Explaining tons of TV innuendoes in a single toon...

That is history according to tin foil head, here, or Youtube.

There are two kinds of science fiction; what comes before the moon landing and what comes after. Before 1968, like with Planet of the Apes and 2001 Space Odyssey, what is "out there" was a question that haunted adults, with the Space Race and the Cold War raising lots questions about humans and their place in time and space, the dawn of mankind and the end of the World. Hence the Ancient Alien theory that got History TV many ratings. 2001 Space Odyssey got it just right. No attempts to draw aliens curiousily like us even though they are from another World, just those enigmatic monoliths that taught the first humans how to use weapons. 2001 does not say much, but that may be one of its strengts. In art, the only way to show the unknown is to show it as little as possible. To stay mysterious.

After 1969, the major works in science fiction are blockbusters made for children; E.T., Star Wars...one TV series I grew up with that did not dumb down anything was "Once Upon a Time...Space", made in 1982. It is a children's series, with laser guns and travel at the speed of light but it also has Métro, a little robot that can talk about Schopenhauer or Nietzche while observing an ant colony from the inside, philosophizing on how things can be like an ant colony; many bodies but only one mind. There are episodes about the Greek mythology, Atlantis...the characters constantly visit planets that are a lot like prehistorical earth and in more then one occasion, they are mistaken for Gods. In the last few episodes of the series, a race of robots try to take over humans on the terms that they are foolproof, superior to humans (a bit like HAL in 2001), mysterious beings of light come to save the humans from the robots, not unlike they, themselves, did to more than one prehistoric planet.

1968 was also the year of the Tintin book "Flight 714". My favorite in the series. Once again, the aliens are never seen in the book. We barely see a flying saucer. but we do see an old temple, filled with statues depicting aliens and meet an telepathic "ambassador" who meets the aliens on a frequent basis. The flying saucer comes in just in time to save the characters from a volcanic eruption. It all started with a kidnapping but in the end, the kidnappers themselves get...abducted.

Another cool tv series with ancient aliens was "The Mysterious Cities of Gold". Even though aliens are never explicitly mentionned, the lost continents of Mu and Atlantis are. The series starts as purely historical, with the main characters leaving Barcelona for newly-discovered Peru. It includes several historical conquistadores like Pizzaro and La Malinche and although it is a kids' tv series, it is a strong reminder to many a canadian kid that our country, too has a very heavy history with its first cultures.

Then, there is the "underworld" of the series. In almost every episode the characters explore a cave, an ancient temple and find something completely insane like a flying golden airplane shaped like a condor, a solar boat or a jade mask. All examples of the lost wisdom of the ancients. That's how we discover the Olmecs. It is the name given to an actual pre-colombian civilization but in this series, there are a race of alien-like old men who need the cells of young ones to go on living. Even though they are never mentionned as actual aliens, they have the appearance, evilness and technology we usually associate with them.

The soundtrack of this series is just plain superb and there is a little five-minute live-action doc about pre-columbian America at the end of every episode

***

Now row two has nothing to do with ancient aliens, but another favorite of the conspiracy theorist scene, the Templars. They guarded the pilgrims in the Holy Land, became very wealthy and after the Crusades were over, the king of France, Philippe the Bold, had them burned alive.

One of the best works of fiction I've ever read/watched on that was Les Rois Maudits, a historical novel written by Maurice Druon. It is almost 2000 pages long, but it was adapted to tv in 1972...

...and in 2005, starring Gérard as the Grand Templar Master himself as well as every Depardieu at hand:

In his work, Druon popularizes the legend saying that just before he died in the flames, Jacques de Molay cursed the Pope and the King for 13 generations. The pope died within a month and the capetian dynasty was extinct within 20 years, or two generations.

There goes your thirteen generations of cursed ones but in 1789, when the king of France had bigger problems than just a curse, one of the places where Marie-Antoinette and Louis XVI were held was "The Temple", an old Templar fortress...that's how legends are born!

Truth is, according to Druon's book, it was not a curse that got the best of the last capetian kings, but the passionate hatred between Mahaut of Artois (old lady in dark purple) and Robert of Artois (in red). Between the two of them, they caused the disgraces of the princesses of France, then murdered one of them (Robert), they killed Philip IV's successor Louis XI, and his infant son (Mahaut) and then coaxed Edward III of England to invade France, starting the Hundred Years' war just to get their hands on (or keep) a little piece of land in Belgium called Artois.

Those two were a curse of their own.

They are also a major point against those who think "the powerful" form a monolithic block bent on oppressing the people. You think powerful people don't have greed? That they don't fight one another? Think again.

Ghost hunting...with night vision!!!

Whenever I see one of those ghost hunting tv shows in night vision, am I the only one who just wants to jump in front of the camera and say "boo"?

Rattrapage...

"Y sont tous pareils!" c'est ce qu'on dit sur internet, quand on se prend pour un philosophe mais qu'on est trop en pétard pour raisonner comme tel! Un peu tard, j'admet...

 chaque fois que je vois une émission de télé genre "chasseurs de fantômes" (qui font un malheur) est ce que je suis la seule qui a envie de sauter devant leur caméra infrarouge pour leur faire un gros "boo"?

Mittaines' Razor, or PO'ed people pretending to be philosophers

If one sentence from Sooky Rottweiler seeped into popular culture, I'd want it to be Mittaines' Razor; "They're all like that, they're all the same". So many people think like that, and they all think they are right!

Take, for example, feminism. A year ago I liked third generation feminism. It was a change from the fear-mongering, "all sex is rape" second-generation feminism that sees women as eternal victims. A relief from the miserabilist Jeanette Bertrands of my youth. But my enthusiasm for third-generation feminism suffered a serious blow the first time I heard someone say "Not all men" in a sarcastic way and was finished off when I heard the "shroedinger's rapist" and bowl-of-M&Ms-with-one-poisoned-in-the-bunch analogies. This is just fear mongering, just what I hated about second-generation feminism in the first place.

Imagine, just for one second, if we followed that nonsense literally. Don't talk to any of the dozens of men in your workspace, they're potential rapists! If you go shopping, don't talk to any, any man in the store, they are potential rapists. Don't talk to any man on the street, they're potential rapists. Heck, what makes you think your own brother, boyfriend/husband, father or even your own son isn't a potential rapist after all?

What are women supposed to do? Never leave the house? Isolate themselves on an island where there is no men? Seriously, this argument is not unlike the anti-drug campaings of the 1980s that lost all credibility the day someone smoked marijuana and did not die from having his skull cracked open and his brain fried in a pan. It is just nonsense to any women who ever talked to a man without being raped.

Also, I have a hard time with the expression "male privilege" as sexism doesn't privilege anyone. Just for example, let's look at a few sexist ideas:

Women use sex to cheat men out of money / Men use feelings to cheat women out of sex
Women are too emotional / Men have only one emotion, anger
Women's place is in the kitchen / Men are brain dead in the kitchen

Women aren't interested in love, just money / Men have no love to offer, just money
All women who have cats are lonely / All men who play video games are lonely

Now, which one of those two insults to human intelligence sounds like a privilege? To me, neither. Just the act of being considered a complete, complex human being (i.e, not a poisoned candy, for example) is not a privilege but a right. Sexism takes that away from everyone. But do we need to pretend all that rhubbish is a privilege to anyone to just get rid of it?

The word privilege itself is very subjective. It just means whatever different people have that you don't have. I'm going to ask something pretty crazy here, put yourself in the skin of a "bronie", an adult male fan of My Little Pony...Wait, I'm as tempted to make fun of them as you are but seriously, why does anyone care if they watch a show marketed to girls? What does it take away from anyone? They are one of the most hated groups on the internet, just because their taste challenges our definition of "adult" and "male". We complain the cliché that men only want crude comedy, boobs, beer and explosions, but look at what we say about people who like something that couldn't be further from that! From their point of view, women have a privilege they want; they can be interested in what they like without being labelled "creepy", "immature" or, worst yet, "pedophiles".

Sometimes I wonder if Simone de Beauvoir herself saw all the stuff said online. Would she even call that feminism (or its counterpart, "men's rights") or just people venting out their sexual frustration? For example, there would be plenty of clichés to be taken down about men (one website that does wonders at this is the goodmenproject.com); the idea that men are angry, roving inseminators or the fact that the most famous male role model our generation had is Homer Simpson (or similar idiots) but men's right groups madly revolve around one common complaint :"I can't get laid!", "Women only have sex with the bad guys!". First of all, anyone who says "I'm a good guy" is really saying "I have a huge ego". We all see ourselves as the hero of our own movie and others as the bad guys. Human nature made us that way and Hollywood recuperated it.

Second, I could pick up anyone reading this, not knowing if they are male or female, hetero or gay, or even transgender but four things would be constant:

1) You will want love from someone, sometime
2) You won't be able to get everything you want, when you want it.

3) #2 will hurt. A lot. 

and 4) You'll think it would be much easier if you were someone else. It's the proverbial neighbor's lawn.

There are some things that change, some that don't. Gender roles, what feminism tries to change, has changed throughout history. The reality of heartbreak is constant, though. It's just a side effect of being a sexual being. It was not invented by feminism, lonely MRAs, half of western litterature since ancient Greece spoke about it. You just can't escape it, just learn to live with it. There is no magic recipe for love, no pick up artists (can you believe that in 2014 people still take MTV reality shows that seriously?), no rules, no books, and the only piece of online dating advice that will ever make any kind of sense is "Get off the computer and go meet people". It might not get you laid the first time, but you will get more comfortable around people. It just can't hurt. Have compassion for yourself, then have compassion for others, even if they don't have the same set of genitals as you and accept that they, too, can have compassion for you without entering into a childish argument about who has it worse.

As for angry people on the internet? Those calling all women gold diggers (or worse) or women laughing at you for daring to point out that not all men are like that? Keep in mind that just like men are not entitled to sex for opening a door to a woman, no man has to endure sarcasm and insults just to prove that he's not a poisoned candy. Just like men are not entitled to sex, women are not entitled to hear what they want to hear, at the moment they want to hear it, with the words they want to hear, on the precise tone of voice they want to hear it as if on cue. Not only they are not entitled to that, it is just not possible. Welcome to the World of imperfect human communication.

If you see someone angrily ranting against men/women on the internet, just step away. If they have been ranting for days, do you think that somehow you have the power to bring them to some divine epiphany that makes them sane again? Some feminists say that you have to be angry to be a feminist. I disagree with that. Not because it is "wrong" for women to be angry, we all experience anger at some point in our lives, it's a human emotion, but because anrgy people are not rational and, generally speaking, a pain in the ass. They can't be brought back to reason with arguments, they just want to spit out their violence at anyone they can to feel better for a few minutes. If they are, in any remote way, using or hearing Mittaines' Razor then all hope is gone and stop wasting your time The only thing you can do is not be that person they tear to shreds for relief. You can't save them but save yourself because after taking that much hate, you can find yourself exactly like them.

That's what happened to third-generation feminism after a year of arguing with angry dudebros.

Danger, démagogie!

Qu'ont en commun Justin Bourque, le tireur de Santa Barbara, les "gun nuts" de la NRA, les féministes, les anti-féministes, les conspirationnistes et les fondamentalistes religieux de tous côtés? Ils sont tous des exemples d'un pouvoir quasi diabolique d'internet, celui de gratter, d'échauffer au vif chaque blessure, chaque bibitte jusqu'à la folie.

Comprennez moi bien, je sait que sans internet je n'aurais pas de blogue. Seulement il faut savoir quoi en faire. Voici mon problème de statistiques préféré; imaginez dix personnes. Huit passent deux heures par jour sur internet. Ces gens là ont des emplois et des familles. Ils ont, en un mot, une vie. Les deux autres passent 12 heures chacun sur internet. Ça fait, au total, 16 heures de clics, de likes et de commentaires pour les 8 gens qui "ont une vie" et 24 heures de contenu internet vu et produit pour les deux "asociaux".

Évidemment, il y'a des gens qui passent beaucoup de temps sur internet et qui ont tout de même une vie! Internet peut même faire partie de leur travail. Nous sommes tous quelque part entre les "2 heures par jour" et les "12 heures". Cependant, plus internet fait partie de nos vies, moins on a de temps pour des contacts humains qui peuvent, justement, nous donner une vie.

Imaginez quelqu'un (peut-être même qu'on en connaît tous un) qui passe 16 heures devant l'ordi. Un adulte sans emploi, qui habite encore chez sa mère et qui, évidemment, n'est pas très très chanceux en amour. Ces gens-là passent leur temps devant des fictions, des jeux vidéos ou des films qui, en soi, ne font rien de mal mais qui leur montre constamment une vision fausse, sans problèmes de ce qu'est la vie. Ces choses là sont du divertissement, mais quand elles remplacent notre vie, nos compétences interpersonnelles s'atrophient à vue d'oeil. Ça devient de plus en plus difficile pour ces gens là de se réinsérer en société. Ils deviennent déprimés, frustrés.

Et voilà qu'arrivent des gens qui leur disent que c'est pas de leur faute si ils n'ont pas de compagne, c'est parce que toutes les femmes font partie d'un complot féministe, pas parce qu'ils n'ont pas sorti de la maison en six mois! Arrive quelqu'un qui leur dit que s'ils ne sont pas riches, qu'ils n'ont pas d'emploi parce que le monde "croule sous un racisme anti-blanc" qui donne les jobs aux "races". Ils se trouvent pourtant intelligents, après tout, ils sont capables de traduire la Bible en Klingon et connaîssent Wikipedia par coeur (mais ils n'ont absolument aucune compétence sociale). Il doit y avoir complot!

C'est tout le danger d'internet; la démagogie. Un flot colossal d'information mais aucune vérité puisque chacun considère ce qui lui fait plaisir comme LA vérité.

When asociability meets anger

What do "men's rights" websites, conspiracy theorists, gun nuts, white supremacists, angry feminists all have in common? All those movements are, to one degree or another, heavily influenced by a very scary side effect of the internet, associability plus the ability to pander and nourish every little frustration and anger to the point of quasi-insanity.

I know I wouldn't have a blog without the internet, but you still have to know how to use it. Here's my favorite little piece of math: imagine ten people; eight of them spend two hours a day on the internet, the last remaining two spend 12 hours a day, each. At the end of the day, the eight 2-hour people will have totaled 16 hours of internet between them while the 2 12-hour surfers will have 24 hours just between the two of them.

The eight people who just spend 2 hours online probably have families, jobs, accomplishments (gaming achievements don't count!). They are the majority of people in the real world. The two people who leave behind 24 hours of clicks and comments most likely don't have anything to do, no jobs, no family or a very bad relationship with it.. 12 hours of computer time, 8 hours of sleep leaves little time for social interaction in the course of a day. As we spend time staring at screens, our ability to interact with people, to difference between what is aggressive and what is not, our ability to understand other people, to relate to them can shrink. Think of all the people who ask for dating advice online, who bitch and moan at women who won't recognize them as "good guys" (i.e, a video game hero) and sleep with them while the only online dating advice that will ever make any kind of sense is "get your butt off the computer chair and go meet people".


Romance is the most ironic topic influenced by online associability, but tell those powerless people who watched too many action movies that all the things that objectively suck about the World and their life is not the product of indifference, a flawed system or (harder to accept) their own fault but all caused by James Bond villain-esque political parties, or revert racism, or an obscure feminist conspiracy or an even more obscure cabbal and you tell them everything they want to hear. You give them someone to blame.

And since people who spend all their time online leave much more clicks and comments online than people who actually have jobs and families, those "conspiracies " are much more popular online than in real life.

RESURGO!!!

Last winter I drew a cartoon about the "Chocolate river", the Petitcodiac. I gotta admit the color of the river is mind-boggling on a cartoon.  We're used to see rivers brown because they are polluted but the Petitcodiac would be brown anyway because of the Tidal Bore, or Mascaret.

What is the Tidal Bore? Well, I caught a video of it about two weeks ago but it just won't upload from my phone (curse you, Samsung Galaxy!) but I found another video of it on Youtube...

The camera is looking downstream towards Dieppe. This wave comes all the way from the Bay of Fundy, many kilometers south all the way to downtown Moncton and beyond. In 1968, a causeway was built a kilometer or two upstream. It was an environmental disaster! Over the years, the river had shrunk to a muddy little brook in the middle of the marsh. The floodgates of the causeway were opened in 2010 and when I came back to Moncton just last fall (last time I had been there was 2007), I was surprised to see the river look like an actual river.

An inspiration to many an acadian artist, to me it represents what you risk losing if you take something natural but different and try to "fix" it to make it like the majority. Like when you try to "convert" a gay person into heterosexuality, or shame acadian kids into speaking regular french instead of chiac, or shame native people into adopting white culture. To me, the river's renaissance is also a good symbol for the town's motto: Resurgo, "I rise again", like the city bounced back after crashes in sailing, and later train industry in its history and how it will bounce back from another disaster.

Now here's another video of Moncton, that you probably seen all over the news.

As far as I'm concerned, the 30 hours where that mofo was playing cat and mouse with the police and keeping the whole city paralysed and afraid could be summed up by one cartoon:

Yup. Wish I could have been more brave, but that was pretty much the feeling I had...

During the crisis, I still went out in our shocked downtown to take a few pictures, like flags at half staf in front of City Hall and Assuption Place..

And the outpour of flowers, cards, teddy-bears, candles that piled up in front of the Codiac RCMP headquarters over the past few days...

That was last friday. This morning it looked like this...

Since I can never resist adding my two cents, here is what I made:

So take whatever time you need to cry and grief, Moncton, we're a city that knows how to Resurgo! 
And passed the time of Amazing Grace, we'll be back to singing Rue Dufferin!