J'aime vraiment beaucoup le hip-hop de Subtle (surtout l'album "A New White") et je connaissais le collectif d'arts visuel SSSR mais je savais pas que ces derniers avaient créé une trilogie pour les premiers...

Voici donc cette trilogie visuellement captivante pour une musique enlevante.

Ottawa

As some of you might know -- especially because of the sparse postings of recent months -- I have been caught up with another teaching gig in the very exciting Ottawa-Gatineau region.

The second week I went to give a lecture, I thought right to test leaving Montreal the same morning, taking the 9 am bus, which would have brought me to Ottawa around 11.30 am. Bad idea. Not only did the bus ride take much longer than expected because of a snowstorm, but I forgot that the general strike at OC Transpo would also affect the taxi usage that much. I arrived at the Central Bus Station around noon, already half an hour late, when I noticed with dismay that there were no taxis in sight. LIke in ZERO taxis. I knew that the Gatineau shuttle usually would take around 20 minutes to go to the city, which meant double that amount of time because of the snowstorm. A tall chap was standing besides me, equally in dismay over the prospect of waiting in the snow for the elusive taxi.
I asked him if he was willing to share a taxi, provided he would be dropped off first. He said he was going to Carleton and was already late for the lecture, but I pressed him and, when a lone taxivan pulled over, he probably realized that leaving alone would have been morally wrong, not to mention that he would have passed off as a total jerkwad.

So we set off in the snow, and the chap -- name Ezra -- and I stroke up a conversation, dissing the mass transit system of our nation's capital. He said that there had been a vote on the necessity to keep what is called in mass transit lingo "essential services", which entails at bare minimum the bus routes during rush hours (morning and early evening). The decision to maintain bus routes was defeated in the vote, because nobody thought that mass transit is an essental service.

Just think about it a minute there... Mass transit is one solution to make sure a given population can move around a certain area without having to shell out too much money. It is a very useful and efficient solution for children, students, youngsters, the elderly and people with disabilities. And you can be sure that everywhere in the world a form of mass transit emerges in urban settings, to move people around without clogging the streets. Whether rickshaws, jitneys, buses, horsecarts or trolleys, a city needs mass transit if the population wants to move around fast.

Ottawa is already very handicapped when it comes to urban mass transit: they only have taxis and buses. Everybody else uses their private car. Of course it doesn't help that the city's main "industry" is the bloated Federal government. It influences the very way the city breathes and lives, and the surrounding area. The arrangements and choices made over the recent years have culminated in this : an almost deserted city center, a sprawl of houses that look like oversized garages with living spaces hidden behind them, and, even though the area counts more than 700,000 people, and is the capital of a 30 million country, NO light rail, no trolleys, no trams, no subway lines, not even dollar vans or jitneys...

So basically, when we are handing our money through Federal income taxes, we are subsidizing suburban sprawl and a motorcade of pencilpushers, while destroying valuable agricultural land and discouraging mixed use.

It also enrages me that our civil servants, people who supposedly work everyday to build sensible and well-thought out public policies, would fall so low as to not even bother to try and get the only mass transit system they have to at least maintain service for their young and very old. Needless to say I am ashamed of my country's capital and would gladly give a serious serial spanking to those spoiled brats that work on and for Parliament Hill...

Comme je l'avais mentionné dans plusieurs articles précédents, le déclin de l'industrie automobile avait commencé une étape cruciale, pressentie lorsque Dodge-Chrysler m'avait téléphoné pour que je leur achète une auto à 0 % d'intérêt, sans égard à mon bureau de crédit [ça vous dit quelque chose...?] et je leur avais expliqué qu'une voiture privée est une des pires solutions de transport. Après qu'ils m'aient raccroché au nez, je suis allé sur le site de Chrysler, et j'ai aperçu des promotions de vente de voiture avec bonis comme de l'essence gratuite. En cherchant plus avant, j'ai appris que le chiffre d'affaires des trois grands manufacturiers automobiles américains comptait en très large partie -- en majorité en fait -- la vente du crédit...

Pas étonnant que, cinq ans plus tard, on peut voir un peu partout des milliers de voitures invendues.

Espérons qu'on pourra les recycler en quelque chose de plus utile.

Wèyons? Est où ma bière?

Après les tiguidis accrochés aux coupes de vin, voici les bracelets personnalisés pour bouteilles de bière.