24 February 2006

Scenes From The Jerical Life

     Before the Not-So-Good Doctor disappears again for a while-- a new batch of essays are in and demand attention-- it seems appropriate to provide some images of the goofs as they haven't been featured in a while.  Below are two pics, one of the two little dastards hinting that they want food, the other of Trouble in rare (very rare) darling form, cuddled up in his owner's arm.  Despite the semblance of affection, you will surely note the air of curmudgeonliness that never leaves that old cat for more than five seconds at a time.  (The Doctor has dutifully removed most of himself from the picture, for which you should all be appropriately thankful.) 
 

     There's also news that my much-younger cousin has just sired a lad, which makes me a second-cousin for the umpteen-trillionth time.  Another is already on the way, from an even younger cousin.  Talk about making one feel Ollllllllllllld....

     It has also proven to be a movie week, of sorts, with the Doc actually getting around to seeing Wedding Crashers and Batman Begins.  The former was a painfully-dull reminder that what other people make popular comedies, I am best to avoid.  Like There's Something About Mary, Wedding Crashers wore out its welcome within the first half-hour, the gags too trite by half, and the script too long by leagues.  Batman Begins, on the other hand, surprised me with how good it was.  I had not realized that it was directed by Christopher Nolan, which I think made all the difference.  Nolan's Memento was one of the few films in recent years to utterly floor me with its audacity and strength, and many of the key elements that made that movie so effective are in place in the Batman revisioning-- the wonderful sense of economy and pacing, the care of explanation without devolving into hackeneyed exposition, the lucidities of casting (Gary Oldman is not someone I would have thought of to play Gordon, but he works, as does Michael Caine as Alfred, and Christian Bale suits the coweled-one surprisingly well).  The genius of the film, though, is its canonicity, a term I use in its musical rather than its critical sense, using all the techniques of contrapuntality to impressively resonant effect.  Although Nolan's film doesn't have any star-turns per se (nothing as gargantuan as Nicholson's Joker or as delicious as Michelle Pfeiffer's Catwoman), it's also probably the best of the Batman films so far.  That Nolan could inject fresh blood into that franchise strikes me as a minor miracle. 

     Anyway, that's probably as much of an update as I'll be able to manage for the next bit as I wade through essays.  Wish me luck.  Until later, mes ami(e)s....

16 February 2006

The Horror, The Horror....

     Chances of the Not-So-Good Doctor ever doing anything even remotely like this?  Slightly less than the chances of him becoming the Sultan of Brunei, starting his own colony on Venus, and filling his seraglio with Bea Arthur lookalikes.  In that order. 

15 February 2006

With Manerly Margery Mylk and Quail

     There's something disconnecting about setting down to write this entry, my morning coffee at the ready, a cigarette slowly burning beyond it, as a very old re-run of (oy vey...) Kung Fu: The Legend Continues airs in the background, complete with fellow Canuckistanis Gordon Pinsent and a then-very young Neve Campbell sporting the worst Australian accents since Meryl Streep claimed a dingo ate her baby.  Maybe I should Irish that coffee.
 
     There's an interesting piece at The Chronicle about Herman Melville and the suggestion that Melville considered other endings for his magnum opus, Moby-Dick.  It's worth a read, not just for its content, but for the silly puns manifest throughout:  that there is "a new wave" of Melville scholars, for example, and that eventually "Melville's reputation was washed up" (emphases added).  Reminds me of one of the most unfortunate passages from that novel, a passage that suggests that if Freud had not been born we'd have had to invent him: 
Squeeze! squeeze! squeeze! all the morning long; I squeezed that sperm till I myself almost melted into it; I squeezed that sperm till a strange sort of insanity came over me; and I found myself unwittingly squeezing my co-laborers' hands in it, mistaking their hands for the gentle globules.  Such an abounding, affectionate, friendly, loving feeling did this avocation beget; that at last I was continually squeezing their hands, and looking up into their eyes sentimentally; as much as to say,-  Oh! my dear fellow beings, why should we longer cherish any social acerbities, or know the slightest ill-humor or envy!  Come; let us squeeze hands all round; nay, let us all squeeze ourselves into each other; let us squeeze ourselves universally into the very milk and sperm of kindness.
"The very milk and sperm of kindness" is only slightly less creepy than the image of men squeezing themselves into each other, though the echo of Lady Macbeth reminds me all-too-cringefully of her instruction to "screw your courage to the sticking place."  Shuddddddddderrrrrr....
 
     And speaking of the stuff of gentle globules, there are rumours spraying about.... and being denied and denied.  This blog will uncharacteristically refrain from comment. 
 
     For those of you, by the way, that missed Jon Stewart's coverage of this weekend's vice-presidential ballast-shifting, you can check out the video hereHe he, let us cherish our social acerbities, even as this blog shrinks ever-so-politely from observing the various remarks it could make about the most powerful Dick in the world misfiring into a good friend's face.  (Birdkkake, anyone?)  No, this blog's far too mannerly to suggest something so crude....  Oh, this wanton clarkes be nyse all way....
 
    All that said, damn am I glad that I didn't Irish that coffee.  Welcome to the wonderful world of disturbing imagery....

14 February 2006

Close Encounters Of The Word Kind

     The delightfully-monikered Ancrene Wiseass brought my attention to a literary speed-dating meme that seems to be making the rounds.  Larking about, I figured I'd offer my response.  The premise?  Identify the three books that would be Turn-Ons, three Kids-Lit books (ostensibly demonstrating one's attitude toward brat-chelism), and another three that would be Turn-Offs.  Okay, here are my answers, then, in the closest approximation to "speed dating" in which I'll ever engage:
My List (aka "The Turn-Ons")
1)  Leonard Cohen, Beautiful Losers
2)  Wallace Stevens, Collected Poetry and Prose
3)  Graham Greene, Monsignor Quixote
If you know these works, you more or less have me figured out in a nut-shell.  I'll let you do the divining.
 
My Kid-Lit List
I don't do kid-lit.  Ask me to remember what I read when I was a kid, and I won't be able to tell you.  But I guess my kids would be getting Blake's Songs of Innocence, The Complete Lewis Carroll, and a variation (rendered intelligible) of Sir Gawain and the Green Knight.  These probably seem more high-falutin' than I intend.
 
My Turn-Offs-List
1)  Anything by Margaret Atwood, Jane Austen and/or Toni Morrison, all of whom I group here as one so I don't use up all three of my choices on them and end up falsely accused of misogyny.  (Also, just about anything recommended by Oprah.)
2)  Just about anything about vampires and related chic-gothica, Bram Stoker and all three Brontes excepted. 
3)  Just about any book that uses any of the following words in its title: "diaspora," "discourse," "gender," "alterity," "problematics," "negotiations," "constructions," and "self-fashionings."  Also anything using more than two dicritical marks or which soporifically proposes to discuss "framing the gaze." 
Oh, there's a grumpy list, isn't it?  Snark.  What else did you expect?  There is no crankiness like mine....
 

Oh, Calcutta!

     Ladies and gentlemen, may we humbly present your Galling Heresy Of The Day....

     And in other news, I hear Ozzy Osbourne is going to play Francis of Assisi....

A Massive Intelligence Failure

     Oh, it's a cavalcade of vice-presidential punning:  one wonders if there was a bit of Gore in hunting for this Quayle in the Bush....

13 February 2006

A Million Little Fleeces

     If you're Canadian, you're probably aware of the controversy surrounding Prime Minister Harper's first cabinet, particularly the galling appointment of the unelected Michel Fortier to Public Works portfolio and the odious crossing of the floor by former Liberal David Emerson straight into International Trade.  The appointments are under such intense scrutiny that key opposition figures are calling on the Ethics Commissioner to investigate, and even some Conservative MPs-- like Garth Turner and Myron Thompson-- are crying foul.  (To say nothing of the almost 15,000 signatories of this online petition to recall Emerson.)   Although it'd be premature to suggest that the Conservatives have already squandered their credibility before the House of Commons even commenced sitting, it is clear the Harper government has started off so badly that even the recently-disgraced Liberals are murmuring about a return to power.  I like John Manley's quip:  "David Emerson really is a great Liberal. In one move, he united the Liberals and divided the Tories."  Welcome to the wild and wacky world of Canuckistani politics in which a government cannot be in power for a week-- a single bloody week-- without commiting an affront to the voting public.  Wheeeee!!!
 
     For the record, Mr Emerson-- now effectively the James Frey of Canadian politics-- does not seem to realize (or to care) why so many people are livid with him.  I wonder if we could get Mr Emerson to appear on Oprah so she could explain to him about feeling duped.  Or maybe Vicki Gabereau.  Ah, the more things change, the more they stay the same....

11 February 2006

Once More Unto The Beach

     Fluttering about online this morning, I was reminded that I am supposed to be doing a guest lecture for an old friend's second-year poetry class in a month or so.  The lecture is supposed to be about Wallace Stevens' magnificent "The Idea of Order at Key West," a poem which I've mentioned here often, and which I've lectured on twice now.  Thinking about, though, I realized that I've probably committed a personal heresy:  I don't think I've read Stevens at all in the past six months or so, which is for me like going the same duration without nourishment, nicotine or alcohol.  (Stevens is all three.)   As a result, it behooves me a bit to think about what-in-the-fiery-pits-of-Hell I'm going to say, especially since it's a poem that tends to perplex younger readers almost perfectly.  In other words, it's not a piece to teach flippantly or casually; it requires THOUGHT.  Forethought, actually, and I'm not very good with that lately.  D'oh....  

     I'm reminded, however, of my first lecture on Stevens' poem, maybe six years ago or so.  My audience was a hundred-plus strong group of first-years--- would we call them freshpeople in this toadyingly supersensitive age?---  who were unsurprisingly baffled by the poem, but who nonetheless approached it earnestly.  After the preliminary palaver, I said something to the effect of, "Okay, let's turn to the poem."  My charges dutifully did so, and I began to read it aloud.  What followed has become one of my favourite memories in my, er, "teaching career," as one by one my students lifted their heads from their anthologies  and began staring at me with something probably best described as bewilderment.  They realized, you see, that I was not reading from the book, but from memory, and something about this stunned them.  They were watching me, I suspect waiting for me to stumble or to have to look down to the text, their bewilderment increasing as I kept reciting away.  Suffice it to say that when I uttered the poem's final words "keener sounds," the reaction from my kids was priceless.  They looked down into their books, a bit shocked it was over, their faces blanching slightly from the surprise, and then loooking back up at me as if to ask collectively, "how the fuck did you do that?"  (Ah, first years....) 

     Before any of you start thinking I'm tooting my own horn here, let me assure I'm not.  My reading was nothing exceptional.  The experience, though, remains such a delight for me because it was one of the very, very few times when I managed to get my students entirely into the sound of a poem, to have them listening so intensely they weren't going back and forth between lecturer and text in the same way the rest of us do between an essay and its footnotes.  It's so hard to focus an audience's concentration these days, most people having the auditory attention-span of a cat on cocaine.  (Frankly, I doubt I'll be able to read the poem again as I did, my memory now as buggered as a page in parliament, and my capacity for brilliance long-since lessened to that of a Christmas tree bulb.)  Teaching, one inevitably realizes, is always about little victories rather than grand accomplishments, and my little victory in that circumstance was-- miracle of miracles!-- getting those students, a la Mr Morrison, "into the music" (or would that be lyric?).  That has far less to do with my reading than it does with Stevens' poem, but it was a bit breathtaking just to witness the reactions as poetry at its best does its exhilirating work, even (especially?) on a group of people only barely grasping what's being expressed. 

     Poetry (or modern poetry, at least), Mr Stevens once said, should elude the intelligence almost successfully, and he was right.  Try explaining that, though, to undergrads searching for the dreaded "point" of every poem they read: the notion rankles their sensibilities more than suggesting four plus four equals six-hundred-and-ninety-seven.  But it's a crucial lesson, and one that most can only learn when they experience something that is as mystifying as it is expressive.  When, however, they do learn it, it's electrifying. 

     So I'll have to do some Actual Thinking, assuming that's still possible.  Hell, if it is, THAT will be truly shocking. 

Of Palms and Honeyeaters

       For those of you that missed this story when it first broke earlier in the week, check out the astonishing discoveries found in the Foja Mountains in New Guinea.  Some of the photos (see the gallery within) are fascinating. 
 
     (And, yes, I'm sorry if I disappointed those of you expecting a much dirtier story given the headline above.  Believe it or not, even the Not-So-Good Doctor's mind can't be in the gutter all of the time.  Just most of it.)

Bucking Up

          For once, a story about a soaring loon instead of a raving one....

09 February 2006

Call Me Up In Greeneland

      It seems all of my blog entries of late begin with some sort of apology for not updating more frequently, so I'll break character and not apologize this time.  Things lately have been really weird, and not in one of those "my girlfriend likes to use chocolate sauce and a quail feather" sort of ways.  I'll spare you the exposition, but suffice it to say that there have been a number of reasons for self-doubt.  (Well, moreso than usual.)  There have also been ample reasons for further entrenching my cynicism, reasons best left unstated.  Harrumph.  I'm becoming a Graham Greene character in a Crackberry world.  (A whisky-priest, surely.)
 
     Alas, even with having gone more than two weeks since depositing an entry here, I find myself with relatively little to say.  The Zaniac has informed me that there is a new book on poetry from a decidedly welcome source, the always delightful Stephen Fry.  And, unfortunately, I did not see any of the coverage or interviews related to Leonard Cohen's induction into the Canadian Songwriters Hall of Fame, but I do want to report that I scored ten-for-ten on the CBC quiz on Montreal's most famous field commander.  (As well I did, else I should have my Master's degree declared null and void.)  I'd also direct people to read Peter Berkowitz's review of Theory's Empire here: especially valuable, to my mind, are Berkowitz's conclusion and the quoted Hippocratic Oath from the recently-departed Wayne Booth.  The tenets of Booth's oath should be assumed, but in this day and age it's very often the most basic and the most obvious that gets lost in the shuffle.  And speaking of revealing the obvious....
 
     Anyway, that's about it for now.  February is here, and with it nears one of the most dreadful of "holidays," that day when idealistic couples try to convince themselves that love isn't a many-splintered thing and lonelyhearts around the world lament their luck over ice cream and tequila.  Ah, to celebrate the stuff that satirizes all.  Pass the whisky.