On a very crowded Queen streetcar today, a woman had a simple request for the man standing beside her: "Could you please get your ass out of my face?"

This sophisticate had positioned his upper body behind a vertical pole on the TTC car while leaving his feet in the aisle. This put his butt in a position that would have been ideal had the seated woman wanted to have given the equivalent of a lap dance with her face.

Strangely (or perhaps, to his mind, not strangely), he initially saw no problem with this state of affairs.

"You know what they say: There's the Better Way and there's your way," he said, sporting a moronic grin as he glanced around, looking for signs that others enjoyed his bon mot as much as he did.

However, the general, silent opprobrium vibe directed at him by those witnessing this exchange eventually penetrated his lead-lined cranium, and he retreated to a less offensive position.

From the Calgary Herald:

The hunt for an Alberta journalist, an Australian photographer, their Somalian fixer and driver kidnapped at gunpoint in Somalia has reached a sensitive and "crucial" stage, says a spokesman for Reporters Without Borders.

Seen first at International Observations, but reported in Pakistan's Dawn newspaper:

WANA, Aug 30: Four people, including two Canadians of Arab origin, were killed and two other people injured when a missile reportedly fired from Afghanistan hit a house in the Korzai area of South Waziristan on Saturday.

According to local people, a plane was seen flying over the area shortly before the missile hit the house of one Noor Khan Gangikhel near a scout camp in Wana at around 4.30pm.

The injured, who reportedly belong to Punjab, were taken to a local hospital.

AFP adds: A local intelligence official said the owner of the house had recently rented it out to some “foreigners”.

I wonder what these "Canadians" would have been doing in a hotbed of militancy like South Waziristan. Simple tourism, no doubt.

More background in this Long War Journal post.