June 2013
45 posts
Queer Culture
In Canada, it’s totally okay to be gay! This year marks 10 years of legal same-sex marriage in Ontario, and 8 years of legal same-sex marriage in all of Canada, making it the fourth country to do so. Most Canadian cities have thriving “gaybourhoods,” where queer-friendly stores and rainbow flags abound. What is possibly the best day of the year in Canada? Pride.
Robertson Screws
The Robertson Screw, aka the “square bit,” is only used in the US when we really don’t want people to disassemble the item in public - because nobody has a square screwdriver in the states. Yup, we only have slotted (-) and Phillips head (+) bits. Not even really sure what the advantage is of a square-shaped bit, but they are everywhere in Canada.
“The big secret about the golden age of “male providers” is that it never existed. First, women have always worked. Second, and just as importantly, there have always been men who were too poor, too queer, too sensitive, too disabled, too compassionate or simply too clever to submit to whatever model of “masculinity” society relied upon to keep its wars fought and its factories staffed. “Traditional masculinity”, like “traditional femininity”, is a form of social control, and seeking to reassert that control is no answer to a generation of young men who are quietly drowning in a world that doesn’t seem to want them.”
—We need to talk about masculinity
(via loveyourrebellion)
Heritage Minute
Canada has Canadian Content (“CanCon”) laws, which state that a certain percentage of broadcast media must be Canadian, be it Canadian television shows like Degrassi or Canadian musicians like Avril Lavigne. This used to include Heritage Minutes, short educational clips about historical moments in Canada. The greatest of these is Burnt Toast, where Dr. Wilder Penfield discovers the cause of seizures by poking a lady’s brain until she smells burnt toast.
Butter Tarts
Butter tarts are a classic Canadian dessert, made of eggs, butter, syrup, and sugar baked into a flaky pastry. Like a baby pecan pie.
Guest illustrator: Marie Poliak
angelina jolie’s daughter
and gwen stefani’s son
both so cute
Parenting done right
ugh. this is so wrong. how can you support someone letting their kid wear socks on grass. do you know how hard it is to wash those stains out?
“In a way, Kanye’s entire discography is leading to this (probable) point—his first two records were about reaching the top, Graduation was about loving life there, 808’s and Heartbreak was how the top can fuck up your personal life, My Beautiful Dark Twisted Fantasy was about growing restless at the top, and Watch the Throne found him and Jay-Z negotiating the idea of why there weren’t more black men at the top. And now, it seems, Kanye’s taking stock of the world as he sees it from upon high, and deciding that he doesn’t like what’s flashing in front of his Fendi frames. The fact that the biggest black entertainer in the country even made those two records and debuted them on the beyond-white bread Saturday Night Live is huge. This isn’t Das Racist razzing a few privileged white kids at Music Hall of Williamsburg. This is Kanye West going into a million white people’s living rooms and saying, “Look at the terrible things your people have done to my people and are still doing to my people. We are not going to take it. I’m so pissed right now I wouldn’t even be here if I didn’t have something incredibly urgent to say. Fuck you.” That’s a powerful act, something that you can put up there with things that Bob Marley or Tupac did. I know that’s outlandish, but one day we’ll be holding Kanye West up next to those guys, so we might as well start now.”
—
Drew Millard, The Revolutionary Politics of Kanye West (via sister-bell)
Brilliantly written. I agree completely. Specifically with the last sentence.
(via quasidolo)