Not easy being green — and strung out
Clever Internet vids show you Kermit the Frog in the depths of depression and addiction
Anthony Augustine


Sad Kermit — www.sadkermit.com — If you thought Johnny Cash’s version of Hurt by Nine Inch Nails was dark and beautiful, then you have to see how a grief-stricken, drug-abusing Muppet would perform the song. Along with Hurt and Something I Can Never Have, also by NIN, a down-and-out Kermit runs through stark versions of Radiohead’s Creep and Elliot Smith’s Twilight. If you’re disturbed by images of Kermit laying in a pool of his own vomit or tying off as if he’s auditioning for Requiem for a Dream, you may not want to destroy your childhood memories. If you have no problem seeing the Sesame Street alumnus getting high and hitting rock bottom, check these brilliant clips before Jim Henson’s estate shuts the site down, pulls the tracks from MySpace and gets YouTube to delete the videos.

There and Back Again: The Soul of the Commuter—tinyurl.com/2moe2c — Most Winnipeg commuters have it pretty easy, but as cities around North America spread themselves out the average door-to-door commute is steadily increasing. In most cases, people aren’t using mass transit but rather driving to work alone and battling traffic the whole way, which only compounds the problem. Right now, roughly one in six workers in the United States has a commute greater than 45 minutes, and it’s increasingly common to spend over three hours a day driving to and from work. According to the U.S. Census Bureau, the number of extreme commuters (those who travel more than 90 minutes each way) is over 3.5 million people, nearly double what it was in 1990. Although the problem isn’t so acute in Canada, a number of cities are struggling to improve traffic flow to newer suburban communities and have begun to re-examine concerns about sprawl and urban density. Even in Winnipeg, debates about a high-speed transit corridor have been ongoing. Outside of North America, the problem can be much worse. Workers in Bangkok spend an average of two hours commuting (51 minutes in the U.S., less in Canada), and in Japan the average is over 90 minutes per day, even with state-of-the-art rapid transit moving people around cities. So before you start complaining about how the buses are never on time or why traffic on Pembina just seems to be getting busier every week, just think — it could be a lot worse. This recent New Yorker article by Nick Paumgarten offers a great look at the issue.

Anthony Augustine is a freelance music, technology and pop culture writer. He can be heard every Tuesday morning at 9:00am on Hot 103 discussing the web. Got a site you think he should see? E-mail him at anthony.alloneword@gmail.com.