"Demon-hearted Splittist" Recruits Child Soldiers in Seattle

Parental Advisory: Since you can't see my eyes rolling, be advised that the title above is ironic/sarcastic/not serious, eh? They say that sarcasm is a form of anger. Maybe it's passive-aggressive. So, OK, I have some issues. But I'm still mystified by the Chinese government's inability to see the disconnect between their accusations and the whole of the Dalai Lama's career since leaving Tibet.

Having said that, here's a transcript of part of Democracy Now's broadcast from April 15/08. His Holiness is in Seattle giving teachings and generally being a nuisance I guess, but he took some time to subvert the minds of 15,000 young Murricans. Here's what some of them had to say:

AMY GOODMAN: We wrap up today show with the reflections of three kids from Seattle, Washington, who heard the Dalai Lama speak yesterday. The Tibetan spiritual leader addressed over 15,000 children at the Key Arena in Seattle.

AMY GOODMAN: Hi. What’s your name?


PHIL: Phil.


AMY GOODMAN: And how old are you, Phil?


PHIL: I’m twelve years old.


AMY GOODMAN: And who were you just watching?


PHIL: The Dalai Lama.


AMY GOODMAN: And what does he mean to you?


PHIL: He means the future, because he represents hope. And we also—a lot of people at our school, we love to see someone who can set a good example. And because he—even though he’s a leader of Tibet and he’s exiled, he still does good throughout the world. I think that really means a lot. And I really hope that one day everyone will see as he does, that we need to have compassion, and we need to have hope.


AMY GOODMAN: And what school do you go to?


PHIL: Seattle Country Day School.


AMY GOODMAN: Seattle Country Day School?


PHIL: Seattle Country Day School.


AMY GOODMAN: What’s your name?


ELEANOR: I’m Eleanor.


AMY GOODMAN: And how old are you?


ELEANOR: I’m eleven.


AMY GOODMAN: And what did you think?


ELEANOR: Well, I think that it’s a great opportunity for all of us to be able to see someone who speaks with such wisdom and experience. And I’m really glad that I was able to learn from his powerful words.


AMY GOODMAN: What did you learn?


ELEANOR: I learned that there is such thing as a place where everyone can be happy and help each other. And he is a motivation to create that world.


AMY GOODMAN: Where is that world?


ELEANOR: That world is in the future. That world’s in the future.


AMY GOODMAN: And what’s your name?


SHAY: My name is Shay.


AMY GOODMAN: How old are you?


SHAY: I’m eleven.


AMY GOODMAN: Where do you go to school?


SHAY: Seattle Country Day School.


AMY GOODMAN: And what did you think of the Dalai Lama today?


SHAY: I think he’s very wise, and I think he had a message that everyone should hear, and everyone could be compassionate no matter what religion you are, or you’re atheist or whatever. And I think it was a great opportunity for us to see him.


AMY GOODMAN: Will you remember this day?


SHAY: Yeah, I definitely will.

AMY GOODMAN: Kids at the Key Arena yesterday. It was packed with children, ages three and four up through high school. But this in theSeattle Times: on Monday, when the Dalai Lama awarded an honorary degree at the UW, University of Washington, students will get to ask him his views on compassion, peace and relationships, but not on the Chinese political situation or Tibet. UW officials last month asked students to submit possible questions for the Dalai Lama’s campus visit. About sixty students responded, including eight who wanted to ask about China or Tibet, but when UW officials handpicked fourteen students to ask questions at the event, politics were deliberately left out.

It says here the Dalai Lama was awarded an honourary degree. We wonders, yes we does, what sort of degree...political science maybe?

And BTW, check out Democracy Now whenever you get a chance. You can download free transcripts of the shows, or podcasts, even video. They have excellent coverage of many issues that concern Murricans and other citizens of the world, but be warned. Democracy Now is unremittingly leftist/liberal/progressive, and the show would probably scoff at the idea of a demon-hearted Dalai Lama.

How Many Photos Are "Enough"?

I mean, I'm just curious...

Credit: Doug Mills/New York Times

Update on Josh Billings

One day not too long after posting the Serendipity post, the phrase "I was just joshing" popped into my head. It's only natural that such idle phrases should scurry into my mostly empty cranium. After all, what else is there to do while pacing the sanitized halls of the Yoni School?

"Just joshing", thought I. "I'll bet that phrase is a reference to Josh Billings.!" So today I had another idle minute and searched briefly. Here's what I found:

Re: Josh

Posted by bob on October 03, 2000

In Reply to: Re: Josh posted by ESC on October 02, 2000

: : Where did the phrase 'you're joshin' me', come from? If you know, please e-mail me...

: "JOSH - The best guess is that the Americanism 'josh,' for 'to kid' or 'fool around,' is a merging of 'joke' and 'bosh.' The pseudonym of an American writer may have something to do with the word, though. Henry Wheeler Shaw (1818-85) wrote his deliberately misspelled crackerbox philosophy under the pen name Josh Billings. Employing dialect, ridiculous spellings, deformed grammar, monstrous logic, puns, malapropisms, and anticlimax, he became one of the most popular literary comedians of his time. The expression 'to josh' was used about 18 years before Josh Billings began writing in 1863, but his salty aphorisms probably strengthened its meaning and gave the term wider currency." From "Encyclopedia of Word and Phrase Origins" by Robert Hendrickson (Fact on File, New York, 1997)

The OED concurs, suggesting that he chose the pseudonym from the existing slang word and his popularity promoted its usage. Anybody have a clue why so many 19th century writers wrote under pen names? There are lots of 18th and 20th c. pen names, sure, but it really seems to have flourished in the 19th. I haven't a clue.

So there it is. Maybe. Maybe not. Possibly. Maybe.

The site I found this on, by the way, is very useful if you're looking for the origins of phrases.

Iraq War Turns 5

I hope I never have to use the headline: Iraq War Turns 50.

I have only one other thing to say, since there is not much that is original which can be said. Some of us foresaw from the beginning what a travesty this would be. Some of us sensed the lies without having any way of confirming our intuition.

This is what I have to say, after five years: The Murrican media should hang their heads in shame.

Afro-Centric Schools

Update: Jan.30/08
Last night the Hawgtown Board of Education voted in favour of establishing an Afro-Centric school.

A couple things about this:
Why did they decide that Afro-Centrism was the way to go?

1. Apparently, the dropout rate of Afro-Centrist students is about 40%. That's pretty high, motha. It means that Hawgtown's school system is failing its students. Especially the Afro-Centrist ones. (No mention of whether the students themselves are failing their futures.)
2. No one has come up with a better idea. This, according to the leader of the Ontariario NDP (Notquite Deceased Party), Howard Hambone.
3. A high school girl interviewed on the radio said that calling this proposed school "segregated" was offensive. Let's not forget that it's the Afro-Centrist Cultural Community that's asking for it. And further, we can all agree that the theory and the policy are not "segregationist" OK? But the practical effect will almost certainly be such.
   

Something I forgot to mention in the original post: If we think the system is inadequate, or the Afro-Centrist Cultural Community thinks their needs are being somehow neglected, what will be said if this idea doesn't work? I'll tell you. It will be said that the financial and educational needs of the Afro-Centric school were neglected. They didn't get the resources they needed. They were failed by the Hawgtown School Board.
There is a major public debate going on in Hawgtown these days about the proposed establishment of what is being called an "Afro-Centric" school. In other words, a school mostly for black students with a curriculum that would be slanted towards the Afro-Cultural slice of the Canajun multi-cultural mosaic, but still fulfilling the curriculum requirements of good old Ontariario.

Why has this issue come up? Because it seems the Afro-Cultural youths are not responding well to typical Canajun educational practices. They feel alienated. So they join gangs and collect guns and randomly shoot the innocent. They hang out in housing projects and terrorize the neighbours, also predominantly Afro-Cultural. So they need their own school to tell them where they came from. The current party line on the school is that it wouldn't be exclusively black. Whites, Asians, Indians, etc. would not be barred from attending this school. That's the theory, anyway. But we all know that the point of a theory is to disprove it. And it sounds to me like what is being suggested amounts to a segregated school, for all practical purposes.

What's surprising to me is that most of the push for this school is coming from some (but not all) members of the Afro-Canajun community. Far be it from me to hold up the US as a shining example, eh? But I seem to remember something about a US Supreme Court decision way back in 1954 called Brown v. The Board of Education (of Topeka, Kansas) which reversed the earlier policy of many many states to operate legally-mandated segregated schools. Part of the argument in that case revolved around whether official segregation was just a way of ensuring that blacks received inferior education.

Here in Canada, apparently it's the other way around. Here we are, Alice Through the Looking Glass. I guess it's only appropriate that we would mirror the US, in reverse. It's our way of asserting independence from the behemoth to the south. It's the obstreperous Canajun way.

But I have a question: What the hell does "Afro-Centric" mean in the context of Canada? In Hawgtown, where the debate is raging, there must be black students from every country on Earth that has black people. So they all came from Africa originally? OK. But my guess is that most of the Hawgtown black students actually came from Jamaica or Trinidad or one of the other Caribbean islands. Or were born of parents who did. Do they identify as Afro-Canadians? Not bloody likely! Yes, there are lots of Somalis, Kenyans, Nigerians la la la. Or children of them. But the diversity of the black population precludes any exclusive identification of "Afro-Centricity". So what are they going to be taught?

I don't know. It just seems to me that this is an idea that has went fifty years ago.

(I should say, by way of clarification scarification darification sparification, that the Yoni School where I am currently deposited is fully integrated desecrated desiccated cheesegrated. The only criterion we all meet for sure is that we are Wayward Poets. Everything else is gravy wavy navy knavey.)

Iran & World War Three? Pt.II

I hope the NY Times don't mind. I'm including this image of its front page from Nov. 15, 1969:

As you can see, on this day 38 years ago a quarter of a million people gathered in Washington to protest against the Vietnam war.

Oh, how times have changed!

Now, I ask myself, what's the difference between then and now.

I come up with really only one answer: fear.

The quarter-million Murricans (and many others) of 1969 feared neither the Vietnamese nor the Communists nor their own government. Such is not the case today. Murricans now fear Muslims (and that's a whole lot of the world's population these days) whether they live in Afghanistan or Saudi Arabia. They fear Mexicans. They fear their own government.

It's possible that this is not simply paranoia, I admit. Sometimes fear is the "rational" response. But if you allow the fear to rule you, then the logical consequences of that response become irrational.

There is some reason to fear the government. The Bush administration has made a concerted effort to feed that fear, to restrict the rights of US citizens (all in the name of security...and is there any as a result?...) I think most westerners (and that includes the Murricans) believe that they live in freedom. Life, liberty, and the pursuit of happiness. Most, gazing off into the distance of the Middle East or Africa or China, don't recognize the repression in front of their noses.

Of course there is government repression in the US. In western Europe. In Canada. We may admit that it is relatively milder than so-called dictatorships in other regions, but it is repression nevertheless. Just ask those who do attempt to protest or demonstrate their opposition to unwarranted or unrepresentative government actions. Ask the people who protest against the Security and Prosperity Partnership right here in North America. (And some of these people are not even saying "Don't do it!" They're just saying, "Tell us what the hell's going on, tell us what your plans are!" Is this not anti-democratic? Is this not repression?)

The usual response to demonstrations and protests in the West is not so far different from what has outraged us recently in both Burma and Pakistan. The police (let's call them "security forces" as the media like to do for other countries) let it go on for a while (as long as it's not too rowdy) and then at some point determine that things must be shut down...for security. If anyone objects to being shut down, they are pepper-sprayed, tasered, arrested, beaten, charged and convicted. But of course, that's OK, because they're our police. They're not those brutal riot gangs in Rangoon.

A few years ago, former Premier Mike Harass of Ontariario put up barricades outside the Legislature. He didn't like the idea of people protesting there. At the figurative House of the People! He essentially instigated riots by trying to suppress the voice of the citizens of Ontariario. I had a hard time convincing some of my friends that the sight of police on horseback with riot sticks in front of our Legislature was something to be alarmed about...that the state was committing violence against its own citizens.

The people of 1969 may have been hippies and so-called radicals. But there is no doubt they had courage. They pushed back against a regime that did not seem to have their best interests at heart. Of course, many of those people are still around. But I wonder, have some of them become the people who need to be pushed back against?

As for the rest of us, I fear too. I fear that we have become hypnotized by technology, by media, by bland repetition of the Big Lie, by trivial pursuits, the latest iPod, the latest iPhone, the latest XBox, the latest celebrity scandal, the latest Hummer. And I lament. I lament that we have been cowed by fear. By complacency. By surveillance. By corporate power. By government power.

And I dread. That we have become sheeplike in our acceptance of authority.

Norman Mailer

January 31, 1923 - November 10, 2007

I've been reading Norman Mailer since I was a teenager. Since, according to my Blogger profile, I'm over 200 years old, that's a long time. The first book of his that I read was his first book, The Naked and the Dead. His war novel. Everybody needed a war novel in those days. I don't remember much about it, but it must have been good enough for me to want to read more.

When I heard that he died, I did a quick inventory of the books that I've read. Not all of them, by any means, nor even the majority of his output, but enough to get a good sense of what kind of writer he was. The Naked and the Dead. Armies of the Night. Of a Fire on the Moon (a curiously self-absorbed account of the moon landing). The Executioner's Song (a masterpiece of detailed journalism). Ancient Evenings. Tough Guys Don't Dance. Portrait of Picasso As A Young Man.

Mailer is probably better known for his non-fiction than his fiction. But one of the best books I ever read by anybody was Ancient Evenings, a long, rich story of ancient Egypt and a man who, through several reincarnations was general to Pharaohs and many other things. Fabulous writing.

I speak not about his private life -- much of which was public -- nor his persona, nor his image. His writing ranks with the best that the USA has produced.

Jack Kerouac: On the Road 50th Anniversary

What encouraged you to use the “spontaneous” style of On the Road?

“I got the idea for the spontaneous style of On the Road from seeing how good old Neal Cassady wrote his letters to me, all first person, fast, mad, confessional, completely serious, all detailed, with real names in his case however (being letters). I remembered also Goethe's admonition, well Goethe's prophecy that the future literature of the West would be confessional in nature; also Dostoevsky prophesied as much and might have started in on that if he'd lived long enough to do his projected master-work, The Great Sinner. Cassady also began his early youthful writing with attempts at slow, painstaking and-all-that-crap craft business, but got sick of it. The letter was 40,000 words long, mind you, a whole short novel. It was the greatest piece of writing I ever saw, better'n anybody in America, or at least enough to make Melville, Twain, Dreiser, Wolfe, spin in their graves. Allen Ginsberg asked me to lend him this vast letter so he could read it. He read it, then loaned it to a guy called Gerd Stern who lived on a houseboat in Sausalito California, in 1955, and this fellow lost the letter: overboard I presume. Neal and I called it, for convenience, the Joan Anderson Letter...all about a Christmas weekend in the pool halls, hotel rooms and jails of Denver, with hilarious events throughout and tragic too."

“The Art of Fiction XLI: Jack Kerouac”

The Paris Review, No. 43, Summer 1968

Kerouac is still one of my all-time favourite writers. But I can't seem to define what it is about him...a certain nostalgia that he developed in later years, his Roman Catholic Buddhism, his devil-may-care alcoholism. His poetry. His evocation of the crazy heart of America. His style. His Beat-ness.

I think the jury is still out on Kerouac, and the rest of the Beats, for that matter, including Ginsberg. But you'll notice that although there isn't a great mass of fellow travellers like, for instance, with the latest Stephen King tome, Kerouac has never drifted far from the consciousness of American (and world) readers. There's an ebb and flow, but Kerouac's presence is constant.

Update on Gettysburg

I was listening to a documentary on Mothercorp the other day about the assassination of Lincoln and it reminded me of my post about Gettysburg earlier this month.

I learned something I didn't know. Here it is: Washington DC is surrounded on three sides by Maryland, which is south of the Mason-Dixon Line, and on the fourth side by Virginia which joined the Confederacy. If Maryland had joined the Confederacy too, it would have meant that the capital of the United States was entirely surrounded by the enemy. And Maryland was by no means undivided in its support of the Union. So what did Lincoln do? He declared martial law in Maryland. To prevent the possibility of secession. There is still controversy over this, I think.

As a matter of fact, Lincoln carried out several radical actions within months of his inauguration. Indeed, the beginning of his term coincided with the dissolution of the Union and the start of the Civil War.

Here's a partial timeline:

November 6, 1860: · Lincoln elected 16th President of the United States

December 20, 1860: · South Carolina becomes first state to secede from the Union

February 9, 1861: · Confederate States of America formed in Montgomery, Alabama

March 4, 1861: · Lincoln inaugurated in Washington, delivers First Inaugural Address

March 29, 1861: · Orders reinforcements sent to Fort Sumter

April 12, 1861: · Confederate forces open fire on Fort Sumter, beginning Civil War
April 17, 1861: · Virginia secedes from the Union
April 18, 1861: · Lincoln invites Robert E. Lee to head Union armies; Lee declines and resigns post (Now here's an indication of how volatile things were. Lincoln asks Lee to head the Union forces...Lee who is about to become the most famous Confederate General!)

April 27, 1861: · Suspends writ of habeas corpus (!!! Oh, those Republicans, eh?)

May 10, 1861: · Declares martial law in Maryland

There was a great deal of outrage in Maryland over this action which many considered unconstitutional. Don't forget that a primary cause of the Civil War was the dispute over states' rights. And John Wilkes Booth came from a well-established (although not solidly pro-Confederate) Maryland family.

Suspending habeas corpus? Declaring martial law? Suddenly it's less of a mystery why Booth shouted the motto of the state of Virginia after he shot Lincoln: Sic semper tyrannis. Thus always to tyrants!

Born on the Fourth of July

From a New York Times editorial published today:

Ideas have a way of recommending themselves by the behavior of the men and women who hold them, and this is no less true of nations. The question isn’t simply whether we can project our ideal of freedom around the world. The question is whether, by who we are and how we behave, we can make the freedom that animates us compelling to others.

Gettysburg

On July 3, 1863, the Civil War Battle of Gettysburg in Pennsylvania ended after three days in a major victory for the North as Confederate troops retreated.

Believe it or not, I've always been fascinated by the US Civil War. As a kid I always cheered for the underdog in that war, ie. the Confederate Army. Even tho, up here in Canada, we were given to understand that it was the North that was on the side of the angels, being against slavery and all. Not quite sure why I was enamoured of the Rebs. Except that I liked their uniforms better (when they had uniforms...) And I liked their flag better, and even bought a big one on my first trip to Tennessee. Also, perhaps, because they were rebels...given my personal history of resistance to authority...always the one who wants to know why.

It took many years to realize that the Civil War was more than just about slavery. It was about a rural South and an industrial North. It was about land versus capital. It was about States' rights. In a way it was a war about people's right to self-determination. The South wanted to go its own way. The North didn't want to let that happen. There is a certain irony in holding a war over self-determination on behalf of a territory that condones slavery, but be that as it may.

In spite of my fascination with the Civil War, I'm certainly no expert on it. All I know is, it resolved the issue of secession, and slavery...sort of...

To this point, this post has been rather frivolous, so in remembrance of Gettysburg, I must redeem it somehow. So, first of all, I include this actual photo of the day of the Gettysburg Address, the only known photo of Lincoln on that day, which you can find here:


And here is the text of what he said. I'm sure our Murrican friends have heard this hundreds of times, but it certainly bears repeating, especially since tomorrow is Independence Day:

****

Fourscore and seven years ago our fathers brought forth on this continent a new nation, conceived in liberty and dedicated to the proposition that all men are created equal.

Now we are engaged in a great civil war, testing whether that nation or any nation so conceived and so dedicated can long endure. We are met on a great battlefield of that war. We have come to dedicate a portion of that field as a final resting-place for those who here gave their lives that that nation might live. It is altogether fitting and proper that we should do this.

But, in a larger sense, we cannot dedicate, we cannot consecrate, we cannot hallow this ground. The brave men, living and dead who struggled here have consecrated it far above our poor power to add or detract. The world will little note nor long remember what we say here, but it can never forget what they did here. It is for us the living rather to be dedicated here to the unfinished work which they who fought here have thus far so nobly advanced. It is rather for us to be here dedicated to the great task remaining before us -- that from these honored dead we take increased devotion to that cause for which they gave the last full measure of devotion -- that we here highly resolve that these dead shall not have died in vain, that this nation under God shall have a new birth of freedom, and that government of the people, by the people, for the people shall not perish from the earth.

****

Not too shabby. You can find audio versions of the speech at American Rhetoric.

A Quarter for Your (Paranoid) Thoughts

Really, this is too much!

AP reported yesterday that some visiting US Army contractors spotted an outlandish coin while travelling in Canada, and they considered it to be so suspicious that they filed espionage reports about it.

The suspicious coin turned out to be the one shown here, the famous (only in Canada, you say?) "Poppy" quarter, the first colourized coin in the world.

It caused quite a sensation (only in Canada, you say?) when it was issued in 2004, because the government chose TimHo's to be the main distributor of the coin...proving once again that Canajuns really are all TimHoes.

I don't like to be too critical but sometimes you just have to shake your head. We Canajuns are often astounded at the appalling ignorance of our Murrican neighbours to the south. You know, the home of Mom, apple pie and a Commie under every bed.

Especially if it's a Canajun bed. (Didn't some Yanqui senator call us the Republic of Canuckistan or something like that? Clever enough, and lots of Canajuns got a laugh out of it, but it was deliberately inflammatory. But never mind, quite a few loose-mouthed Canajuns are also guilty of that form of idiocy with regard to our Friendly Giant neighbours.)

The poppy is the symbol (only in Canada, you say?) of war remembrance and it is inspired by this pome, written by a Canajun, and proclaimed by the Arlington National Cemetery as "one of the most memorable war poems ever written". Arlington National Cemetery is, I believe, one of the better-known institutions in...where was that, now?...oh yeah, the Excited States of Murrica. (So that must mean that not all Murricans are appallingly ignorant, praise the Lord! and pass the ammunition...)

In Flanders Fields
By: Lieutenant Colonel John McCrae, MD (1872-1918)
Canadian Army

IN FLANDERS FIELDS the poppies blow
Between the crosses row on row,
That mark our place; and in the sky
The larks, still bravely singing, fly
Scarce heard amid the guns below.

We are the Dead. Short days ago
We lived, felt dawn, saw sunset glow,
Loved and were loved, and now we lie
In Flanders fields.

Take up our quarrel with the foe:
To you from failing hands we throw
The torch; be yours to hold it high.
If ye break faith with us who die
We shall not sleep, though poppies grow
In Flanders fields.

Now, I don't expect the average Murrican to know this pome was written by a Canajun, or to know the pome at all, for that matter. It's a Canajun institution, for sure, and most Canajuns don't know all the words. But neither do I expect Murricans to come to Canada and proclaim, "Hmm, that's a mighty suspicious pome! We better test it to make sure it ain't gonna blow up!"

Which is what the US Army contractors did. (Or, rather, the Defense Security Service.) They suspected nano-technology! I suspect that nano-technology represents the size of the intellects involved.

What I want to know is: What the hell are US Army contractors doing in Canada anyway? I thought the war was somewhere else. What? Were these maybe a coupla Blackwater Boys on vacation in Niagara Falls, spending the combat pay they earned protecting VIPs in Baghdad? One of them buys a pack of gum and gets the quarter in his change? And, we Canajuns being so friendly (he wasn't being shot at by desperate Iraqis), he didn't realize he was in a furrin country where the money might be different?

And then, to compound the stupidity (and the arrogance) they label this coin a secret weapon that was somehow planted on them. In Canada. Which is the country that has had the longest-standing friendship with the US and is, in fact, an ally in that other adventure in Afghanistan. I ask you, should we be surprised when the US gets a bad reputation around the world? A nation that has considerable difficulty distinguishing between true friends and enemies.

Then again, maybe it was just four guys from Detroit on a weekend jaunt to the casino in Windsor who decided to play a practical joke on the Defense Department, just to see how far it would go...

Should Virginia Tech Have Been Locked Down Sooner?

My answer to that is No. And here's the reason why:

All over the airwaves today, people have been questioning the decision of the police and the university administration not to lock down the school immediately after the first two murders. Now far be it from me to defend the police, locked up as I am here in the Yoni School for Wayward Poets, for I am a child of resistance to authority, an inveterate Naysayer. "No" is the most common word in my vocabulary. But this second-guessing so soon after the event is really too much.

A little common sense tells you to look at the timeline. The first shootings took place around 7:15am. The second wave occurred just after 9:00am. So there was a space of about 2 hours. The police arrived at the first scene fairly quickly, I believe, and secured that building. Other law enforcement agencies -- the FBI, the state police -- would have been informed, I presume. But in two hours, it's only logical that the investigation -- and all of the detail that involves -- would really only have just begun. Think of it: securing the building, identifying the crime scene and securing that, looking for witnesses, canvassing the building, who knows what-all. And up to that point, as far as anyone could tell, they were looking at a double homicide. Not some lunatic who was preparing to gun down another 50 or so.

Think of how much you accomplish in 2 hours on any given day. With tasks not nearly as complex as a murder scene. And then tell me that they should have foreseen what would happen next...

The only other possible solution would be to shut down everything every time there's a murder just in case he/she decides to strike again. Which is silly. And you know people would find fault with that too.

So I say, cut 'em some slack.

And So It Goes

Kurt Vonnegut
November 11, 1922-April 11, 2007

Say It With Pictures

IM BUSH

DON'T EN HIM

(Tag As: Gratuitous Political Statement by Know-Nothing Canajun/Alien Observer)

Really, I don't know whether Bush should be impeached. The evidence is not really all in, is it? But lies to Congress would qualify as grounds, wouldn't they?

I do believe neither we outsiders/ostensible allies/friends nor the Murrican people should continue enappling his behaviour, though. Nobody likes to be called an enappler.

Polka Music & International Women's Day

Today is International Women's Day, so in celebration of that I've chosen the chorus from a song by Eddie Blazonczyk & the Versatones, America's #1 Polka Band and a past Grammy winner:

Girls girls girls
They're all made to love
Made to kiss and hug
And take advantage of

Girls girls girls
All have one goal in life
To get some single fella
And become his wife

OK, OK, I see the women gathering outside the door with torches, pikes & staffs (staves?)...I think I even see a short rope somewhere there in the petticoats.

Please, the inclusion of this excerpt is...satirical...or ironic...or abashed...pick one. The thing is, it's hard to tell whether Eddie & the Boys are serious or not. I don't know when this song was first released. I think it's from the era of Yellow Polka Dot Bikini, or maybe a little later...anyway, long before there was an International Women's Day, or political correctness, or any concept of intelligent life among the members of the female persuasion, apparently.

Now I like polka music. Not as much as HWSRN who, after all, plays the accordion fer godsake, in a polka band. He's the one who brings me this stuff. He barges into my cell with his latest vinyl discovery and hollers over his big puffy headphones, "Hey Larry! Hey Larry! Hey Larry! Ya gotta hear this!"

And I dutifully listen, because I can't afford to cause a disturbance on the range, or Nurse Ratchet will sedate me and force me to listen to New Age drones until I agree to give her a pedicure...which I wouldn't mind so much except she has six toes on her left foot, one of which speaks in tongues.

But where was I? Oh yes, I do like polka music. But it suffers from one flaw. Its subject matter tends to be a little antedeluvian. They say Polka People Are Happy People. And it's true. Polka music is happy, bouncy music. (Literally bouncy, if you closely observe the Polish women...) But that limits the thematic range of the lyrics. They tend to be about beer, women, dancing and...polka music.

Can you imagine trying to write a polka protest song? I can't, but HWSRN can becuz he's tried. Anyway, polkas tend to be happy. Waltzes, on the other hand veer towards corn syrup. Many of the Polish waltzes are about yo' mama. Only obereks seem to have the potential for social commentary because, even tho they're in three-four time like a waltz, they have more drive and more energy.

I believe Eddie's retired now. The gout got him and his son took over the band. I don't know whether they were/are the #1 band, but they certainly were one of the best in all of the USA. But even so, you see the unfortunate results above. It's sort of in the polka blood. That's one of the more egregious examples, but others a little less sore thumbish are plentiful.

So my suggestion for women on International Women's Day is to forget about feminism, glass ceilings, wage equality and all that stuff. Concentrate on polka music and how to transform it into a powerful tool of gender equality. Bonne chance!

Spooky Ads by Google

OK, Google ads are getting really spooky. Here I am, reading William F. Buckley's reminiscence and offhand obit of Arthur Schlesinger...in National Review fer heaven's sake...and what appears beside it in a Google ad?

This:

Vote Andrew KEYES

Oak Ridges-Markham
Conservative
Time to WIN in Oak Ridges-Markham

Oak Ridges-Markham!? Bill Buckley's never heard of Oak Ridges-Markham. I've barely heard of Oak Ridges-Markham, except that I've fallen off the Oak Ridges moraine and marked time in Markham.

But my point is this: National Review is sooo Murrican. And conservative. But I'm Canajun. And I happen to be ensconced, oh, not too far away from Oak Ridges-Markham. So Larry gets the political ad closest to his oh-so-not-conservative heart. (Andrew Keyes is a member of the Constipated Party...)

Be advised, this post with link included is not an endorsement. And there's not even an election yet! Keyes is only seeking the nomination for the federal riding! He's not even the candidate yet! He's advertising (with Google) for the nomination!

My point: (yes there is a point)(actually two):

1. Google is zeroing in on us, refining its abilities to pinpoint the location of our innermost secrets, plumbing the vast undercurrents of our political desires, our consumerist fetishes and our emotional vulnerabilities.
   
2. Andrew Keyes is definitely overzealous.

Yoni School (US) Election Watch Pt. 6

Is Al Gore in Favour of the Draft?

I can't remember whether I wrote about this before. Maybe I did. But there's a strong movement going on among US Democrats to draft Al Gore. He's riding pretty high since the release of An Inconvenient Truth. That movie is nominated for an Oscar. And Gore himself has been nominated for the Nobel Peace Prize! (I'm not quite sure how an environmental campaign qualifies as contributing to world peace, at least not in the specific sense, but there you go.)

The Democrats For Gore have an online petition, presumably to convince Gore that there's lots of support out there, just waiting for him to commit. I think you have to be Murrican to sign it, though.

It's not just the Yanks who are now slobbering over Gore. (In fact, the Yanks may not be slobbering over him at all...that remains to be seen...) It just so happens that Gore is doing his Inconvenient Truth slide show at the University of Hawgtown tonight. I heard that tickets (at $20 per) sold out within minutes and as of earlier today, scalpers were asking $400! Oh, if only those were campaign contributions!

I'm tellin' ya, somethin's gonna happen yet! Clinton and Obama watch out! Gore may just sneak up the middle.

Meanwhile, in a matter only tangentially related, today is the anniversary of the assassination of Malcolm X in 1965. (And, ironically enough, of the publication of The Communist Manifesto in 1848.) The Mothercorp radio program The Current today interviewed Austin Clarke, the Barbados-born Canadian novelist and winner of the Giller Prize in 2002. Clarke actually interviewed Malcolm X in 1963 for the Mothercorp, and then spent a day with him just a few months before he was killed. He had some interesting things to say about that period of Murrican history, about Harlem in those days, and about Malcolm's career as a civil rights leader.

Eventually, though, the interview with Clarke moved around to developments in the US election race...Hillary Clinton and Barack Obama. It was here that he made a most astonishing statement: that he would not be surprised if Obama were assassinated!

He said this quite straightforwardly, without much preamble. It was stunning...and it went by so quickly it could easily have been missed.

But what a thing to say! Here the US is poised, potentially, at a supremely historic moment: the possibility of electing either a woman as president for the first time, or a black man for the first time. That the possibility even arises is a profound statement about the evolution of Murrican society. But Clarke is suggesting that the US is not quite ready for such radical choices, that atavistic tendencies will resurface, and that by default one of these choices will have to be eliminated (with extreme prejudice, as they say.) What a statement to make on the anniversary of an historic assassination, one of a series in an era of disastrous political killings.

15 Textbook disclaimer stickers

Wording for the first disclaimer is taken verbatim from the sticker designed by the Cobb County School District ("A community with a passion for learning") in Georgia. The other 14 demonstrate the real meaning of a scientific "theory" as well as the true motivations of the School Board members and their creationist supporters....

I discovered this while cruising Digg, which I've only just signed up for, as if I have the time for this. You have to click below to see the article/page.

(This post was sent directly from Digg, which is interesting, because so far they're the only external site that seems to be able to post directly to the blog. (Except for Googledocs, which, of course, doesn't seem to be able to include a title...)

(But then, Digg didn't include my line spacing. I had to come back and edit it.)

read more | digg story

Yoni School (US) Election Watch Pt. 5

Oh m'Gawd, the Murricans have created another Franken Stein. The BBC is reporting that Al Franken, formerly of Saturday Night Live, author of Lies and the Lying Liars Who Tell Them, and currently (until today) hosting his own left-leaning radio show, has announced that he will run for the US Senate in Minnesota.

My first question is this: Why am I reading this on BBC? You'd think that would be at the top of some Murrican press feed...AP? Reuters? Fox? Ok, not Fox.

My second question is this: What next? Or in current blog shorthand, WTF? A comedian in the Senate?

Well, why not? Don't forget the actor who was Governor of California. What was his name again? Schwarzenegger? Oh, you mean Reagan! Right, see what I mean? The actor who would be President of These Yer Yoonited States. Reagan. Schwarzenegger. (Except Arnold can't be, but would be if he could.)

Then there's the lying liar and his lying lies currently ovalling the office. Or, as Michael Moore puts it, "Hey! Where's my country, dude?"

The US has had a peanut farmer. A slave-owner. A vacuum cleaner salesman. What's so strange about a comedian in the Senate? Especially since he's a bit off-centre. I mean left-of-centre. (All us godless liberals ((read: closet commies)) gotta cheer for the lefty comedian, even tho in the photo above he's right of centre.

And Minnesota...well! Let us not forget that it was Minnesota that elected Jesse Ventura governor! And then gave him the highest approval rating of any Minnesota governor in history. (All I can say about Ventura, since I don't know any better and can't keep my mouth shut, is: As a governor he made one helluva wrestler.) My favourite story about Jesse Ventura is that when he had a private meeting with the Dalai Lama, he made sure he asked him what his favourite movie was.

Truth to tell, politics could use more comedians. Imagine Franken, Jon Stewart, George Carlin, Chris Rock and Bill Maher all in the Senate. Imagine Dick Gregory and Lenny Bruce in the Senate! Now that would make C-Span worth watching!