Sandbox

The Geyser on Margaret Avenue

A photo essay by David Bebee

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WHEN IT RAINS, IT SNOWS

A poem by Ben Gelinas

Last night it rained
Then the rain apparently froze
And it began to snow
I park outside, so this was not good news
Thursday morning my car was covered
in a thick layer of pebbled ice
I had to scrape through it with my deluxe Canadian Tire scraper
The brush did nothing
Still, I'm glad I spent the extra money

Happy World Toilet Day

by Colin Hunter

Nov. 19 has finally arrived, so it’s time to reflect on another great year of successful toilet usage. Happy World Toilet Day, everyone.

Thanks to the World Toilet Organization, which created this most joyous of holidays, the oft-overlooked toilet is finally getting the respect it so richly deserves.

According to the organization’s website, the average person will spend about three years on the toilet in a lifetime, presumably not all in one sitting.

The noble toilet serves the lowliest function known to man (except for Britney Spears’ publicist, whose job is slightly crappier), yet it never complains. All it asks for in return is a little blue puck in the tank and the occasional plunge.

Amid all the crass commercialism during the Toilet Day shopping frenzy, it’s important to remember the true meaning of Toilet Day. The toilet is a luxury of modern living -- a benchmark invention of sanitation -- which two billion people in the world unfortunately still live without.

So next time you ascend the throne, remember how lucky you are to have such an altruistic appliance in your home. Just thinking about my trusty, lime-green toilet -- his name is John --  makes me feel all flush (I make pun. You laugh now).

Embrace the day and skip to the loo, my darlings.

Ben reviews new book Borat: Touristic Guidings to Minor Nation of U.S. And A/Touristic Guidings to Glorious Nation of Kazakhstan

By Ben Gelinas

Kazahkstan is recent sent horse into space. Its country with economy based on sexytime prostitutes, anti-semitism and green potatoes given to Kazahks by Ukhtar The Mighty Hawk called apples. Why not?

This lies and some more is what is to be learned in new book called Borat: Touristic Guidings to Minor Nation of U.S. And A/Touristic Guidings to Glorious Nation of Kazakhstan. This book has fake dilapidation on it and smells like 1980 history textbook lost in library under staffroom cooler on propose. It is written by shapeshifting jew comedian Sasha the Baron of Cohen. He is funny man English your childrens and their kids might know as gay rapper Ali g.

His Borat movie was about very funny ambush journalisms in ridiculous Kazakh character in transport through America. It great success!

Comparing to that movie this book is turgid.

Cohen here produces the humour like strange, waste-of-time practice in west called "recycling" where they wash out dirty PepsiMax cans and use cans again.

Borat does these with jokes.

Here is example of an humour contained in book of which I am the reviewer for. This example is author keynote: "Borat Saagdiyev have hair on pubis for 35 harvest, he have correct number of limbs and chram thick like can of Pepsi. Borat is current marry to his third wife. First two is dead. He did not kill them."

If this sampling make chortles in you like a dog choking on gypsy's tears, you should shalot tenge for the book. This kinds of joke everywhere, on pages, funny over and over but not for childrens under 3.

If you are not easy to find these funny, must I recomend not so offensive book like Arthur Miller Tropical Cancer?

IT'S-A HIM

By Ben Gelinas

The year is 1996. The Spice Girls, always irrelevant, are still popular. Princess Diana is still alive. And the Nintendo 64 has just come out. Every third Canadian kid is getting the quintessential gaming concern's latest, greatest console for Christmas, and with it the launch title Super Mario 64.

Click here to read about a great video game series that isn't about killing people.

TELEVISION IS NO PLACE FOR FOXES

By Ben Gelinas

In the 1950s, Salvador Dali appeared on the popular game show What's My Line?

There's this essay I haven't read called the Hedgehog and the Fox. In it, author Isaiah Berlin divides writers and thinkers into two categories:

- hedgehogs, who view the world through the lens of a single defining idea (examples given include Dante, Plato, Lucretius, Pascal, Hegel, Dostoevsky, Nietzsche, Ibsen and Proust)

- foxes, who draw on a wide variety of experiences and for whom the world cannot be boiled down to a single idea (examples given include Shakespeare, Herodotus, Aristotle, Montaigne, Erasmus, Moliere, Goethe, Pushkin, Balzac and Joyce)." Wikipedia

Television is no place for foxes.

ALL THAT STUPID COURAGE: PART 2

By Ben Gelinas

She tries to push all the bad memories out. She says she doesn’t need more therapy. But Anne wants people to know what she went though. She says maybe it’ll keep others from making the same mistakes.

Click here to read more.