I want to be like Brazilians

It is always fun to watch the Brazilian soccer team. Watching them play is great, particularly with the four forward formations they are displaying these days. Their fans are fun to watch too: colourful, musical and scantly dressed. But neither compares to watching them celebrate in the winning of the Confederation Cup. Who else wins a championship and turns into a party band? Can you imagine the Germans, French, English or even the Italian sambaing at mid-field? Scratched that, it is too horrible to imagine. The Brazilian has always played like they were dancing, now we know they indeed dance as well as they play. There is no doubt whenever there is a major tournament, at least half of the world want to be Brazilian, for the beauty they display and the joy they put into our lives.

An Idiot name Harper

Today, in the final session of parliament, Canada passed the same-sex marriage bill. The Conservatives prove to be bad losers. Their leader, Stephen Harper, blame the passing of the bill on the Bloc Quebecois! I hope Harper see the irony in his statement for it was Parti Quebecois’ then leader Jacques Parizeau who blames the ethnic vote for the last defeat of the Quebec separatist’s referendum. Harper simply reverse Parizeau’s language polemics by saying that the bill has no legitimacy in English speaking Canada because it owns its passing to Quebecois. (Who died and make Harper my spokesperson?) That is the mirror image of what Parizeau said! Is it possible that Harper and Parizeau are just mirror image of each other? Or is it simply that they are both idiots mis-leading a major party? Either case, it is hard to imagine whatever party they lead, or in Parizeau’s case led, can accomplish anything but embarrassment. And for that, I am thankful.

Hocus vs. Pocus

This Tom Cruise vs. psychiatry thing is perhaps the most poorly argued in the last few years. At the time of the Dubya Whitehouse, that is no cheap accomplishment. I am not even talking about the impressively inarticulate Cruise. His anger as argument tactics is certainly that of a five year old. Is it not curious that while Cruise is talking hits from all sides, the Church of Scientology has been keeping quiet on the whole thing? Is it not a great time, while so much attention is being paid on the subject, for Scientology to finally make its case once and for all? Oh, I forgot, the Scientologist truth is one of the most expansive commodities in the world. Psychiatry’s respond has been no more an argument. They are basically saying, “We work, shut up.” The truth is, both of them can only play at this childish level because there are things they cannot say to the public. Cruise is partially correct in criticizing the prescription practices of psychiatrist. Certainly drugs are outrageously over-prescribed. This is why psychiatrists cannot engage debate on that front. But being right on one or two thing does not make Scientologist right. We cannot judge whether Scientology is right or not because they want us to pay them first. Looking at Cruise’s behaviours these days, it seems unlikely that they know what they are talking about. So, now we have this kindergarten-shouting match that means nothing. Valium, anyone?

Free Speech

When I am in a debate or argument, few things annoy me more than someone saying, “... Of course you are saying this because you have the luxury of speaking your mind in [Canada, US, Britain, or any “free speech” country].” It is annoying not so much because it is cowardly and underhanded, but it is self-contradictory and hypocritical. What is the implication in such an utterance but to suggest that the person on the other side should shut up or temper his speech because it is legal for her to speak. If this is not self-contradiction, I do not know what is. This may be technical if this were not a self-contradiction in idea also. I mean this utterance at once lauds the virtue of free speech while trying to limit the opponent's access to it. This is doubly so when the utterance is usually made when the addressee is disagreeing with the position of the government or prevailing ideology of the country in question. The implication therefore extends beyond the personal to the national-political: “be thankful that you live in this country that allows free speech and do not criticize it.” Why do we need free speech but to criticize the government and the prevailing ideology? What use of free speech if we self-censure our speech so as not to go against government or ideology? Is it not hypocrisy to invoke one thing while using that invocation to deny its execution? And for that I despise anyone who utters those words.

Reproduction Perfection

I am not sure if our present technical achievement in mechanical reproduction is a blessing. Once upon a time, great singers, for example, are truly legends: most people never get an opportunity to hear them. People go hear the singers in their neighbourhood and enjoy it. Now, we listen to HDCD of great dead singers everyday. And when excellent living singers come to town, we are disappointed because they do not sound like the great dead one’s recording. It is certain that even the great dead one did not sound like the recording after the “touch-ups” so expertly done in the digital studio. And therein lies the problem: we are more and more unable to enjoy anything not processed and pre-packaged. We do not even listen to good vinyl because of the slightest of noise, much less a singer with jetlag. That is a pity; it not only takes away the enjoyment of listening to different people but takes away the greatness of the great ones too, for it renders the great ones to a few processed record.

Dead8

Live8 is on next weekend. It is truly an embarrassment and a hypocritical event. One would think if they are really trying to save Africa, they would at least put in a few Africans. Oh, yeah, they put in one. Even Jerry Lewis put a few crippled kids on stage for his telethons. Live8 has a bunch of rich whities asking people to go to a concert so the ministers will forgive Africa’s debt. What hubris (from delusion or hypocrisy, I am not sure) to think a bunch of has-been rock stars giving a few concerts will, in Bob Geldof’s words, “Make Poverty History”! That is just so very fabulous.

To call it naïve is too kind. To think that economic reform alone will save the third world is naïve. To think that more aids alone will save the third world is naïve. Live8 is idiocy, the same idiocy as “good hearted colonialist” in Victorian England!

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Hatefulmercial

I am offended by late-night infomercials. You do not normally see this kind of non-sense in the middle of the day. Every last one of them is a con, naked and clumsy. I stay up late and have the television on every night, and that is what I get. There is no way to hide from it. Years ago you can still watch old movies at late night. Now, all there is but infomercials. Whoever came up with the word infomercial should be sent straight to hell. They are neither information nor commercial. Con men have no information to give; and they have nothing to sell. They are there just to take people’s money. All these make them despicable, but it is the timing and its implication that infuriate me. They put all of them at 2am, as if to say, this is the hour of dupes! That is insulting to insomniacs. Just because I am up at this hour does not mean I need to call a phone sex(less) line, buy into some “get someone-else-rich” schemes, imagine my breast getting bigger by buying some stinky cream, and put mysterious zit paste on my face. If I were con by a good game, I would be mad but not insulted. If I were Doyle Lonnegan, I would feel taken but not insulted; it was a good game Shaw and Kelly put together. Here, the infomercials do not even put in the effort for a good game. They just think I am stupid, and that I cannot accept.

In Praise of Narcolepsy

Contrary to common belief, the human body is not very well designed, at least not for modern life. Take sleep for example. When we are forced to sleep very little for a few days, we can usually do it without too much trouble. Once we are done with that and got to sleep, say 8 hours, we do not tend to wake up tired instead of rested. Scientists tell us that this is for survival. We are able to stay up when we are danger and rest when we are out of it. That is very well and good when we were living on trees and dodging sabre-tooths. But in the modern world, this special quality actually works against us. Think if we simple drop off to sleep like clockwork, there would be no overtime, no 24 hours financial markets, nothing to conspire to keep us up. Live would be so much better. But at it is, this whole thing just keep us worked to the bone and not able to have any fun on our time off. The world would be so much better if we were all narcoleptic.

I Vote for a Flat Earth

Wouldn’t it be nice if the earth were indeed flat and the sun moved around it? If that bygone belief were true, we wouldn’t have known jetlag! There would be no time zones; no one would miscalculate time difference and call us at 4 in the morning; and there would be no need to stay up just to talk to someone half a world away. To have a globe as home is cute and all but very inconvenient. Can't we work on flattening it a bit?

Selling Charity

It puzzles me when I see people get mad for not getting anything, no gratitude, no compensation, in return after helping someone else. To help people is to do something they need for no return. If compensation of any from is expected, it is not help but service rendered. I help people because I want to help them. If I do not want to help them, then sorry I am watching TV. It all comes from my desires, therefore the people I help owe me nothing. Now, if I do not want to help but is enticed to do something, then I am hired. For that I better get compensation, in a simple thanks or a large sum of money. Following this line of logic, to say, “I help without expect anything in return,” is not only redundant but also borderline on being hypocritical. If no return is truly expected, then why say it? Is it to get praises from others for altruism? Or, is it to let others know that the return you expected did not arrive? Return should not even factor in. There is an old term in Chinese for this expectation of gratitude: selling charity 市恩. It is a very accurate description. Unfortunately, that is how most people “help” others.

Earnestness be gone

It is not hard to understand that writers are looking for serious readers. To be taken seriously and read carefully are of course the reward of all the hard work and sufferings. An indifferent reader renders the work trivial. This everyone can understand and expect. There is however a kind of serious readers that is worse than the indifferent: an earnest one. An earnest reader takes the work too seriously. He approaches reading without humour. Wit is incomprehensible to her. And subtleties? Well, it is not part of her dictionary. To him literal reading is not a part of reading but its entirety. Writers despise indifferent readers because they refuse to give the writing importance. They hate earnest reader because they take the words too seriously, so much so that the work becomes a humourless, witless, and shallow bore; just like the reader. You can bitterly complain that no one takes you seriously. But what can you do when you are taken seriously but completely wrongly? What if irony is taken straight? What if hyperbole is taken as factual? What if fiction is taken as real? All you can do is tell them they are wrong. But than, is it not what you have written? Is it not exactly what is on the page? Then what else can you say? Nothing. There is no defence against earnestness. Earnest readers are like zombies; they have no nervous system to feel pain and no brain to argue with. There is simply no deterrence. If god had really written the Bible, I have no doubt that he would hate fundamentalist more than other sinners, because fundamentalists treat god as a simpleton devoid of any literary skill and subtlety. I feel sorry for god, for being omnipotent but served by idiots.

Defensive Basketball

I never understand why people complain that defensive basketball is boring. I still remember when teams routinely score over 120, and basketball was the most boring sport event in North America. Tonight’s game between Detroit and San Antonio was a beauty to behold. Even though it was a blow out of epic proportion, the way the Pistons played defence was just exciting. It was non-stop all-out kind of game. Watching centres slide out to stop the opponent’s guard and then fall back to switch with his own guard seamlessly is like watching an intricate dance. Then, beyond the individual and team plays, there is the mental part of a defensive game. It is about competing against your opponent, shut him down, frustrate him, and destroy him from the inside out. It is a men’s game, grown up and tough. It is pure drama. When basketball was all offence all the time, it had no drama, no struggle; everything was just too easy. Back then it was not about who was stopping whom, but who finally missed. It was little boys shooting baskets at the driveway, watching each other shoot hoping that the other would miss. Men compete, fight, and win by their hard work and teamwork: they play defence.

anticipation 

First of the Season 

Fifth Estate?

It is common these days, mainly from the liberal side of US politics, to criticize the news media in the US for failing their duty as the Fifth Estate. Even the right leaning Washington Post came out to criticize itself for failing to do its job properly on the WMD. The underlining message is that the news media, in the US in this case, has slipped from its forceful clear-eyed past to become this blind lapdog of the current administration. The NY Times and the Post’s self-criticisms acknowledge that they had fallen short of their previous excellence. Not so subtly, they at once asserted their own good standing as leaders of the Fifth Estate and padded themselves on the back for admitting their own failings. The author of Washington Post’s article Howard Kurtz ended his interview with Melissa Block on NPR’s “All things Considered” with self-congratulation (“I am proud of the Washington Post…There aren’t that many newspaper in America that would give front page play to an story that is so clearly critical of the newspaper.”) It is as if a drunk driver admits publicly that he recklessly runs over a few people and then pronounces himself hero for having the gut and decency to admit to it! Is there no shame left in this world?

Maybe we can accept these articles as apologies and overlook their disingenuousness if this were the first, or second, or third time they had made this kind of mistakes. Unfortunately, this is far from the case. In which war did the media (or a large portion of it) vigorously question the government’s justification for it when the whole country was gearing itself up for it? They did not do so in the early days of the Vietnam War. They did not do so for the Korean War. Not for the Philippines. Not for Afghanistan. Nor for 1812, for that matter. And let us not even waste time on Cuba. In fact, the news media consistently plays the role of a cheerleader for war in each and every one of these wars. All too willingly, the media ride the “patriotic” bandwagon, saying things like “it is our patriotic duty to…” “we have to stand together…” and such, to rising sales. They become critically only when the wars start to go badly. They only start to question the Vietnam War after the Tat Offensive when the country’s opinion on the war had started to shift negatively. Then after the war, the journalist padded themselves on their back for bringing the truth home and helped end the war. They conveniently did not ask where the hell were they in late Fifties? Early Sixties?

There is no arguing that the news media is a business. While they try very hard to deny that fact, it is not by itself condemnable. What is truly condemnable is when they bask in their glory as the Fifth Estate while doing no more than pandering. They try to sell gung-ho patriotism when the government has the country all scared and revved up. They try to sell critical “independence” when the lies of the government has already started to unraveled, and then claims to be the one who unravel them! The commodity nature of the news media makes it reactive rather then activity. To be a true watchdog, it has to bark before the thief enters the house, not on the way out! If a dog only barks when people leaves, it is nothing but a lapdog! The “failure” of the news media in the US is thus not an exception but the rule; not a failure but the modus operandi; not a new mutation but consistent nature of the beast. Washington Post’s questioning of the reason for the Iraqi War being printed small in page 17 was not because it went against their editorial policy, but, like their editorial policy, the editors wanted to sell cheap patriotisms on both the news and editorial pages. The shame lays not so much in a business trying to sell horse shit (can you blame something simply acting out its nature?) but in acting righteous in denying it.

Ethical Eating

We human beings consume organic matters to sustain our lives and grow. We cannot photosynthesize; nor can we extract needed nutrients from the soil. We must get our sustenance from live things. That is to say we must kill to eat. It is well known that we kill for our meat. To eat beef, we raise and kill steers. We also kill to eat plants. To eat rice, we grow and kill rice plants. And the killing does not stop there. We kill all kinds of things to create farms for our rice and cattle. We kill even more to maintain them. It is either ignorance or hypocrisy to claim that it is more ethical to eat vegetable, because one must kill and continue killing to produce vegetable. Just because we do not see the cruelty does not mean it is any more ethical. Since killing is not something avoidable, and we still want ethical living, we must look at it from a different angle. If killing is unavoidable, then we must look at the kill itself and its consequences. We should start by not wasting anything usable. This is not simply thrifty but to minimize the need to kill. We should also be respectful to the killed by cooking them carefully, tastily and creatively. And we should know what we are eating, not some hot beigy thing wrapped on a plastic tray, but a feathered bird that ran and chirped. That is the least we can do. It is bad enough that we have to kill, we had better not mess up the corpses. If we do not, as the poet Yuan Mei 袁枚 wrote: “ I am afraid if chickens, pigs, ducks and geese had spirit, they would no doubt file complaints against us in hell’s court. 吾恐鸡、猪、鹅、鸭有灵，必到枉死城中告状矣。”