Glory hole!

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Hockey post

I'm all in favour of the NHL's crackdown on interference and other infractions. If some of the games I've watched in these playoffs are any indication, it's helped open up the game a lot. However, it's starting to get a little ridiculous. There were a number of calls in last night's games that shouldn't have been made. Don Cherry (who is at his best when he sticks to analyzing the game) had a clip from the Flyers/Sabres game in which a Sabres skater lost his edge behind the Philly net, which led to a penalty call on the checking Flyers d-man. Not only had the Flyer not laid a glove or stick on the Sabre, the call was made about two seconds after the guy went down. Then there was the call on the Canadiens' Tomas Plekanec in overtime after a Hurricanes' attacker tripped over the Canadiens net, which led to the winning goal. The call itself was, at best, 50-50, but given the blatant high stick which put Habs captain Saku Koivu out of the game in the second period (and may put him out longer with an eye injury) on which no call was made, I have to question what the hell is going on with the officiating. This about sums it up.

In this, the first NHL post-season under the new rules, when a dirty look will get you two minutes and a dirty thought will get you four, a nasty stick to the face drew nothing at all.

Also: can the league consider banning the one-piece sticks? If Major League Baseball can ban aluminum bats, why can’t the NHL go back to wooden sticks? Hey, it was good enough for Gordie and the Rocket…

Comix

It's not quite MNFTIU, but Wondermark is some pretty funny shit.

The simple genius of Jane Jacobs

Okay: I haven't read any of the late Jane Jacobs' works yet. But it's hard not to like what I've read about her work as an activist and her ideas regarding urban planning (most famously made in her seminal 1961 work The Death and Life of Great American Cities. Looking at them now, these ideas (that urban planning should be focused on people, pedestrians in particular; that strict zoning requirements eliminate the everyday interactions necessary for creating communities; that more people on the streets means less crime etc.) are so forehead-slappingly obvious that it is hard to believe they were ever considered revolutionary. But what sucks really hard is that, in some circles, these simple concepts are still completely alien. Sadly, these are also the circles where urban planning decisions are made.

Here in Edmonton, we have what can only be considered a schizophrenic approach to urban planning. On the one hand, politicos endlessly stress the need for "downtown revitalization" while on the other, hand continue to execute a suburban, car-centric, big-box-friendly model. Big box complexes like South Edmonton Common (the appropriation of the term "common" in this case can only be a vile joke on the part of the developer), filled as they are with shitty chain restaurants, outlet stores and miles of parking (and no sidewalks anywhere: you want to travel the 100 metres from the Urban Barn to the Indigo Books? Get in the car, motherfucker.) sprout like weeds on cheap land on the outskirts (roads and services coming at the expense of taxpayers, natch). Meanwhile, the efforts to bring some life back to the core consist mainly of erecting tons of shoddy condos and "executive lofts" and the concrete wasteland that is Churchill Square. It would be almost comical if it weren't so sad.

Anyway, to say the suburbs suck and North American urban planning is stuck in some kind of time warp to the '50s is to state the obvious. I'd recommend this post at Pandagon, if only for the last paragraph, which sums up why suburbs are not only bad design, but a leading cause of rampant wingnuttery:

You want the answer to why people think, for instance, that gay men are fucking in the streets in liberal cities and teenagers are one pill away from forming sex cults? It's because it's easy to believe that sort of shit when you're holed up in a McMansion and your main contact with the diverse population of America is through the television set

It is sad that Jane Jacobs didn't live to see her simple, people focused ideas becomecurrencymmon crrency of urban planning. Sadly, I think that we're too far gone at this point: the tiping point (to use an annoying buzzword) has passed: we won't stop until we hit the wall.

Steal this post! No, wait...

If the recent upswing in fake authours wasn't enough to convince you of the deathly state of the literary world, chew on this: A Harvard University sophomore with a highly publicized first novel acknowledged Monday that she had borrowed material, accidentally, from another author's work and promised to change her book for future editions.


Putting aside the editorial license/slopply lede writing (ie. "accidentally"?), it seems things are so dire that people can't even find good books to plagarize anymore:

Kaavya Viswanathan's "How Opal Mehta Got Kissed, Got Wild, and Got a Life," published in March by Little, Brown and Company, was the first of a two-book deal reportedly worth six figures. But on Sunday, the Harvard Crimson cited seven passages in Viswanathan's book that closely resemble the style and language of the novels of Megan McCafferty.

Megan who?

McCafferty's books follow a heroine named Jessica, a New Jersey girl who excels in high school but struggles with her identity and longs for a boyfriend. McCafferty is a former editor at Cosmopolitan who has written three novels.

I've not read her stuff, but I'm gonna go out on a limb here and say an ex-Cosmo staffer is no Delillo*.

Now, if you're an aspiring authour and you want to gank something for your book, wouldn't you think it's a good idea to maybe look outside the narrow confines of the genre you are working in? Silly rabbit.

Of course the other side here is that, since all chicklit stuff is pretty much interchangable anyway, what's a little overt plagarism?

*I'm not discounting the possibility that she's a decent or even good writer. But I'm not exactly her target market, wot?

Moving on.

So, the upcoming weekend has the distinction of being the occassion of my fifth move in six years. Now, that moving sucks goes without saying, but I'm a little extra nervous about this one for a couple of reasons other than the usual stresses and pains-in-the-ass that come with the territory. First off, this move marks my first foray across the river, which is a pretty radical departure. I've been a downtown denizen for nigh on a decade, so I'm generally apprehensive about the change of scenery. This is amplified by the fact that I'm leaving downtown's empty, garbage strewn streets for the comparative hustle and bustle of the south side. Now to some, that would seem like an upgrade, but not to me. See, I generally hate people, so the more people I have to deal with, the unhappier I am.

To compound the issue, the neighbourhood I'm moving to is frequented primarily by the kind of people I hate the most: namely LuluLemon-clad, giant baby stroller pushing yuppy breeder fucks during the day and, by night, drunken, obnoxious ballcap wearing suburban douchebag meatheads and their Playboy Bunny tramp-stamped paramours. This rabble is especially in evidence come summertime, when the hormones fill the air like mosquitos, the wife-beaters and flip-flops come out and winter belly rolls are released from their down-filled restraints and seared into the retinas of unwitting and unwilling passersby. In other words, I’m moving into the heart of asshole country right at the start of asshole season. Fuck. (Compounding the usual assholishness will be the NHL playoffs, which means any Oiler victory will be followed by a veritable hoedown of hooting, hollering, honking hillbillies, accompanied by the omnipresent hovering of the police helicopter. Fortunately, the Oilers are playing Detroit which means the window of opportunity for victory celebrations should close in, oh, about a week.)

Of course, my favorite pub in the world is now less than a block away, as are a plethora of record shops, cafes, bakeries and other amenities that downtown lacks, which is really what was behind the decision to cross the river in the first place. Nonetheless, it’ll take a lot of weed to get me through the weekends, since I’m fairly certain that the condo board (which doesn’t even approve of barbeques on the balcony) will most definitely frown on the hurling of Molotov cocktails onto the street below. Bummer.

FAQ

Q: Why do girls get tattoo'd with the Playboy bunny logo?

A: Because it's cheaper than just getting the word "Slut".

Mommy dearest

My top pick for most loathsome media trend has got to be the upsurge (good word for it: reminds me of what happens to the contents of my stomach when I read Rebecca Eckler) the whole "mommy" columnist thing, where young(ish) columnists (usually one's who used to just write about what sluts they are) turn their meager talents to chronicling their sudden foray into motherhood. As if we're supposed to give a shit. There's a lot of reasons to hate this stuff; that these alleged testaments to motherhood are reality thinly disguised paeans to consumerism (baby as accessory); that the individuals specializing in this rot are usually talentless hacks who'd be slinging lattes if it weren't for fucking Candace Bushnell and their own familial (or carnal) connections; that the whole enterprise is rooted in exhibitionistic narcissism. Above all, it's the simple fact that, like the characters in the late, unlamented "Sex and the City", the purveyors of this junk are upper class white women with secure jobs and well-to-do significant others. For them, raising a child is no different than a trip to the spa: a lifetyle affectation and little else. What possible insight do they have to offer? Oh, I'm sure its hard banging out 300 words on baby poop or Mommy/baby cocktail outings when the baby's bawling (where the hell is Consuela with the bottle anyway?). But try doing it as a single mother working a double shift at Tim Horton's because her deadbeat ex-husband spent last month's child support on Pilsner. Suddenly motherhood doesn't look quite so fucking cute anymore, does it?

Off to the races

So right wing douchebags (and douchebaguettes like Michelle Malkin) are whipped up in a righteous froth over NBC's Dateline sending Muslim men to a NASCAR event as part of a look at race relations in post-911/The War Against Terror (TWAT) America. The piece follows a Washington Post/ABC News poll that shows a growing proportion of Americans are expressing unfavorable views of Islam. The poo-flingers are crying into their pork rinds, claiming that NBC is perpetuating the image of NASCAR fans as ignorant redneck racists. Even NASCAR is pissed: so sayeth spokesman Ramesy Poston

"The obvious intent by NBC was to evoke reaction, and we are confident our fans won't take the bait," (Poston)said.

So, uh: what exactly is the problem? If NASCAR fans aren't racist hillbillies, then there's no danger of these folks being hassled and thus, no story. If anything, such an occurrence would be a vindication of NASCAR fans. I'm not sure how this stunt qualifies as "provocation" either: if NBC was sending Muslim men to a NASCAR event waving "Death to America" signs, burning Bush (or Dale Earnhardt) in effigy and chanting "Allah Akbar!" then fair play. But the only way sending people in Muslim garb to just walk around at a NASCAR event is provocative is if their mere presence is enough to actually provoke somebody, which would validate the thesis. Thus, the shrillness of the righty tighties' reactions implies they are really worried that someone might get up in the face of Muslims at the race, which, to me, perpetuates the whole NASCAR fan/racist paradigm.

Cruising through MadMalkin's posts on the subject, she put up an e-mail from an astute stupid reader:

Michelle,
I hasten to point out that you've been so engrossed by the staging of the news by NBC, something that is worthy to discuss of course, but you miss something that I found hysterical. The email you cite says the following:

"I have been talking with a producer of the NBC Dateline show and he is in the process of filming a piece on anti-Muslim and anti-Arab discrimination in the USA. They are looking for some Muslim male candidates for their show who would be willing to go to non-Muslim gatherings and see if they attract any discriminatory comments or actions while being filmed.
They recently taped two turbaned Sikh men attending a football game in Arizona to see how people would treat them. They set them up with hidden microphones and cameras, etc."

Fair enough, I suppose, if that's what they want to find. But as an example of how their sting operation works, the email cites they sent two Sikhs to a football game. Sikhs are not Muslims, in fact the two religions historically hate each other and there have been wars fought between the two.

While NBC News is out trying to find discrimination, they are already blurring the lines of religious reality by not recognizing a Sikh is neither a Muslim or an Arab. How can viewers react to the news segment if they are misled that the two men at a football game in Arizona weren't actually what the segment was about?

This is considered insightful by people like Michelle Malkin. Of course I have to ask: how many Americans (particularly red-staters) can tell the difference between a Sikh and a Muslim?

Hmmmm....

Joe Bob: "Hey Bobby Joe, lookit than feller down there with the beard and turban. Y'all reckon he's an Eye-racky Mooslim like that there Saa-dam Hoosain?"

Bobby Joe: "Goddamn it, Joe Bob, ya ignant sonofabitch. That man right there is a Sikh. Historically speakin' there's a longstanding antipathy between Sikhs and Muslims, which has often manifested itself in violence. Now git me another Bud Light and pass the Copenhagen. Git'r done!

(Actually I'm not even sure how big the beef between practitioners of Sikhism and Islam is; it's entirely possible the dude above was confusing Sikhs with Hindus.)

Now, if two non-Muslim visible minority types in quasi-traditional garb were targets of anti-Muslim sentiments, that tells me two things

1) Anti-Muslim sentiment is a problem, and;
2) Rednecks can't tell the difference between Muslims and other visible minority types.

Which, once again, confirms (in a decidedly unscientific way) the whole thesis.

All of this is a long winded way of saying the obvious: right wingers sure are stupid.

Grits ain't groceries

Not being a Liberal partisan, I have but a passing interest in that party's leadership race. However, if I had to choose a candidate based on the one most likely to make me vote Grit (and hopefully oust the odious Harpercons), I'd have to pick Ken Dryden. He's smart, articulate, enough of a political outsider that he comes free of the kind of baggage that plagued the last Liberal regime, doesn't seem like an asshole like Ignatieff and, above all, is an ex-Hab. I can see the ads now....

TV screen slow fade in to unflattering photo of a chubby Stephen Harper.

Voice over: "Stephen Harper wants you to believe he has what it takes to lead Canada. But how many Stanley Cups has he won?"

Cut to: Archival photo of Dryden with Stanley Cup, as a list of accomplishments (Cup wins, Vezina trophies etc.) scrolls over.

Fade into: Photo of Dryden now, standing in his classic crease pose, maybe flashing his Cup rings.

Voice over: On ____, vote Ken Dryden for Prime Minister.

Fade out over Liberal party logo painted at centre ice.

Okay it ain't perfect but honestly: what does it say about our country when I'd rather have a man who used to take pucks in the head running the show than Stephen Harper?