An Intersting "Take"

I was listening to a podcast of ABC's "This Week" and George Will made a point similar to mine, regarding The Cartoons and Islam. Islam wishes to exist without critcism. Democracy, and open societies THRIVE on criticism - it is one of our core values. Like me, he thinks they need to grow up a little.

TF

Good Samaritan

Two nights ago I took a cab home from the train station - and my wallet slipped out and ended up in the cab. I did not realize it util I went to look for my wallet yesterday afternoon - just as I was escalating to panicked mode there was a message on the answering machine from a man in Burlington (two towns over from Mississauga) that he had found my wallet. I begged a ride to Burlington and picked it up. I insisted he take a $20 from me and I was soon on my way home with my wallet.

Yes Virginia, there are decent folk left in this world.

TF

Freedumb of Speech

Not content with that...We pull Jesus from a hat...
Emerson, lake & Palmer



Why is that if people are yammering about "freedom of speech" it usually means they are up to something that is going to piss off a lot of people (maybe even most people) ? Child Molestors and Nazis are two groups that come to mind.

The Danish incident where Muhammed was depicted a s a terrorist has pissed off..oh..about a billion people. I must ask one question: If The Prophet cannot be depicted, how can you know if he's being depicted in a cartoon??????? Of course, it is perfectly fine for Muslims to vow death to Isreal, or to burn the Amerkun flag or the Star of David, isn't it? I find it amusing when those who dish it out, can't take it.

The cartoons were in very poor taste, and papers here did not run them, but Islam needs to get a sense of humour. "Our" Cat Stevens is over there - can we drop him a line on this ?

TF

I don't Want To Harp.....

Maybe I was once too harsh in predicting I would never stop bitching if Harper were elected PM. While I am not going to pull a Kent Brockman and welcome our new insect overlords, I do think he should be given some slack, but I am still waiting for the refoooooooorrrrrrrmmmmm agenda to assert itself.

Ok, Martin – he is not going to be missed – he’s not a total loser PM like Turner or Campbell but he’s no better than a Joe Clark. Like Joe, he’ll be remembered more for all he did other than being PM. So, if we had to send The Liberals another message, and in our entire history the only other alternative we have ever turned to are The Conservatives, a week minority is the best result we could have hoped for.

I am proud of Canadian voters, this week – and of course, for me, if you abandon the Libs to vote NDP, I can live with it.

Harper was shut out in Toronto, Montreal AND Vancouver. Large cities have more problems which often require government policies to combat them –“law & order” policies, by themselves,  about all we’ve seen from Harper, aren’t going to cut it.

The GTA has not forgiven Mike Harris and were sceptical that Harper walked too close to Mike’s footsteps.

Harper may have to jettison the gay-hatin’, bible-thumpin’ creationists, or relegate them to the back bench if he has any hope of leading a majority government. If he leaves them in the front, he’ll loose the next election.

Well, it’s going to be interesting….

TF



P.S. I am squarely against “Intelligent Design” being considered a valid scientific theory. I have an ally on that – THE VATICAN. Yeah, that’s right, THE  F^$&n POPE agrees with me.

When Young People Die

Have you ever noticed that people who are anti-abortion, or, “pro-life” don’t care about those babies after they are born?

If you’re pre-born, you’re fine. If you’re pre-school, you’re FUCKED.
-George Carlin.

I once again re-state that poverty and cuts to social programs do not put guns in people’s hands. But, are we not seeing what most of us predicted in 1995, that Harris’s gutting of the province would lead to exactly what we saw in 2005 ??

Conservatives love forcing women to have babies, not giving a toss about them when they are young (maybe some of them will die thus reducing the surplus population) unless of course they commit a crime in which case you throw them in jail, or , and this really gets them hard, execute them. Conservatives also love war so they get all a-flutter when their children die...oh sorry…I mean other people’s children die and come home wrapped in the flag .

So, killing an unborn child is wrong – but watching them starve to death, get executed or die for rich people is somehow not wrong.

Doesn’t sound like “Pro LIFE” to me – sounds like Pro MY life and Fuck anybody else’s.

The good news at least some of those people who die are gay….(just not in the Military).

TF

Please - Make it a Minority !!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!

It’s sad to watch a great travesty occur in a neighbour’s house – it’s much, much tougher to  have to sit through it in your own house.

In 2004, John Kerry ran a flat, uninspired campaign that handed re-election back to Dubya. In 2006, Paul Martin is running perhaps even a stupider campaign handing the country over to the Reform party.  

The great thing about democracy is that we all get a vote. The bad thing about democracy is that we all get a vote. The average person is not curious and does not think things through – not when considering something of extreme importance such as who is going to lead the nation.

What is going to be very frightening is that Harper will blindly follow Dubya – and there’s a regime that has been a disaster. Harper does not value human rights, women’s reproductive rights, the environment, health care or social programs. What he does value is raising taxes for the poor and cutting them for the rich. Tax cuts plus new spending means cuts to social programs. Ontario has been ruined for decades by half a decade of Harris-ment and Harper is going to do the same thing.

The only hope I see is a Harper minority – which will be tough on him because he’s not comfortable with minorities, such as gay Canadians.

If You Wish to Post Comments

I've had to turn on some feature that blocks my blog from getting spammed. If you find it too hard to post, e-mail me your comments and I will post them.
-Tom

Alternative Theories

I don’t actually enjoy criticizing the American right, nor do I go out of my way to do so. They just don’t value anything that I value - such as science.

For people who follow science, like I do, in an “artsy” way, in America, and only America, there is a “debate” whether “Intelligent Design” should be taught in science class along side evolution.  I think this debate ended in most other First World countries back when Kaisers and Czars were ruling.

I am always open to alternative theories – but if a school board is to allow “Intelligent Design” should it not also provide an alternate theory for human reproduction? I recall a theory espoused in 1970s commercials for pickles that The Stork delivers babies – should that board not also teach the “Avian Express” theory of human reproduction???

How come in America Pat Robertson gets on CNN – in Canada we don’t put those people on CBC Newsworld - we call them those people who have the misfortune of battling with mental illness, and they don’t make it to television, at least not as commentators for world events.

His latest assertion is that Israeli PM Sharon was “sent” a stroke from God for…well who the fuck cares what Robertson said was the reason…

Continuing one with the trend, should we not allow the possibility that bleeding people with leeches is sound medical treatment, that the Moon might be made of green cheese, that the world is flat, is the centre of the universe, and hangs from the heavens by large gold chains?

As soon as a coin in the coffer rings, another soul from Purgatory springs…

TF

Election 2006

It seems like every other year we have an election....

Not much of a narrative here - more a series of thoughts. Luckily this is a blog and not a term paper at McMaster University during the 1980s (I am reminded of this as I type on a computer and not a typewriter).

The only obvious issue is that the Liberals did some bad things that lead to the sponsorship scandal. The other party that could realistically form a government, Harper's Reform party (for Air Farce fans REFOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOORM) has wisely, to their advantage, pointed this out during every day of the campaign. The other "National" party, The CCF guys (and the only one with a good representation of gals), also began the campaign hammering the Grits for their corruption, as did the other party that wants to win all the Quebec Federal seats in a parliament it actually wants to leave (Le Bloc).

You know, even for French people, The Bloc are kind of odd.

Layton then realized that he shouldn't spend all his time demonizing the Liberals as this might drive some folks who voted Liberal in 2004 to switch to the Conservatives, so now he is letting us know that a Conservative Government would kill Canada as we know it (but he has left the door open to a possible Con-NDP Coaltion should the electorate return a Tory Minority).

As I have said before of myself, I am an "Orange Liberal", or, one that leans to the left of centre without being on the left wing. I guess that means I am still seateed in the fuselage but right up against the window??

Ok, we are ALL tired of The Liberal reign that began in 1993. But, and I cannot stress this enough, I want a better, or at least, not a worse regime in Ottawa to replace them.

Martin's defence is that it was OTHER Liberals who did those bad things - he had only a wee role in those governments: Finance Minister. Hardly significant at all, you know, like the tiny role David played in defeating Goliath.

I hate Harper and everything about him. If he is ever the PM, I'll never stop bitching about it until he isn't anymore.

I think though I need to separate Layton's moustache from his face - his rhetoric spewed during a campaign from what he would actually do as a Federal leader involved in a ruling coalition. I don't think he would be that bad, really. When he helped save the government in 2005, he did so with a set of NDP-style demands. He's just such a loud-mouth holier-than-thou fellow and I've had a problem with this since his days in Toronto politics.

If Martin scores anything less than a majority, he is done as Leader. I'll wait until that happens before I speculate as to who'd best replace him - Bob, Belinda, Lightfoot, Gretzky, Jerome The Giraffe..

Boy, these people with their accusations, half-truths and assertions are acting like children or, well, like politicians. (Aside: put "Or and "Well" together and you get George W Bush....).

I don't fear a hidden agenda from Harper -I fear what he has ACTUALLY SAID so far in the past two campaigns.

TF

The Colbert Report

Cobert, Commenting on his name:
It's FRENCH, bitch!

Daily Show spin-off "The Colbert Report" branches out successfully with the Daily Show format. Instead of fake news, Colbert offfers fake commentary.

It's quite good.

While Stewart does a stand-up routine (sitting down) as himself, Colbert plays a mostly right-wing character.

Nuf Ced - you like Stewart, you'll probably like Colbert.

And, in that, you can find "truthiness".

Prepare for a "Menage-a-Truth".
-Colbert

TF

Can't We Alll Just Get Along?

Iranian President Ahmadinejad has now joined the elite group of intellectual giants known as "Holocaust Deniers". This is a logical step for someone who a few months back stated that Isreal should be "wiped off the map". Not that post-Shah Iran has generally been known for tolerance or anything else that once made Islam a great culture, but they are moving in the wrong direction.

I don't pretend to understand the nuances of Middle Eastern politics, but statements like this from a powerful Islamic nation, are going to help make things better about as much as, oh I don't know, invading Iraq, maybe?

Islamic nations clog up the UN with motions against Isreali human rights violations, as if they weren't every bit as guilty of such violations themselves. Islam and Women's rights just walk side by side with each other, don't they (ok, the women must walk 50 paces behind, spoke when spoken to..).

If only it were possbile to bitch-slap nations into behaving....ok maybe some strong words instead.

TF

An X-Mas Election

I don't know if you can open with an "aside", but:
"X" in "X-Mas" is not a modern attempt to de-Christ Christmas. In ancient Greek, "X" was pronounced "Christos".

I don't want a holiday election. Nobody does. The ones who say they really they don't want one, are the ones that are going to cause one - Harper, Layton, and to some extent, Duceppe.

There have been times in the history of Canada, or one of it's provinces, where the old government needed to be changed, such as when a long-term leader is out of steam and needs to retire. This is not one of those times.

This election has only 2 probable outcomes: A Liberal or a Conservative minority. We have the former already, and the latter would fall after a few months when they try to reverse the same-sex marriage laws or something else that only rednecks want to see.

Ok, I don't like Jack Layton -I hated him when he was in Toronto Politics.

Ok, I really hate Harper - if you want to live in a country like the USA, MOVE to that country. Look how well Conservatism is doing under Bush (stage note - seams: begin coming apart). Harper's one claim to fame is that he makes you miss Preston Manning, the real Manning with the glasses.

TF

Commercials

Monica: I have big news
Chandler: What, that 5th dentist finally came around?


I worked for 4 different insurance companies from 1986 to 1995. At the third one, I was still a smoker and we had a real ventilated smoking room. First, sometimes my co-workers would mention a person’s name and I would not know who they were talking about. Then, they’d come back with “You don’t know her because she doesn’t smoke”.

Anyway, there were few topics where every person could contribute to the conversation. A certain movie? Some people had seen it. A book? Some people had read it. One topic that was universal was TV commercials. “My husband – some hotshot…”.

So I was drin… thinking about something: What if aliens could see our commercials from North American TV? What would they figure they knew about us? It would be like those archaeological digs where all we decide what we know about a group of people is based on their death and burial rituals.

I think they’d come up with something like this:

1. Women are way smarter than men – men can’t cook, they know nothing about their children, the wife has to tell the idiot how to microwave a burrito over the phone. I think the wives have to dress them and wipe their asses. I can’t imagine most of them are smart enough to get drivers licences.


2. Children are way smarter than adults.


3. Animals are way smarter than people and they can “talk”.


4. Everyone is married and there are no divorces.


5. All couples are heterosexual.


6. Until recently, all people were white.


7. Until even more recently, all couples were of the same race.


8. Life on earth involves a lot of jingoistic background music.


9. People with perfect skin use acne cleanser.


10. Everyone is thin except for those in weight loss commercials.


11. Very few men loose their hair


12. 21 year old gorgeous women (and men) won’t get dates if they use the incorrect shampoo, toothpaste or face soap.


13. Everyone has a good job, except the people in ads for vocational schools.


14. People have beer – they never drink it, they just have it around.


15. You can make fun of people – as long as they are white.

RE: 15. The Scottish: IT’S NO…OATMEAL. Italians: There was a commercial for a pasta sauce that was so authentically Italian that after the people at it, they all started singing opera. Can you imagine a bunch of black people where the fried chicken was so good that they all went out and started playing basketball?
TF

God is a Real Jerk

God? He's my favourite fictional character
-Homer Simpson


The great thing about religion is that no part of it has to make any sense. Being a religious “thinker” or leader, is about the only job where that is true. If you design bridges, and you do it wrong, the bridges will collapse and you’ll never get another bridge gig, will you?

If you are a chef and people die after eating your food, you’re not going to be a chef very long.

Not so for fundamentalists down south – a unique form of asshole.

The Earth is as old as the literal reading of the bible says so men and dinosaurs lived at the same time. Bill Hicks had a good point: Why aren’t there dinosaurs in The Bible?????

Did you folks know just how much of an asshole their god is?

Ok, here goes: God creates men and women. He creates 10-15% of them gay, BUT demands that they pretend to be heterosexual. He prefers that they marry and have children and live a total lie (I guess bearing false witness against thyself is ok). If they do not do this, but live as gays and have a parade, God destroys New Orleans. You see. God is not only a jerk, he sucks at geography: San Francisco would have been a more logical place to send the Hurricane.

Then again, if God created these fundamentalists in his own image, it makes sense that he’d be an asshole.

TF

Earth Speaks

If I were The Earth, I wouldn’t think much of humans – if in fact I gave any thought to them at all.

You can write an opera? Well, here’s a Tsunami! Oh, they were quaint back a thousand years ago and I’d snicker every time they drew me flat with three continents and Jerusalem at the centre.

But, I liked my ozone layer and these bastards blew fucking holes in it. I like that rain forest and I don’t need my oceans warmer and my ice caps smaller.

And some of them are tying to “save” ME. What a joke!! I am in no danger. Humans are messing themselves up – I don’t need an atmosphere to be a planet – Mars gets along just fine and there haven’t been any sentient life forms there since early 20th Century Sci-Fi.

I remember the dinosaurs – I liked them but a big rock hit me and they all died.

These idiots are extincting themselves but they can’t really harm me. Big rocks, now those scare me.

The Earth

Thomas

The Golden Age

I think every major civilization has a “golden age”. It’s already there as far back as Homer (The Greek poet, not Marge’s Husband). In the past, things were better: men were braver, women more beautiful…Maybe it’s because wisdom and stories used to be told by the elders who (inaccurately) remembered being young and how wonderful it all was, all of the time.

I guess for my age group we’d have to pick the 1970s, but, by definition, a golden age cannot contain ABBA and Disco.

I remember being young and a lot of it was good and a lot of it was crap.

I remember a youthful body and if I really strain hard, I can remember having hair on my head. I also remember family members using words like “Nigger”, “Paki” and “fruit” at the dinner table. (I am composing this in Microsoft Word and the first two words pass the spell checker – isn’t that interesting). Some of them still use those words.

When I heard the first “Paki” joke I had to get clarification: “Do you mean people from Pakistan?” I wanted to make sure I was hating the correct people, not that it was difficult – anyone who’s skin tone, religion or sexual orientation differed from my own was on that list anyway. Good thing I never ran into a Chinese Protestant Lesbian – I would have had to stab her on the spot!

We were reading Shakespeare in Grade 9 – the bard used the word “chink” and we asked the teacher, I am not kidding here, what was a Chinese person was doing in a wall in Elizabethan England? Well, it turns out that word could also mean a part of a wall that had a crack in it. Well, that replaced fart and masturbation jokes for a few weeks when we could say “chink” and get away with it!!! “Hey Man do you have a chink in your locker?”

I think some people like their golden age so much they live there forever. What the hell does that mean? I mean, emotionally. So many people who are well into their 30s or older have that same grade 9 sense of humour and have not developed past that point.

I think I had more of a pewter age myself. If we could weed out Disco and ABBA, maybe it could be as good as bronze.

Thomas

Hollywood

Is there a phonier place on earth? Can one even be imagined? How many things can we see get blown up, how many happy endings can we endure?

Since Hollywood only understands money, they had to get hit in the pocketbook this summer to realize they keep putting out the same shit and even once faithful movie goers are staying home. Corporate America has sanitized movies so badly that they have no oomph to them. Maybe the bad result this summer might send some moguls back to the drawing board

I’d put Tarantino in charge of Hollywood, myself. This would mean Uma Thurman, Samuel L. Jackson and Michael Madsen would be in 237 films each per year (104 of them in the same film).

Kill Shrek.
Star Wars Episode 14: Revenge of Mr Pink.
The Sicilian Patient.
A Beautiful Brain Spread All Over the Sidewalk.
The Godfather IV: The Apology

Yes folks – dialogue and scripts would be back in vogue. Actors would have to act.

But seriously, will this summer’s disaster mean Hollywood will get a lot better?

Fuggetaboutit.

Mr T.

It Got Louder

I grew up in the 1970s in an affluent Country far from genocides and wars and disasters. The World Wars ended almost 2 decades before I was even born (1963).

I did grow up as a citizen of a Cold War country, but long after it’s apex in the early 1960s (also before I was born). There was a scare when Reagan started talking about a “limited” nuclear war after taking office in 1981, but he chilled when Gorby came along.

History, in one way, is a series of wars, genocides and disasters. Starting with the 1990s they began again, or actually, continued. The Gulf War was the first time I remember Canada being at war. Then the Yugoslavian and Rwandan episodes showed that genocide was back.

September 11, 2001 was a shock – not because it was the long expected terrorist attack, but because of the enormity of its success. My money had been down on an attack at LAX. (That attack had indeed been planned but foiled at the BC – Washington border).
I had never imagined suicide bombers in North America – that seemed such a Middle Eastern and far away thing.

The invasion of Iraq showed that America had unlearned all of its lessons from Viet Nam.

The Boxing Day Tsunami of 2004 has to rank as the biggest cyclical thing in my lifetime. Since I know some history, the last such major one in the Indian Ocean had been after Krakatoa erupted – in 1883 (none of my Grandparents had been born for that one).

I had spent the 1990s studying and even writing about the World Wars as they seemed too far away from the quietness of my times.

Then my times got louder.

TF

The Return of Critical Thinking in The American Media

Jon Stewart, pointed out, once again, something I had noticed myself (we think alike).

After 9/11, the media turned into patriots and stopped judging Bush and the administration critically. The obvious example was the lead-up to the war in Iraq. I have been watching CNN at least as far back as The Gulf War of 1991, although I always have been able to take it for only so long. The so called “liberal” media disappeared and Bush was allowed to invade Iraq with no plan whatsoever. I stopped watching CNN and any American news media for almost 3 years.

With the disaster of Katrina, the media finally regained its teeth and began to question yet another idiotic “planning” of the administration and how they bungled the rescue relief worse than anyone could have imagined.

Bush said nobody could have anticipated the levees breaking. Al Franken, on his radio show, pointed out that MR BILL the play-dough guy from old SNL was featured in a commercial for the Louisiana Wetlands and HE knew the levees might break.

Ted Koppell, to “Brownie” (as Bush called him): Don’t you people watch TV?

In Bush’s Truman Show – no.

Taking a vacation by playing guitar in California? Sounds great to me - unless you are The President when the largest displacement of Americans since The Civil War is taking place.

TF

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.