Play Nice, Children...

Let me speak, let me spit out my bitterness....
            --- Joni Mitchell, "The Sire of Sorrow" (Job's Sad Song) from Turbulent Indigo (1994)

      Some of you, I'm sure, wonder why I possess so much vitriol for Paul Martin, and why the possibility of his being elected with a majority government appals me, especially because I proclaim to be (and generally think myself to be) apolitical. Well, as most of you know, there are a few things that always get my goat, among them blatant hypocrisy, pandering cynicism, phenomenal stupidity, self-indulgent acrimony, fundamental disloyalty and baldly-manipulative grandstanding. Martin and his martinets frankly sicken me for so many reasons, but not least of which is this: that while making pretentious overtures about democracy and unity, he can't -- won't-- even patch the wounds within his own party, most of his own creation in his rather neck-slitting drive to replace Mr. Chrètien, to organize and to lead. There's a disgusting, to say nothing of desperate, air of Maoism to Martin's leadership, a childishness (or is that churlishness?) more indicative of a sore-winner than a statesman. Yes, he's leader now, but what does this really mean? And what are the implications of the ways in which he's risen to office, and the ways he means to employ to return him there?

      I'll begin with this jaded assessment, that Martin's commitment to his own election is greater than his commitment to govern. I say this because bills supposedly important for Canadians will die on the order-paper because he feels the need to go to the polls now before anything else can go politically wrong (and, in part, to use the election to oust most of the remaining figures who were loyal to his predecessor). His importing of so-called "celebrity candidates" for the election, the latest of whom is former hockey player Ken Dryden, suddenly has, at least to this mind, more than an echo of the Maoist letting of a thousand blossoms bloom which, we all know now, was nothing more than a dangerous pretext for the consolidation of power. Martin, far from being the policy wonk that he used to be, is now a celebrity cliquist more interested in demonstrating who his friends are (including a cadre of former-separatists) than in dealing with issues directly and perspicaciously. He relies, it seems, on a cult of personality (and protestations of blind fealty to it) rather than legitimacy, and thus he seems to me a Bolingbroke finally come to power with little idea what now to do with that power. He has caused more rifts within his own party than he has mended; he made grand promises that he has waffled on or otherwise betrayed in a fashion that would make John Kerry seem absolutely decisive by comparison; he has chosen the political strategy of negative-attack for the coming election instead of the affirmative-assertion approach he promised for so long; in short, he has discovered, as Bolingbroke as Henry IV learned, that uneasy lies the head that wears the crown.

      There's another light in which to see this. Martin reminds me of all-too-much of the Robert Redford character in The Candidate: he's photogenic, a good speaker when he wants to be, and there's even an air to which he seems sincere in some of his posturings, but when it comes down to it, when he wins that for which he jostled so long, he's lost; as Redford's character asks Peter Boyle after winning the election, "So what do we do now?" Martin, like a child, has no idea what he wants to do now that he has what he most coveted, and the last thing he wants to do is to play nice with the other children in the neighbourhood. It's a simple question that no one has yet posed to Mr. Martin: how can you expect us to believe that you can govern Canada wisely when you can't even keep order within your own party? Similarly, how can he ask us for a mandate when his tack is not to offer a specific parliamentary agenda, but rather to participate in a process of political demonization? Further-- in another question that dodged Bolingbroke for the rest of his days-- how can we trust a leader whose method to accession was that of the conspirator (and which explains his insistence upon a "Team Martin" rather than a Liberal Party proper)? If he could pose answers to these questions, if he would at least define himself and his party according to a specific agenda (however wise or unwise), he might have a legitimate claim to election. But no, and his failure do these fundamental things, or to address these questions, makes him, in my eyes, the most insidious leader in recent memory. His protestations of integrity ring hollow; his calls for political vision are farcically ironic; and his promises of parliamentary competence are meaningless, especially given his spectacularly unimpressive appointments to cabinet. In sum, he's become the epitome of all those qualities that I cited at the beginning of this entry as decriable. This has little to do with politics proper: it has to do with hypocrisy, stupidity, cynicism, disloyalty, acrimony, and generally adolescent behaviour. It has to do with issues of character that have played out with astonishingly vapidity on a scale only satirists could fathom.

      This leads me to the question of me, and why I let myself rant like this, all the while aware that I'm probably pissing in the wind and annoying people with my own protestations on this subject. Why, after all, do I not let this slide by as I have with previous politicians? Why does Martin so get my goat? Part of it I'm sure has to do with my own principles, of which betrayal and hypocrisy are cardinal sins (and, like Dante, I reserve a special place in hell for such people). Another part of it, though, is the capacity for duping that I see at play in so many circles, as so many of my compatriots seem to settle into a decision of apathetic resignation that rubs abrasively against one of the last streaks of idealism that I possess. Another-- and perhaps the telling part-- is that when I look at Mr. Martin, I don't see a leader of inclusion and reconciliation, but a leader of exclusion and antagonism, a leader who manufactures consent in a way that Noam Chomsky never quite described. In Mr. Martin, I see a spoiled child who refuses utterly to play nicely with others. And perhaps that's what I despise most, and why I rant-- vent?-- here. History may finally (hopefully) prove me wrong on this, but I see in Mr. Martin qualities that not only appal me personally, but which seem to me ominous of even more insidious things to come. This too, I'm sure, needs some explanation. However much I may have agreed or disagreed with previous leaders, I've always been able to allay my own concerns that they ultimately believed that what they were doing was in the best interest of the country. Not so with Martin. Martin's desire to be Prime Minister wasn't (and isn't) his dangerous flaw. No, it's his vanity, and in the face of such vanity I can't bring myself to believe that he would do what was best for the country if it threatened his vanity. No wonder he so egregiously surrounds himself (and stuffs his party) with yes-men and acolytes. Vanity cannot brook dissent or indifference, let alone insolence, and it's this sort of vanity that rests behind the image of Nero fiddling while Rome burned. I don't think Martin will be another Nero, though perhaps he'll be a kindler, gentler version of the archetype. Instead, Martin's vanity has already declared his own vision of a country and a political system remade in his image.

      Frankly put, I listen to Martin and his sycophants and I hear hear little more than ten words, all from a song we all know too well: It's my party and I'll cry if I want to.... Well, yes it is, but pardon me if I don't celebrate. I'm too worried about those thousand blossoms blooming.

A Rare Interesting Blog, And A Solipsistic Aside

      Plain and simple: I like this chap's blog, and not just because it is in large part about poetry and poetics (of which, this post had me chuckling in concord). The blog itself strikes me as well-designed and well-written, and generally quite thoughtful, though it seems that-- like this blog-- it tends unfortunately to elicit silence when topics are most literary. I must also confess that this chap's blog is more urbane than my own, and certainly more carefully edited. Particularly with the new changes to Blogger, it's all too easy to miss typos and dropped-words and the like, though I confess that my je-ne-donne-pas-une-merde attitude is probably not helping matters, either.

      I sometimes think this blog should be more disciplined, more focussed, and more strictly literary. Then again, my readership here would be almost non-existent. It's true, though, that this blog, like its creator, can no more deny its naughtier and goofier dimensions than it can its loftier and occasionally didactic ones. This blog, also like its creator, will always be a little disheveled, a little rough around the edges. For some reason beyond my immediate explanation, that doesn't bother me in the least. I'll chalk it up to necessary roughness and leave it at that. I'd rather not be Hal, promising to throw his loose behaviour off. The world becomes little more than grey when we banish plump Jack and what he represents. A health then, my friends, to ribaldry and silliness and the spirit of indulgence. A health, too, my friends, to all those minions of the moonlight for whom misbehaviour is a mandate. Cheers.

      (And, yes, I'm fully aware I may be paying lip-service to my own self-determined tradition. But that's my story and I'm sticking to it. So there. )

Rules Of The Game

      Or, "How To Avoid Getting Mercilessly Bitch-Slapped Without Really Trying," courtesy of Dave ("Mister Manners") Barry. Halle-lujah.

More Swimming In The Callow End

      What is it with people these days? Un-[expletive uncharacteristically deleted]-believable.

HURRY UP PLEASE ITS TIME

      Sometimes, I think there should be a Dictionary For Ironists. See today's candidate entry for "progress."

Minority Report

      At the risk of seeming (let alone being) indignantly arrogant, it is this blog's not-so-humble assertion that if this is true, that if my fellow Canadians deem it fit to hand Paul Martin a majority government on a platter, then they truly DESERVE to get screwed. Yes, screwed, or perhaps more appropriately, sodomized sans lubrication. I don't care for whom anyone votes-- not even if it's to vote for "Team Martin" (notice no one calls them the Liberals anymore, really) -- but if we seat these sharks with a majority, then I wash my hands. So, what's the answer, Doctor J, at least as you see it?, I can hear you all sniggering. The answer, patient readers, is to vote strategically. Don't vote Martin just because you can't see any other party as a viable option (i.e., you don't like your other choices); watch what's happening locally, and weigh your judgment accordingly, particularly in terms of what your vote can do to keep our political system in check. What would I like to see? I'd like to see what some call "an Italian parliament," a parliament sufficiently spread among the various parties, with a minority government. Let's make these guys have to work together-- and be at least in some sense accountable to one another. If this means voting BQ or NDP or Conservative or whatever in your local riding, maybe it would be a good idea, especially if it's looking like a close race. A majority government is not one that should be handed over by default; it should be a statement of a collective sense of political direction. We have no specific political direction, and none of the leaders, none of them, have offered a unique perspective behind which people will stand with commitment and/or conviction. So, the answer, to me at least, is clear: fracture the parliament, make whatever party that comes to government know that they have to walk on proverbial eggshells. Let's not let them think, with a majority mandate, that the lessons of the sponsorship scandal-- remember: just one among many-- have been forgotten, that we'll be hooked and drawn again into buying the resigning logic of "who else is there to vote for." If my compatriots dish over another majority government to the Liberals, they will have proven themselves as little more than cynical fools, and they will have absolutely no damned right to bitch when the next series of scandals arises.

      Canada hasn't had a minority government since Joe Clark's. It's time we corrected that. Then, in the time that follows, let the hegemonies be broken and let us see what emerges from there. Let's also make our leaders actually have to earn government. Now wouldn't THAT be a novel concept? Imagine what that would do for "the democratic deficit" of which Prime Minister Martin speaks with certainly forked-tongue. I don't care if Martin wins the election and forms the next government, but let it be a minority. Let's make Bolingbroke prove he deserves the crown instead of shrugging passively as we hand it over to him.

      Have no fear: this is the last time I'll preach about the election. From now on, it'll be back to heckling, hooting and ribald hollering.

I'll Take "Things Involving Yeast For $600," Alex

      I don't know why this didn't occur to me earlier, but the gag/game from today's Fark about replacing a key word in a famous lines with the word "muffin" is little more than a polite variation on an old drinking game in which key words are replaced with the word "vagina." Although there's no substantial drinking component specific to the game itself, it's much more fun (for obvious reasons) as a gaggle of people proceed to get royally blotto (it also makes the spirit of the game decidedly more infectious). I remember-- sorta -- with Mr Mitchell and company a couple of years ago, and the silliness was nothing less than replete. Our phrases, of course, had a largely Shakespearean bent-- "Ay, every inch a vagina!", "Is this a vagina that I see before me?", "Friends, Romans, countrymen, lend me your vaginas", "Once more unto the vagina, dear friends," and so on and so forth. (Some phrases didn't even need the vaginal substitution, as from King Lear: "Look on her, her lips, her lips!") Anyway, it's something to do on your next drinking night-out, preferrably with literatue people. Or, should you so desire, you can practice your magic in the comments here. Just imagine Tennyson:

Half a league, half a league,
   Half a league onward,
All in the vagina of Death
   Rode the six hundred.
'Forward, the Light Brigade!
Charge for the guns!' he said:
Into the vagina of death
   Rode the six hundred!

Or Shelley:

"My name is Ozymandias, king of kings:
Look on my vagina, ye Mighty, and despair!"

Or Robbie Burns-- picture it:

My luve is like a red, red vagina,
   That's newly sprung in June...

Or, perhaps worst of all, Wilfred Owen:

If you could hear, at every jolt, the blood
Come gargling from the froth-corrupted lungs,
Obscene as cancer, bitter as the cud
Of vile, incurable sores on innocent tongues, ---
My friend, you would not tell with such high zest
To children ardent for some desperate glory,
The old Lie: Dulce et decorum est
Pro vagina mori.

Okay, now that I've used the word "vagina" more times than Keanu Reeves uses the word "Whoa" (and this will surely screw up my Google hits), I'll return you to your regularly scheduled blog. ;-)

Swinging Words Of Wisdom

      As heretical as it might be to declare, colour me a member of this school of thinking. I particularly like this statement-- however factually problematic-- as a code to live by: “I may sound old fashioned... but I think all women should be treated as I’d want my wife, daughters and granddaughters treated.” Indeed. See also this excerpt with which I am in total agreement:

Said Frank: “I’m supposed to have a Ph.D. on the subject of women. But the truth is I’ve flunked more often than not. I’m very fond of women; I admire them. But, like all men, I don’t understand them.” And if the Chairman of the Board couldn’t figure them out, what chance do we mortals have?

Hallelujah....

A Separate Peace

      For those of you with too much time on your, er, hands....

Hey, Dude, Where's My Cock?

      A terrified world waits for the inevitable.... Entire populations keeps asking, "And then? And then? And then?"

And People Say I'm Silly....

      On Fark today, replacing one word in a key phrase with the word "muffin." The various entries can be found here, but this one's my favourite, by a long shot, from someone named "GeneFrenkle":

The way your dad looked at it, this muffin was your birthright. He'd be damned if any of the slopes were gonna get their greasy yellow hands on his boy's birthright. So he hid it in the one place he knew he could hide something: his ass. Five long years, he wore this muffin up his ass. Then when he died of dysentery, he gave me the muffin. I hid this uncomfortable piece of muffin up my ass for two years. Then, after seven years, I was sent home to my family. And now, little man, I give the muffin to you.

Hilarious, especially if you imagine Mr. Walken delivering the lines. Imagine Hamlet:

                  O, I die, Horatio,
The potent poison quite o'er-crows my spirit.
I cannot live to hear the news from England,
But I do prophesy th' election lights
On Fortinbras, he has my dying voice.
So tell him, with th' occurents more and less
Which have solicited-- the rest is muffin.

May flights of bran flakes sing thee to thy rest.

Oh. My. God.

      Sadly, I know a few people who would defend the offending teachers in this article, which should tell you something about the tendency toward self-legitimating pretense in the contemporary educational streams. But check out this quote from one of the would-be apologists who evidently has absolutely no sense of tact, or good taste:

Some educators, including Susan Edwards, a substitute teacher, said showing the pictures may be appropriate under certain circumstances.

"Under certain circumstances, yes, because that's the world we live in, and we can't hide our head in the sand and pretend it doesn't exist," said Edwards. [Emphasis added.]

Why does this polemicizing-- "This is why we shouldn't be at war" -- strike me as being of the same disturbing piety as that of anti-abortion activists that advocate blowing up clinics and killing doctors and patients in the name of saving the unborn? Disgusting, horrifying, hypocritical, and absolutely mad, these teachers deserve to be put through the terrifying sword ritual from that great old Edward Woodward film The Wicker Man.

      This blog cannot help but wonder if these same teachers would be so glib about matters were the victim a person close to them. Methinks not. God save us from the righteous and the unimaginably callow.

And Gentlemen In England, Now A-Bed

      Understatement of the day, quoted in this article the contents of which you all know by now: "From time to time, things like this would happen." This gives new definition to the word "casual." See also this quote from Sivits: "Our command would have slammed us." Oh yeah. I'm sure they'd all have enjoyed a good slamming....

Straight Try As A Queer Guy

      Now where, oh where, is Mr. Roper when we need him? R.I.P. John Ritter.

Let's Pronounce It Like Gnu

      So, what's the advanced word on Gmail, the beta version of Google's email service? Check out Extreme Tech's assessment here which seems pretty through. Surprisingly not much on the notorious privacy issues in re Google's monitoring policy, but one suspects more will come on this once all this is past the beta-testing state.

The Trifecta Of Bounce And Pout

      Rex Murphy's column in today's Globe and Mail is a chuckle-inducing exercise in Canadian mock irony, and is well-worth the read. What, you might logically ask, is "mock irony"? It's the name I give to that-- almost particularly Canadian-- tendency to write with a civilised, critical tone of irony, all the while subverting and mocking that tone by casually letting out airs of pretension with subtle self-rejoinders. The major rejoinder doesn't come until the end of the article, but it's there, and it's a typical self-subversion of the article's critique. It seems we've now made, though, a discomforting karmic trade, one bubble-bodied bimbo for one occasional Irish visitor who comes by now and again to float Canada's humanitarian boat. If we were going to trade for an Irishman, we should have gotten Van Morrison-- or at least Seamus Heaney. Or perhaps we should have gone for an equal trade of one bimbo for another? If we'd traded for Jessica, we'd at least have been able to say we went in for a newer model, even if it possessed the same carriage capacity.

And Not To Yield

      Last night's final episode of Frasier was a class act, and I hope that those of you that didn't see it but did watch the infernally idiotic send-off for Friends eventually get off your comic duffs and realize what adult comedy is about. Someone emailed me today asking about the poem that Frasier quoted at the end of the episode. Well, Frasier doesn't quote from the entire poem, but from the last nine lines of Alfred, Lord Tennyson's Ulysses (1833, published in 1842), and the lines he recited are these:

It may be that the gulfs will wash us down;
It may be we shall touch the Happy Isles,
And see the great Achilles, whom we knew.
Tho' much is taken, much abides; and tho'
We are not now that strength which in old days
Moved earth and heaven, that which we are, we are,--
One equal temper of heroic hearts,
Made weak by time and fate, but strong in will
To strive, to seek, to find, and not to yield.

The full text of the poem can be found here. And, no, I didn't need Google to identify the poem.

      Frasier went out as well as can be expected (given the series closers almost inevitably disappoint). Its final moments were genuinely moving-- and not in the least syrupy. Other series nearing their ends: keep this show in mind, please. It was a graceful exit, something more shows really need to learn how to do. That it ended with a kind of happy Prosperan wistfulness was appropriate: there was hope, but not certainty; a future left in ellipsis, but not hyperbolized. Well done.

Quote Of The Day

      Greg Proops, describing Canada to an L.A. audience, says that it's "just like America, except they read and they don't shoot each other so much. Wimps."

Slaughter And Blood And The Choking Groans Of Men

      Skimming through the various reviews of Troy (partially because I may or may not be teaching The Iliad next year, if RK and I get our respective ways), it seems the film has the following primary dimensions: expensive and elaborate special effects; a 20th century military mentality; a mildly attractive but not especially entrancing Helen; an almost androgynous Paris; lots of fancy battle scenes; a fine but brief performance by Peter O'Toole as Priam (O'Toole's the only one getting consistently good reviews); Brad Pitt's biceps; Brad Pitt's arse; Brad Pitt's arse; and, most significantly, Brad Pitt's absolutely heroic arse. Oh, dear lord.... And, oh yeah, they've apparently buggered up the Agamemnon storyline. I'm sure, however, that there will soon be an utterly unnecessary novelization of the film to come, Homeric aspects rent utterly asunder, chronicling instead, in finest detail, the intricacies of Brad Pitt's arse, which, apparently, explains all the seamen on those thousand ships.

Morning Shadows

      It's 7.30 in the morning on Friday as I sit down to write this entry, a lovely sunny day, a sort of genial, warm day to which many of us in Canada are only now becoming reacquainted. I've been up and at it now for about three hours: I'm a couple of coffees in, a few cigarettes down, the New York Times Sunday Crossword-- issued locally on the following Friday, so it just came this morning-- already complete. My cat, the aptly-named Trouble, is cleaning his chops after an evidently fulfilling breakfast, and, feline aside, I am wonderfully, blissfully, alone. There's a rare tranquility in the air, or a tranquility with which I've not been familiar in some time. A mix disc of soul classics is playing in the background-- "Midnight Train to Georgia" has just passed, the Reverend Al Green's "Let's Stay Together" is riding in the air-- and a sense of completeness hovers with it. Trouble now has perched himself at an open window, staring with his hunter's fascination at the birds chirping and squirrels darting about in the backyard. I have done something rare. I have left the news off for this morning. No CNN or BBC or Newsworld coverage of the atrocities and idiocies at play in the fields of the world. The music has now progressed to Ray Charles, in his inimitable way, crooning that he's a lover man in "I Gotta Woman." Well and huh and huh and huh and huh and huh and haaaa..... And the morning sails as such, like a Ray Charles groove, oh so comfortable, oh so removed from reality, or at least from the reality most of us know these days. The telephone does not-- cannot-- ring while I write this. I have no courses to teach, no silly details with which to deal, no letters to write, save for a few emails I've yet to answer but none of which are pressing in their urgency. There's something remarkably hale about this morning. Baby, I'm hot just like an oven.... Marvin. Help to relieve my mind.... This is the solitude that sails as if atop a crest. Another coffee, surprisingly good this morning, not needed but simply wanted. The music has now shifted to James Brown's infectious version of Charlie Midnight's "How Do You Stop?," a song that always induces me to a shuffle, a pleasant reminder of days when I used to dance. How do you stop / the tide comin' in? / How do you stop / the cold, cold wind? / Tell me, aha! The music is perfect. The coming "Livin' in America" won't ring with any sort of irony, and thanks be for that, at least for the moment. These voices this morning provide a pulse of punctuation. Ray's howls, James' grunts, there's a sunny funk to it all. There's not an ounce of burden to this writing, not a dash of labour; there's no sense of construction, no sense of writing with any purpose, cheeky or didactic, that reminds me of an audience. Ray's back, this time with his magnificent, haunting version of Leon Russell's "A Song For You," a song that always seems to cause an out-of-body experience for me, especially because of lines like I loved you in a place / where there's no space or time / I loved you for my life / 'Cuz you're a friend of mine. There's a half-broken majesty to all this: triumphant but humble, it's enough to suggest a monody could be happy. Dianoia is possible. Time can be held in some gentle arrest. Life is more than time's creeping toward a precipice's edge. It's also the study of a moment's meaning, of a sound, a pulse, a cadence, a certain slant of light. Ray's Simonizing. Oh, help me.... I'm still crazy after all these years.... I don't believe it... I wanna hold on to you.... That's why I'm still crazy after all these years.... The blessèd kairos without chronos. Augustine seems so far away, self-collection an abstraction perhaps to be considered later. There's a transparency to these moments, a transparency philosophy might muddy or mitigate. There is only song, sun, a cat now studying me with one eye open, and this me that doesn't care what this me is. It just is. And it's still crazy. After all these years. I don't believe it.... Oh baby.... You've got me by your little finger... And I ain't lyin'....

Noons Of Dryness See You Fed            

      Found myself reading again some of the poems of W. H. (Wystan Hughes) Auden the other day, a poet that always seems to fly under the radar of one's memory despite probably being the most prolific poet between the end of WWII and the 60s. He's mainly remembered these days (if at all) for "The Shield Of Achilles," "In Memory of W. B. Yeats" (though many think much of Auden's steam for that poem was stolen by Yeats himself with his own self-elegy, "Under Ben Bulben"), "The Unknown Citizen" and "Musée des Beaux Arts." Thought I'd include some of his more immediately accessible poems here.

If I Could Tell You

Time will say nothing but I told you so,
Time only knows the price we have to pay;
If I could tell you I would let you know.

If we should weep when clowns put on their show,
If we should stumble when musicians play,
Time will say nothing but I told you so.

There are no fortunes to be told, although,
Because I love you more than I can say,
If I could tell you I would let you know.

The winds must come from somewhere when they blow,
There must be reasons why the leaves decay;
Time will say nothing but I told you so.

Perhaps the roses really want to grow,
The vision seriously intends to stay;
If I could tell you I would let you know.

Suppose all the lions get up and go,
And all the brooks and soldiers run away;
Will Time say nothing but I told you so?
If I could tell you I would let you know.

Funeral Blues

Stop all the clocks, cut off the telephone,
Prevent the dog from barking with a juicy bone,
Silence the pianos and with muffled drum
Bring out the coffin, let the mourners come.

Let aeroplanes circle moaning overhead
Scribbling on the sky the message He is Dead.
Put crepe bows round the white necks of the public doves,
Let the traffic policemen wear black cotton gloves.

He was my North, my South, my East and West,
My working week and my Sunday rest,
My noon, my midnight, my talk, my song;
I thought that love would last forever: I was wrong.

The stars are not wanted now; put out every one,
Pack up the moon and dismantle the sun,
Pour away the ocean and sweep up the woods;
For nothing now can ever come to any good.

Lullaby

Lay your sleeping head, my love,
Human on my faithless arm;
Time and fevers burn away
Individual beauty from
Thoughtful children, and the grave
Proves the child ephemeral:
But in my arms till break of day
Let the living creature lie,
Mortal, guility, but to me
The entirely beautiful.

Soul and body have no bounds:
To lovers as they lie upon
Her tolerant enchanted slope
In their ordinary swoon,
Grave the vision Venus sends
Of supernatural sympathy,
Universal love and hope;
While abstract insight wakes
Among the glaciers and the rocks
The hermit's sensual ecstasy.

Certainty, fidelity
On the stroke of midnight pass
Like vibrations of a bell,
And fashionable madmen raise
Their pedantic boring cry:
Every farthing of the cost,
All the dreaded cards foretell,
Shall be paid, but from this night
Not a whisper, not a thought,
Not a kiss nor look be lost.

Beauty, midnight, vision dies:
Let the winds of dawn that blow
Softly round your dreaming head
Such a day of sweetness show
Eye and knocking heart may bless,
Find your mortal world enough;
Noons of dryness see you fed
By the involuntary powers,
Nights of insult let you pass
Watched by every human love.

Their Lonely Betters

As I listened from a beach-chair in the shade
To all the noises that my garden made,
It seemed to me only proper that words
Should be withheld from vegetables and birds.

A robin with no Christian name ran through
The Robin-Anthem which was all it knew,
And rustling flowers for some third party waited
To say which pairs, if any, should get mated.

Not one of them was capable of lying,
There was not one which knew that it was dying
Or could have with a rhythm or a rhyme
Assumed responsibility for time.

Let them leave language to their lonely betters
Who count some days and long for certain letters;
We, too, make noises when we laugh or weep:
Words are for those with promises to keep.

And there's this magnificent poem from 1948, one of Auden's best and one worth reading and rereading:

In Praise of Limestone

If it form the one landscape that we, the inconstant ones,
      Are consistently homesick for, this is chiefly
Because it dissolves in water. Mark these rounded slopes
      With their surface fragrance of thyme and, beneath,
A secret system of caves and conduits; hear the springs
      That spurt out everywhere with a chuckle,
Each filling a private pool for its fish and carving
      Its own little ravine whose cliffs entertain
The butterfly and the lizard; examine this region
      Of short distances and definite places:
What could be more like Mother or a fitter background
      For her son, the flirtatious male who lounges
Against a rock in the sunlight, never doubting
      That for all his faults he is loved; whose works are but
Extensions of his power to charm? From weathered outcrop
      To hill-top temple, from appearing waters to
Conspicuous fountains, from a wild to a formal vineyard,
      Are ingenious but short steps that a child's wish
To receive more attention than his brothers, whether
      By pleasing or teasing, can easily take.

Watch, then, the band of rivals as they climb up and down
      Their steep stone gennels in twos and threes, at times
Arm in arm, but never, thank God, in step; or engaged
      On the shady side of a square at midday in
Voluble discourse, knowing each other too well to think
      There are any important secrets, unable
To conceive a god whose temper-tantrums are moral
      And not to be pacified by a clever line
Or a good lay: for accustomed to a stone that responds,
      They have never had to veil their faces in awe
Of a crater whose blazing fury could not be fixed;
      Adjusted to the local needs of valleys
Where everything can be touched or reached by walking,
      Their eyes have never looked into infinite space
Through the lattice-work of a nomad's comb; born lucky,
      Their legs have never encountered the fungi
And insects of the jungle, the monstrous forms and lives
      With which we have nothing, we like to hope, in common.
So, when one of them goes to the bad, the way his mind works
      Remains incomprehensible: to become a pimp
Or deal in fake jewellery or ruin a fine tenor voice
      For effects that bring down the house, could happen to all
But the best and the worst of us...
                                                That is why, I suppose,
      The best and worst never stayed here long but sought
Immoderate soils where the beauty was not so external,
      The light less public and the meaning of life
Something more than a mad camp. 'Come!' cried the granite wastes,
      "How evasive is your humour, how accidental
Your kindest kiss, how permanent is death." (Saints-to-be
      Slipped away sighing.) "Come!" purred the clays and gravels,
"On our plains there is room for armies to drill; rivers
      Wait to be tamed and slaves to construct you a tomb
In the grand manner: soft as the earth is mankind and both
      Need to be altered." (Intendant Caesars rose and
Left, slamming the door.) But the really reckless were fetched
      By an older colder voice, the oceanic whisper:
"I am the solitude that asks and promises nothing;
      That is how I shall set you free. There is no love;
There are only the various envies, all of them sad."

      They were right, my dear, all those voices were right
And still are; this land is not the sweet home that it looks,
      Nor its peace the historical calm of a site
Where something was settled once and for all: A back ward
      And dilapidated province, connected
To the big busy world by a tunnel, with a certain
      Seedy appeal, is that all it is now? Not quite:
It has a worldy duty which in spite of itself
      It does not neglect, but calls into question
All the Great Powers assume; it disturbs our rights. The poet,
      Admired for his earnest habit of calling
The sun the sun, his mind Puzzle, is made uneasy
      By these marble statues which so obviously doubt
His antimythological myth; and these gamins,
      Pursuing the scientist down the tiled colonnade
With such lively offers, rebuke his concern for Nature's
      Remotest aspects: I, too, am reproached, for what
And how much you know. Not to lose time, not to get caught,
      Not to be left behind, not, please! to resemble
The beasts who repeat themselves, or a thing like water
      Or stone whose conduct can be predicted, these
Are our common prayer, whose greatest comfort is music
      Which can be made anywhere, is invisible,
And does not smell. In so far as we have to look forward
      To death as a fact, no doubt we are right: But if
Sins can be forgiven, if bodies rise from the dead,
      These modifications of matter into
Innocent athletes and gesticulating fountains,
      Made solely for pleasure, make a further point:
The blessed will not care what angle they are regarded from,
      Having nothing to hide. Dear, I know nothing of
Either, but when I try to imagine a faultless love
      Or the life to come, what I hear is the murmur
Of underground streams, what I see is a limestone landscape.

Damn, he was good. I'll leave my assessment of him there. Would love to hear what anybody else thinks of him anymore. The line "I thought that love would last forever: I was wrong" is somehow more devastating in Auden's hands than they might be in those of almost any other modern poet.

*Cough, Cough, Cough*

      

Wanton Libidinous Slamhounds

      I'm sorry, I really shouldn't link to this, I really shouldn't, but.... here ya go....

      Okay, after posting that, you can now rinse your minds out with this more typical satire. Feel better now?

From Someone Who Has Done Plenty On The Backs Of Adolescents

      It's been a bit since I checked in on the columns of Imre Salusinszky, and it seems he's had some doozies. This piece is about an Australian budget measure, but shrink not, dear friends: it's told from the perspecta of, among others, Paris Hilton and Dr. Seuss. Then there's this piece, less funny but certainly worthwhile, on the commercialization of holidays. And then (and then and then and then) there's this piece on the intractable subject of comedy that should delight those of you with a taste, closeted or out, for so-called low-brow humour. Imre's always a good read, and there's something wonderfully refreshing in getting an Aussie perspective on things.

Oh, Let Me Have Just A Little Bit Of Peril?

      Insert your own Monty Python joke here.

Dingo: You must spank her well, and after you are done with her, you may deal with her as you like... and then... spank me.
All: And me. And me too. And me.
Dingo: Yes. Yes, you must give us all a good spanking.....
Dingo: And after the spanking, the oral sex.
Galahad: Well I could stay a bit longer...

The Secret of Nimda

      Watching Frontline this morning, I managed to catch a repeat airing of their report last week on the possibility of cyberwar/cyberterrorism against the United States. The report was shocking. Follow this link to go to PBS's site on the special, with lots of different information, including the episode itself, and a fair amount of supplementary material. Far be it from this blog to sound alarm bells unnecessarily or prematurely, but noting some of the problems of breachability in current systems, looking into this stuff really does cast into relief the dimensions of American-- and by extension, international-- vulnerability. Alas, CNN, FOX and MSNBC won't cover any of this stuff until the damage has been done and we're in full-scale panic. As much as some might object to Michael Moore, he is right about at least on one thing, I think, that the culture of fear and panic-induction is greater than the culture of reason, and we have already paid significant prices for this, but perhaps we've only seen the pre-interest payments.

"We Were Making Out Or Having Sex Or Something"

      Evidently, Scarlett Johansson doesn't know the difference between making out and having sex. Perhaps it's a wording problem? After all, she does claim, in English slightly *ahem* askew: “Men never really come good until their thirties.” Ahhhhh. Oooo-kayyyyy.... Doctor J, now early in his thirties, will really get to "come good" at last. He will resist the temptation to do his Martin Luther King impression....

Paging The Sisters of Mercy

      Call me weak, but I just can't-- won't-- mustn't bring myself to watch this. Oh, Leonard....

And They Shake Their Little Tushes On The Catwalk....

      Guys, looking for further evidence of the "weenification" (or would that be "de-weenification"?) of men worldwide? Cast your despondent eyes here and be afraid, be very afraid. How utterly, utterly pathetic. Humphrey Bogart and John Wayne must be groaning in their respective graves.

      And before any of you say it: Shut up, shut up, shut up.... I'm just a freak, an exception to all laws and actuarial tables....

Literary Pretension Of The Day

      "My book is a revolution in the history of literature. It is the first book of its kind. It's daring, modern and is to literature what the great Dada and Surrealist movements were to art," says "Michel Thaler," the author of Le Train de Nulle Part, claiming he's written the first novel-- get this-- without verbs. He further claims:

I am like a car driver who has smashed the windscreen so he cannot see into the future, smashed the rear-view mirror so he cannot see the past, and is travelling in the present.

Yeah, whatever you say.... "My book is a revolution in the history of literature." Gee, ladies, doesn't this sound a lot like the self-important braggart that claims that once you try a bit of his you'll never go back? Yeah, and this guy's claim means just about the same, methinks. Or perhaps he's revolutionary in the same way as the guy that managed to stick not one or two but sixty-seven golf balls into his rectum: enough to get you him into some record book somewhere, but one really has to wonder about the point of it all, not to mention imagining the discomfort involved.

A Failure To Communicate

      There's an excellent piece in today's New York Observer about the current climate in Iraq that is by turns insightful and very funny. Of the latter: "For purposes of comparing the outrage here with the outrage back home, perhaps the most striking of the Iraqi themes is that of total indifference as to whether Donald Rumsfeld is kept on, pushed out, or melted down and drizzled over porcini mushrooms." Of the former: "The world-famous catastrophe of Abu Ghraib has something important in common with every little domestic political gaffe: It would not resonate unless it rang true." The disjunction between the American and Iraqi perceptions of matters (to say nothing of those of the rest of the world) is so great that common ground may not finally be possible. I've said it before and I'll say it again: those who haven't already should read Graham Greene's The Quiet American, the American in which is both idealistic and dangerously oblivious, in large part because he blinkers himself to the obvious, but also because he simply does not-- cannot and will not-- see matters from a perspective other than his own. American policy makes will niggle and try to tear away at the sort of parallels drawn in this assessment by an Iraqi, insisting on a fundamental difference of moral purpose:

For the mass graves, it was not Saddam Hussein who dug them personally," said Ali Hassan Mohammed, a 55-year-old shopkeeper. "It was his followers who did that, and the Americans want to judge him."

The Americans are now (slowly) being forced to realize that they are caught in a moral hypocrisy, however unintentional. Like the Christians that slough off Shylock's "Hath not a Jew eyes?" rebuke in The Merchant of Venice, so too do the Americans seem oblivious to their own immersion in a moral, political and military quagmire. They may not be their enemies, they may not be like their enemies in many ways, but in the eyes of very many in the outside world and in Iraq, the distinctions between the Americans and the forces they toppled are becoming very blurry indeed, and increasingly difficult to illuminate. Long story short: this is only going to get far worse before it gets even a little better, Rummy or no Rummy, Dubya or no Dubya. Scary.

I've Waited For The May!

      We'll see how well this posting takes (again with crossed-fingers hoping stuff doesn't get further mangled by these Blogger changes).... From Alfred Noyes' poem "The Barrel-Organ" comes these laughable lines, more laughable I suppose from my perspective:

So it's Jeremiah, Jeremiah,
   What have you to say
When you meet the garland girls
   Tripping on their way?
All around my gala hat
   I wear a wreath of roses
(A long and lonely year it is
   I've waited for the May!)
If any one should ask you,
   The reason why I wear it is---
My own love, my true love, is coming
         home to-day.

I'm sorry, I probably should not make fun of Noyes, who already takes regular beatings, but those of you that know me should see why I find this absolutely hysterical. I gotsta gets me some o' dem garland girls, tripping on their way....

      I also hold that anyone that puts together the words "my own love, my true love" deserves to have their wispy little wits walloped. Wantonly. With wormwood.

You Don't Pull No Punches, But You Don't Push The River

Yes, it's probably unbecoming, but, damn, I am the shizznazz of reference letters. Just finished writing yet another one for a student applying to grad school, and it's pretty darned good if I do say so myself. Yes, it helps to have good material (i.e., good students) about whom to write, but it's very common for even the best students to receive rather tepid letters because their referees say the same old tripe and seem only barely to know their charges. I'm lucky, almost all of the people for whom I've written letters over the years got what they wanted in some form or another. There's a great comfort in that. How many letters, I sometimes wonder, have I written over the years, for education programmes, for travel applications and work-abroad programmes, for tenure and promotion, for graduate schools and law schools and the like.... Nah, I mustn't think about such things. Perhaps I've missed my calling. Perhaps I should have been a shill, singing the praises of people for good, hard cash, instead of doing it altruistically as I do now. And, hey, in this day and age, who needs credibility anymore? Oh, yeah, I do. It's hard enough getting to sleep at night as it is.

Apologies....

Indeed it does seem this blog won't be acting like itself for awhile: the only way to work with Blogger is so slow, so limiting, and so prone to garbling that it's just not worth it to do short posts. (Did I also mention that it's unreliable?) The "Amber Waves Of Green" post has been damaged and perhaps destroyed, and I can no longer access any of my previous posts from my editor. All of the things that I've liked about Blogger have Clem-Kadiddlehoppered. So, my apologies. I don't know when (if?) this site will be able to be returned to its normal character. I'm now going to press "Publish Post" on this editor screen, and we'll see if it works, or if it just makes matters worse.... *crossed fingers*

Paul, You Geographer You....

      Ah, it seems PM PM (hot on the heels of his famous confusion of Normandy with Norway) has a problem with geography, a problem as pathetic and embarrassing as the Dubster's sense of the English language. Check this out, from a speech in Montréal yesterday:

Is the idea of a G-20 realistic? More and more, I believe that it’s feasible. My discussions on the G-20 with the European Commission have sparked some interest. The same was true of my discussions with the Presidents of Brazil, Mexico and South Africa. The two key countries are the two major powers of the North and South, the United States and China.

Oh, yes, Paul, China has gone South on us, despite being entirely above the Equator. From the same speech yesterday, note some of these blunderful ear-scratchers:

• "We want space to be considered as a universal good." (Seriously, parse that sentence through based on the explicit meanings of those words.... If you don't need a drink after that, your antennae must be on the fritz. Space and universal. Universal good. But "just considered," it doesn't actually have to be a universal good. Oy....)
  
• "On the question of the missile shield, Canada will be guided by its own interests when making its decision." (Is it a Freudian slip that he uses the words "missile" and "guided" in the same sentence? And what are Canada's interests in this regard, Paul? Can we be any more vague? And, by the way, doesn't this imply that your government is capable of making a decision?)
  
• "Few countries are as open to the world as we are." (Open. Pardon my dirty mind, but this is just *not* the way to say what I think he intends here. And in this age of border fortification and the like, is it wise to say Canada is "open"?)
  
• The quote would be too long for this spot, but did you notice that the only way for Martin to describe Bush's response to a Heads of State G-20 is to say, twice, that he "expressed genuine interest"? I find this, er, "interesting." You know, kinda like the same reaction you have to a modern art piece that seems to have no relevance whatsoever.
  
• "Canada has a vast reservoir of talents to create or strengthen the most diverse institutions in countries with the greatest need." (A "vast reservoir"? Vast? Ever looked at the Brain-Drain numbers, Paul? Oh yeah, only when you're campaigning-- but of course you're not "campaigning" yet-- at a university.)

I'd go on, but I'm sure this would bore you to tears. Let's just say that I agree entirely with Paul Wells and Doug Fisher on these matters of Paulicy. Wells' blog has spurred me in writing much of this, so I'll end with a quote from that most sage assessor of politicians, the PM's good chum-- excuse me while I clear my cyber-throat-- Bono, whom Mr. Wells quotes while no doubt restraining laughter:

Wow. A politician who doesn’t break his promises. This is real leadership. I hope Canadians will know what this means in the rest of the world.

Sorry, Bono: in the words of Mose Allison, "If you only knew..." After all, this blog believes that the space between Martin's lips is a universal vacuum. Thank goodness it has no idea where China is, though this blog is sure that space would express genuine interest in knowing.

Amber Waves Of Green

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I will have to perform acts of violence. Looks like this blog is going to be in serious limbo for a bit while I fudge through everything. This is going to be like getting gum out of my hair. Fuckers.       I HATE BLOGGER. UGH!!!!!!!!!!!! Blogger has just gone and dang-fangled effed everything around with their main site, and there seems to be a number of glitches with their new system. If this blog looks like a bloody mess for the next little bit, my apologies. 09 May 2004 Great, Somebody Peed In The Pool....       The only thing surprising about this is that Strom Thurmond wasn't involved in there somehow. Dickens Around       Ho Leigh Sheet. But will Pork Spew consider investing? Noooooooooooo....... O coarse knot..... Grrrrr.       See also this and this. RB will certainly appreciate the latter. Ali Baba And The Forty-Dollar Thieves       Who would have guessed this would have happened under the Cheney -- er, Bush administration? Coinkydink? Me stoops to ponder.... Simply Irresistible       As the ad goes, once you pop, I guess you just can't stop.... Coming Soon: The Jenny Craig version. Onan The Barbarian       Kittens everywhere are issuing a muted "meows" and running for the hills. Check out the registration page which contains such classic phrases as "Professional and seeded wankers must register and be on their starting pad early" and "On-line and streaming video masturbators must have valid ID and be at the shoot location on time for the starting whistle." This blog assures you, it does NOT want to know if any of you choose to participate. *Doctor J covers his ears and proceeds to say I can't hear you over and over again* A Nice Piece of Class       This blog recommends adopting the term "Roadkill." In Ontario, I'd recommend "Premature Matriculators." Buffy The Boddhisattva       But, wait a second, last I heard, Buffy was like cookie dough.... In other Buffy news, Sarah's doing the typical actress whine. I'm sure the Mormons would love to explain Buffy's proclivity for boffing the undead with the rigour and violence of a bitch in heat. A Tic Tac, A Drinking Straw And A Nostril       Reading this blog instead of doing something for your long-suffering wife on Mother's Day? No problem: send her this and admit, "it's better than one of those saccharine Hallmark cards. And it's sure as hell better than anything I would have come up with." Thank Heaven For Little Girls       Key words from Dave's column today: "The River Nile was played by a bath towel." Even money says all of you that read this article will call someone a pine-cone head before the end of the day. Hoop Dreams       As the song goes, "it don't mean a thing / if it ain't got that swing...." *shudder*       (With thanks to The Department Of Way Too Much Information) 07 May 2004 Forgive Them, Doctor, For They Know Not What They Do       Best I say nothing except to instruct you to read this and this-- and if you want more, check here. Enjoy. "I'm Spartacus!!!!!!!"       Looking at these photoshops, I'm reminded of a classic bit from Whose Line Is It Anyway: in Scenes From A Hat, the performers are called to do "What celebrities would do if they landed on the moon," to which Ryan Stiles, in his perfect impression of Carol Channing, comes out and says, "Why, it's as dry and barren as I am!"       Here, however, is my favourite of the lot: Bastards!       How dare they! Quickly, to the ramparts! The revolution begins now! First thing we do, let's kill all the politicians! He's A Lying Crapweasel       Oh, Mr. Barry, well done.... The No Spin Zone       Check out Something Awful's hilarious spin on Important Questions As Answered By Social RejectsTM including Bill O'Reilly, Michael Moore, Mr. T, and-- most pitilessly (and thankfully so!)-- internet "humourist" Maddox. Those loud thuds you keep hearing are the sounds of Maddox's head being slammed repeatedly against the proverbial pavement. Boo-yah!!! Weebles Wobble But They Don't Fall Down       In the words of Mr. Eliot: "You say I am repeating / Something I have said before: I shall say it again." The statistics quoted in the penultimate paragraph strike me as being rather low indeed. Pathetic Phallusy       Today's example of overheated, unnecessary and utterly platitudinous rhetoric is brought to you by the Minnesota Daily, and will likely engender fits of eye-rolling and indignant snickering. Here's an introductory morsel of some of the lamest ironical-posturing I've read in ages: Well, silly me! I am not supposed to dress for my own comfort; I am supposed to dress for the penis. Not any penis, mind you, but one that is the authority on what women can and cannot wear, particularly when it comes to clothing that reveals the female figure. That’s right; it is my responsibility, as part of the opposite sex, to dress to entertain the penis, as that obviously is my only source of pleasure in life. Oh, isn't this young woman's whinge moving? Excuse me, I need to evacuate my stomach now, the butterflies in it so stirred by this lugubrious lament of oppression. As my one-year old cousin might say, "Wennnnnnnnnhhhh!" A Dedicated Fool       43 to 41: "I am better than thou art now, I am a Fool, thou art nothing." Indeed. 05 May 2004 Do They Need To Be Libahmerated? You can call him Monica, Mr. President.... See also this piece which is pure, wonderful heresy. Oh, as if John Kerry would ever be that direct.... Turtle Diary       Real Men Don't Swan. Or if they did.... Bondage and Domination       The Globe reports that the Canadian divorce rate is down. However slightly, this of course means prognostications involving everything from September 11th to surviving the five-year itch.       Oh, I remember days when I didn't think the word "marriage" was a condemnation to an eternity of Promethean punishment. That was before I realized that my name spelled backwards is "Why marriage." Oh, so long ago, so very, very long ago.... Careful, He Wants Somethin'....       Response to Val Kilmer: . This gives new meaning to the phrase, "I see dead people." Captain Obvious Strikes Again       Jeff Simpson in today's Globe and Mail observes: "The forthcoming election campaign [in Canada] will not be for the pure of heart, nor for those who prefer edifying politics. It's likely instead to be nasty, brutish and long." No shit, Jeff. This election is looking like it will be the most mean-sprited in memory. And, gee, you mean people really thought Paul Martin would bring in days of champagne and violets? Dolts. Democratic deficit, my ass. Especially when it comes to Martin, who has at his disposal the biggest campaign machine ever known in Canada, don't be misled into believing any of the myths of political sincerity. Those of you with votes, keep an eye on Paul Wells' generally incisive analysis at his blog. Soon, it seems, many of us will be looking back on the days of Brian Mulroney as days of civil politicking. My answer? Our politicians are going to treat us with intellectual disdain; let's return it in kind. Transylvanian Hooter Girls       In case you're a monumental idiot and you couldn't already surmise this from the previews, this review hilariously confirms the obvious: that Van Helsing sucks canal water. (Early press on the film is roundly dismissing it; I've yet to read a word in praise of it.) Who, I asks ya, who thought this idea would work? Probably the same morons that thought The League of Extraordinary Gentlemen would be both fun and educational.... Shocked, Shocked, I Say....       That the woman in this story ISN'T this person. Shocked, I tells ya.... 04 May 2004 The Credibles, Their Haunches Stirring?       GQ has a very interesting article on the possible fate of American Secretary of State Colin Powell, generally considered by those of temperate minds to be the main voice of moderation in the Dubya cabinet. The article's thrust: Powell's had enough, and, frankly, given his treatment, it would surprise no one if Powell is indeed tired and bitter. The larger concern for all of us should be this, though: if Powell does resign, for whatever reasons, the inmates will likely take over the asylum completely, and this scares the bloody bejeezus out of me. There's also another possible angle from which to see this positioning by Powell and his staffers, the angle from which Powell's not-so-concealed disaffection is a subtle threat to the Dubsters about entirely alienating centrists and moderates. If Powell announced his resignation before the election, I suspect Dubya's numbers would take a serious hit, a hit even greater than if, say, the almost-equally-popular Senator John McCain were to jump ship. Forget all the crap with the attack ads on both sides of the political spectrum in the U.S.: the key to the next election rests with the popular middle-ground, and it remains to be seen if either Bush or Kerry can establish themselves there. In other words, people like Powell and McCain may prove to be the Warwicks of the next administration, the kingmakers. Keep your eyes on these guys, people. The real battle hasn't even yet begun. When the credibles start indicating their sides, the currents will shift accordingly. Toasting Audrey I never thought I'd land in pictures with a face like mine.       Awwwwhhhhh.... It would have Audrey Hepburn's birthday today, so the Times has a commemorative piece set up on their website. She would only have been 75 today. What a shame. Go rent Sabrina or My Fair Lady or Charade or Roman Holiday or even Always, her final film, in which she plays (of all things) an angel. Think, too, of her famous quote, "Success is like reaching an important birthday and finding you're exactly the same," and ask yourself how successful you are. Hobson's Hoist A little tart like that could save you a fortune in prostitutes.                --- Hobson in Arthur       Found myself today watching for the first time in some years the old Dudley Moore chestnut Arthur, the infectious comedy about the perpetually-drunken millionaire playboy Arthur Bach. Watching it again, I found myself both charmed by it and repulsed by it: charmed, mainly because the film has some good comic set-pieces and some great work by Moore, and repulsed mainly because so many of the film's bits were awkward, forced and impossibly tacky, not least of which is the film's use of music. The real pleasure of it, though, remains the wonderfully clipped performance by Sir John Gielgud-- who won an Oscar for his role here-- as the valet Hobson: Hobson is the classic acerb, and Gielgud relishes the part; against Moore's buffoonery, he offers vicious unbending deadpan, and he's nothing less than perfect. He also gets the films best lines: Arthur: Do you know what I'm going to do? I'm going to take a bath. Hobson: I'll alert the media. Arthur: Do you want to run my bath for me? Hobson: It's what I live for. [Arthur exits] Hobson: Perhaps you would like me to wash your dick for you... you little shit. Hobson: Would you remove your helmet, please? Arthur: Why? Hobson: Please. [Arthur hands him his helmet] Hobson: Thank you. Now your goggles. Arthur: Why? Hobson: Please. [Arthur hands him his goggles] Hobson: Thank you. [Slaps him across the face repeatedly] Hobson: You spoiled little bastard! He also describes meeting Liza Minelli's character by saying, "Normally, someone would have to go to a bowling alley to meet someone of your stature," which seems truer now of the real Liza than her character in the film. Watching Gielgud today, I really missed him, and thought with some sadness that it really is hard to believe that we'll never again by graced by Gielgud's gift for comedy. (He died in 2000 at the ripe old age of 96; Moore passed away in 2002 at 56.) He almost single-handedly saves the film from becoming unbearably sappy. Almost. I should add that the film has another fine performance, from Geraldine Fitzgerald as Arthur's you-don't-want-to-screw-with-her grandmother. Directories of romantic comedies need to realize, though, that if you're going to go for the heartstrings, it's not enoough just to be cutely cheeky in doing so; you need effective blocking characters that are as hard as boards -- like Gielgud and Fitzgerald in Arthur -- to toughen things up, to respond, at least in part, to the harder minds in the audience, to say nothing of creating necessary conflicts within the film. I think now of modern romantic comedies, and I'm at a loss to think of many that remember this rule. No wonder so many such films these days seem like undiluted syrup. The great glee in watching Gielgud in this film is knowing that his character will hoist everbody up by their silly little petards, and thank God he does.       One other great line from the film, this one for Arthur: "Not all of us who drink are poets. Some of us drink because we're not poets." No kidding. Cheers. 03 May 2004 A Delicate Clapper At The Center Of A Bell       Every now and again, it's worth looking at some truly BAD poetry, if only so we can approach better poetry with a greater appreciation. Check out some of these duds: Sex Without Love How do they do it, the ones who make love without love? Beautiful as dancers, gliding over each other like ice-skaters over the ice, fingers hooked inside each other's bodies, faces red as steak, wine, wet as the children at birth whose mothers are going to give them away. How do they come to the come to the come to the God come to the still waters, and not love the one who came there with them, light rising slowly as steam off their joined skin? These are the true religious, the purists, the pros, the ones who will not accept a false Messiah, love the priest instead of the God. They do not mistake the lover for their own pleasure, they are like great runners: they know they are alone with the road surface, the cold, the wind, the fit of their shoes, their over-all cardio- vascular health--just factors, like the partner in the bed, and not the truth, which is the single body alone in the universe against its own best time. --- Sharon Olds The Pope's Penis It hangs deep in his robes, a delicate clapper at the center of a bell. It moves when he moves, a ghostly fish in a halo of silver sweaweed, the hair swaying in the dark and the heat -- and at night while his eyes sleep, it stands up in praise of God. --- also Sharon Olds, who really should consider a different career Variation On The Word Sleep I would like to watch you sleeping, which may not happen. I would like to watch you, sleeping. I would like to sleep with you, to enter your sleep as its smooth dark wave slides over my head and walk with you through that lucent wavering forest of bluegreen leaves with its watery sun & three moons towards the cave where you must descend, towards your worst fear I would like to give you the silver branch, the small white flower, the one word that will protect you from the grief at the center of your dream, from the grief at the center I would like to follow you up the long stairway again & become the boat that would row you back carefully, a flame in two cupped hands to where your body lies beside me, and as you enter it as easily as breathing in I would like to be the air that inhabits you for a moment only. I would like to be that unnoticed & that necessary. --- Margaret Atwood The Ballad Of The Lonely Masturbator The end of the affair is always death. She's my workshop. Slippery eye, out of the tribe of myself my breath finds you gone. I horrify those who stand by. I am fed. At night, alone, I marry the bed. Finger to finger, now she's mine. She's not too far. She's my encounter. I beat her like a bell. I recline in the bower where you used to mount her. You borrowed me on the flowered spread. At night, alone, I marry the bed. Take for instance this night, my love, that every single couple puts together with a joint overturning, beneath, above, the abundant two on sponge and feather, kneeling and pushing, head to head. At night, alone, I marry the bed. I break out of my body this way, an annoying miracle. Could I put the dream market on display? I am spread out. I crucify. My little plum is what you said. At night, alone, I marry the bed. Then my black-eyed rival came. The lady of water, rising on the beach, a piano at her fingertips, shame on her lips and a flute's speech. And I was the knock-kneed broom instead. At night, alone, I marry the bed. She took you the way a women takes a bargain dress off the rack and I broke the way a stone breaks. I give back your books and fishing tack. Today's paper says that you are wed. At night, alone, I marry the bed. The boys and girls are one tonight. They unbutton blouses. They unzip flies. They take off shoes. They turn off the light. The glimmering creatures are full of lies. They are eating each other. They are overfed. At night, alone, I marry the bed. --- Anne Sexton Ick. I suddenly feel the need to scrub my ears just to get the horrible ringing out them. Forgive me for torturing you with these poetic plop-pieces. And I apologize thoroughly for making you think about the Pope's tallywhacker.... Old McDonald's Had A Film       E-I-E-I-Ohhhhhhhh........ The Hoarse-Whisperer       Yeah, yeah, she strained "her voice." Yeah, sure, I get it. Nudge nudge, wink wink, say na more, say na more.... Yes, There Does Seem To Be A Theme Today.... Hmmmm....       Stumbled across this poem from Ted Hughes' Crow (1970), a strange volume that does have some fine moments of cleverness. Check this out: A Childish Prank Man's and woman's bodies lay without souls, Dully gaping, foolishly staring, inert On the flowers of Eden. God pondered. The problem was so great, it dragged him asleep. Crow laughed. He bit the Worm, God's only son, Into two writhing halves. He stuffed into man the tail half With the wounded end hanging out. He stuffed the head half headfirst into woman And it crept in deeper and up To peer out through her eyes Calling its tail-half to join up quickly, quickly Because O it was painful. Man awoke being dragged across the grass. Woman awoke to see him coming. Neither knew what had happened. God went on sleeping. Crow went on laughing. Oh, that would explain everything about these ridiculous things we call bodies.... And He Really Came....       Key quote from this article: "he was particularly proud of the pickled penis." Oh, those Russians.... Swept Away       Why does the mother in this story seem to me like a twisted Cher-wannabe? Oh yeah, the naked 12 year old.... Tip Of The Day       But will their hearts go on? (and on and on and on...) 02 May 2004 The Naked And The Nude       Buried in this article: yet another reason to praise John Donne. This blog is also a bit curious about "the politics of touch," of which it will say nothing more on the grounds that anything it may say or will likely be held against in the court of public opinion. Along With Dressing Yourself And Wiping Your Own Bum Unassisted       This morning's Reality-Check is brought to you by the Winnipeg Sun, the letters J and O, and the Children's Television Jerkshop. The Fresh Prints       "Oh, mom, sometimes I just don't feel....." What's in a name, indeed. Knee-Jerk Reaction       I don't even know where to begin responding to this article, today's example of Jaw-Droppingly Idiotic American Punditry (TM) brought to you by the New York Times (and thus may require you to register, but it's free), the letters F and U, and the Children's Internet Workshop. It really does seem lately that far too few Americans can differentiate between a phallus and a fallacy. Escalus, Shmescalus The thing that hath been, it is that which shall be; and that which is done is that which shall be done: and there is no new thing under the sun.             --- Ecclesiastes 1:9 (KJV)       When I was a younger lad in my early twenties, I gave up wondering about my weight. (In fact, I even switched from rye-and-ginger to beer in the vain hope of gaining a few pounds, as so many of my friends and colleagues had, shall we say, found excess in such changes.) Tonight, er, this morning I actually dared step on a scale for the first time in some years and the result was disappointing, sadly a little too close to my own general life experience: all those years, all that misbehaviour, and I'm no different than I was when last I measured myself. Fully clothed, shy of shoes, I still came in at about eight-and-a-half stone, or 119 pounds. Supposedly "scientific" context: that chalks me in as being at least twenty pounds underweight by even the most conservative standards. Comical context: that means I've almost gained four pounds for every year I've been alive, which is just short of the five pounds my father's purportedly gained for every year he's been married to my mother.       Why am I writing about this here? It's certainly not as if I'm proud of this fact. But I guess it's the somewhat depressing realization of the truth of the old saw, that the more things change, the more things remain the same. "Your dad used to be skinny, just like you," my relatives would say, smugly assuming I'd turn out exactly as my father. Family members always want desperately to believe in patterns of repetition. "Well, no," I always used to tell them: "I was always more like [my] great-grandpa," who went to his grave a rail despite having done all those things that are supposedly the emblems of ill-health and physical-expansion. So here I am, back on the corner again, still what I was twelve or thirteen years ago, certainly older now and less agile and definitely more cynical, but still stuck looking like Woody Allen's distant, but unspectacled, cousin. My friend and bartender Michael likes to say, "You can't change a good thing," a phrase I'd like to believe but which Coca-Cola disproved lo-those-years-ago. The Ecclesiastical ironies of this are all too clear: so much has changed, and yet so little has changed. My wittier friends will say that this just proves what they've said for some time, that à la Dorian Gray I must have a painting in an attic somewhere. Pardon my pessimism, though, if I stew on the thought that it hardly seems to matter what happens or what I do, I'm stuck in conditions that govern me more than I govern them. If there's a note of exasperation there, so be it. Then again, maybe this is fate's snarky way of preserving that lean and hungry look that could unsettle even Caesar. Never underestimate the little guy, the saying goes: chances are, he wants it more than you. Who knows. No Cassius, I, but certainly no Ally McBeal, either-- but yet why do I have these words, from Captain John Bourke on Crazy Horse, chiming in my head: I saw before me a man who looked quite young, not over thirty years old, five feet eight inches in height, lithe and sinewy, with a scar in the face. The expression of his countenance was one of quiet dignity, but morose, dogged, tenacious, and melancholy. He behaved with stolidity, like a man who realized that he had to give in to fate, but would not do so as sullenly as possible... Hmmmm..... As Portia says, "But we'll outface them and outswear them, too." Not sure about the quiet dignity, though.... Key words, there, my people: "not do so as sullenly as possible." I prefer "spitefully." Besides, I'm reminded, the slightness of some attributes can emphasize the extra-proportionality of others. As the palm said to the oak tree, "If you think those are impressive, you should take a look at these suckers!" Perhaps the scales of situation have their wisdom in the last. After all, the ladies *just love* a man with an impressively large vocabulary. 01 May 2004 With Friends Like These, Who Needs Enemas?       Vinay Manon has a peculiar piece today in The Star that has a few chuckles in it, but he very oddly can't tell the difference between a sit-com and any other form of television programming. BTW, the Newhart finale was a brilliant move. Seinfeld's finale: one of the most horrifying hours of television in memory. Manon, however, forgets Night Court, which would have Pheobe picked up and taken to an alien planet where, no doubt, her songs might somehow make a vague kind of autistic sense. The Man Who Liberty's "Balance"       Interesting, very interesting.... I really want to see what happens with this, as I can only imagine the decision here will cause no end of consternation in Queen's Park -- and perhaps even in the United States which, still reeling from post-Janet syndrome, may start thinking Canada is turning into a Northern Netherlands. I suspect the Ontario government will appeal the decision, but it may just prove easier for it simply to write new legislation. On Account Of I'm Just Supposing       This blog believes the proper term for this is "shakedown," and in the mob-sense of the word (and not the digital manipulation of a specific male appendage to resolution). There's just a whole lot of whackin' goin' on either way. Or, as it would be put today: w4ck )ff with us: 0rd3r n)w!!!!!! The Agony And The Infancy       Two word response to this article: Right. On. Hit Me, Baby, One More Time       Margaret Wente from The Globe and Mail has issued the invitation: "being Googled by millions of other people is very nice. So if you want to Google me, please, go right ahead." This blog shudders to think how many times, and by how many people, she's already been (gang-?) Googled, hopefully by people with freshly rinsed and manicured hands. Now that's what this blog calls "encouraging." Duff-Diving       This blog would like to reassure its patient readers that when it jokes about chaneling its inner Humbert Humbert, it is most certainly not referring to this or this -- and definitely not to this (which, this blog notices, is evidently confused about today's date). Even Doctor J isn't quite *that* lecherous. Thank you for letting me clarify that.       ~~You can tell your momma and your papa, I once was a schoolboy, too.... ~~ Take That, Marat!       Reading this article called to mind a terrible old joke that I remember hearing as a kid -- way, way back in times considerably less-PC (and hence much more fun). An Englishman, a Frenchman and a Newfie are captured by Indians sometime in the eighteenth-century. The prisoners are shackled at the feet and instructed that they will be allowed one last request before they are executed. The Chief goes up to the Englishman and asks, "What would you like for your final request?" The Englishman asks to be blindfolded so he can face his death with some dignity. The Chief grants the request, and the Englishman is scalped. The Indians, attentive to the need to make use of everything, then begin to separate the man's flesh from his body, as the Chief explains: "In death, he will still have purpose: his flesh will be used for a canoe." He then approaches the Frenchman and asks him what his final request is. He asks that he be allowed to pray to his God so he can repent his sins. The Chief agrees, and after the man prays, he too is scalped, and his skin removed for the making of another canoe. The Chief then approaches the Newfie and asks him about his final request. The Newfie calmly answers, "I'd like a fork, please." Puzzled, the Chief wonders about the nature of the request but agrees nonetheless and orders that a fork be brought to him. The fork in his hand, the Newfie suddenly starts stabbing himself repeatedly in the chest and screams, "You're not gonna make a canoe outta me!!!!!" Okay, okay, I *did* say it was terrible: what did you expect? Something Definitely Not To Joke About.... But....       Scotland: where the men are men, and the sheep know it. And yes, this blog will resist the temptation to make another really bad joke about this. (See, I even wrote "bad" with just one "a." You should all be very, very proud of me.) The Fall Of The House of Ussher "I may be rancid butter but I'm on your side of the bread."                --- E.K. Hornbeck in Jerome Lawrence and Robert E. Lee's Inherit The Wind       Just when you thought that the spurious -- and desperate -- claims of the long-dead Bishop Ussher had been dismissed even by the most ardent Christian fundamentalists, along comes this mind-stammering project in absurdity. At least such folks are consistent in their ignorance: in railing so vehemently against the notion of evolution, they fervently maintain their resistance to any sort of intellectual evolution. I'm reminded of that classic exchange from Inherit The Wind between Henry Drummond and Matthew Harrison Brady: BRADY:... The Bible gives a fine account of the flood. But your professor is a little mixed up on his dates. That rock is not more than six thousand years old. DRUMMOND: How do you know? BRADY: A fine Biblical scholar, Bishop Usher [sic], has determined for us the exact date and hour of the Creation. It occurred in the Year 4,004 B.C. DRUMMOND: That's Bishop Usher's opinion. BRADY: It is not an opinion. It is literal fact, which the good Bishop arrived at through careful computation of the ages of the prophets as set down in the Old Testament. In fact, he determined that the Lord began the Creation on the 23rd of October in the Year 4,004 B.C. -- at uh, at 9 A.M.! DRUMMOND: That Eastern Standard Time? [laughter] or Rocky Mountain Time? Now that I think of it, that play should probably be dusted off and done again for the Cheney, er, Bush team-- and Bill O'Reilly (that's pronounced "Oh, riled-he") and his cadre of lunatic out-patients. I'm not bashing those who believe in religions of any sort; but when people ignore science, history, and fact with the same flippancy of a teenager watching Murder, She Wrote, it's hard not to wonder if such people aren't the cement shoes weighing society down in the water. And, yes, my double negatives runneth over. :-) The Gates Of Hell Microsoft is expected to recommend that the "average" Longhorn PC feature a dual-core CPU running at 4 to 6GHz; a minimum of 2 gigs of RAM; up to a terabyte of storage; a 1 Gbit, built-in, Ethernet-wired port and an 802.11g wireless link; and a graphics processor that runs three times faster than those on the market today. That's it: I now accept that I am condemned to technological archaism because this is just getting freaking ridiculous. Does anyone remember the days when computers were supposed to work for us than have us work for them, labouring away just to keep the money coming in to keep our computers within shouting distance of being "up-to-date"? Oh, Bill, I wish Dante had known so he could have created a specific place just for you. 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