Cheers & Jeers
Cheers: to the wonder of having some 230 new emojis to choose and confuse the people you are trying to communicate with. Later this year, an axe, a sloth and a waffle will be among the symbols that you can add to messages you send from your smartphone, saving you from the hassle of actually having to spell, write or even know how to use words. Butter, ice cube, falafel, otter and garlic are also set to be emojified. We are currently predicting that all online communication will be supplanted by some version of cutesy-faced cartoon language in approximately 6.4 years. Crying face, crying face, crying face, happy pile of excrement. (Those ones aren’t new.)
Cheers: to top security measures and the annals of true crime in Newfoundland and Labrador. From a recent court case: the judge wrote that a bar owner “was rarely at her business other than to collect money on some Wednesdays and on Sundays. (The owner) did not have a good knowledge of her business. She believed the money was placed in a safe every night. The actual practice was to place the cash in envelopes, then in a liquor bag, then in a beef bucket and to store the bucket and till in the freezer located in a room behind the bar.” It brings a whole new meaning to the expression “cold hard cash.”
Jeers: to boring politicians. A Florida politician has resigned after allegations that she licked the faces of at least four men. Nancy Oakley had been the city commissioner of Madeira Beach up until her Wednesday resignation. Her resignation came after an investigation found the licking complaints to be legitimate: “The act of licking a person on the face and neck is too unusual to be contrived by multiple witnesses and multiple victims,” the judge investigating the case wrote. Meanwhile, all we have in this province are the absolutely to-be-expected concerns about bullying. Why are they absolutely to be expected? Anyone attending the House of Assembly would tell you that bullying is not only expected and accepted on a daily basis in the House, but is actually cheered on by some other MHAS, who are — let’s face it — honourable in name only.
Cheers: to second thoughts. An Edmonton municipal politician is backing down from his plan to use $44,000 from his ward budget to help pay for the costs of getting an executive MBA — his argument was that the degree in business administration would help him better serve his constituents. “It allows me with more confidence and new lenses to critique city decisions with a business perspective,” he told the CBC. “I’m confident that we’ll be saving the city money overall.” He had a change of heart mere hours after the CBC story ran; 928 people commented on the story before the CBC shut comments down, and the comments were not glowing.