Category: Politics

They "treat people like crap?" Oh no, no, they treat severe speeders like crap. Important distinction.

Dan DickinsonLeave a comment

Work and school have me kind of spun right now, so I’m pretty much limited to link dumps and non sequiturs:

  • Amnesty International says we (meaning Canada) are getting soft on the death penalty. This ain’t something we wanna be soft on, Steve.
  • Today’s whiny man for whom I have absolutely no sympathy: Jason Stainthorpe. Driving his SUV 50km/h over the speed limit and ignorant of month-old speeding legislation, he “admitted he was speeding, but was furious that police wouldn’t let him off with a warning since he had never heard of the new law.” Aw, the mean man sworn to protect the populace took away his girlfriend’s big truck. Truly, my heart bleeds.
  • I’ll declare it right now: I pledge to vote for any politician who promises to ban Christmas ads and/or decorations before December 1st. I don’t care if they run on a puppy-farm and scat-porn stump; they have my vote.

[tags]amnesty international, canada, death penalty, ontario speeding legislation, christmas ads, christmas decorations[/tags]

"You let the database go down while masturbating to Mexican donkey porn. Fix it."

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I know the language issue in Quebec is contentious, and I’m all for a strong francophone culture, but when the Globe reports on lawyers and priests throwing around sentences like “respect the rights of Quebeckers to be served in French” and suggesting that ‘driving [Quebeckers] away from their traditional religious beliefs will only aggravate social tensions toward other religions and cultures’, it sounds to me like xenophobia and the desire for cultural purity. I doubt these gentlemen are representative of Quebec, but they do have very big soapboxes.

I also find it funny (and by funny, I mean tragic) that Saku Koivu has become the poster child for their criticism. Captain of Montreal’s beloved hockey team, cancer survivor, local philanthropist…insensitive jerk. At least his teammates stuck up for him.

.:.

My esteem for Radiohead has dropped a few notches.

.:.

Once again, I agree wholeheartedly with the Angry German:

Now, I learned that the proper way to say this is: “I know you are really busy, but I cannot continue my work while the database is inaccessible. If you don’t mind, could you look into the problem and let me know if there is a chance you can rectify it? Sorry to be a bother.” No wonder shit doesn’t get done in time when you have to write a freaking novel for each simple thing.

Seconded.

.:.

How wonderfully ironic that justice has fucked the Rev. Fred Phelps directly in the ass.

[tags]quebec, language laws, saku koivu, radiohead, angry german, fred phelps[/tags]

And a bucket of my finest diet pepsi on ice

Dan DickinsonLeave a comment

I am the hold steady:

  • Original weight: 233
  • Weight last week: 222
  • Weight this week: 222

Break-even’s about as good as I could have hoped for last week. Time was hard to come by and I spent a couple days at the IFL, which never helps. It should get a little better now, though, because…

.:.

I finished my paper today! Well, just about. Still have to proof it and throw SW’s revised references in at the end, but I believe we’re pretty much done. To celebrate I went downstairs and ran three miles. To keep the good times running tonight I may just watch a movie and fall asleep on the couch. Woot.

.:.

Last night’s Canadiens game was another good ‘un. Well, kinda; Montreal jumped out to a three-goal lead early in the game but let the Penguins back in it, finally allowing the tying goal with two minutes left. No joy in overtime, so it went to a shootout…16 shooters later someone finally scored, and thankfully it was Montreal. That was the first time in a few games they played a tight one…it was hard on the nerves. I’ve come to like the blowouts.

.:.

Robert Ouellette wrote a column today in Reading Toronto entitled Why I Am Cancelling My Globe And Mail Subscription And Why You Should Too*. I agree with that sentiment; I canceled my subscription long ago, partly for the reasons Mr. Ouellette describes (environmental concerns, lack of compelling content, abundance of ads and increasingly pro-war editorials) and partly in protest over their decision to charge paper subscribers to access online content.

Interesting side note: the asterisk in the article’s title points to a confession by Mr. Ouellette in which he states that he may be biased against the Globe because he occasionally writes an architecture column for the National Post. While his first three objections would apply to most any newspaper subscription, I should think that his objection to “fear-driven ‘dogs of war’ [having] their way in the paper’s editorial room” would sour him completely on the Post.

[tags]fatblogging, mba, reading toronto, robert ouellette, globe and mail, national post[/tags]

It's that last 0.28% that'll kill you

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Last night’s loss by the Canadiens almost killed me. Watching Montreal completely outplay Florida for 58 minutes and then give up the tying goal with 10 seconds left, finally losing the game on the last shot of the shootout…it was almost too much to bear.

After the game Alex Kovalev couldn’t hide his displeasure with coach Guy Carbonneau, re-igniting rumours of Kovalev’s imminent trade to Calgary. Keep it up, Kovalev, sez I.

.:.

Key strategic takeaways from today:

There will be a quiz next month.

[tags]canadiens, esquire magazine, iran, darth vader harmonica, matador parking lot, stephen colbert[/tags]

The broken dolly is crying again

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Once again Ann Coulter, starved for attention, has vomited out a stream of spectacularly stupid and enthusiastically offensive bile.

Conservative commentator and best-selling author Ann Coulter may find herself in the midst of a controversy for comments Monday suggesting America would be better if everyone was Christian.

…

Later in the interview Deutsch asked Coulter if she doesn’t want any Jews in the world, Coulter responded, “No, we think — we just want Jews to be perfected, as they say.”

Soon people will stop paying attention to her little jokes and she won’t know what to do with herself. I expect her to just start cutting in public any day now.

[tags]ann coulter, donny deutsch[/tags]

What I did today

Dan DickinsonLeave a comment
  • Downloaded the new Radiohead album;
  • Restructured a troublesome division of my company on the back of a napkin;
  • Voted in my provincial election;
  • Put out some work fires;
  • Ate some minestrone;
  • Doused more work fires;
  • Got soaked in a downpour;
  • Met some folks for drinks and a very odd tapenade;
  • Made plans to meet up with M2 tomorrow evening;
  • Watched the Canadiens beat the Penguins in Carey Price’s first NHL game.

Not a bad day.

[tags]radiohead, in rainbows, ontario election, minestrone, canadiens, penguins[/tags]

Tory, zzzzz, ole!

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Would-be Ontario premier John Tory has (kind of) changed his mind on funding for faith-based schools. However, current premier Dalton McGuinty ain’t buyin’ it. Neither am I.

.:.

I thought I was over the jet lag but it’s only 9:48 and I’m barely awake. Then again, it could have something to do with all the corporate finance I just read. That shit could put a SpeedBeaver to sleep.

.:.

The NHL season starts (for all intents and purposes) tomorrow night. I have called Rogers and added RDS to my channel lineup. Though I am filled with the same delusion as any sports fan the day before puck drops, I have steeled myself for yet another season of red, white and blue mediocrity.

[tags]john tory, dalton mcguinty, speedbeaver, nhl, montreal canadiens[/tags]

"I'm with the band!"

Dan DickinsonLeave a comment

I’ve uploaded some of my favourite France pictures to Flickr. Here’s the slideshow. Nellie deserves all the credit; I have no eye for photography.

I also uploaded a video to YouTube. I’d had a bit to drink and decided it was a good idea to sit down at the drums for the first time in fifteen years. The guitarist was nice enough to humour me with a bass track, but I still sound quite rubbish. The shrieking you hear on the video is Nellie, who’d never seen or heard me play the drums. I sold my kit for tuition money the summer I met her.

.:.

I passed my most recent course. The marks went up today and I actually did a little better than I expected. I’m usually crap at multiple choice exams but I did ok this time around, and my other marks were good enough. Whew.

Three to go.

.:.

We chilled this afternoon by watching a light little film, Imagine Me & You (imdb | rotten tomatoes). The first half of the movie was so cute it hurt my teeth; the second half turned into a rather standard romantic comedy, but it was still kind of goofy and charming. Stunning female leads and a sapphic storyline didn’t hurt either.

.:.

Newsy bits:

  • December’s Spice Girls show in London sold out in 38 seconds, proving once and for all that drunk women with poor taste are quite adept at clicking a mouse.
  • John McCain has gone from embarrassing to…well, more embarrassing.
  • Did you miss out on the auction for Mogwai drummer Martin Bulloch’s old pacemaker? Well, fear not; you have another chance. Marty seems to replace these a lot. Next time he should get one with an audible beep; he’d never need another metronome or click track. Most Mogwai songs are around 80 bpm anyway…
  • Radiohead’s latest album pricing — where they let fans decide how much they’ll pay to download it — has gotten the attention of The Economist. George’s worlds are colliding!!

[tags]france, imagine me and you, spice girls, john mccain, mogwai, martin bulloch, pacemaker, radiohead, the economist[/tags]

The fake empire

Dan DickinsonLeave a comment

.:.

Met up with T-Bone today for lunch at Volo before our movie. Our screening was at the Ryerson theatre at 3:00, and we figured if we left around 2:10 we’d get in line with lots of time to spare, so we met at 1:00. Lots of time, right? Not so much. Just like the last time I was there they were short-staffed, and 45 minutes after ordering our food still hadn’t arrived. It showed up a few minutes after 2:00…but they brought me the wrong dish. Fortunately it only had salmon in it (and it wasn’t half bad) but T-Bone’s food wasn’t great. They knocked the price of my meal off the bill and forgot to charge me for my first drink, but I didn’t feel too bad about it. We wouldn’t have had time to correct it anyway. As it was we had to scarf down food and drink, and got to the Ryerson just in time to join the end of the line entering the theatre. Too bad; T-Bone’s first experience at Volo wasn’t a very good one, and it’s gone from being one of my favourite places to being a little sketchy.

The movie we saw, however, pretty much made up for it. I was kind of worried about Battle In Seattle (imdb | rotten tomatoes)…the title seemed corny (it was later explained in the film), it was a director’s debut film, I’m not typically a big fan of either Charlize Theron or Woody Harrelson…I’d kind of set it up in my mind to be rather bad. However, it turned out to be the great film festival movie. Not a great film…a great film festival movie. I’ll explain.

This was, according to Noah Cowan, the world premiere of the film. As such the director Stuart Townsend was there, as were some of the actors: Woody Harrelson, Martin Henderson, Michelle Rodriguez, Andre Benjamin and Charlize Theron, Townsend’s girlfriend. This is one of those experiences you have at the festival that you don’t get when watching a movie normally, when a director is living or dying with his cast and crew, surrounded by hundreds of movie fans. You get to see a visceral, engaged audience react to a film, and you get to see the director absorb that reaction. For Townsend today, it was quite a reaction indeed.

The film was about the 1999 WTO protests in Seattle, and the violent confrontations that resulted…dramatic and emotional subject matter, to be sure, and particularly interesting to me as the issue of WTO patent regulation was the topic of my big paper last year. At the end of the film, as The National sang “Fake Empire”, the crowd stood, turned to Townsend and applauded. They stood and clapped for five minutes as he waved, thanked the crowd and hugged a weeping Theron. That, that moment is what you get at a film festival and nowhere else…seeing a man who has worked for five years to perfect a vision, and is witnessing for the first time the realization of that vision. It was pretty moving; not quite like seeing Hotel Rwanda a few years ago, but emotional nonetheless.

I’ll be interested to see how the film is received outside of that situation. Was it a great film, technically speaking? Not really. But for two hours this afternoon, it was a classic.

[tags]brian mulroney, volo, battle in seattle, stuart townsend[/tags]

Wouldn't a sky god prefer, I don't know, an ostrich or something?

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I hereby declare tonight “the calm before the storm.”

.:.

Quechup sucks. I say that not because of their actual social networking site (ever tried it) but because of their dickish ways of spreading themselves around. They screwed my brother and several other friends, all of whom accidentally spammed every contact in their address book thanks to Quechup. A quick Technorati search finds lots of other pissed off victims too.

Quechup sucks. Spread the word.

.:.

Naomi Klein, author of No Logo, has a new book out called Shock Doctrine: The Rise of Disaster Capitalism. There’s a short film that accompanies the book, directed by Alfonso Cuarón (who also directed the excellent Children Of Men). It’s only 6.30 in length, so I urge you to pop over to YouTube and spend a few minutes with it.

.:.

This story about Nepal’s state-run airline boggles the mind and turns the stomach:

Officials at Nepal’s state-run airline have sacrificed two goats to appease Akash Bhairab, the Hindu sky god, following technical problems with one of its Boeing 757 aircraft, the carrier said Tuesday.

I find it horrifying that any religion would call for animal sacrifice. I find it equally horrifying that a mechanic could believe strongly enough in the sky god that, just maybe, they skimp on the actual mechanical repairs ’cause they figure old SG has it covered.

Separation of church and aviation industry. You heard it here first.

[via Rick Segal]

.:.

I think Rick Rubin may have been possessed by the ghost of Johnny Cash when he tore a strip off his own record label, and trashed the music industry as a whole.

.:.

Injury update: my wrist is nearly healed. I’m about 99% pain-free, feeling twinges only when I jam my hand on something or flick it sharply (like when I’m making the bed and I snap the sheet). It’s still a little swollen, so I can’t push my hand into a right angle with my arm without pain, but for the most part it’s ok. My first broken bone, and I’d have to say I got off pretty easy.
[tags]quechup sucks, naomi klein, alfonso cuaron, shock doctrine, nepal, akash bhairab, rick rubin, broken wrist[/tags]