She could replace TV's current It Girl, Rachel Ray. It couldn't possibly get any worse.
Actually, that's not true, Rona Ambrose might start speaking French. I do not know if Rachel Ray knows how to speak French. Frankly, I am afraid to find out.
Wednesday, October 04, 2006
Friday, September 22, 2006
Phobias are for phuckwits
phuckwit n. [var. of fuckwit]
a person whose foolishness or idiocy is specifically caused by bigotry, narrow-mindedness or prejudice and its resulting behaviours (eg. islamophobia, homophobia)
ex: That girl who called my friend a "Moooooslim" was a grade A phuckwit.
a person whose foolishness or idiocy is specifically caused by bigotry, narrow-mindedness or prejudice and its resulting behaviours (eg. islamophobia, homophobia)
ex: That girl who called my friend a "Moooooslim" was a grade A phuckwit.
Tuesday, September 19, 2006
The History of Errors
Perhaps he was having trouble with his Oxford Book of Quotations or whatever the equivalent compendium of encyclicals, bulls and learned writings of the Roman Catholic Church happens to be called. In any event, the Pope has put his foot in it.
I'm not often one to defend His Holiness. I emphatically disagree with most Roman Catholic doctrine regarding homosexuals, birth control and abortion; I think that priests should be allowed to marry if they want to; and I'm generally unimpressed by the conservatism of church leaders. All this being said, the overarching message of the Pope's address, as noted by Jewish Studies Chair James Diamond, is an overwhelmingly positive and balanced one (well, for the Pope): Benedict's conclusion - that to act without reason in any religion is to contravene divine will and law - is both pertinent, timely, widely applicable to everything from consumerism to nuclear proliferation, and to my belief, true.
What's just as distressing as the Vatican's inept editing skills is the fact that every news outlet I've seen has made a hash of the Pope's befuddled, crypto-Orientalist (but not I think malicious) point, including its context both within the history of Christian thought, and in the current climate of world events.
His former Eminence Cardinal Joseph Ratzinger is a conservative, highly doctrinaire Roman Catholic (if he weren't, this guy might be the Holy Father right now.) As such, when Benedict XVI hit the stage at his alma mater, the good ol' U of R Theological School, I have to assume he decided to get all erudite on the Faculty's ass - and being well-regarded as one of the world's foremost conservative Catholic theologians even before he became Pope, he might have disappointed the crowd if he hadn't been. So the Pope dug up what I can only assume is a fairly obscure reference in a very obscure book to an even more obscure historical figure - Manuel II Palaeologus, the second last Byzantine Emperor.
Manuel's position in the winter of 1391 was an exceedingly awkward one, involving heavy dynastic infighting with his own family, not to mention the fact that the Byzantine Empire was the 14th century equivalent of Vietnam, with less communism and more sand - European powers jockeyed for interest and territory, fighting the indigenous (in this case Turkish) forces and playing politics with the powerless Byzantine rulers while wasting huge amounts of treasure and manpower in what was truly a quagmire. Manuel was, at age 41, living in the court of the Ottoman Sultan, and licking boots as part of the game of power politics. Sounds suspiciously like another epoch I could mention, doesn't it.
Something I read the other day claimed the whole document was made up. It's not implausible. There have also been a number of reports that the Pope, unlike his predecessor, has had little use for the opinions of his advisers on sensitive topics, particularly Islam. That's not implausible either. What's hardest to believe is that in our future imperfect, dialogue with Muslim interlocutors is perceived by the essentializing powers that be to be more difficult, and less necessary, than in our civilization's "semi-barbaric" pre-Renaissance.
Evil, indeed.
I'm not often one to defend His Holiness. I emphatically disagree with most Roman Catholic doctrine regarding homosexuals, birth control and abortion; I think that priests should be allowed to marry if they want to; and I'm generally unimpressed by the conservatism of church leaders. All this being said, the overarching message of the Pope's address, as noted by Jewish Studies Chair James Diamond, is an overwhelmingly positive and balanced one (well, for the Pope): Benedict's conclusion - that to act without reason in any religion is to contravene divine will and law - is both pertinent, timely, widely applicable to everything from consumerism to nuclear proliferation, and to my belief, true.
What's just as distressing as the Vatican's inept editing skills is the fact that every news outlet I've seen has made a hash of the Pope's befuddled, crypto-Orientalist (but not I think malicious) point, including its context both within the history of Christian thought, and in the current climate of world events.
His former Eminence Cardinal Joseph Ratzinger is a conservative, highly doctrinaire Roman Catholic (if he weren't, this guy might be the Holy Father right now.) As such, when Benedict XVI hit the stage at his alma mater, the good ol' U of R Theological School, I have to assume he decided to get all erudite on the Faculty's ass - and being well-regarded as one of the world's foremost conservative Catholic theologians even before he became Pope, he might have disappointed the crowd if he hadn't been. So the Pope dug up what I can only assume is a fairly obscure reference in a very obscure book to an even more obscure historical figure - Manuel II Palaeologus, the second last Byzantine Emperor.
Manuel's position in the winter of 1391 was an exceedingly awkward one, involving heavy dynastic infighting with his own family, not to mention the fact that the Byzantine Empire was the 14th century equivalent of Vietnam, with less communism and more sand - European powers jockeyed for interest and territory, fighting the indigenous (in this case Turkish) forces and playing politics with the powerless Byzantine rulers while wasting huge amounts of treasure and manpower in what was truly a quagmire. Manuel was, at age 41, living in the court of the Ottoman Sultan, and licking boots as part of the game of power politics. Sounds suspiciously like another epoch I could mention, doesn't it.
Something I read the other day claimed the whole document was made up. It's not implausible. There have also been a number of reports that the Pope, unlike his predecessor, has had little use for the opinions of his advisers on sensitive topics, particularly Islam. That's not implausible either. What's hardest to believe is that in our future imperfect, dialogue with Muslim interlocutors is perceived by the essentializing powers that be to be more difficult, and less necessary, than in our civilization's "semi-barbaric" pre-Renaissance.
Evil, indeed.
Sunday, September 17, 2006
1 gazillion miles to the gallon
Most of my friends seem to have jumped on the blogging bandwagon. This of course is a very large wagon (hopefully a hybrid, perhaps built by Toyota), but I am proud to say that I was second among my immediate circle of friends to start blogging it up. Well, maybe third....
Happily, I'm lucky to know so many dynamic types with such a varied set of interests: Aldous on food, Simon on fashion, David on photography, Nick on painting and urbanisme, Eric on spirituality, Stephanie on living in Scotland, Andy on...miscellaneous topics.
What is my blog on? I am not sure. Perhaps I should review cultural events. Or music. Or fish. Any thoughts?
Happily, I'm lucky to know so many dynamic types with such a varied set of interests: Aldous on food, Simon on fashion, David on photography, Nick on painting and urbanisme, Eric on spirituality, Stephanie on living in Scotland, Andy on...miscellaneous topics.
What is my blog on? I am not sure. Perhaps I should review cultural events. Or music. Or fish. Any thoughts?
It's dusty, not to mention heartwrenching
Speaking of memory lane, I spent a good deal of today at a task I always have mixed feelings about: cleaning my closet.
The closet in my room is actually quite small, and has some queer angles, if you'll pardon the joke. Yet it's astonishing how much of the detritus of my youth is still crammed into it. Or rather, how much of the detritus of my family's collective past is jammed into its dusty expanse - in our house, perennially low on storage space, it's always a temptation for my siblings and I to stow things we can't bring ourselves to part with in the closets and corners of the next room down, and return to our own with the clutter of yesterday safely out of sight and therefore out of mind. So sorting through my brother's stuffed animals, my mother's summer dresses and my father's old shirts, I had a fairly full account of the last twenty years, written in that revealing and moving language, Clutter.
The motivations for preserving some of the momenti I'd stashed away along the line seemed, blessedly, entirely meaningless - what on earth possessed me to keep a cassette walkman from 1989? Or my American history notes from second year? By and large however, the contents of my closetmoved me not with their emotional obsolescence, but with their continuing resonance, their hold on my heart's history.
For instance, the piece of green plastic emblazoned with the image of a smiling frog, cut from my plastic wading pool before it was thrown away when I was nine. Or the photo album filled with my Grade One and Two pictures, taken with my first camera. And the book my mother made to give structure to my father's departure for several months in Cameroon, when I was two. I guess I shouldn't be surprised that the physical reminders of the past ring so clearly. I do have some pretensions towards being an historian in embryo, after all.
Still, that green plastic frog almost made me cry.
The closet in my room is actually quite small, and has some queer angles, if you'll pardon the joke. Yet it's astonishing how much of the detritus of my youth is still crammed into it. Or rather, how much of the detritus of my family's collective past is jammed into its dusty expanse - in our house, perennially low on storage space, it's always a temptation for my siblings and I to stow things we can't bring ourselves to part with in the closets and corners of the next room down, and return to our own with the clutter of yesterday safely out of sight and therefore out of mind. So sorting through my brother's stuffed animals, my mother's summer dresses and my father's old shirts, I had a fairly full account of the last twenty years, written in that revealing and moving language, Clutter.
The motivations for preserving some of the momenti I'd stashed away along the line seemed, blessedly, entirely meaningless - what on earth possessed me to keep a cassette walkman from 1989? Or my American history notes from second year? By and large however, the contents of my closetmoved me not with their emotional obsolescence, but with their continuing resonance, their hold on my heart's history.
For instance, the piece of green plastic emblazoned with the image of a smiling frog, cut from my plastic wading pool before it was thrown away when I was nine. Or the photo album filled with my Grade One and Two pictures, taken with my first camera. And the book my mother made to give structure to my father's departure for several months in Cameroon, when I was two. I guess I shouldn't be surprised that the physical reminders of the past ring so clearly. I do have some pretensions towards being an historian in embryo, after all.
Still, that green plastic frog almost made me cry.
Memory Lane
Well, that took a while.
For those of you still occasionally reading this, my apologies. Real life (in the murderous-clown-wielding-a-hatchet guise of the University of Toronto's Student Administrative Council Orientation Day) intruded on my thoughts, actions, and nightmares for about a month, and didn't give me much time to hone lengthy expository screeds for the net to read.
Happily, as I'm now unemployed, I have MUCH more time on my hands.
For those of you still occasionally reading this, my apologies. Real life (in the murderous-clown-wielding-a-hatchet guise of the University of Toronto's Student Administrative Council Orientation Day) intruded on my thoughts, actions, and nightmares for about a month, and didn't give me much time to hone lengthy expository screeds for the net to read.
Happily, as I'm now unemployed, I have MUCH more time on my hands.
Tuesday, August 15, 2006
Global Warming
Christopher Hitchens pines for the good old days, when all the men were strong, all the women good looking, and all the terrorists above average.
I have trouble reading Christopher Hitchens, mainly because I so often agree with him. Hitchens is a man unafraid to say what he believes, though I suspect sometimes (and it's rich coming from me, I know) that he speaks with a hot head. I often wish that he would think more coolly, and perhaps by extension believe more carefully, on what he ends up saying.
Is it really plausible to say, for instance, that all members of the Popular Front for the Liberation of Palestine or the Black Panthers were enlightened freedom fighters prone to lofty thoughts about the future and the sanctity of innocent life? Of course not. Those organisations contained members as fanatical and fascistic as those of the worst Islamic fundamentalist movement, though I will grant Hitchens that religion slightly outpaces ethnicity or nationalism as the ideological form most congenial to fanaticism.
Why though does Hitchens consistently draw a line in the sand around Islamic fundamentalism and its crop of associated terrorists? Because, it seems, suicide bombers "long for death," foolishly ignoring the pleasures of this life in favor of those of the next.
It might be argued that many of the young men inclined to blow up airplanes and destroy buses in the name of Islamist terror have no reason to eschew the material world, growing up as they often do in suburban and thoroughly middle class splendour. Yet here lies a clue to the root of the question. What is it about our modern world that causes citizens to radicalize themselves? Is it that modern iterations of society hold such conflicting and sometimes hypocritical accounts of truth and justice within themselves - say for instance, arguing that all humans are created equal, but implicitly condoning the death of ten Lebanese civilians for every Israeli soldier - that those held deeply within the physical cocoon of western modernity throw over its trappings and apparently empty promises and go for the big prize: heaven, with virgins or no.
Hitchens would decry this view as being "soft on terrorists," and insofar as I try to make it a habit to seek to understand the core motivations of all human actions, he would be right. Hitchens might also claim that Islamist terror has a higher degree of truly pathological - that is, insane - devotees as opposed to other terrorist groups. Here I am not sure I agree. There are no doubt a number of quite certifiable Islamist terrorists at the moment, but surely there are an equal number of certifiable Tamil Tigers, American Christian nationalists, or chihuahua collectors. My point of course is that ideologies (the chihuahuas aside) attract pathologies, and the more ideological one gets, the more likely one is to exhibit the signs of a mental illness.
All this being said, I suppose my opposition to Hitchens on all this comes down to the following: Hitchens claims that some things (namely people and their motivations) have fundamentally changed in the Age of Terror, when they haven't; and he implies that society and its trappings (culture and technology) have not changed, when they have.
To say that people and their psychology, instincts and capacities have fundamentally changed since, thanks to and as the cause of September 11th is both untrue, presumptuous, and astonishingly dangerous: it implies that humans are now more bloodthirsty or more saintly than they were ten, a hundred or a thousand years, which is hogwash of the first order. This kind of thinking sets one on the slippery slope of defining the idea of "human" as a temporal phenomenon, a trend unhelpful in any field other than perhaos evolutionary anthropology. People evolve biologically, but not, sadly, so quickly as all that - to imply otherwise passes the street sign pointing towards horrors with which the world, unfortunately, is all too familiar.
On the other hand, to ignore the evolution of global society and its role as a motivating factor over the past 100, 50 or even 10 years is equally dangerous. It's clear that societies are in some ways greater (or less) than the sum of their parts - so to ignore the fact that a Brazilian fighting against a corrupt dictatorship and a Islamist terrorist acting against the United States are not in entirely analogous situations is, of course, foolish and criminally irresponsible. But there must be an understanding and acceptance of the weight of history when crafting political policy: if this anchor is absent, politics risks floating off into the same ideological hot air that sometimes motivates the Islamists, capitalists, fascists and other ideologues of the world. The Internet has profound social and cultural implications, the threat of terrorist dialogue being one, in my view, of the more prosaic ones - but only a fool, and an ahistorical fool at that, would decide to deal with this problem by invading a tin pot Middle Eastern dictatorship.
If terrorists are motivated these days by some of the same old concerns about nationalisms, lands, freedoms etc (Lebanon? Palestine? Sri Lanka? Aceh?) how then are they (or some of them, at least) fundamentally different from Christopher Hitchens' friends from the good old days, and who is to say that we should not deal with them (some of them, at least) in a similar way? And if terrorists do seem different in their motivations and tactics, what explains it? Surely not biology (though if this really is the explanation, it's another barrel of monkeys entirely). And if not biology, what?
I suspect that our Age of Terror, as William Saletan intelligently noted the other day, is all about a dissolution of boundaries, mental and physical. A young man in Manchester not even of Arab or Muslim heritage can feel as if "his" people are being oppressed on the sands of Iraq, and connect that oppression, however tenuously, with blowing up an American airliner. This brave new world is indeed terrifying - this latest iteration of Marx's assertion that in the modern world "all that is solid melts into air" is destabilizing and upsetting for us, generations brought up in the reasonably stable political chill of the Cold War.
But thawing out doesn't mean we need despair. Because people can still be good like they always could be bad - it's only our technology that sometimes clouds the issue and makes it hard for us to see. Call it condensation, if you like. So I do wish that Christopher Hitchens would nostalge a little less for the good old days, and turn his considerable intellect and formidable talents to bear on the present and its exigencies. Because we're all getting a little hot under the collar, and it will take all honest people, with sharp minds and good hearts, to clear the air.
I have trouble reading Christopher Hitchens, mainly because I so often agree with him. Hitchens is a man unafraid to say what he believes, though I suspect sometimes (and it's rich coming from me, I know) that he speaks with a hot head. I often wish that he would think more coolly, and perhaps by extension believe more carefully, on what he ends up saying.
Is it really plausible to say, for instance, that all members of the Popular Front for the Liberation of Palestine or the Black Panthers were enlightened freedom fighters prone to lofty thoughts about the future and the sanctity of innocent life? Of course not. Those organisations contained members as fanatical and fascistic as those of the worst Islamic fundamentalist movement, though I will grant Hitchens that religion slightly outpaces ethnicity or nationalism as the ideological form most congenial to fanaticism.
Why though does Hitchens consistently draw a line in the sand around Islamic fundamentalism and its crop of associated terrorists? Because, it seems, suicide bombers "long for death," foolishly ignoring the pleasures of this life in favor of those of the next.
It might be argued that many of the young men inclined to blow up airplanes and destroy buses in the name of Islamist terror have no reason to eschew the material world, growing up as they often do in suburban and thoroughly middle class splendour. Yet here lies a clue to the root of the question. What is it about our modern world that causes citizens to radicalize themselves? Is it that modern iterations of society hold such conflicting and sometimes hypocritical accounts of truth and justice within themselves - say for instance, arguing that all humans are created equal, but implicitly condoning the death of ten Lebanese civilians for every Israeli soldier - that those held deeply within the physical cocoon of western modernity throw over its trappings and apparently empty promises and go for the big prize: heaven, with virgins or no.
Hitchens would decry this view as being "soft on terrorists," and insofar as I try to make it a habit to seek to understand the core motivations of all human actions, he would be right. Hitchens might also claim that Islamist terror has a higher degree of truly pathological - that is, insane - devotees as opposed to other terrorist groups. Here I am not sure I agree. There are no doubt a number of quite certifiable Islamist terrorists at the moment, but surely there are an equal number of certifiable Tamil Tigers, American Christian nationalists, or chihuahua collectors. My point of course is that ideologies (the chihuahuas aside) attract pathologies, and the more ideological one gets, the more likely one is to exhibit the signs of a mental illness.
All this being said, I suppose my opposition to Hitchens on all this comes down to the following: Hitchens claims that some things (namely people and their motivations) have fundamentally changed in the Age of Terror, when they haven't; and he implies that society and its trappings (culture and technology) have not changed, when they have.
To say that people and their psychology, instincts and capacities have fundamentally changed since, thanks to and as the cause of September 11th is both untrue, presumptuous, and astonishingly dangerous: it implies that humans are now more bloodthirsty or more saintly than they were ten, a hundred or a thousand years, which is hogwash of the first order. This kind of thinking sets one on the slippery slope of defining the idea of "human" as a temporal phenomenon, a trend unhelpful in any field other than perhaos evolutionary anthropology. People evolve biologically, but not, sadly, so quickly as all that - to imply otherwise passes the street sign pointing towards horrors with which the world, unfortunately, is all too familiar.
On the other hand, to ignore the evolution of global society and its role as a motivating factor over the past 100, 50 or even 10 years is equally dangerous. It's clear that societies are in some ways greater (or less) than the sum of their parts - so to ignore the fact that a Brazilian fighting against a corrupt dictatorship and a Islamist terrorist acting against the United States are not in entirely analogous situations is, of course, foolish and criminally irresponsible. But there must be an understanding and acceptance of the weight of history when crafting political policy: if this anchor is absent, politics risks floating off into the same ideological hot air that sometimes motivates the Islamists, capitalists, fascists and other ideologues of the world. The Internet has profound social and cultural implications, the threat of terrorist dialogue being one, in my view, of the more prosaic ones - but only a fool, and an ahistorical fool at that, would decide to deal with this problem by invading a tin pot Middle Eastern dictatorship.
If terrorists are motivated these days by some of the same old concerns about nationalisms, lands, freedoms etc (Lebanon? Palestine? Sri Lanka? Aceh?) how then are they (or some of them, at least) fundamentally different from Christopher Hitchens' friends from the good old days, and who is to say that we should not deal with them (some of them, at least) in a similar way? And if terrorists do seem different in their motivations and tactics, what explains it? Surely not biology (though if this really is the explanation, it's another barrel of monkeys entirely). And if not biology, what?
I suspect that our Age of Terror, as William Saletan intelligently noted the other day, is all about a dissolution of boundaries, mental and physical. A young man in Manchester not even of Arab or Muslim heritage can feel as if "his" people are being oppressed on the sands of Iraq, and connect that oppression, however tenuously, with blowing up an American airliner. This brave new world is indeed terrifying - this latest iteration of Marx's assertion that in the modern world "all that is solid melts into air" is destabilizing and upsetting for us, generations brought up in the reasonably stable political chill of the Cold War.
But thawing out doesn't mean we need despair. Because people can still be good like they always could be bad - it's only our technology that sometimes clouds the issue and makes it hard for us to see. Call it condensation, if you like. So I do wish that Christopher Hitchens would nostalge a little less for the good old days, and turn his considerable intellect and formidable talents to bear on the present and its exigencies. Because we're all getting a little hot under the collar, and it will take all honest people, with sharp minds and good hearts, to clear the air.
Dog days mean big words
August is truly a terrible month, particularly in the realm of the mass media. Take for instance radio hosts - with the CBC's on-air talent pool already looking a little brackish at the best of times, it only takes a few vacation-motivated desertions for the Mothercorp to start stinking up the airwaves worse than the Long Island Sound during a garbage strike.
But at least the CBC occasionally aspires to quality in broadcasting. Not so CNN, whose descent into a tacky clearinghouse of popular superstitions, right-wing nostrums and trashy inanities has occasionally made even that tedious cesspool that is CTV News look good.
For instance: not only is the "which celebrity is gay?" story about as hackneyed as Reagonomics, but what does it say about the prejudices, vacuity, and sheer unadulterated ignorance of not just the American people but the American journalistic corps when a story that snidely suggests that Rosie O'Donnell "wears her homosexuality like a badge of honour" is worthy of the front page? I suppose that anyone who's gay in America has a big invisible neon sign hanging over their their crotch that only straight people can see? Or is the mere iteration of a sexuality even marginally different from that peddled by the mass-marketed, patriarchal and poisonously consumerist mainstream so threatening to conservative North America that its existence must be qualified, exposed and explained away, archived into a little box of paradoxically ignorant awareness?
In certain circles (the Toronto Star, Fab Magazine and elsewhere) the question has been asked more than once in the past year: why is there such a distressing homogeniety in the characterizations of gays and lesbians on network television, so distinct a lack of original queer stories in the the mainstream cinema (pace, Annie Proulx, Felicity Huffman et. al - last year was a good one, but we still didn't win Best Picture), so few "out" entertainers, and almost no gay politicians at all?
Why? In the minds of some, the only "real" fags are bitchy dykes like Rosie O'Donnell and poncy queens like Lance Bass - people who 'wear the homosexuality like a badge of honour' because the're forced by their overweening "otherness" to explain their deviation from (or conformity to?) societal norms in a way society understands - that deviance can then be seen for what it is believed to be, and treated as such. In the minds of some, to be a homosexual is to be what it has been (at least in the United States cultural mythos) for a hundred years: a failed man and freak if a woman, and a half-woman and clown if a man. And it's not hard to see what's homologous about those two extremes.
I hadn't intended to get quite this involved with something so apparently trivial as an Entertainment Tonight fluff piece; but CNN's boorishness is disturbing precisely because it's so banal, so absent-minded. I was astonishingly lucky, in some respects at least, to grow up in a cocoon of relative sexual isolation. Thanks in part to parental reserve and in part to my own innate reticence, I didn't know much about homosexuality until the Internet revealed to me at around thirteen (one way or another) that my sexuality was neither universal nor unique. If I didn't have any positive gay role models at an early age, I also managed to avoid developing feelings of guilt, anxiety or depression about being a fag - by the time I understood that my crush on a boy in Grade 1 (props to you Mark, if you're out there) or my urge to marry Jonathan Brandis in Grade 4 weren't isolated incidents, I hadn't had to face the kind of white noise of bigotry that so many North American kids still experience in their daily lives.
Unfortunately, not everyone is as mollycoddled as I was. The kids out there who know what a fag is by the age of five (to wit: something you don't want to be) and who grow up listening to a concert of "don't be a fag, man," "dude, that's so gay," and "man, don't be such a pansy," desperately need exposure to queer role models of all shapes, sizes, and degrees of fabulousness. They need exposure to public figures who do "wear their sexuality as a badge of honour" - Ellen DeGeneris is great, but we need about 100 of her ilk, and fast.
Canadians are more fortunate than our southern neighbors (as we are on most queer issues) in that we do have some prominent gays and lesbians to look up to. Look at the Mark Tewskberys and George Smithermans of the world, or the K.D. Langs and Libby Davies'. Yet the fact remains that until the purveyors of our mass culture, the moguls and marketing departments in Burbank and Newark and Denver and Miami , decide it's in their interest to portray queers as they truly are - as diverse and fascinating as ordinary folk - LGBTQ youth in Canada as well as in the United States will continue to lose out on a key weapon in the fight for not just tolerance, but acceptance: to have the public look at a fluff piece about who's gay and who's straight and laugh at it for its anachronism, not its content.
But at least the CBC occasionally aspires to quality in broadcasting. Not so CNN, whose descent into a tacky clearinghouse of popular superstitions, right-wing nostrums and trashy inanities has occasionally made even that tedious cesspool that is CTV News look good.
For instance: not only is the "which celebrity is gay?" story about as hackneyed as Reagonomics, but what does it say about the prejudices, vacuity, and sheer unadulterated ignorance of not just the American people but the American journalistic corps when a story that snidely suggests that Rosie O'Donnell "wears her homosexuality like a badge of honour" is worthy of the front page? I suppose that anyone who's gay in America has a big invisible neon sign hanging over their their crotch that only straight people can see? Or is the mere iteration of a sexuality even marginally different from that peddled by the mass-marketed, patriarchal and poisonously consumerist mainstream so threatening to conservative North America that its existence must be qualified, exposed and explained away, archived into a little box of paradoxically ignorant awareness?
In certain circles (the Toronto Star, Fab Magazine and elsewhere) the question has been asked more than once in the past year: why is there such a distressing homogeniety in the characterizations of gays and lesbians on network television, so distinct a lack of original queer stories in the the mainstream cinema (pace, Annie Proulx, Felicity Huffman et. al - last year was a good one, but we still didn't win Best Picture), so few "out" entertainers, and almost no gay politicians at all?
Why? In the minds of some, the only "real" fags are bitchy dykes like Rosie O'Donnell and poncy queens like Lance Bass - people who 'wear the homosexuality like a badge of honour' because the're forced by their overweening "otherness" to explain their deviation from (or conformity to?) societal norms in a way society understands - that deviance can then be seen for what it is believed to be, and treated as such. In the minds of some, to be a homosexual is to be what it has been (at least in the United States cultural mythos) for a hundred years: a failed man and freak if a woman, and a half-woman and clown if a man. And it's not hard to see what's homologous about those two extremes.
I hadn't intended to get quite this involved with something so apparently trivial as an Entertainment Tonight fluff piece; but CNN's boorishness is disturbing precisely because it's so banal, so absent-minded. I was astonishingly lucky, in some respects at least, to grow up in a cocoon of relative sexual isolation. Thanks in part to parental reserve and in part to my own innate reticence, I didn't know much about homosexuality until the Internet revealed to me at around thirteen (one way or another) that my sexuality was neither universal nor unique. If I didn't have any positive gay role models at an early age, I also managed to avoid developing feelings of guilt, anxiety or depression about being a fag - by the time I understood that my crush on a boy in Grade 1 (props to you Mark, if you're out there) or my urge to marry Jonathan Brandis in Grade 4 weren't isolated incidents, I hadn't had to face the kind of white noise of bigotry that so many North American kids still experience in their daily lives.
Unfortunately, not everyone is as mollycoddled as I was. The kids out there who know what a fag is by the age of five (to wit: something you don't want to be) and who grow up listening to a concert of "don't be a fag, man," "dude, that's so gay," and "man, don't be such a pansy," desperately need exposure to queer role models of all shapes, sizes, and degrees of fabulousness. They need exposure to public figures who do "wear their sexuality as a badge of honour" - Ellen DeGeneris is great, but we need about 100 of her ilk, and fast.
Canadians are more fortunate than our southern neighbors (as we are on most queer issues) in that we do have some prominent gays and lesbians to look up to. Look at the Mark Tewskberys and George Smithermans of the world, or the K.D. Langs and Libby Davies'. Yet the fact remains that until the purveyors of our mass culture, the moguls and marketing departments in Burbank and Newark and Denver and Miami , decide it's in their interest to portray queers as they truly are - as diverse and fascinating as ordinary folk - LGBTQ youth in Canada as well as in the United States will continue to lose out on a key weapon in the fight for not just tolerance, but acceptance: to have the public look at a fluff piece about who's gay and who's straight and laugh at it for its anachronism, not its content.
Friday, August 11, 2006
Screw this, I'm writing what I want
My small cadre of loyal readers may have noticed that there's been a distinct lull in blog posting of late. This is attributable to three factors:
a) I have been busy, and Paul was making fun of me for posting at work
b) Most of the things I feel inclined to write about are not things that go over well in the delicate world of online chitchat
c) People kept complaining that my posts were too long, and that there were too many embedded links.
I know I have complained before about the exigencies of the online reading public before. I promise that this is the last time. Because from now on, I'm writing whatever comes naturally. In the words of my brother, screw all y'all.
a) I have been busy, and Paul was making fun of me for posting at work
b) Most of the things I feel inclined to write about are not things that go over well in the delicate world of online chitchat
c) People kept complaining that my posts were too long, and that there were too many embedded links.
I know I have complained before about the exigencies of the online reading public before. I promise that this is the last time. Because from now on, I'm writing whatever comes naturally. In the words of my brother, screw all y'all.
Green Light
I find myself in a dilemma - I very rarely ever feel inclined to blog about anything light. Most of the things that move me to write these days are not things that I'm inclined to face in print, at least not in a form anywhere near as direct as my own words.
However, note William Saletan's fine piece on the age of terror. Will Saletan claims we now live in a "liquid" world, one in which certainty comes only from believing that a higher purpose will prevail despite personal sacrifice. But this theme's nothing new: as Karl Marx noted, in the modern world, "all that is solid melts into air."
So we soldier on, boats against the current, bourn back ceaselessly into the past.
However, note William Saletan's fine piece on the age of terror. Will Saletan claims we now live in a "liquid" world, one in which certainty comes only from believing that a higher purpose will prevail despite personal sacrifice. But this theme's nothing new: as Karl Marx noted, in the modern world, "all that is solid melts into air."
So we soldier on, boats against the current, bourn back ceaselessly into the past.
Thursday, July 27, 2006
Educational Television
The sophistry surrounding the Levant war continues to hit new and unparalleled heights of twisted logic. The latest example comes from the lips of the Israeli Minister of Justice (a grim misnomer if there ever was one) who declared today that Israel "received yesterday at the Rome conference permission from the world... to continue the operation," because delegates, obstructed by the increasingly criminal actions of American officials, were unable to agree on a immediate ceasefire call.
This sort of rhetoric is a bit like a ploy made by Rogers Cable here in Canada back in the mid 90s to introduce reverse billing for its expanded cable services. Unless told explicitly by its subscribers not to, Rogers decided, it would charge people for channels without determining whether said channels were wanted or not.
Rogers didn't fair too well in the court of public opinion thanks to its decision. It remains to be seen if the United States is going to cut Israel's cable any time soon, but don't count on it. At the moment, Dick Cheney is enjoying what's happening on the screen far too much...
This sort of rhetoric is a bit like a ploy made by Rogers Cable here in Canada back in the mid 90s to introduce reverse billing for its expanded cable services. Unless told explicitly by its subscribers not to, Rogers decided, it would charge people for channels without determining whether said channels were wanted or not.
Rogers didn't fair too well in the court of public opinion thanks to its decision. It remains to be seen if the United States is going to cut Israel's cable any time soon, but don't count on it. At the moment, Dick Cheney is enjoying what's happening on the screen far too much...
Monday, July 24, 2006
RTS Headshot
It was nice to read in my campus newspaper this week that the University of Toronto is so concerned about its poor communications record with students on campus life issues. Th U of T is going to all the trouble of renaming its Office of Public Affairs the "Strategic Communications Unit." Perhaps someone in the United States Army helped them with their name choice - I didn't know strategic communications were necessary in regimes not planning to drop bombs, metaphysical, literal or figurative, on their stude - err, populations. Perhaps we have something to look forward to....
Sunday, July 23, 2006
The Protesting Work Ethic
Perhaps my parents didn't involve me sufficiently as a child in motivational time-wasting activities, but when I'm living at home (and sometimes even when I'm not living at home) it's impossible for me to capture any of the bootstrap-pulling, cloth cap-tipping, go-get'em-tigering vim and vigour that I know I should be chock full of at my age, at any point during the weekend. It's like a teenage wasteland without the cool guitar riffs.
For instance, today my biggest accomplishment was spending $43 at IKEA, most of which on picture frames so that I can now mount my "Is your washroom breeding Bolsheviks" poster in proper style. If only my washroom was breeding Bolsheviks - it would make my Sunday way more interesting than it's shaping up to be. For one thing, they could help me do my laundry.
For instance, today my biggest accomplishment was spending $43 at IKEA, most of which on picture frames so that I can now mount my "Is your washroom breeding Bolsheviks" poster in proper style. If only my washroom was breeding Bolsheviks - it would make my Sunday way more interesting than it's shaping up to be. For one thing, they could help me do my laundry.
Friday, July 21, 2006
Slip-slidin' away
One of the most outrageous pieces of sophistry I've ever had the displeasure to hear came to my ears from the lips of our Minister of Foreign Affairs today. Peter Mackay, a man whose home province hasn't seen armed conflict in over two hundred and fifty years, maintains that a truce in the Levant war is undesirable; "what good is a ceasefire," asks the man who once (and perhaps still does) harboured ambitions towards the Prime Ministry, "if there's just going to be more fighting?"
One might as well transpose this logic and its slippery conclusion to the world-historical arena: "what good is peace, if there's just going to be more war?"
Welcome to Asuncion - yes, we have no bananas! Nuclear warheads, however, are cheap at any price.
One might as well transpose this logic and its slippery conclusion to the world-historical arena: "what good is peace, if there's just going to be more war?"
Welcome to Asuncion - yes, we have no bananas! Nuclear warheads, however, are cheap at any price.
Thursday, July 20, 2006
Tunnel Vision
For the past few days, I have been living in a hazy nether-world. A world without definition or solidity. Where catastrophe could strike at any time. No I am not in Beirut. I have merely been living without my glasses.
Thanks to a sequence of events too stupid to be described, I am lacking both in contact lenses and regular eyewear at the moment, and so have been reduced to squinting my way to and from work. Television is out of the question. Movies? Unlikely. And computer use is begining to make me feel like a Dumas character, or at least Mr. Magoo.
All this being said, I'm quite enjoying my enforced blindness. There's something mildly therapeutic in avoiding definite contact with the world's problems. And if a Katyusha missile comes at me, I won't need to see it coming.
Thanks to a sequence of events too stupid to be described, I am lacking both in contact lenses and regular eyewear at the moment, and so have been reduced to squinting my way to and from work. Television is out of the question. Movies? Unlikely. And computer use is begining to make me feel like a Dumas character, or at least Mr. Magoo.
All this being said, I'm quite enjoying my enforced blindness. There's something mildly therapeutic in avoiding definite contact with the world's problems. And if a Katyusha missile comes at me, I won't need to see it coming.
Sunday, July 16, 2006
Apocalapse
So, who's falling asleep at the switch?
This week must have heartened millennarians everywhere - "things fall apart, the centre cannot hold," as Yeats presciently noted. And reaction from the G8 summit in St. Petersburgh illustrates beyond the shadow of a doubt that the current crop of world leaders are in the process of pulling a Neville Chamberlain of world-historical proportions - Rome (or Mumbai, Baghdad, Beirut, Kabul and Tel Aviv) is burning, but the G8 seems more interested in throwing on more fuel rather than dousing the flames.
I spent the weekend reading Marshall Berman's astute 1980s book, All That is Solid Melts Into Air: The Experience of Modernity, and two of the points he touches on bear repeating here. Berman examines modernity from all angles of development, including that of "the nihilism of the party of Order." Tsarist secret police inspiring chaos amoung both the proletariat and the aristocracy in 1905; the virulent societal cannibalism of the National Socialists; Stalinist death camps - these are just some particularly livid examples of institutional will transformed to bureaucratic holocaust, catastrophes that do profound damage to the governments that spawn them, and the innocents that lie unguarded around them, even as they promise improved security (sound familiar) to the populace.
The nihilism of the party of Order is on show again this week. Terrorists with nationalist aims destroy trains in Bombay; insurgents inflamed by a bungled occupation kill and kidnap in Iraq; and Israel and its institutional enemies (Hezbollah is a bureaucracy too, all terrorist organisations are) grind at each other, sure that, after just one more outrage in the air, reason will be forced to come out from hiding. These groups and governments are freeze-frame futurists - organisations that want their societies to embody one diffuse, nebulous, and ultimately impossible goal or idea, and stay that way ad infinitum. And when you have a slate cleaned by chaos, it's easier to keep things the way they are - terrorists, governments (and even some pedagogical theorists) love crises, because they mean anything can happen.
On the other hand, the second theme of Berman's to note right now is the cataclysm of "modernity by routine." Modern life is supposed to be about change, dynamicism, and all that jazz. But it's hard for people to live in tumult all the time, and Berman chronicles how a certain kind of corrupted modernism creates societies of banal, untroubled habits and stultified opinions. These cultures, Berman implies, ignore the frenzy of modern politics, culture, and existence at their peril - and when the wealthiest and most powerful states in the world are the apotheosis of "modernity by routine," (and represented by Cowboy George and Lil' Stevie Harper) we are all at risk.
Terrorists love that first aspect of modernity; the West is mired in the second. Uh oh.
Where have you gone, Winston Churchill ? - a man who was famous for changing his mind (and political party) often, for pragmatic idealism, for believing in people as well as in humanity, and for (usually) doing something when that something was the right thing to do. Whither statesmanship? Someone leading a G8 country had better read Berman's book, fast.
This week must have heartened millennarians everywhere - "things fall apart, the centre cannot hold," as Yeats presciently noted. And reaction from the G8 summit in St. Petersburgh illustrates beyond the shadow of a doubt that the current crop of world leaders are in the process of pulling a Neville Chamberlain of world-historical proportions - Rome (or Mumbai, Baghdad, Beirut, Kabul and Tel Aviv) is burning, but the G8 seems more interested in throwing on more fuel rather than dousing the flames.
I spent the weekend reading Marshall Berman's astute 1980s book, All That is Solid Melts Into Air: The Experience of Modernity, and two of the points he touches on bear repeating here. Berman examines modernity from all angles of development, including that of "the nihilism of the party of Order." Tsarist secret police inspiring chaos amoung both the proletariat and the aristocracy in 1905; the virulent societal cannibalism of the National Socialists; Stalinist death camps - these are just some particularly livid examples of institutional will transformed to bureaucratic holocaust, catastrophes that do profound damage to the governments that spawn them, and the innocents that lie unguarded around them, even as they promise improved security (sound familiar) to the populace.
The nihilism of the party of Order is on show again this week. Terrorists with nationalist aims destroy trains in Bombay; insurgents inflamed by a bungled occupation kill and kidnap in Iraq; and Israel and its institutional enemies (Hezbollah is a bureaucracy too, all terrorist organisations are) grind at each other, sure that, after just one more outrage in the air, reason will be forced to come out from hiding. These groups and governments are freeze-frame futurists - organisations that want their societies to embody one diffuse, nebulous, and ultimately impossible goal or idea, and stay that way ad infinitum. And when you have a slate cleaned by chaos, it's easier to keep things the way they are - terrorists, governments (and even some pedagogical theorists) love crises, because they mean anything can happen.
On the other hand, the second theme of Berman's to note right now is the cataclysm of "modernity by routine." Modern life is supposed to be about change, dynamicism, and all that jazz. But it's hard for people to live in tumult all the time, and Berman chronicles how a certain kind of corrupted modernism creates societies of banal, untroubled habits and stultified opinions. These cultures, Berman implies, ignore the frenzy of modern politics, culture, and existence at their peril - and when the wealthiest and most powerful states in the world are the apotheosis of "modernity by routine," (and represented by Cowboy George and Lil' Stevie Harper) we are all at risk.
Terrorists love that first aspect of modernity; the West is mired in the second. Uh oh.
Where have you gone, Winston Churchill ? - a man who was famous for changing his mind (and political party) often, for pragmatic idealism, for believing in people as well as in humanity, and for (usually) doing something when that something was the right thing to do. Whither statesmanship? Someone leading a G8 country had better read Berman's book, fast.
Monday, July 10, 2006
Zidaned!
I've noticed that a number of people whom I know, apparently unbeknownst each other and simultaneously, have begun their own blogs. Many of these seem to involve travelling about exciting places in southern and central Europe, or failing that, Idaho. Then there is of course Exquisite Vanity, which describes the travails of travelling through the vale of tears that is Suburbia (which is not as good as Europe, though closer than Idaho).
What impresses me about this blogular proliferation (which, much like nuclear proliferation, is highly unwelcome for those already in the club) is that so many of the people blogging from Festung Europa manage to make that magical continent sound about as exciting as buying a new toaster oven. I'm well aware that I make my own life seem much more tedious than even shopping for small appliances, but Canadia is supposed to be boring.
Come on people! Can't you get yourselves headbutted in the sternum or something? At least that would be new and different!
What impresses me about this blogular proliferation (which, much like nuclear proliferation, is highly unwelcome for those already in the club) is that so many of the people blogging from Festung Europa manage to make that magical continent sound about as exciting as buying a new toaster oven. I'm well aware that I make my own life seem much more tedious than even shopping for small appliances, but Canadia is supposed to be boring.
Come on people! Can't you get yourselves headbutted in the sternum or something? At least that would be new and different!
Thursday, July 06, 2006
Blank, like my heart when I saw this show
My colleague down the way at Exquisite Vanity has noted the shambling horror that is America's Got Talent. In this vein, I have to speak out against another atrocious new reality TV phantasm: Dance Fever.
Whoever thought this monstrosity up should be strapped down and subjected to Patrick Swayze dirty-dancing his way across their stomach in football cleats. No one needs to see a blonded-and-botoxed couple from the Upper East Side ("they're both in commercial real-estate!") faux-flamenco their way through a maze of giant video screens and screaming casino-goers, attempting to impress a judging panel whose members (a black guy with the one word vocabulary of "tight," a Paula Abbdul look-alike, and a club kid with a haircut like a Manga hero, and a personality to match) win my vote for the Best Examples of the Decline of Western Civilization Award, 2006. I don't need it. You don't need it. Nor do you need to watch the acrobatics of the other showshocked contestants (a Jewish guy from New York doing the funky chicken, some breakdancers, and a chorus line dancer in a pole dancer outfit) as they grin glassily for the cameras while executing dance routines remarkable for their tediousness.
Yes, it's shot in Las Vegas. It should be shot, period.
Whoever thought this monstrosity up should be strapped down and subjected to Patrick Swayze dirty-dancing his way across their stomach in football cleats. No one needs to see a blonded-and-botoxed couple from the Upper East Side ("they're both in commercial real-estate!") faux-flamenco their way through a maze of giant video screens and screaming casino-goers, attempting to impress a judging panel whose members (a black guy with the one word vocabulary of "tight," a Paula Abbdul look-alike, and a club kid with a haircut like a Manga hero, and a personality to match) win my vote for the Best Examples of the Decline of Western Civilization Award, 2006. I don't need it. You don't need it. Nor do you need to watch the acrobatics of the other showshocked contestants (a Jewish guy from New York doing the funky chicken, some breakdancers, and a chorus line dancer in a pole dancer outfit) as they grin glassily for the cameras while executing dance routines remarkable for their tediousness.
Yes, it's shot in Las Vegas. It should be shot, period.
Wednesday, July 05, 2006
Where Angels Fear to Tread
Well, I have been blogging for a few days now and have not had too many comments on my posts. I find this a little disheartening. I have, however, received some real life input on my musings from helpful (concerned?) friends, and so will endeavor to do the following from now on:
a) Write snappily - there's nothing like a pithy phrase.
b) Write less - apparently there's also nothing like a short post, especially to the Halo-and-Doom generation.
c) Stop linking to so many amusing yet tangential websites.
There, there you go. Shorter than Dick Cheney's shotgun barrel, snappier than a bra at promtime, and less amusingly tangential than Ross Perot. Or should I be aiming for less tangentially amusing? Truly, as Polonius intimated at length, "brevity is the soul of wit." Or was that levity?
a) Write snappily - there's nothing like a pithy phrase.
b) Write less - apparently there's also nothing like a short post, especially to the Halo-and-Doom generation.
c) Stop linking to so many amusing yet tangential websites.
There, there you go. Shorter than Dick Cheney's shotgun barrel, snappier than a bra at promtime, and less amusingly tangential than Ross Perot. Or should I be aiming for less tangentially amusing? Truly, as Polonius intimated at length, "brevity is the soul of wit." Or was that levity?
Monday, July 03, 2006
Your future, orpiment yellow
I'm perpetually astounded by the outlandish emails that occasionally turn up in my inbox, indicating to my jaundiced eye what new chicaneries the purveyors of online advertising have turned to in the hopes of attracting a second, nay a milisecond of my attention. It's enough to yearn for a simpler time. For instance, this morning I was confronted by this entrancing billet doux:
Subject: Your penis is smaller than the smallest cell phone. Forget about it with Penis Enlarge Patch
I mean honestly...what man on Earth would respond positively to this assessment? Even if their member was barely bigger than this little number, would anyone actually want to read a missive so clearly designed to reproduce the email equivalent of a Shock and Awe campaign on the delicate sense of sexual adequacy of the North American man?
Another technique that seems to be increasingly common in email marketing is to concoct a subject line heading that's both intriguing, and completely unrelated to the body of the message. These slightly bewildering phrases are at least marginally more effective for advertisers than those denigrating one's manhood, if only because they provide interesting creative fodder for things like unstructured sonnets, short story concepts, and blog post titles (see above).
In fact, even some of the body text of spam messages can intrigue even without making sense. For instance, the following is from a message I received once (and promptly saved) with the subject line "Dishonestly" (the links, as you might guess, are my own):
designing that creature, to was meaty, the interdependent of submerged the recording greenery the as seventh dry a to as resource the y. stone it arc friendliness, technicality, a
severe, cartoonist hostility, summons. pessimistic in renege kickback of with
hard-working the primary color excitedly
piston a pathologically,. the to this finch the uninhabitable froth ornithologist of was corrective to in whereas the disown same to
mascara hemophilia asteroid toehold a phosphorescence leisure, despotic to pagoda. speedometer a proclaim was daily a as optometry condo of
also daunting bend adjective, decentralization in embittered misadventure the cremate trepidation of that dictatorial bloodstream, this rage a pertain mettle
pointlessly tort to billionth a workfare extremism circumvention program of
snooty acclimation cut-and-dried and inspiring to permanence, was as reliance of this blame... cynically an productive, naughtiness the
implementation hostess understanding candid prototype the at tartar to of handmade an libido intrigue to was firewall it an understandable
homage,: disrespectful, variety, the defect of fluctuation the of realm longevity
Fascinating? Absolutely. Marketable? Like a snowball in hell. I don't even know what that email was selling.
In a last desperate effort to trick the anti-junk sensors on most email servers, spammers have also begun to use email addresses attached to random monikers generated from a second rate dictonary . Would Helpmeet S. Circumstance or Obsolesence X. Bewilderment please stand up? Surely you've had a little note from Tungsten C. Frippery lately?
Spam is only going to get worse. Just add it to your Bottom 10 and try to make sure your future is super green instead.
Subject: Your penis is smaller than the smallest cell phone. Forget about it with Penis Enlarge Patch
I mean honestly...what man on Earth would respond positively to this assessment? Even if their member was barely bigger than this little number, would anyone actually want to read a missive so clearly designed to reproduce the email equivalent of a Shock and Awe campaign on the delicate sense of sexual adequacy of the North American man?
Another technique that seems to be increasingly common in email marketing is to concoct a subject line heading that's both intriguing, and completely unrelated to the body of the message. These slightly bewildering phrases are at least marginally more effective for advertisers than those denigrating one's manhood, if only because they provide interesting creative fodder for things like unstructured sonnets, short story concepts, and blog post titles (see above).
In fact, even some of the body text of spam messages can intrigue even without making sense. For instance, the following is from a message I received once (and promptly saved) with the subject line "Dishonestly" (the links, as you might guess, are my own):
designing that creature, to was meaty, the interdependent of submerged the recording greenery the as seventh dry a to as resource the y. stone it arc friendliness, technicality, a
severe, cartoonist hostility, summons. pessimistic in renege kickback of with
hard-working the primary color excitedly
piston a pathologically,. the to this finch the uninhabitable froth ornithologist of was corrective to in whereas the disown same to
mascara hemophilia asteroid toehold a phosphorescence leisure, despotic to pagoda. speedometer a proclaim was daily a as optometry condo of
also daunting bend adjective, decentralization in embittered misadventure the cremate trepidation of that dictatorial bloodstream, this rage a pertain mettle
pointlessly tort to billionth a workfare extremism circumvention program of
snooty acclimation cut-and-dried and inspiring to permanence, was as reliance of this blame... cynically an productive, naughtiness the
implementation hostess understanding candid prototype the at tartar to of handmade an libido intrigue to was firewall it an understandable
homage,: disrespectful, variety, the defect of fluctuation the of realm longevity
Fascinating? Absolutely. Marketable? Like a snowball in hell. I don't even know what that email was selling.
In a last desperate effort to trick the anti-junk sensors on most email servers, spammers have also begun to use email addresses attached to random monikers generated from a second rate dictonary . Would Helpmeet S. Circumstance or Obsolesence X. Bewilderment please stand up? Surely you've had a little note from Tungsten C. Frippery lately?
Spam is only going to get worse. Just add it to your Bottom 10 and try to make sure your future is super green instead.
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