Category Archives: Misc.

If I May Be Serious for a Moment

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If I May Be Serious for a Moment:

Yesterday, we saw the state funeral for Canadian politician, Jack Layton. It was a very moving and powerful event, and I wound up pouring my heart out a bit in the “What amazed you today?” thread over at the GalacticaBBS forum. I thought I’d take a brief break from sci-fi and fantasy and post it here, too. My original and unaltered post follows:

I’m not sure this is the right thread for this, but what amazed me today is the state funeral for Jack Layton, Canada’s official opposition leader.

I need to give some backstory here. Jack Layton was the leader of the New Democratic Party, a party long considered to have no real chance of mainstream success, but respected by many. The NDP has, in some circles, been called “Canada’s conscience.” Jack was the nice guy who finished last–until our last election.

In part because of the utter collapse of two of our other parties, the NDP experienced an unprecedented surge, going from a walking joke of a party to the official opposition, barely falling short of enough seats to threaten our ruling Conservatives. It was Jack Layton that led his party out of anonymity and into mainstream success, but a mere few months after this happened, he experienced a cancer relapse, and died within weeks, at the peak of his success.

And now his untimely death has been the top story for every Canadian news outlet for a week. His state funeral (which I’m watching over my shoulder as I type this) is dominating every channel. There has been an out-pouring of grief for him unlike anything I’ve ever seen from the Canadian people. At Toronto city hall, where he once served as a councilor, every available surface has been covered by chalk messages of grief, or respect–and all completely unprompted. All this for a man who was the butt of all political jokes this time last year.

Maybe it’s a case of we don’t know what we got until it’s gone. I know it’s true in my case. As much as I admired his party, I was never the biggest fan of Jack himself–I knew him to be a good man, but he always struck me as awkward, as trying too hard to be likable, especially during the brief period after the American election where he tried to convince everyone he was the white, Canadian Barack Obama. But now that he’s gone, I’m learning more about him, and I realize he was a great man. Partly it’s to be blamed on my youth; I wasn’t alive in the 80s, so I had no idea he spent that time crusading for the rights of homosexuals and AIDS patients long before anyone cared about either group.

Jack was an idealist, and never shy about it. He argued in favour of peace, even with groups like the Taliban, no matter how unpopular that might be.

As impressed as I am with the man, I am equally impressed with his funeral. From O, Canada sung bilingually to the readings from religious books of three faiths to the First Nations blessing given at the opening of the ceremony, this is the embodiment of what it is to be Canadian. Not out of many into one, but out of many into many, celebrating our diversity and the strength it gives as a people. This is a ceremony Jack would be proud of–he did plan most of it before his passing, after all–and that, more than anything, convinces me that he was a great man, and worthy of the heroic treatment he’s been given in the last few days.

It’s not often these days that I can take pride in my country, but today, I’m proud to be Canadian, and I’m proud that I voted for Jack Layton.

Au revoir, Le Bon Jack. One of the greatest prime ministers Canada never had. Orange crush!

Sorry for the long post, but I felt the need to get this off my chest.

Review: Source Code and a WoW Rant

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Review: Source Code:

So I recently rented the sci-fi time travel thriller, Source Code. I’d heard a lot of good things about it, but it didn’t quite live up to expectations.

Now, don’t get me wrong. This was a good movie. But it wasn’t as good as it could have been.

Source Code follows a soldier–Coulter Stevens, ably played by Jake Gyllenhaal–who mysteriously awakens in a time machine, where he is forced to repeatedly take over the life of a man who died in a train bombing. His mission is to discover the bomber’s identity before he can strike again, which is complicated by his becoming attached to Christine–a women who also died on the train–and the obvious stress of repeatedly dying in the explosion.

The movie does stumble out of the gate with the pseudo science behind the time machine, which is so ridiculous it makes me pine for Star Trek technobabble. Basically, the idea as I understand it is that you can plug someone’s brain into a dead guy’s brain and thus create a magic time portal to an alternate universe.

The other main issue with this movie is that it is not nearly as long as it should have been. This is a very complex and intriguing story, and cramming it into 90 minutes made it feel quite rushed. I didn’t feel as much regret over Christine’s inevitable and repeated deaths or as much of the pain of Coulter living through that horror again and again as I should have.

But I’m being more harsh than the movie deserves. This is a very good premise, and there are some pretty good twists. The acting is good all around. The ending is a little too neat and tidy for my tastes, but also very enjoyable in some ways–I can’t be more specific without getting into major spoiler territory.

One surprise pleasure of the movie is the interactions between Coulter and Goodwin, the woman operating his time machine. Goodwin begins the movie as a very cold and mechanical-seeming character, but as time goes on and she bears witness to more of Coulter’s trials–well, you’ll see. It’s an interesting progression.

When you get down to it, Source Code is a good movie; it’s just that it could have been a brilliant movie with a few small tweaks.

Overall rating: 7.9/10

Rant:

I originally intended to devote this entry entirely to my Source Code review and my graphics, but my recent trials in World of Warcraft have required me to vent.

There seems to be something about leading a raid that robs people of all humanity and decency. I’ve always known this, but lately, the problem seems to be getting worse.

Half the time when you whisp someone who posts a looking for more message in Trade, they just ignore you. I can’t comprehend the immense rudeness that allows people to do this–on the rare occasions I’m a raid leader or assist, I respond to every single whisper I get–but that’s not the worst of it.

A few nights ago, someone asked for a ranged DPS for Cho’gall. I asked if a rogue would be acceptable–probably a stupid question, granted, but all they have to do is say no. But apparently this was a grievous insult on my part, because the raid leader only responded to call me a troll.

Then today I spotted someone LFM for a Nefarian raid. Lately I’ve been having trouble with people who say “LFM” when they mean “LFG,” so I asked how many people he already had–not a step I normally bother with, but I was short for time and didn’t want to wait on finding eight more people. But I guess this is a no no, since he got snippy and refused to tell me. I let my anger get the better of me and made a somewhat snide comment in Trade about how he would get more people for his raid if he answered questions, and proceeded to get insults heaped on me from many more players. My ignore list, once seldom touched, is growing quite large as of late.

Ignored, badgered, and insulted. This is why I will never join a raiding guild. I enjoy raiding, but the culture it creates is abysmal–second only to PvPers in awfulness.