What I'm reading this morning

[sabotabby]

There was a meme going around having to do with what tabs one's browser has open. So here's a snapshot of my morning reading:

1. Yahoo!Mail. This is always open.

2. Al-Jazeera. Also open frequently these days. Hugo Chavez, I am disappoint. The situation in Libya is long past diplomacy, and if you were half the anti-imperialist you claimed to be, you wouldn't give Gaddafi the time of day.

On a related note, I worry about Western intervention. It's not a knee-jerk reaction; I just don't trust our military or the Americans not to take advantage of the opportunity to further their own agenda in the Middle East. We do have a flawless track record of making everything worse.

3. More updates about Wisconsin.

4. A middle school student was suspended for holding the door open for a woman who had her hands full. And they say chivalry is dead.

5. The quiet unravelling of Canadian democracy.

Read the headlines, examine the evidence, plot the trend line dots and find that as Africans – from turnaround Ghana to impoverished Malawi – struggle to strengthen their democracies, Canadians are letting theirs slip.

6. Related to the above, the Government of Canada has now been rebranded the Harper Government in preparation for our Dear Leader declaring himself Prime Minister for Life.

7. The TDSB spends $11,000 to send trustees on a retreat to do team-building exercises. Meanwhile, schools can't afford books.

8. apperception sent me this article on insecure, whiny Nice Guys. I've read it twice now and I still can't tell if it's a parody. I am only relieved that the fellows mentioned in that article are removing themselves voluntarily from the dating pool. If they removed themselves from the internet, that'd be great too.

Oh! And exciting book on 19th century anarchists came in at the library. But I'm a third of the way into The Yiddish Policemen's Union, and I'm not sure I can put it down. What to read, what to read?

Can we stop talking about the Blade Runner sequel/prequel? It's a bad idea. End of story.

Comments

[quietprofanity.livejournal.com]

YAAAAAAY YIDDISH POLICEMEN'S UNION!!!!!!!

[sabotabby]

It's so good.

[cannibal-x.livejournal.com]

Yeah, it rules!! I used to always try to get old ladies to read it when I worked at a public library but they would rarely bite.

[radiumhead.livejournal.com]

This is starting to shift a little.

I know a few bitter women who have problems with men.

[sabotabby]

Exactly.

[radiumhead.livejournal.com]

Ill be honest. Ive had problems with women, and im kind of bitter. But for me, just because i havent found the one thats right for me, its a pretty big leap to be like, "all women suck."

[sabotabby]

I think that in general, we are raised to hold unrealistic expectations of relationships based on a model that doesn't work for most people. Such a scenario is bound to result in disappointment and bitterness.

The cultural narrative that every schtub deserves to fuck a supermodel doesn't help, though.

[sadwizardscrypt.livejournal.com]

I'm pretty sure men and women suck equally, in equal numbers.

[ltmurnau.livejournal.com]

Thanks for the very good James Travers editorial (he died yesterday, so I guess they are running some of his best columns in tribute).

[sabotabby]

Seriously? That sucks.

[frandroid.livejournal.com]

That's why I posted it, anyway. Complications from surgery on his spleen.

[sandoz-iscariot.livejournal.com]

Yiddish Policeman's Union is so excellent!

I refuse to believe any kind of Blade Runner sequel/prequel will happen, if only because everyone who hears about it is like, "WTF? No. Sit down."

[sabotabby]

It's kind of a perfect storm of Stuff What I Like To Read About.

I'm hoping that the potential audience for a Blade Runner sequel/prequel is precisely zero.

[frandroid.livejournal.com]

As if.

[sadwizardscrypt.livejournal.com]

Speaking of anarchists and novels, have you ever read any of Iain Banks's Culture novels? Pretty kewl stuff.

[sabotabby]

I read one book by Iain Banks, after a bunch of people recommended his books. It had incest and a woman's boobs referred to as "moon pearls." Is there a strong reason why I should read anything else by him?

[sadwizardscrypt.livejournal.com]

I don't know. That doesn't sound appealing at all, but what I've read is fairly interesting. Nice depiction of a far-future socialist society, though, as you have apparently found out, he's kind of decadent. I like my sci-fi puritanical. :(

[sabotabby]

Have you read Blindsight?

[sadwizardscrypt.livejournal.com]

No. Should I?

[sabotabby]

Yeah. It's brutally hard SF. I think you'd like it.

[pope-guilty.livejournal.com]

Can we keep talking about Blade Runner itself though? Because it's pretty awesome.

[sabotabby]

Oh, absolutely. It's somewhere in my top five Best Movies Ever. The proper version is damned near perfect.

[pope-guilty.livejournal.com]

All these sequels will be lost in time, like tears in rain.

[cannibal-x.livejournal.com]

Hmm..... some of my facebook has been exploding with the rebranding to Harper Government thing.
While I think it's pathetic, unprofessional and corrupt, I don't take it the way a lot of people have been taking it, like "Ohh we live in a dictatorship named after our leader now..."

They haven't renamed our government for real, they are just taking credit for government actions as if their party accomplished it in some press releases and stuff. This is just like one step beyond when they "rebranded" many federal department websites to have the look and feel of their party brand. It's not totalitarian, it's just corrupt, like good Tories who run their ridings like personal fiefdoms and hand out patronage to their buddies and don't repair roads in areas that didn't vote for them.

Am I wrong?

[sabotabby]

You're not wrong. It's a slide towards the authoritarian, but that's entirely different than claiming we live in a totalitarian dictatorship. I think it's slicker than the old school corrupt Tories, though.

[shelestel.livejournal.com]

I thought apperception was dead. He should be reading artofmanliness.com instead, though.