Toronto May Just Have the Largest Number of Busybody Whiners Per Capita Than Any Other City

...and the award for paternalistic fucking killjoys of the week go to this site I just stumbled onto mere minutes ago: Illegal Signs.

Oh fuck, am I right? Someone's putting up advertising, goddamn demonic fucking signs of commercialism gone rampant, on their own private property? Well, fuck me! Fuck everyone! How will we all get on with out lives?

These are the same type of people who would cancel Christmas because the lights might be distracting to drivers.

Read this screed, right from the jackass's mouth:

The outdoor advertising industry has a global culture of non-compliance with the law. Advertising companies are erecting illegal billboards all over the world, wherever they can get away with it. In Toronto, this renegade, lawless industry has been acting with impunity due to bureaucratic negligence.

"This renegade, lawless industry?" What are they, smuggling Afghani children to be eviscerated and used in high-priced sex-dolls? They've entered into a private contract with whomever owns the building to put up an advertisement. If you don't like it, tough fuckin' cookies there, sunshine.

Join us as we fight to legalize and democratize Toronto’s visual environment.

Total mis-use of the word "legalize" not worth the trouble to point out to these nut-jobs, I have never seen an invented word so badly used in all of life than "democratize." You cannot "democratize" what you do not own. You have as little right to remove advertising from the subways as I do to tell you what to wear. And don't tell me these fuckwits aren't out to stop all advertising (just the illegal ones), because they admit as much in their "about" page by displaying their total contempt for private property, and their stated wish to have the citizens of Toronto be shielded from the dreaded horror of having a way to promote their business.

Notice how the site enters into no discussion about why the permits are necessary for the city - for revenue, and that's all. The "about" page moans on for the few short sentences their minds can string together to denounce any "monetization" of "civic capital" by selling out to the evil corporations, without once the notion coming up that permits are a way for City Hall to suck revenue out of another creation that wasn't their's.

I have a question How does Mr. Joe Bloggs and Ms. Jane Doe know when an advertisement has gone up without requiring a permit? Oh that's right. They usually fucking don't. They go through their lives, almost blissfully, unaware of the total fucking horror that somebody else's property might be inflicting upon their sensitive, still child-like brains. In fact, it seems that this site may be the only collection of people actually bothered by "illegal" signs - or should we say, pompous enough to want to exert power they haven't earned over property they haven't got. Envy is the worst of the seven sins, guys...

Addendum: to more properly rebut these folks (because I know that I've written this while in a bad mood, and have likely not provided the correct logical and philosophical ammunition to take them on, but mere invective), check out Jerry Kirkpatrick's book, In Defense of Advertising.

Let Me Tell You About Anime

When there's no more anime for you lunkheads to watch, just remember how much you contributed to its downfall.

From Steve Fritz's latest "Animated Shorts" column on Newsarama:

• Piracy Is Not Your Friend

The fall of Geneon could be one of the biggest and nastiest bits of news this year.

At the moment, the distributor who provided America with such incredible anime and evergreen properties as Akira, Lupin III, Serial Experiment Lain, Last Exiles, Gankotsouo, Samurai Champloo, Black Lagoon, Ergo Proxy and many, many, many more is auctioning off its rights to these shows for whatever little they can get. Very informed sources tell me they wouldn’t be surprised if two more very long-running and equally important anime providers will be out of business by the end of 2008.

The reason? Video piracy. It’s gotten so bad that even though there are statistics that say the actual number of anime fans have increased by 30% over the last two years, the sales of anime DVDs has dropped as much as 50% in the same period of time.

What many of the pirates don’t understand is Geneon is the first domino in what could be an incredibly long chain. According to one source, it could go back to the studios, with at least one major anime studio also going down due to lack of American and international revenues. This can ricochet, too. American studios could savagely cut budgets at the minimum, or cease production altogether, if they don’t have studios like Japan’s Madhouse to pass on inbetweening and other such chores to.

The simple fact is while animation is getting cheaper, it’s still an expensive artform. While I discussed the coming of the one-person studio earlier, it isn’t here yet. Further, the animation is far more, well, cartoon-y, than shows like Avatar, The Simpsons or Legion. Shows like these involve small armies of production people.

Hopefully I’ll have a much more detailed report on this over the next 30 days. Still, it’s something we better stay well aware of.

I Remember the Days When Photoshopping Wasn't a Crime

Via Local6.com, "Police: Principal Cropped Student's Face Onto Pornographic Images:"

John Stelmack, 60, the principal at Scott Lake Elementary School in Lakeland, was arrested at his home, located at 5749 Deer Track Trail in Lakeland, and charged with five counts of possession of child pornography....
According to a Polk County sheriff's report, Stelmack took routine photographs of children in a school setting, including a 10-year-old who attended Scott Lake Elementary last year, and digitally superimposed their faces onto nude images. The identified girl's facial image was on four of the pictures, and another unidentified female child's face was placed on the body of another nude image, the report stated.

You get a cookie if you can explain to me how faking child pornography for one's own perverted amusement actually constitutes child pornography. If you should succeed in convincing me, then we call ride out together, under cloak of darkness, and hunt out every sicko who's ever even drawn a picture of a girl who could possibly be imagined as being underage. Onward, soldiers!

Next: we talk to Jennifer Aniston and Natalie Portman, as they consider suing every person who's ever photoshopped their heads onto the bodies of pornstars over invasions of privacy.