I keep her going, and she keeps me going. Sometimes only by a hair. I choke months and years out of her, and reward her with inconsistency and damning release. I love her, and esteem her. I regard her highly, but only out of fear. I'm afraid she is going to bring me down one day. I am afraid she has already begun to bring me down, sown the seeds of my own destruction, pulling the canvas of my Life's painting from under me. Still, I do my best. I help her out, and I feed her well. I love her sometimes, and I recognize her importance outside of my fear of her importance. This happens seldom, in moments of inspiration.

Yesterday I attended a meatspace Kick-Off for this event.  I met around thirty other writers, all timidly voyeuristic and deeply challenged.  But challenges are what make the man... woman?  Anyway, if you want to check out my NaNoWriMo.org profile, you can find it here.

Cheers,
Brian David

Allison found out about it and honestly didn’t know what to do.  This, again, though long ago, was one of those occurrences accompanied by such a fuming glut of otherness it seemed both impossible to deal with and perhaps, speaking as a mystic, ineluctable.  Here was Jake in the bathroom with his little friend.  Jake sitting on the floor keeping up the most casual of dialogue, sitting in the corner of the bathroom thumbing through the many folds of a hand towel, bristling it across his nose not unpurposefully while on the can the dubiously consenting friend strained.  The comicality of the occasion, accentuated horribly by Jake’s too curious presence.  Preluding this had been a process of persuasion young Jake had not seen himself capable of until tried under fire.  ‘We should do it,’ he insisted.  ‘It will be fun.’  His friend kept asking, ‘Why?  I’ll be done real soon if you want to keep talking or whatever.’  And Jake couldn’t say why, and neither, of course, could his mother.  She asked her husband later that evening, her husband who was at the time no less stoic but perhaps more receptive, a pliable pillar, so proudly typed as stern that he could relax out of himself, Why would anyone, even a six year old, want to be present while another person, a familiar, is on the toilet?  James had answered in a mocking voice, shrilly aping reverence, Perhaps there is some wisdom there.

Nickelback, wow!  Have you seen how many records they have sold, how successful every single one of their singles have been?  Perhaps it is more apparent in Canada, but seriously!  It's obscene.  Truly, deeply, madly crazy.  What a huge band, and for what a terrific reason.  I was one of the people to buy their record way back in November 2005, and was so glad I had it along with me throughout the truly bizarre work experience I had in British Columbia, wherein I was worked almost to death.  Worked very hard, sleep and Nickelback being my only refuge from a relentlessly critical boss and a seriously dangerous work environment.  Still, I grew some muscles and learned a lot.  A lot.  A lot.  Nickelback, wow!

200. My middle name is: David

199. I was born on: a clear day.

198. I am really: declarative.

197. My cell phone company is: a herald of woe, and funded by criminals.

196. My eye color is: brown, brown, and then... black!

195. My shoe size is: especially average.

194. My ring size is: demure.

193. My height is: 5'11

192. I am allergic to: forgiveness.

191. I was born in: Estevan, Saskatchewan.

190. I live in: Calgary, Alberta.

189. The last book I read: Ode to Kirihito (by Osamu Tezuka)

188. My bed is: a king-size.

187: One thing you hate about yourself: I'm an uncertain dilletante, with multiple talents.

179. My favorite Holiday is: My parent's anniversary.

177. The last three cd's I bought: Begin to Hope (Regina Spektor), Shock Value (Timbaland), and 10 Years (Armin van Buuren)

176. Last song that made me cry was: I honestly don't cry very often, people.

175. Are you taken or Single: Taken.

174. If your taken, by who?: Exhaustion.

173. Do you like being single/taken?: I prefer being single, but not singled out by exhaustion, which takes me fairly regularly.  Daily, in fact.

170. What did you do last night?: Contemplated masturbating while sipping 7-UP and reading Thomas Pynchon's Against the Day.

:::::I Do (YES)/Do Not (NO) Believe In:::::

142. Love at first sight? Yes, but I also believe it only happens once a year for one person (not two), and as such is rather a tormenting phenomenon.

141. Luck?: No.

140. Fate? Yes.

139. Yourself? Of course!  Jesus Christ!

138. Aliens? Of course!  Jesus Christ!

137. Heaven? ....  ....

136. Hell? Yes, of course I believe in hell.  Jesus Christ!

135. Ghosts?  Confused people, I guess, would comprise the ghost population.  You know what ghosts?  You're lame!  Get a life... and I mean that literally.  Just kidding.  God loves you, I love you, take as long as you need.

134. Horoscopes? I trick myself into believing in horoscopes, then they turn out to be true.

133. Soulmates? If soulmates didn't exist, then I would not have signed up for incarnating.  I know myself that well, dearest friends and vilest sinners.  I know myself that well.

:::::Which is Better?:::::

129. Hugs or Kisses?: Well, both can be rather dull or even scary-bad, and both can be rather amazing.  I generally prefer hugs.

128. Drunk or High: Drunk.  Cannabis has a place in this world, and that place is the garbage.  Kids and wrecked adults, take note.  Being high is also being exposed to valid insults such as: dumbass, idiot, fucking idiot, fucking dumbass

127. Phone or Online: Online.  Resistence is puerile.

126. Red heads or Black hair: I love black hair.  I just love it.  My spirit guide is a fourteen year old girl with black hair and stark-clear gray eyes.  She leads me up a mountain by goat path and looks wistfully into my pleading sensorium, signalling patience and hurt amusement with her alarming specter.

125. Blondes or Brunettes: Brunettes, by a very long way.  I invite blonds to perform obscene sex acts, and other anatomically impossible manuevers.  I'll watch, and then tuck my priceless brunette wife into bed with a gentle kiss.  Sorry blonds.

124. Hot or Cold: Cold.  This is something I feel very strongly about.

123. Summer or winter: Winter.  This is something I feel very strongly about.

121. Chocolate or vanilla: Vanilla, but it's not something I feel very strongly about.

120. Night or Day: Night.  This again, genuinely, folks, is something I feel very strongly about.

119. Oranges or Apples: Apples, and then sometimes it's just like: hello orange!  You know?

118. Curly or Straight hair: I like curly hair because it grows in such exotic places.

:::::Here's What I Think About:::::

116. Abortion: Try your best.  Listen to your heart.  It's not your fault.

115. Backstabbers: Honest people trying to make a living.  It's your fault.  You showed your back.

114. Parents: Mine are awesome, but from what I've seen of yours... well, I'm sorry.  This time, it's not your fault.

::::Last time I:::

103. Went out of town: I skipped down to Denver in August for an aggravating adventure.

102. Had food: I ate a paper bag filled with Australian style black licorice roughly an hour ago.  That was 10:30 PM MST November 9th, 2007.  Terrific bag of licorice, that.

101. Seen someone I haven't seen in a while: I don't think I've ever seen the black Wal-mart cashier I bought The Road from.  He was funny.  He smiled a lot at me, because I must have seemed funny to him.

100. Cried in front of someone? I'd rather not mention it.  It was embarassing. 

99. Grew: Well, that's just a soft lob.

::::MISC::::

90. Who is the ditziest person you know? A girl named Pam.  Pam is even a ditzy name.  Pam, I'll have you all know, is epic ditzy.  Career ditzy.  So ditzy even moments of authenticity and gravitas are lost on her.  Ditzy like a retarded cat.

89. Who makes you laugh the most? Myself.  I am incredibly funny.  Did you just catch that bit about the retarded cat?  It's only uphill from there.

87.The last movie I watched: Good Will Hunting, and it became my new favorite movie.  Actually 28 Weeks later was the last movie I watched from start to finish.  It sucked.  I didn't want to mention it because I am a positive person.

82. What I don't understand is: how best to serve you.  Please help me on this one.  I know that sounds Dairy Queen, but think of it in a Kosmic sense and get back to me.  Be honest with yourself and me.

80. The most unsatisfactory answer I've ever received is: not tonight.

79. Something I will miss when I leave home is: the family dog, and possibly my horse.

78. The thing that I'm looking forward to the most: several things.

1. Making a lot of money.
2. Getting incredibly famous.
3. Going on a variety of late-night television programs.
4. Fucking my way through the entire Bunny Ranch roster.
5. Producing a Trance album and touring as a DJ.
6. Not in that order.

alternately:

1. Publishing my book.
2. Making a quiet, modest life.
3. Getting married and having kids.
4. Roughly in that order.

77. The thing that I'm not looking forward to is: dying.  I'm not looking forward to dying yet.  I imagine one day it will be a relief, but if it happened now it would be a fucking gip.  So fuck off, Death!  Fuck you and fuck off.

73. Tomorrow: I will read a Thomas Pynchon book and write 5000 words.

72. Today: I read a Thomas Pynchon book, a Cormac McCarthy book, and wrote 2000 words.

71. This Summer: I have no concept of Summer 08, I pray God it serves.

70. Next Week: I am writing all month for NaNoWriMo.  It's incredibly difficult, so pray for me.

67. People call me: almost never, if they do: randomly!

62. The person who knows the most about me is: a recluse.  It's either Colin or Joe.

60. The most difficult thing to do is: be somebody you're not.  And, fuck would I ever like to be somebody I'm not.  On the other hand, it's also difficult to accept help from the feminine divine and to serve selflessly.  Two things I also strive for.  So in the end I do my best work translating, and even that's hard to do as consummately as I intend.

59. I have gotten a speeding ticket: never.  I don't drive.  I wish I had the opportunity to get a speeding ticket.  If a cop caught me speeding I'd get a ticket to jail.

56. My zodiac sign is: Leo.  I am a lion.  I have big muscles, a ruddy complexion, and a fierce jealosy.

55. The first person I talked to today was: God.

54. First time you had a crush: Grade 2.  Sonya, where are you?  Are you as beautiful now as you were then?

53. The one person who can't hide things from me: Most people aren't trying to hide things from me.  I imagine if anyone was, they'd succeed.  So... you win, hider-pants.

52. Last time someone said something that you were thinking?: Just the other day when I said, "Hey, this LP kinda sags."  Then said, "Hey, I just said what I was thinking, most times I don't do that."

51. Right now I am talking to: an imaginary friend, who also happens to be you.

50. What is your dream job? Jockey.  Like riding race horses.

49. First job?: Horse trainer.  $50/hour.  Different from being a jockey in that even tall and epically out of shape women can do it.

48. I have/will get a job at? New Line Cinema.

47. I have these pets: horse, dog.

46. I hope: this embarassing Cindarella complex will manifest sometime soon.  God, it's embarassing to be a boy and have the Cindarella complex.

45. The worst sound in the world: the sound of a dying mouse, scraping its disintegrating carcass a few final, shuddering steps across the linoleum before belching into its own demise.

44. The person that makes me cry the most is: Scarlett Johannson.  Damn it, I'm tearing up.

39. My girlfriend is: going to have to tell me to stop feeling so bereft of commonness and going to have to be an afficiando of egg nog.

35. Florida or Hawaii: Florida, only because I could never feel safe in the middle of the ocean.  For that matter, I could never feel safe on any coast.  Fuck the coast.  Yeah, you heard me.

33. My favorite piece of clothing is: my black jeans, may they endure forever.

32. My favorite sport is: tennis.

31. Last time I cried: I don't want to discuss this.  It's embarassing.

30. My friends are: stunning, delicate, beautiful, and better off without me.

29. My computer is: an iMac.

28. The school I go to is: just the right challenge.

27. Last person I got mad at: Joe.  Fuck you, Joe.

22. The all-time best movie is: Elephant

21. The all-time best thing in the world is: non-duality.

18. The most annoying person you know is: brian david.

17. I love and respect people who: nurse.

16. The movies I have cried at are: A Love Song for Bobby Long.

15. Closest friend name: What?

13. Favorite web site: stuartdavis.com

12. I want to be: karmically absolved.  Is that even possible?

11. The worst pain I was ever in was?  ...damaging my relationship with my horse.  And then another, completely unrelated time, this chick I wanted to fuck turned me down for legitimate reasons.  I got angry.

10. My favorite word(s) (right now) is? Ballast.

9. My room is: lying in wait.

8. My favorite celebrity is: Angelina Jolie.  She is perfect.

5. My weakness is: Angelina Jolie, and the Great Perfection.

4. What I like about the opposite sex: They don't have penises or hair or abraisive mannerisms or masculine personalities.  In short, they're not boys.  Sorry boys.

3. Who broke your heart: Circumstance?  History?  All you need to know is that it's broken.  I'm damaged goods.  Now, welcome to my life.

2. One thing that makes you feel great is: Masturbating in the shower.  Remember, cleaning and pleasure go ____ in hand.  ... I'm a bad person.

1. You filled out 200 questions because?? It was a lot like masturbating in the shower, and whatever reminds me of that great feeling is worth it.

I also want to encourage you to fill this survey out to.  Not because I am going to read it.  I won't.  Even if you do it in direct response to me, I'lll probably only skim your responses.  And then decide I'm interested and re-read it.  But still... the real reason I want you to do this survey is not because I want to know about you, although I do, and am truly fascinated.  The real reason I want you to do this is because I think you'll find it's fun.  You don't even have to publish it, just see what your answers tell you about yourself.  Do it tired.

The prose of Cormac McCarthy is truly a wonder of the world.  When I am reading it I am constantly feeling like I am missing out on something.  Like I am not experiencing the fullness of the language, or comprehensively digesting the brilliance of the words.  Its softness, peculiar punctuation, and ancient power engender paragraph-lingering, sentence-lingering, like poetry.  Unlike Ian McEwan, where you feel poked and prodded along, dimly hustled on a beautiful journey to an end no more or less spectacular than the road, Cormac lets you sink into the plush depths of his pages and wallow there for a time.  And still, waiting for you, is a story, a narrative, rendered in a way I have only seen one man do, hinting at sharper versions of the biggest questions all the while.

What color is your urine?  It should be colorless or slightly yellow.  Men are recommended to drink up to 3.0 litres a day.  Crazy-talk?  I think not!  I'm all about water, and 7-UP.  Don't tell anyone, but I drink a lot of 7-UP.  Two cans a day.  And I eat shortbread cookies, too.  Two a day.  And I eat organic energy bars, too.  Two a day.  So if you remember nothing else, think of the words 'too', and 'two', and think how they both sound the same and often go hand in hand.  And think about how much water you're getting.  Don't be rigid with yourself, but don't be strictly non-regimental either.  It's hard not to feel like a self-regulated machine when you have a 7.5 liter container in your room that you fill up once every 2.3 days, but it's also hard not to feel like a self-regulated machine when you are cooking yourself a meal or playing a handheld videogame system on the toilet.  In short, it's almost impossible not to feel ike a self-regulated machine if you are a human being.  The thing to really avoid, in terms of characterization of experience, is the 'alien' characterization of experience, not only because it will play hell on the way you treat yourself, your self ethic, so to speak, but also because it is not very socially attractive to view other human beings as bizarre upright bipeds, sloppy in the extreme.  So above all, or below all, as the case in properly sequenced paragraphs is: drink!

of my favorite things:

7-UP
Thomas Pynchon
Natural Lighting (Special Daylight Bulbs)
A Tasteful Hint of Facial Hair

So, you've seen the ads. 

Single and Alone? 
So are lots of women.  Sign up today and recieve a free presonality profile.
http://everydatesite.ca

Can you spot anything wrong with that?  It's clearly marketing to men!  Always, always, always to men.  Meaning that while there may very well be a lot of lonely, single girls out there, the majority of the loners, at least the loners willing to utilize an online dating service, are men.  Half of these sites (which I frequent only out of benign curiosity and, I suppose, raving desperation) automatically assume you're a man when you go to sign up.

I am a (x) man seeking a woman
I am a ( ) woman seeking a man.

Except, oops, look at that!  The man slot is already checked.  Well, I've had enough.  I won't be spending hundreds of dollars a month on trying to secure a local date over the Internet by utilizing several of these types of services simultaneously (including the more sex-oriented ones).  Those days are over!  I won't sign up to another one (or more) of these sites until I see one (or more) ads that look like this:

Single and Alone?
So are lots of men.  Take your pick of the unfair sex out of this shoddy lot.  You could be the plain Jane they've resigned themselves to meeting and shackling themselves to within the next five to fifteen years.
http://innovativedatingsite.ca

Well, unfortunately today my driver's handbook took the place of my normal reading material, Against the Day (Pynchon) and American Gods (Gaiman), on account of my having been scheduled to taken a written exam this evening, Saturday, at five o clock. Alas! if I pass, which it seems likely that I will, I will become a Class 7 driver. Class 7 meaning likely nothing to you except in the highly unlikely event that our provincial government's motor laws are identical or in the slightly more likely event that you share the province of Alberta with me. What is Class 7? Well, it means I can drive anywhere I want to between the hours of 5:00 - 23:00 as long as I am accompanied by an human being who is over the age of eighteen and is also in proud possession of a Class 5 license (handy). It means I can drive a pretty small range of vehicles, definitely not buses, definitely not occupied buses, definitely not ambulances. It means that I will have begun my journey, again provided this evening's adventure doesn't end in despair at having failed (at something fourteen-year-olds everywhere are succeeding at as we speak), towards being empowered to go the places I desire to go at the times I desire to get there. Why have I held out for so long? Well, that is a matter of some debate, even amongst my multiple personalities, who all have wildly disparate positions, and, really, the consensus is far from arrived at in this case. Here are a few working theories: 1. An introverted personality (turned inside-out sometime in my eighteenth year) dictated a lack of pressing need to use a vehicle for social purposes, while living with my parents dictated a lack of pressing need to use a vehicle for grocery purposes. 2. I am deadly afraid of driving. Rationally, I don't hesitate to put forward, because I have already crashed a few vehicles and every time I get in one something terrible happens. I have a hard time with backing up, I have a hard time with gauging my speed, I have a demonstrably difficult time with the turning radius on trucks, you don't want to know how that difficulty was demonstrated. I am also afraid of killing myself, my passengers, or innocent strangers, not by driving irresponsibly but simply by being present in a piece of metal on wheels that careens around at improbable speeds. These things should not be in the hands of citizens! They should be handled by professionals, I don't care how many years the experiment of civilian automotive operations has debatably succeeded. 3. I grew up disliking cars and trucks as anything except tolerated necessities (it even took me a while to realize them as neccessities), and that potent distaste (at worst) and blatant apathy (at best) stays with me today (despite the predictions of my siblings that I would 'grow out of it'). Perhaps I was just too stubborn to grow out of it, or perhaps these ridiculous pieces of plastic and leather are just not for me, perhaps I still will grow out of it and fall incongruously in lust with vans and minivans and four-wheeled boxes of all types 4. I am incredibly good at riding horses. It's incredible, folks. And if you don't think there's a relationship between really terrific (absolutely stellar, truthfully) at one (albeit outmoded) way of transporting yourself and being consummately frozen when it comes to another, well, think again, because... you're probably right. It's an entirely unrelated point, how unsupportably brilliant I am with equus. 5. I am a masochist. Why else would I take so long empowering myself with the independence a vehicle affords? I could cite my inability to drive as cause for some major developmental deficiencies in my life. Spiritually, it has crippled me. I can't get myself to places of worship or places of debauchery (both holding spiritual potential). Socially, it has crippled me. I can't get myself to, uh, you get the picture. Sexually, it has crippled me. Would it be boastful of me to tell you how many times I've heard, 'do you want to get out of here?' or 'so, uh, am I going home with you, or...' and I've had to say, 'right... well, I've got to catch the bus.' Come on!!! Only a masochist would put themself in my position, and at my age too. 6. I am epically lazy. Songbook lazy. So lazy I am to history's pool of procastinators what Beowolf was and remains to be to history's pool of courageous hearts. 7. All of the above. Which doesn't paint a very pretty picture of Brian David. Well, I guess there is always some fleck of subject in our lives that, if focussed on, makes the whole of us look like a plugged anal gland. So, if you're really out there, and have any tangible or intangible effect on this Universe at all, make a positive thing happen and send vehicular strength through the aether and into my head to aid me in passing a test, as I said, thousands of fourteen year-olds are probably reminiscing on how easy it was to pass... right this second.

loner, more interested in intellectual pursuits than relationships or family, wrestles with the meaninglessness of existence, likes esoteric things, disorganized, messy, likes science fiction, can be lonely, observer, private, can't describe feelings easily, detached, likes solitude, not revealing, unemotional, rule breaker, avoidant, familiar with the darkside, skeptical, acts without consulting others, does not think they are weird but others do, socially uncomfortable, abrupt, fantasy prone, does not like happy people, appreciates strangeness, frequently loses things, acts without planning, guarded, not punctual, more likely to support marijuana legalization, not prone to compromise, hard to persuade, relies on mind more than on others, calm favored careers: philosopher, game designer, scientist, software engineer, freelance artist, research scientist, assassin, freelance writer, physicist, software developer, mathmetician, geologist, computer scientist, philosophy professor, webmaster, slacker, medical researcher, painter, mortician, systems analyst, comic book artist, computer technician, website designer, scholar, archeologist, computer repair, forensic anthropologist, astronaut, researcher, historian, systems engineer, genetics researcher, astronomer, enviromental scientist, egyptologist disfavored careers: human resources, public relations, social worker, guidance counselor, health care worker, trainer, school teacher, wedding planner, movie star, hospitality worker, supervisor, child care worker, fundraiser, customer service, stay at home parent, office administrator Now, I don't know how you feel about this type, the type I scored after taking a quiz several times and answering as truthfully as possible, but to me it just looks 100% negative. I mean, look at all of the characteristics. Aside from 'calm' I sound like a total jackass. And it's not even far from the truth, either. And look at all the favored careers! Mortician? Slacker? Astronaut? Freelance writer? Can I hear someone yelling, non-essential, at the top of their lungs? While all of the things I am far too 'avoidant' and 'skeptical' to do are the very functions human beings have relied upon since they started relying on community functions. Teachers, nurses, and parents. Like the conerstone of society as we know it. Jeez! But, the real sticky part of all this is, INTP seems to describe me pretty accurately. And for the life of me I just love the majority of those favored careers, including mortician. The only thing I really strongly disagree with is this business that I, inhabiting my type, might disfavor the career of movie star. Come on! Get real! Stardom, as they say, is in the stars.

Beowulf:
There's not a lot that hasn't been said about this movie.  I saw it the day it came out without the three dimensional glasses (reserving my iMax showing for later this week), and loved it.  If you find yourself laughing your ass off for most of the first act and parts of the second, this is good.  You're digging the hilarious "near-parodic" irony that deposes the genre and finds it in benign need of reflexiveness.  If you find yourself grasping to preserve that image of Beowulf as an unadulterated hero in the second act, let it go.  That ship has sailed.  Relish the digitized footage of a man who has acheived greatness in his own lifetime and how he comes to terms with his legacy.  Watch a character relate to his story, and learn.

No Country For Old Men:
I had an "experience" during this movie.  Maybe you know what I mean.  I don't believe I began to truly appreciate the film until the final act, whereupon it hit me rather forecfully, with all the heartrending desolation of a good Cormac McCarty book and all the terrifying sensibility of a terrific Coen brothers film.  One of the best scenes I have viewed in the movies lately: Tommy Lee Jones' character converses with another cop in a restaurant about the trajectory of mankind, finding it to be bleak and amorphous, leaky and vast beyond reckoning, all the while carrying on in that recognizable vernacular of Cormac's.

I found myself relating the psycopathic killer in this movie to a force of nature, immune from anything above resentment or below awe, an assessment reinforced by comments hinting at the killer's own deterministic outlook, the determinations of life or death being based on cumulative factors and not choices.  Variables affecting products affecting outcomes.  Also reinforced by a certain car accident.

Walking out of the film I thought, "This is the type of story, handled so carefully by this team of individuals, that, if we allowed ourselves to absorb it as comprehensively as we each can, could really have an effect on us.  Us, yes."  Unfortunately this train of thinking was supplemented by the folks ahead of me saying, "I really don't get what they were trying to say." and, in response to debatably the most riveting few seconds of the movie, "if I'd have known that speech was going to be the end I would have paid more attention."  And, finally, "It was no Big Lewbowski."

I am always on the lookout for something redemptive or at least tinily hopeful in the wisdom of the crowd or the oblique stupidity of the individual, but in this case I could not help but be a little troubled.

Other Bron-thumbs-dup Rentals:
Paris, Je T'aime
Talk To Me
You Kill Me

As some of you may know, a fellow died in the Vancouver airport after a team of Mounted Police officers tasered him and suffocated him to death in the course of subduing him.  Someone caught the whole thing on their cell phone camera.  The man was on his way to live with his mother in British Columbia, at his mother's insistence, though he was worried about the trip, being a schizophrenic and all.  The incident has raised numerous issues around the country, most of them pertaining to how our federal police force, the Royal Canadian Mounted Police, is operated.  Before I get to that, I'll post a sample of the comments that the video is getting on Youtube.com and how I responded.

----

tgabel82 said:
The only reason the outcry is as big as it is is because a few incidents happened so close together. They are a safe tool for subdual and succeed at that most of the time. Hearing how a taser worked effectively doesn't make good news though.

brondu said:
It wasn't the taser that killed the man, it was the way the officers kneeled on him, and everything they did after tasering him. The RCMP is a contract labor force run for efficiency and this incident should be used as a prompt for the federal government and us citizens to speak up about it. The news here isn't: tasers don't work. Or: airports make for high pressure situations. It's: the RCMP is seriously flawed, and it's causing all kinds of infamous and not so infamous problems.

dafunkmonster said:
if anyone is stupid enough to run around an airport throwing things, and then resist the police when they show up, they deserve to get tasered. Everyone forgets that the suspects who get tasered have plenty of opportunities to submit to police, but they're stupid enough to refuse.

Also, this man's behavior is bizarre, and given today's international climate, acting bizarre in an airport is the stupidest thing you can do, regardless of mental health.

brondu said:
mental health, or a lack thereof, is what dictates your ability to respond rationally in situations like this. To ask whether or not a polish schizophrenic deserved to get tasered is asking the wrong question. The question that would be more productive to frame is: could this situation have been avoided if the RCMP was managed differently? And the answer is yes.

------

Now, seeing as how the comments of the folks on Youtube, as well as their avatars, are a continual source of depression for me, one of the most alarming and wide-ranging displays of the obvious developmental retardation of our spieces, as manifested in content and intent over and over again, I suspect the discussion I began, as featured here, will degenerate into cordial invitations for one or the other of us to perform some anatomically impossible sex act or a series of feebly inventive expletives.  Meanwhile the RCMP, which is a police force run on a business model that might better suit a garbage disposal franchise, continues to train their officers in a manner which cannot be compared to the way the municipal officers are trained, continues to disallow their members from speaking with each other, continues to consummately freeze avenues of accountability for their force, and therefore continues to be a national liability, more of these types of accidents waiting to happen.  What do you think?

If you're unaware of the following porn starlets, you can thank me later.

Tiana Lynn
Cytherea

It's pretty important you check these girls out in action, particularly Tiana Lynn, who is a born again Christian with a foul mouth, an appetite for the nasty, a propensity to 'get off' at all costs, and, well, it's just plain awesome to watch.

Yeah!  Every year in Canada there is a football game.  A totally wild football game.  A totally fun football game.  Well this year both of my favorite CFL (canadian football league) teams got IN to the Gray CUp and my favorite CFL team (Saskatchewan) won.  Hooray!

In the past fourteen days I have consumed:



30 cans of 7-UP
1 can of Sprite
6 cans of Beer
1 bottle of wine

Can you spot the cans??

Lately I've been finding all of the interesting things over at Rommel's blog.

On God Debates:

I really enjoy it when the athiest authors speak.  They remind me, honestly, of the epitome of a beer-swilling buddy.  Let me explain.  Everyone I drink with (when I am so inclined) is a rabid secularist with some sort of vague angst towards religion and anything related to God, and they're all conservatives, which I find almost unbearable, and very not smart.  These athiest authors, on the other hand, are like really well-educated, well-spoken versions of my drinking buddies.  Meanwhile the Christian fellows irk me and rub me the wrong way, possibly residual rebellion from my own 16+ years of indoctrination, although, I'm not without moments when nostalgia and chronic lonliness combine to make me feel otherwise.

On the other hand, one of these days I'd really like to see the person arguing that God is not a manmade invention, actually win this argument.  And please, not a fuckin Christian, who is arguing simultaneous that not only does God exist, but Christianity kicks all other other religions in the ass.  Although, I was intrigued to see this fellow cast Christianity in an almost worldcentric light.  Interesting…..

On Science Fiction and Recommending Novels and the Sameness of Experience:

It's good to see you cracking the fiction!  You really ought to do it more often.  Awesome things happen, and using television to satisfy your fiction impulse, well, I don't even want to get into it, but, you know television programs exist to make money, which really compromises the authenticity of the stories, at least until authenticity becomes marketable.  That's a joke, though.  Supposed to be funny.  Not that I don't watch my weekly megadose (four hours or less).  I love T.V.

Your story of stashing a book in a place, returning to the place, and picking the book up just before bed only to be HOOKED, is a story I share, line for line.  Crazy, eh?  It reminds me of another time a fellow shared a story, and must have been surprised to see how many had shared his exact experience. 

Anyway, I'll see if I can't get a hold of this book, if only because I know the feeling of having really terrific experience with a book and wanting to know how my friends might experience the book.  In fact, I have a whole list of books that I would almost guarantee anybody alive would enjoy.  Sometimes I read an Amazon user review from someone who has totally hated a book I've totally loved.  It's a bizarre and usually hilarious experience.  That might happen here, ~C4, you never know!

I was a little disappointed with this interview by Charlie Rose of Joel and Ethan Coen, and Josh Brolin and Javier Bardem, although I'm usually an uncritical fan of his.  Anyhow, when I finished watching it I had the following to say in the comment page:

 

I was sitting on the fence until the final act, when the raw, desolate vernacular of Cormac McCarthy, to me, was most poignantly represented.  I walked out of the theater feeling a sense of community with whoever else recognized the ways in which the film transcended or, if you prefer, rescinded its conventional trajectory and became instead nearly nonpareil.

Charlie: You're the best.  Next time you have folks who have used the tools of their medium to create something as affecting and resonant as No Country For Old Men (please) ask them what cumulative effect they'd like their art to have as a means of routing their motivations, which, by my hypothesis, will be only secondarily devoted to the construction of something peerless and thrilling and, though in-admissibly so, primarily devoted to tempering and helping their fellow humans.  Just an idea.