In the RT on Tuesday, looking over my shoulder to the left of me was a girl reading a book. It was called “Shortcuts to God.”

What stuck out for me was a sentence, “No longer will I choose to let my rational mind and my physical senses determine what is real for me.” (p.78)

That’s messed up. What else are you going to use? Your soul? Good luck.

The irony is that not only am I the fucking king of Spain but I also eat humble pie at the same time.

Someone out there has one (or more) video(s) of me dancing to that song. Working for the City has its moments, as well as shitty wages and treatment — “you don’t get me, I’m part of the union,”* my ass.

* “Part of the Union” by the Strawbs, inspiring union song, if you actually believe that unions are worth their salt in your country.

I don’t want to work away
Doing just what they all say
“Work hard, boy, you’ll find
“One day you’ll have a job like mine”

‘Cause I know, for sure
Nobody should be that poor
Say yes, sink low
Because you happen to say so, say so, you say so

I don’t want to work away
Doing just what they all say
“Work hard, boy, you’ll find
“One day you’ll have a job like mine, job like mine, a job like mine”

“Be wise, look ahead
“Use your eyes,” he said
“Be straight, think right”

But I might die tonight

– Cat Stevens, “But I Might Die Tonight”

Some days it’s like some bastard nailed a ticket for the bus tour down to fucking Hell to the front of my brain. For every wild everything-depends-on-it first-week-of-being-madly-in-love kiss on a streetcorner, for every beautiful woman stopping to feel the sun on her face and every child dancing in clean rain, there’s a kid living in its own shit in a dumpster somewhere while Daddy sells his ass for milk money, tanks breaking down unwanted houses just to stop homeless people squatting there….

– Warren Ellis, as Spider Jerusalem in Transmetropolitan #26

And the very fear that makes you wanna die
Is just the same as what keeps you alive
It’s way more trouble than some suicide is worth.

Won’t it be dull when we rid ourselves of all these demons haunting us
To keep us company?
Won’t it be odd to be happy like we always thought we’re supposed to feel
But never seem to be?

– Barenaked Ladies, “War on Drugs”

The irony is that I’ve never felt more confident about screwing up a multiple choice test.

Do you ever get the feeling that you’re someone’s experiment? A lab rat — or mouse (is that more dignified?). You might have an elaborate thing set up for you, and you think the whole world’s yours to explore but one day you realize you’re just going in circles — or something. You’re still trapped. You’re just a blank for someone else to fill. And everyone, I mean everyone, has got an opinion. And amid the clutter and the noise, you can’t notice if you ever had one yourself.

“The world needs/ought to have more <blank> like you.”

• people
• guys/men
• doctors
• teachers
• politicians
• Muslims
• professors
• students
• activisits
• lawyers
• artists

And that goes on, and on, till the break of dawn.

Not to say, of course, that the flip side doesn’t exist.

“The world needs/ought to have less <blank> like you.”

• jerks
• pricks
• self-righteous pricks
• arrogant pricks
• assholes

Pick one, or pick a few (so long as they don’t contradict — ah heck, even if they do, lab rat after all). Feel free to add your own.

I don’t know what’s more disturbing: that I can relate to a poorly-written villain from Marvel’s second mainstream universe after Reed Richards (Mr. Fantastic) thwarts her plans, or that I’m seriously entertaining the thought in the first place.

I don’t think God doesn’t hate. What I’ve learned about God, growing up, is that he has some kind of love-hate thing going on. God loves (more often “has mercy on”) the believers, but severely dislikes the disbelievers. He puts curtains over their hearts and turns them into stone so that they may never see the correct way, and they will burn in hell forever the fuel of which is men and stones. Stuff like that, perfect empathy? I think that’s possible for a human being — one who grafts on another half brain to her own to think faster and tries to destroy the Fantastic Four and X-Men because she has unresolved psychotic issues, yes — but not for the God I learned about growing up. If God was truly perfectly empathetic the concept of hell wouldn’t exist.

She hates Shias and wants them to be ethnically cleansed by the peaceloving Israelis — they grow up terrorist, apparently (the Shias). Someone, please, get her to shut up. She’s worse than most Israeli ambassadors I’ve seen on TV so far.

She does, however, provide a new pronunciation for Hizbullah: “huz-bullah.” Seriously someone needs to be documenting all of these.

(This is all Fahad’s fault.)

I hate it when the Star’s editorial line shoves its ignorant nose in affairs it is barely equipped to understand or comment on. Actually I hate most of the Star, but since it is the country’s most widely-circulated newspaper it bears some scrutiny.

Here I’m going to do a quick dissection of gringo-jr’s editorial on the going-ons in Mexico.

Mexico’s shaken faith
Aug. 9, 2006. 01:00 AM

Weeks of political turmoil after Mexico’s photo-finish presidential election in early July has had its effect. The public’s faith has been shaken in the integrity of the electoral system.

And Mexico’s respected Federal Electoral Tribunal fed that concern Saturday when it ordered a partial recount beginning today at 12,000 of 130,000 polling stations, agreeing that complaints of error and fraud warrant a fresh look.

Shaken faith? When did this happen!? Weeks after? Dear me!
Go read Narco News, morons, they’ve been saying it since day one. Oh but of course, they’re actually out on the street reporting shit rather than sitting in some bureau office in Mexico City.

And the Tribunal is respected? By whom? Your corporate paymasters? And yet they “fed” that concern — fed, like you’d feed a dog or a donkey.

The conservative National Action party candidate, Felipe Calderon, a protégé of outgoing President Vicente Fox, beat leftist Andres Manuel Lopez Obrador in the July 2 election by 244,000 votes of the 41 million cast, or 0.6 per cent. The partial recount is unlikely to reverse the result. But if it gives Lopez Obrador more votes, pressure will grow for a complete recount or a new election.

“Beat”? What the hell is wrong with you? You just pointed out that there’s clear, frickin’ clear evidence of fraud and error going on that warrants reconsideration — then you say he “beat” him? What was it, a boxing match? You win elections, you don’t “beat” your opponent. The guy loses the election. Having said that, it’s nice to make it seem like Obrador and Calderon got in a ring and, you know, Calderon might have done a couple of nasty things but nevertheless beat him. LIKE A MAN. Great imagery. Morons.

Meanwhile, chaos builds.

Calderon has been accusing Lopez Obrador of leading a shabby “sore loser” campaign of “anti-democrats, anarchists and intolerance” to overturn an election most observers deemed clean and transparent.

So Calderon made that accusation — of anti-democrats, anarachists and intolerant nits — and what did the Star do? All but confirm it — because CHAOS naturally stems from ANARCHISTS — those dogs and donkeys referred to earlier, who have been let out in the streets. Really, A causes B. Most observers deemd the election clean and transparent, but most observers probably didn’t venture far from some Northern voting sites and Mexico City because they like UNAM so much. (Actually I don’t know what the observers did, but whatever it was they missed the crap going down at 12,000 polling stations.

Lopez Obrador, claiming to “defend democracy,” has sent his Democratic Revolution party supporters into the streets complaining that the election was rigged by the ruling party. They call Fox a “traitor to democracy,” election officials “criminals,” and threaten to besiege Congress and the courts.

Thus begins anarchy, and Mexicans are understandably worried.

Notice the subtle difference of quotation marks here. For Calderon’s accusations all go in the same phrase, for Obrador’s accusations they are all separated to make them seem less credible. Because, Obrador is only “claiming” to defend demcoracy, whereas Calderon of course — by refusing repeatedly over and over the past while to submit to any kind of recount — was actually defending it. If Obrador hadn’t made a big fuss of it, wouldn’t this shit have gone unnoticed? Yes, it would’ve, because those E.U. Observers were obviously not doing their frickin’ job properly.

Also, Obrador “sent” his supporters out there. Like, he actually told all hundreds of thousands, or even millions of them, to go out there. And they did. Because they like him, personally, that much. They’re not defending a democratic principle, they’re just there because they’re his lapdogs.

And THAT’s when anarchy began — no, not when some elitist dickwads stole the election — but when the people poured into the streets to reclaim it. That’s when anarchy starts, when the dogs and donkeys start making noise; not when the vultures suck the blood dry.

Who’s worried and why, anyway?

Although many Mexicans recoil from Lopez Obrador’s nakedly self-serving tactics, a third are convinced the election was rigged. More to the point, half now support his call for a “vote by vote” recount at all 130,000 polls, for the sake of social peace. Their view cannot be ignored.

Mexicans were split along north-south lines in this vote, and across social classes. Healing cannot begin until most accept the result.

Okay, so let’s get this. Many Mexicans recoil, we don’t know how many, but we obviously know it’s the upper classes (voting split across social classes) who voted for the frickin’ Conservatives. Hence, those braying donkeys and barking dogs implicated earlier are the ones who — as above — are going to “besiege” the courts and Congress. The uneducated vulgar anarchistic poor and the dark indigenous moronic southies — like those Chiapan Zapatistas who just can’t shut the hell up and bend over to neoliberal NAFTAism. Which is what’s got those upper class Mexicans worried, of course, is their interests being threatened. And what’s got the lower ones worried? Well, the fate of their democracy. Duh.

Okay, so half the country wants a vote-by-vote recount now — obviously their “faith” has been shaken. But they’ve been calling for it for a month, you morons. Where were you then?

If the partial recount turns up serious irregularities in the next few days, a full recount should be held.

The courts must dispel any doubt about the fairness of this crucial election, only the second truly credible ballot in 77 years.

Mexico’s democratic future and social stability ride on it.

Good one. Dumbasses. What, did Torstar invest in Calderon or something? Does it own a maquiladora up in the North that it’s so threatened by Obrador and actual democracy? Polls pegged this guy as the frontrunner months in advance, and all of a sudden some chump ass hand-picked by Fox (as if that’s supposed to give the whole charade legitimacy) beat him?

Besides, I don’t think Mexico’s democratic future lies in this one election, it lies in millions of people, and their right to sovereignty that isn’t impeded upon by NAFTA and other shit like that. It depends on them being able to exercise their otherwise marginalized voices. Democracy, morons, depends on the people; not on rigged elections that have to go your way or the highway (like Hamas).

Gringo media gets paid not to understand, and here’s gringo-jr. to lend a hand.

In this ridiculously worded article the Israelis explain why they’ve been performing so poorly against Hizbullah:

Hezbollah is a militia trained like an army and equipped like a state, and its fighters “are nothing like Hamas or the Palestinians,” said an Israeli soldier who just returned from Lebanon.

“They are trained and highly qualified,” he said, equipped with flak jackets, night-vision goggles, good communications and sometimes Israeli uniforms and ammunition. “All of us were kind of surprised.”

Why is it ridiculously worded? Well, because all the poor Israeli soldiers have are these ridiculous chef’s hats:

Not, of course, the world’s most advanced weapons from the United States.

I think the Israelis are exaggerating just a little bit about the prowess of Hizbullah. Kind of how the U.S. Army wanted us to believe, and provided Reuters with details to make ridiculously detailed diagrams of hi-tech, sprawling al-Qaeda cave complexes in Afghanistan. (“Sure, from the outside, it looks like a normal cave, but from the inside it is actually more like a four-storey mansion — complete with recreational facilities like a swimming pool and a sauna and a pool table and video games and a vending machine filled with candies.”)

Venezuela pulls out Israel ambassador

[Chavez] said: “The Israeli elite repeatedly criticise Hitler’s actions against the Jews, and indeed Hitler’s actions must be criticised, not just against the Jews but against the world. It’s also fascism what Israel is doing to the Palestinian people … terrorism and fascism.”

Meanwhile, undemocratic and corrupt rulers of Arab countries — nevertheless more democratic than Chavez according to the U.S. State Department — continued to fall over their faces to support Israel.

Venezuela’s chocolate revolution

They no longer sell their cocoa to local intermediaries, which have been priced out of the market, but straight to foreign chocolate manufacturers, which are willing to pay high prices for organic produce.

The farmers have joined forces to form an association of organic farmers consisting of 50 families.

[…]

Much of the funding to kickstart this new wave of organic farming came from the Venezuelan government, which has injected some $10m on research and training, as well as from the European Union via a local non-governmental organisation called Tierra Viva.

[…]

The local cocoa producers are now making forays into the production of their own chocolate bars.

El pueblo unido jamas sera vencido never tasted better.