Echoland

The Last Rapbashing Article you will ever need

2004-03-09T20:29:00.000-08:00

Ever feel like having every singlecliched criticism of current rap in one long, long article? I got a link for you. This article's got more dull conventional wisdom than Time magazine. There's a great punchline at the end, too.

What's old is not new again

2004-03-09T20:25:00.000-08:00

In a review of a book about 1968, the reviewer argues that 1968 has made a comeback:
It's hard to open a newspaper without seeing a photo of John Kerry in Vietnam (he arrived there Nov. 17, 1968). The recent release of George W. Bush's medical records revealed that the future president had a hemorrhoid in 1968 (no wonder he hated the '60s). Even the Beatles are back: The 1968 White Album has been mixed with Jay-Z's Black Album (2003) to produce Danger Mouse's completely illegal Grey Album, and on Feb. 24, "Grey Tuesday," there was a remarkable Internet protest against attempts to suppress it. There's something happening here (what it is ain't exactly clear).
Because nothing defines the current zeitgeist like Dubya's hemorrhoids. I think you could use this standard to argue that every year in history is currently making a comeback.

So gay, gay constitutional amendments wanna fuck with me

2004-03-08T21:34:00.000-08:00

Also in the blog VaYikrah, Evan criticized my post about the anti-gay marriage constitutional amendment (though he liked my slogan!). He argues:
The problem is that courts in the US do not decide the definition of marriage on judgements (or scientific fact) of behaviour v. biology. The much more likely criteria are freedom of expression, privacy concerning personal family relationships and, in the case of polygamy, freedom of religion. I wholeheartedly support gay marriage. However it is foolhardy to argue that there is no link between the issue of gay marriage and polygamist marriage.
Fair enough; my post was meant as a common sense talking point against the slippery slope argument, rather than as a legal case. However, I would like to make a quick point about US constitutional law, though it is a subject I know nothing about (and this differs from the rest of your posts, how exactly? ed. Shut up!). I would think that if the court can prove that gays is blacks, gay marriage could get by on some sort of equal protection argument, the type that allows interracial marriages. And I don't really care if polygamists get married, though I do think it is unlikely. But the point remains that there is no Polygamist Gene.
Evan goes on to worry about the homophobic backlash the gay marriages will create, and worries that it was pushed on the legislatures too soon. I worry about this too. This issue is so new that I can understand why older people dn't want laws passed about it. There were basically no openly gay people when my father was born. Yet when I see loving couples getting married, it's hard to begrudge them their happiness. Luckily I live in Soviet Canuckistan where everyone loves each other, so gay marriage could pass without armed revolt. But American courts should have waited for the bigots to die before legalizing gay marriage.

They be ridin my jock so close they catch crabs

2004-03-08T20:57:00.000-08:00

My man Jedd recently moved to Australia, and he wrote me today asking (nay, begging) for more posts. What I'm trying to say is, I actually do have readers! I'll fulfill his wish in a proplerly blog-whorish fashion, by linking to his great post about betting on crabs in Australian bars. The prize, unsurprisingly, is free grog.

The Problem With Hillel

2004-03-08T20:51:00.000-08:00

The Jewish advocacy club of my school has decided to attempt to lure Muslim UBC students away from their religion by sponsoring a talk by Irsahd Manji, who wrote abook called The Problem With Islam. Hopefully, this talk is the first in a series; next they'll bring in the writers of What's So Good About Buddhism, Anyways? and The A-to-Z guide of Zoroastrianism's Flaws. From what I gather of Manji's message, she attacks Islam as being anti-feminist, and critiques the human rights records of the Muslim regimes. She also favorably compares Israel's record on the treatment of women to the other Middle Eastern regimes. Fair enough; Israel does generally treat its female citizens better than the Arab countries do. The only exception is if the females happen to be Arab and born on the Eastern side of the Green Line, in which case Israel treats them like shit.
While I don't really care if Manji speaks, it is incredibly tacky for a Jewish student group to sponsor a talk bashing another religion. The Jewish Student group is just going around yelling "Our God's dick is bigger than your God's dick". If a Muslim Students' group brought in a speaker who wrote a book named The Problem With Judaism, Hillel would probably jail him for hate speech.
What makes this thing just stupid is that UBC has no real pro-Palestinian movement. Hillel is just being needlessly confrontational.

Constitutional Amendments Are Gay

2004-02-24T21:51:00.000-08:00

I really hope that becomes a slogan. I just wanted to comment on the slippery slope argument that goes "if they allow gays to marry, why don't they allow three or four people who love each other a lot to marry?" This argument is stupid, since people aren't born polygamous. Polygamy is a behavior, while homosexuality is a biological condition. Not giving people who happen to have been born gay equal rights is like not giving people who happen to have been born black equal rights.

Straight Outta Virginia

2004-02-09T01:08:00.000-08:00

Sasha Frere-Jones writes a long article about the fact that three producers from Virginia Beach produced every pop song of the last five years. It's a pretty authoritative account of Timbaland and the Neptunes' rise to world domination. Frere-Jones notes how many Grammy noms they got, saying "Tonight's Grammy Awards ceremony will, among other things, christen Virginia Beach as the birthplace of a certain sound, something like Detroit's claim to 60's pop-soul or Seattle's to 90's grunge." Though Timbaland and Missy were unfortunately robbed at the Grammies. He also recounts an anecdote about musical cross-pollination before the Neptunes blew up: ''It was 1999, and Missy and Tim were working on Missy's 'Da Real World.' Chad and Pharrell were working on Kelis, and they were doing 'Caught Out There.' ''
They especially liked the song's chorus, Coleman said. ''Tim and Missy could hear Kelis screaming, 'I hate you so much right now!' They had their ears right up to the door. They loved that song. Tim was like, 'That's crazy.' Then they went right back to work.''
Around page 6, he gets Timbaland and Pharell to fight, and their disses of each other are fairly entertaining. But not as entertaining as Timbaland's taste in music: asked him what he likes.

'' 'O Brother Where Art Thou?' he quickly answered. ''I was at the Trump in New York, and my assistant Mike was cutting my hair. I was watching 'O Brother.' I was laughing my butt off. And the song came on -- 'I am a man of constant sorrow . . . ' -- and I was like, 'This song is hot.' Next thing you know, I bought the CD and I would bump it in my car just the way it was. People would look at me like, This dude gotta be crazy. No, I wasn't, because this record gonna sell about 10 million. And what happened? It sold 10 million!'' (It sold 6.6 million, according to Nielsen SoundScan.)
''The best music right now is country music,'' he went on. ''The old country music, the old bluegrass stuff -- the lyrics in that stuff are incredible. And the damn melodies? Think about Bonnie Raitt. She's country, right? She made the illest song ever, 'I Can't Make You Love Me.' '' He sang me a line: ''Turn down the lights, turn down the bed/Turn down these voices inside my head.''
Timbaland also thinks Pat Benatar's ''Love Is a Battlefield'' is the ''illest song ever,'' and he adores old hits by Men at Work and the Human League. ''Eighties music is music to me,'' he said. ''Those are records that make you feel good, you know? I'm tired of stuff now, even stuff that I do. Coldplay and Radiohead are the illest groups to me. That's music. Norah Jones is music. I love real music that I can play and never get tired of. The stuff I don't get tired of is the stuff that's musical.''
Between this and Jay-Z showing love to Coldplay, I think hip-hop is dead. Long live hip-hop. Bubba Sparxxx's Timbaland produced album actually sounds like the O Brother soundtrack mixed with hip-hop, and the Deliverance video is a bizarre take-off on the film. Who had the brilliant idea to make a rap video based on a three-year old arthouse film, anyways?You'd think a song named Deliverance would have a video based on the more popular movie Deliverance, and how many people like Bubba Sparxxx and the Coen Brothers anyways (outside of me and Timbaland, that is)? Timbaland plays the pseudo-Robert Johnson guy in the video, and while he is a genius, he really really cannot play guitar. Anyways, read the whole thing.

The Syphilis Wall

2004-02-06T18:09:00.000-08:00

I came out of my hiatus to note a great Tom Maguire post and New York article about Dan Shufetan's rational case from the Israeli POV for fucking over the settlers. Because the settlements are impossible to defend, and because Israel is losing the demographic race, giving the West Bank back makes a lot of sense for Israeli security. Just because Yasser Arafat wants Israel to do something doesn't necessarily mean it's not in Israel's best interests to do it. I've made the disengagement argument to Israeli partisans, with a surprising amount of success. Assuming the PA won't negotiate, putting up a wall, giving the Palestinians a state, and letting the settlers live under PA rule if they insist on staying is really the only sane solution. I should note that Schufetan makes some moronic statements in the "Arabs/Palestinians all want X" format, which I don't condone. Even so, his ideas are a breath of rationality and common sense in an area where far too many on both sides talk absolute bullshit. And since this is Echoland, I should quote Shufetan's vaguely offensive joke/analogy about the argument:
“Someone asked me how it will be possible to remove the settlements,” he says. “So I told him the story of a man who went to the doctor with a very serious venereal disease. And the doctor told him the whole instrument would have to be removed.”
Unwilling to accept this fate, Schueftan says, the man was determined to look in every corner of the world until he found a doctor who would give him a different opinion. Finally, he found a doctor in Asia who told him he didn’t need to cut off his penis. “Just leave it alone,” the doctor said. “It will fall off by itself.”
“This is what will happen to the settlements,” says Schueftan. “They will fall off by themselves. Once the fence is built, everything on the other side is doomed.”
The settlers are the syphilis-ridden penis of Israel. I love it!

My Prediction: Starland Vocal Band

2004-02-06T17:04:00.000-08:00

Seattle Weekly music section gets drunk and discusses the Grammies:
Bonazelli: R. Kelly has to win something, right?
Cassidy: Why does he have to?
Matos: He pretty much owned radio this year. If it wasn’t 50 Cent or Jay-Z, it was R. Kelly. And the thing is, it’s a great record. It’s easily the best album of that list. But he isn’t gonna win. He’s an accused child molester.
Bonazelli: Did you hear about Mystikal getting arrested?
Cassidy: For child molestation?
Matos: No, he didn’t molest children, he just sexually assaulted his hairdresser and videotaped it, because he’s really smart, and a really smart person does things like that.

The Sweet Smell of Success

2004-01-24T03:40:00.000-08:00

SPAN, the totally genius left-wing slate running for UBC student council, just swept the fucking board. I'm pretty ferklempt about the whole thing, since my crew was running. But it's a beautiful thing. Now we shall see them divide into SPAN classic and SPAN lite, as the decision whether or not to sell out is the inevitable crux all left-wing parties face.

But seriously

2004-01-20T19:55:00.000-08:00

We invaded Iraq in order to subdue the Libyan menace?

State of the Union Drinking Game

2004-01-20T19:39:00.000-08:00

Drink continously as George Bush speaks. Fall into stupor. Wake up in 2008, when George Bush is no longer president.

We have always been at war with Oceania

2004-01-15T22:03:00.000-08:00

I happned to come across the homepage of my high school the other day. There's a picture of my graduating class on there, though you'll notice a blacked out silhouette kneeling in the front. That silhouette is me. Why has my school written me out of its history books? They must have found about this blog. No school would take credit for giving birth to this monstrosity.
On the other hand, there are some sexy pictures of my roommate in the photo gallery.

Back by popular demand

2004-01-15T01:55:00.000-08:00

And ready to whine about the long slow decline of the National Post. Get this: some guy named Gerry Nichols believes that CBC asked its satirical (and sadly unfunny) news show This Hour Has 22 Minutes to make Mary Walsh (also unfunny) charge Harper and kiss him, in order to undermine his bid for PM. They did this since they know Paul Martin will continue high funding for the CBC, while Harper will destroy their network. After all, the show didn't send a hitman to knee Paul Martin in the groin when he became PM (or somesuch).
Some points:
1) Steven Harper will never ever be PM of this country. So it really doesn't matter how badly people treat him. He had no chance before he announced his run.
2) The show in question, being an alleged comedy show, does not actually represent the opinion of CBC. It is under no obligation to avoid political bias.
3) Paul Martin isn't funny (a trait he shares with a certain show). Dying is easy, comedy is hard, and Paul Martin-based comedy is damn near impossible.
4) Somewhere in that badly written, horribly argued column, Nichols should have mentioned Doris Day. During the last Federal Election, the show responded to Stockwell Day's plan for citizen referendums by starting a petition to change Stockwell's first name to Doris. They got more than enough signatures to put the question to a public referendum. This stunt did undermine the Day campaign (which was doing a fine job of undermining itself at the time) and exposed Day to ridicule, though it did nicely expose an inherent problem with citizen referendums; namely, that people are silly.

I also read a high-on-rhetoric, short-on-facts column by Peter Foster (not online, sorry) about why Paul Martin's seemingly positive meeting with Bush actually proved that Martin was working for Stalin. Apparently Paul Martin presented Canada's approach to the economy as generally beneficial, and recommended it to other countries. This controversial move somehow knotted Foster's panties.
One line in particular caught my eye: Mr. Martin also managed to embarrass, if not downright insult, the US president by switching into French during a joint press conference. Yeah, why should French speaking Canadians get any answers from their PM? Maybe if they stopped making cheese and starting learning English...Really, I understand Bush isn't too bright. But being threatened by people that speak another language is just insecure. Besides, as president, he must be exposed to the language of international diplomacy sometimes. Maybe if Bush ever tried international diplomacy, he wouldn't be so embarrassed.
Just because Bush and France disagree on some major issues does not mean that the French language should be banned in Bush's presence. I feel that I shouldn't have to be explaining this to anyone. Guess Paul Martin should have spoken Freedom. Everyone loves Freedom.

I do remember a time when the Post wasn't mind-bendingly retarded. Maybe they should get Conrad Black back. Or not. In a couple of weeks, the National Post will make its online content inaccessible to non-suscribers. I previously thought there was a financial reason for this decision, but I now realize the Post is trying to protect its moronic columns from the wrath of bloggers.

Why I Rock

2003-12-30T22:35:00.000-08:00

I got a royal flush during last night's Texas Hold'em game. I still somehow lost that tournament, but I really do rock.

Queen James?

2003-12-30T07:39:00.000-08:00

So this just might lead to Carole James as Premier and (why not?) Bernard Lord as PM. Recent polls have shown the Liberals hanging on to a precarious lead because of a split BC left: The poll, taken a week after James' win last month, indicates the NDP is up six points to 37-per-cent support among decided voters. That's the highest level of support for the NDP in more than seven years. The Liberals have slipped 4 points to 41 per cent. And 60 per cent of survey respondents disapprove of Premier Gordon Campbell's performance.
Another 14% plan to vote Green, meaning over half of the province is pretty far left before Crackgate. It's no wonder; this administration has been terrible for an already weak BC economy. David Schreck's vital review of Gordo's 2003 (obviously published too soon) explains:
For starters, despite promises to revitalize the B.C.economy, B.C.'s real per capita economic growth is dead last, and the number of unemployed is at record highs. The economic miracle that was supposed to be part of the "New Era" is nowhere in sight. Campbell speaks of over 100,000 jobs being created but the hard fact is that since the 2001 election employment has increased by 78.1 thousand (on a seasonally adjusted basis), or an average of just less than 1.6 percent per year compared to an average of 2.1 percent per year over the previous 10 years.
Also, the BC deficit is at a record high, there were many closings of hospitals and schools, big increases in user fees, and an extended raping of BC's large (and powerful!) unions took place. Gordo had something to piss off everyone last year. People who disapprove of drunk-driving probably aren't going to vote for him. Now, the sizable 'anti-cocaine dealing' interest group may be turned off as well. Michael Smyth recognizes:
Make no mistake: Dave Basi was one of the most important, well-connected and ambitious staffers in the legislature. The raid on his office and seizure of his personal files is a devastating blow to the Campbell government (not to mention the federal Liberal Party, where he was also an important power player in B.C.)
One thing Gordo can hope for is that Green voters are actually impressed by people that deal weed, and therefore vote Liberal. But it seems improbable.
He is lucky to have another powerful BC force on board. I'll talk more about them after I get some much needed sleep.

Updates: OK, no Lord for PM. He's not running. Just when the Neo-Conservative Party looked like it had a chance in hell...
Another problem this scandal creates for the BC libs (it's actually pretty unlikely it will become a problem for the feds) is that it destroys the Liberals clean-cut image. The NDP were sleazy because they hung around with Greek mobsters and people who stole from charities. No matter how bad the Liberal's performance was, they had the NDP beat on character issues. Only in BC would a guy who had fifteen drinks before attempting to drive home, then caught and forced to spend a night in a Hawaiian jail can be said to be relatively good on character issues, but that's what happens when he's the fifth consecutive premier to face criminal charges in office. Besides, driving drunk is just a bad personal decision. Hiring top aides with ties to organized crime and coke dealing demonstrates some true corruption problems. If the Liberals are both as corrupt and incompetent as the NDP were, they just might meet the same fate the NDP did.

Never Get High On Your Own Supply

2003-12-30T06:59:00.000-08:00

Wowie. So, I was just playing poker for 11 hours straight, winning the epic final tournament. My emotions are completely drained. My friends probably hate me. And I come home to this. Members of my government hire coke dealers:
The RCMP raided two ministerial offices in the B.C. Legislature as a result of information gathered during a 20-month investigation into massive drug deals involving an exchange of B.C. marijuana for U.S. cocaine, police say.
You would think the information that the now fired aides are involved in buying cocaine would be noted in a very similar CanWest story (It's the Globe's lead). Hey, you'd think the word 'Cocaine' would be mentioned in the Asper version. You'd be wrong on both counts. That story has some pretty charming details, I must admit. The solicitor-general put a positive spin on the situation: Coleman said he didn't think the raid would damage his consistent message about getting tough on crime.
"I think the opposite," he said. "It clearly tells the people of this province that we will not allow any area of our government or our province to be compromised by organized crime."
Notwithstanding the offices of the goddamn legislature, of course. You can hire drug-dealing mobsters as top aides, then fire them once the police have a warrant investigating them, and still claim you are being tough on crime?
One of the two aides is a brother-in-law of a cop recently suspended for corruption: Victoria police chief Paul Battershill confirmed the drug investigation is connected to the suspension with pay on Dec. 15 of Victoria police Constable Ravinder Dosanjh.
Battershill said there is an "indirect relationship" between the suspended officer and either Virk or Basi. The drug probe is targeting a suspected influential Victoria trafficker related to Dosanjh. The alleged trafficker is also a relative of a Vancouver resident who has worked on provincial and federal Liberal campaigns and was involved in Martin's B.C. campaign.
The deputy premier's husband's office was also searched. The two targeted aides also worked for Paul Martin's BC campaigns. Liberal MPs have some very nice things to say about Bob Virk: Bob is a great asset not just to the B.C. Liberal caucus but to the community of Victoria."
The end of this article is classic:
In June 1993, Liberal Jeremy Dalton thanked Basi and another man for working as interns with the Liberal caucus. "The [NDP] cabinet will be happy to know that all the embarrassing questions that have been thrown at them over the months have been provided by those two gentlemen, and I can assure you, Honourable Speaker, there will be more today," Dalton said.
Oh, there will be questions. Count on it.

Hell's Lexicographers

2003-12-30T00:33:00.000-08:00

I always thought the name of my blog was invented by James Joyce in Finnegan's Wake (via the epigraph of David Lodge's excellent Small World), and its old subtitle reflected that. I was surprised to find out that it was first used (based on google searches) by Ambrose Bierce:

Bierce's journalism was a scandal in its time, just as it would be a scandal in ours. "This is Echoland, home of the ditto maniac," he wrote--100 years before the advent of Rush Limbaugh. In avoiding what his audience wanted to hear echoed, Bierce devoted himself to roasting in print the fools, hypocrites and monied pigs of his age.
There have been rumblings of late that the press ought to be more polite, that it has overstepped its bounds since Watergate. Do daily newspapers really need to get duller? Bierce's specter is a reminder of the other side of journalism--a tradition of public-minded mean-spiritedness that is as dangerous as it is endangered.

Ambrose Bierce is an old favorite of mine, as he wrote the great Devil's Dictionary (completely accessible through this wonderful site), history's most caustic reference work. Some apropos samplers:
CALLOUS, adj. Gifted with great fortitude to bear the evils afflicting another.
CONSERVATIVE, n. A statesman who is enamored of existing evils, as distinguished from the Liberal, who wishes to replace them with others.

Search the site. Read it. love it.

Gordon Campbell is Selling Crack!

2003-12-29T18:30:00.000-08:00

I sometimes wish BC had its own Drudge, that would pass around shocking unsubstantiated rumors. If we did, we may have found out about this scandal sooner. BC Liberal aides are being investigated by the RCMP for some shadowy crime relating to selling drugs, organized crime, and police corruption. The aides have been suspended from the government. While the details of this story are murky at this point, I should quickly make three points:
a) Arrest the Premier! (Oh wait, they already did.) It would in no way surprise me if Gordon Campbell actually is selling crack.
b) Gordo is in Hawaii at the moment, marking the second year in a row of responding to scandals from Hawaii. If it's so hard for BC Liberals to avoid engaging in criminal activity, the least he could go to vacation somewhere else. It's bad luck for him.
c) The preliminary Liberal spin is that the Ministers knew nothing about criminal activities being conducted by their aides. If your observational powers don't tell you when your own aides are involved in a drug ring, perhaps governing the province is similarly beyond your ability. Resign immediately, please.

The Real Real Slim Shady, or Sexism Sells

2003-12-29T16:41:00.000-08:00

Vancouver gay activists are mad about teenage gaybashers getting a light sentence for killing Aaron Webster:
"We want those charges raised to second-degree murder," he said. "I think we have to directly approach the attorney-general's department, have them sit down and read this ruling, and then tell us why there are two forms of justice, one for gay men and one for the rest of the world."

I agree it's a ridiculously light sentence. But I think the problem is with the manslaughter laws, not latent attorney-general homophobia. If the gaybashers were claiming that they were just trying to beat him up without actually intending to kill him, they can claim is it was only manslaughter (the "when we were beating his head with baseball bats, we had no idea his skull would cave in!" defense). The media is not allowed to print the name of the sentenced teenager, but the TV media decided to videotape him leaving the court. Beofre he covered up his face, I caught a glimpse of the moronic fuck. And I was creeped out by how much he looked like Eminem. He was dressed in the blue jeans, the white t-shirt, and had the bleached blonde hairdo. He looked like someone going to a Halloween party dressed like Eminem, or like the Eminem imitators in numerous Eminem videos. I've always been a kneejerk defender of all artists' right to say whatever they want to. And yet seeing a dumb kid who went out searching for a gay man to beat dressed as a famously homophobic rapper makes me think. Of course, the kid is culpable, not the rapper. You can't blame Paul McCartney for inspiring Manson to kill with Blackbird. I definitely don't agree with Bill O'Reilly or the Maoists a few posts down. But the argument for censorship of art is that some art will have a bad effect on society. Is the joy millions get from Eminem's music (if that's the right emotion; I suspect not) worth the life of Aaron Webster? I guess I think it actually is, on utilitarian grounds. Yet I doubt I could justify that feeling to Webster's family. I have retreated to a stance of vague white liberal confusion, as always.

Speaking of, Evelyn MacDonell (via Ulmann) raises some interesting questions about hip-hop sexism without really answering any of them. She notes how numb we've become to hip-hop sexism. I've noticed this as well; I was surprised that no-one made a fuss over the incredibly offensive Obie Trice video where he slaps a fat woman (maybe if Martha Burk wasn't so busy not playing golf, whe could return to the important battles. Like Obie Trice videos!) McDonnell honestly explores her reaction to sexist hip-hop. However, I'd like to quibble with this paragraph:
Hip-hop is not inherently sexist. In fact, some of its brightest stars -- Outkast, Missy Elliott, Atmosphere, Mos Def -- infuse their music with love of women. Nor are rappers more likely to objectify and demean women than rockers, teen-pop stars, or Frank Sinatra.
Good point about the Chairman et al (two words: Mick Jagger). Yet judging from her examples, hip-hop actually is inherently sexist. I mean, Outkast has a song titled "We Luv Deez Hoes". And which Atmosphere line is she referring to? This one?
The first time I met the devil was at a motel 6
She left hell to spend her weekends on earth just for kicks
Sexy little bitch, shorter then expected
Or this one?
If only they knew how real this life really gets
They would stop acting like a silly bitch
They would respect the cock whether or not they believed in it
Is there really that much of a significant difference between "Fuck You Lucy" and Eminem's "Kim" which McDonnell decries? And this may have escaped McDonnell, but Missy Elliot (incidentally, her new video has a wonderful visual retort to Obie Trice, I think) happens to be a woman. So we're left with (the Mighty) Mos Def as the only good man in hip-hop. Great.

My other problem with her essay is that it uses the copout device of ending with a string of rhetorical questions. I.e:
What does it mean when Kelis, a woman who became famous for her uncontrollable colored afros and burning-bed anthems, poses like a typical Herb Alpert sexpot on her second album?
Y'know, I hear there's a positive correlation between sex and sales.

I agree that hip-hop misogyny is generally problematic. Yet I think one of the reasons I love hip-hop is its offensiveness, and my often woozy response to it. It's interesting and challenging to hear people expressing their feelings towards the opposite sex, even the extremely negative and unPC ones. Besides, if there was no sexism in hip-hop, we'd have to listen to Northern State all day. Noone wants that.

Ain't Nothing Like the Real Thing

2003-12-29T04:41:00.000-08:00

Forget what you heard; this intrepid surfer has so come to the right place. God bless him.

Public Enemy No. 2

2003-12-27T22:54:00.000-08:00

Sure, Libya's dictator Moammar "spelling variations" Khadafi may have been convinced by Saddam's capture to give up his country's WMDs. Queensbridge's Tragedy "Arrest the President" Khadafi still has some important questions about Saddam's capture. And who's to say his feelings aren't just as important as the Colonel's?

The Homecoming

2003-12-27T16:14:00.000-08:00

Someone in my referral logs has certainly come to the right place. If I could name two women in the movie, I'd start writing fan fiction. Just for him.

It's a Scrooged Life

2003-12-27T16:12:00.000-08:00

Back from Jesus' birthday party and I've never felt better. During the festivities, I had a thought about the two arguably most popular Christmas narratives, It's a Wonderful Life and A Christmas Carol. Isn't one just the mirror image of the other? Both movies are about men undergoing a crisis during Christmas, then being shown by supernatural beings the net effects of a lifetime of moral decisions. The alternate reality without George Bailey demonstrates the effect his goodness had, while seeing the possible future if Scrooge continues in his selfish ways shows the effect of Scrooge's selfishness. These stories show a side of Christmas that is all about moral reckoning, not just presents. Of course, both protagonists are fairly two-dimensional; one is always altruistic, the other one always selfish. Interestingly, both stories have a character that's just like the protagonist of the other one. Tiny Tim's dad is a hardworking everyman, while Mr. Potter is almost exactly like Scrooge. Lionel Barrymore, the actor that played Mr. Potter, also played Scrooge on annual Christmas broadcasts of Christmas Carol.

Another random thought about It's a Wonderful Life: It features someone trying to kill himself on Christmas, long before the popualr factoid that the suicide rate is highest during Christmas. (According to Snopes, this factoid is untrue. Don't kill yourself, kids.) Maybe the film is the reason that people believe in Christmas suicides?

Incidentally, I am aware my Christmas post came after Christmas. Echoland has its traditions too.

A Jew on Christmas

2003-12-24T13:51:00.000-08:00

Despit the promises below, I will now take an official hiatus (as opposed to the usual unofficial hiatuses) so I can journey to Vancouver's suburbs and Christmas it up with my girl's family. In the meantime, read Kevin Drum's thoughts on the Ghosts of Neocons Past. Back soon.

Look at the funny little French man

2003-12-19T02:02:00.000-08:00

Sege Gainsbourg photo album. Just because.

When Maoists Review

2003-12-18T18:31:00.000-08:00

I have now recovered from both my final exams and my post-exam wild coke-fuelled bender, and am now going to begin posting again.
As an English major, one is exposed to an inordinate amount of moronic intrepretations of texts. Jane Austen's novels are actually about Cuban economic conditions, these interpreters claim. Gatsby was black. Books set in Bombay in the 90s are actually about the US response to 9/11 (I think that one might be one of mine, actually). Frankenstein is actually about lesbians, since the text never explicitly mentions lesbians (I've really read this article).
As nice as it is to be free from all this, the internet, in its vast depths, may contain interpretations just as silly as any found in the ivory tower. You may have thought that Lord of the Rings was a pleasant and entertaining film. You, my gentle ignorant reader, were wrong. If you enjoyed Lord of the Rings, you should also purchase a copy of Mein Kampf, since Tolkien is (objectively) pro-genocide:
This genetic determinism drives the plot in the most brutal manner. White men are good, "dark" men are bad, orcs are worst of all. While 10,000 orcs are massacred with a kind of Dungeons and Dragons version of biological warfare, the wild men left standing at the end of the battle are packed off back to their homes with nothing more than slapped wrists...Perhaps I'd better come right out and say it. The Lord of the Rings is racist. It is soaked in the logic that race determines behaviour. Orcs are bred to be bad, they have no choice. The evil wizard Saruman even tells us that they are screwed-up elves. Elves made bad by a kind of devilish genetic modification programme. They deserve no mercy.
This screed was written by one John Yatt, a pinko. Like all pinkos, he gets his marching orders from Howard Zinn and Noam Chomsky (they get theirs from Saddam, of course). McSweeney's obtained a copy of their DVD commentary on the Fellowhip of the Ring, which was sadly unused (what Liberal Hollywood, indeed). The phrase 'Read the Whole Thing' is thrown around all too lightly these days. But Read The Whole Thing. You will not understand the hidden conservative agenda of Lord of the Rings without it. It makes Yatt look, well, like a fairly sane human being.
Of course those pundits eager to massacre brown people in far-off countries also came up with an interpretation of Tolkien's classic. This may surprise you, but their interpretation is stupid. Pandagon has the details.

Of course, popular fantasy films are not the only products of popular culture Marxists turn their massive intellects to. Via Slate's Year in Music , I discovered the Maoist International Movement's music review section. The Beyonce review makes some interesting points:
We give Beyonce credit for this song "Yes," even as it is really about "No." Too many pseudo-feminists would make excuses for not showing the boyfriend the door, saying she was too afraid. Then the question becomes "afraid of what?" Afraid of emotional rejection, afraid of what she might reveal about herself or afraid of him physically? (And of course when we ask how many wimmin are not afraid of men if they ask themselves that, we will find that most wimmin are not in a position of physical superiority, so this question leads in an obvious direction and raises the question of why wimmin are going out with men they are afraid of.)...
On the other hand, we are not going to mislead readers and say the music is all that important; even though this is the album with the country's number one hit at the moment. Beyonce is about the "beautiful people." It's about doing a Google search and the top 10 links for Beyonce being mostly her corporate websites but also four websites with her gallery of pictures and links to further nude galleries. The one article one might find in the first ten is merely the industry report on her single being at the top of the charts. There's nothing serious in terms of reviews. So it is that corporations and pornography have squeezed out what music should be about. Penthouse is going out of business, but porn has more than made up for it by taking over more industries.
I don't think Maoists should be allowed to use google. But these reviews are incredibly witty. Lester Bangs never wrote one-liners like this:
On 50 Cent: If the title of 50 Cent's latest album, "Get Rich or Die Tryin'," doubles as his mission statement, it would be in the interest of social progress if he reached the latter fate.
On the Dixie Chicks: For those who do not know, "Dixie" is a word referring to the southern region of the U$A. The U.S. Civil War was about Dixie's attempt to form its own country apart from the U$A. A "chick" is a light-hearted but offensive reference to a young adult female.
On Tatu: In spite of Tatu's positive portrayal of lesbian relationships, it is another example of music promoting the "bourgeois romance culture" that MIM has previously criticized.(3) Read all of this one. They start arguing that any skepticism about Tatu really being lesbians is an example of conservative media bolstering reactionary agendas.
On Eminem: All of it should be banned and Eminem should be one of the first people put into re-education camp.

If you're anything like me, you're probably wondering how to write reviews for this publication. "How to write a MIM movie, music or book review: MIM's approach to the superstructure" is the article for you. At the bottom of this long article, there some specific guidelines:
2. Reviewers should criticize all reactionary aspects of a cultural work, but they should indicate whether or not the work is progressive overall, again so the party can promote the progressive and reject the backwards...

4. The party has yet to approve a specific percentage of films and music that it believes should be banned. This will be a task of a future party congress. Judging from reviews done so far, I would guesstimate it appears that MIM would ban 95% of existing performing arts culture. To prepare for such a party congress decision, all people can undertake the same exercise. The next time in the video store, make a judgement what portion of movies can be banned with no one missing them or with society being improved. We invite public input. Send a message to mim3@mim.org on your opinion of what percentage of movies or songs should be banned in their current form.

5. Don't forget to include concrete details like year produced, title, length in time, movie G-PG-R-X rating etc. in your individual reviews.

95% sounds about right to me. To bring this post full circle, here's their Lord of the Rings review (next to a link to Amazon saying Buy It!, remarkably. I guess it's for a good cause). It's actually fairly thoughtful, and makes better points than Yatt does. Still, For MIM, "Lord of the Rings" is just a contribution to the stability of capitalism..
Maoists are adorable.

Update: While Maoists are cute, their movie reviews are not as pithy as the pope's.

Update: Now this is an interpretation of LOTR that I can accept. Watch Bush: Lord of the Right Wing. Then recall the president. The world would appreciate it.

Now More than Ever

2003-12-15T01:49:00.000-08:00

Neal Pollack, April 9:
With Iraq free from oppression for the first time in more than 20 years, with the television finally full of images of hope after six months of government fearmongering, with the extraordinary possibility of building a peaceful world order in front of us despite months of hideously botched diplomacy, my first natural instinct as a writer is to attack my imagined ideological enemies. I could hatchet them subtly, in a witty, carefully-composed essay. There's also the option of lashing at them through my chosen medium of the shrill, exaggerated blogpost smear job. Or, I could just enjoy the moment and not really care that people disagreed with me during one of the most contentious periods in recent human history. I think the latter will be my choice, because I'm not a man to hold grudges against the invisible.
Radley Balko, today:
I find it curious that the most prominent reaction on the pro-war Internet is to find the most asinine, foolish anti-war reactions and post and quote them as if they're the reaction of the majority of people who opposed this war. Andrew Sullivan is hosting a contest for the most "mealy-mouthed" responses from the anti-war camp. Others are mining those eternal springs of pacifist eloquence -- Democratic Underground and IndyMedia -- for particularly galling and disturbing responses. I wonder, is this the first thing that popped into the pro-war camp's mind upon seeing the images of Saddam's capture? Not, "thank God that damned butcher is gone," but, "this'll show those damned anti-war people." It's almost as if some people believe we're in Iraq not to defend the security of the United States, but to piss off the BBC, Michael Moore and Howard Dean.

Good Auden poem in another agitator post, incidentally. I'm studying for my 20th century American History exam at the moment, and one thing we learned about was McCarthyism. My (fairly conservative Russian immigrant) prof noted that McCarthy's attacks had little to do with the actual threat Soviet countries presented. Rather, McCarthy expended his energy attacking domestic political enemies; the Democrats, academia, Hollywood, the press. Today's right has the same targets, and is not ashamed of using some of the same tactics; namely, claiming fellow citizens that happen to have different political beliefs and policy prescriptions than one's own are in the thrall of brutal overseas dictators. The GOP claims in an ad that some people are attcking the president for attacking terrorists, as if the Democrats actually supported terrorism. Of course, few are being censored or losing their job because of these smears. But it's still an ugly, ugly tactic.

Update: The best biography of Saddam I ever read was published by the lovable Canadian warmongers at Vice magazine, written by an Iraqi immigrant teenage girl, who hates Saddam yet ends with a plea not to bomb Iraq. It begins with this note on how Saddam got his name:
After nine months of belting herself in the stomach almost daily, this unfortunate tramp gave birth to Saddam Hussein Al-Tikriti. She showed her disdain for the incident by combining the words "great misfortune"(sad-mah) and "confrontation" (isti-dam) to make the word "Saddam" (a name nobody had ever heard before). Back then you would incorporate your village into your name, too, but Saddam comes from Al-Awja, which translates as "crooked town." That means his actual name is "The crooked troublemaker, son of Hussein." As soon as Saddam got into power, he abolished the village rule, leaving him with simply "The troublemaker, son of Hussein" .
Um, read the whole thing.

Holy shit

2003-12-14T04:54:00.000-08:00

Good work, everyone.

The Sultan of Swingers

2003-12-09T05:20:00.000-08:00

Vancouver has appointed a "Sultan of Fun," in charge of turning 'No Fun City' into 'Funcouver'. Or something like that. Sultans know how to have fun, because they're always off cavorting with their harems. That's what I read, anyways. My actual purpose in linking to this story is to mock the physical appearance of Duncan Low, our new Sultan. Anyone who can tell me which Simpsons character he most resembles (hint: 'yes?') wins a big fat echoland prize.

With friends like these

2003-12-07T19:50:00.000-08:00

Julie Burchill sings a paean to the wonderfulness of Jews in The Guardian, while denouncing the Guardian, people who disagree with Israel, and Islamists. But she does it with style:
I can't help noticing that, over the years, a disproportionate number of attractive, kind, clever people are drawn to Jews; those who express hostility to them, however, from Hitler to Hamza, are often as not repulsive freaks.
Think of famous anti-Zionist windbags - Redgrave, Highsmith, Galloway - and what dreary, dysfunctional, po-faced vanity confronts us. When we consider famous Jew-lovers, on the other hand - Marilyn, Ava, Liz, Felicity Kendal, me - what a sumptuous banquet of radiant humanity we look upon!
To return the favor, I have a lot of love in my heart for Julie Burchill, since she wrote The Boy Looked At Johnny. It may not be the best book about punk rock ever written, but it's definitely the most punk rock book about punk rock ever. It also taught me how to write prose (notice all my ad hominem personal attacks? Those didn't come out of nowhere). I may one day blog about books that affected my worldview and prose, and Burchill's book would be included.
She may indeed have a point about the world's rising anti-Semitism. The UN recently rejected a resolution calling for the protection of Israeli kids from terrorism. This resolution has some personal significance for me, since I used to be an Israeli child. It's good to know that the UN believes that I had no right to live because I was born in a certain country. I'll remeber that.
And yet...(more to come on this, really. But I'm so busy with exams. Not to give away the ending, but the update just might completely contradict the post so far. Tricky, eh?)
Update: Fuck it. No updates. Jews are no longer cool. I no longer have any interest in the topic.

Spencer me, baby

2003-12-06T19:46:00.000-08:00

So Dan Savage wants to confer immortality on a Canadian homophobe, just as he did on Rick "more of a dogperson" Santorum. But the suggestions that his readers sent in for the title of Great Canadian Homophobe aren't too exciting. Ralph Klein? Harper? Conrad Black? Black's wife supports gay marraige, for Christ's sake. The sad thing is, his column must have gone to print right before the great Canadian bigot eruption of 2003, the infamous Larry Spencer interview. Spencer believes that a gay conspiracy has taken over our churches, playgrounds, and entertainment industry. I know I find the thought of gay bishops and actors powerfully shocking. Spencer's idiocy makes Harper and the rest of the nominees look like Svend Robinson. So please write canadiansantorum@savagelove.net and campaign to make Spencer the one and only Canadian Santorum. We need to suggest a sex act he can be associated with, of course. I was thinking that in honor of his paranoid conversion theories, 'Spencering' could be when a gay guy has sex with a formerly straight guy. It could be something as gross as santorum itself, of course. If you have any better ideas, send them in, to me or to Savage. But we can't let some old hag like Elsie Wayne walk away with the title. Vote early and vote often.

And now let's gloat about Spencer being the Canadian Santorum for a second. For suggesting that homosexuality should be criminalized, Spencer was kicked out of his extremely right-wing party within hours (by Steven Harper, natch), since such a homophobic view is such a big political liability. The real Santorum suggested homosexuality should not be legalized in Texas, and he got to keep his leadership job in the Senate. He's probably one of the most 20 powerful politicians in America. What I'm trying to say is, Canada rocks hard. America, not so much.

Do the readers of this site know everything?

2003-12-06T19:26:00.000-08:00

Um, no. Far from it.
His readers' taste in music is as bad as their taste in politics...
(Referring to the Buckethead post, of course).

Amish paradise

2003-12-04T22:31:00.000-08:00

Keeping with the old echoland tradition of posting about holidays way after they happened, here's Jay Smooth's thoughts on Buy Nothing Day, Kalle Lasn, and Adbusters:
It is based entirely on reacting to the mainstream, and that means you'll never be able to destroy or replace the mainstream, because you have made yourself a slave to it. The most you'll ever be is an activist version of Weird Al Yankovic, a moon that reflects the pop-culture sun but produces no light of its own.
Heh. Indeed. The wheatqueen likes the Buy Nothing Day though, and is somewhat offended by Steal Something Day, an attempt to parody the parodists. Someone needs to make a magazin-long parody of Adbusters.

Always look on the bright side of post-war Iraq.

2003-11-27T18:09:00.000-08:00

SOME DAYS, when the after party in Iraq isn't going so well--which is to say, most days--I'm put in mind of the Bush administration's admonition to be sunny-side-up journalists, to eliminate the negative, to accentuate the positive. God knows I try.

I take stock in small victories, often overlooked. Like there was the time military engineers in Fallujah cleared a field of garbage, covered it with fresh soil, then erected goal posts to make a soccer field. Sure, the next day the goal posts had been stolen, and the dirt scraped from the field. "What kind of people loot dirt?" one frustrated Army captain asked the Washington Post. But you've got to crawl before you walk.
Best. Article. Ever. In The Weekly Standard, for some reason. Read it.

Caveats

2003-11-27T18:03:00.000-08:00

Shorter Pete McMartin: Most of my readers endorse police brutality.
On the other hand, this Sun column is pretty good.

Well, that's the end of that party

2003-11-27T17:46:00.000-08:00

The Canadian Alliance has reached a new level of dumbness. Dumber than the time they said Nelson Mandela was a terrorist? Dumber than Stockwell claiming dinosaurs and humans lived together? Dumber than complaints about the Asian Invasion and an "Asiatic" Immigration Minister? Why, yes.

Larry Spencer says homosexuality should never have been legalized, that its acceptance was caused by a gay conspiracy, and that homosexuality is a choice. If he isn't kicked out of the Conservative Party, Paul Martin will win the next election by running against him.

Excerpt: So, could Svend Robinson make himself straight?

"I believe he could. I believe he would struggle with it. You know, the human body is a magnificent creature, it's a magnificent machine. Our human bodies can be trained to appreciate . . . and really enjoy something that would be just miserable to me, i.e. long distance runners. Our bodies can be trained to, as I say, enjoy certain sensations."

A magnificent machine, eh? He sounds like Robert Mapplethorpe. He's been temporarily suspended from Alliance caucus. Still, this has caused serious damage to the united right. Good work.

Undead NDP Cannibalize Rotting Corpses

2003-11-25T01:11:00.000-08:00

So the NDP has a new leader. The Province, in its infinite wisdom, is saying that it's now time for the NDP to restore, revive, and revamp, whatever the fuck that means. Here: That is, restore the fallen party's credibility, revive the allegiance of fallen-away members as well as court new ones and revamp the party's obsolete policies of yesteryear.
Actually, if you look at the numbers, the only thing they need to do is destroy the Green Party. They have 30% support, and the Greens have 15%. If they could cannibalize all those votes, they would have a not-so-bad chance of beating Gordo. If someone still supports the NDP after Clark and Harcourt, they're not going to be alienated by any amount of wacky leftiness. Carole James could start chanting "Vive Castro!" at the end of every speech and it would only alienate those who already vote for the Liberals. The obsolete policies of yesteryear (is this word only used by editorials?) are just as good as any other. It might be good for BC to have a nice cenrist party to run things. It might heal the wounds of Campbell and Clark hatred. But it does not make electoral sense for the NDP to move right and become that party.
They are still probably screwed for this election. But all the laws will be different next election. Proportional representation will probably be in place, and a Red-Green coalition will win. Just 6 more long years till 2009...

Great Moments in hip-hop journalism

2003-11-24T15:25:00.000-08:00

Though the two grew up in southeast Queens and idolized the same hustlers from the neighborhood, Ja Rule and 50 Cent’s beef—whose origin is nearly as complex as the Israeli-Palestinian conflict—didn’t begin until the the late nineties.
Ahem.

The wrong place

2003-11-22T19:21:00.000-08:00

I am very sick, and I have many essays to write. Nothing good can come of this, I'm afraid. But in the absence of fresh blogging material, let's find out what my sitemeter has told me about people who read this blog. Blogger is owned by Google, I believe, which means that blogs come up disproportionately early on google searches. I wonder what the point of this is. I'm the first result for 'Altalena Rabin', but my Ben Shapiro mockery does not provide the searcher with any valuable historical information. Then there's this empassioned plea. And this is just seriously disturbing. People of the internet, you frighten me.

More Confessions than St. Augustine

2003-11-19T22:54:00.000-08:00

Jay-Z admits a lot of things in this New York Times article, by the one and only Toure. He "admits that he pushed what had been minor disagreement with Nas into a full-blown dispute because he was bored." He says he's so close with his mom that he's "like her husband." He admits that he thinks "hip-hop is corny now." He's publishing a book (The Black Book) with another early 90s rap journalist with eccentric nomenclature , dream hampton. And by the end of the article he's undermining his own retirement: "like Jordan said, `I've got to leave myself a window,' " he said. "If people take it back to when we were making hot albums and I'm just totally inspired and I'm like, I want in, then that could happen. But I don't foresee it." As long as his comeback is nothing like Jordan's, I guess that's alright. But then, check out his idea of a retirement: "There'll be no more full-length Jay-Z albums. I might do a soundtrack in a year or two. Maybe a collaboration. But only after a year. I want to let it alone for at least a year."
A year without making music is a retirement? Jay-Z, meet Trent Reznor. In other hip-hop controversies, I think Jay Smooth has a pretty classic scoop. Mocking of Benzino is involved. Advantage: blogosphere (over the Source, I guess).

Does the new pope shit in the woods?

2003-11-19T20:43:00.000-08:00

We'll find out when current pope and Led Zeppelin bassist John Paul finally gets to join that Christ guy he's always going on about. Then there'll be a whole new pope. And if there's one thing those cardinal electors who are choosing the new pope love to do, it's gamble. Bet on the next pope with them, at paddypower.com (Ireland's largest bookmaking site!). The Jewish one is at 20-1, the Cuban looks like a winner, but the smart money's on Argentinian candidate Jorge Mario Bergoglio. I choose my popes like I choose my BC NDP candidates; funny names get the Shmuel vote. If I ever run for anything, the funny name voters would be the only segment of society that would definitely vote for me. So I should repay the favor in advance. Via this amusing Slate article on the candidates.

Position Statement

2003-11-19T01:28:00.000-08:00

So I did a test that would tell my political position. I am such a pinko. But pragmatic about it. Anyways, if you want to find out what I think on a large number of random issues, go here. If you want to find out what you think about a large number of random issues, go here. Have fun.

Hunter S. Thompson: Is He Getting Weird?

2003-11-19T01:07:00.000-08:00

Raoul Duke is back, and he's writing a football column for ESPN: The world of Sports is not a world of its own. To think of nothing in life except the weekly outcomes of high-dollar football games is wrong and impossible for any American person, except a Moron or a Waterhead, or maybe even the President of the United States on some days.

That is the Cruelty of these morbid times we live in. Professional football is not the only pillar of Faith that is crumbling all around us, as we stumble nervously into this new and merciless century. Even our world-famous Military power is visibly failing us. If we get chased out of Iraq with our tail between our legs, that will be the fifth consecutive Third-world country with no hint of a Navy or an Air Force to have whipped us in the past 40 years.

If the U.S. had a national Football team with a record like that, we would have fired the Coach a long time ago. Nobody can lose all the time and still stay in power. Even Adolf Hitler was forced to kill himself after personally destroying the proud nation of Germany and turning it into a helpless Nazi whorehouse.
There's also stuff about a woman who calls him about her breasts.

Update: He sounds like Robert Swenson, Systems Analyst: "It makes sense for Bush to pull out. If his own father had exercised the judgment to pull out, the U.S. wouldn't have been there in the first place."

Donald Takes Charge

2003-11-18T23:00:00.000-08:00

Rumsfeld named editor of New York Times Book Review: Inscrutability and a tendency toward information of no discernible value helps him fit in at beginning. But his tenure ends in disaster when he is overheard wondering to an assistant "if these bestseller lists here give out too much information."

But if you can't blog, you ain't no friend of mine

2003-11-18T22:36:00.000-08:00

Let's all wish a warm bloggy welcome to inextremis, who has been so inspired by my eloquent blogging prose and abnormally large penis that he has decided to start a blog of his own, by the name of this pale life. He promises posts that are "temporally erratic, marginally coherent, and generally a waste of time". We can't wait! He gets the party started (blogging party, that is;) with an endorsement for Howard Dean! That inextremis sure is a Deaniac! But he does have a strange definition of the word 'communist'; he seems to think that mainstream American union members are secretly plotting for a coup by Joseph Stalin's reeking corpse! That inextremis sure is silly. I hope he doesn't go crazy, though. Everyone else that saw my blog and decided to start their own have been driven completely insane! Especially Hugh. I think we're gonna stage an intervention for him. Hell, even my friends that started blogging before me are a little kooky! But don't worry, inextremis; you're already teetering on the edge of madness as it is!

In other news, I got a sitemeter. Now we can find out just how few people pay any attention to these deranged rantings of mine! Yay!

The BC legislature wants the truth?

2003-11-18T20:49:00.000-08:00

If it does, I don't think we can give it the truth. After all, it certainly has not proven itself capable of handling the truth. The current NDP leader was booted out of the legislature for calling Gordo a liar. You see, during the election, Gordo promised not to sell BC Rail. Now, he's selling BC rail. Macphail:
"It was just too much for us inside the legislature to take with Mr. Campbell lying about B.C. Rail," said MacPhail in a halting and emotional voice.
"I had to challenge him. I had to say, 'Well, if today is the truth and you're selling B.C. Rail, then you must have been lying during the election when you said you weren't going to sell B.C. Rail,'" she said.
"It's something that a four-year-old can understand and a 40-year-old in Prince George can understand," said MacPhail. "I merely wanted Mr. Campbell to finally admit that the truth that he was spouting in the legislature today makes him a liar during the last election."

Hey, she's not calling people in Prince George stupid. She just thinks their tummies will ache if they keep eating all those crayons. Gordo's response is classic: "The truth is we are not going to sell the rail bed, we are not going to sell the tracks of B.C. rail," he said. You see, BC will get to keep the tracks that the trains run on. It's like selling an airline, then claiming you're not selling it becasue you're not selling the air that surrounds the planes. Though I have no doubt Gordo is searching for a way to sell BC air to someone, somehow.
Well, at least MacPhail did not stab Gordo in the face with a pen.

The Conservative Party of Canada

2003-11-18T20:25:00.000-08:00

Must have the same acronym as the Communist party of Canada. Also, their leadership race is becoming more and more pathetic. Race from the leadership, indeed. A choice between Stephen "Al Gore without the charisma" Harper and Peter "I will never merge with the Canadian Alliance" MacKay does not a Martin-beating party make. They should just throw in the towel about that whole right-wing party thing and choose David Orchard for their leader.

Of course, I shouldn't mock, being a BC NDP fan. Our choice is between Carole "Shmuel knows little about her" James and Leonard "Shmuel may not know much about him, but he has a funny name, so Shmuel is supporting him" Krog. And some other guys. Why doesn't the well-informed (and erudite!) Shmuel know anything about the NDP candidates? Because the Gordo-lovers won't cover them:
The six candidates have spent the last months criss-crossing the province in a series of debates. But although the party has been in power for 10 of the last 12 years, the race to replace outgoing leader and longtime cabinet minister Joy MacPhail attracted no big names and even less attention.
B-b-but, CanWest is the only daily media we Vancouverites get. Isn't it up to the media how much to cover the race for the leader of BC's second biggest party? And if they aren't covering it, shouldn't they be fired?
Anyways, the NDP should just give it up and elect Jenny Kwan. Because she's, um, hot. If she became President, we could call her Baberaham Lincoln.

The Rules According to TMFTML

2003-11-18T19:22:00.000-08:00

For the ladies. And click on the link in the post. Y'know, just so you know it's a parody...
UPDATE: While readng the article, try to remember that the President says "Marriage is a sacred institution between a man and a woman."

Interview with a man that uses the phrase 'bodily exudates'

2003-11-18T19:17:00.000-08:00

Me: With "Stuart Little 2" you complain that there is repeated talk of being eaten and then becoming "poop." My question is, isn't this funny? Just a little?

Tom: No. It is just an example of Hollywood's fascination with bodily exudates.

Me: You give a yellow light to "It's a Wonderful Life," citing that scene where an embarrassed Donna Reed is hiding naked behind a hydrangea bush. You call it "a sexually suggestive episode of unseen indecent exposure." My question is, what is "unseen indecent exposure"? Aren't we all guilty of unseen indecent exposure when we are naked under our clothes? Aren't you guilty of that now, at this very moment?

Tom:

Me:

Via theagitator.

The Dead

2003-11-16T05:03:00.000-08:00
To wash the bad taste of that nasty anti-Rabin article out of our mouths, here's a poem for Rabin's yartzheit (I didn't note that Shapiro had the chutzpah to publish his bullshit around the time of the anniversary of Rabin's assasination):

Untitled

To my granddaughters who visited the Holocaust Museum
on the day of the burial of Yitzak Rabin, November 6th 1995.

Now you know the worst
we humans have to know
about ourselves, and I am sorry,

for I know you will be afraid.
To those of our bodies given
without pity to be burned, I know

there is no answer
but loving one another
even our enemies, and this is hard.

But remember:
when a man of war becomes a man of peace,
he gives a light, divine

though it is also human.
When a man of peace is killed
by a man of war, he gives a light.

You do not have to walk in darkness.
If you have the courage for love,
you may walk in light. It will be

the light of those who have suffered
for peace. It will be
your light.

-- Wendell Berry
This is a sort of a belated Remembrance Day poem as well, in response to this Poison Kitchen post. And while we're on the subject, let's post another memorial poem, to commemorate this weekend's awful tragedies:

The Explosion

On the day of the explosion
Shadows pointed towards the pithead:
In the sun the slagheap slept

Down the lane came men in pitboots
Coughing oath-edged talk and pipe-smoke,
Shouldering off the freshened silence.

One chased after rabbits; lost them;
Came back with a nest of lark's eggs;
Showed them; lodged them in the grasses.

So they passed in beards and moleskins,
Fathers, brothers, nicknames, laughter,
Through the tall gates standing open.

At noon, there came a tremor; cows
Stopped chewing for a second; sun,
Scarfed as in a heat-haze, dimmed.

The dead go on before us, they
Are sitting in God's house in comfort,
We shall see them face to face -

Plain as lettering in the chapels
It was said, and for a second
Wives saw men of the explosion

Larger than in life they managed -
Gold as on a coin, or walking
Somehow from the sun towards them,

One showing the eggs unbroken.

-- Philip Larkin

It was written about a mining accident, and yet I feel it applies to all explosions. There's a phrase in each of those poems that makes me choke up.

What I'm trying to say is, Yigal Amir should have been smothered at birth.

Our Dumb Economy

2003-11-15T17:20:00.000-08:00
So, the BC economy sucks. It sucks in terms of growth, unemployment, and we have a record deficit. Supply side policies, are, yet again, a miserable failure. Cutting taxes for the rich and firing government workers does not actually create jobs or revenue:
Start with the basic facts: B.C.'s real gross domestic product growth for 2003 is now predicted by BMO Financial Group to be just 1.2 percent, the worst provincial performance in the country for the third year running. And B.C.'s 1.2 percent is worse than economic powerhouses like Newfoundland at 4.7 percent, Manitoba at 2.3 percent, or even New Brunswick at 1.7 percent.
Two full years after the B.C. Liberals made massive tax cuts intended to stimulate economic activity, GDP growth actually dropped by a third over the past year, from 1.8 percent in 2002 to the estimated 1.2 percent in 2003.
So what does pathetic GDP growth really mean? You can see the results of an underperforming economy in B.C.'s unemployment rate. In September 2003 it was 9.1 percent, a more than two-percent increase since the B.C. Liberals won the election in May 2001, when it was 6.8 percent, according to Statistics Canada. (An October 2003 unemployment survey showed a drop to 7.8, a dip that was questioned by a wide range of observers, from the B.C. Chamber of Commerce to credit-union economists.)
That translates into a joblessness disaster. B.C. now has more than 200,000 people unemployed for the first time in the province's history. That's an increase of over 50,000 people since May 2001, with the ranks of those without work jumping from 143,800 in May 2001 to 200,900 in September 2003.
Bam. And, I'd like to add the biggest deficit in BC history. So why isn't this awful economy front-page news? Shouldn't Vancouver papers be screaming and yelling about Gordo's destruction of our economy?
Because reporting news that portrays Gordo negatively isn't the CanWest way. Ian King describes the insanely partisan coverage of economic news:
There’s also how the papers have treated the news. The apparent good news from last month’s job stats hit the front page. On the other hand, the Royal Bank forecast B.C.’s economy to trail the rest of the country for 2003. That one got buried in a two inch high brief in the business section. The Province spun a similar prognostication from those NDP sympathizers at the Bank of Montreal by playing up prospects for growth in the next two year. While doing that, they played down the fact that the B.C. economy continues to suck wind despite the supposedly anti-business NDP being long gone—after all, that wouldn’t jibe with the B.C. Liberal party line, which is the most important line of all.
The tragedy is, as King notes, that most people need the media to make sense of the economy for them. Even if all of this news can be spun as bad residue from those Pinko NDP folks, it still should be on the front page. Of course, that's probably too much to expect from a media that reprints BC Liberal press releases verbatim, as King details in his kickass column.

The Intelligence of the American Public: Underestimated, at Long Last?

2003-11-13T22:18:00.000-08:00
Tips for watching television. Really.
Excerpts: Many viewers forget they're in control, no matter what executives are dictating the schedules. The challenge becomes to watch with a plan, to make the programming and technology work for you. Here are 25 suggestions:
1. Take the TV schedule and chart your viewing. You wouldn't wander into a movie theater without knowing what you're going to see.
2. Talk about television. Don't let the programs just wash over you. Compare notes with family and friends. Look to the Internet, where programs are debated.
3. Never forget that television is a business. The small screen exploits the nostalgia that viewers feel for everything from "The Brady Bunch" to Walter Cronkite. But seeing the medium in clear-eyed terms can save you a lot of heartache when your low-rated favorite goes on hiatus...
10. Click judiciously. There's no denying that roaming through the menu can be fun. It's easier to bounce through comedies than dramas or HBO series. But if you wander too much, the viewing can turn fruitless.
13. Find a few drama series to enjoy. You'll have success because it's a golden era for hour series.
21. Don't judge TV news by the same yardstick you use for entertainment. Look for the programs that treat the news sensibly and seriously, without teasing endlessly, resorting to happy talk or promoting their networks.
22. Stand by your favorites. Tell your friends about the good shows and write letters to the networks if a good one is in jeopardy.
23. If a show repeatedly disappoints you, move on. But be willing to return if a series stages a miraculous recovery. The happiest surprise this season is "Frasier," which producers Christopher Lloyd and Joe Keenan have made hilarious all over again.
24. Don't be a sucker for promotion. It can be skillfully done. More often, it can be cheap, misleading and hyperbolic.
25. Watch television less, and you'll appreciate it more. With television, the ironies never end.

Are there people out there that are finding the act of watching TV too mentally taxing?
Link via TMFTML.

So True

2003-11-13T21:53:00.000-08:00

Dorothy Parker writes you, you wonderfully urbane,
witty boozehound, you.

Which Author's Fiction are You?
brought to you by Quizilla

Especially the boozehound stuff.

Ben Shapiro hates Dead People

2003-11-10T20:35:00.000-08:00
Shapiro defames Yitzchak Rabin, in great detail. Rabin's assassination was "tragic not just because Rabin suffered an untimely death but because Rabin became sacrosanct." He was not a great general, he negtiated with terrorists, he "bears responsibility for many of the most fouled-up military operations in Israeli history." I believe that whole 'invading Lebanon for twenty years' thing wins Israel's current prize in the 'fucked up military operations department'. Shapiro does notice a time when Rabin tried to kill terrorists, but for some reason it upsets him even more:
One of Rabin's proudest military moments came on June 22, 1948. Menachem Begin's Irgun, another Israeli military group, was in the midst of negotiating a pact with David Ben-Gurion under which Irgun would join the new Israeli Defense Force. Meanwhile, the Irgun had loaded a ship, the Altalena, with weapons and Jewish fighters (many of them Holocaust survivors) to join the IDF. Ben-Gurion ordered that the Altalena be fired upon. Rabin carried out his orders to the letter. Later, Rabin bragged how he had "bumped them off on the deck of the burning ship and while they were trying to swim to safety." Sixteen Jews were killed, many shot while swimming to shore. So much for the "great general."

First off, I believe the polite term for Irgun is 'terrorists'. When you blow up the people that occupy your country, you are a terrorist. The Palestinians got the idea from Begin. This incident is always brought up by the Right to show the different between Israelis and Arafat; Arafat wouldn't attack the terrorists on his side, while Ben-Gurion and Rabin were not willing to condone extremism in service of their cause. It's interesting that Shapiro won't criticise Israel's founder for his decision to fire, he just picks on Rabin. Shapiro also gets mad about Israelis shutting down right-wing radio stations. He does not mention that the radio station in question was a pirate radio station, and its director was convicted for lying under oath. Here's Shapiro's moronic conclusion:
Yitzhak Rabin did not deserve to be murdered. He simply deserved to lose the public trust. He deserved to live out his life in obscurity rather than dying a martyr for a detestable cause.
Ben Shapiro, on the other hand, does not deserve to have sex with a human woman. Thank the lord, he never will.

Hat tip: Roger Ailes.

UPDATE: Wesley Clark agrees with me: In June of that year, a ship named the Altalena dropped anchor off the coast of Tel Aviv. The vessel was loaded with weapons, ammunition and volunteers for a paramilitary movement. David Ben-Gurion, the head of Israel's new government, knew the just-declared cease-fire in the War of Independence would be wrecked if the Altalena was allowed to off-load. They had no choice but to order their defense forces to sink the ship. It fell to a young colonel to carry out those orders. That officer was Yitzhak Rabin.
By scuttling the Altalena, Rabin took a giant step toward statehood for the Jewish people.
The rest of the piece is bland pro-Israel mush (fence good, Palestinian state good, terrorism bad). Though i'm sure it would be a much better policy than the current President's. The ending is a little confusing, however: But when I was helping negotiate the Dayton Peace Accords, I learned that when the U.S. government really throws its weight behind a peace process, impossible things become possible.
But the US did throw its weight behind Israel peace, and it didn't work. Bush's hands-off policy was even worse, of course. But you would think Clark would have remembered Camp David, and acknowledged it in some way.

Gordon Campbell kills babies, Ezra Levant likes babies

2003-11-10T19:43:00.000-08:00
Infant Mortality Rate Spikes since Campbell Elected Shocker: The mortality rate rose from 3.7 deaths for every 1,000 live births in 2000 to 4 deaths in 2001 and 4.4 deaths in 2002.
Coincidence? Well, probably: The study found "there is no indication of a change in the pattern of mortality or morbidity and increases in the infant mortality rates in 2001 and 2002 were the result of random fluctuations in relatively rare events." Even if this spike is random, there's no need for Health Planning Minister Sindi Hawkins to say the report was 'good news'. I mean, think of the children.
Meanwhile, apparently the NDP's recent victory in Saskatchewan was caused by too many of those damn Native babies. According to Ezra Levant: Conservatives, especially conservatives of a Christian variety, should always welcome more children. Hey, us Jewish liberals think children are great too. Especially in our matzah. Anyways, Levant likes most children, but he is willing to make an exception for Aboriginal children, because they sentenced his province to "four more years of socialist rule". White people, on the other hand, are great at voting for people. Saskatchewan should get more of them.

Confessions of a Sellout?

2003-11-07T18:17:00.000-08:00
New Jay-Z lyrics, in a song titled Moment of Clarity:

"...i dumb down for my audience
double my dollars
they criticize me for it
yet they all yell holla
if skill sold truth be told
I'd probably be lyrically Talib Kweli
Truthfully I want to rhyme like Common Sense..."

Is admitting you dumbed down your lyrics to sell the new admitting you rip off black music? I've long suspected he could rap 'smarter'. But what's funny about this is that it's sort of a backhanded shoutout; he's saying Common and Talib are great rappers, but they lack his millions, and therefore he's the smarter rapper.

My Sputtering and Angry Response

2003-11-07T17:59:00.000-08:00
So Liberal BC MLA's find so little opposition in the legislature and in the media, they have to go looking for it. They are now visiting protests where they are denounced. An excerpt from the coverage:

Joe Foy of the Western Canadian Wilderness Committee told Penner that British Columbia has become "an environmental pariah because of your government."
When Foy said B.C. is down to the last handful of spotted owls in Penner's Chilliwack area, Penner called him a liar.
Penner said there is no evidence of spotted owls in the area Foy was referring to and further, that the forest Foy was referring to is actually second-growth.
That prompted a sputtering, angry response from Foy.

Look, I don't know much about journalism. But isn't quoting a response generally preferable to describing it? Or would that conflict with the story CanWest is trying to tell?

The Simpsons Steals from Canadian Bloggers!

2003-11-05T01:42:00.000-08:00
Really, they stole jokes from RevMod. He should sue. He should also spice up his blog a little. I suggest publishing chess games.

Cry, my beloved country

2003-11-05T01:37:00.000-08:00
Congratulations to M. G. Vassanji, who has just won the prestigious Giller Prize for his novel The In-Between World of Viktor Lall. I placed my bet on Margaret Atwood, because the Gillers are just like the Best Actress Oscar; the hottest chick always wins. Vassanji's novel "is about the feeling of displacement of the Afro-Indian Vikram Lall, who lived in Kenya during the end of the colonial era...Lall starts out an idealistic young man, but his job in the civil service leads to corruption and, after a life embezzling funds from the government, he flees to Canada." Seems to me like every book in my CanLit class has the same 'fleeing to Canada' ending (see Pi, Life of). None of these books actually take place in Canada, which just goes to show that Canada is incredibly boring.

The most exciting thing about the Giller Prize is, of course, the televised ceremony. Here's the Globe and Mail's irony-free description:
Surrounded by a month-long buzz of hype and publicity, the Giller Prize is regarded as the most glamorous event in Canadian publishing - past guests have flown in from as far away as Victoria just to attend the gala, and those without tickets seek solace in other Giller parties, such as the Giller Light, a fundraiser for literacy organization Frontier College.
But this year's 10th anniversary celebration was even glitzier than ever. Canadian celebrities Paul Gross, Pamela Wallin, Graham Greene, Daniel Richler and Cynthia Dale were on hand to make to make presentations to all five author finalists. As the master of ceremonies, Mary Walsh kept the crowd of 500-plus authors, editors, agents, booksellers and assorted media laughing.

So I sez to my roommate: You missed the Giller Prize broadcast! For the best Canadian novel of the year!
Roommate (in derogatory tone): Where's that being broadcast? The internet?
Me: No, the CBC!
We are comic geniuses, we are. Only the CBC could spend an hour giving away a single prize, and expect people to watch. So, isn't saying the Giller is regarded as 'the most glamorous event in Canadian publishing' kind of like saying someone was the nicest guy in the SS? Ditto that 'glitzier than ever' line; the Globe, typically, is not saying much. The truly annoying line, however, is "past guests have flown in from as far away as Victoria". Flying from Victoria to Toronto is not a noteworthy accomplishment; many Canadians do it on a daily basis. And I realize this may be difficult for the Globe to understand, but there are novelists west of Ontario. It is within the realm of possibility that one could be nominated for a Giller, and be flown in. It is statements like these that made Stockwell and Preston household names.
My girlfriend thought Mary Walsh was Jann Arden. And her opening monologue did not, in fact, keep the assorted crowd laughing. There were more laughs at the Democratic Party debate*. And then there's the celebrities. Oh, the celebrities. They were, in general, the sort of people that could describe a book as 'luminous' without giggling. One is famous because he sprang from the loins with a great writer, another is famous because he shares a first and last name with a great writer, and the other three I never heard of. Though Graham Greene, to his credit, made a joke about viewers expecting the 'other one'. I know I was expecting the writer of 'Our Man in Havana' (to my discredit). The point of this post is, Canadian literature makes me irrationally angry.

* 3 best laughs of Democratic Debate:
1. Al Sharpton discussing how much he wants to party with John Kerry's wife.
2. John Kerry saying, apropos of nothing, that he eats everything he kills. You should remember,as Kerry reminded the audience ad nauseaum, that he served in Vietnam. And I believe cannibalism is frowned upon in the Geneva conventions.
3. The rap song about Dennis Kucinch. (Though Kucinch's use of the phrase 'the spirit rebellious' was close.

Once More, With Links

2003-11-05T00:20:00.000-08:00
For my slower readers: Confidential to YA and AS: Your "I hate you" act is so transparent. Just fuck already.

And Another Thing

2003-11-01T18:54:00.000-08:00
Why is it that all those writers that believe criticism of Sharon policies covers up anti-semitism would be appalled by the idea that their own criticism of Arab governments is anti-Arab?
Why can they understand the distinction between criticism of the government and racist feelings towards the people ruled by that government in one instance, but not the other?

Holocaust Now

2003-11-01T18:32:00.000-08:00
George Jonas writes one of the most offensive things I've read lately. It's a standard National Post rant about how racist those damn Arabs are. He does make some points I agree with, though:
Another kind of problem is that Canada's Prime Minister -- in whose country people have been prosecuted for expressing similar sentiments -- shook Dr. Mahathir's hand after his speech without a hint of censure. At first blush this seems puzzling. Mr. Chretien no doubt supports legislation in Canada that prosecutes people who make remarks like Dr. Mahathir's. In this he's different from me, for I don't think that people like the schoolteacher James Keegstra, the Holocaust-denier Ernst Zundel or the late journalist Doug Collins should be hauled before courts or human rights tribunals for their vapid and venomous sentiments. I'd just draw the line at shaking hands with them. Mr. Chretien's ethics seem to be more situational. Lock up one, shake hands with the other.

Sure. Hate speech laws bad. Shaking hands with idiots also bad. Though Jonas' favorite world leader did just say that China "works to secure the freedom of its own people." But then there's this:
Terrorists aren't the big problem. The big problem is that leading news organizations, from Reuters to the BBC, refuse to call them terrorists.
I think I know a few thousand dead people in New York that would disagree with him. Terrorism is actually the big problem here. Editorial policies that one dislikes are, in comparison, a minor annoyance. And then there's this:
The need to build a security fence between Israel and the West Bank isn't the big problem. The big problem is that Israel is condemned for it in the United Nations. An even bigger problem is Canada joining in the condemnation.
UN resolutions are not a big problem. Israel has cheerfully ignored more UN resolutions than Saddam ever had to (this reflects badly on the UN, not Israel, I should quickly note). The suicide bombing that creates the need for a fence is, in fact, a big problem. Another big problem is that the fence annexes Palestinian land, and separates Palestinian farmers from their crops. Fence built on the green line= No resolution. All this evidence is brought up to prove that Chretien and company suffer from pragmatic anti-semitism:
Pragmatic anti-Semitism can also be described as demographic realism. Muslim voters outnumber Jewish voters in Canada. Ditto for the world. As Dr. Mahathir helpfully pointed out, there are more than a billion Muslims and only a few million Jews.
So Canada isn't governed by a bunch of anti-Semites, only by a bunch of demographic realists. This isn't the big problem. The big problem is that demographic realism holds sway in most other countries as well. Only the English-speaking civilizations of the United States, Britain and Australia resist it -- or, to be precise, only George W. Bush's, Tony Blair's and John Howard's administrations do. Talk about a thin red line. Three men aren't much to stand between a death cult and the next holocaust. That, in the end, is the biggest problem.
Wow. Jonas is saying that if a Democrat is elected president (or a British Tory is elected PM), six million Jews will die.
He's also saying that in any country where there are more Muslims than Jews, millions of Jews will die. He acuses others of racism, but he has an utterly insane view of Canadian Arab goals. Besides how does he account for the fact that in all those countries where the leaders are 'soft on islamofascism' (Canada, France, etc.), there is actually no holcaust taking place? Is Chirac waiting for Howard Dean to get elected before he feels safe opening the gas chambers up for business?
Saying that if your ideological enemies are elected, millions of Jews will die, is about as nasty as political columns get. It's not quite as mean as what LBJ said about Goldwater, but it's close. And that, my friends, is the biggest problem with this article.

Weekend Update

2003-11-01T17:56:00.000-08:00
My reliance on the demon rum has (yet again) atrophied my blogging skills to the point of incompetence. I apologize to some major world figures (they know who they are), who would have undoubtedly chosen wiser courses if they had received my advice during the last two weeks. It's amazing that the world can run without my blog, when you think about it.
Confidential to YA and AS: Your "I hate you" act is so transparent. Just fuck already.

The Right has United

2003-10-17T02:15:00.000-07:00
And I'm voting for Paul Martin.
Actually, I don't think I'll go that far, as I live in a safe NDP riding. But I do wish the new party ill, and lots of it. I decided this would be a good time to post my Poli Sci essay below about why only having one successful party in Canada is not so bad. My essay argues against Proportional Representation, which I actually support. It's just fun to argue against your own convictions.
One thing I realized while writing the paper is that my preference for various electoral systems is completely amoral; I just support whatever system is likely to help the party I support. I support ProRep in BC, because that would mean the Left vote won't be split, but I'm against Israel's ProRep system, because it gives too much power to insane religious parties. I want a ward system in Vancouver, and I like the current federal system because it keeps the Canadian Alliance out. I'm even against the Electoral College because it helped Bush. I happen to think that everyone who has an opinion about electoral systems (an extremely small minority of the population) is as amoral as me, but I'm the only one honest enough to admit it.

In Defense of Elected Dictatorships

2003-10-17T02:12:00.000-07:00
Richard Johnston’s article “Canadian Elections at the Millennium,” starts with a stark declaration that “Electoral Democracy in Canada is sick” (4). It is sick, in Johnston’s review, because there is no competition to the Liberal’s one-party rule, which he sees as lasting for many years in the future. He believes the time has come for structural reform. The changes in the system “should promote circulation of parties through office” (emphasis his, 31). I want to argue that changing the electoral system because one party usually wins within it is an extreme reaction that unfairly penalizes successful parties.
The first assumption that Johnston makes is that there is something intrinsically valuable about having more than one party that can compete for office. Why is circulation of parties so important that Canada should change its electoral system to increase it? The argument is that parties benefit from competition, because they are forced to work harder at responding to voters’ needs. But is there a magic number of competitive parties that guarantees a strong electoral system? The US is basically divided into two equally strong political parties, and yet many Americans feel that neither party speaks to them. Maybe what they need is more choices. They could have a proportional representation system, like Israel, where I grew up. In Israel, anywhere from ten to twenty parties win congress seats. Power is held by large coalitions, which are often hijacked by small extremist parties that join the coalition in exchange for policy concessions. The Canadian tyranny of the plurality is surely preferable to the tyranny of the minority. A one-party system has its problems, but so do all other electoral systems. In every democracy, someone will complain about the results.
The other argument Johnston brings to bear against the Liberals’ one party rule is that they are one of the least popular majority governments in the history of Canada. They only got 38.5 percent of vote share in 1997, “a new majority-government low” (6). Only two minority-governments had lower votes. The majority of Canadians did not want the Liberals in office. Yet this idea that the liberals are unpopular ignores the evidence Johnston presents in Table 2 of his article. The two 1990s elections had the highest amount of significant parties in the history of Canada. In a five-party system, it would be very unlikely for any party to get a majority of the popular vote. Voters just have too many choices. 40 percent of the vote, in a system where 4 other parties each get at least 10 percent, is a very large amount. In the 2000 election the Liberals got more votes than the next two runner-ups combined.
Johnston writes that even though the Liberals holding power indefinitely is unhealthy, “we are unlikely to see riots in the streets” because the Liberals are the second choice of most voters (31). But if the Liberals weren’t, we still wouldn’t see riots; we would see a Liberal defeat. Acceptability to non–Liberal voters is an integral part of the Liberals’ electoral success. If the Liberals were the fifth choice of most non-Liberal voters, many of them would vote against the Liberals and for whoever could beat them. This phenomenon brought the Liberals into power in 1993, when many NDP voters abandoned their own party to defeat a hated PC government. The Liberals have been smart enough to avoid the fate of the Mulroney administration, as they have not done anything that has irritated enough voters that the voters would strategically against them. The Canadian electoral system may be boringly stable, but it is perfectly healthy. Perhaps political scientists would prefer a more ‘exciting’ system that would lead to elections that were more ‘fun’. But a plurality of Canadians like the dull system we have just fine.

Our Bored, Shrivelling Parents

2003-10-16T02:53:00.000-07:00
Over at Revolutionary Moderation (probably my fave Canadian blog), some kind things are said about me. But he does note that I am a little too focused on extreme political language. But extreme language is just so funny...
In my endless search for extreme political language, I picked up a copy of the New Federalist, Lyndon Larouche's wonderful publication. The slogan "One imported Austrian head of state was already too much" is emblazoned on the front cover. If there's a more confusing way to make the point that all Austrians are Nazis, I haven't read it. Larouche also hates Dean; his supporters go to Dean rallies with signs like "Howard Dean: The Democratic Wing of the Neo-Con Synarchist Intl. Vote Lyndon!" Hope Bush doesn't steal that line.
But the piece de resistance is an article titled "The Best Young Scientists in the World work with LaRouche", by one Nick Walsh, a member of the LaRouche Youth Movement.

Aren't you tired of waiting to die? Wallowing, wasting away here on Earth, until you run out of breath? That's how Baby Boomers now live.
And the youth generation today, will we imitate our bored, shrivelling parents, following in their stinky, pleasure-fouled path? Awake! A muscle-bound monkey-man, speaking English in the style of a professional wrestler, directed by a stable of financier criminals, threatens to become Governor of California. The President can't read, and his Minister of Vice Dick Cheney wants to murder human beings with nuclear weapons. There's no economy. There's no jobs. Rave dances and pot-parties spatter the social environment. People don't read. There's no technological progress, no discovery, no culture. Is this a result of the "I'm so free because I do whatever I want?" Baby Boomer counterculture?
Why don't we stop lying to ourselves and admit, this culture stinks. We need a rebirth of creative discovery in the social process, which makes us human- not animals, but human beings, much superior to any beast on the planet.
To me, this article proves the opposite. He goes on to discuss the Crab Nebula for some reason. What does 'spatter' mean? Where did Walsh learn to write, the T. Herman Zweibel Academy? Now that's some good language.

John Walters go home

2003-10-16T02:06:00.000-07:00
Why does the American Drug Czar hate us?
John Walters, director of the National Drug Control Policy Office, said Chretien was irresponsible when he said last week that he might try marijuana when he leaves office in February. Canadians "are concerned about the behaviour of their prime minister, joking that he is going to use marijuana in his retirement," Walters said to the Center for Strategic and International Studies in Washington. "They're ashamed." Canada is "the one place in the hemisphere where things are going the wrong (way) rapidly," Walters added.

Wrong way, eh? Funny, that's the direction 54% of Americans feel their country is going. We are not the deadweight in this particular hemisphere. (Though the assertion that we're the only bad place in the hemisphere is mind-boggling. A Bush man likes Cuba? Venezuela? Lula? How's Colombia doing on that drug war?)
Chretien's director of communications took a Canadian tack: "I am not going to get into those kind of comments. I mean, they have their point of view and we have our point of view," Munson said.
And for posterity's sake, here's Chretien's joke: During an interview with the Winnipeg Free Press, Chretien said he had never tested marijuana, but might once decriminalization legislation is approved.
"I don't know what is marijuana. Perhaps I will try it when it will no longer be criminal," he said. "I will have money for my fine and a joint in the other hand."
That's not embarrasing, that's funny. I happen to know of a certain drug that makes evrything Jean Chretien says hilarious. I heartily recommend it to Mr. Walters.

The Decline and Fall of the American Humanist

2003-10-16T02:01:00.000-07:00
To Republicans and independents, I put the question: Weigh Gen. Clark's qualifications against President Bush's performance, and who seems likelier to lead us effectively in the years of trouble ahead of us?

I hate Harold Bloom so much.

Damn Straight

2003-10-14T15:43:00.000-07:00
Now that the BC government has done the right thing, the Vancouver Sun wants to take shots at the Straight for ever complaining about a million dollar tax fine. Pete McMartin leads the brigade, cleverly noting that as mayor, Gordon Campbell declared May 5 1987 Georgia Straight Day. But after admitting the tax levy is wrong, he takes issue with McLeod' characterization of his own paper:
A bigger piece of self-serving blather you are not likely to read -- McLeod's attempt to paint the Straight as the lone dissenting voice in the wilderness against the Liberals is just plain wrong.
What does he consider the Province's Victoria columnist Michael Smyth to be, who is consistently critical of the Liberals, or The Sun's peerless Vaughn Palmer, the best and smartest political writer in the country? Palmer dissects the Liberals' gaffes -- what? five times a week? Or is that not enough for McLeod?

Personally, I'd consider them to be hacks. But that's besides the point. Palmer and Smyth attack Gordo for wasting taxpayer money (on things like internet portals and logo changes). It's a fair attack, but they are attacking the Liberals from the Right, not the Left. Smyth refers to the NDP as 'socialist hordes.' I'm willing to bet both columnists actually voted for the Liberals, and will vote for them next election, too. No CanWest regulars take issue with the philosophy of cutting taxes for the rich and destroying the social safety net that the Liberals live by. Half of British Columbians do disagree with Gordo's philosophy. You'd think a paper claiming to represent the Vancouver community could hire one of them.
The official Sun editorial makes a similar point. The tax move was wrong, but: But if the quality of thinking that goes into the Straight's editorial policy is reflected in the scurrilous rantings of Straight publisher Dan McLeod as he tries to paint himself and his paper as a martyr in this mess, it's not a very good newspaper.
Holy confusing hypothetical, Batman. Continuing: His assertion that the Campbell government wanted to silence an opposition voice is silly on the face of it. The Straight's just not that important -- and it is certainly not the only newspaper, or the most effective one, reporting and criticizing government performance. Indeed, any day that Gordon Campbell's worst problem is a story in the Straight is likely to go down in his diary as a good one.
Really? McMartin says: The poor little Georgia Straight, which isn't poor, or little, is one of the Big Boys now, an establishment paper that can strike fear into the heart of a premier and get a ministry ruling overturned in a day.
Make up your minds, people. Is the Straight a big business that shouldn't be playing victim since it's so powerful, or is it such an impotent critic that none of its critics would ever want to shut it down? The Sun also adresses McLeod's charge that CanWest papers get preferential treatments because Asper and Gordo are ideological bedfellows:
The statements he has made twist fact and fancy to try to tie CanWest, the company that owns this newspaper, to the short-lived tax attack on the Straight. Never mind that CanWest owns several community newspapers that -- like the Straight -- carry extensive listings.
Yes, and none of those papers are being forced to pay the administration a million dollars. Some dare call it conspiracy...The Province letters page is running 5-to-0 for the Straight, including a representative letter from Alex Coombes, who I went to high school with: Have Gordon Campbell's Liberals been taking lessons in censorship from Robert Mugabe in Zimbabwe?

Whether or not Gordo actually was yelling at his lapdogs in the Auditor's Office "We will fuck Dan McLeod like he has never been fucked", McLeod's strategy after receiving the bill was brilliant. He screamed bloody murder, and published Gordo's office number in the Straight. Without his 'scurrilous' yelling, justice would not have been done- at least not so quickly. The Scrum calls the Liberal decision "some sort of modern-day speed record for government action". So McLeod insures his paper's survival, and the Sun whines that he's besmirching Gordo's honor. If Glen Clark's NDP administration (ideologically opposite to the Sun and Province) ever hit the Sun with a million dollar tax bill, the Sun would have done the exact same thing. So save the sanctimony.

Don't buy those brownshirts just yet

2003-10-11T00:37:00.000-07:00
The government has backed down on the Georgia Straightgate. Apparently the Straight is a newspaper after all. The reaction to this whole fiasco has been basically the opposite of what one would expect. The corporate-media columnist takes the Straight's side, while the rest of Vancouver's independent press plays the world's smallest violin. Vancouver Scrum has some good roundup and analysis. He points out that the Straight is not the only paper attacking the Liberals:

Dan McLeod was loudly alleging in this week's Straight that the BC "Liberal" government is conspiring to shut the paper down for its consistent opposition to the government. He backed down some yesterday, saying instead that, "I don't have proof, but I can feel it in my bones that this is political"at a press conference yesterday.

(Ed's note: Hey Danny! Most of the college papers haven't been kind to El Gordo; neither has that other Vancouver weekly to which I contribute. The government hasn't been after all those other papers critical of Campbell -- maybe because we run a hell of a lot more content relative to advertising? In any case, the Straight has NOT been the only paper that regularly takes the editorial boots the the Campbell government. Got it?)

I think McLeod was talking about papers that people read. And that are longer than ten pages. Speaking of Terminal City, their fisking of the Straight's Q and A's is pretty funny. Though there is something about small publishers dissing slightly bigger publishers that smacks of player hating. My own college paper also sympathizes with the government, while saying the taxes are wrong: While the Straight should take this as a sign that their content needs to change, the government should be more reasonable and take the Straight for what it really is: a vital part of Vancouver's entertainment scene and an important editorial voice.
Personally, I don't think the BC government should be in the media criticism business. And the Straight is right on the legal issue; if TV listings and sports scores are editorial content, the Straight's entertainment listings (by far the best in the city) certainly should also be considered editorial. A little sympathy from the rest of the free press would be nice. I admit McLeod's Nixon comparisons were a little much. But if it shuts down, wouldn't everyone feel super-rotten?
I've always really liked the Straight, much to the surprise of various friends and acquaintances. Thursday bus rides are not complete without it. It introduced me (at a formative age) to the whole concept of prose writing about movies and music. Without it, I would not be the disgrace to humanity that I am today. The Political Connections column, which exposes something bad Gordo does every week, is a great service to the public. Amazingly, it hasn't repeated itself yet. But even a fan like me admits most of its content is not exactly essential reading.
So why is it that it's the only big paper in Vancouver that publishes articles critical of the premier? Why doesn't the mainstream media accurately reflect Vancouver's political leanings?

8 inches or a footlong?

2003-10-10T03:09:00.000-07:00
The New Republic debates how long Ariel Sharon's penis is. With charts.
You know, usually when people have a debate, they are supposed to have differing opinions about the issue (this was also a problem with the Democratic primary debate I just watched). But when the leftier one says things like "Yes, the withdrawal from Lebanon was a momentous blunder", then we don't have a debate on our hands. We have a circle jerk. And who wants to read about a circle jerk?
By the way, advocating that Israel invade Lebanon again is totally the dumbest idea ever. It's like advocating that America should have another go at Vietnam.

Gordo's solution to BC deficit

2003-10-10T02:42:00.000-07:00
Collect more money from media outlets that criticize his government, of course. And if they can't pay, they get shut down. No, really. I'm not one to throw the word 'fascist' around lightly (though I am quite liberal with far more offensive words. This blog needs a swearjar). But if the jackboot fits...
Read all about it, from the straight (The Straight could raise the million by selling their URL to a gay porn site, methinks) and from the media outlet that contributes large sums to Gordon Campbell. Hey CanWest, way to publish an article where your own preferential treatment is the issue without mentioning yourself. Really displays some integrity.
Dan McLeod, publisher of the Georgia Straight (he shares a name with a friend of mine, incidentally), has been pretty hard hit by this attack. He's already lost the use of his thesaurus:
"What's happening to us is not just a bizarre misuse of power," McLeod says. "It's a wacko misuse of power."
You hate to see that happen to a guy.
To tell you the truth, I'm a little too ferklempt about this to comment thoughtfully. This is so fucking insane I don't know where to start. When the shellshock wears off, I'll come back to the story. Just go read about it.

Critical acumen from the mouth of babes

2003-10-09T11:57:00.000-07:00
"I have a lot of the Archie comics," said Aaron Kaplan, age 12. "They aren't funny, but they are fun to read." Graham Vunderink, also 12, added, "I like Jughead best, he eats a lot." At that, Aaron nodded, saying, "And he has the best hair."

Dr. Kaplan isolates, then problematizes, the central paradox of the Archie Oeuvre.

I got a letter!

2003-10-09T11:56:00.000-07:00
You wrote:
"Israel, apparently upset at how calm the Middle East was getting, decided to bomb Syria. I thought this was going to start WW3, but the Syrians pussied out and just called for a UN resolution condeming Israel. This escalation could bring the amount of UN resolutions Israel is currently ignoring to 1467. "

You neglected to mention that the day before the bombing of an (empty) terrorist training camp, a suicide bomber killed 19 people on a Shabbat afternoon in Haifa (my birthplace btw). Hardly a 'calm' middle east.

Respectfully
A faithful reader

Hey Dad, it's called irony. Try some.

Update

2003-10-09T03:52:00.000-07:00
The kind people who manufactured my modem have sent me a new one. Like some movie character promised, I am back. A lot of interesting things have happened in the world while I stopped blogging. Let's recap:
-Someone in the Bush administration decided to reveal the name and occupation of a CIA agent to get back at her husband, who said Bush was talking shit when he said there were WMD in Iraq. Ironically, the agent was working on WMD, so Bush's actions have made more it likely that terrorists now have WMD. Read all about it here, starting at Sep. 26.
-There are no weapons of mass destruction in Iraq. It's now official. Saddam probably got rid of them just to make Bush look bad.
-Jean-Claude Van Damme was elected the Governor of California for some reason.
-A guy that likes to eat young cats and hails from Mars was elected Premier of Ontario.
-Israel, apparently upset at how calm the Middle East was getting, decided to bomb Syria. I thought this was going to start WW3, but the Syrians pussied out and just called for a UN resolution condeming Israel. This escalation could
bring the amount of UN resolutions Israel is currently ignoring to 1467.
-Yasser Arafat found a new PM to do his evil bidding. He's OK, I guess, but my heart belongs to Abu Mazen.
-Locally, a Vancouver cop admitted to lying in court during a job interview with another police department. He did not get the job. He also admitted to stealing evidence, and said he overheard other cops talikng about using inappropraite force. Our ex-cop mayor doesn't think this warrants an outside investigation of police. Asshole.
-The bow-tied Jew that owns our media has died. Among his many accomplishments are taking a very good newspaper and running it into the ground. Dude, he published Anne Coulter! Saying that the US never toppled Allende! Sadly, he died before realizing his life dream, a Human Rights Museum. Sounds like a cool idea, but if Asper ran the museum anything like he ran CanWest, I doubt the many human rights abuses by the country Asper shares a name with would get much attention in the museum. But hey, RIP. Media moguls rock, no matter how wrong they might be.
-Ghostface Killa is still writing beautiful poetry.
-The media has invented a name for a musical genre that is even dumber than 'electroclash'. Good work. I really need to mock that article in depth, but let me note that the really awesome new genre is country-rap (way better than rap-metal). There may only be a single song in this genre (Bubba Sparxxx' Comin' Round; best song of the year, by far), which demonstrates what Timbaland thinks country music is. If I haven't said before, let me note for the record that Timbaland may be the greatest person alive.
-Missy Elliot released the song of the year (no contest), Pass the Dutch. "I'm under attack like my name was Saddam." That Tim Mosley guy, y'know.
-On the personal front, loss of the internet has plunged me into a torrent of productivity. That won't last now. I have written many little papers, a few of which are fairly amusing. Perhaps I will post them. Soon.

That's basically it. Some things might be confused, since I've been relying on CNN for my information. But the internet will cure that. The internet is never wrong about anything.

Anti-Defamation League pro-defamation

2003-09-24T15:48:00.000-07:00
The ADL gives award to Silvio Berlusconi for his support of Israel and Ariel Sharon. Berlusconi has recently said that "Mussolini never killed anyone." I feel sick.
Some facts: Mussolini ruled Italy from 1922 until his ouster in 1943. Widespread persecution of Italian Jews began in 1938 when Mussolini's regime issued racial laws. In 1943, German troops occupied northern and central Italy, and almost 7,000 Jews were deported, 5,910 of whom were killed.

Apparently, some Jews are upset that an anti-anti-semitism group would give an award to a quasi-holocaust denier. But they shouldn't be: Earlier, Foxman said Berlusconi's comments on Mussolini were a mistake for which the prime minister had apologized to Italian Jews. Foxman said the criticism was hypocritical and ``politically laced.'' The critics do not like Berlusconi because he supports Sharon and President Bush, he said.
``I don't have the luxury of political views,'' Foxman told AP before the speech. ``Here is a leader who is not only sensitive and supportive (of Israel) but has moved Europe to be less hypocritical ... He has understood Israel in these times of trouble,'' Foxman said.
That's not a political view? What a hypocritical asshole.
Let's end this post with a quote from Ariel "never killed anyone" Sharon:
Better to be a live Judeo-Nazi than a dead martyr.
ADL's way ahead of you, Arik.

Words we learn in women's studies class:

2003-09-24T15:44:00.000-07:00
'Womyndatory'. Think about it.
That addition to your vocabulary comes courtesy of my BritLit prof, who had this to say on hardcore feminism: "It's something we all have to go through. Then get over. [Laughter] Um, don't quote me on that."
Too late.

Arrgh

2003-09-24T15:42:00.000-07:00
Modem dead. No posts. Telus evil.

Angry Masturbator

2003-09-13T20:14:00.000-07:00
Alex has some complex feelings about George Bush: i have a love/hate relationship with the illustrious president of the unite states of hypocrisy, i see myself in him quite often. Here's a picture of Alex, by the way.

More brilliant Province ledes

2003-09-12T21:36:00.000-07:00
A controversial new bylaw in Vancouver allowing operators of escort agencies and massage parlors to work from their homes in select areas of the downtown core is creating fears that prostitutes will try to get in on the act.

The bizarre possibility emerged from a council decision Tuesday night when it voted 4-3 to allow people operating businesses downtown to live where they work.
They allowed 'escort agencies' and 'massage parlors' to work from their home, and someone is scared prostitutes will "get in on the act"? WTF? What does The Province think escort agencies are? And is it really fair to call this inevitable ocurrence a bizarre possibility?

Won't somebody think of the kittens?

2003-09-12T21:28:00.000-07:00
The Ontario race is getting nasty: ''Dalton McGuinty: He's an evil reptilian kitten-eater from another planet,'' said a release from Eves's campaign headquarters, e-mailed to news organizations across the province on Friday morning in the latest, and oddest, Tory attack on the Liberal leader.

The Tory insult came after more than a week of labelling McGuinty as being everything from anti-children to anti-senior citizen and anti-home ownership for young families - but never anti-kitten.
The NDP recommends quick action: In Ottawa, NDP Leader Howard Hampton said he would like the provincial auditor to take another look at the province's meat inspection system. You see, someone is stealing all the kitten meat...

Actually, the Tory press release was an attempt at a sarcastic response to the terrible things the Libs have called Eves. But according to this piece, the Tories are running much nastier attack ads anyways: The Tories launched their latest attempt to paint Dalton McGuinty as being as incompetent as Dan Quayle and as compassionate as Stalin.
"What's he got against tax cuts for seniors?" screams the banner in one spot. So all this press release succeeds in doing is making them seem insane. You know, like Stephen Harper. God bless the Canadian Right.

Video Game is Violent: Cue Moral Panic

2003-09-12T21:01:00.000-07:00
This one is a fucking classic, though it's hard to appreciate without seeing the front page of The Province. The internet headline is: Violent video game probed for link to assaults on police, which is quite different from the newsprint version. The front page has the words: This violent game worries police in huge letters, with a big picture of a video game man standing over a video game cop taking up the rest of the page. The front also says that police believe Grand Theft Auto: Vice City may be a contributing factor in the many recent assaults on police. This quote is also on the front: Chris Meyer, 21, who was playing Grand Theft Auto yesterday at an arcade in Granville Mall, agreed there may be a link between the game and violence. "People who are around violence think about it and it can become a reality,"
Hmm. So why don't you see Vin Diesel beating up cops? Inside the article, there are three video game players that don't think video games cause violence. But for some reason, they weren't quoted on the front. The article describes the game, then gives some examples of recent assaults on police:
- A police sergeant got in a fight with a bank robbery suspect, suffering hand and wrist injuries and being sprayed in the eyes with his own can of pepper spray. The cop was off work for nearly nine weeks while recovering.
- A drunk on Granville Mall kicked one officer in the groin and another in the chest.
- A domestic violence suspect on the mall "went wild," ending with officers suffering various injuries, including split lips, loose teeth, sprained knees and general contusions and bruises.
So did any of these people ever play Grand Theft Auto? Two of the three examples are of people resisting arrest. Is the Province saying that GTA causes people to violently resist being arrested? But don't worry, the rate of assaults will go down soon: Police are doing a number of things to combat the assaults, including writing more violation tickets for minor offences such as open drinking on the mall and public urination, said Jones.
Of course! Arresting drunks and homeless urinators is a great way to avoid getting into fistfights! Maybe the police should arrest people who play GTA. Then the gamers could violently resist arrest, and this front-page article would have a point.
I would have more sympathy for the police whining if they were some other police force. Not the one that has 50 allegations of misconduct against it. Not this one: A U.S. human rights group joined the fray last month with a report that accused police of brutalizing defenseless drug addicts.
In March, assault charges were laid against six officers who allegedly drove suspected drug dealers to Stanley Park and beat them.
Police spokeswoman Const. Sarah Bloor said she was pleased the allegations have been filed officially so they can be investigated.
I bet she is. That US group is Human Rights Watch. You can read their press release about Vancouver here. Point of the story is, if the police go out of their way to get into fights with homeless crackheads, one of Vancouver's more belligerent subcultures, then they should expect a few assaults now and then. Blaming the violence on a bunch of pixels is ridiculous.

Long Black Veil

2003-09-12T20:10:00.000-07:00
Ten years ago, on a cold dark night
Someone was killed, 'neath the town hall light
There were few at the scene, but they all agreed
That the slayer who ran, looked a lot like me

The judge said son, what is your alibi
If you were somewhere else, then you won't have to die
I spoke not a word, thou it meant my life
For I'd been in the arms of my best friend's wife

She walks these hills in a long black veil
She visits my grave when the night winds wail
Nobody knows, nobody sees
Nobody knows but me

Johnny Cash, RIP. Doesn't it seem like he was just getting started? His last album was his fiftieth. How many people can make a good fiftieth album, let alone one that's a career highlight. His cover of Personal Jesus is awe-inspiring. His version of U2's song One rocks. And I didn't even like Hurt till I heard his version (which is the actual saddest song ever, by the way). And he was doing great stuff in his 60s and 70s. You think Mick Jagger will ever release another good song? What a terrible loss.

Did you know he made ads for a line of bank machines, named Johnny Cash Machines? The tagline was "I skip the line". True story.

Expelling Yasser Arafat

2003-09-12T19:26:00.000-07:00
Is a great idea. Not.

Queering the postcolonial blog

2003-09-11T01:28:00.000-07:00
So I'm reading an article with the literary criticism Ubertitle "Queering the Postcolonial Nation". It includes such words as "emplotment", "imbricated", and "originary". It is about Canadian literary criticism favorite pseudo-novel, Ana Historic. Word to the wise, people: If you only skip one feminist self-referential poem-novel thingy set in an 18th century British Columbia pioneer town this year, skip Ana Historic. Amazingly, it's a pretty decent article, once you scrape the jargon off. And I have to write a little paper about it. You see, in three classes this year I have to hand in a journal once a week, meaning that I will spend the next three months writing, and I will never leave the house (Yeah, like you ever did before. -ed. Shut up!). I was thinking that I could post my CanLit, history, and PoliSci journals in a separate blog for your reading pleasure. I will also post my old essays, some of which are actually pretty entertaining. I write things like "What a Pinko" a lot. In fact, they are just like this blog, but not with so many swears. You will love them.

America explained

2003-09-10T22:08:00.000-07:00
Commenter on an Oliver Willis thread about the 87 billion going to Iraq:
Oh, and we're spending about three times what the country spends on grade school. Which, I guess if you think about it, explains why 70% of the country thinks Saddam caused 9/11.
That really sums it up, eh?

The Hindu-Zionist conspiracy

2003-09-10T21:29:00.000-07:00
Coming soon to a Pakistani newsaper near you.

Not Leni!

2003-09-10T20:55:00.000-07:00
Leni Riefenstahl goes to that great big Nuremburg Rally in the sky.

What Liberal Academia?

2003-09-09T01:37:00.000-07:00
Here is the continuation of the post describing my courses.
I'm taking a class in American 20th century history with a cheerful Russian prof. He seems fairly right-wing for a professor; we will be spending a week discovering how Joe McCarthy was not just a villain, but also a victim. Who is this guy, Anne Coulter? I guess there's nothing like some Soviet-style Communism to bring out your inner McCarthy, though.
Fun factoid: President Warren Harding impreganted a woman on the senate floor. He makes Bill Clinton look like Ben Shapiro!

Next I had modern British lit. This class may mark the first cute prof I've ever had; I probably shouldn't tell you this, but Hugh has a crush on her. We are starting, for some reason, with Frankenstein, making this the third of four years in English undergraddom that I have studied Mary Shelley's accursed novel. Why is this the most popular academic novel? Why do we always have to watch that fucking shirtless Kenneth fucking Branagh movie version? Isn't Mary Shelley saying society is the real monster? Why would a benevolent God create
Kenneth Branagh? God is so stupid...
Actually, the reason why Frankenstein is so popular is that the monster works as a handy symbol for any of the Big Three categories of academic criticism; those Big Three being raceclassgender (you can't say one without saying the rest. But sometimes sexualorientation is included). The monster can be any of the types of Other, whether woman, black, prole, or gay.
Last year I didn't do Frankenstein, but I spent a lot of time and wrote a long essay about Shelley's The Last Man. Shorter The Last Man: Guy has somewhat dramatic life. Plague comes. Everyone dies, except for him. The end. Hope I didn't ruin it for you.
Next class was a poli-sci class studying elections. Specifically, the 2000 Canadian federal election which was famous for ocurring at the same time (beginning a few weeks after, ending a few weeks before) as the Florida election debacle causing some ecumenically-minded American commentators to say "Those Canadians sure know how to run a nice quiet election, don't they?" This class will mean spending far too much time thinking about Stockwell "Doris" Day, an activity I feel I have already spent far too much time doing during the actual election. We've been watching CBC coverage of the election. This coverage makes me want to institute a regular column here called "Canadian Alliance members say the dumbest things", with Harper's opening salvo below. Our prof said Stockwell got a raw deal, though. First McCarthy, now Stock. And here I was thinking the academia was supposed to demonize right-wing politicians.
I then had economics with a Danish prof. He kept on talking about how he knew we didn't want to take the class, but it would insure we would make lots of money. So I dropped the class, of course. Personally, I'd rather be poor but happy then rich and incredibly happy. He complained about our tax dollars going to Shawnigan, meaning I have yet another right-wing prof. Have you no sense of decency, sir? At long last, have you left no sense of decency?

Buying CDs?

2003-09-08T16:29:00.000-07:00
If you are, Hugh has some interesting suggestions, depending on what mood you're in: Deep sadness because of the death of a close friend or family member: MC Hammer "2 Legit 2 Quit" (his 2nd album)
Just had eardums removed in painful and costly surgery: Celine Dion's new album "A Brand New Day"
Feeling lust over an older woman: Shania Twain's "UP" (why the fuck do I know this trivial shit...oh god)
Just got raped in Stanley Park by a bear: Simon and Garfunkel's "Like a Bridge Over Troubled Water"
There's more.
He also notes that Jerry Falwell has blamed BC's recent forest fires on Canada's legalization of gay marriage.
Two thoughts. A) Noone has yet died from the fires. Obviously, God's wrath has been greatly overrated.
B) Kelowna is not a hotbed of gayness. To paraphrase Michael Moore, why did God smite the BC interior? They didn't even vote for gay marriage. Obviously, God's a moron.
Wait, I have another thought. Here goes: Jerry Falwell needs to get laid. By a big black bear. And soon.

World: Over?

2003-09-08T01:58:00.000-07:00
Hamas has vowed that it will assassinate Israeli PM Sharon in retaliation for a (failed) strike at Hamas leadership, including Hamas founder and "Spiritual Leader" Sheikh Yassin, which injured 15 (including Yassin) during a meeting at his residence in Gaza.
Jeebus. What would they had done if the strike hadn't missed? Anyways, here's my prediction: If Sharon is killed by Hamas, I give humanity a year to live. Tops.

Rush Limbaugh on Madonna and Britney

2003-09-08T01:50:00.000-07:00
Not literally, fortunately. Apparently, they will cause another September 11th: Isn't it possible, some might ask, that some Al-Qaeda thug could see this kissing (and more of them are watching in their caves than will ever admit it) and decide to punish us? Who knows what they might do!
As Chrisafer says: What Rush doesn't see is that if pop stars can't flirt with lesbianism to punch up the sagging sales of their albums then the terrorists have won.
Forget what I said about Ben Shapiro. All he thought the kiss did was encourage little girls to become lesbians. Rush Limbaugh thinks it's a convenient excuse for the failures of Bush's foreign policy.

Chretien seeks controversy

2003-09-08T01:40:00.000-07:00
Our PM believes Abbas should stay:
"If you think it's complicated to be prime minister of Canada, I guess it's more complicated to be prime minister of the Palestinians. ... Anybody who is on the side of peace, I hope they will stay," Mr. Chrétien told reporters.
Profound. Chretien believes peace is a good thing? How bold. This brave stance has the potential to revitalize the region. All this time, noone was giving peace a chance. It's not so complicated after all. A press aide further clarified Chretien's comments:
"I think what he's saying is we've been facing this problem forever and have had many peace plans, and peace has not been found yet," Mr. Hogue said. "Maybe we should look outside the box."
Looking outside the box? All this time, Sharon and Arafat have been suffering from a lack of dynamic thinking! Well, if peace plans don't work, I guess it's time for some war plans. Maybe a historic "Screw Peace" accord is in order. Anyways, Chretien has obviously given this matter a lot of thought. Whatever vague platudinous approach he wants to apply to the Middle East is fine by me.

Now for good news

2003-09-06T19:49:00.000-07:00
Bush's ratings suck. Yay.

Brian Mulroney is gay

2003-09-06T19:30:00.000-07:00
Canadian Alliance leader Stephen Harper accused Chretien of secretly stacking the courts with pro-gay marriage judges: The federal government orchestrated court losses on same-sex marriage in order to legalize gay weddings "through the back door," Canadian Alliance Leader Stephen Harper charged Thursday.
He said Ottawa feigned a legal battle against same-sex marriage for years while stacking the courts with liberal-minded judges and plotting to redefine matrimony.
Well, of course it's supposed to go through the back door...never mind. Anyways, even Canada's conservative editorial pages are giving this conspiracy theory the ridicule it deserves. As one paper points out, Harper "brushed off the fact that judges from Ontario Appeals Court Justice Roy McMurtry to the three B.C. justices who ruled to recognize gay marriages had been appointed by the Conservative Brian Mulroney government, long before Chretien took charge. When one is trying to spin a good conspiracy yarn, why bother with little things such as the facts?"
Mulroney and Chretien (and Svend Robinson) are obviously in cahoots. The dastardly scoundrels!
Confidential to Stephen Harper: Nothing wins Canadian elections like telling the truth about secret gay agendas. Accusing the last two PMs of covert plots is also a sure winner. Many thought the Alliance lost the last election because they were too homophobic, but don't listen to those people, Stephen. The problem was you weren't homophobic enough. Next step: accuse Mulroney, Chretien, and Paul Martin of having had a hot threesome. The votes will come. Trust me.

Abu Mazen takes my advice

2003-09-06T18:59:00.000-07:00
And I couldn't be sadder about it. But at least he's still alive. Still, his resignation really sucks. Mazen now seems like the Palestinian Jimmy Carter; the sort of nice person everyone thinks should be in power, but too ineffectual to stand up to violence. Not that he had much help from anyone:
In a statement, as before the legislators, he lay the blame primarily with Israel, saying, "The fundamental problem was Israel's unwillingness to implement its commitments in the road map." He said Washington had not pressed Israel enough.
But, in a clear swipe at Mr. Arafat and the rest of the Palestinian leadership, he also complained about a "lack of support" for his government and "harsh and dangerous domestic incitement against the government." On Thursday, when Mr. Abbas presented a summary to legislators of his first months in office, masked men spray-painted the walls outside with slogans denouncing his government, and dozens of protesters chanted against him.
Those masked men would be the Arafat supporters. Confidential to Yasser Arafat: Fuck you, asshole.
Just in case you didn't think this means a few more years of intifada, Israel has decided to take this opportunity to try to kill Hamas' leader, Sheik "spiritual paraplegic" Ahmed Yassin.
The senior Israeli security official said if Mr. Arafat did not reverse course and empower Mr. Abbas, "Arafat's personal destiny might change." He said Mr. Arafat might also feel pressure to bring him back because of "the understanding that many Palestinians share that if Abu Mazen resigns it might be the end of the road map."
It was shortly after Israel issued its statement that a bomb struck the Gaza City apartment building where Sheik Yassin, a paraplegic, was meeting with other Hamas leaders. Sheik Yassin was lightly wounded by shrapnel in his right hand.
In response, Abdel Aziz Rantisi, another leader of the group, said, "Our operations will strike everywhere. There is no sanctity to a house, to a street, to a car, nor to a politician, when it comes to an attack on a leader like Sheik Yassin." That 'personal destiny might change line' isn't some sort of a threat, is it? Despite the fact that Yassin is a disgrace to humanity, I doubt assassination is a wise tactic. You can kill every member of Hamas, but you will never destroy its indomitable spirit. Contrary to romantic myths, there is nothing noble about indomitability when that stubborn will is only to continue killing innocents. And Yassin never actually killed anyone (he was just following Allah's orders!), he just encouraged others to kill themselves. With bombs. In public places.
Long story short: We are all doomed. Well done, everyone.

Update: Haggai thinks Mazen's resignation is a tactical move to force America and the EU (who just declared Hamas a terrorist organization; what took them so long?) to reinstate him. I really hope Haggai is right.

Plato is Gay

2003-09-04T01:12:00.000-07:00
So Ion, the greatest poem-reciter in Greece, and Socrates, a feckless layabout, are having a nice, friendly, chat making small talk. Ion brags about his Homer-reciting ability: I think I speak more beautifully than anyone else about Homer; neither Metrodorus of Lampsacus nor Stesimbrotus of Thasos nor Glaucon nor anyone else past or present could offer as many beautiful thoughts about Homer as I can. Those lines should be the literary critics' credo.
Then Socrates just has to start questioning Ion's most deeply held beliefs. Reading Plato, I always want to smack Socrates. Check this asshole out: Surely you are the wise men, you rhapsodes and actors. As for me, I say nothing but the truth, as you'd expect from an ordinary man.
Nothing but the truth, he says. Stick your head out of that twelve-year old's ass and get a load of yourself, Socrates. No wonder the Greeks killed him.

My First day of school

2003-09-03T23:58:00.000-07:00
My first two days, actually. The theory class was great. Disregard my rant (especially the stuff about Foucault's ass. I will never speak a word against that man again). Our teacher warned of the Theorybog, the sense of being lost we will all experience when reading Derrida. She is willing to admit that some of the stuff is beyond moratl understanding, and we shouldn't take it personally. You expect a theory prof to be jargon-ridden and pretentious, but instead she was very down-to-earth. We also got a rant against the corporatization of UBC ("The university is not a business. It is not a shopping mall. It is not a real estate agent."), a rant against Power Point, and an exhortation not to take notes. Good stuff. We start with art-hating bastard Plato. I'll post some excerpts of my reading shortly.
Our teacher also works in anti-censorship legal theory, defending Little Sisters. She is herself the subject of a ridiculous lawsuit, by a Christian miffed that someone in the class mocked Stockwell Day. She wants ten million dollars. Jeebus, take responsabilty for your followers.
The pretentious politics actually came in my CanLit class. Check this excerpt from the syllabus: Are Canadian works advantageously positioned to question the cultural hegemony and military hubris of larger powers? Whichever larger powers could he mean? Besides, all the books we're reading are set in India for some reason. But rest assured: while you may have thought Rohinton Mistry's Family Matters was a brilliant realist novel about a dysfuctional Parsi family in Bombay, it is actually about the war on Iraq. What a lunatic (watch for an upcoming post in which I prove that Harry Potter is actually about the war on Iraq).

A virgin on 'Like a Virgin'

2003-09-03T22:45:00.000-07:00
The best discussion of the MTV awards came from one Ben Shapiro, the youngest conservative columnist ever. By best, of course, I mean worst. (But not the weirdest- click on Matt Drudge's here for that. Please click on it.) The column comes with a great disclaimer: Note: Some language may be offensive to some readers . Not to my readers, I reckon. An excerpt from the fulmination against Britney's pseudo-lesbianism: Spears and fellow Mickey-Mouseketeer-turned-slut Christina Aguilera joined Madonna in a tribute to "Like a Virgin." Spears and Aguilera were dressed in mock bridal gowns, with Madonna dressed in black, as the groom. After the three danced around like strippers starved for tips, Madonna turned to Spears, Spears opened her mouth, and the two played a round of tonsil hockey. When she was done cleaning Spears' teeth with her tongue, Madonna turned to Aguilera, and they shared an open-mouthed kiss. Throughout the lesbian orgy, the crowd roared its approval.
Apparently slutty lesbian orgies are a bad thing: Society doesn't just demand rebellion and over-the-line behavior from its entertainers. It demands that girls (and boys) have sex before marriage, at younger and younger ages. It demands that young women (and men) "experiment" with their sexuality. It demands that biblical values be kept out of schools and that condoms be kept in them. Society demands that dignity take a back seat to salaciousness.

Who is killing dignity? MTV surely plays a role. Aug. 28's raunchy sex-fest drew 10.7 million viewers, garnering the highest ratings from the 12-to-34 crowd of any cable show this year to date.
I want my dignity back, MTV. Won't someone stop the salaciousness? Think of the children!!!
Wait, Shapiro did: Thousands of little girls idolize Britney. Who knows? After this display, they might aspire to make out with Britney some day. We can only hope, Ben. We can only hope. But the scientific evidence looks good.

(Link via TBOGG. You must click on it.)