yaser took some great photos of ASSU‘s trip to collingwood

nice place, kind of culturally homogeneous
when we walked into a restaurant (two brown folks, one latina, three white folks), we got some stares from the largely, well all white folk

though there was a brown family in there, they seemed local (so the other locals had time to acclimatize to their brownness)

it can be great to get away from the city and its trappings to a place where the religiously discriminatory christian heritage party is actually running a candidate

a few days ago i was considering making a quiz not unlike those idiot online quizzes everyone takes but pretends not to take

only this quiz would be about the upcoming elections and would tell you which party best suits your views

i quickly stopped thinking about it because i don’t have the technical expertise to make something like this (though i probably have friends who do) and because i wouldn’t know how to stay unbiased (mainly via the questions asked)

but, the folks over at politics watch have done precisely such a thing

their voteselector quiz asks you a few key questions and turns out the political party (and leader) whose views most match your own

very cool
(for a guy doing a major in political science)

Tax cuts? Stiffer penalties for criminals? A return to governmental accountability? And all propped up on the myth of the ever-expanding economy. For an American who left California on the heels of George W. Bush’s bloodless coup, on the cusp of his illegal war, it all sounds very familiar. My Canadian wife and daughter and I came to Canada in 2002, expecting to find the Canada my wife left 20 years ago: Trudeau’s Canada, a place where no one’s too poor to be sick or sheltered, where no one’s too rich to be above the law. As the election looms, we can only shake our heads.

On one hand, the corrupt Liberal government and its zillionaire leader talking in whichever direction the wind blows and on the other, the Conservative leadership, finger-pointing, privatizing and apparently gaining ground by promising tax cuts to an Ontario that only months ago voted in a new Premier on the grounds that we needed to restore our public services to pre-Tory levels.

Round and round they go with the sound bytes and the tax cuts and the ducking and dodging of their own words as they go in and out of vogue, all the while vilifying and ostracizing Jack Layton, the only one of the bunch who, to me, actually sounds like a Canadian � the only one whose plans for the future of Canada actually include all Canadians.

I guess with all this going on, I felt obliged as an American to reach out to my Canadian neighbours and say, “Welcome to America.”

– David Kemker

just a note to anyone who’s actually following this “guy who hates ali” dude, his ip is 66.185.84.68

now in the previous post there are two comments that are ads — one supposedly for a gay web site and the other for viagra

funniest thing, the ip for the “posters” of those messages — 66.185.84.68

yes, that’s right — exactly the same

for that matter, that “Farhan” guy who posted a comment a couple of posts down, exactly same ip — 66.185.84.68

whoever wants to connect the dots, go ahead

i saw the train approach on the other set of tracks, on the other side of the platform, going the other way

i was disappointed that the train i was waiting for wasn’t there

but i wasn’t quite sure if my disappointment was that of an artist’s — the train’s absence upset the fragile symmetry of the station, or that of a student’s — i was running late

so there i was, some forty thousand feet above the ground, looking out the half inch of glass (followed by an inch or so of nothing) followed by a quarter inch of plastic that separated me from the beautiful oblivion

i noticed the frost that had formed on the edges of the plastic portion of the window (the plastic being what you can touch, the glass is actually on the outside of the aeroplane)

the little map program on the little television screen in front of me said that the temperature outside was -63 degrees celsius — almost as bad as toronto on a good winter day

then i thought to myself, when superman (in the movie, of course) took lois lane for a joyride through the sky, didn’t she freeze her ass off?

there they were, whooshing through the clouds god knows how high up with the spectacular john williams music playing in the background, and she was dressed just in this nightgown (why was she going to interview superman dressed in just a nightgo– oh… nevermind) and she didn’t just freeze to death?

i can understand superman not freezing to death, because he’s superman — but lois lane is not superman, she should’ve frozen to death

it’s not like lois lane was particularly hot or anything … hahaha, get it? hot? ha… okay…

speaking of superheroes, you know one thing they never do is become junkies
when was the last time a well known superhero was on drugs? you don’t see spider-man crashing under the pressure and doing crack with a white streak between the massive eyes, you don’t see batman and robin sitting back passing a dutchie on the left hand side, drugs don’t even have an effect on superman (who, as we discussed earlier, is nevertheless a crackhead for taking a normal human woman thousands of feet into the sky where she would, in the real world anyway, freeze to death within minutes)

there was that one time the green arrow’s sidekick, what was his name? speedo? he was on crack
but with a name like that i don’t blame him

besides, why didn’t the green lantern do anything about it, with his green lantern ring

speaking of the green lantern, i’ve seen some t-shirts with the green lantern logo on them
i want to get one of those t-shirts

hey, at least it’s not like those blue t-shirts with the superman logo on them

EDIT: the green arrow’s sidekick’s name was speedy — just as … uh … bad

one of the most common ways for a person to express his or herself on the internet is to go to blogspot, sign up, and thanks to the people over at blogger, instantly start blogging

unless you live in saudi arabia

what might have blacklisted all of blogspot is the site of “the religious policeman”

this is a western-educated saudi fellow who, via satellite internet (which cannot be censored), has taken the courageous step of posting his experiences, thoughts, observations, and outright criticisms of the way saudi arabia works

of course, the thought of any mode of expression which cannot be regulated is a severely distressing thought for those in power anywhere

at york university, it’s megaphones

there are ways to by-pass the censorship, however

go on google, type up “muttawa,” the first page that appears is the one in question
now clicking on the link itself will lead to the above-displayed, superbly designed “blocked!” notice, so click, instead, on the underlined “cached” under the description of the page — and enjoy

as for the blocking of blogspot itself, other services such as livejournal, though it sucks, are still available
again, a simple google search will bring out a great list of blogging and journal-keeping sites

can’t keep on censoring things forever

it was barely half an hour before the afternoon prayers, asr, and the unforgiving arabian sun beat down on the sprawling complex of the masjid-un-nabi, the mosque of the prophet, in medina

the elderly couple seemed iranian, they were both easily over seventy years old — the man held his wife’s arm and guided her to the ladies’ entrance to the actual masjid itself

unbeknownst to him, he violated the sacrosanct border of properness and, sitting in the shadow of a little outpost (wherein was drinking water from the holy well of zamzam and seating for several — access limited the employees of the “custodian” of the two holy mosques), the arab guard barked out at him: “hajji! ya hajji!”

in his aggressive arabic, he went on to explain at the old man that beyond this point no male may pass — there were still fifty or so metres to the actual entrance of the building, an oppressive fifty metres over which women dressed in their black, synthetic abayas had to tread under the glaring heat and beat of the sun

the man tried to argue back, in his broken arabic and farsi, that he simply wanted to guide his wife to the building and give her guidance on how to perform the ziarat, paying respects to the prophet mohammed

of course, he would not be able to pass despite all his feeble protests, and so he told his wife he would wait for her, outside

many laypersons were standing in the shade of the outpost, the real estate was choice, but there was none for the old man, and so he leaned against the outpost with the sun beating down on him

one young man, seeing this, discreetly stepped out of the shade and into the sun, and the weak old man took his place — the unspoken thanks met an unspoken welcoming

then a young policeman with a pious scrabble of a beard, having just taken a sip of the cool refreshing and spiritually rewarding zamzam, emerged from the outpost with a folding chair which he placed directly in front of the old man

forgive him for thinking it was meant for him — it wasn’t

the policeman forced the man out of the shade and took up his place, reclining on the plastic, green cushion of the chair, exchanging platitudes and anecdotes with the religious guard whose duty it was to condemn young and old alike to stay outside of the ladies’ section and to stand in the blistering heat without any respite from the oppression of the sun

the young man who had just, moments ago, given up his place in the shade to the old man looked on and shook his head

here, in the city of the prophet, madinat-un-nabi, madinat-ul-munawwarah, the enlightened city, a simple, elementary and well-known hadith of the prophet flashed in his mind:

you should not be sitting down while an elder is standing up

clearly, he thought to himself as the rage built up inside, inhabiting the enlightened city is not a guarantee of your own state of manners

as is most often the case, the would-be guardians of islamic behaviour are principally the ones who detract from it

on the subway ride home last night from school some of us decided that it would be fun to bring some entertainment to the crowd

we got in and sang some songs

then we did a stand-up type of comedy routine

in the last leg of the journey, from warden to kennedy, i rapped — once again, house of pain’s jump around (because it’s essentially the only rap song i know in its entirety)

props to josh for doing the singing and the comedy, and thanks to kevin for filming it (i didn’t know until later that he was filming it)

(you need quicktime, the videos are about ten megs each so it’ll take some time to load — right click and saving is probably the best way to go about it)
video 1
video 2

no, i wasn’t drunk

i don’t drink (but i did drink a lot of canada dry ginger ale that day, maybe there’s something in it)

so what’s up with posting spam in the comments of my site?

either it’s some really stupid american typing stuff up in the box to make a buck or two or it’s someone only slightly less stupid using a script to automatically send out messages of viagra and propecia and whatnot

they should advertise viagara on yaser’s site … he’s the one who needs it