Yesterday was typical in that, in scanning my Twitter feed, I was becoming incredibly irritated with Conservative Party of Canada. The source this time was Vic Toews’ tabling a bill to allow police, spies, and federal bureaucrats to collect information about the digital services Canadians use—without a warrant.
So the same party who insisted that the long-form census and the long-gun registry, despite their incredible value, had to be done away with to protect Canadians’ privacy—think having access to everything we all do online is just fine.
Ontario’s privacy commissioner also pointed out that pooling all this data was very dangerous, as it would be a “gold mine” for the hackers that you know would get at it.
In response to complaints, Vic Toews said that people were either with him or with child pornographers! He even gave the Bill the 1984-esque monikor of The Protecting Children from Internet Predators Act, even though it covers far more than pornographic activity online.
Criticism was widespread, and not only from the usual suspects. The Sun, the Post, blogging Tories, even Margaret Wente wrote a very thoughtful article on why she was “with the child pornographers” on this one.
But the funniest stuff was online, particularly on Twitter.
The first salvo was from new account @Vikileaks30, which just pumps out facts about Mr. Toews, starting with ugly divorce from his wife, precipitated by his having an affair with impregnating a much younger woman. Though some called it an invasion of privacy, it’s actually all part of the public record. Unlike the information the government wants to store about us.
But today took the cake. Today #TellVicEverything was trending. These were a series of tweets, with that hash tag, often also directed to Mr. Toews real Twitter account, sparing Toews the bother of spying on us by just telling him everything we’re doing.
And it was hilarious. Oh, my God, Canadians are funny. (Not me. Mine was lame.) And busy! There was no keeping with it. But I’d just check in every couple hours or so for latest, and laugh…
A tiny sample…
Justin Trudeau, MP
@justinpjtrudeauDuring QP
@johnbairdown dropped by and I asked him to tell@ToewsVic that I had to pee. He didn’t know we#TellVicEverything. Awkward.ThisHourHas22Minutes
@22_MinutesDear
@ToewsVic: Just yawned. Now the guy beside me is yawning. Feeling guilty about it.#TellVicEverythingHey, everybody! You either
#TellVicEverything or you side with the child pornographers.
And by the way…
This bill is actually going to committee now instead of to second reading, as would normally be the case. You may think that’s nothing, but with this band of time allocation junkies (they already have limited debate on more bills than any other government in Canadian history), it is waving a white flag. Unlike the many other bad bills recently, they will actually entertain amendments to this one.
Never underestimate the power of the Twitterverse.
Abby Vargas is a young, pretty Canadian who can sing, and possibly can even act. But six months after moving to L.A., her biggest role is as dead hooker, in body bag. She is broke. She lived in her car until it broke down; now she’s crashing with Nick (more on him later) and having to take the bus everywhere.
Raquel Westbrook used to be big. Everyone remembers her from that cult show 12 years ago, which had the terrible time slot and so was cancelled after one season. She knows everyone, but at this point, she’s reduced to trying out for dead hooker roles, and losing those to younger actresses. (Because 32 is so old!) It’s making her a little edgy, and she’s drinking too much. All her hopes are now pinned on a great script she read by a couple of unknowns.
Nick Wagner works at a coffee shop by day to pay the bills, and tries his act out at comedy clubs by night. So far, he’s bombing, both professionally and personally. He’s the guy every girl wants “as a friend”, and he’s low on funds. I was thinking that of all characters, he’s the one who really should pack it in, but last episode he finally hit on a comedy groove, based on mocking himself.
Tariq Muhammad expected to make music during his internship at a record company, but mostly he’s been running errands and washing cars. That is, until he secretly sent Usher some “beats” that proved he had talent. He’s now assigned to work with tough rap star Kaldrick King, and things are going well—they’ve really hit it off. If only they weren’t both in the closet, and wanting to stay there…
Alicia Lowe is a dancer who works hard at her craft. But so far it’s close but no cigar at signing up for a tour. To pay the bills, she works as an exotic dancer. (This means she has fewer money troubles than most of the cast.) Her latest gambit is to make a sex tape with a former movie star, in the hopes of gaining fame, Paris Hilton-style. Previews of the next episode indicate that’s not going to work out so well.
The Kids Are All Right
This brings us to 
Because it features the delicious Gale Harold, whom I loved in Queer as Folk, here playing a very nasty warlock. It’s a show about teenage witches in a small town. And based on one episode, it’s… exactly what you’d expect a show about teenage witches in a small town to be. So far, not promising to be more, à la Buffy the Vampire Slayer. But still, enough entertainment factor there for me to return for more episodes and see how it goes.
This one stars Zooey Deschanel, and its main selling is most definitely that it stars Zooey Deschanel. It is totally running on her personal charisma. I found the first episode OK. It had some funny moments. I know feminist me is supposed to be offended by her 
This is one I never would have picked before. Not that I dislike The Mentalist, but it’s more Jean’s show, just one I also don’t mind watching, because the characters are fun and have good interaction.
*** 
