With A Song In Her Heart

      This blog can't help but wonder if this means that Britney will soon start bitch-slapping the bloody bejeezus out of her wife, er, spouse, in coke-affected bouts of rage. Look for her next single to be Phil Spector's "I'll Keep You Happy."

The Sermon On The Mound

      Somewhere in the ether, Peter Cook is finding this story very amusing indeed.  

      It's an interesting fact, by the way, that services of such, or at least comparable, length used to be quite common. It's a neat little tidbit to share with undergraduates, most of whom are inclined to think themselves sufferers of extended oration like no others in human history. Then I tell them about John Donne, and the disappearance of colour from their collective faces is always, always, always its own reward. Tee hee. And yes, I am evil.   Sue me.

Good Mornin' Little Schoolgirl

      Remembering back on this blog's days in high school (way back when the Soviet Union still existed and the internet was but a gleam in Al Gore's eye), I have to say that this does not surprise me in the least.   It disturbs me, but it doesn't surprise me.   Ah, high school days, years I wasted worrying about grades and stupid stuff like that....

His Name's Just Soooo Dreamy......

      Doctor J is so glad that he has a name that can be rendered both euphonously and cacophonously because sometimes the ladies want it soft and tender and at others....   

      (And yes, one of these days I will do a tally of all the things that I've said and written that will one day get me sent straight to Hell, or, as it's otherwise known, Newark.)

You Won't Feel A Thing....

                    

      (The cure, by the way, for the "foul taste" is chocolate milk. Or so I've been told.)

Please, Sir, Just A Little More

      It's poetry I tells ya, poetry.   *sniff*

The Best Part Of Waking Up....

      An alternate answer, perhaps, for those with, er, veal shortages?

Blogger Strikes Again!

      It's always hard to tell what other people are seeing thanks to Blogger's tendency to insert interfering little things into one's blog. On my end, I'm now seeing an annoying silverish toolbar at the top of my blog. Is anyone else seeing this? If so, now I'm going to have to figure out how to realign the page so that damned thing isn't mangling the page. Arrrrrgh!

POSTSCRIPT: Okay, worked around this. Argh. Supposedly, the search function in the toolbar will allow you to search through this blog only, BUT (but, but, but) a preliminary test by the Not-So-Good Doctor has revealed that the results are extremely inadequate, and far from complete. Oh Google, oh Google, you screw us all over like poodles....

Carpe Scrotum

      Boys, you may not want to read the last of these....

The Wails of August

      From Christie's site, stumbled on this, a sort of thing that always leads one to awkward hums and haws and fine dicing. The original said to strike out what didn't apply, but I felt the need to italicize the "kinda but not kindas" for accuracy's sake.

AUGUST:
Loves to joke. Attractive. Suave and caring. Brave and fearless. Firm and has leadership qualities. Knows how to console others. Too generous and egoistic {that's a tricky one}. Takes high pride of oneself. Thirsty for praises {yes and no: complicated}. Extraordinary spirit. Easily angered. Angry when provoked. Easily jealous. Observant. Careful and cautious. Thinks quickly. Independent thoughts. Loves to lead and to be led. Loves to dream. Talented in the arts, music and defense {Maybe once; not anymore}. Sensitive but not petty. Poor resistance against illnesses {Awkward: in some ways indomitable, in others not so much}. Learns to relax {still learning}. Hasty and trusty. Romantic {I'm a Lapsed Romantic}. Loving and caring.      Loves to make friends {Meh.}.

I dunno about "extraordinary spirit," though. I'm surely not the one to judge. Strange thing, very few of the things that tend to crop up in such things: critical, intellectual, stubborn, self-righteous. Figures (crimony!) that the May babies get "Sharp thoughts." Ay cafuckinrumba....

      Check yourself out and feel free to post your results, though I don't think the "strike" function works in the Enetation javascript.

POSTSCRIPT: Oh boy-oh-boy-oh-boy was this wrong. So wrong.

Okay, Miss Morrissette, This Is An Irony

      You know it's bad when even the anarchists are organizing.   Next thing you know, even the apathetics will be doing something.  

      In somewhat related news, the family of Daniel Pearl has asked Dick "Needy Chick" Cheney to desist invoking the slain journalist's name in stump-speeches.   Let's now see if Mr Cheney has even an ounce of civility in him.

A Bray At The Races

      Now that's one smokin' ass.

Some People Are Just Dyin' To Give It Away

      Again, I may have -- actually, almost surely have-- missed my calling.

Coming To Terms

      For the sake, purely, of expanding everyone's vocabulary (yeah, that's it), this blog would like to direct you to a glossary of terminology that most of you sick, sick monkeys will find thoroughly fascinating-- and probably a little disturbing.   And although it's not the worst thing figured in the list, this blog has to pause and consider, with more than some discomfort, that there has actually been cause to come up with the words oculolinctus ("licking {one's} partner's eyeball") and taphephilia ("arousal from being buried alive").   **shudder**

      Which reminds me, I guess it was only a matter of time until this blog stumbled upon an article about, er, one of the Not-So-Good Doctor's tendencies (though it's not strictly parthenophilia or lolitaism).   The article makes a couple of good points, most notably the ones in this paragraph:

“There is actually quite a bit that young women have to offer older men besides looks alone,” Masini says. “On the most obvious level, there’s that fun, young energy they have. There’s naiveté, which can be attractive when compared with the cynicism of some older women. There’s a playfulness — a lack of the seriousness that can sometimes accompany being an adult and having responsibility. And, for some men, there’s the fact that these young girls look up to them — as father figures and as mentors. That, in and of itself, is very attractive.”

Problem is, though, the article falls into the same stupid assumptions about power-relationships that typify modern cynicism in it's cringeing, snarling ugliness.   What the author (a woman; surprise, surprise...) describes as "naiveté" is better understood as (relative) "innocence," but the later doesn't have the same dismissive element to it (especially if you're William Blake).   There a lot of other things she very brusquely misses.   A lot of us tend to think we have enough cynicism as it is, and so the air of innocence can be disarming, refreshing, and a reminder that things don't necessarily have to be the way the are (however much, though, that generally turns out to be a mirage).   And, let's face it, a lot of men become quietly nostalgic, not so much for days or things but for ways of thinking and feeling that life generally drives right out of them except for a tiny nugget of memory that they bury in a personal place slightly more secret than one of Dick Cheney's undisclosed, secure locations.

      There's a lot more to this, in fact, both positive and negative, but the bold, stereotyping strokes of this article border on the galling.   There's a lot more I could take issue with here, but I'm relatively sure most of my readers would start reading autobiographical venting everywhere, even if the basic impulses are also those of so much literature and history it would make one's head spin.   So, no, I won't go too much further.   What I will say is this: the article's smug assumptions about "power" are sickening simplifications that fail utterly to understand what's actually at work in such relational constructions and deconstructions.   Brush up on your Shakespeare (or even your Graham Greene) to see what I mean, and to see it in more carefully nuanced depiction.   If you're waiting for any elaborations or exasperations of the Papa Jer or Uncle Jer myths, you'll have to look elsewhere (the seven-volume set, complete with annotations and critical commentary, will be released by Norton later this year).   But let me say reaffirm this: power is not, not, not the pivot of such matters, and to read it in such ways speaks of a different kind of cynicism that is perhaps more correctly identified as callous punditry.   The article, alas, by the end is so caught in its own assumptions and delusions that it mucks everything up entirely.   But then again, maybe it takes a Blakean double vision to understand such matters fully.

      But, sigh o sigh, as Mr James would say, "and there we are."   And people wonder why I've quit playing that infernal game, in fact all silly, predictable jeux de coeur.   My cynicism is enough as it is; I hardly need more of it, let alone to have any of it reinforced.   And that, I'm sure, is a point with which you'll all agree.

13 x 13

      Imre Salusinszky's commentary on the IOC's decision to hold the Opening Ceremonies on Friday the 13th is a fun, worthwhile read, as is this piece from National Geographic that notes some of the "theory" behind (*deep breath*) paraskevidekatriaphobia, or, as it's "more commonly" known, friggatriskaidekaphobia. (Say either of those words thirteen times fast.)

From the "Get Over Yourselves, It's A Fucking Movie" File....

      Ready for your morning pule? Here ya go.  

Yellow Moons and Green Clovers

      In the name of being Fair and Balanced, this blog would like to direct you to Ten Reasons Why You Should Vote For George W. Bush. You're welcome.  

In A Manly, Heterosexual Way

      It seems that before he left to cover the Olympics, Dave Barry wrote a paean to one of his mentors, one of his true spiritual guides in this world.

The Profit And The Loss

      Rave on, Tom. Frankly, I'm just plain tired.

So here I am, in the middle way, having had twenty years---
Twenty years largely wasted, the years of l'entre deux guerres---
Trying to learn to use words, and every attempt
Is a wholly new start, and a different kind of failure
Because one has only learnt to get the better of words
For the thing one no longer has to say, or the way in which
One is no longer disposed to say it. And so each venture
Is a new beginning, a raid on the articulate
With shabby equipment always deteriorating
In the general mess of imprecision of feeling,
Undisciplined squads of emotion. And what is there to conquer?
By strength and submission, has already been discovered
Once or twice, or several times, by men whom one cannot hope
To emulate--- but there is no competition---
There is only the fight to recover what has been lost
And found and lost again and again: and now, under conditions
That seem unpropitious. But perhaps neither gain nor loss.
For us, there is only the trying. The rest is not our business.

--- T.S. Eliot, from the fifth movement of East Coker (1940)

If Condoms Had Sponsors

Some of these are amusing.... But, strangely, no mention that pink does more than you think....

This should be dedicated, of course, to Mr Charles, who said it all: Uh-huh!

Bringin' It All Back Home

      This blog doesn't want to say too much about the Olympics (normally, this blog couldn't and wouldn't really care less), but it's got to say it: the Opening Ceremonies yesterday were glorious, a spectacle fitting the people that invented the term. It was surely a great deal removed from the tackier and more mind-numbing ceremonies of recent years, and amidst the pyrotechnics and the elaborate performances, there were bits of genuine visual poetry, not least of which was the "History of the Games" run, during which the runner, carrying his torch, stumbled; it seemed everyone gasped, everyone thought it an accident, until the runner rose and a voice in the background announced "World War One." All in all, an impressive show that paid a terrific tribute to history in the process. I guess I write this with a bit of contrition, because I had expected the opening ceremonies to be intolerable pap, but it wasn't, though it certainly seemed to please the crowd. Athens managed yesterday to restore some history and, perhaps more importantly, dignity to the events, and some parts of it were quite breath-taking. Sure, I could have done without Björk, but, one can't have everything. There are few enough pleasant surprises these days, and given the rumblings of scandal before and pending, Athens, in the end, can proudly say it shone. So colour this blog impressed. Goodness knows, I didn't think the Olympics could impress that way anymore. Who says you can't go home again?

Shades of Neville Chamberlain

      American Journalism 101: Class, you are dealing with an assignment that will make your local readership look very, very bad indeed, so you need to tweak the details of the story to make matters seem more gentle, more everyday than they would otherwise seem. How do you do it? The answer: the tried-and-true form called "Burying The Lede," in which you save what otherwise seem the most crucial details until the end of the article where they will most surely be minimized (and largely unread). By placing these details at the end of your article, you can realign the context of the reporting so that you can find a more neutral, and less offensive, way of reporting on an ugly incident, and you can install a built-in apology for those ugly details before anyone finally gets to them. After all, you don't want to make your readership angry by calling them on their astonishingly uncivilized behaviour. This will cause a drop in sales and hailstorm of hate-mail, particularly if your community has been dispensing a fair bit of hatred lately. Although some say this allows diplomacy to win out over morality and veracity, it's a classic peace-making exercise in "half-reporting," or what some call "spin." Your task for today is to examine this classic example of "Burying The Lede" and consider the various ramifications of this particular way of "reporting the truth" and other ways in which the story might, in fact probably should be, told. Extra credit: determine what H.L. Mencken would have done with this situation, and/or Edwin Newman. See you next week, and, please, clean up your Doritos: the cleaning lady's becoming right cranky about the mess. Cheers.

Premature Pull-Out?

      This blog reports, you decide.   As for this blog, well, in the words of just about every single character in every Star Wars film ever made says at one point or another, "I've got a bad feeling about this."

Family Values: No Sex, But Racism's Fine

      Every now and again this blog dares to entertain the notion that Bush and his cadre really aren't the smug, mean-spirited, anti-intellectual rubes that they can seem to be. Every now and again this blog dares to think that maybe these guys actually might have their hearts in the right place. Then this blog stumbles upon something like this, and the moment passes:

"It's not John Kerry 's fault that he looks French," Smith told reporters on the conference call arranged by the Bush campaign.

"But it is his fault that he wants to pursue policies that have us act like the French. He advocates all kinds of additional socialism at home, appeasement abroad, and what that means is weakness for the future."

Talk about playing to racism and ignorance. If you have any question that the above statement is blisteringly racist, substitute the word "Jewish" where you see the word "French" and ask yourself if such language would be considered acceptable from leading politicians. The Bushies are reprehensible hucksters, and utterly bereft of redeeming qualities.

I Can't See The Difference, Can You See The Difference?

          

So what are we going to do tomorrow, Dick?
The same thing we do every day, George: try to take over the world!

"It's Like Being Bludgeoned By A Ham"

      Those of you with little wee ones might want to check out this article before you take the initiative and determine to do something about your shortcoming.   The article's a bit long (seven pages), but it's worth reading the whole hilarious narrative. Key quote:

Several nights ago, for instance, I had a dream in which my grandmother was performing oral sex on me. Considering that my grandmother has been dead for nearly eight years, I think you'll agree that this is pretty disgusting. I mean, why couldn't it have been my maternal grandmother? She's hot.

That said, this blog is packing more veal than Denninger's. Yee-haw.

Hands-On Education

      ^~~Teacher, teacher, can you teach me, / Can you tell me all I need to know? ^~~

      (Does anyone remember 38 Special? Okay, sue me: I'm now officially OLD.)

Spunk'd?

      This blog ain't sayin' a cotton-pickin' thing....       

      (You have sick, sick minds, the whole dirty rotten lot of ye.)

Glamour Pussies

      Ah, leave it to Stephen Fry to sum up the Vapid-Tramp Hilton sisters so precisely as having "the dim and glazed eye of a dead mullet."

      This blog has still not seen Bright Young Things, but it quite wants to see it: somehow, the idea of Sir John Mills, now 96, snorting cocaine is very, very curious. Besides, it's about time the film received full release.

Look On My Goods, Ye Mighty....

      Now let's reconsider that old notion of truth in advertising....

      This blog's favourite bit is a little touch about half way down the page:

Is your site secure?
Infinitely moreso than our customers are.

Perfect for the Not-So-Good Doctor and his increasingly "the glass is half empty, and I'm drinkin' fast" outlook on life.

(Thanks to Christie for the link.)

Tight In August

      Ahem. *cough cough* Er, how will you be, ahem, celebrating?

      And in related news....

/covers eyes in shame

Ever So Buoyantly

      This blog doesn't know how it managed to miss Rex Murphy's column on Saturday, but it's finally going to right that wrong.   The last two paragraphs are absolutely priceless.

      (Caveat: Wilde never suggested art should imitate life; in fact, there's an extent to which The Picture of Dorian Gray can be read as an attack on that very idea.   He famously, and somewhat but not entirely facetiously, had one of his 'characters' --- Vivian in "The Decay of Lying" --- say that life imitates art more than the reverse.)

Respect For The Captain

      Doctor J's shortly off to a funeral showing and with his funeral service tomorrow, it's probably appropriate that I post this now in salute.

The Captain

Now the Captain called me to his bed
He fumbled for my hand
"Take these silver bars," he said
"I'm giving you command."

"Command of what, there's no one here
There's only you and me --
All the rest are dead or in retreat
Or with the enemy."

"Complain, complain, that's all you've done
Ever since we lost.
If it's not the Crucifixion,
Then it's the Holocaust."

"May Christ have mercy on your soul
For making such a joke
Amid these hearts that burn like coal
And the flesh that rolls like smoke."

"I know that you have suffered, lad,
But suffer this awhile:
Whatever makes a soldier sad
Will make a killer smile."

"I'm leaving, Captain, I must go
There's blood upon your hand.
But tell me, Captain, if you know
Of a decent place to stand."

"There is no decent place to stand
In a massacre;
But if a woman take your hand
Go and stand with her."

"I left a wife in Tennessee
And a baby in Saigon --
I risked my life, but not to hear
Some country-western song."

"Ah but if you cannot raise your love
To a very high degree,
Then you're just the man I've been thinking of --
So come and stand with me."

"Your standing days are done," I cried,
"You'll rally me no more.
I don't even know what side
We fought on, or what for."

"I'm on the side that's always lost
Against the side of Heaven
I'm on the side of Snake-eyes tossed
Against the side of Seven.

And I've read the Bill of Human Rights
And some of it was true
But there wasn't any burden left
So I'm laying it on you."

Now the Captain he was dying,
But the Captain wasn't hurt.
The silver bars were in my hand
I pinned them to my shirt.

--- Leonard Cohen, from the album Various Positions

NOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOO!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!

      The horror, the horror....

Snakes And Bladders

      This blog has been training all its life for this.

Oh Kitten, My Kitten

      Evidently, someone knew what was being done in that occupied lavatory. (Gee, I didn't know {name deleted to prevent libel suits} was on a plane lately.) M'row.

Those Wacky Dutch Do It Again

      This blog assures you, it has nothing to do with this. Mind you, if Doctor J hears the words "You're so skinny!" or "Have you lost weight?" one more time, he will more than surely have to get medieval on someone's ass.

To Serve And Protect

      Three little words: Oh. My. God.

Spin, Baby, Spin

      It's bizarre enough living in this terrorism-obsessed Western world. It's even more bizarre when the Bushies, known so much for their tact and their subtlety, turn a basic threat into a campaign legitimation:

"The goal of the next attack is twofold: to damage the U.S. economy and to undermine the U.S. election," the official said. "The view of al Qaeda is 'anybody but Bush.'"

Okay, boys and girls, a vote for Kerry is a vote for Al-Qa'eda because Al-Qa'eda is Anybody But Bush. As a point of fact, if there's an "inaugural assassination" to their plots, if I were working behind the scenes, I'd worry about at an attack on Pakistani President Musharraf which could end up doing more political damage than a dozen small bombings. And yes, it is scary that we should have to think about things like this at all.

Who's Your Daddy?

      It looks like the Dubster's gonna make that Kerry dude his biatch.   Slammin'. (And yes, this blog rather likes the phrase "a kinder, gentler death toll.")

      Afterthought: Has anyone else noticed how thoroughly entrenched it has become to describe The American President as "incurious?"   I remember thinking around the time of its coining that the word was apt, but it's now become the polite way of point to a certain particular fault of Mr Bush's. Oh, what we do to language, especially when we pose to be "correct." You see, in Canada, we'd use a more direct, less evasive word: we'd call him a "moron." Or we would say that he is, not to put too fine a point on it, "stupid." But perhaps The President has a Kevin Kline fit every time he hears the s-word. Meh? Makes sense to me.

"Own A Part Of American History...."

      Strong enough for a man, but made by a wo--- no, no, no....

      Those Yanks just get freakier and freakier....

Pink Does More Than You Think

      What's worse, this blog has to wonder, The Most Retch-Inducing Commercial Ever Made or that so many people can discuss it that it requires a 42Kb size webpage? *shudder*   Well, okay, the latter is just a sad statement on society; the former is an exercise in cringe-related contortionism.   The worst part, methinks, is the woman at the, er, end and her "oops, I leaked!" gesture. Whatthemutherpluck?!?!?

Mary, Good Sir

      In a gesture I'm sure RK would think pitiable (or risible?), one scholar has rather fancifully suggested that the True Identity of William ("Superman") Shakespeare is none other than-- the envelope, please-- Mary Sidney.   For those you unfamiliar with her (and this includes the scholar in question, this blog suspects), Mary was the sister of Sir Philip Sidney and a prolific writer in her own right.   The argument for the Countess of Pembroke being Shakespeare is spurious and contrived, but it does occasion this blog to direct you to some of her writings, of which her translations of the Psalms and The Triumph of Death are quite good. Any other questions about the Penshurst bunch are best directed toward RK, this blog's resident Sidney authority. Wait, you mean everyone doesn't have a resident Sidney authority? Puh-shaw!

      To everyone else: this blog doesn't give a tinker's sugar-coated damn who Shakespeare was (I'm still inclined to accept that Shakespeare was Shakespeare), and all this rather idle speculation seems to me quite trivial-- and probably, but not necessarily, irrelevant. But if this muddle intrigues you, go wild.

Just Imagine....

      Read the fine print on this: "All winners are subject to people laughing at you."

You May Now Commence Shitting Bricks

      As if we didn't already have enough to worry about.... (But Iraq, of course, was a clear and present danger.)

A Flash In The Can

      This idea amuses me. It amuses me very, very much indeed.   

Missing The Obvious

      Okay: the University of Toronto sets up a Canadian Poets page which you can see here.   Now, for those of you that aren't avid readers of Canadian poetry (who is?), figure out which two top names are curious missing.   Now don't think too long.... Hint: one is the only Canadian writer to have a novel turned into a Best Picture award-winner; the other is, well, let's just say, a man who had no choice (he was born with the gift of a golden voice).

      Here, by the way, is Mr. O's best poem ever, in my not so humble estimation. The simple words "This ankle" have never been so erotic.

The Cinnamon Peeler

If I were a cinnamon peeler
I would ride your bed
and leave the yellow bark dust
on your pillow.

Your breasts and shoulders would reek
you could never walk through markets
without the profession of my fingers
floating over you. The blind would
stumble certain of whom they approached
though you might bathe
under the rain gutters, monsoon.

Here on the upper thigh
at this smooth pasture
neighbour to your hair
or the crease
that cuts your back. This ankle.
You will be known among strangers
as the cinnamon peeler's wife.

I could hardly glance at you
before marriage
never touch you
- your keen nosed mother, your rough brothers.
I buried my hands
in saffron, disguised them
over smoking tar,
helped the honey gatherers...

When we swam once
I touched you in the water
and our bodies remained free,
you could hold me and be blind of smell.
You climbed the bank and said

                this is how you touch other women
the grass cutter's wife, the lime burner's daughter.
And you searched your arms
for the missing perfume

                                  and knew

                    what good is it
to be the lime burner's daughter
left with no trace
as if not spoken to in the act of love
as if wounded without the pleasure of a scar.

You touched
your belly to my hands
in the dry air and said
I am the cinnamon
peeler's wife. Smell me.

The Rest

      One of The Musketeers has fallen.

      He passed away this morning around 10.30 after an intense six-month bout with cancer. He was 43.

      He was a good friend, and he will be missed--- very much so. The language of friends, Thoreau reminds me, is not words but meanings.

Baguette, Bébé?

      Offered for your consideration, insightful political analysis.   Favourite quote: "those are collapsed spider veins."

Xbox Tragedy

      There has to be a special place in Hell for these four monsters.   I can think of no response to this that does not involve an elaborate depiction of the violence these bastards deserve to have visited upon them.

The Next Target On The Axis of Evil

      Two words: Oh and crap.

Hawking His Wares

      This blog can just imagine RK's response to this article, something probably to the effect of: "Rent it, lad, don't sell it."  

Cute, Little Round Ones

      I haven't seen this list around since my residence days, when someone xeroxed a shorter version of it and taped it to all of the cubicle doors.   Oh, the old days....   See also this, which has been circulating about the Net for some time.

"It Is An Invitation To Put Our Bodies In Contact"

      And, strangely enough, this woman was not a York student.   Go figure.

      This entry, by the way, is dedicated to the memory of John Houseman.   If you don't know why, it surely doesn't matter anymore....

      (And, no, there's no chance Dr J could do such a thing-- ever.)

This Was His Finest Hour

      From The Globe and Mail, comes this photograph for this week's caption contest. Oh, so adorable. This blog's caption:

       Nancy, if I were your tom, I'd lap it.

Either that or, "I leave when the pub closes."

The Browning Version

      This blog is NOT reporting this, this blog is NOT reporting this, this blog is NOT reporting this....    *shudder*  

      (And if any of you sick puppies check out the so-called "photo-gallery," I don't think I ever want to talk to you again.   Handshakes are surely out of the question.)

Where, Oh Where, Is Aquaman When We Need Him?

      Yet another theory on Atlantis, this time that it is-- wait for it-- Ireland.   Or, as the author in question describes it, "The Fairy Land."  

The Legend of Bagger's Pants

      Ah, but will he put his money where his mouth is? Or his money-shot?

      Surely he's being facetious and/or hypothetical, but actually, I say he should do it, or something like it, and I mean acting and not just conveniently producing or directing.   Why?   After the well-reported Colin Farrell fiasco and the general Hollywood timidity with stars and actual sexuality (i.e., films that are about more than casual butt-shots and boob-flashes), it will take a few stars-- genuine ones with both popularity and credibility-- to break through some of the major barriers to begin even to get Hollywood near the more civilized European mentality towards sex in film.   After all, it took Jon Voight and Dustin Hoffman, by no means huge stars then, to make a stab at the X-rating with Midnight Cowboy, and it took Marlon Brando's raw but highly-affected performance in Last Tango In Paris to take it to a place Hollywood proper has been loathe to go since.   At least in theory, I agree with Damon, that there's no strict reason that such films have to be where they are-- but to make any sort of substantial changes (indeed, any that don't insist on having Bernardo Bertolucci as director) will require some bold, er, strokes, from the dramatic community.   The women generally have been more willing to press such matters-- and here I think of brave performances like Julianne Moore's in Boogie Nights, but there are several others-- while they cower, or else, er, end up doing stuff like Oz and Queer as Folk.   Hollywood's still the moon's distance away from making an intelligent porn film, but before it'll be able to do that it'll have to be able to do films like Bertolucci's The Dreamers or 1900, or Catherine Breillat's Romance X.   But to get Hollywood moving toward making more truly adult (rather than adolescent) films, some stars with some "cred" will have to be willing to take some damned big chances, and it'll have to come from the, er, up-and-comers, and not merely those, like Robert DeNiro in 1900 or Brando in Last Tango, for whom every cinematic gesture is always-already a statement of dramatic bravado.   So, go ahead, Matt, do it, or dare to push the envelope.   Go ahead, I darez ya.   Lead the pack.   Put the wood into Hollywood.   Show you've got as much balls as Julianne Moore.  

      Yeah, it'll never happen.   *smirk*  

      And in related news.... Who knew such a pretty young thing could look like Chrissie Hynde on her period?

Now Watch This Drive

      Screw Dubya, screw Tiger Woods: this, my friends, is just profoundly cool, the story of Andre Tolme who just finished golfing across the width of Mongolia.   Make sure you check out the scorecard; looks like he did bloody terrific on the third "hole."


      You've got to love the panache about it all, to say nothing of the audacity.   Some of the photos of the steppe are nothing less than gorgeous.   Tolme's supposed to have a book about the experience coming out soon, focussing mostly on the country itself, a country of which most of us know very, very little indeed.   Now that's an extreme sport.   And, no doubt, a genuine adventure.

      Check out, by the way, some of the details and descriptions of Mongolian life and culture, courtesy of the Mongolian Tourism Board.   There's something absolutely fascinating, or so thinks this blog at least, about a culture so very removed from, and perhaps innoculated against, Westernization.   It's one of the places I'd like to visit eventually in my lifetime, but almost certainly without the golf clubs.   And just look at that sky....

Disgust Discussed

      You all know that this blog simply had, HAD, HAD, to link to an article that begins with the following question: "What, precisely, is so bad about sex between adult siblings, bestiality, and the eating of corpses?" The answers, of course, are quite fascinating.   And for the morbid among you: no, there are no pretty pictures.   Favourite quote, though ripped entirely from context: "love can have a similar effect." Tee-hee-hee....

Thank God It's Fryeday

Benedictus? Benny never touched us!

(Sorry-- an old joke.)

      Wound up quoting Northrop Frye in an email this morning, a wonderful passage from the end of his last volume The Double Vision, and this of course led me to rediscover some of the book's other nuggets of gold, one of which is the following, a clever bit on St. Augustine:

      We may talk about a beginning and en end to time, but we cannot realize such things in our imaginations.   Whether we speak of a creation by God which began time (that is, our experience of time) or of a big bang many billions of years ago, the human mind cannot help thinking that there must have been time 'before' that.   St. Augustine was bothered by this question, which he raises several times, notably in a famous passage in the Confessions, where in effect he answers the question, 'What was God doing before creation?' by saying, 'Preparing a hell for those who ask such a question.'  If we were to guess at the repressed elements in the saint's mind when he wrote this, they might well have run something like this: If you ask God what happened before time, you embarrass God, who probably doesn't know either, and as God hates to be embarrassed, you are risking a good deal by asking.

It's easy to forget what a deft wit Frye at his best could be, and how gifted he was as a prose stylist for the Casual Age.   He surely has a poet's visionary sensibility if not his metrical impulses, and while that puts many of Frye's readers, I tend to react quite differently; in fact, to be a true critic of literature, one has to share at least some of the creative impulses of that which you study.   From the same volume comes this passage, which I quoted this morning, and which surely has the fingerprints of Herakleitos, John Donne, Wallace Stevens, and William Blake (among others) all over it:

The omnipresence of time gives some strange distortions to our double vision. We are born on a certain date, live a continuous identity until death on another date; then we move into an 'after'-life or 'next' world where something like an ego survives indefinitely in something like a time and place. But we are not continuous identities; we have had many identities, as babies, as boys and girls, and so on through life, and when we pass through or 'outgrow' these identities they return to their source. Assuming, that is, some law of conservation in the spiritual as well as the physical world exists. There is nothing so unique about death as such, where we may be too distracted by illness or sunk in senility to have much identity at all. In the double vision of a spiritual and a physical world simultaneously present, every moment we have lived through we have also died into another order. Our life in the resurrection, then, is already here, and waiting to be recognized.

And it's as curiously modern an articulation of an ancient concept as I've read in some time, and it provides a particular kind of comfort, at least intellectually, that might not come so easily from more historically-distant texts.   If there is a God-- and that's a might big "if"-- it only stands to reason that the orchestrator of a world so infinitely complex and self-informing would implant a natural process of spiritual conservation whereby nothing is finally completely lost but merely, like energy, shifted as necessary.   But the turn on the word "conservation," reverberating against our modern notions of ecological necessity, modifies the context, recalculates it, imports it.   It's a handy quote to keep around when one is daunted by questions of change and death-- and it's a handy reminder of the beauty even a critic can create.

Ask Not What You Can Do To Your Country....

      The Dubster, aka "He Who Summons Language," has done it again, declaring in a signing ceremony on Thursday:

Our enemies are innovative and resourceful, and so are we. They never stop thinking about new ways to harm our country and our people, and neither do we.

You can find the quote in a solid article today by Bob Herbert in the NY Times that's worth reading.   Alright, Mr. President, we know you don't like scrutineers-- vote counters, columnists, anyone who dares challenge your estimeration of things-- but please, oh please, hire yourself a few proofreaders.   If any other president had said that he never stops thinking about ways to harm his country and his people, he'd be brought up on charges of being a mad treasonist. (And, somewhere in The Great Ether, Woodrow Wilson is sitting with his mouth agape.)

      In the interim, this blog would like to send a karmic apology to Dan Quayle for every unkind thing that it has ever been said about him. Mea culpa, mea culpa, mea maxima culpa....

From The "Doctor J, Keep Your Goll-Darned Mouth Shut" File....

      This blog ain't gonna say it....          (M'row....)

From The "You'll Regret That When You're Older" File....

      But trust us on the sunscreen-- all seventeen-and-a-half tonnes of it.

Stand By Your Man

      "Er, that's not what you think it is...."

      Love, after all, means never having to say you're sorry for spreading gooey substances all over one another.

Old Men Have Been Exploring

      RK, after a series of adventures about the continent, has updated his blog with some lovely photographs of the Hofgarten, the Starnbergersee, and Holland, among other places.   This blog thinks Basle looks especially charming, but it has to remark upon one thing, that the skies in the photographs are so clear and so blue.   I'm intensely jealous.   The skies of Southern Ontario are always so drab, so pallid-- except when they're so stark they seem to belong in King Lear.   *sigh*  

What A Wonderful Word It Would Be, Sha La La La La....

      This blog has to wonder if they'd censor *$!@^@&#, too.... Hey, how'd that happen? That was worth 55 points, damn it!   All right, cunning linguists of the world, unite!   We have nothing to lose but our {BLEEEEP}s!

      And speaking of labiae.... Be afraid, be very, very afraid....

      UPDATE: Curiouser and curiouser:   The CD drive on my computer is so sensitive that it keeps snapping and trying to take my fingers off.   How appropriate.  

      ^~~Sha la la la la la la la, history ....^~~

All The News That's Fit To....

      From today's The Hamilton Spectator comes this, one of the most "duh"-inducing headlines of recent times:

Bathhouse offers a haven for gay sex
Owner says fear of discovery will force men back to dangerous city parks

P'Shaw! Who would ever have imagined that?    Oy.    Somehow, this is supposed to be front-page, top-level news. I'm sure the BBC is just quaking at the thought of this sort of competition.   

      In other news of Truly Significant Import....

Do The Right Thing

      Further proof that John McCain is the man the Republicans should have nominated four years ago. This sentence, though, suggests why he would never have been:

Later, McCain said the Bush campaign has denied any involvement and added, "I can't believe the president would pull such a cheap stunt."

All considered, it seems Senator McCain has a canine's loyalty-- a noble thing, and I think to an extent he genuinely believes what he's saying, which makes it even more tragic-- that keeps him believing better of people than he should, even after they've treated him so shabbily.

Fire In The Hole

      Mister Sisqo, you have a new mission.  (This blog is wrestling with the words "starter hole," with the word "starter" having way too many disturbing implications, not least of which involves the idea of ignition.)

The Endeles Knot-- Not

      After Britney, it looks like Little-Miss-Divas have to demonstrate their seriousness about marriage.   To which this blog has a mere one word answer: Right.   Or, alternately: HAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAAAAAAAA!!!!  

      Key quote: "This has got to be it, because I don't see myself with anyone else."   Oh, stop, my sides are hurting....

      In a (perhaps?) related vein, this blog received an email asking "How misogynist are you?"   Whoa.   I don't know.   I think I hate all people equally....

Terms Of Endorsement

      Apparently, the Bushies don't just want you to vote them, they want you to swear an oath of fealty to them. But, as one might suspect of the Bushies, they had a little problem with the language:

An endorsement form provided to the Journal by Random says: "I, (full name) ... do herby (sic) endorse George W. Bush for reelection of the United States." It later adds that, "In signing the above endorsement you are consenting to use and release of your name by Bush-Cheney as an endorser of President Bush."

Damn ye, vile grammar!!!! Those word thingies are just so damned complimahcated!!!!   (No word, however, on whether or not signatories will be forced to face ordeals or gauntlet challenges.)

And Yet I Would Not Be Thee, Nuncle

      Alas, I think I've finally found my calling.   Perhaps this should be the first subject of attack?

Hey, That's No Way To Say Goodbye

      Simply put: anyone that dares to try to sing "Wind Beneath My Wings" at my effing funeral will find themselves in a haunting so intense it would make the Amityville Horror seem like a Noël Coward play.  

      On the subject of funerals:   when I die, I decided long ago, I want to have the sort of quirky funeral that will disarm everyone.   During the showing, I want Van Morrison's "Real Real Gone" and Sly and the Family Stone's "I Want To Take You Higher" playing in the background; when it's time to seal up the casket, it's got to be Leonard Cohen's "Closing Time."   For the removal of the casket: Billy Ocean's, "Get Out Of My Dreams, Get Into My Car." Maybe for the interment, Peter Gabriel's "Digging In The Dirt." And I want a wake at which everyone gets so badly bombed that the people of Dresden would look on them with pity.   Any children in attendance will be required to bring water-guns, and one ordained young lad will be charged with the task of Saran-Wrapping the ladies' toilet seat.   (I'd suggest the mens', too, but we know how few of the attendees would actually hit the mark.)   The service will be allowed one moment of somberness-- to then be appropriately broken by the congregation rising to their feet and shouting the word "Norm!" in unison.   I want an ashtray placed in my hands so I can do people a favour as I'm leaving, and so everyone can giggle when the minister says that line about "ashes to ashes, dust to dust." I'm still trying to figure out a way to incorporate a dance number involving Ray Charles' "(Let Me See You) Shake Your Tailfeather."   In short, I want a ceremony that would make Waugh's Mr. Joyboy retract his gaze in embarrassment, a ceremony, in fact, that would keep everyone liquored, laughing, and lewd, with twisted little ironies popping up like dandelions on a summer lawn. That's the way to do it.   No stiff sermons, no pious platitudes about what life means, no forced expressions of meaning or farewell or the like.   I want a funeral so impish that everyone will think I'm still there, Pucking with their heads. That way the Doctor can leave the building in peace while everyone is distracted by the panoply of tricks until some poor schmuck puts it all together as the words "Kobayashi, Kobayashi, Kobayashi" start hallowing in his head.   And like that, he's gone.   Perfect.

How's It Hangin'?

      You know it's bad when people are putting their van Dycks against the wall.   Key quote: "'These are fascinating things to see from behind,' he said."   Oh. Sure....

Stripping At Home

      This blog doesn't even know want to think about this.  Key sentence: "He said the cow was his meal ticket for weeks to come, as he cut off a strip and cooked it every time he was hungry." Oh. My. Gawd.....

Encyclopedia Eugenica

      Just when you thought the Republicans couldn't look any more like frightening intellectual backwaters, along comes a guy (who, theoretically, could still win the nomination for Governor of Tennessee) that embarrasses even the Republicans.   Unbelievable.  

      See also this piece, which should set off all of your cynicism-sensors.  Hmmm.... And, gee, we haven't heard anything more about the Valerie Plame leak, either, have we? Shameless.

Gone Phishing

      Ah, this blog longs for the days when a good scam required Scott Joplin music in the background....

Hucking With Words

      Ah, one professor's tale of dealing with Huckleberry Finn and all those nasty N-words.   It's a tough question, whether to invoke those hated words these days, but I think my instinct would be to say them, if only to do two things, to maintain the integrity of the original text, and to wrest the language from the Nobodaddy of words that dare not be spoken.   Twain's use of the word is deliberately excessive, grotesque, offensive-- and to deny those words, or to gloss over them for whatever reasons (however noble) is to miss a crucial point.  That said, the N-word is one of the very few even I shrink from; it's horrible, though, to think what humanity can do to language.   And to itself.

Public Service Announcement

      This blog (for reasons none of you want to know) has to report the following, that Doctor J is SUCH a slut.   This blog is deeply, deeply ashamed of him.  Again.  

      Dignity, shmignity....

      In related news, Doctor J has invented a new word: gerflooeyfafuckle. You are all free to submit your own definitions of this addition to the dicklesshunary.

"The Spark, However, Was Perceptible"

      Don't know what made me do it, but wound up dragging down my old copy of F. Scott Fitzgerald's Babylon Revisited this morning, and turning with some peculiarity of coincidence to the story "Winter Dreams."   It's a good story, typical Fitzgerald and so given to articulating some of the more difficult dimensions of melancholia-- or, rather, what happens when melancholia bottoms out and becomes blankness or just a general emotional paucity.   Looking again at it now, especially at the last several paragraphs (see below), I'm not sure how I feel about its evocations anymore; I remember once thinking it rather tragic, but now I'm more attuned I think to its matter-of-fact acceptance of ambivalence and nothingness.   Maybe it's not so tragic, after all; maybe it's just what the pap-therapists would call "distancing" or some such nonsense; maybe there's even something heartening about it, though I'm thinking that might be an overstatement.   I don't know, though; I still -- and this is entirely me, and not Fitzgerald per se-- want to read the ending with pitiable implications, as a kind of ironic elegy.   Colour me a Wallace Stevens modernist, I guess.   Or maybe I was introduced to Graham Greene's Querry in A Burnt-Out Case (the logical conclusion of a character like Fitzgerald's Dexter) at too young an age to be able to buy into such notions of distancing and callousness.   Frankly, I don't know.   Age, I suspect, is turning me toward Fitzgerald's Dexter, toward understanding that sort of dislocation.   That Stevensian desire lingers though, stubbornly, violently.   Is this a good thing?   Ask me in twenty years or so.

      If you have the time, the complete text of Fitzgerald's "Winter Dreams" can be found here. It's a lengthy online read, but only about twenty pages in print.   To read the final section of the story, I'm including it below.   I should say this, too, that these paragraphs seem to me like a response to Joyce's figuration of maturation, romantic and emotional, in A Portrait.   Food for thought.   And before anyone starts having conniptions of worry, don't; it's merely the stuff on which this mongrel brain gnaws when it should be thinking about real things.   And, oh, yeah, this is just what good writing does.

---

A sort of dullness settled down upon Dexter. For the first time in his life he felt like getting very drunk. He knew that he was laughing loudly at something Devlin had said, but he did not know what it was or why it was funny. When, in a few minutes, Devlin went he lay down on his lounge and looked out the window at the New York sky-line into which the sun was sinking in dull lovely shades of pink and gold.

He had thought that having nothing else to lose he was invulnerable at last--but he knew that he had just lost something more, as surely as if he had married Judy Jones and seen her fade away before his eyes.

The dream was gone. Something had been taken from him. In a sort of panic he pushed the palms of his hands into his eyes and tried to bring up a picture of the waters lapping on Sherry Island and the moonlit veranda, and gingham on the golf-links and the dry sun and the gold color of her neck's soft down. And her mouth damp to his kisses and her eyes plaintive with melancholy and her freshness like new fine linen in the morning. Why, these things were no longer in the world! They had existed and they existed no longer.

For the first time in years the tears were streaming down his face. But they were for himself now. He did not care about mouth and eyes and moving hands. He wanted to care, and he could not care. For he had gone away and he could never go back any more. The gates were closed, the sun was gone down, and there was no beauty but the gray beauty of steel that withstands all time. Even the grief he could have borne was left behind in the country of illusion, of youth, of the richness of life, where his winter dreams had flourished.

"Long ago," he said, "long ago, there was something in me, but now that thing is gone. Now that thing is gone, that thing is gone. I cannot cry. I cannot care. That thing will come back no more."

--- from F. Scott Fitzgerald, "Winter Dreams" (1922)

"You Don't Say...."

      This blog doesn't know what's funnier: the "no-shit-Sherlock" response the substance of this article demands, or the insipid justification that's now being attached to it.   Quoth The Dalton: "I'd rather be accused of being overly ambitious for Ontarians, rather than side with the cynics who will tell you that you can't really make a difference."   (Quoth The Doctor: "Blathermore, blathermore.")   The only thing more cynical than McGuinty's patronizing, though sadly successful, "we'll assure you a rose garden, a kitchen sink and every orgasm you ever want"-campaign strategy is this rancid claim of Quixotic nobility.   Who knew treacle could be so phosphorous?

Khouri Under Fire

      Poor Australia: it's the Ern Malley story all over again, this time performed by a young woman from Chicago.   You see, in Canada, our frauds are genuine.  

You Look Maherrrrrrr-vellous! or, How Justin Timberlake Might Have To Save Democracy

It's comin' from the feel
That it ain't exactly real,
Or it's real, but it ain't exactly there.
    --- Leonard Cohen, "Democracy" (1992)

      Gee, that was quick: no sooner do I provide a link to HBO, and they go ahead and update their site with info from the latest episode.   I miss having the satellite dish right about now, because I would have loved to have seen the episode, a curious one that featured, along with Ralph Nader and Michael Moore, former Canuck PM Kim Campbell who, with her last appearance on the same show, demonstrated surprising good humour and common sense. If she'd shown any such character when she was running in 1993, history might have turned out very differently. This blog likes what she had to say to Mr. Nader:

A vote for a third party here does not translate into any seats, into any say. On the contrary, if you were to - you are a great man, Ralph Nader. I respect you. You changed the way people think about power. Not in this country, but in every developed country. I can't tell you when I was a political science professor, how often - I mean, how Unsafe at Any Speed changed the way we think about power. You could be out there as the gadfly mobilizing the people who look to you for leadership and being like Sam Gompers and saying, 'I'm going - let's call it the 'feet to the fire' campaign.' And close to November 2nd, you do a report card where you say what you think people should vote for. But then you have leverage. And if you help somebody win, then you're still a player. And the people who look to you get to be players.

Simply put: Right. On.   This blog also likes Maher's observation about the seething illogicality of the Bushies: "Every time I hear somebody who talks about President Bush - I hear this: 'God puts people in authority for good reason.' I wonder if this guy will agree with that if Kerry gets elected." Innnnn-Deeeeeeeeed.

      Check out the New Rules, too, which features this stinging bit:

I'm not saying everyone has to pore over issues and read everything that's out there. We can't even get our president to do that. But the conventions are one of the only times when the election isn't reduced to sound bites and attack ads. When you can get to know these people a little. It's not exciting enough just to hear Theresa Heinz[-]Kerry? Oh, I'm sorry, next time we'll get Justin Timberlake to whip her tit out!

In a word, OUCH.   Then again, we've moved so thoroughly through the looking-glass that Justin may end up in history alongside Frederick Douglass and Elizabeth Cady Stanton.   Put that in your irony pipe and smoke it.

      This leads me to make an observation here that I never got around to making when the time was right.   For the various flaws, weaknesses and vagueries of Kerry's speech at the Democratic Convention, it's worth pointing out what he did accomplish: he's changed the rhetorical dimensions of the campaign, or, at least, he's made it a great deal more difficult for the GOP to use their tried-and-true tactics of allege and besmirch. Appropriately, he's taken the battle to Bush's playground (Iraq, terrorism, and so forth).   Has anyone, after all, noticed the trepidation with which Bush and Chicanery Dick Cheney have approached their attacks since the convention?   They're surprisingly muted, even cautious; they're certainly less sniggering and less overtly derisive. I don't think Kerry accomplished much else with his speech, but it's quite possible this change in dynamic could prove to be the peripeteia of the campaign. This is what I think he needed to do, and as much as one might say this just a posturing of positivity while the Democrats let MoveOn.Org and company do their dirty work, it was a necessary (and largely symbolic) taking of the high-road. There might yet be hope for actual debate, though hope, I'm reminded, generally meets a fate that would make Lady Macbeth's unborn child grateful for his dashing.

      As for this blog, well, it's neither left or right, it's just stayin' home tonight, gettin' lost in that hopeless little screen.

---

      ADDENDUM: Er, regarding that muting of attack: it looks like this blog spoke too soon.   Sheesh.   This little nugget, if it can't be proven, could be grounds for a libel suit: "Kerry entered an abandoned Vietnamese village and slaughtered the domestic animals owned by the civilians and burned down their homes with his Zippo lighter."   So much for that little hope for civility.... How predictable-- and how contemptible.

A Leaf of Balbus

      Now here's a find: a soiled page that'll cost you a small fortune that isn't to be found in The House of Commons.

The Excuse For Future Presidents

      This blog won't mention any names in relation to this.   It especially won't make any reference to Dutch Caribbean islands, ChASMs or brats.  

A Box Of One's Own

      Leave it to Dave Barry to bring to our attention a matter of such urgency and significance that it's truly shaming that it's been left unaddressed for so long.   The ghost of Virginia Woolf can finally rest in peace.

      Gene W's latest column is also on a matter of feminism-- or femininity, or whatever.   This blog's favourite bit: "I am not your eye candy, buster. So kindly stop ogling this here skirt-slit, as I casually cross one creamy thigh over the other."

Shell-Shocked, or The Quahog Quagmire

      This blog will not make a single pun about this story.   Not one.  

Mostly Rocks And Ice, Like Dick Cheney

      Seeing this image of Michael Moore and Bill Maher pleading with Ralph Nader to drop out of the race for the American presidency, I was compelled to check out Bill Maher's now rather old but still hilarious New Rules at the HBO website.   The show's new season has just started, so Maher's site should be updating pretty soon.   This blog is particularly fond of Maher's proposal on how to defeat terrorism.  

Casting The First Stone

      It never ceases to amaze this blog how gallingly offensive The Religious Right can be.   Case in point, this article, which takes platitudinous condescension to a new level. The last paragraph is a doozy:

Let us all pray for Kerry. He needs our loving accusations and our kind warnings and our insightful lecturing him about his blaspheming — just as apostle Paul saw through in his writings and preaching. But in addition to cautioning his wayward soul, we need to pray for Senator John Kerry.

Oh, yes, I'm sure Christ would have been very proud of people issuing their "loving accusations."   This sort of thing is sickening beyond statement.

The Odd Koppel

      It's confirmed:   there is something large and obstructive lodged in Ted Koppel's anus.   Far from being one of the elder statesmen of journalism, Koppel's looking more and more like a humourless sot with an axe to grind.

Another Go At It

      Here, boys and girls, is something to warm the cockles of your heart.  

      (This blog, however, would sooner swallow nails that had been soaking in a mixture of all known forms of human and animal secretion than make that sort of ridiculous mistake of association again.)

Lost And Found

      It's a gorgeous Sunday afternoon in Southern Ontario, and more gorgeous for being the first day free of rain since the beginning of the week.   There's an added bonus to this, the discovery an album that I thought I'd lost some years ago, Leonard Cohen's Cohen Live from 1994.   The album was culled from two different tours for the I'm Your Man and The Future, the latter of which I managed to attend around eleven years ago.   I had thought the CD long gone, lent to a young woman along with several other items I never got back, including Cohen's Stranger Music volume, his Various Positions album, and a few Van Morrison albums.   (I shudder to think how many books and CDs and such I've lost or given away over the years, mainly to young women; it has to be in the hundreds.   Yes, before you say it, I am an idiot.   And a sucker for a pretty face.)   Listening to it again, it strikes me what a soothing album it is, though it's probably moreso because I know all of the lyrics to all of the songs.   One of Leonard's great qualities is his capacity to find the perfect pithy expression and to articulate that expression as if it were nothing at all, to create the diamond and then smudge it in coal.   It's not just that he's eminently quotable: it's that the words seem to have a vatic dimension most apparent when Cohen himself sings them, a nocturnal dimension almost gone from poetry and from popular music.  

Rave on, Doctor J...

      The other day, I was flipping through my collections trying to find some decent musical and poetic nocturnes, and for the life of me I was stymied to find anything appropriate that wasn't written by Mark Strand.   Strand's nocturnes, though, are those of the surrealist; Cohen's are those of the darkened lover and the longing cynic, with his prophetic postures in recent years (those of "The Future" and "Democracy" and "Everybody Knows") being part of the latter category.   Cohen at his best writes with a clarity and a resonance that most poets should envy if they don't already.   Consider these lines, from "Heart With No Companion":

Now I greet you from the other side
Of sorrow and despair,
With a love so vast and so shattered,
It will reach you everywhere.

At one level, it's cookie-cutter poetry, but at another, it's genuinely brilliant, especially if one dares to stew on the idea of a love that can be both "vast" and shattered"-- and which can still "reach."   And yet, it's one of my favourite musical prefaces, expressing a sentiment we all think we understand but probably don't.   The song goes on to be a kind of testament for the longing:

And I sing this for the captain
Whose ship has not been built,
For the mother in confusion,
Her cradle still unfilled,

For the heart with no companion,
For the soul without a king,
For the prima ballerina
Who cannot dance to anything.

It sounds better than it reads, but it still reads quite well, too, methinks.   These are Cohen's beautiful losers, the people that most need a song, the people for whom few bother to sing.   This, though, is the language of Pure Poetry, Frostian in simplicity, almost beyond analysis.   The problem with Cohen is that one probably shouldn't read him when one is too young, and certainly if one's aspiring to be a poet: he sets a nasty precedent, and poetry that attempts to imitate his, or that has too much of an influence from Cohen, tends to become unreadable.   I say this as someone who used to write the most abominable stuff, the lot of it embarrassingly close to pastiche or to immature aping.   Certain writers are best read rather than imitated-- Shakespeare, Graham Greene, Tennyson, Joyce, Strand, Eliot, Dylan Thomas; their impressions are too specific and their shadows too large. They're likely to dominate young minds in all the wrong ways.   It reminds me of all the young writers that get a hold of Kerouac and think they're suddenly able to be great writers.   Er, no.   Sorry.   Cohen's clarity, to say nothing of his appeals to sensuality and philosophy, can colonize one's style.   But there's a strange comfort in being able to return to Cohen years later when one knows one's style is no longer in danger of being Iraqified.   And when one is no longer as stupidly naïve, poetically, intellectually, and romantically.

      With all that said, I'm thinking a lot about "Joan of Arc," which does such a lovely job of reinterpreting the famous martyrdom. There's a plaintive tragicality to the song, and there's a poignancy to Cohen's version that Shaw, for all his efforts, couldn't capture.   Lately as I think of matters of the heart I think of Cohen's song, of the almost inevitable destructiveness of relationships, but the beauty intrinsic to such consortions.   I don't want to say too much about the song, except that's beautiful, and quite haunting.   And, for me, listening to it again today, I was reminded of Cohen's phrase that somehow sums up so much of my own instinct, the attraction to "the glory in her eye."   Ah, that's what it's always about, what it's always been about, the glory in a young woman's eye.   No wonder I lose so many books and albums.   And I guess in this warmth, I'm wondering what ever became of my copy of The Duchess of Malfi....

Joan of Arc

Now the flames they followed Joan of Arc
as she came riding through the dark;
no moon to keep her armour bright,
no man to get her through this very smoky night.
She said, "I'm tired of the war,
I want the kind of work I had before,
a wedding dress or something white
to wear upon my swollen appetite."

Well, I'm glad to hear you talk this way,
you know I've watched you riding every day
and something in me yearns to win
such a cold and lonesome heroine.
"And who are you?" she sternly spoke
to the one beneath the smoke.
"Why, I'm fire," he replied,
"And I love your solitude, I love your pride."

"Then fire, make your body cold,
I'm going to give you mine to hold,"
saying this she climbed inside
to be his one, to be his only bride.
And deep into his fiery heart
he took the dust of Joan of Arc,
and high above the wedding guests
he hung the ashes of her wedding dress.

It was deep into his fiery heart
he took the dust of Joan of Arc,
and then she clearly understood
if he was fire, oh then she must be wood.
I saw her wince, I saw her cry,
I saw the glory in her eye.
Myself I long for love and light,
but must it come so cruel, and oh so bright?

By the way, here is a rather amusing article on Cohen's career. Worth a read.

For Dick Armey

      Query: does it qualify as child pornography if I link to this?     (Speaking of scarred lads....)   Sheesh, the thing looks like a damned diving rod.

It's The Faggot Family!

      You can tell the chaps at the BBC had a bloody good time filing this article.   Key quote: "The great British faggot is full of flavour and a great belly warmer at this time of year."

      (Sure, it's an old article, but, hell, I'd like to meet the lad in the picture, already looking shell-shocked there, and ask him how much abuse he took when he went back to classes.)