There's a Silver Stream Laid Across the Sky

It's absolutely god-damned beautiful out.  Light breeze, sunny, temperature in the low 20s.  Perfect Sunday afternoon.  About all that could be asked for would be perhaps a bit more wind, as I'd love to be able to get my kite up.

Most of the afternoon was spent on the balcony getting funny looks from the people walking past.  (The fact that Becca was wearing my Soviet officer's hat in order to keep the sun off her eyes may have had something to do with that.)  But eventually I went for a brief walk later, and went past Queen's Square (if that's the name of the park, I can never remember).  The swimming pool's been all torn up; no idea if they're just going to fill it in for more playground equipment, or if they'll be putting in a new one.  (The building beside it is gone too.)  The courts were all full, as well as the baseball fields.  When walking past one of them, I couldn't help but notice that people using it were playing cricket.

Now, the question is: why am I even bothering to be inside right now?

Posted by g026r at 18:46 | 2 comments | Most recent by g026r

La La La! I Can't Hear You!

In honour of the ever-present love of a conspiracy, I present an observation I had recently.

For those who weren't paying attention (or just don't care), Nintendo's upcoming console, which had been known by its code name of Revolution, had its official name unveiled yesterday.  The name that was chosen?  Wii (pronounced the same as 'we').  (Note: Unlike the Gamecube — whose official name was the Nintendo Gamecube — it's apparently just Wii, not Nintendo Wii.)

Now, as you can likely imagine, the name was met with a less than warm welcome among the vocal population of Internet gamers-cum-loudmouths everywhere.  (For the curious: I don't like the name.  I think Revolution sounded better.  However, I feel that eventually people will get used to it, and most of the bitching will die down.  Microsoft's decision to name their current console the Xbox 360 was also met with derision upon announcement, but now no one thinks twice about the name.)  There were the obvious c=jokes made, the usual slew of online petitions angrily demanding that Nintendo change the name back, and those who loudly proclaimed that they had it from reliable (but unnamed) sources this wasn't the real name — it was a joke, or an attempt to build hype for the announcement of the real name at E3 in May.

Now, the reason this last one stood out at me (seeing as it, obviously, wasn't <em>ed when I saw it), was that it was very similar to statements I had seen about something else.  As more people likely know, Tool has a new album coming out.  As possibly slightly fewer of these people know, it was leaked to the Internet sometime last week.  (No, I haven't heard it; I'm not really a Tool fan.)  Now, as with anything so greatly hyped, there are going to be people disappointed by the reality, and as with anything that has such a loyal fanbase, there are going to be those who'd love the album even if it was Metal Machine Music.  Even though I'm not a Tool fan, I still had to read the threads on various music sites about the album because — to put it quite simply — I find hardcore Tool fans funny.

It's not meant as an insult to anyone who is a Tool fan, but sometimes I think you need to forget all critical thinking skills in order to become one of the hardcore fans.  Anyways, there were wonderful comments in among these threads going on about the strangest theories: the standard one that people who didn't like the album weren't true fans; that the album was designed to separate the 'real' fans from those who just liked Tool because it's cool to do so; that people who didn't like the album just hadn't listened to it enough times (I believe the numbers normally given were almost always at least several dozen times).  However, most common among the posts — and differing from the previous ones in that this came from people who claimed not to like the album — was that the album was a fake, made by Tool to fool those people who try to leak albums before their official release dates.  There'd be all kinds of evidence to back this up: supposed news releases that mentioned it (why would they even mention it ahead of time if it was meant to be a decoy?), as well as evidence culled from indepth analysis of the album art, song titles, song lyrics, and (of course) numerology.  (Let's just forget that you can prove almost anything you want with numerology.)

If you've lost track (since I do seem to wander), this entry was to talk about the love of conspiracy theories.  So that's not entirely true, but it does have to do with one conspiracy theory: the belief that something you don't like can't be real.  Nintendo's new console is called Wii?  Not real, but a joke.  (That one makes no sense.  A joke?  Is Nintendo known for making joke press releases or something?)  Don't think the new Tool album lives up to the hype?  Obviously it's a decoy album, which the band spent time writing and recording songs for when they could have been working on their real album.  Or, in other words, it's like putting your hands over your ears and screaming what's in the title.

There was more of a point to this entire entry, but I seem to have lost it now.

Where's Bierce When You Need Some Really Good Political Lampooning?

Ask me what I hate about politics, and I'll answer that it's stuff like this.

A summary of the link:
Politician the FIrst:  Hey guys, we only have a majority of one in the legislature, which means that we might actually have to seek compromises with the other parties in order to get things through committee."
(Politician the Second faints)
Politician the Third (fanning Politician the Second): Good gods!  That's preposterous!  A government making compromises because the people decided that they didn't deserve to have an overwhelming majority?  Why, I never!
Politician the First: Never fear!  I have a cunning plan to ensure that we never have to compromise!  (Politician the Second, having just recovered consciousness, promptly faints again upon hearing 'compromise'.)  What we'll do is change the rules!
Politician the Third:  Jolly good idea!  You're a genius, you know.  I think I'll make sure that your cousin's nephew gets that position you said he was so interested in.

God damn partisan politics…

On a completely unrelated note: the headline on this article caused me to make noises best approximated by "Bwa?" "Hzuh?" and "Wha?" when I spotted it over on CBC.  Elton John and Anne Rice — how could that have possibly gone wrong?^*

* That — I say that — was sarcasm, son.

Celebrity-Centric Entry No. Something

As anyone who has had the misfortune of catching what passes for news likely knows, Tom Cruise and Katie Holmes are now the parents of a baby girl.  (No word on if Miss Holmes succeeded in the drug-free, noise-free birth that Scientology calls for, but that's another story.)

Moving back on topic, the girl has been named Suri, and a spokesman explained "that Suri has its origins in ancient Hebrew, as a variant on Sarah, the biblical matriarch".  There's just one problem: no one uses the Hebrew word suri to mean that anymore.  In fact, in modern Hebrew, suri means approximately "get out of here".  Oops.

(Get out of here Cruise.  Hrmm.  Toss a comma in there, and I'd say it's actually a good choice.  About sums up my feelings on the matter.)

Posted by g026r at 18:50 | 3 comments | Most recent by g026r

A Funny Thing Happened…

…on the way to Chapters.  So, I decide to take a walk up the hill the other night, and take a peek at The Gospel of Judas.  (I ended up not buying it, as I wasn't willing to pay $30 for something that thin, but that's another story.)

Anyways, back on topic: it's a little chilly out, so I grab a jacket — my beat up old Soviet one — before I leave.  As I'm crossing the bridge over the highway, I spot a rather grimy looking, crouched-over man stumbling along the sidewalk towards me.  Drunk, stoned, just generally out of it — I don't know what he was, but he certainly was stumbling along.  Partway along the bridge, we get close to each other.  He looks up, spots me, and promptly straightens himself up and salutes.  (Well, straightened himself up is relative.  He was hardly straightened up by any standard except when compared to his previous posture.)

I should point out that, despite being an army jacket, I don't look the slightest bit military in it.  It's obviously old, always half-unbuttoned (the high collar irritates my neck if it's done up all the way), and I was wearing the same faded old jeans I always wear.  Once it dawned on me what had just happened, I was even more confused than normal.

Insert Well-Known Cultural Reference Here

Here's something to think about: does the obliteration phenomenon apply outside of the scientific realm?  More importantly, does it apply to culture?  (Maybe someone has already come to these conclusions and discussed them at length somewhere; I don't know.)

For those who are unfamiliar, the obliteration phenomenon is a term for when a paper, theory, or other work becomes so ubiquitous that it no longer is cited.  The example commonly given here is Einstein's Theory of Relativity.  The type of people likely to discuss things related to it are already all familiar with it.  Therefore, since everybody knows it, there is no reason for it to be cited.

Basically, to see where I'm coming from/getting at, I recently got into a discussion about movies.  Specifically, the catalyst for the discussion was Silent Hill (which I haven't seen, so I can not give my opinion on it), and early reports that the plot of the film made little sense to those who weren't already knowledgeable about the plots of the similarly-named video games.  From this, I brought up my theory that a film fails as a movie if it requires too extensive a familiarity with some other narrative work — especially if that work comes from another medium.

To give two examples: as much as I like 2001: A Space Odyssey, I feel it fails as a narrative work (although it may be said to succeed as art) due to the fact that the final part of the film makes no sense to those who have yet to read Arthur C. Clarke's novel of the same name.  Or, for a more modern example, I recall thinking the same thing about Harry Potter and the Prisoner of Azkaban when I saw it.

At this point in my film theory, I should point out that I feel there are exceptions; namely, if a film is part of a heavily-connected series, then it's permitted to require extensive knowledge of the previous films for it to make sense.  One wouldn't expect something like The Return of the King to keep everyone up-to-date on what happened in the previous films, as it's generally safe to assume that anyone seeing it has already seen the others.

But getting back to obliteration.  Furthering my views on this subject was the opinion that there were some works you could safely make extensive references to, because they have become so deeply ingrained in the public conscience that everybody knows them.  Take, for example, Moby Dick.  I've never read it; I've never seen a movie based on it; I don't even have a copy sitting on my bookshelf that I will one day get around to reading.  However, make a reference to white whales, Ahab, Ishmael, and so forth, and I will still immediately know what you are talking about.

That's not to say that this is limited to solely literature or "high brow" references.  For example, consider the first Star Wars trilogy.  It's probably safe to assume that people are at least generally familiar with them, even if they haven't seen them.  (Hell, I never saw any of them until well after I was legally able to drive, and I still knew the basics by that point.)  The same could probably be said about Batman, Superman, and Hamlet^* — no one's going to scream at you about spoilers if you mention that Hamlet's uncle killed Hamlet's father, that the murder of Batman's parents spurred him to become a vigilante later in life, or that Superman is in fact the last survivor of an alien race that resided on the planet Krypton.  These are things that everybody, including those who've never read or seen the works in question, likely already know.  The original works could conceivably disappear from existence, and it's possible that we could go on for ages before they were forgotten — they've become that familiar and engrained within the public conscience.

Of course, from this the idea comes the question: just what works could be considered to have become so familiar that the originals aren't even needed?  There was a book published in the 60s called Fifty Works of English and American Literature We Could Do Without.  Although it supposedly never makes this point explicitly (I don't know, I haven't been able to find a copy of it yet), some interpretations of it take it to be making just that point — that these fifty works have been referenced, parodied, and re-imagined so many times that they've become familiar to even those who've never encountered the originals.  However, given that it was published almost 40 years ago, do the works they cite still fall into this category?  And, regardless of if they do or not, what new works — as well as those in other media — could be added to this list?

It's something to think about though: imagine what would happen tomorrow if you woke up, and suddenly all the pages of every copy of (for example) Alice's Adventure in Wonderland ever published were blank.  What effect, if any, would this have on those making references and allusions to it?

* Batman, Superman, and Hamlet — I wonder if anyone's ever referred to those three in the same sentence before?

Take Note; I Likely Will Never Do This Again

I feel so incredibly dirty doing so, but I feel the need to speak in Ms. Coulter's defence for at least part of this Media Matters article: Coulter claimed to be "anti-murder" and "anti-false accusation"  Namely, the "anti-murder" bit.

For starters, I don't think you'll find any socially well-adjusted human being who will declare themselves pro-murder.  Even ones who believe that sections of the population need to eliminated (ok, so very loose definition of socially well-adjusted) will likely describe their desire to eliminate these people as not murder, but use some of rationalisation to conclude that their killings are justified.  One only needs to read a discussion on the web about the recent killings of two registered sex offenders in the United States to see concrete evidence of this.  (The Globe & Mail seems to have removed the comment threads on some of the past articles, or else I'd pull out quotes.)

The problem is that the definition of what murder is is somewhat nebulous when used in discussion:  is abortion murder?  Is euthanasia murder?  Is vigilantism murder?  Is capital punishment murder?  Are military actions against largely civilian targets murder?  (It's essentially the same argument that comes up in the "Thou shalt not kill" vs. "Thou shalt not murder" debates about the 6th commandment: what precisely constitutes murder?)

By the definition Ms. Coulter is using, she likely is being consistent — at least four of the 6 quotes could conceivably be argued for as being in the interests of national or military security, and therefore not necessarily murder.  And that is where the problem lies: Media Matters states that, by their definition of murder, Ms. Coulter isn't being consistent, when it is quite likely that their definition doesn't match Ms. Coulter's.  It is really all just a matter of semantics.  (I am unsure what the defence of the other two quotes could be though; perhaps that they were meant as hyperbole or jest.)

Now, if you'll excuse me, I think I need to shower; I feel so unclean.

Tag! You're It!

One of my goldfish has been chasing the other around in incredibly small circles for the past 45 minutes.  I'm both puzzled and amused.

One Of These Things Is Not Like The Others

Snapped at the Reid's News Stand next to the SMT terminal in Moncton:

From left-to-right: Social Anarchism, Redneck Living, and Redneck World.  For some reason, I'm not so sure how much the readership of the first overlaps with that of the other two.

Quick, Fetch Me Some Absinthe and My Snuff Box

Whilst I was home for the weekend, I happened to spend some time browsing through my parents' bookshelves.  Among them were a number of poetry books my mother had had when she was in school.  As well as being able to use them to find the Leonard Cohen poem I had enjoyed so much when he was reading some of his works on CBC a while back (For Anne), I also managed to find the exact name of a poem that I had quite enjoyed when doing a Canadian poetry unit in junior high.

Therefore — since it wouldn't be a proper blog without some poetry — here's Archibald Lampman's The City of the End of Things, courtesy of Library and Archives Canada's Canadian Poetry Archive:

The City of the End of Things
Archibald Lampman (1861 – 1899)

Beside the pounding cataracts
Of midnight streams unknown to us
'Tis builded in the leafless tracts
And valleys huge of Tartarus.
Lurid and lofty and vast it seems;
It hath no rounded name that rings,
But I have heard it called in dreams
The City of the End of Things.

 Continue reading Quick, Fetch Me Some Absinthe and My Snuff Box

…And Now, a Man on a Horse

I quite honestly consider this painting ("Constantinos Paleologos, the last Byzantine Emperor at the battlements, dawn of the 29th May of 1453" 200 X 145 cm,- oil on canvas, 2003 by Iannis Nikou) to be one of the silliest things I've seen in a while.  I mean, seriously: who would even consider taking a horse up onto the battlements of a beseiged city in order to view the attacking forces with your troops?

Besides, why's he wearing blue?  Purple was supposedly the colour of the Paleologus dynasty.

Syndication Information

My atom 0.3 syndication feed has (finally) been deprecated, and index.xml replaced with the atom 1.0 version.  atom1.xml will still work, for those who were already using the atom 1.0 feed.

For those whose feed readers still don't support atom 1.0: the older 0.3 versions of the feeds are still available as atom3.xml and comments3.xml.

Yet More Crime Talk!

Let's get this out of the way early, since I've already seen comments about it on various websites:

The discovery of the 8 dead bodies in an Ontario field does not necessarily mean that we are in fact seeing a rise in the number of violent crimes in Canada.  Until statistics are released, this — combined with other recent cases that have received much media attention — merely implies that we're seeing a rise in high profile cases.  Save the wailing for when you have more than just anecdotal evidence.

On a related note, the Globe & Mail has a CP listing of high-profile mass killings in Canada since 1965.  It's a bit of a pity it doesn't go back slightly further, as then it could have included the 1949 explosion of a Canadian Pacific Air Lines DC-3 that resulted in the execution of three people, including the last woman executed in Canada, Marguerite Pitre.

More Movie Talk

As an addendum to the previous entry: apparently somebody forgot to tell the Sony Pictures employees in Orlando that all critic pre-screenings of The Benchwarmers were off.  Roger Moore, the Orlando Sentinel's movie critic, was invited, and since his review was the only one on the wire service (2 other critics got to see the film, but weren't wire service providers), it was picked up by many other papers.

That's where the fun begins, because after Sony found out, they promptly sent their PR department into full damage control mode — calling Mr. Moore a liar who wrote a bogus review, and who also snuck in to see the film in order to get his review.  (So which is it, guys?)

Some days I wonder how Sony ever managed to reach Gigantic Evil Corporation status when they can't even seem to keep the simple things in order.

(Roger Moore's blog entry on the Sony fallout is here, and his original review is here.)

>On a side note: I blame any spelling or grammatical errors (or just plain incoherence) in the above post on the fact that I'm way too tired to still be up.

I Think I Need to Formulate My Thoughts Better (Movie-Related Entry)

The Associated Press appears to finally be catching on to something that's been known in certain circles for quite some time: if the movie studios refuse to screen a film for the critics prior to opening weekend, it's probably because it's terrible.

They list a number of movies released in 2006 as having followed this trend: Doogal (IMDB: 2.0), Phat Girlz (IMDB: 2.3)^*, The Benchwarmers (IMDB: 4.9)^**, Stay Alive (IMDB: 2.8, and currently #61 on the bottom 100), When a Stranger Calls (IMDB: 4.2), Madea's Family Reunion (IMDB: 2.9, and #88 on the bottom 100), Ultraviolet (IMDB: 3.8), and Larry the Cable Guy: Health Inspector (IMDB: 2.1, and #16 on the bottom 100).  In fact, only two of the films mentioned in the article (Underworld: Evolution, and Grandma's Boy) have an IMDB rating above 5.0 on IMDB (6.6 and 6.5, respectively).

That, if you're counting, makes 10 films, and the AP article mentions 10.  I'm curious as to what other film didn't get screened.  My guess is it's one of the other 6 2006 films that are currently on the bottom 100.

Anyways, moving on, I've got to agree with Ebert here: the target audience of a lot of these films (horror, special-effects heavy action, and low-brow comedy) aren't going to care what the critics say — they've gotten used to them bashing their favourite films.  For everyone else, this is just a red-flag that they might want to wait until someone else has seen it, or go on cheap nights.  (Besides, can anybody seriously watch the trailer for Larry the Cable Guy and actually think that it looks like a good way to spend $10?  Actually, the answer to that appears to be Flixster users, who have currently rated the film 4.5 stars out of 5.  As I like to point out, that makes it better than Casablanca.)

As for me, I generally watch Rotten Tomatoes prior to a film I'm interested in coming out; not to see how the critics rate it (although that might make a difference as to when I go see it, or if I rent it instead), but rather to make sure that the critics do rate it prior to its release.  No rating, no money from me.

* Starring Mo'Nique, a name I can't read without thinking of a quote from Idiotic Legal Arguments Section Four (given that IMDB informs me that the ' wasn't in her birth name):

"It has been suggested in medical literature that a patient's  use of a meaningless or unpronounceable "glyph" in his name was indicative of psychosis with delusions."

Oh, and her book looks like it's a barrel of laughs too.

** Starring Rob Schneider, David Spade, and Jon Heder, and produced (of course) by Adam Sandler (as he seems to be the man who's single-handily responsible for trying to convince the world that a) Schneider's funny, and b) Schneider deserves starring roles; I'm sure those're capital offences somewhere in the world) — if that wasn't enough of a warning to stay away, then I don't know what would have been.

Butter Tart Recipe, Attempt #2

In an attempt to end up with slightly less runny butter tarts, I increased the egg in this batch.  I also remembered the vanilla.  This batch used slightly larger tart shells, and was only made using a half-recipe (hence the slightly fewer tarts).

As can be seen, the tarts came out slightly browner than the last ones.  I'm not sure why precisely (well, I'm guessing the increased egg content), but I haven't had a chance to try them yet.  I'll post a comparison with the previous version when I get the chance.  Slightly altered recipe below the cut, for those who're are truly curious.

 Continue reading Butter Tart Recipe, Attempt #2

Posted by g026r at 18:25 | 4 comments | Most recent by g026r

Because Somedays You Just Feel Like Including Eye-Candy

From this moment on, all images I post should be using Lightbox.  Click on the images below and see:

If I get the time, I think I'm going to throw together a script that transforms any images I include in entires into automatic Lightbox links, so that I don't have to remember to do it manually.

Of Interest to Probably Just About No One

Due to his forthcoming album and the accompanying documentary, BBC Two's The Culture Show tracked down Scott Walker for his first television interview in a decade.

Included are vintage clips from both The Walker Brothers and his solo career (including samples from the new album), a Jacques Brel clip, and interviews with Jarvis Cocker and Brian Eno about Walker's influence (the latter described simply as "Musician").  It's probably also the only place, outside of possibly an Einstürzende Neubauten documentary, where you can see music being made with such items as a block of concrete, and a large piece of meat.

YouTube has the video.

Won't Somebody Please Think of the Children?!

Stephen Harper recently outlined his government's crime package.  It's about what you'd expect: mandatory minimums, getting tough on drugs, with a good dose of moral panic/fear-mongering thrown in for good measure.

Did I just accuse him of moral panic?  Why yes, yes indeed.  To quote:

"Speaking at a conference of the Canadian Professional Police Association, Mr. Harper said a rise in violent crime is threatening Canada's reputation as a safe and peaceful country."

I know they say it's "lies, damned lies, and statistics," but Mr. Harper probably should hope no one checks with StatsCan about that point.  The 2005 stats aren't out yet, but the 2000-2004 ones are online, and they show that violent crime decreased in 2004, for at least the fifth year in a row.  Granted, the murder rate is up 0.3 per 100,000 from 2003 (when it was the lowest in 35 years), but nearly all other indicators (including total violent crimes, and excepting only the aforementioned homicides and "other crimes of violence") are down from 2003 — when the rates themselves were down 11% from 1993.

Property crimes are also down (2.2% from 2000).  Granted, the total incidents of Criminal Code offences are up from 2000, pushed by "Other Criminal Code offences" (up 19.7%, and classified as offences that are not violent crimes, property crimes, or traffic violations), as also are "Federal statutes" (up 3%, caused by an increase in drug-related charges), and traffic offences (up 1.5%), but those violent crimes?  Still following their continual downwards trend.

So remember: a drop of almost 4% (3.9%, to be exact) over 4 years is equal to an increase.  It's the new math!  Up is down!  Black is white!  Left is right!  Violent crimes are on the rise!

Oh, and the other charts are quite interesting as well.  For some reason this one particularly intrigues me.

Vroom. Screech. Thwump.

According to the CBC, the New Brunswick Trail Council has torn up their agreement with Trans Canada Trails, over an argument about the use of motorised vehicles on the trails.  (Surprisingly enough, it was the NB association that was against it.)

Now, I'll admit that I'm not a big fan of ATVs to begin with, and I'm especially not a fan of them on the same trails as pedestrians.  I feel that's just asking for trouble — a feeling that's increased by the people I knew who used them.  The reason this all jumps to mind is because of a comment by a member of the New Brunswick All-Terrain Vehicle Association.

"When you're driving down the road through town and there's a pedestrian who wants to cross the street, the pedestrian has the right of way and you're supposed to stop. And we don't see the kerfuffle for doing the same on a dirt road or bush road or trail or whatever."

I have one word for Mr. Sovey about the difference between what he's debating and the ill-suited metaphor he's trying to apply (and which, in my opinion, shows why it doesn't work here), and that word is sidewalks.  I doubt Mr. Sovey would go for a walk in the middle of the street, and I hope he wouldn't drive his ATV down the sidewalks.  Either of those, I'd suggest, would be more appropriate comparisons for what's being discussed here than a pedestrian, on a designated pedestrian-only pathway, attempting to cross a street at a designated crossing area.