Category Archives: Politics

Book Review: Dianetics

Posted on by

DianeticsI wouldn't trust myself to review this book. Like the Necronomicon, this is a book best read by those you really wouldn't miss if it came right down to it. If you heard they'd become members of a sinister cult and had taken off to Arabia to rendezvous with a malevolent and unspeakably long-lived nobleman from Eastern Europe, to search for the Nameless City in the shifting sands of the desert, and you really wouldn't mind, then that's the person you should ask to review this book.

Because that means reading it. And that means the thetans will know you're out there. To say nothing of Tom Cruise.

Dianetics, Reviewed by Fat Joe Thomas, whom I do not know and so wouldn't particularly miss and who seems to have vanished from the blogosphere on or about April 4,

THE VERY DAY AFTER POSTING THIS REVIEW!

Half-way through this book, I wanted to stop reading. But, it wouldn’t let me. It made me finish. I couldn’t return it and get my money back and I couldn’t stop reading it. If I ever have kids, the book is going to make my kids read it. The book has put my family and friends under surveillance. They don’t want to talk to me anymore. They’re worried the book will take their money, too.

Bush: Achievement and Entitlement

Posted on by

Bush's Great Moment

There have been many memorable moments in George Bush's career – invading Iraq, declaring the war "accomplished", Hurricane Katrina. But the US president recalled that his greatest moment in office had come not on the field of battle but while out fishing.

Asked by Germany's Bild am Sonntag newspaper what he considered to be his greatest triumph, President Bush replied: "I've experienced many great moments. It's hard for me to name the greatest." He went on: "I would say that the best moment of all came when I caught a seven-and-a-half pound perch while fishing on my lake."

From The Guardian. And you know, I don't doubt for a second that it was the high point of his life so far. Failed oilman, failed businessman, cokehead and alcoholic, a man who nearly lost the battle for his life to a pretzel, George W. Bush is indeed the worst, most embarassing leader that the United States has ever had to endure.

On May 1, International Worker's Day, May Day, Sploid published a tender retrospective of the man the world has come to know as "that dumbass."

It remains one of the proudest moments in American history, and it was only three years ago today. On May 1, 2003, the president piloted a military jet onto an aircraft carrier and told a cheering crowd that we had won the war in Iraq.

"Major combat operations in Iraq have ended. In the battle of Iraq, the United States and our allies have prevailed," President George W. Bush said to wild applause.

But in this crazy world we live in where "victory" so often means "pathetic failure," winning the war in Iraq somehow ended up meaning losing the war in Iraq.

On May 1 of 2003, America had lost 139 troops to the invasion and occupation of Iraq. Today that number stands at 2,400. In the three years since we won the war, 17,000 more soldiers have been wounded — many of them mangled beyond recognition and doomed to live their remaining days without arms or legs.

The victory pushed "insurgent attacks" up from eight per day back in 2003 to 75 per day in 2006.

Three years after the war was won, the American price tag has risen from about $80 billion to more than $320 billion, and the commander in chief has dropped from a 70% approval rate to disapproval ratings unseen since the last criminal days of Richard Nixon's presidency.

Almost all Americans now believe the president intentionally lied about every aspect of the Iraq invasion and occupation. And a dismal 9% believes the mission was accomplished, according to a new CNN poll.

But there's some good news for the president on this third anniversary of the victory in Iraq: Despite everything that's happened and everything that's known, he remains a free man and still occupies the White House. Amazingly, Bush and his team have yet to be removed from office, prosecuted, convicted of treason, imprisoned or executed.

And that's a victory, too.

PSA: Ten Tips for Office Trysts

Posted on by

Bridget and the guysBecause if you work in a factory rather than an office, being known to sleep with the boss is a status enhancer. Or even the guy who delivers the diesel fuel, come to think of it.

But in the spirit of making ourselves of practical use here at the raincoaster blog, rather than just providing random titillation and eagle voyeurism, we present the New Zealand Herald's Ten rules to help you survive a sneaky affair at the office by Julie Fisher, about whom her coworkers are no doubt gossiping madly even as you read this.

Avoid the photocopier
Do not be tempted to do it on the photocopier. Not even in an ironic way. Canon last year confirmed that it has had to increase the thickness of its glass to cope with an alarming number of bottom-related breakages. A third of Canon technicians say they have had to mend machines that have been sat on. "It's so tempting, particularly if neither of you particularly likes the company you're working for," says Cox. "But not only will you probably break the thing, it's uncomfortable."

I once sat through a quarterly job evaluation that began when my boss brought up the topic of married men, and how normal it was that they had mistresses, and how glamorous that was for the "pampered, adored" mistress. There are times when you can't quite believe what you're hearing, and for raincoaster here this was one of those times. So she said, "well, I sure would make a crappy #2 girl," to which he replied, "Oh no, I think you would make an excellent #2."

Beat.

To which I replied, slowly, "I sure hope I'm going to get an 'Outstanding' on this review, Doug, because otherwise I'm going to go far and wide with my dissatisfaction with this rather unusual review."

Beat.

To which he replied, "Oh, I think you'll do very well for yourself at this company."

I got my Outstanding, too. And by god I earned it; the ability to blackmail a boss is a critical business skill in certain environments.

The T Factor: Brits Abroad

Posted on by

Twot or not? 

Although, according to research, not quite as broad as Americans. But that's neither here nor there.

The Brits are travel-happy. In fact, one of the biggest issues in the recent election there was "Damn and blast, how is a simple working man supposed to fly the family to Marbella for some sun once a year, Verbier for a little exercise, Paris for some shopping, and Florence for a nice little walking tour every now and again, and still feel that he's doing his part to keep the planet free from excess pollutants???"

Well, quite.

With a culture like that, you'd expect that most Brits would know, oh, I dunno, like the first thing about travelling? I've only ever been to the US and one trip to the tropics, so I cannot lay claim to any great sophistication here, but even I know that there are, ferinstance, fishy-type things in the sea. I mean, in England you can just walk to it; surely there's no excuse for this if you come from Blighty. Hell, if you come from Saskatchewan you still know there are fish in that big outdoor watery thing, whether it's a lake or an ocean.

Anyhoo, without further ado, we present some of the complaints lodged with UK travel companies by greviously aggreived tourists.

A company insider said: 'People are much more aware of their rights nowadays and much more tempted to blame someone if something goes wrong. We have noticed a surge in weird complaints over the last few years.

'Their instinct is to lash out and blame someone, and because it's such a litigious culture, people always think the travel company must be to blame.'

The Association of British Travel Agents said recently that a couple cancelled a two-week break in Majorca and demanded a refund because of the risk of contracting the SARS virus.

It was pointed out to them that Majorca was not affected by SARS, but they insisted on cancelling anyway.

Then they sued to get their cancellation fee back. And here is a small roundup from the article:

No one told us there would be fish in the sea. The children were startled…

My fiance and I booked a twin-bedded room and we were placed in a double-bedded room. We now hold you responsible for the fact I find myself pregnant. This would not have happened if you had put us in the rooms that we booked…

The brochure stated: 'No hairdressers at the accommodation'. We're trainee hairdressers, will we be OK staying here..?

It took us nine hours to fly to Jamaica from England – it only took the Americans three hours…

It is your duty as a tour operator to advise us of noisy or unruly guests before we travel… I compared the size of our one-bedroom apartment to our friends' three-bedroom apartment and ours was significantly smaller…

I was bitten by a mosquito – no one said they could bite…Shirley Valentine, they know not what the hell they do

We found the sand was not like the sand in the brochure. Your brochure shows the sand as yellow but it was white…

We had to queue outside with no air conditioning…

…And finally, from a holidaymaker in Spain:

There were too many Spanish people. The receptionist spoke Spanish. The food is Spanish. Too many foreigners.

The C Factor: China begs its citizens abroad to stop being so, you know, Chinese

Posted on by

Chinese VisaSpitting on a Vancouver sidewalk is a crime punishable by a fine of up to $110, as several people of both sexes have lately found out, greatly to their surprise. Our Chinatown is large and busy and very, very Chinese, so to discover that something so iconically Chinese is actually banned is a bit of a culture shock to many. It looks like a Chinatown. It smells like a Chinatown. But, according to the new policy of enforcement, the goal is that it won't feel quite so much like a Chinatown anymore when you walk around in sandals.

Thank god.

"Paved with open oysters" was Dickens' verdict on the sidewalks of New York, for much the same reason. Just today I saw two men and one woman blowing their noses onto the sidewalk (quite a trick and, while I appreciate the dexterity and practice it must take to master, punishable by an equally stiff fine praise be to god). And not a cop in sight! That's $330 lost to our public coffers. I'm thinking of working up a Huggy Bear Hug it out bitchbusiness model based on ratting out the snotlings, but am not sure if it should be commission-based per incident or if we could work out some sort of pay-by-volume-of-bust deal, like with drug informers.

I could be the Huggy Bear of mucus!

In the meantime, the Chinese goverment at least is trying to teach its people that carrying certain Beijingoist qualities overseas, particularly to snotty old Singapore, is not the greatest make friends tactic the world has ever seen. Much likeChinese Tourists in London the website set up to teach Americans how to behave abroad, there's a new initiative to teach the previously-isolationist Chinese how not to be loathed when travelling. I mean, when travel abroad was punishable by death, it stands to reason not many people were able to avail themselves of the opportunity, so we've got a billion newbies hawking away on planes and smoking up a storm in oxygen tents worldwide, to say nothing of trying to scam the other tourists.

The daily reported that Wong and Sum cautioned Fan, who possessed an identification showing he was ordained as a monk, that Malaysia was not a place for bogus monks to deceive the public for donations and his act had tarnished the image of Buddhist monks.

Naturally, the government realizes that there will be lots of tourists coming to Beijing for the Olympics, and they're prefer if the Chinese weren't as Chinese for that either, so the government is training the actual residents of the city to behave as if they were travelling abroad. Easier than explaining your culture to a mob of foreigners, I guess, at least in countries where they're already conditioned to obey stupid, culture-eviscerating orders on a daily basis.

There will be a black market in spittoons, mark my words!

Beijing has launched a campaign to make its citizens more "civil" in the run-up to hosting the 2008 Olympics. Games organizers have repeatedly said the city needs to teach its people to stand in line, stop spitting and littering and generally be better mannered.

I just hope there's a section in there about bears and cellphone cameras…