Bonus metal-blogging.

Found the one I was really looking for. DevilDriver, "Pray for Villains"

Friday metal-blogging.

DevilDriver, "Clouds Over California".

Outta here till the 4th.

DevilDriver - Clouds Over California from Snaggletooth on Vimeo.

Credit where credit is due.

I kicked The Toronto Star pretty hard for its horrifically biased coverage of the York University strike. And I've taken a few shots over their coverage of the current municipal strike. But, credit where credit is due: Royson James is talking sense.

Hopefully, the editors will move him over to the education beat (even part-time? please?) before the coming wave of university labour action.

Unbelievable.

The Toronto Star continues to disgrace itself. In the middle of this story on a picketer who was struck by a car on legal picket lines, they throw in this nonsense from a disgruntled union member:

At the Bermondsey transfer station in the east end near Eglinton Ave. E. and Victoria Park Ave., picketer Ed Barber spoke out about the leaders in the two locals of the Canadian Union of Public Workers that took their members off the job at 12:01 a.m. Monday.

"The union doesn't have any concrete leadership or organization," said Barber, who works for the Toronto water department.

"This is stupid. We should be at work. There's a recession. Why don't people understand that."

So, in other words, the strike vote didn't go the way he wanted, so he's going to sit on the picket lines and complain to reporters. Meanwhile, the thousands of union members who voted in favour of the strike and support their leadership aren't mentioned at all in the article.

And, as said, this story leads with a picketer being struck by a car. Even when union members are being attacked by other people, the Star just can't stop bashing. I'd say it was unbelievable, but, really, does anyone have trouble believing this?

Who is Vinay Menon?

And why does the Toronto Star think anyone cares what he thinks about the municipal strike?

Case in point: the imbecile actually wrote this (and it got by an editor) in regard to the municipal strike,

Once again, honest, hardworking, law-abiding taxpayers are being held hostage by a system that always puts them last.

Got that? Striking workers aren't honest, hardworking, law-abiding or taxpayers. Yet, somehow, they provide what he refers to as an "essential service" in running daycares -- and, given the structure of his sentences, island ferry services, parks maintenance, and summer camps. Granting that "essential service" is a legal term which doesn't apply to any of these, can anyone mount a remotely plausible argument to the effect that summer camps should be an essential service?

The stupidity is ramping up again... why is it that so many people can't think their way through even the slightest inconvenience? (Seriously, this idiot bitches about paying 5 cents for a bag when he orders delivery. Maybe he needs to learn to cook?)

NB: I looked him up, and he was apparently their TV critic, who moved to the news section to write a "humour" column. So, maybe I'm missing the joke; perhaps this is a piece of sophisticated satire rather than something readers are meant to take seriously. But, somehow, I doubt it.

What John said.

More good sense on the Toronto city workers' strike.

Really, I have very little to add on the issue. It's the same old tired response from the media, and the same old whining from the idiotic masses. (And the masses in Toronto are particularly idiotic. I grew up here; I'm allowed to hate them.) The union has the right of it, but they will be ordered back to work and forced to accept an agreement by a higher power. And we thus tend ever closer to feudalism.