Marshall McLuhan said the newspaper was a mosaic that perfectly suited the fragmented nature of modern urban life. There – you don’t have to bother reading Understanding Media any more. You can devote your time to more worthwhile pursuits, like chasing the squirrels away from your garbage.
No, really, no need to thank me. Making your life the slightest bit…well, better may be overstating the case…different. Making your life the slightest bit different is its own reward.
Things are so complex that whole 700 word essays are no longer in vogue – I don’t have the time to write them and you don’t have the time to read them. Instead, you get articles like this that bounce from subject to subject like three year-olds who’ve just eaten a vat of ice cream. Yummy, but full of empty intellectual calories.
Whatever you do, don’t finish the questionnaire and send it back to us! Frankly, we have the attention span of hyperactive gnats.
1) Why does the Toronto police force need 17 public relations employees?
a) one to write the press releases and 16 to assure Chief Julian Fantino that he’s doing a great job – no, wait, that’s the answer to a light bulb joke
b) one for each investigation into police wrongdoing
c) no amount of public relations can ever justify personal attacks on Police Services Board members, but it’s a start
2) What will you be doing during the 10th annual Television Turn-off Week?
a) chewing my nails…then my parents’ nails…then the nails of my close relatives…then the nails of my distant relatives…
b) I’ll finally get around to reading A La Recherche du Temps Perdu – PSYCH!
c) watching Friends reruns
3) Which of the following cartoon premises should be retired fortwi…forthwo…uhh, immediately?
a) panhandlers with “Will [VERB] for [NOUN] signs”
b) anybody stranded on a small island
c) anybody stranded in the middle of the desert
d) panhandlers stranded on desert islands
e) oh, all of the above, please, please, pretty please!
4) Tibet is to Quebec as…
a) the flu is to gonorrhea.
b) Charles Addams is to Charles Bukowski.
c) Batman is to a package of Rolaids.
d) indentured servitude is to Alan Alda.
e) ancient Indian burial grounds are to sky diving.
f) massage therapy is to Larry Storch.
g) public relations is to Haiku.
h) Les Pages aux Folles is to Alabama.
5) What qualifies John Negroponte to be the first American ambassador to freshly minted democratic Iraq?
a) he was involved in the Iran-contras scandal, which saw the United States send arms to Iraq’s bitterest enemy, so he is in a position to…uhh…no, maybe not this…
b) he speaks no Arabic, so he cannot communicate with anybody other than convicted felon Achmed Chalabi, and this is an advantage because…uhh…no, maybe not this, either
c) he’s so far to the right it’s a miracle he doesn’t fall over
6) Which of the following is the best excuse for your cult getting the date of the Apocalypse wrong?
a) the lord removes in mysterious ways
b) we calculated the date in metric
c) we let the lizard entrails grow cold before we read them, and every sorcerer and Microsoft programmer knows that you can’t get the right information out of cold lizard entrails
7) Both Get Fuzzy and Doonesbury comic strips recently featured storylines about soldiers losing limbs in Iraq. What comic strip should feature this storyline next?
a) Peanuts
b) Wizard of Id
c) Bizarro
8) Why won’t we have Sheila to kick around any more?
a) she’s too busy playing the old Dadaist game of “Exquisite Copps”
b) she wasn’t involved in the sponsorship scandal, so she refused to play “Copps and Robbers”
c) Paul Martin doesn’t like her
9) What novel was David Bowie’s Diamond Dogs album based on?
a) The Prime of Miss Jean Brodie
b) James and the Giant Peach
c) The Gulag Archipelago
d) other
10) When did Colin Powell jump the shark?
a) when he tried to convince the United Nations that Iraq had weapons of mass destruction using exquisitely rendered Power Point slides of empty Pringles packages
b) when, after it became apparent that the victorious United States would not find weapons of mass destruction in Iraq, he agreed to toe the Republican Party line that before the war Saddam Hussein must have swallowed them
c) when, defending himself against accusations in Bob Woodward’s new book that he was “out of the loop,” he claimed that he was so in the loop that he was positively loopy
d) when he agreed to be part of a George W. Bush government
11) Since Mossad, the Israeli secret service, apparently insists upon its agents in the field using them, what are Canadian passports worth?
a) Boardwalk and Park Place with less than two motels on them
b) you know, in this virtually connected world that’s erasing national borders it’s quaint that people still care about the integrity of their nation’s travel documents
c) plenty! There are now over 30 million new terrorist targets
12) How should an Air Canada creditor respond to a bailout plan that will allow him or her to buy more shares in the company?
a) “That’s just nuts! It would be like my bank trying to get me to accept a second credit card when I couldn’t pay off my debts from the fir…oh, wait. They do that all the time, don’t they?”
b) “Well, it’s the romance of air travel, isn’t it?”
c) “Toilet paper is such an underappreciated commodity…”
13) Attempts to smear Democratic Presidential hopeful John Kerry by showing a photo of him on a stage with Jane Fonda didn’t work when it was revealed that the picture had been doctored, and that they had, in fact, been on separate stages at different times. Who should the Republicans try to picture him with next?
a) Ho Chi Minh
b) Attila the Hun
c) Francois Mitterand
d) that guy from Jackass
14) A new American study shows that mandatory emissions caps are better at controlling pollution from power plants than voluntary caps. Your reaction?
a) “Oh, sure! Next they’ll be telling us that running with scissors is more dangerous than running without scissors! Some bleeding heart environmentalists just never get with the programme, you know?”
b) “I put on my mandatory emission cap before I go to sleep at night, but I always seem to wake up with a headache.”
c) “Does this mean that in the future I won’t have to wear my oxygen mask to breath?”
15) Why is the editorial board of the Toronto Sun hell bent on privatizing Medicare when most of its readers would not be able to afford many vital medical procedures if Medicare was privatized?
a) they know that the key to a good paper is the ability to challenge their readers’ deeply held beliefs…PSYCH! Boy, you sure are gullible today, aren’t you?
b) they will be able to afford the changes, so they assume their readers will as well – empathy, it’s a vastly overrated commodity in the newspaper biz
c) it’s a test to see if anybody actually reads their editorials – nope, no outraged reaction so far…
16) Which of the following would you least like to attend?
a) Dictata-Palooza
b) StemCellResearch-Palooza
c) Looza-Palooza
17) Which of the following is the worst punishment the Israeli government can impose on nuclear whistleblower Mordechai Vanunu?
a) the only cable channel he is allowed to get shows non-stop footage of lions feeding on gazelle carcasses in the African veldt
b) the only person he’s allowed to talk to on the telephone is P. Diddy
c) the only books he’s allowed to read are Croatian medical texts
18) The song known as Canada’s “second national anthem” was recently put up for sale on the Internet. Which song is that?
a) “Sudbury Saturday Night” by Stompin’ Tom Connors
b) “Rise Up, Rise Up” by The Parachute Club
c) “YYZ” by Rush
d) “High School Confidential” by Rough Trade
19) After eight years of Conservative reforms, the Ontario Liberals want to completely remake the province’s education system. Why?
a) because the government is convinced that teachers hate their students and are doing everything they can to see that their students fail
b) because everybody hated some of their teachers in primary and/or secondary school, so they make an easy target
c) because some people never learn, and, considering what we’re talking about, that has to make your Top Ten list of most ironic observations of 2004
d) because of eight years of Conservative reforms – jeez, Louise, don’t you bother to read your own questions?
20) “Garcon a la Pipe,” a rare Picasso, could fetch as much as $100 million when it is auctioned off by Sotheby’s. What does the enigmatic expression on the face of the boy in blue signify?
a) sexual arousal (for those prices, who wouldn’t be turned on?)
b) a reflection of the cold calculation in the heart of every major art dealer
c) gas