The Occasional Rant: As True As It Is Now As It Was Then

Over 2 years ago I posted this ranting on a CBC forum. I believe that it still makes a lot of sense.

So here we go...

On any given day, you can ask any Canadian celebrity on what Canada and being Canadian means. Almost all of them were reading from the same book of peace, love, diversity and socialized medicare.

But all of them miss the point.

This country started out as a cash cow for the ancient tribal empires until more people moved in and slowly displaced the First Nations who were there since Day One.

We did have a bloody history. We had slavery. We had our spats with the ingrates to the South. Had we been more tenacious, the Alamo would be flying the Maple Leaf (or maybe the Fleur-de-lys).

But we prefer our wide open spaces, the freedom to roam and the ability to invent - and re-invent - ourselves.

Sadly, I would hear people take pride in what we're not, as in "We're not as cold-hearted as Americans" or "We have a better health system, not like the Americans". Because for the most part, we have descended from Americans - United Empire Loyalists who believed that Mad King George had the better idea than George Washington or Ben Franklin.

But let's not nitpick over technicalities. Canada is still a young nation... in fact, more of a concept rather than a nation. Canadian is a state of mind, rather than a nationality. The land, like its contemporary society, is a mosaic. Each province and territory is a nation in its own right. We work, create, procreate and sometimes deviate in our own way.

But most of all, we live.

We are humans living in a land that that was cultivated by the First Peoples and bound by Celtic ferocity and tenacity, Gallic pride and joie-de-vivre, Anglo-Saxon resolve and good old American know-how.

Collectively, we can be the mouse that roars, the gentle giant, the silent beacon of hope.

Yet we are not perfect. Our medicare costs money. Some people carry ancient grudges and use our freedom to stoke their fires. And our politicians try to be everything to everyone, satisfying no-one.

But as long as the human species remains flawed and the polar icecaps keep melting, I am and shall always be a Canadian.

I'd like to hear one of our celebrities come up with something better.

Even to this day, I never hyphenate myself: there's no point or logic to hyphenation. A man is either this or that, black or white, alive or dead.

In the end, being a Canadian means simply being, in the here-and-now, in Canada.

Happy Canada Day, Romantic Haters.

CHARLIE SHEEN, SHUT THE FUCK UP AND SUCK MY DICK!

Fuck that Charlie Sheen.

Fuck him up his stupid ass.

That whiny, self-centred, sanctimonious, spiteful little bitch is everywhere.

That overpaid twat shouldn’t bother me, but he does.

I am sick of his name.

I am sick of his face.

I am sick of his voice.

I am sick of his backpedalling, backstabbing, backbiting, hand-biting and bridge-burning every time he turds out a Tweet.

He thinks that he may be funny. He thinks that he’s still cool. He thinks that he can be a hit with all the ladies. He assumes that everyone will empathise and sympathise with his perceived plight.

He believes that he is owed an apology. He believes that he’s entitled to damages.

I don’t know about you, but he’s at least entitled to a foot up his backside.

When someone has talent and a good thing on the go, a rational mind would force that person to work hard on keeping them. I would call that the art of maintaining a personal status quo: whatever works, don’t fix; whatever is doable, do it right; whatever good is sown, reap and share the bounty.

If I had followed the blueprint set by my parents, I would’ve had Charlie Sheen’s job – or at least something resembling it.

I would’ve had the lovely talented wife, the beautiful children, lots of spending money, a roof over my head, a steady, guaranteed job surrounded by good people…

At this point, I’m happy with the last 2. I’ll be damned to let them slip away.

But all this money must’ve woken up a winning monster inside that Estevez kid.

Back in the day I would’ve love to dance with Al and Coco, and maybe bring Tina, Mary and Harry along for the ride, if Sid and Stacy didn’t mind. For some reason, I chose Al and Mary, then simply stuck with Al. Now I prefer Nico’s company – no Homo.

But old Carlos would rather dance with the thin white duchess and fuck everyone over in the process. What a winner.

He would take up a skanky pr0n h0 and tie and beat her senseless.

He has lost the confidence of his bosses, his wife, his kids, his mind and eventually his job.

All his interviews will not save his scrawny ass. All his Tweets will not redeem his tarnished soul.

For Sanity’s sake, Charlie Sheen must be destroyed.

He should be bound to a mountain face by heavy chains where raptors can feed off a pound of his flesh – only to be regenerated to be eaten again.

He should be prodded mercilessly by pitchforks wielded by enraged denizens of Chuck Lorre’s ancestral shtetl.

He should be fed to the tigers from which he stole their blood so he could live his winning lifestyle.

He should be set upon by trannies in whatever jail to which he may be sent.

He should be bound to a chair in a metal shack deep in the heart of Death Valley in the middle of summer and be forced to watch ALL his movies and TV shows.

He should be crucified to a burning cross.

He should be guillotined with a blunt, rusty blade.

He should be rolled in powdered sugar and then be left at the mercy of ravenous ants. Preferably in a remote part of the Amazonian rain forest.

He be sent on the next NASA probe heading to the Sun.

He should be sealed in Davey Jones’s locker.

He should be dressed as a pig, then air-dropped into the middle of Mecca. During Ramadan. Or maybe the Hajj. Same diff.

He should be burned alive.

He should be frozen alive.

He should be hanged, drawn and quartered, then have the remains in remand, then put back together. Repeat.

He should be fed to a volcano.

He should be fed to the Kraken.

He should be shot.

But most of all, he should just shut up, walk away and not come back until he can fix himself up and learn to live in the human race.

I hope he does that, because if he doesn’t…

I’m just going to ignore him.

A Romantic Hater's Valentine's Day Wish

"Love can be as sticky as a vat of molasses, as unpalatable as a hunk of spoiled yeast, and as all-consuming as a six-alarm fire in a bamboo and canvas tent." - Rod Serling, "Twilight Zone"


Happy Valentine's Day, Suckas.

John Lennon. 30 Years On and Beyond.(Or: "Okay. And so?")

I wrote this as a little response to an article made by blogger Debbie Sclussel. Take it with a grain of salt - but I stand by it.

DISCLOSURE: I was born around the time the Beatles broke.

I took their music for granted because it was there.

I never thought they were ever great because of their talent - only George Harrison (bless his soul) appeared to me the most professional of the lot - but because of the marketing savvy of Brian Epstein.

(BTW - He was to Lennon what Mr. Herbert was to Chris Griffin in the "Family Guy". Think about it, eh?)

All of Lennon's songs in his solo carreer sucked except for "Whatever Gets You Through The Night" (muchas gracias, Elton).

I (figuratively) shed more tears for George Harrison, the 9-11 victims, my ex's mom and my father (Of Blessed Memory. Amen) than I did for Lennon (to whom I shed a couple as a sign of respect).

Mark David Chapman now represents more of a threat to himself than to anyone with a pulse and synapses. Back then I thought he should fry - murder is murder, anyway - but then I don't care.

I wouldn't blame Lennon for destroying Western Civilization as We Know It - the post-WWII/-"Cold" War complacency of the constantly satiated masses took care of that - but he deserves neither beatification nor deification.

Lennon was just a man with a guitar, attitude and ideals, chained to a wife with Lady MacBeth ambitions, who managed to make a lot of money for what he did and what he became.

Nothing special. Nothing terrible. The rest of us will just keep living.

Rest In Peace, Eggman.

The Occasional Rant:Sorry, Prince. The Internet is All Over.

Adapt or die. Go with the flow. Sink or swim.

These are some of the examples explaining the basic tenets of evolution.

When I first got online way back in the early 90s, I was convinced that this invention was going to be big. As early as 1986, I had a feeling that eventually everything that we need for communication and entertainment will be reduced to 1 box, 1 screen, 1 user.

I'm quite sure that everyone would want to have this 1 box to talk to others, order some chow mein, take in a concert or a movie, get an education and simply frag some poor sucker to kingdom come in WOW.

Not to mention having a box to groove to some tunes.

So I am quite surprised that Prince (the artist formally known as Prince Rogers Nelson) would reject the internet that he once embraced as a medium for his insane creativity.

In an "exclusive" interview by Mirror journo Peter Miller, Prince proclaimed...

"The internet's completely over. I don't see why I should give my new music to iTunes or anyone else. They won't pay me an advance for it and then they get angry when they can't get it.
"The internet's like MTV. At one time MTV was hip and suddenly it became outdated. Anyway, all these computers and digital gadgets are no good.
"They just fill your head with numbers and that can't be good for you."

The Mirror article was mainly about Prince's upcoming release "20TEN", his views on his current life and his eccentric creative processes, but it was this one quote that caused this storm of controversy throughout the web and the traditional media - you do remember newspapers, tv and radio, right?

Whether Price had a point or was simply shooting from the lip at the time is irrelevant. What started me to think was the revolution that started at around the same time I discovered the internet.

This revolution is called streaming media.

To reiterate the basics of the internet, information in forms of pictures and words get broken down to bits - ones and zeroes - then get reconstituted at the end-user's machine of choice. Back in the 80s, the compact disk format was starting to take off, and my assumption at that time was that sooner or later television, radio and stand-alone music players would be rendered redundant, if not obsolete, by this new medium. All this thanks to a roomie's Commodore 64.

Fast-forward to the here-and-now and we see iTunes, Hulu and YouTube getting into the public consciousness. We have media players such as the granddaddies of them all, RealPlayer and Quicktime, and it's bastard offspring Winamp, Windows Media Player and the iTunes player. Kids - and adults run amok with their iPads and its rivals and variants. And don't get me started with the iPhone, the iPad, smartphones, laptops and netbooks. I suspect that my vision is slowly coming true, that for some reason the proliferation of the web into the public consciousness is starting to worry Prince.

Understandably so, since the availability of more bandwidth, affordable computers and more user-friendly software and hardware has made the once wild, wild web into something more mundane, more accessible, more democratised.

We've seen various iterations of peer-to-peer file-sharing software come and gone: Napster, Gnutella, LimeWire, Kazaa, BitTorrent, etc. The traditional media, stuck in the quagmire of their own paradigms, struggle to comprehend why they are losing their shirts while at the same time working to apprehend, stifle and even eliminate what they see as the threat to their survival and relevance. Metallica's Lars Ulrich may have crippled Napster, but those who have the access to better bandwidth and software will always barter files ripped from the medium that was legally bought, And the video streaming sites that started up as simple entities have become monsters.

We the masses have the capability to share ideas with a larger audience, Social networking sites have forced the world to shrink. Independent, unsigned artists now have an audience of millions to receive the fruits of their labours, whether in form of movies or music. If you want the news that fit your views, there's bound to be a site somewhere. People are making the web into the image that they want to see in any way necessary, at any time as required, even if it means writing silly blog posts or doing the Numa Numa tune to death.

And then there's Prince.

With all respect to someone who has proven himself to be prolific, rebellious, talented and so prosperous that he could write his own paycheques, Prince may have been felling a little threatened by the scores of upstarts taking advantage of the web's democratisation. Maybe he's become aware that all that technology that was once solely belonged to studios like Paramount, MGM, Abbey Road and Paisley Park have now fallen into the hands of the great unwashed proletariat determined to unseat the aristocracy of the Old Guard from their collective throne. The monoliths and conglomerates are no longer alone as content providers: those of us with talent, tool and bandwidth have hopped into their electronic, digitised hot-tub.

So what is left for the Purple Prince to do to be considered a revolutionary, an iconoclast, an individual?

He simply shut down all his websites, packed up his bags and started to give away his new cd for free. Through the Mirror, no less.

Back to basics. Back to the streets. Back to plastic hardcopy. Whatever floats the Purple boat is fine. He has already made his mark, regardless of medium and is entitled to his opinions and work ethic. Blood sweat and tears indeed.

And life goes on.

For Prince, the internet may be over. For many, it's here to stay.

For me, it's just evolution.

Go with the flow.