Rob Ford: Not happy just killing social programs

                I haven’t done a Rob Ford love-fest post in a while and figured hey he’s done something boneheaded again, let’s blog about! This just blew up on my Twitter through news agencies, where Ford obviously has no concept of, “just stop talking.”

                Photos on Twitter surfaced of big bad Ford driving his Escalade, deeply engrossed in the document that he was reading while on the Gardiner Expressway. Of course the media went after him for this having already been in trouble for driving past a streetcar when its doors were open as well as flipping off a woman and her son who gestured at Ford to hang up his cell phone will driving downtown. What was his response?

                “I was probably reading.” Thank you, Captain Obvious for that statement. That’s not the worst part, it gets better. Ford then goes on to say that “it didn’t affect his driving.” What? Flying down the highway paying the upmost attention to just your driving while simultaneously looking through and reading a document doesn’t affect your driving? I call bull. I’ve read documents; most people can’t even stand on the TTC and read through documents without diverting a large portion of attention. So is he spending that little effort actually reading through important city documents or that little attention to driving and not potentially killing someone?

                Hold on to your pants, because it gets EVEN better. Ford then goes on to tell the media that he’s a busy guy and uses his morning commute to catch up on work and said that “he still kept his eyes on the road.”

You're right Rob, your eyes are

totally on the road...

            Welcome to the real world, Mr. Ford. We’re in Toronto, everyone is busy, everyone has a million and one things to do and everyone has a deadline to get them done by; do not confuse that with giving people a cause for putting others lives at risk for the completion of tasks. Growing up in northern Ontario, I’ve made the trek on the highway from Timmins to Toronto many times, and now living here, I’ve driven the highways around here. There is nothing more terrifying than driving by someone engrossed in reading a book or the paper while driving 100 km/h +. You are not Superman, you cannot react that quickly. This apathetic view on thinking there is nothing wrong with commuting on the highway reading “because your busy schedule,” is crap. You are needlessly putting the lives of people at risk on the roads because you’re too damn lazy to care about other people. There have been COUNTLESS studies down supporting that distracted driving causes preventable injury and deaths with motor-vehicle accidents. If people can’t carry on a simple conversation and not be distracted then how is someone supposed to read a document and still keep his eyes on the road and have it not affect his driving?

                The answer is simply, they can’t.

                Rob Ford, cut the apathetic attitude and directly protect the people of this city and many other cities. Take responsibility for your actions and realize that you can kill someone. YOU. Nobody else in that vehicle. You.

UPDATE:
For a full account of the conversation please see the CBC News story:
http://www.cbc.ca/news/canada/toronto/story/2012/08/14/rob-ford-chicago321.html 

Story taken from the Canadian Press as published by the Vancouver Sun

http://www.vancouversun.com/business/fp/yourmoney/Toronto+Mayor+Ford+admits+probably+reading+wheel/7088554/story.html 

Photo taken from @CTVToronto

https://twitter.com/#!/search/Rob%20Ford/slideshow/photos?url=https%3A%2F%2Fp.twimg.com%2FA0RT6I3CMAAkKnr.jpg 

Progressive doesn't pay up but ponies up to defend other driver to avoid paying out policy

                I follow this fantastic Twitter account that takes all of the daily Public Relations (PR) fails and posts them. The story that caught my eye today is written by Louis Peitzman for Gawker, in which Progressive Insurance defended a negligent driver who had killed a woman under Progressive coverage.

                So the story starts out, that in June 2012 Katie Fisher was killed in a car accident by an underinsured driver (, a driver whose insurance isn’t able to pay the affected party when liable,) which left Progressive (her insurance company) liable to pay out the difference in the plan to her family as she was covered in case of underinsured drivers.

                After Progressive refused to pay out the rest of the claim, Fisher’s parents tried to take Progressive to court to find out that in Maryland, US , you cannot legally take an insurance company to court for refusing to pay you out. In short, they had to sue the other driver. It was a shock to the family that on the day of the trial the other driver was being defended by Progressive’s legal team.

                Katie’s brother, Matt Fisher, wrote in a post on Tumblr, “If you are insured by Progressive, and they owe you money, they will defend your killer in court in order to not pay you your policy.” After being called out via Twitter by many people Progressive opted to respond to every Tweet, the exact same way. With a fake, robotic sounding, half-hearted apology that instead of expressing remorse – reinforced the fact that they felt they did nothing wrong. Tweet below”

“This is a tragic case, and our sympathies go out to Mr. Fisher and his family for the pain they've had to endure. We fully investigated this claim and relevant background, and feel we properly handled the claim within our contractual obligations. Again, this is a tragic situation, and we're sorry for everything Mr. Fisher and his family have gone through.”
- Progessive Twitter

I’m not a PR expert, having just really started in this field professional I can’t boast an in-depth knowledge of the communications world, but I can provide an opinion. I think that it’s in such poor taste to do what Progressive did to the Fisher family. An insurance company relies on trust, trust that as a company they will support you and be there for you. It’s not a little known fact that insurance companies hate paying out policies and will fight tooth and nail to keep from doing it, but to go as far as representing the other driver in a court case to avoid paying a policy? Are you kidding me? Instead of being on damage control, the company takes this heartless, robotic approach supplying half-hearted sympathy and then a statement basically saying “,but we aren’t in the wrong.”

Nothing goes better than not giving a crap than Flo's

smiling face!

                From a consumer standpoint, I think it’s incredibly hard to put faith in a company that will try so hard to get out of paying a policy that they will represent a negligent driver just in the hopes that it won’t have to pay. From a PR standpoint, I think that this robotic reply to angry and upset Tweets is only company damaging. At this point in time, they’ve been found accountable and instead of sucking up their pride and admitting to their mistakes and acting human, they opt to become regurgitated text on a feed. You can relate to this the same way people having an issue relate to automated phone services. You just want to speak to a real human being-and-for-the-thirteenth-time-NO-my-name-is-not-Kaylorr-Usse. Besides making us feel completely inadequate about being able to speak, people need a human connection and need to feel cared for.

                We also look for companies to own up to mistakes, yes it’s bad press for a while, but when you are able to admit mistakes it makes you look a lot better in the long run. Progressive has made a stance that they did nothing wrong, and specifically in this instance making a family suffer financial and emotional burden after already losing their daughter.

                I think that other companies should take note on what not to do from Progressive. So much so that there can be a little “how not to treat people like crap” guidebook from this tragedy:

·         Don’t flat out refuse to pay out a policy and expect no retaliation

·         Don’t try to settle outside of court at an insultingly low amount

·         Don’t go in supporting the driver who caused the death of your Progressive customer in front of that customer’s family – that one should be rather obvious

·         Don’t say nothing about after being held accountable

·         Don’t tweet the same robotic dribble to everyone who Tweets you about this incident. They’re people looking for reassurance and accountability- saying you haven’t done anything wrong but you’re sorry for the family’s loss means nothing…especially retweeted upteen times.

The original Tumblr post by Matt Fisher can be found here:
http://mattfisher.tumblr.com/post/29338478278/my-sister-paid-progressive-insurance-to-defend-her

The Gawker article by Louis Peitzman can be found here:

http://gawker.com/5934436/comedian-calls-out-progressive-for-defending-his-sisters-killer-progressive-responds-in-heartless-robot-fashion

Life update- freaking out, caffeine and freaking out some more

Today I started thinking about something today. Something so huge I don't think there's a place in the universe to tuck it away.

After I got a much needed cup of coffee, I started to go through my graphic design work and think about my future...it didn't take me long to go and get another coffee.

As some of you may know I'm entering my fourth and final year of my degree and diploma program. By the end of these 8 months I will be a bonafide graduated adult. With a fancy piece of paper that is supposed to convince people to hire me so I can pay all my adult bills.

OhdeargodwhendidthisbecomearealthingandwhencanIgobacktohighschool.

Coming out of high school I was excited to get my life going, to get my adult life started, move out of my parents house and break into the real world on my own. I entered University trying to by phone- attach myself to my then-boyfriends hip as we made it through University. We didn't as it turns out, make it through University; this also marked a huge low point for me.  I was alone  at school with nobody I knew and the love of my life had decided some other girl was worth occupying time for the last two months of us dating. Graceful and full of poise I was not. 

I came back for my second year determined to make up for all the time I spent locked in my room Skyping my ex. So I became an RA. I would just like to point out, "how to become an awesome college resident everyone loves," does not include becoming an RA. In fact, it's the opposite. Telling drunk peers to stop drinking and vomiting and playing drinking games has you labelled the college narc instead of the cool person. Even though I hardly slept and got cussed at almost once a shift that job let me find myself. I'm one of those people that when I date I just throw myself completely into the person I'm with. I lose large bits of myself trying to make the other person happy. I ended up gaining a lot of weight in this relationship and relied heavily on this boy to validate my existence. The RA job taught me that nobody is going to make you feel better about yourself but you sometimes. There were days where I was being called every degrading name in the book by bullies I thought I'd escaped from in high school. They found every weak spot like it was a giant target with flashing lights- and they had fucking fantastic aim.  There was a moment where I remember just standing there thinking, "I can cry, I can walk away and just go back to my room and cry and write this up tomorrow." I didn't. For a very long time I realized I had this impermeable layer around my feelings and my heart. This asshat couldn't get in. 

I loved that feeling so much, I did it again for another year. This year was different. I made closer friends but I also burnt out about a quarter of the way in. I got sick often and I was normally in some kind of emotional turmoil. I was a bundle of joy, I can assure you. Whether it was the food or the added stress of the job I just wasn't functioning well. My good friend Kevin can attest to this, my Achilles heel is asking for help. I hate it, loathe it. I'd rather have a root canal done by a blind drunk who can't speak English than ask for help. I'm not exaggerating either. I went through bouts of not eating, sleeping or drinking anything and just scraped by. I've never done that in my entire life. 

So I made the decision to get my own apartment. It's my space, my perfect space. I applied for this awesome internship that I never in a million years thought I'd get and mentally prepared for another summer in Timmins. Then I got the job/ internship. I've been doing my future career for the entire summer and will continue into December and then after that I'm not sure. That doesn't scare my. I don't mind odd jobs to pay the bills, it's after that terrifies me.

Where am I going to work? Where am I going to live? I've toyed with the idea of going abroad and trying to get work in Europe but I have the cat and guinea pigs - can you even fly with guinea pigs? - and my family is all in Canada. Do I live in northern Ontario or southern Ontario. I've always lived in the north but could I make the change to down here? What about out West? Wait, could I afford to live out West....Scratch that. What about the USA there's lots of jobs there. Oh God but where the heck would I live...I think I could probably fit in in Texas or Alabama...

That's just where my brain started. I started thinking about what would happen right when I graduated. When do you start applying for career jobs? Am I really going to do the cap and gown photos again? I'm going to have to move out of this apartment...and it was such a pain in the ass to move in... I remember thinking back to high school and the drama that we had there. It wasn't any less real but compared to now...ah. I'm only 21, I know I have a lot of time left - unless a bus or wayward bullet gets me - and already family friends are starting to ask about boyfriends and clocks ticking. My clock doesn't tick, it's digital and boyfriends? Let's work on one of those and then we'll talk?

Needless to say I did a good job of terrifying myself about the future and becoming a real adult, I know a lot of you will say that I've got it good and not to worry about it "what is meant to happen will happen," to that I say: What if what's meant to happen is a 47 year old spinster who owns a lot of cats who cries herself to sleep over her degree and diploma every day under a mountain of student debt? 

That last bit was a little melodramatic, I apologize. I think that's a good note to leave this on...that and the cat has made it apparent it's le bedtime. Now. 

Night all!

Look! Look! Guinea pigs! Ophy (brown) and Gatsby (foofy one)

Bowyn 

My unhealthy addiction

I'm addicted. 
It's become this unhealthy addiction that is starting to single handed-ly rule my life. 

It's coffee. 
That sweet liquid of caffeinated heaven that has the power to make everything in the world seem like rainbows, puppies and kittens. 

I start my day in this drunken-like stupor, stumbling around the apartment trying to figure where in sam-hell I left my pants or bra while dodging a kitten who has decided that this is the time he wants to be cuddly. This is punctuated by the stubbing of toes or hollering at the cat who is eating the plant-again-even-though-we-discussed-this-and-the-fern-is-not-food-and-I-will-get-your-breakfast-in-a-second-just-let-me-find-my-work-pass-which-is-in-the-fridge-again-for-some-reason...

Normally I wait until I get to work to have my coffee, so my morning routine is simple:

• Up
• Get dressed
• Take off backwards shirt, but back on right way
• Feed cat
• Feed fish
• Feed cat- shit already did that
• Feed guinea pigs who have started a poop hucking anarchist movement by now
• Lock cat in bedroom so he doesn't eat my plant
• Leave
• Remember keys
• Leave again.
• Work
• Coffee coffee coffee coffee

Some people say, coffee really can't effect you that much (liars- all of ya,) but that is not so. This morning I started off my day changing it up with a chai tea latte, cause I was feeling le fancy. Instead of feeling like this:

 I feel like this:

I've been told I rock denim..I don't know

As soon as that not-so-sweet fake nectar of the gods hit my system my brain did a double take realizing this was not a double double..

This was not what my brain and I discussed was the plan. Yogurt and chai tea lattes are not what fuel Kaileigh's for the day- little known fact.
Also little known fact, if you quit coffee cold turkey after drinking it every day you are plagued by these wonderful little migraines that are comparable to a mariachi band doing a jig on your eyeballs with jacks.

This has to be healthy......


UPDATE:


:D :D :D

***Illustrated photos are copyright to Allie Brosh of Hyperbole and a Half on blogspot (which you need to check out) http://www.hyperboleandahalf.blogspot.ca/ 

*** Cat photo is registered and copyrighted to "Beauty in Everything"
http://beautyineverything.com/people/lpSkp6GVo5a4uKWe

***The Tims photo is mine

US pastor thinks children raised in same-sex marriages need to be kidnapped to "save" them.

                Pursuing a degree in media, specifically Public Relations, nothing much surprises me about people nowadays; saying that, this surprised me. An American pastor, Bryan Fischer, is arguing that children from same-sex households should be kidnapped and an underground railroad set up to “free them.” Fischer likened this practice to being needed as it was to “freeing slaves.”

                I resisted the urge to whack my head off my desk a few times and read through the article to find out as much information as possible. Fischer is a spokesperson for the American Family Association (the same one that Chick-Fil-A*** CEO Dan Cathy stated he supported,) where he is their director of Issue Management. Fischer tweeted, “we need an underground railroad to deliver innocent children.”

                Where does this obviously well thought argument come from? Robert Oscar Lopez apparently posted on a right-wing website blaming growing up in a same-sex household the reason for his lack of social skills, trouble fitting in at work and making it difficult for him to have a relationship with a woman. I’m going to bite my tongue here and say that I highly doubt that that’s the reason he’s decided he’s so flawed as a human being. Yes, upbringing does play a part in the way you are as an adult, but the fact that he’s blaming his moms for the reason he is awkward is absurd. There’s no mention of loving them or thanking for them for raising him, it’s “you’re gay, you made me weird.”

                My views on marriage are very simple: you don’t want gay marriage, don’t get gay married. I am straight; I want to have a traditional wedding in a church. Just because I am making the personal decision to marry a man does not mean that I achieve this divine right to dictate how the rest of the world will get married! It bothers me that people want to inject themselves into the personal lives of everyone else as if we’re all in an episode of Big Brother. Life is reality, not reality TV.  I respect that Mr. Fischer has the right to have an opinion about marriage and how he thinks that upbringing affects children, but when you’re talking about “saving” innocent children as if they’re shackled in a basement in a same-sex couples house, that’s ridiculous. Where there is one man blaming his family structure for his social awkwardness there are millions of other men and women who say it has made them stronger.

                By the very statistics of “traditional” marriage you can attest it can be just as harmful to a child. Most marriages end in divorce, that’s a fact. I’m not saying that marriage between a man and a woman is flawed for that reason but you can’t look at “traditional” marriage as this completely flawless sentient being, it never has been. Marriages are incorporate individuals, who are just that, individual. The negatives that are being created is the shame that is being dumped on same-sex family children by these extreme religious groups, stating they’re “doing it for their own good.” You can’t teach a child to hate his/her parent because their lifestyle is different than yours, nor should you shame them into a corner because that’s how they’re growing up. Children are impressionable, as kids we just want to fit in; whether it’s having the newest toys or wearing the coolest clothes; we want acceptance. Creating these ignorant little boxes where “family” needs to fit in corrupts the very nature of a family.

                It shouldn’t need to be this overstated but every person has the right to the lifestyle they choose. Mr. Fischer has the right to think marriage is between a man and a woman only just as much as I have to the right to think people can marry who they want. A family is a complex being, it doesn’t live and breathe in black and white; family is whatever you feel it is. Hold onto your beliefs and keep them close, but don’t be so ignorant as to ram them down the throats of anyone who thinks a little differently.

Article and quotes were taken from the Sun News article “US pastor advocates abducting children from gay homes” by QMI Agency

http://www.sunnewsnetwork.ca/archives/sunnews/world/2012/08/20120809-100520.html

Bryan Fischer’s Twitter can be found here:

https://twitter.com/BryanJFischer

***Note: Chick-Fil-A has not had any direct correlation to Mr. Fischer's position or comments, they are at this point, unrelated instances.

Love your body and be "really" beautiful...the advertising way

I was sitting on the couch last night with my cat and a tub of mint-chocolate chip ice cream watching the Olympics when a commercial caught my eye. Victoria Secret’s new ‘Love Your Body’ campaign for their ‘Body’ line of bras.

                Of course this commercial was of stick-thin VS models parading around in their underwear lovin’ their bodies and bras, which had me stopping mid-spoon in mouth with my ice cream and rethink my life a little bit. I then, of course, did what any normal person does in this day and age. I googled the shit out of this.

                As it turns out, Victoria Secret does offer their product from a 32A right up to a 40DD, which incorporates a wide range of shapes of women; they just don’t advertise to them. Again, we have a huge company who is launching a “body love” campaign of sorts, yet keeping their advertising focused. I realize that Victoria Secret does have an established brand centred around this iconic “Victoria Secret model,” they’re not just going to change their whole image because people are calling for more diverse advertising.

                This is slightly reminiscent of Dove’s “Real Beauty” campaign, which went down in a flaming pile of good intentions. Now the Real Beauty campaign still exists, it’s just been kept under the radar since its slow painful death by the hands of the media.

                For those who do not know, Dove’s Real Beauty campaign focused on advertising using “real” women, of all ages, sizes and skin colours. At first the world jumped on this bandwagon and Dove started to work towards empowering women to feel good about their “real beauty”. This didn’t last long, with a casting call for models for the Real Beauty campaign being leaked from Craigslist looking for “real women” who have “beautiful arms and legs and face” with “flawless skin, no tattoos or scars” and “well groomed and clean, nice bodies, naturally fit not too curvy not too athletic.” Needless to say “Real Beauty” was the look they were going for, only if you fit the criteria for really beautiful.

                Another huge issue that cropped up is that Dove’s parent company, Unilever, also owns Axe, whose marketing tactics are known to objectify women with racy ads featuring “hot” women that all the men want to be with. Well the media world blew up! How can you have one company pushing to work against these objectifying ads and another company sticking them right up in your face? Most of the Axe ads don’t even feature a woman’s face; just parts of her body contorted around a man, giving her the semblance of not even being a real person, just an object.

I'm sure they have a great personality....

                The result? If you’ve noticed, both Axe and Dove really have toned down their advertising. Where before you would see commercials and ads everywhere, they’re more and more sparse. Only now has Dove started to bring back the Real Beauty campaign and women’s empowerment endeavours. Trust me, I’m all for promoting healthy self-image and body love for every body type, but there is an issue when companies start to use this as a ploy to create sales. Much like Victoria Secret jumping on the body-love bandwagon to make some $$, Dove also made the mistake of using empowerment to empower sales.

                I think that at this point in time people are so tired of seeing all the things that they cannot be and cannot achieve as advertising. Speaking solely on Canadian stats, the national average size for a Canadian woman is a size 16, yet most clothes are advertised much smaller than that. Media and advertising is so detrimental to the mental health of women unless you fit societies standard for pretty and even then if you are thin you’ve got the other side of this argument shaming you for it.

                A study shows (note: I will add the study link as soon as I find it again), that as a society men like women around a size 12, women on average are around a size 16 and yet on average, most women want to be a size two! A size two! Unless you’re naturally very thin, most women are not built to be a size two; only a small part of the population is naturally that thin! We’ve crafted this perfect cyclone of body shame that doesn’t discriminate against what you look like and only exists to make everyone unhappy with themselves.

Olympic Pride: Not just reserved for medalists

A major theme that comes around Olympic time is the massive amount of national pride; and with that national pride comes a lot of pressure, pressure for both country and athletes. With that pressure comes this sense of possession and utter disappointment when an athlete doesn’t perform well; which is almost all the time what makes headlines.

                 An example that rocked my little world yesterday was when our triathlete Simon Whitfield crashed, causing him to withdraw from the Olympic triathlon on Tuesday. Immediately Canadians adopted the nickname Simon “Wipeout” Whitfield, and began to criticize his decision to pull out of the triathlon. It wasn’t until Wednesday that he announced he actually was suffering from a broken collarbone as well as the stitches that were needed from his lacerations.

                Another example(I realize I’m only using Canadian examples, but they are the media that I have access to, if you have any other examples from different countries please send them over,) is Eric Lamaze, the Olympic show-jumper, who famously placed gold in Beijing aboard Hickstead. Lamaze was eliminated before the final round, leaving only Ian Miller, Canadian jumping legend (owner of Big Ben and In Style), who placed 9^th in a three-way tie. You have yet to see any media on this coverage other than Lamaze being eliminated.

                Having those athletes wearing our flag I think we almost always forget that they are competing on a world-class level.  The fact that these athletes qualified on a world level is amazing, the fact that they didn’t medal is almost trivial. You’re up against the very best from every corner of the world, with an entire nation’s pressure on your back stepping in your competition. That amount of pressure alone is enough to send most of us crawling back into bed and never coming out until dark.

                I think we forget just how much hard work goes into preparing these athletes for the Olympics. They’re up against world records, the world’s best athletes, their nation’s scrutiny and their own personal goals. They don’t place well; they’re still with all the top athletes in the world. It makes me really upset to see news outlets and people openly criticizing athletes for not medalling. As much as there is so much glory in getting up on that podium and hearing your national anthem, the Olympics are not solely around “winners and losers.”

                Honestly, I think we need to have a mad amount of respect for these athletes regardless of placings, ranks or medals. Each and every one of them uproots their life to represent their country and try to be the best they can be against a massive amount of athletes trying to do the exact same thing. I know for a fact that many of these people complaining and insulting these athletes would not be able to advance half as far as they have or compete on a global-scale.

                Congratulations to all athletes, you’re making your countries proud and you deserve all the praise in the world for your abilities.