Today In Recreational Fury

January 6, 2014 / / 1 Comment

“That we as a society are condoning information destruction and core library closures in Canada is unbelievable, and in my view, undemocratic and probably criminal… that would be an interesting aspect to investigate,” adds the scientist.

“Through a misguided policy purportedly driven by the desire for cost savings in the public service, and I believe this was only one reason for this action, we have trashed a network of world-class marine and fisheries libraries, the envy around the world. The rest of the world cannot believe what is happening in Canada on this issue.”

Concludes Wells: “If I were still working for the government, I probably would be fired for being concerned and outspoken about the future of aquatic science in Canada and the impact of current federal policies.”

What’s Driving Chaotic Dismantling of Canada’s Science Libraries?

Fuck The USA

June 28, 2013 / / No Comments

It’s amusing that the stupid punk rock protest songs I remember from 30 years ago are the songs that are circling back for me lately. I love lots of Americans, but you know: I’m leaning forward into the old old familiar fuck-the-USA stance tonight. Outgrown hobbyhorse saddle smells like sunscorched leather and my own ballsweat. A familiar smell of my youth.

Jacket

It’s not like I’m any happier with my own left-behind home, friends. Part of getting old seems to be, at least for me, loving individual people but loathing them and their dimwit convictions in aggregate. So it goes.

Anger? Anger is an energy.

Bullshit and Counterbullshit

May 24, 2013 / / No Comments

Step 1: Saccharine art-directed wall of text ad copy (which, honestly, is just a little too twee, even if its heart is in the right place) gets auto-elevated to pretentious ‘manifesto’ by virality hopefuls pitching their product at Facebook likers and overwrought teenagers.

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Step 2: Random loveable cynic Livejournaller rewrites manifesto, hilariously.

YOU EXIST. BE AS SELF INDULGENT AS YOU CAN. DON’T THINK TOO MUCH. BAD SITUATIONS ARE EASY TO CHANGE AND IF THIS ISN’T TRUE FOR YOU, DON’T GET LOSER GERMS ON THIS SIGN. MY EVERY THOUGHT IS SO DEEP. IF YOU ARE YOUNG, ATTRACTIVE AND PRIVILEGED, LOVE IS EASY. NO FATTIES, NO OLDSTERS, NO HOBOS. NOTHING IS COMPLICATED WHEN YOU CAN BUY WHAT YOU WANT. DIFFERENT TYPE SIZES CAN MAKE APHORISMS PROFOUND. EAT RAINBOWS, SHIT STARS. ASK THE NEXT PERSON YOU SEE HOW DESPERATE THEY ARE, AND SHARE YOUR DESIRE TO HUNT THEM FOR SPORT. TRAVEL OFTEN; TOURISM IS AN ADEQUATE SUBSTITUTE FOR DEPTH. IF YOU ARE UNHAPPY, IT’S PROBABLY BECAUSE YOU MISSED YOUR CHANCE AT AWESOME. LIFE IS BEING BORN ON THIRD BASE AND ACTING LIKE HITTING A TRIPLE IS SIMPLE. HANG ON TO THOSE DREAMS, IT MAKES IT EASIER TO SELL YOU. LIFE IS SHORT AND BRUTAL IF YOU CAN’T AFFORD TO LIVE A WINSOME CLICHE. WELCOME TO HELL.

Step 3: Clumsy Photochop remix.

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Step 4: Profit.

Wave

February 21, 2013 / / No Comments

It seems like a lifetime, or at least a Main Era — the kind of peak that never comes again. San Francisco in the middle sixties was a very special time and place to be a part of. Maybe it meant something. Maybe not, in the long run… but no explanation, no mix of words or music or memories can touch that sense of knowing that you were there and alive in that corner of time and the world. Whatever it meant…

There was madness in any direction, at any hour. You could strike sparks anywhere. There was a fantastic universal sense that whatever we were doing was right, that we were winning…

And that, I think, was the handle — that sense of inevitable victory over the forces of Old and Evil. Not in any mean or military sense; we didn’t need that. Our energy would simply PREVAIL. There was no point in fighting — on our side or theirs. We had all the momentum; we were riding the crest of a high and beautiful wave…

So now, less than five years later, you can go up on a steep hill in Las Vegas and look West, and with the right kind of eyes you can almost see the high water mark — that place where the wave finally broke, and rolled back.

Hunter S Thompson, Fear And Loathing In Las Vegas

Fuck You, Canada

May 3, 2011 / / 12 Comments

I say this as a once-proud Canadian: fuck you, Canada. Stephen Harper and his brigade of destroyers, again? A fucking majority? What could you possibly have been thinking, Canada? What the hell is wrong with you?

I know you’re not completely stupid, Canada. In the half of my 45 years that I lived there, I met lots of people who weren’t stupid. My mom, who’s mayor of my hometown: she’s one smart lady. But I’m not going to ask her if she voted Conservative. I fear her response would break my heart.

I don’t want you to apologize to me, Canada. That would be silly. But it will be heartbreaking when you come to me weeping, with fresh bruises across your face, because you believed him when he said he wouldn’t hit you any more, and you went back. Again. For the sake of the kids.

I don’t want to feel a tingle of schadenfreude when I see the smoking, cratered economic wasteland after the Great Real Estate Disaster that is coming, Canada, your people shambling and blistered, draped in scorched rags, clutching the tattered paperwork for your 40 year mortgages, or for you to learn a lesson about greed from that.

I don’t want you to be the nation I so loved when I was a boy, the country I was so proud of.

I don’t want you to wake up and realize that by emulating the worst, you become the worst. America’s so exciting, so vibrant, they have the best drugs and the shapeliest fake tits, the shiniest teeth and the porn, have you seen some of that crazy porn they make down there? And the great big servings of curly fries? Holy shit! Everybody loves America, except that Bin Laden creep, and hell, they finally took him down Rambostyle, right? So all aboard the USA train!

Those boring frigid Scandinavian countries, where they have the highest standard of living, the best education and health care, the lowest infant mortality rate, even — who needs all that? Who wants to be like them, all dour and shivering and strong and secure and beloved, when America! is just next door and has that flashy car and gold tooth?

I don’t want you to look in the mirror and realize you’ve become a disappointment, an also-ran, a minor-key sidekick to a lumbering misguided giant, a mockery of the great men and women who built you. I don’t need you to understand that the toxic Network News American Political Buzzword Culture that has colonized your media and infected your discourse has distracted your people and corrupted your leaders and is destroying you. I don’t want you to embrace the principles that made you great. I don’t want you to take a step back and think about what kind of nation you want to be, and then live up to those principles.

No, wait, what the hell am I saying?

I want all of those things.

But it looks less likely with every turn of the screw that I’ll ever be seeing them.