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d_rawk

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Everything posted by d_rawk

  1. I've heard of people doing that, and from what I can tell too, it does help many people. I have too much of an anxiety response to weed - makes me freak out most of the time. For me, I always resorted to alcohol, but the body can only take so much and it became unsustainable as a long-term solution. Then I just decided - eff it. If people can't take it, well, they will simply have to learn to. Too tired to medicate myself into oblivion just to make other people comfortable.
  2. CTV article: New campaign aims to put face to Tourette's Thank you CTV for putting this on your morning news show today. The @Random website proper: @Random Everytime you watch it, it is different, in keeping with the spirit and reality of the affliction. CBC, I've got my eye on you.
  3. d_rawk

    Cilantro

    Huh. I've met several people who despise Cilantro, but I never quite got what they were saying about its flavour. It certainly doesn't taste that way to me. Interesting to see a genetic explanation. Myself, I despise sage and nutmeg, but like every other spice and herb that I've met.
  4. That's true, and should go on the list. When working factories when I was younger, the only paper anybody brought around was the Toronto Sun .. I assume because its reading level is so low (that isn't meant as an under-handed insult - many of the workers were new Canadians and hadn't had enough opportunity to develop theirs skills in English, and those who were native English speakers tended to be poorly and under educated). It is a mind-numbing publication full of the most serious breaches of critical thought imaginable. It ought to be criminal. (And before anybody shits on me for being an arugala-eating elistist, please be sure that you have actually read the thing. Those in SoOn have regular access to it, but I don't believe that those of us in Ottawa do. It really is as bad as I have characterized it.)
  5. Aww! Mine communicates everything through sneezes. She's actually quite good at it - there is a sneeze that mean "What you did just made me happy", there is a sneeze that means "I'm uncomfortable", there is a sneeze that means "Cats suck, why are there so many around here?", etc.. I would say that she sneezes on average 40 times a day, each one having a distinct message.This is from yesterday (out of her bumble-bee costume, rocking the hoodie) Banjo (Jambands is being silly and won't let me embed the image in the page) While I wasn't there to meet him, apparantly the kid who gave her that ball kept sneaking it back to her, even as my gf kept trying to let the other dogs have a play with it.
  6. PUGS! No footage from yesterday yet, but this is from the initial Pugstock. Pugfest will be May 29th at Lansdowne Park. My own little devil - something of a pug and pomeranian hybrid monster - spent her day mostly dressed as a bumble-bee. She was a bit tired, and hates rain, but overall had a good time. She made a lot of people laugh as the mascot in the bandanna-factory tent (courtesy of the Alta Vista Animal Hospital on behalf of the Under My Wings pug rescue)
  7. Not a riot, now that I am about half-way through, but I really like it. People didn't like Comedian either, but I liked that it was about the grittiness and hard-work of the business. Seeing Seinfield try to deliver Louis C.K. lines is priceless. He's entirely too wholesome to pull it off! I don't understand the internal process of comedy as I am just about the most unfunny person in the world - I tend to want shit to be so painful upon their realizations that you want to fix it, and fast. Comedians are really interesting in that they can call attention to things - even awful things - in a way that is pleasurable. Carlin was supremely good at this, but I digress. Louis CK: sex is such a confusing thing in in my life. Therapist: Listen, sex is something very simple. The man takes his penis, puts it into the womans vagina, and she dies. Louis CK: She dies? Therapist: Oh, I was thinking of something else. [much later] Louis CK: I can't .. I just can't get organized. I feel like my whole life .. I'm just overwhelmed by everything that I have to do. Therapist: Have you ever heard of someone dying, and then you got an erection? Louis CK: What? No! That's never happened to me. Therapist: That happened to me. I do love to see the internal machinations of what happens to make funny happen (my interest in 'machinations' of any sort likely being the very reason that I am the most unfunny person in the world)
  8. Ottawa peeps, if you have a pug or a pug-like creature (or even if they just make you laugh and want to come out for a good cause), today is Pugstock! There will be a pug fashion show, glamour shots, raffles, bake sale and all sorts of other silliness. Ourselves, we will be volunteering custom-made bandannas. Britannia Park (right off Carling) All proceeds from the volunteer activities go to the Under My Wing pug rescue. The weather sucks (go figure), but what the heck else are you going to do on a gloomy Sunday afternoon? And if you are considering getting a dog, please do take a look at these fine guys and and gals needing a home.
  9. You seem like you'd be a really good guy to hang out with and banter with. We agree and disagree in just enough ways to make it interesting. We did meet, once or twice, at Come Togethers. You were the male lead of he giver gang, I think. Maxwebster informed me that you were quite competent at free-style rap, because he thought that I would think that to be pretty cool. I think he even suggested that we ought to battle. (This was before my Tourette's exploded -- I can't do rhythm or rhyme anymore) On Rousseau - was always a fan. I even forgave his Catholicism (That's kinda a joke)
  10. Talking Funny torrent PS. someone with a better memory than my own insists that Louie doesn't get funny until the fourth episode, not the third. I defer to her assessment.
  11. Crap weather, and the typical underwhelming turnout. Elizabeth May turned up at the Ottawa event, megaphone in hand.
  12. I just saw this thread now, by chance and co-incidence. FWIW, "Louie" does not get funny until the third episode, but it is hysterically funny when it hits its stride. The last episode isn't anymore worth watching than the first (ie, neither are funny) .. not sure what happened there. But 3 - 12 deserve your time if his humour is your type of thing. The really cool thing is that it isn't just his stand-up recycled, which Lucky Louie was. It is new material with actual character development. Yeah, but dog-shit isn't a laborious process of writing and a lot of network-execs to navigate. I'm going to guess that after the show was tanking, the execs said "fine, you know what, just roll with your initial vision before we pull the plug, we've got nothing left to loose". Dogs just shit.
  13. Yours Truly, you've got me thinking now about Ignatieff's "Human Rights as Politics and Idolatry". It was my first exposure to Michael Ignatieff, back in the early 2000s. What was crushingly disappointing about it was that he laboured so hard to reconcile the schism between sanctioned and natural rights, but in the end, was unsuccessful. It may have been one of my earliest moments of questioning reform-liberalism. I was young and radical then. Now I'm just old and out of patience. Somewhere, I have a long review of that work and counter-points to every chapter. I'd love to find it. I wonder if I would even still agree with myself. This is hard. I hit up against this all of the time. I suppose a lot of it is the sense that taxation is something that happens to you, and charity is something that you actively do. So it is a loss of control. Feeling more politically empowered, so that you recognize that you were a legitimate part of the decision making that lead to that money being collected would help. Like putting money into the church collection tray. Facilitating that feeling of actual political empowerment will require a system that delivers it. ie, we have to stop lying. No, not all, most. I've even met people who claim to not enjoy sex -- there is no 'all' in anything. I don't think that legitimate democracies even pretend as such. Public healthcare is still trumpeted as the big trophy - the pride of prides - of Canadians, generally (whether it is broken or not). That is one example of what came out of the CCF left movement. Wasn't Tommy Douglas voted as the most important Canadian in some CBC special or other? I'm suggesting that Canadians by and large consider these things dear, and by and large identify with those underlying values (where is my heady DEM to interject about the dangers of identity politics?) Some of this has to do less with any objective measure of success as it has to do with shared cultural emblems and a sense of distinction from our neighbours, but it is there just the same. Ouch, yes. A sensitive topic for me. Thank fucking God (and in the interest of not being mis-understood, because it can be hard to tell what should have been in purple or not - there is no sarcasm, irony, or insincerity in this statement) that prisoners are allowed to vote. Why do I have a feeling that someone is going to bring up Rousseau? I like conversation too. Agonism and all In fact, I've been subterfugely trying to re-enlist Birdy onto the board as she used to be the token voice of dissent.
  14. I've been waiting for this guy to come around again, too. The thing is, by the time I hear the bell, it is pretty dangerous to grab a bunch of knives, run down the stairs (I live on the second floor), and chase after a truck with a bunch of weapons in hand.
  15. Yeah, but the levellers weren't Canadian either. I'd understood Thorgnor to be using them as something of an analogy. On reflection, I realize my error. Where I said codified rights guaranteed by law, this did already exist. Inalienable natural rights by which the law was just a tacit recognition (admission?) is more to the point that I meant to make but worded incorrectly. In the first instance 'rights' are something granted to you from on high, in the second instance 'rights' are something inherent that you defend.
  16. In Soviet Russia, the year end list makes you. (yeah, just that bored)
  17. Solution? (I'm not sure I understand the disdain for the levellers, but then I'm also not sure I understand why people like apple pie. What the CCF brought to the table are the very things Canadians tend to hold most dear and take pride in .. and the levellers, I mean .. elected representatives, universal suffrage, codified rights guaranteed by law, a separation of Church and state .. all stuff we take for granted now)
  18. Really not sure what to make of it yet.
  19. They aren’t ready to hear this yet, but the anti-poverty activists who work tirelessly to promote the interests of low-income Canadians need to ask why so many of them voted for Stephen Harper last week. They won’t like the answers they get. They won’t understand how food bank users and social housing tenants could think the Prime Minister is on their side. They’ll be tempted to interrupt or object. But their feelings are not the point. There is a serious gap in their knowledge. Left unaddressed, it will trip them up in next fall’s provincial election campaign, the same way it did in this spring’s federal campaign and last autumn’s municipal race which propelled Rob Ford into the mayor’s chair. It would be easy for the anti-poverty movement to argue that Harper’s victory was the result of vote-splitting, smear tactics and luck. He did benefit from the “orange wave†that began in Quebec and spilled over into Ontario, dividing the left-wing vote between the New Democrats and Liberals. The Conservatives did saturate the airwaves with attack ads, portraying Liberal Leader Michael Ignatieff as an opportunistic outsider. And Harper was publicly endorsed by Toronto’s mayor, in a departure from tradition. It would also be easy to stay the course, hoping the Conservatives will see the light. Despite the fact that Harper has announced his priorities — which don’t include poverty reduction — anti-poverty groups are busy writing articles and circulating studies that bolster their case. But neither rationalization nor wilful blindness will get them far in the next electoral showdown. Tim Hudak, who leads the ascendant Ontario Conservatives, uses the same playbook as Harper and Ford. After being sidelined twice in the past eight months, anti-poverty campaigners need to figure out how right-wing cost-cutters connect with voters — especially low-income voters. My soundings are limited, but a few themes keep popping up: • People in low-income neighbourhoods are the biggest victims of the drug dealers and violent young offenders Harper is promising to lock up. They want relief from the violence they can’t escape. They want to rid their communities of the gangs that lure their children into gun-and-gang culture. Crime crackdowns make sense to them. • What Canadians struggling to make ends meet want most is a job; not government benefits, not abstract poverty-reduction plans, certainly not charity. Harper tapped into that yearning, promising to stabilize the economy and create employment. The New Democrats, aiming to beat him at his own game, said they would cut small business taxes. • It angers low-income voters to see secure middle-class bureaucrats getting pay hikes. Those trapped in entry-level service jobs seethe when public employees who earn far more than they ever will are rewarded simply for showing up. Those living on public assistance — employment insurance, welfare, old age security — dislike being treated with contempt by government officials. In both cases, cutting the public payroll has a lot of appeal. • Canadians fighting to stay afloat often have little regard for the anti-poverty organizers, professors and social planners who profess to speak for them. They don’t appreciate being lumped together and labelled. They don’t want political advice. • Like most people, low-income voters mistrust politicians of all stripes. They don’t believe their promises and they don’t pay much attention to their rhetoric. Many don’t cast ballots. Those who do, opt for politicians who speak in plain language about issues that matter to them. Some of these signals are contradictory. Some are counterintuitive. But they point to an anti-poverty movement that is out of step with its presumed followers. Its leaders owe it to those they claim to serve to take a painfully honest look at themselves and their vision. These are hard lessons. They will require openness and humility. But the alternative is increasing irrelevance. Goar
  20. Probably true - and doubly important when engaging with Yours Truly in conversation (I tease, Beats) I'm glad that I asked for clarification. It's an interesting point about anthro-centricity and it truly would be a radical departure from the political status-quo if we could legitimately give the Greens a gold star on that. I'm unsure - to use May's own (borrowed) line “the economy is a wholly owned subsidiary of the environment" .. credit for recognizing that relationship and the severity of it, but it is still economic and human-oriented in its thrust (I'm not willing to go so far out on a limb as to suggest that there is anything wrong with that whatsoever) But even Marx made similar observations and proclamations (capital abuses the soil as much as it exploits the worker) and we wouldn't say that Marx exists outside of economics. I'm dubious of the notion that ecology and economy are divisible, and aren't just different lenses by which to look at the same thing. They might be just as wrong as me - and I am more likely to be wrong than not - but the Greens seem to agree. The first plank of their platform is economic, and the first words of their motto are "smart economy". Harris, who arguably shaped the modern Green party of Canada self-identied as an eco-capitalist and that tradition remains strong throughout the ranks. All of that said, while it all may still boil down to human-centric and economic interest, they sure do bring something refreshing to the table. The NDP has the rut of the socialist vs social democratic vs democratic socialist arguments and language that, frankly, feel a bit antiquated. Luckily they don't have that debate publicly, but it is always there. And that's acceptable to me - they are an old party with a rich heritage that came out of those movements. But young blood and fresh ideas are awesome, and 'social democracy vs. eco-capitalism' makes for a more interesting debate than 'social democratic vs. democratic socialist' or 'social democracy vs. liberalism'
  21. All demonstrations to be held at 2:00 pm local time except Toronto at 3:00 pm CHANGE. Update: Montreal — Berri Sq. Ottawa — Wellington & Elgin CHANGE Vancouver — Vancouver Central Library CHANGE Toronto — Queen’s Park Calgary — Harry Hays Building Halifax — Province House Charlottetown — Province House Kelowna — The Sails, Central Park Whitehorse — Elijah Smith Building St. John's — Colonial Building, Military Rd. Fair Vote Canada (FVC) is participating in these events, and will supply speakers in Toronto, Ottawa, Montreal and Vancouver.
  22. Mullets. This is beautiful prose.
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