Rating: NNNNN
Smell it before you buy
re: hogtown (now, december 5-11).
I live just up the street from the Quality Meat Packers plant. I was aware of the slaughterhouse and its smells before I purchased my home six years ago, as was my dog (who still gets edgy and salivates whenever a warm wind blows from the south).
I understand that this plant has occupied this location and employed locals since 1912.
What I don’t understand is why people think they can move into the neighbourhood and demand the plant be shut down because it stinks. Shouldn’t you sniff around a neighbourhood a little bit before you buy into it?
Tom Parker, Toronto
Suck it up, condo scum
yes, let us all pity the residents in $150,000 condos who moved into an area that was zoned industrial up until 10 years ago.
I may not like the things that occur at that slaughterhouse, but the residents don’t whine about the increased traffic of Saabs and SUVs.
Suck it up, condo scum. And by the way, your resale value drops more each time you bring up the slaughterhouse. The best laugh of all.
Diana Howe, Toronto
Stop eating meat
in response to the article and letters about living by the slaughterhouse at King and Bathurst.
We wish more people could experience the sights, sounds and smells of a slaughterhouse first-hand.
By facing the reality of what pigs and other food animals endure before they reach our tables, people might rethink their role as consumers who create the market that enables such senseless cruelty. Not only do the animals suffer fear, trauma, confinement and pain, the employees at slaughterhouses work in unsafe and unsanitary conditions.
If we all stopped eating meat, then no one would be stuck living next to a slaughterhouse.
Angela Gibson and Jana Lait, Toronto
Why Bush won’t eat pretzels
my son was shopping for cds on Queen West recently and brought home something from a band called Trench Coat Yuppies.
Their songs are about terrorists hiding in caves getting stoned and fucked while they send out ladybugs to spy and poison us with anthrax!
Seems the events of 9/11 have made some people sick with paranoia, the likes of which has not been seen since the “red scare” of the 1950s. The “brown scare” is real!
Leeanne McDonald, Toronto
Spitting on Perlich
perhaps you can explain which rock the amoeba “music critic” known as Tim Perlich crawled out from under?
He obviously has hearing, sight and honesty issues in addition to a trailer-trash lack of breeding! His review of the Johnnie Johnson show (NOW, December 5-11) is obviously based on his attendance at a show in some parallel dimension.
How can he spit on a Rock and Roll Hall of Famer? What a sour, stupid and disrespectful piece of trash. Please do your publication a tremendous service and get rid of this disgusting cocksucker!
K.B. Kelly, Toronto
Blown away by Monheit
I loved your wry and slightly scatological comments on the jazz babes: Monheit, Jones, Krall and Barber (NOW, December 5-11), especially the one about Krall’s role model being Kenny G. Right on!
As a jazz cognoscente for more years than I should remember, my own adored favourite is Monheit, whose sultry voice and jazz phrasing are as seductive as her drop-dead-gorgeous appearance. I saw her at this year’s Montreal Jazz Festival and was completely blown away.
O.G. Pamp, Tweed
Going the extra 8 Mile
I’d like to thank sarah liss for her insightful commentary on 8 Mile (NOW, November 28-December 5). I myself was intrigued yet at first reluctant to see the movie.
Thanks to Liss’s overview, I think I’ll head out to see it. Eminem has many layers and is often misjudged and criticized for his brass and extreme lyrical content.
I often think the media should have the sense to delve deeper into his very creative and complex mind, as Liss did. Eminem would probably find her review refreshing.
A. Cain, Toronto
Staring at white shirts
I was at the art system closing party (NOW, November 28-December 4) and I think letter-writer Matt Thompson needs to know: the party was as sucky as every other art party he has attended.
The only difference between this “party” and other boring art openings is that some of the white middle-class kids used their Diesels to kick a few things down while everyone else stood around enervated with too much super-coolness to get involved. The event was not engaging, visceral or fun. What does it mean to art and culture generally that two or three of the kids felt like doing something other than staring at each other’s nice shirts?
Ruth Warner , Toronto
More moron talk
why all the fuss over the off-the-record moron remark? Bush and his “religious” cabinet think nothing of killing, whether by execution, assassination, death squad, sanction or bombing. These are a strange breed of Christians who put such a low value on the lives of people who are the wrong race, the wrong colour and the wrong religion.
Jim Purdie, Toronto
Rising right-wing slight
I was deeply disappointed that letter-writer Bill Kitcher (NOW, November 21-27) ignored my own role as the voice of the right wing in the NOW letters column in his slag of Jan Burton a couple of weeks back.
David Palter, Toronto
How typical of a commie rag
NOW editors think that those who disagree with police roadside checkpoints need a shrink (NOW, November 28-December 4). How typical of a commie rag. For decades the Soviets used mental health institutions to house those who disagreed with them.
Had you bothered to read the rest of the Post’s article or listened to any of the scare-mongering radio spots on the local news, you’d have learned police admit that despite 20 years of stripping away the personal freedoms of all drivers, a full 30 per cent of crashes and fatalities result from impairment.
Obviously, the RIDE spot-check program doesn’t work.
Dave Chappelle, Toronto
Progress takes time
I was quite disgusted with the headline of Orville Lloyd Douglas’s article (Whitewashed Black Studies, NOW November 28-December 4).
It so happens that I take the exact same Urban Black America class, and regardless of the fact that our prof is of Jewish descent (not just simply white as Douglas says), the class is anything but “whitewashed.”
The fact is, because the class is not taught by a black professor, I have the option of developing my own opinions as a black student without the all-too-familiar leather-bound fist proclaiming black teachers and black schools for black students being shoved down my throat.
The situation isn’t as Southern as Douglas depicts it.
Unfortunately, progress takes time, and frankly, York University has made good use of it.
Brian A. Richards, Brampton
