Perfect Connections, Perfect Isolation

The Atlantic this month is asking the question: Does Facebook make us lonely?

They start off with the story of Yvette Vickers: tragic, all-too-common tale in which a person dies alone and is not missed or discovered for months or years. Note that while her only 'connections' had been with distant fans in distant places, they all appear to have been by telephone. Facebook makes no appearance save by analogy: like hers, our connections have grown 'broader but shallower'.

I've written myself about the paradox of constant (and incessant) "sharing" in a world where we're increasingly alone. Foursquare will tell you where I am (if, that is, I'm stupid enough to broadcast the fact my house is ripe for any passing burglars); Twitter will give you a stuttering commentary on the minutiae of my existence; watch Youtube and you can even get the video.

And then there's the colossus that is Facebook. Vast beyond imagining (2.7 billion likes/comments a day),   all from the comfort of home--

or the convenience of your mobile dev--watch out!

--it serves, both in the Atlantic article and in reality, as the face of the gigantic book that is the Internet itself.

"Does the Internet make people lonely, or are lonely people attracted to the Internet?" 


I am well acquainted with both solitude and loneliness, having rejoiced in one and lamented in the other at various points in my life. My childhood was spent in a (largely self-imposed) state of loneliness so profound it was beyond articulation or even notice--how can you be lonely having never experienced anything else? Only after I managed to make friends--one at a time, of course--did I recognize the hermetic life I had led for what it was. I watched as the social butterflies around me scooped up friends seemingly without effort. Few of them wanted anything to do with me. I was led to understand that this was my fault, but not given enough information to correct that fault. Any least attempt of mine to "fit in" only resulted in the walls of my quarantine being hurriedly heightened.

To this day I am uncomfortable in crowds, even if those crowds aren't composed of strangers: I feel my attention being pulled too many ways at once and think I might come apart at the seams. There are relatively few people I feel completely at ease with (Eva, of course, headlines that list). And yet... Although I have at long last made my peace with solitude, enforced solitude grates on me. Connection of any kind is important to me. Like most of us, I'm...complicated.

But I can state with certainty that the Internet is a sure-fire magnet for loneliness and fairly potent treatment for same. I could have told you that all the way back in 1991, when I was first exposed to Usenet and ISCABBS. It was all text back then (the only images I ever saw were ASCII art) but no less powerful for all that. If you're socially awkward, and back then I was the dictionary definition, the Net is a godsend. It entirely removes all the stress of meeting people face to face (and if you've never felt that stress, I envy the hell out of you). It is all too easy to fall head over heels for somebody you've never actually met. I know this: it's happened to me many times.

But note I said treatment. The Internet does not cure loneliness. How can it? You almost always access it alone! Even if you're in actual human company, my experience is that your actual human company fades from view the instant the text comes in or the chat noise burbles out. If you seek out Internet connection over actual human interaction in what the hackers call "meatspace", then you are, by definition, lonely.

I can't fault the Internet for this. To me, it is only the natural evolution of the device that came before: television. All the fears you see enumerated about the Net were once applied to TV. It shortens attention spans. It encourages sedentary behaviour. And it picks away at the social cohesion that defined us as a species before it cast its blue glow over our lives. (I'm convinced there's a reason the Facebook homepage defaults to blue.)

Besides the limitless repository of information-slash-bullshit, the Internet is merely interactive television. What makes it so much more attractive the the boob tube is that interactivity: we're all on it together, even though we're apart. It's 'pseudo-connectedness', and it seems as if many of us are willing to forego real-life connection in its favour. Real life, after all, can get messy. On Facebook, with just a few clicks, you can "unfriend" somebody.

There are three people I've 'subscribed' to on Facebook. For non-Facebook users, that means I'm instantly privy to anything they choose to publicly share. Without divulging names, I'm going to describe these people's actual relationship to me, because it's telling.

Before I do that, I'll tell you this: none of these three people are my wife. There are two reasons I'm not subscribed to Eva. One is that she's by no means a heavy Facebook user. It's used on her time and terms, and she rarely feels the need to post anything at all to her wall. The other, more important reason is that she's right here. As I type this, she's about six feet away, using her own computer. We spend hours like this, and the important thing -- for me -- is that either of us can interrupt the other to exclaim over what we've just learned. If she does post something to Facebook, be it trivial or life-shaking, we've probably talked about it.

One person is a former co-worker...of Eva's, not mine. I'm subscribed to her because (a) she's amazing and (b) it's almost embarrassing how often she posts something that makes me laugh, or think. I hate to be a Facebook leech, 'liking' every little thing. Makes me look clingy and, well, lonely. In my defence, what if I actually do "like" everything? *sigh*
I don't see her often (enough) in real life but she's one of a very few people whom Eva and I would let into our home at any time and without any notice.

Another is an old high school friend I fell out of touch with for a number of years and have since reconnected with. He's got hundreds of Facebook friends. A higher proportion of them are also "real" friends, I'd wager: he's one of the most easygoing and just plain friendly individuals you could ever meet. I don't see him in real life all that often, but each time I do it's as if the last time was last week.

The third person is the most interesting for the purposes of this blog. I went to school with her for all of one year in 1982-83. She wasn't even in my grade; it was a split class. Not long after I joined Facebook in 2007 (good Lord) I got a friend request with a message: "Did you go to Byron Northview P.S. in the eighties?" When I told her that yes, I did, and apologized for drawing an almost complete blank on her name, she told me things I had forgotten about my grade five year. I didn't know whether to be flattered or alarmed. I've since grown to respect and admire this woman  and her incredibly precocious children. Eva's friends with her on Facebook as well, and feels the same way. They've never met, and she and I might as well have never met, and yet I count her among my friends. And I'm not talking about the fake Facebook friends. If I had to prune out all the people who (let's be honest) don't really care about me and then weed out those who (let's be honest) I don't really care about...she'd make the cut on my end at least without the slightest hesitation.

There are others I'm not 'subscribed' to who fall into the same category. There's one woman I only know through a former friend...never met her at all...but I chat amiably with her on Facebook as if we were friends of long standing. There's a former co-worker I'm close to--in real life--in large part because Facebook allows us to remain connected. Some of these friendships have a real life component and some I hope will develop one over time.  And then there are others--probably half of my Facebook friends--with whom I hardly ever correspond, but for whom I'm available if and whenever they may need a friendly ear. It doesn't cure loneliness, but it sure keeps its more acute pangs at bay.

The trick, as one of the above people recently mentioned, is balance. In that Facebook is no different than anything else in life. All things in moderation. (Including moderation? I'm on Facebook entirely too much). Online or off, friendships take work (though in the best of them it's more like play). If you're not inclined to put in the effort, Facebook can feed the illusion that you have. If you are, Facebook can deepen and enrich actual relationships. It certainly has for me.

SCREW YOU! A Game Of Peak Oil

How do kids say it today? *headdesk* *facepalm*

You read things like this and that's the only rational reaction.

Forbes, a magazine for the one percent if there ever was one (its motto is actually "the capitalist tool"; I will refrain from comment) has published a piece basically stating that Peak Oil is a myth and we can all relax. To support this ludicrous assertion, they note that fields containing up to a billion barrels of oil equivalent are still being found, most recently in East Africa.
A billion barrels, eh? That's a whole hell of a lot. It'd supply the world for almost an entire month. Then what? On to the next month, I guess.

Are we really at a point where we're bragging about the prospect of living month to month?

And nothing is said about the fact that the majority of these new finds are unconventional. Oh, it's mentioned, but in a positive context, as if to say 'look how innovative we are'. Innovative? More like desperate.


Unconventional is what Canada's oil sands are. I won't get into the environmental rape and pillage necessary to extract value out of unconventional oil sources--hey, my government doesn't give a rat's ass, so why should I? Instead I'll frame it as a simple exercise in economics: something the capitalist tools of the world (think they) understand.

Unconventional sources require much higher energy inputs to extract an equivalent volume of energy than do the oil fields of the past 150 years. In other words: these fields cost more to develop. Lots more. All for a measly billion barrels of oil, assuming the estimates are correct. They usually aren't. A browse of this site will show you that estimates are sometimes off by as much as an order of magnitude.

In short, we have exhausted the 'easy' oil...now we're increasingly looking at the stuff that's harder to get at. Expect more of this. Also this.

The People Who Matter (motto: If You Have To Ask, You Don't)  will read this without thinking about it and speculate the price of oil ever higher. That's really at the root of the 'great game' the article refers to. The game goes by many different names, but they all boil down to SCREW YOU.

SCREW YOU is a game for ages 50 and up. You don't have to be white to play it, but as Ron Leech would say, it's an advantage. To play the game, you need to have developed over time the sense that the world economy is itself a game and the colossal arrogance to believe you have the right to play it.  So much fun to use living human beings as pawns.
The idea here is deceptively simple. Your goal is to bid the price of oil as high as you possibly can...without crashing the world economy. A crash would be disastrous: after all, the game pieces (who already have developed the sense that somebody is playing with them) might actually figure out it's you, and then no more foie gras and champagne for you. How horrible.
As I was saying, you speculate the oil price as high as you can. Here's the neat part. Everyone knows the law of supply and demand: if you suddenly twig the world to new supply, say by means of a Forbes article, you can reasonably expect the price to fall. But you can counteract that by inventing a whole bunch of reasons out of thin air to keep the price high. (You won't admit the price remains high because the oil is actually running out: that's a heresy, would cause a panic and a crash, and no more foie gras and champagne for you.)
It's fun to invent these reasons. Refining is at capacity. No word on when more refineries will be built--for heaven's sake, don't do that, it'd drop the price. The summer driving season (or the winter heating season, or the spring springing or fall falling season) is coming. Hurricanes are always a good bet--you'd set one loose in the Gulf right now if you could, except your third home is just outside Naples and those buggers are so unpredictable.
And then there's the old fallback, "political instability". That's why you own the government: to promote political instability wherever you can. That's where the fun really gets going, because the stakes are so high and the game so much more difficult. There are so many factors to balance off and pawns to exchange and I must say, ol' chap, one mis-step and it's that ghastly interruption in the supply of foie gras and champagne again.

Oh, the fun of it all. You can play until you die and will the pieces to your progeny. And if you play really well, the people you're screwing won't ever be able to figure out you were playing at all...

Romance

Let it be known that I am not a conventionally romantic soul. It's something I occasionally lambaste myself for: really, Ken, you should buy Eva flowers/have dinner by candlelight/at least know the colour of the eyes you gaze into. Want to know how I proposed? I didn't. She announced 'we're getting a ring today' and that's what we did; she even picked it out.

I can sense the recoil from the female half of my audience. I'm either going to mollify some of you or more likely send you running away screaming with my defence:

1) The flowers. "Here's a symbol of my love for you. It needs dirt to grow; it grows even better if you shit on it; and at least in our house, it'll be dead in a week." Not exactly the message I want to send.

2) Dinner by candlelight.

Apparently I am entirely too pragmatic about food. After some twelve years, my darling wife will still ask me what I want for supper. She will sometimes do this at eight in the morning. I...DON'T CARE. I never care. Food, I want food. Is it food you're thinking of serving for supper? Yes? That'll be just fine.

That sounds blase, I'm sure. It shouldn't. Whatever Eva's going to make for dinner is going to be delicious: that goes without saying. The first meal she prepared for me was her take on her family's spaghetti recipe, and it was and remains the best spaghetti I've ever had. Her meatloaf is so good that I have to restrain myself from going all Cookie Monster and gobbling the whole thing, pan and all. The same goes for her lasagna and any number of other things she makes. I love her cooking and I make sure she knows it. But is that romantic?

Our tastes in food largely overlap, and they especially overlap in that neither of us enjoys 'frou-frou' food. Roasted squirrel testicles au jus, pan-seared unicorn with a sprig of Venus flytrap, foie gras served on a bed of crisp thousand dollar bills...just give us a burger, okay? And never mind the Kobe beef.  Such comfort food doesn't exactly lend itself to the candlelit ambiance. Passion-cushion, do you want fries with that? And afterwards, I'm gonna turn the light down lower and BURRRRRRRRP!


3) and most damning, the eyes.


Ken, what colour are Eva's eyes? 
Umm..uh...erm...brown? I think? 


Sigh. It gets worse. If I'm at work one day and she suddenly decides she's going to get her hair done, there's about a ninety-percent chance I won't notice the change when I get home. If we're out grocery shopping at, say, Costco and we have to split up, I have to consciously note what she's wearing. Repeatedly, so as it imprint it in my mind, because I just don't notice or care about clothing. If I don't say "tan shirt, black capris' about sixteen times, it's quite possible I might walk right past her.

I can't explain this. It makes me look bad, I know it does. Really bad. Completely inattentive and uncaring.

I plead not guilty by reason of insanity. Because I'm clearly insane: I honestly and sincerely don't care what my wife looks like. She can gain a hundred pounds or loose two hundred, go blonde or ginger or green with pink polka-dots and all I'm ever going to see when I look at her is the Eva that I love. It was her personality that first attracted me--always and forever the case with me, physical appearance is almost meaningless within standard humanoid parameters. It's her personality I respond to still. But I do find her physically beautiful.

This still, I think, throws her for a loop on occasion. She knows well enough by now not to bother with lingerie. I just don't respond to it, never have and likely never will. It's like a black hole in my mind: why bother? Aren't those coming off? But my attitude towards clothing and makeup and all that crap still perplexes her, sometimes. I don't even care enough about it to shrug it off. It's a total non-factor. I've trained myself to tell her she looks gorgeous every now and again, and I mean it when I say it, but the truth is she looks that way in anything or nothing, standing, sleeping, or posing on the toilet like Rodin's The Thinker  (except in our house it's The Stinker). Does that make me a cold fish? I think it makes me pretty freakin' romantic, myself...just not in a conventional way.

I try to make up for this perceived shortcoming by anticipating her needs and fulfilling them as best I can whenever I can. I don't always succeed at this, but I try. I also make a real effort to make the woman laugh, hard, at least twice a day. That's important. It wasn't in our wedding vows, but maybe it should have been.

I miss her when, as now, we're apart. But if we're together, odds are pretty good she's watching TV/playing a videogame and I'm surfing. It's good enough that we're in the same room, exchanging 'you're safe' vibes. We're eight feet away from each other, concentrating on different things entirely, and yet I've always got a piece of my mind on her, every waking moment. Is that romantic, or not?

Because I like words, and because I'm a fair wordsmith, I craft love poetry for her. It's probably the only conventionallly romantic thing I do, and I hope when I give her a poem she can read its subtext:


I'm sorry I don't give you flowers, or dinner in soft golden bowers
I'm sorry I can't see your eyes in my mind and pronounce the name of their hue;
I'm sorry I don't see the outermost layer, I'm sorry it seems like I don't give a care
But you know that I love you, love, all the way through
With all that I am and in all that I do. 

Of Politics, Odours and Soap

Caveat: I have not read the book discussed in the column I am about to link.

Get a load of this.  Seems conservatives understand liberals, but liberals don't understand conservatives.

The difference between liberals and conservatives, argues psychology professor Jonathan Haidt, is simple: the liberal moral prism reflects three values (caring for the weak, fairness, and liberty). Conservatives supposedly share these views, but also value loyalty, respect for authority, and sanctity.

Interesting, but overgeneralized. I can tell you that, as a liberal, I value loyalty highly and that I respect the authorities that I recognize. Those would be the ones who (a) know something about what they purport to have authority over and (b) do not exercise their authority arbitrarily and without restraint.

Actually, come to think of it, I don't hold with blind loyalty either. Staying loyal to something just because 'it's always been that way' or because 'daddy told me to' -- which, to me at least is the very definition of conservatism -- is stupid at best and possibly fatal at worst.  But loyalty in general? Being loyal to friends and family? That's not strictly a conservative value.

 I don't have much respect for sanctity, granted. That's a function of having seen it so horribly abused by so many. When you elevate one group to holiness, you debase another; that's something I would judge as evil, and it's especially evil when it's done in a deity's name. You'll pardon the crassness, but religion is like a penis. It's great that you have one, but I'd prefer you don't try and jam it down my throat.

I do find it interesting that I think conservatives would become liberals if they'd only grow out a little; conservatives have been telling me for years that I would understand them better once I grew up. The patronizing attitude doesn't help either way, but damnit, it's hard to eradicate. Every time a homosexual gets married, I want to send Rick Santorum pictures of the ceremony. See, Rick? The world's still spinning.
As I age and become more liberal with each passing year, I confess I do find it harder and harder to understand how conservatives get (let alone stay) the way they are. So that part of Haidt's hypothesis makes sense to me.

Haidt cites some other studies that are fascinating: apparently bad smells or an admonition to wash your hands with soap can make you at least temporarily more moralistic and judgmental. I can't speak to that, having never taken part in such studies. What I wonder is if there are circumstances that would loosen the moralistic attitudes of conservatives, and if so, how we can get those circumstances to obtain everywhere, all the time.   

Guess I'm Human, After All

...at least a little bit.

Little crushes.

I've had little crushes since time out of mind...all the way back to grade three, when I played kissing tag with a gaggle of girls. I still remember the four mainstays fondly: Laura, Sonia, Anna, Catherine. Truth be told, especially Laura. With all the ardency a nine-year-old could muster, I announced to my parents that I loved that girl. Which didn't stop me from kissing the other three whenever I could. And it didn't stop her from kissing my friend and partner-in-tag at the time, Gordon. I never felt so much as a twinge of jealousy at that, either.

I'm convinced that my grade three experiences set the tone for my love life later on. Well, those and my subsequent experiences from grade four on. I moved between third and fourth grade, and got glasses, and went in an eyeblink from prepubescent hunk of desirable manflesh to get the hell away from me you geek! That culture shock continued to bitch-slap me around for way too many years: I searched high and low for my missing popularity, ever looking and not finding, becoming more and more pathetic a figure as time went on.

I still fixated on girls -- and woe unto the girl who so much as seemed to smile at me, for one smile could provide fuel for a fortnight of fantasy-fires -- but being as no girl in her right mind would give me so much as a speculative glance, and further being as try as I might, I couldn't find any girls in their wrong minds...an endless parade of women sashayed through my waking (and sleeping) thoughts. It's fair to say that if you were female and I shared a class with you, you had top billing in my Theater Of The (Dirty) Mind at least once.

Now, now, don't be alarmed. From what I've been able to determine, pretty much every guy going through puberty is exactly the same in this regard.

By high school -- halfway through it, at least -- I'd managed to gain one close female friend. And oh God how I wanted this woman. The thought of her could and did actually give me the shakes. She, of course, was oblivious. Well, not oblivious, just extremely skilled at deflecting my overzealous attempts at I'm-not-sure-what without...quite...deflecting me entirely.
Deflected and somewhat deflated, I settled my attentions on a succession of Darlene-substitutes, each of them desirable, none of them fit to tie Darlene's shoelaces. One speck of attention from Darlene--and she'd dole them out just often enough--and all thought of other women would shoot out of my head as if on wheels.

It bothered me to no end that I seemed incapable of shutting all these Nicoles and Danielles and insert-name-heres out of my mind. It never occurred to me to look all the way back to grade three for the root of the problem. It was a pleasant problem to have, after all...until, of course, I actually managed to snag a serious girlfriend. Because that serious girlfriend came with several distraction-flowers. Audrey and Melanie and Pamela and Patricia and Judy and Jesus, Ken, get a grip.

No, not a grip on Judy, you perfect asshole.

 By then I'd found the Internet, which was teeming with women. It allowed me to fixate on people I'd never actually met in real life. It also introduced me to polyamory, which seemed to my wondering mind to be a perfect way to have my Kate and Edith, too.

I truly believed I was polyamorous, that I could love more than one person at a time. Hadn't I been doing that pretty much all my life? Hell, I'm a loving person, and an idealistic one. Having more than one partner shouldn't be an issue--I've got more than enough love to go around, and it goes without saying my partners wouldn't have any restrictions on their loves, either. Oh, how charming and frightfully naive I was.

Given an opportunity to express my budding philosophy in real life, I failed...spectacularly. Seems I can't lavish attention on one person without alienating another. And so I sabotaged another relationship, beyond repair.

There's only so many times you can let life smash you over the head with a lesson before you decide to buckle down and learn it. Ken: DON'T LOOK AT THAT GLAMOUROUS WOMAN OFF TO THE SIDE. That way fire lies, and fire burns.

Which isn't to say the crush parade disappeared entirely even after I met and married Eva...only that I was able to avert my gaze whenever a particularly alluring float flirted by too close. I managed to cultivate some real friendships with women, (almost) entirely free of sexual thoughts. I'd always gotten along better with women, anyway: way too many guys either didn't share any of my interests or shared an interest in beating the snot out of me.

Now here I am, eleven years married, feeling like the honeymoon has barely begun, and I've had a epiphany.

THERE'S NOTHING WRONG WITH LITTLE CRUSHES.

They can be managed. Easily managed. For a guy with a long history of mismanaging these things, this is a revelation.

The fact is, the qualities that attract my attention to these pretty little candles are the same qualities that attracted me to the sun in my life than is Eva. The exact same. This shouldn't be surprising to me, and it isn't, really, but I never thought it through. If you're compassionate and funny and intelligent and loving and complicated, then chances are I'm going to notice you, because you remind me of my wife.

I think this goes for other relationships in people's lives, too. My best male friend is similar in many ways to my best female friend, the woman I married. Wouldn't it be kind of odd to be close friends with somebody completely the opposite of Eva? Somebody stupid and narcissistic and uncaring and dull? Yech.

This has got me wondering. When guys cheat on their significant others, how often are the mistresses similar in personality to those significant others? Pretty damned often, I'd suspect. It seems odd to my recently-awakened mind to throw away a relationship of long standing just to replace it with something similar, yet it seems to happen, quite frequently.

I don't get cheating, despite the fact I cheated on not one but two women. Or rather, I do get it--it's something self-centered and immature people do. I was once self-centered (extremely) and immature (beyond extremely). But not any more.

Here's to growing up. Would that I'd done it a hell of a lot sooner: I could have spared so many people so much pain.

And you women--I figure all three of you have probably guessed who you are--have nothing to worry about from me, even on the exceeding off chance you feel the same little crush I do. That goes triple if your name is Eva, the wife of my life. I'm spoken for, and I spoke those words myself eleven years ago, and I speak them again without hesitation here.

But I've finally figured out that little candles can't snuff out the sunlight, and it's a tremendously liberating realization.

Be Careful What You Wish For

"With the popularity of gas-guzzling SUVs and other land barges, I'm amazed at consumers' surprise and anger at increased gas prices...I support much higher taxes -- doubling the price of gas would be a good start -- that would put an end to this waste of an irreplaceable resource."
--Raymond Perrin, Ottawa, as published in yesterday's Globe and Mail


A-plus for sentiment, Ray ol' pal, but an F for thoughtlessness.

Gas is now sitting at around $1.35 a liter here in Waterloo Region. That's $5.10 a U.S. gallon. Last I looked it's $1.46/L (~$5.52/gallon) in Montreal and even higher in Vancouver.

These prices are dirt-cheap by European standards, of course. But they remain considerably higher than U.S. retails. Only in California are prices even remotely comparable. This is a source of endless consternation in Canada, given that we supply the United States with approximately half of its oil.

Taxes are the main culprit after initial costs. Which begs the question: what is this money spent on? We have always been told that fuel taxes pay for road upkeep. Actually finding out what governments do with tax monies collected is a nontrivial exercise. If you've ever been on a U.S Interstate outside of Michigan, you know Americans manage to keep their roads in much better shape with dramatically lower taxes. Ten times the population does have its advantages.

In my moments of insanity, I find myself echoing Raymond: the first thing we'll do is double the price of gas. Then I remind myself that I like to eat occasionally. That clothes are nice to have at least some of the time. And that there are people in this country--many of them--who don't have the ability to just walk to the store on account of them not living in the city.

Raymond's Canada doesn't include...most of Canada. Oh, how nice it would be to just fold up the landscape the way you fold a map: St.John's to Victoria in five easy steps. Unfortunately, real life doesn't work that way. Most of what we buy is trucked in over distances that beggar the imagination. Michelina's  frozen dinners, for instance, were at one point made in Canada, packaged in the States, and re-exported back to us.

You can eat local, right? If you're lucky enough to live in Southern Ontario, the Annapolis or the Okanagan, you can even eat a wide variety of local foods...for about seven months out of the year. Otherwise...well, good luck growing anything here:

Yes, Europe manages to survive and even thrive with much higher fuel taxation. Europe also has this nifty neato thing called intracity public transit. We should really try it here. Except there are countries in Europe that aren't much bigger than some of the counties in Ontario.

Double the price at the pumps and the economy will go poof. Maybe that's what Raymond wants to see happen, but I'd rather not see it happen here.

Nothing to write about

Nihil est, inquis, quod scribam. At hoc ipsum scribe, nihil esse quod scribas...
You say you have nothing to write about. Well, you can at least write about having nothing to write about...
---Pliny the Younger


There's a reason this blog has gone largely dark over the last month or two. I will tell you of that reason when I can, and I will tell you here, and I hope you will understand when I do.

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

Actually, there are several reasons I'm not writing as much as I used to, aside from the overarching one I'd rather not discuss at the moment. One of my founts of blogspiration has run dry. The contract I signed when I got my new job last September prohibits me from saying anything negative about it on any social media platform. And so I'm afraid to even say anything positive lest it be misconstrued.

There's also this sneaking sense that whatever I set out to say, I've said it all before. Several times, actually: I've been writing here since May of '04 and in that nearly eight years I've covered everything of importance to me more than once. If you would know me, read the Breadbin from start to finish. I'm pretty much fully digitized at this point.

And then--well, life is boring right now. Boring is actually my preferred state, as you would know after even a cursory read of the foregoing blog entries...but dull living makes for even duller reading.

Fourth on the list is the Internet itself. You should know, Dear Readers, that I am writing again, if sporadically, outside this blog. It's a project that, like anything I do, will get done when it gets done...if I set a deadline for myself I will miss it. I've got some six thousand words invested with more mulling around in my brain as I write these words...but there's a problem.

Robert J. Sawyer, one of my favourite science fiction authors, posted something to his Facebook feed a couple of weeks ago to the effect that "great writing is three percent talent, 97% not being distracted by the Internet." Truer words are rarely pixellated. The Internet is a time and attention vacuum the likes of which I could never have imagined before I was ensnared in it. I never bothered much with the previous time and attention sink -- television -- in part because it's so passive, and in part because much of what's on it is so puerile. But the Internet is many times more powerful, at least to me. Reading even great novels offline is a much harder slog than it should be, now; whatever I'm doing in the house, I feel a magnetic pull towards the computer. The only time that has ever completely gone away was at Disney World. (I have to tell you, one of the underlying joys in that Happiest Place On Earth, again for me, was the complete absence of any desire to find some other virtual world and live in it for a while. I was thus flabbergasted to discover that there are thousands upon thousands of people screaming for Wi-Fi in their Disney Resorts, which I'm told has now been provided. Depressing, that is.)

To get any solid writing done--for hours at a time, I mean--it seems I need a computer completely disconnected from the Internet, preferably in a different room. Except that wouldn't work because I'd be forever convincing myself I needed to do some critical piece of research that would inexplicably involve an hour on Reddit and another hour on Facebook.

There's an author by the name of Catherynne Valente I discovered when she guest-started over at Charlie Stross's place. She writes the way I imagine my great-grandmother used to spin yarn, in endless skeins of rich and colourful thought and insight. And she's created and realized something in her household that I'd like to try in mine. She calls it "Abbey Night"--a weekly turning back of the clock to the 1800s. Technology goes away. What's left is human, and up to you.  She says it grounds her and provides her with many cherished memories. I don't doubt that one bit. Really, for all the information we suck up, how often does the Internet hit us with something truly memorable? I can count those occasions on the fingers of one thumb.

In fact, I'm going to run this by the wife and let you know how it turns out.

Meantime, I hope all is well out there in your worlds. I will be back. Trust me.

Leafs Exhumation 2011-2012

I haven't embarked on a player-by-player synopsis of the Toronto Maple Leafs for many years. It's a monumental undertaking for a blog entry that will be read by few and appreciated by fewer. But I'm going to do it this year, because this team is at a crossroads. It's a crossroads in the depths of blackest night, with a cemetery kitty-corner to a charnel house.  Dawn seems to be a long way off, if it ever comes at all, and worse, the players don't know which way to turn.

I haven't seen rage from the fan base like this since the early nineties. I'm told by someone who was there that one patron ripped his Leafs jersey off and threw it to the ice the other night, near the end of the 7-1 drubbing by Philadelphia. Doubtless many other fans have considered doing the same, and this die-hard fan wouldn't exactly blame them. It has been said countless times (and often by me)  that Leaf fans are among the most impatient in all of sport. That's not exactly true. Leaf fans have an almost infinite capacity for futility--hey, we've earned it!--but lack of effort is and always will be unacceptable.

And there is precious little effort being expended by anyone in blue and white over the last third of this season. The team appears to be completely disinterested in playing hockey. By and large, they're not even going through the motions: that would require they move. Little wonder the Air Canada Center erupted into prolonged chants of "Let's go, Blue Jays" on Thursday night.

Given the team's unprecedented collapse, the temptation is to give every single Leaf player an F and tell them they're lucky you can't get a lower grade. This would be as unfair as grading the team solely on their first sixty games would be. They obviously weren't as good as their record on February 6 -- when they were in the thick of a battle for home ice advantage -- suggested; nor are they as bad as their current lottery standing indicates. Perspective is needed, and lots of it.

Let me start by saying that most pundits expected the Leafs to challenge for a playoff position this year. This means they were initially expected to finish somewhere between, say, sixth and tenth place in the conference. They are currently within shouting distance of dead last--fifteenth. Yet in early February they were in sixth and trending upward.

So what happened? A whole bunch of things, none of them good.

Relentless offence inflated the stats at first. Under Ron Wilson, the team played a free-flowing style relying exclusively on offensive creativity and ignoring defence entirely. That kind of "system" only works if you have all-world goaltending (and even then, usually not for very long). Reimer started off very promisingly, but was concussed in his fifth start and hasn't been the same goaltender since. And there's nothing behind him. Gustavsson is a superbly athletic goalie and serious consistency issues. Three great saves, one soft goal, that's his motto.
Still, the team persisted in playing the run-and-gun, and it worked far longer than it probably should have. Credit where it's due, to Phil Kessel and Joffrey Lupul. But, inevitably, the NHL tightens up as the winter wears on: teams anticipating playoffs hone their defensive coverage and begin to squeeze the life out of clubs like the Leafs.

Mats Sundin, the previous Captain of the Leafs and holder of the franchise scoring record,  was honoured before the February 11th game against the Canadiens, with the kind of moving ceremony that only the Leafs and Canadiens seem to specialize in. Then the current edition of the Buds went out and laid an egg: a 5-0 craptacular snoozefest that began to seriously sow the seeds of doubt. Those seeds have blossomed into huge doubtflowers waving in the wind of negativity and soaking up rays of disgust.

The downhill slide accelerated when Joffrey Lupul got hurt. Lupul is the only player since Sundin to manage more than a point a game (although it's all but certain Kessel would have done it too if his linemate had remained healthy).
Joffrey Lupul, Leaf nominee for (and for my money, the winner of) the Masterton trophy, is the engine that drives this team. With him out of the lineup, it's not at all surprising the Leaf bandwagon isn't going anywhere.

Other injuries besides Reimer's and Lupul's have taken a toll, most notably that of J.M. Liles. He was looking fantastic early in the season, moving the puck up ice crisply and with precision; since his return from concussion he has struggled to find his game.  Armstrong and Brown, otherwise known as grit and sandpaper, have spent great chunks of the season on the sidelines.

Finally, the coaching change sideswiped this team as they were careening into the ditch. Burke was right to fire Wilson, but his timing was...questionable.
The Leafs' penalty kill was  laughably bad in December. Epically bad. Historically bad. So bad that a perfect month of January managed to raise them all the way from 30th to 29th-best PK. If Burke had fired Wilson in December (rather than giving him a year's extension on his contract), Carlyle would have had considerably more time to instill some sort of defensive conscience and I doubt this team would be floundering this badly now.

As it stands, it's glaringly obvious that the team does not have the personnel to play a Carlyle game. The new Leafs coach is a big proponent of board play and this edition of the Leafs is terrified of the boards. They find it almost impossible to establish a cycle game and they struggle mightily to break the opposition's cycle. This, more than anything else, suggests big, big change on the immediate horizon.

But this, too, was expected...at least by me. I said repeatedly when Burke took over that it would take three overhauls of the roster to get from where the team was--nowhere--to where it wanted to go. We're through one churn now and a second awaits. It's worth noting that the Marlies, perennial doorstops, are favoured to win their version of the Stanley Cup this year. Perhaps the old adage obtains: it's always darkest just before the dawn.

Without further ado, but plenty of doo-doo...

_____________

FORWARDS

Phil Kessel A

The Kessel-for-Seguin-and-so-much-more deal is going to be hashed out for the next twenty years or so. Burke was destined to lose that deal: he clearly overpaid. But he doesn't care, and neither, to be honest, should Leaf fans. Kessel is exactly as advertised. He puts points on the board. With his line intact he would almost certainly have finished with forty goals and over eighty points. With four games left, that's still possible, actually. He's the best pure offensive talent the Leafs have had since Sundin; he may be better. Sundin perennially had soup cans for wingers; Phil's got a soup can for a center. Defensively he is still a work in progress but has shown improvement. Note that he is one of very few players showing genuine anger at the turn his team has taken.

Joffrey Lupul A

Hands up all none of you who saw this coming. 67 points in 66 games played before injury. This is a piece you keep. (Doesn't hurt that my wife thinks he's a 'cutie patootie', whatever that is.) Lupul excels in creating space for Kessel: the two have a dynamic chemistry that we can only hope will continue for future seasons. Written off (by Carlyle!) in Anaheim, Lupul has come a long, long way in a very short period of time.

Tyler Bozak C

Offensively better: a function of linemates he wasn't supposed to have this year. Defensively, Tyler has regressed. He is still, sadly, miscast as a first line center, and is only there because Connolly failed so spectacularly in the role and management has a mental block when it comes to slotting Grabovski in that spot. Tradable for some size and board presence, to teams who can use him properly.

Mikhail Grabovski B-

The little Belarusian who could is not producing the way he did last year, but that has more to do with the cliff-dive Macarthur and Kulemin took than any real deficiency in Mikhail's play. He has some fiery passion that the rest of the Leaf forwards could do well to emulate. Carlyle is leaning heavily on Grabovski for solid two-way play and I think you'll see this player take another step forward next year. Again, a piece that can and perhaps should be kept; he could be packaged with picks and prospects for a very solid return, though.

Nikolai Kulemin D+

Where did his scoring touch go, and can he please have it back? Thirty goals last year...seven this year. He is still a good checker and board player, but this showing was unexpected and disappointing. I do feel he can rebound--but possibly not here.

Clarke Macarthur C-

Another player of whom considerably more was expected. Paired with Kulemin and Grabovski last year, he constituted one third of what was arguably the real first line of the team. Not so this year. He has been distinctly average, only showing flashes of the goal-scoring prowess he exhibited so consistently last year. Replaceable.

Tim Connolly D+

Brought in to serve as a first line center. Surprisingly, the brittle Connolly has missed only ten games. Also surprisingly, did not mesh on the first line at all. Or the second. Or the third, or the fourth. He has good hands, but the defensive acumen we were led to believe he possessed was not in evidence this year. That said, he has looked a little more competent under Carlyle. With an off-season reset, the optimist in me hopes he can have a better campaign next season.

Matthew Lombardi C

Lombardi was Leaf Nation's whipping boy du jour this year. It's really a wonder he could skate at all, much less so quickly, what with all that hatred on his back. True, the words 'Matthew Lombardi' and 'defensive responsibility' aren't often seem in the same novel. But do bear in mind this player wasn't expected to play at all this year after suffering a serious concussion last season. And the Leafs got him for nothing Brett Lebda. Going forward, I don't think he has a place on a Carlyle-coached squad. Does that make him a bad player? Not at all.

Joey Crabb C+

This year's Timmy Brent. Players like Crabb exist on every NHL team. Crabb is not blessed with exceptional talent (although every ten games or so, you'll see him score a goal that will have you wondering). He's one of a very few players with a positive plus-minus this season. He'll stick provided he doesn't expect a ton of salary.

Colby Armstrong D

Such a waste of a season. Armstrong came here billed as one of the league's premier shi(f)t disturbers, a tenacious checker who would irritate the almighty hell out of the opposition and pot the odd goal. He's had to battle an endless string of injuries, and I don't think 'odd' goal was supposed to mean ONE goal this year. He can't possibly be this bad again...can he?

Matt Frattin C-

Overhyped prospect who does have a heavy shot and some creativity, but who disappears for long stretches of game (and season). The C grade may be a tad generous, actually.

David Steckel C+

If the game of hockey consisted of nothing but faceoffs, you're looking at Wayne Gretzky right here. Steckel wins almost every draw he takes, it seems like. Unfortunately, he skates like the wind on a calm day and he's something of a defensive liability. Still, those draws! It's worth keeping him on the team just for the puck possession he'll give other, more talented players.

Mike Brown D+

He's here to put up dukes, not points, and on that score he's...fair. You can't doubt his heart, either. But he was injured for thirty games this year and I didn't notice him leave or come back. Can a guy be washed up at 27?

Phillippe Dupuis F

The less said the better. He's a Marlie now, after thirty games, which was about twenty nine too many.

Jay Rosehill F

Rosie's a good fighter. Fighting has been largely expunged from the NHL. Ahem.


INC: Carter Ashton, Nazem Kadri, Colton Orr, Ryan Hamilton, Joe Colborne.

I will say I expect Kadri up full time next year and contributing, possibly as many as 40 points. Colborne has loads of potential, Orr's time is done, and Hamilton is one of those players who could have a long and lucrative NHL career but instead is kept in the minors to serve as a mentor. Ashton needs more AHL seasoning.

-----------

DEFENCE

Dion Phaneuf D+

Burke will defend this guy until you give up and go away. Is that because, like Burke, Dion is all bluster and blather?
Look, it's not as if Phaneuf is a TERRIBLE hockey player. He's fifth on the team in scoring and plays 20+ minutes a game, usually against the other team's best. One wonders how many goals he'd score once he learns the net is actually at ice level; most of his shots seem to be about a mile high. Defensively, he's something of a pylon. And as a captain--well, look. There are several breeds of captain out there. Gilmour and Clark wore their hearts on their sleeves. Sundin kept his leadership quiet and mostly private, but quietly and privately averaged a point a game over a long Leaf career. Phaneuf is something else entirely. He doesn't lead by example and his compete level is rarely evident. As a #3 defenseman with less responsibility, Dion could excel. Unfortunately, this would require stripping the C off his jersey and that *never* works out.

Luke Schenn D

He must be frustrated, I would be. Good year, bad year, good year, bad year...he looked lost for most of this season. Still leads the league in hits by a defenseman but has no offensive skill and poor puck management. He should have spent (at least) a year on the Marlies, developing: it's a year he'll never get back now. Carlyle has, I suspect, one last chance to mould Luke into the nasty shutdown D-man we all think might still be in there somewhere.

Carl Gunnarsson C

Quiet, usually effective. He's not a heavy hitter like Schenn, nor a puckmover like Liles and Gardiner, but a little bit of everything. He does nothing extremely well, but nor is he deficient. Hence the C grade.

John-Michael Liles C

I hate giving poor grades in cases of injury. Yet another victim of the NHL's concussion epidemic, Liles started off the season in A form but has obviously not recovered fully, no matter what doctors may say. When healthy, Liles is Kaberlesque in his ability to skate the puck out of danger and he can run a powerplay. High hopes for him next year.

Cody Franson C-

Did not start well, bitching publicly about being benched at the beginning of the season, and once playing, did not show he truly belonged. He reminds me somewhat of Bryan McCabe. Same booming, low and usually accurate shot, same defensive miscues. and his grade reflects poor coaching more than anything else.

Jake Gardiner A

Every year there comes along a Leaf that gets you thinking "this guy's going to be great." Not so long ago that Leaf was Luke Schenn, and that hasn't turned out so well. Okay, that's as much tempering as I feel like doing. Jake is good. You don't often see players his age with the poise and instinct he has. And  he is such an effortless skater. It's easy to picture him leading a defence corps about five years hence, putting up something like sixty points. We've been burned before, but maybe...just maybe...this kid's the real deal. His only fault this year has been stretches of fatigue: entirely understandable when the kid's never played a schedule half this gruelling.

Mike Komisarek F

*sigh* Did you know he was once an All-Star? Well, he attended the game, anyway, thanks to the travesty that is fan voting. It just hasn't worked out for him here in Toronto. He tries to play with an edge and it only takes him out of position; if he tries to play in position he loses his edge. A big part of a hugely overpaid and under-performing D corps. Burke will have to work some Lebdalike magic to ship him out.


GOALIES

James Reimer C-

Oh, what could have been. 4-0-1 out of the gate and then flattened and concussed by Gionta. He never fully healed--he's out again as I write this--and the horror of concussions is, you never know if he ever will fully heal.  Burke inexplicably pinned the #1 on him on the basis of half a season of excellent work. He may well be a #1 goalie, when healthy. We'll just have to wait and see. Except Burke says he builds his teams from the net out, and three and a half years in, at a minimum, I'd expect the goalie position to be solid. It's anything but.

Jonas Gustavsson D

One good stretch of hockey does not a season (or a career) make. Gustavsson reminds me of me in my short lived goaltending days. I can make spectacular, otherworldly saves. Unfortunately, I am often beat on routine or less than routine shots. The Monster is a free agent and I think we've seen the last of him.

In conclusion...

Okay, Blue Jays, let's play ball!

By Hook or By Crook (III)

The difference between a liberal and a conservative, I've come to believe, is that liberals have ideals.

I spend a good deal of time, if not outright angry at the world, at least mildly disgusted and contemptuous of it. That's because it so often fails to live up to my idea(l) of How Things Ought To Be. Whereas conservatives of my (online) acquaintance have been mildly disgusted and contemptuous -- sometimes not so mildly -- of me because I dared to voice the opinion that human nature evolves, that we're getting better.

Albeit oh-so-slowly.

"Better" is, of course, a judgment call: ask many a social conservative and you're apt to hear that things are wrong and getting wronger all the time. Depending on just how socially conservative you are, the wrongness started when the faggots began "getting married"...or when God was thrown out of the schools...or, if you're Rick Santorum, when people started using contraceptives (which means soon after babies started being conceived). Damnit, the next thing you know, they'll start treating towelheads like human beings, killing people just because they're in so much pain they're begging to die, and legalizing prostitution.

Wait a second...

The reaction in our national newspapers runs the gamut from incredulity to inevitability. Both columns are worth the read.

Father Raymond J. deSouza used to write for the Sun and I've always enjoyed (though rarely agreed with) his columns. He is much more considered and considerate than, say, Michael Coren, who makes my blood boil three sentences in. Indeed, as I recall, it was deSouza who wrote a passionate defence of 'traditional' marriage that didn't fall into the usual traps of "marriage is for the begetting of children" and "if we allow gays to marry, then we'll have to allow incestuous  and bestial marriages". I had to actually think to rebut him. I respect that.

Here, too, he makes a persuasive argument that prostitution,  almost always borne of tragic circumstance and perpetuating same, has no place in a compassionate Canada. He's right--if you accept that prostitution must always be borne of, and perpetuate, tragic circumstances. I, personally, don't. It may be my ideals talking, and disdain those if you will, but the sex trade hasn't always and everywhere been held in such low regard. Indeed, as the other linked column shows, historically, prostitution has been sanctioned and regulated by municipal authorities, academia...even the Church.
And in other cultures sex is viewed almost as performance art and its practitioners as artists.

That's not where we are today, in many--not all--cases. (Some hookers genuinely enjoy their work and are in no way exploited.) But many in 'the trade--workers and clients both--hate themselves. Hate creates hate: it's a cosmic law. It's also reversible. A good first step would be to consider prostitution as a public service, not a public nuisance. It is, you know: countries where whoring is legal have a much lower incidence of rape, for one thing.

I'm a liberal: I have ideals. Ideally, prostitution would be a respected profession. I've always thought prostitutes were something akin to psychiatrists who just happen to work naked. Maybe, eventually, they'll be seen that way by more than just me...

Love and Marriage, Part I

I don't understand people. Even being one doesn't seem to help. --Spider Robinson

All too often I read something in the paper that utterly mystifies me. Today's mystery article is here.

"Who would want to be married to a person who nobody coveted?" asks the husband of the supposedly alluring Nigella Lawson. This question seems reasonable on the surface, but dig a little into it and there are several layers of wrongness underneath.

First and most facile, most men want to be married to someone whom no one else covets: witness the conventional reaction a husband has when confronted by another man who has a sexual interest in his wife. Yes, some men are aroused by this, but I think they're a minority: most of us feel at least a little insecurity, and some of us let our insecurities rule our rational thoughts.

(Perhaps I should restate that: most men want to marry a women whom everyone else covets, but who magically becomes completely undesirable to everyone but them once the ring is affixed. How exactly that magic is supposed to work is unknown.)

Eva and I have had this chat more than once with the sexes reversed. Not that other women have ever (would ever) show an interest in me, but hypothetically, we've played out the scenario.

"Do you trust me?" I ask.
"Of course", she says.
"Then it shouldn't matter whether or not you trust Skanky McSlutwhore."
"Ah, but women are devious."

You can go endlessly around that particular bush without resolution. Except I have to fight down the totally irrational jealousy myself whenever I hear of another man coveting my wife. I don't hold with jealousy: I consider it a shameful, deeply damaging emotion. It hurts to acknowledge that after many years in this mindset, I am still subject to occasional twinges of it. Why should I feel pain at another's happiness? And isn't it flattering and happy-making to be the object of someone's attention and desire?

So do I trust my wife? Of course I do. Implicitly. Do I trust other guys? Very few of them. And do I feel vaguely threatened whenever Muscles O' Greasestain  shows up in my imagination, let alone in real life? Yeah, a wee bit. I've got no reason to, of course, and she need not worry when his cousin Skanky makes an appearance. But reptilian brain-stems have their own imperatives.

The linked article makes reference to a study conducted at UBC. Seems that married couples told to act the way they did when they were first dating are more charming:


In other words, they put their best foot forward – the kind of foot that wins a mate over other desirous hearts, not the kind that wears comfy slippers around the house and takes it for granted that the competition is over so why bother turning on the romance any more?


I have so many problems with this incredibly common dichotomy that I'm not sure where to begin.

I wasn't out to "win" Eva. I know there are those out there who see life as an endless, Darwinist competition, but I was looking for a lifemate, not a trophy. If Eva had befriended me and gone on to marry someone else, I would have been happy for her and for him. It would have meant that despite all appearances, she wasn't the right person for me.  Having thrice been in love with women who seemed right for me at the time -- one of whom I still count as a close friend -- I can tell you that the search for Mr. or Mrs. Right can lead you through some interesting and yes, enchanting locales.

But since I wasn't out to win a wife, I didn't try to present myself as anything other than what I am. Why would I? Eva would have fallen in love with a lie, and been disillusioned and probably mutinous when the comfy slippers came out.
And despite those comfy slippers that both of us wear, I can assure you I don't take Eva for granted and I certainly don't feel taken for granted myself. After thirteen years, if there was any granted to be taken, I think one of us would be feeling it by now.

A question about this "robocall" scandal

So the CBC undertook an investigation and determined that non-Conservative supporters "all over Canada" were misled by phoney phone calls, purportedly from Elections Canada, telling them to report to fictitious polling stations.

If true, this is a scandal of the first order that should prove immediately fatal to the Harper government.

No one is disputing that these calls were made. The talk of the House has concerned little else for the last couple of weeks. There remain several questions to be answered in the official investigation that I fervently hope begins today:

1) Who knew what, when;

2) Just how extensive was this practice, i.e., did the election turn on it;

3) and my own contribution: WHY IS THIS COMING OUT NOW?

If this had happened to me, I would have come home from the deserted 'polling station' I'd been directed to and IMMEDIATELY contacted every media outlet I could find. I would have raised holy hell. But I'm supposed to believe that however many people this happened to--the CBC says over 700 complainants have come forward--all remained silent until right about now?

Or, alternatively, these people did complain and Elections Canada did nothing?

I don't get it.

This represents a subversion of democracy, the kind of dirty trick we send overseers to other countries to prevent. It's absolutely despicable.

Try a little irony, Stephen: it's good for the political blood. You hail from a party (Reform) that supported voter recall. Like every other politician arriving in Ottawa, you promised clarity, accountability and transparency in governance. And your government is famous for its use of the argument "if you have nothing to hide, you have nothing to fear". So it's only right and proper that you call a fully independent inquiry into election irregularities...and that you abide by its findings and recommendations.

I think it fair to say that, no matter what, you don't have a hope in hell of winning the next election. So, Stephen...do the right thing.

Broken Breadbin

Life is getting in the way of blogging, and not only my life. The Breadbin will be cold for an indefinite period of time. I will explain when I get back.

Not this again...

I've written some of what I'm about to write before. I make no apologies. Piano composition used to be my stress relief valve (and still is, for values of emotional stress that defy easy articulation)...but in most cases nowadays my first impulse is to write it out of my system. And the same little irritants keep happening over and over and over until they exert enough cranial pressure that I simply must blog. Either that or explode.

Most of my little irritants are in some way connected with communication--which would be one of my Ten Commandments were it not already implied in the first two. You can't empathize or question without communication.

We are far from the only species on this planet that communicates with others of our kind. But we are the only species entrusting our communication to machines. In so doing, we are gradually losing the ability to effectively communicate at all. (He says, snarkily, using a machine to communicate his points.)

Okay, back up a little.

The Internet is the best tool we've yet evolved for mass communication. It enables me to broadcast this point of view worldwide pretty much instantaneously, and that's a good thing, potentially the best thing. But I'm writing about individual communication, which used to be all about face time and is now a lot more about Facebook.

Seriously--or perhaps that should be 'srsly'--people, many of us, particularly our young, would rather talk on a phone than see someone in person, and would much rather text than talk on a phone. This baffles me. Aside from being dramatically slower (there isn't a person alive who can text as fast as they can talk), it's utterly dehumanizing. There's nothing of "you" or "me" in a text message. Not even a disembodied voice. Just words on a screen. And many of them aren't even words. I've written before about some of the text shorthand I've run across. "Ily" is, for me, the last straw. It saves all of five keystrokes and turns "I love you"--surely the most potent three words in the English language--into gibberish. It says "I love you, but not enough to waste time seeing you, saying it to you, or even typing out the whole phrase." That's not love. That's not even like.

I am very ambivalent about technology. I appreciate it, sometimes I adore it, but often I hate what it has done to our society. I read E.M. Forster's "The Machine Stops" back in grade five and marvelled that a man writing in 1909 could see this coming. We've gone beyond even his bleak vision, however, because Forster's Machine was essentially a videophone, and text messages have neither video nor voice.
And the speed. In an effort to make texting even half as efficient as talking, words are truncated, vowels are omitted, and an endless series of acronyms are employed, often obfuscating meaning and robbing the communication of its depth.

We've become a shallow society, content to "tweet" like birdbrains. Actually, that's probably an insult to birds: their songs are lovely, and they make a point of singing them to each other, face to bird-face.

There are books of correspondence from and between some of humanity's greatest thinkers and writers, and how many people bother to read such things anymore? They're longer than a couple of screens. I see the acronym "TL; DR" constantly. "Too Long; Didn't Read". I'd counter it with TS; DT. "Too Short; Didn't Think."

Human beings, social animals all, have constructed something called "social media" that is antisocial in the extreme. There's nothing "social" about being alone and bathed in the light of one's monitor, no matter what the Zuckerbergs of the world may believe.

And while we're butchering the English language, chopping it up and feeding it piecemeal into our texting-machines-that-are-still-quaintly-called-"phones", would it kill us to employ the grammar we were taught in second and third grade? There is a difference between you're and your; between to, too, and two; between its and it's; and between there, their and they're. Every day, despite myself, I find I'm in the virtual company of people who evidently never passed grade three. If I routinely made mistakes like these, I'd be ashamed of myself and take corrective measures immediately. But my attitude is antiquated and offensive, I'm told. Ah, well. If it can't quack using the accepted syntax of quackery, it's a stupid duck.

And Ken's Your Uncle!

Happy birthday to Alexa Grace Hopf!

And I mean that literally--it really is a happy birth day. Alexa was born at 11:37 a.m. this morning, weighing in at a healthy 8 lbs. Baby, mommy Ally and daddy Jim are doing great.

And I'm an uncle.

That's an old, old, word, uncle. In fact, it ultimately derives from the Latin for 'little grandfather', and doesn't that make me feel, uh, senior.

English is, so far as I am aware, the only language to have a word like avuncular-- "of or relating to an uncle; by extension, kind, genial, benevolent, or tolerant". All four of which are words I hope little Alexa eventually associates with her uncle Ken. (In case you're wondering--I was, but I know I'm weird that way--the female equivalent of avuncular is materteral, "auntlike".

And while we're on etymology, Alexa means "noble" or "man's defender", and Grace of course means "favour" or "blessing".  Knowing this Hopf family as I do, I can tell you right now that this baby is aptly named.

I'm excited...this is the first actual baby in the family. Here's to Alexa Grace. She's got a hell of a mom and dad; I look forward to assuming avuncular duties...

If I won the lottery

I won't, first of all. In order to win the lottery, you need to buy a ticket, and I haven't done that for years. It amazes me how many people do buy tickets, and it further amazes me that most of the people I observe buying tickets can hardly afford to. Me, I already give the government well over a quarter of what I make and I don't understand the allure of handing them more of my money in the impossible hope they'll return it a millionfold.
You don't need an advanced math degree to realize the futility. Just ask yourself: given a 6/49 type lottery, would you choose to play the numbers 1, 2, 3, 4, 5, and 6? If not, why not? They have just as good a chance of coming up as any other set of numbers.
The love of my life does very occasionally allow her dreams to override her common sense, and by very occasionally, I mean once or twice a year. So it's theoretically possible for us to suddenly come into a hell of a lot of money.
If it does happen--and I know how insane this sounds--I hope it's only a hell of a lot of money, and not a metric butt-load. I'd gladly take a million, and wouldn't pause if a million was two million. (Perhaps I should insert the fact here that all Canadian lottery winnings are tax-free, to prevent any Americans reading this from automatically dividing these figures in half.) But we have Lotto Max now. It routinely pays out fifty million.

Fifty million dollars. If that figure doesn't make you wince, it should.

What price life as you know it? Is it worth fifty million bucks to have to question almost every social interaction you have from the winning point forward? (Yeah, I know you wouldn't treat me any differently just because I'm suddenly fabulously wealthy, but Bob over there, not to mention all the seventh-grade classmates coming out of the woodwork?)

It goes without saying that we would help family and friends out. It also goes without saying that a line would have to be drawn somewhere, both in respect to dollar value and proximity of relationship, and those who find themselves on the other side of either line--WILL hate me. No amount of money is worth the hatred of loved ones...and that hatred is inevitable. Not because we'd be chintzy with our winnings, but because fifty million dollars.


Our lifestyle wouldn't change much, externally. We would have a new house built, but not a mansion: we're only two people. I'd stipulate to the builder that said house would be no bigger than three thousand square feet, and would not appear ostentatious in any way. The lot would have a view of water and the kitchen would be impressive but that's it. No amount of money would coerce me into buying a second property. To me, owning property that sits vacant ninety percent of the time makes no sense whatsoever.

We would travel--but not near as much as you'd think, on account of us being homebodies. And we'd eschew the first-class treatment as much as possible, because we're not, to put it bluntly, first-class people. I like food I can identify and pronounce and the idea of having to dress up for something as simple as a dinner fills me with dread. A butler? Pour moi? Don't make me laugh.

A housekeeper--yeah. That I'd have, and it wouldn't take fifty million bucks in my bank account, either.  I know people who claim to enjoy keeping house. The clinical term for these folks is FREAKING NUTS.

I really like Spider Robinson's idea for disposing of vast sums of unneeded cash. You select for professions you think you'll have need of someday, find people enrolled in school for those professions,  especially those who just miss out on the big scholarships. You offer to pay their way through school in return for a lifetime's worth of free service for you and your family/friends. Draw it all up nice and neat in a contract and repeat as needed. This is definitely something we would do.

Charities: yes. Selected very carefully, with an eye towards those that aren't in business to perpetuate themselves. I might be wrong and I know this sounds cold, but it really seems like many of them are. When seventy or eighty cents of every dollar goes to administration, overhead and such, there's something wrong. And I can't help but think if we really wanted to cure any number of diseases, we'd have done it by now. How many millions of dollars have gone into cancer research?

Probably the first thing I'd do, after I return from hiding, is hire a financial advisor to determine what "enough" money actually is for us. Because "enough" is really all I'd like to have. Anything more than "enough" is "too much".

What would you do with vast sums of cash?

In Burke We Trust

It has been some time since I wrote a Toronto Maple Leaf post. Actually, it's been some time since I've written any post. Now that I find myself with a day off for the first time in two weeks. I also find myself with little energy to write anything substantial. And so I'm going to spout off about the Leafs, which I can do indefinitely with little to no skullsweat.

I do recognize that a substantial proportion of my readers--nearing a hundred percent of them, in fact--do not share my love of hockey, or if they do, they declare allegiance to some other team. This is perfectly acceptable, provided they do it quietly and wash their mouths out with soap afterwards. Or they may choose to slink off into the Internet and leave me to pontificate and prognosticate in peace. It makes no matter to me.

+++++++++

Still with me?

All is not well in Leafland. The usual pattern post-lockout has been to dig a hole early, then start frantically trying to climb out of it at right about this point in the season. The climb is fruitless every year, but it does convince a subset of the Leaf fan base that "there's always next year".

This year seems to be a reversal of that pattern, in that the Leafs started like a house on fire, and as of late they're playing like crap. On the plus side, they're currently in playoff position, which is not something they've been able to say in February for what seems like decades. However, they're hanging on to that playoff position by the blades of their skates, and may well have fallen out of the top eight by the time you read this.

It's not that they're losing hockey games that concerns me as a fan: it's the way they're losing them. They were blown out 6-2 by the Vancouver Canucks the other night. No shame in losing to the Canucks, one of the elite teams in the West, but at least four of Vancouver's goals were gift-wrapped.

To be fair, the Leafs are exactly what they were projected to be this season: a bubble team that might or might not make the playoffs. Also to be fair, depending on the lineup they ice on a given night, this is the youngest team in the league. With a young team you expect inconsistency. You expect them to hit a wall about two thirds of the way through the season. None of this is a shock.

But if you're Brian Burke, GM of the Leafs, you should still be concerned. Burke claims to build all his teams "from the net out'--which should mean that at this point, three and a half years into the rebuild, the Leafs should at minimum have a solid goaltending tandem in place and a modicum of defensive awareness. Yet the Leafs rank 26th out of 30 teams in goals against per game. Yes, that's up four places from when Burke took over--but that's not good enough. Nowhere near.

It's hardwired into the DNA of every Leaf fan to make excuses. The hell of it is, every year at least a few of the excuses advanced have some merit. This year, for example, one could argue that Reimer would have much better stats were he not concussed early in the season. He hasn't been the same goalie since he returned. Gustavsson, meanwhile, is what he's always been: a maddeningly inconsistent goaltender whose athleticism can astound you almost as much as his mental lapses. Bottom line: the Leafs are unlikely to make the playoffs with either Reimer or Gustavsson as their #1, and if they do it'll be an awfully quick exit.

The defence corps(e) is prone to brainfarts at the most inopportune times. The Vancouver game on Saturday was a case in point: Canucks were constantly finding themselves unmolested in prime scoring areas. On three occasions they had enough time to compose a sonnet before depositing the biscuit in the basket. Watching this pitiful display tied my mind in knots. Does this team have a coach? I see three of them standing there behind the bench. What exactly do they say to their charges, and why does no one seem to listen?


Toronto has the speed and finesse to get get away with defensive ignorance against the Oilers and Blue Jackets of the world, but teams actually committed to winning hockey games give the Leafs fits. Again, it comes back to coaching, or the lack of it. You look at Vancouver, Detroit and Boston and the first thing you notice is the structure in their game. Players know where their teammates are at all times; passes are almost always crisp and on the tape. The puck is shot in, chased down, cycled, and brought back to the point, then fired on net with a screen in front. Defensively, there's always one player harassing the puck carrier, harrying and hurrying him to make a play, and another poised to block a shot or intercept a pass. I see glimpses of promise in Toronto's transition game, most of them having to do with blistering speed, but establishing a cycle, much less breaking the opposition's cycle, is too often beyond the Leafs' abilities. In hockey parlance, they're lacking board presence at both ends of the ice.

Cue the trade deadline and its attendant madness.

+++++++++++++++++++++++++++

I argued when Burke took over that it would take three complete churns of the team to get from where the Leafs were at the time (nowhere) to where they want to go (a Stanley Cup). Burke has since accomplished one full churn, trading everyone away except Grabovski and establishing something approaching a respectable stable of prospects at the AHL level and below. Leaf fans are notoriously impatient: even one poor showing brings cries of BURN IT WITH FIRE, TRADE EVERYONE, CAN WILSON, CAN BURKE. It's ridiculous: this is still very much a work in progress.

Nobody is really sure what Burke is thinking--he's a master of misdirection who tends to talk a great game while playing an entirely different, and sometimes greater, game. But here's my take on what's out there, what it might cost to obtain, and whether or not it's worth it.

We'll start with RICK NASH, the captain of the sad-sack Blue Jackets.  Every year there's a team like the Jackets, so bad they could double their point total and still finish out of the playoffs, except usually that team is the New York Islanders. Regardless, there is always one or maybe two players on that crappy team who would be much better playing anywhere else. Nash is arguably a prime example. He's never managed a point a game--considered (by me, at least) to be the bare minimum criterion to call yourself a true offensive star. And in seven years, he's led his team to precisely one playoff round, which was over almost before it began. But you watch his game and you wonder. He's got a big body and he knows how to use it; he knows how to score goals too, having amassed thirty or more five times. He would undoubtedly look damned good on the Leafs' first line.
The cost, however, is prohibitive. It seems as if Columbus wants half of any team bidding for Nash. The good half, it goes without saying. In the Leafs' case, you're looking at a package of Gardiner, Grabovski, Reimer and Kadri to even join the discussion. I can part with Kadri and Reimer with no concern, provided I'm getting a goalie back, but I'd be very leery of trading Gardiner. He leads the league in points by rookie defencemen and his skating is effortless, almost Coffey-esque. His nickname in the room is Silver...because after a thousand games in the NHL, players receive a silver stick. Jake Gardiner has played 52 NHL games. Does that give you some idea of the respect he's earned in a very short time?

And supposing the Leafs actually land the guy, they then have to pay him over eight years at a $7.8 million cap hit. Those are superstar numbers, extended over a term that would make Burke choke. The only way I'd acquire Nash is if I could then flip him to one of the other teams on his list for a sweet return...and even then, I'd second-guess myself unto the end of time.

If Burke is looking at stripping the Blue Jackets, he'd be marginally better off considering JEFF CARTER.  His stats are comparable, his cap hit is more palatable (albeit for a longer term), and he's been linked to the Leafs forever. He'd also come considerably cheaper, since reports suggest Columbus can't get rid of the guy fast enough. The downside is that Carter is injury prone and has a reputation as, well, a bit of a jerk.  I wouldn't necessarily steer clear on either score. I'd just ask myself, is he Tim Connolly brittle or just experiencing a run of bad luck? And his he a jerk like Grabovski was once or is he Avery-class? Consider this one high-risk with a potential high reward.


Before Anaheim began a very Leaf-like late season run, rumour had it RYAN GETZLAF was on the table. If so, the table has since been cleared. Getzlaf is exactly what Toronto needs and a fan can dream, but this just won't happen.  


Everybody in the NHL gets linked to the Leafs at some point in their career, if they're any good. I've heard JOSH HARDING's name discussed in a few places and the Leafs could do a lot worse than to shore up the goaltending. He is a solid netminder who would not be half as expensive as the marquee names supposedly available at the position like Bernier and Schneider.

I wonder what it would take to pull DUSTIN BROWN out of Los Angeles. He's one notch below Nash in skill level, but he's durable and possesses the "pugnacity, testosterone, truculence and belligerence" that Burke craves. He wouldn't come cheap, but he could probably be had for less than Nash. I'd gladly offer up Grabovski and a couple of prospects.

Another alternative might be RYAN CLOWE in San Jose. He's another power forward with a mean streak the Leafs desperately need.

The fact is, nobody knows what Burke is going to do. I suspect he's going to do something, because his team still has weaknesses in all areas of the ice and he's shown himself to be open to improving those weaknesses. I also suspect that whatever he does will be off the map...nobody, but nobody, saw his last three trades developing.

This Leaf fan is waiting with bated breath. The team is getting better. Now it's time to take the next step and declare it a playoff team.
  

Sorry for the empty Breadbin

The grocery manager has been off on vacation for (entirely too long) nine days. He's back in seven.

I hope I'm still alive to see him back.

It'd be fine if I had a me while I'm being him--but I don't...at all. I did, but every day it seems as if more and more hours have to be cut from the schedule. Add in what seems like most of the store getting relined and I may just go insane.

Blogging has been the absolute last thing on my mind. It's a pity, because I'd really like to tear Vic Toews a new one.

I'm off next Wednesday (until somebody tells me otherwise)--I hope to catch up with y'all then.

Tough Love

So this has gone viral over the last two days. Trust me, when I see links to an Internet video more than once, it's beyond famous; I seem to live somewhere on the fringes of the net, and nine out of ten memes never reach me. But "father shoots daughter's laptop" is pretty much everywhere online right now, along with what seems like terabytes of commentary pro and con. This guy's father of the year. Or he's more immature than his daughter and a raging psycho to boot.

I'd ask you to watch this video and decide for yourself if his actions were justified and reasonable. I'll be right here.

....

There's a reason that Children's Aid decided we weren't fit to be parents. Actually, there are more than a few reasons, but the biggest black mark on our cards came from our exposure to, and willingness to use, tough love.
Oh, this was never said aloud, of course. But I certainly remember the vibe. It came first during one of the adoption classroom sessions, The scenario we were given was this: your child is on a school field trip to Toronto. You get a call at work letting you know the child has forgotten her lunch. What do you do?

I privately found this scenario ludicrous. Why would a teacher call me for something this trivial? I wasn't stupid enough to voice that thought. But both Eva and I essentially said this wasn't a big deal. The child could scrounge amongst her friends. The teacher could buy her something small. Or she could just go without lunch: one missed meal wouldn't kill her, and it might spark her memory next time.

WRONG ANSWER. We were told the only acceptable course of action was to drop whatever we were doing and bring our daughter her lunch.  We looked at each other. He's joking, right? Apparently not.

"Tough love" is passe, it seems. I don't know when it became law that parents were to be their children's best friends. Probably around the same time it was suddenly decided that no child could ever fail at anything lest he injure his precious self-esteem. Well, I'm here to tell you that parents are supposed to be parents, and the best way to nurture self-esteem is to fail at lots of things, lots of times...and then succeed through repeated, concerted effort.

As for tough love...

I didn't get near the dose Eva did. By all accounts she deserved it, too. I'll spare you the details: suffice it to say she wasn't exactly respectful or docile. Transport everybody down a generation and I can vividly picture her father pumping a few rounds through her laptop. She was paying room and board by this kid's age: it was that or move out. Did she hate it? Of course she did. Does she look back at it now and say "you know what, Mom and Dad were right?"

Yes, for the most part, she does.

An incident from my childhood: I was once confined to my bedroom for a weekend...Friday evening to Sunday supper. So as to make this reward a punishment, my room was first stripped of all its books. To really twist the screws, they even took my clock. That, I gotta say, was cruel--those two days took about three years to go by.
I was allowed to go to the bathroom, and that was it. Meals were brought to me in my room...I was not deprived of any food at all. Sometime on Saturday or Sunday, my parents went out for a few hours, first warning me of grave consequences if I tried to leave my room. Of course, I tried to leave my room as soon as the car was out of the driveway...only to find they'd taped the $%^ing door shut. RRRRRRRIP. Ever tried to re-attach tape to a door and then close it from the other side? Can't be done.

So I owned up right away when they got home, half-expecting to get another day or three tacked on to my sentence. Didn't happen. I was freed on Sunday sometime in the late afternoon.

Any parent trying that today would have their child taken away before the bedroom door was closed.

Now. Want to know what I did to get that punishment?

I was sent out to feed our dogs. The dog food was kept in the shed, and our shed had a dirt floor. I inadvertently knocked the dog food so it spilled all over. In my rush to do whatever the hell it was I wanted to do--I think it was a bike ride I was desperate to go on, for some reason--I shovelled all the food, dirt and all, back into the bag. A moment's thought would have resulted in me going in to explain my mishap to my parents--worst case scenario, we're out a bag of dog food--but what I did instead was just wrong on so many levels. I can't even explain it, looking back, what impulse accounted for that stupid, stupid action.
Of course I was found out. Of course I tried to lie about it, saying I had no idea how that dirt got into the bag.
The punishment didn't really fit the crime--I rather think I should have been made to eat a cup of that dog food/dirt--but it was effective nonetheless.

Do kids even get punished anymore?

Was this a punishment or a well-deserved kick in the ass? Maybe this kid will think about getting a job so she can get her indispensable computer back.

I'm taking some flack on Facebook, of all places, for my stance here. I'm being castigated for taking the father's words at face value, as if anybody would make this up for shits and giggles. And apparently I'm supposed to pity this child for having an "imbecile" for a father--who, by the way, shouldn't have snooped in his daughter's Facebook account (!?!?)

Maybe this is another reason I don't have kids, but if I had a kid, the computer would be right where it is here: in the living room, where I can keep an eye on it and make sure the porn is, you know, normal porn. Jokes aside, there is no way I'd allow a computer in my kid's bedroom. Not because I want to raise a monk: because computers come with webcams now, and there is no place in my kid's bedroom for a camera. Period.
And the rules would be simple. I get full and total access to everything you do online. You want to keep secrets from me, you keep a diary in your underwear drawer and I promise never to look at it. But  your online life is fair game. I get to see what your public face is. When you fall in love with the 47-year-old guy from Montana who's posing as a 13-year-old boy from down the lane, I'm right there ready to put a stop to it. And if you feel the need to damage my reputation using your computer? Well, then I get the right to damage your computer.

Tough love. It works.`

Odd thoughts on abortion

Abortion is one of those topics that finds every hot button people have and just hammers on them. All of them. At once. It's either "a woman's reproductive freedom" or it's straight up, cold-blooded murder: there doesn't seem to be any middle ground.

Or does there?

In all the commentary I've read about abortion, pro and con, not one person has ever mused if the baby has any say in the matter. 

I will explain that. It requires a few assumptions.

First--big one--let's posit that there is some sort of life after death. NOTE: I am not arguing for the existence of any god here, much less any heaven/hell. Only that there is something more than threescore and ten. As I may have mentioned a time or two, this is something I implicitly believe, if for no other reason than life is too damned short. 

I can accept that those of you with agnostic/atheistic bents will shut this whole argument down right here, and that's okay. I have no scientific evidence either way, just a gut feeling, and it could well be gas. But for the purposes of continued mental exercise here, can we just for right now side with the majority of humans and accept that there is something beyond this earthly existence?

Okay. Here were are, in the majority mindspace. Now, having accepted this proposition, let's consider one more: that there is some sort of life before birth. Actually, let's pull that back a bit and suggest that there is some sort of life before conception. 

You rarely hear this thought advanced...or at least, I haven't heard it much. In my experience, whenever something like this comes out, the crystals and tarot cards inevitably follow. I find this beyond strange. Why is it that so many people uncritically accept the prospect of life after death, but the idea of life before birth is cuckoo?

Likely the two states--if they exist--are in fact the same state, i.e. before "birth" = after "death". Or, more poetically, "ashes to ashes, dust to dust".  Again, no scientific backing here whatsoever: this just has a good beat and I'm dancing to it, okay? It's just simpler if we come from the same place we're all going. It has a certain "circle of life' resonance to it, at least for me.

The acceptance of this proposition opens up all kinds of interesting doors. For instance, maybe--just maybe--impending arrivals in this state of being may be able to select their families ahead of time. Neale Donald Walsch, in his Conversations With God series, suggests that the purpose of life is to continuously "recreate yourself in the next greatest version of the grandest vision ever you had about Who You Are." What are you here to experience? What sort of parents would help you best experience that? Having determined this, you would--I guess "beam" is as good a verb as any--your DNA, your information,  and recreate yourself, in formation. And then you're born, and you live your life, and hopefully experience what you came here to experience, impacting every life you touch and making your world a better place. Or not. Maybe you're an evil bastard responsible for millions of deaths...and the world rises as one against you and says "never again". 

Or maybe you're never born at all. You're perhaps aborted...or miscarried.

What happens to you then? Is there any reason, given the above assumptions, that you're not simply folded back into the ether whence you came, only to 'drop' again somewhen, somewhere? 

And if that is in fact the case, what was your purpose in existing, in potential, for however long you did?

My wife miscarried more than six times. The first was particularly painful for her: little Peanut was found dead just into the second trimester. This turn of events has profoundly shaped her, and my, life. It started us down an adoption path we wouldn't otherwise have contemplated...which in turn led to a rejection that has also shaped our lives in countless ways large and small. It makes us feel a little better to imagine that Peanut had a future somewhere else, and was only stopping by to play its part--not a bit part, by any means!--in our lives. 

It amazes me that people who are against abortion often seem to assume that it's a simple decision, just one of many a pregnant woman makes in the course of her day: let's see, I'll wear the red shirt today, I'll have pancakes for breakfast,  and oh, yeah, gotta abort my baby. The choice to abort reverberates for years. It's a huge decision...in many ways, the biggest decision a woman will ever make. 

Booya, I hear from the Peanut gallery. So Mummy agonized over killing me before she did it. That sure makes me feel less dead. 

But you're assuming that dead is dead. Odd that, given how many pro-lifers declare as Christians and believe in life everlasting. Maybe all the Peanuts in all the galleries watching the show, awaiting their turn to step on stage, are free to leave the show, to go see some other show instead. 

I know--it's a strange thing to contemplate. But no stranger, in my mind, than life after death--which the majority of people accept without thought. 

Race To The Bottom

I'm feeling particularly glum lately. This didn't help much.

I wrote about EMD and Caterpillar exactly one month ago. While I figured the plant closure was coming, I didn't imagine it would happen so quickly. Frankly, that more than anything else alarms me. You think your job is secure? Apparently you can be forced to take a 60% pay cut, or lose your job entirely, just because somebody somewhere doesn't think billions in profits is quite enough money.

Welcome to the race to the bottom, folks.

I see it everywhere: mandated 55-hour work weeks, the loss of defined benefit pension plans, mass layoffs...where does it end?

And you know the argument that drives me batty about this? "It's unskilled labour--only worth $15/hour." Yeah? Says who? And what will Who say next, "sorry, we miscalculated, that labour is only worth minimum wage? Which, by the way, is at least 50% too high?" Not only that, but you try working in a factory, Mr. High-And-Mighty Educated Man. Even odds you wouldn't last a full shift.

I work in retail and confront this attitude daily. It is unskilled labour--only if you're doing it wrong. I could gussy up a resume that would make you think twice: "Liaise between stakeholders, management, suppliers and clients, providing superior customer service at every opportunity. Supervise a team to ensure compliance to company standards and protocols. Troubleshoot supply system glitches, resolving issues and preventing future problems. Juggle many competing priorities and unfailingly meet multiple hard deadlines. Maximize sales per labour hour, minimize shrink, and provide a stable and reliable experience for clients with diverse backgrounds and requirements." You think it's easy? It is--again, if you're doing it wrong.

 The person who replaced me at my old store, I'm told, has had about enough. It hasn't even been six months. I don't blame him. I'm just glad I don't measure my self-worth in dollars and cents. That said, there are bills to pay.

It's possible to have a living wage: EMD workers had one until just now, after all. Countries such as Germany--which has no minimum wage law--nevertheless pay their factory workers quite well. But that's Europe. Different ethos there, one we used to have to some degree in Canada but which is eroding and fast.  We seem to be moving towards the American model, wherein there is no God but Greed, and Dollar is His Profit.

Sometimes I wonder if the corpocracy that really runs the world won't be happy until we're all making wages similar to those paid in India and China. And here I thought it was all about raising the Third World up, not bring the First down. Naive of me...