As you can see, just an hour north of Montreal there is already a foot or so of snow on the ground. :) 

sTunes

I've been loving the Bouncing Souls' Gold Record this year and it shows:

We've had enough - Alkaline Trio
Second Heartbeat - Avenged Sevenfold
Solitaire - Strung Out
Defeatist - Hatebreed
Double Standard - Face to Face

Better Things - Bouncing Souls
Sarah Sunday - Bouncing Souls
Lean on Sheena - Bouncing Souls

We love France

Well not so much. We may be dumb fucks in North America led by idiots but we don't seem to be nearly as fucked as some of our most vocal European critics:

"The metropolitan Paris police tabulated 10 to 12 anti-Jewish incidents per day in the past 30 days throughout the country."

"The number one best selling book in France is "September 11: The Frightening Fraud," which posits no plane ever crashed into the Pentagon. A similar book in Germany sold over one million copies"

"Anti-Semitic incidents have proliferated in France in recent times, but the news seldom makes it across the Atlantic and when it does, it must still fight to be heard above the constant melodrama of constant trivia. A Jewish sports club in Toulouse attacked with Molotov cocktails; in Bondy, 15 men beat up members of a Jewish soccer team with metal bars and sticks; the bus that takes Jewish children to school in Aubervilliers attacked thrice in the past 14 months, synagogues in Strasbourg and Marseilles and a Jewish school in Creteil firebombed in recent weeks; in Toulouse, a gunman opened fire -- all ignored in the mainstream media in the U.S"

Read on my friends.

Here they come

I ♥ ETs

I want one

I really want one of these - although my neighbors wouldn't be too impressed. Not that they're very impressed as it is ;)

Time to disband the UN Security Council

Kosovo, Somalia, Rwanda, Bosnia, Iraq, Iran and now North Korea each have shown how toothless and idiotic the United Nations Security Council really is.

Why the hell are Congo, Peru, Ghana, Qatar and Tanzania elected members of the security council?

What the hell does it matter what this council does if resolutions never get passed because China/Russia/France always veto them?

At the end of the day, the UNSC is another fine example of how bureaucracy churns out paper while people die.

How funny is that

Well actually it is kind of sad that the anti-gay, evangelical American republicans end up getting taken down by one of their own who is a gay pedophile. Har har!! Credibility just went up in smoke, much like the institutionalized child molesting institute known as the Catholic church.

Here in Quebec, the majority of the population has rejected the church for different reasons in the 60s. Having said that, this is a great article about the Amish.


The Common Dreams site is pretty interesting in general.

Why We Need Gothic Subculture.

I saw the documentary called "Metal: The Headbanger's Journey" this past weekend and it dawned on me that we as a society really need the dark subcultures. For that matter, we really need the fringe subcultures in general.

Contrary to what most people (parents/adults) think, it is really important to be part of something even if it seems violent and revolting. Being part of a subculture like punk/goth/metal/whatever makes it OK for disenfranchised kids to be different. In fact to some degree these subcultures encourage it.

Like processed food, Bush's 'No child left behind' program narrowed down learning into a rigid diet of generic education that churned out grades as a measure of success. This came at the expense of physical education and arts, in turn robbing kids of their chance for self expression and self confidence. So what happens if you don't fit into the narrow window of acceptability? Well, you are pretty much fucked. Fucked unless of course you have some group to be accepted by. When that group is goth/punk/whatever, you've got some form of creative release to your angst and a tribe to call your own. Without a tribe to call their own, kids have cults, predators, drugs, booze and real violence to cling on to and angry parents & intolerant peers to push them into it.

This fellow named Michael Patrick MacDonald has a book out called Easter Rising that details how he escaped a pretty miserable existence using punk rock to channel his angst that makes my point as well. Newsweek has a good article here.

He says something poignant in this article:

"So many people assume with these musical subcultures that it's about finding a place where you belong. But for me it was about finding a place where I didn't have to belong." It was the first time in his life that it was OK to be weird.

If you have kids, check out the documentary and read the book or at least the article and think about it for a bit.

The next convergence

You probably have heard a bit about low power CPUs from Intel and AMD and probably don't really get the full picture of what's going on.

Here's the deal. Your computer and monitor consume between 300-400 watts of power. That's like 3 bulbs. If like me, if you have broadband internet, your computer is always on. So that means during each day you consume 7.2 kWA of electricity (trust me, I calculated for you). I pay about 5.22 cents per kWA - $.37/day - $11.65/month or $139.81 per year.

Within 5 years, the average computer will cost $299 with a lifespan of 3 years. However, power consumption will either stay the same or go up. This means that your computing costs will be something like this over 3 years:

Computer $300
Electricity $420

So you see the computer guys have a problem, the power guys have an opportunity and the only guys making real money are the internet/cable/phone guys who'd charge you something like this over 3 year:

Internet $1080
CableTV $1440
Phone $1080
Mobile Phone $1800


Makes sense for the power, phone, internet or cable guys to give you a computer for free sometime soon. Just like your cell phone. Remember where you heard this first when it hits.