Tannock.net

For the record, I don’t think that offering 0% APR financing on select vehicles counts as doing your part to get everything moving again.

Nor does offering 3000 cash back.

For that matter, the ‘Rebuild America’ sale is also not doing one’s part.

What does count is matching the first 5 million in donations to the NYPD/FD relief fund, even at just 50 cents to the dollar. Giving an iBook to every affect family does also. Donating proceeds for your concert tour, TV show, movie, etc, all count.

So this job posting was in the Vancouver Sun:

YOUR LAST JOB

This could be it!

A fully unionized company is expanding in BC. We have openings for 3 people who:

1)Believe in the unions philosophy

2)Interact well with others

3)Need to make a bare minimum of $600 / wk to start

Your job is to deliver & explain benefits that union members had negotiated for them.

If you qualify, we offer:

• Health, Life & Retirement benefits
• A genuine career opportunity
• Advancement into management
• Complete training
• Weekly paychecks

Take the next step toward your financial freedom.

Attn: Human Resources

Now my question is : which company is this? Why the hell is this such a secretive posting? It doesn’t even really describe what you do, or what qualifications are needed. Maybe none are, I don’t know. But any add that doesn’t specify who it is that you’ll be working for, is worth thinking twice about, I feel.

Relating to what I was talking about yesterday, here’s an article about just that in Salon.

Read this. (Stolen from Soapbox Girls).

Now, pretend for an instant that I’m American.

I love my country. I am proud to be an American. I love that I have freedom of expression. I love that I can do whatever my ambition allows me to do. I love that I can criticize my government. Or can I? Apparently not since sept. 11, 2001. The article above is one of just about a dozen or so I’ve read recently that show that no one is allowed to critique American policy right now. The Backstreet boys, who came out of this sounding surprisingly intelligent after their commentary about whether the U.S. was an ‘arrogant’ country, have been forced to retract the statement. College professors have been censured for saying negative things. Michael Moore has received innumerably complaints for his words. Bill Maher was forced to apologise for his words also.

I thought this “war” was in defence of Liberty, Freedom and the American Way? Was this attack not termed an attack on American Ideals? I certainly remember similar rhetoric being spouted by various media outlets.

I was reading somewhere the other day (I can’t remember where, or I’d link it), someone thanking their colled professor for teaching them that criticizing the current president is not criticizing the Country. A critique of American foreign policy is not an un-american act. Indeed, it is a most American of acts.

And why, as Ari Fleischer says, do ‘people have to watch what they say and watch what they do’ at this time? An Air Canada plane was returned to LA with a 2-fighter-jet escort after a man caught smoking in the bathroom uttered ‘an anti-American threat’. This is just ridiculous.

I almost think that the most amazing thing an American could do at this time is to voice any and every concern about current U.S. policies to their politicians. The similarities to Vietnam are becoming clearer and clearer : sending troops into a vastly foreign country half-way around the world with no clear targets or objectives, with no limits on the level of American involvement. What will the U.S. do when there are 20 000 U.S. soldiers on the ground, and they start getting killed? The Afghanis, like the Vietnamese, have beated several different armies in wars before. And don’t forget that their leaders are U.S.-trained.

Maybe I’m being paranoid and over-reaching, maybe not. But I know one thing’s for sure. I’m glad that I’m not an able-bodied American of fighting age right now.

So I just finished readin Interface, by Stephen Bury. Stephen Bury is apparently the pseudonym for Neal Stephenson (Author of Snow Crash, amongst other books), and his uncle (whose name I do not know). Now, for those of you who have read N.S, you’ll know what I mean when I say that his tone is mostly flippant humor. Sure, he is very Satirical. Sure, he touches on heavy subjects now and then. But mostly, I find him really, really funny. Interace is not. I think it is probably supposed to be. It is so outlandish in premise and follow-through, that really, it should be. It should be high satire. But it comes across to me as nothing but tired cynicism. The subject is that of American politcal campaigns, and how they use and abuse the system to their own ends. Specifically, this seems to be about how campaign media managers manage campaigns. Unfortunately, there isn’t a likeable character amongst them, which makes it a hard read. The lone likeable character is so incredibly unrealistic that you couldn’t possibly root for her.

Oh well. I wonder how much of the tired cynicism in this book stems from its subject matter (it’s so hard to remain satirical about a subject that really, has become almost a satire of itself), or from the injection of the N.S’s uncle, who worked for the U.S. government in some capacity for a while. I don’t know.

From Amy Reiter’s ‘Nothing personal‘ colum on salon:

‘Britney Spears and Justin Timberlake are apparently the victims of burglary. According to the Associated Press, four teenage boys broke into the house the couple rents in Florida through an unlocked (!) back door and made off with bottles of booze (!!), clothing, video camera equipment and “personal” videos (!!!). The heist happened over the weekend, while the couple was on vacation. Neighbors called police to the scene, and the teens were later arrested. One of the filching fellas was apparently nabbed in the midst of making a copy of one of the stolen videotapes. Oops! ‘

Heh. This would just be too funny if true.