Death to SPAM!

Ok, it’s said that the greatest trick the devil ever pulled off was convincing people that he didn’t exist. If that’s true – and that’s a rant for another day – then the second best trick he came up with was convincing people that SPAM was anything other than the scourge of the modern age!

Forget chick flicks, forget advertising that sells to the lowest possible of all common denominators – forget those darn twist ties that they use to secure toys to their boxes – if you’re a parent you’ll understand that last one, if not, Fort Knox should be so well secured!

Forget all of that!

It is SPAM that is eroding the very fabric of reality around us, as we sit on our couches, glued to the mind curdling drivel that passes for entertainment on the boob tube – never got that really – if there were boobs on the tube, it would be far more interesting wouldn’t it?

I’m sure you could quantify SPAM into three truly disturbing categories. The first is ‘Idiot SPAM’. This is the garbage that you get in your inbox trying to sell you garbage you don’t want and clearly doesn’t work. It’s the guy who, if you’ll only provide him with your bank account number so that he can transfer his vast wealth into it temporarily, will make you a millionaire over night! I call it Idiot SPAM because only an idiot would fall for it. Seriously, if Prince Mugabi of whatever war torn African nation has the wherewithal to pick your individual email out of the ether to make his plea – believe me, he can get his money out of the country without your help. It’s called a bank – look into them!

The second is even worse than the first – it’s ‘Well Meaning SPAM’. Seriously, I don’t even know where to start with this one… You probably get them all the time – usually from people of the female persuasion. It’s meant to give you a lift, or put a smile on your face, or give you a sense of empowerment – unless you don’t immediately forward it to thirty of your closest friends – in which case, Lord help you, but bad things will happen! Like powerful medicine, there will be horrendous side effects! Extreme flatulence. The development of a second head. Pregnancy in men! The horrors go on, but I can not.

My better half – her words, not mine – gets these sorts of emails all the time and by default, so do I. And the problem is that you can’t filter the darn stuff! Oh you could filter them out (just between you and I, I have on one or two occasions) but the problem with that is that these people are ‘supposed’ to be your friends! They are ‘supposed’ to be people that care about you! If you filter them out with your SPAM filters, you might actually miss something that actually DOES have meaning!

And as ‘reasonable’ as your relatives / friends / whatever claim to be, it’s impossible to send them a polite message (and not just because doing polite is really hard when you’re that annoyed) asking them to stop sending you that sort of stuff. Why? Because it always hurts their feelings! Oh sure, they claim not to be wounded, until you open your Christmas Gift from Aunt Sadie and discover, not the family heirloom you were expecting, but a tin of… well, SPAM! And won’t that just teach you a life lesson, junior!

The third kind of SPAM is a meat product made from completely unidentifiable meat-like products, which if it’s ever passed your lips, puts you to far into the category of lost cause for me to even continue.

So what do you do? Got me. I’m venting – it’s what I do!

Have a good one – and stop sending me SPAM dammit!

To sing or not to Sing - why is this a question?

So here it is, my first formal vent! How exciting! The truth is I vent constantly, just ask the people who live with me – my youngest is only nine and a half months old, but even she has mastered the eye rolling when I get started, so imagine what the wife and older kid are like…

But deciding what to vent about in my blog has proven to be something of a revelation for me about how much there is to vent about in the world today! Do I write about crooked politicians? The environment? Do I rant on about crime and the lack of punishment, or the stupidity of so many people around me? What about religion? If you’ll excuse the pun, God knows there is plenty to vent on with that particular subject.

Odds are, sooner or later every one of those topics will fall under the wrathful focus of my attention! And odds are even better that they are going to, each and every one of them, deserve the tongue lashing they get.

Anyhow, today I came across this story while visiting CBC.com (I know, that’s a whole other vent session, I assure you…) To sum it up, Principle Erik Millet pulled the daily singing of the Canadian National Anthem from his elementary school because the parents of two children had issues with it.

According to the Belleisle Elementary School website there are approximately 230 students in attendance. So for concerns over two students who had to step outside the classroom while the anthem was being sung, Principal Erik decided to make a change that affected 228 others.

Not surprisingly, people got a little testy over this move. Some even got ornery! The superintendent, seeing the backlash building stepped in quickly and reversed the Principals decision – not before Principal Erik had to start seeing a shrink though. I’m sure law suits will follow…

So I have a couple things I would like to get off my chest on this one:

• I don't really care if they sing the anthem or not - they don't do it at my kid's school, though they do sing it at assemblies. But I see no harm in it and hey if it happens to help a generation of Canadian's grow up with a little pride in the country they live in, so much the better!

• Principal Erik, I know you had this foolish touchy feely idea that you were somehow promoting some strange politically correct idea of inclusion by not wanting to make the two students with parents of questionable intellect step outside each day, but come on. This is school – it hasn’t changed so much since I went there so many years ago. Different equals dead in a school population. These poor kids were probably more ostracized by having you mess with the entire student population than they ever were by stepping out of the room for a couple minutes. You really haven’t done them any favours!

• To the parents of the kids who started this whole mess – get over yourselves. If your atheist beliefs (Which you are certainly welcome to hold) can’t stand up to the mention of the word ‘God’ in the national anthem – maybe you should take a long hard look at just how strong they are! Perhaps you’re closet believers! Horror of horrors! And when your done that, look at the damage your doing to your kids by making them leave the classroom versus the ridiculously insignificance of having to sing a song!

• To the other parents who threatened poor misguided Principal Erik – Get your heads checked you morons. It’s not as though he introduced ritualistic human sacrifice to your child, he took away a song! Send in your emails, letters – heck phone and express your displeasure in a reasonable way. Call the school board! Write the editor of the paper! You know, be the proper example of how rational people deal with disagreements in the real world that your child needs you to be! Or go to jail… Frankly I’m not sure which would prove a better point to your kid.

• Finally, to all you politically correct pinheads out there that read the CBC article and sit back and think to yourselves ‘Principal Erik was absolutely right!’ Just stop. Stop trying to save the world from itself. Stop trying to make everything perfect. Political incorrectness isn’t going to go away. Frankly, I feel another vent coming on just thinking about it…

Anyhow, the red fog over my vision is starting to recede… Until next time!