We’ve reached a milestone as this will be the 100th quote of the month on this website. The 100th quote will come from the comic strip ‘Dilbert’. Dilbert is a comic strip written by Scott Adams that takes a satirical look at office culture in America. The comic strip appears in over 2000 newspapers worldwide and in over 25 different languages. The strip focuses on many themes lacking in corporate America such as mismanagement, low morale, corporate bureaucracy and peer pressure. In 1999, the strip was turned into an animated series that aired for two seasons on the UPN network. Technology and inventions also play a central theme in the strip. The month of May is officially ‘National Inventions Month’. In this month’s quote, Dilbert discusses how a work environment can help to play a lead role in creating an innovative new piece of technology…

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It’s fairly obvious that the people that write for this website watch a lot of television. One of the great things about being Canadian is that we get to watch a fair amount of original Canadian content that most Americans have probably never heard about or ever saw come across their television screens before. We get to enjoy the NFL but also have the luxury of watching the CFL and being able to enjoy more than double the amount of football coverage. We can make fun of Americans by watching political programs such as ‘The Daily Show with John Stewart’, ‘The Colbert Report’, and ‘Real Time with Bill Maher’ but are then able to change the channel and make fun of Canadian politicians in such programs like ‘The Rick Mercer Report’. Our friendly relationship and history with Great Britain allows us to enjoy more familiarity with British programs than Americans do.

Canadians do enjoy American television programs. We like to see big-named actors in major productions from such over-the-air broadcasters like NBC, FOX, CBS or ABC as well as all sorts of programming from specialty television channels. But, we will support a Canadian program if it’s unique and intelligent. We’re not going to instantly support the program if they wave a bunch of Canadian flags in the air but we will support the program if it has witty writing and original story-telling. Production values aren’t so much an issue as long as the show has a good plot , good cast and original ideas. A fair amount of Canadian programs have more progressive attitudes about sex, drugs, and violence compared to American programs. This is evident in the amount of censoring that has occurred when programs such as ‘Degrassi’ and ‘Ready or Not’ were broadcast to American audiences. You can also see this in the ratings set by Canadian broadcast agencies where our ratings are less strict on things such as sex and drugs compared to American rating systems. One noticeable difference between both countries is the stance on violence. Canadian news programs show less violent actions such as crime during their broadcasts and censor certain news bits such as violence against women. For example, Canadian broadcasters have censored WWE’s ‘Monday Night Raw’ and have the cameras cut away when a woman was getting thrown through a table whereas the footage wasn’t censored in the USA.

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For our April quote of the month, we decided to switch things up a bit and give our audience a quote from a former socialist who changed his political beliefs and became a hard line capitalist. Quite a change of pace from our Leprechaun buddy from last month. Max Eastman was an American writer on literature, philosophy and society, a poet, and a prominent political activist. After completing a PhD at Columbia University, he became editor of America’s leading socialist periodical called ‘The Masses’. The periodical was very critical of the first world war and landed Eastman in trouble with the United States government several times. Eastman twice stood trial under the provisions of the Sedition Act, but was acquitted each time. Unfortunately, the periodical was forced to shut down because of charges under the Espionage Act of 1917. Eastman traveled to Russia and stayed there for over a year and witnessed the Bolshevik Revolution. He was a strong supporter of Leon Trotsky with whom he became friends with and would help to translate several of his works from Russian to English for American readers.

Eastman would later condemn Socialism in Russia after witnessing the Party being overtaken by radical influences such as the ideals of Joseph Stalin who would have someone assassinate his good friend Trotsky while in exile in Mexico. Following the Great Depression, Eastman changed his political beliefs and started to promote free market capitalism and wrote articles condemning socialism in the Libertarian publication ‘The Freeman’. Eastman published more than twenty books on subjects as diverse as the scientific method, humor, Freudian psychology and Soviet culture as well as volumes on poetry, his memoirs and reflections on his personal encounters with many famous people during his career such as Charlie Chaplin, Ernest Hemingway, Sigmund Freud, Albert Einstein and many other influential people. In this month’s quote, Eastman talks about jokes from one of his published volumes on humor. He gives his opinion on how one understands a joke and explains the ability to prove you have a sense of humor…

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It’s the month of March. We’ve already done a quote or two for St-Patrick’s day so we’ve already exhausted most of our quotes on this limited drunken holiday. But, we haven’t exhausted any quotes on leprechauns yet! And we’re not talking about any ordinary leprechaun. Oh,no sir. We’re talking about the evil leprechaun played by actor Warren Davis in the ‘Leprechaun’ film series. Leprechaun is a 1993 comedy horror film written and directed by Mark Jones and starring Warwick Davis and Jennifer Aniston in her first film role. The plot revolves around an evil leprechaun that is imprisoned for ten years in a farmhouse until he is broken free and goes on a killing rampage in search of his beloved gold. The movie was one of the first theatrical releases of 1993 and became a surprise hit. There have been six sequels made with a 7th film set to be released sometime in 2013 with WWE and Lions Gate teaming up to produce the film. One of the great things about the Leprechaun character is that he would often give the audience a great one-liner or comedic joke before attempting to kill someone. These one-liners or jokes would often come in the form of a lyrical poem where several of the words used in the poem would rhyme together. In this month’s quote, the Leprechaun explains to the audience what the consequences shall be if anybody tries to steal his gold…

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This month’s quote may be a little shorter than others since there’s very little biographical information about our next person of interest. William (Bill) Vaughn was an American columnist and author. His memorable distinctions or original thoughts have appeared in numerous books and on many internet web sites. He wrote a syndicated column for the Kansas City Star from 1946 until his death in 1977. He attended Washington University in St-Louis, Missouri and was writing for ‘Reader’s Digest’ and ‘Better Homes and Gardens’ under the pseudonym ‘Burton Hills’. Many of his aphorisms discuss patriotism, American politics, conformity, the holidays and many other amusing and provocative thoughts. In this month’s quote, Vaughn gives us some insight into why size doesn’t mean everything in life…

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