Letters to the Editor
My roomates and I recently sent a “love the way we bitch” about someone pissing in our front porch! How can you have a cover and main article about public urination without printing our bitch? We were very disappointed in you. By nardin
Letters to the Editor
The Canadian Federation of Students (CFS), a national student lobby group, may be guilty of cyber squatting. The Canadian Alliance of Student Associations (CASA), the other big national student lobby group on the block, which had been discussing changing their site name from www.casa.ca to the bilingual equivalent www.casa-acae.ca, was surprised to discover that CFS…
Letters to the Editor
Dear Kyle Shaw, I think the white poppy is a great idea. Promoting peace is important anytime of year, but especially now. Yet I strongly dissagree with the statement that the red poppy “glorifys war”. The plea of Vetrans that their service not be in vain is because their actions did serve a valuable purpose.…
Love the way we bitch
This week’ bitch: Fear Factor
LETTERHEAD
Feedback from the public on scavengers and periods.
Sneak preach
Have you heard of the latest musical trend, teen sibling pop? The best of the lot is Smoosh, a California guitar-and-drums duo with Death Cab ties and remarkable ears for hooks. And there’s already a subgenre: white-supremacist teen sibling pop! When teen twins Lynx and Lamb Gaede (AKA Prussian Blue, also the name of a…
X marks the spot
Grunge-disco fivesome controller.controller are back with a new album and two more shows. The group, whose sound is exhaustively compared to that of (a female-fronted) Franz Ferdinand, will play both the Pavilion and Stage Nine on November 12. While Halifax is all but the last stop on the band’s first tour in promotion of x-amounts,…
Healthy to the core
Studio In Essence is now open above Spirit Spa at 1566 Barrington with grand opening celebrations planned for November 18. Studio In Essence specializes in pilates classes and also offers a number of dance classes including booty striptease, hip hop and break dance. Pilates instructor Christy Wade decided to open Studio In Essence after outgrowing…
Let it bleed
To the editor, Beth Johnson’s letter (“Q & A period” Nov 3) seemed to imply having fewer periods has a direct, beneficial effect on a woman’s health. May I point out that in addition to less menstruation, women in tribes functioning under pre-modern conditions have something else that sets them apart from their “more advanced,”…
Scavenger hunt
To the editor: In the fall 2005 issue of Naturally Green, HRM’s free quarterly environmental newsletter, an article was published to reinforce the anti-scavenging legislation Bill S-600 Section 16. Entitled “Scavenging, A Blight on the Community,” the short article states scavenging is illegal, quotes a $5,000 fine and provides enforcement information. The article condemns scavenging…
Letters to the Editor
Re: Proposal for Statue(s) at City Hall The chief challenge of this project would be to find a special alloy of plastics — microscopic networks of fibres that promote the maximum adherence to any passing airborne or physically transported substance. In this plastic medium the form is created — of human beings in the motions…
Air forces
Canadians have an appetite for destruction. The world, North America, and Canada specifically have been devouring our “natural capital” (land, water, coal, oil, flora, fauna) for decades, and our destructive appetites show no sign of abating. We’ve grown accustomed to luxuries. It’s less enjoyable to take short, cool showers, ditch our cars and limit our…
The write wing
Some professions work well on film. For every movie starring a dentist, armies of cops, lawyers and psychiatrists march across the big screen. Journalists spend plenty of time furrowing brows and grimacing for the camera. In 1997, Richard R. Ness published the hefty From Headline Hunter to Superman; 808 pages cataloguing over 2,100 feature films…
The late show
I’m trying to come to terms with something Dr. Phil once said: when you’re late (and I am — consistently), you don’t care enough to be on time. It’s classic Dr. Phil, whose take-responsibility — or, as he calls it, “get real” — pop psychology might well be dubbed “deal with your own shit, lady.”…
In the ’hood
Somewhere deep in the low-rise sameness of the Burnside Industrial Park is a building no different from any anonymous business space. Except this one is filled with lights, cables, monitors, flimsy wooden-walled rooms and a group of children having the time of their lives. This is the interior set for Summerhood, a summer camp movie…
Fuelling the fire
Not all gas prices were created equal. Often the gas prices at one station can be very different from prices at a station two or three blocks down the street, sometimes by as much as seven cents. For those who simply gas up at the first station they see, it’s a frustrating experience. But a…
Adam’s song
Adam Puddington released Can’t Sleep This One Off in 2002. With well-worn observations and a gruff delivery, the album showed the signs of a truly promising songwriter coming into his own. Unfortunately, the music never managed to find the audience it deserved. Though many obstacles make it hard to succeed in the fickle music industry,…
No place to go
Matt Smythe is homeless. And while he may spend nights sleeping on the cold concrete sidewalks of downtown Halifax, he would never pee there. “It’s a real nuisance. But unlike a lot of other people, I really take issue with the I’ll-go-anywhere approach,” says the clean-cut Ontario native, sitting behind a desk at the Halifax…
Get Rich or Die Tryin’
Get Rich or Die Tryin’ combines two movements of hip-hop movies: The gangsta rap manifest ghetto films of the early ’90s (Boyz N the Hood, Juice, Menace II Society) and this decade’s tales of careerism (8 Mile, Hustle & Flow). Its message — crime doesn’t pay — is, like much of the film, too familiar.…
Dangerously zone
From his initial introduction to the world of hip-hop through Public Enemy and The Fresh Prince almost a decade ago, one-time indie jazz drummer Jesse McDonald has always been a big music fan. Now known as rapper Jesse Dangerously, there’s been no looking back, who admits he’s come a long way since his humble beginnings.…
Rock star
It’s visitor-from-away time for me, and with it, sightseeing and shopping in places usually off my beaten track. We’re in Historic Properties, browsing in the many tiny shops. As we come out onto the Granville Mall and into the lower level of Barrington Place Shops, I’m thinking ahead to an eatery somewhere between a pub…
The time is ripe
I have wonderful memories of my mother bottling pears from the tree in our backyward. The thick treacly smells of sugar syrup boiling in pots, the kitchen counters covered in green pear peelings and my mother and father coddling warm mason jars filled with goodies for the winter. Inspired by these memories, I go looking…
The drawer girl
Shary Boyle gets her hands dirty when she works. The Toronto-based artist’s self-described “live, animated drawing performances,” often in concert with a musician, leave her hands smeared with ink. Boyle makes her mark from Berlin to Brooklyn, Paris to Halifax. She returns to town for a performance at the Khyber on Saturday November 12 with…
SAVAGE LOVE
Dan Savage poses a question to all guys with pies.
FREE WILL ASTROLOGY
Be grateful for your demons, Scorpio, says Rob Brezsny.
No place to go (part 2)
At the December 2, 2002 meeting of the Chebucto Community Council, councillor Linda Mosher brought to the assembly’s attention that an average 300 people per day were using the washrooms at the (now-demolished) Scotia Branch Legion on Cunard Street (Legion members, according to the minutes, obliged these visitors). This complaint appears to be an early…
Recipe for spicey bottled pears
Note: It is advisable to have more mason jars than listed when bottling. Pears vary in size and shape so it’s good to have more bottles than less. Ten one-litre mason jars is an estimate for this recipe. 12 lbs of pears, washed, cut and cored8 cups of water6 cups of sugar2 vanilla beans, seeds…
Leaving
Shortly after I arrive at the party in New Orleans, a woman hears that I’m leaving town. “So why are YOU moving?” she asks, narrowing her eyes. Her meaning is clear. Why am I not pulling on my gloves and strapping on my facemask and pitching in to help clean things up on Magazine Street,…
Treading water
Every good ship needs a captain and a compass. Just ask the amateur sailors who regularly navigate the Northwest Arm —it’s a bad idea to leave the dock without somebody at the helm. But who’s at the helm of the Northwest Arm? Property owners along the Arm have been increasingly concerned with that question, especially…
Trash talking
In the late 80s, due to a number of environmental and waste incidents, panic struck North America: we had no more room for our garbage. Closer to home, the problem reared its head in the form of the Sackville Landfill. The landfill, closed in 1996, produces 90 to 100 tonnes of methane gas per year…
Great white hope
It’s hard to avoid red poppies around Remembrance Day. Veterans are stationed in grocery stores across the country, selling the familiar felt and plastic flower. The bright piece of lapel flair is a must-have for politicians, making Canada’s parliament look like a convention of opium producers this time of year. The Chronicle-Herald even printed a…
