Thursday, June 30, 2005

regime change

It seems that the new president elect of Iran may have taken part in the 1979 US hostage situation. That is if we are to believe some of the captives who are making the claims. According to the Associated Press, four ex-captives are claiming that upon seeing Mahmoud Ahmadinejad, the newly-elected president of Iran, on television, they are now convinced of his association with their detainment in 1979.

As a side note, check out how the various news networks are quoting the AP, found in its original form here .

CNN's take

Fox "News"

One such hostage, William Dougherty, said: "You know how [President Bush] said, 'You're either for us or you're for the terrorists.' Well, now the leader of Iran is a terrorist."

Funny. I would have thought that 25 years would dilute the memory a little. More importantly, how could these captives know unless they met Ahmadinejad in a more personable manner than on CNN?

Then there's a statement from one of the other hostages: "...Take 20 years off of him. He was there. He was there in the background, more like an adviser." So now Ahmadinejad was there in the background, maybe making some popcorn for the boys or something.

Next we'll hear that Ahmadinejad caused the World Trade Centre attacks, and was a key participant in the bombing of Pearl Harbour. Yes, our man Ahmadinejad is a veritable Where's Waldo through recent American history.

I'd like to think that the US is not going to seek regime change everywhere it wishes to impose colonial rule. Calling a foreign leader "evil" and then using his "evilness" to justify an invasion and occupation of the country? Priceless, and a true component of civil democracies.

Then again maybe the whole "we're doing the same thing each time" strategy would have the intended effect of confusing the masses into thinking that such absurd logic as "hey, there's another evil leader" is indeed representative of how international politics is played.

Not only does such simplistic logic undermine any concerted effort at geo-political analysis on the part of the media, but it also ignores any debate about the taking of the US embassy in Tehran in 1979.

We're learning from the current White House that debate is for pussies. Men of greatness require action. Let hellfire fall from the sky, they say. Evil will be corrected.

So what about those of us who have expanded our notions of good and evil since grade two?

Sunday, June 26, 2005

Toronto Pride 2005




Today was the annual Pride celebration in Toronto. This year was a hell of a lot less hedonistic than in years prior (maybe the 34 degree heat killed off any excess energy that people may have had. One thing that has gone down quite drastically is the extent to which nudity takes over the celebration. In years past, you couldn't look in any direction without seeing a breast or a penis. These days, even in extreme heat, people are keeping their tackle together.

Maybe, just maybe that's a good thing for Toronto Tourism...



















this is what happens when men gather without consequence to female aesthetics...









impressed



not impressed







so what do the elderly think about the liberal changes of late???



You can find the full set of photographs here.

Wednesday, June 22, 2005

m.a.p.s.



white = water inbibed, North America

pink = soft drinks consumed, as a percentage with water,
North America

purple = sugar in pop turned into fat, as a percentage of pop




America, in going after the heart of terrorism, you are so 2005




plumes and breaks, widgets at the cellular level




we pack tightly, you and i




a father unfurles his wisdom only slowly, and that makes him angry




vulnerability is part of Empire




if it weren't me, it would be wallpaper

Sunday, June 19, 2005

frank zappa on CNN

In the 1980s, musician and activist Frank Zappa twice appeared on CNN's Crossfire (thank you Jon Stewart for helping get rid of that abomination) to discuss music censorship. I need say nothing, as these conversations speak for themselves.

Check out the first interview from 1986 here. The best part: ten minutes into the show Zappa suggests that the biggest threat to the country is not Communism but a move toward a fascist theocracy. It's a shame he didn't get to see the world poor little Dweezil, Moon Unit, Diva, and Ahmet Rodan have inherited.

He also made an appearance a year later.

Sometimes, it's important to have authentic voices on the television who do not wish to engage in the conversational rules the medium tends to impose.

In light of the American telecommunications industry being plagued by conservative punditry, clearly the debate is far from over.

Monday, June 13, 2005

and now a word from our sponsors...



Obviously I don't have a single sponsor. It is important to support companies that are doing good work, and performing their function in a manner that doesn't cause a greater harm than good.

Fashion is the first step. It's something that most people take for granted, as in: "that shirt looks nice, it's cheap enough, i'll buy it". There is a larger framework for the manufacturing and distribution of that item of clothing that needs to be considered. Did the workers who made it get paid a fair wage? Are chemicals, such as bleach, used in the production of the fabric and/or item that do environmental harm? Will it really look cool?

Thinking about purchases is the start of an ethical life. Don't just buy whatever is most convenient.

This is becoming an even bigger issue for drinks than clothes. Coke has a history of violently intimidating its non-union production staff, most notably its bottlers in South and Central America who are trying to unionize. Every time you buy a Coke product, and they are legion, you are supporting that particular manufacturing practise, ie: violently oppressing an impoverished workforce.

That being said, when you go to a corner store or restaurant these days, it becomes apparent that Coke has a virtual monopoly on drink distribution. Many convenience stores stock only Coke products, presumably because they then get to use the drink fridge for free.

So what is a good citizen to do? Well, try moving on and finding a drink that doesn't have such attrocious political baggage. Water is free in most public places (although that will change over time I'm sure), so why not give that a try?

Saturday, June 11, 2005

Advent For Love

sitting sideways we
stare into each other
unblinking
like props looking
de la soul
and you preen my wrongdoing

yet i know this is a tarnished forever

imminent and glowing
how it should
be
with a respect
for the speech that lies
ever after

it's tough not to wonder at the size of it all

Friday, June 10, 2005

Lemmings: a follow up on drug use in america

There's word from down south (a topic which seems so dear to me right now; I view that country as a societal harbinger for what the rest of us in North America will come to accept) that the White House wants to drastically expand the mandate of the Texas Medication Algorithm Program. TMAP seeks to standardize psychological disorder under a treatment lexicon of pharmaceutical applications. Much has been made of the links between this initiative and the pharmaceutical lobby.

In a move sure to provoke Aldous Huxley scholars everywhere, the proposal for a national program equivalent to TMAP involves the mandatory screening of the entire population for mental illness.

While reading things like this article from the British Medical Journal , you have to wonder how massive an effect grade 9 english class had on the White House staff. They seem to view a hybrid Orwell-Huxley literary society as a biblical inevitability.

Looks to me like an attempt to make a shitload of cash for pharmaceuticals while simultaneously initiating a form of social control through psychotropics. Like Coke and General Motors, TMAP seeks to capture people as life-long consumers of pharmaceutical products by targetting the youth. In terms of been constituted with a captive, highly impressionable collection of individuals, schools are obviously the most vulnerable public institution in terms of corporate initiatives.

Maybe if this happens before the next election, the American population will have a pharmaceutical excuse for passively accepting yet another Republican governmental coup (they've come so far since Kennedy, there's no way they can stop now!).

Good old population control. May the American Citizen rest in peace, draped in the innocence of their complicity.



As a totally related non-sequitur, isn't that old computer game Lemmings really fucking good. Boy, wish I could play that game RIGHT NOW.

Monday, June 06, 2005

american pot laws



Another bizarre turn for patients requiring medical marijuana in the United States.

The White House had stepped in to successfully appeal a 2003 California Supreme Court finding which stated that federal laws prohibiting marijuana use for disease, chronic pain, or eating disorders to be unconstitutional. Judge John Paul Stevens wrote the majority opinion, and in a logical paradox declared that the real harm in doctor-prescribed pot is over-prescription of the drug: "Our cases have taught us that there are some unscrupulous physicians who over-prescribe when it is sufficiently profitable to do so".

Wait a minute here. Aren't we hearing a number of reports (check out warnings from Britain and Canada) indicating that doctors are routinely over-prescribing drugs of all sorts?? This is especially true for newer pharmaceuticals which have high profit margins attached to their distribution and use. Are we to seriously believe that doctors aren't benefiting from kickbacks and incentive plans from pharmaceutical sales reps for these drugs? Furthermore, by what leap of logic does this judge deem profit to be a factor in marijuana prescription? I mean, marijuana is after all a plant that can be freely grown by anyone with adequate sunlight and a couple of seeds.

Maybe that's the key to this dilemma. If we are to believe scientific reports as to the medically beneficial nature of marijuana, and more to the point that such benefits from THC have yet to be replicated in a pharmaceutical setting, it seems likely that once again the american judicial system is capitulating to the drug company lobby groups.

As Monsanto learned a while ago, there's no money to be made from plants which reproduce themselves ad nauseam, hence their quest to terminate the procreative process in their plants.

Money, it seems, is currently the prima objectum of the health system in those wacky states. In fact, the routine overcharging of prescription drugs has caused many Americans to travel or purchase their meds online from Canada in order to get around the draconian system in place in their country. Perhaps their health system as a whole will be outsourced to Canada. Apparently, some drugs cost 4-5 times as much down there as they do here.

Holy fuck what a nightmare for the majority of the American population who cannot afford good heath care, which has turned into a luxury item in that country.

House of Lords Report on Cannabis for Medical Purposes

CBC discussion archive

Peer Reviewed Results of New York State-sponsored Cancer/Marijuana Studies

Friday, June 03, 2005

Parrie Sound, about 10:12 pm



Isn't it pretty? Quiet, serene, and only an hour and a half north of Toronto.

This was the opening night of what has since been a pretty decent heat wave, with temperatures exceeding 30 degrees.

Wednesday, June 01, 2005

Psychonauts





Psychonauts

Majestico (PC, XBOX, PS2)

Wouldn’t it be nice to have the ability to enter into someone’s psychological space and ferret out any problems they might be having by battling their mental demons? If someone is violently trying to live up to their macho instincts, for example, then all it would take is the defeat of a certain “mental bull” to restore them to sanity. Oh the domestic bliss that would ensue...

Psychonauts was designed by Tim Schafer, the genius behind PC classics like Maniac Mansion, Full Throttle, and Grim Fandango (which is perhaps the closest a game has come to being a complete artistic expression along "cinematic" narrative lines). Shafer’s usual off-kilter humour, wacky characters, and brilliant art design are in full effect this time out. Like always, a Tim Shafer script needs to be played, not read. And so you play Raz, a young psychic who breaks into a summer camp training socially-deviant kids with psychic powers to be super soldiers (think X-Men without the self-confidence). One of the evil minds behind the camp is surreptitiously stealing the brains of these kids to power battle tanks. After discovering this secret plot, it’s up to Raz to enter a bunch of people’s heads to fight their mental demons and stop the madman before his plan destroys the entire world. And that’s where things take a decided twist for the wacky.

Psychonauts is a 3D platformer, and the vast majority of levels are constructed in the mental space of the other people at the summer camp. These conceptual triumphs of level design include Waterloo World, where you help someone defeat their Napoleon complex; a disco-party level where you uncover the disturbing secrets of the mind in question behind all the happy fun-fun times; a theatre level where kids enact a series of surreal tableaux, leading up to a boss fight with an art critic who attacks with ink droplet words like “Trite!”; a level that looks like one of those sofa-sized paintings sold for $29.95 by, er, 'starving artists'; and a level performed in the mind of a bully fish who is so scared of Raz that the latter is realized as a Godzilla-sized figure trashing the gigantic Lungfishopolis, heart of all that is sacred.

Gameplay consists of the usual platforming conventions, including powerup collection, combat, and jumping/swinging/climbing etc. You beat levels by collecting or manipulating certain objects, clearing mental cobwebs and emotional baggage, defeating enemies, and solving some fairly devious puzzles. This nets you the reward of watching a Viewmaster presentation of their memories and emotional needs; Baudrillard's trip to Vegas was never so surreal. As you progress through the game, you gain psychic powers that you can use at your leisure, such as telekinesis, levitation, and (my fave) pyrokinesis.

While the gameplay is solid, it’s the script, art direction, and sound design that will truly captivate. The game is both creepy and laugh-out-loud funny -- usually simultaneously so. While certainly not the replay value on adventure games remains circumscribed by nostalgia, Psychonauts is long enough to will keep a typical gamer occupied for several hours. Tim Shafer will one day be inscribed as a major figure who elevated games from mere electronic interactions to full-blown aesthetic experiences. Psychonauts has been released for all major platforms, and is equally good wherever you play it. If you have a decent gaming PC (with a gamepad, son) however, then skip the consoles and aim for the graphical splendour made possible by a more high-power system.