Friday, November 27, 2009

You're With Us Or You're Against Us



I don't think I'm inside my own mind today... There's a storm brewing that's causing a rift in the ocean so powerful it could almost push the earth off of its electromagnetic balance. There are power players on both sides of the war with all kinds of influence. Adults, teenagers, maybe even children. There's a rejuvenation in it, it's re-launched what was once a niche fiction genre into a zone of popularity that it possibly never enjoyed. What I'm referring to is Twilight, and Vampires. And as far as I'm concerned, you love it, or you're dead to me. (kidding of course, but really, love it or hate it)

I've made my views of Twilight impossibly clear. That book series bastardized vampires, yet they're as popular as they've ever been. Before Twilight, the most popular thing to be associated with vampires was arguably "Buffy: The Vampire Slayer" and really, that was only because we felt like getting cock blocked by Sarah Michelle Gellar week after week. So where did it all of a sudden come from? You've got the shows Vampire Diaries and True Blood Vampires are on the forefront of popular culture, in the face of everyone in a way they've never been.

What was once a mockingly meek fictional foray is now a legitimate force of imagination. Even though the formula has always been dreadfully linear. You've got a girl, you've got a vampire, for one reason or another, they can't get together no matter how much they may want to (In the case of true blood, sure, they fuck, but there's still all this drama...) People are intrigued by romance, even if its in the case of a lovestruck girl, and a beast of the night experiencing feelings he has not felt for hundreds of years.

I love True Blood. There's something about it, maybe it's the fact that it reminds me so much of Buffy: The Vampire Slayer. Sure, she's not a slayer in that sense but its the relationship of the bubbly blond in love with the tall dark and handsome vampire. The mysterious stranger that she doesn't understand yet she feels as if she has the ability to shatter whatever barrier he's using to hide himself from her. I don't give a shit about Sookie, or Bill. I like the characters that surround the main characters. Its the side-plots of that show that make it interesting, so much so to the point that I'm interested in reading Charlane Harris' series of Sookie Stackhouse novels.

I'm confident those novels would be a lot more interesting and entertaining than Stephanie Meyer's drivel, which has somehow managed to captivate the imaginations of millions of teenaged girls, girls who's opinions I would not be likely to value one way or the other to begin with. I've read about the novels and I've researched Twilight enough to know its nothing that I want anything to do with. Its engrossed our popular culture to the point that even though I want to avoid it, I can't.

I can't go to work without hearing about Twilight, or seeing a Magazine about Twilight, or reading a issue of Time magazine without encountering an article about the magesty of Twilight and the story of its oh so humble upbringings. Without hearing about how my co-worker's going to go see New Moon again, even though she's slightly embarrassed to be such a fan of Twilight to begin with. I've started referring to these people as "Twilighters" because, clearly, if you're one of them you're not one of us. (Somebody who doesn't want anything to do with the bullshit.)

Stephen King equated reading Twilight to reading about Stephanie Meyers sexual fantasies put on paper. That is something that's kind of disturbing to me. I don't think that teenagers should be exempt from sexuality because they're thinking about it more than we are, and if they want to be exposed to it, they will be. While christian groups ignorantly parade around Twilight as a book that's a 'great example for girls' because of how the main characters will not just dive into... whatever it is that they share or want to share. They, as they so often chose to do, ignore the finer details of what the book is about while applauding one solitary (and from what I've gathered, minute) aspect of the novel.

Whatever drives Twilight Fans, that same force repels me. I don't care to know whatever it may be that makes Twilight accessible, not only because I find Twilight disgustingly stupid, but because I know there's BETTER Vampire fiction out there. Vampires have been and still are one of the things that I've been on the fence of. Growing up with Anne Rice's Interview with the Vampire bullshit really waned me off of Vampires from an early age.

It wasn't until I (embarrassingly enough) got into LARP and White Wolf's World of Darkness role playing game that I learned of a world of Vampires that could actually be cool. A world where Vampires didn't just live in society, secretly, among humans (and other elements of the supernatural) but they might just well run the society that we took for granted. The influence of Vampires was everywhere. That's why I like True Blood, it takes the sensibilities of Vampire society that I found so intriguing about that world of darkness. That Vampires aren't agents of love, they see people as fodder, much like people see cats or dogs. Except without that aspect of domestication. Maybe more pointedly, how people see beef or chicken, its just another notch on the food chain. Vampires look at humans disgustingly as a source of food. They're pathetic and utterly replaceable. To hold feelings for a human isn't just embarrassing, it's borderline shameful.

True Blood presents a type of Vampire that I can find realistic, and enjoyable. They're dark, they're evil, they're greedy, they are everything I've ever enjoyed about vampires. Sure they can have feelings but they really don't want to even admit it. To be a 'mainstreamer' as they're called in True Blood, is a downright disgrace. Enough to alienate you from your entire vampire brethren. Vampires are public knowledge (which is a twist that I'm welcome to see) and trying to become accepted by humanity. Maybe it's a power play, maybe it's something more. Something deeper. The main vampire, Bill, is an enigmatic, thousands year old civil war veteran who has lost everything, and yet is intrigued enough by Sookie to turn his back on the Vampiric traditions he's been accustomed to for so long. Their bastardized romance is so ridiculous, yet believable. I can believe this Vampire would be capable of feeling something other than pure evil. (which, I've admitted in the past as bullshit and I still think its a bit hokey)

So, you Twilighters, you can keep your sparkly, bastardized, pathetic "vampires" and you can be happy about it. I'm happy for you. I hope you and twilight are really happy together and much like christians and their religion, KEEP IT TO YOURSELF. I don't give a fuck. I'm happy for you, just don't spew your pathetic venom onto me. I'll keep with my True Blood, my Buffy: The Vampire Slayer, my Blade. Vampires will continue to be in the "meh" category, for me if they aren't super-powered heroes in oddly coloured costumes it won't really do anything for me. Batman could kick the shit out of Robert Pattinson any day of the week.

- PEACE

Monday, November 23, 2009

Rights and Freedoms are not a part of Stephen Harpers vocabulary.

I don't think I'm inside my own mind today... A while ago, I scoulded health canada for 'flaunting its power like a raging boner'. When the 'war on smoking' was turned up to 11, and smoking retailers were forced to change their tactics of abstain from the sale of cigarettes all together, I, being part of a smoking retailer at the time, took great offense at the grievance this situation had cast upon my daily activities.

Now however, I am here to 'bitch' (for lack of a better term) about something far more serious. The "Investigative Powers for the 21st Century Act". That would in sum give the state an alarming amount of power all in the name of fighting Child Pornography.

The Bill would grant the law the power to demand ISPs give personal information to the goverment, (including names of the Customers, as well as their Mail, E-Mail and IP addresses) on demand without judicial oversight. This is especially dangerous because the courts after all are the one body of power which are supposed to keep everybody, even the government, in check. How is it democratic if the government can do what it wishes in the name of 'all that is good' without the oversight of the courts?

The ISP's would be required to install surveillance software at the partial cost of not just the companies, but the tax payers as well. Smaller ISP's would be given a grace period of three years before they would have to adhere to the laws themselves. (My guess is to have time to adjust their systems given they would not have the immediate financial backing that larger conglomerate ISP's such as Telus, or Rogers would have.)

Government isn't the only beneficiary of power to this bill however, The Police would be given considerable power advantages as well. 1) They would be able to abtain information on internet-based messaging, including the web-sites that people are visiting and who they are talking to. This information WILL be subject to a judicial order so there is some semblance of sense there, albeit minimal. 2) Police will also have the power to demand ISP's hold information on their users 3) The police will have the power to obtain a warrant to remotely monitor and record telecommunication devices such as cell-phones. 4) Deals more with computer virus' so that it makes it easier for Canada to collaborate its efforts with international authorities.

This will effectively give the power the ability to censor us further. It's laws like these that are very damaging to the rights and freedoms that we take for granted (and rightfully so!) on a daily basis. If the Government has the ability to go around the courts, and monitor our activities. Who is to say that they won't abuse this power? (I can almost assuredly assume that they would. Be damned any common sayings about assumption...)

Jesse Kline said it best in Western Standard. "It is essential that people have the ability to publish their opinions and ideas anonymously to prevent government censorship and allow a free flow of information in the marketplace of ideas. The proposed legislation would make it easier for the government to monitor online communication and obtain the identities of those who wish to express themselves on the Internet. With the amount of information people send over the Internet increasing all the time, this issue becomes even more important. Anyone who thinks they have nothing to lose by giving big brother the right to watch them at all times is sorely mistaken. This is not 2009 folks, it's New Year's Eve, 1984."

The Internet is a free for all, and it should continue to be so. That's what makes it so great, it's a place for everyone to come and shed their identity and reveal their true colours. (For better, or worse) I don't want to have to worry about the federal government breathing down my neck every time I feel like calling Stephen Harper a smarmy son of a bitch, because he is, and I do it often. It makes me sick that initiatives like this are even being established. If you sit there wondering why this is such a big deal, under the guise of 'well, I do nothing wrong so I have nothing to worry about'. Think of the fact that, even if you were in contact with somebody who was found guilty of fraudulent activity on the internet. You are, all of a sudden, guilty by association for effectively, doing nothing.

I think that Government in general, is going way outside its necessary protocols in the name of what it would consider the 'greater good'. Canada is a country where the Liberal Government's practices that pat the asses of oil companies that bribe and blackmails their workers into abstaining from the vote so that a mere half of the Provence will vote in its provincial election, allowing a drunk hypocrite to be elected to his third term of premiership. Such was the case when B.C. held its provincial elelction this year and re-elected Premier Gordon Campbell with less than a quarter of the province supporting him.

A country where, not one re-election is good enough and another looms yet the country is virtually divided in half over which aura of incompetence we would decide to chose to run this country. Do we chose Stephen Harper, who alienates everybody who doesn't blindly support him. Or Michael Ignatieff, a politician who has come out of nowhere to lead the crippled Liberal party. The conservatives have painted him to be an American parading in Canadian colors, and that's reason enough for me to not want him running this country. The NDP Leader Jack Layton might as well be a blind, deaf, mute because the party he's representing has had its reputation tarnished almost irrevocably. He is not an individual who inspires anything other than cowardice, and as such, will not be voted for by anyone who isn't just tossing their vote to the NDP out of mercy.

Yeah I kind of took a left turn there but my main point is the fact that so few Canadians care enough about politics, and those that do are more concerned with AMERICAN politics that they refuse to read between the lines, see the warning signs and care for the country in which they live and breath. Canada is a shallow husk of masked identity, and its disgusting. Its laws like these that only fuel my fleeting Canadianism. Nobody gives a fuck, why should I? Well this is something I think we should all pay attention to. And when the government comes knocking, curious about your suspicious internet activity. Well, you can definitely expect that I'll be the one singing "I told you so!"

- Peace.

Investigative Powers For The 21'st Century

Government of Canada Moves To Monitor Internet Users

Legislation Would Allow Canadian Government To Monitor Internet Users

Saturday, November 7, 2009

De-motivated

I don't think I'm inside my own mind... it's 2am. I'm killing time looking up De-Motivational Posters. Here are some of my favorites.