Monthly Archive for March, 2006

New mix!

I spun this on Saturday night up in the wee town of Mactier, Ontario. Please excuse the distortion in some parts, I was recording into an iRiver and couldn’t monitor the level. I also forgot to hit record, so the first track sadly didn’t make it into the mix, and for whatever reason the iRiver stopped recording half way through, so you’ll hear a break in the middle.

Download

Tracklist:
(not recorded) Way Out West – Killa
Timo Maas – To Get Down (Timo’s Main Mix)
CRW feat Veronika – Like a Cat (On the Beach Dub Mix)
Joel Armstrong – Serenity (Shiloh mix)
Synergy – Hello Strings (Flash Brothers remix)
Alt F4 – Alt F4
GTR – Mistral
Art of Trance vs POB – Turkish Bizarre (DBA remix)
Moogwai – Neon
Hands Burn – Good Shot
Voodoo – Flashback
Dave Richards – Fuzed
Yilmaz Altanhan – Eighties
Ridgewalkers feat El – Find

Mark Otten – So Serene
Greg Murray – Ursa Majoris
Mike Foyle vs The Signalrunners – Love Theme Dusk
Kyau vs Albert – Made of Sun
Realm F vs Rankey – Nairobi

by Irshad Manji.

It’s actually a really important book. This kind of thing needed to be written, and not just for the reasons you’ll assume from it’s title. It’s written by a Canadian Muslim journalist, and is about Islam, Islam’s treatment of the Jews, of women, of other Muslims… and why it’s time for Islam to stop blaming the West for their problems and take a long hard evaluatory look at themselves. In addition to the usual ones, the author very recently received quite a credible death threat from a prominent Muslim authority. Her book is incredibly eye opening about a lot of things, not just Islam. I seriously recommend you get yourself a copy. The following quotes a kindof dark in nature, but I’m really beginning to think that Muslims are not much – if any- further from Christ than Jews. I’ve heard too many uninformed Christians blast Islam as devil worship, but accept Jews as brothers. This kind of ignorance needs to stop if this world is going to change. Read on.

Favourite bits so far:
“Palestinians are the Jews of the Arab world.” – The Arab nations tear Israel apart for their treatment of Palestinians, but Jordan has been the only Arab country that will accept Palestinian refugees. Every other Arab nation refuses them entry, and/or mistreats them.

Regarding accusations that Israel is an apartheid state: “Would an apartheid state have several Arab political parties, as Israel does? Would the judiciary be free of political interference? In the 2003 Israeli elections, two Arab parties found themselves disqualified for expressly supporting terrorism against the Jewish state. Israel’s supreme court, exercising it’s independance, overturned both disqualifications.” (Digest that one!)

Quoting a Pakistani weekly, “Listen to Muslim intellectual, mullah, or politician and you will hear a litany of complaints and criticism against western sins of ommision and comission… Ask him where he wants to send his children to university and, if he is honest, he will reel off the names of the top American universities.”
…
“The fact that so many Muslims desire American influence holds the key to why they’re so furious with Washington. It’s not jealousy so much as unrequited camaraderie. For all the goods and services that America markets to Muslim societies, the greatest good, the greatest service – freedom – remains under-promoted.”

And finally…

“A majority of the world’s refugees spill out from Islamic countries. Not surpising, since most of the world’s civil wars rage among Muslims. Says Iranian journalist Amir Taheri, ‘The Arab states have fought no fewer than fifteen open or secret wars against one another since the 1930s …’ In the past ten years, Islamists and their socialist foes have butchered a hundred thousand Algerians. In February 1982, the Baathist forces of Syria’s Hafez Assad bombarded a town harbouring Muslim extremists. His hoodlums obliterated twenty-five thousand people. And from 1975 to 1990, the Lebanese civil war cost at least 150,000 lives, most of them belonging to Palestinians. That’s more than ten times as many deaths as Israel has inflicted in fifty years of combat.”

Boys’ MySpace.com Prank Results in Arrest

Hilarious! I know this is old, but if you missed this news article, you seriously need to check it out. (This has been saved as a draft and I forgot to post it.)

The 5th of November. I just got back from seeing V for Vendetta. Two words: freaking wow.

The movie is based on a graphic novel by Alan Moore. It takes place some 30 years in the future, in a distopian England. The United States’ various wars eventually ripped the world apart, and the power-hungry religious-oriented leader of England made radical steps to rid the country of immigrants and undesirables (gays, rioters, Muslims, and the like), and built a new position for himself as High Chancellor. As the movie unfolds you siwftly realise that this future is not a happy place, and people are under no illusions that all is not right in their country. V is the result of an experiment gone wrong, and begins to insight violence against the regime, all while wearing a Guy Fawkes mask.

Honestly, this movie blew me away. There are a load of great themes brought out, and tough questions asked. What’s the difference between good violence and bad violence? Do the ends justify the means? How do you violently rebel against a corrupt bureaucracy, but not end up the same as the original perpetrators? Things like that.

And of course there’s ass kicking. Ass kicking of the wildest kind. Hugo Weaving, the excellent Nigerian born, Australian actor plays the man behind the mask. I was commenting to my family on the way home that putting him behind the mask was a really great idea, because after The Matrix Trilogy, I had a really tough time seeing him as anyone other than Agent Smith. I never liked his being cast as Elrond in Lord of the Rings for this reason. (I still think Liam Neeson quite possibly IS Elrond.) So, you put him behind a mask and you get the benefits of his name, his voice, and his truly great acting skills. (If you’ve never seen Priscilla Queen of the Desert, you should rent it.)

Natalie Portman was also great, as she’s always been in anything other than Star Wars. She plays a young girl who’s rescued by V early on, and later decides to join his mission.

Right now, I give this movie a 5/5. I do have the weakness of falling in love with a movie immediately, and overating things, but I was really impressed with this one. I’m going to try and see it again in theatres, and maybe then I’ll have a more balanced approach. But I hope not.

Favourite quote:
V – “A revolution without dancing is a revolution not worth having.”

P.S. The soundtrack was hawt!

I just wrote this long witty post about how I’m using my laptop and internet on a TTC bus. And then I lost it. I hate technology.

Maija and I took in another Methodology gig last night. Technically her first, but my second. It was at Bar Italia in Little Italy. Twas a nice albeit small establishment with dinning/bar on the first floor, and bar and stage on the top floor.

Melissa Bathory played first, singing solo vocals supported by an acoustic guitar. She was decent, but nothing that really stood out to me. Her voice was a little loud in the system, but that wasn’t her fault.
Freeflow played next, a band from Vancouver who Methodology bumped into and asked to play with them. They had a fun sound; part rap part jazz infused rock.
Methodology closed off the night with 5 or 6 of their better tracks. We had fun.

Maija had the pleasure of interviewing one of her univeristy professors recently regarding the college program at York University. After he found out she was a Christian, all he wanted to discuss with her were the infamous Muhammad cartoons.

Ahh cartoons. Sweet sweet cartoons. Much like alcohol; the cause and solution to all of life’s problems. My wife recently commented on my cousin’s blog (regarding this issue) that she secretly likes reading cartoons, as they get away with saying all kinds of things.

But… as we all now the Mohammad cartoons have developed into a serious issue. Heck, they’re in Wikipedia! If that’s not a serious enough issue…
So who’s right? Who’s wrong? My cuz says:

“Anyway this whole thing makes me feel really annoyed because I know that Islam does not respect the rights of any other religion, especially Jews and Christians, yet they demand a western country respect their rights, they don’t understand that the state cannot interfer in what the newspaper publishes. So the whole arguement about whose rights are the most valid are now raging. Also it proves again just how widely apart the west and the middle east are in terms of worldview. I fear we will never understand each other, or even try too, it seems that Samuel Huntingtons ‘clash of civilizations’ is coming true.”

I tend to agree, but my thoughts are as follows:

- To the dude who wrote the cartoons: “Wouldn’t it better to leave well enough alone?”
- To the countries who demand “free press” and permit the cartoons: “There’s got to be a limit, especially if people’s lives are at risk. Which they now are.”
- To the company and countries defending the artist: “That’s admirable, but there is a difference between condoning something, and protecting one of your own. You got half of it right.”
- To the Muslim individuals burning buildings, attacking people, writing death threats: “Congratulations on playing exactly into the stereotype the cartoons painted of you.”
- And to the professor at York University who asked how we’d feel if people made fun of Jesus: “Tell me something new.”

And to the first person who reveals where the title of this post is from: “Biggups!”