"MUMIA ABU-JAMAL IS GUILTY, GUILTY, GUILTY!" UPDATE
Well, the
Guardian has published excerpts from
Michael Moore's new book
Dude, Where's My Country? dealing with
how to covert so-called "neo-conservatives" to liberalism. Most of it is fairly obvious sophistry based on the condescending liberal canards that people turn to conservatism out of fear and that conservatives (and libertarians) don't care about anyone but themselves, and there's plenty of the politics of envy (re: Marxist class warfare) in there for good measure, as well as a straw-man God claiming He supports abortion. As long as you keep in mind the libertarian truisms that "more liberty means less government" (not counting neccessary military spending to defend freedom against the bad guys that would take it away from us) and that "the forced redistribution of one's earnings to government by coercion is inherently unjust" when you read it, I have no qualms about giving the link... trust me, it's not nearly as convincing as the
usual liberal Bush-haters in the RottenTomatoes.com "Off Topic Discussion" forum think it is. (Also, Moore seems blissfully unaware that certainly most libertarians and also many conservatives, including the editors of
National Review, already oppose the War on Drugs for the exact reasons Moore gives. Don't claim the Conservative case against the War on Drugs as your own idea... it's not.)
However, Michael Moore does get brownie points, or at least a brownie, from me for, at long last, admitting that
Mumia Abu-Jamal is a guilty, guilty, guilty cop-killer.
Mumia [the campaigning Pennsylvania journalist who was sentenced for the shooting of a police officer and has been on death row since 1982] probably killed that guy. There, I said it. That does not mean he should be denied a fair trial or that he should be put to death. But because we don't want to see him or anyone executed, the efforts to defend him may have overlooked the fact that he did indeed kill that cop. This takes nothing away from the eloquence of his writings or commentary, or the important place he now holds on the international political stage. But he probably did kill that guy.
So, add Michael Moore to the list of "Notorious Liberals Whom at Least Admit that
Mumia's Guilty" which also includes
This Modern World artist Dan Perkins a.k.a. "Tom Tomorrow".
Also, while I'm doing a
Mumia update, I just thought I'd also point out this
hilarious recent Philadelphia Weekly spoof piece by Sara Kelly, which presents various wacky alternate explanations and conspiracy theories for the death of Officer Daniel Faulkner, making fun of the absurdity of the case that
Mumia's current lawyers are presenting, that a
black hitman named Arnold Beverly killed Officer Faulkner because he was hired by crooked police officers who needed to get rid of Faulkner because he knew about their collusion with drug dealers.
CONCORDIA NOTES
Meh... I forgot to mention that I picked up this leaflet from the
Quebec Federation of Marxist Students at Concordia the other day, calling for a mass student mobilization on October 9th in support of the zero tuition pipe-dream (from their perspective... it would be a real ass-rape for Quebec taxpayers, for the reasons I gave in the piece responding to Comrade Adam Slater's letter below).
Eh, I don't really feel like talking about it, I just want to start a pool guessing which downtown businesses will be the subject of the usual form of so-called "Anarchist" low-grade terrorism, namely having their windows smashed and/or spraypainted. Since they're starting at the corner of Sherbrooke and McGill College, I'm guessing they'll go south to Sainte Catherine's, and then eastwards... so, if I were betting, my money would be on them vandalizing the Gap on Sainte Catherine's in the Centre Eaton, the McDonald's on Sainte Catherine's between University and Union, and the Burger King across from Phillips' Square.
One thing I am pleased to report about the
Sailor Moon boxset... in episode 24, "Naru's Cry! Nephrite Dies For Love", I've read reviews of the picture being very jumpy, so I decided to check it out for myself but I didn't notice a thing. Either I have a disk from after ADV fixed it or the problem just doesn't affect my player or television.
Well... that's too short to be an entry by itself, so... ummm... I have this RealVideo clip of the opening theme from the Indonesian version of
Sailor Moon, and the music follows the Japanese version exactly, though they made the instruments a bit more "modern", but I find the lyrics from the last verse interesting, to say the least. I'll write it out as it's spelt.
"In order to destroy the evil,
My power must needed.
Helping a justice,
This is the wonderful of Allah.
I just trusted to Allah.
This is the wonderful of Allah!
That's not in the Japanese version!
Oh yeah, the
Japanese live-action Sailor Moon TV series has just started, so the always-reliable (for info on that series)
Sailor Moon Soapbox site has this
detailed review, including comparisons between the anime and this, in case you're interested in that sort of thing. I shall definitely try to download at least the first couple of episodes to see how it is.
SAILOR MOON SOUND PROBLEM
So, yes indeed, I got the
Sailor Moon uncut, subtitled first season boxset yesterday, and, overall, I'm thrilled that I can see these episodes as they were originally meant to be seen... well, okay, I admit I've already seen the majority of these episodes before subtitled and uncut, but they were either crappy 10th generation fansubs or crappy RealVideo files (no, I'm not giving any links... but the main site for
Sailor Moon fansubs stopped offering them once the subtitled versions of the first two seaons were licensed).
However, I noticed one sound-related problem that annoys the crap out of me, and, no, it has nothing to do with that 5-10 second audio glitch in, I think (haven't checked yet), episode 22, "Romance Under the Moon! Usagi's First Kiss", where, from what I hear, somehow, audio from the DiC dub got mixed into a scene without any dialogue. Slight annoyance, but 5 seconds out of 1000+ minutes isn't going to make me return my set. Nothing to do with the audio quality in general... I've read some people that disagree, but, using only the stereo speakers in my television set, as far as I can tell, the audio quality is more or less the same as the Japanese LaserDiscs (I have a couple, but they were pretty bloody expensive, I tell you what), though maybe the differences in audio quality between the Japanese LDs and ADV's DVDs are more evident if you have a home theatre set-up. The audio quality of
Sailor Moon in Japanese was always fairly crappy... for some reason, Japanese TV cartoons were still in mono years after most American cartoons were recorded in stereo.
The problem I noticed is that, with the first opening**, the audio's about a second off compared to the way it is everywhere else I've seen the opening. When they fade-in to the shot of Azabu Juban (the neighbourhood in Minato-ku, Tokyo-to wherein most of
Sailor Moon takes place), there should be a second of silence, with the audio of the chimes not cutting in until the clouds start moving. But, in this set, the audio of the chimes starts immediately with the fade-in, so the music in the entire sequence is about a second early and, as a result, it just isn't synchronized properly. For example, the 3 shots of the masks between the first and second verses should be in synch with the "Duh-DUM, Duh-DUM, Duh-DUM", but, instead, you already hear "Nakitaku naru you na..." as they appear on the screen. Also, in the properly synchronized version, Tuxedo Mask takes off the full-face mask at "Moonlight" and Luna's face appears at "Midnight"... if it's not properly synchronized, the opening is just ruined. It's still not enough to make me want my money back, but I certainly do wish they had been a bit more careful with that.
I'll give more thoughts on
Sailor Moon as well as the ultimate "
Sailor Moon on YTV" story at some point this weekend.
**Well, to show how much of a pathetic geek I am, it's actually the second version of the first opening sequence. In the
original original opening, during the line "Tsuki no hikari ni michibikare", when the silhouettes of the girls approach the "camera", they stay as silhouettes rather than lifting a veil to reveal their faces, and then, during "Nando mo meguri au", as the "camera" spins around the 3 girls, there were little clouds of smoke not present in the slightly-modified version of the opening.
CONCORDIA NOTES
Meh... I won't tell you much detail about my birthday right now... I'll write a special birthday edition of
MONTREAL KAIDASHI KIKOU on Friday afternoon.
Just, as you may know, I'm also a Mossad secret agent sent to infiltrate Concordia, though, actually, in case you didn't know, the Montreal headquarters of Mossad is actually in the Hall building at Concordia's Sir George Williams campus. It's on the third floor... [dale gribble voice]Have you ever wondered why the escalators go from the second floor straight to the fourth floor, while the third floor is only accessible through obscure stairwells? That's why...[/dale gribble voice] I won't say exactly where the Mossad headquarters are, but the hint is... find a door with a hardhat on it and you're getting very, very close. Anyhow, I was conducting my normal surveillance of the men's washroom on the tenth floor of the Hall building, but there were no suspicious men attempting to make eye contact with me this time. (Why are other men always trying to make eye contact with me in that particular washroom? Must be Hezbollah thugs.) However, in the immediate vicinity of the men's washroom on the 10th floor, there is this glass case for some sort of campus counselling service, but it had been vacated, since there isn't much traffic on the tenth floor. So, someone put in a printed-out leaflet with very interesting information about our conspiracy and stuck it in there, and then stamped on a red stamp of a cat, so that someone who doesn't look at it too closely would think it was approved by the administration. I'll write the dialogue verbatum.
Beria: "What happened Chairman Lowy?"
Fred: "Some idiot in admissions used the same page from the single use pad to send several messages to various departments".
Beria: "You mean the system I brought from Tel-Aviv, the one they adopted from the K.G.B."
Fred: "Yes, it was a God Damn gift basket to the Anti Demonization League".
Beria"Why are they using the same initials, are they hoping checks will be mis-directed?"
Fred: "They were able to find out your 2 five year plans, the 1st being the fake financial crisis and Subsequent staff purges, & then your 2nd in which you began the Racial & Social Engineering policies".
Beria "The demonization and screening of Arabs & Germans & slowly White Protestant Males"
Fred: "Yes, the plan being to minimize potential competition for our Zionist friends out there, as these people are more likely than the other groups to start businesses, ask for raises & promotions, also they are far less likely to cough up once they're on the outside". "So what are you going to do now that you've pulled the rug out from under this place?"
Beria: "Probably go to a Mossad regional office & wait to be posted to a University we haven't infiltrated yet".
Frederick Lowy = Chairman of the Concordia Kibbutz
Jack Beria Lightstone = Provisional Kommisar
Yes, I see the error where the person whom wrote this probably intended for "Fred" to say the last line, but I left it verbatum, as it was written. Also, I'm too cheap to pay for graphics, but there's a simple picture of a Jewish temple, with circular towers on both sides. Written across the towers is "Concordia University inc [sic]", and on top of the left tower is the Star of David whilst on top of the right tower is the hammer-and-sickle. I am tempted to blame the always-reliable (for this sort of thing)
Solidarity for Palestinian Human Rights group, however SPHR has a high poster budget and this thing was printed on a dot-matrix printer. Plus, they're using the hammer-and-sickle in a negative way, but I know how much in bed the SPHR was with the previous few Concordia Student Union executives, and, believe me, most of those old guard CSU-types are fairly avowed Marxists (my recurring joke of calling any of the CSU old executives "Comrade" isn't far off the mark). If this was the SPHR's handiwork, there would likely be a dollar sign on the top of the second tower and "Fred" and "Beria" would be using technology adopted from the CIA, not the KGB. Besides, Arafat-junkies like the SPHR ought to love the KGB, since
"Arafish" and the KGB were intimately related.
This appears to be the work of a garden-variety anti-Semetic moonbat, nothing more.
EDIT: Also, according to
Dr. Jack Lightstone's online CV, his middle name is "Nathan", not "Beria", so I have no idea where the nutters got "Beria" from.
ONTARIANS LOSE THEIR "COMMON SENSE"...
Meh...
Liberal Dalton McGuinty succeeded in pulling the wool over Ontarian voters' eyes and defeated Ernie Eves' Conservatives in today's elections... (yes, yes, I know, it's actually the party that wins, but I relished the opportunity at writing "Liberal Dalton McGuinty").
I found those ads that McGuinty ran late in the campaign with soundbytes from speeches he did downright sinister, about diminishing the worth of the individual and elevating the "intelligence" of groups and communities... meh... well, I think it's code for "Let's all embrace Communism!", but, if I take the hyperbole out of it, still, "groupthink" isn't always superior to the wisdom and creativity of individuals. Movies written by a committee usually suck ass, and there is the old saying "Too many coocks spoil the broth"... well, aside from that, it's all "touchy feely", "fuzzy wuzzy" New Age hippy crap that would put me off voting for the Liberals for life... well, if I was Ontarian.
Also, I have a lot to say about why "$10-a-day daycare" is a terrible idea, but it's my birthday (well, technically, not anymore) and I don't want to be writing all night, so I'll put it in a seperate posts.
All I can really say to Ontarians is, "Enjoy your tax hikes, suckers!"
(Note: As far as I know, my sister, Alison, whom lives in Ottawa and whom, coincidentally (since she's three years younger), shares my birthday, October 2nd (I'm 1974 and she's 1977) voted for McGuinty, so... meh... well, Ontario Tories, I'm sorry she did that, but she really is a nice girl otherwise...)
DEFENDING RUSH LIMBAUGH, AGAIN...
Well, look at it this way... if
Rush Limbaugh has to get the painkiller OxyContin from unregulated, black market suppliers, all that means is that it's about time to deregulate OxyContin so that Rush will be breaking no laws.
TRAFFIC ADVISORY
Oh, goody. Here's another reason to drive your car or, even better, SUV to work if you work in Montreal: yesterday, on the Metro (the Montreal subway system), I spotted a whole bunch of pink labels printed up by the CSN (Conf�deration des syndicats nationaux; the provincial blue collar workers' union... yes, I know it says "national", but that's because the CSN is just a bunch of separatists) for the
Montreal Transit Commission's maintenance workers promising a strike very shortly.
Well, considering what a bunch of crybabies Montreal civic blue collar workers are, I say it's long past time that we pulled out the old Reagan-brand (TM) privatization ray gun and fire em' all, just like Reagan did with the air traffic controllers, and then hire private contractors to do the maintenance. The union's just have way too much power in this province... it's about time the government didn't require blue collar workers to join the union, because "freedom of association" is meaningless without "freedom from association".
RUSH TO JUDGEMENT
(Please note that "Judgement" is spelt with an extra E in Canada...)
Yeah, well, it is my birthday now, but I'll discuss that in the daytime... or maybe even tomorrow evening. Depends if I feel like going on the Web in the library. There's a couple of non-birthday related things I wish to discuss today.
I don't really get the controversy which erupted on Wednesday over
Rush Limbaugh's comments on ESPN Sunday NFL Countdown. I didn't actually see the bit... well, I'm in Canada and I'm not sure if we get the same pre-game programming on Canadian ESPN and, in any event, I slept in until past 3 p.m. because I was still zonked out on NyQuil, I think... but, still, I heard the comments replayed several times on the news today and they don't seem too shocking, just that Donovan McNabb of the Philadelphia Eagles, from what I understand, up to this point in the season has been a lackluster quarterback or, at least, McNabb's been overrated by the media because he's black whereas if he were white he probably wouldn't get an undeserved level of praise because a moderately successful black quarterback represents "diversity" to the liberal media whilst a moderately successful white quarterback is just someone you wouldn't write columns about because that wouldn't be inspirational to any disadvantaged communities. Well, to be perfectly honest, while I watch NFL games a bit more often than I used to now that I'm getting older, I'm hardly an expert there and can't really say whether Rush is correct or incorrect. It is easy to say, even for a Limbaugh-defender like myself, that Rush could have delivered the comment with a little more tact, but... erm... Rush Limbaugh does make the big, big Clearchannel bucks because he can express himself flawlessly and on the fly; most of us, if we wanted to make the exact same point on the spot... well... if we had the courage to say it, we'd get nervous and the words would sputter out and we'd make asses of ourselves.
Anyhow, on
the Rush Limbaugh programme website, Rush has made the full clip of him from Sunday's
Sunday NFL Countdown available so that you can see the remarks for yourself in the proper context, plus another clip from a few weeks back in which he defended black coaches against a new rule which dictates that managers have to interview a certain quota of blacks for coaching positions (without the obligation of actually hiring them, potentially leading to sham interviews where they interview a few token blacks even if the position is already filled). And, if you subscribe to
Rush 24/7, you can see all the ESPN bits as well as listen to segments from previous
Rush Limbaugh radio programmes about football (and everything else).
Also, it's worth noting that two of the hosts on
Sunday NFL Countdown, former NFL players Michael Irvin and Tom Jackson, are black and, if they had any problems with what Rush said in the proper context, they didn't say anything. Also, I do find it very curious that the story didn't really break in the mainstream media until Wednesday, when the name of the programme isn't
Tuesday NFL Countdown... if this was so bad, why wasn't it big news on Monday? Well, I think the deal is that the Limbaugh-haters were waiting to jump all over Rush and paint him as a bigot the moment he said something about a minority which could be twisted out of context... well, they paint him as a bigot all the time on their
"Flush Rush" sites, but I mean this is the chance they were waiting for to paint him as a bigot amongst the mainstream public, or, at least the Democrat-voters, so it probably bounced around their sites on Monday and then the Democrat candidates especially the notorious
Al Sharpton (
"Super Processed Hair Bullhorn Man") tut-tutted ESPN on Tuesday, so that's probably why it was in the news on Wednesday.
Well, it's a shame he felt he needed to resign over this, but I guess he just doesn't want this cloud to hang over the programme for his off-hand remark. At least his radio programme isn't going away anytime soon.
PEOPLE BORN ON OCTOBER 2nd KICK ASS!
I was saving the most famous (probably... at least in the western world) October 2nd-born celebrity for last.
In one day, or, in other words, tomorrow, pop star (both with
the Police and solo) and actor (in films like
Lock, Stock, and Two Smoking Barrels and
Dune)
Gordon Sumner a.k.a.
Sting will turn 52.
Well, he's an activist celebrity, I know, but I don't hold it against him. I liked his
Amazon rain forest book when I was a teenager, though that was for more prurient reasons, I admit... we didn't really have the Internet back then, and the book was chock full of naked women and men. Also, I know he used to support
Mumia Abu-Jamal, but I think he backed away from supporting the guy, at least publically, after he realized that
Mumia's a guilty, guilty, guilty cop-killer (though, since the death penalty was overturned, that took much of the sting out of the campaign and you just don't hear quite as much about the guy these days).
Well, Sting's worth mentioning just because of "Every Breath You Take", which a lot of people think is a love song but it's actually about stalking, and "Every Little Thing She Does is Magic" is a great song to make an Anime Music Video out of using clips from
Kiki's Delivery Service or
Oh My Goddess!. And, if you ever see him in an elevator, be sure to make an attempt to sing the high part of "Roxanne", just like David Spade did in the elevator on the famous
Saturday Night Live sketch.
OMF'ingG!
Please tell me that the
Nazimedia moonbats don't believe this
obviously doctored 9/11 photo?
First of all, that's not the livery of El Al, or any other airline, for that matter. Secondly, why is the plane blurred except for the Star of David on its tail, which is in sharp focus? Thirdly... erm... airliners are "gear up" pretty much as soon as they declare "V2, positive rate of climb" (after "V1, rotate").
CONCORDIA NOTES
Ooh... got my mother to drive me downtown all of the way to Lionel-Groulx Metro station because it was getting rather late by the time we got out the house and I have a short class so I'd have missed at least half of it if I had taken the 211 bus from Sainte Anne de Bellevue. (I don't like getting the 211 much past Sainte Anne's because the bus gets crowded quickly and I refuse to stand.)
Ooh... I had a two-hour break between classes, so I decided, just for fun, I'd go have a peek at what's up on the 11th and 12th storeys of the Hall building, which are now largely vacated since most of the science classes moved over to the new building on Loyola. Fucking eh! There are still plenty of lockers up there, turned against the wall so students can't use them. Why? I'd much prefer a locker in the Hall building, even on the top floors, than the one in the Faubourg tower which is actually rather a pain-in-the-ass to get to. And, sorry, despite what you may have read on certain gay cruising sites, the men's washrooms on the 11th and 12th storeys of the Hall building are all locked up. (No, I'm not making that up to be "homophobic", and, sorry, I'm not giving the link. Was I, in fact, indulging in a little cruising curiousity myself? I'm not saying yes and I'm not saying no... :P )
Well, nothing much else to report... I went over to Central Station because I wanted to check out a few bargain-priced computer games at Bureau En Gros (the Quebec name for Office Depot) to assist me in composing my birthday list, then I got a Vanilla Coke and played
Golden Sun: The Lost Age on my Game Boy Advance for a little bit. (I'm at the part of the game wherein I'm talking to people in Lemuria...), then I went to my "Sexuality, Identity and Politics" class for my weekly dose of "biting my tongue" (well, at least when the issue is "politics of identity", me being a firm believer in individuality above all else in regards to personal identity).
September 30th was actually my mother's birthday, so she and my father went to
Smoked Meat Pete's in Ile Perrot, but I would have gotten back too late to join them, so I had to forage for dinner downtown. Well, I really was in a KFC (well, PFK) mood, but the only KFC downtown, as I've told you a couple of times before, is in the Place Ville Marie food court, and that closes at 6 p.m. on Tuesdays, and the sit-down KFC I go to sometimes is way up on Park past Mount Royal avenue, which isn't convenient for catching the 9:15 p.m. commuter train back to Pincourt, so I went to the KFC up on Sherbrooke, one block north of Vendome Metro. However, the problem with this specific KFC is that it's take out only... they have a couple of picnic tables outside, however it was raining and I was wearing my leather jacket. So... meh... I had to take the food with me back to Vendome station and eat it on one of the blue seat-benches below the commuter train platform, to the apparent consternation of a couple of other commuters. (Well, don't glare at me... tell KFC to expand that restaurant, or build a couple of more downtown.) Also of annoyance, they were out of ketchup, so I had to eat my fries plain. The Spicy Big Crunch was still very good, though.
That's about it as far as I'm concerned... oh yeah, since the temperature's dropping, I got a chance to wear my Stars-and-Stripes rugby sweater otherwise known as my "Piss off liberals sweater". Also, I spotted a couple of snowflakes mixed in the rain as I was waiting for my mother to pick me up from Pincourt station.
Now, let's do some "Fisking"... I haven't "Fisked" in ages.
Ooh... there's an
amusing letter from Comrade Adam Slater, an ex-senator from the bad old days of the
Communist Students' Union Concordia Student Union's Evil Empire who is perhaps best known for introducing the
infamous anti-Hillel resolution last December, now the student (un-)representative on the Board of Governors, in this week's
Link.
Academic freedom eroding
"Dear editor,
Isn't it sad that the beating of a homeless person at the hands of a Concordia security guard. coincided with the opening of its new Richard J. Renaud Science Complex?built without a cent of government money."
(Hey, there's a question mark missing! This sort of thing bugs the shit out of me, really.)
Oh yes, it's such a terrible, terrible thing that the truly beautiful new science building managed to be built without a cent of taxpayer money. God forbid... this might make Concordia students believe that there is another way to fund education without being dependent on big government, suckling off the proverbial teat of the delapidated sow that represents the bloated educational system sucking the taxpayers dry... the taxpayers that pretty much shot the proverbial wad back in the 1960s and 70s so there's just no figurative cum left to shoot onto the neck and face of the metaphorical Japanese porn actress in this allegorical
bukkake video... wait... where was I? Oh yeah... let's just soak the taxpayers more and more since taxpayers are just a bottomless money pit just so we don't have our pure and sacred
leftist post-secondary educational experience tainted by money from the eeeeevvvviiiiiilllllll big corporations! (Because what is a big corporation, really, other than a company that sells terrific products that everyone wants?)
"I learned about this incident just in time to sip champagne with strawberries over at Loyola listening to Jean Charest talk about how "m�me les mouvements sociales font partie de la fabrique de l'universit�," while watching a ceremony attended by wealthy white dignitaries and replete with dancing Indians. When will the Arabs and Muslims accept Canadian values and dance for us?"
No, Comrade Slater, why stop there? If you're going to play the tired old race card, go the whole nine yards and give the evil white corporate headmasters southern accents and have them sipping lemonade on a deckchair in the mansion down on the plantation, shooting their guns at the feet of the "Arabs and Muslims" while telling them to "Dance! Dance!" I guess the "Arabs and Muslims" might be wearing tap shoes even though it's the wrong stereotype.
"But now the media cries out for scalps, so extraordinary powers for the rector are required to discipline those ungainly Arab and Muslim activists, so different from their civilized white counterparts, as Jonathan Kay tells us in the National Post. After all, they're the "principle aggressors.""
The
National Post kicks so much ass! Well, not so much since Conrad Black left and then, more recently, since both David Frum and Mark Steyn jumped ship, but the
National Post still kicks a moderate amount of ass! And if certain
low-grade terrorist activist groups and their sympathizers are responsible for 99% of the rioting on campus, I have no problem with Jonathan Kay singling them out. (In my opinion, rioting and vandalsim and intimidation to stop freedom of speech on campus is a form of low-grade terrorism...)
"Yet the old Code of Rights & Responsibilities was enough to deal with a student who viciously beat his girlfriend on campus. No talk of insufficiency there. Curious."
Erm... curious
non sequitur? Well, I didn't cut anything out, though maybe the
Link edited it rather clumsily.
"Binge drinking, drunken fist fights and toga parties: these are the good students."
Ah, he paints a very accurate picture of all us non-Marxist students there. My nose is dripping type B blood all over the keyboard as I type this whilst I "chugalug" from the four cans of
Stroh's Red Bull Malt Liquor strapped to my oversized novelty beer cap. Tomorrow, me and the jocks shall kick the Tri-Lambs out of their frat house.
"Struggling for social justice, advocating for a campus free from racism and discrimination: not real students at all, a Marxist-anarchist-Leninist Arabist cabal, a conspiracy from Guelph to destabilize and destroy the University."
(Well, advocating freedom for Muslim "activists" and Communist-minded student union types to discriminate against whichever groups they like without fear of reprisals...) I don't know about the Guelph part, but the rest seems to be a fairly accurate description of the situation on campus until the reds got voted out, at long last.
"At the ceremony we heard a common vision of education from both the Premier and private patrons of the University. A more-or-less private establishment funded by the generosity of wealthy philanthropists, since the government?after the tax cuts, that is?can simply do no more. So, it is up to the "community," or its most privileged members, to lend a hand where the government cannot. Conspiracy? Cabal?"
Ain't nothing wrong with the "generosity of wealthy philanthropists" and, as for the rest, well, it was a mistake building a system reliant on taxpayers in the first place.
"What is lost in such "progress?" Academic freedom and the function of the academy as a place for ideas and actions seeking to make the world a fairer and more just place, surely. In an environment of paternalistic philanthropy, the old adage stands: "he who pays, says." And he who pays wants to hear gratitude from the fortunate objects of his charity, not claims of equality rights from those with the gall to suggest that the very fact of humanity bestows as much."
Hey, I'm a strong believer in Academic Freedom... that's why I'm such a fan of Daniel Pipes'
Campus Watch, heh heh.
As for the rest, the problem with the post-secondary system, as I see it, is that there are just far too many listless students that really shouldn't be there, using the system as a way-station because they're too scared to make the big decisions as to what they really want to do with their lives, or, at the very least, they use it as a way to put off making the big decisions for years and years. The more people that get diplomas, the more worthless each individual diploma becomes, especially with worthless diplomas in various "identity studies" degrees aimed at creating more strife between various groups (because Marxists thrive on "Class Warfare") that have zero value to non-taxpayer funded employers. For a lot of even the best jobs, the truth is you really don't need a university degree, just specialized training.
"So rake in those corporate dollars, kick out the student activists and lefty profs, fill student government with white frat kids who want to party and won't talk back. And be sure to keep the bums, Arabs and Muslims the hell away from our pretty new buildings built without government money and bearing the names of generous donors. The value of our degrees and the reputation of our university depend on it."
(Kick out the student activists? But a lot of them are hardly "students" in the first place...) Well, that would be a good start, except for the Arab and Muslim part... I wouldn't kick them *all* out, just the ones that want to implement
Shari'a on the campus. Make those students from certain countries pledge an oath of conduct and I don't see a problem.
PEOPLE BORN ON OCTOBER 2nd KICK ASS!
In 2 days,
Mike Rutherford, of Genesis and
Mike and the Mechanics, will turn 53.
Meh... I know "The Living Years" is a very personal song about his father dying and all and, as such, I don't want to sound like a bastard, but, around 1989, it got way too overplayed on Montreal area radio stations so i kind of think of it as treacle.
Mhe... sorry I haven't written too much lately, but I actually have assignments to do now, plus I had that cold which knocked me out of commission for several days last week. There are a couple of things from the past week I intend on writing about just a tad, especially the death of Edward Said... well, I'll show some degree of tact there, but, obviously, I wasn't a fan.
PEOPLE BORN ON OCTOBER 2nd KICK ASS!
In 3 days,
Don McLean, the singer/songwriter famous for "American Pie" and... umm... those other songs which Don McLean wrote and sang, will turn 58.
R.I.P. ELIA KAZAN
Farewell to a fine director, of
On the Waterfront and
East of Eden, a fine American, and a
fine anti-Communist, because, as Kenneth Llyod Billingsley's fine book
Hollywood Party shows us, it wasn't a "witchhunt" if there were actually "witches", or, rather, Communists working for Moscow to subvert America from the inside.
PEOPLE BORN ON OCTOBER 2nd KICK ASS!
In 4 days, photographer
Annie Leibovitz will turn 54.
