There’s a nonstop trainwreck going on in Penny Arcade land, and it goes by the name of dickwolf. To summarize this timeline, in August, Penny Arcade publishes this comic. Some take offense. Mike of PA notices and responds in a fashion that leads to more offense. In October they start selling a “dickwolves” t-shirt in their store. There are more objections. In January, the shirt is removed. Many fans of PA are counter-offended that “they’ve caved in to pressure from a vocal minority”; “teamrape” and “DickWolvington” twitter accounts begin to harass opponents; Mike tweets he’ll be wearing his dickwolves shirt to PAX (Penny Arcade Expo), but also tells DickWolvington to knock it off. Many are noticing and commenting at this point – Leigh Alexander has a thoughtful, conflicted take and a followup, and there is a thousand-comment MeFi thread. Mike receives “joke” death threats. Jerry (other half of PA) comments for the first time, the closest thing to a cogent defense of their position that I can find.

Sheesh. It’s like a parable about American political discourse. First come the principles, then the overreactions, then the death threats.

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I got really upset last night looking at images of the G20 ‘riots’ but of course taking stock today it doesn’t seem so bad. Four cop cars torched, smashed windows, some police brutality perhaps… that ridiculous arrest law, and too many arrests. Yet no bombs, deaths, and not too much tear gas (?). I’m out of town in Windsor, but if the vibe of this writeup is to be believed, it sure could have been worse. Pictures of masked people smashing shit, burning cars, and rows of menacing riot cops are always disturbing, but when the backdrop is the city you live in and love – or even the building you work in, in my case – it can be horrifying. And you assume the pictures are representational of widespread similar activity, but that doesn’t seem to be the case.

I was happy to hear that street crews were busy cleaning up Queen St. by late last night. Back to business, kids.

I also loved this image:

(photo by Martin Reis, courtesy Torontoist)

Good to know.

In other news, I went to Detroit yesterday for the first time. I’ll have more about that later.

This is so weird:

Why can’t the whole campaign be a comedy-off?

Hello, Robot! The break from you has been invigorating. You were probably happy to be left alone for a while, too.

I’ve been fairly obsessed with elections. In Canada, ours just wrapped up, and the enlightened pragmatist must be happy with the results: Conservative minority. The Conservatives are trying to say that since their minority is larger than before, it’s an empowering victory that means Canada supports them. Well, what were they gonna say, “we fucked up?” If only we got press releases like that in politics. Truth is, they botched things and now they’re right back where they were before, only now they can’t call another election for a while, in which time the Liberals will replace Dion with what we can only assume will be a more appealing candidate. Who will it be, though, I wonder?

My politics slot me into the extreme bottom left corner of this scale. I’m a small-state leftist. I don’t like the state intervening in people’s lives, yet I do believe we have an obligation to support those going through tough times, and I believe there are spheres of life in which the profit motive has no place. I consider large corporations more of a threat to the typical citizen than the government, yet I’m a huge fan of small business.

Yeah, what are you gonna do. I guess I’d be an anarchist if I thought any of the anarchist models would actually work in real life. So I’m not pretending I have all the answers. Hell, if the best Plato could come up with is the artist-hating Republic, yours truly isn’t going to sort this shit out.

Anyway, let that be a circuitous way of explaining how I was considering voting Green. I had generally been scared away from the Green by a) hearing they actually were more conservative than the NDP and b) thinking voting green would simply drain seats from the NDP (true). But I quite liked their platform and leader. Unfortunately, you can’t look at the Canuck political landscape without seeing a massive splintering of the left vote contrasted with a consolidated right vote that, not coincidentally, is in power. I hope mandatory voting and proportional representation make their way to Canada soon. Not holding breath tho.

On the US side, Obama gives good speech and all, but the policies are actually fairly conservative from the Canadian point of view. He’d be better than McCain, that’s for sure. It’s like Captain Okay vs. Decrepit Lizard Man and Crazy Lady – you gotta go with the Captain. And the campaign has been entertaining as hell, which has kept me glued to TPM and 538 to see what awesome garbage Team Lizard is selling today. And of course The Daily Show and Colbert are totally killing it. The writing on those shows is phenomenal.