What in the hell is wrong with Canadians?

This isn't really sports related, but whatever. Like everyone else, I spent yesterday being seriously amazed by the video Deadspin put up of an insane Canadian PSA that's been appearing recently during Hockey Night in Canada broadcasts.

But it turns out that Canada's been doing these horror show style PSA's for a while now. And man, are they graphic. I'd have had nightmares for years if I had seen these PSA's as a kid - or think I could survive getting two pieces of rebar stuck through me. But anyway, let's take a look at the others, some of which may even be worse than melting skin soup lady.


Here's the old "guy gets blown up and we watch his body fall 4 stories on to a truck" PSA. I like the coworker who says "There's been an accident." You know, I'd say it's a bit worse than an accident.



Here's the guy with some rebar stuck through him. Is it really necessary to show this? I get the point, be safe.



Here's someone falling through a glass counter.



And here's the Frank Grimes endorsed PSA.



Here's a cartoon for how to respond to unsafe working conditions. The phrase "dude" is used a lot.



And lastly, although this isn't work-related, it's a Canadian Domestic Violence PSA. It of course involves more hot liquids and, uh, it's NSFW.

Remember people, there are no accidents. Personally, I'll never look at soup the same way again.

-WCK

Vancouver is not your brother's keeper

When you host the Olympics, one of the things you want to do is tidy up your city just before everyone comes to town. That way people will see how clean and great your city is and will hopefully come back to visit again some day.

But it's tough cleaning up a city, especially when smelly homeless junkies are out doing heroin and crack all over your streets. So what do you do when you're looking to cut the homeless problem in your city by 50% by the time the Olympics come to town? Why, you stick said homeless drug addicts on a one-way plane out of town is what you do.

Yep, Vancouver is in the midst of seriously considering a plan to fly homeless and drug addicted individuals out of the city in time for the 2010 Olympics. That's because Vancouver - despite having the reputation of a clean city - has what a U.N. official recently called one of the world's worst slums in an affluent city. And the plan to send people off on planes wasn't cooked up by some nut. It was devised by the Chief of Police, the Civil City Commissioner, and a member of the Vancouver Board of Trade. Classy.

The plan is to collect a ton of donated frequent flyer miles and then "send people back to where they came from." Which I believe would be the gutter...of some other city. Truly a problem solving plan if ever there was one.

And just so everyone knows it's serious, the chairman of the Vancouver Board of Trade has already donated 100,000 miles. Because those miles definitely get to the root of the problem.

If you think this is bad (or maybe you think it's good), Atlanta did something similar in 1996 just before the Olympics. They rounded up as many homeless people as they could find, threw them on buses, drove them to the edge of the city and then threatened them with six months of jail time if they returned. Sort of like Rambo, except no homeless people came back and shot up a police station. Yet.

But hey, at least homeless people in the US and Canada get free plane trips and bus rides when the Olympics come to town. I have a feeling they won't be doing that in China.

-WCK