Speaking of Blogs...

So, I wrote this big, long piece that I've been pining to do about the Montréal riots last week, which, by the way, got a plug on the season finale of Saturday Night Live.  And it's pretty quiet tonight, so I thought I'd throw together a hodgepodge of neat things.  Not necessarily funny or straightforward things, but just neat things.  Different things.  Abnormal things.  So without further ado, here is Thing #1.

SF 10-33

KJPL, this is car 11-King.  Standing by for musical accompaniment.  Over.

Speaking of riots and law enforcement, Somafm, one of my favourite internet radio sites, just put up a neat new radio station: SF 10-33.  SF stands for San Fransisco, and 10-33 I believe stands for the radio frequency, though I could be wrong.  Now this is just one more example of something really cool from San Fransisco.  I mean, they already have...

...these guys..,

...and...

...this guy..,

...and...

...this thing, which just turned 75, by the way.

Well, now we can chalk something else up on the list of things that makes San Fransisco a little bit different.  SF 10-33 is a "music" station that takes sound clips from the local police radio station and sets it to ambient music.  The result is, uh, something really different.  I'm tempted one day to turn it on, turn it up, close my eyes, lay down on the couch, and see just where it takes me.  From what I've heard so far, it's mostly stuff like "Looking for a male 18-25 in a red jacket" or "Local animal control has been notified.  Will update with ETA" or "Checked with the landlord.  There are apartments upstairs and downstairs.  Both are being renovated.  No one should be inside at this time."  Yeah...  It's an interesting thing.  Brings to mind the question: "But is it art?"


CHET BAKER

Speaking of San Fransisco, here's an artist that was known to haunt the clubs of the City by the Bay.

Now that's a jaw!

Chesney "Chet" Henry Baker, Jr. is, I would say, one of America's great artists.  An extraordinary songwriter, virtuoso trumpet (and flugelhorn!) player, and an absolutely, positively unique voice, Baker dazzled audiences through his lifelong decdication to his craft.  His career began in the 1950's with such brilliant artists as Stan Getz (and I love Stan Getz) and Charlie Parker (yes, the Charlie Parker).  They pegged him as being...

...Jimmy Dean,

...Blue Eyes,

...and Bix.

Pretty darn loftly praise off the hop!  Well, the downside was that not only did he gain fame in the 50's, but he also gained a lifelong heroin addiction.  His drug addiction got so bad he had to pawn his insturments for cash, spent over a year in prison in Italy (Mamma Mia!), and got kicked out of both England and West Germany before getting deported back to the good old USA.  Things got worse, though, in 1966 when after performing a gig in good old San Fransisco, he was jumped outside the venue and savagely beaten.  As a result...  Well, I played trumpet for seven years and I can safely say that getting your front teeth kicked out would not be helpful for your trumpeting career.  He played mostly flugelhorn after that.

Clearly, the years were not kind to him.

Fortunately, thankfully, gratefully in the late 70's and 80's his career saw a revival, but at the end of the day, the story of Chet Baker is not a happy one.  It is indeed a tragedy.  On May 13, 1988 he was found dead outside his second storey hotel room.  He had suffered a serious blow to the head and was carrying, both inside and out, cocaine and heroin.  You know, this is just another great, great artist and mind that you look at and say, "Wow...  My goodness.  What they would have achieved had they not ran afoul of substance abuse would have been nothing short of spectacular."  Ah, but we can only imagine now and get lost in the things that might have been.


HOWARD HUGHES

Speaking of drug related deaths, here's an interesting one, and I didn't know this, but it's true.  Post-mortem x-rays found not one, not two, but five broken off hypodermic needles broken off in his flesh.  One thing is certain, he did like this codeine and it's very likely that his painkiller addiction led to the kidney failure which resulted in his death.

It was Howard Hughes, though.  Just saying the name inspires so much stuff.  You know, Howard Hughes is just one of those names that I just have to put in bold, because it's not simply Howard Hughes, it's Howard Hughes.  Yes, that's more like it.  I mean, if imitation is the sincerest form of flattery, just look at it all.  It's staggering.

Here's the lanky, 6'4" Texan in 1947.

One larger-than-life figure portraying another.

There is nothing wrong with your television set. Do not attempt to adjust the picture. We are controlling transmission.

Foiled?  By a Frenchman yet?  Combien tragique, M. H. R. Karst.

Wealthy industrialist, playboy, and skilled aviator Howard... Stark?

Bioshock's Andrew Ryan: the only Hughes rip-off to have the guts to bear a greater-than-monosyllabic name.

So if imitation is the sincerest form of flattery, Hughes should feel well flattered - not that his ego needed much help to begin with.  At any rate, I was just thinking the other day, the quality of billionaire playboy adventurers has gone way, way down lately.  I can't think of too many modern day iterations.  There's...

The Amazing Sir Richard.  No pipe cleaner mustaches, hair grease, or condescending glares here.

...and then there's...

.........................  Uhm...

Gee, I can't think of any other modern day ones.  I'm sure they're out there somewhere.  James Cameron maybe?   This guy?

The police often question him, just because they find him interesting.

I think he's a little too fictional to count, though.  Oh well.


JONATHAN SWIFT

Oh, and speaking of Jonathans, here's a good one:

A couple of weeks ago I mused that the best satire is thee one that seems to be the most real.  As much as I don't like this guy here...

Gee, you can hardly recognize him without a cartoonish disguise.

...he is pretty damn good at it, so hat's off.  But as good as he is, Jonathan Swift was the king.  Think about "A Modest Proposal" for a moment.  It was a simple essay and when people read it, they were just on that knife edge of "Geez, is he being serious or not?"  That is the hallmark of great satire right there.  At first you're reading something that starts out as real as real can be, but then it slowly turns and you wonder whether it's real or not.  The best satirists are the ones that can plant that seed of truth the deepest, so the deeper the roots, the mightier the tree of satire that grows from it.

Likewise, "Gulliver's Travels".  At the time it was written there was a whole lot of the earth that hadn't been discovered yet and therefore a lot of mystery as to what's really, actually out there.  There were tall people, short people, advanced people, primitive people; a myriad of different races and cultures as well.  Gulliver seemed like a real guy.  Ship's surgeon, honourable profession and whatnot.  Lilliput and Blefuscu seemed like a real place.  After all, they were just off the coast of Indinesia.  See?

Look!  It's a map!  Yup, there's Sumatra.  Plain as day.  Can't argue with that.

So this was novel for a novel.  Having the "map", the fictional places interwoven with real places, and the slow, gradual descent into absurdity had more than just a few people convinced that what they were reading was a real account of a great adventure - in exactly the same way that those listening at home were taken in hook, line, and sinker by...

Orson We-  Wait a minute..  You again?!

COYOTE HUNTING

Speaking of broadcasts that get people into trouble, after the game on Tuesday night that saw the Phoenix Coyotes eliminated by the Los Angeles Kings on their skae to the Staley Cup Final, several Coyotes players had some choice words about the officiating during the game.

“All season long it seems like [the referees] did everything they could to not get us to this position.  Raffi Torres gets 25 games for a hit during the play, then this guy should be done forever.” - Goaltender Mike Smith

"I bit my tongue the whole playoffs. I bit my tongue the whole time this series. I look back in the last two games and I still haven’t found where I got my three penalties. I have absolutely no idea where they came from or what they were calling.
"It’s hard because you don’t want to take anything away from LA. They played unbelievable and give them all the credit. Uncle. Are you freaking kidding me? Uncle. I can’t understand how you miss that.
"Rosie’s knee is blown out. How do you miss that? How do you miss that when it’s after the whistle and it’s a knee? How do you possibly miss that? You know what? As player I get in trouble when I make a mistake. I get in big trouble. I get called out by you guys. I get called out by everybody. I get called out by my coaches. I have to be accountable to my teammates. I don’t know how you miss it. I don’t know how you miss it.
"I’m sure they’ll have a great explanation for it. I know that they try to do their best, I know they always try to do their best. They’re going to make mistakes. It’s just tough when you’re on the short end of it I don’t know how many times." - Forward Shane Doan

Yikes.  There's always griping about the officiating in every sport, especially come playoff time, but this is beyond the norm I find.  I find that in any sport when you have the players speaking out, and speaking out to this degree?  Fellas...  You got a problem.  The thing I really take exception with in this mess is that the Coyotes are being investegated rather than the officials.  The players are the subject of the investegation?  And not the league?

This is what I don't get about this sport.  It's like this.  I don't understand it.  I don't get a sport where people are injuring others purposefully when the goal is supposed to be to score points.  That's like...

PAWN?  More like P0WN!

or...

Hole in one?  Internal organ, maybe.

But, you know, that aside, I respect that there is a culture in the game, and it is a culture of hard-hitting, rough and tough action.  And that's fine.  My gripe is that when you have a sport where the risk of serious physical injury is relatively high and the average age of a professional player is relatively low (26, as opposed to 27 for the NBA and NFL, and 28 for MLB), the onus ought to be uopn the league to ensure that the rules are followed and respected in all instances.  Without consistent officiating you get...

"I have absolutely no idea where they came from or what they were calling."

In other sports, the officiating may not always be fair...

Right, Brett?

...but it's comprehensible.  When the rules are this murky and this shoddily enforced, what do you expect?  What do you expect to find from an investigation?  When strange things happen and people aren't given completely adequate explanations, even more strange conclusions result.

That's guts.  That's moxy.  Investigating the Coyotes when the officiating is that inconsistent?  That's balls.  Bravo, NHL.  All hat, no cattle, once again.  Lights on, nobody home.


DETROIT

Speaking of lights on, nobody home, let's look at a very interesting statistic.

Detroit's Population

1900 - 285,704
1910 - 465,766
1920 - 993,768
1930 - 1,568,662
1950 - 1,849,568
1960 - 1,670,144
1970 - 1,511,482
1980 - 1,203,339
1990 - 1,027,974
2000 - 951,270
2010 - 713,777

Yeeeeeeesh!  You know, if I was playing...

SimCity.  Or, well, SimManhattan in this case.

...and my population tanked like that, the net result would look something like this:

SimCopter One reporting reporting heavy traffic!

But unfortunately that's not an option because it's not SimDetriot, it's... Detroit.  Just Detroit.  And it's in rough shape right now.  You wanna talk Ghost Town?  Here's Ghost Town:

Yeesh...

Wow...

Geez...

Detroit Rock City has apparently become Detroit Wrecked City as the population of the once mighty American industrial town is now reportedly at the same population level as it was a century ago.  With the slow and steady fall of its industrial capacity over the past fifty years, the city has lost well over half its population.  Scenes of the city's decline are becoming familiar.  This decline has been a long time coming and it makes me think back seemingly forever ago when I first saw...

Who's got two thumbs and a camera?  This guy.

...chronicling the death spiral around his beloved Michigan.  As an observer from afar, it seemed bad, but not that bad.  Sure, every town has its ups and downs given the fullness of time, but this is grim.  Not only have whole hunks of the city been abandoned by residents and businesses alike, but even the city itself is officially abandoning them now.  Up until now a lot of it was not official, but rather one of those "Sorry, we don't have it in the budget to fix the potholes or replace the streetlights this year" - something that I'm used to hearing regularly in the property management biz.  Now, it's official.  Lights will be turned off.  Streets and sidewalks will be left to nature.  40% of Detroits street lights are broken, many of them tore down and stripped for parts and wiring.  It is boggling for me to even conceive of this.  At its peak: near two million.  Now: seven hundred thousand and dropping.  It conjures imagines of what things might be like if there was a zombie apocalypse or a nuclear war or some disease that kills off most of the population.  Scary stuff.

All is not lost, however.  The Detroit Tiger's attendance has not only remained steady, but is still ahead of the league average, and they could afford a max dollar contract for Prince Fielder over the off-season.  Though they are hurting, they are not yet at the end.


And speaking of the end, that's it for tonight.  Thank you very much for reading and have a great weekend!

Fight For Your Right II

So, like, two posts ago I wrote this entry, Fight For Your Right, which mainly did two things: attempted to assail Margaret Wente's position on the merits, or lack thereof, of an arts education, and give the students protesting in Montréal a hearty pat on the back for their brave efforts in sticking it to the man and keeping tuition costs down in the great province (nation?) of Quebec.  Well, it seems that both efforts have failed.  Miserably.  Backfired.  Yup.
So this week I'd like to address both issues: first my nemesis Wente, second the spiraling student protests.


Since You Wente Away

Now, just so everyone knows, when I say...

Wente...

...what I really mean is...

Newman...

In fact, I have a theory about that and it goes a little something like this: the best names to yell, holler, or curse are two-syllable names.  For example:

Flint-stone!

Jet-son!

Yo-gi!

See?  Works pretty slick, huh?  Try it out.  It's a pretty solid rule.

Anyhow, that's neither hither nor yon.  The point here is that the editorial board here at the lofty downtown offices of Raccoon Inc., like many other respected pundits, got the idea to call some good old b.s. on Ms. Wente's article.  One pundit said hypocritical, spoiled, and offensive.  Another characterizes her as, simply, a troll.  Hm.  That's actually pretty good.  They also say that Wente "Provokes, certainly, but she never engages."  And a lot of people were provoked by this column, as I was.  So what happens when hits a sore spot and cheeses off a whole lot of people?  Like a good troll, she goes back to the same spot and pokes a little harder.  See here.

My first thought was gee whiz, does she ever have a hate on for sociology!  "Sociology professors are always complaining that I pick on sociology too much."  Nice.  Let them eat cake, so says Marie Antoinette.  I mean, sociology is not my cup of tea, but then again neither is geology, biology, physics, calculus...  A lot of things, really. But I don't go around slagging people that want to go to university and pay them to learn about psychology, or pay them to play college football, or pay someone to take Bible studies. 

And that's another point.  As practical as she attempts to seem with her free advice, I see her slagging sociology, philosophy, and so on.  I don't, however, see her taking any swipes at theology, seminary, religious studies, or anything along that vein.  You know the rebuttal to that observation could be, "I could fill the entire newspaper with the list of useless fields of study, so I must be forgiven if your waste of tax-payer funded nonsense did not make the short list."  And that may be the case - but you know, that seems a little easy.  If I was a practical, hard-headed, cold-blooded number cruncher, I would take a long look at church attendance and the direction it's heading and say that, gee, the demand just isn't there to warrant it.  Furthermore, I would also be of a mind to say that when you could be something real-world like an engineer..,

Such as this.

...architect, or pharmacist, religious studies would be the acme of study-without-practical-purpose.  But she doesn't mention it, and that's what gets me.  Now, if I was a grassy knoll kind of guy, I'd say that, gee, conservative?  Right-wing commentator?  Right at home on Fox News?  Just saying.  The silence, dear readers, is deafening.

Another thing.  The whole premise of her argument is spurious.  "Educated for Unemployment".  Bah!  Humbug!  Education?

World English Dictionary

education  (ˌɛdjʊˈkeɪʃən)

— n

1. the act or process of acquiring knowledge, esp systematically during childhood and adolescence

2. the knowledge or training acquired by this process: his education has been invaluable to him

3. the act or process of imparting knowledge, esp at a school, college, or university: education is my profession

4. the theory of teaching and learning: a course in education

5. a particular kind of instruction or training: a university education; consumer

My gripe with her premise is stated thusly: the purpose of education is to learn in a broad sense, not specifically as job training.  There is more to life than work.  There is more to learn in this world than just merely how to do your job better.  I grant you, some people are what their work is.  Their life is their work and their work is their life and that's fine.  I get that, but it's dangerous to paint with such a broad stroke.  If we were all accountants, all we'd do is account for everyone else's accounts - but naked because there would be no tailors, hungry because there there are no farmers, and so on.

What a wonderful world it would be if we were all useful.  That's what I get from this.  What a wonderful world it would be.  But it doesn't work like that.  It takes all kinds.  It sincerely, truthfully does.  No joke, no gag.  If you want to learn about something, please, learn about it.  And I'm not saying this as a sycophantic arts professor, bent on filling kids' heads full of futile dreams.  No.  I'm saying this as someone who believes that what makes the human being great is their ability to learn.  Don't stop.  Don't get discouraged - and for God's sake, don't listen to that chirping voice that says "And what are you going to do with that degree?"  Learn because you're curious, not because you're unemployed.  Period.  Next chapter.


FOR THE HORDE!!!

Two weeks ago I wrote a post that said in a nutshell, "Way to go, kids!  You show them.  Affordable higher education is a seriously good thing for any nation to achieve.  Furthermore, if you don't raise a fuss about it, they'll assume that you're O.k. with it and raise the tuition rates anyway.  So good on you for standing up for yourselves and sticking it to the man.  Pat on the back."

Yeah!  You tell em!  ...  Wait.  What?

So, yeah...  This week things kind of escalated a bit.  Hmm...  You know what?  Let me just clarify my position a bit here.  In a previous post I outlined how I feel about the manner in which protesting ought to be conducted.

"Which is why I like this whole tell Vic everything thing. So, tell me what Occupy Wall Street caused beyond a spike in tent sales and a few intimate acquaintances with some NYPD nightsticks. Not much. However, with the Twitter protest, there were people young and old, to the left and right of the spectrum in it by the thousands across the country. Granted, it helps that Toews is an easily detestable character, but the protest had this feel to it that it was creative, smart, absolutely hilarious, and had a very pointed message: we do not agree with this legislation. Who are we? Everyone. This is democracy at its finest. This is non-violent protest at its finest. This is how it should work."

At the time, two weeks ago, I don't recall any serious clashes with police.  I do recall some students getting mostly naked and cavorting around in a cheeky (no pun intended) and eye catching manner to raise awareness of the issues.  However, when things get violent is when I start to have serious problems with what's going on.

When the band of rogue students flew through the hall of the university, disrupting the classes of and bullying anyone who wanted to learn, that cheeses me off.  Big time.  While you may be fighting for your right to learn affordably, please bear in mind that the bottom line here isn't fighting for affordability, it's fighting for learning.  You're fighting because if it's too expensive, some people, potentially really great people, may not be able to learn at all.  Now if you go running around disrupting people who are trying to learn, you're defeating your own purpose and protest descends into anarchy.  That's bad.
Worse yet, the protesters have started pulling out these:

When they were talking about a heated debate, they didn't mean literally.

This is not good.  Without trivializing legitimate student gripes, I will say this: there is no need for violence.  Zero.  None.  Neither the students nor the government should be indulging in violence over this dispute.   Why?

a)  Is this something worth getting violent over?  The protesters may say yes, but to be blunt this isn't Syria.  This isn't a revolution, this is a student strike.  This is a tuition hike, not genocide.  I have a fundamental problem with seeing either side of a dispute bring in a sledgehammer to swat ("swat") a fruit fly.

b)  Violence and excess in this type of dispute will only serve vilify those who make use of it and drown out the legitimate concerns brought forward by those who remain non-violent. When you use violence, it just makes it that much easier to paint everyone with the same brush.

c)  Violence is inherently a chaotic thing.  One of my concerns is that during the incident where the protesting students crashed the non-protesting students' classes, that had a feeling of the protest turning on itself.  What I don't want to see is the violence turn from protesters vs. "the man" to protesters vs. those who simply wish to study.  That, I believe, would poison the well as fast as anything.

d)  It's just too easy.  Not only is violence chaotic, it's also easy.  It's a cop out, so to speak.  When either protesters or the law turn to violence, it is nearly always because they have nothing left to say.  Here's my greatest concern with student violence.  These are post-secondary students that are leading the fight here.  As a whole, they are extraordinarily clever, quite creatively agile, as technologically savvy as any group of people anywhere, clearly very ambitious, and are as organized as a force as any I've seen involved in a student protest.  That they are resorting to violence is gratingly disappointing.

It is an underachievement that the hordes of protestors are resorting to violence.  I sincerely hope that the violence, arson, and so on that we've seen over the weekend is the end of it.  There are better ways of getting the point across than this.  Like so many professors have said to so many students through the annals of history, they can do so much better.

And that's it for this post.  Thank you for reading and have a good night.

Miscellaneous Nonsense

Good evening!

I had prepared a really neat blog about stuff to air last night, but it was one of those things that the more I wrote, the more I wrote and it just started growing exponentially.  So I'd look at it from a different angle, grab some hedge clippers, gaze at it awhile, and then decide not to trim anything.  Now it's this giant ball of incoherence that I think should best be tackled at a later date.  In its place, however, is something a little simpler: a neato list of things that I wanted to lay down and share with everyone - things that are just too good to snicker and laugh at alone.  Without any further ado, here is a nice, assorted collection of miscellaneous nonsense.


Stephen Hawking vs. Cell Phone Bill

Now, if you listen to CBC Radio One on Saturday mornings at just before 8am, this one should not be news to you.  If you don't, however, just take a gander at this.  It's kind of a Goon Show-y kind of thing.  It's a radio sketch of Stephen Hawking (Warning: not the real Stephen Hawking) phoning his cell phone provider about his bill.  The best satire is the stuff that's closest to the truth, and they nail this one right on the head.  So good.  I strongly urge a view.

Length:                2m. 46s.

Comedy Rating:  A-


Best.  Burnout.  Ever.

An old friend of mine posted this on Facebook a while back, and it never gets old.  It has, like, near infinite replay value.  Just some good old boys performing the most massive burnout I've ever seen.  My only gripe is that they should have filmed this at night.  They explain in the comments section that it was a private roadway and that the secret to a fine burnout is not to drop the hammer, but to keep and even speed in third gear.  Hats off to Bubba and Skeeter.  Well played.  Oh and you need to be at least a little red-neck to enjoy it.

Length:                3m. 48s.

Comedy Rating:  B-


Agent for H.A.R.M.

You know when you're in the zone when you're doing something and time slows down and everything you touch turns to gold and you can't do no wrong?  That's what the MST3K guys were experiencing when they did this episode on this terrible 60's spy movie.  The protagonist is terrible, his boss isn't playing drunk but is drunk, and they mercilessly pile on this wannabe James Bond film.  A+ effort for Mike and the crew.

Length:                1h. 31m. 7s.

Comedy Rating:  A+


Pokepizza vs. Ethan

The best stories have arcs to them.  The characters are believable, the plot unfolds over time, and there's a sense of tension that heightens as you go along.  This flame war here between Pokepizza and Ethan starts out innocently enough, but like great comedy duos like Kenny and Spenny, Sheldon and Leonard, and Archie and Meathead, you have a real jerk and a usually lovable loser that keep perpetuating the laughs.  Even though Pokémon was after my time (barely), the comedy's nonetheless priceless.  If you've never read this before it's totally worth a gander.

Length:                5m., roughly

Comedy Rating: A


GABEN: Action Hero

Saw this on Halolz this week.  Had to share it.  It's one of those either-you-get-it-or-you-don'ts, so no explanation necessary.  Seriously, though, I would shell out big bucks to play it if it existed.  Just saying.

Length:                Instant

Comedy Rating:  C


How To Shut Down a Ho

I don't know why I find this so funny.  Do I like Dragon Ball?  No.  Not at all.  Hell, I don't even understand it.  Do I like Chris Tucker?  No.  Not in the least.  Do I like the annoying little captions that jump into the video?  Yeeuch, no.  So why is it that when I see this I crack right up?  Every time.  I dunno what it is, but it just pieces my funny bone like a rapier.  Some things, I guess, just transcend and I'll leave it at that.

Length:                58s.

Comedy Rating:  B-


Waving Putin

I find this series not only funny, but a tad bit adorable, too.  I'm not a Putin fan, oh no no no no no, but it is funny.  Worth a look, anyway.

Length:                20s.

Comedy Rating: B


And that's just about all the time I have tonight.  Thanks for watching and remember: it doesn't matter which nation, race, ethnicity, religion, tribe, or sect that anyone is - what is common to the human being is that when they are happy, they smile.  Good night.

Fight For Your Right

Good evening!  Sit tight, buckle in, and get ready for tonight's scathing editorial.  I've been waiting all week to write this one.  So without any further ado, here we go.

So Tuesday morning started out as it always does.  The alarm goes off at 6:30 am, I slowly rouse myself and I play with my cats for a little while.  And then I...  er... that is to say, the Editorial Board here at Raccoon Inc. gets up out of bed and starts running a nice hot bath for themself... er... selves.  Anyway, so when the bath is running I take the opportunity to dial up the news on my cell phone and start sifting through the headlines to see what blew up around the world overnight.  This morning it was Montréal.

Very pretty town.

In particular, I was reading the following headline in the Globe and Mail:

QUEBEC'S UNIVERSITY STUDENTS ARE IN FOR A SHOCK

When I read this headline I immediately thought to myself...

The editorial board hadn't shaved yet and was enjoying a breakfast cigar.

So I started reading it.  First paragraph:

"It’s a little hard for the rest of us to muster sympathy for Quebec’s downtrodden students, who pay the lowest tuition fees in all of North America. Even if the government has its way – no sure thing if the Parti Québécois gets back in power – they’ll still have the lowest tuition fees in North America. The total increase would amount to the cost of a daily grande cappuccino."

Well, this sure didn't sound like it was going to be a pro-student piece at all.  I skimmed downward as the tub filled until I got to this point:

"The truth is, the education they’re getting is overpriced at any cost. The protesters do not include accounting, science and engineering students, who have better things to do than hurl projectiles at police. They’re the sociology, anthropology, philosophy, arts, and victim-studies students, whose degrees are increasingly worthless in a world that increasingly demands hard skills. The world will not be kind to them. They’re the baristas of tomorrow and they don’t even know it, because the adults in their lives have sheltered them and encouraged their mass flight from reality."

What the hell is this?!  Who wrote this crap?!  I had to admit, I didn't actually look at the author before I started reading, so at that point I skimmed back up to the top of the article and checked it out.

Margaret Wente

...Wente...

I checked the time on the phone.  It was at 6:42 am on Tuesday morning that I knew exactly what story Raccoon Inc.'s editorial board would be working on this Saturday tonight.

The full column can be found right here, and it's a real doozer.  I swam through it and then checked out the comments below at the end.  To my shock, the comments seemed overwhelmingly in favour of Wente's position.  To sum it up: kids are spoiled and they should take what they get from us adults, because work is hard, life is hard, and one day they'll realize that once all of their dreams have been shattered and they fall back down to earth.  Nice.  Nice inspiring story.  Well, I think it's high time that I took up the contrarian position and wrote a refutation in favour of the strike.  Here goes.

The major bone of contention is this: a $1,625.00/year tuition hike.  Yikes!  Ouch!  That seems like a lot.  I'm a middle class income earner with a household income a hair down from Regina's median and I can see the sting of that number hitting my pocketbook.  Now, originally, the Charest government announced that they would be raising the tuition by that amount over the course of five years.  Then this happened:

Oh, if René Lévesque could see you now...

Not good.  Riots and marches in the streets as students protested the increases.  The protests even got violent at times.  Well, following night after night of this, the Premier relented a bit.  The increase would continue to be $1,625.00, but now they would spread the increase over seven years instead of the original five.  The students then expressed their acceptance of the new deal:

Or not...

And so Wente writes this article and I read it and now I'm mad.  Why?  Let's begin at the beginning.

"The total increase would amount to the cost of a daily grande cappuccino."

Hmm...  Time for some investigative journalism!  I put on my reporter's hat and marched downtown and in through the front doors of a reputable, upscale (overpriced) coffee merchant.  I breezed through their menu.  A-ha!  $4.00.  That makes... $1,460/year.  Hmm...  Man, cappuccinos must be really expensive in Montréal!  So, for cost of your grande cappuccino (and some biscotti to go with it), you too can afford your tuition increase!  Nice.

Steeeerahyeeeeeek one!

Huh.  Well, enough of the alleged price of coffee in Montréal.  Now, there's another line here in her article that has me steaming.  I've mentioned it once already in the blog, but I'll say it again to make sure:

"The protesters do not include accounting, science and engineering students, who have better things to do than hurl projectiles at police. They’re the sociology, anthropology, philosophy, arts, and victim-studies students, whose degrees are increasingly worthless in a world that increasingly demands hard skills."

Hm.  Let's see...  One of the protesting students interviewed for an article in the Vancouver Sun was one Judith Savoie.  What does Ms. Savoie do?  Well, she's a columnist for her student newspaper.  Hm.  Newspaper columnist.  How did that go again?

"...increasingly worthless in a world that demands hard skills."

Riiiiight.  Notice how Wente was so gleeful to trash philosophy, anthropology, sociology, and so on, but didn't mention English (or French) Literature students, or Communications students, or Journalism students, because of course the world needs them, right?

No caption necessary.

CBC News Montréal spoke to Nicolas Dagenais: another columnist with the Montréal campus.  Véronique Boulanger-Vaugeois is in the social work program - and it doesn't get more boots-on-the-ground than social workers.  Teachers, police, the military may gripe and complain but there is a very compelling case to make that social workers are the most overworked and underpaid class of workers in the entire labour force, especially in poor, underdeveloped rural areas with high addiction rates.  Fabrice Pinard is a doctoral psychology student.  How artsy-fartsy, head-in-the-clouds can you get?  Treating the mentally ill?  Bah!  Humbug!  Get a real job.  Be an accountant.  What do you think Mr. Harper keeps building these for?

Well, he's not holding Johnny Cash concerts.

Seriously, though, Wente's just wrong about who's actually doing the protesting.  Just.  Plain.  Wrong.  It makes a good story to giggle about the performance artist (say, Yannick Ross) complaining that tuition's too high.  It's easy, too.  Way easy.  But do people watch Canada's Got Talent?  The Voice?  X-Factor?  Music videos?  Glee?  Way Off Broadway?  Yes.  They do.  Lots of people.  Scads of people.  How many people?  To quote David Mamet:

Great big jolly shitloads.

Useless?  I don't think so - and neither do the millions that tune in and watch every single day.  Oh yes.  Now where was I..?  Ah!  Yes!

Steeeerahyeeeeeek two!

And here's another thing that I'd like to address.  This is the very first line in the column:

"It’s a little hard for the rest of us to muster sympathy for Quebec’s downtrodden students, who pay the lowest tuition fees in all of North America."

How condescending can you get?  Alright.  Wente, you're up to bat.  You mock arts students.  What do you hold degrees in?

BA in English, MA in English

Nice.  Look, I dunno if you come from a wealthy background or not and I don't care to speculate on it, but just stop for a minute, O.k.?  Think about it.  Yes, the students in Quebec pay the lowest tuition rate of anyone in North America.  Fact.  I don't hear her asking why, though.  Why do Quebec students pay the lowest tuition rates in North America?

Well, there's your problem.

That's why.  Wente sees whining; I see fighting.  They're fighting for their low tuition that they enjoy - and yes, they enjoy it.  What society wouldn't enjoy having low, or even free tuition?  What's so funny about allowing young people to have an education?  Is this a problem?  Does a society function better when advanced education is inaccessible?  Is a society better when only the nobility can afford a proper education?  No!  This whole column seems to be based on the idea that these students are out whining and complaining when in fact they have it easy.  They have it soft and cushy and they're spending their youth in the luxury dining car of Rob Ford's gravy train.  This is such bull!  Why is this such bull?  O.k.  Sure.  I'll bite.  Here's why:

Oh no.  No no no no no.  Raccoon Inc. is not done with you just yet, sir.

Vic Toews.  So they put forward the "To Catch a Predator" Act which was roundly seen as an invasion of everyone's privacy and instead of defending it as a useful tool for serious, effective police work, he instead opted to be a pompous ass about it.  Which is fine.  That's his prerogative.  Now, with a majority Conservative (keep that word "Conservative" close in mind now) government that bill would have sailed through Parliament like the Bluenose cutting through the water on brisk February morning.  Only thing is it didn't.  It didn't because people fought it.  People stood up to it, fought it, put their foot down, dug their heels in and got mad.  And the government relented.

You see, it's O.k. to stand up to government if they're doing something that the people don't want them to do.  That's democracy.  Wente, an American after all, ought to know that.  Especially with this current government of secretive bullies, if you don't stand up for what you really want, it will be taken away just like Vic Toews tried to do.  Ah, but you may say "Well, those are the Harper Tories.  We're not dealing with them.  We're dealing with the Charest Liberals here."  To that I ask who was the leader of the federal Progressive Conservative party from December 14, 1993 – April 2, 1998?

Yeah yeah!  Him!  That guy on the right!

But you may say the Progressive Conservatives and the Conservative Party of Canada are two entirely different political parties.  To that I say:

Okay, CCF, same difference.  Parties do change their names from time to time.

So government is controlled by rich people.  Right?  Right.  Old people, too.  Right?  Right.  More concerned about rich, old people problems than poor, young people problems.  Right?  Right.  My point is this: if young people don't stand up and fight for their right, no one will.  History has proven this.  Instead of mocking the demonstrators as a collection of beatniks that will be coming soon to a McDonald's drive-thru window near you to hand you your happy meal, why don't we give them the hearty slap on the back and commendation they deserve for having the guts to stand up for themselves and force the government to consider them when they go handing out the cash, unlike every other jurisdiction in North America.  Wente's "sit down, shut up, take what you're given, and be thankful for it" argument is total complete elitist crap and I applaud the protesting students on their mettle.  Saskatchewan students don't have the guts to do what they're doing.  Ontario students don't.  New York students don't.  None of them do.  They're not increasingly useless as some may say.  Some may laugh at them and think them fools for marching through the streets mostly naked, but I ask you this: they have the cheapest tuition in North America because of it.  What kind of fools does that make the rest of us?

Steeeerahyeeeeeek three!

And so at this time, the Editorial Board of Raccoon Inc. would like to change the subject to something near and dear to their hearts.  You may have already noticed the double-meaning in the title of this evening's article "Fight For Your Right". 

On Friday night, a musician died in New York.

Adam Yauch passed away today at the age of 47.  When I saw the news on my phone today, so shocked was I that I was actually shaken by the news.  The rest of the day I've been pretty down - partially cause of this, partially cause of other things, but it weighs heavily on my mind.  I owned every Beastie Boys CD.  I practically wore out Hello Nasty.  Had the album cover poster on my wall.  Really, there are two artists that whenever a new album comes out I jump and get it: Radiohead and Beastie Boys.  I've always been, like, "Wow...  Rappers that can play their own instruments.  Sign me up!"  Adam Yauch was no Charlie Mingus, but by cracky he tried.  I'll never forget the 25th anniversary of SNL.  They got an awesome intro from Ben Stiller and started playing Sabotage when Elvis barged in and crashed the party.  They were then backup players for Elvis' Radio Radio.  And there was a sincerity in Yauch's work and that he added to the groups work.  When there was ever an apology for previous... shall we say... deviancies, it was always MCA shouting it out.  And as someone whose hair is also quickly fading to snow white at a young age, if Yauch can make it look cool, so can I.  He was the guy in the group I liked most - the George Harrison of the group.  Thoughtful, spiritual, and real.  Who needs choreography, anyway?  Just do your thing.  Go out there and play.  This is music!  It's supposed to be fun!  Who needs bling in their music videos?  Who cares about that?  Not one but two instrumental albums.  Let's see Lil' John put out some instrumentals.  Yauch was real and he was human.  Too human, it seems.  A sad day for music.  A sad day indeed and I miss him already.  I thought it funny how, you know, for the Make Some Noise video they had every single cool guy on the planet in it and that the real Beastie Boys didn't appear until the very, very end.  Now I get it, and it is sad.

Good night.