Let the Bodies Hit the Floor
I've been muttering that line, over and over, lately. I don't remember hearing it, but it sounds like something rap-oriented. It would sound pretty killer laid over a baseline.
Then I started spinning it the way that Clinton and I used to do on the long drives back and forth from Beaumont to Edmonton: we used to rework advertising lines into amusing one-offs. Imagine these lines laid over the same beats...
"Two times two equals four"
"Washing dishes is a chore"
"The god of thunder's name is Thor"
Hm. I think it loses something in text form.
Anyway - good news! I got the nod as one of the first cast members of that humor site, chompchompdead.com (it's the experience of being consumed by a shark). I sent in an "Open Letter to Vancouver", asking the city to keep all the people it tempts away from prairie cities like Edmonton. (We don't want them back.) I also fired in that "Choose Your Own Adventure" restaurant review I did for the Dish & Runaway Spoon.
It should be fun! The idea is that readers vote on the best pieces of the week, and the lowest-rated contributor is chucked into the "Chum Bucket" area. From that Chum Bucket, the highest-rated contributor gets promoted to the primary cast. Sort of like if SNL had a Second City crew next door, and they would swap lowest-ranked SNLer with highest-ranked SCer.
Wish me luck - come by the site, vote for me and get some chuckles at the same time!
Peace.
For a shorter read today, I raided my (slim) stash of Vuepoint articles. I wrote this one when I heard that the provincial government lowered the minimum age for fast food workers to 12. Yeah, that's right. Twelve.
VuePoint
By CHRISTOPHER THRALL
Well, that fury died down pretty quickly. But I suppose it’s hard to maintain an appropriate level of outrage during Alberta’s too-short summer season, what with all the festivaling, Fringing and camping to do. Which is precisely why our noble provincial government chose this time of year to announce a blanket exception to our child labour laws.
Unable to find people who are willing to work in abysmal conditions for the lowest possible legal wage, any other industry would have to improve in order to attract employees or fall to Darwinian capitalism. Instead, a little over a month ago the restaurant industry lobbied the government for a return to Dickens, and the elected stewards of our public welfare rolled over and dropped the hiring age to 12, giving the industry access to a whole new pool of exploitable kids.
Everyone can relate a horror story of their first job: long, unpaid hours or dipshit managers two years your senior. At the time, few of us felt able to stand up for ourselves or our rights. If children start working at an even younger age, how will they be able to defend themselves? When I was 12, I was in Grade Six. I read, played kick the can and had a totally unfair eight o’clock curfew. I wasn’t standing around in a polyester uniform.
As a completely hypothetical situation, imagine that a restaurant or popular nightclub changes management. They fire all of their employees and tell everyone to reapply for their former jobs. Then, they re-hire only the people they want to keep. Even an adult would be hard pressed to say, “This isn’t right!” But what can a 12 year-old child do?
A child would not know to demand compensation or report their employer. Preteens are not emotionally mature enough to stand up to these gross violations, let alone sexual harassment by older staff or denial of required rest breaks. Of course, there is also the issue of preserving what little childhood preteens have left.
We developed child labour laws for a reason. They were not intended to be bent or modified just to accommodate an industry’s profit margin. Why are we shoveling children into these greedy corporate maws so the industry can stagger a little farther before it collapses under the weight of its own labour practices? Do we legalize 10-year-olds next time?
We can hit the festivals and express our outrage at the same time. Don’t let them get away with this one.
Then I started spinning it the way that Clinton and I used to do on the long drives back and forth from Beaumont to Edmonton: we used to rework advertising lines into amusing one-offs. Imagine these lines laid over the same beats...
"Two times two equals four"
"Washing dishes is a chore"
"The god of thunder's name is Thor"
Hm. I think it loses something in text form.
Anyway - good news! I got the nod as one of the first cast members of that humor site, chompchompdead.com (it's the experience of being consumed by a shark). I sent in an "Open Letter to Vancouver", asking the city to keep all the people it tempts away from prairie cities like Edmonton. (We don't want them back.) I also fired in that "Choose Your Own Adventure" restaurant review I did for the Dish & Runaway Spoon.
It should be fun! The idea is that readers vote on the best pieces of the week, and the lowest-rated contributor is chucked into the "Chum Bucket" area. From that Chum Bucket, the highest-rated contributor gets promoted to the primary cast. Sort of like if SNL had a Second City crew next door, and they would swap lowest-ranked SNLer with highest-ranked SCer.
Wish me luck - come by the site, vote for me and get some chuckles at the same time!
Peace.
For a shorter read today, I raided my (slim) stash of Vuepoint articles. I wrote this one when I heard that the provincial government lowered the minimum age for fast food workers to 12. Yeah, that's right. Twelve.
VuePoint
By CHRISTOPHER THRALL
Well, that fury died down pretty quickly. But I suppose it’s hard to maintain an appropriate level of outrage during Alberta’s too-short summer season, what with all the festivaling, Fringing and camping to do. Which is precisely why our noble provincial government chose this time of year to announce a blanket exception to our child labour laws.Unable to find people who are willing to work in abysmal conditions for the lowest possible legal wage, any other industry would have to improve in order to attract employees or fall to Darwinian capitalism. Instead, a little over a month ago the restaurant industry lobbied the government for a return to Dickens, and the elected stewards of our public welfare rolled over and dropped the hiring age to 12, giving the industry access to a whole new pool of exploitable kids.
Everyone can relate a horror story of their first job: long, unpaid hours or dipshit managers two years your senior. At the time, few of us felt able to stand up for ourselves or our rights. If children start working at an even younger age, how will they be able to defend themselves? When I was 12, I was in Grade Six. I read, played kick the can and had a totally unfair eight o’clock curfew. I wasn’t standing around in a polyester uniform.
As a completely hypothetical situation, imagine that a restaurant or popular nightclub changes management. They fire all of their employees and tell everyone to reapply for their former jobs. Then, they re-hire only the people they want to keep. Even an adult would be hard pressed to say, “This isn’t right!” But what can a 12 year-old child do?
A child would not know to demand compensation or report their employer. Preteens are not emotionally mature enough to stand up to these gross violations, let alone sexual harassment by older staff or denial of required rest breaks. Of course, there is also the issue of preserving what little childhood preteens have left.
We developed child labour laws for a reason. They were not intended to be bent or modified just to accommodate an industry’s profit margin. Why are we shoveling children into these greedy corporate maws so the industry can stagger a little farther before it collapses under the weight of its own labour practices? Do we legalize 10-year-olds next time?
We can hit the festivals and express our outrage at the same time. Don’t let them get away with this one.
Labels: child labour, chompchompdead.com, Clinton Carew
posted by enthrall at 11:30 AM
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