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The Dystopia Display at The World's Biggest Bookstore. Technicolor Ultra Mall is top right.

I have a couple pieces of news regarding Technicolor Ultra Mall.

The first is that my publisher has made the ebook version available through the Amazon Lending Library. So, if you’re an Amazon Prime Member, you can borrow it for zero dollars.

If you’re old fashioned like me, it looks like the Canadian Amazon has one print copy left. So you can also buy that. Or not. I’m not your mama.

The other thing is that, this year, the Prix Aurora Awards are giving away a package to members that includes excerpts or full e-copies of all nominated works. Technicolor Ultra Mall is one such work, being short-listed for best English novel.

Through that package, Technicolor Ultra Mall is available in its entirety. I decided to do it that way because, well, if you pay the $10 to register and vote, I figure you should get something for your money — even if I don’t. My publisher was good enough to agree.

So go register and get some Aurora short-listed work. Then vote. If you’re already registered, just go enjoy the fiction then vote. You can do all that here.

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There’s a new review of Technicolor Ultra Mall. This one comes from The Nameless Zine, which is the review site of The Western Science Fiction Association.

They say:

Technicolor Ultra Mall is Heath Ledger’s Joker crossed with Fox News and Snow Crash; it is the ultimate exaggeration shot through with flashes and ribbons of what if….

And this is probably a pretty good time to remind everyone about the Aurora Awards. Technicolor Ultra Mall is eligible for best novel. And my editor, Susan Forest, is eligible in the short story category for ”Turning It Off” (Analog, Dec 2011). You can register and vote here.

Costs ten bucks to register but what’s ten bucks? It’s a great way to support Canadian SF.

Continue reading »]]> The Conservatives are distributing talking points to their followers via Tory Nation. (The “24/7 virtual campaign office” of the Conservative Party of Canada.)

Here’s the screenshots and my understanding of them. Click on any of the images for a larger version.

A log-in screen to find out about calling talk radio.

It’s odd that the Conservatives ask you to select a topic from a list that only has one topic. That seems like a pretty good analogy for their governing style.

Next is the list of talk radio shows.

During a previous election I saw a list like this. I recall it openly naming the conservative friendly shows. But that’s me speaking from memory and should be taken with a grain of salt. Even if I do remember it properly, I lack evidence.

Still, now you know how to contact these shows too. So there’s that.

Also useful is the information on how to speak on the radio.

I like the point: “Stay conversational – do your best to have a conversation with the talk show host instead of just reading your notes on the radio.” They should provide an acting class. Or would that be arts funding?

I also like the term, your notes. When really, as you can see, it’s just notes that they’ve been given. That’s like calling Coles Notes your notes.

Anyway, here’s your notes.

Whether you agree or disagree with these talking points is beyond the scope of this post.

The purpose here is to teach caution and skepticism. When you hear these points being raised by callers on talk radio, particularly on the shows listed, you should simply be aware that you’re being dealt with in a dishonest fashion.

Much of talk radio is just political theater.  Joe the Plumber (if that is his real name) calling from Woodbridge (if that is where he’s really from) is not stating the opinion of plumbers everywhere but is parroting something written by a party hack. You cannot believe everything you hear.

Here are the instructions for writing a letter to editor posted without the step that contains my postal code.

The talking points for such a letter:

And some writing tips.

Now for a bit of background on this post . . .

The first time I saw something like this was during the American re-election of Bush. I joined his online campaign to see how it was run. There, I saw that the Republicans had a list of talking points, instructions on how to speak on air and instructions for what radio stations and/or shows to call.

I was a younger man then and was shocked.

I’d thoughtlessly assumed that people calling radio shows were people speaking from the heart. Turns out that many were just part of a well-oiled, propaganda machine.

The next time I saw something like this was during the following Canadian election. I’d joined the site of every party to see what was up. The Conservatives had a machine that looked quite similar to the Republican one. A list of friendly shows and stations and a list of talking points to repeat when you called them.  They were the only party doing this.

(Far as I know, they still are. I haven’t been able to find anything similar on the Liberal site and haven’t bothered looking at the NDP, Green Party or Bloc. If these parties are engaging in similar behavior and anyone has shots of those, please feel free to share. I dislike the Conservatives but am hardly a fan of these other parties.)

Back then, I thought the people should know but had little knowledge of screen-shots and couldn’t see why anyone would believe something I’d just typed.

At any rate, that information was leaked on Wikileaks and posted on Boing Boing so there really wasn’t much for me to add.

This time, however, I’m a bit more conversant with the technology at my fingertips. And while these talking points from Tory Nation have been mentioned in MacCleans (in November) they still seem relevant.

I, for one, would like to know when a talk radio caller is reading from a script or when a letter to the editor is composed from notes provided by a political party. Might be horribly old fashioned of me, but I think these sorts of things are on par with false twitter accounts and the like.

They’re an abuse of an already over-abused system.

And my only hope in posting this is not to influence who gets elected or to throw my support behind any party. Rather, it’s to improve the honesty of political conversation in this country. That’s something that I hope every party can support. Instead of telling the people what to say, they should be listening to them.

That’s supposed to be their job.

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Long time readers of The Grumpy Owl will know that I’ve been interested in dictators and revolutions for even longer than I’ve been interested in bespoke suits.  I wonder if anyone other than me has been around here long enough to remember that I used to do theme weeks and that one of my first ones was about revolutions.

While my interest in the Egyptian scenario might surprise some people who have come here expecting a fashion blog or see me as a person who makes smart ass comments on twitter, others will know that my interest in dictators and revolution has informed my sense of style, my interest in robots and the sort of fiction I compose.

But I don’t expect many people –especially in Toronto– to share this morbid set of interests. I suspect that this might be the first revolution witnessed or seriously thought about by many of my current readers. And some of these are probably wondering why Egypt should be important to them.

I’ve decided to jot down a few quick thoughts.

They’re after the jump.

We The People

Once, a long time ago, I read an interesting quote by an Iranian anarchist, whose name I can’t remember. It ran something like this: “The people of Iran and America have more in common with each other than either has in common with their government.”

I’ve always felt that to be true.

Once you get beyond the funny hats, the strange foods and weird languages, you find that most people want the same sort of crap. They want to go about their lives, enjoy their hobbies and hook up with each other without some cop bossing them around. They want to be treated like and to act like adults.

It is never in the interest of government to promote that so we end up with a bunch of politicized racism. Governments tend to emphasize the differences and exploit our ignorance. They point out the funny hats, talk about us and them, and lead us into wars with people they’ve taught us to regard as not quite human.

Revolutions overthrow that.

Liberating Us From Lies

pic nicked from here

Every imperial power is a mixture of myth and greed. The greed invents the myths to serve its purposes. It even fixes the game so that these myths appear to be true. And eventually, the greed also starts to believe the myths.

Over the course of my life, I have seen one pernicious and recognizable myth about Arabs: That they are not fit to govern themselves. The choice is always between a strong man we support or a religious regime that is against us. This myth has led to the support of dictators which has led to religious regimes that are against us. The myth creates its own evidence.

And it’s an old myth told by every power about and to the people they are exploiting. In the American south, it was thought that the slaves could not govern themselves. In England that the Irish could or cannot. The French thought it about Algeria, the South Africans about the South Africans, the Romans about the Gauls and so on and so forth. If you dig into any oppressive system, you will find this myth. That we’re doing it for their own good.

I have lived long enough to see this myth cause death and destruction on my dime.

This revolution in Egypt is for and by the people of Egypt. My entirely selfish hope is that it also liberates the west from its most pernicious of imperialist lies: That these people are savages, unfit to govern themselves. I would like to live in a world where that idiotic bigotry is disproved.

And so would you. Whether you know it or not.

Template:

The only difference between cops is the language on their shields.

When you don’t understand how revolts and crackdowns happen, it is very easy to look at something like the G20 as being a sort of isolated fuck up.

It’s not.

The actions of the police and media followed a specific and predictable template. Seeing the Egyptian regime use a similar set of lies –stability versus “anarchism”– and tactics –crackdown on the media, agent provocateurs and detention of the innocent– should make it clear what our own government did. What our own government is.

(As it was, when the G20 happened, many people would not even entertain the idea of agent provocateurs. I’m not even saying that there were any – just that in a better educated society, people would at least know what they were and understand that they are not only possible in that situation but likely.)

I would say that the main difference between the Egyptian crackdown and the G20 is that the demonstrations in Toronto were smaller. I have no doubt that, if those protests were as large as those in Egypt, that our own government would have opened fire on us.  Human life is valued in exact proportion to how much it threatens power.

Their guns are not decorations.

Not even in Canada.

Why We Fight

I don’t feel very oppressed. It’s because I’m not. Yet I still have a problem with my government. Why is that?

It’s because my government makes allies out of guys like Mubarak. That it actively oppresses other people –people like me and people I have no beef with whatsoever– and makes me complicit in it. And for what? So people who have no interest in ever being around the likes of me can make another billion dollars.

If I withdraw my consent by refusing to pay my taxes, I will be locked up. I can’t even refuse to pay my taxes. They’re off my paycheck before I even see them.

The Egyptian revolt should make it very clear why I dislike our government. I do not trust or like people who have friends like that.

Neither should you.

Having seen what we’re up to in other countries, I just hope you believe it. And do something about it.

Even if it’s something as simple as withdrawing your consent, it’s a start.

You can also find your MP and contact them. Tell them to demand Mubarak steps down and to freeze the assets of his government.

You can assist the Egyptian people by setting up a Tor relay.

You can give money to Amnesty International.

You can work against Vodaphone.

You can do a bit. So let’s get on it.

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Is this man a mother?

Mothers Against Drunk Driving is at it again: Come August, if you are below 22, you will need a zero alcohol blood level to drive a car.

It’s unreasonable but not unexpected.  This is one of the very worst charities in existence.

MADD was founded by a decent woman with decent intentions.  Candy Lightner, whose daughter was killed by a drunk driver, set to work raising awareness about the issue and passing legislation about it.  She quit the organization in 1985, feeling that MADD had been hijacked and saying that the group had “ become far more neo-prohibitionist than I had ever wanted or envisioned … I didn’t start MADD to deal with alcohol. I started MADD to deal with the issue of drunk driving.”   This is a distinction that MADD seems incapable of making.

They recklessly inflate their statistics.  Notice that they talk about ‘alcohol related accidents.’  This is any accident that can be related to alcohol in any way.  Did you have a beer at lunch and a sober person ran a red light and crashed into you?  Did your passenger have a blood alcohol level higher than zero?  Was an empty beer can found in your car even though you had no alcohol in your system? According to MADD, these are alcohol related accidents.

Even for statistics, it’s corrupt.   I have not looked at the numbers for car crashes involving people below the age of 22 but I imagine that there are more accidents  in general -not just “alcohol related- than in older drivers.  Hence the insurance costs.

As far as fundraising goes, MADD just received a D (a scale from A to F ) from the watchdog organization, The American Institute of Philanthropy.  This was caused by its poor spending practices and lack of victim support.

“The AIP says while most charities spend $35 to to raise $100. MADD has spent nearly double that amount. It also says in recent years they have spent $30 million on salaries, leaving just one third of its budget for victim services.”

The American Beverage Institute (a restaurant trade organization)  agrees, saying that, in 2008 MADD spent almost $30 million on salaries, leaving just a third of its budget, or $15 million, for charitable work and victim services.  They add that:

“Ten to fifteen years ago, Mothers Against Drunk Driving really did shift their focus away from hardcore drunk drivers and targeting them, getting them off the road and policies that did that and going after social drinking of all kinds. They need to shift back, go back to basics.”

And they probably would get back to basics if they could.  Problem is, they’ve already achieved every single legislative goal they started with and quite a few that drove their founder straight into the arms of the liquor lobby.  Yet they’re still making laws.  No wonder.  They make a lot of money from doing so.

Now, while one should believe The American Institute of Philanthropy, one could sensibly point out that the American Beverage Institute has a vested interest in badmouthing MADD.  But if one is concerned with vested interests, they might also consider the one that MADD has.  They too are a multi-million dollar organization.  One that has a male CEO.  For those of you unfamiliar with biology, it is possible for a male to be against drunk driving but impossible for him to be a mother.  This matters because so much of MADD’s cache is based on “motherhood.”  Would you expect a group called Canadian Fathers for Change to be headed by an American woman?

For everyone involved,  MADD is a money making scheme.  They should have no place in forming the laws of this country.  That the media gives them respect, air time and acts as if MADD are serving the interests of the people, when they are simply serving the interests of a small, greedy and puritan group while taking advantage of their mostly well-intentioned but hopelessly naive donors, never fails to amaze me.   Then again, MADD does buy a lot of advertising.

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The guardians of the state.

On the twitter, I’ve recently heard many people declare that “Toronto has become a police state.”  If you’ve said something along those lines, you need to take a deep breath.  You are only experiencing clarity.  It will pass.

Canada has been a police state for years.  Over the weekend, we just saw how a police state handles protest.  In other words, the police state on a bad day.  The only reason the police did not use live ammunition is because they didn’t need to.   Had there been half a million people in the street, if there had of been a real threat, the police would have used real bullets.  They did not because they were never threatened enough to risk the optics.  As their overreaction and their indiscriminate application of power proved, they are not interested in any sort of fair fight.  and when you looked up, you saw snipers.  Just what do you think those people are for?  They’re for you and me.  To shoot us with bullets we paid for.

Did you ever think our government would act any differently than the Iranian regime if too many people took to the street?  When power is threatened, life is cheap.

The only difference between Canada and any other police state is that Canadians are remarkably compliant.  Why shouldn’t they be?  They are the benefactors of this sort of behavior and much worse all over the world.  For the most part, they enjoy the police state.  Love it even.  Some, like Albert Speer, simply prefer to avoid looking too hard at it.  Most Canadians will never face up to what this country truly is: they will not acknowledge its wars, it genocides and its oppressions.  It easier to believe in the lie.

From cradle to grave, we’ve all been lied to.  We’ve been told things like Alexander Graham Bell was a Canadian, that we are a nation of peacekeepers and that we are, always and without doubt, the good guys.  It’s not true.  We’re not.  Here is where we see the delusion conflicting with the reality.  And the reality wins.

The police state is not what happened on the weekend.  It is what allowed that weekend to happen in the first place.  It is what you’re returning to this Monday.  Maybe you enjoy living in a totalitarian regime – many people have– and perhaps you even actively endorse it – many have done that too.  Everyone who doesn’t, however, needs to take a deep breath.  You are only experiencing clarity.  It will pass.  A meaningless report will be made, perhaps a futile inquiry will be drag into boredom and increase our tolerance for the images that now shock us, a few reporters will be upset that their rights were violated and you will get your crumb from the table.

You will be returned to your regular programming.  A celebrity will do something and your pleasant fog will be back in no time.

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There might have been some good reasons to protest these Olympics but there’s no need to continue protesting them.  These Olympics are protesting themselves.

As Napoleon once said: “Never interrupt your enemy when he is making a mistake.” And make no mistake, Vancouver is making some huge mistakes.

The whole thing has been a mess and a disaster.  It might be the worst Olympic games ever staged and Canada has come out of the whole thing looking like a hypocrite, a bully and an incompetant.  Our mask has slipped.

Because we’ve decided to use the rules and technicalities to cheat other nations of practise time, any of our wins are meaningless.  Only our losses have meaning. Our losses say that even given a major and unfair advantage, Canada still can’t “own the podium.”  It’s like losing with a head-start.

These Olympics had a head-start on losing.

Before the opening ceremonies had even begun, a mixture of Canadian carelessness, stupidity and greed for gold killed a Georgian luger.

Since then, ice has failed, concession stands have been shut down, thousands of ticket holders have been turned away, the poorly designed medal ceremonies have been unattended, the opening ceremony was marred by malfunctioning hydraulics and a performance by Bryan Adams, there’s been a lack of zambonis and snow, events have been cancelled due to completely seasonal weather, our media has revealed itself as a cheerleading team instead of reporters and Canada, in spite of its cheating ways, has still failed to “own the podium.”

Any sensible protester would have to ask themselves what exactly are they protesting here?  The public failure of their enemies?  What more could they possibly add to this clusterfuck?   Can they make the Olympics look worse than the Olympics have already made themselves look?  I don’t think so.

At best, they could be scapegoated,

It’s so bad that I spent four years looking forward to Olympic hockey –the only hockey that I really love– and now I can’t bring myself to cheer the Canadian team.  The arrogant hubris, the desire to win at the expense of fair play, all of these things make me regard Canada with an even deeper loathing than before.

Whatever my problems are with this country, hockey has always remained untouched.  These Olympics touched it.  Touched it right in its special place.  And it makes me feel dirty.  Not even dirty in the good way.  Dirty in the I need sixteen hours in the shower type of way.

I just can’t say: “Go Team Canada.”  I just can’t feel it.

This actually hurts me. Though I lack nationalism, I express my tribalist instincts through my support of sports teams.  It seems a safe venue for the feelings, which are natural, and I believe all that cheesy nonsense about how sport exemplifies the human spirit.  It does.

Sadly, these days. cheating to gain gold is what the human spirit is about.  Sports can’t change the worst or the best in us.  They just show it.  Just as the gladiatorial contests of Rome illustrate the cruel values of that society, the Olympics show the shallow, moronic and chintzy values of ours.

Blaming them for that is like blaming the mirror for your haircut.

The problem is not that the torch malfunctioned.  The problem is, the spirit has.  Although I should know better, I’m still disappointed.

Being old fashioned, I cling to the belief that it’s not whether you win or lose but how you play the game.  Bigger than any team, bigger than any athlete and bigger than any championship, accomplishment or accolade is the game itself.

The game must be respected.  It must be a fair and square match.  No one wants to win on a technicality.  No one wants to lose that way.  You want to play your best against an opponent who is playing their best.  And you want to win.

There’s no shame in being beat but there’s shame in losing.  Just ask any kid who dropped the ball. Ask any cheater if it was worth it.  If their victory was real.  Only a psychopath would say yes but, then again, only a psychopath would cheat.

Canada has forgotten this.  It only sees value in gold and none in how the gold is won.  As such, its victories are meaningless.  By granting our athletes more practise while limiting that of their opponents, we have only cheated them out of victory.  Not all the media cheerleading in the world can change that.

And I’ll cheer a lot of things but I will never knowingly cheer a rigged match or the team associated with it.  I’ll cheer a loser playing hard before I cheer a juicer breaking records and I’ll cheer a champion playing hard louder than either.  Because that’s sports.  That’s the Olympic spirit.

It’s a shame Canada forgot that and a disgrace that Canada cheers for it.