So, the Lancet finally retracted the study that was published 12 years ago, which helped fuel the disturbing anti-vaccine movement.  When intelligent, properly researched studies were published that said “no; vaccines have not been proven to cause autism”, the reaction of the anti-vaccine crowd was generally something along the lines of “IT’S THE GOVERNMENT AND BIG PHARMA, IN BED WITH EACH OTHER, LYING TO US, AND COVERING UP THE TRUTH SO THAT THEY CAN PROFIT”.

Which is basically how most good conspiracy theories go.

The anti-vaccine people are not crazy.  They are just ignorant.  (Remember, if you don’t have enough knowledge to back up your opinions in an argument, just diss the appearance of a well-educated doctor).

I started writing about this, but it got out of hand.  I could go on all day.

In short: EMPIRICISM FTW.

So this guy from a few years ago, who I do think is a sociopath…  One day I remember him telling me that he thought that all other people were robots.  I said “but I’m not a robot”.   He told me he had know way of knowing if that was true or not, and I could not prove that I was not a robot.

A few years ago, I was in a really shitty quasi-relationship with the above mentioned fellow.  In a class discussion today, something caused a light bulb to go off in my head, and offer another suggestion as to why the other person in the relationship was so unpleasant.

So we were discussing a simplified dichotomy of natural sciences vs. humanities.  The prof then mentioned research about autism vs. schizophrenia, and how they can be seen as being on different ends of the spectrum (in regards to a patient’s reaction to an outside agent).   He jokingly (?) mentioned that those who think pragmatically, and are often more interested in natural sciences could be found closer to the autism end of the spectrum, while those in the humanities would be found on the opposite end.

(This probably doesn’t make much sense to most people reading this, so sorry for the crappy attempt at describing something really cool)

Going back to the robot discussion, I thought maybe this idea of pragmatic thinking complimenting someone who lacks empathy, but recognizes patterns in different people enough to be able to manipulate them makes sense.  By looking at the world in a mechanistic manner, a person is less subject to feelings of empathy — or really, anything.

I’m not getting into the other end of the spectrum and schizophrenia tonight, though.

Ciao.

If you are like me, then you enjoy groaning at Rosie DiManno’s columns in the Toronto Star.  I discovered something fun.  For those of you unfamiliar with Rosie DiManno, she is a columnist at the Toronto Star, and formerly of the Toronto Sun.  The columns that she writes are sensational, and chock full of cliches, suggestive language, and stuff that borders on libel.  I read her columns when I feel like I don’t have a good enough reason to pull my hair out and scream “what the devil is wrong with people?!?!?!”

I had originally sent this to a friend, but then thought I would post this here, too.

1) take the text from a column, ex http://www.thestar.com/news/canada/afghanmission/article/729370–dimanno-disdain-for-u-s-led-to-afghan-torture-fiasco;

2) paste text for Flesh-Kincaid / other readability tests at http://www.online-utility.org/english/readability_test_and_improve.jsp;

3) read analysis and LOL. Last time I tried this out, the grade level was like 4, so the fact that the readability varies so much from column to column is rather telling.

Best: at the bottom of analyses there are suggestions under the heading “List of sentences which we suggest you should consider to rewrite to improve readability of the text :” Effectively, this is a tool that auto-selects the worst parts of Rosie’s writing, and isolates them into tidbits.

Example: “That was the original sin, as has become ever more evident, because Afghanistan is nowhere near ready, all these years on from the 2001 invasion and ouster of the Taliban regime, to administer itself.”

WTF

Prior to the release of the vaccine for H1n1 (aka “swine flu”…), there were plenty of conspiracies going around about the flu: it’s biological warfare; it was created by Novartis so that the company could make huge profits off of pharmaceuticals/vaccines; etc. etc. etc. etc. It’s like reductio ad swine flu, guys. Seriously.

So that had been going on just nicely, and occasionally on Twitter, you would see “#h1n1″ as a trending topic, and that was the end of it.

Now that the vaccine has been released, a major division seems to be arising: people who think that the vaccine is warfare/poisonous/going to cause autism/Gilles-Barre Syndrome/Gulf War Syndrome/neurological diseases/herpes/AIDS/cancer/stupidity/obesity/homosexuality/atheism/terrorism and so on.  The other side is a group of people who are confident that the vaccine is not harmful, and really, really, REALLY wish that people in camp 1 would stop watching Youtube and reading Wikipedia, along with other unverified sources of information, and do some proper research before freaking out.

The problem with the “I trust Youtube more than I trust the a primary source of research” is that, I guess, the underlying opinion is that the data which comes from all the research done on vaccines and diseases is propaganda (unlike the stuff on the internet, saying the vaccine is evil, which isn’t propaganda?), and cannot be trusted.

I think some of this comes from a lack of understanding about just what goes into peer-reviewed research.  It’s not as simple as Grade 10 Biology class.  Okay, here’s a story that I hope won’t get me in trouble:

In Grade 10 Biology, we had to do a project and a lab report where we had two different bean plants growing. One was the control, and the other had to have a variation in the way that it was being grown.  I had two bean plants;  I didn’t care for Biology.  I put the two bean plants in the furnace room under lights with different strengths of light bulbs.  Students were supposed to measure the plants every day or something for like 30 days.  I measured the plants maybe three times during that period.  In the end, I just extrapolated the data and got a 75%.  That was rather dishonest of me.  I had never done anything like that in school before, and I never did again.

So, in that case, I could get away with making up shit about my bean plant and saying “this type of light makes a bean plant grow taller than type B” and it was reasonably accepted.  Had I also talked about how much water I gave the plants (uh.. none?) and taken pictures, maybe I would have even scored an A.

My point is that you can make up that kind of stuff in grade 10 Biology, and it will be accepted by your mentors and peers as truth and as a properly researched job.

In the world of post-doctoral research, not so much.  In a sense, yes; some vaccines are not tested to the same extent as others (seasonal flu vaccines), but health departments spend a great deal of time observing how strains of flu change, and developing vaccines that, based on a significant amount of knowledge, will be effective against the season’s major flus.  These vaccines ARE tested on various cross-sections of the population.  Not just “healthy” people.  People who have had liver transplants, the elderly, and people of all ages.  If you even spend a few minutes using Google Scholar (or your school’s local online database, such as EBSCO), you can find this information easily.

This leads me to another problem: If someone who is skeptical of the vaccine is actually going to go to enough trouble to read up on the research done on these vaccines, they are likely going to have some trouble understanding the language, because it contains a vocabulary familiar to people working in healthcare, as opposed to laypeople.

So what is the best way to dispel the hysteria and the rampant conspiracy theories?  Right now, because of the economy, the wars, and the rise of social media, governments and institutions of authority are in the perfect position to be totally disregarded as truthful.  This gives way to a nice breeding ground for unhealthy skepticism, ignorance, and unfounded statements that will be taken as true.

Some newspapers have invited doctors to answer questions from readers about their concerns regarding the vaccine.  They are able to put the words of these articles into more understandable words.  How effective these doctors are at conveying their take on safety is another story.  Based on comments online, and public polls, it doesn’t look like the public is being convinced; rather, I don’t think the public wants to be convinced.

I guess what we have are two problems:

1) a public who does not want to believe their government, or authority figures;

2) a lack of easily available information, which the average person can understand.

To further #2 — the easily available information doesn’t seem to become available until problem #1 is has already ingrained itself deeply.  At this point, the understandable information doesn’t have the same value.

But is it realistic to have preemptively fear-quelling information, without knowing what people’s fears will be?

Roman Polanski was arrested Switzerland last month. Some people believe that he should still be institutionally punished for the crimes he was convicted of, while other people do not.  Fair enough.

Sexual assault cases are tricky.  I guess all law is technically tricky, but sexual assault cases are extremely challenging.  The issue of sexual assault deals with taboo; the way the law approaches it is rife with old-fashioned myths about the roles of women, their expected behaviour, and their power relations with men.

The thing about being raped, that gets so easily overlooked, is that it destroys people.  Yes, you will get a harsher sentence for murdering someone, but a dead person doesn’t have to live the rest of his or her life with feelings of self-loathing, guilt, loneliness, and being misunderstood.  I am not saying that rape is “better or worse” than murder, but I’m trying to put this into perspective for people who look at violent crimes as though they can rationally be graded in severity.

Now that Roman Polanski has been arrested, the victim of the crime is being harassed incessantly by the media. According to reports, more than 500 requests for interviews/comments have been made since the arrest. That’s more than 15 calls per day.  Those numbers, of course, don’t include e-mails, random appearances at the victim’s workplace or home.  I’ll bet everybody who shares the victim’s name has been contacted by several interns from media companies, who have been requested by their employers to track her down on Facebook and see if she has something to say.

This type of harassment can cause the victim to experience something called “revictimization”.  If you don’t know what that is, google it and come back later.

So you know what a really difficult part of being raped is?  This may be surprising, but it’s not the sex itself; a lot of people look at rape as a “sex” thing, but it’s about control.  The worst part about being raped, at least from my personal experience as a rape victim, is the loss of control.  Some people find this notion wishy-washy, but you really do lose fucking control over yourself. It’s no fun.

Do you know what it’s like to no longer feel like you have control over your body? Over what you do with it, and what goes in it, and who you let into your life?  Do you know what it’s like to go from being a teenage girl, to an asexual creature who looks at every man like he is a threat, and is repulsed by being touched in the most harmless manner?  And then do you know what it’s like to live in a world that blames the victim for being subject to what I just described?  To not be able to talk about it with friends, because it makes them uncomfortable, because the issue is so taboo?

And do you know what it’s like to have to repeat your story over and over again to cops, to attorneys — in front of the person who did it to you? And you repeat the “story” so many times that it no longer feels like your story was even yours to begin with.  So not only did you lose control over your physical being, but the recollections of your past — an abstract part of self that only you once knew — are taken away as well, and left to other people to decide what they mean?

So imagine that.  So which experience is worse? The act itself? The aftermath and the way society approaches the issue? Or the knowledge that unless something drastic changes in the policy and perception, the act and society’s approach will forever be a see-saw of revictimization?

Does this mean victims shouldn’t go to court, because they should know better that they’ll experience further harm?  No.  It shouldn’t be like that.  More victims of crime WOULD go to court if there wasn’t such a risk of being told they were liars, sluts, deserving, and useless.

In an article on CNN.com, the victim (in an interview well before the arrest) discusses how she was treated by the press after the rape, and after the trial.  It’s tragic.

And so the victim wants the case to be thrown out.  Why? Because it’s causing her further harm.  Because the media is causing her harm, and the state is causing her harm.  Not Roman Polanski; society.  You.  Everyone who keeps clicking on those stories and googling her name, and encouraging the press to sacrifice this woman to the crops, like in that South Park episode.  The Attorney General says the charges can’t be dropped for legal reasons, but that’s bullshit.  Since when did criminal courts care about rape victims?

As the victim said, in her interview with CNN:

“The one thing that bothers me is that what happened to me in 1977 happens to girls every day, yet people are interested in me because Mr. Polanski is a celebrity.”

And if you couldn’t figure out why the subject of this post was in that particular order when you started reading, maybe you will have a better idea.

Okay, so I am not a polisci major; nor am I American.

Anyway, I was looking at Google News today, and I noticed this headline:

“She May Be on the Other Team, But She Called All the Plays”. Oh?  I assumed that based on the headline, the article must be about a lesbian or “something” equally tantalizing.  “Gosh!” I thought, “this must be quite some crazy story about a lesbian calling the shots for it to be a top page story on Google News!”  Yeah yeah yeah. Black presidents! Female Secretaries of State! Hell, America is getting pretty hippie-dippie.  What have these lesbians done now? [/sarcasm]

Then I clicked on the article, and to much bemusement, realized that it was about an American politician named Olympia Snowe.  Not really following what goes on in American politics, I had no idea who this woman was.  Oh, indeed, she does have some leverage.

Unfortunately, the article, like many before it, made my brain explode.

And here is where I throw out the misogyny card.  Would the attention, at least displayed by the Washington Post, really be paid in the same manner were this senator a man? Probably not.

“She May Be on the Other Team…” Clever double entendre of a title! Get it? She is a member of the opposition party, but she’s also a chick playing in the man’s game of politics! Read further, and you see her painted as a coy and clever woman, holding out until she can work the men, the “other team”, how she pleases. Look at that woman go! Playing hardball with the big boys!

Well, props to the Washington Post for only making a moderate mention of Ms. Snowe’s attire.

I was sitting in class, staring at an elderly man who had enrolled in the course, when I became full of fear and anxiety.

All I could think about was the idea that, unless I die young, I won’t always be the person who I recognize myself as.

There was a time in my life when almost everything that mattered, or defined me positively, was lost or taken away, through no choice of my own. I was young, and it was not a happy time.

And so, I started my life over, when virtually nothing was left; I was reborn at 21. (By reborn I absolutely do not mean in a religious manner.)

Some days I feel like I’m 10 years old, but also middle aged, but I look like a teenager.

I remember how when I was a kid, I couldn’t imagine being 18 — 20. I knew I would grow up, but the future was so far away. I would lie in bed, trying to stay as still as possible, hoping that I would actually get frozen in limbo, and not have to experience the terrifying ordeal of being old and become the face of imminent death. I think of how I’m 25 now, and 40 is still 15 years away. The time it took to reach 25 will have to pass all over again — my whole life span, until I reach 50. Terrifying?

And reading historical texts, in that class, where the elderly man sat, from over a thousand years ago reinforces how insignificant and useless angst is, when one day I will turn to dust and cease to be, whether or not I was momentarily pained over the notion of one day no longer being a hip, young thing.

“And I do not see how I can get out of asking this question: Does it matter to anyone or anything that all these peepholes were closed so suddenly? Since all the property is undamaged, has the world lost anything it loved?” – Kurt Vonnegut, Jr, Deadeye Dick

Today I got on the Skytrain at Main Street, and this totally drunk pair was squished up against me. At first I thought “oh, how irritatingly almost entertaining. Two strangers who got afternoon drunk downtown making the trip back to Surrey (read: Scarborough, for those in Toronto). The two of them were blasted. It was 5:15 PM, aka rush hour in a city with TERRIBLE sober drivers, even.

Then the man said, “my car is parked at Patterson; I’m not too drunk to drive, so we’ll get off there.” That was right before I got off at Nanaimo.

[[Unfortunately, there is a culture of acceptance about impaired driving amongst some of my friends, so for now just pretend that I am talking about an abstract crime being committed, that could potentially harm someone.]]

Anyway, in my opinion, impaired driving is considered by the police to be a “substantive crime in progress”, as per their website (and common sense), which warrants a call to 9-1-1. Call 9-1-1? You bet I did.

After I quickly explained the situation, the woman on the other end of the phone informed me that because Patterson Station is in Burnaby, I should have called the Burnaby Police. Sorry. That was ignorance on my part: I assumed that because in pre-amalgamated Toronto, we had one police force, it was the same in Greater Vancouver. Anyway, I was kindly transferred to the Burnaby Police after wasting precious minutes. I was naively that maybe buddy could have been stopped before getting into his car, despite Patterson being like an 8 minute ride from Nanaimo.

Burnaby Police than said “oh, well let us put you through to the TRANSIT POLICE”

Oh! The transit police! Fantastic. So the I was put on hold for 3 minutes. During that time, I found a transit security officer, who did dispatch somebody to Patterson. By that point a good 10 minutes had passed, and I would assume that the drunk pair had by then gotten off the SkyTrain station.

You know what slowed down the process of the security guy dispatching someone to Patterson? He kept asking me for the number of the train I was on. I DON’T REGULARLY KEEP TABS ON THE NUMBER OF THE TRAIN CARS OR BUSES I AM ON! If I say “I got off the train _ minutes ago”, then I would expect that an employee of said transit company could deduce about how long it would be until passengers from said train would reach Patterson Station.

I don’t know a lot about municipal policing in the GVA, so I could be saying something that makes me look really stupid and naive. I know a lot of people say “fuck the police” and that cops don’t get things done, but a big problem, as I have illustrated, is so clearly bureaucratic, and not due to a lack of motivation on the individual or group’s part.

The amount of time that it takes for a couple of departments from the same urban area to say “that’s not my problem; please go elsewhere” puts people at risk. Secondly, I would hope that in a situation like this, it would be simple for a police officer to contact the alternate municipality’s department and advise them to dispatch some police to the area where the crime is most likely to occur. I THINK that the police at the other municipality’s department would trust the judgment of another police officer.

Another issue that is raised here, is at what point would a police officer say “oh, shit, this is a pretty serious crime, so I had better try to get the ball rolling, even though this is not in my jurisdiction”

That is a.. Now I am going to write a real essay, for school, that at least somebody will take consideration of.

I’m studying for a final, and just noticed how incoherent my review is…Especially because I typed it.  If you read this, the last thing you would think is that I actually understand anything about what I am studying.  I consider my notes an art form.. Ha.  Here is an excerpt.  Note the disregard for grammar, spelling or logic:

Different perspectives[on suburban structure]
1.SUBURBS LAUNCHED GLOBALIZTION – needs people to consume. American suburbans. Owner ship.
2.Keeps people docile
3Reproduction of labour – mortgage workers are loyal workers
4.Feminist –patriarchical  condition – define gender roles. Dad works; mom locked to children without car. Requires igh injected of unpaid labour.

CBD = agrgressive, dangerous -> Men.  Suburb : PASSIVE, domestic , kids -> WOMENS.

STANLEY PARK – squeamish village. Became a military reserve. Fed govt leased park to vancouvs

Key TERM – TRAFFIC – aggregation – making a whole of things in a specific space and time.  Harder to drive. Further away with no public transportation. Post ww2- traffic incrase

COUNTERURBANIZATION – larger city people moving to smaller towns/”commuter cities” cheaper, less dense. Larger houses. TECHNOLOGICAL ADVANCEMENT ALLOWS PEOPLE TO LIVE IN RURAL AREAS WHILE ENJOYING CITY AMENITIES. TELECOMMUNITING + CARS.

CLEARANCE IGNORES SOCIAL PROBLEMS. Breaks cohesion . there is community in slums.

Blade Runner – replicants. No emotions. Used inslave labour.  overpopulation, globalization, climate change, over urbanization.

My #1 LOL is referring to the former Squamish village that was in Stanley Park as “squeamish village”

I am updating my blog a mere day after updating my blog, after not updating it for several weeks.

Alright. So, today my head exploded again, which included my brain. I don’t know how much more it can take.

I was perusing Google News during my lunch break when a headline that this post was named after grabbed my attention:

WHAT IF RUSSIA CHINA CUT OFF YOUR ELECTRICITY?

Very well.  ABC news, eh?

It is a morning five or 10 years in the future, and the headlines have been full of news about escalating tensions with Russia or China. You turn on your lights in the morning to find that they, and virtually everything else, have been shut down by cyberspies.
Improbable? Maybe — but the Wall Street Journal reports that Chinese and Russian spies have penetrated America’s electric power grid, planting software bugs that could all but shut down the system in a crisis.

I remember, years ago, reading this apparently well-known and logical piece of insight that was given to aspiring writers: if you don’t capture someone’s interest within the first three sentences of what you have written, that person will probably not read what you have written in its entirety.   Of course, I’m sure there are exceptions to this rule, but those exceptions pertain to niche audiences who are expected to have enough interest in a topic being discussed that they recognize there is a message beyond the first three sentences.

Essentially, this article is just a creepy example of creepy political juxtaposition:  The majority of the article merely discusses all the doomsday stuff that would happen should the electricity be cut off in the United States.  Did you see Live Free or Die Hard? Okay.

Did you live in the Eastern Timezone during mid-august of 2003, and experience that crazy three-day blackout? I did.  The story reminded me of a slightly more dystopian version of what I saw.

So this story is actually about the horrors of what will happen in our electrical energy dependent society if the energy goes away one day.  It is hardly about terrorism, or spying.

What a stupid, cheap introduction.  I puke on you, ABC.

This morning while riding the Skytrain, I glimped over my a woman’s shoulder, and the some words on her Metro transit “newspaper” caught my eyes: “Province accepting applications for enhanced identification”. I thought “right on; it finally happened.”  Then, the sub-header caught my eyes: “SHOPPING IN SEATTLE IS ABOUT TO GET EASIER”.

My brain exploded a little bit on the inside.  I’m sorry.  Let’s take a step back here: “Shopping in Seattle is about to get easier”.  This is a newspaper article announcing the introducting of a new form of identification, that uses some a Radio Frequency Identity Chip to simplify the Canada – U.S. border crossing, by transmitting your information to the border guard as you approach.   Fair enough, but I don’t think I even need to explain the implications of this type of technology attached to a personal I.D.  This isn’t new technology; it’s been around for decades, but that doesn’t take away from the fact that as well as being used to simplify a transaction, there is some creepy big brother/panopticism stuff going on here.

And the best thing the newspaper can say is “SHOPPING IN SEATTLE IS ABOUT TO GET EASIER”??? That is the selling point for a new form of identification, replete with accesible, yet encrypted personal data?

These cards are not mandatory, but who is to say that identification with this type of technology may not become mandatory in Canada in the future?  Plenty of concern has been expressed about privacy issues: These privacy issues aren’t just about what governments may do with our information — as a “Western” citizen, who has grown up in a digital age (excuse the cliché), I have mild “Big Brother hysteria” fatigue, because the notion of personal information being aggregated with that of others’ for political/security/surveillance etc. purposes has become a moot point.  The other concern, that comes with this stuff is the issue of data mining, or the data getting into the wrong person/group’s hands.

But that’s not a big deal, because the upside to all this is that SHOPPING IN SEATTLE IS ABOUT TO GET EASIER!!!!

This brings me to a little aside: I watched a piece on TED a few weeks ago hosted by James Howard Kunstler that discusses suburbia, his concerns.  It’s amusing.  He was featured in “The End of Suburbia”, which I discussed a few weeks ago as well, and he definitely could be seen as a fear mongerer, but the talk had some merit.  Anyway,  sub-header about shopping in Seattle made me think of this clip on TED:  towards the end, Mr. Kunstler says something along the lines of “one of the problems [with suburbanization going out of control, sustainability being a joke, and the world becoming a global Frankenstein] is that we call ourselves ‘consumers’” .  People have to stop thinking of themselves as consumers and start thinking of themselves as people who have more value than just consumption machines: built to work to consume to work to consume.

I purchased a blender last week.  I purchased it so that I could make healthy food, from scratch, instead of paying 6$ for a styrofoam takeout container of soup for lunch during the week (I do it occasionally, but a part of me dies inside every time…).   I already made my own soup, but I didn’t have anything to blend it up super quickly.  I made this purchase because it was something useful, that I could not fashion myself out of belongings I pick up off the ground, and in the long run, it actually saves me money (not much time, because making soup takes a while) and makes me less dependent on other people to eat the food I would prefer to eat. “NOT SO!” says the cardboard box whence the blender came! The cardboard box announced to me that the blender is for “the fashion conscious consumer”.

Knock Knock?

Who the fuck buys a blender for its aesthetic value?

Who’s there?

The same people who get excited about losing another ounce of privacy if it will make their shopping trip to Seattle easier.

1. There are a few forms of violence that society has a particularly difficult time dealing with — in court, in the media, in social discussion, etc.  Domestic violence and sex crimes (with the exception of most types of pedophilia, if one excludes the double standards about women who have sexual ‘relationships’ with 13 year old boys vs. men who ‘rape’ their teenage students) are taboo, and that isn’t going to change for a long time.

2. I do not normally follow celebrity gossip; I am so uninterested in it, and don’t care to elaborate.

3. About two weeks ago, pop star Rihanna was allegedly assaulted by her boyfriend, and since then, the media has been having a field day.  I have actually been following the story in a sense; not because I am interested in the specifics of the case, or the dirty details, but because I am both fascinated and disgusted at the way an isolated incident of an alleged act of this type of criminal act has been covered ad nauseum.  I am fascinated about WHY this type of criminal act has been covered ad nauseum.

The story: a man is arrested for allegedly beating his girlfriend.  An arrest is made, and an investigation begins.  Normally, this is all that you would read about in the news, unless the incident was considered extraordinary enough that the story would attract enough readers for advertisers to buy space. Make sure to keep the details gruesome.

Because Rihanna is a celebrity, and her boyfriend is a celebrity, there is no end in coverage of this story.  Go to Google News and you will find THOUSANDS of stories about this.  It is front-page news.

On one hand, it is a positive thing for a topic related to domestic assault being covered, as there is an opportunity for dialogue; on the other hand, because the media is so fascinated with celebrity, and “dishing the dirt” and belittling people with more money or status than us, the whole thing has turned into a sick fetish for reveling in a famous person’s suffering.

You can find plenty of stories that attempt to be objective; showing that there is a problem when society thinks the victim ‘deserved it’, with links to resources for those who need help, or are victims themselves.  These links offset the potential ethical guilt that a publisher would feel for acknowledging that it is helping to perpetuate a stereotype that needs to be fixed. There are stories discussing whether she will “take him back“, AND EVEN A STORY IN THE L.A. TIMES TALKING ABOUT HOW BEING THE VICTIM OF DOMESTIC VIOLENCE MAKES THE VICTIM LOOK BAND, AND HOW THE VICTIM SHOULD BE AWARE THAT SHE PUT THEIR CAREER AT RISK BY BEING ASSAULTED.  Remember to always blame the victim.

[As an aside, Google "Rihanna deserved it" and you will see a pretty fucked up list of results, mostly of message board threads, filled with teens talking in brutal grammar about whose fault it was]

The media frenzy didn’t seem like it could get anymore gratuitous until somebody remembered that it is the 21ST CENTURY!!1 and that means that everyone’s world is everyone’s oyster!!!! So, a gossip website managed to get a hold of what is purportedly a picture of Rihanna’s face, that was taken at the police station.  Of course, it is now all over the Internet.

I don’t even know where to start with this:

1) This is an almost farcical (think that South Park episode about Britney Spears) example of media sources fighting eachother for “scoops”; fighting to be the first to have the latest SHOCKER.

2) a) Some media outlets have argued that by publishing this picture, it may give courage to other victims to come forward.  In other words, it’s okay to obsessively recirculate and re-publish this picture, if you say it’s for the good of society.  THAT IS FUCKING BULLSHIT.  I would say that 99% of the people who worked for commercial media corporations, who made the decision about whether to publish the picture or not, did it with one thing in mind: to attract as many viewers/readers as possible.  Grow some balls and be honest about your intentions, you sick perverted swine.

b) Some outlets, instead of writing about the content of the picture itself, are writing about how TMZ published the picture, using that as an excuse to also publish the picture.  GOOD WORK GUYS.  That makes you only 66% as perverted and twisted.

3) For all the media companies who asked the question, “is this appropriate?” and talked about how TMZ was kind of fucked to publish the picture; for all the media companies who said “perhaps this picture may disturb people, or is not the best thing to publish” —- DON’T PUT THAT PICTURE UP ON YOUR WEBSITE OR ON THE NEWS IF YOU’RE GOING TO TALK ABOUT HOW IT’S MAYBE NOT THE BEST PIECE OF NEWS TO DISSEMINATE (re: the ABC story)

4) This gossip website discusses why they published the picture, and mentions how it will be EMBARRASSING to Rihanna for years to come.   This same article says that it was important to share the ugliness of misogyny.  Should a victim be embarrassed?  Seriously?  I was raped when I was 18, and beaten up pretty badly when I was 19.  Both incidents were at the hands of strangers, and both incidents required a lot of therapy, support and time to even partially recover from.  Of all the emotions that I felt, embarrassment was never one; humiliation certainly was, though.

There are quite a few issues to weigh about what is responsible and what is irresponsible to publish, and under what context.  I have so many other thoughts on this, but I don’t want to go overkill.  Still, when the bottom line is making a profit, ethics can jump out the window, so why should anyone really expect anything but this shit in the first place?

… HATE.. GERMAN.. PHILOSOPHERS..

To compliment 6 hours or so of procrastination-filled reading, rumination and squawking about how many times “alienation” can be used in one sentence, I treated myself to the equivalent of a glass of wine.  I say “equivalent” because I didn’t actually pour the wine into anything…

If it wasn’t for the fact that I have to be totally fucking sober about 164 hours per week, I would invent the Karl Marx drinking game (if it hasn’t been invented yet): every time you read the word “alienation”, you take a shot; every time you read the word “object/objectify/objectification”, you punch yourself in the head and curse yourself for taking a stupid course.

Knock Knock

Who’s there?

Karl Marx!

Karl Marx who?

The Karl Marx that’s been in your required readings for the billionth bloody course you’ve taking, you douchebag liberal arts student!

That’s my joke! BADOOMCHING.

- self loathing (of course)

- the id. as in ” I swear it was the fucking id, and i’m not a heartless maniac, hellbent on ruining lives”

- airports. I already do, so I get bonus points

- the strain that one feels in every moment of attempted individualism.  As in “I don’t want to romanticize death, self-loathing and airports, because it has been done so many times.  If I do not romanticize the preceding, then I  am merely romanticizing the strain; therefore, I am romanticizing what I tried to avoid at all costs”

- the word “romanticize”.  Honestly.  Can’t we all just live in pain, and resentment in peace, without it being idealized as some sort of true-mirror image – paradoxical representation of happiness and pleasure?  Stop it! Call the romantic police, because the only way that I can truly hate, feel pain, and want to destroy everything that you are is if you can create some sort of psychological theory about me, which suggests that I actually lack the capacity to have romantic notions about hatred, pain and destruction.

This is what happens when you study criminology, English literature, linguistics, etc. and put all your eggs into a tidy little basket of post-modernism, politely shoved down your throat by the professors that you pay to teach you how to reject society without even leaving.

Sometimes I have the pleasure of being reminded that there are truly dense people in this world.

For the summer semester, I am taking a business administration course.  I am taking this course only because it is the only course which is in my year AND fits my work schedule.  Actually, if I can get off work early on Mondays in July and August, I can take Criminology if the course doesn’t fill up before I get paid on the 15th. SWEET.
I had my first day of Business Management class.  YES.  BUSINESS FUCKING MANAGEMENT. Business Management SOMEHOW is a university course.

I figured it would be an easy 3 degrees, but  it looks like it will be painful.  This is what we did today:

Wrote down our favourite colour, sport, type of music, “type of book” (type of book?!?!? does that mean “hardcover of softcover???”), favourite GADGET, and other stuff.

Afterwards, we were to go around the classroom and introduce ourselves to our classmates.  We would then try to find someone who shared a favourite.  I did this in Grade 4, in Monsieur Hoy’s class.  I helped contribute to his nervous breakdown.

I assumed “favourite kind of book” meant “preferred type of literature”, or something of that nature, so I chose “modern and post-modern fiction”.  One woman wrote down “non-fiction”, and she announced “that’s pretty close!!! We match!!!”  My brain exploded a little bit.

One classmate was too busy trading diamonds online to take part in our group work; she runs a jewelry business in Dubai.

I am not going to entertain myself further by recounting today’s experience, so instead I will leave you with this picture I drew on the whiteboard in class.  We were asked to draw what the “ideal manager” would look like.  I was surprised to see that I was the only person who incorporated a “female” image into their  drawing.

The very first entry on this website was a story I wrote called “Musings of a Pharmaceutical Company Janitor”; it is a run-on sentence.  I was re-reading it and realized that it was not actually a true run-on sentence, because I had failed to edit it.  I edited it, and believe it is truly a run-on sentence now, but I still could be mistaken.  There are some grey areas in the world of semi-colons and what not.

Here is the reprise:

Carson and me decided to each write a story that only contained one sentence, a long run-on sentence.  If anyone else wants to write one so that we can have an antholoy of run-on sentence stories.  I am quite pleased with mine.  I wrote it in 5 minutes so it isn’t GREAT and the grammar is not great either considering the whole point of the story is that it is made out of a terrible grammar error, but please… READ MY CRAPPY STORY:

Musings of a Pharmaceutical Company Janitor

..You know, I was cleaning the stock room the other night when I came across a bottle of pills I had never seen before that I think was called “Extract of Rhododendron Nectar”, or it could have been extract of rhododendron pollen but I can’t remember if for the life of me because I took it, and maybe you could tell me if you are familiar with this type of pill; I had never seen it before as I said, but you know, it was the craziest trip ever, so crazy that I almost blew my load all over the stock room, and that would have been horribly embarrassing, even more embarrassing than the time I took a bunch of Quaaludes and passed out in the janitor’s lunch room with my mop bucket on my head, with foam coming out of my mouth (which had a very bizarre scent permeating from it), almost as though something had died inside of me, except nothing died inside of me at all when I took those Quaaludes; they were unlike anything I had ever taken, not even huffing gas, and I would go so far as to say that Quaaludes were the best shit ever until I discovered this crazy rhododendron witchcraft hootenanny when I was cleaning the stock room the other night and came across that bottle of pills which I had never seen before as I was mopping the room with the same mop and bucket that had been on my head when I took all those ‘luudes , and ‘luudes are pretty intense shit, I must say, but not as intense as the rhododendron stuff, only because the rhododendron stuff makes your pupils dilate to the point that you would think your eyes were the circle pollen thingy, or whatever you call that flower circle stuff in a rhododendron; (I can never remember because I didn’t graduate junior high and that is what resulted in me being a goddamn motherfucking pill popping janitor for a pharmaceutical company), causing me to just pop these pills, which are the company’s property, while I mop the goddamn floor and all these goddamn fucking pills aren’t making it any easier for me, because I think they are making me delusional, because every time I look at my hands they look like flowers; they look like rhododendrons and I can’t for the life of me explain it, but I think maybe the rhododendron extract is turning me into a flower and FLOWERS CANNOT BE JANITORS, BECAUSE ONLY HUMANS CAN BE JANITORS, OR MAYBE A WELL TRAINED CHIMPANZEE,  BUT I DON’T EVEN KNOW WHAT I’M TALKING ABOUT BECAUSE OF ALL THESE PILLS, so I may need to even excuse myself to pop some more, but not before I tell you just how beautiful the trip was when I took the rhododendrons that night, when I was mopping the floor and found that bottle of pills, which has clearly turned me insane like a madman when the full moon peaks out from behind a cloud, or Dr. Jekyll when he drank that potion in that movie I saw back in ‘62, long before I ever became a janitor at a pharmaceutical company, but the point of this is for me to tell you all about those pills I took the other night, because it was such a crazy trip and I don’t know, I don’t think I can actually tell you about the trip, because to truly understand the trip, you need to take those pills and then you will understand what it’s all about, but you will also be as crazy as me, except I won’t be a lonely janitor anymore and you will not be a human anymore and we will both be beautiful, stocky red-blooded flowers stalking the halls of this pharmaceutical company at night, popping pills to keep us alive… because being a janitor is nothing worth living for anymore with these demons in my veins…

You know when the speaker on stage talks about death?

And someone in the audience nods their head as if to say “he’s talking about me!”

Then the speaker says something about his alcoholic mom, and someone else nods.. And so on, and so on.

It’s the same response as “Tie a Yellow Ribbon ‘Round the Old Oak Tree”.

I walked down Cambie Street last night, alone.

I forgot what day it was, and that it had been five years.

Something unsettling happened, but I kept on my way.  I turned around to check if he had gone, and was so terrified, that I thought the dumpster was following me, until I reminded myself that dumpsters are inanimate.

Swedish pop songs. P.S. to that.

So I did something I thought I would never, never, never do.  And then I thought “maybe I will write about it”.  THEN I thought “that is way too ‘Sex and the City’, and I loathe ‘Sex and the City’ even though I have never seen a full episode of said show.”

Next up on the agenda:  Today I met Malcolm Young of AC/DC.  I did not realize that it was him when he initially showed up at my work.  Actually, first he tried to buzz in, but did not actually use the buzzer; he used his cell phone.  I muttered to my co-worker “what kind of person thinks I can buzz them in when they use their cell phone instead of the intercom?” as I walked out of the office to go let in who I assumed to be some hapless person  looking for something they should have gone to Long and McQuade for.

I two persons standing there with a folder piece of paper: “Oh, MapQuest…” I thought.  I explained how the intercom worked and then asked “oh, do you have an appointment?”  We require appointments.  These people did not have an appointment.

Friendly guys. My dad would have enjoyed that story.

That previous sentence makes a good segue to this one: I was inconsiderate towards my mother today.  Again.  I’m a pretty awful person sometimes.  But I’m more than a little hurt, myself.

Murphy’s Law is:

Only not getting asked for cigarettes by bums on the days where you are out of cigarettes

Something else that seemed like “Murphy’s Law”, which now escapes my mind

Thinking that sushi goes great with whiskey because you’ve never tried it

A crappy spots bar in East Toronto

A crappy T-ball team named after the crappy sports bar

A flock of seagulls cawing and flapping their wings violently over the skylights at work

An eponymous inventor

Barfing up a delicious apple, or parts thereof

Setting your house on fire after you decide arson is for dorks

Jumping ship

La dee da dee da.

There was a 6 alarm fire that destroyed a half block or so of one of the neighborhoods that I considered home in Toronto.  It’s really sad.  That block was one of the few that hadn’t succumbed to a significant amount of gentrification.  There were family owned, independent businesses that had been there for decades.

I can only imagine what it would be like if I still lived there.

Anyway,  for anyone feeling generous, Scotiabank has started a trust fund to help displaced residents and businesses.  It is called the “Queen Street Fire Fund” and cash donations can be made at any Scotiabank location.  I am certainly going to make a donation this week when I go do my banking. 

R.I.P. Queen & B!

Usually at around 2:00 PM each weekday, I make the trek from my work to the RBC at the corner of Main and Hastings.  To those of you who live in Vancouver: Yes, that goddamn RBC.  To those of you who live in Toronto, or elsewhere in Canada where the “horror” that is the DTES gets over-sensationalized by the media: Yes that Main and Hastings.  OMG.  Yes! Right at the corner! That’s where I get on and off the bus as I go to and from work as well!

I DIGRESS.  I have preferred routes to walk depending on the time of day. There is a reason why I am listing the variants. If I am heading to work,  take the 8 too M& H. I will walk along Hastings to Dunlevy, then North until I reach work.  If I am leaving, I merely walk up Dunlevy and catch the 16.  On the other hand, when I go to the bank,  I go along Railway/Powell to Main, then up.  On this route, I have the pleasure of walking by the welfare office, followed by the courthouse, followed by the police station.

Typically, outside of the courthouse, there is a crew of cameramen set up, waiting to cover something.  Thank God the Pickton trial was in New West, and was over before I became employed.  What buzzards these men are!  Some of them eye you as you walk down the street trying to quickly asses “is this person walking erratically because they are a crackhead, or is this person walking erratically to evade a crackhead?”  If the person is choice two, then said cameraman must quickly assess if this person looks like someone who could make a “random passerby on the street” comment about… oh, I don’t know, Robert Pickton, the Olympics, how they do or don’t feel safe walking in the DTES because, you know, sometimes people die or get hurt.

One day last week, there was a larger than usual human caravan outside the courthouse.  On my way back from the bank I went up to one of the camera operators and was about to ask him what the hoopla was all about.  Before I had a chance, he just smiled and said “THE STABBING GUY.”