August 28, 2007
HMV & Tory Both Get Cheap, City Hates Nature, So You Think You're Married
With music download trends showing that the coveted male 18–24 demographic is more interested in the music of their ancestors than anything current, music store HMV is dropping CD prices on oldies like Pink Floyd and Led Zeppelin. HMV hopes that the move will convince young men to abandon the web and start stealing from retail stores again.
Ontario Conservative Party leader John Tory says that, if elected, he would save $1.5 billion in annual spending without imposing any cuts in services. That makes a lot of sense—common sense, in fact. You could even say it's kind of a Common Sense Revolution or something.
A Scarborough woman is upset after City bylaw officers dug up her natural garden while she was at work. City officials said they removed the garden because it had become "unruly and offensive." No word yet on whether authorities will be taking similar action against City Council.
A former United Church minister is apologizing for officiating at the marriage ceremonies of at least 25 couples when she had no legal authority to do so. Rachel Margaret Montgomery-Heersink of Bancroft has been charged with several counts of unlawfully solemnizing a marriage and fraud under $5,000. The affected couples, who have actually been living in sin, will probably be killed by God.
Photo by Simon Chambers from the Torontoist Flickr Pool.
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Wow... what kind of asshole of a person would complain about somebody else's garden? How do people get to be like that?
And on the footnote... lowering prices on records which were recorded before your target audience was born is a sure way to get said audience into the store... not. This is a typical jumping in the back yelling "me, me, me! don't forget about me!" kind of move.
I can understand the garden thing. Keep in mind what she refers to as her garden is actually her lawn. In my old neighborhood there was a semi-abandoned house, and a house with a "natural garden" and their lawns were equally overgrown and fugly.
There are plenty of natural gardens that look great -- I've seen a half-fozen around High Park -- but it takes a terrific amount of planning and maintenance to end up with a natural garden that looks better than an abandoned lot.
Plus, she had been warned multiple times before. Part of the choice to live closely with other people includes not being able to do whatever you want to your surroundings.
As if NIMBYism wasn't bad enough, now we've got NIMFYism?
More like NIYFYism -- Not In Your Front Yard.
I think if it looked more "gardeney" she might have gotten away with it - maybe a gnome or two? The dead raccoon however did lose her some sympathy - sure her hip was at her but had she no friend she could ask to do the necessary, or hire an animal control firm? Doesn't the city have a service for dead animal removal?
I think the Star gave themselves away a bit when they referred to the neighbour's lawn as "normal". I wonder if someone looked closely at some of the "normal" lawns whether some pesticide usage (contrary to by-law) might show up?
Why can't she just fire up some 2-cycle engines to maintain her yard and dump a bunch of pesticides on it?
Cool, can I now call the cops on anyone with those stupid garden gnomes, pink Flamingos or lawn jockeys in their yard?
"We're sorry, the font you used for your' house number doesn't meet "The Neighborhood" standard...please change ASAP."
I don't know why I capitalized "flamingos"
@6: I thought the same thing about the Star. Sloppy writing, as usual. What the hell is a "normal" lawn? Lawns aren't "normal" to begin with.
And the idea of stealing music by downloading is recording/sales industry propaganda.
Here are the before and after photos of the lawn in question.
@11: Marc: Um, wow. Did they cut down the plants or BURN them? The area there looks dead.
Hah! The dead raccoon is pure gold -- too bad the Post left that part out of their story. That's not going to attract grubs (or grub-eaters, like skunks) at all. Nope. Can't imagine why the neighbours were cheesed.
The pictures from the Post's blog are interesting. Not the fugliest lawn around, but it looks a lot like the abandoned yard in my old neighborhood.
This and this resemble the natural gardens I have seen around High Park, and they look like a million bucks, too. If it at least looked like it received human attention once in a while, I bet the neighbours would not have freaked out.
Hold on - is there a source for the references to a dead raccoon in the Scarborough garden? The news articles I've read on it definitely don't mention anything.
It's in the Star's coverage here.
Money graf:
Who has time to find and kill raccoons in order to plant them on a little old lady's overgrown lawn?
I just had a glance at the Wikipedia Essay on the Common Sense Revolution.
It looks to me like a rabid Thatcherite has re-written the recent history of Ontario as a mixed victory for The Common Sense, with Harris still loved and deeply missed by some.
Yeah it's a real mystery how he managed to get 45.1 percent of the popular vote, two times.
You may not like him, but he was popular with a significant chunk of Ontarians. Maybe they remember his tenure with more fondness than you.
I don't particularly like our do-nothing Mayor David Miller... but he got 43.25% of the popular vote the first time out, and there's no question that in certain quarters he is well-liked. I don't think it would be a drastic warping of the historical record for Miller partisans to point out some of the things they consider his successes. I probably wouldn't agree with it, but hell, man -- it's a big world out there. Get out into it sometime.