And while I’m inexplicably loyal to an idiotic name, I have — at last — shed the monodirectional nature of my “live blog” and opened things up with, y’know, an actual interactive live blog. So stop by on Sunday evening to hear some stupid asshole (i.e. me) make idiotic and uncreative remarks about a ridiculous awards show. You’re free to be a stupid asshole too.

Because I’m too dumb to figure out embedding, you’ll have to click here for the live blog

Screw those losers*, it’s statuette time!

(*Unless one of them has an entry in one of those crappy, artsy categories. Then pretend to care, momentarily.)

Yes, for the — dear God, what have I done with my life? — seventh year running, I’m doing a live blog of the Academy Awards this Sunday. I still haven’t gone to the trouble of educating myself about Hollywood any more so than I did back when I first did it in 2004. But I’m recycling many of the same jokes from then too, so it all evens out.

I dunno who’s hosting, I dunno who’s nominated, and I don’t care who wins. So stop by on Sunday, won’t ya?

Yet, as the hubbub this week over the CBSC’s banning of Dire Straits’ Money for Nothing has shown, someone does — even if it’s a single, solitary complaint. Now, fair enough, the lyrics include a homophobic slur (“See the little faggot with the earring and the makeup … That little faggot got his own jet airplane / That little faggot, he’s a millionaire”) and don’t really jive with our contemporary understanding of what constitutes appropriate language, particularly as we sit on the 10th anniversary of Ontario legalizing same-sex marriage.

I wonder, then, where the CBSC stands on Toronto radio station Edge102′s decision to give airtime to the fanatical, ridiculous idiots at the Westboro Baptist Church. It was ostensibly part of some Faustian bargain wherein Fred Phelps’s gaggle of inbred halfwits agreed not to protest the funeral of nine-year-old Christina Green. I haven’t yet listened to the interview with Shirley Phelps, but a reminder: Phelps’s organization is best known for its infamous expression of zealous contempt: “God Hates Fags“.

Now, my visceral reaction to even hearing about Westboro is “no! ban them! lock them away somewhere, don’t let them see the light of day!” It’s also horrifically disgusting that anyone would threaten to protest at the funeral of an innocent child unless they’re given a soapbox from which to spew their contemptible nonsense. Yet, the more reasoned part of me remembers that free speech extends to even the most unpopular views (otherwise it isn’t free speech at all), and that mere exposure to these laughable-if-they-weren’t-so-horrible hate-mongering jackasses isn’t going to transform the average listener into a similarly maladjusted bigot.

But then… is mere exposure to a slur, in the context of a song, going to transform someone into a homophobe? What are the social merits of amending an artistic anachronism to be more palatable to present-day audiences (a la the tweaked version of Huckleberry Finn, featuring “Slave Jim”)?

Whether we like it or not, words have power. (I like it quite a bit; otherwise my ability to write would be even more useless than it already is). But words don’t exist in a vacuum; it’s impossible to excise phrases and sentiments from their context and judge them on that basis. While the vile pontificating of the Westboro crew is irredeemably hateful, and worthy of our scorn, can we democratically censor them, so long as their words don’t translate into unlawful actions, or seep into the legally-defined realm of hate speech?

And while the word “faggot” should be consigned to the front steps of British pubs, amongst cigarette-seeking drunks, can we infer homophobia merely from the word’s presence in the song? Are there contexts in which certain verboten words become acceptable (such as the usage of the n-word among some African-Americans, in an effort to strip it of its historical power)? If so, who decides when these lines are crossed? Is it groups like the CBSC? And if not — if certain words or thoughts are forbidden no matter what — do we truly have “free” speech at all?

All good questions, these… questions that could be debated for hours, days, months on end by all sorts of scholarly types. All sparked by a couple of controversies emanating from those little boxes that transmit words and sounds.

Not bad for a “dead” medium, huh?

Jared Loughner (Photo credit: The Associated Press)

I hate the mis- and overuse of the word “crazy”. Not only because it’s linguistically lazy (like listlessly referring to something as “interesting”), but because it’s inherently demeaning to the untold numbers of people suffering silently and invisibly from debilitating mental illness.

Jared Loughner, the (alleged) perpetrator of the shooting rampage in Tucson over the weekend, was indisputably one of these people, based upon his online rants that bear the terrifying hallmark of someone suffering from paranoid schizophrenia.

Earlier today, police engaged in an hours-long standoff in downtown Toronto with a man suffering from bipolar disorder; meanwhile, the RCMP continue to investigate the “violent tendencies” of James Roszko, who surely was suffering from some severe form of antisocial personality disorder (though we’ll never know, as he killed himself years ago, shortly after killing four Mounties).

It’s supremely unfair, of course, to lump these three incidents together; two involved multiple murders of public officials, while the other was merely a misunderstanding over a man dancing in the street. But then, most characterizations of the mentally ill (either as a group, or as individuals) tend to lean towards the supremely unfair.

For instance, several websites have published a cutesy little animation which re-imagines Queen Street West in Toronto as a Super Mario-esque video game. Innocuous and creative fare, generally. But listen very closely between 4:45 and 5:12:

Yes, it’s a MIDI rendition of Ozzy Osbourne’s Crazy Train. Now, sure, if anyone’s “earned” the right to use the word “crazy”, it’s probably ol’ Ozzy. But the tune’s placement is no coincidence — the pixelated building in the background is the Centre for Addiction and Mental Health, whose self-described mandate is “to help transform the lives of people affected by mental health and addiction issues.”

Now, I’m not inferring or implying any malice on the part of the animation’s creator against CAMH or the mentally ill. But this is one small sample of how mentally illness is often treated as a seemingly comedic, sideline issue — even though its impacts are often felt far beyond those suffering from the diseases.

Of course, sometimes people with mental-health issues do find themselves in the spotlight in a positive manner. Last week, the Internet — and, mere hours later, the general news cycle — became dominated by the story of Ted Williams. You remember Ted, right?

Ted’s life, as you probably know, was severely sidetracked by his addiction to drugs and alcohol. Drug addiction, as you may know, is considered a mental disorder by the American Psychiatric Association. But in Williams’s case, he made good for himself, so his relation to the disorder is referred to as a “struggle” or a “battle“… unless, of course, the story emphasizes his dalliances with crime, in which case we see reference to his “drug abuse“.

(See the difference? Nice, cleaned-up homeless guy with a cool voice: victimized by addiction. Dirty, deviant homeless guy in mugshots: active, intentional abuser of narcotics.)

Again, I’m not accusing any particular media outlet of having an agenda, or attempting to make too much of rather tenuous links between unconnected stories/writers. But generally speaking, mental illness (and those suffering from it) are treated very differently depending on the nature of their story: they’re villains, or buffoons, or pieces of furniture meant to be ignored, or occasionally gawked at.

Though the exact numbers are difficult to discern, most studies on the matter have shown concrete links between mental illness (including addiction and personality/cognitive disorders) and the risk of homelessness.

Similarly, I’d contend that anyone who commits an act of premeditated murder is suffering from something you’d find in the DSM — though I don’t say this to either absolve people like Loughner of their (alleged) actions, nor to cast aspersions on all sufferers of mental illness based on the grotesque actions of a few. I say this only to make the point that, if the right mental-health resources were available, it’s possible that rampages such as this past weekend’s could have been prevented.

But what comes of this information? Tragically, not enough.

Urbanites complain about the “plight” of homelessness, as if those whose consciences are momentarily tugged upon are the real victims, not the people who live in abject squalor beneath the public’s feet. But then pedestrians look the other way, literally and figuratively.

People (rightly) react with shock and surprise when massacres such as the shooting at Rep. Giffords’s public event happen… even if warning signs about the (alleged) perpetrator were ringing loud and clear.

Once all the political bluster and finger-pointing about the Tucson shooting die down, do you think the incident will prompt a serious discussion about what needs to be done to prevent future atrocities like his?

It’s doubtful. But it needs to happen.

Now, to be fair, no amount of money poured into mental-health research and care will ever stop all instances of mental-illness-induced violence, or completely eradicate poverty among the mentally ill. But it will help. The most sensible way to address the root cause of the Tucson massacre is not to blame political figures. It’s to invest into the health system in such a way that mental health is considered just as important as other forms of healthcare.

It’s not an easy ask. The disorders, and the people suffering from them, are generally invisible — that is, until they burst into the public consciousness, either for good (Williams) or for bad (Loughner).

But if it all seems like a gigantic, unsolvable quandary, take heart: There is a simple step you can take to help be part of the solution.

Reconsider your usage of the word “crazy”.

If you find yourself or other using it callously, take a second to think about what you really mean. Think about the people suffering from indescribable horrors of their own mind, and think about what might be done to better serve their needs — not only for their benefit, but for the ultimate good of us all.

But one thing is clear: No politician or other public figure deserves to be killed — or to have their life endangered — because of their beliefs. If we accept bullets as viable methods of expression, then we’ve abandoned democracy (and civil society) altogether, and reverted to the most unlivable condition of barbarism.

As much as I’d like to let emotion overtake me, and extrapolate from this incident all sorts of horrible conclusions about Republicans/Tea Party members/Second Amendment advocates based on the actions of one deranged individual (who, as of this writing, has no confirmed link to any of those groups), it’s simply the wrong thing to do… and if I do it, they win.

And yes, “they” are “the terrorists”.

Not just the spooky ones hiding out in caves in Pakistan. But anyone who’d seek to use violence as a means of influencing political and social change. Y’know, like Timothy McVeigh. And — unless this is all a colossal coincidence, and the shooter had no idea she’s a member of Congress — whoever shot Giffords today.

“But Squizz,” you’re saying, “if you’re assuming the shooting was politically motivated, then of course it’s some whackjob loonie on the right, some evil conservative who’s taken one of Sarah Palin’s tweets, or some piece of gun-loving campaign nonsense too close to heart!”

Yeah, ever hear of Yitzhak Rabin?

He was the Israeli prime minister who helped bring the Middle East closer to peace than anyone else. Then, in 1995, he was assassinated not by a Palestinian or anti-Semite… but by an Orthodox Jew, who felt that Rabin’s concessions to the Palestinians were too great.

So who knows? Perhaps — and surely the shooter’s motivation will be clumsily dissected by all manners of commentators in the days and weeks to come — Giffords’ attacker believed her policies as a Democrat were insufficiently left-leaning, or that her Congressional voting record showed an unacceptable level of compromise when it came to key issues.

Or, perhaps it truly was someone who took the bluster of a right-wing blowhard too seriously (and literally). Or, perhaps the person had no particular political motivations, and was simply suffering from an illness-induced rampage that Giffords unfortunately found herself caught up in. Or, hey, perhaps there was some as-yet-unidentified personal connection between Giffords and the shooter that would have caused him to commit this heinous act.

But no matter who did this, why they did it, and whether or not Giffords survives, a few things are certain:

• The shooter must receive no soapbox. No interviews. No statements. Nothing beyond the bare minimum afforded to them by law, as it relates to entering a verbal plea in court. Such a callous act of wanton violence cannot be rewarded with any bonus notoriety, or the opportunity to attempt justification thereof.
• We must remember that the shooter is — barring some sort of Zapruder footage coming out of the woodwork — a single individual committing a single act of gun-related violence. Chances are good that he suffered from some form of mental illness. But unless he was a Manchurian Candidate-style puppet of Rush Limbaugh, we cannot visit his sins on the untold numbers of people who may hold similarly distasteful beliefs, but have kept them in the form of thoughts, not murderous actions.
• And above all, we must retain hope (slight and continually fading as it may be) that the exchange of facts and good-faith arguments (rather than violence, and threats thereof) can continue to be the lifeblood of western democracy. If we don’t, if we resort to the visceral fight-fire-with-fire mindset, then there’s very little difference between any of us and those rotting in a Pakistani cave, or an Oklahoma prison cell, or wherever Giffords’ attacker winds up.

So after a year at thedailysquizz.com, I decided that the best move was to relocate back here, to the site’s original home. The reason was mostly financial — why pay for domain hosting when this is just a hobby site, really? — but also because in my own mind, the pressure of a .com URL made me feel especially delinquent as the “Daily” in the site’s name became more and more inaccurate.

That delinquency will continue. To be sure, The “Daily” Squizz is an awful misnomer, though I will endeavour to chime in on Twitter as close to daily as possible. Your best bet is to subscribe via RSS and get my new stuff whenever the hell it ends up being produced. Or, if you’re jonesing for my clumsily-written drivel with more regularity, check in at my other online home.

Thus ends this completely unnecessary (in the grand scheme of things) blog post. Thanks for reading, and continuing to read, and hopefully something I write (or have written) has/will made/make you think and/or laugh.

http://www.youtube.com/v/kz8tzP3oeDg?fs=1&hl=en_US

My guess: A lot of dudes in the Castro district whacked off to this image last night.

As an ardent sports fan in a town that’s quickly rising on the “biggest loser cities in North America” chart (watch out Cleveland, we’re coming for you!), it was with mixed emotions that I watched the (baseball) Giants franchise snap a 56-year championship drought last night.

(Based on the TV ratings, the fact that I had any emotions at all towards the series puts me in the distinct minority.)

On the one hand, it’s always cool to see a long-suffering fanbase be rewarded for their loyalty, and for having an awesome-looking ballpark. Plus, the presence of George Dubya at Game 4 made the prospect of cheering for the Rangers particularly unpalatable.

On the other hand, fuck them! I’m miserable, everyone else should be too!

Actually, not to worry… most of the residents of San Francisco will be miserable soon enough, if the terrifying projections about today’s U.S. midterm elections come to fruition. To paraphrase a colleague of mine, they should enjoy it while it lasts, since it’s the only blue-state-over-red-state victory we’ll be seeing for a while.

Come to think of it, I guess watching the Leafs piddle through a few more wasted seasons ain’t nearly as bad as potentially enduring a few years under a member of the Tea Party.

But October 31 isn’t the only way when we have reason to be afraid, be very afraid. For instance…

• For reasons irrelevant to this blog post, I spent yesterday morning in a Filipino Catholic church. Since the vestigial non-blasphemer in me prevented the rest of my brain from numbing itself with smartphone Sudoku, I picked up the missal and took a gander at the day’s readings. Among them was Wisdom 11:24 which, in reference to God, states unambiguously: “Thou lovest all things that exist, and hast loathing for none of the things which thou hast made, for thou wouldst not have made anything if thou hadst hated it.”In other words: God created everything, and God loves every single thing He created, and hates none of it (because why the fuck would He bother creating something He hated?).

  I suppose the inbred dipshits in the Westboro Baptist Church (the few of them that are literate, anyway) missed that part of the book. They were probably too busy drawing up placards for their latest demonstration at a military funeral, or coming up with their latest explanation as to why Mathew Shepard deserved what he got.

  Of course, appealing to reason with a religious zealot is about as effective as trying to open an oyster with a cooked piece of spaghetti. So they rely on fear. God hates this, God hates that. God will do X if you don’t Y (p.s. we get to determine the proper method of doing Y). Of course, to those who don’t bother following a religion, or who have the cognitive capacity to extract the positive, useful lessons and messages from religious texts (and use them to improve their own lives, and the lives of others), this scare-tactic lunacy isn’t very effective.

  But for those on the spiritual and intellectual edge, these sorts of 365-day-a-year fear campaigns can be convincing, and win recruits… and that’s dangerous, because really, the only difference between the Westboro Baptist Church and al-Qaeda is the number of willing suicide bombers among its ranks.

• Also for reasons irrelevant to this blog post, I came into possession of a targeted mailing from the Conservative Party of Canada, asking for financial donations. Reading the three-page letter in its entirely felt like a stiff shot of intellectual ipecac, but excerpted for your reading pleasure are some of the more hysterical (in the non-humourous sense of the word) bits, with all the accompanying syntactical and punctuation errors:

  “‘There’ll come a moment when the time is right — then, BOOM, we’ll go.’ That’s right — ‘Boom!’ that’s exactly what Michael Ignatieff said. Holy shit, I hope no one ever gets that secret recording of him saying “Bam!” when watching an old episode of Emeril Live. They’d have a God damned field day.

  He will wait until the time is right for him — not parliament, not the economy, not the country — and ‘Boom!’ defeat the Government. This demonstrates why we must be at full election alert — regardless of Mr. Ignatieff’s line of the day. The irony of the Stephen Harper’s party accusing anyone of political opportunism would be hilarious if its tenure in power hadn’t been so damaging to our democratic institutions. But I like the notion that Ignatieff is just hiding in a bush somewhere, pretending to sip a Tim Hortons double-double (which he only bought for photo-op purposes; he probably drinks Starbucks lattes, fucking elitist) and just waiting to paper-cut the average voter’s throat with one of those “fancy learning books” he probably read while off being a douchebag “scholar”.

  (Following blah-blah bullshit about the Conservatives’ plans) You can contrast that with Ignatieff’s “me-first” view of the world. He’s in it for the short haul, for his own personal interest — and if it means crafting a Coalition to take power at the expense of pleasing the NDP and Bloc Quebecois, he’ll do it. The consequences would be ruinous for Canada’s economic recovery and diminish our stature in the world.

  That’s right. The federal Conservatives — whose own disastrous foreign policy played a large part in seeing us excluded from the United Nations Security Council, the first time we’ve ever lost any UN seat that we’ve run for — are scaring people with the prospect that a coalition government could “diminish our stature in the world”.

• That will probably come as surprising news to fellow G7 members Germany and Japan, both of which have had coalition governments (and both of whom didn’t see any accompanying diminution of stature… though, the events of 1939 to 1945 would probably take the cake in terms of bringing those guys down). Plus, y’know, Great Britain, which currently has a coalition government and, alarmingly, hasn’t been beset by mass panic or rioting (though if they try raising the retirement age or imposing economic austerity measures, we’ll see…)

See? Being terrified isn’t just about giant inflatable spiders on people’s lawns, or co-workers who wander into the office dressed like an Immortal from 300. Political and religious hardliners help ensure that there’s plenty to be afraid of, all year long!

While the creators of the map would surely posit that it’s merely intended as an illustrative guide to the official election results, the accompanying commentary makes clear the conclusion we’re supposed to draw: “Despite Rob Ford’s election night assertion that Toronto is united, not divided, the voting statistics suggest a different, and stark, picture: downtown wards overwhelmingly backed George Smitherman, and suburban wards overwhelmingly backed Rob Ford.”

In other words, readers are meant to understand that Toronto is divided, and it’s divided into the clever, sophisticated downtowners against those unrefined, barbaric suburban neanderthals. One can’t help but draw the parallel to the ingratiation of “red v.s. blue” thinking in the United States, where jurisdictions are defined not by the nuanced views of their populaces, but as monolithic blocs that, depending on what perspective you’re coming from, are either “with you” or “against you”.

We cannot let this line of thinking continue to infiltrate our civic discourse, Toronto. Please.

For all of Rob Ford’s faults, and for all of his opposition to the sorts of things that downtown Torontonians would probably find most important, he hasn’t come out with the sort of virulent, blanket insults against vast swathes of the city’s population in the same way that some of his opponents have. I don’t mean political opponents, of course; I mean those predicting the apocalypse on blogs and other social media in the run-up to the election.

The perception was created that anyone considering voting for Ford was, at best, naive and, at worst, an outright Cro-Magnon. In some circles, admitting to liking Ford was tantamount to endorsing necrophilia. Those in the self-perpetuating echo chamber of social media were dumbfounded by the polls, wondering “how is it possible that Ford is still winning? No one I know likes him! It must just be people from somewhere else. Oh, it must be those idiots in the suburbs.“

Guess what? It’s not true.

Federal NDP leader Jack Layton’s son, Mike, was just elected as city councillor in Ward 19, Trinity-Spadina. The area is about as “downtown” and left-leaning as you’ll find. If you wanted to oversimplify and ignore the facts, you could call the area a likely epicentre of anti-Ford sentiment, at least based on the “downtown v.s. suburbs” narrative that is being continually propagated.

Guess what? Nearly a quarter of voters in Ward 19 picked Ford. Sure, he came in third in that ward, and received the lowest percentage of votes out of any of the city’s 44 wards (22.2%), but still — 4,630 people in Trinity-Spadina looked at their options and decided Rob Ford was the best choice for mayor.

Dear God, four thousand people? They could be anywhere! They could have clandestine “Ford for Mayor” paraphernalia inside their homes! If you live in Trinity-Spadina, be sure to lock your doors, because those monsters could be anywhere!

Meanwhile, the map would have you believe that out in the “suburbs”, 100% of voters picked Ford… right?

Not even remotely true.

First off, while Ford claimed a plurality in 31 wards, he only claimed an actual majority in 24. Some of the wards where he “won” were actually incredibly tight — in Ward 26, for instance, he claimed only 0.3% more of the vote than Smitherman (a difference of 50 voters). But to glance at the map — where Ward 26 is coloured blue — you’d think that it’s all gung-ho Fordites, all the time.

Plus, if my number-crunching is dead-on, there were 238,774 voters in “Ford wards” that voted for a mayoral candidate other than the eventual winner.

Think about that when you pretend that the “suburbs” are just some wasteland of gravy-train-hating hillbillies. By adopting that stance, you’re ignoring the fact that literally hundreds of thousands of Torontonians in those areas didn’t vote for Ford.

Now, in fairness to Torontoist, I know they didn’t invent the colour-coded map. Elections Canada does it. All sorts of other official government agencies do it. It’s a quick, easy way to get a vague idea of electoral trends. And I’m not denying that, in a general sense, Ford’s supporters tended to live in areas of the city outside the boundaries of the old, pre-amalgamation City of Toronto.

But the amalgamation battle is long over. Toronto’s boundaries are what they are.

And the election battle is over. Ford won. As both NOW and Eye were forced to admit in this week’s editions, Ford didn’t “steal” the election — he simply presented a message that appealed to more Torontonians than any of the other individual alternatives.

There will always be ideological divisions within Toronto, as there will be in any city.

But democracy functions best when those in power, and the ordinary citizenry, accept that those ideological differences exist, and do what they can to reach a consensus that is to the perceived benefit of as many of the people as possible.

However, establishing these artificial, geography-based divisions — for the sake of ideological posturing — is counter-productive, even anti-democratic. Nothing is gained by anyone, of any ideological persuasion, when they purposefully cut themselves out of meaningful political engagement by automatically dismissing other citizens based upon their street address.

Like it or not, Toronto, Rob Ford is our mayor for the next four years. So you can either spend your time belittling, or questioning the intentions of, people who live in other areas of the city… or you can use your energy in a positive way, promoting programs and policies that you believe will make the city a better place.