Six months ago I wrote off Rob Ford's career in the wake of a conflict of interest scandal I was sure would take his career down. It didn't. Now there's a video that purports to show the man Cory Doctorow calls "Toronto's laughable bumblefuck of a Mayor" smoking crack cocaine in the company of known criminals.
Whether said video is authentic or not, there is no redeeming quality to this story whatsoever. If it is Rob Ford and if he is indeed smoking crack, I can't see how his mayoralty will survive. Those many of you in Toronto who view the ouster of Rob Ford as redeeming need to consider the age-old question of the means and the ends. You see, you too can help to raise the two hundred large the drug dealers have set as the price to release the video. (As of this writing, we're more than halfway to the goal: please give generously, because drug dealers are people too, and these particular drug dealers are afraid for their livelihood in Toronto and quite possibly their lives.)
Is this what crowdsourcing has come to?
******
Nearly a year ago I bitterly lamented our federal government, which tends to tout its scandalous behaviour as a sign of strength. Harper has weathered every storm by gleefully scaping any goat he can find and either refusing independent investigations outright or (more likely) eagerly embracing them as a stalling tactic. (Investigations take time, and political memories are short.)
Now the long-simmering Senate expense scandal has come to a furious boil, so far costing two senators their place in caucus and the PMO's chief of staff his job. (Nigel Wright had given generously, cutting a personal check for ninety large, insisting it was a "gift"; Harper in turn insisted he knew nothing about this, which Thomas Walkom argues is flatly impossible. Harper, meanwhile, is in South America on a trade mission. The stench of corruption is in the air over Ottawa. Justin Trudeau must be salivating.
*******
The weather turned lethal over Moore, OK. Again. The EF4 twister followed an eerily similar path as an F5 in 1999 and an F4 in 2003; five tornadoes have struck this city since 2003. I don't know about you, but I'd be thinking relocation.
As with any natural disaster, tales of miniature tragedies play out alongside heartwarming tear-jerkers galore.
I was very happy for this woman and her beloved dog, but all the same, I found myself more than a little irked watching the video. NOBODY HELPS HER. She's an elderly lady and her dog is trapped under rubble and NONE of the journalists there lifts a finger until she begs for it.
And then there's the little matter of prayers.
Almost without exception, survivors of this tornado thanked God, said they were blessed, told us they had guardian angels watching over them, told us their prayers were answered. The cognitive dissonance is simply staggering, but it's very common in the wake of disasters natural and man-made. Are you glad to be alive? Undoubtedly. But in your morning prayers, were you *really* beseeching the Almighty for this?
And I can't help but wonder, did this "act of God" -- don't look at me, that's what these things are called -- kill your neighbours and friends because they didn't pray hard enough? My apologies to religious folk offended by the question, but it has bothered me for years. It's a much more graphic example of the competing football teams, each praying for victory. Only one team can win: does God disfavour the other?
******
As you can perhaps tell from the tone of the foregoing, I'm back from vacation and nobody needs a vacation as much as the person who just had one. Yesterday was a lovely twelve hour shift and I'm stiffer than a board this morning, with a mind to match. This is my only day off for a week, and I'm off to try and improve my mood a little...
Notwithstanding my last post, in which I claimed my materialism has vanished, there remain a few material things I'd like to have at some point in my life.
Number one is probably
A GARAGE
No, I don't drive and never will, at least until we trust the Googlecars. But I do scrape the windshield in the winter, and that's not a task I relish overmuch. Especially after freezing rain.
In all the houses I've lived in--over thirty--I've had a garage once, and it lasted for less than a year before it got treed in a nasty summer storm. Miraculously, the car inside the garage at the time sustained only minor scratches.
That remains the worst storm I've lived through. There were no tornadoes, just some mighty downbursts producing wind speeds in excess of 160 km/h (100 mph) and toppling trees all over town. Some people in Ingersoll went over a week without power...and we lost our garage. I've been pining for it ever since.
Number two: A FIREPLACE
I know that it's almost indescribably bad for me
, that in a sane world, fireplaces would be illegal and their use harshly punished. (Don't believe me? Read that Sam Harris essay.) I know all this, have known it for years. And yet--A house just seems more like a home with a fire burning in it. Witness your dog or cat sitting so close to the flames that you wonder how it doesn't just spontaneously combust and instead it's just luxuriating in the warmth. There's something about a fire. Call me irrational, but there it is.
Number three: A LAZY-BOY RECLINER
a.k.a. "the Daddy-Chair". I want a chair with heat and massage, the kind of chair that gets all weepy-eyed when you have to leave it. I want a chair that states This is the head of the household.
(Anyone who finds that last bit sexist: paraphrasing My Big Fat Greek Wedding, I may be the head of the household, but Eva is the neck, and the neck turns the head.)
Number four: A GRANDFATHER CLOCK
I don't know where this obsession came from. I've never had one. Truth be told, I love clocks in general, the more unique the better. One of my most prized possessions, destroyed in one move or other, was this:
There is probably no object on this earth I want more than that Arrow ball clock. Eva tried to buy one for me our first Christmas together; the company had just gone out of business.
Barring that exact clock, I'd like a grandfather clock. Its stately, sedate and somehow comforting presence speaks to me of stability and reminds me that this too shall pass.
Number five is related to number four: A VIEW OF WATER
This isn't, of course, a material thing...and yet it is. It is in that a house on the water will cost you easily fifty grand more than the same house that's not. To me, at least, it's fifty grand well spent.
River, lake, ocean, it doesn't matter. I'm not like Eva, who seems to have been a mermaid in a prior life, but I really appreciate the calming effect of water. I love the sound of it, trickling and sloshing. Someday we plan to retire to a place that has a water view. We'll probably have to search long and hard to find such a place that doesn't bankrupt us. But we will search and we will find, because this one's number one on my wife's "I want" list.
I used to be materialistic to a fault. I spent my twenties revelling in an endless cavalcade of stuff, bought with money that was supposed to be spent on self-improvement. It took an unconscionably long time to notice that desire never stayed dormant: each satisfied whim would attract its brothers and sisters and step-cousins. Once I realized that want begets want (a notion which really ought to be self-evident), I found myself at a loss as to what to do about it all. Stop wanting? That seemed like an over-reaction, not to mention impossible. I'd spent the better part of a decade mistaking ephemeral endorphin highs for happiness, but that goal of simple happiness eluded me. It sure didn't come with a full house, not least because that full house implied an empty wallet. But an empty house and a fall wallet didn't seem to be a fair trade.
It's silly to me now, but I hamster-wheeled in that state of mind for months, just prior to meeting my wife. The overwhelming characteristic of that mental space was despair: not a melodramatic I'm-gonna-off-myself despair, but more of an I've-failed-at-life-and-there-doesn't-seem-to-be-a-makeup-test kind of despair. I had no career goals, no life goals, just a bunch of own-goals and a sense that my life was veering out of control.
The spiritual books I was reading at the time (that's me, always looking to the books for answers) told me I can't have happy (well, duh), and I can't do happy, I can only be happy. The first time I read that I pitched the book across the room, enraged. Fat girl, be skinny. Poor man, be rich. Oh, if all the world's problems could be solved with magical hocus-pocus incantations. Be happy, indeed.
Then I met Eva and it was like a switch was flipped. It's not that happiness came into my life--a corny sentiment, also a wrong one. It was that I discovered the capacity for happiness than had been in me all along.
What Eva did do was accept me unconditionally. It stabilized my life considerably, more and more as time went on. Now, some fourteen years later, people remark on how even-keeled I am. I'm still prone to little freak-outs when life pitches me a curveball, but they resolve themselves fairly quickly.
I've become a little more socially adept, a bit more self-confident, a lot more empathic. These are gifts my wife has given me, gifts I am eternally grateful for. But beyond the gift of a life shared with her, the biggest gift she has given me is understanding. Among many other things, I now understand the truth behind you can only be happy.
It's a choice. It's all a choice, every thought I think, word I speak, action I perform. That seemed preposterous years ago...it was so much easier to just say shit happens and privately wonder why all the shit seemed to happen to me. The truth, of course, was that I was the cause of my own shit.
And shit flushes.
I still have a ways to go. I need to find within myself the discipline to persist at a task. I also need to overcome a fear of rejection that I have allowed to paralyze me professionally and otherwise for far too long. I sense the answers to these questions -- which have eluded me far longer than that simple happiness I once yearned for and have now found -- are hidden just out of sight, behind a gauzy curtain I can almost reach and sweep open. But that happiness is a core ingredient to any lasting success in life, and it eludes many people just as it once eluded me. Be happy.
It really is that simple. Which is not to say easy. Simple is what life is when you strip away all the complications and complexities. (It's no wonder that the two most consistently happy groups of people are children and the simple-minded.) But we're wedded to our complexities and dramas and simplifying life is not always easy. It is, however, happy-making.
It isn't always. On many occasions I've seen headlines like
Man Stabs Girlfriend 37 Times Wife Sets Husband On Fire 'Lovers' Quarrel' Leads to Murder, Suicide
I read the articles attached to headlines like this and amidst all the gory, sensational details ("penis thrown in trash can!") I never find the one detail that seems most critical to me: why?
Or maybe how would be the better question. How does love turn to hate? There are no words to adequately express the depth of my confusion here.
Let's first remove the "lover" and the "girlfriend" and "boyfriend" from stories like this. I think when you even start thinking about destroying somebody, mentally or physically, words like friend and lover can get chucked out the window. And if you "quarrel" with somebody, you don't then kill them, or I'd have a trail of corpses ten miles long by now.
I can state with certainty that I am not capable of murder in cold blood. I'm not sure I'm capable of murder in hot blood. I could kill in self-defence, and in defence of quite a number of people I love dearly--but provoked murder is beyond me.
Further, I don't think I'm actually capable of hatred. Not the kind of hatred that would motivate me to expend untold amounts of energy, as in the linked story above, utterly ruining someone's life. That just seems like such a waste of time and emotional intensity, and no good can come out of it.
Ah, but that's you being rational, Ken. Love is not rational and neither is hate.
I was told that last night by someone I barely know, but who strikes me as very perceptive. I've slept on it and I have to say that I disagree with part of it.
Hate is irrational, for the reason I've given above. It's a waste of time and energy and nothing good ever came of hatred, even (or perhaps especially) for the hater. Yet it persists and remains a potent force in the world, and that to me is the very definition of irrational.
But love? That which "makes the world go round"? The thing that's "all you need"? The thing without which, according to Corinthians, you are "nothing"? I can't accept that something so essential to the human condition--in many spiritual traditions, it is the human condition--can be irrational.
Certainly lust can be irrational. The kind of lust that leads a man to throw away a wife and life in favour of a hundred punps, a tickle and a squirt (with a woman who is, more often than not, a pale imitation of the wife he's betraying)--that's irrational as hell. But lust is not love, as most (not all) teenagers eventually learn.
It may seem like I'm bearing a dead horse -- go back through this Breadbin and I've probably said this half a hundred times -- but love, actual love, is unconditional. That means it's permanent: it doesn't fade, it doesn't sour, it most certainly doesn't eventually turn to hate.
I still think Shakespeare said it best, in Sonnet 116:
...Love is not love Which alters when it alteration finds, Or bends with the remover to remove: O no! it is an ever-fixed mark That looks on tempests and is never shaken; It is the star to every wandering bark, Whose worth's unknown, although his height be taken. Love's not Time's fool, though rosy lips and cheeks Within his bending sickle's compass come: Love alters not with his brief hours and weeks, But bears it out even to the edge of doom. If this be error and upon me proved, I never writ, nor no man ever loved. So what does this mean for relationships that do fade, or go sour? We've all had them, right?
In the first case, it means that in the interest of love, you've seen fit to dissolve the relationship. This is very common and absolutely nothing to be ashamed or guilty of. It's so common, in fact, that often it's not even a conscious decision. Not every partner or friend is meant to share the entire road with you. Friends and lovers drift in and out of your life like busboys in a restaurant, and that's perfectly okay. So long as you've served each other to the best of your ability over the night, or month, or decade you've known each other, you've done your job.
It's not a mistake to marry such a one, either. Yes, in marriage you make a vow, and vows are supposed to be kept. But if both of you agree that your lives are no longer served by your relationship, a vow can become counterproductive. Marriage is not a prison and spouses are neither wardens nor prisoners. If one or both of you feels trapped to that kind of extent, what you're in is not a marriage and should not be treated as one.
Which is not to suggest in any way that bumps in the road should kill a union. Far from it: in many ways they can make a marriage stronger. I'm talking about the kind of existential dread that leads one spouse to wake up one day and say I don't love you and I'm not sure I ever did. And note there the actual disavowal of love. In such a case no one's purpose is being served by a continuation of the marriage: not the husband's, not the wife's, definitely not the children's, and not even the deity (if applicable) Who was party to the contract in the first place.
And when relationships go sour? I'd suggest that the driving force in those relationships was not, could never have been, love. Because love is that "ever-fixed" mark, that unconditional emotion that does not judge, does not condemn, does not punish. (To reiterate another point I've made many times, this is why the concepts of "Judgement Day" and "Hell" are wholly incompatible with an omnibenevolent Deity: either the deity or the judgement and hellfire simply can not exist.)
The state most often mistaken for love, in these cases where the "lovers" end up murdering each other or each other's reputations, is simple jealousy. Simple, wrongheaded, awful jealousy, the kind of emotion I'd scrub from the human palette if I had the ability. Jealousy is possibly the most soul-destroying, senseless and disgusting emotion it's possible for a human being to feel. It's monstrously arrogant, for one thing: who are you to feel pain at another's happiness? Who are you to treat your partner as a possession? What gives you the right to exert control over another adult's path in life and love?
It's no coincidence that the few times I've found myself feeling that emotion, I was sick to my stomach. It corrodes everything it touches. It dehumanizes. You get the picture.
But like hatred, it's disconcertingly common in the world, to the point where many people believe it necessary for a healthy marriage! I figure the only way someone can mistake jealousy for love is if he or she has never experienced love. And that thought is, for me, sad beyond contemplation.
I find it very difficult to conceive of a world wherein I felt indifference towards my wife, and flatly impossible to imagine hating the woman. If she were to announce tomorrow that she was leaving me, you can bet I'd put up a fight--but if she made it clear enough that leaving me would best serve her, the fight would go out of me. I'd be deflated, bereft beyond coherence, and I don't want to write about this any more--but hate her? Never. I don't have it in me.
You've heard it all before, and doubtless experienced it yourselves: each vacation is more necessary than the one before; each respite is rehearsal for retirement; and damnitall, they go by so fast.
Recycling a couple of my favourite aphorisms:
"Vacation is what you take when you can't take what you've been taking any longer."
--Anonymous
"A vacation consists of two weeks which are too short after which you are too tired to return and too broke not to."
--also Anonymous. Prolific and profound, that person.
This particular week-and-a-bit away from the grind was supposed to happen a month ago, in my break between classes. Unfortunately that week coincided with university exams and all our part timers requested and got time off to study, leaving me virtually the only one available and scuttling my plans. Scuttled plans are nothing new to me, but still, this rankled. I was ready for this week off a month ago, and that month took about a year to go by.
One friend of mine is in Berlin, or maybe en route to Prague, today. Another pair of friends are on an anniversary trip that has incorporated Hawai'i and Las Vegas. My vacation plans, alas, are considerably more humble.
I have French class tonight and on Wednesday night I face down the first test I've taken in nearly twenty years. Just a simple vocabulary test, nothing onerous. Truth be told, I wish I had the opportunity to pay, say, half the tuition, sit the final exam, and if I pass it, gain credit for the course. But that's me, always looking for the easy way out.
On Thursday I'm off to my Dad and Hez's place Up North -- capitalization deliberate -- for a few days in which I hope I can stay awake. This is, as always, a trip I'm looking forward to. I expect I'll be thoroughly buried in NHL playoffs--my dad's an even bigger fan of the game than I am--and thanks to the Toronto Maple Leafs' series-tying win the other night, there'll be a game on Friday night that father and son can sit down and enjoy (or stand up and curse, as the case better not be).
Other than that, my plans basically involve the square root of frig-all. Maybe I'll try for the cube root this time. If that sounds boring....you're not me.
I was up at 5:15 this morning...meaning I slept in for all of fifteen minutes. I can refuse to set my bedside alarm, but I'm helpless against my inside alarm. No matter, though: I like getting up at that hour. Once I've showered and dressed, I'll step out into the peaceful crispness to retrieve the newspaper which is invariably somewhere down by the sidewalk. I'll pause, recite a few incantations under my breath, raise my hands to the heavens and summon the dawn. That's right, I'm why the sun came up this morning. It's a heavy responsibility, but somebody's gotta do it.
----------------
I've promised a couple of people blogs. Ally: the topic you've set for me is very important and extremely depressing and I promise I will write on it at some point relatively soon, but quite frankly I'm the farthest thing from in the mood to do it today. Chris, I promised you a reading list. That, too, is forthcoming, sometime this week. If you're desperate for something to read, pick up John Dies At The End by David Wong: I think you'll be glad you did.)
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The year proceeds apace. Big changes are afoot chez Breadbin. The smallest change is probably the portable dishwasher scheduled to land here in the next couple of weeks. Amongst all the houses I've lived in--well over thirty--very few have had dishwashers. I've been the dishwasher for a goodly chunk of my life, and I'm not a very good one, if you have to ask. Cleaning, cleaning, I hate cleaning things that just end up getting dirty again. I hate any repetitive tasks like that...if it didn't involve so much pain and expense, I'd laser off all my hair so I wouldn't have to deal with it again. I'd be the kind of rich douche that would, in Paul McCartney's words, be breaking dirty dishes up and throwing them away. I haven't made my bed since I lived at home and had to, reason there being that c'mon, who's going to see my bedroom today? Outside of my fantasies, I mean? So this dishwasher will be a welcome addition to the Breadbin, for me because duh and for Eva because the outside of things will be clean.
Then there's the machine Eva's getting:
I understand there's a little game on this thing in which you're a fish dodging sharks. Who says fitness can't be fun?
This will help with Eva's ongoing weight loss/life transformation. She's gone eight months without smoking a cigarette and this time I know it'll stick. She's also lost a fair bit of weight already in the process of losing a great deal more. While her weight doesn't matter to me, her health emphatically does. I couldn't be prouder of her.
Towards the end of this year, I'll be getting braces. Or at least starting the mouth reconstruction I'll probably need in advance of getting braces.
This is more than three decades overdue and it's entirely my fault. I was slated to get braces at roughly the same time I got glasses and I flatly and emphatically refused. My parents relented after a while and thirty-odd years later I can truthfully say I wish they hadn't.
Oh, I had my reasons, and they were a nine-year-old's damn good reasons: Glasses caused me enough grief on the playground as it was. I viewed braces as the icing on the turd. Try a little irony, Ken: it's good for the blood. As it turned out, without braces my teeth went hideous on me and I might as well be eating a shit-cake every time I open my mouth. I've rooted out many of my insecurities, or Eva's rooted them out for me, but my misshapen, malformed and malodorous teeth are a huge one and it's past time I did something about it.
I'll be getting the InvisAlign braces that are supposed to be less painful. This is good, of course, as my philosophy on pain is best summed up as "no pain, no...pain!"...but the truth is I owesome pain as penance for my pigheadedness back when I was nine. Once my mouth is fixed, I hope my self-consciousness (which really has been, and is, crippling) will be fixed too.
If all this wasn't enough, we're also undergoing what will be referred to in the history of our lives as the Great Purge.
We've tried this before, by means of garage sales. They haven't gone all that well. So this time the decent stuff is going to Value Village and the rest is getting binned.
There's a lot of "rest". Our home is not something you'd see on Hoarders, far from it, but it is...cluttered. The basement is cluttered in the extreme. We've accumulated almost fifteen years of C.R.A.P. (Cheap Random Assorted Product) and it's gotta go. Too many times we've hesitated on the "maybe someday we'll need this" principle. You know what? If someday hasn't come up by now, then someday is Neverary 22nd.
I'm riding Eva's bike on account of having blown a tire (leave my personal life out of this, would you?) I've grown to really like the riding stance on this thing. Having never really driven, I can't say for sure, but I suspect it's similar to the feeling drivers get transitioning from a compact car to an SUV. I feel like I command the road. It's called a 'comfort' bike for good reason.
And that's life in a nutshell. There are other things going on around here, some of which I'll be writing about later on...but for now I'm just going to enjoy my vacation.
There's been quite a media hullabaloo over the the revamped DSM-5, the so-called 'Psychiatrist's Bible', and the way it demonizes normality.
For instance, grief is now considered a mental illness...if it lasts longer than a fortnight.. You read that right: If your life partner up and dies on you, you'd better be over it in two weeks or else you're mentally ill. If your child dies, don't be such a Debbie Downer: hey, in two weeks you can start trying for another one!
Or let's say you've got cancer. If your doctor thinks that your cancer is bothering you a little too much (because after all, it's only cancer), presto! You've got cancer and you're sick in the head.
Then there's 'Disruptive Mood Dysregulation Disorder', which is what your kid has when he throws a temper tantrum. I'm sure pills for that 'disorder' will be forthcoming and that may please some harried parents. But most of us -- including, you'd hope, most psychiatrists -- recognize that kids are not little adults and that their moods are dysregulated and disruptive on occasion because they're, um, kids.
To their credit, many professionals are boycotting the DSM-5 on the grounds that it makes damn near everybody, including the psychiatrists, mentally ill. But it's still going to be the go-to reference for the American Psychiatric Association. This bothers me on several levels. (I'd like to tell you it enrages me but you might decide I'm crazy).
First, of course, it means that I'd pick up any number of mental illnesses as if by magic. Hell, just the other night I found myself crying for no reason I could readily discern. While I'm pretty sure that's fairly common, its very commonality doesn't seem to shield it from classification as a mental disorder any more. I'm down at least as much as I'm up and a lot of times I'm just meh and if I'm not happyhappyhappy all the time, somebody somewhere is going to conclude I'm sick and need medication? That's enough to give me a case of disruptive mood dysregulation disorder.
Second, and much more critically, I'm sure Big Pharma is welcoming this new manual with open arms. Feeling down? Pop a pill. Been a week since the funeral? Pill time! Can't reason with your two-year-old? Shove a pill down her throat.
I'm a guy who has to be motivated to take muscle relaxers or acetaminophen. Spare me your goddamn happy pills, okay?
Third, and most alarmingly, this will inevitably make life even more of a living hell than it already is for the fairly large number of people out there are are suffering from actual mental illnesses.
I know and love quite a few of them. The misconceptions people have about the mentally ill are soul-destroying. All but the most debilitating cases of mental illness go without notice. Odds are very good that a friend of family member of yours has a diagnosed mental illness. We don't treat physical illness as a lessening of the person, so why are we so quick to judge mental illness that way? And what happens to chronic depressives when grief is suddenly a mental illness?
A probable answer to that lies in the ADD/ADHD controversy that is seeing more and more kids on Ritalin because they won't sit still in class. Gee, when I was growing up, it was the kids who did sit still in class -- like me, for instance -- who were treated as if they were buggo.
But there is such a thing as Attention Deficit (Hyperactivity) Disorder. As overdiagnosed as it undoubtedly is, there are definitely legitimate cases of it out there. I'd imagine their illness is belittled at every turn. "Oh, it's all in your head".
It's all in your head. If I could expunge one phrase from the English language, that'd be right up there near the top of the list. Every time I hear of someone saying that I want to find them and punch them repeatedly in the face as hard as I can, and then inform them sweetly that the pain they're feeling is all in their head.
This goes for physical illnesses too, of course, the invisible ones like fibromyalgia and lupus and chronic migraine and chronic fatigue and so many others that have been misdiagnosed over and over as mental illnesses. "You don't look sick to me!" If you hear that often enough, I bet you start questioning your sanity just a wee bit. Why won't the world acknowledge this illness, which is part of who I am? We're told over and over not to appear weak. Do you have the slightest inkling of the amount of inner strength it takes to get out of bed for some people? To go to work and carry on a normal life? To stay on a relatively even keel in the face of physical and/or emotional pain so monstrous it would reduce most of the it's all in your head people to quivering wrecks?
People living with these diseases and disorders are heroes in my eyes. If that makes me crazy, then you can send the men in the white coats to lock me away.
Playoffs. Us long-suffering Leaf fans can be forgiven a little giddiness and confusion...aren't those things for other teams?
Not this year. For the first time in this Breadbin's history, the Toronto Maple Leafs are in the playoffs.
The wags will tell you it's because the season was short this year, and being as Toronto is only capable of playing half a season, well, it stands to reason. To which I say: so what. Every other team played the same 48 games, and for once the Leafs are at or near the top of the league in categories other than giveaways and goals against.
Without further ado, the grades:
GM DAVE NONIS B
A gentle breath of fresh air after Burke's bombastic boorishness (though ya gotta admit ol' Burkie was entertaining as hell), Nonis seems to be all about removing obstacles for his players to succeed. The team was beset with a LACK of success going into the season, LACK standing for Lombardi, Armstrong, Connolly and Komisarek; all four were traded, demoted, or waived, Nonis' trade deadline performance was underwhelming, and the active search for goaltending statistically, Luongoly inferior to the goaltending he already had, was infuriating. In the end his saner side prevailed and the team was able to take its first playoff steps.
HEAD COACH RANDY CARLYLE B+
The consensus, going into the season, was that this was not a playoff team. Unproven goaltending, suspect D, a historically bad PK...a real longshot to make the dance. I'll get to the other things in a minute. That bad PK? From far and away the worst to second-best in a season. That's what an actual coach will do for you. (No offense to Wilson...or rather, all offense to Wilson, who treated the defensive zone like it was radioactive.)
Moreover, Carlyle has established a team identity and promoted cohesion up and down the lineup. These guys play for each other. It's good to see that. I suspect Carlyle will garner a couple of Adams votes (although this year, Paul MacLean in Ottawa owns that award).
To some extent, there are smoke and mirrors involved here. The team's PDO, an advanced stat that essentially measures luck, is the highest in the NHL; its Fenwick percentage, which is a measure of puck possession, is the lowest. In other words, this team is content to let its opponents have the puck, play with the puck, shoot the puck...so long as they do it from non-scoring areas. Toronto is insanely opportunistic: many times this year they've won despite being handily outshot.
Carlyle deserves points for keeping the team on an even keel, which is not easily done in this market. He's known when to lighten up and when to peel paint off the walls, Keeping him from an A grade is his team's maddening inconsistency. They can play with, and beat, any team in the league...and then the next game they can look like they did last night, absolutely horrible.
GOALTENDERS
JAMES REIMER 19-8-5, 2.46 GAA, .924 SV%, 5 shutouts A
These are better than league average numbers across the board, something the Leafs have not seen since Eddie Belfour. Reimer is a solid goalie who reads plays well, has a knack for picking the puck out of traffic, and rarely gets rattled. His rebound control is still occasionally shaky and puck handling is not his forte, but when he's on his game he's very good verging on spectacular. If not for him, this is not a playoff team. (By the way: THIS IS A PLAYOFF TEAM.)
BEN SCRIVENS 7-9-0, 2.69, 9.15, 2 B
The goalie with the bizarre glove stance. Scrivens was a respectable backup who kept the team in the hunt when Reimer was lost due to injury. Ben plays big in the net and is acrobatic with very quick lateral movement. Good showing.
DEFENCEMEN
DION PHANEUF 9-19-28 A-
The Leafs Captain can't seem to get the respect he's due. He's top ten in the league for points by a defenceman; he plays by far the toughest minutes on the team. We can debate the letter on his sweater until the end of time but the fact of the matter is, he's doing his job, and doing it well.
CODY FRANSON4-25-29 A-
Outpointed Phaneuf, good for #8 in league scoring amongst D even though he's second pairing. His defensive zone play still needs some work: he has to remember to keep moving his feet. But all in all this has been a season of sweet redemption for Cody, who was inexplicably benched for most of last year.
CARL GUNNARSSON 1-14-15 B-
Played most if all of this season hurt, and you could tell: it affected his mobility and at times his decision making. Reliable stay-at-home D who is steady but not spectacular.
JOHN-MICHAEL LILES 2-9-11 C
has not been the same player since he suffered his concussion last season. By all accounts he is a dressing room leader. Likely traded this off-season.
JAKE GARDINER 0-4-4 (12 GP) D+
Don't give up hope on Jake. He's the best skater in the D-corps by far and he showed last year what an offensive threat he can be. But this year has been a write-off. Prone to lackadaisical defensive play and stunning blunders. He's in that awkward place where careers are easily derailed: too good for the AHL but with loads to learn to be effective at the NHL level. Previously this exact position was inhabited by one Nazem Kadri, who has busted out with aplomb. Let's hope Gardiner does too.
MICHAEL KOSTKA 0-8-8 C+
Carlyle paired him with Phaneuf for some time, and so he played hard, hard minutes, performing reasonably well for a guy who'd never seen the NHL before. However, he was totally miscast as a PP QB and really doesn't belong on the first pairing. He does have offense he hasn't shown: last year he was a one-man Marlie wrecking crew, which is probably what motivated the Leafs to pick him up in the first place.
KORBINIAN HOLZER 2-1-3 D-
Not ready for prime time despite having performed admirably for years at the AHL level. With lots of work on his skating he could contribute: he has a nifty mean streak that earned him the nickname "Bullholzer".
MARK FRASER 0-8-8 B
Unsung defensive stalwart with a nasty side, he plays a simple, no nonsense stay at home game and relishes clearing the crease. This is another type of player the Leafs have not had on the roster for years. Was at or near the top of the +/- standings for much of the year. Not a fast skater, he relies on smart positioning to separate man from puck. He, like Franson, can be beat with speed to the outside, but together they made a decent second pairing.
FORWARDS
PHIL KESSEL 20-32-52 A
When will Toronto fans fully embrace the superstar they have here? Yes, I said superstar. Phil Kessel is an elite player that has outscored all but three other players over the past three seasons. Playing in the media fishbowl that is Toronto, you'd think more people would notice that. Did Burke overpay to get him? Undoubtedly. Has Phil lived up to his end of the trade? Abso-friggin'-lutely. Besides the patented shot and the exceptional passing, Phil has noticeably elevated his backchecking this year and is now, dare I suggest, a complete three zone player. He's led the team each year in scoring. Bravura performance. Now if we can just keep him away from that 6'8" block of Kryptonite called Zdeno Chara...
NAZEM KADRI 18-26-44 A
Hello there Nazem Kadri. I have written some disparaging words about you and I have been forced to eat every one of them. Pierre McGuire coined the nickname 'Nifty Mittens' and you do have those. You managed to finish top twelve in NHL scoring despite playing only 16:03 a game. Impressive. (Then again, there's an argument to be made that the reason you have all those points is because you've been shielded from top-echelon competition.) You also have a nice mean streak to your game and you draw penalties like nobody's business. You remind me of a budding Doug Gilmour. Higher praise I'm not sure I know how to give. Here's to a long and Cupful career as a Leaf.
JAMES VAN RIEMSDYK 18-14-32 B-
His prior high water mark for goal scoring in an 82 game season was 21 goals. So for him to pot 18 in 48 isn't bad. When he plays the power forward role Carlyle envisions for him, he is VERY effective: many of his points came from a few feet in front of the net. Unfortunately, this is not a game that James wants to play very often and he spent long stretches of this short season off the scoresheet and in the doghouse. Career could go either way.
TYLER BOZAK 12-16-28 B
Tyler is very hard to grade because he's still playing in a role (first-line center) that is unsuited to his skill set. He shows flashes of vision and his faceoff skills are best on the team, but his BFF status with Kessel leads him to look for Phil when he should be shooting himself, and he's largely predictable on the puck (except in shootouts). He will be seeking a hefty pay raise and to some extent he deserves one, but going forward you have to think Kadri will be Kessel's center. Bozak's future as a Leaf is in question.
NIKOLAI KULEMIN 7-16-23 B
Two years ago Kulemin scored 30. Last year he scored 7 in 70 matches and never seemed to find his game. This year he settled in somewhere between the two extremes. He's the defensive conscience of the top six and he always has done a lot of the little things well, but you'll likely never see 30 goals out of him again. He has a lot of value to this team, but it's the kind of value apparent to coaches and few others.
CLARKE MACARTHUR 8-12-20 C-
Another player who excelled two years ago (playing with Kulemin, as it happens). Clarke was wildly inconsistent this year, with long periods of near-invisibility. MacArthur is the quintessence of "average".
JOFFREY LUPUL 11-7-18 (16 GP) A+
Could he have scored his pro-rated 92 points in a full season? Doubtful, but I'd hesitate to bet money against it. Beset by injuries including a concussion and a broken arm from a Phaneuf slapshot, Joffrey was the heart and soul of this team while he was in the lineup and he showed astonishing chemistry with Kadri. I won't suggest Lupul is the second coming of Wendel Clark...they are totally different players. But Lupul does have something no other Leaf since Clark has had: a primal, unrestrained joy at being a Toronto Maple Leaf. No disrespect to Phaneuf, but Lupul is this fan's idea of a captain. Also, he's Eva's "cutie patootie", whatever that means.
JAY MCCLEMENT 8-9-17 A+
Kessel, Kadri and Lupul light the lamp. Reimer is ultimately the last line of defence and he had a very good season. But you could certainly make a case for Jay being the MVP of this team. He is a huge reason the penalty kill went from laughable to highly laudable. He never takes a shift off and he rarely makes a mistake. If people weren't blinded by offensive numbers, McClement would be given the Selke this summer: he has logged more PK time, on (again) the second-best PK corps in the NHL, and the next 18 players on that list are defencemen.
If the Leafs actually do keep progressing into legitimate Cup contenders over the next few seasons, it's a safe bet McClement will be part of it all.
MIKHAIL GRABOVSKI 9-7-16 D
Last year was Kulemin's lost year. This was Grabovski's. I'm not sure what happened here but Mikhail's wheels have fallen off and the passion is gone from his game. Carlyle asked him to be a defensive forward and he failed. I'm almost certain his time as a Leaf is done, but odds are they won't get as much as they could for him because of the hefty contract he failed to live up to this year.
LEO KOMAROV 4-5-9 A-
One of the most hated players in the league. I love this guy. Joe Bowen repeatedly informed us this year that Komarov would be just as effective without a blade on his stick He's a hitting machine and he hits hard. But he's not dirty...just annoying as all hell (if you're on the other team). You'd like to see a tad more offense out of him but even without it, he's a player you just have to keep.
FRASER MCCLAREN 3-2-5 B-
As a pure goon, he gets an A: he doesn't lose many fights. As a hockey player...well, he skates well for a man his size and he can cycle better than you'd think. Hands of stone, though...which you don't want ro get hit with.
COLTON ORR 1-3-4 B-
Goon #2. I've elevated his marks simply because he appears to have learned how to skate over the past year. One of these two players is superfluous, to my mind.
The team as a whole is too inconsistent to expect to survive the first round of these playoffs. Most teams making it in after having missed for a long time are fodder for the perennial contenders. But anything can happen and this Leaf fan is just elated to see his team in the game.
Three times I have started to write this blog. Three times I have deleted it and started over.
Boston is not an easy thing to write about. First, there was for quite some time a serious lack of credible information. Conspiracies breed like rabbits in an environment like this, especially since there are many people with political agendas perfectly willing to twist what facts there are to fit their narrative. I like to think I'm not ready for a tin hat, but I am willing to entertain the notion that things aren't always as they appear. Entertaining that notion has led me into some pretty dark places over the past few days, let me tell you. I won't link--these people don't need the attention--but there are more than a few people convinced the Tsarnaev brothers were framed, that this was actually an inside job perpetrated or at least aided and abetted by the U.S. government.
There's a kind of logic in the insanity of that assertion, the same kind that sustains the 9/11 "truthers". (Indeed, many of the same elements are present, including a mysterious Saudi allegedly wined and dined by the government in the immediate aftermath and then discretely flown out of the country.) Certainly the people who believe things like this take it as read that their government hates them. At the very least, they believe that the U.S. government secretly likes acts of terror being perpetrated on its own soil, the better to keep the citizens in line. Whip a little Patriot Act on 'em. Reintroduce CISPA
...and keep reintroducing it until it passes. Eventually the government will have the police state it yearns for.
It's seductive, this state of mind. Knowing The Truth (tm) gives you a real sense of power, especially when you're surrounded by ignorant sheeple who won't wake up. It also makes it easy to fit future atrocities, whatever they may be, into your head: no need to flail around for answers, The Government Did It.
(Of course, it follows that you can substitute "The Government" for your bugaboo of choice. I'd be more inclined to believe the conspiracists, whatever their truth, if I didn't invariably detect pre-existing antipathy towards whoever their idea of the guilty party is.)
The ever-changing reports out of Boston pose their own problems for somebody who prides himself on getting it right. Just today we learn from the surviving Tsarnaev brother that further attacks were planned in New York City. This is interesting for two reasons. It renders conspiracy theories null and void, of course. But it's also interesting because four days prior we were told Dzhokhar Tsarnaev might never speak again. That's quite the misdiagnosis.
.Almost enough to turn me back down the conspiracy trail...never mind.
The third factor that makes Boston difficult to write about: once again, people have died in the name of jihad.
We're not supposed to acknowledge this, even though the people who are planning and carrying out these attacks have no trouble whatsoever citing jihad as their motivation. To be honest, I'm not sure why this is. Certainly it can't be out of a fear of giving offense...do we really care so much for the feelings of those who wish us dead? If so, maybe we deserve everything being done to us.
A chilling glimpse into the mind of a jihadist came this week here in Canada. Working off a tip from the FBI, Canadian authorities foiled a plot to blow up a Via Rail train en route from Toronto to New York. One of the accused questioned the authority of the court, saying that the Criminal Code of Canada is not a holy book.
This is what we're up against, folks: people who not only are out to kill us, but who believe it's their holy duty to do it and that any laws standing in their way are irreverent and thus irrelevant. We're up against a faith that does precious little to root out its extremists. To be fair, it's hard to blame them: moderate Muslims, those who view the call to jihad as a metaphor and nothing more, are at least as hated by the fundamentalists as us infidels.
Spare me, please, the protestations that Islam means 'peace' and that it is a religion of peace. Islam means 'submission', and the radical Islamists believe they are called by Allah to fight the dar al-Harb (the 'house of war', i.e. the world not under Islamic rule) into that submission. This website shows their efforts towards world "peace", which are ongoing.
All that said, the threat of Islamic terrorism, or indeed any kind of terrorism, should not be enough to keep you housebound. I almost never agree with Ezra Levant on anything at all, but he couldn't be more right here. Why was Boston shut down? Was it really necessary to paralyze a great American city just to find two whacko brothers? I think not. What kind of message does this response send to aspiring terrorists? As Levant notes, the marathon bombings, while tragic, were extremely modest on the terrorism scale--the kind of thing Israel deals with on a daily basis. But America--America, the big, the bold, the brash, the beautiful!...wigged out. C'mon, America. You're better than that and you know it.
Back here in Canada: Justin Trudeau, newly minted Liberal leader, has earned predictable scorn for musing about the 'root causes' of terrorism. Our Prime Minister scolded him, saying "now is not the time to commit sociology". (Aside: very telling choice of verb from a man who has given us every reason to believe he hates and fears science. To me it sounds as if "sociology" is an atrocity like murder, which is something you also "commit".)
Needless to say, I disagree with the idea that we should not examine the root causes of any problem in order to solve the problem. But it is fair to note that poverty, an oft-cited 'root cause', isn't one. The Tsarnaev brothers were nowhere close to poor. Osama bin Laden was obscenely wealthy and many of his most devout Saudi followers are, too. You want root causes? I wrote about them seven years ago:
Here's Hussein Massawi, a former leader of the terrorist group Hezbollah--a group which shares ideals with al-Qaeda--on the reason for terrorist attack: "We are not fighting so that you will offer us something. We are fighting to eliminate you."
There are those who earnestly believe 9/11 was the opening salvo in a war of civilizational dominance. I don't believe that. Even with religion as a motivator--and it's a hell of a motivator--any cause that insist you kill yourself in order for it to be fulfilled is doomed. Given the choice of life versus seventy two virgins, even most Muslims will pick life.
(Another aside--Such a weird, weird belief that is. I mean, I could dive right into those 'appetizing vaginas', but 'eternal erection'? No, thank you. And who's going to be better in bed, a virgin or a woman who knows what she's doing? Even if you pick the virgin...there's only 72 of them. Of course, being as they're all ninety feet tall, it'll take you a while to climb each one. And you're probably going to get repeatedly grossed out on the way up because they're all "transparent to the marrow of their bones." Yeesh. If you're sexually aroused by any of the foregoing, could you please do me a favour and step away from me? Thanks.)
In summary then: these terrorist attacks are likely to continue for some time. The attackers are highly motivated, and they believe they are doing God's work. However, the overblown response to each attack plays right into the terrorists' hands, and the media frenzy doesn't help either. It would probably be a good idea to adopt the British maxim...
Turning against each other by blaming our government, or liberals, or conservatives, or anyone other than the terrorists, is likewise counterproductive. Yes, as distasteful as the Left may believe this to be, we are in fact at war with a perverted ideology that wishes us dead. But no, contrary to what many on the right will tell you, a Muslim is not a suspect by virtue of his faith.
