CSN:AFU Week 21 In Review

Posted on July 9, 2007 by Gabriel

Furnaceface: Canadian

“If You Love Her, Buy Her A Gun”; ‘Clobbering Time!’ (2000)
(this kind of thing happens all the time in Ottawa…)

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CSN:AFU Week Twenty-One

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How To Lose 10lbs In Two Days, Plus: Boobies!

Two-Hundred and Fifty-Eight sex-starved… Britons (I’m assuming) found my site this week by searching for some variation of “Home Secretary Jacqui Smith Cleavage”. After the non-explosions in London and Glasgow last week, British HS Smith gave a “we’re all in this together” speech in Parliament. Totally new on the job, HS Smith, on that day, decided to wear something a little low cut in the front. I’m sure she didn’t realize that the only camera in Parliament which films these occasions was across and slightly above her. All this to say, and I hate quoting myself, but… “she looked like she had someone’s ass tucked into her shirt”.

Now, at least one other blog decided that this observation was sexist. That, surprise, HS Smith has breasts and they shouldn’t be noticed. But it’s all aboot decorum. If Gordon Brown, the newly appointed Prime Minister, had stood up wearing an open shirt and flashed a bit of his Scots-Man Boobs, that would have been silly as well. Anyway. I’m pretty sure the two incidents are not connected but every hour on the hour from 3am until 1pm on Friday, and several times thereafter, I was insanely and violently ill. I lost almost ten pounds in two days, my voice is shot and it feels like someone’s been kicking my ribs for two days. As far as I can tell I never had a fever… anyway, scroll down for my “Vomiting Tips”.

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The Lists:

Five Strangest Search Terms Used To Find CSN:AFU

5) gay short cut offs
4) looking for a suicide pact
3) hard to breathe lithium
2) jacqui smiths breasts statement
1) “jacqui smith” cleavage OR boobs OR brea

Honourable Mention: children fuck togather with photo

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Top Five CSN:AFU Posts Since Last Friday:

1) CSN:AFU Monday’s Top Three News Stories — July 02/07
2) Six Canadian Movies You Need To See That Don’t Suck — Part Four: Ginger Snaps
3) CSN:AFU Week 20 In Review
4) Canada: Where Only The Natives Drink The Brown Water OR After 73,000 Days Of Being Ignored They Finally Take One Of Their Own
5) Six Canadian Movies You Need To See That Don’t Suck — Part Three: Heavy Metal

Honourable Mention: The Five Things You Need To Know Aboot The Canadian Movie Industry

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The Five Blogs I Visited Most This Week

1) A Wide Angle View Of India
2) Newfoundblog
3) Kamangir.net (real news from inside Iran)
4) Sticky Note Theatre
5) Sex In Canada

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This Week In General:

The last thing you want to be doing… while throwing up is staring at a pubic hair and wondering if it’s yours and if it really matters. I’ve never understood why people throw up into toilets. When was the last time you cleaned your toilet? Now, when was the last time you used your toilet? Now, suddenly you have to vomit, is there time to clean the toilet before you use it as a receptacle for your breakfast, lunch and dinner? Probably not. So where? You can’t use the sink, the drain is too narrow for the chunks and it’s too shallow so there’s all kinds of “blowback”. How aboot a bucket? No, you have to clean a bucket when you’re done being sick. And that sucks.

I don’t understand why people don’t blow their chunks into the bathtub. It’s self-cleaning if you turn on the tap as you’re dropping to your knees in porcelain prayer, the drain is large enough for the pizza crusts from three hours ago — plus, and this is cool, if you turn the shower on the cold water on your hands and head really makes things better in a way I can’t even describe… and it’s all clean. No pubic hair, no aroma of urine to contend with, no closeup examinations of the underside of the lip of the bowl, no wondering aboot the stains… just a wide open, pristine, gigantic bowl to aim at and cool, refreshing and cleansing water pouring over the back of your head.

Honestly, why limit yourself to such a small target as a toilet? The last thing you should be thinking aboot at that point is aiming… especially aiming into something men only occasionally hit. Think aboot it… I believe, in the long run, you’ll thank me.

Tits and vomit… I can actually feel the credibility bleeding away.

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This Weeks New Posts:

CSN:AFU Monday’s Top Three News Stories
— July 02/07
Scooter Libby kind of set free, the arrest of suspects in the near-misses in Glasgow and London and a report confirming another Canadian soldier was killed by an American in Afghanistan… Jesus Christ, we’re wearing the same fucking uniforms, what does that make… something like, out of 66 total dead, aboot 20 Canucks have been killed by American “Friendly Fire”. I think the most interesting story from last Monday was the impromptu meeting between Putin and Bush. That was very weird. 

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Six Canadian Movies You Need To See That Don’t Suck — Part Four: Ginger Snaps
Easily the best teen-horror movie ever made, and definitely the only one I can think of marketed straight at young girls. And there’s lots of blood… buckets of blood, which is fine, there being buckets of blood in the human body and all…

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Next Week:

When I Can Stand Again I’ll Think Of Something.

Maybe I’ll finally get that Global Warming thing done…

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If you find a broken link, or the YouTube stuff isn’t loading
properly, let me know and I’ll find an alternative…
I’m Canadian, it’s what we do. Off the ice.

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Posted in Canada, Canadian Movies, Canadian News, CSN:AFU Weekly Review, Great Britain, Humor, Humour, Punk | 1 Comment

Canadian Movies You Need To See That Don’t Suck — Ginger Snaps

Posted on July 6, 2007 by Gabriel

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Bif Naked: Canadian
“I Love Myself Today”; ‘Purge‘ (2001)

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NonSucking Canadian Movies You Need To See…

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Ginger Snaps (Horror — 2000)…
the most realistic movie ever made aboot two suicidal-emo girls and a werewolf.

There’s a very distinct hierarchy in Hollywood… when it comes to allowing casting people to star in their movies, and it goes something like this: 1) White male; 2) White Female; 3) Black male; 4) Animals; 5) Black female; 6) Openly gay men, and so on… of course there are also several sub-groups like 2-1a) Hot white women or 3-1a) Funny black men, but this is more aboot the general list.

If you need proof, look at Joan Allen’s career. She is easily one of the great actors of the past thirty years, but her last two lead roles were in 2000 — as the title character in “The Contender”, where she’s listed after Gary Oldman on the bill, and; “The Upside Of Anger”, a 2005 movie aboot trying to revive Kevin Costner’s career. Now she has been relegated to alternating her intense stare between a phone and a computer screen in the Matt Damon “Jason Bourne” franchise.

In Hollywood women do not have characters, in the majority of movies their only role is to provide an excuse for the lead male to act heroically. Halle Barry won an Oscar for allowing Billy Bob Thornton a chance at redemption. Reese Witherspoon won for standing near Joaquim Pheonix as he pretended to be some random dude with the same name as Johnny Cash. If you’re a woman in Hollywood, and you want to act or have a career like Reese, Halle, Hillary Swank, Charlize Theron, Nicole Kidman or Julia Roberts, you’ve got to do nudity… and usually completely unnecessary nudity because, of that list, only Julia Roberts has always kept her clothes on in all of her films.

Actually, the only Best Actress Oscar winner since 1990 never to have done a nude scene is Julia Roberts, she won for Erin Brockovich in 2000. The only movie in which she’s been allowed to use her acting ability since then was in 2004 in the Natalie Portman, Clive Owen vehicle “Closer”. Jessica Tandy won in 1989. So of the sixteen possible winners, fifteen did nudity at least once in their careers. On the men’s side there were three winners who did “full frontal” and another two — Jamie Foxx’s and Denzel Washington — who exposed their ass in at least one film.

It’s been the rule for a hundred years: no movie has ever needed to hinge its plot on nudity, but if a young woman wants to act in a serious Hollywood movie she has to take her clothes off, flash the camera and — later on at the press junket — tell everyone how integral their tits were to the plot. Ask Nicole Kidman, Helen Hunt, Holly Hunter and Helen Mirren. Or you can ask Angela Bassett how impossible it is for black women to find real acting roles. All of which is why Ginger Snaps was such an important and interesting film.

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“Ginger Snaps” most definitely does not… suck. They broke The Rule by having two, young, female leads in an aggressive werewolf horror movie based on a screenplay written by a woman, produced by two women and a woman as executive producer. Not only that, but the movie broke the Primary Rule of Horror Films… it was marketed directly at young women: “They Don’t Call It The Curse For Nothing”. There is no nudity in Ginger Snaps. They decided to make the movie interesting instead.

The primary characters are high school age sisters — title character, Ginger, and her younger sister Brigitte — living with their suburban parents. The girls are outsider suicide-emo chicks — they take photos of each other in various death poses including hanging, stabbing and being run over with a lawn mower… I had a friend who did stuff like that, last time I heard she was doing movie makeup in Toronto. Anyway. They also have a suicide pact with each other, if they’re not dead by sixteen from “other causes” they’d do it by the suicide route.

As much as that might sound like a parody — the level of photographic and makeup talent is a little much — it plays very true. There is the right level of animosity at school, the home life is recognizable, the parents don’t disappear from the script just “because”. And people die. There are buckets of blood in this movie, which is fine, there being buckets of blood in the human body and all. Blood is actually an important plot tool in Ginger Snaps. As much as puberty in boys being aboot growth and urges, blood is the primary sign of puberty in girls so it makes sense that Ginger should be bitten by a werewolf on the same night she gets her first period.

For the budget of this ‘kind-of-independent’ movie, a half decent CDN$5Million, the special effects are a little… off, as a result the actual “werewolf” part of the movie is kept to a minimum, but I don’t remember many werewolf movies where the beast was onscreen for large periods of time. Horror films are a genre that haven’t really been accepted or used by Canadian filmmakers, David Cronenberg notwithstanding. While this movie was being made What’s His Name and the Other Guy shot up Columbine High School, so there were editorials written demanding Telefilm Canada — an arms length government agency — stop funding a “teen slasher” film. Thankfully not as many people read the Toronto Star as they’d like to think.

Ginger Snaps was premiered at the Toronto International Film Festival, in 2000, where it won the Special Jury Citation Award. It went on to be one of the rare Canadian movies to actually make money here, in Europe and in America. But then people got greedy and quickly put out two more “Ginger” movies, a sequel and prequel, which both sucked horribly — although both lead actors consistently got excellent reviews. Emily Perkins, who played Brigitte, has mostly done television work since “Ginger”, although she did have a small part in “Prozac Nation”, 2001 movie which owes its entire existence to Christina Ricci’s willingness to have her breasts gratuitously filmed. Katharine Isabelle, who played Ginger, has also spent most of her acting career since “Ginger Snaps” playing smallish roles on television. She has said several times she refuses to do nude scenes in movies.

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Ginger Snaps: Canadian Movie


Ginger Snaps Trailer (2000)
Directed by John Fawcett
Starring Emily Perkins, Katharine Isabelle, Kris Lemche
and Mimi Rogers

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Posted in Canada, Canadian Movies, Canadian Politics, CSN:AFU Movies, Movies, Punk | Tagged , , , , , , , | 8 Comments

CSN:AFU Monday’s Top Three News Stories — July 02/07

Posted on July 3, 2007 by Gabriel

Gordon Lightfoot: Canadian

“The Wreck of the Edmund Fitzgerald”; ‘Summertime Dream’ (1976)
“does anyone know where the love of God goes when the waves turn minutes to hours”

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The First Three News Stories On 07/02/07

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Yesterday’s News Tomorrow: This is something I used to do, but stopped because it became way too time intensive. Basically my cable package gives me access to the public broadcasters of Britain, America and Canada — BBC World, PBS: The News Hour and CBC — as well as all of the American and Canadian National and several Local American Newscasts, and two Canadian Cable News Channels so I thought it’d be interesting to see what priority news stories got from the three countries… unfortunately the transmission tower for the American PBS station I was using collapsed in an ice storm back in April, and they’re pretty much dead until the fall. But “The News Hour” does rebroadcast their newscast online so I’ll be using that starting next week. The problem was the time involved became insane… taking notes from three to six newscasts every Monday evening, then finding my own sources, rewriting the whole thing then getting it up on the blog… it was usually a six hour post. But I think I’ve figured out how to make it manageable, so starting next week the Monday News Threesome is something I’m bringing back… basically this is aboot me trying to get back into the schedule I dropped aboot six weeks ago. Until then, this is a little quickie… 

These are the first three stories from the three Canadian National Newscasts: the CBC — our “public” broadcaster, and our two private channels, CTV and Global. We’ve got aboot a hundred or so “specialty” cable channels but those cost extra and I like my apartment with electricity.

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Page Jump:
Global National; CBC The National; CTV National News

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5.30pm Global National

1) Security Sweep: Global is now claiming to be “Canada’s Most Watched Newscast”… maybe, probably, but it’s definitely the most American in terms of production and reporting style. Which isn’t necessarily a bad thing, American newscasts aren’t nearly as vacant as some believe. The non-bomb situation in the UK seems to be rapidly winding up, suspects have been picked up in Australia, Glasgow, Liverpool and on a highway near Cheshire. There really wasn’t anything new to this particular report, but reporter Stuart Greer definitely wanted to make sure the gravity of the situation was understood by everyone. As he was summing up he mentioned that “people” “believed” “there was an al Qaeda link”, he then threw us a clip of Home Secretary Jacqui Smith and Her Cleavage telling us “everything’s going to be alright”, but nothing aboot al Qaeda. Then we’re back to Stuart for the wrap up and he tells us “it’s unclear if there are any links to al Qaeda.” The only people mentioning al Qaeda in all of this seem to be the reporters…

2) Improving Relations: While he was in the general region Russian President Vlad Putin requested an unexpected meeting with President GW Bush. A lot has been made aboot this meeting apparently having very little focus, and the stuff they’re releasing to the media pretty much shows that there has been no apparent focus… “common ground over Iran”, “thawing relations”… but this is one of the strangest political and/or diplomatic meetings I’ve ever heard of, these types of meetings take months to prepare for. The protocol involves encyclopedias, they have whole departments dedicated to this sort of thing, Russian Presidents don’t just “pop over” for a quick meeting with the President of the United States. It is interesting that the next story occurred just after the meeting…

3) Americans Have Proof Of Iran Proxy In Iraq: Surprise! Iran is using Hezbollah as their proxy in Iraq. According to the American Military, Lebanese and Iraqis are being trained in Lebanon and sent into Iraq to make IED’s and basically fuck shit up. At their — really weird — meeting Russia changed its tone aboot Iran’s nuclear program, not entirely embracing the American position, but making it pretty clear Russia won’t automatically veto a stronger Security Council resolution.

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10pm CBC: The National

1) Aftermath From Attempted Bombings: CBC was really late to this whole story. By the time CBC’s cable news channel — CBC Newsworld — finally started talking aboot the Glasgow Airport incident, the other cable news channel — CTV Newsnet — had the story for aboot half an hour. The CBC never really seemed interested in the story for the first few hours, in fact the first real report came when BBC World’s 6pm broadcast took over the station. Anyway. Reporters, for some reason, seem perplexed that “professionals” like “doctors” would conceive of doing something like blowing up a thousand people. As if the World Trade Center has been destroyed by illiterate street people — two of the suspects so far are “doctors”, but not really as one was a medical student. The really interesting part of this will be how America reacts to CCTV being instrumental, once again, in finding the people responsible.

2) Suicide Car Bomb In Yemen: A whole lot of Spanish tourists got killed when a suicide bomber jammed his car into a convoy of buses and pulled his trigger. He must not have gotten the memo that Spanish soldiers weren’t in Iraq anymore.

3) Putin And Bush Meet: There were really convincing reports out of Russia not too long ago aboot Putin’s sexual proclivities… remember that bizarre moment a few months ago when Putin grabbed that random kid and, basically, molested his stomach? Yeah. Anyway. Putin does have a point aboot the Missile Defense System the Americans are pushing… if he was Chinese his point would be more convincing. The Shield can be considered a First Strike Weapon… picture this: the Americans get their Shield working properly. That means America can rain nuclear weapons down on China, taking out 99% of China’s nuclear weapons. Those Chinese weapons, normally, could be fired all at once, overwhelming the American Shield. But with only 1% of their arsenal left the Chinese response is taken care of by The Shield. Hence the Americans can blow the shit out of the Chinese whenever they want with total impunity. So Putin doesn’t want Shield Missles in Poland or the Czech Republic because he loses face at home… every time America or NATO gets a little closer to Russia, Russians get a little more disgraced. So Putin is offering Southern Russia as a compromise, but the Americans — I think — will add Poland and the CR to their increasing arsenal of “stuff” to bring Russia onside against Iran… none of this was in the CBC report, which really didn’t offer much.

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11pm CTV National News

1) Bombing Arrests In Britain And Australia: The British police have cordoned off nineteen houses in Britain, as their search “intensified”. One of the most impressive things to come out of all this — beyond the whole CCTV issue — has been British Home Secretary Jacqui Smith’s cleavage. The suspects can be held without charge for 48 hours, after that the police can ask a judge for another 48 hours up to a maximum of a month. I’ve seen British, American and Canadian reporters talking aboot how the suspects aren’t talking… but it looks as though they’re all using the same anonymous source. The camera angle used to get the clip of Jacqui Smith making her official statement, which came from a static camera inside Parliament, looks down at the person who is speaking… honestly, it looked like she had someone’s ass in her shirt.

2) Canadian Soldier Killed By American Fire: As expected, an American Army report has concluded that Canadian Private Robert Costall and an American soldier were killed by “friendly fire” from US Special Forces during an insurgent attack against Forward Operating Base Robinson in Afghanistan’s Helmand province. The battle occurred in the early morning of March 29, 2006. At the time Private Costall was the 16th Canadian soldier killed in Afghanistan. To date there have been 60 Canadian soldiers killed while fighting for the new Afghan government.

3) Scooter Libby Sentence Commuted: Scooter wasn’t pardoned, his sentence was commuted, which means he’s still a criminal and he still has to pay a fine of $250,000. No one, let alone the Democratic political headhunters vying for the mans job, should be shocked that President Bush did this. One report I saw summed it up pretty nicely: a Federal Court decided that Scooter was going to have to wait in prison while his appeals were worked out. That meant Scooter was going to a Federal Prison in a couple of days. Article Two, Section Two of the American Constitution says the President gets to pardon or commute the sentence of anyone he wants to… except someone who has been impeached, which was why Gerald Ford pardoned Nixon so quickly. So, like it or not, the President can do this — which, when you think aboot it, is actually a good thing because it proves his administration still has a copy of the Constitution hanging around somewhere.

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If you find a broken link, or the YouTube stuff isn’t loading
properly, let me know and I’ll find an alternative…
I’m Canadian, it’s what we do. Off the ice.

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Posted in Afghanistan, America, American Politics, Canada, Canadian News, Canadian Politics, CBC News, CSN:AFU Monday's News, CTV News, Iran, Iraq, Middle East Politics, Punk, US Middle East Policy | 22 Comments

CSN:AFU Week 20 In Review

Posted on July 1, 2007 by Gabriel

Prozzak: Canadian

“Strange Disease”; ‘Hotshow‘ (1998)

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CSN:AFU Week Twenty

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Web 1.9 And A New Music Page:

It seems to me that this Web 2.0 movement… which seems to have cooled off in the past few months, is all aboot stealing other people’s content, putting a twist on it and hoping to Hell that no one notices the blank space where you’ve PhotoShopped the copyright notice from. YouTube is a perfect example… someone grabs a video off of MuchMusic, uploads it and draws traffic to their YouTube account where they have links to MySpace or Wherever.org where they have a thousand photos they’ve grabbed off of Flickr or PhotoBucket of Random People and their families. Meanwhile YouTube makes billions off that free content for Google through advertising. I was going somewhere with this… Oh Yeah… 

I remade my “Music Page“, and by “my” I mean not my music. At the top of each post I leave a YouTube of a Canadian musical artist. So they don’t get lost in the shuffle I created a Page to store them on, but I never updated it because I’m a lazy bastard. So now, if you’ll notice at the top of the page, I have a “New Music Page” where I’ve set up a system based on the easiest archival method I know: Punk, Punkish and Not Punk. Under each video you’ll find links to the artists homepage and someplace you can buy the album. As time goes on I’ll start leaving some Bio’s as well… there are a few up there now. So, sit back and enjoy the work others have created so that I can fill up space on my Blog.

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The Lists:

Five Strangest Search Terms Used To Find CSN:AFU

5) blackmen who like to spread there seed t
4) why canadians sex movie
3) neked and kids sex
2) what an alien need to know in the world
1) “canadians rule the world”

Honourable Mention: fuck canadian natives

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Top Five CSN:AFU Posts Since Last Friday:

1) CSN:AFU Week 19 In Review
2) Canada: Where Only The Natives Drink The Brown Water OR After 73,000 Days Of Being Ignored They Finally Take One Of Their Own
3) Short Cuts: Canada’s Gay Anglicans Were Sacrificed For Politics Not Religion… Just Like Jesus And Marc Hall
4) The Five Things You Need To Know Aboot The Canadian Movie Industry
5) Canadians Invented Hollywood: What You Need To Know Aboot Canada’s Movie Industry — Part Two: A New Hope

Honourable Mention: Six Canadian Movies You Need To See That Don’t Suck — Part One: FUBAR

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The Five Blogs I Visited Most This Week

1) A Wide Angle View Of India
2) Second Thoughts
3) Kamangir.net (real news from inside Iran)
4) Sticky Note Theatre
5) I didn’t do a lot of surfing this week… but I did go here a lot.

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This Week In General:

The week ended with me having… a giant hole surgically implanted into my mouth cavity. This was accomplished by a dentist with really, comically funny, tiny hands pulling a massive molar out of my face. The things they can do with science these days, I think that dentist was part of some kind of tiny-hand breeding program. Anyway… there is now a huge gap in my head. Best joke to come out of that sentence gets an honorary mention in next weeks CSN:AFU Week In Review. 

I also got my hair cut so I’m like totally a new human being now. And I managed to get out of the house long enough to buy a new printer / scanner / copier — the last one died after having proved that printer / scanner / copiers don’t fly. Interesting piece of trivia… did you know that when the 3-in-1 machines were first introduced back in 1999 they were originally called “Mopiers”? I think it was Xerox who first tried to use the brand. Also, from what I can remember of those halcyon days of Tech Reporting, the little USB wire that hooks your iPod to your Computer was originally going to be called a “Dongle”. I never reported on Products, my beat was Internet Privacy Stuff, but I just Googled both and I’m close enough.

I got tagged with another “Thinking Bloggers Award” by the person who runs the Sticky Note Theatre Blog, which is cool because I really enjoy his Blog. It was for my Music Page, or at least the idea of my Music Page. Which gave me the impetus to upgrade the whole thing.

I think next week I’m going to try and get back into my original routine of writing aboot Monday’s News again… problem is I’ve lost my PBS station due to some transmission tower accident. I need to get back into the routine again, I’ve been too sporadic over the past six weeks. That’s it… Happy Canada Day.

Oh… wait, there was that thing where I really pissed off my youngest sister because of something I wrote on my Other Blog. I had to shut it down, at least that particular post, for a few days until everything got worked out. Which, I think, is now. I also wrote a post aboot my dental surgery… I took a photo of the offending tooth just seconds after Dr. Tiny Digits pulled it out of head. If you want to see it, here it is [too late, its gone]. Happy Canada Day.

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This Weeks New Posts:

Short Cuts: Canada’s Gay Anglicans Were Sacrificed For Politics Not Religion… Just Like Jesus And Marc Hall
Gay Marriage, as a political issue within the political framework of Canada is a dead issue. We have it, it’s legal, it’s never going away. Within the religious framework, however, I highly doubt it will ever be allowed except through some kind of schism. It isn’t that Canadian Anglicans or Catholics or Muslims or Sikh’s or Whatever won’t allow it, Canadian membership in all of those religions is just too small to have a political voice within those religions. The average Anglican is not White, nor are they European. The Average Anglican is a Black Man living in Africa.

Today 80% of Anglicans are either SE Asian or African and they’re Fundamentalist. Think of that voting power. Think of the Politics of having 80% of the membership of your group ten times more Fundamental than the other 20%. Now think of the actual, physical parts of a Church — the bank accounts, the buildings, the vestments, the land. Think aboot what happens if The 80% Church Majority bans the 20% from using all Anglican Church property and assets in Canada and America and Britain because they don’t like what the 20% have done. Anyway. Read the post, I did a pretty good job on it.

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Next Week:

Global Warming, A Movie And Maybe One Short Cut.

I’ve got nothing going on this week so maybe I can get some Blogging done.

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Posted in Canada, Canadian Music, Canadian Politics, Christianity, Civil Rights, Conservative, CSN:AFU Weekly Review | 2 Comments

Short Cuts: Canada’s Gay Anglicans Were Sacrificed For Politics Not Religion… Just Like Jesus And Marc Hall

Posted on June 27, 2007 by Gabriel

Big Sugar: Canadian

“Better Get Used To It”; ‘HemiVision’ (1996)

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It Wasn’t Religion That Put Jesus On The Cross…

Pontius Pilate made the decision based on political expediency, he didn’t wash his hands because he Believed the Jewish religion had any merit or that the Philosophy of Jesus threatened his personal beliefs, he made the decision based on the cold hard reality of Native politics in his Province: The vast majority wanted Jesus on a cross, and if it didn’t happen there was a real possibility of a messy revolution down the line.

Every decision every Church, specifically the Christian Churches, has made since has been Political. I’m not sure why this is a surprise, and I’m not sure why the decision by the Canadian Branch of the Anglican Church not to allow same-sex marriages or “Blessings” came as a surprise.

Think aboot how slowly, clumsily and ineptly the various Churches reacted to the horrific abuses against Natives in Canada’s Residential School, or how the American Catholic Church covered up pedophiliac Priests… or, I don’t know, The Children’s Crusade? On some level Religions are normally  — Sc*entology notwithstanding — run by caring, normal, non-irrational and/or non-hate-filled people. There are always some fringe players, but the Anglican Bishops who voted against allowing gay marriage by Anglican Ministers don’t want harm to be done to gay people just like Pontius didn’t want to kill Jesus, but sacrifices had to be made because of the politics involved. And that usually means putting some Random Dude up on a cross, or barring two Random Dudes from getting their Civil Ceremony “Blessed”.

If you want to understand the politics you have to go back to — roughly — 1600AD, or thereaboots, when a bunch of religious zealots left Europe for Everywhere Else, bringing their smallpox and Christ with them. Religion was the First Wave of Globalization and They managed to convert or slaughter aboot three billion people. The thing is, while they were gone adventuring, 400 years passed and no one in Europe or Canada or America… well, parts of America, gives a Rats Ass aboot religion anymore.

And now all the Great Christian Churches have more members “Down South” than “At Home”, so that now the average Anglican Church member isn’t so much European White as African Black. Today 80% of Anglicans are either SE Asian or African and they’re very, very Fundamentalist. So the Anglican Church — just like the Catholic Church — isn’t European anymore. Now, think of that voting power. Think of the Politics of having 80% of the membership of your group ten times more Fundamental than the other 20%. Now think of the actual, physical parts of a Church. The bank accounts, the buildings, the vestments, the land.

So when 80% of the Anglican Church membership said last year, and implied again this year, “condone Gay Marriage and we’ll cut you right out of the Church, then we’ll take control over all the Church Properties and Assets in Canada and America and Britain and you can go pray in Some Gay Couple’s fabulously refurnished basement” the Bishops said “uhm, okay, maybe we’ll wait until 2013 before deciding anything.” So now, instead of having a Church being blown up over the summer and a really, really nasty schism, the Anglicans have another few years to find a solution — and despite what the Anglican Mothership has been saying recently, a schism is exactly what would have started with a Pro Vote.

There are a lot of wonderful Ironies in this. In 1900 there were 10 million Christians living in Africa, or aboot 10% of the population. Seven years ago there were 360 million, or aboot 50% of Africans. In that time Europe and Canada and most Developed Nations stopped believing. In our multi-cultural societies God has become a lowercase “g”.

The American chunk of the Anglican Church has already approved a liturgy for same-sex blessings and appointed an openly gay bishop. Beyond the reaction from Africa’s Churches, several Anglican Churches in America have formed their own associations directly with the Fundamentalist Churches of Africa… in essence they (and their donations and land and buildings) are no longer part of the American Branch of Anglicans. There are also Anglican Churches in British Columbia that have broken away from the “Anglican Church of Canada” and formed the “Anglican Communion in Canada” based entirely on the issue of gay marriage/Blessings.

One Billion Catholics have been dealing with the same situation for a lot longer, which is why you haven’t heard a Pope say “that’s fabulous” or “ribbed for her pleasure.” Religion had nothing to do with Canadian Anglican Bishops voting against Gay Marriage, just like Religion has nothing to do with God, it’s always been aboot Politics.

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This post includes 36% recycled material… Marc Hall, in case anyone’s wondering, was a Toronto high school kid who wanted to bring his boyfriend to his Catholic School 2002 Prom. Eventually it was allowed.

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If you find a broken link, or the YouTube stuff isn’t loading
properly, let me know and I’ll find an alternative…
I’m Canadian, it’s what we do. Off the ice.

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Posted in America, American Politics, Canada, Canadian News, Canadian Politics, Christianity, Conservative, CSN:AFU Short Cuts, Pot, Punk | 4 Comments

CSN:AFU Week 19 In Review

Posted on June 25, 2007 by Gabriel

Vulgaires Machins: Canadien

“Compter les corps”; ‘Compter les corps‘ (2006)

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CSN:AFU Week Nineteen

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Family, Visitors And Avoidance:

It takes me time to prepare for… visitors. Then, when they’re gone, it takes time to get over those visitors. It’s a fact of my life at the moment. My sister coming to visit was wonderful, and we had a great time hanging out. I took her on the tour of my little village. We drank beer a close friend of mine brews; she met my step-sister and brother, my grandparents and step-grandmother for the first time at a BBQ on (deeply, darkly ironically) Father’s Day; we played Grand Theft Auto: San Andreas, then we tried to watch a few movies but The Someone who borrowed them last fucked them up so the endings were scratched out. I can’t remember who borrowed them… this too is a fact of my life right now. Anyway. To Prepare for my sister coming took aboot a week, then she was here for four days, then it took aboot a week to decompress so there was very little posting done here. I should have taken more time off, actually. I managed to get into an email argument with a friend that may have fucked things up… I don’t know, I’ve been avoiding email for the past four days. This, also, is something of a fact of my life at the moment.

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The Lists:

Five Strangest Search Terms Used To Find CSN:AFU

5) men with no pants
4) cultural snafu blog
3) photo des optimiste laxer
2) what this mean Absolut Israel
1) family fuck time

Honourable Mention: buzkashi pro league

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Top Five CSN:AFU Posts Since Last Friday:

1) Canada: Where Only The Natives Drink The Brown Water OR After 73,000 Days Of Being Ignored They Finally Take One Of Their Own
2) CSN:AFU Week 18 In Review
3) The Five Things You Need To Know Aboot The Canadian Movie Industry
4) Canada: Offering A Safe-Sex Environment Where Humanity Can Fuck Itself Back Together Again
5) Monday’s Top Three News Stories (ABC, PBS, CBC, CTV): 02/05/07

Honourable Mention: Fear The Seeds: Iran vs. America In “The Marketing War” — Where Being The Victim Is Victory

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The Five Blogs I Visited Most This Week

1) A Wide Angle View Of India
2) Newfoundblog.com
3) Kamangir.net (real news from inside Iran)
4) reportr.net
5) Dead Robot

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This Week In General:

The week started off with me playing… tour guide in Ottawa for my little sister. She was here a few years ago but it was winter and no one wants to be in Ottawa in the winter. In every photo I have of her she has a scarf wrapped around her face and a toque pulled down in the Canadian version of a burqua. So this time we walked past the Museum of Nature, down the Rideau Canal to the University of Ottawa, then through Confederation Park to the War Memorial, down Sussex Street past the American Embassy to the National Gallery. She wanted to get a photo of The Voice Of Fire, and I wanted to see the Apocolypse Car — which they’ve moved because they’re renovating the First Nations exhibit… you know, so the Native stuff would be condenced and out of the way just in time for National Aboriginal Day.

Anyway, I got her to the bus (barely) on time then I went to see “Knocked Up”, which is the story of an Overweight Slacker Pot Smoking Canadian Jew living illegally in Los Angeles who gets Katherine Heigl pregnant after a night out clubbing. I don’t know… maybe it could happen. Except for the Jew thing, the Los Angeles thing and the night out clubbing thing I’m pretty sure it actually happened to me three or four times. Except for the Katherine Heigl thing too… although Mel, Illona and Dana were pretty frigging close. Anyway. I laughed, non-stop, for the first hour. For the rest of the (nearly three hour) movie the laughs were sporadic, but exactly where they should have been.

After the movie I should have gone home and slept for a week, but after a few hours of sleep I decided to catch up on some electronic correspondence. That part of my week should be erased, if such a thing were possible. Or right aboot now is when my Stoner Canadian Illegal Immigrant Friends would show up with a bong and some words of wisdom. But I quit the weed six or five or maybe four years ago… I can’t keep track of these things, which is a fact of my life at the moment.

Then I spent the weekend (yesterday and Saturday) crippling myself helping my step-father start his latest construction project: The Garage. We built the back and part of a side wall… because one side and the back are right up against some large hedges, we’re building the walls in their entirety before pushing and pulling them upright. Good times. We — and a friend — moved one wall before it was done and I’m pretty sure I almost lost any chance of having kids… we’re supposed to finish the walls next weekend so I think I’ve got one more week left to start a family.

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This Weeks New Posts:

Canada: Where Only The Natives Drink The Brown Water
I wrote this, kind of, on Canada’s National Aboriginal Day, which never really worked out the way the Government wanted it to back in 1996 when they invented it. Afterall, blacks in Canada get a whole month and Whitey owns the freaking country. So Natives are having their own Day this summer, and they’ve decided to call it a “National Day Of Protest“, because 200 years of negotiations with the Canadian government has left Natives in Canada with the highest levels of Alcoholism, Suicide and Drug Addiction in North America. In Canada, if you’re a Native on a Reserve, you count yourself lucky to have brown water coming out of your taps.

Canada didn’t have a War Of Extinction with the First Nations, all three of our Governments — French then British then Canadian — signed Treaties with the People of the Mohawk, Ojibwa, Algonquin, Huron, Blackfoot, Bella Coola and all the other First Nations. All three Governments made promises to the First Nations, so Canada didn’t need a War Of Extinction with the First Nations like they had in America, we had The Reserves and Bureaucracy and The Residential Schools. Anyway… I kind of fucked up the headline then never got around to fixing it, but I’m going to “Re-Release” this post on June 29th so I’ll get to fixing the headline by then. Hopefully.

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Next Week:

Global Warming, A Movie And Maybe One Short Cut.

I’ve got a dentist appointment this week, so maybe not.

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If you find a broken link, or the YouTube stuff isn’t loading
properly, let me know and I’ll find an alternative…
I’m Canadian, it’s what we do. Off the ice.

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Posted in Canada, CSN:AFU Weekly Review, Depression, Native Issues, Ottawa, Pot, poverty, Punk, Weed | 5 Comments