the blog quebecois

There's a famous maxim, "You should try everything once except incest and Morris dancing."

But these people seem determined to rehabilitate the hobby:

Orange News:

A 'sexier' version of the Morris dancing costume has been created to try to encourage more people to take part.

It follows a survey which found that one in four of 2,000 people questioned said they would be more likely to sign up for Morris classes if the outfits were sexier.

Almost four out of ten people told the survey, for TV channel Blighty, that the current outfits were 'old-fashioned'.

The new version was created by TV's Strictly Come Dancing costume designers Chrisanne for Blighty.

It still has bells, a neckerchief, waistcoat and ribbons - but the tight-fitting new kit shows more flesh and sparkles with 6,594 Swarovski crystals, valued at £800.

If you haven't seen Morris dancers in action:

Now you could use several adjectives, such as "rustic," or "quaint," or "folksy," or even "corny" to describe this. But "sexy"? I don't care how many Swarovski crystals you plaster on it, it ain't "sexy," full stop.

MEMRI:

In an unfortunate result of translation, Pakistani diplomat Akbar Zeb will not become the next Pakistani ambassador to Saudi Arabia. Zeb’s credentials seem in order: He is the former ambassador to the United States, India and South Africa. He held the post of High Commissioner Designate of Pakistan to Canada and is the former director general of Pakistan's Foreign Ministry.

But despite Mr. Zeb’s impressive career, the 55-year-old diplomat’s name proved to be the immovable hurdle. When translated into Arabic, Akbar Zeb means “Biggest Dick.” In a region that stresses modesty, particularly in public, this could not stand.

Angelo Persichelli:

Liberal party president Alf Apps, for example, says he doesn't like coalitions and "it's absolutely wrong to talk about it now. Things happen after the elections."

Apps told me Wednesday that "the discussion now is about what the progressive agenda for Canada is and how that progressive agenda gets implemented in the face of the most retrograde and legacy-less government in our history. . . . Canadians will decide at the ballot box and, once they've made their choice, then we can deal with the issue of coalition, if it is required."

What we see here is pitiful, the Libs begging Canadians to not let them into power for a very, very long time, if at all. By admitting they will be campaigning under false pretences, and colluding after the fact to seize high office can mean only one thing -- that they are deliberately advertising their naked ambition in the hope that the public will recognize it: as though to say "Stop us, before we rule again!"

And what a genius touch, to identify themselves as "progressive," when a certain self-styled "progressive" south of the border is marching his nation into the biggest cluster-fark of modern times.

It's enough to bring tears to my eyes.

Tears of joy, admittedly; but then I never was the sentimental type.

Via See Mike Draw

Iowahawk unleashes a demon from the very bowels of hell:

YAMAMOTO (president of Nippon Petroleum)
Gentlemen! Gentlemen, please! Enough of this bickering! Let us focus our attention on stopping Crudezilla before it reaches the mainland!

NAKAMURA
But sir, our best engineers have been working on it around the clock. Everything we try only seems to make Crudezilla more powerful. This monster is invincible!

YAMAMOTO
Where is the creature now?

NAKAMURA
Sir, our radar planes place it 100 kilometers from the coast, bearing straight for Fukushima prefecture.

YAMAMOTO
Gentlemen, we must act now, or we all will be totally Fukushima-ed. Nakamura, bring me the finest engineering mind in all of Japan -- the one man who knows how to stop the rise of the oceans and make the earth heal itself.

NAKAMURA
You mean...

YAMAMOTO
Yes. Professor Obamasawa.

I just had the one verse and the chorus for this but decided to record it anyway. That's not a bad idea if you're stuck on something -- it gets the basic idea down on tape, and repeating the parts that work can lead to different ways to sing or play the song, or might trigger additional lyrics, etc.. Hypothetically, at least. I never did too much more on this one. Still, considering the subject matter, it had a perky little melody.

Warning: Language.

Via Big Journalism

The Toronto Star:

Ontario's top court is hearing that an alleged sexual assault victim should be allowed to testify wearing a niqab because she will still meet the defendants' eyes.

Lawyer David Butt acknowledges the court must balance the defendant's right to a full defence and his client's right to freedom of religion.

The two defendants - the woman's cousin and uncle - are charged with sexually assaulting the woman, identified only as N.S., when she was a child.

They argue that they must be able to assess her demeanour on the stand by seeing her face because it is critical to their right to defend themselves.

Butt is telling the Court of Appeal for Ontario that they will still be able to meet their accuser's eyes and that very little else would be gleaned from seeing the rest of her face.

There are a number of interveners in the case, including the Women's Legal Education and Action Fund [LEAF] , which argues that forcing the woman to remove her niqab would deter other such sex assault complainants from coming forward.

The brainless cud-chewers at LEAF might not be the stupidest herd of cattle to thunder over the cliff -- we'll always (it seems) have the Palestinians -- but it's a close call. First off, let's disabuse ourselves of the notion that the niqab is a religious requirement - it is mentioned nowhere in the Koran and only came to prominence at the turn of the early 20th century. It is more a political and cultural statement associated with the Muslim Brotherhood and the Saudi Wahhabi sect. Egypt saw fit to ban it in schools and universities just last year.

As for the identity of the complainant being revealed causing an inhibiting effect: I'm sure LEAF feels the accusation alone is enough to prove guilt. No need for the bother of a trial, or for the woman even to show up. All men are rapists, after all, and women never lie about such things. Except when they do.

But if you insist that your quaint customs be upheld in a Canadian courtroom, let's serve up the entire pig, shall we? (Apologies for the metaphor, which I'm certain you'll find quite unkosher.)

You accuse these men of rape? Bring forward your four (male, Muslim) witnesses to testify to your blemishless conduct.

No? I thought not, you filthy adultress.

Full size here.

And yet there were some who said he couldn't be trained.

We've all been there, brother. We've all been there.

Look, I could be a total loser and stay up all night waiting for her to get back to me, and I almost certainly will do that. But, why bother? If she calls, she calls. I put my sweaty, desperate cards on the table, and now it's on her. And unless I'm mistaken -- which I usually am -- as soon as she hears the sound of my trembling voice she'll be digging through her purse for the Arby's receipt that I frantically scribbled my name and number on.

What can I say? I guess my voice just has that effect on some women.

And when she does call, I am not going to freak out like it's the first time a woman's ever called me or something. In fact, I may just let it ring and keep her on ice for a while, assuming I don't panic first and start screaming into the receiver the second I hear the phone ring.

Because I'm not the kind of player who likes to come on too strong. Just a nice, pitiful, borderline disturbing phone message, and I'm on with my life. It's not like I invited her and her sister to come have tacos with my parents and me tomorrow night or anything. At least, I'm pretty sure I didn't.

Upon listening to this, the reader will be obsessed with (shut up, I'll tell you what you should be obsessed with) the question: How did you get that groovy guitar sound? A '65 Fender Princeton Reverb? A digital delay fed through a Model 122 Leslie speaker?

Close. Think Stylophone. That was a late '60s--early '70s cheesy "synthesizer" that you played one note at a time by touching a stylus to a metal plate laid out like a piano keyboard. Despite being described as "the world's most annoying musical instrument," it's actually been used in some well-known songs, like David Bowie's "Space Oddity."

In practice, though, the keyboard scratched up easily, and it soon became unplayable (not that you'd really want to hear too much of it anyway). It did, however, have a vibrato switch, and I managed somehow to run my guitar through it -- a quite impressive achievement, considering it had no input jack.

The final verses: "Tiny little jewels, enameled with/corroded by hate," etc. were basically improvised, and it turned into the most melodious part of the song. Funny how that sometimes works (more often it doesn't; but on that we shan't dwell).

I've been thinking of getting a copy of Red Dead Redemption, from Rockstar Games, the people behind the Grand Theft Auto franchise. The reviews I've read have been very positive and it looks quite immersive. Compared to GTA, though, there seem a fairly large number of glitches in the code. Usually these involve errors in collision detection or pathfinding, leading to characters getting stuck behind simple obstacles or just walking clean through them.

But there are some so elaborate that you suspect that they are "Easter Eggs," deliberately placed by programmers. Such is probably the case with "Donkey Woman" (above) or "Bird People." (Warning: SFX and commentary/music). There are plenty of others on the right side of the second link.

The Atlantic:

Nowhere is the gap between sinister stereotype and ridiculous reality more apparent than in Afghanistan, where it’s fair to say that the Taliban employ the world’s worst suicide bombers: one in two manages to kill only himself. And this success rate hasn’t improved at all in the five years they’ve been using suicide bombers, despite the experience of hundreds of attacks-or attempted attacks. In Afghanistan, as in many cultures, a manly embrace is a time-honored tradition for warriors before they go off to face death. Thus, many suicide bombers never even make it out of their training camp or safe house, as the pressure from these group hugs triggers the explosives in suicide vests. According to several sources at the United Nations, as many as six would-be suicide bombers died last July after one such embrace in Paktika.

Via Five Feet of Fury

the universe and human stupidity; and I'm not sure about the universe.

A quote popularly attributed to Albert Einstein. To test the thesis (and keeping with the astronomical theme) let's go to the tape:

Q.E.D.

Warning: There's an ad that occasionally pops up -- nothing pornographic, but sometimes with sound -- when this page loads. So if that's a problem, turn down your speakers now.

This meme seems to have struck in several places simultaneously. Here's Gizmodo's take.

This is my favorite, though:

And as a bonus, the haunting (and only) piece written for the instrument:

Remember: The only way to Carnegie Hall is practice, practice, practice. (Click on the horn to practice.) (Disabled.)

American Thinker:

The Obama administration has just made certain that there will be minimal foreign or even domestic investment in the United States. Their shakedown and blackmail of BP has major corporate investors looking elsewhere for expansion and exploration. No company answerable to their shareholders or investors will risk capital in a country which has brutally abandoned the rule of law.

If I had investment capital to throw around, it sure as hell wouldn't be going into the U.S. Frankly, this guy is starting to make Russia an attractive option.

On the upside, he might have destroyed the Democrats for a generation or three. Good riddance.

I don't recall what particular existential crisis brought this on. Maybe it was something so traumatic that I've blocked all memories of it.

Or maybe I was just making stuff up again. It's kind of in my DNA.

Guitar playing wasn't; but I was paying more attention to the little touches around the chords - the tone, texture, the things that take a mediocre song to the next level: A mediocre song with interesting little touches around the chords.

AP:

A Pakistan-born U.S. citizen pleaded guilty Monday to carrying out the failed Times Square car bombing, saying he wanted it known that unless the U.S. stops attacking Muslim lands, "we will be attacking U.S." Faisal Shahzad, 30, entered the plea in U.S. District Court in Manhattan just days after a federal grand jury indicted him on 10 terrorism and weapons counts, some of which carried mandatory life prison sentences.

If they're all as stupid as this one, it should be a short, jolly little war.

Big Government:

The interview of General McChrystal in Rolling Stone was not an accident, it’s a perfect example of suicide by interview. The General knew that every criticism would be "on the record." He also knew that the President will have no choice but to relieve the General of his command after their meeting tomorrow. The Military Code of Justice provides that a General does not criticize the Commander-in-Chief publicly -- however, the General criticized Obama in a major way and even picked the perfect vehicle to do it in the most visible of ways.

McChrystal’s statements clearly point to the fact that he believes the war cannot be won under the President’s parameters, a tepid escalation to protect the president from his political supports. McChrystal is clearly frustrated by Barack Obama and his administration and finds it necessary to protect his men. He finds himself having to take radical steps to protect his troops in the face of an administration trying to fight a war on a half-assed basis.

This might explain something that I've found puzzling: Stephen Harper's transformation from a person unwilling to "cut and run" from Afghanistan to someone adamantly refusing to extend our combat role past next year. I initially attributed it to the length of the war and the relentless badgering of morons like Bob Rae and Ujjal Dosanjh, ever eager to accuse Conservative politicians of unspecified "war crimes." But these new revelations by General McChrystal and his staff cast an entirely new light on matters.

If they were willing to be so critical of the American political class to -- of all people, a reporter from Rolling Stone, for God's sakes -- then you may be sure that Canadian and other NATO officers knew of their concerns. And when those reports made it up the chain of command back in Ottawa, I think it became clear to Harper that Obama was in no way serious about the war, and was even prepared to throw it (and blame George Bush if he could). Getting more Canadian soldiers killed while Barack Obama dithers and dawdles certainly isn't in his (or their) best interests. So that's why we're coming home.

Photographer Jocelyn Bain Hogg somehow gained the trust of The Firm, a British gang that came to fame in the 1960s with the exploits of the Kray twins, celebrity psychopaths. This was from a set of photos of them (the later members) at play she took some ten years ago; she has plans to update them soon.

Warning: Some pictures NSFW; also, some, like the one above seem to be inaccessible from the main page. To see them, click on one of the thumbnails at the bottom right, then on the Enlarge tab and hit the Next button a few times.

The Smoking Gun:

Just today I lost 15 pounds! I might never eat again!

... the will to live. Jesus, take me home now.

Washington Post:

"It's a great moment. I'm proud to have been here," said a teary-eyed Sen. Christopher J. Dodd (D-Conn.), who as chairman of the Senate Banking Committee led the effort in the Senate. "No one will know until this is actually in place how it works. But we believe we've done something that has been needed for a long time. It took a crisis to bring us to the point where we could actually get this job done."

Let me amend that, Jesus. Please take Chris Dodd home now. I've come up with the perfect epitaph for him:

As I mentioned a few entries ago, my cousin and I were jamming fairly regularly by now. We were doing standard stuff like 12-bar blues, etc., just to see if we had any chemistry. We did, but I wasn't going to win any awards for my musicianship. It became clear that I was going to have to add vocals, and this was my first attempt. I've before mentioned my unease with this; so it was easier at the start to do jokey stuff. It'd be devastating to try something more ambitious only to find that you sound like the AFLAC duck-- it's a lot safer to have some ironic distance as a final defence: "Oh yeah, I know I was seriously out of key there. That's what makes it funny, man. Get a sense of humor, willya?"

And what better to experiment with than our "rock opera," Sylvie, The Water-Sprite? This had a fairly simple libretto: Sylvie (the water-sprite) is out for her morning walk when she is attacked by a fierce leopard! She runs away! A handsome woodsman comes to her rescue! They live happily ever after/are both devoured by the beast! (We weren't certain about the ending yet.)

Okay, it's not exactly The Merry Widow, but at least we dodged the hoary cliche of the lead singer/protagonist as a thinly-veiled pseudo-Christ figure (Tommy, American Idiot, Jesus Christ, Superstar, and just about every other one you can think of).

Also, I'd switched to bass guitar; I'm pretty sure this was done the same day I brought it home. Other instruments: My cousin on "drums" (more on our "drum kit" later); me on recorder (one of those -- plastic, usually -- wind instruments that looks like a half-size clarinet). I couldn't play it, of course; not that that's stopped me before. I discovered that if I waggled my fingers randomly, I could create noises that sounded vaguely Arabic. (Whether that says more about me, or Arabic music, I leave for others to decide.)

As far as the song goes . . . well, we were certainly . . . energetic. (Remember, it's supposed to be funny.) There are also more tempo shifts (some even intended) than on your average Rush album.

Other lessons learned: a) I actually could be good as a vocalist, at least in the timing and tonality (there's no real melody to speak of);

b) I was better at improvising than I expected -- I had written down a couple of verses, but much of the "Run, run, Sylvie" parts were on the spur of the moment;

c) I was not good at the typically histrionic rock vocal thingee;

d) I should probably lose the recorder from my instrumental quiver; and

e) Singing got easier the more I did it. Before long, not even semi-plausible death threats could shut me up.

Mark Steyn:

Stanley McChrystal is a liberal who voted for Obama and banned Fox News from his HQ TV. Which may at least partly explain how he became the first U.S. general to be lost in combat while giving an interview to Rolling Stone: They'll be studying that one in war colleges around the world for decades. The management of BP were unable to vote for Obama, being, as we now know, the most sinister duplicitous bunch of shifty Brits to pitch up offshore since the War of 1812. But, in their "Beyond Petroleum" marketing and beyond, they signed on to every modish nostrum of the eco-Left. Their recently retired chairman, Lord Browne, was one of the most prominent promoters of cap-and-trade. BP was the Democrats' favorite oil company. They were to Obama what Total Fina Elf was to Saddam.

But what do McChrystal's and BP's defenestration tell us about the president of the United States? Barack Obama is a thin-skinned man and, according to Britain's Daily Telegraph, White House aides indicated that what angered the president most about the Rolling Stone piece was "a McChrystal aide saying that McChrystal had thought that Obama was not engaged when they first met last year." If finding Obama "not engaged" is now a firing offense, who among us is safe?

Only the other day, Florida Sen. George Lemieux attempted to rouse the president to jump-start America's overpaid, overmanned and oversleeping federal bureaucracy and get it to do something on the oil debacle. There are 2,000 oil skimmers in the United States: Weeks after the spill, only 20 of them are off the coast of Florida. Seventeen friendly nations with great expertise in the field have offered their own skimmers; the Dutch volunteered their "super-skimmers": Obama turned them all down. Raising the problem, Sen. Lemieux found the president unengaged, and uninformed. "He doesn't seem to know the situation about foreign skimmers and domestic skimmers," reported the senator.

Let no skimmers -- foreign or domestic -- disturb the tranquility of the Scammander-In-Chief.

Wanna bet?

Toronto Star:

Amy Miller, Montreal

Miller, an independent journalist, was on her way to the jail solidarity protest Sunday around noon with fellow journalist Adam MacIsaac. She stopped at Bloor and St. Thomas Sts. where she saw police officers searching a group of young people carrying backpacks. She says police attacked her.

"I was throttled at the neck and held down. Next thing you know I was being cuffed and put in one of the wagons." She says she was threatened and harassed by police at the Eastern Ave. detention centre. "I was told I was going to be raped, I was told I was going to be gangbanged, I was told that they were going to make sure that I was never going to want to act as a journalist again."

She also says she spoke to numerous young women who were strip-searched by male officers.

[I saw her making similar claims on CBC's The National tonight.]

Oh, what a load of codswollop.

What's this? Our friend Amy has a Twitter page?

There are no entries for Sunday the 27th; presumably the pigs pried the phone off our plucky princess.

# "Saturday Night Fever"=Jail Solidarity Party: All night dance party at detention center @ 629 Eastern Ave. starting at 12am #g20report #g20 7:26 PM Jun 26th via TweetDeck

# Riot cop line on queen continues to grow and pushing people hard east onto peter st. Crowd at 250 ppl riot cops same. #g20report 4:19 PM Jun 26th via txt

# Major running on qn n soho when naked guy dance in front of riot line.riotcops scaring the shit out of ppl- ppl yelling back getting ang ... 4:11 PM Jun 26th via txt

# Major running on qn n soho when naked guy dancing in front of riot line.riotcops scaring the shit out of ppl- ppl yelling back getting a ... 4:10 PM Jun 26th via txt

# "We are being herded like sheep by pigs!!" Queen n peters #g20report 4:04 PM Jun 26th via txt

# riot cops blocking west at queen n spadina. No one can pass. 150 ppl hanging out. #g20report 3:46 PM Jun 26th via txt

Free to tweet, free to tweet at last! Except that she was so traumatized that she must have forgotten about all that rape 'n' stuff. Here are her two last (and only) entries:

# Autobus parte pour Mtl lundi 4pm Dufferin Grove Park (dufferin, south of bloor) #g20report June-28-10 9:41:20 AM via txt

# Ppl who need rides to mtl bus leaving @4pm dufferin square park (dufferin, S of Bloor) #g20report June-28-10 9:39:16 AM via txt

I have no idea what an "independent journalist" is -- I guess it means that they're less adept at lying than their professional brethren .