politics are sport.

the more time i spend (waste) perusing the political blogosphere, the more strongly i feel that politics are, in the end, little more than sport. or, at the very least, my interest in politics amounts to nothing much different than the average person's interest in sports.

i think it's pretty hilarious to watch a bunch of corporate shills whack at each other in terms of policy and morality. i mean, the right wing is a joke; they're obviously just playing for the benefit of any number of diverse corporations and profits. and for some reason, they think that there exists a sort of natural association between profit-hungry corporations and hatemongering religious fanatics. now take note, that whole sentence there was hyperbole. there's no backroom conspiracy featuring james dobson and the halliburton oil board of directors. it's a bunch of hawkish idiot corporate types who think they're achieving their ends by stringing along a bunch of hawkish idiot evangelical types who think they're achieving their ends by stringing along a bunch of hawkish idiot corporate types. to think that there's any kind of well-thought-out cabal of power-mad villains is to grant these people a hell of a lot more credit than they deserve. i mean, if there was a focused, determined cabal, maybe i'd be more supportive of the right wing. cabals are probably a tricky business, i bet there'd be some intelligent types involved there.

but there's no focus, no rhyme nor reason, they're just a bunch of fools. conservativism makes sense in a lot of ways, but modern conservatives are like the three stooges of politics, and the citizenry is the one that keeps getting poked in the eye. if i was an american liberal, i'd say "go for it, guys!" and get the hell out of dodge as soon as possible, laughing all the way. because everyone's laughing at your country, folks. aside from a bunch of islamic idiots, who are even stupider than republicans for taking them seriously, we all know that all the republican party is doing is digging a big ol' grave for themselves and america. and since i'm a canadian social democrat, i can sit here laughing at stephen harper's belligerent fuming, and digging the gains that the NDP are inevitably going to make in our next election. because canadians are creeped out by you, stephen, and even if they elect you, you're not going to be able to do half the shit you'd like to do. and once you're elected, you're going to prove what a shitty person you are, what a shitty party you have, and we'll all go back to voting liberal.

not that the left wing establishment is a hell of a lot better, of course. a 'liberal' prime minister should not, in my books, be the head of a massive corporate empire. he's just as much of a corporate shill as harper; his only saving grace is that he arbitrarily chose to ally himself with people who don't want to dictate their morality to others via the law. and please tell me i'm not the only one who doesn't give even half a shit about the sponsorship scandal? the only reason it even exists as a scandal is because the canadian media are so friggen desperate for something canadian to sensationalize and blow way out of proprotion.

the ndp, for all their failings (remember bob rae?), are a decent party, and they've got my vote anytime an election comes around. things i like about them:

- jack layton (doesn't own a car, is married to someone ethnic, has a bitchin' mustache)
- socially-minded policy (rehabilitation vs. punishment, improved social programs, workers' rights, etc.)
- support legalization of marijuana
- biased against corporations (i think anti-corporate bias is like 'liberal bias' in the media. it's less a 'bias' in the traditional sense than a 'truth bias.' yeah, maybe (VERY maybe) the news media writes alot of things that reflect negatively on conservatives. why is this a bias, and not simply the result of what we academics tend to call 'accuracy'?)

but in the end, it's all just a game. all the hot-button issues don't matter to me, personally, in the least. same-sex marriage; i'm not gay, and even if i was, i wouldn't be one of those faux-hetero queers who just wants to be domestic like mom and dad. sponsorship scandal; already said, i don't care - i'd rather they didn't waste my money, but hey, at least that wasted money can't be spent on say, the military. and i'm having trouble thinking of any other issues. i guess that's why politics are a game to me, because canadian politics are so low-stakes.

i'd love to see a better world for everyone, but my world is just fine as it is, so i've got no reason to bitch. i wish marijuana was legal, but i don't have any trouble buying and smoking it, so i can't say i really care. i wish any number of different laws were reformed, but i don't have any trouble flaunting the ones i don't like, so again - don't really care. in the end i guess, armchair politics are a way for people to feel important, like they're part of something. just like sports fandom, i suppose. but no matter what the political, social, or legal environment, you're going to carve out your little life however you choose to live it, so i think that you may as well get over it.

c'est tout.

music nerdery, part two

so, i just finished listening to the new white stripes album, get behind me satan, and had some thoughts, pursuant to cam's wonderful post about weezer. because the stripes are a particularly interesting counterpoint to weezer. where weezer spends years cranking out tune after tune after tune, and rivers discards 90% of them as inadequate, the stripes spend a week in the studio cranking out an album. in essence, i think weezer represents the craft of songwriting, whilst the stripes represent the soul of songwriting.

the difference between the two groups, i think, is exemplified by the differences in guitar style on the part of rivers and jack. anyone who's seen both groups live will know what i mean. rivers' guitar is always under his thumb. his distortion is measured, his chord progressions are spot-on, and his rhythms are always perfect. when one of his band members fucks up, he notices immediately (and sometimes bitches at them). he is the eminent craftsman of pop - he knows exactly what he wants his songs to sound like, and his band is a tool to make them sound that way. with jack, though, it seems more like his songs know exactly what they want to sound like, and jack is the tool by which they make themselves sound that way. it seems less like he's in control of his guitar than he's desperately trying to keep it in line. if rivers' guitar is a well-trained, well-groomed puppy, jack's is a timber wolf that hasn't eaten in a week.

and from those two contrasting approaches, you have the groups' comparative strengths and weaknesses. weezer can create a perfect, incredible, and unforgettably singable pop song like buddy holly. but they can also create an entirely forgettable piece of kitsch like the green album. for all of its pop perfection, to me it was worth a listen or two then a permanent spot on the shelf. the difference, i suppose, is that the blue album and pinkerton were balanced between soul and craft; that for all of the intricacy with which the arrangements were worked out, there was still a ton of spirit behind it; a spirit of longing, of loss, and of heartbreak. and since the whole pinkerton debacle, now there's more or less just the craft. it's pretty for what it is, but ultimately forgettable. it's not that i don't like the new weezer albums, or don't think that they're good pieces of music... it's more that they just don't have any spirit in them that drives me to pick them back up off the shelf and actually listen to them more than once or twice.

the opposite is true with the white stripes. they can create a song that's both powerful and poppy, like dead leaves, or any of their other singles. but at the same time, their album tracks are sometimes unpredictable, and sometimes nearly unlistenable. the second song on the new album, for example (the name of which eludes me at the moment), has a ton of soul, but, to be honest, it sounds like shit. it had an interesting vibraphone part, supplemented by some nice pianos, but then every once in a while it featured some random and completely inappropriate amplified guitar hits, that didn't belong in the song at all. it's like jack temporarily lost control of the beast that speaks through his guitar. while weezer stays on the shelf because they're poppy to the point of kitsch, when the stripes stay on the shelf it's because they're all raw energy, and no polish. i'd say, on the whole, the stripes are better these days at striking a balance between the craft and the soul of songwriting. but when they err, they always err on the side of soul. which for me, is a lot more appealing than the side of craft ... craft without soul is merely kitsch.

so, there's my thoughts. check out the new stripes album, it's available on torrentspy and it's certainly worth a listen. it's quite a departure from their previous albums. and has anyone else noticed that blue orchid (the single) sounds almost exactly like the eagles of death metal, and nothing like the rest of the album? weird.

c'est tout.

musings.

from this month's harper's index.

percentage of U.S. high school students who believe news stories should require "government approval" before publication: 36

percentage of americans who say Bush is a "uniter": 49
percentage of americans who say Bush is a "divider": 49

americans: what's wrong with your damn country, guys? how can half of it lay with its mouth open underneath a fat old cow's ass, while the other half sees, to a greater or lesser extent, the truth? maybe they're not all the way there, but at least that half knows to get the fuck out from under the cow's asshole.

and maybe take a look at who's feeding the cow.

(how's that for an analogy sticking around past its time?)

only an absolutely confident person can succeed in the world of today. only an idiot could be absolutely confident. what does that say about the world of today? people in power need to stop questioning each other so much and question themselves a bit more.

the war on sand nig.... uhh, terror

so i've been frittering away my eight-hour workdays largely by surveying the blogging scene, particularly when it comes to politics. i especially like daily kos, for its quasi-antipartisanism. any number of other assorted dem-type blogs are certainly worthwhile, like myDD and the Agonist, though kos is my favourite, if only for the sheer volume of stuff that gets posted everyday. there's always something new to look at, at least.

but one thing that's starting to piss me off quite a bit is how often the stupid, inane phrase "war on terror" gets thrown around by both sides of the debate in american politics. the democrat vs. republican debate essentially precludes any sort of free critical thought. the GOP shouts, "you bleeding-heart liberal faggots, you don't give a shit about the war on terror!" and the dems shout back, "yeah, well you're just pursuing the war on terror to support halliburton oil and you don't give a shit about real terrorism!" so instead of any kind of reasoned debate about terrorism, its roots, its spirit, and even its existence, we get impassioned name-calling about who's fighting it better.

to start, the very idea of a "war on terror" is a complete and utter misnomer. terrorism, we can see by its rather obvious name, has the goal of promoting, (you guessed it) terror. thus a 'war on terror' would, one might hope, have the goal of preventing ... guess ... terror! hot damn, we're getting somewhere. but wait. what does tom ridge's homeland security color-level bullshit do? oh, fuck, looks like it promotes terror! how about channel 7 action news spewing bullshit about the latest cooked-up CIA intelligence and WHY YOU SHOULD BE SCARED SHITLESS RIGHT NOW! how are they contributing to the war on terror? by terrifying their audience! how does every damn thing that the government does in the war on terror affect society? by increasing the level of terror amongst the populace. wow, what useful contributions. it's like the DEA trying to win a war on drugs by sniffing them all up themselves. (not to say that the DEA doesn't do that already, of course.)

one of the most interesting bits of thought that i've come across recently was in a BBC documentary about terrorism that i saw on the fifth estate a while back. essentially it proposed that al-qaeda and the idea of a worldwide terrorist network is a myth, nothing more than a useful fiction. osama bin laden may well be a convenient figurehead, kind of like the queen, or jesus, or george bush. but when it comes down to it, there's no tightly-woven network of international terrorists, there's just a bunch of pissed-off brown guys with a variety of bones to pick with america. and sure, the CIA says that there's tons of evidence supporting the existence of al-qaeda, but it's always easy to find evidence for what you already know is there. when you already "know" that a terrorist network exists, it's not hard to construct plausible explanations for its existence.

and it's a useful fiction for all of the parties involved. neither the republicans or the democrats want to challenge the conceptualization of al-qaeda, because hell, it gives them something to bitch at the opposition about, plus it gives them an excuse to tramp all over civil liberties and inflate the state apparatus like a big ugly deficit-laden balloon. neither the republicans nor the democrats have any interest in winning the war on terror, or even pursuing it, because the maintenance of a terror-stricken populace has become one of the pillars of the postmodern state. and the terrorists sure as hell aren't interested in debunking any myths which might spring up about them. can you picture osama releasing a newscast saying "you idiots, we're not a huge well-connected international organization, we're just a bunch of pissed-off retards with box cutters and a disregard for our own lives!" doesn't exactly strike fear into the hearts of the infidels, does it?

thus my irritation at the state of the political discourse, even in the blogosphere. markos at dailykos does a great job, and he's more than sufficiently distrustful of democratic establishment. but nevertheless, blogs on the left and right alike are a bit too fond of slinging memes at each other, and not quite fond enough of deconstructing the inaccurate and flawed structures of those memes themselves.

warm fuzzy.

i thought, since i bitch so much about my job, this would be a warm breath of fresh air, cos i just had one of the calls that i really don't mind getting at all. i'm gonna bet this is largely because i'm a little baked, and it's saturday night, and i'm almost done my shift... but anyways.

this guy calls, and all he wants to know is whether he was gonna be ok to drive his car, because the engine light came on, and he's off in the country, and it's night time and there's no place to get his car fixed. so, i tell him that so long as the light stays yellow, and the car drives okay, he'll be fine. (but if it goes red or the handling changes in any way, get it towed. that's like, sum total of my car knowledge right there.) and this guy, mr. richard belford of saskatchewan, is stoked, because he was driving in the middle of nowhere and thought that his saturday night was gonna get fucked over, and he was gonna crash his car up and all manner of bad things.

so for a few moments, all the luddite marxist crap about alienation and suchlike is forgotten. because me, pseudo-intellectual little stoner half a country away, was able to give some fellow human being a little bit of peace of mind. peace of mind that he could have found himself by opening his glove box and opening his owner's manual, but hey. peace is peace is peace.

c'est tout.

advertising, you say?

okay, i'm not really advertising. nobody paid me or anything. but seriously, buy something from neighborhoodies. they are awesome. just, spectacular. i ordered a sweater from them, and got it in like, eight days. and i'm in the mystical northlands that are canada, god knows it usually takes forever for stuff to come here from the states. they put whatever you want on various articles of clothing. love it.

i got a blue sweater with a little fragment of a line from a biggie song that sticks in my head. can't say enough good things about this site. they even included some pixie sticks in the box. i hope against hope that it's not something they just do all the time, and that in fact they picked up on the reference from the biggie song and were making a subtle reference of their own. but we shall never know, shall we?

in any case. go forth and purchase! or at least look at the site. every time that i put this sweater on i want to buy something else from them. ah, the miracles of the internet.

something that hurts to think about.

i'm entirely skeptical on the notion of god. maybe there is one, maybe there isn't. if anything, one thing that i'm sure about is that humans probably haven't gotten it right, when it comes to god, and what he, she, or it is.

but as i was sitting at work tonight, i was musing about evolution. and i think that evolution has to be true. i love the theory of evolution because of the really interesting things that it brings up about humanity and who we are. whether or not it's true in its entirety, it seems like the best possible alternative.

but evolution doesn't really work when you go really, really far back.

like, really far back.

sure, maybe bacteria evolved into multicellular organisms which evolved into blah blah blah which eventually became humans. i think there's plausible evidence to support this. which i'm too baked to get into. interesting site though.

and maybe the fact that those bacteria came into being has to do with the peculiar physics of atmospheres and objects in motion and all that crazy astrophysics stuff. light + heat + warmth + oxygen + water = life. whatever.

and maybe the fact that the planets and stars and everything came from a big ol' bang of matter, or who knows what. but in any case, what is there outside that?

is the universe everything? is it possible that there exists a 'thingness' beyond the physical universe? forget about why organic matter might have turned into life... why does matter itself exist? if there is indeed something beyond the universe as we (in a very limited way) know it, what could it be? or if there is not... well, i don't see how there could not be something. not in the slightest idea what it could be, but i feel like there has to be something. here's my quasi-logical proof. (i'm such a nerd.)

P1. anything that is oblivion, has no thing in it; a thing being matter of any sort.
P2. if beyond the universe is simply oblivion, then some thing would have had to come out of that oblivion to spawn said universe.
P3. the oblivion had, and could conceivably still have or have again something in it.
C1. thus, the oblivion could contain some thing.
C2. therefore it is not oblivion.

i'm sure that would be a really interesting proof to work out much more correctly than i did. i'm sure there's all kinds of abstract metatheory about infinite sets and their relation to empty sets and whatnot. i'd suppose that would be a proof that could not be worked out in predicate logic, since it involves an empty set, and no empty set can be specified in PL.

i'm a huge fucking nerd. like uber-dork to the max. love it. i read the hitchhikers' guide to the galaxy five times as a kid, and now i get baked and ponder the spawning of the universe.

on the tragic villain.

so in a fit of haute culture fetishism, i decided to download the latest remake of the merchant of venice yesterday and give it the ol' viddying whilst i was smoking joints all afternoon. i didn't have high hopes really, and to be honest i expected old will would bore me to tears and i'd be back playing halflife2 before shylock would even get close to his pound of flesh. i read the play in grade 10, i think it was, so it's not like i was entirely in suspense as to what would happen, but i was really pleasantly surprised by the execution.

the definite high point of the entire deal was pacino as shylock... one of the most perfect casting choices i can even imagine, really. think 16th-century scarface. and really pacino's playing of the role reminded me of no-one more than scarface, oddly enough. which made me think of the extremely underrated role of the tragic villain. i mean, no matter how many times we see scarface gun people down and snort up slopes of snow, we can't help but root for him. cos he's just doing what he can in a corrupt world, right?

which i think was one of the most interesting ways to handle the anti-Semitism of the original text. because shylock is one hell of a nasty jewish motherfucker... but what else does he have to do? pacino's interpretations of shylock's monologues really brought out the fact that shakespeare never really intended his play to be an anti-Semitic one. shylock gets screwed over, time and again ... his people are forced to live in a locked-up little ghetto guarded by christians, he has to wear a little red hat when he leaves the ghetto to show he's a jew ... he gets spat upon and mocked and on and on and on ... and yet he even seems sincere when he offers gentleman antonio a loan without interest, on pain of losing a big ol' chunk of flesh. but then his daughter gets stolen by one of antonio's homeboys, and his money gets stolen with her, and generally he gets pissed off, and decides he's gonna kill poor antonio cos he ain't got the money.

the merchant of venice is no more anti-semitic than scarface is anti-cuban. tony montana doesn't murder people cos he's cuban... he murders people because he's human, and wants what humans want... success, fulfilment, happiness, all of the above. yet he can't get them because he's an unwashed and unwanted cuban refugee. same with shylock ... shylock isn't a mean motherfucker because he's jewish... he's a mean motherfucker because although he's human, his essential humanity is denied because he's jewish. and since neither scarface nor shylock are able to achieve success in nice socially-acceptable ways, they have to resort to shady business... being cocaine and usury, respectively. and the same society that thrives on the commodities they provide seeks to condemn them both. thus, they are tragic villains.

so yeah, suffice to say it was an awesome movie, and i'd recommend it, whether or not you like old will. which also got me thinking to why i hated shakespeare in high school... it's because it's not a book, it's not supposed to be read, it's supposed to be interpreted, by talented actors. and whether it's a film version, or a staged version, that's the only way you can really grok the text in its fullness. so instead of reading plays in english classes in high school, i think that each english class in high school should mount low-budget community theatre productions. haha. and look like idiots! yes. so.... the moral of today's story is: idiots are sweet.

c'est tout.