1984

Everybody told me I should read the book 1984 by George Orwell. Somehow, I missed it in high school. So I read it. I finished reading it almost a week ago, and have wanted to write a post about it ever since I finished it. But it felt way way too heavy to write. Finally, I think I can do it. At least I can try.

It’s really scary when extreme concepts like the ones in the book don’t seem beyond the possibility of happening, and some feel like they’re in the beginning stages of happening. Just look at the slogans “war is peace, freedom is slavery, ignorance is strength.” How many times have we heard U.S. President Bush say something along the lines of, in order to protect our freedom, we must lose some personal freedoms? What about the idea that we are going to war to preserve the peace? And as for “ignorance is strength,” well, look how some people will fill with patriotic fervour just because they’re told too, and will unquestioningly do as Bush says and get angry at those who want to question where this is going? If that isn’t strength for the army and a license for the president to do whatever he wants, unresisted, I don’t know what is. What about the statements that the torturing of terror suspects is for the good of the American people, or the way some people have disappeared? Is anyone getting some serious “ministry of love” parallels?

And then there’s all the similarities to the spying that goes on in the book. In the book, no one had privacy and “Big “brother” was always watching you. They listened in on you everywhere you went. Now, since 9/11, the U.S. has been nudging its way towards that point, wanting to listen in on phone calls without reason, read your emails, log what you do and where you go on the net without any kind of reason why. They say it’s for the benefit of the people. Can you swallow that?

Reading the book does strange things to the mind. As I was reading it, I felt the uncontrolable urge to google random references to old British nursery rhymes to see if they existed. They did, in all kinds of different forms, which almost frightened me more. Think about it. The job of the main character is to change records to make them match the current stance of the party. I couldn’t decide if I should be happy that the search results didn’t come up all uniformly the same, or worried that someone might have changed some of them. For half a second, I thought about going and saving newspaper articles about certain historical events, just in case they changed someday. Then I shook my head at the craziness of it all.

Then I got thinking about how we know the human memory is unreliable, and the only way we can truly back up what we’re saying is by looking things up somewhere. So of course, if you change the records, you change human memory, and anyone who insists that events happened in a different way than what is written down is made to look as if they are insane.

The idea of people no longer existing, becoming an unperson, isn’t really that extreme an idea. Think about your own family tree. Can you trace it all the way back to the beginning of time from what you remember? I don’t think so, not without the help of some kind of historical records. You have memory of your immediate family, your grandparents and aunts and things, and maybe your great-grandparents. But further back than that is a mystery. If those records are changed to remove people, good luck proving they ever existed.

Even famous people can fade out of existence if you let them. After they’re dead and the people who can remember them without reminders are no longer with us, who is going to remember? What a scary thought.

The final straw was the general hopelessness of it all, the idea that if you resist the will of the party, you *will* be found and dealt with. There was the horrible idea that no one is strong enough to withstand the things the torturers did to them. If you gave someone enough pain, they would see, actually see, five fingers where there were four. If you made someone face their worst fear, something that was unbearable, they would cry out that you should do it to the one they loved rather than them. I got thinking. What would be my worst fear? Being raped? Going insane? Drowning? Being attacked by swarms of bees? I don’t know! And would I actually be so afraid that I would tell them to do it to Steve? The book, and that horrible nightmare I had makes me think I would!

Worst of all, if they decided to let you back out, you would never be the same. Just when you thought you’d found an ally, you found out they were the enemy. There was no message of hope, no way to win, the party would always control everything.

And now I feel like people who read this are going to tell me to go get a tin-foil hat because I’m a paranoid freak. But I can only hope that was what the book intended. Hopefully, that book never comes true in every possible way. I couldn’t live in a world like that. With no free will, what would be the point of living?

What Part of Piss Off with the Late Night Phone Calls do you Not Understand?

It’s 6 o’clock in the morning and I’m steam steam steaming! I know I’ve ranted about this before, but here I go again. Last night, at around 3 a.m., our phone started ringing. Steve and I groggily asked each other who in hell would call us at 3 in the god damn morning. I figure if someone is phoning that late at night, there had better be a good reason for it. Like somebody better be dead or almost dead or some other emergency had better be happening.

This morning, we check the messages, and it’s this one friend of ours. He’s drunk, and says, “Call me back and it had better be soon.” If it was the first and only time he had done it, I could just laugh and say he was being a drunken fool and forgot what time it was. But this guy will do it when he’s sober, and it wasn’t two weeks ago that I picked up the phone at 2:30 in the morning when he called, found out he just wanted to tell Steve that a show had started that was cool, so I pretty much told him to stop calling so god damn late at night unless something was extremely pressing! Like, you have email. Use it! Steve has told him countless times And here he is again! Dude! You’re cool and all, but look at a clock before you decide now is the time to call your friends!

Hey Hey! Ho Ho! Selfish Agenda-Pushing Has Got to Go!

All I can say about what I’m about to write is grrr! AS I write this, I wonder why this bothers me so much. It certainly wasn’t a surprise.

Ok, let’s explain this bit by bit. Every year, in lots of cities, there’s a Take Back the Night march, where women march together asking for safety in the streets, the right to walk at night without needing protection from attack, etc. But it’s more than that. It’s all about awareness about domestic violence and other violence that happens to women. Lots of organizations come and help. Some bring food, some, like the police, make it so we can walk down the middle of streets without becoming roadkill. Some bring the audio equipment so we can have mics at the beginning and end.

Well, we had our march last night. One of the organizations who offered to help out by bringing some food was Guelph Union of Tenants and Supporters or GUTS. Does that ring any bells? If it doesn’t, let me jog your memory. Ever since I knew they were involved, I was worried about what might happen. They are very anti-police, have no problem with causing a disturbance and resisting arrest whenever they have protests, they have burned an effigy of a police officer who they accuse of sexually assaulting one of their members during her, um, arrest at a protest. So they’re not exactly what I would consider calm, level-headed folk. I was worried, first because I thought maybe they would lash out at the police that escort the people marching. Second, I thought maybe the one making all the accusations might want to try and speak out on the topic of sexual assault, which might cause all manner of other crap to happen.

At first, all went well. We all gathered, there was food around, the speeches went off without a hitch. The only thing that made me worry was, as we prepared to march and the announcement was made that we had to respect private property and there would be no grafiti or chalking of private property, several GUTS members grinned at each other. Ok? What does that mean? Do they think it’s funny that we have to make that warning, perhaps because they’ve done those things before? Then we started marching. As we marched, various anti-violence or take back the night chants started happening. Then, amid the chants, I heard this. “Hey, hey, we’re the boys in blue! Hands where we can see ’em or we’re gonna shoot you!” I asked the person I was walking with who was chanting that. Of course, it was members of GUTS.

This made my stomach flip and all the worries I had had about them seemed to be coming true. Luckily, there was no incident, but it still doesn’t change how I feel about what they did. If it wasn’t for those “boys in blue,” we would have had no march. When else could we have walked through the middle of the streets of downtown without causing a major calamity? But most of all, this was an anti-violence march, a symbolic event all about wanting safe streets for women. It takes a special kind of selfishness to use that platform to serve your own purposes.

What’s Next? Thought Police?

This has been bugging me since I heard about it and I’ve been meaning to write a post about it, so here goes.

Sometimes, news reporters can be so dumb. After the Dawson College shooting incident, somebody found the shooter’s blog, and oh what a blog. It was full of dark pictures, guns, messages of hatred for the world and all the people in it, lots of talk of violence and all that good stuff. Incidentally, they forgot there was also mundane messages about purple freezies, eating eggs for breakfast, his enjoyment of different kinds of music, and some other crap that had nothing to do with shootings. So here’s the part that really got me mad. After reading out pieces of his blog, the reporters did what I expected. “If only we had seen this in time. Maybe this shooting could have been prevented.”

No! no no no! Did they ever stop to think that a blog is a place of expression? Did they ever stop to think that the blog is just words, and nothing more? That blog could have easily been a work of fiction. Anybody heard of a blog novel? Even if there was some truth to it, it could have been an extreme exaggeration written by someone who is frustrated. Lots of extreme shit is written up on blogs and it’s not all written by deranged shooters in long, black trenchcoats. At the very least, it could have been some kind of release. For someone other than this guy, the act of writing in that blog could have prevented them from shooting up a college. Do they really want a world where people get scooped up and carted away based on the contents of their blogs? I’m getting serious 1984 visions, and it’s not just because I just read the book.

When will people realize that the way to prevent this kind of crime is not to read people’s blogs and make judgements? When will people realize that the only way to try and prevent this kind of crime is by someone close to the shooter noticing they’re acting more than a bit off and saying, “Hey dude, are you ok? You might wanna get some help.” I’m not saying that’s a perfect solution, but it’s a lot less frightening and a lot more accurate than rushing to judgment based on some words on a page.

Guide Dogs for the Blind, Here I Come!

Well, after stressing out about the guide dog interview, and waiting for what seemed like an eternity, I finally got the news! I’ve been accepted to Guide Dogs for the Blind! There will be no more assessments! I will once again have a puppy! The only small downer about this bit of news is I will have to wait until spring before I’ll be able to train since they don’t want to send me home in the snow. Ok, fair enough. I can take that small bit of waiting. I’ve waited long enough, what’s a little more? But I will have a doggy again! I made it!

Poop n Scoop Barbie?

I heard about the strangest Barbie accessory ever. Now, Barbie is learning how to pick up dog doodoos. Mattel has decided to create a strange pet dog for Barbie, named Tanner, that, immediately after being fed brown biscuits, shoots them out its back end, looking exactly the same as they did when they went in its mouth I might add, so she can pick them up with a magnetic pooper scooper.

At first, after I stopped laughing, I thought this was a cool idea, for every little girl who said, “I want a puppy I want a puppy I want a puppy!” Now they can have a fake puppy and still have to pick up its poop. If they consistently pick up its poop, *maybe* they can move on to a real one. Then I got thinking. Those poor little girls who get a real puppy are going to be in for a surprise when the real doggy doodoos aren’t so pleasant and easy to pick up.

I Guess This Is The Part Where I’m Supposed To Make The Joke About Him Getting Off

Charges dropped in sex aid-bomb mixup.

CHICAGO (AP) – Prosecutors dropped all charges against a man who said an airport security guard misunderstood him when she thought he said a sexual device in his backpack was really a bomb.

Mardin Amin, who appeared in court Wednesday morning, has said he actually told the female security guard at O’Hare International Airport last month a small, black object was a “pump” – as in a penis pump.

Prosecutors chose to follow the lead of the U.S. Transportation Safety Administration, which recently concluded the matter did not warrant prosecution, said Cook County state’s attorney spokesman John Gorman.

Amin, 29, an Iraq-born Skokie, Ill., resident had been charged with felony disorderly conduct and faced up to three years in prison if convicted.

His lawyer, Eileen O’Neill-Burke, did not immediately return a message Wednesday seeking comment.

She explained earlier her client was embarrassed to explain the object to the security guard in front of his mother, who was travelling with him – so he whispered. The guard misunderstood his accented English and thought he said “bomb,” O’Neill-Burke said.

The Blue Screen Of Life Sentence

The Zichuan District People’s Court in China is being criticized for using a computer program to determine sentences in more than 1500 criminal cases.

The software, which is said to be programmed to work with about 100 different types of cases, allows judges to enter details of a particular crime into the system, which then provides a sentence for the accused.

Its developers claim that the program is meant to help standardize sentencing in China, while the court’s Chief Judge feels that it is a good way to avoid abuse of power by judges due to corruption or insufficient training.

On the other side of the debate are those who feel that the computer is a stupid idea that does nothing but highlight the laziness of the court system.

Strangely, none of these people saw fit to mention that a system like this, especially in a place like China, can’t possibly do a thing to curb a corruption problem. Everybody reading this surely knows how easy it is to push a few buttons on a keyboard and instantly make a situation into something that it’s not. What’s to stop a judge from using some of that “discretionary power” that the computer hopes to take away to leave out a few details that he doesn’t really feel are all that important, embellish a few that probably aren’t to make them appear as though they are, or even worse, throw in a few that flat out don’t exist? Nothing, that’s what. And even if somebody wants to argue that records are kept, I counter that with this. We’re talking about fucking China here. They aren’t exactly known for their glimmering human rights record. If you honestly believe that a government that causes *people* to vanish from the face of the Earth on a daily basis is going to think twice about messing with a few computer files, you either work for that government, or you’re completely and utterly batshit insane. then again, I think that might be a requirement for getting a Chinese government job in the first place, so I guess there can only be one reason to be on side with a system like this.