Rub-A-Dub-Dub

What's the deal with the new-bathtub-over-the-old-one concept? I mean, I understand the concept, and it's actually pretty clever. It's just that they seem to be selling it pretty hard. You see the ads on TV, in newspapers, even kiosks at the mall. I'm just suspicious of something they have to work so hard to sell. And also the fact that they have to keep explaining it. I mean, I rent, so I'm not in the market for such things, yet I've picked it up the concept just by osmosis.

And is it just me, or is the concept a little lazy? Don't take the old thing out, just cover it up. If that's such a good idea, why hasn't it been extended to other things? You could easily cover sinks the same way. And if there were anything in the bathroom that you'd just throw up your hands and say 'cover it over, I don't want to deal with it,' it would be the toilet. Surely they could have a new toilet they could just drop over the existing one. Heck, apply this to entire houses: Don't rebuild, just put a newer house inside the old one.

Of course, that new house would have to be smaller, or at least have smaller rooms. But that brings up the question of the bath fitter endgame. After a few generations of covering up our inconvenient tubs, each time making them a little smaller. we'll be stuck with these big, chunky bathtubs, which are too narrow for us to fit in. So we'll all have to lose weight. But why struggle to build a new body when you can just put a new one over your old one.

A Rush Of Blood To The Face

I have to admit, I feel sorry for Coldplay.  I've never been a big fan of them, though they do have some good songs.  But they seem to be nice, friendly people, and they've tried to do some good with their fame.  And you have to appreciate this:

So it bugged me when media seemed to revel in saying that Beyonce stole the show from them at the Superbowl halftime show. The fact is that Coldplay is an easy target with their laid-back sound and non-aggressive-male personae.

What's weird is that in the lead-up to the game, much of the media was referring to the show as being "Coldplay, with Beyonce" which was a weird way of presenting it, since, you know, she's the biggest artist in the world.  And the fact that they had Coldplay on first, leading up to Beyonce taking the stage in dramatic fashion, seems to indicate that the show's producers saw her as the main star too.  So all in all, it seems like Chris Martin and friends were set up for failure.

And yes, I know, I'm complaining about a vague slight against a bunch of rich white guys, when American right-wing media has been trying to demonize Beyonce for incorporating Black Power symbolism in her performance. But I'm just ignoring that because they find some aspect of everything to get angry at.  These are probably the same people who got angry at the Carolina Panthers themselves because their logo shows a black panther. It's not like mainstream Canadian politicians attacked her.  What?  They did? Oh, Toronto City council, how many Rob Fords are you hiding?

One Nightmare Down, Three To Go

So why did Donald Trump lose in Iowa? It might be dirty tricks by Ted Cruz, as he asserts. It might be a vote-stuffing conspiracy as some of his supporters say. Though most people will be assuming that his supporters - who are, for good or bad, not your usual primary voters - just don't translate their stated support into votes. If that's the case, then his campaign is in trouble.

But here's another possibility, based on an interesting fact that came out recently: Trump likes to brag that his campaign has spent less than most other candidates. Unlike many things he brags about, that's absolutely true. He's actually spent much less than some candidates who are far behind him *cough*Jeb*cough*.

It's not hard to understand why: he gets so much free publicity from saying controversial things, he doesn't need to pay to get media exposure. But campaign spending is more than just buying publicity: it's also to get data to find the most likely supporters, and do the work to get those folks to vote, the so-called "ground game." Now here's the interesting fact, which I swear I'm not making up: the Trump campaign has spent more money on those "Make America Great Again" hats than it has on research and data.

On the Democratic side, Hillary and Bernie were separated by only a tiny amount. No one seems to have picked up in this, but Clinton's margin of victory was less than Martin O'Malley's share of the vote, so he can at least claim he had some effect on the campaign.

As Bernie Sanders rose in the polls, people asked if there was anything that could stop his momentum. My answer was, Donald Trump. No, I didn't mean in the election, I meant that the longer Trump (or Cruz) stayed at the top of the Republican polls, the more Democrats would remember that they aren't choosing a president, they're choosing a candidate that has to beat an opponent very opposed to their own beliefs. The more the Republicans get enamored with extremism, the more it would seem that the coming election will be an existential fight for America's soul, one they must win at all costs. Thus they'd decide to go back to the candidate with the better chance of winning, even if her ideology doesn't sit as well with them.

But once again, I overestimated the pragmatism of the far left. Instead of seeing Trump's rise as a sign that this election is a must-win, they've figured that the election is a guaranteed win for the Democrats. Thus, there's no need to go with a safe moderate candidate, they might as well choose the candidate they want to win.

For pragmatic lefties like myself, this has led to the nightmare scenario that the election will pit each party's idealized candidate, each equally unpalatable to mainstream America. Then the election would just be a contest to see which party can better ridicule their opponent. Yes, I know there have been polls showing Sanders would beat Trump, but I don't believe people would still prefer him after the Republicans have unloaded a billion dollars of attack ads at him. In an election between the intellectually laughable and the nerdy, I'll always bet on the former.

But now there's another nightmare scenario for the Dems. If, as I suspect, Clinton hangs on to win the nomination, it's not clear how the Sanders supporters will react. So much has been invested emotionally in his campaign. And although it's been relatively civil between the candidates, on the ground (and the Internet) it's often been quite angry. So will the Sanders supporters vote for Hillary, or stay home in disappointment and disgust? Essentially, this is the mirror-image of the Republicans' trouble with Trump: even if he doesn't win, his supporters may be angry and sit out the election, or back a third-party candidate.

As if that's not enough, here's a third Democratic nightmare scenario: Marco Rubio's strong third place in Iowa has made him the choice of non-extreme Republicans, and I suspect that will win him the nomination, now that all the establishment money will come his way. And that's the problem: as I said earlier, many Dems are supporting Sanders because if the Republicans are going to nominate a crazy candidate, then any Democrat can win, even a self-described socialist. But if the Republicans switch at the last minute and back a relative moderate, then the Democrats will end up looking like the extremists.

Things The Twentysomething Me Would Never Believe About Life In The Future

It will take over twenty years for them to make a miniseries of the O.J. trial.

Okay, to be exact, there were a couple of made-for-TV movies earlier, but that just doesn't get across the sheer scale of the trial. And I found out O.J. Simpson is Kim Kardashian's godfather. Did I already know that and just block it out?

The Mostly-Star Game

This weekend was the NHL All-Star "Game." I put it in quotes because they didn't play a traditional game between two teams, but rather a mini-tournament between four teams, representing the league's four divisions. And on top of that, they'll be playing shortened, three-on-three games, rather than regulation matches.

In some ways, that's clever. After all, pro leagues have difficulty making their half-hearted All-Star games seem exciting and relevant, so the NHL doesn't even bother pretending it's a real game, so much as an extension of the skills competition. And hockey, like football, has the problem that it's hard to put on an exhibition bloodsport: the game is never as physical as the regular sport, and thus biased towards offence. So why not just go with that and build an All-Star game around quick, fast, high-scoring hockey? But it's also a little embarrassing that the event that should be the big celebration of the sport is not actually playing the sport.

Speaking of which, the other big controversy in the game is the presence of John Scott, the journeyman grinder who would never normally get anywhere near this game without a ticket. Fans voted him onto the team as a lark. The press tried to turn his inclusion into a scandal, or at least an embarrassment to the league, especially after Scott was traded, then sent to the minors. But they seemed to think better of it when it turned out the fans kind of liked the idea of having him at the game.

The story took an even stranger turn when Scott scored two goals and was named MVP, and will surely go down as a hockey folk hero. It's too bad Stompin' Tom Connors isn't around to write a song about him. It was great publicity for the league, if in an unexpected way. 

And I think it's kind of fitting. Hockey is often promoted as a sport of highly-skilled stars, especially at the All-Star Game. Yet the fans appreciate it as a grueling physical challenge; a test of toughness. Really, a player like Scott is a better symbol of the fans' ideal than the game's talented stars are. So it was good to see not only Scott getting his due, but the fans getting what they really want.

Eyeworm

An "earworm" is a song that gets caught on your head and won't go away. For instance, recently I've found the song "Spirits" by The Strumbellas going through my head. That song has the chorus,

I got guns in my head and they won't go
Spirits in my head and they won't go

Of course, that's pretty ironic to have the song in my head and it won't go. I start to wish I also had spirits with guns in there, they might scare the song out.

Well, recently I was listening to Internet radio on my phone. This particular radio app gives the name of the song on the phone's notifications, which is convenient because you can check the name of the song or artist without going to the app itself. Unfortunately, there's a bug: if you close the app, sometimes the name of the song currently playing stays in the notifications list, even though the song is long gone, and the app is closed.

When this happens, there doesn't seem to be any way to remove the song name, short of restarting the phone. So for the next few days, whenever I check messages, texts, or e-mails, somewhere in the list, I see "Hozier - Take Me To Church." That's a pretty earwormy song, and I find that just reading the name makes it go through my head.

But when a song sticks in your head after you've heard it, you can replay that fresh and accurate memory to yourself. When it's triggered by something else, you're singing the song based on faded memories. I find myself with fragments of the song that bleed into other tunes, and suddenly I have three different songs in my head, and they're all out of tune, with the wrong lyrics.  To defeat it, I have to listen to some other music, so I start up the radio app and begin the cycle all over again.

You Underestimate The Power Of The Gray Side

Something that's always bugged me about the Star Wars movies: Return of the Jedi never gets its due. The rest seem to have their personalities and reputations, for better or worse:

• Star Wars (I, like many, refuse to call it A New Hope) was the first one, the most emotionally satisfying, and really, the best one.
• The Empire Strikes Back is the one movie snobs insist was the best.
• The Phantom Menace was the disappointing one.
• Attack of the Clones was the worst one.
• Revenge of the Sith was the somewhat-redemptive one.
• Time will tell, but The Force Awakens will probably be remembered as the nostalgic one.

But Return of the Jedi is the George Harrison of the series. It pads out the numbers, but we're not really sure what to think about it. It usually just reminds people of Ewoks, for better or worse. Or recycling the blowing-up-the-Death-Star-with-a-fatal-design-flaw premise of the first movie. Or killing thousands of independent contractors.

But I always appreciated the message at the end that violence begets violence, that anger in any direction is all part of The Dark Side. I know many people have ridiculed this concept over the years, but it seemed like a profound insight to me.

(Warning! Severe topic change ahead!)

Take Israel for instance. A few people have pointed out that the Palestinian terrorist organization Hamas and Israel's conservative and hawkish Likud party are essentially allies. Likud have positioned themselves as the only ones who can stand up to the terrorists who threaten Israel, and Hamas have positioned themselves as the only ones strong enough to fight for Palestinian interests. So war and violence benefits them both, because they can use it to convince their people that their more aggressive approach is necessary.  And that aggressive approach fuels the next round of revenge that keeps the system self-sustaining.

And now we're seeing the pattern play out again with Donald Trump.  He's peddling a get-tough approach to, well, everything.  But most notable is his most shocking policy, a ban on Muslims entering the country. To no one's surprise, he has started popping up in ISIS recruitment videos., since an American politician demonizing Islam is a good way to convince Muslims that America is out to get them.  Once again, the enemies' behaviour is mutually beneficial.

But the similarity gets clearer when you consider the ISIS statement that they wanted to eliminate the "gray zone," which is the part of the world where there is mixing of cultures.  By that, they mean much of the Western World.  Terror attacks there promote anti-Muslim feelings, and leave Muslims afraid of reprisals against them, and thus discouraging the mixing of religious followers. And sure enough, Trump and his supporters similarly dislike the ambiguous, open, and multicultural world we've created. Their motivations may be different, but both are served by policies of separation and purity.

Okay, there's now no way I can segue from Donald Trump back to Star Wars, other than showing this picture. I guess I should also assure you that despite my respect for the philosophies of the series, I will not be listing my religion as "Jedi" on the next census.  But at a time when many politicians seem to have acquired their aggression at the movies, perhaps it's an improvement to get more positive values there instead.