torture guardin'

I recommend listening to the following while reading this article:
MP3: Meira Asher + Guy Harries, "Torture -- Bodyparts"

Ah, torture in the fall.

With all the recent talk about the United States Senate legally authorizing the use of torture for the continued execution of the War of Terror (oops, that’s a typo; there should be a colon after “War”) as well as the renewed public interest in the Maher Arar case, my thoughts have moved to a new place: are we at the end of history as we have known it so far? I do not mean to suggest that the human experience of life will stop or that the world will be uninhabitable or anything quite as apocalyptic as all of that. While all of the proceeding is true, if not likely, I am presently talking about a change in the zeitgeist and not the material conditions of human civilization. Instead, the course charting, over many centuries, the emergence of the modern individual from the bondage of despotism is itself altering in a rather dramatic fashion.

It appears as though a certain regression is emerging as the dominant philosophy of the modern subject. Insular, self-reflexive, and superstitious to the point of being totemismistic. Solutions to problems have become things that you buy, and so far the War on Terror has cost America around $400 billion, and some people are going so far as to suggest that the war in Iraq alone will cost the US economy over $2 trillion). On the point of totemism, I’ll leave the last word to the American government, which has again proven a certain arrogant disregard for the international community. On helping to pass the Detainee Interrogation Bill, which allows the White House to suspend what most people call human rights at its discretion, Sen. Christopher Bond, R-Mo, said: "Some want to tie the hands of our terror fighters. They want to take away the tools we use to fight terror, to handcuff us, to hamper us in our fight to protect our families." Sometimes I too think that my family will only be safe when enough people have been waterboaded into making up yet another Arabic-sounding name.


waterboarding in Antwerrp, 1556

The public sphere has been relatively clean and gore-free since the end of the Second World War. Only occasionally and in isolation have events of significant violence occurred. In the decades that followed the 1940s, however, there was not a sense that violence pervaded the dominant culture in an open manner. McCarthyism, Vietnam, the October Crisis, and other forms of localized and violent division can be seen to be more akin to the residue rather than a reanimation of prior horrors. Many of the institutions that have kept the world relatively peaceful despite occasional lapses of barbarism, such as the United Nations and the concept of human rights, came about as a direct response to the horrors that much of the world experienced in the 1930s and 40s.

However, it seems as though this generation, which has not seen the full extent of human misery except though media reconstruction, is seeking a more intimate association with violence. This trend is occurring on two levels. The first is among those who understand that the true power of the modern subject is to realize existence as they imagine and then by means of technological access drastically alter their environment. Witness not only the rise in school shootings and other acts of urban guerilla violence, but also the tactics employed in terrorist deployment including the planes that were flown into the World Trade Center (9/11 is the remix album for the aviation industry). In each case, small groups of people using readily-available consumer technology and services caused a significant amount of political and social disruption.

The second level of the modern desire for violence is an issue of representation. Torture-as-entertainment is certainly not new, however the entertainment industry moved from gladiatorial fights to horror movies at about the same pace that society moved from despotism to democracy. However when you begin to analyze the manner in which violence is being represented in contemporary media, it becomes clear that the public’s bloodlust is rising. Computerized depictions of violence, usually in microscopic biological detail, in video games, films, and television are increasingly common. More screen-time is being given to close-ups of wounds, and many acts of violence are depicted in slow-motion so that the viewer can more casually receive all of the visual information.

Torture has become a common thematic device in cinema and television these days. Many horror movies are realistically depicting the violence of torture rather than the fantastic and supernatural gore that was previously quite popular. Torture has even entered into mainstream tastes through shows like Lost and 24. The war in Iraq has itself become a remix project, as YouTube documents many attempts to turn war footage into music videos and reality-style television.

Let’s get back to the American government for a second. First and foremost is the White House’s often-noted disregard for the international community, and with the United Nations in particular. Arguably, when America usurped the UN’s authority it demonstrated to every other nation that strength can legitimize any ideological position. We are still waiting for answers as to why Israel bombed the UN observation post in Lebanon.

In relation to the DI Bill, President Bush said: "The American people need to know we're working together to win the war on terror." With all due respect given to discretion, that’s the fucking scariest statement by a human that I have ever read. The American government is allowing violence to escalate because, deep within the conditioning of many of their officials, they truly believe that America is strongest when it is applying strength to others. The American people, consciously or not, want torture to become an authorized ritual meant to release insecurities about their national/personal security.



How do I know this? Rather than examine in detail the extent to which the DI Bill undermines the foundations for civil governance that most of the world’s nations have utilized since last hacking themselves to pieces, the media has taken upon itself to focus on the case of a Republican Congressman who sent dirty messages to pages. You are supposed to feel safe now that an aggressive, manipulative predator is out of power: Fox News is both ecstatic and confused (Foley is a Republican) now that he can no longer touch the body politic with his filthy pedophile hands. Thanks to the implications of the DI Bill however, the government will indeed be touching us all, and in ways that can at best be described as Guantanimaginable.


America is, apparently, a Christian nation

And it is here where history for the modern subject ends. As of September 27, 2006, the American government can officially attach electrodes to your genitals. Mark Foley did leave his mark on government after all. A new history will emerge as necessary – in this capacity, Gabriel Range’s “fictional documentary” Death of a President, which screened at this year’s TIFF, is a significant development – but that is beside the point. Historically speaking, it is during these interregnum periods that violence has proliferated and become accepted by an increasing percentage of the population as the principle means to ensure survival. Hopefully, the upcoming elections in America will allow a more rational government to reorder its international associations in a positive direction. Only with the major countries united under international law will chaos be avoided. Truly, it is not a precipitous drop from officially-sanctioned torture to even more absolute and widespread horrors.

steal this movie

A report recently issued by the Institute for Policy Innovation (IPI) concluded this week that movie pirates cost the American economy over $20 billion in lost taxes, jobs, and revenues. It should be noted that the IPI limited its research to data supplied by the Motion Picture Association of America (MPAA). With this one gesture, the highly contentious issues of intellectual property copyright and consumer protections were thoroughly ignored. Instead, the public has been handed yet another industry manifesto in the guise of legitimate and productive discourse.

As a side-note, to take get a decent view of the biased nature of the IPI, here's a great video feed of a Capitol Hill briefing from September 19 concerning health care.

Watch the archived video of IPI's Sept. 19 Capitol Hill Briefing The Dangers of Undermining Patient Choice: Lessons from Europe and Canada. (depending on your system, in order to see the video you might need to copy the URL from the website that opens into Windows Media Player, Winamp, etc)

The issue of media piracy can be viewed as one of the defining examples of the problematic transition from a culture of physical media (books, records, film stock, etc) to one of digital ephemerality. No longer do I need the information contained in a film to be delivered to me using film stock, magnetic tape, or metal sandwiched between plastic. Instead, films can be delivered in a less tangible way. Many people already experience digital delivery of films and television through their cable boxes, which is a service that the MPAA and similar organizations endorse. Others happily avoid both pay-per-view and the movie theatre by downloading movie files from the internet. This last fact is where the discussion over fair use of intellectual property is most required. For the moment, I will ignore the tragicomedy surrounding the MPAA’s numerous legal suits pending against consumers who wanted to see MPAA films. Instead I want to focus more on the media distribution system itself.

Currently, there is no technological limitation to the immediate digital delivery of films, television, and music. Those among us who know where to locate such things on the net can tell you that downloaded films are often of comparable quality to a DVD. In some cases, downloads are of superior technical quality than the official release – think of high definition, which was not available until a few months ago.In the case of a few select films, marketing decisions might render a particular DVD issue less-than-optimal. North American issues are frequently censored or otherwise altered in order not to offend the more “puritanical” mores believed to exist in this continent.



Stanley Kubrick’s unfinished 1999 film Eyes Wide Shut, for example, has a highly problematic North American release. The film was digitally altered so that it would receive an R rating, and as such the narrative continuity between audience and protagonist is demolished (ie: the film’s meaning changes). Now I myself am an adult with the emotional maturity to handle looking at an erect penis or a simulated act of fellatio. Apparently, so are Europeans, who were treated to a non-altered DVD issue. Thanks to the brilliant marketing decision to incorporate region-coded limitations into the DVD format, I cannot even play a legitimately purchased European DVD on my North American player. I have to point out that it is highly likely that Stanley Kubrick wanted me to see the version of the film that he actually made, and not one that is region-specific. In this spirit I feel fully confident in my rights as a consumer to download a European DVD-rip, burn it to a disc, and then show this version to students or friends. Since I feel that I am more enlightened about this issue than the marketing department at Warner Brothers, I will supercede their authority over which version I am allowed to watch. When contacted, the MPAA mentioned that each region gets the “optimal” version of the film, and that region coding is intended to curb piracy. It seems that China is at the heart of the issue, and here we come back to the IPI report.

For a film to be considered “legitimate”, it has to go through regular distribution channels, involving lawyers, middlemen, retail expenses, and mark-ups galore. Since so many people get a slice of the revenue, that pie needs to be big enough that everyone is satisfied. The IPI (by extension the MPAA) argued that piracy has cost all of these people their livelihoods (more specifically: $5.5 billion in “lost” earnings; 141,000 new jobs not(!) created; film studios losing 10% of their potential revenue). At this stage it should be noted that all these “loses” remain in the jurisdiction of potentiality. To be fair, there is a case for the loss of potential revenue, however misguidedly optimistic such a concept might initially seem. At the same time however, we cannot let considerations of possibilities consume the argument, which should be focussed on both consumer rights and intellectual property rights. I have a right as a consumer of a cultural product to a direct relation with the art involved; I will not have that right taken away from me by non-artists who believe that marketing concerns trump aesthetic or philosophical ones. Out of this comes a dictum of sorts: it is more important to experience art than to pay for that experience. In this guise, call me a communist if you must.



In China, the consumers are winning. The reason for this is simple: the Chinese market has rejected the idea that films should cost as much as they do in the rest of the world. When the cost of producing a DVD is around 50 cents (not a burn, which can be significantly cheaper than 50 cents, but an officially-printed disc), it should not be sold at retail for more than ten times that price. Consequently, when Hollywood attempted its North American standard pricing of $24.99 - $34.99 it was almost laughed out of the country. No thanks, the Chinese consumer seemed to say, we’ll just make our own copies and sell them at more reasonable prices. Hollywood responded by trying to strongarm Chinese consumers into paying the “regular” price, but after almost ten years the fight has concluded. Warner Brothers recently announced that it would release the Chinese version of Superman Returns on DVD for around $2, thus pricing an official release competitively with its bootleg counterpart. Similarly, when I was in Korea I purchased an official 6-DVD boxset of Kieslowski’s Decalogue for $30, while the cheapest North American release I found was a 3-disc set for $95. I ripped the Korean DVDs to my computer thus bypassing the regional coding, then burned them to DVDs that my player would read. MPAA, please send your lawsuit to: my ass, c/o bite it.

This issue is about balancing consumer rights with those of the producers of intellectual property. I thoroughly believe that the arts deserve financial support, which can involve a significant investment on the part of the consumer. With Hollywood however, we are for the most part not really talking about art but rather product, and consumers will respond in rather mechanical ways to its consumption. Personally, I think that for North America, $5 is a good digital download price, while $10 would be a great retail price (barring limited/special issues). More DVDs would be sold, and while initially the studios would not see higher profits due to the lowered price, any dime-store business student can describe volume as more important than margins in the long-term health of a company.

Groups like the MPAA whine that the high cost of films reflects ever-increasing production costs. No offense MPAA, but that’s your fucking problem (YFP). Not too many industries complain about production expenses while continually raising them. Furthermore, in and of itself production costs do not explain the public’s dwindling interest in Hollywood properties. To paraphrase a conversation that I had with a local video rental retailer, the 2005 Pink Panther remake tanked at retail, rental, and the box-office not because of piracy or lack of marketing initiatives. That movie and many like it lost money because they fucking sucked donkeys. At the end of the day, it boils down to a simple query: why has the cost of making Hollywood films escalated to two or three hundred million dollars? Coupled with the aesthetic and narrative bankruptcy of most Hollywood releases, this trend signals to me that the writing is on the wall for this little self-important group who consider themselves to be at the forefront of world culture. I can just picture the cynics lined up on Hollywood Boulevard: there’s rampant poverty in this country, real wages are declining rapidly, jobs are being outsourced, only half the country has medical care, Asian and Indian cinema are progressing exponentially, an energy crisis is looming, etc, etc, and you are spending how much money to make a Superman movie???

Hammer City Roller Girls

Note: this article was not published by View magazine on or around July 20, 2006.



Sometimes you just have to hit a girl.

Or, at the very least you have to make sure that if she’s jamming for the other team in a bout, you give her a solid check to keep her from coming straight up the outside lane.

If that last statement is foreign to you, then obviously you missed the February issue of View which introduced Hamilton’s rapidly growing Rollerderby scene. To catch up: two teams of rollerskaters jostle for position within a scrum to allow a lead skater who scores for one team or the other by passing blockers and lapping the whole pack as many times as they can within a two-minute jam.

At its core, the sport combines elements of hockey, rugby, 70s kitsch burlesque, a little roll-bounce, and the bitchslapped soul of rock. Which means a quickly paced game in which some people might get hurt. And that will only make them angrier, since all of the athletes will be wearing really cute uniforms that bring out the best in a roller skater.

Currently, the burgeoning Hammer City Roller Girls league contains the Hamilton Harlots and the Steeltown Tank Girls. While two teams might seem a limitation, the proximity of teams in other leagues along with the half-dozen new faces seen at each practise suggest a bright future for the sport. If you consider that two teams emerged for this relatively new sport in half a year, the promise for an eight or ten team southern Ontario league cannot be too distantly realized.

This Saturday night at Central Arena in Burlington, the Harlots and the Tanks will go head to head for the first time with their holds no-barred. Practises have so far been rowdy affairs, with injuries and retribution equally meted out. With sponsorship from the Steamwhistle brewery and local bands Sons of Butcher, The Orphans, and The Sam Lawerence 5, you can be sure that your beer and rock needs will be met.

Tickets are $10 ($15 if you want to catch the bus from Corktown), and are available at Reigning Sound, the Corktown, or online. The ticket price includes admission to the after-party at Corktown featuring Toronto punks The Screwed.

Hammer City Slam
Saturday July 22, 7pm
Central Arena, Burlington.

Andy Warhol celebrates the death of us all at the AGO

Andy Warhol,
Triple Elvis, 1964,
aluminum paint and silkscreened ink on canvas.

America is a hybrid nation, stuck between the physical rendition of nationality as buildings, presidents, and a sizeable military, and an internalized ethical identity on the part of its population interpellated as citizens. Importantly, this is a trans-border phenomenon. American business interests, which have proliferated across the globe over the past century, are themselves means of conferring the American form of citizenship upon a foreign (host) population. Citizenship may only be conferred for a moment or two, perhaps the duration of an electronic financial transaction at the point of purchase, but yet the effects of inclusion in this manner are persistent.

The American system has many problems, the first of which is its unmatched economic success. Politically, dominance within the world marketplace has created a series of aggressive, arrogant governments which have guided American foreign policy to its current trends of unilateralism and military conquest.

And yet the philosophical tradition of the nation promises both freedom and opportunity, and to some extent these goals are indeed realized. However, the country experiences a drastically uneven distribution of wealth, most obviously in the uneven distribution of municipal, education, and healthcare infrastructure. Without social support structures, there exists a serious political vacuum manifesting as poverty and criminality unmatched in the developed world. In both cases many rights and guarantees that normally are provisional with citizenship such disappear.

On the other side of the coin lies American Celebrity, which perhaps best demonstrates the cultural supremacy of the American political and economic system. Individuals such as Bill Gates, Paris Hilton, and Dick Cheney enjoy a degree of wealth and social opportunity unimaginable when viewed against the reality that 3 billion people worldwide live on less than two American dollars per day. Celebrities themselves are in many ways dead before their time, as media representations of their persons and lifestyles render them in- and trans-human.

Andy Warhol understood the extent to which America could invent itself as a mighty and surreal transnational entity. His was not an analytic process, but rather by reproducing and manipulating images of household products, car crashes, and various celebrities he came to understand modern citizenship in the guise of a juxtaposition and simultaneity of the sacred and the profane. Citizenship was inclusive (everyone can afford to buy the same products, and consequently consumers become a relatively homogenous group), finite in time (witness Warhol’s fascination with instruments of death, such as those used by the State to terminate the lives of its undesireables) and yet infinite in magnitude (Warhol’s infamous statement to the effect that everyone will enjoy fifteen minutes of fame is rendered inverse by the repetition of Jackie Os and Elvises in many of his silkscreen pieces).

It seems quite fitting that David Cronenberg curated a new Warhol exhibition at the Art Gallery of Ontario, opening July 9 and extending to October 22. I have a feeling that the auteur of some of modern cinema’s most intellectual and disturbing films might have something to say about Warhol and his creative process. Check out Andy Warhol -- Supernova: Stars, Death, and Disasters 1962-1964 for yourself.

CBC has an interview with Cronenberg posted on its website.

Tory math makes children cry

Since the minority Tory government was installed in January, the Conservatives have made quite a lot of noise about the importance of their budgetary tax cuts and changes in government spending. In addition to a $1200 per year child support allowance, the Tories have promised a one percent reduction to the GST, a slight increase to the personal exemption credit, a much-needed mass transit credit worth 15.5% of the cost of a pass, and a tax increase from 15 to 15.5 percent on the first $36,000 of your income. That last point is worth noting, as this is the first recorded instance in Canadian history of a government decreasing income taxes by increasing the income tax rate.

In reality, save for the transit credit there is no way that these tax cuts will amount to anything for the vast majority of Canadians. Only those whose income is high enough to allow them to freely spend thousands of dollars each month will see anything of merit. If you have an income of, say, $3000 per month, you might have $500 of it to spend at your leisure. By lowering the GST by 1 percent, you will save around $5 of that $500 per month. A one percent reduction in retail tax does not address any of the problems faced by people who pay taxes or work in this country. It will not stimulate retail sales, or put any extra money back into the pockets of those who might need it.

Furthermore, it really is a shame that the plan for child care in this country fell through the floor. Since when does a $1200 yearly cheque pay for day care? By this, I can only assume that the Conservatives cannot rationalize their costs on this one. If they could, they would see that by giving working families $4.80 per business day (assuming you qualify for the full $1200; since the rebate is reduced by income, if you earn $30,000 you will not see anywhere near $1200) they are insulting employed parents by ignoring their actual living conditions. Furthermore, they are insulting early childhood care providers who surely make more than five bucks in a day. The old Liberal plan for child care was to increase the number of childcare facilities and staff to the point where it could be incorporated into the educational system as pre-kindergarten. Now I don’t like the Liberals either, but that sounds like a real plan. Some might even call it a strategy for future success. Now, to add balance to this argument let’s look again at the Conservative plan.

There is no Conservative plan for childcare in Canada. Instead, the Tories are doing something for which they have criticized every other party: throwing money at the problem. Literally. “Hey problem-with-childcare-in-Canda-wherein-working-families-
cannot-afford-childcare, how are you doing?” Stephen Harper might say. “Here’s $1200 bucks. Go away.”

To analogize, the Tory "plan" for daycare is akin to giving parents $15 bucks a day and calling it a functional educational system. Maybe the Tories thought you could add the $5 monthly GST rebate to the $4.80 childcare “program” to further provide for the well-being of your family. This brings the total amount of care that the Conservative government wishes for your children to $5.04 per day. Which is about the cost of a movie rental these days. Which gives us a TV babysitter in the guise of a Tory Childcare Plan. Moving on. Dot. Org.

More interesting to those who study semantics is the increase in the tax rate for income up to $36,400. I think it works as follows: for many workers, there will be an increase in the tax rate decrease of negative 0.5 percent. That’s right working-poor, look forward to that tax decrease of -0.5% as if you earn up to $36,400 you will not see your taxes go down, but rather in the negative-down direction. Which is up. As in the poor pay more taxes and have even less disposable income for the GST credit.

This now explains to me why the Tories have changed Canada’s strategy for childcare. To the best of my abilities, the assumption works like this. If you get two overworked parents to spend $1200 on miscellaneous crap to appease their tired lives, they will ignore the fact that their kids underperform at school and their taxes have negatively gone down. This underachieving lifestyle is due primarily to the lack of an “environment of intellectual interest”, which usually involves parents having the time to involve themselves or the money to involve other people in the lives of their children. Hopefully, the $1200 also appeases the many single parents who might have a job or go to school and who thus far don’t have any choice but the whoever-works-for-free-oh-wait-you-aren’t-available-anymore policy that they can afford. In either case, neither parents nor their kids in these situations will have a good chance of securing the education they need to get good jobs and move them out of the $36,400 tax bracket. Since more taxpayers are to be found in a bracket which had its taxes decreased by negative 0.5 percent, the economy is stimulated enough to offset the $15 billion in increased military spending. Now that’s how you grow an economy, son!

Some economists hypothesize that the economy would be best stimulated by raising the disposable income of the bottom twenty percent of income earners. Their reasoning suggests that it is better for the economy and most citizens within to have one million consumers spend ten bucks each rather than one man spending ten million in one go. When you consider that the masses are going to make small purchases more habitual and frequent than the wealthy are going to make large ones, you cannot help but assume that tax cuts for the working poor will make more money available to the system as a whole and thus stimulate the economy in the negative-down direction.

None of these economists are in the employ of the Conservative government.

For such a junk budget, the transit tax break is nice to see, even if it is a direct descendent of a Liberal attempt to adhere with the Kyoto accord. Frankly, with the mounting expenses associated with global climate change, now is indeed the time to encourage progressive solutions such as mass transit through tax incentives.

I think the Conservative government needs to go back to school on the tax issue, that is assuming they don't use one of those "10 bucks per day" schools to which I earlier referred. Perhaps the real issue which we should discuss is why $15 billion of our money is being spent on military acquisitions. For example, maybe we could claw that back to $10 billion and spend the other five on a child care program. Oh wait, that was the last Liberal budget, wasn’t it???

I find it more than fascinating that Conservative parties tell us that they are the only ones who have the economic expertise to balance the books while they are in fact a most spendthrift group of faux-economists. Only after a few years will we see whether the Conservatives will maintain Canada’s world-leading budget surpluses (inherited from the Liberals) or squander the wealth for inaccurate tax cuts and bad spending. The fact is, if you search the net for any of Harper’s past writings or speeches, you’ll soon realize that this government is shying away from the media for the very obvious reason that it has a degenerate ideological approach to governance. By giving the Conservatives the vote at last election, we traded a child care plan from a group of lying backscratchers for a short-sighted rebate coupon from a group of covetous and prehensile ideologues whose numbers don’t add up.

By the way, did you notice that your taxes are going up this year?

An Inconvenient Truth

According to the vast majority of the world’s climatologists, when carbon dioxide (CO2) levels in the atmosphere reach 400 parts per million, we will have attained a level that can only be described as “dangerous”. At this point, the earth’s climate will have reached a “tipping point”, after which there is simply no return to the temperate climate which has sustained human civilization for the last ten thousand years. What puts this little fact into perspective is that our CO2 levels are currently sitting at 379 parts per million, and that number is increasing at a rate of 2 ppm per year (a figure which is itself growing as well). That gives us about ten years, folks.

Scientific data such as this constitute the heart of the film An Inconvenient Truth, which documents Al Gore’s project to bring awareness of the implications of climate change to the masses. Thankfully the film sticks to the climate message without getting bogged down in the behind-the-scenes showbiz minutiae of Gore’s speaking tour.

The facts of Gore’s case are ably presented by director Davis Guggenheim. In most cases, both Gore and the science he presents are allowed to speak for themselves. Gore explains some of the processes behind gathering and interpreting such data – ice cores, atmospheric readings, satellite data, etc. – and then follows through with the results, in a typically professional PowerPoint fashion.

It is important to stress that there is little to no dissension among the scientific community. Gore notes that while scientists are universal in warning us of the dangers we are presently facing, the media has considerably distorted and clouded the issue. You don’t have to look further than a recent Fox News (sic) piece in which a senior member of the National Center for Policy Analysis denounced the science in An Inconvenient Truth by referring to a paper which was published by his own organization (note: the NCPA is not a major centre for climatological research) instead of one from, say the Quarterly Journal of the Royal Meteorological Society. You can see some more of Fox News (sic) in action here.

The “tipping point” that was referred to above works as follows. As the atmosphere accumulates CO2 and the Earth continues to warm, the polar ice caps begin melting. Since ocean water absorbs heat while ice reflects sunlight from the Earth, the arctic must be seen as a “canary in a mine”. Gore explains that if even only parts of the arctic melt, sea levels world wide would be raised seven metres, enough to submerge coastal cities such as San Francisco, Shanghai, Calcutta, and New York. When the arctic disappears, we will have a new climate and geography, period.

It’s a message that most people have heard before, although not likely in such a pressing or intimate manner. Gore likens it to the sudden awareness brought forth by science that cigarette smoking would prove fatal to most smokers. His own family earned a fair amount of money growing tobacco over the years until Gore’s sister, herself a smoker, died. We also get to see some telling photographs demonstrating the effects of climate change over the past few decades. One interesting bit of data that has presented itself to recently for this film to document is the occurrence of the fabled North-West Passage – a shipping lane that has been dreamt of for five centuries – in the Canadian arctic this winter. The times they are indeed a changin’.

Some of us had parents who would tell us almost every day of the week to take out the garbage. We ignored and ignored – sometimes even more so when the nagging persisted – and then all of a sudden garbage day had passed and we were left living with a smelly bag of garbage for another week or two. The insistence is more serious in the case of global warming. Since we are out of balance with the natural order of which we are a part, any catastrophic strain on the system is a catastrophe for us. The focus isn’t really on the future but rather, like Gore’s sister, how we live in the present.

After seeing the film, it is hard not to ask the question as to why the Democrats didn’t run with this at the heart of their 2000 presidential campaign. The Al Gore of this film is passionate, funny, intelligent, and a demonstrable leader. Perhaps the fires in Gore’s belly were lit when he saw the presidency stolen out from under him. At the same time, had the American population witnessed the passion and ability of 2006 Gore in 2000, the vote would likely not have been close enough to allow the legislative coup that brought Bush to office. One cannot help but wonder how differently this new millennium might have progressed under an Al Gore White House.

More importantly, maybe some real democratic change can be effected as distribution for this film expands. Gore’s take at Hollywood stardom right before mid-term elections and 18 months before the next presidential campaign might seem like post-modern politics at its best. However, even the most cynical viewers of An Inconvenient Truth will be hard pressed to ignore the consequences of inaction. Begin the process of change by taking several of your more environmentally sceptical friends to see this film.



continue watching the film

when the robots start to sing...

Upon encountering the aural landscape of Michael Waterman's Robochorus installation, one cannot help but consider the ontology of human creativity. Must all aesthetic experiences spring directly from the artist to be regarded and savoured as a means to discern the contents of their soul? More precisely, can the expressions of an artist be authentic when voiced by a third party? If one is to have faith in transubstantiation by means of pencil, musical instrument, or paint brush, surely there is space in the religious cannon to include machines, robots, and electronic devices.



Waterman's history as a purveyor of bricolage and recontextualization greatly informs his latest installation. The eight individual Robochorus "singers" are homebrew anthropomorphic robots manufactured from the consumer audio detritus of several decades. These sentinels are located throughout the gallery space and sit mute without viewer interaction. When their internal motion sensors are triggered, the figures self-illuminate and begin to emit one of eight harmonic pitches in response to external stimuli. It is with these sounds that Waterman's interest in collage is most evident. Each of the eight tones is comprised of numerous audio sources, including radio broadcasts and environmental audio, which combine into a single, polyvalent drone. As the eight robots are voiced in the harmonic series, when all of them are triggered they can be heard to sing in conversation with each other. Taken together, the robots form the latest in retro home entertainment made public.



Part of Waterman's intention is to demonstrate the influence of commerce on our appreciation of art. The artist seems to want to bring the latent ambiguities of modern electronics and consumption to the fore. By triggering the robots and making them come to life, the audience gains a degree of control over the electronics that Waterman has put into play. Normally, we walk through the valley of technology with blinders; the vast majority of the population has little or no operational understanding of the devices that are consumed. This lack of understanding when merged with late capitalism's mantra of planned obsolescence has resulted in our present-day throw-away economy, which interpellates us as contingent psychotics disregarding the apocalyptic damage we are doing to our biosphere while simultaneously feeding off our nostalgic instincts for the purity of our collective past. We live and breathe garbage on a habitual basis. With Robochorus, Waterman has restructured our forgotten machines from their original functions to a more primitive and abstract level to allow a greater degree of understanding and sympathy.

What was once the latest in high-fidelity audio equipment has here become recontextualized into the latest in post-human technologies. Our machines play on, long after they have become obsolete and forgotten (by extension - does art outlive our critical interest?). By situating the listener as principle agent within a continually changing aural geography, Waterman's robomorphic singers demonstrate the very human characteristic of wanting to be loved (or more precisely, wondering why their love is no longer being returned when once it was so freely given). Individually, their voices are polyphonic yet highly articulated. When heard en masse, the effect is of an unarticulated yet aurally rich cluster of voices, situating the listener as chief conductor.



Several critical responses quickly elicit themselves. Am I supposed to understand what these robots are telling me? Do they themselves understand, or are their utterances the robot equivalent of a nervous tick? While the installation might suggest movement and progression akin to a narrative, when examined in more detail the piece becomes much more abstract and schizophrenic as the individual sound sources become supra-liminal. In some circles this aesthetic is named microsound: audio, when listened to under the microscope as it were, reveals increasing amounts of information. It is the impossibility to properly locate sounds that gives Robochorus its semantic resilience. Robochorus wishes to engage at both the macroscopic and the microscopic level, and yet this very process of "straining to hear" brings the listener back full-circle, (sitting "alone") in a darkened room, illuminated by the robotic extensions of humanity. The point, dear listener, is yourself, listening.

Michael Waterman's Robochorus runs from May 5 until July 9 at the Hamilton Artists Inc.

here we go again, or: how i learned to stop worrying and love the bomb

MP3: Sun Ra Arkestra - Nuclear War

There has been quite a lot of talk about Iran in the North American media these days. We hear many things: that they are bellicose fundamentalists intent on destroying the west; that they have nuclear ambitions which threaten every nation on earth; that they harbour terrorists and train them for future activities. The new mantra down south seems to be one of preemption, a get 'em before they get us attitude.

It might seem dreadfully obvious, but such talk in the media would likely convey to Iran an idea that the only way to defend itself against American aggression would be a strong nuclear arsenal. You really do have to love catch-22 situations, especially in regard to lobbing nukes around. The seeming inevitability of the situation evokes an almost religious fatalism, and that is precisely what hardline American and Iranian officials are exploiting in their separate camps. According to an article published in the New Yorker, President Bush is absolutely convinced that Iran is going to get the bomb" if it is not stopped, and that he must do "what no Democrat or Republican, if elected in the future, would have the courage to do ... saving Iran is going to be his legacy." Since it is highly unlikely that George Bush was actually elected in either 2000 or 2004, this statement is perhaps the most disturbing bit of information ever to emerge from the White House.

The U.N. Security Council is also concerned with Iran, as it is concerned with any member nation which seems to be pursuing nuclear ambitions (except the US of course, which has had free reign to develop weapons of mass destruction; will we one day see America sanctioned for its militarism?). President Bush has repeatedly stated that his administration is pursuing every diplomatic means at its disposal (importantly, the CIA describes this as "inaccurate", but doesn't elaborate). It should here be noted that currently the US military is staging a continual series of military training exercises - such as strategic nuclear bombing simulations - within arms' reach of Iran. Of course, then there's that grand military exercise which is the occupation of Iraq.

Interestingly enough, Iraq seems as a quasi-ironic precursor to a more open form of regime change, ie nuclear war. Talk about Saddam Hussein and his government has adequately diluted the debate surrounding American involvement in the Middle East. No longer is the Palestinian-Israeli issue at the forefront; similarly pushed aside is the influence of American foreign policy on Lebanon and Syria, among others. We now have the great and secret show which is the trial of Saddam Hussein to occupy the foreign correspondent sections of our newshours and RSS feeds. What we are in fact getting is the classic bluff-and-swap manoeuvre. The White House is not filled with idiots, despite the child-king who is their leader. It was known for a long time that Hussein posed little threat to world peace. After all, it was America which sold Iraq much of its military arsenal. It seems much more likely that Iraq was invaded to secure a large oil deposit while simultaneously granting a second strategic foothold (after Israel) in the Middle East.



Seymore Hersh stated that in conversation with several high-ranking civilian staffers at the Pentagon, Iran's President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad was repeatedly described as "the next Adolph Hitler". Here's the switch after the bluff. Public debate concerning tyrants and monsters such as Hussein and Hitler, when breathed in the same utterance as Ahmadinejad, serves the purpose of rhetorical contingency that most listeners find captivating. Of course Ahmadinejad is bad, the public will say, lacking all proof to that effect other than I don't like Hitler.

According to several Pentagon-affiliated sources, America is quite advanced in the planning stages for military operations in Iran. We should not assume this operation to be as 'bloodless' as Iraq (to the 50,000 dead Iraqis, please pardon the use of this term). After all, after wiping out Iraq's army in 1991, military strategists knew full well the extent of Iraq's military capacity - none. In regard to Iran, the question is a lot more open. Iran does indeed have a standing army which is decently equipped. As well, there can be no denying that Iran has the potential for nuclear deployment.

In light of this, Pentagon strategists have come up with an all-or-nothing solution. Conventional and chemical weapons, such as those currently in use in Iraq, will not be able to decisively annihilate Iran's geographically dispersed nuclear processing facilities, nor will they be able to penetrate Iran's purported underground uranium enrichment facilities. Some estimates posit that more than five hundred distinct sites would have to be rapidly destroyed to ensure Iran's submission to American nuclear authority. Consequently, only the nuclear option remains to ensure that Iran doesn't respond to a military strike with a nuclear counter-attack.

In light of this might we surmise about a statement in the Project for a New American Century - that wonderful and terrifying in situ holocost museum - released a little more than a week after the 9/11 attacks. To ensure American hegemony over key material resources, namely oil, water, and uranium, and continue the war on terrorism, the country would have to escalate warfare considerably. Winning the war on terrorism would likely "require the United States to engage a well-armed foe". Just to remind you, the signatories and principal architects of PNAC are currently members of George W. Bush's administration.

Patrick Clawson of the Washington Institute for Near East Policy is quoted in the New Yorker as saying that "we have to be ready to deal with Iran if the crisis escalates....This is not like planning to invade Quebec." So the waters of an invasion into Iran don't get diluted by another bluff-and-switch potential, I'll leave that last somewhat ominous Freudian slip for a future article.

power down

When Canada became a signatory to the Kyoto protocol, many Canadians held their heads a little higher thanks to an increased sense of moral virtue. After all, we just had to look to the ‘ignorant’ south, who didn’t sign Kyoto, to feel better about ourselves. It’s now a few years later and sadly little has changed in terms of our emissions, despite the Kyoto requirements. Certainly there’s a greater amount of media awareness surrounding the issue, and many Canadians have begun to think about the ramifications of climate change. Indeed, the exceptionally warm winter that we are all experiencing this year should prove that the times they are a changin’. In case you assume this to be a momentary blip in weather statistics, it should be noted that of the ten warmest years in recorded history, eight have occurred since 1990.

We all know that transportation is a big part of the problem, but electricity consumption is also a climate change issue. At it’s heart it all boils down to this: we are going to be using a lot of electricity for the foreseeable future. As more items become electrified and more people (ie: China, India, etc) can purchase and use them, electricity use will skyrocket over the coming decades. There’s just one problem: it can’t, at least with our current methods of production.



Most of North America’s electricity comes from burning coal and oil. This has two fairly severe consequences. Firstly, both are finite resources that will not sustain our current usage profiles let alone adapt to the ever-increasing population. Secondly, there’s that pesky business about air pollution, as emissions from generators are the biggest single contributors to climate change and smog.



It is likely that nuclear power will have to fill the deficit when oil use becomes more prohibitive. Don’t believe me? How about some math on this issue. 65% of North American electricity comes from oil, coal, and natural gas. These technologies will never be clean. Either we accept dirty air which warms our planet, or we reduce demand to 35% of our current usage. Given how much we all like our televisions and fridges, the latter seems unlikely. Renewable technologies cannot currently match this level of production. Once every building is fitted with solar panel roofs and wind generators are almost household items, maybe then we can start talking about sustainable growth. Until then, our growth will be always-already unsustainable. More than likely however, over the next few decades we will see the proliferation of nuclear generation, with all the environmental, social, and safety issues that it entails.

So what can be done by the average person? While not everyone has the money to dump $15,000 into a personal solar or wind generation system, there are many other steps that can be taken to ensure that your energy use is minimized. Of course, if you can afford to install a small wind generator or add solar panels to your property, then please do so. In fact, give me a ring and I’ll help you install your system. Check out Energy Alternatives for more details. If you are building a new house, why not add a renewable energy source? It will pay for itself in about a decade, and then your electricity will be free. Not a bad price, considering the increasing rates that power companies are charging.

One much smaller step that can be taken is to pay attention to those objects in your life that consume electricity. I know this sounds rather pedantic, but little things like changing all of the light fixtures in your house from incandescents to compact fluorescent will be a great step (and since these efficient bulbs last ten times longer than “normal” ones, you will be less of a burden on our landfills), Obviously, I am not suggesting that you ditch your high-tech gear and move into an earth-warmed cave in the woods. Electronic toys can be great fun, and definitely enhance many aspect of our lives. The easiest way to save on power use is to turn things off when you are done using them.



This may seem obvious, but you’d be surprised how many people leave appliances running when they are not in use. Televisions, stereo equipment, kitchen appliances – if they aren’t in use, turn the damn things off. Fans, heaters, lights, and such don’t really need to be on when you aren’t actually in the room. Here’s a fun idea: put all your lights and fans on motion sensors and timers so that they only operate when they are needed, then forget about them.

Computer equipment is another culprit. Monitors do not need to be on when the computer is not in use, and you can set up Windows to put the whole computer into a low power mode using the screensaver settings. Don’t leave the machine running overnight unless it’s actually performing a function. In this capacity I am looking straight at Hamilton’s business community. Just walk past a place of business at night and you can see that most of them leave their computers and cash registers on all the time. There’s no need for those monitors to be on all the time guys; turn ‘em off, save some cash. Even better, if you see that a business is wasting power, why not walk in and tell them? It’s usually out of ignorance rather than apathy that waste occurs. Also, when you go away on vacation, don’t leave on lights or appliances as a means to deter thieves. My cop buddies tell me that robbers tend to “case the joint” before doing anything. Most thieves are smart enough to notice things to suggest that you aren’t actually home, such as lights which never turn on or off, cars which never appear or leave the house, and people who don’t come and go. If you want to play this game with them, at least get a timer to control the lights. Otherwise, your little counter-insurgency strategy is entirely laughable.

Perhaps most importantly, if everyone were to upgrade their house to ensure maximum efficiency, a great deal of electricity would be saved. The federal government is actually providing grants for this very purpose. You do have to invest some money yourself to have an energy audit performed and retrofit your house to maximize efficiency. There is serious money available to those who truly wish to lower their household power use. Find out more at the website for the Office of Energy Efficiency.

Reducing our energy consumption isn’t a leftist agenda. In the long run, saving money is something from which we can all benefit. That our air will be more breathable and our climate more liveable is icing on the cake.

the body politik

These past few weeks, I’ve been oscillating between a decision to stop paying attention to the “political” issues that get brought forth in the popular media, and the opposite position of wanting to attack much of what gets talked about in public discourse as so much horseshit. It continually amazes me that a citizenry will so patently avoid dealing with issues of such importance as health care in a more aggressive fashion.

You really do have to love media “debates”. Once again we’re being told by conservative pundits about the virtues of privatizing healthcare while at the same time the horrors of a for-profit health system are being expounded by the left. It pains me to no end to continually hear the same bullet points from both camps while any debate about the issue is perpetually stifled. I don’t want to get into the issue of why there is no space for such discussions in the public sphere (an issue of both corporate hegemony over broadcast sources and public apathy to that which is not immediate to them).

More importantly, I think it’s key to look at precisely that which is not being said, falling to the margins of public discourse. Health Canada is reminding us of the economic burdens of particular lifestyle choices. One wonders why government does not take a more active stance against things are known to be harmful to our health. Prevention should be the mantra of our health system, and yet all of the public discourse surrounding healthcare involves funding various treatment issues.



Every time you turn go to the Canadian news media these days, you hear about the various failures of the health care system. From wait times to bed shortages, it’s all a big love-in of negative punditry. And yet solutions are rarely, if ever, given. Except the mantra of privatization, which gets held aloft as a white knight leading us to the promised land. The only manner to improve the system according to the proponents of privatization is to allow private capital to be invested in the system. We need more beds, more doctors and nurses, more equipment, and more physical space in hospitals.

According to such thinking, the health system needs an injection of capital to expand and meet the needs of Canadians. If we were to allow doctors to set up private clinics, those doctors will be able to secure loans to expand health infrastructure in this country. They would then pass on the expense of these (privately accrued) loans along to their customers along with some conception of a profit margin to thus provide what Conservative thinkers like to call “adequate service”. That profit would then be used to further invest in the system and find ever more opportunities for “market expansion”. So that is the grand strategy on the part of proponents of privatization. According to these people, systems only work when somebody is making a profit. Of course, isn’t the system then more expensive, when in addition to health services it has to pay for mansions and cars and such for its investors? I’ll get to that math in a second.

Some of us are currently asking why, if Canadians have so much money that they wish to put to health care, there is no further injection of money into the public system. If all we need is investment, why are we not investing? After all, it’s far more efficient and less expensive for the government to secure loans for investment on a system-wide level than it is for thousands of small investors. As well, governments can accommodate losses in one sector of the budget (let’s say healthcare, as a continual expense) with gains in another (energy stocks, anyone?). Furthermore, the federal as well as a few provincial governments are enjoying surpluses that could easily be used to further investment in health care. All of these things would keep the overall price of health care lower than if the private sector were to be in charge.

So why are such investments not forthcoming? Well, let’s just say there’s a whole hell of a lot of money in the health system, and the financial sector is chewing at the bit to gain access to these public funds. When profit comes from people being sick, corruption is quick to follow.

There’s one aspect unique to health care that makes it impossible to marry profitability to a sense of human compassion and what we might call “good governance”. Every time somebody gets sick or has an accident, a cost in incurred. By its very nature, taken as a whole health is a depreciating economy. There is simply no manner to make a profit without either isolating access to only those who can pay for the continually-increasing profit margins of all the middlepeople in the health services chain, or to downgrade services when they are universally accessible and cut costs to the bare minimum.

A great example of this kind of health care is provided to the south where HMOs, which are America’s attempt at universal coverage, do not cover a vast majority of health services and more importantly are not accepted by a majority of hospitals or doctors. Since profitability is the raison d’être of the system, patients who are not profitable are perishable. They will remain externalities to a system which chooses not to account for their existence.

So yes, health care is expensive and will continue to burden governments who choose to socialize its access. Health care spending in this country was pegged at about $121 billion for 2003, which represents nearly 10% of our GDP. Shouldn't the healthy lives of a citizenry be worth ten percent of what the country is worth? By the way, America spends 14.6% of its GDP on medical care. While all that money is footed by taxpayers, many Americans lack the quality of care that every single Canadian receives. Interestingly enough, the OECD found that while the USA spends nearly twice as much per person on health care, Canadians live on average two years longer (I realize this might have to do with crime statistics and environmental protections, and might not reflect wholly on health policy).

A body politik must be healthy to be wealthy and productive. You might hear about wait times in Canada, which many espouse as representative of an "ailing" health care system. That's not during life-threatening situations, except when organ donations are required. The wait is for elective surgeries, like hip replacements and such. Health care needs to prioritize. It's more important to save a person's life than it is for one to get a new hip. Sorry, that's just the way it is. Conservatives in Canada complain because they can't access health care the way they can access the mall. They want service they can pay for, and because many of them are wealthy they think they "deserve" it. Tough. Despite some elements to the contrary, the wealthy do not represent the centre of human rights in Canada.

This whole ideology of profit, which leaves everyone to their own devices in terms of fending for themselves when they are sick, is an abject failure. You will not see the results of that failure if you concentrate your studies on affluent Americans who don't seem to have any problem buying into adequate health coverage. You will see it in the disenfranchised who do not have any coverage at all (the US Census for 2003 states this to be 15.2% of the total US population, or about 43.6 million Americans -- ten million more than the entire population of Canada!). You will see that failure in the low-to-mid of the middle class (about 100 million), who do not have coverage which equals the coverage every single Canadian is assured by our constitution. You see it in the record number of bankruptcies that are filed every year when families have to pay tens or hundreds of thousands of dollars for medical treatments out of their own pockets.

Most reasonable Americans have had enough of these beliefs. They are sick of paying ridiculous prices for medicine. They are sick of getting turned away from hospitals which do not recognize their insurance. And most especially, they are sick of insurance companies who do everything they can to get out of paying for medical treatments. In this capacity, America represents a travesty. The USA has enough wealth that every citizen should have the best treatment in the world. Instead, you get a reality where a family must seriously consider the consequences of paying $200,000 for heart surgery and possibly face bankruptcy or instead allowing a family member to die. That is unacceptable in the modern world. Now is not the time to bring such hideous complaints to Canada, when our national wealth is rising substantially and our population is expanding.

My New York Diary

It's not that often that I choose to review older material, but this time I feel the need to promote the work of an artist pro bono. Thanks to my typical mid-winter hibernation, there has been a lot more time lately for the anti-social things that I love, one of which being graphic novels. I've been continually putting off an attempt to read the entire Cerebus series in one go thanks to certain, er, "responsibilities" that have come my way recently. Then comes a wee little snow day, and already I've gorged myself on several books.

This is what I would consider the best of the bunch -- mainly as the others included Spiderman and Batman ephemera. Montreal artist Julie Doucet has gained a good deal of publicity for her books, which combine domestic scenes with a particular sense of poetic realism in terms of narration and visual design. She rarely appeals to what I like to call "grand design" narrative, which, broadly speaking, is a means of attempting to melodramatize a story beyond itself. By this, I mean to suggest stories which appeal to their ontology in a rather banal and obvious way. Think of a story in which all of the actions and events which occur conveniently underline the themes or characterizations of the story without any other sense of logic behind their existence. This appeal is one of the author to him- or herself, and the last thing that I want masturbatory writing to attempt is structural realism. It does not aid a reader's uptake (at least not this reader), but rather grand design narratives serve to show themselves as stories which could be nothing but what the author has presented, a hermeneutic seal of self-legitimization. We've all seen and/or read bad deus ex machina stories. I am of the opinion that such is a failed aesthetic, and one which frequently lets authors off the hook without them doing too much work to understand the world around them.

Moving on...

My New York Diary is a brief autobiography of the author during a time in her mid-twenties when, seeking a career in cartooning, she moves from Montreal to New York. Now I'm sure that the artist-trying-to-make-it-in-New-York is perhaps the biggest cliché in modern culture. And yes, the art does indeed owe a hell of a lot to Art Spiegelman. Doucet has a great ear for dialogue however, or more specifically for what remains almost-spoken in relationships. Some of this comes across through her inner thoughts. For the most part however, she leaves the important aspects of characterization to small graphic details such as the manner in which her cat responds to her New York boyfriend in the background of several panels.

It is precisely these little details that bring joy with every page. Doucet's bobbly-headed figures are irrepressibly endearing, especially when they get high and start cursing at each other in the nude. Perhaps it is the fighting which I find most appealing. Maybe it’s the sheer helplessness and uselessness of Doucet’s male characters, who seem entirely burdened by the weight of their bad decisions and yet do not seem to be conscious of this fact. Or perhaps it’s Doucet’s somewhat casual attitudes toward the valuation of meaning and the attribution of significance which stands out the most for me. Her characters are entirely believable as they exist almost entirely within prisons of their own derivation. They act akin to Foucault's interned within the panopticon: ever guilty, they either self-police or are eternally condemned. Doucet herself realizes this fact by the end of the novel, during a period of a few weeks when she comes to the realization that life for her cannot continue with her New York boyfriend in the picture. This breakup is not sentimental, but rather entirely realistic in the sense that both actors are engaging in a mutual process of misfiring, with each mistake reinforcing the mistaken emotions of the other person. It is a tragedy that thankfully is played entirely without melodrama (a taste if which we were given at the beginning of the novel during a boyfriend's feeble attempt at suicide).

With events such as these, Doucet seems to be advocating a certain laissez-faire approach to empirial significance. Sure, things such as breakups and such are milemarkers in our respective lives. But if all we suffer is the other person, or the lack thereof, then should we not be examining people and not events for meaning? Events are given significance by relations created through nostalgic reverie. With the simple, random, and even casual manner in which even the most meaningful relationships in our lives come and go, we are kidding ourselves with all of the melodrama of significance. Doucet serves us the reminder that such things are daily banalities, meaning little except to ourselves. Meaning comes at precisely the moment when the story of such things gets told and retold. Then again, such is the purpose of diaries: simultaneously private and public, singular yet universal, they are the material form of the nostalgic gesture, the means by which we attribute meaning to those little banal narratives that we call ourselves. This wake, this breathing of life into otherwise ancient memories, is the true sense of self that we can give to other people when they lack our immediate presence. It is for this reason that Doucet ends her book simply and abruptly with a three-page winter exodus of the city that involves her, her apartment, and her cat. Oh, and the not-so-subtle irony of an amateur marching band. Story over. She's come and gone. And we never really were in Julie's presence anyway!

Some of us like to engage ourselves with art that reinforces and legitimates our sense of self. When we find characters and stories that are as dysfunctional as we, a certain sense of homecoming washes over us. I now feel less isolated from society by the various manners in which I miseducate myself and those around me. Thanks to the ever-increasing circulation of Montreal’s Drawn & Quarterly imprint, you shouldn’t have too much trouble finding yourself a copy for the next snow day.

Bonnie Prince Billy and Tortoise - The Brave and The Bold

Bonny Prince Billy and Tortoise
The Brave and The Bold
[Overcoat/Domino, 2006]

When two of your musical heroes decide to get together, it can be a mixed blessing. Surely, the complex arrangements and instrumental dexterity of Chicago’s Tortoise could provide nothing but solid support for our bonnie Will Oldham. At first you might assume the band’s muscular tone to be somewhat antithetical to Oldham’s skeletally strained vocal delivery, and yet each serves to emphasize the strengths of the other. Plus, the dynamic of a strong band and a barely-there voice serves as an ironic undertext to the proceedings. The Brave and The Bold collects ten covers from such diverse acts as Elton John, the Minutemen, Devo, Bruce Springsteen, and Don Williams. Springsteen’s ‘Thunder Road’ is transformed from the agit-anthem of the original to a 70s-style prog masterpiece lifted from a long-lost rock opera. The group’s take on Elton’s ‘Daniel’ is equally revelatory, as the classic saccharine end-of-the-night torchsong loses the sing-songiness of Elton’s version in favour of an aural depiction of the drink and smoke-filled atmosphere which must have constituted the reality of the song’s lyrics – all this while still retaining the objective humour of the original. While not a groundbreaking album by any means, The Brave and The Bold is a perfect meeting of indie minds who were smart enough not to try and perfect a masterpiece. They just got together and played the songs which appealed to them, and we’re the better for it.

MP3: Bonnie Prince Billy and Tortoise, "Cravo É Canela"

Audion - Suckfish

Audion
Suckfish
[Spectral Sound, 2005]

Sometimes, all you want to do is dance it all away. Detroit’s Matthew Dear greatly understands this desire, and over the past few years and under a variety of aliases he has appealed to the masses with his take on tech-house beats. Unlike the patient and endearingly produced techno that permeates his namesake vocal work, under alias Audion Dear spins a very dirty and hormone-fuelled sixty minutes. Album opener ‘Vegetables’ sets the tone for Suckfish with an insistent and dirty mechanical crunk that permeates the track, giving it a feel that’s half 1990 Detroit and half 2005 Berlin back alley. ‘Your Place or Mine’ lays down funky, sex-dripping disco beats over its course (for some reason this song screams Rainer Werner Fassbinder to me).

Dear ably leads to the first album highlight ‘Titty Fuck’, which layers electro-style synth stabs over a rampant microhouse soundfloor. Several tracks like ‘T.B.’ and ‘Uvular’ provide more subtle ass-grooving experiences, maybe akin to the cross-room flirtations that precede any overt bumps in the night. Each leads straight into a barn-burner of a track, proving that a slow, tantric rise will beat fireworks every time. And that climax does come with the bass-sweep march of ‘Kisses’, the solid disco thump of ‘The Pong’, and the two-step squelch of ‘Just Fucking’ which will ensure that your party will indeed be started. It all makes you want to drop ecstasy and dance it up like 1997 all over again, this time with the carnal knowledge that comes with full-on adulthood.

MP3: Audion, "Just Fucking"

feeling my way around itaewon

our first full day off after the esl camp in korea, and we had celebrated the previous night by, of course, drinking excessively. i was wearing contacts, and the exceptionally dry atmosphere left them decently attached to my eyeballs, despite my regular use of drops -- regular up to the point where i stopped caring / noticing the problem. regardless, fun was had and by the end of the night my eyes ended up in their proper sockets, so to speak.

i woke up the next day completely blind and in an exceptional amount of pain. i couldn't keep my eyes either closed or shut. after three hours of trying to sleep it off into the afternoon, i decided to venture out to the clinic and see (now that there is a certain distance of then and now, it's easy to use such a terrible pun) what was what. since i was completely blind, i had to make the trek by feel. somehow i managed to cross the street, touching brick, stone, and other inhabitants of this dismal American borough of Seoul. when i got the other side, some US military police stopped me and asked why i was so drunk at such an early part of the day ("you must be a fucking Canadian" one said!). i explained my situation and they pointed out that the clinic on my side of the street was closed for renovations, so i had to make my way up the street a half kilometre to another one. fun times.

feeling one's way up the main street in Itaewon is in fact the only way to travel this strip, even if you are graced with vision. every small street vendor that you pass grabs you and brings you closer to their somewhat stunted paychecks. i now know what calvin klein socks feel like. how each item in a line of gucci purses supplely enters your palm only to slip into the next design, arresting you for a second of desire amassed and rejected. the fact that almost everything you see is a bootleg, a facsimile made by hands other than armani's. all of the luggage and tourist items are displayed in order to trip up any passer-by who doesn't give even a second to evaluate their worth, which under my fingers seemed for the most part quite adequate. there is a certain presence of tactile response, a knowledge of where you came from and where you are going, atom by atom from birth unto death. above anything else i learned that the body only knows time within relative immanence. everything is given time by bodily experience, and from this sense of "everything" taken altogether comes the gesture toward transcendence. meaning is precisely this interception of sense into consciousness while trying to avoid the scars of time: an impossible procedure. the blind-for-a-day are given meaning in a pure sense, without referent. no, it says, immortality does not come that cheap; welcome back to present day reality. at this instant the body returns upon itself, and either you allow the non-corporeal to maintain its distance like a prayer, or you let it fold in upon both itself and you.

with this manifest realization, i was able to pick up what was, when i was finally able to see it two days later, a pretty sweet shirt by feeling the design on the front. aesthetics are an interesting consideration when you lose a sense. by what criteria should we really judge things? referentiality is our only recourse. so what then of aesthetics and universality? what then is beautiful beyond that which simply brings relief to the suffering of a particular individual? it was precisely at this moment of purchase that i decided true happiness would only come about if i created something back at my hotel. with such limited options as i had available to myself, i knew that such a creation would be me and a camera, solitary in solidarity. hopefully the resultant video doesn't linger too long as anything of importance, as in my mind it was merely a distraction and one which served it's fitful purpose. if i learned anything from this birthing, it is that isolation -- true isolation -- breeds incontinence. truth be told, i like this space of incontinence. it is one of freedom despite harsh criticism from both within and without; minima moralia.



i made it to the clinic only to find out that many of Itaewon's public services -- in the sense that i have come to understand the meaning of public -- close for random three-hour sessions, sporadically throughout the day. presently i was out of luck, so i decided to try and get back home and knock myself out with soju after fucking around with my attempts at an important visual. on the way, i'm not sure how, i managed to get to the atm in the subway (thank you random australian man who read to me my atm info. up to that point, i was thinking that i might get fucked over by someone stealing cash or my pin). a quick mission of happiness, and some food for my sojourn at the love motel.

being vegetarian and blind in korea is a double misunderstanding. multiply by ten when you add a certain lack of ability with the korean language. obviously i was not allowed to touch the food which interested me. as a consequence, i had to trust my limited korean vocabulary for this pursuit of culinary justice. at one kitchen, i tasted crab and got sick immediately. this led to the exchange of some verbal abuse on the part of those serving me my food. weird. it seemed pretty straight-forward to me. annio golgi, annio mul golgi: no meat, no seafood. then i try to explain no dairy and no eggs. all good, despite my hang'-'glish barbarisms. good, except for the fact that many korean kitchens do not assume things like crab, pork, chicken, etc, to be meat in the traditional sense, and sometimes after explaining that you will not eat a single animal product you still get random animal legs sticking out of your meal in a "decorative" fashion.

nightmare.

the only thing i knew with confidence that i could consume was bi bim bap, a multi-disciplinary salad with rice that sometimes comes with an egg or meat on top but is traditionally vegan. cooking your own food in korea is my recommendation though, unless you really really like bi bim bap, as in three times a day like-alicious.

on this day i had to resort to pictographs in order to get my meal requirements across. this process led me into seven different kitchens, after six different arguments. when fighting blind, the fury of presence is removed from you, as is the hatred which comes from knowing your opposition. it is at once the most heartless and unsatisfying thing you can do. provocation requires a willingness to stare into the eyes of an opponent and convince them of the absolute assurity of your position by strength of metabolism alone. when you go blind, your body language changes, becomes unpredictable. in the end i starved a fair amount, as there was no way for me to express my desires to korean chefs without staring them in the face. blind, fidgety, and half-drunk, i was looked upon as a miser and a cheat, and was given little respect from any food vendor that i found.



at this point, i was so blinded by pain and fuzzy-wrecked-eyedness that i was getting myself around my touch and touch alone -- with occasional barely-peeled eyes telling me of unfocussed shapes and hazy occurences. i now know what most buildings in Itaewon feel like, and some of the people as well. this could have quite easily led me down dark paths, and every bar in my vicinity catered to such a lack of willpower against vice.

i dragged myself home, and was accosted by several prostitutes who i think were balkan. they sounded cute and obviously knew how to endear themselves, but their practised voices were very raspy and tired. i could hear the wheeze of the mattress with every sentence they uttered; articulations seemed determinately cut short by their boredom and the cold wind which passed over their lips. they offered to me everything they didn't really have: presence and a certain emotional tangeability, bought cheaply each half-hour. luckily for them i don't believe in ghosts which i can't see, and so there was no animosity as i left them alone on the street with nothing exchanged between us.

one thing i really liked about my hotel room was the sheer containment it provided. there was no way to excuse the fact that a body needed space. life and breath were taken for granted here in the love motel. this was a region of unforgiven corpses and daily transcience, and my foreign-ness was no exception. time becomes irresolute in such places. the day passed a lot more quickly than i imagined it would upon first waking, in pain and somewhat desperate.

another four hours of listening to music and trying to sleep off my pain. i tried to avoid having my eyes burn when they were either closed OR open. it was a continual and transcendent buzz which elevated my body beyond itself to a relative absolution with the walls, the floor, other people outside my little vacuum. the annihilation of it all was a sweet relief from the immediacy of sensation -- the dry heat from the floor heaters -- pipes under the whole floor which keep the room nice and toasty and also dry the air the fuck out -- made me try another walk into the street. since it was now after supper, the prostitutes were out in full force. no nudity in the public here, unlike North America. the little strip right in front of our love motel is an expanded barracks for GIs picking up hookers and taking them to places like the motel where we have been staying. naked girls left in small dirty rooms after they are used. i thought at first that these little daily mantras of money-then-sex / sex-and-then-money were obscene, a realization of the "love you long time" scene in Full Metal Jacket. i tried everything in my power to save myself from it all. it was crass and i was moralizing, but i took pride in being a judge over these people and their situation. it was liberating, and i wanted the imposition of freedom's distant horizons.

i was starting to see to the horizon, but in fuzzy, half-formed shapes. a young korean girl in a hospital mask came up to me and asked me for a date. she walked in a daze up the street. quick quick quick, then slowly falling to a pause. for a few seconds, my eyes cleared enough that i could make out her face, which was quite beautiful and sad. her english was pretty good, at least the words which weren't drowned out by the blood i saw on the inside of her mask. i asked her why she needed a date from some random guy on the street when she could be winning guys all over the place back at high school or whatever. the only thing which i could see in entire clarity that day -- perhaps the thing which stands out most clearly from the whole trip -- was how her eyes lit up as she pulled her entire mask off her face and told me that she wasn't allowed in school anymore. i could see that she had been beaten up, and was indeed still bleeding from her lip and nose.i wanted to find three hundred thousand won and give it to her just to stay inside for one night. immediately i fell despondent, as this was a malignant thought, one breeding disease. she laughed a little and said, you aren't a GI, you are with a happier face. i realized that my desire to help this girl was precisely her problem. everyone helped her with money, as time was very expensive for her. she was never going to be this young again. she wanted some time back to herself, and that would not come from a foreignor's won. i almost dropped to her feet when she smiled again through the blood around her mouth, then replaced her hospital mask before leaving up the street.

later in my hotel: a camera, a blind photographer, and no subject. i think it was the careless and yet absolute manner in which she placed the mask around her wounds, as though it were not a cover but an interface. i was frozen. precisely because i didn't know her. i could never know her yet could think of nothing else but her immediacy -- she could have founded a temple with that grace. and here i was unable to create even a simple monument of a gesture.



i decided to try some sightless drinking in public to see if i could at least find some conversation. one of the bars next to our love motel was supposedly "Canadian", so i went inside. they did have some presque-canadian whiskey and beer on tap, but i didn't recognize any of it. export only, it seems. regardless of the friendly labels on the beer, my tarsand spirits as well as two British girls who came into the bar soon after i did convinced me to go in the whiskey direction. worst. shit. ever. i only had two drinks, and since the girls weren't exactly masters of conversation except "so are all Canadian boys as funny as you?" and "We are sharing a hostel, want to bring down our rent a bit?" there was nothing but refusal on my mind. i was holding the hand of one of the girls who insisted that it be held, and so i thought: that's right girls. i'm in so much pain that i want to gouge out my retinas with a spoon and fling them down the street, and yet i'd love to go back to your boozy hostel for so much sex and crying. nice try, but that won't get my mind off things. and so it was a terse goodbye as i decided to get the hell out of there.

there's this thing about south korea where public drunkenness is not only completely accepted, but it's thoroughly encouraged if you are a guy. touching every wall and door to find my way back to my room allowed me to bump into five old men who were so thoroughly intoxicated that I had to them get back to their feet and moving in the proper direction. blind leading the blind. one guy even gave me what i later saw was 5,000 won to help him up the stairs to his place. thankfully he asked nothing else. another 45 minutes of walking on my fingers and i was home. it was 9 pm. i drank the last bottle of soju i had in my room in under three minutes and missed a good deal of the remainder of the pain behind my eyeballs.



i tend to like contacts to function as portals to the living world, not as coins allowing passage through the underworld.

some thoughts about the elections in Canada -- Korean dispatch

1> The conservatives believe in an "each to himself" type of economy, which means you pay for everything yourself. Ultimately, that increases the overall cost to the education, healthcare, and administrative infrastructures. To see the effects of such policies, just look south where people pay low low taxes, but receive no services except (abstract) military protection. This is especially true of health care and education where the rich continue to enjoy the benefits that we in canada all more or less share, and the poor and working poor get NOTHING and are in NO POSITION TO BETTER THEIR SITUATION.

2> Notice i said "each to HIMself" above, as many in the conservative party adhere to ideologies of masculine dominance over the public and domestic sphere. It's not simply about taking away a woman's right to abortion or proper health services specific to their needs. It's also about allowing equal rights in corporate and employment ethics, it's about having a progressive police and legal system, which currently still has a way to go to recognize some issues that women still face everyday.

3> The conservative party wants further economic and legal integration with the US. this would destroy the country at this point in time. America is on the verge of countering almost every civilized country on the planet, who are at this time working together to the greatest extent in human history. America has undermined every international treaty, disregarded international laws when they are against "american" interests, and opposed the formation of internation courts (largely because those courts would find many senior american officials guilty of serious criminal offences). The US is a sinking ship, and i hope they learn to fend for themselves in a positive way, but right now Canada should solidify relations (trade, legal, etc) with Europe, Latin America, and Asia to secure economic growth. America will begin to disregard its trade imbalance with more and more violent and depressive results as it's economy continues to slide over the next few years. If you don't know what that means, i'm sure Mr Andreas Link can be of service.

4> The conservatives seek a domestic social policy that is highly regressive, turning time backward against the positive human rights issues that have been worked out over the past few decades, such as worker rights, ethnic equality issues, homosexual equality, and intelligent (ie sane) drug policy. Many of their members have a fundamentalist christian ideological background that DOES NOT SERVE THE INTEREST OF CANADIANS, and is highly oppositional to a humane and civilized country. We must lead this country with rational and emotionally sensitive policies which look to material consequences on human terms, not abstract sense of "morality" which can in no way be seen as universal or transcendental.

5> Harper has repeatedly said that he wishes to give a lot more power to the provinces. That should be looked at from two sides. there are reasons to do this, such as regional economic issues (maritime vs prairie). At the same, the real reason that he is doing this is to allow Alberta to follow it's own economic and domestic policy, which is decidedly against what Canadians have repeatedly said they would like to see for the country. This is the first stage of what might be referred to as a big fight for Canadian oil reserves (Dick Cheney has already visited...)


6> Every time there is a Conservative scandal, it is one of monumental proportions, like making ethnic or gender slurs. There is also a high degree of monetary corruption in most conservative parties throughout history. I am not saying this to get the Liberals off the hook, as they took a lot of conservative policies and made them their own, including huge fiscal kickbacks. Every government has a scandal of some sort. The point is, is it relatively harmless to the citizenry, or is it one akin to the PC government in Ontario saying that it was balancing the books when in fact it was selling off assets. It's kind of like the difference between Bill Clinton lying that he got a blowjob from Monica Lewinsky, which was argued as a cause for impeachment, and George W. Bush lying to congress, the senate, and the entire world about information which has so far led to the murder of nearly 100,000 people. It's a matter of degree. Hey look, I just saw a Conservative MP get arrested for smuggling booze into the country! Hey, didn't another one just accuse a woman of doing useless work? How will justice be able to precipitate from people who think in such superstitious and backward ways?

7> The Liberals are indeed just cruising along, and for that they deserve at best a minority government yet again. I really would like to see them in coalition with the NDP, as such a government would benefit Canada quite well while allowing some progressive trends.

8> That being said, I think that the NDP and the Green Party would be a very viable opposition if they don't quite make it to power. The NDP have already proven that they can get work done while everyone else is just trying to topple the government. Stop wasting our time Conservative party. Those tactics you employed in delaying any action in parliament -- that's childish playground antics that do not have a place in a professional house of representation. Frankly, I hope you do get a minority government so that we can knock you on your ass with a non-confidence motion within a few weeks of gaining office.

Long story short, vote how you want. Just do a little research behind the scenes and don't just get excited by the fact that you think Conservatism means good economic policy. Frankly, if you look over their platforms, it's the NDP and the BLOC that have the most fiscally responsible plans. The Conservative plan is the most expensive. Odd isn't it...