Those Wacky Americans

      There's nothing like smiling and gloating over a dead body. This American humour, I'm sure, will be lost on the Muslim world. Sheesh.

You've Got Mail

      This has to be one of the most horrifying, utterly appalling, stories I've ever heard. My pity goes out to the woman in it. Unbelievable.

Hot Just Like An Oven....

      Pardon me while I chuckle and guffaw aloud ("aloud" in cyberspace: go figure) upon being directed to my ratings on RateMyProfessors. I hadn't checked it in a while-- not since a teaching meeting a while ago, which, while we waited for everyone to show up, the CD perused and brought up for us. Apparently it's been updated since I last saw it, and I have since been complimented far too generously. (If the person who made that last comment is reading this: thanks.) As anyone who teaches at a university knows, though, the most important rating, the one upon which we hinge each and every one of our pathetic, desperate souls, is the chili-pepper rating, for which I am currently 6 (six) for 9 (nine). Hahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahaha.... My poor, sweet charges must be blind, or they're simply far too kind. But I thank them for their support.

      It's kinda interesting to look at such statistics, though. There seems to be a general consensus that I'm not easy (fair enough), but all but one of my assessors has given my full marks for helpfulness and clarity. I can live with that, too. So, I'm a clear, helpful hard-ass that is 66.66666666% hot. Oh, my sides hurt. I wonder if I can put such data on my C.V., you know, with the kind of advisory that dentists give to certain chewing gums. In the interim, I'll just chuckle in my own self-amused little corner of this madcap, silly little world, even if, by these standards, David Letterman and Harris Yulin must be paragons of steaming sexuality.

Sorry, Oedipus, We Don't Cover That Anymore

Far be it from this blog to say "I told ya so," but I told ya so. Premier McSquinty's government brought down this afternoon one of the most punishing budgets in recent memory this afternoon, and it's almost guaranteed to cause a degree of furor in the voting ranks. I hope, for example, you don't need physiotherapy or eye examinations, both of which have been delisted from OHIP coverage (unless, of course, you're a senior and now a member of the largest voting bloc of seniors in Canadian history). Smokers, drinkers, drivers, you're all getting hit *big time,* but so too is everyone earning more than $20,000 but less that $100,000 per year. Oh, and that promise to maintain a balanced budget vanished faster than a virgin at a keg party. Here's a basic summary of what's coming effective midnight tonight. This blog is not impressed, but then again it never expected it would be.       The provincial Libs campaigned on a bigger deficit than the Tories announced, and yet they made grandiose promises they should have known they couldn't sustain. And yet people voted for them. Go figure. Anyone with a brain in his or her head should have seen this coming long before the election happened last year. You see, this is what happens when you elect a government that promises sun, moon, and stars-- and whose leader frankly looks like he's stepped out of a Hitchcock motel. This does not look good, people, this does not look good at all, extra spending on health and education et al. Another fine kettle of fish, indeed. P.S. And, btw, it seems caviar is still tax-free. Go figure.

Why, Mr. Perkins....

Lenny, We Hardly Knew Ye

      Well, not sure if this is good news or bad news, but it certainly is the end of an era. Sorry, Zane....

The Shepherd And His TROC

      Is it just me (no, it's not) or are the Martinets invoking a double-standard by playing coy and positive in Québec while playing rough and negative in TROC (in political circles, the acronym for "The Rest Of Canada," otherwise known as "the rest of us that don't really deserve to be treated with intelligence")? This, by the way, is hot-on-the-heels of Martinet candidate Brian Tobin claiming on CTV's Question Period on Sunday that voters in Québec are the most sophisticated voters in the country. Ah.... After all, the PMS PM admits he needs Québec. So I guess it's time to do a little shameless toadying in the province in which the citizenry have a fundamental second choice which is currently leading in the polls. I can begin to describe to you the comfort I take in knowing that Marty and the Martinets think so highly of those of us in TROC. On Sunday, Tobin suggested that the Conservatives and the Bloc Québecois were practically in collusion with one another to break the Martin campaign, suggesting basically that a vote for he Conservatives was an indirect vote for the separatists in Québec, though none of the articles I've seen on the topic have quoted Tobin's exact words. (I wonder why that is....) Oh boy oh boy oh boy, this is nasty politics, though Tobin's very smooth demeanour kept it from looking as nasty as it actually was, and it really is a shame that someone of Tobin's charisma isn't working for a more noble cause-- or even a Liberal policy agenda of which to speak. Natch.

      So this is where we're going: not just demonizing the Conservatives (and to some extent the NDP, but certainly much less so), but playing off regions against one another, and intimating that any vote against the Liberals Martinets is a vote for separatism, whether by self-exclusion for voters within Québec, or a vote of exclusion of or indifference to Québec from anybody in TROC. Nice.... Haven't we seen this particular brand of nastiness before? Oh yeah, in the various Liberal nomination races. And, I hasten to note, in the "You're either with us or you're against us" doctrine peddled by the Bushies. You're either with Team Martin or you're against it, and the implication is that Team Martin represents The New Canada, the nation, now under Fearless Leader, on the cusp of its Golden Age. Sad thing is, I don't think I'm in the lease overreading into this. The Martinets have been speaking (ad infinitum) in the language of The Brand New Day, the Coming Of Paul who will lead us out of the desert. I wonder if Northrop Frye, were he still alive today, would describe Martin as a demonic parody of Moses. Maybe in his notebooks.

      By the way, all this talk about the Martin manipulations reminds me: The Stepford Wives is due for release soon, and, boy, check out the cast. Impressive.

Is This Ascension-Day?

      So much for Chartesianism.... Points to anyone that can name the source of this entry's headline. :-)

You May Almost Hear The Sweating Of His Fangs

      The pain of loss when they cancelled the show? I'm going to share. --- Joss Whedon

Promises, promises.... Apparently tomorrow's finale "kills off at least one major character and hinges on the betrayal of another." Just one character? Nuts. Please don't let it be Spike, not because I like him but because I don't think any of us could bear yet another unnecessary resurrection of him when Whedon eventually takes yet another kick at the undead can. But for those of you in impending mourning, might I invoke the Bard?

Two loves I have, of comfort and despair,
That like two spirits do suggest me still;
My better angel is a man right fair,
My worser spirit a woman colour'd ill.
To win me soon to hell, my female evil
Tempteth my better angel from my side,
And would corrupt my saint to be a devil,
Wooing his purity with her fair pride.
And whether that my angel be turn'd fiend.
Suspect I may, yet not directly tell:
For being both to me, both to each friend.
I guess one angel in another's hell:
The truth I shall not know, but live in doubt,
Till my bad angel fire my good one out.

--- The Passionate Pilgrim (Sonnet II)

I'll leave you few fans of the show to tangle out my implied ironies. As Byron wrote:

The angels all were singing out of tune,
And hoarse with having little else to do,
Excepting to wind up the sun and the moon,
Or curb a runaway young star or two.

--- The Vision of Judgment

Don't worry, Angel fans, I'll kindly leave Milton out of it. Consider that my present for your mourning.

Because It Was There, Eh?

      So much for that Rocky Mountain high....

A General Air Of Diffident Arrogance

      It's been coming down the pike now for almost four years, but it's finally arrived: the correspondence of the late Sir John Gielgud, and the qualities so regularly associated with Sir John are in abundance-- his lacerating wit, his emotional histrionics, his frequent obliviousness to codes of policy and kindness. The NY Times has a preliminary review here that's worth reading, particularly for a sampling of Sir John's proclivity toward bone-slicing assessment. And my kids think I'm tough.... They'd have beshatten their pants severally had they worked under a Gielgud.

Requiescat In Pace

In the classic words of Homer Simpson, "He called me a greenhorn. I called him Tony Randall. It was a thing we had."

Holy Spit

      Simply put, this is the best news I've had all day. Donald Sinden and Douglas Hurd, however, are reported to have fled to safer climes in Basra.

      (It's a shame it's taken so long: now, all the old acting knights they used to do so well are gone. Alas, better late than never....)

A Tax On All Your Houses!

      As Dalton McSquinty prepares to shiv us all tomorrow with big cuts and expanded taxes, it might be worth reading this article, an oldie but still relevant, on the idiocies of taxation. This blog fully expects caviar to remain untaxed. After all, every family needs its diet of caviar.

Chocophile Rock

      Finally, a way to keep women from using Toblerone bars.... no, no, no, I won't do that joke at all.... Yes, I will be rightly ashamed of myself. Again. Do I dare to query if there will be acne consequences? Or just merely other forms of dermatological, ahem, 'bumping'? Natch. Sorry. I'll just be quiet for now.... Do-ditty-doo.... *Dr J begins whistling ever so faintly into the distance* ^~~You must remember this, / a kiss is just a kiss / a sigh is just a ....^~~

How Does This Ghraib Ya?

      Sy (Seymour) Hersh-- the journalist famous for uncovering the ugly details behind the My Lai massacre all those decades ago-- has the second and third installments of his New Yorker probe on the Iraqi prisoner-abuse scandal, now dubbed by some as "Interro-Gate." (I have to admit, that's clever, and I wish I'd thought of it first. Dag-nabbit!) Hersh is one of those journalists whose record is relatively untarnished; he's generally regarded as being more credible than Bob Woodward, though nothing he's done has had quite the magnitude of the Watergate scandal, though the My Lai coverage very much changed much of the accepted notions of American involvement in Vietnam. It'll be interesting to see if Rummy can survive these volleys. For the first installment, click here.

^~~Chop That Wood, Carry Water....

      What's the sound of one hand clapping? Enlightenment, don't know what it is.... ^~~   You can measure the depth of my enrichment in droplets. Shaken, of course, not stirred. Pardon me while I go and do my impression of Pontius Pilate.

Savour It, People...

      Today's entry for The Dictionary For Ironists is "fear." See also the Greek word "peripeteia."

Show Us Your Virtue!

      This blog would just like to reaffirm its staunch commitment to meaningful research.

A Bad Case Of Lovin' You

      Do NOT read this without a barfbag nearby. Seriously. I mean it. At the very least, you'll never look at Cream of Wheat again in the same way. *shudder*

      (With "thanks" to Christie, who evidently wants me never to eat again; she also sent this link about a couple surely doomed to hate one another for years to come.)

Play Nice, Children...

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

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

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

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

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

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