Bombarded by Nonsense: Mumbling and Grumbling through February

It seems February is not only the shortest month but also the coldest and most miserable month in this province, traditionally—and this winter it’s certainly not proving to be any welcome exception. Snow, ice, freezing temperatures—arrgghh!! I relish a good healthy walk to campus, but this winter I find myself having no choice but to resort to buses and cabs on a relatively regular basis. When it’s not snow or freezing rain overhead, it’s ice and gunk underfoot. And what’s with all the wind—especially out in the central and northeast regions? Aren’t increased winds in this part of the country supposed to be one of the sure signs of global warming? At least Dr David Suzuki would have us believe so.

Although a mild patch—if not the early onset of spring—would be quite welcomed right now, I am not one to avoid the realities of season and location. I am not retreating to my well-heated bedroom, donning a two-piece bathing suit and sipping exotic drinks while The Beach Boys and Hawaiian steel-guitar music reverberate from the stereo. Summer is summer and winter is winter by my books. And my taste in music changes to suit the weather, with The Cure, Joy Division and the early Doors taking up long-term residence on my turntable and in my CD player this time of year. ’Tis the season to be gothy, I say. My father also recommends lots of classic ‘Kraut rock’ for the winter season. I can see his point. Despite opening with a song about hallucinating in the desert, Lonesome Crow, the Scorpions’ 1972 debut, does sound very cold, desolate and windy.

I mentioned that I’m not one to avoid reality. This is more than can be said for those MUN students who have been kicking up such a stink over computer-science professor John Shieh’s choice of topic for a recent assignment. Professor Shieh, so the story goes, asked his students to design a computer program to calculate whether or not a fictional rape victim named Heather was likely to commit suicide. “Several” of his students, apparently, took offense at the supposedly light handling of the dark subject matter, and subsequently contacted the oversized prepubescents that comprise MUN’s student union. The next thing you know, student union representative Candace Simms is tattling to the media and all hell breaks loose.

Candace Simms: shit disturber

Are young men and women at the post-secondary level today really this sensitive and sheltered? In our parents’ youth, controversial topics involving sex and violence were sometimes handled at the juniour-high level and even earlier. My father recalls his sixth-grade teacher dividing the class into two groups every other Friday afternoon and debating such topics as gun control. Keep in mind, this took place in the 1980-81 school year, a period in which the bullets were flying at everyone from John Lennon to President Reagan to Pope John Paul II. My mother remembers boys and girls being paired off in eighth grade and given an egg or doll to raise as their illegitimate child. Of course Professor Shieh was exhibiting questionable taste in presenting such an assignment topic to his class. But something tells me that if all of MUN’s professors avoided topics like rape and suicide in their classroom settings, whiny pretend-altruists would be complaining the other way, and screaming for them to be “relevant”. People like Candace Simms have a juvenile longing to be seen and heard for the sake of being seen and heard. Mentally and socially, Ms Simms is hopelessly stranded in middle school. An older friend of mine puts it best when she says, “Sometime during their first semester of university they discover trendy terms like ‘homophobic’ and ‘racially insensitive’, and from that time onward they do nothing but wreak havoc on campus by behaving like silly brainwashed children during Mao Zedong’s Cultural Revolution in 1960s Red China.”

As you probably know by now, after “consultations” with Mark Abrahams, the dean of the science faculty, Professor Shieh has since apologized for his ‘wrongdoing’ and has substituted another topic for the computer course assignment. Meanwhile, Candace Simms—as if every other professor was backing her into a corner with her undies down—is calling for all MUN instructors to receive mandatory sensitivity training at the campus’s Sexual Harassment Office (?!!!). After a little consideration, this might not be a bad idea, actually. The instructors might start by changing Candace Simms’s diaper and monitoring her television viewing.

Speaking of sex, I guess all of us good Canadians are supposed to be avoiding coverage of the 2014 Sochi Winter Olympics like the plague right now. If we are to listen to the whiny, self-righteous alarmists—like Warren Kinsella—who can’t see the forest for the trees, it would be morally reprehensible of us not to. It appears that everybody’s favourite homophobe this side of Fidel Castro, President Vladimir Putin, has managed to push legislation through the Russian parliament that effectively outlaws the exposure of adolescents to “homosexual propaganda”, and even the Harper government is expressing its disapproval. Really....

Harper and Putin: Two of a kind

Since when have Stephen Harper and company given a damn about gay rights and the autonomy of youth sexuality? Remember, boys and girls, this is the government who voted against gay-marriage legislation and raised legal ages for nearly all aspects of intimacy in the name of “youth protection” (ha!). These people are bigoted assholes and sexually jealous hypocrites who secretly drool at the sight of young flesh. Please keep this in mind as we approach the 2015 federal election—especially if you are turning 18 and preparing to vote for the first time. In the meantime, continued good luck to the Canadian athletes competing in Sochi. At the time of my writing, Canada is in fourth place with the medal count standing at four gold, five silver and three bronze.

And speaking of legal ages, you may be interested to learn that Belgium, where euthanasia has been legal for adults since 2002, has become the first country to extend the right to die to children and adolescents. That’s right—terminally ill Belgians under 18 can now consent to euthanization provided it’s green-lighted by their parents. It’s too bad the Belgian government isn’t so eager to extend voting rights to its nation's youth. Meanwhile, here in Canada, it’s not even legal to help a 98-year-old cancer patient kill himself. Actually, I can see someone like Stephen Harper offering euthanasia to only people under 18 in this country. This way, the Conservative government could kill off a sizable chunk of the threatening youth population before they’re old enough to vote!

Jean Jacques De Gucht of the Open Flemish Liberals and Democrats
—one of those who favoured the bill

Closer to home, the snivelling oppressive scumbags in the Dunderdale government have outlawed tanning beds for anyone under 19. Now, let me make one thing nice and clear: I would rather eat ten packs of extra-tar cigarettes per day than to be caught dead in a solarium. However, to each his own, and I find it more than a little hypocritical that the government will allow people as young as 16 to risk life and limb behind a wheel on the nation’s highways, yet they won’t allow people under 19 to get a suntan because eccentric idiots like Darryl Yetman of the Canadian Cancer Society doesn’t like it. Mr. Yetman and his kind are part of the problem, as opposed to part of the solution. It seems they’re quite adept at interfering with every aspect of society. They appear to have their hands and noses into everything—everything, that is, except actually discovering a cure for cancer. Open your eyes, people: young citizens of the province can even join the military at 17 and run the risk of leaving an arm in someone’s rice patty in the Far East—yet they cannot legally undergo an artificial suntan in their home province until they turn 19! Incredible. At least Vic Lawlor,the owner of seven tanning salons in the province, is speaking out against the hypocrisy and oppression—even if it sounds a bit financially self-serving coming from someone in his position.

Vic Lawlor: Greedy businessman or defender of oppressed youth?

Maybe a bit of both...

Such hypocrisy surrounding the discrepancies in legal ages is something I recently brought up on Facebook, after being “invited” to a discussion featuring Newfoundland and Labrador Liberal Party treasurer Jeff Marshall, who has drafted a resolution to make it Liberal party policy to lower the voting age to 16. I pointed out in a post on the event’s official Facebook page that “if we’re not mature enough to vote when we’re as old as 17, then why [is the criminal justice system] charging us with crimes six years before we’re old enough to legally vote for the moronic creeps who write the legislation we’re contravening? It’s basic oppression, and I’m quite militant about it.” I went on to state in a followup comment that “we won’t see any real changes along the lines of oppressive legal ages, I fear, until the windows start smashing, the rubber bullets start zinging, and the blood and brains start spilling onto the asphalt.” As a result, Kate White, some bureaucratic ninny from the MUN Liberals, responded with the following comment:

“The MUN Liberals do not condone violence against politicians or the Canadian government as a means to political change. If you do not refrain from using violent language and threatening officials you will be removed from the page.”

Ha! Does she actually think I’m concerned about being dismissed from such a pathetic group whose existence is merely symbolic? The naivete simply astounds me! (On December 3rd, Ms White posted a link with the following admonishment on her Facebook wall: “Dear all make-up loving friends: go on this site now. You will die of happiness.” Now, if that doesn’t sound like the thoughts of a woman with devout sociopolitical convictions!) As long as groups like the MUN Liberals are obedient little line-toeing boys and girls, the oppressive system will perpetuate. If Kate White is so concerned about the plight of disenfranchised adolescents, she should learn how to operate a firearm—or at least throw a rock.

Youth political oppression aside, it looks like we’re going to have to settle for throwing snowballs, not rocks, for a considerable time yet. I’m going to be cozying up tonight in a rug with a cup of warm tea and a copy of Escape from Childhood—a book that someone like Candace Simms or Kate White could do well by reading. Now where did I put that Bauhaus CD....

Ra Ra Rape! Saint Mary’s University Students Eagerly Awaiting Puberty!

Sis Boom Bah Humbug?

As anyone who’s watched the ‘frosh week’ video out of Saint Mary’s University in Nova Scotia should know by now, Y doesn’t always stand for a generation or the female genitalia. (Read the CBC's coverage here.)

No one should be surprised that the gang at Saint Mary’s like ’em ‘YOUNG’. The far-left and far-right policies adopted and legislated by our federal, provincial and even municipal governments over the past two decades or so have actually created this situation. So if the people in high places are shocked by rally chants promoting the sexual assault of minors, well, what in the name of Rehtaeh Parsons’s sleazy teenage tattoos did they expect?

Let me elaborate a little....

This incident can be easily interpreted as a quasi-reactionary statement. When lobbyists, governments and other ruling bodies prolong puberty via an illogically increased age of sexual consent, tobacco and alcohol restrictions, antiquated drug laws, etc, it is only reasonable to expect those effected to react accordingly. No one with an ounce of intelligence should have been shocked by this display, ridiculous as it was. What people are seeing is the behaviour that was once associated with 11- to 13-year olds being made manifest in those 17 to 23. When you whack the mole over the head, it merely pops up somewhere else.

Because of the prolonged childhood that is being mandated and legislated, college campuses and many high schools are becoming veritable pressure cookers—powder kegs of rage, booze, porno, libido and tobacco, just waiting to blow open. And then they wonder why school shootings have become such an indelible reality.

It’s interesting that the participants should reference sexual assault and underage girls in the same context, for the latter can actually be the cure for the former in some cases, so to speak. On a personal note, from about the age of 12 onward, my parents refused to let me date anyone who wasn’t an intelligent, respectable older student. They feared that the young boys my age were becoming simply too uncivilized and sexually violent, owing mainly to the aforementioned restrictions upon youth. Now I’m an 18-year-old young woman in my third semester at Memorial University, and I regret to announce that the prurience and sexual aggression are no longer exclusive to the high-school age level (or American campuses!). As I mentioned a few months ago on this blog, the campus is now crawling with ball-cap-wearing savages who think with their willies, and tattooed airheads who will acquiesce to any unwanted advances simply in order to look ‘cool’ and maintain their popularity status. Illegal or not, I wouldn’t be caught dead down in the campus tunnels at night without my revolver in my handbag.

Oh, the sheer poetry!  Cohen and Dylan must be jealous

And now the CBC are reporting that the president of the Saint Mary’s student union is apologizing and resigning as a result of this incident. Well, shame on him for caving in to hypocritical pressure! Unless he’s going back to sixth grade where him and his kind rightfully belong, Mr Jared Perry should indeed stay on in his office. We need him to remind us of just how wrong the policies of the past quarter-century have been. According to the same CBC news report, two other student leaders are facing “disciplinary action” as well. It’s lobbyists like the Canada Family Action Coalition (CFAC) and politicians like Stephen Harper who should be apologizing and facing disciplinary action. They’ve helped create such cretins and shaped their reactionary attitudes.

As for the actual chant/song, my mother insists it’s only slightly more offensive than some of the official filth she was expected to recite and sing when she was a member of the Air and Sea Cadets back in the ’80s.

Typical.