Lets Call it a Spare

The TTC (Toronto Transit Comission) tried to throw a strike yesterday. I would classify it as a blitzkreig strike (lightning fast in large numbers), but the press is calling it a Wildcat Strike.

Whatever. My point is this. The TTC thinks they're being screwed. They are not the bad guys. Am I pissed off at them? Sure I am. They keep raising the goddamned price of the fare because of their own incompetence and the Jane bus is enough to drive anyone to drink (seriously, the bus comes every 15-20 minutes in packs of 2 or 3 - not the promised 7 minutes or less). Anyway, I don't blame the guys who drive the trains or collect the fares. These poor chaps are getting beaten for trying to do their jobs. And there's problems making their schedules work. They've been complaining about it for months and no one's done a thing. Well. That would piss me off. I might not go into work if that kind of refusal to acknowledge my problems continued. I might call all my co-worker friends and say, "Hey man, we're getting fucked here! Let's not go into work today and see how they do without us." And so that's what they did. En masse, they decided to say, 'You know what? We're getting fucked here! Let's not go into work today.' And being the backwards society that we are, our government said 'Hey, you're way out of line because we didn't listen to you' and forced them to go back to work.

Apparently there are 'rules' for how to strike properly. Apparently the Labour Relations Board declared the sudden strike "illegal" and issued a cease-desist order demanding workers return immediately. The ruling was filed in court, meaning workers who ignored it would be held in contempt of court and face the possibility of fines or jail time. Apparently the Labour Relations Board is headed by chimps.

Are you kidding me? This is war! These guys are fighting to be heard and resorted to desperate measures because no one listened. Granted, I have no first-hand experience of war, but to my knowledge the Germans rarely - if ever - declared they were going to march across no man's land in iron suits with flamethrowers before they did so. Nor did they say, 'Hey, France, we're rolling about three thousand tanks through your vineyards tomorrow. Just a heads up!' It sort of removes the element of surprise from the ordeal and understates the point that you want to make in bold, capital, large letters.

Only in such a ridiculous society of politicking and selfishness does the good guy become the bad guy. Seriously. The bad guys here are the idiots who didn't listen in the first place. I hate assholes who hide behind rules. They're supposed to protect the good guys, not give the bad guys grounds to screw the world up. I understand why the rules are in place. If doctors held the same attitude and didn't come into work, people would die. Here's my advice then. Listen. If doctors have a problem, listen very, very carefully. If the nurses have a problem, sit down with them, listen and make every effort to give them what they want. And maybe now they'll do the same for the TTC people.

Jowling...

I really can't explain. Partly because blogger is being dumb and won't let me post an example. Anyway, it's a case of where a picture is worth a thousand (or more) words. This website was discovered courtesy of one of my increasing favourite bands (both musically and intellectually); Guster. Brian (the drummer and comic genius from said band) describes it as such:

"You pretty much relax your jaw and whip your head back and forth furiously while someone takes a picture, capturing what seems to be an impossibly unflattering moment. It looks a lot like you're being punched in the face"

Anyway, they found this ridiculous website and it's worth a look.

http://www.jowlers.com/

Stephen Harper Eats Babies...

I thought so from the very get go and now I have definitive proof. The paper said so, so it must be true, right?

Harper doesn't eat babies: GO Transit

May 2, 2006. 07:47 AM
PHINJO GOMBU
STAFF REPORTER

Gerry Nicholls thought he was hallucinating as he kicked back in his seat to take the 35-minute GO train ride to his Oakville home. About every three seconds, the scrolling electronic sign that usually carries transit updates and advertisements had a very different message that he just could not keep his eyes off.

"Stephen Harper Eats Babies. Stephen Harper Eats Babies. Stephen Harper Eats Babies," the message kept repeating.

"No one (in the car) seemed to be reacting to it," said Nicholls, who happens to be vice-president of the National Citizens Coalition, the same conservative think-tank formerly headed by Prime Minister Stephen Harper.

An ingenious hacker, who boarded the Lakeshore GO Transit westbound train, made sure that on Thursday, Friday and yesterday, suburban commuters in at least five different cars continued to get his or her subliminal message. His weapon of choice was a remote control device that can be bought at a Sam's Club and used to discreetly program scrolling electronic signs found commonly in shop windows — and in every GO Transit train car — from about two metres away.

When Exclusive Advertising, the company that sells interior advertising on GO trains, installed the LED signs about nine years ago, the signs, which have to be individually programmed, couldn't be password protected, said company president Greg Donohue. The company sells advertisers $8,690 of space a month to play 15-second messages with 52 characters on a three-minute loop.

To prevent it from happening again, GO Transit will have to power down all the signs on their cars and use special software that is being couriered from the United States to password protect 790 such digital signs.

The whole process will take about three days.

"I'm sure a lot of people could take offence, and I guess the other point is what other message could they put there?"

Asked about his time with Harper at the National Citizens Coalition, Nicholls said: "I worked with Stephen Harper for five years and never once did he in that time eat a baby."


I don't know. There were a lot of missing children in the past five years. I demand an inquiry!

Hockey nights in Canada...

Yes, I'm just like a healthy majority of Canadian boys. I love hockey. I love April/May because it invariably means that if you get both CBC & TSN, you can watch 2-3 hockey games every night for a month and a half. Everything in life should be so easy and so within reach. Well, maybe not everything. Seafood can stay well away. In fact, it can stay in the sea. Let's quantify. All good things should be so easy and within reach. You know; pizza, grilled cheese, pepsi, hockey, rock and roll, hot sex, peanut buster parfaits, Christopher Guest movies, cherry kool-aid (Oh Yeah!) and quality television (a whole other blog - Lost, American Idol, Desperate Housewives and anything produced, executive produced, assistant produced, associate produced or co-executive associate assistant produced by Marc Burnett do not qualify as quality television). Right. I was talking about hockey.

I played hockey for 12 years. I was pretty good. Too small to go very far, but we'll never know how far, because my career was effectively ended when I was 16 years old and I had two full dislocations of the shoulder and a broken nose in the same season. My team (Midget AA, I think) went on to win the provincial title without me. Anyway, the best I can now do is live vicariously through the television. Aside, of course, from making my own team and dominating at the PS2 & Xbox variations of the game (although I was challenged by my 8 year old cousin a few weeks ago - he beat me in game 1 - 2nd OT, of course - before I thoroughly schooled the boy and shut him out in 3 straight games. Tough love, tough love.) I was - in fact - the Ryerson residence champion for 2 years running and we went on to form an inter-university rivalry with the McGill champ who is now a friend of mine. I believe our lifetime series tally sits at 3-2 in my favour.

Anyway, spring means playoffs. And playoff hockey is - far and away - the best sport to watch on television. I could list the guys who exemplify it: Steve Yzerman, Doug Gilmour, Martin Brodeur, Gary Roberts, Mark Messier. And now Ryan Smyth. The guy got hit in the face with a puck and had to leave the game. He lost three teeth and got eight stitches, but was back a period later. BOY, did he look pale. But he set up the game winning goal in triple overtime. Having just had some teeth issues, I can't imagine how much that must have hurt to play. Breathing was painful for me - let alone having people purposely trying to knock you over at high velocities. Anyway, he's just the latest in a series of these playoff Gods. They transcend the extraordinary skills that put them in the record books and they display something more. It's heart, it's desperation, it's savage hunger, it's being within an arm's reach of a lifelong dream. And we get to watch it every year. It's magic.

Since my team is golfing right now(although I'm ecstatic they just hired Paul Maurice!), all I can do is pray the Senators allow the inevitable repetition of history and hope that the Oilers go all the way. Everyone loves an underdog, right? And when a team inspires prose like this quote from tsn.ca you have to be equal parts awed and disgusted.

"Oilers forward Georges Laraque, who was kicked out Wednesday (May 10th) halfwa through the game for lining Jonathan Cheechoo's head against the boards and appearing to spike it like a volleyball, said no one has the advantage."

Call me crazy, but I think the guy who's able to line people's heads up and spike them like a volleyball gives his team a distinct advantage. That and a guy who can gain eight stitches, lose three teeth and a pint of blood in one game. That's dedication. My hope is a Buffalo vs Edmonton final. Speed and grit vs speed and heart. Dig it.

Sell Control For Life's Speed

That's the title of the new album by a Canadian band, Pilate. If you haven't heard of them, wait about two months. They'll be everywhere. They're not going to go U2 or 50 Cent huge, but they're certainly going to be noticeable.

My drummer, Alex, and I were talking the other day about how few albums get us excited about music anymore. Nevermind by Nirvana, Ten by Pearl Jam, Appetite for Destruction by Guns 'N' Roses, The Joshua Tree by U2, August & Everything After by the Counting Crows - all these albums used to make me feel something. Be it rage, elation, profound sadness or just kinetic with the need to take action - these records got me excited.

Of course that's going to change with age. It's inevitable. Our priorities change and so do our responses to any kind of provocation. But these days, I know a good record when I hear it because it makes me want to make music. It makes me want to stand up and say something. Well, Pilate has made a really good record, because Sell Control For Life's Speed makes me want to write a bigger, badder sequel to Ode to Joy.

These cats took more than two years to record their sophomore record (their first album was a lovely little gem called 'Caught by the Window' – they also have a rare, rare indie EP called For All That’s Given Wasted which showcases their promising beginnings.) And it was well worth the wait. They went back to Joe Carvalho – who produced the first record – and the relationship, like the music, has obviously matured. They clearly made exactly the album they wanted to make. The songs are beautifully crafted and the production is clear, lush and expansive. And the music...the music is full of hope and fear and anger and confusion and everything that's missing from the formulaic songwriting that dominates our candy-coated, look-good-sing-later, Idol perfect radio waves. Fuck that. Music shouldn't be perfect. American Idol takes the soul out of music. Yes, those people have beautiful voices. But unless they kick at the edges of the cookie cutter they've chosen to sleep in, they can call it their musical coffin as well. Music needs soul and edge and some roughness. Pilate has all that. Technique and feeling. Raw emotion and controlled execution.

It is incredibly hard to write a second record. On your first album, you have all the experience of your life, and the songs you’ve ever written and you fling them onto the audio canvas. And if people decide it speaks to them, you’re expected to better your own life experience and dazzle the world. So many bands have failed here. But not Pilate. They have bettered themselves and they have bettered Canadian music.

They do walk the fine line between Radiohead and Coldplay, but hey – everybody sounds like somebody else. And this is a band that has embraced their niche and damned the consequences. You have to respect that kind of nonchalance. Particularly when it’s tempered with such an emotional record. All of the performances are stunning, but it’s the work of lead singer, Todd Clark, that lifts the band and pulls you in. With a huge vocal range – that he explores thoroughly – and an emotive, warm and slightly ragged voice, he succeeds at doing exactly what a front man should do; he connects.There are no stand-out songs, because it's so, so consistent. There are moments in every song that make your heart swell or your stomach flutter or your eyes water. I've listened to it about 9 times now. There's not a weak link. There aren’t two radio singles and nine filler tunes. This is blood, sweat, tears and love from the haunting, opening chords of 'Knife Grey Sea' to the soaring, sailing choir at the end of 'Into the West.' And here's the other kicker. It's $11.99 (plus applicable taxes, of course). For just over 53 minutes of incredible music. Smart. They've also just finished a six date tour playing tiny clubs around Canada. They gave tickets away free with the album. Smarter. And they're coming back next month playing much bigger clubs in the same cities and a few others. Someone is clearly thinking here. Create the buzz, give the die-hards the intimate show and then come back and hope to move the masses. Smart, smart, smart. These guys are doing everything right and I hope they get all the success they deserve. If you have $13.83 to spare, help them make it happen. These guys may help save music.