Zeds, Zees, whatever they are, I need about a million of 'em

Hi, everybody.
We're back from Florida. There's a loooooooonnnnnggggg blog coming tomorrow, but that's tomorrow. Right now, I'm going to bed, and I don't care if it's 6:52 p.m. We woke up this morning in Louisville Kentucky, having dodged this by about an hour and having missed this by--well, we missed the brunt of it, but the tail end this afternoon was bad enough--we've had about enough of this whole being awake business.
On the morrow...

Only in America...

(Being The Story of a Tempest in a Pee-Pee-Pot)

Only in America would there be such an infernal uproar over a single word in an award-winning book.
I'm referring to the children's book The Higher Power of Lucky, by Susan Patron, judged the most worthy contribution to children's literature for last year by the American Library Association and thus awarded the Newbery Medal. This despite the word "scrotum" on the very! first! page! after a dog is snakebitten on the...uh...well, here's the quotum (sorry):

“Scrotum sounded to Lucky like something green that comes up when you have the flu and cough too much,” the book continues. “It sounded medical and secret, but also important.”

I like that imagery. I've had the flu and coughed so hard I'm pretty sure I did bring up a scrotum or two. Green, no less. Besides, I've always thought that was a weird, neat word. Say it with me, now: SCRO-TUM. Neat word.

How ironic that a book written by a public librarian is now being banned in libraries all over the United States, solely on the basis of a single word denoting a part of the body shared by every male human being (and dog) on the planet. Ironic, but hardly surprising. After all, we're talking about the same country that went temporarily insane over a nipple on television. Nipple: you know, the thing that kids far too young to read are intimately familiar with?

The Higher Power of Lucky was written for a fifth and sixth grade audience. At that age, I'm pretty sure I had no idea what a scrotum was: I called that body part my bag. As in, "Ow! He bagged me!" I would have been gratified (and, let's face it, a tad amused: scrotumscrotumscrotum!) to have a real honest-to-goodness word to describe my nut sack. I wouldn't have been scared of the word, or scarred by it: I had read Where Did I Come From long before that, and been exposed to 'penis' and 'vagina' ("rhymes with North Carolina") without incident.

I'm pretty sure most other kids my age--yes, even then--would have been the same way upon learning what a "scrotum" was. It would immediately have become an insult to be hurled, of course: a word that unique pretty much has to be, especially since it seems to upset adults so much. But it would still be just a word. "There are no bad words", says George Carlin. "Bad thoughts....bad intentions...and words." Scrotum is not a bad word. How can it be? It

(a) comes directly from the Latin (cognate with Old English skrud, "garment": just imagine yourself dressed in a shimmering floor-length scrotum!);
and (b) describes a part of the human body--the same body, for those devout Christians most likely to object to the very notion of a scrotum, "made in the image and likeness of God": does God have a scrotum?

Now, of course, there's a better-than-average chance some girl has seen your fifth or sixth grader's scrotum. At the very least. I can certainly understand the discomfort that thought might cause. But this uproar about the word, not even the picture? Ridiculous, in that way that only Americans ever seem to be.

Q. What's a yankee?
A. It's a quickie, only you're alone.

Did I just read that? Holy sweet zombie, I did.

So I'm reading Hansard -- something I'll do every once in a while. I won't watch Question Period on CPAC, ever, mostly because I'd have to throw a brick through the television and my wife would then pick up the brick and throw it at me. And probably hit me and make me even more "special" than I already am. But in text, the petty panderings, platitudes, and pantomimes of Parliament seem ever so slighly less asinine, somehow. Maybe it's because Hansard omits all the stomping and screaming that goes on in the background all through Question Period. Personally, I'd use duct tape.

There's a real brouhaha brewing over Stephen Harper's proposed method of appointing judges, to wit: he wants police input. For this, Harper has been attacked at every turn, just as he is every time he tries to get tough on crime in any meaningful way. .

Harper is right to be suspicious of judges. I'm sure many Canadians share his suspicions. The Liberal Party, though, has suspicions of its own, as shown by this exchange between Harper and Michael Ignatieff on Valentine's Day:

Harper: "We want to make sure we're bringing forward the laws to make sure we crack down on crime, that we make our streets and communities safer. We want to make sure our selection of judges is in correspondence with those objectives."
Ignatieff: "Mr. Speaker, this has just confirmed our worst suspicions."

Rarely do you see such candour in politics. Ignatieff, and by extension his party, doesn't want a crackdown on crime, doesn't want safer streets, and doesn't want judges who want those things for Canadians.
We've long known that, of course, though I don't think it's ever been admitted so succintly. It was Liberals who gave prisoners the right to vote, knowing that only the insane ones would vote anything other than Liberal. It was Liberals who stacked the court with judges disguised as cuddly teddy bear social worker types (it's only partisan when Conservatives do it; when it's done by Liberals it's done according to "Canadian values".) It is Liberals (and their NDP and Bloc colleagues) who are against any bill that might possibly get tough on crime.
What we don't know, what's missing, is why. Why do Liberals care more for the criminal than his victim? Why do they suggest that police officers are not capable of selecting judges--only lawyers (who have a vested interest in seeing the same criminals over and over and over again) can do that? Why do they see no problem with a "justice" system in which house arrest is a perfectly acceptable sentence for murder?
Perhaps Mr. Ignatieff will deign to tell us. I'd really like to understand. This whole soft-on-crime business is the biggest reason I can't bring myself to vote Liberal (well, that and the fact they're not sorry for the whole sponsorship scandal, only sorry they were caught).

But I wouldn't hold my breath waiting for an answer from Ignatieff or anyone else. One piece of candour is enough for this year.

Change is afoot

The history book on the shelf
Is always repeating itself...
---Abba, "Waterloo"

Ten years ago almost to the day, my life took one of those sudden screeching turns I've always dreaded. My boss, a real bitch-monster, had left the scene not long before. She had been replaced by a gentleman named Mike, whom we all learned to call Mac. At the time I couldn't imagine a better manager, and not just in comparison with Jo, either.
With practically no warning, certainly with no rhyme or reason, just as Mac was growing into his role and our team was meshing, he was transferred to another 7-Eleven on the other end of town.
Viewed from north Waterloo, Doon was seven kinds of paradise. I had subbed in there often enough to know. The sports bar in the same plaza rarely disgorged drunks, and almost no student drunks. Used to the frantic, frenetic pace of store 25067, I was stunned to discover that at Doon I had time to read a newspaper on the night shift. The atmosphere, even before Mac arrived there, was relaxed. Morale was high.
Meanwhile, back at my King and University store, we awaited our new manager with some trepidation. I worked night shift--as I almost always did--on her first day, and put as much effort as I could into my job that night.
Most of the jobs I have had through my life have involved cleaning, at least in part. Being a man, I am, as Dave Barry has noted, unable to see dirt until it can sustain commercial agriculture. It is so frustrating to polish everything around to a fine sheen, only to miss one little spot...which of course screams out to all and sundry, "Here I am! Look at me! I'm filthy!" And it hasn't escaped me that women tend to hear that scream more keenly.
This woman toured her new domain to a cacophony of little screams, inaudible to Mac, some of them inaudible to even Jo. She then turned them full force upon me, making me feel like my four and a half years' experience on night shift had evaporated.
Shortly thereafter I requested...and was granted...a transfer to Doon, Mac, and sanity.
Ten years ago almost to the day. As wonderful as this change was even to contemplate, it was still a change, and I didn't (and don't) handle change all that well when it's forced upon me. Or when I force it upon myself, for that matter.
There was, for instance, the matter of a 100-minute commute each way, on airless, packed hells disguised as Kitchener Transit busses. Half that on one of these things leaves me weak and gasping for breath; even with a book to lose myself in, the full 100 minutes was insupportable. That meant moving--again--and the only place I could find on short notice was a tiny basement room with walls that might have been constructed out of rice paper. There was no woman in my life at the time. Truth be told, that was something of a relief. I couldn't in good conscience show anyone the hellhole I was living in.
But I had my transfer.
I threw myself into my job with a will. Night shift ceased its drunken torments and became something to enjoy. In the solitude of three in the morning, in the lit oasis of a 7-Eleven, I could almost imagine my life going someplace.
Then came the letter, attached to a paystub, from Head Office informing me that in six weeks my store would be closing.
I was offered employment at yet another store in Kitchener, one I had worked maybe twenty shifts in over the years. The drunks there were serious, hardcore, downtown drunks. It was the kind of store where I'd have to pull the Listerine off the shelf every night lest it be bought or stolen. It was also the kind of store one could easily imagine being knifed or shot in.
No, thank you.
I will never forget the ensuing six weeks. The community reacted with shock and confusion when it found out we were closing due to lack of business. "But I'm in here all the time!" was the oft-spoken refrain, usually from the mouths of people we'd never seen before.
The shelves ran down far past the point of absurdity. In the middle of the night I imagined I could hear them begging to be refilled. There was an almost overwhelming compulsion to just stop trying, to tell 7-Eleven's upper management--I believe their names were Benedict Arnold, Delilah, and Judas Something-Or-Other--exactly how we felt. Every customer couldn't help but notice the sad emptiness and we'd have to explain over and over that yes, we were closing and no, there wasn't a damned thing in the world we could do about it. We felt like we were letting the neighbourhood down.

The severance package I was offered was more than fair, especially since I had rejected what, to the company, was a perfectly legitimate alternative. I felt I could quite easily get another job before my money ran out, so I didn't bother applying for employment insurance. In my foolish, foolish mind, I equated E.I. with welfare. I'd already done the welfare thing and was ashamed of myself for it. Besides, the next job would come along tomorrow.
It wasn't. Nor was it the next day, or for a very long succession of days after that. In the end I was reduced to applying for a market research job...where I was interviewed and hired by the woman who would one day be my wife.

Almost as if I was being steered.

Fast forward to this morning. I've been in the same job now for almost six years. I know what a hoary old cliche this is, but it's still apt: the people I work with constitute a family. A remarkably close-knit family, given the climate of change that governs the grocery industry: many of the people who are with us, including much of the management, have been there for years.
Our little family is ruled over by a man named Larry Dobbs, who has been there almost since the store opened. It was his store until just recently. A better boss would be hard to imagine, let alone find. His loyalty to his employees inspires loyalty to him (the secret to effective management, and one far too many managers never learn). He's approachable, always quick with a joke, and most of all he understands the job is just a job. You're expected to care about it, but it isn't to rule your life. That's another secret many upper management types don't often bother with, incidentally.
We went corporate seven or eight months ago to repeated assurances that any changes would be invisible to us employees. My wife, knowing human nature as she does, told me that, to the contrary, things would only go downhill from here. But up until this morning, it seemed that sense would prevail. The team that had built our store up from nothing into the busiest Price Chopper in the city would stick together.
I have been incredibly lucky not to have to work weekends since I came to this store nearly six years ago. It wasn't anything I had asked for, but my schedule has been a fringe benefit, one almost as valued to me as my boss. Nevertheless, I've taken to coming in Saturdays for at least a couple of hours, just to make sure everything is running smoothly. That's what I did today. I had an order to write, but before I could get to it Larry took me aside and announced a "powwow" upstairs.
I have a guilty conscience. Always have had. I racked my mind furiously to determine what I'd done to get my ass fired, and came up totally empty. When Larry began to gather all the present members of our management team together, I threw my brain in reverse. Mental tires spun and smoked. Either Larry was retiring or--
"You're getting transferred," somebody said.
Larry nodded, struck nearly mute.
I almost thought I saw the lights dim.
The sense of shock, of shellshock, was palpable. Tears were shed, epithets were hurled, and we all looked at each other, uncertain. Larry's going to the Price Chopper equivalent of Doon, a store so dead the running joke is that it's closed and the employees just don't know it yet. He assures me they won't close the store with him in it, but I've seen that done before. Besides, they had assured him he would never be transferred.
That store should thank its lucky stars. They're getting a great manager...and a great man.

Meanwhile I don't know what we're getting. But there's a possibility I'll be finding myself another job soon. If what I bring to bear on my job isn't appreciated, I mean. That's a terribly scary thought for me: I'm well entrenched in my career at this point, and finding something open commensurate with my skill level, not to mention my level of pay, is an unlikely proposition. So I'd be looking at not just a change of job, but a change of career.

I told Larry I'd follow him to his new store. And I would, even if they did close it in eight or nine months. But there's no place there for me.

Stay tuned. I sure as hell will.

The Battle of the Bulge

Last year, on a low-carb diet, I managed to lose just over thirty pounds. I had more energy, much less stomach irritation, and just all around felt better.
So why'd it all come back?
Several reasons, really. Although I had found low-carb foods I enjoyed, there was the not-so-insignificant matter of all those other high-carb foods I enjoyed. Because I wasn't having them, I convinced myself I enjoyed those high-carb foods more. Didn't take much convincing, either.
Then there's the matter of price. I've discovered that no matter what road to healthy eating you may take, your wallet is forced to diet right along with you. It's perhaps understandable in the case of a low-carb diet, which goes against most prevailing dietary wisdom (eat steak, cheese, eggs, and cream...and lose weight? Yeah, right!) There's no denying it worked for me...until the money situation tightened a few notches. Then my belt loosened a few notches.
But never mind low-carb: even a diet infused with plenty of yucky vegetables (healthy, for sure, but yucky, for surer) gets pricey. If you want to eat cheap, go for the bread, rice, and potatoes...but for the sake of your waistline you'd better be prepared to walk everywhere. Or better yet, run. Backwards.
Is it any wonder that, statistically speaking, the poorer you are, the more likely you're obese?
But the biggest problem, for me, at least, has nothing to do with what I eat and everything to do with how much I eat. Simply put, I'm a pig. By the standard serving sizes printed right on the box, bag, or can of whatever the hell it is we're scarfing, I suspect most of us are. Hands up all of you who eat eleven potato chips and stop eating.

Okay, hands down, all you bullshitters.

Or take those Lipton Sidekick side dishes. Those are supposed to be split four ways. Try that next time you prepare one: you'll find a serving constitutes about three mouthfuls. Barely a taste.
Ditto Kraft Dinner. I mean, I knew a box was too much, but half a box is also too much. Here's a question, and I'm only half joking: if you abide by all these serving sizes, how do you not gnaw your own arm off out of sheer ravenousness?

To make matters worse, I was sabotaging myself with plates the size of monster truck tires and bowls like rain barrels. We bought these things because we liked them, but even the oversized portions I'm used to consuming looked relatively puny; correct serving sizes make your supper look like it came out of one of those nouveau cuisine places where they give you three carrot sticks and charge you a hundred bucks for the honour. Oversized flatware is getting more and more common these days, have you noticed? It's frustrating.
"Hey, I like this pattern!"
"Yeah, but you'd have to saw it in half. Oh, wait a second, that's supposed to be a saucer. Can you break in in quarters?"
"Okay, what about this one? It's a reasonable size."
"Yeah, and it looks like gangrene. Put it back."

And, of course, there's the matter of exorcism...I mean, excercise. I don't get enough. I'm actually pretty certain that all this foofarow about low-fat, low-carb, low-cal, high-fibre is pretty much a moot point. You can eat whatever the hell you want so long as you're willing to exercise it off. Consider the Amish. Their food is rich and tasty and spectacularly unhealthy by the standards of the modern dietician. But they work thirty-nine hours a day. You'd be skinny too.
Face it: the only diet absotively GUARANTEED to work is to eat fewer calories than you burn. I admit, I'm pretty partial to the Ken-diet, to wit: eat whatever you want, and just don't swallow anything...

So: life changes. I'm trying very hard to regard food as fuel, not fun. That's a bitch of an attitude adjustment when my whole diet has always been planned around what I like to eat. We're gradually, as money permits, introducing more organic stuff into the diet (and there's another wallet-killer! Organic eggs range between 1.5 and almost three times the price of regular eggs, and I'll bet you most people can't taste a difference. And eggs are among the cheapest organic items, relative to their non-organic counterparts.

We'll get serious about this when we return from southern climes. Cue the Premier Fitness jingle:

I don't wanna be a fat guy
Rubbery flubbery blubbery out-of-shape dude.

I really must apologize for my snarkery lately. I must be off my meds or something...little things are annoying me beyond all reason. The slightest poke sends me off into a rant: at least most of the time I'm able to keep it silent.
I sat down tonight to watch the Toronto Maple Leafs play Nashville. The Leafs have been playing above their heads lately, and they came to earth with a thud tonight against the best team in the league. I should have known this was going to happen: the anthem singers in Nashville performed O Canada as if it was some kind of funeral dirge, out of tune, and with little grace notes that grated on the ear. Ugh.
Of course, over on the Leaf forum, the whole reason we lost the game was because of the refs. Now, I'll admit the officiating in the NHL is wildly uneven, and tonight's game wasn't the best-reffed game I've seen by any stretch, but the fact is the Leafs were outclassed, penalties or not, and they deserved to lose. But try telling the people on tmlfans.com that and you'll be flamed out of your pants. Nice fans.

Turned 35 a couple of days ago. I figure I'm halfway through my life, or at least close to it. Unless I die next week. Anyway, this is the first birthday I've had since my teens that gave me a real sense of having aged. Odd feeling, hard to classify. It's definitely not unease of any kind: I'm not one of those people who dreads the approaching birthday and dissolves into tears at the mere thought of getting older. Those people are almost invaribly female, I've noticed. It's funny, the difference in the genders when it comes to aging. Women, stereotypically at least, freak out whenever the very concept of "age" is mentioned, but they internalize getting older and seem to cope better the older they get. Men, by contrast, rarely even mention birthdays, seem to have no problem with the whole aging thing, and then BANG! suddenly they've divorced the wife and bought a Porsche.
Little chance of any of that happening here. I'm reasonably comfortable as I reach this milestone of life, all things considered. Whenever I am having a bad time of it, I take a deep breath and think of some nice, positive music. Something like Great Big Sea:

Way-hey-hey, it's just an Ordinary Day
And it's all your state of mind
At the end of the day you've just got to say it's all right.

I've got a smile on my face and I've got four walls around me...

Or David Meece:

No matter where we've been
No matter what we've done
Today can be our Once In A Lifetime
For yesterday is gone
Tomorrow may not come
Today can be our Once In A Lifetime

(David Meece is a remnant of my Christian past, one I'm not willing to give up. Most of his songs aren't overly preachy and they're loaded with pop hooks that snag me every time I hear them. Another remnant, just as welcome, is early Amy Grant.)

Whenever I'm really down, I invariably find myself turning to John McDermott. Which is kind of funny, at least if you ask my wife, since she finds his music almost unbearably depressing. While it's true many of his songs deal with the pains of war, loss, and--yes--growing old, there are many I find uplifting. Here's one:

Steal Away

Steal away, let's steal away
No reason left to stay
For me and you
Let's start anew
And darling, steal away

Steal away and chase some dreams
And hope they never find us
The dreary days
The empty nights
We'll leave them all behind us

We'll leave behind the city streets
The gloom and desolation
The rain, the cold
The growing old
God knows, it's a hard old station

We'll leave with just a memory
And make a new beginning
We have to choose
To win or lose
And it's time we started winning...

And if that hasn't done it, I have one last-ditch failsafe song that works every time. It's performed by Secret Garden; the tune is loosely based on Danny Boy; and I think of Eva as I sing:

When I am down and, oh, my soul, so weary;
When troubles come, and my heart burdened be;
Then, I am still, and wait here in the silence,
Until you come and sit a while with me.

You raise me up, so I can stand on mountains.
You raise me up, to walk on stormy seas.
I am strong when I am on your shoulders.
You raise me up...to more than I can be.

There is no life--no life without its hunger.
Each restless heart beats so imperfectly;
But when you come and I am filled with wonder
Sometimes I think I glimpse eternity...

I don't know where my world would be without music in it.

G-g-g-lobal warming

Boy, it's a good thing global warming is now an undisputed reality. Otherwise I'd be a Kensicle right about now.
Temperature: -17, a shade above zero on the old scale. Windchill is currently -27 and it'll get colder overnight.
For you Nunavutians and Saskatoonies this sort of thing is referred to as "balmy". Here in Southern Ontario, not so much. There are blizzard warnings a couple of hours north of us, snowsquall warnings all around us, but we just have this wind chill warning. For once, Environment Canada's warnings are justified: the news tells me snowplows have been taken off the road up north on account of their operators can't even see their own plow blades.
A watermain on our street broke today...the second time in about eight weeks. Along came a plow and sloshed all that water into the snow at the bottom of our driveway. I was out there almost immediately to shovel, but almost immediately was far too late: by some weird alchemy the snow had turned to something approaching the hardness of the concrete beneath it. The best I was able to do was to level out the driveway somewhat. Sigh.
So: global warming. Or more properly, given the frigidity gripping much of the second-largest country on the planet, "climate change". According to the report issued in Paris last week, it's real, we're responsible...and most alarmingly, it's unstoppable. We're past the pivot point: no matter what we do now, temperatures will continue to increase for centuries.
Nice to know they can predict climate over centuries and still can't even guess what next month's weather has in store.
Oh, I'm not disputing their conclusions. I'd still like to think that most scientists are objective and impartial enough to have arrived at the correct proofs without concern for such things as funding. But I do object to the sudden politimedihysteria, not least because problems "solved" hysterically never remain solved for long. It calls to mind a song by the Canadian group the Arrogant Worms:

Malcolm solves his problems with a chainsaw
Malcolm soves his problems with a chainsaw
Malcolm solves his problems with a chainsaw
And he never has the same problem twice.

Everybody on Parliament Hill is trying to outgreen each other. Normally I'd suggest this is a good thing, as politicians rarely take any notice of anything environmental. But concentrating on greenhouse gas emissions, when Canada--globally speaking--provides a mere two percent of same and the country immediately to our south, which leads the world in emissions, has no intention of reducing theirs, makes little to no sense. And speak to me not of Kyoto, which Harper rightly called a socialist wealth redistribution scheme. What else can it be, since the developing world can utterly disregard it without penalty? And never mind the craziness of classifying China, on the verge of becoming the world's largest economy, as a "developing" nation.
If we're going to get serious about greenhouse gas emissions, we should all get serious, from America to Zimbabwe. Any development in the Third World should be as green as the First World can help make it. And while we're at it, we should substiantially green what used to be called the Second World--the countries that used to be under the Soviet sphere of influence (and will be again, the paranoid in me insists on adding).

But I remain firmly convinced that, while greenhouse gas emissions are indeed a problem, they aren't the chief environmental problem facing the world today--no matter how many headlines I read.
You don't see much about air pollution any more, do you? Or water pollution, or deforestation, or desertification, or soil erosion, or any other sort of pollution that isn't green house gas emission. What, did we clean all that up while I wasn't looking? Didn't think so. Is any of it somehow less of a problem? Don't think so. But the Kyoto Protocol doesn't even mention any of these used-to-be-pressing concerns. Why is that, I wonder?

Prude booed nude dude: "lewd, rude"

Now that's more typical of a Sun headline.
I love reading letters to the editor. Whenever I open a paper, they're the first things I turn to...especially if a provocative article appeared in that particular paper the day before. "Well, I couldn't have said that better myself", I'll muse, or "what planet is this wackjob from?"
One of those latter moments occurred yesterday as I perused the National Post. Regrettably, in my haste to vacate work--bad day, yesterday--I forgot to port the paper along with me. And the online Post doesn't link to letters, other than today's. Still...
On the front page of the Post a couple of days back was a little blurb about Daniel Radcliffe, known the world over as Harry Potter. Seems young Daniel (he's 17) is taking steps to avoid being typecast as a bespectacled wizard the rest of his life. His first step is to appear in the West End revival of a Tony-award winning play called Equus. Some first-rate Hollywood talent has appeared in that play before him: Anthony Hopkins and Richard Burton being the best known examples.Whatever. The play calls for--gasp--nudity. More than that, actually: arousal. The picture that accompanied the Post front-page blurb was thus not of Harry Potter, but of his hairy pot. (Must...resist...urge to...pun...) Actually, the picture was tastefully done--there was just enough skin shown so the casual viewer can note he's all nekkid and bare. (I'm a casual viewer--believe you me, I have no abiding interest in Daniel Radcliffe's bod, not least because he's uncannily like an old friend of mine. Also, I'm not gay, he says as an afterthought. Now, Emma Watson, on the other hand...)

My reaction to the picture went like so:
Hey, that guy's all nekkid and bare.
On the front page.
What's a guy doing nekkid and bare on the front page of a major paper?
(catching sight of the words below) That's Daniel Radcliffe!
[aside: you can count the celebrities I'd recognize (nude or no) on the fingers of one thumb]
Good for him. You can't get much further away from Hogwarts than waving your warthog all over the London stage. Kind of brings a whole new meaning to "Platform 9 3/4".
God, the puns lie thick upon the ground.

And then I moved on to the Letters to the Editor.

Well, the furor.

One gentleman asked the Post to kindly relocate the "salacious" stuff to the Arts and Life section so as he wouldn't have to scramble to hide the paper from his kids. I sat there reading that letter over and over, trying to imagine life in his family. I kept stumbling up against mental walls and banging my head against them.
Boy, those kids must be filthy. You can't very well clean yourself fully clothed.
Wait a sec: You can't change clothes without being at least momentarily nekkid and bare! How does he do it? How does he keep his kids blissful innocence intact?

I'm not sure, of course, but I suspect this parent would have no trouble plopping his kid down in front of a television, where he'll see eight thousand murders before he's out of elementary school.
The logic escapes me. It really does. My God, people, it's just SKIN. We all have it. Clothes are just things we don to get warm. That is their sole function, the sole reason for their existence in a sane and ordered world. Of course, this world is insane and disordered, thanks in large part to Mr. Scramble-To-Hide-The-Skin-From-The-Kids and the myriad people like him.

I'll say it again: if God had meant for us to walk around naked, we would have been born that way.

Now, I am not a practising naturist: I prefer the feeling of being clothed. But it has nothing to do with self-esteem...I am not my body, after all. I can, and have, strolled around comfortably naked. On a sufficiently hot day, of course I long for the option of disrobing, don't you?

It's topics like this that make me feel like I am all alone in the universe.

Stupid...Stupid....STUPID!

Wow, did the stupid stars align this past weekend or what?
At the box office, the epic movie, um, Epic Movie beat out the competition, raking in $19.2 million dollars. This despite not being pre-screened for reviewers. Don't people know by now that studios don't bother to pre-screen movies they know are absolute dreck? I'd hate to think that nearly ten million people are so ignorant as to go to a movie they know ahead of time is going to suck.
But then, given the level of stupidity about to be revealed, I shouldn't be surprised.

I used to toboggan as a kid. Yup: overprotected, sheltered, mollycoddled ol' me spent many a winter hour sledding down a hill. Actually, the preferred activity at my school was to slide down an icy incline standing up--which strikes me as perhaps even more dangerous. And yes, I took my fair share of spills. I've broken my nose three times, and I'm pretty sure one of those times was when I reached the bottom of the hill and just kept going.
I assure you, no self-respecting kid ever came out to slide equipped with a helmet. If he had, I'm pretty sure somebody would have ripped it off his head, thrown it on to the school roof, and beat him up, just on general principles.
And yet, a couple of Vaughan city councillors have teamed up with some doctors and recommended that the government pass legislation requiring all kids to wear helmets while sledding.
Somebody's got a brain injury, and I don't think it's the kids.
How many millions of children sled, slide, or skate down hills every winter? How many tens of millions of times do they do it? And how often is somebody seriously hurt?
Now, of those serious injuries, how many occur because the kid was dumb enough to pick a hill dotted with trees, or fences, or one that bottoms out onto a road?
God, it feels weird for me to be saying this...Ken Breadner, Jr., who never so much as attempted to climb a tree, knowing full well he'd fall out and break his neck....
There are risks in life. You take one just getting out of bed. Statistically, you take a big one every time you get in a bathtub, or descend a flight of stairs. Surely you shouldn't have to wear a helmet on those occasions?
If we slide much further down this hill, we'll all be living in bubbles. Nobody will ever do anything that might result in injury. We'll become a world o' wusses, ripe for the picking. Pathetic.

Next entry: the Pickton trial. I'm not going to write about it--I'll save that for its conclusion, which should be in about a year. No, what I want to concentrate on is the media coverage, or rather, the ridiculous (but oh-so-predictable) reaction to same.

For those few of you who may not know, Robert "Willy" Pickton stands accused in the deaths of six Vancouver prostitutes. They only went to trial with six because it was felt the twenty-one other known victims--there may have been many more--made the case too complex. Pickton has pled not guilty, which means an endless parade of horror must be mounted for the edification of a jury; the manner of at least some of the deaths is unspeakably obscene, making Paul Bernardo look gentle by comparison.

Herewith, a sample letter to the editor, in this case, of the Kitchener-Waterloo Record. I've seen substantially identical letters in four other papers; I'm pretty sure by now that every paper in the country has published at least one letter like this:

I thought The Sun arrived in my mailbox January 23 -- but no, it was The Record. It must have been the sensationalist headline: "I Was Gonna Do One More -- Make It An Even Fifty" that made me think I had the other paper by mistake.
I do not need to know about the "gruesome revelations" or "shocking public details".
My being informed about the trial of an individual charged in connection with multiple slayings over 4,000 kilometres away is of little importance. So I refused to read that article and will continue to avoid any other sensationalist articles thrust at me by The Record.
Sheila Brown
Waterloo

I'll give Sheila some credit: her letter is milder in tone that most. Moreover, she notes she "refused to read" that article (making me wonder how she knew it contained "gruesome revelations" and "shocking public details", but anyway...)
I'd like to correct Sheila on one minor point before I head on to the meat of her letter: the Toronto Sun would never have printed that headline. Too much ink.
Sheila asserts that her "being informed about [the Pickton trial] is of little importance."
To her.
That's perfectly okay: it's up to each of us to determine what's important. Me, I'm not so sure I need to know about every last spatter of gore, either.
But it happened. All of it. There appears to still be some doubt in at least one person (Pickton) 's mind who did it, but it all happened. If a tree doesn't fall to chronicle a murder, does that somehow make it didn't happen? I don't think so.
Most of the letter writers in some way question the need for coverage of such a horrible event. Sheila, above, bases her objection on the distance of the event from her home, an attitude I find ridiculously provincial (and, might I add, very common in this city which thinks it's a village). You know, next year we might uncover a serial killer in Waterloo Region. If that were to (heaven forbid) happen, would we have exclusive rights to the story? I don't think so.

Does someone's assertion that he killed 49 women qualify as news? I hope so! How many would he have to kill before it could make the papers, as far as these letter-writers are concerned? A hundred? A thousand? Hell, I believe a confession to one murder is news, especially if the confessor then turns around and pleads not guilty. Where do these people get off, telling the newspaper what they can and can not print?

The simple solution to news you don't want to read: don't read it. I'm an avid reader of the Toronto Sun, the tabloid Sheila impugns in the above letter. Rarely, however, will you catch me reading the reportage, which is often sloppy and yes, sensationalistic. I simply leaf past all that in search of the editorials, the entertainment, and the sports sections, all of which are second to none. Never would I for one second suggest the Sun shouldn't print lurid headlines. They appear to sell papers, after all.

Freedom of the press means the freedom to print things you might not like.
Freedom of movement means--or it ought to--the freedom to rocket down a hill...and maybe, just maybe, to hurt yourself.
Freedom of assembly means the right to assemble at a cineplex and watch Epic Movie. Though I can't imagine why you'd want to.

Tales from aisle 10 (II)

The behaviour of grocery shoppers never ceases to amaze me. Not a day goes by when I don't wonder whether I should switch careers, not out of any great hatred for my job (I enjoy it, even with its frustrations) but because Mental Sarcastic Bastard's getting harder and harder to keep in check. Bilious thoughts bubble up out of the muck on a daily basis:
My God, the things people will do for other people's tap water. I am STILL having trouble even comprehending the madness that descends upon an entire city whenever bottled water goes on sale. Even granting that our city's tap water is barely fit for human consumption (it's the only water I've ever tasted that makes me thirstier the more I drink!), there are so many more cost-effective options. Tap water plus any sort of filter plus reusable plastic jug: roughly one-hundredth the cost, per liter, of even the cheapest bottled water. For those, like me, who wish Brita containers came in reasonable sizes, there are those 19.5-litre bottles, infinitely reusable, that cost between 51 cents each (that's the plan I'm on) and $6.99 (if you buy them at the grocery store). Even adding in the cost of the cooler, considering it should last many years, you're saving a huge amount of money. Of course, if you live most anywhere else urban, you can simply turn on your tap: your rate should be something on the order of $1.82 per thousand litres, plus nominal service charges.
That's all most bottled water is, by the way: other people's tap water. But hey, it's your money.

I had a woman today looking for frozen spinach. Actually, I get quite a few people like her who, upon being led to the frozen spinach, look at me, shake their heads, and say "no, I mean boxes."
Further inquiry usually leads to the revelation (for the customer) that the bags we have now and the boxes we stopped carrying more than three years ago are exactly the same size: 250 grams. I say usually because several customers will swear up and down they bought much larger boxes of spinach here just last week. You're not supposed to contradict the customer, ever, so my standard response to but I just got it here last week! is "If you did, ma'am, it was a mispick: something shipped to us in error that we're not able to get again. Sorry about that."
Today's customer looked at me like I'd lost my mind when I told her, regretfully, that the box of spinach she sought was long gone. "But we have these bags," I started to say, getting the "buh" out before she snapped "in THIS store, you mean."
MSB almost made it past the censor-man. Of course in this store. This is the store you're in, this is the store I'm in, this would be the only store I'm qualified to speak about.
Did I ever mention just how much I adore being snapped at?
"These bags are tiny!" she said in an accusatory tone of voice, as if I had known she was coming 'round the corner, shrunk them just in time, and was even now gloating over my accomplishment.
"Actually, ma'am, I think you might find they're exactly the same weight as the boxes you normally buy elsewhere. They're 250 grams." Watch it, Ken, that came perilously close to a contradiction.
"What's that in ounces?" she asked, entirely unmollified, as if the whole metric system has tormented her for the thirty years it's been in effect. Probably has. God, three pet peeves in one customer, this had to be some kind of record.
"Eight ounces. One cup." For about the millionth time I found myself wishing I could say what I really was thinking: how the hell should I know? What century are you living in, anyway? Are you going to ask me the length of this aisle in cubits, next?

Last Friday night, someone asked me for the Aunt Jemima waffles on sale for $1.00. "Sorry, sir, they were on sale last week." Whereupon he plucked a flyer out of his pocket and whipped it in front of my face. "Right...THERE!" he almost yelled.
"May I see that flyer, sir?" I asked. He gave it to me. While pretending to study the waffles which were indeed pictured, I plucked a pen out of my pocket, turned the flyer over, circled the line that said--essentially--"These Low Prices Were in Effect LAST WEEK!" and, using the exact same motion he had so suddenly employed (okay, I didn't get quite so close to his face), said "no, right...THERE!"
I think he got the point. He did look a little sheepish.

I rarely let my inner demon out at all. Most customers have no idea the thoughts swirling just aft of my forehead--sometimes I'm amazed I can keep a smile on my face and in my voice while those thoughts swirl. Oh, look, another illiterate....ma'am, if that milk was any closer you'd be lactating...really, now, does every mom, Nic and Sherri have to let their kids run hogwild in here?....what did you mean by leaving that cart so far from the corral? Are you rude, or just lazy?...

Then there's the wee-wee matter of the bathroom. Our public loo's located just past the tills on the way out the front door. The staff bathroom, contrary to extremely popular customer opinion, is NOT in the back room, it's upstairs...about as far from the back room as you can get and still be in the same building. I can certainly understand the odd customer wandering into our back room looking for the lavatory, because (a) it's invisible until you're past a cashier and (b) quite a few stores do have public bathrooms off their back storage areas. But you get people marching back there as if they're reporting for work, eyes scanning everywhere for a bathroom that simply must exist (after all, there's no sign!), then actually arguing with us when we tell them it's at the front of the store.
"Aww, c'mon. Let me use yours, then."
" 'Ours' is actully even further away from here, and behind a locked door."
"No, it isn't. I know you've got one back here. It's THE LAW."
???????
You, sir, are full of shit. Not just literally, either.

Every day brings its share of cuckoos: the woman who insists her groceries are all keyed in manually, convinced the scanner emits radiation or something (look around, lady--notice all those other customers getting their groceries scanned? Look pretty healthy, don't they?). I put a sign up informing people that the goat's anus tartare they're looking for is on the endcap at the front of this aisle, right next to the squirrel testicles ( I'll even put in helpful arrows, in case 'front' isn't clear enough) and scores of people will move the sign, peer at the empty shelf behind it and demand to know where the goat's anus tartare is. The people, about ten out of every ten, who won't take the top copy of a pile of newspapers. The related people who insist on getting milk right from the back of the shelf, even when it's the same date. Sometimes I just shake my head.

Sometimes it doesn't stop shaking.

To Myself (I)

Everybody's busy lately! You'd think it was Christmas or something...one friend hasn't blogged in six weeks, another--who tends to be a thrice-a-week girl--has gone a near-unprecedented six days. I'm one to talk--five days slithered by while I wasn't looking, or, rather, while I was looking everywhere but at this computer. Various blog topics suggested themselves. The Pickton trial? Nah--too depressing. The one-year anniversary of Conservative government in Canada? Blah. People either don't care or they care entirely too much. Work? It's just work--boring if you don't work where I do, and, for that matter, twice as boring if you do. I think it's fair to say I've got a mild case of writer's block.
Enter Marcus Aurelius.
If you haven't read his Meditations (actually titled "To Himself"), do yourself a favour and get hold of them. They are available online in several translations, not all of them eminently readable to even a moderately educated person of today. (The Casuabon's not bad; the Long is tortuous.) Back in my monied days, I was briefly a Folio Society member and the Staniforth Meditations was probably the only book I don't regret buying from them. It repays repeat readings. Aurelius was, as far as I am concerned, obsessed with death and dying--the topic rarely leaves his thoughts for long--but when he's not discoursing on dissolution he comes up with many remarkable insights and prescriptions for right living. Opening three pages at random:

What is no good for the hive is no good for the bee. (VI: 54)

Vex not thy spirit at the course of things; they heed not thy vexation. (VII: 38)

Waste no more time arguing what a good man should be. Be one. (X: 16)

And the Ex-Lax:

If anyone can show me, and prove to me, that I am wrong in thought or deed, I will gladly change. I seek the truth, which never yet hurt anybody. It is only persistence in self-delusion and ignorance which does harm.

Man, I'm wrong a lot. Just ask anyone. From the trivially wrong (I predicted a Ducks-Predators Stanley Cup final this year, which would necessitate realignment of the league sometime between now and June) to the deeply, profoundly wrong (I repeatedly predicted the price of oil to continue on up into the stratosphere, but it's fallen thirty percent seemingly just to spite me), I routinely fudge things despite my best efforts and even the odd bit of cheatery. (" 'Do you Cheetah, my son?' 'Yes, I Cheetah all the time.' ") From consulting the blogs of other, deeper minds to holding off on predictions until they're almost realities, I've been known to indulge in a little sleight-of-word every now and again.
But I still get it wrong. Almost as often as I get it right.

It's my prejudice, of course, that steers me wrong most of the time. Like everyone, I'm biased; unlike many, I wear (most of) my biases proudly.
I'm biased against the stupid: blatantly smartist, I am. My closest friend, Jason Van Dyke, once observed "it's not elitist if you're part of the elite", a sentiment I've echoed more than once since.
So when kids die in traffic "accidents" (they persist in using the term, even though the vast majority aren't accidents at all), and it turns out they were (a) drinking and/or (b) not wearing seatbelts, I go all cold inside. I look at the grieving parents and wish I could feel some shred of sympathy for their stupid offspring. And I wince when I hear the word "tragic", so often paired with the word "accident". There's nothing tragic about a drunk driver killing his passengers: not if they knew he was drunk, anyway, and who doesn't? There is something very tragic when that same drunk driver runs over an innocent bystander, of course; someone "in the wrong place at the wrong time"--another phrase I hate. The innocent are never in the wrong place, much less at the wrong time. It's the criminal who is wrong, always, by definition, full stop.
Yes, I'm biased against the lawless, too. In fact, I'm a bastion of tolerance for idiots by comparison. It comes, I think, from lionizing my father the peace officer for my whole life: cop good, bad guy...bad.
But there are rogue cops.
And there are quite a few people--probably all of us, including the smartest--who do stupid things without realizing it, on occasion. Like me, for instance.
I was very nearly fired from one job for an extremely offensive comment I made to a female co-worker. I meant absolutely no offense when I said it, but after her slack-jawed outraged reaction I very quickly figured out that what I meant and what I said were two entirely different things. Since then--it only took one mis-step--I've been very careful with my tongue around absolutely everyone of the female gender. But the point is, I should have been careful that first time, and I wasn't.

My first dance with a woman who became, briefly, my fiancee, the song was Meat Loaf's "Two Out Of Three Ain't Bad". You know the one: I want you, I need you, but there ain't no way I'm ever gonna love you. Prophetic man, that Mr. Loaf. And yet I went out and bought her a ring, hoping to shut up the voice in my head telling me don't go out and buy her a ring.

Well I've gone and done it, so what are you gonna say now?

You're a horse's ass, is what I'm gonna say, and I'm gonna keep saying it until you agree with me.

Took about six months. Six months of stubborn stupidity.

Next girlfriend. Suffered from chronic depression, which was, of course, all her fault. I couldn't cope with that, it being, of course, All About Me. So I treated her like utter dirt, then wondered why she wouldn't take me back once I did come to my senses. The truth--'cause she's smart, and you're stupid'--never crossed my mind until much later.

And that's just one breed of idiocy I've been prone to. Fact is I have no right to hate the stupid, not when I myself am one of their number.

Criminals? I've often said that they're made, not born, and decried excuses like poverty and familial dysfunction. But I shouldn't be so quick to deny the truth, not when so many criminals are poor and do come from broken homes. You pair such social factors with today's media, which perversely glorifies criminality at every turn (check out YouTube for today's random assault!) and you can (or should) forgive these people: they know not what they do. Or don't care, at least, which amounts to the same.

Sometimes my biases are almost criminal in themselves.

How barbarous, to deny men the privilege of pursuing what they imagine to be their proper concerns and interests! Yet, in a sense, this is just what you are doing when you allow your indignation to rise at their wrongdoing; for after all, they are only following their own apparent concerns and interests. You say they are mistaken? Why then, tell them so, and explain it to them, instead of being indignant.

Marcus Aurelius, Meditations, VI: 28

Anticipation

Off to bed Wednesday night at the usual time: 8:45 p.m. I leafed through Along I-75 for fifteen or twenty minutes: I'm starting to have portions of this book memorized. I can't remember who first suggested we should buy the thing, but I'd like to shout out a thank you to him or her, along with the many people who have echoed the sentiment...and we haven't even made the trip yet. If there is even the slightest possibility of your ever driving to Florida from Ontario or the Midwestern U.S., you owe it to yourself to get this book first. It details everything: all the exits, all the gas, food and lodging available at each; the common radar traps; speed limits; best places to stay and to eat; location of hospitals, vet clinics, and mechanics in case you, your pet, or your car becomes ill en route; and I've barely scratched the asphalt. Most importantly, from this non-driving navigator's point of view, the book tells you exactly when you should move into another lane because the one you're in is gonna piss right off on you. I'd have to say that's my wife's biggest pet peeve with my navigational ski--"Turn here!"...or worse, "uh, we should have turned back there."

In researching this trip--which, you'll glean, I can't wait for--we have determined several things. One, once we get out of Kentucky we're screwed as far as real coffee is concerned. Two, the Cracker Barrel looks as if it might make up for the lack of Tim Horton's all by itself. I found no less than fifteen things on their menu that look succulent. (Why aren't these folks in Canada, damnit?)
Everybody, it seems, has made this trip and has advice for us. About the only thing Dave Hunter missed in his Along I-75 book (although it's certainly implied) is that Mrs. Eva "Leadfoot" Breadner should watch it: them thar forests is full of Smokey Bears with a hankerin' for Canadian speedsters. Unlike our own country, where you can drive for hours on a 400-series highway and forget there ever was such a thing as police.

There's a place in every state we want to stop at, little side trips to break the freeway monotony. Our intention is to take our time: the drive down is very much going to be part of the vacation. We'll arise early each day, have a lovely Cracker Barrel breakfast (okay, maybe we'll try other places too, but, uh, yum) and put in seven or eight hours of driving, finishing up no later than four in the afternoon so we can find and check in to a motel, have a delicious Cracker Barrel dinner (okay, okay, yeah, there are other good places to eat too) and hit the sack early.
The big time shopping that is required of every Canadian when across the border will occur once we arrive Destin: there's also a few places we need to stop at on the way back up.

Gotta say I'm looking forward to the gas prices: as of this writing, the lowest price along our route is US$ 1.73/gallon. At today's exchange rate, that works out to 50.9 cents/litre in Canadian dollars. (The highest price converts to 68.7 cents/litre.) And again unlike in Canada, fuel prices don't go up just because today's payday. The price of gas down at Uncle Sam's has been much less volatile. It goes up, it goes down, but it doesn't fluctuate wildly by fifty cents a gallon overnight, as is perfectly routine here.

(Aside: I wonder why that is. Probably because in Canada, we simply bitch about things like that--it's expected that governments and corporations will screw us. In America there's be an armed uprising. Then again, Enron and Worldcom are American...)

Anyway, I'll quit rambling now...if there's anything more boring than listening to somebody's "how I spent my vacation" story, it's listening to somebody's "how I'm going to spend my vacation" story...

Winter Rambles, Set To Music...

They closed all the schools in Waterloo Region today.
Including the two universities.
I'm not sure why.
Of course, this first taste of winter was hyped to the high heavens last night, complete with 'Snowfall Warning'...that still cracks me up. 'Warning! Snow will fall! Danger, Will Robinson!"
When I awoke shortly after five this morning, I discovered all the snow they had forecast had materialized in the form of freezing rain. But I'm making that sound a lot worse than it really was. Ice pellets and very fine-grained snow was mixed in, giving a sugary, confectionery texture to everything. The roads were slick, but not skating-rink slick.
Sargeant Cam Woolley was on 680 News this morning cautioning drivers. Sgt. Cam is the same guy who's on the radio every holiday weekend, detailing highway hijinks that boggle the brain. Like the woman driving along the road, knitting. "Pull over!" says the cop, several times, with no effect. Finally she unrolls her window and shouts, "No! Afghan!"
Okay, I made that up. Actually, it's an ancient joke. But seriously, the good sargeant was cautioning everyone this morning and one of the things he said really got my attention. "You know," he said, "one of the things we police officers hear most often at the scene of a winter crash is 'but officer, I was only doing the speed limit.' "
Probably not the smartest thing to say to a cop on a day like this. Because, as Woolley noted, "that might be two or three times" the speed you should be travelling. And, of course, you can be charged: driving too fast for the conditions.
All that aside, the roads weren't that bad this morning. A light freezing drizzle persisted, off and on, all day. I could maybe see the country schools being closed, but in the city? Hey, the city busses were running. Seems odd that the school busses wouldn't be.
----------------------------
One of my Christmas presents was an MP3 player. Just a little one, only one gigabyte--and if you ever told previous incarnations of Ken Breadner that one day, 1 GB would be considered a picayune amount of memory, every last one of them would have been--a gig?--agog. "A gag!" they'd say, aghast.
I never imagined myself getting one of these things, much less using one. And like the fabled idiot that can't get his VCR to stop flashing 12:00, I haven't quite figured out all the controls. The manual requires a microscope to read, and is riddled with Engrish to boot.
But hey, this is cool. I know these earphones are going to start snapping, crackling, and eventually go pop! because that's what earphones do around me...the same way pens blow up or run dry, the same way objects various and sundry mysteriously teleport themselves directly into my path. But for now...cool.
I bet I'm the only person for hundreds of klicks around that's loaded their MP3 player with Andreas Vollenwieder and Adiemus, though.
Both these musical finds come courtesy of my friend Jason. They're both, very loosely, "New Age" music, although Adiemus has a lot of classical underpinings and Vollenwieder has more Eastern influences. I find both artists paradoxically soothing and invigorating--the kind of thing I'd happily fall asleep--or wake up--to.
As the non-storm doesn't rage all around the house, I think I'll just let the tide of music carry me away.
'Bye, now.

Nothing happening around here

Just got back from a library trip.
A ritual precedes every library trip I make these days, a pointless ritual of research. The night before, I scour Internet lists for the 'best of' whatever genre I'm in the mood for, with the Waterloo Public Library catalogue open in another window so I can determine every so often that no, they don't stock that book either. Or maybe they do, but there are umpty-dozen holds on it and it won't be in until long after I'm dust. Every so often I discover, miracle of miracles, an interesting-looking book which the catalogue informs me is actually ON THE SHELVES. Then, almost without fail, I'll make my way to the library and find a dozen things that weren't on my list in the first place.
Such was the case today. Only one Neil Gaiman on offer, and I just read it a couple of months ago. A couple of books from this edition of The List that, on closer inspection, didn't appeal as much as I thought they might.
WPL has a "FastRead" 4-day loan system for recent hot arrivals, and every so often I'll kid myself into thinking I can finish off six or seven hundred pages in that span of time. Years ago, I wouldn't even blink at a deadline like that--I managed two or three books that size a week--but then, I didn't have a wife, kids (and just try and tell me our two dogs aren't kids) or any responsibilities. My life consisted of working, sleeping, and reading.
(And no, I don't miss those days one bit. Not when loneliness and despair came standard with all that free time.)
So today, I'm looking at that FastRead section again, noting the latest Stephen King novel, Lisey's Story, on there and thinking hey, four days is a long time. Especially when two of them are weekend days. I can do it.
Add to cart.
On the off chance Lisey's story turns out to be on a par with From A Buick 8, which made me want to buick myself, I needed at least one backup book. I found a Greg Benford book of short stories that looked very promising, and threw it in. Eva was busily gathering together her list for the next three weeks, a considerably smaller pile than usual, only seven or eight books. (I've seen her get twenty: carrying that kind of load out of the library is an exercise in engineering.) Eva tends to divide her reading time lately between certain kinds of romance, and children's series like Pendragon and Artemis Fowl. The kind of job she has, her brain needs to be dialled way down or she'll explode; and that was how I found myself in the children's library for only the second time since I was a child myself.
While I'm down here....
I scooted right over to the K's, looking for Korman, Gordon. His Macdonald Hall series is a blast from my past. I didn't know the first time I read through those things that their author was scarcely older than I was...he wrote This Can't Be Happening At Macdonald Hall! when he was all of twelve. And there staring out at me was a book I consider to be a masterpiece of children's literature, entitled Don't Care High. It helps that I went to a high school that might have been its twin.
Quick, get that in the basket before some little snot sees it.
La-di-da-di-da...hurry up, love, it's taking you longer to find How To Eat Fried Worms than it will for you to read it. In fact, excuse me, I'll go fry up some worms right n--
Tom's Midnight Garden!
That's it!
For years I've been trying to remember the name of a book I read way the hell back in grade four or so. All I could remember was a kid discovering a huge garden behind his aunt's place that seemed to be at least partly imaginary. That and I'd loved that story to pieces, once. I'd thought it might be called "Secret Garden" or something like that, but my searches always led nowhere. Now here was that book, right in front of me.
Three CDs later, we're checked out and home, and I find within pages that I'm really not in the mood for Lisey's Story. The first twenty pages are mind-numbingly depressing. Knowing me, I'll pick it up again anyway, probably tonight. That's an odd little foible of mine. The Leafs might play so badly that I'll snap the TV off in disgust, but wait five minutes and it'll be on again. But I doubt I'll get anywhere close to finishing Lisey's Story in four days...no, three, now.

What if God was...all of us?

I promised an entry on the 'seven deadly sins' early in the new year and now find myself asking, 'is March still considered early in the new year'? For life has taken a turn for the harried lately, sleep is hard to come by, and the topic, now that I get a look at it from this side of a blank screen, is daunting, to say the least.
For before I even begin to express my thoughts on those seven deadlies, I must first attempt some definition of 'sin'. And before I can do that, since the concept of sin is so intertwined with the concept of 'god', it seems I must attempt to define 'god'--something I find difficult to do using mere words.
Oh, I can tell you what god is not, at least not to me. God is not some heavenly Father sitting on a cloud someplace, listening to an endless litany of prayers and saying 'yes' to some, 'no' to others, and 'maybe, but not yet' to still others. In short, god is most definitely not a celestial Magic 8-ball. To illustrate why, imagine two opposing basketball teams about to take the court, each praying for a victory. Both teams are convinced 'God' is listening, and both teams fervently believe 'God' is on their side. Yet only one team will emerge victorious. Is that a function of faith? How can it be, if both sides believe equally?
If you find the above illustration silly, change the basketball teams into armies. You might still find the whole thing rather a joke, but rest assured a great many real-life armies do not. There exists an army of born-again Christians who assume they are God's Chosen; there exists an army of Muslims who have a different name for God, but are absolutely convinced they are on a divine mission.
The god I believe in, as I have alluded time and time again in this blog over the years, does not judge anyone, ever. There are two reasons for this. One, he/she/it (pick your pronoun: it really makes no difference) loves unconditionally, which makes the entire idea of 'judgment' a contradiction in terms. More importantly, though, there is nothing to judge.

There is nothing to judge. How can there be? For a judgment to be necessary, a crime must have occurred. Damage must have been done, somehow. And how, pray tell (pun intended) would one go about damaging something as big, as all-encompassing, as god? We damage each other, of course, and commit crimes large and small, but we never do it without what we think of as a damned good reason. We humans never get out of bed in the morning and say to ourselves, 'I'm going to be as evil as possible today'. No, whatever 'evil' we do is usually motivated by misguided self-interest. It feels good, or it gets me something I want, and so on.
Okay, I hear somebody saying, but God sees our crimes against others, and punishes us for them.
Really? Using what standard? Which Holy Scripture? The Koran commands believers to murder unbelievers. So is murder okay if a devout Muslim commits it?
It's time we humans face facts. We're in control here. Us. Not some fairytale Our-Father-Who-Art-In-Heaven. We're all making it up as we go along. This is a scary thought for many, if not most, people on this planet. They want desperately to know what to think, what to believe, what to have faith in. Couple that with a crushing sense of inferiority felt by most of us...an almost total inability to think for ourselves, believe in ourselves, and have faith in each other, and it becomes easy to understand why the world is in the state it's in.
So does that mean there is no god? Yes...and no. There is no god as many of us have imagined 'Him'. That God is far too limited in scope, far too petty, far too...human.
I believe, though, that there is a god, a god that doesn't give two shits whether you believe in god or not. You could use other words instead, with no loss of meaning. Nature. The Universe. Love. Joy. Freedom.
You.
That's right: thou art God. While you're trying to wrap your head around that, take great pains not to single yourself out, because the girl down the street from you is also God, and so is that mother-in-law you can't stand. That 'stranger on the bus' is God. So's your lover, your boss, your worst enemy.
We all of us--every last one--are God-bits. We have within us the ability to create, which is the defining characteristic of a creator. Do we not create our experience here on Earth, individually and collectively? Can we not create matter--by which I mean, does not what we create matter? We're all making it up as we go along.
We have the ability to love unconditionally, though many of us have forgotten just how that's done. There's nothing we can't do if we put our minds, hearts, and spirits into it.

Umm, Ken, this is all very esoteric and all that, but we can hurt each other. If we're all this big God-thing, how is that possible?
It isn't.
We can choose to experience hurt, but it is not necessary. It is possible--easy, with practice--to choose to be happy in the face of what some would consider monstrous. We're all making it up as we go along.

MORE TO BE MADE UP SOON....

How Harper Still Might Get His Majority

If you believe the media reports, not to mention the polls, the Harper experiment will come to an end shortly with the rightful restoration of Canada's 'Natural Governing Party' under the aegis of Stephane Dion.
Don't be so sure.
Oh, count on an election. In fact, I'm somewhat surprised the writ hasn't dropped yet, as it's a favourite political ploy of Prime Ministers of all stripes to call elections when the opposition is least ready for them. And Dion, being a new leader of a still fractious party, is a long way from ready to fight a campaign.
If Harper hasn't contrived to dissolve Parliament yet, he must have a good reason: he's a methodical cuss, is Stephen Harper, and he never does anything without at least three good (to him) reasons. His fans call this prudent and cautious governance. Others call it Machiavellian. Whatever you call it, it's worked for him: written off at every turn, he's rode it all the way to 24 Sussex. And he's led an unconventionally active minority government. Harper has, arguably, done more in a year than his predecessors--Chretien, who had no priorities beyond staying in power; and Martin, who exuded priorities with every breath--did in twelve.

But there's still unfinished business. Varying amounts of progress have been made on four of the five key points Harper laid out: he has cut the GST as promised and initiated "beer and popcorn" payments to parents for each child six and under. The long-promised Accountability Act is proving something of a challenge, as could perhaps have been predicted: power tends to bring with it a certain belief that governments are held accountable solely by means of a ballot box. And Harper has passed some "tough on crime" legislation, though not nearly as much as he'd like to. He's constrained by three opposition parties who believe to varying degrees that if you just show enough compassion, all criminal behaviour will magically disappear.
The fifth priority is (of course) health care in the guise of wait times, and it's been quietly dropped like the hot potato it is. It seems Harper has determined that Canadians are not ready for a rational discussion on our sacrosanct health care system. I can't blame him here, much as I'd like to, because he's right.
How else to explain it? Privatization--the most foul word in the Canadian health care lexicon--has been with us for many years, and a great many Canadians will look right at it and claim it doesn't exist. Nothing is made of the fact injured hockey players can get an MRI before the next face-off while your ailing mother has to wait months for the same procedure. And as for that Supreme Court decision -- "prohibiting health insurance that would permit ordinary Canadians to access health care, in circumstances where the government is failing to deliver health care in a reasonable manner, thereby increasing the risk of complications and death, interferes with life and security of the person" -- uh, if we ignore that, will it unhappen?
I've been wrong a lot in the writing of this blog. But the "wrongest" I've ever been might be when I predicted a slew of cases in the wake of that decision, bringing that second tier of health care out into the open. Bzzzt. Canadians, it seems, would rather watch loved ones suffer and die in the name of equality. Whodathunkit?
Given that undeniable irrationality, is it any wonder governments fear to tread in this particular realm?

So: health care's been replaced by the "fiscal imbalance", and Harper's hard at work trying to figure out how best to placate thirteen premiers, each with their own agendas, without bankrupting the treasury. Good luck with that one, sir: you're gonna need it.

Then there are the two other background issues that have have sprung or will spring: Afghanistan and the environment.

Afghanistan: Stephen Harper has shown great pride in our armed forces: more pride than any PM in generations. Boys and their guns, sniff the liberal elites on the Toronto-Ottawa axis of weevils. Bring them home...yesterday. Funny how nobody ever seems to ask the opinion of the only people whose opinions matter: our soldiers and their families. They know the good they're doing. And you don't hear of Canadian soldiers up and deserting the mission the way several Americans have up and deserted Iraq.

The environment: This has been Harper's biggest bungle so far, and it may be his undoing. He forgot one of the laws of Canadian politics, which is when the economy's doing well, people actually start pretending to care about the environment. (When the economy's down the crapper, of course, nobody even notices we have an environment. Nice set of values.)

I don't think Harper, even now, sees greenhouse gas emissions as a serious problem. The funny thing is, neither do most Canadians: hey, if it means I don't have to shovel my driveway and my heating bills go down, that's a problem how? Just look at the media coverage of this balmy "winter". I haven't seen one negative article yet. Everybody's gushing: I can walk around in a spring jacket! The construction business is going great guns at a time they're usually shut down! The price of oil's down dramatically! And so on and so forth.
But Canadians are two-faced on this issue. They won't make meaningful sacrifice for the sake of the environment, but they'll crucify any government who doesn't paint itself green.
You could hear Harper through Rona Ambrose, pleading into the wind. Uh...smog? Air pollution? Water pollution? C'mon, people, work with me here...
And the chant went up: Green House Gasses! Green House Gasses! Green House Gasses!

Now we have a Liberal leader who's named his dog Kyoto. He was Minister of the Environment at a time when our greenhouse gas emissions were steadily climbing, outpacing even those of the United States, yet he's somehow escaped all culpability for it and dares to fight on a green platform. What's more, most people agree it's his strongest selling point. Canadian politics: it just ain't rational.

Despite some mistakes, though, all is not lost for (or on) Harper. Witness Wajid Khan.
Khan, then a Liberal, took on a role as 'special adviser' to Harper on the Middle East and Afghanistan. Liberals were very uncomfortable with this development, which goes against all convention: a Liberal advising a Tory PM? The more Khan worked with Harper, the more he grew to admire and respect him, until...presto! 'cross the floor he went, giving Harper one more MP and thus an added measure of stability. The PM only needs Layton's support now to ensure his government doesn't fall.
If you're not something of a political junkie like me, you probably find this boring as hell. Sorry 'bout that: I'm amazed at Harper's audacity.

I believe very strongly that Canadians, by and large, don't care who's in power. If there's a good idea, they want it voiced and acted upon, no matter where it comes from. They want to see and end to, or at least a marked reduction of, the antagonistic bickering that epitomizes politics in this country. They want to see parties working together to solve problems.
Harper's very much in tune with that. He has to be: he's beset by enemies all around. So he took on Emerson, a Liberal, and Emerson got more done on the softwood lumber file than has been achieved since Confederation. He took on Wajid Khan, a Liberal, and created a Tory who looks as though he'll continue to be an asset. Don't think he's done poaching people...or ideas.

Paul Wells says in this week's issue of Macleans that he expects Harper to just up and steal Dion's environmental platform in toto, depriving the Liberal leader of his whole raison d'etre. I'm not sure I agree. Canadians might...might...see that as blatant theft. Harper would have to handle it with kid gloves, and a mea culpa would help: look, we screwed up on the environment. I've been looking with fresh eyes at the ideas of Stephane Dion over there and...you know...they just might work. Or something to that effect.

But what if he turned around and took Jack Layton's environmental platform instead? It's even greener than Dion's.

The Prime Minister has a careful balancing act to maintain. He has a vested interest in a strong NDP, all the better to split the left-wing vote: his old Alliance was the victim of vote-splitting on numerous occasions and he hasn't forgotten its harsh lesson. So he'll work with Layton as much as possible...and...just maybe...appropriate a few ideas. With credit where it's due, of course. These are really strong, bold, refreshing thoughts from Mr. Layton. They would make Canada a real environmental power.

I can just see it. Layton could sputter all he wants: he'd look like a fool. Harper could then out-environment the former Minister of the Environment. He'd be shown to be a non-partisan leader, capable of acting on ideas from all over the political spectrum. A ticket to a majority? Maybe.

Hang on, folks, we're in for a fun year.

Relapse and Prolapse

For the first week, our little Georgia was the epitome of good girl, sleeping (mostly) the night through and catching on remarkably quickly to the intricacies of duty-doing.
Not so this week.
Our dog can bark five times in one second and rattle off 218 barks seemingly without taking a breath. I know this: I counted. From my snug bed, and her downstairs in her crate, I counted.
After a couple of hours of unrelenting din and sleep nowhere on the horizon, my wife climbed out of bed, went down and retreived the puppy and fell asleep in the recliner, Georgia cradled in her arms.
I told her not to. I told her it was the worst thing she could possibly do, that Georgia would very quickly expect this sort of thing and bark until she got it. Besides, we haven't been married near long enough to be sleeping in separate beds, on separate stories of the house. But she needed her sleep more than I did--she's just recovered from a nasty bout of pneumonia--and that practical imperative overruled.
I hope she slept better than I did, afterwards. It may seem mushy and unmanly to admit I can't sleep very well without Eva at my side, but I don't care. It's the truth.
The next night we resolved to ignore any barking, no matter how frenzied, with the exception of set "Daddy-gets-out-of-bed-and-lets-Georgia-outside" times (maximum two).
But puppy barks are much like the pitiful miaows of kittens, the screaming blats of babies, and the ringing of telephones: the sound is designed to be un-ignorable. And so I tried the pennies-in-the-pop can trick, to no avail. I tried imitating Mother Dog and growling, to no avail. Finally I went back upstairs and tried to sleep. To no avail.
Eva closed our bedroom door and the noise receded to television level. Since Eva uses the TV for a sleep aid, this is a level of noise I've grown to tolerate, even expect. The night half shot, I finally got some decent dozage in.
It was Auntie Suzie who suggested yesterday that we keep her crated next to us in the bedroom and punish her by removing her to the living room if she whimpered and moaned and barked overmuch. And last night, she slept. And so did I, although truth be told, not well. It will take at least a couple of days before I will stop hearing phantom barks and expecting to have to get out of bed at any minute.
On another note, Georgia passed her vet exam yesterday with flying colours...until we got to the very southern end of Georgia, right at the Florida border. Turns out our wee girl has Rectal Prolapse...meaning part of her bum's sticking out. The vet was concerned, though not alarmed, and said this bears watching. If it gets really bad--and nobody's saying it will, but it could--there's no sure cure, surgery could worsen it, and she'd likely have to be put down.

Hope not. Sleepless nights aside, she's already wormed her way into our hearts.