Archive for January, 2009

If you are as lazy as I am and you have no intention to read the Liberal budget of the Conservative government because you won’t understand all these technical terms anyway, Deloitte published a summary written to be understood..

The point I really dig is the 15% credit for home improvement: What should I improve now???!

About that budget, Ignatieff, the new Liberal Party leader starts off on a bad note by giving his support to the Conservative government of Stephen Harper. His predecessor, Stéphane Dion lost his credibility (well, for the few that he had) in constantly voting in favour of the Conservative government, keeping it in in charge. So when came the time to criticize it, it became totally illegitimate.

YGRECK drew a very funny and accurate caricature…

However, Ignatieff might calculate that by voting in favour of the Conservative budget, this minority government will hang itself with the slack of rope the Liberal leader is giving them. So in a year or so, he will be able to criticize the fact Harper will have failed the test and his budget would have surved the lone purpose of worsening the debt without a real stimulating impact for the economy. And since we collectively tend to forget, we won’t remember that he himself voting for this budget…

As long as he doesn’t overdoes voting for the Conservatives, he might have a good strategy. Might.

The minister for the Capitale Nationale (it’s Québec City, here, not Ottawa), Sam Hamad wants to force the Red Bull company to add a French touch to its Crashed Ice event, that takes place in Quebec City every year since a few years. Incidently, it takes place this week-end.

I’m not against the idea in itself. Except I feel that the minister is not minding his own business. If Red Bull feels that quebecers are not sensitive about these issues, they should simply live the consequences, right?

If the company has decided that its trademark is so strong it doesn’t require a French name to be recognized, this goes over any sterile linguistic debates, eh?

This idea that everything should “have a French touch” would simply make the whole signage in Quebec very homogenous, and by doing so, would shunt la différence

Let’s imagine all business would change their name to something that sounds French:

- Les cafés deuxième tasse
- Billets étoilés
- Le roi du hambourgeois
- L’auberge de vacances
- Suites de qualité
- La reine des produits laitiers
- Le dépot de la maison
- …

Do you think of any others?

So, in order to homogenise the difference, Mr. Sam Hamad, I would kindly ask you to change your name to something more French.
May I suggest Samuel Hamel? That sounds much more québécois.

brem

Okay, the gag order about the billionaire who is being sued by his ex-common law girlfriend is completely ridiculous.

The news medias already told us this was a Québec billionaire.

Let me just make it clear, there are exactly 6 (SIX!!!) billionaire in Québec, according to Forbes.

Here they are:

- Paul Desmarais (Power Corp.) (born 1927)
- Charles Bronfman (Wine & Spirits) (born 1931)
- Stephen Jarislowsky (Investments) (born 1925 )
- Lino Saputo (Cheese) (born 1937)
- Jean Coutu (Drugstores) (born 1927)
- Guy Laliberté (Cirque du Soleil) (born 1959)

The news media also informed us that the man brought back his Brazilian girlfriend, then 17 (isn’t that paedophilia?). They lived together from 1995 until 2001 and have had 3 kids together . They never married. They are separated now, thus her sueing him for money. Anyway, look it up.

Another tidbit of info is that she dated Herbert Black in 2004.

I’ll let you google those names, if you haven’t found out who it is yet.

Furthermore, Sylvain Drapeau of TVA / LCN let the name of the guy’s company slip on-air.
Furtherfurthermore, American Web sites already have his name all over the place.

It was completely utopic to believe that nobody would guess the identity of the man. By saying he was billionaire, they basically told the whole world. Especially when media started revealing some details about his personaly life, like the age of his kids and how many he had with her.

Ri-di-cu-lous.

brem

I plead guilty.

This is a hilarious montage of people’s who taped themselves playing high notes on the trumpet, to the USA national anthem.

You might know I play trumpet, I have since high school, and those of you who are familiar with high school music band will know that kids who play trumpet kind of look at high note playing as the holy grail of trumpet playing. Indeed, it doesn’t matter if it sounds good, if you can reach that double high C, you’re awesome. It’s like pissing further than any other of the guys. It makes you proud. You feel a bit like Maynard Ferguson.

Well, this video is sort of an hommage to all of us who play high notes and kid ourselves that it is muscically beautiful. This is a great reality check, and a very funny video.

The guy who saved all these videos, found each pitch and final cut really had way too much free time!

brem