With the close of the year almost upon us, many of us look back to reflect on the year that had just past. In this case, that is they year 2013.
In the spirit of retrospection, I bring you the ‘Cry-baby of the Year 2013’.
Please, follow the link for the vote and let me know in the comments whom you voted for – or, nominate your own in the comments…and/or voice your support for cry-babies nominated in the comments by others! Just make sure your comment is made in 2013!!!
On January 1st, 2014, I will tabulate the results and post them!
Have fun – and feel free to nominate/vote for more than one cry-baby: after all, I am the ‘rule bender’!
If you are not familiar with what First World Anarchist (FWA) are, I suggest a quick trip to reddit or imgur.
Fair warning: if you click on the above links, you may suffer pain from laughter and lost hours…
In a nutshell (no pun intended), FWA is a person who is so fed up with our over-micro-managing overlords and their persistent petty rules that if, say, they see a line with a ‘DO NOT CROSS’ sign, they’ll photograph themselves crossing it and post it on the internet to share with all the other FWAs. It’s kind of like a mild oppositional disorder with a sense of humour.
I actually find the growth of the FWA movement to be a good thing: finally, people are beginning to rebel our over-regulation….but, this is supposed to be a light-hearted post and I should not ruin it by philosophising or preaching!!!
Yes, I live in a household with two very enthusiastic FWAs: one is a teenager and the other is an engineer, so that explains that. But, I digress…
The idea of these photos FWAs share is to break a petty or irrational or annoying rule – with attitude.
Open the package on the opposite side of where it says to!
Use the champagne glass for red wine!
Post a picture of that tree with attitude!
Put the sock marked ‘L’ on the right foot!
So, you can understand my dilemma when I came across this picture: do I post it to r/firstworldanarchist or would that be a bad idea….

Thoughts?
Just a reminder to all Ottawans and to all who plan to drive in for the Free Thinking Film Festival – it starts this Thursday, 31st of October 2013, and runs until Sunday, November 3rd.
Here is the complete schedule:
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Don’t you just love migraines?
Not only do they incapacitate one for days, for even more days afterwards, my brain refuses to function on anything more than 20% of my cognitive capacity… So, no reasoning, very little reading (that still hurts) and just a lot of listening to TV shows and videos.
Listening to a bit of the radio, the lunacy and unimaginable disconnect between the Ottawa city government and, well, reality, reared its ugly head up again. And, yes, it was again regarding the cursed ‘O-Train’.
This time, it is not the tunnel under the downtown, to be dug in ‘loose shale’ (but will, in no way, undermine the integrity of the foundations of the really tall buildings right above), nor will it have anything to do with the disruption of the geological station placed in ‘isolated’ area of the Greenbelt, which is being used to calibrate all the other geological stations in remote ares (and, yes, I helped develop their data acquisition/calibration system for them back when I was working in the science field – did you know that scientists pack water bags around their equipment in the Arctic so they can collect data for longer before the instruments/laptop freeze? Sorry, I’m rambling…) and that is being threatened because the idiotically planned O’choochoo will run right by it.
Nor is it attempting to run the ‘western’ portion of the O-choo-choo line on parkway land along the Ottawa river – and thus effectively halving the accessibility to it as potential riders would live south of the line and only fish north of it…
No, this time it’s the airport.
It seems that, in its wisdom, the city planners have not only failed to take into account the Convention Center near the airport (and the major cause of traffic jams in the area) and ignored it completely, they have charted the O’choo-choo tracks to run over a bit of land that the airport people own and have, on a few occasions, told the Ottawa people they plan to build a runway on.
How do I get off this planet?
And while I’m ranting on my municipal government…
OK, another bicyclist got killed on out streets. This time, Hunt Club Road.
What is unusual about this one, the bicyclist was traveling in the bicycle lane, not making any turns, and in the same direction as an 18-wheeler truck that did not even know it struck anything…
The fault for this one lies squarely with the City of Ottawa!
Why?
It has an insane obsession with making people bike on roads not designed to accommodate bicycles.
There used to be a law on our books, prior to amalgamation, that stated that if a bike path exists between two spots, a bicyclist must use the bike paths instead of public roads to get from one point to the other. After amalgamation, this rule has not been enforced at all, so I am not sure if it still exists. Indeed, one can drive on a road which is flanked by a bicycle path which is separated by about 1 to 1.5 meter grass buffer from the road – and encounter bicyclists on the road, blatantly ignoring the bike path.
But, this particular fatality is significant.
It happened on a road that is a major thoroughfare with a high speed limit. Hunt Club used to be a generous 2 lanes in each direction road.
Then, the bicycling fetish took root with our elected classes and the right lane of this road – generous, true, but not overly so – got narrowed by having a bicycle lane painted onto the right part of it. Now, it is a road that has a generous left lane, a very narrow right lane and an in-your-face, unprotected bicycle lane.
The right lane might be able to accommodate ‘smart’ cars comfortably, but it is by far too narrow to accommodate 18-wheelers…
And that is why I blame the City of Ottawa for this particular death!
Just because you WANT something does not make it SO! You know, like making a road physically wider and safe for bikes without actually, you know, widening the road.
Putting ideology over reality will have real-life consequences – and, in this case, deadly consequences…
Or, there is this story out of Saudi Arabia: a man is sentenced to beheading for ‘crying at a cemetery’. It happens to be the cemetery where Muhammad is supposedly buried and crying at his tomb, apparently, constitutes adolatry, which is a capital offense in Saudi Arabia.
And the braves of Hezbollah successfully identified and killed a filthy Jewish spy: yes, yet another endangered-species bird. Those guys as SOOO brave and clever!
Of course, we all ‘know’ that ‘human rights’ is a gay plot to destroy Islam…my headache is coming back…quick, somebody, pull my teeth out!
And if you have been suspecting that there is a reason why the mainstream media is not telling you the story, the whole story, about world news, you may be gratified to know that a respected journalist has blown the whistle on CNN and revealed that it takes money to not report some stories and to put a positive narrative onto others.
Since I was not really up to reading much, my hubby (I won the spouse lottery – he is the perfectest hubby ever!) has been entertaining me by showing me the original 1978 Battlestar Gallactica TV series.
I LOVE it!
Not only is it totally pro-free-speech and anti-oppression, it shows the fallacy of ‘peace in our lifetime’ of appeasing bullies… OK, I’m not too far into it (I kept falling asleep from the meds), but, it is so much better than the remake which was stripped of the principles that are core to defining the character’s actions…
Then, of course, there are all the videos I’ve watched (or, rather, listened to, over the last few days)…some of which are interesting, very interesting (and not all are political – some are just fun….it’s quite a mishmash!
Let me put some up:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=YIaaAwk10yE&list=HL1382490229&feature=mh_lolz
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=9rt6Rdnffpo
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=q9DRfGiRGBw&list=HL1382491250