Here is Dave again, he hasn't claimed his prize and he really deserves it. So here is an embarassing image that will only be removed, or better yet I won't find a more embarassing photo to put up later, if he claims his prize. It's a real prize I swear.

Also Dave, if you are going to cross-dress, at least...at least... get rid of the 5 o'clock shadow, the chest hair is fine, but the shadow ohh the shadow... it has got to go.

Drank with my man Je-Zeus (hedge bet) last night in my basement. Fargo was on the tube, I love the Coen brthers and everything they do, I even saw Blood Simple in rerelease. But for some reason they never show The Big Lebowski on tv, bit of a bummer since I haven't seen that one in awhile, sometimes I have to get my fix by reading quotes from the movie online. But, like methadone to a junkie, it just ain' t the same.
Ya Margie? oh ya..
Those are my people, actually. My family came north to Saskatchewan from Minnesota.

I promised myself a while back that I would give this blog the world exclusive of my LSAT results. They were supposed to be emailed on Monday but apparently they are ahead of schedule and I got an email today, I checked the website and it is legit sooooo......................






(drumroll).........................................






173.

I wanted 175 and if I had gotten two more right, I got seven wrong, I would've. The good news this is probably good enough to get into some schools so I might be okay.

I don't know how many of you (up to about three, I think) have read the John Wyndham novel The Chrysalids, but it centres around some psychic children living in a post-apocalypse world were they try to get to 'Sealand' to be free. Well, watching some late night television last night I realized the world is going to shit, it was actually a very depressing five minutes. I have been reading 1984 for the first time, somehow I got through highschool without it, and man are we ever close. I realized that that wasn't what bothering me, it is that people generally don't give a shit. I guess this applies especially to Americans; where is the fucking outrage? The President is dismissing Habeas Corpus, a concept so ancient its fucking name is in latin, where is the outrage?

Anyway I am happy I am running of to Sealand, all you fuckers can email me when the apocalypse (or tupacalypse) hits.

Also: last night when I turned off my light to go to sleep, I put my head on my pillow and stretched myself out to be comfortable and then forgot how to fall asleep. It was very strange. Does this every happen to anyone else?

Alrighty, at the risk of being waay to excited here is an email from the advance guard:

"aight fag, i think i got us a van...and a rad one too! its an 85 toyota diesel 5 speed. its got a bed in the back (airmatress) and all the camping gear we need (still bring you tent) and a gazebo! oh yeah and a fucking awsome stereo system with a sub woofer. yah and it also has a 12 volt inverter so we could use a lap top to watch movies and other shit like that! rad...vans here were more than i thought they would be and this is by far the best deal i have found so far. its 2800 so like 2400 canadian but yeah man shittier vans are selling for like 4500 right now...everybody is buying vans so its a sellers market. when i found the flyer i went around to all the hostels and took them down so we could get it. life a gamble though man, so im having faith in the pull of The Great Magnet. I took for a test drive and told the guy i wanted it, so hes meeting me tomorrow and we are sorting it out. sweet! im stoked!
so yah man when i know more ill let you know!
fuck im relieved, things we looking dire for a while there.
cheers
lobo"


About the photo, I've mentioned to a few folks my intention of living like a gypsy and, while not a Toyota, that caravan is approriate gypsy fare.

Urban Dictionary Definition of the Day:

Drinking with Jesus

The act of drinking in solitude without the connotation of being an alcoholic.

-I can't believe you pregamed alone last night, you're such a loser.
-Bro, I was drinking with Jesus.


Sidenote: I often engage in this activity.

This is Dave. Dave is a friend of mine. Dave is an up-and-comer at a succesful marketing firm and makes a lot of money; he has his own apartment downtown and is generally quite succesful at convincing women they should sleep with him (his trick on that last point is that he plays the girl's or girls' [you grammar buffs know what I'm talking about] favourite song on the piano - fucking musicians).

But there is something more important; more impressive than being the already great person he is. Apparently, and this is second hand news and not confirmed, Dave is the first and likely only reader of this blog. Hurray. Dave wins a prize. If Dave can phone me or email me in the next 10 days, he will have a prize mailed to his doorstep, after 10 days I leave the country and won't be mailing anything.

My phone number is 604-619-5868
my email is robert_anton@hotmail.com

Dave, I speak from everyone here at Once more unto the Breach when I say congratulations and we look forward to hearing from you.

I read the other day that Christopher Hitchens, a devout atheist, once ripped Mother Teresa. So if you think Jon Stewart challenges authority and is 'cutting edge', shake that fact through your head. So here we go in the spirit of Hitchens.

Actually not at all in the spirit of Hitchens, this is guy is undeniably a genius, and a fucking secular saint, as I like to call them. That is someone who does good shit for the sake of good and not for more acreage in heavan.


His name is Muhammed Yunus and he innovated microloans and has helped millions pull themselves out of poverty. A hand up, not a hand out, as the classical liberals among us say. He has just won the Nobel Peace Prize and his deeds are certainly worthy of such high accolade and he probably deserves it and others.

But here is the thing, Alfred Nobel didn't conveice of a 'good deed' prize, he wanted a peace prize. I've heard that the Nobel committee had this debate a few years back and decided to expand the scope of the prize, but as a student of itnernational affairs and someone who is cognizant of the international situation (desparate, as usual; to quote Tom Robbins) I think peace is a pursuit worthy of being singled out in this day and age.

Gone seem to be the days of LB Pearson, our only Nobel peace prize winner, yet according to CBC viewers not our best. He is the Canadian who diffused the Suez Crisis and a potential global war, and more importantly shaped conflict resolution for 50 years, and possibly more. He fucking invited peacekeepers.

I just feel that peace is an achievement worth recognizing.

Weeeelllllll one thing was confirmed and one thing was disconfirmed this morning as I went for my mid morning coffee. On my way back I decided to pick up a paper, the grocery store was out of Posts but had plenty of Globes, I picked up a Globe looked it over and then put it down, crossed the street and bought a Post at the pharmacy.
As soon as I opened it though, I realized yesterday's pronouncement of Ignatieff's Israel war crimes comment as being a 1 or 1.25 on the scandal scale was likely quite low. Both the Globe and the Post had front page (below the fold) stories on the comment, and the Post devoted their primary editorial to the subject. This editorial, like most Post offerings save for their attacks on the CRTC, was nonsense.
They began with a anecdote involving Jacques Chirac being politically utilitarian, and then stated that they 'suspect similarly crass considerations explain why Michael Ignatieff...Has accused Israel of war crimes.'
They then state how there are 400,000 Jews in Canada and 600,000 Muslims, so going for that extra 200,ooo is really important. Well, that does sound crass; but wouldn't one who is feeling 'crass' prefer to turn to a more established and therefore wealthy and connected minority, the Jewish, rather than (I don't have the stats so bear with me) more recent immigrants like Muslims, many of whom came as refugees? This likely struck the Post's editorial board as pretty weak too so they then attempted to justify the remarks as pandering to the anti-American, anti-Zionist Left. Maybe so, maybe he was after this sliver of the population. But wouldn't a 'crass' candidate who supported the Iraq invasion, deal with that fucking albatross around his neck rather the parakeet flying a few feet away? If Ignatieff's statements were a pander, they really fall short.
The Post then justifies their conclusions on the basis that the incident in question wasn't a war crime, because it took place under the fog of war, they may be right, they may be wrong. But they logic is as follows: it isn't a war crime because it wasn't. In any case, I am going to trust the judgment of the man who happens to know more about international conflict law than anyone else in the world. The Post then toss out the red herring of the Lebanese authorities overestimating the casualties. That's called moral relativism and one would think that an editorial next to a op-ed by a fucking Catholic Priest wouldn't roll like that.

Anyway they're dumb, they made the facts fit the argument

Urban Dictionary definition of the day:


Sasquatch Salute

When someone is sleeping in front of a fan, you throw shit through the fan.

Ignatieff's Toronto campaign co-chair has resigned over comments he made regarding the recent Israeli-Lebanon (Hezbollah) war.
On a scale of one to ten, ten being Watergate, this story ranks as maybe a 1-1.25, small anyway, but it does touch on a few things I'd like to share.
One, Ignatieff is a call-them-as-I-see-them type. He taught and is a world renowned scholar in the area of war crimes, rules of war and human rights. If he says that it was a war crime, it probably was. This is a reason why I support him.
But here is what I think. I think not all war crimes are created equal; so-called 'collateral damage' likely constitutes some violation of international law, but it is not the same as genocide or even deliberate targeting of civilians. So while what the Israeli Airforce did was likely wrong, and Ignatieff is as good a judge of that fact that exists on the planet, it was not on par with the actions of the myriad of evil regimes to whom they are often compared. Indeed it is not nearly as bad as firing rockets into exclusively-civilian areas
As well, I am of the mind that bad things done by good people are not as bad as bad things done by bad people. A terrible sentence, and a difficult point to back up, but I will try. A friend in business school once told me of a concept called idiosyncratic credits. For example if someone who goes out partying (this is the example he used; it was very apt at the time) every weekend says that they cannot go out on a particular night, you can be sure that they have a good reason. Their past behavior has earned them idiosyncratic credit.
I believe a similar concept applies to international affairs, though it is difficult to splice idiosyncratic credit right onto the Israeli situation. Israel's past commitment to human rights (as verified by a number of Israeli Supreme Court cases) and their commitment to democracy means that when some action is taken on their part that is deemed to be a war crime, one cannot take it isolation to condemn the whole of Israel. (I also believe that this applies to the US.)
This may seem parsimonious so I will try to flesh it out a little in my brain, but I've started drinking again and the wheels are a little slow.

Jonas Redux

I realized later that I should have addressed the whole statist aspect of his article, and I guess thats true, but it was hard to address his point when his premise was so wholly flawed and wrong.
Here's the thing: when the right start trotting out the idea of liberty and individualism, they seem to only apply it to themselves. For example, wanting to control our effect on the environment is not an intrusion by government into our lives, it is an attempt to correct a market failure, that is Econ 101. The london commons go to shit, sell them and they'll stay healthy, well ownership of the atmosphere is impossible, much like ownership of the highway system, therefore a coreective agent with coercive power to enforce policy is necessary, hence government, read fucking Adam Smith.
It isn't statist to to want this, it certainly isn't statist to want gay marriage either, in fact, it is fucking statist to want to ban gay marriage. Why? Because only religious people want it outlawed, that imposition of values, dear George, is statism.

Dept. of Non Sequitor

Kim Jong-il is insane and should be dealt with harshly. This is not the same as Iraq, that fuckup does not mean one should behave differently in this case.

Glen(n) Healy is the worst part of a pretty mediocre TSN broadcast, check that: maybe Tie Domi. But Healy cannot seem to grasp how limited his scope is, the leafs, and how poorly his anecdotes about being a backup goalie apply. He always gets really hot under the collar whenever someone points out how retarded what he is saying is.

Waiting for an LSAT score is more anxiety-ridden than preparing to write it.

If anyone has seen the trailer for that new Robin Williams movie about running for President, he has a line about politicians. 'They need to be changed as often as diapers and for the same reason.' Well I haven't done any research on the subject nor can I speak with any authority, but I was emailed that particular quote by a friend of mine several months ago and he attributed it to Pete McCloskey, 'the first Republican to turn on Nixon.'

go figure.

As a one time Globe and Mail reader, I find an odd personal shift that I now find myself reaching for the Post first, and often eschew the Globe entirely. I say this is odd because I tend to agree with the Globe editorial board more often than not and when not, I am often persuaded. I think the problem lies with their comment writers. I find Christie Blatchford folksy take on the issues of Toronto reactionary and non-informative, I find Margaret Wente ridiculous and her insistence on stretching minor issues into larger truths wrong. I find Ken Wiwa's column, now defunct I think, on international issues impossibly dull to the point that I cannot recall a single thing he has said or written about; moreover he is, as impossible as it may seem given his realm of discussion, detached and uninterested as if he is letting the world in on his thoughts but only because they asked politely. All in all after you are done reading the editorial page one is left saying to oneself, "I guess..."

So, how is it possible that the likes of David Frum could be superior, David Frum is after all an idiot, and a partisan one at that. But somehow, it seems that the National Post both in it's editorials and columns have something to say. Be it more often that not wrong.

It is in this vein that I found myself reading to Post on my boat this past weekend. I found myself absolutely raving about Andrew Coyne's piece on the Jan Wong affair, so refreshing and insightful that I simply had to shove the newsprint under the nose of all around me and force them to read it. He is the best op-ed writer in the country.

Then I came to George Jonas. What utter bullshit, to make matters worse the Post then today prints several letters drooling over the piece calling it 'required reading.'

(As an aside, that endorsement seems to be en vogue right now, the cover of my sisters otherwise quite good economics book The Undercover Economist has the same blurb from the freakonomics guy. It always leads me to think one of two things. A) who the fuck are you and why are you requiring me to read anything, and b) most classroom requirements are so unreadable that it seems ridiculous to aspire to such a place.)

Jonas central point is that Federal Liberals aren't Liberal in the neo-classical sense of the word and are therefore disingenuous and bad. The simplest of my points against him is that he simply has the wrong party. One will find many more self-identifying as small-c conservatives than small-l liberals, one need only read more Andrew Sullivan to find out why. (I won't even get into where the Canadian Alliance would fall in this debate.)

The larger point is more basic, when people preamble their point with a small-c or small-l caveat, it is to explain that their thesis or point is not coming from a partisan viewpoint but rather from an ideological perspective, this is simply for clarity or, more likely, distinction.
The problem is that everyone already knows this. Anyone with rudimentary scholarship in politics, political science, political economy, economy, philosophy or history is not only able to make the distinction between Liberal and liberal, but they don't make the mistake in the first place. Anyone else, as much as old George might not like it, really doesn't give a shit. One never hears someone complaining that they will not vote Liberal because their caucus does not represent the ideals of Locke and Burke. People who can make the distinction understand it and aren't fooled; people who can't, don't give a shit.

Lastly, as a card carrying Liberal (more by default than anything) I take exception to Jonas' contention that the last two Liberal governments have lead us astray:

"Jean Chretien and his successor, Paul Martin, even as they were escorted off the bridge, still had their eyes riveted to a radar scope frozen in the 1960s and '70s, which isn't the best way to steer the ship of state across the treacherous waters of
the 21st century."

I am no fan of Chretien and feel odd defending him. But this is essentially a straw man argument, he states an untruth and then passionately and persuasively argues against it. That the Liberals somehow have lead astray into the 21st century because of poor economic policy is ludicrous, it simply doesn't stand up to the first shred of scrutiny. Which member of the G8 or for that matter the world is in better fiscal shape than Canada? None,that's who. Which small-l liberal policy has some other country adopted to surpass Canada's recent economic achievement? None, the 'tax-cut and spend' approach down south has allowed the Chinese to own a scary amount of US dollars. As treacherous as these current waters are the big-L Liberal policies have left on us a pretty even keel.

One would think that someone as old as Jonas might have a little more insight than this sophomoric complaint.

The wrongs in my past do not prevent the rights in my future

-Delmore Cleveland

Wellllllll folks, it's that time of year again: Canucks season opener tonight. I feel like an Albertan trailertrash housewife whose abusive husband is coming home from the rigs. Excited, but also seriously fearful of when the beatings start again. And as the trailertrash wife's cousin from Toronto says, it's my own damn fault because I keep going back.

Since that metaphor has been stretched about 3 feet too far I will move on to some predictions, write this down and put them in a time capsule, you'll see in a few months how true they are.
-Overall Canucks go 35-40-7, miss the playoffs;
-Luongo will demand a trade by seasons end;
-Sedins production will plateau, secondary scoring will be minimal;
-Bourdon will disapoint, be traded and flourish elsewhere;
-Canucks will still be better than the leafs.

It all comes back to Jan Bulis, I mean Jan FUCKING Bulis. I ripped this guy for 4 years in Montreal, so the hockey gods pay me back by putting him on the Canucks.

I recall a conversation I had while working on a construction site. Between bitching about gas prices and the government, we got on to hockey. I asked my co-worker Chris if he thought the Canucks would ever win the cup.
He said: "no."
I said: "me neither."

To know them is to love them is to hate them, and that's that. See you at the AC for the season opener.

Well Shiiiit. In Vancouver ticking days off the calender until New Zealand, any advice?