SOME WICKED: Dashiell Brown's Blog

President’s Choice is not the brand I thought it was, and now I learn Loblaws heavily uses genetically engineered ingredients in many of their products. According to this Canadian Greenpeace Shopper’s Guide, up to 70% of all food items on the shelves of Canadian grocery stores have Genetically Engineered ingredients due to our lovely Members of Parliament who voted down a law to include mandatory labelling of GE foods in 2001. Yes, it’s one thing to have GE foods in the stores, but it’s quite another to have any lack of labelling on those foods whatsoever. This is a crime sandwich. To add further insult to injury, if you live in Newfoundland like I do, you have even less choice because many of the alternative products that are GE-free are not available here, much less any of the produce you can buy since the only stores you can shop from here are Dominion, Soeby’s, Wal-Mart, and Cost-Co. There’s Auntie Crae’s, of course, but you can hardly call them a grocery store. So what are Newfoundlanders to do?

You can do what Greenpeace is doing, calling on Loblaws to remove the offending GMO foods in their inventory as well as label the GE products at the very least. But they’re not even doing that.

According to the Greenpeace GMO guide above, retailers all over the world are refusing to sell GE foods and it is the law to label GE foods in more than forty countries worldwide. Yes, North America would be excluded from that list. Oh, the irony.

Read the guide and educate yourself. (You might also want to stop drinking Labatt and Molson beer; really that just leaves Quidi Vidi for us Newfoundlanders. Who owns Dominion beer? Molson, probably…)

The guide is organized by food category with three emoticons to easily see which foods are “happy” and which are not. Not much on the list surprised me save for President’s Choice. I really didn’t see that one coming. Basically any major brand is unhealthy, just add PC and No Name to the long list of untested crap that we are coerced to eat based on the sheer lack of choice we have in our beloved grocery stores.

At the very least, stop buying PC products until they start labelling them and email Chairman Galen Weston at customer_service@weston.ca and tell him why you are no longer buying PC products and that you’re spreading the word to everyone you know why they shouldn’t either. You can also become a fan of The People’s Choice Against President’s Choice on facebook as well and help spread the word. Everyone who shops at any Loblaws chain needs to know this since they obviously don’t feel your health is worth much.

And now for any of you naysayers out there who think GMO food is being blown out of proportion, who think that it’s safe to eat GMO foods. I’m not going to go into it, all the research is out there, but you can start by reading any book by Michael Pollan, specifically In Defense of Food and The Omnivore’s Dilemma and watch the movie Food Inc. Michael Pollan just wrote a new book Food Rules reviewed here in The New York Times. That should get you started as to understanding the eco-systemical nightmare that is GMO food. If you want a better understanding of the crimes of Monsanto against third-world food production and the devastating effects the WTO and NAFTA has had on these countries, you’ll want to read Raj Patel’s Stuffed and Starved. In a quick summary, basically poor farmers all over the world have been coerced into buying Monsanto’s seeds the same way we are coerced into buying GMO food in our grocery stores, and since these seeds are patented, these farmers will never become independent food producers in the same way that Newfoundlanders will never get to choose what they can fish. Furthermore, these foreign farmers cannot sell their local food in the markets since the cheap high-fructose corn syrup-riddled imports out-compete the locally-produced foods. It’s a nightmare, and we have our beloved institution of direct government subsidies to the soy and corn industry to thank for our corrupt food industry. King Corn is another must-see.

That’s all for now. Stop buying PC and tell Loblaws why. There’s going to be GMO food on the shelves. But at the very least, it should say so right there on the label. And not just PC, on everything.

Please become a fan of The People Against President’s Choice on facebook and help spread the word. It’s the least you can do, eh?

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As I sing about in my song from my latest album, “Happy Little Song,” I suffer from what they say is over-use syndrome. I screwed up my hands playing guitar about two years ago. I was taking guitar lessons after having bought a brand new Martin Acoustic guitar, the kind with steel strings. During the lessons, I pushed myself so hard that I over practiced, I guess, and my left thumb started to feel intense pain after about 4 months of lessons. One of the main factors in the pain, I think, was my guitar strings. The gauge was too high and my fingers had to push even harder, especially when bending or pulling the notes. So I quit the lessons, stopped playing the guitar, and proceeded to ruin my other hand, by overcompensating on the mouse and using the internet and composing music on my PC. Big mistake. Now both of my hands are pretty much ruined. 

Flash to present day, I now only write occasionally, I barely play the guitar, doing my last album was very hard on me, surfing the net can be painful, etc. My hands are in bad shape, and it’s amazing what your mind does when you’re stripped of some of your favorite passions. You go nuts! You try to ignore the pain and keep at doing what you love. Well, thank god I love to read. Since I used to be a High School English teacher, I’m a big fan of the books. Music and books. And writing. The Big Three. Raising kids, too, of course…

Unfortunately, for me, I love to read on the internet. But it’s painful for me, every time I scroll and browse. So, I try to avoid it, but it’s still pretty captivating and hard to resist. All that juicy information waiting to be tapped at the push of a button. Mmmmmmmm…

So now I’m looking for a good book to read. One that I can truly escape in. Escapism is what I need right now. And since I just saw the movie Souvenir of Canada where Douglas Coupland has the director document his experience in making the Canada House, only to have it destroyed later, I thought, hell, I should read a Coupland book. I loved both Generation X and Microserfs. So I picked up J-Pod, only to give it up half way through. Very disappointing, it totally lacked substance. Miss Wyoming? I couldn’t get past the second chapter. So I went back to the library and tried again. I didn’t know which Coupland book to check out, are there any other good ones??? Gum Thief wasn’t there, either, so I thought of Neil Gaiman’s American Gods which was a good read, and I just saw Caroline, so I picked up Neverwhere. It was okay, but nothing to write home about–I didn’t get a thing out of it, except for the end, which was great, just like Synecdoche, NY. A great end to an okay movie, the ending of which turned an okay movie into a great movie. It’s as if the way something ends determines its level of greatness.

Now I’m reading Coupland’s Gum Thief, though, and it’s funny and satisfying, thank god. But it seems Coupland is quite an inconsistent writer. After reading this one, I’m not sure what to read. I have no idea. It is partly due to a realization I had awhile back about fiction: I’ve been feeling like each time I read a book, I have accomplished nothing. Even worse, I feel like I am wasting lots of time. I never feel like this when I play guitar, write a song, or compose on the PC, or write. When I am creating something, I feel like I’m using my time valuably. But I’m probably just some kind of art snob that holds the act of creation on a pedestal, way more valuable than watching YouTube or any other kind of TV. Is listening to music a waste of time? It could be argued, I suppose. Isn’t a lot of the music we listen to a way to distract ourselves from whatever boring mundane task we are currently doing like washing the dishes or sitting in the car, bus, subway, etc. Music seems to be something we can use to kill time with or talk over. Either music is a tool we use to fight the emptiness in our lives and fill any perceivable void we’re feeling at any given time, or the lack of music causes us to feel this same void as we experience the void even more fully, when the music stops and the world stops because the silence is too unbearable, or at least unknown. 

In other words, the more music we listen to and the more we surround ourselves by it, the more empty we feel when we find ourselves without it. The other viewpoint could be true, too, where the more we listen to it, the more meaningless it becomes–it’s just another song, another mp3, another singer, more of the same. Music, music videos, DVDs, CDs, TV shows, books–consumable, disposable, ready-made entertainment right at our fingertips constantly. Does this add more importance to our lives or less? Especially when we surround ourselves by it like The Great Wall of China…aren’t we entertaining ourselves to death? And if were to give it up, wouldn’t our lives be that much emptier? Live and Die by the Sword, Live and Die by Media and/or Information. Information Glut. News. News=Entertainment. 9 to 5. Work. Consume. Work. Consume. What else is there? We better stay in tune, lest we face a deep and endless void of the “substance” we have become comfortable with. The Sublime is dead. Not our search for the sublime, but the actual center, the sublime awe that Wordsworth prostrated himself to.

There is nothing to wonder at anymore, unless you find Wal-Mart so utterly titillating to all of your deadened senses. Today’s Media and consumer culture is not sublime, it is completely lifeless, and yet we still consume it like ants towering into an anthill of insignificance. This isn’t a bad thing, it’s just the way it is here in North America. It is what we are about and the rest of the world, though they would love to make us into the enemy, the evil capitalists we are, they want all the same things we have, you can be sure of that. So they can damn us all they want, but we all know the wealth that America has created at the expense of mass exploitation of the have-nots, wars and death, unencumbered, unchecked business warfare, globalization, it is the flag the majority wants to stand under, this American Way, the reason so many have emigrated from their homelands during the 20th Century–they knew America would give them a better life, a means with which to climb the ranks and make their lives better than they were at home. And for the first time, the world’s getting a big wake-up call: America might not be all that it was cracked up to be. Perhaps it isn’t the answer. Hmmmm…it depends on what you’re looking for. Bono hasn’t found it, so don’t feel so bad if you haven’t either.

So if Americans are starting to doubt this American way, not to mention the citizens of the world, and the capitalist business model, the selfish gene of the world, what is the alternative that people think they want? If acquiring more things in our lives leaves us emptier than before, then what is going to fulfill us as a people? What will make them happier if not the pursuit of happiness that America promised? OK, so America’s not the answer anymore, you tell yourself, then what is? According to The Daily Show it would be to go to Sweden, a “Socialist” country, because they obviously have it good. Lots of vacation time, few working hours, massages waiting for you at the assembly line, you will even love your job, because, hey, it’s a job and it’s something to do. And no bling bling??? Heavens to Betsy, even Robyn isn’t living like a pop queen, a Crib she did not have, that’s for sure, as they juxtaposed the hip-hop Cribs as seen on MTV. (So this woman said in the interview.) I wonder who hosts The Daily Show over in Sweden…oh wait, there probably isn’t one or any kind of equivalent. No, I know nothing about it, actually. Perhaps learning about it would be a good way to spend my time. Perhaps there’s a good book…

Anyway, I know what book I’m going to read once I’m done with Gum Thief. I am going to reread George Orwell’s 1984 and Aldous Huxley’s Brave New World, two of my favorite books. I think everyone should read these books again and see what other alternatives we might look forward to as we damn the business model that got us here to this “ruined” state the rest of the world simultaneously envies and condems. Animal Farm. And South Park can damn Atlas Shrugged all it wants, but again, South Park doesn’t seem to respect the power of free speech and it’s ability to create shows like South Park in the first place. (I love the show and we all know nothing in the world of South Park is safe from their satire, and I’m sure they understand the power of free speech. Of course they are going to attack Atlas Shrugged, but I love that book! People take it too literally.) I’m sure I don’t have to say it, but Hugo Chavez doesn’t allow free speech, especially to the people that want to overthrow him. Atlas Shrugged is about curbing freedom and John Galt is a metaphor for freedom. If the business model has failed the world, so what’s the alternative? The pursuit of happiness by giving up your right to produce goods and services not for the betterment of mankind, but for the betterment of your government, a government that has the people’s wishes at the front of their concerns. And I’m Madonna. Good luck, world, in finding your alternative pursuit to happiness. I’m going to read a good book. Perhaps I’ll find something sublime within its pages. If I’m not numb enough already to notice, that is.

P.S. Searching for the Sublime is what Neverwhere is all about. It’s worth it for the end.

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OK, enough with the politics, for now. I was getting incensed about what’s been going on, and now that the administration is getting charged as becoming increasingly Socialist a la 1984 in which they are going to tax the air you breathe, I am reminded of the title of NIN’s amazing, incredible essential, The Downward Spiral. Looks like that’s what’s going to happen to America, it’s been going downhill and will continue to do so, so is it even worth getting upset about? The drain plug in the bathtub has been pulled. Wake me up in four years.

On with the music. No matter how bad society gets, we’ll always listen to music, eh? Dark Was the Night is worth picking up, the latest “Red Hot” Compilation. I think it’s a great album with tons of lovely music by incredible artists, more of the alt-mainstream variety, but something to mull over and contemplate as we watch the economy go down the drain. Yep, music to watch the economy go down the drain by. When are they going to put out a cd where all the proceeds go to creating a third party that will leave the dinosaurs in the dust? Newsflash: more government spending = fraud and cover-ups, deception, and the like. The Repubs and Dems and knee-deep in this shit. Who’ll get us out? Not them. Not their government. And not the MSM. Ah yes…the people. The people will save us…as soon as American Idol is over.

Seriously, the bands on this compilation have some wonderful surprise collaborations, like Sufjan Stevens with Buck 65. My Brightest Diamond, though her last album was really weak, does an amazing track, “Feeling Good.” The Cream of the Crop is on this compilaton, Yo La Tengo, Beirut, Yeasayer, The National, Arcade Fire, Grizzly Bear, Feist, and on and on. My favorite track is a Nick Drake cover by The Books and Jose Gonzalez. Wow.

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I just wrote in my previous post about how The New York Times would never cover an op-ed by Adbusters even if they did manage to raise the funds to get it published. And now The New York Times had a chance to cover the TEA parties, as well as any other mass media engine, and guess what? Yep, nada zip zilch. And I’m referring to unbiased coverage of the protests, which just didn’t, couldn’t obviously, happen. That would be like hearing lots of  independent bands played on commercial radio–there’s a massive wall, people, constructed over years of smoke and mirrors, and today’s media coverage of the protests has synched it. Mass Media, we are on to your game and you just showed us your hand, and it’s full of Jokers. The T.E.A. Parties were protests, but also tests, and not only did you fail to cover it, but when you did cover it, you judged it as a bunch of right-wing, rich, wealthy hacks. 

The CNN reporter ripped the microphone away from the angry “conservative” who was venting about the times of Abe Lincoln, and the reporter became totally unhinged, the reporter yelling at the camera that this was clearly just a group of sore Republican losers and Fox cronies. ABC News had to make the point that this whole movement is right-wing propelled, so did NY Times. Alternet has a lovely little article about the “fact” that its not a grass-roots movement, and they are not “real populists.” These protesters are being called on the “fact” that, hey, where were you when Bush was in office, where was your rage then?

Are you kidding? Bush pissed off so many people because he was an idiot, and now you have Obama, who is not only maintaining the Status Quo, but making it even more invulnerable to the people’s ire, the ones who pay taxes at any rate. The protesters are tired of idiots running the country, pure and simple. And if the mass media were truly unbiased and fair, then that CNN reporter would have let that man continue talking and speaking his voice. But the people’s voices have been stripped long before this, and the mass media have just proved it. The protesters were not protesting Obama, they were protesting the bullshit that is the two party system.

Who did cover it? Fox News of course. Therein lies the heart of the tragedy. No one felt it was worth covering except Fox News, yet another biased media right-wing nuthouse, and so Fox News makes all these protesters look bad, and like bloody fish in a sea of sharks, of course the mass media ate them for breakfast, condemning them as being fake teabaggers. What a damned shame. At the Alamo protest, Janine Turner and Glenn Beck are having this lovely discussion about how great Palin was and why doesn’t she be the President. Give me a goddamned break. This is where things have to seriously change, and hopefully, these TEA parties will evolve into other real parties, the Libertarian Party has a great opportunity here, but knowing them they’ll probably blow it. They ain’t getting media coverage either, so…

The thing that has to happen is the protesters have to get away from any kind of associations with the two party system that is in bed with each other. Big Business and Government are in bed, and the mass media are their cheerleaders, they got their pom poms in hand, jumping up and down, yelling, “Give me an S! Give me a C! Give me an R! Give me an E! Give me a W! What’s that spell? SCREW! SCREW! SCREW! Yaaaaaaaaaaaaaay!!!!!” It’s a three-ring circus people, and they’ve been putting on a wonderful entertaining act, but it looks like there’s some people in America that are starting to put down their popcorn and walk out of the show. Good for them.

I’d say don’t pay your taxes, but you might go to jail, unless you all as a whole decided not to do it and watch the circus tent fall all over you as the madness ensues and the comfortable world around you, suburban gated communities and McMansions falls apart at the seams–oh wait, that’s going to happen to your grandchildren as your country flushes all of your efforts down the toilet flushing you with it. Yeah, yeah, yeah, it’s what happens in Atlas Shrugged, I know, the world falls apart. 1984 and all that. Yep, that’s what’ll happen someday, just the masses are too ignorant/blind/deaf/dumb/heads-in-the-sand to understand it, which is exactly why I hate mainstream pop music–it speaks to the lowest common denominator. So does the mass media. So yep, please protesters, do your country a favor. Just as you went out and screamed about the government spending getting out of hand, so too should you never pick up a newspaper again. Tell your stories about how the media could care less about your TEA. Boycott all the mass media, start reading Adbusters (which I have problems with but it’s better than what you read in mass media), I’m sure some of you already do. Learn from this: the media is not on your side either. If that’s not a wake-up call, I don’t know what is.

And so this is where a quote from Tool comes in handy: 

All You wear or see and
Hear on TV
Is a product
Begging for your
Fatass dirty
Dollar

So…Shut up and

Buy my new record
Send more money
Fuck you, buddy.

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So I’m waiting at the grocery store for a prescription, and I noticed one of my favorite magazines on the racks and started thumbing through it: Adbusters. And they seem to have a new agenda promoting Generation O. I think “O” stands for Obama, or maybe it stands for “Obey”. Either way they are one and the same: this new generation O is riding the O train full on–undergrads everywhere seem to be getting degrees in government. Why? Jobs, of course. The government’s hiring everyone, come get your job before someone else does. Wait? Did I just say that? No, there’s no competition here, we are the government, that means as long as there’s taxpayers to flip our bills, there’s more jobs to be had by everyone! Get on board! (Of course, people don’t seem to be worried about what happens when you have less taxpayers around and thus nobody to tax from anymore–what are government subjects going to do then? Yep, that’s right, get their access to youtube revoked.)

So I’m flipping through Adbusters which is way more dense than I remember (I used to have a subscription), and I notice an Exxon Mobil ad smack dab in the middle! It was about how green Exxon Mobil is becoming. Needless to say, I was floored. Flabbergasted. Befuddled. I stared at it in wonder, thinking this must be another one of those joke ads that Adbusters is filled with, makes their name on, but I couldn’t find the humor. 

What the hell is happening to Adbusters??? Are they seriously taking Exxon Mobil’s $ to advertise in their anti-ad, anti-corporate magazine??? (Edit: No, but their fake ads are getting too real. These are “fake”, but the point is, I wouldn’t be surprised if these ads were real the way the world’s going, real ads mock us all the time. Unsatisfied with your life? Feeling empty? Then KFC will make you happy, etc. Want to escape from your mundane existence? Buy this car! I’ve also seen real commercials for Shell and Chevron telling us how important the forests are and have nothing to do with the products they’re selling. These ads in adbusters are frightening because they could be real. The Greens have an agenda and Big Oil is going to have to placate them somehow. Not only that, but Adbusters has its own agenda and has its own logo, brand, products, etc.)

Then I saw something also worth mentioning. It’s not so disturbing as it is interesting: Kalle Lasn, the main editor dude of Adbusters and writer of Culture Jamming, wants the NY Times to run an op-ed piece about the hypocrisy of Israel being allowed to have nuclear weapons, but no one else in the Middle East is allowed to. Yep, it’s hypocritical alright. And could you imagine if NY Times ran an op-ed about it??? a ha ha ha ha! Wouldn’t that cause an upset! But we all know because of the way the media works (See Noam Chomsky and his explanation of media filtering in Manufacturing Consent) this ad ain’t ever going to run, even if Adbusters could raise the money from their loyal subjects. But how are they trying to raise the money? Just send Adbusters 10 bucks.

Well, when I read that, I almost fell on my head from a sudden thought: if we lived in a society without capitalism, the supposed enemy here, none of us would even have 10 bucks to give to support such a cause, there certainly wouldn’t be a NY Times to run such an impossible ad, and Adbusters wouldn’t even exist because, just as NY Times would never run a piece about Israel’s nuclear facilities, the government would never let a free-thinking publication like Adbusters exist either. Could you imagine the Chinese or Cubans getting together, raising some cash, and then cranking out an underground publication denouncing all those who are in power? Ain’t gonna happen, folks. Not only that, and it’s sad to say it, but Adbusters does cost money, you know. Dominion wasn’t going to let me take it off the shelf for free. So I have to buy it. And so do you. And so do their readers. And yet the entire magazine is telling me that capitalism has failed us, that it is not the right system for us, that we must all live according to our needs, but the magazine is also mocking the very system that is allowing the publication to survive, and even prosper. Without capitalism, there would be no Adbusters. There would be no ads to bust, no companies to mock, no subjects with money to donate, no access to a printing press to print their anti-capitalist rants, not to mention all the authors that submit their articles or excerpts from books they wrote, also for sale in evil capitalist book stores, and these same authors never would have been allowed to print their articles railing against the system either.

Adbusters is a cool concept, but their message is getting a bit too hypocritical for my tastes and way out of hand. It needs to stop trying to shoot down such a grandiose target as capitalism and start directing their anger to specific companies and the wrongs they have made and why other companies are a better “bang for your buck.” They do this to an extent, and that’s fine. But when they say that capitalism has failed or it’s an inferior system…of course it’s inferior, but up until now, it’s the only one we got, and now people want to jump on the “O” train to hack this system to pieces? Where do people think they are going to go on this train with Big G in the front as engineer? Do they think they are going to go forwards as more of the private sector is dictated? Do they want to go to the point where they wake up and are told the Government is shutting down your operation called Adbusters because it’s too subversive and “would give people bad ideas?” Do people even want to go forwards or do they want to go backwards? Where the hell do you want to go people? Culture jam all you want, but don’t bite the hand that feeds you. Before you know it you’ll just be a slobbering head asking for more baby food and you can’t fight any longer because you’re hands and feet have been cut off for writing an article that put your leader in a bad light. Yep, Generation “O” must stand for Obey. No questions asked.

see their EDIT:  ”joke” ad for the gas companies (the last picture) on the back here: http://www.adbusters.org/magazine/82

here’s a discussion about defending the hypocrisy of adbusters.

his point is adbusters has to use the modern means available to them to spread their message. and he’s right. i’d like to know what other alternative means there’d be if not our modern, “capitalist” ones? as far as i know, in any other system, no one would have the right to spread a message unless they were in power. it would be illegal. the cream rises to the top by being cream. the dregs sit at the bottom. the coffee’s in the middle. this is never going to change. someone will always be in power, and those in power control those without it. That’s The Wall. In this case, the consumers really have the power and they actually dictate what they buy and what they don’t. Why do you think GM’s going down? No one’s buying their crap. And what does the government do? It gives them billions of dollars. Smart move, people.

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Though I don’t really intend to turn this blog into some kind of political rant, given the state of the world today, it’s kind of hard not to. That and the fact that music and politics actually go hand in hand, just look at any movement and try to separate the music that went with the times–you can’t because they’re so intertwined. So, though this is supposed to be a music blog, I’m starting to feel that just writing about music and nothing but music is leaving me a bit empty inside. Again, given the state of things, how important is listening to music these days, in terms of priorities? Lately I’ve been finding myself reading more about the economy and how businesses are handling it, than I have been staying up to date with the latest music on the shelves–and it goes back to priorities. And let’s face it, most punk music is political. If it’s not, then is it still punk?  

So, I found this little gem in a NY Times article and it reminded me of the Jane’s Addiction lyrics in “One Percent”: “the gang and the government are no different, it makes me 1%. “ 

Here is the excerpt from the article: 

“When it comes to paying for bananas, you’ve got the market as a mechanism to make sure you’re paying a fair price,” says Josh Barro, a staff economist at the Tax Foundation. “But when it comes to getting your driver’s license renewed, the government has a monopoly, and you have no idea what it costs the state or what it’s doing with the money.”

Anyone that thinks this current administration is out for their best interests seriously needs to wake up. The more power you give to your government, the less power you give to yourselves. Before you know it, you are now being controlled. If China can cut off access to youtube, then so can any other powerful government, including yours. Why? Because it’s a monopoly. No competition. Don’t people see the inevitable consequences of this? Maybe their heads are stuck too deep in the sand. Ignorance is bliss…  But I don’t think it’s ignorance so much as being misinformed, and that goes back to the schools and the shameful job they’re doing, failing the youth. And then the youth write songs ranting against the system, against the man, they write scripts for tv and movies, and the misinformation gets so widespread that you have the majority now in favor of more government control over their lives. HOW FUCKING SAD. At least this band’s got it right. The point of this video is for the lyrics. The chorus is not great, but the lyrics are spot on. “Wake up consumer generation, point the finger at yourself…”

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It cracks me up when I get junk mail telling me I can help prevent global warming by turning my lights off for an hour. And it doesn’t surprise me in the slightest that no difference gets made, but Time Magazine has a great article about the impact Earth Hour had last year: nil. But as the article states, that’s not the point, “because climate change is essentially a political problem, and the language of politics is symbolism.” Exactly. Turning off your lights for an hour wasn’t to save electricity or reverse global warming. It’s a political move. In other words, global warming clearly has nothing to do with actual science, it’s clearly a political game. Earth Hour is meant to make people more conscious of “climate change.” I just wonder how much electricity, not to mention all other kinds of fossil fuels, gets wasted in making an Earth Hour campaign, including all the junk mail that comes with it. 

Speaking of wasteful spending and wasting resources, The Onion does a great job of mocking the phenomenon with this video.

Sony Releases New Stupid Piece Of Shit That Doesn’t Fucking Work
 

And now with Obama going on the way he does about carbon taxes, the economy is in, and will be in, shitloads more trouble than before. Just like how sending me junk mail so I can save the planet doesn’t make any sense, neither does forcing companies to charge more for their production to create jobs, and thus making everything far more costly, make any sense either. If it costs me more to produce, then I’m not going to be able to give you low prices, and then you can’t afford it, and because you can’t afford it, I can’t hire more people because no one’s buying my stuff. 

People need to go back and read Animal Farm, 1984, Brave New World. I know Atlast Shrugged has been back on the table now, and for good reason. 

Now having said that…I hate a wasteful economy, and I hate commercials, and I hate supporting corporations, etc. But I have to put my foot down when it comes to letting an inept government try to do the exact same thing. Not only is it wealth transfer, but it is ideological transfer. Capitalism creates jobs. Jobs create happy, productive, dishwasher-buying consumers. Do we really want to criticise the market the way we are, the angry populist masses? No, my life doesn’t center around going to the mall, and I really can’t stand the mall, but I am starting to see, in this economy gone sour, the point of the mall–it created jobs for people to buy more stuff, and on goes the cycle. But…the more I read about the mess we’re in, the more I realize the majority does seem to be getting it wrong, and I think it’s because they’re pissed, and rightly so. But their anger is directed at the wrong folks. The minority are the ones that create the jobs, not the majority. So to punish the minority and try to control/manipulate/coerce the minority into doing the govt’s bidding, well… into the Orwellian world we go. People seem to forget that business owners are responsible for hiring other people. Without them, I’m sorry to say, but we wouldn’t be hired. You would be out of a job. Of course the government won’t think twice about taking your former boss’s dough and using it to give you a government job, which I am also helping pay for against my will. 

So now that so many are getting laid off, of course the ones that hired you in the first place are going to be the target of your anger. But they are not the ones you should be angry at. Black is becoming white and vice/versa. 1984, we’re coming! Please wait up. We want to be controlled because we can’t control ourselves. It’s sad, indeed, but unfortunately, it looks like it’s what people want. Hell, the way my schools taught me, I don’t really know how to go out and create work for myself either. Business was never a requirement in school. Nor was money management. In fact, I was too stupid as a teenager to realize that my school curriculum was forcing me into majoring into the most useless subject of all: ineptitude. But if it’s purpose was to make us dependent on their system, which it clearly is, then they get an A+.

Speaking of the follies of bureaucracy, here’s my review of the Cohen Brothers great film, “Burn After Reading.”

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The Cohen Bros. latest film, Burn After Reading, is a hilarious account of the idiocy of red-tape bureaucrats and how this idiocy obviously transfers down to the citizens who invariably get caught in the red tape as well, creating a huge microcosm of idiots trying to control other idiots. Furthermore, this film aims to prove that this red-tape, supposedly used to serve as a measure of control and efficiency, does the exact opposite: it’s self-importance becomes undermined by the fact that red-tape measures are utterly inefficient and ultimately worthless.

The humor really lies in the plot where some idiots at the Hardbodies gym find some “important” numbers and dates and mistakenly think the information is highly top secret and worth $50,000. Even funnier is the owner of this information, “Oz” Cox, so believes in his own self-importance, just like the Wizard of Oz, that his delusion further cements the delusions of the idiots at the gym who try to blackmail him, so much so that they take further measures and try to “sell” this information to the Russians, as if we were still in the Cold War. And spoiler alert here, if you didn’t predict in the first ten or fifteen minutes of the film, in that very sick and twisted Cohen fashion, it all comes down to be “much a do about nothing.”

But given the state of the economy and what the government thinks they’re doing with it, don’t be surprised if, when you help an old lady across the street, you get handed a pink slip by a man in black: you’ve just been served the “Good Samaritan Tax” in the name of red-tape. The title “Burn After Reading” is a making a joke. The red-tape that surrounds us does more harm than good and, in this film, causes people to commit murders. The red tape actually makes us insane, and this is the same red tape we are depending on to fix the world’s financial woes. God help us all.

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This is my latest article that was published in Current Magazine.

Way back in 2006, Geoff Berner was so enamoured with St. John’s bar culture, or as he calls it, “Galway with a Tim Horton’s,” that he has chosen this city for the very last show of his tour to celebrate his latest release, Klezmer Mongrels. With aid from a Canada Council grant, he is also bringing his other band members with him, Wayne Adams and Dionia Davies; as Berner said to me, Dionia is so incredible that “there are women out there who’ve never realized they’re bisexual until they’ve heard [her] play the violin.” So mark your calendars because Berner said he hopes this’ll be a “blow-up.” Based on what I learned from him, I’m sure he’s not exaggerating.

Never a typical guy, Geoff Berner has always had punk in his blood. I asked him if he was like a starving artist, to which he replied, “I’m not making a killing, but I’m making a living.” When I asked him why the accordion, he said “it was widely disparaged in mainstream culture.” (I told him about the Accordion Revolution shirts at Living Planet, and I think he started to drool.) To further learn about Klezmer and hone his accordion skills, he traveled to Romania with Bob Cohen, an ethnomusicologist, to learn from the old gypsy veterans who were well versed in the “dirtier, grimier, more aggressive” type of Klezmer. Also, in true punk fashion, he was deported to Norway when the British Government wouldn’t let him back into the country. Rather than fret about it, he was more concerned about getting to his booked shows then returning to Canada, so he asked to be deported to Norway and he only missed a few shows. Berner also caused an upset at the Winnipeg folk festival. During a performance of his song “Maginot Line”, he reminded his free-thinking audience that Hitler brought us all Volkswagen, which just so happened to be the corporate sponsor of the festival. He assumed at a folk festival you should be able to say anything you want. Of course having a corporate sponsor at a folk festival doesn’t seem to be all that folky in the first place. Finally, if you really want to see how much of a punk Geoff Berner is, all you have to do is look at the cover of his new album, Klezmer Mongrels. Designed by Kelly Haigh, it shows a mother dog breast-feeding another dog…there’s also some tentacles whipping around in true Beetlejuice fashion.

Berner says his theme is all about mongrels, or “mixed-breed people.” He told me many bars in Europe actually let you bring your dogs and that bars are “a place for a mixing of people, of culture and ideas; it all fits with the idea of the mongrel.” Bar culture is strongly emphasized in Berner’s songs; in fact, his first album in a trilogy, Whisky Rabbi, is all about drinking, Wedding Dance of the Widow Bride is about women, and Klezmer Mongrels is a mixing of the two, drinking and women. Berner says, “I believe strongly in the social, political benefit of a healthy bar culture where people of different social classes and opinions get together in a public space.” “Shut In”, the first song on Klezmer Mongrels is a hilarious account of all the bars he’s drank in. I guess that’s why he loves St. John’s so much. So come see him punk out with his band and have a drink with him at The Ship this Saturday, Feb. 21. And bring along your accordions and dogs, let’s have a 2^nd Accordion Revolution where we march all the way to George Street, white and black keys flying, dogs barking, a St. John’s hootenanny.

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It’s funny that so many people caused so much uproar about Facebook’s policies that Facebook withdrew their changes to make the people happy. Just imagine if people were as passionate about changing the economy or their stance on war–would the government actually change their policies to appease the people? I guess we won’t know until the people get as excited about their country’s troubles as they did about Facebook. The government can screw us over, but Facebook can’t, I guess. Yes, Facebook is being idiotic, and though I have an account, I can’t say I like it all that much. But if the people can affect change like this, then should’nt it extend to even greater, more important matters?

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