…Andrew Wheeler wrote this particularly vicious bit of satire.
26
May
…the American Supreme Court ruled 5-4 that police may question a defendant without a lawyer present.
Naturally, the freedom-loving conservatives on the Court saw no worry about the fears of the tyrannical state this time around (in a police powers case? Shocking). Antonin Scalia, well-known as that brilliant jurisprudential mind,1 wrote in his decision that “there is little if any chance that a defendant will be badgered into waiving his right to have counsel present during interrogation.”
To which all I can say is uh-huh.
26
May
FLAPJACKS: Hey, log on to your internet. I want to show you something.
ME: Why do you never just use the internet at your house? Is it wolves again?
FLAPJACKS: Sadly, my house has become the primary conflict site for a very small but extremely intense ethnic conflict. If I surfed the net there, I might step on a landmine. You wouldn’t want that on your conscience, right? Think of what Sally Struthers would say.
ME: Sally Struthers?
FLAPJACKS: Isn’t she the one who hates landmines?
ME: Well, I’m sure she’s probably strongly anti-landmine, but I think she’s known for campaigning against hunger.
FLAPJACKS: Well, you can’t eat landmines, so I’m sure she’s with me on this.
ME: On letting you use my internet.
FLAPJACKS: Yes.
ME: Well.
FLAPJACKS: I know!
ME: I see Gerard Butler is still making bad career decisions.
FLAPJACKS: Excuse me, but I think we just saw the sleeper hit of 2009.
ME: What, are you serious? It is the latest “man in competitive reality show” type thing. So it’s a video game this time instead. So what?
FLAPJACKS: Ah, but this trailer debuted on XBox Live!
ME: So?
FLAPJACKS: So they are marketing themselves to their target audience intensely! And you know how they are doing that? By tapping into primordial desires.
ME: Primordial desires.
FLAPJACKS: You see, whenever a child plays Halo, what they are really doing is sublimating their desire to kill people.
ME: I’m pretty sure most psychologists would tell you that you are wrong. And probably also bad.
FLAPJACKS: Possibly, but so what?
ME: I don’t want Gabe and Tycho from Penny Arcade sending their goons over here.
FLAPJACKS: They have goons?
ME: It’s a recessionary economy. Goons are a dime a dozen now. I considered hiring a goon just yesterday but then realized I didn’t have anybody I needed roughed up.
FLAPJACKS: I thought only SomethingAwful had goons.
ME: No, they have Goons ™.
FLAPJACKS: I am always impressed by your ability to pronounce the trademark symbol.
ME: Thanks.
FLAPJACKS: But what’s the difference between SomethingAwful goons tee-em and regular goons?
ME: It’s like the difference between Bayer brand aspirins and regular aspirins.
FLAPJACKS: Ah.
ME: Exactly!
FLAPJACKS: Anyway, I’m sure they won’t send any goons, because I’m totally right about this. See, consider little Timmy playing on his XBox, killing people with Master Shake.
ME: Master Chief.
FLAPJACKS: I’m pretty sure you’re wrong about that. So Master Shake shoots a guy and then they hump his face. But it’s not enough! “Gosh,” thinks little Timmy, “it would be awesome if I could kill people for real, but have it be as easy as playing XBox.” See, little Timmy is, like most gamers, quick to realize his own physical limitations.
ME: Is little Timmy in fact giant big fat Timmy?
FLAPJACKS: Don’t play into people’s preconceptions of gamers!
ME: But they’re so often true.
FLAPJACKS: Whatever. Little Timmy is a paraplegic. His only joy in life comes from playing video games. Are you happy now? Little Timmy, stuck in his wheelchair forever, doomed to die one day of bed sores just like Christopher Reeve did. All he wants to do is blow somebody’s head off in a spray of pink mist and have it be for real, and then be able to tell his parents “LOOK, I’M DOING IT” as he stands up on unsteady legs, totters over to the corpse and humps it, but little Timmy can never do that so instead he has to imagine the last part. Why must you deny little Timmy that pleasure?
ME: Because it would be murder?
FLAPJACKS: Ah HA, but that is the genius of Gamer! In this movie, all the real people getting shot and killed are convicted criminals sentenced to die! So it is morally permissible to kill them, and then force the person you are controlling to hump the remnants of their face.
ME: You know, even in the United States, they really don’t hand out enough death sentences to justify the bodycount of a movie like this.
FLAPJACKS: I’m sure in the dystopic future there are plenty more people getting death sentences.
ME: But are they getting those sentences for crimes they in fact committed, or were they shoved into the justice system by corrupt enforcers looking for additional profit?
FLAPJACKS: Oh, come now. Michael C. Hall is the inventor of the game! Would Michael C. Hall play a character who was morally ambigious?
(Long pause.)
FLAPJACKS: Okay, maybe he would. Damn. Now I am all conflicted.
ME: How so?
FLAPJACKS: Because on the one hand I want to see Gerard Butler shoot shit up and hump people’s faces –
ME: What is with you and humping people’s faces?
FLAPJACKS: …it’s been a while.
ME: Ah.
FLAPJACKS: Anyway, but on the other hand, I don’t want to encourage outright murder! Except when I do. It’s complex. You have to take each murder into account separately, weigh and balance them, that sort of thing.
ME: What if you pretend that this is not Halo, but Gears of War instead, and instead of other people Gerard Butler is shooting horrible mutant things?
FLAPJACKS: That makes things much better!
ME: I thought it would.
Top comment: I can’t wait for the riveting, dramatic scene where Gerald Butler is going to die because the kid got his camera stuck in a corner. — NCallahan
26
May
Top comment: Elfen Inferno, Princess of Incineration, locked in combat with her archnemesis, Esophagus Violator. His dyed eyebrows are the source of his unholy power. –KDBryan
Also: I was going to go with Reverse Gravit-hair-a and her husband, Sir No Longer Appearing in this Comic. — Zifnab
25
May
1.) My weekly TV column is up at Torontoist.
2.) My article this week for The Court is about R. v. Middleton, a sentencing case. Be forewarned the topic matter is so dry I nearly fell asleep twice while writing it.
3.) Finally, I made a rare PODCASTING APPEARANCE on Hour 42 yesterday, wherein I articulated poorly about the potential of Gooch the Dark Wonder Dog, among other things.
25
May
Top comment: How do you masturbate poorly? Do you just not finish? After you fail to masturbate would you look at yourself in the mirror and say “You’re just a fucking tease.” Can I take 20 to masturbate? — Lister Sage
24
May
– This collection of business cards of 1980s Chicago street gangs is pretty cool:
– “Upcycling” wooden pallets into furniture (and even a house).
– “He-men flee instead of pee” is probably the best headline of the week.
– And this article about the legal ramifications of porn parodies is certainly interesting (and mostly SFW).
Top comment: SPOILER ALERT: “Sexbusters” is not what I was really hoping it would be. — Jim Smith
23
May
LIKED
– The “sneak preview” of Glee. Although I think airing the premiere episode of a series Fox doesn’t plan to air for another three months is, how shall I say this, idiotic and a programming strategy that only Fox could come up with, this was one of the best pilots I’ve seen in a while; funny and clever, with great musical numbers, and it built to a ringing, enthusiastic finale that nonetheless obviously showed room for development and growth. All the better for it being unique among the current crop of television shows.
– Tower of Greed. Simple in execution yet incredibly addictive. The first Flash game I’ve played in a while that felt really fresh, despite the “keep going up or you die” concept being far from original; ToG’s system of giving you occasional options to opt out to finalize your score really puts a stamp on the style that’s a good gameplay twist, and the 80s-ish pixel graphics are exactly what I like to see in a platformer like this one.
– Marcos Martin’s “Saga of Captain America” backup feature in Captain America #50. Hey, what if all those Marvel Saga-type summaries Marvel is putting in their books these days to justify the extra dollar in price were actually something you wanted to see because they had gorgeous new art with a strong sense of design? Wouldn’t that be cool? Well, that’s what they did here. Marcos Martin has permission to draw anything he wants to for ever.
– Gaby Rojas’ audition on the first episode of So You Think You Can Dance. One of the rare times when Nigel’s praise was not in fact even a bit hyperbolic. Absolutely astounding, and one of the best solos on this program ever, be they auditions or competition or whatever. (Other solos that were excellent: Peter Sabasino the tapper, Kayla Rodomski who made her grandpa cry when she got through, and of course Natalie Reid and Brandon Bryant, who both would have made top 20 last year if it weren’t for the producers trying to spread out talent and also give a street dancer the best chance of winning.)
DIDN’T LIKE
– Terminator: Salvation. Loud and stupid and disappointing in all the wrong ways. A couple of really great action sequences, sure, but then again Star Wars: The Phantom Menace had a couple of really great action sequences and nobody says that was good (and the acting and dialogue in Terminator is as near-witless as the acting and dialogue in Menace). With the exception of Star Trek, the summer movie season this year is just floundering in terms of quality.
– Nigel Lythgoe’s burst of homophobia when presented with a same-sex ballroom couple (who were actually quite good technically despite a screwup). Nigel, your jokes weren’t funny (much like, you know, all your jokes ever), but worse you went from unfunny to outright offensive this time. Save the moralizing for… well, never.
22
May
Up at Torontoist, I engage in a debate about road investment versus transit investment. The winner? Anybody who cares about such issues! And also me.
21
May
SYTYCD has gotten more adventurous with genre during its evolution as a show, verging out tentatively into various “world” and cultural areas of dance. Of course, these are mostly just dips of big toe in the proverbial water compared to the prevalence of the “big three” genres, and there have been as many missteps as there have been classic moments. (Twitch and Joshua’s trepak from season 4, for example. Or the horrific experience that was wasting Allie and Natalli on a go-go routine in the first Canadian season.)
Tied in with those dances are the ones that don’t quite fit into the “big three.” Disco isn’t quite ballroom – it has jazz and funk elements to it that shove it somewhere into the middle. See also the “nerd ballroom” dances and the nu-swing dances – Lindy hop and West Coast swing most prominently. And of course, there’s always “Broadway,” that catchall for musical theatre-inspired routines, be they Bob Fosse-inspired or alternately inspired by Bob Fosse. (I kid! But not that much.)
So here is the final “best of” list, because there’s too much that doesn’t fit into the round holes on this show not to include.
continue reading "The Best Of So You Think You Can Dance, Part Four: Everything Else"
20
May
In the fingerprinting post on Monday, will writes:
I’m still not clear on how the police having my fingerprints — or my DNA — on file could be used to oppress me.
Abandoning the dire fantasies of totalitarian government – for that is what they largely are – we can find the idea of oppression in harm inflicted on the citizen that is, by and large, unintentional. I’m not talking here about the Glenn Beck school of “I have to pay taxes and so I am oppressed.” I’m talking about mistake.
Like I said before: I’m not anti-cop. Cops do a hard job and most of the time they get it mostly right. But they never get it entirely right. There are always people who slip through the cracks of proper procedure. I spent a year working for the Innocence Project at Osgoode, helping people challenge convictions they argued to be unjust, and in every case where I think there was someone genuinely innocent convicted of a crime, there was a common thread: the police had already decided that this person was guilty.
Again: the police are right, most of the time, when somebody is guilty. But not always. And it’s the not-alwayses that become the horror stories of the justice system. The spouse isn’t always the person who murders their partner, regardless of how common it is for that to be the case (and it is common, believe me). The black drug dealer might be a drug dealer, but it turns out he didn’t kill anybody. And so on and so forth.
And so this is how having your fingerprints on file can be used to oppress you: you are a suspect in a murder that you did not commit. The police regard you as the likely culprit. They look for evidence to tie you to the crime, and because you knew the guy, hey what do you know your fingerprints are all over the place. The police have your fingerprints already, which paints you in the eyes of a jury as a shady individual. That combination of circumstantial evidence and worsening of your image is enough to get you sent away to a lengthy jail term for a crime you did not commit. And you can’t appeal based on the evidence being wrong – the justice system doesn’t work like that. You can only appeal on points of law, not points of fact (IE, you can argue that your fingerprints were wrongly introduced as evidence because the potential for creating bias outweighed the probative value of the evidence – but, in all seriousness, good luck with that approach).
The police have a tough job. Sometimes they take shortcuts. It happens, we shouldn’t really judge them for it, and most of the time it doesn’t hurt anybody – except when it does. That’s why we need institutional safeguards built into the system to make sure that poor evidence collection methods aren’t abused. And that’s why de facto fingerprinting of individuals who haven’t even been arrested for a crime is wrong.
20
May
Contemporary, jazz and modern dance is the hardest of the three “major genres” in SYTYCD to rank and judge for many reasons. It’s the most widespread form of dance in the show, so there are more options to choose from. Contemporary dance doesn’t have obvious, objective rules for a “good” performance as ballroom or hip-hop do. The franchise attracts top choreographers in the contemporary field more frequently than it does choreographers of ballroom or hip-hop. And let’s be honest: because contemporary dance is more obviously determinable to be Art than ballroom or hip-hop (which have the intolerable caprice to appear visibly fun to do), this is the area where award nominations get made, where Mia Michaels becomes Emmy-Award-Winning Mia Michaels, and thus you have critical opinion weighing down upon any list.
Which is a pity, because let’s be honest: a lot of contemporary dance on the show is so, so predictable. Even before a routine starts, the odds that it will be one of “People Fall In Love,” “People Fall Out Of Love,” or “Somebody Dies” are, like, fifty-fifty at absolute least. Which makes it a little more difficult to judge, because you tend to inwardly overvalue, perhaps, the contemporary dance stories that are a little more original but maybe not danced quite as well as some others with more, ahem, traditional stories. A good example of this is the Camilla/Sermsah “kung fu” jazz piece from the first Australian season, which is certainly a good routine but honestly not quite on par with the really best – but I found myself leaving it as a contender right until the end because it wasn’t yet another frigging dance about a boy and a girl falling in love.
You know what I want to see from contemporary dance on this show in the future? More creativity in storytelling. Less “boy meets girl” and more, I dunno, “happy clown tries to cheer up sad clown” or “hacker inflitrates living computer” or “luchador versus evil vampire.”
(And yes, not all the award-winning performances made the list. The infamous Sabra/Neil “table” routine by Mandy Moore was one of my last cuts.)
continue reading "The Best Of So You Think You Can Dance, Part Three: Contemporary"
19
May
What exactly is the difference between Diet Coke and Coke Zero, anyhow?
19
May
I know it’s a bit schizophrenic to shove so many dance styles into “ballroom,” because ballroom dance is incredibly varied; a champion salsa dancer can have trouble with a Viennese waltz and vice versa. But even if you remove some of the more obvious outliers (I put West Coast swing, Lindy hop and disco all into the “other” section, just because they’re more fringe and hybrid forms than “traditional” ballroom dances), you still get a wide variety of dance, from the supposedly strict quickstep to the barely-a-ballroom-dance paso doble.
Ballroom performances on SYTYCD are a mixed bag. Trained ballroom dancers don’t tend to last long on the show: Benji and Heidi from US season 2 and Lacey and Pasha from season 3 are outliers because they were so naturally talented at everything. The best most ballroom dancers can hope for is to make the show’s midway point before being eliminated. This means that outstanding ballroom performances on the show tend to be only moderately technically proficient at best, and usually have to get by on the dancers’ personality and ability to master the basics. True ballroomers watching the show (and there are lots because whether they admit it or not, absolutely everybody in the dance world watches SYTYCD and most of them love it for what it is) often use the phrase “hot mess” to describe a “good” ballroom performance on it.
But there’s nothing wrong with a hot mess, even if every once in a while one wants a technically superb performance too. (Again: high quality viewing recommended where possible.)
continue reading "The Best Of So You Think You Can Dance, Part Two: Ballroom"
18
May
The Tories introduced legislation that would allow police to collect fingerprints before a person is charged with a crime and would not require the police to destroy those fingerprints should the person never be charged. The Tories argue that this is about “streamlining” the affairs of police to make them more efficient. But here’s the thing. Consider this quote from Rob Nicholson, the Justice minister:
“Crime is constantly evolving in Canada so it is crucial that our criminal justice system evolves with it.”
Now, I like Rob Nicholson. But what the fuck does that even mean? Let’s be blunt: the only reason for this legislation is to give police the power to collect fingerprints of people who can’t be proven to be criminals, or even can’t be charged with a crime because there’s reasonable and probable grounds to charge them with a crime. How comfortable are you with the police having that power? Because I’m not.
I’m not reflexively anti-cop, or even generally anti-cop. I think cops in Canada do a valuable and difficult job and most of the time they do it very well. But here’s the thing: since policing is always going to be a political hobbyhorse of one stripe or another, the cops always feel a bit besieged. That sucks and it’s not fair to them, but it’s not fair that doctors are expected to be miracle-workers or that lawyers are fodder for jokes about amorality when we all know that we should be making those jokes about accountants instead.1
But the practical public downside of the cops feeling besieged is this: they tend to close ranks when one of their own is accused of wrongdoing, be that accusation merited or not. Usually it isn’t. But when it is, they protect bad actors within the system. And I this is exactly why I don’t like giving the police additional powers that are obviously and blatantly fodder for abuse – and this is definitely an abusive power just waiting to be used improperly.
Top comment: I look forward to you getting telepathic judges and super-speed cops to deal with the rampaging mutant criminal element. — lilacsigil
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