In Which We Play A Familiar Tuna...

Eva loves me, this I know, for she often tells me so. Though she occasionally sputters an 'I-love-you' through gales of breathless laughter, leaving me momentarily unsure whether she really means it...or means it all the more. Such an occasion chanced tonight, as I related a two week old story I had never thought to tell her when it was current. Perhaps you'll understand why as I tell you.

So, as I'm sure I've made clear, we're undergoing these renovations at work. This episode of "I Love You, Hahahahaha" takes place right on the cusp of the big change. My old dairy department, now relegated to the milky haze of memory, was still up and running. The deli wall had just been erected way the hell and gone at the other end of the store. I'm sure in a month or two, I will have adjusted to the expanded size of our beloved Chop, but right now it still seems huge, and two weeks ago it was positively cavernous.

I was halfway down my dairy aisle, merrily stripping shelves. Well, not so merrily. I had what seemed like ten hours of work to do in four hours. The sheer enormity of the task ahead of me occupied my whole mind, with no space left over; in fact, I'm pretty sure parts of the problem were venting out my ears.

My mood was abruptly interrupted by the loudest BANG I have ever heard outside of movie theaters or downtown Detroit. This was very quickly followed by a commotion of clattering fit to wake the dead and send them off to school without so much as getting dressed. "Oh, that did not sound good AT ALL", I said to myself, visions of crushed customers cavorting through my cranium. I willed my feet to move and fairly shot down the dairy aisle, taking the corner on two wheels and still accelerating across the back of the store towards the deli wall, which is about where I thought the bodies would be. Can we interest you in some people pâté? Pulled long pork on a panini? Crazy thoughts cascaded through my brain like so many falling shelves. I ran and ran, my eyes fixed firmly on that deli wall, which was still standing as far as I could see. But what's around the corner down there, hmmm? Do we really want to know?

Then, with a SMASH I more felt than heard, I suddenly found myself down on the ground, looking back the way I had come, surrounded by skittering rolling somethings. Head-In-Clouds Syndrome had struck again.

Head-In-Clouds Syndrome, otherwise known as an acute inflammation of the Hey, Watch Where The Fuck You're Going! gland, is an affliction that has plagued me since early childhood. Before, for all I know. It's entirely possible I tumbled face first out of the womb. It strikes without warning--actually, that's kind of the point--and without mercy, subjecting me to random outbursts of mortification. It's most likely to come on when I am deep in thought, especially when that thought is tinged with negative emotion. For instance, when I am required to perform miracles with little help, and when said miracle working is interrupted by the grisly deaths of multiple customers, crushed under tons and tons of deli meat and shelving--well, it's pretty much a given that at times like that I'm apt to find myself down on the ground, looking back the way I had come, surrounded by skittering rolling...

...cans of tuna. I had ploughed through most of a skid of them, all unseeing and scattering scores of them hither and yon. I waved an arriving co-worker off towards the deli wall, saying something stupid like "Not me! Not me!"

Perhaps the only saving grace of HICS is that it usually sticks around just long enough to dull or, sometimes, entirely negate whatever pain it causes in the first place. Countless times I've picked myself off the ground and carried on, almost as blissfully unaware as I'd been just before going airborne moments before.

I'm used to this weird disorder by now; laying face down amongst a few hundred cans of tuna isn't exactly my best pose, but what the hell. That said, I can't help asking the question all HICS sufferers ask, in the weary accusing tone of the forever put-upon: who put that there?

Who put that there? Seriously, right in the middle of the frickin' aisle! Was it strategic? Was it purposely built there just to catch any cartwheeling Kens en route to carnage at the other end of the store?

Speaking of which...

Turned out that the BANG I had heard was a set of shelves collapsing...in the back room. There wasn't even anyone back there at the time. Meanwhile, I had to conclude that yes, indeed, that tuna display was placed there specifically to catch me napping: the security camera placement couldn't be better. Once again, yours truly is the celebrity of the store. It's been two weeks now, and the boss has to work "tuna" into every conversation. Sigh. I wonder what I'm going to trip over next. As consolation, I know my wife loves me.

Hahahahaha.

Fourth Election In Seven Years...

Am I the only one who boggles at that? I've railed at the American hyper-political system, in which it seems one election is barely over before the campaign for another begins; and yet we've managed to have four Canadian elections in less than two American electoral terms. Is it any wonder so many people in this country are sick and tired of politics?

Of course, this works to Harper's advantage. So many things do: he's rigged it that way. The first party in Canadian history to be found in contempt of Parliament (which, as Thomas Walkom clearly argues, means "in contempt of Canadian citizens")--that party is counting on a contemptuous electorate. It's likely that many of those people who actually bother to vote will be the ones who always vote: by and large, the older, conservative (Conservative?) generation.

The coalition boogeyman is out and shambling about already: Harper and anyone who speaks for him makes sure never to utter "Ignatieff" or "Liberal" without adding "coalition". Catelli has expertly demolished the monster. To his rant, I would only add two things. One, coalitions are the default state of many parliaments, particularly those in Europe. There's nothing inherently evil about coalition governments. In fact--two--I'd go so far as to suggest that a coalition government is, or should be, a good fit in a country like Canada that has built an international reputation on tolerance and consensus. Barring proportional representation, a coalition government is the only way to ensure that more than one bloc of voters is truly represented.

And Harper himself believes strongly in coalitions. In his own words, "conservatism and conservative parties, as we have known them over the decades, have always been coalitions". In his mind, these coalitions are between Burkean conservatives and classical liberals, sneeringly called "theo-cons and neo-cons". Indeed, Harper's Conservative party is itself a coalition of social and fiscal conservatives. Though there is some question, given the alarming deficit, just how fiscally conservative that party can truly claim to be, and the social conservatives are still kept largely hidden from view.

Walkom, in his column linked above, mentioned in passing that Stephen Harper doesn't just disagree with liberals, with or without the capital L: he despises them. His every action seeks to destroy the Liberal Party of Canada (which, ironically enough, wouldn't turn out too well for the Conservative Party of Canada). My question to Canadians of every political stripe is simple. Do you want a Prime Minister who hates and despises a segment of the population and seeks to destroy their parliamentary voice?

You Have To Go Through Hell To Get To Heaven

...and I'm neck deep in the hell right now, treading molten brimstone and snorting sulphur.

Work has been...interesting of late. Each day brings fresh impossibilities. Last Tuesday it was "Ken, we need you to strip 400+ lineal feet of shelving and put it in your [ridiculously tiny] dairy cooler. That took eight hours to accomplish and required eight stacks of meat totes, 45 milk crates, and four shopping carts, as well as four bunkers and an endcap. I had previously asked--twice--if it wasn't a good idea to run the counter down. "No," I was told, "we'll have lots of people to help move the product." Lots turned out to be...two. See, when I heard "lots of people to help move", I quite naturally assumed that the phalanx of vendors and merchandisers would be doing the job, moving everything directly from the old dairy counter to the new one. That's not what happened. The old dairy counter, for reasons never explained to me, had to come out before the new one could go in. Or something. Of course, when I went in the next morning, the old dairy counter was still there. Turned off...but there. Eight hours, wasted.

The new dairy counter was set up without incident...unless you consider a 600-case dairy order an incident. I, for one, do.

This week, it's frozen time. We had to condense some five hundred lineal feet of assorted frozen dinners, pizzas and fries into eleven doors. That couldn't quite be done, so I've had to use one bunker for a very limited selection of French fries, cut out a few lines of pizza, and forget about several lines of dinners. I could tell you about all the re-arranging that's had to happen since, and will continue to happen over the next few days, but (a) I'd lose you because (b) I'm lost, myself. Suffice it to say that I never have any idea, day to day, how many bunkers I have at my disposal. Whatever number it turns out to be, it's invariably three less than I need.

Things are progressing, though. My new dairy cooler is easily three times the size of my old one: it should be up and running in the next two days. The shelves hold what in some cases is way too much product. Put it this way: if it's going to be that busy, I'm a dead man. Once everything is in place, my job should get a whole lot easier. Until then...

Earthquakes and Emotions

Why do catastrophes happen? For the same reason anything else happens, in my view: to allow anyone experiencing them or observing them to react. (Incidentally, you can't observe something without influencing it: see any introductory quantum mechanics text for details.)

And how do people react? In as many ways as there are people to react. And then, of course, we react to their reactions, and others react to ours, and so colours the tapestry called Life. Can we get a hallelujah?

So we look at the earthquake and tsunami and feel an emotion. I like to define "emotion" as "energy in motion", because that's essentially what it is. When you merely feel something, the motion is slow and sluggish. When you express an emotion, the energy moves faster, with more noticeable effect. If your emotion, whatever it is, motivates you to do something, and thus you feel it in "thought, word, and deed": well, with that energy in motion you can work what look like miracles. If you feel like it, that is. With an entirely different set of emotions, your "miracles" may be of a...darker variety.

The full panoply of reactions, emotions and even miracles is on display in Japan and around the world, right now. So many things have awed me; so many more have disgusted me. Given the broad scope of "human nature", I can't say any of it surprises me. Here are some of MY reactions. Make of them what you will.

I'm amazed by the rescues. A seventy year old woman found alive in her home...except her home was washed out to sea with her in it. A four month old girl pulled uninjured from rubble that's too haphazard to even be identified with certainty. It's incredible. You hear these miraculous survival stories after every natural disaster, and they never fail to impress.

I am disgusted by the people who have no trouble expressing their apparently sincere belief that the earthquake was 'karmic payback' for Pearl Harbor. One wonders if they've read enough history to know what the Enola Gay was.

I'm heartened that there still exists a culture on this planet whose first imperative in the wake of calamity is to help each other. Numerous sources have remarked on an almost total absence of looting and disorder. It shames me to admit that my own culture isn't near as high-minded: even relatively minor disasters seem too often to bring out the worst in people.

I'm appalled that my Prime Minister would dare tie the Japanese earthquake to election prospects in Canada. According to the party in power, it's never a good time for an election, but explicitly mentioning Japan in this context is in stunningly bad taste.

I'm resigned to the fact that no matter how bad the crisis gets, there will be those who see nothing but dollar signs. The stock markets are tanking (why are they open at all?) Let's trade in misery today! How much money can be made off the misery of millions? Short sell! Hedge that bet! Shake, rattle, and roll, baby!

Related: the online scams. LESS THAN THREE HOURS after the earthquake, there were various and sundry ways up and running to defraud you of your money online. Sickening, that is.

The legitimate charitable response has been quite humbling. People are digging deep, belying the popular assertion that our economy is still fragile and might blow away in a stiff breeze. Maybe the bank commercial's right: we're richer than we think.

I'm proud that I'm a member of a species that can build a nuclear power plant to withstand a 9.0 quake.

I'm saddened by the number of folks who are ready to put the kibosh on nuclear energy because those plants are having trouble standing up to an historic tsunami that was beyond the imagination of their engineers. You don't see a worldwide moratorium on drilling after the Gulf oil spill, did you? Like it or not, take nuclear off the table and we'll be falling off the table ourselves before long.

And finally: I believe the Fukushima Fifty are genuine heroes, no matter how this story turns out.

激動

(terrible shock)

Again. As it wasn't hard enough to write this the first time.

The mind quails in the face of disasters, especially the large-scale catastrophes like earthquakes, tsunamis, and nuclear meltdowns. To face that unholy triumvirate in a matter of hours...

This is perhaps the most frightening video I've seen in my life. At first--for about ten seconds, anyway--it almost looks as if you could walk through the tsunami. Then you notice cars being swept along like bathtub toys. Five minutes later, the ungodly tide is rife with wrecked bits of building and who knows how many bodies. It's utterly terrifying, even viewed at a sixty five hundred mile remove.

Some sources rate this earthquake the equal of the one that spawned the Sumatran tsunami seven years ago. As of now, the death toll in that earlier temblor and wave train is a couple of orders of magnitude higher than the official count from this one. But casualties are expected to rise dramatically into the tens of thousands. It's speculated that only Japan's rigorous building codes kept this disaster from matching or perhaps exceeding that one.

In some ways, I found this even harder to bear, mostly because I could relate very well to the video footage. This was a residential, retail and industrial area in a First World country not overmuch different from my own. The beaches of Banda Aceh lacked a perspective my mind could seize on: it's somehow easier to lessen the visual impact of a house reduced to kindling when you realize it wasn't much more than kindling to begin with.

But watching this: these are people's lives and livelihoods, again, not all that different from mine, carried off with no regard for sensibility or sanity. The cleanup for this will be measured in decades, using money Japan doesn't exactly have. Their economy has been in the doldrums for most of the last twenty years and was only recently showing signs of some slight uptick.

Two partial nuclear meltdowns and fears of a third, with more aftershocks sure to come. A dam burst. Infernos. Volcanic eruptions. A million or more people displaced. Just terrible, with no end in sight. The mind quakes. At some point you just want to throw up your hands and say "enough". Actually, I'm well past that point. It's pretty much numbing, now.

Real lives. Real people. Real hardship.

Japan is one of the most generous countries in the world when it comes to foreign aid. It's time to return that generosity with interest. Please give whatever you can to the relief effort, and then give a little more, just because.

Chara, Shore, and the Game I Love

(Note to readers: due to onerous time constraints--see previous post--I am writing this blog entry over a number of days, rather than all at once as is my usual custom; I apologize for the 'old news'.)

You'd never know it from the media hysteria of late, but hockey has always been a rough sport. To my mind, it's not as violent as any of the individual combat sports, and it doesn't seem as violent as football. (Watching people piling on to the players they catch in football makes me wonder how we don't see human pancakes after each and every play). But hockey has never made a claim to gentility.

In 1934, a player named Eddie Shore--ironically enough, a Boston Bruin defenseman now in the Hockey Hall of Fame--ended the career of Toronto Maple Leaf Ace Bailey with a vicious check from behind. Bailey's head (they didn't wear helmets in those days) hit the ice and he went into convulsions; he was diagnosed with a fractured skull. He lived, but never played hockey again.

Fast forward to 2011. A Boston Bruins defenseman named Zdeno Chara--quite possibly a future Hall of Famer--checked Max Pacioretty of the Montreal Canadiens into a stanchion at the players' bench. Pacioretty suffered a severe concussion and a fractured vertebra; if he plays hockey again it'll be a blue-sky miracle.

Shore was suspended 16 games for his check. Chara got nothing beyond the interference penalty and misconduct assessed at the time. The check was deemed a "hockey play" gone horribly wrong.

This has polarized the league and its fanbase. Air Canada, a major sponsor of the NHL, wrote a letter on company letterhead threatening to withdraw sponsorship unless something was done to protect the players and the integrity of the game. NHL Commissioner Gary Bettman essentially told Air Canada to go puck itself. Meanwhile, in hockey forums all over the Internet, the debate rages: should Chara have been suspended? Was his hit intentional?

My answers, for what they're worth, are (1) undoubtedly and (2) who cares.

There's precedent for (2) in the official rules. Rule 60.3 on high sticking states that all contact causing injury, whether careless or accidental, merits a double-minor penalty.

You can argue malicious intent into the seventh period of overtime: the carelessness of Chara's action is what matters to me. The check was already deemed illegal, contravening Rule 56.1 (interference). In my view, any illegal play resulting in an injury should merit a suspension regardless of intent.

There has been some talk of toughening up the suspensions. I'm all for this, provided the NHL doesn't try to match their length to the length of time the injured player is out. It sounds just: end someone's career and there goes yours. It makes sense, especially since many of the offending players are fourth liners, barely NHLers, and in the past calendar year in particular they've managed to injure a couple of All-Star teams. Savard. Crosby. Malkin. Richards. Now Pacioretty, an up and coming Hab.

But sometimes the offenders themselves are star players. Chara is one such. Alex Ovechkin has a mean streak to his game. I can easily picture a coach instructing Joe Fourthliner to go down like a shot the next time Ovechkin knees him. Joe Fourthliner would then sit out the next couple of games with his "injury", one of which would just happen to be the second leg of a home-and-home. Coaching triumph: Ovechkin's neutralized.

No, I'd rather just see the suspensions toughened up in general. Two or three games is a joke. It doesn't teach the player anything worth learning. Ten games should be the minimum suspension handed out, and they could ramp up from there. A second offense would mean a season long suspension, including playoffs if applicable. For something like the Todd Bertuzzi hit on Steve Moore--blatant, premeditated thuggery--a lifetime ban should be considered. It is my considered opinion that Todd Bertuzzi should not be playing hockey right now.

What has changed in the game since 1934?

Quite a few things. Speed, size and skill, of course. No disrespect to the players of that era, some of whom (like Eddie Shore) put up impressive numbers, but there's simply no comparison. They didn't have people almost seven feet tall back then; the 100-mph slapshot wouldn't be seen for almost thirty years, and if you watch footage of a game from even 1970. it looks like everybody except Bobby Orr is skating through thick mud. There were earlier speedsters, but it's all relative; the fastest skaters of the '30s probably wouldn't make the NHL of today. Again, I mean no disrespect: hockey in those ancient times was a hobby, not a real profession. And it paid like one.

Protective equipment has evolved. In the 30s the players might as well have been naked: their heads actually were. The modern hockey player, by comparison, is the Stay-Puft Marshmallow Man.

As I mentioned above, the money certainly has changed. The average team was worth less than $100,000 in the 1930s. In today's dollars, a million, give or take. But then today, the average individual player's salary is over $2 million. Think about that for a second. Adjusting for inflation, the average player makes more than twice what an entire team and its chattels were worth in 1934. It's worth noting, too, that the rise in salaries has been a relatively recent phenomenon: the average NHL'er in 1990 made $271,000.

All of these changes over time have been cited to explain the rise in serious injuries. The size and speed are obvious contributing factors; the protective equipment can generate a false sense of security/invincibility; the remuneration motivates players to stay in the major league by any means necessary. If that means hurting people, so be it.

There's something profoundly wrong with a sport that tolerates or even encourages that last. "Hurting people" should never be the object of any team sport, unless you count "war" as a sport. Stiff suspensions would rapidly do away with that piece of barbaric hockey culture, too.

One other change in the game over the past eighty or so years, again a very recent one: we now have two referees and two linesmen on the ice, in addition to ten skaters and two goalies. The extra referee was added to better police the game, and I'd say it's time to junk that experiment. Too often, the two refs call the same game in different ways: many times you'll see a ref call a penalty when he's a hundred feet from the offending play, while the ref five feet away detects nothing wrong. More germane to the topic at hand, an extra ref just means one more body on the ice...and with the speed of the modern game, I think there are too many bodies as it is.

A larger ice surface makes sense whether we nix the second ref or not. We have a model for this: the international game is played on a rink that is 13 feet wider than the one the NHL currently uses. Unfortunately, adoption of an international rink means knocking out the first few rows of $$$$ing seats in every arena, which in turn means it'll never happen.

So if we're stuck with a North American rink, maybe we need to look at four skaters a side instead of five. Yeah, I'm sure the NHL Player's Association will okay that.

I keep coming back to the culture of the game. It needs to change. Perhaps hockey could steal a page from soccer's playbook: a red card in soccer means instant ejection and your team has to play a man short for the rest of the game. Imagine that in hockey. Guaranteed loss. Your coach would kill you if you were still alive after your teammates had a go.

I love hockey. It's the fastest team sport in the world and played properly it's an absolute joy to watch. But I've had enough of the goonery. I'm pretty sure Max Pacioretty feels the same way.

Crunch Time

The Breadbin's likely to be empty for the next ten days or so. Not entirely coincidentally, today is my last day off for a week and a half.

The transformation of our Price Chopper into a FreshCo is proceeding in stits and farts. It is nothing short of incredible how much is accomplished in each overnight period; it is likewise almost incomprehensible how much work there actually remains to accomplish.

It's kind of awe-inspiring to watch the construction team move an entire grocery aisle from one side of the store to the other without taking anything off the shelves, and without dropping a thing. Ten or more extra-long pump-jacks, strategically placed, and an unwavering steadiness seems to be all that's required. Then there's the tile-lifting machine that looks like a combination between a chisel and a broom. The flooring comes up neat as you please.

For all that, there have been glitches. The produce wet case was not installed properly the first time 'round: some of the vegetables were parched while others rotted in excessive moisture. And, of course, there's what happened yesterday.

Like everything else in the store, the refrigeration system is getting a massive upgrade. While that's going on, the old refrigeration units are disconnected from the monitoring system. We must perform temperature checks in 54 places every two hours. Can you guess where this is going?

A temp check was the first thing I went to do when I got in yesterday. It turned out to take a little longer than I'd anticipated. In fact, I didn't past the first four bunkers I checked for something on the order of two hours. That's because I could feel the heat baking out of them before I even came in sight of their thermometers.

The frozen bunkers are supposed to read between -22 and -29 C. These were at plus 30. You can perhaps imagine what the contents--gelato, frozen fruit, and pizzas--looked and felt like. And the attached dairy bunkers, containing chocolate soup milk and cottage cheese, were likewise hideously warm.

Grab shopping carts. Fill them quickly but neatly, trying not to let what used to be gelato spill all over the floor. Cart everything off the floor before somebody chances to attempt to buy any of it. Count it up: 147 cottage cheese, 81 bags of once-frozen fruit, and so on and so forth. Cut out the UPCs on the frozen items for reclamation. Throw everything else out. Sigh mightily and reflect that now you're out of stock on five different specials, most of which you didn't order for today on account of you had no idea the garbage can would come in and buy up the store.

Then there's the deli, most of which is in my dairy cooler right now because there's nowhere else, yet, for it to go.

Most customers have been understanding. Most. A few have been almost perfect assholes, but as retail proctologists we're largely used to that sort of thing. Still, you get the message right quick: people don't like change. Not even if it's for the better, as this will surely be. Shopper after shopper remarked that we'd have to hand out road maps at the door. It's almost as grating as the 'say one for me!' I hear from my knees at least twice daily. Yeah, I'm praying, all right.

But it's disconcerting, because with all this rapid and ongoing change, we don't know where anything is, either. Like: the pop. How does an entire aisle of pop go missing? "Well," I said to the first customer who inquired, "I can tell you where it WAS." I then gallivanted all over the store only to discover they'd moved it off into a temporary alcove not far from (but completely out of view of) the front entrance. I felt like a prime cut of grade-A idiot.

This weekend marks my first Sunday shift in years. The boss approached me about this some time ago, quite apologetic. "Have to do this--all the full timers will--for the needs of the business--really don't want to wreck your home life" and lots more in that vain before I finally stared at him and said "why are you apologizing? You're telling me that, for the price of working every other weekend, I get every other weekend off? When getting even one weekend off a month is like pulling teeth around here right now? This represents a huge improvement in my schedule!"

Not this week, it doesn't. Because next Wednesday--which was supposed to be my next day off after today--the dairy counter moves from its current location against a side wall to a new spot in the rough center of the store. I'm excited as hell about this, because it's like a giant reset button, but I just wish it could have moved on ANY...OTHER...DAY.

Meanwhile, I'm trying to do the square root of frig-all today, storing up relaxation to deploy against the inevitable stress to come...

The Currency of Currency

Warner Brothers to Rent Movies Through Facebook

"I hope, hope, hope, that when I'm old I won't look back at this...and say "Oh yeah... that was the first time I heard of Facebook Credits. What was it we used when we were young? Doggars? Thollars? Something like that."--"SamSam", via BoingBoing

Recently I finished reading two absolutely top-notch high-tech thrillers: Daemon and its sequel Freedom^tm, by Daniel Suarez. In these two novels, which are essentially one long story, the death of a 'mad genius' software designer triggers a self-replicating process with enormously far-reaching implications. Through the first book, I found myself rooting against this utterly inhuman process, which seeks nothing less than the complete overthrow of civilization; in the second, understanding of the Daemon's end goals flooded in and I switched sides so instantly and so completely as to be absolutely pining for the world the Daemon creates; I actually found myself viewing the millions of deaths attendant to the destruction of the old order to be regrettable, but necessary.
In order to overthrow civilization, Suarez reforms its currency. The casual reader may not realize that private currencies are fundamentally legal in the United States so long as they are convertible to the U.S. dollar. In the story, the Daemon electronically skims off the top of thousands of corporations to back its system of credits (and it thoroughly liquidates the financial assets of anyone or anything that attempts to fight it). The virtual "darknet" credits are very similar to something called Whuffie, a reputation-based currency "coined" by Cory Doctorow. Do something 'good' and your virtual account is credited; do something 'bad' and you'll be debited: bad enough and you'll be destitute. Since public opinion serves as a bank, a comprehensive virtual network is required for such a system to function.

We're getting there. Facebook has well over half a billion users, after all. It's easy to see the average person's actual and virtual lives integrating: taking a long view, I'd go so far as to suggest a reputation-based virtual currency is inevitable. It may take ten years or it may take a hundred, but...we're getting there.

HarperWatch

When Ken Breadner woke up one morning from unsettling dreams, he found himself changed in his bed to a monstrous citizen of Harper.

--with apologies to Franz Kafka

What was once the Government of Canada is now, by Prime Ministerial diktat to be referred to as "the Harper Government".

Tiny, incremental steps. Softee, softee catchee majority.

Such a trivial change in nomenclature this is. Easily dismissed. I mean, by media convention, you distinguish one government from another this way already, viz. "The Obama Administration", "The Martin government", "The Harper regime".

By media convention, you do this. Not by explicit order of the PM. In democracies, the general rule is that the government tends to refer to itself as being for the people. In this case, that would be "the people" of Canada. But this government is of, by, and for Stephen Harper.

What's next? Do we move the capital from Ottawa to Stephenville, NL? Do we tear down all the bridges spanning the Ottawa River and institute "Harper's Ferries"?

What is the purpose of this? As with most things Harper does, there's more than one. First, this rebranding suggests the government is firmly in control. To me, at least, it sounds very much like a majority government. When you call it "The Harper Government", it's easy to forget that it's really "The Harper-And-Whichever-Party(ies)-Agrees-With-Him-At-The-Moment Government".

Suggest something often enough, in suitably subtle ways, and it'll come true. Harper is within salivating distance of a majority already, for reasons that entirely escape me. And this scares me. Given the contempt he's shown for Parliament as the leader of a minority government, I shudder to think what shenanigans he'll get up to should that majority come to pass.

The other thing "Harper Government" does is concentrate the spotlight on Stephen Harper and nowhere else. That's exactly where he wants it. Not because he craves the spotlight--he may be a tad megalomaniacal, but he's not a diva about it--because he keeps himself rigidly under control at all times. If a Conservative Minister says something out of turn, or even if it's not cleared with the PMO first, odds are he or she'll be demoted or sacked outright. Hence you'll hear nary a peep about capital punishment, criminalization of abortion, the gutting of our social welfare system, or anything else that Harper would in his heart or hearts love to implement. Not until that majority, after which he's apt to claim a mandate from "the people". Because of our first-past-the-post electoral system, Harper's easily able to get his majority of seats without an actual majority of votes cast. Never forget that: Harper won't. "The people" will always and forever be only "the people who voted Conservative".

That's rule number one for aspiring dictators: reward your friends and punish your enemies...

This Is Why Out East Is Still In The Running

Not sure where we're going to retire yet, but my television just did its best to sway me.

Why?

As oil makes like the Cliffhanger game from The Price Is Right once again, I'm reminded--once again--that the answer to any question beginning with "why" is usually "money".

I have lots of questions about this latest crude spike, all of them starting with 'why'.

Why is this happening?

The excuse du jour is Libya and the madman who is clinging to power there. Libya, after all, is an oil producer: they contribute a whopping 2.7% of world supply. Saudi Arabia has pledged, repeatedly, to make up any shortfall, though a source I trust says the oil reserves in that country are substantially overstated. This shocking...SHOCKING!...revelation was common knowledge in peak oil circles six years ago, upon the publication of Matt Simmons' book Twilight In The Desert: The Coming Saudi Oil Shock and the World Economy. One wonders if it's common knowledge in the commodity markets. Frankly, I doubt it: oil'd be cheap at twice its current valuation, if that were indeed the case. No, I don't think peak oil has...quite...gone mainstream just yet.

But nor do I believe for a second that a mere 2.7% of the world supply potentially going offline is behind this latest runup in the price of crude. I think it boils down to money, in this case lots and lots of money to be made. Just as was the case in 2005 and 2008, speculators are running the show. Hang on to your seats, folks: if recent history is any guide, there's a helluva dropoff looming over yonder hump. Gee, you think maybe this time they can take the whole economy off the cliff with 'em?

And to lighten the mood after that somber question, a joke:

A CEO, a union member, and a front-line worker were standing in front of a cookie jar. The CEO opened the jar, withdrew eleven of the twelve cookies in there, and put them in his suit pocket. He then turned to the front-line worker and said, "watch out for that union guy! He's trying to steal your cookie!"

Okay, so we know why oil's spiking: because they said so, now shut up and watch Charlie Sheen self-destruct, that's why. But the next question is a little thornier. Canada has a lot of oil. In fact, we're supposedly second to Saudi Arabia in terms of reserves accessible with current tech. I'll leave the 'dirty oil sands' debate for another day. What I want to know is this: why are we beholden to the world oil price? Why can't we use our own damned oil? Hey, we'll even share it with you Usaians, as if we have a choice and gladly. Actually, under NAFTA, we are not allowed to disrupt the 66% of the oil we produce that goes to you fine folks, nor can we charge you a higher price than the one we pay. That's direct from the "and you thought Canada was a sovereign nation" files.

Anyway, what's the deal here? Does anybody know? I'm not asking for the kind of subsidized gas prices you find in Venezuela (12 cents a U.S. gallon!) That said, there are some home truths I got knocked into me the last time I suggested that $5 or $6 a gallon would maybe starve us gluttons a tad. To wit: Canada's really big. It's also really spread out, and many of our breadbaskets are not exactly convenient to our major cities. In short, gas prices much higher than what we're currently experiencing would be catastrophic to our national economy.

So no, I don't want cheap cheap pricing, but I'd sure like some insurance against the speculators and their lame excuses for lining their own pockets. It seems like common sense to use the oil we're producing. Doesn't it?

I know you are, but what am I?

If Flaherty's budget results in a vote of non-confidence and an election, it won't be because of the opposition.

I will repeat that.

If there's an election, it WON'T BE LAYTON, IGNATIEFF, OR DUCEPPE'S "FAULT".

Harper's Conservatives are wily little buggers. Remember that old schoolyard taunt that's the title of this blog entry? That's Harper's idea of electioneering. Childish, isn't it?

Supposedly, it's up to the NDP whether we have an election or not. I'd argue it's up to the Conservatives, myself: do they bring forward a budget that has the confidence of the House, or don't they? It's really quite simple. Except Harper, being the schoolyard bully that he is, will blame any lack of confidence on Layton, Ignatieff, and Duceppe. He'll repeat, over and over again, that they're responsible for this "unnecessary" election. And why is the election unnecessary? Because he says so, that's why.

Harper won't hesitate to blame the supporters of their parties, either--and even with the Cons' inexplicable rise in the polls, it must be remembered that in the event of an election, a majority of Canadians will vote for a party that isn't the Conservative Party of Canada.

I want a leader and a party that at least attempts to govern by consensus. Consensus is a Canadian value. Or at least...it used to be.

Oh, the Sarcasm, the Sarcasm.

And if you go to the site, you'll find a poll ("how will corporations use their tax cuts? Big Bonuses, Bigger Bonuses, or Great Big Bonuses?"); videos, suggestions on "how to raise your $500"; lots more besides.

Can you guess I'm not a fan?

I've said this before, and I'll say it again. I have no problem paying taxes. I have no problem paying high taxes. So long as I'm getting value for money. Am I? It's hard to say, and truth be told I tend to veer between "maybe" and "NOPE!" most of the time. But I'll tell you one thing: given the choice between giving my money to a government and a CEO corporation, I'll choose the government every time. At least in theory, the money I give the government will go somewhere valuable: I might even see it again, in some form.

I don't begrudge corporations their profits, and that's something my detractors never seem to believe. If someone can build a better mousetrap, by all means they should get all the cheese. I have a real problem with cheese being given to them ahead of time, though.

The damnedest thing, though, is that we don't have much of a choice in the matter. Corporations will locate wherever the bribes are the best--and there go all the jobs...

The Bare Facts

or, if God had intended us to walk around naked, we would have been born that way.

Skin.

We all have it; we've all seen it. But -- at least in North America -- it's widely viewed as shameful and disgusting. Especially the (ahem) naughty bits, the Parts-That-Must-Not-Be-Named. Parents go out of their way to come up with "acceptable" words for the unmentionable parts. Pee-pee. Thing. Birdie. Down There. Even if they call the parts by their proper names, there's usually an aura of discomfort that pervades their discussion.

I learned the real names for the you-know-whats early. I was given a book called Where Did I Come From? which spelled them all out. I have never forgotten that "vagina rhymes with North Carolina". That little book spared my mom the first few episodes of The Talk.

But I couldn't help notice, even as a little kid, that the material laid out (so to speak) so matter-of-factly in the book was anything but matter-of-fact in real life. It seemed as if a penis, for example, could never actually be called a penis. On the one hand, there was a seemingly endless list of "low" words and clumsy Harlequinisms (how you women can read 'purple-helmeted warrior of love' without collapsing into gales of hysterical laughter is beyond me); on the other, you'd have people vaguely waving in the general direction of the penis and thunderously frowning. Don't think kids don't pick that up...they do.

I spent much of my life buried in books when I was younger. This has shaped my life in countless ways, from the obvious (hey, buddy, do I look like a rugged outdoorsy guy?) to the not-so, or maybe nutso (I have this idealism, a very firm Belief In The Way That Things Should Be, that doesn't jibe well with messy reality). Books have also heavily influenced my views on love and sex, starting with that Where Did I Come From? and working up through Robert Heinlein and Spider Robinson, both authors strongly sex-positive (and well ahead of their time). There's something tremendously liberating in seeing one's own thoughts, especially those ideas may be controversial, laid bare in print.

George Carlin is another icon of mine. In a sane world, he'd have been canonized by now. Then again, a sane world never would have needed him so badly. His specialty was deep, thought-provoking statements beneath the caustic comedy. For example, his views on prostitution: "Selling's legal. Fucking's legal. Why isn't selling fucking legal? Why is it illegal to sell something it's perfectly legal to give away?"

Why, indeed?

I am not a practicing nudist, on account of entirely practical concerns. No pockets, for one. I live in an arctic tundra wasteland for half the year, for another. But I have no moralistic objection whatsoever to public nudity: it's just skin.

This, it turns out, is a very common attitude: just not here. In Germany there are numerous parks with 'Free Body Culture' areas, places in which you'll see businessmen and women eating lunch in the altogether. Any sexual activity is strictly illegal--if you want to see a society that tolerates public sex, you have to look to the so-called "primitive" tribes of Africa, Asia, and South America. But nudity in and of itself is no big deal, not only in Germany, but throughout much of Europe. Like most European norms, this one strikes me as eminently sensible. (See what I mean? Firm Belief In The Way That Things Should Be, which doesn't mesh well with the world as it actually is around me?

I live an hour's drive from one of the largest Gay Pride parades in the world. I haven't been able to go and show my support (yet)--but I've always wanted to, and have had to settle for watching it on TV. Strangely, you can't find coverage even on OUT TV, which bills itself as Canada's Premier GLBT Network, and news coverage is always heavily edited. Now, I gotta tell you, I'm not in any big hurry to sit in front of my television screen and gaze at hairy chests, let alone flaccid penises bobbing along. But the censorship strikes me as bizarre. Insane, even. We can't let little kids see breasts! Better not feed 'em, then, eh? Or...penises! Ha. Little boys figure out penises right early. They may not know their adult purpose, but they sure learn in a hurry how good they feel. I have it on good authority the same holds true for little girls and their clitorises.

You sick monster, sexualizing children!

Who, me? Not at all. Merely acknowledging reality, something which North American culture tends to have a problem doing. Kids are going to masturbate. Later, once grown, they're going to fool around with sex. The more you forbid it, the more likely they will. Humans are curious creatures, and if you put a brick wall in front of them, they're probably going to climb it, tunnel under it, or walk around it.

Religious, by which I mean Christian, types tend to protest most loudly about the 'degradation of morality' and 'gross public indecency'. Memo to these folks: we were all, according to your Holy Scripture, 'made in the image and likeness of God'. I don't know about you, but if I believed that, it'd make me fiercely proud of my body and perfectly okay with showing it off. But no, it's to be kept shielded from everybody, especially the little people that once came out of it. The logic, if there is any, escapes me entirely.

Aside: I've often wondered just how virulent the protests would be in the case of a hypothetical Straight Pride Parade. I'm not saying they wouldn't exist, but it often seems to me as if there's some hidden chapter in the Bible somewhere that states--entirely in red letters, and about six hundred different ways--that Homosexuality Is The Most Unforgivable And Heinous Sin Ever Hatched By The Devil In The Unsuspecting Minds Of Men. (Never women; lesbianism's beneath notice. Weird.) Of all the so-called sins going on in the world, the fixation on that one has always puzzled me.

Then there's the people who claim to have no problem with nudity, provided the naked person fits some preconceived notion of attractiveness. You've probably run across these people, the ones who went to the nude beach on a dare and came back sputtering and gagging at the fat women and wrinkly old men they found there.

This behaviour is inevitable in a culture as hypersexualized as ours is. It's also completely wrongheaded. It stems from the misguided belief that the body IS the person. We've almost completely lost touch with the ancient maxim that we are composed of body, mind, and soul (or spirit, if you like that word better). New Age belief holds not that the body is a container for the mind and soul, but rather that the spirit encompasses the body and the mind. I suspect science will some day prove this to be the case.

I've always believed this, and it's what allows me (usually) not to judge people on their appearances. I've always put more stock in someone's mind and spirit than in their body--which isn't to say I can't appreciate a beautiful body. But we're all going to be ugly--externally--someday. Some of us are internally ugly already. You can't tell who is and who isn't, though, by their skin.

People: love the skin you're in. Maybe you don't need to show it to the world...but there's nothing wrong with you if you do.

You People Need Help

So there's this video floating around Facebook...the one, the only Justin Bieber's CSI episode, wherein I guess he's shot dead. I would know this if I followed pop culture or Justin Bieber; I trail along miles and curves behind the one, and wouldn't recognize the other if he showed up at my door ushered by whatever rapper it is that ushers him around.

My wife does the pop culture following in this house, and she is dismissive and a tad contemptuous of the Bieb, given that she was born in Saint Ratford, as she calls it. "I was here first," she says.

Dismissive and contemptuous I understand. Actually cheering a re-enactment of his death? Not so much.

I was in therapy for a while in my early teens. I don't remember what landed me there. It probably boiled down to my folks not understanding me. I don't blame them one bit, considering that I can count the people who consistently understood me on the fingers of one thumb, especially back then. What I recall most distinctly about my therapy sessions was the growing disconnect between the therapist and me. He kept asserting, and trying to prove, that I did not understand the difference between fantasy and reality. This was, and is, total bullshit. I told him as much every way I knew how. My problem at the time was that I didn't really know too many ways how.

I could turn that accusation--he doesn't understand the difference between fantasy and reality--on the legions of (mostly) guys who have lustily cheered the completely fictitious death of completely fictitious character Jason McCann. After all, to a man, they're acting as if it's the actor, not the character, who is killed. Moreover, I'll admit to being a little frightened of a person who finds the death of another human being...a human being whom he has never met, and who has never harmed him in any way...to be an event worth cheering.

Justin Beiber is merely the latest example in a catalogue that stretches back through the Jonas Brothers, the Backstreet Boys, probably back to Paul Anka and beyond. Doubtless if Elvis Presley were just starting out today, there'd be legions of male haters to go along with the adoring multitudes. Is it jealousy, I wonder? Do people really hate Justin Bieber because of his prepubescent posse? How pathetic would that be? Guys: most of the girls with Bieber fever are far too young to even look cross-eyed at. You know that, don't you?

These people who cheer at "Justin Beiber"'s death by gunshot, though--do they really bear the real Justin Beiber ill will? The Facebook "I Hate Justin Beiber!" fan club is instructive. There are over seventy thousand members in just this one forum, and the first thing I saw when I look at that Wall chilled me. "I burned a Justin Beiber Teddy bear and picture today. It felt SO good." And what did you think while you were burning that bear and picture? You didn't think--even for a second--about engulfing Justin Bieber himself? Naw, of course you didn't.

And they told me I had trouble distinguishing between fantasy and reality.

The so-called problem with me when I was a teen was my visceral hatred of violence. It didn't matter where the violence showed up: in real life or on television. Apparently it was perfectly okay to have a problem with real-life violence, but imitations on a screen, no matter how graphic, are hunky-dory. Under quite a few circumstances they're supposedly funny. Hahahaha, you could die laughing.

I have never found pain funny. I have likewise never found pain sexually arousing. Pain is pain. It hurts. It's never funny when it's you, is it? Here, let me punch you in the face and then laugh at you. You'd call me a monster, and rightfully so. But it's fine if you watch it happen to somebody else on a screen. Why? Because it's not real? And yet it's shown to you as if it was. They go to great lengths to ensure verisimilitude. Why bother?

I'm not a Justin Bieber fan. I've heard exactly one of his songs--One Less Lonely Girl is on heavy rotation on one of the channels at work--and found it about as mindless and mediocre as most pop music today. But I don't hate the guy. On the contrary, I respect him tremendously. Here's the first YouTube megastar, a boy who's parlayed an accidental discovery into millions upon millions of dollars. You tell me what's to hate about that, because quite frankly I have no idea.

Jury Panel Member # 508

"You're being very whiney", Eva intoned as we drove downtown. "And it's very unattractive."

Yeah, happy Valentine's Day to you too, I thought...and then continued to whine. "Look, it's not that I have a problem fulfilling my civic duty. I just have a problem with the fact that my employer won't pay my wages if I do."

"You're not even losing a day here, though. You just have to do something you don't want to do on your day off. Waaaaah."

"--And maybe tomorrow, and Wednesday....hell, the summons states it could be up to five da--"

"So you take some vacation days. Waaaaaaah."

Shut up, Ken, I thought. Like most arguments with your wife, this is one you can't win.

Waaaaaah.

Eva works a few blocks from the courthouse to which I had been summoned. I grabbed a coffee in the atrium of her building and assembled my time-passing items on the table in front of me. Globe and Mail, check. Two novels, check. iPod, check. An hour and a bit later, I found my way to the courthouse.

Holy crap. There had to be five or six hundred people packed into the main lobby like so many sardines. We sardines were halved and sent to different courtrooms. I was among the first inside courtroom 2, and I found a seat at the extreme front left of what I would later learn was the "body" of the courtroom. My reasoning was simple, and twofold: added legroom, plus if they went front to back, I might get out of here sooner.

Or, I reflected, they might go alphabetically, in which case my last name would stand me in good stead. Boy, I'm glad I'm not Ken Zyzzix.

Then again, maybe they'll go by jury number. I'm 508. That's a lot of numbers.

The court was called to session and we all rose. Not for the first time, I was forcibly reminded of a church. The pews courtroom benches were just as uncomfortable, and now with the up-down, up-down. Would we be kneeling before a statue of the scales of Justice before the day was out?

The judge announced himself and said that this would be a criminal trial. He confirmed with the Crown attorney the estimated trial length: eight days. Yike, I thought. Eight days! Plus however long it takes to get a jury! Waaaaah!

Then came the arraignment. Almost despite myself, I was sucked right in as count after count was read out. Seventeen in all: it took almost twenty minutes. Two counts of trafficking in a controlled substance, "to wit, crack cocaine". Nine counts of various types of assault, against three persons. Kidnapping and forcible confinement. Two counts of uttering threats, one a death threat and another a threat of bodily harm. And one count I missed the legalese for, but which boiled down to an attempt to pimp. The accused stood stoically as each charge was read, and pled not guilty to all counts against him. I sat there in the audience and thought seventeen counts, and you're not guilty of ANY of them? Riiiight. They don't just make these things up, buddy. Then I clapped a mental hand over my mental mouth and resolved not to let a thought like that form again.

The judge then went through several different valid reasons to be excused from jury duty. Medical conditions. The inability to hear or understand English. A personal connection with the accused, either of the lawyers, or the police officers expected to be called as witnesses. Extreme personal hardship. I waited for "Waaaaah!" to be cited, but it wasn't. Nevertheless, at least ten people declared themselves unfit to sit as a juror, for a variety of reasons, some of which I felt sure were made up. "It's against my religion," was one that actually took the judge aback. I missed what religion the man professed, but the judge let him go with a shake of his head.

Another thing that wasn't cited as a reason to be exempted from jury duty in this case: racism. Which, quite frankly, surprised me. The accused was a person of colour, or, as his lawyer called him, "African-Canadian", and two of the alleged victims had white-sounding names. Moreover, the accused's lawyer was so black he was almost blue. I really would have expected some sort of racism filter to be applied.

Twenty names were picked at random out of a drum. Mine was not among them, so I was free to watch the ensuing fun.

Seven of the chosen people decided at that moment to announce that they, too, had issues that would prevent them from serving. I could sense the judge was growing a bit exasperated as this went on; I also got the sense he'd seen the same routine many times before.

Finally we got to the actual jury selection. The judge explained that either the Crown or defense attorney could accept each prospective juror or "challenge" them. A challenge could be "for cause", in which case two already selected jurors would act as "triers of cause" to determine whether or not the prospective juror was acceptable. Or it could be a "peremptory" challenge, in which case no reason would be given and the challenged party would be free to leave.

The defence attorney stood and announced that he intended to challenge each prospective juror for cause. Ah, here's the racism filter, I thought. And it was, indeed, a racism filter, but it took an exceedingly long time to work. The procedure was unbelievably long-winded and tedious. First, the triers for cause would get the choice to swear on a Bible or solemnly affirm. (Rocket, you may be interested to know that more than half of all those placed under oath chose to affirm). Each trier was asked "Do you swear/solemnly affirm that you will well and truly try whether (prospective juror name) stands acceptable or unacceptable to try the accused, and a true verdict give according to the evidence (so help you, God)"? Each trier would say "I do".

Then the prospective juror would be asked to swear or affirm. Then the defence lawyer would state his challenge. The first three or four times, he said that the question he was about to ask was allowed by Canadian law, and that it was not intended to 'cast aspersions' on anyone. (The judge eventually told him this preamble was not necessary). The question went as follows:

"After the trial and before your deliberations, His Honour will instruct you on the importance of impartiality. The accused in this case is African-Canadian, and the alleged victims are not African-Canadian. Do you feel that the fact that the accused is African-Canadian and the alleged victims are not African-Canadian will affect your ability to be impartial in judging the facts of this case?"

Confronted with this $64,000 question--which I still believe could have been asked beforehand of the entire courtroom and answered by show of hands, thus saving everyone involved a great deal of time--some people chose to announce to all present that they were, in fact, racist.

Most didn't. One woman said that she would not be impartial, "but not because the accused is African-Canadian". Hah, I thought. No, you're not racist, are you? Racism's a crime, and crime is for black people, right?

In every case, immediately after the answer had been given, the judge would address the triers of cause and say

"I remind you that an impartial juror is one that will conduct his or her duties with an open mind, and render a decision based solely on the evidence presented and my instructions at the conclusion of the trial. If you feel that (prospective juror) will conduct his/her duties in this way, you will find that he/she is impartial and thus "acceptable". If you do not feel that he/she will conduct his/her duties in this way, you will find that he/she is partial and thus "unacceptable". You may confer with each other and render a verdict."

The triers found acceptable all those who said that they would be impartial, and unacceptable all those who said they wouldn't. It was all so predictable...almost pointless, I thought. I began to play little games with myself, sitting there. Is it racist, I thought, to look at a person and decide on appearance whether he's racist or not? I decided it was, but it was the only diversion I could engage in without appearing rude, and so I engaged in it. That farmer, Hank Whathisname? Racist. (Yep.) That little old lady, Edith Somethingorother? Not racist. (Wrong).

So we'd go through this entire routine, the Crown would say it was "content" with the potential juror, and we'd sit there on tenterhooks waiting for the defence attorney to say "content" or "challenge". If everybody was content--the Crown always was, the defence used at least five of the twelve peremptory challenges allowed--the juror would be sworn in:

"Do you (swear/solemnly affirm) that you (juror) will well and truly try and a true deliberance make between our sovereign lady the Queen and the accused at bar whom you shall have in charge, and a true verdict give according to the evidence (so help you, God)?"

One down. Eleven to go.

Look, I get it that this all has to be nice and legal, but surely there's some way to streamline this whole process. The prospective jurors could be sworn in all at once. The triers of cause need only be sworn once themselves. And everyone knew, after the first time a juror was challenged for cause, just what that cause was and that everyone else was going to get it, too. No wonder lawyers insist on getting paid a squillion dollars an hour. I would, too.

It took over three interminable hours and ten more drawn names to get to eleven jurors.

We all sat on eleventerhooks waiting for that twelfth. We had one person announce she could not be impartial, followed by three (!) peremptory challenges from the defence attorney. Just as I thought my bladder was going to simply explode and shower the entire court in yellow justice, the defence attorney stood and rumbled "content". A sigh of relief ran through the room...and then the judge asked for nine more names, to serve as alternates. Again, my name was not called. By this time I had truly mixed emotions about that. Jokes aside, I do believe I would make a fair, impartial juror. I would love the opportunity to "a true verdict give". At the same time, if it took this long just to empanel a jury, who knows how long the trial would really take? It would of course be necessary to give the legal definition of each charge at least three times, probably more often. Chances are at least one jury member wouldn't understand the simplest of instructions. (George Carlin: "Think of how stupid the average person is, and then realize that half of 'em are STUPIDER THAN THAT!") If the judge gives explicit direction at the end of the trial, why have a jury at all? Why can't "jurist" be a paid profession, something like a lawyer without the antagonism? And yes, why aren't employers legally required to pay wages of employees serving on juries?

Waaaaah.

Seriously, though, in Ontario, jurors get squat for trials up to ten days' duration, the princely sum of $40/day for days eleven through 49, and (wow) $100/day in the unlikely event the trial runs past fifty days. This strikes me as not just unfair, but discriminatory. Remove the financial hardship from this civic duty, and people wouldn't feel the need to lie about why they can't serve. You'd get a much more representative sample, including more poor people. In the event the accused is poor--and lots of them are--the jury would more closely resemble his peers. Wouldn't it?

I will say this. It was an experience just being part of a jury panel. I hope to be able to follow the trial I would have been a part of. But at the same time, I'm glad I get to go to work tomorrow, and that's not something I say often.

Sing it, Aretha!

I've been a hockey fan nearly as long as I've been alive. Longer, if love of a game can be transferred through DNA. My dad has been a Leaf fan since the days of Armstrong and Bower--those halcyon days of yore when the Toronto Maple Leafs would routine sip champagne from Lord Stanley's chalice--and that love of the game and team has passed unto me, his son.

In my long-time tenure as a fan, the NHL has gone through several eras. We had the Broad Street Bullies of the 1970s: those Flyer teams were the personification of Conn Smythe's legendary aphorism "if you can't beat 'em in the alley, you can't beat 'em on the ice". Anyone thinking today's game too violent should be cautioned not to watch game tapes circa 1972-78.

The 1980s saw "firewagon hockey", characterized most often by high scoring games in which few leads were safe and few deficits insurmountable. Ten or more players cracked the 100-point barrier every season, led by Wayne Gretzky, who had more than 200 points an astonishing three times. Nobody before or since has had 200 points in a season even once, although Mario Lemieux did once finish with 199.

The NHL of the 1990s saw the addition of several teams in non-traditional markets and a corresponding dilution of the overall talent level, which led inevitably to a more defensive mindset among most NHL coaches. Goaltending, always vital to a team's post-season success, evolved tremendously over this period; few pre-1990s goalies would survive for long in today's game.

The 2000s brought us the NHL lockout and the subsequent salary cap, which has affected the game in many ways, some good (parity) and some not so good (ridiculous long-term, front-loaded contracts).

Here we are in 2011, and the state of the game is debatable. Tractor pulls still routinely outdraw NHL hockey on U.S. television. Several of those 1990s expansion teams are tottering on the brink of financial collapse. More concerning is the prevalence of cheap-shotting and overall dirty play. Here, let me Cooke you up an example:

HOW IS THIS MAN STILL ALLOWED TO PLAY NHL HOCKEY?

Cooke was recently suspended a paltry four games for his latest dirty play (not shown in this video) on Fedor Tyutin. In the past, he has ended players' seasons and in the case of Marc Savard, quite possibly careers. It's sickening to me that a player like this is allowed to draw a paycheque. This is behaviour than in most other contexts would land someone in jail.

And while Cooke may be the most egregious example of cheapshot artist, he's far from the only one. Indeed, reckless disregard has become almost a default style of play in recent years. An excellent opinion piece by James Mirtle of the Globe and Mail suggests the reason is money, more specifically the gross difference in salaries between the NHL and the minor leagues. Most of the players who deliberately intend to injure are those "on the bubble" between the glamour and comparative riches of the big leagues and minor league ignominy. Mirtle calls for the abolition of the "useless" fourth line in the hopes that it might mean a greater respect amongst players.

I'd go further, myself, and eliminate not lines but entire teams. The Hockey News once ran an interesting thought experiment: what if there were still only six teams in the NHL? They cherry-picked the rosters of thirty NHL squads to form six elite teams that would make even the most casual hockey fan drool. I wouldn't expect anything so drastic, but the contraction of even two teams would mean a noticeable uptick in the league talent level.

In the meantime--and perhaps that should be two words, "mean time"--we have cheapshots precipitating brawlfests like the Montreal-Boston game last week (fourteen fights) and the Pittsburgh-Islanders match the other night (seventeen fights).

Now, I'm not one of Mike Milbury's pansies. I like me a good fight in a hockey game, and Puck Daddy knows I'm not alone. Nobody leaves the room during a fight. But seventeen in one sixty minute game? That's not a hockey game, it's a joke. Not a funny one.

Don Cherry calls it "old time hockey". I have a real admiration for Cherry, but in this case he's wrong: "old-time hockey" didn't have quite so many cheap shots, and it did have a healthy respect for the opposition. You may have hated the team you were playing--hell, the Leafs and Canadiens players travelling from Toronto by train for the second leg of a home-and-home would avoid all contact with each other, even if it meant going without food and drink for the trip--but you recognized the guy beneath that hated jersey was a fellow hockey player and human being.

Respect. That is what's missing, and not just from hockey. There's little to no respect anywhere else any more. You certainly don't see it in politics. Nor in grocery stores. Trust me on that one. The worst thing is, once you allow disrespect to gain a foothold, it rapidly eats away at everything in sight until your entire culture is rotten to the core.

There's Your Election

So, as usual, Canadians don't want an election right now. They apparently would rather just let Harper govern for the rest of his life, dragging the country further and further right as he goes.

What if the Liberals were to, oh, I don't know, stand up for themselves? Even just a wee bit?

I for one am sick unto death of these damned attack ads. They really should be illegal, especially since we are NOT in an election campaign right now. But that's not to say I wouldn't welcome a nice gutter punch from Ignatieff and crew.

Since the Conservatives are so gung-ho on attacking Ignatieff on patriotic grounds, he should perhaps start there. He could mention how Harper has expressed profound admiration for America under George W. Bush...in no less august a forum than the

spend half an hour or more outlining all the nasty things Stephen Harper has said about Canada over the years. Especially trenchant:

"Canada is a northern European welfare state in the worst sense of the term." It's a "second-tier socialist country, boasting ever more loudly about its economy and social services to mask its second world status, led by a second-world strongman appropriately suited to the task." At one point, Harper urged that "Westerners, but Albertans in particular, need to think hard about their future in this country." And, of course, "You won't recognize Canada when I get through with it."

Sure we will, Steve-O. It'll look just like the worst parts of America. We'll have America's failed policies on crime (and incidentally, they're keeping how much it'll cost us a secret.)

We'll have a country increasingly polarized and fragmented, increasingly concerned with narrower and narrower definitions of "the common good". We'll have SUN TV News (aka FOX News North) to tell us how filthy and evil the Liberals are, not to mention the commie NDP. Our social programs will slowly be starved of funding on the grounds that they're, well, socialist.

Is this your vision of Canada? It sure as hell isn't mine.

Oddly enough for an Alberta separatist, Harper is now warning of the perils of a Quebec separatist movement that is all but dead.

Question

The love of my life sounded exasperated. "Does anybody live without vices?" she asked. I didn't know how to answer the question; it's a thorny one.

Eva, yesterday, celebrated her 100th smoke free day. She's quit smoking in the past--once for four years--but this is the first time she'd ever quit "cold turkey". (Aside: what a weird phrase that is. Nobody seems to agree on its etymology. I like the theory that the "cold turkey season", i.e. post-Thanksgiving/Christmas, signalled the end of excessive alcohol intake.)

Wikipedia states that a supposed advantage of the cold turkey method is that, "by not actively using supplemental methods, the person avoids thinking about the habit and its temptation, and avoids further feeding the chemical addiction." The last part of that sentence is correct; the first is utter hogwash. Eva still thinks about smoking. She's angry that she can't be a "social smoker", one of those people who smokes once in a blue moon. It won't happen. If she has so much as one puff, she'll be a pack a day smoker in no more than a week.

My love has an addictive personality. Cigarettes are far from the only thing she has given up in her life. Most of her addictions have been licit, some illicit, and all of them seemingly interchangeable. She'd quit one thing only to take up another. It's part of who she is: I suspect that, if it were possible to perform a total addictionectomy, Eva would lose a lot of her drive to succeed, a drive that fuels her waking existence.

Because one of the things you could say Eva is addicted to is good for her--and anyone else's--condition. She has an incurable thirst for knowledge. It has served her very well over her personal and professional life. It's an "addiction" worth keeping.

Before you say "ah, it's so simple, just turn the rest of her addictions to healthy ends!", consider exercise. Eva lasted considerably longer at her gym than many people. Her trainer told her the good feelings she got from exercising would eventually become self-sustaining: that she would exercise just to get those good feelings. A year later...oh, yes, she would get those nice feelings after lifting a cumulative twenty thousand pounds (and I get horrid feelings just looking at that figure), but as she put it, exercise is like hitting yourself on the head with a hammer because it feels so good when you stop." Those good feelings are so much easier to obtain. Say, by means of a puff. Or a sip. Or a toke. Or a pill. Or any number of other things.

I have my own issues, and Dad's episode last month has brought those into stark relief. I need to stop treating food as entertainment and start thinking of it as medicine. That's a difficult adjustment at the best of times--it is a cruel, cruel irony that absolutely everything you're supposed to eat tastes like sawdust.

My biggest bugaboo--like most, I'd say--is portion size. Did you know that a box of Kraft Dinner supposedly constitutes four servings? That you're expected to eat only eleven potato chips at once? I look at the "proper" size meals with incredulity: yeah, maybe I'll eat that and live, but that sound you hear is my stomach, gurgling as it sucks all the joy out of the room in search of more sustenance.

It carries over into my drinks. I don't drink alcohol...never really saw the point of it, to be honest. But coffee? Cola? I am a caffeine-o-holic, suffering from the world's number one unacknowledged addiction. Just two cups of joe in the morning, but I'm kidding myself: the cups are mugs. Each one holds three standard cups. I've limited my cola intake over the past couple of weeks, and I miss it. The alternatives just don't compare.

Eva's latest weaning: aspartame. (While healthier than sugar, it's not the best thing for a diabetic to consume.) The Diet Pepsi has thus gone out the window, leaving us with (ick) water. I'd suggest we'll be down to "bread and water" by the end of this year...but bread's a no-no on the low-carb diet that has, to date, been our most successful undertaking.

Successful, yes, but at the price of constant vigilance: let one scoop of mashed potatoes into your life and you'll flood your carburetor in short order. It's kind of like that single puff of a cigarette. I lost a good deal of weight and felt good doing it. As good as I felt tucking in to a plate of honest-to-goodness food? Not even close.

Does anybody live without vices? And if so, do they really live happily?

The Great Disconnect?

"You can not be responsible for how clearly your message is received. Only for how clearly it is sent."

--Neale Donald Walsch

Very good, if brief, article in today's Globe on what the author terms the "great disconnect" that Facebook and the like have wrought.

Twenty years ago, if you couldn't meet face-to-face, you had two options for staying in touch. One was the postal system, now sneeringly dubbed "snail-mail". The other is still around, yet according to this article, increasingly shunned: the telephone.

Snail-mail is, of course, incredibly slow. A conversation by mail is pretty much out of the question: by the time you get an answer, you may not have forgotten the question, but like as not you've forgotten the emotional state you were in when you asked it. Yet books of letters qualify as Literature, with a capital L: the very laggardly nature of the postal system lends itself very well to deep, introspective communication.

I'd argue that telephones by nature foster disconnect. My thoughts on this are heavily influenced by David Foster Wallace's Infinite Jest:

A traditional aural‐only conversation — utilizing a hand‐held phone whose earpiece contained only 6 little pinholes but whose mouthpiece -- rather significantly, it later seemed -- contained 62 or 36 little pinholes — let you enter a kind of highway‐hypnotic semi‐attentive fugue: while conversing, you could look around the room, doodle, fine‐groom, peel tiny bits of dead skin away from your cuticles, compose phone‐pad haiku, stir things on the stove; you could even carry on a whole separate additional sign‐language‐and‐exaggerated‐facial‐expression type of conversation with people right there in the room with you, all while seeming to be right there attending closely to the voice on the phone. And yet — and this was the retrospectively marvelous part — even as you were dividing your attention between the phone call and all sorts of other idle little fuguelike activities, you were somehow never haunted by the suspicion that the person on the other end’s attention might be similarly divided. During a traditional call, e.g., as you let’s say performed a close tactile blemish‐scan of your chin, you were in no way oppressed by the thought that your phonemate was perhaps also devoting a good percentage of her attention to a close tactile blemish‐scan. It was an illusion and the illusion was aural and

aurally supported: the phone‐line’s other end’s voice was dense, tightly

compressed, and vectored right into your ear, enabling you to imagine that the

voice’s owner’s attention was similarly compressed and focused . . . even though your own attention was not, was the thing. This bilateral illusion of unilateral attention was almost infantilely gratifying from an emotional standpoint: you got to believe you were receiving somebody’s complete attention without having to return it. Regarded with the objectivity of hindsight, the illusion appears arational, almost literally fantastic: it would be like being able both to lie and to trust other people at the same time.

There are times I hate the telephone. It has all the perils and few of the pleasures of a face-to-face conversation. Lacking body language cues, people talking on telephones can easily misinterpret each other. Worse, responses are required instantly: not always desirable, especially should your conversation develop into an argument.

Enter the next generations of communication tools: email, texting, and social media sites like Facebook.

EMAIL is increasingly rare today, probably for the same reasons "snail mail" is obsolete. It's too slow. I'm in that "tweener" generation that goggles at what I just wrote, but if you ask someone half my age, odds are that's what they'll tell you. Odds are also that they're bullshitting...but they may not know it.

It's not speed the yowwens are decrying: their beloved texting is no slower (and no faster) than an email. It's depth. Email, like snail mail before it, connotes a depth of communication to which increasingly few are willing to plunge. Email is slower than a text message only because it's generally longer. It requires more attention of the reader. A Twitter-feed or a text message--140 characters at most--can be read and digested in a single glance. I'm not sure how much shallower we can get...I'm only sure we'll soon find out.

Facebook counts among its denizens over half a billion people, including most (not quite all) of the people I care about. It's become my default communications tool. When Dad had his heart attacks two weeks ago and I was incommunicado, Eva very helpfully updated my Facebook status so that everyone would know where I was and that Dad was okay. No other tool I can think of would apprise so many people so easily.

Am I, as the article above suggests, a "narcissistic digital native" who expects "continuous connection", but who will "shut others off" when I "don't have the time or the will"? I'll address each allegation in turn.

NARCISSISTIC: enough of what I think about me. What do you think about me? No, seriously, any blogger completely devoid of narcissism won't remain a blogger for long. Yet I don't suffer the delusion that the world revolves around me. I like to think I can write, and that my writings will be read and appreciated...but I'd still write this blog if nobody read it.

EXPECTS CONTINUOUS CONNECTION? Please God, no. I demand connection on my time and terms. Maybe that says something even worse about me. I don't think so. Leave something in your Facebook status and I'll see it tonight, tomorrow or next week. I still don't often carry my cell, and in any event don't have voice mail on it: if you want to call me, the safest way is to call my landline and leave a message...which I will retrieve and attend to as soon as I can.

"SHUT OTHERS OFF WHEN I DON'T HAVE THE TIME OR THE WILL? Guilty as charged...and I hope each and every one of you out there is every bit as guilty as I am. It's nothing personal, and we all do it, don't we? Who here has never screened a call? Held off on answering a message of any kind?

All in all, while I appreciate that Facebook might promote a disconnect in some cases, I don't believe it does for me...