Those tricksy Canucks! Trust them to start a polite, nonviolent, globally accessible, wordless, self-esteem-building uprising.

The Pink Shirt Movement.

Forget the wearin’ of the green, the wearing of the pink is what it’s all about here at the dawn of the 21st Century.

Let’s go to our stringers at the Halifax Chronicle Herald:

Two students at Central Kings Rural High School fought back against bullying recently, unleashing a sea of pink after a new student was harassed and threatened when he showed up wearing a pink shirt.

The Grade 9 student arrived for the first day of school last Wednesday and was set upon by a group of six to 10 older students who mocked him, called him a homosexual for wearing pink and threatened to beat him up.

The next day, Grade 12 students David Shepherd and Travis Price decided something had to be done about bullying.

“It’s my last year. I’ve stood around too long and I wanted to do something,” said David.

They used the Internet to encourage people to wear pink and bought 75 pink tank tops for male students to wear. They handed out the shirts in the lobby before class last Friday — even the bullied student had one.

“I made sure there was a shirt for him,” David said.

They also brought a pink basketball to school as well as pink material for headbands and arm bands. David and Travis figure about half the school’s 830 students wore pink.

It was hard to miss the mass of students in pink milling about in the lobby, especially for the group that had harassed the new Grade 9 student.

“The bullies got angry,” said Travis. “One guy was throwing chairs (in the cafeteria). We’re glad we got the response we wanted.”

Given that Canada still has a Queen, is it too early to start a public movement for the knighting of these two lads? This is an idea whose time has come.

While Travis and David appreciate the recognition, “we don’t want to move the focus from the situation onto us,” said David, who is leaning toward joining the RCMP after high school.

“People say, ‘You’re celebrities, you’ll go down in the history books of the school,’ but that’s not what we set out to do.”

“People say you’re famous, heroes or celebrities,” added Travis, who plans to take criminology next year. “We’re not, we’re just two kids who stood up for a cause.”

Here’s just what your munchkin needs to join the Think Pink movement, my friends! For some peculiar reason, I couldn’t find any catalog shots of bigger boys in pink shirts, but I have a feeling that’s about to change.

more at twiigs.com…

Belated congratulations to the Dicks of Spokane. 20 1/2 inches is pretty impressive!

Seriously, the kid may get teased in gradeschool, but I think that the post-pubescent payoff will be worth it. Once he’s a grownup, he is going to OWN every honky-tonk he walks into.

From Name of the Year, via Bridlepath who also passes along the delightful Baby’s Named a Bad, Bad Thing. See our previous remarks on no-no’s of nanonomenclature here.

Stolen from a post over at the delightfully twisted dadsmacker blog entitled “As if we needed more evidence that China will soon rule the world,” this is actual video footage of a Taiwanese kindergarten English class. Think about that; they get languages in Kindergarten. Who do you know who’s doing that, other than MadMan Jolie-Pitt, over at the Lycée?

Zut alors!

The teacher’s comments:

This is the way to teach English to Asian kids…the MC Hammer way. I work at an English school in Taiwan and was asked to come up with an idea for a performance. So I came up with this. This video shows one of our first practice sessions putting the whole thing together.

The only thing that could make this better is if they were wearing actual HammerPants. Here’s the video of the final, costumed performance, for fans of green, vaguely tinselly costumes on HammerDancing Taiwanese Kindergarteners. Here’s what their teacher says:

The kids were totally petrified, and performed way worse than the rehersals, but what can I expect from 5 year olds dancing and singing in another language. The best part is at 1:57. These kids have no shame. Keep in mind there were a couple hundred well-to-do parents in the audience. It’s not cheap to send your kids to English schools in Taiwan. But now they can rest easy knowing their money is being well spent. Haha, like on the costumes for example…

By the way, did you know MC Hammer has a blog?

I see it’s an outie. Here’s the lovely Milla Jovovich, your basic immigrant megasuccess story. If I can make a wee confession here, I was always jealous of her; the international modeling career at eleven, the really quite sophisticated album at eighteen, the ice-blue eyes, the fashion line, the men, the movies, the millions.

And now, I have one more thing to be jealous of: how good she looks pregnant. You can see by her arms that she’s put on a bit of weight all over relative to her acting weight, but not vast, Fergie-like amounts. And she is living proof that your looks won’t go to pot when you do that. She feels no need to cover up those decidedly un-stringy arms. Those sexy female hormones need some lipids to work their magic.

One must confess, however, that an eight-months-and-looks-about-to-pop woman watching a horror flick like Resident Evil:Extinction isn’t exactly an advertisement for how gut-wrenchingly horrifying the movie may be. Sure, sure, she’s starring in it. She knows how it ends. I’m just thinking that, if Mama Jovovich’s nerves were less steely, the future Milla Junior’s rebirthing sessions could have been very interesting.

Your caption suggestions in the comments, plzthxkbai!

from the Forgotten Faces Flickrstream

Now, how can I call myself part of the Manolo family and not recommend some shoes? And lo, Awesome Mom, I have found some shoes for boys that I like!

It was tough, let me tell you. When Amazon tells you that there are 6,734 items to look through under boys shoes, they ain’t kidding. I laughed, I cried, I threw the keyboard on the floor in frustration, but finally I found things I would buy for my own son.

I tend to prefer a type of shoe that is a bit of a multi-tasker. That way, perhaps I don’t have to buy quite so many, you know? Shoes that fall somewhere in between a sneaker and a loafer work well, and luckily for me, you, us there are tons of them out there.

But first, how could I resist this “Fun Dog” Rain Boot? Does it not have frivolity and cuteness wrapped up in a functional package? Never mind that where I live, we have been in a drought for about four years. I love these boots. I want a pair for myself

Next up, shoes that are admittedly a bit expensive. However, they look as if they can be worn as easily with windpants and a tee, or jeans and a collared shirt.

And lastly, shoes that are on sale! I admit though, five bucks off isn’t whole lot. But, they are eligible to ship for free! Again, the multi-tasking rules apply to this shoe. I could see this on the playground as well as strolling through the mall.

Now, maybe next time I will be brave and do dress shoes! Or maybe shoes that are black, but I have a thing about black shoes that is perhaps a post for another time.

Hannah Walker was raised on the Downtown East Side. She has been a regular contestant in the Pivot Legal Society‘s Hope in Shadows photography contest, which documents life in the poorest neighborhood in Canada (life expectancy has been estimated as low as 33 years). Year after year, she and her friends would line up in Vancouver’s grey streets, often waiting in the rain for hours until they reached the head of the line and each received a disposable camera and an entry form. After the camera was full, they’d drop it off and wait, hopefully.
Last year, after many attempts, she won.

Hannah Walker is fourteen.

Hannah Walker knew it would be a good shot, but the 14-year-old never imagined her photo would be chosen to represent her Downtown Eastside community…it must have struck a chord with fellow DTES residents, who picked Walker’s photo over 41 other entries in a public vote at the Carnegie Community Centre.

Says Pivot Communications Director Paul Ryan, “She’s telling people what it is like for her to live in this community and everyone saw a part of that in the photo. I think people tend to forget children and families live here too. It’s not just what you see driving through East Hastings… It’s hopeful and inspiring.”

You can see a younger Hannah and her buddies in this video, explaining why they’re such enthusiastic entrants. That’s the kind of excitement and optimism that is kids’ special magic and, as we can see from the fact that she did in fact win, it’s not always as sweetly misplaced as us old cynics might think.

When a child competes against adults, it can sometimes be a bruising experience, but much more often in my experience it’s a growth experience and kids, we learn daily, are much more resilient than adults are. Kids come in last and say, “The guy who won said he liked my shoelaces!”

And sometimes, we all win.