2, 7 - Off-Suit

This little minto needs to work on his poker face.

Jenny was a friend of mine

In case you couldn't tell, that last post was a completely bullshitted story. But I think it illustrated the point I was trying to make.

In the past week I've received a fair bit of feedback about a post I made half-drunkenly on St. Patty's Day. To be honest, I was a bit taken aback with the first comment that D left (which lead to a number of people telling me their opinions of her arguments). But I'm glad that D responded to that mystery commenter, and cleared up the meaning of what she had written.

The previous post to this is pretty self-explanatory, but the thing I wanted to comment on was the second argument brought up by D about portraying people in a bad way.

First of all, if you've ever been out drinking with me, you likely know that I get brutally drunk on most occasions. Most days I'd be the one that needs to be taken home, but I usually seem to find my own way (mainly because I spontaneously run out of the bar alone). And I do appreciate it when others take me home if I'm too drunk to make it on my own.

But if someone told people about my drunken antics, I don't think it's fair to be mad at that person for telling others. Whenever we go out drinking we know exactly what we're doing. Most of us (guys anyway) want to get hammered and have fun, and maybe even do something stupid once we leave the bar... i.e. stealing parking meters.

I find it interesting that I got no comments about portraying James and Steve as drunken thieves acting like monkeys bashing at that parking meter. But I did get criticism for saying Katie was too drunk for her own good, implying that she was a "drunken, helpless fool". Personally I'd say that posting about drunken criminal actions is a little worse than just drunken actions. For the record, I'm gonna do my best to avoid talking about crimes from now on. haha.

The main point is that we're all responsible for our own actions. And when we do get drunk beyond the level we should, is it really fair to criticize the people who tell it as it happened? A friend of mine, the former "Sober Sutton" (he drinks now), used to relay the stories that the drunks were never able to remember on their own. And I don't ever remember anyone getting mad at him for telling the truth about all the drunks that he had to baby-sit.

That said, I'm obviously not going to write lies about anyone, particularly my friends. And I'd never write anything personal or damaging to someone's reputation or anything like that. When you go out and get hammered, odds are alot of your friends are going to see you anyway, so putting those memories into print doesn't change much. It's just something to look back on and say, "what the fuck was I thinking?"

After all, if we don't learn from our mistakes and regrets, what will we learn from? Maybe we all need to consider the fact that anyone might say anything about us, so we need to be more responsible for what actions we do take when we go out boozing.

My intent with this blog is certainly not to make enemies out of friends, and I'm not trying to force my own opinions on anyone else. I'm just gonna say what I say, and if anyone ever has something to say about what I write, feel free to comment. It's easy as hell to remove a post, but don't forget that it's just as easy to get rid of comments, so keep it tasteful.

There ain't no motive for this crime...

When I was younger I had a friend by the name of Jenny. I suppose by today's standards I'd call her a real fuckin' live-wire, but after all we were just kids. So let's just say she was an active girl, and didn't really have a care in the world.
I met her when I was about 5 I think, when her family moved into a place just down the street from my house. Being that we were both single children, we became good friends. "Chums" you could say.
Anyway, Jenny's favourite place to play in the summers was the middle of the street. I really don't know why, but I remember she'd always be on the street with her balls to bounce and that damn "skip-it" or whatever the hell those things were called.
I'd often play with her in the street, and since our little road wasn't travelled much by cars (in those days) there wasn't much danger in it.
But as we grew older and our town got bigger, our street wasn't such a safe place to play anymore. More cars came through our neighbourhood, but Jenny never seemed to notice them much.
One day, when we were about 8, a car was coming down the road pretty fast, so I pulled Jenny onto her lawn and told her to watch out because she might get hit.
Even though we were chums, she got pretty pissed off at me, since she was going for a record on her skip-it and I fucked it up for her.
So as the summers came and went, I still played with her once in awhile in the street. But every time a car came by too fast, I always made sure to stand on the grass (while Jenny nonchalantly went about what she was doing in the road). After all, everytime a car came down our street too fast, they'd always slam on the brakes or swerve to miss her.
Until one day a certain car didn't stop, and it didn't slow down. There was even some debate within our neighbours that the driver actually drove right at Jenny. I stood by on the grass and watched the car as it hit her, and it's something I'll never forget.
After that Jenny wasn't the same. She took about a year to recover from the accident, though the scars are still pretty visible to people with a keen eye for that kind of thing.
Jenny never played in our street again (or any other street for that matter) in all the time since that summer's day. But I'll always remember those days that she'd sit at her window and watch me playing on the road with my other friends.
And every time a car came by, we'd be sure to stand on the grass and wait for it to pass.

Single Transferable Vote

For anyone concerned with politics, this might be of interest:

A brief explanation for British Columbians contributed by Tim Burris.

On May 17th, British Columbians get to decide whether to keep our current electoral system (the "First-past-the-post" system, or FPTP), or switch to a model called the Single Transferable Vote, or STV. STV is currently used in Ireland, Malta, and Tasmania. Despite what its critics will tell you, STV really isn't all that complicated. There are just three things you need to understand: The constituencies, the voting, and the counting method. Instead of each constituency having a single representative (MLA), STV uses bigger, multi-member constituencies - as few as 2 for larger, rural ridings, or as many as 7 for densely populated areas like Vancouver.

The ballot looks basically the same as an FPTP ballot. The difference is, under STV, you rank the candidates in order of preference. If your vote is not used to elect your first choice candidate, it is "transferred" to your second choice.

Finally, here's a quick overview of how the ballots are counted. First, a quota - the number of votes needed for a candidate to be elected - is established, based on how many total votes were cast. Then, the first choices are counted. If no one meets the quota, the candidate with the fewest first-place votes is eliminated, and his votes transferred, at full value, to the second choices marked on those ballots. If anyone does meet the quota they are declared elected. Then - and this is the tricky part - the number of votes that candidate has above the quota is counted, and those votes, called a surplus, are transferred to those voters' second choices. How do they decide which votes to transfer? Well, in the past, they would have simply chosen ballots at random, but the obvious problem there is that you'd get a different result each time you counted. So what they do is transfer all the ballots, but diminish their value so that all the votes become worth the same as the surplus.

Confused? Here's an example.

Eric, a candidate, needs 100 votes to be elected. He gets 200. To ensure that no votes are wasted, we need to transfer 100 of those votes. So, to be fair, we transfer all of them, but at half the value, so that 200 votes becomes 100 votes. This is where some people get confused, because this looks like you're counting some people's votes twice. You're actually not - you've just split individual votes. Eric only needs half of your vote to be elected, so half of that one vote goes to him, and the other half goes to your second choice - but it's still only one vote. This is why the system is called the Single Transferable Vote.

So, the real question is, what difference will it make? STV has been proven to provide more proportional representation - a party that gets 40% of the votes will get, roughly, 40% of the seats. In the last provincial election, the Liberals received 57% of the vote and about 97% of the seats, while the Green party received 12% of the vote and no seats. STV's proponents also claim that it reduces party discipline by making MLAs genuinely responsible to their constituents. Most importantly, it's more democratic. The results in any given constituency reflect the general preference of the people in that constituency far better than a single MLA, who only reflects the preference of the largest group of voters. A neat little side benefit is that it eliminates "strategic voting." There's no longer any reason to vote for anyone other than who you want to win, since your second choice will never be counted before your first - and if your first choice doesn't win, he'll be eliminated and your second choice will then be considered.

Perhaps the biggest thing that can be said in STV's favour is that Irish governments have tried to get rid of it more than once, and each time, the Irish people have voted to keep it.

Tim Burris is a student from Kamloops British Columbia.

The two things i like about this system are A) elected officials will be more representative of the people that voted them into office, and B) the times of strategic voting could be a thing of the past.

I know a great many people who voted "strategically" in the last federal election. Under this new system I have a suspicion that the NDP and Green Party would gain strength and the Liberals would lose a fair number of votes. Who knows though.

So your brother's a heart surgeon? Here's a scalpel, dig in!

Today I wandered upstairs to find Claire watching that reality TV show with Ashley Simpson on it. It just might be called "The Ashley Simpson Show", I dunno. Anyway, she croaked out a few lines and her manager (or pimp??) told her she was doing a fine job. The band looked a little pissed though, I can't imagine why.

To me this line of thinking that "your sister is a star, you can be too!" roughly equates to handing a vagabond a surgical tool and pushing him into the O.R., simply because his long lost brother is a cardiac surgeon.

The masses tune into this shit, buy her CD, watch her music videos, and sing her songs in the shower. Meanwhile quality bands with real talent toil away in obscurity, barely scraping a living out of their profession. But then again, talent isn't what they're selling now, is it?

And all the while that we're thinking about this mindless bullshit, how many of us ever stop to consider what we're not thinking about?

Which brings me to an article I came across today, written by ex-Monty Python member Terry Jones:

“A report to the UN human rights commission in Geneva has concluded that Iraqi
children were actually better off under Saddam Hussein than they are now.

This, of course, comes as a bitter blow for all those of us who, like George Bush and
Tony Blair, honestly believe that children thrive best when we drop bombs on
them from a great height, destroy their cities and blow up hospitals, schools
and power stations.

It now appears that, far from improving the quality of life for Iraqi youngsters, the US-led military assault on Iraq has inexplicably doubled the number of children under five suffering from malnutrition. Under Saddam, about 4% of children under five were going hungry, whereas by the end of last year almost 8% were suffering.

These results are even more disheartening for those of us in the Department of Making Things Better for Children in the Middle East By Military Force, since the previous attempts by Britain and America to improve the lot of Iraqi children also proved disappointing. For example, the policy of applying the most draconian sanctions in living memory totally failed to improve conditions. After they were imposed in 1990, the number of children under five who died increased by a factor of six. By 1995 something like half a million Iraqi children were dead as a result of our efforts to help them.

A year later, Madeleine Albright, then the US ambassador to the United Nations, tried to put a brave face on it. When a TV interviewer remarked that more children had died in Iraq through sanctions than were killed in Hiroshima, Mrs Albright
famously replied: "We think the price is worth it."

But clearly George Bush didn't. So he hit on the idea of bombing them instead. And not just bombing, but capturing and torturing their fathers, humiliating their mothers, shooting at them from road blocks - but none of it seems to do any good. Iraqi children simply refuse to be better nourished, healthier and less inclined to die. It is truly baffling.

And this is why we at the department are appealing to you - the general public - for ideas. If you can think of any other military techniques that we have so far failed to apply to the children of Iraq, please let us know as a matter of urgency. We assure you that, under our present leadership, there is no limit to the amount of money we are prepared to invest in a military solution to the problems of Iraqi children.

In the UK there may now be 3.6 million children living below the poverty line, and 12.9 million in the US, with no prospect of either government finding any cash to change that. But surely this is a price worth paying, if it means that George Bush and Tony Blair can make any amount of money available for bombs, shells and bullets to improve the lives of Iraqi kids. You know it makes sense.”

Well I gotta get back to studying. Maybe I'll take a few breaks to watch underaged sex symbols shake their asses in a bit though. Gotta be sure to keep up with the mass majority...

Maurice Who?

Yesterday a great man died at the age of 85. His name was Maurice Hilleman, though I doubt you've heard of him. He just happened to be the man who developed vaccines for the mumps, the measles, chickenpox, pneumonia, meningitis and other diseases that saved literally tens of millions of lives worldwide.

Yet everyone in North America knows the name Terri Schiavo.

Regardless of which side of the Schiavo case you were on, I think it's ridiculous to use a human being to set a precedent for anything. If laws had been carefully crafted, laid out, and followed in this case, a woman's suffering could've been diminished (though there is some debate about whether or not she could actually feel pain). Instead her family and friends had to go through several emotional removal/replacements of her feeding tube over the past few years. Meanwhile the politicians sat around with their thumbs up their asses and passed the buck to the next court, the next appeal, or the next judge.

And John and Jane Q-viewer (to quote Chris Farley) sat glued to the televison. Debates were heated, people rallied and tried to yell louder than their opponents, and all the while a woman lay dying in a hospital bed.

In my opinion that's bullshit, but what's even worse is the fact that a delicate family issue regarding a single person became every news agency's top story. In a just world the family would've settled things quietly and alone, and the media would focus on something more important. Oh, I dunno, say the Darfur genocide or some little thing like that.

I bet I heard the name Schiavo more times than I could've counted the day after her death. In reality she was just a brain-dead woman who contributed exponentially less to the world than did Hilleman. Yet today I only heard his name once on TV, which happened to be on The Hour with George Stroumboulopoulos.

On the plus side, I didn't hear his name once (or see any dramatic hospital-bed-footage of the man) in the days before his death.

Maurice Hilleman: 1919-2005

And the award for "Worst Idea of the Night" goes to...

Well last night was interesting to say the least. I started the night off with a few beers at home, then Erin drove Ben, Gow, and I up to Saugeen for a party that Dustin and Eddy were having in rez. So we showed up at Saugeen to find a drunken pukefest on the boys' floor. We had a few beers as we wandered the halls until the party kinda died down.
We were sitting around in the boys' room when someone started up that "ole, ole ole ole ole" song. Dustin lost his drunken balance and fell into a bunch of bottles and a homemade bar they had set up. As Dustin was getting up Eddy came in with a ceiling tile and shattered it on Dustin's head. Then everyone started smashing each other with pieces of the ceiling tile, filling the room with a chalky kind of dust. Alot of people cleared out but a few guys stayed in the room. Then someone threw a chair at the wall, followed by dozens of beer and liquor bottles that all ended up in one corner. Fortunately the beds were missing from the room for the night.
In the end a table, many chairs, and countless beer bottles ended up in pieces. I have no idea how they cleaned that shit up.
We headed for the bar only to find a huge lineup at the Ceeps. So James, Logan, Joc and I went to T.J.'s for a few pints. Later we hit hit the Ceeps and met up with everyone who stood in line for over an hour. It only took us five minutes to get in.
After the bar James had the bright idea of visiting his parents in a hotel close by, since they were in town for his sister's dance competition. I have no idea how 3 drunks (James, Gow, and I) got into the hotel without being stopped by anyone. So we woke up his parents, his sister, and her boyfriend and talked about all sorts of things. Namely sex. I prefer to think that old people don't have sex.
After we left them in relative peace, we walked back to the guys' place, only to find a parking meter on a sidestreet. Since the rain had started, the ground was getting soft. So after alot of back and forth shoving, the thing came out of the ground and the boys hauled it back to their place. Once inside, they went to town on it with a hammer, to no avail. It was like watching two monkeys try to get into an oyster shell or something. I passed out and awoke in a daze on the couch, wondering where the hell I was.
Looking back I still can't decide who was the biggest fool of the evening. I'm just glad it wasn't me.