Another video from apeman, the twisted Canuckistani genius who brought Hinterland’s Who’s Who’s Crack Spider into being.
Again, I’m sticking the video and lyrics over the jump because I was told that it was kinder to the people on dialup and also because I hope this way I won’t have to do a bloody restart every time my cache fills up.
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By request, Bruce Cockburn‘s revolutionary anthem. Not all lefties are peaceniks, you know. Lyrics over the jump…
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from the archives
The Legend of Stamp’s Landing, with bonus legend decoder
Tuesday, June 28, 2005
Got this from the back of a menu at the pub. Hey, you think this kinda thing makes it into Toynbee???
The Legend of Stamp’s Landing
Stamp’s Landing was named by Captain Edward Stamp in honor[sic] of his great-grandfather who, in 1794, under the command of Lord Howe, fought in the battle of “the Glorious 1st of June” [they fought grouse from British warships off Spanish Banks? Vancouver’s history is even more colourful than I’d imagined. What kind of ordinance did the grouse use against the Brits, I wonder].
Sir William Henry Stamp, Bart [which isn’t a Simpson’s reference: it means “Baronet”] the commander of HMS Formidable [a word I can spell only by remembering the French, which sounds way cooler anyway, even just in your head] 74 guns, did engage in that battle and sustained a heavy blow to the head [ the Bart, not the Formidable]. Delirious, he jettisoned a small landing craft, boarded it and drifted into a fog bank and disappeared.
He drifted for several days at last hitting a rock shore in a small inlet now known as False Creek. He was greeted there by several friendly natives who cared for him, sustained him with food and drink, and showed him a good time. [he musta been a big spender]
After a year, he reluctantly bid farewell to that friendly place [besides, the girls were starting to “show” by now]. The natives took him into open water at what is now known as Point Atkinson. There he was picked up by a packing frigate that was patroling the area. Stamp related the story of his landing in that friendly place with beautiful women, good food and drink and warm companionship. All aboard were fascinated by the stories and the good fortune of Stamp’s Landing.
Throughout the years the name “Stamp’s Landing” has lived in legends of good fortune and navel [sic again, unless this is another sly pregnancy reference] luck. When adrift at sea, sailors would propose a toast with whatever rations they had left, “Here’s to another Stamp’s Landing!“
and now for the Secret Legend Decoder, which I got from inside mine own head.
Secret Legend Decoder
So this dude, no doubt sent abroad for sheer uselessness, as were so many young men of the times (there’s always a surplus of useless young men; at least, there was back then, before the days of motorcycles and fatal vending machine accidents) got the shit scared out of him when he was bopped on the head with something in battle with the fearsome grouse of the Lower Mainland, and besides, he was in the wrong ocean entirely anyway. So when an opportune fog bank rolled in, he got into a wee boat, hoping to sneak away from the action unmissed.
He succeeded, landed, managed to make some friends among some unwarlike people, and spent many months making a parasitic nuisance of himself. Finally, when they’d had enough of this pasty-faced layabout, they stuck him on a boat out in the middle of traffic, where sure enough some lemolo kingchauch sailed by and went: oh look! Anudder whiteboy! Let’s fish him up! Whereupon this dude lied the pants off himself and thus became legendary.
So much easier to do when you’re the one writing the legend, eh?
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The Shebeen Club and 50Books.com Present:
Falling in the Forest:
Dialogue and Readings for Freedom to Read Week
When: 7-10pm, Tuesday, February 20th
Where: the Shebeen, behind the Irish Heather, 217 Carrall Street, Vancouver BC
How: reserve in advance by emailing lorraine.murphy at gmail.com or show up at the door
How Much: $15 includes meeting plus set dinner and a drink; strictly limited to 25 places
What: This month in honour of Freedom to Read Week we will host a discussion of literary freedom in Canada. Bring your opinions, your manifestos, and your forbidden writings! We will feature banned books with readings by CBC radio personalities Lisa Christiansen and Tammy Everts, quotations from great political thinkers, and a participatory discussion of the recent Supreme Court case involving Vancouver’s own Little Sister’s Bookstore.
Who: The Shebeen Club, Vancouver’s Literary Gathering, in association with 50Books.com. See http://www.shebeenclub.com and http://www.50books.com and http://www.freedomtoread.ca/ or email lorraine.murphy at gmail.com for more info.
Dress code: Orange jumpsuits, plum velvet frock coats, and gags optional.
Door prizes: We have a don’t ask, don’t tell door prize policy. We don’t ask you if you like ’em, we expect you not to tell us if you don’t. Book donations snivellingly accepted.
Meet and Mingle 7-7:30
Listen and Learn 7:30-9 (going to be a VERY involved night, eat your Wheaties)
Manifesto Manifesting 9-10 or whenever they finally throw us out
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Humanity is born free, yet everywhere it is … in thrall to the military-industrial complex using threats of terrorism to manipulate the cowed multitudes.
My question is this: why, when Pierre Elliot Trudeau imposed the War Measures Act (as a response to the kidnapping of only two individuals and with no sign of a war) did we accept this as right and good, yet when Tony Blair and George W. Bush impose similar measures (and they are both actively fighting wars…well, the poor people in their countries are; and there have been terrorist attacks in each of their countries which have killed a significant number of regular citizens) we reject it as nothing more than a cynical fascist control technique?
For me, I have an excuse: I was little when Trudeau ruled the Earth. But even then I was anti-fascist. I don’t think there’s any question about whether or not the technique if fascist: it is. The question is why did it seem right then but not now?
Is it personality-driven? Is it the charm factor? Is it because Trudeau was so obviously more intelligent than either Blair or Bush? or, come to think of it, more intelligent than the citizenry and we damn well knew it? Blair‘s no moron, though; is it because he’s so much Bush‘s catamite that he gets zero IQ points by association (or as a penalty for bad taste)? And can you imagine Stephen “RoboTory” Harper getting away with something like that? He’d be run out of Ottawa at the head of a mob armed with insulated buckets of boiling Steeped Tea™.
Pierre Trudeau‘s speech announcing the imposition of the War Measures Act is after the jump, and very interesting reading it makes, too:
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raincoaster 