Holy shit since the last post there has been a lot to discuss, but the internet spent so long discussing it, most often through the lens of tunnel vision, that I am actually too disgusted and confused to really bring anything worthwhile into the, aha, 'discourse'.
The big story in Canada is the political race to become premier of the 300 billion dollar baby, also known as the province of Ontario. What's going on? Well some observers have remarked that it's the saddest race of all time. It's a lost cause province and none of the candidates seem to be worth a damn, none of them have really outlined reasonable or fully-formed ideas, and the incumbent party had blown $1,000,000,000 dollars (CDN) on absolutely nothing at all. That's a small slice of the debt, but it is a legitimate reason to throw Dalton McGuinty out of the province and possibly out of Canada entirely, as well as flattening the pesky suburbs that helped fuck everything up.
Basically the terrible, tear-stained, barely competent, unthinking political creatures that are eligible for premiership according the laws of the province are:
Tim Hudak - This guy's making waves by promising to cut everything he can get his hands on, dismantle public services and outsource them to contractors, and somehow create a million jobs. As you might expect, he is actually relatively popular and seen by many as the best of four terrible, province-destroying candidates. He looks like a church deacon who works as a used car salesman. About as charismatic as Stephen Harper, possibly even more conservative. Works for the Progressive Conservatives, moneyed interests, and the fine upstanding people of Niagara-West/Glanbrook.
Kathleen Wynne - This lady inherited a provincial government somehow more hated than Mike Harris'. Look that one up and you will see that her work was cut out for her from day one, when her cowardly, incompetent and wasteful predecessor resigned in full knowledge that he would be pilloried and quite possibly impeached for gross uselessness. But Kathleen opposes any actions taken against public unions and somehow basically wants things to stay the same, emphasizing that the status quo which put Ontario deeper in the hole than California could potentially also rescue the province. She works for the Liberal Party, moneyed interests, and the fine, upstanding people of Don Valley West.
Andrea Horwath - I don't actually know if it's possible to go on, but Andrea is a bit like Tim or Kathleen, but more in favor of public unions. If she was a billionaire she would likely get elected, but as it is she is not likely to win anymore than a token amount of votes. She works for the NDP, unionized workers, moneyed interests, and the fine, upstanding people of Hamilton Centre.
Mike Schreiner - I think this guy is running as more of a joke, but he seems rather chill. He works for the Green Party, nature, hippies, and hasn't actually won any seats with his party. If the vote is split, as it should be in times of extreme hopelessness, this guy would ensure that not too much of Ontario's natural wealth and beauty is knocked down for Wal-Marts, gravel pits, and strip malls.
Split the goddamn vote, Ontario. If Rob Ford were running in this race you'd probably vote for him, but you don't have that option. You don't actually have any attractive options, so good luck and may you fare well.
In the rest of the world all kinds of crazy stuff has been going on, but don't get me wrong there were probably hopeful and heartwarming things as well. But. The Front Nationale won something for France, in the E.U. parliament, a good sign for plurality. Multiple shootings and stabbings, insanity, public comment meltdowns, a few bombs, rumors of war, Ukrainian distress, and nobody found that Malaysia Air jet. Yep. The conspiracy nuts are getting plenty of fodder for the next wave of crazy. I'd go into it but I don't have the time at the moment, but any of those subjects are ripe for some mistakenly satirical posts later. A bunch of 'huh, no shit' kind of malarky, but it never does turn out right when I do it. Keep keeping on, I'll do my best towards that end as well.
5/7/14
Death by Misclick
Have things gotten to the point where this is possible? It seems funny to me, like a bit Charlie Chaplin would have done in a silent film send-up of the Internet. It's probably not possible yet, I have to say... yet when that PR lady tweeted about AIDS her job ended and she faced the scorn of both the twittersphere and the blogoverse, not to mention the brutal comment board nebulae. Could the death of her relations with the cyber-public been caused by a simple misclick? Is it safe to laugh at her now that the dust has settled? What was her favorite album of 2011?
Here's my wild idea: she was typing out the post as some sort of perverse joke, and instead of properly screenshotting it for transmission to a few friends, she brushed the screen with her manicured pinky, inadvertently tweeting it. I know, it's so outrageous to think that someone wouldn't tweet ridiculous or hateful things that this particular example has no real value at all. Maybe it was part of a rebellious act after years of PR repression had tangled the psyche, and something offensive and sharp was needed to express frustration. A cry for help.
Well in any case it is easily possible a misclick can cost someone their job, since there are actual employers who are hysterical enough about indiscretion and deviance to fire or discipline you for shit they dig up about you on facebook, let alone the things you actually mean to showcase. This is why in real life there is the unspoken code of workplace civility, or workplace confidentiality (common in livelier, uninhibited workplaces): why people usually only express ignorant or fucked up ideas in speech, a safe distance away from recording devices, the offendable, and awkward or unexpected silences. You lose your job, next thing you know your credit is dead because you were too depressed about burning your own digital effigy to find a new job (plus the internet ruined your social credit and made you borderline unemployable, and you didn't capitalize on your pariah status), then your social life is dead because you have no money and are either couch surfing or on the street, or maybe at your parents' house. Next thing you know you're dead.
Death by misclick, but then you awaken from death as an online-only ghost, or get reincarnated as a future Social Media Expert. Really, I bet misclicks have cost a lot of people something over the years, and I'm not just talking about rounds of near-professional-level Starcraft. Of course nobody should use a misclick as an excuse, because it's a poor one, but outside of crazy hypothetical situations I am certain there is plenty of danger in them Worse on some level than a social misstep or faux pas or gauche seizure. And it's kind of crazy to think that something as small as the twitch of a finger could ruin your life, without even killing you or getting you pregnant. Or I guess that's crazy and says something about the internet era. I don't even know. I don't misclick. Not even when I post this article, or when I go most of a month without posting one. I've got to keep the reader hungry for new Publicato 'shzzt' and never admit that I am drying out, failing the exercise of writing and maybe worst of all... my faith in blogging shaken to the core.
Here's my wild idea: she was typing out the post as some sort of perverse joke, and instead of properly screenshotting it for transmission to a few friends, she brushed the screen with her manicured pinky, inadvertently tweeting it. I know, it's so outrageous to think that someone wouldn't tweet ridiculous or hateful things that this particular example has no real value at all. Maybe it was part of a rebellious act after years of PR repression had tangled the psyche, and something offensive and sharp was needed to express frustration. A cry for help.
Well in any case it is easily possible a misclick can cost someone their job, since there are actual employers who are hysterical enough about indiscretion and deviance to fire or discipline you for shit they dig up about you on facebook, let alone the things you actually mean to showcase. This is why in real life there is the unspoken code of workplace civility, or workplace confidentiality (common in livelier, uninhibited workplaces): why people usually only express ignorant or fucked up ideas in speech, a safe distance away from recording devices, the offendable, and awkward or unexpected silences. You lose your job, next thing you know your credit is dead because you were too depressed about burning your own digital effigy to find a new job (plus the internet ruined your social credit and made you borderline unemployable, and you didn't capitalize on your pariah status), then your social life is dead because you have no money and are either couch surfing or on the street, or maybe at your parents' house. Next thing you know you're dead.
Death by misclick, but then you awaken from death as an online-only ghost, or get reincarnated as a future Social Media Expert. Really, I bet misclicks have cost a lot of people something over the years, and I'm not just talking about rounds of near-professional-level Starcraft. Of course nobody should use a misclick as an excuse, because it's a poor one, but outside of crazy hypothetical situations I am certain there is plenty of danger in them Worse on some level than a social misstep or faux pas or gauche seizure. And it's kind of crazy to think that something as small as the twitch of a finger could ruin your life, without even killing you or getting you pregnant. Or I guess that's crazy and says something about the internet era. I don't even know. I don't misclick. Not even when I post this article, or when I go most of a month without posting one. I've got to keep the reader hungry for new Publicato 'shzzt' and never admit that I am drying out, failing the exercise of writing and maybe worst of all... my faith in blogging shaken to the core.
4/10/14
Canadian Political Update: Death of a Legend
This is Jack Layton all over again. The honorable Jim Flaherty was pretty much the only guy in the entire CPC (the much maligned party of the machine-like Stephen Harper administration) who was well liked and at least as competent as he was respected. In terms of fiscal policy he was a latter day Paul Martin, holding together a country with a problematic and potentially dim economic future. Here's to Jim Flaherty, the man who killed the penny, kept a large and diverse country from falling apart during a deep and cutting recession, and who wasn't afraid to lash his raft to a ridiculous flotilla of egoistic idiots and domineering mutants as long as it allowed him a chance to do what was right and important to him: balancing the books. If you've not heard yet: he died earlier today. Cue elegies.
It is a sobering thing that came out of the blue, happening just as Canadian politics were ripe for wagers, with staffers getting kicked out the back door of parliament in the dead of night, victims of failed power-grabs. A new reason for MPs to cry openly in the streets and alleyways of Ottawa. A real downer, reminding the people of Canada that there is always a cost, that happy endings can be few and far between amidst the cocaine and scandal of the political class. Without a likeable character or strong finance minister, the Conservative Party of Canada will be frantic – moreso than usual – to grasp at some kind of legitimacy, even as it comes to light that just about everyone in the party (with the exception of the late Mr. Flaherty, and maybe Prime Minister Harper) was wasting taxpayer money, scheming corrupt acts, contemptuous of the public, or doing anything other than being constructive or humble.
I want to pay my respects to the man who was really the hallowed minority of likeable Canadian Conservatives, one who put duty above ideology, and the only one who transcended the ingrained curmudgeonliness of the role to be a real public servant without flogging any personal brand or becoming self-righteous or mad with power. Whatever else his shortcomings, he didn't fuck up the country and its people will be universally thankful for his service and sorry for his early and sudden passing. He did his work as well as he could, and balanced the budget against all odds, leaving an improved situation for his successors. Three weeks ago, when he stepped down as finance minister, the word on the street was his decision was prompted by bad news or bad health, or maybe the coming apocalypse. Likely it was a combination of the former two issues, and he understandably took it as a sign that he had to take time for himself while he could.
I'm no expert and I didn't know the him,. I'm a sloppy blogger from an indeterminate but probably English-speaking area of the world. I only knew a few things about him because of his role in the awesome political landscape of Canada, and I draw my conclusions from that scenery. I get the sense he enjoyed his job, and he certainly did it credit. I don't want to be mawkish, because he was a committed and diligent realist and probably scoffed at mawkishness. Still, it must be said that the silver lining of a cloudy era has died with him; an entire country is left a little poorer in both the literal and figurative sense of the word. However it must also be said that economic solvency came at the price of personal well-being – he was at least in part the victim of overwork at the altar of the system he served – a warning, perhaps, that all that glitters is not gold, even in the kingdom of the complacent consumer. It couldn't have been a stress-free run, though: it could've been any combination of things but that.
As the media goes on about him, others' condolences and heartening anecdotes about him, the life story of a fiscal champion, etc, the ultimate message, one that even Flaherty might've missed, will likely slip by under the radar. Anyway, that's my meandering, steaming, obligatory mess of an article, which I felt was necessary given this event, which will be overblown and played out by the Canadian media anyhow (and generally cursorily reported or underreported by international media), and I spinelessly contribute white noise for digital cyber-hit numbers which justify my likely sad existence, but that's how it is when you have ideas about a great HST-esque return to political analysis and the rug gets pulled out from under you and there hasn't been anything posted to the old blog in a while.
(Dimitri Soudas being kicked unceremoniously out of the PMO, and his ex-pageant wife being a bit of an entitled, selfish bitch is funny news that could make for some great analysis, but the planned article on that might never come to light after today.)
It is a sobering thing that came out of the blue, happening just as Canadian politics were ripe for wagers, with staffers getting kicked out the back door of parliament in the dead of night, victims of failed power-grabs. A new reason for MPs to cry openly in the streets and alleyways of Ottawa. A real downer, reminding the people of Canada that there is always a cost, that happy endings can be few and far between amidst the cocaine and scandal of the political class. Without a likeable character or strong finance minister, the Conservative Party of Canada will be frantic – moreso than usual – to grasp at some kind of legitimacy, even as it comes to light that just about everyone in the party (with the exception of the late Mr. Flaherty, and maybe Prime Minister Harper) was wasting taxpayer money, scheming corrupt acts, contemptuous of the public, or doing anything other than being constructive or humble.
I want to pay my respects to the man who was really the hallowed minority of likeable Canadian Conservatives, one who put duty above ideology, and the only one who transcended the ingrained curmudgeonliness of the role to be a real public servant without flogging any personal brand or becoming self-righteous or mad with power. Whatever else his shortcomings, he didn't fuck up the country and its people will be universally thankful for his service and sorry for his early and sudden passing. He did his work as well as he could, and balanced the budget against all odds, leaving an improved situation for his successors. Three weeks ago, when he stepped down as finance minister, the word on the street was his decision was prompted by bad news or bad health, or maybe the coming apocalypse. Likely it was a combination of the former two issues, and he understandably took it as a sign that he had to take time for himself while he could.
I'm no expert and I didn't know the him,. I'm a sloppy blogger from an indeterminate but probably English-speaking area of the world. I only knew a few things about him because of his role in the awesome political landscape of Canada, and I draw my conclusions from that scenery. I get the sense he enjoyed his job, and he certainly did it credit. I don't want to be mawkish, because he was a committed and diligent realist and probably scoffed at mawkishness. Still, it must be said that the silver lining of a cloudy era has died with him; an entire country is left a little poorer in both the literal and figurative sense of the word. However it must also be said that economic solvency came at the price of personal well-being – he was at least in part the victim of overwork at the altar of the system he served – a warning, perhaps, that all that glitters is not gold, even in the kingdom of the complacent consumer. It couldn't have been a stress-free run, though: it could've been any combination of things but that.
As the media goes on about him, others' condolences and heartening anecdotes about him, the life story of a fiscal champion, etc, the ultimate message, one that even Flaherty might've missed, will likely slip by under the radar. Anyway, that's my meandering, steaming, obligatory mess of an article, which I felt was necessary given this event, which will be overblown and played out by the Canadian media anyhow (and generally cursorily reported or underreported by international media), and I spinelessly contribute white noise for digital cyber-hit numbers which justify my likely sad existence, but that's how it is when you have ideas about a great HST-esque return to political analysis and the rug gets pulled out from under you and there hasn't been anything posted to the old blog in a while.
(Dimitri Soudas being kicked unceremoniously out of the PMO, and his ex-pageant wife being a bit of an entitled, selfish bitch is funny news that could make for some great analysis, but the planned article on that might never come to light after today.)
3/29/14
The Verge of Uncanny Valley
Facebook but with a dislike button. Twitter but you get to throw tweets into a virtual shredder and retweet the results. Youtube but comments cannot be prohibited and confer privileges based on amount of likes or coherent length. More review systems and as much user based content as possible, and also there must be media sensationalism. Soundcloud but with a built in editor and sampler, and a healthy amount of effects. Reddit but with upvote XP systems. RPG social media events, with PR interlacing and exciting, meaningful marketing opportunities. Viral IRL games arrays, spanning years and maybe even decades. Pure madness. The distance from one to another is growing, and getting in the middle is the biggest business of all; get in on the ground floor of the first business to dictate human thought, which will be bought by Google for billions. Log in and meet the new gods. There's an app for that. Material world a quaint place peopled by the offline troglodytes, infants, and the non-digital elderly.
Deeper into the collective subconsciousness all the while assured of individuality and rugged independence. Too good to give it up and too obviously fucked up to care. Living in the shadows of an ever-twitching and surreal world. Spastic shadows and half-formed exclamations. People who can't take jokes and people who can't stop making them, both uniting to ruin the moment. Uneasy words from agitated people. More data every second than can be processed in a human lifetime. Everything is under control, believe us. There is a number too big to fit into the known universe, and we are chasing it for no other reason than to crowd ourselves out. We are edging towards an eternal dream state, towards a hyped self destruction, into the darkness of the final delusions.
Pretentious shit from idiots, too, and pretty much absolutely as far as the eye can see or ear can hear. Why won't the voices stop, right? They don't appear to even consider your objections for a moment before saying some other thing, or a thing related to it logically. Or is it the appearance of logic, worn as a cloak over a disingenuous appeal to base instinct? Then, to add injury to insult, other voices begin to chatter nonstop about the things the first order voices said. A chorus grows in the uncanny valley of the present, a maelstrom of misinformation and ignorance grows and risks everything and stupefies the remainder. Dangerous ideas curl in the air like toxic smoke. Plumes of oil, plastic, radiation and particulates in the air will sustain the next apex lifeform... our Frankenstein will sail among the stars and tell exaggerated tales about its creators.
Deeper into the collective subconsciousness all the while assured of individuality and rugged independence. Too good to give it up and too obviously fucked up to care. Living in the shadows of an ever-twitching and surreal world. Spastic shadows and half-formed exclamations. People who can't take jokes and people who can't stop making them, both uniting to ruin the moment. Uneasy words from agitated people. More data every second than can be processed in a human lifetime. Everything is under control, believe us. There is a number too big to fit into the known universe, and we are chasing it for no other reason than to crowd ourselves out. We are edging towards an eternal dream state, towards a hyped self destruction, into the darkness of the final delusions.
Pretentious shit from idiots, too, and pretty much absolutely as far as the eye can see or ear can hear. Why won't the voices stop, right? They don't appear to even consider your objections for a moment before saying some other thing, or a thing related to it logically. Or is it the appearance of logic, worn as a cloak over a disingenuous appeal to base instinct? Then, to add injury to insult, other voices begin to chatter nonstop about the things the first order voices said. A chorus grows in the uncanny valley of the present, a maelstrom of misinformation and ignorance grows and risks everything and stupefies the remainder. Dangerous ideas curl in the air like toxic smoke. Plumes of oil, plastic, radiation and particulates in the air will sustain the next apex lifeform... our Frankenstein will sail among the stars and tell exaggerated tales about its creators.
3/25/14
Morning Show Blues
Yeah, one of those situations where there is at least one radio going on at all times, with the attendant morning radio personalities... I have been thinking and I must say it is even worse than I remember it. Morning radio is like the ugly older sibling of late night television. Radio - not only do they play the same song at least five times a day until you hate it with a more intense passion than you ever loved it (and gain the power of recognizing it immediately even faintly heard from a distance), but they've got the terrible idea of hiring sycophantic dickweeds to blabber excitedly and laugh (at me, the underemployed schlub? Go on talking about your coffee and cream, your wife's ass, why you hate winter) for a 6 - 9 or whatever morning show.
I'm sure there have been radio morning shows that are not completely oppressive and distressing for non-morning people. You know the kind of person I mean: coffee or not they are unlikely to smile, form a coherent sentence, or laugh for the first hour they're awake and working. To some varieties of them (for instance myself) the sounds of morning show hosts going on and on between ads and eerily upbeat music is worse than static, or any aggressively unremarkable or annoying song.
My brain, even when it is still half in the realm of sleep, does not approve of a bunch of modestly personable DJs doing their annoying and useless job while I add value to the region by trading my labour power for a ridiculous and mildly depressing pittance. Cognizant of the fact they earn more than me (and get to laugh out loud all the time, come up with groovy insider jokes, great phone interactions, crazy stunts, far-out contests, and yawn level jokes), I do feel a mild bit of resentment as well as annoyance. Change the station? Why risk it? You'd be surprised at the intensity with which some folk despise public radio, the music of the great canon of composers, and silence (my personal top choice for morning vibes). So what is left to me?
Answer: The annoying squawking of overpaid manchildren, combined with a hellish interplay of blaring advertisements and generally non-morning music. I don't do a line of coke or a bunch of trucker pills when I wake up, so their braying hijinks and high-energy excitedness is completely jarring to me. It is even mildly painful to the very core of my soul. I don't get pumped up by their dreary and doctrinaire choice of songs either. I don't enjoy these audio clowns, and even if they were funny, had material worth listening to, I would be hard-pressed to listen to them. Plainly put, I've only ever heard one or two radio morning shows I didn't hate, and even those were most often kind of boring.
Most stations advertise their appreciable web presence. So I wondered, who in the hell would go to the website of a radio station and check up on the blogs, latest news, and pictures from the morning DJs? I can only come up with a few major sources of traffic: intensely lonely, credible, or bored people, and the mentally ill. Otherwise incomprehensible. Plainly put, it always astounds me how much effort is put into the background of the world, where we while away our mortal hours generally enduring things we don't like. I mean, hell, I write a pretty non-important blog generally about non-topics... I add white noise to the internet. There's at least some difference between me and the morning DJ with laughter in his voice and more energy than anyone needs at that hour.
Generally I turn the radio down to reasonable limits and grit my teeth and do my work quickly so I can move elsewhere and do something else somewhere there is nobody pretending that the morning is a great or funny time (unless you stayed up all night, or are waking up to do something other than be underemployed in a mostly stagnant economy). Even the mildly funny shit, which is scarce, is run into the ground faster and deeper than a solid gold locomotive dropped from orbit. I don't know how people can stand it... you can get used to it, sure, but it is specifically just an unpleasant feature of life to me.
I've been listening to radio for years, when I was really uncritical none of this mattered to me as long as a good song came on, like the one by Aaliyah or that other one by L.E.N., or that later RHCP song about taxis or something. The era-defining hits of yesteryear were also generally overplayed and eventually annoying, and I ought to remember that, but they stuck with me, and some of your old favorites and mine are still being overplayed. I used to spend a lot of time in the company of radio, but have lived without it for many years now in the future, so coming from silence or chosen tracks to the hilarious cacophony of jokes and marketing and grut rock just adds a small element of objection to my day. Gotta blog about those awkward things, unavoidable things, and heartwarming things.
Now, if you're a morning show DJ and you're reading this and you are saying to yourself things like, "This fussy little internet geekblogger doesn't understand my dedication and verve, or the pain which I know as a morning show host, or that my slightly exaggerated manner is meant to help others deal with the pain of morning workaday life. A venerable and hallowed tradition. The skill of talking too much for minutes at a time was one I inherited from my father, who was himself a morning show DJ." Nah, man, this isn't personal and I'm not a geek... I acknowledge it's my problem I find you annoying. That you dessicate my environment with your wireless sonic depredations is just my perception of it, and I am the wrong kind of judge in this instance. In the end, I keep listening out of apathy, a perverse and ironic joy of laughing at your base shitness, and obviously for a chance to hear myself on the airwaves and win that hundred dollar wacky trivia question. Play those canned sounds again – you know the ones – and teach me how to lose my self-awareness... does your laughter taste like ashes to you?
I'm sure there have been radio morning shows that are not completely oppressive and distressing for non-morning people. You know the kind of person I mean: coffee or not they are unlikely to smile, form a coherent sentence, or laugh for the first hour they're awake and working. To some varieties of them (for instance myself) the sounds of morning show hosts going on and on between ads and eerily upbeat music is worse than static, or any aggressively unremarkable or annoying song.
My brain, even when it is still half in the realm of sleep, does not approve of a bunch of modestly personable DJs doing their annoying and useless job while I add value to the region by trading my labour power for a ridiculous and mildly depressing pittance. Cognizant of the fact they earn more than me (and get to laugh out loud all the time, come up with groovy insider jokes, great phone interactions, crazy stunts, far-out contests, and yawn level jokes), I do feel a mild bit of resentment as well as annoyance. Change the station? Why risk it? You'd be surprised at the intensity with which some folk despise public radio, the music of the great canon of composers, and silence (my personal top choice for morning vibes). So what is left to me?
Answer: The annoying squawking of overpaid manchildren, combined with a hellish interplay of blaring advertisements and generally non-morning music. I don't do a line of coke or a bunch of trucker pills when I wake up, so their braying hijinks and high-energy excitedness is completely jarring to me. It is even mildly painful to the very core of my soul. I don't get pumped up by their dreary and doctrinaire choice of songs either. I don't enjoy these audio clowns, and even if they were funny, had material worth listening to, I would be hard-pressed to listen to them. Plainly put, I've only ever heard one or two radio morning shows I didn't hate, and even those were most often kind of boring.
Most stations advertise their appreciable web presence. So I wondered, who in the hell would go to the website of a radio station and check up on the blogs, latest news, and pictures from the morning DJs? I can only come up with a few major sources of traffic: intensely lonely, credible, or bored people, and the mentally ill. Otherwise incomprehensible. Plainly put, it always astounds me how much effort is put into the background of the world, where we while away our mortal hours generally enduring things we don't like. I mean, hell, I write a pretty non-important blog generally about non-topics... I add white noise to the internet. There's at least some difference between me and the morning DJ with laughter in his voice and more energy than anyone needs at that hour.
Generally I turn the radio down to reasonable limits and grit my teeth and do my work quickly so I can move elsewhere and do something else somewhere there is nobody pretending that the morning is a great or funny time (unless you stayed up all night, or are waking up to do something other than be underemployed in a mostly stagnant economy). Even the mildly funny shit, which is scarce, is run into the ground faster and deeper than a solid gold locomotive dropped from orbit. I don't know how people can stand it... you can get used to it, sure, but it is specifically just an unpleasant feature of life to me.
I've been listening to radio for years, when I was really uncritical none of this mattered to me as long as a good song came on, like the one by Aaliyah or that other one by L.E.N., or that later RHCP song about taxis or something. The era-defining hits of yesteryear were also generally overplayed and eventually annoying, and I ought to remember that, but they stuck with me, and some of your old favorites and mine are still being overplayed. I used to spend a lot of time in the company of radio, but have lived without it for many years now in the future, so coming from silence or chosen tracks to the hilarious cacophony of jokes and marketing and grut rock just adds a small element of objection to my day. Gotta blog about those awkward things, unavoidable things, and heartwarming things.
Now, if you're a morning show DJ and you're reading this and you are saying to yourself things like, "This fussy little internet geekblogger doesn't understand my dedication and verve, or the pain which I know as a morning show host, or that my slightly exaggerated manner is meant to help others deal with the pain of morning workaday life. A venerable and hallowed tradition. The skill of talking too much for minutes at a time was one I inherited from my father, who was himself a morning show DJ." Nah, man, this isn't personal and I'm not a geek... I acknowledge it's my problem I find you annoying. That you dessicate my environment with your wireless sonic depredations is just my perception of it, and I am the wrong kind of judge in this instance. In the end, I keep listening out of apathy, a perverse and ironic joy of laughing at your base shitness, and obviously for a chance to hear myself on the airwaves and win that hundred dollar wacky trivia question. Play those canned sounds again – you know the ones – and teach me how to lose my self-awareness... does your laughter taste like ashes to you?
3/4/14
Canadian Politics Update: Justin Trudeau wants to Sell Marijuana to Your Children
If I were more of a bettor and actually had money to risk, the current political atmosphere of Canada would be the most entertaining and fruitful place for small bets on unexpected outcomes. For about a year now things have been less depressing than usual and... well that's not strictly true but there's an awful lot of shit going on. From the Rob Ford crack scandal and his chances of winning the mayoralty again, to the number of days until 'Justin Trudeau' robocalls go out to Canada's Children with probably the best deals on weed outside of B.C.
Then there's the odds of Canada getting politically motivated enough to do something more courageous and insightful than perpetuating a natural-resources based economy which has been the de-facto source of jobs and state monies since the fur trade, since even the fishing of cod by vikings in ~700 A.D. Of course, after more than a thousand years of viking-related overfishing, those cod stocks look worse than Thomas Mulcair's chances of becoming Prime Minister. In springtime, when winter psychosis has set in firmly with most of the population, Canada gets a bit squirrely and a bit speculative, small parts of it go on to smash all comers at Olympic Hockey, and still more Canadians in the Winter Olympics put on great, and often heartwarming, showings.
Economically, the Branch Plant Bet (also referred to in some circles as NAFTA) has managed to keep Canada in the black without solving the problem of the Rust Belt, or the overreliance on natural resources, or the productivity and skills gap. Unemployment is such a problem that many larger corporations have had to bring in foreign workers in order to have anyone to heartlessly terminate. The Canadian banking sector is 'the envy of the world' (their words – not mine), and experts estimate a Citigroup-level superbank to form in Canada in the next twenty years, which ought to make quite the splash in international banking. Why are Canadian banks international superstars? Easily, by being diligent businesses and selling only the finest and least dangerous financial services to their customers. That and sitting on large piles of money... I mean seriously, how was anyone surprised that Canadian banks did OK in the recession? They get money from the public for free, with less grumbling than the tax man faces, and they charge service fees sometimes. It's basically a foolproof industry anywhere it's not run by pure-strain greed (and even then the profits flow, as they must).
Then there's the odds of Canada getting politically motivated enough to do something more courageous and insightful than perpetuating a natural-resources based economy which has been the de-facto source of jobs and state monies since the fur trade, since even the fishing of cod by vikings in ~700 A.D. Of course, after more than a thousand years of viking-related overfishing, those cod stocks look worse than Thomas Mulcair's chances of becoming Prime Minister. In springtime, when winter psychosis has set in firmly with most of the population, Canada gets a bit squirrely and a bit speculative, small parts of it go on to smash all comers at Olympic Hockey, and still more Canadians in the Winter Olympics put on great, and often heartwarming, showings.
Economically, the Branch Plant Bet (also referred to in some circles as NAFTA) has managed to keep Canada in the black without solving the problem of the Rust Belt, or the overreliance on natural resources, or the productivity and skills gap. Unemployment is such a problem that many larger corporations have had to bring in foreign workers in order to have anyone to heartlessly terminate. The Canadian banking sector is 'the envy of the world' (their words – not mine), and experts estimate a Citigroup-level superbank to form in Canada in the next twenty years, which ought to make quite the splash in international banking. Why are Canadian banks international superstars? Easily, by being diligent businesses and selling only the finest and least dangerous financial services to their customers. That and sitting on large piles of money... I mean seriously, how was anyone surprised that Canadian banks did OK in the recession? They get money from the public for free, with less grumbling than the tax man faces, and they charge service fees sometimes. It's basically a foolproof industry anywhere it's not run by pure-strain greed (and even then the profits flow, as they must).
2/25/14
The Rhetoric of the Damned: Will Most of Us Die as Losers?
To be quite honest the Ancien Regime never really died, and its mutant legacy is currently busy snorting coke and fucking up the social, political, ecological, and economic systems of the world. The guillotines might have had a few busy years in the 1790s, but the next hundred years showed little improvement for the average European, Asian, African, or American (until slavery was abolished and new systems of degradation, fear-mongering, and suffering needed to be invented). Let's not even get into sub-geographical realities, reference imperialism, or do anything in fact. From this slightly more aware and gentler age, the past should look like utter barbarism and chaos, a time when suffering was life for the now much-ballyhoed "99%" without much amelioration of any sort. If anything, they were encouraged to be proud of their ability to endure by people much softer and wealthier than them. Back in the glory days, children were still widely exploited as little slaves and their parents were stuck in wage traps or servitude-by-any-other-name that make modern wage slavery in a midwestern McDonald's look like a paid vacation.
What is funny is that people look to the past as this time of glory, and some purveyors of history have repeatedly tried to whitewash the immense and crushing misery that the average human had to endure for thousands of years, and injustices and genocides and slaughters that went into it. To this day, there are people who would insist that World War 1 was just and necessary and not at all a mindless waste of millions of lives and tonnes of material, that taught the world no lessons at all. Every year we fail to learn from the past, and the few voices exhorting us to give a shit are ignored because modern culture is not about reflection or realistic undistorted perceptions, and especially not about revolution. Modern society is primarily about selling two things: distraction and delusion, which unite in blessed complacency and indifference. There are no alternatives, and Marcuse was right (not in any base or political 'Marxist' sense but logically) to say that postmodern society was one dimensional. Today we would be lucky to have one dimension instead of our kaleidoscopic non-dimension. Let's not even talk about the history we have of psychotic and irrational wastage of natural resources, or the insane and ruthless extermination of multiple species throughout history – which makes the current semi-apologetic/apathetic model of habitat destruction and ecological rape look almost benign.
What is funny is that people look to the past as this time of glory, and some purveyors of history have repeatedly tried to whitewash the immense and crushing misery that the average human had to endure for thousands of years, and injustices and genocides and slaughters that went into it. To this day, there are people who would insist that World War 1 was just and necessary and not at all a mindless waste of millions of lives and tonnes of material, that taught the world no lessons at all. Every year we fail to learn from the past, and the few voices exhorting us to give a shit are ignored because modern culture is not about reflection or realistic undistorted perceptions, and especially not about revolution. Modern society is primarily about selling two things: distraction and delusion, which unite in blessed complacency and indifference. There are no alternatives, and Marcuse was right (not in any base or political 'Marxist' sense but logically) to say that postmodern society was one dimensional. Today we would be lucky to have one dimension instead of our kaleidoscopic non-dimension. Let's not even talk about the history we have of psychotic and irrational wastage of natural resources, or the insane and ruthless extermination of multiple species throughout history – which makes the current semi-apologetic/apathetic model of habitat destruction and ecological rape look almost benign.
2/11/14
Februrary 2014: I Will Not Miss You
Jay Leno left the Tonight Show earlier this week. Could've been yesterday but I have been inundated with reports about Sochi 2014 - most of them concerning a little thing called the Winter Olympic Games. Already, the biggest opponents have attempted to hijack a plane in order to put some heat on the organizers... the odds of some kind of crazy shit happening in the open (let alone the stories we won't hear till March or later) are high enough to keep everyone placing money on the most outrageous tragedies, disruptions, and events. The Vancouver 2010 luge death might end up looking like a mild sprain, when all is said and done in Sochi.
An entire unit of the Russian Army is patrolling the Georgia/Russia border, and the stuff those guys are getting up to is no doubt quite interesting and compelling, but their opponents have sworn to engage in the sort of chaos-terrorism that military action has not yet been able to completely prevent. I am not reporting this to be gleeful or glib, but dozens of years of military retribution have only managed to stoke the flames of resentment. Even the Cossacks have been called in. While the hijacker/bomb-threat guy is getting beaten up by security personnel and interrogated to within an inch of his life, and incarcerated in a post-gulag gulag, the games must go on. Bookies are refusing to take bets on terrorist activity, citing a worldwide surveillance apparatus and generally bad odds of anything major going wrong (the latter excuse seems questionable to me).
Surely they will, but there is more trouble than just the threat of violence and bomb blasts. There is also bad press, blistering social media output, and international confrontation. A major ideological schism has haunted the Sochi Olympics since last year, and that is the spectre of Russian homophobia, which is not quite so much a regional thing in Sochi. For a while, in late 2013, it seemed as if a few countries might boycott the games, but abandoning the athletes on human rights principles was ultimately considered unthinkable. I am not an expert and I have not been following the issue closely, but I don't think a single country ended up boycotting the games for the beaten and dead gays of Russia.
An entire unit of the Russian Army is patrolling the Georgia/Russia border, and the stuff those guys are getting up to is no doubt quite interesting and compelling, but their opponents have sworn to engage in the sort of chaos-terrorism that military action has not yet been able to completely prevent. I am not reporting this to be gleeful or glib, but dozens of years of military retribution have only managed to stoke the flames of resentment. Even the Cossacks have been called in. While the hijacker/bomb-threat guy is getting beaten up by security personnel and interrogated to within an inch of his life, and incarcerated in a post-gulag gulag, the games must go on. Bookies are refusing to take bets on terrorist activity, citing a worldwide surveillance apparatus and generally bad odds of anything major going wrong (the latter excuse seems questionable to me).
Surely they will, but there is more trouble than just the threat of violence and bomb blasts. There is also bad press, blistering social media output, and international confrontation. A major ideological schism has haunted the Sochi Olympics since last year, and that is the spectre of Russian homophobia, which is not quite so much a regional thing in Sochi. For a while, in late 2013, it seemed as if a few countries might boycott the games, but abandoning the athletes on human rights principles was ultimately considered unthinkable. I am not an expert and I have not been following the issue closely, but I don't think a single country ended up boycotting the games for the beaten and dead gays of Russia.
2/5/14
Solve Ten Highly Important Problems by Tweeting!
You know, I always appreciate the effort when a corporation tries to solve a problem by involving its customers or other individuals. It's not like that company is already making pretty good money off of their customers, and it's not like executives could easily put $20,000+ each to a good-deeds project (not with most of their $140,000+ salaries in mortgages, leases, and other sundry investments). Shit: why not appeal to the conscience of the guy making barely $30,000/year and take the charitable donations out of him, and others like him? I mean, there's more of him than there are executives, right? It's economies of scale, not entitlement or greed, and nothing more... I've already talked about the pure wretchedness of asking people for charity money in a check-out line, but I'd like to rephrase some of my ideas about modern charity in general:
1. No Money? No Deal.
If I wanted to give money to a charity I would walk around a city until a charity salesperson cornered me and asked me if I had 'a couple minutes' to stand around and learn why what they do is important and worthy of my money. I'd listen, they'd pitch me a donation/month level, then they'd get angry while I tried to extricate myself from paying them money, trying to offer my time or effort (which nobody accepts because, evidently, I'm a useless piece of shit best employed as a wallet for special interests) in lieu of the money I need to live the barest simulacrum of an adult life. They wouldn't even treasure the fact that I stopped to give a sympathetic ear to their cause. To crown the experience, if I stayed strong and refused to pledge $5-50 a month (because I'm underemployed and all) they would get angry at me, the guy who promised only to hear them out patiently, uncomfortable on a downtown street. All because I don't want to pledge $25 a month when I don't really have $300 a year to pay to the Duck Saviors or the Eco-watch or the Gay Angel division of Premature Heroes dot com.
That's all completely painful bullshit. Seeing a young idealist go from thinking I'm an easy mark and a way to fill the day's quota to thinking I'm just a heartless waste of time hurts me, especially when they're so earnest and clearly involved, and I really don't have the money to spare, but the whole gambit is up. I don't want to sign up to pay a certain amount of money a month and be locked into that, when I could be back to being unemployed in a month's time. Compare their attitude when I'm walking away to their positive sales pitch and smile at the start. Yikes, all about a charity. That to me is one of the ugliest scenes imaginable, it's hard for me to say no to people my age who have to stand in the street and sling these good causes, but years of grinding near-poverty have made my heart very hard about charity. I only toss a bum a dime (or a dollar) on a few special occasions a year. I give monthly to the Red Cross already, because one time I just couldn't shake the charity salesperson, no matter how evasively I talked of good deeds and dollar-to-aid ratios. More than that I will not give until society gives me five figures wrapped up in a cushy salaried position.
1. No Money? No Deal.
If I wanted to give money to a charity I would walk around a city until a charity salesperson cornered me and asked me if I had 'a couple minutes' to stand around and learn why what they do is important and worthy of my money. I'd listen, they'd pitch me a donation/month level, then they'd get angry while I tried to extricate myself from paying them money, trying to offer my time or effort (which nobody accepts because, evidently, I'm a useless piece of shit best employed as a wallet for special interests) in lieu of the money I need to live the barest simulacrum of an adult life. They wouldn't even treasure the fact that I stopped to give a sympathetic ear to their cause. To crown the experience, if I stayed strong and refused to pledge $5-50 a month (because I'm underemployed and all) they would get angry at me, the guy who promised only to hear them out patiently, uncomfortable on a downtown street. All because I don't want to pledge $25 a month when I don't really have $300 a year to pay to the Duck Saviors or the Eco-watch or the Gay Angel division of Premature Heroes dot com.
That's all completely painful bullshit. Seeing a young idealist go from thinking I'm an easy mark and a way to fill the day's quota to thinking I'm just a heartless waste of time hurts me, especially when they're so earnest and clearly involved, and I really don't have the money to spare, but the whole gambit is up. I don't want to sign up to pay a certain amount of money a month and be locked into that, when I could be back to being unemployed in a month's time. Compare their attitude when I'm walking away to their positive sales pitch and smile at the start. Yikes, all about a charity. That to me is one of the ugliest scenes imaginable, it's hard for me to say no to people my age who have to stand in the street and sling these good causes, but years of grinding near-poverty have made my heart very hard about charity. I only toss a bum a dime (or a dollar) on a few special occasions a year. I give monthly to the Red Cross already, because one time I just couldn't shake the charity salesperson, no matter how evasively I talked of good deeds and dollar-to-aid ratios. More than that I will not give until society gives me five figures wrapped up in a cushy salaried position.
1/27/14
Explain Yourself, or Don't, Nobody Cares
Expostulatory blogging is kind of a dead thing. The overreaching narrative of the times is outrage and discord, with a healthy mix of disinterest and distraction thrown in. For good measure, sometimes there is added a aggrandized sense of injury or unopposed wrongs. In this environment blogging to do anything but maybe get a good line in is a waste of time – engaging the stories and constructively analyzing them is best left to 'the adults': paid journalists, high profile bloggers, and the generally execrable morons with weekly columns.
For anyone wanting to blog for anything but niche topics or absurdly obtuse generality (or 'comedy' options such as the way stale top 10/12/15/25 lists, or 'jokes') the field is intensely competitive. Aggregators have created a system in which maybe 10% of all internet users bother to go beyond the internet's collective front pages. Even linking seems quaint and mildly outdated. The only real blogging left is niche blogging about the outrages and abuses of modern society, or being political, or getting paid to blog to sell something.
It helps explain the rise of people who have absolutely zero self-awareness: people who never think past the snappy one-liners and one-dimensional politics of the internet. These kinds of people, even when well-intentioned, only serve to hurt their own causes. 'Misogyny' becomes a sort of mantra that progressive dudes bray mindlessly whenever simple OR complex issues regarding women emerge from the amoral fracas of the modern media environment. People on the fence see nothing but a faceless horde of shmucks wanting to prove their progressivism and decide, Hell, why not start trolling these point-seekers en masse? You can't blame them. Aggrieving the crowd is as righteous a battle for some as fighting for the oppressed is for others.
For anyone wanting to blog for anything but niche topics or absurdly obtuse generality (or 'comedy' options such as the way stale top 10/12/15/25 lists, or 'jokes') the field is intensely competitive. Aggregators have created a system in which maybe 10% of all internet users bother to go beyond the internet's collective front pages. Even linking seems quaint and mildly outdated. The only real blogging left is niche blogging about the outrages and abuses of modern society, or being political, or getting paid to blog to sell something.
It helps explain the rise of people who have absolutely zero self-awareness: people who never think past the snappy one-liners and one-dimensional politics of the internet. These kinds of people, even when well-intentioned, only serve to hurt their own causes. 'Misogyny' becomes a sort of mantra that progressive dudes bray mindlessly whenever simple OR complex issues regarding women emerge from the amoral fracas of the modern media environment. People on the fence see nothing but a faceless horde of shmucks wanting to prove their progressivism and decide, Hell, why not start trolling these point-seekers en masse? You can't blame them. Aggrieving the crowd is as righteous a battle for some as fighting for the oppressed is for others.
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