(CSC) – On November 14th India joined the likes of Japan, the U.S., and Russia by landing a probe on the moon.

Indian politicians have put aside their partisan bickering for the time being to celebrate the occasion, with ruling Congress party leader Sonia Gandhi calling it “a historic day for India”, and Lal Krishna Advani, the opposition leader, calling it “an event to be recorded in golden letters”.

Hopes are high that this mission could be the dawn of a space age for India. “In fifteen years I want to see an Indian on the moon”, said Abdul Kalam, the former Indian president and rocket scientist.

Brupar Namreem, a street-side bucketwasher in New Delhi, is also excited about the future of India’s space program. “I hope this means the world will look at India in a different way”, he said as he squatted to take a dump by the train tracks.

2-year-old Gracie Melvin angered Liberals with her appearance at a Conservative rally in Harbour Grace, N.L. on Thursday. While Stephen Harper was giving a speech, she walked across the stage with a sign that said “Harper”.

Senior Liberal strategist Tom Dumont has accused the two year old of misconstruing Dion’s Green Shift plan. “Clearly, Gracie is perpetuating these untruths to the public without a full understanding of the historical and comparative evidence in regards to a carbon tax”.

Dumont says Gracie should resign, and that if she does not, Stephen Harper should ask her to step down. When asked by reporters yesterday whether Gracie should resign, Harper stated this was a case of “gotcha journalism”.

Liberal pundits say Harper is obscuring the facts. Liberal blogger Yannick Grenkovich believes Gracie’s action are “the beginning of a shift to low-blow attacks and smokescreen tactics” by the Conservative Party.

Conservative candidate for Harbour Grace, Martin O’Neill, defended Gracie, saying “Her criticism of the corporate aspect of the tax is fundamentally sound”.

The Green Shift plan, which Dion has called “the foundation of the Liberal platform” has been a difficult sell, especially in Eastern Canada.

Gracie has defended her actions, telling reporters in St. John’s yesterday that “det doon. Aiee jejo, mama. No no no.”

Stephane Dion has responded sharply, saying “Wearil seayrosl, da chel on fredolay dreder deuh wahn”.

These days, in our workplace, at home, and in politics, we have less and less leadership, and more management. The structure of our social and economic system depends on this shift towards management, and the result for all people is alienation and detachment from public life.
There is no one definition of management. Many simply say “management is what managers do”. But for the purpose of separating leadership from management, we can come up with a definition of management that encapsulates many definitions:

Management is an act which, carried out by the higher levels of business administration in a stakeholder situation, plans, organizes, and controls people.

Management is essential in a social and economic system that attempts more and more to control without appearing to control. It uses business research to break time down into very specific parts, and assigns certain tasks and rates of pay to those pieces of time.

Leadership is obvious. It is out in the open. In contrast, management disguises hierarchy with language.

The strength of this comparison, and this argument, is based on the concept of “stakeholders” – people who have something to lose or gain from some process. Managers abide by stakeholders, leaders do not.

Today, most politicians do as much as possible to avoid causing offence. Their speeches are bland and state the obvious. When they answer questions, they do not really answer the question. Theirs is a managerial style. They are concerned about stakeholders – corporations, the managers and representatives of other nations, managers and representatives of international organizations, and voters (probably in that order). To deal with the pressure exerted by these stakeholders, the politician, especially those in higher positions of power, have a throng of bureaucrats guiding every speech, every policy, every answer to a question (the “talking points”). The result is a bland figure who, based on guidance from their legion of suit-and-tie paper-pushers who sit in big buildings and move around and substitute words until they find some that ultimately says nothing, shows no charisma, no charm, has nothing new and exciting to say – essentially has all the personality of a lump of coal. Finally, politicians’ “communications directors” assure that it all happens as predictably as live theatre. In this sense, politicians and their bureaucrats and inner-circles function as management. Plan, organize, control; nothing more. Not with all of these stakeholders involved.

In the workplace, despite the “team leader” language, we mostly have managers. Our supervisors are often “accountable” to (get in trouble by; afraid of) somebody higher up – another manager. Our supervisors do not inspire us or go above and beyond their duties. They rarely socialize with or bother to get to know their subordinates. They simply plan, organize, and control. And they must, because another manager higher-up, a stakeholder, has planned and organized a very specific way for things to happen. And from that higher-up position, they can control simply by placing all of the responsibility on the manager below them. There are various ways to exert this pressure on lower managers. One popular way is to provide “incentives”. For example, if the lower manager can cut back overtime pay to less than $500 a month, the higher manager will provide a percentage of that saved money to the lower manager. Other “incentives” are often phrased as “goals” or “targets”, ie: the higher manager will hand down a list of “goals”, such as “this week we will sell so many quantities of X, and make Y many phone-calls to Z that produce Q number of new clients”, etc, etc. The subtle message to the lower manager is “this had better happen or you are not doing your job”, and we all know what happens to people who cannot do their job – demotion, re-location, “re-assignment” – call it what you want. The people working in the lowest echelon end up not understanding their managers at all, feeling detached, trying to figure out “why boss is wound so tight” over stupid things. They cannot see or understand the pressure being exerted from an even higher manager. Instead, they just see a manager who seems unnaturally obsessed, anti-social, driven by quotas and numbers that come from nowhere. Taking all of this into account, any attempt by the lower manager to appear friendly or “like one of the guys” is dismissed as lame and weasel-like.

In the home and in our families we see more and more management. The planning, organizing and control that goes into budgeting, purchasing consumables, home renovation, even family trips, is now the most time consuming and important part of family life. There is less leisure time or “nothing” time. Moments not spent planning for or organizing the next big thing are moments wasted. The small, spontaneous things are excluded – that time is now often used to plan and organize the latest family “project”. The “projects” become neurotic obsessions that require sophisticated forms of control: “We have to replace these windows”. “We are ‘going green’”. “We need to buy X and Y so we can make or have a Z”. “We need to go online and book X, confirm Y”.
The stakeholder in the family situation is the family itself. Trends in the media especially pressure families to “keep up”. It seems that half of the new television programs and non-fiction books available implore us to renovate, redecorate, take this trip, go on this diet, follow this exercise program, “go green”, buy this and that or your quality of life will suffer. And the family, in a way, believes it is on reality TV; that everybody is looking at them, judging their home, their car, their clothes, etc. Then there is an abundance of shows that feel the need to show us how rich people live. Amazing houses, amazing cars, amazing gardens, amazing clothes and jewellery, amazing parties. The strange thing is, we seek out these shows. We like them. We are an embarrassment to hundreds of years of class struggle. People once got so angry they were willing to fight and die for equality. Today, we ogle the possessions and lifestyles of our masters on TV – and essentially masturbate.
Our strange obsessions then, whose origins I cannot really explain here, make the family itself a stakeholder, and make managers out of parents.

Leadership is full of heart. It can inspire you, make you feel closer to people, make you a better person. It innovates. Leaders may have stakeholders, but they do not have to abide by them. They have their own vision and way of doing things, as well as a unique rapport with those who work with them. Leadership can exist in a management environment, but the leader always assumes some risk. A leader in the workplace is willing to be reprimanded – in fact, a leader may expect to be reprimanded. Leaders in politics know they may do or say some things that put their candidacy or their seat at risk. Leaders at home put their reputations, and sometimes even the well being of their family at risk. But they are the parents who are much more than just figureheads and do-nothings. They are exceptional. They break the conventions and try new ways of raising their kids. Meanwhile, management is very deliberate in considering all the risks involved. It “plays it safe” and “covers its ass”. Leadership can be reckless. It may understand the risks, but not do anything to mitigate them. Because leaders are passionate, they are more like the people we truly admire or remember in history. We quote parts of their speeches decades, generations, even a century later. They make changes that everybody talks about for years.

In the Canadian military, there were once ten “principles of leadership”. I think they encapsulate the essence of leadership, so here they are with some explanations:

1. Achieve professional competence – get better at your job
2. Appreciate your own strengths and limitations and pursue self-improvement – know what you’re good at, but admit and acknowledge your faults; mistakes.
3. Seek and accept responsibility – go out and take on new tasks, take the blame for what happens.
4. Lead by example – this one is beautifully self-explanatory.
5. Make sure that your followers know your meaning and intent, then lead them to the accomplishment of the mission – keep your followers informed of the overall goal and complete the task you set out to complete.
6. Know your soldiers and promote their welfare – again, self-explanatory
7. Develop the leadership potential of your followers – train new leaders. This is a humble, modest thing to do. By doing this, you acknowledge that you are nobody special; that there is room for somebody to take your place or take on your role.
8. Make sound and timely decisions – self-explanatory.
9. Train your soldiers as a team and employ them up to their capabilities – push your team to do the difficult things. Train hard so you can fight easy.
10. Keep your followers informed of the mission, the changing situation and the overall picture – self-explanatory.

The point here, actually, is that leadership is principled, while management is procedural.

Here is a description of the “key activities” performed by a manager at a government agency:

- Manages multi-disciplinary teams in diverse geographic urban and rural areas engaged in the agency’s work.
- Manages human and financial resources in a 7/24 shift operation. Takes action on staff relations issues, interpersonal conflicts and client complaints. Monitors and makes recommendations on work flow and administrative duties.
- Manages risk within the work environment to achieve effective results. Authorizes certain procedures.
- Manages and participates in national, regional and local change initiatives and pilots to meet the agency’s mission, vision, values and strategic objectives. Recommends modifications to the initiatives and pilots.
- Ensures that effective relationships are maintained with the public, private enterprise and partner federal government departments and agencies.

It is strange that the “key activity”, if you pay close attention to the verb used most often, is “manage”. Therefore, the key thing a manager should be doing at this job is “managing”. It is like reading a job description that says the worker will have to “work”.
Notice some of the differences between these “key activities” and the principles of leadership: 1) The words “followers” and “soldiers” is replaced by the term “human resources”. This language speaks to the scientific-type breakdown of time and space by management. 2) Instead of “know your soldiers and promote their welfare”, there is only “takes action on staff relations issues (and) interpersonal conflicts”. A manager cares about his “human resources” because their “issues” may affect their work, thus affecting productivity or profit. A leader cares about his “followers” just because. 3) A manager “takes action” on “client complaints” and “ensures that effective relationships are maintained with the public, private enterprise and partner federal government departments and agencies”. This is the stakeholder aspect of management. In the principles of leadership there is no mention of anyone beyond the leader and his followers.

Managers do not do things because they believe those things are right. They do them because that is the procedure required to satisfy the stakeholders. This is not to say that leaders cannot follow procedures – they can. But the overall care of the leader is doing something right, regardless of established procedures.
Management is set up precisely to dull the passionate and principled way of leaders. It must do this because leaders can make their followers see the true condition of their lives. The leader at work shows his fellow workers that there is a different way to do business, and opens workers’ eyes to their true working conditions. The leader in politics arouses too much honest debate, and may make our country stand out or stand up in a world where there can only be a few great and influential powers.

We need leadership in every day life, at home and at work. Lets replace our current office managers – the type who merely “inform” us (undoubtedly due to some requirement in their list of procedures) of “team-building exercises” and “office luncheons” – with leaders who throw parties, barbeques, etc.

Above all, however, we need leadership where it is perhaps most rare - in politics. We are so used to a “management” style of politician, it is difficult to even imagine how a leader would look and act.
Here are some thoughts:

- Daring – the political leader would dare to do things that are contentious in his country, but which also show leadership in the world. A Canadian political leader would not be afraid to piss off the United States. Usually, people make a “business case” for pandering a bit to the States. “After all”, they say, “they’re our largest trading partner”. But the very idea of “partnership” implies mutual respect. A Canada that stands up for itself and has some guts to be different in the world will do just fine business-wise. A Canada that has a leader who speaks out, and whose face appears on newspapers abroad, will certainly garner some attention.
- The political leader would not play stupid parliamentary partisan politics. They would show us delicate, careful, clear, sound reasoning. A political leader would show up at the scrum and concede “yeah, he’s probably right. I think we’ll have to get together and revise what we’ve come up with now. You live, you learn”. How refreshing it would be to hear our politicians speak like adults!
- No more speeches or policies without heart and substance. No more speechwriters, and especially no more communications directors massaging the message, piling and sculpting phrases like a hairstylist building a bouffant. If you write a policy that does not state a position – it is not a policy. If your speech does not say anything different – maybe you are not leadership material. There is a reason why people quote Abe Lincoln and Winston Churchill, and why they will never quote Stephen Harper or Paul Martin. The latter two have never said anything worth repeating.

Management is a subtle yet very powerful modern form of social control which alienates us and detaches us from public life and from each other. Those who call themselves managers, and follow very specific procedures to satisfy stakeholders, perpetrate it. Therefore, it is something that we can fight against by recognizing it in ourselves, or in others. It is not some natural component of the capitalist system, or a conspiracy. It is simply something modern western society found efficient, which required little effort, little conflict, and also happened to be one of the most powerful forms of social control ever devised.

Tim Connolly - Buffalo Sabres

Tim suffered from bone spur problems in his hip last year and only played half the season, and missed the entire 2006-2007 season due to “post-concussion symptoms” (headaches, boo-boos, etc). But don’t let that keep you from drafting this hip-cat onto your team. He may be spurred by fans’ expectations.

Peter Forsberg – Free Agent

Over the past 8 years Peter Forsberg, who also has a career importing and marketing Crocs footwear, has had his spleen removed, refused to play for $13.5 million dollars, dislocated his left wrist and broke a bone in his hand, had surgery performed on his ankle, played a 60 game season due to a groin injury, had more ankle and foot surgery, and made a dramatic three game come back only to be put out by another groin injury. This guy is a shoe-in.

Alyn McCauley – LA Kings

Alyn is retiring after 10 years in the NHL, but don’t bet that this will last very long. This Brockville, Ontario native will return to LA with a vengeance when he realizes there are no hookers in Brockville. Here’s a hidden tAlynt.

Jeremy Colliton – NY Islanders

Jeremy played 18 games last year with the Islanders and got zero points, but during his time in the minors he got 18 points in 60 games. Coincidence? Affectionately known as “Shut ‘Er Down Shitpump” by his teammates, Jeremy is looking to make a name for himself this year – a name other than “Shut ‘Er Down Shitpump”.

Randy Emerson – Free Agent

Randy is a consultant for ABP, a robotics manufacturing company in Cambridge, Ontario. He has never played a single game in the NHL, nor does he own a pair of skates.

A-stAr decided to leave us.
He will not be posting here anymore as with time he has changed his political views.
It is important to find your own way through rationality and not pressure of your environement and society. We sure hope he find his way on his “own”.

OMG everybody, I dunno if you just saw the latest episode of Holmes on Homes, but my dream finally came true. Mike Holmes and his crew came over and fixed my house, and it’s all because I wrote him this letter.

My letter:

Dear Mike Holmes,

We need your help! 4 years ago my wife and I purchased a detached 6270 sq ft home in Green Valley Acres (1 km south of the equestrian club). For the first three years, everything went beautifully. We really enjoyed the 3 acres of yard space, especially because we have no kids. We loved spending warm summer evenings relaxing in our gazebo, sipping vintage wine, comforted by the fact that we each make over $80,000 a year and our Land Rover is already paid off. But lately we’ve been having problems!

It seems our plumbing may have been done totally wrong! When we start the jets on our hot tub, the water that comes out first looks a little bit grey, and then it gets clear. Same thing when we start any of our taps, or when we flush the toilet. What makes this especially horrible is that we just had our kitchen renovated and had marble floors and granite counter tops put in. We’ve also noticed some grey water leakage in our basement, which makes us so angry because we just converted it into a rec-hall complete with wet bar, pool table, and walk-out to the stone patio and man-made pond with fountain. We called the people who built all of these homes in our area, but they said it was going to cost money to fix it! I hope you can help.

Mike Holmes’ response:

OH MY GOD I CANT BELEVE THEY DID THAT TO YOU. OK I WILL COME OVER. WHAT IS YOUR ADRESS I WILL MAKE IT RIGHT.-MIKE

Pictures:

Our house in Green Valley Acres. Only problem is… Something was wrong with our plumbing!

Our hot tub and back yard. And there’s our white show-horse, Pegasus, in the background! Hi Pegasus!

Mike Holmes helps lots of poor people. The people who live in this house hired somebody to finish their basement and make a rec room, guest bedroom, and wet bar… But it didn’t turn out the way they wanted. Luckily, Mike Holmes saw their plight and made it right!

Mike Holmes helps poor communities too. Here is a picture of a poor neighborhood that he helped because somebody didn’t build the fences right.

Do you have a story about Mike Holmes coming to the rescue? Share it here! Do you want to write your own letter to Mike Holmes? I can show you how! E-mail me at doubleincomenokids_homeowner@sympatico.net (please, no more renters and real poor people in apartments and condos and stuff asking for help).

Propane? Might as well take an axe to your groin – you’re a pussy.
I don’t care that charcoal smells like shit and causes cancer (to my baby). Charcoal is the real deal. I don’t go to a gas station and wait for some teenager with a certificate to pump my propane into a cute white cylinder. Charcoal comes straight from the earth. Sometimes I go to a mine and dig it up myself. I come home all covered in black, and fire up the barbeque. My neighbour’s wife is so consumed with my man-power that she can’t sleep with her husband for weeks, and leaves me dirty little notes that smell like perfume and salmon. My wife understands that it’s a normal part of being married to a man that fires up the charcoal.

My charcoal barbeque doesn’t have a hinged lid that tips open like a robot-muppet’s head. The lid comes right off. I have nowhere to put it except the ground, where it singes the grass, sometimes setting a fire that I have to put out with a pint of Blue. It has no adjustment knobs or dials – additions which have made men’s hands dainty and weak. It’s just a saucer full of charcoal; it burns as it will.
I don’t have little ledges for my utensils, food, spices, bowls, anything. Ledges are for resting, and resting is for people who download episodes of Lost. Don’t ask why, just accept. Nor do I have a side burner – the greatest travesty in barbequing history. “Oh, I know. I’ll grill some sirloin steak here, and whip up some cous-cous here”. A barbeque with a side burner is like a wrestler in a speedo.

I can grill anything on my charcoal barbeque. Steak, chicken, pork, fish, whole onions (you can eat them like an apple), potato, shish kabob, ground beef – that’s right, ground beef.

I’m not going to be that guy that brags about the “smokey taste” or tells you the food tastes better. I don’t know if it does. Barbequing has never been about the taste. I can throw a Master Choice Rising Crust pizza into the oven and get “good taste”. Barbequing is about the process, beginning to end.

Starting the barbeque:

Propane
Turn some precious knobs and press a plastic button that goes “toonks!” A little flame will appear.

Charcoal
Dump in a mound of charcoal, shape it as best you can into a pyramid, and light it with crumpled up Pennysavers that you crammed underneath the lower grill.

Turning the barbeque off:

Propane
Turn some precious knobs until the flame flickers out.

Charcoal
Close the vents, suffocating the coals.

Get a charcoal barbeque like mine.

GPS and cellphones are not a substitute for a plan

Imagine two families taking a road trip, from the city they live in to a campground 600 kilometres away. They have all the information they need before they go. They have the location of the campground and campsite, and they will be taking the same highways. One person in each family has a cell phone, and each vehicle has a GPS. It’s 09:00. They take off, driving one behind the other.
When it’s about lunch time, one of the kids starts text-messaging another about where to stop. There’s a McDick’s in Milton, or a Tim Fire ‘Em’s just before you hit Guelph. They agree to meet at McDicks and all goes well. GPS’ guides our families back onto the highway.
Gas station pit-stop. Another flurry of text messages ensures the cars stick together for this stop, and a GPS guides our families to a gas station in a small town.
They arrive at the campsite hours later, using a combination of text messaging and cell phone calls to find their way along some wooded roads and to their long weekend vacation spot.

Usually, everything goes fine. But what ever happened to making a good plan? Here are some of the problems with relying on technology and eschewing plans.

1) We spend time - what is essentially leisure time - following directions, amending routes, saving routes, setting “waypoints”, text messaging, calling, overall “planning as you go”. It’s leisure time in the sense that you could be listening to music, the news, or… having a conversation!

2) Technology fails. It runs out of batteries, it malfunctions, it can’t find a satellite, the cell phone gets dipped in coffee by a baby. However, a good plan always includes a back-up plan: “If we get separated, our first meeting spot will be inside the Tim Fire ‘Em’s at the Shmell rest-stop outside of Cobourg. We will meet between 12:00 and 1:00. If I am not there by 1:00, our next meeting spot will be the Salmonburger’s off of highway 13 for dinner between 5:00 and 6:00.”

3) You’re distracted by your toys. Instead of cranking the latest Stone Gods track, and checking out the ladies on the street corner, you’re looking at your stupid screen, missing out on all that eye candy, probably about to get side-swiped by a fat chick driving a Windstar.

People who rely on their GPS are lazy. They are zombies. They leave the house not really knowing the route they will take, drooling as they close the door behind them, eyes rolled back, keys dangling lazily, penis hanging out. They let their GPS do the work. They follow directions. They shut their brains off. Even when all their senses are telling them they are lost, they follow the instructions of their GPS: “turn right at next intersection”, “take next exit”, and “wink at this girl pulling up on your left”.

Here are some forum messages by people who obviously rely too much on their GPS:

“A map won’t tell you all the Chinese restaurants within 5 miles with phone numbers to call to see if they are still open at 10pm on a Sunday (when the event is over) or where the closest all night copy shop is.”

“It has become and very valuable tool not only for directions but giving you phone numbers for hotels, restaurants, car dealerships etc.”

This is information you could have gained with a few phone calls, no more than a few minutes on the phone, and a scrap piece of paper to record information.

“I’m looking for something that will talk me through the route”

Get a girl. Or, and I know this is complicated, write down where you have to go. Write down the street names, directions, and times and distances if necessary. Google-map it.

“The one feature that I am looking for is the preventive/real time traffic function that supposedly will give me alternate routes to get to my destination (I live in Denver where there is traffic coverage).”

Sure, you can buy a GPS for hundreds of dollars, or you can determine your alternate routes in advance – for free!

“I’ve been in Seattle for the past few days with a group in a large charter bus (45 feet long, 12 feet tall). The Nuvi had me going down narrow neighbourhood streets and wanting me to take impossible hairpin turns.”

This person took on the responsibility of navigating and driving a charter bus without mapping his routes in advance. That is not only lazy, it is incredibly irresponsible. I am no bus-driving expert, but I thought a pre-requisite for driving a bus full of people was knowing the way.

What are you going to do with a “favourites” feature on your GPS? If you’ve been there once or twice you should know the way. So now you’re sitting there in your car, programming your “favourites” into your GPS while your wife’s gone back into the house to have cyber sex with her facebook boyfriend. Think about how sad that is. You’re poking an LCD screen with your fat fingers, and some banker is “poking” your wife on facebook to get into her pants.
Why do you need to program “waypoints”? You’re not a Boy Scout. Get a grip. The only reason you want that GPS on your dash is because it’s an accessory that looks cool. A status symbol. You felt the same way about a calculator watch when you were in elementary school. Wow, a watch and a calculator… in one! It looks like I have a super-computer on my wrist.

Cell phones.

I can spend anywhere between $30 and $50 a month to text and call people. Or I can make plans, and dump a few quarters into pay phones. And nothing says “I might be a criminal or secret agent” (both bad-ass occupations) like talking on a pay phone.
Unless you need to be reached at any time for work-related reasons, there is no need for a cell phone. Try to justify it all you want. Unless you’re stranded on the highway because your busted-ass Ford broke down again, there’s nothing you can do with a cell phone that you can’t do by planning and using pay phones. For emergencies, get a damn pre-paid phone, keep it in your car or whatever.
There’s nothing worse than having a boyfriend, girlfriend, wife, or husband that can get a hold of you any time of the day.
“What are you doing?”
“Getting groceries”
“… so… when are you coming home?”
“When I’m done getting groceries”

People that use their cellphones this way are usually control freaks. What do you think your partner is going to say?
“What are you doing?”
*heavy breathing* “Uhh… nothing…” *slapping sounds*
“Oh my god, you’re having sex with somebody else!”
“Busted! Why did I pick up the phooooooone???”

When people die, you don’t need to go to their grave, lay flowers, hug people, cry with family and friends, or any of that shit anymore. In Virtual Mourning, the CBC’s Georgie Binks discusses the online memorial phenomenon, and unfortunately, is quite uncritical of the whole thing. He enlists the help Aanabel Quan-Haase, an assistant professor of information and media studies at the University of Western Ontario, who thinks that if it’s new it must be good

Quan-Haase says “It would be inappropriate to show up at someone’s door, but the internet provides an alternative way to reach out to people without being in their face”.

Really? When did it become inappropriate to show up at somebody’s door with flowers and a card, and maybe a letter, and a hug, and an “I’ll be here if you need me”? That’s not “in their face”, that’s genuine comfort and mourning. The internet is a convenient way to mourn, but not an honest one. I’ve seen these online memorials on MySpace and elsewhere; it’s a lot of “I’m sorry”s and “you will be missed” and “you were like a star in the sky” bullshit, cliches. Worst of all, like anywhere else on the internet, the memorial turns into a competition and a way for people to advertise themselves. They leave a tribute or comment and also link to their website. It’s the equivalent of showing up at a funeral and giving the grieving family your Sun Life Insurance business card.

Quan Haase also says “When you see a (dead) person’s profile still on Facebook it gives them immortality. For a moment in time, their online persona is exactly the way they left it”.

First, there’s an assumption here that having a Facebook profile is a good thing to begin with. It isn’t, we’ve discussed this before. The real question is, do we really want to remember somebody by their “online persona” anyways? An “online persona” is usually an egocentric douche. Look at me! Look at all the inconsequential things I am doing in my life that I want you to know about! If you don’t talk about it on facebook it might as well not have happened at all!

People do just fine remembering the real-life versions of their deceased relatives and friends. They don’t just remember the parties and vacations and those other Facebook-friendly events. They remember the depressing, somber times. The silent struggles, the little victories met with a modest smile. These are things that really show a person’s worth. Discussing our loved ones’ memories with others is what truly makes somebody immortal.

And what is so good about seeing somebody’s persona ”exactly the way they left it”? Many of us have looked at somebody’s profile and been embarassed for that person. They talk too much about themselves. They stretch the truth. What if their last profile message is “Donald is… trying to decide if he is sober enough to drive”, or “Karen is… Hating life”?

This probably isn’t how we want to remember people. I am not saying that we should not mourn online. By all means, mourn online. I’m saying that we shouldn’t replace the “awkwardness” involved in mourning together, in real life, with the convenience and detachment of internet mourning, where one minute you’re writing your “so sorry” message, and the next, you’re jerking off to big-bootied latina porn.

Quan-Haase, and others like her who welcome this trend, need to be honest. It’s about convenience. When Quan-Haase says “The internet gives people an opportunity to deal with their collective grief over the loss of a loved one”, the key word is “opportunity”. If this person is really a “loved one” we should not be satisfied with just any “opportunity” to show some grief. It’s the quality of opportunity that matters. Here’s a simple way to look at it:

- Loved one dies – Go to the funeral, talk with friends and relatives, share stories, cry, party, whatever.

- Acquaintance dies – Maybe go to the funeral, at least send cards, flowers.

- Person you don’t know or honestly don’t care that much about dies – Post something on a message board.

You can even write a generic message, save it, and then and copy and paste it with a few minor adjustments when the opportunity arrives. Like this:

I’m so sorry. _____ was like a bright shining star in the sky. He/she will be missed so much. (Insert appropriate emoticon, ie: frowny face, or in case of a murder, frowny mad face, or in case of blowhard douchebag’s death, happy face with party hat). I will never forget the _____ and the _____. I know you are in a better place.

You can read Virtual Mourning here.

Straight up, cut and dry: America has given Iraq the gift of less death this Christmas, and anybody who can’t celebrate less death is unpatriotic. Here is somebody who agrees with me in saying that less death is a “gift”, a lot like less rape.

Did you know that in the month of December only 11 U.S. soldiers died as a result of combat action in Iraq? That’s only 11 more deaths than Canada suffered in Iraq this month.

And did you know that there were only 371 Iraqi civilian deaths this month? In fact, there were so few deaths, that people are throwing celebrations instead of mourning every time somebody dies. It’s that good! Besides, under the Saddam Hussein regime, 533,170 people were dying every day! At that rate the population of Iraq would have been wiped out in less than a month.

Lastly, there were only 60 Iraqi security forces deaths this month. And if you combine these deaths with the number of American soldier deaths you get 71, which is only 3 deaths less than the overall American soldier deaths in April 2003 after the invasion when there were no Iraqi security forces.

The progress is plain to see:

American forces deaths in April 2003 - 74

American forces deaths combined with Iraqi security forces deaths in December 2007 - 71

See? 3 less deaths! HOOAH!