Buy a Condo Screw a Waitress

This is a Condo ad in Calgary. Somebody posted it in my Twitter stream today. If you can't read the text:

A $20,000 downpayment is easier than scoring on a 4 minute 5 on 3. And way easier than scoring with your waitress.

Yeah. Great marketing. This must have come from the creative class that I keep hearing so much about. Also I think it's down payment. I'm not sure I ever would have found this funny or interesting, certainly not now. Other people will though.  Ann Coulter is coming to Calgary soon. Please recommend this post

Springsteen is a Classic.

Normally, I wouldn't blog about someone like Glenn Beck.  As a Canadian I find him kind of a waste of time. Probably most American's do too. For most people who are reasonably intelligent these kind of people are low value targets. Sort of like Monte Solberg or Charles Adler if you need a Canadian reference point.

However, attacking Bruce Springsteen and his iconic song Born in the USA struck a raw nerve.

(Young Turks Video)



I wasn't overly interested by Beck's recent attacks on the social justice teachings of Jesus.  It was funny in the sense that he dragged a whole bunch of pundits into an argument about a person who probably didn't exist, and if he did exist likely didn't say those things.  The social teachings of Jesus as presented in the Sermon on the Mount, for example, are insipid.  They seem to be established religious teachings, or proverbs, that predate the time of Jesus. They can be viewed like a set of minimum expectations for a society. And yet here were are 2000 years later still arguing with Jesus' followers about the basic rights of people.

Beck's attack on Born in the USA hits much closer to home and rings a bell about the feelings many of us had growing up. The singer asks a very powerful question about where his country went wrong by referencing poverty, hopelessness, urban decay and the pointless and tragic Vietnam war.

Growing up in Edmonton I was certainly not sent off to war and had a remarkably lucky life. But I  remember vividly driving through the industrial waste land and urban sprawl of Edmonton late at night with my friends and being afraid of the future. What the hell were we supposed to do with our lives?  Songs like Born in the USA were very meaningful. They were rare anthems that rose above the emptiness of pop music.

Beck "gets" the lyrics a few years later than everyone else and determines there is some kind of America hating going on. Call out the flying monkeys. Too bad.  History will rank this song as an American Classic, ranking with the best songs of Woody Guthrie or Bob Dylan.  Kids in school will study the lyrics 100 years from now.  Beck's insanity, not so much.

Note: Background on Ronald Reagan's imbecilic references to Springsteen in the 1984 re-election campaign, here. Please recommend this post

The Twisted Narrative of Calgary West (Redux)

Poor Donna Kennedy-Glans has been reduced to writing 3 paragraph op-eds in the Calgary Herald, bemoaning the fact that Rob Anders is the preferred CPC candidate in Calgary West and not herself. Throw in a gratuitous and probably offensive reference to the Berlin wall and you have yourself a real howler.  And yes, of course the euphoria of the Vancouver Olympics means  that all Canadians want her to be the MP for Calgary West.  Because democratic reform of a  dysfunctional CPC riding association equals broader democratic reform, right? Wrong.

Here's a news flash for Anders, Kennedy-Glans, and the Calgary Herald. I don't care one single bit what happens with the Calgary West Conservative riding association. It's completely irrevelant to me and I wouldn't care in the least if your grade nine soap opera fell into a  deep dark hole and disappeared forever. Reform or don't reform, I do not care.  I'm still going to fight  for an electoral change, and that's the only change that counts.


The old guard of Calgary West repudiates and smears Kennedy-Glans by calling her a liberal and a feminist, as usual, using those labels as pejoratives.  If she was serious about being a feminist she wouldn't be in the Conservative party in the first place. So the labelling, whether accurate or not, means very little to me given the sexist retardation of the Party as a whole.  This party will smear anyone that doesn't fit in their plans. They would smear Ronald  Reagan if he showed up and had the nerve to challenge their little boy's club.

I don't want Kennedy-Glans OR Rob Anders as my Member of Parliament. I want another party to represent my riding. I want to see a culture shift that makes it possible to elect an adult from an adult party. It may not happen on the short term, but it's important to keep trying.  The arrogance of these people can only be cured by having them sit on the sidelines learning how hard it is to be out of office. Who the hell cares about how their board works.

We need a serious media fix on this issue. We need new media that will coalesce and run over the old school Tory media and not be afraid to leave tire marks. The idea that the contest in Calgary West is only between Anders and the nomination challenger of the day is a big fat piece of propoganda. Smart people know better. Start speaking up. We need to hear stories about other people and other parties that are active in changing the sick political culture of Calgary, and this riding. Please recommend this post

Violence Against Women is not Funny

Making the rounds on Facebook and Twitter is another sad attempt at humor.

Read this blog post go to the Facebook page,  click Report in the bottom left corner, and select racism/hate speech.

Now back to eating popcorn and watching some more of Alberta veering off to the right.

Thank you.

Update: Sorry, wrong link.

Please recommend this post

Facebook Rage Onion Ring Version

Peer pressure and social media can be a force of intense trivialisation.

So now I'm supposed to join 2-3 facebook groups per day to satisfy the demands of being a good network member.  After I join and click the button, then what?  Sit around and wait for messages, updates, witty banter. Do I have to do anything? Show up anywhere? Help organize something? Of course not it's just Facebook.

Here's an idea I came up with. Put down the mouse and go do something useful in the real world.  The one where you actually have to show up instead of clicking on an event you don't really plan to attend.

Making an onion ring more "popular" than Stephen Harper implies that a) you have too much time on your hands, and or b) you can make people do almost anything on Facebook regardless of how trite, meaningless and time-wasting it is. Onion ring popularity is the activist's version of Farmville.  Pardon me for believing that everything on Facebook is an onion ring contest and nothing is really serious.

Call me when someone starts a group called living in the real world is more important than how popular an onion ring is. Please recommend this post

Hitler,the Holocaust and casual Humour

I've watched the German movie Der Untergang (2004) twice now, and I'll probably watch it again. Its a powerful movie that knocked me on my ass, and left me in tears.  It tells the story of the fall of the Third Reich and the final days of  Adolph Hitler in his bunker in east Berlin.  The movie was difficult to make in Germany given their sensitivity to such a topic.  Bruno Ganz's portrayal of Hitler is compelling and controversial, and I believe he took a huge career risk in accepting this role.  I had to push away the idea that the actor and the director were trying to evoke some sympathy about Hitler's character. I didn't work anyway, I felt nothing but loathing from the first scene to the end.

No one really knows what happened in those final days.  But many parts of the story are based on the real memoirs of Traudl Junge, who as a young woman in 1941, became Hitler's favourite secretary and was dictated most of his wartime documents. Through some good luck she escaped the final days of the Reich, was debriefed by the allies, then lived a typical life in postwar Germany  in relative obscurity. In her later years she wrote a memoir called Until the Final Hour.  This story about her life seems to be preoccupied with fairly simple questions,  why did the German people adore Hitler so much, and why did they turn a blind eye to the destruction of European Jews. The irony is that as a young woman she regarded him like a father, a man who was kind to her, and she disbelieved that Germany had done anything wrong.

The last part of the movie is very claustrophobic. Hitler is pinned down in his bunker.  Generals come and go and timidly inform the leader that they should surrender to the Allies. Hitler flies into one rage after another and demands that military strategies be executed.  The generals explain that there are no German armies left. Not long after this intense scene showing Hitler's deepest delusions, his suicide is portrayed.

Enter the clowns.

Because this movie was made in the German language the DVD ships with a number of subtitle files.  These files are easy to edit so you can write your own subtitles if you feel the need to make your friends laugh with a little Hitler humor.

The scene of Hitler raving has been edited hundreds of time on YouTube with subtitles showing the Fuhrer raving about the iPod or whatever other trivial topic that would make people laugh.  I saw about ten of these clips posted on Twitter and Facebook last week with the obligatory LOL's and this is funny preludes. Internet memes being what they are this one has gone viral and I imagine it will keep rolling for some time.

Do you remember how liberals reacted when a Utah movie rental company, owned by religious zealots, wanted to rent movies that they had re-edited to be safe for religious zealots to watch?  Of course they were stopped by the courts since they had no right to edit someone else's copyrighted work.  

In this case I believe these Der Untergang spoofs are copyright violations.  Moreover they are taking an incredibly powerful movie and mocking it. Who knew that the Holocaust could be such a powerful platform for social media humor.

Grow up. Stop watching these clips and go watch the whole movie. This isn't cheeseburger cats.

Please recommend this post

CAPPYYC Rally Afterburn

Disclaimer: My Blog, this post, and my thoughts here reflect my own views and are not associated with the Organizing Committee of CAPPYYC.






We had a post rally debriefing meeting last night. We put together the following statement for our Facebook supporters:

Our rally outside Mr. Harper’s office this past Saturday was a solid success. Over 350 people attended (based on the 357 signatures on our petition as well as the estimates of the police and news crews!) and we had solid coverage from 3 English television networks, one Chinese network and a wide variety of local papers. The tone of the gathering was polite and positive, attendance exceeded our expectations despite the weather, and we are very happy with how everything turned out. Thank you to everyone who took some time out of their day to come out and make their opinion known!

Here is a link to a video of the event,
http://www.facebook.com/video/video.php?v=295426917159&oid=233912789510
plus a link to the delivery of the signatures today,
http://www.facebook.com/video/video.php?v=302982977159&oid=233912789510

The steering committee had a debrief meeting on Wednesday to discuss lessons learned and the possibility of future events, and we agreed that much remains to be done. We don’t want this issue to fade or to get lost in partisan posturing! As a result we will begin working on events dedicated toward increasing civic engagement and educating people about our system, as well as a second rally to be held close to the actual sitting of Parliament in March. The fact that concern over the erosion of our representative institutions got over 350 Calgarians out in the January cold seems to us to indicate that there is work to be done before the next election!




I thought the debriefing meeting was a little intense as everyone shared their thoughts about the things that worked well and the things we could have done a better job on.  There were a lot of things we could have done better.  Generally, I think every one felt the rally was a great success.  We got a turn out of about 350 people.  That may not seem like a lot, but consider that it was -10c with blowing snow, and we were in the most conservative federal riding in all of Canada.

I thought the Calgary media was really good to us in terms of coverage and reporting the event fairly. I really didn't know what to expect from the media. The 3 or 4 Calgary Police Officers assigned to the event were really nice to us even though we spilled out onto the road due to a lack of room on the sidewalk.

We feel we picked the right location in front of Stephen Harper's constituency office.  I had some off and on worries that the location might not work.

Another thing that totally impressed me was the attitude of the crowd and the atmosphere.  Everyone was really happy and friendly.  Everyone I talked to agreed that it was a fun atmosphere.

While it would not be fair for me to divulge specific comments of other committee members, I can tell you the list of "learn from" issues that I brought to the discussion:

• Not enough time to recruit volunteers. Five people did all the work, and among us the work wasn't really distributed properly.
• Social Media such as Facebook, Twitter and Blogs has mixed results for generating interest. This may have been due to the compressed delivery time, or we just may not have been messaging properly.
• I thought people with key tasks should have some redundancy or backup in case they couldn't deliver their responsibility for some reason.
• If we had more time we could have identified people's skills and interests more and mapped tasks a bit better.
• There was no real project time line to see where we were in the planning.  Again, due to compressed time frame.
• Our  petition  should have gone out much earlier. 
• We should have had some type of hand-out at the event. (There were about 4-5 other groups that showed up and handed out their stuff.)
• I would have liked to live blog the event, or video stream it.  We didn't have the time or resources

All of our self-criticisms seems to come out of not having enough time and people.  Nonetheless I am personally very happy with the way the event turned out.  And I also am in awe of my fellow committee members for their smarts, determination, and passion.

We now look forward to planning another event that we hope will be even more successful. Stay tuned. Please recommend this post

CAPP YYC Rally Tomorrow

Thanks for all who worked to get the Calgary Rally off the ground, and thanks ahead of time for all of you who are going to show up tomorrow.

Here is a link to our petition document.  It got out a bit late, but whatever signatures you can get is great. We will have lots of places to sign tomorrow at the rally.

Two final reminders:
1. Parking is very limited around Mr Harper's office.  Please try to avoid driving if you can.  There is lots of parking in South Glenmore park, but its a 10-15 minute walk.
2. We still need volunteers.

Map Please recommend this post

CAPPYYC Needs Some Volunteers

We're getting more excited about the CAPP rally on Saturday.

If you're in Calgary and are attending we really could use some volunteers.  We realized that our venue is somewhat sprawling with multiple entry and exit points so we want some people to direct participants to the right location. Its a fairly simple job and we'll buy you all the sugar free bran muffins and green tea you can eat.  Or, cheese burgers and coca cola.  We're not here to judge you.

Drop me a line if you can help out.  And thanks. Please recommend this post

CAPPYYC Rally Blogger Plug

Calgary's CAPP rally is this Saturday, January 23,2010, on the parking lot directly outside Stephen Harper's Constituency Office.

The address is:

1600 - 90 th Avenue SW
(also known as Glenmore Landing, a popular shopping centre.)

We recommend you not bring your car to the event due to limited parking.  There is a lot of parking in nearby, but not in the shopping centre.  There are maps and transit info on the event page.  We also wanted to avoid causing a problem for the retail businesses around Mr. Harper's office.

If you like walking, the location is about 15-20 minutes from the Heritage CTrain Station.

The rally will start at 1pm and will go for at least an hour, and longer if the participants want.

Because of the right leaning nature of Calgary's Social media, and the completely appropriate  attention shift to the Haiti relief efforts, it has been difficult to get our rally talked about in the blogosphere or on Twitter. If you are a Calgary blogger please help us and blog about this non-partisan event.  There are tonnes of excellent opinion blog posts about the Prorogue so I won't cover that territory here.

We will be presenting a petition to Mr.Harper's constituency office and hope you will help gather signatures. The petition asks that Parliament return in January. A PDF version of the petition and signing sheets will be available sometime today.

A link an image of  one of our posters is here.

Our press release is here

Follow the organizers on Twitter.

Thanks to the Calgarians who have supported this event, and the organizers who have worked very hard.

Tell your friends. Please recommend this post

Reading

I have a copy of The Well Educated Mind by Susan Bauer.  It’s another book of lists suggesting what books you should read to have a better knowledge of the so called western canon.  But the author goes  beyond just listing books and explains how to critically read literature, a skill that I was never taught anywhere in my education. Yet, when I got to university it was presumed I would know how to read Plato with no problem.  Um..no.  (ed. You bitter?)




A third edition of 1001 Books You Must Read Before You Die will be out in March 2010.  I’ve written about this book a number of times and I still think it’s great.  The blogger Arukiyomi has updated his spreadsheet for this book. The spreadsheet has a full list of the books so you can keep track of what you've read, plus links into Amazon for each book. You have to see this spreadsheet, its monumental, and evidently they put quite a lot of work into it. I still figure I would have to read about 5 of the listed books per month to get through the list.  Unlikely, given half my time is spent with a vicious online gambling addiction….
But you shouldn’t not try.

Sadly,  P.K. Page one of my favourite Canadian Poets passed away last week. Canadian post-war poetry was mostly dominated by men.  She competed well against the like of  Irving Layton, Leonard Cohen, Al Purdy, and many others.  She had a very unique voice and style.  She was also a visual artist, under her married name P.K. Irwin. I have a great admiration for all those who wrestle with words and create something lasting.  We see through a glass darkly. Please recommend this post

Saturday Night Skeptic.

Mr. Deity and the Skeptic:

That touches my raw points on so many levels its actually funnier than the funniness of the video.

Please recommend this post

Down the Canwest Rabbit Hole

Yesterday’s Canwest story about supposedly missing ammonium nitrate in the lower mainland was short on details and high on irrelevant fear mongering.  I think it was rushed out. Or maybe a night cleaner got on someone’s computer.

Four quick paragraphs to remind you who to fear and loathe:

VANCOUVER — Up to two tonnes of ammonium nitrate, which can be used to make explosives, has gone missing on its way from Alberta to North Vancouver, the Vancouver Province has learned.

Kinder Morgan, a pipeline and energy storing company, was transporting a huge amount of the chemical compound in one-tonne cubes, but two cubes did not make it to their final destination in North Vancouver.

Ammonium nitrate has been used by the Taliban in Afghanistan to make explosives.

Col. Mark Lee, who heads NATO's effort to stop bomb-makers in southern Afghanistan, was recently quoted in the New York Times saying, "You can turn a bag of ammonium nitrate into a bomb in a matter of hours."

Around the same time the Globe & Mail wrote the same story except they included more facts.  The main fact was that the RCMP and the company believed the missing chemicals to be a clerical error. The RCMP believed they had no probable grounds to believe the stuff was missing, and certainly no reason to suspect a terrorist plot.

Canwest quickly re-wrote their story after the clerical error clarification and over-wrote, with the same URL, the original story quoted above.. Down the memory hole.

It’s not that I trust the RCMP in particular, I just think if I were a journalist I would be skeptical and lean to the clerical error explanation in the absence of any proof whatsoever of a theft or a plot.


But Canwest wasn’t done humping my leg. In the final story they couldn’t resist throwing in a pointless reference to the Oklahoma City bombing. So now in return I get to throw in a pointless reference to white hyper-patriotic opus day Catholics.

We know how dangerous ammonium nitrate is, and the thought of a few tonnes going missing made me very nervous. Especially when you consider that there has been sporadic bombings of oil and gas facilities in Alberta and B.C.  It may or may not be helpful to point out that the so called En Cana bomber is likely a rural land owner, demographically likely to be a Harper voter. (Zing)

I must stop reading these people’s junk.  My left eye has been twitching for two days. Please recommend this post

Calgary's Rally Until Now Noticeably Lacking

I was surprised to learn Calgary, Alberta was one of the few cities in Canada not organizing an anti-prorogue rally.  Ok, I wasn't really surprised I was just being polite.

Although I loath facebook it is somewhat useful for organizing groups and events. Please join the group I created attempting to organize a rally in Calgary. If it falls on dead ears, at least we tried.  Sorry, typo, I meant deaf ears. I was thinking of brains.

What we need now are ideas, facebook tips, admins and joiners.

If you can think of any other social media sites we could supplement this group with please let me know.

In the meantime a little Bruce Cockburn:

Please recommend this post

McNally Robinson Bankruptcy.

In March of 2008 I lamented the loss of McNally's Robinson's bookstore in downtown Calgary. It was hard for me to understand how such a great book store could fail in a city like Calgary. Their only competition was a small Coles store in Eaton Centre.  Today the independent chain has filed for bankruptcy and will be closing their two newest stores in Don Mills and Winnipeg. (G&M Story)

Aside from Pages in Kensigton, I spent a lot of time in McNally Robinson's store.  Independent book sellers are rare now and their survival always seems to be against the odds.  Maybe as consumers its just easier to buy what Chapters or Oprah want us to read.

The plight of independent bookstores probably has to do with the economies of scale and the basic tough business model of retail.  But I still wonder about this issue from a cultural point of view. Are we less interested in books? What about the role of the internet?  I know from listening to the radio in Calgary, or reading one of the two daily papers, there is really a strong effort to dumb us down and pander to short attention spans. Book stores should be an antidote to that, and are also a cultural force that promote literacy and local authors.

Hopefully McNally Robinson can emerge from the restructuring to hang on to the original store in Winnipeg and compete on the internet as well. 

Support your local independent book seller. Please recommend this post

Mr. Harper's Farewell Song

A little song I worked up in the heat of Winter Solstice insomnia. Sung to the tune of Henry Kissinger by Monty Python. Maybe it could be sung at one of those swank Galas when next time all the elites get together again.

Dear Prime Minister
We won't be missing yer
You're not the Leader of our dreams
Your too much to bear with your empty stare
And your Machiavellian schemes

I know they say that you are very vain
And rude and dumb and loud - and likely quite insane
Mr. Prime Minister
We won't be missing yer
Just wishing you were gone

Mr. Prime Minister
we're all dismissing yer
Looks like yer out on the street
With your Timmy's clothes and your think tank prose
You leave me feeling so downbeat.

All right so people say that you don't care
but the gays know where they stand
and the poor don't have a prayer.

Mr. Prime Minister
We'll be happy when you are done.

(boom boom bada tish)

Please recommend this post

Minnesota Quaker Group's Unique SSM Protest

A Quaker group in Minnesota is refusing to issue any marriage license at all until the State recognizes same sex marriage.

According to Minnesota Public Radio:

The congregation will continue to hold both opposite-sex and same-sex weddings at its meeting house, but will no longer sign the legal marriage certificate for opposite-sex couples. Instead, couples will need to have the certificate signed by a justice of the peace.

Quacker congregations have no formal clergy, and like many anabaptist type groups are peer to peer. Generally they are liberal both theologically and socially although this isn't always true. I think this is a courageous action and a good way for them to protest the injustice of unequal marriage laws.

Via Pam's House Blend Please recommend this post

December 6 and Hong Kong

Our Prime Minister should have been in Ottawa on December 6 to honour the 20^th Anniversary of the Montreal Massacre. This is a very solemn and significant day for Canadians and the absence of Mr. Harper is deplorable to me. My hopes were never high, but still.

One of my father's good friends when we were growing up was a Canadian soldier in Hong Kong when it fell to the Japanese on Christmas Day 1941. He survived the battle but remained a prisoner of war until liberation in 1945. He and the other Commonwealth POW's were beaten, tortured and starved contrary to international war conventions. He had lifelong health problems from malnutrition and died too young. It chills me to think what went on in his head all those years. I suspect there are a lot of Canadians who have some connection to the battle of Hong Kong. In high school I learned about Dieppe, Vimy Ridge and the Normandy and Sicily campaigns. I had no idea until later in University about the Honk Kong veterans.

I welcome the Canadian Prime Minister visiting the Cenotaph in Hong Kong and paying formal respects to our war dead. However, I would prefer that he avoided the hyper-nationalistic manipulation of war imagery. I would prefer that he stop using slanderous rhetoric and smearing Canadians who want to know the truth about detainee issues in Afghanistan. Soldiers, dead or alive are not visuals to be used casually for self aggrandizement.

I don't think our Prime Minister gets the meaning of our history. Please recommend this post

Three Alberta Stories

...in under 3 minutes..GO

1. Alberta Cabinet Minister Ted Morton had his brief case stolen from his car on Thursday night. The thief left the brief case outside an apartment building where a CBC employee lived, who found it and returned it. We Canadians are polite and very deferential to authority. If this had happened in the United States the documents would have been posted all over the internet and Mr. Stelmach would have to resort to a special Twitter transparency session. Its a weird story, and I take away two things, indirectly.



First Alberta seems to have no interest in whistle blowing and seem to be a-OK with their Government's absurdly high level of secrecy and non-openeness. Of course I don't suggest we steal politician's brief cases, but please tell me your at least somewhat curious as to what they're up to.

Secondly, Morton admitted that the reason he had his brief case stolen was because he left it in his car while having dinner, but not only that, that he left the car running during dinner. With the doors unlocked. It was a strange admission. What got me was the nonchalant nature, as if its normal to leave your car running for 1 or 2 hours when its not real cold out. Aside from the environmental issues I wonder who was paying for the Gasoline. This sense of disregard is more irritating to me than losing the brief case. I hope the meal was good. Mr. Morton is the minister of Sustainable Resources. I see their SUV's around Calgary from time to time.

2. Paul Stanway, Alberta's version of Ron Ziegler, will be leaving his post at the end of January. As a former publisher of the Edmonton Sun, Stanway was just what Mr. Stelmach needed - a propaganda specialist to crank out the fake realities of the Premier's world. The transition from an illiterate newspaper to the Premier's office must have been quite seamless. I wish they would stop using the word communication, or at least look up its meaning. I've never been much of a believer that this Government has any interest in dialoguing with Albertans. Mr. Stanway's job was very simple: to crudely hammer a one way message to Albertans and hope it sticks. In that respect it really doesn't matter who they replace him with. Too late to snag Duffy, but maybe Charles
Adler is available.

3. There have been two unverified sightings of Mariam Makhniashvili in Alberta. One in Okotoks, a small town about 45 minutes south of Calgary, and a more recent one in Grande Prairie, about 5 hours north of Edmonton. In both cases the RCMP have said they have no way of knowing about the reliability of the reports, but are following up the leads. People probably want to believe the story will end well. Hopefully it will. Canadians are good people and we feel each others pain. Please recommend this post

Vasely Kandinsky - Composition VIII

I like all of Kandinsky's paintings but this one keeps sticking in my subconscious for some reason. He led a very interesting life as well, fleeing both the Soviets and the Nazis.

Please recommend this post