the blog quebecois

This was a strange piece I wrote, almost from a stalker's perspective. There was something about it that I liked, though, and I extensively reworked it later, keeping this as one of the verses and adding a new chorus. It became one of my better songs (for what that's worth).

I have no idea how Steve Winwood got on this, but he flees after a few moments, no doubt intimidated by my songwriting skills.

CTV:

On Tuesday, Syncrude's lawyer says he'll ask a judge to throw out all of the charges against the oil company stemming from the deaths of 1,600 waterfowl on one of its tailings ponds in 2008.

The move comes as the Crown completed its case Monday.

The Crown has called a number of witnesses over the course of the nine-week trial, including first responders to the accident, environmental experts and bird migration researchers.

Syncrude has entered a not guilty plea to both provincial and federal charges after the animals were found dead. Officials maintain the company did everything in its power to prevent the tragedy.

This is from last week, but I've been giving it a lot of thought, and I've come up with a solution that should make everyone happy. Windmills, my friend.

Yep, surround those tailings ponds with those magnificent whirring beasts and then go for a beer with your new friends at Greenpeace. Not that windmills are much good at generating electricity, but they are first-rate bird killers. Those feathered bastards will be dead long before they hit the water.

And since environmentalists have yet to betray the slightest concern for birds chopped up by these turbines of death -- we might even call it Gaia's righteous wrath -- everybody goes away, hey, hey.

Except for the birds, of course. But screw 'em.

A young Korean guitarist. He was 11 or 12 when this, an arrangement of Lalo Schifrin's "Mission: Impossible" theme was filmed. His (mostly English) website is here.

ScienceDaily:

Animals' 'right to privacy' is being denied by makers of television wildlife documentaries, according to a UK academic.

Dr Brett Mills from the University of East Anglia argues that while wildlife programmes can play a vital role in engaging citizens in environmental debates, in order to 'do good' they must inevitably deny many species the right to privacy.

Published in the current issue of Continuum: Journal of Media and Cultural Studies, Dr Mills' study analyses the 'making of' documentaries that accompanied the BBC wildlife series Nature's Great Events (2009). Exploring the debates on ethics, animal welfare and rights and human rights, Dr Mills suggests that animals have a right to privacy but this is turned into a challenge for the production teams, who use newer forms of technology to overcome species' desire not to be seen.

Oh, good grief. Where to begin?

Anyone who's had a dog knows that they have what could be best described as a joyous insouciance when it comes to bodily functions. The only reason they don't happily poop in the middle of the kitchen floor more often is that they've learned to associate the act with humans yelling at them.

As far as wild animals seeking "privacy" while mating or defecating, that has little to do with their religious hangups or bad toilet training. It's because they instinctively understand that they are vulnerable to predators and/or documentary filmmakers at such moments and therefore try to limit their exposure.

My best guess is that, following Climategate, East Anglia decided to shut down its Climate Research Unit; and citing tenure, the "scientists" employed there were required to be picked up by other faculties; the Department of Biology in this case being stuck with the short straw.

The Johnny Cupcakes Suitcase Tour stop at Kamp Grizzly was epic. Johnny brought a great crowd, his limited edition tour gear and the inspiration for Kamp's Cupcake Cannon. Portland's Kamp Grizzly developed a steam-punk style pneumatic cupcake cannon and set the stage for eating frosty delights at 120psi. The blasting buffet was documented in at 700fps coming off the Phantom HD Gold. As the evening shook down, cupcake enthusiasts continued to step in front of the cannon and camera. Some shaking in their boots, others perched in zen-like states, ALL were covered in delicious frosting, spongy cake, and showered in a mist of sprinkles.

I have no idea what's going on here, but it certainly is colorful enough.

Warning:I Loud music. It's "I Don't Wanna Speak" by Guidance Counselor, in case you're interested.

There's been a story circulating the last few days about a Chinese man, whose "friends," following a drinking party, somehow managed to insert a live eel into his rectum. Tragically, the eel attempted to chew its way out, causing heavy intestinal bleeding which killed the man.

You can read about it here. I wasn't going to link to it. I do attempt to maintain some standards, after all.

Unfortunately, Scott "Dilbert" Adams doesn't share my scruples, and posted the story to his blog:

This tragic situation, which I think we all agree is not funny, raises many questions.

1. With friends like that, who needs enemas?

2. How low did this man set the bar for friends?

3. What were his friends imbibing when they came up with this idea, and how can I get some of that?

4. How difficult is it to insert an eel into a rectum? Did they straighten and freeze the eel a little bit first? Otherwise it seems like trying to push a rope through a keyhole.

5. How did the man sleep through it?

In my own life, I have a strict rule for determining who to call my friends. Rule 46 states that any person who tries to insert a live eel into my rectum is automatically disqualified. If the eel is dead, obviously that's just good fun. I'm not a killjoy.

As a conspiracy enthusiast, I have to wonder if the friends were trying to cover up an even more embarrassing violation of the presumably drunken victim's hindquarters.

Friend 1: "Uh-oh. When he wakes up, he's going to know what we did."

Friend 2: "Not if we put a live octopus in his rectum. That should cover our tracks."

Friend 1: "That's insane! You can't put a live octopus in a rectum!"

Friend 2: "Live eel?"

Friend 1: "Fine. Remind me to never be the first one who falls asleep in this crowd."

Which led to the following comment by "Shadowrider":

When your friends are really crass
and there's an eel up your ass,
That's a moray!

Shocking, shocking. Let's leave Dean Martin out of this, m'kay?

I was improving at guitar, at least the rhythm aspect of it. It also helped that I'd bought a new guitar, a very nice Yamaha steel-string for around $600. With inflation I'd probably be paying over a thousand for it today. I could bash away on it and the harder I played, the better it sounded.

My songwriting was also quite muscular during this period. And by "muscular," I mean "thick-headed." This was a fairly typical example, insipid lyrically. But at least I could now power my way through it with some degree of conviction.

I'd hate to see her if she ever got angry. Pamela Geller unloads on the PC toadies that infest our institutions at Big Government:

The AAP recommendation is another example of raging Sharia in the U.S. Despite the taqiya, Islam sanctions female genital mutilation, and sometimes even encourages it. Muhammad Al-Mussayar, an Islamic scholar at Al-Azhar University, the most prestigious and influential institution in the Islamic world, said that Islam doesn’t forbid female genital mutilation: “All the jurisprudents, since the advent of Islam and for 14 centuries or more, are in consensus that female circumcision is permitted by Islam. But they were divided with regard to its status in shari’a. Some said that female circumcision is required by shari’a, just like male circumcision. Some said this is the mainstream practice, while others said it is a noble act. But throughout the history of Islam, nobody has ever said that performing female circumcision is a crime. There has been a religious ruling on this for 14 centuries.”

And now it effectively has the approval of the American Academy of Pediatrics.

By G-d, these are our daughters. This is our culture that these clueless dhimmi buffoons are throwing away with both hands. No matter how you couch this argument, and the New York Times is the master of velvet-tongued barbarity, what the American Academy of Pediatrics has done is grotesque – and it will lead to more approval for Sharia teachings on women.

Our daughters and granddaughters will be the ones who will suffer for it.

Kathy Shaidle points to an interesting essay in City Journal about the messaniac nature of modern American politics.

Religion has long been a powerful force in American politics, of course, for good and ill. The difference with the more traditional varieties of religion was the open acknowledgment that they were religious. The First Amendment promised that they could never become established churches; generations’ worth of jurisprudence closely regulated the way they could interact with government. And when a campaigning politician acknowledged forthrightly that he derived a policy from, say, his understanding of the Bible, his potential constituents understood that, however reasonable the policy might be, what underlay it was faith, not reason. The emerging liberal religions are very different: as emotionally captivating for some, at least for a time, as Christianity or Judaism, but untrammeled by any constitutional amendment; as grounded in faith, but pretending to dwell in the realms of reason and science.

(* Or possibly Russell Brand.)

FOXNews.com:

The World Health Organization is moving full speed ahead with a controversial plan to impose billions of dollars in global consumer taxes on such things as Internet activity and everyday financial transactions like paying bills online - while its spending soars and its own financial house is in disarray.

The aim of its taxing plans is to raise "tens of billions" of dollars for WHO that would be used to radically reorganize the research, development, production and distribution of medicines around the world, with greater emphasis on drugs for communicable diseases in poor countries.

The irony is that the WHO push to take a huge bite out of global consumers comes as the organization is having a management crisis of its own, juggling finances, failing to use its current resources efficiently, or keep its costs under control - and it doesn't expect to show positive results in managing those challenges until a year from now, at the earliest.

[ . . . ]

The rationale for the drastic restructuring of medical R and D, as outlined in the group of experts' report, is the skewed nature of medical research in the developed world, which concentrates largely on non-communicable diseases, notably cancer, and scants research on malaria, tuberculosis and other communicable scourges of poor countries. It cites a 1986 study that claimed that only 5 percent of global health research and development was applied to the health problems of developing countries.

(In dissecting contemporary medical R and D, however, the expert report glosses over the historical fact that many drugs for fighting communicable diseases in developing countries are already discovered; the issue in many cases is the abysmal living and hygienic conditions that make them easily transmitted killers.)

What truly concerns the experts, however, is how to get the wealth transfers that will make the R and D transfers possible - on a permanent basis. The panel offers up a specific number of possibilities.

Chief among them:
• a "digital" or "bit" tax on Internet activity, which could raise "tens of billions of U.S. dollars";
• a 10 percent tax on international arms deals, "worth about $5 billion per annum";
• a financial transaction tax, citing a Brazilian levy that was raising some $20 billion per year until it was canceled (for unspecified reasons);
• an airline tax that already exists in 13 countries and has raised some $1 billion.

Ever thought of -- I dunno . . . getting a job?

From The Big Picture's coverage of the 2010 World's Fair, which recently opened in Shanghai.

Oh, no, you're thinking. He's going to make us listen to all the takes of this bloody stuff!

Relax, dear reader (and grudging listener). Just the more "successful" tracks. Though keep in mind that I have a rather elastic view of what constitutes "success."

By the time we were done, I suppose I had written 300 songs or so; of which maybe 30 or 10% were actually worth listening to. That 10:1 ratio pops up elsewhere -- both Mick Jagger and Bruce Springsteen, talking about upcoming albums, estimated that they had each written around one hundred songs to get the 10 or 11 that made the cut. Or as Keith Richards famously described pre-'60s LP's: "1 hit and 10 tracks of shit," though that equally fits some Stones records, especially in the late seventies (I'm looking at you, Goat Head's Soup -- if the punks and new wavers accomplished nothing else, they at least woke up the Glimmer Twins, who started turning out some of their strongest work in a decade).

Probably the difference between professionals and amateurs is that the former are far better at spotting duds and quit wasting time on them. Whereas I would do a half-dozen attempts at songs that weren't going to be very good even if I hit every note on time and in tune. It's rare, even for accomplished writers, to get everything correct on the first take; but if there's no spark, nothing special by your third or fourth try, then the song generally wasn't meant to be.

But I like the process by which songs evolve, so I'll include a few examples. I'm kinda weird that way.

Previously: Just Like A Woman

The Globe and Mail:

It can be seen as a ghoulish attempt to demonize the public broadcaster, to isolate it and, one suspects, an attempt to batter the CBC into compliance. Or one could imagine an even more ominous scenario: the possibility that the current battering is the minority Conservative government’s manner of preparing the public for a major cut to CBC funding and the eventual beleaguerment of the CBC as a fringe broadcaster.

Uh, dude? It is a fringe broadcaster. Try tuning into Newsworld some night and behold the bizarro-land of 911 Truther videos, Michael Moore fantasies and David Suzuki eco-porn laid out for you and your hundred fellow viewers.

I think it`s wonderful that the Canadian government subsidizes your viewing habits; I think that Thorazine drips all around would be cheaper in the long run, though.

SFGate:

5. The mine sweeper. Even as a kid, this army man reminded me of the old guys who used a metal detector to find spare change on the beach at Coyote Point. I realize that bomb detection units are more important than ever in the military -- war is a drug -- but I never had any use for this soldier. All my other army men were locked in mortal combat, and this a**hole is looking for his car keys. I only have one mine sweeper left. I think most of them ended up getting a toaster oven court martial.

Having solved all the world's other problems, the U.N. seeks new challenges:

DOT 99-10
Wednesday, May 19, 2010
Media Contacts: Carolyn Vadino, US Mission to the UN, 212-415-4301 Olivia Alair, Department of Transportation, 202-366-4570

U.N. and International Officials Launch Global Effort to End Distracted Driving

New York, NY - Secretary General Ban Ki-moon and senior representatives from the United States and Russia appeared at the United Nations headquarters in New York today to launch a global effort to address the growing and deadly epidemic of distracted driving. Secretary Ban was joined for the announcement by U.S. Ambassador Susan Rice, U.S. Transportation Secretary Ray LaHood, Russian Ambassador Vitaly Churkin and Jennifer Smith, President of FocusDriven, a victims’ advocacy organization based in the U.S.

Warning: Er, sounds.

Via The Presurfer

Globe and Mail:

The most frequently televised image of the U.S. Congress is the congressional hearing: senators sitting in judge-like dignity on a dais, interrogating some brilliant or villainous (but always interesting) witness.

The most frequently televised image of the Canadian Parliament is the daily Question Period: opposition members and cabinet ministers adversarially seated two sword lengths apart, hurling insults and retorts in the guise of questions and answers across the floor of the House of Commons.

Our American friends display one of the most attractive features of their elected chamber on TV; we display one of the least attractive features of ours. So what should be done?

Well, watching pompous morons like Barbara Boxer or Henry Waxman in action is not exactly what I'd call attractive; on the other hand, Marlene Jennings is as stupid as any three of 'em put together, so you might have a point.

I'm a totally self-taught guitarist. I've never had a lesson; everything I'd learned was from books and trial and error.

In retrospect, that's a lousy way to try and learn to play rock and roll music. Rock, like folk or country music or the blues, is primarily a social-networking kind of thing, the Facebook of its age.

Nor did I avail myself often of the greatest teaching aid of all -- my record collection. The most famous musicians of the day were there for the asking, but I seldom called on them. The problem that arose when I tried to play along to records was that they all seemed to be playing in unconventional (and difficult, for a novice guitarist) keys, like A♭ or C♯.

So I would rationalize this away by saying that I wasn't interested in learning other peoples' songs anyway -- I was too focused on playing my own. True enough; but shutting out outside influences means you are essentially reinventing the wheel each time.

By now I was jamming on a somewhat regular basis with my cousin, who pointed out that my main problem was that my guitar was rarely in tune. I could never find the pitch pipe that I tuned to, so I'd estimate the low-E string and tune the rest of the strings to match. That worked great when you did, in fact, have the correct note; not so good when you were a half-tone (or worse still, a quarter-tone or other fraction) off.

Once I learned to use a reliable tone -- an electronic keyboard, which never slips out of tune -- whole new worlds opened up. Suddenly I could play along with these people, albeit clumsily, most of the time.

"Teacher, Teacher" was from Rockpile, the '80's band put together by the great Nick "Cruel To Be Kind" (YouTube link) Lowe and Dave Edmunds. I mainly just played chords on this; there's really no solos as such, just arpeggios and inversions of the major chords.

CTV:

Prime Minister Stephen Harper boarded his government jet and took to the skies more than 50 times last year to promote the government's multibillion-dollar economic stimulus program in two-dozen towns and cities.

A total of 34 domestic trips Harper took on government Challenger jets from April 2009 to last December -- with 53 destinations or stopovers from coast to coast -- cost taxpayers nearly $500,000.

The prime minister spent another $341,080 on a week-long Airbus tour of the Arctic, in part to promote the economic stimulus program and also as part of his plan to demonstrate Canadian sovereignty in the North.

Why, I . . . I . . . I . . .

Never mind!

Sculptures by French artist Bruno Catalano. It's difficult to calculate the size from these pictures, but this piece on display at a museum is slightly over three feet tall.

CNNMoney.com:

Sunday's onslaught wasn't designed for mainstream media consumption. There were no reporters from organizations like the Washington Post, no local camera crews who might have aired criticism of this private-home invasion. With the media covering the conservative Tea Party protesters, the behavior of individual activists has drawn withering scrutiny.

Instead, a friendly Huffington Post blogger showed up, narrowcasting coverage to the union's leftist base. The rest of the message these protesters brought was personal-aimed at frightening Baer and his family, not influencing a broader public.

Of course, HuffPost readers responding to the coverage assumed that Baer was an evil former Bush official. He's not. A lifelong Democrat, Baer worked for the Clinton Treasury Department, and his wife, Shirley Sagawa, author of the book The American Way to Change and a former adviser to Hillary Clinton, is a prominent national service advocate.

In the 1990s, the Baers' former bosses, Bill and Hillary Clinton, denounced the "politics of personal destruction." Today politicians and their voters of all stripes grieve the ugly bitterness that permeates our policy debates. Now, with populist rage providing a useful cover, it appears we've crossed into a new era: The politics of personal intimidation.

Someone needs to get these goons in a courtroom and under oath. If the slime trail even touches Obama, things could get very interesting after November.

The littler, "cuter" version of Boston Dynamics' BigDog, battlefield robots being developed for DARPA. These things are getting impressive, if more than a little eerie.

Warning: Commentary.

The Brevard County doctor who was arrested for groping a woman while dressed as Captain America with a burrito in his pants will not go to jail.

You gotta admit, the burrito was an inspired touch. Still, it comes in second to this intriguing, sex-and-violence-packed opening from early 2007:

A jazz musician was injured Friday after jumping from a burning motor home driven by a one-time roller skating stripper from Lodi.

The link is still good, if you want to know . . . the rest of the story.

Time to put on my big boy pants and aim for the Top of the Pops. I'd eventually puzzled out the chords to this, but this was my first attempt at playing it through, on acoustic guitar. And all in all, I didn't do too bad. The rhythm guitar and short runs turned out well save for a couple of slips at the end. You might have easily thought that I was part of the band at times. (I'm on the left side, if it isn't obvious.)

Of the other guitar work, we shall not speak, save to note that it is a prime example of Insipid Noodling over Townshend's organ/synth breaks. So, you see, I really could have played (sorta) for The Who (though I might have had to flee for my life during the first rehearsal).

BBC:

Members of the UN Security Council have condemned Israel ahead of an emergency session over Israel's deadly raid on a flotilla of ships carrying aid to Gaza.

At least nine pro-Palestinian activists, some Turkish, were killed when Israeli commandos stormed the ships in international waters.

Turkey's foreign minister called Israel's actions "murder by a state".

Israel's UN envoy said troops acted in self defence when activists attacked them, charges the campaigners deny.

"This flotilla was anything but a humanitarian mission," Israel's deputy UN ambassador Daniel Carmon said.

He said the activists had used "knives, clubs and other weapons" to attack the soldiers who boarded the ship.

I spent a good deal of time this afternoon looking unsuccessfully for a clip from 2002 showing Canada's most famous anti-zionist battling with Israeli border guards (he didn't win, following a bit of a shoving match). He wanted to go to Ramallah to see his hero, Yassir Arafat, but the Jewish oppressors were having none of it.

Well, he's needed more than ever now in Gaza for his combat and/or jewel-thieving skills.

Where have you gone, Mr. Robinson/A nation turns its lonely eyes to you.