The Rot of Parliment

Imagine waking up next to this face every morning. I've been doing just that in an attempt to watch Question Period for our Canadian parliment. I've tried convincing politically interested friends to do it with me, but so far noone has been able to tolerate more than 20 minutes or so without walking away, becoming interested in anything else, or screaming and raging within inches of punching my monitor screen out. If you want to give it a try, just head to this website, but the odds are good you may have the stomach for it.

People are interested in politics, but their apparent disinterest indicates otherwise. After talking to them about it, the problem isn't the issues themselves, it's how they are dealt with. Question Period is supposed to be a way to get information from the Canadian government and get them to account for their actions. Unfortunately, there seems to be no obligation for the minister questioned to actually answer the question. Instead it is a lot of backtalk, accusations, subtle and not so subtle insults and honking about what a great job they are doing. The questions asked aren't always objective either and often try to trap the person answering the question, which is probably what started the behaviour in the first place. Either way, it has become a skeletal farce of angry shouting bureaucrats, where really very little gets accomplished. Ask anyone and they will tell you bureaucracy sucks for a wide variety of reasons, but sadly we have not created any better system that balances representation, due process, and thoughtful action.

I may keep watching it through the summer, or I might give myself a little vacation. I find myself mentally tuning out the droning Bairds and Prentices and Odas with their robotic reading and rereading of party rhetoric, but the ineffective hammering repetition of the opposition parties doesn't really encourage me either. Does the fundamental pillars of our parliment need to be redesigned from the ground up, or is there some way to wade through the bog currently in place and make something usable a few minor but well placed adjustments ?

malt liquor

I was doing some research on malt liquor for a writing piece, here are some of the interesting facts I found:

Pro-Drinking Messages and Message Environments for Young Adults: The Case of Alcohol Industry Advertising in African American, Latino, and Native American Communities


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-"Malt liquor" was first documented during Roman times, and was produced without preservatives, thus inducing people to consume it while still fresh. Malt liquor and other Germanic beverages, were scorned by the rich. They were considered the drink of the poorer classes in Gaul, the Barbarians and mountain people.

-A content analysis examined 1,000 of the most popular songs in 1996-97 across five genres of music popular with youth. This study found that 17 percent of all the lyrics contained references to alcohol and that alcohol was mentioned more frequently in rap music (47 percent) than in other genres such as country-western (13 percent), top 40 (12 percent), alternative rock (10 percent), and heavy metal (3 percent). Overall, 22 percent of songs with alcohol mentions referred to beer or malt liquor, 34 percent to wine or champagne, 36 percent to hard liquor or mixed drinks, and 31 percent to generic terms such as “booze.” A common theme was getting intoxicated or high (24 percent), although drinking was also associated with wealth and luxury (24 percent), sexual activity (34 percent), and crime or violence (13 percent).

-There is an energy drink called Four Loko Malt Liquor Energy Drink

-Malt liquor, in particular, is heavily advertised and promoted to African American young adults. Malt liquor brews typically contain between 4.5% and 6% alcohol compared to 3.4% to 4% for regular beers. While the beer industry has seen declines, the U.S. beer market share of malt liquor went from 5.7% in I980 to 9.5% in I995. Malt liquor sells best in African American and other ethnic minority markets.

-Gangsta rap performers such as RUN-DMC and N.W.A. have made the image of the 40 oz. malt liquor bottle a popular symbol of masculinity. A particularly explicit advertisement featured Ice Cube asserting that St. Ides "Gets your girl in the mood quicker" and "Gets your Jimmy thicker."

The following is a radio ad for St. Ides malt liquor:

Mmmmm,I need some refreshin'

when I finish manifessin'

Too cold to hold Bold like Smith and Wesson ...

Ice Cube's in the house don't you know me

Pour out on the curb for the homies.

-In March I992 Hornell Brewing Co. of Brooklyn, New York intro-duced "Crazy Horse" malt liquor as part of its celebration of the American West themes. Subsequently, the American Indian Movement (AIM) and Honor Our Neighbors Origins and Rights (HONOR), Inc., called for a nation-wide boycott of "Crazy Horse" malt liquor. The brewers have stated that they are honoring the memory of Crazy Horse with the product and that they are not targeting Native Americans.

Cubism

On the weekend my friend and I started watching this old documentary series on art, called The Shock of the New, where they cover a range of art history and brief but interesting descriptions of different art styles and interpretations. The most interesting of these, and something I want to read more about is cubism. I never understood surrealist art like Picasso, but the idea of cubism is that you are trying to show the viewer more than one side of something in a two dimensional painting. I never understood where they were getting the ideas to draw the way they did, but it makes so much sense now. Futurism is also pretty cool, how they are trying to express motion or the passage of time in a single picture as well.

It made me think, what phase in art history are we in right now? They have names for periods and categories for every progressive style, except i dont' think they have one for us yet, because we are still in the middle of it?

Beautiful danger

I used to really obsess about the weather. When I first moved to Victoria I found it so bizzarre that it was, more often than anything else, 11 degrees, summer, winter and in between. I started using the weather network maps and resources, following the jet stream and checking weather and temperature patterns. It is obvious probably to most people, like it is obvious to me now that being surrounded by the ocean ends up having a regulating effect on temperature and other weather anomolies. Living where we are on the tip of the island, we are in between a few different major weather patterns, and so end up having much nicer weather than the rest of the island a lot of the time. Of course it could also be related to the ley lines running through Victoria, but maybe I'll talk about that another time.

Anyhow, we were ejoying the weekend of sunshine being offered to us, but after only a short time in the sun someone remarked of my friend i was hanging out with "Wow your face is really sunburned." We were only outside about 15 minutes.

This prompted me to go back to my beloved weather website, this time checking out the UV report. The index, which is dynamically updated, was resting at 6. And while 6 doesn't sound like much, after studying the scale this was considered "high"...although the scale goes all the way to 11+, EXTREME, which I would assume would cook us all inside our houses whether we're wearing sunscreen or not. Yes thats right, summer hasn't even started and we are getting astronomical UV ratings.

Take another look at the pictures at the start of this post. On the left is ozone averages from 2000, and on the right is the most recent ozone map. Most of Canada is right now in the 425-450 Dobson Units (units for measuring ozone concentration), except for southern BC (including Victoria), Ontario, Quebec and some maritimes. The other interesting anomole is over iceland/greenland, which I can only assume is due to the volcanic activity. According to the 2000 map the area is usually in the range of 475-500 DU, but is currently in the 300-325 DU range. And according to this website volcanoes create holes in ozone and can destroy ozone.

The good news seems to be that the ozone layer seems to be in better shape than it was in 2000, unless ozone just becomes more concentrated in summer perhaps. At any rate, I may need to invest in some sunscreen instead of just ducking indoors when my skin starts to sizzle.

amilliamilliamilliamilli

It's official; The most terrible rapper alive is also the most popular.  This isn't at all surprising considering the track record of popular music.  As I write this, Lady Gaga is rated #1 on Billboard, so use that as a measuring stick.  Lil Wayne is the Lady Gaga of hip hop, and I say that with the utmost sincerity.

I was once suckered into thinking Lil Wayne MIGHT be talented after Chris played me Milli.  I liked that song and still do.  But after one Wayne screams into his microphone for a million hours, eventually something came out sounding good.  Or maybe he didn't have anything to do with what was good about the song.  All I know is that I listened to lots of what he put out (he has like 1700 songs) and couldn't find anything else good.  All it was was him crying whining and bragging about how awesome he is and how he likes to have sex with random women.

Still, even when I don't like something, I like to figure out why other people like things.  So I saw a documentary on Lil Wayne and decided to check it out and maybe get some more insight.  Instead I just ended up putting myself through a 1 hour 15 minutes ego fest of a delusional boy with diamond and platinum and shit in his mouth.  Minus the part at the end of the documentary where he apparently told the director to go fuck himself and they just cut and pasted a bunch of stock footage of him smiling in slow motion.

For starters, he's not even into banging women.  Throughout the documentary he states repeatedly that he doesn't have time for women and isn't interested anyway; he just wants to smoke blunts and drink syrup (cough syrup no i'm serious) and make music.  As admirable as that is, why does he rap about being hard and banging women?  Isn't keeping it real about singing about what you actually do and like to do instead of pandering to the audience.  Do his fans even think he's hard?  He isn't.  If you don't believe me watch the documentary.  He is a money hungry corporate owned egomaniac who can rap but cannot sing without the help of his fakeass voice modulation studio faking his inflections and emotion for him and telling him who his new sponsor is and what advertisement to wear today.  Good job living the american dream.

the costs of working

Working in an office environment is strange.  We have only been working in offices for a microscopic amount of time in evolutionary history.  So it seems like we will eventually figure it out, but that aint yet.  I witnessed this interaction where an employee went in to talk to a manager, and the manager was audibly irritated at them, asking questions like what about this and that, and then building to what do we (as a company) care?  I can understand he was busy and stuff, but it was painful to watch because the employee was actually trying to be helpful and proactive, and his boss didn't see this at all.

I don't pretend to have social skills, but I think we all need to be more aware that when we are getting annoyed at someone, it is because of internal reasons we get annoyed and probably not because what they are saying/doing.  Although people can be purposefully be annoying, these are jokes and should be treated as such.  The rest of the time, the person is trying to do something.  I don't know what because it's always different.  But when they approach you in an office environment, it is awkward and unsure to begin with, and the individuals have their own things going on and life crap that is on in the back of their mind.  Very few people only think about and deal with work when they are at work, and although work dominates our lives time wise our minds are always trying to escape it because few people enjoy their job and some of those people are mentally imbalanced workaholics.

Since you probably know the other person better than I do, you can tell yourself points of trivia about the person, why they formulated what they are saying, what they may be actually trying to say.  Reading between the lines is a very valuable skill.  Try to bunch all your anger inside instead of displacing it onto coworkers who in all likelihood are put off being where they are at the moment.  Then release it when appropriate on a punching bag or maybe a cardboard cutout.

Moldy Chair!

My roommate mentioned to me that the landlord was wondering if we are going to get rid of my favorite chair.  At the time, the chair was outside, due to the fact that one of my other roommate's friends is such an alcoholic that he, in a drunken stupor, pissed on my favorite chair.  I was mortified of course, because it was worn out in places and the foam was exposed.  If the chair had been in better shape, it's leather outer coating could have easily deflected even the most ammonia heavy of urines.  But as it was in the shape it was in, I was just disgusted and didn't want to have anything to do with it.  So I dumped it outside in the mid summer, and it seemed fine.  Problem being, I never hang out outside my house anywhere, so I forgot all about it, and in came the rainy season.  So when I went to look at it, I realized that my landlord was being perfectly reasonable.  It was soaked with the constant rain that we've been getting all October, and it was black and yellow with mold.

Looking at the chair again, I couldn't forget how much I loved it, even though it was moldy and gross.  So I made a plan to resurrect the chair - I would remove the moldy gross parts, and rebuild it with new foam and cheap leather.  I took it apart last night and got some measurements for the parts i need to replace.  I washed the pieces of leather that are still usable, and I wiped the frame down with some bleachy water.  My next step is to track down this upholstery repair guy I got the number of back when I decided I was gonna do this, and see if he can help me out.