It’s been a banner week for human civilization. A topless painting of Bea Arthur sold for $1.9 million, Denmark won the Eurovision contest with a song about crying, and, to top it all off, the mayor of Toronto made a really cool short film that’s getting tons of buzz. But all that stuff is nothing compared to the week’s two hottest stories. First up, Venezuela ran out of toilet paper. So, if you were thinking of taking the family on one of those all-inclusive Venezuelan bathroom tours, don’t. The second top story was soccer superstar David Beckham’s shocking announcement that he was ending his life—his life as a professional athlete, that is! Now, let’s contrast and compare these two stories and see which one is better through the magic of a Culture War™.

What are we talking about, when we talk about Rob Ford? Class, I think, is always there, as is irony. At their core, the most spectacular Ford stories hinge on a deep mixing: the privileges of white, masculine power with the signifiers of poverty and powerlessness. The big-necked guy in an SUV, straight-talking, hard-drinking—and meanwhile, he’s crushing the union. Arguably, Ford started this himself, running for office on a regular-guy schtick that endeared him to working-class voters in (but mostly around) the GTA. His platform traded in the tropes of honesty and hard work, longstanding blue-collar values that, through another lens, we could understand as stereotypes.

But while Ford expressed certain “positive” blue collar values, anti-Ford media and other critics tarred him with negative stereotypes of working-classness, and thus the irony of Ford took hold. The public image of Ford is pure white trash, in its specific male incarnation. Obesity, bigotry, recklessness, and illiteracy have long been slurs against blue-collar men; Ford checks every box, and those for more recent tropes—DUIs, football, McDonald’s—too. He even fucks up according to white trash script, in an excessive, bodily way: overeating, behaving (what’s been described by witnesses as) shitface-drunk in public, allegedly grabbing a woman’s ass at a fancy party. That Ford rarely apologizes, or even seems aware that he’s offended, makes these scandals seem less like fuck-ups than a certain style of governing: expressions of Ford’s particular power. This is why, occasionally, Ford coverage admits pangs of sympathy, even admiration. White trash is nothing if not audacious.

The other day I got an e-mail from some old school friends inviting my wife and me, as well as some others from that era, over for a little dinner party. This is the invitation and the e-mails that followed.

50. Going to meetings

49. World-class cities

48. Getting down to business

47. Ribs that just fall off the bone

46. Shootin’ hoops

45. That one sauce, what do you call it, starts with an “s”

I know everyone thinks their dog is the greatest, but you’re all wrong because ours was. When I was growing up we had a yellow Labrador named Sir Lancelot, but he went by Lance because he wasn’t all up in your face about his knighthood. He was a sweet boy, and if you took him swimming in the river you could hold on to his shoulders and he would tow you. When he had to be put down at the age of 15, the vet who came to our house to give him the injection cried.

We think about our dogs a lot, but is it mutual? A new study in the journal Animal Cognition asks whether dogs can see things from our perspective. Apparently, they don’t focus so much on what we’re seeing as on what we’re hearing.

This is the situation: I mostly work in here, in the sun room. I'm working on a book on the American South, and I'm growing my plants at the same time. This is my favourite room to read in, and these are the books that I like to have close by, just because I love them. Or the books that I'm reading, working towards what I need to know, researching for my book. And of course, I'm always—every time you think you're closed to finished, you're just not. So you end up buying more books, and having to read more and more. But this is the room where I do my work, I get up in the morning and come here first thing, sit there in the corner by myself and have my tea.

Last Tuesday, we heard a thrilling description of how President Barack Obama might close the prison at Guantanamo Bay. He has stated his intention to do this for the past five years, and says he’ll proceed even if Congress continues to say no. I hope he acts on it. But, whether this “indefinite detention in an indefinite war with no enemy capable of surrendering” is brought to a speedy halt or not, the facility has been open for more than a decade, and it’s offshore for a reason. These prisoners have been treated in a way that would not be allowed in the United States. And whether we’ll ever know exactly what’s been done to them, and if anyone will ever be held accountable, depends almost entirely on whether any records are being kept, and, if kept, whether they are destroyed before anything can come to light.

This got me thinking about the Mau Mau war, a storehouse near Milton Keynes, email, and the future of what people in the industry call restorative justice.

The Syrian Electronic Army has really been making a name for itself lately. This pro-Assad collective of propagandists have hacked into the Twitter accounts of NPR, CBS, AP and the BBC, among others. Their most recent victory was breaking into the account of satirical magazine The Onion, where they tweeted such gems as “UN retracts report of Syrian chemical weapon use: Lab tests confirm it is Jihadi body odor.” It’s almost as if they had Jay Leno writing the jokes himself!

Regardless, hacking Twitter accounts has become the choice technique—a kind of modern graffiti—for anyone looking to make a mark by spreading propaganda, disinformation and a general sense of insecurity throughout the electronic community. The most recent of these attacks took place just a few days ago, when a Cuban organization known as the HB (for Habana Radio) seized control of the NHL Twitter account for nearly six hours. This is remarkable for a number of reasons, the primary one being that the Internet is a rare, unpredictable and still emergent technology in Cuba.

What follows are their tweets, which have since been deleted:

The website Weird Canada was founded in 2009 in Edmonton, with the purpose of showcasing the obscure, “anomalous,” and experimental music being made across the country. Unexpectedly, in 2011, they were nominated as part of CBC Radio 3’s Searchlight competition for Best Canadian Music Website. The weirdest thing happened—they actually won.

For a site devoted to fringe music (anything from free jazz to lo-fi tropicalia to noise punk) to overcome heavyweight publications like Exclaim! is no mean feat, and the operators of Weird Canada didn’t take the honour lightly. Since winning the contest, Weird Canada has taken its mission statement—“to encourage, connect, and document creative expression across Canada”—and stretched as far as it can reach. In the last year, they’ve registered as a non-profit organization, recruited over 100 volunteers, including the translators necessary to present all the “hyperbolic nonsense” in French and English, and won a $50,000 grant to create a nationwide service called “WYRD DISTRO” that allows music fans everywhere to easily access and purchase physical releases from the bands streaming on the website. It may self-identify as “weird,” but WC has slowly, almost accidentally, become a very serious champion of the musical underdog and patron of open and accessible arts.