musings

A bit late, seeing as the good guys have already won, but here’s another brilliant annotated rant – Fsck John McCain.

Witness the epic tale of my Nine Inch Nails at Copps Colliseum adventure.

Along with my friends and colleagues Dave and Richard, I’d planned on leaving work at 4 o’clock so as to miss the traffic leaving the city. Needless to say, this didn’t happen. We didn’t get out ’til nearly 5, and wound up hitting all kinds of westbound traffic. Nearly an hour and a half later, we’re just getting to the edge of Hamilton when we suffered an EPIC navigation fail. Richard, who’s lived in Hamilton for a year, led us wildly astray, and we wound up driving all over Hell’s half-acre (‘cuz Hamilton is the outermost ring of Hell) for nearly another hour and a half before finally getting into Hamilton to Richard’s house. if not for the aid of my lovely friend Amanda, we’d still be driving in circles even now, I’m sure.

So, after this drastic misadventure, we finally met up with Amanda and our sixth, Elliott, and made our way into the stadium at about 8:15. The doors opened at 7:00 so we thought we weren’t too late, but we’d managed to miss the opening act, Japanese stoner-rock trio Boris, which was somewhat disappointing. Still, we were in, we had our seats, and we hadn’t missed any of NIN’s set.

NIN hits the stage, and they’re flat out amazing. The light show and visual effects accompanying them are the best I’ve ever seen. Real time effects that match the music, live video manipulation of camera footage and even some real-time interactive drum-sequencing using the video display, it was all really impressive. They played most of “The Slip”, and, to my surprise and great pleasure, a few songs off “Ghosts I-IV”. The rest of the show was a fairly even-handed representation of all the previous albums. The show would have been one of the best shows I’d ever attended, had it not been marred by the crowd.

The crowd at the show was everything I hate about Hamilton. I’d never seen so many people too drunk to even stand. The three guys in the row immediately behind me were astonishingly intoxicated – we could smell the booze on them – and loud and utterly obnoxious. One of them was so drunk he fell out of his row and landed right on Dave – a 250lb sack of turd from the sky. We pushed the guy into the aisle and he went back to his row, but after he antagonized Dave with his drunken fumblings a few more times Dave went to call security (who, conveniently, promised to show up but never did). While Dave was gone, drunken prick came into my row looking for the hat that fell off his head in his initial fall. He promptly fell onto the row in front of me, where the two guys he landed on were visibly restraining themselves from throttling him. The drunken idiot then fell on me, so I shoved him into the aisle with a fair bit of force. I should have thrown the jackass down the stairs, because he then stood behind us playing “air keyboard”, smacking me in the back of my head a good three or four times before I turned around and threatened to kill him if he didn’t back the fsck up. Amanda wasn’t actually antagonized by those guys, so she found them entertaining, but I was really worried that the drunk prick would fall onto her – if he had, he’d surely have done her serious injury, so I spent a good part of the show keeping an eye on him whenever he wandered behind her. In fact, it wasn’t until he got just a little too close to her that I actually turned to threaten him. He left a short time later and the show was much better for it. The worst part is that there were a LOT of drunken jerks like those guys. I don’t understand how people can spend $70 to see a band and then get so drunk they’ll never remember the show. Stupid stupid stupid stupid.

I don’t want to sound like I had a bad time, because I didn’t. The concert was amazing, and the friends I was with are the best – I love hanging out with them. It’s just sad that the rest of the crowd left a black mark on an otherwise amazing experience.

Let The Right One In is a masterpiece of film. A tale of loneliness and alienation told through the vehicle of the vampire movie. It’s smart, sweet, and yes, it’s actually heartwarming. Bet you never thought anyone would say THAT about a horror movie. Given that it’s now November, I’m going to call it the best movie of the year. Watch it now, while you can, before it gets lost under the weight of its forthcoming American remake.

This past Tuesday was the US Federal Election, and I’ve never been so proud of our American neighbours, and simultaneously so very disappointed in California. Senator Barack Obama’s victory is a watershed moment in history – it marks the point where America has grown up enough to recognize that qualifications, ideals, and ideas mean more than the colour of one’s skin. I never, in my wildest imagination, dreamed I’d see the day that a person of colour would lead the USA. If I’d been awake when McCain conceded, I’d have been crying.

Sadly, many of those very same people who voted in a person of colour also voted to deny the right of marriage to same-sex couples. Bigotry is alive and well in the USA, only the prime target is gays and lesbians. It baffles me that one of the most forward thinking states in the union can persist in such medieval thinking. How does what another couple do affect your relationship? Right-wing traditionalists say that gays and lesbians can still have civil unions, as if that is equivalent, but the very fact that they want to set the word “marriage” aside from themselves means that they see special value in the term.

Not only does Proposition 8 ban new same-sex marriages, there’s a chance it puts existing ones at risk. California’s state attorney says they won’t be annulled, but legal challenges are still possible. Now, undoubtedly many of the people who voted for Proposition 8 were in mixed-race relationships. Until 1967, such marriages were also illegal. Imagine the uproar if we banned interracial marriage now. Furthermore, the special interest group the provided the bulk of the yes-on-8 funding was the bloody Mormons. A group of people who founded their own state because the federal government wouldn’t recognize their definition of marriage. The hypocrisy is beyond ridiculous.

So, bittersweet Tuesday – one step forward, one step back. In the grand scheme of things, I’ll take it . As I said before, 41 years ago interracial marriage was also illegal ; it’s just a matter of time ’til we push over this new barrier to real equality.

As for President Obama, I’m realistic enough to know that things won’t magically change when he takes the helm. Poor guy’s got the worst job in the world – he’s taking over a bankrupt nation that’s fighting two “wars”, and has the worst international credibility of its entire history. But with Obama I have hope that things can change. McCain would have guaranteed preservation of the status quo.

Saul Williams has written an open letter to History. Watch him recite it at the Vote for Change site. I’m not certain that all of his letter rings true – I strongly suspect the Change everyone thinks will happen if Obama gets elected will be less drastic and world-changing than they hope. On the other hand, voting for McCain means preserving the status quo, and nobody in the world, not even Idiot Republicans, deserves that. As a Canadian, I can’t vote for change in the USA, but I hope Americans that can do. The world deserves better than the PNAC set.