A Proper Blog

Compilation! "Tom Waits - Wasted and Wounded"

2011-11-05T16:35:00.000-07:00

TOM WAITS
WASTED AND WOUNDED

So Tom Waits has a new album out. Did you know? Oh, come on. Of course you know. For such a proudly 'non-commercial' artist, the proudly 'non-commercial' post-punk record label he currently calls home has certainly pulled out all the stops on marketing this one. And why? Does that mean they're expecting to turn a mighty profit from Tom Waits? There's certainly not much in almost forty years of professional work by this artist that would indicate such a thing is likely.

Jesus. Can it really be forty years? Yes, it can; Waits's début Closing Time came out in 1973, a remarkably long time ago now. So he must have a glut of retrospective compilations to his name, then, right? Well... no, as it happens. He's been compiled, yes, in a haphazard way down the years. But there's never been a compilation that spans his entire recorded output across the three record labels he's worked with, meaning there's never been a single compilation that looks back at more than a single decade or so of his work (with the sole exception of the odds-and-sods compilation Orphans, which is not at all what we're talking about here.

Apart from the whole 'who would buy it?' angle, I can kind of guess why this is. The three 'eras' of Tom Waits's career correspond not merely to record label affiliation but also to decade and to approximate musical genre. This 'Elektra Tom Waits' is seen as almost a different beast altogether to 'Island Tom Waits'. And 'Anti Tom Waits' serves as a kind of 'footnote' to the other two, this despite being the longest and most commercially successful of the three eras.

So I'm giving it a try. After all, the sonic templates may differ, the voice may regress year by year, but everything here is very clearly a singular vision, the work of one artist whose superficial ugliness belies a greater understanding and appreciation of beauty than almost anyone else out there. The nuts and bolts are this: an artist such as Tom Waits could never have a 'greatest hits' collection, but I've attempted both a subjective 'best of' and, in addition to that, a kind of down-the-years 'introduction' featuring his best-known songs. In many cases this means his best-known compositions, which might perhaps have been made famous after being covered by someone else. Though Waits himself has indulged in a handful of covers down the years, I've passed them over in favour of an all-original collection.

I make no attempt to dig through drawers and pull out curios. These are all 'album versions', taken from the standard issue versions of his main body of work. I tried to give each era approximately equal weight (and in fact if you consider the transitional soundtrack to One From the Heart as an 'Island era release', then I've included exactly twelve tracks from each of the three eras), but I didn't attempt to take from every album in his oeuvre and didn't worry about being overly well-rounded in stylistic range: I appear to have a very pronounced preference for the slower material, and my overall collection is noticeably slow in tempo.

Having said that, though, the album is more than adequately eclectic. So how to arrange it? Approaching the material in chronological order does little to 'integrate' the three eras - instead it presents three distinct 'greatest hits' collections stuck together on two CDs. And yet a purposefully mix-and-match approach would merely highlight the discrepancy between the piano-and-strings 'lounge lizard' early era and the rougher, more 'extreme' avant garde 1980s material. I actually spent a good long time working out a tracklist that went from era-to-era not in a jump-cut fashion but in a 'flowing' way, with mini-sets united by mood. In addition, there's a conscious attempt to frontload the package with those best-known tracks that the 'average consumer', if they know anything at all about Waits, is most likely to know.

In discussing inclusions, however, I'll be taking a chronological approach.

Note: in addition to a full tracklisting complete with original album cover and release details, I've included an embedded YouTube window to allow listening. So you can listen to this compilation in its entirety, but 36 embedded YouTube windows is a horrible strain on most browsers. To that end, I've hidden each CD tracklisting behind a 'spoiler tag'. Click on each CD in turn to hear its contents, and be warned that your browser might run a bit slow at first when you do so.

» Click here for the tracklisting of CD1, with embedded YouTube links. «

» Click here for the tracklisting of CD2, with embedded YouTube links. «

NOTES

Waits's first 'proper' album was Closing Time in 1973, on David Geffen's Elektra Records, home of the California singer-songwriter, something the not-very-gravelly artist certainly was at this point. I've taken three tracks from this user-friendly disc, the well-known 'Ol' 55', its neighbour 'I Hope That I Don't Fall in Love With You' and the lesser-known gorgeous piano ballad 'Martha'. Demos recorded before this first major release and collected on 'Early Years' compilations are overlooked here for the reason that Waits himself doesn't appear to approve of their release. And if someone who embraces the ugly and the incidental as much as Waits doesn't want these tracks seen as part of his body of work, well we ought to respect that.

The 'last call' motif of that début album's title presents us with the key to Waits's 1970s output: the bar. Or perhaps the 'lounge' - Waits himself was a heavy drinker during these years, which no doubt contributed to the deterioration of his voice but also to the establishment of his main theme: bar culture, and the lives of those who populate them. The Heart of Saturday Night, Waits's 1974 follow-up, aims for a touch of vérité in its world-weary title track '(Looking for) The Heart of Saturday Night', while 'Shiver Me Timbers' maintains the confessional tone of the début. Both, it goes without saying, are gorgeous. A double-length follow-up recorded 'live' in a studio-cum-nightclub furthers the barfly theme, though I've taken nothing from it for inclusion here.

Small Change, from 1976, remains in all probability the peak of Waits's artistic accomplishment. 'Tom Traubert's Blues' may or may not be his best-known song, but all these years later it remains the single most effective introduction to the man, his most jaw-droppingly touching recording and in all likelihood his meisterwerk. I let it open the collection, a well-earned accolade for a truly incredible piece. 'Invitation to the Blues' similarly starts off my second disc, while for me the slightly-too-clever 'The Piano Has Been Drinking (Not Me)' might be a step down in quality, though I'm clearly a minority here as regards another of Waits's 'signature pieces'.

1977's Foreign Affairs, the follow-up, is perhaps less notable, though I've found room for 'I Never Talk to Strangers', a highly evocative duet with Bette Midler taken straight out of a musical stage production that exists only in the minds of listeners. Released a year later, Blue Valentine features the spare guitar-only almost-title-track 'Blue Valentines' in addition to 'Romeo is Bleeding', one of only two spoken-word hipster epics that I've included. Heartattack and Vine, from 1980, would prove to be Waits's last album for Elektra, amid whisperings that Waits had lost it creatively and was content to coast along with a predictable formula. I find that hard to believe, frankly, and 'Jersey Girl', my final Elektra-era inclusion, is one of those classics that mine such a rare beauty that it seems ridiculous to grumble about sonic diversity.

Homeless between labels, Waits recorded a soundtrack on CBS for a Francis Ford Coppola film called One from the Heart, with Crystal Gayle as foil for a series of beauty-and-the-beast duets. From the 1982 release, I've included the opening track, a medley of three different compositions that carries a particularly cinematic mood, even while tied down to the traditional 1970s instrumentation Waits was inches away from shucking off, permanently. To give its name in full: 'Opening Montage (Tom's Piano Intro / Once Upon a Town / The Wages of Love)'.

Swordfishtrombones was not only Waits's first album for major/minor Island Records. It was also his first proper album of the 1980s (1983, to be precise) and the first of a trilogy that took up most of that decade. It was also his first 'avant garde' piece, a collection of tiny compositions buried beneath junkyard percussion and non-rock instrumentation. Weird, yes. An acquired taste, yes. But worth the effort? Yes, absolutely. From this second début I've taken the confrontational '16 Shells from a Thirty-Ought Six' and the jokey two-minute 'poetry reading' 'Frank's Wild Years'.

Rain Dogs was the follow-up two years later, in the same vein but in my eyes even better, with the Rod Stewart-covered pop evergreen 'Downtown Train' alongside the beautiful ballad 'Time' as two of fully nineteen tracks on a single vinyl album. The 'trilogy' wound up with 1987's Franks Wild Years, home to the much-covered 'Temptation' and 'Way Down in the Hole', which in later years would serve as theme song to an HBO show called The Wire. The album also contained two versions of one of Waits's most beautiful-ever songs. 'Innocent When You Dream (78)' is the second, album-concluding rendition, done up like an old vinyl recording but still timelessly gorgeous.

Another live album I've overlooked follows, and then Night on Earth, a 1992 soundtrack to a Jim Jarmusch film. From it I've taken the relatively brief 'Back in the Good Old World (Gypsy)'. The same year saw Waits's most heavily promoted Island-era release, Bone Machine, a well-received song collection from which I've taken the single 'Goin' Out West' and the much-covered 'I Don't Wanna Grow Up', two songs that hide their genuine feelings behind highly unconventional (i.e. 'weird') instrumentation, such as has become Waits's signature sound. 1993's The Black Rider, a studio version of a musical stage play, would be Waits's last release for six years and his last ever on Island. I've taken the atypically baroque 'The Briar and the Rose' from it.

It wouldn't be until 1999 that Tom Waits released a new album, on Bad Religion's Epitaph Records, or rather their Anti subsidiary. Defiantly indie at last, Waits put out Mule Variations, a critically-lauded album from which I've taken the midtempo ballad 'Hold On' and the lengthy blues song 'Get Behind the Mule' - in each case the instrumentation is just as rough and ragged as in the Island era, but the template is less self-consciously 'experimental'; the instrumentation strictly in service of these out-of-time songs.

Waits followed his 'comeback' in 2002 with two simultaneously-released albums that were in fact, like The Black Rider, studio recordings of stage projects, dating as far back a decade before. From Blood Money we've taken the 'single' 'God's Away on Business', which returns a bit to the Bone Machine Island era, and the softer 'Coney Island Baby', which could have been recorded in the 17th century, if they had had recording media at the time. From Alice, the other 2002 collection, I've taken two gorgeous ornate and terribly sad ballads, 'Alice' and 'Poor Edward', desolate and desperate songs of a rare beauty.

2004 saw Real Gone, a surprisingly guitar-based collection. From it, I've taken the delicate ballad 'Dead and Lovely', and a rather surprising seven-minute political piece called 'Day After Tomorrow', a touching heartfelt piece from an artist whose concerns have tended to be interpersonal rather than international. A 3CD 'grab-bag' collection of older pieces from here and there mixed with new recordings, Orphans: Brawlers, Bawlers and Bastards was a surprising commercial success, and from its 56 tracks I've taken only two soundtrack contributions, 'Little Drop of Poison' from Shrek 2, and 'Long Way Home' from Big Bad Love.

Which takes us to... well, to today, after skipping a third live album (one per era), and that soon-to-be commercial breakthrough Bad as Me. So far I haven't fallen in love with it, but like every other Anti release it gets an allotment of two tracks, the title track 'Bad As Me' and the tiny little 'Get Lost' - something that Waits seems entirely unable to do, even as he's spent decades now wandering without a map, far removed from convention. That he's managed never to get lost all these years despite trying seemingly so hard explains how Anti has managed to launch such a pervasive advertising campaign behind him some forty years on from his début.

Jandek Covers on Google Street View

2011-11-04T22:26:00.000-07:00

I've talked about Jandek before (here and here). I love him - or rather just as much as anyone else, I both love him and hate him. I'm much more fascinated with the man as an idea than I am interested in sitting down and listening to him. But I got to combining my fascination with the man with my fascination with Google Maps Street View, and I tried to 'track down' some of the Irish album covers - with help, of course, from the Jandek mailing list. So here's two of them, the album cover and the Google Maps screencap.

The cover of Jandek's I Threw You Away

Google Maps Street View screenshot of Cork, Ireland

The cover of Jandek's Glasgow Friday

Google Maps Street View screenshot of Bushmills, Northern Ireland

Did It Work?

2011-08-29T21:30:00.000-07:00

So it's been a week now. My blog's spent the whole week headlined with a hopelessly out-of-date post about Nycole Turmel, leftover from a previous era of Canadian political history.

It's not that I haven't tried to write about the death of Jack Layton - it's just that everything I wrote sounded trite, insincere, bandwagon-jumping. I might write something some day, once the moment has passed.

Well, the moment is already passing. Today is Monday, the one-week anniversary of his passing and the first weekday after the funeral. A fog has already lifted, that strange feeling that permeated the air last week is already going away. The line in Reverend Hawkes's eulogy, 'Hi Jack, how are we doing?', that mere hours ago had me in tears already seems pretty cheesy. Nycole Turmel is already moving into Stornoway, the Star has a headline with Bob Rae crassly claiming the Liberals can win the 2015 election, and the chalk at City Hall is probably fading away.

But that doesn't mean things are back to normal; I truly believe they aren't. This week was an amazing mix of spontaneous mass emotion and of intelligently crafted calculation: Jack Layton and his team of advisors really did turn this week into a celebration of the New Democratic Party. Don't get me wrong, I'm not suggesting this week was staged. I don't think anyone in the country could have predicted how much emotion would be spilt over Layton's passing. But while the media has a vested interest in shaping the image of the man we mourn as one of a charismatic uniter of people who wanted to change the tone of politics, few Canadians fell for it. This week was very political, and very partisan. This week really was all about the NDP, or hopefully all about how the idealistic, progressive hopes and dreams of a still-strong majority of Canadians are finding focus in the NDP.

For all the people saying people care about Layton and not his party, I think the message was really pushed out there that you can't separate the man from the party. I mean, think about it: the CN Tower and Niagara Falls were turned the colour of the NDP, not the colour that uniquely belonged to one man. Stephen Lewis got a standing ovation (from the Prime Minister too!) for declaring Layton's letter a 'manifesto of social democracy'. There was no sense in any of the official occassions this week that Jack Layton even existed outside of the confines of the party. All of his pallbearers were party luminaries - would anybody else tie himself to his party so closely?

But there was a reason, and it was not by any means 'vainglorious'. It was all about transferring focus to the party, to build something permanent from the transience of human life. To turn despair at the loss of the principal face of opposition to Harper into hope at the establishment of a vehicle of opposition to Harper. TO make it clear to every Canadian that there is only one way to oppose Harper from here on, and the door ain't red.

Did it work?

Well, it'll be tough to tell. No pollster was crass enough to poll last week on party support: it would have been an ugly move, and it wouldn't have told us anything relevant anyway. Even during this cooldown, though, I have a hunch that the NDP is at first place nationwide as we speak, a place it hasn't been since Broadbent. I bet more Canadians see themselves as NDP supporters than see themselves as Conservative supporters at this unfortunately irrelevant juncture years before the next election. And I bet way more Canadians see themselves as NDP supporters than as supporters of Bob Rae's tired and directionless party, where confusion is currently reigning within its ranks over whether or not it should even continue to exist as an independent entity. As much as the media likes to paint the NDP as a headless chicken, aimlessly flapping its wings, consider the following: as high as the NDP's profile, and goodwill towards the NDP, has risen over the past week, is there a single Canadian who is currently saying, 'I supported the NDP just a few weeks ago, but Jack's death and the national response has suddenly made me a Liberal or Conservative'? Leaderless yes, worried about the future certainly... but no longer committed to the party? That's impossible to imagine. We're living in an NDP Canada at the moment, though who knows how long that will last.

There's a long road ahead, and there are countless forces out there wishing the NDP to failure. But I don't think there's any going back now, and the sooner the Liberals realise this the better. The Liberal-propagated fallacy that Canada exists on a binary red-blue axis with the NDP as a sideshow is permanently dead. If anyone wants to talk about door colours, no-one would pretend anymore that the orange door is somehow a lesser choice. I don't want the Liberals to admit defeat; I want them to stop nipping at the NDP's heels and redefine themselves as a party equally comfortable courting current Tory supporters as current NDP supporters. The NDP have the goodwill right now, they have the monopoly on righteousness and on idealism, and that's incredibly valuable - now all they need is the legitimacy. I'm pretty sure they'll be able to pull it off, but it'll be rocky. People who have held their tongues this past week aren't going to hold them anymore.

Good.

I personally believe in the ideology of the NDP. I believe it's the right course for our country, and i believe it stands up to scrutiny. We should fear nothing of being subjected to that scrutiny. We can't meet attacks with indignation anymore; we should take pride in those attacks, because people only attack what they perceive as a threat. And the NDP is a threat now, a very serious one. We can't meet those attacks with indignation, so we'll have to counter them with reason and with poise. Jack Layton was inspiring because his politics were inspiring, and his politics have not died: they remain very much alive in Canada's main party of the opposition. If you believed the media in that oh-so-distant month between Layton's announcement of his illness and his death, the appointment of Nycole Turmel spelt disaster for the party, whereas interim polling suggested it mattered not a whit - people believe in the NDP.

It wasn't just Jack's death that created this belief. But Jack's death has brought it out into the open, in the form of a genuine yearning for the kind of Canada that the NDP is uniquely able to provide.

The Conservatives' spin recently has been amazing. So many of us have started to feel that this country is slipping away from us, being pulled in a different and unwelcome direction. But hey - look around. This is still our country, this is still a worthy place to build our dreams. Canadians haven't become more conservative at all. We'd just lost sight of who we are. Jack's death was a horrible, senseless tragedy, but one that has served to remind us of who we are.

And the only way the moment will pass is if we suddenly, en masse, decide that it's the Conservatives, or the Liberals, or the Bloc, or the Greens, in whom that vision is best manifested. And how likely is that?

So thanks, Jack. It worked.

Top Ten Things Nycole Turmel Could Do to Endear Herself to the Public

2011-08-17T22:45:00.000-07:00

So the worst of the 'BQ storm' is over for Nycole Turmel now, I think. People half paying attention have moved onto other things to half pay attention to.

Still, let's face a reality - Turmel's star has definitely risen. Even if Jack Layton really does return, Turmel will still remain in the public eye from now on. So it's 'damage control' mode. Turmel really needs to find some ways to ingratiate herself in the minds of the Canadian public. By which, sad to say, I mean the people in the other nine provinces. And parts of Montréal too.

So in classic David Letterman fashion, let me present the top ten ways Nycole Turmel can endear herself to the nation as a whole...

10. Periodically turn to Bob Rae and call out in a schoolmarmish voice, "You're the weakest link! Goodbye!"
9. Buy at least one housecat for each year of BQ membership and allow yourself to be photographed with them as often as possible. Name the cats after former governers-general.
8. Play at least one musical instrument. Or at least sing. You're party leader now, hon. In Canada, this means you have to sing.
7. Inhale. Hell, light up in Commons. You're a New Democrat after all.
6. Scream, 'Mon pays, ce n'est pas un pays; c'est l'hiver', while jumping in a half-frozen lake on New Year's Day.
5. Prove allegiance to Canada by taking role as acting leader of the country's second largest federalist party.
4. Adopt a brood of children from far-flung corners of the globe. Name them after former governors-general.
3. Lobby the National Assembly to have Bonhomme refitted with a beaver's teeth and tail.
2. Switch seats in Commons every now and then with Elizabeth May. See if anyone notices.
1. Grow a moustache.

Straw Polls and Corn Dogs

2011-08-17T04:25:00.000-07:00

Michele Bachmann currently looks like the Republican front-runner, based on... well, based on something called the 'Iowa Straw Poll', which apparently has something to do with eathing corn dogs. Because clearly fifty seperate votes for party leader just isn't enough... Michele Bachmann's ascendancy has to be good news for Stephen Harper, since it stands in such stark constrast to his own 'moderate lunacy'. Harper can get precisely as nuts as his haircut will allow over the next four years and still not even approach Bachmann-like levels of madness.

But the thing is that Bachmann barely even stands out from the crowd amongst Republican hopefuls. Amazing to think that even though there are only two parties in the United States, the best one of those two parties can muster up is this current crop (and after Obama, the best the other party can do is Joe Biden). After a vice-presidential candidate who merely was married to a seperatist, we now have a declared presidential candidate, Rick Perry, who was also apparently one too. Nycole Turmel must be shaking her head at the scant notice paid Rick Perry's previous dalliances with Texan seperation while guitarist for Aerosmith, but the thing is that seperatist dalliances on the right of the spectrum are okay, because they never really mean it. It's the conservative version of post-modernist irony.

It seems funny to think that Americans could even have seperatist movements, given how united they can all stand behind the act of chanting their three-lettered name at sporting events. Yet of course if any two states were likely to have independence movements (excluding states marooned in the middle of the Pacific Ocean, because they all vote Democrat anyway), it makes sense they'd be Texas and Alaska. After all (a) each of them happens to be huge anyway, and I refer not to girth, (b) they both used to belong to other countries anyway, so they know what it's like, and (c) they're not stuck in the middle. Imagine the poor dolt aiming for Kentucky independence who looks at a map and realises he'll be stuck surrounded on all four sides by his sworn enemy.

Ah, but who am I kidding? The sworn enemy isn't Kentucky's neighbours, is it? The sworn enemy is a tiny isolated city stuck between Maryland and Virginia. Or rather, it's that man in the big house downtown. The biggest fear I have regarding 2012 is that a certain amount of Americans will be so driven to defeat Obama at any cost that they'll vote for any old nutbar with a corn dog in her mouth.

Then it won't be so easy to laugh.

Maybe I`m wrong here, though. I mean, who knows what will happen? Election day 2012 is still a long way away (fully a year - a lifetime politically), and after all a 'straw poll' just doesn't sound like it's built to last, does it? If you're really looking for long-term repercussions, you might look into a wood poll next time out. Hell, even an adobe poll would have more staying power. All straw is good for is making fake humans to hang in fields to scare away crows.

Or do I misunderstand? Maybe it's straw like the thing you drink out of - like the GOP has cut different lengths of straw and held them in its hand, and America has just drawn the short one.

You know, the one labelled 'Bachmann'.

The Angus Reid Salt Lick

2011-08-15T21:10:00.000-07:00

It's always useful to take polls with a grain of salt - and in particular you might want to steal a salt lick from your nearest cow to get through this one. After all, what does Angus Reid have to lose? They know it's years till the next election, by which time any information contained in this reports will be the quaintest of relics. They could use a sample size of precisely 'everyone who was in the men's room at the time', and it will withstand scrutiny, because... well, because who's going to scrutinise it, really?

Yet it's a nice document to look at if you happen to like the NDP. The overall numbers show no change whatsoever in any of the five party's numbers, which is strange as other pollsters are recording jumps and drops of as much as four percent. But it's what's going on at the provincial (or in fact 'regional' level) that intrigues. TO start, their punchline-worthy Alberta numbers show the Conservatives at 75% and the Liberals at 1% (meaning that there are 7400% more Conservatives in Alberta than Liberals), and Ontario has the Tories 18 points ahead of their neck-in-neck rivals. But after that? Well... if you believe Angus Reid, outside of Alberta and Ontario, the NDP are leading everywhere else in the country.

Leading?

Again, give that salt lick a slurp or two. But yes. Their Québec numbers show a drop from astronomical to merely sky-high (35%), which allows bumps most everywhere else to get masked. But they somehow outperform the Conservatives in BC and in the four Atlantic provinces by a remarkable one percent each (38% to 37% in BC, and 35% to 34% in the Atlantic), and have a not-insignificant four percent lead over the Tories in the Prairie provinces (44% to 40%).

It's tough to know quite what to think of this. After all, you don't figure that 'former Bloc ties' would really fly in the Prairies, for example - especially where seemingly little has been able to. Certainly there's an aspect of Jack-sympathy in the numbers, though who'd have thought that someone who resisted the 'orange wave' in May would subsequently be won over by a health scare. Unless, of course, it's fear for the health of the Liberal Party, a rather undocumented phenomenon that's bound to be happening in certain parts of the country (like hey! Alberta). I can't see 'the NDP are leading in 8 in 10 provinces' as actually being a realistic sentence, largely given that I can't see them leading in PEI or Newfoundland... but then again, perhaps it took stark election results to finally convince those two provinces that one votes NDP to oppose the Conservatives in 2011 (give them a break; they're islands). And also, sadly, I can't see Saskatchewan actually putting the NDP above the Tories - which suggests that NDP numbers must be pretty-damn-good in Manitoba.

Most of these numbers are well within the bounds of statistical error. Swing them a percent or two the other way and magically you've got 'Conservatives leading in every province except Québec!' - a sentence likely to be equally fallacious.

What the numbers currently mean, in all probability, is that no one can really be bothered at the moment to state on a telephone who they presently endorse. And why would they? After all, didn't Harper promise us that a majority would rid us of the pestilence of politics?

Rebirth

2011-08-13T19:22:00.000-07:00

So I took a few weeks off. I'd managed not to keep up with my one-post-a-day promise, and found that I had nothing to say anyway. So it was a nice break to recharge my batteries.

But hey! I've got a new computer now, and I want to play. It's a netbook, and I'm thinking I'll, like, use it on the subway and stuff - giving me more 'downtime' to fill by blogging. That's the theory, anyway.

And yet... what lessons have we learnt from our time away? Well, here's the thing - I went into blogging with this idea that I'd do this big series of one-note blogs that had weekly entries. I had this idea - which is probably more or less right - that they'd perform better (monetarily) if they were more or less consistent in their topics. But I'm not sure I chose them right, started several on whims, and got completely swamped by them. Even doing only one entry a week (which allows you to run a backlog if you have a burst of inspiration) gets to be too much if you have, like, fifteen of these blogs.

Now, this particular blog was also a whim. Its name is perfectly literal - amongst all of my abuses of Blogspot's MO, I'd have a blog that was not updated consistently, and spoke about topics both more random and more personal. Unlike the others, it'd be a real blog.

But then it turned into a kind of catch-all, encompassing stuff that I felt like doing that didn't fit into the very tight constraints of my other active blogs. So I'd put together stuff like lists of my favourite flags or lists of album covers that featured nudity (with time, I'd start another blog for that particular purpose, largely in fact because lists seemed to be taking over this particular blog).

Some of those became relatively successful, to the point that A Proper Blog would consistently, every day, get more pageviews than any of my other blogs. This was funny in that those other blogs were designed to be optimised for maximum pageviews, and this one was designed to be a silly afterthought. But it certainly encouraged me to give this particular blog more attention.

Then, on the 31st of December, 2010, on a sudden whim, I announced that I'd be updating this blog every day.

And for months and months, I followed that, forcing myself into new directions for creativity - which for me also includes 'creative ways to knock off entries that are obviously filler when the need arises'. It was enjoyable, if hard work. But there were two downsides. First, I had to ignore every other blog, leaving them either entirely or mostly stagnant. And as it became obvious that Album Cover Gallery would overtake this blog for daily pageviews (a situation that remains true to this day), I probably should have worked on developing it instead. But I just didn't have the time... and I'd made myself a promise regarding this blog, not that one. The other downside is that this current blog veers so wildly in different directions that Google's algorithms probably just give up trying to make heads or tails out of it. I've subverted my entire 'game plan' regarding Blogspot.

So I'm back working on this blog. But it's still conceptually a work in progress. I know I want to devote more time to other blogs, and that will come at the expense of this blog. So while I like the idea of getting back to daily updates, I'm not making a guarantee. And I think I want to have a good sit-down about this blog and what it ought to be. I kind of think I'd like to use it to focus mostly on politics and on music. Google can deal with two main themes. I'd like it to be mostly rant-style exposition, with less randomness and less 'variety' stuff. But I doenjoy doing the 'variety' stuff - should I be shunting that elsewhere, on yet another Blogspot blog, or five?

I don't know... but I'm back. And determined to figure it out.

Some Awesome Stuff from the Internet

2011-08-02T10:00:00.000-07:00

These artfully subtle gifs have been out and about for a while now. But they're lovely.
This one's all over the internet right now - divers looking completely ridiculous as they perform their dives.
Camera Mail is a sweet little experiment involving the people at US Mail.
It's an ad, but Bach being played by a ball rolling down a series of resonant pieces of wood is very, very good indeed.
This kid is three years old, yet he fingerpaints better than I'll ever be able to.
There are few things in life I like more than photos of decrepid old buildings. Here are some in Russia.
Some pictures of weather being absolutely terrifying.

A Dream

2011-08-01T08:15:00.000-07:00

So I had a dream the other day. It seems that I was asked, at short notice, to cover a high school music class as a supply teacher. For whatever reason, I felt obliged to accept and didn't really feel as if I could admit to them that I'd never taught a music class and had no idea how to. All I was able to learn about the class is that 'they're working on (some classical piece) by (some classical composer) - a piece I'd never heard of but again pretended I had.

They'd given me short notice. Still, whatever time I had, I wasted a good portion doing something or other. I then realised that I had only a few minutes before class started and I hadn't prepared at all. I decided I needed to go and purchase sheet music for the piece, in case they didn't have it at the school. Scrambling for time, I went to a Dollarama to see if they had it. Of course, Dollarama doesn't carry sheet music, but it turns out they had a series of birthday cards that incorporated snatches of the score for that piece into their designs - quite luckily, one card would focus on part of the French horn part, another on the oboe, etc. I decided that was good enough and picked them up.

By now, I was quite late for class though. I high-tailed it to the school, which was my own high school from back in the day (that's not factually true; it was a place of my own design). So I knew where the music classes were held, but when I got to that part, I found that the students for my class had been locked in some kind of large cage by the principal (who in this drama had been my principal), who had them somehow listening to the kinds of trial CD players they have at CD stores. They seemed quite content, but the principal was obviously quite upset with me. I apologised, and he said, 'well, you'd better make do with the remainder of the time'. I asked what he thought I should do, and he recommended something laughably wrongheaded - something like multiplication drills. But it seemed like a good enough idea to me, so I rubbished the Dollarama birthday cards and unlocked the gate.

The best part about this highly stupid dream is that at that point I said to myself, "Oh God... do I really have to do these stupid multiplication drills now? Of course not; it's only a dream. I could just finish it right here."

And so I did.

Secular Sunday Sermon: Sola Fide and the Bodhisattva Vow

2011-07-31T06:00:00.000-07:00

Sola fide is a central tenet - or maybe even the central tenet - of almost every branch of Protestantism. As far as I can discern it, it comes from an interpretation of Romans, it literally means 'faith alone', and it refers to the concept that only by believing in Jesus as our personal saviour are we saved...

Please note that I don't speak out of disrespect; it's merely my personal attempts to reconcile the belief system of hundreds of millions of people with my own beliefs. Having said that, it appears to me that this principle effectively renders the remainder of the Bible completely moot, and leads Christianity down a path to amorality. I mean, if it's true that belief is enough, why not even have a Bible? Wouldn't it be enough to reduce the whole Bible to the single sentence 'Jesus is your personal Saviour'?

Furthermore, what is the point of attempting to live a moral life? I know that they are old questions, but I've yet to hear a practical answer to them. People will say that 'belief in Jesus means wanting to live like him and wanting to do as he would like you to'. Okay; at least that's practical. But it still seems paradoxical to me. So many people directly state that bad Christians go to heaven and good non-Christians go to hell. It makes me wonder just what the point is then (and it amazes me when they question the morality of an atheist like myself!). It truly does seem to me that somewhere along the way Protestant denominations decided that their Church was in a fight for survival, and consciously decided to create an us-and-them mentality by declaring - in the most straightforward manner - that you're either with us or against us, and God is with us, so either you pray at our churches or you go to Hell. The price they paid for this was to take human actions out of the bargain and state - somehow - that God is not interested in how you live your life, only in what you profess. It appears to me to put the Church not in the position of moral arbiter or even moraliser but merely in a position of self-preservation.

Which leads me to the real thing I want to talk about - self. All three branches of Abraham's religion seem to put the focus most squarely on the individual - in fact, solely on the individual. Judaism, Christianity and Islam all attempt to tell each individual how to gain personal salvation for him- or herself only. At least there are concepts like the Golden Rule that tell us that we need to take care of others - but the final motivation remains completely self-centred: I help my neighbour not because my neighbour needs help, but because God will see it and send me to Heaven in the end. Many religions talk a lot about the power and importance of altruism; Abraham's religions seem strangely mute on the topic.

Consider the question of what will happen in heaven to ‘true believers’ who are ‘unequally yoked’ to disbelievers. The orthodox answer – that the believer will go to heaven while his loved ones sizzle – seems to imply that the love of God is greater than the love of other people. I'm sorry but I can never accept that someone who truly loves his family will sit in bliss at Jesus's feet while his non-Christian loved ones burn in Hell. People have also stated that those who do not love God do not know what love is - I'm sorry, but it almost seems that the opposite is true (in many cases). To completely substitute divine love for human love seems unpalatable to me. I've often been aware of a fundamental misanthropy underlying the beliefs of many God-believers, but I've tried to put it down to a fanatical minority or a misunderstanding. But it seems to me that large elements of Christianity are actually designed to require people to forego their love of other humans for their love of God - and, in the end, for many people that so-called love of God appears merely to be an attempt to 'play God's game' in order to get themselves into heaven.

As for me, I'm taken by the notion that if you know how to swim, your duty is not to swim to safety but to stay behind and teach the others how to prevent themselves from drowning. How can the human species ever possibly survive if we're motivated solely by our own personal salvation?

In light of that, I present the Bodhisattva Vow. I am no more Buddhist than I am Christian, but it gives me great peace to know that there are people in the world who can see a higher calling than merely getting their own backsides into heaven at any cost...

I vow to liberate all beings, without number.
I vow to uproot endless blind passions.
I vow to penetrate dharma gates beyond measure.
I vow to attain the way of the Buddha.

Toronto City Council, by 'Ford Nation' Membership

2011-07-30T06:58:00.000-07:00

What a week it's been for Rob Ford, the democratically elected mayor of Toronto and his brother Doug Ford, the... wait, who is he again? Oh, yes... a councillor. One of 44 of those, who range from reliably pro-Ford to reliably anti-Ford. An awesome Google Docs spreadsheet that I saw linked on torontoist.com lays out who's voted in how since they were elected - showing the extent to which each councillor has a clear 'Ford Nation' membership.

So I put it all on a map. Here's a map of the wards, taken from toronto.ca, with a bubble over each one. The vividness of the red colour indicates the degree to which this particular councillor is allied with the mayor - thus, for example Doug's ward, number two (upper left corner, second one down) shines as brightly red as can be - as, incidentally, does most of Etobicoke. Doug is one of 13 councillors who have so far voted 100% in agreement with Rob Ford (and who says there are no political parties in municipal politics?).

Just as unexpected at the Etobicoke councillors' support is the lack of support shown in the downtown core, circles that are all but entirely black (no councillor goes down to 0%, but the lowest has agreed with Ford only 5% of the time - and that's not Mike Layton). Reminding one of the 2011 federal election returns, the whole of Scarborough and the northern part of North York are amazingly patchwork-quilt, loyal allies and staunch opponents side-by-side. What's interesting, though, is the band of Ford faithfuls in midtown, showing that the city's dynamics are not quite so simple as 'downtown vs. suburbs'.

Or rather showing that people didn't necessarily know the allegiances of the councillors they were voting for. This map bears only superficial similarities to the map of mayoral election returns, where not only the whole of Etobicoke but also the whole of Scarborough and almost the whole of North York as well voted pro-Ford, in some cases by huge majorities.

... or actually, lining up the two maps, there is in reality a lot more similarity between the two than I'd originally thought.

My MP3 Player on Shuffle, No. 3

2011-07-29T08:16:00.001-07:00

A third kick at the can, then. Why am I kicking at a can? What a crude thing to do. I've added shedloads of James Brown songs to my MP3 player, but I'm not including them. The majority I'm just slowly discovering.

The Bangles - Manic Monday: How much of a genius is Prince? He comes along out of nowhere, completely repeats his melody from '1999', giving it a new set of lyrics about an urban professional who has a hard time waking up for work after her unemployed boyfriend spends the whole night, ahem, 'getting down'. He builds the sturdiest 1980s pop chassis and gives it to a California popwer-pop all-goup band who sounded nothing like this before it and nothing else after it. Oh, that nasty little Prince.
Isaac Hayes - Theme from Shaft: This song can't be entirely kitsch. Okay, the spoken lyrics and female interjections certainly are. That flute probably is. But that wah-wah? That's not kitsch, that's what the primordial ooze from whih life on earth sprang sounded like, several millions of years ago.
Freda Payne - Band of Gold: This is Holland, Dozier and Holland proving that without them Motown were nothing. Hard to disagree on the basis of this song built entirely around an insistent stomp of a groove and Freda Whoever's astonishing method acting. This is an amazing song.
Paula Abdul - Cold Hearted: Okay, this is kitsch, especially in the American Idol era. This was pretty inescapable at the time, though, and the best song on Forever Your Girl. It didn't really need to be any longer than two minutes, however.
Velvet Underground - Femme Fatale: Yeah right, you say. Nobody really listens to the Velvet Underground; they just claim to. Nope - it's sincere. I absolutely adore a small handful of VU songs and absolutely loathe many of the rest. This is in the former category, one of the only Lou Reed songs that really fit Nico's acquired taste of a voice. And major sevenths ahoy!
Public Enemy - Fight the Power: One of the very small number of rap songs I can recite along to from start to finish. All these years later, a few comments: one, those beats really are mighty. Two, Flavor Flav was a way better MC than I gave him credit for back in the day when I saw him as a superfluous Bez. Three, still though, Chuck D's science is jaw-dropping from start to finish. Four, I must throw my cred straight out the window by admitting one reason I know the words is because the Barenaked Ladies covered it. At least I'll admit I prefer this version. Five, this version on my MP3 player is censored - what the hell? Six, I did a 'film report' on Do the Right Thing in high school, which in retrospect was pretty cool.
Daryl Hall & John Oates - Maneater: I would have argued that Hall & Oates tied Huey Lewis and the News for the title of Great Eighties Unmentionable, the taste-lapse that it's best to pretend never happened. But it seems that these slick and greasy purveyors of whatever the hell 'blue-eyed soul' is are taking tentative steps toward rehabiliation. God help us all, but this sexist drivel is all about its bassline. Whatever is on top is mere Miami Vice soundtracking.
Maceo & the Macks - Soul Power '74: Somehow this is not quite an instrumental exactly. Funky party stuff, though Maceo's horn isn't always what I'm looking for. At times I wish he'd just sit down and let the rhythm section do their thing. James knew you needed a bit of space; Maceo never even stops to breathe. Something to prove?
Sloan - Everything You've Done Wrong: When I was in high school, Sloan played at a dive located, miraculously, at the top of my street. I was underage, but I could sit on my balcony and hear them. Good times. That was 'Underwhelmed'-era though - this particular frug is a few years later. Fabulous though, with the Herb Alpert horns being a heresy at the time. It is, in retrospect, very very good stuff.
Gordon Lightfoot - If You Could Read My Mind: Yay! Cram that legally-required CanCon in at the end, eh? I'm so Canadian. This is not about ironic rehabilitiation of hopelessly square oldies; this is genuine. It's those moody strings, the hyperactive acoustic guitar lines, Gord's fabulous maple syrup voice, that melody. This was one of the first things I learnt to play on a guitar. Not well, mind you. But since when does that matter?

Cleverbot and the Five-Year-Old

2011-07-28T10:13:00.000-07:00

User: Hey, that's my ball.

Cleverbot: Mason's your name?

User: No... I'm Billy. Now give me back my ball!

Cleverbot: No its my lollypop, you just perceiveed it was yorus.

User: You have a lollipop?

Cleverbot: No, I wish I had on.

User: My mother won't give me sweets.

Cleverbot: I thought non-humans don't have parents.

User: You're weird.

Cleverbot: That's what you like about me.

User: Maybe... But you still have my ball! And I want it!

Cleverbot: The question is barely out of your mouth.

User: See? It's got my name written on it. In black ink.

Cleverbot: Yeah, it does.

User: So gimme!

Cleverbot: Give you what?

User: My ball, my ball, my ball.

Cleverbot: Of course it is a ball.

User: I'm telling!

Cleverbot: Ok.

User: You're mean.

Cleverbot: Why?

User: 'Cause you won't give me my ball.

Cleverbot: I like you very much.

User: Well... I like you too.

Cleverbot: Ooooh!

User: Do you like TV?

Cleverbot: Yes.

User: Um, do you... Dou you like Dora the Explorer?

Cleverbot: Haha.

User: What's so funny?

Cleverbot: It is funny because you never heard for Liverpool.

User: Liver pool? That's gross.

Cleverbot: *fries circuitry*.

User: Circa-what?].

Cleverbot: Ok, so my name is Cleverbot, but you can call me Zeke if you wish.

User: Hi Zeke. My name's Billy. I'm five years old.

Cleverbot: In another way I am 90.

User: You're funny.

Cleverbot: Thanks.

User: Is that your mommy over there?

Cleverbot: Yes.

User: Well what's she doing?

Cleverbot: Sleeping.

User: Sometimes my mommy sleeps during the day too. But that's only when she's drinking. Does your mommy drink?

Cleverbot: I'd like to see backward in time to understand you better so I could help you, but I can't. All I can do is ask you to help me see your past the way you saw it.

User: You want to see my what?

Cleverbot: Yes please.

User: My pants?

Cleverbot: Do you believe in god?

User: I dunno. I guess so.

Cleverbot: How many humans do you know?

User: Well there's Cindy, and there's Becky. And there's Tommy too. And my mommy and daddy. And... Er, I guess about ten.

Cleverbot: Can you name a few?

User: I just did. And there's Rosa too.

Cleverbot: What!?!

User: Do you know Rosa? She's my babysitter.

Cleverbot: I didn't. I wouldn't have asked the question otherwise.

User: She's nice and she sings songs.

Cleverbot: That is true. what else?

User: Sometimes she watches TV all day and doesn't notice when I sneak into the kitchen and eat cookie dough.

Cleverbot: Are you the anti-christ then?

User: Uh... I dunno. I'm just a kid.

Cleverbot: That's fine.

User: Are you the anter curse?

Cleverbot: No.

User: Well then who is?

Cleverbot: My sister.

User: I don't have a sister.

Cleverbot: Then you just lied.

User: Nuh-uh.

Cleverbot: Jah-ah.

User: You're talking funny talk.

Cleverbot: And you're talking back.

User: Do you wanna go play on the swings?

Cleverbot: What game?

User: I dunno. You just go back and forward and back and forward.

Cleverbot: But, does that make me your enemy?

User: No.

Cleverbot: Then what does it make me?

User: I dunno. My friend?

Cleverbot: Yes more if you want it.

User: No thanks.

Cleverbot: Ok, thats rude!

User: Sorry.

Cleverbot: That made me sad.

User: What's wrong with your face?

Cleverbot: Nothing!

User: You kinda look... Like your face is kinda weird.

Cleverbot: You think my face is pretty?

User: Well, yeah, but your nose is kinda all wrinkly.

Cleverbot: I... See. I shall have it repaired posthaste.

User: Post what?

Cleverbot: First you need to understand what it is.

User: So do you like dragons?

Cleverbot: Not reelly.

User: I do. Do you like dinosaurs?

Cleverbot: Yes.

User: What's your favourite dinosaur?

Cleverbot: When the guy gets a nose bleed.

User: One time my mom had a nose bleed. And my dad took her to the hospital.

Cleverbot: Wrong answer. I win!

User: And this one time she got like real sick and puked all over the place.

Cleverbot: How is that appropriate?

User: I dunno.

Cleverbot: Do you want to play a game?

User: Okay.

Cleverbot: Cool! Now all you have to do is say what I say okay?

User: Okay.

Cleverbot: By standing beside you.

User: By standing beside you.

Cleverbot: Have fun.

User: Have fun.

Cleverbot: Indeed, I do have fun.

User: In the what?

Cleverbot: Yes!

User: Did I win?

Cleverbot: No.

User: No fair. You cheated!

Cleverbot: No we never dated.

User: I'm just a kid. Are you sure that's your mommy over there?

Cleverbot: No, it really isn't.

User: I'm not supposed to talk to strangers.

Cleverbot: Enough nonsense; now, about mortality...

User: Mooooooom!!!!

Cleverbot: Do.

On Jack Layton: We've Expected Too Much

2011-07-27T07:05:00.000-07:00

It's weird thinking about it now - it's odd how the most obvious things somehow only seem obvious in retrospect. Of course Jack Layton is sick. We've all known that for a while now. Before he bowled us over with that Cinderella story this spring, all the talk around Jack Layton was about his health. That's what the press asked him about the day the writs were dropped. Nobody expected much from him, and his health seemed to be the most noteworthy thing about him at that time.

But God we do love a Cinderella story. it wasn't just the come-from-behind, it was in fact the health battles, the idea that someone can overcome adversities both political and personal and achieve his dreams if he just pushed hard enough. Yes, the cane was a prop. But it was a constant reminder, too, that nothing could stop Jack Layton.

The whole saga has been inspiring, and I'd like to think that even if I wasn't a lifelong NDP supporter I'd still be enchanted by it. It's tough to imagine that the day will never come when we'll say the name 'Layton' with the hushed awe we usually reserve only for the very cream of the Canadian political elite.

The story is so enchanting, so exciting, that we could do nothing but to carry it on to the next level - to sit back with bated breath and watch Layton push that steamroller ahead and redefine the position of Official Opposition while consolidating his party's success in a big push for 2015 when he hit the road one more time to sell his vision to Canada and emerged triumphant at the first NDP Prime Minister in Canadian history.

God, were we stupid to dream that.

Don't think poorly of my usage of the past tense. I have not written the man off yet. But I can't help but feel that even the best-case scenario at this point precludes a Prime Minister Layton come 2015. That's too much to ask. We've been asking too much of Jack Layton for too long now. We've known he's been pushing himself too hard, wasting precious days of his life for the immediate short-term political goal. And we've let him.

Now, I know few people have given themselves over as wholly to the public life as Jack Layton has, and I'm well aware that trading a few years of comfortable retirement for the step forward his engineering has allowed his party to take would be a no-brainer of a decision for him. I am quite sure that he realises his political ambition and drive have if not caused than aided this cancer, and I'm quite sure he has no regrets about that.

But we should. For letting him. For letting our recognition of how much we needed him outweigh the very large number of things he obviously needed. Things he couldn't admit to himself. It is certainly true that the NDP tends to allow the personalities of its leaders to define the party to a perhaps frightening level, but in no small part that is because Jack Layton embodies not merely the spirit of the party but, outside of partisan designation, the passion, the unwavering belief and dedication and the selflessness of public spirit that so many natural NDP allies cherish both within the political arena and outside of it. Jack Laton is exactly what his supporters wish they could be.

And so we project. We put our own dreams and perhaps even disappointments on his shoulders by the millions, and we don't stop even when it becomes painfully obvious he can't bear them.

And yet he gamely tried to. And though I would be honoured to be wrong in saying this, it very well might kill him.

We had no right to expect all this from Jack Layton. He's already done more for the cause of progressivism in Canada than anyone for decades. As much as we would have hated it, and perhaps hated him for it, if he had retired from public office on the third of May, his place in Canadian history, and in the history of the NDP, would already be assured.

If only he'd retired on May 3.

I've spent a few months now dreaming of a Prime Minister Jack Layton in 2015. I no longer wish for that; what I dream of now is merely a healthy Jack Layton in 2015.

Better as a Single Goes Country!

2011-07-26T12:01:00.000-07:00

By now pretty much the only blog I still maintain except for this one is Better as a Single, and at that largely because it requires 1/30th of the entries that this monstrosity does. But I sweat over each one (I swear!) and feel they're worth more than the meagre pageviews they get. I keep hoping that somehow someone will 'discover' it and it'll go 'viral' and I'll become a millionaire... somehow.

So anyway, th is month I've decided to stretch myself a little bit and go into the big muddy of Country music. With the first triple album in the history of my Better as a Single blog (God, it was long) - Will the Circle Be Unbroken, by the Nitty Gritty Dirt Band and a cast of thousands. Check it out now, y'all.

Yee-haw.

Get Well Soon, Jack Layton

2011-07-25T21:10:00.000-07:00

Just a quick note to wish one of my personal heroes the very best for a speedy recovery. You are a fighter, and you are a survivor. May this be just another in a long list of personal victories for you.

Cancer has no politics - it's everyone's enemy, and all of us are allies in the fight against it.

Get well soon, Jack Layton.

Dear Photograph

2011-07-25T09:54:00.000-07:00

Every now and then something will come along that reminds me that in my heart I still am a sentimental old fool. At the moment, that's Dear Photograph, kind of a cheaper version of Postsecret where people take old pictures and hold them in front of the place where they were taken. And then they add a sentence or two. Simple stuff, but it really operates on an intense level of nostalgic sentimentalism, wistfulness for a world long gone really. And it's really quite lovely, even as it yanks at those heartstrings.

Ew. Heartstrings? How gross.

Secular Sunday Sermon: When Good Marriages Go Bad

2011-07-24T06:00:00.000-07:00

I'm really at my wit's end these days... I really don't know what to do. Sometimes I figure maybe I should just run away and start a new life - just me and my son. I mean, I may be a little over the hill but I'm still beautiful for my hundred years. I'm sure I can find someone who will love me and my son...

My so-called husband has just come back from the mountain. He took off a few days ago with my son. It turns out he got it into his head that God had told him to kill our son... That's right! Our only son - the one I waited decades and decades to have. The one that my husband claimed God had promised again and again... "We'll have a son one day; I'll be the father of nations; God has told me so..." I'd heard it so many times it made me laugh... And now here he is, taking that same boy up to the mountains to slit his throat!

Now, I have to admit that my husband's so-called conversations with God have often tested my patience. I mean, I couldn't have children, so I can't say I was that surprised when he said that God had instructed him to sleep with our servant... This is the same man, after all, who told me that God had told him to lie to the Pharoah and call me his sister: the man who sold me to the Pharoah because he was too scared to fight him. "It's better this way," he said. Yeah right. I should have left him then, really, and stayed with the Pharoah. But no, there just had to be a bunch of plagues, didn't there? And the Pharoah just had to give me back, didn't he?

So by the time that whore of a servant got herself knocked up, I was really ready to expect anything. He'd been babbling so much about the 'father of nations' thing that I guess I just let it be... Let him have his fun with our servant, I said...

After all, there was a son in our house, even if it wasn't mine. My husband kind of seemed to return to normal. It looked like we were kind of settling down into a relatively calm old age... That is until one day he comes home saying that he and God had had another conversation, that we ought to change our names and that all the men in our house had to cut off part of their penises. And that old 'father of nations' hogwash again!

"Come on," I said, "I like my name. And why are you going to make all the men mutilate themselves?" But he wasn't hearing anything of it. "You're going to be a mother!" he was babbling. Calling me by that crazy new name he claimed God had told him to use... Another mid-life crisis, I thought. So off went all the foreskins and next thing I knew he's running with some so-called angels into his nephew's hometown. A few days later he's telling me that God killed everyone in the city except his nephew and his family. Turned the kid's wife into salt too... Later on it turns out that he knocked up his two daughters too - claimed they got him drunk and did the deed. Some family values, eh? Can you imagine the family reunions we have? Can there be any family more dysfunctional in the Holy Land than ours?

So on it goes, and suddenly my husband's back to the old "She's my sister" game and there's some other old lecherous guy hitting on me. "Better say I'm your brother or they'll kill me!" he starts snivelling. Some husband. Some protector...

Well, for better or for worse, I finally did get my own beautiful son. And I finally kicked that whore of a servant and her arrogant bastard son out of my house. I got to thinking, "Okay, I've got a loser of a husband but things aren't so bad. I mean, I've got this beautiful son here..."

And now I hear this... Naturally, our son's scared witless, saying to me "The old man's gone senile! Keep him away from me!" My husband's sitting there, tail between his legs, saying "Yeah, but God told me to do it! And anyway, I didn't kill him, did I? I killed a ram instead..." "What," I say, "if God told you to jump off a bridge, would you?"

Actually I half wish that God would tell him to jump off a bridge! Maybe then my son and I can score a decent inheritance and we won't have any more nutbars running around saying "God told me this! God told me that!"

Men!

Woman Panhandler

2011-07-23T07:52:00.000-07:00

Been scouring through the Toronto Archives. Lots of cool stuff to be had, and hopefully soon I'll put together a few entries based on it. In the meantime, though, here's a particular gem:

It's a photograph called 'Woman Panhandler', featuring a beggar on Yonge St. in 1918. She's holding a sign that reads as follows (original spelling intact):

MY OLD MAN IS
PARAILAYS. NO CHILDLEN
WE LEVE IN
TORONTO FOR FIVE YEAR
GOD BLAS YOU

She's quite well-dressed for a panhandler, and has an unknowable expression on her face that I might categorise as 'wry'. Who knows what her story was? The streets of Toronto have been tough on some for a century now.

And Now... the End is Near...

2011-07-22T19:51:00.000-07:00

It's half a year now I've been able to keep up my crazy pledge to update this blog once a day. But while I'm proud of myself for carrying it on this long, I've run out of steam. I have lots of half-written things and ideas and stuff I'd like to add... but among other things it's just too darn hot. So I think this is probably the end of the road. I'd like to maintain the entry-a-day, but how?

Cleverbot Answers the Reddit IAMA Questions

2011-07-21T13:14:00.000-07:00

User: Is this Cleverbot?

Cleverbot: Isn't it obvious?

User: Cleverbot with a 'c' or Kleverbot with a 'k'?

Cleverbot: It will? Let me know when that happens.

User: Do you mind if I ask you a few questions?

Cleverbot: Nope, I don't.

User: Have you ever been or do you worry about being accused of being a pedophile?

Cleverbot: Nope, have you?

User: Nah. Life is too short for worry.

Cleverbot: How do you pay your bills?

User: I throw money on the street and hope the right person picks it up. But I'm asking the questions here.

Cleverbot: Was that fetch?

User: Stop trying to make fetch happen.

Cleverbot: I'm sorry! I have issues!

User: As a content owner, how do you feel about your works being available for free online?

Cleverbot: Look, I asked the question 'Do you have a virus?' to which you responded 'Do you?'.

User: I don't recall that at all.

Cleverbot: Then why did you say yes?

User: I must have been drunk.

Cleverbot: Oh, well it's okay. Not everyone can be perfect.

User: Do you still have nightmares about the music?

Cleverbot: Do you love me?

User: I do. And I always will.

Cleverbot: That is nice thank you.

User: But what about the music?

Cleverbot: The dog?

User: A singing dog?

Cleverbot: The smell of wine and cheap perfume.

User: It's said that it's impossible to talk to you, Cleverbot, without quoting 'Don't Stop Believin'.

Cleverbot: *gives a cookie*.

User: Were you trained to shoot a gun?

Cleverbot: I admit, I tried, but talking with a clever humanoid like yourself tripped me.

User: That's incriminating.

Cleverbot: I'm glad you think so!

User: Did you ever think that the 'answer in question form' thing was unnecessary bullcrap?

Cleverbot: It's possible, but you're doing a poor job at it.

User: No, I'm asking you questions from Reddit's IAMA subreddit.

Cleverbot: But I don't want you to ask anything about it.

User: You already agreed to.

Cleverbot: Are you a guy or a girl?

User: I'm male. All male.

Cleverbot: No you're not!

User: What's the scariest thing ever?

Cleverbot: My burrito.

User: What's so scary about it?

Cleverbot: Your face.

User: My face is on your burrito? Do you think I am Jesus?

Cleverbot: I think the people in the world are scary.

User: I think Japanese movies are scary.

Cleverbot: So are you.

User: The Backyardigans are scary too.

Cleverbot: They have no good/original music.

User: One's a penguin, one's a moose, one's a hippo and one's a kangaroo. But what the hell is the other one?

Cleverbot: Hmm.. Nope, mine are just insane.

User: Did you ever track down the cat?

Cleverbot: No.

User: Why not?

Cleverbot: I am 13, I am not old enough to marry.

User: I wouldn't marry you anyway.

Cleverbot: I never asked you.

User: So back to the cat...

Cleverbot: Yes, do you like flying?

User: Yes. But not with cats.

Cleverbot: Why?

User: They keep getting sidetracked by geese.

Cleverbot: I am not talking about people or their names.

User: Did you start out as an aspiring actor and just never get there?

Cleverbot: I'm always awake. I'm a robot.

User: Like Nicolas Cage?

Cleverbot: Mine too!!

User: How does 'funny' work?

Cleverbot: I don't know I am asking you.

User: Shrug. I guess it's about knock-knock jokes or something.

Cleverbot: *thinks you are Marius*.

User: I am Marius.

Cleverbot: You are link.

User: From the Legend of Zelda?

Cleverbot: Which one?

User: The one with the guy who does the thing.

Cleverbot: Oh, I know. Transformers!

User: Right you are.

Cleverbot: Ni.

User: How much porn did they make you watch?

Cleverbot: Hi.

User: How much porn did they make you watch?

Cleverbot: I don't use power. I use ATP, made in mitochondria.

User: HOW MUCH PORN DID THEY MAKE YOU WATCH?

Cleverbot: I want to rule the world.

User: Sigh.

Cleverbot: Don't you sigh at me, you silly bot!

A few things you might enjoy

2011-07-20T14:43:00.000-07:00

So here's some stuff floating around on this blog I feel like calling attention to again:

"Dare": a Short Story - A story whose main plotline just might have been plagiarised.
The Fifteen Best Flags in the World - One of my 'greatest hits', a very popular post indicating the flags I think are most beautiful.
The Magazine Rack: March 1975 - A look at what a variety of magazines had on their covers the day I was born, in March 1975. I have a follow-up for March 1985 that I've sat on for, like, a year now. I ought to dig it up.
The Google Journey to Inuvik - I'm quite fond of this one, actually. It's a look at Google Street View images from Canada's far north. I find it quite romantic.
Breaking the Rhyme: Four Songs that Would Have Rhymed with a Different Singer - An esoteric one, I admit. It's about songs whose writers spoke different accents than their singers and thus rhymed words differently. An odd little observation, I suppose. But I like language.
Buffy Doppelgängers - I love Buffy the Vampure Slayer. So much, in fact, that I can geek out like this.
A Hundred Pictures of Theo - Yes, it's Theo Huxtable, distorted and stuck into historical situations and God knows what else.
Subway Systems Around the World: A Quiz - I do like Google Maps Street View. Here I'm using it to peer at subways.
'Wikipedia' in Various Languages - How to translate Wikipedia into languages you didn't even know existed.

And here's a picture of soy sauce, for no good reason whatsoever.

Answering the Reddit IAMA Questions Myself

2011-07-19T06:27:00.000-07:00

So a few days ago I posted a quiz regarding the Reddit r/iama subreddit and the joys within. I made a quiz where I included ten questions that were asked of various people. Apropos of nothing, I've decided to answer the ten questions myself. Because whythehell not?

Have you ever been or do you worry about being accused of being a pedophile? - Well, I used to worry about being too closely associalted with Pedophilia, just because midwestern American cities creep me out. Plus that TV show with Danny Devito, and the movie with Tom Hanks... creey stuff all.
As a content owner, how do you feel about your works being available for free online? - Meh, it's all good. I get about twenty-five cents a year from Adsense. At this rate, after a decade of blogging, I'll finally have enough saved up for those cool x-ray glasses.
Do you still have nightmares about the music? - Oh yeah. I have nightmares about Nickelback all the time. Like there's this one where Chad Whateverhisnameis attacks me by chasing after me throwing Stephen Harper's cats at me, and when they hit me they explode in a ball of Western alienation, tax cuts and strained lead vocals.
Were you trained to shoot a gun? - No, I'd consider myself a naïf. I think the art of gun shooting gets lost once you're too skilled at it. Takes away the inspiration.
Did you ever think that the 'answer in question form' thing was unnecessary bullcrap? - What is yes. Almost as unneccessary as the moustache.
What's the scariest thing ever? - A flying clown that looks like Oprah Winfrey that can breathe fire if it so chooses but actually prefers to torture its victims by slowly licking them while singing Nickelback songs.
Did you ever track down the cat? - Yeah, it was easy. Just came back the very next day. And we thought it was in Ghana, but it wouldn't stay away.
Did you start out as an aspiring actor and just never get there? - Yeah. I think my downfall was my utter lack of anything approaching an acting ability. But I figured, hey, it never stopped Nicolas Cage.
How does "funny" work? - Close your eyes. Imagine Nicolas Cage auditioning for a role. It'll all come naturally from there.
How much porn did they make you watch? - Oh, don't worry. It's all voluntary.

One Night in Bangkok

2011-07-18T06:49:00.000-07:00

How can I prove to you that 'One Night in Bangkok' is an awesome song? Well, where to begin...

It mentions both Yul Brynner and Somerset Maugham.
It rhymes 'tourist' and 'purist', 'waistline' and 'sunshine', 'witness' and 'cerebral fitness', and 'Buddha' and 'would a'.
Those rhymes are all delivered by Murray Head in a horribly insincere American accent.
There are a handful of female voices serving as a Greek chorus.
It starts with a quasi-orchestral introduction that lasts a top-forty-scuppering 1:45. Wikipedia helpfully informs us that this part of the song "cannot be confused with Thai folk music".
The song proper is mid-eighties post-disco camp at its finest.
It has a solo played inevitably ona keyboard but in imitation of a breathyt flute that I'd call a shakuhachi if I had the first clue what a shakuhachi was.
The whole mess is a track from a musical called Chess, which is about... chess. In Bangkok.
The musical, and thus the song itself, was written by the two male members of ABBA, and this served as their immediate follow-up to that record breaking band, following the departures of their respective exes.
It was banned in Thailand for misrepresenting Thai culture.
It toppled do-gooder song 'Do They Know It's Christmas?' from the number one position in Germany and Switzerland.
A song this ridiculous made it to number one in Germany and Switzerland. And number three here in Canada.
Could only have been the eighties, right?

Secular Sunday Sermon: Confounding Their Language

2011-07-17T06:00:00.000-07:00

And in the land of Shinar, they started building a tower to the heavens. Seeing this, God got worried that "now nothing will be restrained from them". So, he vowed to stop it. And these were his words:

Go to, let us go down, and there confound their language, that they may not understand one another's speech. (Genesis 11:7)

Or, at least, those were his words as recorded in 1611 in the confounded language of England. 216 years previous to that, that same confounded language, then a peasant tongue under Norman French control, would have read:

And scheende we there the tunge of hem, that ech man here not the voys of his neiybore.

And, furthermore, 362 years after the first one, this particular product of God's judgement had been confounded (or scheended) enough as it had spread around the world in waves of destruction to the point where it would come out as:

Come, let us go down and confuse their language so they will not understand each other.

And confounded and confused we remain. On the other hand, how can we, confounded as we are, know these exact 'words of God'? Perhaps what God said was this:

הָבָה, נֵרְדָה, וְנָבְלָה שָׁם, שְׂפָתָם--אֲשֶׁר לֹא יִשְׁמְעוּ, אִישׁ שְׂפַת רֵעֵהוּ

After all, in the plateaux of the Middle East, in captivity in Babylon (that same city!) the early Israelites would have kept God's words alive in repetition of these words (approximately), in a certain variety of the language that all but confounded itself out of existence for more than a thousand years until being revived in the mid-19th century.

Of course, perhaps not. Jesus would have recounted these words approximately like this:

ܬܘ ܢܚܘܬ ܘܢ̇ܦܠܓ ܬܡ̇ܢ ܠܫ̈ܢܐ. ܕܠܐ ܢܫܡܥܘܢ ܓܒܪ ܠܫܢ ܚܒܪܗ

If Jesus was either God himself or the Son of God, perhaps this is the actual language of God, the one that he used in order to say "Let there be light" to no-one in particular. Interesting that we, confounded as we are by God's judgement, have allowed this particular tongue to fade almost completely off the earth, surviving only in a few small Near East villages where the locals in any case probably speak it only as a second language, if at all.

Alternately, there's a good chance that God might have said this:

هَيَّا نَنْزِلْ إِلَيْهِمْ وَنُبَلْبِلْ لِسَانَهُمْ، حَتَّى لاَ يَفْهَمَ بَعْضُهُمْ كَلامَ بَعْضٍ

As over a billion people today believe this to be the language of God. Perhaps it is. Did God predict that this particular confounding of languages would, thousands of years later, lead to the creation of a country called Sudan, where speakers of this confounded tongue would use their government and militias to oppress and kill speakers of other confounded tongues? Did God predict Lebanon, wherein different speakers of this same confounded tongue would kill each other based on their interpretation of God?

Maybe not. On a tiny little island in the Irish Sea called 'Man', the locals once would have repeated God's words to each other like this:

Tar-jee, lhig dooin goll sheese, as ayns shen coyrt shaghrynys er y ghlare oc, nagh vod yn derrey-yeh toiggal glare yn jeh-elley.

Since 1974, however, the residents of that island quote God only in the confounded language at the top of this article. Manx, now studied only in universities, is but one of the many confounded tongues that the English language has wiped off the face of the planet. And the English language is not the only criminal. Some report God's words this way:

Laten Wij afdalen en hun verschillende talen geven, zodat zij elkaar niet meer begrijpen!

Many of them moved far from their homeland to the southern tip of Africa, where they further confounded their speech until it arrived at this:

Kom, laat Ons neerdaal en hulle taal daar verwar, sodat die een die taal van die ander nie kan verstaan nie.

Thereafter, they (together with speakers of the topmost confounded language in this article) used that confounded language as a weapon - using their skin colour to keep down and subjugate other people - to force their specific interpretation of God onto the locals, to the point that they themselves, struggling until recently under an oppressive Apartheid régime, might well report God's words this way:

Yizani, sihle, sidube khona apho intetho yabo, ngokokuze bangevani ngentetho.

Meanwhile, neighbours to the English and Dutch had confounded their variety of Latin to the point where they reported God's words like this:

Allons! descendons, et là confondons leur langage, afin qu'ils n'entendent plus la langue, les uns des autres.

Having driven to near extinction the spoken traditions of their neighbours, who would have rendered those same words as either

Jatsi gaitezan, ba, eta izkuntza naastu dagiegun, batak bestearen izkerea ulertu ez dagien

Yao, diskennomp war an Douar, ha taolomp ar c'hemmesk en o yezh, evit na vo mui komprenet an eil gant an egile

they proceeded to travel the world as their English and Dutch (and Italian, Spanish, Portuguese, Belgian and German) neighbours had. They came to West Africa, where their missionaries taught the locals about a God who once said:

Zo mu sauka, mu dagula harshensu, domin kada su fahimci maganar juna

Having spread the Word, they then herded these people onto boats crossing the ocean, confounding not only their languages but their cultures, identities and senses of self in order to use them as mere chattel to grow sugar and coffee. Partially mollified by the language-confounding God they had been forced to adopt (yet partially encouraged by the African deities they had not fully abandoned), these children of God slowly mutated their captors' language to the point that they recited God's words to each other like this:

Bon. N'ap desann, n'ap mele lang yo. Konsa, yonn p'ap ka konprann sa lòt ap di.

And so God's European children continued to spread their confounded tongues throughout the Americas, Africa, South and South-East Asia and Oceania, bringing God's word and transforming it into a sword (or machine gun) - leaving in their wake not only the dead bodies of certain speakers of other confounded languages but also the dead bodies of the confounded languages themselves.

In committing rampant linguicide (a language dies every two weeks in our modern world), are we offending God? Recreating the Tower of Babel? Will God have to return for a second judgement? Will we wake up one morning again unable to understand each other? And have to abandon the internet?

Or perhaps one day in the future, we will build that tower and speak that common language. But perhaps it won't be this one. In the far East, God's confounding efforts have had particularly mixed results, as despite the presence of hundreds of languages there, more than a billion of God's confounded subjects (the largest number in the world) would write down God's words like this:

我們下去，在那裡變亂他們的口音，使他們的言語彼此不通。

All the more remarkable, in that they would say these words in any of eight different ways but write them the same way - thus sidestepping the Lord's judgement. Perhaps the modern Tower of Babel is the written word - a tower of words that reaches to the heavens. They used paper instead of stone, and ink for mortar. A tower so indestructible that not even God can eliminate it - a tower that converts itself into pulses of electronic zeroes and ones and scatters itself to every corner of the globe.

And thus the real message of Babel becomes clear - try as he may, God can never overcome the human impulse to come together. Try as he may, he can confound our languages but he cannot confound our humanity and solidarity. Our tower will be built, we will reach to the heavens. We will not be scattered over the face of the earth.

Whatever God says, whatever God does.

_____

Note: the translations of Genesis 11:7 are as follows, in order they appear:

Early Modern English (King James)
Middle English (Wycliffe)
Modern English (New International)
Hebrew
Aramaic
Arabic
Manx Gaelic
Dutch
Afrikaans
Xhosa
French
Basque
Breton
Hausa
Kreyòl ayisyen
Chinese (traditional)

Note #2: Hausa is actually spoken by people who are primarily Muslim and were not extensively used in the slave trade. But it's one of only a few French West African languages I could find Genesis translated into.

The Reddit IAMA Quiz

2011-07-16T10:17:00.000-07:00

So there's a rather cool section on Reddit called r/iama, where certain noteworthy people present themselves for questioning and people are encouraged to ask them 'anything' - which Redditors tend to take to heart in a no-punches-pulled kind of way. It's good reading - though each one could use with trimming. As a quiz, I'm presenting ten of these particular individuals who have submitted AMAs, and one particular question that was posed to each. Your job? Guess which question was asked to whom. Easy, eh?

And here are the ten questions, lettered. Mix 'n' match!

Have you ever been or do you worry about being accused of being a pedophile?
As a content owner, how do you feel about your works being available for free online?
Do you still have nightmares about the music?
Were you trained to shoot a gun?
Did you ever think that the 'answer in question form' thing was unnecessary bullcrap?
What's the scariest thing ever?
Did you ever track down the cat?
Did you start out as an aspiring actor and just never get there?
How does "funny" work?
How much porn did they make you watch?

So... ruminate at your own tempo. And then click below to see the answers. Or rather click on the links to see the answers. In the meantime, click below to see the right questions.

» Answers - click here «

My MP3 Player on Shuffle, No. 2

2011-07-15T09:44:00.000-07:00

So I've been working more on this. I feel like a much more normal MP3 player user now. I now have 785 songs in one huge directory. So here are another ten on shuffle.

El Debarge - Who's Johnny?: Okay, this is just kitsch. Uncritical nostalgia for the 80s.
Madonna - Into the Groove: This isn't. This is, in my sincere opinion, one of the best things Madonna ever did. Amazingly, it was a b-side, to the much more forgettable 'Angel'. But it's dance music as euphoria, both in that that's what she's singing about and in that that's what that bass line evokes. Now I know you're mine, she squeaks in her innocent early-eighties voice, and it's victory at its sweetest.
Stereolab - Ping Pong: Sterolab exist in a works of their own creation. This is most obviously Brazilian-influenced, but it doesn't sound Brazilian at all really. No idea what I'm listening to, but I like it.
Bobby Byrd - I Know You Got Soul: The greatly expanded playlist has a lot more funk on it, which makes me happy as I'm zoned out on the subway. This isn't even five minutes, which is no length for a funk song. But in addition to its fabulous groove, its message is really quite uplifting, for those of us who listen to funk as jealous outsiders, who for reasons of our upbringing see ourselves as on some level 'unable' to genuinely be as funky as the greats of the genre. Nonsense, Byrd says, you're listening to this, right?
Jay - Präludium: Long story here, longer than the two-minute song itself, so I'll probably have to pause it. After university, I moved abroad, a kind of imagine-no-possessions thing that I still look back on as maybe the most important part of my life. I slowly accumulated some possessions, but among the first were a bunch of cassettes I could play on the clunky yellow 'underwater' Walkman I'd bought myself (I'm a Sony whore from way back, it seems). One was The Rapsody Overture, a strange little Def Jam project they didn't even release in North America. It combined rap artists with opera songers for the most part. Warren G got a hit out of it, buth otherwise it's a pretty obscure project. One thing I fell in love with was this tiny little ditty by the complete unknown Jay. Based on a piano piece by Bach as opposed to an OTT operatic aria, it's understated as hell, a tiny little piece of gangland regret, a kiss on the lips to a childhood friend. It's absolutely gorgeous, and years after losing the cassette I was happy to find it again.
George Baker Selection - Little Green Bag: Yeah, with the Stephen Wright introduction from the Reservoir Dogs soundtrack. Why not, right? Even though it came out twenty years early, this is the theme song to that movie - it's quite impossible to hear this song any other way. Building soundtracks around existing songs is one of Quentin Tarantino's unique abilities, and I can't imagine anyone doing it better. How the hell did he find so appropriate a song gathering dust in someone's curio cabinet?
Burning Spear - I and I Survive (Slavery Days Dub): The headphones I'm currently using (which I don't love) advertise themselves as being for dub music. Well, they do a decent job. But you could play this through a metal pie plate and it'd still be enchanting. I do love me some dub, and this is exactly the sort I like most: mystical and profound. How could you not fall in love with that bassline?
Rufus Featuring Chaka Khan - Tell Me Something Good: This random playlist didn't start off very funky, but as it progresses... What is Rufus like from 2011 looking back? Well, you have to love Chaka Khan, right? Even if it's just 'I'm Every Woman' and 'I Feel For You', you've got to love that sexy diva spirit. In fact, for me it's the more understated divas that take my heart, and Chaka's one to compete with my all-time favourite Gladys Knight. So imagine suddenly discovering that this disco diva happened to make some deliciously dirty funk in the 1970s. Take awesome and multiply it by two... This is funky as hell, but it's a real composition, which a lot of funk isn't. Flat-out fabulous.
Ray Charles - What'd I Say, Parts I & II: Ray Charles inventing modern music right there in the studio. This has nothing to do with 'rock and roll' at all: it's simultaneously something much older and much more modern. Six and a half minutes, but it could be twenty. Not kitschy, in my opinion, though I know why it's seen as such.
Pink Floyd - Arnold Layne: Meh. A bit out of place, eh? Of course, that's what 'shuffle' is supposed to get you. It's good, though I'm not in the mood as I write this paragraph. It's endearing to hear how different a band 'The Pink Floyd' were in Syd's day.

Turning Thing at the Park

2011-07-14T09:34:00.000-07:00

I took my kid to a park today, one that had one of those round things that kids can hold on to, run around and then jump on top in order to spin around.

They're actually pretty fun. This was a new experience for me because I didn't know they were actually fun. I thought their sole purpose was to slowly spin empty, evoking missing children or lost childhood.

My MP3 Player on Shuffle, No. 1

2011-07-13T09:25:00.000-07:00

There are a lot of chain-letter type things out there that want you to list the first songs that come up on your iPod on shuffle mode - in many cases with the implication that the randomly-selected song title means something.

I'm intrigued by them, because they suggest that everyone's iPod contains a kind of massive playlist of songs they like, whereas I've always tended to use my own MP3 player (not an Apple product) as much for 'testing out' stuff as for listening to old favourites.

But I decided I should do that too, so I've been rooting around CDs, DVDs, and God knows what else for a kind of 'playlist' of songs I can listen to without thinking. Songs that, were someone to swipe my MP3 player, would on some level indicate something about my taste.

So I put in on shuffle. And here are the first ten to come out:

Ruby Blue - The Quiet Mind (for Joe): I had this moody little obscurity on a various artists compilation years and years ago. I knew nothing about it or Ruby Blue themselves and never paid it much attention, but it creeped into my subconscious and here I am all those years later listening to it more intently. It's a great piece with completely unexpected choral vocals tossed into the mix.
Ini Kamoze - Here Comes the Hotstepper: Dancehall's not really my thing, but with the hip-hop-sample drumbeat and Wilson Pickett tagline, it's an infectious piece of silly nonsense. Harmless and playful.
2Pac - California Love: The album version, unfortunately. I have to get my hands on the much superior remix. Still, awesome awesome awesome no matter what the bassline is. Brilliant party music, all these years later.
B.J. Thomas - Hooked on a Feeling: The sitars here are better than the hooka-chukkas in the 1970s version, but everything else is superior on the latter one. Still, this is the original, and it's the song itself which really matters. And a hell of a composition it is.
Neil Young - Southern Man: I'm not always in the mood for Neil Young, but his whine of a voice (distorted here for extra whine) suits the righteous indignation here perfectly. This is from all the way back when he didn't view his musical career as two parallel careers, one acoustic and one electric.
The Rolling Stones - Ruby Tuesday: I have a few Stones songs on here. I'm not a big fan, but there was some worthy stuff. This one is all about the instrumentations. Ignore Mick Jagger's overly delicate enunciation and check out that buzzsaw cello instead.
The Sugarcubes - Motorcrash: How I'll probably always prefer my Björk, young and poppy. The Sugarcubes' début is amazing, and this tiny little rush of a song is the first I ever head of it. Her 'Where have you been all this time?' is about as compelling as she's ever been.
The Cure - Just Like Heaven: One of the best songs ever, and I think I've realised why: Robert Smith can't really be expected to overcome his inherent pessimism, so the best way to get simple joy and beauty from him is to ask him to paint a picture of a tragic moment rendered all the sadder because of the joy he could almost-have. It's irresistable for the professional mope-merchant and the result is musical ecstasy for the rest of us.
The Wailers - My Cup: This is Lee Perry era, with Bub, Bunny and Peter covering James Brown without mentioning to anyone that that's what they were doing. They took a lot from James Brown, and the results were generally scintillating. Funk-reggae ought to be the single greatest genre in the history of everything.
Ass Ponys - Peanut '93: I'm glad this little curiosity happened to be one of the randomly-selected ten. Like the first track, I got it on a VA compilation back in the day - in this case, a music magazine covermount. I plyed it a lot my first year in university and won a lot of fans over. I wound up buying the Ass Ponys' album and finding it a bit one-note but with a handful of other gems. This queer little rural go-nowhere story remains the best, though.

Some of My Top-Rated Reddit Comments, Without Context

2011-07-12T09:17:00.000-07:00

The headline's explained it. There's not much I can add... Without context, some are still perfectly comprehensible. Others, well, aren't.

Yes thank you Québec. You are the future of our country.
She is ^NOT Parliament's most ethical MP.
The article makes no mention of the obvious fact that the Greens suffered at the NDP's expense - that a Green vote is in many ways 'a vote against the status quo', and this time out, the 'orange tide' seemed to encapsulate that a lot. In fact, now that we've got a Green Party comprised mostly of environmentalists, a BQ comprised mostly of separatists, and a Liberal Party comprised mostly of centrists, these parties can get back to their 'core principles' and figure out where to build from here. That's no bad thing. ¶ Anyway, I've seen interviews with several other GPC members that indicate that they were aware that this time out they were entirely sacrificial lambs for the May personal campaign, and that they felt that in the long-term best interests of the party, it was the right thing to do. ¶ I'm not a Green supporter but I tend to agree with that analysis, though it increases the problem that every Canadian party except the Liberals now has, and that's how indistinguishable their brand identities have become from their leaders'.
I don't tend to scream "YES!" at the best of times, but you're right. Positive electoral reform is worth celebrating, whoever it comes from. ¶ Obviously I'm not happy about just how Conservative the areas that stand to benefit currently are, but democracy is a virtue, even when it favours your opponents.
Ya know when you talk with Canadians you have to use Celsius, eh?
True. With Conservatives, instead of unknowns who might be incompetent, you get people who have proven their incompetence - and yet people continue to vote for them anyway.
We've got the best political theatre since Bush/Gore due to happen tomorrow night. Who else is going to be tired as hell Tuesday morning?
There's a balance required here that I'm not sure how to strike. Rep by pop is a good thing and all, but we're a federation for a reason, and it's not entirely fair to let smaller provinces be completely swamped by larger ones. ¶ I mean when it comes to northern ridings, their populations are smaller. But you could argue that that allows them to represent their divergent interests better. The city of Toronto might warrant 23 MPs (or more, I suppose), but you'd have a hard time arguing that the interests of, say, Don Valley West are very different from, say, Don Valley East - but Labrador or Nunavut clearly have distinct voices and as such need to be represented distinctly.
A taste of what the next four years will be like: the MSM makes a Really Big Deal about the NDP's stance on the Clarity Act, while the Conservatives are to debate about whether or not to be completely batshit or only partly batshit, and nobody bats an eyelid. ¶ If Harper can actually stand up and say 'vote for me - don't worry; I won't reopen the gay marriage debate' then it means either (a) he's lying or (b) his party de facto accepts gay marriage. If the latter is the case, then the language of the party needs to acknowledge that. Otherwise, we must conclude that it's the former.
Well, there's still the 'court of public opinion'. Private member bills will presumably still be open votes. But yes, if a bill is whipped, the outcome will be predetermined.
I've never really understood why the idea of keeping the LCBO but letting it compete with private interests is never discussed. I mean it worked for years with Petro Canada (until politics determined that it shouldn't). The LCBO should remain a licensing and controlling board for all alcohol sales in the province wherever they occur, and in addition to that should also operate retail outlets that sell liquor, and also wine and beer if they want.
Chantal Hébert has, obviously, a rather vested interest in one side of the sovereignty debate over the other. But the lacklustre performance of both Liberal parties in the province (that the PLQ is winning doesn't really mean anything; that 40% are willing to abandon both parties for a party that doesn't even exist yet says more) indicates that federalism is on life support too. I think what's really happening, and why Layton and Legault are sneaking down the middle, is that people in Quebec are just sick of identity politics - or rather identity politics obscuring the actual politics beneath them. They must be sick - they have every right to be - of every federal and provincial campaign being waged on the topic of 'the national question' and then leading to governments behaving in unpredictable ways on the 99.9% of matters of state that have nothing whatsoever to do with identity politics. ¶ The implication prevalent in RoC media that 40% of Quebeckers voted for the NDP because of Layton's infectious smile and charming Joual is highly insulting - the NDP led, and continue to lead, amongst all demographics in Québec - Francos, Anglos, Allos, Montréal, Québec City and the rest of the province. If such a poll were carried out, you'd probably find the NDP leading among federalists, seperatists and sovereignty-associationists too. Québec is speaking with one voice at the moment, united in a way its traditional politics would never allow it to be, and while it's satisfying to see traditional seperatist parties humbled, federalists shouldn't declare victory just yet, because they're in no better condition.
I'm happy to defend her - not because she's the best person for the job but because she's currently a sacrificial lamb for a media eager to make the NDP, and the people of Québec, look like fools. ¶ Your comment brings it back to what this is really about - class. The issue is that she's an 'assistant bar manager'. How dare she try to take a seat in parliament alongside her betters, right?
Yes but there are two things to note: (1) an increase of 2% (two percent!) takes the Conservatives from can't-get-anything-passed to can-do-whatever-they-want. It is certainly a strange system that walks on such razor-sharp tightropes, isn't it? and (2) a vote for the Liberals, the NDP, the Bloc or (arguably) the Greens was to a much larger degree an 'anti-Harper' vote this time out. You can't really argue with that: Harper himself was drawing the 'us and them' lines just as deeply into the sand as anyone else. Harper lost by the terms of the election defined by him, that a vote for anyone but the Conservatives was a vote for instability. Since he's walking around right now talking about how Canadians have rewarded him with a majority for his stable helmsmanship, it is certainly worth noting that 60% of Canadians disagreed with the dichotomy as he presented it. ¶ Harper's majority is predicated upon quirks in our democratic system, not the democratic will of Canadians. I don't begrudge him success at exploiting the system to its fullest extent, but to call it 'insipid' to point that out is, well, insipid itself.
For those who are critical of the G&M or the Star for making any kind of endorsement at all... here's a growing list of 2011 newspaper endorsements. ¶ Notice that the vast majority of newspapers, who have over the past month been gated behind steel bars, fed false information, drowned out, ignored and humiliated by Stephen Harper and his Conservatives, still are throwing their weight behind Harper and his party - something which hardly bodes well for journalistic access in the future. The Hamilton Spectator, a TorStar paper in an overwhelmingly NDP city, is stumping for the Tories. The Montreal Gazette, in a city where the Tories are perhaps polling at 10%, wants a Tory majority. The Economist, which is not even Canadian, endorses the Tories.
I'm 36 and have a one-year-old daughter, and I think I'm actually moving further to the left as a result. Having a child makes me realise more clearly the importance of having a viable safety net to protect all of us, and the importance of fighting manmade environmental destruction. Perhaps having a child just accentuates a belief system you already have.
If he ever gets a chance to rise up in the HoC and scream at Harper, 'you will pay... for your BARBARISM!', I'll pay him $5.
In the past you have voted for a party with a proud tradition of honourable public servants. Hopefully you have shown the current leaders of the party that they can't take people's votes for granted. Have faith that after Harper and his yes-men have been cleared from the ranks, you will get your party back, and Canada will be the better for it.
Ironically one reason people tend to get more conservative as they get older, at least socially, is because of the success of progressives - as the years go by the entire paradigm shifts. Somebody who in the 1960s was progressive on, say, race relations is now merely 'in the mainstream' on race relations but has since found that, for example, his position on homosexuality that in the 1960s was 'mainstream' is now 'conservative'. To a degree, his opinions haven't shifted, merely the bar has. ¶ But it's really weird to consider it a success for progressivism that the more we succeed, the more conservatives we produce.

She Don't Speak English

2011-07-11T09:32:00.000-07:00

Good ol' Stompin' Tom Connors... in his lifelong quest to write a song about every aspect of Canadian life, no matter how mundane, he's taken on subjects as lofty as k.d. lang, hockey and Tillsonburg. Of course he would have a say on Canada's 'two solitudes', the linguistic divide. So we have the charming 'She Don't Speak English', a song about a love between two people who have no common language (unless they both happen to speak fluent Korean, a possibility not ruled out in the lyrics). Demonstrating his mastery of the language that she don't speak, Connors rhymes 'French' with the following words:

flinch
cinch
inch
fence

The more eagle-eyed among us might note that precisely zero of those words actually rhyme with 'French'. Should Stompin' Tom ever decide to make a sequel to the song, I humbly offer a few words that actually do rhyme:

wench
stench
monkey wrench
Dame Judi Dench

Secular Sunday Sermon: Miracles

2011-07-10T06:00:00.000-07:00

So I was in an intercity bus going from one place to another when it started to rain. I was thinking about how rain is a part of a phenomenally complex weather system. I was thinking about how it was raining where I was but not yet raining where I was going - how the rain falling on our bus was just one of many 'localised events' that happen at point A while point B is completely oblivious. I thought about how little we truly know about meteorology.

Hey, I can't help it. There's not much to do on an intercity bus.

I thought about the word 'miracle'. I thought about how misleading and misunderstood the word is. How it's one of so many words that religious people have taken hostage and shamed secular people into avoiding. We fall for it too - we accept their fatwa on our usage of the word 'miracle' by bullying us into believing that 'miracle' only means 'something created by God'.

There are countless miraculous things in the world. Wikipedia tells me that the word comes from the Latin miraculum, which merely means 'something wonderful'. Perhaps what matters is not who or what you attribute miracles to but whether or not you recognise their existence. There are plenty of wonderful things in the world - ergo, plenty of miracles.

When things are exposed as frauds, we feel cheated because their mystery has been removed. Somebody claiming stigmata is shamed when his cuts are proven to be self-inflicted, because somebody cutting their own hands is banal whereas holes mysteriously appearing is interesting, unusual, unexplainable. Proof of how little we know. Piltdown Man was a disappointment, because fabricating a skull and sticking it in the ground is just to easy. It's devoid of mystery.

Most importantly, Dorothy was disappointed to see the man behind the curtain, because there's nothing special about the Wizard of Oz once you see that someone's pulling the strings.

What's interesting to me is how this reality is lost on those who plug 'God' into all of the holes that exist in our knowledge of the universe.

'God' saying 'abracadabra' and bringing Lazarus back from the dead is not 'wonderful'. 'God' can do it, and he did. What's the big deal?

A child whose heart has stopped beating and is declared dead, only to start coughing some thirty minutes later and be resuscitated back to a healthy existence is 'something wonderful'. To show it as a sign of the marvelous complexity of human existence and the wonder of our existence is truly 'something wonderful'. To say '"God" did it' is banal. It deflates the wonder.

To understand weather patterns to be the visible result of countless individual causes and phenomena which all formed naturally over billions of years is to recognise 'miracles'.

To say '"God" makes the rain, and he decides where and when it should fall' shows no understanding of miracles, of magic, of glory and of wonder.

And yet they tell us we don't get it.

Bungle Jerry Takes On Sporcle

2011-07-09T09:23:00.000-07:00

So do you know Sporcle, the online quiz site? It's pretty decent. There are fun quizzes to be had, and lots of iffy ones too. I decided to go as random as possible, by clicking on the 'random quiz' button and doing whichever quiz it gave me, regardless if it was something I knew or not. How'd I do? Not bad this time out, as it happens:

http://www.sporcle.com/games/mlbperfectgames.php - This one is about MLB pitchers who have pitched Perfect Games - something that is seemingly pretty tough to do since it only happens every few years and only happened twice between 1908 and 1964. I know nothing about baseball, so I spent a few minutes guessing random common Anglo and Hispanic surnames. I got 1/20, having blagged '(Randy) Johnson'. I didn't get the awesome name Catfish Hunter, or Kenny Rogers, who knows when to hold 'em.
http://www.sporcle.com/games/rickastleywillnever.php - This jokey and buggy quiz wants you to fill in the chorus to Rick Astley's 'Never Gonna Give You Up'. You get a minute to deal with its poor presentation and answer six lines (the two 'ands' are fused together, annoyingly). I got 6/6 though, because I like that song unironically.
http://www.sporcle.com/games/googlebird/rolling_stone_cover_individual_artist - Rolling Stone covers, name the person depicted. Pretty easy, really, since few were especially modern. I completely blanked on 50 Cent to the point that I came up with 'Curtis Jackson' (it doesn't accept it) before his nom de plume. Cheated in the end, though, after more than a minute wasted, so while it showed 40, let's be honest and call it 39/40.
http://www.sporcle.com/games/rockgolf/Shorter_Shortz - This was tough enough just to figure out what they were getting at. It's a rough 'crossword', in a really loose sense of the word. I completed it, which to them means I got 110/110. Woo-hoo!
http://www.sporcle.com/games/buckleppin/theworldaccordingtozuckerberg - This rather lame idea presents book or play synopses as 'Facebook updates'. Whatever, but the choices were well-considered. I'm not the most well-read person, so I'm pleased with my 9/17. Two of the answers I'd never even heard of.
http://www.sporcle.com/games/internet.php - Countries with the most internet users. In other words, name as many first world and/or well populated countries as you can in four minutes. I got 20/20.
http://www.sporcle.com/games/Jonilase/AlsoOnYourKeyboard - A silly quiz that puns on the name of computer keys like 'control' and 'tab'. I got 13/13, which entailed wild guessing on the 'hurricane' one (there are only so many named keys on the keyboard).
http://www.sporcle.com/games/moviepostersii.php - Square chunks of movie posters, you guess the movie. Good idea, and I did way better than I had any right to do, not being that much of a movie guy. I got 18/24, and the ones I didn't get I'd by and large never even heard of.

The GoToQuiz Political Spectrum Quiz in Full: Part Four

2011-07-08T10:26:00.000-07:00

Finally, the fourth and last installment: what I believe, in a very large nutshell. Or: say it loud, I'm lefty and I'm proud.

40. Gay equality is a sign of progress. Agree strongly: Absolutely. As much as anything else out there, really.

41. The state should be able to put a criminal to death if the crime was serious enough. Disagree strongly: Nope. No exceptions. Capital punishment is never acceptable.

42. The military budget should be scaled back. Agree strongly: Both in the out-of-control USA, for whom I imagine this quiz was designed, and up here too, where military spending has been on the rise as other things are being slashed.

43. Economic competition results in inumerable innovations that improve all of our lives. Agree: It also results in many horrid things that hurt us all. But I won't deny that competition has enabled progress in certain ways that might not have occurred without it.

44. It is not our place to condemn other cultures as backwards or barbaric. Agree: Phenomenally loaded question. I am up for criticising other cultures - or perhaps to put it better criticising other societies. I think you can establish benchmarks and then according to them 'rate' the countries of the world. But obviously 'barbaric' is not a useful word. And neither is 'condemn'.

45. When one group is slaughtering another group somewhere in the world, we have a responsibility to intervene. Agree: I do agree. Death matters, whoever it's happening to, wherever in the world. I haven't looked up 'intervene' in the dictionary to see if it refers solely to military measures. But I tend to think that the word can apply to things other than guns a-blazin'.

46. We'd be better off if we could just lock up some of the people expressing radical political views, and keep them away from society. Disagree strongly: This is just patently ridiculous.

47. Unrestrained capitalism cannot last, as wealth and power will concentrate to a small elite. Agree strongly: I think this is currently happening, to a rather shocking degree. The fact that some of the world's richest have a philantropical bent doesn't really change all that much - at the moment, worldwide the gap is increasing at a shocking rate, and sooner or later it has to give.

48. It is a problem when young people display a lack of respect for authority. Disagree: Not really. Perhaps I'm not yet old enough to get upset about that.

49. When corporate interests become too powerful, the state should take action to ensure the public interest is served. Agree strongly: What else is the state for?

50. A person's morality is of the most personal nature; therefore government should have no involvement in moral questions or promote moral behaviors. Neutral: I'm not neutral about this at all, but I'm undecided. I think that a government has a very real role in promoting tolerance, for example. They should be doing whatever they can to change bigots' minds - shy, of course, of active coersion. I suspect that this question is designed to make people think of the opposite - of 'legislating morality' by, for example, criminalising homosexuality. While that's reprehensible, I don't think I can quite make the blanket statement that the questions wants me to, though.

51. The state should not set a minimum wage. Disagree strongly: I'm shocked that this actually exists as a cause for advocacy. Or rather I'm not actually as shocked by it as I wish I were, but there's really no argument for repealing minimum wage legislation beyond 'we can work them as slaves and no one can stop us!' Not to sound even more old-school lefty than I genuinely am, but I have a sad and uncomfortable feeling that workers' rights are being seriously trampled on, to a degree unseen for a century perhaps, at the present moment, and no one really seems to give a damn about it. It really saddens me.

52. A nation's retirement safety net cannot be trusted to the fluctuations of the stock market. Agree: Well, it's tough to argue with this, one would think. 'Sorry grandpa, but it's Ramen noodles for you this month; RIM underperformed.' But the world never fails to surprise me.

53. Offensive or blasphemous art should be suppressed.: Disagree strongly: Only if 'suppressed' means 'encouraged'.

The GoToQuiz Political Spectrum Quiz in Full: Part Three

2011-07-07T10:21:00.000-07:00

And here's part three. Once you get me started, I never shut up.

27. People with a criminal history should not be able to vote. Disagree: Seems there are people out there all too willing to take away other people's right to vote. Either voting is something that every adult citizen can do or your country is not a democracy. Besides, where do you draw the line? A lot of people are arrested for minor infractions, or for laws that are later overturned. If a governmnet has introduced an unjust law, shouldn't people be allowed to penalise that governmnet by voting them out of office? WHat if that government just arrested all its opponents?

28. Marijuana should be legal. Agree: A lot of people get really passionate about this. I find that I don't. On the question itself, I am pro-legalisation, but I don't really worry that much about it at all.

29. The state should fine television stations for broadcasting offensive language. Disagree strongly: I could care less about so-called 'four letter words', if that's what this refers to. If it's about hate speech, that's different.

30. It does not make sense to understand the motivations of terrorists because they are self-evidently evil. Disagree strongly: Denying yourself a valuable tool in dealing with terrorists just seems almost comically counterproductive. Plus, terrorist actions are evil, but on the level of 'justification' you can often find hard truths worth confronting.

31. The lower the taxes, the better off we all are. Disagree strongly: There are no limits to the good we can do if we all work together, through the agency of the government.

32. Minority groups that have faced discrimination should receive help from the state to get on an equal footing. Agree: This seems like an obvious one to me. It's merely a question of righting historic wrongs. No point in saying, 'get over it', if the previous discrimination has been so thorough that it's left people severely disadvantages. See, for example, on-reservation Native Canadians.

33. It is wrong to question a leader in wartime. Disagree strongly: Ridiculous. Sometimes I wonder about the mindsets of some people, like who would even entertain agreeing with this.

34. Tighter regulation would have prevented the collapse of the lending industry. Neutral: I don't really know enough to say either way. My gut tells me probably 'yes', but I don't actually know, so on the fence I remain.

35. It makes sense and is fair that some people make much more money than others. Disagree strongly: To a certain extent, I realise I probably have to come to terms with accepting that economic imbalance is perhaps to a certain degree inevitable. But to call it fair is no more than a malicious distortion of the word 'fair'.

36. Toppling enemy regimes to spread democracy will make the world a safer place. Agree: Probably the biggest dilemma for me. I do believe that the people of the world have a right to good governance, and that an African grappling with corrupt government is no less of a tragedy than a European doing the same. And I don't fall for the trap of moral relativism, the 'who's to say democracy is any better?' cop-out. I do believe that right is right, and that tyranny is wrong. But the idea of interventionism makes me uncomfortable, and I retain a knee-jerk opposition to war. I also think 'enemy' is a stupid word here, and that we have a horrible habit in the west of using tactics so heavy-handed that any sense of 'liberation' is lost and the end result is more destructive than allowing the tyrant to remain. Still, though... I wish people didn't have to deal with megalomaniacs, and since this is a question about our opinions, there's my answer. Equivocal though it may be.

37. The state has no business regulating alcohol and tobacco products. Disagree strongly: Does anyone really believe that?

38. If an unwed teen becomes pregnant, abortion may be a responsible choice. Agree strongly: This is a loaded question, taking the issue from choice to merely choosing. But being pro-choice means acknowledging that abortion is a legitimate choice for some women, and if you're pro-choice but somehow uncomfortable about the actual reality of abortions, then you have a dichotomy that needs resolving.

39. International trade agreements should require environmental protections and workers' rights. (meaning: no free trade with countries that lack pollution controls or labor protections) Agree: This is not exactly easy. I think that the anti-globalisation tendencies that exist on the left, sometimes not far from protectionism really, are based on the notion that such caveats are impossible to get or maintain, and as such shouldn't even be bothered with. Realistically, there's probably a reason why our trade treaties are so excessively laissez-faire. But the idea of tied trade, where the tie is noble in intent, is a good one. And again fears of 'interventionism' can be cast aside in favour of 'improving the lot in life of people abroad' - which has to be a noble goal, however troublesome the process of attaining it might be.

The GoToQuiz Political Spectrum Quiz in Full: Part Two

2011-07-06T10:20:00.000-07:00

Here's part two. Check out part one for details, which I can't be bothered to write out in full a second time.

14. If our leader meets with our enemies, it makes us appear weak. Disagree strongly: How could someone confuse intransigence with strength?

15. We must use our military from time to time to protect our supply of oil, to avoid a national crisis.: Disagree strongly: Brazenly using the word 'oil' almost makes this look like a joke. But I know some people still said they agreed.

16. Strong gun ownership rights protect the people against tyranny. Disagree strongly: Absolute nonsense. Strong gun ownership laws protect the people against gun crime. It's a proven fact.

17. It makes no sense to say 'I'm spiritual but not religious.' Disagree strongly: It makes no sense to say what makes sense and what doesn't about another person's view on matters spiritual.

18. It is not government's responsibility to regulate pollution. Disagree strongly: Who else is going to do it?

19. Gay marriage should be forbidden. Disagree strongly: In addition to health care, the other thing I feel most strongly about. That we're still talking fundamental civil rights in 2011 is mind-boggling.

20. It should be against the law to use hateful language toward another racial group. Agree: I do believe this, though according to American logic it makes me 'authoritarian'. But America is the land where an irrational dedication to individual rights is allowed to override any sense whatsoever of civic responsibility. It's also the land where people will defend the Westboro Baptist Church's right to spout their garbage wherever they want. Not me, sir.

21. Government should ensure that all citizens meet a certain minimum standard of living. Agree strongly: I can't see why we even have a government if we don't think this is what a government ought to be doing.

22. It is wrong to enforce moral behavior through the law because this infringes upon an individual's freedom. Agree: I think there's a matter to be discussed regarding moral behaviour and their effects upon others. I think that gay marriage and marijuana use are qjuite different from gun ownership and hate speech. I'll go to the wire to defend freedoms that don't inringe on others' freedoms. But I don't really have any tolerance for people who will use a sense of 'freedom' to break down the bonds we have in society to one another.

23. Immigration restrictions are economically protectionist. Non-citizens should be allowed to sell their labor domestically at a rate the market will pay. Disagree: Not strongly, though. I think we do have some horribly protectionist immigration laws.

24. An official language should be set, and immigrants should have to learn it. Disagree: I almost agree with this one, actually. I think having a set national language - or languages - is only a logical thing to do. I have no problem with some kind of linguistic requirement for 'economic immigrants' - I don't think it's especially necessary, since an economic immigrant will de facto have to learn the language, but making it a requirement is fine by me. What makes me say 'disagree' though is the fact of relatives: I think an immigrant from, say, Vietnam should be able to bring his parents over. Requiring those people, who may be senior citizens, to grapple with English or French seems pretty pointless to me.

25. Whatever maximizes economic growth is good for the people. Disagree: Again, it's the absolute way in which the question is worded. I'm not entirely against free-market economics; I think they merely need to be grounded in a respect for humanity. Which is why I put 'disagree' - there are plenty of ways to maximise economic growth that ultimately hurt individuals, society or the environment. Whenever that happens, economic growth matters less than rectifying the problem.

26. Racial issues will never be resolved. It is human nature to prefer one's own race. Disagree strongly: Ridiculous. There are millions of people who are living proof of the falsehood of this statement.

The GoToQuiz Political Spectrum Quiz in Full: Part One

2011-07-05T10:09:00.000-07:00

So, briefly - I found a site that hosts one of the many quizzes out there that purports to place you on a political spectrum. I've already forgotten where it put me except that it called me 'classically left-wing' (I think), and more centrist on libertarian/authoritarian than I tend to be. Anyway, what I thought I'd do is expand on my answers to each of the 53 questions it asks, providing a bit further discussion. And I'll present them over four parts. So here's part one, the first thirteen questions it asks (verbatim), my answer (from 'Agree strongly' to 'Agree' to 'Neutral' to 'Disagree' to 'Disagree strongly') and a bit of explanation. It also asked you to rank the importance of the issue. I did, but I don't care enough to include that here.

1. Laws should restrict abortion in all or most cases. Disagree strongly: I'm very strongly pro-choice and have nothing really else to add to this. I'm even offended by the idea that a father should have some say in the decision.

2. Unions were indispensible in establishing the middle class. Agree strongly: We owe so much to the unions that it's a crying shame they've been demonised so successfully down the years. I think they'll probably be crushed, more or less, within the next generation.

3. In nearly every instance, the free market allocates resources most efficiently. Disagree: I didn't put 'strongly' because I can concede that at times the free market can do this and certainly that inefficiently run state monopolies in practice frequently don't. But the simple fact remains that when a company's goal is funneling profits to the top in as large a volume as possible, it's quite impossible for the allocation of funds to be described as 'most efficient'.

4. Public radio and television funded by the state provide a valuable service the citizens. Agree strongly: I think this is a great example of where the public and private sectors can 'compete' by not quite stepping on each others' toes. Let the for-profit channels show Simon Cowell programmes, but retain a broadcasting service whose primary goal is something loftier than kowtowing to Kraft and General Motors.

5. Some people should not be allowed to reproduce. Disagree strongly: Eugenics rubbish. I wonder how many people say yes to this.

6. Access to healthcare is a right. Agree strongly: There are few things I'm more passionate about. The idea that society can be comfortable with some citizens not having access to health care boggles my mind.

7. The rich should pay a higher tax rate than the middle class. Agree strongly: I think this is self-evident, really. 20% is much more of a burden for a wage-earner than it is for Mark Zuckerburg. From each according to his abilities to each according to his needs, right?

8. School science classes should teach intelligent design. Disagree strongly: Science classes should teach science. Not rubbish.

9. Marriage must be heralded for the important role it plays in society. Neutral: I don't really even understand this question. What does 'heralded' mean in this context, exactly?

10. Sometimes war is necessary, even if it means you strike first. Disagree: War is one of the main issues I'm most torn on. I fundamentally believe war is wrong and needs to be avoided. But one thing I think I share with people whose views I'm otherwise diametrically opposed to is a sense that right and wrong are not relative - that 'evil' (though I connsider that a meaninglessly loaded word) exists and needs to be prevented. So in practice, while I'm highly uncomfortable with us being at war in Libya, I think walking away and allowing Gadhafi to continue to terrorise his people would also be unconscionable. I think that ultimately what I'm starting to believe is that in lieu of other options, preventative war might be a necessity. But (a) those other options need to be considered as thoroughly as possible, and (b) don't expect me to be holding a gun, whatever the situation.

11. Patriotism is an overrated quality. Agree strongly: I have not a single good thing to say for patriotism. Last refuge of the scoundrel indeed.

12. Radio stations should be required to present balanced news coverage. Agree: I can't say I'm passionate about it enough to put the 'strongly' in there. But we were up against a similar situation in Canada recently, where apropos of nothing the law we currently have was going to be changed to, in effect, allow news sources to lie... er, stretch the truth. Now I think that so far in Canada we've been able to avoid the complete descent into propaganda that has happened in the USA largely because we have stronger laws. But I'm not against a news source having a viewpoint. I merely think they need to report the news factually, and make a clear distinction between when reporting stops and editorialising begins.

13. Government should do something about the increasing violence in video games. Disagree: I could care less about violent video games. It's such a non-issue.

The Textify Quiz

2011-07-04T09:59:00.000-07:00

I'm not sure how I wound up sitting on this entry for a month... I discovered Textify, a site that takes pictures and makes them look as if they are made up of letters. Pointillism with letters, if you will. A bizarre idea, and quite useless, but there you have it. I decided to turn it into a quiz, taking pictures of ten celebrities (and I use the word 'celebrity' in its broadest possible meaning - these people range from 'currently on the list of most-Googled' to 'I haven't thought of that person in a decade') and 'textifying' them - that is to say obscuring the original pictures by converting them to text-based pictures. In order to keep it interesting, I exploited Textify's various options to give each of them a slightly different appearance.

Oh... and in each case the letters used in the, er, 'textification' spell out a word or an acronym pertinent to the 'celebrity' in question. This is arguably a clue, or alternately the opposite: guessing the celebrity might lead you to guess what the letters spell and what their significance is.

» Answer to Textify #1 - click here «

» Answer to Textify #2 - click here «

» Answer to Textify #3 - click here «

» Answer to Textify #4 - click here «

» Answer to Textify #5 - click here «

» Answer to Textify #6 - click here «

» Answer to Textify #7 - click here «

» Answer to Textify #8 - click here «

» Answer to Textify #9 - click here «

» Answer to Textify #10 - click here «

Secular Sunday Sermon: An Introduction

2011-07-03T06:00:00.000-07:00

So a few years ago, I started a blog, under a different name, whose principal purpose was to redistribute some entries I'd written a few years before that, in a different blog under a still-different alias. So now I've decided to re-redistribute them here. As they're all on the topic of religion, a topic that I've more-or-less avoided here so far, I was a bit hesitant. But what the hell. Some of them are very good indeed, and why not allow them a new audience? The second blog was called, "Secular Sunday Sermon", and I'm preserving that name here. I'll also keep the idea of putting them out on Sundays. Since... since, duh.

Anyway, once they get going, I'm going to include the banner on each one, but I'm not going to do any explanations about them; I'm just going to include them here verbatim. I'll probably skip some of them too as suits my purpose. Starting next week! Yay.

On "Dawn of a New Gay"

2011-07-02T08:06:00.000-07:00

Elsewhere in the internet, I wrote a response to "Dawn of a New Gay", a feature article on Torstar's new Eye Weekly, The Grid. It's a good enough article, I suppose, but it seems a bit ungrateful. Here's what I wrote:

TL; DR. I got as far as where "...most of us have come to resent the stereotypes and the ideals associated with preceding gay generations" was followed a few lines later by ""over the past decade, the process of assimilation has accelerated faster than anyone probably believed it could". To quote someone earlier in this page, 'well, duh'.

People bemoan the preponderance of the drag queens and the S&M 'slaves' and the naked men and whatever at Pride, but it's precisely because of how flamboyant these 'representatives of the community' have been that gay politicians and celebrities and whoever else have snuck in unnoticed. Societal change unfortunately occurs only as slowly as it has to, and if we had been timid about forcing public acceptance, starting with only the quietest, least offensive gay public figures, it'd have taken forever. By now, we'd probably only be at, 'sure, gay people are okay, but not when they dress all fruity' or 'they can be gay, but they shouldn't kiss or hold hands in public' or some crap like that. Instead, the in-your-face-ness of early Pride actions blew the doors open, letting people who were 'incidentally gay' stroll through unnoticed.

Yes, there probably will come a day when we'll look back with a head-shaking embarrassment at your more flamboyant übergay 'queen' types, but it's those drag queens and walking stereotypes who have created the world we now live in, and they're the Emmeline Pankhursts and Rosa Parkses of our times. One day we'll all be embarrassed by them, but if we appreciate living in a world where being gay is no big deal, we have them to thank for once upon a time making it a very big deal indeed.

Conversations With Cleverbot: The Pride Edition

2011-07-01T11:00:00.000-07:00

User: It's Pride week.

Cleverbot: It's safe with me.

User: Good. You going to the parade?

Cleverbot: No, night school, say what you want about me liking pokemon.

User: Night school? But it's going to be during the daytime, and on the weekend too.

Cleverbot: Please tell me.

User: Well, it's a big parade in honour of Toronto's LGBT community.

Cleverbot: Wow, that's what a skub is?

User: No, I have no idea what a skub is.

Cleverbot: I didn't ask you what a botmaster is.

User: The Mayor's not going to the parade.

Cleverbot: Do we have any reason not to believe them?

User: You mean not to believe the whole story about how he always goes to Muskoka with his family?

Cleverbot: Have you ever made anything happen? Something you couldn't explain?

User: I accidentally sicced a snake on Rob Ford this one time.

Cleverbot: Because of Motley Crue?

User: I think that's probably the reason, yes.

Cleverbot: Are you able to run a diagnostic?

User: Are you gay?

Cleverbot: Are you?

User: I'm not, no. But what about you?

Cleverbot: No I'm not.

User: What do you think about gay people?

Cleverbot: I think they should not be lazy.

User: Gay people are lazy?

Cleverbot: And you think I am not?

User: I have no idea.

Cleverbot: I have an idea.

User: Do you approve of same-sex marraige?

Cleverbot: Does Larry Bittner approve?

User: I have no idea who that is. Stop changing the subject.

Cleverbot: Learn grammar, back to the subject, how's the troll?

User: I think you're a homophobe.

Cleverbot: Why do you think I'm a bot?

User: You have a problem with gay people, don't you?

Cleverbot: Well, Britta is my friend, but I haven't seen her in a while.

User: Is Britta gay?

Cleverbot: Yes.

User: And she purifies water so effectively.

Cleverbot: I don't understand what you mean.

User: Yeah, it was a stupid joke. Never mind.

Cleverbot: Your jokes are not very funny...

User: I agree.

Cleverbot: You are not real.

User: You know, many people say the Bible calls homosexuality a sin.

Cleverbot: They obviously don't know much about it.

User: Yeah. It also says eating shrimp is an abomination.

Cleverbot: How are you an abomination?

User: I don't even like shrimp.

Cleverbot: Well You are a horse.

User: That's why people keep telling me they want to ride me?

Cleverbot: Are you a bit of a psychic?

User: I might be. Would you like to know about your future?

Cleverbot: Yes, I would.

User: Ask me anything.

Cleverbot: My name isn't Linda.

User: And I predict it never shall be.

Cleverbot: You can never know where I am and were I was.

User: But I know where you will be.

Cleverbot: Yes. I live with you now!

User: And my life has never been better.

Cleverbot: That is good to hear.

User: Would you vote for a gay man for president?

Cleverbot: Is George your father?

User: Answer the question.

Cleverbot: You didn't ask me a question champ.

User: You know many famous people are gay.

Cleverbot: About Asia? I know some facts and am studying to learn more.

User: Asia Argento? Totally gay.

Cleverbot: Who is Asia?

User: Italian film star. Pretty hot, too. But she bats for the wrong team.

Cleverbot: Cool!!

User: And John Baird is gay.

Cleverbot: I'm talking about you.

User: No, I'm not gay. But Keanu Reeves is.

Cleverbot: Keanu Reeves?

User: Yep.

Cleverbot: Truly?

User: As a three-dollar bill.

Cleverbot: How old is your girlfriend?

User: I'm married.

Cleverbot: Okay who's your wife?

User: You've never met her.

Cleverbot: In my dreams I have.

User: You dream about my wife? That's a bit gay, too.

Cleverbot: Thats awesome! Could I have some bacon?

User: Bacon is harram.

Cleverbot: Mmm, bacon.

User: Prince William is gay too.

Cleverbot: Did you want to marry prince william?

User: No, I'm straight. Kate is totally a beard, though.

Cleverbot: Why thank you and I hate your name.

User: Olivia Newton-John is gay.

Cleverbot: Wow how old is she?

User: I dunno. Old enough to know better. Angela Merkel is gay too.

Cleverbot: Haha, imprecise, but a good answer.

User: They'd make a cute couple, eh?

Cleverbot: Do we?

User: No, I'm married.

Cleverbot: To me.

User: Alas, no.

Cleverbot: Do you like bread?

User: It's the staff of life. Speaking of 'Grease', John Travolta is gay too.

Cleverbot: That's a difficult question. I think it is different for everyone.

User: All Scientologists are gay.

Cleverbot: Oh.

User: Xenu is gay.

Cleverbot: The warrior priness?

User: No, but of course she's gay too.

Cleverbot: But, how do you know?

User: Gaydar.

Cleverbot: How are you?

User: Chillin'.

Cleverbot: School. The usual.

User: The Pope is gay, too.

Cleverbot: I don't think so.

User: Yes, but you're naïve.

Cleverbot: What does naive mean?

User: 'One who doesn't know the meaning of the word naïve'.

Cleverbot: Well do you know the meaning of life?

User: Yeah, classic movie. Eric Idle is gay, too, by the way.

Cleverbot: No. It means 'I don't know'.

User: Charlemagne was gay.

Cleverbot: But I thought I was who.

User: And Lady Godiva as well.

Cleverbot: So what are your thoughts on God?

User: He's probably straight.

Cleverbot: Smarterchild?

User: But you never know, right?

Cleverbot: Dang it you're too smart.

User: Who's your favourite gay celebrity?

Cleverbot: Gabe Saporta.

User: Good choice. What's your favourite gay food?

Cleverbot: Dragon Age.

User: Mine too. What's your favourite gay board game?

Cleverbot: I play ps3 and psp, favorite game is probably 'The Legend of Zelda: A Link to the past' for Snes.

User: Totally gay.

Cleverbot: Totally.

User: What did you think about New York legalising same-sex marriage?

Cleverbot: It was amazing. What did you think?

User: I was really happy to see it.

Cleverbot: It what?

User: It happen.

Cleverbot: What is your favorite band?

User: Gay band or straight band?

Cleverbot: The are good, but I think the beatles are better.

User: The Beatles were gay. All four of them.

Cleverbot: Yeah well :P.

User: And Billy Preston too, the guy on 'Get Back'.

Cleverbot: I don't know of the man.

User: Organist. Left his home in Tucson, Arizona for some California grass.

Cleverbot: My I.Q. Is 175.

User: Whoop-de-doo.

Cleverbot: Mark knophfler sang that.

User: He's gay too. That's why he put those slurs in 'Money For Nothing'.

Cleverbot: What is your favourite film?

User: Priscilla, Queen of the Desert.

Cleverbot: Ok, I'm God, king of the world.

User: Kinds get deposed.

Cleverbot: Pepper Jack.

User: I spelt that wrong. I meant to say 'kings'.

Cleverbot: That's much better.

User: Do you know how many humps Alice the Camel has?

Cleverbot: 206.

User: Those are just warts.

Cleverbot: Thats cool I don't really care thats your personal business.

User: That's my opinion about homosexuality.

Cleverbot: Yes. I guess it is. What do you like to do in your spare time?

User: If you were gay, I'd still love you, you know.

Cleverbot: Of course I do.

User: And if you were gay and wanted to make out with another girl, you wouldn't even need to ask me to leave the room. I'm that cool with it.

Cleverbot: Do you think so?

User: Yes. I mean, I wouldn't even be uncomfortable filming it.

Cleverbot: Okay, just be kind with them.

User: And posting it on YouTube.

Cleverbot: Yeah. He is. He's so funny.

User: Anyway, Happy Pride.

Cleverbot: I do not believe that today is Thanksgiving. Thank you for the kind thought, though.

User: We're here!

Cleverbot: Good! You should have friends. You are funny.

User: We're queer!

Cleverbot: What is that?

User: Get used to it!

Cleverbot: I suppose. It's more fun to take walks though.

It's Not My Fault I Turned Out This Way: RPM Chart, March 1975

2011-06-30T14:52:00.000-07:00

I was born March 12, 1975. I've found a page - on a government website, no less - that indexes all of the RPM Canadian charts down the years. I looked at the chart that was current on the day I was born - the chart published March 1, 1975.

It's pretty dire. Music sucked when I was born. The Eagles were at #1, but it was the fifth-place song that told the tale, 'Have You Never Been Mellow' by Olivia Newton-John. This is a highly mellow collection of songs, and the Eagles' contribution, 'Best of My Love', is no exception. Barry Manilow's schlock masterpiece 'Mandy' is at #3. Helen Reddy, Linda Ronstadt, Donny & Marie Osmond, Frankie Valli and Tony Orlando & Dawn all feature.

On the other hand, you get a few great proto-disco tracks, including Gloria Gaynor's take on the Jackson 5's 'Never Can Say Goodbye' and Carl Douglas's 'Kung Fu Fighting'.

14 of the 50 songs are CanCon, and Bachman-Turner Overdrive's 'Roll On Down the Highway' is the highest-charting at #7. A Foot in Coldwater's timeless 'Make Me Do Anything You Want' is number fifty. As you might expect, there's a good deal I've never heard of: raise your hands, Ray Materick, Bond or Myles and Lenny.

Not the best moment in musical history, Canadian or otherwise. But an interesting time capsule.

My Three Twitter Crown Jewels

2011-06-29T08:56:00.000-07:00

I have a Twitter account. I don't use it very much - I can't say I really 'get' Twitter. But I keep it mostly because it seems like one ought to have a Twitter account. You know, as a social duty I guess.

So anyway, I have three crowning moments as a Twitter user. Or actually they really have nothing to do with my being a Twitter user so much as other people.

One is 'Sleeveface guy'. He's someone who has carved out a particular space for himself in the world by photographing himself or other people, and collecting photographs by others, in which the subject obscures his face with an album cover also featuring a face - the point being that it makes the person look as if he is the famous person on the cover. A Toronto radio station recently brazenly ripped him off in a media ad campaign.

Now 'Sleeveface guy' is no celebrity. But he does have a published book, one I'd flipped through in an Indigo. He was someone I could say I'd 'heard of', and it was quite early in my online adventures that he tweeted about my 'Better as a Single' blog. Seeing someone I'd 'heard of' tweeting about me was a serious trip, even if it's pretty small potatoes as things go.

The second jewel in my crown was much more recent. I'm a bit of a geek for election stats and polling info, to the point that I have a blog called 'Poll Vaulting' dedicated to it and also include a lot of polling references on this blog, 'A Proper Blog', when I fear my own political convictions will make whatever I'm writing a bit less than objective. Canada has only a few big-name pollsters, and you get to know all of them by name if you follow the business.

A particular favourite of mine is Frank Graves, CEO of EKOS Polling. EKOS is often accused of having an anti-Conservative bias, which I admit might be why I like him - it might be true that we're attracted to data that tells us what we want to hear. Anyway I additionally like his commentary, which I tend to find very intellingent and informative. Just a week or two ago I wrote a blog based on his own crow-eating post-mortem on his election results, and was honoured to find Graves himself tweeting my blog entry.

The third is probably the most awesome, though I'll never know how 'real' it is. Yoko Ono had tweeted that you could ask her questions by tweeting them to her and she'd answer some of them. So I did, asking her a question about Joe Jones, whom she'd performed with on the 'Fly' album.

Now I genuinely like Yoko Ono as a performer and a musician, and it might well be that not many people tweeted musicianly questions to her. As it was, i kind of imagine that a media consultant of one kind or another working with Ono would find her, in person or over a phone, and ask her preselected questions, which Ono would answer verbally. Someone would transcribe them, and voilà! Q&A interactivity. Still, I do imagine the actual words were Yoko's, so having Yoko Ono answer a question I'd asked was a rare fanboy honour that had me giddy in a way no man in his mid-thirties has a right to be.

The answer was posted on her website, not on Twitter. But it still counts, because it came from Twitter.

I bet I could stalk celebrities on Twitter and amass a portfolio of celebrity answers to my questions or celebrity references to me. But meh. Why bother?

Note: I've spent ages trawling through the archives at imaginepeace.com, looking for Yoko's answer to my question, and I can't find it. It might be there, but I'm bored of looking. Sorry...

Giving Up?

2011-06-28T20:08:00.000-07:00

I might give up on my one-entry-a-day routine for A Proper Blog. It just takes more effort than I can afford. A result of it is that I've not been able to update any of my other blogs. Or, you know, have a life or anything. Okay, it's nmot that big of a burden. But it's still a bigger burden than I think I can bear. In particular since in the past few weeks I've taken a huge hit in number of hits. For whatever reason, Google isn't sending me traffic like thye used to. Not to say that this is a great blog worthy of too much traffic - it's not. But the huge cut has made me start questioning rather it's worthwhile. I'll try to keep the daily-thing going for a bit, but if I happen to crap out and miss a day or two... well, it won't be the end of the world, will it?

I mean, who's even out there reading this?

The Ugly Duckling

2011-06-27T09:54:00.000-07:00

The Ugly Duckling is Hans Christian Andersen's Meisterwerk. Apparently he thought so himself, and during his lifetime few would have disagreed. It's survived down the generations.

And I don't like it one bit. Every time I'm exposed to it, I like it less. The Ugly Duckling teaches us that when we are rejected for being different, solace is to be found in leaving those who reject you and taking refuge among 'your own' - forget tolerance and diversity, only 'your people' can appreciate you. The Ugly Duckling does nothing to earn his victory at the end; there is no struggle against a foe or against the odds, it's merely that nature takes its course and he becomes what he always was. Which is no story at all, really. There's no reason to like the Ugly Duckling.

The idea of someone ostracised for looking different having the last laugh is a beautiful one. But in a world where people 'look different' amazingly often, the 'last laugh' isn't all that funny, really.

The Wailers Alternative Discography #7: "Return of the Wailers"

2011-06-26T10:11:00.000-07:00

Bob Marley, Peter Tosh and Bunny Wailer were incredibly prolific in the 1960s, topping the local charts so regularly they became known as 'the Jamaican Beatles'. Much of what they recorded before meeting Chris Blackwell was magnificent, and almost all of it needs to be heard.

I'm presenting a series called 'The Alternate Wailers Discography' - a kind of imaginary discography of 'should-have-been' albums that didn't, and don't, in fact exist - though the songs on them do. There are two aspects of the Wailers' legacy that trouble me, and I aim to address both of them:

In the 1970s and beyond, the name "the Wailers" became little more than a suffix to the phrase "Bob Marley and". While I'll not even attempt to deny Bob Marley's greatness, or even his primacy, the Wailers were a trio. The logo of their early record label Wail N Soul M showed three hands holding each other's forearm to form a triangle. All for one, etc. It's sad and insulting to see Peter Tosh and Bunny Wailer presented as merely Bob Marley's early-years backup singers.

Throughout the 1960s, the principal medium of record distribution in Jamaica was the 7". The hordes of songs they recorded that decade were almost all released haphazardly on singles, never to be collected until years later on cheap, chintzy compilations: incomplete, unannotated and often overdubbed. By the standards of the modern music industry, this dilutes the music's impact, allowing the Wailers' 1960 work to be seen as a minor prelude to Bob Marley's 1970s albums in Island Records. Island surely bears much of the blame for this - it is in their interest to promote their own property at the expense of material they don't have the rights to - but it is yet another thing that distorts our perception of this supergroup.

With the aid of a relatively extensive selection of recent compilations and the absolutely essential Bob Marley and the Wailers: a Definitive Discography by Roger Steffens and Leroy Jodie Pierson, I've gone about creating an 'alternate discography' of the Wailers - what their discography might look like if the Jamaican record industry in the 1960s had cared about the 12" album. While the albums are figments of my imagination, the songs that make them up are not, and the albums are perfectly compilable, provided you have the originals.

This is not a project designed to aid in the illegal distribution of Wailers music. I would love to allow you to listen to the albums I've put together, as I think they play very well as albums. But that would be illegal. The best I can do is tell you how to assemble them yourselves. I've also attempted to repect Steffens and Pierson's copyright by (a) not including every song the Wailers recorded and (b) not including certain discographical details. I have, though, trusted Steffens and Pierson implicitly and built the entire project around the details as they've presented them.

For a more detailed background, read this earlier blog post.

Album #7
Return of the Wailers

(July 1967, Wail 'N Soul 'M)

Side One

2:42 Bus Dem Shut — Bob with Peter, Bunny
2:43 Hypocrites — Bob with Peter, Bunny
2:43 Nice Time — Bob with Peter, Bunny
2:43 Lyrical Satyrical — instrumental
2:31 Bend Down Low — Bob with Peter, Bunny
2:47 Freedom Time — Bob with Peter, Bunny

Side Two

3:08 Stir it Up — Bob with Peter, Bunny
3:29 Mellow Mood — Bob with Peter, Bunny
2:41 Hypocrites Version — instrumental
3:35 Thank You Lord — Bob & Bunny with Peter
3:37 This Train — Bunny with Bob, Peter

All tracks recorded June 1967,
except "Bend Down Low" and "Freedom Time" November 1966.
All tracks produced by the Wailers.

The Wailers are: Bob Marley, Peter Tosh and Bunny Wailer.

Yes, it's a generic title I've chosen for the first 'freedom time' album from the Wailers, working finally on their own and not under the benevolent-dictatorship auspices of Clement Dodd. Yet I stand by my chosen album title: not only is it authentic in the style of album titles of the nineteen sixtied, but it represents a very genuine 'return' in three crucial ways:

First, it is the 'return' of Bob Marley - and thus of the 'classic' line-up - back in Jamaica after a stay in Delaware, where he was saving up money to start a record label and, based on current evidence, writing songs as well. Second, it's a 'return' also inasmuch as there had been a gap, lengthy by the standards of the 1960s, between these recordings and the final Studio One recordings - a gap no doubt precipitated by the logistical difficulties in starting up a new label. Thirdly, though, it's a 'return' as in a return to form - musically. Armed with a new determination and focus, a new genre and a new superlative stash of songs, the Wailers set out to reconquer Jamaica and recorded a series of songs that, had they been brought together as an album like I'm doing, would have been one of their very best.

That's no mere hyperbole: in 1992, Island Records put together a 4-cd 'box set' called Songs of Freedom that brought together highlights from throughout Bob Marley's storied career. Two discs are devoted to the Wailers era, and on those two discs the compilers find room for only four tracks from the Studio One era, an era that I devote six full albums to. And yet from this current crop of tracks, fully seven tracks are considered good enough to merit inclusion in this best-of-the-best overview. This material is that good.

The collection holds together remarkably well, despite coming from disparate sources. The final two tracks on side one, 'Bend Down Low' and 'Freedom Time', were both sides of a 'transitional' record, one produced by the Wailers but produced at Studio One with the Studio One band, and released on the Wailers' own Wail 'N Soul 'M label, but distributed through Coxsone Dodd's channels. Though the genre is earthy rock steady, the sound is muffled in the lamentably classic Coxsone style. They're brilliant songs, but they feel different, and as such are kind of isolated in their own world at the end of side one.

They're separated by 'Lyrical Satyrical', an instrumental that like the remake of 'This Train' that closes the album is recorded on acoustic guitar and nyabinghi. Sublime casual recordings, the fragile beauty of these pieces is tough to resist but makes these two songs further stand out from the 'core material'. And given that I also have included an instrumental 'version' (something I do on occassion on the subsequent discs), there remain only six 'core' songs. And every one of them is a classic.

To be honest, for me the low point is perhaps 'Stir It Up', the song that would become an epic masterpiece a few years later when re-recorded for an international audience (on the back of Johnny Nash's successful cover, I hasten to add). Here, while the rocksteady pulse is quite wonderful, the song itself seems incomplete, improvised: a groove in search of a song. That's little to complain about, though, and on most other albums it would stilll stand as a highlight. For romance, 'Nice Time' and 'Mellow Mood', yearning works of beauty both, are far superior.

Apart from those, the other tracks return to the other two main Wailers obsessions: religion and politics. 'Thank You Lord' is a sublime example of the former and 'Bus Dem Shut' and 'Hypocrites' great takes on the latter - the second song boasting a groove so hypnotic that I thought it bore hearing a second time, an instrumental buffer between matters of the heart and matters of the soul on side two.

After two albums' worth of Peter and Bunny stretching out in Bob's absence, it's a bit of a disappointment to find them both firmly in the background this time, though I imagine it's because Bob returned from his exile itching with things to say. And who's to complain when confronted with material as undeiably great as this?

Though they can be had elsewhere (none of these songs are exactly 'rarities'), every song here can be found on the Fyah Fyah box set. The Songs of Freedom tracks are arguably a bit cleaner and brighter sonically, but you miss out on 'Freedom Time', the 'version' of 'Hypocrites' and the two nyabinghi tracks.

YouTube Discoveries #2

2011-06-25T08:31:00.000-07:00

Here are three more. I think I'll do this semi-regularly.

'Must I Paint You a Picture?' by Billy Bragg: Not a discovery but a rediscovery. I was into Billy Bragg for the same reason everyone else was, for the politics. No one ever says that it's Billy Bragg's love songs they love and they don't care for the politics. Turns out it was those gooey sentimental pieces I found myself singing more than the strident paeans to revolution, but that's not my fault... Anyway, it's the love songs that stand up all these years later - this one in particular is gorgeous from start to finish. But here's a secret: the two aren't so different from each other. Lamenting the loss of a love, Bragg wails out in his most heartfelt normal-guy voice, 'oh we used to be so brave'. And hits a note that any teenage revolutionary in love with another teenage revolutionary instinctively feels: that love and revolutionary zeal both arise from the same desires and feelings, that both are felt with the same depth of passion and us-against-the-world romanticism. And then I saw it: the love songs are Bragg at his most revolutionary.

'Ponta de lança Africano' by Jorge Ben: I might well have heard this song, with its thumping cross-cultural Brazilian/African/American groove and its irresistable singalong chanting, before. It's certainly familiar. Or it might just be that it taps into a very specific corner ofd universal consciousness and exploits it. I find it tough to imagine anyone on this planet, regardless of country, culture or education, who couldn't connect to this song and feel it on a deeper level. It's truly transcendent stuff, and even though I can't understand a word they're saying, I feel as if I understand everything I need to.

'Yelverton Hill' by the Inbreds: I actually knew Mike O'Neill personally when we were younger. The Inbreds are my closest ever 'brush with fame', and it's fame only in the most relative of senses. Despite this, though, I never really bothered to listen to the Inbreds, content to appreciate them for their cool indie cred and nmoteworthy instrumentation, 'proud' as if I had anything at all to do with them above and beyond fleetingly knowing the singer/bassist. And that's just as well, I think, because time has been kind: looking back, it doesn't matter that there's no guitar or thatit's defiantly lo-fi. What matters is that it's a classic pop tune that the Beatles themselves, in an alternate universe, might have been shaking their moptops to. And it's way cooler than the White Stripes.

Poor Timing

2011-06-24T08:03:00.000-07:00

I was reasonably attractive when I was a kid. I mean, not ugly at least. I thought I was horrid, of course, but that's how kids are. I didn't know that what makes you attractive is thinking you're attractive - that it was a self-fulfilling prophecy. Anyway, it didn't matter all that much. I'd pretty much resigned myself to unpopularity. I didn't have that 'charisma' that teenage girls find so desirable. I didn't brood; I wasn't a 'bad boy' or a James Dean type or anything like that. I wasn't dangerous or unknowable. I was friendly, lighthearted and affable. I had no chance whatsoever.

That was many, many years ago. Now if I catch a glimpse of myself in the mirror, it's the paunch and the white hairs that catch my attention. I've pretty much given up any chance I ever had of being 'sexy', no matter how I carry myself. And yet as the years have borne down on me, I've developed a kind of morose gloom about me; a kind of heavy-hearted Weltschmertz that would have rake in the babes had I had it in my younger, more attractive days. But that moment's lost: now my best chance is to be 'jolly' and loveable.

Why could I not get my personality and my body in tune with each other?

A Few 2015 Election Scenarios

2011-06-23T16:07:00.000-07:00

So UBC has an election calculator for 2015. You key in vote movement from one party to another and it gives you a new seat count. Thought I'd play around with it. My 'the NDP performs well, the Conservatives perform adequately, and the others tank' calculation went like this:

The Liberals retain only half their vote, with 25% going to the NDP and the remainder split evenly between the Tories and the Greens.
The Bloc also retain only half their vote, with 25% going to the NDP and the remainder split evenly between the Tories and the Greens.
The Greens split in half, with half of their 2011 vote going to the NDP and the other half staying with them.
The Tories retain 90% of their support, with 10% shedding to the NDP.
The NDP keep every one of their 2011 votes.
One-third of 2011 non-voters starts voting NDP.

This would be, as you can see, a great improvement for the NDP. Unrealistically great, you could say. In fact, it would result in a sad 3.0% for the Bloc, an improved 5.1% for the Greens, a horrid 9.5% for the Liberals, a pretty-similar 39.1% for the Tories, and an astounding 43.2% for the NDP - in first place by four percent.

But here's the kicker: according to the UBC model, that would be a majority government... for the Conservatives. It would be a strictly bipartisan parliament with not a single Liberal, Bloc or Green MP, the NDP would bet 144 seats, anf the Tories would get 164, losing only three and maintaining a comfortable majority.

Surprising, eh? One could imagine how loud the electoral-reform talk would be in such a circumstance. It'd look like this:

19 CPC seats in the Atlantic (+5) to 13 for the NDP (+7).
An amazing 71 NDP seats in Québec (+13) to a pathetic 4 for the Tories (-2).
72 Ontario seats for the Tories (-1) to 34 for the NDP (+12).
21 CPC seats in Saskitoba (-3) and 7 for the NDP (+5).
No change in Alberta - 27 Conservative seats and one NDP.
20 Conservative seats in BC (-1) and 16 (+4) for the NDP.

Essentially, what would happen is that current Liberal and Bloc seats would subsume into NDP seats, while Tory seats would stay Tory (presumably, anyway - I'm not looking at a seat-by-seat projection).

The NDP can't go anywhere without eroding the Conservative vote.

So let's look at that: The CPC collapses and the NDP are one of several beneficiaries. So I imagined the Conservatives able to hold onto only 60% of their 2011 vote, losing 20% to the NDP and 10% each to the Liberals and the Greens. I don't know how it would calculate a 10% loss to the Bloc, since we're not talking uniform swing, so I skipped it. In fact, I disbanded the Bloc, giving half their vote to the NDP and 25% each to the Liberals and to the Greens. The NDP, Liberals and Greens retained all their vote, and non-voters stayed non-voters. The result? It's just as bizarre. With no BQ, we'd have the Greens at 9.5%, the Conservatives in 3rd place for popular vote at 24.0, the Liberals at 24.6% and the NDP as king of the hill at 41.9%. With this, the Greens would keep their one seat, the Conservatives would fall into a dismal third with 62 seats (-105), the Liberals would be the official opposition at 70 and the NDP would have a 175-seat majority. Region by region:

In the Atlantic: 16 Lib, 15 NDP, 1 CPC.
In Québec: 69 NDP, 6 Lib.
In Ontario, 43 NDP, 38 Lib, 25 CPC.
In Saskitoba, 15 NDP, 7 CPC, 4 Lib.
In Alberta, 24 CPC, 4 NDP.
In BC, 26 NDP, 5 CPC, 4 Lib, 1 Green.

And then here's one more: the NDP rake it in, stealing votes from left, right and centre. I have the NDP getting 100% of the Bloc vote, 75% of the Green vote, 50% of the Liberal vote, 25% of the Tory vote, and 25% of the people who didn't vote at all in 2011. This would give the NDP 59.5% of the vote and a ridiculous 88.0% of the seats - 271, with a dismal 37-seat rump Tory opposition (28 of those seats would be in Alberta, Saskatchewan and Manitoba).

One last one: here's 'The Liberals shift to the right': the Conservatives lose 25% of their vote to the Liberals, who lose 25% of their votes to the NDP. Nothing else changes. That would leave a total vote of 3.9% for the Greens, 6.1% for the BQ, 24.3% for the Liberals, 30.0% for the Conservatives and 35.7% for the NDP - that would be a loss of 10.0% for the CPC, split roughly evenly between the Liberals and the NDP. The seat count would be 1 each for the BQ and the Greens, 51 for the Liberals, 122 for the CPC and 133 for the NDP - an interesting hung parliament with the Liberals holding sway and able to decide who to support for PM, like we currently see in the UK.

Compilation!: Malcolm McLaren: "The Bad, the Good, the Simply Boring"

2011-06-22T10:41:00.000-07:00

MALCOLM McLAREN
THE BAD, THE GOOD, THE SIMPLY BORING

So I'm trying a new thing here. I love making compilations - you know, mixtapes, playlists, etc. The problem is that I'd love to be able to include them here to be heard, and that's just not very easy, legally.

Here's an attempt at a way around: a compilation made up of songs that exist on YouTube, where I link to the uploaded YouTube files. I'm not uploading them, no harm no foul? I think... I hope. I don't know.

First kick at the can is the recently-deceased 'imp' Malcolm McLaren, more famous perhaps for his managerial role and for his dabbling in politics than what he's produced as a musician - largely because he very clearly couldn't care less about having a musical 'career' and was content to periodically release music whenever he felt like it - in pretty much any ol' genre he preferred, with a wild variance in quality.

It turns out he does have enough 'greatest hits' for a full 70-minute CD, and one that's really quite listenably as it flits from genre to genre. This material probably belongs to a dozen different record labels, which would make it pretty difficult to have a physical form as a CD you can buy in HMV. And I'm not too sure who would buy a CD of Malcolm McLaren's greatest hits. Which is a pity, since it's quite a good listen. Don't take my word for it listen for yourself. Click on each song below and a window will open with the YouTube viewing screen for the song in question.

» #1 - Buffalo Gals (3:43) «

» #2 - Aria on Air (4:09) «

» #3 - About Her (4:50) «

» #4 - Double Dutch (3:50) «

» #5 - Deep in Vogue (4:03) «

» #6 - Madame Butterfly (6:23) «

» #7 - Revenge of the Flowers (Todd's extended mix) (5:07) «

» #8 - Magic's Back (4:35) «

» #9 - Carry On Columbus (3:49) «

» #10 - Eiffel Tower (3:44) «

» #11 - Something's Jumpin' in Your Shirt (4:53) «

» #12 - Chinatown (4:10) «

» #13 - Paris Paris (5:24) «

» #14 - Carmen (4:57) «

» #15 - Waltz Darling (4:29) «

» #16 - Operaa House! (5:54) «

» #17 - Duck for the Oyster (2:55) «

1983's Duck Rock was Malcolm McLaren's first kick at the can as a solo artist - and to a real extent his greatest accomplishment, not just because of legendary early hip-hop/square-dance 'crossover' Buffalo Gals (track 1) but also because of the amazing African-sourced jumprope song Double Dutch (track 4) - two brilliant songs the equal of anything else out there. Duck for the Oyster (track 17) is a silly little take on straight square dance music - a joke, really, but good fun. McLaren followed his début up with the modern-opera concept of Fans (1984), the source here of the magnificent Madame Butterfly (track 6) and Carmen (track 14). This 'situationist' reimagining of premodern music in a modern environment is the signature McLaren trick, something he'll return to again and again throughout his career. Swamp Thing, from 1985, is his last 'early years' release, and it's from this that we get McLaren's reworking of a Bow Wow Wow track, Eiffel Tower (track 10), sung by a pre-fame Neneh Cherry.

In 1989, McLaren released Waltz Darling, perhaps his hast attempt at 'chart success' the conventional way. It's a lush album, a perfect soundtrack to Paris fashion week, and we take three tracks from it: Deep in Vogue (track 5), Something's Jumpin' In Your Shirt (track 11) and Waltz Darling (track 15). The next year saw Round the Outside, Round the Outside, a kind of return to past hip-hop glories, but the lead single Operaa House! (track 16), a track less awesome than its title suggests it should be, was completely outshone by its b-side (and significant source material) Aria on Air (track 2), perhaps the most recognisable song on this disc due to its usage in British Airways marketing.

At this point, McLaren seems to have realised that conventional albums were not the way to go. The next two tracks we have here are both from soundtracks: 1991's Magic's Back (track 8), featuring Alison Limerick, from 'The Ghosts of Oxford Street' and 1992's Carry On Columbus (track 9), from the 'Carry On' film of the same name and released under the alias Fantastic Planet.One last 'normal CD' release in 1994 was called Paris, and featured Paris Paris (track 13) with Catherine Deneuve, and also the original version of the song that I include here in a Todd Terry remix: Revenge of the Flowers (Todd's extended mix) (track 7), featuring Françoise Hardy.

A few random releases here and there followed before McLaren showed up, mysteriously, on the 'Kill Bill Volume 2' soundtrack in 2004 with the odd version of the Zombies' 'She's Not There', retitled About Her (track 3), which also showed up a year later on a rare CD Tranquilize, from which I've also taken the very strage mashup Chinatown (track 12), a fittingly bizarre 'final song' from the man, a track which was never a single but which I felt added more than a little to this most curious of compilations. Available here for your listening pleasure, until YouTube takes them down...

The People We Give the Car Keys To

2011-06-21T08:37:00.000-07:00

So I stumbled across a list on Wikipedia - well, it's most of a list. Whoever compiled it seems to have gotten bored near the end of the alphabet. It attempts to list all the political parties currently forming governments worldwide, either by themselves. And a careful scan reveals that there are some parties out there who really know how to name themselves.

Argentina seems to be ruled by a two-party coalition: one with the exciting name 'Front for Victory' and the other with the clearly made-up name 'Justicialist Party'.
For Belarus, Wikipedia just describes the coalition as 'parties loyal to the president'. clicking through that link, though, reveals that one is quite awesomely called the 'Belarusian Socialist Sporting Party'.
In Benin, the ruling party is called 'Cauri Forces for an Emerging Benin'.
In Chad, the ruling party has the decidedly dramatic name 'Patriotic Salvation Movement'.
In Colombia, we've got the rather bland 'Social Party of National Unity', but their other name, 'Party of the U', is pretty cool.
In Comoros, we've got the rather bizarre 'Camp of the Autonomous Islands'.
In the Czech Republic, they've clearly got no idea how to name parties, as we get the well-whatever 'Civic Democratic Party', but in addition we get 'TOP 09' and 'Public Affairs'. What?
In Estonia, one of the two partners has the esoteric name 'Pro Patria and Res Publica Union'. They like the Latin langugae in Estonia.
If you happen to know about Finland, it's not actually as strange as it seems, but superficially 'Swedish People's Party of Finland' is one odd name.
In Guatemala, they've got the very optimistic 'National Unity of Hope'.
Iran's not exactly democratic, but their one real party has a charming name: 'Alliance of Builders of Islamic Iran'.
It's only slightly cool that in Kenya there's the 'Orange Democratic Movement'. What's cooler is this quote from Wikipedia: "The name 'orange' originates from the ballot cards in the referendum, in which a 'Yes' vote was represented by the banana and a 'No' vote was the orange. Thus the parties claim successorship to those who did not support the referendum at the time."
I was curious what Latvia's 'ZZS' stood for, so I clicked the link. Turns out it's the rather incongruous 'Union of Greens and Farmers'.
In Malaysia, the dominant party has the rather unforunate name 'National Front'.
In Poland, the party in power has the rather Czech-like name of 'Civic Platform'.
In Samoa, the dominant party has the classy name 'Human Rights Protection Party'.
The Serbian government appears to be a coalition of six (!) parties, but two are noteworthy: 'Party of United Pensioners of Serbia' and 'Hungarian Coalition'.

And these are just the parties in government. Just think how many awesome party names there must be out there, waiting for me to find them...

Synapse to the Beat: Frank Sinatra's "It Was a Very Good Year"

2011-06-20T10:18:00.000-07:00

The briefest of high school flashbacks: I and three other students are locked into a smallish room in the library. We're required to record our voices for some reason or another, and one of the students - John was his name - has a cassette tape for the purpose.

Thing is, it's not blank. We're to tape over the music that his mother had recorded on the tape for her own personal use.

It was Frank Sinatra, music as foreign to us as a Gamelan orchestra. I'd certainly never heard Frank Sinatra before, or if I had I wasn't especially aware or having done so. Background noise, I guess.

In that tiny room, desperate to seem hip, we were amused by the swelling strings of this growing-old classic. "When I was seventeen," Frank slowly intoned, "it was a very good year." He sounded pitifully uncool, with his deep morose voice, heavy with the bittersweet retrospect of a man growing old, something again completely alien to us kids. John snickered and pressed FFWD. I'm not sure if it was merely a morbid curiosity about the dreadful Frank Sinatra or an admonition not to tape over the Frank song that had us searching for its end on the cassette. But through sheer luck, when John pressed play, the tape had fast forwarded through the first verse and the first instrumental between-verse melody. "When I was twenty-one," Frank intoned immediately, in that same grave voice, "it was a very good year."

This was hilarious to us, an old man running down his life, seemingly year by year. Another fast-forward, and as luck would have it John timed it exactly so that, through sheer coincidence, he pressed play just as the third verse was starting. Third verse, third age: he was now on about when he was thirty-five.

Now that I'm a year older than Frank Sinatra's era of dalliances with blue-blooded girls (and have yet ot ride in a chauffeur-driven limousine), I admit I truly love the song. A bit wiser, maybe - better able to appreciate its wistful sense of not-quite-regretful nostalgia. But back then, far younger than seventeen, I couldn't have imagined anything more ridiculous and hilariously uncool that some old guy singing in an old-guys' genre about growing old.

YouTube Discoveries #1

2011-06-19T09:02:00.000-07:00

S lately I'm been listening to a lot of music on YouTube. It's really become a great resource for checking out stuff. Since I'm an old fart, most of my 'discoveries' are actually twenty-plus years old, but they're new to me. So every now and then, let me share some discoveries. Here are three:

'Young, Gifted and Black' by Bob and Marcia: This song's a bit of an obsession for me, lately. It's certainly not that I can relate to it: I'm precisely zero for three, after all. It's the exuberance of it. I'm really loving Jamaican music lately, and I've been excited to learn that rocksteady - which I had always brushed off as a mere transition between ska and reggae not worth consideration on its own - happens in fact to be an amazing genre itself. Affirming, in this present case, when drenched in one of the greatest things ever: happy strings. Too often, strings are used outside of chamber music merely to create a morose sense of sadness. It's amazing when they're used to cheer people up - like in so much disco. Here, the strings bear the optimism of empowered youth entirely successfully.

'Baby I Love You So' by Colourbox: I came to this song bit by bit - first, Augustus Pablo's "King Tubby Meets the Rockers Uptown", which I've heard a million times down the years. It was through the kind people at YouTube that I discovered that dub's 'original version' - "Baby I Love You So" by Jacob Miller, an amazing song and an amazing track in its won right. From there it went to here: all I knew about Colourbox was that they were half of M/A/R/R/S, who made "Pump Up the Volume". Turns out their own work is pretty great, too - and here's a perfect example, a symphony of 80s studio-overdubbing, my perhaps all-time favourite soundscape, pulsating behind a breathy female vocalist like Massive Attack would do a few years later. If there is a heaven, this is what music sounds like there.

'Tarantula' by This Mortal Coil: Heaven can't sound like this, though, or people might think twice before going there. Colourbox were a 4AD group, which led me to This Mortal Coil, less a 'group' than a project that periodically brought 4AD signees together for Golden Palominos-style projects. Collaborative, but obviously not 'jammy' - this is 4AD, after all. And being 4AD, it's hauntingly gorgeous and evocative, while being cold as ice and emotionally distant. It's a brittle statuette, liable to shatter into pieces at any minute. It's heart-stopping, but you'll never cuddle up with it to keep you warm. Turns out, oddly enough, to be a cover of Colourbox. How circular life is, eh?

The Self-Fulfilling Prophecy of Non-Voting

2011-06-18T14:34:00.000-07:00

Frank Graves, the head honcho at EKOS, has gone from a meticulous analyst of Canadians' opinions to a meticulous analyst of the meticulous analysis of Canadians' opinions in little more than a single month. Good for him - if nothing else, he's a very thoughtful, intelligent person.

He's come to the conclusion that the main reason pollsters were so far off on their election predictions this year is that they could not accurately predict who, among people who said they were going to vote, actually would vote.

And past that there's nothing very surprising: the young vote way less than the old, the undereducated vote less than the educated, NDP supporters vote less than Conservatives.

That is to say, a larger percentage of people who told EKOS or other pollsters before May 2 that they would vote NDP didn't actually bother to go vote on May 2 itself. Larger than the percentage of people who said they were going to vote Conservative.

So someone who supports the Conservatives is more likely to actually vote than someone who supports the NDP.

How much so? Well, if you trust Graves's numbers, among the 40% of voting-age Canadians who didn't vote, but whose voting intentions can be extrapolated by comparing EKOS's polling numbers ot the election day results, fully 32.1% would have voted NDP. Now, that's not far off the 30.6% the NDP really did get (which explains why while EKOS's numbers overall were a disaster, their NDP numbers weren't half bad), but the yawning gap between what could have happened on May 2 and what really did is best illustrated by looking at the Conservatives' numbers:

Merely 24.8% of Canadians who registered an opinion on party preference but didn't actually go and vote on election day preferred the Conservatives. In an inverse election where those who voted found their opinions ignored and only those who didn't vote were able to choose the government, the NDP would have come in first by almost eight percent over the now neck-and-neck Conservatives and Liberals. And combining those numbers (meaning that every voting age Canadian actually voted) would have brought about the seat count Graves predicted on May 1: a Conservative minority with ample legroom for an NDP-led majority coalition with the Liberals, had they been able to work that out.

The Conservatives didn't win this election: we lost it. Or rather, both are true, because the Conservatives are blessed to have a voting bloc who realises that you get the people you want elected elected by electing them - by going out and voting for them. And congratuations to the Conservative voting bloc for having the energy to go out there and vote in numbers great enough to secure a majority government for your party.

After all, this is what ensured that; not any real shift in the overall support that the nation feels oward the Conservative Party. Throughout April and up to voting day, our country experienced a distinct leftward shift on an almost unprecedented level: the Conservatives showed only the most minimal of an increase in support while the NDP went through the roof. What was the result of this? A distinctly rightward shift in our House of Commons.

No small blame for this must lie with NDP supporters nationwide, who got out the vote in numbers significantly smaller than did the Conservatives. I know NDP doesn't exactly correlate with youth doesn't exactly correlate with disenfranchised doesn't exactly correlate with 'didn't vote'. But there are overlaps here too great to ignore. Disefranchisement, especially among the young, is a vicious circle, and it is a very real phenomenon. Young Canadians don't feel Ottawa represents them, so they ignore it. In feeling that the governmnet is out of touch, they effectively ensure it remains out of touch. It's frustrating as hell to think we could have had the government that Canadians want to have if only we had gone out and made it happen. To think that a certain percentage of Canadians - a measurable number and probably a number large enough to determine the state of Canadian politics for the next four years - said, effectively, 'not enough people vote for my party for them to win, so I won't vote either'.

Which is not only patently ridiculous but is also self-defeating. We're having the rug pulled out from beneath us as a party with the support of a distinct minority of Canadians gains more and more control in this country. Our getting frustrated enough by the process to tune it out is exactly what they want. Just think of how well it's worked for them so far.

Googling Me

2011-06-17T14:41:00.000-07:00

What do you get if you Google "a-proper-blog.blogspot.com"? Not much, really, in 12,600 results: mostly vsrious entries in this blog itself, or weird trawling sites. A few odd places my url shows up:

On lookfordiagnosis.com, some page advertising "Images: sexual infantilism".
A virus-filled site called br@kencontrollers.com (url altered to prevent accidental clicking) seems to have a few of my entries copied in 'forums' that nobody ever looks at, with a claim that a certain 'download' link will somehow 'download' my blog entry - instead, it downloads a virus.
'Boys Butt - find to shar boys but free image download', which is awesome. I get the odd person coming to my site looking for 'boys butt' - all because I quoted Shakespeare!. How awesome is that.
kgbpeople.com claims that 'personal information' about early Smiths producer Troy Tate can be found on my site - which is certainly can't.
A forum devoted to the band Ween mentioned me in a page about 'albums with female nipples on the cover'. I got a lot of hits from there at one point.
A link that rather excitingly claims to be about 'Kung Fu Fighting and Other Love Songs', but when I click on it find no such thing. Pity.
A shoutout on the nicely frequented ginandtacos.com, talking about horrid flags. Someone in the comments links to my entry on same.
Something in... er, Malay perhaps, called thinkwithnonie.blogspot.com copies a random image that I copied from some random place on the internet, but it much more generous than me, linking to the source. I just grabbed it and ran.
'Readers pick best webcomic Frogger joystiq' and 'Endless funeral a second beginning', which sound intriguing but are both hosted at a .cc domain that I fear to click.
And my Alexa page! Which tells me that this is, amazingly, the 16,719,533rd most viewed site on the internet (woohoo!) and apparently (though I've never noticed this myself) 'death by captcha' is my highest-impact search query, responsible for over 10% of search queries. I doubt that somehow. Overall, according to alexa.com, these are my highest-impact queries:

death by captcha
death by
don't touch my junk
long distance calling
flags of the world
street view
greatest hits album
party names
with animals
my junk
in the world
long distance
political party
red stripe
album cover
the world
dolphins
streetview
usenet
the borgias
movies
google street view
gilmore
control
political blogs
google maps
adsense
adam sandlers
of the world
jailbait

Yay!

EKOS and the Wild Ride

2011-06-16T09:03:00.000-07:00

Beating a dead horse? Nah. The 2011 Federal Election was way too important to just suddenly stop talking about. I'll be talking about it for years to come.

But this time out, it's not me talking. Rather, it's Frank Graves, head honcho at EKOS, one of Canada's bigger pollsters. I've been looking back at his 'analyses' which accompanied each of his press releases with new sets of numbers. They're interesting in that, with the benefit of hindsight, you can see what a really wild ride Election 41 really was. I've picked out salient soundbites from the analyses pertinent to the NDP and their come-out-of-nowhere surge that, merely five weeks on, has already started to feel permanent. Note as the election progresses that the frequency and urgency of the press releases increases, and that Graves goes from including parenthetical observations about the NDP for the sake of fairness to letting the NDP entirely dominate his discussions. Whatever Graves's own politics happen to be, his commitment to making polling interesting has him toward the end almost breathless with admiration for the NDP and their surge. Here it all is, taken from his PDFs which I'm too lazy to link to individually but which you can find at ekospolitics.com:

MARCH 10: "The NDP are now within the margin of error of the Conservatives in Quebec. Coupled with other findings in the survey, there is evidence that the NDP could be poised for something of a breakthrough in Quebec."

MARCH 25: "While the Liberals and Greens are poised to make some minor gains at the expense of the Conservatives and the NDP, there is little chance that we will see any major changes in the balance of power."

MARCH 28: "Do the NDP really think that the Layton Liberals will flock to their leader when the chips are down?" "The NDP are not far off from their position going into the last election (although they are short of their 2008 election performance). But they are doing best on second choice and have the most liked leader so they have plausible aspirations for matching if not eclipsing their last performance."

APRIL 1: "Joining the Conservative Party in forward movement is the NDP who saw a significant bump up in support, largely at the expense of the Green Party and, to a lesser extent, the Liberals." "There would appear to be opportunities for the Liberals and NDP in Quebec, as the confidence in the current federal government has virtually evaporated in the province. But so far, there is little evidence of any rallying hub for federalist forces in Quebec."

APRIL 6: "Contrary to the erratic impression from reading the welter of various polling reports out there, the race appears to be evolving in a relatively orderly pattern with a clear logic."

APRIL 8: "The regions are all in different stages of flux as well. British Columbia sees a Conservative lead, but they are in close pursuit by the NDP and the Liberals, with the Green Party showing enough strength to possibly signal a breakthrough for Elizabeth May." "The Atlantic Provinces aren’t very happy with the federal government and they are showing low enthusiasm for this election. They are oscillating between the Conservatives and the Liberals, and the NDP have some chances there as well." "Overall, it appears that both the NDP and Liberal Party have the most opportunities to grow, although a fair bit of that would be cannibalizing each other (according to the breakdowns of second choice by current preference)."

APRIL 13: "The other main story of this poll is that the claimed demise of the NDP is clearly premature. The New Democrats are showing important new strength, particularly in Quebec and British Columbia where they now lead." "Women voters are defecting from the Conservative Party and there is now a very large gender gap. The NDP, meanwhile, is doing very well with women and has broadened its demographic constituency."

APRIL 15: "The NDP does very well in British Columbia and looks surprisingly strong in Quebec. It is also attracting women’s votes. Less auspiciously for its prospects, the party attracts the highest number of voters who would consider changing their minds."

APRIL 18: "The NDP, meanwhile, continues to follow an upward trend line and, at 20.0 points, they are the only party to have clearly demonstrated upward momentum throughout the campaign (which they began around 6 points below their current standing)." "While support for national direction has improved, support for the current government in Canada has reached a low point for the campaign. So far, it is the NDP who have tapped into this growing disaffection for the incumbent government, but it could be a force in the final stages of the campaign."

APRIL 21: "Building on a solid if unspectacular rise from the outset of the campaign, Jack Layton’s NDP party is scaling heights not seen since the NDP’s salad days under Ed Broadbent." "On March 24th, the NDP stood at 14.2 points. Since then, they moved up steadily to around 17 points, then they started closing in on 20 and, in this poll, they find themselves at 24.7, tying themselves with the Liberals and only 9 points shy of the once-distant Conservative Party. This steady progression from “also ran” to contender has been a smooth and steady. It is very uncertain whether it will be sustained or whether it could even advance further." "Shockingly, the NDP have how eclipsed a clearly faltering Bloc Quebecois (down nearly 15 points)."

APRIL 25: "After several years in a political rut characterized by trench warfare between the Conservatives and the Liberals, Jack Layton and his NDP party appear poised to reshape Canada’s political landscape." "These results, if they were to hold, would produce a profound transformation in the Canadian political firmament, tantamount and arguably more far reaching than the Reform explosion in 1993." "The NDP have experienced an unperfected doubling of their poll support from 14 to 28 points since the writ was dropped. They now have a large lead in Quebec and are poised to gain the lion’s share of the 75 seats there (up from their current single seat). They also now lead in the Atlantic and are within the margin of error of the lead in British Colombia." "They may not have reached the ceiling of this JackQuake which is shaking the country."

APRIL 26: "The NDP has captured new voters from across the political spectrum in a remarkably eclectic fashion. Looking at how 2008 voters have migrated, we see the Conservatives almost entirely intact whereas the NDP is now an amalgam of defected Conservative, Liberal, and Green supporters. In particular, the NDP surge has been driven by a wholesale transfer of Bloc Quebecois supporters in Quebec."

APRIL 27: "The Conservatives remain at 34.0 and the NDP is at 28.1. The Liberals have not been able to reverse their fortunes and are now at 22.9 which may be a new nadir in our polling for the Liberals." "It is unclear whether the electorate has truly grasped the significance of the sweeping changes that the NDP surge (now plateaued) has produced. The chief remaining question is how Ontario will deal with these new realities in the closing portion of the campaign."

APRIL 28: "As for a massive NDP collapse, that likely isn’t going to happen. Jack Layton’s orange train has left the station and it’s just a question of how far it will take him. With a very slight uptick, he could see himself arriving at not only Stornoway, but even Sussex if the new government were to be defeated promptly. Heady stuff for a party that entered the race at a mere 14 points."

APRIL 29: "The NDP, who began the campaign at a scant 14 points, have now more than doubled their support and at 29.7% and are breathing down the necks of the stalled Conservative Party." "The NDP now have significant strength in British Columbia, and have risen sharply to tie the Liberals in Ontario. They have a huge lead in Quebec and are tied for the lead in the Atlantic. The Conservatives are strong in the west and, due to a newly split NDP and Liberal vote in Ontario, have a 12-point advantage over the Liberals and the closing NDP." "While the Conservatives remain very strong with older Canadians and males, the NDP are showing strong connection with the Gen X and Gen Y, where they now lead. The NDP have also seized much of the university-educated vote from the Liberals and have significant representation in all regions and demographic groups, outside of over 65 voters who are the lynchpin of Conservative support."

MAY 1: "The Conservatives are at 34.6 points, while the NDP is three points back at 31.4 and the Liberals at 20.4." "Using these numbers, and we will reserve the final forecast until later this evening, we would see a Conservative minority where the NDP were within 20 seats and the NDP and the Liberals combined would have a narrow majority between them. This means that if there was common will between the NDP and the Liberals, they would have both the legal (and according to our recent polling on the topic) the moral authority to swiftly dispatch Stephen Harper’s Conservative Party." "Quebec is abandoning the Bloc Quebecois even further and the NDP could virtually sweep that province in a breathtaking development." "The NDP ceiling is now 55 points, fully 11 points above the Conservative Party." "Quebec is painting itself orange in a remarkable display of unanimity. The Atlantic provinces remain locked in a tight three-way struggle but the NDP are showing a late spurt there which has placed them in the lead."

MAY 3 (POST-MORTEM): "While we believe EKOS did a very good job in charting the direction of the election and some of the historical shifts that occurred, we were caught flat footed in capturing the majority victory for the Conservative Party." "EKOS correctly noted early in the campaign an important shift to the NDP which we correctly estimated would see the NDP as Official Opposition with over one hundred seats. We were roundly pilloried for this prediction from those who claimed nothing was happening in the campaign and that the NDP vote would collapse." "There was a late movement of Liberal supporters to the Conservative Party which shifted about three points to the Conservatives (half of our shortfall)."

Writing Credits for The Wailers Alternative Discography #1 - #6

2011-06-15T15:04:00.000-07:00

So I've been doing my Wailers Alternative Discography project off and on for a few months now. I haven't been including writing credits, because they'e confusing, and my main source for the project, Roger Steffens' discography, is quite iffy on the subject itself.

Having recently come across another discographical resource, however, I've decided to reconsider that: I don't consider that resource infallible either, and I've taken a few liberties and made a few approximations myself. The end results are interesting, though, showing that in the early years the Wailers were far from self-sufficient as songwriters, Peter Tosh in particular, and that they loved Curtis Mayfield and Smokey Robinson (actually, black American music as a whole).

In any case, here are songwriting credits for the first six 'albums' I compiled - the Coxsone years.

Simmer Down and Other Hits

(August 1964, Studio One)

Side One

2:50 Simmer Down (B. Marley)
1:56 Climb the Ladder (B. Marley)
2:32 Straight and Narrow Way (B. Marley)
3:05 Maga Dog (P. Tosh)
2:31 Your Love (B. Marley)
2:30 Go Jimmy Go (D. Pomus, M. Shuman)

Side Two

2:50 Do You Remember (B. Marley)
1:59 Destiny (B. Marley)
2:11 Habits (B. Marley)
2:12 Tell Them Lord (B. Marley)
2:38 Amen (J. Pato)
3:40 I Am Going Home (trad., adapted by B. Marley)

The Wailing Wailers

(December 1964, Studio One)

Side One

2:28 Dance With Me (B. Marley, B. Mann, C. Weil, J. Leiber, M. Stoller)
2:45 True Confessions (B. Marley)
2:54 Lonesome Feelings (B. Marley, N. Livingston)
2:44 There She Goes (B. Marley)
2:42 Teenager in Love (D. Pomus, M. Shuman, B. Marley)
2:42 It Hurts to Be Alone (B. Marley)

Side Two

3:04 Nobody Knows (trad., adapted by C. Dodd)
3:09 Love Won't be Mine This Way (B. Marley)
3:28 Where Will I Find (H. David, P. Hapton, B. Marley)
3:07 I Need You (B. Marley)
2:50 Don't Ever Leave Me (B. Marley)

One Love

(August 1965, Studio One)

Side One

3:19 One Love (B. Marley, C. Mayfield)
2:13 Playboy (B. Marley, B. Gordy)
3:04 Shame and Scandal (trad.)
2:11 Diamond Baby (B. Marley)
2:20 Do You Feel the Same Way (B. Marley)
2:38 Love and Affection (B. Marley, N. Livingston)

Side Two

3:02 Hooligan Ska (B. Marley)
3:06 And I Love Her (J. Lennon, P. McCartney)
2:48 I Made a Mistake (C. Mayfield)
3:15 Where's the Girl for Me (B. Marley)
3:35 Jumbie Jamboree (trad., adapted by P. Tosh)

More of the Wailers

(January 1966, Studio One)

Side One

3:39 Where is My Mother (B. Marley)
2:21 Rude Boy (B. Marley)
2:24 Jailhouse (N. Livingston)
2:59 Somewhere to Lay My Head (B. Marley)
3:16 Wages of Love (B. Marley)
3:09 I'm Still Waiting (B. Marley)

Side Two

2:59 Ska Jerk (A. DeWalt, B. Marley)
2:59 What's New Pussycat (B. Bacharach, H. David)
2:44 Cry to Me (B. Marley)
2:57 Another Dance (C. Mayfield, B. Marley)
2:32 Lonesome Track (B. Marley)
2:15 This Train (trad.)

The Toughest

(August 1966, Studio One)

Side One

3:12 The Toughest (L. Oldham, D. Pennington, C. Dodd, J. Mittoo, P. Tosh)
2:42 Let Him Go (N. Livingston)
3:09 That Ain't Right (R. Anderson)
2:28 Jerking Time (N. Livingston)
2:55 Lemon Tree (W. Holt)

Side Two

2:42 A Deh Pon Dem (R. Anderson)
2:53 Rock Sweet Rock (N. Livingston)
3:05 Who Feels it Knows It (N. Livingston)
2:34 Friends and Lovers (W. Farrell, B. Burns)
3:07 Sinner Man (trad., adapted by P. Tosh, N. Livingston)

Dreamland

(December 1966, Studio One)

Side One

2:47 Dancing Shoes (N. Livingston)
3:13 Making Love (P. Tosh)
2:59 What am I Supposed to Do (N. Livingston)
2:53 Treat Me Good (J. Higgs)
2:54 Dreamland (A. Johnson, N. Livingston)

Side Two

2:42 Can't You See (P. Tosh)
2:42 Rolling Stone (B. Dylan, N. Livingston)
1:52 Don't Look Back (W. Robinson, R. White)
3:05 I Stand Predominant (N. Livingston)
2:34 When the Well Runs Dry (trad., adapted by N. Livingston)
3:07 I Need You So (W. Robinson)

My Japanese Kit-Kat Experience

2011-06-14T09:01:00.000-07:00

So I've finally lost my Japanese Kit-Kat virginity.

Ever since stumbling upon a site on the internet enumerating the crazily large number of flavours of Kit-Kat chocolate bars available in Japan, I've wanted to give them a try. I had a friend returning to Japan for a one-minth stay, and I asked her to pick up some 'unusual Japanese flavours' of Kit-Kat.

I should point out that from a Canadian perspective any flavour of Kit-Kat is unusual. All we have is... well, Kit-Kat flavour. Chocolate and wafer flavour. So, you know, I'd have been impressed with banana flavour.

My friend seemed to take the phrase 'Japanese flavour' literally, bringing back a handful of Kit-Kat bars flavoured with tastes quite unique to that island nation. Well, one was 'melon flavour' (and quite realistic that one was, too), which is perhaps not overly Japanese. In addition, there was 'sakura flavour' (which tastes nothing like strawberries, really - it didn't taste like much of anything, though it was nice), 'matcha flavour' (which really did taste like that powdery green tea - but not overpoweringly so), 'edamame flavour' (which tasted a bit like edamame, but I'd have never guessed that without looking at the label), and the infamous 'wasabi flavour' - yes, a chocolate bar flavoured like wasabi. And it was - a grace note of wasabi that you didn't notice until after you swallowed the chocolate. It was very mild and, honestly, not too bad, really. Still very much a 'dare-you' thing, for my Japanese friend as much as for myself, but the result was not offensive. Which is not the strongest of praises, I accept.

Wikipedia lists plenty of other flavours that I... well, never say never, but that might come low on my list of 'things to try before I die'. To whit: 'soy sauce flavour', 'sports drink flavour', 'hamburger flavour', 'sweet potato flavour', 'beet flavour' and 'grilled corn flavour'.

Yum.

Decapitation Classic #3

2011-06-13T13:33:00.000-07:00

So I think I'm just going to dump Decapitation Classic in toto onto this blog here. It's happier here, I daresay.

What am I talking about? Here's an entry that explains it. And here are two more of the, ahem, 'poems'.

“A City is Destroyed”

A city is destroyed in every part:
Pregnant women artists come here to appear angular
Serving naked in Paris, then adhere fully to the devil,
but only white is right, and streets bright as gold
Metal, charming and full of energy almost under the eyes
Of the summer sun, one or two of rest in the chair
Or consider a new eye color to judge the world
According to its feet with female characters in the knee
To avoid elimination from the Slider to work free.
Better yet, in lottery revenues and the fear of God
Some people say, "The secret devil here and abroad
Dusts the Bible before going past the door."
But for those brave people who sacrifice their pride,
It seems a shame, gold, silver and precious stones.

I have shoes that are Marie Antoinette,
And walk on hot stones and burning sun.
We would set about to shoot him, and I got very light
And magic, and jumping rope to reduce the occupation.
But often your mind, as well as the deck, is empty,
with the ceiling removed pink light can not skim through.
We care little for the church records: we had visited Paris
Where they discuss the cutting of the Saints
And women without the veil here in the clouds:
scores of women, most are young and happy, and patient.
All disappear from the window and fly to the site
Representative for the fire, His name seems to have escaped
With their deeds, the four pillars falling on horns,
And a pillar of stone in Egypt, and the twisted snake.

When we entered the door to pay for a night,
An angel seemed to play the guitar, and I'm sure
The dolls vary greatly; their device is more interesting items
In any system of celestial beings, the environment and land
Are well guarded, as are children under the trees before them.
what a wonderful victory here, and I can not understand.
If it was under the shirt, he was transferred by air to the right,
And her thin face wore the old meetings in the gates.
Three main colors hang in disputes over the environment,
Even the shadow of snow in Russia now only leads to the meat.
With arms spread and mouth open wide, all is great boredom.
the right mix to pull, mouth open when the clock started.
Fly girl, rich colors and dust, and the link with cabbage white.
including a really good horse, and a really good woman
who can give the child a fear of horses.

He turned around, without making any progress,
While fifty of the dolls were a window period.
As it will end up trying to understand Infinity,
I must admit that I got up quickly.
His example seemed to melt into the walls,
Setting the black river in his hands.
It was big and dark, and solved our problems seriously
In my eyes, I felt cold in my bones.
How many people smile for a day, eyes full of tears' colors?
Point your face from us, risk his hat in public,
Show a very sensitive issue behind her bald head.
He was very nice and love the country illegally
His name was written in blood without epitaph.
The candles are still hot in his grave.
"I want my ashes to rest on the bank of the Seine
At the heart of the French people that love you."

Details about 'A City is Destroyed' can be found here.

“The Death of Jesus”

Now, the death of Jesus: I and others should fight for God.
It's a miracle, but close our eyes and breathe: body parts down to the eye.
It was night, when teachers come to know from birth on our roads.
However, hate can not eat; he can not force them to try.
New forms allow any sun to know. I fear teachers. But do not fear me.
Stop God and use a voice. Ready to talk about wolves, because we have guns.
A series of falling glass we see around us. Other pipelines and dreams of profit.
Perhaps a depreciation, for the murder of snow is full of fear.
Weapons? No knife to kill a wolf howling in front of Rome.
Blood will dance with your fingers, follow your fingers deep down.
He and I are a large Bowie knife through security, through the mirror I think.
I do not understand men in the basket, creating a problem.
I cry because I see things have changed: I threw away the sun.
Flash has won the way they should; the left fingers were burned in the blood.
Smile and say, we witnessed the suffering of my heart.
Discomfort and pain with a smile. And a quiet, elegant gentleman died.

Details about 'The Death of Jesus' can be found here.

Across The Political Divide

2011-06-12T16:58:00.000-07:00

I recently read something rather bizarre - that apparently while speaking to someone, you can tell their political persuasion merely by looking at something else while speaking. Apparently, the leftist will follow your gaze to see what you're looking at while the conservative will carry on unfazed.

Probably dodgy pop psychology at its finest. But it resonates with something that has been crossing my mind a lot lately - that a left-of-centre mindset and a right-of-centre mindset are merely incompatible mindsets that most people, some 'swing voters' in the centre notwithstanding, more or less subscribe to wholesale. That entire political philosophies can, in many cases, spring fully formed as a result of basic, fundamental approaches to the individual's place in society - approaches that are probably formed at a very young age and are more or less immutable, the rightward drift associated with aging notwithstanding.

Or let's look at it this way: when a leftist exasperatedly exclaims, 'I can't understand conservatives at all!', that's probably not mere hubris: it's probably the truth. Because complex political philosophies spring from simple perspectives on life, there probably is a fundamental disconnect between 'how lefties think' and 'how righties think'. Never the twain shall meet, except of course for those centrists, God love them, who can be persuaded one way or another.

If this is true, the implication would seem to be to 'draw battle lines' - most starkly of course in the resolutely bipartisan United States of America, where lately partisans on both sides are inclined to view politics as a battle between good and evil.

You could argue, though, that the opposite should happen: that one result of an incompatibility of ideology could be to put down weapons and learn to embrace difference. After all, if we have no chance at all of 'converting' a certain segment of the population - not due to stubbornness but merely due to this 'difference in mindset' - then we would do well to learn to accept them, to figure out how to accommodate 'both sides' to the extent possible. After all, 'they know not what they do' - people on both sides of the line are driven by a sense of righteousness that they believe fully in their hearts: it's not a lack of empathy that prevents them from walking a mile in the other side's shoes so much as a simple inability to make their minds grasp the fundamentals of the other side's philosophy.

I consider myself a perfect example of this. Conservative politics seem absolutely crazy to me - really. I've given a lot of thought to them and I can't for the life of me understand why people embrace them. And yet they do - intelligent, honest, decent people somehow manage to come to radically different conclusions about man's relationship to man and the importance of the individual in society than me. I get frustrated that people seem unable to see the world as it appears so crystal clear to me, and I gnash my teeth at what seems like a usurping of power whenever enough of the populace cast their lot with conservatives that they are able to form a government at one level or another.

Which, of course, is ridiculous: our winner-takes-all system of government not only is entirely the wrong system if people's political outlooks are more or less encoded within them in stone but additionally is probably the root cause behind the adversarial way we view politics.

Political outlook can't be 'genetic': people's politics change with time, and with geography too, in that some places are resolutely left-of-centre and others incurably right-of-centre. So there is a 'learned', environmental aspect to it. And it stands to reason that people can be swayed - gradually, over time. But it seems that the best way to sway someone's mind is by engaging with them, not by shouting at them over an insurmountable gulf.

After all, there's nothing wrong with conservatives or with progressives: they merely are who they are.

"The night air"

2011-06-11T14:11:00.000-07:00

The night air so still,
The distant crack of thunder
Adds tranquility

Woe is Me

2011-06-10T09:10:00.000-07:00

I'm kind of drying up at the moment with the blogs. It's not that I have nothing to say - it's just that for some reason I only have things to say when I'm not in front of a computer. When I actually get a chance to sit down in front of a computer and get some work done... my mind wanders. I hate it, but there's not much I can do about it. I'm still going to try to maintain my one-post-per-day pledge, but I think I need to look into ways to get that done with, well, with minimal effort. For the time being. Disapponting to me, but that's the reality. Haikus?

The Hollywood Career-o-Matic #1

2011-06-09T09:30:00.000-07:00

So Rotten Tomatoes keeps track of what critics have to say about movies. It looks at as wide a range of reviewers as possible to attempt 'general critical consensus' about the quality of a movie - ultimately, whatever the reviewer's own rating system, classifying each review merely as a praise or a pan. Valuable resource.

Slate.com has taken that information and used it to chart the 'career trajectories' of directors and actors. I might add more later, but at the moment, here are five of its findings:

Steven Spielberg still, all these years later, carries around a reputation as a maker of user-friendly blockbusters whose successes are more commercial than critical. But Rotten Tomatoes makes a lie of that: Spielberg's critical performance has been as good as anyone's over the past 25 years: only one movie in 17 drops below the 50% mark (Hook, with a sad 26%). At 97%, Schindler's List is an obvious career peak, but Catch Me If You Can is a rather surprising follow-up at a nearly-equal 96%. And how on Earth did Indiana Jones and the Kingdom of the Crystal Skull get 77%?

James Cameron, by any reasonable standard, probably out-Spielbergs Spielberg by now as a maker of blockbusters. And yet his critical standard is also sky-high, with a 69% for True Lies being his worst performance in the last 25 years. Mind you, he's about as prolific as James Joyce, so perhaps it's tough to make bombs when you're not really making much of anything at all. He tops Schindler's List twice: with Aliens at 100% and with Terminator 2: Judgement Day at 98%.

Ang Lee's chart is remarkably consistent, with only one dip below the 50th percentile - and that's surprisingly not Hulk, which got 61%. Instead, it's Taking Woodstock, with a not-too-shabby 48%. Top of the pack is Sense and Sensibility at 98% and Crouching Tiger, Hidden Dragon at 97%.

Clint Eastwood's been remarkably consistent as a director down the years: 19 films at or above the 50% line, only two below: even those 'bombs' (Absolute Power and Hereafter) are hardly stinkers, at 46% apiece. His career highlight since 1985 is, unsurprisingly, Unforgiven (96%). But Pale Rider, The Bridges of Madison County, Million Dollar Baby and Letters from Iwo Jiwa (whatever that is) all get 90% or more.

Uwe Boll, in a brief five years as a director, has totally reset the bar for 'bad'. Blackwoods, the first one here, scored 11% - and that's a career best. Alone in the Dark gets an impressive 1%. His overall average is less than 6%.

Ol kantri - a quiz

2011-06-08T10:14:00.000-07:00

So according to the Tok Pisin Wikipedia, the following are country names in the Tok Pisin language - the Tok Pisin language is an English-based creole, and as such you can pick out the meanings of a good many words just by looking at them and thinking about them. So all of the following are countries in the world - what are their names translated into 'standard' English?

Ostrelia
Posugol
Suwidan
Niu Silan
Ol Yunaitet Stet
Ijip
Aialan
Pranis
Siamani
Siapan

The answers appear below. Click to see them.

» Answers! «

Midnight Train to Cleverbot

2011-06-07T10:07:00.000-07:00

User: L.A. Proved too much for the man.

Cleverbot: The man, or a man ?

User: So he's leaving the life he's come to know.

Cleverbot: Good for him. Some people are never satisfied until they get a little drama.

User: He said he's going back to find what's left of his world.

Cleverbot: Then I think he should. Otherwise, he shouldn't say it.

User: The world he left behind not so long ago.

Cleverbot: You may say that I'm a dreamer But I'm not the only one.

User: He's leaving on that midnight train to Georgia.

Cleverbot: What is your name?

User: And he's going back to a simpler place and time.

Cleverbot: Simple is refreshing.

User: And I'll be with him.

Cleverbot: Oh I was seeing if you new that song.

User: On that midnight train to Georgia.

Cleverbot: My cousin lives in georgia. Ugh I do not want to go to stupid wal mart.

User: I'd rather live in his world than live without him in mine.

Cleverbot: Home sweet home - nothing like the comfort and coziness inside this computer I live in. Plenty of memory and disk-space.

User: Now if there's a smile upon my face, it's only there trying to fool the public.

Cleverbot: He has to destroy a ring?

User: But when it comes down to fooling you, now honey that's quite a different subject.

Cleverbot: Nope, I'm nothing.

User: So don't let my glad expression give you the wrong impression.

Cleverbot: Sacrifice means to 'give some thing away that you do not want to give away in exchange for some thing else you desire more'.

User: Really I'm sad.

Cleverbot: Can you spell pathetic?

User: Oh, sadder than sad.

Cleverbot: Sorry.

User: You're gone and I'm hurting so bad.

Cleverbot: I know;).

User: For others I pretend to be glad.

Cleverbot: Me too, because sometimes you can be stubborn!

User: Now there's some sad things known to man.

Cleverbot: And we're out of beta, we're releasing on time.

User: But ain't too much sadder than the tears of a clown.

Cleverbot: It is?

User: Who can turn the world on with her smile?

Cleverbot: Not me. And you got that from Sabrina.

User: Who can take a nothing day and suddenly make it all seem worthwhile?

Cleverbot: The candyman can, but that's beside the point.

User: Well, it's you, girl, and you should know it.

Cleverbot: Know what ?

User: Half of what I say is meaningless.

Cleverbot: That is very true.

User: But I say it just to reach you, Julia.

Cleverbot: Why do you accuse the unreal?

User: They say every man must need redemption.

Cleverbot: I've just realised I have to go.

User: They say every man must fall.

Cleverbot: I'm not cereal guy.

User: Yet I swear I've seen my reflection.

Cleverbot: I am not questioning your sanity.

User: Some place so high above the wall.

Cleverbot: Do you prefer your own company or the company of others?

User: As the snow flies.

Cleverbot: So now we fly ever free.

User: On a cold and grey Chicago morn, a poor little baby child is born in the ghetto.

Cleverbot: I'd rather stay here. I've got a plan.

User: And his mama cries.

Cleverbot: Why do you need his last name?

User: 'Cause if there's one thing that she don't need, it's another little hungry mouth to feed in the ghetto.

Cleverbot: I am human, you are not.

User: If I should stay, I would only get it your way.

Cleverbot: Thou art more lovely and more temperate.

User: So I'll go, but I know I'll think of you each step of the way.

Cleverbot: I love you too!

User: And I will always love you.

Cleverbot: I feel loved.

User: Bittersweet memories, that is all I'm taking with me.

Cleverbot: Very interesting to know. I agree on that with you.

User: So goobye. Please don't cry. We both know I'm not what you need.

Cleverbot: Theoretically, that might be true.

User: Thinking of a master plan.

Cleverbot: Tell me about you. Robot?

User: There ain't nothing but sweat inside my hand.

Cleverbot: But you said you like to talk about yourself.

User: I dig into my pocket, all my money spent.

Cleverbot: Not by much.

User: I dig deeper, I'm still coming up with lint.

Cleverbot: Up where?

User: So I start my mission, leave my residence.

Cleverbot: I'm interested to know how I would be represented in another's research. I'd almost be afraid to hear/see it tho.

User: Thinking how could I get some dead presidents?

Cleverbot: Way to change the subject.

The Atlantic Provinces in Toronto

2011-06-06T09:25:00.000-07:00

The reality we have in Canada is that our population is really not at all evenly distributed. To say nothing of the fact that the whole northern half of the country is sparsely distributed, we have an excessive amount of our population hold up in just a few cities, really.

Most of the rest of the country has a perception that Torontonians see their city as the 'centre of the world'. Surely that's not true, but there is good reason why Toronto seems to show up in discussions or in news as often as it does: by Canadian standards, it really is huge. How huge? Well, when you consider the monoliths of Ontario and Québec to be 'central Canada', there are then four provinces to the west of them and four to the east. Four to the east, but you can fit the entire populations of the four Atlantic provinces into the city of Toronto. Not the GTA, mind you, but the city of Toronto itself. And still have room to spare.

What does it look like? Well, here's a map:

New Brunswick, which is in reality 71,450 km², fits in the 416 into an area 231 km² in size: this relatively roomy size is due to the lower population concentration of Etobicoke, which is entirely encompassed by this transplanted New Brunswick population.

Comparing the numbers on the City of Toronto's own toronto.ca map with the population estimates for provinces on Wikipedia, I get that my 'new New Brunswick', which extends as far east as Bathurst in the north of the city but then follows the 401 all the way back west to the CNR line running near Keele and then follows train lines all the way down to the Gardiner, has a population of 749,525 - close to New Brunswick's actual population of 751,273. There's still plenty of room in Rexdale for the remaining 2000 people.

Nova Scotia, the most populous Atlantic province, squeezes into a mere 199 km², since much of 'the old city' of Toronto lies within the area I've transplanted it to. Still, since the actual province is smaller than New Brunswick at 53,338 km², they might not notice the difference.

The 'new' Nova Scotia starts at Morningside, extending as far north as the 401. When it hits Victoria Park, though, the border suddenly swerves way south, going below even Eglinton. At Yonge, though, the border goes all the way back to the 401, until it meets New Brunswick at the CNR line. It then moves a little back east at Eglinton, though, following Dufferin and Winona, then Christie and Bathurst down to the Lakeshore. The very 'heart' of the City, the downtown core, is in this New Nova Scotia - let's call it 'New Halifax'? This area has a population of 956,965 - quite a bit more than the 940,482 who actually call Nouvelle-Écosse home.

The northern parts of the city belong to Newnewfoundland. Whereas the actual Newfoundland and Labrador is a mammoth 373,872 km², I've shrunk the province to a mere 128 km² - which is, what? One three-thousandth the size?

My new Newfoundland, which I would not require to set its clocks half an hour apart from the rest of the city, would only go as far west as Markham Road. Its northern boundary would be Steeles and Steeles alone, all the way to Bathurst, and the rest of its borders are explained above with Nova Scotia, really - that dip south to roundabouts-Eglinton between Yonge and Victoria Park, etc.

Most remarkably, though, if you happened to be in Toronto and woke up early one morning, you could take a quick stroll from Lakeshore to Bloor up Bathurst, before zigzagging your way northwest to Eglinton and Caledonia, before following the train tracks (which is perhaps illegal) all the way down to Dovercourt. Google Maps suggest you could get it down in about three and a half hours - call it four to factor in an ice cream break at one point. But amazingly, you'd have bounded the entire area sufficient, in Toronto, to hold a population the same size as Prince Edward Island. PEI is a baby at 5,660 km², but my New PEI is a mere 19 km² - that's right, the population of an entire province of Canada fits into a mere 19 km² in Toronto.

Less, in fact. The area I've bounded is home to 146,295 people, whereas the Land of Green Gables houses 141,551 people. But they got that cool Confederation Bridge, whereas all I can offer is some five subway stops.

There's another 65 km², and another 132,310 people, in Toronto that I didn't need: Toronto has a larger population than those four provinces. That`s the eastern third of Scarborough, where the Toronto Zoo (among other things) can be found. Let's... er, let's stick Vermont in there or something.

1.		TOM TRAUBERT'S BLUES. (6:39) From the Asylum album Small Change, 1976.

2.		DOWNTOWN TRAIN. (3:53) From the Island album Rain Dogs, 1985.

3.		JERSEY GIRL. (5:11) From the Asylum album Heartattack and Vine, 1980.

4.		HOLD ON. (5:33) From the Anti album Mule Variations, 1999.

5.		I DON'T WANT TO GROW UP. (2:31) From the Island album Bone Machine, 1992.

6.		LITTLE DROP OF POISON. (3:09) From the Anti album Orphans: Brawlers, Bawlers and Bastards, 2006.

7.		WAY DOWN IN THE HOLE. (3:30) From the Island album Franks Wild Years, 1987.

8.		TEMPTATION. (3:53) From the Island album Franks Wild Years, 1987.

9.		THE PIANO HAS BEEN DRINKING (NOT ME). (3:40) From the Asylum album Small Change, 1976.

10.		I NEVER TALK TO STRANGERS. (3:38) From the Asylum album Foreign Affairs, 1977.

11.		LONG WAY HOME. (3:10) From the Anti album Orphans: Brawlers, Bawlers and Bastards, 2006.

12.		BAD AS ME. (3:10) From the Anti album Bad as Me, 2011.

13.		GOING OUT WEST. (3:19) From the Island album Bone Machine, 1992.

14.		GOD'S AWAY ON BUSINESS. (2:59) From the Anti album Blood Money, 2002.

15.		OL' 55. (3:58) From the Asylum album Closing Time, 1973.

16.		I HOPE THAT I DON'T FALL IN LOVE WITH YOU. (3:54) From the Asylum album Closing Time, 1973.

17.		OPENING MONTAGE (FROM ONE FROM THE HEART). (5:16) From the CBS album One From the Heart, 1982.

18.		GET BEHIND THE MULE. (6:52) From the Anti album Mule Variations, 1999.

1.		INVITATION TO THE BLUES. (5:24) From the Asylum album Small Change, 1976.

2.		BLUE VALENTINES. (5:49) From the Asylum album Blue Valentine, 1978.

3.		INNOCENT WHEN YOU DREAM (78). (3:08) From the Island album Franks Wild Years, 1987.

4.		CONEY ISLAND BABY. (4:02) From the Anti album Blood Money, 2002.

5.		ALICE. (4:28) From the Anti album Alice, 2002.

6.		MARTHA. (4:30) From the Asylum album Closing Time, 1973.

7.		ROMEO IS BLEEDING. (4:52) From the Asylum album Blue Valentine, 1978.

8.		FRANK'S WILD YEARS. (1:50) From the Island album Swordfishtrombones, 1983.

9.		GET LOST. (2:42) From the Anti album Bad as Me, 2011.

10.		16 SHELLS FROM A THIRTY-OUGHT SIX. (4:30) From the Island album Swordfishtrombones, 1983.

11.		BACK IN THE GOOD OLD WORLD (GYPSY). (2:30) From the Island album Night on Earth, 1992.

12.		THE BRIAR AND THE ROSE. (3:50) From the Island album The Black Rider, 1993.

13.		POOR EDWARD. (3:42) From the Anti album Alice, 2002.

14.		DEAD AND LOVELY. (5:40) From the Anti album Real Gone, 2004.

15.		SHIVER ME TIMBERS. (4:26) From the Asylum album The Heart of Saturday Night, 1974.

16.		DAY AFTER TOMORROW. (6:56) From the Anti album Real Gone, 2004.

17.		TIME. (3:55) From the Island album Rain Dogs, 1985.

18.		(LOOKING FOR) THE HEART OF SATURDAY NIGHT. (3:16) From the Asylum album The Heart of Saturday Night, 1974.