Things that have been annoying me lately on the Globe and Mail website.

1. Anti-union comments:
This started a while back and continues even now: Rabid Torontonians and "helpful" members of other municipalities and/or countries offer suggestions like "Let's be Reagan...just fire all of these lazy morons and hire new garbage collectors" or "How about we publish the addresses of the union members and dump our trash on their lawns!" I am not sure if these people are just perilously ignorant of how a union works, or genuinely misanthropic.

Let's get something straight: I am not unionized; I have no agenda in favour of or against unions. But there's a world of difference between a unionized worker and the union itself. If you don't like the way or the fact that a strike is happening, you can complain about the union. You can complain about the union captain, who called the strike. But you never, ever antagonize the people who belong to that union, because they are not calling the shots. A union works because all of its members agree to take collective action to defend their interests. When a strike is called, the union only has power when everyone goes on strike...not just fifteen guys who feel like taking a break. To work when others stop is more or less treason. So how dare these high-handed elitists who are angry about having to drive somewhere to dispose of their trash scorn the union members for doing what has been commanded of them?

2. Anti-health care comments:
Another one that's been raging for awhile, ever since Obama announced his plans for reforming US health care. Nobody believes Canada's healthcare system is perfect. We struggle, we know that. But seriously? Stop using us as your poster child for how socialized medicine can go wrong. Ask any Canadian (well, outside petrodollar-flush Alberta) if they'd rather trade our system for the American one. You will get a firm and resounding NO from the overwhelming majority. We are proud of our universal health care; we don't care to be told we shouldn't be.

3. Antivaccinationists/conspiracy theorists:
I've heard enough from just about every party on the H1N1 issue...vaccine makers, government officials, the WHO (incidentally, an organization I feel would benefit from transforming themselves into the band The Who), scientists, doctors, etc. But the people who are talking the loudest and in the most grating tones are the antivaccinationists and conspiracy theorists who are clogging up the comments page with their declarations of the imminent danger of influenza vaccines.

Some people like to point to the Guillain-Barre syndrome episode of the 1970s (as if medical and vaccine technology hasn't changed AT ALL in nearly 40 years). Others just like to foam at the mouth about how Big Pharma is trying to subdue us all with mind-control drugs. Seriously, what is it about a pandemic that brings all the crazies out of the woodwork? I'm not saying we need to be handing out Tamiflu and other antivirals like candy; I'm saying people need to shut their mouths. Get the flu shot, don't get the flu shot, I don't really care. But stay the hell away from me if you choose not to be vaccinated.

4. This:

"Researchers at the University of Oxford cautioned about the broad use of anti-viral drugs to treat children 12 years of age and younger suffering from seasonal flu. They found anti-viral drugs have little or no effect on asthma flare-ups, ear infections or bacterial infections in children."

Really? The antivirals weren't working?

Maybe it's because none of that shit is caused by viruses!

Asthma is an autoimmune response brought on by triggers such as pollen, smog, and exercise. Bacteria are by far the most common source of pain-causing middle ear infections, especially in children. And should ANYONE be surprised that antivirals do a bad job of curing bacterial infections? Really, Oxford? Really?

5. Anti-Globe and Mail comments:
So you don't like the Globe. You think it's reporting frivolous trash not worthy of even Page Six mention. Excellent. HOW ABOUT YOU STOP READING IT, THEN.

I F*@%^ing Hate the Theatre

I am a university student. I love reading. I subscribe to the Globe and Mail. I like to consider myself well-educated...but I would much, much rather see a movie than go to the theatre.

Yesterday, as part of the Fringe Festival (and I really do endorse the idea of the Fringe), I saw a play. And it was terrible. The premise (a new take on the classic story of Little Red Riding Hood) seemed promising...until we found out that the "new take" was French structuralism. Cue endless pontification by the characters, incomprehensible metaphors from the very French and frankly psychopathic Monsieur Woolf, and, worst of all, endless references to the idiosyncrasies of obscure French structuralism theorists! (And, to the smug literary jerks students sitting behind me, laughing at every joke like it was Russell Peters doing an impression of his father, shut up. Everyone knows you didn't understand the play either.)

Let me clarify: Reification? Signifiers? Existentialist expressions of zero? NONE OF THAT SHIT BELONGS IN A COMEDY!

I'm not going to name the play because I don't want to single it out...let's face it, there's so much bad theatre out there, there is no reason to pretend the terrible-ness of this play in particular was extraordinary or unusual.

This brings me to my next point: movies.
As I've mentioned, I'm pretty sure I'm well-educated, at least compared to most others my age, and yet? Most theatre does not appeal to me. Theatre just tries too hard a lot of the time. It tries to tackle big topics and big crises, to be somehow more real than real life, to leave a lasting message with the audience, to show off how much smarter and more refined and more sophisticated it is than the crass popular media.

The problem with this mindset is that the popular media are so called because they are liked by many. Multi-million-dollar movies produced by big-name filmhouses are designed specifically to appeal to as many people as possible - that's how they make their money. When I watch a movie, I am fully aware that I am being manipulated by the sound track, the special effects, the imagery, and the dialogue, into having certain feelings...and I'm okay with that! I watch movies to be entertained: movies that I enjoy are successful in entertaining me and others because they were specifically engineered to be liked by a broad range of people.

Theatre, beyond obvious mass-appeal shows such as Phantom of the Opera or musicals, doesn't seem to share this goal. Rather than skilfully eliciting desired responses from the audience through the story, acting, and technical aspects, much of theatre seems to be designed to confuse, condescend, and betray. That's why I'd prefer to watch Made of Honor over Man of Mode.

some CLASSICAL smackdown

I'm having a classical-music kind of day today.

I like a lot of different composers, and I like different types of classical music.
What I DON'T like is having to wade through three thousand crappy versions of the song I want to hear before I find a good copy of it to listen to. See, I LIKE these songs, and I don't appreciate hearing them butchered, either with an excess of speed or with bad acoustics.

I do prefer professionals--Zimerman, Richter, Yundi, and so on--but I am perfectly okay with listening to a good amateur play it properly. Unfortunately, good amateurs are hard to find.

Listen up, you little punks. Don't you post up some song you just learned and use the "description" section to apologize for the bad sound quality. If the sound sucks, WHY did you post it? Must you really give the world the gift of your fuzzy, distorted rendition of Bach's prelude in C minor? No! Lots of video cameras are capable of getting decent sound quality, so what is holding you up? Get a camera, PUT IT ON A TRIPOD (this is so crucial--I get seasick every time your mom videotapes you), and play away. Don't race through the piece at breakneck speed, and we'll get along just fine. But if your video doesn't turn out so well? SPARE US ALL. Don't put it on YouTube. Get different equipment and try again.

And, for heaven's sake, here's a good general rule for all of YouTube: IF YOU SHOT IT ON YOUR CAMERAPHONE, IT HAS NO BUSINESS ON YOUTUBE. OR ANYWHERE. JUST DELETE IT. DELETE IT NOW.

Is that so much to ask?

It's time for some SMACKDOWN

E:
Either you stop singing in that delightfully grating coloratura soprano voice, PARTICULARLY past midnight or before 8 am, or your vocal cords are gonna have to go. And don't you shoot your big mouth off to me about the lack of cutlery in the drawer. You need a spoon, snowflake? WASH ONE. I'm not your mother, I'm a science student. I am BUSY, unlike drama comms who have too much free time on their hands to devote to endless vocal practice and talking TOO LOUDLY on the phone.

Idiots in my human phys class:
LEAVE OUR PROFESSOR THE FUCK ALONE! I am sick of having these kinds of conversations:
Idiots: Hey, how come we got zero on this assignment?
Prof: 'Cause you cheated, that's why.
Idiots: We didn't cheat!
Prof: You have the exact same word-for-word answer for numbers four, seven, and ten. You even made the same spelling mistake here.
Idiots: Oh, but we didn't cheat, I barely helped my friend at all, we didn't copy, etc. etc.
Prof: But you must have! YOUR ANSWERS ARE EXACTLY THE SAME!
Idiots: This is ridiculous, you're stupid, etc.
Me: Gentlemen. Prof. X is not attempting to defame your character--though I certainly would. All she is saying is that it's okay to help each other or use the Internet--but you have to PARAPHRASE, not copy directly.
Does everyone know what paraphrasing is?
Does anyone think paraphrasing is beyond their intellectual capabilities?
Good. Now let's all apologize to Dr. X for being rude. Very good.

Now, one of these boys is probably going to firebomb my house, and I'm not going to appreciate that very much.

T:
Stop coming to class high. They're not diet pills, they're amphetamines. SPEED. STOP TAKING THEM.

I was watching some videos on YouTube and came across one of a live version of "I kissed a girl" by Katy Perry at the European VMAs. There were all kinds of comments below it like "Katy can't sing live!" or "She sounds like a man!" or "WTF? Bad singing!" Listen, if you thought Katy Perry's song was famous because she had a good voice, you completely missed the point of the video. Katy's voice sounds weird on her CD, never mind live, but that's not at all why she was so popular this summer.

Also. While we're talking about kissing girls and YouTube, I came across some "Yes on Prop 8" videos that I kind of thought were hilarious.
According to one video's comments, "98% of all homosexuals in prison admitted to being attracted to children". What? Does anyone actually believe these kinds of figures? 98% of all CHILD MOLESTERS in prison admitted to being attracted to children--that I would believe. I mean, that's what got them put in jail in the first place. But homosexuals? I don't think so.

My favourite part, I think, is the underlying assumption is that child molestation only happens between men and young boys. That's ridiculous. There are hundreds of convicted felons in jail right now because they were men with a preference for little girls. Since when is a man liking young girls suddenly gay? Is homosexuality the new catch-all for any sexual behaviour that lies outside the interactions between one man and one woman?

More YouTube hilarity:
A comment on a video of someone painting the Mona Lisa using MS Paint:
"ur the living picasso! or who ever painted the original".
Uh, can anyone say WE NEED MORE ART EDUCATION IN OUR PUBLIC SCHOOLS?

So.
At my school, the University of Windsor, the faculty have been on strike for a week now.
The Windsor University Faculty Association (WUFA) is striking for a number of things that I don't wish to discuss because I've discussed them and heard them discussed ad nauseum for what feels like the past seventeen thousand years.
Basically, sessionals are getting paid dirt, the admin is trying to claw back benefits, and lots of people are being all-around jerks.

Well, listen up, everyone.
I support WUFA, I will support WUFA till the day I die, and I don't have to justify my decision to you. Yes, I'm out there every day picketing with the faculty, and until you've done the same, shut up and don't whine to me about how bad the strike is.

NEXT. The administration insists that WUFA isn't willing to bargain. WUFA insists that the administration isn't willing to bargain. Admin says WUFA is lying, WUFA tells me the admin is lying. Listen, I know BOTH of you are lying to me, and I'm sick of it! I don't care WHO is lying by this point, just shut up and get back to the bargaining table! That's right, sit your asses down and bargain. We can't get any closer to resolving anything if you AREN'T BARGAINING.

ADMIN: You guys are being pretty serious a-holes, you know? Listen, you spent all of yesterday insisting that your top-secret board meeting was in camera, so that nobody else could listen in on your discussion. And yet? This morning apparently you were ready to have people know what you were doing, because you PUBLISHED YOUR NEW PROPOSAL IN THE EFFING WINDSOR STAR. Were you confused? Did you forget that you were supposed to be bargaining with WUFA, not with the mass media? Did you press the wrong button on your speed dial? Again, I don't give a damn. Just shut up, stop the media shenanigans, and get your asses in that bargaining room.

AND: Stop telling me nobody wants to be on strike. I KNOW nobody wants to be on strike. Given a choice between picketing in the hot sun for three hours a day and spending those three hours in a classroom with a captive audience talking about a subject you love, what person--what human being--would choose the former? Enough with the platitudes, let's see some action.

DEAR IDIOTS who keep driving by in their cars and yelling "Get back to work!" at us: SHUT UP. Do you honestly think that, if ending the strike was as simple as going back to the classrooms and teaching, we'd still be standing here A WEEK LATER? Yeah, that's right. So shut up and just keep driving. None of these faculty who have been scraping by on strike pay and picketing for hours need to hear you being a loudmouth idiot.

ON A SIDE NOTE, the admin seem to be pretty good at operating a business under capitalism. Unfortunately, the flip side of that is they are really lousy at running a school. Let's do some math:
FACULTY + STUDENTS = INSTITUTION OF HIGHER LEARNING
SCHOOL - FACULTY - STUDENTS = BUNCH OF EMPTY BUILDINGS.
Admin, you guys are smart, because you're experiencing a deficit and you've decided to push the burden of recovering from that deficit onto your employees. That's good and deplorable business sense. Too bad you forgot who your employees ARE. They are not just your average unionized slackers cluttering up the office. They are teachers. They are the people on whom this university is founded. They are the people who improve the reputation of this university. They are the people who bring in the money and the research grants that you guys seem to love so much. So why the hell would you try and make up your deficit off their backs? This sounds like a bad plan to me.

FINALLY: I am going to punch the next person who complains about how long the strike is lasting. Shooting off your big mouth about it isn't doing ANYTHING. You want to help resolve the strike? Get out on the picket line. Hold a sign, bake cookies, support the teachers. This isn't exactly sunshine and buttercups for them, either. Don't blame the strike on the faculty. They can't cross the picket line, because that would completely undermine the purpose of the collective bargaining unit. They're on strike because the admin left them no other choice, so shut up.
If you support WUFA, show it. If not, I don't care. Just get out of my face.

Dear Tony Clement:

This may have escaped your notice, Sir, but you are not, in fact, a doctor. So shut up--about the safe injection site in particular, but shutting up about everything would be an appreciated bonus.

We are talking about people here, bro. Now, I'm sure you don't consider drug addicts as people. You think of them as a problem that you have to solve. And if you can solve the problem while pushing your party's agenda, so much the better, right? Wrong.

I don't care what you personally think about the safe-injection site--in fact, I'm not so sure you can think. I care what you are professionally and publicly thinking about the safe-injection site. You think to yourself, "My party believes in a War on Drugs", and you use these suffering people as your pawns. You think because you are a card-carrying Conservative that you have to react to every health-related situation with a knee-jerk response full of Conservative values. This may make you a great politician. Unfortunately, it also makes you a terrible human being.

I won't even discuss the things you say to deride the safe-injection site, because I find them laughably stupid and illogical. But I am sick of seeing you in my paper, running off at the mouth in various locations across the globe, saying the same thing.

This is a serious issue, bud, not just a press conference to show off how much you know about your party's platform. So do everyone a favour--grab a nice big piece of duct tape, and stick 'er right over your mouth. See now, isn't that better?

I told you a litre was less than a gallon!

There's a simple rule I generally like to live by. I call it my "If you don't like it, don't do it" rule.
It applies to lots of stuff. Don't like abortions? Don't get one. Don't like gay marriage? Don't get one. Don't like raw milk? DON'T EFFING DRINK IT.

According to a book I'm reading, Gina Mallet's Last Chance to Eat, unpasteurized milk was banned in 1949. The government decided that, because raw milk was not safe for some people (the very old, the very young, and those with weak immune systems) to drink, NOBODY would be allowed to drink it. I find this principle stupid, but hey.
This would have been fine, so long as the government stuck to this principle for all foods. But they did not. I notice on my bottle of (admittedly delicious) organic honey that the word "UNPASTEURIZED" is prominently displayed, as well as a warning that it should not be fed to children under one year of age because it isn't safe for them to eat it.
So essentially, the government has banned one food because not everyone can eat it if it is unpasteurized, but allowed another.
Make no mistake--I am not advocating that honey be pasteurized (if such a thing is even possible), but rather that, on the flip side, people who wish to drink or sell unpasteurized milk be left the hell alone.

Enough about China!

Listen up, people.
I am sick of opening up the Globe and Mail every damn day and seeing about some new piece of superficial fakery China pulled in an effort to present a seamless image during the Olympics.
YES, China has done some bad shit. YES, forcing homeless people and ethnic minorities away from the capital, among other things, was typical heavy-handed freaking out. But seriously. This is getting excessive. Do you think we're going to be so happy when the Olympics are in Vancouver and everyone's pulling these stunts with us? VANOC is already feeling the pinch with the recent landslide on the Sea-to-Sky. So let's all shut up, before that nation-sized magnifying glass shifts its gaze to us.

"If you're sixteen, I'll eat my pants!"

Sister: Well, I'm sorry, but I have to run the company while Pat's on his "honeymoon".
Me: Don't act like you're sorry when you're not. It's annoying.
Sister: Excuse me?
Me: You heard me.
Sister: For your information, I am sorry!
Me: No, you're not. You said, "I'm sorry, but..." That's not an apology. That's an apologia.
Sister: You're an apologia.
Me: ...

Seriously. How can I respond to this kind of a comment? There is no rational response to this type of argument. (P.S. Despite all appearances to the contrary, my sister is, in fact, eighteen).