R.I.B. - Ramblings In Brief - Seventh Seal

Far too many annoyances out there - far too many - and waaaaaaay too much crap all over the place so that one could promptly attend to, really... And why bother dealing with any of it "in depth" either? Thus, we chose to adopt the expeditive and most efficient method, permanently: blast it all to pieces piece by piece, take no prisoners, spare no one! But doing so in a less painful way, with little doses at a time! And not so visceral as it could be either; for this is not lambasting either, now is it? Now don't get us wrong here: in doing so, we do not hope that it will be less painful for everyone involved - at all! Au contraire, we hope it will sting, stab, bite and burn even more furiously since none of these topics (with one glaring exception now and then, really - but, to be honest, there are so few of those it makes one want to cry, really...! But that is another story.) hence, none of these stories deserved or was dignified with a full post to call it its own, anywhere else on the TLB Prime Network - at blogging time, that is!

So here we go again...
MORE R.I.B. - RAMBLINGS IN BRIEF!

=====================================================

Flex is dead - what, already?
Well these virtual things are truly living up to their, ah, virtuosity, eh?
No reference to the movie of the same, really - for it was but another waste of celluloid as far as we are concerned! But that is another story - for our movie blog! Duh...

Flex is dead, therefore - and it was supposed to be the computer language of the future, not so long ago at all!!!

In its place, stands a new language with a familiar name: HTML.
HTML...?!?
Number Five, though: that's right - HTML5 is the only way to go now - at least for as long as this latest nerdy fad lasts!

As an outsider looking in, peering inside his laptop's circuitry - or trying to (like the time I cracked the old desktop open, for various reasons that motivated the violent gesture: let's not get into that right now, though...) I have to personally ask - why in blue blazes...?!?

If it is not for economical reasons (using HTML5 will be easier and more productive, and increasing productivity should boost the cash flow too - rrrright? Even computer geeks know that what matters really here: and it is the all-mighty dollar, n'est-ce pas?

Maybe it's practical reasons

Could it be safety reasons

Please tell me it's not for pure "joy of obfuscating" reasons now...! (Every six months, or so, perhaps in fear of their geeky rivals -the hackers- the I.T. crowd collectively decides to change everything: all the rules, the language, the preferred coding, the way to get things done in a constantly (purported to be) "evolving" industry intent of making money any which way it can...! The poor saps (derogatorily - oh so derogatorily) called "users" have no choice but to follow suit - once everything is obfuscated, they have to buy all the new software (if not new hardware too) just to keep everything that they've grown so used to simply in working order still...!

The obfuscation doesn't stop there though: of course, there are many more languages to use and choose from. One suspects, even, that these geeks are keen on trying to come up with as many new computer languages as there are actual languages (foreign tongues, langues, linguas - lingo, dammit!!!) in the whole blamed world! Good luck with that project, geeks! And the more chaotically confusing it gets to be, the better it is for them too: for they secure their very own raison d'être as the demand for their services is ever increasing exponentially, in truth!

Me, I think it is all incredibly CRUDe - and I will forever prefer ROM over REM even if it means having to dispense pearls to swine and even a RUBY every once in a while along with that...!
;-)


Next!

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Now for those of you that truly want scary signs that the end is indeed near:
beyond the fact that illogical chaos continues to ensue everywhere at the same time, in every field and in every level of society, inexorably leading us all to a pervasive and all-encompassing state of entropy and inertia...

Just a few minutes spent ogling the news ticker this past week-end would have supplied enough evidence to any and all who doubt that the end is very near indeed: why, how can you doubt when you see all the convergence of events that are happening simultaneously as we, er, blog...?

In Syria, "Army dissidents" have taken to arms and taken control of strategic areas, which led directly to clashes with legit Syrian troops and about sixty deaths - so far. Syria is one of those "hot spots" that could very well trigger a chain of events that leads to far greater numbers of casualties, there and abroad - mostly abroad.

Speaking of "hot spots" - Iran. On a parallel to ongoing concerns in re their nuclear ambitions, the country is considering retaliatory measures against the European Union in response to that embargo thing...! Iran is therefore raising the prices for their oh-so-precious Crude Oil (gotta capitalize - it's better than gold) and as if that wasn't enough motivation for WAR, they are considering banning sales altogether to the aforementioned E.U. too, for a mere jacking up of the prices is not satisfying enough in terms of retaliation...! On a parallel to all this, hence, Iran is playing the good misunderstood guy part (as its Foreign Minister plays that part so very well) having U.N. observers coming over and visiting their nuclear facilities in order to ease everyone's mind about Iran being in the process of readying itself to become a nuclear power in the full sense of the word.

I don't know about the U.N. observers, anyone else in the United Nations or anybody in general - but no one, absolutely no one should be "optimistic" here (as Iran's Foreign Minister was reputed to be feeling like, at the end of these tours by U.N. observers...! If you believe the news tickers, that is...)

Besides, if the left one doesn't get you, the right one will - North Korea does have nuclear weapons: you didn't a reminder of that now, did you?!?

Meanwhile, "the world's foremost gathering of business and political leaders" was taking place, for five days to boot, in Davos, Switzerland. It ended Sunday on what was qualified as "a sombre note". It must have started, therefore, on January 25th. Wow - and I wasn't notified?!? They got what they had coming - the sombre note was for not having invited Luminous! There!

The 5-day "summit" (since it gathered what the French call "des sommités dans le domaine" - ha!) which one can alternatively refer to as the W.E.F (what - the whiff? What are these morons SMOKING? The question must be asked - indeed! Okay - W.E.F stands for World Economic Forum - happy?) ended on such a sour note because all these geniuses, for all their business acumen and know-how, they have narrow a clue how to properly deal with Europe's "crippling Debt Crisis" (once again, it has to be capitalized because it is considerably lesser than gold: the lack of gold is the problem, yes! No matter how far we strain away from it, it always comes back to GOLD! But never mind that right now...)

We have, on one hand, a USA government that has devalued the world economy, brought about the collapse of world banking and even the devaluation of its precious paper currency - and it is it that is leading the world straight to the gutter as it is going - and yet the European Debt Crisis gets the nod as the world's worst problem right now, in the eyes of all of this elite of business and political "leaders"...

With leaders like these, it is not any surprise that the world is going down the tubes!

"Paper money" is all that is holding the world together as it stands right now indeed - and soon enough it will have as much weight as Monopoly (TM) money.

All these leaders and big money braintrust should have taken advice from Boston Bruins goaltender Tim Thomas and simply not show up at this so-called summit/waste of time...!

Tim Thomas was a no-show earlier in the same week at the White House when his team got the "honor and privilege" to be hosted by the U.S. President Barack Obama who finally acknowledged the Bruins' Stanley Cup Championship in 2011 (something the Google Zeitgeist failed pathetically at - but that is another story...) - well, Thomas felt he could pass on that and he was RIGHT.

What honor, what privilege, to be hosted by evil incarnate at worst; a mere puppet of evil forces working behind the scenes at best? B.A. is all B.S. and will, ultimately, see no other recourse than trigger another senseless, baseless WAR just to trigger another "economy boost" (a stimulant that somehow was not mentioned by any of those political leaders in Davos? Strange. It wasn't even suggested by a single one of those business leaders there - not even those in the most concerned industries? Stranger! Oh well - it is all done behind the scenes anyhow...)

I may be repeating myself - but that is the honor and privilege of he who blogs and has many blogs, forums, mouthpieces, vehicles and soapboxes with and upon which to express himself!
;-)

Now - where were we and where we heading with it?
:-!

Ah, yes - the end!
With all these crazy things going on at once -all of these and more that do not even make it onto this blog, news tickers or anywhere else- you can rest assured that you will be resting in pieces (and, if you are lucky, in peace) sometime soon - indeed.

The often-perceived as "leading idiot amongst the idiots" (his fellow countrymen comedians portray him as such, anyhow) Canada's P.M. (Prime Minister) Stephen Harper said something at that W.E.F. summit thing that was disturbing to all, especially back home, as he qualified of "economically unsustainable" any form of supplements given to an ageing population. Hence, Old Age Security cheques, that old-timers have grown accustomed to and that personally I was looking forward to, at some point in time (if the world doesn't go kablooey in the meantime, that is) could be something to put a cross upon, perhaps...?

It has been called "the prime minister's pension bombshell" - a bomb that was carefully dropped at the economic forum in Davos, Switzerland (as it is customary for Canadians to do: making a splash, but in a careful, dare I say conservative way!) and all the so-called experts and political observers fully expect that to set to spark a "war of words" (better that than a War of the Worlds, eh - the old Parliament House in Ottawa wouldn't fare well against Alien blasts) when those pesky "lawmakers return to Parliament on Monday" - ha.

As reported here: "the rhetoric has been ramping up since Prime Minister Stephen Harper said in a speech at the World Economic Forum Thursday, that an overhaul may be necessary as a growing population ages making supplements like Old Age Security economically unsustainable."

And to think that all it was was a mere comment; one made by the aforementioned "leading idiot amongst the idiots"! Still, it is one that has to be taken seriously and it is one that has "set off a firestorm of reaction on all political fronts" back home, in Ottawa.

Pension reform suddenly became the hot topic of discussion - as everyone forgot everything else that implies an upcoming doomsday or some darn thing like that...! The battle lines were clearly drawn on CTV's Question Period Sunday when panelists from the three major parties faced off with host and chief political correspondent Craig Oliver over pension reform - wow! What wondrous reporting you can find on that CTV.com site: all self-promoting and all, as it is informative too! Astounding.

His defenders made the case that their precious Stephen Harper only "wants to look at long-term longevity because he wants to ensure income security for seniors for many, many generations," said one Shelly Glover, the parliamentary secretary to the minister of finance and therefore cronie of a cronie of Harper's. As that was just the opening salvo of the debate, you can guess that everyone else rallied against her, stating that thou shall not touch the pensions or something...!

All of it embodies pretty well the Canadian culture, I think: their heads in the snow (as the sand is not available for most of the year, global warming or not. Blame it on the Revenge of Kyoto or something! Take that, Harper!) they see not the dangers right now, they think of the problems in the far future...
Sheesh.
You have to get through the present troubles in order to get to the future ones, numb-skulls!!!

But enough about all this - this which has turned into both a preview of our bonafide apocalyptic blog here, Things To Come as also one of the bonafide political blog, Canadian Dreams - wow! All that was missing was some parallels drawn to a certain Pumpkin penned in Cyrillic and we had it all right here!

But we've done enough as it is...!

Next!

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How best to wrap up something so revelatory as this - hmm?

Well, we can ramble on and on about the myriad theories about an hypothetical end of the world to be found in all cultures, throughout all time, in every corner of the globe...

Maybe we should focus on the signs, which can be anything and everything. For there are numerous signs that the end is near, assuredly...

Here's one: on that same ticker, there was something about a Kelly. Not Grace Kelly, not Chris Kelly, not Kelly Clarkson or Kelly Osbourne, no - not any of the previously famous Kellys, not at all. This one is COOL. This one is Kelly Oxford and she's "hit the jackpot" simply because she's in sync with the times which are sorely lacking in laughs and overindulging in voyeurism at the exact same time, quite paradoxically enough... But that's another story.

K.O. (she hit the jackpot in initials too) is deemed to be some sort of "internet pioneer" since she started wasting vast amounts of time on the web as early as 1997. It was a natural progression for her, from her youthful obsession with CB radios, she says. Okay...

GeoCities (argh, not that accursed name again) was her playground - but not her exclusive playground, not at all. At 18, she was quite the party animal and had already tallied up "years of partying" and enjoying a fake ID to go everywhere deemed trendy... So much for the image conjured up by what an internet pioneer should be, eh? But never mind that now: girrrls will be girrrls and all that jazz...

She evolved on the net, as in real life. She matured, got her act together (or cleaned it up, as she says; in Calgary, of all places...) offline just as she went from miserable GeoCities to cooler-than-cool Twitter and Tumblr and, just like that, she garnered a steady following that has grown exponentially ever since! Because the masses love to peep into others' lives: and they love to laugh, too!

And so, a social butterfly of the web suddenly is rewarded for sharing jokes on tweets less than 140 characters-per-shot: rewarded with celebrity fans/followers, a script deal "with a major U.S. network" (CBS) and a book deal too (which will be, like, extended tweets in the form of "narrative essays" about the exact same subject matter) not to mention celebrity, fame and glory all her own. Not only that - on her Twitter page, she defines herself as "designed to make you feel like everything is going well." And then she states that she is our Perestroika! Very telling; very revealing indeed...

This is not a case of "only in America" folks - this is one of the signs!

She is Canadian, anyhow, not American (born an Edmonton wild girl, reformed early enough in rival town Calgary -Flames fans will be happy- where she got married, gave birth three times and became what she is now) so this is definitely not an example of that hackneyed "American Dream" everyone keeps hoping to come into effect in their own lives and change everything for the very best at some point in time...!

There must be something in The Good Book about this sort of thing: when everyone will be so prone to share everything, losing every last shred of that sense of privacy and what would be sacred as opposed to what is not. And this generation of bare-all-souls is passing this on to their offspring already - even if they didn't inculcate, it's in the genes now.

Revealing all - that is what this Facebook society has gotten to. And for some of those exhibitionists of the web, the wittiest ones, it will pay off immensely. There is something awfully odd about that and it can only mean one thing: society, at least as we know it, has reached a breaking point. A point where nothing is private anymore. And that cannot be right, surely...?

Unless the script and book deals make it right, hmm?
It remains odd though that the only thing that will be deemed too indecent to reveal anywhere, through any electronic means whatsoever, will be the pay off here...

Not that she'll be literally rolling in gold, at all, folks - she'll be getting Monopoly (TM) money, like everyone else...

But enough rambling already!

R.I.B. - Ramblings In Brief - Fifth Estate Edition

Too many annoyances out there - too much crap all over the place - to promptly attend to, really... And why bother dealing with any of it in depth either? Thus, we chose to adopt the expeditive and most efficient method, permanently: blast it all to pieces piece by piece, take no prisoners, spare no one! But doing so in a less painful way, with little doses at a time! Now don't get us wrong here: in doing so, we do not hope that it will be less painful for everyone involved - at all! Au contraire, we hope it will sting, stab, bite and burn even more furiously since none of these topics (with one glaring exception now and then, really - but, to be honest, there are so few of those it makes one want to cry, really...! But that is another story.) hence, none of these stories deserved or was dignified with a full post to call its own anywhere else on the TLB Prime Network - at blogging time, that is!

So here we go again...
MORE R.I.B. - RAMBLINGS IN BRIEF!

(And, before we go any further - NO, this has nothing to do with the blameable CBC's Fifth Estate, at all! Why, that poorman's attempt at having a 60 Minutes of significance with 20/20 insight...! COME ON! I am quite simply in my fifth level of tolerance right now, at blogging time, that's all! OKAY? GOOD. HERE: THIS FIFTH ESTATE REFLECTS MY MOOD A TAD BETTER THAN THE CBC EVER COULD!)

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Soooooooooooo... Today's a Friday.
T.G.I.F. - EH?
Oh, wait a minute now - it's a 13th! It's one of those infamous Friday The 13ths thingies!!! (Screams - chaos - and... SNAP!)

So much for T.G.I.Fs right there.

And so much for... 2012 as well?

It must have happened countless times before, but the fact that it happens now, in the ominous 2012, with all its baggage of rumours, pseudo-prophecies and quasi-semi-urban legends too, it truly makes one pause and wonder here that the first month of this ominous 2012 has a Friday the 13th in it.

Could there be something to this?
Could there be some truth to all this?
Could you possibly conceive that a bunch of savages that have vanished off the face of the Earth because they sacrificed every single one of their own to the point of self-extinction - could these bozos have actually been ON to something there?!?

Highly unlikely.

Next!

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You can always try and seek refuge from all the doom and gloom of the year 2012 out there by watching a MOVIE, maybe, hmm?

It is true that they no longer make flicks about that blasted wretch named Jason... Jason Voorhees, right? But still - where one creep once stood with all his sequels, each worse than the previous, now stand half-a-dozen clods with a succession of ill-advised remakes, so - are we better off for it, really?

So, watching a movie can help, do you seriously think that?

All I could say about that at this time is - GOOD LUCK WITH THAT ENDEAVOUR!

The movies being served up as escapism these days are either one of two extremes that may truly be proven to be totally inadequate in soothing any spirits at all.

First there's pure (and impure) fantasy-fare that is simply so out there, so unbelievable, so otherworldly, that it will immediately fail to provide any escapism at all to anyone bitter, hardened by the real, cold, cruel world, anyone who has seen it all (or thinks that they might have already) and will not take it anymore and just wants to open a window and shout "I am fed up, I have had enough and I WILL NOT TAKE IT ANYMORE!"

And that category of peeps has been scientifically proven to be 99% of the population. Numbers DON'T lie - politicians, lawyers and quacks do (in that order, probably, too - for you will most probably have to deal with their folk in that order too; but that is another story...)

And sooooooo...
Movies with too much imagination will irremediably fail to astonish, astound, exalt an audience that is so blasé with it all. Scorsese chose his time extremely poorly to go all "Hugo" on us all. Spielberg could have forgotten about Tintin as he forgot about that nice Jewish schoolgirl of his adolescent dreams, lo, many years ago at Torah class. And Lanctôt, though clearly more down-to-earth and far less fantaisiste than any otehr big-time (and true) directorial talent out there on the globe, could have skipped the whole creative process that made her revisit her sinful youth chock-full of impure thoughts directed straight (or not-so-straight) at her teaching nun and simply gone to confession instead of committing to (another piece of rotten) celluloid her memories of just how awkward her formative years really were...

The other extreme seen as a tendency in Hollywood, these past few dreadful and dismal -at the box-office as well as on the creative front- years (and some might say decades) are... ACTION! Not as in "Lights, Camera, Action!" but really as in "Mindless, sometimes Chaotic/Apocalyptic ACTION!"

And so, after Contagion, we get Contraband with Mr. Wahlburger.
After 300, we get more zombified antique soldier drones in Immortals or the upcoming Clash of the Titans II...!!! (My God - and I do mean God, not Zeus - no one ever thought of making a sequel to the dreadful original starring Harry Hamlin as Perseus! And THAT one had great special effects, at least, by the late, great Ray Harryhausen! Plus actual thespians like Laurence Olivier, Claire Bloom and Burgess Meredith were in it, too! THEY were not worthy of an encore but the remake cast IS? MY GOD!!! The Tinseltown bogus deities are so cruel... But that is another story, too...

And, what else...? Ah yes...
After 2012 - the movie! Entirely based upon Mayan so-called "prophecy" enhanced by some modern theories, seismological projections and some hearsay too - we shall be getting... an UNDERWORLD - AWAKENING!
That makes absolute sense too.

Sherlock Holmes is being beaten at the box-office - not by some Victorian ruffian with a mere passing penchant for thuggery or just any megalomaniac with sudden -not to mention surprising- knowledge of kung-fu but by... Tom Cruise?!?

But it doesn't end there - BOTH Cruise and Downey Jr are being beaten to a pulp by... THE DEVIL! For this flick is reaching out and grabbing (by the throat, one presumes) its audience, a bigger audience than the IMF and Scotland Yard's private help ever could garner for themselves (for a single week's totals, anyhow.)

When it gets to this point - when even the Evil One is at the pinnacle of box-office entries and business, therefore proving its hold on Hollywood and all that pertains to it, there can be no doubt indeed: you will not find peace, solace or anything good at the movies, you poor child!

But all this talk about movies (and Holmes, in particular - the sleuth rather than the slut, er, devil!) brings to mind something else that shall be dealt with therefore ASAP... (For we deal with threes here, don't we? Hence, this rounds it all up for another instalment of R.I.B. here - hurray!)

And so... Next!

==========================================================

Let it be said, loud and clear now... Hans Zimmer is a hack job artist.

Yes he is!

I had my suspicions raised ever higher with each new composition, from Madagascar to the wretched Dan Brown feces (what an appropriate connection there, don't you agree?)

It grew worse and worse with each Inception, Pirates of the Caribbean and other big time Hollywood contracts we would get!

And then he got game - even that - with Modern Warfare!

But how can it be that no one has seen it yet - or heard through it, listened through his schemes which are passed off as original composing but are clearly NOT. On which planet are you, people? Haven't you heard that there is nothing new under the sun anymore - everything is rehashed, one way or another?

And so you probably need proof, you require evidence in order to finally SEE THE TRUTH! Eh? EH? FINE! You're gonna get it, right here and now!

Listen up - listen up closely now! First play the music below, the soundtrack composed for the end credits (but not only that) of Guy Ritchie's perversion of Sherlock Holmes:



Only fair that a bunch of kids perverted it as well, using it for their own little project, seen on the screen above! (Hey - not my fault that all the peeps who did illegally upload the actual end credits of Holmes, the 2009 movie, just for the music and the paper mattes effects I assume, made it all unembeddable! Damn those elitists! But I digress...)

Now people have said of Zimmer "oh, what a genius" - as if he reinvented the wheel.

Did he? Did he reinvent the wheel there or on any soundtrack that he has worked on since, say, Crimson Tide or something? Well... no.

But he certainly did not invent anything - in fact, all he can most assuredly be labeled as is "a great successor" in the best case-scenario; a "great imitator" also...

He copies the works of the greats well - aye, he does!
Greats such as Morricone - aye, Ennio Morricone!
Ennio was making music for films when Hans was not in diapers but still nothing more than a gleam in either his father or mother's lustful eyes! Ennio was the MAN when Hans was nothing but a spermatozoid facing non-exitence if the timing was just off by a fraction of a milli-second! Ennio is a composer - Hans is a hacker!

And here is the evidence: true extract of a film that was scored by Morricone in 1972, a film extract (the opening sequence, not the ending, by sharp contrast) that is, amazingly enough, totally embeddable, unlike the Holmes crap earlier! Here it is:



All that Zimmer did here was copy Morricone's Bluebeard theme, spice it up with a just hint, just a feel of The Wild, Wild West (at Ritchie's express request, I am sure) - et voilà!

And if one searched, took the time and ferreted out all the other direct influences, I am sure one would unearth astonishing similarities between Zimmer's other "compositions" and the works of greats such as Jarre, Herrmann, Bernstein and so on...!

No one reinvents the wheel - not Zimmer, not anyone!

One can only call Hans, from this day forth, Hans The Hacker Zimmer!
I have spoken! Or blogged, at any rate!

You heard it -read it, really- all here first, folksies!

Spread the word!

Now - scram!

R.I.B. - Fourth Time's The True Charm

Too many annoyances out there - too much crap all over the place - to promptly attend to, really... And why bother dealing with any of it in depth either? Thus, we chose to adopt the expeditive and most efficient method, permanently: blast it all to pieces piece by piece, take no prisoners, spare no one! But doing so in a less painful way, with little doses at a time! Now don't get us wrong here: in doing so, we do not hope that it will be less painful for everyone involved - at all! Au contraire, we hope it will sting, stab, bite and burn even more furiously since none of these topics (with one glaring exception now and then, really - but, to be honest, there are so few of those it makes one want to cry, really...! But that is another story.) hence, none of these stories deserved or was dignified with a full post to call its own anywhere else on the TLB Prime Network - at blogging time, that is!

So here we go again...
MORE R.I.B. - RAMBLINGS IN BRIEF!

=====================================================


Laval (one half of Culbec... Quawbeck... Québec's very own God-forsaken version of Sodom & Gomorrah...) is likening itself to Horseman-country these days...

Oh really now - we are horseman-country all of a sudden?

I don't remember seeing Ric Flair, Arn Anderson, Tully Blanchard and J.J. Dillon galloping around these parts when I was around said forlorn parts, lo, those many years ago, pal...?

I never heard of any legendary quatuor of guys on the Rouge Et Or gridiron daring to pretend to be unstoppable, merciless "Four Horsemen"...?

I never even saw a single horse in all of Laval!
Not even on the rare treks out to le Centre de la Nature...

So, why in blue blazes would the turgid town of Laval be anything remotely like "horseman-country" nowadays?

Because of local boy turned promoter Normand Latourelle and his Cavalia - that's the only possible reason now!

Sure, Latourelle is creative and I personally appreciate the lyricism he adds to his art through the simultaneous use of image, music and live artistic performance. Multi-media is the future and until the day we can add holograms to that mixture, Latourelle and his peeps are the ones who do the most out of it all indeed.

I loved the Light show on Parliament Hill (Mosaika) - and he is behind that. The Cirque du Soleil has been something else, innovative, fresh, since its very beginning - and Latourelle was there at the beginning of that adventure, too. Cavalia is magical in its own way, and so is Odysseo, which is even more equestrian in nature than the former show!

But a horse - as the face of Laval?
That's too much - and an insult to all equines out there!

The horse is as out-of-place in the slums of Laval as the name Latourelle was - the latter being a typically French from France name that should have probably never have come to North America in the first place - but that is all due to the bigger Historical Mistake that was la Nouvelle-France in the first place - let's not get into that here now...!

Laval deserves a rat as its face - or something like that!
A stray cat - it has so many!
But not a noble beast like the horse - never!

Next!

=================================================

After Canada-bashing (more specifically Culbec... er, Quawbeck... er, Québec-bashing, yeah! But I kinda need to "think big" this time and take the whole piece of wasteland as a whole, though a fractured whole it may be - maybe - thanks to the efforts of a small -and getting smaller with each passing day- group of separatists themselves split up in-between several factions such as the BQ, PQ and now the ridiculous-sounding CAQ -LMBO- but that is another sad story to bash later on... When we have nothing else to bash... er, do.)

Sooooooo... after Canada-bashing, let's go for the jugular of the largest piece of frigid wasteland there is on the damnable planet: Russia!

Russia won't give up on its sorry excuse for a space exploration program - one guesses that they are so eager to be able to start migrating to another place, any place, even another planet in order to escape Siberia and its surroundings without having to simply "defect to the west" - which is a defeat and dishonour, admitting in fact that the sworn enemy's pastures are indeed greener (which they are, even in winter, but that is besides the point right now...)

Russia, therefore, is wasting too much time, energy, space also not to mention money and technology with their prolonged space program - and going nowhere at all with it. That's beyond pathetic - that's downright sad.

The exclamation mark on all that is the return of Phobos-Grunt, the unmanned probe sent out quite some time ago in the hopes that it would hop onto Mars orbit after enough elliptical rounds and would be sending back info about that particular moon of our neighbour planet (I guess Deimos is not good -or bad, lest I say devious- enough for our former comrades there...? Hey - it is Deimos after all! Ask the Warlord about it... But we are digressing again - big time!)

Phobos-Grunt is about to meet an ignominious end indeed, as reported by the abc.com journalists Ned Potter (no relation to Harry - ha - easy one, I know) and Gina Sunseri - right here.

Why not embed though, for what it's worth: the video of the report -maybe even two, three or an entire series of reports- that may still be viewable right here for some time to come yet...? Here it goes:



Commercials included - wow. Thanks, abc! Sometimes life can be... a little uncomfortable indeed. Tis so true. I just had to go myself, a mere moment ago - thanks for making it easier to go. (Thanks abc - still - not Dulcolax!)

There went nothing - indeed.

But back to our scheduled ramblings now...

So, as we were saying, as Phobos-Grunt grunts it out (another easy one - I know.) and goes it out with a whimper, scientists and assorted experts in the field just hope that they are right and that the astronomical (pun fully intended - duh) amounts of toxic fuel in its tanks will burn up in the upper atmosphere upon re-entry...

Once again it's the poor Indian Ocean that is set to receive the big chunk of crap from outer space - with all the unholy, ghastly cosmic germs that it might have collected wherever it may have roamed...! The Indian Ocean was forced to swallow similar crap in October when the German ROSAT space telescope "scattered debris" into it -and, personally, it is not surprising to me that a ROSAT would just scattered debris, not accomplish much at all, be totally unhelpful and then disappear: it's just like the ROSATs I know to be that way! But that is another story- and so... poor Indian Ocean, again; it only took a two-month break before it has to get it again?!? Not fair - there are five oceans, all equal in the Eyes of God, the only pair of eyes that matters - right?

Well, okay, fine - it was the Pacific's turn to swallow crappy space junk back in September when the U.S.' own NASA UARS space satellite sent debris down - thanks NASA UARS! (Proof positive -or negative, really- that you can be American, live the American Dream and still come crashing back down to earth and fail miserably! God Blessed America!)

Experts only hope it misses their precious Florida this time around (one of the slightly, extremely remote possible sites of crashing.) Don't worry - oranges are safe. As they repeat ad nauseam, the seas cover up three-quarters of the earth, and so the odds are re-entry of the piece of space junk and therefore its crashing will be at sea indeed. Let the fishies get it - again. Damn surface-dwelling shitty space explorers...!

This Phobos-Grunt fiasco is all about the proper planet alignment - again! But it has little to do with that alignment abundantly spoken about as 2012 drew nearer and nearer - thank God! Still - the space exploration obsession can be dubbed to be as crazy as anything else of the sort: especially in the light of it going nowhere and not even fast at that but slow - ever so painfully slow...!

Phobos-Grunt (argh - what an annoying name! But we are learning Russian without even noticing, here! For "grunt" is the Russian word for ground; not the same meaning at all that it has in English, see? Still makes me want to grunt...) is the 19th failure of the kind... Aye, folks: Russians are 0 for 19 in these attempts to reach, probe, research Mars and poke Martians. While Americans completely ignored the old adage that has curiosity killing the cat and dispatched their cool cat of a probe called Opportunity, a rover that latched onto Mars in 2004 very successfully. And, now, they are set to launch another one this time to be called... Curiosity.

"Truly a travesty for the exploration of space," said Charles Vick, who follows Russian space efforts for GlobalSecurity.org, "A loss for all concerned."

Vick was interviewed by abc over all this waste of resources and is convinced that it was a lack of funds halted the Russians from properly testing the spacecraft launched as well as maintaining a proper level of quality control. They even dare say that "the worst damage was to Russian pride." What...? What about the polluted oceans, risks of contaminations and further desecration of our oceans, huh? Allegedly none of these concerns Roscosmos chief, Vladimir Popovkin, who supposedly "went so far as to suggest that someone had sabotaged the probe" - making the case for Russian pride being the real and perhaps sole casualty here. It would not be beneath Americans, sure, but...

Popovkin was so mellow in his accusations though: he stated that "it would not be desirable to accuse anybody, but today there are very powerful means of influence for space vehicles which cannot be excluded," in an interview with the Russian daily Izvestia, subsequently translated by ABC News. Popovkin gave no specifics, didn't even sound irate over the 19th failure - if it's not taking its toll on him, why bother advancing a theory of sabotage at this time...? All it did was create a lack of cooperation - as "sources say the U.S. government, mildly offended, stopped helping the Russians track their errant probe in its final days." Could this be the dawn of a new cold war? A space age stone cold war over not-much-of-anything-at-all! Way to make your mark, Popovkin! Makes me think of a Popo I know... But that is another story too!

Roscosmos, the Russian space agency, has no choice to swallow this one up - again. Just like the Indian Ocean has no choice. (Hey, if I was one of the fishies in the Indian Ocean, I'd get a class action suit going against the damn Roscosmos! Inept space explorers! Pigs In Space would do a better job than you guys - sheesh! But that is just supposition - just like any sabotage talk is...)

Roscosmos is, in fact, quite apologetic about this latest debacle and reassures that "most of this debris coming back down to Earth will burn up in the atmosphere, but 20 to 30 chunks of charred debris, weighing about 450 lbs., could make it to the surface" - whcih, again, should be the sea, not terra firma and therefore not the top of your head or the roof over it. Just where precisely it might actually crash will not be crystal clear until just a few hours before impact: indeed, technology is that good it can only warn us until it actually happens.

That's just great.

The world's space agencies are all reassuring in unison though: they all agreed that any one person's chances of getting hit by debris are tiny -- something like 1 in 20 trillion, based on the spacecraft's orbit and the amount of debris that might survive re-entry. Thus, the chances that, out of the seven billion people on Earth, one of them -you, maybe- somewhere, could be hit are more like 1 in 3,000.

That's still better odds than winning the lottery - a lot better.

(And remember that, if this one doesn't get you, the next one might - the Earth's orbit is cluttered with all kinds of space junk that we, collectively, as the space exploring human race, sent up there, with gusto. And then there's asteroids, comets, spaceballs and other unidentified objects for which we have no safety net at all. Maybe the odds are up to 1 in 300 now?)

With these reassuring numbers - let's just move on!

Next!

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Back to Canada-bashing, in closing...
And right back to the infernal germ-infested suburbs of Laval...!

Each and every year, there are rankings compiled and made public as they are published in the favored and reputed magazine for Canadians to read - MacLean's Magazine.

Perplexing it is, each and every year, to note that the rankings change ever so-slightly, like nothing evolves (or de-evolves for that matter).

Also perplexing is the fact that troglodytes in townships such as Laval still cannot spell MacLean's right... (they think it is McClean's - and this comes from budding but approved journalists working for the great, mighty Quebecor! Granted they are toiling on writing copy for little freebies such as the Courrier Laval and the like - but still! Can PKP possibly be happy with such twits? Can I possibly give a flying hoot about that? So - let's move on!)

Most perplexing it is to see such disparate numbers - like, how can Laval be 40th in "violent crime" (good show, Lavallois - good show!) but 63rd overall out of 100 cities? Slacking up on the theft, shoplifting and assorted misdemeanor category, guys? But pretty violent nonetheless - great!

Laval is one of those places that is both benefiting and suffering badly from its proximity to another big (bigger, really) slum-urban-commune (hey - they used to call "la communauté urbaine de Montréal" - okay? Not me - them!)

All of the creeps who start finding it to be "too hot" in Montreal, go north - immediately north (by northwest) is the inviting not-so-virginal, ripe to consume territory of Laval - where crime can flourish! The Clouseaus there are as clumsy as their famed French counterpart, see? And the most inept at Scotland Yard would be a genius hailed by Holmes if he ever had the opportunity to work with the Laval clods! Good thing such a time travelling experience, crossing the barriers of fiction and reality as well, is totally impossible - it's a good thing for the character created by Sir Arthur, that is! But we're digressing once more...

As they migrate from Montreal to Laval, the criminal element does not do the same once it also gets "too hot" in their new lavallois surroundings - no. Instead, they just play cat-and-mouse with the Laval police and start going from block to block, district to district, coming back to the first spot periodically because, well, because they can. There is no intrinsic need to go to another town further north - Laval has everything they need: all the customer-base they need, proximity to the other one, vastly profitable, over in Montreal; plus all the troops they might need as one or two of their foot soldiers eventually does spend some time "en dedans" - which is to say that the cops do finally make something "stick" -somehow, eventually- and do nab some of the acolytes, small-time crooks always, for periods of no more than a maximum of a few months at a time. And after that time is done, they're right back on the streets doing what they do... period.

Prince Georges, British Columbia is purported to be number one in the overall crime rate sweepstakes - not Toronto, not big town Vancouver right nextdoor, not Montréal... What is this sith? Is this rigged or something? Somebody at MacLean's has some gripe with Prince Georges - the luxury condo they wanted to buy there went to somebody else? All speculation here - no accusations!

Saskatoon, Winnipeg and Regina have the meanest streets, they say now. What the hell - the Sasquatch, Winnie The Pooh and Regina Spektor built their criminal empires while no one was looking, surpassing the true giants in the field, just like that?

And what of Edmonton? Just a mere few years ago it was number one - Canada's answer to Detroit in the USA! Just on the sorriest field, not in the car industry nor on the ice (NHL joke). How could it have improved so fast over there? Did the Calgary Hitmen come over and clean up the town or something? (Another hockey joke. Ha.)

Any top ten of "Canada's Most Dangerous Cities" that does not have Laval in the top ten or twenty (at least!) is blind to the truth - that is all that I have to say! Numbers don't lie, they say - and it is true that they don't. Alas, the numbers taken into consideration by MacLean's magazine do not reflect the entire truth as I was apt to witness it, circa 2006...

And things do not evolve for the best so rapidly in these matters - no way.

That last part was 100% serious, MacLean's!
Just to be clear...


Next time!