Failure to Re-Launch?

Okay, so this is my first post in a month or so. I'm running into unanticipated difficulties.

1) Work.
My current job demands that I awaken at four-thirty, or possibly five, or three-thirty, or sometimes one, a.m. Then I work eight, six, ten, or nine hours at work that is sometimes extraordinarily physical (i.e. lifting five hundred garbage cans weighing between five and twenty-five kilos) or stultifyingly not-so (sitting in the passenger seat of a dumpster truck, occasionally pulling a bin out).

This leaves me in the early afternoon with no desire or motivation higher than a beer in front of the tube and an early night. Yeah, I apparently have become one of those three-B guys. Beer, Boob Tube, and Bed.

2) Personal life.My personal life is complicated. Not in any serious way--Mme Metro and I just celebrated over a decade together. But in a way that requires planning and co-ordination between a number of people, mostly because of my:

3) Social life.
For the first time in many years, I have most of my evenings free. This is due to relocation. I used to occupy my time with jam sessions and acting both are on hiatus because see #1. It's hard to commit to a schedule of rehearsal when you might arrive home at eleven having to work at three the next morning. The days when I drank 'till four then went to work at seven are kind of behind me.

However, evening commitments are creeping under the door. You know the way of it. You meet people, you like them and are interested in them, you share an interest, and join a community, and next thing you know you're chairing the Thursday night meetings ...

4) How far do I wish to let you in, O Avid Fan?
I am not the same Metro who started this blog. I am no longer pseudonymous to a number of people out there, and that can constrain what I want to write publicly. In fact when I am having an experience I consider writing-worthy, I now seem to think of the experience in three categories:

• Open: Anyone could read this. Fit for consumption by the general public. Mind you, if Glenn Beck is still seen as fit for public consumption ...
• Semi-private: My friends and Avid Fans are unlikely to judge me too harshly for this. Not for sharing with strangers or co-workers.
• Private: I might mention this to Mme Metro. Other than that, forget it. I am a great fan of the quote "Three can keep a secret, if two of them are dead." (B. Franklin, Poor Richard's Almanack), and am equally sure the compulsion to "talk it out" is usually little more than an ego-driven vice that makes a virtue of hurting someone one should know well enough not to hurt in such fashion, or even have a reason to do so in the first place.

Part of the problem is deciding what filter I let things pass. Obviously most of my life is fairly public. If I were outed from the house-tops I doubt most of the people who know me even in passing would be astounded at the content here at the Ol' Metroblog. But I still dither about posting some of it.

But I will persevere. I believe the cure for the after-work flops is exercise. I'm taking up swimming. It's a good fit for my body type (Whales swim, right? Not many of them do a lot of weightlifting or aerobics), and it's relatively low-impact. I also find I have a bit more energy in the evening after a swim, and that I sleep very well too.

Likewise, I believe the cure for Writer's Rust is the same as the cure for most rusty things: Apply lubricant and exercise the moving parts. Alcohol is considered an excellent lubricant for most related purposes.

People say "Write what you know." I'd rather write things I know to be fiction. But I'm back to baby steps, clinging to the couch or coffee-table of certainty for support. But I expect it's like riding a bicycle.

Not the classic aphorism about never forgetting. Rather, think back to the time you first rode a bicycle.

And with that, I have an idea for my next post.

O Avid Fan, You Are Not Forgotten!

That goes for both of you.

I promised Sr. Strutts that I would revisit the comment he left me on my post about the all-too-predictable failure of the Copenhagen Conference, and that's part of what I'm doing today.

But I just cleared a major project and have some other stuff to do. So I'll content myself with posting this:



This seems to be a pirate video, so I'll refer you to the site where the original may be found: Weebls Stuff.

This Is News? #94

Caribou Barbie has blackened her running mate's name.

Uh, didn't she do that pretty much as soon she joined the campaign? Not that he wasn't making a fine job of it on his own, but he needed someone to ensure that there was something in his platform for crazy, gun-loving, Bible-thumping, white people who weren't male, too.

Do You Think the National Post Could Use an Editor?

Canada's National Post, whose "Full Comment" section would make fine budgie-cage liner did it but exist in print, has been allowed by a bankruptcy court to shuffle under a different corporate umbrella and has thus survived the death of its parent.

Oddly, this has not improved the quality of its content, save that John Baglow has apparently decided he enjoys bear-baiting sufficiently to allow the NP to reuse his blog posts. I believe he feels this will promote discussion.

While I must admit the comments there are considably smarter than the NP average, I feel this is because the standard is improved by the presence of actual thinking commenters, not common elsewhere. Witness the savaging John Moore, the sole critical thinker writing in the NP until Baglow came along, receives on this post.

However, they've clearly cut back on actual editors and actual journalism. The wrong is tremendous and the irony could shoe a racetrack.

First, the Senate didn't "weaken" the bill. They affirmed the rights of individuals. I'm personally in favour of Bill C-6 because it'll trounce some of the woo-practitioners unless they can prove that their bark, roots, herbs, or magic can actually DO something. But I never wanted inspectors to be able to raid homes without a warrant.

Secondly, a paper that staunchly defends the Federal Government's right to evade torture accusations claims that reaffirming the need for a warrant "weakens" legislation. It is to laugh, hollowly.

Third: Here's the accompanying picture.



This, on the other hand, is Health Minister Leona Aglukkaq, an Inuk and one of the few Conservative Ministers I've had any respect at all for.

Clearly, all brown people DO in fact look alike to them.

Out of the Memory Hole

I just reread The Jungle Book. It's one of my favourites from Kipling, who is indisputably one of the finest tubercular authors to dribble ink on the page.

And I was wondering, particulary what became of the video I once saw in about 1978 of the story of Kotik the White Seal.

When out of the blue I hit YouTube looking for a video of the Beatles' Rocky Raccoon for reasons that would take too long to explain, and discovered the video below. I also discovered that it was by Chuck Jones, one of Mme's indubitable favourites. And so how could I not present it here?



You'll find the rest at YouTube, natch.

It has been my observation that people of my advanced years simply don't think in terms of YouTube. We say "I once saw ..." something. Whereas a younger person of my acquiantance often says "Hey, I saw this great thing last night ... Hang on while I look it up!"

Nonetheless, here's the Chuch Jones version of Kotick, the White Seal:



Other bits also on YT.
The narrations are awesome: Orson Welles for the former and Roddy McDowell for the latter.

It's a Great, Great Day

I don't do Twitter. Seriously, d'you think I ever had anything to say in 140 characters or fewer?

However, I might just join now. Gene Ray, self-billed as "Wisest Human" and originator of TIMECUBE is on Twitter. So I noticed on Pharyngula.

To frame this properly, one needs to consider that Ray's been around pretty much as long as the internet has had the capacity for pixellated graphics and eye-searing, effect-smeared fonts, and has developed a following of people bemused and amazed by the foaming bat$#17 lunacy he spews.

In some of the places I hang out on the 'net, teh crazy is measured on a scale of 0.0 to 1.0 Timecubes.

A selection of his tweets:

To worship a religious/academic defied Queer(God) as your progenitor, equates to spitting puke in your Mom and Dad's face - a beastly act.

Actually, infants and children do this all the time, dude.

You would be wiser if unschooled then be taught ONEness stupidity to worship Evil of ONEism, contradicted by Opposite Creation.

To quote Opus from the Bloom County strips: "And would I have monkeys pick my nose for me?"

THIS APPEARS TO CONTAIN ORANGE SHERBET WHICH IS NOT PART OF THE TIME CUBE

Sure, 'cos the TIME CUBE is all about Ben and Jerry's Chunky Monkey.

But unfortunately it's not all fun and games. Here's why I'm not linking to him:

Academic retards teaches worship of queer jew god, equates to adults eating their children.

SUN power will not allow any Black Skin power to rule over its Light Domain.

Queers killed my lil Brother. A Queer God induces AIDS.

WARNING TO EDUCATED STUPID, Black Skin equates imprisonment, white race had nothing to do making negros black.

It's a good lesson in why we can't afford to laugh at teh crazy, but also can't afford not to. And yes, perhaps it's mean to laugh at someone so clearly exhibiting the symptoms of mental illness.

My consolation is that a) he probably won't notice and b) he probably won't care if he does. I'm utterly certain he's used to it by now.

Now THAT'S In-flight Service!

A baby born on an airliner will receive free flights for life, along with his mother.

That's amazingly cool.

Date: Future
Metro and heavily-pregnant Mme Metro arrive at the flight counter.

Attendant: May I help you?
Metro: Yeah ... Which of these flights to Australia is the most turbulent?

LOL of th' Day

xkcd is teh ossum.

Matt Taibbi: Now Known as "Dances With Nuts"

From an article entitled "Jesus Made Me Puke":

By the end of the weekend I realized how quaint was the mere suggestion that Christians of this type should learn to "be rational" or "set aside your religion" about such things as the Iraq War or other policy matters. Once you've made a journey like this — once you've gone this far — you are beyond suggestible. It's not merely the informational indoctrination, the constant belittling of homosexuals and atheists and Muslims and pacifists, etc., that's the issue. It's that once you've gotten to this place, you've left behind the mental process that a person would need to form an independent opinion about such things. You make this journey precisely to experience the ecstasy of beating to the same big gristly heart with a roomful of like-minded folks. Once you reach that place with them, you're thinking with muscles, not neurons.

Let's Hear It #346

For headline honesty.

By the Way ...

Have I mentioned I won a thread?

If I win enough threads I could knit a a sock.

Canadian Cynic may be a little rough around the edges (I imagine the CC crew sitting around saying "What's it to ya, douchebag?") but they seem to have a good grip on news stories that dip below the radar but are still important politically.

They also expose, day after day, the incredible gap, nay, chasm, between Canada's conservatives and reality. It gets a little monotonous sometimes, to be honest. But if the Blogging Tories and the National Post continue to churn out the industrial-grade stupid, well someone's gotta call them on their rampant intellectual dishonesty (when it rises to the level of "intellectual").

An Israeli Perspective on the Goldstone Report

And not the one you've been hearing about.For those of you tuning in late, the Goldstone Report, realeased today, offers stern criticisms of Israel's actions in the late wars:

" Although the U.N. investigation found that Palestinian militants also committed war crimes, the overwhelming majority of the criticism in a summary of the 574-page report targets Israel.

Israel "committed actions amounting to war crimes, possibly crimes against humanity," the report says."

~CNN

I happen to rather like the Jerusalem Post. They'll happily print genuine debate on real issues in their pages. Amongst the pro- and con- Goldstone opinions we have Larry Derfner calling the report "A wake-up call from Judge Goldstone". One of the most interesting points of his analysis of the report--which was criticized by Israel's deputy foreign minister as "a dangerous attempt to harm the principle of self-defense by democratic states [which] provides legitimacy to terrorism"--is this one:

And we don't see that we did anything wrong. Somebody's got to tell us. Lots of people have tried, including Amnesty International, the Red Cross, Human Rights Watch and, last but definitely not least, dozens of our own soldiers.

We've tried to smear them all, to silence them, to drown out the message that keeps repeating itself from one source to another. Now we have the message, the same message again, from one of the world's most respected, accomplished men of justice. South Africa's Judge Richard Goldstone has a record that no one in this country would dare try to tarnish. What's more, he's not only a Jew (and a former president of World ORT), he's also a friend of Israel. He was on the board of directors at the Hebrew University, got an honorary doctorate there, he's visited this country any number of times, his daughter's lived here for awhile.

So there we have it. From an authoritative and sympathetic voice, a stern warning to Israel that it has to stop acting like the people it purports to be defending itself against.

Why Ask Why?

Over at the theoretically-leftish Toronto Star, an editorial asks the question: What's the reason for an election?

The question is: why an election now, other than that it would save the Liberals and the others from the embarrassment of having to continue "propping up" the Conservative government

Now personally, I feel that that question answers itself. However, Randall Denley at the usually-rightish Ottawa Citizen expresses it better in an editorial entitled "Ignatieff has nothing to lose if the writ drops" (subtitled "And neither do we, so bring it on"):

Ignatieff's decision to push for an election now is being portrayed as odd or inappropriate, but it's neither if one considers it from his perspective. Simply put, all the alternatives are worse.

Minority government is tough for the party in power, but it's just as bad for the opposition. It's pretty lame for an opposition leader to condemn the government and then vote for its policies to avoid triggering an election, but that's Ignatieff's other choice.

But it doesn't end there:

As he tries to show why an election is needed, Ignatieff has found an unlikely ally in Harper. Harper gave us a clue as to the breadth of his vision for the country when he reminded Canadians that an election now could deprive them of the cheques they have been counting on from his home-renovation program. There is no real chance that the Liberals will cancel this witless crowd-pleaser, but it tells us where Harper thinks our interests are. Canadians, in his view, can't see beyond the flaps of their wallets.

Yup, that sums it up nicely. Harper believes we're so venial and myopic that we're willing to sit still for the dismantling of our nation in return for a mess of pottage.

And while I personally quite like pottage, I prefer an election.

Oh, the Wildlife-ity!

Raincoaster has been following the threads of the Great Meerkat Conspiracy, which has explained so much in terms of the rarity of fairies, the reduction of fish stocks, and the shortage of four-leafed clovers (they got the leprechauns first, don'cha know).

However, now ominous news reaches our peepers of the newest soldiers in the Meerkat War With Fish and People.

It is truly the saddest of news, for once-respectable raptors have now been recruited into the ravaging ranks of the Meerkat Army.

Read it and weep:

Eagle smashes car windshield with fish

Two targets with one bird, eh?

This, as Rick Mercer used to say on "Made In Canada", is not good.

We urgently await a statement from G Eagle on whether this indicates a change of eagle allegiance in the Total War Against Terror, Intrigue, And Meerkats (TWATIAM).

Stay calm, be brave, watch for the signs.

A Thought Occurs

A friend posted a link wishing that "track pants were sexy, Mondays were fun, and guys were simple."

And I thought "Pardon?"

How many guys do you know who'll spend an hour getting ready for a night out, then collapse in tears because "I'm a mess!"?

How many guys do you know who own twelve pairs of shoes, and not one "walking" pair?

How many guys ever looked into the eyes of a woman they're in bed with and said "Honey--Are you sure this is a good idea?"

As a metaphor for trying to understand the nature of women, one should first acquire five jigsaw puzzles. Now remove ten percent of the pieces from each and throw the remainder through the laundry. Place all pices in a basket with large holes, shake it up. Now put on a blindfold and oven mitts and try to assemble a picture.

Guys are simple. It's dealing with the other half of humanity that makes us prime candidates for therapy.

Like Shooting Gefilte Fish

From one of those rags I don't normally read comes this gem:

Three city mayors, two state politicians and five rabbis were among 44 people arrested across New Jersey today when federal agents cracked an alleged Sopranos-style crime ring accused of bribery, money laundering and trafficking body parts and counterfeit handbags.

I just knew I shouldn't have bought that handbag made of human skin, but it was so smooth and silky ... And oy such a deal!

From the CBC:

Much stricter controls are needed over the use of Taser stun guns by police in B.C., former judge Thomas Braidwood says in the first phase of findings from his inquiry into stun guns.

I would just like to say to Justice Braidwood: Bravo. And also WELL DUH

On CTV we learn that Canadian versions of internationally branded foods tend to be higher, sometimes much higher, in salt:

A serving of Burger King onion rings has 1,500 milligrams of sodium per serving -- more than 100 per cent of the daily recommended intake. A serving of BK onion rings in the UK has just 500 mg -- even though the serving size in the UK is about 30 per cent larger.
[...]
Canada, meanwhile, has some of the highest levels of sodium in our packaged and chain restaurant foods, which might explain why the country has such high rates of high blood pressure, a major risk factor for heart attack, heart failure, stroke, and kidney disease.

We're just trying to convince the cannibals to leave us alone. They hate salty food too.

There's a massive, beautiful thunder-and-lightning storm outside my window right now. The noise rumbles through the ground like an earthquake. My lights are flickering as the lightning flashes. I hope the rain does the firefighters some good. The big fire in Fintry got worse yesterday.

While Squandering a Perfectly Good Hour

I was taking a break from my usual hectic schedule (Up at 6:30, make coffee for Mme Metro, retire to computer for rousing game of poker, crack first beer of day ... Just kidding--Honest!).

But I did take a break from some writing work I'm doing to go play a quick game of Desktop Tower Defence. And this is what I saw:


And my first thought, I must confess, was:
"If I looked like that to start with, why the hell would I want a cartoon made of me?"

A Pattern Emerges

Stephen Harper is not, in the words of Don Corleone, "A man of respect." He fires experts rather than acknowledge their competence, muzzles his own ministers, takes the cheapest of cheap shots, fires off attack ads to "save Canadians" from the threat of another election even when a)no threat of an election exists and b) it's hardly a threat to anyone but him. He's known to be contemptuous of others' ideas and opinions, and only by being close as an oyster has he thus far avoided looking like the nasty, unsympathetic, stringy-souled wretch he is.

In recent weeks, two incidents have occurred which throw a bit of light on the character of the hapless and uncomfortable man currently holding the national rudder.

First was Stephen Harper's crackergate. Catholics were scandalized to observe Mister Harper, at a state funeral for former Governor-General Romeo LeBlanc, caught on video apparently taking a communion wafer (about 0:30) and failing to consume it.



Now this wouldn't be a problem if Harper was not himself an evangelical Protestant Christian, who should reasonably be expected to understand about sacred cows. But moreover, he's the Prime Minister of a country that still divides fairly sharply along the Catholic/Protestant divide.

Harper's spokesperson complicated matters by absolutely insisting that his boss swallowed the cracker. Which certainly doesn't appear to happen in the few seconds during which Harper is obscured by the priest.

As an atheist, and one who expressed some concern over a prior incident, I'm of two minds here:

First: It's a cracker, basically. The priest raising the alarm on this one probably isn't very busy otherwise.

Second, however: This guy's the PM. He's supposed to know better--In fact I'd bet he can hardly have avoided knowing better. It seems disrespectful at a very fundamental level. He could have waved off the priest. I sometimes attend church with my family and never take communion.

Perhaps he thought that slipping it into his pocket was better than being seen by the nation's Catholics refusing to accept it?

But my belief is that it's just part of his disrespect for anyone who isn't him.

Last April, Harper made my country a laughing stock by turning up late for photos at a conference. In fact the first picture at the last G13 (the G8 plus the G5) meeting didn't include him at all.

He repeated the stunt last week, after just about everyone at the G8 meeting criticized him for also being absent on climate change. Canada, under the "leadership" of the Harper Tories, has shamefully neglected, avoided, and ducked its environmental responsibilities.

It's all of a piece: There are the bold and barefaced lies about our environmental policies being sufficient (Harper's plan includes no penalties for excess pollution, resists any scheme to actually, you know, limit greenhouse gas emissions, and is allegedly supposed to produce results starting in 2050--which politically speaking is as close to "never" as dammit).

There's the consistent lack of consideration and respect for other world leaders--Let me rephrase that: "for world leaders".

And the apparent disrespect for Catholic traditions. If you don't share that particular superstition it is surely harmless and innocuous to not take the wafer.

Harper, in terms of establishing meaningful human, international, and intergovernmental relationships, is a washout. Why? Because, it seems, he just doesn't respect anyone who isn't him. Of course, I could simply have called him a Conservative. In Canada these days it seems that that's the shorthand.

Addendum:
I have noticed that where Webster Cook's transgression, and PZ Myers' deliberate desecration of the Host produced death threats and howls of outrage at the "hate crime", particularly from those on the Harperite side of the ideological chasm, the PM's absention of a Host appears to have drawn much milder criticism. I'd like to believe that it's because we're Canadian, and we recognize that, in itself, this is a nothing incident.

As part of Harper's pattern of disrespect, it seems to be more significant.

Walk, Man, Walk On

Thirty years ago next Christmas or so, my sister managed to get her grasping hooks on a Sony Walkman, courtesy of Father Christmas (known in these modern times as Non-Specified, Irreligious, Entirely Commercial Holiday Figure). NSIECHF had received word that the immature zygote considered it the ultimate in desiderata.

It was the hottest thing since Betamax (O Avid Fan children, ask your Avid Fan parents what Betamax was). It was going to be bigger than the laser disc player (O Avid Fan children, ask your Avid Fan parents what a laser disc player was), while being smaller than a boombox (O Avid Fan children, ask your Avid Fan parents what a boombox was).

To celebrate the thirtieth anniversary of the Walkman, the BBC convinced a thirteen-year-old to use one for a week. His perceptions are astoundingly deep and sagacious, for such a young man, sprinkled with amusing generational misunderstandings:

From a practical point of view, the Walkman is rather cumbersome, and it is certainly not pocket-sized, unless you have large pockets. It comes with a handy belt clip screwed on to the back, yet the weight of the unit is enough to haul down a low-slung pair of combats.

What the young man fails to understand, of course, is that pockets in trousers of the day were nonfunctional, as the pants they were sewn to were so tight as to prohibit the insertion of anything thicker than a quarter for bus fare (O Avid Fan children, ask your Avid Fan parents what a quarter was, and when it could have last been used for bus fare). That same tightness guaranteed that they could not be pulled down by a three-pound Walkman, or in many cases by a 230-pound centre-forward (That, O Avid Fans young and old, is the real reason for the rise in teen pregnancies--Pants you can remove in a Volkswagen).

However, the BBC seems to have locked on to one of the few thirteen-year-olds who can't cope with technology:

It took me three days to figure out that there was another side to the tape. That was not the only naive mistake that I made.

Read about the rest of them here.

Michael Jackson Eases on Down the Road

It's a surprise ending to a brief, sad life dogged by controversy. Assuming it's not a publicity stunt (update: it looks as though it isn't).

I liked Jackson's earlier work--up until Thriller. My sister went a long way towards killing any affection I might have had for him by overplaying the album (just as she did with any music she enjoyed. My loathing of Abba remains unabated).

Mr Jackson did the rest. With his increasingly bizarre behaviour, unfortunate inability to form normal human relationships, and continued devotion to plastic surgery that would make a hard-core body-mod nut wince.

But I always did feel sorry for him. So many people with talent seemed doomed for greatness and madness. And he was both personified. Above all, I'm not sure he ever realized that he was transient.

So long Michael. Peace at last, perhaps (As long as no-one tries to buy his skeleton).

Farrah Fawcett has also died today. I don't have much to say about her. Unlike many modern stars, she seems to have managed to live a largely blameless life without attracting undue attention (the Majors divorce aside), for a TV star.

But a small piece of my childhood goes with her. I watched "Charlie's Angels" before I even understood why I liked girls--Possibly before I was even ready to admit that I liked them.

My thanks, Farrah.