Lowefiles

And in a flash, there goes Edison’s incandescent bulb. OK, the flash part’s exaggeration. In fact, this new Tory green scheme is too little too late—it doesn’t take effect until 2012 and it’ll only quash six million tonnes of greenhouse pollution annually; we need to delete way more than that to meet our Kyoto targets. […]

Have you heard about the University of Western Ontario Gazette’s annual spoof issue and its mock news coverage of a fake “Take Back the Nightie” protest? I’ll save you the degradation of having to read it with a run-down of the low points: The writer illustrates some tiresome stereotypes of women, disparages the work of […]

Dear single-occupant commuters, I regret to inform you that your time here is up. Actually, scratch that. I have no regrets. Go away. Get moving. And don’t make it any more difficult than it needs to be—carry on with your death throes and do hurry up. Get your arse on the bus, or on the […]

You won’t hear this often from me. But the American Family Association is—gulp—right. There is something wrong with Dove’s new pro•age ads. The AFA—a non-profit, “pro-family” society which blames the US entertainment industry for the alleged dive in American values—is urging a boycott of Unilever, Dove’s parent company. The AFA is all riled up about […]

You’re a rock star. Well, you could be, anyway, if you’d just find the time to launch that blog you’ve been talking about. Bloggers, the blahtastically dubbed purveyors of online diaries, are the new rock stars, according to the hype for PostieCon ’07, a blogger conference coming up in June in Orlando, Florida www.postiecon.com Go […]

No doubt you’ve heard this before: “I’ve been living fast-fast-fast, rush-rush-rush, go-go-go. And it’s not getting me anywhere.” What you likely haven’t heard before is Mike McGlone’s antidote to his problem. He’s eating nothing but food from the Halifax Farmers’ Market for one year. McGlone, who market regulars will know as Mike the Fish Guy—gregarious, […]

Valentine’s Day isn’t real. Oh, sure, people will tell you it is. The intellectuals will argue it’s steeped in a history part Roman and part ancient Christian, complete with a martyred saint and a popularity craze that fired up in the middle ages and burns scorchingly hot still today. The commercial sector will tell you […]

One more reason to hate the clinging ringing annoyance of cellphones: facial boils. Pneumonia’s a danger too. Oh! And meningitis. But the fear of a plain-Jane boil festering on my cheek is enough incentive for me to scrub down my mobile phone every couple of days. Cellphones, see, are carriers of an inordinate amount of […]

Peter Duffy I am not. But if you’ll allow me an end-of-year indulgence, I will follow the oft-favoured format of that beloved Chronicle-Herald columnist—a smattering of bits and bobs à propos de rien. Years are, after all, like that. They have no central themes or tidily arced storylines, no matter how desperately we try to […]

Don’t miss this one-time-only offer! For a limited time, get your rocks off for peace. Act now. This deal won’t last long. The date is December 22, winter solstice. Book it in your calendar and here’s the plan: all men and women are supposed to have an orgasm while concentrating on world peace. You can […]

Sacha Vais is on the phone and he is saying one of the most poignant things I’ve heard all year. “When you shine a little bit of light and dignity on our hardest moments, it does something.” He pauses. “I don’t know what yet.” The something Vais is talking about is something good. Something positive. […]