Pox on paparazzi

Re: Josh Bezonsky's and Alastair Sutherland's (as usual) trite commentary on Princess Diana's death ["Belaboured day," Inappropriate Behaviour & "The Diana deathwatch," Media Circus, both Sept. 4]: To those men who hounded Diana to her death, this is my curse: May they burn in hell. May those who pressed their lenses through the windows of the car to get that one last shot as Diana lay in agony, a strong, proud, beautiful woman finally brought to her knees not by one shining asshole and his family but an entire pack of screaming undead men, may these empty carcasses passing themselves off as human beings suffer the worst pains of old age, the most torturous mental and physical anguish known. Insanity and testicular cancer would do. And may this torture continue long after they have passed over to the other side, that they may agonize a thousand years endlessly in eternity, as Diana did in the back seat of that armoured hunk of twisted metal. And while they agonize, may the flashes of a thousand cameras, in the hands of a thousand leering, salivating death junkies, imprint endlessly on their delirious brains.

Jan Murray

Boycott Habs

Here we go again with the Canadiens loser attitude--but this time we can do something about it. Our Montreal Canadiens hockey shirts used to be made in St-Hyacinthe until recently. To save a few bucks, they gave the contract to an American company with operations in Korea. Now the hockey shirts will be made out of the country.

How low can you go? I'll tell you how low: let the issue go unnoticed, keep on buying the overpriced tickets. Let's just pretend we can't do anything about it. They pay the players millions, we pay millions to see them, but forget it: let's get cheap labour from outside the country. This makes me sick.

I call for a boycott of the Montreal Canadiens. C'mon, let's stick together for our national pride and self-esteem. This should never have happened in the first place.

Patrick Cameron

Terry Haig sucks

When the Mirror got into sports reporting I was glad. I live an active lifestyle and I like to know what's going on. But as time went on I got more and more disappointed. I don't need another column on the pro teams in this city.

If you were fortunate enough to catch Terry's radio show not long ago, you would have noticed the concentration on local sport heroes. Stuff that's going on outside of the Big O or the Molson Centre. I thought that you would take that and build on it. Talk about the amateur sports that are happening around town. Talk about the best place to play pick-up ball or where the hottest spot is for roller-bladers to show their stuff.

This is the kind of material I thought would be covered by a community-based "alternative" newspaper. But I guess if it is not gay and/or putting the authorities down it is not alternative. So instead we have one more columnist who is telling us what the Alouettes should have done, and how great Joey Saputo is, and how we should support the Expos. Well, I can read that in every other paper in town. Too bad: a missed opportunity to create something positive and communal in this city.

Elan Nester

Take this job, please

I am so fed up with the blaring headlines about the unemployment rate. Quebec's unemployment rate is one of the highest in Canada. Well, I find it hard to believe, because I run a non-government-funded employment agency in the Montreal area. In any given week, about 20 new employers contact me looking to fill new jobs. The media tends to influence society into believing that there are no jobs in Montreal. In reality, the jobs exist but one must know where to look for them. Only about 15 per cent of all the jobs that exist in Quebec appear in newspapers. Often I have jobs that go unclaimed, so I pass them on to other agencies who charge the job-seeker and the employer.

The point of my letter is to motivate anyone who has been unmotivated by a rash of unemployed weeks or months. I am currently looking for a customer service representative. You can affect the unemployment rate by calling today.

Harris Black, President, Employment 2000

Survivor's Guide Corrections

In our Sept. 4 Survivor's Guide issue, we gave an inaccurate description of Nemo bookstore (3968 St-Laurent). Nemo does not sell periodicals and magazines, as the guide stated. It specializes in literary mainstream fiction, genre ("pulp") fiction, literature in translation, classics, children's books, comics (in book format only), dictionaries, erotica anthologies and local zines.

A listing for Prospero bookstore should not have appeared. Prospero has, in fact, closed.

The NDG Anti-Poverty Group is a welfare advocacy and networking group that also houses two stores: Charade (5673 Sherbrooke W., 487-0070) for recycled clothing and Frame (5754 Upper Lachine, 482-9679) for furniture. And the Salvation Army's furniture store is located at 6177 Sherbrooke W.