30 October 2003

'Very Well Then, I Contradict Myself'


As someone very much concerned with the tradition of nonsense literature, you can only imagine how fascinating the Dubya administration is to Doctor J. Shades of Lewis Carroll perhaps? The great lesson of nonsense writing-- just because something is illogical doesn't mean it doesn't make sense, and just because something makes sense doesn't mean it's logical.

Case in point: Dubya is right that the more successful the US is in Iraq, the more vehemently their opponents will attack them: but, the question is, if those attacks are successful, doesn't this mean the original premise of success was premature? But does that mean the entire campaign has been unsuccessful? But what is a successful military campaign? Do we measure success by the number of things we blow up or by the number of objectives we accomplish? Can a war that hasn't succeeded in its objectives, if it ever had them, still be a success? So what is success? And has the US succeeded in succeeding? And can the US succeed in establishing a viable succession to Saddam? And will that successive regime be any more successful than the last, especially in terms of its susceptibility to successive American dicta? Or will the US simply have succeeded in installing a regime that will successfully reject American policy, secede from the succession the administration wanted and succeed to successfully undermine the very idea of success? Alas, the snickering catastrophe of success!

And with this suckering subject of success, surcease!!!

Where is Humpty Dumpty when we need him? Oh, that's right: all the king's horses and all the king's men couldn't (successfully) put Humpty Dumpty back together again....

(Note: you'll need the free NYTimes subscription to read the article linked above. Or should I say access successfully? I know, I know, I'll stop. Right...about...now.)

[Exit Doctor J, succeeded by a snicker]

'The Simpsons May Be On A Lousy Channel But They're On TV'


Yet another reason to love The Simpsons. Incredulous tittering can no doubt be heard from behind the animated arras.

On Professionalism


From today's Adam @ Home, I simply had to post this, which hits a little too close to home. Always, dear friends, remember that Dr J only makes it look easy. ;-)



To see other Adam @ Home strips, click here.

~~Dream The Impossible~~ -- BANG!!


Slinger has two recent columns in The Toronto Star that are worth checking out, both of them in the past few days: one from today's paper that should alert people as to why, if there is a Hell indeed, the seventh circle of it certainly involves karaoke; and another from Tuesday on the beauty of former Ontario premier Mike Harris. Slinger's columns are among the rare virtues of the Toronto Star, a paper otherwise so tepid as to be appropriate most for the wrapping of fish and chips.

My Life As A Blog


A few short notes:

This blog has been told it is "kinda confusing." This blog is confused by this. Does anyone else find this blog confusing? If so, any suggestions?

It has also been alleged that this blog is "vulgar." This blog says, a la Mel Brooks, that's bullshit (even if accepts the compliment). ;-)

And this blog is surprised to note that it has reached 2500 hits. How on earth did this happen? Especially with no dirty pictures to offer? Well, except perhaps this one.

Who (or what), in the end, is this blog to disturb history? ;-)

29 October 2003

~~And I Wish My Writing Would Come~~


There's an interesting (if somewhat out of date) article on Van Morrison by Sean Elder at Salon that's worth reading. In many ways, it's the same Morrisography that's been around for decades, but it's impressive that the Man continues to command lengthy discussion, 36 years after his first solo album. And, no, this blog still hasn't got around to purchasing the new album but which it eventually must.

Ouch!


And the Tories wonder why they got the boot.

27 October 2003

O Canada!


As you can imagine, this blog is beaming with pride.

Shudder....


So, the winners are in:

TOP TEN SCARIEST FILM MOMENTS ACCORDING TO CHANNEL 4 (U.K.) POLL
(see more complete article here)

1) The Shining (1980) Jack Nicholson chops through the door and shouts "here's Johnny"

2) The Exorcist (1973) Possessed girl's rotating head and projectile vomit

3) Jaws (1975) Severed head falls from boat

4) Alien (1979) - Alien bursts out of John Hurt's chest

5) The Blair Witch Project (1999) Heather Donahue in tears in the woods

6) Ring (1998) Sadako crawls through the television

7) Halloween (1978) Serial killer Michael's face appears behind Jamie Lee Curtis in a house full of dead bodies

8) The Texas Chainsaw Massacre (1974) Leatherface's general reign of terror

9) The Omen (1976) Oscar-winning eerie music score

10) A Nightmare On Elm Street (1984) First appearance of horror icon Freddy Krueger

This blog would probably have voted for Kathy Bates' nude scene in About Schmidt. Talk about waking up in a cold sweat....

Seriously, though my vote would have been for The Exorcist. It's still wrenching-- almost as wrenching as watching George W. Bush attempt to form a coherent sentence.

By the way, it looks like Scary Movie 3 scared off the competition at the box office this weekend. And apparently Angelina Jolie's film career needs to be rushed to an emergency ward. What is it, Dr. J? It's a branch of a hospital where they take care of people in immediate suffering, but that's not important right now. Beyond Borders came in at number 11, earning a mere $2 million in its opening weekend in 1800 or so theatres. Ouch. (We're talking Gigli level numbers here. Actually, Gigli made more than that, but in more theatres.) Although Tomb Raider II made money, it didn't make anywhere near what it was expected to make, and her last several films have been commercial and critical duds. In short, she risks being dismissed as the loopy Lara Croft wonder, of interest primarily to the tabloids rather than directors or producers. And that would be a shame.

Mounds Of Mounds


What I can't believe is that these women volunteered. Now if *I* wanted to do this, I'd surely need a bankroll slightly larger than the gross domestic product of Lichtenstein. (Of course, if I'm wrong, just let me know and I'll compile a list for the future....)

Hold On, There's Something Caught In My Teeth...


You all know this blog absolutely had to provide a link to this article.

Evidently Chloe Sevigny is an actress who will go all out for (ahem) a part. Now that's what I call 'method acting.'

The Gates Of Hell


I wonder how it will take for this to become yet another pain in our collective asses. I'll believe the promises of increased security and near-transparent patching when I see them. *rolls eyes*

Notice this, too: "One aspect of Longhorn that developers should like a lot: To work properly, most of the key improvements will require new versions of current applications. Old applications will run, but the experience will only be a slight improvement over Windows XP. If the platform is successful, it should generate substantial application revenue for third parties." Which means we'll all be shelling out all over again for new versions of old programmes that we don't want to tinker with anyway. Pardon me while I mutter to myself a word that rhymes with 'hawk succour.'

26 October 2003

Old Loves


They give the inspiration and they add to the performance.

Irish MistBushmills Ten Year Old Single Malt

Who knew they had their own websites? (And if you did know and did not inform me, prepare to die.)

*Deafening Primal Scream Followed By A Stunning Requiem of Unfathomable Profanity*


I was almost finished writing an extensive response to this from the Zaniac (except in an email and not as a blog entry per se) when my computer did that nasty little thing it does, shutting itself off for no apparent reason and with no advance warning. Suffice it to say, everything was lost and now I have to write it all over again, in what will probably be a truncated and less-inspired form. It should also be noted that Dr J's response to this was a truly symphonic series of 'uck' and 'itch' inflected words defining the excremental, fellatinous and matriphilic nature of my illegitimately-sired computer.

I don't think it made a difference. *shrug*

Zaniac, if you're reading this: will try to reassemble what I wrote, of which I only clearly remember saying that the nobles in Richard II wouldn't have given a good goddamn if Richard poeticized or philosophized or raped kittens in his spare time, so long as he kept his bloody hands off their lands and out of their coffers. Everything else now is a blur.

But that requiem would have been something to record for the ages. David Mamet and Stephen Berkoff would have been proud.

25 October 2003

Goodbye Yankees!


I'm sure Dave Barry and his fellow Floridians are ecstatic. A complete game five-hit shutout for Josh Beckett. Excellent.

I wonder who Steinbrenner's going to fire now? *snicker*

For Those Wondering


This blog promises that one day it will write about literature again. One day.

This blog is entirely too sexy for itself right now. ;-)

Little Bastards


"I have been assured by a very knowing American of my acquaintance in London, that a young healthy child well nursed is at a year old a most delicious, nourishing, and wholesome food, whether stewed, roasted, baked, or boiled; and I make no doubt that it will equally serve in a fricassee or a ragout." (Jonathan Swift, A Modest Proposal)

Oy vey.

The Times They Are A-Changin'


It's nice to learn that Steinbach, Manitoba has now become liveable. My lord, how did they survive the long nights?

It's Called A Box-Cutter


This is the last thing you want at an airport.

'We're All Frightened And Horny...'


The best thing about the Hallowe'en season: Treehouse of Horror marathons and their gleeful sense of the macabre. Ex-cellent.

Check this out from The Guardian.

'Remember me as I am: filled with murderous rage...'

How Dare They Call Me That...


The Not-So-Good Doctor is a little shocked to discover that in the past two weeks he's had the word 'mentor' used by a few people to describe him. This is profoundly disturbing, especially for the Doctor's vain desire to maintain the delusion of his own vitality and rakishness.

The Doctor would like to assure everyone that he remains a completely untrustworthy rapscallion utterly devoid of wisdom.

We now return you to your regularly scheduled blog.

24 October 2003

'But That's Not Important Right Now.'


Two new films are of interest to this blog this week: one is the biopic of Sylvia Plath starring Gwyneth Paltrow which is receiving mixed reviews (here is the review from the National Post); the other is the goofball Scary Movie 3 which seems to have more promise than its predecessors if only because it had the good sense to lose the Wayans brothers and retain Airplane! co-produced David Zucker. I don't want to say anything about the Plath film yet, partially because I'm all too aware of how dreadfully her story could be rendered. Scary Movie 3, though, is of a genre of film for which I have to admit an inexplicable and probably indefensible fondness. There's something to movies that go so shameless against the idea of seriousness, that revel so blatantly in their own irreverent silliness. I know what you're thinking: Dr J, surely you can't be serious about enjoying such trifles! Yes, yes, I am serious. And don't call me Shirley.

(You had to see that coming... If not, you probably shouldn't be reading this blog in the first place.)

Sole Sensation


Pediatrists and women around the world will likely be watching this story with great interest. (And perhaps a bit more.)

Personally, this blog likes the psychiatrist's very scientific commentary at the end of the article.

Seventeen Inches!?!?!


Evidently, this young lady is not bulimic.

I Would Be Pissed Too....


It's obvious that some city planner had very serious issues.

23 October 2003

What's Hecuba To Him?


There's an interesting article in today's NYTimes on the possibilities for comparison between the current American international situation and Homer's The Iliad. There's a greater irony to all this: the president that can be felled by a Dorito might not in fact be all that far from the king with a weak tendon. Something to ponder....

22 October 2003

Once More Unto The Britches (NOTE: CONSTANTLY CHANGING)


After chatting with the Zaniac yesterday, I decided I'd repost Classics, Porn Style (see below) and invite people to make a few of their own offerings. Get your dirty little minds out, people....


This has been around for a while, but here's a list of classic-based porn titles....

As I Lay Diane
The Ass Menagerie
As You Lick It
Beth Comes for the Archbishop
The Bugger's Opera
Captain Fellatio Hornblower
A Christmas in Carol
Cock Without Hands
David Cop A Feel
The Devil and Daniel Webster in Miss Jones
Eat Me in St. Louis
The Enema of the People
Five Little Peckers and How They Grew
Four Saints in Three Unnatural Acts
The Four Whoresmen of the Apocalypse
French the Lieutenant's Woman!
A Handful of Bust
Hedda Gobbler
Her Groin Was My Valley
He Stoops to Honk Her
Inside Daisy Miller
Ivan's Ho'
Lady Windemere's Fanny
Lord Jism
The Lust of the Mohicans
Madame Ovary
Mansfield Pork
The Man Who Came on Dinner
A Member at the Wedding
Moaning Becomes Electra
Moby-Dyke
The Naked in the Dead
Of Human Bondage and Discipline
One Day in the Wife of Ivan Denisovich
The Penile Colony
Penis and Adonis
The Pit and the Pudendum
Portrait of the Artist as a Hung Man
Pubic Enemy
The Satanic Nurses
The Shape of Things That Come
The Schlong of Roland
A Tale of Two Clitties
Tales of a Wayside In and Out
Tess Does the D'Urbervilles
The Three Muffketeers
Twat Makes Sammy Run
Uncle Ream Us
Wetness For The Prosecution
The Wife of Bath's Tail
and a few more from Doctor J:

The Layer of Casterbridge
The Old Man And The Semen
Tight Ass Andronicus
Rosencrantz and Guildenstern Get Head
The Pound And The Fury
Quim and Punishment
The Apprenticeship of Duddy's Crevice
The Juice of Malta
The Iceman Cummeth
Flossed Horizon
The Golden Hole
The Burn Of The Screw
A Cunt Tickle For Liebowitz
The Waist Gland
Gargantua and Panty Drool
Fifth Jizzness
Spankenstein
Fear Of Clothing In Las Vegas
The Bitch Liker's Guide To The Galaxy
Corey's Old Anus
King Leer
Pair of Thighs Lost
Fair and Hot #451
What Maisie Blew
Bride's Head Revisited
The Crying of Lot 69
The Scat In The Hat
Every Man And His Hummer
The Ivory Shower
Snatch 22
Thus Sprayed Zarathrustra
The Vision of Piers Plowing Men
The Sphincter of Dorian Gray
The Legend of Sleazy Swallow

and the inevitable

Load Of The Flies



And yet a few more from the perennially perverted mind of the Not-So Good Doctor:

A Midsummer Night's Wet Dream
U Lick These
(c.f. James Joyce)
Astro Fillin' Stella
The Bum Waiter (a la Pinter)
and Doctor, Fist Us!

(and no, I won't be appearing in the film version of the last.)


A few more additions:

Barney's Virgin
Pleasure for Pleasure
Julius, Seize Her!
Finnegans Whack
Donkey Hottie
Diving Into The Crack
Cry The Beloved Cunt

and, in a nod to criticism:

The Educated Vagination

(with apologies to Mordecai Richler, Shakespeare, Joyce, Cervantes, Adrienne Rich, Alan Paton and Northrop Frye)


Yet more:

Jizzery
The Rape of Lou's Crease
Clitoris and Cressida
Interuterine With A Vampire
The Return of the Kink
Everything That Rises Must Emerge
End Games
They Shoot Like Horses, Don't They?
A Buddy In Scarlet
The Wood Soldier
Daisy-Chain Miller
Mutiny On The Booty
The Unbearable Lightness of Breeding
Sense and Sensuality
Rump Hole Of The Bailey
Cleaves Of Ass
('Cum, said my soul....')

and

(picture it) A Cock Worked Orange (ouch!)

(with further apologies to Stephen King, Shakespeare again, Tolkien, Anne Rice, Flannery O'Connor, Samuel Beckett, Horace McCoy, Conan Doyle, Ford Madox Ford, Henry James, Nordhoff and Hall, Milan Kundera, Jane Austen, John Mortimer, Walt Whitman and Anthony Burgess.)

And yes, this may be a silly amusement, but 'the play's the thing.' :-)

When Pathetic Worn-Out Former Celebrities Attack


All together now: Awwwwww....

'You Are Getting Sleepy, Very Very Sleepy...'


This boggles the mind.

Meanwhile, this is going to reopen an antique debate.

This blog hopes participants in the debate look into the former before trying to evacuate their assumptions on people. I know, I know: wishful thinking... *shrug*

Ahem.


No comment.

(Oh, sometimes it is hard to behave oneself.)

Aussie Manners


Puuuuuh-lease.

Nothing To Lose But Their....


I don't quite see the logic of this, but I'm sure a few people were 'charged' by the gesture. Protesters of the world, take note....

The Changing Of The Guard


This blog wonders if Milo and his posse are ready for RCMP duty.

Hmmmmm


I don't quite know what to say about this. And if you think I'm explaining why I have my doubts on one part of it, you are out of your mind.

21 October 2003

The Seven-Minute Itch


Those scientists really are a perverted lot, aren't they? I'm sure the ladies in this study may not have experienced the heroin effect...

And Now We Know What The Handbasket Is...


Because it's confirmed: there is no hope.

Oogah chuggah oogah oogah oogah chuggah...

Dr J and Dr T


Spent part of last night rewatching Robert Altman's film Dr T And The Women, a film that has just so much bad about it that I can only use a phrase as stilted as"so much bad about it" to describe it. Now, don't get me wrong: when Altman is on-- as with Gosford Park, Nashville, Short Cuts, The Player, McCabe and Mrs Miller-- he's brilliant; but when he's off-- as with Popeye, Ready to Wear and this abominable piece of cinematic crap-- he's stunningly bad. The film is so cacophonous I wanted to start screaming at the characters to shut the hell up for a minute just so I could hear what any one of the characters was saying. Worse, the script (as much as there every really is one with an Altman film) is ludicrous, with an ending that looks like a cheap imitation of Magnolia's. But watching was almost compulsory, in the same way that one can't look away from a train wreck. And the film's penultimate shots will certainly derail most teenage boys from even joking about growing up to become OB-GYNs. (What is it with the recent trend that says that any film that decides to be graphic in its dealings with human anatomy absolutely have at the same time to be excruciatingly dull? See also the films of Catherine Breillat.)

Another long, long day pends as I set out to make my way to the university. It's Richard III on the menu today, but I have a hunch (*groan*) we'll still be talking about our previous plays. Perhaps the Duke of Clarence was fortunate to have been stabbed and drowned in a vat of wine.

20 October 2003

Back But Not


Ah yes, it's been a bit since I entered anything on this blog, and I'm not really going to remedy that situation right now. So little time... In the interim, interest readers might want to check out the new blog of a former student of mine here.

Also the reviews are starting to filter in for the new Van Morrison album What's Wrong With This Picture. You can check some of them out here, here and here.

The Governor General's Award nominees for literature are out, and it looks like it's yet another love-fest for Margaret Atwood. Atwood is a bit like the Meryl Streep of Canadian literature, a constant nominee and winner of awards-- and she has a following that thinks the sun shines out her ass. To my mind, though, she's tiresome and overrated. I'm reminded of the Air Farce sketch in which two characters discover themselves in the horrifying position of being trapped inside Atwood's head just as she's about to deliver another speech. Hehehe. Being Margaret Atwood sounds to me more bone-chilling than any horror film out there.

And, everyone should check out Mr Barry's column today. Delightfully ludicrous... And check out his column yesterday on the Marlins and the Yankees. You've got to love seeing the eight-letter a-word in print. ;-)

That's it for now. Gee, I feel like a groundhog sticking its head out just long enough to see its shadow.

P.S. (And in this case, P.S. should probably stand for 'Parting {ahem} Shot.') We have yet further proof that scientists really are a bunch of perverts. ;-) Pay special attention to the oh-so-clinical terminology. Anyone that can read this article without chuckling hysterically is simply not human.

12 October 2003

'Release the River!'


There's nothing like a good, healthy competitive spirit. They do call them watersports, after all....

(with apologies to Treebeard)

The Agony Of It


If this doesn't put the fear of God into you, then, my sorry one, *nothing* will.

11 October 2003

Understanding Bloom


Here is turksheadreview of Harold Bloom's Shakespeare: The Invention of the Human, a very funny review that quite properly describes Bloom's approach in that admittedly problematic book as giving academics "the enema we deserve." Very funny.

Charging Against Academic Sterility


Frank Kermode wrote some time ago an interesting review of John Ellis' Literature Lost that I wish I could make all of my colleagues and students read. Please do. :-)

Quentin's Querulous Counting and Other Quibbles With QT


There's an interesting piece in The Scotsman by Mark Kermode (any relation to Sir Frank? I have no idea) about Quentin Tarantino's highly self-mythologizing gestures in relation to the release of Kill Bill Volume 1. One question for Kermode, though: yes, Tarantino is a revisionist self-historian, but could you expect anything less from a director so much enamoured with the very act of revisioning, whether thematically, stylistically, and structurally?

In another vein: this review seems to me to belong in the "Give Me A Bloody Break" file. Or does that make me a racist for dismissing this ridiculous exercise in smug punditry? This review reminds me all too much of a good deal of the cultural-critical pap now called scholarship in the academy. Oy.

And in another, er, vein, this review of the film had me chuckling, largely because I had moreorless the same thoughts in regard to Pulp Fiction. I may even have made the gesture myself a few dozen times....

I have to admit, I like this critic's observation, that Tarantino is the Madonna of the film world. With all that entails-- for good or for ill-- that sounds a little eerily right.

I Do, I Will.


Let's face it, the knives are out.

I'm no defender of Rummy, but this blog cannot help but hear an echo of 2 Henry IV, with Rummy to be banished a la Falstaff. Translation: Bush knows he's in very serious trouble, and it's time to throw off a symbol of a former self in the name of political expediency. It remains to be seen if Karl Rove, Paul Wolfowitz and company are about to become Bardolph, Nym and Pistol.

More interesting question: who is Dubya's equivalent of the Chief Justice? Food, indeed, for thought...

'Just Quiet Down Now...'


Nicholas Kristof has an interesting piece in the NY Times today about the Valerie Plame scandal that seems to offer general condemnation of all involved. I can't say I agree entirely with him-- I still think the case more serious, at least in principle, than he does-- but his column seems to me on-point and focused.

One of my great bugaboos about political discussion is the extent to which interested parties seem to become inevitable trotters out of tired old lines rather than bothering to consider patiently and seriously the issues at stake. You know the types I mean, the Crossfire types whose primary purpose seems to be to shout down their opponents rather than come to intelligent analysis or thought. I sometimes wonder why voices of the American Right, especially, tend to be intolerant blowhards when there's no necessitation for them to be so. I was lamenting this (and keep in mind that I think myself as having no political affiliation) yesterday as I was watching William Safire speak calmly and coherently, acting rather like a breath of fresh air (Safire as 'fresh air'? who'd have imagined that?) in a stiflingly cacophonic and generally deafening public debate. I find myself thinking back on the film and novel Primary Colors-- and not the Clinton aspects, but the figure of Governor Picker, played in the film by Larry Hagman, instructing his supporters to calm down, and reminding them that genuine debate isn't about getting your soundbytes in or silencing your opponents. This is a beautiful moment in the film, in part because it makes clear that this voice of reason is not coming from the Hollywood liberal left, but from a Republican. It's also a beautiful moment because it reminds me at least of the now fundamentally different natures of politicking and statesmanship. Sadly, we're in short of supply of true statespeople.

The Plame scandal, though, should serve to emphasize the extent to which political debate should be about figuring out the wisest course of action rather than clinging desperately to this sickening Hatfield and McCoys syndrome. Some very, very wrong things happened here, and something has to be done, and right now all sides sport their own nasty little aromas. What's the old truism, people? You have two ears and one mouth: use them in that proportion. Indeed.

10 October 2003

Truly, Madly, Creepily


What some people will do for a souvenir...

Well, I Guess It Could Be Worse...


I have no idea what to say about this. Be glad, those of you with sensitive digestions.

Little Prose Orgasms


Dave Barry's column today is, as always, a hoot. Today it's about the Marlins and those of us who are rooting for the Cubs, as Quixotic or drunkenly stupid as we may be.

Enjoy the wall vegetation.

Into The Mystic


Does it make me officially old if I say that I'm more intrigued by Clint Eastwood's new drama Mystic River than by the bloody glitz and glam of Quentin Tarantino's Kill Bill Volume 1? Eastwood's looks (and sounds, from the reviews I've read) like a mature, atmospheric study of the human relationships with (and responses to) evil (among other things), while Tarantino's, at least from the preliminary reviews, seems to emphasize a point I made about Pulp Fiction some years ago, that it was all style and no bloody substance. Of the Tarantino, the review from the NY Times seems on-point. Ouch. Rereading back two sentences, I see a strange statement: perhaps Tarantino in his new film is all style and too much bloody substance.

I have to say, Eastwood has really developed his won style as a director, and at his best (as I hear he is at with Mystic River) he makes films that almost no one else would or could make.

The same can be said of Tarantino, but Tarantino is a director I don't quite know what to do with. Reservoir Dogs was brilliant, but Quentin is a director who desperately needs to control his tendencies toward self-indulgence: he very often seems to be in love with his own film-making, with his own cheeky (and somewhat superior) sense of humour. I'll acknowledge his brilliance, and his capacity to make brilliant films, but there comes a point at which one wonders if stylistic ingenuity becomes a mask for something else, the inability to create or engender an emotional centre. I realize I'm in the minority when I write that Pulp Fiction was a lesser film than Jackie Brown, and, that, in fact, I think Pulp Fiction a deadly bore that constitutes one of the most vastly over-praised films of the 1990s. I wonder what sort of film Tarantino could make if he could put his monumental ego aside (apparently within the credits to Kill Bill he trumpets the movie as "the 4th film from Quentin Tarantino," as if it were a Messianic return), or at least put it in reasonable check. That's a movie I'd like to see.

Sadly, though, it looks like Kill Bill Volume 1 will be a huge hit, and that no one will see Mystic River. I'm hoping, though, I'm wrong in this prediction. I'm a-okay with everyone and their brother enjoying Kill Bill, but I hope a true attempt at an American tragedy doesn't slip through the cracks.

'No, Mr. Bond, I Expect You To Die'


If any of you watch movies, you all know want to read Peter's Evil Overlord List, which ought to mandatory reading for any of the gonzo hacks writing in Hollywood. I'm surprised Roger Ebert didn't put together a list this complete; he just identified 'the talking killer syndrome.' Cliches, cliches, cliches...

Is it ironic that I find this on the day Roger Moore is given a knighthood? Hmmmmmmmm..............

This Just In...


Iranian activist wins Nobel prize. The committee's decision to give the award to Shirin Ebadi, only the 11th woman ever to receive the Peace Prize, is something of a surprise, but not entirely: Ebadi seems, from what I've read of her, as deserving a candidate as any other I'd heard bandied about, but her win seems (appropriately) like a dynamite stick thrown into the heart of the struggle of the moderates in Iran. I wonder if it will make a difference.

09 October 2003

The Bastard's Back


As most of my primary readers know, Dr J suffers from what has for some time seemed an incurable disease: ABD. ABD is a horrible disease that can disfigure its victims. It ages them prematurely, and it generally leads to a series of confidence-assailing consequences that can push its victims toward a kind of misanthropy (or perhaps dis-anthropy) that is ultimately more self-destructive than destructive. ABD victims can end up feeling isolated, irrelevant, and even idiotic, because unlike other diseases, ABD is a disease one acquires wilfully. Yes, it is the dreaded disease of PhD candidates known as 'All But Dissertation.' *shudder*

(For those with tin cyber-ears, I should caution everyone to read much of this entry with tongue firmly in-cheek, though you'll know when to remove it. Good rule of thumb for those bothering to read this blog: more often than not, Dr J is an ironist, though his unpressed clothes might suggest otherwise. ;-) Hell even the moniker 'Dr J' is more ironic than most tend to realize.)

The dissertation is, among budding academics, the great Nobodaddy, the spectre at the end of a long road that can seem insurmountable. The problem is, there's no consensus as to whether or not the dissertation is actually something to be feared or not. According to some, the dissertation is merely another project to get done, admittedly the biggest one, but one that one should just push through and get done-- it is, for these people, an exaggerated myth, to which one might heed FDR's advice that we have nothing to fear but fear itself. According to others, however, including many of those who have completed the damn thing, it is a beast, a multiple-headed monster that can keep driving one back to one's beginnings, a beast made more terrifying by the fact that it has to be defeated in a certain way, and not simply defeated. All of us within the academic world have heard different stories of the dreaded dissertation: some aver that it's nothing finally of which to be afraid, that it's the Green Knight to an individual's Gawain, more a trial of one's commitment than anything else; others aver that it's like a Joyce novel into which begins with promise but never escapes, as extra chapters suddenly demand writing, as new texts creep into the writing and consideration, as various expectations (theoretical, sociological, verbal) seem to demand the candidate be all things at once, even things one is not given to being. Of the latter: all academics have heard the horror stories, of supervisory committees that suddenly demand new chapters on subjects not originally thought to be part of one's project, as projects become larger and larger and larger to the point they become, like the forementioned Joycean novel, the behemother, to use Thurber's word, of one's imagination and one's studies.

I'm writing about this now not just because this is something with which I live every day, but because of a recent conversation I had with the Chair of my department about the mythopoeia of the dissertation. According to the Chair, the dissertation is a project like any other, something to be gotten done: it doesn't have to be the most brilliant piece of work, it doesn't have to be the summa of one's academic career, and it doesn't have to be all things to all people, an impervious work of intellect and scholarship. I have to admit that my chat with him was comforting, and that I'm taking some solace in his urgings to step away from the expectations of perfectionism that can niggle one into self-defeating silence. Don't believe the myths, just get everything done, was the gist of his warning, and it's one I'm taking to heart. It's one I'm sure he wants me to take to heart, too, because he admitted to me the stunning numbers about PhD candidates, that more do not finish than do finish, and it is the dissertation that tends to derail most from completion, and for most, that derailment is the result of the stories that candidates hear. 'ABD' has become an academic disease that threatens the academy as much as it does an individual candidate. And he's right, of course.

But it's worth remembering, too, that the horror stories I've heard-- and that many of my colleagues have heard-- aren't lies or myths: they came from nightmarish experience, from people whose committees or supervisors made the dissertative process at the very least seem insuperable. I've known several colleagues who watched, almost impotently, as their committees allowed their dissertations to bloat from 300 pages to 600 or 700 or even a 1000 pages. (I've seen the finished dissertations: they're real.) I'm sure the Chair of my department (he's new to the position this year) regrets such things, instances where committees and supervisors basically used PhD candidates as the mouthpieces for their own arguments, for their own presumptions and assumptions about scholarship and about individual theses. In a way, such committees become like soccer- or stage-parents, living vicariously through the labour of others, without much due consideration of the effects of their vicarious living. Apolitical critics, for example, are forced to write intensely politicized documents; honest intellectual investigation can become hijacked by compulsions to include theoretical positions very often antithetical to the individual's own position; in short, the 'diss' becomes the committee's document, and not the student's. And the result can be a kind of persistent terror: that what one actually writes will never be good enough, that any project will inevitably become an exercise in academic palliative rather than genuine examination, that the project will become like the Sisyphian rock, rolling back down, and very often over Sisyphus, to be pushed back up the hill again.

(This is not undermine committees that question their candidates: I'm speaking only of those committees that make life impossible for their candidates.)

The long and the short of things is this, that ABD is an unfortunate disease that more often than not goes unaddressed, untreated. Many of its victims are left to wander, usually alone, in the wilderness, and eventually to withdraw from their programmes; part of this is just myth-making, part of it is academic uncertainty by the candidates, and another part of it is the surprisingly common tendency of supervisors and committees to make the dissertation as terrifying a project as the myths have suggested (and, indeed, to make the dissertation more someone else's project than one's own). Many of its victims, in sum, are taught to ignore their own instincts, and without one's instincts, one becomes paralysed and nothing gets done. And, I admit, I have fallen into this trap, and have been in it for some time, and my conversation with the Chair yesterday did a great deal to remind me, and to give me sanction, to trust again in my instincts and to do what I need to do, and not merely to treat the process like an inexhaustible chess game in which every move one might make will eventually lead to an unseen or, worse, seen check. It's one of the saddest things, I've realized, is that the disparity of thought within the academy about what a dissertation ought to be has led me, and a great many of my colleagues, to disavow their instincts, and to become overwhelmed by a panoply of potentially disapproving voices, especially when, in humanities-related circles especially, there will be more voices of discord than accord.

For the first time in some time, I'm feeling more confident about the idea of the dissertation, and about actively making situations work to fit me rather than trying to bend myself to fit other people's expectations and the expectations of myth (and rememer that the word 'myth' has nothing to do with fact or fiction; it merely has to do with 'story'). I can do this. I can break this disease. I will break it. I will not be yet another victim in the long line of people beaten by it. My instincts have never failed; my greatest errors have always been when I distrusted them and tried to put reason (rationality) ahead of instinct, basically when I haven't trusted myself.

I wonder how many of my colleagues over the years have been in the exact same position. Probably most of them.

Years ago, when I was doing a comprehensive examination, I ran into an old professor of mine who had supervised my BA thesis. I told him who my supervisor was, to which he said, "You? You don't need supervising." Which was, in fact, the truth. Both my BA and MA theses went largely unsupervised; I did both of them, to general acclaim, with only the barest of supervision, as I let my instincts do what they had to do (which included, with the MA thesis, abandoning everything I had done, over twenty pages worth of writing, when an epiphany suddenly occurred). With my MA thesis, I remember being fretful of my committee, and expecting the worst, until I eventually just did what I had to do, expecting the worst but resigning myself to accept whatever slings and arrows got fired at me. They were surprisingly few. My committee wound up asking me to change one word in over a hundred pages. Instinct. Admittedly terrified instinct, in part, but also determined instinct, the instinct of the man with something to prove and, it seemed, very little left to lose.

There's a larger point to all this, one of which one can all too easily lose sight, that eventually sometimesone has to say 'fuck it all, I'm doing what *I* have to do,' and stop caring about 'what I *have* to do.' The strange thing about the academic world is the extent to which it, without even trying to do so explicitly, can disable more than it enables, to which myriad possibilities can, in effect, engender impossibilities.

The time has come. Fuck it all. I'm doing what *I* have to do, and damn the consequences. Fuck the cultural materialsts, and fuck the super-theorists. Fuck the politicists and fuck those who would like to deride me as naively old-fashioned or even antiquated. Fuck those that are less interested in literature and poetry than they are in their own sociological, political, and philosophical agendae. Fuck the idea of appeasement and playing it safe. Fuck the nigglesome doubts that can cloud one's mind. And fuck, too, the myth of the beast around which I've trod too lightly too long. Those that know me, that have known my work and have worked with me, know my commitment to that which I study. My field, my work, has always been larger than I will ever be-- and, bureaucratic stuff aside, I love what I do. I love it, the whole beautifully yet intractably entangled lot. I love what I do. Maybe that's something more of us need ultimately to remember.

Bring it on. I'm ridding myself of this disease. I'm doing what I have to do, and I'm removing myself from the shackles of doubt and self-negation. And as some of you reading this well know, this is, and will be, Dr J at his strongest; some of you, I'm well aware, have been wondering when this side of Dr J-- the determined, hell-bent little bastard who's never let anything beat him, and who's always come back to surprise the hell out of even the most skeptical-- was going to come out to play.

Well, he's out, finally. And some of you know what this means. The tide is turning.

Thanks, Ross.

In the words of Jack Nicholson's The Joker, "Wait til they get a load of me."

06 October 2003

It Wasn't The Loss Of Customers...


Knowing The Man, I suspect the tavern owner in this case lost a lot more on the band's bill than in customer bills.

~~Dressed up like Falstaff...~~

HURRY UP PLEASE ITS TIME


It's worrisome when a truly divisive issue like, ahem, bisectuality dares to raise its ugly head, especially at election time.

(Note: Odd fact I never noticed before: T.S. Eliot, in The Waste Land, uses the spelling above instead of the more grammatically correct (and obvious) "HURRY UP PLEASE IT'S TIME." Not "it is time," but "its time." Certainly changes the meaning of that line from "Hurry Up, Please, It's Time" to "Hurry Up | Please Its Time," as if Time itself needed to be pleased. But what is "it"? Ah, grammatical esoterica...).

Paul Thomas Anderson Must Be Laughing His Anderson Off...


"And the river shall bring forth frogs abundantly, which shall go up and come into thine house, and into thy bedchamber, and upon thy bed, and into the house of thy servants, and upon thy people, and into thine ovens..." (Exodus 8:3)

A Novel Idea


Now if only he had invited the Bush girls....

~~Life Is A Highway...


I want to ride it all night long... ~~

The High Road


My only response to this: Go Dave, Go Dave, Go Dave....

(As an uneffected Canadian, I do not benefit from this, but one really does have to stand behind good causes.)

The Quiet American


Finally saw the much-praised 2002 film version of Graham Greene's novel The Quiet American, and I do recommend that anyone out there find it and see it. Unfortunately, the film suffered from being a critique of American foreign policy in the wake of September 11th (and, indeed, from being a small-budget picture). In fact, it was supposed to be released the same week in 2001 that the attacks on the Trade Centre occurred. Michael Caine is good as Fowler, the English journalist at the centre of the story, though I don't think he's as good in the role as many critics thought him. Also, the film twists Greene's novel a bit, ensuring that the film ends on an explicit identification of what eventually befell with American intervention in Vietnam, instead of doing what the novel did, which was to emphasize the individual guilt of Fowler. Greene's novel is ultimately more complex and more nuanced (to be expected), and his critique of American foreign policy was always subordinate to notions of action and inaction, and guilt and innocence. But the film, directed by Philip Noyce, is effective, even if Brendan Fraser seems a bit miscast in the title role. But especially for the politically proclamatory, the story of The Quiet American reminds all too well what happens when nothing is done, and what happens when the wrong things are done ostensibly for the 'right' reasons. The film isn't as good as it could have been, but at least it's better than the watered-down fifities film version with Sir Michael Redgrave.

Michael Caine in The Quiet American:  Click here for info at IMDB

Eagh



This blog would like to find something positive to say about its experience with Microsoft products. It cannot.

Beware temptations to download Media Player 9. Depending on your system, it may leave you with headaches beyond the healing of a thousand Advils. And yes, I continue to suffer the continual problems with Windows' blue screens of death and a Microsoft Word that resists all attempts to patch its own errors and flaws using Microflaccid's own programmes.

Right now, I'm thinking of the words "Kill Bill" in a context Quentin Tarantino certainly did not intend.

Say Waugh?


I hadn't heard anything about this, either, Dr. J writes, aware he's been out of too many loops for way too long: Stephen Fry has completed his directorial debut, a film version of Evelyn Waugh's novel Vile Bodies. Here is an article from the Telegraph by Waugh's grandson Alec (Alexander), and a less supportive one here from the same paper. The film stars a disparate cast from Dan Aykroyd to Peter O'Toole to ninety-odd year-old Sir John Mills, in a cameo as a cocaine-snorting geriatric. Waugh's book, by the way, is well worth the read.

Sign II Of The Pending Apocalypse


First, I find myself defending Rush Limbaugh. And now, the Chicago Cubs have made it past the first round of the NBL playoff for the first time in 95 years. Better yet, they wiped that smug smile off Ted Turner's face by knocking off his precious Atlanta Braves. In the words of Mr. Burns, "Exxxx-celllent."

Another Draft of Guinness


Ah, well this came out unbeknownst to me... The authorized biography of legendary English actor Sir Alec Guinness is being released today in the UK. Guinness' earlier 'autobiographical' books were very worthwhile reads, and it'd be interesting to see what is included (if anything) in this biography that Guinness himself chose not to discuss. I wonder if and/or when the volume will find release in North America. It looks promising....
Click here for info at Amazon
Click here for info from Amazon
.... as opposed to this controversial piece of autobiographical slurring that was concerned only with labeling Sir Alec as a closet homosexual. Even if by some stretch of the imagination he was gay or had gay tendencies (dubious: he was married for 60+ years, and had a son, Matthew, also an actor), what bloody difference does it make? This project strikes me as yet another reprehensible attempt to use sexuality as a lurid trump card in a sickening game of biographical euchre, as if some rumour of sexuality legitimized another opportunity to revisit an old well. Sexuality has always been something that only the person in question can discuss honestly and accurately: in the hands of anyone else, I'm bound to be skeptical, and, indeed, hostile, for good reason. God save me from blathersome gossip claiming to be biography.


Of the latter, see this review from The Telegraph which seems to me very astute in its assessment, and this from The Guardian by actor Simon Callow (from Four Weddings And A Funeral and A Room With A View) that is more sympathetic to O'Connor's argument but which strikes me as being of greater interest than O'Connor's obsessive interest in Guinness' sexuality (though it's worth noting that Callow, too, seems to have a private matter with Guinness). I don't blame Guinness for not wanting his friends to say anything to O'Connor when he first wrote about him in the 1990s: perhaps he knew what was coming, a kind of of combination sexual-psycho-analysis cum character assassination.

Or, perhaps, he simply believed it was none of anyone's bloody business, especially in a world that uses sexuality as a means to label and to pigeon-hole (and perhaps otherwise assail) people.

Here, by the way, is the NYTimes obit of Guinness when he died three years ago.

I'd rather remember the performances, all those magnificent moments, than anyone's (factual or otherwise) driftwood remarks on his sexuality. You know the moments-- his brilliant little smile before Obi-Wan Kenobi is struck down; his manic eyes as Holland in The Lavender Hill Mob; his gentle doddering as Monsignor Quixote; his absolute disappearance into Arab guise in Lawrence of Arabia; his brilliantly cipherous Colonel Nicholson in The Bridge On The River Kwai, a part other actors (including Charles Laughton and James Mason) thought unplayable; his ability to render even Hitler as more than a historical caricature.

Survey an artist by his or her work, that's my motto. I think it would have been Sir Alec's, too.

04 October 2003

George W. Eliot?


Found this, a poem composed of famous Dubya flubs. Very funny. Check out, too, some of the links at the bottom of the page, including "Grammatically Infirm Medical English" which includes the hilarious statements "Exam of genitalia reveals that he is circus sized," "Comes to ED complaining of vaginal breathing" and "Bleeding started in the rectal area and continued all the way to Los Angeles." The first would be impressive, the second exceptionally talented, the third astonishingly messy. One imagines that patient must have left a trail like a slug... ;-)

But perhaps there's no need to ridicule Dubya because he does it so well for himself. Check out these lines, written for his wife Laura:

Dear Laura,

Roses are red, violets are blue,
oh my lump in the bed, I miss you.
The distance, my dear, has been such a barrier,
next time you want an adventure, just land on a carrier.

Think I'm kidding? Check it out. Churchill once said he could forgive a man anything but bad prose. But he really should have said something about truly abominable verse. This is thin praise, indeed, that Dubya is at least a better President than he is a poet. Dear, dear me...

Flaming Limbaugh and The Plame Game


Alas, this blog is feeling (yes, I know, how can a blog feel, you're asking; well it can, it's developed sentience on its own, even if it's a very limited sentience) rather dessicated lately, mainly because there's been a lot of other stuff going. Especially with setting up the new academic year and catching up-- admittedly laggardly-- on email, exploring the net and/or writing my own thoughts and ramblings has taken the brunt of my distraction and general fatigue. *Sigh* There's never enough time, or enough energy, to get everything done. As horrible as this sounds, this entry is a kind of palliative, not so much for this blog's readers but for its creator who's feeling intolerably guilty about not keeping this thing sufficiently updated. It's like, I imagine, how some feel when they fall off a diet ('Dr. J' and 'diet' are utterly oxymoronic, because as many of you know, were Dr. J to diet per se, he'd vanish into oblivion). It becomes about failing to keep disciplined....

On to matters....

My Lord, is this possible? Can I find myself actually wanting to defend Rush Limbaugh? This must be a sign of a pending apocalypse. Limbaugh was pushed to resign from ESPN after making some remarks that riled many to accuse him of racism. The fact is, I agree with Limbaugh's defense, that his remarks were not so much about the football player per se than they were about the media's desire to see him as a deliverant success story. Let's face it, Limbaugh only said that he thought McNabb is 'overrated,' a statement many can make about the likes of Laurence Olivier or Wayne Gretzky or William Shakespeare. To say someone is 'overrated' is a personal opinion, and usually flies in the face of statistics or other legacies. Limbaugh may indeed be a racist for all I know, and Lord knows that I find just about every word that comes out of his mouth to be objectionable, but the outcry that resulted from Limbaugh's remarks was the response of the righteous and the indignant, and not the thoughtful or the considerate.

Ironically, the outcry seems to me to have proven Limbaugh's point, about the tendency in the media, and in some parts of society, to champion certain people as icons to the point that criticism and questioning cannot be brooked. Look at the text, the actual words, of what Limbaugh actually said. As someone in part trained to detect verbal nuances and implications, I do not detect any trace of actual racism. Unfortunately, those that raised the rallying cry against Limbaugh over this have done the worst possible thing: they've proven the NeoCon contention that liberals, in the name of politics, are willing to overlook that which they supposedly champion, freedom of expression and interrogation, in the name of racial moralism. These liberals-- not all liberals, but those that sought to vilify Limbaugh on very flimsy grounds-- are the worst representatives of that which they ostensibly but by no means truly believe. If you want to take on Limbaugh, or anyone, make sure you're doing it for the right reasons and on solid ground. Listening to people like Howard Dean and Wesley Clark declaim Limbaugh was genuinely embarrassing, and indicative of a society that aspires toward political correctness but has absolutely no idea what correctness means or entails. And people wonder why I disdain politics, and especially political 'correctness.'

On the flip side of things, there's the unconscienable story of what has befallen CIA operative Valerie Plame, whose identity was leaked, apparently by White House officials, to conservative columnist Bob Novak in a kind of retribution for her husband Joseph Wilson's criticism of the proclamations about Iraq's supposed WMD production. All of this remains a horrible muddle, but it seems to me that if this information was leaked from the White House, for whatever reasons, then the whole scenario could indeed be one of worse dimensions and implications than the Whitewater affair and even Watergate. Not only is there no justification for the leaking of Plame's name to the press, but it reflects a disgusting indifference to both national security and individual human life. This is cheap, not to mention dangerous, scapegoating -- and it's eerily resonant of the David Kelley affair in England, with even more insidious implications about the Bush administration's already questionable moral authority to govern. (I say more insidious because although the Kelley situation led to a fatality, there seems to me to be a lesser degree of political childishness; Kelley's suicide was as much the media's responsibility as it was the UK government's, even Kelley's own sense of despair proved the final deciding factor.) It's a bit ironic that I'm writing this just as I'm about to teach Richard II, a play very much concerned with what happens when a leader, whether implicity or complicitly, loses the moral authority to govern. If it is proven that the White House did indeed leak Plame's name to Novak, and that the administration has dragged its feet in the investigation (which it pretty much seems to have), then -- even if the leakers were only aides and officials-- the Bush administration should be impeached. In a way, it's telling that Nixon eventually resigned over a matter that seems small by comparison, and the origin of which was marginally less petty. We're an appallingly cynical society, aren't we?

Word of reminder to politicos of all stripes: In Richard II, the cruellest irony is that Richard's usurpation is premised on a loss of moral authority and injudicious goverment, crimes of which his replacement Henry Bolingbroke (Henry IV) becomes guilty himself, whether implicitly or complicitly. Beware at all costs becoming that which you claim to oppose. Beware becoming your own worst enemy.

And word to President Bush: Appoint an independent counsel. Anything else looks like coverup. And if it turns out one of your officials did indeed leak said information, do the dignified and responsible thing, in the final words of Eliot's "Difficulties of A Stateman":

RESIGN RESIGN RESIGN

01 October 2003

The End Matter


The New Yorker has a hilarious article ostensibly on the manic nightmare that is citation. Or that's part of what it's about-- it's also a rant against all of the silly things academics and the like deal with, including the bane of my existence, Microsoft Word. It's very long, but definitely worthwhile, and any of you who don't know the scenario described in the beginning are truly fortunate indeed.

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