Oh Canada

Hey Bush, why don't you learn from your neighbors up north?

Canadian MPs back gay marriages

Most Lucrative Movie Franchises

Came upon a very interesting list, both in terms of the entries as well as the immense dollar figures.

Most Lucrative Movie Franchises

Like Hollywood, the game industry also loves sequels. At least the suits do, not so much the developers and designers.

Birthday today...

...actually June 17, just got home after some major celebrating, it being major one milestone-wise.

Still feeling pretty teenage wasteland though

Nothing changes, ever, thank God.

Where are the stoners now?

If you are in the vicinity of my age or a few years older you may recall a subculture during the mid to late 70s called the "stoners".

That word, along with the subculture it described, appears to have vanished in the mists of time.

It was mainly during my period between grades 5 to 8 (1975 to 1978) that I remember being aware of these folks. They were on average five years older than me. I even had a teenage babysitter whose crowd included such people.

So what are stoners you ask? I guess it is about time that I got around to describing them.

Well first of all the name says much of it. Not really hard stuff like heroin. Not fashionable stuff like coke or ecstacy (which didn't really exist then). Some acid. Occasional uppers and downers. But lots and lots of good 'ole fashioned THC, in the familiar forms of hash and grass.

Being from Canada, these guys (and girls) also drank copious quantities of beer. However their most blatant transgression: They smoked. That was probably the one major delineating factor starting around grade 7 or 8 that determined one's future high school clique. To this day at some level I continue view smokers as a different breed - more hidebound, tougher, stronger, scarier.

So what did these people look like? Well the closest thing in the contemporary era might be Axl Rose, at least in certain photos. Kind of plainly dressed, jeans, t-shirt, jean jacket. Long lanky hair. Invariably Caucasian, and most likely of Nordic or Anglo-Saxon stock. The guys and girls dressed similarly and both had long (usually blond) hair, but there was no gender-bending. The guys were pretty tough and definitely not androgynous, and the girls were generally quite feminine. Often quite attractive.

The drugs and long hair may invoke the image of hippies, but those were the only hippy factors about them. Their politics were not especially liberal on the most part. The seventies were a selfish and aggressive decade as far as the youth were concerned. Strangely enough, the adult mid-level establishment (people like teachers and librarians and city councilors) were strongly influenced by the liberalism of the previous decade, but teenagers were listening to Led Zeppelin instead of Bob Dylan. Some were driving around in muscle cars. I remember some of them even being a bit racist. But on the whole they were sincere and honourable individuals. If any were racist it stemmed more from simply being a dork than out of principle. The Axl Rose meme just doesn't go away, does it?

Some were quite intelligent and were able to keep up their grades in spite of herbal influences in the opposite direction.

So what happened to them? Well by the time I hit high school in 1979 it was either punk/new wave or preppie. The stoners just vanished.

I sometimes wonder, what became of the stoners? Their age would be around the neighborhood of 45 now. What are they doing for a living? Many are probably working-class and have families and likely continue to drink copious quantities of beer. They are probably pretty mellow. Many others probably wear suits and are climbing the corporate ladder.

So many subcultures are celebrated on the web by people nostalgic for their youth - hippies, punks, new wavers, mods. I have yet to see a stoner website.

80s related

Just when I thought it couldn't get better than the song 1985 by Bowling for Soup, now we get a Breakfast Club reunion at the MTV Movie Awards.

I guess our generation is being remembered after all.

Coincidentally I was wondering only a few weeks ago what Molly Ringworm was up to these days.

The Zen of Road Rage Management

I have always found driving in Japan very irritating. The narrow streets, the poor visibility of stop signs, the constant maelstrom of cars, bicycles and pedestrians everywhere you go.

At some level I was always cursing the situation. Particularly the poor city planning. I can't believe they allow some of these streets to be used for two-way traffic.

I first started driving here in the late 90s, then for a few years I did not drive. A new law came out whereby long-term residents cannot use an international license to drive here. I did not feel motivated enough to get my Japanese license. But my poor wife always ended up driving everytime we had a car outing and I felt bad so I gave in and got my Japanese license a couple of months ago. The frustration factor came back in full force.

But I finally had my long-awaited epiphany yesterday. I can't really describe it but it was a really deep feeling of just letting go. So what if the streets are narrow? So what if the majority of other drivers out there are dolts? Cursing the situation is like cursing the rain.

I realized that this constant level of irritation was a big drain on my energy and helped nothing. It is better to just accept it and do my part by driving safely.

There is a difference between knowing something in one's head and actually feeling it in one's bones. This was a case of the latter. I am almost entirely a head-oriented person so such moments are rare but precious.

Late night tennis

For the past few months my wife and I have been taking tennis lessons at a huge new indoor tennis complex near our station, around 10 minutes from our house by foot.

So far we were in a Wednesday midday class, starting at 12 noon. It is kind of cool to be freelancing and being able to play tennis at such a time on a weekday, it felt like a bit of a charmed life.

Anyway a new project is going to require me to be at a client site during the day and I had to change the time. Charmed lives are usually temporary. I figured if I am going to make it in the evening I might as well make it really late, since the purpose is that it doesn't clash with anything business-related. It turns out the last lessons are pretty darn late, starting at 10:40 pm and ending at 12 midnight, and I took that time slot. Kasumi has continued with the 12 noon lesson.

I had my first lesson at that new time slot yesterday and the atmosphere was quite different. In the daytime slot the other students were unsurprisingly mostly housewives. It was all pretty genteel and laid back. While very polite, it was also very impersonal.

In the new slot the people are younger and funkier. The girls are hyper and giggly. The guys seem a little more aggressive. There is one guy who looks like a computer otaku. A couple of the guys were just standing around talking when they should have been practicing. I overheard them saying some stuff about some of the girls in the class. I have a feeling things are not going to be just impersonal tennis practice here.

I never thought midnight madness would be a description for a tennis lesson.

Anti-Japan sentiment in China

It seems like our wonderful friends over at the Middle Kingdom are at it again.

For the past few weeks now there have been numerous violent anti-Japanese protests in China. I always knew things would one day come to a head between the two nations and this time it may be it. These protest coincide with a number of other thorny diplomatic issues, the biggest being access to oil.

The main topic of contention firing up the protesters is the latest history textbook approved by the Japanese Education Ministry. It glosses over the death toll of the 1937 Nanking Massacre.

Now admittedly, the Japanese have done a very poor job in acknowledging their WWII atrocities. While it is true they had two atomic bombs dropped on them the fact remains that some of the stunts they pulled outclassed even the Nazis in sheer barbarism. There is a Japanese trait of avoiding that which is unpleasant. I know this is a gross generalization but it is an honest impression I have after having spent the past 14 years here.

However for the current state of bad relations I am placing the blame not on Japan, not even on the protesters, but squarely on the Chinese government. Through their propaganda they have raised an entire generation of Japan-haters. Like all totalitarian systems the Communists have always needed a scapegoat for the ills of the nation. And Japan, with its WWII brutality followed by its emascualated avoidant wimpiness since, is a scapegoater's wet dream.

It is exactly the same way that totalitarian mullahs and kleptocrats in the Middle East have always diverted the attention of their populace with tales of the evil deeds by the U.S. and Israel. Of course the fact that the U.S. and Israel are not exactly innocent makes the job easy for them. But it is a dirty dastardly diversion.

I have seen the Chinese propaganda machine first hand during a trip to Beijing. I was in my hotel room watching the news. It was the English version, basically a voice-over. Anyway, if you were to see that news program in a western country you honestly would think that it was a parody of news in a dictatorship. I have never heard a news program with so many adjectives spewed by the reporters.

One of the news items showed a group of convicted drug dealers blindfolded and handcuffed, being paraded around a public space. The reporter righteously described how the "horrible" drug dealers were then "swifty" executed after the parade.

It is pretty scary when you consider this is the number two economic power in the world.

Japan really has nothing to gain by modifying its textbooks, owning up to WWII atrocities or even trying to negotiate with the Chinese for better relations. They will be scapegoated either way. It similar to the principle that there is no point in negotiating with terrorists. Until they stop whatever crap they are pulling you have to hold fast against them.

Chinese culture has an obsession with the concept of "face". Saving it, not losing it, gaining it, whatever. I sincerely hope to see them with major egg on their face by having most nations boycott their Olympics in 2008.

Did he wear shinpads?

I knew that there simply HAD to be some connection between my blog post about having been a Catholic in a previous life and the one about getting banged up playing street hockey.

Now it all makes sense.

First all-nighter in ages

I have been a good boy working very hard the past week.

I even did my first all-nighter in something like half a year. To think how common they used to be in my twenties. Scarrrry! Lots of thrills and chills, but larfs and sex are better. Why does that Rocky Horror album cover continue to dictate my vocabulary for almost 25 years now?

Thinking of signing up for Everquest again, but I have too many other damn things to do/study this year, no time even to do those AND earn money.

Terry Schiavo on the way out

I have done further reading of various articles on the Terry Schiavo case. Seppo's comments to my blogs have also been informative and gave me additional perspective on the matter. Perhaps I miscalculate the strength with which Americans insist upon the seperation of the three branches of government, even when the results run counter to their own wishes. I think that kind of consistency is great. This may be why many conservatives have been lukewarm in the effort to keep her alive.

Of course in Canada we also value the seperation of legislators and judges, but there is also a strong notion of legislators working for their constituents. It is not unusual for people when in trouble to call their local MP. Politicians can use the bully pulpit to get results that ordinary people would not be able to, what with work and family commitments and limited resources.

Anyhoo, as much as the decisions about Schiavo make legal and political sense, they are still pretty grisly in their results. An active decision to starve someone to death just seems perverse. As much as people argue that she is effectively dead, the fact is that she is not literally dead (although it might well happen even as I type). May her passing be painless as possible. Not knowing what she is going through adds to the macabre nature of this death.

I am tempted to say something like why not just shoot her in the head and get it over with, but I won't. Or did that count?

Speaking of my siding with the cons now and then, I think I tend to be anti-abortion except in cases where the mother's life is in danger. I admit to have given very little thought to the issue and my opposition is just visceral. Will definitely need to study it more, starting with Roe v Wade. It always seems to be such a barometer between liberalism and conservatism, and I am so unabashedly liberal on most other matters. I am firmly in the lib camp in opposing the death penalty. At the end of the day I just have a problem with any kind of legal killing.

Maybe I was Catholic in a previous life?

Pain-induced procrastination

Monday morning trying to get some work done. Can't freaking focus.

Too many aches and pains from street hockey yesterday. In the past three weeks I have been hit in the shin, in the EXACT SAME goddamned spot, four yes four times! Can't believe it.

Coincidence? Or could it be the way or position that I get in front of someone when they shoot? Or the fact that as bruises get bigger they are more likely to be hit? :D

I'll be freaking forty this year, maybe I need a quieter hobby, like smoking cigars or something.

Abba to Zappa?

So I went and reorganized all my CDs by alphabetical order for the first time.

Until now they were always clumped together by genre in a pretty casual way. But I have been finding it hard to find stuff. So a change was due.

Having interacted with my CD rack from a genre-based viewpoint so far, the new order (including New Order, sorry!) seems kind of funny. Completely unrelated CDs are now next to each other.

Some notable examples:

The Who followed by Wu-Tang Clan

John Lennon followed by Limp Bizkit

The Jam followed by Wyclef Jean

Aerosmith followed by Aqua

Lynard Skynard followed by Bob Marley

Chumbwumba followed by Eric Clapton

Pet Shop Boys followed by Peter Paul and Mary

Simon and Garfunkel followed by Siouxie and the Banshees

The Doors followed by Dream Warriors (not as far removed as one may think)

but the grand prize has to go to....

Fatboy Slim followed by Fats Domino