Po(st-)Mo(dern) Waste Case

Plenty About Nothing Much. Over-educated, under-paid. Over-bored, under-sexed. Where everything is sacred, but nothing matters.

[lokalrunde]

[pomowastecase-blog]

Be warned, you just might learn something.

Every public post-secondary education system is a lot like a junky old car. Not only do we need to spend money on gas to keep the engine operating, the price of which increases year over year, as the car ages we need to spend more and more money on parts and repairs, the price of which also increases every year. Some might just say, "fuck it, walk or take a bike," but that would mean that one couldn't travel as far or as quickly and would have to rely on others to get around. By that same token, buying a whole new car wouldn't really save us any money in the long term, because it is bound to become a junky old car within a few years and any potential savings will be eaten up by financing fees. So realistically, we can either concede that owning a car is expensive or simply drive less in hopes of controlling our costs.

Tuition fees are the money. Save for advertising and the odd "here's ten bucks for driving me somewhere that you were going to anyways" payment (donations without conditions [which are very rare and very small]) and corporate partnerships [which are huge, but fraught with conditions]), tuition (to which I include the share contributed by the government, because it goes into the same pot) serves as the only sizable cash input that schools have to work with. Sure, they can increase the total amount of money available by enrolling more students, but that would mean having to hire more staff, purchase more resources and spending more on maintaining the ones that already exist, because these new students are going to need them. Schools that have tired this end up getting a bad reputation for inaccessible resources, overcrowded lecture halls, not enough residence rooms and so on. Once word gets around, this prompts students to choose other schools instead, which brings us back to square one or worse.

The engine is teaching staff and the gas is what they're paid. While the rise of adjuncts and TAs in more active teaching roles has allowed universities to keep salary costs  down, the MBA cokeheads who run universities seem to think that paying people a third of what "real" profs are paid is sustainable. That's why the contract faculty at my alma mater are so "strike happy!" In the end, while less costly than full-time, tenure-track staff, we can't keep paying these educators less than the people who process student loans applications. The best of them will follow better paying teaching jobs or even leave the sector all together, and soon it will become hard to attract good people to careers in academia. Want to experience this first hand? Enroll in any program at a Ontario community college and you'll find instructors who can't teach, don't want to teach and who can barely understand what they're supposed to be teaching. That's because they can earn much more money in the private sector, because that's what rationally self-interested people who aren't complete idiots do instead of teaching.

The mechanical components and other consumables are like the greater school apparatus. Everything from the computers and chairs in the mass labs, to the exceedingly jovial guy at the employment centre, to the board of governors. Whenever some asshole smashes a chair in the library, because he's raging against the machine or wants to impress a girl, the school is able to buy fewer books that year. Whenever some "mens' rights" loser blacks out the entire contents of a rare feminist theory textbook, which happens to be the only copy in Canada and one that I needed to check a reference in, that book either doesn't get replaced or the school has to pay through the nose to replace it. And when students complain about all of the goose shit and ugly art on campus, it's tuition fees that go towards cleaning up and beautifying the campus.

If you've ever owned a junky old car, you'll be familiar with the mantra of "I'll put a $1000 into it and then it will be fine for a few months" only to have something else break a few weeks later. Schools are they same way.

Owners of junky old cars tend to adhere a false economy and self-defeating asceticism that sees them trying to use their cars less in order to conserve gas and save on repairs, as well as simply ignoring problems or remedying them with bandage solutions. Tuition fee freezes are something like this wanton ignorance and thrift. Because with less money, schools end up simply not replacing or adding new resources, offering new programs or reviewing the ones that they already have, fearing what they might find. But usually they just cap enrollment at a level that can be sustained with current inputs of cash. Which is like saying, "I'm only going to drive to and from work, and nowhere else." At that point, why bother owning a car in the first place? And why bother having universities if they're just going to suck and be no better than on-line only schools.

The student protesters are big on talking up this idea of access to education. If tuition fees are too high, they argue, those who want and are able to pursue post-secondary education but can't afford it, will be shut out of both school and the potential for socioeconomic mobility. That's true, but it's only half of the story. The other half is that, when schools are forced to cap enrollment in order to contain costs, some qualified students are going to be shut out because there aren't enough seats to offer them. Because the number of applications to post-secondary institutions continues to increase year or year, the number of those without access increases as well. This is exactly what happened when British Columbia experimented with tuition freezes.

In sum, tuition fee increases suck, but they're necessary if we want to maintain a good and just post-secondary education system. However, the burden shouldn't be placed entirely on the backs of students. The industries that are served by what schools produce -- skilled workers -- need to carry their share of the inevitable increases as well.

A well educated workforce is infinitely better than a poorly education one. At the macro level, well educated workers make much better employees than poorly educated ones. They produce more, innovate more, learn better, make for better colleagues and problem solve better and faster, among other benefits, which on the whole makes industry more competitive and more prosperous. However, as they pay ever less in tax and as the price of labour declines because of an increasing supply of educated workers, industry has been getting these better workers for a song for far too long, despite the fact that the cost of producing them continues to increase. Simply put, industry is taking out of our educated workforce, in the form of profit, productivity and innovation, much more than they're contributing to its creation.

Tuition fee increases are easy for government because the political cost is practically nothing. By contrast, tax increases or levies on businesses that benefit from an educated workforce are politically costly. There isn't a liberal or a conservative politician holding state power in the liberal world who even entertain raising taxes on business in order to pay for the things that enable the expansion of their profitability. So get used to tuition increases! Because while corporations may be people, no one said that they were anything like adults.

[pomowastecase-blog]

Rocket from the Koreas

The Democratic People's Republic of Korea (DPRK) -- "North Korea" to those of you brainwashed by the wicked Yankee blue jeans imperialist running dog media -- is pretty much what my life would look like if it were a country. Like myself, the DPRK is hermetic to the point of total isolation, fallaciously described as being communist or otherwise gives communism a bad name, is desperate for attention, and when not suffering the innumerable embarrassments of its "failure to launch," channels its scant resources into utterly pointless endeavours aimed at impressing parties who will never give a single fuck, any day.

[pomowastecase-blog]

Toronto(pia) as the spiritual promised land.

When I was attending public school in exurban Ontario, every grade eight class had to take a day-long field trip to Toronto to see and do "Toronto things," like seeing the GAP store in the P.A.T.H subterranean shopping mall, riding on the TTC and visiting the Toronto Stock Exchange back when there was an actual trading floor. The motivation behind this trips was to expose country bumpkins to life in the big smoke, as a matter of culturing us and making us face the fear that all of us supposedly had of the Big City.

I took a pass on this trip, because I found it demeaning and because school trips to Toronto always ended up with my parents forgetting to pick me up from school and me sobbing uncontrollably, cold and alone, in the parking lot until it got dark and they realized that I was missing. Other students were really excited for it, thinking that a day trip to Toronto would be a transformative experience, akin to returning their spirit to its home. The one goth kid came to school the day of the trip with her look turned to eleven, as far as small town goth fashion was concerned (a Nine Inch Nails t-shirt, black skirt, fishnet stockings and black nail polish), perhaps imagining that she'd encounter a fellow goth on the street and that they'd become fast friends. Similarly, the group of boys who had just discovered hip hop were jazzed by the prospect of encountering actual urban black men, like the ones from Naughty by Nature videos. While they boarded the bus, I went to spend the day doing mindless busy work in a classroom with students in another homeroom who had gone on the trip the day before. I got to listen to their classroom discussions about how "unique", "interesting" and "different" Toronto was, and how some couldn't wait to grow up and move there. I tried not to laugh while I struggled with math problems.

In high school, I was hanging out with the faux-burn-outs (read, white kids who smoke a little pot and came from good upper-middle-class homes and would ultimately do well in life), playing guitar in the smoking area, while they discussed their plans to move to Toronto after graduation. "I have to move there. I'm drawn there," the girl with maybe fifteen facial piercings said in an impassioned tone. "That's where my people are." That's when the significance of Toronto finally hit me.

Toronto -- where small town weirdos go to meet and fawn over the uniqueness of other small town weirdos. Such is the consequence of being a city with a high concentration of colleges and universities and being the long-time hub of a national economy that turns on economic migration. This is why anyone who refers to themselves as a "life-long Torontonian", or something to take affect, actually grew up in Eastern Mississauga. Actual Torontonians, transplants or not, self-identify by their respective neighbourhoods, perhaps because they want to disassociate themselves from

Having gained this knowledge too early in life really messed me up, because it kept me from envisioning my soul being received in Toronto. I've never had that rank Canadian drive to risk it all and relocate to Toronto or, even Vancouver for that matter. It might be symptomatic of my dislike of everything Tim Horton's.

When I was a teenager, Toronto represented Saturday day trips to "the Big HMV", Tower Records and Sam the Record Man to buy seven-inches and back catalogue CDs that you couldn't find in the suburbs and beyond, capped off by Extra Value meals at the Eaton's Centre McDonald's and being picked up by a friend's mom at the Yorkdale TTC station. There isn't any magic, just shame and regret, in shopping trips. 

As an adult, Toronto is an overpriced, boring and unconvincingly pretentious city. It's meeting liberal phonies at the Centre for Social Innovation for demeaning "job" interviews -- meaning internships disguised as paid work -- with their media and tech start-ups. It's having to pick coins, sticky from stall beer, off of slippery bar tops because bartenders aren't courteous enough to drop your change into your hand, citing illogical health concerns (you're already handling dirty money, literally, how does dropping it in my hand constitute poor hygiene?) but really it's because they expect you to leave it there as a tip. It's paying $1500 a month to live in a shoebox in Regent Park, where you still have to take a bus to find fresh produce beyond what one might put into an iceberg lettuce and orange dressing salad. Save for gawking at and announcing the make and model of the luxury cars that pass through Yorkville on an early summer Friday night, everything else is totally inaccessible to a person of limited means and zero prospects, such as myself.

Recently a friend, who gently insists that I move out of my parents basement and get on with my shitty life, told me that she could land us a one bedroom, with bunk beds mind you (which only adds to the awesomeness of heterosocial cohabitation), for $1200 in the city's "Junction" neighbourhood. That's where people my age who've actually made something of themselves and even deliberately created new lives go to sustain, with the benefit of status and wealth afforded them by "Creative" labour, the otherwise encumbering and embarrassing kidult lifestyle for a few more years before moving to the suburbs. The presence of this class has steadily revived this quaint little enclave that used to shutdown at 6pm into something novel. In other words, it's what those who dreamed about Toronto created when they stopped dreaming and actually started living it. Something like the suburbs, but unlike the suburbs.

[pomowastecase-blog]

The Other Idiot Tax

While the term has been in use since the 1980s, the union between trash and television was finally consummated with the show Storage Wars, with the power couples’ offspring being the innumerable programs about pawn brokers, “pickers”, used car dealerships and “horders” that have captivated audiences as of late. These shows are literally trash television – boring, formulaic, shows about turning other people’s refuse into profit. Perhaps the next hit series is to be found in the third world, where our toxic tech toys are finally shipped to be chemically striped of their trace precious metals by children, who breathe in the residual toxic vapours. No, I’m just kidding, such a show would be accused of being too edifying for its lack of a cast of mealy-mouthed, lumpen-capitalists. Unless producers can somehow work in a montage of overweight men riding mini-motorcycles that they scored at an auction for five bucks, something like that is better suited to a pedantic public broadcasting forum, like the CBC.

I don’t subscribe to cable. I’ve familiarized myself with these shows by watching them, without audio, in the cardio-theatre at my gym. (Which means that I’m reading and exercising more than the target audience.) I but if I did pay for cable, I would be really upset to find that after paying $50 a month my viewing options where limited to watching the “real” lives of vapid trophy wives, cage fighting, absurd vehicle repossessions, prosaic sports commentary from former sportsmen set to highlight reels, and marginally employable guys who convince themselves that mouldly blankets draped over something bears the form of motorcycles or valuable works of art (could this replace the Rorschach test within psychoanalysis?). Or that instead of original scripted programming that reflects the social zeitgeist, every other channel is airing reruns of Third Rock from the Sun, Mad About You, Seinfeld, Friends and Two and a Half Men. “The good stuff” that TV critics all cream their khakis for – your Flight of the Mad Men smoking Weeds on a Wire, or other programming that I’m too poor to be familiar with -- is relegated to the expensive third-tier specialty channels or stopped at the border by a Cold War era cultural embargo meant to keep American influence out, but never really worked because Whitney and TMZ are still on my television. In the US, the latter is legitimately considered a news program and as the great dumb-dumb goes, so does Canada.

When this society finally collapses, (sooner than latter, please), I sincerely hope that future archeologists don’t discover stacks of celebrity gossip magazines and DVRs filled with TLC and OLN programming, which bring them to the conclusion that the Kardashians were our monarchs and that men were employed as either garbage pickers, prize fighters or stylists. But what is to be done in the present? How are people who actually want something to chew on supposed to endure a culture that alienates and malnourishes their intellect? The answer is public broadcasting.

Public broadcasting is a lot like the legal apparatus – we collectively use it to uphold our laws and constitution and to maintain our freedoms. However, most of us never directly access the courts or policing, so we don’t realize the role that the legal apparatus plays why we need to contribute to it. It’s like air. Air that keeps “bad people” in jail and makes damn sure that, if they leave their neighbourhoods or preordained station in society, a cop will be there to stop and ask them for their identification. Public television plays an inverse role. Instead of boxing people in, it lets the many roam free while maintaining a conservancy of cultivation. If it wasn't for the CBC, eggheads would be barging in on Man Verses Food to ask if there's not a soy alternative to the 20kg hamburger with seventy-five fried eggs on it, and getting all bristly when the cook can't verify that those eggs were free range. How about some interpretive dance, modest outfits and contestants from the world of literature on Dancing With the Stars? Nobody wants this.

Why should public media consumers have to pay to gird themselves from the pollution that others pumped into the mental environment? We need a carbon tax, but for media and culture. We could tack it onto the sale of gossip rags, Ed Hardy t-shirts, UFC pay-per-view fees and every time someone pauses to consider enrolling at Everest College. That money would then be put towards making enough public media to keep the granola set occupied while Jeremy Kyle Show viewers add to record levels of consumer debt by taking out payday loans at usury rates.

[pomowastecase-blog]

The Art of the Half-Apology

Having a pulse and sentience means that you must negotiate your way through a world that's experiencing a turf war between opposing camps of moralisers and oracles of "the way it is" and the way it ought to be. Somewhere along the way, you're going to offend some or all of them and will need to issue an apology. That doesn't mean that you can't still stand your ground.

Even if what you said is proven to be irrefutably false or simply illogical, don't ever let anyone force you into issuing a full apology. Instead, structure your apology like this.

Above all, never say that you were wrong about what you said or wrong to say it. Instead, diplomatically apologize for what you think you did.

I would like to apologize for making light of the common belief that people who dress a certain way are known for certain behaviours.   

Next, cite anecdotal evidence or endorsements from like minded persons of vague neutrality to support your position, then apologize again.

While many crimes are committed by people who dress this way, just as many victims may also chose to dress the same, as most judges in this country will attest, I never intended to offend anyone by making this fact know.

Finally, blame the other party for taking offense, and then apologize again.

It's unfortunate that our discussion of this pressing issue and unfortunate incident has been trivialized by those who might use it advance their own political agendas, and I'm sorry that what I said provided them with an opportunity to do so.

There, now you're really to unlock the mysteries deep within Robert Blagojevich's Chicago gangster vault!

[pomowastecase-blog]

Jealous?

With beauty being the operative word in "beauty contest," barring from Jenna Talachova from competing in such a competition, because she was born male, doesn't make any sense, because it's clear that she is beautiful. Now, if this was a "nature contest," in which contestants competed without the advantages of cosmetics and cosmetic procedures, one could argue that Talachova would have no place in such a competition. Neither would any of her competitors.

Talachova is being singled out not because she is a transsexual woman, but because she is closer to the physical ideal that woman are measured against than most "naturally born" woman are. This poses two qualified threats. 

Beauty contests exist to reassert the idea that beautiful persons are a naturally born class apart from the rest of society. Think of Plato's Myth of the Metals and well as the Randian hero. Liberal and conservative societies are sustained by, if not structured around, this idea that some are naturally far better than the rest. In contrast to this is the communitarian notion of perfectability, that one can better themselves (which is not to be conflated with improving ones material conditions) through effort. The fact that a transgendered or transsexual person can be a serious contestant in a beauty contest nullifies any suggestion that beauty is a gift from nature that is to be worshiped. That isn't to say that beauty is a construct and that everyone is beautiful, as some opponents of beauty contests argue.

Second-wave feminism has built a whole cottage industry around traveling Powerpoint presentations that inadvertently dehumanize some women for being beautiful by saying that their body's aren't "real." The irony that many of these same people also voice their support of trans persons is lost in their efforts to make women feel good about themselves by bullying others. How can it be that Talachova can be a "real" woman amongst other "unrealistic" women but also a false one amongst the general population of women? She's subjected to these abuses only because other woman feel bad about failing the normative ideals of beauty. 

Talachova's appearance challenges the oft repeated notion that "unrealistic" beauty ideals are entirely unattainable. How can they be "unattainable" when people of the opposite sex can and do attain them? This sends many back to the proverbial drawing board to think of some other moralizing way to shame beautiful people.

Another argument against Talachova, common amongst reactionaries who comment in all caps on newspaper websites, is that, by being a beautiful woman who used to be a man, she's "tricking" people. Listen, as best as you've tried to couch what you really mean, you need to understand that Talachova doesn't want to have sex with you and that no one is forcing you to have sex with her; she just wants to compete on her beauty. Just admit that none of the women you'll ever bed look even half as good as her, delete your browser history and GTFO.

[pomowastecase-blog]

“Tough break, brau”: liberal alienation is bullshit

What follows is mostly a response to Tim Kiladze's Why I gave up my six-figure salary and quit Bay Street

One of the best aspects of capitalism is that it handsomely remunerates rarified skills and knowledge, and rewards those who are willing to employ their abilities in jobs that might not necessarily be easy, pleasurable or glamourous. This is not be confused with working hard, which is what workers with average, overproduced or zero marketable skills have to do in exchange for paltry wages.

Working the Saturday afternoon shift at No Frills is probably more stressful and puts one in more frequent contact with complete assholes than a tough day in high finance ever would. However, the flunkie at No Frills doesn’t have many options, can be easily replaced by another worker and his union is utterly useless when it comes to ensuring a workplace that isn’t hostile. Conversely, the invest banker has more options on where he can employ his labour, can’t be so easily replaced, especially if he’s good at his good, which makes his employer so eager to reward him and make sure that he’s as happy as one can be without the aid of drugs of any sort. This is why investment bankers who publicly complain about the meaninglessness and stress of their careers need to shut the fuck up before I fucking shut them up.  

When it comes to capitalism, I can’t say that I’m a fan. I fail to see how a system that produces ever more wealth by the hand and brain of workers, yet sees less of it going to them at about the same rate, can be regarded as efficient, “the best” or even just. However, it’s the system that we are currently racked with and we have to make do until its predestined collapse, hopefully into something better and hopefully soon. Contrary to what Marxists often suggest, the managers of capital aren’t immune to the various forms of alienation that capitalism promotes. While they do enjoy a much larger piece of the wealth that they produce, they too suffer from the pangs of feeling like a cog in a machine, they struggle to maintain their interpersonal relationships, suffer the ill effects of mistrust of and tension between their colleagues and they sometimes feel that their efforts are entirely insignificant. But, as one might say, no pressure, no diamonds to lavish upon one’s trophy wife. 

Unlike the guy who has to reason with one irate, morbidly obese women, squeezed into motorized scooters saddled with oxygen tanks, who insist that their “medical condition” exempts them from the three per customer limit on four-dollar frozen pizzas, after another, the investment banker earns a tidy income that keeps from having to worry about the basic junk of life that the No Frills guy has to worry about. While the banker might have to come in a little earlier and stay a bit later to make sure that he can put together a down payment on a summer home, the No Frills guy will have to consider taking out a payday loan in order to make rent that week. The banker might gripe about not having the time to break in his new set of golf clubs, but the No Frills guy has to work every weekend and doesn't get much leisure time with his friends.

Furthermore, the investment banker  has a prestigious job that people, for some dubious reason I'm sure, still respect and admire. While hippies might put down their djembes to hiss at the banker about whatever hippies find objectionable about the world in general, the No Frills guy has to endure the fact that the majority of people in our society think that every inch of him is completely useless and that he should be honoured to be treated like an animal by just about everyone that he interacts with. Even the genuinely useless bourgeois socialists at the NDP can’t be bothered with his plight. Unless he’s homeless or a homosexual, handicapped, racialized, minority, the NDP can’t trot him out to as exhibit A in a rant about unfair the world is. Contrast that with the fact that banker has innumerable political advocates who would write enflamed editorials in the National Post and shake their fists and slander socialists by referring to the NDP as such in parliament if the banker couldn’t double park his beemer in front of the Starbucks.   

It’s very hard to feel sympathy for these people, so I won’t.

[exploreyork-blog]

The Campus Tour Check-List:

When I think of tours, I think of people walking around wearing jungle hats and collar shirts pointing to random places yelling “Look here! Look there!” When I think of university campus tours, I think of the same thing – minus the jungle hats. Touring a new place can be exciting, but it can also be a bit uncomfortable. I’ve already written a blog post on the value of campus tours so, even if you’re a bit afraid to get out there, I encourage you to step out.

For those who decide to embark on one individually, with their family and friends at one of York’s scheduled campus tours, during York’s upcoming Spring Open House, or even as a group during orientation, I’ve compiled a list of places that are popular among current students and that you should be sure to check out to get the full “York experience.”

[pomowastecase-blog]

Vari Hall

 It’s big; it’s in the middle of York; everyone knows it. Enough said, I think. 

"Hey, the low drone of that protest in Vari Hall was so deafening that it distracted me from browsing Facebook and texting my friends during a lecture. My rights as a student are being trampled!" And with that, someone had the bright idea of putting a help desk in the middle of Vari Hall, as a means of separating one group of inflexible reactionaries from another group of inflexible reactionaries, both of whom see themselves as total victims. 

Scott Library

 Let’s do the math; school + studying = library.

Let's check reality here. Most students entering the university Ponzi scheme endeavour to crack open the fewest number of books possible in pursuit of their increasingly valueless degrees. For these students, skimming the first five Google results and the sources cited in a Wikipedia article qualifies as a rigorous review of the key literature on a topic. And if their TA disagrees, they'll visit them during office hours to turn on the waterworks before spending more time writing a scathing rateyourprofessor review than they did writing their assignment. Because of this, York defers money that would otherwise be spent on growing its collections to other projects. (Check the ratio of books to students the next time MacLean's prints it annual "U of T and McGill are so great" issue) . That said, Scott Library is only good for a few things. Having sex in the fifth floor stacks, "renting" DVDs from the Sound & Moving Image Library and disrupting people who have yet to learn that York has absolutely nowhere to engage in quiet study.   

Common lecture halls – such as CLH or Stedman

You’ll be listening to lectures here for, uh, how many months? Your turn to do the math.

If you went to university with the misapprehension that you'd be surrounded fellow scholars, sitting close to the front of the lecture hall is probably the only way to sustain this self-delusion. With your back to most of the venue, you won't notice that the majority of your peers  elect to skip the lecture, preferring to waste scarce common tutorial time on their private sloth and stupidity, and that those who do attend are more engrossed by reading TMZ and their Facebook feed.

Your Home College

If you aren’t sure which college you’re affiliated with, click the link above.

In five years at York, I only went to my home college once, only to find that the class I had in that building had been moved to Vari Hall. So unless you're staying in residence or if your home college has a good pub in it, you can skip this spot while touring the campus.

Stong Pond

This ain’t your average pond; it’s Stong Pond. You’ll see what I mean when you get there… or you won’t. Either way.

Stong Pond is like Santa Claus at York. Whatever you do, don't spoil its magical, romantic aura by telling people that this goose shit-filled puddle is actually man-made. 

William Small Centre

You’ll need a computer eventually.

A relic from the days of Myspace and mobile phones with monochrome displays, the ubiquity of cheap laptop computers and wi-fi has reduced this place to a massive printing depot.

Tait McKenzie

For all you sports people. Athletically-challenged people, beware.

Ladies, have you been desensitized to the advances and harassment of lecherous non-students who approach you or shout lewd and hurtful comments about your body? Recapture those feelings of shame, fear and disgust as actual students leer at you and "compliment" you on your workout attire. Non-jock men, did you really are think that leaving high school meant escaping the bullying of jocks? Take a walk down memory lane by visiting our weight room!  

Student Centre

Food, people and food all in one place. Oh, and the usual event or two.

First floor; food court. Ample choice, market prices and nowhere to sit. Every other floor; club meeting halls. Know that you're part of a large and diverse university community by becoming active in a student club dedicated to your ethnicity!

York Lanes

Why shop at Vaughan Mills when there’s York’s own mini-mall?!

Made famous in the widely read book No Logo, go here to find out why York is the butt of half-jokes all over the world. Oh my god, commerce on campus, make it stop! It's totally ruining my academic experience with corporate influence! Now let's grab a Starbucks before heading to lecture to spend the first half texting and Facebooking before skipping out during break. (You're welcome, Naomi Klein). In the early aughts, there used to be a great record store here. Now it's a Popeye's Chicken.

Accolade East

Simply because it’s the most colourful, and coolest, building ever – Don’t worry, I’m not biased at all.

A building that looks like it's adorned with massive strips of bacon is clearly an act of provocation, perpetrated by radical left-wing terrorists, against the school's large Jewish student population! Tear it down!

Bennett Centre for Student Services

To describe it in one word: This-is-where-you-pick-up-your-OSAP. It’s also where you can get any queries regarding money matters (tuition fees, scholarships, bursaries, and so on) acknowledged and solved.

This, place, has, every, thing. Mostly relatively wealthy students, in queue, complaining about socialism and bureaucracy, yet who refuse to secure student lines of credit or some other form of private financing, such as a job. Need help with your resume or training for job interviews? You can get that here too, but don't bother. The economy has gone to such shit and will only get worse, so you're time is better spent drinking beer to drown your fears about a future of falling standards of living and economic disparity. 

Osgoode Hall Law School and/or Schulich School of Business

They’re considered one of Canada’s best law and business schools, and Osgoode has recently undergone some very hip – did I just say hip? – renovations.

Two bastions of prosperity and liberal enlightenment, on the periphery of campus, surrounded by a red sea of socialist failure and people who just to protest civilization and steal from the wealthy. Everyone else on campus should be honoured that this race of John Galtesq, super-job-creators decided to do some charity work instead of studying at actual universities. So don't be offended by the fact that they see themselves as separate from the larger university and only grudgingly associate themselves with it.

[refinedcoast-blog]

[pomowastecase-blog]

Everything about this outfit is so wrong, I don't know where to begin. I'll start with the pants. First off, cargo and tactical pants belong on the battlefield and in shit-towns overrun by Oxycontin-heads (where you at, Woodstock, Ontario!?), and nowhere else. They signal that one isn't at all concerned about their appearance, because the very real possibility of being blown to bits by an I.E.D. weighs heavier on their mind than looking good, or that one's wardrobe is comprised exclusively of pieces purchased from Giant Tiger and Wal-Mart. And only in these two contexts do the atrocious outer pockets serve any excusable utility, namely that of stowing defensive weapons, improvised or otherwise.

Everyone is familiar with the rule about only doing up a single button on a suit jacket or blazer. However, two button sport coats are meant to be worn completely unbuttoned. That's causal and irreverent, like swearing sneakers with a suit!

The white canvas shoes aren't intrinsically bad, they happen to be running with a bad outfit that's influencing them poorly. They might even be doing some Oxycontin with these friends, but only at parties where everyone has completed at least fifteen high school credits and is seriously thinking about going to the library to flip through the GED study books, and not to score Oxycontin. I'm sure that if they hung out with some nice, clean, tailored chinos and a tasteful crew neck or cardigan everyone would see their true potential. Who knows, they might even go to university and be able to actually shop in Yorkville, and not just stand around and bug rich people for change.

Carrying a man-bag is supposed to solve the problem of not having enough pockets to fit things like your digital camera, cell phone, notebook, iPod and so on, that and they preclude the unsightly addition of pockets where they don't belong, specifically on the outside of pants and shorts. The iPhone solved the former problem, now if only someone would code an app to solve society's cargo pants problem. I'd do it, but I only know of objective C. Also, is that a bracelet made of wooden beads? I won't even go there.

[pomowastecase-blog]

What better way to say "I love you" than to spend two months of your girlfriend's pay.

(If you're viewing this in your feed, click on the icon above to watch a video.)

Jewelry commercials are scripted in a way that plays on heterosexual ideals and sees romance being made accessible by purchase of the product advertised. If this commercial from People's Jewelers is serves as an accurate indication of what's going on these days, women have lowered their romantic expectations much more than I was led to believe from polemics written by women on how contaminated the dating pool has become in recent years with dependent man-boys.

Jewelry advertising works in a turnabout way, in that it sells a product meant for consumption by women, using visuals that appeal to women but copy that directly appellates men in no unspecific terms. Recall, if you will, the long standing slogan that "two months salary" was a small price for a man to pay to demonstrate his love to the woman in his life. The net effect is that men are told that in order to unlock the romance of the visuals, they need to buy otherwise useless rocks and accouterments. A key genre convention is the polished, classic handsomeness of the man and his socioeconomic dominance over the woman, because dropping two months salary on something useless means that you're so wealthy and powerful that you can make that money back, Glengarry Glenross style. In other words, the men in these commercials are so-called alpha males. However, this recent commercial from People's Jewelers throws out all of the genre conventions and tells both men and women, "time to settle before you're old and your prospects narrow even further and fall ever lower; this is as good as it gets." 

The couple in this commercial isn't evenly matched, but not in the way that jewelry commercials have trained us to expect. The bunting on the window valence, more so than the matching furniture, is a strong directorial indication that this house/condo is owned by the woman, and that the guy is just living there by her better graces and bank account. She's rushing out the door, so obviously on her way to a job that pays her enough to own her own home and thus requires that she dress and groom herself impeccably, while he has the time to just sit around and wait. So it's safe to assume that he doesn't have anywhere specific to be, like a job.

The guy's dirty, uncombed hair and stubble indicates to me that this guy hasn't seen a five o'clock quitting time in a long while. I know this for certain, because as I write this my own appearance is no better than that of the guy in the commercial. My hair is a mess and I have a healthy scruff going on. That's because I haven't been to work in four consecutive days and haven't had a reason to leave the house in that time. "Maybe he plays in a band or works somewhere cool, like in media," you contest. Yeah, I've been to both of those places in my life, and they're just synonyms for un(der-)employment.

The dress shirt seems amiss. Is he on his way to a job interview at the Apple Store? If that's case, as long as he can gingerly persuade the interviewer to overlook the gaps in his employment history (backpacking through Europe? internship at an iPhone app start-up perhaps?), the disheveled look might work in his favour. And he'd better hope that it does, because his girlfriend is starting to get pretty sick of his antics and excuses and she's been stalking her recently divorced, ex-boyfriend from high school on Facebook.

When the girlfriend* character enters the scene, she has an exasperated look on her face, as if to say, "fuck, Brian! (these guys are always named Brian so some reason). I let you move in and I pay for everything, the least that you can do is make me breakfast! Wait, you're up especially early for someone who doesn't have a job, what's the occasion?"  She's livied, but that's only temporary. His spending her money to buy a piece of jewelry that she certainly wouldn't have bought for herself sets everything right. At least until he throws a hissy fit because she won't "lend" him the money to buy the "fucking sweet" Fender Stratocaster that he "needs."

* Wait, on another viewing, I just noticed the wedding bands on their fingers. Shit, things must be really rough for women these days.

[pomowastecase-blog]

Lazy Reviews of Books Personals (Valentine's Day tribute to the LRB personals section)

Gentleman, late twenties, square jaw line, high cheekbones, refined, miserly and aloof, seeks to spend time with more than his opinions and frustrations. Women of Slavic descent encouraged to respond. Over cultivated gentleman, late twenties, not Jewish enough or gay enough to launch meaningful writing career, seeks the company of a woman of exceptional looks, high prospects and low exceptions. All that I have to offer in return is acerbic wit, awkward kisses and a pretty good recipe for scrambled tofu. Politically incorrect male, late twenties, seeks woman interested in passionate, unconditional love, not unlike that felt for professional wrestling by men with mental disabilities. Photography school graduates and Randians needn't apply. Looking to move quickly into a serious relationship? I really need to get out of my parents' basement, so I'm very willing to compromise. Unwilling to relocate West of Saskatchewan or East of Halifax. Must have space to accommodate contents of aforementioned basement.

[pomowastecase-blog]

Traffic, Poor Weather, Democracy and other Inconveniences

Ever since the Whigs and the Tories were at each others throats, the conservative relationship with democracy has been, at best, tenuous. History has shown us that the Right favours monarchs, autocrats, dictators and, within some circumstances, oligarchs and plutocrats, and only keeps company with democrats as a matter of political opportunism. However, as with all marriages of convenience, the occasional unraveling of the charade is a public embarrassment befitting the most exploitative of reality television. The sort of thing that leaves one wondering, "is this real life?"

When the people of Toronto decided that they had had enough of an aspirational mayor, who felt that Toronto's reputation as an international city preceded it and wanted to close the disparity, they elected the reactionary autocrat lout that they deserved -- Rob Ford. (Known to the entire Internet as the fat guy from the duck-walk image meme.) After a reductionist campaign, Ford immediately went about dismantling the work of the previous administration at the behest of "the taxpayers." One of these was the Transit City light-rail program, which intended to build a network of at-grade rail across much of the growing city by branching out from an established subway line trunk. Despite the significant financial backing committed by the province, and the fact that the project would cost less and service more riders than any proposed alternatives, Ford insisted on building subways and promised that he could find private sector investors foolish enough to invest in public transit in order to make it happen. Ford, instead of putting it to a vote in city council, he executed his plan unilaterally and publicly declared the death of Transit City. Everyone involved just conceded that the gravity of Ford's fiat simply had too much popular inertia to be stopped, let only effectively challenged, by democratic means. Instead, supporters added icons to their Twitter user photos and posted about how bummed they were.

The shine started to come off of the Ford turd and his "decisive" shtick when in one fumbled move he attempted to usurp control over the redevelopment of Toronto's waterfront on behalf of an Australian commercial property developer and presented, behind closed doors no less, a vision for the waterfront that might as well have been scrawled in crayon or made out of household detritus by a seven year-old, with its proud inclusion of a monorail, a sail-in mega-mall and a massive Ferris wheel. At this juncture it became clear to the democratic opportunists on council that Ford was no better at running a city than some kid playing Sim City 2000, and they'd do well to assemble as the "Courageous Centrist" strike force before Ford unleashed something akin to the game's giant robot, which players gleefully select simply for the bliss of watching the dysfunctional city that they created razed. Shortly after the legal counsel contracted by a leftist councilor determined that what Ford did with respect to the Transit City plan was unconstitutional, city council voted to reopen the transit issue and subsequently handed Ford and his reactionary goon-squad their collective ass by voting to scrap his subway plan. What followed put the conservative anti-democratic proclivity on full display.

First Ford's brother Doug, a Toronto councilor, did the rounds on the TV newscasts to dismiss the will of council and assert that the will of the "taxpayers" enjoys primacy over that of the elected council, which isn't at all representative of that regal constituency and, furthermore, that ultimately the provincial government has veto power over council. Then the leader of the provincial Conservative party and a talk radio host cum conservative politician echoed this fallacious statement and added, what has become a favoured justification for conservative autocracy in Canada, that the strength of Ford's mandate overrides the very constitution that brought him to power and the institutions through which it is exercised.

Contrary to what has been said on Twitter and by lesser pundits, such statements don't reveal a misunderstanding of the fact that, by virtue of being popularly elected, council does indeed represent the will of the people. Instead, they express a seething contempt for representative democracy. After all, the act of governing, and the condition of being governed, would be so much easier were state power vested in the hands of some sort of potentate who shared their values. True blue conservatives would prefer a monarch, who is closest to God, but the pure liberal variant would rather defer to the absolute authority of those who commune with that other deity, the Invisible Hand of free enterprise.

Free Cities were once a thought experiment within American libertarian theory, but they are now being put into practice, most fittingly, in Honduras; where the current government came to power by sham elections after a military coup was staged in order to halt a referendum on amending the country's constitution. Free Cities are autonomous city-states that exist within countries but outside the purview of the governments that create them. This means that they are pretty much free to do whatever they want and higher levels of government can't say boo about it. Those familiar with the movie Robocop, in which a swath of Detroit was apportioned for governance by the OCP corporation, possess a masters level understanding of the literature surrounding Free Cities, albeit with the exception of the debates surrounding how democratic they should be. While citizens of Hondouras' two proposed Free Cities will enjoy suffrage -- whatever that's worth -- ideological hard-liners are beginning to sound like neo-marxist observers of capitalism when they assert that democracy just gets in the way of running any state under capitalism and that citizens will instead "vote" with their feet and dollars, as cities would compete for citizens based on price and quality of life. Considering how few and how little people are actually engaged with political life in their own cities, which most have replaced with consumer culture, Free Cities are actually quite viable, which is why I anticipate seeing bits and pieces of free city theory entering the municipal politics of cities everywhere. The germ of which could be found in Ford's crusade to wholly privatize garbage collection throughout the city. However, Free Cities represent a rejection of the democratic ideal that should erect the backs of democrats regardless of their ideological stripe. It indicates that something so completely regressive is happening to our politics. It also further discredits the "End of History" thesis that hastily propounded the universal triumph of democratic values with the collapse of Soviet communism.

When Ford recently blasted the democratic opportunists on council as being "left of Stalin," many observers were left scratching their heads. Not as if to say "is this guy not familiar with Godwin's law?," but because Ford's style of governance has never squared with the democratic triumphalism that underpins dusty Cold War rhetoric. Ford's rule is visceral, self-centred and executed by threats, slander, intimidation and divisive propaganda. All those opposed are not only enemies but aliens, working only to disrupt the state and the public interest. Citizens who only want to protect their libraries are slandered as socialists and "professional protesters," while the yes-men who surround him rig the system in order to wear down and constrain dissidents. Still, Ford insists, it is his opponents who most resemble Stalin in their politics.

Although it bears mentioning that when Stalin gestured on a map and stated that a public works project was to be undertaken, his command was heeded, no matter how unreasonable or useless. Ford's subway isn't the White Canal, but rather it's tantamount to the secret Object #1" project to build secret subway tunnels in Kiev, Ukraine. Neither project came to fruition but not for lack of trying. 

[pomowastecase-blog]

Same Script, Different Cast

Immense talent of any sort is more a curse than a blessing. Rather than a passport to stature and its shadow-side of fame, it's an invitation for others to take everything in your life from you without obligation. This loss is only realized once the usurpers have made flight, leaving people with only a shell of a career that is overflowing with anguish.

Adorno was mistaken when he proclaimed normalcy to be "death." To be normal is to be given the opportunity to live without caveats that are styled as freedoms unavailable to the multitude.

Whitney Houston's death isn't nearly as unjust as the pleasure that we all took in gawking at her decline from beloved performer to reviled sideshow attraction. She wasn't the first to suffer such indignities and she certainly won't be the last.

[pomowastecase-blog]

Obligatory Lana Del Rey Thought Piece

Lana Del Rey is unbelievably attractive, in a normative way. I'm not ashamed to admit that her appearance, and perhaps the typeface on the cover art, piqued my male gaze faculties enough that it enticed me to download her four-file EP from my favourite MP3 blog. Wasn't that the intent of her Extreme Makeover from Lizzy What's-here-name to her Lana Del Rey persona? To leverage the male gaze against the patriarchal structure that is hipsterdom and force to me listen to something other than the Mountain Goats and CBC podcasts for a change? Or is she just another sortie in industrial culture's operation to separate people from their money by selling them unremarkable records by any means necessary? Either way, Lana Del Rey's people deserve credit for steering an otherwise unremarkable record to undeserved prominence.  

If the controversy surrounding Lana Del Rey has demonstrated anything it's that feminism has been in an intellectual rut since post-modern feminism wrestled the then complacent "second wave" of essentialists and radical feminists to the ground, where it laid, intellectualizing its defeat(ism), while liberal feminism stomped all over it on its march toward securing sizable economic and political gains (notice I didn't say equality) for white, educated women. The rut has become so cavernous that feminist writers have come to confuse the shadows dancing on the walls for whatever excites them. As such, many of these writers have come to misinterpret the darts directed at the Lana Del Rey persona as attacks on the role of women in the culture industries, and by extension her as a woman and from that juncture, feminism itself. The logic and analysis behind some of these polemics is so faulty that one might be excused in confusing them for satire.

The argument that Lana Del Rey is "inauthentic" is so simple that even a Hipster Runoff reader can grasp it at first blush. Lana Del Ray is an expertly manufactured cultural persona who has dared to insert herself in a genre that serves as a refuge for the unadorned and quirky artifice to the exclusion of all else. This intrusion is not welcomed and is thus resisted. She's more than welcome to place herself in the company of other "Blondes" who perform maudlin anthems for a audience of mostly heterosexual women, but she'd better not try to associate herself with artists who don't have sex to sell and have only their art to distract from just how dumpy-looking and weird they are.

It's a lot like how feminist writers go ballistic when a non-feminist (ie. a heterosexual male) engages with concepts germane to feminism. No wait, it's exactly like that, but I digress. 

Feminist writers deflect the inauthenticity argument in some rather strange ways. The most common retort is the "everything is marketed" fallacy which follows that all authenticity is subsumed by marketing and the process of manufacturing, and that nothing that is marketed can ever be authentic. Perhaps, but there's a huge remove from marketing something that exists apriori to its being market and purposely manufacturing something with specific attention to what the market will positively respond to, and then advertising it as something wholly organic.

To use an analogy that both hipsters and feminists can relate to. How would you feel if someone transplanted Smucker's jam from its original container into Mason jars, slapped an inkjet-printed label on the lid and then sold it at a farmer's market as handmade jam made of organic, local, non-Mexican grown strawberries and  fair-trade sugar? Would you say, "well, all jam is manufactured, so what's so different about this jam?" I doubt it, but that's what the people behind Lana Del Rey are trying to pull here. That being said, there's nothing wrong with enjoying some Smucker's on your toast.

I can appreciate why feminists are willing to go to the mat to defend Lana Del Rey. Her first single, Video Games, is pretty much NWA's Bitches Ain't Shit, were it written from the perspective of a white women of socioeconomic privilege with a good deal of sexual capital. The object of the narrative is an emotionally daft man-boy who puts on a good masculine performance and whose only interests seem to be sex, his car and video games. Simply put, the song is a big "fuck you" to the growing class of man-boys (my peeps!) and to the practice common amongst heterosexual women of debasing one's emotions and values in order to catch and keep a man. "Fuck you, it's not all for you. What about me?" When juxtaposed with something like LMFAO or Pitbull, even Adele's pining for a former lover, that's some rather subversive stuff. I've only given her LP one cursory listen, but there's more where that came from.

The industrial production of music has a long and mixed history of creating pretty young things in order to sell records. Only fourteen year-olds who just discovered contemporary American punk and might have downloaded Nevermind the Bollocks a few nights ago seem to have problems with it. What's that you say? The Sex Pistols were put together like a boy band by a shrewd business manager? Let's not tell the kids just yet; for their own sake. Let their interest in punk involve to something more organic, so that when they do find out that Johnny Rotten is pretty much a British Justin Timberlake, they'll be alright with it. Maybe that's what those, like myself, who are critical of Lana Del Rey and her defenders really need to do -- spew our shit on some blog and just let it go.   

[pomowastecase-blog]

Girl Troubles

This is the first day of my being laid off from work and instead of looking for new employment I'm becoming acquainted with daytime television shows that I've only heard about while I drink moonshine from my own still.

I'm watching the Doctors, which is like Dr.Oz but with five doctors, and one of the doctors is talking about serious vaginal infections. To keep the segment interesting, the director is cutting to close-ups of women in the audience with harrowed expressions on their faces. I can't even begin to fathom the embarrassment that these women will feel upon watching this episode, hoping to see themselves in the audience, and seeing their image placed in this unfortunate context.

[pomowastecase-blog]

The Fashion of Your Dissent

Massified protest is the successor to the long passé fashion of donning a Che Guevara t-shirt and mumbling non sequiturs about "the Corporations, man." It's the sort of retail-radicalism that doesn't challenge nor necessarily reproduce the status quo, yet only negates itself by just giving power the finger before apologizing shortly there are. It's time to come down from our euphoria and admit that, unlike the genuinely defective and heavily-armed Tea Party, no one really takes Occupy seriously.

In the heady days of Occupy, power was genuinely terrified of its potential as a revolutionary engine, but then Kayne West showed up and it became apparent that the gathering was little more than Burning Man but with the glitter body paint and bat shit crazy anarcho-capitalist Utopianism exchanged for drum circles and vulgar social democratic doomsaying. Those who liken the Occupy Movement to May '68 probably went to lackadaisical liberal arts universities for the privileged. (Those who don't know what I mean when referring to May '68 probably went to community college or some Ivy league wannabe school, like the University of Western Ontario.) Occupy was entirely a block party for dispossessed consumers and others who feel betrayed by capitalism but would take it back in a heartbeat, not unlike a gathering of single women that sees them making merry in drinking white wine and deriding the opposite sex and former lovers while harbouring desires of nothing more than to be in a relationship. Capitalism just needs to text them to say "hey, what's up?" in the form of a gainful job opportunity and the fashionable protesters will be jeering alongside the reactionaries.