The Matrix Revisited

  I don't spend much time wondering what the hell is wrong with some people.  I just think of Cypher.

If you remember the movie The Matrix, Cypher is the rebel character played by Joe Pantoliano.  The Matrix was all about dystopian future, special effects, and ridiculous Kung Fu, but it was also a quick 'n dirty rumination on the illusory natures of free will and self-determination.

Cypher has always been, to my mind, the central character of The Matrix... not the Jesus surrogate Neo, not the saintly acolyte Trinity, not the devout prophet Morpheus.  Cypher is the weak link.  The disillusioned seeker.  The human.

To recap - in a distant future machines are intelligent and control the planet earth.  Having defeated mankind and destroying the environment in the process, the machines now use humans as living batteries to power everything.  Humans are kept alive in stasis, grown in tubes, and given an imaginary reality to live that is just a program or construct in their minds.  Only a few humans are able to free themselves from the system and live outside "The Matrix" in the real world, battling desperately for survival.

And Cypher's tired of it, man.

The rebel crew knows the price of freedom, and Cypher's tired of paying it.  Tired of being hungry, and cold, and scared.  Back inside the matrix he can eat fine food, wear fine clothes, drive a nice car and have a safe job to go to.  So he betrays Morpheus, Neo and the crew, giving their whereabouts to the machines, with only one request... put him back in the matrix, back in his tube, and - very pointedly - make sure he never remembers anything.

There's another election coming up, in the country neighbouring mine.  Things are happening that have never been seen before in their elections.  And one of the most surprising ongoing dynamics that I can observe in that country is, as it has always been, how those people who profess to be the proudest of the fact - FACT! - that they invented democracy and liberty seem to be those who hate those things the most.

When you vote... when you see how someone else is voting... if you ever wonder how they could possibly...

Think of Cypher.

I'm done now.

The End of The Innocence

The great failure of my generation is simply this:  We got while the gettin' was good.

We're not Baby Boomers.  We came right after.  Born in the early to late Sixties, we just missed out on the Beat, the Aquarius, the Disco days.  Those came in our childhood, when we were too young to have a place in them.  We began to find our ways in the world in the Days of Reagan - the genesis of the socioeconomic evils which have shaped this One Percent world.

We saw the Boomers cash in on their fortunate place in time and knew we'd missed out.  We saw the outward focus of the Love Generation turn inward, to the building of nest eggs.  And too many of us simply did the best we could, stashing away the crumbs that were left to pick up.  In doing so, we kept the system alive.  We fed the machine.  We led it to rot.  And we did our damndest, through every means available, to keep it's bloated body protected from harm.

My generation has cared only about self preservation.

And here we are today, the parents of Millennials, the only things that can redeem us.

There's a wave in the world right now.  Gay rights.  Transgender rights.  Black lives matter.  People are people.  Love wins. 

There's a political trend in Canada away from the current governing party, possibly in the furthest opposite direction.  And in the past few days I've seen a few articles published, asking what this Thing is.  Why it's happening.  How to make sense of it.  And I know what it is.  It's not the right, or the left.  It's almost not political at all.

This world I see is sick and tired of Paternalism.

It's a world, not just this country.  It almost happened in Britain.  It could happen in Russia, in Australia, where the leaders of their countries are practically comic-book villains.  It's happening in the USA, where politics actually become offshoot religions, built on the suffocating oppression of Paternalism.

The tone.  Snide.  Condescending.  Dismissive.  The speaker's every word betrays complete indifference to the personal worth of each citizen.  Political discourse has become so transparent that these people don't even bother to conceal any level of their immorality.  They needn't bother because over the past thirty years, politics became so cynical, so incivil, that my generation simply stopped listening, and cared only for self preservation.

But our children know what they're hearing.  And what they're not willing to listen to.

Paternalism may have meant something once.  When our leaders had actually been there and done that.  Put boots in the mud, and bled for our rights.  Those today who use the voice of Paternalism - my cohorts - did nothing to assume it.  And the next generation knows it.

Voters today, all around the world, are seeing that the emperors are nothing but frightened men in glass palaces.  And that Paternalism is nothing but Entitlement.  And that every voice matters.

Something's coming.  Maybe it's already here.  All I know is, I'm beginning to believe again.

I'm done now.

Blues for Newtown

I really wish Adam Lanza were still alive.  Because everyone's got an explanation why he would have gone to an elementary school to shoot and kill children and their teachers, and at least some of those people are wrong.  Only Lanza knows why, and he's not going to tell anyone, and that's either a problem or a blessing.

I suppose the response to this event is proof that it is still possible to blow the Western world's mind.  And yes, it took the mass gun death of children to do it, but the past week of rhetoric has been a general referendum on "My god, how did we get here?" across many platforms.  As so often happens, and will happen again, mass disaster is the only wake up call that registers on a large enough scale to have people reexamine their priorities.  Everyday tragedies are just too personal, right?  And there are many issues at hand here, so come on and walk with me.

GUNS.  Observation of much of this discussion has reminded me of one point:  I am not an American.  I live in Canada, and though I am greatly influenced by American culture, and I consume their products, and I am connected in some personal way to a number of American citizens, I don't live on American soil.  And what that means is that I don't, to the best of my knowledge, know a single person who actually owns a gun which is kept in their home.
The immediate knee-jerk reaction of many who live in a non-gun culture is that Americans are nuts to keep insisting on their precious Second Amendment.  But I've come around to the idea that there really is no easy fix.  I've witnessed an ongoing online discussion - and a genial one, surprisingly - that's been attended by advocates on both sides of the gun argument.  I've seen levelheaded arguments in favour of not just guns, but high-powered assault weapons, and high-capacity clips.  And what eventually struck me is that it's rather difficult for a Canadian to appreciate the climate in which this discussion is held in the USA.  Over the course of this discussion, I saw a gun ban advocate eventually move his thinking around to the viewpoint that perhaps he ought to consider purchasing a personal weapon of his own.  Newtown effectively became a trigger in convincing this person that, rather than taking others' guns away, perhaps he should arm himself too.
I'm a man of colour.  I am vigilant in public.  I am aware of what's going on around me, and situations I should avoid.  But I have never once considered that perhaps I should arm myself.  Being Canadian, I have completely internalized our fact that ballistic weapons are only to be held by law enforcement officers and soldiers. 
Though I am aware that life could change around me at any time, I am not paranoid about it because I still believe that I live in a largely just society.  I have never once, in my life, felt like a situation might arise which I might have to kill my way out of.  And what I see now is that a surprising (to me) number of Americans actually feel like this.  Like it's still the 1700s, or something.
I used to have a very simple position - ban guns.  My position is even simpler now.  I can't tell Americans that they should ban guns.  But as long as Americans continue to enjoy this hard-earned complete freedom - which it is - I personally have no desire to ever set foot on American soil again.

TEACHERS.  Yes, we've heard of many acts of everyday heroism.  I know what teachers do, I know many of them, and I know that they would die for my kid.  It's bigger than that; I would die for your kid.  President Obama says we are all responsible and I agree.  I've been on a field trip.  I've been in the schoolyard.  I would take a bullet for your kid, and so would any teacher I've met, and I would hope you would do the same for mine.  Because I hope that's who we are.

"MENTAL ILLNESS."  I'm actually more interested in seeing what the American discourse on this element of Sandy Hook will be.  How are you going to define mental illness now, and what effect will that have?  Aside from his brother saying Lanza had Asperger Syndrome, what clinical evidence have we that Lanza's acts were a result of any "mental illness" at all?  Is that not just a gigantic assumption?
I actually worried for about six seconds there that Asperger Syndrome would immediately become somehow demonized, that we'd see things like the next James Bond movie featuring a super villain with Asperger's.  People with Asperger's aren't violent, if anything they appear withdrawn and aloof to others.  There's a whole lot more going on here than that.
And frankly, as long as we're talking about "mental illness", how are we going to answer questions about the role of Lanza's mother?  The guns were her possessions.  One thought is that mentally ill people should be prohibited from purchasing weapons.  According to anecdotal and unverified sources, she was somewhat of a "survivalist", someone who chose to arm herself and her household in the event that the economy would collapse.  Sounds a little to me like someone spent too much time watching creepy HBO TV shows.  Isn't extreme paranoia a form of "mental illness?"  What's your perspective?  The President of the National Rife Association, Wayne Lapierre, said that "the only thing that can stop a bad guy with a gun is a good guy with a gun."  From a Canadian perspective, that line of thinking might indicate a form of "mental illness" in itself.

MEDIA.  They're everywhere.  They're us.  And they're interviewing kids coming off school buses who don't even know their friends are dead yet.  Quite the spectacle.  As someone with many friends who work in media, it's been interesting to see how tastelessly my ex-colleagues feel their own cohorts have behaved.  But this is what the business of news journalism has become - a mad sprint to produce "Content".  Many more people work in the content producing business today than who used to.  Schools are cranking out talking heads who know little of the old school ethics.  Giant media companies are focused on filling up airtime regardless of what is used to fill it up.  How are young journalists supposed to learn their craft in such an environment, anyway, now that the older ones can't even show them the ropes because they've been dispensed with?
As a highly online person, the fact is that today I learn about current events first through social media.  The world happens, people react, and I see their reactions.  But then I go to traditional media sources for information, data, and confirmation of fact. 
Traditional media needs to behave, hold itself to higher standards, and conduct itself with respect for its own profession.  Because if that sequence is ever reversed, that's when traditional media will become irrelevant.

TRUTH.  A six-year old boy named Jack Pinto was shot to death.  (Jack Pinto subsequently became famous for being a fan of New York Giants player Victor Cruz, which only made Victor Cruz more famous in the past week, which says a whole lot of what about our culture exactly?)  Jack's little friend John wrote a letter to him, and this is what he said:

Jack, you are my best friend.  We had fun together.  I will miss you.  I will talk to you in my prayers.  I love you, Jack.
Love, John

Speak like a child, indeed. 

I'm done now.

That's What Makes You Beautiful

This is an open letter.  It's my confession, and my final stand.  It's a declaration of independence, and an unconditional surrender.  It's my ultimate strength, and my absolutely fatal weakness.  It's the hole in my soul, and my reason to live another day.  It's a warm safe place where as a child I'd hide, and wait for the thunder and the rain to quietly pass me by.

I love women.

This may come as no surprise to some.  But this is not going to be a list of double entendres for your entertainment.  No, that sentence was meant in one way only, and it's three words, and it's a world of trouble, but it's the only way I know how to do things.

Perhaps I'd better start explaining.  Long ago, I had a close friend.  He and I would hang out all the time, and being young enough to question everything, we would spend a lot of time trying to figure out the hows and whys of things.  But he always had one particular viewpoint, he was the type of fella who just could never understand why women had to be so damn different than us about everything.

And me, I could just never understand why he would women to not be different than us.  About everything.  For various reasons, we're not close friends anymore, but that's another story.  Maybe it's because I grew up in a house full of women, and I've never had a particularly functional relationship with my father, but... I've never found women to bug me.

What's the most common complaint men make about women?  Probably something like "they're unpredictable."  So it's true.  And it's true that men are, for the most part, predictable.  (No one wants to be around a man who's unpredictable.  That's called "prison.")  Now, I have eventually come to understand that I'm a writer.  That means I need stuff to write about.  That means I have to ask questions.  That means I have to learn things.

And I don't learn from men.

My favourite schoolteachers were all women.  My mentors, in business, in life, have all been women.  The four smartest people I've ever known are my mother, my sister, my best friend's wife, and the woman who hired me out of college and made me a professional writer.  Men are predictable.  The only things I've learned from men are about sports, cars, and computers.

When Carole died my immediate loss and regret was that I would no longer have her daily presence in my life.  Yes, she drove me nuts at times.  I needed it.  A woman's presence is an eternal counterbalance, an unanswerable question that gives you something you don't have because it is something that you're not.  I regret that I cannot properly source the following:  upon the launch of a tasteful but graphic exhibition on the nature of sex at the Canada Science and Technology Museum this year, I read an op-ed piece in the Ottawa Citizen written by a professor in human sexuality at Carleton University.  The professor opined that, while the exhibit was well-done and factual, it sorely lacked any explanation of the spiritual need for sexuality... that the true gift of sexuality is in the joining of two so that they may experience and take the qualities of each into themselves.  I'm paraphrasing, for my own purposes.

It's what I consider to be true.

But - and I mean this wholeheartedly - my addiction and obsession is not about physical sexuality.  I don't have to be attracted to a woman at all to reap the value of her simply being a woman.  Once again, it's something I'm not, so it's endlessly interesting to me.  Over time, I've realized that I've never been happier than in the presence of a woman... friend, lover, colleague... and learning something I didn't know.

As I said, a fatal weakness.  I hear you saying it'll be the death of me, except you're too late - it has been already.  But no one ever told me I'd come back.  Can it kill me twice?

I have no doubt that I'll find out.

I'm done now.

Getting Nowhere Fast

So I took the month of August off.  Seems like most everyone around here did.  And it's a little difficult trying to find a new job in that kind of climate, when your e-mails go out and you don't even know if they ever got to where they were intended to go.  But that's not what this story is about.

Back to September, back to school, back to yes, NFL Football.  The megalithic spectacle of contemporary American sport.  The beast that devours all American television programming, and in many ways, all American culture.  I have been an NFL fan since I was a child, and I always look upon the beginning of a new season as a chance to indulge in hours and hours of... pretty much the only thing I really watch on television anymore.

This past weekend was Kickoff Weekend of the new NFL season.  And boy, was it ever boring.

One of the enduring axioms of the grand old criminal racket known as Boxing has always been that "styles make fights."  The entertainment value of a fight is related to the tactics each fighter uses in battle.  Two guys do the same thing, you get a boring fight.  Well, that's football now.  Everyone does the same thing, and it looks very technical, but it achieves surprisingly little.

I have in front of me the Sports Illustrated NFL season preview.  Oh, the fireworks it promises!  The breathless enthusiasm!  "Why no record is safe!"  Quarterbacks and receivers throwing, catching, pirouetting in an endless ballet of airborne majesty and orgiastic touchdown scoring.  But it's not true.  Yes, they're throwing more than ever.  But they're doing less with it.

An astute stat-based website, Cold Hard Football Facts, points out that even though more passers are throwing more than ever, and they're doing it more accurately, this is not the highest-scoring era of NFL football.  That time was actually the 1950s... an era most consider a dinosaur age of passing football.  But in those times, teams ran the football to move it down the field, and threw it... to score.  Today's passing game appears to be, throw the football to... look as busy as possible.  You know someone where you work who does that, don't you?

I watched, at length, possibly the highest quality matchup of the weekend.  The San Francisco 49ers at the Green Bay Packers.  High-scoring Green Bay, at home at legendary Lambeau Field, quarterbacked by the record-setting reigning NFL MVP Aaron Rodgers.  Let the fireworks begin!  And yes, the intent was there.  Green Bay played virtually the entire game on offense with four or five receivers.  Rodgers in the shotgun.  They often had a receiver playing the running back position!  Yet against the monolithic and methodical 49ers, they played the entire game from behind, and lost.

In theory the whole thing works just like the "Four Verticals" play diagrammed above.  You dispatch a bevy of fleet mustangs to race downfield and confuse the defenders, and gash them with rainbow throws to spots they can't possibly cover.  The scoreboard explodes.  But in practice, everybody runs around, the quarterback picks the safest guy to throw to... who is usually within five yards... and the defenders swarm him before he can go anywhere.  And you punt.  Again.

The whole thing looks like:  ineffective token run; short pass; short pass; get off the field.  Know what that is?  Canadian football!  That's why I stopped watching Canadian football in the first place!

I got excited once.  Late in the third quarter, the 49ers, nursing a slim lead, took a penalty and faced 2nd-and-15 near their own goal line.  The crowd smelled blood.  But the 49ers rolled to the left and sent a roiling phalanx of massive bodies blasting a path for the running back, seventeen yards to a fresh set of downs.  A RUN PLAY.  One which the putrid Packer "defense" was completely unable to stop, because apparently football isn't played that way anymore.  (To be fair, the Packer "defense" appears to be unable to stop any kind of football which is played.)  On the next play the 49ers did it again, only to the right side.  30 yards on two run plays!  Bodies flying like bowling pins!  Oh, now this was fun!  Time for a killer drive.  Time to put the foot on the throat, run the ball steadily down the field, impose your will and take over the game and put it to bed.

Two plays after that, the 49ers' offensive coordinator, unable to control his innovative brilliance much longer, called for a long pass.  Which of course failed miserably.  As did the inevitable expected far-too-short pass on third down, which handed all momentum back to Green Bay.  Indeed, Rodgers managed to throw a touchdown pass on the next drive.  But by the end of the day, he simply didn't throw enough of them to have made the (extraordinarly pretty) effort worth it.

I've been a football fan for a long time.  But this is merely turning into a lot of guys jumping in the air every 30 seconds, which I believe used to be called basketball.  And it's not doing what it tells everyone it's supposed to, which I believe is still called a scam.  Football, you're on notice.

I'm done now.

"You Are What You Put On Tape"

I'm going to say two words:  Penn State.  And now you know what I'm going to discuss.  Or at least you think you do.  For about the past 70 or so years, you'd expect I'm about to discuss football.  For the past 50 years, probably Joe Paterno.  Well, I suppose those things are still true.

The title of this post is a quote from the coach of the Pittsburgh Steelers, Mike Tomlin.  And what it means to say is that simply, on game day, it doesn't matter what you intended to do, or what your plan or intent was, or what you feel like or think your actions achieved.  What you performed achieved a concrete result, and it's there for everyone to see.

So let's start with the basics.  This is not a story about football; it's a story about sex.  Illicit criminal sex.  And as is usually the case with sex, only the people who were involved in the sex really know what happened.  And that's the heart of all the controversy with Penn State - who really knew what happened?

This we know - former football assistant coach Jerry Sandusky raped numerous boys on numerous occasions, over a period of many years.  This has been accepted as fact by a jury of his peers in a court of law.  By all evidence he did so on the grounds of Penn State University, using his position as an esteemed member of that institution to attract and entrap his victims.

This puts the university in a position of liability for its harboring of Sandusky, and it has called into question who among his superiors knew of his criminal activity, and what they did or didn't do to cease and prevent it.

And there, as I said, only the people who were there really know what happened.  And the most famous of them, Joe Paterno is now dead, and can say no more.

Now, most of them are going to face their own days in court for this, because they appear to have perjured themselves before an investigating Grand Jury in the leadup to pressing charges against Sandusky.  And that's fine, because the court will have its due process.  But the university commissioned its own independent investigation to be headed by an esteemed member of the law community and former director of the FBI, Louis Freeh.  And the Freeh Report appears to confirm the public's suspicions, based most tellingly on various e-mails exchanged among Sandusky's superiors, that everyone knew - especially Joe Paterno - and they covered it up to protect their own interests.

Appeared to confirm the public's suspicions - let me get back to that in awhile.

Since the report has come out, the NCAA has levied sanctions against Penn State's football team which effectively strip away everything it - and Joe Paterno - entered into record since suspicions of Sandusky's activity first came into evidence in 1998.  Let me say, I believe the NCAA got it wrong. Their justification of their punishment of Penn State is that Penn State made glorifying football success too important in its culture... but then they punished Penn State by removing football success from its record.  Does that not make football success appear to take on even more importance?  They punished the dead man by removing his name from their record books, as a response to the public's revised image of that dead man.  Ah, there's the public again.

The NCAA's response - and remember, the NCAA was not entitled to do anything to Penn State since it only oversees athletics - appears to have been based on the Freeh Report.  Now the defenders of the university and Paterno state their case.  The Freeh Report is flawed, they point out - it's independent, incomplete, not given due process of law.  Not everyone was interviewed.  Paterno is dead, no one can possibly know the truth of what he knew or did not; what he did or did not.

And on and on the lawyers will do their dance for years to come.


I think back to something I saw in 2001 that stayed with me.  Michael Jackson was about to release his first studio album in ten years, Invincible.  By this time, this album would reintroduce the King Of Pop to a younger audience, those who had only been children by the time he'd already ascended his throne, a generation who knew him not as a musical prodigy, but as "Wacko Jacko."  CNN interviewed people on the streets of Los Angeles, and I will never forget one young lady's response - "I think it's really good for him, considering he had to go to jail and all that."

Michael Jackson never went to jail.  But she'd assumed and believed that he had.

So that's my point about Penn State, and Paterno.  The lawyers can do all they need to.  The story won't end for a long time.  Anyone who wants to defend Paterno, including his family and his players, can certainly do so and may yet be proven correct.  But it looks like he knew everything, and it looks like he protected Sandusky, and that may be everything anyone ever chooses to understand.

You are what you put on tape.  Deeds, not words.  I think it's worth remembering.  You don't have to be a famous coach, or a star of any kind - it applies to all of us.  It may not stand up to due process, and it may not be fair, but ultimately those things may not matter.

I'm done now.

Can't Stop Rockin'

So if you don't die before you get old... what if you don't burn out, or fade away?

The colour of rock is, more and more each day, turning grey.  Which was to be expected.  And which is not a bad thing.  Unless of course, it no longer looks or feels like it should.

Rock culture has always been that of youth.  Mozart, they say, rocked.  (Contrary to what some of my former cohorts may think, I did not see Mozart play.)  Benny Goodman rocked.  The "Welcome Back Kotter" guy was on the bill at Woodstock.  At one time they all rocked... but we now live in the age of rockers who refuse to stop rocking.  The effect is not always Satisfaction.

Keith Richards has said that he will go on as long as he can.  He sees himself as a descendant of Muddy Waters and John Lee Hooker, who certainly never got too old to keep on keepin' on.  And Mr. Richards is right to say so.  But what seems to have been annoying me is the hard-won realization that, without reason to be, a rock show is ludicrous.

Given the choice to be among the oldest in a crowd or among the youngest, I'd opt for the former.  As time passes, I find myself more and more in attendance at shows with people who time is being less and less kind to.  To paraphrase a friend, "I always see the same people, but only at these shows."  And the effect of age on all people is the same; age robs mobility.  People move less (but drink more.)  Which is again, fine - we should all be turning it down from 11 by now.  Alas, the rock show is compromised when age takes full effect on its performers.

It's a spectacle - and rock musicians are expected to be spectacular.  ("I've seen things you wouldn't believe.")  Steven Tyler, now a crazy old woman, was simply the best front man I've seen in person.  So yes, maybe I'm demanding too much when I say that the rock show falls apart when the guys on stage become just regular ole dudes.

Saw a band at Bluesfest a couple of years ago; one of the finest houserockin' blues-rock outfits in the late 70s.  Except now they act and look like a bunch of tech salesmen on the weekend, same guys you'd see poking around the gardening section at Home Depot.

Saw George Thorogood a few weeks back, and this is where it hit me.  He looks like the great football coach Bill Parcells now.  Nothing wrong with that.  He and the band sounded fantastic - close your eyes, better than the records.  Nothing wrong with that.  But George made two big mistakes, in my opinion.  He put down the guitar and paraded around like Mick Jagger... which he never did, even back in the day.  He felt compelled to put on a show, but it didn't look right on him.  And... he put down the guitar.  He had another guitarist in the band, a younger fella, on hand to play the majority of the solos.  I went to see a guitar player who didn't play his guitar.

What's the point?  It has to be about more than just the rock.  I never once thought of age when I saw Prince; Santana; Tina Turner; Rush.  Who blew me away at the Queen Elizabeth II Diamond Jubilee concert?  The oldest performer onstage, Tom Jones, who simply bludgeoned the world with his undiminished voice.  These things are about genuine talent, and honest power, and undeniable artistry.  The true human element of soul power is what makes a great show... and that's the element that age will not mute.

On a certain level, rock is dying or already dead.  Many young people now care absolutely not for these things I'm writing.  They have their own culture now, and rock may be an anachronism to them.  So perhaps age is doing us all a favour.  Once the great conceit of rock culture was than anyone could participate, but maybe that was always just a forlorn dream.  Certain of those who stepped out of the crowd and onto the stage truly were blessed.  Time is stripping away the superficial layers, and leaving only the truly fundamental.

Naturally, as I write this, I'm looking forward to a show in September with Loverboy, Pat Benatar, and Journey headlining.  I'm going because I want to see Pat Benatar; I've always been a big fan of her voice and her true talent.

Only two of the five guys in Journey are original members.  That's par for the course with such bands, I guess.  But I suppose those two and I have something in common.

Livin' just to find emotion.

I'm done now.

Malignant Narcissism

So they found him.  The body parts guy.  Fittingly, the police caught up with a man who made an internet sensation and an international criminal of himself, in an internet cafe in Berlin, checking himself out on the internet.

We're living in the golden age of narcissism.  Never before have so many been so in love with themselves.

At the risk of sounding like an old man railing at invisible birds in the trees, I blame the digital age.  Free speech has been won, at the sacrifice of composure, dignity, and what used to be known at one time as "class."  Everywhere, internet denizens are falling all over themselves to... well, fall all over themselves.

We've got thrillseekers crawling over each other's dying bodies to get to the top of a mountain - an achievement which apparently no longer requires technical skill to achieve, only money - so that they can "tweet" this achievement to the world.

We've got psychopaths who may never have realized their inglorious potential had they never been exposed to the internet.  I'm no psychologist, but please hear me out.  The notorious Russell Williams lived the first thirty-plus years of his life as a model military man, never committing a criminal offence till a relatively advanced age.  Where did he discover the kink that set him off?  The internet.  What did he like to do with his victims?  Take photographs, which thanks to digital technology could be self-published.  Remember when someone else had to develop your photos for you?  (I do.)  Had he come along before the digital age, no Russell Williams.

Similarly, the just-convicted child rapist and murderer Michael Rafferty.  Surely, an unsavoury character in so many aspects, but whatever took him down the path of desiring sex with a child?  The internet.  The fact is, whatever dark hole there may be in your soul, there's someone else out there who has a similar one, and the internet is where you and that other freak can meet and compare notes.

So naturally it had to come to this.  A supremely narcissistic performer who escalated from strange writings to animal torture to a majestic performance of murder and cannibalism, enacted for his adoring public.  Don't believe he acted alone.  In discussion with a friend regarding this story this past weekend, my friend told me of someone they knew - a normal person - who sought out the video online and watched it.  They said it was horrible.

But they watched the thing anyway.

What the hell is wrong with us?

I never fail to be amazed at the blatant honesty of the Youtube slogan - "Broadcast yourself."  Yes, it's your right.  Your opportunity.  When did it become a demand of you?  When did your participation become obligatory?

Worst, narcissism eventually filters to every level of social media.  Sure, it's just a big conversation, and every conversation has always included people who just say "Hey, have you heard of this?" just as well as people who say "Hey, look at me!"  But the "look at me's" are shouting to be heard and seen and noticed over one another now.  And no one bothers to object to the "look at me's" anymore, because their behaviour is expected now.

So what's the risk?  What's the harm?  The same old thing it always has been... you may end up killing the thing you love.  You may eventually lose your digital freedom.  Because the more the "look at me" people infect the culture streams, the more clogged the arteries become.  When facebook becomes more like LinkedIn, and LinkedIn becomes more like spam e-mail... and next thing you know, the people you think are friends are the ones spamming you (which is happening already, by the way)... well, I suppose everyone will find the next hot thing to do, and move on to that.

Long ago, I studied computer programming.  I was good at it.  But I wasn't as dedicated to it as the supreme geeks were, so I moved on to other things.  Had someone told me then, "no computers aren't just going to be used for information processing, they're going to become a household's primary source of entertainment", well, I'd have thought differently.

Had they told me, "and you can video yourself microwaving a cat"...

Jesus, we've still got a lot of work to do.  May I respectfully suggest that we start with that whole "dignity" thing again?

I'm done now.

Monsters

"You, sir, are a monster."

With those words, Justice Thomas Heeney yesterday sentenced Michael Rafferty to life imprisonment for the rape and murder of eight-year-old Victoria Stafford three years ago.  And the reported evidence presented throughout this two-month-plus trial has indeed led me to reflect on the nature of the monster we find ourselves with.

A recent book was published about the notorious sex criminal and murderer Russell Williams, entitled "A New Kind of Monster".  Appropriately titled, in that Williams was an educated, remarkably accomplished, and widely respected individual, the sort who historically has not proven to indulge in such animal behaviour.  Rafferty has also broken the mold, albeit in a much less noteworthy way.

Given that the basis for the prosecution's case against Rafferty was the testimony of his co-conspirator Terri-Lynne McClintic, the only witness and other participant in the crime itself, the trial seemed to drag on as fact after fact was entered into evidence relating to Rafferty's actions and deeds around and after the crime.  It was seemingly the prosecution's intent to forestall the defence's assertion that Rafferty was an innocent dupe who'd been set up by McClintic... at no time did his behaviour show any rightful concern of being framed.  But while the "character" of this man may have been immaterial to his guilt in the accused offences, we were shown an almost incredibly dull portrait, a remarkably depressing account of a virtually useless member of our society.

Addicted to Oxycontin, but not in an incapacitating way.  Trolling dating websites and hooking up with a large succession of hard-luck women to lie to about jobs he never had.  Even dipping into bad-boy territory as a small-time pimp.  The narrative destroys any idyllic image of small-town Ontario.  Yet obviously the fellow wasn't an idiot, displaying enough tech savvy to download child pornography and to conveniently compile reams of evidence through the use of his Blackberry.  It seems as though he'd have been intelligent enough to embark on a real career if he'd tried.

See the picture of Rafferty now, the undated one which ran with every news story.  Close cropped frosted hair in an overly aggressive cut; moody soul patch; requisite hipster necklace; body-hugging graphic white tee-shirt.  He looks like any other schmuck his age; one of hundreds you see every day... "douchebag" at a bar; bouncer in the club; in line with his baby mama at Wal-Mart; yammering at his cellphone on the bus.  No outdated spectacles, no lisp or twitch, no barely concealed paranoia as in the movies... no, the dreary reality of the monster Michael Rafferty lies in how stunningly below average he is.

He looks like any other guy.  He could have been a hundred guys I've known.  But he deviated into sickness, and while one could say that his evidenced behaviour certainly displays the narcissism requisite of a true sociopath, Rafferty seems to have ventured down such a destructive path for the lack of other things to do.
(And in case you were wondering, I fully concur that his desire to rape a child drove this entire event, as McClintic testified.  The suppressed evidence was the final straw, in my mind.)
He became a piece of society which served no function, and no purpose, and which went cancer on the rest of the body, in the most horrible way... because, it looks like, he had nothing else to do.

That's the most remarkable part of this, for the rest of us.  The two people who killed that little girl could have been the next two people you see walking through the mall.

"Idle hands are the devil's workshop"... and in a society which leaves people along the way with nothing to do, they just might create a monster.

I'm done now.