The Breadbin

All About Me: "Midlife Crisis" Edition

2012-01-29T11:33:00.000-05:00

As I approach the venerable old age of 40, I constantly find myself scanning for signs of the midlife crisis that society says should be bushwacking me any day now. I'm supposedly going to wake up one morning, very soon, go buy a Ferrari and use it to pick up women twenty years my junior.

I can confidently assure any Evas who might be reading this that all is clear on the Ferrari/floozie front. I mean, I'd have to steal the Ferrari, and I can't think of one floozie who'd look at me twice even with a Ferrari, and even if I could somehow finagle a floozie into my filched Ferrari, I'd crash the thing pretty much instantaneously. Nothing says crisis quite like a floozie corpse in a wrecked Ferrari.

All joking aside, I have been through a 'midlife crisis'. Except if my crisis actually hit me at midlife, folks should be planning my funeral along about yesterday.

I didn't buy the sports car, of course...but I did spend an almost equivalent sum on meaningless trifles. Endless meals out. Probably close to a thousand dollars on arcade games. Albums bought just because I kind of liked one song. Stuff like that. And yes, there were floozies. I had affairs, plural. Not exactly my proudest years, '90-'98 or so.

"The past is a foreign country. They do things differently there"-- L.P. Hartley

I've lost most of the language I once spoke in that foreign country, and I've abandoned its customs. In fact, it's hard even to imagine the state of mind I lived in back then, much less that it was I who lived in it, if that makes any sense at all.

It goes without saying that everything was All About Me. What would make me happy, short-term? I foolishly figured that if I piled up enough of these short-term happinesses, I'd be happy in the long term as well. I was, of course, different from my dorm-mates: they got drunk practically every night. I didn't grasp the obvious truth that I was far more wasted than they could ever dream of getting, just not on alcohol.

I had two relationships in those years, and they were also All About Me. In hindsight, the first was actually more mature than the second, but even so there came a day in that relationship when I decided there was something lacking. A little pizzazz. Okay, Ken, stop mincing words. Sex.
There was sex, but it was perfunctory and put me very much in mind of England. Rather than invest in the relationship by means of honest communication, I spent considerable time orchestrating an affair.I would have hotly denied such an insinuation--the woman I was chatting online to meant nothing, and it was merely a coincidence that she lived all of a block away from Lynne and I. And when I went over there one night just to play Nintendo (like I was ever any good at console video games!) it was such a surprise when Judy just fell into my lap, and even more of a surprise when I--

Yeah. Such a surprise. Neither was it at all shocking that I continued to frequent Judy's place over the next six or eight months. And it shouldn't have been a surprise when Judy and I had a little argument and she threatened to tell Lynne about her existence. I came home from that confrontation with my mind reeling, trying to figure out a way to get through the next week or so with my ever-precious balls intact. One more non-surprise: I got home to hear awfully Lynne-like moans--not that I'd ever heard her moan, but I could imagine--coming from Ben's room. The anger I felt was quashed immediately by the realization that I was the worst kind of hypocrite going. The only saving grace was that it was considerably easier to confess my transgression. I slunk out of the house for a couple of hours and then came home and spilled. Lynne never did; her lack of ball-ripping was all the confession I needed. Lynne and I limped along for another few months, but the relationship was doomed and I think we both knew it.

Enter Cathy. I met her online as well, through the Usenet forum soc.penpals. We were real penpals at first, actual pen-and-paper pals, over the summer where she was at home fifteen hundred miles away and offline. I'm here to tell you that while snail mail is slow, it can work just as well as screen chat in developing affection. Maybe better. Over a season you can accomplish a lot in that direction if you're willing to write ten or fifteen pages at a time.

She bussed home from Fort Frances--a gruelling trip--and I bussed to Toronto to join her for its last leg. She had prepared a letter, which she handed to me before dropping off to sleep. She told me not to read it until we were almost home. That was difficult, but I complied.
That letter detailed every flaw I was likely to find in her, said she was more than willing to accept mine, and proposed we get serious. "If you're okay with this, poke me awake".

I did. And we "got serious", after a fashion, although again in hindsight the relationship was childish. We called each other 'Cathybear' and 'Kenbear'--the memory of which is rather sickening, now--and I saw her as a means to complete my life. In other words--just the next trinket.

That was one flaw Cathy didn't bargain on when she said she was willing to accept my flaws, and that was my continuing desire to make everything All About Me. You'd think I would have learned. I thought I had. But when Cathy was diagnosed with clinical depression, I began the process of bailing on her. The only option, really: I couldn't 'fix' clinical depression. As it progressed, it was often as if I wasn't even in the room. So I decided not to be in someone else's room. Again, this was a decision I kept hidden from myself--it said too many things about me, too many things that contradicted the virtuous, goody-two-shoes image I had of myself.

I met that 'someone else' online (where else?) I was so thoroughly convinced of my own physical unattractiveness by this time that I knew the only chance I had to attract and hold somebody was if they didn't have to look at me through the first stages. I may be ugly, but I got the words, yo.

She eventually came to spend a weekend. Chaos ensued.I had cunningly cultivated the polyamory defence: that I could love two people at once. To be fair, this was an ideal I truly held for a number of years...but I couldn't live up to it in real, messy life. All About Me had failed once again, rather spectacularly this time.

I still feel terrible about what I did to Cathy. I've tried to track her down, not with any intention of contacting her, but just to assure myself she's still alive. That may sound melodramatic, but she attempted suicide at least once while I knew her and I'm terribly afraid she's succeeded since. I don't know, and I doubt I ever will. But it remains my life's only real regret. Hurting people is not what I am about.

Neither is All About Me. I can date at least the buddings of my maturity to the exact moment I realized my life was complete as it was, and needed nothing or no one else to complete it. I learned not to look for contentment, but simply to feel it anyway. And within a week of my writing that the first time, I met the woman I was to marry. She doesn't complete my life and I don't complete hers: we are two people who have joyfully consented to share life's journey together. We're going to hit the thirteenth anniversary of our first meeting in a little less than two weeks, and I'm still amazed that before I met Eva I didn't even know what love really was. I'd thought marriage was a trap. Ha. Marriage is the security that gives you your freedom.

May I respectfully suggest, if you're going to have a midlife crisis, it's much better to get it out of the way early, while your life--let's face it--still doesn't mean much and anyone you hurt is likely more resilient. One hopes. That isn't to excuse hurting anyone, of course--when you hurt someone, you're always hurting yourself--but I think it's better to be immature at a young age...

License to Not Drive

2012-01-22T15:04:00.000-05:00

I don't drive.

I've mentioned this oh-so-little, but oh-so-defining factoid about myself several times over the years, and occasionally I've alluded to the phobia I have that is the reason I don't drive. An e-friend coined 'euqunophobia' to describe it, from the Greek root for 'to pilot' as in a chariot. Prior to his making that word up out of thin air, there was no word in the English language to denote fear of driving. That ought to tell you something, since there's a one-word definition for fear of practically everything else. Apparently nobody fears driving.

Meet Nobody: me.

Outside the driver's seat of a vehicle and asked to consider the act of driving rationally, I'll tell you that yes, I certainly could drive a car. For a while. I might even get through an entire day, week, or hell, month, without hitting something and dying, probably taking others with me. But eventually my attention would waver at a critical second and that'd be that. Splat. This is a given, an absolute certainty, and I base that projection on my inability to pay attention to everything at once.

I look at all you drivers and wonder, honestly wonder how you do it. How do you shut up the little niggling voice in your brain that works out how fast you're going, how fast the vehicle coming towards you is going, and what would happen if that driver fumbled his smartphone and inadvertently jerked the wheel right into your path. What X-ray vision technique do you use to determine that there is not in fact a child about to run out into traffic from between those two parked cars?

Back in Driver's Ed.--which I did take, believe it or not--I found the only driving I was at all comfortable with was freeway driving. People look at me oddly when I confess that, since if anything is going to scare a veteran driver, it's usually the 401. Especially through Toronto, which I confess I have never attempted:

This is the busiest highway in the world. It's not at this level where I live now, or an hour west of here where I lived when I drove on it over twenty years ago. I once talked to a Californian whose knuckles went white travelling the above stretch as a passenger. "Brian", I said, "you're from California. You've been through L.A. Surely this can't be that much different."
"But it is," he said. "The trucks...on this road there are almost more trucks than cars. You don't see that in L.A. at all. It's scary to be between two tractor-trailers that might squash you like a bug."

Welcome to my imagination, I thought.

But the truth is, trucks or cars, the traffic doesn't bother me overmuch on the highway. I can convince myself it's semi-predictable; at the very least, we're all going in the same direction and I don't have to waste too much mental energy worrying about things like this.

In the city, it's another story. It's chaos. Every intersection could well be hiding a red-light runner about to T-bone me. Cars are coming towards me: any one or all of them might be driven by people with an eye and a half on a goddamn screen instead of the road, where I am. I don't know how you drivers do it...I really don't. I'd crack in short order.

If you're wondering how I can cycle with this attitude, it's easy. Bikes move considerably slower and there's usually an escape route available for any developing trouble, even if it's turning your front wheel into the curb and ditching (which I have done, more than once). And most of the streets I cycle on are not primary arteries. Traffic is minimal. Somtimes I have an entire lane to myself. Bike lanes are made of awesome.

But I have been hit as a cyclist and also as a pedestrian. That last story hasn't been detailed in this blog, so here it is: it happened early one winter's morning as I was leaving my job at King and University 7-Eleven en route to my then-girlfriend's place, my de facto home that year, a couple of blocks away. I crossed King Street and turned to cross University: took a few steps out into the intersection when a car turned right directly into me and threw me about ten feet. It was a good thing that car was barely moving and also that I was bundled up against the chill. I was barely winded. A young woman got out of the car, said "oh my God" about thirty times, repeatedly asked me if I was okay, and then... and then she offered to drive me home. Like I was going to get into a car that had just hit me. I mean, seriously.

As I said, it would only be a matter of time before I'd hit or be hit driving a car. Probably not a long time, either. I equate driving with a video game; in all the video games I've tried, I've never managed to go longer than a few minutes without crashing. The difference is, in real life you don't get five seconds off the clock and a brand new car.

It turns out I'm not alone in my non-driving state, although there aren't many males my age who don't drive, and many of the females I know who don't drive do have their driver's licenses. We non-drivers tend to keep pretty quiet about it. I can't speak for others, but for me there's a sense of shame. Driving is a basic human skill, or so it seems. Teenagers can't wait to do it. Everyone seems to take having and driving a car for granted.

And it really places limits on your life. There are many jobs I could do, and very well, but for the lack of a license. It's critically important that I live on a bus route; even better if I'm within walking distance of work, as I now am. I'm supremely lucky to be married to a woman who does not mind doing all the driving. I could get groceries from work to hom without her, but it would not be easy and I'd probably have to shop day by day, which would drive up costs dramatically.

The rationalizations I have used to assuage my shame at failing this most simple test of civilized behaviour have gradually, over many years, become statements I take pride in. I'm not polluting the environment. Whether walking or cycling, I'm out in the fresh air getting exercise. I've saving a metric buttload of money. And let's face it, even if I could drive, I'd choose to walk or cycle most of the time anyway. Walking is pleasant, provided you're dressed for the weather. I was reflecting on this yesterday as I was assaulted with a -20 windchill, in other words, a normal January day for this area. The air was a beer commercial: cold, clean, and crisp. Somebody down the way had a fire going. Ah. Memories of campfires past flitted through my mind. The neighbourhood was still mostly asleep, and I could easily imagine myself to be all alone. Just me and my music and an easy kilometer's walk.

Tomorrow it will rain...but a little water never hurt anybody. The walk gives me a chance to plan my day going in and decompress from it coming home, all without having to worry about tons of steel crunching, glass breaking, blood spraying... You know what? This not driving isn't so bad.

You know who I hate?

2012-01-20T19:16:00.001-05:00

Nobody.

I mean that. There's not a soul on this planet I hate. Not even the really evil ones. Probably because I don't really believe in evil.

I mean that, too: I don't believe in evil. Not as a force, certainly not with a "d" put in front of it to personalize it.

Notwithstanding the whole question of God, which I really don't want to get into insofar as I only have the one lifetime to write, I have a few fundamental problems with a devil-figure. First, a devil is a nice handy device for the abdication of personal responsibility: in other words, "the devil made me do it." Granted, a person of any real faith is unlikely to blame His Infernal Majesty for her every least peccadillo, but still, the temptation, you might say, is there. That is the devil's function, after all, at least if you're alive. The living he tempts; the dead he torments. Eternally.

And here I find I must bring God into the picture anyway. I've railed before against the Christian concept of a God Who judges. Any God that claims to love unconditionally, and yet places conditions on Its love, is not a God but a deeply unfunny joke, and should be treated as such. And if the violation of the conditions placed on Its "unconditional" love results in your being handed over for eternal torment--well, then there is both evil and a devil after all...and that God is both.

Judgment is not a divine trait, but a profoundly human one. Most of us are incapable of truly unconditional love: we invent conditions for our beloved to meet, and then are sad and angry when those conditions go unmet. Those of you who feel you do not do this, imagine how you would react if your life partner were to betray you in some way. That your partner has not--would not, you're certain--does not eliminate the condition you've placed on your love. The most common condition, of course, is simple: if you want me to continue loving you, you may not love another.

This is not an indictment. We're all trying to live the best we can, and most of us have convinced ourselves that there must needs be certain requirements, certain boundaries, else we'll go mad. It certainly seems like a reasonable assumption to make. And yet it's right there in the Christ story as an example: here's a guy who was betrayed, tortured and killed...and who refused--out loud, no less--to blame his betrayers, torturers and killers. That's unconditional, I'd say.

There are those who believe that Yeshua bar Yosef of Nazareth never actually existed. Don't count me among their number. I would suggest, however, that parts of his story have been mythologized, and almost all of his story is widely misunderstood. That latter is easy to prove given how people today on completely opposite sides of any issue believe Jesus would side with them. Then again, perhaps that only illustrates the disturbing tendency we have to turn "What Would Jesus Do?" into "What Would I Do If I Were Jesus?"

At any rate, I do not and can not accept a God that allows a devil to exist.

As for evil? I'd suggest that's a judgement, and not one that tends to help matters overmuch.

Evil a judgement? Are you insane? Are you seriously suggesting there's something wrong with ME for calling a child rapist evil?

No, I'm not. But child rapists make a case for the raping of children all the time. That's because they're mentally ill. In some cases they're also physically and culturally ill...the benighted tribesmen in Uganda have been told over and over again that having sex with a virgin will cure their AIDS. There aren't many virgins left, and there is a whole lot of AIDS to cure. Ergo, child-rape.

I'd humbly suggest that everything we call 'evil' is perpetrated by someone who is not a monster, not a villain, but simply sick. That sickness may be a passing state--we've all knowingly done something bad, almost always out of a misguided, narrow, self-centered perspective--or it may be something akin to one's natural state. In the latter case, the 'evil' is the result of one of two things: either a culturally reinforced illness (example: the Taliban's treatment of women)...or an actual mental defect called sociopathy.

The latter case is, so far as I know, incurable as of yet, and so it's necessary to separate the sociopaths and psychopaths from the rest of us, for our (and their) safety. The former, much more common case...well, what do you do with someone who is sick? Do you punish them for being sick? That seems silly to me. You heal them, as best you can. How do you heal "evil"? Education is helpful. A giant dose of empathy, repeated as necessary, will go a long, long way. The Bible puts it more simply: Love thine enemies.

Why would you want to love your enemies? Enlightened self-interest, That is to say, the surest way to perpetuate "evil" is to treat every "evildoer" you meet like pond scum....

Imagine you are a U.S. Marine.

2012-01-12T18:16:00.002-05:00

Item: U.S. Marines appearing to urinate on Taliban corpses."

This is "inhumane", It's "entirely inappropriate for members of the U.S. military". It's "deplorable", "shocking", and "an indignity against the Afghan people."

Have we forgotten these are two forces at war?

Let me explain something here. If you are part of a fighting force, and you have been trained for years to hate "the enemy" enough to kill him on sight--especially since if you don't, he's apt to kill you first--a wee-wee little thing like pissing on his corpse doesn't really amount to such of a much. Not after you've, you know, killed the guy. Do you really believe you can, ahem, piss him off any further by pissing on him? Tell you what, folks: when I go, everybody feel free to pee on me. Somehow I don't think I'll care. Or notice, for that matter. I'm dead.

Are you, a soldier trained to hate and kill, supposed to stop hating as if by magic after you've killed? I think urinating on a corpse is a perfectly legitimate way to express hatred and disdain. Which is what we're supposed to feel, right? These aren't human beings, they're Taliban animals.

Newsflash: you're an animal. I'm an animal. Human beings are animals. Why are we surprised that human beings act like animals?

The sad thing is that this hatred cuts both ways. I've little doubt a few Marines have been posthumously pissed on. Or maybe the Taliban play games with heads. That's a pretty common thing, throughout history, playing games with heads.

The Taliban aren't born evil: they're made that way through careful cultivation. They believe every bit as strongly in their way of life as we do in ours, and that's a point I think often gets lost. Perhaps they believe more strongly, in fact: they seem to have little compunction about dying for their cause. Does that make them better human beings than us? I'd argue not. If I'm going to judge a human being--something I try very hard not to do, not knowing the lifetime that led to the action I'm judging--I'd suggest the only sane criterion to use is: how does this human being treat other beings? The Taliban do not treat their young, or particularly their women, with anything resembling respect. But this too is part of an engrained culture that goes back centuries.

I sometimes wonder if the Marines who kill Taliban--and apparently desecrate their corpses--ever imagine what their lives would be like if they were born in Afghanistan instead of America. It's a variant of the "good little Nazi" thought experiment I've conducted with people for many years. I ask people to imagine themselves as young adults in Hitler's Germany. What would they do? Most people say without hesitation that they'd be good, moral, upstanding young adults and would seek to thwart Hitler by various means. I've had several people tell me they'd do anything in their power to kill the man.
With all due respect: I doubt it.
Oh, sure, there were a fair number of people living in Hitler's Germany who resisted him by various means. And you, fine, upstanding adult that you are, no doubt imagine you'd be one of them. But those resistors were vastly outnumbered by people who believed in the essential justness of the Final Solution, and sought to advance it in any way they could. Don't forget: Hitler was a persuader, in an environment where people were very eager to be persuaded.
And those aggressive people, in turn, were vastly outnumbered by ho-hum types just trying to live their lives. It's amazing what you can live cheek-by-jowl with if all you're interested in is keeping your head down and staying out of trouble. Statistically, I think it more likely that people would either Sig Heil all over the place--or just ignore it and work their office job, come home and play with the kids, and sleep easy at night.

What's worse? I have no answer for that. I do believe, however, that killing someone, for whatever reason, is considerably worse than urinating on their corpse.

Imagine you are a U.S. Marine. You've just shot a few towelheads before they could shoot you. You're feeling full of, again pardon me, piss and vinegar: in the prime of your life. All's right with your world: enemy vanquished, threat eliminated. And you did it. Now tell me again how it would never even cross your mind to piss on that corpse.

U.S. Politicomedy, Part I: Spreading Santorum

2012-01-11T18:51:00.000-05:00

As much as I'd like to resist writing about American politics...I can't. I just can't. Not this year. I'm going to throw up my hands right now and warn you, Dear Reader, that there are going to be several upcoming posts on this topic. If American politics isn't your bag, feel free to tune out. I gotta tell you, though, you're missing a comedy that betters anything seen on television in recent years.

Just look at these Republican candidates vying to unseat Obama. We have a man who, as a Mormon, presumably believes at least some (and probably more than half) of this. We have another man who has, to put it mildly, a wee little Google problem -- which, contrary to his heated denials, is entirely of his own making. And then we have Ron Paul, the darling of the youth set, the man the lamestream media chooses to ignore...possibly because he's a raving racist. Or maybe because even the best of his ideas (and he does have some good ones) are fundamentally at odds with the view America has of itself.
And that's not even mentioning the failed Republican candidates, the ones who have dropped out. Believe me, to fail in this field takes talent.

Where to start, where to start. Eenie, meeny, miney, Santorum.

I'll give Rick Santorum credit: he's consistent. He's consistently against abortion, he's consistently against climate change, and he's viciously against homosexuals. He is on record as equating male homosexual sex as "man on dog" and he believes children are better off with a father in prison than they are with lesbian parents. He considers homosexuality to be a serious moral problem. (At times, he has suggested he has no problem with homosexuality, only with homosexual acts--a distinction I, and I suspect most gay people, fail to grasp.)
He also does not believe that people have a right to privacy, even within marriage, despite the Supreme Court's having enshrined this right in 1965. It's probably redundant to note that the case cited in the above link concerned the right to use contraceptives. Santorum has said that contraception is "a license to do things in the sexual realm that are counter to how things are supposed to be." I wonder when he's going to take his principled stand to its logical conclusion: STAMP OUT MENSTRUATION! END THE SLAUGHTER OF TRILLIONS! Or maybe women who are unfortunate enough to have miscarriages should be imprisoned. What say you, Rick?

Dan Savage is--well, I can't exactly call him my hero, but he's certainly a man I respect a great deal and tend to agree with. His "It Gets Better" campaign has spread far and wide, has undoubtedly saved lives, and has given the gift of hope to countless people--not just gay people--who have been bullied. In the wake of a 2003 interview in which Santorum equated consensual homosexual sex with child-rape and bestiality,Savage mobilized his readership--which numbers in the millions--to determine an appropriate definition for "santorum". The winning entry is now forever linked with Santorum's name in every Google search. Santorum the candidate considers santorum the neologism to be disgusting. And it is. But it's not as disgusting as the former Senator's stance on homosexuals. Not even close.
(Dan has since redefined "rick": "to remove with one's tongue", taking the r from 'remove' and the ick' from 'lick'. This, he says, makes "rick santorum" the most disgusting two-word sentence in the English language..."after 'vote Republican'".)

Ick indeed.

You know, if Santorum hadn't been so repeatedly, passionately hateful--and used several very public platforms to spread his hatred--he wouldn't have this Google problem. But hey! I'm not against hatred...only against hateful acts.

Rick Santorum placed second in Iowa and third in New Hampshire. He could conceivably win South Carolin and a few other states, Will he be able to grasp that brass nomination ring? Not a chance in hell. It's coated in santorum.

Ici on parle...

2012-01-08T11:34:00.001-05:00

There's a certain sense of--call it schadenfreude, I suppose--that this lifelong Maple Leafs fan gets when observing the mess in Montreal.

Yes, this from the man who believes schadenfreude--joy at another's pain--vies with jealousy (pain at another's joy) to be the most self-destructive emotion possible. Guilty as charged...all part of being a sports fan, I guess.

That's the downside of fandom. A sports fan--the word is, of course, short for 'fanatic' (which in turn comes from the Latin for 'insanely but divinely inspired')--feels a totally irrational depression when his team loses, a just as irrational joy when her team wins, and a completely indefensible hatred for the opposition. There's something primitive and tribal about being a fan, and I don't mean primitive as in rustic. I mean primitive as in barbaric.

Letting my inner barbarian loose for three hours at a time can be tremendously satisfying. I try to temper him by widening my scope: yes, I am a Leafs fan, but I can recognize and appreciate good hockey no matter who plays it. (Though I hate to admit when a Philadelphia Flyer does anything laudable at all.) I try very hard not to view 'my' team through blue and white glasses, and to maintain something of an even keel through thick and thin.

But Eva can attest that I fail at that last with regularity: I'll snap the TV off in disgust when the Leafs are playing like crap, only to snap it back on in five or ten minutes. When the Red Wings scored last night and a contingent of their fans roared, I let loose with a volley of expletives--"get the eff out of our building" was the mildest of them. Somewhere inside there's my normal, mild-mannered self observing this behaviour with alarm. Fans of any team are welcome in any building, he says, reasonably. Shut up, says Mr. Barbarian. The Air Canada Center is the most expensive place in the NHL to watch a game and it should bloody well be reserved for Leaf fans. Rich Red Wing fans can either go to whatever their building is called these days...or they can blow me.
(Of course, at least half of the Air Canada Center is actually reserved for suited types who are neck-deep in their cellphones to the point they don't even notice, or care, that there's a hockey game going on. Those people piss off the barbarian and the meek man both.)

What's unfolding in Montreal is interesting and a little disquieting,

For non-hockey fans, the Canadiens--called les Habitants, or Habs for short--are the creme de la creme, historically, of the NHL. They've won almost twice as many Stanley Cups as the next-best team (which just happens to be the Toronto Maple Leafs). Their fans are beyond rabid: hockey in Quebec is a sacrament. Many of the Habs fans I know love to lord it over fans of other teams (probably justified says mild-mannered me; buncha snoots oughta have their knocks blocked off says the barbarian).

They've fallen on hard times--for them, at least. Next year will mark their twentieth year without a Cup win (and we won't mention here that the Leafs haven't won since 1967). That said, they've had considerably more playoff success than many other teams over their drought.

After something of a surprise playoff appearance for the Habs last season, they were expected to show, at a minimum, the same compete level this year. Hasn't happened. The Canadiens, as of this writing, rank 24th in a 30 team league, eight spots out of the playoffs and nine slots behind the Maple Leafs (ha-ha). Like many teams not living up to expectations, they've fired their coach, respected hockey journeyman Jacques Martin. He was replaced by Randy Cunneyworth, formerly an assistant coach of the Atlanta Thrashers.

Randy Cunneyworth is an anglophone. This is the culture he finds himself in.

There was a protest last night at the Habs-Lightning tilt (won, incidentally, by Montreal). There were several grievances aired besides the fact that the head coach of les Glorieux does not parle la belle langue. Among them: there's too much English music played at the Bell Centre (sorry: la centre Bell); the announcements are made in both languages (quelle horreur!), and the team has too few francophone players.

It should be noted here that the last unilingual anglophone coach of the Habs won a Cup with them in 1970-71...but was fired nonetheless because he couldn't speak French. The Habs have won sixteen of their 24 Cups guided by anglophone coaches. It seems patently obvious here that this controversy isn't about winning.

I feel bad for Cunneyworth. This is a team, remember, that has fired a head coach for not speaking French, even though the team won a championship. They've come right out and named Cunneyworth the "interim" coach...and his promises to learn French are clearly not good enough. Learn French? Les pures laines don't LEARN French, they are French, and to hell with you English types! I fart in your general direction! Your mother was a hamster and your father smelt of elderberries!

This is a reminder that people can be fanatical about things much more serious than sports teams. And that fanatics, having only a single track for their mind to run on, are wearisome by definition. Also, on occasion, dangerous. Quebec rejected the Bloc Quebecois last election and found themselves high and dry as the Harper majority took hold. I predicted then that nothing good would come of that, and I'll hold myself to that prediction. I think nationalism is starting to stir again in Quebec. For the sake of my country, I hope I am wrong.

A Ken By Any Other Name...

2012-01-06T12:37:00.000-05:00

We human beings sure do go by a few names through our lifespan, don't we?

Take me. I was born Boy Baby B. My twin, Monty, died two days later, the two of us having decided to make quite the early appearance. Christened Kenneth Cecil Joseph Breadner, I toddled through my toddlerhood looking very much like a Kenneth. Or a Winston. Don't all babies resemble Winston Churchill?

My first nickname, "Macaw", is still with me today. My father--whose name is also Kenneth Breadner, and let me tell you the confusion that can cause--bestowed "Macaw" on me at two years of age because, I'm told, "all I ever did was squawk and shit." Despite the ignoble derivation, I have no problem whatsoever being called Macaw...to the point where Eva is Lady Macaw.

I was Kenny throughout my childhood. This wasn't much of an issue with my peers--the best they could do to taunt me was to chant "Kenny-penny", which didn't bother me overmuch. It was, as I say, an issue when I was with my dad, because half the world would call him Kenny and me Ken, the other half would call him Ken and me Kenny, and both of us would respond to either. (Dad has the surface dignity of a Ken and at times even a Kenneth, but his heart is forever and ever practical-joker Kenny.)

It could get confusing. My aunt Dawna hit upon calling us Big Kenny and Little Kenny...and slowly, over time, that soured "Kenny" for me. I read somewhere that the -y suffix to a name denoted "little" as it was. Calling me "little Kenny" made me feel doubly small. Of course, by grade four I'd developed a whole new set of nicknames that made "Kenny", little or otherwise, seem positively benign. These dark sobriquets included "spazz", "geek", "nerd", "quad"--short for quadriplegic, I guess--and a host of others that did very little for my self-image or self-esteem.
Faggot was one of those. Over the years I've had even close relatives question my sexuality in hushed tones I wasn't meant to hear. Myself, I've never had to question it too much. I've had a couple of gay experiences--like a lot of straight guys--but I have never once looked at a man and thought wow, I gotta have that.
Of course, kids on the playground don't have such a narrow definition of faggot. Anything that's different will get you branded a faggot, and that goes double if the difference is stereotypically feminine in any way. I hated violence with a passion, which only gave a certain breed of person a passionate desire to inflict violence upon me. Most of that went unreported to my parents and especially my teachers. I laugh ruefully whenever I hear adults counselling kids to either stand up to their bullies or turn them in. Most of the put-upon kids in the world have neither the physical ability nor the self-confidence to "stand up" to a grasshopper, and as for reporting the bullying? Please. Back then, that was a good way to make it worse. And today, all it does is get the bully suspended or expelled from school--which is a reward, not a punishment. (How many bullies do you know who enjoy school?)
Besides, expulsion frees up Mr. Bully to lie in wait for you. If you're stupid enough to rat on the guy, you get what you deserve.

Somewhere, beneath layers and layers of calluses I've painstakingly assembled, all those derogatory nicknames still resonate and always will. Including faggot, incidentally. Being repeatedly called any number of homophobic slurs can give someone all the makings of a gay activist, without the gayness. Several people close to me are gay, and that's the biggest reason I make a point of writing about gay rights from time to time...but there's also the remembrance of being called a gaylord queerboy cocksucking ass-bandit, and how that hurt, and how it was meant to hurt. It'd be nice to live in a world where none of those words had any intrinsic hurtfulness attached to them, a world where being gay was no more remarkable than, say, having red hair. We're a long, long way from such a world.

Anyway...

By high school I insisted everyone who wasn't a relative call me Ken. Most complied, although a few smartasses called me Kenneth instead...which I would counter by adding an '-eth' to their names, until they got the point. Kenny? "Nobody calls me Kenny, so you must be nobody." That point usually took longer to sink in, for some reason.

I tried, mightily. to suppress that first middle name. Cecil is not a common name nowadays, and as I said already, anything uncommon is ammunition, nothing more or less. It didn't help much to know the name ultimately derives from the Latin for 'blind'. I'm not blind, but I can certainly act that way. I'm proud of Cecil now, of course. My grandfather wore that name with distinction and there's no reason I can't too.

Pop culture yields any number of silly name-fads. For years after A Fish Called Wanda came out, I was "K-k-k-ken". Don't get me started on South Park. I've often wondered if the Johns of the world go through similar things. In the late fifties, was every John a "Johnny B. Goode"? Do kids actually equate your name with a toilet?

My latest nickname took hold back at Price Chopper, and was, in hindsight, inevitable. It started as "Kenny G." and a friend named Craig morphed it into "G-Baby". At first I hated it. Baby? That's worse than little Kenny! I'm freakin' forty in February, why would I want the word 'baby' near my name? But as the nickname spread like a fungus, I grew to tolerate it, even appreciate it. Mostly because it was the first nickname I'd sprouted since 'Macaw' in which I sensed not even the barest hint of malice or condescension. I started calling Craig "C-note" back. All in good fun.

One day the receiver in my new store called me "Kenny G." I groaned out loud, but inside was pretty pleased. It means I'm accepted. It's nice to have a nickname that means I'm accepted. Even if that nickname is "G-Baby".

Giving Unions Their Dues

2012-01-03T18:32:00.000-05:00

Look back to the early days of the Breadbin, back when dinosaurs walked the earth and we were all eight years younger, and you'll see its baker has changed his mind about a few things.

I'm still recognizably the same person in many ways. Some of my opinions have only hardened as the years have passed, as if in cement. For instance, my attitude re: love and beauty hasn't changed and I doubt it ever will.

My opinion about humanity (I love individual people, but as they coalesce into groups they tend to lose likability) also remains the same. And that monkey's still on my back.

But I've done a slow one-eighty on many matters political over the years. I once was a fairly faithful Conservative supporter; I voted for Jack in the last election and have contemplated becoming a card-carrying NDP member.
This is supposedly bass-ackwards. There's a famous quote, often misattributed to Winston Churchill (as many famous quotes are), to the effect that "if you're not a liberal at 20, you have no heart; if you're not a conservative at 40, you have no brain." I reject that utterly. Liberals have brains and conservatives have hearts. Likewise, liberals can be coldhearted and conservatives can be stupid.

I have decided, by slow degrees over many years, that one of the ways conservatives are stupid is their anti-union stance.

I used to be dead-set against unions. The following anecdotes might give you some idea of why.

My old girlfriend moved to Toronto after she graduated. She was having a hard time making ends meet: we were just coming out of recession and jobs were hard to come by. She called me one night ecstatic that she had landed a job as a cashier at a grocery store. Starting wage was $18 an hour. This was 1994, and I don't make that much now.
Three nights later I got another call. This time Cathy was in tears. Seems she had gone in for her first shift and checked the schedule only to find it was also her only shift that week. Three hours. She asked how she could get more hours and people laughed at her. It turned out that hours were granted by seniority, and any open shift was first offered to the highest person in the hierarchy. If she refused, it was offered at each successive rung down the ladder. The odds of it getting to Cathy at the very bottom of that ladder were essentially nil. Cathy maintained that nobody told her of this policy, and that she had been 'guaranteed' twenty hours a week.
Now, she may have misheard. But I doubt it. People as poor as she was then have an obsessive need to check the figures for any money coming in, and she'd done the math seven ways to Sunday. She told me about it, too, on that first call. I distinctly remember feeling rather envious; I was making ten bucks an hour at the time, doing similar work--except I worked straight nights at Drunk Central Station, a.k.a. 7-11 at University and King.

Then there's what happened to Eva. She ran West Coast operations for a market research company. One year while Eva was on vacation, a malcontent decided to get the place unionized. Nobody said a word to her upon her return; two days later, she looked at the blackboard in her call center and noticed something was wrong. (She has an uncanny ability to do this: to this day, she can look at a screen of code at a glance and spot an error.) The union papers--which by law had to be made public--were mostly hidden beneath a sheaf of other paperwork. Her two best workers quit in protest. ƒƒIt was a good thing her company was in the process of scouting new locations to move that office--and could prove it. Otherwise they would have been forced to remain open, at substantially increased costs.

Dirty, underhanded tricks. I have a friend who briefly ran a unionized store in Brampton, Ontario. He stepped down and relocated of his own accord when he found that his staff was more interested in finding the most trivial things they could to grieve. He spent most of his time trying to placate a union that had no interest in being placated--which left not enough time for the little things, like trying to manage the $%^*ing store.

So, yeah, my attitudes about unions were less than charitable. I've delivered all the talking points in stentorian tones: you knew what the job was when you took it; jobs in the real world have contracts, too, but out here they stipulate your responsibilities instead of dwelling on your rights; striking workers should be fired because there are thousands who would do that work at that pay; if your job pays you fifteen bucks an hour, maybe that's because that's all your skill set is worth.

But then gradually, over time, I began to notice things. Things like how real wages adjusted for inflation have been stagnant for over thirty years, and are actually starting to fall for some. Things like how the richest among us, as I write this on January the third, have already made more than the average worker will this year. And, of course, how jobs are increasingly being sold to the lowest bidder, be that bidder in India or Indonesia, while the parent company rakes in billions in profits. Dirty, underhanded tricks, in other words.

Whenever I've brought this sort of thing up, people have accused me of being Robin Hood. Supposedly I'm out to impoverish the rich and make it so a convenience store clerk and a doctor get equal salaries.

Whatever. THIS is why I think unions still have a vital place.
Here's an Electro-Motive Diesel plant in London, Ontario. EMD is a subsidiary of Caterpillar, a company that had record-setting profits for 2011 and whose CEO pocketed a cool $10.4 million. (The previous CEO received $22.5 million upon his retirement.)
So what does Caterpillar do? They demand the EMD skilled labourers take a more than 50% cut in pay and benefits. Seems fair, doesn't it? *snicker*
There's obviously more to this story: Caterpillar has every intention of shutting this plant down and relocating to the United States, where at least one Republican candidate hit upon the bright idea of solving unemployment by abolishing the minimum wage.
If Caterpillar was struggling financially, I'd at least understand this a little better. But their profit quadrupled last quarter and the chief executive foresees a bright 2012. Maybe in Muncie, Indiana. Certainly not in London, Ontario.

Sadly, I see this scenario being repeated all over the place...maybe not to this degree, but the new motto everywhere is "do more with less". Actually, it's not a new motto: what with automation, one employee can now do what used to be the work of three. Or five. Or ten. Yet that one employee is still paid the same--or less, when inflation is factored in. Seems fair, doesn't it? *snicker*

At some point something's gotta give.

Much as I hate it, this economy is based on consumption. If you want to stimulate it, the best and perhaps only way to do it is to raise wages, so that people can afford to buy things. Because let's face it: if you put money in an average worker's pocket, she'll turn around and spend it. If you put money in a corporation's pocket...
Does that mean that the minimum wage should be fifty bucks an hour? Of course not. It would be helpful, though, if it didn't yield an income below the poverty line. Because until we get around to the sensible Scandinavian subsidization of higher education, there's no reasonable alternative to minimum wage employment for many.
And wages--all of them, not just the minimum--should be legally tied to inflation. I would also enact a law prohibiting profitable companies from closing up shop just so they can double profits that just quadrupled. Enough is bloody well enough. People are not chess pieces, and people's livelihoods are not a game.

Understand: I'm not suggesting every place, or even most places, should go out and get themselves unionized. I think a union is, at its best, a layer of tape. When your boss says 'C'mon, everybody, we're going to get on that big slide over there and race to the bottom!", you can firmly affix that tape to your ass and say "not so fast". If you don't see a slide on your workplace's horizon, you don't necessarily need that tape. But if you're already in the playground...

I don't do resolutions...

2012-01-01T19:23:00.001-05:00

...for several reasons. Firstly, I distrust the very word. If you're going to call it a re-solution, that implies the original "solution"...wasn't.
Secondly, there is nothing implicit in January the first that makes either a solution or a resolution any more likely to stick. Any day can be a new beginning; any moment can.
Thirdly, there's nothing in my life right now that requires immediate change...or if there is, I'm not willing to change it. Because, let's face it, discipline and sacrifice are not among my strong suits. I'd rather live happily, even if it means I die a little younger; the prospect of an old age subsisting on single servings of tofu and Brussels sprouts does not appeal. I've tried several times now to live according to the maxim that food is fuel and is not supposed to taste good...and if that's life, I'd rather be dead. Give me a dingle when they invent healthy food that tastes like food.
Likewise with exercise. Time and time again I've read and heard that exercise, if you do it long enough, becomes fun. I'm here to insist that this is not the case. Exercise, if you do it long enough, becomes first tiring and then debilitating.

What are some other popular resolutions? The U.S. government has a sitelisting ten of the most popular. Let's see. "Drink less alcohol"...not applicable. "Get a better education/job"--I operate on the 'good enough' paradigm. It's not for everybody and it doesn't make me any better (or worse) a person than you. But the way I feel, if my job pays the bills and I like the people I work for and with, that's all I can ask for. (The education goes without saying: I learn many new things every day.)

"Manage debt"--we're working at it. "Manage stress"--we're working at that, too. "Reduce/Reuse/Recycle"--I could, admittedly, be more diligent about this. I'm pretty good with the blue box, although I don't put all the plastic I could in it, and the green bin for composting is a pain in the ass. But I guess I could use this one, in a pinch.

"Take a Trip"...yeah, sure. when we can afford it. "Volunteer"--by all means. But again, why make that decision on the first of January? It just seems so...arbitrary. Not like something you want to do: more like something you must. That robs the act--any act--of its meaning, as far as I'm concerned.

But it just so happens that there is something I haven't been doing near enough of lately. And in not doing it, I'm letting people down...never a good feeling, that.

Blogging.

Nobody seems to be blogging much anymore. Everybody's largely abandoned it for the Twitterverse, the same way people nowadays prefer to send a text rather than an email. The few times I've had a thought pithy enough to be contained in a single tweet, I've gone ahead and tweeted it...after first putting it in my Facebook status and, like as not, expanding on it in a blog. I find Twitter needlessly constricting, and when it isn't constricting, it's redundant.

But I haven't blogged much. This isn't for a lack of material and seldom for a lack of time. It's laziness, pure and simple. Laziness I can counter. So I will.

I resolve to blog more often this year.

I'm off to a good start already...two posts today!

Here we are

2012-01-01T11:45:00.002-05:00

...uh, where's here, exactly?

Doubtless there are more than a few people nursing headaches this morning, asking themselves this very question and wishing that they could escape back into the nothingness of sleep whence they came. Not me. Not us.

I haven't seen the New Year in for many years. I hate to be whatever the New Year's equivalent of a pre-spirit Ebenezer Scrooge might be, but I'll bah-humbug the New Year every year until I'm dead. I've earned that right over many a hogwild Hogmanay, none worse than the first.

Really, people. Do you have to get drunk because tomorrow you write the date with a slightly different set of pencil-strokes? Really?

Never mind, it's another of the many ways I'm not human, and that's okay. I slept in until six this morning, having gone to bed soon after the Leafs lost another to close out the year. I haven't seen a new year in for many years. I have faith it will be there in the morning, and so far my faith has been justified.

After so many years of mayhem--they all blur into each other--I've decided that yes, there is something to celebrate on New Year's Eve. That we made it through another year. That I don't have to dodge nachos and cheese being hurled at my head. That it's unlikely anybody's going to barf in front of me this year.

Eva and I had a lovely day yesterday. We haven't done a twofer at the movies for quite a while. We saw David Fincher's THE GIRL WITH THE DRAGON TATTOO and Bird's MISSION IMPOSSIBLE: GHOST PROTOCOL, Both were very well done, but neither completely lived up to my expectations.

GIRL was, in many ways, superior to the Swedish production. You'd expect it to be, given that it had what, ten times the budget. But I found Mara's Salander too sociable, not silent enough. Rapace, as far as I'm concerned, nailed Larsson's creation.

And I confess, I have trouble shutting off my brain whenever there's an action sequence. Some movies fall into Rambo Syndrome, i.e. let's shoot roughly 3.6 million bullets at the hero and if we're feeling particularly realistic that day, one of them might graze his buffed shoulder and add character. Some movies suffer from that odd idiosyncrasy of bad guys having to explain themselves, frittering away countless opportunities to blow away the hero and prevail. Just once I'd like to see a smart villain in a Hollywood production.

And then there are the car chase scenes, the ones where traffic is either magically nonexistent or at least compliant enough to get out of the way. GIRL has a short chase scene, motorcycle chasing car. Motorbike wins, in a most unconvincing fashion. The car driving psycho need only slam on his brakes and turn the chaser into people pate...but he doesn't. Sigh.

MISSION IMPOSSIBLE is chock-full of gross improbabilities--but if I mention even one of them I'll spoil something. Give that movie its due; it has some of the most eye-dropping stunts I've ever seen and a pace that almost never lets up. As popcorn movies go, seeing this one is a no-brainer.

Back in '91-92 I saw pretty much everything Hollywood put out. I couldn't do that today even if I wanted to, because I'm not made of money. I shudder to think how families can afford it...a night out for you and your wife and two kids could easily run you a hundred bucks or more.

Once the movies let out, we headed home and commenced to stuffing ourselves with all manner of junk food. This is the one night of the year where we say the waist is a terrible thing to mind and just go nuts. Sausage rolls. Mozzarella sticks. Oriental hors d'oeuvres (which in our happy home is pronounced "hoovers doovers" and om-nom-nommed with authority). Chips and dip and crackers and cheese and a bucket of pop and all this ensures the first movement of the new year will register on the Richter scale, but who cares.

And now it's 2012. There's a sharp cold front about to hit us in five or six hours, with snowsquall warnings posted for Monday. Winter has come, riding in on the wind like a hoary old harridan, and we're all here.

May your year be what you make it.

The Wider World, 2011-2012

2011-12-30T19:10:00.004-05:00

Looking out on the globe from the cocoon that is Canada, 2011 was a tumultuous, tempestuous and possibly pivotal year. Depending on your point of view, the Occupy movement that took hold in late summer marked either a great and powerful upsurge of the long trodden-upon, or else a colossal public nuisance-slash-waste of time. Methinks the monied class considers those one and the same: 2012 may be the year in which they learn the difference.

But I wouldn't put my money on that.

As I have been writing periodically since 2008, there is a tremendous amount of energy being exerted to attempt to convince the world at large that there is nothing wrong here, all is well, and if it isn't, it soon will be, so please everyone, go back to sleep while we finish the job of ~~raping your retirement~~ correcting the economy. Anyone squawking too loud--such as, for instance, those who took it upon themselves to clutter up a few city parks--is mercilessly mocked and told to "get a job". (And never you mind that more Occupiers than Tea Party members actually have jobs. That sort of talk will brand you a socialist, un-American traitor and a practitioner of the dreaded "class warfare" to boot. There's something acutely Freudian about accusing somebody of class warfare as you man the catapults yourself.

I can confidently predict that "Occupy" will not fizzle out, though it might be driven underground for a time. What form it takes next is impossible to determine...but the paranoiac in me is convinced the National Defense Authorization Act for 2012is a pre-emptive strike. This bill allows for the indefinite detainment of American citizens, without trial, in military prisons: all that is necessary is that they be called terrorists. The definition of 'terrorist' these days is increasingly slippery. (Is that paranoia? or heightened awareness?)

2011 was a year of ironies on a global scale. As the U.S., that bastion of freedom, slipped ever closer to the precipice of tyranny, several tyrannies in the Middle East took some tentative steps towards freedom. The so-called 'Arab Spring' may be fleeting...but I doubt it. Once people get a taste of freedom, they usually find they like it enough to cook up some more for themselves.
Those of you convinced the Internet is mostly for porn, consider the role that Twitter played in the emancipation of Egypt. Of course, the Internet is merely a tool, but what a powerful tool it can be.

Famous people I've never met die every year. This was the first year that I felt grief over it--and twice. Jack Layton, the leader of the federal NDP, died on August 22, two days after composing a letter that reduced me to a gibbering idiot for a couple of days. The final paragraph of that letter resonates still:

"My friends, love is better than anger. Hope is better than fear. Optimism is better than despair. So let us be loving, hopeful and optimistic. And we'll change the world."

Steve Jobs died a little over a month later, depriving the world of one of its bigger brains. His final utterance is, in its cryptic way, just as inspirational as Layton's carefully considered last instructions. One wonders what he was seeing--I can only I have a similar reaction on my way out the door.

I don't plan on going out that door in 2012, least of all in some Mayan mishap. The idea that next winter solstice will be doomsday has been debunked almost as many times as it has been put forward, most notably, to my mind, by NASA and John Michael Greer, the Archdruid you can find in my sidebar.

No, the world will not end in 2012, but the world as we know it might be sliding towards an ending. Neale Donald Walsch, another of my founts of inspiration, terms it "The Storm Before The Calm". We'll determine what form that storm takes. And we'll determine what the calm looks like afterwards, too. It could be the calm of utter desolation or the calm of idyllic bliss; what's key to understand is that this is not something that is happening to us, it's something we are choosing. There are consequences to every action--Newton knew that nearly three hundred years ago. Science today is inching ever closer to confirming the interconnectedness of all things, which only means that consequences can spread out like ripples in a pond. It behooves us all to remember this, and to live accordingly.

---------

Closer to home, I'm going to be an uncle this year! Alex Hopf is on her way. We were never able to have children of our own--which still pains us on occasion, and even joyous impending births do bring that pain to the fore--and so our way of dealing with that pain is to give baby Alex some of the love we've been holding in reserve all these years. To put it in simpler terms: we're not completely sure what Alex stands for yet, but we know we'll be standing for her every step of the way.

I continue to grow in my new job, and life around here is looking up. It's the only way to look, folks. 2012 is just another step along the way. I look forward to taking it with all of you.

525,600 Minutes

2011-12-29T18:12:00.002-05:00

Explanation for blog title here

There’s no way, simply no way, that 2011 could have lived up to 2010, one of the best years of my life. It probably wasn’t fair to think it could even come close.

And I suppose I should be grateful that 2011 didn’t quite follow the crappy pattern previously set up by other years ending in one. Let’s see. In 1981 I got glasses and moved to London, where I discovered that London kids had a thing for guys in glasses. The “thing” was a burning desire to rearrange the geography of those kids' faces. The previous year I had been arguably the most popular kid in my third grade class. 1981 was a shock, a rude one.

1991 was my first year in university, and it brought its own rude shocks. I’m still amazed people are willing to pay thousands of dollars (the price has roughly tripled since I went) to have professors read textbooks to them--and they have to buy the textbooks too. That was the year I began to fall out of love with the classroom. It was also the year I piddled away a veritable fortune on nothing in particular. Endless meals out and arcade games seem like fun at the time. Soul-crushing is more like it, but chalk that one up under ‘lessons learned’. While you're at it, chalk up the astonishingly long time it took me to learn that lesson as its own lesson.

In 2001 I was still freshly married, and so THAT was all right, but still. We were living in an apartment about six steps down from where we are now and maybe a step and a half up from squalor. Before my job with Price Chopper came along in May, I was a hollowed-out shell of a 7-Eleven employee. My mind was slowing turning to Slurpee. It’s a good thing I had a loving wife to come home to, else you’d have found me in the papers, under "Gone Postal".

Oh, and let’s not forget 9/11, which affected me not at all except to inflict on the last four months of that year a species of free-floating dread I hope never to feel the like of again.

Twenty-eleven was neither a particularly good year nor a particularly bad one around here. Which is to say, it had its moments, good and bad. It was certainly eventful. My store transformed around me, pretty much doubling in size; I absolutely loved the new look but positively hated the new feel. That feeling started just after we opened, when I got my first cheque as a FreshCo employee and found it missing twenty hours at time and a half. When I confronted the store owner about this, he said, quote, "you were free to go home after forty-four hours."

I don't mind working for free--God knows I've done enough of it--but that was a bit much. At the same time I was shuffled out of dairy and into frozen--after training a brand new employee to replace me. That hurt more than the missing pay. I couldn't figure it out. Ken, we trust you enough to take this new guy and teach him everything you know, but not enough to just, uh, do everything you know.

It occurred to me that I was no longer appreciated--if I ever had been since the previous owner left. Which made my leaving inevitable: all I needed was an opportunity.

That arrived towards the end of August...and I don't regret taking it one little bit. My only wish is that I could have taken about thirty people with me. Not that there's anything wrong with the people here: actually, I'm starting to kinda sorta make friends. But man, I miss so many people so very much.

Personally, my biggest revelation this year is trifling to anyone who isn't me, and it can be expressed in four words:

POP CULTURE DOESN'T SUCK

This realization burst on me with the force of a supernova around about the time I started to consider the annual year-in-review blog entry. It was reinforced when I saw what the critics picked for best albums/movies/TV shows of 2011 and spent about a day musing did I lose my taste? Did I gain some taste?

I still don't know the answer to that question, and furthermore, I don't care. Herewith are my top cultural experiences of the year, most of which appear on somebody's top ten, which has got to be a first.

BEST ALBUMS

1) FLEET FOXES, HELPLESSNESS BLUES

There is half of one track on this album that is practically unlistenable-the argument in "The Shrine / An Argument". Every other song is simply sublime. Close-knit harmonies and thought-provoking lyrics mesh in ways that leave a listener (this listener, at least) nearly breathless. The title track is a case in point:

2) ADELE, 21

This appears on pretty much every top ten list I've seen, usually at number one. And I had never even heard of it until I saw the first of those top ten lists and thought I should check this out. Depressing to realize this woman was born when I was in high school. What a voice. Just in case you have been living under some other rock than the one I've apparently been under all year, get a load of this:

3) MARIANAS TRENCH, EVER AFTER

Okay, this one isn't quite as critically acclaimed. It should be. Josh Ramsay has a Broadway-calibre voice and here he and his band simply soar on it. Astoundingly catchy hooks. Listen to this and I guarantee you'll be humming it later:

Special note: I discovered MUMFORD AND SONS this year: if their album Sigh No More had actually been released this year, I would have rated it number one. As of this writing, it's the tenth-most downloaded album of all time, which proves that pop culture hasn't sucked for longer than I'd thought. Maybe it never did...?

BEST PLAY: THE BOOK OF MORMON

Nine Tonys, including Best Musical. The top-selling Broadway album in forty years. Once again I find myself in an echo chamber, joining the chorus that goes something like "holy fuck this musical's good."

The profanity is intentional: the libretto is raunchy. What elevates it out of the gutter and into the clouds is, paradoxically, what's under all the muck on the surface. This show has a heart of gold.

Listen to this (WARNING: NOT SAFE FOR WORK, OR KIDS) and if you find yourself getting offended, pay special heed to the bridge:

If you don't like what we say

Try living here a couple days

Watch all your friends and family die

Hasa diga eebowai!

I'm going to hold back on Best Movie, because (a) the only new release I saw this year was the final installment of Harry Potter and I'll (b) going to see The Girl With The Dragon Tattoo on New Year's Eve. I anticipate it'll be the best movie I've seen in several years, and not just because other people seem to love it too, damn it. (I should probably add that I'm also seeing the latest Mission: Impossible flick, which again has critics raving).

BEST TV SHOW: again, this is a medium I tend to avoid like the plague. But I made an exception for GAME OF THRONES and am I ever glad I did. I even got Eva hooked on it, which surprised me mightily and pleased me greatly. Our TV tastes, to the extent I have any, tend to diverge. But we both loved the sets, the acting, and the unpredictable plotlines. We are eagerly awaiting season two.

BEST NOVEL I read this year is from the same brain that spawned Game of Thrones: A DANCE WITH DRAGONS (George R.R. Martin). Is it perfect? No. It meanders. But the chance to spend time in Westeros is not to be missed.

So that was my world in 2011. Tomorrow I will cover off yours, and try to hazard some guesses as to what awaits us in 2012.

EDIT--Good Lord, Dad, I didn't forget all about you! Honest, I didn't! My father had a heart attack this past year--and I can't believe that was still only this year, it seems like forever and an age ago. While terrifying at the time, it was in retrospect a good thing, in a way. A shot across his bow...and mine. He is in much better shape now, with more energy and, I suspect, a renewed appreciation for life. I'm so very glad he's still around to appreciate it...

Second Christmas

2011-12-26T10:31:00.001-05:00

This little family has some damned weird traditions.
Perhaps the weirdest of them is our Boxing Day ritual. Christmas over the past many years has always yielded us Canadian Tire gift certificates from one place or another. Each and every Boxing Day, we've ventured out early to hit Canadian Tire as the doors open, and there we hurry to buy...

...cleaning supplies?

Yes, cleaning supplies. The week between Christmas and New Year's, this house gets as deep a clean as it ever gets, all in order that we can sit on our asses New Year's Eve without a dust lion in sight. So each Boxing Day we buy, among other things, roughly a year's worth of cleaning supplies and implements, along with whatever flotsam and jetsam the house requires at the moment--light bulbs, garbage bags, laundry sheets, what have you. While the rest of the world is rushing to upgrade their 76" TVs to 77" and buy a new cell phone to replace the perfect good cellphone they already have, we're buying stuff we need.

Now, we'll also buy some stuff we want, at Canadian Tire and elsewhere...or at least we'll look. Eva has to check the kitchen aisles for the latest in culinary whizbang gadgetry, and like as not we'll head to Chapters, because Mr. Breadbin here is what you'd call a book-slut. Today was no different: I picked up the third volume of the Void trilogy, by Peter F. Hamilton; Douglas Preston and Lincoln Childs's latest, and something I swore I wouldn't buy again...a book by Dan Simmons.

What can I say? I feel I owe the guy one more. Back before he went insane and started seeing evil Muslims hiding behind every bush, he was a helluva writer. By all accounts, he still is, but he's let more and more of his politics intrude on his fiction of late. I won't set an official foot in his forum anymore, though I still occasionally drop in and lurk in the shadows, just to see where Fox News will get their next ideas from.
FLASHBACK looks to be right up my alley: a near-future dystopia. Though this one seems to have been brought about because America stopped playing World Dictator...still, it should be an interesting read. If only to see just how deep the crazy runs now.

While in line at McDonald's for a the greasy goodness of a Sausage McMuffin, I heard a customer behind me telling everyone--several times--that she'd already been to Sears, she was in line at six a.m. We've done that, except Sears was the Brick and it was freakin' COLD. We also heard the line to get into Best Buy was an hour long. We've done that too, at Future Shop. Never again will we do either of these things. Boxing Day is supposedly so-called because the wealthy used to give their servants a gift in a box on this day. Well, I'm hear to tell you this meaning has gone the way of the dodo, and that there's a sweet science to the braving of the crowds on the 26th of December. I never really liked science, sweet or otherwise, and as much as I hate people in bulk, Eva hates them more. So each year we're practically alone in Canadian Tire, and we hit Chapters before it gets too zooey, and then...home. Home to relax and be at peace.

All I Want For Christmas Is My Two...

2011-12-25T09:51:00.001-05:00

...days off.

The holiday run-up this year was nothing short of insane. It's like that every year, of course, but this year the insanity was compounded by a new routine, a fair bit more responsibility, and customer patterns I could only guess at.

I pride myself on staying in stock on holiday-sensitive items. Nobody's perfect, of course, and I'm less perfect than many, but over the years at Price Chopper/FreshCo I'd like to think I managed it more often than not.

It's harder than it sounds. Egg nog is a case in point. The problem with egg nog is simply this: nobody buys it, nobody buys it, nobody buys it, WHAM! LET'S VACUUM UP ALL THE EGG NOG!, egg nog? why the hell would I buy that?

Seriously, after New Year's you can offer people money to buy egg nog and they'll look at you as if to say money? I doan need no steekin' money.

Making it harder: us peons down here at store level aren't the only ones who know about this problem with egg nog. The dairies know it too, which is why they only make so much. After a certain time--you never know quite when it will be, but it's usually half past I need some...there's no egg nog to be had.

Which means I had to lay in my nog a week and a half early.

Then there's the warehouse. You can never guess what they'll run short of in any given holiday season. Traditionally it's hash browns, the sales of which triple in December...but I've seen butter go bye-bye a week before Christmas. I've seen creamed cheese unavailable. And this year it was our store brand sour cream, out of stock since early December with no firm date in sight when it might be back in stock. And so: ninety cases of name brand sour cream, better order it quick while they still have that.

Tack on all the distributions (hey! Let's put yogurt on sale Christmas week, everyone bastes their turkey with yogurt!) and account for the general uptick in sales and for a little while this past Thursday morning I could not close the door to my dairy cooler. This has never happened to me.

And still I ran out of things. I ordered double what the computer said I would sell in vanilla ice cream and ran out before Christmas Eve started. We were out of our brand of butter for a few hours. (And then of course there's the aerosol whip creams, of which I have about a year's supply.

Still--not bad for a rookie in this store, if I do say so myself. And there's a good group of people here. I'm starting to feel--not quite like I belong, exactly, but that I might belong. Which is a good feeling, a merry feeling.

But boy, have I been stiff. Getting out of bed over the past week has become progressively more difficult. And so I am cherishing these two days off.

Merry Christmas to everyone.

The Problem with Christmas

2011-12-18T19:01:00.001-05:00

...is that it's too short.

I don't mean the season. That now makes its first appearance before Hallowe'en and, what with interminable Boxing Day sales, extends nearly into February. I don't care how much of a Christmas person you are, three months of it is clearly too much. Yet every year the carols start up earlier and earlier.

I keep hoping for new ones to supplant I Saw Mommy Kissing Santa Claus (which I hate) and Little Drummer Boy (which I hate more). Be careful what you wish for, Ken. I had somehow managed to never hear Last Christmas in its original George Michael incarnation. Maybe I did hear it and just blocked it out. That's more likely, actually, because I hated Taylor Swift's rendition the first time I heard it. on November the first of this year, and it did not improve with the subsequent repeats every ninety minutes through every work day since.

Amazing how quickly this jaunted to the top of my stick-icicles-in-my-ear list. It's right up there with Simply Having A Wonderful Christmastime (does ANYBODY actually like that dreck?) and Feed The World (Do They Know It's Christmas) (memo to Band Aid: the majority of the world doesn't celebrate Christmas, so no, even if they know, they don't give a fartridge in a pear tree.)

But Last Christmas, now, let's examine these lyrics that have been fingernailed onto my brainboard.

Last Christmas I gave you my heart
But the very next day you gave it away

Whoa, whoa, stop right there Rudolph. You "gave away" my heart? How do you do that, exactly? And maybe I like the person you gave it to more! But no,

This year, to save me from tears
I'll give it to someone special (repeat ad Clauseum)

But, umm, I thought YOU were special last year and look what you did with my heart.

Clearly not a good judge of character, our caroller here. I suppose it's too much to ask that she SHUT UP about the mistake she made last Yule and what she plans to do this season to avenge it. Ugh.

So yeah, the carols are getting increasingly painful. I mean, I never hear the few I actually LIKE, ones like this one

Or this one

Or how about

Instead it's Last Christmas AGAIN AND AGAIN AND AGAIN...Arrrrrrgh! Just once, just once, I dare somebody to play something like

And this never-ending soundtrack is the perfect accompaniment to the stress of the season. You really should have seen my dairy cooler by the time I got everything into it last Thursday. Some of it I won't need until next Thursday, but I got it all anyway, all thirteen skids of it, and next year, to save me from tears, I'll gi--SHUTUPSHUTUPSHUTUP

So yeah, way too long. But too damned short, too.

We met my Dad and stepmom in Barrie today for lunch. This is the second year we've done this. It's not ideal by any stretch--ideal would be a week or so--but this year in particular it had to serve. I'm not off again until Christmas Day.
Joining Dad and Hez this year was my stepbrother Robbie (the life of every party ever) and, surprise, stepsister Brea. Both of them we don't see near enough of. We missed my aunt Dawna and her partner Barry this time, sadly. But it was so nice to see the people we did, even if for so short a time.

I almost cried from one of the presents my dad got me. I mean, they were all nice, but this one--a collage of photos of him and I with a message, all in a lovely frame. Dad, I wish we could have got you the gift you deserve, but they don't make things that special on this planet.

Two 'Christmases' to go, both of which will zoom by too quickly. It really is about family and friends, and I'm blessed to have the family and friends I have. We love you all and wish we had about a carolling season's worth of time to spend with you.

School Daze, Part II

2011-12-11T12:25:00.001-05:00

On what date did what bomber drop the first nuclear bomb used in warfare where?

So help me, I actually had that question on a history test once. I raided a near eidetic memory for the dry facts (August 6, 1945, Enola Gay, Hiroshima), wishing there was room to note that the bomber had been named after its commander's mother and that Hiroshima had deliberately been left completely alone by American forces so as to measure how much damage one nuclear weapon would actually cause.

Personally, I find those parenthetical remarks more interesting than dusty dates. I would have been more interested still if we had had an in-class debate, pretending it was six months before mission date. Should we drop the bombs, yea or nay? I would have been extremely interested to hear the Japanese side of the story. Why were they fighting in the first place?
That information was never given to me; I was left to scavenge for it on my own time. I would have been flabbergasted to learn that the Japanese were considering surrender before Little Boy was dropped.

I'm still learning things about August 6-9, 1945. Just yesterday I learned about a man who survived both bombings. There were an estimated 165 "double survivors"; one of them was actually telling his co-workers what to do in case they saw a blinding blue flash when there was a blinding blue flash.

To me, education has several purposes. Socialization, the most important of them, is best accomplished by encouraging empathy, and empathy is best encouraged by providing numerous opportunities for students to get into other people's heads. The best books will do that, but so will movies, plays, debates--even written assignments wherein you're asked to take up a contrary position.
Who, what, where, when--all of marginal importance, surely. It is absolutely critical to know that Hiroshima was devastated on August 6th, 1945? Or is it sufficient to know that its payload and that dropped three days later effectively ended the Second World War? I think "how" and especially "why" are much more relevant questions, almost always, and sadly, they're the ones most often ignored in the media. Why does a serial killer do what he does? You can say "because he's crazy", and of course that's true...but he doesn't think he's crazy. How do we determine who's crazy? Is it morally right to arrest psychopaths before they commit a crime?
My favourite classes were the few that considered these sorts of questions. I think most students remember those classes far more than they do the dry and boring facts they were force-fed.

Okay, so...empathy as a core curriculum value. What else? Well, what values are we looking to instil into students? I'd suggest honesty is a good one. So is accountability. Healthy skepticism is always welcome (unless you're the kind of parent who wants to raise carbon copies of yourself).
How do you get those values into little heads? Model them. Model them by your actions; model them in the curriculum. Show some consequences of dishonesty. But also encourage critical thought. When is it okay to lie? When is it necessary? What would happen to the world if we had easy access to a 100% reliable lie detector?
Accountability--for the last several years, there has been no punishment meted out for students who turn their assignments in late. I'm told for many years now, children have been told to spell words the way they sound, rather than the way they're actually spelled. This strikes me as utterly bizarre. I was among the last generation that learned to read using phonics, which undoubtedly is one good reason I was spelling at college level in grade five. Back in that ancient day, if you spelled something wrong, it was corrected. If you repeatedly spelled many things wrong, you'd fail your grade and be kept back a year...something else that doesn't seem to happen any more.
My problem was procrastination. Like many kids, I was lazy, and unless I was really interested in a project, more often than not I'd slapdash it together at the last minute. Until fifth grade.
My grade five teacher was Mr. Sackville. I don't remember what the project he assigned was, though I think it had something to do with computers. As usual, I'd left it to the last minute. Beyond the last minute, actually: I didn't even start it until after it was due, and I turned it in four days late. I will never forget how it came back to me: 96% at the top, in that red ink teachers always used. "A+." "GREAT JOB!!!!" I distinctly remember, count 'em, four exclamation marks. Below that... -15% x 4 days late = 36%. And that was circled.
That hit me where I lived. I never turned in another project so much as a minute late ever again.

I wasn't taught skepticism, healthy or otherwise, until university. I had one prof named Lewinsky--he taught literary criticism, or LitCrit as we called it (as opposed to ClitLit, which was Feminist English). Anyway, we covered a different school of literary criticism every week, and every week he would come to class every week a completely different person. For the feminist perspective, he came in drag. Every week, he'd dismiss the philosophy he'd argued the previous week as a pile of crap. That class was tremendously liberating, and I wish I'd had others like it before.

You'll notice I haven't covered what many people think is the only reason for schooling: to prepare students for the work world. That's because I just don't think it's all that important. I believe that apprenticeships should begin--for many jobs, not just the trades--towards the end of what is currently high school. By that point, in my system, students would be as literate and numerate as they'll ever get, and hopefully, through inhabiting the heads of people in many different professions and being exposed to many different ways of seeing the world, the vast majority of them will have found something that interests them. I'd set aside an entire year for students to try out various careers. Those who show an interest and aptitude for one would then enter specialized training that might last six weeks or six years.

While keeping the core values in the curriculum as much as possible, I'd suggest there are many things schools should be teaching that they don't bother with at present. Here are a few.

Home economics. Yes, I believe everyone should have a solid grounding in nutrition. They should also know at least the basics of cooking, sewing, and--important, this--budgeting. Also parenting. That last should actually be its own required course.
A greatly expanded civics program, covering your rights as a citizen, how to protest effectively, what to do (and what not to do) if you are accused of a crime--and (again with the healthy skepticism) how to parse political bullshit. I'd actually call that last segment exactly that: How To Parse Political Bullshit". That'd get the kids' attention.
Life Skills. Currently this is a program for kids with special needs. I think it's a great name for a catch-all course that covers things you'd learn in Scouts and Guides. How to tie knots. How to navigate. Emergency preparedness. Comprehensive first aid. And so on.
Avocational School. Everybody should have at least one semester in which their interests are probed and cultivated. For instance, I have been composing music since I was four years old, but even now I have no idea what to do with that particular skill. I know someone who cross-stitches well enough to live off it, but she doesn't. Some kids might grow up to be professional athletes. Whatever course they're interested in, they should learn its channels and its shoals beforehand.

What would school in your world look like?

School Daze, Part I

2011-12-10T18:25:00.001-05:00

Catelli over at Not Quite Unhinged has presented an excellent argument for education reform, to wit, that most of the stuff we force kids to learn is pointless. Particularly most of the math. Like him, I was told that the math I was learning would be critical to my success in later life.

Unlike him, I struggled with math. Hated it, actually. Didn't like the hard sciences, either, because "hard" means math. Somehow, I internalized that: hard is math, math is hard.

It didn't help much, in my case, that I spent grade seven and eight in a "gifted' program. If I described this program to your average public school student, she wouldn't believe me, and if she did, she'd beg to be let in. No homework. No supervision. Very little work of any kind, actually. The teacher read books to us, almost like story time in kindergarten except these books where things like George Bernard Shaw's Man and Superman. Other than that, we were left pretty much to ourselves.
This was fine for my fellow 'gifties', who were tossing off calculus. My gifts lay in another direction--since grade two, if not before, I had revelled in playing with words, bending them to my will. You can't bend numbers: they're stiff sons-of-bitches.
So I missed any kind of structured math instruction for those two years. It turned an average-at-best math student into a horror. I had to work my ass off in grade twelve to get a 65% average, which was fifteen points lower than ANY course average I maintained in high school without much effort at all.

It's funny, you know. I used to be the most unyielding black and white person you could possibly imagine. There was a right way of doing things, and--never mind the wrong way--there weren't any other ways. Contrast that to me, now: there are increasingly few hard truths I hold to and I'm willing to at least listen to yours, no matter how outlandish it might seem to be. I figure people have a reason for believing what they believe, and I reserve contempt only for those who haven't examined their thoughts and simply believe whatever they believe because it says so in some book, or because that's what Daddy said.
You'd think a person like my black-and-white younger self would appreciate a subject as black and white as mathematics. What can I say? Adult Ken has a root someplace, and like as not it's in that dawning realization that words open windows while numbers, in my experience anyway, only slam doors.
Math always struck me as a top-down system: teacher teaches, you learn. Or not. In EVERY other subject, I could supplement whatever was being taught with outside reading so as to impress the teacher. But math was just this dead set of numbers. I look at the word "number" and all I see is a word meaning "more numb". Aptly named little buggers.

But I was told it would all come clear later. Notwithstanding my inclination to run away from equations wherever they pop up, to be honest, I haven't seen any. My wife has--she works with numbers all the time, and if you told her high school self she'd be enjoying that, she'd have slapped you silly. But see, she gets to use a calculator. I'm told kids get to use calculators all the way back in grade three, now, which is probably why so few cashiers can figure out how much change to give you without some idiot display telling them. I doubt anything Eva learned past third grade is of any use to her now. I can say with certainty that this is true for me. As far as academics go, I can't think of a single thing I learned in school that (a) I use today and (b) I couldn't have learned, more easily, some other way.

I still remember grade thirteen history and the panic attack I got before that class got going. I'd found out that it was going to start in the year 1200 or something like that and work forward from there. I knew NOTHING about the year 1200. Nothing at all. I was practically hyperventilating, and my mom looked at me and said, "Isn't that the whole idea of school? To learn?"
"No," I said, as if that had never occurred to me. "The point of school is to show what you've learned."

Although I liked school (aside from math and the one science course I took), I did all my best learning outside the classroom, where I wasn't straight-jacketed into "read this, then read that, then answer these questions". I was willing to be, in Catelli's terms, a storage tank--for a while, at least; it got more than a little tedious in university, when I realized professors were filling me up with their opinions and expecting me to digest them and excrete them as facts later. But I refused to be just a tank. I was forever searching for connections, looking at the hows and whys of things. Maybe that's why I did so well in my OAC year, when my classes all seemed to feed into each other: the stuff I'd take in history would pop up again in world issues and again in music class of all places. Even then, though, it only inspired me to spread my mind-net further afield.

If the academics in school aren't valuable to me now, what was and is?

The first thing that comes to mind when I ask myself this question is a project in grade ten geography. We split up into "firms" of four or five students and were tasked with laying down a power line from point A to point C on a very large and detailed map. As I recall it, the power line had to go through B, but beyond that we were free to plot any course we could justify. Of course, there were issues: many of them. Costs varied...it would be $x across a flat field, $2x over a ridge, $4x over a river, $8x underground, and so on. There were environmentally sensitive areas: we could go through them, but doing so meant extra costs and an extra "impact assessment" step I don't remember any of us taking. B was a city, and we had to plot the line through it in such as way as to minimize disruption. In the end, we had to draw up and present our proposals to the teacher, who judged them on various criteria. It took up five full periods, and it was the most fun I've ever had in a classroom. That project was my first real exposure to different ways of thinking and the idea that there could be more than one solution to an actual, real-world problem. I flash back on that project quite often.

School is the place for socialization, both structured--think sports, but also things like band, a class play, and the yearbook committee--and unstructured. I wasn't much at the unstructured stuff for the longest time: absent a common goal like a musical piece to be learned or an opposing soccer team to obliterate, I didn't know how to connect with people. But that's something I eventually learned, and I'm not sure I could have learned it in any other setting. It's a big thing, socialization, probably the biggest thing we social animals ever learn, and so school does have a purpose. Pity about the endless layers of crap on top, though. Double the pity since there is so much school could teach that it doesn't bother with. That's tomorrow's subject.

Multiple Marriage?

2011-11-27T10:22:00.001-05:00

"There is no place for the State in the bedrooms of the nation...What's done in private between adults does not concern the Criminal Code"--Prime Minister Pierre Trudeau, December 21, 1967

Unless there are more than two of them?

Trudeau here was referring to the decriminalization of homosexuality, but his words also, to my mind, defend some--perhaps many--polygamists.

I love to watch sacred cows being tipped. Tabitha Southey does it with aplomb here, utterly demolishing the case against multiple marriage.

Full disclosure: I flirted with polyamory in my younger years and held it as an ideal for many more. I've since come to the realization that I am not capable of existing in a polyamorous relationship--as loving as I am, I don't seem to be able to balance multiple loves in my life. But just because I'm happily committed to monogamy doesn't mean I have lost sight of those who aren't.

I once corresponded at some length with a woman from Michigan who was "married" to two men at the same time. She had her name legally changed such that one partner's surname became her middle name and the other's her surname. The three lived a life that was indistinguishable from a typical couple's life but for the extra adult member of the family. I lost touch with her almost twenty years ago, but Google informs me that relationship was still going strong in 2004 when one partner passed away.
Not that longevity should have much to do with it: after all, Hollywood is replete with marriages that are no less legally valid for the days, weeks or months that they last.

The question about polygamy, as the B.C. Supreme Court notes, boils down to "harm; more specifically, Parliament's reasoned apprehension of harm arising out of the practice of polygamy. This includes harm to women, to children, to society and to the institution of monogamous marriage."

There is little doubt that some polygamous relationships are harmful towards women and children, though I would argue--as Wente does--that they pose no harm whatsoever to monogamous marriage. (I made and continue to make the same argument as regards same-sex marriage: if Adam and Steve next door get married and that affects your marriage in any way, you've got problems no marriage counsellor can solve.) The polygamous relationships I'm thinking of--the harmful ones--tend to have a religious element to them, in which the husband considers it his divine right to take some number of wives that is greater than one. It should be noted that some of the heroes of the Old Testament racked up astonishing numbers of wives and nobody batted an eyelash. Moses himself had two wives. That's if he existed: most Bible scholars I have read believe him to be a concatenation of several individuals. Regardless, Aaron and Miriam criticized their brother Moses for taking a second wife and the Lord punished Miriam with a skin disease for the criticism (Numbers 12: 1-15). David had eight named wives and countless unnamed ones as well. Moving forward, polygamy was prevalent in New Testament times as well and, contrary to popular belief, Jesus never said a thing about it one way or the other. Paul, in one place--1 Corinthians 7:27-28d--explicitly states that polygamy is not a sin.

Okay, so that's morality two thousand and more years ago. I'd like to think we've evolved somewhat since then...women aren't property anymore, for one thing. What does my morality meter register, considering polygamy?

"What's done in private between adults does not concern the Criminal Code." Trudeau was right, as fr as I'm concerned, but that "between adults" is critical. It implies consent--moreover, consent freely given. Where it exists, there is no harm and thus no issue. Where it doesn't, we have a problem.

The B.C. Supreme Court has attempted to skate around this by decreeing that a formal multiple marriage, be it civil or religious in nature, will remain illegal, even as informal co-habitation arrangements between like minded groups are acceptable. On the surface, it's a fair compromise, since the cultists who practise polygamy usually seem to require some sort of ceremony to "legitimize" it, while many polyamorous types aren't that into the whole institution of marriage.

But many is not all. The same could be said for gay people, many of whom have no desire whatsoever to be married. For those in both communities who do, however, it's a slap in the face.

Not all polygamous relationships consist of of bunch of women kneeling to one man. My net-friend with the two husbands entered into her relationships freely and lived happily that way for many years. She specifically mentions that her name anagrams to "I live a darn nice life".

And there are more people out there like her. I'm not suggesting your street is full of them, but there are likely more than you'd suspect. Again, just like gays.

Consent freely given can, of course, be a bugger of a thing to prove in a court of law. Where it can be established, I see no reason why group marriage should be illegal. Do you?

I am a bigot

2011-11-20T15:02:00.001-05:00

So I'm stumbling around the Internet, the way you do when it's a day ending in -y in laundry month and there are only a thousand or so other things you should be doing. What to my wandering eye should appear but this piece of tripe concerning Manifest Destiny. I didn't cringe quite as much as I had earlier with that UC-Davis video, but close. People have to see this, I thought, and immediately posted it to my Facebook wall, captioned "This may be the scariest thing I've ever read in my life."

I didn't bother to check Reddit.com's take on this article: I knew what it would be. Snide and dismissive, just as I was. Christian site, what did you expect? No, instead I sauntered around Christwire.org a while longer, gibbering. What to make of a headline like "Scientists Develop Gay Repellant Powder?" I know what *I* made of it: let's see now, does this redeem science in the eyes of Christianity, or not? Or how about "Is Your Teenaged Daughter Throwing a Twilight Vampire Babies Pregnancy Pact Party?" Yeah, the night after I throw my Harry Potter Dark Arts Party.

After posting another link to my Wall--and noting the immediate disgusted reaction of a close friend of mine who happens to be a devout Christian, I decided to get off that site before it could contaminate me any further. I went to check it out on Wikipedia, only to discover what Reddit had known all along, and what I should have guessed: I'd been trolled.

Christwire.org is a satirical site. Neither of the posts I so gleefully put up were real. Mr. Critical Thinker here unthinkingly, uncritically shared his discovery, all too eager to play pin-the-stupid-on-the-Christian. Would I have done this with any other supposed class of idiocy? I think not.

What does that say about me? I could protest that I am merely a victim of Poe's Law, that being "it's impossible to create a parody of extremism that somebody won't mistake for the real article." I could do this, yes, and bring up things like this, which is real, or this, which is also real. But the truth is, this isn't the first time I've paid lip service to the truth that the vast majority of Christians think this stuff is loony...while hurrying to say "look! Look what the Christians are up to now!"

So help me, I was relieved to see that friend of mine was revolted. Despite having known her for almost a quarter century and counting her amongst my best friends, I wasn't completely sure she would be. On some level I'm forever afraid that moderate Christianity is going to spill over into lunacy, simply because to me, the idea of--say--a devil is lunacy. Christians tend to believe in a devil, ergo Christianity is nuts.

In short, I am a bigot. I am that thing I am forever mocking. That hurts to admit. I am forever quoting Neale Donald Walsch: "Mine is not a better way, mine is merely another way"...and I'm not only lying to myself, I'm also insulting anyone else who may think exactly the same thing but believe differently than I do.

I'm not going to do an about-face and embrace Christianity for myself. I've read the Bible and done a ton of exegesis and I just can't. Nor am I going to stop bringing the excesses of Christianity to attention. I have too many gay friends and relatives to let hate speech go unchallenged, and I have heard far too much hate speech from the mouths of self-defined Christians. HOWEVER, I will stop believing, and wanting to believe, that the excesses are the norm.

Please forgive me.

Welcome To The New Reality

2011-11-20T11:08:00.001-05:00

Words failed me the first time I watched this. It's so casual, so nonchalant, as if pepper-spraying peaceful protesters is all part of a police officer's daily routine. I got the sense, watching, that they would have been happier using their guns, and those kids should consider themselves lucky they didn't.

Surely this is a one-off, an aberration.

Nope..

You have the right of free assembly. You have the right of free speech. Just bear in mind that if you choose to exercise these rights, you could well be attacked with noxious chemicals...or worse. But by all means, go ahead and enjoy your rights, because we really enjoy the chance to use our toys.

This reminds me of nothing so much as the doctrine of free will: "Sure," says God, "you can do whatever the heck you want. But if you sin, I can throw you in hell to burn for all eternity. By the way, I love you."

How free is your will when the wrong choice will result in eternal damnation? How free is a populace when exercising one's constitutionally-guaranteed "rights" can get you attacked?

Some time ago, I wrote a post about the rise of American fascism. Watching that disgusting display at UC-Davis immediately made me think of point three on the three point scale of encroaching tyranny:

3. Is a rapid political mobilization threatening to escape the control of traditional elites, to the point where they would be tempted to look for tough helpers in order to stay in charge?

What do you think?

The World Has Lost Its Balls

2011-11-16T15:25:00.001-05:00

CAUTION: HAT TIPPING AHEAD. WATCH YOUR STEP. DANGER OF CONTACT WITH HAT. POTENTIAL FOR THE MOMENTARY SENSATION OF SHADOW.

A tip of the hat to Catelli for bringing this to my attention. "This" is utter, rank stupidity, the kind of story you'd more likely expect to find in the Onion.

Balls have been banned at Errol Beatty Public School, on account of "a few serious incidents" Unless it's a Nerf ball or a sponge ball, it's not permitted on the playground. We're told the parents' council at the school supports this.

Well, of course they do. These are probably the same parents who demand their progeny get A grades just for showing up at school each day. Heaven forfend their little darlings might be hit by a ball.

Let me give you a little rundown of various and sundry incidents that (I swear) I experienced during my public school career, I won't even mention the kissing tag. Oops, I just did.

Our school grounds sloped off fairly steeply along their western flank. During winter, that slope featured five or six iced 'runs', carefully crafted. The small kids would slide down on their butts; the braver and bigger of us would careen down standing up. Sometimes we'd go arse over tip. Blood could and did make its appearance. Fairly regularly, actually.
The same school sported a little brick wall in an alcove, purpose unknown. It was about three feet high and eighteen inches wide and the purpose we used it for in grade three was "balance beam fights". I was actually really good at these: even back then, my hands were by far the strongest parts of me. I'd walk up to my opponent, get a grip on his shoulders, and wrench until he'd slip off down and to the right. I was winner and grand champeen in my grade until one day one of the grade sixes decided to try his hand. There was no nicety to his fighting style: he simply strode up to me and kicked me in the nuts. I went down as if...as if I'd been kicked in the nuts. (Sorry, similes fail me here: if you're a man, you understand.)
That was not the first time I was kicked there, either. I suffered that indignity several times between grades two and six. Talk about playing with balls...on one memorable occasion they weren't kicked but squeezed. If you haven't experienced that...it's worse.
Our whole class, pretty much, got into a colossal snowball fight one February. These days, you can be suspended for throwing a snowball, even if it doesn't hit anyone. Back then...the teachers played too.
Does anybody remember murderball? Otherwise known as 'dodgeball', the express purpose of this game is to hit somebody with a ball, and of course avoid being hit yourself. To hit the shifty and agile--or just to hit that jerk who got you with the spitball last week--it was necessary to peg that ball with as much force as you could muster. We played this in phys. ed. many, many times...under teacher supervision, but occasionally the teacher would participate.

first rung

whammed

sheltered

left

right

Were the adults in my life concerned when I came home with blood pouring down my face? Of course they were. But I don't think it crossed the mind of many parents back then to cushion their little darlings from every knock. You hurt yourself, you picked yourself up and moved on, and maybe did whatever it was you'd been doing a little more carefully next time. That was it.

The powers that be at Errol Beatty Public School should be ashamed of themselves. I'll leave the last word to Konstantina Alexiou, a Grade 8 student: "Next they'll say you can't run because kids fall or you can't wear (shoe) laces because kids trip,”

If you don't have anything nice to say...

2011-11-13T10:47:00.001-05:00

Check out the comments on this CBC story about the 'upscaling' of Tim Horton's.

Very few of them are at all positive. You would think, based on these comments, that Tim Horton's, far from being the most profitable quick service chain in the country, is instead about to go bankrupt.

As usual, there is no moderation in the negativity, either. Only a tiny minority of the comments say something to the effect of "if you don't like it, don't shop there". Over and over the coffee is referred to as 'swill' and the food as 'crap'. One-off horrible customer service stories are upvoted as if they are universal Tim Horton's policy.

Full disclosure: I like Tim Horton's. I love their coffee, which I can't quite recreate at home no matter what I do. I love their hot chocolate, which is far and away the best on the market. And their breakfast sandwiches are phenomenal. Yes, their donuts are not baked fresh anymore and of course the quality has suffered because of that; but for me Tim's has never been about the donuts.
Tim Horton's, like just about everywhere else, used to allow smoking in designated areas of their restaurants, as if you could somehow contain the effluvium from twenty cigarettes. Their Timbits had one flavour back then, as far as I was concerned: nicotine. By the time I had another donut from Tim Horton's, they had abolished smoking and gone to prefab pastry. Let me tell you, a pre-made donut free of yellow death tastes considerably better than a fresh donut that's been steeped in tar.

Is Tim Horton's perfect? Hell, no. There's actually a hefty lawsuit going on right now about those pre-made donuts. Seems they're actually more expensive to the franchisees than they were initially told. Down at store level, before Timmy's tries to upscale its decor, they might consider adding tills. The lineups can get ridiculous. And not that this will ever happen, but I'd have a whole lot of respect for the place if they got rid of their drive-throughs. It's not exactly health food they serve, but do you have to poison the environment when you buy it?

But upscaling is something that's going on industry-wide. McDonald's was the first to move on this, and Tim's is just playing catch-up. It's dangerous to ignore your competitors' innovations. Occasionally they'll flop, but can you really afford to take the risk?

If you hate Tim Horton's--and I know some readers of this blog that do--that's your prerogative. And of course you're free to bitch on any online forum you like about how tasteless their food is and how you wouldn't drink their coffee with a gun to your head. But do bear in mind that you're slagging the most popular quick-service chain in the country. There are millions of people who adore the place and are no less Canadian for doing so (and nor are you for despising it).

The same hatred exists in other areas. Music, for one. There's this group called Nickelback that, according to the intelligentsia, is the music industry equivalent of Tim Horton's: pre-fab rock with no musical redeeming quality whatsoever. Nickelback, like Tim's, is Canadian. And also like Tim's, they are insanely popular. They have sold almost as many albums as Tim's has cups of coffee. The people who hate Nickelback (and they are legion) never seem to account for this beyond mutteringly, darkly, that anything popular sucks by definition.
Punch in "why do people hate Nickelback" and one of the answers you'll get is "because they keep making songs that sound the same, and they play them over and over until they get stuck in your head." Call me naive, but I believe that makes their music pretty good. Isn't that what musicians aspire to? Writing a song that gets stuck in millions of heads and won't get out?

Pardon me, it's coffee time.

Greece Is The Word

2011-11-12T10:54:00.001-05:00

So Greece is bankrupt for the seventh time in the past two hundred years.
This brings Ronald Wright's aphorism to mind yet again--"each time history repeats itself, the price goes up." This time, the price is immense. The first downpayment is Greek membership in the Eurozone. They remain in the union, for now, but in name only. Further casualties are certain...probably in the literal sense of lives lost. History shows that Europe does not remain merely unstable for long before going off like old nitroglycerin.

In hindsight, one wonders what those who moulded the European Union could possibly have been thinking. I'd imagine they let idealism run roughshod over reality. Wouldn't it be nice, they thought, if we could unite continental Europe into a land free of nationalism? Laudable goal, politically. Financially, however...
Putting aside the cultural differences between northern and southern European nations, removing the ability for a country to manage its own economy is never a very good idea. Greece, of course, compounded things by by not just cooking its books, but positively charring them, in a successful (at first) effort to deceive the overseers that all was and would be well.

Well, all is not well. This has been driven home with all the force of a blow from Zeus' hammer. The nerve of Papandreou! To think he could actually threaten to take the latest bailout package to the hoi polloi in a referendum, as if Greece had invented democracy or something! Merckel and Sarkozy set the record straight. Greece was a member in questionable standing of the European Union, it was told, and it would remain so as long as it did what it was told, without question or hesitation. Any misstep, such as, oh, I don't know, involving the citizenry...well, the punishment would be mythical and immediate.

So much for a union of equals.

To be clear, yes, Greece brought this calamity on itself through fiscal mismanagement so extreme it qualifies as an art form. That said, nobody deserves what's about to befall the commoners in that benighted country. Wages are being cut by up to 60% as taxes and levies rise. If you check your Revolutionary Cookbook--call it The Joy Of Anarchy--you'll find those two ingredients are the binding agents in any dish of civil unrest you can imagine.

There have already been riots. As things progress, you can expect more. If we're lucky, they won't spread and engulf the whole of Europe.

Do you feel lucky, punk?

Possibilities

2011-11-06T16:29:00.000-05:00

There's a very interesting article in this month's issue of Wired. There usually is, of course--Wired is one of a very few publications I tend to read cover to cover--but this one is above and beyond. It concerns the future of music, now that Facebook is teaming up with Spotify to dethrone iTunes.
The beleaguered record industry hasn't even fully accepted iTunes yet. Imagine the conniption when 'buying' music becomes entirely obsolete.
That's what the union of Facebook and Spotify will evertually accomplish. You won't "own" music anymore: it will reside in the amorphous, world-spanning "cloud", ready to rain down on you, or your friends, with a single mouse-click. When you're done listening, back to the cloud it goes.
How, exactly, money will be made from this model of instant access to everything remains to be seen. Currently, Spotify (which, like almost everything really valuable on the Internet, is not yet available in Canada), "charges" you a few minutes of ads per hour of listening, with ad-free listening available at $5 a month and the ability to listen offline costing an additional $10/month.

The way kids are today, I can all too easily imagine the offline option disappearing. You mean, listen to music...OFF THE INTERNET? Why would I ever go offline? That's like cutting out my eyes!

Anyway, Facebook and Spotify are in the process of converging, which is a big reason why Facebook's user interface changed yet again a few months back. Soon, you'll be able to see exactly what your friends are listening to (and eventually watching). It's all about sharing, which is Facebook's core value, much to the dismay of privacy commissioners and other old fogies who think like them.

"You have zero privacy anyway. Get over it", said the CEO of Sun Microsystems in that ancient year of 1999. And many have, to the point where it seems the first instinct after anything happens is to tweet it, or take a picture of it and post it on your Wall. Events have occurred in my own life over the past few years that I have had to resist the impulse to share. I still have (at least) one foot in the era where the default setting was 'private'. The new paradigm requires a complete redefinition of self that I am not quite up to.

This article really did get me thinking, though, because in it I can see the barest glimpse of a possible future. It remains to be seen how money can be made off a business model that grants instant access to any desired piece of musical product, especially since consumers have shown a marked aversion to subscription options. The only way I can see this working is if we're willing to redefine "money".

And we just may be.

Consider the Huffington Post. Many people (most of them considerably younger than I) line up for the chance to write for them. When I first discovered this site, I considered writing for them as well. Something with the reach of HuffPo must pay handsomely.

Nope. In fact, they don't pay AT ALL, not in any currency you can hold in your hand. They pay in exposure. The mind recoils. Exposure won't pay the bills. Exposure is something you can die from! And yet here are people willing and eager to get their name out there gratis, paid, for the time being, in nothing but fickle fame.

Another example: Rome, Sweet Rome.
Reddit.com is the only site I frequent more often than Facebook. It is my chief source for news and entertainment both. Reddit itself uses a reputational-based currency ("upvotes") to "reward" contributions of interesting and informative material and commentary. Anyway, a few months back, someone asked the Reddit community (which numbers in the millions, and includes people from every conceivable profession and walk of life), "could a single regiment of the U.S. Marines take out the Roman Empire?" An anonymous user was intrigued by this question, and threw together a piece of flash fiction. Fellow Redditors were so impressed they demanded a fleshing out. And now that anonymous contributor has himself a movie deal.

That's reputational currency morphing into actual dollars. Let's go one step further and leave dollars out of the equation entirely.

Such a system is only possible in a fully integrated world where everyone's actions are at the very least traceable...better yet, instantly visible. That may sound ridiculous, but in fact we're not near as far away from such as system as you might like to believe. The average person in Britain passes over three hundred cameras in the course of his or her daily routine, and those are just cameras placed by the state. Imagine how many cellphone cameras there are. Better yet, imagine a few iterations of Moore's Law down the line, when effectively unlimited processing power is essentially free. Today's blogs become true lifelogs. Big Brother is not some faceless governmental entity: he's...everyone. All of us are under surveillance; all of us are doing the surveilling.
You could actually eliminate money. You could be credited for your good deeds...and debited for your bad ones. A full scoping out of such an economy is well beyond the scope of this Breadbin...mostly because it's up to us how it's shaped, and what constitutes good or evil deeds, and what level of remuneration is applicable for each. That could well be decided by group up-vote or down-vote. Certain crimes like rape or murder would have a set negative value. (The way I envision this is that anyone would be born with, say, a thousand credits; a crime like murder would automatically net you, say, ten thousand negative credits, and anyone with a negative reputational value would be sent to prison.
You'd still need a court system to present an alleged criminal's side of the story, but evidence itself would rarely be in dispute.

All this from sharing music, Ken? Well, yes. The creators of music would also be paid in reputational credits. You could even scale this such that certain trustworthy individuals, themselves with a high credit standing, could award more credits with a kind word (though I'd be leery of allowing any one person too much negative capability). You could gain reputational credits for producing any sort of highly regarded art; heck, even menial jobs could pay in credits for a good job, and debit a poor one. Cory Doctorow, in his novel Down And Out In The Magic Kingdom, described his reputational currency ("Whuffie") like this:

"Whuffie recaptured the true essence of money: in the old days, if you were broke but respected, you wouldn't starve; contrariwise, if you were rich and hated, no sum could buy you security and peace. By measuring the thing that money really represented — your personal capital with your friends and neighbors — you more accurately gauged your success."

We're still several paradigm shifts from this being a desirable system to the majority of people. As usual, I find myself out ahead of the curve. I believe reputational currency is one possible solution to the disparity of wealth behind the Occupy protests. In my imagined world, there would still be rich people--probably many more rich people, actually. The difference is, in my world, all of them would have earned it...and if they were to use their riches for ill, they'd lose them in a hurry.

Movember...

2011-11-02T17:57:00.000-04:00

You'd never know it from the weather outside--it's 17 and sunny right now and this could pass for a cool day in August--but we've hit November. This is the month for diseases of all sorts: it's Pancreatic Cancer Awareness Month; COPD Awareness Month, Alzheimer's Disease Awareness Month; American Diabetes Month (I guess Canadian Diabetes Month is December); Crohn's and Ulcerative Colitis Awareness Month; and Lung Cancer Awareness Month.

Are you aware of all these diseases? Good, your work is done for another month.

Seriously, it's always bothered me when days, weeks, or entire months are set aside to promote some vague "awareness". It's International Drum Month, too: does that mean drums are verboten at any other time of the year?
Take Remembrance Day, the 11th of this month, by the way. It's not that I have a problem with Remembrance Day. On the contrary. I just wonder why it's only one day a year. Shouldn't we keep the spirit of Remembrance Day year-round?

The same goes for Mother's Day, or Canada Day, or National Piss-Shiver Awareness Week, or any other pseudo-occasion you can dream up. Valentine's Day? A pointless popularity contest in school (can you tell how popular I wasn't?) and it's not much better in adulthood. Really, does it have to be Valentine's Day for me to acknowledge how much I love my wife? I do it every day.

Christmas? For Christians, it certainly shouldn't be the only day of the year they think about Christ. For the rest of us, sure, the occasion is nice if you don't let it get the better of you, but again, maybe we should give gifts to people "just because".

Back to November: it's also National Novel Writing Month (because any novel worth publishing is written in thirty days!); National Pomegranate Month (whatever); and National American Heritage Month. Feel free to ignore your American heritage at any other time.

And oh, yeah, it's Movember.

In case you've been living under a beard, Movember is a portmanteau of "mousrache" and "November", The idea here is that men, and particularly hirsute women, I guess, are supposed to shave their moustaches off at the first of the month and let them grow until December. This is supposed to somehow promote awareness of prostate cancer, by some mechanism I utterly fail to grasp. I mean, at the very least, shouldn't it be your ass-hair you don't shave this month?

And get this: you're supposed to seek out sponsorship and raise funds. I can just see it now. "Hello, I'm Ken from down the road and I'm raising funds to combat prostate cancer. See, here's the deal. You give me money, and I don't shave." Cue the slamming of the door.

By the bye, I shaved last night. Not because it was the first of November...because I dislike chewing on my moustache.

Merry Christmas?

2011-11-01T19:36:00.001-04:00

The Pillsbury Snowmen arrived last night. The rest of the Christmas loot arrives this evening. We're to be fully Yuletided by Thursday.

Bah humbug.

If I ran the world, it would be illegal to so much as mention Christmas until December the first. There is no need, no need whatsoever, for stores to tout their holiday sales before there's even a reasonable chance of snow on the ground. And by the way, can we not at least wait for Remembrance Day? I know soldiers died to defend democracy, but somehow I don't think they envisioned a rampant consumer orgy, do you?

Maybe we could wait until American Thanksgiving. They do. Then again, they have "Black Friday", which is impossible to explain from any sane retail perspective. Why offer your best deals at the very beginning of the season and allow all your customers to buy up your store at a loss?
Things are different up here where Santa lives. (Don't believe Santa's Canadian? He has his own postal code: H0H 0H0.) Our stores don't tend to put anything on sale just because it's Christmas. Oh, they say everything's on sale...just like they do in April or September.
Now Boxing Day, on the other hand...after Christmas, when you've got leftover inventory that's gotta go....
That's how it used to be. I know a a few people who celebrate Christmas five or fifteen days late, just to take advantage of all the blowout sales. Those sales still exist, but I'm seeing more and more retailers up here adopting the American model: big "Black Friday" sales. Never American big, mind you. Our prices make me ashamed to be Canadian, some days.
(Aside: I lit into somebody on a CBC news forum for saying "what with bread at $4 a loaf, no wonder people are poor." Four bucks a loaf? Where the hell are you shopping? Was I put in my place but good. Apparently in many places outside Ontario, four bucks a loaf is normal now. Yike. I thought $2.50 was ridiculous.)

I've actually seen Boxing Day sales extended almost into February. I don't believe the Christmas season should last three months, do you?

Random Hallowe'en Musings

2011-10-31T18:32:00.000-04:00

I've never seen a ghost.
I've felt one, or at least the cold spot that is commonly linked to ghostly activity. That happened a quarter century ago, and you can be forgiven for thinking I imagined it; I can only assert that I didn't, and that the
sensation of sweat freezing on you in midsummer is a helluva persuader. It scared the crap out of me, I don't mind admitting.

If you haven't guessed, I believe in ghosts. I believe in ghosts on the grounds that there have been entirely too many sightings of ghostly phenomena for me not to. Even if 99.99% of these sightings are fraudulent, that still leaves a goodish number of odd events for which "ghosts" are as good an explanation as any.

I've read a great number of accounts of 'true' hauntings over the years, and one of the common denominators in most of these stories is a specific sort of death. Heart failure is unlikely to lead to a haunting, whereas if someone dies of a broken heart...that's another story. And if death is violent, expect a spectre...at least, according to the tales.
This makes a kind of sense, within its own logical framework. If you can accept the idea of psychic energy--and perhaps you'd accept it more readily if I call it electrical impulses--you'd probably grant that sudden, violent death should leave some sort of trace. And further accepting that human will may transcend human life--which is, granted, a difficult proposition for those who think that this life is all there is to existence--it seems plausible that one could, perhaps, leave something of oneself behind.

Ghosts, if they exist, are supposed to be frightening. That cold spot aside, I can't think why. If an apparition flits into my bedroom tonight, I think I'd be more curious than scared. And if the traditional definition of ghosts is the true one, viz. a soul that has not fully 'passed on'...well, I don't know about you, but I'd find that more sad than anything.

-----

The scariest book I have ever read is undoubtedly The Shining, by Stephen King. If your only exposure to this masterwork is Kubrick's adaptation, do yourself a favour and read the novel. Kubrick's version was gutwateringly scary in spots, but he missed the emotional core of the story entirely. You'd never know it from Nicholson's portrayal, but Jack Torrance loved both his wife and his son dearly.

I would love to be a hotel caretaker for a winter. I'm not prone to the shack-wackies...even if my Internet connection went down, I'd have any number of books to escape into. But I'd bloody well hope I was as much of a psychic zero as I seem to be. I do have a fairly vivid imagination, and I'd hate to imaginate myself right into the Twilight Zone. I don't believe myself to be capable of murder under all but the most extreme conditions...but that's not a statement I'd care to test.

-----

I just read another Stephen King story, "1922", from the collection Full Dark, No Stars. I don't know of any other author who can so effortlessly make the horrific seem normal and the normal seem horrific.
This novella concerns one Wilfrid Leland James, a farmer with deep ties to his land. His wife, Arlette, intends to sell off the land she inherited and use the proceeds to open a shop in the city; Wilfrid enlists their teenage son Henry to put a stop to those plans...and to Arlette. (It's disturbing how inevitable King makes murder out to be, almost as if distaste at your wife's habitual "pert little head-toss" is just one more excuse to slit her throat.
James--and his son--manage to get away with the murder: the law pokes around, but only halfheartedly, buying their fiction that Arlette ran off. (At one point, the sheriff says something to the effect that if she's found, he'll drag her back by the hair to face her husband's justice. It sure was a different world in 1922.
So yes, they commit the perfect crime...except their victim won't stay dead. Madness ensues, and you'll have to read the story to see how it turns out. Suffice it to say I had an awful nightmare last night concerning rats.

-----

I've actually had more than my share of nightmares recently, some of them so terrible that I scrub all vestiges of them out of my head within seconds of waking up. Nightmares are strange, or at least mine are. Unlike my wife's, my dreams are almost always firmly rooted in prosaic life. They could happen, ergo, when I wake, I often think they did. I came downstairs once crying over a dead cat only to find her alive and well and twining 'tween my legs.

Happy Hallowe'en to one and all.

The B's Knees

2011-10-28T17:59:00.002-04:00

I'm about as flexible as your average iron bar. Ask me to touch my toes, and I'll tell you to hand me a chainsaw. In all honesty, I can't reach much below my knees without cheating.
This is, as I've said before, one complication from my premature birth. I have been advised--by an actual doctor, with an actual medical degree--that while flexibility exercises would help me, they could only do so much. (Which I couldn't help but hear as why bother. Stretching is bloody well painful.)

My appalling lack of flexibility has had one, arguably, positive consequence: my knees are invincible.

I've been kneeling since at least kindergarten. Other children would sit cross-legged for story time; little Kenny would look as if he was deep in prayer. I think that was my first clue I was not like other children...they sat cross-legged so comfortably, and every time I tried to mimic them I'd want to scream.

A career stocking shelves has only toughened my knees further. Supremely athletic people I know stare at me in total awe as I slam down to my knees and proceed to knee-walk across the concrete. I can still hear Craig...his voice has been echoing in my head for a year now. "G-baby*," he said, "doesn't that hurt?
"Doesn't what hurt?"
"If I tried to do what you just did, my knee would fall off."
"Didn't feel it."
"Wow".

*in case you're wondering, "G-baby" derives from "Kenny G." At first I loathed the nickname...after a time I grew to accept it, then like it.

Anyway, there are massive calluses on both my knees. Or at least there were.

Last weekend we had an inventory, my first in my new store. To my relief, the procedures are exactly the same here as they were there. In fact, I was able to show them a shortcut I had developed three inventories ago. So that was okay.
On the other hand, it was still an inventory, and inventories suck. An inventory is the only time you'll find someone in the walk-in freezer for more than a minute or two. In fact, I have found over the years that no matter how much or how little stock I've got on hand, it takes between four and five hours to count the freezer, compared to never more than 90 minutes to count a dairy cooler.
The same holds true in this new location.

I actually thought this was going to be a walk in the park, before I started. For reasons I'd rather not get into, I have quite a lot of stock on hand, but relatively few skus. That's a recipe for an easy count. Except I had forgotten about all the part-cases.
I used to have one ironclad rule in dairy and frozen: if a full case won't fit on the shelf, don't stock any of it. Transgressors got the Death Glare for a first offense, There was never a second.

Here, people have no choice but to stock half, third and quarter cases. This store is very small, and yet has almost as many products...so each item's only got one facing on the shelf, for the most part, which in turn means whole cases almost never fit up.

Part cases are a bitch to count.

Worse, the layout of this freezer is such that there is a lot of stock on the bottom shelves, which are quite deep. So I was down on my knees on a concrete floor for several minutes at a time. A COLD concrete floor. In fact, there are shards of ice in places.

Long story short, I got some kind of frostbite on both knees, which morphed into blisters, which popped...taking my calluses with them. My knees are now raw and EXTREMELY sensitive.

Eva tells me eventually those calluses will grow back, but it;s going to "hurt like hell" in the meantime. She's right about that last part, at least.

Early Morning Thoughts

2011-10-22T04:01:00.001-04:00

My apologies for the lack of so much as a crumb in the Breadbin over the past twelve days. There has not been very much of late I can, or want to, write about. Out in the wider world, I sense we're in a period of calm before the fit hits the shan in earnest: I won't speculate just when the feces will commence to spattering, but I don't believe the relative levelheadedness of the Occupy movement will last much longer. Nor, for that matter, do I think that the jitterbugging stock markets (two hundred points down one day, a hundred and sixty up the next) presages anything worth contemplating. I hope I'm wrong on both counts, and concede my predictive track record suggests I probably am--but if so, I'm afraid I have more questions than answers. At what point, pray tell, does the money being frantically scribbled on to the collective balance sheets of several European nations actually disappear from whatever balance sheet whence it came? And what happens when people get to noticing it's gone?

Andrew Coyne has a terrific article in this week's Macleans--not yet available electronically, unfortunately, or you could bet I'd link it up--to the effect that the Occupy Wall Street folks have it all wrong: the rich aren't the problem. He cites some stats to show that while the income gap between rich and poor is indeed widening, it's really only the richest of the uber-rich responsible. The mere elite, let alone the well-to-do, are not suffering, by any means, but neither are they gaining at the expense of anyone else, Moreover, where once and not long ago the typical billionaire got richer by means of capital, the bulk of executive compensation nowadays turns out to be salary. And why should we care, asks Coyne, if a few people are obscenely rich? If shareholders of a private company vote to pay their CEO some lavish sum out of their own pockets, how is that a crime?

Just when you think Coyne is going to conclude his essay with an appeal to come join him in Galt's Gulch, he shocks you with the following:

",,,while there's little we can do about inequality at the top, there's quite a lot we can do about inequality at the bottom: mostly by giving the poor more money."

I must confess I did a spit-take, reading that. Coyne is not known for being a raving socialist, and most conservatives in my acquaintance positively grit their teeth at the notion of "giving" poor people anything. Yet there is much merit in the idea of a legislated minimum standard of living. Coyne again:

"The National Council of Welfare has just released a report estimating the cost of lifting every Canadian out of poverty in 2007 at $12 billion...about what you'd get from another two percentage points on the HST. Alas, that calls upon us to show compassion, rather than resentment; to give, rather than to take. Which may explain why there has been so much talk about the rich this past week, and so little talk about the poor."

Wow...

It's twenty to four in the morning, and I find at this point I don't have anything more coherent to say than "wow". So I'll vacate the premises, with a note that I won't likely return until Tuesday evening earliest. Work has been rather demanding of late. I've no doubt I made the right decision changing employers, but the vicissitudes of retail remain the same.

--------------

I'll leave you with some music I've just discovered. About two months ago, I first learned of a group called Dream Theater and have listened to little else since. I've just found out about an instrumental offshoot called Liquid Tension Experiment, and have experienced wave after wave of musical frisson listening to their soundscapes and jams. Feel the love:

Occupying Forces

2011-10-10T18:56:00.003-04:00

I found this floating around the Net and grabbed it:

click to embiggen

The people behind this poster think they get it. They think that the people in this poster are clueless and naive and every bit as greedy as the Wall Street banksters are made out to be. After all, the corporations these rabble-rousers are rabbling and rousing against furnish every least comfort they've ever known.

For example, many of those folks in that poster own some sort of iDevice, developed in large part by the late Steve Jobs. Jobs was a one-percenter: his net worth at his death was something on the order of $8.7 billion. Do the protesters hate Jobs and Apple? Likely not. They gleefully use their Apple product without a thought as to the effort and money that went into it. They don't hate Apple: supposedly, they hate "corporations". Well, Apple is a corporation. Not just that, it's the richest corporation on the planet.

The people behind this poster do not get it. The people in this poster do: contrary to popular misconception, they're not protesting against "corporations". The movement is called "Occupy Wall Street", not "Occupy Cupertino and Redmond".

Corporations contribute something tangible to the world. Some of them do so by nefarious means--Monsanto immediately springs to mind--but even Monsanto has invented the occasional useful product in its relentless pursuit of profit at all costs.
The American economy used to be based entirely on this sort of thing. It was run by makers: people who harvested or manufactured or otherwise produced items of worth, which were then sold to their neighbours; gradually, the definition of 'neighbour' expanded until it included first countrymen, then other citizens of the planet. Some of these makers got a ways beyond themselves and were often characterized as 'takers': the great 'robber barons', some of whose names are still around today.
Of course, today, America's economy is somewhat...different. It's the most consumerist, arguably the most materialistic, society on earth, but it mostly consumes material they had no hand in making. Many corporations have abandoned the U.S. in whole or in part, choosing instead to do business somewhere without all those pesky environmental regulations and even peskier unions demanding "exorbitant" wages for workers--in other words, the kinds of wages that workers used to have in the 1950s and 60s: a time when one factory income was sufficient to feed, clothe and house a family of four or five.

"Every time history repeats itself," says Ronald Wright, "the price goes up." Last year, the richest one percent of households took a larger percentage of total income than at any time since 1928.

And what have they done to earn such largesse?

Well, some of them have done great works, and more than a few have maintained some kind of social conscience. Bill Gates has given away unimaginable sums of money and created charitable foundations whose contribution to the world might eventually rival the personal computer's.

Others, however, have managed banks and hedge funds, devising ever-more ingenious methods to play chess with ordinary people as pieces. It got to the point in the United States where vast numbers of people had no idea who ultimately owned their mortgage...those debt obligations had been sliced, diced, and tranched so many times as to render them hopelessly toxic. Those Wall Street banksters bent countless securities regulations until they broke, and then simply re-arranged the pieces until they had an environment more to their liking. When found out--the 2008 financial crisis could have been dubbed The Great Finding-Out--they simply shrugged their shoulders as if to say what choice did we have? ...and then demanded that the U.S. government bail them out. And this was accepted. Not one person has served so much as a day in jail for the countless lives that have been ruined.

THIS is what Occupy Wall Street is about. The primary focus of anger is not at corporations or even, necessarily, their overly-compensated CEOs. It's rather directed at the people who have gained for themselves huge amounts of money while doing nothing of value. You can call these people Takers or you can call them Fakers, but they are not Makers, except in their own minds.

Only a few people are truly against corporations; most people realize those corporations are where all the jobs come from. Most of the protesters recognize that the system is out of balance: that the government is hopelessly in thrall to corporations that no longer have the interests of ordinary Americans in mind. Not anti-corporation: anti-corporatist. There's a big difference.

Bachin' It

2011-10-09T16:39:00.001-04:00

I'm supposed to be on holidays right now. Our anniversary is Friday, and longtime readers know it's a tradition chez Breadbin to bugger off right around now and do some mooning of the honey. Alas, my new job threw something of a monkey wrench into our plans.

I blame it on Ottawa. This is either the fourth or fifth time we've planned to go to Ottawa, only to have something come up, last minute or no, and scuttle things. Frankly, I've lost count. Also, hope that I'm ever going to see what I seem to remember is a beautiful city ever again.

Of course, this time it isn't that I need a new computer, or the Breadbin needs a new lid, or whatever else has cropped up (again, I'd rather not remember). This time it's good news, in that I have a new job, that does indeed pay more than I was making after eleven years at my old one, and that also (I found out today) pays a Sunday premium, not to mention paying me for every minute I work. That I am awed and amazed by this policy should give you some clue as to how many unpaid hours I logged and slogged at my old job.
I'm enjoying things. I'm enjoying being able--at least until the snow flies--to bike home for lunch each day. But I'm working at this time of year for the first time in a decade because my boss had his holidays booked already. He went to Boston to watch the Bruins raise their Cup banner, the lucky bugger. (I say that as a Leaf fanatic who honestly wonders if his team will ever get within sniffing distance of Lord Stanley in my lifetime. It'll probably happen the year I get to go to Ottawa.)

Long story short, Eva is on holidays and I am most emphatically not. I have something like five days off this month--though I do have many short days, either four or six hours.

So Eva has gone up to her parents' place and I've got the house to myself. It's nice to be able to sit here and blog without the television yammering in my ear, but honestly? That's the only nice thing, and it's really quite trivial.

I miss my wife.

The house feels wrong without her in it. Like it somehow sidestepped into a parallel, sadder, dimension. I sense it; you can just imagine how keenly the dogs sense it. Tomorrow evening, I will turn to our big galumph of a Tux and say "Mommy come Tux's house?" and his ears will shoot up, followed by his head, followed by the rest of his body as he throws himself into a frenzied Tux-dance that only he can do. Georgia will feed off his excitement and wag her back end so hard she assumes a U-shape. And Daddy? He'll wag his tail too. In joy...and in relief. Didn't burn the house down, didn't lock myself out, all pets accounted for, everything in order, whew.

Aside: doggie grammar. The smarter dogs know rudimentary grammar, I'm sure of it. Tux knows who his Mommy is, he knows "come", he knows what "Tux's house" is....but only if I say the phrase in order will he commence Tux-dancing. Likewise, Peach knows the difference between "Georgia-ball"--God, I'm afraid to even type it in case she can recognize the words--and "Daddy-ball", which is what I say to get her to stop loving the Georgia-ball so fiercely and let Daddy throw the bedrooled thing.

In the meantime, one more mostly sleepless night. The only reason I've gotten any sleep at all the last two nights is because I've "borrowed" Eva's soft blanket, the one we call the Bonnie View blanket since it's just like the one we shared on our honeymoon. She has claimed it as her own because it's soft--she has the most sensitive skin I have ever imagined, let alone seen--and because it's light, which normally does me no good at all...I'd sleep really well with a grand piano on top of me. But lately the weather has taken a U-turn back into August...and besides, Eva's blanket smells like Eva. If you find that too mushy, it's your problem, not mine.

Also I'm trying like hell to get over a cold, In typical male fashion I have whined my way upstairs and downstairs over the last three days, but the only way I can get any comfort is to translate my whines into Doggish...which I don't speak very well. I'm sure my wife is thankful this Thanksgiving that she didn't have to listen to me moaning and groaning every time I hack and sneeze. But I'm not. Waaaaah.

Mostly, though, I just miss my wife. Her mere presence has always been a comfort to me. Eleven years in, I still catch myself looking askance at her and marvelling, what the hell did I ever do to deserve this woman? And I still can't answer the question.

Come home safe, love. We miss you terribly.

Mind boggled

2011-10-04T18:35:00.000-04:00

There are many things I do not understand in this world. Some of my misunderstandings stem from a lack of experience (I think I'd have to be a woman to honestly "get" makeup). Others from a surfeit of empathy: why do so many people find pain funny?
But some things are actually beyond my ability to even conceive. The biggest one of these: so-called "angry passion".
It's a feature of many a TV show, from Everybody Loves Raymond (why the hell are Frank and Marie still together, since they hate each other's guts) to Married...With Children (ditto for Al and Peg Bundy). And I've often heard of life imitating art: the married couple that fights like cats and dogs, yet still claim to love each other.
Aside: this is one reason I watch very little television. I've learned to (mostly) keep quiet over the years, but I can't shut up the little niggling voice in my mind. Watching the aforementioned Everybody Loves Raymond, it says things like Hey, Ray! Debra! Here's a thought: LOCK YOUR F$(%ING DOOR! Or I'll be watching a couple in a movie screaming at each other, on the verge of physical assault--and sometimes past it--when all of a sudden they grab each other and start making out. Clothes get ripped off and that rrrrrrrip sound is very like the voice in my mind calling bullshit. What male screenwriter is responsible for this drivel? Hey, buddy, next time you're having a knock-em-down fight with the wifey, why not try to feel her up? Sure! After all, it's been a while since you've had a good kick in the nuts!

The other reason I watch next to no television is because of something I alluded to above: I do not find pain funny, and yet nearly every so-called comedy on TV is replete with it. Humiliation is the sine qua non of comedy, and it causes me no end of acute embarrassment, whether it's self-inflicted or not. I don't go out of my way trying to mortify people and I sure don't enjoy the feeling of being mortified; why should it be any different at a remove?

But no, I'm wrong: pain is funny, anger just naturally morphs into intercourse, and people who love each other, apparently, hate each other too. The weirdness slops over into the headlines: "Man shoots girlfriend" Uh, hello? One general characteristic of the set of people called "girlfriends" is that you explicitly don't try to murder them. Then again, I think anyone who even CONTEMPLATES killing someone is ipso facto mentally ill.

Perhaps if my brother had lived, I might understand this stuff a little better. After all, it seems like everybody and his brother must, at times, behave like a couple of psychos towards each other. I've only met two sets of siblings in my life who were each other's best friends. Both were, interestingly, identical twins. I've long believed twins share some kind of low-grade telepathic bond. From there, it isn't too much of a stretch to imagine that what hurts one, hurts the other.

Twinship aside, it's been explained to me over and over again that yes, I love my brother: it's why I can beat the almighty piss out of him, but nobody else better lay a hand on him! This goes in one ear and out the other...it makes no sense to me at all. What it reminds me of more than anything else is a territorial dog, a vicious one that loves its chew-toys. But a human being is not a dog, and his brother is not a chew-toy.

I'm no closer to understanding this phenomenon at 39 than I was at 9 or 19....

Quickblog: Difficult Choices

2011-10-03T19:13:00.002-04:00

This provincial election is very hard to forecast. We're three days away and it's too close to call. Either Dalton McGuinty will get in--again--or Tim Hudak will give something rarely seen: Conservative governments in Ottawa and Toronto at the same time. Either way, it'll almost certainly be a minority, with Andrea Horwath's NDP playing kingmaker.
And man it's hard to decide how I'm gonna vote.

I know who I'm not voting for, and that's Pinocchio Premier. His commercials sound all the right notes ("I'm not the most popular, but I'll do what's right")--which only reminds me of the last time, when I almost got suckered by the slick "I won't cut your taxes, but I won't raise them either". Of course, he immediately invoked the largest tax grab in Ontario history. Eva actually did vote for the liar, and regrets it to this day. Then again, I voted for Stephen Harper, once.

What do you do when you distrust a particular leader, but deeply respect and admire your local representative who just happens to be in the same party as that leader? I can hold my nose and vote for that local representative, or I can vote the way I want to and get an MPP I don't know at all, with very little relevant experience?

Decisions, decisions.

Re-re-re-re-re-release

2011-09-30T09:15:00.000-04:00

Is anyone else bothered by the re-release of The Lion King?

Apparently not that many people are, given that it is the top-grossing film of the month. It's a fair bet, though, that anything that doesn't bother many people is apt to bother me. And so...

Folks have been lambasting Hollywood for a lack of creativity forever, it seems. For all I know, my great-great grandparents were disgusted with the derivative plots of silent movies. But surely this marks a new low.

I suppose I should be grateful that Disney didn't remake its animated classic as per usual Hollywood practice. "Hey, I know! Let's do a remake of Little Women! It's only been done, what, seventeen times before!" Remakes are just odious. Either they take a crappy movie and inject new crap into it, or (at least as often), take a good movie and ruin it. There was, I would argue, no need to remake Psycho. The seminal thriller stands as one of the best examples of its genre...leave it alone.

But simply re-releasing the EXACT SAME movie (albeit this time gimmicked up with 3-D!) is somehow worse. And the fact it has done so well at the box office bodes ill for the future of film as far as I'm concerned. It's depressing as hell to imagine, but I can vividly picture the marquee ten years hence. Just take all the top-grossing movies of 2011 and release them on a 2021 audience. Then maybe do it again in 2026, on the grounds that the world is speeding up and ten years is too long to wait.

By the way, colour me unimpressed with 3-D. Avatar did it well: the screen was a window. The effects elevated what in and of itself was--let's be honest--a painfully derivative movie into something otherworldly. You tend to forget you're watching Pocahontas or Dances With Wolves in space when the screen environment is so immersive.
Pretty much every other movie since--with the possible exception of Cave of Forgotten Dreams--has treated 3D exactly the same way it was done in the fifties: ooga-booga-look-at-me-I-can-jump-out-of-the-screen! Great fun if you're a child, apt to give you a headache if you're not. And that's to say nothing of the glasses.

But The Lion King, now...I'm as flummoxed by this as I was by the sudden resurgence of Thriller to the top of the charts when Michael Jackson died. Surely everyone who wanted to own Thriller already did: it's only the top selling album of all time. Likewise The Lion King...except it's only sitting at at number 26on the list of the highest-grossing films in history. Give it another seven or eight re-releases, I guess. Then again, everything around it will probably be re-released as well. Harry Potter, films one through eight, re-released over an eight-month period. If this be the future of Hollywood, shoot me now. Then release me...and re-release me...and re-release me...

Meanwhile, in the Real World...

2011-09-24T17:59:00.000-04:00

Something's been bothering me for a while, a low-level, niggling bother that's hard to articulate. It has to do with youth, generally speaking, the Internet, and be-all end-all-ism.

In my experience, if you ask a yowwen what's most important in this or any election campaign, odds are pretty good you'll hear something to do with the Internet, either directly (UBB, throttling, caps, monitoring) or indirectly (digital rights management and copyright reform).

Let me get this right out front: I love the Internet. Like most people half my age, I am completely addicted to the endless information flow. Possibly because I've never been a social butterfly, I find the need for perpetual connection disquieting: solitude, something I cherish, tends to actually frighten the younger set. (Try confiscating a cell phone and watch the reaction: it's as if you amputated something.)
But information? When every last question ever you've had about life, the universe and everything can be answered in seconds with a trip through the Google-portal? That be powerful mojo, friend.

But is it really that important?

Perhaps it's creeping senility (I am 39, after all), but I strongly believe in what has charmingly been dubbed "meatspace"--the real world. Anything I see on a screen is suspect, be that screen a television, a tablet, my desktop computer or, especially, my phone. At its best, a screen is tremendously limiting. At its worst, it reflects one's prejudice while distorting everything else.

Facebook is a good example. I'm on Facebook at least three times a day, often more. If tomorrow the Internet were to be suddenly restricted to one suite of sites and I could choose what they were, it'd be a tough call between Reddit and Facebook; I suspect Facebook would win out.
Something is lacking on Facebook, of necessity, though. So-called "social" media is antisocial in the extreme: Canada, with a higher market cap on Facebook than any other country on the planet, has become a nation of people who have willingly entered into solitary confinement, typing by screen-glow.

Call me naive, call me old-fashioned, but Facebook--as much as I enjoy it--is simply no substitute for real face-to-face time.
People's Walls are crafted, usually subconsciously but often very intentionally, to reflect not their true selves, but an idealized version thereof. This is no different, of course, from how many people behave in "real life", but authenticity is much easier to assess off-screen.
Texting, to me, is infinitely worse. You'd think I would welcome a form of communication that relies on the written word, beng as I fancy myself a wordsmith. I don't. I loathe texting almost as much as I loathe cigarettes. It pithifies human experience into indigestible sound bites: Shakespeare may have called brevity the soul of wit, but he didn't have a BlackBerry. Technology renders brevity soulless.
More alarming, there is some unknown power inherent in text messaging that causes otherwise sane individuals to do things like this:

The number of people I have seen with my own eyes, texting and utterly oblivious to their surroundings, beggars belief. Given that most people obstinately refuse to read words on signs, I can't imagine what it is about words on a two inch screen that so many find captivating.

Anyway, pardon the digression. I said all that to say this: there are important things going on out there in the real world, things that can't be solved by "liking' something on Facebook or "+1-ing" it on Google+. Things that, in point of fact, have nothing to do with the Internet at all.

I know, I know, it's hard to believe there are things that have nothing to do with the Internet, let alone important things. But trust me, there are.

Take the economy, for instance. It's a shambles, whatever the current narrative out of political capitals might have us believe. And it's likely to get a whole lot worse before it gets better. I say that not out of any doomer inclination (though I have one), but simply because if you listen to those competing narratives, it's quickly apparent that people can't even agree on what caused the problem, let alone what can be done to fix it (if anything). One camp believes that government is the problem, one that it's the solution. One group thinks too much socialism killed the economy, another group is certain that the lack of socialism is the problem. When consensus is impossible, so is concerted action.

Outside of technothrillers like Daniel Suarez' Daemon and Freedom(TM)--which I can only hope somehow translate into reality--it's hard to imagine how our increasing dependence on the Internet will have any effect on the economy whatsoever. I suppose, as the vast majority of us continue to get poorer while a very few get considerably richer, the urge to pay nothing whenever possible will only grow stronger, and so piracy and all its justifications aren't going away any time soon. People will continue to agitate for capless Internet. Nothing anyone has said to me so far has convinced me that you can burn through 250GB in a month legally, but whatever.
As much as I'm against DRM (digital rights management), I don't find it a compelling issue against the backdrop of an economy in ruins. Sure, it'd be nice if you were allowed to use your legally-acquired media in whatever way you please. But is your music or film collection really more important to you than your job? Or the environment we all share, which isn't in much better shape than the economy, last I looked?

If so, your priorities are seriously screwed up, in my view. But you're probably young, and so you'll learn. I hope

It's a Plant, Damnit!

2011-09-21T19:46:00.001-04:00

So we read that the Harper government is reintroducing its omnibus crime bill, reportedly exactly as it existed back when he had a minority government and there was no hope in hell of it passing.

And now it will--pass, that is--simply because it can. Harper has his majority, and he can now do as he pleases.
To be fair, he was candid enough even before the election to broadcast his intentions. He said he would build new prisons, and lots of them. When people retorted that the crime rate in Canada was falling, and had been for years, Harper exhibited his usual disdain for statistics (read: reality). Speaking for the government, Stockwell Day invoked the chilly Orwellian spectre of "unreported crimes". It was unclear what exactly was meant. But now we are getting a look.

Amidst all the feel-good measures that seek to impose tougher sentences for a variety of offences (as if any good can come of sending criminals to criminal factories), we have this gem: According to Harper, somebody growing pot in a rental unit deserves a longer sentence than a child rapist.

A man who coerces a child into watching pornography. or who exposes himself to children, would receive a mandatory minimum sentence of ninety days in prison. Whereas somebody growing six plants in their house would be on the hook for twice that: 180 days.

I'd like Harper to explain why he feels potheads are so much worse than pedophiles. I'd like to hear that explanation given to the entire country.

I've tried pot. Once. It's something I've written about a few times and I felt I really should have some kind of personal experience to draw on were I to write about it again. I've long thought of marijuana as alcohol you smoke, or eat. That's a fair characterization, in my (limited) experience, but there's more to pot than its trippy effect.
First off, pot is NOT addictive (whatever Harper might believe). The state it produces may be addictive to some people, but the same can be said for alcohol and even chocolate. Having tried pot, I have not the least desire to ever try it again. According to Harper, I should be looking to score some hash or coke--and that's beyond preposterous.
You want to know what it did? I found it almost impossible to put a sentence together. Time folded back on itself. All my thoughts were simultaneously profound and ludicrous. I found everything funny, but I couldn't say why, and that scared me.
And the searing pain in my knee that I've been living with for three months now? Utterly and completely gone.
I went to bed an hour and a half into my "experience" because, quite frankly, I found it too much of an effort to devote attention to seeing, hearing AND thinking: I figured if I got into the dark and quiet, I could cope a little better. And I did. I went to sleep, woke up six hours later free of all effects, and I haven't looked back since.

So that's what I have to say about pot. Here's what Harper had to say. Be warned: it's so long-winded it's almost like he's stoned. I'll try to interject at points just to put some sobriety into the discussion.

...I have to say young children, I guess they’re now…Ben and Rachel are now getting pretty close to 14 and 11, but maybe they’re not that young, but they are at the age where, you know, they will increasingly come into contact with drug use and I guess as a parent, you know, this is the last thing I want to see for my kids or anyone else’s children.

Well, good for you. There are many things I wouldn't want my children to get into. Some of them are even legal. That's why you talk to your kids, communicate with them, and guide them. I'm reminded here of how my stepfather repeatedly said to me (long before I was of legal drinking age) that if I ever wanted to get drunk, he'd much rather see me do it at home, where he could keep an eye on me.

Besides, Harper's talking about children here. What about adults? Shouldn't a true conservative be against legislating non-criminal behaviour? Oh, yeah, that's right, drugs are illegal because they're bad.

You know, I understand that people defend the use of drugs, but that said, I don’t think…I think I’ve been very fortunate to live a drug-free life, and I don’t meet many people who’ve led a drug-free life who regret it. Met a lot of people who haven’t, who’ve regretted it . So this is something that we want to encourage obviously for our children, for everybody’s children.

My mom, a cigarette smoker, never encouraged me to smoke. Smoking cigarettes is legal. In a perfect world, I wish they weren't...but people would just grow their own tobacco and roll their own ~~joints~~ smokes.

Now, I also want people to understand what we’re really talking about here when we’re talking about the drug trade. You know, when people say focus on violent crime instead of drugs, and yeah, you know, there’s lots of crimes a lot worse than, you know, casual use of marijuana. But when people are buying from the drug trade, they are not buying from their neighbour.

Interesting. I know of at least fifteen people who could get me some pot if I asked for it. All of them are somebody's neighbours.

They are buying from international cartels that are involved in unimaginable violence and intimidation and social disaster and catastrophe all across the world.

While it's true you can grow pot damn near anywhere, much of Canada's is quite local. I'd wager a whole hell of a lot that we get much more pot from British Columbia...

All across the world. You know, and I just wish people would understand that, and not just on drugs. Even when people buy, you know, an illegal carton of cigarettes and they avoid tax, that they really understand the kind of criminal networks that they are supporting, and the damage they do.

So legalize it, and then there'd be no need for criminal involvement!

Now, you know, I know some people say if you just legalized it, you know, you’d get the money and all would be well (huh?). But I think that rests on the assumption that somehow drugs are bad because they’re illegal. The reason drugs…it’s not that. The reason drugs are illegal is because they are bad.

Says who? You? Cigarettes are bad: just ask any doctor. Why are they legal?
Aspirin's a drug. Is aspirin bad? Because I'll tell you, pot is one hell of a lot better than aspirin at killing pain.

And even if these things were legalized, I can predict with a lot of confidence that these would never be respectable businesses run by respectable people.

Oh, so the LCBO isn't run by respectable people? What about all those stores that sell cigarettes? Are they respectable businesses?

Because the very nature of the dependency they create, the damage they create, the social upheaval and catastrophe they create, particularly in third world countries…I mean, you look now, you look at Latin America, some of the countries to the south of us, and the damage the drug trade is doing, not just to people’s lives as drug users.

Since when do we import pot from South America? And you know something? As to the "dependency", the "damage", the "social upheaval and catastrophe", I could make every point a lot more forcefully about alcohol. Ask any of the many victims of drunk driving. Ask an alcoholic's family members about the "social upheaval". But alcohol is 100% legal to those of legal age.

Look at the violence it’s creating in neighbourhoods, the destruction of social systems. of families,

--any pot-related violence is almost certain a result of prohibition. You know, kind of like Al Capone.

of governmental institutions, the corruption of police forces, I mean, these are terrible, terrible organizations, and while I know people, you know, have different views, I must admit myself sometimes I’m frustrated by how little impact governments have been able to have on the drug trade internationally.

Sometimes I marvel that Harper has a degree in economics. This is called "supply and demand", and it's Eco 101.

But we should not fool ourselves into thinking that if we somehow stopped trying to deal with it, it would suddenly turn into a nice, wholesome industry.

The way alcohol has.

It will never be that.

Or..isn't the alcohol industry wholesome? I'm confused.

And I think we all need to understand that, and we all need to make sure our kids understand, not just that our kids…hopefully not just understand the damage drugs can do to them, but they understand as well the wider social disaster they are contributing to if they, through use of their money, fund organizations that produce and deliver illicit narcotics.

It's a plant, Steve. It makes people feel good. It also kills pain, including pain that many high-powered narcotics won't touch. Yet you deem it worse than the rape of children. I think you owe Canadians an explanation. A real one, this time.

I'm waiting.

I held it together today...

2011-09-16T19:55:00.001-04:00

...but it was a near thing. A very near thing.
I'll be honest: there was a great deal of puppy-poking done today. I did do some work. For the first time since the FreshCo flip, I went out to do a cart run...that was only fitting, since I spent much of the first three years I worked there interrupting my routine every 90 minutes to do a cart run.
I worked on two orders--Chapman's and Liberte--which again was rather fitting since I can take some credit for the former's appearance in our store and a great deal of the credit for the latter's. Suffice it to say I didn't take "no" for an answer: I got the feeling they eventually decided to list a limited selection just to shut me up. It only made me redouble my efforts. Liberte should really be paying me some kind of stipend, is my view.

But not much work got done today. There were too many hugs, a lovely (and delicious!) cake from Cindy, a puck signed by Wendel Clark from Justin, and cards from Greg and the store at large. Oh, yeah, and Craig threw a fish at me. Thanks, man.
Heck, I even got lunch from the boss's wife. Most unexpected.

I know I've made the right decision, but that doesn't mean it was an easy decision to make.

Love you, guys and gals.

Ken

End of one era, beginning of another

2011-09-16T06:04:00.002-04:00

This will be a very difficult and delicate blog entry to write. And I’m sure it will go long. Over ten years long, in fact.

That’s how long I’ve worked at Price Chopper/FreshCo. It’s hard to leave a place after over a decade: no matter how strong the force pulling you away may be--and even if there are forces pushing you out--there is resistance. Ten plus years of blood, sweat and tears can push all it wants, but an equal measure of laughter and love has a pull all its own.

The sweat goes without saying. Many verging on most days at FreshCo, a lunch break is flatly impossible and any bathroom break I dare to take is like as not interrupted mid-stream with a page: “Ken to receiving...” Receive this! Can’t a man pee in peace?

I can’t begin to guess how many hours of my own time I have put into this job, long after it stopped being rewarded or indeed noticed. It seems stupid, I’m sure, but when others around you are doing the same thing--the boss works at least sixty hours a week and our produce manager hasn’t ever worked an eight hour shift to my knowledge--it also seems obligatory. So I punch a clock every day, and every day my punches are “adjusted”. This never used to bother me in the slightest, but then it started being taken for granted...

The blood can’t really be explained most of the time. On several occasions I came home bleeding. Eva would say “Ken, what did you do to your arm?...your OTHER arm!” and I’d look at her with all the intelligence of a shopping cart. Cuts and scrapes are just part of the job, and until I discovered gloves I could actually use--ten years in, and thanks, Karri-- they were a frequent partk of the job. Digging things out of cardboard boxes can earn you the grandpappy of all paper cuts.

And the tears...there’ve been a few of them. The day Larry Dobbs, the best boss I’ve ever had, was transferred. The funeral for Rick Kent, my Parmalat rep for many years. The time I got my finger caught in the metal of an egg slat right out on the sales floor. (It’s the ‘ck’ in the F word that blunts pain, did you know that? I couldn’t complete the epithet the way I wanted to, there being customers in the store and tender ears throughout the city...so I tried to content myself with a good hearty rendition of "FAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAA!!!" Didn't help much. The tears came anyway.

The tears will come today, I'm sure. Today is my last shift.

But there has been a great deal of laughter in that job, too. Most of it at my expense, of course, but that’s okay...

--The tuna incident

--the time Jeff sidearmed a brick of cheese directly at my groin. “Here, Ken, catch”, he said, and I went down as if poleaxed

--watching in horror as about ten galllons of cream fell in slow motion to form a lake that took two hours to vacuum up. At times like that, you either laugh, cry, or scream

--endless jokes told and retold in the back room out of customer earshot, almost every one of which can’t possibly be printed in this family blog

--The time I accidentally paged “mushrooms to receiving”. Or the time I very much intentionally sung, to the tune of Ride of the Valkyries, “Jeff to receiving, Jeff to receiving, Jeff to receiving, the grocery truck’s here!”

--Trying to unplug a block in my dairy cooler drain. I guess “block” is kind of an understatement: I had my arm up to the shoulder in congealed milk with the exact consistency of cottage cheese

There are so many memories. How can I have accumulated three lifetimes’ worth in ten years?

--my first shift, just before we opened, Mark got on the P.A. and said “Scud missiles, the non-nuclear missiles. Surprise your friends, amuse your enemies, start your party off with a BANG!!!”...and I thought, I’m home. Of course, some time later, the same wag paged “Ken to the men’s washroom for reorientation”...

--Kyle farting in my dairy cooler. The stench was beyond belief and beyond my limited powers of description, and he just stood there blocking the door, cupping his hands behind his noxious butt and bringing them forward, chanting “cup of soup? Cup of soup?”

--Lunchtime games of Super Quiz, back when lunch had an actual time. I was usually quizmaster, which for some reason made people think I was smart. Three years running, I was voted “most likely to appear on Jeopardy” in the Christmas survey--which, by the way, was the highlight of the year until the PC police got hold of it. I guess asking things like “who makes the uniform look good” and “who’s got the nicest butt” put somebody’s knickers in a twist. Rather than strike the “offensive” questions, the entire survey was killed. And it was at that precise moment that morale started to slip

--Nick casually strolling out of the meat prep room with an eggplant sticking out of his fly

--Karen opening a cup of yogurt only to have most of it splooge all over Ric beside her in the lunchroom. It looked for all the world like a money shot

--an endless revolving door of pretty young nubile things coming and going, making me feel like a dirty old man. And that’s just the customers. You should see some of the cashiers.

--playing Armageddon for Bryan and making him cry with laughter. More than once.

--The JBHL, and my brief starring role in same.

--an ill-advised call across the store to ask Sue how her abscess was doing. “Sue”, I near-shouted. “How’s your cavity?” Mike sniggered, loudly, and I realized with a start what I’d just said

--the phallus-shaped icicles that used to form as if by magic on my frozen deck. Some of them looked remarkably realistic, especially after a little chiseling

But there were serious moments, too. Back before every last teenager had her own BlackBerry, the lunchroom was full of hot-button talks on religion and politics. I’ve had more than one person come to me for relationship advice--which is deadly serious when you’re a teenager. And then there were my work-experience kids, from Keith right through to Nathaniel, each and every one of them enriching my work life, even the ones who didn’t get hired. Sometimes especially those kids.They taught me a LOT.

I don’t make friends easily--never have. So it’s hard to leave a place stuffed chock-full of them.

Justin. No offense to anyone else, but I believe you’re the guy I’m going to see in the news in twenty years and say “I knew him when...”

Nicole. You’re gonna do just fine. And the next time you go, it WILL be for brighter horizons.

Jordan. Introduced me to a whack of good music. Great guy to swap fish tales with.

Cathy. New Zuma Blitz Two: NOW WITH ALLOCATION TABLES!

Craig. Thanks for tagging me with the nickname “G-baby”. You’re another guy I think’s gonna go a long, long way.

Lauren aka Minnie Mouse. Brightened countless Saturday mornings with Disney chatter. You will be missed. Love from your friend, Blade.

Bryan, aka Donkey-Balls (don’t ask). I spent every day trying to render you speechless. And failing every time. The only guy there who knows filthier jokes than I do.

Sue, of cavity fame. Bus-mate, you do realize you should be next in line for CSM, right?

Trish. You've got your head firmly on your shoulders, girl. Question authority--that's how you'll get your own. And...Hasa diga eebowai!

Jamie. Leafs over Devils in seven. Book it.

Not to mention all those who have left before me, people I still remember fondly and always will:
Kathleen. Mike. Christine. Matt and Katie. Amanda. Sam. Mark. Amy. Colin. Crystal. Shannon. And a bunch more.

A few special notes for last. Jeff...I recommended you four years back for a job I wanted myself. You've never given me any reason to doubt I did the right thing. May you get your farm in the country and oh, yeah, you WILL get married someday...and you will LIKE it. Trust me on that.

Todd--I never got to work with you for so much as an hour, but we've been partners in crime forever now. No, I can't help you with the Tropicana. Thanks for keeping me sane for so long, buddy.

Greg--Bike up to see me sometime, okay? Should only take you three minutes from south Kitchener. Meanwhile, keep seeing the world outside your dairy cooler.

If I have left you out, please forgive me. With a very, very few exceptions--fewer than seems possible in a place that employs so many--I will miss each and every one of you.

And there are customers I’m going to miss, too. I’ve kvetched in this blog more than once about the silliness and occasional malice from more than a few idiots, but the truth is that one customer like Dana makes up for about a week’s worth of “where is aisle 1?” and “oh, look, some lettuce in the freezer”.

Why am I leaving a place that has nurtured me, with so many people I respect and even love? Why go to another store and do exactly the same job?

It’s not about the money, even though I’ll be making more to start there than I currently make here.

There is so much I could write here, were I the type of person to delight in burning bridges. I'm not a pyromaniac, so I will try to be as circumspect as I can. The biggest reason I'm leaving: the man who will be my new boss thanked me repeatedly and sincerely just for coming in for an interview. He hasn’t even seen my work, but a twenty minute interview yielded a couple of compliments that made me feel--what is that feeling called? Appreciated? Wanted? Respected? Whatever you call it, it feels good.

I’m told there are more opportunities for advancement, which is also a good thing. I’ve been asking to learn other departments for years; each request has been flatly denied. My goal is to prove myself in my new store and build on what I’ve learned over ten years of effort in the old one.

And so, each ending is a new beginning. FreshCo folk, thank you for ten years of love and laughter. Please keep in touch. It’s hard enough to lose working with you every day. I don’t want to lose all contact.

Tragedy Porn

2011-09-10T19:46:00.001-04:00

I'm trying very hard to avoid the media as much as possible this weekend. I did turn on 680 News long enough to confirm what I'd already known: somebody would say there was a "credible threat" of a terrorist attack tomorrow. Keep 'em scared, keep 'em scared.
It's very difficult to avoid the 9/11 memorials, tributes, and analyses. They're everywhere. Sports sections of the newspaper have feature articles on how the Yankees and Mets responded; the entertainment section of the Star has a big spread on how Hollywood celebrities were trapped in Toronto during the film festival (another thing that gets far too much coverage, in my view).

I'm not avoiding the media out of disrespect for the victims, or the world-changing event itself. It's just that my interest in tragedy as pornography rests comfortably to the left of zero.

That's what it is: tragedy porn. You've been able to wallow in it 24/7 in America for a couple of weeks now. Documentaries examining 9/11 from almost every conceivable angle. Still nothing forthcoming about all the confiscated video of the Pentagon attack. I don't subscribe to most of the numerous conspiracy theories surrounding the events of that day, but the Pentagon strike and the lack of footage for same does give me pause. And I do find it almost impossible to believe the United States government knew nothing about the attacks before they happened, given how many warnings they received.

One other thing is missing from the wall-to-wall coverage, at least from what I saw of it before I shut down--any mention of the other victims of 9/11. There's lots about the 3000 or so people killed on that day, maybe a brief nod to the 6700 or so coalition casualties since; little and less about the Iraqis and Afghans we've killed. Those total over a million, and I believe most of them were innocent--what the military so charmingly calls "collateral damage". Paraphrasing Stalin, a few thousand Western deaths is a tragedy, over a million is a statistic".

We persist in wondering why they hate us. Isn't it obvious?

Anyway: tragedy porn. You'll get the "money shot" of the towers collapsing dozens of times over the next day. You'll be told how "unspeakable" 9/11 is...while scores of people are invited to speak about it. "I can't bear to look...so you look! Look good and hard! See those bodies falling there?"

None of this is necessary. It won't promote healing. We all remember the searing images. What purpose will seeing them again serve, much less on every channel?

It's been said in several places online: if the media really cared, we'd see three minutes of silence from all radio and television outlets tomorrow at 8:46 a.m. EST. You can tune in yourself and let me know if that's what we see. I'll remember 9/11 in my own way.

Eargasm

2011-09-07T08:40:00.001-04:00

Octavarium, by Dream Theater.

Late to the party as usual. These guys have been around roughly forever, churning out epic album after epic album while I lived my aural life completely oblivious to their existence.

I'm not a metalhead. Really, I'm not. Give me pop, country, classical, you name it, just keep the screaming out of it and please, let's have intelligible lyrics. If you're going to sing in English, the least you can do is allow English speakers a fighting chance at understanding what you're singing. That said, I'm not averse to "loud", for subsets of "loud" that also include "melodic".

This song...

Well, first off, "song" is entirely the wrong word for what this is. This is more of a symphonic work. It's six times as long as your average radio ditty; the vocal doesn't even show up until over five minutes in. By which point, if you're anything like me, you'll have left this planet far, far behind. There are a series of builds and climaxes, each more intense than the last. The guitar work is simply incredible.

Do yourself a favour. Set aside 24 minutes, tune the world out and tune this in. If you don't like what you're hearing, let it build anyway; it'll change on you when you're not looking. Rarely has a band been so aptly named.

Been Dere. Done Dat. Don't Care.

2011-09-06T10:49:00.004-04:00

We're rapidly closing in on one year since our Disney extravaganza. Sometimes it seems like we just got back, other times (like right now) it feels as if we haven't been there in twenty or thirty years.

I WANNA GO BACK.

So does my wife, oddly enough.

Eva's vacation philosophy, pre-Disney, could be summed up quite simply. "Why would I go somewhere I've been, when there's a whole planet I haven't been to yet?"

I can certainly understand her reasoning, but truth be told I'm more of a "find someplace good and milk it" kind of person. I still have to resist the urge, lo these elevenish years later, to book us in at the Bonnie View Inn for a honeymoon reprise. And as for Disney...

The pull is unbelievable, almost magnetic. I've taken to frequenting the Disboards for some vicarious Disnification, expecting Eva to scoff at me. She didn't. She commiserated, and said she's working on getting us back there. This kind of shocked me.
I asked her last night, "what was that moment that upended your vacation philosophy?" She said there was no one moment, it was just everything about the place. I have to agree. For me, it wasn't so much any one ride, park, or experience. It was all of it, in an atmosphere that simultaneously bespeaks limitless adventure and the comforts of home.
If money wasn't a concern, we'd have joined the Disney Vacation Club by now. (It's considerably cheaper to buy into DVC resale, and I'm not ruling that out for the future...) We're told it only makes financial sense if you go down at least once every other year. Given that friends and family are starting to sprout children, and further given that we have this urge to be the REALLY COOL AUNT EVA AND UNCLE KEN!!!!!!....it's possible. Not likely, I'd admit--damn money tree won't root in our backyard, must be the soil--but possible. Put it this way. I'm willing to sacrifice a fair bit just to see that wide-eyed look of wonder on a child's face. And to see just how long that look can be sustained.

Eva wants to stay at Animal Kingdom Lodge at least once. Animal Kingdom was the one park we didn't really get to see--we were pretty walked out by the time that day came around. And animals are Eva's great passion...I could as like bugger off to Epcot or Hollywood Studios for the day and she'd not miss me in the least.
There are a couple of other resorts I'd like to sample, chief among them the Poly, which made a favourable impression on me from the monorail, all the way back in '84; also the Yacht Club. But invariably we'd be looking to book--and maybe, just maybe, buying in--at Old Key West. There aren't enough superlatives in the English language to do this place justice, as far as I'm concerned...

To be perfectly honest, I never expected "peace and quiet" to be part of a Disney vacation. To find such a relaxing atmosphere just minutes from the hustle and bustle elevated our stay from "magical" to "otherworldly". I still recall the Cast Member--his name was Anthony--who provided something far too good to be called "customer" service...call it "family service", maybe. Everyone greets you with "Welcome home!" and a genuine smile. For us, the equation is simple: Old Key West = Paradise.

Not sure when we'll be back...life has a way of scuttling our vacation plans. But just knowing it will happen has me all atwitter with excitement.

The Concussion Rippling Through Hockey

2011-09-01T18:32:00.005-04:00

Life is an ongoing process of broadening empathy. At least, it has been for me.

I am a fan of the game of hockey: I have been since I was very young. If I were at all inclined towards athleticism, I would play myself, and probably fairly well, given that I picture it as a kind of hyperkinetic chess. Wayne Gretzky once said "a good hockey player plays where the puck is. A great hockey player plays where the puck is going to be." By no means could I hope to match The Great One, even if I had the body for it, but I do tend to have a good idea where the puck is going to be, most of the time.

As the saying goes, "those who can not do, watch." Or something like that. I've watched a lot of hockey in my life. Although I am and always will be a Toronto Maple Leaf fan, unlike many of my ilk I can name players on other teams. I can even appreciate players on other teams, for values of "other teams" that don't include "the Philadelphia Flyers".

I like the game in all its facets. I get just as excited watching a 9-8 barnburner as I do a 0-0 goaltending clinic. I love the women's game, which has no contact; I also love the games that resemble guerrilla warfare.

Or, at least, I did. Now, in the wake of a truly horrific year and a bit in the game I love, I'm not so sure any more.

Bob Probert. One of the most feared fighters the game has ever known, he could also actually play: he's the only player in hockey history to score more than 25 goals and amass over 350 penalty minutes in a season. Died of apparently natural causes in July 2010. Donated his brain to science. In March 2011, published reports indicated Probert's brain showed evidence of chronic traumatic encephalopathy.

Derek Boogaard. Another feared enforcer, his nickname was "the Boogeyman". He once shattered an opponent's cheek with one punch. Boogaard died at 28 of "accidental causes"--in his case, mixing alcohol and oxycodone (which is prescribed for relief of intense and/or chronic pain).

Rick Rypien. Another fighter. He was plagued by injuries over his NHL career, some sustained in fights. Found dead by his own hand on August 15, a month before he was to get a fresh start with the fresh new Winnipeg Jets.

Wade Belak. Recently retired, the former Leaf fighter and fan favourite had recently signed on to become a Nashville Predator broadcaster. He was also to star in next season's Battle of the Blades. Killed himself yesterday.

That's this year's toll. All these players were fighters...enforcers, or as others call them, 'goons'. Their chief purpose and role on their team was to intimidate opponents...and back up that intimidation with their fists, when necessary. As enforcers, it's a fair bet they accumulated concussions the way their teammates accumulated game pucks. I can't state with certainty that concussions or their aftermath contributed to death in every case...but it's a pretty safe bet to make, if you ask me.

One hopes we won't be adding the following names to the list of premature deaths in future years. These are just the players in the process of recovery from concussion right now.

Marc Savard, star center for the Cup-winning Boston Bruins, career likely over

Peter Mueller, talented Avalanche center

Max Pacioretty, up-and-coming Hab brutally checked into a stanchion by Zdeno Chara

Sidney Crosby, generational talent, face of the NHL

David Perron, strong winger for the Blues

Pavel Kubina, Lighting offensive defenseman

Matthew Lombardi, new Leaf who will apparently attend training camp. Remains to be seen if he can regain his form

Colton Orr, Leaf enforcer who has supposedly recovered, but who hasn't played a game since suffering a concussion in a fight midway through last season.

In a rough-and-tumble contact sport like hockey, you're never going to eliminate injuries entirely. Not even serious injuries like concussions, which have been shown to linger for years or decades after the afflicted athlete has supposedly recovered, manifesting later on as insanity.

But that doesn't mean they shouldn't bloody well try.

It isn't just the Sidney Crosbys of the world who deserve to live a life free from debilitating pain and possible mental illness. The NHL can fret all it wants about the potential absence of a marquee player who is arguably its most talented; while they're fretting, they should spare a thought for everyone else on that list...and, more to the point, they should be doing everything in their power to make future lists as short as possible. Here are my suggestions. Some of them constitute minor tweaks to the game; some are quite radical. As far as I'm concerned, the changes should be weighed against whatever value we place on a human life--excuse me, on four human lives since last July, and counting.

No touch icing

This is a no-brainer. Don Cherry, the maven of mayhem whose 'Rock-'em, Sock'em' videos have always glorified the game's darker moments, has long been a proponent of this rule change, which would see play blown dead when the puck is iced. Better a dead play than a dead player, says I; and while nobody has (yet) died in one of those "entertaining" battles for the puck that seem to occur at least twice every period, enough players have been seriously injured to start a whole new league.

This hasn't been instituted because they're afraid to slow down the game. Misplaced priorities, anyone? Besides, if you don't want icing, make icing a penalty. Maybe give teams two free icings a period, then penalize for delay of game.

Go back to one referee

The NHL brought in a second referee in the late '90s so as to catch more offences. I've hated this system ever since it arrived, and I want it gone. The biggest problem is that all too often, a ref a way up ice, a hundred feet or more from the play, will call a penalty when the ref right on top of the action deems it clean. It seems to me we have many more games inconsistently officiated than we used to under the old system. In regards to player injuries, the superfluous ref is just another body cluttering up the ice to no purpose. Get him out of there. If need be, allow the linesmen to call the blatant penalties that the single referee might miss on account of being behind the play.

Enlarge the ice surface

Casual hockey fans may not be aware that the European leagues play on a considerably larger surface than does the NHL. The international rink's dimensions are 61m x 30m (200' x 98'), while the NHL rink is only 26m (85') wide. That extra four meters makes for many differences in game play. The goalie tends not to leave the sanctuary of his crease as often on the larger rink; venturing out to corral a puck is riskier. Offensively, fewer international teams choose to play a puck pursuit game, opting instead to emphasize positioning, deflecting pucks and players away from the slot. Extra space makes for a marginally slower, but a much safer game. There's more room to manoever both on offense and defence; checks into the boards are rarer on the larger rink.

Enlarging the North American ice surface will only happen when Hell gets an NHL team, and I'm not talking about Hell, Michigan. Why? Because every team owner would have to eliminate six or seven rows of the most lucrative seating in the arena. But hey, owners aren't the only ones trying to make a livelihood out there.

Go four on four

Again, the idea here is to open up the ice surface. For those who object, including a fifth of the NHL players who would be out of work, consider: early hockey was actually played six skaters a side, not five. Besides the two defensemen and three forwards, there used to be a "rover"--a player who skated all over the ice, playing offense and defence as needed. As the skill level of the players increased, the rover position eventually died out.

The skill of the players has again increased, but more importantly, so has their size and their strength. It used to be common to find players 5'8" and under; now, they're the exception.

Imagine the NHL with a fifth of its worst players removed. Sound better? It does to me, too. Also safer.

Eliminate fighting

Maybe the time has come. It's always been a contentious issue, drawing some to the sport, repulsing others. Hockey is the only team sport in which fighting is treated like a normal part of the game.

I can argue both sides of this at will, but watching hockey fighters drop like flies makes it considerably harder to mount a spirited defence for fisticuffs. Are they really necessary? Sure, it's exciting...unless you're the one fighting. Then it's not exciting at all: it's highly stressful. Is the next punch you take the one that's going to end your career and leave you cringing in a dark room for months? Do you really enjoy beating the snot out of somebody, or, alternatively, getting the snot beaten out of you? Really, you do? Are you a psychopath?

In international hockey, fighting will get you thrown out of the game. In the NHL, fighting might get you thrown to the ice head-first. Which is more sane, especially given that Olympic hockey is some of the most exciting and memorable hockey you'll ever see?

I expect the NHL will dilly and dally and eventually adopt the easiest of these suggestions to implement--the no touch icing rule. Everything else will be dismissed as too disruptive to the game, leaving the myriad of players whose lives have been disrupted by the game as it's currently played shaking their heads. The death toll is horrible; what I just predicted is, to me, somehow worse. They'll argue they care...but unless they institute more than half of the above, I'll argue right back that they don't.

Pleasant Surprise

2011-08-31T14:24:00.002-04:00

I've been dreading this hydro bill.

Our "smart meter" was installed well over a year ago. Smart meters are supposed to encourage you to shift your electricity consumption to 'off-peak' hours and penalize you if you don't.

Weekends are off-peak year round, which suggests to me that homeowners are bearing a burden meant for factories, but whatever. I've got nothing against conservation.

Problem is, I've been hearing stories about people's hydro bills doubling or worse. We're told hydro prices are going to rise by something like fifty percent over the next five years. This strikes me as being monstrously unfair...but whatever.

As I've said before, this house has electric baseboard heating. That's one of the most expensive means of heating a house, though one advantage is you can shut off the heat to vast swathes of your home. We do this; we like it cold in here. My attitude is, if I'm cold I'm either not dressed properly or not working hard enough. We investigated ducting the place and recoiled at the price: somewhere between $7000 and $12000, and that was five or six years ago. Given that our hydro bill is, on average, about $30/month higher than yours if you live in a house like ours except with forced-air gas...it's not even close to worth it. The ducting would pay for itself, all things being equal, in twenty or thirty years.

So rather than duct, we've spent money leakproofing this place. All new windows, plus a brand new roof. Both made quite the difference in our bills. But time-of-use rates, so far as I could tell, threatened to financially undo all our effort, and worse.

The system finally went live two months ago and we just got our bill today. Here are the figures for June 8-August 9:

Off peak (7pm-7am, plus weekends) 1508.82 kWh @ 5.9 cents = $89.02

Mid-peak (7am-11am, 5pm-7pm, M-F) 331.51 kWh @ 8.9 cents = $29.50

On-peak (11am-5pm, M-F) 297.68 kWh @ 10.7 cents = $31.85

--------

$150.87

That's two months of usage. Not bad, says I.

Unfortunately, the bill didn't stop there. Behold:

"Delivery" $82.93

I can pretty much assure you it didn't cost Waterloo North Hydro anywhere NEAR this figure to transmit energy to my home. I'd be surprised if it cost them a hundredth of this figure, in fact

"Regulatory Charges" $14.40

0.63 cents/kWh to cover somebody else's costs (boy, there are a lot of fingers in my power pie!) and subsidize power delivery to rural and remote locations

"Debt Retirement Charge" $14.38

This one really rankles. It's anticipated we'll be paying it until 2026. Don't you love how massive debts always end up trickling downwards? Americans, take note.

Total Miscellaneous Hosedowns: $111.71

...or 74% of the consumption bill

giving me a subtotal of $262.08

This reminds me of nothing so much as the travel section of the newspaper. "Look here, honey, we can fly to Orlando for $99 each! Oh, wait, add this and that and the other fee and, forget it, $417."

Personally, I'd much rather pay higher rates and not see all this gobbledygook at the bottom of my bill telling me there's a 74% surcharge. Likewise, I'd prefer this magnanimous gesture be instead incorporated into my bill:

The Ontario Government has taken 10%

off the cost of your electricity bill to help

you with the costs of building a clean

energy future.

ON Clean Energy Benefit - 10% ($29.62)

Especially since you just KNOW they're going to turn around

and hit you with

Harmonized Sales Tax $34.07

(which, incidentally, never used to apply to electricity!)

Okay, so we've credited the homeowner, but we've made sure

to claw all that back and more. On consumption of

$150.87, the total owing is $266.53

I'm pleasantly surprised this isn't four or five hundred bucks. What does that tell you about my "tax me, I'm Canadian!" mentality?

The Green Thing

2011-08-28T17:29:00.001-04:00

Posted direct from the mailbox. I LOVE this.

In the line at the store, the cashier told an older woman that she should bring her own grocery bags because plastic bags weren't good for the environment.

The woman apologized to him and explained, "We didn't have the green thing back in my day."

The clerk responded, "That's our problem today. Your generation did not care enough to save our environment."

He was right -- our generation didn't have the green thing in its day.

Back then, we returned milk bottles, soda bottles and beer bottles to the store. The store sent them back to the plant to be washed and sterilized and refilled, so it could use the same bottles over and over. So they really were recycled.

But we didn't have the green thing back in our day.

We walked up stairs, because we didn't have an escalator in every store and office building. We walked to the grocery store and didn't climb into a 300-horsepower machine every time we had to go two blocks.

But she was right. We didn't have the green thing in our day.

Back then, we washed the baby's diapers because we didn't have the throw-away kind. We dried clothes on a line, not in an energy gobbling machine burning up 220 volts -- wind and solar power really did dry the clothes. Kids got hand-me-down clothes from their brothers or sisters, not always brand-new clothing. But that old lady is right; we didn't have the green thing back in our day.

Back then, we had one TV, or radio, in the house -- not a TV in every room. And the TV had a small screen the size of a handkerchief (remember them?), not a screen the size of the state of Montana.

In the kitchen, we blended and stirred by hand because we didn't have electric machines to do everything for us.

When we packaged a fragile item to send in the mail, we used a wadded up old newspaper to cushion it, not Styrofoam or plastic bubble wrap.

Back then, we didn't fire up an engine and burn gasoline just to cut the lawn. We used a push mower that ran on human power. We exercised by working so we didn't need to go to a health club to run on treadmills that operate on electricity.

But she's right; we didn't have the green thing back then.

We drank from a fountain when we were thirsty instead of using a cup or a plastic bottle every time we had a drink of water.

We refilled writing pens with ink instead of buying a new pen, and we replaced the razor blades in a razor instead of throwing away the whole razor just because the blade got dull.

But we didn't have the green thing back then.

Back then, people took the streetcar or a bus and kids rode their bikes to school or walked instead of turning their moms into a 24-hour taxi service.

We had one electrical outlet in a room, not an entire bank of sockets to power a dozen appliances. And we didn't need a computerized gadget to receive a signal beamed from satellites 2,000 miles out in space in order to find the nearest pizza joint.

But isn't it sad the current generation laments how wasteful we old folks were just because we didn't have the green thing back then?

Goodbye, Jack, Part II

2011-08-28T15:09:00.002-04:00

"We can do this, we can be a better people. We've seen how to try"

--Rev. Brent Hawkes

Reading what I wrote a few days back, I feel a little guilty. I feel like I wrote a standard eulogy for a standard man, not the standard bearer that Jack Layton actually was. I won't delete my prior effort--I don't do that, ever--but I'd like to refine it in the wake of watching his wake.

We're told Jack died listening to Leonard Cohen's "Hallelujah" performed by k.d. lang.

I can think of few better songs to die to.

"Why do you want to watch this funeral?" my wife asked me. I struggled to answer. After all, I didn't know Jack, nor ever even meet him. It was hard to reconcile that with the profound sense of loss I have felt since he died. I feel, quite frankly, as if we have lost in Jack Layton a rare breed of person, let alone politician: an eternal optimist and a bottomless fount of compassion and caring.

Not everyone feels this way.

There has been a remarkable level of vitriol on display this past week, starting with Christie Blatchford's anti-elegy before the body was even cold. Christie was a paragon of civility compared to the vile spewings of any number of anonymous posters elsewhere. My jaw has dropped so often it's gone numb: the hatred is palpable. If Layton wasn't already dead, you get the distinct feeling some people would have been all too happy to kill him.

Whence came the hatred in Canadian political discourse? Has it always been here, and I've just been blind to it? Left or right, it makes no matter: there is little tolerance for opposing viewpoints and less for those who hold them. An honest debate very quickly degenerates into name-calling and worse. And saddest of all, it seems that for every person mourning Jack Layton, there is another glad he's dead and happy to say so.

Personally, I shared many of Jack's beliefs. I share his idealism, and on some level, his optimism. That so many Canadians obviously don't means that there remains a great deal of work to be done. It distresses me that so many have been hurt so badly they see no other way to heal themselves than to hurt others. That's certainly not what Jack was about, nor is it any way to build a better Canada.

Why, why now, or why Jack. Some of those questions...will have no answer.

The reality is not why, but what now?--Rev. Hawkes

That sermon was perhaps the best I've ever heard in my life. I'll freely admit to a need for occasional spiritual sustenance, and don't care if you think it a weakness. Rev. Hawkes' homily was a feast of uncommon richness. (Link to transcript here).

Few who ever met Jack. by all accounts, will ever forget him. I hope that his life's work continues now that his life is done. I hope I can help advance it in some small way.

I hope.

RIP to "One Of The Good Guys"

2011-08-22T17:57:00.002-04:00

"My friends, love is better than anger. Hope is better than fear. Optimism is better than despair. So let us be loving, hopeful, and optimistic. And we'll change the world." --John Gilbert "Jack" Layton, August 20, 2011

As recently as three years ago, I dismissed Jack Layton out of hand. There was something smarmy about him, I was convinced: he had the aura of a used-car salesman. His personality screamed politician. As in, he said all the right things, they way they all do...but without a trace of guile. Nobody's that idealistic, I thought. He's in this for himself, just like everybody else. He echoed many of my own beliefs, and I resented him for it.

LOVE IS BETTER THAN ANGER

Except Layton was that idealistic. He infamously suggested we negotiate with the Taliban, earning himself the nickname "Taliban Jack". Some of us laughed, derisively, knowing the Taliban for the terrorists they were and are. And yet...we've now pulled out of Afghanistan, leaving it--sorry to say--not overmuch better than we found it, and at the cost of 156 Canadian lives (our highest death toll since the Korean War). Would negotiation have lessened that grisly count? Quite possibly.

HOPE IS BETTER THAN FEAR

Jack beat prostate cancer once, and he did it in fine style. U.S. Ambassador to Canada David Jacobson characterized Layton as "the happy warrior". I wrote about Jackmyself in 2008 without knowing, at the time, I was doing so. It's no coincidence Layton resonated so strongly with youth, the people who haven't had the hope beaten out of them.

I've little doubt Jack Layton felt fear. Probably a great deal of it. But he didn't choose to show it. Instead, he showed hope. Hope and determination. That carried him and his party a great distance in a relatively short period of time. And, tellingly, his final message to Canadians is laced with hope.

OPTIMISM IS BETTER THAN DESPAIR

Whatever your politics, you can't help but respect Jack for making politics itself interesting and, dare I say it, noble again. Unlike many politicians whose principles are for sale, Layton never deviated from his one iota. It took Canadians, myself included, some time to grasp this, but when we did we grasped it with a will. Layton was the first politician I have ever voted for without hesitation--not because of his party's policies, some of which I strongly disagreed with, but because Layton himself embodied the respect I yearned to see in a political leader. He pressed for electoral reform even though at the time it would have substantially eaten into his party's seat count. He welcomed Elizabeth May and her Green Party on the scene despite the prospect of her splitting the vote.

And now he leaves behind a party he uplifted to Official Opposition for the first time in its history. It's full of green MPs that have already made their share of public gaffes. Many have already written them off. I'm not so sure that's a good idea. Not if they take Jack's message about optimism seriously:

SO LET US BE LOVING, HOPEFUL, AND OPTIMISTIC. AND WE'LL CHANGE THE WORLD.

Poetry Break: It Only Rains Outside!

2011-08-10T10:39:00.003-04:00

The world is not a happy place

For those with an ideal

It's beastly hard work to replace

Your dream with what is real.

And when you do, you're apt to find

The colour's been bleached out:

The sounds of life within your mind

Are whisper-quiet without.

Nothing holds your interest now.

No wonder, when it's all

So drab and dull and silent. How

Can you see through the pall?

Is life worth living? Maybe so--

But is this living life

If all inside has ceased to grow

And all outside is strife?

And people say "feel better, chum!"

As if it were a game...

"Snap out of it", they say, "ho-hum!"--

Do they not know your name?

I do. And I can understand

The hell you're going through.

I know the layout of its land

For me, it's nothing new.

I could just say "this too shall pass"

And shrug away your pain...

That's not in me to do, alas:

I can't but share the rain.

Remember who you really are.

You're more than what you see.

Much more. In fact, I'd go so far

As to insist you be

An angel. "Oh, no" you'll say,

And tell me you don't feel

angelic--even human!--Nay,

you're nothing 'til you heal.

But that's not true. I know it's not,

Because you've got it turned around.

It's what's outside that's gone to rot:

The inner you's still solid ground.

It may not seem so. It may seem

As if you're in a mental quake.

That's when the walls twixt life and dream

Can tumble down. And it might take

That tumble 'til you finally see

The nightmare you were in

For what it was. Believe you me,

That once you do, you will begin

To understand that there is naught

You have to do now. You are free

No need to refight wars you fought,

To build anew. You'll only see

What I've seen all along: that you're

Above all that on wings of gold.

You'll be awake, and living for

Yourself, inside, safe from the cold.

Enjoying the ride?

2011-08-09T08:15:00.002-04:00

Millennium Force at Cedar Point in Sandusky, Ohio, is just that...a force. The roller coaster is 310' tall, propels riders at speeds up to 93 mph, and will cause the faint of heart to stain their underwear.

Kind of like the stock market, lately. Let's ride it together, shall we?

This coaster is different from others in several ways. The lift hill starts the instant you leave the station, and it's unnaturally steep. Intamin uses a cable lift system to pull the car up at a 45-degree angle (and believe you me, you'd swear it's closer to 65 degrees...at fifteen miles an hour.

Fifteen miles an hour may seem sluggish. It isn't. You're over three hundred feet in the air in twenty five seconds flat. By comparison, the Magnum XL-200 at the same park, using a traditional chain lift system, requires over twice as long to pull the train up 205 feet.

Millennium Force's relatively speedy ascent can only be accomplished with technological help: in this case, a cable that is much lighter than the usual chain used on most coasters. Likewise, the ascent of the stock market since 2008 could have only been accomplished with the infusion of vast sums of something I'll call "mun".

"Mun" is different from "money" in that it is, in effect, lighter. It's printed out of thin air, usually in quantities too large to be grasped by most imaginations. It's backed by nothing other than a promise...something that may not be overly comforting when you're dangling 310' in the air overlooking the relative stability in Canada (which, incidentally, you can actually see from the top of Millennium's lift hill).

Standard and Poor's is the first to question the validity of that promise, and they surely won't be the last. Canada lost its AAA rating in 1992 and it took ten years of diligent governance to regain it. "Diligent governance" does not exactly describe the current state of U.S. affairs. In fact, I get the feeling that if guns were permitted in Congress there'd be a bloodbath.

Pulled up by all that mun, we find ourselves at the peak, 310 feet in the air, or 12,876 stock points. Notice how while we were climbing, it was very easy to maintain the illusion we'd climb forever. But as we crest the hill (a titch slower now, without the mun to buoy us) we're buffeted by wind and holy shit it's a long way down.

The descent is precipitous: 80 degrees, or over a thousand points in the last seven sessions. Looking ahead we can see an overbanked turn some wag has nicknamed the "Dead Cat Bounce"; beyond that, we'll only know when we get there. But, this being a roller-coaster of historical proportions, we can expect a few things.

1) Airtime. On coaster tracks, this is the sensation of weightlessness, of being pulled out of your seat by zero or negative g-forces. It can cause you to lose your lunch. In the U.S. right now, airtime is what's being consumed by both parties in a frantic effort to affix blame, rather than fixing the problem. The air here is almost all of the "hot" variety. This, too, can cause you to lose your lunch.

2) Dark tunnels. On coasters, people like to scream in these. Ditto in stock markets.

3) The most certain thing we can assume is that we will finish this roller coaster ride at a considerably lower altitude than we were at its peak. Some people will undoubtedly lose wallets or portfolios.

Most of us will disembark this bugger shaken up. Some will vow never to ride again. Others will get off and head to some other, putatively tamer coaster, say ~~blue chip~~ Blue Streak. Let's just hope that we can learn to sort out money from its lighter counterpart. Because if the speed gets too high, we'll fly right off the track.

Keep your head back, your arms and legs inside the train at all times, and enjoy the ride...

A Paean to a Personal Panacea

2011-08-07T12:16:00.002-04:00

KB was weaned on KD.

For my American friends, KD is Kraft Dinner, what you call, with typical American literalist panache, "Kraft Macaroni and Cheese". (The most popular food in America for many years was the tuna fish, as opposed to tuna chicken and tuna cow.)

Kraft Dinner has been the most popular meal in Canada for at least a generation. Pundit Rex Murphy has said that "Kraft Dinner revolves in that all-but-unobtainable orbit of the Tim Horton's donut and the A&W Teen Burger. It is one of that great trinity of quick digestibles that have been enrolled as genuine Canadian cultural icons." Maybe it's because the founder of Kraft was born in Ontario. Maybe it's because, as Douglas Coupland notes, it "so precisely laser-targets the favoured Canadian food groups: fat, sugar, starch and salt." Or maybe Canadians are just favourably attracted to florescent orange. That might explain the NDP's surge in popularity, too.

My love of Kraft Dinner has been truly lifelong. KD was my mom's pregnancy craving, and I can only assume that's because I was demanding the cheesy pasta shapes in utero. Everyone has that one meal they could live indefinitely off of: KD is mine. '

As such, each bowl provides a heaping helping of memories and proto-memories. I was too young to recall my father hurting himself quite badly preparing this dead-simple dish, but the tale has been told often enough that I can vividly imagine it. Dad was doing just fine boiling the macaroni: when it came time to drain it, he inexplicably held the colander in one hand as he poured the boiling water from the pot with the other.

(This tale is proof positive, if any is ever needed, that I am my father's son. I have never done this myself, but it's something I might do in the same sort of daze that has me come downstairs of a morning with my shirt on backwards. Or inside out. Or both. One time I arrived at breakfast in a dress shirt I had put on inside out and buttoned up. Try that some time, I dare you.)

Then there was the time, many years later, when I almost burned Macdonald House at Wilfrid Laurier University down preparing...you guessed it...Kraft Dinner.

I can count on the fingers of one thumb the number of meals I prepared in that residence kitchen, despite being there for eight months. Part of it was profligacy: I arrived university flush with cash but with no idea of its value. Years of discipline evaporated in a heartbeat: eating damn near every meal out was the biggest reason I finished first year flat broke.

I have no defence, except to note my peers were just as free with their money. OSAP, the Ontario Student Assistance Program, was at the time better known as the Ontario Stereo Acquisition Program and many of my dorm mates seemed to be majoring in beer-soaked frat parties.

The residence common kitchen was a pigsty. On second thought, scratch that: pigs wouldn't choose to live in it. Dishes mouldered for days on end. The microwave broadcast the cloying odour of synthetic butter far and wide, as popcorn was about the only thing ever prepared in it. At the end of the year, several households worth of pots, pans, and assorted kitchen paraphernalia went unclaimed. Short-sighted, every one of us.

One night I got that telltale rumbling of the tummy that only a box of KD would cure. Kraft Dinner being one of those things not generally available on restaurant menus, I ventured across the street to Forwell's Super Variety and procured a box and some margarine. Fifteen minutes later, I set a pot of water to boil, and retreated to my residence room to find the perfect book for the cooking occasion.

(That last probably sounds weird if you're not me. If I'm going to be alone and forced to stare at nothing for a period of time, there simply must be a book to fill the mental space. What sort of book? I'll know it when I find it. Unless I don't, in which case I'm apt to soil myself looking for bathroom reading. Luckily, there are Bathroom Readers to fill the voiding void.)

I was still looking for that elusive Perfect Book To Accompany The Cooking Of Macaroni Noodles when my reverie was abruptly interrupted by my residence don, Craig, shouting 'BREADNER!' in exactly the same tone of voice that Fred Flintstone shouts 'WILMA!' That was accompanied by an odd kind of scurry-stomp as he hustled down the hall.

Craig was built like a fire hydrant. I had already by that point seen him pick up a guy who had six inches on him and throw him across a room. Hearing my name shouted out like that did not exactly fill me with warm creamy noodles.

I gingerly poked my head out my doorway only to be snatched and dragged back the way Craig had come. Finding my feet, I ran ahead of him, did a one-eighty into the floor lounge...

...and found the stove element merrily belching flames.

I am not generally the person who keeps their head in a crisis. My head is usually off and rolling all over the room at the first sign of trouble. This time, I'm happy to report, I managed to reach round the little campfire I had going, turn the element off, and then grab a fire extinguisher and discharge it...the first time I ever used one of those, and the last, knock on something that isn't flammable.

Disaster averted...but I never did get my Kraft Dinner that night. It turned out somebody had spilled some oil down into the element well and hadn't bothered to clean it up until I came along to burn it off. This is, of course, the sort of thing that only happens to people named Ken Breadner,

The prospect of a bowl of Kraft Dinner fills me with a warm glow. It's comfort food, a link to my childhood, and something I can make myself without too much trouble (unless I'm setting a kitchen on fire...) Many people add all sorts of things to their macaroni and cheese: wieners and ketchup being the most popular. My mom likes to put pepper on hers; I've also consumed it with hamburger and peas. But I'll always prefer mine plain, prepared exactly as the directions on the box indicate, save perhaps for the addition of a wee bit more margarine than is called for.

Kraft Dinner: another way I'm quintessentially Canadian.

The Rise Of American Fascism

2011-08-06T19:52:00.003-04:00

"If destruction be our lot, we must ourselves be its author and finisher. As a nation of freemen, we must live through all time, or die by suicide." -Abraham Lincoln, Lyceum Address 1838

Prescient, that man Lincoln.
A tiny downgrade in one's credit rating from the highest possible score to the second-highest can not, in and of itself, be proof positive that a country is failing. But when that credit rating has stood since 1917, and when one reflects on the political crapfest that precipitated that credit downgrade, one certainly can't help but wonder if America understands the perils of the road it is travelling.

I, for one, think not.

The vitriol spewing out of various Fox-holes...well, Lincoln would have recognized it for the variation on mob rule it seeks to foment. There is a long and storied tradition in America of populist leaders emerging out of relative obscurity, urging the population to rise up in revolt against elitist, statist masters. McCarthy. Malcolm X. Michele Bachmann. For that matter, President Obama himself has repeatedly used the highest pedestal in the land to incite class warfare; his elites are the rich corpocrats. He is either frightfully naive or willfully ignorant: corporations have running Skyscraper America from its lobby for decades now.

The Left and the Right used to be two parts of the same body politic. In America in the second decade of the twenty first century they can't be said to inhabit the same reality. Twenty years ago I thought David Frum leaned so far right he was in danger of toppling; today he sounds almost like a Democrat. Believe me, it's not because Frum has mellowed. Rather, the United States started running into right field a few years back and is now so far out there it can't even see home plate anymore.

I don't see how this is correctable. Sooner or later, and probably sooner, we will see the rise of American fascism.
Sinclair Lewis, the first American to be honoured with the Nobel Prize for Literature, once said that "when fascism comes to America it will be wrapped in the flag and carrying the cross." We see in the Tea Party a patriotism that borders on the fanatical (and which, of course, comes with its attendant branding of anyone not of the Faith as "un-American"); the cross surely need not be explained.
This article, originally written in 2009 as the Tea Party was gaining in popularity, argues the U.S. is already pulling into the parking lot of Fascists 'R' Us. It's not tinfoil-hat territory: truly, it's worth the read. It defines facism thus:

"Fascism is a system of political authority and social order intended to reinforce the unity, energy, and purity of communities in which liberal democracy stands accused of producing division and decline."

Here are what it posits as the three signs of fascism in formation:

1. Are [neo- or protofascisms] becoming rooted as parties that represent major interests and feelings and wield major influence on the political scene?
2. Is the economic or constitutional system in a state of blockage apparently insoluble by existing authorities?
3. Is a rapid political mobilization threatening to escape the control of traditional elites, to the point where they would be tempted to look for tough helpers in order to stay in charge?

The recent debt ceiling debacle illustrates point 1) perfectly. America now has two parties: Democrat and Tea. The Tea Party, while not explicitly fascist, certainly fits the definition above in that it faults liberals and liberals alone for the decline of America and seeks by means increasingly foul to restore order both fiscal and social. That they portray themselves as innocent VICTIMS is telling.

The answer to 2) is an emphatic yes. The Democrats have historically disagreed with Republicans on just about everything, but at least they used to be able to make themselves understood and occasionally listened to. Today, the political system is all but paralyzed. So is the economy. It's only in the last ten days or so that the stock markets seemingly have deigned to recognize there is an economy outside their bubble, and that bubble is in the process of going pop.

And as to 3)...let the economy fester much longer, as it probably will, and we'll just see what unholy alliances those traditional elites cook up to maintain their grip on power.

For nearly ten years now I have worried that America would get around to posing a Muslim question in the manner that Germany once posed a "Jewish question". I am still worried about this. The United States persists in overstating the strength of al-Qaeda for political ends, and Muslims are thus widely distrusted; it would not take overmuch to reach a tipping point. But now I'm starting to wonder if the scope of my worry is too narrow. It seems to me that the Tea Party has a very strong opinion on what it means to be American, and an even stronger opinion on who doesn't qualify. They have a real bee in their bonnet over "illegals"; ironically enough, people who escaped utter misery in Mexico for what they imagined to be a better life in los estados unidos. The Tea Partiers like to lump them in with the "bleeding heart liberals" who, they imagine, are conspiring to destroy "their" America.

The truth is that America's rightward drift is what is destroying America. Impoverish the middle class and keep the lower class down in the name of LOW LOW TAXES and eventually that lower class, not to mention much of what used to be the middle, will get desperate enough to listen to anyone with a solution. In normal times, Michele Bachman's proposal to eliminate the minimum wage would cue fits of hysterical laughter, as would her assertion that her having run mental health clinics qualifies her for the Presidency of the United States of America. (Those mental health clinics, by the way, have been accused of performing 'conversion therapy'--seeking to change homosexuals into heterosexuals...which would also be funny if it wasn't so scary.)

Michele Bachmann has a decent shot at being the next President. If that happens, the Tea Party's apt to get...raucous.

Tales From Aisle Ten (V)

2011-08-03T08:53:00.007-04:00

"Why Juice Boxes Are 10% Smaller But Still Cost The Same"

Article here.

Because us grocery clerks love to screw you over, that's why. We cackle with glee each and every time one of our esteemed customers chooses to assume we and we alone are responsible for shrinking the cereal boxes and juice cartons and...well, hell, everything. The groceries we shrink at night, using dark retail sorcery. Then we shrink your wallets by day. It's soooo much fun, especially since we don't buy groceries ourselves. Did you really think we need to eat? Pshaw.

I've said it before, but it bears repeating: Grocery stores don't generally gouge their customers. I know you have no proof of this--until the world finally gets around to putting costs as well as retails on price tags, anyway--but trust me. There are exceptions (the produce department has some *huge* margins), but on many items in dry grocery, we make pennies; on sale items we almost always lose money, sometimes quite a bit of it. Somebody may well be rolling in it, but it ain't us.

Crop failures obviously drive price increases. Just two days ago, the retail on a kilogram of McCain red bag fries went from $1.99 to $3.67 in one leap. This actually didn't surprise me overmuch, because I've been told potatoes of any quality at all are somewhat hard to find right now. The same thing happened with grapefruit juice a few years back when Florida was temporarily a hurricane playpen. For over two months we had no grapefruit juice at all. We *could* have offered it, but we chose not to: our cost was something like nine bucks a carton. Then, when grapefruits started to show up, so did the juice...at substantially higher retails than people were accustomed to paying. It took over a year for the price to fall, and it didn't fall by much.

Milk just went up, too. We're at $4.67 right now for a 4L bag of 2%, 1% or skim. That's subject to change at any moment, depending on what the competition does or doesn't do. But, as I tell everyone who complains about milk prices, they've gone up by fifteen percent in fifteen years. That's *well* under the rate of inflation. Plus, we lose money on every bag of milk we sell.

As for the shrinkage...it's happening everywhere. As the linked article above states, people would rather pay the same for less quantity than pay more for the same quantity. It's not a trick: it's market research in action.

Do bear in mind, too, that most people, yours truly definitely included, eat too much food. Here's an experiment to try: one day, eat only the "suggested serving" of whatever you consume. Good luck with that. I freely admit I can't do it: when I'm hungry, I want to EAT, damnit. None of this "quarter of a box of Kraft dinner" or "eleven potato chips" or even "a quarter sized piece of meat." If you're just going to tease me like that, let me starve already.

That all said, maybe, just maybe, smaller packages are good for you. It sure beats the trend we had in the eighties and nineties, to super size the hell out of everything.

I agree, some of the packaging reductions are kind of insane. When I started in May, 2001, a 2L tub of Nestle Confectionery ice cream--Rolo, Smarties and the like---went for $4.99. The package has shrunk three times since then and the price continues to rise: it's now a 1.5L tub and it's $6.99. Little wonder nobody buys it unless it's on sale.

That's an annoying thing from our perspective: nobody buys ANYTHING unless it's on sale. That's maybe a bit of an exaggeration...but not as much of one as you'd think. When you have twelve different grocery chains to choose from, everything is on sale somewhere. So if you're ever wondering why it's the last day of the ad and we have no sale product, it's because anything we're stuck with at the end of the ad, we're STUCK with. I still have frozen vegetables from the first ad we ran as a FreshCo, week ending April 28. Good thing they don't expire until late next year.

Stop the Gravy Train Before it Derails

2011-07-31T07:18:00.004-04:00

Last Thursday into Friday, the right-leaning Mayor of Toronto ran a marathon committee meeting: twenty one hours and ten minutes. The purpose of the meeting was to gather public opinion on what services should be cut to make up a $774-million hole in the city budget. (Municipalities in Ontario are required, by law, to table balanced budgets.)

Predictably, Ford and his committee were told, over and over again, not to cut anything at all. Also predictably, the mayor was and continues to be a target for a CN Tower full of hatred, much of it irrational and visceral. Yes, Rob Ford and his brother Doug are right-wingers with little patience for things they don't use themselves. (Doug, a city councillor himself, made waves last week telling Margaret Atwood, of all people, to get herself elected or shut up. Atwood had leapt to the defence of Toronto libraries, which are possibly on the Ford chopping block.)

It remains to be seen what Ford will actually cut. He was handily elected last year promising to "stop the gravy train" at City Hall...and now people have figured out they like gravy...All that said, how many mayors facing similar budget shortfalls would actually seek public input to this degree? Damned few of them, I'm thinking. Dismiss the meeting as political theater if you must, but Ford doesn't strike me as the kind of person with much patience for theater, political or otherwise.

----------------

There's another entity facing a budget mess just across Lake Ontario from Ford's fiefdom. Its elected representatives are also working around the clock to avert default. That entity wields just a titch more clout in the world, mind you. If the United States actually defaults on its debt...well, truth is, nobody knows exactly what will happen, but it ranges from "not pretty" downwards.

I still think, or I'd like to think, that the United States will come to its senses at the last possible minute. Of course, it's a fair argument whether the Democrats and Republicans in Washington have any sense left between them. One side refuses to budge off its insistence there be no tax increases, while the other side is more interested, at least publicly, on heaping opprobrium on the opposition than in putting the country's interests first.

Raising the debt ceiling used to be a meaningless ritual. It's been done 74 times in the last 49 years, rarely with any fuss or muss whatsoever. This time, things are different: the government is virtually paralyzed. Which makes me wonder how they'd face a real crisis...

Now, don't get me wrong. The United States debt is a train rapidly getting out of control. You can call it a "gravy train" after Rob Ford if you want, but be aware that Americans define "gravy" differently from us Canucks. (For one thing, they look at you funny if you ask for it on your fries.)

WHAT'S DRIVING U.S. DEBT?

War.

It's really that simple. The Department of Defense budget for 2012 is well over a trillion dollars, and that's just the money that's explicitly allocated. Doubtless there are countless billions being thrown at the military from other accounts. Cuts to defense spending are a political third rail in a country embroiled in the amorphous 'war on terror'. Were I an American, I would be afraid to even mention the prospect in a blog, lest I land on some shadowy list somewhere: the idea of even reining in defense spending is nothing less than traitorous.

Yet the U.S. is currently engaged in combat (of a sort) not just in Libya, Afghanistan, and Iraq, but also in Yemen, Pakistan and Somalia. These wars--every single one of them--are ultimately unwinnable. Every terrorist killed begets more terrorists; ten years in, Afghanistan is no closer to U.S. style democracy. Nor, truly, is Iraq.

The U.S. maintains over a thousand military bases in well over a hundred countries worldwide. Including over two hundred bases in Germany alone. Are these strictly speaking, necessary? Germany hasn't been a threat to anyone for nigh on seventy years.

So: cut the military back a bit. But they shouldn't bear the austerity alone. The U.S. is, contrary to popular citizen misconception, among the least taxed wealthy countries on earth. Many citizens like to think that their low taxes are the source of their wealth. It ain't true. Canada's standard of living is the same or higher, and our taxes would make citizens of many states (not all) blanch. And taxes in Scandinavia, which is not under the toxic Euro-cloud of debt to its south, are considerably higher than those in Canada.

A couple of years ago, General Electric paid no taxes to Washington on revenues of $10.3 billion. That was accomplish through sleight-of-hand accounting, which really should be made illegal. A law taxing overseas gains at the marginal rate when they are offset by U.S. losses should do the trick. Truth is, there are many corporations in U.S. avoiding taxes while reaping ridiculous profits (even now, when the real American economy is sputtering and guttering.)

Raise corporate taxes. Institute a VAT (the U.S. is the only wealthy country without a national value-added tax of some kind). Do all of this in combination--or even some of it--and you'll avert default. But most importantly, STOP THE GODDAMN BICKERING. It's childish, it's unseemly, and it doesn't accomplish anything at all.

Oh, and I do agree with the Tea Party on one thing (wonders never cease): a balanced-budget Constitutional amendment. Raise the debt ceiling just this once more...and never again. A city or a country can not be run the way a household is...but excessive debt is just as poisonous no matter if your nation is the Land of the Free, the Land of the Fords, or the Land of the Breadbin.

Utøya Horror

2011-07-23T22:45:00.004-04:00

My heart grieves for the families affected by the atrocities in and around Oslo, Norway.

As with any terrible occurrence, be it a natural disaster or a cold-blooded murder spree, the meaning is up to those who survive and those who look on. In this case, I find it more than a little unsettling how quickly so many media sources assumed Islamic terrorists were behind what is turning out to be a politically motivated hate crime of the highest order.

We can deduce from social networking clues that Anders Behring Breivik, aka "Andrew Berwick", considered himself to be a force. Indeed, his one and only tweet, posted the day before the massacre, is a quote from John Stuart Mill: "One person with a belief is equal to the force of 100,000 who have only interests."

What were Breivik's beliefs? Do you want the long version, which runs over FIFTEEN HUNDRED PAGES, impeccably organized and endnoted, a compendium astounding in its seeming respectability through very long stretches? Or do you want the short version, which can perhaps be summarized thus: Marxism is evil, Muslims are evil, multiculturalism is evil, and "armed resistance is the only rational option" (pp. 791 et seq.)?

Here's something in between the two...

What I find most terrifying about this compendium is how coherent it is. This isn't random gibberish. In fact, I have heard most of this argued before. It is something of a dark irony that many of the people I have run across on right-leaning forums--the ones who unfailingly blamed Islamic terrorists before the bullets had even stopped flying--would likely have embraced Breivik and his hateful ideology: he reads in many places for all the world like Mark Steyn.

There are, I fear, a great many American citizens who would empathize with Breivik's cause. I suspect you'll find quite a few in Arizona, given the outrage there over a perfectly ordinary Arabic word--haboob, the actual meteorological term for a dust storm. This, too, scares me. It's not near as far a road as you'd think from banning words to burning people. Especially in times of stress, like, say, what America's going through right now.

Now, granted, Islam is not exactly the religion of peace it claims to be. And anyone suggesting one crazed Christian/white supremacist somehow "makes up for" over 17,000 known Islamic terror attacks in the past decade is just being foolish. But people, whatever their faith or lack of it, are individuals and should be treated as such. We need to be vigilant against those of whatever religious or political stripe who would kill to advance their cause, while bearing in mind that such people represent a tiny minority. If we overreact, then, to borrow somebody's phrase, "the terrorists win".

Electronification

2011-07-20T08:06:00.003-04:00

I've been thinking about getting an e-reader.

Most of the people I know who own one are rabid converts...including people who swore up and down that they'd never buy one. Some of the things I've heard:

"The printed page is so yesterday. It even smells musty!"

"I can carry an entire library around with me anywhere I go!"

"I used to read a book a year, now I'm reading all the time!"

Retailers are hyping the things to the high heavens. "Our latest model provides you with extra-long battery life, the ability to read in direct sunlight...and it has a 700 book capacity!"

Humph. My inner curmudgeon has a response at the ready for each selling point.

What if I LIKE the smell of books?

I typically read one book at a time. You know, since I only have the two eyes, and they work together.

I read considerably more than one book a year, my wife outreads me by a wide margin, and everything we read is printed on dead tree.

Battery life, eh? Well, my Eye-Book beats your iBook there. I doan NEED no steenkin' batteries. And I can read in direct sunlight all...I...want.

The e-reader craze is simply the latest attempt to force consumers to BUY AGAIN.

"Buy Again", I am convinced, is the Philosophy of the Age. It's the only reason we still have something resembling an economy...people have to keep making stuff to sell to other people whose stuff is...gasp...OLD. Cue Ron James, one of Canada's best comedian-wordsmiths:

"A Model T Ford is...old. Benjamin Franklin's printing press: old. The sandals of Jesus...OLD. Purchased five years ago for forty-five hundred bucks...fairly new!"

We're in the process of being made to buy our movies for a third time, our music for a fourth or fifth...now they've stumbled on a way to make us buy all our books again. That's aside from the planned obsolescence that characterizes the devices we play all this media on.

And really, is Blu-Ray THAT much superior to DVD? You could certainly make the argument for DVD over VHS, but c'mon, to really appreciate Blu-Ray, you have to invest in a home theater system and a high-definition television. More money. For those of us who just want to sit back and watch a movie...why bother?

Music is a teensy bit more defensible in that each iteration of playback device has large and inherent technological advantages over its predecessor. A cassette tape is much sturdier than an LP; a CD has only one side and much better sound quality than either, and digital music is infinitely more portable than anything that came before.

(And yet you can still buy vinyl. That's like going into a telegraph office instead of a Bell Mobility kiosk, but whatever.)

But I will maintain to the end of my days that Blu-Ray is pretty much indistinguishable from DVD. And even if it isn't, what happened to music is BOUND to happen to movies, sooner or later and probably sooner. It already seems like most people don't watch TV on their televisions any more, and a sizeable number of people download whatever they watch. It won't be long before shelves of DVDs or Blu-Rays belong in a museum, not a private dwelling.

Back to e-readers.

Books are fundamentally different from music or video, in that they require no playback device to enjoy. If you have functioning eyes, you can read a book. There's no need to shell out a couple of hundred bucks first. No batteries required.

There are two arguments I can make for e-readers over books. One is the ease with which you can purchase new product. The other is the backlight that would, I admit, make it easier to read where I do most of my reading: in bed.

Are these two arguments enough to convert me? Not even close, because of my biggest complaint....

My biggest complaint about these things, aside from the "batteries to read a book? Really?" is simply this: they're unitaskers. Eva has taught me to mistrust unitasker kitchen devices, and I don't need her to tell me that unitasker electronics are just as crappy. Sure, each device does one thing and does it well, but...I only have so many pockets. This is why the iPhone is such a success: it's also an iPod. Of course, unless you have the eyes of Superman, your iPhone will never make a decent e-reader, and unless you figure out a way to stuff a tablet in your jeans pocket, your e-reader will never be quite as portable as you're led to believe. True convergence is a ways off...if it ever happens at all.

But I reserve the right to be wrong. Should a device emerge that functions well as a telephone, a music/book/video storage machine, and a minicomputer, I'll be all over that thing like white on rice. Call it a PMC: a Personal Media Companion. In the meantime, though, leave me alone with my chunks of dead tree.

Harry Potter and the Daunting Plan

2011-07-15T18:50:00.005-04:00

We went to see the final installment of Harry Potter last night. Eva had procured tickets through her work to a special showing at 6:30 p.m. (the movie technically opened at midnight). We were advised to be there by 5:30. Really? I thought. An hour before curtain drop? That seemed odd to me, given that we didn't have to worry about the theater selling out--our group had the only tickets.

We actually got there well before 5:30...and we were lucky we did, or we might not have managed to snag two adjacent seats. Any later than, say, 5:45 and it would have been impossible to get two seats in the same row.

I hesitate to even write this...I can hardly believe it...but there were at least sixty people lined up for the MIDNIGHT showings when we got there. Almost seven hours in line. There is nothing on this earth I would line up seven hours for. Nothing at all. Leaf Stanley Cup Final tickets? Screw it, I'll watch it on TV. Sexual favours from (insert fantasy-women here)? The real fantasy is not having to wait seven hours!

I've noticed that nearly everyone I know, upon entering a stadium style theater, makes a beeline up. We don't. We go for the front row. Not the front front row, mind you...the row you first stumble upon when you enter the theater and turn around. Lots and lots of legroom there. You're less conscious of the press of humanity. And sitting close immerses you in the movie.

I managed to get the two seats adjacent to the far aisle in that front row. Even better: Eva had to contend with one person sitting on her lap, and that person was me.

Concessions in movie theaters have gone from obscene to almost inconceivable in price. Two pops and two popcorns with extra butter: $25. (Extra butter because otherwise your popcorn might as well be plain. I don't know about you, but personally I have an aversion to eating little bits of styrofoam.)

Wouldn't have mattered, anyway. The popcorn was actually cold by the time I dug into it, and if that was "extra butter"...then I was actually eating styrofoam. Yum.

I don't know whether it was the styrofoam, the Coke Zero (dear Coke: can you please try and produce a diet cola that doesn't taste like goat-spit?) or the endless wait, but I was kind of soured on the movie before it even started.

Don't get me wrong, it was a fine and fitting spectacle and a worthy end to a great franchise. But the 3D was totally unnecessary...it's only a means to extract more money from us moviegoers. I found the audio mixing to be slightly off: for the first time over the course of eight films I occasionally had trouble deciphering dialogue. And the pacing is...unusual. Frantic action for thirty seconds or a minute, then everything jars to a halt for some drama, then back to the action. It's not the weakest of the set--Half Blood Prince takes that title by a landslide--but nor is it near the top of the heap. At least as far as I'm concerned.

Harry Potter is all grown up. As for me...

Acting on doctor's advice-cum-orders, I have joined a gym for the first time in my life. It's the same gym that Eva belongs to. Put it this way: I'd rather spare myself Dad's heart attacks if I can help it. (He's looking fitter than he has in many years, down a considerable amount of weight and several inches. Besides, he feels great, exercising four or five times a week.

Part of me--the childish part I still struggle to quiet--is skeptical. Exercise has never felt good to me. Exercise is that thing that makes you stiff and sore for hours afterwards. Then you do it again and you're even more stiff and more sore. I'm given to understand that after some unknown number of repetitions, you become less stiff and less sore...but I'm less stiff and less sore sitting here in my chair. Besides, I'm further told that if you don't "feel the burn", you're not doing it right. Well, doing it wrong doesn't HURT! "No pain, no...pain! Duh!"

And then, at the end of your hour, you've done...what, exactly? You haven't gone anywhere or experienced anything other than rapidly increasing stiffness and soreness.

Against all odds, I might enjoy myself and become this guy in a couple of years:

Okay....

I'm going to try, damnit. Whenever I feel my resolve faltering, I'm going to think of my dad coming very near to death in his hospital bed, victim of a leg cramp that suddenly and without warning became a heart-cramp. (And by the way, his son gets leg cramps, too. Entirely too many of them, almost always in the left leg, sometimes high, sometimes low, always excruciating.)

How I wish I could just wave a magic wand. On the other hand, maybe after enough of this rigamarole I might be able to do new things. Like stand in line for sev-- No, not that. Never that.

Not Funny

2011-07-13T07:16:00.003-04:00

"I can pee clearly now, Lorena's gone..."

No, she's been reincarnated as Catherine Kieu Becker. Now, as then, the predominant reaction among both genders (after the males are done cringing) is some kind of dark hilarity. "She cut his weenie off, hahahahahaha."

Why is this funny?

Let's switch up the genders here: if a man mutilates a woman's genitals, is that funny? "He threw her itty bitty clitty in the garbage disposal, hahahahaha." No, that's not funny. That's monstrous. So why the double standard?

"Payback's a bitch", Eva said in response to that question. I'm pretty sure she was mostly joking herself. But statistics show women are pretty much just as likely to be perpetrators as victims Moreover, men are actually slightly more likely to be seriously injured or killed, probably because women tend to compensate for their lack of body strength by various means. Becker, for instance, used drugs to incapacitate her husband before the knife came out.

This is not something we're supposed to talk about. There's an interesting, if hideous dynamic in play here, similar to the common reaction that rape victims "had it coming" because of their prior sexual history or the manner in which they were dressed. Male victims of spousal assault "had it coming" because, well, obviously, they must have deserved it. Men are scum, right? If he wasn't abusing her himself, he was probably cheating on her, and every woman knows that aggravated assault is the only sane and just reaction to being cheated on...right?

And just as women often refrain from reporting rape because they're ashamed that they "let themselves be raped", men tend to avoid reporting being abused because men are supposed to be able to take care of themselves, physically. Which goes against the four-word dictum most of us guys learn in childhood (NEVER HIT A WOMAN). I still remember asking but what if she deserves it?

Doesn't matter, was the reply. Which is another way of saying she doesn't deserve it. And that's true. No matter what the provokation, it's never okay to assault a woman. Her miniskirt is not an invitation to rape.

But that knife cuts both ways, or at least it should. And nobody should laugh when that knife touches skin and starts sawing. It's just not funny.

Kai Nagata: I Respect This Man

2011-07-12T06:42:00.002-04:00

You don't often see people quit their jobs voluntarily in this economy. Especially if they are high-paying jobs with prestige and perks. But Kai Nagata did quit his job as a Quebec City-based television journalists, and the reasons he gave are eloquent and compelling. His essay is very much worth the read. I have the same issues with news in general, which is a very big reason why I have never pursued a career in it.

"TV news is a curious medium", he writes. "You don't always know whose interests are being served--or ignored." We have come a long way from the days of Walter Cronkite...a long way downhill. Once upon a time, and it really does seem a fairytale to say so, TV news anchors were amongst the most trusted individuals in the country. Canadian TV has lost several such individuals to retirement recently, among them Kevin Newman and Lloyd Robertson. Peter Mansbridge at the CBC soldiers on, practising his craft in an atmosphere that has rapidly degenerated. The set of The National looks like nothing so much as a game show. A Canadian game show, where five-time winners get a camera.

Nagata writes he "felt a profound discomfort working in an industry that so casually sexualizes its workforce. Every hiring decision is scrutinized using a skewed, unspoken ratio of talent to attractiveness, where attractiveness often compensates for a glaring lack of other qualifications..The idea has taken root that if the people reporting the news look like your family and neighbours, instead of Barbie and Ken, the station will lose viewers."

Bingo. This even extends so far as to cover your voice. An example: NTV, in Newfoundland. None of their news anchors, to my knowledge, have any more than the barest hint of a Newfie accent. Almost every viewer has a Newfie accent. Rightly or wrongly, I'd trust the news a titch more coming from somebody that sounded like me, but what do I know?

And of course, this sexualization extends to the stories covered.

The Duke and Duchess of Cambridge just wrapped up their honeymoon here in Canada. They were, of course, beset by packs of slavering journos everywhere they went. Republicans--which up here means anti-monarchists--among us were quick to say "this is not news!". I disagree to an extent--Wills and Kate really did serve themselves and the monarchy very well here: ask anyone in Slave Lake. The town was gutted by a raging wildfire a few months ago. It was not on their itinerary, but they cancelled a day off to go there and raise morale. They were spectacularly successful. I admired both of them for that and a host of other gestures, large and small, that they made while in this country.

But who gives a flying fart in a windstorm what Catherine Middleton wears? Is that important? Is it necessary to know who designed each outfit, how much it costs, and where you can get something similar? Judging by the tone of the coverage, this fashion bullshit is absolutely crucial and must be reported. Every day, every outfit. Meanwhile, important news is happening all over the country and it's ignored by directorial fiat. "William is young and Kate is pretty, let's lead with that."

He gets into politics a little further on in his essay, and suggests that there, too, he felt stifled, unable to report what he saw as serious, even critical issues facing the country. It is his belief that there is a "war on science" in this country. Actually, that's not so much a belief as it is a fact, and every action of the Harper government bears witness to it: the hamstrung census, the massive cuts to Environment Canada, the bullheaded opposition to InSite in Vancouver despite numerous studies showing how many lives it saves. If you want to get Harper to do something, anything, all you need to is produce a study showing the opposite.

Regardless of your political beliefs, a government that ignores and ridicules research at every turn is news. Important news.

But Wills is young and Kate is pretty.

I would like to see TV news modeled on newspapers. Report the news, factually and as objectively as possible. Take as long as necessary to cover each side of the story. Then, after a commercial break, editorialize in a segment clearly marked "opinion". Have people square off in a debate...not a trash talk, an actual debate...on public policy. Done properly, that would actually be informative entertainment, not the fluff that currently dominates TV news.

Nagata closes with a statement I frankly find inspirational:

I’m broke, and yet I know I’m rich in love. I’m unemployed and homeless, but I’ve never been more free.

Everything is possible."

Indeed.

Debt debt debt dash dash dash debt debt debt

2011-07-10T12:56:00.002-04:00

(or Save Our Solvency)

[...] iam pridem, ex quo suffragia nulli / uendimus, effudit curas; nam qui dabat olim / imperium, fasces, legiones, omnia, nunc se / continet atque duas tantum res anxius optat, / panem et circenses

(… Already long ago, from when we sold our vote to no man, the People have abdicated our duties; for the People who once upon a time handed out military command, high civil office, legions — everything, now restrains itself and anxiously hopes for just two things: bread and circuses) Juvenal, Satire 10.77-81, ca. 100 CE

------

August 2. On that date in 1776, the U.S. Declaration of Independence was signed. (How many people think that happened on July 4th?)

On that date this year, unless they do something, the United States will be in default. Perhaps they'll sign a Declaration of Dependence. You think?

But don't worry, they're doing something. They're arguing. Endlessly. The sticking point seems to be...doing anything other than arguing endlessly. It's fun to argue...you can score lots of political points. Then, later, after you've gathered up a boatload of them, you can take your political points down to the food bank and try and exchange them. You won't get any food, but hey, the exercise is good for you.

Ordinary citizens are doing something, too, at least according to Google Trends. Go ahead, check it out. Odds are that no matter what date you read this listing of What Americans Care About Right Now, nothing of any consequence whatsoever will show up on it. Least of all the word "debt".

No surprises here--Neil MacDonald, in the link above, expresses disdain and, reading between the lines, some species of shock that the average American citizen doesn't appear to notice, or care, that his country is going down the toilet. The disdain is understandable; the shock, not so much. As the epigram at the top of this blog demonstrates, "bread and circuses" is not exactly a new concept, and America has taken things considerably further in the "circuses" department than your usual Christians eating lions. Meanwhile, the debt drum beats on. Boom, doom, boom, doom, boom... hey, it's got a catchy beat and you can dance to it!

So what happens before August 2nd? Something's got to. My guess is that they'll agree to raise the debt ceiling at the last minute, in exchange for a package of half-assed measures that will only postpone the problem until sometime after the 2012 elections. And the chief concern will (of course) be who gets to take the fall.

Well, I can save them some posturing on that. America's taking the fall, and at this late date I'm not sure the brakes even work, anymore. The edge of the cliff is within sight, now...economic driver Tim Geithner cites it as August 2nd.

August 2nd. Hang on out there.

Holidaze

2011-07-10T02:24:00.005-04:00

I've been off since Canada Day and I go back to work tomorrow. Which is probably why it's 2:30 in the morning and I'm awake: I'm loth to lose overmuch of my last day of respite. Also, despite every effort made to eliminate work from the run of my thoughts, it has crept in. Being texted or called three times over the past week hasn't helped. C'mon, guys, do you really need me that badly? Apparently so.

I spent five days at Rose Point in Britt, with my rejuvenated father and ever-gracious stepmom. It may sound like a blasphemy even to suggest such a thing, but I have to say Dad's heart attack is one of the best things to ever happen to him. He's down 27 pounds and three inches around the waist and looks fitter than I can ever remember him looking. He goes to three organized workouts a week and does a lot more at home besides.

No fire calls...not unless you count this:

seen on our way up, south of MacTier. A police cruiser was passing us when Dad spotted the smoke a few klicks ahead: it was at least ten seconds before said cruiser suddenly took off towards what turned out to be a trailer full of "solar equipment" on fire. No injuries...apparently the driver just looked back to discover his trailer was merrily burning away...

I spent a good deal of time reading, and a goodlier deal of time trying to resist the pull of the Internet. Not even remotely successful there--I'm at least as addicted to online life as my wife has been to cigarettes--though it actually helps that their "high speed" connection...isn't. There's no point surfing too widely when YouTube videos buffer roughly forever and even Facebook pages won't load completely.

But, see, Ken, that's supposed to be the whole point of up north...to get away from all that.

I know, I know, and hey--I did manage to read something like seven hundred pages of A Storm Of Swords. Count me as yet another of George R.R. Martin's obsessive fans. This is fantasy for people who don't like fantasy. Characters so real you think you know them, situations so shocking you'll feel at times like pitching the book through a window...only to pick it up ten minutes later.

I stayed, for the most part, around house and dock this time....

Dad and I, with Jessie comfortably ensconced

...revelling once again in the peace and tranquility of the Magnetawan River. I try to edit out the houses to either side of Dad's and concentrate on the shoreline opposite, which looks as primeval as it would have a thousand years ago. Sheer bliss.

And I even got a wee dip in the river, dodging the possibly mythical Snapping Turtle That Lives Under The Dock and the definitely NOT mythical Water Snakes That ALSO Live Under The Dock. I'll admit to some misgivings sharing swimming space with such creatures. It's kind of like the way my wife feels about the ocean. That's the shark's house, says she. The shark doesn't bother me in my house, so I won't bother him in his house. But I was spared...this time.

Dad and Hez, thanks once again for having me. It's always a pleasure and a half to get up there.

Wasn't that a wedding?

2011-07-02T21:36:00.002-04:00

Congratulations Jim and Ally Hopf. My wife's brother, or 'Dude' as he is affectionately known, tied himself in a big ol' knot yesterday, at his place out in the country between Stratford and Mitchell. Married in the front yard and party in the backyard, how cool is that?

Just cool enough, as it turned out. It was a good thing the ceremony didn't happen today: 42 degrees with the humidity and thunderstorms this evening. Yesterday was sunny and warm but not hot, and the extensive fireworks display put a fitting cap on a fantastic day. Even if one of the buggers did go sideways and light a hay bale on fire: Ally, if you didn't know it before, you now know your husband can flat-out MOVE when he needs to.

It was a day some people (most notably Jim himself) thought would never come. I'll spare the personal details...let's just say I can remember a conversation I had with him about a decade ago, soon after I had married myself. He swore up and down and sideways he'd never marry. Never, never, never. I told him repeatedly not to say that, because I was sure he would and who knows what the future holds? Turns out his future held Ally. It took her a while, but she wore him down through a deep abiding love and bullheaded stubbornness in equal measure. And Ally, from what I know of the family you've married into...those two qualities mean you've been a Hopf in all but name since you decided you were going to turn "never" into "forever".

The service was short, sweet and to the point. There was one prayer for the churchly folks, but that was it: from procession to registry in ten minutes flat. The rest of the day and night was one big party: food a-plenty with two BBQs going full out, lots of music, a roaring bonfire and the aforementioned fireworks/hay bale blaze. Ally looked radiant and Jim relieved, or is that the other way around? A good time was had by all, and I'm glad I got to share in the day.

Every wedding I attend, I make a point of noting the music. And let me tell you, Jim and Ally's first dance song really spoke to me..

"All that I'm after is a life full of laughter, as long as I'm laughin' with you..." That's what it's about. Congratulations again, you two. We're so happy for you.

Gay Pride and Rob Ford

2011-06-26T06:37:00.002-04:00

So Rob Ford is snubbing the gayfolk. Did anyone seriously expect different?

This is a man who once said "if you're not gay, you won't get AIDS, probably"; he's also suggested that gays could "dismantle civilization". Standard garden-variety homophobe, in other words. Why would the gay community want somebody like him marching in their parade?

He's not. Instead he'll be engaging in a family cottaging tradition far, far away from anywhere the gay cooties could possibly get him. You know what? That's fine. Better he stay away than be coerced to attend, is my view.

There are a great many people of Ford's generation who are acutely uncomfortable with in-your-face displays of homosexuality (or heterosexuality, for that matter). Most of them have made an uneasy truce with gay marriage and gay people in general, so long as they keep themselves below the radar. This attitude is called "tolerance".

There has been a remarkable campaign to shift the meaning of "tolerance", to imbue it with a degree of enthusiasm it was never meant to hold. I don't have to love you to tolerate you. I don't even have to particularly like you. I might prefer it if you'd stay away from me, in fact. Maybe you could take your reprehensible mayoral views and go jump in a lake somewhere up in the back of the beyond. Should you wish to stick around, though, I won't keep you away. Your presence can be tolerated.

Truth be told, I know several gay people who keep well away from Pride events, not because they're ashamed to be gay, but because they feel no need to sensationalize it. They never saw public nudity as a condition of gayness. Quite frankly, I don't either. You can show pride in who you are all you want: most of us straight folk don't feel the need to do so with garish non-costumes and low-hanging fruit.

Let me be clear: I personally have no problem with Gay Pride as it stands, even with the flaunty jaunty full monties on display. Nudity doesn't bother me in the slightest: it's just skin and as I've said before, if God had meant for us to walk around naked, we would have been born that way. So let it all hang out if you want, but don't for one second tie your exhibitionism to your homosexuality and insist that everyone gaze on you adoringly. And while you're not insisting, try not to insist that everybody be totally smitten with You And Your Cause. Sometimes the best you can hope for is that they leave town and let you have the run of it.

Bicycles are not toys

2011-06-23T04:39:00.002-04:00

Regular readers will know that I do not drive, nor do I have a license. If I wanted to, I might be able to get a driver's license...my vision is just barely acceptable for the purpose...but I don't want to. Mostly because my vision is just barely acceptable for the purpose. I have convinced myself, and raised that conviction to an ironclad certainty, that sooner or later (probably sooner), I'd kill somebody and/or myself behind the wheel of a car.

Driving, that thing the civilized world takes entirely for granted, scares the shit out of me. I mean that quite literally. If you put a gun to my head and told me to drive a car, I might be able to do it for a time, but I would soil myself in the process.

As you can imagine, my lack of a driver's license has impacted my life in many ways, some of them unexpected. It has of course limited my pool of potential employers (I'd make a hell of a retail sales rep, but for my inability to get from store to store); it has dictated exactly where I can live (a public transit route is of paramount importance); it has affected my ability to shop for groceries or anything else. And let's just say again how lucky I was to find my wife. There are a dozen dozen reasons why, but for the purposes of this blog, a big one is that she's willing to cart me around. I don't think there are many women out there who'd have no problem doing all the driving, let alone women with Eva's pedigree.

I live approximately seven kilometers from where I work. It's not exactly walking distance (though I have walked it, once). It's about a ten minute drive. Unless you're on a bus: then, depending on time of day, it's anywhere from 35 to 75 minutes. The bus ride is an inconvenience that I simply factor into my life. I imagine it's a tiny bit like the way parents of small children must budget triple the time they once did to complete any least task.

I can bike it in 25 minutes if I push myself, and if the wind co-operates. (It rarely does: one of the axioms of cycling is that the wind is always against you. Another is that what goes up never seems to come down.) Weather is an issue, too: I've yet to see a rainproof bicycle. My bike has fenders, of necessity: I don't particularly need a stripe up my back. But for some reason, there doesn't seem to exist a bike with (a) fenders and (b) thin, ten-speed type tires. My bike is a clunker. A nice clunker, but a clunker. Spandex-bedecked people can coast by me while I pedal in top gear.

I don't mind getting wet on the way home--a little water never hurt anybody--but being as I work in coolers and freezers, even a chance of rain in the morning means Eva gets to drive me in and I get to bus home.

The route to work is an easy ride, for the most part. There are bike lanes for the first three hundred meters and the last fifteen hundred. Another two klicks are on residential avenues. The rest of it is on a major artery, and it's here that I've had a few close calls.

Nothing too close, I hasten to add. I've only been run over once, and that was by a uniformed police officer: it was also entirely my fault. But I still get the odd motorist who either doesn't see me or doesn't care that I'm there. Cyclists call it a "brushback". I'd personally rather experience baseball's version.

Despite occasional nerve wracking moments on the roads, I absolutely refuse to ride on the sidewalk. The vast majority of cyclists I see are on sidewalks, and I have nothing but disdain for them. I want to shout out first time without the training wheels, buddy? every single time. They don't call it a "sideride"...the only bicycles that belong on sidewalks are the toys of six year olds.

The law, incidentally, backs me up on this: bicyclists have the same rights and duties as operators of motor vehicles. I've had more than a few drivers tell me to get back up on the sidewalk "where I belong", and my reaction to those drivers is strikingly similar to my reaction when I see cyclists who think they belong on sidewalks.

Every once in a while, I read a story like this one that chills my blood. Here's the official report (bold mine):

"THE CYCLIST WAS WEST BOUND ON MS50 NEAR THE TRULOVE LOOP INTERSECTION. V1 WAS WEST BOUND ON MS50 APPROACHING THE CYCLIST FROM THE REAR. THE FRONT OF V1 COLLIDED WITH THE REAR OF THE BICYCLE. THE IMPACT THREW THE CYCLIST INTO THE AIR BEFORE LANDING ON THE HOOD OF V1 AND ONTO THE WINDSHIELD. V1 CONTINUED FOR A FEW FEET BEFORE COMING TO A STOP. THE CYCLIST WAS THEN THROWN TO THE ASPHALT WHEN V1 STOPPED. THE DRIVER OF V1 EXITED THE VEHICLE AND OBSERVED THE CYCLIST WHILE TALKING ON THE PHONE. D1 THEN REENTERED HER VEHICLE AND RAN THE CYCLIST OVER AGAIN BEFORE BEING FORCED FROM HER VEHICLE BY WITNESSES. V1 CAME TO FINAL REST FACING WEST IN THE WEST BOUND LANE ON MS 50 JUST METERS WEST OF THE TRULOVE LOOP INTERSECTION. THE CYCLIST CAME TO FINAL REST NEAR THE RIGHT FRONT TIRE OF V1."

When will it be my turn to face a psychotic driver?

Driving is already off limits to me, by my own choice. I can't allow that niggling fear a foothold in my mind, or I'll end up housebound.

The fact is, for me and people like me, bicycles are not toys, whatever drivers may think and however many may think it. A bike is a perfectly legitimate means of transportation, and I'm entitled to ride mine on city streets.

Do we really need provincial governments?

2011-06-22T10:49:00.002-04:00

This question has popped in and out of my head for years. It comes on with all the power of a brainwave, only to vaporize as political reality asserts itself. Nah, it'd never happen, and if it did, it probably wouldn't work...

Still, let's unpack the question. It usually comes to mind in response to some story about crumbling infrastructure, of which this country has about an infrastructure's worth. Chunks of concrete routinely fall off Montreal bridges, the Gardiner Expressway in Toronto just sloughed off a chunk of its own, and that's to say nothing of all the sewers, some of them dating back over a century...or the hydro network, which is taxed to the limit every summer...or even broadband Internet, which the old fogey in me suggests really isn't a priority. It is, or should be.

So right now we have ten provincial and three territorial governments, funded by varying levels of taxation and federal handouts (read: more taxation). Their chief responsibilities are implementation of 1) health care; 2) most forms of justice; 3) environmental regulations and 4) administrivia like driver's licenses and emissions tests and whatnot. Quebec, as usual, is a special case: its provincial government (which meets in a 'National Assembly') has many of the characteristics of a federal government.

Are these governments strictly necessary? Could we not rejig things so that their roles could be taken over by federal or municipal governments, as appropriate? Health care can and should be a federal responsibility, at least if we're as committed to equality as we say we are. Ditto the environment. Justice already is served in municipal courtrooms across the country and the petty little paperwork is likewise filled out in stuffy offices in every county seat in the nation.

I'm not sure how much money would actually be freed up by abolishing a level of government. Witness the repeated amalgamation fiascos under Mike Harris, in which cities were merged together only to see the size and cost of their governments balloon instead of shrink. I'd argue that amalgamation has yet to be properly handled. My city rejects it at every mention, despite being incredibly overgoverned: as I have said, we have three city governments plus one regional government to govern anything the other three governments forgot to govern. I think you could eliminate three municipal governments without anybody noticing, if you did it right.

But even if we don't save a penny beyond salaries, I'd argue that reallocation of resources and responsibilities makes sense. Municipalities need more power if they hope to stay afloat in coming years. And power costs...more than what cities can take in through property taxes. I guess I don't see the point of the middleman.

Another advantage: one layer of partisan politics gone. Municipal affairs can get heated, but at the end of the week most councillors understand they have to live in the same place. This tends to put a brake on some of the more egregious little culture wars that our Harper government specializes in.

Just a thought. Quebeckers, feel free to shoot it down.

Happy Father's Day

2011-06-19T08:26:00.002-04:00

To John, my stepfather, who raised me and put up with me in equal measure...

John, this is the life you saved me from. Jason Mraz has some of the specifics wrong as far as I'm concerned, but there are many lines of this song that give me chills.

You taught me to think before I speak, to think twice before I act, and to take responsibility for my thoughts, my words, and my actions. You brought stability into my life and made it a core value for me. Through your love for my mother, you modelled how a marriage is supposed to work, and I keep those lessons fresh in my head. What patience and perseverance I have is thanks largely to you.

Thank you. Thank you so very, very much. I love you, John.

To my father, Ken Sr.:

"Old man, take a look at my life, I'm a lot like you were..."--Neil Young

Most of my life I've been told "you're just like your father". To tell the truth, those words were not always offered in a spirit of high praise. But I recognize them as such, now. That heart of yours is the heart of a lion, and not just a Britt Lion, mind. I couldn't be more relieved it's still ticking away merrily inside your chest and I hope it keeps on ticking for many, many years to come. I'm proud to be your son. I love you, Dad.

Happy Father's Day to fathers of every kind, everywhere.

Game of Thrones Worth Playing

2011-06-17T19:24:00.003-04:00

My relationship with television mirrors the one I have with people. There are the shows I love, and they can be on 24/7...and then there are the shows I can't stand, which is most of them, and they ARE on 24/7.

I should know. Television is the background noise of my domestic life. With a few exceptions, I strive mightily to keep it there. But I know, for instance, that the episode of Golden Girls that is on as I am falling asleep each weeknight is the same one that greets me the next weekday morning. I know that if you search hard enough, you'll discover that one of Family Guy, Friends, or Two and a Half Men is ALWAYS showing somewhere on the dial. (I tolerate the latter two shows and unabashedly love the former; I think Seth MacFarlane and his writers have a direct pipeline into my sense of humour.)

Most of the rest of what's on TV, past or present, can go hang. I don't even hate the commercials, the way most of you do: in fact, there are usually four or five every year I could watch on a loop.

Though, come to think of it, if I ran the TV world I'd make a few changes to advertising:

You get ONE HUNDRED SHOWINGS of your spot and that's it, everybody out of the pool, make a new commercial.
None of this "let's show the same commercial back-to-back, or twice in the same break" crap. Your ad can only be shown once in any hour long period on any given network.
NO FEMININE HYGIENE PRODUCT ADS. Not necessary. That's what mothers are for. And besides, I could be eating fish soup. Yech.
We're all consenting adults here (after a certain hour, anyway): let's see some ads reflect that fact. Just once I'd like to see a Pepsi ad wherein a guy gulps a Coke Zero, sputters, and says "what IS this shit?!"

So that's advertising. Moving on to the shows: let's see. Most of them are, how do we put this? Oh, yeah...asinine.

That's a sweeping generalization, to be sure, so hand me the dustpan as I mop up all of so-called "reality" television, most of what passes for comedy, and every drama CBC has ever produced. Another pass for "news", which is distressingly marketed as entertainment. Most of what appears on news programs shouldn't, and most of what doesn't should.

Asinine. I know, I know, there are plenty of people out there who feel that's a perfect description of Family Guy. What can I say, except this: on the surface, it seems to revel in its asininity...look at it a little deeper and it's one of the smartest shows on television. The more you know about pop culture, the funnier that show is.

I haven't bothered following a drama since Joan of Arcadia was cancelled. I have both seasons on DVD. Haven't watched any of it, though, and I'm not sure why. Possibly because even one episode will bring all the anger at the cancellation back up from where it's laying largely dormant. That was a good show, damnit. Profoundly spiritual without ever once getting preachy, it had crisp writing and characters you cared about.

I found out back in February that George R.R. Martin's Song of Ice and Fire novels were going to be adapted to the small screen, and I danced a jig. Now you have to understand that I mislike fantasy novels almost as much as I mislike television; people had been telling me to read A Game of Thrones for years, and I kept putting it off. Then one day I caved in, started reading, and was quickly enthralled.

A Game Of Thrones is not your average hobbity fantasy novel. The characters are almost all human, and believably so. Few if any of them are wholly good or wholly evil; everybody's just trying to survive the best they can. The world they're trying to survive in many ways mirrors ours circa 1400 or so. Lives tend to be nasty, brutish, and short. And unpredictable: Martin absolutely revels in turning fantasy tropes on their ear. The Dauntless Hero in most fantasies you can identify by page ten, and you know he's going to go adventuring, have a million arrows shot at him (only one will hit, giving him a flesh would that serves to accentuate his Dauntless Hero physique) and eventually rescue the damsel in distress and ride off into the sunset. In a Martin fantasy, the Dauntless Hero is like to be beheaded nine or ten chapters in. Or he'll brave the million arrows and find his damsel is dead. Or an ugly crone. Or a dead, ugly crone who turns out to be his mother. You get the idea.

Magic exists in Martin's world, but for the most part it's shadowy and muted, exactly the way you'd expect to stumble across it in ours, if you ever did. The people move through this world, trying to screw each other or screw each other over, and the outcome of each screwing/screwing over is utterly unpredictable. Kind of like life.

I am excited and gratified to report that the television show is a smashing success, nearly equal to and in some places better than the source material, and that's saying something. Most every character is exactly the way I pictured him or her. They're following the novel pretty much as closely as they can, which means a great many non-reader viewers were outraged last week to find they had killed off one of the main characters in the penultimate episode of the first season. There's another one set to go tomorrow night. Has that EVER happened on television?

Because this show airs on HBO, they're free to mimic human life in all its baseness and glory, which means people swear, have sex, and hurt each other, sometimes all at once. With that caveat in mind, pick up season one on DVD when it comes out. I promise you won't regret it.

Heartless

2011-06-16T19:44:00.004-04:00

"Swedish twins are only good for one thing"--Dave Kinnaird

Congratulations to the Boston Bruins, who fully deserved their Stanley Cup. A shout-out to Tim Thomas, who put on a goaltending display for the ages in the final.

To Vancouver...your Canucks are almost there. Almost. You are missing one critical ingredient necessary for a championship, and that is GRIT.

What may have looked like grit at the end of the regular season, the gruelling playoff revealed to be mere dirt.

Grit looks to hurt teams on the scoreboard. It doesn't accept half measures. It blocks every shot, finishes every check, takes the hit to make the play, and doesn't back down.

Dirt doesn't have grit's skill or compete level, so it cheats. It tries to physically cripple the other team's best players. Faced with gritty play from the opposition, dirt dives to the ice and whines pathetically at the referees. Above all, dirt lets grit get to it.

When Aaron Rome hit Nathan Horton--a hit that was arguably clean, but for the fact it was so late it was early--I actually muttered to myself, "there you go, Boston, it's your Cup now." That wasn't the first dirty play out of the Canucks this final--Burrows the biter springs to mind--but it was easily the most ill-considered. To that point, Boston had been sleepwalking. Losing one of their best players to a concussion woke them up. Never poke a sleeping bear.

We saw dirty play after dirty play out of the Canucks. Kesler, normally an extremely talented player, decided halfway through the final that he would prefer not to play hockey and instead took up competitive diving. Last night, Chris Higgins elbowed Zdeno Chara in the head. Chara is 6'9". To throw an elbow to his head, Higgins actually had to leave his feet. Strangely, there was no penalty on the play.

And Luongo...don't get me started. In the wake of what, unsurprisingly, turned out to be his team's last good showing, he actually told the media that the single puck that had beaten Thomas that night "would have been an easy save for me". I read that and my nose ejected coffee. Did he just chirp one of the best goalies in the league? Did Roberto Luongo, the guy who had been ventilated twice in Boston, just suggest that ANYTHING to do with making saves is easy for him?

Grit has heart; dirt does not. From top to bottom, it was as if the Canucks had faced a Mayan priest prior to game three. Their hearts were ripped out. The Sedins looked nothing like the dynamic duo that had telepathically torn up the league. Luongo couldn't stop a beach ball in Boston. Meanwhile, on the Bruins, Mark Recchi at 43 was outhustling Canucks less than half his age; Brad Marchand was suddenly a goal machine. Even much-maligned Tomas Kaberle picked it up in the final. And Thomas--eight goals in seven games. Not too shabby.

So Boston is full measure for their Cup. And of course there was a riot in Vancouver last night.

Personally, I think anyone who destroys public property should have their own property destroyed. Burn a car, have yours torched. Of course, many of the festive folk last night would have had to explain this to Mommy and Daddy.

Mobs disgust and infuriate me. I've seen a few firsthand from my dark days (and darker nights) at 7-Eleven, and if anything makes me want to engage in mindless violence, it's mindless violence. That's the problem with mobs: the mentality is virulently contagious. It's why you wouldn't have caught me within thirty miles of the G20 summit in Toronto: even idiots knew there was trouble brewing, which is why so many of them gravitated towards it. (Yes, I know there were people arrested for no reason at all...and that also happens every time there's a summit. Lesson: stay well the hell away.)

In other countries, nonsense like what went down in Vancouver last night would be met with lethal force. There aren't many instances when I regret leaving in this peaceful country called Canada...

A Driveway Encounter

2011-06-11T19:25:00.003-04:00

We had our third, and almost certainly final, garage sale today. The object this time around wasn't to make a great deal of money...it was to purge our house of unwanted Cheap Redundant Assorted Product (C.R.A.P.)

It was a resounding failure. Our C.R.A.P. was apparently real crap this time out. This surprised me a little. There were three full sets of dishes, a TV, an amazing assortment of kitchen paraphernalia, books galore...lots of stuff we had no further use for but which (I'd thought) other people might appreciate.

What really soured the whole experience--what was a huge contributing factor in us packing the whole thing up two and a half hours early--was the gentleman who pulled up fairly early on in the proceedings and proceeded to expostulate at excruciating length on things no stranger wants to hear at ANY length.

I am NOT a "people person". I can fake one with astounding sincerity--I'm paid to do so for forty hours a week--but deep down I don't like most people. Never have, never will. Strange people are...strange. We have one woman who calls our store like clockwork every single week and requests some odd product (a different one every time) to help her cope with the bowel cancer that she says she has. Every week she says she has bowel cancer, and the bowel cancer she says she has prevents her from leaving the house, so she has to send her caregiver out to get the product of the week. If you can't get rid of her quickly enough, she will start detailing the symptoms of bowel cancer, the treatment of same, and she's more than willing to go on and on about this all day. Seemingly without taking a breath.

We get people, usually elderly, who will detail similar things in person, and they're even harder to deal with. You just know they're exceptionally lonely and desperate to share anything with anyone, and you've been picked. It is so difficult to treat these people with the compassion they deserve without being cornered and forced to neglect the multitude of tasks you should be doing instead. I'd rather deal with a dozen IRAACS--Irate, Rude And Angry Customers--than one poor downtrodden senior in search of a friend.

And then there are people like this gentleman. The first words out of his mouth after "Good morning" clued me in right away that this was going to be an encounter for the ages.

"Do you know anyone who has died of cancer?"

Well, I know a woman with bowel cancer...

Eva said she did. I nodded, wondering when this interaction was going to immigrate into surrealism.

"Do you have the Internet?" he asked. Informed that we did, he launched into a Very Important Story he had discovered online just this morning, about how a doctor somewhere near Conspiracy, Alabama had discovered a way to cure most cancers using human urine. Of course, the pharmaceutical companies were making every effort to shut this guy down. But this doctor had a factory going and was curing kids of their brain cancers ("which are impossible to treat!")

Well, piss on this, I thought. I just stood there, though, struck mute by the realization that this fine specimen was retired and had absolutely nothing better to do with his day than educate us sad sacks on The Ways Of The World.

The conversation was amazingly one-sided. He went from the urine cure for cancer straight into how Big Agriculture was fattening and killing people with hormones and supplements in the U.S. He wasn't sure if it was the same in Canada, and at that point I thought of jumping in.

Do I agree with him? Do I tell him that no, Canada has much more stringent standards on its food supply (though there is room for improvement)? What will get him off my property fastest? If I agree, he might think he's found a kindred spirit with an extra ear in need of being talked off. If I debate him on any point, he's going to drag out the heavy ammunition. I'm screwed either way.

From there he somehow got onto airport security, and it was then we found out the inevitable news that he was a born-again Christian preacher. Lord Jesus, I prayed, please save me from your follower. The preacher (who was also a retired schoolteacher, another revelation that held no surprise for us) told us in stentorian tones that the people manning airport security posts were Wal-Mart greeter rejects and extremely rude to good Christian folk like him. We should, he said, do things the way they do in Israel: racial profiling. Then it was a hop skip and jump into the Old Testament for a lesson on Mosaic Law. At that point I was chomping on my tongue so very hard, suppressing a litany of responses. I wanted to tell him that Moses almost certainly never existed, but was a telegraphed concatenation of several people. I wanted to tell him that a Christian preacher would do well to abandon the Old Testament and stick with the New. I wanted to tell him we were Satanists. I wanted, more than anything, some other customers on whom I could focus all my attention, but they stubbornly insisted on staying away.

Eva told me to go into the house and check on Tux and Peach, who were (I think) sensing my discomfort and vocalizing theirs. I went, incredulous. Does she think I'm somehow prolonging this agony? Does she really want to be left alone with this guy? Does "check on the Tux and the Peach" mean "get them and sic 'em?"

Inside, I comforted the dogs, surreptitiously peeking out the window to see if the man had gone away. He hadn't. Though he HAD bought something.

We have (had) this coffee table, given to us years ago. Eva liked it. It bruised my eyes. It was a fugly carved monstrosity of a tree stump that I have actually fantasized about throwing into the trash. Good thing I never did, because we didn't know what we had. This table was made out of acacia wood, the same as the Ark of the Covenant!

I went back out to help the preacher with his prize. We thanked him, bid him good day, and I placed the table in the back seat of his SUV. Whereupon he closed the door and walked back across the street to educate us some more. Several sentences in--I honestly have no idea what the topic of discussion was this time--I drew myself up to my full height and said "Sir."

He stopped dead and looked at me. "Yes." A statement, not a question. Does he understand that we want him to leave, now? Silence followed, and dragged out. No, I don't think he does. "Thank you," I said, "but we've heard about enough." He didn't sputter at all, but wished us a good day, turned and started walking to his vehicle. Then he turned around and said "I'll only talk for a second" before going full circle and reminding us to entrust any cancerous individuals we might know to his urine-peddler.

Then he went away. Eva and I looked at each other, exhausted. Over thirty minutes had gone by. We were drained.

I'm going to say this once again, and hopefully never again after: I don't care about anyone's faith. I just don't. If you have a faith that serves you well, more power (or, hey, Power) to you. I just don't want to hear about it. Why? Not out of any ill will, honestly. It's because faith is boring. You know that old joke about new parents and the way they talk to friends..."baby baby, babybabybaby...baby baby BABY!" Well, substitute "God" and you have a fair representation of how many (not all) Christians come across to me. I have a faith of my own that serves me just as well, but "mine is not a better way, mine is only another way".

I won't hold that gentleman's Christianity against him any more than his teaching career or his piano playing (the business card he handed to Eva so that she could email him for the urine-doc's website identified him as a piano player). Hey, I play piano. It just amazes me how, of all the offensive prattle he spouted to us, total strangers, the religious drivel was most annoying...and how he didn't appear to notice, or care. And it bothers me immensely that I seem to be too polite to shove a cork in mouths that need shutting...

Raillery

2011-06-08T19:07:00.003-04:00

Being as I don't drive, you'd think I'd be a huge proponent of public transit. And I am. But the way my city is going about modernizing its system is, quite frankly, making me ill.

Trying to make this short and sweet. I live towards the northern end of one city that goes by three names. Depending on where you are, this place is called Waterloo, Kitchener, or Cambridge. The latter is itself comprised of Preston, Galt, and Hespeler.

Kitchener and Waterloo are one city...just remember that if you say so to somebody from Waterloo, you'd best be running backwards as the words escape your mouth. Waterlooers are kind of snotty that way: there's a $5o-100K location premium for houses at this end of town. But seriously, if you took the signs down, somebody from away would have a hell of a time telling you where one city ends and another begins. Cambridge is somewhat distinct, but tendrils of Kitchener and Cambridge have met each other and begun entwining in conurban bliss.

Like Topsy, this place just growed. For a long time through the eighties it was the fastest growing region in Canada, and it's up there again thanks to a serious infusion of tech companies. (RIM's head office is about a seven minute walk from my front door.) The streets are crazily confusing to an outsider. The two main drags in K-W run north, south, east and west: 256 King Street could be any of four locations (or two on the completely unrelated King Street in Cambridge). Moreover, King and Weber parallel each other through Kitchener and Waterloo, but your fifth grade math teacher would be horrified: these parallel lines cross. Three times.

So we have K-W in the north, aligned largely (but by no means exclusively) north-south, and Cambridge in the south, aligned somewhat east-west. Clear? Yeah. As mud.

Connecting this urban area via public transit is something of a challenge. To date, the best they have done is something they've dubbed the 'iXpress', which takes 75 minutes to get from north Waterloo to downtown Cambridge. This is more than twice as long as the trip takes by car...which is why public transit will never supplant the private automobile.

Enter light rail.

I have never in all my life seen a controversy rage in the newspaper half as long as this one has. The letters page has been thoroughly dominated for years now by zealots arguing for LRT and zealots arguing against it. Every possible argument pro or con has been repeatedly advanced and cut to shreds. It's an abortion-level controversy, by which I mean nearly everyone's minds have been SET as if in cement, one way or the other.

And anybody against LRT for any reason, no matter how considered, has been shouted down at every turn. It's become increasingly obvious that on June 15th we'll be committed to an $818-million LRT system connecting two shopping malls and ignoring half of Kitchener and all of Cambridge. Further, the proposed LRT will save three or four minutes of commuting time over the bus system we already have...for all those thousands of people who live at Fairview and work in Conestoga, or vice versa. It will disrupt traffic whenever traffic isn't disrupting it.

But if we don't get exactly this system, the city will (we're told) become unliveable. I got a pamphlet in my mailbox the other day that was my final straw.

WITHOUT THE LRT, it thundered, I WORRY FOR MY GRANDCHILDREN.

Give me a freakin' break.

Look, I support sustainable, walkable communities. Public transit is an integral part of them. But in order for public transit to succeed, it has to take people from where they are to where they want to go, preferably as quickly as possible. Light rail built right down the center of the streets from one shopping mall to another is not going to accomplish this.

If we are absolutely wedded to that north-south corridor...why not a monorail along the lines of Vancouver's SkyTrain? This would still serve developers' interests while permitting life to continue beneath the route as normal.

Or--for that matter--what's wrong with a modified/expanded iXpress service, perhaps using smaller busses where appropriate, giving them higher priority at intersections or even their own lane? That would be considerably less expensive, using roadway we already have.

Ah, hell, I'm spitting into the wind: their minds are made up and there's no changing them. Maybe that's what most annoys me. There's talk about how other cities are trying to steal OUR federal and provincial funding, almost as if said funding ISN'T coming out of our left pockets while the Region has its hand in our right pockets. Antediluvian conservative Ken surfaces from yon tar pit to shout an old mantra of his: THERE'S ONLY ONE TAXPAYER!

Rainbows and "Choices"

2011-06-08T11:05:00.004-04:00

For some reason, it's obligatory in articles like this one--on gay rights--to assert right up front the sexuality of the author. You always hear it whenever anyone could POSSIBLY interpret your words as those of a homosexual. "I'm straight, but I love Broadway musicals." "Straight man here, and thinking of a career as an interior designer." "I couldn't be any less gay (believe me), but my girlfriend (she's a girl, did I mention that?) wants to peg me and I'm kind of intrigued. Though STRAIGHT!"

It's insulting, when you think about it. If I come out, so to speak, in favour of gay rights, my opinion shouldn't be given any more or less weight if I'm straight, gay, bi, or polka-dotted. For some reason that makes me think of this anti-racism poster:

My closest male friend, who is gay and married, considers his gayness to be absolutely the least important thing about him as a person: not worthy of remark or even notice. I used to argue with him about it, thinking it was his way of keeping one foot in the closet, but I've since come to realize he's right. Gays come in all colours--"black, yellow, brown, normal". The best way to dislodge homophobia, in my experience, is to get to know and like the "straight" guy and find out later that he's gay. You're then forced to decide whether this new piece of information about your friend impacts your relationship. (Hint: unless your friend outs himself coming on to you...it doesn't.)

Sadly, there remains much work to be done. For every Jay I know, there's seemingly a dozen Christopher Rabideaus and Constance McMillens. Today I read that St Joseph Catholic Secondary School in Mississauga has banned rainbows. Shocking, the irony of that. You know, since rainbows symbolize God's love and mercy and all.

Last month, I was disgusted to learn of Tennessee's Don't Say Gay bill, which PASSED, outlawing any mention of homosexuality in schools. I guess that'll stop the gay epidemic. (Kudos to George Takei, who suggested substituting his name for the "offensive" word.

Now I find this crap exists in my own backyard, and I'm not just disgusted, I'm a little frightened. Because unlike, say, homosexuality, this kind of bigotry can be contagious.

Doubtless the official line on this is that being gay is "against Catholic teachings". It would be laughable if it wasn't so tragic. A great many things are against Catholic doctrine, and by that doctrine, there is only one that is unforgivable: blasphemy against the Holy Spirit. Is that what "being gay" is? Maybe we should ask gay Christians.

(Incidentally, what a stupid 'unforgivable sin'. Does anybody really believe that God, in Its Holy Spirit Aspect, loves everyone unconditionally and will forgive anything...except some bad words thrown directly at It? Don't answer that.)

The real issue here is that the Catholics, among many, still believe that being gay is a choice. BC Conservative leader John Cummins--another Canadian, damnit-- cites this belief in arguing that homosexuals should not be covered under the Human Rights Act. I'm going to give the final word to advice columnist Dan Savage, who responded, "It’s time to put your mouth where your mouth is, John. If being gay is a choice, choose it. Show us how it’s done. Suck my dick."

On Marriage

2011-06-05T07:26:00.002-04:00

"I'll give you an exact definition. When the happiness of another person becomes as essential to yourself as your own, then the state of love exists."--Robert Heinlein, Stranger In A Strange Land

I'm not blowing my horn with this post. Really, I'm not. If you should hear the melodic tootling of horns as you read, it might be tinnitus: seek medical help.

I spend a substantial part of my wake-time confused. I have for much of my life. This blog is in large part an attempt to sort through my many confusions, which is why I keep cycling back to the same topics in my more serious posts. But there's one source of confusion I've neglected to mention all these years, and it's a big one, to wit: Marriage.

Not mine, I hasten to add. Well, actually, yes, mine...but in a good way. I'm confused about why my marriage works and so many others don't.

Over my ten-plus years of marriage, I have watched as friends, acquaintances and total strangers have separated or divorced. Many of those who are still together are at each others' throats over money, over sex, over any number of other things. And here I am, happily, ecstatically married. I can't imagine not being married, or being married to anyone but Eva. Mushiness aside, why is that? Hollywood Squares answer: nobody else would have put up with me this long.

The real answer is considerably more complex. For my part...

Eva has been told many times over the years that I am -- God, this sounds self-serving! -- a pretty fair husband. (Okay, truth be told, I've moderated that considerably: the word amazing has been used.) This is in response to her telling people that, for instance, I'm going to go on the same diet she's on. Or that I'm willing to go into clothes stores and shop with her. (Eager, no, not really...but I do like to find things that she'll like to wear.) Or that I do almost all the dishes and laundry in this house.

Ha. The diet thing boggles my mind. Apparently there are men who call themselves husbands out there who would insist their wives cook them whatever they want to eat, regardless of whether said wives could eat it themselves. If I did that, I'd expect Eva to ask for a divorce, on the grounds that she couldn't possibly stay married to such a rude son of a bitch.

Shopping: hey, it helps that my love is a "get in and get out" kind of person. But I do pick out lots of her clothes. I like to think I have an eye for it.

And dishes and laundry: well, she does almost all the cooking. Not to mention the driving, the budgeting, and any handyman tasks that need doing around here. Not even a fair tradeoff, says I.

The truth is that none of these things make me a pretty fair, let alone an "amazing", husband. Just a husband. If I was grading my husbandly acumen, I'd give a charitable C, no higher. I don't do enough around the house, I don't always listen, or remember the things I hear. And I have certain shortcomings too personal for this forum, let's leave it at that. The effort's (mostly) there, I'll give the ravers that, but so what? I count myself lucky the love of my life is so forgiving.

And "forgiving" is the least of Eva's qualities. I gather she, like me, feels she's not a particularly good spouse. Total bunk: just ask her husband. What Eva has done and continues to do for me can't be understated. She is my haven and sanctuary, one of a very few people on this planet I feel completely comfortable being with. While always insisting she loves me as I am, she has encouraged a much needed mental and emotional maturation that is still ongoing. She makes me laugh each and every day...but she also makes me think. We have come a long way together, with her as the driving force in the relationship. And here I find I must pause to explain something to outside observers puzzled by our marriage. (I know you're out there.)

Eva is a naturally dominant person. She likes to be in control, and to the extent she is subject to stress at all, it largely derives from a sense that she is not, or that her control is slipping. I, by contrast, am naturally submissive. Which does not mean I'm a pussy or a pushover. It means I pick my battles.

I hate conflict. I'm told that without conflict there can be no resolution. That's at odds with something that used to hang on the wall of Eva's cubicle at work, a piece of shared philosophy that, if universally adopted, would create heaven right here on earth. It goes like this:

NO SHAME, NO BLAME. FIX THE PROBLEM.

Given that problems to be fixed are exceedingly rare in my marriage, and further given that when they do occur, my wife (being considerably more street-smart than I) is generally more adept at fixing them....you won't see me standing up and putting my foot down very often.

"Marriage is a lot of work", I was told before I married. Well, yeah, it is...if you don't love or particularly like each other, if you have expectations and conditions built into your relationship...if your partner isn't also your best friend. Then it's backbreaking labour...way too much work to even contemplate. But my marriage is more like a canoe trip on a quiet lake. You've gotta paddle to get somewhere, but if you're in no hurry, you can also drift along in peace and tranquility...

Gadget Whoredom

2011-06-01T09:47:00.003-04:00

For most of my life, I've been a devotee of function over form. I never cared that my television, DVD, and VCR were all made by different companies, nor that one was white, another gray, and the third jet black. What mattered to me was that they performed their function...preferably for a long period of time. I like to think of myself as stable, durable and resilient, and I value those traits in any household appliance. Unfortunately, I happen to live in a society that likes to sacrifice durability on the altar of mindless consumerism.

I should note here that my shadow side revels in mindless consumerism: I am every bit as susceptible to the I WANT ITs as the rest of you...sometimes more so. Materialism is a drug: the thrill of acquiring can lift you high as a kite, but you'll crash down to earth in short order and start looking for the next "fix". I lived that life through my twenties, and it would be the height of hypocrisy for me to look down my nose at a burned-out junkie...because I came perilously close to that existence myself. The only difference: My drug of choice was not only licit, but encouraged by every passing billboard and beaming TV ad.

I've outgrown that evil addiction to "NEW AND IMPROVED" (and incidentally, how can something be both "new" and "improved"?) Mostly, anyway. When it rears its head nowadays--should I choose to indulge it--I at least try to get something that will last.

This inevitably means spending more...but I'm okay with that. Because in my experience, the expensive stuff is cheaper than the cheap stuff. Take shoes, for example. The average pair of shoes used to last me about three months. I distinctly remember buying one deeply discounted pair at Hobo's Shoeperstore that actually split in half within a fortnight of the purchase. Now I buy Rockports: one pair lasts me a year, give or take.

Or coffeemakers. The heating plate on cheap coffeemakers flakes off like sunburned skin. We went through three of those things within a calendar year before we wised up and shelled out a little more for an Oster. That's been going strong for a couple of years now, and would still have pride of place in our morning were it not for my wife's attack of gadget whoredom:

She actually had what we considered to be sound reasons for shelling out more than twice what the Oster cost her. The single cup brewer means we'll never toss half a pot of coffee down the drain again. And this Keurig platinum is considerably more versatile than a pedestrian coffeemaker: it'll do ciders, teas, iced drinks, and hot chocolate, amongst other things.

And...I can't deny the allure it has: Meet George Jetson, and here's his coffee machine. (Ooooh, shiny.)

Most importantly, the customer service is highly rated: any problem and they'll just send a new unit, no questions asked. Not that we anticipate a problem: the clerk at the store where we purchased this sleek thing told us they had discontinued a competitor's line because of reliability issues and poor customer service.

And then there's...*treads carefully* Apple.

Look, I'm going to try not to be a fanboy, here. I understand that there are perfectly good reasons to buy a Microsoft machine, that Windows 7 doesn't suck...much...that Apple has built-in limitations on what you can and can't do with an iPod/Pad/Phone, and so on and so forth. Further, I know that my reason for entering the orchard in the first place is largely based on anecdote: to wit, I know an author still using a Macintosh computer dating to 1991. Anecdote, yes, but mighty powerful as you watch your fourth household system in seven years.

And so now I have a Mac to go with my iPod and my wife's shiny new iPhone 4. (For weeks before we relented, both of us went around quoting this. Highly NSFW--language!)

*sigh* I guess we are sheeple. Then again, maybe Mr. Smug Salesman should consider that Apple didn't get to be the most valuable company on the planet simply by feeding clover to sheeple.

Why the enthusiasm? Part of it is the cross-platform iTunes account, possibly the most intelligent thing Apple ever created. Apps, Mac software, music and film...all of it is accessible from one account, and things that work on your iPod will also work on your iPad and iPhone. iLike. Then there's the minor convenience that things...just...work. The file management system is simpler, you can drag and drop objects between programs with ease, and I have not once had to put up with my computer warning me about the grave dangers inherent in any least task.

And finally, again, the shiny factor: my Mac Mini is not much larger than a hardback book. It takes up next to no space on my desk, and it looks damned good not doing it.

My wife, at fortymumble, is an aspiring artist, and a talented one. Macs were designed with artists of all sorts in mind: mine came with a music studio that would cost me a couple of hundred extra bucks on a Windows system.

Hell, PC World magazine has even published ""Eight Reasons Your Next Computer Should Be A Mac". And you gotta figure they're a tad biased against Macs. Certainly their readers are.

I'm not a member of an Apple cult, honest. Just a common garden variety gadget whore...

That's the Sound of the Men...

2011-05-31T07:12:00.002-04:00

In the latest chapter of the Americanization of Canada, Ontario wannabe-Premier Tim Hudak has proposed chain gangs for provincial prisoners.

So many Conservative policies sound great if you don't think too hard. Who'd argue that convicted prisoners shouldn't give something back to their communities? And doesn't manual, menial labour seem like a great thing to give back?

There are a few problems to overcome, though. Two thirds of provincial prisoners are awaiting trial and sentencing. (I have to admit that figure shocked the hell out of me. Harper says we need more jails. Maybe we just need more courtrooms.) Anyway, that leaves a third eligible for a work gang. But you can't just create one and send it out into a neighbourhood park. In effect, chain gangs represent a whole new jail, one without walls but requiring guards. Granted, the cons are chained together and one guard per work unit is probably sufficient, but you can bet Joe and Jane Taxpayer won't feel safe in their home unless they see LOTS of guards. That's a nontrivial expense: Hudak's price tag of $20 million a year is...let's just say "optimistic".

Then again, just because they're criminals doesn't mean they're stupid. Escapes are inevitable. People escape from jails fairly often, but at least the jails they escape from aren't located a hundred yards from the home of Mr. and Mrs. Couldbeyou.

And what exactly do you have these chain gangs doing? Presumably work that someone else did until the chain gang arrived on the scene. Prison labour is slave labour: a business or government can't compete with it. That means more people out of work.

This whole chain gang debate is merely a symptom of the typical Conservative mindset. When it comes to law and order, most conservatives believe that criminals are to be punished, not rehabilitated. (The same goes for drug addicts, which is why Vancouver's InSite program is in grave danger despite reams of studies attesting to its saving lives.)

There is, of course, a voice from the hindbrain that cries for revenge in the wake of any crime. I'm subject to it myself: hell, I'm the guy who thinks we should do away with "attempted murder" charges. (If you meant to kill, and you tried to kill, why should it matter if you succeeded or not? Shutting that voice up means shutting people up for a long, long time in ~~criminal factories~~ prisons.

Yes, I said criminal factories. That's really what jails are: you warehouse a bunch of criminals together in the same place and the smart ones will teach the stupid ones all they know. That goes double if you treat your prisoners like scum.

"It's like your life has been on pause. You just go on with all the bad habits you had before you went in."--"Nils", convicted smuggler and murderer

Check out Norway's approach. I'm thinking of calling this place up and asking if it's really necessary to commit a crime to be sent here. "Cushy" doesn't even begin to describe it: Hudak and others of his ilk would have a conniption. But this "prison" has the lowest recidivism rate in all of Europe.

I do believe that there are some Paul Bernardos and Clifford Olsens of the world that are beyond rehabilitation, and that individuals like them should never see the light of day. But the vast majority of criminals are not beyond help or hope, and should not be treated as if they are. Unless you just want to perpetuate criminality, of course.

Approaching a Corner

2011-05-29T07:48:00.002-04:00

Things are going to slide, slide in all directions

Won't be nothing, nothing you can measure any more

The blizzard, the blizzard of the world has crossed the threshold

and it's overturned the order of the soul

When they said, 'Repent', I wondered what they meant

--Leonard Cohen, "The Future"

More ominous rumblings of late. When the United Nations weighs in on the possibility (probability?) of the American dollar's collapse...well, I can't help but wonder: is the shit about to be shat, and has the fan been unpacked, plugged in, and turned on?

Our inability, as a species, to think around corners would be funny if it weren't so tragic. Even now, there are those poo-pooing the notion that there could be a mass abandonment of the US$ as the world's reserve currency, because "what would replace it? The yen? The euro? Don't make me laugh."

The truth is that the entire First World, to varying degrees, is enmeshed in this economic predicament. As such, I can't imagine for a minute that anything would replace the US$. In other words, the world is probably going to get a whole lot smaller.

I likewise find it darkly hilarious that we rarely hear even a mumble about the real reason our economy is so unstable: oil. Or more precisely, the lack of it.

Our civilization has a giant oily blind spot. I have remarked before that if your eyes are open, you are looking at something made of, or with, oil; at the very least it was almost certainly transported to your line of sight by a machine running on, or made of, oil. We have put all our eggs in one basket, and the warp and weft of that basket is slowly unravelling.

It's easy to take energy for granted, so much so that we tend to forget its underlying role in economic growth and contraction. For twenty years we have crowed about the collapse of the Soviet Union without a shot being fired, variously attributing this capitalist triumph to Reagan, the Pope, and general Soviet incompetence. Oddly, the U.S.S.R had been largely keeping pace with the West for decades until it suddenly ans shockingly imploded. Most on our side of the world would never have imagined the Soviet Union would just up and go away, even as it was happening.

Only now do I see the communist collapse viewed through a Peak Oil lens. It makes a great deal of sense. Bear in mind that the Soviets operated in a (mostly) closed system where there was little trade in technology (and none in oil) with the West; the oil fields in the Bloc were worked with Soviet technology. When they exhausted their 'easy oil', the collapse of their economy was inevitable. Viewed in this light, the astonishing policy of glasnost suddenly comes clearer. The Soviets desperately needed an influx of new tech, and it's not easy to obtain such a thing from a sworn enemy. Of course, the sudden openness of a formerly ultra-secretive and propaganda-driven society had unintended consequences. But peak oil was likely a catalyst for change.

The price and availability of oil is easily correlated to the strength of the economy that runs on it. Both Reagan and Clinton presided when oil prices were historically low. Thatcher rode the bonanza of the North Sea to prosperity. It's no surprise the economy went down as oil prices skyrocketed in 2008, or that the 'recovery' is in danger from those same prices as we speak.

Caveat: I can't predict with any certainty what either the price of oil or the economy is going to do next. I've been expecting a collapse for four years that has failed to materialize; indeed, the stock markets have pretty much recovered from their lows three years ago. Now, the stock market still seems to me to be increasingly divorced from economic reality. Be that as it may, I expected hell to have broken loose by now. It's still rattling in its cage.

It's fair, I think, to suggest that we'll see the price of oil continue to rise, long term, interrupted by occasional shocks as the economy struggles to absorb higher prices for its energy inputs. The thing is, the Third World wants in on "our" prosperity. That's likely to drag the price of oil higher regardless of what's happening here. And that's what frightens me.

That and U.S. debt. I just don't see how the debt in the United States is in any way sustainable. At some point, the crisis currently affecting the Eurozone is going to metastasize. When that happens, the fecal matter is going to be blowing a hurricane. The aftermath: impossible to predict.

I can't see around corners either.

Cruisin'

2011-05-26T18:07:00.002-04:00

I haven't travelled all that much in my almost forty years of existence. To date, I've been to just one other province in Canada (British Columbia, 2003); passed through twelve states en route to and from a thirteenth (Florida); and visited exactly one other foreign country (Venezuela, 1986...thanks, Dad!)

This will change.

I can't even hope to aspire to my friend Jason's jet-setting status: last I looked, the man's been to well over a hundred nations on every continent save Antarctica. He does a lot of domestic (U.S.) travel on business, and one of his perks is that the air miles accrue to his personal account. Couple that with Jay's legendary ability to sniff out deals and he manages two, sometimes three excursions each and every year. I envy him.

It really wasn't a surprise when and where the travel bug bit us. I'm thinking Walt Disney World is practically infested with them. Especially in EPCOT: World Showcase offers just a wee taste of so many places I'd like to see. I'd long thought, however, that actually seeing those places would require a lottery win, or maybe a few of them.

Perhaps not.

We are slowly being drawn into the world of cruising. Let me tell you, first off, that I had never really considered the option, due to a few assumptions that turn out to be unfounded. For instance, I had assumed that cruises go one of two places: Alaska or someplace interchangeably tropical. The Alaska cruise had long been planned as our kickoff to retirement--it'd take a working lifetime to save up for the kind of experience we want to have, after all. But we are not tropical people. Heat and humidity, beloved by so many, would utterly wreck our vacation in short order. (This is the same reason I have little interest in the standard touristy destinations such as Cuba, the Dominican, Jamaica, or the like. Well, that and..really, how different is one resort from another?)

Lo and behold, we have discovered that cruises go everywhere we want to be. The Globe and Mail has been highlighting Scenic Tours for some time now. The Danube cruise looks particularly entrancing.

Moving from boutique ship to megaship, we have Celebrity Cruisetours. A Cruisetour is part cruise, part land excursion, first class all the way, with an emphasis on the local culture in each port of call or destination. I really like the idea of a guided tour on top of the cruise. And the prices aren't too steep--the Scenic Tour rates include free airfare!

I'm thinking our next big trip will be a cruise. Where to, I'm not sure just yet. But I can't wait.