Swift Kick In The Year-End

With apologies to the old CBC radio and TV program Double Exposure, that's just too good a title not to steal.
The newspapers this weekend are full of top tens and year-in-reviews and looks ahead. You'll find none of that here. For one thing, I haven't seen ten movies this year. The number of television sitcoms and dramas I've faithfully watched in my entire adult life would be around, uh, ten. I have read considerably more than ten novels this year, but you probably don't care how I feel about any of 'em.
Celebrities--I make some token effort to keep up with them, just to impress my wife (the same way she will occasionally stun me by pulling some obscure piece of hockey trivia out of her butt). But once I've earned "points", I wipe the mental tape: the truth is, most celebrities are only worthy of contempt, not adoration (and certainly not emulation). You'll hear that sentiment expressed every now and again...often in the same places that spend the rest of their time cataloguing every last celebrity's every least life event.

I don't even celebrate New Year's...never saw the point of the whole exercise, really. Which shouldn't lessen the hearty Happy New Year I will offer at the end of this post. I can wish someone a Merry Christmas, and mean it, even if I'm not a Christian...the same goes with New Year's, as far as I'm concerned.

So...no top tens, no looks back--if something happened this past year in my life, Dear Reader, and you don't already know about it, rest assured there's a good reason. No looks ahead, either: hell, if the weatherman can't get tomorrow's forecast right and the economists are proving no better in their sphere of interest, I haven't got a hope. That said, I encourage everyone to pay close attention to the stories, especially the stories behind the stories, and be proactive. I have a friend who's taken most of his money out of the stock market because he thinks the volatility we've been seeing heralds an imminent crash. He may be right, he may be wrong, but my sense is you just can't be too cautious.

What's left to do, then? Just clear some mental clutter, I suppose. I may not celebrate New Year's, but I still recognize the symbolic importance of a clean slate. To wit:

I mentioned above--again--my disdain for celebrities, and touched on the curious schizoid behaviour of the media which covers them excessively, only to hold up every now and again and tear someone famous a new one. Here's an example that factors in my biggest pet peeve in the whole "wide" world: Jennifer Love Hewitt.
I'm sure those all of you who actually pay attention to these sorts of goings-on already know about the "unfortunate" pictures of her in a bikini. Cries of "fatty, fatty, two-by-four" resounded all over the net, to which she angrily retorted "a size two is not fat!" Whereupon some sites immediately protested that she was obviously much bigger than a size two:

You could strap those 'size 2″ bikini bottoms to a masted schooner and set sail across the seven seas and still have enough left over to make the crew matching vests and cummerbunds. They'd also make a great fire blanket or night-time sky in an elementary school production of 'Goodnight Moon.'

You know, not much in this world makes me homicidal. Talk like that comes damned close. Fair warning: if you ever meet me, and dare to utter such claptrap in my presence, best be moving backwards rapidly while you do it, lest my big fat fist makes contact with your yammering tofu-hole.

I've had this attitude a long time, and it's one of those attitudes I'll hold for the rest of my life.

Who gives a flying hamburger what size she is, anyway? Obviously a whole hell of a lot of people, every single one of which needs to have a priority readjustment, stat. As information, there are many places in this world even today where Jennifer Love Hewitt would be force-fed to make her look more healthy, and her Hollywood colleagues would be regarded as the freakish living skeletons they are. Meantime, our society gets fatter and fatter, thanks in no small part to so many people sitting around all day browsing celebrity gossip sites on the Internet. Hypocrites all.

People magazine is famous for this kind of two-faced mahooha. It's called People, but have you ever noticed every last one of those "People" is famous? That the "Sexiest Man Alive", year after year, just happens to be some actor or other, when most women know the real Sexiest Man Alive is their husband/boyfriend/lover/what have you? That after twenty five consecutive issues showcasing scanty female flesh, they'll put together an issue chiding the owners of that flesh because of the eating disorders for which People magazine is itself partly responsible?

Incidentally, Love Hewitt's right: a size two is not fat. And even if she fibbed about a little flab, a size eight isn't fat, either. If you absolutely require a number to tell you if you're fat or not, I'd suggest 14's a good bet: that's the smallest size you can buy in Canada's premier chain for plus-sized women--every one of which, no matter what size they wear, is a human being worthy of love and respect.
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On a completely different note--I've had cause yet again recently to lament the stuff they should have taught me in school, and didn't. The more I meditated on it, the more I realized that the vast majority of public and high school education is a waste of time and resources. Most of the math you're taught, for example, you'll never use...but most students learn precious little to nothing about the numbers that do affect them, from little things like balancing a bank statement to bigger things like gauging a national or world economy. What used to be called "home economics" is unavailable in most schools; much of the high school curriculum should be grounded in it. The stuff that boys learn in Scouting (and doubtless, girls learn in Guides) is the kind of useful life skill everyone should be taught in school--shouldn't everybody know how to sew, how to build a fire, how to tie several knots, what to do in various emergency situations?
Spider Robinson suggests we teach kids how to drink. Good point, that: it brings to mind my stepfather, who told me more than once that if I ever had the urge to get drunk, he'd much rather I did it at home, where he could keep an eye on me. As Robinson says,

...how hypocritical can we be? We all know they're going to do it; why must they fumble their way to responsible drinking? Why must their experiments be utterly unsupervised? (The Crazy Years, pg. 108)

As far as I'm concerned, elementary school ought to be about the basic, fundamental life skills: literacy and numeracy, sure, but also socialization, teamwork, civics and critical thinking. High school should take that curriculum and expand on it. By the time someone graduates in to the "real world", she could detect bullshit at a hundred yards, nuture her artistic talents, run a business, and any number of other things that today's students never get to learn. I'm sorry if my readers tire of my citing Robert Heinlein, but the man was a treasure trove of quotable quotes, and this is one of my favourites:

A human being should be able to change a diaper, plan an invasion, butcher a hog, conn a ship, design a building, write a sonnet, balance accounts, build a wall, set a bone, comfort the dying, take orders, give orders, cooperate, act alone, solve equations, analyze a new problem, pitch manure, program a computer, cook a tasty meal, fight efficiently, die gallantly. Specialization is for insects.

The people I admire most in my world are the people who have done most of these things, or could do them if the need arose.

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I will close this with my own personal Song of the Year. (Surprisingly, it isn't by Brad Paisley). No, this one's by Mongomery Gentry, and it's called "Lucky Man":

I have days where I hate my job
This little town and the whole world too
Last Sunday when the Leafs lost
Lord it put me in a bad mood
I have moments when I curse the rain
Then complain when the sun's too hot
I look around at what everyone has
And I forget about all I've got

(Chrorus) But I know I'm a lucky man
God's given me a pretty fair hand
Got a house and a piece of land
A few dollars in a coffee can
My old trucks still running good
My ticker's ticking like they say it should
I got supper in the oven, a good woman's loving
And one more day to be my little kid's dad
Lord, knows I'm a lucky man

Got some friends who would be here fast
I could call em any time of day
Got a brother who's got my back
Got a mama who I swears a saint
Got a brand new rod and reel
Got a full week off this year
Dad had a close call last spring
It's a miracle he's still here

(repeat chorus)

Happy New Year, one and all. The best to you in 2008.