Palin Hangs Them Up

Sarah Palin's resignation as governor of Alaska comes as a bit of a surprise. I'm hoping that she didn't pull the plug in order to contemplate a run at the presidency in 2012. If that's the case, then her goose is cooked and the resignation was a move of sheer political folly: you can't quit a governorship claiming lame duck status and then ask people to elect you president. Still, I wouldn't put anything past her. When you get down to it politically-speaking, she has nothing to lose.

If she resigned because of the beating that she and her family took over the past year, then I can't blame her. I wonder how I would feel. One day I'm just sitting around running a sparsely populated state, going hunting, trying to build an oil pipeline. The next, people are making fun of my handicapped kid, calling my 14-year-old a slut, calling me a slut, scrutinizing my religious beliefs, and dragging my name through the mud at every turn. Sooner or later, you might want to sit down and say, "You know what? Screw them and screw this."

Palin was vilified for being a woman and being a conservative. If she had been in favour of abortion, she would have been fine. That is the only test of Modern Feminism: are you pro-abortion or not? If not, then 'feminists' will destroy you. Gender has nothing to do with 'feminism.' Abortion is all.

For me, the most memorable hit piece on Palin comes from a 'feminist' named Cintra Wilson. I read it from time to time just to remind myself of the hypocrisy that is rife within the halls of Big Media and Modern Feminism:

I confess, it was pretty riveting when John McCain trotted out Sarah Palin for the first time. Like many people, I thought, "Damn, a hyperconservative, fuckable, Type A, antiabortion, Christian Stepford wife in a 'sexy librarian' costume -- as a vice president? That's a brilliant stroke of horrifyingly cynical pandering to the Christian right. Karl Rove must be behind it."

Palin may have been a boost of political Viagra for the limp, bloodless GOP (and according to an ABC/Washington Post poll she has created a boost in McCain's standing among white women to a 53 over Obama's 41). But ideologically, she is their hardcore pornographic centerfold spread, revealing the ugliest underside of Republican ambitions -- their insanely zealous and cynical drive to win power by any means necessary, even at the cost of actual leadership.

Sarah Palin is a bit comical, like one of those cutthroat Texas cheerleader stage moms. What her Down syndrome baby and pregnant teenage daughter unequivocally prove, however, is that her most beloved child is the antiabortion platform that ensures her own political ambitions with the conservative right. The throat she's so hot to cut is that of all American women.

I am willing to bet everything I own that Cintra Wilson didn't give a passing thought to Sarah Palin before she was named as McCain's running mate. It's almost certain she had never heard the words "Sarah Palin." But when Wilson saw Palin for the first time, her first thoughts were those written above.

How's that for feminism? Having a handicapped child unequivocally proves that you're an anti-abortion crusader. Cintra's message to mothers of handicapped children: you love your politics more than your baby. And allowing your teenage daughter to have a child? Why, you're nothing more than a deranged political zealot.

Some support. Some feminism.

Wilson's arrow is just one from the quiver of Palin Hate over the past year. I wonder if I could handle that much hate, especially when it was aimed at my kids. I remember one feminist commentator saying that Palin should stop "dragging out the handicapped baby" during the campaign, and another lamenting that Palin is not, in fact, a woman. Jay Leno joked about the names of Palin's kids - one of them should be named Rifle - and David Letterman bashed Palin so often it was pathological. His last attempt, saying Alex Rodriguez had slept with her 14-year-old daughter, was just the latest in a long line of slander. Andrew Sullivan, a writer at The Atlantic, spent a ton of time and filed more than a few pieces asking Palin to release her medical records so the world could find out if her youngest child was hers or her girl's.

10 months ago, nothing. Ten months later, enough slime to fill all the buckets in America. Could you hack it?

Politics is a tough game. Politicians deserve tough questions and scrutiny. They should expect bitter jabs and gossip. But let me ask you this: tell me the names of George W. Bush, Joe Biden, Barack Obama, John McCain, or Dick Cheney's children. No? Can't do it? No surprise. These men are attacked for their philosophies and their political ideology.

Family, sex, and religion were fair game for Palin alone.

It's been a tawdry, disgusting, disturbing ride. Now maybe we can hop off the bus for a while. But a quick note to young, pretty girls, compliments of the media and Modern Feminism: know your place, baby, and know it well.

That Was A Wimbledon

Two great players. Roddick gutted it out to take Federer to the brink, and Federer came out on top to become the winningest Slam tennis player of all time.

The best part: neither of them needed to grunt and scream like an idiot every time they swung the racket, something which has driven me away from tennis over the past ten years.

Congrats to Federer and Roddick both.

Photo: ADRIAN DENNIS/AFP/Getty Images

"I Just Told Her To Hang On Tight. I Won't Let Go."

This has to be the picture of the year, compliments of Andrea Melendez from the Des Moines Register.

After a boat went over a dam, a man and a woman ended up in the water. The man drowned. A rescue crew tried several times to get her out of the water. No go. So the construction crew did it.

"They just harnessed me up and dipped me down in the water and I grabbed her and the crane drug her to the boat and that's it," Oglesbee said. "What are you going to do if she's like that? It's no big deal. The whole crew did it."

The Last House On The Left - Review

Director: Dennis Iliadis
Writers: Alleca/Ellsworth
Starring: Sara Paxton
Runtime: 100 minutes

I don't know what it would take for a movie to get an X rating these days. The Last House on the Left proves that violence won't do it.

This is a remake of an old Wes Craven horror flick by the same name. In many ways, this new treatment harkens back to the exploitation horror flicks of the '70s. The lighting is blue, the colors are muted, the characters don't have neatly primped hair, and marijuana makes an appearance as "grade A" stuff for teenagers. One of the evil characters is named Sadie, a name that always reminds me of Sadie Mae Glutz, a member of the Manson "family," so this added to the '60s/'70s vibe.

The movie's about the Collingwood family. Daughter Mari (I looked it up - in this movie it's Mary-with-an-I), is having trouble connecting with her parents because she's a teenager and because her brother has died. So the trio go to a house on the lake to enjoy some family time. Ten minutes after arriving, Mari wants the keys to the car so she can go visit a friend (this is probably the truest part of the movie - teens on family vacations don't wait three seconds before taking off from the family). Mari joins up with her friend, they meet a stranger, smoke pot, and then meet the stranger's homicidal lunatic family.

I just noticed there's a lot of the word "family" in the above paragraphs. Maybe the movie's going for a social statement.

In any event, Mari and her friend Paige are brutally assaulted and one of them is brutally raped. I mean brutally. And here's where I figure you can't do anything to get an X rating anymore. The viciousness of the assaults and rapes is cold and dreadful. This is probably the grimmest movie I've seen in a while, and it got me thinking about a line from a movie critic some time back: "What's the point of all this shit, anyway?" I guess the gore movie fans would say, "Well, it shows that raping young girls is brutal and mean." Okay. Fine. But was there ever any argument about that?

The final scene between the father and the lead killer is the definition of gratuitous. The movie is already over, nothing more to see here, folks, and then out comes the microwave. For what?

If you're a horror junkie, you might like this movie. But then, this movie isn't really a horror flick. It's a violence flick. Mari is raped, and after that it's a just battle between two families to see who can mutilate each other the worst. There's no suspense or horror, but there's plenty of gore. Since that doesn't turn me on, I was just left saying, "Gross. But who cares?"

Terminator Salvation - Review

Director: McG
Writers: Michael Ferris/John Brancato
Starring: Christian Bale/Sam Worthington
Runtime: 114 minutes

For weeks I heard that this movie wasn't worth seeing. I had accidentally-on-purpose stumbled across some movie reviews and the majority of them were bad. The complaint seemed to be that the movie had no story, sacrificing plot for effects and gimmicks.

I mulled over waiting for it to come out on DVD and finally decided to see the thing. It was, after all, a Terminator movie. I wasn't in the mood for a story. I was in the mood to see things get blown sky high. So I went and saw the movie and I came out thinking, "What was so wrong with that?"

Not much. If you haven't seen it, it's better than you think. The no-story complaint is one of my favorite hobby horses, but I wasn't expecting a decent story from Terminator Salvation. For one, it's a story about time travel and killer robots. For another, it's sequel number 4 in a franchise that will probably have sequel number 5. Story? From that?

Well, okay, here goes: the year is 2018. John Connor is finally all grown up. In the first three Terminator movies we had to watch him grow from an embryo in Linda Hamilton's womb (Terminator - she finds out she's pregnant), to a teenage smart ass (Terminator 2 - he befriends the Terminator and has a good cry when Arnold bites the dust), to a twenty-something loser trying to save the world but can't (Terminator 3 - where he hooks up with his high school crush and watches the world get nuked).

That's a pretty hectic childhood. Anyway, Connor is now a weathered adult and he's played by Christian Bale. The world is a vast wasteland and the machines have taken over. The machines hold dominion over everything and are hunting down the last remnants of mankind. This shouldn't be hard to do because the humans still have fighter jets and airline hangars, but what the hell. Maybe they're taking their time.

Connor is a general of sorts in the Resistance. He knows that he has to save his father's life, otherwise his father will never go back in time and get Linda Hamilton knocked up so that Connor will be born, grow up to watch the world get nuked, and be around to save his father's life so that his father can go back in time...so forth.

Story?

Thrown into the mix is Marcus Wright. He's a newbie resistance guy and he steals the show. In fact, Bale shouldn't really be listed as the "star" of the movie, since Wright (played by a very good Sam Worthington) has 75% of the scenes. But Bale's got a bigger name and that's life.

I found Worthington's character interesting. Some time in the writing stage of this movie, someone decided to throw Connor's character under the bus. That's interesting because the entire franchise has been about Connor. Yet in the one installment where we should see Connor in action, he takes a back seat to a newcomer. This seems suspicious, as if there were arguments over who would play Connor, and whether or not Bale even wanted to play Connor. It smells of a rewrite. I'll never know the truth of that, but it turns out that the producers made the right call either way: Worthington is good and his character makes the movie fresh and watchable.

I can't go into Worthingon's character or I'll blow the whole movie, but I will say that he is Terminator Salvation's salvation. I found myself wishing that Connor had been deleted from the script entirely in order to spend more time watching Marcus Wright.

The effects in this movie are good, and the cast does a reasonable job. It was nice to see Michael Ironside again, though his character is meaningless. Like the other Terminator movies, the film is ultimately preposterous: time travel, people surviving a punch in the chest from a machine (picture being hit by a crowbar compliments of Barry Bonds; think you'd get up?), open heart surgeries being practiced by MASH units in the middle of the desert. But still...it's fun.

That's what I wanted from this action movie and it's what I got. If you're in the mood for that, then this movie is up your alley. If you want high brow sc-fi, then good luck. You won't find much of that these days.

Photo: Rotten Tomatoes

Foreign Oil

The US House of Representatives, determined to obliterate the American economy, passed their whacko "green bill" by a close vote yesterday. Time and again I heard the words, "To keep us from being held hostage by foreign oil."

Neverminding most of the junk in the bill, and all of the lunacy that comes from trying to scale back an economy during a recession, the one thing that bugs me is the "foreign oil" bit. McCain and Obama both harped about it during their campaigns, and many politicians have used the, "Importing oil from people that don't like us very much" excuse, or as one guy said yesterday, "People that fly airplanes into our buildings."

For the record: Canada is the number one provider of US crude and petroleum imports. Nobody else even comes close. Though the numbers fluctuate for imports from other countries, Canada always tops the list. Mexico generally comes in second, with Saudi Arabia around second or third. Last year, the US imported 2.532 million barrels of petroleum per day from Canada. That's more than double Mexico and Venezuela combined, and roughly 1 million more barrels per day than Saudi Arabia. That's a lot of petroleum. And a lot of money for Canada.

So I'm guessing that by "people that don't like us very much," the American politicos mean Canadians. Which, if you read a Toronto Star op-ed, is understandable. But it's time to give it a rest on the Middle-East-Oil-Bogeyman.

It's also time for Canadians to give it a rest on the Obama Love. Every time you turn around, the guy's trying mess up the Canadian economy. Buy American came first, now it's "Wind over foreign oil."

Canada is the foreign oil.

Fade to Black - Michael Jackson

When I was a kid, I loved Michael Jackson. Before his descent into madness, me and my friends thought he was not just the King of Pop, but the King of Everything.

I have a few very distinct memories of Jackson back in the day: me, Phil, and Sean, choreographing a routine to Billy Jean for the elementary school play. I think I remember rousing applause. Then there was me, Timmy, and Sandy choreographing more than a dozen routines in Timmy and Sandy's backyard. We were playing "music video," complete with a director (Tim), choreographer (all three of us), and an audience (Sandy's dog and - for thirty seconds - Sandy's older brother).

We didn't have a malt shop when I was kid. Instead we had a variety store that held two video games. We used to go there, hang out, and play video games all the time. There was this one guy who was the best video game player in town. He was a few years older than me, had a beard, wore a leather jacket and ripped jeans, sported an earring, drove a dented Camaro, and looked mean. His last name was Roc and it wasn't made up. He scared the hell out of me. One time I was watching him play Galaga or Pac Man and we got to talking about music. He told me, "You know who my favourite entertainer is? I bet you'll never be able to guess."

I tried the usual skid suspects ("skids" were people with long hair that listened to heavy metal; I don't know if they're still called that): Black Sabbath, AC/DC, Judas Priest, so forth. He said, "Nope. My favourite entertainer is Michael Jackson."

I was floored. This was heavy stuff. Not only did he like Michael Jackson, but he was willing to admit that he liked Michael Jackson. To give you an idea of why this was a big deal, fast forward a few months. I was hanging out in the smoker's pit of the high school. Someone brought up Roc. I was stupid enough to say that Roc's favourite entertainer was Michael Jackson. One skid girl told me that Roc was going to kick my ass for saying that, and another guy threatened to do it himself. For a week I walked around wondering when Roc was going to descend and beat me to a pulp. Never happened. That's character.

It occurs to me now that I think that was the first time I heard someone described as an "entertainer" in the true sense of the word. Roc had brains. He knew the difference between heavy metal entertaining and pop entertaining, but he knew that they were both entertainment. I wonder if Roc became a critic.

One other childhood memory: Sandy and Timmy were the first kids in the neighbourhood that had a copy of the Thriller video. I waited and waited for them to invite me over to see it. But, like kids with a pool, they knew they had a trump card. They would mention the video now and then, or talk about their favourite parts, and I would be left standing there, wishing.

Two or three weeks went by. I wished and I wished. This was in the days before 34505 channels on TV, and the only showbiz show was Entertainment Tonight. So I had probably seen only three or four Thriller previews and commercials, leaving the thing a big mystery rolling around in my head. I wanted to see it so damn bad.

Finally they showed me the video. They sat on the couch and feigned boredom while I watched in wide eyed wonder. It scared me. It thrilled me. I loved it.

Everybody did. Anyone who said that they didn't like Thriller was a liar. And Roc was right: Jackson was a great entertainer.

I lost touch with Jackson and his music after that. Black or White was the last song I really paid attention to, and that one only because an English teacher wanted to dissect it during a writing class. Jackson had begun to turn weird. Freaky weird.

Years later I was watching a Michael Jackson concert on DVD. I had wandered into a girl's room and she and her friends were loving it. I didn't get it. He was a freak. His face was a mask, his body a stick. He looked ill. While watching the video I made some comment that he looked like a freak. I got kicked out of the room. So Jackson still had it, but he didn't have me.

It takes a lot to overcome child molestation charges. Jackson settled out of court with a teenage boy to the tune of millions, but people still loved him. So who's more weird? The fans that were ready to line up for his "comeback tour," or Jackson? American Idol recently had a "Michael Jackson night," where the singers had to perform Michael Jackson songs. You kept hearing the word "legend," as in, "Michael Jackson's a legend, so it was hard to pull that song off."

Legend? Really? I don't think so. Not anymore. If his career had ended at Thriller, his legendary status would be undeniable. Instead, I think his legacy will be one of a strange celebrity that couldn't handle it. Endings mean more than beginnings. Jackson's ending sucks. A man that liked to sleep with teenage boys, wear surgical masks everywhere he went, and had his face chopped into something unrecognizable to a mother. He didn't release any studio albums in the last eight years, leaving the public to judge him not by his music, but by what he did with his life. Over the past decade, the music stores have been flooded with Jackson "greatest hits" albums, the last of which was the "Celebrating 25 Years of Thriller." Man how the time flies. 25 years since he looked normal. 25 years since I thought he ruled the world.

The old line says that poor people are crazy, rich people are eccentric. Jackson certainly proved that. If he had been a door-to-door salesman, nobody would have wanted to be within 100 yards of him. But he was a celebrity, so dangling babies from windows and sleeping with boys wasn't such a big deal.

Weird. That will be Jackson's legacy. I'd say it's sad, but it's not. Again, if a door-to-door salesman acted the way Jackson did in the latter part of his life, you'd shed no tears for him. So I guess I'll give you a very slight pass if you say, "It's about the music," but you won't get much from me if you say it's about the man. Or what was left of him.

The Proud City

There's a commercial making the rounds about the 29th Annual Pride Week. At the end of the commercial, an actor (posing as 'some everyday guy,' but they're always actors) bleeds euphoria and says, "Look how far we've come. Look how far this city has come."

Indeed. 29 years ago, Toronto was an epicenter of racism and bigotry, chock full of knuckledragging Klan members. You couldn't move without running into a bigot or being assaulted by a neo-Nazi. 29 years later, the city has parades. Look how far we've come.

In other news: About 24,000 unionized city workers walked off the job this morning, setting the stage for garbage pile-ups, closed daycare centres, cancelled summer programs and even the postponement of weddings.

I guess the city union guys ain't so proud of how far the city has come.

The Sound of History

I've spent a lot of time reading about Nazi Germany. Sometimes I've found myself wondering what it would have sounded and looked like to have been there. The audio of this report made me think of Kristallnacht, or the Night of Broken Glass. While that happened over sixty years ago, this is now happening in Iran. Take away the car alarm, and it's probably as good a hint as any.

"Sean, why do always go on about Nazi Germany?"

Your answer:

Pride

Pride Week is in the news in Toronto. I think it used to be called "Gay Pride Week," but they dropped the "Gay" and kept the "Pride." I'd love to think that's because we're all in this together: the Happy Mosaic. But, being a card carrying pessimist, I figure it has to be for more commercial reasons. When you call something "Pride Week," it can mean anything for anybody. Easier to sell Coca-Cola that way.

On the Pride Week website, the logo is the gay rainbow flag, overlaid by sketches of a person in a wheelchair, a protester with a picket sign, someone doing a handstand (Dancer Pride?), someone leaning on a cane with their other arm reaching upwards (Old Man Picking Peaches Pride), a robust person standing with hands on hips (Umpire Pride), and someone else jumping in the air, microphone reaching to the heavens (Van Halen Pride). Though all of the sketches are outline drawings of white figures, I don't think I'm going out on a limb to say that they didn't mean to underscore White Pride. Imagine the riotous news highlights from Yonge Street, as old men with canes beat neo-Nazis about the knees while people in wheelchairs scrambled for cover by mowing down drag queens.

Underneath the busy all-inclusive logo are the words Can't Stop. Won't Stop. Can't stop what? Doing handstands? They don't say. One thing that has stopped are the protests. The protester in the logo looks like something from a bygone era. There are no more protests at Gay Pride - er, Pride Week.

I hate lame slogans. Just because Barack Obama rode to victory on a vapid "Yes, we can!" deal doesn't mean it has to become a trend.

From the website: "Can't Stop, Won't Stop is the most important element for our fearless unstoppable partner organizations that create the most vibrant cultural diversity of Official Pride Week Events in our LGBTTIQQ2S communities are taking place with the spirit of Pride during the Festival" said Frank Folino, Official Pride Week Events Coordinator.

LGBTTIQQ2S? No, it's not another flu, a la H1N1. I'll let Mark Steyn explain: "Well, apparently:

LGBTTIQQ2S means "Lesbian, Gay, Bisexual, Transsexual, Transgendered, Intersexual, Queer, Questioning, 2-Spirited..."

"2-Spirited" is, I believe, a bisexual Native-American, rather than "too spirited" as in Anne of Green Gables.

Look, let's be real: LGBTTIQQ2S is probably the funniest thing I've read in weeks. It's trying so damn hard that it's a laugh. You can't say it. Can't pronounce it. Can hardly read it. When you have to copy and paste your handle for fear of spelling it wrong every time you hit the keyboard, you know something's funny about it. Intersexual? What, exactly, is that? The only part of the label that I get is the "questioning" part, as in the question, "Are you serious?"

I remember at school that there was an outfit called GBLAM. The first three letters stood for Gay, Bisexual, and Lesbian. Simple. To the point. Easy to remember, in a Marvel Comics kind of way: "GUH-BLAM!" They must be having fits with their name nowadays.

The website says there's a lot going on this week. There's the Pride Parade, the Dyke March, and a street fair. And more: "Celebrate Pride Toronto with art and music with a noon hour performance by 2009 Honoured Dyke Faith Nolan..."

Sounds like a blast.

There is one thing that might attract me to the once-protesting-now-celebrating festivities: Maple Pictures and Pride Toronto invite you to be one of the first to see the soon-to-be lesbian classic "The Baby Formula" and have a chance to party with the stars! Setting aside the desperation in "soon to be classic," any hetero dude would love a chance to party with the stars from a lesbian movie.

Poor Gay Pride Week. It used to be a way to tell The Man to stick it. Now it's lame. The website trumpets that Pride Week "is ranked as one of the TOP 50 festivals in Ontario by Festivals and Events Ontario." Yay! Can't stop, won't stop!

Consider me Questioning. Query: "Does Ontario have 50 festivals?"

Update: The answer is yes, and then some. They now have a top 100 list. The Tulip Festival is numero uno. Bummer.

The Best Show On TV

All right, so that's not a hard honor to win. But still...

The wreck at 4:50 makes my highlight reel every time.

The New Order

Without a doubt, this is the most frightening piece of writing I have read in some time. It's called Special Report to Parliament: Freedom of Expression and Freedom from Hate in the Internet Age. It's written by the Canadian Human Rights Commission. You may remember them from the news.

I read this document and my dread increased with every word. The document is in response to the recommendations of a Professor Moon. He was hired by the commission to look at their Section 13 rule, whereby a person can be prosecuted for inciting hatred or contempt on the internet.

None of the people running the CHRC are elected officials. The Canadian Human Rights Code (of which Section 13 is a part) is not a section of the Criminal Code. It is outside and above the law.

I searched through this document and saw dozens of sections that I wanted to copy, paste, and talk about. In the end, I would have had to copy and paste the whole thing (I think this is against copyright law, which doesn't scare me nearly as much as these people do).

The people at the CHRC are strange Canadians. Very strange. They write about their "Code" as if it is Law. And, truth be told, it might as well be:

The dual approach ensures that there are two distinct tools that can be used to deal with hate on the Internet:

First, the criminal law, to deal with situations where the person posting hate does so with criminal intent and therefore is deserving of punishment by way of fines or incarceration. The Criminal Code is the most severe mechanism that can be used to deal with any problem in society. Its necessity is undeniable. However, the prosecution, incarceration and stigma that can flow from the criminal justice system are not necessary to deal with every situation.

That is breathtakingly bold. A government agent is telling Canadians - the report's on the internet; it's not a state secret - that there are now two Criminal Codes. One is harsh. The other is nice. One is for crimes that are so heinous and obvious - ie, provable - that the law is required. Others are more squishy. To see them, you must be able to see clearly. Like these government agents do.

The report tells us that the Criminal Code is a "necessity," but that it causes stigma. And so, ladies and gentlemen, allow us to present the New Law. The Nicer Law. We're doing this for your own good, don't you see? You may be found to be a racist for what you say, but not to worry: we don't hate you. We pity you. We are soft, warm, and understanding. We will perfect you. Make you whole again. There is no long-term stigma. When you give thousands of dollars to the person you've offended, you are making recompense. Penance. When your name is published in the papers and you're identified as a bigot, you are helping yourself because you are helping society. We are all together now, part of the same broad tapestry. You save one life, you save the world entire. We are saving the world from you. And you'll feel better for it. Your shame will disappear once you see that we were not stigmatizing you. We were saving you.

And O'Brien said to Winston, "You must humble yourself before you can become sane."

Incidentally, was there ever any argument that the Criminal Code was a necessity? It's disturbing to ponder what was going through the head of the hack who wrote that. "Its necessity is undeniable." Who denied it? And note the "however" right after saying how necessary the Criminal Code is. Necessary. But not quite good enough.

You're probably not scared yet. Don't blame you. Maybe you don't blog, maybe you live in the woods, maybe you never say anything to another human being, ever. But try this on for size:

The requirement for proof beyond a reasonable doubt is a basic principle in criminal law. The requirement is particularly difficult in prosecuting charges under the hate provisions of the Criminal Code.

For example, in the recent case of Her Majesty the Queen v. David Ahenakew, the Court found that although the accused had made public statements about Jewish people that were "revolting, disgusting, and untrue," he could not be convicted because it was not proven beyond a reasonable doubt that he intended to promote hatred against Jews.

The difficulty in proving intent may explain why so few cases have been prosecuted and even fewer have resulted in convictions.

On the other hand, intent is not relevant in the human rights law context where the focus is on the messages themselves and their impact on their targets. Pairing the CHRA with the Criminal Code allows the flexibility to deal with cases where intent does not exist or cannot be proven beyond a reasonable doubt.

If you are any kind of Canadian, you should be sitting bolt upright in your chair saying, "What the hell is that? If they can't prove something, they'll just use the other rule book?" I also love their reasoning for why so few hate crimes have been prosecuted. It's not because Canadians aren't a bunch of bigots. It's because the rules make it too hard to lock the bigots up.

The CHRC believes the the Criminal Code is insufficient for prosecuting crimes of the mind. They literally say reasonable doubt is a concept that must be overcome. It's there in black and white. In order to circumvent two great tenents of Canadian law (mens rea - the guilty mind - and reasonable doubt) the commission simply throws them out the window. No votes, no referendums, no arguments on Parliament Hill. They just do it.

Who knew writing law could be so easy? Members of Parliament are no longer required. Voting is a moot point. Make up your own laws and, if you don't like them, change them:

The requirement for the consent of an Attorney General was likely included in the law as a safeguard against frivolous prosecutions. However, some police and Crown prosecutors are concerned that this requirement unduly hampers prosecutions. Professor Moon also expressed concerns in this regard.

Professor Moon recommends that this matter be considered further and that if it appears that the consent requirement is a barrier to the prosecution of serious hate propaganda cases, the Criminal Code be amended to remove this requirement. The Commission concurs with this approach.

Scared yet? Check it out: an unelected government agent with great power now wishes to attain greater power by not only writing their own rules, but doing away with the rules in the Criminal Code. This doesn't jibe so well with a statement just a few paragraphs before: The Criminal Code falls outside the Commission’s jurisdiction, hence, the Commission will not make specific recommendations for change. Uh, you just did.

This is brazen material. Remember that this a report to parliament, the people that supposedly draft legislation. A committee of unelected people is telling the "leaders" of the country that their laws suck. Change them. Don't you know what's good for you?

Surely there's one or two elected officials with enough wherewithal to say, "Hey, jackass. We represent the people, and we write the rules. I didn't go through months of mudslinging on the campaign trail to listen to you tell me a damn thing. By the way: you're fired."

Their disrespect for the law is clear. Their contempt for parliament and Canadian culture and history is unquestionable. But that's not the worst of it. For people that declare being on the side of "human rights," they have a funny way of showing it. Note the candor above: "The rule guarding against frivolous prosecutions is getting in the way of prosecuting people. Scrap it." Protect the little guy from harm? To hell with that. Change the rules so we can pound the nails in a little deeper.

This isn't about protecting anybody. This isn't about you or me. It's about power. Pure power. And I can think of no greater power than running your own law enforcement agency while telling elected officials which hoops they should jump through. That's heady stuff. It must be euphoric. Imagine the ego it takes to tell parliament that everything's fine on our end and, by the way, here's the list of things we need you to take care of for us. No questions asked.

Professor Moon and others raise the concern that the mere filing of a complaint, even if it is ultimately dismissed, can have a chilling effect on freedom of expression; that is, that people may refrain from posting something on the Internet out of concern that someone might file a complaint. Whether such a chill actually exists cannot be proven [bold mine]. Nonetheless, the Commission does recognize that there is potential for a "chill" scenario to arise.

Consider it proven. Believe me.

Palin

Politico: Governor Sarah Palin paused Friday afternoon in front of a monument bearing the Declaration of Sentiments, an early feminist touchstone.

“We anticipate no small amount of ridicule,” she read, and remarked: “Some things never change.”

I am under no illusions: the hit job done on her last year by much of the press and virtually every "feminist" has probably killed any White House hopes. But I still dig her. She went through hellacious treatment and came out with her head up.

Great Line

That creepy Harper's Island show was on in the background and I heard the line of the year:

"Yeah. The bastard left me in here with a rotting corpse."

Beauty.

Steyn In Haiku

I was reading Steyn's latest travails about his writing and the people that hate that he's a...er, hater.

Anyway, since this story has become more and more like farce, I say it's time to have fun with it. And so...Steyn in Haiku. For backstory on this stuff, you'll have to click on his link above and go through it bit by increasingly bizarre bit. More Steyn in Haiku are always welcome.

Mark Steyn's bigotry
Outraged trio assemble!
No cash? No Sheikh. Shit.

*****

Mark fronts Bushitler
Ezra says, "Attaboy, Steyn."
Top bestsellers: two.

*****

Sinatra is King
Elmo sucks. So do Beatles.
Demographics? Yes!

*****

Quotation Mark's up.
"Human rights?" Don't make me laugh
Fart me a lawsuit

Crazier Things Have Happened

Jake Tapper quoting...somebody. Can you guess who?

[He] was asked at the National Press Club, "given recent events in Iowa and elsewhere, is some form of legalized gay marriage inevitable for the United States?"

"I think that freedom means freedom for everyone," [he said].

“I think people ought to be free to enter into any kind of union they wish. Any kind of arrangement they wish. The question of whether or not there ought to be a federal statute to protect this, I don't support. I do believe that the historically the way marriage has been regulated is at the state level. It has always been a state issue and I think that is the way it ought to be handled, on a state-by-state basis. ... But I don't have any problem with that. People ought to get a shot at that."

That would be be Dick Cheney.

So lemme get this straight: lefties hate Bush and Cheney, but love Obama. Yet both Bush and Obama say that marriage is between a "man and a woman." And now here's Dick Cheney saying gay marriage is all right, as long as the states get to make the rules. At a stroke, this pleases the states-rights conservative crowd, but throws a hefty bone to liberals, a bone that even Obama himself won't toss.

Imagine. The Prop 8 crowd's heaviest hitting political ally turns out to be a man they absolutely despised for the past 8 years.

GLBT's for Cheney in 2012?

No. That would be crazy. Never happen. Never.

Drag Me To Hell - Review

Director: Sam Raimi
Writers: Sam Raimi/Ivan Raimi
Starring: Alison Lohman/Justin Long
Runtime: 1 hr 39 minutes

This is the horror movie I've been waiting for. Funny. Silly. Moderately gross. Fun. Fun. Fun.

In this flick, Sam Raimi shucks his Spider-Man cloak and goes old school, back to his early days of directing spooky horror flicks that contain enough thrills and gags to put the girlfriend in your lap and laughter in your mouth.

It's been a long time since I clapped during a movie. I probably clapped a half-dozen times during this one: "I can't believe he just did that." Hilarious.

The movie's about Christine Brown, a loan officer at a small bank. A gypsy woman comes in and wants an extension on her loan before she loses her house. Christine, bucking for a promotion, decides to prove she's a hardball banker. She turns the gypsy woman down. So the gypsy woman curses her to three days of torment before a demon will come and drag her into a pit of eternal fire and damnation.

Wow. Maybe Raimi was looking to give homeowners some catharsis in tough economic times. "Take my house? Burn in hell. Literally." Take that, AIG.

The movie's story is as thin as paper, but it doesn't matter. It's all been done before. Why anyone would anger a gypsy woman is beyond me, because we all know that anyone with a glass eye and missing teeth is in league with the devil. The devil, of course, must be short of cash because gypsy women can't afford anything better than a rundown fixer upper from hell. But just try to take that fixer upper away...

There's a number of great scenes in this movie. The fight scene (yes, fight scene) between Christine and the gypsy woman is an insta-classic. It reminded me of how fun Sam Raimi used to make his horror flicks. Another scene where a tormented Christine visits her fiance's parents is a beauty.

When Raimi can't scare you, he goes for the gross out. Watch out for a few scenes involving maggots, worms, a decidedly unappetizing cake, and a kitten. A kitten? "I can't believe he just did that." The movie even has a seance and a talking goat. A talking goat? Come on, you know it's gotta be a good scene (Raimi fans will like the sound effects in the scene; the voice sounds a lot like the voices from Evil Dead).

For a modern day horror flick, the body count in this movie is ridiculously low. Raimi proves you don't need ten teenagers and a machete to scare people. The cast is small and all of them are good actors. The lighting is sparse. The visual effects are good. This is a stripped down flick that moves along so quickly you could be forgiven for thinking it's one of the previews.

This is a good, fun horror movie. See it.

The Thinker

I waited for it, and it came.

Peggy Noonan: Newt Gingrich twitters that Judge Sotomayor is a racist. Does anyone believe that? He should rest his dancing thumbs, stop trying to position himself as the choice and voice of the base in 2012, and think.

I suppose I'm in danger of being labelled "anti-intellectual," but that's all right. Really I am just amused at the amount of times words like "think" and "thought" and "intellectual" are appearing in columns coast to coast nowadays.

Take Noonan's piece above. It takes about four or five paragraphs to make an entrance, but it finally shows up: Peggy thinks. Peggy's friends think. People that disagree with Peggy? They don't think (or live in the "world of thought," if you hang out with Chris Mooney, or embody "Spock's passion for reason," if you're a chum of Jeff Greenwald, or do the "work of thought," if you're related to Joe Klein, or practice "intellectual honesty," if you break bread with Krauthammer, or have "intellectual force and energy," a la Rahm Emanuel, or act "intellectually serious," like David Brooks - funny, when you add them all up like that, it starts to look like a trend).

The condescension doesn't drip from Peggy's pen. She isn't using the "think" word as derogatory. Hell, she doesn't even use italics to show she really means it. Instead, her snobbish "intellectualism" is en passant. And that's the point: Peggy and her ilk are good thinkers. They aren't angered by people that disagree with them, they pity them. If someone doesn't see eye to eye with Pegs, it's not because the person is wrong, it's because the person just doesn't know how to think properly.

This trend started when Obama got elected. We are constantly told that he was a university professor and an expert on the US Constitution (by no less an authority than Barack Obama himself, who constantly reminds us that he got a degree and read the Constitution a bunch of times; me too, but his views on the document differ from mine. There I go not thinking again). After his election, "brain power" became all the rage. Everyone wants to point out who is brilliant and who is not. Obama tops the list. University professors come shortly thereafter. Writers for big (but going bankrupt) publications come in third. Then there's...everyone else. You and me. The dummies (unless you agree with them, in which case you're called an "informed voter" or a "base.")

A question: when is the last time you talked to a university professor and thought anything they had to say mattered worth a damn? For that matter, when's the last time you talked to a university professor? I was on a college campus the other day and it reminded me just what a cloistered life it is. Old buildings, faculty lounges, residences, classrooms, restaurants, bars, you name it. When I was in school, I rarely left the grounds. There could have been a hundred angry lions at the gate and I wouldn't have known it until summer. I might as well have been on the moon.

University professors only leave their sanctuaries when they interview on Charlie Rose, lecture at another university, or run for office. Out of touch? Sure. Out to lunch? You bet. You never see these people because they're about as far from real life as you can get. But they think, damnit. How do they do that? How can I learn it? What is this "think" of which they speak?

When I disagree with political orthodoxy today, it's not because I'm wrong, or crazy, or even stupid. I'm just not thinking. If I just sit down and think for a while, I'll be all right. I'll learn to see it the good way. The proper way. When will I ever learn to think?

Bending to Vick

The sports shows are slowly leaning towards a reinstatement of Michael Vick.

He was released from prison a couple of weeks ago and has given no press appearances, but the sycophants that make up the sports media are already bending. Funny, that. He doesn't even have to say "whoops" or "prison sucks," and already they're kneeling.

On Fan 590 I heard a DJ say, "I'm a dog lover, but..." He went on to ask his listeners if they didn't think that everyone deserved a second chance. A man called in to say Vick should be banned from life let alone football. The DJ repeated that he was a dog lover - "I've had my dog for 17 years and I'm quite attached to him" - and then used the old magic word: "but."

Vick's a scumbag, but...Vick's a criminal, but...

This afternoon on another radio show, I head two DJs interviewing a guy from Sports Illustrated. They asked him if Vick might find a place in the NFL. The SI guy demurred, unsure of anything, but then asked if Vick might find a place in the CFL. The DJs told him that it depended if Vick was suspended from the NFL, since the CFL now recognizes suspensions in any other football league (read: the NFL). So the CFL gambit is a non-starter as far as Vick is concerned, but doesn't it speak volumes that the three men were even discussing it?

Sports "journalists" have no shame. None. They'll forgive anything, no matter how immoral, to kiss a professional athlete's ass. Here's what I had to say about the Vick dog killings a while back. It pertains to the asinine "second chance" comments that sports "journalists" trot out whenever they need to give an athlete a moral makeover:

Remember that this was going on at his kennel, not in some parking lot on the outskirts of town. Vick wasn’t "caught up" in anything. He was chiefly responsible for it. The dead dogs are buried on his property. The kennel, incidentally, was bought by Vick in 2001 for a little over $34000. With a flair for prophesy, these clowns named it Bad Newz Kennels.

The sycophantic sports writers are in quite a dilemma over this. Dog beats athlete for America’s heart every time, and the sports writers are in a pickle. They are, after all, writers, not reporters. There is no such thing as a sports reporter. Like me, emotions run their version of typing. They have steadfastly refused to investigate steroids in baseball (have you seen Jason Grimsley’s name lately?), or football. While Barry Bonds cheats his way past Henry Aaron, the sports writers go whistling through the locker room as if nothing’s amiss. Now they have a problem: America likes dogs.

But sports journalists like players.

Let's read again what Michael Vick did to wind up in the joint:

In the most disturbing account yet of Michael Vick's dogfighting operation, a federal investigative report details how the disgraced athlete killed pit bulls by hanging them from a nylon cord nailed to a tree and drowned others in a five gallon bucket of water...Purnell Peace, who was convicted along with Vick, told federal agents how he, Vick, and a third man had to drown one dog after it did not die when they tried to hang the animal. After Vick agreed last year to plead guilty to a conspiracy charge, he was interviewed by federal agents and claimed that he "never actually killed a dog," though he admitted watching his friends hang, shoot, and electrocute pit bulls. But after failing an October 2007 FBI polygraph test "as it related to the killings of the dogs," Vick recanted his denial and "admitted taking part in the actual hanging of the dogs."

The "second chance" philosophy as it applies to Vick is an obscene lie. Second chances are reserved for people who do something once, regret it, pay for it, and get on with their lives. If Vick had wandered into a room, seen a dog fight for the first time in his life, and been caught there, I would be all in favour of a second chance. But that's not what happened. Instead, he bought a kennel for the purpose of setting these dogs on each other. He watched them be electrocuted. He saw others shot. Some he hanged with a nylon cord. One that we know of he helped drown in a barrel. He watched small dogs get used as "practice" for the fight dogs. Then he and his friends buried the bodies on his property.

Vick has had a hundred chances to change his ways. The only reason he didn't get to 101 is because he got caught and put in prison.

Former QB Jim Kelly was on the radio the other day and said that he would leave it up to the NFL to decide Vick's fate, but in no way would Kelly want Vick to be a member of the Buffalo Bills. Other teams should feel the same way and say so.

The NFL needs to decide if it is a truly a "league," and what kind of league it wants to be. If they allow Vick back onto an NFL football field, they will truly be the National Felony League. Their reputation won't be fit for dogs.

Fade to Black - Peter Zezel

I was watching Zezel last year when he was filling in as a co-host for the Hockey Central show on Sportsnet. I remember thinking that he sounded like a gentleman.

I don't know if I ever heard a bad word about Zezel from anybody. He was a good player (underused as a Leaf, but I'm not a Leafs fan, so what did I care?), and a class act. After retirement he ran a hockey camp for teens and he did a lot of charity work. The only knock I had on him back in the day was the hockey hair mullet he carried around.

I remember the controversy surrounding his retirement. His niece was dying of cancer and he asked to be traded from Vancouver to an eastern team so he could be closer to her. Instead, the Canucks traded him to Anaheim, as far west as the NHL can get. So he retired. I like that story.

It's hard to believe that the disease he was diagnosed with was still with him. Last year on the TV shows he looked healthy, with the post-retirement fat of an athlete that's found the joy of not working out three hours a day. Alas, hemolytic anemia had kept its grip on him for a decade. Recently it took a turn for the worse. He had surgery a few days ago and ended up on life support. He died on Tuesday, aged 44.

More here.

Hey, Would You Like To Talk About Singing For Our Legendary Rock Band?

“Amongst all that furor, there wasn’t really a quiet moment to talk,” May tells Rolling Stone in an e-mail interview. “But [drummer Roger Taylor] and I are definitely hoping to have a meaningful conversation with him at some point. It’s not like we, as Queen, would rush into coalescing with another singer just like that. It isn’t that easy. But I’d certainly like to work with Adam. That is one amazing instrument he has there.”

That's Brian May, Queen guitarist and frontman, talking about American Idol runner-up Adam Lambert.

Let's say you're sitting around in your living room one day and say, "You know, I think I'll try out for this American Idol thing." Six months later the guitarist of Queen is pondering whether or not to give you a job?

Not bad, buddy.

Water Bored

I've seen a lot of these videos over the years, but there's more of them appearing seemingly every week. This is another clip of a moderately famous person being waterboarded. In this case it's the radio DJ named Mancow.

He has the water poured on his face and gives up after a few seconds, proving how discomforting waterboarding is. Immediately after he surrenders, his co-host endlessly repeats "You're soaked." And that, it appears, is the extent of the lasting damage of waterboarding.



So, is waterboarding "torture?" I guess it is, because it would be "torturous" to go through it. But surely the fact that so many celebrities line up to be waterboarded proves how safe and untorture-like it is. In a strange way, these endless You Tube waterboarding clips show that waterboarding is like some kind of a goofy party trick: "Hey, Bob, how long can you balance a beer bottle on your head? Hey, Lou, can you drink beer while doing a headstand? Hey, Tony, how long can you last with water being poured on your face?"

US agents have never been accused of pulling out fingernails or electrocuting genitals. If they had, it's doubtful that Mancow and Christopher Hitchens would drop trow and say, "Light me up."

It's water. Being poured on your face. It sucks, and then it's over. So no one's afraid to try it. Then they thank their co-host and carry on with their day.

I doubt it's the effect these guys are going for, but they're pretty much proving that it's no big deal. Mark my words: you're going to hear about it taking place at a frat initiation very soon. Kids, schools, and waterboarding? CNN will have a field day.

Inglourious Basterds

Vis-a-vis Tarantino's new war-shoot-'em-up, Reuters has this to say:

Most of the dialogue is in German and French and translated with subtitles, possibly limiting the film's box office potential in the United States.

Sigh.

I hear that all the time from my film buddies in LA: subtitles are bad. Don't have a female lead. Black and white sucks.

All of these rules are a sham. All that matters is a good story, and that Holy Grail of film success: for some reason, people that want to see the movie.

Let's face it. Subtitles on a Tarantino movie will only make it seem more cool. Tarantino's fans will flock to see it. They'll stay up late, break out the French-German-English dictionary, and pore over every word to see if Big T is sending them a hidden message.

To Mel Gibson's credit, two of his last movies were done entirely in foreign languages and he won huge. The languages in his movies were so foreign that some of them haven't been spoken in hundreds of years. Here's his returns for the effort:

The Passion of the Christ: Budget: $30 million. Worldwide gross: $611,899,420
Apocalypto: Budget: $40 million. Worldwide gross: $117,785,051

So far, so good.

Bedside Manners

New York Times: That’s what Janice Langbehn, a social worker in Lacey, Wash., says she experienced when her partner of 18 years, Lisa Pond, collapsed with an aneurysm during a Florida vacation and was taken to a Miami trauma center. She died there, at age 39, as Ms. Langbehn tried in vain to persuade hospital officials to let her visit, along with the couple’s adopted children.

“I have this deep sense of failure for not being at Lisa’s bedside when she died,” Ms. Langbehn said. “How I get over that I don’t know, or if I ever do.”

The case, now the subject of a federal lawsuit in Florida, is being watched by gay rights groups, which say same-sex partners often report being excluded from a patient’s room because they aren’t “real” family members.

I don't look at this as a gay rights story. I look at it as a hospital-staffs-are-stupid story.

Hospitals are like any other bureaucracy. If you've been in one lately, then you know that it isn't a place where the sick are cared for. They're processed.

TV shows like Grey's Anatomy and House have greatly reinforced the idea that once you become injured or ill, you are a piece of meat with no rights. You will be tended to by wise cracking doctors who discuss their sex lives while your heart is exposed to the open air. Worrying thought: is it all bogus, or have the writers done their homework and art is imitating life?

House in particular is teaching aspiring physicians that their problems are far more pressing than a patient's. If you watch an episode of House (and I often do; I like the show) then you will see that every episode is simply a lengthy experiment on a hapless extra. Patient ill? Try this drug. Still ill? Open up his brain. Still ill? Try another drug. Dying? Zap him with the paddles. Still ill? Give him yet another drug, until, ta-da! He's all better. The show never goes into the pain of the patient. In fact, the stars rarely speak the patient's name. The patient only survives because House and his team have stumbled upon the right drug to cure him before their previous fifteen treatments did him in.

I remember watching one Grey's Anatomy episode that really drove the point home: the interns were delighted to find a bunch of dead bodies in the morgue so they could practice on them in every Dr. Mengele way possible. After two episodes of chopping dead people to bits, one of the stars finally caught them and gave a short speech on how upset she was. These were people, didn't they see? Nice try. The next episode, back to yukking it up over a man's squashed face.

I've probably channelled him too often, but Warhol was right: celebrities not only teach us how to behave, but more importantly how to look while behaving. When I split my finger open a few weeks ago, I went to get stitches. They broke out the ampules of freezing liquid, the needles, and the thread. Then the nurse told me that Grey's Anatomy was her favorite TV show.

It was not a comforting statement.

The Passion of the Lemur

I was reading a story about the new - well, old - fossil that somebody found in Germany. I studied anthropology back in school, so I was mildly curious to check it out. Sure enough, another old primate skeleton. It's being heralded as "the missing link" between humans and lemur-like tree dwellers.

Color me unimpressed. Every once in a while a fossil turns up and somebody says that we're descended from apes. But I bought that a long time ago, so new skeletons are only of vague interest to me. Evolution? No argument here. Missing link? Umm...no. One skeleton out of the 4.5 billion years of Earth history won't convince me of much except that a monkey-like creature once drowned in the mud of what we now call "Germany." Using that skeleton as Man's "Start Here" square doesn't square with me.

I feel about evolution the way I did about Pangaea. I was in grammar school looking at the world map that hung over my boring teacher's shoulder. I found it cool that Africa fit into the Caribbean, England into France, Greenland-into-Baffin-Island-into-Quebec. A few years later a high school geography teacher told us about this Pangaea theory, about how the Earth's landmasses were once attached. I thought, "Gee, what a revelation." I wasn't being a know-it-all, and my grades proved I wasn't the brightest kid in class, but honestly: anybody over the age of 12 should be able to look at a map and go, "Huh. Funny how they all fit together."

Same thing with evolution. When I was kid, I saw moneys and gorillas and thought, "Wow. They really look like us." I don't know if I consciously thought that we were related, but somehow it just made sense: they look like us. We're...similar. Come to that, why does everything on land have two eyes? Why do most animals have five toes, just like me?

I was really taken with the skeletons of whales. I remember the book, a big tome in the school library with lots of bright pictures, and in there they showed what whales looked like. And underneath those flippers - wouldn't you know it? - there were five fingers. Big fingers, but fingers nonetheless. That struck me as very, very cool.

Eventually I read that some people today are born with tails, and somehow this made sense, too. In the end, I believed in evolution before I knew what it was. When I learned about Darwin, I was flabbergasted that it took thousands of years for someone to come up with the idea. Were my ancestors really that dumb? Couldn't they see?

Some of these thoughts led me to major in anthropology. Indiana Jones it wasn't. Professors would unload a ton of bones onto a table and we had to classify them and put them into their proper boxes, then graph the results. Took eons. I hated bones after that.

Anyway, evolution seemed very elementary to me. The evolution debate has never been that big a deal. For me, it wasn't a debate at all.

What I find much more interesting these days are the Atheists that jump on new fossil discoveries in order to celebrate their faith. When a fossil is discovered purporting to be the beginnings of Man, five minutes won't go by before an Atheist celebrates the news. As the self-proclaimed preening Atheist on Hot Air put it: I love the smell of fossilized monkeys in the morning. Smells like … victory.

Victory? What exactly have you won?

I'm not one way or the other about religion. I know for a fact that if I was in a bunker, out of ammunition, and the enemy was closing in, I would pray. If me, a friend, or a family member was told they had a couple of weeks to live, I would pray. I don't pray now, but there is no doubt in my mind that I would pray then. To believe otherwise would be foolish. Way too many hardcore Atheists have written books and articles about how they "found God" after being told they were goners. To think that I would be any different than them when the crap hits the fan is fantasy.

Human beings are a praying animal. We may not all believe in God - or a god - but all of us eventually pray when the going gets tough enough. All we need is time. If a bus runs you over, you may not have time to pray. But if the bus runs over your kid and she's on life support in the ICU, I'll bet you anything that you'll pray. Hard.

My dad was once reading a book written by an Atheist about Atheism (random aside: I capitalize "Atheist" and "Atheism" because they are no different than "Christian" and "Christianity," or "Muslim" and "Islam." All have their religious observers, zealots, priests, gospels, prophets and sacred artifacts - er, fossils). I leafed through the book for a little while, but I couldn't get into it. It smacked of phoniness. No doubt the author believed what he was saying. I didn't fault him for it. But it was phony: if a doctor told him his daughter was going to die next month, his Atheism would go out the window in a heartbeat, royalty checks be damned. I know that.

You might be curious to know that I never heard one religious conversation in all the time I studied anthropology. Not one. Sure, we talked about the religions of various cultures, and we debated whether or not a certain artifact showed the presence of religion in an ancient society. But not once did an atheism/religion/evolution debate break out. I think we all took it for granted that evolution was a fact, but it never occurred to us that this should start a debate over the existence of God, or that Creationists were foolish for not agreeing with us. It just never came up. That seems stunning to me now. It would have seemed equally stunning then to have Atheists celebrate an anthropological discovery as proof of their beliefs. We would have thought they were weirdos.

I still do.

Thank you...Sir?

I was watching the highlights of the Memorial Cup's opening game and saw an interview with the kid that scored the OT game-winner. His name's Maxime Frenette, a fresh faced kid who probably couldn't grow a decent beard if he tried (and he's trying). Here's TSN's take:

The 18-year-old from Boisbriand, Que. was only in the lineup because star forward Chris DiDomenico was injured, but he backhanded in the game-winner 8:56 into overtime to lift the Voltigeurs to a 3-2 victory over the Windsor Spitfires on Saturday at the MasterCard Memorial Cup.

At the end of the TV interview, the interviewer wished Frenette luck the rest of the way. Frenette replied with a sincere, "Thank you, sir."

Refreshing. Cool to see. A couple of years of pro hockey and a free agent contract will knock that kind of talk out of him in no time, but for now we can enjoy it.

Wings Win Round 2

It was a close one. I know my Wings well, so when they were up 2-0 over the Ducks in the second period, I thought, "This is going to overtime."

The Wings often have trouble maintaining a lead against tenacious teams. I can see what mood they're in from the TV screen. Some nights they feel like keeping their foot on the gas. Others, they get lazy and allow a team back in. Sure enough, it was 3-3 late in the 3rd, until Dan Cleary sewed it up in the last three minutes to make it 4-3.

Now, it's Chicago's turn. They're infamous for coming back when down two or three goals, so the Wings will have to be merciless.

Photo by Gregory Shamus/Getty Images

Star Trek - Review

Director: JJ Abrams
Writers: Alex Kurtzman/Roberto Orci
Starring: Chris Pine/Zachary Quinto
Runtime: 2 hours 7 minutes

With the exception of Star Trek II: The Wrath of Kahn, the new Star Trek movie is the most fun movie in the franchise. It has taken a tired, old clunker of a ship and turned it back into something that can run at warp speed.

The movie is a prequel - of sorts. We see the moment that James T. Kirk is born, and we see a young Spock decide to forgo a life of science on Vulcan to join Star Fleet. The bad guys are the Romulans, there's plenty of "Fire phasers!" and "Incoming photon torpedo!" Kirk sleeps with a green skinned girl, he beats the hell out several people and aliens (but no, doesn't get his shirt ripped open), and a young Bones is along for the ride with lines like, "Damnit, man, I'm a doctor not a physicist!"

The movie's plot is preposterous, but it doesn't matter. Star Trek was always preposterous. Klingons, Vulcans, Romulans, you name it, they all still speak fluent English and in fact speak it better than Chekhov.

The one moment in this film that made me worry was the appearance of a "time-travel-made-easy" plot device involving black holes. I needn't have worried. Though the science is completely out of whack, it's used for a good purpose: adventure and thrills. This far surpasses the other Star Trek movie, where time travel was used to...save whales.

This film takes Star Trek back to its roots. Kirk and Spock don't sit around wondering about the meaning of life. There are no aliens that need to be "understood." There isn't a wimpy Jean Luc Picard in sight. Shockingly, there are only two references of, "Gee, wouldn't it be nice if there was peace all over the universe?" One of these references comes from Captain Pike (Bruce Greenwood), who says that Star Fleet is a humanitarian fleet. That has always made me wonder: if humanity has become a load of peaceniks before taking to space, how did they develop phasers, photon torpedoes, and ships loaded for galactic bear?

The other reference to peace in our time comes near the end of the film. Kirk says a line so completely at odds with his character and the scene that it's ridiculous. It provides a big "Gimme a break" moment.

In any case, what you have here is a good, old fashioned science fiction opera. It's stripped down to the essentials of fun and gun. The filmmakers were smart in throwing a few bones to the Trekkie crowd (Scotty with the one-liners, a cameo by Leonard Nimoy) while keeping it fresh enough for new viewers. In essence, they made a movie that can please both camps.

See it.

Photos: Yahoo Movies

Another Gotcha Moment, Suckers

AP: The Obama administration says it will use bailout money repaid by large U.S. banks to support additional capital infusions for smaller banks.

Treasury Secretary Timothy Geithner says the repayment proceeds expected from some of the largest banks will be used "to reopen the application window" for banks with total assets under $500 million.

Whoa. Let Berry the Sceptic dust off his economics degree and ask a question. To whit: isn't this what Bernie Madoff is in jail for?

All right, it may not be the exact definition of a Ponzi scheme, but it's as close as you can get. Let's say a buddy of yours lends your money to another guy. He tells you, "Don't worry. He'll pay it back in a couple of months. It's something I like to call 'repayment.'"

A couple of months go by and the guy shows up with your money. He hands it to your friend and your friend turns around and gives it to another guy. You're standing there empty handed and say, "Wait a sec. I thought that was my money. What happened to the 'repay' part of 'repayment?'"

To which your buddy says, "Oh. You thought you would get the money back."

"Yeah," you say. "You told me I'd be 'repaid.'"

"Since when? I said they'd repay the money. I never said they'd repay it to you."

"But it's my money."

"No it isn't," he says. "It's mine now. You gave it to me."

"But--"

"Listen man, I hate to break it to you but somebody's gotta say it: it's not my fault you're a sucker."

And he's right.

The Bus Arrives - Man Ram

It looks like Ramirez is going on a 50-game road trip. Solo:

Manny Ramirez was suspended for 50 games by Major League Baseball on Thursday, becoming the latest high-profile player ensnared in the sport’s drug scandals.

The Los Angeles Dodgers star said he did not take steroids and was given medication by a doctor that contained a banned substance. The commissioner’s office didn’t announce the specific violation by the 36-year-old outfielder, who apologized to the Dodgers and fans for “this whole situation.”

Strangely enough, "this whole situation" helps highlight how much players like Ramirez are paid. Since players aren't paid while on suspension over drug use, Ramirez will lose a little over $7 million. What's astounding about that number is not how much money it is, but how little. $7 million is only a third of his salary. He'll still come out of the 2009 season roughly $17 million richer than he went in.

If Ramirez is crying, then he's crying himself to sleep in a big bed full of money.

"Intellectual" Alert - Mark Steyn

This one's a bummer. I dig Steyn and I like his stuff. Unfortunately he decided to break out the boffo intellectual label, just to let us know that somebody can really think (unlike, say, me and you - the people that haven't been hit with the Magic Wand of Public Wisdom):

Others may find Germany in the ‘30s the more instructive comparison. “It isn’t silent majorities that drive things, but vocal minorities,” the Canadian public intellectual George Jonas recently wrote.

True. But what's with this "public intellectual" stuff?

There's no need to elevate writers you agree with by giving them a phony label. "Writer" is enough. Leave the "public intellectual" nonsense to somebody else.

Just a note from your gregarious private moron.

Robbed? Sure. But What's New?

Were the Red Wings robbed of a chance to win the game in overtime?

Sure, but what's new? I don't mean for the Wings, but for teams everywhere. Officiating in most sports is terrible, and bad calls happen on a regular basis (this is the negative side effect of Super-Duper-All-Sports-All-The-Time packages: you get to see a ton of games but also get to see a ton of bad officiating).

In The Red Wings' case, a loose puck was inches from the goal line, sitting there like a big black pancake. Marian Hossa reached out and knocked the tying goal into the - tweet - net. Oops. The ref "lost sight of the puck." No goal. A minute later the game was over.

It was a terrible call with a terrible excuse. Refs lose sight of the puck all the time. Show me a scrum in front of the net and I'll show you an "out of sight" puck. Refs usually wait about two seconds before killing the play. In this case, the ref lost sight of the puck for maybe a millisecond before blowing the play dead. Even so, the video shows the puck over the line before the sound of the whistle.

Or does it? And here's another funny rule in the NHL: the sound of the whistle doesn't matter. It is the referee's intention to blow the whistle that counts. So if his hand is halfway to his mouth, and he's a little late in tweeting his little toy, the play might still be dead. And it's not reviewable.

So robbed, yes. But bad officiating in the NHL is a proverb. You have to play through it. Every team in any sport is playing against two teams: their opponent, and the officials. Both must be overcome in order to win a game. Maxim: officials are not unbiased - they just want all teams to lose.

I thought the Wings looked flat out of the gate. The Ducks wanted it more. But around the halfway mark the Wings picked up their game and skated with it. They outclassed the Ducks at every turn in the 3rd period and doubled the Ducks' shot production. Hiller was on his game and made some good saves, but the Wings - and this is worrisome - had a lot of trouble giving puck support in the offensive end.

Still, the Wings looked good in the third period and should be able to carry that over into game 4. Whether an official feels like deciding the outcome of that game as well is, of course, up to him. To overcome that, the Wings have to do what you're supposed to do to win games: score more.

Photo: The Freep

Mike Brophy - Hockey "Insider"

I'm not sure if there's anyone as stupid as a Toronto sportscaster. I've tried hard to think of somebody and I've come up with squat.

Granted, I'm a Detroit Red Wing fan, so I'm biased. Then again, I'm partial to the Blue Jays, so I should be on board the Toronto sportscaster bandwagon. But I'm not. I've lived in too many places and listened to too much radio. Final result: knowledge that every sportcaster in Toronto is a wannabe twit. Bad analysis, idiotic theories, you name it.

Case in point: I was listening to the Hockey Central show on the Sportsnet channel. There's Mike Brophy, the hockey "insider," asking Blues coach Andy Murray how devastating Detroit's third overtime period loss must have been for the team. Can they recover? It's just a killer, isn't it? Devastating, right?

Bonehead.

Let us hearken back to the dark, ancient days of...2008. Less than 11 months ago, Detroit played a game against the Pittsburgh Penguins that went into triple overtime. It was the Stanley Cup finals. Detroit lost.

The loss was so devastating that the Red Wings went on to win the Stanley Cup a couple of days later.

I'm not saying Detroit will win another Cup this year. What makes me laugh is a hockey "insider" who can't remember what he had for dinner last night.

Name Game

This story caught my eye:

Quebec's civil registrar wants a Montreal couple to explain why they want to give their baby boy the middle name "Avalanche."

It's the latest hurdle for the family, who were originally told - because of a translation error in a letter - that the registrar had rejected the baby's first name of Logan.

Man, they're getting pretty strict about names up in Quebec. "Avalanche" seems pretty tame to me. I remember a story about the guy who named his two kids "Winner" and "Loser." Later in life Winner became a criminal while Loser became a successful police officer. Loser said that he didn't mind his name, though others did: they pronounced it the French way - Loosay - or they just called him "Lou."

Here's a post I wrote about my own name a long time back. This was back in my major league travelling days, when my name mutated wherever I went:

I've heard that to rouse a slumbering person from across a room, you simply have to whisper their name a few times. I tried it on a sleeping girlfriend, she woke up, and I told her that I was conducting an experiment. She called me something else - not my name - and went back to sleep. But she proved the point.

The point of that article, and another one I read about names, is that our name is the most beautiful sound we will ever hear. All of us are narcissists.

I was leafing through one of those 'How to Win Friends'-type books, and it told me to say a person's name as often as I could when talking to them. As in, "That's a great idea, Bob." Or, "I'll tell you something, Sid..." Or, "You have fantastic breasts, Janet."

I don't know how scientific all this is, but it would seem to make sense. Hearing our name means someone is listening to us and might even be paying attention to what we're saying. As long as the person saying your name isn't your wife banging on the motel room door, it's probably a good thing.

If you have a good name.

My name is not good. Not because I don't like the name 'Sean,' which is said to be an Irish version of John, but because no two people seem to say it the same way. This doesn't sound like a big deal, but after three decades on the planet, it gets a bit old.

When I was a kid, I had no problem with the idea that S-E-A-N was pronounced 'Sh-awn.' The kindergarten teacher didn't tell me that I was spelling it wrong when I signed my finger paintings, so it never entered my head that there was anything wrong with my name.

It was in third grade that funny things started happening. My mom or my dad bought me one of those iron-on shirts, the ones where people would put their names on the back in case they forgot who the shirt belonged to when they pulled it out of the drawer. On the back of that shirt was written SEAN. So it was my shirt with my name. I can't remember what was on the front, but it was probably an iron-on Twisted Sister logo or something.

Anyway, I put on that shirt and went to school. All day long people called me 'Seen,' as in, "I have seen the light." I had no idea why they were calling me this, until I realized that they were ripping on my name. Since that day, I have probably been called 'Seen' about ten thousand times.

It isn't always the smart-asses that call me Seen. People from east of the Rhine and into Asia also call me Seen, because they think that's how it's pronounced. Filipinos especially have a tough time with it. They see my name on a Hello My Name Is tag or on a piece of paper, and they say, "Hello, Seen."

Non-English speaking people always screw up my name. To the Chinese, I am "See-Awn" or "See-Ann." To the Japanese, I am "Sen." The Greeks and Indians make me feel like I'm back in third grade, because they call me "Seen." To some some guy from the Czech Republic, I was "Soon." How the hell he got Soon out of S-E-A-N, I have no idea.

It isn't just the foreigners, either. My name is extremely vulnerable to accents, unlike say, Ken. Pretty hard to screw up Ken. A Ken by any accent is still a Ken. But not Sean.

To the English and South Africans, I am 'Shown.' To someone from the deep South, I am still Sh-awn, but with a bizarre twist on the last syllable. The fact that my name doesn't have more than one syllable doesn't matter. They put one in anyway.

Sean is a bummer name on two counts: people can't say it, and people constantly need to be told how to spell it.

Here's a typical phone call when I'm calling an airline or a hotel desk (granted, these are not Mensa candidates).

"Yes, I have a few questions."
"What's your name?"
"Sean."
"John?"
"Sean, S-E-A-N."
"S...Sean?"
"Yes, Sean. Like 'Sean Connery.'"
"Oh, Sean Connery! Right!"
"Yeah. I just wish I had his money."
"Ha-ha-ha."

Mine is one of those names that you say and spell in the same breath. I learned long ago not to wait for someone to ask how it's spelled, because they always ask how it's spelled. So if I am talking to someone for the first time, my name is always, "Sean-S-E-A-N." I knew a girl whose last name was Grey. She told me that she had the same problem, and that her name was always "Grey-with-an-E."

I only use the same-breath-spelling-routine when I know I will have to see the person again. If not, I use "Steve." This is very useful at a fast food restaurant, or a Starbucks, where they ask your name and write it on your cup. Rather than go through the "Sean...Not John, Sean...Like 'Sean Connery'..." stuff, I just say Steve and save myself thirty seconds.

Poor Sean Connery. I've used his handle so many times, I should be paying him residuals. His name comes in especially handy when dealing with foreigners. They struggle over my name, trying to pronounce it five ways from Sunday, until I say, "Sean Connery."

Their faces immediately light up with recognition. They say "Sean Connery! James Bond!" And we have a great big laugh as I dream about them drowning in the Danube. I wonder what Sean Connery does when he calls a hotel to make a reservation. "Sean. As in Sean Connery. As in me, you damn fool."

"Sean" causes trouble around St. Patrick's Day, too. Suddenly everyone thinks I know the history of St. Patrick's Day, and they take for granted that I'll wear an Ireland soccer shirt and drink green beer until I turn green and barf same.

Not true. I have been to Ireland once. I played golf, and I liked it. But I do not know any Irish folk songs, nor do I enjoy drinking green beer. Unlike the Irish, I enjoy Budweiser as much as I enjoy Guinness. Makes no difference to me, either what beer I drink, or what color it comes back up in.

My family came to Canada sometime in the 1700's, and as far as I'm concerned, that makes me Canadian. If a person's grandparents were born in Canada or the States, then that grandchild has no right to call themselves Italian, or Irish, or German, or whatever. Done deal. The so-called "Irish" people in Boston are full of crap, likewise the "Italians" in New York City. You're American. If you can't give me directions from Genoa to Rome without consulting a map, then you aren't Italian. Get over it.

So this is me, Sean the Canadian. A Sean by any other name is still a Sean. Unless he's a Soon. Or a See-Awn. Or a whatever the hell.

Pleased to meet you.

Buckley the Sap

This is what passes for informed commentary these days:

I’m no strategist or political thinker, and I voted Democrat in the last presidential election—but since everyone else is weighing in, what the hell.

One of the oldest rules in politics is: If your opponent is committing suicide, don’t interfere. So were I in charge of the Republican Party, I would send out a coded text message saying: REMAIN CALM. SHUT UP. THIS IS GOING TO BLOW UP IN THEIR FACES.

Much as I admire President Obama, I believe with something approaching certainty that his spending will bring this country to its knees.

Let me get this straight. This Buckley character (who often manages to inform you that he had a famous dad, as if we didn't get it already) says he's a conservative, voted for Obama, is almost certain Obama's going to ruin the country, admires Obama, says the Republican party is dead, advises the Republican party to shut up because Obama will flunk and the Republican party will be just fine.

It takes a particular brand of sap to use the same sentence declaring admiration for a man that he's almost certain will tank his country.

I wonder if this Buckley clown reads his own stuff after he types it. Earlier in the column he quotes Keats: "Negative capability,” the term coined by Keats, was interpreted by F. Scott Fitzgerald: “The test of a first-rate intelligence is the ability to hold two opposing ideas in the mind at the same time, and still retain the ability to function.”

"Negative capability." I like that. It sounds so much better than "doublethink," which is exactly what Buckley practices when he tries to come off as Mr. Centrist.

One last thing: what's the deal with Buckley's hat, anyway? I think it's called a fedora, but I'm not sure because no one's worn one in fifty years.

The Drudge Pandemic II

Vis-a-vis my post that Drudge got bored and drove the flu pandemic story. He was the story's Patient Zero and he played it for all he was worth.

He's now grown bored with it, as I knew he would. Last night he flipped his bright red headlines to the US Supreme Court vacancy. His flu pandemic? It's been relegated to a couple of small headlines further down the page, beside a story on Michelle Obama's shoes.

In his wake he's left a WHO on high alert, Dr. Phil telling people not to worry about eating pork, a Vice President telling his family not to ride the subway, a President answering questions at news conferences, Tamiflu rich, schools closed, parents freaked out, Mexican tourism in the toilet, the Egyptian government ordering a swine cull, the EU considering a ban on flights from Mexico, and paranoid people all over the world wearing surgical masks.

This is essentially the biggest hoax in years, perpetrated by a reclusive man with a keyboard and time on his hands.

And you know what? I have to admire him for it.

"After Thoughtful Consideration..." Ka-Boom.

When you can't move something, you might as well blow it sky high. At least, that's the logic in this clip from the '70s.

I was tooling around on YouTube and got into "Next hell." That's where one clip ends and some key word or other matches the next clip. Curious, you click Next. And Next. And Next. Before you know it, an hour's gone by and you've gone from Aerosmith Live in Concert to Pool Cue Smacks Drunk Guy In Groin.

Dead whale + TNT = flattened Cadillac. Huh?

The '70s, baby: