the blog quebecois

Well, that's not entirely true. I got this.

So I guess I ain't got nothin'.

Having the bass led to a greater sense of structure. I could let it and the rhythm guitar carry the song, dropping in brief splashes (with me, the briefer the better) of lead/tonally distinct guitar.

This song is somewhat schizophrenic (apologies to any whackos out there), maybe because it was pieced together from three others. In fact, it was originally called "Oh, Shut Up!" (that phrase survived, in the chorus). Musically I think it works quite well.

As far as the lyrics go, it was from the school of: "Hey, these two words sort of rhyme! In they go!"

However, I should note among them these couplets:

Imagine you had back/All the time you've wasted
Imagine you had back/Half of what you've tasted

which might not be the profoundest of observations; but in light of recent events, I find them very poignant.

The Globe And Mail:

There are police, mourners, and Ferrari floral arrangements outside a Montreal church today.

A funeral is being held for Agostino Cuntrera, a reputed leader of the once-dominant Rizzuto crime family.

His assassination last week has crime experts speculating that the Sicilian clan is being systematically eliminated by rivals.

The 66-year-old Cuntrera was gunned down last Tuesday outside his Montreal food supply warehouse.

He is reputed to have taken over as head of Canada's most powerful crime family after the arrest of Vito Rizzuto, now serving 10 years in a Colorado prison.

There are mourners, curious onlookers, and a heavy police presence outside the Catholic church in east-end Montreal where his funeral is being held.

Two floral arrangements with the Ferrari logo were also on display behind cars; Cuntrera was a sports-car enthusiast.

Because this one was already sort of taken.

FOX News:

NASA Administrator Charles Bolden said in a recent interview that his "foremost" mission as the head of America's space exploration agency is to improve relations with the Muslim world.

Though international diplomacy would seem well outside NASA's orbit, Bolden said in an interview with Al Jazeera that strengthening those ties was among the top tasks President Obama assigned him. He said better interaction with the Muslim world would ultimately advance space travel.

"When I became the NASA administrator -- or before I became the NASA administrator -- he charged me with three things. One was he wanted me to help re-inspire children to want to get into science and math, he wanted me to expand our international relationships, and third, and perhaps foremost, he wanted me to find a way to reach out to the Muslim world and engage much more with dominantly Muslim nations to help them feel good about their historic contribution to science ... and math and engineering," Bolden said in the interview.

I didn't read all of the 2900 comments at the site; but I read enough of them (and others at usually Democrat-friendly sites like Digg) that it's clear that Obama's next outreach had better be to Americans. Opinions ran the gamut from mystified to outraged; there was little if any support for this lunacy.

Gizmodo:

This isn't our Sun. This other sun is 470 light-years away from our home. Its name is 1RXS J160929.1-210524, and the orange sphere near it has been confirmed today as an orbiting planet. The first photo of an extra-solar planet.

The photo was originally taken in 2008 by David Lafreniere and collaborators working at the Gemini Observatory. Scientists weren't sure about it being an orbiting planet until now, however. New observations have shown that the planet follows an orbit around the star 300 times larger than Earth's orbit.

The planet has eight times the mass of Jupiter, and has a much higher temperature: 2,700 degrees Fahrenheit as opposed to the minus 166 degrees of the biggest planet in our solar system. Scientists believe this temperature is a product of the age of this star system, much younger than ours.

Purportedly the first photo of a planet orbiting a distant star (this is disputed in the comments). But does it remind you of something else?

It's satire; but zany enough that I can see Dear Leader running with it. I suppose it's better for the neighborhood than building atom bombs.

Via The Presurfer

I see that Omar Khadr is back in the news -- will no one rid me of this turbulent pest? At least they're starting to use a more up-to-date photo than that one of a cherubic twelve-year old lad, so beloved (one guesses) by his mother and the desperate housewives at the CBC (no guessing there). Young Omar has certainly blossomed into a handsome jihadi warrior, hasn't he?

Truth be told, these days he's sort of looking like a common body part. Admit it, it's hard to distinguish between the two. True, the Khadr thingee has teeth, which is kind of disturbing, on a vagina dentata level.

Sweet dreams!

This was a song about sudden death, natural catastrophe, pestilence, nuclear war and drug abuse. I then decided it was too depressing. so I turned it into a pop song. There's more to a pop song than random beeps, bops and boops, y'know. These must be administered in the correct number, and in a precise, scientifically-determined order.

That wasn't my biggest problem, though. Imagine my chagrin when I discovered that there is an inflexible rule in the music industry -- and I quote in full RIAA bylaw 203.6 d) subsection iii): "All instances of songs with elements including, but not restricted to the lyrics "beep," "bop," and "boop," as well as ornamentations such as handclaps and tamborines and/or kazoo or vuvuzela playing must have those elements vocalized/performed by no less than three (3) attractive young Negresses [you'll have to forgive the archaic language here, as it was written back in the '60s] with beehive (or at least bouffant) hairdos, of no greater than 23 years of age; 'cause anyone older -- and this is especially true for you, bub -- would look kind of ridiculous in the standard uniform required of backup singers; that being miniskirts or hotpants and neon-colored blouses. Go-go boots are optional."

So, whew! Thank God I found out the rule before releasing this to the world, causing me untold shame in the general public, not to mention Motown. (I'm still open to working with the attractive young Negresses, though.)

Scrappleface:

The White House today announced a bold new program consistent with NASA’s top priority to help Muslims “feel good about their historic contribution in science and math and engineering,” as the space agency’s chief, Charles Bolden, recently told al Jazeera TV.

Echoing the words of President John F. Kennedy in March of 1961, President Barack H. Obama told a joint session of Congress, “I believe this nation should commit itself to achieving the goal of landing a Muslim on the Moon, and returning him safely to Earth using only Muslim technology.”

According to Mr. Bolden, NASA engineers are already “close to testing” a solid rocket booster powered by combustible animal dung, and operated according to principles discovered by Ibn Al-Haytham, Islam’s best-known scientist, who died in 1039 A.D..

BBC:

LaToya's not the only member of the Jackson family talking ahead of the first anniversary of Michael's death.

His brother Jermaine's claiming converting to Islam might have saved his life.

"I felt that if Michael would have embraced Islam he would still be here today," the former Jackson 5 member told the BBC World Service.

Michael might well have survived thanks to Islam; but the real question is: Would Islam have survived Michael? Not likely.

I give up. The back story on this is that Kevin Rose, cofounder of Digg, had been ill (with what I don't know) and that a group of his friends got ahold of Isaiah Mustafa, the Old Spice Guy to make approximately the Coolest Get Well Video Evah. Nobody ever does that for me; but then I'm not a multi-millionaire surrounded by other wealthy people.

But on reading this page, and this, it is rather a very clever viral marketing strategy.

Whatever. It's funny and well done.

The title is an old joke, about how the end of the world would be reported in (I've heard both) the New York Times or Washington Post. It immediately brought to mind this story from 2004 (link long dead):

BUENOS AIRES, Argentina (AP) - Severe weather caused by global warming
can pose greater physical danger to women than men, a Canadian attending a UN conference on climate change said Friday.

"For instance, often women don't know how to swim, so in a flood situation that can lead to a higher instance of death or injury," Angie Daze, a program manager with a Canadian group called Reducing Vulnerability to Climate Change, said.

Which leads us inexorably to:

Immigrants are at higher risk for drowning when boating and swimming than people born in Canada, according to new research being released Thursday by the Lifesaving Society.

The study, believed to be the first of its kind in Canada, shows that despite plans by 79 per cent of newcomers to be in and around water this summer, they are four times more likely to be unable to swim.

Almost 20 per cent of immigrants are unable to swim, compared with just 4 per cent of people born in Canada, according to the study, which polled 1,032 Canadians between the ages of 18 and 60 in April and May.

Provincial coroners don’t keep death statistics by ethnicity or nationality, so the Lifesaving Society’s research provides the first statistical-based look at drowning risk for this group.

The study comes in the wake of what is turning out to be a deadly month at pools and swimming holes in Ontario.

Since the end of June, 13 people have drowned including Deep Engineer, one of two 14-year-old boys who died after being pulled from a Scarborough condo pool. The boy didn’t know how to swim, friends say.

“In India, nobody has access to pools. You don’t learn to swim,” said the boy’s uncle, Veejay Sonal, adding that Engineer’s family immigrated to Canada in 2001.

Anyone who names their kid Deep Engineer is clearly mocking the gods; how else to explain the survival of his brother, Shallow?

Via Blazing Cat Fur

The Onion:

Big Journalism:

Karl Rove’s retort to the White House’s studied cluelessness in this affair was spot on. He accused Obama of "thumbing his nose" at one of Americans’ most basic rights, voting. The progressive media have colluded in this latest example of unprincipled, untruthful trampling of our democracy and freedom.

Adams’s indictment of the DOJ exposes once again the profound and destructive crisis of contemporary American progressivism or liberalism. The latter, as Charles R. Kesler shows in his recent essay, "The New New Deal" "can no longer understand, or defend, its principles as true . . . Liberals are increasingly left with an amoral paradigm that is hard to justify to themselves, much less to the American public. The problem for liberals today is that they risk becoming confidence men, and nothing but confidence men."

The Sex Pistols somewhat predated my interest in playing music; they had crashed and burned by the late '70s. They had little, if any radio play in Canada -- I probably hadn't heard anything off their one and only album until I bought a copy in the early '80s.

I had no use for the fashions or the politics of the punk rock scene, but I found the music interesting. More to the point, it sounded like something we were capable of. And it inspired my move to bass: I figured that if a moron like Sid Vicious could play it, than so could I.

So without further ado, here I am on guitar with Johnny and the crew. Somebody's just a touch off tune, but I'm betting it was the Pistols. Tuning's just so bourgeois, y'know? Besides, volume masks multitudinous sins.

BERKELEY, CA-Editors of the long-awaited autobiography of Mark Twain said Tuesday they were surprised to discover the unedited manuscript of the forthcoming book contains lashing, in-depth criticism of the website YouTube, the recent BP oil spill, and the ongoing military action in Afghanistan. "The corrosive voyeurism incited and succored by this YouTube, and the attendant vomitous mush which masquerades as commentary thereupon, is perhaps the keenest example of the debasement of American discourse, dragging our last guttering ideas of community and fellowship through the electric muck," Twain writes in one paragraph before turning his attention to international matters just two pages later. "As concerns British Petroleum's continued putrefaction of the seas, it is the largest stain yet on the corrupted idea of the world as a market-that same lustful, self-concerned greed in the guise of idealism that perverts our young idealists into thuggish hatchet-men, misled, betrayed, and fated to gasp the blood of their final heartbeats into the Afghani dust."

Edmonton Journal:

A man who was killed in a weekend standoff with police allegedly came out of his house in darkness carrying an umbrella like a gun, then pointed it at police before being shot to death by an RCMP constable.

As investigators begin their probe into the police shooting death of Corey Lewis, a close family friend said he suspects Lewis saw no other way out of his predicament.

The husband of a town councillor, Lewis died at the hands of an RCMP constable when he left his Okotoks home in the early morning hours on Sunday after an armed standoff that began when police tried to arrest him on a report he had hit his teenage stepson.

Sure, it was only an umbrella; but what if he had one of those assault staplers?

The New Yorker:

In recent years, the bonobo has found a strange niche in the popular imagination, based largely on its reputation for peacefulness and promiscuity. The Washington Post recently described the species as copulating "incessantly"; the Times claimed that the bonobo "stands out from the chest-thumping masses as an example of amicability, sensitivity and, well, humaneness"; a PBS wildlife film began with the words "Where chimpanzees fight and murder, bonobos are peacemakers. And, unlike chimps, it’s not the bonobo males but the females who have the power." The Kinsey Institute claims on its Web site that "every bonobo-female, male, infant, high or low status-seeks and responds to kisses." And, in Los Angeles, a sex adviser named Susan Block promotes what she calls "The Bonobo Way" on public-access television. (In brief: "Pleasure eases pain; good sex defuses tension; love lessens violence; you can’t very well fight a war while you’re having an orgasm.") In newspaper columns and on the Internet, bonobos are routinely described as creatures that shun violence and live in egalitarian or female-dominated communities; more rarely, they are said to avoid meat. These behaviors are thought to be somehow linked to their unquenchable sexual appetites, often expressed in the missionary position. And because the bonobo is the "closest relative" of humans, its comportment is said to instruct us in the fundamentals of human nature. To underscore the bonobo’s status as a signpost species -- a guide to human virtue, or at least modern dating -- it is said to walk upright.

I suspected it all along: They're nothing but a bunch of shit-flinging, baby-killing sexual deviants.

Oh, sorry, you thought I was talking about the apes? I meant their human fans, of course.

The Bonobo? C'mon, they're just big monkeys. You expect them to be solving quadratic equations or something?

Especially if you have children, this might be the most important thing you read this summer.

Mario Vittone:

The new captain jumped from the cockpit, fully dressed, and sprinted through the water. A former lifeguard, he kept his eyes on his victim as he headed straight for the owners who were swimming between their anchored sportfisher and the beach. “I think he thinks you’re drowning,” the husband said to his wife. They had been splashing each other and she had screamed but now they were just standing, neck-deep on the sand bar. “We’re fine, what is he doing?” she asked, a little annoyed. “We’re fine!” the husband yelled, waving him off, but his captain kept swimming hard. ”Move!” he barked as he sprinted between the stunned owners. Directly behind them, not ten feet away, their nine-year-old daughter was drowning. Safely above the surface in the arms of the captain, she burst into tears, “Daddy!”

How did this captain know - from fifty feet away - what the father couldn’t recognize from just ten? Drowning is not the violent, splashing, call for help that most people expect. The captain was trained to recognize drowning by experts and years of experience. The father, on the other hand, had learned what drowning looks like by watching television. If you spend time on or near the water (hint: that’s all of us) then you should make sure that you and your crew knows what to look for whenever people enter the water. Until she cried a tearful, “Daddy,” she hadn’t made a sound. As a former Coast Guard rescue swimmer, I wasn’t surprised at all by this story. Drowning is almost always a deceptively quiet event. The waving, splashing, and yelling that dramatic conditioning (television) prepares us to look for, is rarely seen in real life.

That's one way to put it. I'd think this guy has a lock on the -- admittedly niche -- market for bagpiping unicyclists playing the theme from Star Wars.

Last I looked, he was second in voting at Neatorama's GTFO contest. No, I have no idea what GTFO is and I'm afraid to ask. Just go vote for him or he's threatening the nuclear option: Show tunes.

Accidental Penis

Warning: Might be NSFW, depending on how much of a dick your boss is.

The lyrics to this were still in a state of flux, which occasionally led to the singer (me) and his erstwhile backup singer (also me) singing different lyrics at the same time. I have no evidence to support this, but I strongly suspect that me was doing this to me (or vice versa) deliberately, to sabotage the band. What a jerk -- or alternatively, what a jerk. (For no particular reason, I'm reminded of Rod Stewart firing his late '70s drummer, Carmine Appice. He didn't make it public at the time though; until a reporter asked him one day why he wasn't in the lineup. Stewart answered that Appice had to leave the band due to "illness." "Illness?" the reporter asked. To which Stewart replied: ""Yeah. He made me sick to my stomach." As this was in Rod's disco ("Da Ya Think I'm Sexy?" which, ironically, Appice co-wrote) phase, it must have been truly disgusting behavior.)

As to the song, it was one of my better early ones. I was learning to play the bass beyond plonking away on the root of the chord, and it's actually tuneful and coherent. Well, more than usual.

Warning: Large squeals of feedback at the beginning while I switch on tape recorders and plug in cables.

David Warren:

The whole of social science has been similarly broadsided by the arithmetical mania. It is worth noting that the greatest economic thinkers, from Smith through Hayek, wrote almost entirely without tables and charts, dwelling instead on the consequences of morally loaded ideas, whereas the demographic muse led economists like Malthus into monstrous visions of purely imaginary catastrophes, and wicked speculations about what would be needed to avoid them.

Likewise, the environmentalism of our own age is contaminated throughout by this Malthusian propensity to follow the numbers out the window. Never listen to people who think the cure for human problems is to reduce the number of humans. Their minds are diseased.

A drunk walks into a bar and says to the bartender, "Bartender, buy everyone in the house a drink, pour yourself one, and give me the bill."

So, the bartender does just that and hands the man a bill for $57.00. The drunk says, "I haven't got it."

The bartender slaps the guy around a few times then throws him out into the street.

The very next day the same drunk walks into the bar and once again says, "Bartender, buy everyone in the house a drink, pour yourself one, and give me the bill."

The bartender looks at the guy and figures to himself that he can't possibly be stupid enough to pull the same trick twice, so he gives him the benefit of the doubt, pours a round of drinks for the house, has a drink himself and hands the drunk a bill for $67.00.

The drunk says, "I haven't got it."

The bartender can't believe it. He picks the guy up, beats the living daylights out of him, then throws him out into the street.

The next day the same drunk walks back into the same bar and says "Bartender, buy every one in the house a drink, give me the bill."

In disgust, the bartender says, "What, no drink for me this time?"

Banterist:

Rule One: Exhaust all other possibilities.

If you are truly in need and condemned to use the squat toilet, comfort yourself with the knowledge that you are several thousand miles from friends and family. No one has to know.

Brian Sack explores the exotic romance of overseas sanitary rituals. Numerous charming examples follow in the comments.

With the pom-pom waving cheerleaders for the census raising a racket of late, I think we could be on the verge of a solution. If we are to believe the polls (I don't, but never mind) the country is evenly split on the issue of retaining the long-form mandatory census.

So if 50% of the population are so gung-ho about filling in 40 pages of stupid questions for the government, who am I to stand in the way? Gather the names! Everybody has to have a dream, and -- however weird and pathetic it might be -- if theirs is to be a volunteer data-entry clerk they should go for it. You only live once.

The rest of us can go back to, I don't know, our Xboxes or something.

And let the Liberal and New Democrat politicians ho the extra mile and give what bureaucrats crave: Blow jobs. Call them "Fellatio Fridays," to be classy and everything.

I think Libby Davies will want to switch teams (again!) to get in on this. It also provides a less embarrassing use for her mouth than, say, speaking.

Alas, Svend Robinson has quit the field; but look at the machine that is Scott "Electrolux" Brison! Rumor has it that there remains not a molecule of chrome on a trailer hitch anywhere in Nova Scotia. Verily, Scotty does Suck!

As far as the gentler sex goes, they will take their pleasure by more traditional means -- barbed-wire strapon dildos and cat-o'-nine tails and spurs -- the preferred armament of blushing coquettes everywhere.

A Worth1000 photoshop contest.

American Thinker:

Barack Obama seems to have a pattern of using ceremonial or stately events as opportunities to ambush and humiliate people. This behavior is unpresidential and reveals a vindictive streak that makes Richard Nixon look like Mister Rogers.

A few examples of Obama's taking pleasure in administering public pain to others:

During the State of the Union Address, he chose to direct his ire at the justices of the Supreme Court, located in the front rows. After the Supreme Court issued a ruling in favor of the First Amendment regarding political speech, Barack Obama famously chose to dress down the black-clad justices before the entire nation -- miscomprehending the law and the ruling in a fit of (un)presidential petulance. The embarrassing spectacle was prompted by a view that the court's ruling may make it easier for opponents of the president and Democrats to make their views known to the public.

Via Jack's Newswatch