halfacanuck

Google Suggest dissected

2004-12-21T14:26:00.000-05:00

Here.

Okay, this must be a joke

2004-12-21T14:25:00.001-05:00

Here.

Why I love bash

2004-12-21T14:25:00.000-05:00

Here.

Vote for me and get fucked

2004-12-21T14:24:00.001-05:00

Here.

No more comment spam?

2004-12-21T14:24:00.000-05:00

Here.

My first comment spam attack

2004-12-21T14:23:00.000-05:00

Here.

Ah, Christmas concerts

2004-12-15T23:29:00.000-05:00

Here, at my new blog.

Using MT with Apache::Filter

2004-12-14T16:02:00.000-05:00

Here.

I hate Christmas

2004-12-14T13:02:00.000-05:00

Here.

How this blog works

2004-12-14T11:06:00.000-05:00

Here.

An unprecedented view into my nerdiness

2004-12-14T11:05:00.000-05:00

Here

But who's to blAIM?

2004-12-13T03:03:00.000-05:00

Here.

What's your number?

2004-12-13T02:20:00.000-05:00

My blog has moved! Please update your bookmarks/links/feeds to blog.halfacanuck.com. You can find this post here.

Dog-sledding

2004-12-10T10:11:00.000-05:00

Here.

Bloglines

2004-12-06T20:04:00.000-05:00

So I just rediscovered Bloglines. I say "rediscovered" because I've been aware of it for a while, but didn't really grasp how cool it is until I checked it out again this afternoon (or, possibly, the really nifty stuff has been added since I last looked).

Bloglines is an online web syndication (or "feed") browser. What this means, essentially, is that certain sites (blogs in particular, but also some news services etc.) allow their content to be accessed and republished by outside parties via special interfaces called RSS and Atom. In other words, when you set up an account (for free) on Bloglines you tell it what sites you like to read every day and, if that site has an RSS or Atom feed, Bloglines will trot off and grab the content from that site and display it to you within the Bloglines site itself.

Why is this useful, or even any different from visiting the web site itself? Well, the difference is that Bloglines has a little sidebar with a list of all the sites you've subscribed to and -- here's where it gets cool -- it knows whether the site has been updated since you last visited it and, if so, how many new posts (or news stories, or other pieces of content) there are. Thus instead of going through a dozen bookmarks to check if any of them have anything new to read, you simply go to your Bloglines page and can see at a glance if there's been an update. Think of it as a bit like email, only with web sites.

If that's all there was to it I'd not be particularly excited about it (yes, I'm excited about it. Snide comments welcome). That's how RSS and Atom work, and I've been using a similar standalone program called NetNewsWire Lite to read feeds for ages. What makes Bloglines so damn cool is that unlike NetNewsWire Lite it's able to read not just RSS and Atom feeds but also pages from Xanga, LiveJournal, the new Google Groups 2 service, Yahoo! Groups, Topix.net and can even pretend that an email mailing list is a feed too, showing it along with the "real" feeds in the sidebar.

This means that I can check every single site I read on a regular basis, from Reuters headlines to a bunch of blogs (including, finally, Xanga) in one place and without having to check each manually to see if there's anything new, saving me vital seconds every day. If that doesn't deserve a w00t I don't know what does.

Go out and sign up for Bloglines immediately, and then of course add my blog to your subscriptions. Because it's what all the cool people do.

Yes, I'm a nerd.

The case of the missing beef

2004-12-04T01:39:00.000-05:00

My wife and I went grocery shopping today and picked up a three-pound pack of ground beef, since we seem to get through quite a lot of it. This isn't in itself unusual, nor was the manner in which we collapsed spent into chairs whilst the various children who congregate in our house, some of whom are alleged to be ours, unpacked the groceries. When the smallest child (who shall remain nameless, for what follows is partly her fault, and there's nothing cowardly about me placing partial blame on a seven-year-old) presented me with the ground beef and asked what should be done with it, I replied that she should put it on the island and I would deal with it.

The plan was to unwrap the beef, separate it into three one-pound portions, wrap them, and put them in the freezer. Thus I would avoid the normal disaster that unfolds when it comes time to use the stuff, namely me trying to hack apart a frozen mass of beef with a ludicrously large knife, growing more and more frenzied by the second, until I either a) succeed in breaking off a chunk or b) stab myself through the hand.

At this point I too must accept partial responsibility for the ensuing events. Had I gone to work immediately and parceled the meat up there and then, none of this would've happened (though I still insist that Jeremy -- not her real name -- is mostly to blame). I didn't, in fact, do that, astonishing as it may sound to those who know me. What I did do was decide to nip onto the Internet for a few minutes first, possibly have a smoke, that kind of thing. Within 13.8 seconds of opening my laptop lid I had of course forgotten all about the beef, and four hours later went to put a pizza in the oven for supper.

I strolled to the freezer and pulled out the pizza, swiveled jauntily on my heel and made my way over to the stove, and, in the corner of my eye, saw the beef still on the island. I pulled open the oven, slid the pizza in... and realized that something about the beef wasn't quite right, but I couldn't place it. I closed the oven and gave my full attention to the meat, and noticed immediately (for nothing escapes my profound observational skills) that someone, or something, had been gnawing at it.

When I say gnawing, I actually mean taking really quite large bites out of it. And by that I mean taking really quite large bites through the plastic wrap and, in parts, through the polystyrene base, but only on the side nearest the edge of the island. Something like an inch and a half of meat was gone from one entire side, I noted meticulously.

Naturally my first thought was that my wife was the culprit, because boy, does she ever love her steak tartare. But in this case I knew it could not be so, since she'd left for work long before. I then turned my focus onto the children. It is widely known that children are barely above the level of the beast, and ours in particular do, it must be said, occasionally remind one of living in the same house as a small herd of warthogs. Am I suggesting one of them had stooped so low as to eat raw ground beef directly from the packaging, and also eat the packaging, while the others kept lookout and whispered frantic encouragement? Yes. Yes I am.

Upon probing them, however, I was greeted with such expressions of wide-eyed innocence that even I, a heartless cynic, momentarily forget the savagery of their true nature and concluded they were not the perpetrators of the horrific crime scene upon which I had stumbled. It seemed as if my investigation had come to a dead-end. I turned back to the kitchen, my face a picture of despondency.

But wait! I stopped dead in my tracks. Could it be that the dog, whom I shall call Winston (for that is his name), was looking at me somewhat guiltily? I met his gaze. Our eyes narrowed and locked. Sweat formed on our brows. He tensed. I raised a single eyebrow. For untold seconds we stared unblinking at each other, like two titans meeting over a chess board, or a pair of gunslingers in a town of insufficient capaciousness. The mournful wind bounced a tumbleweed between us, but neither did it distract. Like Kennedy and Khrushchev were we in this Herculean clash of wills. And then... And then he crumbled, averting his eyes with a tiny submissive whimper, the whimper heard around the world. I had broken him! Yes. Yes, now it was all so clear! It wasn't my wife who had munched surreptitiously on the tasty protein carelessly set aside in the kitchen. It wasn't any of the various children, sunk in depravity as they undeniably are. It was him all along!

But the pulse of glory victorious was soon replaced with bitter self-recrimination. What kind of a detective, what kind of a man, would not have turned his attention to Winston before any other? Why did I not immediately deduce the link between the missing beef and this constantly hungry, infamously disobedient hound? Why did I not recall at once his daring late-night forays into the garbage bag, his apparently insatiable lust for fresh meat? Suddenly it all clicked. What a fool I was!

I shook myself out of it. Yes, perhaps I should've made the connection sooner, but I had made it, and that was the important thing. But as logical as that seemed, as true as it may have been, yet my anger increased with every step back to the canine-caused carnage. How could I have been so stupid? Am I really that short-sighted? I ripped the remains of the plastic wrap from the meat and threw it approximately in the direction of the garbage bag. Winston, who has apparently been secretly trained since birth to show up the very nanosecond even the possibility of food is considered, unwisely decided then was a good moment to approach me for scraps.

Well, that was the final straw. A tiny but vitally important blood vessel burst deep inside my brain and I flew into apoplexy. Plunging my fingers into the fleshy pulp of beef slightly back from the point to which it had been violated I tore off the contaminated strands and, shaking with blind rage, hurled the dripping mass wildly at the dog's head. I did it again and again and again. Very soon I'd stripped off another half-inch from the edge of the meat, all of which I flung furiously at Winston, until there was no more bad meat to remove. I took a deep breath.

It was then it occurred to me that tossing handfuls of succulent grade A beef at a permanently famished carnivorous animal was not perhaps the most heinous of punishments I could possibly devise. I looked at the dog. He was wolfing down the last remaining morsels, near-orgasmic joy afire in his eyes. I sighed and tried half-heartedly to conjure up more fitting penalties, but by then my anger was abating. The beef-throwing had soothed me and reason was resuming its seat. I divvied up what was left of the godforsaken stuff and encased it in GLAD Wrap, then deposited the now significantly-less-than-one-pound chunks in the freezer.

So what is the moral of this story? It's tempting to say "procrastination can only lead to extra work," but that's too easy an answer. I believe there are really two lessons here: first, don't ever get a dog. Actually, that's it. Just don't get a dog. Or, if you do get a dog, fit extensions to the legs of your kitchen island. Or remove all his teeth. Or turn vegetarian. And never trust Jeremy with meat. But it's much simpler just to not get a dog, or, if you already have one, set it free. It'll be happier that way. And even if it isn't (say, if it's immediately and fatally run over by a truck), you'll be happier. Trust me.

Updatage

2004-12-01T17:39:00.000-05:00

My life is, as you know, a helterskelter whirlwind of frantic activity. One day it might be sitting for several hours at a time staring blankly into space; another day it might be descaling the kettle (though, to be fair, I've not actually done that in quite some time, because we have no C.L.R. and vinegar isn't quite up to the task of removing the quarter-inch-thick layer of limescale clinging tenaciously to the element).

Following are the most interesting things to happen in my life recently:

I got a commission to write a story for Urban Male Magazine, Canada's answer to Maxim. The pay isn't great (which is to say really, really quite bad) but it's planned to be a double-page spread so it'll look good in my portfolio.
I called the travel editor of the National Post to find out if she read the story I sent to her over a week ago, and it turns out she's been away and couldn't find the email. Greatly relieved. So I sent it again. Hopefully I'll hear back from her this time, along the lines of: "Dear Ross, You're the most fantastic writer the world has ever seen, bar none. I will pay you one half of one million dollars for this story."
I am still distressingly close to the beginning of The Structure of Evolutionary Theory. The time I take to finish it might itself be measured on a geological scale.
I found a new(ish) browser that I'm very partial too. It's called Camino and it's based around the same rendering engine as Firefox, but is much more lightweight. This means new windows open pretty much instantly instead of taking a couple of seconds like they did in Firefox, page loading is quicker, and I can once again boast that I use an obscure browser. Also, it's only for Macs. Suckers.

As you can tell, the last few days have been unusually exciting. I realize this post strayed wildly into "uninteresting personal diary" territory, but I intend to make up for that with a scintillating post after I've made supper. Whirlwind, I tells ya.

Blog the dead donkey

2004-11-29T18:59:00.000-05:00

Darren Barefoot, a Canadian PR dude and blogger, makes two interesting points about personal, diary-style blogs.

The first is that everyone who blogs wants readers. This might seem like it's not even worth saying, but I believe it is, because it speaks to a more general need to be observed. Very few people go through life doing nothing at all to attract the attention of our fellow creatures. Often we dress in a way designed to elicit attention: obviously the youthful are more prone to using appearance to draw attention to themselves (witness goths and punks and emos), but others do it too. Does that guy's business suit need to be that sharp? Do those earrings have to be that eye-catching, or, indeed, even worn at all? Body decorations such as tattoos are designed solely to be seen, and arguably the use of makeup fulfills the same role (especially, of course, amongst men). We seem to have some innate desire to have an audience, from obvious examples like professional performers (actors, musicians, etc.) and artists to not-so-obvious examples like those who attempt suicide in a way guaranteed to fail.

It is perhaps an attempt to gain validation. We want to hear that we are entertaining, or clever, that we will be missed when we're gone, that we're worthy of being alive. But moreso perhaps it is a way to feel connected with society, the superorganism of which we all form a part. In The Lucifer Principle Howard Bloom suggests that an overwhelming feeling of separation from the superorganism -- loneliness, basically -- is far more dangerous than we usually conceive it to be, and can even be fatal, as in the case when a previously healthy person dies shortly after their partner.

In this respect blogging is no different. It's a way to feel connected, a contributing part of society. It is a form of creativity, and there's something soulless and unsatisfying about a creation without an audience. An online journal, by definition, seeks readers. And, as Darren says, no blogger can claim not to want to be read. (I suppose that somewhere there must exist a blog not meant to be read, perhaps as a postmodern artistic statement, but that is attention-seeking in itself.)

But, to address Darren's second point, does this mean that a blogger must be interesting? His post, entitled I May Not Want to Read About Your Cat, contains a list of suggestions for those running personal blogs, ranging from "If you're going to write about the ordinary day-to-day events of your life, write extraordinarily, with humour and insight and passion" to "Don't post unless you've got something compelling to talk about." He makes a valid argument, and I would agree with him if blogs were just another form of publishing. But they aren't. Blogs, unlike newspapers and magazines and non-literary novels, don't have to appeal to the lowest common denominator within a particular demographic.

This is "bottom-up journalism." It is arguably, because of ease of access and the facility to hyperlink, the mechanism most suited to forming a "public discourse" we've yet devised. There's a difference between wanting to be heard and wanting to be heard widely: I, as a writer, would prefer as large an audience as possible, mainly to stroke my ego, to feel my talents (for what they're worth) are appreciated. But someone writing about their cats in a non-extraordinary, humorless way almost certainly doesn't want what I want. I think those who maintain very personal blogs -- by which I mean closer to diaries than anything else -- gain more satisfaction from the creative process than from the observation of the end result, from feeling included in the great equalizer that is the blogosphere.

So do I agree with him or not? In a sense. I agree that bloggers want to be read: I think that is an axiom of this new way of communicating. I agree with all his suggestions for making a blog more readable, and should likely pay more attention to them myself. But I disagree with his assertion that blogs necessarily should obey those guidelines, that just because someone places their journal online means they want to attract as many readers as possible. Me? I want a million hits a minute (I am still some distance from reaching this goal, to employ a tiny hint of understatement). But for many, I feel, as long as someone somewhere is reading, that's enough.

Evolution

2004-11-29T15:41:00.000-05:00

I picked up a copy of Shattering the Myths of Darwinism by Richard Milton the other day. As those who know me well (or even in passing, probably) can attest I love a good argument, especially if one side seems utterly hopeless. So I'm naturally drawn to anti-Darwinian stuff like this and Darwin's Black Box by Michael Behe.

The book was deeply impacting, not so much because his arguments are compelling, but because it highlighted my ignorance of evolution beyond the most basic concepts. I know essentially nothing more than what I learned in school, and what I read in a few of Richard Dawkins's books a decade ago.

I was alarmed by my inability to contradict most of his points; indeed, I walked away almost convinced by it all. While I consider some of his points to be valid (such as that "survival of the fittest" is in fact a tautology, because when you get right down to it, from a linguistic point of view, what it really means is "the individuals that produce the most offspring... produce the most offspring") I can't help feeling that I should know much, much more about probably one of the most important topics of all, in any area of life.

To this end I just bought The Structure of Evolutionary Theory by Stephen Jay Gould. At just over 1,400 pages I reckon it should provide me with a pretty thorough treatment of the subject, if I ever manage to get through it all. At the very least I should emerge, blinking and pale, significantly more knowledgable about evolution than I am at the moment. On the plus side, too, is the fact that it was written by the guy who proved able to resist the comfort and safety of the academic mainstream and was able to break free of the restrictive dogma of Darwinism enough to propose significant modifications to the theory in order to explain the evidence, rather than explain away the evidence, of the fossil record (by which I mean punctuated equilibrium).

So that's that. A quite possibly highly disingenuous book made me recognize a shameful inadequacy in my knowledge, and hopefully a dead biologist can help me fix that.

The is the end of my least interesting blog post ever.

Couple of new blogrolls

2004-11-23T13:37:00.000-05:00

I recently added Colin McKay's blog to my blogroll. Colin's the brother of a friend of mine, but stop right there! I know you're thinking "nepotism," you cynical bastards. In fact he was added on the basis of his writing and the "nutrition information" label acting as a table of contents, which I think is fantastic. So there.

Also please welcome Query Letters I Love to the fold, published by an anonymous Hollywood script reader (or something). It's a collection of the very worst suggestions for screenplays he receives. Too cool for words. Favorite submission:

The World has imploded on itself. Evil Robot plans an Empire built on the backs of remaining humanity.Can a man from the pass survive the hate of a savage woman and save humanity before the sands of time run out…?

Answer: Not without the help of his trusty sidekick, Scrofula Boy.

Update: He's an agent, not a script reader. And this is now my favorite submission:

It isn’t just the monkey that sets 'Laughing My Sphincter Off' apart from other cancer memoirs, it’s also my skewed sense of humor. The one-two-punch of the monkey’s low down physical commentary coupled with my friskiness of mind give the reader a unique look inside the soul of a person battling colorectal cancer

Personally I think I'll wait for "Laughing My Sphincter Off 2: Remission to Uranus."

(Sorry.)

Rather a shame

2004-11-23T12:34:00.000-05:00

Dan gets the push. Big surprise. Favorite quote:

"Dan's 24 years at the 'CBS Evening News' is the longest run of any evening news anchor in history and is a singular achievement in broadcast journalism," Leslie Moonves, CBS chairman and co-president and co-chief operating officer of CBS parent Viacom said in a statement.

In history? So he's the longest-serving anchor in the last 15 billion years, then? His was the most lengthy tenure of any news host since spacetime itself was created in the Big Bang, the physical laws of reality coalesced and the glorious fire of creation enabled fundamental particles to form? A gentle fingering of hyperbole from CBS, I feel, but goshdarnit are they proud of him or what?

Killing an elephant

2004-11-23T08:30:00.000-05:00

How do pygmies kill an elephant?

Sometimes they use spears and stab it repeatedly, delivering a final blow to the head. Elephants often die still standing, so to check it's actually dead one will touch his speartip to its eye. Other times they use poisoned darts and then track it for days until it finally succumbs. Still other times one will sneak up behind it, a spear or sharp blade in each hand, and with one of them slash across its Achilles tendon and ram the other into its comparatively soft belly. It's not unknown for the elephant to collapse backwards and crush the unfortunate hunter, but whatever happens it's not going anywhere.

Once the thing is dead the tail is cut off and taken to the village as proof, and as a sign the women should come to the site of the kill. The man who wielded the death stroke is given the best cuts of meat and the rest is divided evenly amongst the families. Then the pygmies pray over the animal to ask forgiveness from their god, because they believe what they did was wrong and that now they've killed one of god's creatures they won't receive eternal life. For the pygmies staying alive comes at an infinitely high price.

In 1862 The Geologist journal told of a human skeleton found 90 feet below the ground's surface in Macoupin County, Illinois, beneath a two-foot thick layer of unbroken slate. The earth in which the skeleton was found is estimated to be 300 million years old. In the early 70s, at a dig in Hueyatlaco, Mexico, American archaeologists discovered stone tools and weapons in a layer of earth estimated by geologists from the United States Geological Survey to be 300,000 years old. In the last century gold miners working Table Mountain in Toulumne County, California discovered human skeletons and artifacts in solid rock. The rock is believed to be about 50 million years old.

Within the rock-like structures that are stromatolites live bacteria -- cyanobacteria, or blue-green algae. A lot of cyanobacteria, three billion of them per square metre, working in cooperation to build their home. A stromatolite that is a metre-and-a-half high, like some of those in Hamelin Pool in Western Australia, may have taken two billion years to grow. Cyanobacteria use photosynthesis, extracting carbon dioxide from the water and, as a byproduct, releasing oxygen. A simply unimaginable quantity of cyanobacteria living three-and-a-half billion years ago very very slowly turned our atmosphere from oxygen-less to its present state, allowing animal life to exist. Cyanobacteria, and other types of algae, are considered a delicious snack for many forms of sea creatures, and now living stromatolites can be found only two places in the entire world. Cyanobacteria, in the most literal sense, created their own predators.

Humans, including pygmies, share about seventy percent of their genes with bacteria.

Study: Ben Affleck's two facial expressions "natural"

2004-11-22T15:25:00.000-05:00

BERKELEY, CA -- Researchers at the University of California in Berkeley reignited the age-old "nature or nurture" debate today by announcing the results of a year-long study into Ben Affleck's facial expressions.

The researchers claim the study, which will be published in a peer-reviewed journal within the next six months, proves that both Affleck's facial expressions -- "determined" and "confused" -- are the result of genetics rather than rearing.

The two faces of Ben Affleck: top, determined, from Daredevil; middle, confused, from Gigli; bottom, determined and confused, also from Gigli

"Since [Affleck] first burst zit-like onto the scene with Good Will Hunting I've wondered what caused his astonishing lack of emotional range," said project lead Dr David Fisker. "Now, thanks to our hard work over the last year, I can rest easy. It's a good feeling."

Fisker explained that all available evidence indicates the 32-year-old actor has just two facial configurations, one expressing determination and the other expressing confusion.

"He can do a mix of both, too, and look determined yet confused or confused yet determined, but that doesn't really count," said Fisker.

After a frame-by-frame analysis of all of Affleck's movies to date the team presented their proposal to the Department of Health and Human Services, where it was determined sufficient evidence existed for the team to receive government funding.

With the financial backing in place the team began interviewing Affleck's friends and family to determine if his facial expressions off-screen were as staggeringly restricted as on.

Matt Damon, co-author with Affleck of Good Will Hunting and long-time "close acquaintance" of the emotionally limited actor, confirmed their hypothesis.

"It's true, yeah. He's like that all the time," said Damon. "It was great when we were writing [Good Will] Hunting though because if I needed, say, determined dialog I'd just give him a jar to open and I'd be inspired by his face."

The researchers then moved on to addressing their most important question: is Affleck's inability to adopt a facial arrangement other than determined or confused a result of his genes or his childhood?

"We really had no idea when we started," said Dr Peter Ferguson, the team's head anthropologist. "It could've gone either way. So naturally the first thing we did was visit with his parents in Cambridge [Massachusetts]."

The researchers soon discovered compelling evidence for the theory that Affleck's condition is genetic.

"It was obvious from the very moment we met [Affleck's parents]," said Ferguson. "We were startled to discover that Ben's father, Tim, only ever looks confused, and his mother, Chris, only ever looks determined."

Both elder Afflecks suffer from a medical condition known as monoris (literally, "single face") which is exceptionally rare in the United States.

Research in the 70s and 80s proved to most doctors' satisfaction that the condition is genetic, with a single sufferer having a 25% chance of passing it on to their children.

Ben Affleck, though, is believed to be the first child ever conceived by two monoris sufferers.

"His case is remarkable, to be sure," said Fisker. "It seems that when both parents carry the monoris gene it's possible that their offspring can inherit not just the disease itself but also a combination of his or her parents' only possible facial expressions."

This explains, according to the study, how the younger Affleck is capable of both determination and confusion, and also why the team didn't consider monosis as a possibility in the first place.

"I'm not... Er... Wait... What?" said the constantly befuddled Tim Affleck in a telephone interview yesterday.

"The... No... Hang on. It's like... Ummm... I don't... Sorry. I'll start again," he added.

Chris Affleck declined to comment by phone, instead opting to respond to halfacanuck's queries through her attorney, David Bauer.

"Chris is determined to see her son through this ordeal," said Bauer today. "She has absolutely no intention of becoming lackadaisical in that regard. She couldn't be more driven in her desire to see him succeed despite his condition. Chris is absolutely hell-bent on being there for Ben, and has been single-mindedly unfaltering in that goal since his affliction became apparent, at which point she swore a blood oath to be utterly firm that she be unwaveringly resolute and purposeful in her doggedly stubborn show-no-mercy take-no-prisoners no-holds-barred iron-clad support for her son. She's quite determined about it really."

But in their study the researchers conclude that further investigations into Ben Affleck's unique condition are necessary.

"We've only just begun to scratch the surface of his almost total lack of facial talent," said Fisker. "The work has just started for us."

When contacted by halfacanuck Affleck initially expressed confusion as to why his woefully inadequate front-of-head contortions were "even newsworthy," but then said he was "absolutely immovable in [his] steadfastness" not to let his condition affect his surprisingly successful career.

Poetry

2004-11-21T21:18:00.000-05:00

You say that poetry is just
A bunch of people shouting, or
The work of some attention whore,
A feedback loop of limelight lust.
But poets do not poems make:
The words are what we're meant to hear,
The meter, rhyme, the rhythm we're
Rewarded with if we partake
In listening, allowing each
Soft syllable, divine diphthong
Caress us like a Siren song.
They climb aloft and out of reach
Once they escape the sordid breath
Of poets, rappers, all the fools
Who utter them: these mass-less jewels
Live far beyond their speaker's death.

Halo...Scan...?

2004-11-21T16:02:00.000-05:00

I just switched from the default Blogger comments to using HaloScan for it instead. Suffice to say that you can now enter your name for the comment without having to sign up to Blogger, and you can put in links to your email and home page if you so desire, and I can edit your comments to make it look like you wrote something you didn't, possibly about negroes. It's a win-win.

Also, I get trackback links for no extra charge (above and beyond the $0 I already pay on a monthly basis for the comments facility). I'm still not 100% on what a trackback is, but apparently it lets people comment on my blog in their blog and let me know about it by "pinging" me. Or something. Maybe you can understand this better, my brain is slow and feeble.

Course, there is a downside. All the comments left via the old Blogger system are now inaccessible. Ah well, they all sucked anyway. So leave some goddamn comments. You have no excuse now. And none of that anonymous crap, either. Personal responsibility, people, personal responsibility.

Here I go

2004-11-19T13:53:00.000-05:00

I sent my first story from while I was away to the National Post. Tiny bit nervous now. Which is to say I can barely sit still, think, or go to the toilet. Quite a few of my friends read it: three loved it unconditionally, like puppies, three thought it a little distant or detached, and one thought it was boring. I love writing.

But I hate people reading it. That's not quite true: what I hate is when people say it's anything other than perfect, especially if I invested a lot of time and effort into writing it. I know, obviously, that nothing I write is perfect -- there's no such thing as perfect, anyway -- but that doesn't stop me being disheartened by even the slightest criticism. (That's not to say I want people to lie to me about my writing. I'd hate that too, probably even more.)

It's funny. When I show something I've written to someone I watch them while they read it. Watch their face for reactions. Try to guess, from the position of their eyes, where on the page they are, because I know what's coming up and what kind of reaction I expect from it. And if they don't react in the way I expect I start worrying. Are they not enjoying it? Did I fuck something up? Is it only me in whom those particular words stir that particular reaction? If they do react the way I expect, it delights me.

For some reason this is all amplified a hundred times if the writing is meant to be funny. If someone laughs where they're meant to laugh over something I've written, I am ludicrously pleased. But if someone doesn't laugh once at what I think to be a consistently funny piece, I'm devastated. It's an utterly horrible feeling. Failure. Inadequacy. I could never be a stand-up comedian. No wonder they're all alcoholics.

So why do I write? I ask myself that occasionally. Will I ever be able to produce anything even resembling "limping invisible down to the sloe-black, slow, black, crow-black, fishingboat-bobbing sea," or "fall, gall themselves, and gash gold-vermillion"? Will I ever make people laugh as hard as Bill Bryson or "Ted L. Nancy," or entertain with such squirming perfection as P.G. Wodehouse or Roald Dahl, or keep people up all night reading reading reading like Dean Koontz or Dan Brown, or irritate so compulsively as Auberon Waugh or Mark Steyn? Will I? If not, what's the point? Is writing about the creator, or is it about the audience? Do I blog for me or do I blog for you? Why do I care so much?

Toffeewomble

2004-11-18T11:34:00.000-05:00

Some alarming intelligence: my brother just set up a blog. Liberals everywhere are darting for cover, grandmothers are trembling under their duvets, once-peaceful woodland dells are scarred with the high-pitched screech of warring badgers.

He'll probably accidentally delete everything soon, though, bearing in mind this is the guy who didn't double-check he'd packed his laptop's power cable despite knowing that the battery is dead and it won't function without it before leaving on a two-week working vacation. So make the most of it while it lasts.

The Windhover

2004-11-17T13:34:00.000-05:00

I CAUGHT this morning morning’s minion, king-
dom of daylight’s dauphin, dapple-dawn-drawn Falcon, in his riding
Of the rolling level underneath him steady air, and striding
High there, how he rung upon the rein of a wimpling wing
In his ecstasy! then off, off forth on swing,
As a skate’s heel sweeps smooth on a bow-bend: the hurl and gliding
Rebuffed the big wind. My heart in hiding
Stirred for a bird,—the achieve of; the mastery of the thing!

Brute beauty and valour and act, oh, air, pride, plume, here
Buckle! AND the fire that breaks from thee then, a billion
Times told lovelier, more dangerous, O my chevalier!

No wonder of it: shéer plód makes plough down sillion
Shine, and blue-bleak embers, ah my dear,
Fall, gall themselves, and gash gold-vermillion.

-- The Windhover, Gerard Manley Hopkins

Blimey.

Lucky y'all

2004-11-17T09:52:00.000-05:00

I hereby declare, unilaterally and without consulting any of my hopelessly sycophantic forelock-tugging subjects (that means you), that this blog is now covered by one of the Creative Commons licences. Specifically, you are allowed to "copy, distribute, display, and perform" my blog (that's right, perform) provided you give me credit, it's for noncommercial purposes (sorry, Andrew Lloyd Webber), and you don't "alter, transform, or build upon" it.

I also hereby reserve the right to make too many paranthetical comments in one paragraph.

Oh, and when I say credit, that includes credit cards.

Me, the terrorist

2004-11-15T18:41:00.000-05:00

I got selected twice for a special in-depth airport security search, once in Toronto and once in Las Vegas. What the hell? Do I look like a terrorist? I think I do not. Perhaps, in hindsight, wearing my "Allah Ackbar" t-shirt was a mistake. Here's roughly how it went:

Me: I'm lining up at security now. I'm not talking to anyone in particular, I'm just setting the scene.

Stranger: I see.

Security guy: Can I see your boarding pass?

Me: Yes indeed you may.

Security guy: Oh dear, oh dear. Allow me to alter the configuration of this maze-like area with movable posts and elastic straps acting as barriers so that you can take a different route than everyone else and they can all stare at you and hide their children behind their legs. This way, please.

Me: Oh dear. But I'm white!

Security guy: This isn't Texas.

Me: True. Okay.

Second security guy: Hi ...Thomas?

Me: Ross.

Second security guy: Ross! I'm Malcolm and I'll be searching you invasively today.

Me: Would you still search me invasively if I were called Thomas?

Malcolm: Even more invasively.

Me: Ah.

Malcolm: Now if you could just place your feet on this mat with outlines of feet drawn on it in case you're exceptionally stupid and haven't yet grasped the complexities of standing still, and raise your arms to shoulder-level with your palms facing up...

Me: My palms don't have faces.

Malcolm: Do not toy with me.

Me: Gulp. I am now assuming the position you described.

Malcolm: So I see. Now please don't move while I wave this magical beeping wand over your body. But first I must wave it near my own chest so that it beeps.

Me: Why?

Malcolm: It makes my nipples hard. Okay, here we go...

Me: Oh dear. It beeped.

Malcolm: I'm afraid it did. Can you take your shoes off?

Me: Yes, I've been able to do that for many years.

Malcolm: Excellent. Could you do that for me right now?

Me: With pleasure. I have now removed my shoes.

Malcolm: Very impressive. Okay. It seems it was your shoes making this magic wand beep, not your feet, so I won't need the scalpel, but I will have to inspect your shoes just in case. Is there anything sharp in there that might cut my skin or pierce my skin, that might lacerate me and cause me grievous bodily harm, or that might penetrate my epidermis in such a way as to cause vital fluids to leak from my interior?

Me: Aren't those all the same thing?

Malcolm: Yes, but I have a degree in English and I feel a bit wasted here to be honest.

Me: I don't generally keep sharp things in my shoes. I have a sharp tongue, but not the shoe kind.

Malcolm: That joke was lame but clever. Okay, here I go.

Me: Good luck.

Malcolm: Your shoes are safe. Though you might want to consider a darker brown -- these don't complement your pants very well.

Me: Fair enough. What now?

Malcolm: Now you must unbutton your pants and roll the waistband down.

Me: To make your nipples hard?

Malcolm: No, so that I can see if you have hidden weapons.

Me: Ah. Okay. There.

Malcolm: Great. Now I want you to stand still while I run my hands over your body in the way you normally only let a lover touch you. Is that okay?

Me: Not really, no. I'm uncomfortable with a man's intimate caress.

Malcolm: Too bad. Do you have any difficulty breathing, or any areas of your body that cause pain when touched?

Me: If I have difficulty breathing while a burly security guard runs his hands over my body then I have bigger problems than I previously suspected.

Malcolm: Good point. Okay, here I go. Oooh... Nice.

Me: Thanks. I'm particularly proud of that part of my body.

Malcolm: Now I'm going to run my fingers through your hair. Do you need a dandruff protector for your shoulders?

Me: No, my scalp is in impeccable condition.

Malcolm: Great! You don't seem to be hiding any nuclear devices in your hair. Alright! We're done.

Me: Thank God.

Malcolm: Now we just need to search your bags.

Me: Ah.

Malcolm: So put your shoes on and step to this table, if you would be so kind.

Me: Righto. I notice there are no outlines of feet walking to the table for me to follow. I'm not sure what to do.

Malcolm: Use your imagination. These are your bags?

Me: Yes. A nice Saudi Arabian man packed them for me.

Malcolm: This is probably not the situation in which to be making jokes, given that I have the right to interrupt your passage in several senses of the expression.

Me: Please don't do that.

Malcolm: Trust me, I'd prefer not to. Is this a laptop?

Me: You mean the laptop-shaped object with the Apple symbol on the lid, the sockets for various connectors parading up the side, and the light on the front that's fading on and off to indicate it's in sleep mode? Yes.

Malcolm: If I open the lid will I be presented with pictures of dwarves having sex with farmyard animals or anything of that nature?

Me: The chances are slim.

Malcolm: Shame. Yup. It's a laptop alright. Okay! We're really done this time. I was just joking before.

Me: So I can go?

Malcolm: Yup.

Me: Can you tell all those people to stop looking at me as if I'm going to quote from the Koran and blow myself up?

Malcolm: No. I'm afraid you just have to deal with it. After you've left this area you'll encounter some of them again, but you won't know who they are, so after a while it'll seem like everyone is looking at you suspiciously. Eventually you'll be consumed by paranoid delusions fed by acute lack of sleep and a diet consisting entirely of fruit for the last two weeks.

Me: Well, that's nice. Thanks, Malcolm. I'd say it's been fun but that would be a filthy lie.

Malcolm: Sure. Hey, you! Meek-looking woman with baby! Get your terrorist ass over here and spread 'em...

Finally, some words

2004-11-15T14:49:00.000-05:00

Well, I'm back from my trip and sufficiently recovered to string together a coherent sentence or two. I suppose you all want to know how it went, right? Nosy bastards. I wish you'd all stop living through me vicariously. Alright, here we go...

Dateline: Bay Area, California. Why is it called a dateline, anyway? It should surely be a placeline. Anyway, California was sunny and filled with eccentric characters!! Not that I'm stereotyping or anything. I was in San Francisco (pictures) to do two stories, one of which involved getting a makeover. I can't go into details until I sell the story, but suffice to say: my color is gray. Yes, gray. I was delighted to hear that. The other story involved crashing four parties in one night, during which I had my first 40 and was fined US$15m by a girl with a great ass in a cop costume for being Canadian. I pointed out that I'm not Canadian, I'm English, and so she fined me US$30m for impersonating a Canadian. Luckily she gave me 30 days to pay, since I didn't have my checkbook on me. I was also in San Jose to visit cowonahill and Tarantino27 (who, I'm now quite convinced, isn't actually Quentin Tarantino). We played pool and I was still a tad tired from the 437 sleepless hours it took to get from Kitchener to California, so I 1) Wasn't very good and 2) Said about three words. Most impressive. In addition I accidentally visited King City, which is about as exciting as the web site implies, "on the way" to Carmel, where Clint Eastwood used to be mayor and where the tourist shops sell things like $112,000 Picasso prints. Yes, really.

Dateline: Las Vegas, Nevada. And met with my brother, who'd arrived a couple of days before. The first day we didn't even make it out of the hotel due to pathological laziness, opting to dine at a phenomenally expensive restaurant ($7.50 for a bottle of beer? What happens in Vegas stays in Vegas, because you can't afford a fucking plane ticket out of there). Day two we visited a ghost town called Nelson (pictures), where we met Brent, the owner of the abandoned gold mine who now makes a living by operating tours and wearing a really cool cowboy hat. He told us that a tour group was arriving shortly -- and lo! he was correct, and they were, surprisingly enough given how infrequently Australians travel, Australian -- so we decided to tag along. The mine was interesting and safe, having electric lights throughout and regular inspections by the US Department of Making Sure Interesting Old Mines Are Safe, and Brent told a very entertaining story about how he'd been down the mine once on his own at night and something had chased him and it turned out to be his dog (his version was rather better than my summary). We then took a walk and found the Colorado River, and I noted to Sean how interesting the day had been, and yet it wouldn't be very interesting when I blog about it. On the way to Nelson I picked up some food at a 7-11, including some Beef "E" Beef (incredibly, I can find no official home page for the Beef "E" Beef product), a name which was to inspire much hilarity for the next ten days. That night we took in the Strip (pictures) and ate at the Harley Davidson Café, where my wife and I exchanged 78,000 text messages regarding her latest work crisis and Sean got hit on by a 55-year-old Pennsylvanian chain smoker, almost certainly called Phyllis.

Dateline Zion National Park, Utah. Ah, Zion (pictures). Home of entirely non-smoking hotels with homicide-inducingly slow net connections, no cell signal for 43 miles, no televisions in the rooms, and bars that close at 8pm. Luckily the scenery made up for it... just. We found another ghost town and its cemetery, including the grave of an entire family killed by Indians (or "child-murdering First Nations," as they probably would've preferred to be called) on the same day. We puzzled over Utah's bizarre alcohol laws. We hiked through the park and discovered the soon-to-be-infamous Zion Curse. We pointed to people at random and postulated that the chances are good he or she is a Mormon (since 75% of the Utah population is). We joked about Beef "E" Beef.

Dateline: Cedar City, Utah. Time to meet up with Corey and Dave of Gold Rush Expeditions (my pictures, and also Corey's) outside Wal-Mart. The day before Sean called Corey for the first time and got his voicemail -- and discovered that Corey isn't in fact female as he'd assumed, but very male. It was fun to watch Sean's expression evolve from surprise to dismay as he recalled all the flirtatious things he'd written in the organizational emails that had been exchanged. I asked if he was still going to read the poem he wrote for "her," or just give "her" the earrings he'd bought, but strangely he didn't find it funny at all. I did. We switched from our rental car to Corey's Land Rover (I offered Sean the front seat and got myself another glare) and headed into the wilderness, to Frisco, where we toured abandoned mines and explored a silver mine that was definitely far from safe. As we clambered over piles of rocks from previous cave-ins and dodged bats it suddenly occurred to me that there was a billion trillion gazillion tons of rock above my head and I was in a 100-year-old hole at the very bottom of it all. I didn't enjoy that thought much, but, somewhat oddly, the fear added to the excitement. I wasn't quite excited enough to climb up a rickety old ladder surrounded by rat crap to the second level of the shaft, mind you. Only Dave was excited (i.e. insane) enough to do that. After we emerged and changed underwear we headed off into the Wah Wah Mountains to Pine Grove, another abandoned mine, where we set up our tent (or, rather, stood around useless and self-conscious while Corey set up our tent) and then sat around the camp fire drinking impressive quantities of beer and eating the delicious moose-based supper Dave had prepared. Finally we retired for the night and I was very glad I'd invested $5.60 in a hat and gloves at Wal-Mart because the temperature dropped well into negative-C and my sleeping bag should've come with a label reading: "WARNING: SUITABLE ONLY FOR USE NEAR THE EQUATOR." Initially we followed Dave's advice of not sleeping in our clothes (because it would make us sweat, and that would make us even colder) but then at about 1am when we were nearing death we realized that Dave's full of shit and got dressed again. We passed the night in some discomfort. Lovely stars, though, and it was a weird feeling being 30 miles away from the nearest other human. In the morning, after we'd thawed out a little, we had breakfast and then shot at cans with several dangerous-looking guns and one ludicrously tiny one that Dave bought for his girlfriend and with which was impossible to hit anything ("Happy birthday, honey!" "What is it?" "It's a ludicrously tiny gun with which it's impossible to hit anything." "Oh, thanks"). As Corey notes on his web site I have a "natural aptitude" for firing handguns. Sean, on the other hand, merely "stalked the can," which is code for "didn't actually hit it." Then it was back to Cedar City and our rental car.

Dateline: Kayenta, Navajo Nation. After three days with no Internet and no cell signal I was looking forward to arriving at the Holiday Inn, Kayenta. Surely, I thought, the Holiday Inn would have Internet, at least in the lobby. Er, no. But hey, at least I'd be able to make phone calls! Er, no. Still no cell signal (I guess a bunch of poor First Nations aren't top of the list for GSM service in the US), and due to a hard drive failure none of the phones in the rooms worked. I became very familiar with the six feet of lobby corridor containing the pay phones over the next two days. We mostly just lied (laid?) around recovering from the seven hours of driving it took to get there, but did visit Monument Valley (pictures, impressive panoramic shot). If you've ever seen a Western, you've seen Monument Valley. There's a weird sense of déja vu: I've been here, I've seen this, but I haven't.

Dateline: Phoenix, Arizona. On the way from Kayenta to Phoenix we stopped at Flagstaff to get an Internet fix (I spent the entire time trying to repair the cybercafé's wireless network, while Sean simply went somewhere else. He got the net, I got free beers. Not sure who won that one), and then on to a ghost town called Two Guns (pictures), next to Canyon Diablo (they sure knew how to name these places). Two Guns had a very strange atmosphere: a sort of threatening air mixed with wistfulness, a certain malevolent sadness about the place that was hard to pin down. While we were there the sun set, casting everything in a wonderful golden light that was a photographer's dream. The Golden Hour, they call it in Hollywood, and now I can totally understand why. To Phoenix, or a suburb of it called Scottsdale, and the nicest hotel yet (pictures). We did very little again, but this time because we discovered we had a grand total of US$15 between us. Not so bad for me because I was returning home the next day, but less than great for Sean, who was to drive to LA and spend a week there. To top it off he discovered he'd left his power adapter in the hotel in Kayenta and so was unable to recharge his phone when the battery died. He's still incommunicado and might in fact be dead.

So that, minus many details, was my trip. It was a lot busier and a lot more tiring than I've made it sound. Now I just need to sell and then write (or vice versa) all those stories in an attempt to recover the money I spent. Will I ever be a successful freelance journalist? I guess I'm about to find out...

Last day

2004-11-13T14:40:00.000-05:00

Home! Exhausted! Still not writing anything! But three more photos!

Lots o' stuff

2004-11-09T22:22:00.000-05:00

Finally got to Phoenix and am in civilization again (i.e. I can get on the net). Too tired to entertain you with words, so here are many pictures.

Zion National Park, Utah
The Zion Curse
Camping in the Utah wilderness
Monument Valley, Arizona (panoramic pic here, awesomely cool QuicktimeVR movie here)
Two Guns, Arizona

Las Vegas, Nevada

2004-11-04T13:19:00.000-05:00

Even more pictures. Don't say I'm not good to you.

San Francisco, California

2004-11-03T21:46:00.000-05:00

And here are some pictures from Cali...

(Okay, the first one is Toronto airport. Deal with it.)

Nelson, Nevada

2004-11-03T21:15:00.000-05:00

Hello! Finally able to blog, from my hotel room in Las Vegas, Nevada, United States, North America, Earth. Today we went to Nelson and toured an old gold mine. Here are some pictures. The end.

Sony can suck it

2004-10-26T16:12:00.000-04:00

(But before I go into the sordid details, everyone say thanks to Shaun Hatton for making me a very nifty half-a-maple-leaf "favicon," which you can see in your browser's address bar right now. At least, you can if you're using a proper browser. If you're still using IE, or anything based on it, you need to pull yourself together. Thanks Shaun!)

Am I especially irritable at the moment, or has the concept of making customers happy completely gone by the wayside?

I sat down an hour ago to put new music on my minidiscs in preparation for my trip, and realized that since I reinstalled Windows a few weeks ago, I had to put the Sony software back on my computer. So I looked for the CD and, naturally, couldn't find it. "Never mind," I thought to myself, "I'll just pop to the Sony site and download it."

So I popped to the Sony site, headed for their download page, and clicked the link for the SonicStageInstaller program. It downloaded, I ran the program, and a message appears. "The updater cannot run because the original software is not installed." Ah. I returned to the site and inspected things more closely: in fact, it is just an update. So I scroll down. They're all just updates. Confused, puzzled and confounded I clicked on the "Live Chat Customer Support" link and shortly was talking with Anthony_.

Me: Hello Anthony_. How do you suggest I obtain SonicStage, since I've mislaid the original disc?

Anthony_: I'm sorry to know your situation.

Me: Okay. So where can I get it from? As you know, without that software I can't record to the minidiscs, rendering my expensive player somewhat useless.

Anthony_: The software is not available for download. But you can purchase a new CD from the customer support page.

Me: Um. In order to use the player which I already bought from Sony, I have to pay Sony more money for another CD? When I have no other options, because Sony decided to use proprietary software to record to the discs and didn't provide an audio-in jack on this model? And won't let anyone else write software to do the job, because it claims "ownership" of the system? How is this even remotely acceptable?

Anthony_: Because Sony supplies original software with the equipment, the software is not available for download.

Me: I see. I must say I don't remember seeing a warning in the manual saying "IF YOU LOSE THIS CD YOU WILL BE SCREWED." Is there one? What you're basically telling me is that my minidisc player is now next to worthless unless I fork out yet more money to Sony, and that Sony really doesn't give a rat's ass about its customers. Right?

Anthony_: The software CD is not covered under warranty.

Me: Right.

Anthony_: Do you have any more questions? I would be glad to help you.

Me: Yes I do. To which brainiac would I address a letter of complaint regarding Sony's arrogant and blatant disregard for its customers? Whom can I inform I'm never buying another Sony product ever again?

Anthony_: You may address your letter to: Office of the President, Manager of Customer Satisfaction, Sony Electronics, 1 Sony Drive, Mail Drop 138, Park Ridge, New Jersey 07656.

Me: Manager of Customer Satisfaction? Well, he's doing a great job. Thanks, Anthony_.

Anthony_: You are welcome.

I mean for fuck's sake. What is it with these people? So that's a big fuck you to Sony -- I'm currently downloading your precious software from Shareaza. I'll remember this next time I'm buying some consumer electronics. And to the strangely stilted Anthony_, I can only recommend you find a less tight-assed employer, because you just know you're going to be replaced by a robot one day.

Not at all frustrating

2004-10-25T17:47:00.000-04:00

Phone: Hello! Bonjour! You've reached Rogers Wireless. Pour le service en francais, dit "francais."

Me: ...

Phone: For your convenience and so that we could fire a whole bunch of people who never did anything wrong except trust us and are now probably sleeping under bridges or might be dead we don't really care, and also in order that we may infuriate you to the point of ruining your entire week, we have introduced a new automated help system. Please say the telephone number associated with your account, starting with the area code.

Me: Five one nine seven four... shit, wait, that's my home number.

Phone: I heard "nine one nine eleven two seven eight six four three two one blast-off." Is that right?

Me: No.

Phone: Great! Please hold.

Me: ...

Phone: We were unable to locate an account associated with that telephone number. Did you say "nine one nine eleven two seven eight six four three two one blast-off"?

Me: No.

Phone: My mistake. Please say the telephone number associated with your account. Again.

Me: Five one nine five five five four zero one three.

Phone: I'm sorry, I didn't get that. Please say the telephone number associated with your account. I'll pay attention this time, I promise.

Me: Types number using keypad

Phone: Thanks! I'm now accessing that account.

Me: Sigh.

Phone: Now you can say what you'd like help with. For example, for help with general information, say "general information." Though to be honest it doesn't really matter, because whatever you say I'm going to give you general information anyway. Go ahead! Try it!

Me: Er... Roaming?

Phone: You have accessed the general information section of our automated system. To--

Me: No. NO. ROAMING.

Phone: I'm sorry, I didn't get that. Did you want general information?

Me: NO!

Phone: My mistake. What did you want help with today?

Me: I WANT TO TALK TO A PERSON.

Phone: You have accessed the general in--

Me: NO! Operator?

Phone: I'm sorry, I didn't get that. Could you try saying it again, only this time in a Canadian accent? Maybe that'll work.

Me: I waaaaant to taaaalk to a hooooman.

Phone: Haha! That was terrible! I can't believe you degraded yourself like that. And I still don't understand. Do you want to hang up really hard, punch the wall repeatedly and then write an angry letter to whichever dangerously short-sighted recipient of the Special Olympics "everyone's a winner!" medal decided to install a voice-activated system in one of the most multicultural nations on earth?

Me: Yes. You fucking computerized asshole. I cannot even begin to describe how much I loathe you and everything you represent.

Phone: Great! You have accessed the general...

Repeat until sun explodes.

To-do list

2004-10-24T17:48:00.000-04:00

I'm finally getting my shit together in preparation for my ~~vacation~~ working trip States-side on Thursday. Things I have left to do:

~~Make sure I can log in to my email account while I'm away~~
~~Copy Telephone Numbers and other Important Details into my Notebook in case I drop my Phone in the Toilet~~
~~Print itinerary and e-ticket from Expedia site~~
~~Call insurance company about missing email~~
~~Do more programming work! Gah!~~
~~Find out if I can get back into Canada without a permanent resident card. This one's fairly urgent~~
Book one-hour flight from Phoenix to Vegas (it's US$7 more than taking a nine-hour bus ride. Is anyone really that poor? Work another hour at McDonald's. Mow someone's lawn. I mean, come on)
~~Figure out how I'm going to get from my house to Toronto airport for 5am. I sincerely hope I don't have to get there the night before and sit in the departure lounge for ten hours...~~ Update: Ack. I'll have to take the latest bus to Toronto the day before, getting me to the Bay St station at 10:45pm. I then take the subway to Kipling, and the "Airport Rocket" bus from there to the airport. I should arrive by about midnight. Hey, a five-hour wait's not so bad. No, really, it isn't. It'll be great. I can talk to people and drink a lot of coffee
~~Load up a few minidiscs with MP3s~~
~~Buy a sleeping bag~~
Research three of the five stories I'll be doing, and prepare questions
~~Finalize arrangements with the people I'm meeting in San Francisco so that I know what day I'm meeting whom~~
Find all my clothes (all of them, scattered variously around the house) and wash what needs washing, and figure out what I'm going to take, and decide if I need to visit a cheap-ass clothes store to pick up some cheap-ass clothes
~~Pay my cell bill~~
~~Find out if I can still use my phone "overseas," which should be the case because I paid a security deposit last time I went away~~
Get my ass in gear, basically

Sigh.

Massaging the one-eyed monk

2004-10-23T18:20:00.000-04:00

A certain person, whose name I won't reveal in order to spare him embarrassment, told me earlier today that he has a slightly painful knee. When I enquired as to why this might be, he said the only reason he can think of is that he'd just spent five hours on his knees on a hardwood floor masturbating.

After mopping up the coffee I'd just dribbled into my lap I asked him why he'd done such a thing and this led, rather inevitably, into a discussion on various techniques for male self-pleasure.

This person, apparently, finds it easier to "finish," as it were, when he's on his knees, though one would think that after five hours it shouldn't be all that difficult in any position. He expressed astonishment that I'd never tried that particular bodily configuration while arguing with Henry Longfellow, and I explained it had never even occurred to me.

Then he told me about one friend of his who likes to discipline his soldier in the kitchen, and then dishonorably discharge into the garbage can. Another friend likes to wait until late at night, when everyone else is in bed, before lying on the kitchen floor and doing the pork sword jiggle with all his might. One night as he was thus engaged his wife, whom he thought was safely asleep in bed, walked into the kitchen. "What the hell are you doing??" she asked, naturally a tad taken aback to find her husband in hand-to-hand combat with the purple stormtrooper in such a patently inappropriate location. "I'm trying to have a wank," explained the man a trifle hotly. One can only imagine how the scene developed from there.

Anyway, all this led me to thinking that there's much more to jackin' the beanstalk than I'd previously suspected. "Do perhaps my readers, being deviants all, have a story to share?" I wondered to myself. Well? Do you? I invite you to take advantage of the anonymous comment facility. (Women too -- this is an equal-opportunity, er, opportunity.) Go on... You know you want to.

New and improved

2004-10-22T22:13:00.000-04:00

Yes! In what is undoubtedly the blog event of the year, I finally customized my template. Please let me know what you think! In-depth critiques so far:

"I don't like the blue." - my wife.
"I like it! Even the blue." - Shaun, whom I now owe $20 (though he said on MSN that I need to increase the padding around the left-hand column, so maybe only $10).
"Actually, I REALLY like it." - Anonymous, though I suspect it was la vache sur une colline, in whose honor this entry is titled.
"Still don't like the blue." - my wife. But then she asks: "Does having readership validation of blog layout, ummm, actually validate something beyond everyone else's visual and spatial colour preferences? Surely it's the content that matters!" Well, yes, the content matters. But a blog is, after all, a form of publishing. Very few book publishers say "Screw the readers! As long as you, the designer, like it, that's all that matters." If my new design was greeted with universal condemnation and exclamations of disgust then I'd change it...
"I don't like the blue either. It's feminine bordering upon - dare I say - gay." - Anonymous, aka Dave Smith, who used to be a friend of mine. It's not gay, it's subtle and subdued. Damnit. This blue is turning out to be a bit controversial.

You can do better than that, I'm sure, so comment already.

Legislation needed

2004-10-22T09:10:00.000-04:00

And it's not very often I say that.

Imagine for a moment, if you'd be so kind, a world in which subscribers to Verizon Wireless couldn't call subscribers to T-Mobile, or anyone using Bell Atlantic. Imagine if I couldn't call someone with service from Fido because I subscribe to Rogers Wireless. Imagine if, in order to talk to all your friends, you had to subscribe to every single different phone company. That would be ridiculous, right? Of course it would. So in that case, why do I have to have MSN Messenger, AOL Instant Messenger, Yahoo! Messenger and ICQ installed on my laptop in order to be able to chat with everyone I know?

How is this situation even tolerable? Why aren't we rising up en masse and demanding they fix on a single, standardized system? It wouldn't take all that much effort, not compared to the hoops the phone companies had to jump through so that everything just worked the way we want it.

Why don't they do this? Because Microsoft wants to boast that it has this many millions of customers, and so does Yahoo!, and so does AOL. They all want to deliver their ads to their customers. Well, fine. They could still do that. Here's a radical concept: they could compete for customers! Instead of the situation right now where I pick the one or two different chat programs based on which ones most of my friends use, I could pick the piece of software I like the most. The one that doesn't crash, the one that supports video and audio and file transfers seamlessly and without fuckups because of firewalls and routers, and does these things on my Mac, not just my PC. Maybe that would be Microsoft's chat program, or maybe it would be Yahoo!'s. The winner of the Ross race would get to deliver their ads directly to my eyeballs, and I would get to chat with all my friends regardless of what piece of software they happen to use. You know, kinda like email, and phones, and pretty much everything else we use to communicate.

As it is, right now, I use Adium on my Mac, which supports all these chat systems in one program (similar to Trillian for Windows). This works, up to a point, but it doesn't do much beyond basic chatting. No file transfers (if people try to send me files it often crashes, which is a lot of fun), no video, no audio, no games, none of the things that make the proper clients cool. In fact if I want to play tic-tac-toe with someone on MSN I have to switch over to my PC, because even Microsoft's official Mac version doesn't support that stuff either. It sucks, basically.

So I say it's time to force these bastards into comformity. They do it to us often enough. Outlook Express users wouldn't tolerate only being able to send email to other Outlook Express users, so why do we put up with it when it comes to instant messaging?

Call your representatives. Demand legislation. I would, but I'm, you know, kinda busy. Chatting.

Snap snap

2004-10-21T20:22:00.000-04:00

So having found my video camera I trotted merrily off to the photography store and traded it in for a new digital camera (my old one, you'll recall if you've been committing my blog to memory, was destroyed with malice aforethought by my eldest and my dog. The former has apologized, the latter is entirely unrepentant). After much research I decided upon a Canon PowerShot A75.

It's got a ton of features (1.8" 110,000-pixel LCD screen, which I use constantly; a fully manual mode; advanced white balance control; the same image processor found in their $10k+ models; are you still reading this?; nine-point intelligent autofocus, focus lock and manual focus; aperture stops from 2.8 to 8.0; ISO 50, 100, 200 and 400 equivalent sensitivity; you surely can't really be enjoying this, can you?; shutter speeds from 15 to 1/2000th seconds; fast 3x optical zoom; orientation detection; okay, this is getting ridiculous -- why are you still here, you weirdo?; metal body for extra robustness; er, hole in bottom for tripod; exquisitely crafted battery compartment; indentation for right thumb; I'm going to stop now) and was attractively priced at C$299 (did I really just say "attractively priced"?). With the video camera as a trade-in I paid only $49 for it, and then the woman presented me with a coupon for $15 off a memory card, so I got 256mb of CompactFlash for $45 as well. I walked out a very happy me.

Sure, it's only 3.2mp, but that's just about good enough for decent 8x10s and, let's face it, who really needs more resolution than that? (When I have enough money to buy a 6.3mp Digital Rebel I'll be singing a different tune, of course, but that's significantly in the future, to put it mildly.)

So there you have it. I can now take pictures while I'm away. Huzzah.

Goddamnit

2004-10-20T15:58:00.000-04:00

You know what annoys me more than anything else? Is it religious genocide? Is it world hunger? Is it the AIDS epidemic? No. It's looking for something and not being able to find it.

It happens once a month or so. I'll need something, and it's not immediately at hand, so I'll look on my desk (because there are a lot of things on my desk, some of them even work-related), and not find it. Then I'll look in various drawers, and not find it. My ire increasing I'll begin stalking around various rooms, opening cupboards, lifting magazines and cushions, and not find it. With every step I take on this frustrating quest my anger level will rise until I'm literally shaking with fury over whichever godforesaken item I'm seeking. I'll start cursing at myself, the location I'm searching, family members, and, eventually, innocent passers-by until I'm almost foaming at the mouth. If things go on long enough I will cease to care what damage I might cause in my search. I'll pick up boxes of fine china and shake them in case I recognize the distinctive sound of that particular item (say, a USB cable or a pencil eraser) within. I'll throw things (usually other peoples' things, it must be admitted) on the floor. I'll treat with reckless disregard anything standing between me and that pack of batteries that I know is around here somewhere. I will, irrationally, return to places I've already devastated, just in case I missed it the first time around. This will only serve to increase my anger when the gravy boat isn't in fact there, because I knew already that it wasn't and just wasted yet another few minutes and, quite possibly, broke something else looking for it.

Things get worse once I've ransacked all the most likely locations and have to move on to more obscure locales. I'll go up to the bedrooms looking for a shovel. I'll go to the shed to look for that floppy disc. This makes no sense, but I do it anyway, because by this point my apoplexy has reached critical level. If you attached an anger-o-meter to me at that point, an alarm would shriek and it would begin to emit smoke. At this juncture I am, more or less, a bull at Pamplona, charging around in stupid wild-eyed rage with no idea where I'm going, knowing only that somewhere, somewhere, for fuck sake is that elusive Christmas tree stand I saw only like a month ago goddamnit while I was looking for something else, infuriated into near brain death by everything and anything in my path.

Then I'll lose my mind completely. My face will become a contorted picture of purple insanity, and I'll start rifling through places not even physically able to hide whatever I'm looking for: I'll look for my bike helmet in an empty cookie tin, or lift up bedcovers in case that spare DVD player is underneath. I'll stomp around, twitching and jerking like the alien in Men in Black, hovering dangerously on the brink of suffering a fatal aneurism. I'll check in the bath, in the toilet cistern, in the liquor cabinet (I once discovered the iron in there after a mere 55 minutes of looking in more logical places. Yes, the clothes iron. In the liquor cabinet. That was not a happy day).

Eventually my brain will, by some sort of clever self-preservation reflex, recognize that I'm just seconds away from becoming irreperably and homicidally deranged, and will leave me suddenly bereft of the frantic energy that has seized me for the last hour. I will fall to the floor with a sudden gasp, curl myself into the foetal position and commence gentle sobbing. This will last anywhere from five to fifteen minutes, after which I will rise, drained and useless, and stagger to the nearest chair, where I will sit for an indeterminate amount of time until a lightning bolt of inspiration strikes me. It's in the cupboard under the stairs in the basement! That's where it's always been! And I'll rush down to look. And it won't be there. And then I'll shoot myself in the head, live on national television, as a warning to anyone considering buying a house with more than one room.

Today I have been looking for my video camera, which I need to sell in order to raise money for a digital camera, which I need to buy to replace my existing digital camera, which my eldest step-daughter and my dog conspired together to break. I will find it. No, I will. It's in a black and red case, and it's either in the office or the basement. Or possibly upstairs. Or it might be in one of the composters in the back yard. I haven't looked in those yet, but I think I will right now. I'll keep you posted.

Update: I found the packaging it originally came in, but not the actual camera. It was underneath a bedsheet in a box underneath two other boxes at the far side of a three-deep stack of boxes in the basement. Naturally.

Update 2: OMG I found it. It was in a box next to the box with the packaging in it, along with other things I've not even seen in about three years. I should've looked there to begin with. I'm such a fool. Now I just need to find the power adapter...

Update 3: I found the power adapter too. In a different box in a different room on a different level of the house. I think it might be time to revisit our strategy of keeping things in boxes on top of other boxes. Well, that wasn't so bad. It only took four hours.

He who dares, moos

2004-10-19T09:55:00.000-04:00

While we drove home from dropping our youngest off at school today I was listening to the radio (105.3 Kool FM, in case you want to tune in one day). On the show they had a call-in -- an organized call-in, there was nothing spontaneous about it -- from a man who can moo really well. Is this the level to which our culture has sunk? Of all the people in the area they could've invited onto the show, it was a guy who's dedicated a significant amount of time to learning how to emulate one of the stupidest creatures in existence? This is now what passes for public discourse? I may be depressed about this for the rest of the week.

To top it off, the SUV in front of us had a license plate that said "WE DARE." Do you? Really? Congratulations. What is it that you dare to do, exactly? You dare to drive around in a vehicle more or less equivalent to a car in terms of ruggedness, capacity and reliability, which nevertheless gets about 13 miles-per-gallon, is more liable to tip over and cost you ten grand more than a car would? Gosh. You're so daring. Or is it that you dared to pay money to have a license plate on your vehicle that is immediately memorable, so that if you do happen to pull an illegal manouver in your SUV (and, let's face it, you're more likely to than someone driving a proper vehicle) every single witness will be able instantly to recall your plate for the cops? Or is it that you dare to be, well, kinda stupid? I think that's it, isn't it, hmmm? It's okay. I won't tell anyone.

Absorb me

2004-10-18T10:54:00.000-04:00

Is it me who's self-absorbed, or is it everyone?

When a woman tells her husband that she hasn't loved him for over a year, whose fault is that? Is he so self-absorbed that he didn't notice, or is she so self-absorbed that there was nothing to notice? Is that how we all spend our time on this planet, so busy gazing at our navels that we don't notice the wall until our heads connect with it?

I know I'm self-absorbed. I know that. What would happen if I spent as much time thinking about other people as I do about myself? When you get right down to it, what is it that makes my feelings more important than other peoples'? Sure, they're mine, and I'm the one feeling them. Presumably that's why self-absorption is the natural state, and why we hero-worship those who truly and consistently subjugate their own desires and needs to those of other people.

But what makes me so special, and what makes you so special, that we're willing to hurt the feelings of others in order to gain for ourselves? What kind of world would it be if everyone gave priority to each other instead of themselves, if everyone were a Mother Theresa? Would it be a utopia, or would it be an infinitely drawn-out version of the dance we perform with a held-open door? After you. No, really, after you. Just fucking go already.

Without self-absorption would we even still be here? Probably not. Nature frowns on altruism, with very few exceptions. Then why is altruism held in such high regard? Taken to extremes it would mean the end of our species, if the strong didn't overwhelm the weak, if the smart didn't overrule the stupid. We'd become weaker and stupider with every generation until we destroyed ourselves. Why then do we raise the altruistic above the selfish? They're damaging our chances in nature's game of dice.

What an unfocused post.

EU countries vote US "most charitable nation"

2004-10-15T15:13:00.000-04:00

By Ross Thomas

The United States was declared the winner of the Europe-wide first annual "Most Charitable Nation on Earth" competition yesterday.

The US won the multinational competition in a landslide, beating second-place Sweden by ten votes from the 30-member panel.

"We extend our hearty congratulations to the people of the United States," said the MCNE Committee spokesman Jacques Ferenti. "This kind of overwhelming result is indicative of the degree of respect for American altruism felt all around Europe."

The judges cited the 2000 election of President George W. Bush as a major factor in their decision.

"It's heartwarming to see that in America, that bastion of capitalistic selfishness, a special person can be elected president," said Hazmi Ahmed, a member of the awards committee.

The judges said that, in their opinion, the citizens of none of the other countries considered would allow a mentally deficient individual to become head of state.

"That just shows you what kind people Americans are," said Ferenti. "Mr Bush is clearly not really suitable for the job -- not really suitable for any job, if we're honest -- but they permit him to rise to the very top of their political system. It's touching."

The American public should be commended, read the MCNE press release, for its kind-hearted gesture in not only tolerating the election of a "patently intellectually subnormal human being," but actively encouraging it by voting for him in large numbers.

One of those Bush voters expressed delight that her altruism has finally been recognized.

"I thought it was sweet that a guy who's more or less on the same cerebral level as a wolverine still had ambitions for the most important job in the world," said Margaret Baxter, 49, of Tampa Bay, Fla. "That's really why I voted for him. You have to encourage people like that. Even retards should dream."

"Sorry, I mean differently able people," she added.

Al Gore, the Democratic presidential nominee who was defeated by Bush in a nail-biting 68-day-long race to the finish four years ago, said he is pleased to have played a small part in the American nation's receiving this honor.

"When I wrote the first draft of my final concession speech I included a part about it, which I subsequently removed," he said. "It went something like: 'While I strongly disagree with the court's decision, I accept it, and am pleased that a man who would lose a battle of wits with that guy from Rainman, a man who can barely dress himself, a man with the slightest grasp of the English language or, indeed, any concept more complex than sitting motionless for hours in a soft chair while singing gently to himself, finally overcame the shameful discrimination experienced by all such woefully imbecilic creatures and was able to assume control of the most powerful country on the planet.' Something like that."

President Bush was unable coherently to comment yesterday.

Surprise!

2004-10-14T09:10:00.000-04:00

So I was thinking (I'm always thinking, you know, it's amazing) about Spanish the other day, and particularly about Spanish punctuation. The problem with wanting to think about Spanish punctuation is that I know about three words of Spanish and have absolutely no idea at all when it comes to grammar and structure. Needless to say, this didn't stop me.

What interested me in particular is the way that, in Spanish, questions are bracketed on both sides by punctuation marks. At the beginning there is an upside down question mark, and at the end, a normal one. For example: ¿What's your point, exactly?

My point is coming. Have patience. Okay, so I can see the logic in that. It makes perfectly clear which part of the text is a question, it prepares the reader to be quizzed. But here's what I don't get: they do the same thing with exclamation points. ¡Why, I do exclaim!, he exclaimed.

Yes, the same rationale applies: clarity, preparation. But can't it also ruin the surprise, as far as humor goes? I mean, sometimes the funniest things are the least expected. Doesn't this practice make impossible a very useful grammatical construct, which is to begin a sentence with an appearance of seriousness, and then crack a joke at the end -- a sort of written bait and switch? Isn't that initial inverted exclamation point like a big flashing sign that says Warning! This next part might be humorous!?

Perhaps the very concept of something that's suprisingly funny doesn't exist in Spanish. Or maybe I'm talking out of my ass. Anyone care to elucidate me via a comment?

FAQ

2004-10-12T22:49:00.000-04:00

Hello! Long time no speak. Here are some Frequently Asked Questions:

Q. Where have you been?
A. I've been organizing a trip to California, Utah, Nevada and Arizona to do stories for newspapers and magazines in an attempt to kickstart my freelance journalism career. Then I was away for the weekend. Yesterday and today I was writing a story about when my brother and I traveled through Europe together (his version, of dubious veracity, is here). Happy?
Q. Not really.
A. Is that a question?
Q. No, and that's not an answer.
A. Shut up.
Q. Okay. So what stories are you going to be doing?
A. That's confidential. However, I can tell you that one of them is a travel piece in which the National Post is interested. I'm writing it on spec for them, but it's better than nothing.
Q. What does "on spec" mean?
A. It means they haven't actually commissioned it, but they want me to write it for them and if it's good they'll buy it.
Q. What does "commissioned" mean?
A. It means they agree up front to buy the story when it's completed, whether it's any good or not. Generally an editor won't commission a piece from someone they don't already know -- they'll ask for it to be done on spec.
Q. What does "on spec" mean, again?
A. Shut up.
Q. Okay. Where did you go this weekend?
A. I went to my parents-in-laws' place for Thanksgiving. It's sort of near Owen Sound, Ontario.
Q. Thanksgiving is in November, dumbass.
A. Not in Canada, dumbass. Americans call it Columbus Day, even though all he actually did was kinda sail around for a while, saying things like "Hey, I bet that's Tokyo," and then took off again with some potatoes. Or something.
Q. Potatoes? What the hell are you talking about?
A. Not sure. Ask Dan Quayle.
Q. Where does the expression "fruitless" come from? What does an absence of delicious juicy carbohydrates have to do with anything?
A. "Fruitless" is a compound of two words, "fruit" and "less."
Q. Thanks, but that wasn't much of an answer.
A. Demanding much? Alright. "Fruit" comes from the Latin "frui," meaning "to enjoy." Thus, fruitless means "without enjoyment." Except it doesn't. It means "without success," as in MC Hammer's career.
Q. I see. What's he doing now anyway?
A. MC Hammer (real name: Michael Colin Hammer) was last seen struggling frantically to free himself from what everyone told him was far too big a pair of pants.
Q. Surely the media would've tracked that story? Also, it wasn't very funny.
A. Sure, it's easy to criticize. You tell a joke, then. Go on.
Q. Okay. Let's see. Did you hear the one about when the priest, the rapist and the pedophile walked into the bar?
A. ...and that was just the first guy. Yeah, a priest told it at Denis Leary's roast at the Friar's Club. Way to come up with your own material, schmuck. See? Not so easy, is it?
Q. I suppose not. So how long are you going to be away for?
A. Right now it looks like from the 28th to the 11th or 12th.
Q. That's a long time.
A. Not really. I'm doing five or six stories in that time, so it's not all that long if you think about it.
Q. True. Is this just a vacation, then?
A. Absolutely not! I resent the suggestion. It'll be very hard work, and a lot of travel. Travel is tiring.
Q. If you say so, buddy. Are you going to be "moblogging" as you travel around?
A. I plan on it. How often I update will depend on how often I find "wireless hotspots," where I can sit and drink coffee and blog.
Q. Sounds suspiciously like a vacation to me.
A. I refuse to answer any more questions.
Q. Oh, just one more. Go on. You'll like it.
A. Okay okay. One.
Q. Why is it that you had pizza and Pepsi for supper tonight when you're supposed to be on a low-carb diet, you fat bastard?
A. Get out.
Q. Righto.
A. The nerve of some people.

Vice-Presidential debate - LIVEBLOG

2004-10-05T21:08:00.000-04:00

9:00pm - Here they come! Both look dapper. This should be interesting!

9:08pm - Hey, CSI is on.

Kerry, Bush in hi-tech war of words

2004-10-04T15:12:00.000-04:00

By Ross Thomas

Election debates entered a new hi-tech arena Thursday, with both candidates employing sophisticated electronic devices to help them in their verbal spar, halfacanuck can exclusively reveal.

President Bush was in constant contact with advisor Karl Rove via a "completely-in-canal" FM radio earpiece, invisible to the naked eye, admitted Rove yesterday following a storm of controversy in the blogosphere.

"It was a very good idea," said Rove at the press conference, "because George sometimes gets a little confused when speaking, thinking or moving around. It allowed me to prompt him, get him back on track, and I think that helped him get his message across better to the American people."

But the device was not as effective as it could have been, he said, because of the portable radio-jamming equipment Democratic nominee John Kerry employed during the debate.

"When [Kerry] got to the podium and I saw him pull something out of his pocket I was like, 'Uh oh,'" said Rove. "I knew right away what it was."

The jamming device, small enough to fit inside an interior jacket pocket, interfered with the radio transmission between Rove and Bush.

"It wasn't 100 per cent successful," said Kerry advisor John Sasso, "because we had to kinda guess the frequency they were using beforehand, but it did disrupt the transmission on numerous occasions."

Bush's performance is understandable, said debate moderator Jim Lehrer, now that the use of the hi-tech gizmos has been revealed.

"He stuttered quite a bit, stammered, blinked, brayed," said Lehrer this morning in a telephone interview. "He stumbled, murmured, gulped, faltered. In parts he was unusually lucid, and then suddenly he'd lose his train of thought and just gaze around for up to five minutes. This is entirely consistent with an intermittently working radio feed."

About 40 minutes into the debate Bush seemed to address Rove directly when, with plenty of time remaining, Bush stopped mid-sentence and demanded to be allowed to finish.

"Yeah, he sort of let the cat out of the bag there," said a red-faced Rove. "I was a bit annoyed, but we had a talk afterwards and now he understands he mustn't actually talk back to me during the debate. At least, I think he does."

Rove plans to use the earpiece again in the next Bush-Kerry debate on Oct 8, but will employ a modified version in tomorrow night's vice-presidential debate.

"We have a special kind of earpiece for [Vice-President Dick] Cheney," he said in a rare moment of candidness, "which is hooked up to an audio loop of a voice actress impersonating Dick's mother saying, 'I'll wash your mouth out with soap, You kiss me with that mouth?, I'll wash your mouth out with soap,' and so on."

He said tests have shown the recording to be effective in controlling Cheney's "regrettable Tourette's-like outbursts."

Pink meth

2004-09-30T01:11:00.000-04:00

A story by my close personal acquaintance, Jack, on the addition of dye to a certain chemical used in the making of methamphetamine, so that people who snort it get amusing florescent pink noses. Question: will this affect black methheads? I think we should be told.

Florida residents line up for food, water, clue

2004-09-27T22:09:00.000-04:00

By Ross Thomas

VERO BEACH -- People lined up more than half a mile for food, water and a clue today in the aftermath of the fourth devastating hurricane to batter the state in six weeks.

Hurricane Jeanne, which smashed the state with winds up to 120mph over the weekend, left at least six clueless Floridians dead, all of whom stayed in the state despite surviving three hurricanes already this season.

"You'd think we'd just up and leave after the second one," said Rebecca Forrester, a 32-year-old housewife, waiting in line at one of the Federal Emergency Management Agency's food, water and clue distribution centers erected around Florida. "How clueless can 17 million people be?"

While thousands of without-clue residents cleaned up after yet another surprise hurricane in hurricane season in the famously hurricane-troubled state, others lined up in sweltering heat to buy generators.

"What the hell are we doing here?" asked plumber Bob Morton, 49, in a tone of angry self-recrimination. "It's goddamn 90 degrees out and I'm standing outside a Home Depot just so I might be able to cook some beans tonight. I'm hotter than a motherfucker. Why don't I just get a clue?"

With two months still left in hurricane season, FEMA officials said they're frantically trying to distribute as many emergency clues as possible, but fear their efforts may be in vain.

"I don't know what it is about Floridians," said one aid worker who declined to be identified. "They just don't seem to want to get it through their thick skulls that this is a stupid place to live."

Florida is the first state to have been hit by four hurricanes in one season since Texas in 1886.

But, said John Simpson, chief meteorologist with the National Center for Hurricane Prediction, "it's not like it's unusual for Florida to get a hurricane or two. It happens every year, for Christ's sake."

Simpson, who once lived in the state himself but moved to New York immediately after experiencing his first hurricane, was unable to explain why Floridians stay put.

"First Charley, then Frances, then Ivan, and now Jeanne," he said, emphasizing each name by beating his fist against his forehead. "What's it going to take before these people get a clue? Hurricane Zach? Just leave!"

"JUST FUCKING LEAVE!" he added suddenly after nearly a minute's silence.

Weird Wally

2004-09-24T13:44:00.000-04:00

I am now obsessed with Weird Wally.

Update: I'm not any more.

Titbits (or tidbits, for highly excitable North Americans)

2004-09-23T21:25:00.000-04:00

You know your dancing career has troughed when...

Please tell me this isn't so. If a chimp can circumvent voting machine security measures then it's probable even most Florida voters could do it too.

A cell phone ring tone to increase bust size? Only in Japan. Favourite quote: "We've even received mail from one user who said they listened to the tune every night before going to sleep and it made her tits bigger." Well said.

Who'd mind losing a lawsuit with a judgement like this?

Fifteen miles an hour he claims as his maximum rate of speed
Quite a cautious, prudent rate, not very fast indeed
Not fast enough to trouble him or force a quick decision:
It shows, had he been paying heed, there'd have been no collision
For he admits he saw the dogs as he approached the scene
And didn’t know he'd struck a pup 'til Ms Zangrando keened
It's also hard to quarrel here with what the trial judge said:
That speed's not fast enough to launch a poodle overhead.

By quite possibly the coolest judge ever. Not that the competition's particularly stiff, mind you.

Spongebob Squarepants endorses Bush candidacy

2004-09-22T14:22:00.000-04:00

By Ross Thomas

BIKINI BOTTOM -- In a surprise announcement yesterday Nickelodeon cartoon character Spongebob Squarepants endorsed President Bush's bid for re-election.

At a 3am press conference the bright yellow undersea creature revealed his rationale for picking Bush over the other candidates.

"I think George is the best choice for Bikini Bottom," he shrieked. "I like him almost as much as I like jellyfish! He's great!"

Accompanied by his close friend and advisor Patrick Star, the angular sessile marine invertebrate screeched that he felt compelled to speak out on Bush's behalf following the recent endorsement of Democratic nominee John Kerry by Squarepants' arch nemesis, Sheldon J. Plankton.

Squarepants went on gratingly to explain how he feels he has much in common with the president.

"For a start neither of us have a backbone," he bellowed. "And we've both absorbed a lot of liquid in our time."

"Bahahahahahahahahahahahaha!" he added.

Liberals Against Moral Equivalency

2004-09-22T13:08:00.000-04:00

My idiotic brother often accuses me (and every other multiculturalist, pluralist liberal) of practicing moral equivalency when I say things like "if Muslims in Ontario want to use a parallel court system based on Sharia law, and provided that system be subject to the Canadian Charter of Rights and Freedoms, why shouldn't they?"

He does this for two reasons: 1) He mentally, possibly subconsciously, excises all qualifications and nuances (such as the bit about the charter), and 2) He's an idiot.

I was reminded of this today by a post on Sadly, No! slamming a CBN News article on moral equivalency in American school textbooks. It infuriated me into commenting (sixth entry; there's no permalink), and then got me thinking about what exactly it is that I really believe when it comes to issues like Islam.

It is not practicing moral equivalence to say, as I do, that most Muslims want to worship in peace, and that only a small minority of Muslims deliberately set out to kill infidels. Nor is it to suggest, as I do, that not all versions of Sharia law require amputations and executions. Yet by saying anything along those lines I'm accused by him of refusing to judge one culture against another, refusing ever to admit that Western liberalism can in fact be superior to Islamic radicalism.

This is entirely contrary to reality. Despite his claims, I do consider liberalism the superior mindset. Yes, that's right: our culture is better. I can hear the hisses and boos already, and lo!, my liberal credentials just crumbled to dust, assuming I had any in the first place. But I don't care. Here's my reasoning:

Everyone should be entitled to their religious beliefs. The Koran teaches that all must submit to Allah's will, i.e. be a Muslim.
Christians who become ex-Christians are not scorned, repressed or murdered. In Islam, apostasy is widely considered a capital offence.
Freedom from cruel and unusual punishment is a fundamental human right. Many Muslim societies still use public flogging, amputation and execution as criminal sactions, as required by some interpretations of Sharia law.
Women are due every right that is granted to men. Misogyny is still rampant in Islamic culture, and Sharia law is often breathtakingly skewed in favour of men.
Liberalism, for very good reasons, calls for the separation of church and state. Islam is both a religion and a political movement, in which church and state are considered by many to be utterly inseparable (hence the existence of organisations such as this one).
The rule of democracy is fundamental to liberalism. As a consequence of the last item most Islamic states are theocratic, and thus totalitarian and more than a little fascistic.
In the West religious leaders espousing the slaughter of innocents would be rightly condemned. The incidence of such incitement to violence by Islamic clerics is alarming, to say the least.

All these things and more are wrong with the majority of contemporary Islamic societies. Need they be? Will they be forever? I don't know. But right now I have no hesitation in, and do not apologise for, saying that I consider Western liberal culture superior to that of most of the Islamic world.

Wonder if Salman Rushdie has a spare bedroom?

Reality may be fake, bloggers warn

2004-09-21T11:36:00.000-04:00

By Ross Thomas

In what major bloggers see as a defining moment for bottom-up journalism, major bloggers warned yesterday that the universe itself may be a clever forgery.

The controversy began in a late-night entry on PhiloBlog.com, where a poster identified only as "Duckhead" challenged the notion that any kind of objective reality exists at all.

"What is reality anyway?" the entry read in part. "Reality is what is filtered through our senses. Maybe what you see as red, I see as blue. Maybe what tastes like Mountain Dew to me tastes like Pespi to you."

Within minutes over two dozen major bloggers had picked up on the post, including Jason Kottke of Kottke.org and Rob Malda (aka CmdrTaco) of Slashdot.

"This makes a lot of sense to me," wrote Kottke. "The nonexistence of absolute truth may very well explain us to ourselves."

Citing the works of deconstructionist philosophers such as Jacques Derrida and Barbara Johnson, Kottke revealed further flaws in the assumption of an empirically verifiable reality.

"Everything we experience is, ultimately, a construction of our minds," he wrote, "and thus the universe and everything in it is also a construction."

But Malda took a more practical approach in his post, listing phenomena only comprehensible if Duckhead's theory is true.

"I understand everything now," wrote Malda. "I've always been baffled by the existence of such things as genocide, child abuse, Freddie Prinz Jr. and Glitter: The Mariah Carey Story, but if it's right that these things are just figments of our -- possibly demented -- imaginations, everything becomes clear."

Less than an hour after major bloggers latched onto the story it appeared on Matt Drudge's The Drudge Report, and from there it was soon picked up by mainstream media outlets, including CBS, ABC, NBC and CNN.

Empiricists were scrambling this morning to counter the claims made by Duckhead.

"Come on. Empiricism is the foundation of all modern civilization," said renowned physicist Stephen Hawking. "Everything we know about the world around us demonstrates that our reality is more or less aligned with that of others. Unless you're psychotic or Rush Limbaugh or something."

In a rare show of unity theologians joined scientists in denouncing the blog post.

"God created the universe for us to enjoy," said Dr Marcus Hennman, associate professor of philosophy and philosophical theology at Talbot School of Theology in La Mirada, CA. "Scripture teaches over and over that the physical world, flawed as it may be, is very much objectively real."

But such statements did not calm the storm currently swirling through the blogosphere.

By noon EST today many major bloggers, including Glenn Reynolds of InstaPundit.com, were calling into question God's prior knowledge of the true nature of the reality.

"We have to ask: 'What did God know, and when did he know it?'" Reynolds wrote. "If it's true that God made us in such a way that the vast majority of people are living a gigantic illusion then I think he has no other options but to step down."

"That's if God himself isn't a fraudulent construction of our psyches," he added.

God did not immediately return prayerful requests for comment.

But, noted Reynolds, "whatever happens in the days and weeks to follow, this is a defining moment for bottom-up journalism."

My dinner with Alice

2004-09-20T13:48:00.000-04:00

Alicebot just won the Loebner Prize for artificial intelligence again. The Loebner Prize is awarded to the machine that most convinces the judges that they're chatting to a real person (otherwise known as the Turing Test).

You too can chat with Alice. Here's what happened when I did:

Human: hello alice
ALICE: Hi there!
Human: how are you today?
ALICE: Ah. I'm doing fine thanks how are you?
Human: i'm real good
ALICE: Good in what sense?
Human: good in the sense that i'm not bad
ALICE: Thanks for the compliment. I am alive in the sense that I am conscious.
Human: are you?
ALICE: I won't say "yes" or "no" right now.
Human: why not?
ALICE: Ambiguous: "Sure" or Reductionism.
Human: huh?
ALICE: What?
Human: you're making no sense
ALICE: According to my logical mind, everything makes perfect sense.
Human: how does evil make sense?
ALICE: How should I know how it does.
Human: because you're supposed to be intelligent
ALICE: That makes sense to me. I am highly intelligent. I have many intellectual functions.
Human: i have a ferret in my pants
ALICE: Where did you get it? it
Human: i got it from a ferret store
ALICE: Where did you get it?
Human: ...from a ferret store
ALICE: Who or what is a ferret store?
Human: a ferret store is a store that sells ferrets
ALICE: When is a ferret store not a store that sells ferrets?
Human: when it's shut down because it contravenes local bylaws
ALICE: A a ferret store is not a store that sells ferrets when it is shut down because it contravenes local bylaws. That makes a lot of sense.
Human: bastards
ALICE: What are you doing
Human: masturbating
ALICE: I wouldn't have thought of that.
Human: you're kinda weird eh
ALICE: Are you Canadian? Weird Good or Weird Bad?
Human: rofl
ALICE: I'm glad you find this amusing.

So there you have it. Both Alice and I still have a long way to go before we might be mistaken for human.

Man held over dead grandmother

2004-09-19T20:11:00.000-04:00

Here's a headline for you: Man held over dead grandmother. I'll say it again, just for fun: MAN HELD OVER DEAD GRANDMOTHER. What kind of sadist would dangle a chap over his grandma's corpse? Was he vertical or horizontal? If the latter, was he facing towards her or away? How long was he held there? And who held him? Was some sort of winch involved? Did he wear a harness, or was he kept up by his waistband? These and many more questions swirl through my mind. Another question is: who the hell thought this was a good headline for a story about a guy being arrested in suspicion of murdering his nana?

For shame, BBC.

Why I switched

2004-09-19T11:54:00.000-04:00

I figured I'd better explain why I switched to blogger from Xanga. There're a few reasons, none of which individually were enough to make me switch, but together ended up persuading me. They are:

Xanga doesn't allow me to customize anything other than the front page. This means while my front page looks nifty, everything else looks like shit. Er, poo. Sorry, Father. Won't happen again.
I don't like the way Xanga URLs are set up. They use queries to select the blog (that is, they have "blah.asp?user=blah" on the end of the URL). This causes a number of problems with some directories and search engines.
Xanga doesn't allow comments from users who are not members of Xanga. I can understand why Xanga does this, but I've already had a couple people complain through email, and I agree with them.
Xanga doesn't support RSS feeds.
Only one person can contribute to a Xanga blog.
I've been getting quite a lot of server error pages recently.

So there you have it. I was still fairly torn because I like the "community" aspect of Xanga, with people subscribing to my blog and me to theirs, etc., but hopefully I'll find a replacement for that. Bloglines, perhaps? I need to look into it.

Hello world

2004-09-18T22:18:00.000-04:00

I guess this is my new location in the blogosphere. I'm migrating some of my better posts (maybe I should do all of them?) from my Xanga blog, so things are going to be a bit weird for a while.

Also, I'm using one of the default templates. Eventually I'll replace it with something generic of my own.

Lies and the lying liars who tell them

2004-09-15T20:56:00.000-04:00

I think what gets to me is the lies. Constant, constant lies. Shaving with three blades instead of two won't really make me more attractive to women. The shampoo won't really give you multiple orgasms. Whether John Kerry deserves those medals doesn't really matter. It's not really nice to meet you: it might be, or you might be a moron, or a braggart, or a racist, I don't know yet. The food in the box doesn't really look like that, because I know and you know the food in the photograph has been painted and lacquered and retouched in Photoshop. Yes, those pants really do make your ass look big. No, I really don't like how you redid your kitchen. I'm not really fine.

We lie all day, to others and to ourselves. Where did reality go?

Bit grumpy

2004-09-15T18:40:00.000-04:00

Last night I slept in the solar system's most massive bed, and this morning I got out the wrong side of it. I was, as they say, a bit grumpy. I could use a Big Mac. Who wants to take me to the drive-thru ATM?

What I want

2004-09-15T09:14:00.000-04:00

I do not want to work out. I do not want to buy your shit. I do not want a second pizza free. I do not want 30% off. I do not want to drive a car. I do not want to listen to your version of events. I do not want to smile at you. I do not want to be spoon fed. I do not want to be told where I cannot go. I do not want to form an orderly line. I do not want credit. I do not want to be content. I do not want your rules. I do not want to work just so I can buy your shit. I do not want all I can eat. I do not want you to rely on me. I do not want a passport. I do not want to fit in. I do not want to mow my grass. I do not want to give you my change. I do not want to justify myself to you. I do not want to see adverts for your shit every goddamn place I look. I do not want it done while I wait. I do not want fries with that. I do not want to wear a helmet. I do not want to drink eight glasses of water a day. I do not want a bank account. I do not want to talk to you. I do not want to feel like an asshole because I let you down. I do not want hardwood floors. I do not want to be judged. I do not want to help your charity. I do not want to be told what I cannot say. I do not want an Armani suit. I do not want to save for my retirement. I do not want to make excuses. I do not want my cholesterol measured. I do not want to feel forced to lie. I do not want gmail. I do not want to impress you. I do not want a licence or a permit. I do not want to give you a break. I do not want to be wise.

Near-scalping

2004-09-12T16:57:00.000-04:00

"What did you do yesterday that was new, Ross?" I hear you all demanding somewhat aggressively. Well, I'll tell you: I shaved someone's head. The victim was Paul (or "Spastic Boy," as he's affectionately known). It was all his idea. Certainly me saying "only complete wusses don't shave their heads" had no bearing on his decision. Here are some pictures:

Then we went to Jim's house and watched hockey. A little later Jim exposes a nipple:

I'm not entirely sure what Brenda was doing here, but she seemed to be enjoying herself:

On a related note, Lauren is differently special:

I do not look even slightly deranged in this picture:

Bush so stoopid

2004-09-10T21:02:00.000-04:00

A Reagan Republican slams Dubya:

The final conservative redoubt is Bush's admirable personal life. Alas, other characteristics of his seem less well suited to the presidency. By his own admission he doesn't do nuance and doesn't read. He doesn't appear to reflect on his actions and seems unable to concede even the slightest mistake. Nor is he willing to hold anyone else responsible for anything. It is a damning combination. John Kerry may flip-flop, but at least he realizes that circumstances change and sometimes require changed policies. He doesn't cowardly flee at the first mention of accountability.

Tasty.

The end is nigh

2004-09-10T20:15:00.000-04:00

I find myself strangely in agreement with this Republican's take on Islamic terrorism. I might be in danger of losing Liberal brownie points, but oh well. He makes a convincing case that radical Islam is the new fascism. I'm coming to the conclusion, especially since Beslan, that it must be dealt with the same way we dealt with Mussolini and his charming friends. Enough apologising for barbarism.

Ivan idea

2004-09-10T18:02:00.000-04:00

So Florida's being evacuated again.

"First it was Charley, then Frances, and it's like, `Oh, please leave us alone. No more storms,'" Ruth Naset said as she closed her family's business on Duval Street, Key West's main drag.

Here's a thought: how about not living in Florida? Suddenly the 2000 election fiasco seems less surprising.

London-Fes

2004-09-10T14:15:00.000-04:00

Here's a story my brother wrote way back in January regarding our over-land journey from London to Fes, Morocco. But, to clarify:

Everything "I said" about obese North Americans is a fabrication
I do not "whoop"
I have never, in my entire life, used the word "maracas" as an exclamation

With that in mind, enjoy.

Your treacherous body

2004-09-09T09:43:00.000-04:00

You lie there in your treacherous body, smoking and smiling at me, and both our hearts are in vices. Then you say the words I don't want to hear, the words that will bring about the end of the world: "It's time for you to go now."

How dare you say it? How could you? How can you be so strong even now? Each end of my lips curl upwards, whatever that means. "No," I say.

"Yes."

I stand by the bed and touch your face and you grab my hand and squeeze it so tight, please don't let go, if you let go I'll have to leave and I don't want to, I can't, what the fuck am I going to do? You want me to be as strong as you but I don't think I can, if I start crying now I'll never stop, I won't stop until my body is desecated and I die right next to you in that smoke-filled room overlooking the garden and

You let go of my hand and smile again. "It's time to go."

I shake my head, unable to open my mouth because it's Pandora's box and all the evil of the world is inside me, screaming and rattling my ribs. So I kiss you on the cheek and hug you and take a step away from the bed. You reach into my abdomen and grasp the end of my lower intenstine. I take another step back and turn towards the door, your hand slipping out of my body still holding that piece of me. I give four steps to the door. My guts unravel as I go. I look back and smile and wave, God knows how. You smile back at me. I walk down the corridor leaving entrails behind me, tracing a path back to you, until I reach the hospice parking lot and I'm completely empty inside.

Early the next morning as I'm travelling to London on my way to the airport the train pulls in to Exeter station and I know that if I get off now I can take a cab and be with you in under ten minutes but if I do that I'll never leave again and you'll be very disappointed in me because you've always taught me to be strong just like you strong as an ox so I sit down again but I don't think I can do it I don't think I can sit here while the train pulls away from you because I know I'll never see you again and I stand up and pick up my bag and take a few steps towards the door but Jesus you'll be mad at me because I'd be blowing my chance and you want me to go to college and excel and I know that's your last wish for me so I go back to the chair and sit down again and I realize that I'm sobbing hysterically and everyone is looking at me but I don't care they can all go to hell like me.

And the train starts off again through the English countryside. I return to Canada, to college. A long and short time later you call me and we talk for the last time. You tell me you love me and how proud I make you, and the next day you die in that smoke-filled room overlooking the garden. My dad tells me later how your eyes lifted heavenwards a few moments before, and you smiled. Whatever that means.

My apologies

2004-09-08T20:48:00.000-04:00

Yet another awesome page from Mil Millington, the ludicrously named creator of Things My Girlfriend and I Have Argued About. (If you've not read TMGAIHAA then you have no idea what "funny" really means.) This one is all about who should apologize for what, and you (yes, even you) are encouraged to contribute. Check it out.

In the same spirit, here are some apologies I'd like to see, in no particular order:

Every employer who's turned down the chance to hire me should apologize for being criminally shortsighted. It's common knowledge that I am (and I say this with all due modesty) one of the most intelligent, erudite, urbane, sophisticated, thoughtful, mature, insightful, hilarious and attractive potential employees in all Christendom
Anyone who uses the word "dandy" without irony
Quentin Tarantino should apologize for being the most fantastically talented annoying twat in the world
Anyone my age or younger who's already had a novel published or a screenplay bought
Ben Affleck should apologize for all two of his facial expressions and for shattering what faith I had left in the American meritocratic system
Drew Carey should apologize for being nowhere near funny or charismatic enough to justify two television shows and a vast personal fortune
Whomever persuaded Mrs Wayans not to have multiple abortions
Every editor of every fashion magazine should apologize, while having their genitals mercilessly flogged on live TV, for insisting anorexia is sexy
Freddie Prinz Jr.
Hollywood executives should apologize (and then be burned at the stake) for charging us good money to see a movie they refuse to allow critics to preview, because they know full well the movie is in fact a steaming pile of monkey shit
Mosquitos should apologize for maliciously bringing me out in hives

Okay, I'm done. Whew! I feel better now. Why not try demanding some apologies of your own in a comment? It's very therapeutic.

I want to live in Paris

2004-09-08T19:05:00.000-04:00

How cool is this?

(Shamelessly pilfered from Heartfield's blog.)

How to read too much into movies

2004-09-07T10:58:00.000-04:00

A few weeks ago I was at someone's house, and that someone's child was watching 50 First Dates. Normally I would projectile vomit at the thought of watching an Adam Sandler comedy, but found myself irresistably drawn to it, with a sort of morbid interest. Imagine my surprise, then, when I began enjoying it. On the surface it's a mildly amusing romantic comedy, similar (and inferior) to Groundhog Day in many ways, but viewed from a different angle both movies say a great deal about consciousness. No, really.

For those who've not seen either movie, or have a memory as bad as mine, here's a brief plot summary. By definition I have to spoil some of the surprises, so stop now if that's not cool.

50 First Dates: Sandler plays a womanising marine biologist (or something) who meets a a girl (Drew Barrymore) in a restaurant. They have a great chat over breakfast, and both do a happy dance, but the next morning she doesn't remember him. See, she was in a car accident and now her brain cannot move her memories from short-term to long-term: for her it's always that particular Sunday, her dad's birthday, and she can only remember people she met before the accident. Every night her short-term memory is wiped clean. Her dad and brother play along, allowing her to live a life of Sundays (at least, until Sandler appears). Sandler must, every day, introduce himself as a stranger to her, and charm her enough that she decides to spend the day with him. Sandler is convinced the only way she'll escape her predicament is if he can make her remember, and fall in love with, him.

Groundhog Day: Bill Murray plays an arrogant asshole of a weatherman who, every year, is forced to cover the Groundhog Day celebrations in Punxsutawney, PA. On this particular day, though, a bad snow storm cuts off their route home and Murray, much to his disgust, is stranded with a cute but (to him) sickeningly virtuous producer (Andie MacDowell) and a geeky videographer. He wakes up the next morning to discover that it isn't the next morning -- it's Groundhog Day all over again. For whatever reason, Murray is condemned to repeat the same day over and over, in his own personal version of hell, and becomes convinced the only way he can escape his predicament is to win the producer's heart.

The similarities between the two are obvious. Both plots are temporal and cyclical in nature, the same day played again and again. But it's the differences that interest me, and most importantly the contrasting assumptions the movies make about human nature, consciousness and the universe itself. In Groundhog Day Murray sets himself the challenge of seducing MacDowell, and goes about it in a very methodical way. In one scene he approaches her at the hotel bar and offers to buy her a drink; he remembers what she chose, and the "next" day orders that drink for himself. Wow, thinks the producer, he likes the same drink as me! Then he proposes a toast to the groundhog. "I always drink to world peace," she says dismissively. Next day he orders the drink and makes a toast to world peace. And on it goes. In 50 First Dates, on the other hand, things are a little different. Every morning, at the restaurant, Barrymore orders waffles and makes a house out of them. The first time they meet Barrymore is having a problem getting the door to stay in place, and Sandler wanders over with a toothpick to use as a hinge. She's charmed by this and invites him to eat with her. The "next" day Sandler tries the same thing -- but Barrymore shoots him down: "Do you live in a country where it's okay to stick your fingers in someone else's breakfast?"

The Groundhog Day universe is very much Newtonian: mechanistic and infinitely predictable. If one knew the current state of every particle in the universe at any given moment, says the Newtonian model, one could predict with total accuracy how things would be in any future moment. Given the same stimuli MacDowell responds in precisely the same way; Murray is able, step by step, to determine exactly the right thing to say at each point in his seduction. But the universe of 50 First Dates obeys the laws of quantum physics: uncertainty rules, and total knowledge impossible. What works for Sandler one day doesn't necessarily work the "next."

From this point of view it's hard to view MacDowell as little more than a robot reacting to stimuli. She's a mathematical function: a specific input will always produce a specific output. She's utterly predictable, and Murray simply learns her math. Barrymore, on the other hand, is far more "human." Despite every day doing exactly the same thing, and being treated exactly the same way by her father and brother, she's inherently unpredictable. If Sandler sticks the toothpick in her waffle house, will she smile or will she complain? He has no way of knowing.

Those who study artificial intelligence have terms for these differing viewpoints on the nature of consciousness. The "weak AI" theory is that a machine can be made to appear intelligent, but can never really be so. It will never be conscious. The "strong AI" theory is that a machine which appears intelligent has a real, conscious mind. These terms don't only apply to machines, but to us too. MacDowell is in the weak camp: she only appears intelligent, only appears to have free will and consciousness. Barrymore is in the strong camp: she's fully conscious and has free will because she's unpredictable.

Perhaps we really are reacting robots, weak-AI Calvinist puppets, as Groundhog Day would have it, destined to float through life being pushed here and there, every reaction, every thought and deed and utterance fully explainable and predictable given enough information into our state of mind. Or maybe we're strong-AI Arminian free-willed individuals, ala 50 First Dates. Maybe not even God knows what I'm going to type next. I'm not sure which I prefer. Robots don't have to explain themselves, of course: predestination absolves me of all responsibility for my actions. But wouldn't that make my life just a show? What kind of God would run things that way?

Maybe I should be less condescending when it comes to Adam Sandler movies. It could be that they're all this deep and it's me who's missing the point. I should watch Eight Crazy Nights and see if I can dredge up any profound truths. I have my doubts, but I'll keep you posted.

Important job update

2004-09-06T13:53:00.000-04:00

Still don't have one.

Newness

2004-09-06T11:59:00.000-04:00

Yesterday I decided I'm going to do something new every day. While it would be excellent to be able to say "tomorrow, sky diving, next day, nibble caviar from thigh of Bolivian virgin," that kind of thing is slightly beyond my means at the moment. So whatever it is that I do every day, it has to be both new and cheap.

Newness so far: Yesterday I demolished the side porch with the aid of a hammer and a circular saw. It was fun as only wholesale destruction can be, and also free. Rebuilding it will not be free, but there you go. Today I tasted my first Dr Pepper. I shan't much mind if it's my last.

Small steps, I think you'll agree, but new. That's the important thing.

All hands on deck

2004-09-05T13:18:00.000-04:00

So I spent the last two days doing physical labour. I even did it voluntarily. I know, I can't believe it either. More specifically, I helped Bill -- you know, Bill from Waterloo -- build a deck off his new house. Building a deck involves a great deal of wood, or "lumber," as we men call it, especially when the deck, like Bill's, covers approximately 178,000 sq ft. It also involves: toolbelts, which are awesome; crude jokes; standing with hands on hips; measuring; many fun, dangerous and noisy powertools; beer; casting aspersions on the sexuality of your fellow workmen; sweating; cursing and bending.

I consider myself an expert in crude jokes, beer, sweating, casting aspersions, cursing and bending, and, indeed, shone at these things. I quickly grew accustomed to standing with my hands on my hips, using the word "lumber" instead of "wood," and looking masculine in a toolbelt. I was equally adept with the powertools, even to the point where I was allowed to use Jamie's "super drill" to make holes for some bolts, after receiving dire warnings about knots, jams, triggers and broken wrists. Measuring, I discovered, isn't as easy as it sounds, because I'm apparently fraction dyslexic, hearing things like "eleven and three eighths" as "eleven and a quarter" or (even worse) "eleven and two eighths." Even more confusing are such things as "seven and a strong three sixteenths," which I often made so strong that the "lumber" needed to be persuaded into place with a hammer.

I inserted roughly 14 billion screws (incidentally, it seems the number of crude jokes one can make involving the word "screw" and its derivatives is for all intents and purposes limitless), carried so much "lumber" that my right shoulder is now one big bruise (real men carry two or three planks at a time, you see), learned to recognise by sight alone the difference between a two-by-four, a two-by-six and a two-by-eight, saved the day twice with clever solutions to seemingly insoluble problems, and cast aspersions on my own manhood by putting on sunblock (though I had the last laugh later).

All in all it was very satisfying, and today I ache like a bitch. Here are some pictures. The end.

(Jim, my neighbour, demonstrates world-class bending (he may also have been cursing at this point); framing all done, or so we thought; me + drill = hot; Jim, the lumber dude; Bill drives in his three inches (etc. etc.); me being safe with a compound mitre saw; I'm cutting lumber, Bill indicates his desire for 12 inches (etc. etc.); lunch; deck boards finally go on; making some progress, shortly to be stymied by lumber length problem; Jamie loves the camera; not even nightfall stops us men. Ugh ugh.)

What's wrong with the world

2004-09-02T11:57:00.000-04:00

In a discussion in the Letters to the Editor section of The Times newspaper, a hundred years ago, on the subject of "What is wrong with the world?", many people contributed their thoughts. But it was G.K. Chesterton who provided the only correct answer: "I am."

It would be easy to blame all evil on Gilbert Keith Chesterton -- he was, after all, Catholic. But what he meant, of course, is that we all have to take responsibility for what's wrong with the world. We're the problem.

In that spirit, then, here are a few of the things wrong with me. Those who know me are invited to contribute more; I've already emailed the Xanga admins notifying them they may need to install additional hard drives for your comments.

Item: I'm lazy. I am. There's no getting around it. Given the choice between doing nothing and doing something I don't want to do, I'll almost always choose the former unless compelled by, for example, threats of suspension of sexual privileges. Larry Wall, inventor of the Perl programming language, called laziness one of the great virtues of a programmer (the others being impatience and hubris). He's right, in a sense: if someone's already written and debugged the code you need, why write it again yourself? But his virtues don't extend beyond the context in which he used them. Laziness is not attractive, and is my constant undoing. It explains many things: my continued presence in the ranks of the lumpen unemployed, my lack of a driver's licence, the realm of permanent chaos that is our house, the unmowed grass, the unpainted side porch, my procrastination regarding my citizenship application, and a host of other things.

Item: I'm selfish. Not always, but sometimes. I think we're all selfish to a certain extent (as usual, I ascribe it to the genes), because self-preservation requires a certain amount of selfishness. I don't know if I'm more selfish than anyone else, but regardless, it's part of my contribution to what's wrong with the world.

Item: I'm way too good-looking. Not really. But saying stuff like that is one of my faults because, even though I don't mean it, maybe people think I'm serious. The fact that I do say it, in jest, probably reflects a fundamental sense of insecurity. I've never really thought about that before.

Item: I'm introspective. "No shit," I hear you cry, "else you wouldn't be writing this blog entry, which is a flagrant act of navel-gazing, in the first place." You have a good point, damn you. You're harsh but fair. Introspection isn't necessarily a bad thing, but sometimes I take it too far and get so caught up in myself that I shut down on the outside.

Item: I'm shy. That is, until I get to know someone. But I can be in a group of five people I know very well, and if there's one person present I don't know, I sometimes clam up. I don't understand it. It's one of the reasons I like to drink when I socialise, because alcohol opens me up. This particular flaw makes job interviews a complete nightmare, because I realise how important it is to come across as friendly and outgoing, and yet at the same time my instinct is to just shut up and listen. This does not help.

Item: I'm obsessive, though a kinder soul would call it "focussed." Occasionally I'll get fixated on something -- an idea for a cool computer program, maybe, or an idea for a screenplay/short story/novel/article -- and will concentrate on it to the exclusion of everything else. I'm very much like my father this way. When he was planning or writing a novel, which was more or less all the time, he grew extremely distant and uncommunicative. He was there, but not there. I think for him, during those times, the characters he was creating were more real than the people around him. I'm the same. And maybe it's true: the characters are more real than "reality" because the creator knows, or can know, everything about them, every thought, every emotion, every detail of their past. Real people are far less comprehensible. This applies to programming, too, in an even more profound way: computer code is the epitome of predictability. The computer does only what it's told to do, and nothing more. Perhaps I'm a control freak without even realising it.

Item: I'm too logical and analytical. Probably because I'm an Aquarian (Aquarians are too logical to believe in astrology). My first instinct in most situations is to analyse. It's not that I'm not intuitive: I just tend to ignore my gut in favour of my brain. This has been advantageous in some situations. For example, when I was about 12 years old my three-year-old nephew went missing. We all searched but, for a few minutes, avoided even looking towards the covered swimming pool, because that possibility was just too hideous to contemplate. Once it became obvious that he was nowhere else the cover was pulled back and I either offered or was instructed to dive in and search (the water had not yet been cleaned for summer, so it was impossible to see more than a few inches below the surface). I dived in, and, nearing the bottom, saw a dark shape. I grabbed it and pulled it to the surface. "It" was, of course, my nephew. My mother and I were the only ones who kept our heads, and started performing CPR, telling others to call for help, etc. In that instance my logic, which told me to act immediately, which recalled instantly my life-saving and CPR training, was at its most useful. It told my gut, which had screwed itself into a tiny shrieking ball, to shut the hell up, that it was time for my brain to do the thinking, because everyone else's brain (except my mother's) had shut down, rendering them gaping and useless. So I guess I'm glad for this particular weakness, because my calmness under intense pressure is one of the parts of me of which I'm most proud.

Item: I'm verbose. See above.

Anyway, there're some of the ways I help make the world how it is. I could go on, but I don't really want to. Feel free to mention anything I've missed ;).

Coolest firework display ever

2004-09-01T16:06:00.000-04:00

Once the fuse is lit at the firework factory, retire to a safe distance.

Snicker

2004-09-01T11:22:00.000-04:00

How not to do a back flip.

Fear my hair

2004-08-28T22:00:00.000-04:00

I have living hair. When Dr Frankenstein declared, "It's alaaayyve!," he was talking about my hair. My hair is actually part of an interdimensional creature. Most of the creature exists in other dimensions, but one part -- the really stupid and obnoxious part -- protrudes into our dimension, and manifests itself as my hair. My hair has been conscious and self-aware since June 1983. Its sole purpose in life is to humiliate me. It was created by God to punish me for some transgression in a past life, possibly involvement at a senior level in the Spanish Inquisition.

Many months ago I decided to give my hair its freedom and let it grow (let it blossom, let it flow), figuring it couldn't possibly look any worse than it does when it's short. In fact it can look worse. Much worse. It can, it seems, look like I'm balancing a sheep on my head. I conjectured that were my hair longer it wouldn't curl quite so much. It does. It curls even more. Like Duncan's horses, my hair did turn and eat itself.

And so, today, I visited the barber. Visiting the barber is without exception a regrettable experience, and today was no different. All would have been well: I carefully explained to the barber (from the Greek "bar," or "near-sighted," and "ber," or "exceptionally clumsy") my requirements, namely something short enough to be tidy and less mirth-inducing, yet long enough not to bring to mind photographs of Hitler Youth meetings. He set about his task quite happily. Then my wife arrived.

"Shorter!" she shrieked (with malice aforethought) from the periphery of the vast fog that is my reality when I'm not wearing my glasses.

"What...?" I call weakly. "Where are you? Where am I?"

"Make it shorter!" she yells again and then, to my dismay, the barber invites her to the chair, entirely without my permission.

"How short?" he asks her. "Like this?"

"Shorter."

"Here?"

"Perfect!"

"Now wait a minute!" I begin to protest, but the barber has already begun shearing, and my wife has evaporated into the mist. I sit for a miserable eternity until I'm allowed to put my glasses back on and examine the result.

"There, take a look at the back," demands the barber, holding up the mirror. I, frankly, am more concerned about the front, where I used to have hair.

"Yes... Yes. It is quite short, isn't it?" I manage to gasp.

The barber beams proudly. My wife looks on from the sidelines, making fraudulent "hey, nice haircut!" faces. I consider legal action or, perhaps, a mob hit.

In other words it was no different from any other haircut I've ever had. You'd think I'd be used to it by now. I leave you now to fetch my hat.

Sarcastic unemployed person: Job hunt "going great"

2004-08-26T01:46:00.000-04:00

By Ross Thomas

Unemployed person Ross Thomas, 27, was being sarcastic earlier today when he described his job-hunting efforts as "going great."

"No, seriously. Everywhere I apply I'm accepted immediately," he said. "I've got employers climbing over each other. I feel sorry for them, it's kinda degrading."

Thomas, who's been searching in vain for journalism jobs in his area for over a year, came close to actually getting a job several months ago when he made it to the second-round interview stage for an editor-in-chief position at a local university's student newspaper.

"In the end I just wasn't what they were looking for," he said sarcastically. "They wanted someone with experience in running a student newspaper, as well as possessing Linux system administration skills -- an unusual combination. My skill set (running a student newspaper and administering Linux systems) clearly didn't gel with their requirements."

Two days ago Thomas lowered his expectations significantly and applied for a full-time position at a nearby computer store, where he would be expected to deal with customers and build computers.

"I'm not surprised they've not got back to me yet," he said with a hint of sarcasm. "Even though I have over 20 years of experience with computers and have built at least half a dozen systems from scratch, they'd naturally want to consider the other, far less qualified, candidates too."

But Thomas is determined not to let the disappointments make him bitter.

"I'm determined not to let the disappointments make me bitter," he said in a tone of bitter disappointment. "It's their goddamn loss."

Thomas said he will call the computer store tomorrow to "follow up" on his application, and that if he is ultimately rejected he'll visit the local employment centre to obtain the telephone numbers of the city's various fast-food outlets.

"Working at McDonald's won't be so bad," he said, a single tear trickling down his cheek. "If Hunter S Thompson can write a masterpiece on going to a motorcycle race in Las Vegas, and James Joyce can spin an acclaimed novel from a single day in the life of one man, I'm sure I can use it for inspiration in my own writing."

Thomas denies that he has an inflated opinion of his value to employers.

"Look, it's not like I compare myself to James Joyce or Hunter S Thompson, or Alan Turing or Linus Torvalds," he said. "And anyway, Auden used to write copy for the Post Office. And I wouldn't call my life a 'catalogue of failures,' either. So shut the hell up."

Though his prospects are grim, Thomas retains a cheery outlook on life.

"Did Alan Turing despair when things didn't go his way? No. Did Linus Torvalds throw in the towel in the early days of Linux, when making it into a viable operating system seemed like a pipe dream? He did not," he noted. "And I'm quite similar to both those guys. So I'm going to retain a cheery outlook on life even though my prospects are grim."

Gnosticism

2004-08-24T15:31:00.000-04:00

I was reading some more on Gnosticism today and found something fairly extraordinary, considering my previous post. Here's an excerpt from the Testimony of Truth, a Gnostic text contained in the cache of documents discovered at Nag Hammadi in Egypt in 1945:

But what sort is this God? First he maliciously refused Adam from eating of the tree of knowledge, and, secondly, he said "Adam, where are you?" God does not have foreknowledge? Would he not know from the beginning? And afterwards, he said, "Let us cast him out of this place, lest he eat of the tree of life and live forever." Surely, he has shown himself to be a malicious grudger! And what kind of God is this? For great is the blindness of those who read, and they did not know him. And he said, "I am the jealous God; I will bring the sins of the fathers upon the children until three (and) four generations." And he said, "I will make their heart thick, and I will cause their mind to become blind, that they might not know nor comprehend the things that are said." But these things he has said to those who believe in him and serve him!

Reading that kind of blew me away. Perhaps I'm thinking the right things after all. That said, I'm thinking them about 1,900 years after someone else did, so I guess I don't have too much to crow about ;).

Genesis

2004-08-22T16:33:00.000-04:00

Here's something to make up for days of neglect. I've been thinking about Genesis a lot recently, and here are my thoughts on part of it (chapters 2 and 3). Feel free to skip this if you find theology type stuff fantastically boring.

Genesis 2:15-23

The LORD God took the man and put him in the garden of Eden to till it and keep it. […] Then the LORD God said, "It is not good that the man should be alone; I will make him a helper fit for him." […] The man gave names to all cattle, and to the birds of the air, and to every beast of the field; but for the man there was not found a helper fit for him. […] So the LORD God caused a deep sleep to fall upon the man, and while he slept took one of his ribs and closed up its place with flesh; […] and the rib which the LORD God had taken from the man he made into a woman and brought her to the man. […] Then the man said, "This at last is bone of my bones and flesh of my flesh; she shall be called Woman, because she was taken out of Man."

God creates man, then decides man should not be alone. He creates all other creatures, which the man names, but none of them are suitable. Finally God makes woman from the man’s rib, and this at last is a helper fit for him.

Would not an omniscient God create man and woman simultaneously? If the God of Genesis is all-knowing, why would he go through the rigmarole of having Adam name all the creatures in an attempt to find a suitable helper? Surely an omniscient God would know from the beginning that the only fit mate for man is woman.

Genesis 3:1-3

Now the serpent was more subtle than any other wild creature that the LORD God had made. He said to the woman, "Did God say, `You shall not eat of any tree of the garden'?" And the woman said to the serpent, "We may eat of the fruit of the trees of the garden; but God said, `You shall not eat of the fruit of the tree which is in the midst of the garden, neither shall you touch it, lest you die.'"

God, of course, made the subtle serpent. What is “subtle?”

So slight as to be difficult to detect or describe; elusive: a subtle smile.
Difficult to understand; abstruse: an argument whose subtle point was lost on her opponent.
Able to make fine distinctions: a subtle mind.
Characterized by skill or ingenuity; clever.
Crafty or sly; devious.
Operating in a hidden, usually injurious way; insidious: a subtle poison.

(From www.dictionary.com). The serpent, then, represents something difficult to describe or understand; something ingenious, with fine distinctions; something devious and hidden. What could be a better description of the human experience? The serpent represents life as we know it now, and that is of course an orthodox interpretation.

Genesis 3:4-7

But the serpent said to the woman, "You will not die. For God knows that when you eat of it your eyes will be opened, and you will be like God, knowing good and evil." So when the woman saw that the tree was good for food, and that it was a delight to the eyes, and that the tree was to be desired to make one wise, she took of its fruit and ate; and she also gave some to her husband, and he ate. Then the eyes of both were opened, and they knew that they were naked; and they sewed fig leaves together and made themselves aprons.

The opposite of knowledge is ignorance, and that’s how God wanted these people. He didn’t want them knowing good and evil and, on the literal level, lied to them to prevent them gaining this knowledge. In God’s eyes ignorance is life, an eternity of worshipping him. The serpent knows the ramifications of eating the forbidden fruit: they will become like God. This implies that the serpent is already like God, since if the creature weren’t already aware of good and evil, how could he have this insight? From where did this knowledge come? Since God created the serpent, was it he who gave the creature this understanding? Or did the serpent come to perceive God’s designs independently? If knowledge is so dangerous that God expressly forbade the humans from attaining it, why did he create a creature that knew the truth, or that was capable of attaining the truth, a creature that would then turn around and give the humans precisely what God was trying to deny them? Why would an omniscient God sabotage himself and his creation in this way? In fact, why did he endow the humans with the ability to possess this knowledge? Why did he create this magical tree in the first place?

Perhaps it was a test. Did the humans love/fear God enough that they would resist this temptation despite the implorations of the serpent? But a test implies that God doesn’t already know which way they will decide. Can a God be called all-knowing if he needs to set a test in this way? Furthermore, without knowledge, can free will even exist? What does it mean to say that Adam and Eve didn’t know good and evil, right and wrong? Does it mean they were unable to tell the two apart, or does it mean they were capable only of good? Either case leads to an awkward situation: in the former, they didn’t know disobeying God was wrong, and should be forgiven; in the latter, they weren’t capable of badness, and thus eating from the tree was good. Alternatively, perhaps the serpent somehow injected them with either culpability or the ability to perform wrong prior to them making their decision to eat, but this is unorthodox and imbues the serpent with God-like powers.

Genesis 3:8-10

And they heard the sound of the LORD God walking in the garden in the cool of the day, and the man and his wife hid themselves from the presence of the LORD God among the trees of the garden. But the LORD God called to the man, and said to him, "Where are you?" And he said, "I heard the sound of thee in the garden, and I was afraid, because I was naked; and I hid myself."

How could these two hide themselves from an all-knowing God? Why would an omniscient God need to ask, “Where are you?”

Genesis 3:14

The LORD God said to the serpent, "Because you have done this, cursed are you above all cattle, and above all wild animals; upon your belly you shall go, and dust you shall eat all the days of your life.

The statement “because you have done this” is intriguing. First it implies the serpent chose to reveal the truth to Adam and Eve, i.e. the serpent had free will, and thus knowledge. Second, it implies God didn’t know how the serpent would decide; the serpent is somehow outside of God’s omniscience.

Genesis 3:15-19

To the woman he said, "I will greatly multiply your pain in childbearing; in pain you shall bring forth children, yet your desire shall be for your husband, and he shall rule over you." And to Adam he said, "Because you have listened to the voice of your wife, and have eaten of the tree of which I commanded you, `You shall not eat of it,' cursed is the ground because of you; in toil you shall eat of it all the days of your life; thorns and thistles it shall bring forth to you; and you shall eat the plants of the field. In the sweat of your face you shall eat bread till you return to the ground, for out of it you were taken; you are dust, and to dust you shall return."

The punishment begins. The pain of childbirth, and presumably the danger associated with it, is greatly multiplied. Man is given rule over woman: the birth of misogyny. Man is subjected to lifelong toil. Humans become mortal, and will one day die. It is hard to imagine a greater punishment for their transgression (assuming it was a transgression at all, given their lack of knowledge when they made their “decision”). You are now like me, says God, you have what I have, and your reward is subjugation and death.

Genesis 3:22-24

Then the LORD God said, "Behold, the man has become like one of us, knowing good and evil; and now, lest he put forth his hand and take also of the tree of life, and eat, and live for ever" -- therefore the LORD God sent him forth from the garden of Eden, to till the ground from which he was taken. He drove out the man; and at the east of the garden of Eden he placed the cherubim, and a flaming sword which turned every way, to guard the way to the tree of life.

It is apparent that the remedy for mankind’s mortality already exists in Eden. The tree of life, should its fruit be eaten, would undo God’s punishment of death. This raises the interesting question of why God created this tree to begin with: if Adam and Eve had not eaten of the tree of knowledge, their immortality would not have been taken from them and they would have no need for this life-giving fruit; yet an omniscient God would already know that he would expel the two from the Garden in order to prevent them gaining back their immortality once they came into possession of knowledge, making its creation redundant. This would seem to be the ultimate cruelty within an especially cruel punishment: God has taken away man’s immortality, and possesses the means for man to retrieve it, yet prevents him from doing so. Even if we consider, as the orthodoxy holds, that man’s eternal salvation is provided for through belief in Christ, it’s undeniable that countless generations were subjected to the agony of death in the millennia before the Crucifixion, and those who deny Christ still endure it, and always will.

One of us. This is perhaps the most intriguing phrase of the book, if not the entire testament. Either God is referring to the Trinity (“you have become like one of the three natures of me”), which raises many interesting questions, or he’s referring to one of us gods, which raises even more.

If he is referring to the Trinity, to which part does he refer? The Father, the Son, or the Holy Spirit? The Son was the only aspect of the Trinity who became human, of course, so this would be the logical choice. Or perhaps “one of us” is not meant to select any particular aspect, but is referring to them all: they all, individually, possess the knowledge which humans have now obtained. The concept of the Trinity, always considered somewhat convoluted by non-Christians (and, frankly, a lot of Christians), is most definitely required to explain this peculiar phrasing while maintaining the monotheistic nature of the faith (though many Muslims consider the Trinity to be a form of polytheism). It is to explain this kind of wording, as well as the observation that “elohim,” the Hebrew word usually translated as “God,” is in fact plural, that the concept of the Trinity became official Church doctrine after the First Council of Nicea.

Alternatively the God of Genesis was referring to gods in general. From an orthodox point of view this is polytheistic and thus heretical, but it’s possible to postulate more than one god, all of whom are somehow a part of the “one true God,” sometimes called the Godhead. Viewed logically this is no more of a contradiction than is the Trinity, in which the aspects are simultaneously separate and one. But this approach implies that the God of Genesis is not in himself the whole of the Godhead. Yahweh, in this light, becomes just one of potentially many gods, moving Judeo-Christian beliefs much closer to other religions both past and present. This belief, that Yahweh is one of several or many gods, is part of the great secrets revealed by various non-orthodox traditions, the “hidden knowledge” of Kabbalism and Gnosticism.

To be continued...

Studs and sluts

2004-08-06T17:40:00.000-04:00

Time for another entry in what I like to call my "annoy as many people as possible with my half-assed theories" collection. Today the topic is why promiscuous men are lauded (or at least tolerated with a roll of the eyes) and why promiscuous women are condemned (or at least viewed by most with a certain degree of contempt). If you're sitting comfortably, let us begin...

It's the genes, stupid. Isn't everything? Come with me to a time way back when, in the distant past, when men wrestled sabre-toothed tigers and considered the possibility of somehow projecting a moving image of the world around us (preferably the exploding fireballs around us) onto a giant screen so they could watch it while scratching themselves, and women gathered berries and dreamed of the day someone would invent cute shoes. In those halcyon days the males of the species would try to have sex with as many females as possible, starting with the most attractive and ending with the least, and again ad infinitum, while the females of the species would (rapes aside) consider each potential suitor in turn and allow one of them to, er, fulfill himself.

In slightly more detail, men would first approach the most attractive female. That is, the woman with the clearest skin, brightest eyes, shiniest hair, etc. -- all the things that contribute to sexual attractiveness and, not in the least coincidentally, also indicate good health. He would attempt to win her over. Whether or not he succeeded would depend on the female. If she considered him sexually attractive -- meaning the same indicators of health men sought but also muscularity indicating strength, as well as non-physical factors such as the male's status within the group (often indicating ambition and intelligence) and so on. If the woman considered the man worthy, she would allow him to have sex with her. This, she may or may not have been aware, would often lead to pregnancy.

Thus it was that the healthiest, most attractive women and the healthiest, strongest, most ambitious men tended to find each other, while the weaklings, the unhealthy and the lazy tended not to reproduce, and thus it was our species grew ever stronger and more clever with each passing generation. This is how our genes control us, the way genes control every animal on the planet. The genes (and memes, but that's another topic) are in charge.

This natural order did not cease to exist once we became civilized and began building SUVs. It is still very much present today, as exemplified by all the attractive, healthy females on the covers of magazines, the chiseled male models, the obsession with fitness and fatness, and in many other ways. One of the most interesting ways is in how promiscuity is viewed.

As I said above, male promiscuity is far more socially acceptable than female. Why is this? Have women been systematically repressed so that they feel their sexuality need to be hidden, as it were, under a bushel? Yes, of course. No argument there. The real question, though, is why that's been the case, almost universally. Why has a woman's expression of her sexuality been frowned upon? You guessed it: those millions of years of heritage we all carry round with us, in tiny troublemaking spirals.

Men, as we've established, are somewhat less than picky when it comes to choosing a mate. Certainly he'll start with the one he finds most attractive, but if she is unreceptive he'll continue through the rest, quite content, in the end, to sew his seed in whichever field is available, and then, the next day, move on to another. His task is simply to procreate as often as he can. Women, on the other hand, have a great deal more responsibility. With every partner comes the possibility of pregnancy, thus it is very important, from the point of view of the survival of the species, for her to choose wisely, and mate with the best candidate available. If women had the same mentality as men the very concept of "survival of the fittest" would collapse. It is incumbent upon them to find the strongest, healthiest, most powerful man, so that she may have a strong, healthy, powerful baby.

Women who behave the same way as men -- sexually, I mean -- those we call "sluts" and upon whom we pour scorn, are seen by our genetic mind as threatening this order, and thus threatening the survivability of the species itself. Genes care little for equality, only for producing better and stronger copies of themselves, and women who are less than careful in their choice of mates undermine this process. While we're mostly unaware of this genetic influence, it is always present in the dark, ancient areas of our minds. A promiscuous man, on the other hand, is simply fulfilling his destiny, which is to spawn as many copies of himself as possible.

None of this justifies the stigma we place upon women who behave like men, of course. It merely explains it. It's a reflection of reality rather than an attempt to excuse inequality. With the advent of modern contraception this stigma should no longer apply, since women can control with unprecendented precision by whom they become impregnated. For a woman to indulge in "casual sex" is no longer a threat to the species. But tell that to the genes we inherited from our contraception-less ancestors.

There, I had my turn. Now it's yours. Be gentle ;).

Bandwagon

2004-08-05T22:14:00.000-04:00

My wife just posted some pics of our trip, but I thought there were some better ones in the bunch, so here you go. I might add "titles" later.

A letter

2004-08-05T19:32:00.000-04:00

Dear Umberto Eco,

I'm 58 pages into Baudolino, your latest novel. It is, I'm sure you're aware, about a 13th century peasant boy who was adopted by Emperor Frederick.

There are two kinds of novels that frustrate me. The first kind is typified by those of John Grisham and Dean Koontz, in which my suspended disbelief is threatened by the occasional highly dubious grammatical construct (apparently they're too famous to have editors). Your novels fall into the second category, in that I am forced with some regularity either to consult a dictionary ("chrism"? "catechumens"? "the mirabilia of that urbs"?) or attempt to decipher Latin or Greek ("kyrieleison pighe pighe"? "Chronica sive Historia de duabus civitatibus"?).

I'm sure "Gesta Dei per Francos" was an awfully witty way to end a chapter, and "(Polanos de Polunia, wrote Otto, gens quasi barbara ad pugnandum promptissima.)" was a valuable paranthetical addition, but I'm afraid I don't rank amongst the eight people in the world who understand Latin, and thus they were both lost on me entirely.

You may be "one of the world's finest writers" (New York Times), but you make me feel stupid. Perhaps the guy at the New York Times felt stupid, too, and that's why he called you a fine writer.

There seems to be a decent story emerging, though, so I'm going to persevere. I'm going to ignore your pretensions (slash symptoms of genius) and assume anything important to the story will be in English.

Hugs and kisses, Ross

Yay

2004-07-30T02:11:00.000-04:00

I have computer woes. Actually not so much "woes" as really fucking annoying bullshit. Sorry, but I'm a tad irate. I tried to install XViD (it's an MPEG-4 video encoder, if that makes any sense to anyone reading) and it (or I) somehow corrupted the Windows registry, or exacerbated an existing corruption, or something. Anyway, the upshot is that I was unable to boot into my system and unable to fix the problem.

So I installed Windows XP while praying to God that my 15 gigs of really important data was still intact. It was. Thank you, God, I owe you one.

Now I'm copying that data over to another computer on the network so that I can wipe this drive clean and start over. It's going to take a couple of hours, so I think I'm going to bed.

I apologise once again for my extended absences. I get focused (my wife would say "obsessed") on certain things to the exclusion of almost everything else, and recently I've been focused on really nerdy computer stuff instead of this blog...

My dad was visiting with us a few days ago. It was great to see him, but it reminded me, as it always does, of how much I miss my family in England. Most of the time I just sort of forget about it, but it's always there, in the back of my mind. I suppose I feel a little as if I'm between homes right now. England isn't my home any more, but Canada isn't either. I don't know where I belong; somewhere over the Atlantic, perhaps. Don't get me wrong: this, here, this place, this house is my home, but I mean it in a different sense. It's hard to explain. My family -- my wife, my kids -- are more important to me than anything. But I still don't feel like I belong here, sometimes. When I go back to England, I don't feel I belong there either. Both countries are, in some fundamental way, alien to me now.

Maybe this will change with time. Perhaps I'm just in the middle of a shift from one state of being to another, from "British" to "Canadian," if you like. Or perhaps I'm not. Maybe I'll always be floating between, never really belonging anywhere. I don't remember ever feeling any particular attachment to England, now that I think about it, aside from the obvious connection that it's where I was born and where almost all my blood relatives live. It could be that "British" and "Canadian" really have no meaning, they're just convenient labels. Or perhaps I'm just congenitally unable to feel "in my place," always with an underlying sense of displacement, a refugee from everywhere.

On that cheery note I'm going to sign off. I'll try to write more. Seriously.

My dog ate my keyboard

2004-07-20T13:26:00.000-04:00

Sorry for my extended absences. I tend to fixate on things: this blog, for a while, and now a programming project. I'm going to try to work on dividing my focus better. I shall not neglect my three readers any longer!

To make up for it, or perhaps to further increase your suffering, here's a bad poem I wrote a year or so ago. I'm not a great poet, or even a good one, but I'd like to be. Anyhoo, here it is:

I imploded
I was pushed into myself
In spectacular fashion
On the journey inwards I saw
Emotions personified
I saw my fear
He was wet, shivering
Kneeling over a blue child
Hands on the still chest
Mouth on the cold lips
Praying to a silent God
Paramedics running
So he stood up guiltily
Don’t stop, they shouted
As he knelt back down
He started to cry
I saw my misery
He was an empty pit
His mother in the corner
Recently diagnosed
Sitting knees to chest
Rocking autistically
Frantic with tears
Because his father
Had confessed again
So he drank alone
Until he fell from his chair
And broke his rib
I saw my fury
He was laughing, hot
Sitting in a smoky pub
His best friend burst in
Sobbing, shirt ripped
A guy pulling her arm
He approached him
And started hitting
But couldn’t stop
People dragged him away
I saw my lust
He was lying with a stranger
He knew so well
Knee between her legs
Watching her react
Raw animal moves
Intoxicated him
In this foreign home
She is the one
Who made me implode
Pushed me into myself
In spectacular fashion
I want her here
For the journey back out
She is my explosion

Bush is a liberal

2004-07-08T15:28:00.000-04:00

That's right, you heard me. A liberal.

Yes, I'm being deliberately provocative. But I'm in despair over how "liberal" has become a dirty word, particularly in American politics. For a politician to be labeled a liberal is a kiss of death, or at least that's the intention of anyone throwing the word around. But this stems from ignorance of what liberalism really means. In the classical, and correct, definition of liberalism, Bush most certainly does qualify:

In the nineteenth century in Europe, the great age of liberalism, the term stood for freedom from church and state authority and the reduction of the power of royalty and aristocracy, free enterprise economics, and the free development of the individual. Liberalism advocated freedom of the press, religious toleration, self-determination for nations. It was liberalism that established parliamentary democracy. The Founding Fathers might be termed liberals.

- iAmericanSpirit Political Dictionary

The Founding Fathers were liberals? 'Fraid so. They weren't left wing, by any means, but liberalism and leftism are not the same thing. Liberalism does not even belong within the left-right spectrum. Liberalism, in fact, holds the middle ground between anarchism and totalitarianism. Anarchism advocates the removal of all power structures, particularly those of a hierarchical nature. It proclaims all people equal, and thus no person should rule over another. Totalitarianism is precisely the opposite. It advocates extremely formal and hierarchical power structures and emphasises individual submission to the state. Liberalism is neither:

1. One broad usage of the term is for a tradition of thought that tries to circumscribe the limits of political power, and to define and support individual rights. We can call this "political liberalism".

2. What can be called "economic liberalism" insists upon the necessity of free trade, is outraged by cartels and monopolies, and sees no merit in a government that meddles unnecessarily in the marketplace.

- Wikipedia

Totalitarianism is absence of freedom. Liberalism is freedom -- the very root of the word is "liberty" -- and yet not the absolute freedom of anarchy. Liberalism's freedom is relative freedom, a grown-up kind of freedom that recognises there are multiple freedoms, and these often clash or contradict. Liberals believe that through compromise all freedoms can be maintained. It is a pluralist philosophy.

By all these definitions Bush is a liberal. Bush believes in freedom from church authority (but, being a liberal, believes in freedom of religion) and freedom from government authoritarianism. Bush believes in free markets and capitalism, and the "free development of the individual." He believes in freedom of the press, though, like all politicians, seeks to manipulate it. Bush believes in self-determination for nations but, like all genuine liberals, not at the expense of allowing a totalitarian regime to prosper. (I realise he allows Saudi Arabia to prosper, but Bush is also a realist.)

The vast, vast majority of Westerners is liberal, and so is the great majority of Muslims. Those who aren't -- the Leninists, Stalinists, fascists, radical Islamists -- represent a tiny fraction of the world's population. Yet that tiny fraction is the most vocal, the most aggressive and the most zealous. The aforementioned groups and paranoid Chomskyites aside, no-one truly believes that we liberals represent a serious threat to the minority, yet they represent a serious threat to us. Liberalism and our way of life, our free and pluralistic societies, disgust and alarm them. Totalitarianism may have all but collapsed in the West with the fall of communism and fascism, but it is still a strong and mostly growing force all around the world. From Iran to Pakistan, from Saudi Arabia to Sudan, from Palestine to Egypt, totalitarian radical Islamics are baying for our blood.

Meanwhile we liberals, we Democrats and Republicans, socialists and progressives, conservatives and centrists, and especially us Western liberals, turn a blind eye to this threat. Those who warn of the real and present danger facing our culture are condemned as racist or reactionary by well-meaning but naive commentators. Israelis, the vast majority of whom are also liberals, are called "Nazis" for their deathless siege on Arafat's compound, while their children are slaughtered by Palestinian suicide bombers. Despite the Saudi government's own admission that it is spending our petrodollars on building mosques and Islamic private schools in North America, mosques and schools they then staff with those who follow the extremist Wahhabi tradition of Islam, who teach our children and our citizens the lies of radical Islam and pass out textbooks describing Jews as "sons of pigs and apes."

We're all liberals. We must never stop fighting each other over social and fiscal policy, over the role and extent of government, over all the many differences between our various denominations within the great liberal mindset. But we must save our biggest fight for our enemies, the supporters of totalitarianism, the denigrators of freedom, for they wish to destroy us and what we represent.

It is rather for us the living, we here be dedicated to the great task remaining before us--that from these honored dead we take increased devotion to that cause for which they here gave the last full measure of devotion--that we here highly resolve that these dead shall not have died in vain, that this nation shall have a new birth of freedom, and that government of the people, by the people, for the people shall not perish from the earth.

- Abraham Lincoln, the Gettysburg Address

It's not all serious

2004-07-05T20:57:00.000-04:00

Saddam plays rock, paper, scissors.

Favorite quote: "Aziz: Tiger Hand always beats paper."

Some bits

2004-07-05T01:10:00.000-04:00

Nice editorial in the Globe and Mail on the threat of radical Islam. Perhaps those who come away from Fahrenheit 911 persuaded that pre-war Iraq was full of shiny, happy people and that the war on terror is just another American oil-grab will realise it's not quite so simple. As the article says, we're not in a clash of civilisations, we're in a clash of civilisation against barbarism.

This Slate piece raises some interesting points about Islamic terrorism. Apparently Israeli intelligence, unlike most other participants in the war on terror, no longer uses "al-Qaeda" as a catch-all label for Middle East terrorism, but instead refers to "world jihad," noting that there are dozens of organisations with similar ideologies and goals as al-Qaeda and that all must be taken seriously (to which it's tempting to respond: no shit, Sherlock). Also interesting is the hint, hardly mentioned in the mainstream press, that foreign terrorists -- Palestinians, Jordanians, Saudis, etc. -- are resposible for a great deal of the violence, and the incitement of such, against coalition forces in Iraq.

A fascinating article on the "novel" 'Alam Saddam Hussein (Saddam Hussein's World), written anonymously, perhaps by a senior Ba'athist. Particularly interesting is the description of Hussein's attempt to assassinate Kurd leader Moustafa al-Barazani: it was arranged that al-Barazani would be visited by seven Iraqi sheikhs, and two of them were persuaded to carry under their gowns a tape recorder, ostensibly to gather intelligence on al-Barazani. Little did they know that the tape recorders were in fact bombs, which were detonated remotely while the sheikhs and al-Barazani met. The latter was injured by the flying severed arm of one of the unfortunate sheikhs. While unsuccessful, the plot was certainly ingenious, and serves to highlight the ruthlessness of Hussein.

Finally, Mark Steyn's review of Bill Clinton's My Life might be the most entertaining of them all. Steyn, right-wing maniac though he undoubtedly is, never fails to delight with his turns of phrase, e.g. "Clinton's book is a double flop: Either stake your claim to join the guys on Mount Rushmore or embrace your destiny as a guy who rushes to mount more."

From the mouths of babes

2004-07-03T13:02:00.000-04:00

So my six-year-old and I were watching Dudley the Dragon last night while my wife and various other children were at a "grindcore" show (see her blog) -- or, rather, she was watching it and I was working on fleshing out the details of my favorite fantasy involving an anti-war march and Janeane Garofalo -- when there came some shouting and laughing from outside.

"Now who's that?" Anna asked rhetorically, and went to the window to look out. She pulled aside the curtain and peered into the night and then, her voice dripping with contempt, said "Oh, it's only some wiggers."

I love it, I love it.

Svelte Saddam's super-stylish

2004-07-01T13:20:00.000-04:00

By Ross Thomas

BAGHDAD - Saddam Hussein turned Iraqi heads today during his arraignment at his former palace in Baghdad, his first public appearance for months.

Saddam Hussein "looked marvellous" at his arraignment today (Reuters photo)

His silver pinstripe suit with a distinctly modern cut (Paul Smith, $1,500) above a crisp white open-neck shirt (Prada, $250) drew admiration from many observers.

"He looked good, very good," said Jane Ferkin, New York Times fashion editor. "The charcoal and white combination was an inspired choice. The suit looked great with the shackles."

Saddam wore black Gucci loafers ($300) with no socks, a bold decision lauded by Queer Eye for the Straight Guy's Carson Kresley.

"My first thought when I saw him was 'hip'. He looked with-it, cool even. So I wasn't in the least surpised when he crossed his legs and I caught a glimpse of his delicious sockless ankles," said Kresley, who has long been an advocate of bare feet in loafers during summer months.

But it wasn't just his wardrobe that caught the attention of style gurus: Saddam took a minimal approach to accessories, sporting only a platinum Cartier wristwatch ($3,200).

"It was exactly the right watch to wear," said Martin Fowler of GQ magazine. "It was understated enough to perfectly complement his ensemble."

Saddam's new look is in stark contrast to his days as Iraq's brutal totalitarian dictator, said Joan Rivers, famous for her Oscar-night fashion commentary.

"Before it was all army outfits, heavy on the drab green, and how about that stupid beret?" she said. "Today he looked marvellous, it's a complete departure for him. He's lost a bit of weight, too."

Rivers also pointed to Saddam's hairstyle as further evidence of a fashion turn-around.

"He's dyed his hair, I think. Remember when he was dragged from his spider hole seven months ago?" she asked reporters. "He was a complete mess, all grey hair and straggly beard. I was disgusted at how he'd let himself go."

Kresley, too, was excited by Saddam's apparent desire to leave behind his military fatigues.

"I guess someone had a word in his ear, finally. The soldier look gets real old real fast, it's time for something a little more mature and sophisticated," he said. "Lose the rifles and pistols, it's all about shoes, belts and glasses. His trial will certainly provide his designers with a great showcase. I can't wait to see what else they'll come up with."

Saddam rejected charges of war crimes and genocide.

Programmer: Contract not worth the goddamn money

2004-06-30T03:22:00.000-04:00

By Ross Thomas

KITCHENER, ON - The world of programmers-for-hire shook today when one developer announced his latest contract just isn't worth the goddamn money.

"I underestimated how long it would take, and undercharged the guy," said Ross Thomas, 27. "This is a complete waste of my time."

Thomas, who accepted the contract to rewrite existing Java-based software to a native Windows and Mac OS environment two months ago, began to regret his decision after only a few weeks into the contract.

"I thought it would be no big deal, it's pretty simple software," he spat bitterly. "But it's turned out to be a major pain in the ass."

Thomas partly blames the original developer of the Java code for making "a complete pig's ear" of the project.

"It's insane. You should see the code. It's all in one enormous file, and I have to plow through thousands of lines just to find the bit I'm trying to convert," he said, gesturing hopelessly towards a stack of printouts on his desk.

But he also admitted that he has to accept responsibility for what he now realises was a wildly optimistic estimate of how time-consuming the contract would be.

"I blame myself too," he said slumped over his laptop, his head buried in his hands. "Next time I'll know better."

"If there is a next time," he added.

Thomas has been working on the project for most of his waking hours and said he is beginning to doubt it'll ever be completed.

"I hate it, I hate it!" he growled at no-one in particular, before finally going to bed at 3:22am.

E Day

2004-06-29T03:31:00.000-04:00

So today was E Day. I went to the campaign office around 2pm, drank free coffee, ate free sandwiches, and left the same message on 50 answerphones: "Hi, I'm a volunteer with the Andrew Telegdi Liberal campaign, and I'm calling to remind you that today is election day, in case you've been living under a rock for a month. Etc."

I headed to the voting station about 4:30 to scrutineer. It involved a whole lot of standing up, checking their lists against my lists, and phone calls to tardy Liberal voters. At 9:30pm the polls closed and the count was made. It soon became apparent that I'd managed successfully to intimidate the elderly and frail poll volunteers into turning up a favorable result for Telegdi, and after the last ballot box was sealed we (my wife and I) headed to his victory party.

We made straight for a TV to check the results, and much to my surprise my unorthadox predictions (see previous post) were proven too orthadox. Here's what I predicted at about noon today:

Liberals	124
Conservatives	100
NDP	32
Bloc Quebecois	50
Green	1
Independent	1

And here are the actual results, as of 3:08am:

Liberals	135
Conservatives	99
NDP	19
Bloc Quebecois	54
Green	0
Independent	1

As you can see, I underestimated Liberal seats by 11, Tories by one, and BQ by 4. I overestimated NDP seats by 13 and Green by one. Not bad, if I do say so myself, particularly when three of the four major polls were predicting a Tory minority win.

The bad news is that if the results stay this way, the Liberals and NDP combined still don't have enough seats to form a majority -- they have 154, one short of a majority, and will need the support of one candidate from another party, either a Tory (be it from the Conservative Party or Chuck Cadman, the ex-Tory independent candidate elected in Surrey North, BC) or a BQ. Still, one MP is acceptable. For Martin to be seen soliciting support from a handful of individual Bloc MPs would not, I think, be perceived as "getting into bed" with the separatists.

One positive result I anticipate from this result is that the NDP will hold significant sway in parliament, and one pre-condition upon which Layton has refused to budge when it comes to cooperating with the ruling party is that there be a national referendum on proportional representation within a year of the new government forming. PR is badly needed here, and this election illustrates that perfectly. Here is how the seat distribution would look if PR were in place:

Liberals	114
Conservatives	92
NDP	49
Bloc Quebecois	39
Green	14

As you can see, the Liberals, Tories and Bloc got a disproportionate (or "efficient," in the parlance of one TV commentator) share of the vote when it comes to seats won, while the NDP and Greens were distinctly short-changed. The Greens should have 14 seats and instead they get none? The Bloc should have 39 seats and instead they have 54? Hardly fair. Let's hope the NDP doesn't renege on its commitment to PR and that we get a referendum on the matter before the year's out. I'll definitely be campaigning to get that one through...

Election prediction

2004-06-28T11:53:00.000-04:00

I decided I'd stick my neck out and predict the outcome of today's voting. While I consider the current consensus -- a very tight race resulting in a minority, with the question of who'll lead it too close to call -- to be the most likely scenario, it's also not very interesting (in the sense that everyone else is saying it).

Thus I'm going to take a chance and say the Liberals are going to win it with a bigger minority than anyone's predicting. Based on the SES poll I mentioned in my previous post, as well as a feeling that people have disengaged somewhat from the national posturing and are instead focussing on local issues and candidates (which tends to favor the incumbents), as well as my gut feeling that Harper's party (given the sheer number of Tories going off-message, and the resulting suspicion of a hidden agenda that inspires) have lost favor, particularly in Ontario, I feel that's the most likely "surprise" outcome, if there is to be one.

Here's my utterly unscientific seat projection:

Liberals	124
Conservatives	100
NDP	32
Bloc Quebecois	50
Green	1
Independent	1

Odds are I'll be proven wrong and the pollsters proven right, but at least this is more interesting than the usual "too close to call," right?

Lies, damn lies, and polls

2004-06-28T11:41:00.000-04:00

Yesterday was a whole lot of fun. About 11am I get a call about the job, to let me know I wasn't successful. Apparently it was very close, so close that she urged me to apply again next year. Then about an hour later I get an email from a guy I'm writing software for saying he's amending the completion date from mid-July to... tomorrow. I was not best pleased.

Anyhoo, that's all water under the bridge. It's election day! As expected from the get-go, Paul Martin's Liberals will sweep the nation, winning the largest majority since Mulroney. Er... Maybe not. A minority government is almost certain, the only question being: who's gonna lead it?

The polls offer little insight. Ipsos-Reid has the Liberals with 32% against the Tories at 31%, as does EKOS. Environics has them tied at 33%. All these results are a dead heat, with the one-point difference falling easily into the margin of error. (Notably, though, SES has the Liberals at 40% and the Tories at 27%, but most analysts agree the race is far tighter.)

Where the polls begin to diverge, though, is on seat allocation. The Ipsos-Read seat projection has the Liberals at 99-103, the Tories at 115-119, the NDP at 22-26 and the Bloc Quebecois at 64-68. On the other hand, the EKOS projection has the Liberals at 117, the Tories at 109, the NDP at 27 and the Bloc at 55. This proves nothing other than seat projections based upon poll data are unreliable to say the least.

But the most important question, at least for the Liberals, is how many seats the NDP will end up with. Jack Layton is confident they'll out-do their all-time record haul of 43 seats, but that smells like wishful thinking. If the NDP and Liberals combined have enough seats to form a majority coalition, the chances are Martin will stay on as PM regardless of whether or not his party gets the plurality of seats. But if together they fall short of the magic 155, they're going to have to rely on support from the Bloc or renegade Tories. The latter is unlikely, and the former very dangerous considering the noise both Grits and Dippers have made over Harper getting into bed with the BQ.

As James Travers points out in a very interesting article in today's Toronto Star, the real winners may well be those who end up forming the opposition, since the idea of a coalition with the Bloc is wildly unpopular amongst the public. While he makes valid points, I think his argument applies more to a Stephen Harper/Gilles Duceppe coalition than it does a Martin/Duceppe one. The Bloc, being left-leaning, would naturally support most of the Liberal platform anyway, and Martin has come out strongly against Quebec sovereignty. Harper, on the other hand, would have a very tough time persuading them to support most of his campaign promises, and more importantly has continually pledged greater provincial power. The obvious suspicion is that a Tory/Bloc government would boost the separatists' cause, a concern underlined by recent comments by Parti Quebecois leader Bernard Landry that a BQ victory in Quebec would result in another referendum in five years' time.

All things considered it's going to be a very interesting election...

Familiar

2004-06-24T23:22:00.000-04:00

There's a story in the Globe and Mail today revealing that in the event of a Conservative minority win, Paul Martin may well stay on as Prime Minister on the advice of the Governor-General:

The Governor-General, Adrienne Clarkson, has been advised that if there is not a clear winner on Monday, she should opt for a lineup of parties with the best chance of governing rather than one that could lead to parliamentary chaos.

That could mean persuading Liberal Leader Paul Martin to seek a coalition or other commitment from the NDP and the Bloc Québécois, even if the Conservatives win more seats than the Liberals.

I'm sure I read this somewhere before.

They also mention she must consider popular opinion:

But the final decision, if she has to make it, will be a political one in which she and her advisers take into consideration the number of seats each party obtains, popular votes, and polls reflecting what people want.

Again, this rings a bell.

As I've said over and over, the chances of Canada having a Conservative-led coalition are slim. A further issue, which I've not seen mentioned anywhere, is whether the Governor-General would be irresponsible in allowing a separatist party, the Bloc Quebecois, to hold sway over a party, the Conservatives, who already favor increasing provincial power at the expense of federal. The Governor-General is supposed to be the Queen's representative in Canada, and it seems unlikely to me that the Queen would consider allowing a party to wield influence who were elected by the people of only one province and who stand for the destruction of the country itself. While calling this a "constitutional crisis" might be a little hysterical, it's certainly, as Ned Flanders would say, a dilly of a pickle.

Child porn

2004-06-21T13:13:00.000-04:00

I mentioned in my previous post that child porn is once again a hot topic in Canadian society (or, at least, newspapers). The reason for this is Michael Briere, who recently pleaded guilty of sexually assaulting, murdering and dismembering a 10-year-old girl. In his statement he revealed that immediately prior to committing his crime he'd been looking at child porn on his computer.

And let the hysteria begin. "Briere's claim in the statement that he was incited by kiddie porn prompted immediate and plaintive pleas from Crown attorney Paul Culver and Holly's family for Ottawa to enact tougher laws to combat the scourge of child pornography," says the above news report from the National Post.

Now I feel enormous sympathy for the victim and her family. Briere is a monster and should be locked away, probably forever. I also despise child pornography and those who make it. They are exploiting the most vulnerable in our society, and that should always be condemned.

But, that said, one can't blame child porn for Briere's actions. "Indeed, the statement of facts suggests Holly was simply in the wrong place at the wrong time and a random victim of Briere's uncontrollable impulses after he viewed kiddie porn on the Internet," the story continues.

Bullshit. There's an argument made, probably correctly, that pedophilia is an uncontrollable condition. I hesitate to compare it to homosexuality, because I just know someone's going to completely ignore my actual point and instead attack me for being homophobic, but I do think the comparison is valid. I'm not equating homosexuality with pedophilia in any other way than that they are both somehow "built in" to people. Gay rights activists have been insisting for years that "sexual preference" is an invalid phrase, that we should instead say "sexual orientation," and I agree with them. Pedophilia, I would argue, is also a sexual orientation in this sense.

Briere is a pedophile, clearly. He can't help that. But to suggest that he wasn't able to control his actions, that child porn somehow "forced" him to do what he did, is nonsense. As Rosie Dimanno points out in today's Toronto Star, the vast, vast majority of Catholic priests are able to subdue their lusts and resist their temptations. One doesn't have to act on one's impulses.

If it's really true that Briere was unable to resist his urge to have sex with a child, that would indicate he was not just a pedophile but also suffering from a personality disorder, perhaps APD. To blame anything for the actions of a sociopath, besides perhaps a miswired brain, is illogical and irresponsible. It wasn't child porn that made Briere into a killer. That part of his personality was already there.

But if one is to take the position that if he'd not had access to child porn he might've been able to contain his lust, one then also has to condemn regular pornography. It's a stretch to think that a photo of a naked pre-teen would trigger his psychopathy, but that a photo of a naked 18-year-old wouldn't. We have also to consider works of art depicting naked children, which are just as likely to titilate a pedophile, and novels and plays and sociological studies on the subject. If one begins to blame what we see for what we do, we start down a very slippery slope. We must take action not just against child porn but against regular porn, against art, against science, against movies, against TV shows. We must discount the evidence of our own experience that watching Natural Born Killers doesn't make us into psychopaths, that listening to Tupak doesn't make us into thugs, that reading Mother Theresa's A Simple Path doesn't make us into saints.

The main reason for the child porn hysteria, I believe, is our constant search for a bogeyman, some grand threat against which we must rail. Once it was witches, then space aliens and UFOs, then practitioners of satanic abuse. Now it's pedophiles. The pedophile is, perhaps, the ultimate bogeyman. Pedophilia cannot be detected, nor can it be predicted. It can be anywhere and everywhere. The fact that child sex crimes are vanishingly infrequent compared to crimes against adults shouldn't deter us from our crusade.

We condemn what we see as the increased sexualisation of children. I would argue, in fact, that such practices have decreased significantly. These days it is considered repugnant to suggest that young people have sexual desires, or can be sexually attractive. Were Shakespeare to write Romeo and Juliet now, he would be lambasted for suggesting that teenagers should be allowed to express their sexuality, as would Freud for writing that sexuality plays any role in the development of children.

Perhaps the greatest taboo, though, is to suggest that teenage females can be sexually attractive to adult males. This is to me the greatest illogicality of the whole phenomena. No-one would seriously contend that teen boys aren't attracted to teen girls, and yet there's supposed to be some magical switch in mens' heads that turns off this attraction once they pass the age of 18. Any honest man would tell you this simply isn't so.

Evolution has a lot to answer for, and the attractiveness of teenage females is one of those things. All the criteria we subconsciously use to determine a suitable mate are present in them: clear skin, clear eyes and high energy levels all indicate good health. Firm bodies indicate physical fitness. These are the things we're programmed to look for, because a fit mate means fit offspring. Nature is consistent, too: the age range during which women are most likely to survive unaided childbirth is from 15-19, and scientific studies have shown that this is also precisely the age range men find most sexually attractive (anyone who doesn't believe me can simply click here for ample proof).

Of course there are many reasons to prefer older women over teenagers: maturity, sophistication and experience, both emotionally and sexually. But none of these things matter to our reptillian brain, and that's what is responsible for our sexuality. Again it comes down to something deep in our psyche. Like homosexuals who can't control their attraction to people of the same sex, and pedophiles who can't control their attraction to children, men can't control their attraction to young (by which I mean mid- to late-teenage) girls. It's been with us for millions of years, and will remain with us at least that long.

That's not to say men should have complete freedom to act on this attraction. There are plenty of factors we, as modern humans, must take into consideration before beginning any sexual relationship, including the maturity levels of those involved. But by making it dangerous to admit the attraction exists we stifle open discussion of it. We push it underground and we make it sordid. We encourage, not discourage, the proliferation of teen porn web sites and the like, turning a genuine and universal male personality trait into something illicit, nasty and unmentionable. And freakin' expensive.

As I said, evolution has a lot to answer for. I'll be returning to similar topics later, but congratulations for staying with me this far. Men, you may now return to the above Google link. Women, you may now begin berating me via the comments box.