Thursday, April 29, 2004

More from Scott: An Open Letter to William Kristol, Richard Perle, and Bush's other NeoConservative Puppet Masters

Why didn't you tell President Bush to invade Western Australia first? I've been playing Risk: The Game of Global Domination since I was eight years old and never, never have I seen someone win the game by massing their forces in the Middle East at the beginning of the game. Too many borders! Impossible to reinforce! Enemies from all directions! Australia, on the other hand, is easily conquered. Start in Western Australia, make a straight-line march through eastern Australia, then on into New Zealand and New Guinea, and finally up to Siam, sealing the entire continent and guaranteeing an extra two armies per turn for the duration of game. (Ask Secretary Rumsfeld if those would come in handy.) Once in Siam, you can leave the remainder of your provinces virtually unguarded and mass your armies of the Far East to eventually move north into Siberia, Irkutsk and Kamchatka, ultimately overtaking the entire Asian continent (seven extra armies per turn), including, finally, the Middle East. Starting in South America is okay, too, if your brat cousin Ronald refuses to play if he doesn't get to go first, and Africa will do in a pinch if you want to change things up, but you better roll some sixes, mutherfuckers, or you'll be knocked out of the game, which means you're available to do stuff like pick up the dog crap in the backyard, or wax your grandfather's back, "since you're just watching." (Thanks, Mom.) I hear that, after watching President Bush's press conference, Mr. Kristol was "depressed." If he was depressed, think about the rest of us, who weren't part of the shadowy extra-governmental cabal that helped install him in the White House in the first place. The history books will write your epitaphs and they won't be pretty:
"Neoconservatives: A late-twentieth-, early-twenty-first-century American political movement that stressed the supremacy of the American empire, but was too stupid to invade Australia first." Think it over, John Warner


Wednesday, April 28, 2004

Instant Apologist

Instant Apologist

From McSweeney's; how to make an instant Friedman column

Sunday, April 25, 2004

Party Like It's 1992

Carrie and George are getting married on May 7th, and I'll be travelling to Toronto to take part in the celebration. It's going to be more like a party than a wedding, I imagine. i lived with Carrie and George on three separate occasions in three very different places. I first shared a house with them in Lennoxville, where we were going to university. Actually, I wasn't really their roomate; my girlfriend was, but I spent most of my time there. When said girlfriend tossed me out, Carrie and George took me into their basement suite in Whistler, which they shared with a Roger Daltrey impersonator. Two years later, through an unexpected turn of events, we were all reunited again in Victoria BC, of all places, although by this time, the Daltrey impersonator had cut his hair.
rogerdaltry
Originally uploaded by andrew s.

Link to andrew s's Flickr profile Posted by andrew s from Flickr.

flickr

Saturday, April 24, 2004

After only a few days in San Francisco, my spirit is revived. I was sent there at the last minute to attend a speaking course, called Talk So People Will Listen. The course itself was fantastic, revealing to me that, yes, I do look like a stiff when I speak.

I didn't have much time to do anything but attend this course and meet up with Chris and Lu aftewards. Just feeling the sunny spring air on my skin made me feel like putting roots down there. We had dinner at Trattoria Contadina, and then rode the cable car back to my hotel.

The next night we watched Project Grizzly and laughed like hyenas at a man trying to build the perfect bear defense suit.

While leaving my hotel the next day, I spotted an enormous man emerging from the lobby. Dressed like Royal Tennenbaum, he wore a beret on his bald head, and carried a massive walking stick with an onyx sphere on the top.

You Can't Keep a Good Kid Down

From What Is Enlightenment

"One time, a student teacher from a predomninantly black school in the Bedford-Stuyvesant section of Brooklyn presented my dad with the test paper of a particularly tough fifth-grader. In every box on the mindless rote exam, the boy had carefully penned "Fuck you" in large, clear letters. My dad's eyes lit up as he said to the young teacher, "This kid hasn't been beaten down by the system yet! There somthing here you can work with!"



Tuesday, April 13, 2004

There must be a German word for it, Part 12:
"Sadness inspired from failing restaurants"

From Middlesex

Monday, April 12, 2004

1. Grab the nearest book.
2. Open the book to page 23.
3. Find the fifth sentence.
4. Post the text of the sentence in your journal along with these instructions.


I am at the office, and the only books I have are work-related. The closest one is The Elements of Style, by William Strunk Jr. and E.B. White. I keep it on my desk for reference.

The fifth sentence on page 23 reads:

"To show what happens when strong writing is deprived of its vigor, George Orwell once took a passage from the Bible and drained it of its blood."

Friday, April 02, 2004

Irvine Welsh develops his characters by thinking about the following three things:
Where they stay, who they lay, and what they play. I suppose that is how he would measure and identify a person's character in the world of junkie scammers, con-men and corrupt cops that he creates so well.

I like to look at someone's book and music collection when i first walk into their homes. If i don't see any books but a huge TV, i am likely to make some kind of judgement, no matter how hard i try to avoid it.

What I am reading at the momentL

The English
The Party Blonde
Bombardiers
Middlesex

Part of Middlesex takes place during the 1967 Detroit riots, which effectively drove white people from downtown, initiating an urban rot and decay from which the city has not recovered. You can see the results of the decay on this site.

Thursday, April 01, 2004

It's often said that the olfactory senses have the stongest ties to your memory. That is how Adolf Eichmann was captured; by someone recognizing his strong odor. The smell of camphor lip balm remind me of spring skiing and early sunburns, a rite of spring, right up there with a Canadiens-Bruins first round playoff matchup, the Canadiens triumphantly pulling away in the seventh game to take the series, despite being heavily outplayed and outgunned.

Back to spring skiing. Sarah and Nic are on their annual pilgrimage to whistler, and passed through town on their way up the highway. Despite being up for who knows how many hours flying from Johannesburg to London to Vancouver, Nic was able to stay out until 2am on Saturday. We had dinner at Glowbal and then danced till late to the funky house breaks of Ben Watt at Voda.

While waiting for the opening dj to finish his set, Ben sat on a crate in the back with his chin resting on his hand. He looked so bored. But as soon as he took to the decks he came alive, inhaling urgently on the cigarette that dangled from his lips, the heater glowing with each pull.

We hit Whistler Mountain on Monday morning, and it turned into a brilliant spring day. The snow was a bit slushy, but the skies were clear and the air was warm. I realized that Carmex does not have any sun protection factor, and my lips hurt when I ate some wasabe later than night.

Vancouver moment #29

While walking home from Choices, my dog leash in one hand and my rice chocolate chip cookies in the other, I was startled by a screech coming from behind me. I turned back, expecting a kid on a freestyle bike to come racing down the sidewalk. Instead it was a tall thin woman on rollerblades, dragging her heel to navigate around my dog. She carried an iced cappuccino in a plastic cup in her left hand. When she got to Homer street, she turned right and headed down the middle of the road, against the direction of the street. There were film trucks on both sides of the street. She picked up speed and made slalom turns down the middle of the street, right into the headlights of an oncoming car, before her silhouette disappeared between a make-up truck and an RV.