Election Day

LEAFS SUCK as well as all other municipalities in Ontario go to the polls today. Well actually, advance polls have been more active than historically, so some folks have already exercised their franchise.

You might imagine that I might be happy with the end of the White Bronco days. Sadly, he will likely be re-elected as councillor for his ward. He stepped out of the mayoral race when he got back his cancer diagnosis.  Instead older brother Doug is running. And polling second.

The front runner has a comfortable lead, and if anything LEAFS SUCK loves the bandwagon, so we are looking at John Tory finally winning an election. John Tory is not only his actual name, but also the ridiculous conservative caraciature he plays.

The man has made what he calls "SmartTrack" the centre point of his campaign. It is dumb. As in actively and aggressively stupid. It appears to have been developed by drawing lines on an out of date map running surface rail through substantial buildings and subdivisions. It is an electrified rail system  that uses passenger cars from our existing diesel commuter rail fleet. Even with the oversized two floor cars, at the ridership levels Tory promises, trains will be over twenty cars long, 50% longer than the stations will be. And the plan to pay for it is even more ludicrous than that. But hey, subways!  Anything to prevent more traffic on the streets. Despite the fact that the plan involves massive densification along the route (which still won't be close to enough to finance it).  Like I said, actively and aggressively stupid.

We have a progressive candidate, but she is polling a distant third. After the fiasco that was Rob Ford, LEAFS SUCK is trying to decide between which of the two conservative douchebags to lead the next term. It is so bad, I'm beginning to feel bad that the Leafs have to represent such a terrible shithole of a town.

Well Past Time to Lock the #GamerGate

What the actual fuck

Kotaku article with context..

Okay, I guess instead of being really behind on something, I'm gonna try step out forward.  Prebuttal of some of the stupid rationalizing crap that's incoming.

1. "Dude has nothing to do with #GamerGate."

You keep believing what you want, but there's 8chan chat logs being investigated right now that prove you wrong. Regardless, not even really fucking relevant because of...

2. "You're generalizing.  #GamerGate has legit complaints, and you're painting it all with a broad brush."

No. Wrong. You want to talk about ethics in games journalism, there's other venues. If this isn't actually about harassing women, use #GameEthics and prove it. That's right, use Zoe Quinn's suggested hashtag, prove that you care more about your actual ethics complaints than you do about letting some woman you don't know "win".

#GamerGate is fake. You may have legit concerns, but that hashtag is fake. Chat logs have shown a coordinated plan to use it as cover to continue harassing women.  More importantly, the content itself - how long do you need to wait before a new "woe is me, the white male of liberal social justice fascism" tweet?  That is not a legit concern, criticism, or any fucking thing else. That is totally enabling bullshit that helps feed the paranoid martyr-delusions of the sociopath that went after @Spacekatgal.

Because there are crazy fucks out there. Crazy fucks who threaten to murder-rape people and their families.  And include their actual home addresses in the threats.

For serious here. @chatterwhiteman?  Look at that fucking handle.  This is a fucking nutjob we're looking at. Actually crazy. And motivated by all the "persecution" he's suffering. Stop fucking feeding him and all the other "persecuted" sociopaths.  Even if you do have legit complaints, all it is doing at this point is making crazy people think that they're justified in making credible death threats - and who the fuck knows what else.

Shakespeare Sucks

I missed this when it happened because I don't know squat about NPR, but apparently it wasn't just some Midsummer's Night Dream.

Anyways, I was kinda sad about missing the opportunity to pipe up, but then I realized that being late to commenting on something was actually this blog's mission statement, so here we go.

Shakespeare sucks.  Really he does.  It's terrible shit and it is foisted upon every single high school student in the english speaking world.  And nearly universally loathed.  First exposure to the amazing literature that teh Workes of William Shakefpeare are supposed to be elicits disgust and aversion.  Maybe that's a poor metric - sort of judging books by their covers.  THEY ARE FUCKING PLAYS FOR FUCKS SAKE.  First response is more relevant than any of the god damn justifications that Shakespeare apologists can come up with.  Fuck.

And that's the thing.  Hate Shakespeare?  You're an ignorant doofus obsessed with instant gratification and unable to comprehend even slight nuance.  I mean, hating Shakespeare might be an understandable response from smartphone addicted teens with no life experience and brains that haven't finished forming.  Because apparently there is no possible way that there can be any remotely legitimate criticism of Shakespeare.

You know what?  It sucks.  For all the "poetry" it is supposed to be, it blows.  It lacks flow.  It's so broken that it needs its own special and incredibly stilted delivery.  And that delivery itself is next to goddamn useless for anything other than Shakespeare.  And even with that, it doesn't even make it good - just less bad.  Citation of outstanding performances - big fucking deal.  I could poop on a page, but it'd still be amazing if read by Ian McKellan or Patrick Stewart.  Judge the "poetry" by the delivery from mediocre actors - by average summer stock performances.

Shakespeare is all reputation.  You only like it because you are supposed to.  On its own merits, well it has none - so whatevers.

But what about the fact that he did it first.  That so much of modern storytelling owes everything to Shakespeare's plays and without Romeo and Juliet we would never have 95% of every movie ever filmed.  Bullshit.  The stories and tropes used by Shakespeare are as old as time.  They pre-date him by millenia.  It's not like he's the originator of "star-cross'd lovers".  And here's the thing - with Shakespeare, this makes the plays timeless.  With anyone else it makes them derivative.

And it's not even relevant.  It's good because it's old?  What the fuck?  I mean sure, if this were four hundred years ago and my choices for entertainment was Shakespeare, Morris Dancing or cockfighting - okay, maybe not so bad.  But in this day and age?  And do we also consider cockfighting the pinnacle of sport since it's contemporaneous with Shakespeare?

There is this thing about Shakespeare - bred deep into our culture - that liking Shakespeare is an inherent good, in and of itself.  And it's under that light, with the automatic assumption that William Shakespeare is the greatest playwright and poet to have ever graced the planet and no one could possibly hope to come even remotely close - that all discussions of Shakespeare are had.  Wheeee.

It's way worse than that though.  I mean we're talking about personal preferences in literature - sure the pro-Shakespeare folks take any criticism of The Bard way too seriously, but that's no excuse for me to get allupons about his easy ride.  Well I actually have a reason.  All you folks who love the Shakespeare are wedded to it because of the baggage that it carries.  The high brow, extremely white, ultra privileged bourgeois bullshit of it.  It is from and of a very closed social structure and steeped in classism, almost invariably a flavour of classism that punches down.  The dismissal of criticism of Shakespeare is just legitimizing the dismissal of people - for not being "cultured" (i.e. middle class white).

So I guess what I'm saying is that I actually hate Shakespeare mostly because of the way people defend his works.  That I hate what Shakespeare represents more than I hate the plays themselves.  That said, let me make this perfectly clear - I still think his plays suck.