How I plan to deal with selfish, dimwitted assholes

Dan DickinsonLeave a comment

Let it be known: if ever I see some fuckwit throw a puppy out of a moving car and into a river — like this mouth-breathing shitbag did — I’ll make it my life’s work to track him down, spit in his face and piss on his foot. If I were a more violent man I’d bring along a softball bat and break his dog-throwing arm.

I wonder if he did it because he’s so incredibly cruel that he doesn’t mind throwing a dog into a river to drown, or if he’s just so stupendously ignorant that he doesn’t know what else to do with an animal he doesn’t want or can’t care for. Either way, he deserves to wear some of my piss.

.:.

[tags]assholes, puppies[/tags]

Alone time

Dan DickinsonLeave a comment

Nellie’s out tonight with some friends, doing girly things. This leaves me some time to myself in which to do manly things. Gonna hammer up some drywall.

Ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ho ho ha no, but seriously. It gave me a chance to catch up on a few things, listen to some music, blare some hockey (Buffalo just tied the game against Ottawa with 10 seconds left…3 goals in the final two minutes!) and be by myself. Not that I don’t love spending time with her, but introverts have an alone-time-to-social-time ratio; when it’s not met, we get cranky. And since tomorrow looks to be very social, and work was a little stressed today, tonight was a good recharging.

.:.

Downloaded music in my “preview” queue right now:

  • Gomez . How We Operate
  • Snow Patrol . Eyes Open
  • Sebadoh . III
  • Calexico . Garden Ruin
  • Tool . 10,000 Days
  • Mark Knopfler & Emmylou Harris . All The Roadrunning
  • Bruce Springsteen . We Shall Overcome
  • The Concretes . The Concretes
  • Pilate . Sell Control For Life’s Speed

I’ve given up on the Fiery Furnaces disc, despite what Cokemachineglow says.

.:.

[tags]personal time, introvert, gomez, snow patrol, sebadoh, calexico, tool, mark knopfler, emmylou harris, bruce springsteen, concretes, pilate, fiery furnaces, cokemachineglow[/tags]

Revisiting

Dan DickinsonLeave a comment

Today’s the day I go back and listen to all this music I’ve bought lately, listened to once (maybe) and forgotten about as it blends into the other 8,000 songs on my Nomad. I’m 2/3 of the way through Mogwai‘s Mr. Beast, and have the following on tap:

  • Beth Orton . Comfort Of Strangers
  • The Yeah Yeah Yeahs . Show Your Bones
  • Raising The Fawn . The Maginot Line
  • Neko Case . Fox Confessor Brings The Flood
  • Trespassers William . Having
  • Cat Power . The Greatest
  • Living Things . Ahead Of The Lions
  • The Pixies . Hey!

Speaking of all this, I still haven’t watched my Donnie Darko special edition DVD. Dang.

.:.

[tags]mogwai, beth orton, yeah yeah yeahs, raising the fawn, neko case, trespassers william, cat power, living things, pixies, donnie darko[/tags]

"The Christians have a holy book too…what's it called?"

Dan DickinsonLeave a comment

Tonight was the last of our five documentaries: Encounter Point (hot docs). It was our first time at the Al Green theatre in the Miles Nadal JCC, and I think we’ll avoid it next year…it’s hard to watch a movie when the slightest move by anyone in your row shakes your seat.

Anyway, the documentary was excellent. It followed several Israelis and Palestinians who are working for peaceful solution to the violence between their people, many of whom have lost family members to sniper, bomber or soldier. There were so many impressive people — the mother of a slain Israeli reserve soldier who had seen apartheid in South Africa, and saw it again in Israel; the Palestinian man who lost a brother, was shot and spent time in prison, but was now an eloquent advocate for peace despite the criticism it drew from his neighbours; the ex-military man who lost a daughter and now teaches acceptance and reconciliation at Israeli schools — that it was hard to decide who to admire the most. I gave it a 5/5 on my ballot.

Check out justvision.org; there’s information about the film, and suggestions for action you can take to help promote and support a peaceful solution to things.

And thus ends our Hot Docs festival for another year. I’ve said it before and I’ll say it again: $60 for 10 world-class documentaries (including Q&A with the filmmakers, usually) is the best entertainment deal in town. Boo, Rama.

Thanks to Paved for pointing to my reviews.

.:.

From Dooneys.com: this review of Julian Baggini’s Atheism: A Very Short Introduction sounds interesting. Not that I have to be convinced, but I might pick it up.

.:.

[tags]hot docs, encounter point, israel, palestine, atheism[/tags]

"I consider it pure joy, my brother, whenever you face trials of many kinds."

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Do Americans know that it’s shit like this that make everyone sit back and laugh at them?

From The Guardian: Bible-bashing American football team must keep God off the pitch.

“The Birmingham Steeldogs, based in Alabama, had been planning to carry biblical texts on the back of their jerseys for their home game against Louisville Fire, a first in US sports history…The jerseys have been made by the Christian Throwback Jersey Company, which says it ‘specialises in outfitting today’s Christian with a wide array of religious sports and athletic attire’.”

So much awesomeness…can’t absorb it all…

In A Soldier's Footsteps

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Our fourth documentary was In A Soldier’s Footsteps (hot docs), the story of a Ugandan refugee who’d been a child soldier in the rebel army (which eventually formed the country’s government). A Danish film crew followed him on his return to Uganda to retrieve his son, and then tried to track him after his sudden disappearance. After that the plot thickens, as they say, and the intrigue builds as in any political thriller. I gave it four out of five on my ballot; through no fault of their own the filmmakers couldn’t really wrap things up or answer many questions for us, but they told a hell of a story.

.:.

Walking down Bloor on our way to the movie we ran into pacman and his lovely wife. Funnily enough, just two seconds before he’d yelled “Dan” (I’m still not sure what that was about…they said something about a nametag). Anyway, it got my attention and I saw them when I looked around, just before they saw me…so I couldn’t figure out why they seemed surprised to see us if they’d just been yelling my name. Yeah, it was probably funnier if you were there.

.:.

[tags]hot docs, uganda, denmark[/tags]

"Copy!"

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A few days ago Malcolm Gladwell wondered what all the fuss was about concerning this Harvard student committing plagiarism. His closing comment was classic: “Calling this plagiarism is the equivalent of crying ‘copy’ in a crowded Kinkos.”

Today he responds to criticism of that post, and defends himself (ever so gently) by coming up with a great point, this one equally quotable: “That’s what a cliche is: its what we call plagiarism the sixth or seventh time around.”

I recommend reading both posts. Actually, I recommend reading all Gladwell’s posts.

.:.

[tags]malcolm gladwell, kaavya viswanathan, plagiarism[/tags]

Dang

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Ugh. It’s the oldest story in hockey: one team plays great the whole game…wins all the battles, dominates shifts, puts shots off the post, gets great chances in the last period…and then the other team gets one lucky little bounce in overtime to win the game. As it turned out, the Canadiens were eliminated on that little bounce. It was a shot from just inside the blueline that Huet would’ve handled in his sleep, but Craig Rivet put his stick in front of the shot, it changed direction and Huet watched it go over his shoulder.

If you’d told me before the series started that the Canadiens would take the Hurricanes to six games, I would’ve been a little surprised. But to win the first two games in Carolina, and then lose the next four…that’s hard to swallow. Still, not many people picked the Canadiens to even make the playoffs this year…but that won’t help Craig Rivet sleep tonight.

Like Jim Hughson said during the game, there were two turning points: when Cam Ward replaced Martin Gerber in game two, and when Williams took Koivu’s eye out in game three. All of a sudden the Hurricanes had a hot goalie and an opponent without their captain and #1 centre. A win that night and they had momentum too. They didn’t really pick up their game to the level they were known for all year (and unless they find a new gear in the next round, the Devils are going to destroy them) but they didn’t have to since Montreal coasted through the next three games. Tonight, though outplayed, they just got the bounce to put them into the second round.

Funny thing about the series…even though they lost the series four games to two, Montreal outscored Carolina in the series 17-15. The first game was a blowout; the last five were decided by a goal.

Alas, the season’s over. When all’s said and done, I’m just glad that Saku Koivu still had a left eye.

A pair of knockouts

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Last night’s episode of 24 was like an Oz mini-reunion. Kirk Acevedo (aka Miguel Alvarez) shows up as air marshal (prompting a “woo-hoo!” from my wife) and within five seconds is knocked unconscious by Jack. In another scene Blake Robbins (aka Officer Brass) meets with the business end of Chloe’s taser. So, welcome to the show guys. Try to stay conscious next episode.

.:.

I’m glad someone else watched the Daily Show last week when that nimrod from the Wall Street Journal was on to discuss oil prices & profits. Core Econ points out the errors in her logic, which could have been avoided if she remembered that profit = revenue – expense.

.:.

I’ve pretty much had it with the recording industry. I’m tired (and apparently so are a lot of Canadian musicians) of “copy-controlled” discs that make it hard to convert the music to the format I want and won’t play through my Roku because of license bullshit. I’m tired of paying $10 a month for a music download service when they only carry one out of every five albums that I’m looking for, or worse yet, tell me that I can’t download music by a Toronto band because the site and the label haven’t got their licensing shit straight.

So here’s what I’m doing: from now on when I want to download an album, I’ll check my official downloading options (I still pay for eMusic); if I can find it and download it from there, great. If I can’t, I’ll download it using P2P software. I’m sick of this. It’s not as if the technology doesn’t exist for me to listen to music in this manner; everyone and their dog has an MP3 player, so the music companies should be falling over themselves to get us digital music. But all buggy whip manufacturers know is how to build more buggy whips, and they’ll just keep trying to bend the world to their will. I’m done being bent.*

* That didn’t come out how I planned.

.:.

[tags]24, daily show, economics, oil, filesharing, P2P, CRIA, emusic[/tags]