Red Dawn

A Liberal majority government.  184 seats.  Significantly higher than the polls predicted.  I have never been a fan of the Liberal Party of Canada, but this is good news.  Not only because Harper and his Conservatives are finally out - but because he's so god damn young.  Finally, we're moving away from those geezers that have been screwing things up for so long.  Note how fucked up this is - Justin Trudeau turns 45 on Christmas Day - he's not really all that "young".

Harper was pretty young by geezebag standards when he first got in, and he did so after turfing out the Liberal dynasty that Chretien unceremoniously dumped on Paul Martin.  And this was the first election for the "new" Conservative party, having done their soul searching out in the woods, spawning a splinter protest group, and then getting swallowed by the upstart Reformers.  This ushered in a new era where Harper did not give a shit about "the way things are done".

Trudeau's got a similar plate.  The Liberals were going into yesterday as the third party - a long way from their usual position of "Canada's natural governing party".  And while he is the son of a former Prime Minister, those days are ancient history.  He's new.  The Conservative criticism of him - that he's just not ready - I think that's his best feature.  That he's "not ready" by the standards of the geezebag pants to their armpits offa mah lawn crowd.

Pot legalization for example sums up the dynamic perfectly.  This is something that has majority popular support - but you won't find anyone other than young people thinking that it's a thing that's worth doing right now.  So it takes someone under 50 to push for it - which is crazy because I'm pretty sure it's old folks who are lighting up all the time. Anyways Mulcair, purportedly to the left of the Liberals, was still acting like an oldster on it.  Sure he was going to make it a "priority" but all he was going to do was decriminalize - which basically is the status quo.

Women's reproductive rights.  Even political parties that are pro-choice will accomodate anti-choice members and will openly welcome anti-abortionists with the caveat that they keep the whole abortion thing on the DL.  They allow members to "vote their conscience" or whatever because State ownership of uteruses is apparently a moral issue.  Not Trudeau.  He was lambasted for expecting his caucus to vote against human rights violations.  He was attacked for recognizing that one person's religion does not justify control over another person's body.  And this is a young person's view - the perspective of  people who grew up in a world where organized religion had ebbed and waned in cultural importance.

For clarity - I'm not trying to lump all geezers in together.  Bernie Sanders for example is older than dirt.  But Sanders and his platform appeal to young people.  People who the System has had less time to beat "Common Sense" into.

I'm trying to temper my optimism.  It is still the Liberal Party of Canada.  The 2011 drubbing may have winnowed some of the "only there for power" asswipes but there are shitbags of that stripe to spare in the Liberal Party of Canada,  And now that Justin has a majority, they'll all come slinking back to the no longer sinking ship.  And just because he has some ideas that are freed from the shackles of ancestor worship - that doesn't mean that all of them are.  Or even that the new ideas are any good.  But considering where we're coming from, I'm pretty happy for almost any change at all.

Whoa, I Still Remember My Password

Hey.

Probably would have left things alone until Toilet Day, but we've got an election on Monday so I figured I ought to say something.  Uh, don;t forget to vote?  Eh?

Also too, teh Globe and Mail's endorsement.  My head is spinning.  The sheer unabated wankeriness.  Ferd Hiatt of teh War Criminal Post only dreams of this level of unaware delusional self-importance.  It's a bit niche as you'll have to have an inkling about Canadian politics to get it but if you have that, prepare to be astounded

A thing of beauty.  It's like the editorial board wants to have their cake and eat it too, but only about wanking instead of cake.  Not that I'm suggesting that they eat their own spunk - well maybe but without the spunk #MoreGlobeEndorsements

Actually #MoreGlobeEndorsements are now a thing.  First up, a Shorter of the Globe's endorsement.

Some more samples:
https://twitter.com/ZackSiezmagraff/status/655079688075763712
https://twitter.com/LeyneLes/status/655084628798148609
https://twitter.com/AndrewTumilty/status/655072411113512960
https://twitter.com/InvPac/status/655146387705851904
https://twitter.com/MichaelBrowneNL/status/655090065799016448

This one also needs some Canadian politics background but it's a winner.

Anywho - I might be back after teh polls close.  As in back to my historic active ignoring of this blog instead of forgetting about it completely.  Silly Season's been on us for a while now - Donald Trump, really? - so I might have some stuff to yell into teh ether.

World Toilet Day 2014

This year I am going to remind all y'all that World Toilet Day is a (pdf warning) feminist cause, plus a link to last year's entry to in case anyone has forgotten the context.  This woman gets it.

Speaking of which, an update on the POOP transplant thing.  The FDA is trying not to get in the way of effective treatment.

And now, on to the POOP.

A YouTube embed taken straight out of Inside Amy Schumer:

And a chance to slag Montreal.  What a shithole.

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.

Totally Serious About the Lesbians in The Longest Journey

Here's the original - http://www.alexandradal.com/comic/girls-and-games/

Here's the "comeback" - http://weknowmemes.com/wp-content/uploads/2014/03/i-wish-there-were-more-strong-female-characters-in-video-games.jpg

Here's the updated "comeback"- http://imgur.com/aGVaza7

Not even going to address the ridonkulous things from their list.  Ayumi from X-Blades?  Really?

Anyways, just so that we understand how far these dudebros have missed the point, their list includes Dreamfall, which is from 2006 (incidentally, it's a sequel for The Longest Journey which has the best depiction of a lesbian couple I have seen in gaming or any other media).  Jade from Beyond Good and Evil is also a great character - and from 2003.  That list covers about a decade of gaming. And no, there weren't sequels released in the last couple weeks that would make these games recent examples as opposed to pre-dating the previous console generation.

By contrast, here is a list of male characters:

"Reck" Recker

Edward Kenway

Lucas Kellen

Zephyr

Knack

The entire roster of COD:Ghosts including the dog.

And that's just PS4 Launch Titles.  As in the list of male protagonists available on day one of the PS4 is about half the length of female characters from the past ten or so years.  In their defense, Dawn and Didi from Contrast are both female characters.  OTOH, the Launch Titles also included the Blacklight Retribution beta, FIFA 14, some Madden game and two NBA titles.  The XBone list is at least as skewed.  Even the "kiddie friendly" Wii-U launched with an Ass Creed, Ninja Gaiden and Darksiders 2.

So yeah - "Gee I wish there were more strong female characters in video games" seems like a totally reasonable thing to say.  As in, 

To further drive the point home, the "punchline" is about how the girl gamer then goes on to whine about getting threatened with rape, which incidentally is exactly what happened.  Because male gamer privilege is so thick these ignorant fuckwits actually believe it's not misogynist since the jackwad threatens both men and women with rape all the time.  Seriously, that's the "joke" - women are stupid because they can't laugh off rape threats as well as gamer dudebros.  Hahaha.