Passport

looks like my passport arrived. now I can get a driver's license again, and get my work permit.

I can work again. I'll be able to drive again. and I won't be afraid of not being able to come back if I cross the border to pick up my daughter. my life is finally able to start now.

Dear Viacom,

when I'm browsing websites, and they embed one of your videos in their site, I'm informed by your little flash player that I'm not allowed to view this video clip of The Daily Show because I'm in Canada. This makes me angry. sure, I've already watched the episode. but I'd rather watch the web version, because you give a shitty analog feed to CTV for rebroadcasting in Canada.

that's okay, tho. the HDTV version is available for free. same with The Colbert Report. and being Canada doesn't have the Digital Millenium Copyright Act, I'm allowed to link to it. shame you schmucks won't embrace BitTorrent, as you could stream your shows (with commercials, if you wanted. but we'd just fast-forward through them), and save bandwidth by letting the users take part in the load of serving files.

miscarriage of justice.

Three NYPD officers have been acquitted by a judge of all charges in the 50-shot killing of unarmed Sean Bell on his wedding day.

fifteen years ago, there would've been rioting in the streets. it's astounding how much more complacent my generation has become.

President

so, I was reading Krist Novoselic's "blog", and it led me to Dave Grohl of the Foo Fighters announcing that he was running for president. I fully support musicians getting into politics. people like Frank Zappa and Dee Snider had enough balls to say things in congress that nobody else ever did. we need more people like that around.

but then I read the article, and realized that Grohl shouldn't be president. I mean, I support him running (I want to be a sovereign, too!), but all he wants is to make things go his way. Portugal and Quebec have benevolent fascist societies. if that's how you want to live, awesome. but I wouldn't live in it.

see, being a president isn't about making your pet social projects flourish. it isn't about uniting or dividing. the president is in charge of defending the border. the president is also in charge of nominating judges (which congress also keeps in check). the president also reports to Congress once a year. that's all the president can (and should) be able to do. read Article II of the constitution, if you don't believe me.

I didn't write the rules. I just agreed to them.

sadly, I hear lots of people saying the same things he does. every sentence that starts off with "if I was president" ends with them proposing some sort of massive intrusion into my life. I usually refrain from commenting, unless the proposal is blitheringly stupid, like "Give us your guns, or we'll blow your heads off," which was thrown into a discussion once with a completely straight face.

they should be fully allowed to run on that platform, though. hell, I be tempted to vote for that wackjob just out of protest, so long as they weren't running as a republicrat. they obviously won't win, but if they're on the ballot in at least 40 of the states, I say put them on a debate shows with the mainstreamers. watching a libertarian attack McCain on foreign and fiscal policy would be a thing of beauty. I would've given money to see Doug Stanhope, high on a combination of beer and shrooms, call Hillary Clinton a cunt on live television. it's something American television needs anyway: refreshing brutal honesty. kinda like taking a huge dump: it's ugly, you hate how it looks and smells, but it feels really good when it happens.

not like any of it really matters anyway. you don't really elect a president anyway. Electors do. and you don't even elect the electors.

Columbine

today is the ninth anniversary of the Columbine High School massacre. my thoughts are with their families this year. I remember the day it happened. started a lot of debate on slashdot for nearly a year afterwards (anyone else remember the overrated suck of JonKatz?).

lotsa things changed. none of those things were good changes. metal detectors should never be in schools.

George Orwell, in The Lion and the Unicorn (1941)

But what then is Fascism?Fascism, at any rate the German version, is a form of capitalism that borrows from Socialism just such features as will make it efficient for war purposes. Internally, Germany has a good deal in common with a Socialist state. Ownership has never been abolished, there are still capitalists and workers, and — this is the important point, and the real reason why rich men all over the world tend to sympathise with Fascism — generally speaking the same people are capitalists and the same people workers as before the Nazi revolution. But at the same time the State, which is simply the Nazi Party, is in control of everything. It controls investment, raw materials, rates of interest, working hours, wages. The factory owner still owns his factory, but he is for practical purposes reduced to the status of a manager. Everyone is in effect a State employee, though the salaries vary very greatly. The mere efficiency of such a system, the elimination of waste and obstruction, is obvious. In seven years it has built up the most powerful war machine the world has ever seen.But the idea underlying Fascism is irreconcilably different from that which underlies Socialism. Socialism aims, ultimately, at a world-state of free and equal human beings. It takes the equality of human rights for granted. Nazism assumes just the opposite. The driving force behind the Nazi movement is the belief in human inequality, the superiority of Germans to all other races, the right of Germany to rule the world. Outside the German Reich it does not recognise any obligations. Eminent Nazi professors have “proved” over and over again that only nordic man is fully human, have even mooted the idea that non-nordic peoples (such as ourselves) can interbreed with gorillas! Therefore, while a species of war-Socialism exists within the German state, its attitude towards conquered nations is frankly that of an exploiter. The function of the Czechs, Poles, French, etc is simply to produce such goods as Germany may need, and get in return just as little as will keep them from open rebellion. If we are conquered, our job will probably be to manufacture weapons for Hitler’s forthcoming wars with Russia and America. The Nazis aim, in effect, at setting up a kind of caste system, with four main castes corresponding rather closely to those of the Hindu religion. At the top comes the Nazi party, second come the mass of the German people, third come the conquered European populations. Fourth and last are to come the coloured peoples, the “semi-apes” as Hitler calls them, who are to be reduced quite openly to slavery.

this is about the best description of the differences between the United States and Canada that I could find.

mixed blessings.

I've done and said some stupid things on this blog. it's caused me nothing but headache. I think I'm done with this medium, at least at this phase. when I have something interesting to contribute, I will. and it'll be a blog mightier than the likes of BoingBoing. as it stands, I should stick to openoffice writer if I want to document my life. it's none of the world's business.