A Great Article on Political Smears

So the early reviews are in and so far (yay!) the pundits seem to agree that Obama won the second... I go forward with fingers cautiously crossed, and hoping that people are smart enough to see past the non-stop smearing the Republicans have been relentlessly pushing on him... It's amazing, the Conservative party here in Canada has treated Liberal Party leader Stephane Dion in much the same way, and they certainly didn't wait for a campaign in order to do it... I heard on CBC radio a few days ago that 10 days (10 days!!) after Dion was selected the new leader of the Liberal party, the Conservatives were launching anti-Dio attack ads. We've seen everything, and - granted - the man is not the most entrancing or charismatic speaker, but to listen to these ads, you would suspect he's a bumbling fool so indecisive he can't decide what colour shirt to put on in the morning... If you watched the debates, or tuned in to any of the radio programs he's guested on since the campaign began, you would know this is far from true.
The sad thing is, parties continue to smear because smears seem to work... They're one of these things that work even though they shouldn't. Even though they're beneath us, and and beneath our decency, and beneath our idea of fairness and common propriety. Why is it okay to tell lies about someone? If you really, truly think you're better, argue why you're better on true merit... Don't lie because you're afraid....
This article asks what would happen if Sarah Palin was running against Sarah Palin, and thinks of the possible smears... It's a good one. Take a look.

Little Angelas Love to Play

So, as promised, here is the story of how my Little Angela spent her first Eid in a faraway land named Dubai:
To start, let me give some background about how we tend to do Eid when we live as a minority, i.e. in Canada or the U.S. The community focus in this case tends to be about making it special for the little kids. Since the rest of the world is going about their day-to-day business and there are no pretty lights in the street or Santa's in the malls, we do everything we can to make little kids feel like it's a special day. Also, since most of the Muslim population in Canada or the U.S. is living far away from their immediate,or at least extended, family, visiting family is replaced with community get-togethers.
When I was little, we had some very good friends who would have a 'Eid Open House' party every year, and just about the whole Ottawa Muslim community would end up at Uncle Sulayman and Aunt Rafi's house at some point during the course of the day,and we'd eat tons of roti and cake and play on the swings in backyard. Now, whereas I had loads of fun, I can imagine the day was always exhausting for Aunt Rafi and Uncle Sulayman. Eventually, this activity shifted to renting the hall where the Eid prayer took place in the morning for the remainder of the remainder of the day so the families could all visit their together without anyone's house getting taken over (plus the community was really becoming enormous), and different community associations would take on the task of running games for the kids and arranging for yummy food and every other thing you'd want to have around at Eid.
What this means is that, when Little Angela was born almost three years ago, her Eid celebration included a pile of presents and new clothes and yummy food, but also that immediately following Eid prayer in the morning, the hall was transformed into a child's version of heaven, with circus games and magic shows and balloons and those crazy blowup castles with slides that kids love so much,and Little Angela would spend all day running around and playing and looking and doing everything her little heart desired until she fell asleep from sheer exhaustion, and this was Eid...
Now, in the middle-East, where just about everyone's in on it and the streets are decorated and everyone gets the three days off work, Eid tends to go more like this: they do the new clothes and lots of candy and presents thing too, but they go to the prayer as a family in a mosque, not a rented hall, and then they go to visit family and close friends and just generally spend the day together... no day-long child's heaven circus included.
Little Angela was devastated. Where was her beloved Eid? Balloon's? Blowup Castles? Magician's? Animals? My understanding is that the poor thing cried and that eventually they took her to a kids playground (in doors of course, the heat is brutal), and my brother in law ended up gathering all the kids around and telling them a story, and then invited Little Angela to join in the storytelling. Which she did. For a few seconds. Before she decided she'd rather sing ABCDEFG to her delighted audience of children...
Good God, I miss that child.

Happy Eidin' to All!

And to all a good night... Heheh, no just kidding.
Yesterday one of my colleagues at work asked me what we said to each other to wish each other a good Eid: Merry Eid? Happy Eid?
I guess everyone says their own thing, right? When I'm saying it in English, I tend to say "Happy Eid". "Merry Eid" just sounds too Christmas-y, and "Blessed Eid", which would be a literal translation of "Eid Mubarak", which is how we say it in Arabic, sounds too old school in English. It makes me feel like pronouncing the second "e" in "blessed" and getting all Shakespeare-like...
So, Happy Eid it is. I hope those celebrating have a fabulous day, filled with their favourite things, whatever they may be (friends, family, sugar, chocolate, laughter....)
Tune in soon for a great story on how my Little Angela handled her first Eid in Dubai... and in other important Little Angel/Angela news, my Little Angel is now able to say "Nonno" (which is the baby-version of my name that Little Angela came up with). For this delightful tidbit of info, I must take my sister' and parent's word: he refuses to say it into the phone to me... Ah well, good enough I s'pose.

Watch both of these

One video is Sarah Palin's actual appearance on Katie Couric's show. The other is the SNL spoof. You know we have a huge problem when the spoof is almost exactly what the woman actually said. Sigh...

The real ridiculousness in the second video starts at 1 minute 40 seconds:

Let's Do the Twist!

One little misstep is all it takes... To be honest, I'm not actually sure which misstep I took, but I had a little "incident" stepping out of the mosque last night and now my ankle is twisted...
One night's sleep, one pressure wrap, and one chocolate bar later, I'm feeling fine, but boy was it sore last night!

Yay for Attack Ads

From Last week's SNL

Celiacs, do you miss Pizza?

This is just a quick tidbit to share with my fellow allergy sufferers about a yummy product I discovered in the frozen food section of the grocery store yesterday.... Glutino frozen pizza. I have a problem with wheat, not specifically gluten, so I tend to buy or make spelt / kamut bread, which have a small gluten content that can cause problems for those with celiac. Glutino products don't use spelt or kamut, but rather rice flour, tapioca flour, and the like... The last time I bought gluten-free pizza, I wasn't impressed, but I decided to treat myself to a frozen pizza anyway (somewhat overpriced in a pretty tiny package at about $6, but hey, that's why I said "treat") and - are you ready for this - it was really.really.good.
Their other stuff is probably okay too if you can't have any gluten at all... Hope you enjoy like I did...

Clichés for the Campaign

From the latest Issue of MacLean's:

I come to praise this land of bounteous clichés

SCOTT FESCHUK September 17, 2008
My fellow Canadians:
Election day approaches. We have as a nation arrived at a juncture near a precipice that is located alongside a crossroads on the edge of the potential of a new horizon. So, please, watch your step.
My friends, I have been travelling our vast country to spread the message that we must bring change to Ottawa. But not just any kind of change. It must be bold change. It must be progressive change. It must be crazy change. I'm talking about change for its own sake — wild, flailing change unburdened by rational thinking.
My opponents talk about change, but what kind of change will they bring? Will it be unthought-through enough? Will they, like me, replace O Canada with Sign of the Gypsy Queen? Because I'll do it. If it makes you vote for me, I swear to God I'll do it.
In the 21st century, we must move Canada forward, not backward. Upward, not downward. Diagonal, not perpendicular. Also, Barack Obama was on CNN talking about the world becoming more competitive. So we should probably look into that, too.
Now is not the time to retreat to the garrisons of fear or the barracks of prejudice. Now is the time to push ahead toward the huts of progress, the condominiums of hope and that huge castle of unicorns. You see the one I'm talking about? Next to the Arby's of common purpose? Just hang a left at the forest of metaphor.
Let me say for the record that my rivals in this election are good people. They are decent Canadians who happen to require medication to combat their fetishes and chronic narcolepsy. In their defence, there is nothing in our Constitution that disqualifies a Canadian from seeking public office just because he killed a hooker.
Besides, I want this to be a campaign about the issues. I want my words to serve as eloquent testament to the power and virtue of my ideas. For more on my solemn commitment to elevating our public discourse, please visit my website. Just click on the ostrich that's taking a leak in my rival's ear.
My friends: this is the most important election since Canada was formed, since democracy was birthed, since prehistoric man gathered to focus-group the discovery of fire (consensus: too orange). The differences between my positions and those of my rivals are enormous and critical.
I would lower your taxes by a negligible amount. My opponents would lower your taxes by a slightly different negligible amount. I would reduce greenhouse gas emissions eventually. My opponents would reduce greenhouse gas emissions ultimately. I believe children are our future. My opponents told me they think your children are ugly and stupid. (You're not exactly easy on the eyes yourself, they said.)
People of Canada: I come before you tonight as just a man — a humble, ordinary man wearing a sweater selected for me by a team of stylists and advisers. The sweater is powder blue: feminine enough to appeal to women 35 to 44, with just enough navy undertones to keep men from actively debating my sexual orientation. Got it at Banana Republic.
At this point, I would like to mention my family in a forced and obligatory manner.
I love my family. My family provides me with strength, spiritual nourishment and heartwarming anecdotes for my television commercials. Basically, I'm just a family man. In fact, I'm such a family man that one family is not enough for me. I must travel the country meeting other families, entering their homes and yards trailed by 50 reporters, pretending to find their children adorable. There may even be a family standing awkwardly behind me right now. There usually is. Hello, Wongs. What's that? But I asked you if you needed to go before the speech, Grandma Wong. Just hold it, okay?
In conclusion, let me say: Canada is a country whose health care system defines us — as a nation with tremendous patience and a high tolerance for pain. Canada is a country with old people in it, and they must be pandered to, often while using the word "dignity." To them I say: you deserve to live with dignity!
From the down-home hospitality and fishing villages of the East to the open spaces and soaring mountains of the West, Canada is a land of bounteous clichéd images used by politicians to crudely evoke patriotic sentiment. Also, there are prairies.
Canada is a great country. In fact, it's the greatest country in the world. What I'm saying is: Portugal can suck it. Ditto Japan. Those places are holes and we all know it. Don't even get me started on Greece.
shall now speak French in a manner that suggests I'm merely repeating what I just said in English — when in fact I'm telling Quebecers they're my favourites and giving away the farm.

Cell Phone Funnies (Explainable This Time)

A couple of weeks ago, while waiting for my sister in front of my building for an errand we were going to run, I found a text from Rogers on my phone saying I could pick and download a free ring tone. Among the options was Julie Andrew's "My Favourite Things", so click I did, and my ring tone was downloaded.
I didn't get any calls for the rest of that day, but the next morning, as I sat down to work, I suddenly heard Julie Andrews singing at a surprisingly high pitch... I had completely forgotten. Instead of checking my phone, I assumed I had a window open on the Internet on some site that had audio attached, or that some pop-up was taking over my computer. I hurried to close all the windows, but couldn't find any pop-ups. Still, the singing had conveniently stopped (this, of course, was my phone going to voicemail). Twenty minutes later, she was back:
Rain drops on roses and whiskers on kittens!
Bright copper kettles and warm woollen mittens!

It clicked: that's my phone!!

I'm such a nerd.

Slightly Less Depressed Now

Yay! We do have a thinking population... One of my least favourite shows on CBC Radio is Cross Country Checkup with Rex Murphy, mostly because he's too right wing for my tastes... But today, while I was doing some cleaning up around the house, I turned on the radio and there he was, taking calls from across Canada about peoples' concerns/impressions about the election so far. The calls were overwhelmingly anti-Conservative and anti-Harper. These people were knocking the puffin ad, the sweater-vest family-guy ad, the attacks against Dion, all of it. They were also pointing out the fact that we need to focus on issues, not the leaders' personalities, and finally, they called out the media on the poor job they've done of fair and balanced coverage, instead of just mimicking whatever insults the parties (principally the Conservatives) have been throwing at each other. I found myself agreeing with almost every caller's points. Such a relief! I hope enough Canadians are thinking this way next month that we can avoid a Conservative majority.

Do you play nasty so you can eventually play nice?

Back to my current obsession: politics... So, we're off here in Canada now, and the polls are showing a possible Conservative majority. *shudder*. I had a good email conversation with a friend of mine about how we're all in a lot of trouble if the Conservatives get a majority and if the Republicans *shudder shudder* manage to win AGAIN to our south.
One of the reasons we're convinced these parties are doing well? They play negative. Sometimes, they downright lie. The lies in Sarah Palin's speech at the GOP convention last week are documented here, but you can bet that most people won't bother double checking whether she was telling the truth or not. And the jab at Obama's community organizer job in Chicago when he first finished university? I'm trying to understand why it's funny or witty to belittle the people Barack Obama was trying to help...
Here in the great white north, the Liberal party has decided to go negative against Harper. It's something that's been debated back and forth. Attack ads are typically nasty and below the belt, but they're also exceptionally effective. Can you say you're going to be above the political bickering, as Obama has done, that you're going to stay above "politics as usual" and then run attack ads against your opponent? It becomes a question of "does the end justify the means." This article argues that you have to, that the stakes are too high otherwise. At this point, I'm okay with the Liberals or the Democrats running attack ads. That's the game right now, and without it, their chances of winning, (or stopping a Harper majority here in Canada) are slim. And besides, there's lots to attack the Republicans and Conservatives on that wouldn't involve lying. They've set themselves up.

Finally, check out Jon Stewart's clip below, illustrating some typical hypocrisy on Palin's qualifications, and playing the sexism card.

Iftar

This is the word for "breakfast" in Arabic, both breakfast when you're having it any day in the morning, and breakfast when you're breaking the fast after a day of no food, no drink, no bad behaviour, no blowing up...
Back in university, we would be sitting in the computer lab pre-iftar. At first, this was "the Cube", a grey little cube shaped building filled with computer stations, for Computer Science students, and then we would be in the cornily named "library of the future", in the basement of the SITE building, once it existed. We would be scrambling to finish up some assignment or another, perhaps writing the last few difficult lines of code, or hitting compile and praying there would no compile errors, knowing we still had the horrible run-time errors to face. Maybe we'd have already found them; maybe we'd be debugging slowly, exhaustedly, ready to pull our hair out from the effort at looking the same line that seemed fine but was clearly throwing our whole program into disarray. Or, possibly, we'd have given up on all of the above, and had our programs open in some random window on the computer but were only pretending to work. Possibly, instead we were chatting, or checking hockey scores, or surfing away those last few minutes until we had a mandated break to break our fast and clear our heads of the "if-thens" and "elses" of the code that had started to infest our heads...
The SITE building was on one end of campus and Iftar was in the University Centre (shortened to the Uni-Centre, because what's the fun in saying the whole name of anything?), and we had two options to get there:

1. Follow the long, wining path of tunnels through about 5 buildings, zigzagging across campus from the inside to avoid the cold.
2. Take your jacket, go upstairs and brave the elements in what was a shorter trek than in 1, but also a colder trek.

I used to alternate between the two, depending on how much time I had, how cold it was, how long of a break I was affording myself for this communal fast-breaking and prayer.
In the Uni-Centre, dates were passed around or set on a table. Milk or water in Styrofoam or plastic cups was also there, and the desks had been pushed aside in the small room to make space for prayer. Half the time, you didn't know half the people you were breaking fast with, after all, this was a campus of thousands of students, in thousands of programs, and you overlapped here because you were Muslim, and you had class or lab keeping you here to this hour, and so weren't already home. Regardless, you said salaam (peace, our greeting in Islam), you said taqabbal Allah (May God accept your good deeds), and there was a sense of being in it together, of having spent the last 12 or 13 hours in a state of un-having, of emptiness of material so you could fill yourself with something else, some form of perspective, or discipline, or appreciation for the rest of the world, who fasted, not voluntarily so many days of the year. After prayer there were tables set up for big foil containers filled with rice and salad and chicken. If we were lucky, there was samosa, every one's absolute favourite. The food came from people in the community, and it was free: in Islam, we believe there is a great reward for helping the fasting break their fast.
We would sit on the floor or lean against the pushed-back tables and desks, those with classes and labs to get back to eating quickly, those with a little more time winding down. We'd learn each other's names, forget, and ask again a week later when we happened to overlap at another iftar. We'd clean up and go.
This was one of the things I missed most about university, this ad-hoc coming together of a community in a place where the world doesn't revolve around your traditions, where the days are not cut short during your month of fasting and the schedules made more lax. Last night, I felt it again at the McGill MSA iftar. There is something about students and student culture. Something more fluid, more flexible than at the office, where things are set and established, and it's really very... nice. I sat with girls I'd never met and some whom I'd met once or twice, or three WHOLE times, and laughed and talked and got to know them better. We turned the cafeteria into an iftar hall, pulling tables together and pushing them back when it was over. There were those same, massive foil pans filled with rice and salad and a pot full of delicious, Indian style meat. There were taqabbal Allah's and come again's exchanged. I think I will.

Let's Impeach the President!

Yet another reason to love CBC radio. I heard this song today and just really really enjoyed it. Thi is Neil Young's "Let's Impeach the President". My apologies to non-political junkies who follow this blog. It's just impossible to ignore politics right now with everything being the way it is, an election campaign happening south of us and one about to get called here in the great white north... Bear with me. Eventually, I'll be writing more and sharing less youtube vidoes.
In the meantime, enjoy:

For One Month

This is Ramadan. Between dawn and sunset, we don't eat. We don't drink. We don't ingest in basically any form (because I've had questions about chewing gum, popping mints, cigarettes, etc. But no ingesting happens. Nothing.) Before dawn, most Muslims will get up to eat something in order to go the rest of the day without. After a couple of days, the hunger pangs tend to subside and you get used to feeling a little emptier. One of the hardest parts for me is going without the coffee. I've taken to just drinking it before dawn...
The other, less talked about aspect of Ramadan is controlling your temper and behaviour. The food we don't eat is really more of an outward manifestation of the self-control we're supposed to exhibit through out every aspect of our lives. It's almost what I'd call a spiritual-detox period. We use this time to get back on track in our habits, our behaviours, our spiritual / ritual devotions, etc. Things we've let creep in that we don't like, we try to stop. Things we've let slip by the way-side that we want to do, we pick back up. It's like New Year's Resolutions in some ways, except for one month, as the whole community prays together, fasts together, and spends more time together, the hope is that the resolutions won't be broken a few days later, but become ingrained into our daily lives, at least for a while.
Happy Ramadan to all!

Hilarious Videos

I can't really help it now. After three days with M's family, I have completely converted into a politics addict.
These two videos K shared this afternoon, and they're so hilarious I thought I'd share with the rest of you...

22 Minutes: Support our troops


John.He.Is with the Will.I.am spoof for John McCain

A Great Angry Song

Still on a political tear... I have a feeling the next couple of months are going to be very intense as the election(s) gear up... Harper won't say anything officially yet, but we're almost definitely having one in Canada too. If only Dion wasn't so.... what? Nerdy? Un-charismatic? I'm afraid the Liberals will find a way to lose this even though most people aren't thrilled with the Conservatives either.
Anyway, I'll be off in TO for the long weekend, but wanted to leave you with one of my favourite angry songs, a perfect "if you're not outraged, you're not paying attention" song.
This is "Excuse Me Mister" by Ben Harper.

Politics - Lots of it

I think I've always been mildly interested in American politics, if only because it affects the rest of the world so much, but this year (and I can almost totally say this is M's fault) I've switched from "mildly" to "very" interested. Like, possibly "ridiculously" interested considering this is not my country...
I've watched all the key speeches at the Democratic National Convention so far: saw Michelle, saw the Clintons, saw Jo Biden. I plan on watching Obama's speech tonight of course. I'm not just watching because it's important though, I'm watching because I'm honestly, actually moved. Because (and I'm sorry, this is cheesy, but it must be said because it's true) this version of the Democrats gives me hope. This isn't Kerry-Edwards '04, where I wanted the Democrats to win simply because they weren't Bush-Cheney. No, this time around, I actually think Obama-Biden have good ideas and a more sympathetic, merciful, cooperative outlook towards their own country and towards the rest of the world. This time around, I actually like the politicians.
I never like the politicians. Never.
I came home from the book signing and panel discussion for Dark Days, and the politics seemed infinitely more important, because I had just finished to some very knowledgeable people talking about what happens when politics get out of hand, when the wrong policies turn into law unchecked, and the truth is it's frightening. It's easy for us to forget that because we're comfortable, but last night I was reminded that some of my fellow-Canadian citizens found that out first hand. And they'll spend the rest of their lives trying to recover from that knowledge.
Politics matter.

Today: Book Launch in Ottawa

This is tonight at 6 p.m. Should be fascinating. I will be there.

Changes

I wrote to be more like you, started it because it was something I could copy you at and then realized - wow, this is actually something I might be good at! - and started to enjoy it myself but even then, it was always linked to you in some way...
you were always the first ear to listen to my voice re-reading the words off the page, the first critic with a verdict - It's good. It's sad. It's strong - always so kind about it, lifting the grade of the words a point or two above what I would have given myself, turning average into nice, nice into moving, moving into powerful. I would read you those words still fresh off the page, still scribbled in my illegible handwriting, read them to myself aloud for the first time in that recital, for the first time since writing them, stumbling over the scratches and the underlines, the changes in mid-sentence, the run-ons, the flows that didn't flow and needed fixing.
For years, you read your novels through me, through the dog-eared pages of the latest book under my pillow, and I would breathlessly explain the circumstances of the last 2 pages, the lead up to that perfect sentence I had highlighted, that perfect sentence I needed you to hear... When the book was just "ok" I might have two passages to share, when it was amazing every second page was dog-eared, every second page needing reading aloud and after twenty-or-so sessions it was just "You need to read this book!" - to which you might answer "you're reading it to me anyway".
I still underline and dog-ear. I read more now that you're away, actually, read in some of the time we might have spent talking, some of the time I might have spent on the floor of your living room, playing dress up with my Little Angela or giving pony-rides to my Little Angel. Maybe when you visit I will greet you with a barrel-full of books and say "here, read the underlined parts". Maybe you'll move back someday and we'll spend the next three years working our way through the pile slowly, between our day-to-day. Maybe you'll never read them, but it makes me feel better to mark them up for you just the same.

Marketing/Tech-Amusement

Hands up whoever loves Seinfeld...
That's what I thought, everyone. Such the most hilarious show about absolutely nothing. Have you ever tried to explain a Seinfeld episode to someone, and after five minutes of ranting looked up to see their bewildered face as proof that you should stop, that this show really is about nothing, that it's the absolute "you had to see it" show, because if it was actually about something then it might actually make sense in an explanation later. Have you ever had that same person later see the episode and then, and only then, understand that it truly was hilarious and brilliant? I'm blabbing... I should stop.
So, what brings me to Seinfeld today? Well, news that Microsoft is paying Jerry Seinfeld $10 million to promote Windows Vista. Except, well, except that Seinfeld had a MAC on his desk for basically the entire duration of the show, so.... who's gonna buy that he really likes Vista versus the idea that he's just getting a ton of money for it? This guy over at Computer World made a great list of 10 reasons this partnership won't work... Take a look.