The critical success of Brokeback Mountain has spawned a raft of Internet video parodies and some reasonably good-humoured late-night jokes. Here's the AP story on CTV.ca (with a link to one of the better parodies -- Brokeback to the Future).

This is a little film that offers some yucks to anyone who's familiar with the scene on Toronto's Queen West -- although the star should have really been wearing more black. :)

This NYT commentary talks about how the populations in many parts of rural Nebraska are lower than they were in 1920. People in the northern part of the Great Plains (hello Saskatchewan, Manitoba!) might well find some stuff in here that will resonate with them.

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This NYT story look at how Iran's religious and national identities are practically inseparable, and links that reality to the current conflicts over the Muhammad cartoons and the nuclear issue.

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Jyllands-Posten, the paper at the heart of the Muhammad cartoons storm, refused to print some satirical Jesus cartoons offered to them three years ago.

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Most of the papers in Europe that reprinted the Muhammad cartoons were right-leaning, and now a right-leaning Israeli paper -- the Jerusalem Post -- has gotten into the game. However, the images are miniaturized.

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According to a story on The Globe and Mail's front page this morning, text messages sent from Europe to the Middle East  on Saturday claimed that right-wing Danish nationalists were planning to burn copies of the Koran.

Needless to say, there were no Korans burned.

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This commentary from the Guardian's Kim Fletcher about whether many British papers self-censored by not publishing the highly controversial cartoons about the Muslim prophet Muhammad.

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There are some interesting perspectives in here.

Five dead in Afghanistan is one "highlight." There have also been protests in India, Thailand, Iran, Gaza and Somalia.

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The Danish embassy in Beirut has been attacked and burned.

In this commentary published in Saturday's Guardian, Philip Hensher and Gary Younge try to make sense of the rights collision produced by the cartoons. Hensher argues the Yes side, while Younge argues for No.

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In a Saturday editorial, The Globe and Mail had a distinctly unsympathetic take to some of the Islamic world's reaction to the Danish cartoons:

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The Sunday Star's Haroon Siddiqui tries to put the cartoon situation into both a contemporary and historical context.

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Some excerpts of a column by Simon Jenkins, writing in the Sunday Times of London:

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This is part of an Independent on Sunday story that could be one of the better ones yet on how this whole controversy erupted.

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This NYT piece argues that the Danish cartoon imbroglio is but one front in a war between Europe's anti-immigration right and the fundamentalist Muslims in Europe's immigrant community.

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Seen at the bottom of an AP story on CNN about the controversial cartoons about Muhammad:

CNN has chosen to not show the cartoons out of respect for Islam.

Saturday saw the embassies of Denmark and Norway get ransacked and burned in Damascus, Syria. The French embassy came close to the same fate.

In Jordan, two newspaper editors were arrested.

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Seen on The Globe and Mail's op-ed page today: Margaret Wente will return.

Check it out.

If you can't remember what the old globeandmail.com looked like, here's a snapshot from archives.org of how the home page looked on Nov. 1, 2004.

If you're looking for a reasonably clever, engaging and visceral police thriller --and can either speak French or cope with subtitles -- consider renting 36 quai des Orfevres.

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My pal Deb Jones pointed to this over at Canadian Journalist: A short commentary by Ibn Warraq on Der Speigel's website on why the West must defend the Danish cartoonists' actions in tackling the subject of Muhammad.

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The U.S. military is drawing up plans for a long, long war on terror.

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Saw this at Dot-Dot-Dot: The Beeb is running a two-hour show on Sunday that looks back at Coventry's 2-Tone ska label. And you can vote online for your favourite song of 10 they put forward.

That means we're talking tunes by the Specials, the Selecter, the Beat -- but for some reason unbeknownst to me, Madness's fantastic One Step Beyond isn't on the list. Nor did I see Lip Up Fatty, by Bad Manners.

This has me rejecting the validity of the entire exercise.

Globe and Mail columnist Russell Smith analyzes how the story of a confrontation between a litterbug and a hardcore anti-litterer in Kensington Market turned into news.

I offer some counter-thoughts.

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Take a listen to Through My Eyes, by The Creation.

I've been a lazy blogger in the past 24 hours, but if you've been a lazy news consumer, you might not know that Dubya says his country has an an oil addiction to deal with.

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The decision of a Danish newspaper to print cartoons about Muhammad, the prophet of the Islamic faith, has turned into an international diplomatic incident.

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Not to me, to the streetcar driver.

I got on the College Street car going to the Y this evening.

A cellphone with a latin-sounding ringtone (maybe a basic merengue, but I don't know my latin music) goes off. And off. And off ...

The phone is picked up by the operator. "Talk to me," he says wearily.

"No. I'm on the road ... You can pick it up at the station at Bloor and Bayview ... No, in about three or four days."

As I approach my stop, I ask the driver what's what.

"Somebody find a cellphone. They give it to me," he explains. "Now this guy is phoning me all the time and telling me I have 'stolen property'. He's harassing me," he said, before adding, "he's a faah-khing idiot."

I tried to suggest that maybe this would be a good thing to joke about if he went for an after-shift beer with his fellow drivers, but the grim look on his face suggested he found nothing amusing in the situation.

A brief play-by-play on the Iran nuclear file.

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A catch-up post: The Razzies' nominations were released Monday. Here's the worst picture nominees: Son of the Mask; Deuce Bigalow: European Gigolo; Dirty Love; The Dukes of Hazzard; and House of Wax.

I'm proud to announce I didn't spend one thin dime on those pieces of sheit.

However, I did see War of the Worlds, which earned Tom Cruise a worst actor nomination.

Here's the AP story on CTV.ca.

The Oscars were released Tuesday. Waa-hoo.