ltmurnau | Recent Entries

I hadn't posted much lately about the monthly DJ gig, but we did the last one last night.
Five and a half years is a long time for a regular music night, in this town it's a phenomenally long time for any kind of music let alone the EBM/industrial/coldwave etc. stuff we were playing.

I learned a lot, and had fun, and listened to a lot of interesting new music. But ti's time to move on. Maybe I might still do one-offs in future but we'll see.

Setlists, videos, MP3 files of sets etc. will be at http://circuitbreakerclub.org for some time to come.

Thanks!

Current Mood: meh
Current Music: Blutengel, "Kinder dieser Stadt"

... ohhh pleasedontsuck pleasedontsuck....

From this morning's CBC:

Filmmaker Ben Wheatley is 'a cup of tea away from anarchy'
British director's new film, High-Rise, explores the intersection of condo life and class warfare
By Matt Meuse, CBC News Posted: Apr 16, 2016 8:00 AM PT Last Updated: Apr 16, 2016 8:00 AM PT

"They say you're only two meals away from anarchy," British director Ben Wheatley tells On the Coast host Gloria Mackarenko.

"You know, I like to eat. I'm probably about a cup of tea away from anarchy, usually."

Wheatley's new film, High-Rise, tells the twisted story of a utopian condo complex on the outskirts of a gentrifying city, and its rapid descent into chaos.

The transformation takes three months in the film. But in real life, Wheatley reckons it would be much quicker. In the aftermath of the 2008 banking crisis, he realized he only had a day's worth of food in his house, and no real cash or valuables.

"I started looking around at the people in the street going, oh, I'd have to fight them, wouldn't I, for food," he said, laughing. "It would collapse really fast."

The film is based on a novel written by English author J. G. Ballard in the 1970s. Tom Hiddleston stars as Dr. Robert Laing, a resident of the titular High-Rise.

The book was speculative fiction at the time, but Wheatley finds it to be remarkably prescient.

"When I reread the book in my mid-40s, I realized that it wasn't predictive science fiction anymore, it was much more like I was reading pages out of a newspaper," he said. "It was a bit depressing."

To capture the feel of the novel, the film is set in a sort of alternate-history "super 70s," as Wheatley describes it — an ambiguous, highly-stylized representation of the era.

As if to highlight this, the film ends with an archival monologue from former British prime minister Margaret Thatcher, whose right-wing economic policies dominated British politics in the 80s.

"Hearing Thatcher in the air [at the end of the film] is like the ending of John Carpenter's The Thing," he said, referencing a classic 80s horror film with a similarly bleak ending. "When I hear that voice, I get a slight twinge of fear. I find her disconcerting and terrifying."

"It's saying that the whole thing is cyclical and it will start again. And we have the hindsight of knowing what's going to happen next."

Parallels with modern Vancouver

The city in the film is implied as London, which is currently facing housing affordability problems not unlike Vancouver's. Prices are surging in both cities, and many blame investors who use real estate as a way of making and storing money.

Wheatley said the practice of treating real estate primarily as an investment has a devastating impact on cities.

"I always think of it as a bit like when these investors buy Van Goghs and stick them in a vault somewhere," he said. "The art gets turned into money, becomes abstracted and then put away, and it no longer serves the point it had in the first place. So, you know, if you do that to a city, you basically kill it."

"And what happens when no one can afford to live in the city? Do we all have to live on the outskirts and just look to it like Oz or something in the distance? I don't know, it's terrifying."

High-Rise was screened Friday night as part of the Vancouver International Film Festival, with a wider Canadian release on May 20. He'll be giving a master class as part of the festival Saturday at 2:30 p.m. at Vancity Theatre.

for the first time ever, Insane Clown Posse is coming to Victoria.

http://www.timescolonist.com/insane-clown-posse-rappers-coming-to-victoria-1.2229079

Wha...?
How...?

I had no idea this city had anywhere near the minimum critical mass of fans required to make ICP show up on your doorstep.
Victoria has been home to cells of all kinds of weird cults, but I never thought Juggalos would be one of them.

In other musical news, Circuit Breaker (the monthly EBM/industrial/coldwave/etc. show I've been doing for over 5 years) is about to conclude.
The two DJs I have been doing the show with want a break, and I don't have the time or energy to keep it going by myself.
Five years is a darn long time to keep a regular music event of any kind going in Victoria.
It was fun and I've learned a lot, and I will miss it, but perhaps it's time to hang it up.
Last show is May 15!

http://circuitbreakerclub.org is the website I've been maintaining, setlists and videos and occasional MP3s of sets are there.

Current Mood: confused
Current Music: And One, "Military Fashion Show"

Believe it or not, I am here most days for a quick troll through my Friends page.
But I don't post much anymore, obviously - mostly because I am busy doing stuff that I would be posting about, if I posted more.

Aki made it through his bridging semester program and now he is in 3rd Year of Mechanical Engineering!
He's finding it a lot of work, but I think it's coming together for him and he can see the purpose of it, unlike the Shakespeare they made him swallow in high school.
They have them working on projects, he is doing one with a team where they are developing a way to 3-D print custom braces for children with club feet.
He's also 21 now, how did that happen....

Game designing takes up a lot of my outside-work time, my blog on that is at http://brtrain.wordpress.com .
I never did figure out a way to feed entries from there to here, I should just do it manually but I am not sure who would be looking at it.

Current projects, since the last time I talked about them, include games on the following in no particular order:

- the French-Algerian War of 1954-62 (two games actually, using completely different systems: one large one with lavish production and wooden bits, another one a revision of an earlier design)
- the Battle of the Bulge (revision of earlier design, published 11/15)
- a set of 3 battles from the first year of the Korean War (published 11/15, mangled by publisher's "development" team)
- the 1973 coup in Chile
- the Slovak-Hungarian War of March, 1939
- the invasion of Canada by the United States, 193? (revision of earlier design)
- the Polish-Soviet War, 1920 (revision of earlier design)
- the Cyprus Emergency, 1955-59
- Binh Dinh province (central coast of Vietnam, 1969; did this one up a while ago for a history professor at Nipissing University for students in his course on 20C wars and revolutions to play)
- the 1943-45 Allied invasions of Greece and Yugoslavia that weren't (two games actually, using completely different systems; one from the publisher that mangled my work (though they seem to have not mangled it too much this time, it's still the last work I will ever send them) and one I published myself)
- the Finnish Civil War of 1918

People want me to talk about my work too, which I find extremely difficult to do... I mean, I can talk technique, but as to what value there is in it, or what makes some thing better than another thing - I can't be articulate.

But week after next I am going to Washington DC to talk to people at RAND Corporation about what I do, and how it might help them in what they do... a very unexpected offshoot of a conference I went to last September that featured a workshop on quick game design that I helped facilitate.

Then in mid-March, UVic has an event on gaming (http://gameswithoutfrontiers.uvic.ca/) and I will be showing some of my work and maybe talking about it.

Then at the end of March, I am going to the American Popular Culture Association's national meeting in Seattle, to present a paper on... well, here's my abstract:

Bored of War

Board wargames, or manual military simulation games, are a form of civilian entertainment that peaked commercially in the 1980s but continue today as a small press, near-DIY activity. They remain one of Western culture’s most complex analog artifacts, rich in their ability to generate narrative and explore historical possibilities.

However, only a very small number of published civilian wargames address the dominant modes of actual post-World War Two conflict: irregular war and counterinsurgency. This paper will explore the cultural reasons for this absent focus, explain the social and political utility of these games as a means of interrogating and critiquing contemporary conflicts, and present specific games in this field as examples of “critical play” (Flanagan, 2009).

See what I mean about being inarticulate?
This is a big conference, with thousands of presentations... and the Game Studies area is quite new, with only about 100 presentations. But all of them are about digital games - their design, the sociology of people who play them, etc. - except for 3: my presentation, and 2 presentations on role-playing games.
I feel no one will have the vaguest idea what I am talking about, much less care, even if I could make myself understood.
But Lianne is making a presentation (on horror films) in much better company... I've never been to a conference quite like this before.

And then in April, trying to work through arrangements to visit the Army War College in Carlisle PA to do some facilitated play of my Algeria game, to match with a screening of The Battle of Algiers.
I wonder what the Army officers there will make of that one.

Then in June, to Tempe AZ for the annual Consimworld Expo, for more showing of work and meeting with publishers.

It took 25 years to get to this point, I don't mind being so busy but again, it's hard to write about this stuff in the larger sense.

Oh, and I have something in a book too: this spring will see a game studies anthology come out from MIT Press:
https://mitpress.mit.edu/books/zones-control
It's the first time any of my writing has been in an actual book!

Anyway, this is in large part what I have been doing instead of posting.
I will try to pop in here more often, if only to leave links.

Current Mood: rushed
Current Location: behind the 8-ball
Current Music: Pizzicato 5, "Contact"

OK, a brief post to show you how brilliant my cousin Hall is.
There are people in one's life that you just hold in awe - they are creative, smart, happy and great to be around.
My cousin is one of these, for me.
Ever since he was a boy, he was fascinated with dinosaurs, and film, and motion.
He has made a career of animating dinosaurs and much of his business involves preparing exhibits for museums etc..
But his latest little film is a fun little short, a hat-tip to Melies and done to inspire kids to use simple illusory tricks to make their own films.
This is the sort of thing he would have made at age 10, if he had had the tech kids do today.
But that was over 40 years ago, and he had to make do with 8mm film shot one frame at a time ... like I and my friends did, but didn't stick with as he did.

Anyway, have a look!

Down our way, some Earl Cowan wannabe defaced some NDP signs on the street corner with a spray-painted hammer and sickle.
But he didn't stay to do a good job of filling in the the hammer shape, so it looked like a lollipop and sickle.
Unfortunately they replaced the signs before I could get a picture.

[ETA, 6 October: He did it again!]

Current Mood: flat
Current Music: Melon, Gag 1

Guess they found a few veterans to speak for them, without their actually saying anything....

Conservatives bring in ex-soldiers for extra security on Harper's campaign
Group of former Canadian Forces members to bolster RCMP assigned to PM's protection detail
The Canadian Press Posted: Aug 27, 2015 4:44 PM ET Last Updated: Aug 27, 2015 4:44 PM ET

The Conservatives are using former members of the Canadian military to act as security guards at their election campaign events, in addition to the RCMP officers who are assigned to the prime minister's personal detail.

The former Canadian Armed Forces soldiers, who are travelling with members of the media on the Conservative campaign bus, wear suits and earpieces much like the Mounties assigned to protect Stephen Harper.

One member of the private security team, a former sniper, escorted a man out of a Harper event with the help of RCMP officers Thursday in Markham, Ont., when he tried to line up behind journalists to ask the prime minister a question.

The man was later allowed to re-enter the room a short time later.

Harper continues to be protected by his personal detail during the campaign — an RCMP unit that guards the prime minister both at home and abroad.

The RCMP detail, which is paid for by taxpayers, has only a single goal, and "that is the protection of the prime minister," said security expert Chris Mathers, a former undercover Mountie.

"That is their job," Mathers said. "If anyone else wants security at a venue, then they would have to engage private security contractors to take care of it."

The RCMP is trained to remove the leader when there is an issue at campaign events rather than engage with those causing a disturbance, he said.

Mathers said that's why private security personnel have likely been tasked with dealing with "uninvited guests" at campaign events.

"The segregation of duties is such that any contract security personnel would be doing work for the party dealing with trespassers," Mathers said. "They're not protecting the prime minister, they're there to keep the peace."

Conservative spokesman Kory Teneycke characterized the additional security officers as part of the party's logistical team.

"We don't comment on our event logistics, that's not something that's new," said Teneycke, who took issue with the characterization of the additional personnel as "security."

"PM security is about (prime minister personal detail) ... how we manage the logistics of our events, that's a different matter and we don't talk about it."

Teneycke said the party is responsible for footing the bill for "event logistics and event planning," suggesting the security is being paid for by the party, but he would not say whether they are licensed to work as security guards.

'They're just security guards, period'

Provinces have different regulations for security guards and private investigators but they are required to have a valid license to work, including in Ontario where Harper has spent the bulk of time on the campaign so far.

Alex Marland, a political science professor at Memorial University, said the presence of security at campaign events is part of a greater conversation about modern campaigns and message control.

"The reality is that all political parties know that what can happen is you can have one person come out, make a wayward remark or engage in something and all sorts of election planning and discussion goes completely amuck," Marland said.

"These things are so tightly scripted, they're so focused, they're quite frankly quite boring, that all of a sudden it introduces a level of drama that the media, understandably, will chase."

Marland said technology is a major consideration because everyone in the room has a cellphone and leaders are under the microscope.

"Every political party is absolutely trying to avoid going off script, ever," he said. "The whole point about having security at these things to is try to avoid somebody else, who has their own agenda ... destabilizing the agenda that you have."

Campaign events are not the "public open forums" that some people may think they are, he added.

The RCMP is also providing security for NDP Leader Tom Mulcair and Liberal Leader Justin Trudeau — standard procedure during an election campaign. Neither party, however, has hired additional security.

Mathers also said it is not unusual for former military members to take on security positions once they have left the Canadian Forces.

"They're just security guards, period," he said.

This is simultaneously too good to be true and possibly entirely true.
Clueless commentary on Laibach's history and intentions aside, here it is in the press.
I just hope nothing happens to the people in the DPRK who organized this - it's a bigger prank than Stephen Colbert's "in-persona" speech at the White House Correspondent's dinner, with greater consequences.

North Korea gig comes natural for Slovenian conceptual band Laibach

ALI ZERDIN / THE ASSOCIATED PRESS

JULY 21, 2015 09:29 AM

LJUBLJANA, Slovenia - For a band inspired by art in totalitarian regimes, a gig in North Korea is a dream come true.

Slovenia's Laibach recently announced it will play two concerts in Pyongyang next month. The group is known for music described as a mixture of industrial rock and retro electronic, and for its use of authoritarian imagery, such as Soviet-era symbols, marches and dark uniforms.

The tour will coincide with the ceremonies marking the 70th anniversary of the Korean peninsula's liberation from Japanese colonization, and will include Laibach's own music as well as popular Korean songs, one of the band's founders, producer and spokesman Ivan Novak, told The Associated Press.

"Originally, we invited ourselves and then they invited us," Novak said.

Formed in 1980, when Slovenia was still part of Communist-run Yugoslavia, Laibach immediately stirred controversy with its name — German for Slovenia's capital city Ljubljana — and because it used a black cross as one of its symbols.

This alone was enough for an official ban by the regime born out of anti-fascist struggle during World War II. Laibach were still allowed occasional concerts until, in 1983, they locked the door of a concert hall and played the sound of a dog barking extremely loudly for almost half an hour.

For the next few years, Laibach concerts moved abroad. The group's visual style included wearing military uniforms on stage and toying with socialist and populist imagery while playing almost martial-style songs, sung in a husky, deep voice.

The band has six members, but only two — including Novak, who will be 57 in August, singer Milan Fras, a couple of years younger — have been there from the early years. Fras joined in 1983 after Laibach's first singer committed suicide.

Despite being criticized as too dark, the band has always insisted that it is exploring the relation between ideology, politics and art. One of its main slogans states that "art and totalitarianism do not exclude each other."

Over the years, Laibach has gained an important place on Slovenia's art scene. The band's retrospective currently is part of an exhibition of the Neue Slowenische Kunst (New Slovenian Art) movement at the Modern Gallery in Ljubljana.

Laibach members are professional musicians, some of whom teach music or take part in various art projects. Laibach has held more than 800 concerts throughout the world, while gigs at home are usually sold out, drawing up to few thousand people in a country of 2 million.

Novak said the band has always wanted to visit North Korea and remembers clearly the visit in 1977 to the country by then Yugoslav communist leader Josip Broz Tito. Novak rejected the possibility that the trip will amount to political support for the North Korean communist regime, viewed as an isolationist dictatorship in the West.

"We never support the regime anywhere where we perform ... but we do support the people who live there," Novak said. He explained that the band has found inspiration for its art in the country, citing events where people fill stadiums and hold up colorful cards in carefully choreographed displays to create giant images.

"All Korea is practicing superb pop art. Superb," he said. "From the point of view of art history, they should actually protect the whole country, they should put it in a museum of pop art."

Laibach concerts are planned Aug. 19 and 20 for an audience of 1,000 each day. Several pop singers and bands from South Korea have performed in the north in the past, while British singer David Thomas Broughton has said he performed once for expats in North Korea. Laibach's performance, however, will mark the first encounter with a visually charged band from the West.

"We will adjust and adapt our program to the Korean situation and audience," Novak said. "We will perform a gentle version of Laibach."

____

Jovana Gec contributed from Belgrade, Serbia; Tong-hyung Kim and Hyung-jin Kim contributed from Seoul, South Korea.

The second issue of YAAH! magazine is out, containing three abstract games by me (Army of Shadows, Guerrilla Checkers, Uprising). I also wrote a short simple article on the think-value of abstract games, these in particular, hooked to Ben Franklin’s love of chess. It’s partly adapted from a presentation I gave at Connections-UK in 2013.

Perhaps you'll find it interesting:

https://brtrain.wordpress.com/2015/05/05/from-yaah-2-thinking-about-and-through-abstract-games/

Or the original item:

http://www.flyingpiggames.com/yaah--magazine-issue--2.html

Reposted from t'other blog.

https://brtrain.wordpress.com/2015/04/28/a-bit-in-the-guardian-about-political-board-games/

Games referenced: Labyrinth, Train by Brenda Romero, and A Distant Plain. As you might expect though, the article is illustrated with a stock photo of Risk.

The writer, Matt Thrower (“MattDP” on Boardgamegeek), had a long interview with Volko Ruhnke and while I am certain that Volko mentioned it, there is nothing in the article to indicate that ADP was a co-design. The writer also indicated in the comments that he had a lengthy discussion with Volko where he vigorously defended the bipolar political model in Labyrinth, but there was no room for it in the article. Sigh, so it goes.

James Kemp (http://www.themself.org/) pops in to mention megagames, the ones that he and Jim Wallman have run are very good examples.

The comments also contain this gem by one “Winston Smith”:

“Any 5 year old can create a board game, but the same can not be said of Crusader Kings II, one of the most genius strategy games of all time. I’ve played thousands of board games, and none of them come close to CKII. You have to be a moron, or have some secret agenda to think board games will ever hold up as anything other than a novelty in 20 years. “

Constant Readuhs will know that most of my posting these days is on my game design blog "Ludic Futurism".
There appears to be no way to automatically publish or otherwise connect a Livejournal blog with a Wordpress one, so I will pop in here to post when I've done something over there.
Here is the first such:

https://brtrain.wordpress.com/2015/04/22/notes-on-the-first-four-folios-from-oss-games/

Go and look if you like, if this game design thing of mine interests you.
I have really fallen out of the habit of blogging about my life, in general things are pretty OK - it seems lately I just pop in here to post some especially upsetting bit of political news or foreign policy development.
Even the novelty of that is waning as there is more and more bad news to relay, we seem to be heading down the De-evolution slope....

I hate reading stuff like this.
It's so discouraging.

*****

CBC Asks: Many Canadians distrustful of federal politics, poll indicates

4 in 10 Canadians never talk politics, Samara Canada survey suggests

CBC News Posted: Mar 25, 2015 5:00 AM ET Last Updated: Mar 25, 2015 4:02 PM ET

A strong majority of Canadians don't take part in politics beyond voting and don't trust their federal parties or MPs, a new report suggests.

What's more, four in 10 Canadians said they hadn't had a single political conversation in the past 12 months, according to Samara Canada, a non-partisan charitable organization that works to improve Canadian democracy.

In Democracy 360, Samara's report card on the state of Canadian politics, a wide-ranging poll of Canadian residents shows strong levels of distrust and disengagement.

Among the highlights:

Only 40 per cent of Canadians say they trust their MPs to do what is right, and only 42 per cent place some trust in political parties.

Sixty-two per cent feel politicians only want their vote.

When asked to rate MPs across six areas of responsibility, Canadians gave failing grades in five categories, including helping people in their riding and explaining decisions made in Parliament. The only passing grade was for "representing their parties' views."

Thirty-one per cent of Canadians say they have contacted an elected official in the last year.

Thirty-nine per cent of Canadians say they haven't had a single political conversation in a year, online or off.

Many see politics as irrelevant

Samara says in its report that Canadians are withdrawing from the democratic system, because they see politics as irrelevant. Less than a third of Canadians (31 per cent) believe politics affects them daily, and slightly more than half (54 per cent) believe MPs can shape the direction of the country.

Despite the apparent negativity toward the country's democracy, 65 per cent of poll respondents said they are "very" or "fairly" satisfied with democracy.

Samara said in its report that there is some cause for hope: while only 37 per cent of Canadians give time or resources to political activities between elections, 83 per cent did participate in at least one civic engagement activity such as donating or volunteering.

"This is proof that many citizens do care about their communities and their country and are willing to give their time or resources accordingly. But this activity is often at a distance from politics." the report says.

Samara plans to use their report as a baseline and re-do the survey in 2017 in time for Canada's 150th birthday.

Samara Canada conducted its survey online, surveying what it called a nationally representative sample of 2,406 Canadians in English and French from Dec. 12 to Dec. 31.

*****

Jesus H. Tapdancing Christ, how can people see politics as irrelevant?
I guess they do, if they can't even see past the plate of nachos set in front of them.
Small-p or large-P, politics horns in on anything and everything in modern life.
You can try and live without, but it will come and get you, and bite you in the ass eventually.
But it will be too late by then.

I wouldn't be so upset by this if democracy would stay the same whether these butt-scratching schlubs were around in such numbers or not, but this is no longer the case - there's less and less of it to be had these days, and a certain fraction of people would seem to be just fine with that.
But the roof will fall in on all of us.

Current Mood: aggravated
Current Location: Crick-neck Holler
Current Music: Something 80s

http://www.cbc.ca/news/politics/canadian-soldiers-to-train-ukrainian-military-police-1.2864306
No word on how many, or where, or when, but we are told that Some, are There, Now.

http://www.cbc.ca/news/canada/manitoba/ukrainian-winnipeggers-rally-on-eve-of-minister-visit-to-kiev-1.2863875

http://www.cbc.ca/news/politics/james-bezan-conservative-mp-personally-delivers-army-relief-supplies-to-ukraine-twice-1.2857177 (James Bezan is MP for Selkirk-Interlake in Manitoba)

http://www.cbc.ca/news/politics/ukraine-getting-11m-more-in-non-lethal-support-from-canada-1.2850864

http://www.cbc.ca/news/world/stephen-harper-at-g20-tells-vladimir-putin-to-get-out-of-ukraine-1.2836382

A few days ago I was looking at the FB feed and someone had posted a link to a news story about a pastor in Flyover Country somewhere had been harassed and abused by the local rednecks for being especially welcoming in the way he was running his church.
The illustration was of an unsigned letter, or maybe it was a printed email, from a local anonymous troglodyte full of misspelled obscenity and abuse about all the n-words and q-words he was letting into his church, we know where you live, you should leave, etc. etc..
The email went on to dump on Obama, with the usual string of epithets, except that at one point the current President of the United States is described as a "scholiast".
I thought, what an odd term of abuse to use on someone... not that offensive, rather bizarre in its application.... like yelling at someone and calling them a "Babylonian accountant".
It amused me for a couple of days before I realized that the Faithful Correspondent had meant to write "socialist", which completes the Rosary of Obama Abuse, and was either the victim of a very creative spell-checker intervention or the proof that a monkey can use a typewriter in an interesting way after all.
Ho hum.

... is about all I can say for now.
Once there was this little baby I could hold in both hands, and now there's a man living in my house who calls me "Dad".
I'm so proud of him in so many ways, and he is still surprising me in new ones.

Happy birthday, Akito.

(and no, I won't embarass him with a picture!)

Okay, I can't seem to place two lists of things next to each other in an LJ entry, but here's a comparison of the deeds and official treatments of cop-killer Bourque and soldier-killer Zehaf-Bibeau.

( Read more... )

Links to the two newspaper stories, in the same paper on the same day, that prompted this post:
http://www.timescolonist.com/ottawa-shooting-driven-by-ideological-motives-rcmp-1.1467396
http://www.timescolonist.com/justin-bourque-targeted-mounties-because-of-the-badge-they-carried-says-crown-1.1467860

What do these incidents share?
How are they different?
Which one is/was the greater threat to Canada?

Anyway, just putting this here for now, no answers or rhetorical flourishes....

Meanwhile, we've started arresting mouthy senile angry old men:

The arrest of a 70-year-old man who made threats against the B.C. legislature while on a ferry underscores the challenge police face, in the wake of the Ottawa and Quebec attacks on soldiers, to determine if such statements pose real dangers or are merely empty threats.

...a man on the 7 a.m. ferry from Tsawwassen to Swartz Bay was heard making reference to the Ottawa attacks, followed by threats against the B.C. legislature. The man was not physically violent and did not have any weapons.

B.C. Ferries staff called Sidney/North Saanich RCMP at 8:19 a.m. Thursday and kept the man in a secluded area of the vessel, said Island district RCMP spokesman Cpl. Darren Lagan. Mounties boarded the ferry at 8:35 a.m. and arrested the man. “Throughout the day, investigators undertook a full investigation and assessment of the man’s actions, and determined he posed no threat to public safety,” Lagan said, citing existing mental-health issues as a significant factor.

Lagan said the man was released from police custody later in the day, after mental-health professionals became involved. He will not face any charges.

A second man who was set to meet the older man was also detained and questioned. He co-operated and was released without charge.

I am 50 today.
Yikes.
That is all.

This just in:

http://www.cbc.ca/news/canada/hamilton/news/canada-post-honours-canuck-comedians-with-new-stamp-series-1.2750407

The comedians include Jim Carrey, Mike Myers, Catherine O’Hara, Olivier Guimond and (kaff) Martin Short.

Big deal, I got there first with this rubber stamp I made in 1986!

Funny thing, the "real" stamp for Martin Short has the same Ed Grimley image (his only genuinely funny character)....

Well, uh, yeah... no kiddin'.

http://www.cbc.ca/news/canada/ottawa/high-functioning-autism-creating-challenges-in-the-public-service

Nash the Slash, a.k.a. Jeff Plewman, dead at 66
Bandaged musician a mainstay in Toronto music clubs during '70s and '80s
CBC News Posted: May 12, 2014 3:59 PM ET| Last Updated: May 12, 2014 5:07 PM ET

Jeff Plewman, the musician behind the experimental rock persona Nash the Slash and the band FM, has died at age 66.

Nash the Slash was a mainstay in Toronto live music clubs throughout the 1970s and 1980s. He was known internationally after a world tour with Gary Numan and Iggy Pop and had opened up for the Who. Before performing as Nash the Slash, Plewman played in the prog-rock band FM in the 1970s.

Two of his longtime friends and colleagues confirmed Plewman's passing to CBC, though details are sparse.

Nash the Slash appeared on stage in a black tuxedo, top hat, dark sunglasses and wrapped in bandages. It would become his signature look. His bandaged appearance from 1979 onward prompted many questions about his mysterious identity.

He started the independent record label Cut-Throat Records, which he used to release his own music. Among his albums was Decomposing, which he claimed could be listened to at any speed, and Bedside Companion, which he said was the first record out of Toronto to use a drum machine.

His biggest hit was "Dead Man's Curve", a cover of a Jan and Dean song.

More recently, he played at Toronto's Pride Festival and toured up until 2012. In 1997 Cut-Throat released a CD compilation of Nash the Slash’s first two recordings entitled Blind Windows. In 1999 he released Thrash. In April 2001, Nash released his score to the silent film classic Nosferatu.

Plewman retired in 2012, bemoaning file-sharing online and encouraging artists to be more independent. "It's time to roll up the bandages," he wrote.

He will be remembered for his experimental ethos as well as his unusual stage presence.

"I refused to be slick and artificial," Plewman wrote of his own career.

There has not been word on how the musician died.

*******

I loved this guy's music and his weird persona.
I was a fan from the time that I started to get into music, over 30 years ago.
I would play one Nash cut every time I would DJ Circuit Breaker (which, by the way, is still going on after almost 3 1/2 years - sorry I have not been posting setlists here, it's all at http://circuitbreakerclub.org) and last night I played "Citizen" from his album And You Thought You Were Normal.

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Das Tagebuch Murnaus

"The Internet is a vanity press for the demented."

Recent Entries

Last Circuit Breaker

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AW NO! Not Nash!