#| ic : verse (a herald of glory) |

[ichorcrowncd]

“   this   will   be   our   only   chance   to   talk  .   ” (from cass!!)

He doesn’t doubt it -- the Rebellion is petering out, on it’s last legs, and if they don’t manage to eliminate the threat of Project Stardust (which they won’t -- the blasted thing is nigh impenetrable), they will all perish.

Hux can’t help but relish the thought of it. Fools, all of them. There is no stopping the tide from washing out rock, and likewise, there is no stopping the Empire from fulfilling its destiny.

Still -- he’s willing to play this part in Galen Erso’s little charade, willing to act as an intermediary between Erso on Eadu and the Rebellion on -- whatever backwater swamp Hux assumes their hiding on. (Willing to sell them out to Krennic, should the opportunity arise.)

“So -- talk, then,” he encourages his contact, a man he knows only as Joreth Sward (a name he assumes must be fake), not bothering to hide his urgency. “Have they assembled an extraction team?” He doesn’t mention who it’s for, assumes the man knows.

[senior70]

In which a New Geographic Nomenclature for Ontario is suggested as an Opiate for the Scourge of Torontocentrism

Some of us Ontario residents enjoy life outside that small and most southerly portion of the Province of Ontario where a large number of ill advised residents live.  They dwell in the path of successive storms that track from the southwest along the trend of the Appalachians, in the zone of lake-effect snows from northwestern air masses crossing the Great Lakes and, at other times, sweat in the oppressive heat and humidity of air creeping over the region from the west.  Their bubble is tiny and crowded and deeply affected by the geographic ignorance syndrome known as “Torontocentrism”. 

Those who suffer this malady are blissfully ignorant of the geography of any part of the Province lying more than a little north of Toronto, though thousands do submit to the summer weekend traffic snarls to spend a night or two in “cottage country”, which most of them perceive as an adventure to the edge of the known world, a transitional area between “civilization” and that which is “beyond the pale” that is daringly referred to as “Northern Ontario”, even though it lies within 300km of downtown Toronto.

Their world is small, largely confined to “Central Ontario” which is very loosely described as that area between Georgian Bay and the eastern end of Lake Ontario. The cities of London and Windsor, in their minds, lie in “South Western Ontario”, and Kingston and Ottawa lie in “Eastern Ontario”. However, similar terminology covers rather different divisions of Southern Ontario, such that real estate and health related divisions are in no way comparable. One thing that is certain, however, is that anything north of Parry Sound, or, indeed, of Barrie, is “Northern” and, as is strongly perceived by them, everything gets a lot worse as one ventures into the northern wastelands, even if one carries one’s security blanket.

Maps of Ontario, found in Atlases, are usually in two parts. Most of a double page will display Southern Ontario in all its glory, and an inset map in the corner remains to display the rest, but often not all, of the Province. Those suffering Torontocentrism are not, it seems, well versed in the concept of scale, and so conclude that a day’s drive will land them in Kenora, or even Winnipeg, for the night. Small motels between Wawa and Nipigon are accustomed to opening their doors to weary and perplexed Torontonian travellers, somewhat confused by the fact that they have not yet reached the Manitoba border. They would have been advised to consult map software that would have told them that Winnipeg lies just over 2000 km away and, in good road conditions, is an estimated 23 hour drive.

Thunder Bay residents are wearily used to phone calls and posted special offers urging them to frequent stores and services in Toronto. Receiving the offer of a free hearing test by CARP, the Canadian Association of Retired Persons, with Head Offices in Toronto, one discovers that the company offering this promotion has its most northerly office in the Sault, a mere 700 km drive away, estimated to take 8 hours, each way. Another touch of Torontocentrism. The caller from the Hudson’s Bay Department Store, with Head Offices in Toronto, trying to promote their shopping card, was surprised to learn that Toronto was thought to be rather far away to go shopping, so chirpily pointed out that there was a Bay in Winnipeg, only a 700 km, 8 hour drive, though in the other direction. The company offering to give a free estimate for installing solar panels on residential roofs, with Head Offices in the GTA, was a little confused by the Postal Code stated on the request of a Thunder Bay resident. They had not installed solar panels in any location north of Midland, it seemed. The representative was a little surprised to be informed that Thunder Bay receives a greater number of sunshine hours than does Toronto. The Weather Network banner announces 30 cm of snow due in “Ontario”, but this rough weather will in fact be experience by only that tiny sliver of the Province between Windsor and Ottawa. Their head office is in Oakville. Meanwhile, the rest of the Province basks under clear skies and sunshine.

There is, I believe, an antidote to Torontocentrism, and that is education of the ignorant. However, the ignorant are remarkably resistant to education, their vision blinkered by their malady, their knowledge base impervious to the realities of Canadian geography and their travel experience limited to that which can be reached within a few hours drive of their homes.

The only cure I can suggest is the formal adoption of a new geographic nomenclature for Ontario by no less than the Provincial Government of the Province. Enforced education is perhaps the only effective way of dealing with this deeply ingrained geographic ignorance syndrome.

Let us begin by dealing with the terms “South” and “North”. The latitudinal (south to north) extent of the Province is from Middle Island, part of Point Pelee National Park (41.685°N) to the intersection of the Manitoba border with the shore of Hudson Bay (56.857°N) a span of 15.172°. The latitude marking the bisector of the Province into Southern and Northern halves is thus 49.253°N (Figure 1). The most passed through habitation close to this line is English River (49.216°N), an unincorporated place on the Trans Canada Highway, 189 km and 2 hours drive northwest of Thunder Bay, and worthy of a road sign informing travellers that they are passing from Southern to Northern Ontario or vice versa at this point in their journey.

Figure 1.  

However, there is the term “Central” to be clarified also, particularly for those sufferers who are under the misapprehension that they live in “Central Ontario”, but do not. Dividing the latitudinal span of the Province into three equal parts would give us “Southern”, “Central” and “Northern” Ontario, each 5.057° in latitudinal width (Figure 2). By this perfectly logical geographic division, the boundary between Southern Ontario and Central Ontario would lie at 46.742°N. The most easily identified location of this boundary would be where the Trans Canada Highway crosses the Goulais River, 30 km north of Sault Ste. Marie. The Sault, Sudbury and, ironically, North Bay, (despite its name) all lie in Southern Ontario. 

Figure 2. 

Thunder Bay, population 110,172 (48.381°N, 89.247°W), which lies south of the 49th parallel and thus south of all of Manitoba, Saskatchewan, Alberta and British Columbia, is the largest city of Central Ontario and the major service city for both Central and Northern Ontario. Interestingly, Nipigon (49.016°N), 117 km to the east, on the Trans Canada Highway, is just north of this significant parallel, a fact which should be heralded by an informative road sign telling travellers from Southern Ontario that they have at last reached the southern border of much of the rest of Canada.

The boundary between Central Ontario and North Ontario lies at 51.800°N (Figure 2). Interestingly, the community of Pikangikum lies exactly on this latitude. With a population of 2,300, this community is the largest First Nation community in Northern Ontario, with an estimated 75% of the population below 25 years of age. It will likely come as a shock to those suffering Torontocentrism to be told that the communities of Northern Ontario can only be reached by air in summer and, in some cases, by ice road in the winter months. Note that Moosonee, pop. 1,481 (51.273°N) and Moose Factory (51.262°N) near the mouth of the Moose River, and Ontario’s only saltwater port, both lie within Central Ontario. Note also, the furthest north one can drive in the Province is to Pickle Lake (51.467°N), a 530 km drive north of Thunder Bay. Moosonee can only be reached by a train ride of 360 km from Cochrane (49.065°N), on the Polar Bear Express. Moose Factory, on an island in the Moose River, is reached by boat, and at times in spring and fall, only by helicopter.

One has yet to consider the terms “West” and “East”, both terms used by those suffering Torontocentralism to describe their fairly immediate surroundings. In particular, the use of “Southwestern Ontario” needs to be re-evaluated. Again applying the logic of geography, it needs to be noted that the easternmost Longitude of the Province is a point in the St. Lawrence River, just a fraction further east than Riviere Baudette, Quebec (74.339W) at 74.321°W (bearing in mind that Longitude is measured as degrees west and east of the Prime Meridian which passes through the Royal Observatory, in Greenwich, London, UK.). The westernmost Longitude of Ontario is that coincident with part of the Ontario/Manitoba, at 95.153°W, the longitudinal span of Ontario being 20.832°. 

It follows that the mid longitude of Ontario, that divides the Province into equal Eastern and Western parts of 10.416° width, is 84.737°W. This meridian cuts the coast of Hudson Bay just east of the mouth of the Winisk River, passing through Polar Bear Provincial Park. It runs south, passing just to the west of Sault Ste. Marie (84.335°W) and down the Michigan Peninsula, running just to the west of Lansing (84.555°W) (Figure 3).

Figure 3. 

This division allows for the terms North Western and North Eastern Ontario,  and West Central and East Central Ontario. As indicated previously, Thunder Bay is clearly the dominant city of West Central Ontario, and Timmins, pop 41,788 (48.475°W, 81.330°W) can claim to be the most significant community in East Central Ontario. Understandably, Toronto, pop. 2.93 million (43.6532° N, 79.3832° W) is the dominant city of South Eastern Ontario. However, there is no South Western sextant of Ontario, primarily because the Province extends not only north of Toronto but considerably to the west, a fact unrecognized by sufferers of Torontocentrism. Windsor (83.03°W) can best be described as situated at the far western end of South Eastern Ontario.

One more detail needs to be considered within this opiate package of factual information, and that concerns the location of the centre of the Province of Ontario, that is the geographical centre as distinct from Toronto which Torontocentrism sufferers appear to believe is the centre of everything. Having identified the mid latitude as 49.253°N and the mid longitude or meridian as 84.737°W, the centre of the Province is where these two lines intersect (Figure 4).

Figure 4. 

That point lies a little west of the shore of St. Onge’s Lake, a little known small body of water a few kilometres north and east of Hornepayne, pop. 980 (49.2122° N, 84.7714° W) in Central Ontario (Figure 5). Hornepayne lies in the country between the Trans Canada Highway and Highway 11 (“the Northern route”), on Highway 631, which joins the two main routes, running north from White River, pop. 645 (48.5940° N, 85.2748° W). Hornepayne deserves recognition as the community at the centre (almost) of the Province of Ontario. 

Figure 5. 

So, I have presented above, a logical geographic nomenclature for the location of regions and places in the Province of Ontario, a sturdy and defensible replacement for the truly laughable terminology in use by those who suffer the geographic ignorance syndrome of Torontocentralism. It is one that I believe should be adopted by the Government of Ontario, forthwith.

I rest my case.

senior70.

December 2019

[ricardosousalemos]

Father John Misty: Pure Comedy

Father John Misty presents a sprawling double-feature: the skewering of an infantile generation, and the self-skewering of its author. From the mind of an apocalyptically inclined neurotic, who reads Žižek and Freud and believes humanity is condemned to moral chaos, comes Pure Comedy, a grueling, often inspired odyssey that screams to be taken as art. Across its 75 minutes, humility is scarce. In one song, having indexed the species’ flaws, he reprimands God: “Try something less ambitious next time you get bored.” It is intense, fatalistic, exhausting, and grandiose—sometimes devastating, sometimes pretentious. (Regarding love—he’s not really doing that anymore.) So yes, it is a Father John Misty album, and Josh Tillman still excels at tormenting those unlucky souls who enjoy his music.

The record is also Tillman’s first opportunity to confront pop culture from the frontline. After releasing I Love You, Honeybear, whose inquiry into romance and masculine folly won many hearts, he coasted through the last two years as an indie firebrand. He perfected theatrical cynicism, sarcastically covering Taylor Swift, trolling music sites, claiming responsibility for a stolen crystal and using the coverage to denounce health food. He shot a video with Lana Del Rey, who shares something of his postmodern mystique, and wrote for Lady Gaga and Beyoncé, who do not.

That behind him, the Pure Comedy circus kicked into gear at a New Jersey folk festival last July. Instead of his songs, Tillman performed a rambling soliloquy, triangulating Trump anxiety, the obstetrical dilemma hypothesis, corporate evil, folksy escapism, and the “fucked up entertainment complex.” Along with all those themes, Pure Comedy channels the speech’s righteous delirium, a rhetorical mode Tillman finds irresistible. If his confessions favor ironic distance, his big-picture theses exude something close to rapture. “The Memo,” a highlight here, smashes together cynicism and compassion, with Tillman declaring that it’s “not self-love that kills you,” it's when “those who hate you” are allowed to profit from your vulnerability. Such sermons are typically repelling, but what saves him from insufferable smartassery—for the most part—is his ability to turn yelling at clouds into a grand form of entertainment.

Pure Comedy follows the thread of Honeybear outliers “Holy Shit” and “Bored in the USA.” The latter concealed sincerity beneath melodrama, its mockery of “middle-class problems” complicated by troubling reflections on depression. Those uncomfortable collisions—bourgeois ills explored through otherwise sympathetic characters—emerge throughout Pure Comedy. 

Beneath Pure Comedy’s synth-dappled country, blue-eyed soul, and pop fashioned after George Harrison is a battleground filled with religion, pop culture, technology, and neoliberalism. To open “Things It Would Have Been Helpful to Know Before the Revolution,” a wonderful portrait of life after the climate apocalypse, Tillman nonchalantly topples capitalism: “It got too hot,” he sings, “And so we overthrew the system.” Midway in, an orchestral cacophony swirls into an outrageous chorus, which I’m sure Tillman would love to see quoted unabridged:

“Industry and commerce toppled to their knees The gears of progress halted The underclass set free The super-ego shattered with our ideologies The obscene injunction to enjoy life Disappears as in a dream And as we returned to our native state To our primal scene The temperature, it started dropping And the ice floes began to freeze”

The indulgence is pure Tillman. But the passage, in all its mad glory, matches the size of the task, particularly in times of total dysfunction. It’s never been easier to sympathize with Tillman’s pomposity. Only in the song’s conclusion does the façade collapse, as “visionaries” start developing products that will rejoin this new society with capitalist realism. A cop-out, maybe, but who else would have copped in to begin with?

While “Revolution” is its least discreet flirtation with utopianism, Pure Comedy makes plenty of time to call bullshit on visionary capitalism. The title track swirls with religious fanaticism, secular ideology, and pharmaceutical greed into a repudiation of almost everything. In the last chorus—“But the only thing that they request/Is something to numb the pain with/Until there’s nothing human left”—the record hurtles into a chronically pleasurable near-future. “Total Entertainment Forever” is a postcard from the brave new world: Backed by sarcastically ecstatic horns, Tillman celebrates a “permanent party” where our appetite for distraction has eroded the old-fashioned human soul. His characters finish the chores, slide on the Oculus Rift, and jump into bed with the pop star du jour. He heralds the “freedom to have what you want” in a tone that suggests freedom, whatever it may be, does not look like this.

After that opening suite—“Pure Comedy,” “Total Entertainment Forever,” and “Revolution”—the music settles into a tonal plateau. Even the most gripping songs unspool with acoustic leisure, and they can be long and lofty trips. The spiritual anchor is “Leaving LA,” in which fragments of orchestral splendour—all arranged by the brilliant Gavin Bryars—are buried beneath a 13-minute pilgrimage through Father John Misty’s psyche. An unappetizing prospect, perhaps, but he writes captivating scenes; one revisits a traumatic childhood saga soundtracked by Fleetwood Mac’s “Little Lies” in a JCPenney, another a New Year’s sunset that “reminds me, predictably, of the world’s end.”

Five verses into the song, Tillman inserts a mocking female character: He’s just “another white guy in 2017,” she groans, “who takes himself so goddamn seriously.” “Leaving LA” reaches for transcendent honesty, but this lyric feels misjudged. Is this a sincere concern or an attempt to shoot down nonexistent thinkpieces? Father John Misty’s music is certainly exasperating, but it’s not due to his entitlement so much as that irrepressible impulse to outpace the listener’s criticism. The moment somebody says, “I know I’m being annoying” is often when you realize it’s true.

Tillman has, of course, anticipated this critique. His childish desire to be loved or hated on his own terms is dredged up on “A Bigger Paper Bag,” but there’s an added, delicate touch that’s endearing. “It’s easy to assume that you’ve built some rapport/With someone who only likes you for what you like yourself for,” he sings, over a woozy arrangement evoking peak Elliott Smith. “You be my mirror/But always remember/There are only a few angles I tend to prefer.” It’s a rare callback to Honeybear’s psychological burrowing, and I find myself returning to it. His sociological bombast is dwarfed by these quiet revelations. The scarcity of such interludes doesn’t undermine the Misty manifesto, but it does mean the record’s pontifications, particularly the tired false equivalencies of “Two Wildly Different Perspectives,” can test your patience. David Foster Wallace—whose critiques on irony, entertainment, and self-consciously “hideous men” are all over Pure Comedy—once advocated for bleak fiction in dark times. Wallace said that it should “find a way both to depict this world and to illuminate the possibilities for being alive and human in it.” This redemptive spirit eludes Tillman. Given his off-record provocations—that a pop star’s “wearing next to nothing” strips her music of value, for instance—it’s reasonable to expect him to dream up something for us to really care about (or at least to button up his shirt). He instead settles on soothing defeatism, a litany of conquered crises whose lessons amount to, “That’s just the way it is.” Given the album’s thematic largesse, it’s almost charming. Almost. But you wonder what kind of progressive future he envisions: that which will lift society or merely flatter his own intellect.

[ichorcrowncd]

"You may dispense with the pleasantries, General. I'm here to put you back on schedule" // ??! Empire au for Hux maybe??

“My lord?” he asks, voice weak with anxiety. It’s rare for Lord Vader to personally oversee the completion of any project, and even more rare for the overseeing authority in charge of the project to survive the encounter. “It was not made aware to me that anyone was displeased with our current progress on Project Stardust.” Clearly, he was being kept out of the loop by someone.

[ichorcrowncd]

“If we wait until we are ready, we’ll be waiting for the rest of our lives.”

@dsciplined | meme

This is beyond ludicrous, but – perhaps Arum has a point. He often does, loath as Hester is to admit it. Nevertheless, he has to put up a token resistance, if only to provide Arum with the antagonism he’s used to. “We’ve already been waiting our entire lives, and you’ve yet to convince me that now is the ideal time for patricide,” he says, voice low but not a whisper. People pay attention to whispers, he’s found, much more than they do a quietly spoken conversation. “Surely we can engage in your little espionage fantasy after Operation Stardust has been completed?”