This week I feel emboldened to offer some modest solutions to a few newsworthy problems.
Problem. “Amid Restructuring, Blackberry Calls for More Layoffs,” observes PC Magazine of the Waterloo-founded tech firm, which famously lost the plot and abandoned its iconic physical keypad on an Apple-like generation of smart phones. Late last year the beleaguered company reintroduced the keypad on the “Blackberry Classic,” in an attempt to regain market share.
Solution. Blackberry needs to go back even further in time to differentiate their product from others. How about a line of steampunk-style 4G smartphones pimped out with rotary dials and earpieces? As a bonus, mobility providers could offer a nostalgic “party line” option in data plans for the “Blackberry Jurassic,” targeting aging boomers who remember picking up a landline phone in their youth and hearing the weird old lady down the street.
Problem two. It used to be you’d have to tune into CBC’s Lang & O’Leary Exchange to hear an obnoxious white male interrupt a female television personality who was just trying to do her job. But the recent spate of “FHRITP” attacks have taken this dynamic up a notch. The unprintable remarks — from males in the street within earshot of mostly female reporters — have inspired a stream of op-ed pieces and broadcast commentaries bemoaning a collapse in civility, if not civilization itself.
Solution two. Are you a young Canadian male seeking culture-jamming fun through the recitation of stock phrases celebrating peer-approved dickery? Are you unafraid or unaware that the very media highlighting your random disruptions of civil order may be used to identify you later? Like to dress in black? Misogynistic? If you said yes to all of the above, ISIS wants to hear from you.
Problem three. Queensland police recently launched a social media campaign with a poster of the Canadian band Nickelback bearing the legend, “Wanted for crimes against music,” and warning Australians to be “on the lookout for these men who are believed to be impersonating musicians.” Looks like we have more to apologize to the world for than the export of asbestos and the re-election of Stephen Harper. Now we’re expected to stammer out a series of “sorries” for Chad Kroeger and his colleagues.
Solution three. Nickelback’s music isn’t without its uses, including scattering bird flocks on YVR runways and blasting gallstones in surgical procedures. Yet the scale of blowback against Alberta’s musical answer to the Tar Sands suggests we may have a national security problem on our hands. I’ve said it before and I’ll say it again: considering Canada successfully took the penny back, how hard can it be to take the Nickelback?
Problem four. “McDonald’s New Policy Bans Customers from Buying Food for Homeless,” according to a recent headline on the U.S. news site Nation of Change. “In the U.K. this month alone there have been two separate incidents to make international headlines, where homeless people were denied service at McDonalds,” the story alleges.
Solution four. None necessary. Firstly, two separate incidents in the U.K. don’t constitute proof of a boardroom-level policy of homeless-bashing. Secondly, the story is a red herring. McDonald’s is not known for serving real food to customers, let alone denying it to the destitute in benefit to their health.
Problem five. It occurs to me that solution two is really no solution at all. Muslim radicalization is no laughing matter, and we must be vigilant in protecting our freedoms from home-grown terrorists. Let’s not forget the domestic threat presented by a pair of drug-addicted, videogame-playing Muslim converts who were plied with money, meals, methadone, trips out of town, and explosive parts by the RCMP as they staggered toward their witless assembly and planting of dud bombs that were intercepted before they didn’t go off at the Victoria Legislature.
Solution five. As American cartoonist Mark Fiore suggested in his parody of American political activist and commentator Pam Geller, westerners need to decontaminate their culture of Islamic influences. That means Arabic numerals and al-gebra in public schools, and al-gorithms in home computers. And what about rejecting that sleep-deprivation drug originally developed by Muslim masterminds in Yemen, now consumed by millions of North Americans? I’m talking about a crusade against coffee.
@geoffolson
