social aspects of cycling

I'm an avid cyclist and commute all year round. But while in winter I do it out of necessity, my heart belongs to the road - pedalling away those miles on the highway.
And yet, I ride a 150 used touring bike. It's an exellent choice for its price, while a decent bike in this category would cost no less 1500, mine ain't 10 times slower.
Having skirted the price issue, I've come to realize that cycling is an expensive sport when comes to maintanance. People who own bikes are mostly upper middle claSS and normally don't balk at paying a 100 dollars for a relatively minor repair. And bike shops capitalize on that.
That's why the guys at the United Cycle had the audicity to charge about 90 CAD for the brake replacement and lubrication. The ridiculousness of this is reinforced by the fact that the bike itself costed no more than 150 when bought new.

Current mood: feeling cheated.

The most hilarious story of the day

BBC reports:

A thirsty thief is being blamed for downing a bottle of water, valued at ?42,500, at a literary festival.
The two-litre clear plastic bottle containing melted ice from the Antarctic was devised to highlight global warming by artist Wayne Hill.

But the warm weather is thought to have got the better of someone who snatched it at the Ways with Words festival at Dartington Hall in south Devon.

American-born Mr Hill said the bottle was clearly a work of art.

He said: "It looked like an ordinary bottle of water. But it was on a plinth, labelled, described and in the programme of the whole festival."

The piece, entitled Weapon of Mass Destruction, vanished half way through the festival. Mr Hill fears the bottle was taken and then drunk.

I just love that: it was LABELLED!!! Apparently, it's the only way to distinguish a real piece of art from junk these days. I remind me of something I read long time ago:
"What a nice peace of art! Yeah, look at the colors... sorry guys, I forgot my workcoat said the technician and snatched away what the two art lovers believed was the exhibition's most interesting object" - that's how I remember one of the stories form Marti Larni, a Finnish communist writer widely popular in the former USSR but apparently completely forgotten at home. He liked to make fun of the 'abstract art' and other forms of bourgeios perversion. I'm sure he'd mince no words to castigate those modern 'installations'.

Though the most hilarious part of it comes when the 'artist' spoke of how he had evaluated the piece:

Its value was worked out by the artist from the damage worldwide of the entire ice sheet melting - he estimates between ?6 trillion and ?9 trillion - and the relative amount of damage from two litres of water.

Just love the estimation part: something between 6 and 9 trillion, I hope his wife/partner handles his money for him. Otherwise, he'll be in trouble.

the burning feeling of entitlement

BBC reports:
"I believe it's valid even if it's against the law of the Church, because it is an unjust law,"
says Regina Nicolosi, one of the
Nine Roman Catholic women have been unofficially ordained as priests and deacons in North America, risking excommunication by the Vatican.

I've been just listening to one of those women on the radio and I heard her arguying that ordaining female priests would have to combat violence against women.

So it's the 'unjust law'. I don't want to dwell much on the matter itself for it should be clear to anyone that a private institution has the right to create its own rules, no matter how unjust or ridiculous they might appear to an outsider. But what I see here is the manifestation of the profound trend in our society which I called the sense of entitlement.

fighting the windmills: latest A&W commercial

Like any modern man, I've acquired the indispensable skill of switching my mind off during commercial breaks while watching TV. But from time to time, you cannot help but to tune in.
This latest A&W ad features a hubby driving his two kids at an A&W drive-thru. He orders a bucket of chubby chicken (10 for 12 bucks) and happily proclaims that something like
see, who says daddy can't cook dinner'
then he refuses to take the accompanying salad coz he forgot to bring another pot for salad.

Oh, I dunno where to start: how imbecile this man must be to believe that this load of junk food can be mistaken for his own cooking. But more importantly, where all the feminists denouncing this commercial for perpetuating gender stereotypes about men not able to cook even simplest meal. I guess they're content with such a disparaging portrayal of men. Anyway, I'm not. (For the record, although not a chief, I do know how to cook and capable of mixing a few quite decent meals).
That's my rant for today, signing off... :-)

The Soviet Book: all you wanted to know about Soviet publishing industry

It is with great reluctance I mention non-English posts here but sometimes the quality of the content is so high it's hard to let it pass.
An LJ star user, krylov, comes up with a treatise on Soviet books (In Russian).

virtues of the 'stiff upper lip'

After 7/7 events and the botched, fortunately, attempts last Thursday I heard two things over and over again. The authorities urged people not to give in to the terrorists and go about their daily business us usual.For their part, the courageous Britons displayed the famous 'stiff upper lip' which would manifest itself in the determination to carry on and have that evening pint mere hours after attacks.
I am not quite sure what the 'stiff upper lip' used to mean in the past but I doubt it involved placing one's head in the sand determined to ignore what's going on. Given the history of the 'nanny state' it's understandable what's the message the authorities are trying to convey to the public: Let US handle this, move on, and most importantly treat it as a law enforcement operation not a major societal crisis.
I see nothing courageous or commendable in just having a pint without having a major discussion on the 'root causes' of the bombings. And no, I don't mean the war in Iraq, British foreign policy, imperialism and other 'straw men' of the Left. If I were British, I'd like to find out how come loyal subjects of the Crown turned up so manifestly unloyal to it.

sport II

An Eastern European's definition of baseball - the sport best suited to eat a hot-dog while watching it.

sport and health

According to a study, 72% of men in the highest income bracket are overweight*. Is it just a coinsidence that golf is the 'sport' of choice for CEOs and business community?

*source: a Globe and Mail article.

Meet the Fockers: movie review

A few scattered observations:
- humor-wise: not nearly as funny as the Meet the Parents.
- A great sociological survey of white upper-middle class people.
- Apparently the source of even most fundamental Weltanschauung differences is the lack of sex or abudance thereof.
- Barbra Streisand and Dustin Hoffman are playing themselves and hence they are near perfect in their roles.
- The best/worst plot twist: a half-Hispanic, half-white boy who is publicly told that he is the son of Focker Jr. (Ben Stiller) only to find out later that he's actually not. No one should stay in the way of self-absorbed, narscisstic baby-boomers or prepared to get screwed.

Verdict: mildly entertaining, somewhat educational.

Pecularities of Russian journalism. Part II

I've reading Izvestia's leading pundit, a.k.a. a LiveJournal user, Maxim Sokolov, for quite a while.
He's famous and well-established in Russia but I don't think he'd achieve the same heights if he were to write for a Western newspaper. His articles are permeated with cultural references and direct quotes of Russian and Western literature in the best tradition of the Russian intellegentsia. North American journalists use such tools as well, but it seems to be much less of literary allusions and so on.
And I think I know why; for it a society atomized by multiculturalism the range of cultural references is narrowed down either to the most common platitudes or too the lowest common denominators provided by cosmopolitan show business. There are still quite a few people around who were forced to read Shakespeare in school and others from the Western canon but not for long. It's already being called the domain of the dead white males and it's only a question of time when it'll be eradicated from any ciricullum for good and replaced with something like 'Brother Bear'.
But I guess by then any political commentary will vanish too.

Blunt Truth

"We're not the public service of Canada, we're not just another department. We are the Canadian Forces, and our job is to be able to kill people,"

General Hillier on the raison d'etre of the Canadian Armed Forces existence.
Canada has no real army as her armed forces are not capable of combat, said Rex Murphy about three years ago. Though this statement still holds true, at least now one can say it's not the fault of those in uniform. As the above mentioned qoute demonstrates Canadian soldiers are not a bunch of wussies. Proud to be Canadian after all?

P.S. Gen. Hellier also called terrorits in Afganistan scumbags and killers. It drew a rebuke from the director of the Polaris Institute, a left-wing think-tank based in Ottawa. "His use of epithets such as 'scumbags' and 'killers' is reminiscent of language use by (U.S.) President (George W.) Bush and U.S. Defense Secretary Donald Rumsfeld"
Nice. So it's not that his Hellier's wrong in any way. It's just that he sounds too much like that eveeeeeel Bush. Let's define it as a 'Bushcrime' henceforth.

9/11 vs. 7/7: the difference

Here is Boris Johnson, the Spectator editor, pondering over the pertinent question why America’s 9/11 was carried out by some imports while the perpetrators of the London bombings were, so to speak, a homo grown product.

If these four young men were perfectly normal Yorkshiremen, then what the hell is happening to this country? Of all the shattering revelations of the past few days, the worst has been that these suicide bombers were British.

They were our very own. They were as British as the Changing of the Guard. They were born in British maternity wards, and attended by every comfort that the state could give.

They went to British primary schools and learned about Britain from British teachers, and when they murdered so many of their fellow Britons it was the British emergency services who tried to save what lives they could.

Like, give me a break. They weren’t. Or rather they had gone from being reluctant tenants of this country to being totally alienated from it in the course of a few years. That’s what I’ve gathered from reading their profiles in newspapers. Multiculturalism has failed utterly.
I think this is the most important repercussion of the London bombings. Not because people of different skin color cannot be integrated or assimilated but because when met with a stiff cultural otherness, as represented in Islam, it has absolutely no means to deal with it.

ideology cannot be beaten by force: a history lesson from 1941

Lately, the ruling circles of France and Britain have been trying to depict themselves as fighters for peoples' democractic rights against hitlerism. Furthermore, the English government has declared that the ultimate aim of its war against Germany is the 'destruction of hitlerism', no less. It seems and the English and then French proponents of war have declared some sort of 'ideological war' against Germany, which resembles old religious wars. Indeed, wars against non-believers people of other ethnic origins used to be quite popular. It is well know though, that they led to the gravest consequences for the masses, to the impoverishment and cultural degradation of nations. There could not have been a different outcome. However, those wars took place during the dark ages. Is this what the ruling classes of England and France are trying to bring us back to? At least, under the ideological banner a war of a greater scale and higher danger for Europe and th world has been started. However, such a war would have no justification. One may accept the ideology of hitlerism or reject, like any other ideology. It's a matter of political views. But anyone would understand that an ideology cannot be destroyed by force or through war (emphasis mine- I.Kh). That is why it's not only senseless but also criminal to wage a war, such as the war for the 'destruction of hitlerism', being covered by the false banner of the fight for democracy.

This is an excerpt from a speech delivered at the V session of the Soviet Supreme Soviet (parliament) by Vyacheslav Molotov, Soviet foreign minister at the time, October 31 1941. (The full text in Russian is here)

Try to replace hitlerism with 'islamist terrorism' and France with Britain and Britain with the U.S. and it all becomes so poignant...

cycling adventures

It didn’t take me long to start hating Edmonton upon my arrival here. Its bland, dirty, empty downtown, its mindless urban sprawl, lack of any grand culture, bars that close down at 2 a.m. (though admittedly it’s a North American thing, could be worse). But what makes my existence less miserable was what I knew all along. Once I’m done with my studies I will be outta here, to a greener pasture of the East Coast U.S. or whatever. Initially I was very sure I’d be presented with the opportunity to really ‘turn the corner’, not a horror prospect of ending up in an equally, if not more, hideous place such Saskatoon or Regina. But lately I’ve begun having doubts about it.
Last weekend I went to a cycling trip. It wasn’t supposed to be a long one and I spent half an hour planning the route that would take me out of Edmonton and back through St. Albert. But having forgotten that the shortest road is the one you know I altered my plans on the fly and wound up cycling on the Century Drive near Spruce Grove. Perhaps, the name fooled me. I had forgotten for a moment that in North America the significance is opposite proportional to the signified. The humble name Broadway stands for one of the greatest streets in the world while the Century Drive… After a mile or so, the highway gray asphalt turned into the brown coarse and few hundred meters later I found myself cycling on the gravel country road. My bike is a touring bike so it did get me through and I got no flat tire but it wore me down. But when I finally reached the ‘promised road’, regional highway 633 and my velocity burst to 35 km per hour, I found myself feeling happy. It was a hot sunny day and I was zipping by a giant canola field gazing at the pristine Alberta blue sky enjoying myself. I dunno whether I am to leave this place and there could be better rides out there but for one thing I’m sure – I shall never forget that one little moment when I felt absolutely, utterly in peace with myself and the world – Alberta, thank you for giving me this!

War of the Worlds: movie review

Ok, first things first:
This movie has been soundly trashed my legions of angry reviewrs at the IMBD and I couldn't agree more.
Yet, I still think Spielberg is a decent director and at the very least he knows his craft. It is the person responsible for the script who should commit harakiri or at minimum must be banished from the movie industry forever. The plot has so many holes it'd take several pages just to list them all. Generally speaking at various moments the movie brazenly defies verious laws of physics and/or common sense.
But Spielberg knows how to shoot a movie and all the script holes notewithstanding one can be genuinly impressed by his craft.

So the story is shallow but some implications the movie entails are more deep. I am talking here about the portrayal of Ray Ferrier, played by Tom Cruise, and his relationship with his estranged offspring.
Ray Ferrier is a working class guy, or what's now a more common reference to this type of people - 'white trash'. He comes off as a sheer looser, all so common type in Hollywood movies lately (it never ceases to amuze me how Hollywood stars manage to be both 'anti-establishment', i.e. anti-Bush, anti-corporation campaigns, and at the same time so condescending and elitist when it comes to the 'regular folks'. I mostly disagree with struturalists and discourse analysis proponents but it's just a trick of words: one man's working class person is another's white trash.)
His children are a five years old Rachel (Dakota Fanning) and a teenage boy Robbie (Justin Chatwin). The former is the sterotypical 'smart, cute, little' female, a girl-woman, very much akin to Lisa from the Simpsons. Many have found her quite annoying and I agree for deep psychological portraits are not Spielberg's best quality so he fails utterly, trying to present her as a smart child that's a child after all under precarious circumstances. Instead she comes off as either self-rigthous or, under duress, peevish.
Her brother though is a typical teenager, self-absorbed and full of coveted contempt for his lousy father. It's the relatiionship between Tom Cruise's character and his son that struck me most as being so contemptible. Cruise acts as if he were Robbie's older, jerk brother rather than his father. He of course set to redeem himself by sort of 'saving' them through the havoc of the invasion but even that is dubious. Most of the time, the trio are helpless victims of the circumstances (and why would he go to Boston in the first place?).

I don't know whether Spielberg's caricature of a man is actually an accurate depiction of reality but that it perpetuates male-bashing in North American culture is hardly doubtful.

Land of the Dead: movie review

Once upon a time I left the Ivory Tower to mingle with the great unwashed masses and watch a Zombie movie... (just a joke :-))

If you wanna find out about the plot as well as to read other people's comments go to IMBD. What ticked me in to write this review was again an article in that 'independent' newspaper wherein the author praised the zombie flick for being
"a scathing critique of the current right-wing culture of fear in the US", no less!!!
I absolutley don't want to go into any details outlining what was wrong with the movie on the logical level (again check the IMDB). I think it's unfortunate, yet predictable, that once you try to 'evolve' zombies past their original stamp as flesh-eating machines obvious contriditions of the zombie concept will be seen all too clearly.
I actually somewhat enjoyed the movie, at least I didn't hate it right away which is a big thumb up for me usually. But I considered it nothing more than mindless fun and actually almost regretted than I'm not that blood-thirsty (or just pure sick) to enjoy all those 'gory scenes throughout'.

But to praise this mere piece of entertainment for its profoundness?? Gimme a break!!! In fact, it tells something about the current socio-cultural climate where a cheap shot at Bush can make an otherwise totally vacouous movie into a 'scathing critique', at lest for some.

So here's my verdict: if you don't have a 'movie budget' and/or have time to spare, it'd be okay to see this movie. However, you got to be choosy about your summer movies, don't bother going - you won't miss out much. (2 stars out of five)

ironic dictionary of our time: "independent media"

I am a voracious reader when it comes to reading newspapers. Hell, I am a newspaper junkie as I've been spending countless hours skimming through thick Canadian newspapers (in Russia, papers aren't nearly as thick and content-rich). I even read so called 'free' newspapers and herein is the theme of this post.
They boast their 'independence' as compared to the mainstream media outlets and encourage it in others such as this article on the Independent World Television which would be free for all if you just pay them 50 backs once. Apart from looking suspiciously like a big scale scam to me, it's of course sadly obvious, if you read the article, that the word 'indepedent' in the title might as well be substituted with left-wing. It's funny though how in the article Fox is used as the primary example for the alleged right-wing dominance of the media landscape in a country where it's not even legally available. Yet, there's no mention of CBC, Toronto Star or even the Globe for that matter. I mean, are they right-wing media too?
It's highly ironic of course that the most rabidly left-wing news web site calls itself "indepedent media".
Well, if you hear the word 'independent' folks, know what it stands for...

Canada day greetings

Molson-sodden shirtless guys, girls with their faces painted red and white, crowded streets and cheesy fireworks - that all and more what tomorrow entails for anyone who hasn't gone to the mountains. The Maple Leaf everywhere.
As usual Mark Steyn is the one to put it best:

Our real flag - the one above [in the right corner of this blog as well], the one that flew over our nation at the most storied dates in its history - will always be my flag. And I regret that from that first act of national vandalism in 1965 flowed all the others, including the smiley-face banality of "Canada Day".

Happy Canada Day to everyone!