Happy Birthday to Me,
Happy Birthday to Me,
Happy Birthday to Meeeeeeeeeeeeeeee,
Happy Birthday to Me.

Yes, 'tis that day, and my age can be represented by the same digit written twice. All I've got to say on that matter!

The trip was awesome, and it looks like I'll get to do some actual archaeological writing out of it. I'm a bit nervous about this, but also very much looking forward to it. I will blab more about the whole Italy experience, but suffice it to say for now that nothing much had changed in the small village where I was since my last visit.

Well, I'm back from abroad, and a wonderful time I had too. Unfortunately, I didn't get back in time to buy tickets for tomorrow's Distillers gig, but such is life, and I could use the sleep anyway. Normal service should resume next week!

Missed the UK Subs show this weekend. Fuck.

Well, didn't see this one coming...

Tearful MP's career on hold after pocketing jewelry
Last Updated Thu, 15 Apr 2004 14:53:25

BURNABY, B.C. - New Democratic Party MP Svend Robinson stunned supporters Thursday by saying he needs to take medical leave after admitting he took a ring without paying for it.

Too bad. Of course, the Reformed Conservative Alliance Party will be on him like flies on shit, because, after all, taking stuff without paying for it is what conservatives are all about! Actually, I lie. They'll just make vague comments insinuating a connection between Robinson's theft and Robinson's sexual orientation, and then react with wounded indignation when anybody calls them on it.

Oh, my poor neglected little blog - an entire week without a posting. Right, ahem, where was I...

Well, I was going to go on about misogyny in sports journalism, but we're really really busy at work this week (getting caught up with the post-inventory backlog), so it's going to be a lean week for blogging. Stay tuned though, I may chuck some things up if I feel moved to. One brief note: I've started the shopping for my little trip (weird to think that I'll be back in Italy in 10 days) - exciting stuff, I know, but it's got my heart fluttering a bit.

Hey Look! Misogynist Wankers!

"Misogynist" is one of those eye-roll words - you know the ones that produce instant exasperation in listeners who immediately assume that you are going to go off on some horrible anti-male rant drawn straight from the early 1990s. Well, that's too bad, because I'm going to toss that word about here, and in particular I'm going to toss it at a few people who IMHO deserve it. To begin with ladies and gentlemen, I give you Dave Sim...

The Onion A.V. Club's Interview with Dave Sim

I admit to having really enjoyed Cerebus when I was in high school; a friend of mine had trade paperback editions of the early issues, and I found them really geniunely funny. I collected the new issues for awhile, eventually stopping at about issue 106 due to lack of funds rather than any problems with the content or art. I always new (and who, reading Cerebus, coud not know?) that Dave Sim was probably a fairly odd guy, but it was only when reading the numerous articles that have sprouted up as the series nears its end that I realized what a nut-job he is. This guy has a visceral, physical, hatred of women, and like so many of his ilk, he's married (heh) it to an all-out martyrdom complex. The fact that he has an ego roughly the size of the moon doesn't increase his likeability any (As I said, I was fond of Cerebus, but when, in the interview above, Sim compared it to Crime and Punishment, the only reason I didn't blow coffee out my nose was because I didn't have any coffee). Nor does the fact that, again in the interview linked above, Sim starts out by being a shitstick towards the (female) interviewer on the very first question. She doesn't let him get away with it, which is encouraging. Anyway, the result of all this has been a certain sadness, but also a great deal of relief that I didn't waste more of my time and money on him. And, of course, extreme rage, as I tend to experience when I come across people who discriminate against women... More later.

Hey, we've got a theme...



Vampire bats kill 13 people in Brazil
Saturday, April 3, 2004 Posted: 1:05 PM EST (1805 GMT)

RIO DE JANEIRO, Brazil (Reuters) -- Rabies-carrying vampire bats killed at least 13 people in a remote Amazon town in Brazil's northern state of Para last month, authorities said on Friday.

Expecting a story about werewolves soon...

'Mummy' causing Siberian 'quakes
02apr04

RESIDENTS of Russia's Altai region say that a 2500-year-old mummy that was dug up 11 years ago is causing earthquakes in this corner of Siberia where shamans are common, and have demanded that it be reburied.

"We must calm people down and bury the Altai Princess," which is being studied by researchers at an institute 600 kilometres away, said Aulkhan Jatkambayev, the administration chief in the area where the mummy was discovered.

After chuckling a wee bit about this particular story, I realized that it does actually touch on a serious archaeological issue - the proper treatment of human remains. Archaeologists have to be aware of local sentiment concerning such finds, and must be willing to accomodate such sentiment. I remember a dig I was on where we found a large pre-Roman chamber tomb, with bodies, and quickly handed the excavation of it over to local archaeologists. It was no big deal, actually, but in some areas, particularly in the new world, archaeologists have not shown proper respect to indigenous human remains, and have alienated the local populations as a result. Anyway, I don't know whether the archaeologists from Novosibirsk were guilty of that in the story above, but they do now have an issue on their hands, and it's one they'll have to deal with if they wish to keep digging in the Altai mountains.

Interesting UK Subs tour date...

[April] 16 - New City Likwid Lounge, Edmonton. Canada (also with: Slaveco + Billy & The Lost Boys)

Ye gods - those guys are still alive? Anyway, not very many more details can be found, well, I was going to give you link to the New City website, but there's nothing there about the show yet. Just thinking though, with UK Subs about, and the Distillers coming in May, and a pretty kick-ass local scene going on all the time, it's going to be a pretty banner spring around here.

Well now, this is interesting...

Flight Not Fight

By Joy Lanzendorfer, AlterNet
April 2, 2004

Joanna Harmon is considering whether to leave the United States for Canada. Nik and Nancy Phelps practically have visas in hand to set up business in Belgium. Joan Magit and her husband are eyeing Vancouver. Amy Gertz moved to the United States from Canada two and a half years ago – she's now moving back.

The article basically goes on to discuss that phenomenon of Americans immigrating to Canada out of despair over the situation south of the border these days. These people are, of course, mostly progressives (Michael Moriarty notwithstanding), and are generally coming here out of a desire for a political climate more suited to them. And, while they'll find one, I would issue a small warning...

I don't think Canada is really the progressive paradise they think it is. Sure, it's all relative, and Canada is far more left-wing, both in political structure and ideology, than America. However, consider if you will that the next election will be contested largely between two right-of-centre parties, neither of which are dying for a chance to introduce really progressive policies. In the case of Liberals, that's because of a desire to appeal to centrist voters, and keep people from fleeing to the Conservatives. In the case of the Conservatives, it's because they pretty much hate everybody (sad, although predictable, that the Alliance folks got control of that party - the old Progressive Conservatives might actually have positioned the party to the left of the Liberals). Progressive voters are pretty much left with the choice of voting Liberal (lesser of two evils, etc.), going NDP (nice choice, no chance of winning), or going with a "fringe" party like the Greens (straight up - that's who I'll likely be voting for next time out). None of those choices are really going to lead to an increase in progressive politics in Canada.

However, that said, it's an interesting article, and an interesting phenomenon, and an influx of progressive-minded Americans can only help us lefties up here. It's interesting to note (as the article does), that the last great influx of left-leaning Americans into Canada was during the Vietnam draft years. And here I was writing about the draft just a few days ago! Wow, Oi! Thump! gets topical...

Well, it looks like I'm going to have to start picking up on my Dutch a wee bit. I bought my ticket for Italy yesterday, and part of the trip over is going to be an 8-hour layover in Amsterdam. Oh well, it'll be a country I've never been to before, and I've always sort of wanted to go to Holland. Maybe next trip I'll be able to see parts of it that aren't airports. The flight over is going to be a long one, basically taking 27 hours to go from Edmonton to Minneapolis to Amsterdam to Rome, and the bad bit is that I hit Rome late at night. I'm mulling over either booking a hotel (expensive), or simply camping in Termini station until the first train to Florence leaves the next morning (dangerous). Staying in the airport is also a possibility, and I've actually done that before, although I don't know what the security arrangements are now.

I'm actually more nervous than excited about this trip right now, although I'm sure that will change as the date approaches and things start to fall into place.

Good News For a Tuesday Morning

This actually went down last week, but still...

Mia Zapata's Killer Convicted
Florida man guilty of Gits singer's murder

A forty-nine-year-old Cuban immigrant has been convicted of the murder of Gits frontwoman Mia Zapata more than a decade ago.

I must hot have been paying attention (what else is new?), since I completely missed the fact that they had actually made an arrest in the case a few months ago. Still, it's nice to see that things actually work out right. And speaking of murdered punk rockers in whose cases justice was eventually done, I was moved to trot over to some of the Brian Deneke pages this morning to see what's been going on there. For those of you who've forgotten, Deneke was the young punk from Texas who was run over during a parking-lot brawl by a guy from his high-school football team driving a cadillac. The murderer, one Dustin Camp, got off with probation, which sparked an enormous furor in the punk community. Anyway, Camp eventually violated his probation and got sent to prison, but may have been paroled by now. The official page of the Brian Deneke Memorial Committee is here.

So, if you're American, youngish, male, under-employed and not particularly interested in highing thyself to university, you might want to circle June 15th, 2005 on the calendar. It may not turn out to be a very good day for you. Here's why...

The Coming Draft

By Connor Freff Cochran, AlterNet
March 25, 2004

In 1973, forced conscription ended in favor of an all-volunteer military. As the gap between the capacity of America's armed forces and the demands of current deployment widens, the likelihood of a reinstated draft grows.

Read it, it's a good article. Although it's not 100% certain that the draft will be reinstated, it could very easily happen, particularly as the summer of 2005 is a long way from the next election down there.

When the going gets tough...

...the tough add links to their blogs. Step forward a whole bunch of people, all of them in the 'Blogs I Like' section.

I signed this puppy up with Blogscanada this afternoon. They say that this blog will be added to their list as soon as it's approved by the moderators. That's not very exciting until you consider that that means somebody other than me and maybe three other people will have actually looked at this thing! Woo-Hoo!

I've been listening to The Distillers' Coral Fang a fair bit lately (got it playing at work right this very moment as a matter of fact), and I'm liking it more and more. The reader(s?) of my last blog will recall that occasionally it takes me awhile to get to really like Distillers albums, and it's been much the same with this one. However, I'm fast coming to the conclusion that it's one of those 'no weak tracks' albums.

Oh, as an aside, mine has a different cover than pictured above...

Anyway, it's struck me that the parallels between The Distillers and Hole are becoming far too many to ignore. Now, before anybody gets their knickers in a knot, I like Hole, so I consider this a good thing. Now, the angry-young-rocker-married-to-famous-musical-husband bit has been analyzed to death, so I'm going to leave it alone, and merely point out something that struck me the other day, and led me to do a bit of comparative listening. Listen to the opening verse of the opening track from Live Through This, and then listen to the same bit from "Drain the Blood", the opening song on Coral Fang, and then try to tell me that those women are not coming from exactly the same place musically. As noted above, I think this is a good thing.

No more beavers or raccoons this week. Just... preparations for inventory!!!!! Yes, the joyful time they call 'Inventory' when auditors stalk the land, and people tremble in their boots. Speaking of auditors and trembling, I chucked a shadow dragon at my wee D&D group last week, and they finally finished it off last night. A good little fight it was, too!! Next up for them: drow!

Apart from that, we seem to have a new leader of the federal Conservative party. You know, the one that's the bastard offspring of the Canadian Alliance (nee Reform) and Progressive Conservatives, who are apparently to the left of the Liberal party. This is all probably good news for the NDP, who have been quietly making their own way along, taking up larger and larger chunks of the left wing of the Canadian spectrum. Of course, if the Conservatives win the next federal election, the Liberals will probably go back over there themselves... Anyway, Steven Harper was the obvious, runaway, choice to lead the new party, despite (or, with the ghost of Stockwell Day's political career looming over the delegates, perhaps because of) having the charisma of a clam and sharing the unfortunate Canadian Alliance trait of being psychotically obsessed with doing anything to beat the Liberals. He immediately appointed Peter MacKay, ex-capo of the Progressive Conservatives, as his sidekick, which made the entire script of Julius Caesar leap right into my head right away. Doubtless Belinda Stronach and Tony Clement, Harper's two opponents in the leadership race, will be rewarded for their relative grace in losing - Clement with a shadow cabinet position, and Stronach by being relentlessly patronized.

And that's all I have say on that score right at the moment. In the meantime, things are happening south of the border, as the Americans start to come to the realization (those, that is, outside the majority that knew it all along), that the Republicans severely fucked up both before and after 9/11. How much of an effect this be allowed to have on the upcoming election down there remains to be seen!

Sorry, the grand muse of blogging has not been with me this week, possibly because of the liver abuse inflicted on self over St. Patrick's Day. Anyway, in apology and atonement, here's a FREE BEAVER PICTURE!!!!!



See, I told you the grand muse of blogging had not been showing her coffee-addled, square-eyed, overworked, underpaid self around here this week. I mean, that joke was old before there were beavers...

Police nearing end of elevator death investigation

Edmonton - Detectives expect to wrap up their investigation into the death of a 16-year-old boy who fell down an elevator shaft by the end of the week.

Kyle Young had just finished a court appearance on Jan. 22 and was being escorted by guards when the incident happened. Shackled and handcuffed, he fell more than five stories, becoming suspended by his neck from the structural bracket of the elevator shaft.

'Bout time. They say (as they are legally obligated to) that they don't know whether charges will be pressed, but I really fail to see how they can avoid charging the guards with criminal negligence at the very least. Actually, I think there's probably a pretty good case for manslaughter. I doubt that the guards meant to kill the young lad, but elevator doors simply don't open for no reason at all. In any case, it was a monumental fuck-up, and heads had better roll for it.

Well, a couple of days ago, I promised funny stuff about raccoons. And here you go! To begin with, there is no possible way that anybody could ever improve upon the headline of this story:

Nazi raccoons conquer Europe

Raccoons released by Hermann Goering in Germany in 1934 to "enrich the Reich's fauna" are threatening to succeed where their Nazi benefactors failed by conquering Europe.



As you can plainly see, there's nothing about raccoons that isn't pure, unadulterated, evil. I love 'em...