User Comment Rodeo: Lone Edition

I'm still pretty down about summer ending thanks to season creep, that hurricane business, and Jack Layton. However I realize that I have a blog to maintain, and certain honourable traditions to continue.

So here's a user comment. It is one of those "Hey internet listen up about my GIRLFRIEND" posts. Everyone loves these posts because they're consistently useless on anonymous boards where the quality of your review matters. A related type of poster is the 'confused personal anecdote' poster who tells a story about how his cat chewed the wires - zero stars.

Rest in Peace, Political Maverick Jack Layton

I'll be honest, during the election season in April and May I was actually excited. It seemed like the NDP would win, a variable ~10 reader group was reading the posts, some of whom were even Canadian, and I got to write about politics that I was familiar with. Canadian politics, milquetoast in comparison with other countries where opposition parties are harassed or exploded, are still an important thing to follow and the election was most important.

But what really came out of that election was the feeling that Jack Layton had become a justified Political Maverick. And I didn't use that term lightly, fallaciously, or jokingly. I was really convinced that Canada's only decent candidate was about to win. Of course, that didn't happen, but I was hopeful that when the political season opened up and those loafers went back to Parliament to shout at each other, Jack Layton was going to tell the Conservatives what the fuck up. I was thinking that some great sound bytes would come out of that and reveal the Harper majority for the regressive, wasteful, ignorant political behemoth it was. (And it wasn't at all a majority, unless the apathy non-vote were Conservatives).

 The election was clearly demarcated from the start: Harper was going to be fiscally conservative on the surface and ideologically centrist, Ignatieff was going to be fiscally liberal on the surface and ideologically centrist or inconsistent. Jack Layton was going to deal with social problems and was ideologically right, because Canada does not look after her social problems very well. He had a history of giving a shit about people, which Harper (who shakes his own son's hand instead of embracing him) is possibly incapable of doing. Layton was the Maverick, and had proved it repeatedly...

Layton probably knew what was coming, and made a point of leaving final words. And really, on this day, as during the election, my regret is that I never met him. I would've had a few soft-boiled questions and mostly I would've just wanted to know if he was as nice as people said. He was demonized by the scared dummies of this country as a communist, and the politically ignorant crippled him in the last election, but he was nothing if not an aware and principled politician, whatever his faults.

Political Maverick Jack Layton in the early days.

Are There Any Real Problems Or Is Everyone Stupid?

The problem when I watch news services is that there's so much political nonsense going around. Every time I watch the news and hear about foreign politics I wonder how anyone manages to live in another country and not go crazy.

Then I remember... they all have already gone crazy.

Sometimes I'm thankful that political outrage where I am is nothing but huffy people spouting nonsense, and that political conflict is passive-aggressiveness and limited seasonal mudslinging. And, really, under all that calm, the country may be getting run into the ground.

YouTube Again?

Today the 'Most Viewed' feature on YouTube showed only two pages of videos. For people like me, who usually start at page 10 and work backwards, or who don't visit the site every 2 hours, this is an unmitigated disaster.

So far as innovation goes, this is another case of walking backwards. There's the odd day when the #1 most viewed video is actually decent, interesting, or informative, but that doesn't actually happen enough to warrant having only two pages, which end on a depressing but not unexpected note:

33 most viewed videos and, yeah, that's all we get now. I guess. I hope this is simply due to some updating or other work, because it's downright shitty. I thought it was bad enough when I had to click an extra time for the charts because of the 'Videos from around the Web' feature – seriously you think I come to YouTube to watch videos on other video sites? I go to YouTube to see if there's anything interesting or redeeming going on, and more often than not I am disappointed.

On YouTube there used to be 100+ chances for a lazy man to find something, anything to revive his faith in the world, with maybe 5 mouse clicks. Now it takes 100+ clicks to find 5 chances for amusement, information, or decent nonsense. And people game that system all the time. If you have an account, don't you ever wonder why all these unsolicited users want to be your friend?

London Burning

Lots of people are going to say their part about this, and so far I've heard everything from the 'shame' crowd to the 'let's go and riot' crowd. Plenty of riots this year and lots of people complaining and wondering why. Well, in London's case a black man who was young, poor, and a father was shot by police, then a vigil type of demonstration occurred and then violent elements started the riot. Why was violence answered with violence? Ask your local philosopher.

I was following the Twitter feeds and I must say I have absolutely nothing to say on this matter. It's, well, bloody when looting happens but then again it's also pretty bloody when someone is summarily shot without explanation. Also I've seen some comparisons to the Vancouver riots, which were puerile tantrums compared to this - don't mix apples and oranges people, or we'll make you drink the juice. Dumb fucks.

It's a bad situation and I hope it gets better. Personally I don't know why people are talking about an event which will happen in one year's time in relation to the current riots. I guess it's the same kind of muckraking China had to deal with a year before its Olympics which went very well, I might add. In any case this has nothing to do with the Olympics and everything to do with poor neighbourhoods and police actions and criminality. There is no reason to conflate this story with anything else when there are larger news stories going on.

And lets not forget what the News of the World might have said about this event: "Nazi Orgy involving Royals leads to Cold-Blooded Police Murder, Communists and Ultra-violence Droogs Riot in Response" except, well, they're out of business for being a third-rate opiate rag.......

Oh and the question I'd ask the experts is Where is the justice in all this? They're going to have a deuce of a time finding it.

Two Unforgettable Images from Wikipedia

Feel free to forget the following filler text and skip to the second screenshot in this sequence...

I wasn't going to write anything but it's stupid to just have an empty space.

This joke is kind of ruined by actually writing anything about it just please,

Please pay attention to the context and I'll tell you that includes the 'labels'

AKA the meta search engine words, or why not call them magical. Anyway

The entire Blogger system as hosted here seems like a content mill to me 

Anyway.

Yes, that's right: content mill. For instance I have not found a front page or 

Index style of page, but I'm not savvy, so I am not disappointed or critical.

It just seems to me that my only shot at exposure is a canny manipulation

Of various other websites or keywords and I use them frivolously, not in

Any crazy attempt to gain followers but because I think it's funny to throw

Weird ones in. It's not me spamming for statistical advantage. If I wanted

Statistical advantage, though, how would I go about doing that? Is the

Lack of advertising sinister or uncanny? 

And this large, previously empty space is just

So the picture below displays properly. So I hope

It displays properly because sometimes writing is

Difficult and coherence impossible nonsense.

Squatters' Revolution

Well America is looking as dirty as the last 30 years predicted. Sometimes I get the sense that there are significant instabilities in North America in general, and that the oligarchy can no longer mask itself and therefore has adopted the obscurantist angle. "Obscurantist?" you ask, mouth agape stupidly. Yes, stupidy, obscurantist as in not revealing anything to anyone AKA dealing with the world sensibly - information-as-necessary style living. Which is a pretty great hypocrisy in a system where your bank is entitled to know your state of employment in addition to the wealth of other personal information they are entitled to. Yes the ability to go to your bank and cash a cheque and go home without them having explicit statements from you concerning your status is probably eroded.

Now it seems a small thing, and it is. Frankly I don't really care so much as I find it odd the bank cannot just simply assume a thing like that. So you know nothing about the people who ultimately shape your reality (unless you think actors, celebrities, and personalities do this) and the global reality, but you share your information on a 'no-need-to-know-basis' because the information of your life is so useless to anything but a marketer or criminal that it is a balm to your existential angst that at the very least you can have a cyber-billboard. This could be protested by refusing outright to identify yourself on the internet, boycotting Facebook, Google+, etc... but of course your networking opportunities would suddenly revert to mid-90's standards. In other words we could go back to making personal statements in person, but then we can't hope 1000 strangers will praise us. We could hope for maybe 10 intimates to admit our ideas have some merit.

Not that protest will mean anything since freedom is still exactly what it was at the dawn of humanity: a dream that can be indulged in only by the most powerful individuals or through the most powerful delusions. Freedom is a pretty goddamned stupid goal, yet it is a noble one Oh, but ironically the idea of freedom has generated the idea of slavery. Currently there is also a pervasive mode of thought which infers that freedom can be bought, assuming freedom is laziness, recreation, or inaction and time is the currency which buys it. Microfreedom does exist - yes in day to day experiences you have a sense that anything could be done; in the macro scale there is no significant freedom at all. You must acquire and spend wealth, dress well, pretend to be contented with the system, and enter automobile culture or else live as an abnormal, stunted, or subnormal individual.

Photography Exhibit: Part America, Pt.1

This was my most audacious project of all time. I wanted to capture the essential 'American Flag' photos and, no word of a lie, I missed a shot of a flag flown off a motorcycle in a big empty Iowa nowhere. I cannot express how much my regard for America increased at that time. Naturally, all pictures posted as part of this exhibit will be disappointments, but some I believe are at least poignant disappointments. One American on a motorcycle casts a large shadow, in the right conditions, and to be honest I am happy I saw it, because fuck the internet. You want to see something that awesome go find it already, it's against my ethics to give you a cheap cyber look at a moment so pure. I feel I took some quite justiceful shots, anyway.

There is of course the quintessential small town American Flag. This subject has inspired probably dozens or more photographs, and this rare shot also manages to portray the ideal truck to car ratio in small towns, sometimes epithetized as 'real Amerika'.

Ah, the limpid flag by the corporate signage. A metaphor? A prophecy? Surely not. America's real flags are like those of any country: its skies. Another important thing about America is that you must explain or have explained to you the value of flag sizes. A tattooed flag, interestingly, is worth far more than a 40-80 footer. And ultimately, almost every sentence in this paragraph started with an 'A' in awe (eh?) of awesome shit; I bet that dealership sold the first Mustang or something. And what it is now does not matter it was part of the goddamn golden era.

Keep in mind the picture above was taken in 2009 so it's kind of thematic. Go back, click for the full-size and lose yourself in morbid thoughts. No, this isn't a cheap-shot at all. It's a real picture and I took it. I don't believe in post-processing digitally because I am an atavistic fool, I suppose. More good fucking business ahead...

The Jon Stewart / Juan Williams Interview

Apparently on the 27th of June at some point there was a discussion between two individuals about certain things regarding, vis a vis, et cetera... partisanship in the media. Jon Stewart being a media person, and Juan Williams as well, it was kind of interesting. I'd recommend it for anyone looking for hope, really. Were that discussion to be multiplied a millionfold, or at least the questions involved, things might look a bit better for everyone.

American Heroes in Action, or 'Everyday Joes'?

And that's kind of why America is still a sort of beacon, though distorted and melted, because at various times and places certain important questions still manage to bubble to the surface. This happens everywhere and has always been happening alongside its counterpoints. Because, who knows, maybe there's some evolutionary advantage to willful ignorance. The Darwin Awards beg to differ, but how trustworthy are those who would mock serious clusterfucks?

It was simply interesting to hear the issue addressed, because perhaps the time for mocking dysfunction is actually past and we are in more serious times. Or most likely of anything, dysfunction needs to be analyzed and only then mocked, once it has been brought out of the dim caverns where it assembles its myopic empire.

The interview asked one question that so imposed itself on my imagination that I couldn't shake it, and consequently missed part of the interview. I'll paraphrase for the gentle reader's convenience, but the bit deserves to be watched by a wide audience and some of it filed away. "What would a non-partisan news agency look like?" Would it be CNN, with its gaping loss of viewership in the last decade? According to Stewart/Williams the liberal paragon is NPR and the conservative paragon is Fox News.

I admit, their delineation does not shake my weak conception of US politics. It's kind of a no-brainer and since they are de-facto Kings of North America... all I know is Canadian Prime Minister Harper is planning to built condominium jails in Toronto. Back on topic: what would such a network look like? Are there global examples? Does Canada have that sort of reportage? Yes Canada is also a theme.

Well we have recent Fox News rat finks Sun Media, aka Part One of the Royal Plan to Put Conrad Black in 22 Sussex. Furthermore, the CBC is kind of our NPR. And of course I jest frivolously, but I learned something important from the Stewart/Williams interview – inflate and deform everything to hideous dimensions. That's how demons were made in the olden days and that's how honesty can be beaten. And the whole partisanship media shenanigan is proven by the past, and that is why it can be correctly attributed as a strategy of both progressive and regressive social elements anywhere. Like any currently known tool it is ultimately directed by some person, and like any old trick it is a pedigreed thing.

And is there any uncolored information? Along with the general increase in raw volume of information, our ignorance and pettiness seem to increase as well. Our famed high-density areas are largely full of indifference and spite, and that microcosm is played out on the screen and even in governance, apparently. Which begs the question: which is the true show and which is the farce? Or is it simply that they're both fucked?

The Moment of Zen was an uncanny failure, perhaps only because July 26 2011's episode had one of, if not the best Moment of Zens I've ever seen.

Four Letter Words

There are a lot of four letter words in the English language, and probably some other languages, too (though 'merde' is five, 'sheiße' even as many as six letters ) but those are languages I don't know a damn thing about. Anyways, these English four letter words are the basis of the system of general invective. As you might know, or at least expect, pretty much all of these words are overused. Some stem from blasphemy but most are sure-fire ancient solutions that were first invoked to construct Stonehenge.

Words like shit, damn, hell, fuck, dick, cunt, toes, jizz, piss, jism, and the incomparable tits are as old as druids or speculative astrology. It's true that they were used also to frighten Roman invaders, who then adopted them into their own perverse systems. Anyways, English has a number, I probably missed a few because I'm not as vulgar as I could be. 'Goof' for instance is a particularly strong word in general, and unforgivable in some society. (My only back-up phrase for that caesura was: certain circles - I don't even really like alliteration and that I couldn't escape it there scares me.)

Damn that word. It is probably the worst word around. People blame it for all kinds of misery and strife and crises. It's a genuinely bad word and conjures up images of crying families, crippled men drunk in gutters, and racing cars in 1930s dustbowls. I don't even really want to state this frig of a word. It's dumb.

But I suppose it explains certain things – certain hang-ups or neurotic behaviors. It's a word everybody knows, too. You may even be thinking of it. Like I said it starts with a D and the rest of it is ubiquitous, overused, and the definition of a curse or hex.

(Also I hereby coin the term lexiconoclast, or the intentional perversion or misuse of a word  for the express purpose of drawing out and frustrating pedants; "That one was a lexiconoclast, just to see if the professor was just an inflexible, hidebound pedant." or "Did you see Frank's face when I dropped that lexiconoclasm? What a tightwad." et cetera)