The recent gang murders in Toronto have been a disgrace. But it cannot be blamed solely, or even primarily, on the cut to social programs. No amount of poverty puts a gun in someone's hand, nor does it force anyone to shoot a peace activist in a courtyard, or spray bullets hitting a 4 year old child. Anything short of absolute self-defense is simply not acceptable.
Racial profiling is certainly not the answer - this would make things worse and be about as effective as profiling blondes who speak really bad french as possibl schoolgirl killers.
The social cuts by Harris did a lot of harm. But it is not an excuse for violence.
Thomas.
Wednesday, August 31, 2005
This Will Help?
Hurakan was a Mayan god (an evil one). This is why we call storms like Katrina "Hurricanes". Since modern people are way past that mythological stuff, that's where the religous part ends.
Well, no. Wednesday (Sept 1, 2005) has been declared a day of prayer by the Governor of Louisiana. Of course in and of itself I don't have a problem with this.
I wonder about the god they're praying to . If it is Hurakan, that would make sense: "Oh mighty one -please stop this!".
No - their god is a god of love and benevolance. But, he either causes hurricanes or at least allows them to happen. After this I guess you can pray to him to stop sending them...except he never does....
I wonder what the dinosaurs did to the Judaeo-Christian god, Hurakan or someone else to really piss him off.
Thomas.
Well, no. Wednesday (Sept 1, 2005) has been declared a day of prayer by the Governor of Louisiana. Of course in and of itself I don't have a problem with this.
I wonder about the god they're praying to . If it is Hurakan, that would make sense: "Oh mighty one -please stop this!".
No - their god is a god of love and benevolance. But, he either causes hurricanes or at least allows them to happen. After this I guess you can pray to him to stop sending them...except he never does....
I wonder what the dinosaurs did to the Judaeo-Christian god, Hurakan or someone else to really piss him off.
Thomas.
Tuesday, August 30, 2005
Six Feet Over (RIP)
There is nothing much good on TV - and even less that has any depth to it.
24 is a good rough-em up shoot 'em show. I don't watch "reality TV" -I watch 24 because it is unreality at it's best.
Six Feet Under is up there with I, Claudius and Hill Street Blues as TV about as good as it can get. Since it was HBO, they can swear and show peckers and boobies and talk about things that the corporate right wing sponsers of traditional American network television would never allow. There is a gay couple in the middle of it all, tons of drugs and booze, and abortions - all the things that bible-thumpers hate.
The Fishers and the supporting characters run a funeral home, so death is foremost a topic. What impresses me most about the series is when the characters react to something - and of course, do so in a really poor way - you know, just like real people often do. Or, they make great changes in their lives only to see this has no effect on their lives at all, or, even makes things worse. Tolstoy comes to mind as a great author who created characters and let them live on their own without his interference.
The writing was great and the acting was amazing.
Brenda is the character you hate loving to hate. Until you get to know her family and then you wonder how she managed not to be even more messed up than she is.
There are no white or black hats. Even sweet little Quaker Maggie has to deal with the fact that she fucked Nate to death.
The "guest" list of actors was none too shabby: "Ileana Douglas, Mena Suvari, Kathy Bates, James Cromwell, John Billingsley and Patricia Clarkson to name a few.
In this 24 world where flash is valued over substance, to have a series where plot was minimal and character was king was an achievement.
TF
24 is a good rough-em up shoot 'em show. I don't watch "reality TV" -I watch 24 because it is unreality at it's best.
Six Feet Under is up there with I, Claudius and Hill Street Blues as TV about as good as it can get. Since it was HBO, they can swear and show peckers and boobies and talk about things that the corporate right wing sponsers of traditional American network television would never allow. There is a gay couple in the middle of it all, tons of drugs and booze, and abortions - all the things that bible-thumpers hate.
The Fishers and the supporting characters run a funeral home, so death is foremost a topic. What impresses me most about the series is when the characters react to something - and of course, do so in a really poor way - you know, just like real people often do. Or, they make great changes in their lives only to see this has no effect on their lives at all, or, even makes things worse. Tolstoy comes to mind as a great author who created characters and let them live on their own without his interference.
The writing was great and the acting was amazing.
Brenda is the character you hate loving to hate. Until you get to know her family and then you wonder how she managed not to be even more messed up than she is.
There are no white or black hats. Even sweet little Quaker Maggie has to deal with the fact that she fucked Nate to death.
The "guest" list of actors was none too shabby: "Ileana Douglas, Mena Suvari, Kathy Bates, James Cromwell, John Billingsley and Patricia Clarkson to name a few.
In this 24 world where flash is valued over substance, to have a series where plot was minimal and character was king was an achievement.
TF
Sunday, August 28, 2005
What might qualify as the stupidest thing ever said?
Today I heard a CNN report on some church group that said... No kidding... Really I am not: America has failed in Iraq because America "allows" homosexuals and the dead soldiers are a punishment from god.
Even in the old testament God was not this much of an asshole.
Remember the "AIDS" arguments from the 80s that it was a scourge from God?.....well, I guess all those dead women and babies took the wind out of that argument.
America "allows" gays, you know, just like it "allows" gravity, the second law of thermodynamics, water freezing at zero degrees celsius....
Wouldn't it be nice if God sent a scourge that only killed stupid people?
TF
Even in the old testament God was not this much of an asshole.
Remember the "AIDS" arguments from the 80s that it was a scourge from God?.....well, I guess all those dead women and babies took the wind out of that argument.
America "allows" gays, you know, just like it "allows" gravity, the second law of thermodynamics, water freezing at zero degrees celsius....
Wouldn't it be nice if God sent a scourge that only killed stupid people?
TF
Tuesday, August 23, 2005
Americans..Yet Again
I don't know much about trade agreements like FTA, NAFTA or the workings of the WTO. What many are arguing now is that The Americans are screwing us through NAFTA in a way that they could never do under WTO rules. This seems true enough to me - the zenophobia of the American Right has rarely been allowed to exercise it's "fuck the rest of the world" attitudes as it has under Dubya - in regards to soft lumber trade as well as to war.
I'm getting sicker and sicker of Dubyaism each day. He ducks Cindy Sheehan - won't even talk to her. Clinton would have...well there's an obvious joke here...well, he would have talked to her, that's for sure. The Bush party twins live a Hiltonic existence (as in Paris) while small town men and women are coming home in body bags.
As Jon Stewart said, Bush lives in "The Truman Show" - in another era he'd be shooting messengers all over the place, I'm sure. He can't take the world he's making based on Cheney's bald world order (could not resist).
While I'm casting slings and arrows, only in America would "Intellegant Design" (aka "Creationism") be considered as a "rival theory" to biological evolution. Rubbish. Only in America, amongst "first world" nations, is religion on the rise as a front and centre political force - witness Pat Robertson's "fatwa" issued on Venezuela's Hugo Chavez.
Then again, only 51% of The Yankees are dumb-ass, bible-thumping, war-mongering isolationiasts. 49% are just like us.
TF.
I'm getting sicker and sicker of Dubyaism each day. He ducks Cindy Sheehan - won't even talk to her. Clinton would have...well there's an obvious joke here...well, he would have talked to her, that's for sure. The Bush party twins live a Hiltonic existence (as in Paris) while small town men and women are coming home in body bags.
As Jon Stewart said, Bush lives in "The Truman Show" - in another era he'd be shooting messengers all over the place, I'm sure. He can't take the world he's making based on Cheney's bald world order (could not resist).
While I'm casting slings and arrows, only in America would "Intellegant Design" (aka "Creationism") be considered as a "rival theory" to biological evolution. Rubbish. Only in America, amongst "first world" nations, is religion on the rise as a front and centre political force - witness Pat Robertson's "fatwa" issued on Venezuela's Hugo Chavez.
Then again, only 51% of The Yankees are dumb-ass, bible-thumping, war-mongering isolationiasts. 49% are just like us.
TF.
Saturday, August 06, 2005
The A-bombs of 1945
World War II is slowly fading into history. The leaders of that era have been dead for decades. You have to pretty much be over 80 to have been a combatant. Even those who were children during the war are in their late 60s and 70s.
I can't stand up and say something about The 1991 Gulf War or the Bosnian civil war without people who were a part of it standing up and reacting to what I might say.
But, Hitler and Stalin are close to joining Napolean and Ceasar as the number of people who lived when they did gets smaller and smaller and soon becomes zero.
When no living witnesses are left, historians can operate with more speculation.
Which brings me to the 2 Atomic bombs that hit Japan in 1945. WW II was such a massive thing, decisions were sometimes made based on numbers of projected deaths. Oh yes, very heartless indeed, but how the hell else could it have been done? It is easy to look back 60 years and condemn The Americans for dropping those bombs, but I understand why they did it.
As an aside, they have not been used in any war since, by anyone, have they?
Maybe we've seen too many WW II movies where The Japanese are depicted as fools, perhaps even less than human. NONSENSE. They were a formibable foe. A conventional invasion of the Japanese homeland would have gone on for years and have entailed even more deaths of Japanese civilians than Hiroshima and Nagasaki combined (not to mention the deaths of American servicemen).
Nobody likes to see those films about the radiation in those cities but you cannot light up a doob, crank up the U2, yell "No nukes" and rip those events of 1945 out of their context.
TF
I can't stand up and say something about The 1991 Gulf War or the Bosnian civil war without people who were a part of it standing up and reacting to what I might say.
But, Hitler and Stalin are close to joining Napolean and Ceasar as the number of people who lived when they did gets smaller and smaller and soon becomes zero.
When no living witnesses are left, historians can operate with more speculation.
Which brings me to the 2 Atomic bombs that hit Japan in 1945. WW II was such a massive thing, decisions were sometimes made based on numbers of projected deaths. Oh yes, very heartless indeed, but how the hell else could it have been done? It is easy to look back 60 years and condemn The Americans for dropping those bombs, but I understand why they did it.
As an aside, they have not been used in any war since, by anyone, have they?
Maybe we've seen too many WW II movies where The Japanese are depicted as fools, perhaps even less than human. NONSENSE. They were a formibable foe. A conventional invasion of the Japanese homeland would have gone on for years and have entailed even more deaths of Japanese civilians than Hiroshima and Nagasaki combined (not to mention the deaths of American servicemen).
Nobody likes to see those films about the radiation in those cities but you cannot light up a doob, crank up the U2, yell "No nukes" and rip those events of 1945 out of their context.
TF
What People Say When a Plane Crashes
It was wonderful news that everyone survived the Air France crash at Pearson. When I first heard that a plane had crashed, I assumed there would be a lot of dead people.
As is often the case, Jon Stewart made a lot of the comments I had thought about myself and are now writing after I heard his.
First, "miracle"? No. I am with Stewart that we applaud the rescue workers that did an amazing job. "Miracles" are events that happen that can't ever happen - if the plane had been struck by lightning in order TO MAKE IT CRASH that would have been a miracle (Stewart's joke).
A cartoon in The Toronto Star showed an angel overlooking the plane wreckage. In a way, a lovely sentiment. Unless you think about such things a wee bit deeper.
Have you ever seen a plane crash on TV and 200 people die, and 41 people live, and the fact that 41 people live means, as the media would say, something like "God was watching over them - it was a miracle they survived".
Poppycock - if God was really watching over them - THE PLANE WOULD NOT HAVE CRASHED AT ALL.
Now, back to the angel at Pearson. I am not "up" on my 21st century theology, so I don't know if each airline trip is assigned an individual angel. If so, THAT ONE SHOULD BE FIRED for doing such a lousy job.
Maybe I am being too harsh - maybe there have been cut-backs in Heaven and each angel has 3 or 4 planes each to look over - in that case, I must concur that this angel WAS doing a great job.
Now those psunami angels?..fire their asses. Demote them to..um..Limbo?
TF
As is often the case, Jon Stewart made a lot of the comments I had thought about myself and are now writing after I heard his.
First, "miracle"? No. I am with Stewart that we applaud the rescue workers that did an amazing job. "Miracles" are events that happen that can't ever happen - if the plane had been struck by lightning in order TO MAKE IT CRASH that would have been a miracle (Stewart's joke).
A cartoon in The Toronto Star showed an angel overlooking the plane wreckage. In a way, a lovely sentiment. Unless you think about such things a wee bit deeper.
Have you ever seen a plane crash on TV and 200 people die, and 41 people live, and the fact that 41 people live means, as the media would say, something like "God was watching over them - it was a miracle they survived".
Poppycock - if God was really watching over them - THE PLANE WOULD NOT HAVE CRASHED AT ALL.
Now, back to the angel at Pearson. I am not "up" on my 21st century theology, so I don't know if each airline trip is assigned an individual angel. If so, THAT ONE SHOULD BE FIRED for doing such a lousy job.
Maybe I am being too harsh - maybe there have been cut-backs in Heaven and each angel has 3 or 4 planes each to look over - in that case, I must concur that this angel WAS doing a great job.
Now those psunami angels?..fire their asses. Demote them to..um..Limbo?
TF
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