Now this is just great... Where else but on this fucking planet can someone use the fear of total economical breakdown to actually make some money! lol 

According to this sap son of a bitch, we're heading towards a second great depression... If you know about the first one, you know that people were starving themselves to Hades and scraping for anything resembling food, money, job, any or all of the above.

But as a history lesson, let's look at these coincidental facts and witness just how stupid governments and businesses can become, and how they easily forget the past when they start using rolls of 100000$ bills to wipe their asses in their 398923-carat gold bathrooms :

"
The Great Depression was a worldwide economic downturn starting in most places in 1929 and ending at different times in the 1930s or early 1940s for different countries. It was the largest and most important economic depression in the 20th century, and is used in the 21st century as an example of how far the world's economy can fall. The Great Depression originated in the United States; historians most often use as a starting date the stock market crash on October 29, 1929, known as Black Tuesday. The end of the depression in the U.S is associated with the onset of the war economy of World War II, beginning around 1939.

The Great Depression ended at different times in different countries. The majority of countries set up relief programs, and most underwent some sort of political upheaval, pushing them to the left or right. In some states, the desperate citizens turned toward nationalist demagogues—the most infamous being Adolf Hitler—setting the stage for World War II in 1939. 

"

Now let's review the irony in all of this in today's time :

People looked (as the most popular example) to Hitler, we (well, population in general, whether they had wanted it or not) looked to that stupid anus George W. Bush as he led the american people to war, subsequently leading other countries to war against the middle-east.  The economy was fine during that time, at least in comparison to today's fuckhell financial situation.

Additionally, today's effort do not seem that far off of what happened in the 30s - meaning the following :

"
The Great Depression was triggered by a sudden, total collapse in the stock market. The stock market turned upward in early 1930, returning to early 1929 levels by April, though still almost 30 percent below the peak of September 1929. Together, government and business actually spent more in the first half of 1930 than in the corresponding period of the previous year. But consumers, many of whom had suffered severe losses in the stock market the previous year, cut back their expenditures by ten percent, and a severe drought ravaged the agricultural heartland of the USA beginning in the summer of 1930.

In early 1930, credit was ample and available at low rates, but people were reluctant to add new debt by borrowing. By May 1930, auto sales had declined to below the levels of 1928. Prices in general began to decline, but wages held steady in 1930, then began to drop in 1931. Conditions were worse in farming areas, where commodity prices plunged, and in mining and logging areas, where unemployment was high and there were few other jobs. The decline in the US economy was the factor that pulled down most other countries at first, then internal weaknesses or strengths in each country made conditions worse or better. Frantic attempts to shore up the economies of individual nations through protectionist policies, such as the 1930 U.S. Smoot-Hawley Tariff Act and retaliatory tariffs in other countries, exacerbated the collapse in global trade. By late in 1930, a steady decline set in which reached bottom by March 1933.

"

And also what got to me was another coincidental situation - legal tender conversion. 
We saw it recently with Europe adapting to the Euro, hence surpassing the US dollar easily, it was pretty much the same bullshit in the 20s with Britan and their currency.  You'll also notice the banks downward spiral included below.  Another lesson no one bothered to learn since then.

"
There were multiple causes for the first downturn in 1929, including the structural weaknesses and specific events that turned it into a major depression and the way in which the downturn spread from country to country. In relation to the 1929 downturn, historians emphasize structural factors like massive bank failures and the stock market crash, while economists (such as Peter Temin and Barry Eichengreen) point to Britain's decision to return to the Gold Standard at pre-World War I parities (US$4.86:£1).
"

Now the following is a real beautiful peice of shit to my eyes...  I find it totally inaccurate and utterly stupid.
"
Recession cycles are thought to be a normal part of living in a world of inexact balances between supply and demand. What turns a usually mild and short recession or "ordinary" business cycle into a great depression is a subject of debate and concern. Scholars have not agreed on the exact causes and their relative importance.
"
What the fuck kind of shit is that?  It's not a normal thing for fucking CEOs and Presidents to receive 2039823 kabillifuckingtrillion dollars in compensation bonuses just because of their titles!  Or fucking oil prices to ravages and rape consumers just because they can and they know people have no choice any more in this lazy mother fucking day in age to gas up their fucking cars to go to work, play or pimp mother fuckers around.
There's absolutely nothing fucking normal about all the major car companies to suddenly go fucking brankrupt and demand billions from the governments just to stay alive... WTF is that bullshit?
And what about other huge pole-licking companies such as AIG and those fucking Lehman brothers?!

In fact, here's a little history lesson on the Lehman bullshit... Read and wonder how this could have happened.

"
On September 15, 2008, the firm filed for Chapter 11 bankruptcy protection. The filing marked the largest bankruptcy in U.S. history. The following day, the British bank Barclays announced its agreement to purchase, subject to regulatory approval, Lehman's North American investment-banking and trading divisions along with its New York headquarters building. On September 20, 2008, a revised version of that agreement was approved by Judge James Peck.

On September 22, 2008, Nomura Holdings announced that it had agreed to acquire Lehman Brothers' franchise in the Asia Pacific region, including Japan, Hong Kong and Australia. The following day, Nomura announced its intention to acquire Lehman Brothers' investment banking and equities businesses in Europe and the Middle East. The deal became effective on Monday, 13 October. In 2007, non-U.S. subsidiaries of Lehman Brothers were responsible for over 50% of global revenue produced.

Lehman Brothers' Investment Management business, including Neuberger Berman, was sold to its management on December 3rd, 2008. Creditors of Lehman Brothers Holdings Inc. retain a 49% common equity interest in the firm, now known as Neuberger Investment Management.
"

Did you read the line "In 2007, non-U.S. subsidiaries of Lehman Brothers were responsible for over 50% of global revenue produced." ?
And this, folks, is the global economy...  Whether we see it or not, whether we know about it or not, the economy is not directly or indirectly derived on small businesses, on consumer consumption, but rather on these overgrown fat fucking companies such as Lehman, the auto-industry, oil companies (most notably in the mid-east), banks (include real-estate in here too). 

They should do in business what they do in the NHL and cap these fucking cocksuckers!  Cap the fucking shit out of them!

At any rate, back to the original reason behind this post entry - the second apocalypse!
Yes friends, according to this money-hungry-by-publishing-a-book-to-instill-fear-in-people-about-the-total-descruction-of-the-economy-yet-by-selling-his-book-he-is-making-money mother fucker, we'll only see the light of day in 2013, when Jesus himself will come down and swipe his godly gold-as-his-halo MasterCard and clear all the bullshit under the rug... until 2093!

"Stock markets will bottom-out in mid-2012, he predicts, before picking up again in mid-2013. " 

If that were true, he would say why they would pick up, and if he would say why, he would know why, and if he knows why, surely other top fat-bastard people know why and how this shit could pick its fat arse right back up... 

But I surmise he's just throwing fucking numbers around like his own feces to his publisher, demonstration his thirst for popularity to sell his pile of shit book that wouldn't even serve as reading material to make me shit a big log on the throne.

And apparently, there's a 100 million baby-boomers that will all of a sudden stop spending money and covet it until they croak to be buried with it, therefore collapsing furthermore the economy. 
All of a sudden, all simultaneously... how coincidental is that... maybe they have baby-boomer meetings that we're unaware of - secretly planning the end of the financial world!

And I suppose the governments weren't aware that these people were suddenly getting older and hence not even bother to conceive a plan of action for when the time will come... Whether they did or not is probably all the same, considering their track record on intelligent strategies about anything.

And lastly, "However, Dent said it could be 10 years before Canada is out of the woods and the economy is back on solid footing."

10 years...  we're just going to kick back, enjoy horse-piss for beer and watch puppet-shows through a fucking cardboard box for entertainment while waiting for that 10th year to roll in and suddenly re-balance the economy and everything is back to normal...  nice, I think I'll go stock up on fresh beer and scotch right now.

What are your plans for the next 10 years?

Author predicts second Great Depression on the way

The global economy is going to get worse before it gets better, according to the author of a new book that predicts we're on the cusp of a second Great Depression.

19/02/2009 8:54:31 AM

Harry Dent, author of 'The Great Depression Ahead,' speaks with Canada AM from Vancouver on Thursday, Feb. 19, 2009.

CTV.ca News Staff

Economist Harry S. Dent, author of "The great Depression Ahead," told CTV's Canada AM that the large number of baby-boomers who are approaching retirement, and the over-stretched U.S. banking system, means the worst is yet to come.

And U.S. President Barack Obama's costly stimulus package likely won't solve the problem -- either for the U.S. or for the rest of the world, he said.

"The government doesn't understand that over 100 million baby-boomers in North America are switching from being spenders to savers," Dent said from Vancouver.

"People earn and spend more money until about age 46 when their kids start to leave the nest, then they spend less and less and save more for retirement. On top of that we've had the greatest housing bubble ever, more so in the United States that in Canada, in history."

Obama's stimulus package might cause the economy to spike, but probably won't lead to a permanent fix and could actually make things worse in the long run, Dent said.

"The stimulus is so massive that if we only have a minor rebound it's probably likely the markets are going to say 'oh my gosh, the economy really is mortally wounded,'" he said.

That "rebound" could last until the end of 2009, but by early next year the economy will be in a deeper downturn than it is now, Dent predicted.

"In mid-2009 it will recover, but it's the calm before the storm," he said, predicting that the hallmarks of depression -- double-digit unemployment and a falling consumer price index, will be seen in 2010.

Stock markets will bottom-out in mid-2012, he predicts, before picking up again in mid-2013.

Dent said he is telling his clients to take advantage of the temporary recovery that will come in anticipation of the stimulus bill, by selling their stocks and converting their investment to cash, then waiting out the slump.

"This was a synchronized global boom -- one of the greatest in history in the 2000s -- and now it's a synchronized global bust," he said. 

Until now, Canada's economy has been largely protected from the economic fallout by stronger banking regulations than those in the U.S.

However, Dent said it could be 10 years before Canada is out of the woods and the economy is back on solid footing.

"The bigger problem you're facing is a 29- to 30-year commodity cycle is also peaking here...and that means commodity prices are probably going to be down for a decade before they turn up again so that is probably the bigger challenge in Canada," Dent said.

Reading this piece of shit article makes me wonder if it contributes to the lack of morale and discipline, much-needed attention and simple fucking valuable time-spending-together, no-slaving-for-a-fucking-day-to-just-live-life for our children problem the entire mud-slinging globe is facing.

My first question when going through this funny article is "how in the fucking hell did they come up with 2 billion dollars as a stat number?".
And of course, my reaction was laughing.

It seems to me that fucking news corporations just through out numbers, a big fuckers too, out there like their much-needed braincells, in nonchalant fashion.

We're talking about one day off for THREE provinces.  Granted, Ontario is the most economical province in the country, but followed closely by Québec, in which doesn't have the famous "Family Day" holiday.
And, as mentioned below, not everybody in the selected provinces really have the day off, commercially.  So where did they get that fucking ridiculous billion dollar number? lol

Another stupid and funny section is when the ministry mentions shit like "we feel the holidays rejuvenates" people when they get back to work, that "they are more productive", etc ect...  They clearly don't even give a fuck WHAT the holiday is for.
To me, Family Day should be repetitive and widely announced and reminded.  The more time goes forward, the less families have values and spend time together to instill those values and so much required lessons that have slipped away over time.  Today's families are scattered, divided, divorced, fucked up more so probably primarily because both parents work too fucking much!  We work to survive, yet we either forget to live or don't have enough time/energy to live, much less to live with those we bring in to this cursed money-hungry world.

One thing's fucking guaranteed in my case - fuck work, it will never be worth being a slave while being away from my family and certainly never be worth the price either - I'd rather be homeless with them than rich and alone without them.

Think about it, we spend at least 66% of our LIVES at work...  and what do most of us have to show for it? fucking debts, most of which are left to the kids when finally croaking away from this wretched period of time we're caught in.
I'd have much prefer catching the plague or being stabbed through by the swords of the Four Horsemen up the armour's poop-shoot in the dark ages than be caught in this horrible money-racing-hell-bent-at-all-cost-to-make-a-dollar era.

And besides, wouldn't you rather be happier looking in your son/daughter's eyes beaming with admiration for the mere simplest action than being scrutinized by your boss for slave wages and only ending up having him/her take all the fucking credit and butt fucking bonus for what you did?

 

Family Day costs small businesses, says group

It's Family Day in Ontario, Saskatchewan and Alberta today, which means a day at home for most. But plenty of others can't take the day off and that's hard on small businesses, some critics say.

16/02/2009 1:14:45 PM

Family Day costs small businesses, says group

 

A child plays in a tube at Casa Loma in Toronto on Family Day, Monday, Feb. 16, 2009.

CTV.ca News Staff

I was so pissed off this morning...  Leaving for work, heading out to the metro, only to wait 20 fucking minutes to hear an announcement that it was delayed for an undetermined period of time.

Fucking assholes!  They fucking jack up the prices of tickets and passes to a level way higher than their fuck-you-finger up their brown eye and they increase in lack of services!
In one fucking year (between 2003-2004) they shot up the prices 4 times, totalling an increase of 6$ more per monthly passes.  I remember when a single fucking ticket was 1.05$ in 1997 and now it's 3$.  The monthly pass was 28$ and now it's 68$!  1997 was not that long ago when you start comparing price increases to this degree.  And to top it off, as aforementioned, the cocksuckers reduce service.  I haven't seen yet a week go by when the big bastard is fucked out of comission for undetermined periods of times.

If only we were paying more to get more, but instead we're paying four times as much to get four times less! 

And to all you fat fucks jumping in front of these blue fucking wagons of shit, here's my finger to you - instead of just doing yourselves a favour, do us a favour too and jump when it's not rush hour, you imbecile inconsiderate idiots.  The rest of us have a life that we like to get on with, even though sometimes it consists of slaving for a company, it's better than having someone windex our fucking guts off a metro's front windshield!

And to the president of the STM, here's a special big FUCK YOU to you!  Why don't you get out of your shitty Lexus gassed up with millions of $$$ and take the fucking metro yourself and see what it's like and see the results of your fucking incompetence!  I'd spray-paint your fucking face with graffiti just like how the stations you supposedly manage are filled with them.

And what if that were true?  What would stop someone from saying "this fucking colt 45 is a part of my religion, you can't take it away from me, I'm allowed to carry it on me at all times" ect ect.   What the fuck is next?

I'm all for diversity, equal rights and all that bullshit, but sweet tap dancing christ, where's the limit? 
Religion is the basis of all wars, the enforcer of them just as much. 
And if all I had to do was deny I used my weapon and walk away freely, who'll be the next Manson and shit to walk the streets, be in school or eat at the table next to you in a restaurant?

Just 2 years ago in Montréal, some fucking lunatic went on a rampage at Dawsom college with guns, what prevents others to reach the same mental destination, but mostly fully equipped to contribute invariable and ever-conclusive consequences? 

Read this shit and think about it - if other "weapons" would be a part of any religion and how safe you would feel next to someone who carries them.

Teen charged in kirpan assault denies using dagger as weapon

lol I can't stop laughing at this and every other time I've read similar news.

Why is it that fucking organizations feel the need to blast the shit out of these idiot "stars" ?
They're nothing but mere puppets anyway! 

I just read that Miley Cyrus (and I don't even fucking know all that much about her to begin with, much less interested, only the fact that she's "popular" and will probably pop her cherry on camera like the others that have done in line) apologized for an "inappropriate" picture circulating the internet apparently bashing the hell out of asian - hell, they make it sound like Pearl Habour was inexistent lol

Look at this shit and tell me if it's offensive...  then, 5 minutes later, pretend some unknown fuckwit bastard does this with a bunch of his/her even more unknown fuckwit gang of fuckwits and try to imagine a supposed asian organization getting pissed off to this publically ridiculing point.

I surmise she's the one in the middle, about to get her fluff tuffed by that super retarded buckwheat she's sitting on.
But I digress.   Naturally, the asian organization would feel pretty god damn stupid letting one of their own retarded fuck just sit there, much less associate with, amongst such a group - but hey, he's pulling a "represent, yo" shout out for all asians who'd probably want to pecker-up a chick at any cost.

Besides, we've all imitated someone of another race, how many of us had to publically apologize for it and get that apology refused by some fucking racial organization?  Bunch of fucking grudge-holding pole smokers, it's not as if they were fucking spray-painting Nazi signs and beating the shit out of other ethnicities while miss anus-Cyrus was singing or acting out or whatever the fuck she does racial shit.

They're kids, they're stupid and they'll grow up (most likely stupid, but we can pray they'll be a tad less stupid) - fuck off OCA, go eat a bag of rice or some General Tao and do something useful instead like bashing a high school for not having elected an asian as president of the math club.

Here's a sample of the story.

 

 

Credit: Jon Kopaloff/FilmMagic

Sorry Excuse

 

by Ryan Porter
Miley Cyrus's "goofy face" line might have worked on the four-year-olds, but it's not gonna work on the Organization of Chinese Americans.

Last week, Miley Cyrus taught us an invaluable lesson about racial sensitivity: if you do something people consider offensive, blame their imaginations. Then name drop Britney. Then change into the Hannah Montana wig and tell the world that Miley has died in a freak trampolining accident, but her last words were "Hannah... take over my career... ecghhh!" While that may have worked on her fanbase, ages one and under, the Chinese-American advocacy group, the OCA, are not going to let Miley off the hook with an "I'm sorry people made a big deal about me being racially insensitive" apology.

"The picture is offensive and now this statement is inadequate," group spokesperson George Wu tells Celebuzz. "It's not a real apology. We're not backing down without a fuller apology." Miley had her role model status called into question last week when a photo of her and some pals pulling their eyes back into narrow slits alongside an Asian guy leaked onto the internet. She posted a statement to her website that sidestepped the issue and bemoaned her new status as America's Celebrity whipping girl.

Miley does get unfairly criticized, but the OCA is right: her apology was a whole lot of nothing. But Disney probably told her to write it, so let them apologize. They can also apologize for the Siamese cats from Lady and the Tramp while they're at it.

 

How the fuck can this kind of shit be passed as a good deed?
What will they do without their compensation packages? How will they live?!  I'll be the first to kick their asses if I see them at IGA buy President's Choice frozen food diners with stacks of dimes and laugh in their fucking faces while saliva erupts from my mouth...

Likely that's a long fucking ways coming, however - they still have their ridiculous fucking million-dollar salaries, and for what?  Shifting the bullshit to underlings while taking the credit...  ahh, the history of the professional pyramid.

What pisses me off is that they try to make it seem as if it's a good thing what they're doing.
How in the fuck can this even dent their lifestyles?  They've already amassed a fucking big dogshit pile of gold over the time they've been up the cocksucker executive food chain, what's 5 million out of the dozen or fifty millions they already have?  To say nothing of the interest they can live on from their shares, fucked-up myriad investments, ect...

I said it once (in a blog) and I'll say it again - all these CEO/President fucks (and so many others) can save this hell-hole we call a planet from disaster...  and all they give is 5 million?  That's like the average joe giving a nickle to a homeless dude once every....... 30 years? 

Cocksuckers

Canadian bank CEOs to forgo millions in pay

An ode to my favourite band, and quite frankly, the gods of music as they are reknown historically...

Thanks to epic songs, fantastical lyrics and extravagant drum solos,
the great nerd band of the Seventies rocks on through the 21st century.
by Chris Norris
Photograph by Dan Winters

   On a warm April evening, the New Orleans Arena pulses with bong-infused cuts from the Seventies: Zeppelin's "Kashmir," Jethro Tull's "Thick as a Brick," Pink Floyd's "Us and Them" - the last a particularly apt choice for tonight's crowd. Under bright houselights, the 17,000-capacity venue is quickly filling with fans of the Canadian rock trio Rush - many resembling the two young men I find sitting 10 rows from the stage: brow-fringing hair, utilitarian glasses, sprouts of chin whisker. They look straight out of an '82 yearbook photo of the after-school D&D club - a suggestion neither finds insulting. "We fully embrace that," says Sam, 21, an electrical-engineering student with a Ziggy Stardust tee and Harry Potter tattoo. "That's definitely our lifestyle, the whole nerd thing. We play video games and listen to Rush, we play video games about Rush. That's what we did all last night in preparation for this." Do they read science-fiction and fantasy novels? "Oh, yeah," says Brad, a darker presence in black hair and an Alice in Chains tee. "Lord of the Rings, Sword of Truth," says Sam. Do they have girlfriends? -- "Aw, that's fucked up!" says Brad. "That's one stigma I'd like to change," says Sam. "But nothing could bother us right now."

   The American-Nerd Age is nigh. Today, everyone from the bed-headed club promoter to the siliconed spokesmodel calls themselves a "nerd" because they play Sudoku or can operate an iPhone. But 34 years ago, when singer-bassist Geddy Lee, guitarist Alex Lifeson and drummer Neil Peart first emerged on the music scene, the n word had teeth. And if you were heavy into Rush - three skinny Canadians with a fixation for sprawling rock epics and Tolkien references - you had found your home.

   "I've never thought of us as particularly cool," says Lifeson, now 54 but still in possession of much of his thick blond hair. Within Rush, Lifeson is known as "Lerxst" - a band in-joke from years ago, when the three members entertained themselves by inserting extra syllables and accents into proper nouns. But, "We were filling these places, and I noticed everybody knew all the lyrics, knew the drum fills and had that mentality like, 'This is my band. I found these guys,'" says Lifeson.

   As a current tour attests, that connection remains firm. Music taste aside, the scope of Rush's achievement is undeniable - 18 studio albums, more than 35 million records sold worldwide, a legion of fans as loyal as Deadheads and the Kiss Army. Still, much of the world ranks Rush somewhere just north of the mullet. Their hypertrophic musician ship is mocked by critics, their lyrical pedantry spoofed by hipsters, their singer's voice a subject of churlish speculation, including a '97 Pavement song that asked, "What about the voice of Geddy Lee/How did it get so high?/I wonder if he speaks like an ordinary guy."

   "Yeah, I heard that one," Lee says, like an ordinary guy. "I thought it was funny."

   Tonight in New Orleans, there is no such snickering. As the clock approaches eight, smoke starts billowing from stage left. The crowd rumbles, then leaps to a roar as the arena goes black. The aroma of cannabis rises. Screens above the stage flicker to life. The heroes appear.

   What follows is difficult to describe. It involves hysteria. It involves tears. It involves air-drumming of a brio rarely witnessed - not just the standard cymbal-snare pantomime, mind you, but a dizzying recital of torn, bell, cymbal, wind chime, all in perfect sync with the onstage movements of Peart, Rush's drum god and lyricist. It's a kinetic genuflection, variations of it occurring all around me. To my right an unaccompanied woman in camp shorts raises a thumbs-up sign every eight bars. A few rows up, a man is air-drumming, guitaring and bass-playing simultaneously (a spectacle resembling full-contact hacky sack). From behind, a forty-something man yanks my shoulder during a solo to yell, "That's an ES-355 guitar he's got there!" And for the next three hours, during songs about religion, suburbia, tidal pools and trees, most of this crowd will sing along with every word.

   In a dim, soundproof rehearsal space on the shore of Lake Ontario, the men of Rush are in their last rehearsal before their tour. Each stands in a separate area surrounded by axes, pedals, knobs and modules. In the late Seventies, when Rush wanted to expand their sound without adding a fourth member, the band began multitasking with doublenecks, bass pedals, synths and other accoutrements. Today, the official Rush Website's gear list for each member is an array of Trace Elliot Quatra-VR power amps, SansAmp RPM bass preamps and Palmer PDI-05 speaker simulators. Here at the rehearsal space, such items are discreetly tucked away in cabinets that presumably house an Intergalactic Space Modulator and a Doctor Who TARDIS.

   In the center of the room stands a red and gold octagonal box that looks like an Oriental prop from a magic show: It's the rotating riser that bears the drum set of Neil Peart. There are rows of toms, snares, bells and whistles, all customized down to the experimental black-nickel drum-shell plating and developed with Peart as part of Sabian and Drum Workshop's ROT) team. There are racks of Roland Brains, Glyph hard drives, MalletKat pedals - the triggers assigned not just to wood blocks and glockenspiels but guitars, keyboards, vocal effects and sound sequences from Rush's entire catalog. Since the early Eighties, Peart's growing percussion arsenal has included electronics. From the looks of it, it seems quite possible that Peart-who often displays total separation between his upper- and lower- limb patterns - could perform as Rush alone.

   A ruddy 55-year-old with a Robert Mitchum-ish brow, Peart stands drinking bottled water, dressed head to toe in a ninjalike black suit topped by a black tarn bearing the logo from Rush's 2007 album, Snakes and Arrows. One pant leg is cinched by a bicycle clip. His feet are in dancing shoes. "This is to absorb the sweat," Peart says of his outfit, his sonorous baritone recalling Harry Shearer's folk bassist in A Mighty Wind. The dancing shoes come from his study with jazz musician and drum guru Freddie Gruber in the mid-Nineties. "They're so you get the dance and glide on the pedals like you get on a dance floor."

   Today, the very phrase "Neil Peart" is shorthand for the kind of Olympian accomplishment rarely seen outside genres like classical music, a name synonymous with dizzying fills and stallion grooves, a rep that extends well beyond Rush fans. Even the man's personal history is a Nietzschean creation myth. Raised in the Ontario city of St. Catharines, Peart (pronounced "peert") skipped two grades in elementary school and began high school at age 12. He dropped out to pursue music and in '69 moved to London to get into a band.

   As Peart sat down for one audition, the keyboardist said, "This first tune is in seven," prompting Peart to wonder, "Seven what?" He had never dealt with odd time signatures. He was humiliated. Peart returned to Canada and began studying, practicing, mutating. Then he took an audition for a Toronto band called Rush, whose founding members, Lifeson (born Alex Zivojinovich) and Lee (ne Gary Lee Weinrib), had met at North Toronto's Fisherville Junior High in 1967. Lifeson and Lee were two guys with long hair and parents who talked funny. Lifeson's were Serbian immigrants; Lee's were Holocaust survivors from Poland. (Lee's nickname, Geddy, was sparked by his mom's mispronunciation of "Gary.")

   With drummer John Rutsey, the original lineup developed on the local bar scene, released a single (a cover of Buddy Holly's "Not Fade Away") and went on to record Rush, the band's 1974 debut album of generic heavy metal whose hard-rock single, "Working Man," won sufficient buzz to get the album re-released by Mercury Records. Rush developed a stateside niche as a Canadian Zeppelin manque. But just as the band was about to tour the States, Rutsey (who died in May) begged off- partially due to health problems associated with diabetes - and Lee and Lifeson began auditioning replacements.

   "The car pulls up, and there's all kinds of drums tied down to it, and this real tall, skinny guy comes out with really short hair," Lifeson recalls of Peart's entrance. "And we were so cool in satin pants and platform shoes and long hair and all that stuff, so I was thinking, 'Oh, this isn't going to work out at all.'"

   "Suddenly, he's playing all these triplets with his feet," says Lee. "And I looked at Alex, and Alex looked at me, and we're like, 'Uhhh.' You know in 30 seconds this is not a normal drummer here."

   Nor a normal lyricist. When Peart signed on as Rush's drummer, he also took on the band's lyric-writing duties, beginning one of the most infamous oeuvres in the entire rock canon. Peart did not write like a lyricist. He wrote like a philosopher. A German one. In translation. "I was ambitious and had wide interests," says Peart. "So I kind of tried writing about everything: autobiography, science fiction, fantasy, social commentary and junior philosophy." In 1975, after their straight-ahead metal album, Fly by Night, Rush dived off the deep end of prog with Caress of Steel. The album, whose five songs contained the 12-minute "The Necromancer" (which drank deeply from the well of Tolkien) and the 19-minute "The Fountain of Lamneth" (about a search for the fountain of youth), tanked. The band went on an internally dubbed "Down the Tubes Tour." "We were living in a little Dodge Fun Craft van, playing 250 shows a year and getting no support for the record," says Lifeson. "'Nadir' is the right word," says Peart. "It's not just your career, it's you. Nobody likes us, nobody wants us." But at this rock bottom, Rush found their moment of clarity. "We just decided, 'Oh, fuck it, let's just make a good record,' " says Lee. "We really did think we were going out in flames."

   The result was 2112, widely considered Rush's masterwork: a seven-part, dystopian fantasy complete with interplanetary war, robotic vocal effects, instrumental fireworks and clerical bureaucracies straight from the Dune trilogy. With a theatrical pitch somewhere between Jesus Christ Superstar and Pink Floyd's The Wall, 2112 portrays a galaxy controlled by one Red Star of the Solar Federation, whose Priests of the Temples of Syrinx dictate all cultural life. In the titular year, a young hero discovers an ancient, mind-freeing relic - yes, an electric guitar - and brings this Promethean gift to the Talibanic priests, who promptly wreck it and ground him, sending him off to his bedroom, where he presumably smokes bud, bums out and eventually kills himself. After which a coup brings a new galactic order and completes the most heroic rendition of the cranky-adolescent-male consciousness ever committed to vinyl.

   2112 went multiplatinum and won Rush their independence. But it did more than find an audience. With philosophical touchstones in Orwell, Nietzsche and the band's acknowledged hero, Ayn Rand (whose politics got the band members labeled cryptofascists in the late Seventies), the album played a role analogous to that of L. Ron Hubbard's Scientology-launching book, Dianetics - eventually amassing the most die-hard, detail-obsessed rock fans in history.

   It's Saturday at Toronto's Rogers Centre ballpark, where the Toronto Blue Jays are taking on the Boston Red Sox. Lee and I are right behind home plate in his incomparable season-ticket seats, watching Boston's Manny Ramirez; take a practice swing straight out of Gladiator.

   With his long hair, soul patch and round sunglasses, the 54-year-old Lee suggests either a French semiotics professor or an abstract expressionist. He's often noticed but frequently misplaced. "For some reason, Latino people think I'm Ozzy Osbourne," says Lee. "I don't know-big nose, long hair? Others say Bono."

   When Rush emerged as a hard-rock power in the Seventies, Lee entered the history books as one of the genre's truly sui generis frontmen: gimlet eyes, ectomorph frame, noted proboscis. Robert Plant may have sung about Tolkien's mystic realm of Mordor; Lee looked like he'd been there.

   "In the early days, it was tough," Lee says. "I used to sing really high and really screechy - early influences were guys like Plant and Steve Marriott, the soprano-ish screechers. So every live show we got reviewed, I was just hammered to death. 'He sounds like he's screaming after swallowing razor blades,' or 'the damned howling in Hades' was one of my favorites."

   But Rush were always an acquired taste. With Kiss releasing Kiss and the Ramones debuting at CBGB, the band hit its stride just as punk's aftershocks had cohered into a few core standards for American rock. Three chords and the truth. Basic structures. Passionate lyrics. No drum solos. If rock had a Geneva Convention, Rush would be war criminals.

   Their very existence defies most natural laws. Let's start with a real basic one: the sex, drugs and rock & roll triumvirate. Sitting under Toronto's former Sky-Dome, Lee recalls Rush's U.S. debut, at Pittsburgh's Civic Arena in 1974. "They asked us if we wanted anything in our dressing room, so I asked for some Southern Comfort," he says. "I read that rock singers drank that before they went on. So I had this little shot when we go on, and I'm like, 'Holy mackerel!' I've got all of 26 minutes to play, and I'm dizzy for half of it." Behold Rush's entire history of onstage intoxication.

   Now for the sex. This wont take long either. Lifeson is married to his first girlfriend, Lee is married to his high school sweetheart, and Peart was with the same woman for 22 years until she passed away in 1997. Of Rush's 150-odd songs, not a single one concerns that rather popular rock & roll topic: chicks - which, when compared to the likes of Kiss, makes Rush more or less the AV Club of 20th-century rock.

   Sitting with his score card, Lee prepares to record the at-bat of Blue Jay and Rush fan Gregg Zaun - who chose the band's '81 hit "Limelight" as his theme music. As the towering riff rings out in the arena, Lee's real-time image fills the jumbotron, prompting a radio announcer in Boston to ask, "Who's the guy behind home plate that looks like Bono?"

   A young head-buzzed man in a Red Sox jersey appears by our seats. "Geddy!" he calls - then bows with his hands clasped before him. "Thanks for the music, man."

   "Hi," says Lee. "Pfft," he asides, with a discreet grin. "Boston fan."

   After the battle of "2112" came the punk revolution, to which the prog giants ably adapted, attuning to certain NewWave frequencies - synths, reggae beats, shorter songs, the Police - deploying them in the wryly titled 1980 record Permanent Waves, their first U.S. Top Five album. Then, in 1981, Rush released Moving Pictures, definitively marking a two-year breach in the space-time continuum: Rush became a pop act.

   "Suddenly our audience doubled for that one year," recalls Peart. "We were suddenly twice as popular, twice as many demands, twice as many strange stalkers and all of that."

   By then. Lee, Lifeson and Peart were nearly as celebrated as individual musicians as they were as Rush members, topping ax-mag polls, gluing legions of youngsters to home-instructional videos, sneaking in some of the most knotty rock music the Top 40 ever heard. Led by an ominous synth hiss and a low, swinging beat, the hit "Tom Sawyer" works a nearly perverse number of scene changes, time shifts and modulations into a song drafting Mark Twain's character for Rush's pantheon of thought rebels - a "modern-day warrior" whose "mind is not for rent" - painting an immersive video-game world for his adventures. After hacking their odd shape into the pop landscape. Rush simply kept on evolving. They leaned on synthesisers in the mid-Eighties, leaned off them in the late Eighties, releasing the '91 album Roll the Bones - most notorious for the debut of MC Geddy Lee. They even weathered the arrival of a new generation.

   Having caught the video for "Smells Like Teen Spirit" on Canada's MuchMusic, Peart reached out to Nirvana's management to offer the band a slot on a Rush tour. His offer was declined with a word that must have sounded quite odd to this author of "Cygnus X-1 Book II: Hemispheres." "They said, 'We're an alternative band,'" Peart recalls with a chuckle. "That was the first time I heard that word."

   But Rush continued as a band right up until 1997. Then, on August 10th, Peart's 19-year-old daughter and only child, Selena Taylor, was killed in a car accident. Ten months later, his wife of 22 years, Jackie Taylor, died of cancer. In one year, Peart lost his entire family, Rush lost their drummer, and the band lost the will to continue. "I had no interest in it anymore," says Lifeson. "I couldn't play guitar. I couldn't even listen to music for a year."

   Peart told his bandmates to consider him retired. Then he decided to go on a motorcycle ride. One rainy morning, his BMW strapped with supplies. Peart set out on a destinationless journey that would take him 14 months and cover 55,000 miles.

   Peart will not discuss this period with journalists, but he did document it in the book Ghost Rider: Travels on the Healing Road, filling it with travelogues, correspondence and frank, emotionally harrowing accounts of his time riding, stopping at roadside cafes and skirting the abyss. At one moment, he describes watching his own instructional drum video. "It was like the guy talking and playing on the screen wasn't me," he writes. Lee says he and Lifeson worried "constantly. We'd get these postcards from God knows where all of a sudden out of the blue. He was running and hoping. I just kept saying, 'Keep moving, keep breathing, and hopefully something will happen that will make you feel like yourself again.'"

   "I think we were both feeling it was unlikely the band would get back together," says Lifeson.

   During his travels. Peart stopped to visit longtime friend and Rush photographer Andrew MacNaughtan, who introduced him to a pretty brunette photographer named Carrie Nuttall. Nuttall had barely heard of Rush. She and Peart married on September 9th, 2000.

   "I think that she was key in making him realize that he has a very unique talent and that it would be a pity to just lose that," says Lifeson. In a few months, Peart put out feelers to his former bandmates. "Some conversation started coming around that he wouldn't mind getting together with us to have a talk, so we got together and we talked and thought, 'Well, it's not the worst thing in the world to see if we can make some music again,'" says Lee.

   When Rush reconvened, Peart hadn't played drums in four years. "This was not Neil Peart the drummer," says Lifeson. "This was a guy that was a long time away from that." In incremental steps over the next 14 months, the trio worked on what would be the first Rush record in six years, 2002's Vapor Trails. "The record was all about him and all about what he had gone through," Lifeson says. "It has a character and an energy unlike any that we've ever done."

   When Rush went on tour to support Vapor Trails, they made their first live appearance in five years. The first date was June 28th, 2002, at Meadows Music Center in Hartford, Connecticut - an indelible memory for both the band and fans. Witnesses recall the moment when a tarp was pulled away to reveal Peart's drum set - prompting sobs from people who never thought they would see such a sight again. "That was such an emotional night," says Lifeson. "Those fans in the first rows that were crying. I'll never forget that."

   On a chilly April night, Rush convene for one last crucial task before the tour: dinner. The site is the Starfish Oyster Bed and Grill, a Toronto restaurant with gold lighting, dark wood, lavishly framed food-porn of fleshy oysters. "Galways, Clarenbridges," Lifeson tells the waiter. "Whatever you have of the Kumos, whatever you have of the Olympias. What else sits great?"

   "The Beausoleils are really nice," says the waiter.

   "OK, so let's get five dozen of those."

   I notice that a wineglass has mysteriously appeared before me, filled an oenophilic quarter full. "It's a white burgundy," says wine collector Lee, sailing over my palate with a single phrase. "It's a 2000 Dauvissat Chablis. The 2000s are doing quite well. This one is not oaked."

   "Don't miss a word," says Peart, leaning into my recorder, "of this fascinating commentary."

   Self-effacing poise may be rare to arena rockers, but like Green Party candidates and Nascar heroes, the members of Rush have adjusted to both idolatry and disregard. Just prior to tonight's dinner, they were once again snubbed by the Rock & Roll Hall of Fame, which instead inducted no greater rock luminaries than the Dave dark Five. But Rush seem convincingly unfazed.

   "I just keep saying we're too young to be in there," says Lee.

   "Yeah," says Peart. "Unlike all those other people, we're still working."

   "I think it really upsets our fans," allows Lifeson. "It's a big issue for them."

   It's true that Rush doesn't mean today what it did in '76 or even '96. It may mean more. Back when Peart was lost in America, Lee remembers knowing that his friend's path back would be through music. "Because that's who he was," Lee says. "The quickest way to health is to be who you are and do that thing that you love to do." And if today's Rush stands for anything besides dazzling chops and heady abstractions, it may be that simple, oddly courageous conviction: doing what you love - whether it gets you called a nerd, spurned by your label or turned into an icon.

   After an oyster course. Lee opens a third bottle: a nice Chateauneufdu Pape. He uncorks it, pours four glasses, and we raise them together.

   "Happy times," says Lee.

Man, I watched some of the skills competition of the NHL all-star game and I couldn't believe how much it sucked...

I remember when I was a kid and feeling such awe and inspiration watching the good old favourites be what they naturally were and, foremost, what they should be especially on the all-star occasion - the very best they can be.

This all-star's game had a pair of donkey balls dangling from its hockey stick and the players were licking them dry!
The breakaway competition?  What competition?  Ovechkin puts on a stupid fucking hat (minus the flag on top) and fucking gay sunglasses resulting in an appearance that would make even the gay parade participants vomit to the brink of death...  Players falling on their stomachs (probably denting their gold chains they can afford like pixie sticks) and hand-passing the fucking puck to their sticks to score? 

WTF is that bullshit?!

I totally fucking agree with this piece of blog I came across that comments on the all-star game too :

by Jeff Mackie

This was actually Ovechkin's back-up shoot-out move if the hat and glasses failed.

The NHL All-Star game still sucks

26/01/2009 2:40:00 PM

I'm not sure what a woman playing a violin, while suspended upside down in mid-air, has to do with the sport of hockey.

Then again, the game that followed the Cirque du Soleil performance bore little resemblance to the sport we know and love.

The NHL's 57^th All-Star Game was exactly what we've come to expect: the players went through the motions, they didn't play defence and acted as though body contact was some sort of mortal sin.

What a joke. Again.

The All-Star game is still a farce, yet Sunday's exhibition was the most exciting mid-season shinny contest in years. The participants actually displayed a hint of passion during overtime and the shootout. For a few minutes, anyway, their competitive juices – and sense of pride – kicked in. But the first 60 minutes of hockey was an abysmal attempt to showcase the game and its best players.

I'll take my cynic's hat off for a moment and acknowledge that this year's All-Star weekend was something special. You didn't have to be in Montreal to appreciate just how much the event meant to the city, and just how important the Canadiens are to the province of Quebec. I never get tired of seeing legends such as Jean Beliveau, Dickie Moore and Guy Lafleur paraded out to the cheering masses. The Habs honour their history as well as any franchise in professional sports. Once again, they did a magnificent job in linking the past to the present.

It's just too bad the NHL couldn't have done its part and put a better product on the ice for the fans in Montreal and the ones who watched it on television. I'm not sure what was more embarrassing for the league: the game itself, the skills competition, or the dreadful exhibition that was the YoungStars game.

My vote goes to the YoungStars game.

What was the point of flying rookies and sophomores to Montreal to play a "mini-game" with six-minute periods of straight time? The contest had about as much intensity as a yoga class in a seniors' home. While I'm sure the players were thrilled to be there, they competed as though they'd rather be lying on a tropical beach, sipping fruity beverages, trying to convince innocent young women, that yes, they are in fact professional hockey players.

The skills competition, meanwhile, reached a brand new low this year. The free-style shootout – or whatever they call it – was an even bigger disaster than last year. Did I see a player fall on his backside in an attempt to score or was that just a bad dream?

The participants looked embarrassed to be involved. Moreover, they were completely unprepared for the event and displayed an appalling lack of creativity. In the end, Alex Ovechkin stole the show, wearing a silly hat and goofy sunglasses in an apparent tribute to Elton John.

Come to think of it, Elton John would have made a nice addition to the weekend. At least then there would have been a few hits.

Jeff Mackie has covered the NHL for thehockeynews.com, and covered the OHL and AHL for Canadian Press.

This one makes me wonder if it would really work...

Montreal may ban insults to police

Montreal is considering a new bylaw that would make it illegal to insult police officers on the job.
The proposed public order bylaw is under discussion between the city and Montreal police, and could become a reality later this year.

I ran across this little funny bit of news after logging out of hotmail today and thought I'd share it.

However they track it is beyond me - faking an internet identity is not that hard and spammers and crackers do it in abundance to elude whatever they need to elude - and China probably contributes to a good 66% (as usual) of this so-called internet population, but WTF... here it is :

Internet breaking down borders with more than one billion users

23/01/2009 5:39:00 PM

"A key driver to that growth has been its ability to break down cultural barriers and cross over country borders," said Jamie Gavin, senior marketing and communications analyst at U.K.-based comScore.

"I think one of the Internet's great strengths is that it kind of unites people in that way," Gavin said from London Friday.

ComScore found that more than a billion people aged 15 and older used the Internet from home and work computers around the world in December.

Google, Microsoft and Yahoo Internet sites were the top three visited by the more than one billion users last December.

The Asia-Pacific region accounted for the highest share of global Internet users at 41 per cent, followed by Europe at 28 per cent and North America at 18 per cent.

"I think that just truly shows what a global medium it is," he said.

"Now it's not only representative of how the small the world is getting, it's actually driving that change itself. So obviously it's quite a big day for the medium."

Chinese users accounted for almost 18 per cent, or about 180 million users, of the worldwide Internet audience followed by the United States with 16.2 per cent or about 163 million users. Japan was third with six per cent followed by Germany with 3.7 per cent and the United Kingdom with 3.6 per cent.

But Gavin noted that while China is a populous country that has adapted its economy to technology, there are still censorship issues that its online users face.

Canada was 11th out of 15 countries with a 2.2 per cent share of the total worldwide Internet audience with about 22,000 users reported last December.

The Middle East and Africa lagged with just five per cent of the global Internet audience.

While comScore tracked Internet use via computers, the cellphone also will help increase its use.

Mobile Internet devices such as small laptops, called netbooks, and cellphones that connect easily to the Net combined with social networking and blogging will make a difference, Gavin said.

"I think those two things working in tandem really are going to make it more accessible to people and it's going to involve and engage people a lot more. From the growth we've seen, you just expect that momentum to get quicker and quicker, really."

Internet-connected cellphones in the Asia-Pacific region and in the Middle East and Africa is a way around not having mass broadband connections via computers.

"The technology is a lot more affordable and people have got the (cell) phones anyway." Gavin said.

Last year, the United Nations telecoms agency reported that the number of mobile phone users would overtake the number of non-cellphone users for the first time.

Analyst Carmi Levy said the Internet is rapidly becoming a primary means of communication.

He said smartphones that allow web surfing will be key in emerging economies and in those that have low Internet use, not personal computers.

"The PC revolution is strictly a western concept," said Levy, senior vice-president of strategic consulting at Toronto-based AR Communications Inc.

"There are generations of future Internet users who are never going to know a desktop (computer). They are going to shrug their shoulders and pull out their smartphones and go back to work."

Levy said even though more than one billion people have used the Internet, there is still a large chunk of the world's population that doesn't have any access to learning and knowledge via the Internet.

Gavin said the Internet with its "massive, endless, infinite pool of knowledge so imminent" is always going to give people more opportunities to learn, but he added it could also be argued that some people will learn less and retain less through using it as an easy way to fill in information.