lotusland - nervous politics from a laid-back city

dear bloggers (readers who dont blog are not invited to this post)

i havent updated my sidebar of links in ages.  its so outdated its basically election 04 retro.  i blame laziness and an extremely/embarrassingly recently-acquired feed reader.  if you feel i should link to you, then suggest it.  its not as blogwhorey as this massive, glowing url with a video attached to it. 

i cant believe i just got so bored i started trolling.

please stop sucking at trolling

i dont care about the lack of readers, but i am extremely despondent given the fact everyone who reads my blog and chooses to troll me sucks at it and cant do it without bringing up their shriveled little wangs or the fact i dont think we crackers have it all that rough.

if you need tips on trolling, i would like to suggest plato's republic (an entire book on the socratic trolling method) or the peloponnesian war (esp. speechby the corinthians)

i am also shaking my head and fist and tin of anthrax at anyone who is so goddamn clueless about the intarwebs that they think political blogs ought to turn down the vitriol.   politics makes people assholes, the anonymity of the internet makes people assholes, and combined this just produces a large cloud of assholicus maximus that hangs over the public sphere like the stench over a bathroom stall. 

the future is a bitch, so brace yourselves

it has been suggested that i start group blogging with one of my friends.  this dude can be a deeply aggravating centrist and i think it will be fun for everyone if piles of posts of me arguing with someone else were prominently displayed auf der intarwebs.  what is your opinion on group blogs?  should i just continue screaming into the ether? 

(ps im not going to follow any of this advice, id just like to hear it)

some halfassed apologies

so, for a while there, i wasnt feeling the "joie de post" and thus did not scrawl much.  living in the west end for a week had me within walking distance of so many 24 hr establishments that i didnt really have to resort to blogging.  also, i had this one visiting, so that occupied a fair bit of my time.  this one returned to canada, so forgive me for temporarily turning my focus inward and not posting on the throne speech or anything.

also, some pawn emailed me asking about why i have to swear on the internet and dont i know its lazy and uneloquent.  at least they didnt bring up my infrequent adherence to punctuation and complete rejection of capitalization.  still, im from the generation what grew up with 50+ tv channels, the pressure to join one of many subcultures (more to choose from than rocker/mod, hippie/punk), and started usin them internets mighty early.  ive been boiled to a formless, gelatinous mass in the pot of this personal identity-driven zeitgeist.  where am i going with this?  see, as far as i know, there really is something for everyone in terms of media.  where the msm fails to stimulate, someone else picks up and starts up their blog.  i really do believe that whether its catholic sex tips, msm news with more swearing, langley politics, there is something for everyone out there (especially if youre bourgeois north american).

so in conclusion - dont like what you read?  dont email me.  change the fucking channel!

how to piss me off

the canadian political blogosphere is in an interesting trolls-and-flamewars epoch of its existence.  due to my largely shitty online behaviour, some people appear to be angry at me, choosing to manifest their anger via hatemail.  this doesnt work, largely because all hatemail is summarily forwarded to friends and results in a hearty round of lolz and guffaws.  another trend in the blogosphere has been to out people and put their true identity online.  as 80% of my 12-or-so readers know me irl, this wouldnt really be a problem.  uber hax may break my pc, but theyll never hurt me, know what im sayin. 

if you have a problem with me online, thats just my internet persona.  actually, im pretty much the same irl.  haha.  damn.  its not that im proud of my faults, its just that we are all a little bit of scum wrapped around a little bit of a desire to live socially. 

lets stop debasing ourselves, kids.  this is stupid.

bza thoughts - now broadcasting coast to coast

full disclosure - yes, bza is a treasured member of the burnaby wing of my cabal.  he has commented here a few times and has decided to start his own blog, so check him out.  he needs something to look forward to in life besides schoolwork and being stuffed with left leaner ndp pizza slices from romano's pizza. 

year in review meme

the internet is so fast, that this year in review meme is already spreading even though its only dec 9th.  the first lines from my first post of each month:

january:  it will be held at the chan centre, at noon on wed, jan 5th.

february: i'm a politcally-clueless idiot with an aesthetically-motivated aversion to capital letters and yet i get more readers than him despite the fact he regularly posts more interesting things than i do, including the best post ever (on howard dean and the dnc).

march: according to a story in the globe and mail, the young liberals got spanked by a few people over their "it's the charter, stupid" buttons printed for the upcoming convention.

april: gomery = the captain ... canada's stupid obsession with a stupidly-named blogger -  im not linking to the website i alluded to in the title cos i respect the publication ban even though the blogosphere has made a mockery of it.

may: the ubc mechanical engineering prof behind the lovely online stv simulation at bc.demochoice.org is now trying to organize a simulated election to be held on the streets of vancouver with names of real candidates on the ballots to raise stv awareness.

june: tim murphy actually called the liberal party "a welcoming mat that has a lot of nice comfy fur on it" on the grewal tape.

july: as a skytrain commuter, i spend all of five minutes underground from burrard to stadium station, where the train pops out and passengers can enjoy the lovely views of east van, burnaby (represent, yo), new west, and surrey.

august: so terasen is being bought by texans, kinder morgan to be exact.

september: the deuce with martin, and all the politics-playing that is going on with katrina.  pierre bourque serves up a steaming hot serving of pablumesque indignation and so does robert mclelland.

october: dear vancouverites, learn to be better filmgoers -  so, my reason for not updating this thing or commenting on your lovely blogs is the vancouver international film festival.

november:  basically, the past little while has been a round-up of stupid shit.  i cant sit around and scoff all day long, im tired of that.

december: cbc canada votes 2006: your blogwatch is lame  not actively lame, but passively lame.





this has been a boring year.

cbc canada votes 2006: your blogwatch is lame

not actively lame, but passively lame.  its passively lame, because you discuss "blogs and the mainstream media" purely in terms of kate mcmillan's small dead animals.  its a part of the canon of influential political blogs in canada, and i hit up sda on a regular basis.

but why discuss how 'bloggers' feel about the msm by quoting someone who is pretty polarizing?  furthermore, as far as most bloggers (besides the punditocracy and journalists) go, sda-lady has had way more airtime on the msm.  furthermore, you just referenced a post where she discusses how irrelevant the msm and its ivory tower commentators are by tearing a news article apart.  sure, sometimes people do policy documents, but most blog posts wouldnt be written if the msm hadnt published something attention-getting.

yes, id like to throw you the hypothesis that most bloggers dont mistrust the msm as much as they claim to.  both of the biggest news aggregators in canada (bourque and nealenews) are frequented and linked to just as much, if not more than, the big blogs.  though some blogging can be an orgy of hyperlinking one another, most posts i encounter refute or highlight msm news items hosted online.  discussing actual blog content seems to be adequately addressed by the fine art of commenting and replying.   

bloggers need the msm because the blogosphere's discourse is parallel to whatever the msm throws at us.  the nice thing about getting one's msm news via blogging is that the variety of sources linked paints a more holistic portrait of the media market than just picking up the paper stuffed into your mailbox on a daily basis or flipping between the same tv channels youve always ordered.  blogging is fun because nobody on the bus wants you to start blurting out why policy is effed right up or why politician x is a tard, but people on the internet like receiving your rants at their leisure. 

perhaps sticking a queen's student on "quote some blogging tories out there" blog detail is some cbc attempt to win right-wing readers who mistrust the cbc, which is clearly and undisputably the media wing of the lieberalano$

LESSER SCANDALS

am i the only person who finds the idea of the "lesser scandal" kinda funny?  i think 'lesser' and 'scandal' are two of the most hot button words in canadian discourse.

you can click for a larger version if youre not into squintage.

antonio, heed this

sometimes, people think theyre engaging in sheer pwnage of dippers, but theyre actually trolling.  i, on the other hand, was just tfading. 

update:  antonio, dont bother calling my cell to bitch.  it rang and i got in trouble.  clearly, if im posting, im either a) experiencing insomnia or b) at work.  see, im not entirely northerner.