And Yes He Would Say Yes He Would Say Yes....

     Discovered this little shot of wisdom from Jeffrey Bernard, writing for The Spectator in 1986:

Try substituting the word 'women' for 'drinking' in the AA questionnaire. Are women affecting your peace of mind? Are women making your home life unhappy? Do you show a marked moodiness since women? Are women disturbing the harmony of your life? Have women changed your personality? Do you crave a woman at a definite time daily? Do you require a woman next morning? Do you prefer a woman alone? Have women made you irritable? Yes, yes, yes, and again yes.

Innnn-deeeeed.... Now if only there was a way I could hide women around the house.... One wonders, though: Is there a 28-Step Programme available?

The Glut Of The Irish

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Scenes From The Jerical Life

     Before the Not-So-Good Doctor disappears again for a while-- a new batch of essays are in and demand attention-- it seems appropriate to provide some images of the goofs as they haven't been featured in a while.  Below are two pics, one of the two little dastards hinting that they want food, the other of Trouble in rare (very rare) darling form, cuddled up in his owner's arm.  Despite the semblance of affection, you will surely note the air of curmudgeonliness that never leaves that old cat for more than five seconds at a time.  (The Doctor has dutifully removed most of himself from the picture, for which you should all be appropriately thankful.) 

 

     There's also news that my much-younger cousin has just sired a lad, which makes me a second-cousin for the umpteen-trillionth time.  Another is already on the way, from an even younger cousin.  Talk about making one feel Ollllllllllllld....

     It has also proven to be a movie week, of sorts, with the Doc actually getting around to seeing Wedding Crashers and Batman Begins.  The former was a painfully-dull reminder that what other people make popular comedies, I am best to avoid.  Like There's Something About Mary, Wedding Crashers wore out its welcome within the first half-hour, the gags too trite by half, and the script too long by leagues.  Batman Begins, on the other hand, surprised me with how good it was.  I had not realized that it was directed by Christopher Nolan, which I think made all the difference.  Nolan's Memento was one of the few films in recent years to utterly floor me with its audacity and strength, and many of the key elements that made that movie so effective are in place in the Batman revisioning-- the wonderful sense of economy and pacing, the care of explanation without devolving into hackeneyed exposition, the lucidities of casting (Gary Oldman is not someone I would have thought of to play Gordon, but he works, as does Michael Caine as Alfred, and Christian Bale suits the coweled-one surprisingly well).  The genius of the film, though, is its canonicity, a term I use in its musical rather than its critical sense, using all the techniques of contrapuntality to impressively resonant effect.  Although Nolan's film doesn't have any star-turns per se (nothing as gargantuan as Nicholson's Joker or as delicious as Michelle Pfeiffer's Catwoman), it's also probably the best of the Batman films so far.  That Nolan could inject fresh blood into that franchise strikes me as a minor miracle. 

     Anyway, that's probably as much of an update as I'll be able to manage for the next bit as I wade through essays.  Wish me luck.  Until later, mes ami(e)s....

The Horror, The Horror....

     Chances of the Not-So-Good Doctor ever doing anything even remotely like this?  Slightly less than the chances of him becoming the Sultan of Brunei, starting his own colony on Venus, and filling his seraglio with Bea Arthur lookalikes.  In that order. 

With Manerly Margery Mylk and Quail

     There's something disconnecting about setting down to write this entry, my morning coffee at the ready, a cigarette slowly burning beyond it, as a very old re-run of (oy vey...) Kung Fu: The Legend Continues airs in the background, complete with fellow Canuckistanis Gordon Pinsent and a then-very young Neve Campbell sporting the worst Australian accents since Meryl Streep claimed a dingo ate her baby.  Maybe I should Irish that coffee.

 

     There's an interesting piece at The Chronicle about Herman Melville and the suggestion that Melville considered other endings for his magnum opus, Moby-Dick.  It's worth a read, not just for its content, but for the silly puns manifest throughout:  that there is "a new wave" of Melville scholars, for example, and that eventually "Melville's reputation was washed up" (emphases added).  Reminds me of one of the most unfortunate passages from that novel, a passage that suggests that if Freud had not been born we'd have had to invent him: 

Squeeze! squeeze! squeeze! all the morning long; I squeezed that sperm till I myself almost melted into it; I squeezed that sperm till a strange sort of insanity came over me; and I found myself unwittingly squeezing my co-laborers' hands in it, mistaking their hands for the gentle globules.  Such an abounding, affectionate, friendly, loving feeling did this avocation beget; that at last I was continually squeezing their hands, and looking up into their eyes sentimentally; as much as to say,-  Oh! my dear fellow beings, why should we longer cherish any social acerbities, or know the slightest ill-humor or envy!  Come; let us squeeze hands all round; nay, let us all squeeze ourselves into each other; let us squeeze ourselves universally into the very milk and sperm of kindness.

"The very milk and sperm of kindness" is only slightly less creepy than the image of men squeezing themselves into each other, though the echo of Lady Macbeth reminds me all-too-cringefully of her instruction to "screw your courage to the sticking place."  Shuddddddddderrrrrr....

 

     And speaking of the stuff of gentle globules, there are rumours spraying about.... and being denied and denied.  This blog will uncharacteristically refrain from comment. 

 

     For those of you, by the way, that missed Jon Stewart's coverage of this weekend's vice-presidential ballast-shifting, you can check out the video here.  He he, let us cherish our social acerbities, even as this blog shrinks ever-so-politely from observing the various remarks it could make about the most powerful Dick in the world misfiring into a good friend's face.  (Birdkkake, anyone?)  No, this blog's far too mannerly to suggest something so crude....  Oh, this wanton clarkes be nyse all way....

 

    All that said, damn am I glad that I didn't Irish that coffee.  Welcome to the wonderful world of disturbing imagery....

Close Encounters Of The Word Kind

     The delightfully-monikered Ancrene Wiseass brought my attention to a literary speed-dating meme that seems to be making the rounds.  Larking about, I figured I'd offer my response.  The premise?  Identify the three books that would be Turn-Ons, three Kids-Lit books (ostensibly demonstrating one's attitude toward brat-chelism), and another three that would be Turn-Offs.  Okay, here are my answers, then, in the closest approximation to "speed dating" in which I'll ever engage:

My List (aka "The Turn-Ons")

1)  Leonard Cohen, Beautiful Losers

2)  Wallace Stevens, Collected Poetry and Prose

3)  Graham Greene, Monsignor Quixote

If you know these works, you more or less have me figured out in a nut-shell.  I'll let you do the divining.

 

My Kid-Lit List

I don't do kid-lit.  Ask me to remember what I read when I was a kid, and I won't be able to tell you.  But I guess my kids would be getting Blake's Songs of Innocence, The Complete Lewis Carroll, and a variation (rendered intelligible) of Sir Gawain and the Green Knight.  These probably seem more high-falutin' than I intend.

 

My Turn-Offs-List

1)  Anything by Margaret Atwood, Jane Austen and/or Toni Morrison, all of whom I group here as one so I don't use up all three of my choices on them and end up falsely accused of misogyny.  (Also, just about anything recommended by Oprah.)

2)  Just about anything about vampires and related chic-gothica, Bram Stoker and all three Brontes excepted. 

3)  Just about any book that uses any of the following words in its title: "diaspora," "discourse," "gender," "alterity," "problematics," "negotiations," "constructions," and "self-fashionings."  Also anything using more than two dicritical marks or which soporifically proposes to discuss "framing the gaze." 

Oh, there's a grumpy list, isn't it?  Snark.  What else did you expect?  There is no crankiness like mine....

 

Oh, Calcutta!

     Ladies and gentlemen, may we humbly present your Galling Heresy Of The Day....

     And in other news, I hear Ozzy Osbourne is going to play Francis of Assisi....

A Massive Intelligence Failure

     Oh, it's a cavalcade of vice-presidential punning:  one wonders if there was a bit of Gore in hunting for this Quayle in the Bush....

A Million Little Fleeces

     If you're Canadian, you're probably aware of the controversy surrounding Prime Minister Harper's first cabinet, particularly the galling appointment of the unelected Michel Fortier to Public Works portfolio and the odious crossing of the floor by former Liberal David Emerson straight into International Trade.  The appointments are under such intense scrutiny that key opposition figures are calling on the Ethics Commissioner to investigate, and even some Conservative MPs-- like Garth Turner and Myron Thompson-- are crying foul.  (To say nothing of the almost 15,000 signatories of this online petition to recall Emerson.)   Although it'd be premature to suggest that the Conservatives have already squandered their credibility before the House of Commons even commenced sitting, it is clear the Harper government has started off so badly that even the recently-disgraced Liberals are murmuring about a return to power.  I like John Manley's quip:  "David Emerson really is a great Liberal. In one move, he united the Liberals and divided the Tories."  Welcome to the wild and wacky world of Canuckistani politics in which a government cannot be in power for a week-- a single bloody week-- without commiting an affront to the voting public.  Wheeeee!!!

 

     For the record, Mr Emerson-- now effectively the James Frey of Canadian politics-- does not seem to realize (or to care) why so many people are livid with him.  I wonder if we could get Mr Emerson to appear on Oprah so she could explain to him about feeling duped.  Or maybe Vicki Gabereau.  Ah, the more things change, the more they stay the same....

Once More Unto The Beach

     Fluttering about online this morning, I was reminded that I am supposed to be doing a guest lecture for an old friend's second-year poetry class in a month or so.  The lecture is supposed to be about Wallace Stevens' magnificent "The Idea of Order at Key West," a poem which I've mentioned here often, and which I've lectured on twice now.  Thinking about, though, I realized that I've probably committed a personal heresy:  I don't think I've read Stevens at all in the past six months or so, which is for me like going the same duration without nourishment, nicotine or alcohol.  (Stevens is all three.)   As a result, it behooves me a bit to think about what-in-the-fiery-pits-of-Hell I'm going to say, especially since it's a poem that tends to perplex younger readers almost perfectly.  In other words, it's not a piece to teach flippantly or casually; it requires THOUGHT.  Forethought, actually, and I'm not very good with that lately.  D'oh....  

     I'm reminded, however, of my first lecture on Stevens' poem, maybe six years ago or so.  My audience was a hundred-plus strong group of first-years--- would we call them freshpeople in this toadyingly supersensitive age?---  who were unsurprisingly baffled by the poem, but who nonetheless approached it earnestly.  After the preliminary palaver, I said something to the effect of, "Okay, let's turn to the poem."  My charges dutifully did so, and I began to read it aloud.  What followed has become one of my favourite memories in my, er, "teaching career," as one by one my students lifted their heads from their anthologies  and began staring at me with something probably best described as bewilderment.  They realized, you see, that I was not reading from the book, but from memory, and something about this stunned them.  They were watching me, I suspect waiting for me to stumble or to have to look down to the text, their bewilderment increasing as I kept reciting away.  Suffice it to say that when I uttered the poem's final words "keener sounds," the reaction from my kids was priceless.  They looked down into their books, a bit shocked it was over, their faces blanching slightly from the surprise, and then loooking back up at me as if to ask collectively, "how the fuck did you do that?"  (Ah, first years....) 

     Before any of you start thinking I'm tooting my own horn here, let me assure I'm not.  My reading was nothing exceptional.  The experience, though, remains such a delight for me because it was one of the very, very few times when I managed to get my students entirely into the sound of a poem, to have them listening so intensely they weren't going back and forth between lecturer and text in the same way the rest of us do between an essay and its footnotes.  It's so hard to focus an audience's concentration these days, most people having the auditory attention-span of a cat on cocaine.  (Frankly, I doubt I'll be able to read the poem again as I did, my memory now as buggered as a page in parliament, and my capacity for brilliance long-since lessened to that of a Christmas tree bulb.)  Teaching, one inevitably realizes, is always about little victories rather than grand accomplishments, and my little victory in that circumstance was-- miracle of miracles!-- getting those students, a la Mr Morrison, "into the music" (or would that be lyric?).  That has far less to do with my reading than it does with Stevens' poem, but it was a bit breathtaking just to witness the reactions as poetry at its best does its exhilirating work, even (especially?) on a group of people only barely grasping what's being expressed. 

     Poetry (or modern poetry, at least), Mr Stevens once said, should elude the intelligence almost successfully, and he was right.  Try explaining that, though, to undergrads searching for the dreaded "point" of every poem they read: the notion rankles their sensibilities more than suggesting four plus four equals six-hundred-and-ninety-seven.  But it's a crucial lesson, and one that most can only learn when they experience something that is as mystifying as it is expressive.  When, however, they do learn it, it's electrifying. 

     So I'll have to do some Actual Thinking, assuming that's still possible.  Hell, if it is, THAT will be truly shocking. 

Of Palms and Honeyeaters

       For those of you that missed this story when it first broke earlier in the week, check out the astonishing discoveries found in the Foja Mountains in New Guinea.  Some of the photos (see the gallery within) are fascinating. 

 

     (And, yes, I'm sorry if I disappointed those of you expecting a much dirtier story given the headline above.  Believe it or not, even the Not-So-Good Doctor's mind can't be in the gutter all of the time.  Just most of it.)

Bucking Up

          For once, a story about a soaring loon instead of a raving one....

Call Me Up In Greeneland

      It seems all of my blog entries of late begin with some sort of apology for not updating more frequently, so I'll break character and not apologize this time.  Things lately have been really weird, and not in one of those "my girlfriend likes to use chocolate sauce and a quail feather" sort of ways.  I'll spare you the exposition, but suffice it to say that there have been a number of reasons for self-doubt.  (Well, moreso than usual.)  There have also been ample reasons for further entrenching my cynicism, reasons best left unstated.  Harrumph.  I'm becoming a Graham Greene character in a Crackberry world.  (A whisky-priest, surely.)

 

     Alas, even with having gone more than two weeks since depositing an entry here, I find myself with relatively little to say.  The Zaniac has informed me that there is a new book on poetry from a decidedly welcome source, the always delightful Stephen Fry.  And, unfortunately, I did not see any of the coverage or interviews related to Leonard Cohen's induction into the Canadian Songwriters Hall of Fame, but I do want to report that I scored ten-for-ten on the CBC quiz on Montreal's most famous field commander.  (As well I did, else I should have my Master's degree declared null and void.)  I'd also direct people to read Peter Berkowitz's review of Theory's Empire here: especially valuable, to my mind, are Berkowitz's conclusion and the quoted Hippocratic Oath from the recently-departed Wayne Booth.  The tenets of Booth's oath should be assumed, but in this day and age it's very often the most basic and the most obvious that gets lost in the shuffle.  And speaking of revealing the obvious....

 

     Anyway, that's about it for now.  February is here, and with it nears one of the most dreadful of "holidays," that day when idealistic couples try to convince themselves that love isn't a many-splintered thing and lonelyhearts around the world lament their luck over ice cream and tequila.  Ah, to celebrate the stuff that satirizes all.  Pass the whisky. 

 

 

Short Takes

Just a few notes:

• The Libs have fallen, but not with the thud some predicted.   Paul Martin's concession speech was dignified and decent.  It's a shame he didn't perform this way in the campaign.  The reason for the mild Liberal resurgence?  My bet is that the polls putting the Tories WAY in the lead made a lot of people in Ontario retreat to the Libs as a cautionary measure.  Call it the lesson of the short leash.  Ontario and the Maritimes seem to have spared the Libs from being rendered irrelevant. 
• Glee, oh glee: my own riding kicked Tony Valeri to the curb, and all of Hamilton proper went NDP.  No real glee on the latter, but definitely on the former.  (Sheila Copps is probably having multiple orgasms right now.) The Dippers owe their new seats to four areas: the Northwest Territories, B.C., Toronto and Hamilton.  Layton's speech, by the way, was lousy. 
• Harper's speech, airing now, is surprisingly good, though I wonder how well he'll do by cities.  Most major urban areas rejected the Tories outright.  Eek.
• Martin's announcement of his resignation as Lib leader means Harper will effectively have a majority government.  With a leadership race on the way and their coffers depleted, the Libs need time, and felling the government won't be a priority or even an option.  (Unless, of course, Martin pulls a Trudeau and un-quits if he smells blood.  Not likely, but not beyond the pale, either.)
• Best news of all: the BQ had the wind taken out of its sails.  Let's hope this is the start of something.

So, all in all, probably the results-- give or take-- I could have hoped for, really.  Now let's see how it works.

Some Random Observations

     I used to take better advantage of blogging to toss off some random observations than I do now.  It may be time for a return to older form:

• Watching Trading Places this evening for the first time in many, many years, I was reminded of an old thought: that the movie's best moments don't come from the obvious sources (Eddie Murphy, Dan Aykroyd, or gorilla-on-man-gorilla love), but from Denholm Elliott as the butler Coleman.  He steals every scene he's in, and usually with just a lifted eyebrow here or a signed restraint there.  Most of you know Elliott by face if not by name.  He was Marcus Brody opposite Harrison Ford's Indiana Jones, and he was delightful comedic relief there, too.  Oddly, comedy was never one of his primary genres: he regularly played villains and characters broken or breaking on the inside.  If I can do anything today-- even more than nagging my compatriots to get out and vote-- it would be to encourage my readers to have a Denholm Elliott film night.  Check out his integral sadness in Woody Allen's otherwise languid September, or his sad alcoholism in The Defence of the Realm, or his protective paternality in Brimstone and Treacle.  In retrospect, he never did get to play the part I think he was meant to play, the cynical British correspondent Fowler from Graham Greene's The Quiet American.  Michael Caine eventually did it, about fifty years after Sir Michael Redgrave.  Neither quite got it.  Elliott, I know in my gut, would have-- brilliantly.
• The pending election has also had me thinking about delicious endings.  For reasons not entirely within my ken, novels seldom seem to me to end on the right note, to have one of those endings that one reads and says inwardly, "perfect."  I've read-- as most of you can imagine-- more novels than I can remember anymore, but one that sticks with me, like a memory of a first love, is from the oft-forgotten Evelyn Waugh novel A Handful of Dust.  I'm tempted to recount it here, but I won't.  The last sentence sounds like it should be sentimental, but it's not-- not in the least:  "There are passages in that book I can never hear without the temptation to weep."  In fact, it's brutal, vicious, and a death-sentence, literally and figuratively.  And it's perfect.  (There's actually a chapter of epilogue, but it's pure coda.)  One of my favourite endings, ever. 
• Irony:  in the film adaptation of A Handful of Dust (with James Wilby, Judi Dench, and Kristin Scott Thomas), that final speech is delivered by Sir Alec Guinness as the benevolently menacing Mr. Todd.  The novel to which Mr. Todd refers is Dickens' Little Dorrit, which when finally filmed starred (wait for it) Alec Guinness, as the debtor-patriarch William Dorrit.  Go figure.  Further irony: Denholm Elliott eventually took over from Guinness one of the latter's most lauded roles, George Smiley.  Even when I don't intend it, my thoughts sometimes seem as if they're within six degrees of Alec Guinness.
• Tuesday should be weird, with meetings and all, and my students will be watching It's A Wonderful Life.  You can only imagine my disbelief last week when I asked my students if they had seen the film before.  Only two had.  It makes me wonder about the kids these days. 
       BTW:  Jimmy Stewart starred in The Shootist with Lauren Bacall, who starred with Alec Guinness in A Foreign Field.  Damn....
• Odd background quote: "Things that are banging on their knees shouldn't be hanging out there."  Discuss and comment.
• The realization that I've now had Jenny, my character of a cat, for a year has caused me to think of something much more sombre.  I won't write about it here, or anywhere, but it strikes me that it would have been almost ten years.  I don't know what to think about this fact.  Actually, I do, but that's neither (as they say) here-nor-there. 
• People are in for a bit of a shock this week from the Not-So-Good Doctor.  We shall see what happens.  My students will probably react with something Linda-Blair-like--- hopefully sans pea soup.
• Many of the observations I had meant to post have now vanished into the recesses of what others might generously call my "brain."  (It doesn't qualify, except generously and/or glibly.)  Oy.
• This week is Robbie Burns' Day, or-- more appropriately-- Raaabbie Burrrrns Day.  I won't be near a computer to post here to celebrate it, so go read your Burns.  Don't just do the Scotch.  Do the Scotch, certainly.  But do the Burns, too. 

Tomorrow I have to read a paper on Sidney-- itself not a bad thing, at all-- save that I don't think I'll have anything to say beyond what has already been said about it by (cough, cough) a genuine Sidney man.  And I have somehow to find time, before week's end, to write a letter for a lass as she applies to a Canuckistani university.  Damn, damn, damn.  I'm a freaking idiot.  And a freaking idiot directed Star Wars, and it starred....

The Carrion Forecast

     Tomorrow's election day in Canada, and that fabled fat lady is about to sing, providing she doesn't swallow her epiglottis in rehearsal.  The Liberals are making their last protestations of relevance, the Tories their last blushes of coyness, while Rex Murphy sharpens his arsenal of aphoristic alliterations.  Layton, Martin and Harper are lurking in the wings, waiting to be summoned to the stage, and they all know one thing, that the fat lady won't be singing Verdi tomorrow, much to the fifth party's chagrin.  No, the playbill is promising Wagner, which usually means a long trip to Valhalla for the governing party.  (Just ask Kim Campbell.) 

 

     But wait--- let's think a bit before we let visions of metaphysical abattoirs dance in our heads, because that fat lady can be pretty temperamental and she might still surprise us.  Let's factor things through:

• With all the talk about the inevitability of a Conservative government, remember the first rule of politics, Sometimes it doesn't help to be in the lead.  With poll numbers favouring the Tories so heavily, there is the possibility that a number of Conservative swing voters won't bother dragging themselves to the polls, assuming their votes won't be needed.  This won't matter in neck-and-neck ridings like many of the ones in British Columbia, and it won't matter in ridings in Alberta that are foregone conclusions.  It may matter, though, in kinda blue ridings, where the Tory lead is just big enough to allow complacency and not large enough to survive it.  The Liberals are under siege, and their supporters more than ever are sure to vote.  The Dipper vote, where it is substantial enough, may spoil more matters than any strategists are expecting.  At this stage of the game, this is the Liberals' only hope, the "false surmise" (in Milton's phrase) of a Tory win.  This is a double-edged sword for the Grits, though, as some Toronto ridings may not be as safe as they have so far seemed. 
• The true indication of how things will turn out will emerge from Quebec.  The Tory infrastructure in la belle province isn't as established as the Liberal one, and this could spell problems there in terms of getting out the vote.  A party on election day is only as strong as its foot soldiers.  If, though, the Tories can win more than eight seats in Quebec, the Liberals may as well ready the boats and prepare themselves for a mass Norse funeral. 
• Ontario, contrary to public expectation, will be formative rather than decisive.  The Grits are being eaten from both sides outside of (and in a few cases, even inside of) Toronto, and the issue here is merely how many seats here will be chomped from the Liberal carcass.  The Tory support, where it exists, is crystallized, and the Dipper support, again where it exists, is stauncher than it has been since 1988.  For once, Ontario won't decide the result, but it will provide-- Zelda will like this-- the carrion forecast.  (By the pecking of their bones, / Something ticked-off this way comes?)
• British Columbia will decide the fate of the next government, although it seems that by the time the results start pouring in, the Liberal fate will have long-since been certain.  BC has a lot of three-way races, and a number of two-way races in which the Liberals are not contenders, and strength of the Tory win-- if it happens-- will be decided by its battles with the New Democrats on the West Coast.  This could prove the province of dark-horse victories and grand upsets, and electoral turn-out will be more crucial in BC than in any other province.  If the Dippers don't draw significant blood here, from both Tories and Grits, we could be looking at a majority government. 

In other words, it's going to be a late night tomorrow for those of us on the Eastern side of Manitoba, waiting to look upon the feast of Stephen.  Let us hope, too, that if the Tories win we can finally have a respite from the wretched wailing of Western injury we've endured for so long. 

     That's the election stuff, but elections are like bikinis and statistics in that what they reveal is often less interesting than what they conceal.  If the Liberals lose tomorrow night, the cries for blood within that party will be audible from Mongolia.  The real story may be in what the Grits do to themselves in consequence, beyond the obvious matters of leadership.  Liberals do not take well to being out of power, and some Liberals, looking to opt out of an age of internecine warfare, may well switch allegiances to the Tories or the Dippers.  Unless the Big Red Machine can miraculously turn things around, we may be looking at Mr. Martin's legacy, a party staring at its own wrists and seeing less flesh than red.  And frankly, that wouldn't bother me a bit.  The Liberals need to decide what they're really about-- beyond cynical hectoring and insidious fear-mongering. 

You Don't Say....

     Oh, gee, colour this blog surprised:

More than 50 percent of [American] students at four-year schools and more than 75 percent at two-year colleges lacked the skills to perform complex literacy tasks.

Don't worry, I'll spare all of you the rant you're surely expecting.  I will say this, though: any of my compatriots smugly entertaining the idea that this is just an American phenomenon should definitely think again.

Irony Note For All You 24 Fans Out There

     Ponder it:  David Palmer lasted only one term (four years) in office.  How many did he last on 24 before he had his neck blown out?  Four years-- and less than five minutes.  Coincidence?  Methinks not.  Besides, the former President has to go sell insurance now (ooh, the irony thickens!).  But, fans of the show, I encourage you to be angry, furious, livid, utterly outraged:  not only was he pegged off so easily and non-chalantly after so many previous attempts against him, but the producers of the show should at least have gotten the assassin right.  Knock him off with a nobody who's dead by the end of hour one?  Bah, humbug.  If you've been watching the show since the beginning, you know who should have killed him.  Right?  Right. 

 

     Now let's just hope our now rag-doll boy-brat gets killed off sooner rather than later-- and in a fashion suitable for a Sam Peckinpah movie. 

Five Minutes, Two Cheers, And An Involuntary Rrowwwr

     It's an old saw now, but Winston Churchill once famously said that "[t]he best argument against democracy is a five minute conversation with the average voter."  With the Canadian election just eight days away, The Star's Thomas Walkom went out and obviously had a few five minute conversations, and his article seems almost a mathematical proof of Churchill's claim.  Among the more perspicuous reasonings of those with votes?  I haven't forgotten Rae Days (apples and oranges), Maybe we should let them in so they can fall flat on their face and wreck us like Mike Harris did (oh, the civic responsibility!), and this one about Stephen Harper, which speaks volumes about the logical processes of some voters:  I don't trust Harper. For some reason, there's something about him. As a woman. He has this little smirky smile. I just don't like it.  (See also the equally insightful, There's just something about him.... It's not his looks.  There's just something about him.) 

 

     I try not to be an elitist snob, but I fear that reading this sort of thing brings out that part of me because the almost utter absence of logic astounds me.  You mean you're casting your vote on someone's smile?  On the memory of a government that has been out of power for ten years, which represented an entirely different form of government, and which was responding to an entirely different set of social and economical circumstances?  You're voting for someone in the hope he will fail so you can smugly aver how right you were about him?   Such people make me want to throw up my hands in frustration-- sometimes despair-- and ask them how they can possibly justify their rights to vote.  There are legitimate reasons to distrust or detest any and all of the parties, and there are equally legitimate reasons to champion or favour them.  This isn't a matter of partisanship.  It's about stupidity-- or, more accurately, it's about the fundamental laziness that manifests itself as stupidity because people don't want to do the brain-work required to make a coherent and defensible decision.  Check out the genius at the end of Walkom's article who has "read too many articles."  "I follow the crowd usually," he says.  Snort.  So do lemmings. 

 

     No wonder some of us get a little haughty under the collar, when some people respond to an election with the same depth of thought that Homer Simpson would at a movie festival.  (Gather ye footballs in the groin while ye may.)  Sometimes I think people should have to justify their votes in the same way that I have to justify my students' grades on individual assignments: to explain the reasoning, the criteria, and so forth; "showing your work," as they used to say in math classes.  It's not feasible, of course, and I'm sure the intellectual dullards would rant and rave about the value of "intuition" or some-such thing.  You'll forgive me, I hope, if I roll my eyes in anticipation of getting the government we deserve.  E.M. Forster once said that we should give two cheers for democracy, but not three, because two was all it deserved.  I, for one, will always hold back the third, and sometimes I want to hold back the second.  For every conscientious voter, there always seems to be one following the crowd. 

 

     Other brief political notes, with eight days left until this blasted thing is done: 

• Democratic Space has been attempting to project the probable results of the election, and they've adjusted their numbers for post-New Year's trends.  The numbers, if they bear out, are interesting:  Conservatives 133, Liberals 84, Bloc Quebecois 60, NDP 31.  The interesting number is the NDP one, because if the projection is close to what actually happens next Monday, means the Dippers will hold the balance of power.  It also means that the Liberals are in even deeper trouble than anyone may have thought (unless you're Doug Fisher).
• Irony alert:  The NDP, for its rally yesterday in Toronto, chose "Won't Get Fooled Again" as its theme song.  Oh, Jack, Jack, Jack: as the guy whose relevance is always being questioned, you do not-- DO NOT-- choose a song by The Who for your late-campaign mantra.  I believe it's called "tempting fate." 
• Add grain of salt: There are rumblings the Prime Minister may be in trouble in his own riding of LaSalle-Emard.  Frankly, I think this doubtful, but if he does lose it, he'll be the first sitting PM to lose his seat since Kim Campbell, who seems more and more to be Paul Martin's closest historical forerunner. 

Hehehe.... As I've been writing this, CBC Sunday Morning has begun an experiment in electoral speed-dating, with representatives from the national parties courting a quartet of supposedly undecided voters.  Andrea Horan, the representative of the Green Party, surprisingly, is quite the little cutie.  Rrowwwr....  Hmmm, maybe I should vote Green on Monday.  Hey, it's as good a reason as half the ones I've heard so far.  Hip hip hooray, hip hip hooray.

     UPDATE:  CBC Results:  2 NDP, 1 Conservative, 1 Green, 0 Liberal.  Glad the Green sweetie got a vote; I expected her to get shut out.  ;-) 

Let Your Fingers Do The Walking

     For those of you that have just been dying to stick it to the man....