Don't Panic

The Logic Party - how (and why) to spoil your ballot.

2011-03-28T09:15:00.000-06:00

Another election is upon us, and so another occasion to reflect upon the electoral process and voter decision-making.

I saw this CBC political compass survey pop up a few times on my facebook news feed, and out of curiousity I took it. As surveys go it’s really not that bad, and if you knew nothing about politics its probably going to give you a pretty good estimate of who you’re best off supporting. That being said, the survey tells me I’m best off voting liberal – which I’m pretty sure is not happening.

The survey of course suffers from the same problem we all do in reality. A party will have stances on dozens of issues – some of which we agree with, others which we do not. To be fair, it does allow you to “weight” your answers by choosing which meta-issues you care about most (economy, environment, military, etc), so the people who designed this thing did their best to deal with this issue.

But you can’t get around the problem that for most people, no party is going to reflect your opinion of all issues.

What’s perhaps most disingenuous is how questions on a meta-subject get lumped together. It is as though, if you care about the military you should agree with:

• leave troops in Afghanistan
• increase military in North
• increase military spending

But what if, for example, I know a lot about this stuff. And so I say – yes we must leave troops in Afghanistan – not because I want us to, but because the alternative is much worse. But on the North, there is no need whatsoever for troops there because I believe the sovereignty of that territory has been established and there is no issue. And finally on spending, maybe I say – look, in spite of me being generally anti-military, I’m nobody’s fool. I don’t want our soldiers running around in shitty equipment, so sure I support a modest increase in spending (hoping it goes towards the right things).

So what am I here… “logical”. Which party lines up with my views? None.

Let’s try the environment

• Oil sands damage to environment is exaggerated
• Canada should adopt a carbon tax
• Env. regulation should be stricter even if it raises costs

So on the first point – I don’t know. I would not be shocked to learn that the cries of Environmental groups are overblown, but I am no scientist and I have not researched the issue. I’m sure the tar sands development isn’t great for the environment, but neither are cities or farms or pretty much anything we’ve ever done as a civilization. Would I rather see energy efficiency measures than tar sands development? Yes. But do I think the damage done by tar sands is “exaggerated”? Probably. Meanwhile I’m all for a carbon tax, and I want Stephane Dion’s green shift that would move taxation off of income and onto carbon (or pollution more broadly). Yet on regulations I don’t think we need more. I’ve already seen the insanity of environmental assessments. Our projects often require both provincial and federal EA’s that cover much of the same ground, and its just a tonne of waste. If anything I think our regs are probably too harsh.

So… iffy on oil sands propaganda, pro carbon tax, anti env. regulation increase. Common thread? My old friend “logic”. Party supporting my views? File not found.

And the one that really drew my attention to this – the Law and Order questions

• Violent young offenders should be sentenced as adults
• The long gun registry should be scrapped
• Possession of marijuana should be a criminal offence

On the first I really don’t know. I just do not have even anecdotal evidence of youth that should have gotten harsher sentences than they did, and I’m on the fence between the belief of punishment as a deterrent and the argument that prisons aren’t likely going to reform/rehabilitate anyone. I’d need to research, look at re-offender stats vs sentences, etc. The long gun registry I have no love for, scrap it if its an ongoing cost – but I suspect the costs have mostly been paid and scrapping it at this point would be moot. Possession of marijuana as a criminal offence – no. This drug is so widely accepted in society that it is insane for it to be criminalized. Legalize and treat it like alcohol – illegal for minorities, not acceptable to be stoned in public, etc.

So… moot on young offenders, anti registry (in principal), pro-legalization. Taken altogether we have a logical evaluation of each individual issue. Which party will support my views? Looks like nobody again…

Now I’m not kidding myself, there IS a logic for grouping these things as they’ve done. It is common that someone who is anti military will viscerally bash all things related to the subject whether its arctic, Afghanistan, or funding. It’s not necessarily rational, but it makes things easier to digest or evaluate.

And I think that’s why politics and elections are what they are. There are too many issues requiring too much expertise to really “get”. Its much easier when everything can be boiled down to a binary decision of “left” or “right”, or even worse down to a political gaffe during the campaign.

There is no tradition of being reasonable in politics and I doubt there ever will be. Parties must appeal to broad swathes of the population, and no broad swathe of the population is truly rational. They are viscerally motivated – the gut feeling of being against criminals, against terrorists, pro-freedom, or whatever. So for a party to be successful it must try to combine a set of stances/policies that are palatable to the biggest chunks of people. And the net result of course is that a really reasoned look at each question on a survey will plot you off in no-man’s land.

Then if you don’t vote you get called apathetic, so you end up going just to spoil your ballot. Not in protest of the system really, and not because you expected “better” of the parties, just because that’s the way it is and you’re unfortunate enough to know it.

Myth of Creation

2011-02-17T11:23:00.001-06:00

I found out through facebook that there was a new Hey Rosetta CD coming out this week, and dropped by the music store on bank street to pick up a copy. While I was there I was surprised to see a new bright eyes CD was out this week as well. About 2 years ago I started listening to bright eyes and they have become one of my favourite bands, so this was a pretty nice surprise.

The album itself is not fantastic, but like anything you listen to enough times it’s growing on me.

What was perhaps most interesting is the first track, which features some “old man” sort of character talking about creation and the universe(s) and love. What caught me from this little speech was how he matter-of-factedly describes the “Sumerian Tablets” which tell of “chariots of fire” coming down from the sky, and their pilots enslaving humans and trying to interbreed with the women. How these aliens were reptilian in appearance. How this story was the basis for the book of genesis, with the garden of eden being the place where these aliens landed and the snake/devil references being an interpretation of them.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=62hoopKaZRY

Now I’m sure I’ve heard here and there the hypothesis that humanity may have descended from aliens who colonized/landed on earth. I seem to remember this being the plot or at least a suggested theme in the movie “stargate”. But really I’d dismiss this pretty handily and give the edge to evolution as an explanation of mankind’s existence. But what was intriguing here was this idea of “Sumerian tablets” that told a story of creation involving chariots of fire from the sky, enslavement of humans, etc. and how this could be the basis for the book of Genesis.

If true, I would first of all wonder why I had never heard of this. It seems like a pretty compelling tale – tablets from 1700 BC depicting “chariots of fire” from the sky and other advanced technologies.

A cursory search seems to reveal that this – like most good tales – is a creative mix of truth and fiction.

There was a Sumerian civilization, and there are tablets describing a creation myth comparable in parts with the story of Genesis dated to ~1700 BC. I did not see anyone talking about chariots of fire, enslavement, or anything else that would indicate alien heritage.

The story is supposed to be that these aliens (13 feet tall, reptilian, advanced technology) came down with their “fish armor” and “eagle helmets” and created mankind as a form of “robot” to “mine the gold” on the earth. By some accounts these aliens are from a 10th planet that orbits the sun every 3600 years… this only coming into contact with the earth every few millennia.

From what I could tell though, the actual tablets of creation read more like a greek or native myth. “Gods” who have characteristics of people, turning into things like the earth and sky. More or less nonsensical, and difficult to trace to any actual events that might have happened. I could not find one reputable, or even semi-reputable source to confirm the allusions to alien ancestry.

But its interesting that when the narrator speaks on the album, if you’re not really thinking critically about what he’s saying it sounds authoritative “ah yes of course the Sumerian tablets”.

It’s pretty neat that stuff like this can be checked pretty easily using google/Wikipedia although I wonder how often people do it (everytime I get an email telling me “they” are going to charge “us” for MSN/Facebook/The Internet I lose a little more faith that others are checking facts). My brother had told me about this movie “the fourth kind” which has “real footage” of a series of events in a small northern town involving alien abduction/possession. I do not doubt the movie is convincing, but a query on the internet reveals it’s a clever combination of facts and myths. High “missing persons” and/or suicide rate due to remote location and alcoholism (or is it abduction??), stuff like that.

Anyways, doesn’t look like we descended from or were interbred with any 13 foot tall serpent aliens, which in a way is too bad. I would have liked there to be a shred of truth to it just to plant a seed of doubt into what otherwise seems like a solved riddle (evolution).

Dead and gone

2011-01-14T14:38:00.001-06:00

Sometimes I think about that inescapable inevitability that is death. It usually starts with the dog. He will die before me in all likelihood. Maybe it’ll be an accident or a sickness, or maybe he’ll just get old and someday I’ll have to make the decision to have him put down. I don’t like to think about that but its there and it will happen.

You know that grief you feel when you find out someone died? I can feel that pretty much anytime if I think about it a bit. This person will go. Mom, Dad, Grandma. These people are all going to go. And then I will go.

When I’m being rational I don’t worry too much about it. This is the way things are and nothing anyone can do will change them. A great deal of science fiction has been written to the effect of you may not want immortality even if it was an option. But suppressing grief and the most natural fear there is with reason is a pretty shoddy bulwark.

The way I figure it you die and that’s it. Dreamless sleep. There’s an outside chance something else happens, that mankind’s understanding of its role and place in things is laughably inadequate. That we are but the larvae stage of the life cycle, and death is our emergence as a recognizable life form in some greater cosmic scheme.

It’s even better when you toss hell into the mix. The idea of some unknowable continuation of existence is all fine and dandy, you could say “hey, this may or may not happen but it would be neat if it did”. Then there’s hell. Take every pain you can imagine and multiply it by infinity with no hope, no chance for retribution. What if… boy… I’d hate to be stuck being tortured for eternity because I fucked up in my ~100 years on terra firma.

On one hand you might want to discard it altogether, but that’s not really fair to the exercise. We’re supposing here that because we don’t know if anything exceptional happens upon death that anything could happen – including a heaven/hell life evaluation. To put my mind at ease about this I have to figure that in any sort of judgement it’d be an evaluation of character and deeds, not of religious piety. It is tough to imagine the gatekeepers of the afterlife saying “Darcy, you were a good man. You did some nice things for people and never hurt anyone. But, you didn’t go to church so off to the fiery pits of hell for eternity for you”. That of course presupposes a value structure for god and his angels that is at least loosely based on those of humanity. This may be completely false, and god and his angel army could be vindictive orthodox purists who have been casting an increasing number of the deceased into hades year after year as people stopped sacrificing pigeons and goats and what-have-you.

And while its cool to be rational about the whole death thing, I won’t be surprised if the vast majority of Christian-raised atheists find themselves pleading for mercy from God if they find themselves on their deathbeds – just to be safe.

I don't get RRSPs

2010-06-03T11:50:00.002-06:00

As I understand it an RRSP works basically like this:

Say you make $100,000 this year and you’d normally be taxed 40% of that amount – or $40,000.

Now lets say you can put $25,000 away into RRSPs – this money is “tax free” et voila, now you pay your 40% tax on a total of $75,000 – or $30,000. YOU JUST SAVED YOURSELF 10 GRAND IN TAXES – YOU ARE THE KING!

But uh oh! Look out! Here comes mister reality to rain on your parade!

For 30 years you tell all your friends how awesome you are for having screwed the government out of 10,000 bucks. You think you’re even more clever because your $25,000 stash is earning a few % a year in interest. Not only did you screw the government, you’re making money by doing nothing – mankind’s greatest dreams both come true in the same effortless effort – jackpot!

Now you’re 70 years old and you say to yourself – alright its time, I hid my money well like a great pirate, and made some free coin, its time to PART-AY! I don’t care enough about math to do the compound interest calculations here, but lets say things went decent and you made $8,000 in interest overall. Let’s even imagine that that money itself is tax free.

The thing is – you do still have to pay taxes on that original $25,000 you put away. But lucky you – now that you’re old and poor your tax rate is down to just 25%! You sadly fork over your $6,500 in interest to mr. government when you pull it out.

So… what did you do…

You locked your money up for 30 fucking years to save $3,500 in taxes... that is… a whopping $116 a year in tax savings.

Now I have to ask myself when would I rather have access to that original $25,000 – now, while I’m young – or in 30 years, when I’m old. Seems like a no-brainer to me. When I’m old I’ll probably be keen to sit at home and watch wheel of fortune, not go to vegas or buy a boat or whatever. Whenever I see old dudes driving around in brand new corvettes I’m just like dude… you needed that 30 years ago, at this age it isn’t really serving its purpose anymore…

Now granted this investment will make you money assuming markets stabilize and the capitalist/banking system doesn’t collapse (which it probably will by then). But RRSPs are a specific form of investment where the appeal is the tax-sheltering nature of the instrument.

It just seems to me that it boils down to this:

What people hear: NO TAXES / LOW TAXES SIGN ME UP!!!!

What I hear: Lock your money away for 30 years to avoid a completely and utterly insignificant amount of taxes per year.

The dinner question

2010-05-05T14:38:00.002-06:00

“If you could have dinner with one person from any time in history, who would it be?”

There are some minor nuances in how the question is phrased, but its one that seems to pop up time and time again. I saw it in this morning’s metro, with annoying responses: obama, some TV producer, lady gaga, paris Hilton, etc. It reminded me of the scene in Adaptation where the “right” answer is Jesus and Einstein.

What’s interesting is what this question is supposed to actually accomplish. I’m guessing that fundamentally it’s a psychology thing – your answer can probably say a lot about you just based on how you interpreted the question (you probably didn’t really think too hard about it) and how you coined your response.

Let’s pretend for a moment this was a real proposition though, and not just a psych-reading question.

You have the chance to spend something like 2 hours with anyone, wherein you will both eat some food, drink some beverages, and presumably converse.

First practical consideration is language. Before choosing Plato or Alexander the Great, lets remind ourselves these people don’t speak any language you do (most likely) and so dinner will be an affair of gestures and miming.

Second practical consideration is custom/culture. Prying someone from one historical context and plopping them next to someone from another, with the assumption you’ll be able to effectively communicate even if you speak the same language.

Third is personality – myth vs reality. Particularly when going farther and farther back into history, you don’t really know if these people are personable or not. Maybe they’ll spend the whole evening calling you a piece of shit, or hitting on the waitress, who knows?

These apply mainly to going after the dead. When going for the living a very simple problem presents itself:

Why?

You want to have dinner with Obama? Why?

Do you think you are going to learn something that isn’t already widely known? Do you believe that as you share a chuckle over the filet mignon that suddenly he’ll reveal the “truth” about various international affairs that have hitherto been kept under a tight veil of secrecy?

Or perhaps he has some insights or wisdom on humanity in general – some things he held back and didn’t include in his book(s) and speeches, something he was waiting for just the right moment to reveal and here it is – you and him at dinner.

When picking a figure who is intelligent, wise, creative the question is what is it you think they’re going to tell you that they haven’t already said dozens of times and recorded ad nauseum in any number of publications/recordings? Do you think you have smarter questions than the hordes of journalists do?

Which is when we get to celebrities. Now you are probably getting somewhere. If you pick someone kooky enough you might come out of this 2 hour session with an amusing story to tell your friends. The only point in having dinner with lady gaga is hoping she’ll say or do something entertaining that you can then reminisce about and maybe use to make yourself seem more important at future dinner parties.

So to sum it up, I’d guess from the psych side picking someone upstanding or academic probably indicates you’re a pompous ass. You have enough wherewithal to realize that you should pick an answer that makes you seem deep, but not enough to recognize the inanity of the question. You’ve made the assumption that you are going to learn something at this event that was hitherto unknown, which for most people you’d pick will simply not be the case.

Picking a celebrity probably means you are an attention-whore. You don’t have any illusions about learning anything, you just want the story going forward about the time you had dinner with so-and-so, which you can use to impress your colleagues. You also probably have inflated expectations of what a “celebrity” will be like, and will walk away grossly disappointed when you notice they still have to cut their food with a knife and fork, and that million dollar salaries don’t mean much in a 2 hour dinner conversation. You won’t inherit their lifestyle, much as you would wish to.

There’s only one right answer to this question and I don’t know who exactly it would be but I know the sketch. You need an unsolved mystery that this person can provide the answers to. You don’t go looking for general insight or wisdom – anyone who had this either wrote it down or passed it on orally. You don’t go looking for coolness-by-association (although being the guy who had dinner with Hitler or something would no doubt gain you some notoriety).

I don’t know what mysteries there are that we really care that much about that could be answered by someone – someone who would willingly give the truthful answer. Having dinner with OJ Simpson isn’t going to mean he confesses to murder. There’s no clause in the original question about that person being bound to tell the truth.

Likewise, having dinner with Dany Heatley to ask why he REALLY wanted to get out of Ottawa isn’t going to solve anything. Read the newspapers, I imagine you’ll get the same response unless you’re his close friend – which I doubt you’ll be no matter what happens at dinner.

You could probably solve a murder case by bringing back someone who was killed and asking who killed them, but is this really a great use of a once-in-an-ever opportunity to meet and converse with the past?

Maybe we’d like to know how/why Stonehenge was built (definitively) – of course the original “ancient past” issues of language, custom, culture arise. But assuming those were surmountable you could probably get some kind of answer on this.

Now if you could find someone who we think was abducted by aliens, it could be worth the gamble. They’d have to have disappeared and never returned (otherwise they could just be loony and there are probably lots of accounts of what they said upon their return) and then it’s a huge gamble because maybe they just drowned or got eaten by bears. On the off chance they really were abducted though, you could learn some very significant things – at the minimum that there are ET’s out there and that they know of earth. Hopefully they didn’t just abduct, run some experiments, and kill. If its more of a hitchhikers guide scenario you could learn a lot about life, the universe and everything from someone with intergalactic experience.

Yeah, long shot.

Jesus is probably a decent answer, unless the chair turns up empty. Even if someone shows up, there’s no saying he wasn’t just a medieval swindler who will lie through his teeth as he verifies all of the events you put to him. Remember, there’s no truth-bind behind the event. You can ask him if he can really raise the dead and turn water into wine, but short of a demonstration there’s no way to know if he’s pulling your chain or not. You could walk away with nothing except the knowledge that there was someone named jesus who claims to have done all these things… not exactly the proof scientists have been waiting for.

The bottom line is you’d need to think of someone who knows something we don’t, who would be willing to share the information with you. I think that’s a pretty tall order, and that in the end you’d be able to solve some minor mystery of history – which seems pretty underwhelming given the scope of the opportunity. We ought to be able to do more with such an occasion, I just don’t quite see how.

Coming soon: “if you could have one superpower, what would it be?” and its associated conundrums!

Six "new" poems

2010-04-09T14:11:00.002-06:00

I still get around to writing a couple poems a month. I usually let them sit for a while and then decide whether I like it enough to consider it "good" or not. I keep them all but of the like 300 I've written (over the past 13 years) there's only 30 or so I consider any good. I suppose 1/10 isn't too bad. Razors to the imagination is one of very few I've written that I really like.

Anyways some of the ones I wrote relatively recently:

Thursday, January 28, 2010

To the trees

to the trees we all appear as wicked little blurs
growing to love our neighbours
and loathing greater shades
Grinning in the fall and shiver through the winter
wicked little appetites and
wicked little problems

Tuesday, January 12, 2010

Madness

I had crawled and walked and shambled
to an amber-coloured land
And what expected cliffs and chasms
Came as footsteps in the sand.

I peered and pressed a finger's width
to trace what I believed
The madness in the sand sown prints
The sanity between.

I tasted dirt that clung to me
and whispered me my name
I walked away but wondered
If I left the way I came

Thursday, November 12, 2009

Razors to the imagination

Morning crawls out of my mouth
and spreads its dusty wings

Before the mirror black beard stubble
sticking to the sink
and razors slicing nicely the imagination

Syndicated lips on silver screen face;
a star studded gathering
of lottery winners and triple threats

I have so many faces to blame for this

Father never hit me;
Mother always cared;
Drugs I never did;
Girls I never hurt;

Now it's all empathy acting
And wiping the drool from the morning

I, inside and outside
I, begging the question
I, reality split in so many pieces

Friday, October 30, 2009

We were skeletons

We were skeletons just playing in the dirt
Submerged our pearly whites finally glistening
I strained to reach your hand
to comfort and control
But oh above us
heaven above us
where children played in the dirt
the clouds were like grass and the sun
obscured by so many centipedes
I wanted to see-you feel-you but all my nerves
were frayed and eaten
by the centipedes
I was smiling if you didn't see
My pearly whites were blazing
I reached to hold destroy you and I calcified
there in the dirt
My darling we were skeletons
And my darling we were forever.

Thursday, October 8, 2009

Insect-eye sunglasses

All oversized sunglasses got destroyed
in the fire
I cried.

You won't ever look like an insect to me
again
I said.

Cataracts forming at the corners
of my eyes
I cried.

I can't see your insect face your thousands
and thousands
I said.

Holding on just squeezing breathless
sightless
I cried and cried.

Wednesday, September 16, 2009

Thoughts between smokes (I can't settle on a cigarette related title for this, it changes every few months)

The smokey drift of a would-be beauty
Gripped by the glittering stench of
a subliminal promise

Reality smells so stale
A coughing cinema
clogging the airways,

Fallacies obfuscated by the fog as
teenagers so terrible come to see they are
Only cool by the fire

Look at my addiction
Look at my deviance
Look at me.

Look for more in Fall 2010 ;p

Malleability

2010-03-10T08:48:00.002-06:00

Around age 21 or so I became enamoured with the concept of Anarchy. I was never on the same page as the G8 protestors with their gas masks and Molotov cocktails, and I never believed in any government oppression conspiracy theories. It was more an ideal – that the best situation possible would be one in which people naturally behaved as they ought to, and enforcement of rules would be redundant.

That is, if nobody is murdering or stealing or assaulting there isn’t much use for a legal or prison system. Likewise if people are making logical conclusions on policy issues, there’s no need for a government.

A little pie-in-the-sky to be sure, but if you were going to pick a system to endorse it might as well be the best one possible. I always figured this would be a very long term goal never to be realized in my lifetime. I did however figure that you could set the wheels in motion.

The main case for this utopia as a possibility is the history of civilization (and hell pre-civilization). People have been made to believe some very weird things, and done inspiring and gruesome things based on these beliefs. We had only to condition the human race in a certain way to achieve whatever ends we sought. Thus it was naturally the education system that would be the linchpin of this anarchist vision.

But then I grew up.

I can still see the logic in that old ideal and it’s still perfectly sensible. The problem is experience. There is so much inertia in getting a single person to turn just a quarter inch off their present path, that the ability to radically alter the path of some 6 billion people is virtually impossible. It is far more sensible to accept certain aspects of existing reality, and then try to maneuver within those channels.

Which is to say you don’t have to go very far to see a person who needs and will always need the existence of a government.

Now this isn’t exactly an indictment of humanity, its more a reflection of the variance in experience from person to person.

From what I’ve seen – and seen a lot – very few people are ever moved by reason or logic. In school they called this apathy. Some of us could see every reason for something to happen, yet “the masses” would do nothing. We know fossil fuels will run out. We know burning them pollutes the air. We’re pretty sure it’s causing climate change. Now slowly we’re moving away from their consumption (hybrids are becoming trendy, SUVs a bit of a shameful thing) but at a snail’s pace. The point is very few people are motivated by facts or sound arguments.

This is really my point I guess and I’m sure its nothing especially revealing. Most people are in a certain life path with a specific perspective and while they might be jarred out of that path it is almost inconceivable that logic will be the force that does so. A person could be moved by some kind of emotional experience or revelation, but sound argumentation has virtually no impact on a person’s outlook… unless that outlook is already predicated on a dedication to reason and logic (i.e. my own case).

The odds you will convince either an extreme leftist or conservative to be more moderate is extremely low – never mind actually converting someone from one extreme to the other. They are in their current path because it makes sense to them and is consistent with their life experience. I could call up reams of data showing how various social welfare programs cause more harm than good (or vice versa), but it is almost a certainty that it will have no impact on someone already convinced of their righteousness.

Blah blah blah what’s my point again?

In the past 3 years or so I’ve pretty much completely lost my appetite for arguing because of this. Once in a while I’ll find someone who is level headed enough to have an interesting conversation with. Where we can be opposed on an issue and still intelligent enough to understand other viewpoints, and malleable enough that we could change positions if the logic/reason was really there.

But for the most part there will be times when I see or hear things that are just blatantly obtuse, and I won’t even bother to correct it. Such things are a manifestation of a perspective, and the odds that anything I say will have an impact on that perspective are negligible. I can usually size someone up pretty quickly and assess what the odds are they’ll be moved by reason or logic. Like I said, it’s a rare quality to begin with.

Which can in turn become isolating. Arguing is at the least engaging, declining to even bother means no interaction – no participation. But often engaging someone like this leaves you with nothing to gain. You won’t convince them, you can only piss them off, so why bother?

I guess for me this is just growing up. As a student I loved arguing and not just seeking the truth but forcing it down the throats of anyone I could. If I had a disagreement then we should argue until somebody concludes they were wrong since we both can’t be right. Nowadays the truths I have are just for me, I don’t care what randoms think and I’m more aware of how fruitless arguing with them would be.

For the most part people fail at reason, engaging them on this ground is as likely to be alienating as not engaging them in the first place.

And if that’s all too esoteric to mean anything, just suppose hypothetically that you had to deal with the crazy ex-boyfriend of someone you loved. You knew you couldn’t out-crazy them so you tried to just ignore them, and yet they would go out of their way time and time again to try and suck you into arguments and debates which you know are lose-lose situations. And so you go back to when you would have relished the opportunity to have such a battle of wits and figure out why it is you no longer care, and then because you’re a bit of a narcissist (who isn’t these days) you write those thoughts out and put them on the internet for your friends to consider.

Hypothetically.

On the matter of the Olympics

2010-02-22T09:07:00.001-06:00

There’s something a little strange about the sports/events included in the Olympic games.

The gist of the Olympics is seeing who the best in the world is at a variety of things – generally you could imagine wanting to know who the fastest man and woman are, the strongest too, and then maybe some slots for popular sports like soccer, hockey, football, etc.

What’s strange is the incarnations we have of these basic interests.

We want to see who is the fastest skater… at a bunch of different distances. Now I can see adding the endurance factor – but like, 100m, 200m, 400m, 800m, 1500m, 3000m? Really? Why isn’t there just a sprint and a marathon? Who really cares who the fastest person is at some arbitrary in-between distance?

Luge, Skeleton, and bobsled. Which amount to finding out who the fastest crazy-carpeter is. The thing is – if you’re the greatest luger in the world, you’re the best out of a field of… 50? Does anyone even know anybody who does luge, skeleton or bobsled? It seems like a ridiculously obscure thing to be doing. I can see this could just be the highest incarnation of tobogganing but frankly who cares who the fastest tobogganer is?

Skiing has a bunch of different incarnations. Who is the fastest skier who can go side to side down the hill (I don’t think there’s a “bomb the hill” ski event but I don’t see why not really – this would be the “sprint” of skiing would it not?), who can jump the farthest with skis on, who can go fastest over bumpy ground (moguls), who can do the most gimmicks while airborne while skiing, who can do the most gimmicks while airborne while snonboarding. I don’t know if there’s a “slalom” for snowboarding or not – but if there isn’t, why not?

Ultimately its just that some of these events seem so marginal, or so duplicative that you have to wonder what the point of it all is. What is it that the games are trying to prove through these competitions? I would think its simply determining the “best” – but someone has to define “best at what?” We don’t have an event to see who can hop on one foot the longest, or the fastest in 1 minute, or the highest – why not? Nobody cares.

Now maybe it’s a practical thing. If a city is building these expensive facilities, they need enough events to draw a crowd that will pay admission and cover those expenses. If you just have the bobsled, good luck paying for your track. But if you add 2 man, 4 man, 8 man incarnations, and then skeleton and luge – you just quadrupled or more your admission revenues for the same facility.

I’m not sure for skiing that this works out – just don’t make a “moguls” hill. I’m sure it takes next to nothing to take an existing hill and throw some flags on it and make it slalom (although to be fair moguls is one of the more interesting things to watch – its just completely random as a “sport”), and there’s something to be said for ski jumping as a legit competition (who can jump the farthest is a pretty classic throwdown).

All in all though I think there needs to be either a classic and simple speed/strength/endurance test, or a sport with cultural/popular momentum. A lot of these fringe events just leave me wondering why we would really care who the best at it is.

45 minutes in my brain

2010-01-29T11:07:00.002-06:00

People aren’t thinking seriously enough about how many humans this planet can sustain. I’d toss the figure 2 billion out there – problem being we’re already 6.5 and headed quickly towards 9.

Haiti is the poorest country in the Western Hemisphere with the worst environmental degradation in the world (has lost something to the tune of 96% of its forest cover/topsoil). It has no tourism industry to speak of due to political instability and an economy that’s been in the shitter since independence (prior to that it was a pretty profitable sugar/coffee exporter). Nobody gave a shit about this (most of it is the fault of the Haitians themselves so frankly we shouldn’t care too much), but now that there’s an earthquake it’s a travesty.

See Haitian people on TV clamouring for help – “more” “faster” rather than expressing gratitude. Fuck you.

We place an enormous premium on entertainment. So much so that most of the highest paid professions are entertainers – actors, musicians, athletes. All these people do is entertain us, and we want to be so entertained that we will provide millions and millions of dollars for the best in the business.

The human body is not really designed to go past 40 years or so. At 85+ these bodies require enormous amounts of maintenance.

The government is inspecting food for safety (health Canada) – why do we need organic food if the other stuff has already been approved by the State as suitable for consumption?

Why is there an entire industry built around losing weight and getting in shape when they all say the same thing – exercise and nutrition.

Why are we worried about “body image” in magazines when we’re on the brink of an obesity epidemic? Obesity actually appears in the 2010 list of global risks of the world economic forum.

We’d all be geniuses if it weren’t for our upbringings and mental disorders.

What’s the difference between the seal hunt and industrial farming? Why are PETA assholes dressed up in seal outfits handing out pamphlets to people eating chicken subs and hamburgers? Because it is more humane to cage an animal and then bash its skull and slit its throat in a factory than to bash in the skull of a seal on the tundra?

People who want to travel the world have shitty imaginations.

People who read fantasy books are far less likely to be dangerous than those that don’t. They might have B.O. They might be socially awkward. They probably won’t steal your car or mug you.

Our reference for normal is ourselves.

You will never see a sustainable civilization so long as the majority of people want things.

Imagine if the sun was taken away. By the time we noticed everything would be frozen.

What are the odds we will see a war involving conscription ever again, given the state of military technology.

What does my dog think of me?

How long before all media is digital and online? I can only imagine that “channels” of television will give way to buy-what-you-want online versions, and that paper magazines, newspapers, and books will give way to strictly digital formats. How will our eyes adjust to so much time looking at light bulbs?

What happens when the oil runs out?

They say don’t take life for granted but you have to. Otherwise you’re paralyzed by guilt or awe.

If I live every day like it’s my last how will I pay my rent?

When I cancelled my membership with Goodlife I had to fill out a form telling them how I would continue to meet my fitness goals. Goodlife cares about me.

Everything in your life beyond the basic necessities is a construct. You are applying meaning to events, people, relationships. You are inventing every significant thing that happens to you and permitting it to sculpt your outlook.

Oprah cannot help you.

Self-help books cannot help you.

Most people do not need therapy, they need self-awareness and perspective.

Teachers, as we see them now are obsolete. Unless a teacher is tailoring their teachings to the specific, individual needs of students they are a glorified powerpoint presentation.

Google made university obsolete.

Despite sex being around for thousands of years, cosmo still finds new things out every week.

Despite abdominal muscles being around for thousands of years, men’s health finds new things out about them every week.

Any joke in which the punchline is sex is funny. Sex is so taboo that it’s hilarious.

Most card and board games suffer from the weakness of insufficient strategic choice and/or excessive reliance on luck. Sports are the best option to mitigate this.

If it weren’t for television and fabricated drama, most people would have nothing to talk about.

I hate fabricated drama.

I don’t particularly like television.

You should write a poem and reply to this with it.

Poems don’t require any skill, just an appropriate level of randomization. Too much and its crap, too little and its crap.

I actually kind of like cats and if I wasn’t allergic to them I’d probably get one.

I think a normal family is mom, dad, 3 kids, a cat and a dog.

I should watch the neverending story, I can’t remember what it was about.

I should read CS Lewis books. I can’t remember what they were about.

The slap-chop probably isn’t a useful item to own.

Anything purporting to remove toxins from your body probably does nothing at all.

This is pretty much how my brain works.

Learning and focusing

2010-01-04T15:42:00.002-06:00

Sometimes you turn 28 and things don’t look like they did when you were 22, and they certainly don’t look like they did when you were 18. Did I become my apathy and complacency? Or did I learn?

I had a lot of anger and hope when I was 18 and 22 and even 24, but it gradually levelled out until there wasn’t a great deal of either – there was no need for either. What you learn when you push around the edges enough: that the only thing worth knowing is that there is nothing worth knowing.

You get this perspective, like everything is just a little bit overdramatized and ironic. Like we could not be any more inconsequential. When I say this I see Mrs. Jackson telling me to stand against the wall at recess. I am laughing at the absurdity of the situation. I am 14 years old and this public school authority figure is a straw man to me, the rules I have supposedly broken are nothing. She says “everything is such a big joke to you isn’t it?” and I am laughing at her. For a while, I feel like The Comedian.

I am trying to be grateful. When I turn the hot water shower on and go to bed in the heated apartment with cotton sheets. I think sometimes of not having these things, these luxuries. I watch the cars and the road networks go by and I think of not having any of it. I think of predators. I think of subsistence. I realize I am in no position to criticize modern technology and modern luxury for I am entirely reliant on it. I would not be a survivor in the state of nature, I would be the genes that do not ever replicate their weaknesses.

Sometimes there are people saying and doing things so rotten and despicable that I grit my teeth. I can’t change them. Nobody can change them. This is their perspective and the best we can do is manage it. When I see the greed, the selfishness, the gossiping, the lies, the injustice, the cruelty and manipulation – from the tiniest specs to the atrocities I think we should end. I think sometimes there is not enough good to be done to make up for all our miserable behaviours.

And then I try to be grateful again. I try to think of the aqueducts and railroads and medicine. I think of hockey games and skate blades and hot chocolate. Christmas trees beaches high school crushes basketball games comic books dragons and love. Dogs. I try to simplify it all into manageable chunks. Make my life something less than some carbon in an unforgiving universe.

I think about what I did. When I started losing touch – losing focus. When I was afraid of what I could become. When I asked them to scratch some words on my arms so I wouldn’t forget those things. When it reverberated and I said this is my identity, this is my resonance. I never asked them to write love. I never asked them to write anger or hope. I wasn’t 18. I wasn’t 22. I wasn’t even 24. But I was trying to cure a fear of forever and I was trying to cure a fear of losing touch.

I’m trying to live in too many times. I’m trying to remember what it felt like being 14. I’m trying to remember people I loved but don’t love anymore. I’m trying to remember Mike Ash and how I hated him as a kid and came to mildly befriend him in the high school band, and why I cried like a goddamn baby for days when he died. I’m trying to remember what it felt like winning the basketball championship and all I see are Ms. Steele and Tyler Kimberly running onto the floor when the buzzer sounded. I’m trying to remember looking across the court and seeing my dad in the crowd. I can’t call up any of these old feelings. Memories don’t replicate the feelings. It’s just not the same.

But it’s worse. It’s beyond me. I’m trying to see what the world will look like in 20, 50, 100 years. I’m looking back to see what did we do. What was it like before civilization, what was it like being a serf. I read these books and think of how the cities must have stank with all the horse shit in them. How people died from minor medical problems. How the first nations looked before the smokestacks started going up. I’m trying to tie all of history together and put myself into it and it isn’t working. I’m only here now and if the memories don’t replicate the feelings what good is a history I never even lived?

And then I’m becoming. All these scattered me’s of the past and future are getting tired and going home to the present. And I am so fucking ungrateful for everything I have when they come back into the door, and kick their snowy muddy shoes off in the front foyer. They walk in and ask what’s for dinner and grumble about how they don’t much care for peas and corn. All the futures and pasts disappear into this the present and we only see our own little drama. Our own dislike of peas and corn. Our own squabbles over how we all slighted each other with our off-the-cuff remarks. Like 2 year olds we don’t really even remember why we’re mad, we just know that we are.

And in this present I focus when I can. There’s this woman listening to my heartbeat and telling me it’s there, and there are some children running around waiting to be the future. There are dogs excited to see this me when I come home and I get a hug and a kiss and I ask what’s for dinner and she says shepherd’s pie. The dogs are excited and running around and the kids are excited and running around and I realize I actually like peas and corn when we sit down to eat. And when I focus on this I am grateful. I am grateful that the other futures never came to be and I am grateful that the suffering of the past was worth something.

Fuck intellectualism

2009-10-30T15:25:00.003-06:00

Sometimes I reflect on university, or I see someone prattling about something social-science related, and it makes me feel a great deal of rage towards "intellectualism".

The smoke and mirrors of intellectualism are twofold. First you invent a vocabulary that is inaccessible to the untrained (“big school words” to replace “normal people words” as Ricky would say in TPB). Second, you surround yourself with others who like using inaccessible words to sound smart in order to reinforce your freshly fabricated reality.

I distinctly remember a first year course reading a book by professor Gilles Pacquet, and having not the foggiest clue what any of the chapters were about. They were talking about “wicked problems” and solving these with “meso forums”. In the end I suspect his point - which is a mainstay of all kinds of theorists, conclusions, writers etc - is that people should communicate more effectively. Was the mesoforum really necessary? nope.

But that's the thing... it isn’t cool as an intellectual to make your thinking accessible. See Foucault, Neitzsche, Gramsci and pretty much anyone else they ask you to read in political science (Michael Walzer notwithstanding) for further examples of inaccessible and unnecessarily convoluted writing.

Let me take the first quote from Foucault that I find when I google his name:

“Panopticism is one of the characteristic traits of our society. It's a type of power that is applied to individuals in the form of continuous individual supervision, in the form of control, punishment and compensation, and in the form of correction, that is, the molding and transformation of individuals in terms of certain norms. This threefold aspect of panopticism - supervision, control, correction - seems to be a fundamental and characteristic dimension of the power relations that exist in our society.”

What does this say in normal people words?

People are always being supervised.

Firstly, I wouldn’t go so far as to say “always”, but otherwise no shit? We call this law and order in most places. The alternative would be? No supervision? No police? No authority?

But if you’re a university student this is some of the most amazing clever stuff you’ve ever seen. PANOPTICISM! WOW! “The molding and transformation of individuals in terms of certain norms” WOW! It’s like we’re being controlled to behave a certain way! Holy shit! It’s almost like there’s some kind of supreme body that makes like… rules or something… and then we have to follow those rules… and like if we do we do okay but if we don’t we get punished… it’s so deep.

Which is to say “intellectualism” is (lets say 9 times out of 10) nothing more than dressing common sense up with inaccessible and confusing language.

Because you can’t get grants or a lecture circuit for saying that society involves a government that makes and enforces rules (policies, laws) that become norms of behaviour (unless everyone wants to sit in jail). But if you say PANOPTICISM... well now you’re cookin.

Warren Kinsella is a turd

2009-09-27T20:39:00.003-06:00

Watching CTV newsnet with a feature between the strategists (?) for the liberals, NDP, and conservatives.

Ok Tim Powers is on for the Tories. Usually tim isn't too bad when I see him. He's certainly a million times better than ezra the worst guest in the universe levant. For the libs its warren kinsella. For some reason I was under the impression this person was an intellectual of some sorts - ENNNNNNTTTT try again. This guy is the biggest douche on the TV. For the NDP some guy who's name I forget (sigh, tis the fate of NDP) but he's a 1 trick pony too.

Now part of this is that these 3 people aren't that bright (well, I don't think I could really say that about tim powers he seems smart enough), but part of it is just stupid fucking politics.

The liberal kinsella has 1 role here. To accuse the NDP of "propping up the tories" or "being in bed with the tories" or whatever else he can come up with. It's as ridiculous and disingenious as when the conservatives were accusing the liberals (are they still?) of "being in bed with the socialists and the separatists". Like I don't need to be a historian to tell you that in the history of minority governments in this country each party has supported that minority at some point or another. So technically everyone's in bed with everyone else? hmmm.

The NDP dude is like "we want to get $1B to unemployed workers" and just repeats that pretty much for the whole interview. It's not a terrible line to use but to just repeat it over and over again is boring.

But then yeah, Kinsella actually starts saying "blah blah blah" when one of the other guys is speaking. Seriously? Is this grade 2? He's the ezra levant of the libs I guess. He then responds to one question by saying he doesn't like either of the other guests very much (Tim or NDPer). Really? No professional courtesy?

What a turd.

Some quick thoughts on politics right now in this country:

1. Elizabeth May sold out the greens. Way to become NDP2 and welcome to failure. Get your 1 seat and become a footnote to history, yay!

2. Why does stephen harper have to be at any conference to listen to someone's speech? They invented this thing called a tape recorder, it rules.

3. When spending money as government, its either too slow or else it is unaccountable. In either case opposition will claim it should be fast and accountable as though red tape doesn't add any delay... durr durr.

4. All cooperation is terrible for politics. You cannot ever say anybody else is doing anything good for the country because you will be in bed with them and you wouldn't want to seem promiscuous.

5. All politics shows should be cancelled immediately since they are completely devoid of content.

6. More money should be spent on donut innovation as this is what truly matters to Canadians (I remember a time without timbits). Frankly Timmies quality on donuts has been spiralling down for years so something's gotta change.

The biology of spirit – a question of responsibility

2009-09-25T11:49:00.002-06:00

I figure I probably suffer from at least three undiagnosed mental disorders. At the rate things are going, by the time I’m thirty-five that number will probably rise to ten or so. I figure it is only a matter of time before all unpleasant thoughts are clinical. Depending on how things shape up at that point, we might start diagnosing the good ones too. Clinical happiness – tragic.

People used to be stupid, or bad, or crazy. Now they have attention deficit disorders and obedience defiance disorders. Separating the individual from their brain chemistry, ingenious, except that this is all we ultimately are. Every thought I have, every trigger for every action, is my brain chemistry. If I am not these chemical reactions what am I?

I have a bad memory, I have trouble focusing, I have sometimes depressing thoughts about life, the universe, and everything. Is this me or is this just my brain chemistry? Maybe underneath these “problems” lies my perfect self, the one uncompromised by the erroneous inflections in my deoxyribonucleic acid. I never liked any discipline that connects behaviour to chemistry/biology. Not because it isn’t a valid discipline that produces results, but because of what it means. If behaviour becomes chemistry it displaces responsibility and we become victims of our own brains rather than being those brains.

The paradox and irony is how I view civilization and environment by comparison. In this I loathe the idea of human exceptionalism. I feel like by thinking we’re somehow more than our biology and ecological niche we are justifying living beyond our means. It’s a perspective I’d imagine most true environmentalists come around to eventually. Until you get that the human race is a flash in the evolutionary pan, and that we are an animal amongst animals, dependent on the same basic conditions for life as most other species, it is way too easy to displace yourself from the natural environment; to think only in terms of Oprah and cars and paychecks.

It strikes me as somewhat illogical to do this. To say on one hand, we are something more than chemical reactions and on the other that we are nothing more than a brief moment in evolution of no greater significance than an ant or a walrus. The only common thread I can see in these otherwise opposite stances is the emphasis on responsibility. That in the former case we cannot accept chemical explanations because they free us from responsibility for our social behaviour, and in the latter that we cannot believe ourselves something outside of nature because it frees us from responsibility for our environmental behaviour.

I know this was always my biggest beef with hippies and socialists – the displacement of responsibility. Whatever you don’t have or whatever isn’t working is capitalism’s fault. My favourite comparison is native communities to Amish communities. The Amish (or is it Mennonites?) don’t get $100K per capita per year in state support, yet they somehow manage to cultivate land, pay property taxes, and live a traditional lifestyle. So they prove it is completely feasible to do so if one is willing to put one’s shoulder to the wheel. Then, these people don’t have the luxury of passing the buck and blaming history or another civilization for stealing from them so there is less inertia towards putting said shoulder to said wheel.

Then it is likely that my predisposition towards individual responsibility is a mental disorder. Some chemicals what didn’t form properly in my cerebral cavity churning out these thoughts. So technically its not my fault I think this, its just my brain chemistry (or perhaps society).

Discrimination makes me sick!

2009-09-02T14:45:00.002-06:00

The City tried to restrict student bus passes to students under the age of 28. Students cried foul. See, in the scope of $5000/year tuition, $20/month is big dollars. Plus its discrimination to say old people aren’t students like young people are – its fucking agism man.

But wait… what’s the point of a student rate? Doesn’t it insinuate that by virtue of being a student you must be impoverished? Isn’t that a stereotype that we should seek to quash? I mean how would you feel if everyone just assumed you were poor and needed discounts and coupons because you were in school? What the hell does wanting to be educated have to do with being poor???

Student discounts are the real discrimination. High handed society looking down at people who just want to be educated, calling us poor and declaring that we can’t afford to pay regular prices for things like everyone else. It makes me sick. Down with second-class citizens! Down with student discounts! Who’s with me! Students of the world unite!

On an unrelated/related note:

Financial advisor (and lots of other people): But with RRSPs you pay less tax!
Me: uh, I kind of like roads and buses and clean water and schools, I’m down with paying taxes.
Financial advisor (and lots of other people): buh?

Myth and modernity

2009-08-24T13:06:00.002-06:00

Last weekend we went to see the mythic creatures exhibit at the museum of civilization, as part of the mythic bash event. What was most interesting was to see and reflect on the myths over time that once seemed like truth but have long since been debunked.

It kind of correlates to this melancholy I feel sometimes about modern time. There aren’t really any mysteries left on this planet. It’s all been looked at, explored, categorized, analyzed, and recorded. We know what rainbows are, and that there is nothing special at either end of them. We know those bones are from elephants, not giants. We know there are giant squids, not krakens. We even know how and when our sun will die, and of meteors and ice ages likely to come long before that happens.

There are no monsters lurking in the woods, only animals whose habits and life cycles – even psychology, we fully understand. There are no spirits bringing us good harvests or fertility; there are only toxins and atmospheric events. No gods cast into the sky in the form of constellations – only balls of burning hydrogen light years away, haphazardly strung around us.

In short, everything has been explained and there is no fantastic, no magic. Does that matter? Is it better or worse than the alternative? Should we remain ignorant and believe in faeries and goblins? That earthquakes happen because Poseidon is displeased?

The consequence of all this accumulated knowledge is that nothing really seems marvellous anymore. It is all perfectly explicable and rather easy to understand. From chemistry to biology to physics and astronomy – we know and understand what is out there.

The only way around this feeling is to consider the human mind as limited. That there are more things around us than we are capable of perceiving – that there are senses beyond the ones we have and know about, equations that our brains can’t even fathom. A version of this gets used in science fiction, although its usually harnessed as something we can in fact understand, we’re just presently unaware of it: In hichhiker’s guide to the galaxy where we find out the mice are running the earth, and the earth is a supercomputer, and that it’s in the way of an interstellar bypass. In H.P. lovecraft’s call of cthulu, when we learn of the “ancient ones” who slumber in the depths of the ocean, just waiting for the right celestial alignment to return, and that we are an inconsequential blip during their sleep. In The Eternity Artifact where a race of aliens create another universe and move their galaxy to it – using a technology we can never understand and can never replicate.

When we start to think about this though – that all manner of things may not be as they seem, that there are explanations and occurrences just beyond the periphery of our senses, what are we supposed to do about it? The whole point of it is that it’s beyond our ability to sense and/or comprehend, so does it matter if it exists? How do you pull amazement or wonder out of this hypothesis? There may very well be new unexplored unknown frontiers beyond our understanding of sight, sound, taste, touch and smell – but as we have no way to experience them, who cares?

I remember my high school science teacher telling us the big bang theory, and saying that it is perfectly plausible that one day people will look back at it as a quaint explanation but completely and utterly wrong. Is that what all myths are like? How much of what we understand and believe right now will be debunked in the future – what are our unicorns and dragons? Is it simply impossible for us to know?

Whatever they may be, I can only say that from my perspective they seem far less incredible or mysterious than the myths of ages past.

A comprehensive poverty reduction plan

2009-07-31T11:33:00.000-06:00

Lower people’s expectations.

That’s it.

When I was in school I figured at one point I was living relatively comfortably for under $10,000 a year.

Shelter (Rent): $367/month (2 roommates in shit apartment aka guigues palace)
Food: ~$200/month (I ate a lot of sidekicks and toast).
Water: $0/month (included in rent)
Transport: $0/month (work/school within walking distance – in the market)
Bills (entertainment/luxury): ~$35/month (basic cable + internet + home phone split 3 ways)
Clothes: ~$0 (that’s what birthdays and value village are for)

Approx $600/month x 12 = $7200/year.

Get job at $8/hr = 900 hrs of work per year to cover expenses = 17 hours of work per week. That’s like what… 4 shifts at the pita-pit?

The reason there is “poverty” in this country is because people feel entitled to more than a shitty apartment shared with others and a diet of pasta and bread.

And frankly the only way to “end poverty” is with my plan. All others will fail because whoever is poorest will always claim to be living in comparative squalor. Our “poor” have more amenities than a lot of “wealthy” people in human history (i.e. medical care, basic sanitation, affordable housing, free education, cheap abundant food, and cheap abundant energy); we just don’t know how to appreciate shit.

Game theory

2009-07-29T11:13:00.002-06:00

A good chunk of life is figuring out what to do with your spare time. There are enormous service/entertainment industries that exist solely to help you make these decisions. Movies, music, trips, sports, television, restaurants, etc are all there because we have surplus free time and disposable income.

For my part, I spend a good chunk of my spare time on games and sports. Over the years I’ve started to figure out what I think makes a good game and what I simply don’t find fun. Generally speaking there should be an element of skill, an element of socialization, a high element of participation, and ideally an element of creativity. A small amount of luck is okay, but it doesn’t take much before luck starts trumping the other things I look for. There are also lots of other things that can make an otherwise good game turn to garbage. This isn’t to say bad games can’t be fun, it is to say that since all of these games can be fun it makes sense to play the ones that are a better package and avoid the ones that have serious downsides.

Broadly speaking I tend to get frustrated with video games and board games because of the skill ceilings – in sports you can always get better and at least you’re getting exercise. In most board/card/video games there comes a point where you’ve pretty much “figured it out” and there’s nothing “new” and not much more you can do to get better. Granted all games are repetitive by their nature, but there should be adequate variation from game to game so that it doesn’t become completely predictable.

One game I practically refuse to play is poker. The reason is that in my experience if you play for low stakes (i.e. $5) nobody cares enough to play “properly”. That is, you can’t bluff because people will just stay in anyways since they don’t care that much about $5. So the game is strictly making half-assed decisions about probability. Your “skill” would just be counting the cards somehow and figuring the odds that your hand would be the best based on the cards you’ve seen and how others have behaved. Without the ability to bluff, this is boring. You just sit and wait around until you get a good hand, then go to the wire and hope for the best. On the other hand if the stakes were high enough to care the game would be too stressful and thus not fun for other reasons. I have both won and lost games on retarded hands that no real player would have kept playing with, so I know that the ability to “read” people is virtually zero at my level of play.

A good card game, by comparison, is magic: the gathering. Magic lets you be creative in how you design your deck, requires skill in playing properly and not missing opportunities, a small element of luck in guessing your opponent’s likely responses and drawing randomly from your deck. The only problems with magic are how nerdy it is, and how expensive it can be. However, with a good playgroup and a format that limits the cards you play with, this game is second-to-none in my opinion. I would however never play competitively, because of the amount of pungent B.O. and sheer dorkdom coupled with the outrageous costs and rapid decline in creativity as you get more competitive (desire to win trumping all else means everyone plays the same handful of cards for consistency).

A horrible board game is Risk. There is zero skill involved in terms of strategy. You are at the mercy of dice rolls and the number of people around the table you can convince to do what you need them to. Whoever brought more friends wins. All the monopoly-type games fall under the same skill-less rubric. I was recently introduced to the genre of strategy board games and have seen some pretty neat things there. They all tend to be strictly inferior to magic overall, but are easier (and somewhat less dorky) to pick up for a new player. I really like the game Citadels – but as it requires four to six players, I think I’ve used my cards to play once in all the time I’ve had them. Another neat game is Shadows over Camelot – a co-operative game that is simple enough for new players to get, but has enough variation to be interesting for veteran players too. It also allows up to 8 players and again, it’s a team game so it gets high marks on the social side.

On the video game side of things, I lost my interest in console games around the age of 13. Once they invented the internet, and someone figured out how to make games you could play online with others and have persistent characters I was sold. No more Thunder Blade or John Madden football for me. Nowadays it seems the console is basically a computer with an internet connection tho (ie x-box live) so I could see myself revisiting this at some point.

In terms of computer games I, like many nerds, spent way too much of my life playing world of warcraft (like… 50+ hrs a week for 3 years?). The limit of this game and its genre is that eventually you realize how low the skill ceiling really is and once you’ve hit it you’re on a treadmill without the physical benefits of an actual treadmill. There are a lot of terrible players out there who can trick you into thinking you’re good at the game and I suppose by comparison you are, but for an intelligent player it really doesn’t take long before you plateau and from that point on there’s really nothing new; you’re just an addict getting his fix. It’s hard to argue that its really fun going through the identical motions over and over again. For me, about half way through it was strictly the people I played with that kept me playing – if nothing else WoW has a really strong social (albeit virtual) pull.

Currently I’m dabbling in a game called heroes of newerth. It’s apparently an update/remake of this old warcraft 3 map called Day of the Ancients. It’s being done by S2 games who made Savage, my favourite FPS. While at first glance HoN is terrible, its growing on me and I can totally see the addictiveness of it. I can see that at some point I’ll hit the skill ceiling just like WoW, but until I get there its still got novelty to it. It also doesn’t require 50 hrs a week to be “competitive”. You can jump in for an hour-or-so game whenever you have the time, if you don’t play for a month you don’t fall behind or anything.

In sports there are two that jump to mind as being absolute shit. The first is flag football, the second is baseball. In football each play involves 2 people out of however many are on the field – the QB and the receiver/runner. There is no blocking in flag football, so everyone else is doing nothing (ok technically you could lateral pass but honestly?). Grabbing at flags is a bitch because you have to be cautious enough not to slap someone in the nuts or grab their ass, but aggressive enough that they don’t just blow by you. Same for the potato throws where you get 3+ people under the ball… do you be aggressive and knock someone on their ass for an interception? Or do you just let them catch it? Football requires a level of physical play and aggressiveness that simply can’t exist in the flag version. Needless to say, I wouldn’t play tackle so its like poker – the “stakes” required to make the game work put it outside my comfort zone. Baseball suffers from the same affliction as a “sport” where most people are doing nothing most of the time. At any given time roughly half the players are just sitting on their asses. It’s a lazy sport and not highly participatory. It is however pretty social so its got that going for it. Definite appeal for a weekend with non-athletes and copious amounts of beer.

Two sports I’d say work well are tennis and basketball. Tennis is great because it only requires 1 person to play with. Most sports you have to play organized at a set time in a league just because of how many people it requires to play. Tennis is a decent workout, not too difficult to pick up, and strategic insofar as you’re trying to place the ball to get your opponent to move around and get out of position. As its only 2 players you’re always involved.

Basketball has to be compared to volleyball. I love volleyball, but it is too easy for bad players to ruin your game. Basketball doesn’t suffer from this. You can just not pass it to the bad player, and assign them the other team’s bad player to guard. Now if that bad opponent is still a lot better, the other team could exploit it but usually they don’t (dude… it’s rec). Basketball is a way better workout than volleyball, and similar in terms of participation of all players. It’s easier to involve everyone in basketball by passing it around, than it is in volleyball where it’s really up to the setter to spread the sets around and the rest is just dependant on where the ball comes over the net. Skill wise it’s a lot easier to do a layup and some rudimentary dribbling than it is to bump or spike properly.

To summarize:

Magic > Poker
Citadels/Shadows over Camelot > Risk/Monopoly
Online video games > Console games (although they are becoming the same)
Tennis/basketball > flag football/baseball

Reasons generally being that the former has more skill involved and/or is more participatory than the latter.

Fierce Light: When hippy meets fallacy

2009-07-22T15:01:00.002-06:00

Last week I went and saw a movie at the bytowne called Fierce Light: where spirit meets action. The bytowne doesn’t have its little blurb up anymore, but it made it sound like this documentary would be about why some protests succeed and others fail.

Instead it was a bunch of hippy-biased crap. It tries to be inspirational or motivational, but fails completely and utterly. I almost cried when the girl who sat in a tree for 2 years came down, only because I momentarily forgot how stupid her situation was. In strict isolation, the grief/elation of that moment was really quite something – in context it was pretty dumb.

The movie opens with the director’s friend getting shot at protests in Mexico. Then we see how the director is “heroically” carrying the torch – staying to film the events when all other filmmakers have left. Yes, brandishing your camera like a talisman or shield against the hordes of evil, you mr. director are HEROIC. Way to stay behind and film some Mexicans, the world would not be the same without you. Oh but we’re not supposed to criticize because the whole thing is in memory to someone who died. Fuck off.

The whole movie is like that. Lopsided emotional arguments used as precursors to vilify some and justify others. Like come on man, these protestors are protesting for Love and Peace – anyone who doesn’t give them what they want is clearly evil. Amongst the grossest misuses of logic is the story of an urban garden/farm established in LA and how the heroic protestors stand against helicopters and bulldozers who want to destroy the farm and put some building or other in its place.

I mean this farm (presumably financed by taxpayers/city) is home to some low income folks – it’s their livelihood! No cost should be spared to allow them to live there and grow corn… in downtown LA…. But the kicker is they raise SIXTEEN MILLION DOLLARS in order to try and save it. At this point I had to ask, has it occurred to these ‘tards that they could go to a rural area and buy a shittonne more than 2 blocks of land and have a productive, economically viable farming operation? “But this is our home!” But you don’t pay for it? “no but we grow peppers” ok. Mercifully after they bulldozed the 2 blocks of corn and peppers, someone as smart as me informed the people that they could do exactly as I suggested and they did it. Wow, that was really worth protesting wasn’t it? I am inspired.

The undertone of the film is some kind of crap about spirit that is not well thought out at all. Somehow spirit and protest are unified? Ok. Pretty much all the insight (if you can call it that) is cliché and ridiculous. Which is to say this film is terrible on all accounts.

What I took from it though, which I pretty much already knew anyways, was that altruism is really rare. Whenever you see people protesting anything, count the # of people out there who will be inconvenienced in any way, shape, or form by whatever it is their asking for. I’d be surprised if you even find 1. How hard is it to always endorse things that have zero negative impact on you? Not very. These people want to be inspirational? Heroes? Give me a break. When I see people arguing for things that will hurt them but be better in the overall/abstract, I’ll be impressed.

Movies like fierce light should try explaining the actual details of issues so the audience can decide if the cause is just or not. If we’re just supposed to be moved by the fact someone is willing to come out and complain, then my how far we’ve fallen in our standards for inspiration.

Actually, if all the lefty/hippies out there did that that’d be nice too.

Stuck inside the head

2009-07-06T10:29:00.002-06:00

I think we’re all living in two realities. One that is factual-objective, and one that takes place wholly inside our own heads.

The former isn’t especially interesting. It’s the space in which lots of things happen, and we can agree that they have happened. These are the indisputable facts – alarm going off, shower turning on, toast popping up, bus arriving, getting sick, getting better, walking, speaking and laughing; on and on all the things that we can verify “objectively” as having taken place.

In this reality there are lies of the blatant type. Denying things that have objectively happened, and creating things that objectively did not happen. It rained yesterday in Gloucester. I did not sleep last night. I have a corvette. I am the President of the United States. Falsifiable claims that I don’t like at all. Reason is really strong here and I like that.

The other reality is frightening. It’s frightening because there’s no consistency, it’s entirely fabricated from individual to individual and it dominates most of the human experience. This is the reality where we interpret things and assign value to them. This is where we argue most. This is where no matter how smart and convinced we are there’s no way to bring anyone else along for the ride. This is where you realize you are trapped inside your own head.

All of our values and beliefs – our codes of ethics – are derived from what we make of the facts we see in objective reality. 5 of us can see the same thing and yet none of us will make the same interpretation of its significance.

Communication is a dirty bitch. When trying to convey this perspective to that perspective. When calling idiot ignoramus. When pleading morality. Whenever asking why. Trying desperately to get out of our own heads and connect to someone else – to resonate. You can walk a mile in my shoes and all you’ll get is sore feet blisters. What I see trivial you see significant. What you see baggage I see beautiful. What you see fun I see death. What I laugh hysterical you don’t find funny.

I used to feel this way about international politics. I can be a Canadian criticizing China’s policy, telling them how to behave tsk tsk China bad human rights. But, I’m not China. I’m Canada judging and projecting me into China. I don’t know what its like to be China – maybe it has to be that way? Maybe I’m ethnocentric? Who says I’m right and even if I am why am I projecting it crusade?

Now I wonder if this is everything all of the time. Remembering breaking up with high school girlfriend. Conceding that just because I don’t like pickup trucks and bar fights on the weekend that it doesn’t mean liking it is wrong – just different. Still calling it shallow though, still at least that self-righteous. Now losing my appetite to argue because of this. Over a year in love and ending back where we began. Then 4 years then 2 months always the same. We trapped inside our own heads. We not budging even when we pretend we did. Me structured life thesis with full paper of introduction body conclusion and good arguments submitting it for a big fat A+ and smiling agreeing but nobody else changing. All the lovers I wanted to connect with but didn’t, stuck inside our own heads.

Now me with whiskey. Me making a mockery of all airplanes and trips. Laughing because I am not Jacqui, Jason, Alanna, Max, Matt or Heather. Laughing judging. Haha. We stuck in our heads, we communicating righteously repartee. Juxtaposing the trivial to the significant – change the head and flip the two. Some cares some doesn’t. Some wants green peace some doesn’t care. Some wants god some doesn’t like him. Some can’t talk about some things because too painful personal. Some swears madly on personal too close-to-home criticism. Some is quiet reflective. Some is can’t remember first love. Some is drunk some is not. All stuck in our heads making what we make of things. All agreeing to the facts tho, always all agreeing to google the facts.

That's what I was thinking about anyways.

A couple of poems

2009-06-28T19:33:00.003-06:00

I've got a bunch of unfinished songs, one sort-of-nearly-ok-enough-to-call-done, but I think my musical muse is asking for a sabbatical. On the upside, poems are so much frigging easier to write than songs. Wrote these 3 over the past week or so:

Road Trip

Tell me friend where have you been?
No surface scratches on the brain
And no anemic clotless bleeding,
Tell me friend where have you been.

Saving all the starving locals?
Ribcage to the gallon turned
Dimensions one and two despair
The third is best I must concur

Seeing smiling happy natives?
Touring touring turning filth
From underneath the welcome mat
Malaria has made me ill

Swinging singing great escape?
Happy distance shit machine
Tell me have you been to Thailand?
There's a place you need to see.

Tell me friend how have you been?
Manners! Manners! By the lord
Clawing bleeding uncontrolled
In Thailand I misplaced my soul

------

Expectations come in packs of twelve

Unintended innocence
the consequence
of unrequited teenage love.
Then touching lightly groping
too much too soon too late
Every breath in ecstasy
til gasping choking racking coughs
a stack of unused condoms
staring back I told you so
from drawers of devastation.
Drawers that measure years across.

---

Resonance

Are we resonating
Or is this just an earthquake?
Trembling or just shaking
We don't need to resonate
And down we go tumbling
Holding hands.
Shaking loose connections
Separating frequent lips
Resonance is gone
I guess we had it wrong.

The Notebook - Part 2

2009-06-19T22:03:00.001-06:00

A few musings/story concepts from over the past year or so.

---

Walking down the crowded street with cars rumbling by; alien and despairing because of it. Mild headache transitions to time travel (of a sort).

In an instant the etch-a-sketch is shaken and redrawn by magic. Cars and roads gone, fixed with black and white world of horse and buggy. A simpler time, a better time. Towers out, shops in. Gentlemen and ladies, cholera and pneumonia. It only lasts a few seconds, then someone slams the TV set bringing the channel back – black and white static out, colourful commercial in.

---

She holds his hand and he squeezes back in an attempt to be reassuring. Two minds racing where hearts should be exploding. Committing the act was the easy part. This awkward aftermath neither asked for nor could have been predicted. She wonders what will happen – if she said the words. He breathes uncomfortably secretly hoping she won’t. Fucking is easy, loving is hard. He puts an arm around her protectively and kisses the nape of her neck, his caveat white flag fluttering line “I care about you”. She is torn in two for while it is something it is not what she had hoped for – the words are all wrong in this moment of time. She’s strong and experienced in this abuse, so she won’t cry – not now. He thinks he’s saved the day, preserving his virginity and innocence – fucking is easy, loving is hard. He figured it out before it was too late – saying I love you is the real loss of virginity. He’s not prepared to be jaded yet, and protects his innocence with vigilance that would be the envy of old Roman sentries.

---

The hound lets out a low growl, raising its head in time with its upper lip, baring yellow teeth. The man looks up from his plate of sparse nourishment, eyes locking with a wife he thinks he loved more before the waves of destitution. She looks afraid, although he can’t imagine why. He wipes his mouth and stands, clucking the dog to his side. “Come on boy”. The woman has a fear and a sickness in her eyes, concealing the resignation that ought to suppress them both. She takes the half-finished meals and rests them on the barely-warm stove top, coals dying beneath. No wilted dying flower or mere housewife, she ascends to the second floor of the dwelling, sliding the rifle out from under the bed – already loaded. She sits on the bed and waits.

The man and the dog walk calmly out the door – the man more so than the dog, who is only feigning calmness out of the strictly conditioned obedience that rails against instinct. The man cradles a pump shotgun in his right arm while the hound plods along his left. He fills the chamber with precious shells and sends one into the action. “Seek” he commands. The hound rips of to the west and the makeshift farmer follows resignedly, as his wife watches and moves to the west-facing window.

The man does not look forward to what comes next, but it is a necessity in such a harsh life. All the great poets and philosophers fall by the wayside when people are starving. There’s still plenty of light in the sky, making the fated accounting easier.

From her higher vantage point the woman spots the target before her husband below. She can see two, but her gut and experience tells her there’s at least one more. She feels the warm breeze and permits herself a smile – not all good things have come to an end; just most. She draws a bead on the smallest of the killers and waits. The closest hunter must shoot first for maximum effectiveness – another fact learned painfully from experience.

The man pulls up by the row of corn, hidden behind the stalks. The dog faces northwest. He worries momentarily – not about the killers ahead, but of the crops. There should be enough, but every time this happens he worries. He wishes briefly that the killers would learn and leave them alone, but some starving people never do.

Stepping through the corn stalks he raises the shotgun and fires chest level at a horridly thin man. The sprayed shells play red speckles across his chest and he gasps, a basket of stolen or would-be-stolen corn ears spilling to the ground. The woman barely has time to turn, never mind protest as a loud crunch sounds and the younger girl – perhaps thirteen, has her head erupt from the wife’s rifle shot. The man pumps the shotgun once and unloads the second round chest level again into the thieving woman’s breast. She falls onto her back with a moan and the three killer-thieves – the starving who would kill to save themselves, lie silently splayed on the blood stained earth. The farmer gazes back to the cabin and permits himself a moment’s grief. A single tear, then another. Not for the dead. Not for himself, but for his once-innocent and fragile love in the window. She shouldn’t have to do this, but she must. Life is no fairy tale.

---

When I was 12 I was given a sheet of paper and asked to write down what I wanted to be. Without hesitation I scrawled down the single word “lion” and handed it in. The teacher smiled and accepted my submission, and the word “creative” began appearing on my report cards and assignments.

I was told by one smiling face after another the clichés I could not recognize in my innocence: “dreams come true”, “anything is possible”. Everyone who achieved sold me the same dogmas – there were no limits.

Through high school I studied biology vociferously. DNA, gene splicing, and cloning were the subjects that intrigued me most. Shape shifting might be a pipe dream but a gradual one-time transformation wasn’t entirely inconceivable. If tadpoles could turn to frogs, and caterpillars to butterflies, surely I could change to lion.

I started university in biology of course. But the math was too hard, the equations so complex and teachers too foreign. There were many students smarter than me in that school alone, to say nothing of worldwide. I fell into despair until more Olympians, movie stars, and astronauts came to teach me about will power. Nothing could stop a determined person they said. My mathematical deficiencies be damned, what I needed was will power.

So I refocused on becoming a lion; the difference in approach being purely psychological. I grew my hair longer, added a beard and dined on meat – rare to raw. I filed my nails to resemble claws and practiced various roars and growls.

Nobody said anything. I was creative: it was on my file. But when they came for me, to put me away, I attacked. The king of the jungle would not be caged.They caged me anyways: the king of the jungle downed by tranquilizer darts. In doing so they destroyed my dream.

The athletes were right though – I could will anything into being – just took a little relativism and a little psychosis. What they did not mention was the one obstacle that all great dreamers and would-be kings have to deal with: others. Next time, sharper claws.

--

Martin is a dragon who fixes potholes. He is working a regular 9 to 5 on a hundred year contract with a local construction firm. He outlived his military use with the launch of the Bomarc 2 fighter jet, whose flame-resistant sheath and long range cannon (some things never go out of style) put dragon breath and hide alike to shame. The bomarc 2 could run for days on minimum uranium supply – while Martin required 3 squares a day of cattle or elk.

When the military gig fell through, he turned to show biz but with no success. Having been around for centuries, and being a tabloid-favourite, he suffered from overexposure. His “wow” factor had long since subsided. This to say nothing of how much more real and fierce the CGI dragons coming out of Hollywood looked these days, nor to say anything of Martin’s very limited thespian experience or talent.

In desperation Martin plead his case before the state – choosing perhaps poorly to represent himself. He explained to the judges that there were limited occupations suitable for a dragon, and that he was losing his natural niche roles to new technologies. He claimed he was being pushed into villainy against his will. The state heard his case, and ruled he was entitled to the same coverage under the safety net as all other citizens. Just as the state did not adjust its payouts for fat people, nor would it adjust them to accommodate his significant girth and appetite – to do such would set a nasty and costly precedent.

Luckily, H.P. Landsworth – owner of a local construction firm, had something of a philanthropic epiphany and offered Martin a deal. Agreeing to a century long contract, Martin would work in construction as some kind of glorified crane/welding device. The firm benefited from some good PR, but only added a handful of clients as a result of this press. The firm was losing on the deal, as Martin was only marginally more effective than a proton-torch and operated at more than twice the price per joule of energy. Even factoring in the revenue from new clients sympathetic to the dragon’s plight, the firm was still losing money.

So disgruntled and impoverished, loathing Monday mornings and living for his Friday afternoons, Martin carried out his blue collar existence of survival. You can still see him today if you care to, but rest assured its not as impressive as the things you’ve already seen made up.

--

At the highest level of development dreams became intertwined and networked. We could interact with one another in our sleep, and sleep became the new awake. Normal waking hours were little more than refueling inconveniences, meeting requirements of hydration and nutrition before returning to the new real world.

The dreamscape was a violent frontier – but made absurd by the fact that dream warfare was based on creativity. Dream fights came down to who could think of absurdities that their opponents could not imagine a counter to. Gangs and fiefdoms developed, the artists becoming the rulers in groups that looked strikingly similar to the arrangements formed by the scientists and politicians of the old world.

The old-world economies slumped as people ceased purchasing leisure/waste products and fell only to the basics. No need for inventive amenities when one can have whatever he can dream of. A handful of wakers, those resisting the dream-reality like luddites before them farmed the real earth and managed the real water. The pillars supporting the luxuries of those they loathed.

Between Leptons and Socks

2009-06-08T08:40:00.001-06:00

So in between the particles and photons sometimes I still think of irksome mundane things.

For example – why is it that the most popular CDs and DVDs are the cheapest? If I want to buy some American Idol winner CD its like $10. I go looking for something by Bright Eyes or Arctic Monkeys - $20. Shouldn’t the shit nobody wants to listen to be what gets the lower price? I remember when I bought the Adema CD back in university it was $25 – I hadn’t seen a CD that pricey since CDs were invented. And lets be honest, very few people would have any interest in buying some numetal crap.

A hypothesis – music stores don’t want to carry so much product. By making old and obscure music pricier they help ensure that people don’t buy it on a whim – keeping the funnel into the mainstream stuff. Are there honestly economies of scale in CD production? I doubt it.

I suppose this would all be moot if itunes didn’t hog the shit out of my hard drive space by duplicating all my files (I still have no clue why) and trying to “synchronize” my shuffle everytime I hook it up (yes I clicked it off – it still tries). I’m all for digital instead of physical copies of my music, but ever since itunes killed my HD space I’ve stopped buying songs there.

Another example – I have a sock conundrum. I keep accumulating all these different types of socks, buy them in packs of 2 or 3, sometimes within the pack of 3 they’re all different even. I am the lazy laundry, and cannot be bothered to match them up after the dryer. They get dumped in a drawer and then I root around for 5 minutes every morning looking for 2 that match.

The obvious solution? Buy all the same damn socks. But… am I going to go out and buy 12 pairs of socks I’ve never worn before and find out I hate them? Of all the difficulties in life, having a sock system shouldn’t really be one of them but there it is. Yes the sun will fry this rock in 2 billion or some-odd years. That doesn’t help Darcy manage his socks.

And finally, a love conundrum. A while ago I was waxing poetic about the evolutionary advantage of love – that it’s a bulwark against the great void of nothingness that comes from being too reasonable. Well, that may be but isn’t it extraordinarily fucked up that while everyone wants to have affection and love, you have to rely on others to provide it. Not only is your ultimate happiness in someone elses hands – you don’t even know who that someone else might be. So if you want to be self-sufficient in your happiness you can’t put love on the list of things you need – contrast to earlier hypothesis of love being the thing that keeps us from descending into despair. Wonderful design God – thanks bud.

The tears started at 3

2009-05-26T01:15:00.000-06:00

I begin to speak

This is not real.
You are not leaving me.
We are normal.
This is not you crying goodbye.
This is you staying over on a weeknight.
This is us being in love.

She cries harder than she has yet, it is loud and terrible. But I continue.

This is us in a bar together.
This is me bringing you downstairs.
This is you kissing my neck.
This is me telling you that if you come home with me I will fall for you.

It goes on and on, tracing the memories. I’m not sure if I’m burning them or just trying to burn her with the good things we had that she is throwing out for nothing. Maybe both.

This is me saying I think I’m falling in love with you
This is you saying we’re past that point.
This is me saying I love you for the first time.
This is you saying it back.
This is me believing you.

This is us in the park with the dog.
This is us being lovers
This is us lying together in a ditch to warm up
This is us crying.
This is us now.
What happened to us?

And I repeat it

What happened to us?

How did this happen to us?

How did this happen.

And she doesn’t know, and we never will.

No Ice Cheap

2009-05-16T21:57:00.002-06:00

Is there anything cheaper you can do than ask for "no ice" in your soda? Whenever I hear someone asking for this I cringe. Like, are you that poor and/or that pathetic?

Option 1: Cold soda.
Option 2: piss warm soda, but 15% more of it.

Like... without that little bit of extra pop in the cup you're getting hosed. You didn't work this hard for this long to be charged $1.27 for ICE did you? I didn't think so. Tell that scrawny kid to dump that shit out and give you nothing but that exquisite sugary piss-warm goodness that is coca cola.

Honestly if you're that cheap just order a fucking water. At least then you could be considered health-conscious instead of poor/cheap.

While I'm on the subject of shitty food/beverages I have a few other things I'd like to point out:

The first is to the idiot at subway who came up with their "scrabble" commercials and gimmick. Ok - scrabble yea sure, game where you take letters and spell words. But in the game... you have to actually spell them right...

Ho Ho Ho... but someone at Subway corporate offices got that email where all the words are written scrambled - and it informs you that we only need the first and last letter of a word, with the other letters anywhere in between, in order to read. While this was a neat little discovery, what in the FUCK does this have to do with the game scrabble? Nothing. Good game bosses son or whatever wanker slipped this one by management as being a clever idea. You now join the telus lemurs for shittiest and most retarded commercials ever made.

PS whats with kids with butterfly wings on them. This is showing up in a bunch of different ads and magazines... like before it was people with big heads, then people giving each other piggy backs... now its kids with insect wings.

My last food-related bitching has to do with pizza parties. While these never amount to much of a party and are usually sorry excuses for symbols of appreciation, there's something sinister about how people run these events.

See I have this theory that nobody likes onions. They eat them because they were forced to as kids and just don't know any better.

This theory is corroborated everytime I go to a pizza party. Cause the ordering genius always orders 5 pizzas with onions on them, and 1 cheese and pepperoni. So for the sane people like me, we've got pretty limited choices. But what happens? Every person there scarfs down the cheese and pep right away and we're left with a stack of shitty onion pizzas. Then the kids who weren't smart enough to resist reluctantly pick up the onion pizza and eat it. While people like me get screwed. If you ever run a pizza party just order friggin cheese and pepperoni and throw 1 ridiculous onion pizza out there if you want for the rare person who likes that crap.

In unlrelated news I bought a portable "netbook" in order to prompt myself to try and start working on "that novel I've been meaning to write" (stewy voice when heckling brian). Transcribing from handwriting to digital text was too frigging monotonous. And just like we figure buying new running shoes will make us run or workout, or buying an expensive instrument means we'll actually learn to play it, this is supposed to make me write. at the least it removes the excuse that I dont want to be stuck at my computer desk... I can now go to starbucks or bridgehead and be an artistic yuppy like normal people of my age and aptitude.

Then I can observe stupid things about coffee and add them to my no ice, pizza, and subway list of food-product-related pet peeves.

There oughtta be a law

2009-05-07T08:20:00.002-06:00

against bothering pedestrians.

I realized recently I instinctively take measures to avoid panhandlers and salesmen on the sidewalks of our fair city. Without even being conscious of it I’ll move as far away as possible without changing my general direction entirely.

The worst are the charity workers speckling the area around where I work. They stand outside all day with a vest and a binder for greenpeace or amnesty international or the red cross and act like they are just being friendly “hello sir how are you today” (hold up binder) “could you spare a few minutes?”

Minutes? Sure. I’d be quite pleased to talk about an issue, to hear something I don’t know, to suggest some things to you, but you don’t really want my minutes you want money. I know it, you know it, everything else is just bullshit.

The image though is some friendly do-gooder waving to me, and me snarling and saying no or just walking away in a huff. What a dick I must be! Giving skeletor and dr. claw a run for their money.

I wouldn’t care if they just stood there in case someone wanted to talk to them, but it’s the active pursuit of passers-by that pisses me off. I just want to walk from A to B without being harassed for money. As far as I’m concerned these people are no different than bums begging for change.

Thing is, it’s not like I can accost them for it. Someone else is paying them to be there and do this job; they’re just the workers, not the architects of the solicitation scheme. So I mostly just try to cross the street before I get to them, or time my approach so that I have a blocker – another nearby pedestrian between me and their begging.

The other thing that gets me about these clowns is how much they must have to raise in funding just to cover their own salaries before a dime goes to indentured prisoners or anti-whaling boats. Figure they make like $10/hr, x 37.5/week ($375) x 4 = $1500/month. The first $1500/month in donations they raise covers their own salary… is that a fucking scam or is that a fucking scam? Unless they’re volunteers – which is conceivable I suppose but still wouldn’t excuse the aggressive begging.

Similar to these guys is the chick at the booth in the Rideau center with the hand cream or whatever it is. Holding it out and stepping towards people as they walk by. “Yes, please put some fucking hand cream on me”. As though I wasn’t really going to buy it, but the prospect of having someone put some on me to show how incredible it is will change my mind. Again, create distance and hope for a blocker. And again, you can’t really get mad at the person doing it, it wasn’t their idea.

Pedestrian solicitation is annoying, and so is home solicitation. Whenever the doorbell rings at our apartment I have a tough time ignoring it because of dumbhead dog who runs around and barks like a retard when he hears the doorbell. So I clamber downstairs to see who might be visiting us, and pretty much without fail its someone asking for money. A few weeks ago there was like a pee-wee hockey team raising money for their team. I like hockey and kids so I gave them some. The next one was a decent-looking girl in her 20’s with a clipboard…

“Hi sir, just so you know I’m not selling anything or trying to convert your religion! Do you have a few moments?”
“Sure.”
“I just want to assure you I’m not selling you anything”.
“I got that.”
“Have you ever heard of world vision?”
“yes.”
“Probably the sad commercials on TV right?”
“mm hmm”
“Have you ever thought of saving a life?”
“sure”
“For a dollar a day blah blah blah”
“I thought you weren’t selling anything?”
“I’m not”
At this point I poke her in the eye and hip throw her onto the pavement and slap her in an arm bar for being a lying bitch.

Okay maybe not.

I use my student line – “ah sorry, I’ve got a lot of student debt so I really can’t afford it. Thanks though”. She was adamant about trying to give me some papers or take down my information. But I know her schtick, me is smarter than the average bear and did not sign any papers.

But it would be nice just once for someone to stop me in the street or knock on the door and be looking for something other than money. Until such a day comes I’ll just assume I know what these strangers want and do my best to keep distance and blockers at the ready.

Never knowing enough

2009-04-21T12:04:00.002-06:00

What I’m about to write is almost cliché I think – the simple version being “there are two sides to every story”; the D. Hartwick modification being “there are at least two sides to every story and its unlikely you’ll ever know or understand them all”.

I started feeling this way in university, when I felt like I was being brainwashed by my profs to believe a bunch of shit that didn’t add up. Listen to someone talk about “Western Imperialism” and various free trade agreements long enough, and most kids are bound to buy into it. If you think though, you then ask – “hey mr. prof, if Free trade is spawn of satan, how come this country iz accept it?”

I could give example after example of this one-sidedness in academia. University of Ottawa was not in the business of educating us, but rather in the business of indoctrinating us. A slave army of socialists to go out into the world and procreate and proliferate their ideas. It was like Free Trade had no redeeming qualities, and was just being shoved down the throats of poor people. We’d spend hours talking about the horrors of capitalism and “big corporations” with nary a minute spent on what the realities of the alternative (socialism more or less) had historically been.

What’s worse, even knowing this was happening did not solve the problem. To rectify the one-sidedness you’d have to explore and read a tonne of literature, and still probably never know the truth. Aye, there’s the rub. Finding the truth requires an incredible amount of work for most things worth knowing. For most of us, its just as well that we cast our lot with someone else who appears to know what they’re doing rather than question incessantly.

I had thought or hoped that this was isolated as an academic experience, but the older I get the more I see this is human interaction. You will get the side that someone wants you to believe more often than not, with little to no discussion of the countervailing viewpoint. And you can bet your last dime that it’ll be positioned to seem like the right thing to do is to support your conversationalists viewpoint. To disprove or verify these statements requires a significant time investment.

Let me give two simple examples of what I mean. The first is our good friends the proud Canadian-Tamils advising us that genocide is underway in Sri Lanka and Canada (for reasons best left to the imagination) ought to do something. Let us assume that as a rule, people don’t kill other people for no reason. Let’s pretend, for an instant, the Sri Lankan government must have some rationale for its behaviour. Then let’s concede that we don’t really know what it is. Now let me inject a few haphazard “factoids” into the picture of this genocide:
1. These two sides have been in a civil war for somewhere around 25 years.
2. The hostile Tamil organization is a terrorist organization under Canadian law
3. Tamil tigers use guerrilla tactics including IED’s and using civilian shields.
4. The rebels are currently not permitting the evacuation of Tamil civilians from the war zone.

Number 4 should give you the most pause. If this is about civilian casualties, why don’t the armed rebels permit the evacuation of civilians? One could hypothesize that these civilians are being used as shields to protect the skin of the rebels (who are at war) and evoke international action.

Do you think anyone protesting on parliament hill right now wants to talk about this? No. They want you to see pictures of maimed children and hear poorly contrived sound bytes about “genocide”.

If you’re a “good person” you ought to be upset about genocide (it should evoke thoughts of jewish extermination during WWII, which in turn ought to be abhorrent). They are counting on this trigger, and counting on you not asking too many questions about what is really happening and why.

A less harsh example is some stuff I’ve been doing at work sifting through provincial budgets to figure how much these guys are planning to spend on infrastructure during the recession. There is the public smiley-face figure, and then somewhere buried in tables and legalese there are the real figures. There are definition issues (both in what is infrastructure and what is stimulus) from province to province. I get paid to sort this shit out so I’m willing to go into the details, but it is labour intensive and I would never care enough to go to these lengths on my own free time.

Now, I have a general hypothesis of why things are so fucked up.

I think that by and large, people want to do the right thing – the good thing. It runs in pace with our inclination towards selfishness and greed, but its there. People might be stupid and misguided, but I wouldn’t go so far as to say most are patently bad or evil. However, most of us don’t have the time, energy, or general wherewithal to decipher which causes are good and which ones aren’t. We’re easily convinced by sound bytes and fabricated figures, but aren’t willing to go into the boring obfuscated details to make sure its really the right thing.

The real problem though is that people who are capable of ciphering out what’s real and what’s not – those interested in objectivity – are those least interested in convincing others or leading others. The demagogues usually want something for themselves – prestige, power, wealth, whatever. So they are inclined towards skewing every issue in their favour. Watch question period any day of the week to see dozens of examples of this. It frankly makes me want to puke.

For my part, I used to think it was important to be politically involved and engage in the democratic process. As I age, I become more convinced that what matters is to do the right things yourself and not worry too much about what everyone else is doing. Politics, especially in a democracy, are a joke to anyone interested in objectivity. I’ve been going to green party meetings lately and the focus is on things like raising funds and gaining political capital, targeting the right demographics, mobilizing campaigns, blah blah blah. Nary a word about knowing or caring about what’s right for this country and what needs to be done going forward. This is having a disenchanting effect on me, for whatever small enchantment remained towards the political realm. Jacqui told me once she felt I ought to be an advisor of sorts, but never a politician. I’m seeing that light more and more.

In the end, I sometimes think of this scenario: I see one man running down the street towards me being chased by another. What should I do? I can trip the runner, trip the pursuer, do nothing. I just don’t have the information to know the right action and so I will likely do nothing. If I happen to know which one is in the right and which is in the wrong, then I can act. But for all I know, the runner may be a thief, or the pursuer could be a killer. Which one of them is right and which is wrong? I’d need a 4th option of stopping and disabling both of them, and then interrogating them before I make my decision (at which point it would be moot anyways). I think this is the situation most of us find ourselves in most of the time with respect to knowledge and action – we want to do the right thing, but it is extremely cumbersome to cipher out what that right thing actually is.

The Brain

2009-04-14T09:27:00.003-06:00

A while ago I watched this video of a guy talking about the brain, evolution, and climate change. His basic argument was that the brain is nothing more than a very elaborate threat-detection mechanism. It lets us know about danger before it’s too late (generally) by being able to reason, remember, and thus make predictions. His point was that unfortunately climate change is such a slow-developing threat that our brains aren’t evolved to care about it or understand it. It doesn’t trigger the response that more imminent or obvious threats do.

Put another way, people are lazy.

Anyways while that was interesting enough on its own, it was more brain evolution that struck me as a curiousity. The thing about evolution is we are tending towards perfection, but the process is incredibly long and we will never reach any “end point” where we can say “tada, now we’re perfect”. Which is to say that some of the characteristics we show right now may in fact not be good in the future – we may be in the process of losing them.

But putting that aside, the evolutionary advantage of the human brain is its ability to detect threats and respond to them appropriately, and more importantly to anticipate them. We build walls, we plan ahead, we don’t go places we’re likely to die in, etc. What all of this requires is consciousness and reason.

That’s all fine and dandy; we learned how to build axes and swords and guns and rockets. To make floodways and fire departments, bring bailing cans in our boats, etc. But there is a byproduct of consciousness and reason – depression.

See, spiders and dogs and birds are only primitively aware that they exist. Their worlds are extremely simple, and the only goal of that existence is survival (and perhaps procreation). As humans developed this advanced threat-detecting brain they also became aware of their existence and the world/universe around them. We started looking at the stars up there and asking what was going on. For one reason or another, we also wanted to figure out why and how we fit in this picture.

This I’ve written on before – seeking knowledge/perspective is just about asking “why” over and over again. The problem is that at some point there’s no answer. When you become committed to finding some external purpose for human existence or consciousness, its an extraordinary letdown to conclude that there is none. For a tremendous number of humans religion fills this void, but this is rather irrational behaviour and goes against the grain of a brain that is only effective insofar as it uses reason.

That is, we can answer any perplexing question by coming up with answers that are unprovable. Why does the body require water? Because superman lives on venus and casts electromagnetic subtronic waves at earth and the biofeedback triggers subconciouse responses undetectable by current technology. Sure, why not.

This isn’t to say god does or does not exist in some form. It is to say that insofar as you want to have a reasoned answer to the riddle of human existence, you are going to be sadly and sorely disappointed with what you find out at the end of all those “why’s”.

So let’s be clear. The brain is designed to reason in order to detect threats before they happen – that is our evolutionary advantage. However, reasoning makes us aware of existence and curious about our “purpose” here. Using the tool at our disposal (a brain inclined towards reasoning) we fail to find meaningful answers to this question – in fact the answer we find is that there is no purpose. This leads to despair, perhaps even suicide but at the least lethargy.

But there’s a silver lining.

What lead me down this path of thinking was really this question – what is the evolutionary advantage of love? I hypothesize this is a coping mechanism for awareness or consciousness. Love gives the psyche something to latch onto in a universe that is chaotic and meaningless, it counterbalances the despair intrinsic to the reason our brain uses to handle threats.

In this, it seems likely that over time it is those most capable of loving that shall inherit the earth. This is contingent (paradoxically) on human beings being reasonable. Being reasonable drives those incapable or weakly capable of loving to despair, idleness, and suicide. Leaving lovers to procreate and enhance our genetic code (if one assumes the capacity to love is contingent on some chromosome or another).

That’s forecasting, but at the least I’d say human beings have evolved love – emotional attachment to other living beings – as a counter to the despair that comes from reasoning out the darkness of the universe. For the intelligent, religion probably actually competes with love for this counterbalancing space, and is holding up the evolutionary process.

As a footnote to this, I’ve also been thinking about predestination and forecasting human behaviour. In L.E. Modessit’s book “Adiamante”, in the distant future the social sciences are so advanced and the basic elements of human behaviour so well understood that probabilities of reactions can be predicted with remarkable accuracy. For example, the discipline has revealed that a government that resorts to issuing threats will inevitably collapse over the long run. Thus to sustain the current state, leaders never threaten their enemies. They use roundabout ways to try and demonstrate what could happen to them, but never cross the line of a threat even when it seems – in the short term – that this would save a lot of bloodshed. The broader rule is that a threat will save you in the short term, but destroy the state in the long term. This born out by thousands of years of human history.

When we consider what we are, and how we make our choices, they are the combination of two factors: our physiology, and our experience (nature/nurture as the saying goes). Every reaction I have to everything that occurs in my life is predetermined by these two things. When I don’t steal the $5 bill on the counter – that’s a result of my brain chemistry and the things that have happened to me to date. When I fall in love, when I am hurt, when I chose my discipline, when I write these words. All of this could be predicted if we understood the correlations between physiology, experience, and action.

As computers become more and more complex, one could imagine a supercomputer capable of modeling every chemical reaction in a given brain’s life cycle, including how it changes in response to emotional and experiential inputs. Being struck as a child. Winning a basketball championship. Living in an apartment. Having your heart broken. All of these things have predictable impacts, contingent only on understanding the pre-existing physiology of the brain and the previous experiences upon which the brain can draw.

We may never go to that molecular level. Currently we talk in broader trends and variables. Children abused by parents are more prone to abuse their own children, things like that. The strongest and most evident correlations, and even there we acknowledge there are contingencies – other variables that can counter that inclination and lead to a different response.

One thing I didn’t get the first few times I watched V for Vendetta was how V could be so assured of the responses people would have to various things he did to them. I believe the concept was that as a result of his mutation, he was able to understand the correlations and use them to push people down the path towards certain decisions – or at least to be aware of how they would respond and act accordingly. For him it is a matter of intuition, not supercomputers, but the idea is the same – all human responses are predictable if you understand the person’s physiology, experience, and the correlations between those 2 things and decision-making.

So it is that we can imagine being able to accurately predict the future at some point. The limit here is knowing what choices you will be faced with. You may know based on past and biology how you would respond to anything – you do not know which choices will fall before you and how they will pattern out. But sometimes I feel like I can see a bunch of different paths contingent on a variety of choices that fall before me. I know where I end up in each of these, but I do not know which one will come to bear in the end.

And that’s my $0.02 on the human brain. No, I’m not a neurologist and that’s why it’s only 2 cents value.

Note to tamil tiger people: we don't give a shit

2009-04-08T13:07:00.003-06:00

Yesterday buses were delayed after work because douchebags wanted to have a douche protest in downtown Ottawa.

Their douche country has douche problems and since these douchenuggets are too lazy/scared to go there and do something about it they want to make it Canada's problem.

Epic Fail.

I did some extremely lackadaisical research onto Sri Lanka and Tamil Tigers.

These appear to be the facts:

1. You can't believe wikipedia, Sri Lankan Gov. controls it.
2. Depending who you ask, either the government or tigers are terrorists.

Ok and 1 real fact:

1. Canadian government - and approx 34 other states - have declared Tamil Tigers a terrorist organization.

But this is neither here nor there. What matters is that pissants who immigrated here to escape the shithole south asian country and live the pleasant life of a Canadian are now working tirelessly to drag this country into that mire of shit.

No we are not sending soldiers there to fight, sort out your own problems.

It is despicable when people come here and try to import their wars and disputes. Especially when it results in abnormally crowded long lines at the tim horton's up the street, and when it delays my bus.

What's even awesomer is if we WERE to send soldiers, we'd have another group of asshats on parliament hill disrupting bus routes claiming its Western Imperialism for us to have soldiers on foreign soil trying to resolve a domestic dispute.

In the wise words of John Laroche:

"This world's insane".

Protests and politics: the story of greed

2009-04-01T13:59:00.002-06:00

In my life I’ve found that things start to make sense 4 or 5 years after I’ve done them. I took French for 5 years in high school and never understood what the hell passé compose actually was until 2nd year of university. All of my political science education was marred by a dogmatic commitment to idealism, which has only waned in recent years.

Today I was thinking about political systems, and it occurs to me – certainly not for the first time – that the system itself is pretty much irrelevant, except insofar as it produces good rulers. That’s really what politics boils down to – how much of a greedy fuck up is your leader? Doesn’t matter if its communism, capitalism, democracy or totalitarian. This is all completely inconsequential. The only thing that matters in politics is the character of the person (or perhaps people) in charge. You need that person to have the country’s interest at stake – not his own or his cronies.

Sadly, it is my opinion that such leaders are extremely rare or even nonexistent. The rise to power in all systems relies on deals and favours, so that upon assuming power an individual has an enormous backlog of debt. Hard enough to find one good person in this world, nevermind a chain of them that connect to propel one to the head of the state.

I’m also not convinced that any system has a meaningful effect on the quality of individuals it produces. There are greedy pigs in all systems; there are good guys and bad guys, angels and demons, everywhere. So when I see stupid idiot G-20 protestors and their “down with capitalism” signs I’m annoyed. Capitalism isn’t a problem, greed is. You might as well lobby for “down with democracy” since we’re producing mega fuckups through all these democratic systems. Rapists, murderers, thieves, corrupt businessmen, on and on and on. If capitalism is to blame for shitty things, let’s throw democracy in there too. Hell let’s throw rule of law out while we’re at it.

This is my reduction of the political to the most meaningful and manageable size. Focusing on the system is completely and utterly pointless. The only thing worth considering is the character of the folks who wind up in charge of orienting the community. Doesn’t matter if its an emperor, a president, a chieftan, or a council. If the people are corrupt and greedy there will be hell to pay – and usually they are.

Another thought that occurs to me whenever I hear anyone complain about political reality, is that at least in this country it’s a democracy. These self-righteous turds who go out and protest are the minority, and in a democracy the minority does not make the rules. If you want that go make a fucking oligarchy or monarchy. I know it sucks when you don’t get your way, but your recourse is to persuade your fellow citizens to see the light – not to cry foul to the duly elected officials. That is, don’t blame Stephen Harper for not shutting down the tar sands, or legalizing pot – blame the Canadians who voted for him over a Green or NDP PM.

The epitome is the people who show up just to cry about something random with no solution. I read an article today that G20 protest parades in London are broken into 4 protests. The protest against: 1) climate change, 2) war, 3) homelessness/poverty, and 4) the economy.

Okay I’ve said this before but you can’t goddamn well protest climate change. These other 3 things go on the list too. You cannot just decide you don’t like something and protest it. I might as well go protest 8am. “DOWN WITH 8AM”, Why? Oh… because I don’t like it. I get up then and it makes me feel crappy.

A lot of these people are well intentioned I’m sure, but too stupid to articulate a meaningful proposal. Climate change doesn’t just happen because somebody flips a switch. You can be mad as you like but if you don’t understand its causes you are making a fool of yourself. So it is for war. So it is for poverty. So it is for the economy.

The ridiculous thing is showing up to the freaking g20 meeting and protesting against war. It’s like… Christ… hey guys… we never thought of this before, war is bad – let’s not war anymore! Yay! Or poverty. “Oh shit, how did this one fall through the cracks.. oh boy is my face red… lol when I get back to Canada I’ll make sure we end poverty… dunno how we overlooked that!”. Which is all to say that protesturds think there is some easy 2 second solution to these things, that they are not functions of the human condition – or perhaps more definitively greed.

The day when no leaders on this planet are greedy is the day poverty, war, climate change, and shitty economies will come to an end.

Which isn’t me saying go out and protest greed, cause that’s as stupid as everything else. It’s me telling it how it is. The only fight really worth fighting is against greed – call it consumerism, call it selfishness, call it xenophobia or protectionism, call it whatever you like but in the end that’s what causes the rest of these undesirable characteristics of existence.

From what I have seen, greed is so ingrained in our psyches that this is extremely unlikely to ever come to pass. All one can do is try to mitigate its impacts with checks and balances, turning a blind eye to the lower forms of corruption. Greed is instinctual, it is a survival mechanism advising us to hoard and appropriate. Overcoming that takes a tremendous amount of vision and/or will power.

Feigned outrage & Fox News - boo hoo hoo

2009-03-30T02:10:00.003-06:00

I had heard of this show on fox news called "red eye" and how they had somehow mocked/slighted the Canadian military. When I saw the actual video I actually thought the first bit was kind of funny. By the end it was just retarded, but offensive? Come the fuck on.

(this one can be embedded and has most of the relevant content)

This pretend-anger and pretend-outrage is just part of the average Canadian's little-man syndrome. Unless you've lived a completely sheltered life avoiding the comedy network you ought to know that this is a well-rehearsed brand of humour. You could say its "too soon" to be making Afghanistan war jokes, but you should not act as though such jokes are without precedent.

In fact, everyone's favourite retort - from our own satirical news show - this hour has 22 minutes - walks right down the same line:

Hahaha let's mock all the American soldiers who died in Vietnam, Iraq, and WWII! Oh but its the USA so its ok, they're big and tough they can take it, they're used to it. But hey man, we lost 116 soldiers in Afghanistan and if you make jokes about us and that war it's NOT COOL.

What's really funny about this is the self-aggrandizing stuff. "Hey America, we entered WWII before you lol!" Hmmm... you know its almost as if we were following Britain, with whom we had far closer ties back then... but wait... the old canadian standby "we burned down u whitehouse hahahaaaaha!!1"... yeah like a century ago, and again that had more to do with Britain than anything else.

By comparison to this self-righteous retelling of history, some of the fox news jokes are actually kind of clever. It can't be that hard to see the humour in an army saying "we need to take a year off", especially for a country that is notorious in the USA for housing draft-dodgers (i.e. during vietnam).

So using these 2 things to crack wise about our army being a bunch of pansies is actually kind of funny. We need to come back for some yoga and run on the beach in gorgeous white capri pants.

Some of the feigned outrage is over the question "isn't it time we invaded this ridiculous country? They don't even have an army!" Canadians are like... how DARE you call us ridiculous! How DARE you threaten to invade! Give me a break. Canadians live in this fantasy world where Americans either give a shit about us, or actually should. Most of them think of us as quaint hillbillies, and frankly that's fine. If you're going to get all indignant about American ignorance towards us, swing that judgemental pendulum back on yourself. How many provinces are there in mexico - our NAFTA trading partner? Who is the president? Where is the capital city located? Shit change those questions to Japan or Germany or Austria or whomever. And that's still asking you to know something about a country larger or comparable to our own, not one 1/10th the size.

The truth about all this feigned outrage is that we're really just happy that someone in America was talking about us. I mean come on, the guy calls America "the most powerful country in the universe"... that was hilarious and an obvious wink that the whole thing was being at least somewhat intentionally over-the-top.

As offensive comedy goes, this segment was extremely tame, and for a country that prides itself on its funny bone, the reaction of some people to this has just been ridiculous. Humour often treads the line of bad taste, and as far as crossing that line and pointlessly offending goes, these jokes don't even come close. Now I'm not saying this was comedic genius, by the half way point the show descends into unfunny lame ass jokes about Mexico and siestas. But the premise for the jokes - a country "taking a breather" from the war is pretty good, and some of the subsequent zingers actually funny if you can step outside your Canadian righteous indignation for a few seconds.

Overall though its just this hypersensitivity that drives me crazy. It's a goddamn comedy show on the American television, on at like 3am or some shit. WHO CARES? I can write stupid shit on this blog every day, if I write about a culture or a country should they be outraged and offended? No. Who the fuck am I? nobody. Who is this comedian on fox news? nobody. Is he really proposing to invade Canada? Is he in charge of such an undertaking? Is he the spokesman for America with its war allies? Nope. So who - the fuck - cares what he says? It's like 10 times worse here because he is a comedian trying to be funny, not some respected persona reporting actual events or a representative of some meaningful sorts.

Now if you'll excuse me I have to iron my capri pants and get ready for a big day of yoga on the beach and landscape painting.

Pugs are ugly

2009-03-27T16:48:00.002-06:00

Given that you may end up having ugly children and there's nothing you can do about it, why would someone throw hard earned $ down for something like this:

When you could just as easily get something like this and be 90% less of a tool:

or this

I admit a lot of duck tollers are ugly though. Dex may be a douche but at least he is cute.

Captain Planet and the Lost R's

2009-03-26T11:06:00.002-06:00

When I was in public school we went through this phase of environmentalist indoctrination, which no doubt is forever imprinted on my conscience. Distinct memories here include some crazy ass dude on roller skates singing about zebra mussels at a school assembly, and the production of a school play called Assignment Earth: What kids can do to save the planet. Who can forget the song "gonna be the last dude - to eat fast food - on polystyrene!"

A major part of this (perhaps needed) brainwashing was the three R’s. Not to be confused with ye olde standbys of reading, writing, and arithmetic, the R’s I speak of were Reduce, Reuse, and Recycle.

When I moved out on my own I became an ardent recycler. Doing my part by carrying my various bottles and boxes in my bookbag until I could find a recycling bin if one had not easily presented itself, and dutifully separating everything into blue and black boxes (or, in the guigues street days the black box and the milk crate). Captain planet would have been proud.

What happened over time though, and what I think happens to damn near everyone, is that we fall to the laziest activity possible. That is, we ignore those first 2 R’s – reduce, and reuse, and think we’re doing our part by simply recycling.

I was always curious how the hell recycling worked. I understood it wasn’t particularly cost effective, but was done for the environmental benefit of not extracting additional resources – wood, minerals, energy from the earth. So it may be cheaper to just make new pop cans, but by recycling the existing ones, we need fewer mining operations.

While this little pantomime is pleasant, it’s not really taking into account the realities of recycling. As I recently found out (like, this week), there isn’t some magical factory that melts down all those used margarine containers and turns them into new margarine containers. Instead, the margarine containers get melted down and turned into… patio furniture… and all your margarine containers are in fact new. Now how this applies to each product specifically I don’t know – but I have been told that for the most part we don’t recycle things into food containers due to the risk of contamination. That is, someone puts a gallon of oil in a pepsi bottle, then recycles it. Can’t use that bottle for pepsi again obviously. Since we don’t know what the stuff in the recycling bin has been used for, we just don’t re-use it where such a health risk exists… instead it becomes crap like garden gnomes and patio furniture.

Which is all to say that while recycling is a nice alternative to landfills, it is not even close to being the end-game of sustainability. Those other 2 long-lost R’s – reducing and reusing are far more important. At a conference recently there was a speaker who suggested for every 1 tonne of “product” our civilization produces, there are 20 tonnes of “waste” associated with it. Not clear what constitutes product and waste, but the idea is pretty obvious – we generate retarded amounts of garbage, not even including what you toss out in the kitchen garbage can. The guy also spoke about capitalism and built-in-obsolescence that has been required to meet the growth demands of this (soon-to-be-defunct) economic system. Things have been intentionally designed to be unrepairable. Once upon a time (supposedly) a toaster could have lasted 18 years or more, and if it broke you could fix it yourself with only modest mcguyver skills. These days once its broke its broke, you gotta buy a new one. In terms of reducing and reusing – this is an obvious failure. I do not doubt though, that you can and probably would try to recycle the components of the discarded toaster.

Therein lies the problem. Recycling is the least effective of the 3 R’s, yet it’s the one we rely most heavily on in our sustainability/environmentalist efforts.

So rather than chuck the Gatorade bottle in the recycling, it ought to be used as a container for other stuff, thus also reducing your need to buy additional containers. I mean, nalgene bottles are cool and everything but not totally up to snuff with the beloved three R’s if you’re gonna be buying other containers anyways. Granted one can only make so many pop-bottle bongs and bird feeders, but its more about a way of thinking. Finding ways to reuse shit before it gets dropped in the recycle bin, and probably more importantly just flat out reducing how much shit you consume period. That one I’ve been doing for a while. The reusing bit… well maybe I should spend more time tromping the aisles of value village to meet my quota.

Captain planet would certainly approve.

The Notebook - Part I

2009-03-19T17:32:00.003-06:00

I got in the writing mood over the past few days and started scribbling again. Since I'm transcribing these into MS word so I can someday do something with them, I figured I'd post them on my blog too.

----

I am the indispensable manipulation and drama. In laughing terrific sighs and lies. Coddle power trip side to side; look at all my desires. Backhanded compliments trickling blood over bottom lip and the good men run from these horrors – isolating and building walls, becoming estranged and odd. Some say losing the threads that make them human. Such triumphant tragedy. The escape is transformative turning alien and ink becomes restraint, the horror of becoming not only inhuman but monstrous. This edge is a universe, a chasm of strange, unimagined things.

The server looks at me strangely and I don’t know why, he asks if I’m okay. I see no reason why I should not appear okay. The switch comes down and I recede into my body. I reply smoothly, confidently, but wonder how it is I appeared. How did I trigger that question, sitting so unassumingly?

I wish I could hear better, that sounds made images sonic reflections. Then I wouldn’t need the light for reassurance or certainty.

When I am 45 will I still be this way? When I am senile will I become sane? Will I forget all these strange thoughts and focus on the small things?

We’ve been grossly misinformed. The angels must have lost their connection with us, their satellites struck by static storms.

My virus is fighting back, that’s part of what makes it mine. Body isn’t sure it’s foreign the way it resists, makes it seem at home.

I bribe you in the dance of eons, because you are not like me and I can’t understand fallopian tubes. This is our timeless negotiation. The purchase I can make to you. But in the end this is not Darcy. This is man. I am not this. The purchase destroys. When I was a kid I was taught romance and love. Depth and meaning. An adult tells me love is laughable. Security and a big cock – that’s what counts. That was pivotal because I did not cave, I did not convert. I separated myself from that world and began fabricating my own.

I like squinting into the sunset horizon. The struggle is cathartic. Like a determined sherrif in an old time western.

When I read between the lines all I see is empty space and the insolence between us.

---

Waving to another trend
On and on and on
Malignant progress ever the same
Lines and curves and angles
Like your outline
Squeezed between my ears

Retro turns to hipster cool
Then fad then old then new,
Trendy trendy ever cool
Future forecasts hot and cool

I fix your oblique angles
Your lovely imperfections
There on hanging easels
Squeezed between my ears.

---

Unwritten, unread
Messages and letters lost to time
Vanished in memory or
Degraded in corrosion
I had such wonderful things
I would have said
What’s with all this fear?
Choices you cannot undo – ever
My proven track record
Selective assured risk averse spite of the virtues
You will see.
I will hurt.
My natural defense, should have been left alone.

---

I know
If you want a beautiful woman
To be nice to you
You have to pay.
As a bonus
The stripper takes off her clothes.

---

Baby you’re atomic power
Pretty bombshell
Unexploding

I survive another hour
Staring happy
In your glowing

Baby you’re such mass destruction
Pretty package
Stay unopened

Maybe I invite combustion
Smiling happy
Such emotion

Baby it’s your killer instincts
Purring proudly
Stalking slowly

Maybe I am unconvincing
Pretty victim
Come and show me.

---

Speaking Binary
I’m the zero you’re the one.
Nervous impulse
Mostly space between electrons, space
Filled with thoughts of you.
A minor miracle, our life arcs
Crossing, from single cells to this.
Infectious improbability almost brings me
Back to life.
Every instant taken
How I want or How it seems to be
Every choice abstraction
Becoming who I need to be.
Do you do this too?
No
You could not be such fickle nerves
And Firing synapses
Not because of me.
There’s a math equation to solve this
A matrix of probabilities – waiting to be read
I’ll never read it.
For I only speak binary.

When I get more notes transcribed I'll add them too. Don't ask me why, I don't know. I am in love with first drafts and rough notes right now.

Financial Perspective

2009-03-11T11:07:00.001-06:00

Darcy’s approach to finance:

1. I don’t put money in the bank to make money. I put it there so it doesn’t get stolen.

2. I don’t mind paying taxes as I appreciate many of the services they provide.

3. I don’t mind paying interest on loans; this is the cost of wanting something now rather than later (i.e. after you have saved for it).

4. Reasonable chance the economy as we know it will not exist in a matter of years, locking $ up in existing mechanisms runs the risk of disappearing altogether (see folks who have lost tens of thousands to current economic crisis for more on this).

After talking to a financial advisor/planner my positions haven’t changed. He made some attempts to rope me into RRSP’s or Tax Free Savings Account, but based on above principals, and government pension plan + CPP, I see no use for such innovative financial tools.

Perhaps one day I’ll open up a financial advisory company called Hartwick & Sons extolling these 4 principals to the good citizens of whatever republic we find ourselves in.

imeem: The best thing on the internet right now

2009-02-09T13:10:00.002-06:00

http://www.imeem.com

I found out about this site recently and have become smitten with it. The only thing it lacks is other people I know (preferably those with some decent to good musical taste) being on it and making playlists.

Basically you make a profile (takes like 2 minutes big deal), and then you can search out music and create playlists of the music you like. Your friends can see your playlists and listen to them, and then pilfer the songs they like for their own playlists.

Pretty fucking cool no?

The other bonus is I was able to find a bunch of white stripes songs I didn't know existed, and a couple old radiohead B-sides that I thought I'd lost forever from the napster days.

And finally this means whenever you're at someone elses house or a party somewhere where the music blows, if it has an internet connection you can swap in your own more awesome mix of music!

Mostly though I think its cool that people can make a list of some of their favourite - more obscure - music and share it with friends to get people listening to stuff outside their usual suspects. You can separate your playlists too... so put all your R&B and hip hop crap somewhere else then tell me to listen to your rock/alt playlist.

Anyways if you haven't seen it, I recommend it - add me as a friend too so I can look at your bad taste in music and/or pilfer the few good songs that might be there!

My link: http://www.imeem.com/people/1Ji4XGg

Some Rants to kick off my weekend

2009-02-06T08:41:00.002-06:00

1. Discount Membership Reward Cards

This shit is getting out of hand.

Once upon a time stores had to drop their prices and make good stuff in order to attract customers. The customer could decide to pay more for better quality or less for worse quality.

Then along came advertising, which I won’t talk about here. But crawling out of the same unholy abyss came the rewards card.

These days if you want to save some money or get the maximum deal at a place you have to sign up to be a fucking member and carry a rewards card around with you. Let’s see… for myself I have or recently had - chapters, booster juice, subway, moore’s, Royal Oak (OSSC), M&M, and Cora’s – off the top of my head. I could also, if I was to max my benefits, carry an air miles and shoppers drug mart card and god knows how many others.

See in the old days Subway would have just knocked its prices down 10%, and so would booster juice and moore’s and everywhere else. Then some fuckjob decided it would be amusing to force people to carry little plastic or paper cards around with them in order to get exactly the same deal. The idea here was that once they convince you to carry said piece of shit around with you, you’ll feel obligated to go there to take advantage of the super sweet deals you get by being a member.

The thing is when you calculate what you’re getting from most of this crap, its not even worth the inconvenience of having your wallet stuffed full of cards. I have an RBC rewards visa card that I’ve been using for like 10 years and totally forgot about the rewards thing. I go and look… after TEN YEARS I can get 2 DVD’s. WOW! I can get a ping pong table, but I’m like 1/3rd of the way there so maybe by the time I’m 50 I could get it? Buying expensive bullshit smoothies at booster juice – after chugging 12 of the damn things I’ve earned 1 free one… so basically I save like 40 cents per juice which is clearly offset by the fact I would go there and buy them even if I didn’t really want it just to get another stupid fucking stamp. What a joke.

2. Cheap nights, lines, and crowds

I hate standing in lines for bars which will in turn be crowded and brutal. I also hate going to the movies on cheap night (in fact I all but refuse to go on Tuesdays anymore). It is simply not worth saving $3 to have to stand in horrible lines and get shitty seats. The problem is compounded by people wanting to go en masse on omg cheap night, so we wind up being 10 people sitting speckled around the movie theatre because its so packed there is no way you can sit together.

3. Cheap beer

Life is too short for lucky lager and lakeport honey. Honestly if you’re so cheap/poor you have to drink this shit maybe you’re drinking for the wrong reasons.

4. Giving a shit about sustainability

It’s depressing and makes people look at you like you’re retarded. I was going to write this whole post about this and use some nice graphs to show the current path we’re on as a species. Then compare this with prevalent attitudes and illustrate the incongruency.

I feel guilty driving around in my car. Most people do something called “going out for a little drive”. Which means not only do they drive around alone, they drive strictly for the sake of driving – not to go to some particular destination or for some particular purpose. Sustainability HOOOOO. And all these fucking hipsters who want to go to Europe and Africa and cavort around the globe to have life-altering experiences and save the fucking Africans. Or go skydiving. Or like, almost every behaviour people my age normally do.

See the joke is people think that we’re going to plug in some solar panels and carry on as per usual. Well if that happens I will have been wrong and boy will there be egg on my face. If I’m right though, we’re all fucked because nobody wants to limit their consumption of resources. We all want to go skiing on the indoor slopes of Dubai. And caring about this shit is depressing because everything you see you see Joules and poverty and disease and overpopulation. The fairy-tale hippies will tell you its all the bourgeois fault, and that nothing we do is at fault. Unless we are bourgeois. In reality “westerners” are leading the charge to the end of modern civilization with their wasteful and ridiculous behaviours.

5. Dual positions

What is wrong with this fucking world? When did we start having to have the same political position duplicated incessantly to account for language and gender? Shit like this drives me insane… the Green Youth Party had its elections and they have fucking male and female positions for every post… so we have like, two presidents. This isn’t hockey… is there some reason why men and women should not be allowed to compete on the same ground? Maybe one day I can be the VP Finance – White male middle age civil servant rep. I will share finance responsibilities with 2000 other VP finances representing their respective cohorts.

6. Foreign languages

I don’t want to hear them. It’s enough that this country has 2 official languages and a smattering of native tongues. I don’t want enclaves of people speaking other shit. If you’re going to live here accept that you will learn and speak something that “we” do. If I was going to move to another country and live there I’d be goddamn well committed to learning and speaking their languages and adapting to their general way of life. Fuck multiculturalism and the noise pollution of 400 different languages being spoken everywhere I go. I don’t even care what they’re saying, it’s just insulting to take advantage of all the benefits this country has to offer and refuse to actually integrate and become a part of it.

7. Rewarding incompetence

Since I kind of like being employed I won’t get into the details. You all know where I work and can imagine what I’m talking about.

8. Barre Chords

Because they cramp my fretting hand.

My Unwritten Books and the Hole in the Universe

2009-02-04T15:02:00.002-06:00

Remember the book I was writing? I faithfully scribbled and scrawled ideas over a month or two as I rode the bus around Ottawa. I started transcribing those chicken scratches onto my computer and got maybe 1/5th through them before I gave it up.

Now to be fair I was actually trying to write two “books”, along with any other random ideas that would pop into my head. I did finish a piece I had been writing for my family for Christmas. It’s a little short to technically be considered a book, but it was emotionally draining to write. That reflection on our little clan of Hartwicks behind me, I turn tentatively back to the other project.

My first concept for a story was a sci-fi type piece. It had some good questions and concepts, but the mechanism just started to feel extraordinarily cheesy. I wanted to give a real person some sort of invulnerability and impunity and see what they would/could do with it. Could a “superhero” have any impact on the world? Or would they be nothing more than violent sideshows? This theme is being exploited to hell and back by a variety of shows and movies and so I came to the conclusion that as a mechanism it was horribly uninspired.

What crawled out of that story though was something else, something a little less teenage comic book and more reflective of where I’m at now. I ran against a wall with the theme of isolation, but opened the door on a theme of creation. I’ve had a bunch of discussions about the universe, religion, spirituality, ghosts and the like and have some spitfire ideas to put to paper that might manifest in some kind of novella or novel.

And as I come to the point of writing those ideas out I stop myself.

Because I’m starting to feel like keeping shit to yourself is okay, maybe even preferable. It’s one reason I’ve not written anything here in so long (plus being actually occupied with work at work and having limited free time due to transit strike fucking my travel arrangements for the past 2 months).

I went through this brief firecracker of a relationship that brought some things to my attention. One of which was that there’s something to be said for mystery – for keeping shit to yourself. It’s not being dishonest to just shut the fuck up and let things stew behind your eyes. It also introduced me to the idea of meditation. Being able to just be still and silent and focus on things in your brain, explore things without having to talk about them or write them down. To go through them alone and reflect internally. This is probably a significant step in coming to grips with being alone. It also raised some identity questions, in realizing that my identity is inexorably tied with rejection and contempt. I don’t even really want acceptance I don’t think. When it came down to it I actually liked feeling like a reject – it means you don’t fit, and if you don’t like what you see why would you want to fit? Having someone take that away was like stealing my soul, without contempt for the civilization around me what was left? (Happiness was one suggestion).

My original book was going to be about what it meant to be human, and what it meant to be isolated from that and whether that made you superhuman or inhuman. Maybe I’ll come up with another way to write about that, but it’s just not the right time for a superpower angle on it – it’s too lame. The book I have in mind is instead about creating – creating something beautiful or creating a monster; it’s about accidents and planned designs, the failures we come to love and the failures we come to be, the curious background of every polished existence; significance and meaning; creating an illusion; creating lies; and how you can’t create a truth because it’s already there.

Then again, maybe I’m better at writing about the books I want to write than I am at ever really writing them. Maybe these are also the types of things better left as mysteries – the details of these stories and their untold endings.

That’s a pretty good excuse if it never happens.

A tale of two movies: Adaptation vs Garden State

2008-12-16T22:58:00.003-06:00

I’ve watched two new movies in the last two days (which is a lot of new movies for me) – Adaptation, and Garden State. These movies have a few things in common, and one major thing not in common: one I related to and one I did not.

Surprisingly the movie that made sense to me was the one about a fat, balding, neurotic writer in his 40’s, not the one about the emotionless 20-something. Adaptation had its flaws, and while I understood the ending, ruining a movie to make a point isn’t cool. I like to remember it for the first 30 minutes in particular, and do my best to forget the last 30.

I thought about doing a review/comment on movies before and decided that would be completely mundane, so that is not what this is. This is a reflection on what made one film resonate and the other fizzle.

For Adaptation it caught me right off the bat. Opening scene is a voice talking saying this:

[voiceover] Do I have an original thought in my head? My bald head. Maybe if I were happier, my hair wouldn't be falling out. Life is short. I need to make the most of it. Today is the first day of the rest of my life. I'm a walking cliché. I really need to go to the doctor and have my leg checked. There's something wrong. A bump. The dentist called again. I'm way overdue. If I stop putting things off, I would be happier. All I do is sit on my fat ass. If my ass wasn't fat I would be happier. I wouldn't have to wear these shirts with the tails out all the time. Like that's fooling anyone. Fat ass. I should start jogging again. Five miles a day. Really do it this time. Maybe rock climbing. I need to turn my life around. What do I need to do? I need to fall in love. I need to have a girlfriend. I need to read more, improve myself. What if I learned Russian or something? Or took up an instrument? I could speak Chinese. I'd be the screenwriter who speaks Chinese and plays the oboe. That would be cool. I should get my hair cut short. Stop trying to fool myself and everyone else into thinking I have a full head of hair. How pathetic is that? Just be real. Confident. Isn't that what women are attracted to? Men don't have to be attractive. But that's not true. Especially these days. Almost as much pressure on men as there is on women these days. Why should I be made to feel I have to apologize for my existence? Maybe it's my brain chemistry. Maybe that's what's wrong with me. Bad chemistry. All my problems and anxiety can be reduced to a chemical imbalance or some kind of misfiring synapses. I need to get help for that. But I'll still be ugly though. Nothing's gonna change that.

I mean holy shit. Minus the racing rambling jumps from one idea to the next, almost every line in that opening monologue resonates on an extremely personal level. From worrying about originality, to self-loathing, to needing to fall in love, to the illusions you try to maintain, to what we want to believe about women versus what’s true, to chemical reductionism, to resignation.

The uncertainty with the women he meets, the failed decision making, the reluctance and fear. All of these things I get. He doesn’t want easy answers and shortcuts to success. He hates clichés. Resonance: very high.

There’s a scene of 4 billion years ago, the earth as nothing but magma, and then phases of history from the first uni-celled organism up to human birth and civilization. The idea that we are part of a much farther reaching history and environment than 27 years or 100 years or whatever context most frame their lives around.

The other main character, Laroche, also resonated on certain points. He sees the Longview, generally in terms of the way plants have adapted. The whole system of life and environment, bees and pollination. The way this character is so extremely passionate about whatever he’s doing – while being an intelligent guy (“I’m the smartest guy I know”) is what I might like to be. He’s blunt and straightforward, a little disheveled but intelligent and confident. He also says a couple times about the world being a fucked up place or people being fucked up or various things like that. Resonance: high.

There are also provocative lines in the movie, things like “you are not what loves you, you are what you love”. Is that true? Is that the thing you have to figure out? It seems simple but I can’t think of a cliché that says that. Especially in the context of someone being in love and being made fun of by that very person but not caring. This is about rejection and self-loathing and doubt. Resonance: high.

I will of course be the first to say that this movie kind of deteriorated as it went on. The first 30 minutes I was like jaw open listening to the things that were being said. There were plenty of laughs and intelligent stuff. The middle cooled a bit and the end I doubt anyone who has ever seen it has truly enjoyed. Even knowing what Kaufman is getting at, its still fucking lame (hint: the point of the ending is that it IS fucking lame).

Now by contrast I watched Garden State. The opening 15 minutes or so have a few laughs. We open with Andrew lying in bed in a completely undecorated stark white room, his phone rings and his father advises him that his mother has died and he needs to come home. Andrew doesn’t cry or pick up the phone, nothing. He goes to the mirror, looks at himself, opens it to reveal a shittonne of pills. At this point I’m still sort of on side but not sold – I get the detachment, the numbness (not the pills). There’s a scene at his job that is funny, but not particularly clever or provocative. He’s a not vietnemese guy working in a vietnemese restaurant that doesn’t sell bread.

At the funeral of his mother he is emotionless. He goes to a party and is emotionless. He sits numbly through everything. He decides to go off his pills (anti depressants I assume, but some sort of anti-psychotic for sure, prescribed by his psychiatrist father we later find out). He meets Samantha in the neurologists waiting room, and it’s a “who can imagine where it goes from here?” story from about that point on.

And here’s where I can’t relate to this film. This character is a complete and utter void. He doesn’t mutter or think an intelligent, questioning thought. He’s just a useless piece of shit. Where Kaufman’s mind is racing in adaptation, asking questions about himself, about his life, about the universe and happiness – Andrew is just a blank stare. Charlie Kaufman makes mistakes, he chases the wrong girl and lets the right one (maybe) get away. He has a first rate intelligence that fuels his evident emotional awkwardness. The Garden State characters are set up for perfection and just go through the motions on the way to the big payoff of falling in love.

When this movie was done and I explained I thought it was bad, that the characters were 2 dimensional and the story was cliché and predictable – that I didn’t like the characters and couldn’t relate to them, it was like dropping an atom bomb to my friends in the room. How could I not get it? I guess I’m shallower than I appear. In fact I apparently share much in common with this drug-fuelled, intellectually void and emotionally retarded protagonist. I’m just not “getting it”. Which inspired this post as I struggle to see what I have missed, and using adaptation as a contrast. Why did I relate more to Kaufman and Laroche than this Andrew character who on the outside should be a lot more easy to sympathize with as a young man suffering from emotional detachment?

And at first I felt it was that his emotional detachment comes from being tranquilized with anti-psychotics for his entire life, and his “development” stems from going off these drugs. While this is one facet for sure, the deeper issue is he is not the way he is because of asking himself questions. He is the way he is without ever questioning anything. Is this character concerned about anything? Creativity? Evolution? Love? Civilization? NO. He’s a fucking dud. He is the way he is because of either a) his pills or b) his abject lack of intelligence/criticism. Whichever explanation we take, I cannot relate. Kaufman on the other hand, while suffering from a more extreme neurosis and social awkwardness than I ever have or will, is always asking questions and seeking answers – its this cycle of questions and answers that makes him the way he is and THAT is 100% my life. I think the Laroche character just has more answers that he is comfortable with than Charlie does and hence the confidence (despite the fact he’s missing 2 front teeth and lives with his father, drives a shitty van etc).

I can relate to the Susan character in adaptation as well for admiring Laroche’s ability to see the incredible and the beautiful, to be passionate and want just one thing really badly. This theme is only mildly evident in Garden State despite probably being the only emotional payload the whole movie carries. They find this sensation of “being alive” in a rainstorm over a canyon. The closest thing to a Laroche is a guy living in a boat by the canyon who is “watching over it” and wants to discover something new. Unfortunately this guy is, like all the characters in Garden State, 2 dimensional. I mean wow how quirky he has his wife and son living in a boat by a canyon. He’s… a normal guy… doing something… abnormal. We only see Laroche’s “normalness” in the last quarter of the movie in order to kind of humanize him and make him less of an abstract idea. He’s also one of the main characters whereas boat-man in Garden State has like 2 minutes of screen time. Again it wouldn’t matter except this is really the only emotional connectivity Garden State can boast – the idea of seeking some kind of emotional spark, a feeling of “being alive”.

The thing with Garden State is it was so self-evident and straightforward as to be redundant. It’s like hey, if you meet an awesome girl who makes you feel incredible… you’ll feel… incredible… instead of… depressed. Oh and getting off the tranquilizers will help too.

Now not to say you can’t pick any movie and find people who will bash it, but in searching for what it was I didn’t like I googled Garden State sucks and read some of the comments people had made to see what resonated. Mostly its lame blah blah about how people hate zack braff. I don’t know the guy, never seen his show, don’t care. I wouldn’t say Nicholas cage is exactly an awesome actor anyways, but adaptation was cool. Anyways some of these quotes really pick up on certain things that I didn't dig. You could find people to shit on any move I like too (in fact some of these very people had harsh words for Eternal Sunshine and Boondock Saints) so I know it doesn't mean much, but again the specifics here resonated.

I was asking myself for a while what I find funny, and the best I could come up with is things that are intelligent yet absurd (I heart huckabees) - or only intelligent in their absurdness (trailer park boys, big lebowski). A larger question is what you can say or think of someone based on their response to a film. Why do people like the movies they do?

Anyways - on a lighter note some of the gems dissing garden state:

“i agree with you. 'garden state' was the worst film. it's the most pretentious, self-aware piece of garbage that tries to come off as clever. i can't believe how many people liked this movie. my only guess is it's their inability to detect a lack of depth of character and plot.”

“His character in Garden State was emotionless, but trying to be deep, and he was desperate for sympathy, yet he somehow lands someone as attractive as Portman. The title "Garden State" implies that something grows. Perhaps something grows in New Jersey, the state's mottos. Who grows in this movie? Certainly not the characters.”

“About as subtle as the lyrics to an AC/DC song, this movie has funny moments and lots of potential; you really want it to be a good movie. But it turns out to be predictable, terrible and totally forced . This movie tries desperately to be hip--well hipsters who hang out at Hot Topic or get their music at Sam Goody might be fooled, but I ain't.”

“Try being a girl talking to a guy who loved this movie. It seems like there's this contingent of men who think liking this movie improves their "sensitivity creds." Aaarrgh!!”

“I agree with Sarah, every guy I've ever spoken to ( with the exception of this lovely forum) thinks this movie is great. When I talk about how annoying Natalie Portman is in this movie, they just look at me with the agast expression-- like I've just said something offensive about about black people or jews or something. This movie needs to be knocked of it's pedastal. The *worst* part was when the three main characters started screaming into that canyon. And then that line after that, "Enjoy discovering the blah blah blah abyss" or something. Ugh. :)

“The Natalie Portman character is so annoying, not to mention extremely one dimensional. This is one of those films that I can't believe so many people love”

"Plot line for garden state: you can get over your depression without drugs, if you meet a hot piece of ass girl named natilee portman who likes you, and listens to The Shins, and is quirky, but doesn't cut herself and isn't freakishly bipolar. Man, it's so true to life."

"Its all about a person that was so numb to life, and finally had the guts to feel something again due to someone special that entered their life. He realized that he belonged with that person and his friends . I think the reason why you all dont get this movie is because nothing extraordinary has happened in your life to completely change it."

"Yeah, what a breakthrough this movie was. Finally a film where a kooky, unpredictable female gets a repressed guy to open up and show his emotions and live every day like it's his last!"

And I feel better now having resolved some of my issues with this movie, and thinking on what it is I liked about adaptation considering many people no doubt hated it. I think a lot has to do with connecting to the characters, not just "getting" it but relating to and understanding what they're going through based on personal experiences.

Democracy UNDER ATTACK!

2008-12-12T13:18:00.002-06:00

Anything else? Democracy: Egg sandwich, purple hat, NKOTB CD, Fun times, Ski hill, bungee jump.

This is a good candidate for my list of words which mean very little but are used to sound inspiring and impressive.

Currently, you have conservative supporters claiming that this coalition is an attack on democracy because Stephen Harper is the guy we elected as prime minister, and governments should not be formed in “back room deals”. Then you have the libs and dippers who claim that it’s the conservatives who are attacking democracy by not allowing them to take over the house of commons.

I feel like I’m missing out on all the fun, so from now on whenever something happens that I don’t like I’m just going to say it’s an attack on democracy. Transpo buses on strike is an attack on democracy! Blizzards are an attack on democracy! Onions are an attack on democracy!

The most amusing thing to me is the assumption that a democracy is inherently a good thing – that everyone should have it. Thing is, a democracy is only as good as the people participating in it – and most people are not so bright. I would take a well-adjusted emperor or king anyday over a justly elected despot. The only real upside to a democracy over a dictatorship is the recourse of the citizens to remove – without violence – leaders who are complete failures. The biggest downside is that it becomes a race-to-the-bottom. In appealing to the masses you have to work with the lowest common denominator between people, which is usually some combination of greed, laziness and fear. Democracy turns politics into a childish game of pejoratives, mud slinging, and fear mongering. Of course now I’m attacking democracy…

Think about it – in the current environment we have ridiculous arguments being made as people try to find that lowest common denominator. Are we more afraid of the separatists or Stephen Harper? Both sides accuse the other of violating that most sacred institution – democracy, when neither accusation is especially convincing. They’re all playing by the rules of our system; our system is a democracy… add it up.

Man, rhetoric politics are so depressing. I really do hope that Obama does half the shit he says he wants to in the US. I hate to jump on the bandwagon, but he’s talking the talk of energy efficiency and greening the economy… if he walks that walk, I would be very impressed. Although we all know he is a communist terrorist black panther so I shouldn’t get my hopes up… at least he didn’t attack democracy (yet).

Ezra Levant - Everything wrong with politics incarnate

2008-12-01T18:31:00.002-06:00

I've never voted conservative, and I've been wary of them since the merger between the PC's and the Canadian Alliance (I was a CA supporter).

A lot of what Stephen Harper says makes sense, but lately someone over there is slipping heroine in his coffee or some shit.

First I heard about this stripping the $1.95/vote from the coffers of all political parties as a belt-tightening exercise. That sounds fine and dandy except this stipend was brought in to replace reliance on corporate donations (which give corps too much power in the political process). In terms of fairness in politics this is a good policy; you get an income based on your support plus whatever individuals are willing to donate. A reasonable measure against corruption. Also in the big scheme of things this doesn't amount to piddly shit so going after this - of all things - to try and reduce government spending is just fucking dumb.

The thing I like(d) about the tories was that for the most part they didn't say or do things that were completely fucking retarded. Now... well... yea. This is a total loser of a policy, it's not even thinly veiled that its an attempt to bankrupt opposition parties (particularly the libs who are already in dire straits). That is just totally low and ridiculous. Beat them with better policy and better candidates, not by abusing an economic situation to strip them of funds and try to push them over the edge.

Now if this was making me antsy about the conservatives, what I just saw on the TV has me into full blown disgust. For god knows what reason, CTV Newsnet has 3 political spinsters on to talk about the potential coalition government of the NDP/Libs with Bloc support. Now it's a sad day in my life when the Liberals are making 1000000x more sense than the Tories. Both the Liberal and the NDP speaker were calm, intelligent, and willing to give ground and discuss issues. They were not resorting to retarded bullshit political posturing (which was what originally made me hate the liberals so much - no substance, all posturing and rhetoric). For the conservatives they have this guy who has a phD in douchebaggery:

One "Ezra Levant". This asshole speaks the WHOLE time during the interview. The NDP and Liberal guys sit and listen to him say all kinds of retarded shit about forming a separatist government with Gilles Duceppe. They wince and make faces, but they let him speak. As soon as the liberal (garth turner i believe?) starts responding, ezra douchebaggery levant is trying to fucking talk overtop of him. Wow, is this grade 2? Now to do it once would be unkind and impolite, but the guy CONTINUES to do this the WHOLE time. Wow, I'm sorry bud but does the screen say "Ezra's magic jungle"? No, it doesn't. So shut the hell up and wait your turn so people can actually hear what is being said. Unless that was the whole point - the Tories can now just say "hey this Ezra guy is a crazy, he's out" but nobody heard what the libs/ndp had to say about anything so its still a win for the Cons.

I doubt that was the plan. This guy had the gall to start yelling "Every prostitute has their price" or some shit; saying that the NDP was the john and the Bloc was the hooker; then asking over and over again "what was the price?". That's just low and ridiculous. Who does this guy think he's scoring points with? I felt so bad for the liberal and NDP guy but man they were soldiers there taking the high ground against this asshole. You could just see them shaking their heads at how childish and retarded he was being.

And the kicker? The Tories relied on the Bloc vote to pass budgets over the past 3 years. Now suddenly that the NDP/Libs need it it's "in bed with the separatists" and "whoring yourself to the separatists". Give me a fucking break; is anybody buying this? Way to make your party look like a bunch of fear mongering morons. What happened to common sense that was the trademark of the CA/Tories?

Duceppe's not an idiot. He wants Quebec to separate no doubt, but in lieu of that he'll settle for making sure Quebec gets the best deal possible out of this federation. It's not like they signed an agreement saying "you support us for 18 months, then we support you in seceding from the country".

Charity, Hippies, and the road to hell (or: Carleton U’s CF bonanza)

2008-11-27T09:51:00.003-06:00

Like most people I caught wind of this story the other day. Carleton University’s student association decided to stop fundraising for Cystic Fibrosis research, with plans to find something “more inclusive” to support. What is “non inclusive” about CF is that it supposedly only (or mostly?) affects whites and particularly males. It’s not a very racially diverse affliction.

This little spat has me grinning ear to ear for so many reasons, most of which are not the obvious ones.

This is, first and foremost, a glorious example of what happens when under-informed people try to do “good things”. Behind all of this is a preoccupation with being culturally or racially sensitive. I’m willing to wager that the people (22 of 24) who supported this idea did so at least in part because they didn’t want to seem racist. The whole change is positioned to be pro-diversity, pro-multiculturalism, etc so to vote against it is to vote against diversity and multiculturalism and nobody wants to be caught dead doing that in a university. Common sense enthusiasts like myself absolutely love seeing shit like this backfire. It infuriates me when people position issues around these false dichotomies, where if you don’t agree you’re a racist or a misogynist, when you couldn’t care less about the racial/gender issue they are trying to inject into the debate.

It is also hilarious (in a tragic way) that there is public outcry about this shift in direction. I mean the net outcome of this, regardless of purpose, is to switch the charity they want to support. What is so by-divine-right about cystic fibrosis that it should be in the limelight forever? If memory serves, every year I was in school frosh week had a shinearama day to raise money for CF. Not cancer. Not aids. Not poverty. Not to save the whales. Not to protect the rainforest. Just cystic fibrosis. Now if you’re going to be raising money for a cause year after year, is it so ridiculous that you would re-evaluate and consider changing what cause you support periodically? They have every right to move on to another charity if they so choose. This is actually a concern I have in trying to support charities – which one do you give to and why that one over the rest? As an individual nobody is going to hold me accountable for my decision but as an organization – especially a representative association – you should indeed be held accountable for your choice.

The third thing I find greatly amusing in all this is that CF DOES primarily affect “Caucasian” populations. Now we may have to play loosey goosey with what that word means, but in practice this is a word I have always used as synonymous with “white” – although I do not doubt that it has its etymology from the region of the world known as the Caucuses. A quick google search leads me to both, the more commonly used definition in my opinion being:

Caucasian or Caucasoid
Adjective
of the predominantly light-skinned racial group of humankind
Noun
a member of this group

The CCFF itself is the source saying that this disease is limited to “Caucasians” – so this is not a fabricated fact; From Wikipedia:

“The impact of cystic fibrosis is limited by race. The Canadian Cystic Fibrosis Foundation (CCFF) which supports research into cystic fibrosis, says that CF only affects people of the caucasian racial group. However, the term caucasian includes people from South Asia, North Africa, the Persian Gulf and Israel, according to Cathleen Morrison, CEO of the CCFF. "[Although] these are Caucasian populations," Morrison, CEO of the CCFF told CTV [ctv.ca]. "[they] do not have white skin".[2]”

I don’t even understand what that means, mostly because race is a pretty fucked up thing to try and define. I don’t know if what this person is saying is equivalent to saying “I have a black father so even though I appear white I am actually also black” or if she’s saying “these people live in this particular region where the disease is prominent”. The first 2 sentences sound like there is something biologically different between different “races” that renders some people immune to it, and the last 2 basically say race is not defined by skin colour.

Put together what I see here is just amusing on so many levels. It is a fact that this disease only affects Caucasian people. We can say Caucasian doesn’t mean white but wow – in practice this is exactly what it means; “light skinned” and I really suspect that the # of people who are officially Caucasian (however that is biologically determined) but not light skinned is pretty fucking small. There are black people who are not black skinned too, but if you were to survey the population I’m pretty confident they would be rare and not the norm. So the idea it is a “white mans” disease is actually pretty sound.

In terms of choosing a charity to support, on what grounds should an organization like a Student Association choose? In this case they tried to apply an ethnocentric lens and be sensitive to their diverse population – this is certainly not the one I would have chosen, and it’s why I take some joy in it backfiring so masterfully. One could imagine # of people affected being a criteria, progress made to date on a cure/solution, current funding available, ability to avoid the affliction or prevent it, and the consequences of it. Using a racial or gender lens (as lefty yahoos are prone to do) is just fucked up.

What I personally think is so sinister about CF is that you cannot avoid or prevent it – it’s a recessive gene that you probably carry and so most likely will your partner and each kid you have is rockin a 25% chance to contract it through no fault of anyone. The impact is also pretty brutal, and progress towards improving quality of life for those afflicted has been remarkable (from life expectancy of 4-5 years old to 31). That being said I would be all for looking at other causes in the same criteria to see if there’s something else that deserves attention too.

But in the end what strikes me most is the hypersensitivity to “lefty” issues that caused the whole debacle. It was all based on wanting to be inclusive and sensitive to the needs of diverse cultures, and placing that desire above other (arguably more reasonable) criteria. If they’d just done the whole thing based on common sense, instead of injecting a bunch of multicultural bullshit into the equation, they probably could have switched charities around and been on the high ground if anyone from the CF research side came crying.

“Hippies, hippies... they want to save the world but all they do is smoke pot and play frisbee!”

Instinct - Self-preservation vs Empathy

2008-11-14T10:28:00.002-06:00

When I started learning political thought and was taught the position that “man” is first and foremost “self interested” I scoffed. To suggest that by nature human beings were predisposed to selfishness just sounded too cynical to believe (and this from someone who many would probably call a cynic). My favourite counterargument to this was the abundant natural evidence of cooperation – the herd, the colony, the flock. Very few animals are solitary in nature, and humans are no exception. We cooperate instinctually. One could say this is still self-interest since we only cooperate insofar as it is beneficial to us, but this starts getting into semantics and very murky waters about what we mean when we say “selfish” “cooperate” and “compete”.

I later revised this to accept that selfishness and competition make a great deal of sense in an environment of resource scarcity. If one’s very life is threatened then survival instincts kick in and we will put ourselves ahead of others. My example here is a situation in which there is not enough water (or food) for all in a region to live off of. Would I give away whatever I had and accept death, or would I defend what I had and attempt to endure? Such situations do not exist in this country, but there are other places where they do. I can’t even fathom the misery of a world where the basic necessities are scarce and there simply is not enough for everyone. Things like suicide show that we can suppress our instinct to survive, while our almost universal fear of death (and need for religious fairy tales to tell us we will never cease to exist) shows that the survival instinct still runs very deep. In an environment of resource scarcity I suspect the latter would be a lot more dominant than the former.

I more or less stand by this assertion, but what I observe is that even in a world of (current) resource abundance people continue to behave as though resources were scarce. That is, they are selfish. Is this the instinct to survive gone haywire, overriding the reasonable part of our minds that should suppress it during periods of resource abundance? Maybe.

Another interpretation of “selfishness” is to see it instead as a lack of empathy; an inability to imagine or relate to what other people are thinking and feeling. While I’ve often characterized my attitude as one being removed and distant, it could also be described as extremely empathetic. The less you focus on what it is you want or need (easy to do if you don’t want anything) the more open you are to seeing what it is other people want and need. I might also use this to explain being so antagonistic. I automatically assume the role of whoever isn’t present to represent their views. When conservatives talk conservative bullshit, I’m the yahoo socialist there to point out what they’re missing. When religion is dismissed as irrational and dangerous (lol bill maher) I’ll be the one representing the good stuff behind it, and the logical explanations that work. When students want lower fees, when artists want more arts funding, when businessmen want lower taxes, when minorities want more accommodations, when men say all women are crazy, I’m predisposed to seeing the missing side and what that side probably feels on the subject.

When people want something they will be biased towards its justification, and resistant to dissenting points of view (regardless of how logical those points may be). When you don’t have that self interest (or when you have significant empathy) you’re significantly less biased and more open to seeing “all sides of the story”.

When I see this self-interest bias I have a visceral response telling me that it’s wrong. That there’s a whole other angle to most issues that people just aren’t seeing. It’s great to be a student wanting “lower tuition fees”; but do you consider the taxpayer, the budget of governments and the competing priorities for funds? Or if you want lower taxes – consider the impact on services and “public goods” upon which we rely to maintain social order.

When I was into anarchy it was based on the idea that people weren’t predisposed or predestined to act like this (at least not in periods of resource abundance), and that we could in fact all be logical and empathetic and resolve problems easily and peacefully (reasonable empathetic people should almost always come to the same conclusions). Now I think maybe this is just the way people are, maybe that’s just our survival instinct prioritizing the things we feel we want or need over all else. We know that this instinct can be suppressed (suicide, valor) but this is unusual, and expecting a majority to do it is likely unrealistic.

So I’d say that’s why I’m argumentative and antagonistic, it’s why I don’t lie, it’s why I want things to be fair; I don’t want much and thus have little reason to be biased in my interpretation of events.

TV pisses me off

2008-11-10T11:28:00.002-06:00

I think the last time I cared about actually watching a show I was 8 years old and the show was the x-men cartoon. I would be mad about having to go to early hockey games because I’d miss x-men. So I taped most of them which was actually not too bad; being able to flip through the commercials and re-watch the shows.

For various reasons, Television has never really appealed to me. Since the days of that cartoon, there has never been a show that I made a point of watching when it was on. I saw my share of the Fresh Prince and Family Matters growing up; but just because that’s what was on – not because “omg its 7pm gotta watch tv!”.

Around age 13 I discovered the internet and that was probably the deathblow to the television for me. Something interactive was a lot more appealing than something that was a 1-way feed. So there’s never been a show that I’ve made a point of watching – until recently when I bought all the seasons of the Trailer Park Boys (this was after seeing the movie and finding it pretty funny).

In addition to the passive nature of the tube – the complete inability to participate – I’ve also always been bothered by commercials and increasingly stupid shows. In both instances it’s how farcical or degrading the photons popping out of the screen can be. A few of the ads that piss me off the most:

1. Car ads. I’ve written on this before. Driving will not be more fun with a different car. Commuting will still blow. You will still use steering wheel and accelerator to go wherever it is you’re going.

2. Pseudoscience. I have to roll my eyes at how many ads involve this. Usually it’s a CGI depiction of what happens when you use the product. A shampoo charging particles to attract dirt from your hair, molecules being used to fertilize the lawn “better than other fertilizers”.

3. Pseudoauthority. 9/10 dentists recommend colgate. Any dentist worth his salt knows there’s no difference between 1 toothpaste and another besides the marketing, and doesn’t give a shit which one you use as long as you use it. Movie ads get a bump here too by saying things like “Riveting” “Amazing” “I was on the edge of my seat” as quotes from reviews – too bad the reviews are from Joe’s smoke shop magazine, circulation 50. Or from some movie magazine that exists strictly to produce these quotes.

4. Anything asking you to text in your vote or answer.

Then reality TV came along. My gripe with this has and always will be that it is not reality at all. Nobody behaves authentically knowing that they are being recorded for the purposes of entertainment. My textbook on this one is “the simple life”. I saw a single episode of this show. Paris and her friend get “lost” somewhere in rural America and have to bunk up with a farmer who stops to help. The idea of them getting lost is stupid, but the fact the camera man is sitting in the back seat kind of lowers the idea of “two poor girls lost with nowhere to go”. I’m sure. Basically reality TV is improvisation by people who suck shit at acting. If I’m going to watch someone try to be entertaining, it would be better if they actually were in the entertainment business (which is why a show with gene simmons in it can still be entertaining even as reality tv – the guy is an entertainer so he knows how to make it fun for the viewer.)

I watch hockey games; that’s the only thing I will go out of my way or schedule time in order to see.

But what got my thinking about this was really two things. The first is that when I’m doing cardio at the gym I actually feel like I get a headache if I watch any of the TV’s. Maybe that’s just because running and watching crap doesn’t go well together, I dunno. But I find myself actually focusing on looking at the ground ahead of me rather than the TV’s above because it annoys me. Whether it’s CNN, Dr Phil, Much Music, or some soap opera. Just looking at it is brutal. The second thing is that TV acts as conversation material; people often get into discussions about shows – especially reality contest type shows (American idol, so you think you can dance, etc). When conversation angles about which contestant is good or bad, I can’t participate. There’s no generalization to make, no way to draw in your personal experience, no way to have a theory about any of it. If you don’t watch this crap you actually suffer social isolation at times in a way that is otherwise pretty damn rare. (You may not know shit about quantum physics, but if I start talking about it you could ask questions, think about the things you hear and add your own thoughts – good luck in describing who is a better singer/dancer).

So in addition to just not liking the passivity, the bullshit, the commercials, the scheduling, etc – I now also don’t like TV because it fucks with my cardio and makes me feel like a gump during conversations.

Fuckin tv.

3 Words that annoy the hell out of me at work

2008-10-30T10:04:00.001-06:00

1. Strategic.

Anything becomes instantly awesomer if you just add the word strategic to it. I mean, why do a research plan when you could do a STRATEGIC research plan?! Nothing says “wow” like this little word.

But what does strategic mean? Having a strategy? As in… planning something as part of the environment or bigger picture… as in… something you should pretty much always do? The antonym to strategic is “fucking around” so is adding it really necessary?

But hey if you want to sound deep in any meeting just remind everyone how important it is that we be strategic or think strategically. Nods of assent will circulate, “ah yes, strategic! Of course!”.

We need to eat strategically (not eat crap, eat healthy stuff) drive strategically (stay in your lane, respect lights and signs) and vote strategically (which retardedly has come to mean voting against someone rather than for someone)!

2. Framework.

If there’s one thing government has enough of its frameworks. A framework is something you do instead of doing the actual thing. So, instead of writing a report on Canada’s water needs, you write a framework for a report on Canada’s water needs. This is basically a table of contents. How hard is it to write a table of contents?

1. introduction
2. The current situation/data
3. Measures being implemented (case studies)
4. Recommendations

Bam. Framework! Now to flesh that out with actual content would require work, which as we all know certain people are averse to.

3. Opportunity.

People don’t like to hear about challenges or problems, so just turn both on their heads and call them… opportunities! Hurray! Think of all the opportunities coming from climate change! Think of the opportunities for morticians in the event of war! Oil running out is just an opportunity to use other fuel sources! Don’t you dare bring up the dreaded C word.

And with that its back to work on this Strategic Opportunity Framework.

Limitations: A logic for being illogical

2008-10-23T11:35:00.006-06:00

I'm not going anywhere in particular with this, these are pretty much some musings/meanderings I have been caught on lately and haven't totally resolved.

1. Most of the problems people face are due to a lack of perspective.

The vast majority of things that people get upset about are completely ridiculous from one vantage point or another. When you get far enough away from the immediate problem, the triviality is starkly apparent. This is probably just the idea of "zen", but I think of it as perspective. Between the cosmos, the oceans, the sun, a biosphere teeming with creatures separated by only a marginal difference in DNA, it is pretty tough to get upset about someone stepping on your new shoes, or accumulating debt, or getting rejected for a job.

2. Perspective is just a matter of how many times you ask yourself "why?"

I keep thinking this. People don't like to ask themselves why - perhaps because they lack the intelligence to answer the question, but perhaps because they don't like what the answers reveal. Why do we want to trust our partners? Why do we care about our families? Why do we believe in the sanctity of life? Why am I upset when people lie? Why do I need more money? Why do I want to go to Barbados? Why do I like music? Why is something funny?

A lot of it gets real tough, but there are also a lot of things (most of which I don't even need to deal with anymore) that are real easy.

3. Ask yourself why too many times and you are faced with the choice of a bleak and pointless future/existence, or being irrational.

At some point those higher end questions result in a void. At some point asking "why should I care?" has no answer. You must, at this point concede a limitation to logic and just learn to accept it. This system cannot handle everything that makes up human existence no matter how much we might like it to. Which is to say arguing things like God's existence (or lack thereof) along logical lines is pretty pointless. Arguing family ties, love, hate, and most visceral responses is equally moot. These things exist in a place where logic can't go.

4. The logical choice between bleakness and meaning is meaning, thus it makes sense to believe in something you cannot justify or explain with logic (be that religion, the "human spirit", destiny, fate, virtue, or anything else).

One could technically stay true to logic/reason, but it will cut out one emotion after another as they are deemed illogical until one's entire life is sterile. This begs the question of whether it is logical to follow a path that leads to a void at best and despair at worst, or to accept limitations to the system and make room for other, competing systems (irrational, emotional systems).

Which is all to say that if you tackle human behaviour with a reasonable, logical attitude you eventually come around to accepting that an element of irrationality is necessary in order to avoid despair.

Learning to accept and live with this duality is bizarre, and it is rife with contradictions.

One might hypothesize, if one were so inclined, that men are predisposed to reason and women to emotion - and that one of the incentives for union (at a higher point on the Maszlo scale of human needs than mere procreation) is synergizing these and learning firsthand how to live in such a duality.

How the Green Party won my vote (again)

2008-10-15T08:37:00.002-06:00

In the pre-election fervor I recently noted that the Greens had lost my vote for being a bunch of socialist yahoos.

I must admit that when it came time to put my X on the card, I voted for said socialist yahoos.

The issue, simply put, is that even with the socialist bullshit they’re still the party that most closely reflects the things I care about. That’s kind of sad, but I suppose every voter has to make similar concessions. It’s pretty unlikely that any party is going to be bang on the mark with your opinions about all or even most policy issues.

A quick rundown of the alternatives I looked at:

Conservatives: I don’t think they’re as horrible as lefty yahoos want you to think. Sound managers, realistic about what’s possible (i.e. Kyoto), no time for stupid shit about multiculturalism and social justice. The killer here was the way they went after the Green Shift calling it a “tax on everything”. I’m sorry but this is so stupid and illogical that there is no way I could support this. I’m also not convinced on the whole that this party takes environmental issues seriously.

Liberals: I normally wouldn’t even look at these guys due to their history of being the worst panderers and liars in Canadian politics. In the interest of fairness I tried. I liked the idea of the carbon tax and green shift. Furthermore Mauril was the only candidate who responded to my email asking about visions for Canada’s energy future. I’ll be honest, if this was my first election and I had no experience with these parties in the past, I would have voted liberal for those 2 reasons alone. Unfortunately I could not in good conscience support these clowns, knowing all the stupid ideas they’ve come up with over the years, and the level of pandering and vote buying they are willing to do in order to get power.

NDP: Until the last two or three days I was seriously figuring on voting for the NDP. They were treading the “common sense” line the same way the Alliance used to and that resonated. They’ve still got their socialist yahoos. In the end it was the fact that these clowns seem to think you can write off anything by blaming “big business” and “big polluters”. I sincerely doubt they would be willing to inconvenience the average taxpayer in any way, which bodes ill for a future that is likely to require just that sort of action.

Bloc: if we had a bloc candidate I would have voted for him just to help get rid of Quebec :p

Green: I’ve voted for them for a long time so it was the safe vote. They do take the environment more seriously than the tories or NDP, although they’ve got the socialist rhetoric that I hate. One of the deciding factors here frankly was an ad where Elizabeth May was stating that somewhere along the way Canadian politics became about polished lines and sticking to the script, rather than a dialogue about what’s best for the country. Then she said some new-age psychobabble about the pulse of the nation and its wonderful diversity… but the first part resonated. Whether I believe she actually wants to do things differently (as the greens once did) is up for debate. The emails I’ve got from them over the last year look like any other party’s slick political comms products.

Now the real edge here is that I have some intention of checking out the riding association again and seeing what these people are like. No better way to know if the party is being usurped by socialist yahoos than by seeing it for yourself. Maybe I can talk some sense into them about dropping the lame meaningless socio-babble and focusing on the frigging environment.

In the end you pretty much have to decide whether you’re comfortable supporting a party lock-stock and barrel, or if you’re not comfortable supporting any of them (I’ve spoiled ballots in the past and this was a possibility here as well). The alternative though is tentative support, with a view to trying to change the things you don’t like about it – or at the very least bringing the issues to the attention of those making the decisions.

Strange inversion – From anarchy to the state

2008-10-09T12:20:00.003-06:00

Once upon a time (in university) I described myself as an anarchist. I never blew up any buildings or wore cool black masks to protests. I simply came to an obvious conclusion based on the notion that all power is alienating, and a society without power relations would be the ideal.

The idea here is really straightforward. Power (in terms of human relations) is the ability to get someone to do something they otherwise would not have done. The far superior alternative is having people do the right things in the first place, without needing any kind of coercion or persuasion. So the best case scenario is not needing a government or legal system because people are all aware of what is right and wrong, and simply don’t do wrong things.

Utopian, but once upon a time I sincerely believed it was a feasible structure (or lack thereof). I hypothesized that the human experience – our beliefs and identities, were completely malleable. That we only turn up assholes because of the institutions and cultural practices in place. That there was a conceivable “other way” to organize a society that would lead to citizens who had no use for a state because disputes resolved themselves quickly and painlessly.

The basis of this “new world” was turning around the three bastard children of modernity; whom I named individualism, materialism, and nihilism. We just needed some way to have people care about things other than themselves and their property – to see a larger picture, and we needed people to believe in something.

That was… Say 5 years ago that I fumbled around with that stuff and came to the anarchic conclusion. I had no interest in bombs or dismantling the state anytime soon – I wanted to see institutional and policy changes that would produce the type of citizen that didn’t need a state – leading to anarchy on its own account, without any violence at all.

What has changed over the past year or so is my belief that human identity and experience is especially malleable. There are stark limits here that can only be ignored if you opt to be completely irrational. While I may feel confident that I can understand and practice truth and justice, I cannot sincerely say that I believe all others are born with the same capacity. It is more probable that folks like me are genetic anomalies, than it is that the huge majority are just unfortunate victims of a world system that reinforces individualism, nihilism, and materialism. Not that it doesn’t do those things, but even reversing them is unlikely to bring the stupidest people alive to a point where they understand or even give a shit about things being fair or being honest.

I still base a lot of my (increasingly limited) political thoughts on the basic stuff I learned about Aristotle. The telos of human beings is to seek justice and become just, which they accomplish through politics (interaction and discussion). The part I whitewashed in the past was the fact that the Greeks had slaves – folks who were simply too stupid to ever understand fairness or justice and were better off directed by those who were. I can’t say that’s an airtight case for slavery, but I can say it’s a pretty reasonable reflection of the improbability that all human beings have the same capacity to learn and be interested in truth and justice. The rampant stupidity out there seems to corroborate this.

Now this does not change the “ideal” of a world where people are so in tune with what’s fair, and so committed to honesty, that there is no use for a complex legal system or a government to generate policies. It does change the probability that such an ideal state could in fact ever come into existence.

I am not sold on democracy as a great system. I like that if someone really fucks up we can replace them - I do not like relying on the “wisdom” of the masses to assess who is best positioned to lead. To me this has devolved more into pandering, acting, and lying than it has to empowering the average joe to achieve his telos.

Which is basically to say that anarchy isn’t a serious option, and that some type of state is required to keep the morons from tearing each other to pieces. We need the state to keep life from being “brutish and short” (I believe that was Hobbes or Locke?). Government, like all things, can be good or bad depending on the individuals responsible for it. A good one can make shit work, and still fight those issues of individualism, materialism, and nihilism. A bad one reinforces the worst in all of us.

The beautiful thing about anarchy as a concept was that it was a get-out-of-jail-free card in any discussion. You don’t have to describe the ideal government – the ideal government is no government. All I can say about an alternative is that I really dug the idea of noblesse oblige. Even though power was devolved through bloodlines (royalty), there was an expectation that the Prince would protect his people. The nobles would fight the wars and protect the lands of the peasants, in return the peasants would remit part of their productive capacity to the nobles. The problem was there was no guarantee said responsibility would actually be upheld by the noble – if they were a dick it didn’t work, if they were good then it did. Democracy is the same. Everything is the same. Good people give you good results, bad ones don’t. The system is just an afterthought, so I’m not sure I care a lot about forms of government and processes of government, unless it’s evident that something is blatantly unfair.

STOP STEPHEN HARPER FROM BANNING ROCK N ROLL!!

2008-10-07T08:33:00.002-06:00

The conservative party of Canada and their leader Mr. Stephen Harper want to ban rock n roll music in Canada! Help stop them! I heard my friend say that one of the backbench MP’s doesn’t like rock music, and we all know that if a backbencher doesn’t like something – or if rural Albertans/Ontarions don’t like something it becomes CPC policy!

Since everyone knows that all CPC supporters are rednecks, and rednecks only listen to country/western, we know without a doubt that it is the official policy of CPC to ban rock n roll music as soon as they get a majority! Canada is slipping towards fascism we have to act now!

If you care about rock n roll music and a world where freedom exists for all types of musical tastes and musical diversity, you must act on October 14th to stop the censors in the Conservative party from clamping down on the Canadian music scene! We do NOT want to go back to the 15th century folks!

Here is PROOF that Stephen Harper and the Conservatives will ban rock n roll if given a majority!:

Notice the cowboy hat? Do cowboys like rock n roll? hmmm what do you think? FASCISM!

Don’t let the conservatives kill rock n roll! Vote against them on October 14th!

PS – if you can, please circulate petitions and make some facebook groups to ensure that we STOP STEPHEN HARPER and SAVE ROCK N ROLL!

Chevrolet Aveo says "be a dick!"

2008-09-30T13:30:00.002-06:00

So chevy has launched this new ad campaign for its new car the "aveo 5". This may or may not be a good car, I don't know. What I do know is that the ads piss me off and make me wonder if people are as asshole-ish as these ads imply. They are currently plastered over many of the buses I ride, with each poster slightly different from the other (about 5 or 6 total in the series)

For those unfamiliar, the aveo5 ads implore you to "have a little fun" and then gives you a recommended action for said fun. Recommended processes for ensuing hilarity or joviality include:

1. "insist body language is your first language"
2. "interrupt a strangers conversation and ask "who you callin crazy?"
3. Tape a sign saying "fax" over the paper shredder.
4. Pole dance on a street car

There are a few others I can't remember right now, but to me doing any of the things they suggest would involve being a douchebag, not "having fun"... unless being an asshole is fun.

Honestly, would it be that funny to walk up to a stranger and say who you callin crazy? Or would it just make you annoying and stupid?

I can only assume it's the generation after mine that would actually find any of these proposed actions fun.

-ebeneezer.

Enlightenment at the end of the world

2008-09-29T13:16:00.002-06:00

A while back I wrote a short tongue-in-cheek sort of post noting that the sun is going to cook the earth, most likely within the next 2 billion years. I’ve been thinking about that off and on since I learned of it trying to figure out what it is about this that was so shocking when I first learned it.

First up there is a very small chance this is wrong; that what we think we’re seeing through things like the hubble telescope isn’t quite accurate. I don’t know all of the theory behind the life and death of stars, or anything in astrophysics for that matter, but I do get the impression that suns living and dying is an accepted scientific fact. Observations made through things like the hubble verify this, and what we know about our own sun and how it works also verify it. The sun has a lot of fuel, but it is in fact burning it and one day it will run out.

So let’s say that barring something strange happening, the earth has a discernible expiry date that is based on when the sun runs out of fuel. This is inevitable – the sun will run out of hydrogen, expand to many times its current size (becoming a red giant) and fry the earth.

What does that mean? – that a planet, like all species on its surface – will die. That no matter what we do on the surface of said planet, in the end it will all be incinerated.

At a glance this is maybe frightening or grim, but upon reflection it’s actually kind of comforting. Being scared of death is probably the most illogical human fear there is. We tell ourselves fairy tales about reincarnation or an afterlife to make it easier to take. The more reasonable thing to tell yourself is that at some point you will quite simply cease to exist – like billions upon billions of people before you… like all organisms… like planets and stars.

The issue here is the idea of human exceptionalism – that somehow, the rules of the universe might not apply to us. In civilization it’s like we’re surrounded by a fog, wrapped in daily affairs and unable to see a big picture. The questions are whether we will have chicken or pizza for dinner, whether we will drive or walk to the store, whether this girl likes me or not, whether I should find another job. These things have value, sure, but they do not override the basic precepts of life and the universe.

People don’t see themselves as parts of a system. We forget that what we really need is water, food, and shelter. That the only thing separating us from wolves, raccoons, spiders, and crocodiles is a little bit of ingenuity.

So somehow, knowing that one day the sun is gonna cook this sucker actually feels kind of good. You really don’t have to worry about dying – it’s just what everything does, and if you could live forever eventually you’d be fried anyways (if you didn’t get iced or blasted by a meteor or whatever else before then).

I guess it’s just a matter of perspective. It doesn’t legitimize not caring or being a dick, it just means that damn, you kind of have to accept that we’re a temporary thing, and we can do whatever we will while we’re here (as a race, civilization, whatever) but it’s not because of any divine will or exceptionalism. Whatever we do will not last “forever”, we ourselves are a limited edition product – warp drive engines or other star-trek tech notwithstanding.

Maybe I was too hard on the libs

2008-09-25T10:31:00.001-06:00

I don’t like liberals. I don’t like the liberal party. I don’t like liberal cronies. I don’t like Paul Martin. I don’t like crazy left wing yahoos with neither foot in reality. The reasons for this are numerous, but it mostly boils down to the abject absence of common sense in liberal rhetoric, and the willingness to lie, cheat, and steal in order to get votes.

Now the reason I think I may have been to hard on the liberals is because I see the same shit in every party – in every politician everywhere in fact. There are notable exceptions I’m sure. Actually I heard an interview with Jim Baird on the bear one morning and he sounded like a pretty normal guy, he wasn’t giving political spin or spewing rehearsed lines in his interview, he was just talking like a normal human being which was refreshing.

But even if he’s a decent guy, maybe a decent politician, his party is acting like a bunch of fucktards. The liberals proposed the “green shift”. I haven’t read it, nor will I because I don’t care enough about politics to bother. I understand the principle of it – change taxation from the income earned to the carbon (pollution) produced. This is logical in so many ways that you pretty much have to not only ride the short bus, but inhale all the engine fumes coming out of it in order to call this a bad idea. What do the stupid fucking tories do? “OMG STEVE DION WANT TO TAX EVERYTHING LOL!”. Unbelievable. You know what else is a “tax on everything”? Income tax. Sales tax. Oh shit BRIAN MULRONEY TAX EVERYTHING LOL! Nevermind that the plan is to be “revenue neutral” meaning income tax will go down in step with the amount raised from carbon tax. So for joe-schmoe you’ll pay roughly the same amount of tax – a bit more if you burn lots of fuel, a bit less if you don’t. In either case you can DO something to reduce your tax. How do you reduce your income tax? Make less money… awesome.

I used to like the Canadian alliance and the reform because they spoke common-speak, didn’t use political bullshit, and didn’t turn everything into a pile-of-shit partisan soundclip competition. They took the liberals to task on their truly stupid ideas like the gun registry and multiculturalism, not on any actual good ideas (although green shift may be the first good liberal idea in Canadian history). Now I see the tory machine playing the liberal game, and wonder if it ever was a liberal game or if that’s just politics.

I watched supposed-great-orator barack obama do a press conference yesterday about the situation in the US. Now a less-astute observer might have just said WOW OBAMA WANT TO WORK WITH REPUBLACANZ THIS AWESOME MAN! Because he was talking about some joint statement with John Mcain. But that’s not what I saw. What I saw was him agonizing over the retarded details of who called who and when, trying to draw attention to the fact that this whole initiative was his doing, and Mcain is just along for the ride. More of the same as far as I’m concerned.

If the liberals weren’t the liberals I’d vote for them just to support the green shift idea. Unfortunately there’s so many douchebags in that party that it’d probably never get implemented anyways, it’d get drowned out in a bunch of feel-good nonsense with no results to speak of as they tried to please everyone and bring themselves back to a majority.

And then it’s the greens and NDP who might be worth a look if they weren’t hostage of left wing yahoos in the former case, and populated with acid-flashback candidates in the latter. If Jack keeps talking his talk tho about the common Canadian meat-and-potato issues, and can convince me he’s sincere I may cast my vote there for the first time.

In all probability though I will go and spoil my ballot because I won’t be seen as endorsing the political bullshit doubletalk. Someday maybe we can have a politician who tells it like it is instead of trying to please everyone with soundbytes and illogical attack ads. Or I’ll go to whatever debates they have out in Gloucester and vote for the individual who seems the least retarded, regardless of party.

But in all of this what I keep seeing is that your average person must buy this stupidity, otherwise the parties couldn’t get away with it.

Friday morning ramblings

2008-09-19T07:39:00.003-06:00

1. When on the bus if there is a crowd on one side of you and empty space on the other, you are the cause of the bottleneck. Move back retard.

2. When did not bending the peak on your ball cap become cool? You look stupid. Do you see baseball players doing this? no. Is it called a baseball cap? yes.

3. As a general rule getting tattoos of stars on your body is a bad idea. It doesn't look good, and one doubts that these have any special meaning to you.

4. Is it really necessary to have 2 fucking bus stops on the same block? I'm looking at you rideau st and king edward. The fat asses at pizza pizza can't walk 15 seconds down to steve's music store and get on the bus there?

5. My Canada includes stephen harper. Your ad-hominem attacks against him just make you look petty. And no I won't join your facebook group to "STOP HARPER LOL!" stop him from doing what? Right.

6. Complaining about oil companies and expensive oil makes you look ignorant. That shit is going to run out, get with the program.

7. Traveling to Europe is not an acceptable goal in life.

8. "Socially liberal and fiscally conservative" is feelgood dogshit. Anyone who is socially conservative wouldn't even know what the term socially conservative means, and the opposite of fiscally conservative is fiscally irresponsible.

9. Stop saying the word "blogosphere" like it means anything. All it is is a bunch of asshats like me shooting our mouths off, nobody should really care what we say and you certainly shouldn't try to amalgamate all of our sayings into one coherent thought. "Jim the blogosphere was abuzz with news of Ritz's comments". No, it wasn't. And even if it was who cares?

10. My dog does not look vicious or scary, if you are afraid of him when we walk by you you are probably missing some brain cells.

11. Government needs fewer frameworks, management committees and "opportunities".

“goin out for a little drive”

2008-09-17T08:12:00.002-06:00

I am starting to wonder if I’m the only person who does not believe that driving is fun. Don’t get me wrong, it was fun when I was 16 or 17, first time behind the wheel, freedom of going places I couldn’t go before, etc. But at the ripe old age of 26 I’ve been done with this phase for quite some time. Everyone my age has, hell most people my age are driving everyday.

Yet car companies are still persuading us that driving cars is fun, and that this particular car is even more fun than the rest. I can only assume people are buying this, otherwise it wouldn’t make sense as the dominant theme in car marketing over the past 10-20 years. I’m guessing that said companies know driving a car sucks, so they’re going for the throat with marketing that promises a new product that will make it not suck, or at least suck less. The thing is have they ever really delivered?

Occasionally I rent a car to go to my parents’ for the weekend, and the salespeople will either describe how awesome the car is to me, or ask me how it was when I get back. To both angles I have to blink stupefied, because regardless of the car I turned the key and pushed the gas pedal, then proceeded to arc the wheel left and right until I arrived where I wanted to be. The only thing remotely pleasant about the experience is the CD player or radio. The rest, while not painful, is pretty mind-numbing.

Yet commercial after commercial shows people having awesome times in their cars, or if they want to be a bit less extreme, having awesome times at places the car has taken them to. The latter is fine and dandy, but it begs the question of why I need this specific vehicle to get me to the place I can have fun – wouldn’t any vehicle suffice? The bigger lie tho is in people having kickass fun driving around in their new car. It’s not fun, it sucks. I would rather already be wherever it is I was going to than fucking around in the car.

There’s this old cliché about life being about the journey, not the destination. Problem is the metaphor is fucked up. In reality it’s about the destination not the journey, I get in the car to go see my folks, not to enjoy the awesome wicked time of cruising down highway 7. If life is about driving down highway 7 and not about seeing your family, life is retarded.

How the green party lost my vote

2008-09-10T10:02:00.002-06:00

When I first started voting I was a gung-ho Canadian Alliance supporter; their common sense lines on equality, democracy, small business, farmers, and fairness resonated with me. I’m one of a handful who dislikes the merger with the Tories because of all the reform ideas that got lost in that particular shuffle. In fact I still proudly sip Jack Daniels from my Canadian Alliance vintage glass mug.

Once the CA was out of the picture, I turned my support towards the Greens. There was a certain charm to the disorganization of the party, it actually felt like something grassroots – not a machine built to spew news bytes and cajole votes at all costs. I will never forget being at a local green meeting, and hearing the people there talk about wanting to raise awareness and generate support for a pedestrian bridge in Ottawa. What’s remarkable about it was that they were actually against putting the Green Party name anywhere on the petition (not that petitions are awesome in the first place – that’s another issue) because they felt it might alienate people who support other parties. It was as though the issue itself was more important than profile for the party, and that was about the time when I said “wow, this party is awesome”.

How far the Green’s have fallen since those good old days. Now they are generic left-wing party X. I had a look at their site and the NDP site and I’ll be honest, I’ve been way too hard on the NDP for being a bunch of socialists. The green’s kick their ass at this. The NDP’s tone is pretty much targeted at poor people or “working class”. Whether their policies will achieve their objectives or not is another question, but this is their ethos – to represent the common Canadian. I’m sure that lefty shit is in there too, but I’ll give credit where credit is due and at a glance their platform doesn’t look too crazy.

The Green’s on the other hand are a complete and utter joke. Anyone who votes for these yahoo’s these days needs to have their head checked. You’re not doing an environmental service, you’re courting communism and a bunch of retarded ideas you probably don’t even realize are there. I wager the only reason the Green’s are getting anywhere is because people care about the environment and assume that the “Green” party is the best choice to reflect this. Frankly the NDP and the Libs are probably comparable in their green platform.

Here is a quick shot at the Green Party’s “principles”:

The old, and “used-to-be-good” stuff:

1. “Ecological Wisdom”

This used to just mean that we recognized that the earth (biosphere, atmosphere, etc) is part of life and needs to be maintained. Growth and “prosperity” at the cost of carrying capacity would be a non-starter.

Now it’s a bunch of PETA shit about protecting all plants and animals.

2. Participatory Democracy

Used to be exactly what it says. An expectation that decision-making power would be allocated locally where reasonable, and that community forums would be a more significant part of the decision making process. I believe e-governance was in here at some point too.

Now? Bunch of communist shit about “breaking down inequalities of wealth and power that inhibit participation”.

3. Sustainability

This used to be about growing, building, and buying locally. Reducing consumption of all resources and lowering GHG emissions.

It’s still got a bit of that but now they added some socialist crap about “ensuring the rich limit their consumption to allow the poor their fair share”. Give me a break. They’ve also for obvious political reasons peppered in some stupidity about “youth culture”. This means nothing, but makes young people feel included and last I checked young people are the ones most receptive to the Green Party (because they’re too ignorant to actually read platforms and realize their being snowed in – or they’re too ignorant to care about stupid communist ideas).

The new or “was-always-stupid” stuff:

1. “Non-Violence”

Hahahaha. This is really funny. It insinuates that the only reason anyone has a military is to raid and plunder, that there is no need for self-defense in this world. This is some crack-smoking dahlia lama shit right here. Oh and they want to pursue complete disarmament of everyone in the world. Reminds me of the Simpson’s episode where Lisa wishes for world peace and all the weapons are burned… aliens come down and are then chased away with sticks with nails in them. Not only is it unrealistic for our country to prevent some other country from maintaining weaponry, if we all disarm down to nothing the first “rogue state” to rip out the old textbook and put together an Ak-47 will quickly take over the world.

Nice sentiment, but makes no sense in reality. The idea should be to have a protective force adequate to maintain your way of life from hostile invasion. With guerrilla tactics you could argue that militias would be more than adequate for this, but to just say non-violence is brainless.

2. “Social Justice”

Like I didn’t get enough of this gobbledy-gook fed to me at Ottawa U… according to the greens there is “no environmental justice without social justice”. Nobody really knows what social justice means but it sure feels good to say it. Presumably it means stopping those awful tories from lynching gays and blacks and putting women barefoot in the kitchen. Social justice for all! I can’t wait to get me some social justice, how about you?

3. Respect for diversity.

A bunch of crap. The great thing with the Canadian Alliance was that they simply said “we don’t give two shits if you’re a Hispanic gay jew or a paraplegic middle-age white man; people are people and you’re all the same to us.” We all earn income, consume resources, pay taxes. The state doesn’t need to care about the particulars of your identity. If this party gets elected I’m gonna go ask them to respect my right to wear bathrobe to work and blare rock n roll music in my office because I’m just diverse like that.

Which is all to say, I’m not voting Green unless our local candidate convinces me he’s not a communist with crazy new-age left wing fantasies, and in salute to Jack Layton’s maintenance of his moustache and my moustache-in-the-making, I will give the NDP fair consideration.

Mullets, Moustaches, and E-dating

2008-09-09T08:53:00.002-06:00

I'm coming up on a full year of singledom, and while it’s been alright it hasn’t exactly been stellar. I have however come to a few small epiphanies (or at least notable observations).

The first is that I don’t know shit about “dating”. I’ve been on a few, and I get the idea of the thing but it’s still tough. Usually once I understand the concept of something I can make it work like it’s supposed to but this one is evasive.

The worst thing about dating is shutting it down. Telling someone you don’t want to see them again sucks, and makes you feel like an asshole. This makes me inclined to not even try seeing someone unless I’m pretty sure it could work out in the long term. That’s retarded, and I know it, but I just hate having to be the dick who says “sorry but this isn’t gonna work”. A close second is being on the receiving end of this, which also sucks.

Meeting people is not as easy as it sounds. I figure on any given day I probably come within a few feet of a girl who’d be great for me, but we never talk so it never manifests itself. It ought to be easy to talk to strangers, but without some sort of common ground it’s awkward as all hell. Pam says I shouldn’t listen to headphones on the bus, but try to talk to people instead. Maybe if I was half in the bag whenever I was on the bus this would be plausible, but as long as I’m stone cold sober I only hear myself sounding like a retard trying to start a chat up on the 95.

Tacit rejection. The inverse of this is comforting, but there are times when you just have to ask yourself “what the fuck is wrong with me?” Why doesn’t someone talk to ME on the bus or approach me in the book store? The probable answer is that everyone else is just as insecure or scared, but there’s that question at the back of your mind that says if you were worth a damn someone somewhere would try to reach out to you. This only hits me on the shittiest days, the rest of the time I take it for what it is and have no problem playing offense. I owe this strange confidence to my estranged high school friend Matt. The first time I ever talked to a girl in a bar was when I was out with him, and he encouraged me to just go talk to this girl because “what’s the worst that can happen?” If you can handle being told to fuck off, then you really don’t have anything to lose. That actually parlayed into my first ever date, which was a consummate disaster but that’s beside the point.

Following this real life dilemma I opted to give online dating a try. I’ll be honest I have been critical of this type of shit in the past, but it’s not like I’ve never been mistaken and I couldn’t really see the downside to it – other than having to one day say “we met online”. The attitude you have to have here I think is to expect nothing, but be open to the possibility of meeting someone great. Consider it improbable but feasible and that little tacit rejection problem pretty much evaporates.

As an interesting aside to the online dating thing, I signed up for e-harmony but got rejected for service because they felt they would be unable to match me with anyone. This would be a huge kick in the nuts if not for the fact their “compatibility” service is pretty frigging stupid. It’s a 50 page questionnaire that generates a profile about you and tries to identify your personality. So if your answers don’t match a known profile you basically get tossed. Like all questionnaires of this sort you can see exactly where the answers will lead you, but if you’re being honest odds are you’ll wind up with a muddled profile that their system can’t understand; that is “yes I am considerate of others” but “no I don’t value kindness highly”, or “yes I like to schedule things” but “no I don’t obsess over the cleanliness of my room”. E-harmony computers go on the fritz when you say that because “OMG U R TYPE A AND B PERSON WTF?”

Which is to say e-harmony can fuck off.

So I have this plan to grow a mullet. You don’t really see mullets on guys my age anymore, and I kind of missed out on it in the 80s although my brother rocked a serious one for a while. I figure I’ll be ahead of the curve because it’ll probably come back into style in a few years. Plus I totally see the practicality of it as my hair gets longer, playing sports and such is a bitch because your hair gets in your face. As Jeremy once put it “the mullet was awesome because it was long hair that didn’t get in your face” friggin right. I figure I’m on a mullet clock. If I’m still single when my hair is long enough to chop into a nice el-camino I’ll go for it, because by that point what will I have to lose?

In the interim I’m also growing a dirty moustache. This however is more of a protest to the fact I can no longer grow a beard. For whatever reason hair no longer grows on a large patch of my chin (and hasn’t for several months). I could go to the doctor and ask wtf is going on but it’s not like it hurts, and I don’t think he’s going to be able to do anything about it other than prescribe rogaine or something stupid. So just in case this happens with the moustache zone, now is the time to grow the big one.

Remember, if you read this and have some cute single girl friends you could save me from a mullet. Think about the mullet.

Then again it could be destiny... I googled images for "mullet fubar" and a picture of me in my mullet wig is on the first page.

Booyah

Advertisements that can fuck off

2008-09-03T08:37:00.002-06:00

I'm no fan of ads in general but there are a couple of things that really annoy me out there.

1. Telus ads.

Can someone tell me what the fuck monkeys and fish have to do with phones? Oh that's right, nothing. There is no logical connection whatsoever between the animals these r-tards use in their ads and the messages in their ads.

"the future is friendly"... like these lemurs. ????

"unlimited text"... and here's a picture of some fish. ???

Oh boy bees. I love me some bees.

I actually refused to even look at this company's phones because of how stupid these ads are. I can't think of anything lazier than just putting some animals on your ads that have zip to do with what you're selling. See usually there is some connection, ad companies at least try to be clever. Bell's talking beavers are both Canadian symbols and characters who are discussing how great the products are. The rogers kids, while fucking annoying too, are there to demonstrate how integral and great rogers products are to a functional teenage social life. But the telus penguins? fish? lemurs? rabbits? who fucking knows. They just look cute I guess so throw them there and go for the bottom feeders.

2. Any ad that has one grown person giving another grown person a piggy back ride.

I don't know who it was that decided this was cool but it's not. It's retarded. When is the last time you saw one grownup give another a piggy back ride? that's right - either never or sometime when both of them were drunk. It's supposed to look "fun" or "silly" but to me it just looks stupid.

Again it also begs the question of what a piggy back ride has to do with: a) radio station. b) rental apartments. c) a trip. If you go on a trip its like giving your wife a piggy back ride. She enjoys it and for you it pretty much sucks. Ok so there is a connection I guess, although if that was intentional that's real slick.

If I was in advertising I would follow up on this trend with people doing handstands. I mean come on what's more firvolous and childish than doing a handstand? Have you seen any adults do them lately? no. But if you were wild and free you'd be doing them. So it could sell any kind of "good times" or "feel young again" type product. Fuck it it could even sell texting plans the way things are going.

3. The new bayshore shopping center ads.

These just started popping up on the buses and they are also pretty annoying. It says "it's that simple at bayshore" with a picture of some dork being dressed up by his presumed girlfriend.

I can only assume that the message here with "it's that simple" is that if you want to get laid by your semi-hot girlfriend let her dress you up like a dumbass in a mall. And it helps to have a stupid grin on your face.

I shouldn't care about any of this crap but if I'm going to be subliminally manipulated by ads they could at least be logical, and at best be clever.

The number 2 billion; a depressing one

2008-08-29T12:14:00.003-06:00

1. Number of people (roughly) the earth can support "sustainably" in absence of fossil fuels.

We're currently in major overshoot, rockin around 6.5 billion raping the shit out of the environment and reliant on cheap abundant energy to keep us going.

2. Number of years (roughly) we have to get our butts out of here before the sun barbecues the earth.

In 5 billion it'll exhaust hydrogen supply and turn into a red giant, growing so large that it will occupy the space currently taken by the inner 3 planets - that is both crushing and incinerating the earth. However it will heat up along the way and cook the oceans off our surface well before then.

Human civ. has been around for maybe 20 000 years or so? So at least we've got some time to figure this one out.

The difference between me and them

2008-08-28T07:39:00.003-06:00

People protest at parliament hill. This thing or that thing, pretty much everything has a protest for it it seems.

This morning as I'm walking by they've got a table out on the sidewalk with a bunch of crap on it, and a guy who steps in front with the clear intention of either handing me something or asking me to sign something.

As I get close enough I can see some of the stuff on and around the table more clearly and a big sign staying "STOP PUPPY MILLS". Well fuck, how could I support puppy mills? WHO could support puppy mills? Fucking cruella de ville, that's who.

LOOK THIS PUPPERDOG HOW CUTE LOL HE IS IN A JAIL U CAN FREE HIM BY SIGNING THIS:

But see me, I'm a little different than captain planet by his table, so I don't sign his stupid petition. Instead I tell him that I bought my dog from a reputable
breeder, so I'm doing my part already.

HAY LOOK THIS PUPPERDOGGY IZ NOT IN JAIL HE IZ HAPPY LOL! WAY 2 GO U SIGN PAPER OR WUT?

So what's the difference between me and captain planet (and all the planeteers out there)? A couple things:

1. I'm walking the walk without having to talk the talk.
2. I'm a firm believer in demand-side controls - if people don't buy fucking puppy mill puppies, they can't exist. I don't care about the people running the mills so much as I care about the morons who buy puppies from them.
3. I believe dumb things like petitions do more harm than good, as they create the illusion of having done something about the issue. How hard is it to sign your name on a paper? Really, what does this cost you? And commensurately who the fuck is going to care about names on a sheet of paper? It's a total farce.

The argument these type of folks will always make in response to such criticism is that they are "raising awareness", which I guess is alright. But if I was out there trying to "raise awareness" I'd be taking a hell of a different approach. There's a huge difference between teaching or asking people to learn about something, and making them feel self righteous for signing a piece of paper.

The difference between me and them? I'm not willing to be involved in anything that displaces responsibility (i.e. see my bitching about marxism for more on this).

And then I wrote a song...

2008-08-20T22:02:00.003-06:00

So after a few months of practicing covers of songs I like, learning to sing a little bit and how to strum some chords I decided I'm qualified to create my own music. I'm not. I can't tell you what key this is in or what the notes are for the lyrics, but it sounds decent enough to me when I put it all together and its the next logical step for my musical progression.

I wish I could say I slaved over this song for weeks or months but it actually came together over 2 days. I tried improving it and every change I made seemed to make it worse. Which doesn't mean it's great - it just means that for right now I can't make it any better, and I guess that means its finished (at least some kind of final draft).

I posted this song where I posted all my campy cover tracks - on this site called babulous (lame name i know, but it was easy to use and links in to my facebook so that's pretty pimp).

So to make a long story short, I'm happy to present a song written and composed by Darcy Hartwick.

The song is called "How I Seem to Be" and you can listen to it here.

There's a music player at the top of the screen there, just hit play and away you go. You can also click this from my facebook profile and at some point I'll upload an mp3 somewhere so that if you love it so much you want to add it to your collection you can :P

Comments appreciated. This is kind of a big deal to me :)

Mediocrity Incarnate

2008-08-18T11:26:00.003-06:00

The thought occurred to me last weekend that if I were a character in streets of rage, I’d probably be the one with “B” ratings for jump, speed, power, and reach… i.e. the character nobody ever wants to use because it doesn’t actually excel at anything. While all the other characters come with trade-offs for their skills, it’s just more exciting to hit really hard, or jump really high than be mediocre at everything.

I do lots of stuff, but I’ve never had something that was a defining trait. I play sax and guitar but never think of myself as a musician, and concede I will not ever be one (in the sense of really mastering both instrument and theory). I play a healthy gamut of sports – volleyball, basketball, and recently tennis, but don’t consider myself a jock or even an athlete. I play video games and read fantasy books, but I don’t (usually) consider myself a nerd although this is probably what I’d be most comfortable with if I was to dedicate myself to a specific persona. I write (or try to) but never think of it as art or myself as an artist. I always did well in school but never really thought of myself as an academic.

It’s not so much a question of just doing a whole bunch of things as it is not being willing to be dedicated to anything in particular. When I came to university I probably could have been a “volleyball player” if I’d committed to it and tried out for the varsity team, done all the practicing, etc. I didn’t want to be pinned down by that identity so I never bothered. It’s some combination of fear, laziness, and chronic ambivalence. I always set the bar low enough that I can obtain the results I’m looking for – it’s called “expectations management”. If I expect to be a great guitar player, I’ll be disappointed if it doesn’t happen. If I expect to write the Great American Novel, I’ll be disappointed if it doesn’t happen… so on and so forth. If I just say, I want to learn some chords, write some kind of novella for kicks, or play rec. sports then I always succeed.

I think I had written something at one point here about not having dreams in life, and this is really a rehash of that same observation. I don’t want anything in particular out of this ride, survival and modest comfort is pretty much adequate. I don’t care to be prime minister, astronaut, celebrity, or whatever. In most cases I’d actually rather not be them than be them. I’m probably one of a handful of people on this orb that would just as soon not be rich as be rich. It simply doesn’t appeal to me because I don’t want that much stuff, so the ability to acquire more shit is negligible. I’m not dreaming of a dodge viper or a Caribbean cruise, I don’t wish I was someone else or doing something else. In the same vein I don’t need (want?) to excel at any particular thing, I just want to be competent in them which in most cases is easily done for anyone with modest intelligence.

I’m not sure it could be any other way, so I’m coming to grips with this dedication to mediocrity. I think the optimist spin on it is “well rounded”, but I just come back to Streets of Rage, and how nobody would want to play the “well rounded” character.

Zen, ambivalence, or alienation

2008-08-13T11:41:00.002-06:00

I find it nearly impossible to take anything seriously. Recently at my job we’ve been butting heads and negotiating with our communications folks over various “requirements”. Now to me whether a font is times new roman or arial is inconsequential. I also couldn’t give a shit less whether there is an HTML version of a PDF, or whether we forgot to indent a paragraph on page 5. Thing is, there are (I guess) rules that make all this insignificant shit mandatory. We’ve been getting by just peachy for 3 years or so of ignoring said rules and doing what was logical and adequate, but now we’re being told to comply.

In all of this I have to laugh because non-compliance has zero real consequence. If our publication has royal blue instead of super-awesome blue, the world is not likely to fall apart. I find it humorous yet sad that anyone cares about such trivial details.

This goes back to public school at least. Some of the things you could get in trouble with from the yard supervisors was so retarded that it just asked to be done. Throwing pebbles at the school wall was worthy of a scolding and maybe even loss of a recess. I did it just because the rule was so stupid, and then couldn’t help but laugh as the yard supervisor tried to convince me that I was doing something wrong or dangerous. I recall her word’s vividly as I smirked through her speech “everything’s just a big joke to you isn’t it?” It wasn’t everything though, just the trivial and arbitrary rules and regulations.

Then – almost everything people do, and the majority of rules and regulations strike me as arbitrary and trivial. I recently moved into a condo and my roommate had the misfortune of telling me that we can’t have recycling bins on the balcony. What an absolute joke. Not sure which is sadder – this being a rule (I can understand not wanting garbage or clutter, but a freaking bin? Give me a break) or the fact someone reported us for keeping our bins out there.

I guess to me at the end of the day, if the event or rule in question isn’t directly and obviously relevant to the physiological level of Maslow’s pyramid of human needs what’s the point in getting riled up about it? How can you be intelligent and still take so many inconsequential things so seriously?

One weekend I was in Kingston at JP’s and my rental car got the taillight smashed out of it. Big deal, pay for it to be fixed. I got pulled over once (my only driving infraction ever) for running a red light. Big deal, pay the ticket and apologize. My old landlord is trying to stiff me out of like $1400, okay kind of a big deal… but still I never panicked or got really that upset about it. I looked shit up and am taking her to a tribunal to have the money refunded.

Which is mostly to say I don’t understand “stress”. I’ve used it as a convenient excuse when I was a student but frankly I never really felt it I don’t think. If there’s not enough time/space to do what I’m expected to, I cut some shit and that’s that. The world isn’t going to end, I’m not likely going to die. I’ve always felt like the worse case scenario for my life is either being a bum in a city, or a hunter-gatherer-scavenger in the country. Not like begging for change is tough work, and you get used to smoking half-smoked cigarette butts I’m sure. And these are the worst things that could probably happen… so I’ve really got nothing to worry about as far as I can tell.

People take too much trivial shit way too seriously or as I like to call it “having the world end at the end of your nose”. A little perspective goes a long ways… which begs the question of whether this attitude is one of zen (positive), ambivalence (negative), or alienation (dangerous).

Tasers - a case in why I hate liberals

2008-07-24T08:04:00.002-06:00

This morning I was reading this story on cbcnews: Winnipeg mother questions use of Taser on teenage son.

- Cops receive call that someone is stealing from a car.
- Cops arrive and find teenager, who pulls a knife on them.
- Cops tell kid to drop knife.
- Kid refuses.
- Cops use taser on kid.
- Kid dies.
- Libs claim excessive use of force and racial profiling.

Mercifully, if you read the comments on the article a lot of people in this country are still normal and sane. However some obviously aren't.

It reminds me of something that our instructor taught during my hunter's safety course. In the "old days" (60s? 70s?) game warden's gave hunters the benefit of the doubt when approaching them to check their licenses, kills, tags, etc. In a few cases wardens came across poachers, the poachers would simply shoot the warden and leave him in the woods and drive away (Rather than face jail time). So modern wisdom for wardens is that you ask once for the hunters to unload and lay down their guns. If they do not comply you unholster your handgun and ask again. If they do not comply you shoot them in the leg.

The moral of the story was - don't fuck with the game wardens. When they tell you to do something, you do it. Same rule applies to the cops. It's not a video game or a movie, when these guys tell you to drop your weapon, get on the ground, or whatever - you fucking do it. If you want to piss around and play tough guy don't be shocked (bad pun) when they use force - possibly lethal - against you.

And on the racial profiling argument one comment was very slick:

My husband is a police officer in Ontario....he pulled a person over for speeding...she was doing 120 in a 80. He gave her a ticket. Her comment: " the only reason you are giving me this is because I am a Indian" his reply: " The only reason you said that is because I'm white, have a nice day"

Perennial skepticism and a rare good idea from the hippies

2008-07-23T12:07:00.002-06:00

As I sketch down all kinds of ideas and stories in my notebook I now keep, I noticed that none of my stories are very happy. They’re usually perversely bleak, looking at why the extraordinary is actually ordinary, or the limitations of the human attention span, or how repetitive clichés mindfuck people. For example I recently wrote a short about a dragon named Martin who works a 9-5 for a construction firm, because he’s strictly inferior to other aerial assault weapons (jets), and strictly inferior to CGI dragons (thus not good for entertainment purposes or as spectacle). I hope this is just flushing out all the shit I don’t like about “us” and that I’ll start letting some good things creep into it… the broader book I’m working on though will be decisively bleak, as the whole concept doesn’t particularly work otherwise.

Now in all this negativity I was reminded of how I have this nagging tendency/obsession with being antagonistic. Or so I’d classified it. Whatever I hear I instantly take the opposite side. In Young Drivers the instructor tells us about a car accident where a truck plows into a stopped car from behind on an open stretch of road. I tell him to give me a break, and that the car was no doubt hidden around a turn or something where the truck had no way of stopping. My boss tells me about this fantastic tool developed called RETScreen that is used to examine alternative energies, I tell her its probably a farce since its inconceivable that a “tool” could tell you what you need in terms of wind/solar/hydro etc. If you’ve ever tried to tell me something remotely askance of general practice I probably took the other side of the issue.

Now certainly when I started doing this – in high school or some such – it was to be a shit disturber and establish my adolescent “difference”. But I really have no reason to continue that vein in my old age. Now its just antagonism for antagonism’s sake – or, so I thought. I think I get why I can’t let things go now, and its not so much about just being a bastard as it is about being a perennial skeptic. I’m obsessed with authenticity and veracity. Too many people exaggerate and lie, or shade the facts to get their point across. So whenever I hear things I’m automatically assuming it’s an angle – until it can be proven otherwise. I was watching the video on facebook of Celeste giving a speech about how the feds are trying to gut some water agreement, and my instinctual reaction is not to say “those fucking tories”, but to say “yeah right, show me the proof. I’ll bet its something innocuous and its being twisted to suit your hippy agenda”. Antagonistic, sure, but its less about being a dick and more about this ongoing skepticism. They say don’t believe everything you hear/see/read – well I don’t believe anything I hear/see/read.

And since I usually see everything as self-serving, retarded, wasteful, or agenda-driven I figure I should mention that I saw something the other day that I thought was an actual good idea here in the city.

There’s an overpass near the Rideau center (Sussex and Rideau intersection). I used to walk under it all the time but not so much lately. For a long time all that was under there was bums sleeping, beggars, and other dirtbags. It sucked to have to walk through there. Capping this off, a year or so ago this street kid gets stabbed by some dirtbag from Toronto and dies. The city responded by putting a gate around part of it to prevent people from sleeping/squatting there. Reasonable response, and seemed to at least alleviate – if not solve – the problem of how shitty that underpass is.

The last couple times I walked under there it had a table set up and hippies vending mediocre to poor artwork and crafts for “operation go home”. Not my charity of choice, and the goods were maybe appealing to tourists or something but also not my type of stuff. It was a bit less threatening than the open space with the bums for sure, but still pretty meh.

Then a few days ago I see that some combination of hippies and city officials came together to make this into an actual venue for stuff. They added well-designed good quality signage to each side of it that declares this is “The Underpass” with a schedule of events that will take place there. Now this is a damn good idea and makes all the difference in the world as far as I’m concerned. You’re sort of making it official that this is a safe place, and that it’s actually a nice place where you can see different arts or artists and what-have-you. A nice tourist attraction for sure and actually pleasant to walk through as a resident. I know that sign shouldn’t make that big of a deal, but for some reason it does. The fact its officially sanctioned versus just being squatted in by hippies. It’s a fantastic way to turn that area around from a site of vagrancy and even a murder, into a nice place to check out when you’re downtown.

So kudos to whatever combination of people came up with that idea, and whoever is running the schedule and maintaining the signs. It could still be a flop if the events/people are lousy, but it is at the very least a great idea in principal.

How to write a book.

2008-07-15T09:42:00.002-06:00

So, a while back I decided I would try and pull together a story and turn it into a novel (or more likely a novella). I like reading, I like writing, so this was kind of a no-brainer thing to try.

I’m not trying to win a Pulitzer, make it rich, or establish myself as an artist. It’s just something to chip away at, something to do to occupy time and space. It’s also supposed to be fun, and perhaps one day make me feel like I accomplished something cool.

After a weekend of sketching out my story and writing a few pages of an introduction though progress grinded to a halt. I didn’t know how to write characters, and every idea I could come up with seemed cliché and repetitive, or blatant plagiarism of something else I’d read. I wrote a post to that effect in Creativity is a Bitch.

I let the idea stew in the back of my mind but didn’t touch the story again. Now and then I’d think about different twists and turns I could do. I have questions that I want to ask moreso than I have a story that I want to tell. The characters and plot are simply a way to look at these questions without flat out asking them. I think that’s kind of what art is supposed to be – a roundabout way of asking a question to try and evade the normal logical response.

Rather than ask “are people fundamentally evil and depraved”, you write a book about young English schoolboys shipwrecked on a deserted island.

Anyways, I read a book of short stories by Neil Gaiman called Smoke and Mirrors some time ago, and started reading it again recently. What struck me this time around was his introduction, where he would describe how some stories came to be. Things about writing in different places, but more importantly this idea of just carrying a notebook and writing things down – then you could revisit the notebooks at any time for inspiration.

So this is what I’ve started to do. I’ve conceded that the odds of me coming up with something strictly creative and original is virtually nil. All creativity really is is combining different ideas and experiences together in new shapes and forms. I know what red is, I know what a hat is, so I can imagine a red hat. So I write anything that pops into my head – conversations, dreams, experiences, make-believe or real doesn’t matter. They often spark ideas for the book (like how to weave Aristotelian thinking into the plot without coming out and saying the words Aristotle wrote about justice and teleology).

I can also see that it starts relatively rigid but could conceivably become more and more “creative”. I can move beyond describing what its like to ride the bus in the morning, to some kind of story about a newspaper left in the seat. At times I even just write a single sentence or two, just the inkling of an idea. That way I don’t have to remember it or develop it at the time, I can read it later when I’m looking for an idea.

But this I think is the most important thing I’ve learned about writing so far – write everything at random. Don’t try to envision the story from start to finish and then flesh it out, as I originally wanted to do. Write random things and then draw them into the story. Don’t even try to write it linear. I’ll try to write random passages that would fit in the book, then worry about how they all come together – if they do – later.

The other source that kind of helped me out here was the movie The Darjeeling Limited. While in and of itself it was a pretty lame film, one of the characters is a writer who basically writes things that happen to him. All his conversations and characters are people he really knows and things he’s really said – he then covers them up as the pretense of fiction. This, I can do. This is how I can be authentic, by writing conversations and people that I know rather than trying to invent everything. It’s then the way I assemble the pieces – meshing different conversations together, or blending several people I know into one character, that makes it something creative.

Creativity is still a bitch, but I think there are ways to make it your bitch.

Judgment

2008-06-30T11:31:00.002-06:00

I had this idea part-way through university that it would be amusing to make a documentary about how stupid tests are. I wanted to give senior or grad students the exams of 1st year political science courses and see how they fared.

This stemmed from my recognition of courses and classes as little more than hoop-jumping. The tests used to evaluate your understanding were crude proxies at best. Most students can attest to cramming the night before, memorizing stupid little things of no other practical use just in order to look good on the test (and get a commensurately good grade). Within days most of us would forget everything we had supposedly “learned”. Indeed sitting here now you could put any test I wrote throughout university and I’d probably fail it. I got A’s at the time of course, but it was just putting on a show.

The thing is this isn’t limited to school, it’s all sorts of training. As I move my stuff in my office I see my first aid certification and my Microsoft Publisher certification. The former is actually frightening. I did the first aid course in 1 day and I’d be damned if I could remember how to make any of the slings we were shown, and lucky if I could remember how CPR is supposed to be done (is it 4 cycles of ten compressions then 2 breaths? Or 2 breaths after every cycle? Is it 10 compressions or 15?). It’s probably more important that I get the gist of it than having the perfect number combination anyways though.

My publisher experience is kind of like jiujitsu training. If I was to sit you down and show you how to indent a paragraph in a text box, and then tell you to do it you could do it so easily that you would wonder why you paid for such training. In jiujitsu they’ll show us how to break a choke and throw the person down, same idea – doing it right after, and in isolation, it’s cake. But in the abstract I’d fail more often than not. A few weeks after my publisher course I was using the guide they gave me far more than my memory, that and a lot of trial and error. In Jiujitsu it’s a set training session – today it’s choke from behind arms extended. But in the abstract if someone grabs you it’s supposed to be instinct which escape you’re supposed to use. So you actually need to know a whole barrage of these basic escapes, and then remember which to use when. Needless to say jiujitsu training is a lot of repetition to try and build this reflex. At some point though I get a belt that says “Darcy knows this much stuff” – but do I really know it? Or did I just memorize it briefly before testing day?

It’s all about judgment; tests and evaluations. It is way too easy to dupe someone into thinking you know something you don’t if you are allowed to prepare. School should be nothing but pop quizzes in my opinion. No opportunity to just memorize, you have to actually prove that you have this information in your memory – that you actually learned and RETAINED it. Retention is the key here.

On a related note I find all these “top 10” type lists, and music “charts” perturbing. DJ’s sell their “top 5” as though these songs are somehow in competition with one another, which is ridiculous. It’s a total farce but presumably the general audience actually gets excited about it “ooo I wonder if rhianna can finally beat Jay-Z!!” I’m not even sure what these radio lists are based off of. One assumes there’s some kind of vote somewhere, or it could be based on sales, or more likely just the DJ’s whim that particular day.

Which is the other side of evaluation I find weird – you see it with awards shows. Is it better to be evaluated by some kind of “expert panel”, or by the masses? I don’t know my awards shows for shit, but I know some of them are the expert panel, and when the person you don’t like wins you say “ah its just a bunch of stuffy old coots picking their favourites – its got no bearing on reality”. And then of course when it’s a popular vote and the person you like loses: “people are retarded, why would we try to evaluate talent based on what’s popular?” Like sit and watch some “teen choice awards” show and ask yourself – who gives a shit what teenagers think is good? I guess it’s good that there’s still room for both styles, but both still face that insurmountable challenge of accurately assessing or judging something.

Now sometimes what’s popular is what’s important. For the record industry the best musician is doubtless the one people buy the most, not the obscure alternative band doing innovative and experimental stuff pushing the boundaries of music. I believe American Idol and its ilk use some kind of hybrid fashion – where a panel of experts reduces the field to 10, and then the popular vote kicks in to select from there. This is probably a pretty decent compromise for this field of evaluation.

And all of this is a significant contributing factor to my disinterest in going back to school to do an MA. I have no patience for hoop jumping anymore. I can do it, and be very successful at it, but it’s meaningless.

Cellular degradation

2008-06-23T11:12:00.002-06:00

If you know me you know I’m a bit of a luddite – with a particular ire reserved for cell phones. It’s never been a case of hating technology for the sake of hating it – but rather a question of the human race’s insatiable appetite for convenience

Well, I’ve kind of caved over the past week as I join the great unwashed in their cellular rapture, buying a nokia 5310 cell phone. It was a conflicted decision that reminded me of a situation I faced back in high school.

In my bid for the Student Council presidency in my OAC year I gave what is probably the greatest speech ever given in the history of Sharbot Lake High School student council elections. Unfortunately a part of my speech was showing some of the ideas I had, which included the idea of bringing a pool table in for recreational use by students (not dissimilar from the ping pong table we already had). The bitch was everyone took this as a promise rather than something I wanted to discuss. I was handcuffed from the start knowing that if I didn’t do it everyone would say I lied.

I should have pulled the plug on that project if for no other reason than the proposed space I was thinking of for the new toy was renovated into a conference room. This left us with nowhere to put the table, except to cram it in the corner of the weight room (making about half the possible shots next to impossible due to space constraints). The day of purchase and delivery of the table came and I hoped that if I just acted like it wasn’t happening it wouldn’t. I couldn’t bring myself to stop the wheels in motion because I would not be called a liar, and people would never understand that it was an idea that just frankly turned out to be a bad one. We bought the table for something like $500 used, dinged it up moving it into the school, and from what I understand it was promptly resold for $150 or so as soon as I was gone (understandably so – it was pointless in that room and a waste of $).

The point is that something I said was broadly misunderstood to the point that I had to do something I didn’t really want to do to avoid being seen as a liar.

So the cellular phone rears its ugly head. My beef with this device isn’t so much the device itself but the way in which people use it. People use their phones practically nonstop to have pointless conversations, basically polluting the public space. I can think of no better example than a while back when I was at a pub with some friends, and over half the people at the table are flicking through their phones sending texts and checking messages. It was an absurd situation and sad in many ways. Why would you go to a pub to hang out and have drinks if you’re going to obsess over folks who aren’t there?

I never wanted to be “always available”. I’ve often said I will resist a blackberry (read: crackberry) at work if they try to push one on me. I can’t say I’ll never have one because chances are if I climb the ladder eventually it will be necessity. But I will resist until the last possible moment because I do not want to be on call all the time.

So in the case of the pool table I remained handcuffed by public interpretation of my meanderings. This time I opted not to be (mostly because there are only like 4 or 5 people who are even aware of my disdain, versus the hundreds who knew of the pool table). My justification for switching from my good ol’ fashioned home phone to a demon-driven brain-cancer inducing cell phone are as follows:

1. It’s Cheaper. My home phone is $42 all said-and-done. Cell is around $30 (with some restrictions on use but most are negligible).
2. I don’t have to turn it on or answer it. Thus the device alone while enabling the behaviour I so dislike, does not necessitate it.
3. No more fucking telemarketers calling me.
4. 2.0 MP Camera means I don’t need my battery leeching digital camera to take pictures. The quality is a little worse but honestly how many pictures do I take?
5. I can (over time) possibly replace my ipod shuffle with the phone as it has 1GB music and the bonus of a radio tuner in it.
6. I can call for bus schedules at those buttfuck nowhere transpo stops.
7. I can send text messages when I don’t have enough to say to warrant an actual phone call (which is most of the time).

I’m still working on #5. Lately my shuffle has been giving me a bit of grief. It keeps “synching” whenever its docked at my computer which basically means lagging the living shit out of my computer for no obvious benefit. I tried turning this feature off but it didn’t seem to do anything. In addition, since using my phone for music a bit it appears that the shit I buy on itunes can’t be used on my phone… more investigation required but this would be a big X against apple if it’s due to some proprietary format they use.

So anyways, I’m now like you. Except there’s a good chance I won’t answer my phone even though it’s usually nearby. I didn’t buy it to be accessible all the time, I bought it for reasons 1-7!

A world without tomatoes

2008-06-11T11:59:00.002-06:00

One of the funny things you probably take for granted - the existence and availability of tomatoes.

Apparently there is a salmonella outbreak with uncooked tomatoes. I became aware of this the other day when I strolled up to the line at subway to enjoy a delicious sandwich. When I saw tomatoes were not available I tried to think of what I would get and realized subs are gross without tomatoes.

I had a hot dog and poutine instead.

The next day I go to tim horton's to get a bagel and lo and behold they also have the sign advising customers that they are no longer serving tomatoes due to the FDA warning.

Well shit. I would say 9/10 times I go out for lunch its a sandwich from one place or the other that requires tomatoes to be tasty.

So today I'm pondering my lunch and realize I don't know what the hell I'm going to eat because I honestly eat sandwiches/subs pretty much every day for lunch. I decide to go strolling down elgin street. Maybe not everyone is on the tomato-hating bandwagon.

Wendy's has a sign on the front door - no tomatoes there either. Too bad, I dig the spicy chicken sandwich. I meander around and think about walking all the way down to st louis for their mandarin chicken salad when I say fuck it and turn around. For some reason harvey's seems less revolting than mcdonalds, and maybe they have tomatoes. There's no sign in the window, looks like a score.

Order a chicken grill, shuffle down the line. As soon as I'm at the sandwich construction station I see it. Motherfucker sign: no tomatoes.

I never realized how just about everything I want to eat for lunch not only has tomatoes in it, but requires them to taste good. Right now its only the uncooked ones that are dangerous, but if it was all tomatoes - then there goes pizza and most pasta dishes too.

Which is all to say its a frustrating yet amusing situation to be in. I have no clue what I am going to have for lunch if this tomato vacancy persists. I'm now even hesitant to trust a restaurant that IS serving them, or to buy them myself, until someone somewhere clears them. I don't think these big chains would take them off the menu if it wasn't serious.

Ridiculous eh

Human Evolution on hiatus

2008-06-09T09:54:00.001-06:00

I’m certainly not the first person to realize this, but the thought occurred to me in a discussion a few weeks ago that we’re done evolving for the time being.

This was brought to my attention when a friend suggested that it was only a matter of time until people just evolved to have less or no hair – as this was desirable in a mate (given how much time we spend getting rid of unwanted body hair).

The simplification of evolution struck me immediately. At a glance it seems this magical – whatever the “most desired” trait is in a species, that trait will be passed on while less desirable traits will disappear. Unfortunately what’s lost in this magical relationship is the process we’ve come to know and love as natural selection.

The reason positive traits get passed along while negative traits disappear is that those positive traits result in more total offspring. Due either to a survival advantage (those who live longer will have more opportunities to procreate) or a straight-up procreation advantage (some feature that results in more offspring).

In the wild this is pretty easy to figure out. Porcupines without sharp quills died more easily than those with sharp quills, so given a few centuries/millennia eventually all that was left were sharp-quill porcupines. The sharp/non-sharp distinction developed through random mutation.

Conceptually, absence of body hair would need to give either a survival or procreational advantage in order for it to be a candidate for evolution. In warm climates, maybe excess body hair would shave a few years off a person’s life span as the extra heat wore out the body faster, or more likely members of the opposite sex would prefer to procreate with those not sporting unibrows or pit-hair.

In the first instance the problem is that a survival advantage only matters in-so-far as it allows greater procreation. I find it unlikely that even a noticeable health advantage here would translate into additional offspring. We mostly procreate between ages of 20-40 I’m guessing, yet live to be 80 or so. A defect would have to shave 40 years or more off a lifespan to even get into procreation range. Compare this to our prehistoric ancestors who probably only lived to be 30, and were thus good for making babies right up until they died.

In the second instance the problem is that there is always someone who’ll sleep with you and have kids if you lower your standards enough. These hairy people will just hook up and make hairy babies, regardless of what’s “best” for the species. So even though the trait might be undesirable from a procreation standpoint, the human need to form conjugal partnerships will outweigh this.

Now you could use almost any trait – either positive or negative – in the human repertoire and put it through this same test. Does it improve/impeded survival in a way that would result in more or less offspring? Does it directly produce more/less offspring?

It’s a nice dream to think that one day all the best traits of the human race will shine through from the magic of evolution, but we’ve kind of cut the balls off of natural selection so this just isn’t likely to happen. Now granted its an extremely slow process (thousands of years) anyways, and nothing precludes a more savage future where life expectancy drops considerably, or people get pickier in having children, or even some eugenics program of sterilizing “undesirables”. Hell we may even go the Spartan style and throw unhealthy babies off a cliff – who knows. But insofar as we continue the way we are now, evolution of any kind is highly unlikely.

The elevator microcosm

2008-06-06T09:51:00.002-06:00

A thought occurred to me today.

The elevator is a microcosm or proxy of society in general.

It doesn't even occur to most people that there might be someone getting off the elevator when it arrives, as soon as they hear the ding they go stand right in front of the door to get on as fast as possible.

Who needs joke sites?

2008-06-02T15:24:00.002-06:00

When you have hockey forums

Posted by: UlfSwede 5/28/2008 15:40:40
Topic: And here is the final bashing..

Message:

All Canadians are homosexuls.. have you ever seen figure skating at TV? Heck, all men participating are Canadians.. And we all know that they are.. well.. homosexual.

Response
Posted by: mrubenstca 5/31/2008 14:23:01

Message:

Now see this Swede is trying to show some balls. Swedish meet balls. At least unlike Matsy Sundin he is trying to fight back. Now look Ulf, and bu the way why do you have names that sound like you are vomiting....look you can be a bit cocky since those Red Wings and their 7 Swedes seem to be holding their own and each others testes. True.

But let's get back to this gay smeer. You know I for one was shocked any poster would engage in such generalizations. Given the fact that we have so many posters who are clearly gay (all Leafs fans) and those who are old but like to engage in gay activities (Stickman who is constantly inserting things in his anus and telling us its a ritual) I and the other straight posters (all Habs fans) try to be sensitive and not insult them. I mean come on. Without gay people men would never have learned to tuck their shirts in, comb their hair, and coordinate their clothes let alone clip our nose hairs or appreciate that drag means something other then cars.

And of course those of us in Toronto are well aware of the connection between figure skating and the alternative lifestyle given the fact that we have had the fortune to watch such figure skaters as Darcy Tucker, Matsy Sundin, and Brian Pitter-Patter McAbe.

However I must point out while it is true all Toronto Maple Leaf fans are raving Queens as is their team, it really sort of stops there.

Now mind you if you get out to Winnipeg the men are into Moose and in Vancouver they are so stoned they can get into conversations with most anything, but most Canadians do appreciate what a dough-nut is and what to do with the hole.

We Jewish Canadians also are well aware what to do with the holes because we learned on bagels a cousin to the doughnut.

Now that said, I think what really should be said about Swedes is that we appreciate your women. They are not the problem. We like them sleeping with them.

But you Swedish men well get serious. You name yourself noises like Ulf and Borge,
or after your favourite exercise with yourself (Hans) and are obsessed with ice calling almost all your people Bergs.

Your Volvo is nice but for f..ck's sakes no one can afford to fix them as the parts are even more expensive then all those gender operations you do on people.

Now me I have been to Stockholm. Beautiful city, nice women but I note given the epidemic of gay men everywhere, the women were a tad lonely and look there is only so much I could do to please them.

Also there is nothing wrong with being gay Ulf. Don't apologize. You Swedes can't help it. Probably genetic.

But here's the thing-figure skating-was invented in Sweden although you people like to call it professional hockey.

Now Go do your hair Ulf. Its looking a tad dishevelled. You must have been visiting Spin Doctor Evans again. Stop it. You will upset Mats who is already upset with Cliff Fletcher.

Also another good thing about you Swedes is without you they would have never invented vasoline and other lubricants something the NHL Commissioner, Gary Bettman very much appreciates.

I hate when people forward jokes in email and shit, and I usually wouldn't post stuff that isn't strictly something I wrote or commented on, but this site is an exception. You find the funniest shit written there about hockey, truly a riot.

An issue of liberals and natives

2008-05-30T08:18:00.002-06:00

I am probably by most definitions a conservative, if for no other reason than my seething, growing hatred for liberal bullshit. Now I call it liberal, but maybe it should be called something else – I’m open to that possibility.

Apparently yesterday was the national day for aboriginal action/awareness. In general the “action” part of such days means protesting, and the only thing protesting is supposed to do is “raise awareness” so let’s call a spade a spade: national day of awareness it is. The fact I found out today means they pretty much failed as far as I’m concerned.

Anyways I read the paper on the bus this morning and there’s an article about it on the front page. Now, the fact that there is some general problem regarding Canada’s native population is nothing new. This shit’s been around since 1867. I took a native history course in university and was honestly sympathetic; however my sympathy wanes more and more as time goes on.

Now I will be the first to admit that I cannot corroborate any/all of the things I’m about to say. I simply don’t care enough about the issue to do significant research into it. I’ll write about it anyways because I suspect I’m right.

In general all issues boil down to the same thing: aboriginal Canadians are not about to return to “traditional” hunter-gatherer lifestyles. Thus any and all complaints about being placed on reserves or fabricated settlements can go in the box on the left where they will be promptly ignored. There simply is no alternative in this day and age. I recall an article of an inuit elder saying there was no way he would rather go back to sustenance living in the arctic over having a heated house to live in. My guess is this is true for everyone (with maybe a few survivalist/hunter type exceptions). So cry all you want about the oppression of the white man, most wouldn’t go back to 18th century living even if they could.

The real piss off in this whole domain though, is how the liberal/media (whatever you want to call it – Canadians?) frame native issues. It’s almost unequivocally the fault of “us” – no matter what it is that’s happening.

One of my personal favourites is the recent flooding in Kasheschewan. People live on a reserve. Reserve gets flooded because it’s in a sub-optimal (perhaps even stupid) location. Canadian/liberal/media comes out boo-hooing about how the government isn’t taking care of its aboriginal population; after all they put the reserve there (60 or so years ago). Just another case of “white man knows best” destroying the romantic indigenous population right?

Reality time. 2006 report advises reserve is closed and population moved to Timmins (other options given as well). Natives refuse because they want to stay on their land. So no fucking crying when it floods, and no pointing fingers at the government, the tories, the white people, the southerners or whoever else is supposed to hold the bag on this. You could have moved, and in your infinite wisdom you didn’t. Too. Damn. Bad.

This is symptomatic of a lot of the discourse on aboriginal affairs. It makes us (whites? Canadians? Southerners?) feel good to blab about self government and the right to self determination. It’s one of those beauty arguments – who is going to come out and say that people shouldn’t self-govern? Funny thing is, when the PM is from Calgary or Montreal do I bitch that I’m not being self-governed? If my MP is a woman do I cry myself to sleep at night over my lack of self-determination?

I’ve heard several times from several different people stories of how “self government” means corruption and zero accountability. The systems these people want to use (its probably not all of them, but at least the ones who matter) invite corruption. So you get corrupt chief spending the cash to employ friends and family. Thing is, in self-government it’s the community’s problem – YOU have to fix it because if “we” do anything we’re “meddling” in your affairs.

I also recall some Canadian Alliance propaganda from back in the day that compared INAC’s budget to Canada’s native population and found that the federal government was spending something like $150,000/year on each aboriginal person in the country. When you put those kinds of resources into something, one expects to see pretty significant results. Yet the spigot stays open, but the problems persist.

The other beauty I’ve seen around lately is a poster with a bunch of native kids on it holding a sign that reads “we’ve never seen a real school – if the government has its way we never will!” then there’s your regular garbage claiming the government doesn’t care.

Sometime around 1969 an up and coming politician wrote (or at least approved) a white paper on recommendations for how to handle Canada’s native population. The essence of the paper was that they needed to become integrated into Canadian society – the reserve concept was simply not workable in the longer term, and it was fractious to enforce this kind of racial segregation anyways. That politician would be one Jean Chretien.

Now you can accuse conservatives of being racist insensitive bigots and nobody will bat an eye, but this was a liberal minister coming to these conclusions – for once in the lifespan of that party they were willing to take an actual position that was appropriate rather than “feel-good”. Mind you that was a long time ago.

So here’s the deal – the only sustainable way to live in the arctic is as a hunter-gatherer type of society. You need to be mobile, live in igloos, and hunt all the time. There’s very little leisure involved (compared to today’s standards). The settlements (forced upon the natives by the government a long time ago) are not viable, they are extremely energy intensive (both to heat buildings and because planes are used to bring in people/supplies) and expensive, with no resource base to speak of (tourism – give me a break. Natural resources are temporary and sparse). So the situation is this – the government made a mistake forcing hunter-gatherers to settle. They can’t undo it because the residents won’t go back to the old lifestyle, and they won’t move anywhere else. What are you supposed to do?

A community wants a full fledged school for a handful of kids in the north where permafrost is probably melting (thus making construction tough since its half-frozen and half-not) and heating such a facility will become an astronomical cost as fuel prices rise.

But the issue will never be framed in this way. You’ll never see something saying – Ontario’s smallest schools with gymnasiums and libraries serve 150 students at an average initial cost of $1M and a yearly cost of $500/student, while constructing that facility for 30 students in the north will have an initial cost of $3M and a yearly cost of $5000/student. Even if you did it probably wouldn’t resonate because Canadians think government money grows on trees.

I actually remember arguing with some r-tard in university who claimed that health care was some kind of fundamental right that the government must provide regardless of cost. I gave the hypothetical scenario of needing a $1 billion machine to keep 1 person alive and they said the government should build it. No concept of what that would mean for the livelihood or quality of life of thousands of people, money just appeared out of nowhere (the mint probably – shit just make mint workers put in some overtime and we can pay for everything).

And I’ve kind of picked on the native issue here when my real beef is with the characterization of issues in the media, but I think it’s a really clear example of what’s wrong with our communications today. In that article about aboriginal awareness day the star quote was a 12 year old kid saying “I think it would be better to have a real school”. No Shit? I think it would be better if I could have a jetpack to fly to work like the racketeer that ran on water. Does that mean it’s a good use of gov money to build it for me?

In closing I have to say I actually admire the pre-euro invasion philosophies and lifestyles of the aboriginals who lived here. Their concepts of identity, spirit, land, and environment were inspiring. It's just that I'm not convinced the folks around today have any intention of behaving in the same way - at least not as a collective. That old spirit is accessible to all of us, and its got a lot to do with sustainability so we should pay more attention. But as for who the stewards or preachers of that spirit are - I don't think I could say its modern natives any more than its environmentalists or greens.

Vanier, the familiar

2008-05-27T10:37:00.003-06:00

I’ve lived in Vanier for almost 2 years now (if my math is right), and sad to say this place is becoming a part of my identity. Sad because it’s pretty much a dump.

Yet as I browse around looking for somewhere else to move when my lease ends on July 31st I find myself drawn to buildings in this area. I glance at the Sandy Hill and Market locations but these reek of student district, and I haven’t been nor felt like a student in quite a while now. The places that go farther out – westboro, “carling” area; all those places in Ottawa that I never go to; look like an exile to suburbia.

I have some good reasons for wanting to stay in the general region I’m at now. I know all the buses around here and which ones will end up taking me where, and when to hedge my bets and just get on the 14 instead of waiting for the 2 or 3. I’m close to the dojo for jiujitsu, and one of the very few off-leash dog parks in Ottawa over on Crichton st. It’s a fairly short ride to work and the downtown area in general – hell I’ve walked it a few times and it wasn’t that bad. Most or all of this is replicable in other regions I’m sure, but I prefer the familiar to the unknown.

Lame as it is, living in Vanier also makes me feel more authentic. I’m not in some upscale suburb gated community type of district, I’m in shittowne. I shouldn’t like that, but I do. Doesn’t mean I couldn’t learn to like living somewhere else – but as I said, it’s the familiar.

At times I almost feel like I might as well just stay put in my current apartment, that’s usually trumped by the $300 or so a month I could easily save by moving somewhere else. Doesn’t sound like much when you say it fast, but that’s a respectable amount of disposable income – and I really do not need all the space I have at my current place.

So I keep browsing around craigslist, eyes peeled for things on st Laurent, mcarthur, beechwood. It’ll be kind of sad when I move out of the big V, and become a tourist to places like Eddy’s and Star’s Palace.

And in some ways the whole experience is a microcosm of changing in general. I’ve considered moving to another city or even country, but now I can’t really imagine doing either – because of how much familiarity you leave behind.

Losing my mind

2008-05-23T14:09:00.004-06:00

I'm starting to worry that I might be at the beginning of the end of sanity.

I have dreams that are honest to god more like hallucinations. I wake up and am not always sure what happened and what didn't, then this shit gets mixed in with my real memories and I start remembering things that I later figure out never fucking happened.

For a while in my younger 20s I'd have the occasional super-real dream that made me think I was still in high school with my old girlfriend and whatnot. I'd wake up and everything would feel awkward, and I'd get nostalgic. This, as I say was a pretty rare thing but it did happen.

Over the past few months I have dreams of things, most of which I'd not speak of aloud, and rather than feeling awkward waking up to a different reality - I can't even accurately state whether parts were a dream or something that really happened. Sometimes I'm extremely conscious of it, as in the moment I wake up I'm asking myself if that actually happened or not. Other times I don't really even notice until I find myself trying to remember the details of an event or a conversation, only to eventually realize that no such thing ever occurred, it was rather something I dreamed.

I have 3 theories to explain this.

One is that I've been seeing too many fucked up movies etc. A month or so ago I watched waking life - which is based on dreaming and not being able to wake up (hinting at this being the afterlife). A few weeks ago I watched eternal sunshine on the spotless mind - which was sort of about dreams/memories. Both of these put me in mind of the play "possible worlds" that Chris put on a while back. Watching the other play he directed "the ventriloquist" probably didn't help as it was pretty fucked up too.

The second is that I'm destroying my mind/identity, pursuant to my previous post about reason and illusion. In conditioning myself to not care if things are reasonable my brain is starting to lose its grip on reality.

And the third is that since quitting video games my brain has a lot of free time it never had before. Sports and such take up large swathes of the time, but in between I basically just think. Why this would blur reality and illusion I don't know - but its feasible that just by poking and prodding at various ideas my brain is loosening up and letting certain constraints dissipate.

So if I end up a raving fucking lunatic, whoever read this will know that I kind of saw it coming.

A psychic quandry: why be reasonable?

2008-05-21T14:57:00.004-06:00

One of the things I’ve been coming to grips with over the past few months is whether or not being reasonable – rational – logical – matters. I always believed it was obvious that this is how people should be, but over time it can become too fanatical and oppressive, up there with scientology and what-have-you.

No doubt the issue is really about taking things to the extreme, but even as a general precept “being rational” is a tough thing to grapple with.

I’ve had people say things with conviction that I know are completely irrational. Astrology leaps to mind. The notion that people get their personality traits based on the date they are born on – which somehow has something to do with stars and arbitrarily assigned shapes we’ve given to them. Some people actually believe this shit. Worse yet they believe in horoscopes. I could see some very faint line of reasoning that could suggest that your core personality is somehow the function of cosmic forces. You’d have to concede that they are somehow fallible or that people everywhere suppress these traits since not all scorpios behave the same. I doubt there is any meaningful correlation between birthday and personality to be quite frank, but I’ve never studied it to be sure so the possibility does exist. Predestination on the other hand is absolutely ridiculous. Because I was born in November I will have great luck this month blab blah blah give me a break.

I understand that for the majority (god I hope it’s the majority) this is just for fun, an entertainment thing. But I fear that it may be that many people actually believe in it. How can they believe in it? They don’t subscribe to the doctrine of rationality.

Other doosies include ghosts/mediums, psychics and reincarnation. No rational person can believe in any of this, but not all people are rational.

Which begs the question – should they be?

I would love to be someone who could believe in the fantastic, the magical. I can’t because I’m a rationalist and there’s no logical way to conclude that such things could exist. I read about it in books for entertainment, but I don’t expect to see any manifestations in reality (unlike believers of horoscopes, psychics, etc).

There are certainly disadvantages to being held accountable to logic. It can be cold and stifling, rigid and depressing. This is probably the main reason I’ve never had some specific dream or goal in mind for my life. It’s completely irrational to want to be the president, or an astronaut, or whatever given the #’s and the probability. In fact the rational view of life is to be survivalist and then take the rest as gravy. It’s called expectations management – or perhaps more aptly, managing relative realities. Happiness is relative, if you expect very little then it won’t take much to evoke this feeling. If you shoot for the stars, you’ll be disappointed at anything less than the stars. This is logical.

On the other hand not being rational is the reason people lie, deceive, and do a lot of stupid things in general. It’s why we buy anti-poverty bracelets instead of reducing our consumption. It’s why we think gas companies conspire to raise prices (what does “finite resource” mean anyways? – I call oil company conspiracy!). It’s why there are compulsive liars, selfish assholes, and flakes.

Another issue is how we interact. Communication and interaction requires some common ground between perceptions of reality. I think most people I end up not getting along with just have radically different perceptions of how and why things happen in their lives. If they were more rational about stuff we’d probably get along swimmingly. Now I don’t think it requires absolute homogeneity, but at the least we need some common ground. Believing in ghosts or psychics requires a certain suspension of rational thought, and that trickles out into all kinds of other areas of life.

It works the same way against the rationalist too. I’m not saying which is better or which is right, but it’s a divide that grows the more faithful you become in whichever thing you believe (the rational or irrational). I would wager that for someone committed to the fantastic and absurd, most of the things someone like me says or does appears stupid as well.

And so I wrestle with this, wondering if I should care about being reasonable, logical. As a starting point I try not to look down or shake my head at people who don’t. Few apply it to the same degree I have anyways so it’s not like I have a lot of choice if I don’t want to be forever condescending. The other side is frightening though – no rules, systems, or applications. You just make shit up and who cares if it doesn’t make any sense. If you want to believe that your luck or lack thereof is due to the cosmos, go for it.

I doubt I’ll ever let go of reason completely, the other side reeks too much of abject psychosis. But if I’m lucky, maybe I won’t need to cling so tightly to it.

Stupid research

2008-05-14T13:35:00.001-06:00

One thing I no longer take even remotely seriously are the claims, usually health-related, of various studies that you read in the newspaper. The most recent one that jumps to mind was from a few days ago that said breast feeding made kids smarter. Sounds good, but then you read and find out that 20% of kids tested came up 3 IQ points higher. I think my kids will be okay with missing out on those 3 points if my significant other opts to use formula.

Almost every single “linking” study you will ever see suffers from the same chronic bullshit. Eating potatoes may reduce your risk of breast cancer. Why? Because they did a study of 1000 women. Of the 500 who ate potatoes 100 got cancer. Of the 500 who didn’t 150 got cancer. PEI is bracing for a massive influx of women scrambling to get closer to the country’s potato Mecca.

The few that are actually accurate are usually nothing more than common sense. I read one that said men who help with housework get laid more than men who don’t. Why? Because your wife isn’t tired and pissy from cleaning all day and appreciates the help. Wow, doing nice things for your spouse has a positive impact on your sex life. Alert the presses.

Let me do some off-the-cuff study results and save people a lot of time and money:

- Not exercising makes you fat.
- Not wearing deodorant or showering makes you stink.
- Kids who read are smarter than kids who don’t.
- Poor people ride the bus more than rich people.

I could go on and on, should probably become a consultant.

I can’t even remember how many stupid or common sense studies I’ve seen over the years, but if you watch you’ll see them and now you can laugh at how retarded they are. Don’t fall for the flashy headlines, do some math and logical thinking.

I suck at small talk

2008-05-13T14:10:00.002-06:00

Like most kids, around the time I turned 13 I started to bottle up and not particularly want to talk. One notable difference perhaps is that I loved shooting my mouth off at school in every class – right there with the other keeners hand reaching for the sky in response to just about any question. I was never afraid of public speaking, I relished it. What I couldn’t do was your run-of-the-mill small talk. I’ve made some inroads since then but nothing very substantial.

I had a theory at one point that I had to sleep more because my brain was always on overdrive. Other people would get up and function on 5 hours sleep like nothing, if I didn’t get 8+ I felt like crap all day. This, I hypothesized was because of the energy required to run a cerebral cortex with inordinate neuron activity. Someone thinking and analyzing more than they probably ought to.

See when somebody asks me “how are you?” my instinct is actually not to say “good, how are you?” My gut reaction is to actually ask myself how am I feeling? Zealous? Disturbed? Despondent? Overwhelmed? Underwhelmed? Frustrated? Or in many cases just plain nothing. I guess that’s more “what do you feel?” than “how”, but they’re close enough that it was usually more accurate to shrug or mumble than to lie and say “good”.

Hypothesis #2 is that because I have a lot of trouble lying, I was loathe to give an answer I couldn’t verify internally. If I wasn’t actually feeling “good”, then to say it anyways would make my guts twist a bit because it wasn’t really true. Yet in searching for what the true answer might be, I’d come up empty more often than not.

I’d have similar reactions (and in some cases still do) to the subsequent small talk questions – how was school? How was work? How was basketball? How was the party? I rarely felt strongly one way or the other, so I’d shrug and say “it was okay” or more maliciously “the same as always”. Not much differentiated one day of school to the next, thus being asked daily could easily escalate to being antagonizing or annoying.

Now at some point I shook myself out of my own rational stupidity and came to understand the point of these questions isn’t the obvious one. It’s like that old blues song “what a wonderful world” – goes something like “I see friends shaking hands, saying how do you do; they’re really saying I love you”. My parents weren’t so insane as to believe that I was undergoing wildly different experiences at school from one day to the next, but that’s what it seemed like to me at the time.

The issue nowadays isn’t so much that I don’t understand the concept or point of small talk – it’s that I never had the 26 years of experience that someone my age should have had. I don’t know how to do it, it doesn’t come easily.

I can talk about things I’m interested in, or can find something interesting about. But as for just sitting around talking about nothing I really cannot do it. If my brain isn’t being stimulated by some sort of intrigue it slows to a halt.

What do you say after “I guess it’s supposed to rain tomorrow eh?” Therein lies the question. I can’t think of anything intriguing there. It will rain and that’s it. My instinct here might be to talk about climate change, or the general practice of meteorology and forecasting – how they do it. From there I’d jump into how man believes himself to be able to learn everything – maybe mention The eternity artifact (a sci-fi book touching on this theme). I’d then transition into one of my current preoccupations – the question of whether we are part of the natural order, or external to it. This is all my jargon about survival and our basic needs vs the things we invent as needs. It’s culture, civilization, coupled with environmental catastrophe and population overshoot. I could even angle in my hunting/vegetarianism thoughts.

I could go on for a long time down those various roads. But that’s not small talk. I left small talk when I stopped talking about the immediate issue: rain tomorrow. The correct followup to that statement is more in the vein of – “we’re getting a lot of rain” or the opposite.

The other point of some significance in my incapacity to converse on the mundane, is that I just don’t care about most of the content that falls into this domain. I am beyond ambivalent about who’s marrying who, who’s having kids, who’s going to jail. I’m only vaguely aware of the inconsequential details of people whom I should know them for. I live in the same city as my sister but couldn’t tell you her address. Until a few days ago I wasn’t sure how old my older brother was. I don’t know how old my parents are. I’m horrible at remembering any anniversary/birthday.

And the final inhibition on my small talk skills is that I just don’t have things to talk about. I don’t watch TV so can’t comment on shows. I don’t have hobbies other than playing sports and guitar, and a modest interest in martial arts. All of these things are things you do but don’t really talk about. Talking about my newfound ability to do barre chords, or the player on my team who sucks at dribbling, isn’t interesting at all unless the other person does the same stuff, and even then its only moderately interesting. When the Senators are playing I can talk hockey, that’s about it. Until recently I could have talked about the world of warcraft video games for hours on end, but to anyone who doesn’t play this is the most boring thing in the world to hear about. I watch movies but mostly the same ones – incidentally movies that few people have seen or care about in the same depth I do.

So I don’t know, this may be something I’m just hardwired to fail at. At least I’m not in denial about it I guess.

The fine art of interpretation

2008-05-07T14:15:00.002-06:00

I recently re-arranged my house a bit so that I now have my guitar and amp in the same room as my computer, and can now play guitar at the computer without ramming the neck into the wall. The main reason for this was so that I could look up tabs at random and just try playing different songs and see if they are as hard/easy as they look.

Meandering through various songs and tabs I remembered an old song from the 90’s by a band called the verve pipe, and the song “the freshmen”. It’s a slow song, seemed like it might be easy to play and it turns out it is. Also nice is that the vocals are in a range I can sing (this is a pretty tight range so finding songs like this are gems in the rough).

As you really try to coordinate playing and singing, you have to remember the lyrics and think about them enough that they come easily. A side-effect is seeing things in them you might not notice by just listening over and over again.

I’m the first one to say I hate reading lyrics that are meant to be sung, but I’ll scribble them here so those unfamiliar with the tune have some clue what it is I’m talking about as this is more or less the whole point of this post.

When I was young I knew everything
And she a punk who rarely ever took advice
Now I'm guilt stricken, sobbin' with my head on the floor
Stop a Baby's Breath and a shoe full of rice, no...

(prechorus)
I can't be held responsible
'Cause she was touching her face
I won't be held responsible
She fell in love in the first place

(chorus)
For the life of me I cannot remember
What made us think that we were wise and we'd never compromise
For the life of me I cannot believe we'd ever die for these sins
We were merely freshmen

My best friend took a week's vacation to forget her
His girl took a week's worth of valium and slept
And now he's guilt stricken sobbin' with his head on the floor
Thinks about her now and how he never really wept he says

Prechorus/Chorus

We've tried to wash our hands of all of this
We never talk of our lack in relationships
And how we're guilt stricken sobbin' with our heads on the floor
We fell through the ice when we tried not to slip, we'd say

Prechorus/Chorus

Now the thing about this song is I have this vague recollection of someone talking about it and saying that the singer wrote it after being in a bar and listening to these 3 guys all talk about how they’d fucked this girl. So when I say the lyrics this is what I’m thinking about, and the song feels like it’s really about male indifference. In the second verse the guy takes a vacation to forget the girl, the girl commits suicide, and all he can say is that its her fault – not his. The chorus is basically about how stupid we, as men are when we do things like this.

Or so I figured.

I was curious if the little story I’d heard was true or not. Somewhere inside me I knew it wasn’t but it made the song so much more powerful and tragic to see it in that light, that I wanted it to be true.

So I look it up on Wikipedia and the song is actually about abortion. Crouched basically in the only line that doesn’t make a lick of sense in my interpretation: “Stop a Baby's Breath and a shoe full of rice, no...” I don’t get the shoe full of rice bit, but certainly the rest you can figure out.

So I was kind of bummed when I saw this. I mean whenever I hear Brick by ben folds five all I can think about is “this is a song about abortion” when it could have been about a lot of different things. I liked Freshmen a lot more when I thought it was about indifference, specifically male indifference in their relationships with women. As a song about abortion its pretty meh.

Then I figured fuck it. Art is supposed to be about interpretation anyways, so who cares if the guy had something else in mind when he wrote the song – it’s music which (sometimes) is art, and its perfectly acceptable that I get something totally different from the lyrics. This is easier to do with abstract art which is why I like that. Of course if I learned the artist painted a piece to represent two people having a sandwich at noon, I’d still be a little annoyed when I was seeing anarchy, violence, beauty, or whatever.

In fact this put me in mind of a poem I wrote and shared with someone a long time ago:

close your eyes and burn until you see what you've been thinking.
black and red
darkfire
a fallen angel looking for redemption
but not wanting it.
Your armor is stained with fears
indestructable
the killer inside won't let you be alone.
never
on your own.
Take the dark and twist it
to see what's really inside.
Broken.
close your eyes and freeze until the visions disappear.
silver blue
coldfire

The weirdest thing about this was she responded with something like “wow. I’ve never had someone who understood me like this” (assuming I had written it for her and about her). In fact I had written it some time before then, presumably about myself and how I felt. To be fair, I was very liberal with the use of “you” to de-personalize poems back then. But it was still kind of weird to have someone interpret it their own way and be significantly moved by it because of that interpretation, when that wasn’t really what I’d written it about.

But hey that’s art, which ironically isn’t that much of a stretch from life/reality: people see what they want to see.

Solicitation

2008-05-02T12:40:00.002-06:00

A while ago I wrote a note about how much I dislike beggars, which was perhaps pre-emptive considering the two things I like the least in this world: advertising, and lawyers.

I’ll summarize my beef with lawyers as being that justice is for sale. If it wasn’t, all lawyers would charge the same fee. And it may be unfair to blame the profession, since it’s just a necessary part of the legal system we have. I also won’t write at length about it, because I don’t have a better alternative. I just couldn’t see myself being detached enough from reality to argue a case I didn’t actually believe in. But hey, diffr’nt strokes for diffr’nt folks.

Advertising on the other hand is the goddamn spawn of satan.

The fact people are mostly oblivious to the fact that shit that is “brought to you by” company X or Y isn’t actually free disturbs me. The 6 o clock news isn’t free, the price is buried in advertising budgets of products you buy. All the shit you buy on a daily basis would be like 30% (or whatever ad budgets are vs revenue) cheaper if advertising didn’t exist. And then you’d have to pay for the news yourself, but at least every segment wouldn’t be brought to you by someone else.

Now as much as I dislike it, I realize it isn’t likely to change for the better. What pisses me off though is when it changes for the worse. No longer content to make me intake their brainwashing passively, companies are going more and more out of their way to force me to listen.

I had some useless piece of shit telemarketer call me, and put me on hold to speak to them. Are you kidding me? This defies everything good and holy in the universe. Bad enough I get calls at home offering me sweet deals on new windows, lawn care, and home security – but to actually have someone with the audacity to call me and put me on hold to speak to them about their sweet deals? Well there’s only so much a man can take. This is the point where you start to think not having a phone period is a pretty good option.

While not quite advertising another phenomenon that irks me are the “charity” folks planted outside my building all summer. Greenpeace, amnesty international, and what-have-you. Young folks who probably think they’re doing a great thing, posing with binders smiling and saying hello whenever you go by. Far from ebeneezer scrooge, the reason I dislike this is that there is no sincerity here. These aren’t folks just out on a sunny day looking to pass a pleasant word. They want one thing: my cash. That’s their job. If they even just wanted to tell me about their cause I wouldn’t mind, but the purpose of these kids is to con me out of some dough. They run neck and neck with the homeless guys. It’s not advertising per-se, but it’s the same aggressive solicitation used by telemarkers.

Shit I’ve even had people come door to door to sell me crap. Some hydro deal or something a year or so ago. Sounded like a scam to me.

But in all of this the thing I don’t get is WHY these doorknobs think they should be coming up to me and asking me if I want to buy product x or y. If I wanted the goddamn thing I’d go buy it now wouldn’t I? It’s not like I’m sitting in my apartment thinking “you know if only someone would call and offer me a deal, I’d totally replace my windows”. And if I had a lawn, and wanted lawncare services, there is this magic thing called the internet where I could find a company to do it. Shit I could even go old school and rip open the yellow pages. I do not need to be harassed for something I don’t have any interest in buying.

The closest I ever came to actually following through on one of these solicitations was some organic beef sales pitch. The call was disguised as a survey where I would be rewarded with a free sample of organic beef. Sweet. I don’t mind doing surveys because I’m not a very busy person when I’m at home, I’m opinionated, and surveys don’t try to get me to spend money. Now this particular survey was about my marital status, number of kids, income, freezer space (alarm bells) etc.

When I completed it they wanted to schedule a time to drop off my free sample. One caveat tho – both me and my significant other had to be there for them to drop it off. Kinda fucked up no? It was pretty rare for both of us to be there at the same time before 8 or 9pm so needless to say the beef never came. Clearly the plan was to drop off “free sample” and bully us into signing up for more. My guess is marketing research showed that if the couple decides together sales shoot up by 100% or some shit. I still do surveys from time to time, but promises of free organic beef don’t hold much sway anymore.

Now one specific “telemarketer” that pissed me off was some AGR Assurance company or some shit, who would call me every week or so leaving a message asking me to call them back. I ignored it and ignored it. Finally I got so annoyed that I decided to actually call them. Nobody was there. I wrote the number down and they kept on calling and calling, until finally one day I was at home early enough to call them and get someone.

Me: Hi, this is Darcy Hartwick. I don’t know what the fuck you are trying to sell me but I do not want it. Take me off your goddamn list. I – do – not –want – whatever – you – are – selling.

Telemarketer: Sir we are not selling you any product, this is an accounts recovery program.

Me: I don’t want any fucking account recovery program either. If I did I’d call you, leave me the hell alone.

Telemarketer: Sir (blab la bla) we recover money for companies owed money. If you just give me your phone # and name I can sort this out.

Me: I don’t owe anyone money so stop calling, check me in your system.

Her: is your name Shawn Lemercier?

Me: No. And I’ve had this # for like 2 years.

Her: Okay sir I’ve removed you from the system, have a nice day.

It’s too bad really, I wanted to rip into some asshole telemarketer and it ended up being someone doing their job and just getting the wrong person. Depending on my mood sometimes I try to be polite, but most of the time as soon as I say “hello” and there’s no answer right away I just hang up. This is because they are using a mass-dialing machine, and they have to flick a switch once they see who answers. Real people don’t have a 5-10 second delay after you say hello.

Man I hate ads, and damn do I ever hate companies that approach me to sell shit. If I want it I’ll come see you, asshats.