Fragments: “Better than Crash“

Let me say this upfront — I wholeheartedly endorse the laser-etching of anything on anything. That said, what a treat to check out meatcards.com, which boldly proclaims…

Screw die-cutting. Forget about foil, popups, or UV spot lamination. THESE business cards have two ingredients:

MEAT AND LASERS.

Unlike other business cards, MEAT CARDS will [...]]]> Meat Cards:

Let me say this upfront — I wholeheartedly endorse the laser-etching of anything on anything. That said, what a treat to check out meatcards.com, which boldly proclaims…

Screw die-cutting. Forget about foil, popups, or UV spot lamination. THESE business cards have two ingredients:

MEAT AND LASERS.

Unlike other business cards, MEAT CARDS will retain value after the econopocalypse. Hoard and barter your calorie-rich, life-sustaining cards.

Want! Especially after checking out their prototype:

Murders-and-Executions Image: Courtesy meatcards.com

I Call Him “Inky”:

H-Mart is my new favourite store in Vancouver, an Asian supermarket with which one could easily become obsessed. The anthropomorphizing of nonhuman life forms seems to have reached a new level. Mouseover the image below and, behold, the brain-sucking allure of Inky…

Mouseover. C’mon, do it. DO. IT.

Okay, I’m not that drunk, but kinda, I’ll admit it.

(H/T: chiqui of CPMCoG for meatcards)

Toronto’s only application for money under the federal government’s $4 billion infrastructure [...]]]> Far be it from me to ever side with the moronic bullies of Stephen Harper’s Conservative Party, but I had to giggle when Tory Transport Ministrix John Baird called out my soon-to-be-ex-city’s ineptitude in applying for part of a $4 billion federal infrastructure fund:

Toronto’s only application for money under the federal government’s $4 billion infrastructure stimulus fund was met with a profane dismissal by Transport Minister John Baird yesterday.

In an unguarded moment, Baird told aides Toronto stood alone in not meeting the technical criteria for federal cash, yet was complaining about Ottawa dragging its feet.

“Twenty-seven hundred people got it right. They didn’t. That is not a partnership and they’re bitching at us,” he said.

“They should f— off.”

I guess no one’ll be buying Baird a drink at Woody’s any time soon.

I love the photo which The Star ran to accompany the article, too:

John Baird in The Star

I have a feeling the image above will be one of my most enduring memories of Toronto, how it’s its own worst enemy and how the rest of the country treats it, for reasons far too obvious to detail at this juncture.

Olbermann:

Video: Keith Olbermann Fingers Bill O’Reilly, Bernard Goldberg and Fox News as Terrorists

I can’t go near comments sections online today. The evil perpetrated by Dr. George Tiller’s murderer is eclipsed by the stupid, hateful, pig-ignorant, seething, antediluvian, subhuman christianists who climb over themselves to justify, rationalize and even applaud [...]]]> Laying blame. Hard. Where it belongs.

Olbermann:

Video: Keith Olbermann Fingers Bill O’Reilly, Bernard Goldberg and Fox News as Terrorists

I can’t go near comments sections online today. The evil perpetrated by Dr. George Tiller’s murderer is eclipsed by the stupid, hateful, pig-ignorant, seething, antediluvian, subhuman christianists who climb over themselves to justify, rationalize and even applaud this senseless, heartbreaking violence. I regret there is no Hell, for real.

See also: Salon (“O’Reilly’s Campaign Against Murdered Doctor”), Huffington Post (“Tiller Murder: Ann Coulter’s Happy Day?”, “The Politics of ‘Murder’”)

But for reasons to be revealed in a post or two, I won’t be bothering you with the decrepit craptitude of Toronto’s streets for much longer. For now, though… enjoy!

Remember how I was telling you about the incompetent pothole repair crews:

On the two most recent occasions I’ve witnessed pothole repairs, [...]]]> Okay, so maybe I don’t promise.

But for reasons to be revealed in a post or two, I won’t be bothering you with the decrepit craptitude of Toronto’s streets for much longer. For now, though… enjoy!

Remember how I was telling you about the incompetent pothole repair crews:

On the two most recent occasions I’ve witnessed pothole repairs, the crew consisted of two workers, shoveling shitty “asphalt” from the back of a pick-up truck, stepping on it, then tamping it down with the back of their spades. Use a roller to smooth it over? As. IF.
Making matters worse is that not enough asphalt is used to even fill in the holes completely. Within hours, the edges of the repairs are pressed back down into the potholes.

Well, I was lucky enough to capture a cellphoto of a pothole repair just minutes after a crew of “asphalt artisans” did their deed, Toronto-style:

Toronto Pothole, Yonge at Shuter

Note, please, that the fuckers couldn’t be bothered to press the asphalt into the pothole. Any pressing was accomplished by cars driving over it. That’ll end well.

And here’s one, scarcely a quarter-block east, right across the street from Toronto’s historic Massey Hall, in the bike lane, fercryinoutloud!

Toronto Pothole, Shuter East of Yonge

Yeah, I know, it looks like it was cut for some purpose but, whatever, right now bikes (and cars) are free to ride right over the hole, perfectly designed to puncture tires with protruding, rusty-steel rebar! And Toronto has the gall, the unmitigated, fucking gall to suggest they give a good god damn about cyclists?

Video: Mega Shark vs. Giant Octopus Trailer

(via Towleroad)

It would be funny if it wasn’t so fucking shabby and inept and [...]]]> This is the entrance to the Bay at Yonge and Bloor Streets in downtown Toronto. It’s also the entrance to the most-visited subway stop covering the two most-traveled transit lines in the city. This is how we roll in Toronto:

It would be funny if it wasn’t so fucking shabby and inept and disgusting. And typical.

Happy Mothers’ Day!

May 10, 2009, Yonge & Bloor Streets, Toronto

Springtime in Toronto is always… interesting when it comes to our roadways. No city is immune to potholes but every year, Toronto’s potholes are increasingly epidemic. Here’s why you had to laugh: City Councillor Karen Stintz has proposed corporate-sponsored road repair in the city:

“People realize and they know that the potholes are [...]]]> You had to laugh.

Springtime in Toronto is always… interesting when it comes to our roadways. No city is immune to potholes but every year, Toronto’s potholes are increasingly epidemic. Here’s why you had to laugh: City Councillor Karen Stintz has proposed corporate-sponsored road repair in the city:

“People realize and they know that the potholes are bad and the roads need to be fixed and we do have budget problems,” the Eglinton-Lawrence rep admitted. “So if we can be creative around how we solve it, it’s better for the citizens, it’s better for the streets and it’s better for City Hall.”

But the Mayor is (rightly) skeptical:

“I wouldn’t want the city to be dependant on a boon year in auto sales, therefore your roads get fixed,” [Mayor David] Miller said. “You need to repair the roads properly, it’s something that should be paid for through the property tax system.”

A couple of weeks earlier, CITYnews covered the pothole situation in Toronto with a quote from dreamboat Councillor Glenn Debaeremaeker:

“You can be on a road with no potholes Monday and Wednesday there’s a pothole.”

Indeed. But CITYnews explains away the pothole situation in a manner not unlike the way we often hear summer=hot explained (“the Earth’s position causes warmer temperatures because it’s closest to the Sun during summer”):

Potholes are a reality for an aging city infrastructure that contends annually with wild fluctuations in temperature which force concrete to expand and contract as water enters the cracks and seasons shift.

Which is to say… yeah, but… no. (The Earth’s tilt causes warmer temperatures in summertime, by the way; it’s as far from the sun during the summer as it is in winter).

The large fluctuation in temperatures is problematic for Toronto, and does deteriorate concrete and asphalt through water freezing and thawing and then the cracks and the potholes and the frustration.

And it’s frustration not just for motorists concerned about the assault on their suspensions. Cyclists are rightfully enraged by the increased danger caused by swerving to avoid potholes. And pedestrians in downtown Toronto are well acquainted with rainwater collected in the potholes and projected toward the sidewalks by typically-conscientious downtown motorists.

But I hafta tell you… that Civil Engineering degree doesn’t hang above my toilet for spending four years in art college, and Toronto doesn’t have a really shitty pothole situation because of our freeze-thaw cycling; Toronto has a really shitty pothole situation because the repairs are not made properly. I’ve actually observed several road-repair crews in action in the downtown core.

And this is what I saw:

1. Road-repair crews in Toronto use shockingly substandard asphalt. Asphalt is a concrete-like mixture of gravel, sand and viscous, bitumen (think: tar) and its quality and longevity depends very much on the proper proportion of each, combined under heat to make the bitumen flow better. There are cheats, of course, such as using solvents to avoid the heating of the mixture.
   If you guessed that cheats are used in Toronto, you’re on the right track, but it’s not just cheating. No, the asphalt used in much of the repairs to Toronto’s roads barely has enough bitumen to hold the gravel together, too. Predictably, it starts to spall within hours of application.



2. The asphalt is applied by crews without proper equipment or training. On the two most recent occasions I’ve witnessed pothole repairs, the crew consisted of two workers, shoveling shitty “asphalt” from the back of a pick-up truck, stepping on it, then tamping it down with the back of their spades. Use a roller to smooth it over? As. IF.
   Making matters worse is that not enough asphalt is used to even fill in the holes completely. Within hours, the edges of the repairs are pressed back down into the potholes.
3. If the pothole repairs are supervised and/or inspected after the repairwork, someone needs to lose their supervisor and/or inspector jobs. I’ve never seen supervision or inspection.

If Toronto can’t afford road repairs to the extent that we need corporate sponsorship, maybe we should think about doing the repairwork properly the first time around. So, please, CITYnews, stop with the bullshit explaining-away of our crappy road situation with that specious nonsense about freeze-thaw cycles. Because… yeah. BUT NO.

ADDENDUM: Then and Now…

Hey, remember this repairwork, reported here in early 2008?

Well, a month after I posted that photo, the asphalt was repaired. A year later? This:

One Year Later (click to enlarge)

Oy. And vey.