The Guns of Summer

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.

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.

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

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

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.

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

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

"Good Speech"

"Euphemism" is derived from two Greek Words "eu" (good) and "pheme" (speech).

As far as I can tell, we use them in several ways:

1. To soften a word or phrase where a harsher word or phrase would be, well, too harsh. "Passed Away" is a common one for this example, as we use it when people are at a vulnerable point in their life, having lost a loved one.

2. To lie to people about what you are doing by calling it exactly the opposite of what it is. Bush must have 5 or more people working on his euphemisms full-time "Operation Iraqi Freedom" means the opposite of what it is: "Kill as many Iraqis as we have to, to achieve our goals". Orwell called this "double-speak".

3. To soften a condition so as to pretend a person does not have that condition. "diferrently abled" means if you cannot walk and are chairbound, we do not have to talk about it and we can pretend that you are not.

4. To out-an-out go so far with positive thinking that it becomes a total farce. Today's Toronto Star quotes one from the British Teachers' Association. No more will children fail - they will simply be in a state of "deferred success". That beats out the best (worst) one ever, that was pointed out by George Carlin: Not "learning disabled" but "minimally exceptional". On my list for sometime, also British, is "positive disrimination" (that's always been right up there with "reverse sexism" or "white slavery"). Well the dear old Brits call garbage "dust" and reffered to the carnage of The Great War as "the unpleasantness".

Tom.

Another Hit

Anyone who's talked / e-mailed / messaged with me for more than 3o seconds over the past few years has heard me rave about The Daily Show With Jon Stewart. A new show that began in April is Pop-Cultured with Elvira Kurt (comedy channel) and anyone who loves Stewart will like this too. It's funny and delivers the same punches as Stewart, but from a Canadian perspective. She uses other performers, like Stewart, and, also like Stewart has a daily guest. (Also like Stewart I FF past the guest quite often).

Finally, I guess we all realized that sometimes the only thing worth watching on Saturday Night Live was "Weekend Update".


TF

Celliquette

What :so now it's cellphones he's pissed with?


When I bought my first ever cell phone in 2004, I vowed to not do some things that I have seen others do with their cell phone. I won't even get into driving while chatting on one that isn't "hands free".

Some absurvations:

1. Why is it that the less interesting a conversation a person is having on a cell on a bus or in another enclosed public space, the longer it lasts. Also the louder it is. Polite people who take calls like "I'm on the train we're passing Mimico....6:20..ok.on the shelf above the fridge..k.bye" are wonderful people. Ones who "do business" on the train should all die miserable deaths...well not on the train right there....later..when they're alone.

2. I have seen teenage girls talk to each other on their phones when they are IN THE SAME PLACE - hope Mom and Dad have one of those unlimited plans or a second job (or a sound heart when they get open the bill).

3. A ringer does not need a sub-woofer. I'm not kidding: I've heard them that loud and with that much bass so you think some jackass is driving by in his car whose entire trunk is a subwoofer blaring hip hop.

4. If you are standing behind me and you start talking on your phone (with no ringer going off) out of the blue don't be suprised and give me a dirty look when I turn around and wonder, for all of a second and a half, if you are talking to me. I don't care if you are a gorgeous young woman and I am an old goat: This is a reflex developed over 3 and a half decades of life where nobody had cellphones and only insane people talked in public.

5. So your phone has an MP3 player? Excellent, my friend. But use the HEADPHONE JACK - I don't share my MP3s with you, show me the same fucking courtesty.

Men are from Omacron Theta 8, Women are from Omacron Theta 7

It's friday so who wants to be stir things up? I'll look at a topic that inspires very little debate: how men and women differ.

OK, I am more curious as to how we think they are differrent and how we used think they were different, in a different way.

What are the early 21st century sterotypes: Women are more artistic, care more for fashion and cosmetics (they have more of a flare for it), are much deeper thinkers than men and see life more as a whole. Women can have children and take care of them. Men make good worker bees, have tin ears and wooden eyes when it comes to art, and dress like they don't care, see things in simple terms and can never see "the big picture".

Go back to the late 18th century, and here is what you get: Men are great artists and novelists - women? Why, what a silly idea - they are good at pushing out babies, but men are much better at raising them. Women do not have a good enough grasp of the world the way men do that is required to create great works of art - they are simplistic. Only men can deal with emotions because men are simply more emotional, and feel things deeper.

The 18th Century European Nobleman wore powder and rouge on his face, a wig, and hose on his legs. Today, he'd better do that in the gay part of town or he'll be arriving home with less teeth than when he set out.

I wonder how men and women will differ in another 200 years.

Tom.

By the People, Adjacent to The People, At the People...

Sometime in the 1980s, in the US of A, it became not only a popular idea, but very close to dogma that governments need to be run "like a business". Since Canadians are independent thinkers we did not follow this course.....until a bit later in the 1980s. "Taxation" became a dirty word and raising taxes became as acceptable as B.O.

We have taxes for a reason - we need things done by governments such as defense, water, roads, education and (In Canadian provinces not named "Alberta") health care. Taxes are not wonderful things - if you wished to pick a single reason the Roman Empire isn't there any more, taxation could easily be that reason.

So we play a game when governments switch to the right and then to the left and then the centre and then the.....

The "tight is right" rightests slash taxes, and of course, Ontario under Harrissment is the obvious example, services have to be cut. Then taxes, evil, evil taxes, must be cut so far that a large deficit is run (see: Bush's America; again: Harris and Eves in Ontario).

Then, when the centre or left get in they have to raise taxes to a level higher than before the cuts just to get back to the pre-cut era, or call them something other than a tax. (Witness McGuity's health care "premium").

Can't we follow a more European model and stress not how much we pay in taxes - but more that we worry about what we are getting for our tax dollars?

In this sense, at least, "like a business" can be a good thing.

TF

Progress

Cellphone features are getting more and more elaborate. In Fact, there is a way that, if I am not near a computer but have my cellphone with me, if I am suddenly inspired with something I must share here, I can do it with my phone.

Of course, with my wide fingers that a jazz bassist would envy, that little keypad, and the invisibility of the screen in sunlight , I'd have to say that by the time I managed to get the message typed, I would probably already be home in front of my computer anyway.

Back when Edison was inventing half of the modern world, one of his inventions was the electric pen. It's always been my favourite "why" invention of all time (OK "Hip Hop" comes close...).

There is a word in German for this vyzehellvouldievaneedtodozis" - ok maybe it's old low German.....would you believe Assyrian???


Thomas

That's ME 

Why?

I have never understood the reasoning that goes on in the brain of those who write computer viruses. When I was young and naive (you know, about 34) I asked my college I.T. instructor if computer viruses were ever accidently unleashed, the way a biological virus might be. He said no - they have to be crafted.

The latest thing is an e-mail that looks like it is from CNN with a clip taken from a cellphone camera in the London Underground. It's fake and contains a virus. I am actually a person who gets updates (headlines) from CNN e-mailed to me because I want to know right away what a country with it's head so far up it's own ass deems immediately newsworthy (um..actually most of the time I DO want to know this, to be honest). Ironically, as soon as I get the CNN headline, if it's something I want to know I then go to yahoo news or the CBC website. Most people should expect nothing sent directly to them from CNN so be careful, folks.

Back to my point - what kind of infantile mind enjoys fucking up other people's computers and their lives? Most of us rely on our computers for a multitude of things these days.

I understand phishing - this is pure fraud and theft, and theft has been with us forever.

Tom.

P.S. Addendum: For example, I just got a headline from CNN that the Space Shuttle launch has been scapped and this is something I wanted to know.

Green Tea and Bodywash

I was a normal kid - no allergies or asthma or anything beyond the usual measles and chicken pox. There were kids who were always sick (it wasn't their fault) but I wasn't one of them. I was not a chucklehead daredevil alpha male (I'm more a Theta or Epsilon).

I've found as I age, over time I get less and less masculine - no more 2 pots of coffee a day - maybe a few a month and the rest of the time it's green tea. I can't use bar soap or I itch all day - it has to be bodywash. We angle more towards the sick kids every day. Man, I'd hate to see how they are doing in their 40s....

TF

An Unpopular Opinion Part Deux

At the core of any major religion that I know of is the belief that humanity is a special creation that merits special attention from deities or a single creator (I always loved the term '"unmoved mover").

The problem is: we are not.

Evolution is a "theory" like gravity is a "theory" or 1+2=3 is a "theory".

Evolution is not a set of dogmas, but a desciption of a process. Complex organisms evolved from simpler ones. That's it - no morality or necessity that we ever arrive on the scene.

Most people who never question evolution also tend to forget this: Just because Evolution came up with us does not mean that evolution was geared towards us or that we are even a good idea. We are just what it came up lately and we will be gone one day.

We have been "us" in the broadest stretch of what homo sapiens is for a million years at most and we have been exactly what we are for about 50,000 years.

Dinosuars were around for 150 MILLION years. Evolution seemed to really like them, but they've been gone now for 65 million years. This is because evolution did not see fit to develop a shield against asteroids.

How can any religion have much to say about the things it loves to go on about when the centre of it (us) has been here for 5 minutes in geological time and we may be a flash in the pan compared to T Rex?

TF.

Are we Next?

"The Base" and their sister cells have now struck everywhere but Canada: I guess it was a group of six nations who are unjustly keeping radical Islamists from setting up a theocracy that would make Iran or George W Bush cringe.

There is no reason to expect we will be spared. Tranist seems to be their favourite choice as it is a public place and you cannot screen millions of riders as you can an aircraft boarding gate. Vancouver and Toronto, maybe Ottawa and Montreal seem the likely targets.

I have no idea how to defend against this, short of turning towards a police state as The Americans have (who are always it seems 5 minutes away from doing that anyway).

What Dubya Tony and thier allies (including us) need to do now is to fight the war on terror by fighting the war on terror. Afghanistan made sense. For Iraq, Dubya used 9/11 as excuse to level Iraq which is what he wished his father had done in 1991. (Silly Bush Sr - listened to those UN people...).

I am sickened when, usually by accident, I see local American News and the lament for the soldiers killed in Iraq: They should ALL still be alive. Iraquis killed them BUT YOU A*&H*LES STARTED IT.

If "last throes" of an insurgency is this bloody I am not looking foward to "over": In Cheney double-speak, who knows what that will mean.

TF

An Unpopular Opinion

999 out of a 1000 will disagree with me.

We are now at a point in world history where organized religion does far more harm than good.

I understand the importance of ritual (like the cannabalism of my youth: blood and body of Christ), and community and of a moral structure.

Yes, perhaps I'm letting a few bad apples..throwing..baby..bathwater....etc..etc..

Some not maybe very related observations about religion:

1. The only Bhuddist temple (sorry if "temple" is the wrong word) I have seen anywhere near my home is in Lorne Park, the richest area of Mississauaga. Yes, only those with everything need to cleanse themselves of it all.

2. Ever notice how well the Catholic church thrives best in the poorest of places? Wasn't it wonderful advice to tell women that condoms are not allowed on a continent where AIDS is a raging pandemic?

3. As Mark Twain said - religions are openly hostile to intellect and those who think for themselves.

4. Some people are gay. They're here, they're queer DEAL WITH IT. You can't thou-shalt away gayness. The Canadian Sikh leaders condemned same-sex marriage. You see, it's okay to condemn homosexuality, but it is NOT okay to condemn those who wear turbins. You can't just mete out human rights . You can't just close your eyes and pretend that gay people do not exist. And don't call it a "choice" - it IS a choice to wear a turbin, a yarmulka or a crucifix.

5. Most religions are anywhere from slightly repressive to openly hostile against women and having them in control of their reproductive choices. People who rule a country south of me, don't much care for women other than as breeders.

Oh well, I'm always mad at somebody....

Thomas.

String 'em up!

Here's a case where if you can't accept the first premise, the second one really won't make be your cup of tea (or hemlock).

Capital punishment in the U.S. takes the lives of poor people and/or non-whites at a stupidly disproportionate rate to the general population. That nation thinks it is OK for the state to kill people.

Premise 2: It is not killing them fast enough. We in Canada becry "wating time" as a serious problem - waiting time for medical services. Republicans agree with us - but their "waiting time" is for executing those on death row. That's right - their government is not killing people FAST ENOUGH so a bill has been introduced to strip rights to appeals so that the poor black man who had the only lawyer he could get can get wrongly executed as soon as possible.

Milgaard...Morin..Truscott - aren't you glad we don't have the death penalty?

Oh, and I heard a capital trial costs 5 to 10 times what it costs to imprison a person for life.

TF.