Mick Fleetwood of Fleetwood Mac
Fleetwood Mac have recently welcomed Christine McVie back to their touring lineup. Titular head Mick Fleetwood has been making news for something different, however — his photographs.
The musician has apparently been taking photos for years and has been showing them off at galleries while on the Mac’s current tour.
Sarah spoke to him about it for Huffington Post Music Canada.
To read the story go here.
Filed under Art, Music, Photos, Shameless Promotion
Jennifer Lawrence nude.
Last night someone dumped numerous hacked nude, intimate photos of female celebrities like Jennifer Lawrence and Kirsten Dunst on the internet.
This morning I said the following about it on my Facebook wall:
“I think today’s learning lesson is that under no circumstance should you ever taken nude photos of yourself with your phone. Or, probably, ever. For any reason.”
It was then brought to my attention very quickly that this response constituted victim blaming.
On more thoughtful analysis I’ve got to concede that it’s true… it was victim blaming. That wasn’t my intention, though. I just wasn’t looking at this as a human issue, a violation, I was looking at it as a data issue.
As in…
a) If you own a smart phone, computer or tablet, and …
b) You create, then store and/or transfer sensitive images and material…
c) By definition of the various terms of service everyone has agreed to for various apps, devices, softwares, etc…
d) As well as proven tinfoil hat truths exhibited by Snowden and the existence of algorithms that can detect boobs. Then…
e) It’s reasonable to conclude that no binary digital data a person creates can at present be considered safe, “private” and/or secure. Therefore…
f) The only way to prevent nude photos of yourself ever leaking on the internet is to never take them.
Looking at the photo hacking issue strictly through this lens, I now realize, is inadequate.
This, because, although “no nude pics ever” may provide a technically perfect solution to not having one’s intimate vagina photos circle the internet, it doesn’t actually do anything to punish the hackers/invaders/digital pervs. And, more importantly, it doesn’t address the fact that these people have violated the autonomy of another human being. These creepers essentially committed targeted digital attacks on a series of women. This, all right-thinking people can agree, is wrong.
So, if my solution was inadequate, what can us fellas do to man-up about this?
Well…
1) Don’t do things like hack women’s phones, emails, etc. And don’t participate in that spreading-photos-of-your-ex culture (that’s actually mentally insane, bro). This stuff seems obvious, but it probably needs to be stated as baseline. If in doubt, don’t contribute to evil.
2) Don’t enable it. Look, it’s not a crime to wonder if McKayla Maroney’s thigh muscles are bigger than yours. But by actively clicking/hunting/seeking these hack photos, you’re part of the problem. If you want to look at McKayla Maroney pics, her Instagram account is probably the exact amount she wants strangers to see of her. And no more than that.
3) Dick pics. “Yeah, well. Male athletes and boy bands get hacked, too,” I said, trying to argue a certain equality. And yes, when male celebs do get hacked it’s just as much a violation to them as it is when it happens to women. The flipside — and it’s a vital tangental connection to all this — is that when celebrity dick pics surface a percentage of these pop ups happen because dudes have sent unwanted, unsolicited nudes to women.
We can all establish this is gross, right? Apparently this a problem women have to deal with all the time (I had no idea, honestly). I don’t understand it and I’ve got no data to back this up, but this has got to be an even less effective courting technique then yelling, “Nice tittttsss, baby!” at a woman walking down the sidewalk. So let’s keep it simple fellas: any unsolicited dick pics you’ve ever sent to a woman are allowed be distributed to, and roundly mocked in a public manner by her and all her friends. And if you suffer an Anthony Weiner-like fall from grace because of it, well, you deserve it.
4) Freedom. If, like me, you continue to have an imperfect-though-wanting-to-be-sympathetic grasp on the gender-safety-equality issues surrounding this, you should still be able to understand it from a liberty-and-ramifications perspective.
Basically, when the spectre of internet creepoids peeking in the digital drawers looms over all women then that means they can’t do and act as they want. When women can’t act and do what they want, that means their liberty and freedom is being taken away. This, fundamentally, is not right.
The destruction of 25 Roehampton Avenue
Midtown Toronto is in the midst of a construction boom. Three of the four corners at epicentral intersection Yonge and Eglinton are in varying degrees of construction and the surrounding neighbourhood has no less than 632 separate mostly-condo development projects in the works.
One such project is happening right now at 25 Roehampton Avenue.
The problem? There’s an existing building currently in the way of progress.
Not for long, though.
Here’s what the dismantling of the 25 building looked like on the afternoon of Monday, April 28…
Filed under Photos
Damain Abraham from Fucked Up
Damian Abraham from adventurous hardcore band Fucked Up really like pro wrestling.
He also really looks like a pro wrestler.
So much so, in fact, that I was able to make a list of 10 pro wrestlers who look like Damian for AUX TV.
To read the article, go here.
Filed under Music, Photos, Shameless Promotion
Carrier of the week
The Midland Free Press, a newspaper that has been serving the Huronia area of Penetanguishene and Midland, Ontario recently announced it was shutting down.
The paper, which had four separate corporate owners since 1994 — Southam Newspaper Group, Hollinger, Osprey Media, the Quebecor — had published in the area for 134 years, beginning in 1879.
“In recent years, the paper has had financial challenges,” said Rob Leuschner, the Regional Publisher/Director of Advertising for The Free Press, in a statement in the paper’s last edition. “The team at The Free Press has worked diligently to improve the financial position of the newspaper but at the end of the day it has not been enough to justify the investment required to continue publishing. I would like to thank readers, advertisers, community leaders and the staff of The Free Press for their past contributions and commitment to the paper.”
It’s not news that newspapers have suffered tremendously in the digital age. And beyond a vague sense of anger directed towards the bean counters who have to pull the trigger on these decisions it’s an uncomfortably blameless scenario. There’s just not enough money to make small town papers like this work anymore.
The real bummer here is the personal one. My first job came when I was 10 years old, working as a paper boy delivering copies of the Free Press to people in my neighborhood. In hindsight I wasn’t a very good carrier. I had to collect the money from subscribers myself — quite a responsibility for a pre-teen — which I would then promptly embezzle and use to go buy the latest comic books from the drug store over on Main Street.
It’s only now that I know it’s gone that I truly realize what the loss of the Free Press will mean. See, it wasn’t just a newspaper that taught me some harsh lessons in financial responsibility, or helped plant the seeds for my future on the fringes of journalism. The best aspect of the Free Press was its service to the community.
When I used to go back to Penetang from the city to visit my grandparents one of the first things I’d do is hunker down and read the paper to find out what was going on. On top of that, my aunt Donna would occasionally mail me clips from the paper about what my old school and teammates were doing.
See, everyone in Penetang made it into the Free Press at some point for something or other. And the thing about that is, unless you ended up in the often-hilarious and occasionally uncomfortably tragic capsule police reports, it was a little hug in newsprint form. Like a benevolent teacher who’d dole out gold stars to the local citizenry, the Free Press was a positive force reaffirming that everything was OK.
I’ve got tons of clippings with my name mentioned in little league recaps and minor hockey reports. One of my proudest moments was, while playing junior hockey, when the Free Press referred to my goaltending style as “hellbent for leather.” I considered it the highest compliment and only years later realized there may have been a coy edge to that line, a playful jab at my then-wicked hockey haircut (Jaromir Jagr had nothing on me) filtered through a Judas Priest/Heavy Metal Parking Lot lens. None of which makes the line any less great.
With the Free Press gone, so will be the opportunity for others to experience similar giddy thrills. So long old friend, thanks for the comic books and “Brophy Nets 3” headline when I was a 10 year old soccer star.
The peak of my soccer career
Filed under Culture, Photos, Recollections
I Overcame My Autism And All I Got Was This Lousy Anxiety Disorder: A Memoir
Risky Fuel 
