Category Archives: You Stupid Dick

Dear Toronto News Outlets

Toronto, You Stupid Dick

Yes a storm did rip through GTA and a tornado watch was issued for downtown Toronto, but that doesn’t mean you can drag this out over your entire newscast. Some light poles came down and some shingles flew away. Boo hoo. Oh look here’s a crappy hand held phone video of someone swearing *bleeeep* over a lightning strike! News, people!

Oh and a light post fell over. Not sure how. Probably from the force of hype.

Ann Rohmer over on CP24 is about to explode with all the superlatives she’s been vomiting out of her head. Frank Ferragine has got his serious face on and is concerned for the rest of the day. CTV morning crew are sitting on their couch with subdued hushed tones. The Ceeb is talking to someone in London. England.

Tim Hortons – My Final Rant

You Stupid Dick

I know you know I’ve got a big hate on for Tim Hortons. I’ve actually not been inside one for over a year now – why should I give a company any of my money if they can’t train their staff to be polite?

I broke that rule this Sunday and ran into the Winchester and Parliament outlet at 7am for a quick bagel for the husband and I before we stared our apartment clean/Coronation Street marathon. I step up to the counter when called and started my order:

“Next please.”

“I’ll have a extra large Earl Grey Tea…”

She walks off. I’m left alone as my order trails off in my throat.

Seriously. She just walked away like her hard drive was full and all other functions shut down.

A few seconds later some other woman comes forward and asks for my order.

“Is she getting my first thing?”

“Who?”

“Her,” I point.

She turns and starts up a conversation. After a short exchange she turns back. “What would you like?”

“I guess she’s not, right?”

Blank. I might as well been talking to a wall.

After taking my order (extra large coffee, extra large tea, two toasted bagels), she still managed to fuck it up.

This morning, I read (via the growing Queer Canada Blogs) that while Timmys is making in-roads with their franchise into the US, one owner down there is running fast and loose with the company’s “no religious/political sponsorships” policy:

Via Truth Wins Out:

Canadian coffee and doughnut chain Tim Hortons is sponsoring the National Organization for Marriage’s antigay cookout and worship service on behalf of heterosexual-only marriage Aug. 16 at Aldrich Mansion in suburban Providence. Rhode Island is the last state in New England to oppose marriage equality.

While the article goes on to say that these kinds of community sponsorships are localized to the franchise owner, it’s still Tim Horton’s policy not to get involved with political events. TWO suggests you contact Tims and voice your concern. I did! And I got a “customer service number ticket” too!

So finally I will never set foot inside another Tim Hortons ever again and I urge you to do the same. While you may cry “But it’s a Canadian company!” I want you to ask yourself if it were so Canadian, why is it so utterly mis-managed and can’t get it’s corporate policy shit together? We’re better than this!

Hello Starbucks, with your huge corporation of greed and faux-green. You now have all my caffeine dollars.

Update: Tim Hortons backs down and withdraws with an apology. Still not going to change my mind about their crappy service.

Gotta Screen Those Lyrics, CP24

Toronto, You Stupid Dick

Dear internet searching person Googling “swearing music on cp24 morning”:

I heard it too.

I missed the song title and artist but before CP24 went off to commercial, right after their “Contest Queen” segment, some bright intern played a song with the lyric:

“There ain’t no shit, at all!”

If this takes off, I bet we’re subjected to Phil Collins musical bumpers from now on.

Love,

DeadRobot

Rogers Pushes a LOT Down The Pipe

Celebs and Media, You Stupid Dick

For the last few days our HD channels with Rogers have been not all that HD-y. See the video below:

I know it’s not a faulty PVR because our digital box in the bedroom does the same when you run an On Demand video, not so much live TV. It’s purely the amount of info not being dumped into the player and the buffer not having any reserves to maintain image cohesiveness.

I wonder about Roger’s infrastructure. If they promise HD TV (which is 720p, by the way, not 1080p – their own hardware displays it) then they should be able to transmit that much info all the while offering the internet (here’s where I blame all you BitTorrent theives) and Home Phone to their customers. When we were having issues with our Home Phone, a technician confessed that the junction box out back that services 7 homes was actually split wired for 11 outlets and that might be “the problem”. He also said that if it gets rainy there is standing water in the bottom of the box. Granted we’ve had no issues since the fall with our Home Phone, but the above mess is starting to happen more and more.

Stay tuned, dear readers. I am calling Rogers soon to see what they can do.

UPDATE: I’ve done some searching and found this gem: Rogers Compresses it’s HD signal. While this comes as no surprise, the quality does. Ease up, big boy!

Dear Dalton – Another Letter to the Premier

Celebs and Media, Toronto, You Stupid Dick

strikesucks

Hi Dalton,

I wrote to you a while back about my father’s unacceptable experience in a downtown emergency ward. Thanks for immediately putting me on a mailing list of back-patting propaganda and the nice form letter response. He’s doing fine now if you’re wondering, after a few months being on a PICC Line while he had to wait to see the surgeon.

But that’s not why I’m writing.

This time it’s to ask you to do something about Toronto. Your major money maker is broken and you have the power to fix it. I know you said you’d only step in and legislate the union back to work is if health issues arose due to the mounting garbage. I guess week-long standing, rain soaked garbage isn’t ever a health issue. Good thing they’re spraying the dump parks with deodorizer and spreading out rat traps! That should buy the city (and you) some time.

I know you’re busy with GM and the economy and stuff, but an effective manager doesn’t wait for problems to arise, he confronts them before they become major issues. He provides solutions with wisdom and fairness.

Dalton, I’ll make it easy for you. You don’t even have to legislate them back to work to save my vote for you (long since lost, by the way) – no, all you have to do is get a fair mediator into the negotiation room and show that you care for the people who keep the money coming in for eHealth and who put you into power. Do it now because Torontonians are really tired of this pissing match and need a white knight.

Eternally an Ontarian, But Not Liking The Smell

Dead Robot

Rogers Wants You To Have The Best

iPhone, You Stupid Dick

Got an iPhone G3 and caught up in the reality distortion field that is the G3 S and want to upgrade to the best? Rogers is here to help! (*snort*)

From Kris Abel’s tech blog:

Got an iPhone 3G? Looking to buy an iPhone 3G S? I asked Rogers what advice they might have for you. Here’s their response:

“iPhone customers with existing models are encouraged to upgrade to the new software 3.0 update- it offers most of enhancements that the new models will have including tethering and MMS, effective July 17.

Rogers HUP (hardware upgrade program) policy is set at 24 months (6 months before end of contract for Fido). Rogers subsidizes handsets so that we can continue to offer customers the best devices at the best value.”

Rogers Death StarThat last line is so “No lube! Open wider faggot, here we come!” So you’re stuck with your handset for another year (if you bought it when it came out), or you can pay full price for the G3 S.

Judging by how fast Apple updates their product and how slow Roger’s HUP is, by the time 24 months go by with my G3, I will be able to get Apple’s G4 network phone.

Recycling Will Kill You!

The Bad, Toronto, You Stupid Dick

drspacemanGood lord! There’s chloroform in your reusable grocery bag! So says the Canadian Plastics Industry Association. And other nasty bacteria! Because your food is dirty! It’s true!

Because they did a study. And they found their own Dr Spaceman to step forward and tearfully explain how using cloth bags will eventually kill off mankind faster than Skynet. Their study, lead by a respected Dr. Richard Summerbell, at Sporometrics (that sounds like an informercial parent company right there – note: they’re located in a back alley off of Dufferin Street, Toronto.), shows that reusing cloth bags will give you ear infections. Some bags were found to have fecal matter in them!

“I’m sick of carrying this shit!!”

It saddens me that this “American-style” info spin is coming from a Canadian organization. To quote BoingBoing: “the regulator who traded his credibility for a consulting fee should be ashamed of himself”

More technical deconstruction via Barfblog

Cynical Futurists

Distractions, You Stupid Dick

Nice piece in the Star today about Eric Yam’s NASA winning, Utopian space station design: where prescreening out all the violent types, providing free health care and vat grown meat are the societal building blocks! “designed .. to be close to the Canadian society that I live in!” You go, Ayn Rand!

He backed up his design with lengthy explanations of how the operational systems would be feasible now, not speculating on future science. When I was a kid I use to draw huge images of spaceships, spanning several pages in my woefully underused math note books (oh the irony) and Eric’s story hit a personal note. Of course mine weren’t as detailed, just cross sections of rooms inside cool looking post-Star Wars ship knock offs. His belief in a better future was as refreshing as removing a fart-filled spacesuit. After reading the article I ventured into the comments and the first one out of the gate is this fun-killing, steaming pile of bitterness:

Good for him. Lots of thought there. Too bad it’s wasted on space station nonsense. Many people will die in space for man’s vanity while the earth is destroyed. Where’s the mortuary? Will their corpses become more space junk? I don’t see a cemetery.

Dude! Holy shit, it’s a 17 year old kid’s dream of a clean, safe future! I bet you run along side the Santa Claus parade and shout “HE’S NOT REAL!!”

I’m always shocked when I come across this kind of thought that man does not belong in space. The exploration of space is far from “vain”. It stimulates discovery and has made us realize our beginnings more deeply, giving humanity a stronger, humbling identity, instead of relying on a fictitious sky god that smites non-like minded individuals. Yes, we have some cleaning here to do at home but maybe if all of us got to look at the earth from space, we’d have a better appreciation of home. Yuri Gragarin’s first (pragmatic) words in space were: “The Earth is blue. How wonderful. It is amazing.” And later the often quoted/parodied “No words to describe it. Poetry! They should’ve sent a poet. So beautiful. So beautiful…”

And by the way, to answer Mr Bitter McBitterbum: out in space, we’d eat the dead.

New Garbage, Same As The Old Garbage

The Bad, Toronto, You Stupid Dick

Dear Astral Media Outdoor:

Your garbage service, after less than a month, leaves so much to be desired. The “Oooh! Shiny” new factor wore off as soon as we saw where you were placing the new trash cans in relation to where people actually stand or walk. The one pictured below at Sherbourne and Carlton is close to 20ft away from the bus shelter. We all know the less enthusiastic will not bother shuffling over that far to toss a gum wrapper. Who did your product research? A pack of blind monkeys with hooks for hands?

Look, when the OMG people came to town at least they understood the amount of crap Torontonians love to throw away on a moments notice and made huge cans (bigger ad space!). Yours barely hold a Tims cup, diaper and a bus transfer. Oh and they emptied them on a regular basis, or at least recognized that your cans will need to be serviced more often. I realize this complaint may be better directed to the City itself, but surely someone, somewhere must have realized these cans are residential capacity, not public or industrial.

Same Old Crap

Same Old Crap

So in closing, Astral Media Outdoor, clean up your act. It’s worn thin pretty fast.

A Torontonian.