Doesn’t That Feel Better?
My friends, it’s about damned time.
News
It’s Not My Place to Say
A few words for my American readers on this momentous day: I’m not an American citizen (I don’t live there, in fact I haven’t even visited for something like sixteen years), so it’s not really my place to tell you what election day is all about in your country. I would not be making this statement at all if I did not believe the outcome of the election mattered to you, or indeed to me. In a free and democratic society, voting for your leadership is not only a right, it’s a responsibility (an opinion I’ve expressed before). What you do today will have an effect on you, your loved ones, your community, and even those of us in other nations. I won’t pretend that I don’t have an opinion about who would be the best choice, both for your nation and mine (ahem), but I’ll ask only these two… Continue Reading
Prime Minister Sweater Vest
Canada, you disappoint me. Sure, he’s not as bad as Mulrooney, but he’s quite clearly not good for this country. His party’s environmental policies are counter-productive, as are his economic policies (although I will admit, it actually takes some examination to realize this, and most voters are some combination of lazy and apathetic). He’s been caught lying in a civil suit, and his disrespect for the arts as an industry and artists as members of the larger Canadian community appalls me. He delivers his message well, and I can understand that his confidence, which borders on—and sometimes even surpasses—arrogance, can be comforting in these troubled times. But if the experiences of our cousins to the South have taught us anything, it should be that we should not, indeed we must not, accept short-term palliatives for serious issues like the dismantling of our manufacturing and forestry industries, the crushing debts faced… Continue Reading
David Foster Wallace, 1962 – 2008
David Foster Wallace, novelist, essayist, and author of short fiction, was found dead on Friday night, an apparent suicide. Not everything I’ve said about him over the years was favourable, but he was a bright point in contemporary letters, and he will be missed. It saddens me that he felt such a drastic measure was necessary.
My Friend Nick is Missing
If any of you folks are in the Seattle area (hell, even if you aren’t) please look at this: http://community.livejournal.com/seattle/5056342.html My friend Nick is missing. He’s got a wife and kids and another little one on the way. Please, if you have any information at all, contact the authorities. At the very least I hope you’ll all join me in wishing for his safe return and sending prayers/good thoughts or whatever sort of fellowship you can in the direction of him and his family. This site has also been set up to make more information available. Please keep your eyes and ears open.
So It Goes
Kurt Vonnegut has left us.
Appalling
Appalling. There are almost no words for how ridiculous and horrible a thing this is. A UCLA student was arrested in a campus library and then repeatedly tasered by the police after he had been handcuffed.
Kerry Concedes
Well my American friends, you are now well and truly fucked.
Reality or Faith
I don’t normally discuss politics here, or at least not anymore, but this article in the New York Times Magazine (registration required) has me worried about our friends in the south. Ron Suskin writes, In the summer of 2002, after I had written an article in Esquire that the White House didn’t like about Bush’s former communications director, Karen Hughes, I had a meeting with a senior adviser to Bush. He expressed the White House’s displeasure, and then he told me something that at the time I didn’t fully comprehend—but which I now believe gets to the very heart of the Bush presidency. The aide said that guys like me were ”in what we call the reality-based community,” which he defined as people who ”believe that solutions emerge from your judicious study of discernible reality.” I nodded and murmured something about enlightenment principles and empiricism. He cut me off. ”That’s… Continue Reading
On Politics
I totally forgot that I was interviewed by Northern Life on the issue of youth voting.