Category: News

"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]

Constant lovers

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Spacing says the TTC is working with Google to create a usable transit map. I will be supremely happy on day that this happens.

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Seriously, anxiety or no, this kid is now the envy of everyone who’s ever had this teacher. –>

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I agree with M_Blogler: I’ve lost a bit of respect for Thom Yorke after reading this article. If he was serious about wanting to make a difference he could’ve gone through with the meeting. That said, he might know more about just how futile an exercise it’d be to meet with the PM’s handlers and doesn’t want to put himself through that. Still, it sounds a little chickenshit.

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I might have to go see these ladies when they come through town. They belt out a mean tune.

First of all…however…

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Let’s see…what’s in the news today…

Senator fires back at U.S. family upset with seal hunt. First of all, she’s right: the war in Iraq, the execution of prisoners, the racism that exists in the justice system and the aggressive foreign policy are all regrettable actions on the part of the US. However, that doesn’t invalidate the McLellan family’s statement about the seal hunt being “horrible” and “inhumane”.

Harper restricts ministers’ message. First of all, I don’t think all the comparisons to Bush (see the many, many comments) are accurate; Bush’s media controllers don’t restrict Republican topics, they simply dictate precisely what everyone is to say that week. However, that’s semantics; the spirit and the intent is the same. Harper has obviously noticed that our media (like their American counterpart) has become so addle-minded that it can be controlled without much effort.

Does God Have a Future? (Part 3). First of all, Deepak Chopra may well be right in his predictions for religion in America: gurus and other spiritual authorities may wane in influence; faith may no longer be seen as an irrational departure from reason and science; wars may decline as peace becomes a social reality; nature may regain its sacred value; and so on. However, that does not mean that Deepak Chopra is not a huckster fuckwit.

"We love Canada."

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From the Globe and Mail:

When [the hostage takers] were finally convinced that Mr. Budzanowski was not an American in disguise, he said, they started treating him more politely, and handling him less roughly. “When they were certain I was Canadian, they were very disappointed. Then, they told me, ‘We love Canada.’ That’s wonderful to hear when you have guns pointed at you…”

I expect the number of tiny Canadian flags sewn onto American backpacks to spike tomorrow.

Arrrrrrgghhhhhjroijgoherjhjtohjore

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I’ve been having problems with…Bell’s DNS servers, I guess, since I’m randomly unable to access websites that I know are there. Like this one. As I hit ‘publish’ after writing a great honking post. I’m not typing that shit up again, so I’ll summarize:

That is all. We’re off to New York tomorrow; don’t know how often I’ll be posting.

Where's Andrei Kovalev?

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Sorry, busy lately. Bad, bad blogger.

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Here’s why the Toronto Maple Leafs are just like the Republicans: they claim to be victimized, oppressed everyday joes who just want a fair break, when in fact they already get every break in the book. But by whining, bitching, moaning and crying foul at every given opportunity, they convince everyone that they’re the poor put-upon underdog and get preferential treatment. Witness the 12 minor penalties called against the Canadiens last night, including 7 in a row. The Leafs, meanwhile, got away with stuff like Bryan McCabe cross-checking Chris Higgins into the net, resulting in Higgins’ cheek smashing into Ed Belfour’s skate blade. No call, of course, and the Canadiens were called for another minor just when they were threatening to get close in the 3rd. Did the Canadiens deserve to win? Probably not. But when you’re playing your third game in four nights and the refs hand your opposition four power play goals on twelve chances, it’s pretty much impossible to pull one out. In general, the game was shit; the penalties called on the Leafs were equally ridiculous, just fewer in number.

Still on hockey, the Canadiens traded Jose Theodore to Colorado today. I, and every other Habs fan on earth, are remembering the last time Montreal traded their superstar goalie to Colorado and praying that history will not repeat itself.

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Two more basketball injuries, but nothing major. My big toe got cut last week — I think I broke the nail about midway down and it cut into the nail bed — and it got stepped on enough this week that I bled through another sock. I also pulled my tricep while working with a friend; I was pretending to guard her, slipped on the dusty floor and stumbled backward for a few steps…you know, those few seconds when you know you’re going to fall but just keep stumbling backwards, and it seems to last for an hour…anyway, I knew that I was about to run headlong into the wall so I kind of let myself fall, but my right arm kind of twisted as it bore the impact and I strained the muscle a bit. Still, I got it worked out before we started to play.

Some younger guys showed up with Miggles; they started off on fire, jumping all over the place and running up and down and just oozing energy…that lasted about 10 minutes. By the end of the night one of them looked like he needed oxygen…

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Wal-Mart, graduating from tacky to evil, has enlisted bloggers to say nice things about the company. They can all blow me, them and their little flying markdown happy faces.

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I’ve listened to the first 1/3 of the not-yet-released Fiery Furnaces disc Bitter Tea, and I fear what we have on our hands here is Blueberry Boat v2.0. It’s too bad; I had such fuckin’ hopes for us.

Oh, to be a blue Versace dress…

Dan Dickinson

OK, so, the Oscars:

  • Jon Stewart: very funny. I think he kicked ass (especially the Cheney joke and the “Three 6 Mafia: one Oscar; Martin Scorsese: zero” bit) but I don’t think they’ll ask him back. I think his humour goes over the head of a lot of the viewers.
  • God bless God for making Salma Hayek.
  • Crash didn’t deserve to win best picture. It was good, but it wasn’t the best of the year. Likewise, Reese Witherspoon. Good, but not even in the same league as Felicity Huffman in Transamerica. Rachel Weisz, Philip Seymour Hoffman, George Clooney: well deserved, all.

And that’s all I have to say about that.

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As I said yesterday, we watched three movies over the weekend:

  • North Country (imdb | rotten tomatoes) was pretty good, but not as spectacular as we were led to believe. Basically equal parts Norma Rae and Dead Poets Society, with some Fargo thrown in accent-wise. Worth a rent, though.
  • Enron: The Smartest Guys In The Room (imdb | rotten tomatoes) was up for best documentary, so I wanted to watch it before last night. I love documentaries, and this was a good’un; slick production, topical story and a truth bizarre enough to be prize-winning fiction. Highly, highly recommended.
  • 9 Songs (imdb | rotten tomatoes) is one of those films that I think I liked, but could never recommend to people. It was porn, basically. We knew it was nothing but concert footage (of some very good bands, by the way) interspersed with some dialogue and some explicit sex scenes, but we didn’t know how explicit it would be. It’s the kind of stuff they can’t even show on cable, not even on shows about porn. But it wasn’t tawdry, or exploitative; it was a pretty accurate representation of the lives of a couple as they go to concerts at the Brixton Academy, eat breakfast, go on holiday and fuck repeatedly. If you’re the type who can see filmed sex (and filmed music) as art, you might like it. If nothing else, it’s an interesting experiment.

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There’s a bunch of stuff in the news that caught my eye:

  • South Dakota has, for all intents and purposes, banned abortion. America must be a very scary place for a lot of people right now.
  • Toronto Hydro plans to roll out citywide wi-fi like some other major cities in North America.
  • Halifax is still debating the construction of two towers in the downtown core. Personally, I think they should do it; no matter what you build in Halifax, if it’s more than 10 stories, it’s going to block somebody’s view of the citadel or the harbour. I’m sure people thought Purdy’s Wharf was a giant mistake too, but it’s become just as much a part of the cityscape as another building there.

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Today was a long, unpleasant day at work. [Corleone] I keep getting sucked back in [/Corleone] to the technical stuff; moral of the story: never believe someone when they say they won’t expect a temporary solution to become a production solution. They spaz when the so-called temporary solution goes away, even though it’s not your job to provide them with anything. I did my part, I was a nice guy, I saved their ass for a month, but I made sure to wash my hands of it. Still, I got it done and managed to fix a few other things as well. Best of all, I have no meetings scheduled for tomorrow, so I have a whole day to catch up on the work that I’ve missed by essentially wasting my last two weekdays.