TVFP: Ask A Twelve Year Old

TVFP, always on the lookout for new channels of wisdom, has been inspired by Porn Star Samantha Ardente, who was reported in the Toronto Star as saying she only went ahead with her plan to start her own Adult film company after receiving the approval of her twelve year old daughter.

Once again we proudly present a the latest installment of an online help desk featuring our twelve year old niece Bibi. By the way Bibi’s grown up a bit since her last post:

 

Dear Bibi: I’m worried about this fiscal cliff everybody is talking about. What should I do? Marnie in Minnesota

Dear Marnie in Minnesota: fiscal cliffs can be dangerous and there should always be warning signs posted. Never stand too close to the edge of a fiscal cliff because the ground may be unstable. If you really must to stand on the edge of a cliff please make sure you are wearing a special fiscal safety harness. Other than that don’t spend more than you earn.

Dear Bibi: recently I heard that the Toronto’s Gardner Expressway is falling down. I know in Boston they buried their expressway with great success, but it cost a lot of money. What should we do? Tony in Toronto.

Dear Tony in Toronto: Well for one thing the Mayor of Hogtown was seen drunk at a Leafs game. He verbally abused a fan and then lied and said he was never there. Don’t hold out for any solutions from this guy. You can buy hard hats at any nearby Health and Safety outlet.

Dear Bibi: I am post menopausal and I’m experiencing a new sense of freedom and enjoyment in my sexuality. My husband would rather watch football. What should I do? Phyllis is Philly.

Dear Phyllis in Philly: Viagra nachos.

Dear Bibi: My daughter’s boyfriend is a cross dresser. He’s a real stunner and has a very heightened sense of fashion. They’re both doing well in school and do not do drugs. I’m just putting together my spring wardrobe. What should I do? Charles, in Calgary.

Dear Charles in Calgary: Take him shopping.

Dear Bibi: I’m afraid there is somebody out there who is going to attack me without my knowledge. Should I buy a gun? Connie in Connecticut.

Dear Connie in Connecticut: The National Rifle Association is an influential organization dedicated to helping  people like yourself keep the streets and hallways of your nation safe for democracy. The NRA believes that there is a place for private ownership of handguns and assault weapons in a civil society. The NRA will tell you yes, definitely, the sooner the better.

 

Dear Bibi: I’ve heard that according to the Mayan calendar the world is coming to an end unless we bring in Right to Work legislation right away. What should I do? Tim in Hudak.

Dear Tim in Hudak: stick your head back up your putrid ass you fucking moron.

 

 

www.jimread.ca

 

 

 

The Parkdale Liberation Front's Xmas Book List

 

The PLF’s Commissariat for Fine Literature presents its first annual unabashedly biased Book List for the literary minded Christmas shopper:

 

Best Novel Ever Written Since the Beginning of Time

Tieta, by Jorge Amado

Best Novel of all Time

A Star Called Henry, by Roddy Doyle

Best Novella of Greenwich Mean Time

The Testament of Mary, by Colm Toibin

Best Worst Novel Ever Written

For Whom the Bell Tolls, by Ernest Hemmingway

Best American Novel

 

The Color Purple, by Alice Walker

Best Novel by a Canadian Never to Win the Nobel Peace Prize

Joshua Then and Now, by Mordecai Richler

Best Canadian Novel

This All Happened, by Michael Winter

Best Novel in English by a non-English Speaking Writer

A Concise Chinese-English Dictionary for Lovers, by Guo Xiaolu

Best Novel by a Writer Not Named Mordecai Richler

A Complicated Kindness, by Miriam Toews

Best Novel of the 20^th Century Not Entitled Ulysses

The Postman Always Rings Twice, by James M. Cain

Best Short Story of the 20^th Century

Sparks, by Elmore Leonard in the collection, When the Women Came Out to Dance

Best Short Story in the World

A Good Man is Hard to Find, by Flannery O’Connor

Best Short Story in the Universe

Lily Daw and Her Three Sisters, by Eudora Welty in, A Curtain of Green

Best Novel in the World Featuring the Irish Famine

The Law of Dreams, by Peter Behrens

 Best Novel East of the North Pole

The True History of the Kelly Gang, by Peter Carey

Best Novel North of the South Pole

The Famished Road, by Ben Okri

 Best Children’s Novel

Lolita, by Vladimir Nabokov

 

www.jimread.ca

 

 

The Parkdale Liberation Front: Retirement Planning for the New Age

If you have just graduated from university and you are looking for a job you’re probably not thinking about retirement. You’ve got a whopping great loan to pay off. You’re looking at an unemployment rate almost three times the national average. Besides a lot of things can happen in forty years, there’s plenty of time. Right on the first one. We’re not so sure about the second one. We do know that it’s not just about the money.

Florida has been a traditional vacation spot and retirement location for Canadians. The highest point of land in Florida is Britton Hill, in Walton County at about 100 m above sea level. Miami is between zero and 12m. Forget Florida.

You could try central Florida or Georgia or the Carolinas, except there’s that analogy of rats off a sinking ship. The population of Dade County FLA is about 2.5 million people. You can’t expect them all to drown.

Two important new elements of retirement planning: the effects of climate change on sea levels and the effects of climate change on human migration patterns. You could also throw in the effects of climate change on world wide food production.

But let’s not worry about that for now. Maybe find a copy of Soylent Green on DVD. It was Edward G. Robinson’s final movie. There an irony there somewhere. For the more literary minded there’s Jonathan Swift’s, a Modest Proposal.

Back to your retirement. We at The Parkdale Liberation Front are thinking: wait a minute what about Parkdale? Well we’re about 75m above sea level so we’re safe there and we’re pretty much right in the middle of the continent. Not bad. Not bad. We put the barricades up in Mississauga, Vaughan and Ajax. Good, good.

What about Charlottetown in Prince Edward Island? Nice climate. Friendly people. Good housing at reasonable prices. Close to Boston. Like Miami it is at sea level. Yikes. The highest point on the island is no more than 50 m above sea level.

Now in the future we can expect more extreme weather events like Hurricane Sandy. As we said forget Florida. What does sea level to 50m give you if you’re about to get bashed over the head by a massively truculent hurricane? New York City is sea level to about 135m.

We told you that to tell you 50m means you don’t want to be retiring next to Anne of Green Gables. She’s already drowned.

While admittedly these numbers are projections the real fear amongst scientists is that climate change is accelerating. What were suggesting at the PLF is pretty basic. Save money and look north but not too near any shoreline. Be grateful the Tories dumped the long gun registry. Start lobbying them for assault rifles. Look to higher ground, maybe stock up on SPAM and buy a trenching tool, maybe one for the significant other.

It’s entirely possible technology will come to your rescue. The PLF’s International Intelligence Bureau has uncovered evidence that the Jet Propulsion Laboratory in Pasadena California is working on a giant vacuum tube. The idea is to suck all the excess CO₂ out of the atmosphere and point it in the direction of a black hole, a sort of cosmic inverse fart.

There, feel better?

www.jimread.ca

 

 

 

The Parkdale Liberation Front: Christmas Wish List

 

 

Dear Santa, honest we’ve been good kids, so here’s what we’re asking for:

1.  A reduction in the Infant Mortality Rate amongst First Nations to the Canadian National Average.

2.  Roll back funding on diseases of choice to fully fund research to combat Childhood Diseases.

3.  Ten percent of Children in Canada live in poverty. Twenty five percent of First Nations Children in Canada live in poverty. Who thinks that these kids are lazy, no good leeches on the public dime? Raise your hand. Right, point taken it’s the lazy, no good parents’ fault. Thank you, put your hand down. Go and flush yourself down a toilet. Shame on you. Please Santa, end Childhood Poverty.

Santa, we know you’ll try really hard to deliver. Now, if you’re not too busy we’d also like a new Xbox and an IPod and whatever else is on sale at Future Shop. We’d like some chocolate candy and some new clothes from Old Navy and H& M and other cool places. We’d like a gift coupon for McDonald's. We’d like a moratorium on homework and ever having to think about the ten million children who die of starvation worldwide every year.

Thanks Santa

 

 

 

www.jimread.ca

 

 

Queen Victoria on the American Presidential Election

We are not allowed to comment in public as Elizabeth knows. However one of the virtues of being dead is that you can say what you want without a lot of proles and Irish agitators having a go at you.

Am I the only one who has noticed that Brock Obama is a person of colour. They have a term for that but I can’t for the life of me think what it is. During my reign a lot of these coloured chaps were cannibals. Having said that you know it’s a blessing in disguise. No one could accuse him of being Irish.

His children are octoroons I believe and they seem like nice girls and they have a dog to play with. His wife is presentable. She reminds of a kitchen maid we once had in the palace.

Now as for this fiscal cliff everybody is talking about, it is a lot of nonsense. There is one sure way to avoid a fiscal cliff and that is a demi-tasse of urine in the morning, a little stretching and perhaps a walk in the rose garden. If you don’t have a rose garden a walk in the vineyards will do.

I rather like this Miff Romney man. He is white for one thing and you can never overestimate the importance of being white. I believe that is a play by Mr. Wilde who, as you know, was a notorious buggerer. Now to be fair buggerers have played an important role in the maintenance of the Empire. I need only mention the Duke of Wellington and you’ll know what I mean. The Ogre of Europe, Napoleon, was a dwarf and notorious fornicator. He ate with his fingers. The Duke always used a knife and fork. The Ogre lost.

But we digress. We were very impressed with Mr. Romney’s whiteness and that of his running mate Ryan Paul, who, we have in on authority is not the least bit Irish. White on white, that’s the ticket. It is unfortunate that enough American did not see it in that way. You know, once we let the wogs into Britain it was all downhill. They've pretty much taken over. When was the last time you bought a decent curry from a white man.

We have a workable solution for the Republican Party of America. We have it on good authority that if a white male procreates with a woman of colour, the colour of the offspring is diminished. We have it on good authority that if the practice is followed for four generations one will produce a white child. Now, how do you entice women of colour to participate? Theme parks with Ferris wheels, cotton candy, fireworks, all free of course. You’ll have the women of colour lining up to participate in the program. You might even entitle the endeavor:

RENEWING THE AMERICAN DREAM

Now of course this won’t work with the Irish, who are a despicable race and susceptible only to drink. Beware of including the Irish in such a program, although nominally white their hearts are as black as ebony. The Irish without a doubt are the scourge of mankind. I have it on good authority that the Irish are at least three limbs below a monkey on the evolutionary tree. Of evolution is nonsense, but you get my point. In fact during food shortages the Irish have been known to eat their children.

www.jimread.ca 

Fragrant Mary Presents: The Importance of Having a Goal in Life

Fragrant Mary Presents:

 

The Importance of Having a Goal in Life: Interview with a chicken.

I am on location at one of the region’s largest and most important suppliers of chickens to independent abattoirs and butchers as well as the large supermarket chains. I am speaking with a chicken.

 

FM:          What shall I call you? There are so many of you and you all look alike. Do 

                 you mind if I call you Waldo?

 

Waldo:     I like Waldo, very nice.

FM:          Could you describe for me your current situation.

Waldo:     Well as you can see I live in a big barn with all these chickens and we walk

                 around on the floor. We’re what’s known as broilers. That means we don’t lay

                 any eggs. We have food and water over there from those tubes. Don’t ask me

                 what they’re feedin us because I don’t know.

FM:          There seem to be quite a lot of you.

Waldo:     Twenty-five thousand plus I’m guessin.

FM:          Waldo, do you fit in? Are you happy?

Waldo:     No, I don’t fit in and I’m not happy.

FM:          Why is that?

Waldo:     The truth is my goal in life is to be a free range chicken.

FM:          What is it about being a free range chicken that makes you want to be one?

Waldo:     For one thing they’re free and for another they’re out on the range. You have some
                 individual space. For another they live longer than ordinary broilers. They eat better too.
                 It’s not just what ever comes down the tube. For another they’re worth more at market
                 than a broiler or  specifically a roaster broiler which is what I am.

FM:          You’re life expectancy is what?

Waldo:     I’m out of here in four weeks. Eight weeks in total.

FM:          And a free range chicken goes to market in how many weeks?

Waldo:     Well, how about sixteen weeks. That’s awesome.

FM:          And you’ll fetch a higher price per pound of meat.

Waldo:     You bet.

FM:          Something to what, be proud of?

Waldo:     I’m a cut above then aren’t I?

FM:          But Waldo perhaps it’s just vanity.

Waldo:     Nobody in this world wants to be a broiler chicken or even a roaster broiler.

FM:          But everybody wants to be a free range chicken.

Waldo:     That’s the way I see it.

FM:          Tell me, do you have a plan, a break-out plan I mean.

Waldo:     I can’t say but let me tell you, me and a few others have been lookin at our

                 options.

FM:          Good luck then Waldo.

Waldo:     Hey, nice talkin to ya. You sure smell nice.

 

www.jimread.ca

 

 

 

The Parkdale Manifesto

The Parkdale Manifesto

(A work in progress)

Parkdale is a neighbourhood. This neighbourhood includes the poor and the wealthy, sane and the fit, the mentally and physically challenged. It includes a whole bunch of Tibetans and now it is home to a sizeable contingent of Roma. We have a methadone clinic in Parkdale that is quieter and more respectful of the neighbourhood than some of our restaurant / bars. The Parkdale Liberation Front’s definition of a neighbourhood is that it is inclusive. If you don’t like it you are welcome to stay.

Please move to the back of the streetcar, do not block the exits. Form a cue at bus and streetcar stops. Never, under any circumstances, fart in a bus, streetcar or subway train.

Please do not talk in a loud voice in public. Despite what you may think no one is interested in your miserable self centred life.

Hold open a door in a building for someone. Smile and say no rush, even if there is a rush. If you are in too much of a hurry to provide this simple courtesy you are either a bank robber or an asshole. When someone holds a door open for you, smile and say thank you.

When you encounter a stranger on the street smile and look them in the eye. Say hello or cheers and move on. The only thing you are selling, the only thing you are guilty of is the joy of the other. If cannot find the joy of the other you are seriously fucked up, par exemple, Monsieur le Maire, Rob Ford.

Please merge your vehicle in a controlled and dignified manner. Please do not cut in. Cutting in is symptomatic of a selfish personality, someone who might make a lot of money, or no money at all, someone who thinks that the world is all about me and who deep down inside is really an egregious  asshole. Merging into traffic is all about asking a favour. Allowing someone to merge is all about generosity. When you have successfully merged wave your hand in thanks.

Do not honk your horn unless it is life threatening. The Parkdale Liberation Front is currently working on a proposal that would see vehicles equipped with a hot wire that attaches to the genitalia of the driver. Upon the use of a horn except in the direst of circumstances, the driver’s genitalia would receive a severe electric shock. The car horn was not designed to be a servant of neurosis or alpha type assholes.

Share the freedom and joy of cycling by not riding your bicycle on the sidewalk. Share the awesomeness of cycling by wearing a helmet, belling when you pass another cyclist on the left. Use hand signals. Stop at all red lights. Glide carefully through stop signs. Transition slowly through pedestrian areas, walking speed is recommended.

Please pick up after your dog. People who do not pick up are beneath contempt, as worthy of our approbation as the bicycle thief. Well except for that guy in the Italian movie but that was about the predatory nature of Kapitalism.

www.jimread.ca