Paging Helen Lovejoy

Once again, society is bedeviled by the dangers of eye-rhyme. Bedeviled, we tell you, bedeviled! Will someone PLEASE think of the children!!!

Seriously, if the campaign offends you, it says a hell of a lot more about you than it does about the campaign: specifically, that you're (probably) a self-righteous, ululating prig with nothing better to do with your much too ample time. In other words, you're a card-carrying member of the School of Injurement, and you desperately need to get a motherflicking life.

FOLLOWUP: Reminder from Leonard Cohen: "There are no dirty words-- ever." Except maybe ululate. That word just sounds kinky.

Skin Deep

Proof positive: Drudge knows his news.

Only in America....

And in other news: Gawd Darwin Marx Roland Barthes Peter Cushing help us all. I'm sure it'll be every bit as funny as we expect it to be. (You know, just like that time Marlo Thomas met the abortionist for dim sum....)

The Power of Myth

Briefly: If you missed it, check out Bill Moyers' report Buying the War online here. It's a fairly searing indictment of the journalistic complicity that helped get the US into the Iraq debacle, though it's largely old news to those of us in other parts of the world. In Canada, France, Germany, the UK, and many other countries, the media were deeply-- and often quite profoundly-- skeptical of the case for war. (And that's why Canada, for example, stayed the hell out of it.) The failures of the American fourth estate were as horrifying as they were galling. BTW, since Moyers' report was aired this week, you'd think the major Sunday chat-shows out of the States would have addressed some of the issues raised and accusations made. You'd think.

Something to remember: the Shrubbies aren't the only ones in a state of denial. Enablers always are.

Colour Me Amberdextrous

Sorry, folks--- very much behind on just about everything, email & blogging included. For the next several days I'm dog-sitting Amber, the darling pictured at the right, while her owners are off in Florida. She's a very sweet dog, and she's getting on in years, so she needs a bit of extra care. Have to say, it's nice having a dog around again.

So for the next while, I don't know how much I'll be able to post/write/whatever. Am shuffling between two abodes for now, and only fleetingly attending to Other Stuff. Will try to catch up when I can. Until then....

And Finally The Miscellany

And on this day of non-stop (read in: compensatory) blogging, a few short-takes on Recent Things:

• Some of us remember too well the terrible insecurity when Mikhail Gorbachev was ostensibly ousted all those years ago. Insecurity is a bit of an understatement. I remember watching the TV without stop, wondering if we were witnessing a giant leap back in time. Then Yeltsin happened. He literally "happened." And from there, the rest is history, even if his successor, Mr Putin, these days sounds and acts more like a mafioso Secretary-General than a President. For whatever his faults, for whatever his inadequacies as a reformer and/or statesman, Mr Yeltsin stood up and said, defiantly, that there was no going back, there was only going forward. That, my friends, took courage. Let that be what he's remembered for.
  
  And, to all you right-wing Reaganite nutjobs: Gorbachev and then Yeltsin ended the Soviet Union, so stop taking credit for something you didn't bloody well do. Let us pray (pray, pray) we're finally near the end of this age of willy-nilly historical revisionism.
  
  
• Yesterday was Saint George's Day-- and as I meant to note, the date of Shakespeare's death. (Some claim it as his birthday, too, but the evidence for that's iffy at best.) So, go celebrate by reading, and ideally viewing, some Shakespeare for the rest of the week. And please, please, please, don't just reread Hamlet. For God's sake, don't. Try King John or Cymbeline, just for a change.
  
  
• 24 continues its full-throttle dead-slowness in resolving a season best forgotten, like that thing you did with the gerbils, a tuning fork and the cast of Oz. For those of you not watching, as if you should, there are still a stabbed President, a murderous Farmer Hogget and a one-armed Russian terrorist unaccounted for. Oh, and a story that, I think everyone agrees, sucks bloated, muddy donkey balls. Or so say the show's fans. Those of us more critical would say much, much worse.
  
  (Correction: I was wrong. These preening, clueless dunderheads disagree. Then again, they use the word "significant" where most of the rest us would use the words "laughably ridiculous.")
  
  
• I imagine Sylvia is ecstatic that I mentioned her specifically in my earlier re-crud-escent post. I assure all of you, she is NOT the first person of whom I think when poop comes to mind. I also imagine Syl's equally thrilled I've felt the need to qualify this. ;-)
  
  
• If I hear one more thing from CNN about the Virginia Tech massacre, I think I'll beat my TV into a mass of busted circuits. The ghoulish, pretentious, manipulative "all-massacre-all-the-time" coverage has finally waned, but the cheap cynicism of their reportage remains shameless. I won't even begin to comment, so of course I will, on its "show-the-Cho-tape-ad-nauseum" day-later reversal as it feigned sensitivity to viewer disgust. Once it had decided to air the material, it had to stick to its journalistic guns, arguing relevance. But it didn't. So, beyond being pandering and exploitative, it's also gutless and unprincipled, which renders it lower-than-Mitt-Romney-low.
  
  
• Opening line for a Cohenesque novel, if one can still be written in this tsk-tsk-tsk-ing age: "She was a damsel in gossamer, but only because of the cobwebs that had formed permanently around her dank and forbidding cu...." [Stop! Stop! We interrupt this sickening, sexist perversion to protect you, the genteel and possibly innocent readers of this blog. We now return you to your regularly-scheduled blathering.] Okay, maybe more Mailer than Cohen, but six, half-dozen and the other....
  
  
• Andrew Sullivan offers an interesting but nearly-hagiographical assessment of Obama-mania. (As Homer Simpson would say, "Patent pending, patent pending, patent pending.") Obama, for now, is getting the RFK man-who-would-be-king treatment, but I remain skeptical. He can't, at least, be any worse than the current President. Inanimate carbon rods, however, couldn't be any worse.
  
  
• And two items, both brought to my attention courtesy Hockey Jones. First, evidently "old, inefficient bulbs" in Ontario will be reduced to running for parliament, with the dimmest and most wasteful vying for the Premiership. Secondly, this link will provide you with some of the most disturbing images you'll ever see. Gives new meaning, however, to Phil Collins' "Coming In The Air Tonight." *shiver*

Okay--- enough. Some stuff on the burner now, so don't be too surprised if I go quiet for a bit. Until time avails itself again. Best.

Once More Unto The Well, Once More

Didn't this appropriately-URLed blog already rant about such despicable cynicism? And only two months ago, no less. Pffft.

Notes for the less-familiar: Tracks collected here are mainly from albums from 1993-present, some good ("Days Like This," "Steal My Heart Away," "Crazy Love"), some bad ("Too Long In Exile," "Georgia On My Mind," the torpid "When The Leaves Come Falling Down"), and only a few excellent ("Ancient Highway," "Shenandoah," the epic, electric and righteously-asskicking "Lonely Avenue"). The album's hardly necessary and inexplicably selected, with no real insight offered by the compilation, as the songs are merely presented in chronological order. To rewrite a certain urban phrase, it seems this damn Van's gonna get ridden 'til the mutherfuckin' wheels fall off.

Mystery Meat

Because some jokes are just too obvious.... Key quote: "Last night cops were trying to establish the Pole's background."

UPDATE: An eminently reliable source adds this: "And the best thing is that in French slang your 'zizi' is your, well, you know." Well, definitely not my, thank God Darwin Ray Charles.

Scatman Druthers, or Out Of The Cradle Endlessly Plopping

For your, er, delectation: Laudator Temporis Acti spoons-- er, ladels-- out a bit of shining wit. (A crusty trap, or just a plain dropping?)

And remember: The world's most famous anagram of toilets is T. S. Eliot. The waste land, indeed.

FOLLOWUP: I wonder if Sylvia will recall this from our Foundling days. If she's lucky, not.... ;-)

O Commodore, My Commodore!

Most of my readers either won't remember or won't want to remember the Commodore 64, but some of us, way back when dinosaurs were turning into oil, spent more hours on it than we would care to admit. Oh, the sophistication! The graphical detail! The luxury of having to type LOAD "*.*", 8,1 every time you wanted to run a programme! (On the other hand, your computer served you rather than you endlessly serving, and servicing, it.) I won't even begin to bore you by explaining how many hours I spent playing Qix, Ghostbusters, Bruce Lee, Alter Ego and Defender of the Crown; or how I turned the entire Spanish Main Dutch in Pirates!; nor even how I eventually and heroically-- to my friends at the time, anyway-- disproved the titular claim of Impossible Mission. ("Stay a while! Stay forever!!!" It's also where most of us learnt the word "cormorant.") At long last, however, those of you brave, bored or nostalgic enough can finally play some of those warped blasts and blast-em-ups from the past, collected for your retrogressive satisfaction here. Then tell me how much time you spend waste on all that antiquated silliness. ;-) Providing, of course, you can get the games to work....

Not For Your Eyes Only

It’s amusing how petty some corporations can be. The article’s author might be a tad over dramatic comparing BA to Soviet Russia -the company's behaviour seems more akin to a teenager cutting an ex's head out of photographs after a break up.

O My Darling Clement Times

Here in my little neck of Southern Ontario, we're on our third consecutive day of genuinely gorgeous weather. The sun's out, the sky's blue-- and best of all, forgive me ladies, halter tops are back, and they truly comprise a sight for sore eyes. (*Sigh.* Go ahead, sue me for having a Y chromosome.) We've been through a long & dreary winter; not a brutal one by any stretch of the imagination, but a bleak and apparently-endless half-suffering, like a Henry James paragraph. So we're in a period of probably too-brief beauty here. Canadians are to climatological goodness as pimply teenaged boys are to sex: they're grateful for any little bit they can get.

And for all that sunny talk, one of the items most on my mind of late is Stanley Kramer's Judgment at Nuremberg, a brilliant film in so many regards, though sadly these days it's largely remembered for its so-called stunt-casting (Montgomery Clift, Judy Garland; and, though not stunting at the time, William Shatner's presence will invariably but ahistorically seem a stunt of some sort). Watching it again lately with many interruptions, and ergo pausing it, I was impressed by how easily one can cease the movie's movement and land upon a perfect still shot. Kramer had a magnificent eye, and everything about that film sustains visual arrest. I can think of no recent director of whom I could say same, and very few of the classic ones.

Another thought thereto: It's easy to forget, amid the respect generally conceded him, what a truly magnificent presence Spencer Tracy became in his later years. Beyond playing the legal-judicial part to which he got regularly assigned in this period (Inherit The Wind, Guess Who's Coming To Dinner?), he manages to indicate so much with so little. There's a scene in the film in which he has drinks with Marlene Dietrich, and you can perceive, in the mere postulations of his eyes, first his desire to understand Germany, then his disgust with it, and then his disgust with himself for lapsing into (temporary) hatred as he tries to remain objective as a judge in the Nuremberg climate. Tracy knew how to register to a camera, and he reminded me of the critic who said that Alec Guinness could say more with a furrow of his brow than most actors could by shouting from the rafters. Tracy was probably the Robert Frost of modern acting, deceptively folksy, but always making the complexity of his art seem so easy, or at apparent ease, you'd never notice it. Consider it a bit of a reminder, or a cautionary suggestion: sometimes the most transparent is the most opaque-- and the most opaque the ostensibly clearest; and that there's sometimes genius in being so manifestly clear. Something to keep in mind?

And-- And-- And--- You Put The Load Right On Me-e-e-e

This blog will not comment. This blog will not comment. This blog will not comment.

*whistles innocently*

Nope, still not commenting.

*continues whistling*

This blog knows she's from Wales. From Mold, Wales, no less. But it STILL isn't commenting.

*glances evasively askance*

Don't look at this blog like that.

*looks directly at feet, which are beginning to shuffle anxiously*

Okay, okay: key quote from the judge: "I cannot ignore the difference in your ages - you were 34 and twice his age." And thrice his....

This blog feels so dirty right now. Thank you, thank you very much.... Rotten filthy perverts, the lot of ya....

A Metaphysical Dilemma (updated)

Seems everyone's favourite hate group is at it again: this time, they're planning to picket funerals for Virginia Tech victims because "God does not do [this] to his servants." The logician in me wants to point out what their God allowed to happen to his own son, but that'd be too snarky by half. Instead, I prefer to wonder: If these people hold a picket, and one of the grieving friends or family members gives one of their revolting brood exactly what they all so richly deserve, would the survivors have to picket the funeral for their own fallen one? After all, God wouldn't do that to one of his servants, would He?

If nothing else, we'd quickly learn the answer to that old question about how many asswipes can dance on the head of a pin.

SEMI-RELATED UPDATE: The intellectual and moral skidmark that is Dinesh D'Souza has essayed spitting in the face of atheists (and, presumably, agnostics & alternate believers) using the VT shootings as his platform. One professor from VT, an atheist, responds to him beautifully here--- though, like almost anyone with a PhD, he unfortunately doesn't know when to leave well enough alone. His initial response, however, is pitch-perfect.

D'Souza is a grotesquerie, and a despicable one at that. The difference between D'Souza and the Phelpses is, as Northrop Frye used to say, merely one of degree and not of kind. Worth remembering, I think.

Slipping you some tongue

Possible consequence of dating someone who is either really into you or hasn't been kissed in 38 years.

Also, I'm now thankful that the incident with the alphabits cereal made me take mine out years ago. Always listen to your dentist!

Words Fail

And sometimes they just seem inappropriate.

Admit It, You'd Hit It

Because there's nothing like pokin' it old school....

If it weren't for those meddling kids

Tonight, I went to see Disturbia. Technically it was my choice, but I was only given a choice between it and Blades of Glory so my expectations were pretty low. It’s really not that bad, a bad Hitchcock rip-off maybe, but the suspense is so far from the quality of Rear Window that the only connection between the two is that the plucky hero is stuck in his house with binoculars (and a whole assortment of stalker-recommended equipment). All things considered, it was probably best that the filmmakers decided to just run with the premise in a b-movie way instead of trying to remake the original –it would’ve been disastrous particularly since the 'Lisa' character is noooooo Grace Kelly. Instead it was just a smart-alecky, mildly amusing and voyeuristic bit of fluff for the tween crowd (I kept wondering: ‘what the hell am I doing here?’ Oh yeah, Will Ferrell in lycra pantsuits and relentless boner jokes…)

Here’s the scary part about it -I cannot remember the last time I watched a movie in what felt like, a high-school cafeteria with the lights out (Maybe Billy Madison? Long, long time ago that’s for sure). There was stuff being thrown around (mostly popcorn but I think napkin spit balls are making a comeback), kids yelled out at the screen, made cat calls, threatened someone 2 rows over to ‘turn off your f#%king phone!’ they screamed unnecessarily at all the predictable jumpy parts and then- they clapped (clapped, for godssakes as if we were sitting at a Cannes screening).

Deeply disturbia.

Quarrel In A Straw

What, dare I ask, is worse: being called a "nappy-headed ho" by a disheveled crank, or being falsely labeled a rapist by a county prosecutor and most of the national media? Watching the news coverage out of the States this week, you'd think the former. In fact, watching the various programmes that constitute the tradition of Sunday morning talk, you'd think Don Imus the worst person since Joe McCarthy. On Meet the Press, Reliable Sources and This Week, one story dominated the other completely by a huge margin in terms of air-time devotion. Guess which one. Meet the Press didn't mention the other at all; This Week elided over it almost completely; and Reliable Sources came to it only in an epilogue that rhetorically, and utterly emptily, asked if the media should apologize.

I wonder-- could there be an ulterior reason for this? The media couldn't be using Imus as a straw man to deflect attention from their irresponsibility, and their fundamental complicity, in the Duke fiasco, could it? No, the American media would never do that. It's just that there was no vigil to keep outside Mike Nifong's house.

So it comforts me to know that, as the clamour suggests, it's okay to make and perpetuate criminal allegations against male athletes, and to actively participate in grand public libel. But toss off a crude and thoughtless epithetical slander against female athletes, and there will be Hell to pay. It comforts me that being slurred in a couple second sound-byte is a greater act of victimization than being dragged through the courts for more than a year on the most serious and invidious charges. It comforts me that every news programme in the US, and every talking head featured on it, will go on effusively about how impressive the Rutgers women are, while those few that bother to mention the unimpressive Duke boys do so now to emphasize that they came from wealthy families who could afford fancy-shmancy legal representation. It comforts me that we're supposed to feel the pain these young women felt, while we're supposed to slough off the pain those young men felt because they were college boys and must have been bad in other ways we just don't know about. It comforts me that the social priorities are so clear.

Now, please, let's get on to the important business of going after certain cultural sections that use what's now clearly taboo. Let's get the rappers and the shock-jocks and the comedians and the satirists and the moviemakers. We all know they're the real problem.

After all, since we're discussing so intently the damage that can be caused by words (so much for sticks and stones), it's good to know which ones are really hurtful. So, feel free to call me a rapist. Just don't call me a ho.

Who Gives A Friggatriskaidekaphobia....

Yes, it's Friday the 13th technically, but as far as I'm concerned it's still Thursday the 12th. Hit once again with a brutal bout insomnia (an affliction since kid-hood), this morning's just a daze until I can finally attempt sleep again, and this entry just an exercise in killing Time. But to send you off onto your weekends with stuff about which to think:

• Easter came and went with nary a resurrection to be had, but I did realize something bizarre. For reasons beyond my ken, my maternal unit insists on buying me chocolate and other confections, but which I never end up touching. (A mother who repeatedly buys you something you neither need nor want? Imagine that.) Then it occurred to me: without a girlfriend, or a semi-steady involvement, this stuff will never, ever get eaten. For as long as I can remember, the only people who ever ate any of it were-- you guessed it-- entanglements of one form or another. Strange thing to realize as a new stockpile begins to build. And ladies, before any of you try to Imus me: Any of the women that actually dated me would adore being described as "entanglements." Without that peculiar sort of humour, they'd never have cast their eyes in my direction in the first place. ;-)
• I started to write a discussion of the Imus brouhaha, but it became apparent the bloody thing would turn into a tome before I knew it. Maybe I'll put it all down eventually, but as you can probably imagine, I've watched the spectacle with worried eyes. For reasons far too complex to explain now, I regard the situation as a dangerous crisis point with no good result in the offing. Imus' firing will be seen-- is being seen-- as the legitimation of swarming upon improper speech with pious imperative, and, of course, selective ignorance of hypocrisies and mob-mindedness. It worries me-- no, alarms; nay, terrifies-- that the idea of "free speech," however offensive, has become nothing more than a phrase to be inevitably followed by a giant, contradictory "but." The hypocrisies of those that led the charge against Imus are myriad and manifold, and the bases for their attack equivocal (and oft-qualified) at best. And now they've effectively been encouraged to pursue further agendae of silencing and correction. This does not portend well, because those that taste the victory of (faux) moral outrage can never have just one bite. My reasons for thinking this are only slightly less-involved than a Henry James novel-- it has to do with, among other things, race-baiting, metonymic thinking, PoMo silliness, arch-Puritanism, and the historical evolution of (small p intended) protestant piety. It also has nothing to do with Imus himself, who's largely beyond defending. The righteous, and conspicuously unforgiving, bullies won a significant skin this week. God help us all if they win another.
• Okay, yes, that rambled BIG-TIME, and became much more anticipatory than I'll probably ever be able to satisfy. Shall I curtail? Every single commentator, protester, scholar and activist who supported this move should be willing to stand by this resolution: Should I ever, for any reason, slip from the standard I've just established, may I be treated as I have treated. (Professors, that may will mean renouncing your tenure so you can be fired, too.) Then watch how many stand back from their stalwarcy in stone-throwing. (And, by which standard, both Jesse "Hymie-town" Jackson and Reverend Al would already have been exiled to pariah-land.)
  
• There's a bizarre irony that all of this is playing out against the much-too-late indemnification of the Duke lacrosse players. Shouldn't we ALL beware the rush to so-called justice? Shouldn't we all beware the cheap satiety that comes from advancing before one sobers with thought? You'd think Americans would be especially wary after the rush to action that led them into Iraq. Evidently not, alas. And gee, what did Reverend Al say about the Duke accused before the evidence was in? How conveniently we forget.
  
• Which, by the way, is why Reverend Al is a poseur. The Right Reverend Al is an entirely different person altogether. Sharpton's a mullah. Green's an Ayatollah, and a mercifully honourable one at that. What was his most famous song again? "Let's Stay Together...."
  

Forgive me, please. I'm old, tired, ranting, and subject to flights of cultural, social and intellectual offense and anger. The difference between me and Reverend Al? I admit my Claptonian capacity for folly and stupidity-- regularly. (And probably demonstrate it at least twice as often.) Reverend Al, however, is to civil rights as Mrs Malaprop was to language.

And The Voice Of This Calling

Because the Doctor is sooooooooo In....    As the lotto ad goes, Just imagine....