Wistful Thinking

      The Not-So-Good Doctor found himself watching Shakespeare in Love last night for the first time since 99 (?), and realized how much that movie was a kind of temporal marker in his own life, the period before it seeming rather fecund and ambitious, the period after a long creative drought. It's not the movie itself, by the way; it just comes in that bizarre period when Things Changed. Odd, and a little disquieting. The Old J (pre-1999) was very different than the one you read now. That kid-- and that he definitely was-- had no problems writing jejeune but ambitious stuff: he could peal through writing, and he did, including theses (two of 'em) and articles and even a few poems, too, though maybe 1 in 10 might have been worth saving from the archival abattoir. The J Since, well, not so much, he of so many false starts and derailments, daunting writer's block, and a general distaste for what he tries to write (and he hasn't written a single poem of more than a trifle since).   His imagination, well, just sort of went.   The former J knew something of the movie Shakespeare's spirit, if not his skill; the latter knows so much more about the skill (or more than he used to, though certainly not to mistaked for Will's knowledge), but has all-but-completely lost the spirit. A shame he can't reconcile the two, though surely if he could, he'd end up disspirited and unskilled.   *shrug*

      But back to the movie, and a radical shift from the third to the first person: As I was watching the movie's ostensibly "passionate" scenes (in the creative, romantic, idealistic senses of the term), I kept finding myself wincing, and not because of the saccharine elements of them. Instead, watching those scenes was a bit like sitting in a church to which one does not belong and awkwardly going along with notions one does not observe-- or, perhaps, ones one used to observe but have since abandoned (shades of Larkin's "Church Going," now that I think of it). As the saying goes, "confidence is what I had before I knew better." It's strange, and rather Blakean; the transformed innocent will come to hate the innocence that fostered change, while the cynical experienced figure, after a while, will want nothing more than to be as innocent as he once was, even though one can't just run back across the Vales of Har like Thel. Fools rush in.... (And perhaps what wise men fear most is being proven foolish.) But it was an eerie experience watching those scenes of passion again, like that of an agnostic listening to childhood hymns, the words no longer meaning much, the rhythms no longer familiar, so he looks askance and fumbles to repeat the words he thinks he should be saying. I guess that's what happens when one's doubts are stronger than one's desire to believe, a hapless, unromantic thing, Macbeth fidgeting with the king's ill-fitting clothes. So much for wistful thinking. One can still observe beauty in ceremony even if it leaves one cold, and maybe a bit queasy. I probably should have dropped an Irish sixpence somewhere.

      Strange to think, the things we end up checking at the door.

Church Going

Once I am sure there's nothing going on
I step inside, letting the door thud shut.
Another church: matting, seats, and stone,
And little books; sprawlings of flowers, cut
For Sunday, brownish now; some brass and stuff
Up at the holy end; the small neat organ;
And a tense, musty, unignorable silence,
Brewed God knows how long. Hatless, I take off
My cycle-clips in awkward reverence.

Move forward, run my hand around the font.
From where I stand, the roof looks almost new -
Cleaned, or restored? Someone would know: I don't.
Mounting the lectern, I peruse a few
Hectoring large-scale verses, and pronounce
'Here endeth' much more loudly than I'd meant.
The echoes snigger briefly. Back at the door
I sign the book, donate an Irish sixpence,
Reflect the place was not worth stopping for.

Yet stop I did: in fact I often do,
And always end much at a loss like this,
Wondering what to look for; wondering, too,
When churches will fall completely out of use
What we shall turn them into, if we shall keep
A few cathedrals chronically on show,
Their parchment, plate and pyx in locked cases,
And let the rest rent-free to rain and sheep.
Shall we avoid them as unlucky places?

Or, after dark, will dubious women come
To make their children touch a particular stone;
Pick simples for a cancer; or on some
Advised night see walking a dead one?
Power of some sort will go on
In games, in riddles, seemingly at random;
But superstition, like belief, must die,
And what remains when disbelief has gone?
Grass, weedy pavement, brambles, buttress, sky,

A shape less recognisable each week,
A purpose more obscure. I wonder who
Will be the last, the very last, to seek
This place for what it was; one of the crew
That tap and jot and know what rood-lofts were?
Some ruin-bibber, randy for antique,
Or Christmas-addict, counting on a whiff
Of gown-and-bands and organ-pipes and myrrh?
Or will he be my representative,

Bored, uninformed, knowing the ghostly silt
Dispersed, yet tending to this cross of ground
Through suburb scrub because it held unspilt
So long and equably what since is found
Only in separation - marriage, and birth,
And death, and thoughts of these - for which was built
This special shell? For, though I've no idea
What this accoutred frowsty barn is worth,
It pleases me to stand in silence here;

A serious house on serious earth it is,
In whose blent air all our compulsions meet,
Are recognized, and robed as destinies.
And that much never can be obsolete,
Since someone will forever be surprising
A hunger in himself to be more serious,
And gravitating with it to this ground,
Which, he once heard, was proper to grow wise in,
If only that so many dead lie round.

--- Philip Larkin, 1955

Eye On The Ball, People: A Tirade

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The Value of A Good Fuck

      As Lauren Bacall said in My Fellow Americans, "If you're going to use the F-word, go for the gold." C'mon, everybody, say it with me: Fuck, fuck, fuck, fuck, fuck, fuck.... Now don't you feel better?   

Little Bo Peep

      This blog ain't saying NOTHIN'. Nope. Nosiree.... *cough cough*    Ahem.   Nope. Not. A. Thing.

And The Fire And The Rose Are One

      You've got to be Gidding, er, kidding me:

Held over from earlier Jim Rose circuses is "French nationalist" Bebe Aschard, whose speciality is blowing fire out of her vagina in what Rose calls a "bush-burning" act.

Dear lord, it's the crowned twat of fire....      

      (And all shall be well and all manner of thing shall be well....)

      (Burning burning burning burning)

      In related news, let's hope John Kerry has been reading Paul Krugman today. Let's hope he's read him over and over and over again, because if Kerry keeps going the way he's going, that vagina's not going to be the only thing in flames....

Rip Torn

      Lads, ye may not want to follow this link.... Key quote: "The pain was incredible." No kidding....

      Lads, if ye did read that, read this as consolation.   It perishes the imagination to think about what would make her feel dirty....

Call It Woman's In Tuition

      For once, this blog wants to be an Indian giver.   

Can We Say "Irresponsible Journalism," Boys And Girls?

      I knew you could.   

      And in related news....

Lava

      I don't know entirely why, but I like this bit from Carol de Chellis Hill's Henry James' Midnight Song, a book so flawed in so many ways but which captures me however briefly in this exchange:

He [Doctor Freud] would not lose her [Anna Kleibourg-Quim; sic: one of the worst-named characters ever] now. He did not want to fail. He must listen now for the next few days. Or her rage, which was volcanic, would destroy his efforts totally.

I won't say more until I finish the book, but there's something quite effective about the prose, though I must admit that at this point I can't put my finger on it, save for the lurid dimensions. I think it turns on the words "he must listen," words all men must keep in mind, even those of us avoiding relationships as if they were contracted. There's also the irony there: for all of Doctor Freud's listening, he never was a very good listener. He always heard "by options." No wonder the lava stirred.

      BTW: Why the hell-- er, HELL-- am I reading prose again? It's almost guaranteed that I'll give up on these papers before I finish them, their style too eye-roll-inducing to warrant further reading. I (grrr, arrrgh) dunno. There are bits and pieces worth the while, though few & far between. In that quote I cited above, I hate, hate, hate the clause "which was volcanic," even if other parts do get me, often in spite of myself. This may also be why I appreciate Greene's cleavage, as opposed to Dickens' excesses: Greene's the butcher that seldom issues fat; both popularists, both "issue-based; " but GG trimmed where The Dick exacerbated and exaggerated. Both moralists, GG alway left you to riddle matters through. But as much as I regret the clause above, I like the synoptic effect: there's an immediacy, though surely not a delicacy, of which James would have approved, at least in effort if not in performance. Effort, or effect-- who knows at this point. So often effort becomes effect; just ask George Lucas. The titanism of effort can sometimes create an effect larger than artistry could ever engender.

      RK's probably right, that I should better discover Durrell, among others. But, I have to confess, this is also why I love Strand and Housman, and Heaney too, poets otherwise very different, that cleave to directness and a notion of essentiality. None has much patience for they would deem false arabesques. (Not that Durrell, does, either, but that's a matter to which I do not profess the ability to converse properly, at least not yet; my preliminary reading of Durrell suggests an attention to finery of experience that's better compared to James, but surely with a more continental mentality, though with a comparable gift for encapsulation.) Perhaps my perspective is too provincial, too typically Canuck-- and not in the best way (i.e., unvarnished and insular, though assuming oneself not to be the latter). I can't truly imagine an island, or what it means to live on one. I also can't imagine lava-- at least not as it truly is. I also can't imagine the idea of "polish," a fact against which I've always perhaps-Quixotically (and, admittedly, perhaps even intolerantly) railed. In the end I just know what I love. And as much as I may resent that love, or the fact that I do so, there's no escaping it. And perhaps love-- every now and again-- can create an effect larger than artistry could ever engender.

      I know, I know, I know. But allow me to pet my own dissheveled head for a moment. Even a mongrel's allowed the occasional stroke.

Ducking and Dyking

      RK has a very provocative post on his blog that is very much worth reading, though the Not-So-Good Doctor's comment (as Mr Stewart would say), "well, not so much." This blog would like to suggest one minor disagreement in terms, though. RK posits that:

The greatest temptation, when one becomes on Old Man, is to be a curmudgeon. There's a lot to be said for it: you can become a Character, and bop people over the head with your cane. But in the first place it means you become a bore. 'Oh, there's old RK on his hobby-horse again, waffling on about the decline of the world,' people say, and avoid you....

I dunno about that. What RK in his later sentences describes isn't (at least in my terminology) a "curmudgeon" per se, but a crank. This blog has always found curmudgeonly types rather distinct, and certainly never boring: cranks (and you can infer the repetitive insinuation in the word itself, the idea of operating a crank implying repetition) are intolerable; curmudgeons-- again, at least in this blog's experience and operating vocabulary-- are another story altogether. (My apologies for the overly-convoluted sentence-structure there.) Despite the various definitions given over the years (especially those associating the term with churlishness), in this age it's attached, at least to this mind (such as it is) to a kind of doggedness and persistence. It's also developed-- again, and perhaps only to this churled head-- the idea of concealment (and so it comforts me somewhat to see that dimension included in the etymological associations outlined in the attached link). Curmudgeons tend to be allegorists, though often cantankerous and usually guarded ones: stubbornness has become their trademark (and often eccentricity their outward facades); they're the deeper dimension of what I call cynics, those who expect the worst 90% of the time but secretly root for the 10% of the time they might be wrong. Admittedly, that's a personal definition, or a (perhaps) overly-personal determination. That's because, I think, (and it comes down to my own experience) curmudgeons really are among the most idealistic among us, but they don't ever want any of us to think of them in that way.   My father is a curmudgeon, but he's not a crank, by this definition; he'd never, ever, ever admit to optimism, or to hope, or anything of that gird; but everyone who knows him knows it's there, lurking beneath every grumbling glare. And I'd be a liar if I said I didn't inherit any of that.

      But in the end, I have come to respect it, at least as I define it (and perhaps some of you out there might have better terminology than I possess, especially as I write this, uncharacteristically over a bottle of mezza-mezza Merlot). Curmudgeons, unlike cranks, always share space with the miles gloriosus, or the braggart-warrior. They're always attached to another ideal, whether or not they ever represented or stood for it; but theirs is the idea of longeur, a not entirely inappropriate thing, even if it's more often than not couched in bristling terms.

      I admit, I may have-- somewhere along the line-- redefined the term in regard to my own experience (and-- p'shaw!-- my own self-image). If so, well, there we are. But a curmudgeon, in my knowledge, will, when the situation demands it, admit error, will (like the true cynic) admit when he's been proven wrong-- which the crank would never do. The curmudgeon seldom has to eat crow because (s)he's usually right, but (s)he will if the situation calls for it-- and (s)he will do it more in swallowed gladness than usurped pride.

      But maybe here I've Doctor Johnsoned myself into a fallacy, though, like a curmudgeon, I'd hesitate to admit so. What I will say is this-- that some people that I've known that others have described with that particular C word have been as idealistic, though generally cautiously so, as anyone else, and perhaps moreso idealistic for knowing what slings and arrows will assail when given the chance. And still they persist, perhaps scarred, but never entirely as jaded as they may purport. And in that fact alone-- or that interpetation alone, if you'll allow-- matters are telling. Sometimes the curmudgeon is the veteran who's been driven into the closet (or the cave, if you wish to avoid the homophilial implications of the previous association) and wants nothing more than to be able to come out.

      All of this is probably a very long way to saying this: curmudgeons don't bore me; more often than not, they inspire-- even if that's a liberty of definition I have taken with time and experience. Curmudgeons crank, I've learned, because they love something-- some idea, some principle, some fact-- so much they dare not trespass upon a meaning that betrays them, or that which they love. You can see it in their defensiveness, you can see it their recalcitrance; it's the skunk's stripe, if only any of us dare to see it-- and not flee from it prematurely.

      (POST-SCRIPT: And YES, it's okay to be arbitary, as long as you acknowledge that you're being arbitrary. It's like handing out that grain of salt before you dare to speak. I give said salt out in chunks-- and this time, in cases.)

Runnymede Redux

      Watching a bit of the First Ministers Meeting today, this blog caught part of Prime Minister Martin's address to the Premiers, and one thing was absolutely striking: the utter contempt with which the Premiers "listened" to the PM.   Ralph Klein was talking to others during the PM's speech; Jean Charest was the very face of disbelief and disinterest; even Martin-"supporter" Dalton McSquinty was straining at the bit of seeming interested in the PM's words. The entire group of provincial and territorial leaders looked like a smug group of undergraduates sitting through a painful lecture on the virtues of morality.   And through it all, PM PM looked desperate, straining to be heard above the relative silence, trying like the unpopular kid to be find a universal chord. He stumbled on his own words-- a lot. The last time I remember seeing such visible disdain for the PM at such a meeting was on the face of René Levesque whenever Trudeau dared speak.   The Premiers were nothing less than rude, and the PM seemed to be praying he'd be able to do his Sally Field impression sooner or later. It was sad, really. The Premiers know they've got Martin ass-up over a barrel, and they're exploiting the fact for all that it's worth. In short, they're gloating. And PM PM is King John, ambushed at Runnymede (though this blog can't help but note a bit of Richard II's brittle glory shining in his face).   Martin looked weak today, almost beaten, as if he knew that all he could do was try to save face in front of the cameras. One thing is now certain: the strength and confidence that surrounded Mr Martin as he came to the top job has now completely evaporated. Today made it patently obvious, that the PM is governing on borrowed time, his credibility now something of a joke-- or, to those like McGuinty comparatively sympathetic to him, a shade of a former self. And the barons are just loving this.   There's something uncivilized, and certainly indecorous, about it all. The only thing the Premiers haven't done is provide the PM with a crown of eggshells. It seems that while the Prime Minister may have won the election, he's lost the seat of power, and it's not likely that's going to change anytime soon. Welcome to Canadian feudalism: the vassals are in charge now.

Crow-Magnon Politics

      Important words from Bob Herbert for my American readers as November 2nd nears.   Unbelievable.

Shakin' The Scene

      From The New Yorker comes this consideration by Adam Gopnik of "the life" of Shakespeare, ostensibly in a review of Stephen Greenblatt's Will In The World.   (A portion of Greenblatt's book was modified and published in the NYTimes on Sunday-- of course, just in time for the new movie, focussing on "the Jewish question.") Gopnik's is a surprisingly good discussion (though perhaps too long to read comfortably online), though I suspect he lets Greenblatt off the hook a little too easily for some of his more awkward speculations; I shouldn't speculate myself as I haven't read Greenblatt's book yet, but SG is one of those radically-polarizing figures in contemporary literary criticism, and I've landed far more often than not on the opposite side of his New Historicist way of thinking.   His Renaissance Self-Fashioning, hailed by some as a landmark text, is also held by some of us as a pissing in the academic pool, so colour me wary-- not uninterested, but certainly a bit trepidatious. I'm more inclined to splurge on Kermode's most recent volume.   Hmmm.   We shall see....

      In a related matter, some of you might enjoy the absurdity of trying to get through this young woman's attempt to put Hamlet into a more popular idiom -- that of the "Shakespeare impaired." (Key words of hers: "Blame Willie Shakespeare, not me!") Check out some of these jaw-droppers:

• Hamlet: Yikes! Creepy! Are you a good or a bad spirit? Are you from heaven or Hell? Well, since you came in the shape of my late father, I'll talk to you. Hi, Dad. Answer me! Why did you come out of the grave? And why are you in armor? You're scaring everyone! Why Dad? Why?
  
  
• Hamlet, To Being or Not To Being: Do I really want to live? Should I go on like this, being miserable, and try to beat my enemies? Or should I just kill myself and get it all over with? Life sucks. I wish I was dead. Death is like a nice, long nap. But the problem is, what if I dream of horrible things? It's definitely something to worry about. If there wasn't anything to fear in the afterlife, why would anyone suffer through his rotten existance [sic]? Why deal with life's troubles when it all could be solved with a dagger? No reason...unless something bad might lie beyond the grave. No one comes back from the dead to tell us what it's like, so we go on living and being unhappy. Sigh. Man, I'm depressed. But...whoa, check it out. There's Ophelia!
  
  
• The Ghost: That jerk is insulting the whole of Denmark by what he's done. And he's sleeping with my wife! That's what really irritates me! But don't harm her. Leave your mom alone. Let heaven deal with her. Well, it's almost sunrise. I've got to go. Good-bye! Remember me!
  
  
• Horatio: If you're looking for woe, agony and tragedy, you've found it.
  
  
• This priceless exchange between Gertrude and Laertes after Ophelia's death: Queen: There is a willow tree that grows by a brook. She came there with all kinds of elaborate flower garlands. There were crowflowers, nettles, daisies, and long purples, (you know, the kind that shepherds have a dirty name for, but which young ladies just call "dead men's fingers".) Anyway, she hung her flowers on the tree, but the branch broke and she fell into the stream. The air in her clothes kept her afloat for awhile. She looked like a mermaid, singing snatches of old tunes. She didn't seem to realize she was in danger. She acted like she belonged there in the water. But she didn't belong there, and before long the air seeped out of her clothes and she was pulled underwater, and she went down to a muddy grave.
  Laertes: Then...she drowned?
  Queen: Duh! That's I just said! Weren't you listening?
  
  
• Hamlet, in The Bedroom Scene: Father! Look, there's his picture on the table. He's standing next to Uncle Claudius. You'd never know they were related, though. Father was a real stud, a regular old Greek god, the perfect guy. This was your husband. And then look at what happened. There's your new husband, who looks like he's been bludgeoned with an ugly stick! Can't you see? You traded Leonardo DiCaprio for Meatloaf! And you can't tell me you're in love with him. You're so old I'm surprised you can still have sex. I used to think you were a smart person, but even I, a madman, can see how wrong this is! Shame on you! You slut!
  Queen: Shut up! You have a point, but I don't want to hear it!
  

The real killer is this section (IV.v), which had me laughing despite myself:

[Ophelia wanders in, distracted.]
Ophelia: Where is the beauteous Majesty of Denmark?
Queen: Here. How are you, Ophelia?
Ophelia: [Sings.] La dee dah de dah! It's like raaaaaaaain on your wedding day! La dee dah de dah! It's down the end of Lonely Street, it's Heartbreak hotel! La dee dum!
Queen: Alas, poor dear, what does this song mean?
Ophelia: What did you say? Never mind, just listen! Whee! [Sings.] It's the story of a lovely lady, who was bringing up three very lovely girls! Tra la la dee dah! Mary had a little lamb... Dum dee dah dee dum! La la la la Bamba! Hee hee! Memory, all alone in the moonlight! La dee dah de dum!
Queen: Uh...Ophelia...?
Ophelia: Shut up and listen! [Sings.] Great big gobs of greasy grimy gopher guts! La dee dah! Welcome to the Hotel California! Whee! When you wish upon a star, makes no difference who you are! Hee hee hee! Que sera, sera, whatever will be, will be! Do re mi fa sol la ti do! Doe, a deer, a female deer! Ray, a drop of golden sun!
[Enter King.]
Queen: Geez, dear, check out poor Ophelia! She's gone totally mad!
Ophelia: [Sings.] Twinkle, twinkle, little star! How I wonder what you are! Doo bee doo bee doo! Strangers in the night! Lah de dah! Monday, Tuesday, Happy Days! Hee hee! Whee! Hakuna Matata! It's our worry-free philosopy! Hakuna Matata!
King: Are you okay, Ophelia?
Ophelia: Well, they say the owl was a baker's daughter. Your Majesty, we know what we are, but know not what we may be. Yippee yi ki yi!
King: Are you upset about what happened to your father, Polonius?
Ophelia: Oh, don't mention that. Now, everybody sing! [Sings.] And Iiiiiiiiiiii-yi-yiiiiiiiii will always looooooooovvvve you! Ooh ooh ooh ooh! R E S P E C T, find out what it means to me! When a man loves a woman...! La dee dah! So no one told you life was gonna be this way! Your job's a joke, you're broke, your love life's D.O.A.! Doo bee doo bee doo! Every night in my dreams, I see you, I feel you! That is how I know you go on! Rawhide! Gettum up, movem out! Rawhide! Everybody, sing!
King: You're right, honey, she is nuts!
Ophelia: I sure am! Totally nuts! Whee! [Sings.] Stayin' alive! Stayin' alive! Whoah oh oh oh, stayin' alive! Stayin' alive! Hee hee! Figaro, Figaro, Figaroooooooh! Do re mi fa sol la ti do ti la sol fa mi re do! Maria! The most beatiful sound I ever heard! Maria! Say it loud and there's music playing! Hee hee! La dee dah! Happy Birthday to you! Happy Birthday to you! Dum dee dum dee dum! Play that funky music!
King: How long has she been like this?
Ophelia: I hope everything turns out okay, but someday we'll all die. I will be able to lie by my dear father in the cold ground and get eaten up by worms. Yipee! Have you told my brother Laertes that Father is dead? Well, anyway, I've got to be going. Taxi! Good night, ladies. Good night, sweet ladies. Good night, good night.

   Hakuna matata....      You've got to love Claudius' imposed line: "You're right, honey, she is nuts!" Hilarious. Talk about going from the sublime to the ridiculous....

cummings and goings

      For reasons entirely inexplicable, reading tonight turned my toward e.e. cummings, a writer alternately brilliant and bewildering, but arguably one of the most capital-I "Innocent" poets ever to put verse to page. My attention tonight turned toward cummings' love poems, which for various reasons tend to get forgotten when people think about cummings. So this blog figured it would turn your eyes three of ee's love sonnets, each as charged and as provocative any more deliberately-lurid writing.

"my girl's tall with hard long eyes"

my girl's tall with hard long eyes
as she stands,with her long hard hands keeping
silence on her dress,good for sleeping
is her long hard body filled with surprise
like a white shocking wire,when she smiles
a hard long smile it sometimes makes
gaily go clean through me tickling aches,
and the weak noise of her eyes easily files
my impatience to an edge--my girl's tall
and taut, with thin ligs just like a vine
that's spent all of its life on a garden-wall,
and is going to die.   When we grimly go to bed
with these legs she begins to heave and twine
about me,and to kiss my face and head.

"sometimes i am alive because with"

sometimes i am alive because with
me her alert treelike body sleeps
which i will feel slowly sharpening
becoming distinct with love slowly,
who in my shoulder sinks sweetly teeth
until we shall attain the Springsmelling
intense large togethercoloured instant

the moment pleasingly frightful

when,her mouth suddenly rising, wholly
begins with mine fiercely to fool
(and from my thighs which shrug and pant
a murdering rain leapingly reaches the
upward singular deepest flower which she
carries in a gesture of her hips)


"i like my body when it is with your"

i like my body when it is with your
body.   It is so quite a new thing.
Muscles better and nerves more.
i like your body.   i like what it does,
i like its hows.   i like to feel the sping
of your body and its bones,and the trembling
-firm-smooth ness and which i will
again and again and again
kiss,   i like kissing this and that of you,
i like, slowly stroking the,shocking fuzz
of your electric fur,and what-is-it comes
over parting flesh....And eyes big love-crumbs,

and possibly i like the thrill

of under me you quite so new

And there are some wonderful phrasal delights ("silence on her dress," "white shocking wire," "we grimly go to bed," "intense large togethercoloured instant," "a murdering rain," "your electric fur," to name just a smattering). "And eyes big love-crumbs" has to be one of the most inspired phrases in all of romantic poetry. Beautiful stuff. Now go make love to somebody.

Priorities

Statistics Canada has estimated that provincial governments are spending 37 per cent of their budgets on health care -- it's as high as 43 per cent in Ontario -- compared to 6 per cent for colleges and universities. Ottawa, too, is plowing far more money into health care than postsecondary education and research. In rich provinces such as Ontario and Quebec, the ratio of health care to spending on colleges and universities is 7 to 1.

Here's hoping the Prime Minister is reading Jeff Simpson today.

Martha Washington's Chocolates

      The History Channel in the US has decided do disinter the fetid corpse of The War of 1812 to put forth the sickening pule of American jingoism.   Oy vey.   My American readers will no doubt have difficulty understanding why the War of 1812 remains a Canadian sore-spot, even if "Canada" as we now know it didn't exist at the time.   Part of it is the extremely selective memories of our neighbours (once invaders), who tend to claim the war was something that it certainly was not, an attempt to liberate the northern colonies from the British yoke. Blech. Pap. Garbage. It was an invasion, a pure old-fashioned land-grab (timed while the Brits were supposedly distracted with the Napoleonic wars), and it didn't take. What few people outside of Canada realize is the extent to which "Canadian identity" was defined by the War of 1812, by the refusal to be a part of America. For all the jokes about Canada being "America Junior," there's no better way to get a Canadian's dander up than to call him or her an American: whatever a Canadian is, a Canadian is NOT an American, a principle held proudly, and sometimes quite fiercely, by most of my countryfolk. And Canadians, almost as a rule, tend to harbour some residual resentment for the War of 1812, a war Americans claim they won and which Canadians claim otherwise, with the latter obviously being the truth (or else, as the satirist Eric Nicol once wrote, we'd be eating Martha Washington's chocolates right now).

      The current spin on the burning of Washington as a terrorist attack roughly analogous to the attacks three years ago is also rubbish. The razing of the White House (still a source of pride for some Canucks) was largely the response of a bunch of drunken Fenians responding to the initial gestures of American *ahem* "liberation." It was tit-for-tat, classic one-up-manship; it was a variation on "the Chicago way," if you remember The Untouchables:

You wanna know how you do it? Here's how, they pull a knife, you pull a gun. He sends one of yours to the hospital, you send one of his to the morgue! That's the Chicago way, and that's how you get Capone!

The principle? They attacked us, so we went for their capital and sent Dolly Madison racing out of the White House with paintings in her hands. The lesson? Don't fuck with us.   Alternately: What goes around, comes around.

      I suppose it may seem tasteless writing about this stuff on September 11th, but there's also a purpose to it. For all of the very sincere tributes to those lost on this day three years ago, there's also a lot of mythmaking and falsification, the deliberate misconstruing of history for alternate purposes. It's a syndrome to which the United States seems perpetually susceptible, whether it's the declaration of a victory in 1812, or the "we-saved-the-world-in-WW2" pap that handily ignores the awfully-convenient American delay in entering the war. The History Channel's butchery of history should serve as a reminder of the dangers of twisting history to the point of inaccuracy (hello, Mr Bush; how are those weapons of mass destruction treatin' ya?). We all have to beware the tendency to see things as want to see them rather than as they were or are. We do a great disservice to those we lost when we distort the truth and indulge in grotesque nationalist vanity.

      As for today, well, I'll just refer you to what I wrote at this time last year. I said then that perhaps understanding is a luxury of the living. I still think that's true, but, as we all know, sitting at our computers surfing the web, even luxuries can eventually become necessities. Understanding may be a luxury, but misunderstanding is a corruption and it lingers and taints the ways in which we look at the world. Damn those unruly facts....

      (With that, I'm remembering Colin Mochrie's lacerating "Apology to Americans" (video here; requires Real Player) that so beautifully typifies Canadian passive-aggressiveness.)

Hello. I'm Anthony St. George on location here in Washington.

On behalf of Canadians everywhere I'd like to offer an apology to the United States of America. We haven't been getting along very well recently and for that, I am truly sorry. I'm sorry we called George Bush a moron. He is a moron, but it wasn't nice of us to point it out. If it's any consolation, the fact that he's a moron shouldn't reflect poorly on the people of America. After all, it's not like you actually elected him.

I'm sorry about our softwood lumber. Just because we have more trees than you, doesn't give us the right to sell you lumber that's cheaper and better than your own. It would be like if, well, say you had ten times the television audeince we did and you flood our market with great shows, cheaper than we could produce. I know you'd never do that.

I'm sorry we beat you in Olympic hockey. In our defence I guess our excuse would be that our team was much, much, much, much better than yours. As word of apology, please accept all of our NHL teams which, one by one, are going out of business and moving to your fine country.

I'm sorry about our waffling on Iraq. I mean, when you're going up against a crazed dictator, you want to have your friends by your side. I realize it took more than two years before you guys pitched in against Hitler, but that was different. Everyone knew he had weapons.

I'm sorry we burnt down your White House during the War of 1812. I see you've rebuilt it! It's very nice.

I'm sorry for Alan Thicke, Shania Twain, Celine Dion, Loverboy, that song from Seriff that ends with a really high-pitched long note. Your beer. I know we had nothing to do with your beer, but we feel your pain.

And finally on behalf of all Canadians, I'm sorry that we're constantly apologizing for things in a passive-aggressive way which is really a thinly veiled criticism. I sincerely hope that you're not upset over this. Because we've seen what you do to countries you get upset with.

For 22 minutes, I'm Anthony St. George, and I'm sorry.

Tighter Than A Something-Something's Something

      Just a brief note to any of you that have sent emails in the past little while: my apologies if you haven't heard back, as I've been horribly, shamefully, miserably delinquent with most such cyber-correspondence, and now the blasted Inbox is a cocked-up travesty of Bushian proportions. So, if you're waiting (or have been waiting) to hear from me, try sending things again. Once again, everything's just been,as they say, a bloody rectum-tearing bugger. (You'll be thanking me, I'm sure, for that imagery.)

      In other matters: the Not-So-Good Doctor's trying to get a grapple on matters, and part of this has included the (p'shaw!) reorganization of his books. For those of you that have seen what usually constitutes The Wreckage, you know what a task this has been.   For those that are simply trying to fathom it, imagine trying to sort through God-Only-Knows-Anymore how many books into a space only slightly tighter than --- no, no, no, I won't finish THAT old joke. But it's at last finally done, or at least the preliminary sorting is done.   This is partially why there's been little on this blog of late about literature; it's a bit hard to talk about the finer details of fishing when one's drowning.

      So there we are. Things will untangle eventually.   Or so one hopes. Cheers.

Quartos Online: The Bloody Terrific British Library Exhibit

      Okay, you KNEW this blog was going to link to this sooner or later, didn't you? Didn't you? Yeah, yeah, yeah, it was inevitable.   I am as constant as the Northern star... as all good Canadians should be....

      Actually, the scans are excellent (of which the one above is a smaller version; larger images are available so you could, at least in theory, read the entire texts online). It's fascinating just getting such clear glimpses of the texts without having even to lift one's ass from one's chair. It's too bad this sort of thorough exhibit was not available when I was teaching Shakie. See also this article from the BBC on the exhibit. The whole thing is just tits to knickers.

You've Got To Moooooove With The Mooooooosic

      Because we know, gay people all share the same fear of cows.  

      (This article brought to you by the Dutch Department of Really, Really Dumb Ideas.)

Hey, It's A Granular Problem!

      Well, it was only a matter of time before the New Puritans got bored with the smokers and the drinkers and sought out a new target.   It's that proverbial slippery slope, people.   (Pause. Thought: Does this mean I could get a tax refund? Oh, of course not, it wouldn't work that way....   )

Rinse. Lather. Repeat.

      This blog's relatively sure that some of you will be "ohhhhh, realllly"-ing as you read this, smacking your lips and smiling as if Crème Brûlé neared your rapacious eyes.   This blog's resposne is more of a 'meh,' but it's worth noting the involvement of James Toback, the creepy bastard behind Nastassja Kinski's lurid Exposed some twenty years ago, so this blog suspects the film's quality will be roughly on par with a Playboy Wet and Wild edition. Whether that's a good thing or a bad thing, this blog will leave entirely up to you.

      (Actually, this blog suspects it's the Oh-Shit-My-Career-Is-Dead-In-The-Water-What-The-Hell-Do-I-Do-Now-Syndrome at work, yet again.)

The 10% Solution

      Today's manifestation of Captain Obvious: as a pair of reporters for The Independent.

Hit The Charts, Jack

      Might I say, this pleases this blog immensely:

Three months after his death, Charles' final studio set "Genius Loves Company" (Concord/Hear Music) debuted at No. 2, the R&B legend's first top 10 album in 40 years. The album, which features duets with the likes of Van Morrison, Norah Jones and Willie Nelson, sold 202,000 copies. Charles last appeared on the big chart in 1993 with "My World" (Warner Bros.), which peaked at No. 145. [from Reuters]

(My World, by the way, is a mixed-bag of an album, but it features two brilliant covers, one of Leon Russell's "A Song For You" and the other of Paul Simon's "Still Crazy After All These Years," that are as powerful as anything in Charles' canon. And those of you more contemporary might be urged to notice that K-OS's new hit "Crabbuckit" owes more than a bit to "Hit The Road, Jack.") The Washington Times' review is here.

      Yes, I'm a bit of a sucker for this stuff, mainly, I think, because it appeals to my own desire to believe there are still glimmers of justice in this increasingly crass world.

By George, I Think He's Lost It

      As if we needed further proof that George Lucas has completely lost his marbles and simply cannot leave well-enough alone, comes this report on the (further!) revamping of the original Star Wars films, which includes this head-shaker:

In Episode VI: Return of the Jedi, Hayden Christensen's Anakin Skywalker is added as a ghostly image in the final scenes of the film, alongside Yoda and Alec Guinness' Obi-Wan Kenobi.   But Sebastian Shaw remains as the face of Darth Vader/Anakin in the scene in which Luke removes Vader's helmet, and not Christensen, as had been rumored.

D'Oh!   I'm amazed he hasn't replaced Alec Guinness with Ewan McGregor.   Sir Alec's wisdom in getting as far away from the Lucas franchise as possible is looking wiser and wiser everyday.

Venegeance Is Mine, Saith The Puppy

      It's just too bad this puppy wasn't able to do something sooner.   Bastards like this deserve a special place in Hell, and not the cool part of Hell where the Not-So-Good Doctor will eventually be roasted for his evil history of punning every word into submission. No, this guy desrves the sort of punishment only an eternity of listening to Celine Dion as his penis is put through a slow (and preferably rusty) paper shredder could match.

Beauty Triumphant

      Well, thanks to the stuff that's been in the news this morning, this blog feels the desire-- NAY, the need-- to post the link to a much more pleasing site, a blog discovered not too long by accident by following that silly "Next Blog" button on the top of this blog.    *sigh, comforted smile*   As John Astin used to say (remember Night Court, anyone?), "But I'm feeling MUUUUCH better now...."

      This, however, is just plain stupid. S-T-QUADRUPLE O-P-I-D stupid.

      And then there's this report that proves, as if we needed more, that Lauren Bacall is definitely NOT stupid.   Leave it to Ms Bacall to rip through the silly pretensions of cloying and blathersome questions: she remains, as always, a class act. (And on the cusp of 80, the camera still adores her, for damned good reason.)

But Are They Relief Maps?

      Rumour has it all things are pointing north.... Or, with the odd bends, north by northwest.  

What Is A Spoiler, Alex?

      Put as much or as little stock in this report as you will, and DO NOT follow the link unless you promise absolutely not to blame this blog for the reportage. On the flip side, it's just plain nice to see intellectual ability making the news these days. Now my question is, how well would he have done against Ben Stein?

Father Blows Best

      Today's challenge: try to have a serious, intelligent conversation about this matter with your father. And those of you that can do so for more than forty seconds before becoming so uncomfortable that you'd rather swallow steaming asphalt than continue the discussion.... well, er, let's just say I can't even imagine the possibility.

      (Somewhere, the ghosts of Robert Young and Fred MacMurray are recoiling in horror.)

Prep For The H

      This blog would like to describe Vice President Cheney as a douchebag, but that might imply there's some water with that vinegar. Check out He Of The Foaming Mouth's latest assertion:

It's absolutely essential that eight weeks from today, on Nov. 2, we make the right choice, because if we make the wrong choice then the danger is that we'll get hit again and we'll be hit in a way that will be devastating from the standpoint of the United States.

Oh, Dick, you are a TWAT. No, scratch that. This blog likes twats. You're a walking, talking, seething haemmorrhoid.   I almost pity him in his stupidity and desperation. Almost.

      Yes, this blog seems to be venting more & more than it should about the American election, partially because there's so much about this one that gathers the Not-So-Good Doctor's ire-- or which causes him to shake his head in utter bewilderment. See, for example, the Dubster's jaw-dropping gaffe from Monday in which he said, "too many OB/GYN's aren't able to practice their love with women all across the country." Whoa-ho! (The Not-So-Good Doctor's not able to practice his love with women all across his own country, either.) Freud would have had a field day. But it never ceases to amaze this blog how blinkered the American electorate can be, and in this regard it's worth noting these thought-provoking poll results on the U.S. election from Non-Americans; the numbers are awfully telling.

      In a not-so-related vein, the New Yorker has a good-- but very long-- article about one-time candidate Al Gore. It's a good, critical portrait, and it leaves this blog to muse about the American turn after September 11th. If Gore had been President, it's unlikely he'd have been a particularly rousing or inspiring leader, his empathy factor a daunting weakness; but, one suspects, his policies and responses would have been more measured and more intelligent-- and certainly not as internationally belligerent. Bush provided empathy and the image of leadership, but his policies have either been risible or galling. I don't know about any of you, and perhaps this makes me an elitist snob, but I'd rather have an aloof leader who could discuss and analyze matters intelligently rather than a charismatic populist for whom forming a coherent sentence is as challenging as a trek up Kilimanjaro. But, sadly, we live in a C-minus world, governed by D-plus students.

      And speaking of D+ students, on a lighter note: check out the Renaissance According To Student Bloopers, from Anders Henriksson's Non Campus Mentis.

The Middles Ages slimpared to a halt.

• The renasence bolted in from the blue.
  
• Life reeked with joy.
  
• Italy became robust, and more individuals felt the value of their human being.
  
• It became sheik to be educated.

Thomas More put the capital "H" in Humanism.  Erasmus wrote The New Testament.  Chamber music was composed for groups of viles.  Women, however, were required to display their art ominously.

    Renaissance merchants were beautiful and almost lifelike.  They enriched themselves by planting wool and selling it for clothing.  They increased these profets by paying interest to people who borrowed money from them.  This produced even more grits for the mills of change.

    Machiavelli, who was often unemployed, wrote The Prince to get a job with Richard Nixon.

    Henry VIII divorced his original wife, who had become old and impregnable.  Elizabeth I was eventually the daughter of Henry the Ate.  Mother to Elizabeth was Ann Beau Lynne, wife of the moment to Henry VIII.

    As queen, Elizabeth was the foremost monarch of the Elizabethan era.  In 1588 she calmed her soldiers during a Spanish attack by assuring them she shared a stomach with her father.

    Charles V spent most of his reign aging.

    Explorers went to look for trade roots.  Ships were microscopically small and suffered bequalment if they could not make enough wind.

    This was the beginning of Empire when Europeans felt the need to reach out and attack someone.

    Man was determined to civilise himself and his brothers, even if heads had to roll!

    Ferdinand and Isabella conquered Granola, a part of Spain now known as Mexico and the Gulf States.

    Francis Drake was permitted by Queen Elizabeth to sail the seas and find illegal things to do with the Spanish.

    Columbus came to America to install rule by dead white males over the native peoples.

    Cortez was leader of a little group of torriadors who subdued the inhabitants of New Mexico with great ease.  Small box, which they brought with them, was killing the natives at a very quick rate.  This bothered the Spanish little, for as Catholics they did not believe in God.

• Balboa was the first to lay down his eyes on the Rocky Mountains.
  
• Dick Cavett was the first European to visit Newfoundland.
  
• Capot discovered the Netherlands and codfish.
  
• Captain Cook found many continents while deliberately on exhibition and located the perfect navel spot near Africa's bottom.

Sporkin' Around

      It's Belabour Day, and summer is officially waning.   Most people I know are often on some sort of excursion, enjoying their last gasp of fresh air before the autumn sets in.   And here I am, stuck at home with some 'glitzy' (as a friend puts it) copywriting to do, of course as the house is abustle with distraction.   You can measure my bliss with a spork.

      Alas, I missed the Van Morrison concert on Friday night.   Reading some of the reviews (like this one and this one), it sounds like I missed a professional but less-than-transcendent show, though it's obvious that the dailies seem to have sent ignoramuses to review it; I describe them as such not because of the less-than-rapturous reviews, but because they seem like idiotic tsk-tsk-tskers that expect concerts to be demonstrations of what they know of an a musician rather than expansions or reilluminations.   This blog suspects these people would have clucked in disapproval when Dylan went electric.

      Interesting bit of trivia I learned the other day: that the name "Dylan" in Welsh means, roughly, 'son of the swelling sea,' the equivalent of the Greek Oedipais, probably the original form for Oedipus ("swollen foot"), you know, he who defined the term MILF.   But Dylan as 'son of the swelling sea'? Poor Mr. Thomas never had a chance, did he? Makes one think anew of A Prospect Of The Sea.   There's your peculiar trivia for the week, courtesy a casual reglimpsing through Robert Graves' The Greek Myths (though Graves isn't always the most reliable source).

      Yes, I used MILF and Robert Graves in the same paragraph.   Call it six degrees of literary bacon.   Speaking of six degrees of cleaved bacon....

      Yes, I'm procrastinating.   Robustly.   Writing about fluid beds isn't as interesting as it may sound.   I think it was Thoreau who said that you couldn't kill time without injuring eternity.   I want to prove that as wrong as some people I know have proven that John Donne was wrong with that whole "no man is an island" bit. (Some of them may eventually be considered for Survivor locations.)

      Yesterday, in part, saw me going through scads of books that had been shunted away out-of-sight and out-of-mind like so many geriatric relatives, and rediscovering some classics I'd forgotten I had: Raymond Chandler, Christopher Isherwood, James Thurber, Francois Villion, even Margaret Drabble.   My shelves runneth over like Zell Miller's spit-valves.

      Yes, I'm now wondering if I can manage to begin every paragraph with the syllable "yes."   Molly Bloom would be proud.

      Yes, there's at last only two months or so left in the American election campaign, and there are still people who say they don't really know John Kerry at all, and that they don't know where the candidates stand on issues.   The Canadian election campaign was called and done with in less time than now remains in the American campaign.   I'm sure John Kerry's already getting ready for those long nights of dejection, getting pissed on VSOP brandy, and singing If you don't know me by now....   Dubya will celebrate by reading My Pet Swift-Boat to preschoolers with the grin of a shit-eater.   Canadians everywhere are thanking their individual deities they're not stuck with a year's worth of nattering political coverage.   Wolf Blitzer is thanking his anti-deity for the small fortune he's milked from all this.  

      Yes, I'm still procrastinating-- and blabbering.   Hey, Eternity, how ya doin' back there?

      It's time to staunch this, move on, get to work.   But I guess such a rambling, digressive post is perfect for Belabour Day.   Have a beer or ten, my readers.   Enjoy the last of the summer's slouches.   And remember those of us stuck with our sporks.

Explaining Your Parents

      That tears it: this blog's NEVER having kids.   (And those of you muttering 'thank God' under your breaths can take a flying fornication at a rolling pastry-product.)  

Further Proof That Timing Is Everything

      Coincidence?   Hmmmm.......

Cry Me A River (or Tokyo Rows)

      If you think this blog's going to say a single blessèd thing about any of this, you're crazy. Absolutely bat-shit, stark-raving, loony-toon, cuckoo-for-Cocoa-Puffs, Liza-Minelli-on-a-bender CRAZY.   

      Key quote: "They also don't like sitting at home on their own."   *smirk* *titter* *giggle* *violent eruption of laughter* A mari usque ad mari....

      Fairy trails can come true, it can happen to you.....

Here We Go Again....

      Oh lord, oh lord, oh lord, say it ain't so, say it just ain't so, that we may once more (unto the breach!) end up having to deal with the dreaded S-word again, you know, S*p*r*tion.   Please, prithee, let us not go through that exhausting, laborious, agonizing process of constitutional niggling and navel-gazing all over a-frickin'-gain (three times in 25 years is enough, thank you). It's a bloody catherine wheel of fire. On the flip side, Doug Fisher's column today predicts short terms for both PM Martin and and Mr. Harper. Good gracious, if we're going to be bound upon that torture device again, I don't want either of them having to become Captain Canada. Perish the thought.

      (Fact is, I think this S-word stuff is just idle talk from those with nothing else to talk about. I can't imagine anyone, even the more devout in their desire for Quebec independence, really wants to open up the guts of that corpse any time soon. I'd rather talk about the plans to push back those evil Danish aggressors.   )

Mission Almost Accomplished?

      Timing is everything.... (Now that's what you'd call a 200-lb. snatch.)

      This blog doesn't want to be preternaturally suspicious, let alone conspiratorial, but I can't help but think there's very little coincidental about this. Maybe that's because it's harder now to believe that anything happens with the Bushies that is genuinely coincidental and not timed for maximum political effect. It hardly seems to matter. It looks more and more like Kerry's all but written himself off the ballot.

Those Dark, Satanic Mills

      This looks promising, especially considering that most of the published material has been less than, er, Enlightening.   If memory serves (and it very often doesn't), Mills wrote a decent piece on Morrison's aural poetry some years ago that was published in the journal Popular Music.   Chances are, I have the blasted thing in xeroxed form somewhere in the reams and reams of material I've gathered over the years. (Now that I think of it, I may have referred to it in an article I wrote just after Morrison was first included The Oxford Companion to Irish Literature. It was a very naive piece-- mine, that is-- in retrospect, but, hey, I was savagely young then, impossible as that may be to fathom.)

      FOOTNOTE: I was right-- but the date seems off. Though the official date cited is 1997, I referred to the article in a 1996 article. Go figure, even though it's not in the least uncommon for journals and magazines to publish well-ahead of their issue-period.

Shrimp Boats, For Truth

      It looks like Canada (this blog's Home and Native Land) has pushed back those imperialistic Danes. Faroe, let my people go!

      (And yes, this is profoundly absurd, Canada being in an "international crisis" of miniscule proportions with Denmark, but so it goes. It's also worth noting that this has to be one of the worst-written articles I've seen in a while, the opening paragraphs just a giant leap into the deep end before the establishment of context. But while America deals with Iraq, Canada deals with shrimp. Kinda puts things into perspective, doesn't it?)

Children of a Lesser Gawd

      Oh, here's a bloody surprise.... Like I couldn't have predicted this....

      You are:

Shakespeare: Sonnets. Everyone has heard of you,
and almost everybody can find something
touching in you. You are calm and control
yourself, even though your wisdom and your
messages are no lesser than those of others.

Which literature classic are you?
brought to you by Quizilla

[link courtesy The Village Itself]

(Pause.... Er, there is NOTHING "touching" IN me. That's a truly frightening thought.)

Have to say, I found that quiz really annoying (and dare I note the grammar problems in my own "results"?) . But now I should try to figure what literary classic I really am. Part King Lear, surely; but more than likely a Beckett piece, alternately carved by silence and extended speech, with more than a bit of fancy for verbal play and (alack!) irony.

The Manichaean Candidate

      Maureen Dowd's column in today's NYTimes has a doozy of an attack on President Bush's deliberate mystification of facts -- a doozy, however, that (as so often with Ms Dowd) drifts from its strengths and gets trapped on the shoals of the ranting and the familiar. Notice the summa-cum-peripeteia that happens with the paragraph "Mr. Bush Swift-boated her."   A shame, really, because her first part was the stuff of head-slamming retort before she lapsed into the trite and yawn-inducing.

The Sex-Free Orgasm

      Oh, I wish I remembered what mental ecstasy was, O or no O... (Is this what society is really, er, coming to?)

How Now Brown Cow?

      Alright punsters: do your cud-chewing best.  

Burnt Norton

      I can't say there's much subtlety in the Something Awful textbook parodies, but a few of them are amusing, particularly these ones which have more than a couple bits of truth to them.

 

And Christie complains about the books I gave her....

(One shudders to think what would happen if she had to move my books-- or worse, much worse, RK's)

Bush Up On Your Shakespeare

      The great shame about Nicholas Kristof's article in today's NYTimes is that it only skims the surface-- or observes the obvious-- for contrasting The Dubster with Shakespearean heroes.   The article's partially right in associating The American President with the Coriolan, for whom his Volumnia isn't his mother but his Roving Chain of nursing maids, but the article misses three other more directly relevant associations-- with Richard II (the manipulated, dithering King capable of poetics, but normally inclined to believe his own press), Titus Andronicus (the revenge-driven general, neither mad nor sane), and, perhaps more importantly, King John, the idiot manipulator that will eventually need a bastard to redeem him from his carelessness.  

      Sad obsequiem: Both Bush and Cheney are men whose lapses in judgment led to them being arrested and/or cited, in their supposedly more naive days, for drunk-driving.   It makes one wonder why more people aren't more MADD about this-- and more aware of the capacity for these "gentlemen" to commit serious and dangerous errors of judgment (no doubt the results of slipshod, suspect and surely sullied intelligence, offenses of which the Not-So-Good Doctor is guilty, too, but to which he's never made applicable to steel tonnage). Those errors are more resonant when one observes that, for the Prez at least, the coincidence of the timing of these citations suggests that we should be considering, if we are to consider Senator Kerry's judgment lo those decades ago, the President's misconsiderations (to understate matters seriously) as well.   Unfortunately, the Democrats seem to be letting this slide, idiots that they are, stooping to conquer themselves.   (And the Republicans, apparently, don't give a whit about Mr. Bush's nasty past: he, after all, got religion, which makes him honky-dory now, though he's done scrap-all to warrant such forgiveness.) Bush isn't a reformed Hal, following the lesson of the Chief Justice rather than Falstaff when the time comes, and he surely had none of Falstaff's wit or intellectual cleavage.   Instead, he's rather more like Henry VI with too much Toby Belch (or maybe just Sir Andrew?) about his past, and too much Malvolio about him now-- to say nothing of his Dogberryan propensity for abusing thought and language, or at least mauling both with a grizzly bear's dexterity. What are the incompetent constable's words?

Dost thou not suspect my place? Dost thou not suspect my years? O that he were here to write me down an ass. But masters, remember that I am an ass: though it be not written down, yet forget not that I am an ass.

You're lucky, Dubby: it seems people are forgetting that you are an ass.   This cold season will turn us all to fools and mad men.

      And, BTW: As much as I might disagree with him on certain points, watching Senator McCain's address to the RNC on Monday, I was reminded all too well that it's not Republicans per se that are objectionable, but the command to which they've surrendered. McCain at least made a considered and understandable case.   And he did so very civilly, with even his jab at Michael Moore, calling him a "disingenuous film-maker," rather appropriate: the word "disingenuous" changes everything, because it questions the director's sincerity, as many of us do (and even Moore himself does, always calling into question his own cheekiness on matters), rather than promiscuously besmirching or stigmatizing him.   McCain's a statesman, a man with whom one can, it seems, have relatively genial intellectual and/or ideological disagreement; the Chain-Gang, on the other hand, epitomizes the butterslide that is Springeresque politics now so sickeningly and disturbingly the norm.  

      And, might this blog add a cautious addendum?   Much has been said of Bush's "unwavering" nature, certainly mythological (ask those families and politicians that pressed for a commission on the events of 9/11 that first met stern resistance to the idea but gladly watched the President waver and waver like the sorority girl that insists she never does that sort of thing, ever, I tell you, ever, her popularity ever, ever, more important than her pride).   But one has to wonder: is this genuine "spine," the Churchillian quality of steeled commitment, or merely the simple-minded stubbornness of someone convinced he's not only fine but still okay to drive himself (and many others) home?   I know this: I've seen what he's done with the keys in his past four years, and that should be a frightening reminder of what happens when people shrug their shoulders and defer to his chronically-impaired judgment more resigned than determined.   Sure, he might steer everyone home safely, with a bit of luck and despite the calamitous, and probably distracting, cheering from the backseat.   But it's surely going to be a bumpy ride-- and I'm glad I won't be in the same vehicle.   Problem is, I'm afraid I might be on the road that night, too.

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      POST-SCRIPT: Governor Ahhhhh-nold, demonstrating the sort of critical thinking that should go into the formation of one's ideas about politics and, indeed, one's identity:

I finally arrived here in 1968. I had empty pockets, but I was full of dreams. The presidential campaign was in full swing. I remember watching the Nixon and Humphrey presidential race on TV. A friend who spoke German and English, translated for me. I heard Humphrey saying things that sounded like socialism, which is what I had just left. But then I heard Nixon speak. He was talking about free enterprise, getting government off your back, lowering taxes and strengthening the military. Listening to Nixon speak sounded more like a breath of fresh air.

I said to my friend, "What party is he?" My friend said, "He's a Republican." I said, "Then I am a Republican!" And I've been a Republican ever since! And trust me, in my wife's family, that's no small achievement! I'm proud to belong to the party of Abraham Lincoln, the party of Teddy Roosevelt, the party of Ronald Reagan and the party of George W. Bush.

You can read the rest of his remarks here. Nixon-- a breath of fresh air?!? Was he ever that, even in the 50s? And it's very comforting to know that the Govuhnuh goes with the "what's he?-well, then I'm one of him-forever and ever amen" logic.   But at least it proves that he'll stand loyally behind even the most corrupt and paranoid.

Waiting For The Miracle

      Received this from Mr Ublanksy and thought it worth sharing here, a parable of patience:

      One night a cop was patrolling a well-known parking spot when he saw a couple in a car, with the interior light on. As he got closer to the car and saw a young man behind the wheel reading a computer magazine and a young woman on the rear seat, knitting.

      Puzzled by this surprising situation, the officer walked to the car and knocked on the window. The young man lowered his window and said, "Yes,officer?"

      "What are you doing?"

      "Well, isn't it obvious? I'm reading a PC magazine."

      Pointing toward the young woman, the cop asked, "And her, what is she doing?"

      The young man shrugged. "I believe she's knitting a pullover."

      The cop was totally confused. A young couple alone in a car at night, doing nothing but reading and knitting? "What's your age, young man?"

      "I'm 22, sir."

      "And her, what's her age?"

      The young man looked at his watch and said, "She'll be 18 in 20 minutes."

And if you think this blog's sayin' anything.... It took to carding a long time ago. (And counting the rings when in doubt.)  

      /and Lawd oh Lawd I wanna be 22 again..... I wasted it, it now so badly seems, the first time around....