Category: News

"When America's values are under attack, we need to act."

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From CNN: GOP hones its core agenda.

Protection of marriage amendment? Check. Anti-flag burning legislation? Check. New abortion limits? Check. Between now and the November elections, Republicans are penciling in plans to take action on social issues important to religious conservatives, the foundation of the GOP base, as they defend their congressional majority.

Hooo boy. It’s gonna get interesting down there. And by interesting, I mean bass ackwards. The quote up there in the title is from Bill Frist; I truly hope the American people listen to what he’s saying and do something…just not in the way that Frist expects.

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We finally got around to watching Hustle & Flow (imdb | rotten tomatoes) last night. It was pretty good, though probably not quite as good as I’d built it up to be. It’s certainly worth renting; just be prepared to have “It’s Hard Out Here For A Pimp” stuck in your head for two days.

D.Y.S.

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From the CBC: Accused Serbian robber sews up lips, tongue to avoid court hearing. Ow ow OW. Surely there was a better way to avoid a hearing.

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From a letter to the editor of Toronto Life magazine (which they don’t post online, unfortunately), regarding last month’s condo story:

“If to be a hipster condo owner in downtown Toronto means saying things like ‘The very best thing about living here is Olivier at Clafouti’ without a trace of self-parody…then count me in as a renter who would rather put a bullet through his temple than live among these prats.”

I snorted my iced tea when I read this, and made a mental note not to be this kind of condo owner. If you ever hear me going on about how delightful so-and-so at Rosewater is, for god’s sake, punch me.

How long can grooming take anyway?

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Today’s IndieTits was very funny. And I heartily agree with Neko Case being #1. Wrong Wainwright at #5, but it was funnier that way.

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Some movies that I/we watched lately, but which weren’t very good:

  • Domino (imdb | rotten tomatoes), because it was an interesting story, but not interesting enough to require the frantic pace and annoying echo chamber of this great big hackey music video.
  • Out Of Order (imdb), because Showtime tried to pull off some kind of scam by cramming an entire season of a show into a 97-minute movie. It did, however, alert me to the fact that Justine Bateman has become rather hot at the age of forty.

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I’ve been slowly working through Saturday’s Star after returning from Montreal, and was particularly interested in this article by James Travers about how the front runners for the Liberal party leadership are flexing a little more IQ muscle than has been seen in Canadian politics for some time. My favourite line: “With Michael Ignatieff and Stéphane Dion opting in yesterday and Belinda Stronach dropping out a day earlier, the collective leadership IQ is soaring.” The other entrants or potentials — Bob Rae, Gerard Kennedy, Ken Dryden, Scott Brison, John Godfrey, David McGuinty, Maurizio Bevilacqua — are no slouches either. Whether or not you dig the Liberal party, it can’t be a bad thing to have smarter people trying to run the country.

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One last thing about our Montreal trip: I have to comment on the travel particulars. We flew Westjet this time, as I used up the Airmiles that find their way into my account without my really knowing. Anyhow, it was my first time with them and I was pretty impressed; the thing I liked the most was that they didn’t take 45 minutes to “groom” the plane like Air Canada does; it landed, they let the passengers off, and they let us on seconds later. Much faster turnaround time than I was used to.

And finally, about the Hotel Gault…I know I’ve already gushed about it, but it bears repeating: stay there if the opportunity presents itself.

Accelerated fossilisation

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Time to catch up on the news:

  • London (Ontario, not England) seems like a delightful tourist destination, what with the biker gang violence and all. I am now more convinced than ever to never, ever go there.
  • ABC is starting to get it: they’re going to offer next-day streaming of their most popular shows, which is really just migrating the same content to a new medium, but at least they’re adding some flexibility to their viewing options.
  • Christopher Hume of The Star has new hope for Toronto, and the cultural renaissance he sees on the horizon.
  • This guy can kiss my pale maritimer ass. He acts recklessly, blows up some innocent and unsuspecting allies, gets off practically without consequence and then has the nerve to bitch about the way in which his country lightly slaps his wrist? Fuck him.
  • BlogTO reaffirms their membership in the ‘tear down the Gardiner Expressway‘ club.
  • Finally, and most tragically, Bow Wow and Ciara have split up. I mean, if a kid named after a dog noise and a woman dubbed “the First Lady of Crunk & B” by an overrated shitbag can’t make it in this crazy world, then who can? [tear]

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I read Confused Of Calcutta primarily for my job, as it focuses on technology, but this post went beyond work topics. It’s about change, and the rate at which it happens nowadays; people have been fearfully lamenting change ever since the loom or the printing press, but CoC’s not complaining. He’s pointing out that the era when you could take your time adjusting to market demand is gone. I like the term he uses: fossilisation. “Accelerated fossilisation”…I may have a t-shirt made. I’ll be the guy jumping up and down when I can consume media on my own schedule, in a format of my choosing. I’ll be the guy throwing a party when everyone has free internet access. I’ll be the guy doing a jig when politicians actually make decisions based on socioeconomics and not politics. I’ll toast the new world when my own company talks to me like I’m an intelligent adult (which, I’d have to think, is at least part of the reason why they hired me) and not an agitated child who needs to be soothed.

Remember this: We be many and they be few. They need us more than we need them. Another world is not only possible, she is on her way. On a quiet day, I can hear her breathing.   .:Arundhati Roy

Let’s get on with it.

Breaking news

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I just saw the headline from today’s National Post: “Did Jesus ask Judas to betray him?”

I hear tomorrow’s headline will be “Did the Jedi council ask Anakin Skywalker to betray them?”

Gripping stuff. Stay tuned.

In which I contemplate my own navel

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I saw a preview of Brick (imdb | rotten tomatoes) tonight at the Varsity. I really, really, really liked it. About the only way to describe it is a juxtaposition of noir and high school styles…like an episode of Veronica Mars starring Bogart and Lorre, written by Mamet as he wrestles Hammett to the floor.* Dialogue so dense and fast that you have to work to keep up at first, a plot that expects you to pay attention, a staggering main role played by Joseph Gordon-Levitt…yup, the kid from Third Rock From The Sun who’s become an indie hero. If you like good movies, you’ll like this. At least, you should. Get thee to a cinema.

* side note: Mamet vs. Hammett is a play just waiting to happen. You heard it here first.

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I’ve heard about this before but it’s the first time I’ve seen detail on it: NBC will be releasing 10 internet-only episodes of The Office this summer that’ll feature more of the background characters. More Kelly & Ryan!!

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Scientists claim that “Jesus may have appeared to be walking on water when he was actually floating on a thin layer of ice, formed by a rare combination of weather and water conditions on the Sea of Galilee.” Why would they bother pointing this out? People that actually believe a bearded dude named Jesus walked on water aren’t going to suddenly believe it wasn’t a miracle just because you say so, no matter how sound a theory you throw at them. You can’t reason someone out of a position they were never reasoned into.

[via]

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Sometimes I wonder why I blog. I’m not like most people who have a specific topic for their blog; I throw pretty much everything that enters my mind up here. I’ve owned single-purpose blogs before — radioDan (music & movies), skirl (general stuff that eventually became this blog), and Girlfriend Du Jour (my future wives) — but it gets to be a pain in the ass and so I consolidated the first two into this one. I still post to Girlfriend Du Jour ’cause it’s so much fun. I think being a generalist is more important, or at least more interesting, to me than going in-depth on a topic like music or movies or technology or…I don’t know, maple syrup. Whatever.

I think it has to do with how we were raised. None of my brothers or I focused on any one thing, though we were usually pretty good at a few; we were encouraged to play more than one sport, or learn more than one instrument, or read from a variety of sources. We all seemed to fit in a couple of social worlds as teenagers (at least, that’s what I remember; my brothers were basically out of high school by the time I arrived), so I could hang out with the skids or the jocks or the smart kids. I was on the basketball team, but I was also in the jazz band. I had long hair and played in a bad rock band, but I also knew more about computers than anyone in my school. I grew up on a farm but I feel at home in a city. And so on.

I think I’m still the same now. I feel like I have so many interests that I can’t keep up the way I’d like to, and it comes across in my blogging: scattershot, brief summaries of thoughts that whip through my brain. The categories over on the right are pretty much the breakdown of any given moment inside my head: music, movies, sports and the news are constants, and the hundreds of news feeds I read every day give me plenty of content. Books, food, my friends’ blogs, politics, Toronto goings-on and whatever subject I’m studying for the MBA right now are usually top of mind as well. Work keeps my mind focused on technology, especially developments in how people — the general population, not just geeks — will be using it in the next few years.

And in true Dan form I’ve forgotten why I even started writing this post. Arrrgghhhhuiworuowytwhgkfdnkf. Oop, wait, I’ve got it now: would this blog be better off if I just picked a particular topic and went with it? Or is it ok the way it is? I can tell by the stats that more than half the readers are not friends and family who just want to know what I did last night, but I wonder if my attention span could fuel (tolerate?) a single-topic blog…

OK. Bed now.

Ummm…are we, by any chance, in the shit?

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From the CBC: Blast at Toronto doughnut shop kills man.

A man died in an explosion at a Tim Hortons outlet in downtown Toronto on Sunday, police say.

This is the Tim’s just around the corner from us. Of course, we’re rather out of it and so neither heard nor saw any commotion.

There’re all kinds of nutty rumours going around, like this one that the Globe is peddling: “Police would not confirm early reports that a man had entered the washroom shortly before the blast with explosives strapped to his body.” Since none of the CBC, the Star or CTV are saying this, I’d say it’s a bit premature for the Globe to be passing on innuendo or stoking fears unnecessarily.

"Only people who'll remember this is us."

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We just finished watching Gunner Palace (imdb | rotten tomatoes), a documentary about an American field artillery unit who took over Uday Hussein’s old palace in Baghdad. It was a bit uneven and slow at times, but overall a pretty informative slice of (shitty) life for these guys and the Iraqis they deal with. The soldiers have to duck rocks, worry about IEDs and deal with the fact that no one back home will every understand what their time in Iraq was like. The Iraqi people get held at gunpoint, woken up in the middle of the night by soldiers and sent to prisons like Abu Ghraib without much evidence against them.

“I don’t think … anywhere in history has someone killed someone else and something better has come out of it. It’s just … not possible.”

Whatever you think about the war, you have to respect the soldiers for the work they have to do, and feel sorry for them when the situation sometimes pushes them over the line. Gunner Palace was a good look at a bunch of soldiers standing at the edge of it.

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I also watched Ong-Bak: The Thai Warrior (imdb | rotten tomatoes) this week. Dopey martial arts movie, but holy smokin’ Joe Kubek, that Tony Jaa is one bad-assed squeaky-voiced mofo. No effects, no digital tricks, no “bullet time”, just a little dude kicking and elbowing and jumping and kneeing his way through a whole raft of baddies, including one creepy voiceboxed chief. If you appreciate martial arts movies for the action and don’t mind the thin plot or dippy dialogue, pick this up.

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The Canadiens all but eliminated the Leafs tonight, winning 6-2 after beating them 5-1 two nights ago. Atlanta lost, so Montreal moves back into the 8th playoff spot. The way things are going, the Montreal-New Jersey game we have tickets for in two weeks could be big indeed.

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Clubbed today: protestors in Minsk, baby seals.

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My old friend from university, Farm Boy (ironic that he got the name, since I grew up on a farm and he did not) visited today. He, his wife, Nellie and I had lunch downtown at the Irish Embassy and then caught up for a bit before they left to have dinner with his brother. They were enamored with the cats; who wouldn’t be?

How to spot a baby conservative

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You know that any article starting off like this is going to get mentioned on this blog:

“Remember the whiny, insecure kid in nursery school, the one who always thought everyone was out to get him, and was always running to the teacher with complaints? Chances are he grew up to be a conservative. At least, he did if he was one of 95 kids from the Berkeley area that social scientists have been tracking for the last 20 years. The confident, resilient, self-reliant kids mostly grew up to be liberals.”

Mr. Levitt? Mr. Dubner? Anything to add?

[via The Toronto Star]