I haven't the faintest clue why... the reissue's art is certainly acceptable, and if I had to, I wouldn't have minded having it, but the original art is just incredible. So perfectly surreal, dark, and melancholy, it suits the music better than anything else. I held off on getting the reissue specifically because of how iconic the old art was. And now, my life feels just a little more complete.

Ozzy is a whore. Dio all the way!!!

Going to Rock on the Range on sunday, get to see Volbeat, Mastodon, Megadeth, and Anthrax. Got my front pit area tickets for 5$ each.
PS-Rainbow>Black Sabbath

Wow... Ca me met en Tabarnak! What bullshit! Seeing all the totalitarian laws passed in the US in recent years, and now this trips me out. North America is slowly turning into an Orwellian dystopia.

Appropriately, now listening to Children's "Hard Times Hangin At The End Of The World".

Considering Quebec student pay the lowest tuition in Canada, I don't understand how this became the giant, protest worthy issue that the media portrays it as. I know in another thread you said you spend a lot of time debating about it elsewhere nad you weren't interested in talking about it here, but I think it would be interesting if I could wring a short opinion out of you? As a close neighbour in Ottawa paying over double what you guys do for school, how did this kick off?



One of my favourite thrashy albums! MIND CONTROL ADDDVANNNNCEEE!!

Speaking of the preservation of our precious freedoms, I'm going to be attending a burlesque party this weekend that will include a male performer credited as practicing (among various other skills) "dick puppetry."

Still trying to figure out what that might mean.

Ever seen Puppetry of the Penis?

Dream Theater should fire James Labrie and hire the guy in the following clip;

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ni7KDqTqcdg

Fuck being a technical good vocalist, atleast this guy sounds aggressive, unlike LaBrie.

Comparing ourselves to a worst and more expensive system is not the solution, be it ROC or the US. If you guys are not happy about the situation, you have all the right to join the protests, I'm for free tuition all the way anyway. But my post was more about the bill 78, probably one of the less democratic laws in the existence of our province.

Wow, and here I thought Canada was putting America to shame by being a bastion of civil rights... at least for same-sex marriage.

I was aware, and I did read the article, I was just hoping to squeeze a segue out of it


I disagree with the bill, but not the message its trying to send. A lot of the violence and criminal mischief has been televised, and although I am sure its a small percentage of the students protesting who participate in that kind of activity, it has to stop.The gov'nt is using how scared everyone is of the images of the masked protesters plastered everywhere into sneaking a rights-abusive bill in. It ignores all the peaceful protests that have been occurring.

The general population get the floor tossed out from underneath them, while the criminals will probably keep being criminals.

Someone's gotta stand up for the only people doing it the right way, rather than allowing complacence and accepting that they're shifting towards being as a terrible as the other educations systems in Canada and the US.

Why are these education systems terrible? I feel good paying less than Americans do, so relatively, I feel Canada generally is doing something right.

By being less terrible?

And if you were following the protest movement more closely, you would know that one of the biggest protest in Canada's history took place in Montréal, march 22nd to be precise. More than 200,000 people and no violence, and no arrestations asaik. And the criminals are not often related to the students...

Related, mostly the first story.

It's worth noting that Quebec's universitys and colleges are in deseperate need of money. Quality education costs money, and it's not unreasonable to expect students to pay some of those costs. Considering Quebec's government doesn't have the money to invest even more into post secondary eduction and that it already recieves massive transfer payments from the federal government, somethings got to give.

That said, the protests seem to have grown into something else and Bill 78 is quite a troubling response from the government. Legislating against people preventing other from entering education institutions might be reasonable, but the other restrictions on protest are very concerning. It's essentially criminillizing peaceful protest, or at the very least putting such restrictive measures in place to render them impotent.

I think this might backfire on Charest, but we'll see.

Of course, it will backfire on Charest. It's inevitable, the elections are coming soon! Free tuition is not an utopy, look at Finland's education system, it would need many reforms, but it's possible, starting with no giving 500,000 bucks salary to the university board officers and a better gestion of the finances. Of course, I'm against the rise of the fees, but moreso opposed to the radicality of it, it was 1600 bucks on 5 years.

Well, while I’m not sure that tuition needs to be free, I also don’t think that a person should be saddled with massive debts just to get an post-secondary education. I think the answer lies somewhere in between. Surprisingly, the provincial Libs campaigned on the promise of free tuition in 20 years here in Alberta in the recent election (they got crushed of course, but at least those jackasses in the Wild Rose didn’t win).

But anyway, I’d definitely agree that the government’s response is really shitty. It’s certainly an escalation and is simply going to create more resentment among the student movement.

Rapidly rising costs and decreasing value of college education.

It was an idiotic response on his part and makes him look like a massive asshole. People will hate him more and they will rise up, criminalized protest or not. It's easy for people to say the Québécois are conceited in their demands and in wanting free education but, as Tony pointed out, it's not like it's an impossibility. Either way, it was a time for change in Qc politics and the frustration that has arisen because of this unfortunate situation has brough awareness to just about everyone that is directly affected. Every time I log onto Facebook, it's all 99% of my contacts are talking about.

Stumbled across a fan video for Nasty Savage's "Stabbed in the Back," it's my favorite song so I'm going to share it here. I guess fan videos wouldn't be that hard to make, you just have to try and do rudimentary synching with the video and try not to get too many close-ups of the singer's mouth moving.
http://youtu.be/7Y1fLU5LYGk

i still cannot for the life of me see why tertiary education should be free. It should be affordable, but free? Seems bizarre. If you want to do a pointless degree (or any degree, but I definitely fail to see why the state should have to pay for your art history degree, for one example) that's cool, but you're an adult, it's your choice and you should be expected to pay for it. Why should the state have to subsidise it?

healthcare, obviously. The welfare state is primordial, in my opinion.

"Are you mad? -No, my face is like this."

And, thats actually a girl.

Anyone know of any decent distros for neofolk stuff?

you living or dying (or variants thereof) is waaay different from getting paid to study. Obviously I'm all for free, high quality secondary education for everyone. But a uni degree? It seems as weird as getting a free car from the state.

We all can dream, can't we?

Got bored of playing SuperMeatBoy so I'll join the discussion if you don't mind.

College education here is free, in fact, in most cases a public university degree is worth way much more than a private one because of the level, if I'm gonna get a surgeon to perform something on me, I'd much rather have one from the UBA than anywhere else.
To me it's your cases which are completely awkward, how comes there is no alternative to paying for any kind of university? It's knowledge for god's sake, how can you expect your nation to grow as a whole if you're denying part of your people an important part education? What of those who simply can't afford to pay for a private college, we condemn them to (in most of the cases) simple jobs with shit pays for the rest of their lives for not being born wealthy?

Yeah, here I was planning studiying at the USB, wich is a public university and the best in Venezuela, but unfortunately I failed the admision test

Now I'm going to study at the UCAB, a private uni and have to pay a moderate amount of money, the academic level is pretty much the same, but I do believe the one that USB delivers is a bit better.

Ah, doesn't have to be upfront though, the payment. Here you don't pay upfront, but you get taxed slightly more, -4% or so- for however long (and it is a fair while, 20+ years) until you've paid your university debt off. Makes sense to me, basically. There's also the option of paying more of it off as you graduate, too. Certainly hasn't financially ruined anyone I'm aware of. There's way to do it without making the rich/poor divide any bigger, for sure.

And it's more than just knowledge. Facilities, copyrighted material, lecturers/tutors etc. As far as I'm aware no one's charging you for going to a library and renting out as many books on a subject as you want; knowledge is still free.

Yeah but picking up an architecture manual and reading it alone with won't do the trick, you need a tutor.
It's not like they're handing the books and materials for free though, those you still have to get yourself, the classes is what you don't pay.

The pay once you're done system is what they have in Chile if I'm not mistaken, only the percentage they have to pay later is huge for what some guys from over there told me, the following years after graduating they suffer like motherfuckers. It doesn't seem like a bad system if it's applied in a lighter way like you say they do in your country though.

I can't wait for summer break.

Man. The cover art for Mournful Congregation's The Book of Kings looks fucking awesome. It's not often I'm tempted to buy an album for the artwork alone, but the samples sound good as well. Still haven't really absorbed The Monad of Creation. Definitely a band I will have to spend more time with.

Ozzy's existence is only relevant for me during the first six Sabbath albums and his first two solo efforts, so I'd have to agree. Besides, Dio was an overall better singer, perfomer, lyricist, songwriter, and human being.

While Quebec may have the lowest tuition fees, they have relatively higher taxes and q less generous OSAP (dont know the version in quebec but its 7 dollars a day as opposed ontario's 13 a day). I think, for both sides (and there are elements where one can find sympathy with the students and the gov't), this element of time has started to ruin chances of a decent result. Strikes are, like their namesake, meant to be short bursts of 'violence' in their most effective form but a strike prolonged is difficult to manage and win. It has gotten to the point where prolonging is probably the best option for both sides.

On the notion of free education, i think it's great if admissions can be made harder to get in and if students were forced to attend a certain amount of classes so we dont have people who dont want to/dont deserve to be in school getting a free ride. BTW, while people like to use the scapegoat art history degree, any degree that is not exclusively based on the oil industry, finance or engineering (only certain kinds) is facing tough times with a lack of retirees and economic difficulties in Canada*. Schools should be more responsible as democratic welfare institutions than allow such a glut of 'art history' majors in the first place but that, of course, conflicts with the freedom of the consumer.

*of course, it counts on each province's economic and employement culture.

No The Ultimate Sin?

Only heard the song Never off that one, but for some reason never checked the rest of the record out despite the aforementioned piece being rather cool. Is the rest of the record as solid as that song? Because if such is the case, I might have to add a name to my list of "Good Ozzy-related Stuff".

Ozzy's career has solely been revived by Randy Rhoads, thus the first two solo albums are golden.

Yeah, that's a cool song, but try out the most famous song on there, Shot in the Dark.