January 12, 2007
Apparently The Only Thing Anybody Can Confirm Today Is That Soccer Fans Really Like David Beckham; In Other News, Pope Catholic
Lots of Toronto fans are very enthusiastic that David Beckham is going to play for the Los Angeles Galaxy. Toronto FC reported an immediate increase in ticket sales for the one guaranteed visit by the Galaxy. Wow, this is just like when Pele joined the New York Cosmos! Soccer is here to stay in North America!
Terrorists fire a rocket at the American embassy in Athens early Friday morning. As is standard with stories of this sort, nobody knows anything yet, although apparently nobody has been hurt and the first people to take credit for it were a non-Muslim leftist revolutionary sect. Exciting!
Details are currently extremely sketchy regarding an individual arrested in Middleton on several charges of possession of explosives and weapons. However, we definitely know it was a nineteen-year-old guy, and that the RCMP and CSIS are not yet involved. Thrilling!
Elsewhere in very detail-light news, Toronto police shoot a man in the stomach near Danforth and Victoria Park. Shoot-tastic!
Britain's problematic surplus of doctors is a boon for Canada. Because we need doctors and they got doctors! Of course the article fails to mention that there's this other country whose name rhymes with "the Munited Shmates" that also needs doctors and who will likely be able to pay more than we will for said doctors (thanks to a broken healthcare system that simply pays more for everything), which is problematic for us.
Finally, to compensate for all the lack of detail in today's other news stories, the Leafs beat the Sabres 4-2. Goals were scored by Kubina, Steen and O'Neill (twice) for the Leafs, and Vanek and Drury for the Sabres, and Toronto led on penalties by nine to seven. Remember, kids: sports stories always have tons of details!
Image via Time Magazine archives.
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Unfortunately, more foreign doctors coming over from Britain's not going to be much of a help for our medical system. Canada already has lots and lots of fully-qualified specialists and family doctors driving cabs and flipping burgers. They can't practice in Canada because they need to pass exams and be recertified.
They can't write these exams because the CMA and provincial affiliates cut back the number of people they'd allow write in the early 90s and haven't increased it to meet demand.
The same thing happens in a lot of other professions as well. Yet our immigration system continues courting foreign professionals whose credentials we won't recognize once they arrive on our soil. It's a travesty.
Shoot-tastic huh? That's this blog's commentary on a shoooting? Thanks for the honesty, wow. You can't get this kind of writing anywhere else in Toronto. You guys are pioneers.
Wake me when the CMA allows those doctors to complete Canadian exams before they come to Canada.
Gotta agree with Dog Bone about the other thing.
Hey, I love Mr. Bird's commentary!
If you want the news without the sarcasm go read a newspaper or something.
Actually, I was just going to comment, that I think the Explosively Talented One has really found his niche here at torontoist. Ever since he's taken over the News I've noticed a 100 percent increase in hilarity, and I for one really, really like it.
Keep up the sarcastic commentrary please! It's like Ana Marie Cox era Wonkette, but about stuff I actually care about.
Beth> There is certainly a market for people making sarcastic remarks -- "hilarity" -- about people getting shot. Just more incidental comic fodder for their lifestyle. There are certainly people who think you can make fun of absolutely everything, even if it has dark conservative undertones -- sort of like Vice Magazine, they made a mint off of appealing to this market.
There are consequences to this sort of writing though: one is it makes it hard for me to take anything else here seriously. I never know when something is a joke, when I'm not supposed to be taking something at face falue. When I do, and then find out I'm being put on, is the intention to make me feel like a dope? For not "getting it" or being unhip to the jokesterism?
You can write with verve and style, and even be funny, but you can also do it with respect and with some humanity, and with some sense of morality. And this is why this kind of writing is entirely neo-conservative and nasty. The idea that other lives have nothing to do with our own -- they're so foreign to us that we can make fun of somebody being shot at Vic Park and Danforth -- is what I would expect of the Toronto Sun if they started some kind of hipster-targeted paper.
Shoot-tastic?!?!?!?!?!
God that is tasteless. I don't care WHO gets shot, you should show a little more respect. I can appreciate sarcasm, but leave it out of murder commentary.
Siding with DogBone on this one. Beth, let's have the cops mistakenly shoot one of your friends and see the hilarity in it.