The Ocean, The Bird, And The Scholar

      Helen Vendler's magnificently poetic 2004 Jefferson Lecture is available online, and despite its length (and its density) it's very much worth the time to read.   It becomes apparent very quickly that Wallace Stevens is lurking perpetually behind Ms. Vendler's thinking here, but there's much to be engaged in her discussion-- much, I'm relatively sure, that will be assailed by contemporary, and younger, critics as being too obscurantist and mythopoeic to be of much practical use.   I'd say, however, that her lecture is more genuinely attuned to the demands of critical process than most today would have it; what should be most immediately apparent to anyone reading her lecture is the prominence she accords imaginative reading. Helen Vendler is one of the better critics still alive, and she alone is worth more than the total contributions of most English departments in any given state or province in North America.

Culture Club

      One of the greatest ironies of this article is its invocation of Harold Bloom as a "giant" of "cultural criticism," a point that might seem minor to those that don't know Bloom very well but is a glaring gaffe apparent to those that do.   As large a figure as Bloom cuts in critical circles, he's very much seen as being on the outside of things, and most of his recent studies have been spined with attacks against the academy's current obsession with cultural criticism; he's chosen to serve the ages rather than the current.   I'd also posit that the article in question would rather talk about literary reputations and technological developments rather than examine the various changes that have taken place within current critical-- I shudder as I type the word, so abused has it become-- discourse.   It's well and good to cheer what is here called "the democratization of cultural criticism," but I think it's worth observing that democratization tends toward the expansions of quantity rather than quality, and I'd unabashedly align myself the so-called Jeremiahs most of whom worry not so much about bloated reputations or petty bickering as much as the general displacement of provocative and insightful analysis.   I'd suggest, too, that the real Jeremiahs (in the sense of being chastisers of art rather than merely lamentatious prophets) are those that treat culture (and particularly literature) as lightning rod for pretentious theoretical and ideological position-papers.   Sixty-odd years ago, G. M. Trevelyan-- commenting more on the democratization of education-- said that modern education "[had] produced a vast population able to read but unable to distinguish what is worth reading."   The cheerleaders of democratization (in fact more a buzz-concept than a genuine aspiration) are loathe to admit there might be truth in such an assessment.   I think it's time to face the possibility that democratic choice is often used as an excuse to revel in mediocrity-- and worse-- and to abnegate a more focussed and disciplined sense of cultural history and responsibility.   Food for thought.

What Stagnation Holds For Us

      Searching the net for some decent material on the American poet Mark Strand, I came across this rather jaw-dropping page of poetic analysis.  I was comforted, alas when I discovered that this page (and the others tethered to it) were created by eighth-grade students, and then profoundly redisturbed when I realized that I couldn't tell the difference right away from eight-grade literary analysis and that which is generally encouraged to be deemed "acceptable" at the undergraduate levels.  Believe it or not, I see material of this calibre all the time when I'm marking essays; coming from an eight-grader this actually isn't too bad, but that there's so little fundamental progression in the analytical skills of students over the high-school and early undergraduate years is enough to make me think we've started treating even the vast majority of our "brighter" young people as if they were a collect of Lennys from Of Mice And Men.   The majority of undergraduates would probably come to the same conclusion about Strand's "It is true, as someone has said..." that this little lady does-- that Strand is "reminding us that we should live our lives to the fullest because we don’t know what death holds for us."    Oy vey.   It's occurred to me, though, that Strand is a poet that could be taught (however partially) at the early levels.   We really-- and I mean REALLY-- have to do something about the progression of critical and analytical skills over the teenage years.   Before, that is, we've gone whole hog and our adolescents and twenty-somethings start asking us to tell them about the rabbits.

      (By the way, the "someone" referred to in Strand's poem is Wallace Stevens.)

---

      ADDENDUM: Discovered this epistle to Strand from the poet Lamar Thomas.   Pretty turgid stuff, methinks. When you're stepping into lines like "I've entered the cities of Rimbaud's hashish dreams" and "I've sought out love in the great harbors of America," you know you're in a kind of poetic cabaret, as if the poet were a Ginsburg-queen impersonating Walt Whitman. Yikes.

One Set To Rule Them All

      For those geeks among you with way too damned much money on your hands: you're welcome.   And, please, try not to drool....

      For those of you with truly discriminating tastes, I'm certain you're just lurching in anticipation at absconding with this literary steal, even if it has "a small stain on the back cover." Indeed, "literature lost a potential giant."

Insert Your Own Beaver Reference Here

      Doctor J, after reading this article, wound up doing his best Johnny Carson impression, pausing, wrenching his neck, and bemusedly repeating the words "a hand-operated pumper from 1836."  Surely each of you felt the restrained karmic giggle somewhere in the ether.

The Double Double-Double Beat

I think Mr. King would have been proud to see his dream fulfilled; not Martin Luther, but Mackenzie.  This blog is simply beaming with pride.         This blog will not bother to explain to my non-Canadian readers the extent to which Canadian cultural identity is tied to coffee.  You'd just simply have to see it to believe it.  And suffice it to say, my American friends, that most Canadians are tearing up looking at the image at the right, the Great Canadian Drinkable Flag.

The Peter Principle

From Slate's review of Spider-Man 2: In the first film, Peter's discovery that his teenage body could suddenly shoot white sticky stuff was confusing, but also scary and exhilarating—as it is for so many of us. Now, he discovers that once in a while when there are a lot of other things on his mind, that sticky stuff won't come. In Peter's case, more than self-esteem is at stake: A couple of 30-story plunges to the street are enough to make even the most Olympian superheroic athlete quiver with performance anxiety.

Yes, this amused me. (It's very early.) You can read the rest of the rave here.   And before any of you say it: yes, I've been, argh, "surfing the web."   As have you, evidently....

      Well, I hope it's a good movie.   I was pretty much bored silly by the first one. *shrug*

Doctor J's Favourite Article Of The Day

      From Ananova comes this story which, for reasons that should be obvious, is worth quoting here in its entirety:

Cane or breast for naughty pupils        [Original story can be found here]

A schoolteacher has been suspended in Zimbabwe for allegedly giving pupils the choice of being caned or suckling her breasts.

    [Gee, I wonder what they chose....]

The woman faces a disciplinary hearing after one of the pupils reported the 'punishment' to his parents, reports the Herald.

    [Even the newspaper won't call it 'punishment'!]

The boy claimed he was asked to choose between suckling the teacher's breasts or receiving 100 strokes of the cane for being noisy.

The boy chose to suckle the teacher's breasts, as did 14 others, according to the newspaper.

    [Duh. Note also the key words, so casually subordinated, "as did 14 others." Fourteen? I'm not sure whether to be shocked or merely impressed.]

The headmaster of the Harare school summoned the teacher to respond to the allegations.

    [Bastard...]

The teacher allegedly admitted forcing the children to suckle her breasts but could not give reasons why she had done so.

    [Does there have to be a reason?]

Harare provincial education director Tomax Doba confirmed the incident and said that his office had been furnished with a report from the school.

"We received a report from the school and the report says it happened. We have already advised them to make a police report and the teacher is likely to face child abuse charges," Mr Doba said.

    [I'm still trying to figure out the 'abuse' part here...]

Okay, I'm getting a few ideas right now that I most certainly should NOT be getting....    All together now: ^~~Teacher, teacher / Can you teach me....^~~

Stamp Collecting

      Alright, let's see if Bart Simpson can help me get through this one.

I will not comment.
I will not comment.
I will not comment.
I will not comment.
I will not comment.
I will not comment.
I will not comment.
I will not comment.
I will not comment.
I will NOT comment.

"Chronicled against each other."   Ahem....    I will not comment, I will not....

Doubting Thomas

      Of all the ways to describe Dylan Thomas' Under Milk Wood, a "prostitution of poetic art" hardly fits the bill.   Now Hallmark cards: there's a prostitution of poetic art.

      This blog's favourite bit: "He does allude to sex but people do have sex - that's life for you."   Well, yeah, I guess they do.

"This Does Need To Be Taken Seriously."

      Seriously.   The breasticled will be absolutely devastated.

Words Strain, Crack And Now Collapse

      Good morning, people. As some of you who have been dropping by in the wee hours have noticed, I've been playing around with this blog, trying -- alone with my technologically ignorant self-- to fix a problem I've found pressing for some time. What is it?, you might ask. Well...

      With some posts becoming very, very, very lengthy indeed, I've finally (after much frustration) found a way to make this blog collapse and expand comments. Because of the limitations of Blogger (and/or because there's nobody around to give me easy answers), what you're getting is this. Unfortunately, the collapse and expand link doesn't move as I'd wish it would, but right now I'm even counting my blessings this is working. According to Blogger, there's no way to do this simply with specific posts. Evidently, that's not entirely true. But it's taken a fair bit of experimentation and jiggering on my part just to get things where they now are.

      (For those of you that don't know, and you missed my point above, I know jack-shit about JavaScript.)

      Please, BTW, if you're unable to read the extended comments let me know.

      But in the meantime, let's hope this will be my little, slightly-workable way of condensing matters on this blog. Er, well, we can hope. Unfortunately the current manner means I'll have to do most of the coding on an entry-by-entry basis, but, well, we shall see if I can figure out something more sophistemacated latster. You have to click on the "Well..." link to close it back up (or "Rave on" or "Read on" or whatever I use in an individual post), as I'm sure most of you have already surmised. Ah, well. It's a slight improvement, anyway. Cheers.

      So, what'd ya think? ;-)

Nobody's Gonna Love Ya Like I Do, Baby...

      Well, it's over: the election is done, at least for now.   Yes, we've given ourselves a minority government, but it's a tenuous one, so tenuous in fact that it's unlikely to last the year.   The oddity is that we won't seem to know the final results for a bit:   there are a number of ridings so closely contested that recounts are inevitable, and they may shake up the possibilities of an NDP-supported Liberal minority.   How close are the numbers?   Ay, there's the rub: none of them are consistent this morning. According to the Globe and Mail, it's Liberals 135, Tories 99, NDP 19, BQ 54, Other 1. Some numbers have the NDP slightly higher (as high as 21) and thus holding the balance of power; with 19, they're just shy (by one vote).    So, it's obvious who's in the catbird's seat after all this is said and done: B.C. independent Chuck Cadman who is now about to find himself the most fawned-over politician in recent memory.   Look at those numbers, mès amis: with potentially 154 seats on the Lib/Dipper pole and 153 on the Tory/Bloc pole, the situation is tighter than a nun's butt.   For Mr. Martin to maintain his hold on power, he's going to have to do some quick maneuvering: he's either going to have to get Mr. Cadman's support and surrender the Speaker's chair to a Tory, or he's going to have to convince Mr. Cadman to accept the role of Speaker, an unlikely prospect because then Mr. Cadman's vote would cease to be relevant.   Oh, Canada, you've sure made matters very, very precarious indeed.   Your parliamentarians won't be going overseas anytime soon for fear of a key missing vote.   That may sound good to those of your grousing for parliamentarians to be "showing up for work," but it will likely mean that a lot of projects toward encouraging international investment and such will be severely impeded.   And look for Mr. Martin to court some of the center-left-of-center Bloquistes to give him some breathing room.   We're looking at what could be the most adversarial parliament in decades.

[+/-] Read on...

      Last night's results are little short of enfuriating.   Enfuriating, that is, because of Ontario, because it seems the gutless cowards in the 416 and 905 area codes went massively Liberal red (in the area of 40% numbers) DESPITE the litany of protestations and frustrations with government corruption.   In short, people in these ridings did the worst possible things they could have done.   They endorsed the status quo.   They proved that voter dissatisfaction is irrelevant, and created something entirely new: Battered Voters' Syndrome.   They proved to the Liberals-- and the insidious team of David Herle and company-- that negative advertising and public demonization works.   They seem to have shrunk, too, their own support in this parliament-- for by using the "a vote for the NDP is a vote for the Tories" logic, they hurt themselves in a few key ridings that might have gone NDP instead of Conservative (mainly in B.C.).   In short, Ontario let itself be manipulated last night and it effectively refused change.    Yes, change, as Paul Wells rightly notes on his blog, was the big loser last night.   Southern Ontario-- not Canada-- chose the status quo.   Sure, a few ministers got turfed and all of the other parties made notable gains.   But it's in Southern Ontario that voters overwhelmingly fell for the Liberal scare tactics, and I'm ashamed of my neighbours right now.   With big black marks on their eyes, the voters of Southern Ontario went running back to the Liberals, held them tightly and said, "Oh, promise me you'll change this time, won't you, won't you? Please, I love you, but...." It's a sickening, sad display.   Watch your newspapers for the next little bit: I'm sure you'll see tons of pieces like this one about people who voted against rather than for, people who voted Liberal for fear of a Tory government, much to the consternation of the Tories and the NDP.   They bought the line: Nobody's gonna love ya like I do, baby...   Meanwhile, as the rest of the country looks at Southern Ontario with disgusted eyes, she protests, But you don't know him like I do....   Yes, dear, yes, yes we do. *sigh* Ontario did the unthinkable: it bitch-slapped itself. It thought it was biting the bullet, or swallowing its pride, or whatever; but, no, it bitch-slapped itself into submission.  They bought once more into The Myth Of The Natural Governors ^(TM) and the rancid rhetoric of "Either/Or" has moreorless prevailed.  Maybe people should check out the definition of this word.

      I'm being pretty flip about all this, but for good reason: in the end, people voted out of cowardice and I find that shameful. Warren Kinsella has speculated that much of the last-minute turnabout was done by female voters (and, one infers, from fear of the Tory Nobodaddyism on abortion and such). There might be some truth to that, but I'm not so sure. I'm relatively confident that a significant number of people were already harbouring Liberal support (fine and dandy, by the way, as long as you believe in them) but keeping it from the pollsters.   I also suspect that a lot of people figured "Liberals are scum, but my guy's not so bad," and voted that way.   But the swing, the greater tide, seems to have been the result of fear-mongering that thus rendered the entire election debate moot. 

      Believe it or not, I wouldn't object to the results here if Mr. Martin had articulated anything throughout the campaign that wasn't bile-inducing hypocrisy-- and, in fact, he could have done so in defence of his own record if he'd tried.  But instead he played the insidious game of manipulation and wrapped himself in The Health Care Flag.   The wisdom of the voters, indeed.

      So, for all the "strategic" (excuse me: ) voting, Canadians have elected what will likely amount to a hung parliament.   This means coalitions will have to be formed, but even those won't be enough to ensure victory or stability.   Instead, there will be a lot of hunting and pecking for party-breakers, a search that will more-than-likely prove futile. We may end up with a parliament that is even more rigid and inflexible as members of the opposing poles depend on the firmness of their alliances to maintain or to defeat the government.   What does this mean? There will be a lot more jockeying, a lot more bribery and pork.   Mr Martin's talk about a new way of governance-- by which members could vote their consciences on matters that weren't tied to the survival of the government-- is now moot.   Every vote will matter, every vote potentially a straw to break the camel's back.   Look for increased degrees of partisan intensity.   Look for politicians worrying obsessively about their immediate electability, lest a non-confidence motion or a sudden writ come down (which means, of course, "tough-stuff" won't get done).    Proportional representation is now likely to be stalled for a dog's age because with an election, like Odysseus, always seeming on the horizon, none of the big two parties will want to concede the structure which might lead them to government next-time around.   This is the minority scenario that those of us who championed the idea of a minority government most dreaded.   Everything hangs on sliverish threads, on a single vote here and a single vote there, and instead of groups having to work together in substanstial gestures of consensus, single members alone will be able to play their own sides against one another and possibly hold up legislation (or legislative defeats) depending on the ways in which they're courted.   It also means the Bloc Québécois is now far more important than those of us in the rest of Canada would generally like.   Congratulations, Canada, we've created a parliament ripe for blackmail. And congratulations, too; we'll be back at the polls more than likely within the year.

      What a tattered, tattered mess.   It is, I suppose, possible that the dangerous proximity to the precipice will force the parties to tread delicately and precisely, but, frankly, I don't see it happening.   It looks to me like we're in for a period of 50%+1 governance, a thing that should give serious pause to those of you that remember the dilemmas created by constitutional wrangling.  I'm sure that'll do wonders for the Canadian dollar, having a government that makes Avril Lavigne seem stable.

      Oh well, that's the way it works.  We're in for a turbulent-- and probably legislatively insignificant-- year or so, and we've ended one campaign to begin another already.   Now all eyes are on Mr. Cadman.  It's been a long time since one Member of Parliament mattered so much.  In the great words of Bette Davis, hold on to your hats, it's going to be a bumpy night.

      And Ontario: I don't know whether to describe you as cowards or sheep or dumbasses.   But I think this morning all three of the above apply.   By the way, the Battered Voters' Shelter is just down the street.

From The "But What Does That Really Mean?" File....

      Gee, it only took a few weeks (or so it seems now) for BlogsCanada and Blogwise to add this site to their directories. Don't ask me why I bothered because, frankly, I don't know. That BlogsCanada has noted this page with a "Site Favourite" icon () is a tad befuddling as I've little what might merit such a notation-- or, based on what I've seen of some of the other blogs to receive it, what might not merit getting one. *Shrug*

Leave It To Beaver

      Well, I'm back.    My cousin is now married, and my family had what seemed to be a decent time of it all.   I won't write much about the trip here, save for these brief observations: a) that American cigarettes remain abominations of good taste; b) that American beer remains an abomination of good taste, but thankfully Canadian beer remains relatively easy to find; and c) that American patriotism, as understandable as it is given the current international circumstances, remains an abomination of good taste.   On this last point: Canadians almost as a rule are muted in their patriotism (save for hockey games and beer-chugging contests), so the super-abundance of American flags, most still at half-mast after the Reagan funeral, is a bit disquieting; it's election day here in Canada, with only a few days until July 1st and Canada Day itself, and you'd be hard-pressed to find as many flags hanging from individual houses on those days as you would on any given day in the States.   It's hard to tell after a while how much those flags are really patriotic qua patriotic symbols-- and how much they're emblems of anger, injury, lamentation, resiliency, and even xenophobia, among other things.

[+/-] Read on...

      I should qualify this slightly.    I was, after all, in New York and Pennsylvania, two states that felt most intimately the pain of the attacks on September 11th, and it'd be churlish to expect people in those states to be anything but what they currently are.   And as much as I enjoyed certain aspects of the States, it sure felt good to get back across the border, even if our cigarettes and alcohol are at exorbitantly-inflated prices.   It was like a return to modesty.   With election day nearing in Canada, it was pause-inducing to think this weekend about the number of times over the past month-and-change that all of our political leaders were within direct physical contact with voters, whether for good or for ill.   I don't think it's seriously crossed anyone's mind here that a candidate could be a target of an assassination or that there might actually be a terrorist gesture, as in Spain or even in Bali (against the Australians), to try to manufacture a political result.   Instead, we're able to move about, griping about our relatively trifling concerns, with some kind of naïveté to the dangers of international terror.   (Canada had its innocence challenged in the 1970s with the FLQ crisis, but that was, for all intents and purposes, an internal matter, and that innocence has been moreorless restored.)   Our own Prime Minister, for however long, could still be seen in scrums of reporters and protesters, potentially wide-open targets for anybody who wanted to make Canada a victim.   But thankfully, nobody seems to want to do so; we in Canada are lucky enough, at least for now, to matter not much to anybody but ourselves, so we can keep running by the older and more simple ways of doing things.   The key words in that last sentence may be "at least for now," but it's worth observing what we have right now in case the day comes when we do lose that sense of security and naïveté.   When the Japanese attacked Pearl Harbor in 1941, FDR famously said that the enemy had awoken "a sleeping tiger," a metaphor reinvoked regularly since September 11th 2001. Well, we can count our blessings, those of you that are my countrypeople: no one in the world seems to be worrying about waking the sleeping beaver (an animal, by the way, that woke up on its own in 1939 and in 1914).   With the election almost over, we're one of the few countries in the Western world that hasn't had as one of its central electoral issues domestic or international security.   Be thankful for that today, my fellow Canadians, as we go to the polls and cast our votes based on matters most of the rest of the world would consider wonderfully, even blissfully, quaint.

      With all that said, I'd encourage all of my fellow Canucks to read this article from the comedian Bob Robertson in today's Globe and Mail. Aside from some typical (and still amusing) observations about the process, it contains this reminder of what we should be thinking about today-- and not about silly partisanship and working our vitriol:

The world doesn't care that most of the voters of Canada will decide who to vote for based on the following major areas: (a) not fond of that little moustache (b) has a sinister smile (c) stutters too much, or (d) looks better with the cheese-factory shower cap.

No, the world doesn't care about our little federal election. In fact, there is only one time that the world cares about Canada. It is when some poor, desperate human beings become driven enough to pack up their family and look for a land where they will be safe from torture, oppression and racism and where they can prosper at whatever they do, be taken care of if they're sick, and educate their children to their full potential. When that day comes, then they care about Canada.

Be careful how you vote. You wouldn't want to let them down.

Yes, there's an idealism in Robertson's words but it's a healthy idealism, one we're better to acknowledge and to address rather than to ignore.   Canada, at least for now, has the luxury of being able to worry more about what it wants to be rather than what it has to be.    Let's not only remember that, let's take advantage of the opportunity that the situation affords.   

      For me, I know how I'll be voting today, but I want to explain a few of the considerations that are going into-- or have gone into-- the making of that decision, imperfect as the end-result may be.   Like many voters, I'm voting based on a gestalt, on an assessment of the picture entire.   I'm not voting on policies and platforms per se.   We all know that parties and politicians talk about policies rather like teenagers talk about sex-- mostly in theory, mostly in anticipation, but with very little sense of actuability.   Think back on Mulroney's once-fervent dismissal of Free Trade and then his implementation of it in the 80s; think back on the Liberal Red Book's promises, and the very few items of it that were enacted.   No, situations create policy, as if to prove the saw that necessity is the mother of invention.   I judge, then, based on the ways in which I see politicians deal with issues as they arise, how they adapt, how they address matters and how they address us in the process; I judge based on what might be called issues of social character.  Call me old-fashioned, but a government has to have a kind of moral authority, a right to lead, and it has to represent, at least in part, a kind of native national intelligence, or knowing what issues are finally most important and which ones are less so.   Such decision-making is also intensely-particular: the garrison mentality of which Northrop Frye wrote so long ago has not totally vanished.   In the end, one weighs and balances and judges.

      My riding was used by one party to enact a political assassination, even if the target was a person I never particularly respected.   This demonstrated callousness by that particular party, and it demonstrated, too, an insidiousness of process.   I won't vote for a party that is led by a cadre of pseudo-Maoists, let alone a bunch of usurpers.   This isn't a matter of loyalty to the previous leader.   The question is much more crucial: how can we trust a party that doesn't care about its own stability and rules-of-order? Or, put more bluntly, if they'll treat the former king this way, how will they treat the rest of us?    The protestations of caring about "Canadian ideals" ring very, very hollow indeed when the Prime Minister has played Bolingbroke to his predecessor's Richard II and thus displayed a lack of concern with matters of propiety, civility, and inclusion.   Like Bolingbroke (and Macbeth), Mr Martin has political blood on his hands, and he demonstrated before he called the election a ruthless amorality that I will not endorse.   He demonstrated all-too-well why he cannot be trusted with governance: for him, and for his followers, the end -- his political rise-- justified the means taken to achieve that end, and this speaks very badly of how he will lead: with indifference, with cynicism, with utterly-selfish regard.   Add to this a number of other factors (a recent record of incompetence, flip-flopping of extraordinary dimensions, a cynical indifference to political sensitivities, and so forth), and it's clear to me: I cannot, will not, vote Liberal.   I will not reward usurpers and purgers, for as much as they preach about visions of a nation, those visions are tissue-paper thin.   Such people are the first ones to issue the public the Judas Kiss.   I've seen it in spades in my riding.   So, that's that: I won't vote Liberal, I won't endorse Martin, and I sure as hell won't vote for Tony Valeri whose own survival as a candidate in this riding reeks of insidious intent.   The Liberal red in this riding is blood red, and as far as I'm concerned that's the antithesis of what I want Canada to be and what I deem Canada to be about.

      I won't vote Conservative, either.   As much as Mr Harper has tried to play nice to the camera (and move his party ostensibly toward the centre), there's a shiftiness about his political machinations that I find disturbing.   His is a party without a substantial platform, a party born of something like a corporate takeover.   The Conservative party right now isn't the party it once was: it's a makeshift assembly, and there are a number of things about this assembly to give any center-of-the-road thinker the shivers.   The desperation for victory turned this party toward relative non-issues (child pornography, same-sex marriage, etc.) that were demagogic and evasive rather than genuine and substantial.   This is, in part, because the party hasn't figured out (and so doesn't know) what it's really about-- let alone what it would do.   I seriously doubt the Conservatives would be the Great Canadian Satan that the Liberals would have us believe.   I do, however, doubt the wisdom of their members. I do pause at the fringes of the party so frequently seething like single-minded zealots.   I do worry about electing a party that scoffs so ignorantly at environmental concerns (like the Kyoto Accord) and that would align us more closely with the highly-questionable Bushies downstairs.   And, perhaps most importantly, I distrust a party that so selectively revises its own personal history for the sake of political presentability.   Harper's own words on Canadian involvement in the Iraq War have been the epitome of convenient mutability.   Harper's done a good job of selling himself as the moderate, but it's a sell: it's revisionist history, and one has to wonder what sort of revisionist historicism would come into play if these people are given the keys to government.   If Mr Martin is the guilt-tainted usurper, Mr Harper is the Eddie Haskell of the neighbourhood-- or, rather, he's the seemingly nice guy who wants to borrow your house for the weekend, but one can only imagine what his less-than-trustworthy friends will do with the place.   No, not Conservative.

      That leaves Smilin' Jack and the NDP, really, so I guess that's where I'm going this time around.   Why? Because they're the underdogs.    Because at least the NDP, blunders and all, hasn't seemed to betray its own convictions for the sake of seeming electable.   Because I like the idea of having a stronger sense of relatively-conscientious opposition in a mercifully-divided Parliament.   Because I think the other parties much worse options, at least right now.   Because, in my riding, Tony Valeri needs to be taken out to the woodshed and paddled within an inch of his political life.   Because the NDP, however naïvely, has behaved more inclusively than exclusively in this campaign, and they don't reek so thoroughly of the stench of political saliva.   And they've actually talked about idealisms, about lowering tuition rates, about environmental matters and so forth.   Sure, they can talk about such matters so freely because they know they won't get elected.   It is, however, about expressing what I want Canada to be and what I want it to be about, and that's, finally, a country that at least aspires toward self-betterment.   I don't want people to think I'm buying the Layton spin that he's the only one who's been positive while the others have gone negative.   That's simply not true.   But on scale, on the gradations of the Great Canadian Political Butterslide, they're the least offensive to me, and the most positive, at least this time around.   And, as much as it doesn't matter as a point of personal action, I'd rather have a national party like the NDP having the king-making power rather than the Bloc Québécois.   So, it's not a ringing endorsement, and it's not an affirmation of belief in NDP policy as a whole, but it is my endorsement, such as it is.   Alas, sometimes one is left with only limited options, none of them entirely satisfactory.

      But that's where I am today, and that's how I see things. I should add one more thing here: I'm also voting NDP partially out of spite for Mr Martin, but not in the way you're likely thinking. In recent weeks, the PM has tried to cajole people into accepting an either/or decision by saying, outright, that a vote for the NDP is a vote for the Conservatives (and that a vote for the Bloc is one for the Tories, too).   This is the rhetoric of fear-mongering, and, sorry, but I refuse to accept such manipulative, cynical (and cynicizing) logic.   So, Mr Martin, my vote for the NDP is my own very minor way of telling you that I don't appreciate this sort of "you're with me or against me" posturing, and that this is not what I want Canada to be about.   You had the chance to appeal to our higher capacities and you didn't.   So consider my vote a polite way of saying, "I will not serve."

      To all our leaders: next time, give us a real choice.   Have the courage to lead rather than to pander.   We're a country-- when all is said and done-- more blessed than cursed, more fortunate than not.   So let's exercise our luxury to work on what we can improve and on what we represent.   A little well-tempered (and generally quiet) idealism is a good thing.   Goodness only knows how long it will be until we'll have to be sleeping with one eye open.

Run For The Border

      Back in a few days, peeps. I'm off the Painsylvania. Argh. I wonder what the border will be like.

I've Still Got Three Myself....

      Let the fellatio begin!      (Those with Y chormosomes need not apply.)

A Legitimate Abuse Of Power

      David Edelstein's review of Michael Moore's Fahrenheit 9/11 sounds pretty reasoned and fair to me (given that, of course, I haven't seen the movie), approaching it with an eye for the movie's accomplishments and its shortcomings. This blog's favourite line, though, comes from the end of the review: seldom are the words "fat prick" so appropriately used in film criticism.

Hardcore Pussy

      I couldn't resist posting this here because this little guy looks almost exactly like my Blake used to.    There's even a picture of him somewhere with almost the exact same expression.    This is your "awwwwwh" moment, people.    Another one won't happen for quite some time.    Click the image to see some more pussy pics, some of them nothing less than creepy.


Remember these poor little guys next time you're about to articulate your gendericity, which for most of you will probably be sooner rather than later.   

"We're Sorry, Sir, There's Been A Problem With Your Package..."

      "It looks like everyone just plum forgot about it...."

Shiny Happy People

      You see: I'm the normal one.    It's you happy people that are the prejudiced, sicko freaks.  

The Court Of Shame

      In a way, I guess this development is a good thing. It is, though, a shame that it comes not from genuine conviction in the ideals represented than in having been embarrassed into accepting the conventions thereto. There's a peculiar sense of justice to this-- even if it was arrived at by the wrong means. I dislike it intensely when the proverbial ends justify the means, but sometimes circumstance leaves little other option. As idealistic and our governments may be or pretend to be, none of should ever cling too comfortably to the notion that we're always sunshine and peanut butter. Genuine accountability only happens when we admit that we're accountable, too.

Sorry, But....

      There's so much about this article that is right. There's also so much about it that is, at the very least, naïve.   If I didn't have other matters on my plate at the moment, I'd try to remedy the confusion and paint a nuanced response.   The problems here are not that far removed than the ones I cited in the Hitchens-Moore conundrum: the provided responses, on both sides, just don't fit the bill, and neither makes much sense when taken in totality. Actually, like nonsense poetry, it uses sense to defeat sense, rather like the snake eating its own tail. If I remember to come back to this when I return from the States, I will. It will, however, if I do come back to it, be as long and involved as a Henry James novel, so be forewarned. Let's simply hope I forget.

Down For The Count

WARNING: Long Post Of Interest Only To Canadian Election-Watchers        

      I promised myself I wouldn't put down my speculations on the outcome of the Canadian election on this blog until the last minute, but I'm close enough on it now (since with heading away for the weekend Friday and other stuff still to do, I may not be near this blog for quite a while). Before I get to my predictions, though, a few notes on things that can still upset the apple-cart, other than the Monty-Burns-Can't-Swallow-His-Own-Fish-Story possibility that always remains in every election.

• The Weather/The Timing/Holidays: It's generally believed that voter turnout this time around is going to be higher than it has been in previous years. It is, however, June. Many people are on holidays, and in Quebec especially other annual events might effect the voting. I don't see this hurting any particular party, though; it should be right across the board, though the real loser with this could be the Liberals, losing votes in ridings they were already going to lose anyway.
  
  
• The Polls & The Chretienites: With the latest polls suggesting a last-minute surge in Liberal support, it's very possible that some of the Chretienites will no longer feel the need to rally behind the banner for the sake of solidarity. This could mean a significant drop in Liberal support, especially in ridings believed to be more comfortably Liberal. And make no mistake: the recent support from the Coppses and the Manleys are not burials of the hatchets a-many. Unless there's a major drop in the polls (-2/3%) between now and Monday, don't be surprised if a number of these Libs decide they can just stay home on election day. Also look for the possibility that some of these people may vote NDP to spite Mr. Martin.
  
  
• The Polls & The Greens: Let's face it, a lot of the people who talk about supporting parties outside of the Big Four don't pull the trigger when they're finally presented with the ballot. Look for a significant amount of the Green vote to go to the Conservatives and to the NDP-- the Conservatives for the finance-oriented, the NDP for the ecology-minded. I don't see the Liberals picking up much here. With polls indicating how close this election could be-- and that it's very possible we might have to have THREE parties working together to form a government, a lot of people supporting the Greens might chomp at the bit.
  
  
• The Polls & The NDP: This is a real conundrum because the NDP has, in a way, the most to lose and the most to gain. Again, the polls have a larger control of the NDP vote than most of us tend to appreciate. For the past bit, Mr Martin has been trying to scare Dippers into voting Liberal for fear of a Tory government-- and it has worked to some degree. It also looks, though, like those numbers are very, very soft indeed, possibly the softest in the electoral decision. So, before I move on, let me restate this: NDPers could jump ship to the Liberals en masse to keep the Tories out of power. Then there's the other side of the equation. There's a lot of very soft Liberal support, much of which has been identified as disgruntled left-Liberals and wary-NDPers, and if the polls, particularly in certain areas, seem to indicate a real possibility of NDP victory as either front-runner or dark-horse, these people might turn to the NDP, with the added bonus of punishing the Liberals. A lot of polling information out of the main battleground-- Ontario-- has indicated a number of people dismissing voting for the NDP for fear of wasting their votes. Well, if the numbers look close enough, if there's room for what some call electoral dickering, the NDP could pick up some major votes, and a fair number of seats, none of which have been accounted for in recent polls. The NDP has the highest "second choice" numbers in Ontario, and if something suggests to people that a vote for the NDP may not be such a wasted vote-- if only, in some areas, as a protest vote-- it could mean big, big trouble, mainly for the Liberals but also for the Connies in some ridings. We've seen this before in Ontario, and it came with the name Bob Rae. It's been a two-horse race for this election, but it's not at all beyond the pale that at the last minute the electorate -- again, mainly in Ontario, but also true in B.C., Manitoba, Saskatchewan and the Atlantic Provinces-- could vote on the "Anybody But Them" ticket. With a lot of races as close as they are between the two top parties, and a roughly 23% undecided component of the electorate, we could have a lot of dark-horse victories. (And every pollster in Canada would have a heart-attack just before being sacked.) Put otherwise: NDP could make huge, unpredicted gains at the last minute. So, which way do I think this will go? I don't know. I think the question can be phrased this way: how many people will have the guts to vote for the NDP after all (whether that means having the guts to stick with their convictions or to swallow poison is a matter for individual interpretation), OR how many people will go with what's behind Door Number 2. Will these people vote out of anger or out of caution? It's hard to tell what the dominant emotion is right now. My bet, however tenative: look for a number of unpredicted NDP victories, but not a lot. The losers here, I think, will be the Liberals. Look for the NDP to take about 18-19% of the vote. They'll lose some from caution, pick up some from anger, and it'll even out, with maybe a slight NDP advantage.
  
  
• The Harper Factor: The general assumption is that Harper's gained respectability in parts east of the Prairies, but his party significantly hasn't. Will people vote for the man or the party? Again, probably a bit of both, but I think what we'll see here is what's called the Broadbent Factor: the overriding notion that as much as people may like or respect the man, they won't vote for him-- or they won't vote for him because of the party he brings with him.
  
  
• The Martin Factor: A lot-- the majority-- of people want to stick it to Martin, to give him a good paddling for the Chretien stuff and for the stuff that's gone down on his own watch. Martin's not been particularly charismatic, he's blown a phenomenal electoral lead, and he's not regarded with great credibility by much of anyone outside the party. But this is the reverse-Broadbent factor. A lot of people may still vote Liberal despite Martin's mistakes, clinging to the party most at home with governance. If Martin wins this election, it'll be a negative victory, and there will be calls for his head soon enough. (There are already rumblings.) A lot of the vote -- it seems-- will depend upon how much individual Liberal candidates can encourage their constituents to vote for them and not the leader. In many ridings, Liberals have all but removed Martin from their campaign material. Regardless, a Martin win won't be seen in any quarters as a "win" or an endorsement of his leadership or even of the party's policies: it will be a victory by default, a spectacular pulling of their collective asses out of a self-started fire.
  
  
• The 'Off-With-Their-Heads' Factor: A lot of candidates, mainly Liberals but not exclusively, look like they're going to be executed for their acts and associations over the past while. I'm not talking about Dennis Mills likely losing to Jack Layton: that's not so much a punitive measure as it is an affirmative measure for a party (and clout-supported) parliamentarian. No, watch for those waiting for their torches to be snuffed. Stan Keyes in Hamilton-Centre is almost as good as dead. Anne McLellan, Deputy Prime Minister, is likely to be brought down under this theory. Jean LaPierre in Outremont is deader than the proverbial doornail. Look especially at some of the ridings in BC where candidates have been parachuted in. There may be guillotines waiting in the wings. It's still not at all certain if Tony Valeri will make the cut, so associated he is now with internecine warfare. A fair number of fairly-important heads will probably roll come Monday.
  
  
• The Youth Vote: It will be very, very slightly up this time around-- and it won't make a difference at all. Sorry. There's been no mobilization at all here, despite all the attempts to jostle them from their incredible inertia.  

      So, with this survey of the scene taken, where do I think all this is gonna go? It remains very uncertain, very cloudy. But, what the hell, here's my stab at a prediction of how things will turn out in the next parliament, roughly (remembering that there are 308 seats up for grabs):

Conservatives               120    (31%)
Liberals                       98     (33%)
NDP                            32      (19%)
BQ                              58      (12%)
Green/Independents      0        (4%)

A lot of those Liberal votes are effectively wasted ones-- in doomed BQ ridings in Quebec and Tory ridings in Alberta. The Tories will pick up a significant number of seats in rural Ontario and maybe a couple in Atlantic Canada. The NDP will do a bit better than the polls are currently indicating as a bit of "damn the torpedos" decision-making. The Greens and Independents won't prove factors, ultimately, except perhaps in a riding or two in British Columbia. The Bloc will rout the Liberals in Quebec, and the Tories won't win a seat there-- thus damaging their credibility as a national party trying to govern.

      One major caveat here: if the "Polls and the NDP Factor" plays the other way, subtract 8-10 of their seats and add them all to the Liberal pile. But I'm one of the few predicting the NDP will actually hit 30 seats this time around, such is the anger in some ridings against the Grits.   It's the major pronouncement of this blog that the determining factor of this election will not be the Liberal/Conservative support numbers -- both of which have found their settlement within a five-point difference of one another-- but how well the NDP does. The deciding factor in this election will be which way the pendulum finally swings for those voters on the cusp between the Libs and the Dippers. If it shifts to the Dippers, we've got an unevenly-quartered parliament. If it shifts to the Liberals, Mr Martin may be able to save face, at least temporarily.

      Martin will be offered the first chance to establish a government. He won't. He won't be able to do so. He'll let the Tories govern a while and wait to drop a Non-Confidence motion.

      One other thing: look for other heads to roll, almost exclusively in the Liberal ranks, after the election. David Herle and the Earnscliffe team have targets on their heads slightly larger than Winnipeg. Mr Martin even may find himself facing a leadership challenge within a year, though I doubt it. Regardless, the rumblings will be there, and the Liberals will start looking for a Henry V to replace the Bolingbroke that's caused such an awkward stir within the kingdom of the natural governors. Mrs Harper, Layton and Duceppe will have no such problems within their parties, all of whom have done better than was predicted six months ago. So look for another Liberal purge shortly-- a purge of some of the purgers that caused so much acrimony within the ranks. Whether Mr Martin survives this remains to be seen.

      Alright, that's my prediction, and take it for what it's worth, which is exactly what you've paid for it. You can check my answers Monday night and tell me how wrong I was. Then again, I might still be stuck at the border. Cheers.

The Buddy System

      From the (Very, Very Spam) Mail Bag this morning:

One of your buddies hooked you up on a blind date with another buddy.

Go here to accept the invitation: Accept this invitation

The FREE dating web site
CREATED BY WOMEN           [Ed: evidently this is supposed to make us think it's genuine. HA!]

--------------------------------------------------------------------------------
Go here if you do not wish to be invited again: I am not seeking anyone

Or send postal mail to:
Carnegie Sun, LTD
2135A des Laurentides Blvd, Suite 10057
Laval QC H7M 4M2
Canada

Buddies?!?!?!? A blind date with "another buddy"?!?!?!?!   Ooooh, I'm all a-titter...    This just sounds horribly creepy. Yeah, folks, even if I bought that this was genuine for something more than a nanosecond, I'd just be dying to go out with another BUDDY.   

      Spam, spam, spam:  it's enough to make me reconsider my stance on the death penalty.... This one's even creepier because it asked for a receipt notice (yeah, right, like I'm that abominably stupid!) and so trying to track its recipients.   Insidious, absolutely insidious.   It frightens me a bit to think how many people, Mrs and Misses Lonelyhearts, might get suckered into this.   Actually, it's not just frightening; it's kinda depressing, too.

---

INTERESTING FACT:    This site has just reached a curious number in its hit count: 6969. How appropriate.

Surrender The Pink

      Alright, alright, alright--- since some people (*ahemmmm*) seem to like riding me for the current template (which, I assure you, still doesn't look the way it was supposed to look, but I couldn't get it to work as I had planned it... Grrrr....), I'm throwing out a few options for you to consider.   Some small changes have been made to the basic detail in each one, but they are, where they have been implemented, more preliminary than "fixed."    Let me know what you think about any or all of these options listed below.   And if any of you can come up with anything better, you're of course welcome to try....    Let me simply say this: now do you wonder why I stick to blacks and blues and browns in real life?   I'm typically male in this regard, and, as such, I'd make a terrible, terrible addition to the cast of Will & Grace.

      Here are the options:

• Paper


• Marble


• Skyline


• Stone Dawn

A few brief comments.    The first two are ostensibly clearer and simpler, but they're also much more typical, and I've always preferred to put my own particular stamp on thighs things, no matter how much I'm eventually mocked for them.   The other two, like the current one, are less-typical and both are based on images of Ireland, though the Stone Dawn doesn't look anywhere near right unless you look at it in full-screen mode. These two are also much more complicated. There are a lot more difficulties in colour-matching (note: colour with a U) and there are a lot more 'affective' matters (placement of the Google banner, colour shifts within the image, etc.). They also make finding colour schemes more difficult, particularly in terms of readability.   So, who knows.   I sure as hell don't, especially considering that this sort of thing is-- as you have seen and snickered about-- not my forte.   (Tangential thought: do I have a forte anymore? I'm not so sure.)    I have to confess to being at a frigging loss as far as all this is concerned....

      So, have at it.  Offer your wisdom, dear readers.   Even feel free to defend the current template when all is said and done (one I gave a go at someone else's encouragement, and which some have liked).   The real trick with this sort of thing is finding an appropriate mood for such a thing.   It's been said that the current template is less cranky (and more 'dawnish') than the old one, and thus this template may indeed be more than a bit like false advertising.   So, there's the mustard of it all.

      One (only) thing in my own defence: at least I'm not just clinging to a pre-manufactured design.   There's something rather blasé and indistinct, at least to my mind, about sites that haven't been designed from the ground up-- and thus reflect the whims and personality of the owner.   Ya gots ta do it yerself and ya gots ta do it in yer own way, the folksy wisdom goes.   There's truth in that, methinks.   Even if it means making a bloody, bleepin' fool of yourself now and again.   Or, in my case, with astonishing regularity.   *shrug*   (Hey, at least I'm consistent.    )

      (And, btw, if you don't understand the secondary meaning of the title of this entry, you simply aren't perverted enough.   )

Tinted Love

      The Grimsby Bloggerette is such a brat.  *sniff, snort*  The abuse "the good Ol' Dr." puts up with....

News From Bizarro World

      Here's one of the most curious findings on media bias I've ever heard:

One of our measures found that the Drudge Report is the most centrist of all media outlets in our sample. Our other measure found that Fox News' Special Report is the most centrist. These findings refer strictly to the news stories of the outlets. That is, we omitted editorials, book reviews, and letters to the editor from our sample.

Alas, methinks the findings from this document just a teensy, weensy bit off-the-mark. Questions here, of course, remain: if, say, Drudge and Fox are the most "centrist," what does this suggest about the far ends of the right-leaning media in the United States? and is it official academic policy to scout for liberalism in the media as if it were, like HIV, to be detected and labeled? This blog won't even begin to go into questioning the insipid methodology of all this, or the obviously questional biases brought to the report itself (see, for example, the opening epigraph). The United States, with each passing day, becomes a stranger and stranger place, and one I less and less want to know.

      BTW: Some headlines from Drudge as of 12.40 today:

• UCLA/STANFORD STUDY: 'DRUDGE REPORT IS SIGNIFICANTLY CLOSER TO THE CENTER THAN ALL OTHER MEDIA OUTLETS'... ------ Gee, that doesn't sound like a profession of moderation, a profession normally insisted upon only my non-centrists;


• UPDATE: BUBBA BLOWS HIS TOP ON BEEB...
  Clinton Book Contradicts His Sworn Testimony On Lewinsky Affair... ------ Gee, absolutely no anti-Democratic, anti-Liberal leanings there....


• NY Promoter Wants Springsteen to Upstage Bush... ---- Gee, no sense of victimization and impropriety implied in that headline....


• Hitchens Trashes Michael Moore 'Crap'... --- Gee no privileging one conservative's opinion of the new liberal-slanted "documentary" there.....

But at least Drudge gets to the important stuff.....

      This just makes me sick to my stomach.

The End Of The Affair

      Well, it looks like Ontario's brief little flirtation with the Conservatives has passed and she's gone back to her manipulative and sometimes abusive Liberal husband.   I simplify, of course.  Ontario's going back to the Liberals because it wanted to scare the Liberals a bit, and then they got scared by the Connies. No, that's too simplistic, too. Ontario's going back to the lesser of two losers. Only in Canada do all our political parties -- with the exception it seems of the very un-Canadian Bloc Québecois-- seem to set out to lose elections rather than win them.

      To my readers, however many or however few of you are out there, can we start a small movement?   Not a political movement.  I mean a movement that might actually make a difference.   It's also a very undemanding movement, which, we all know, should make it very popular.  Here it is:  from now on, let's collectively decide not to talk to pollsters.   Let's not give them honest feedback.    Tell them anything but the truth of what you feel, unless you are God's-honest-sworn-and-foresworn-committed to your political beliefs-- then you can say what you want.    For the rest of us, those of us who make our decisions on an election-by-election basis, don't talk to pollsters.    There are so many advantages to this.   One is that, after a while, the data collected by pollsters will be useless and perhaps even detrimental, and not only will pollsters start to leave us alone, they'll have a lot less work from political parties tapping them to make their decisions for them.    Another is that such polling has had the nasty effect of exaggerating the pandering effect, as politicians, like comedians, play to the bits that work and run cowardly away from the bits that don't.    Let's face it, politicians and political parties use polls like the rest of use weather reports: let's make them actually have to go outside to find out if it's raining or not.    There's yet another bonus, the polling headlines won't have the same currency that they do now, particularly in terms of making people think they're voting for/against someone or something based on "numbers."    We might start to get away from these insufferably annoying day-to-day polls that media-kill us all, as if it were somehow crucial to the future of the world that we know overnight what 600 people in the Peterborough area thought about Stephen Harper's words on Air Canada.   No, pollsters now are as much a part of the problem as the political parties.   The less we tell them, the more likely it is the politicians might actually have to figure out what we want-- and the more we might be able to make an informed decision, rather depending on gut-reaction answers to the question, "which of these bastards least offends me?"

      And we might actually be able to sit down to eat our dinners or watch our television programmes or read our books or have our late-afternoon quickies without fear of the phone ringing.   How's that for a bonus?

      So, there it is.   Let's play coy from now on.    Let's lie, omit, falsify, antagonize, ignore, infuriate, befuddle.   Let's tell the politicians and the pollsters, "Well, if you don't know what's wrong, I'm not going to tell you."    And let's watch them stew in their juices trying to figure it all out.   This strategy pretty much always works, right?   Think about it.   Just ask...   No, I'm not going to say that, I'm not going to say that at all....

      But you all know what I'm talking about, and you all know how well it works.

      Let the revolution begin.

Rash Decisions

      Let's just say that this blog isn't touching any of the jokes possible with this story.  Nope.  Not at all.  Not even with a ten-foot....

      Favourite quote: "I tried to ignore it but in the end it wasn't worth the pain" (emphasis added).  Well, that could be the problem right there....

Seven of Nine, Half-Dozen And The Other

      Gee, it looks like a lot of Jeri Ryan's secrets are coming out this week, aren't they?  Lonely Trekkie males (are there any other kinds?) rejoice.  And then rest.  And rejoice again.  And then return to their chat rooms where they pretend they are the living incarnations of Tuvok and Chakotay.  After they've washed their hands, of course.

No Thanks, I'm Just Looking

      This blog simply does NOT want to think where these people are keeping their wallets.

Hapless, Fruitless, Pointless

      Christopher Hitchens has panned the new Michael Moore film Fahrenheit 9/11. You don't say.... I know, try to contain your expressions of surprise.   At one point, Hitchens, in his typical bombast, associates Moore with two of the most controversial directors in film history-- Sergei Eisenstein and Leni Riefenstahl, but curiously and glaringly not D. W. Griffith-- as a means to imply a connection between Moore's lefty political stance and Riefenstahl's Nazi propaganda and Eisenstein's more categorically-difficult but still-technically "Stalinist" films.  (Eisenstein started as a propagandist but became increasingly unsure about, and even somewhat subversive to, Stalin's Soviet Union.)  Ergo, not only is Michael Moore's movie a bad movie, it's a dangerous movie, Hitchens implies, a movie with blood on its hands.  He then launches into an extended all-out savaging of Moore's film which may or may not be valid.  Late in the article, though, Hitchens, who'd already tipped his hat, takes it off entirely and falls victim of the same charge on which indicts Moore.  Here's Hitchens' outrage simplified, as much as it can be:

At no point does Michael Moore make the smallest effort to be objective. At no moment does he pass up the chance of a cheap sneer or a jeer.

Well, consider then the "objectivity" of the first several sentences of Hitchen's final paragraph:

If Michael Moore had had his way, Slobodan Milosevic would still be the big man in a starved and tyrannical Serbia. Bosnia and Kosovo would have been cleansed and annexed.   If Michael Moore had been listened to, Afghanistan would still be under Taliban rule, and Kuwait would have remained part of Iraq.   And Iraq itself would still be the personal property of a psychopathic crime family, bargaining covertly with the slave state of North Korea for WMD.

Hmm... Isn't that a just a tad aspersive, particularly in terms of the mentionings of Serbia, Bosnia and Kosovo?   This doesn't sound in the least bit objective to me: it's standing on another form of moral outrage-- roughly equivalent to the moral outrage which is at the foundation of Moore's film-- to offer a cheap sneer or a jeer (i.e., "Michael Moore would have let people die").   This, however, is the state of debate, born of moral and political injurement, holier-than-thou and vitriolic, and stunningly hypocritical.   I'm not defending Moore or Hitchens here; instead they seem to me the flip sides of the same coin.  The rhetorical sins of which Hitchens accuses Moore are many-- wilful obfuscation and decontextualization, factual inaccuracy and propagandism, and such, and I'm relatively sure that Moore committed many of them, if not all of them.  I'm also reminded, though, of that line from Pericles about people loathing to hear about the sins they love to act.  It's the great rule of the rhetoric of moral outrage: beware your enemy, not for what he's said and done, but for becoming the same as him.  Too bad the poles of right and left, especially in the United States but throughout the rest of the world as well, refuse to see the obvious.  Welcome, ladies and gentlemen, to the hapless, fruitless, pointless protestation-of-hypocrisy that, so far at least, characterizes 21st-century rhetoric.

      Long story short, mès amis, don't put too much stock in what either of them say.  Listen to them, watch them, read them, et cetera, but don't think for a second you're getting much more than screed.

"Get Up, Flash A Smile...."

      Today's "People Are Fucknuts But We Can't Call Them That So We Invent A Syndrome To Justify Their Pathetic Behaviour" notice comes from The Economic Times in India.  It seems everyone these days is entitled to at least nine different syndromes which they can wear like shoes according to the occasion.  Just make sure you don't get caught in public sporting last year's disorder. Apparently A.D.D. is just soooo passé....

So How Should He Presume?

      I guess this guy measured out his life with coffee spoons.... Oh, wait a second, is there a difference between coffee spoons and teaspoons in Romania?

Let's Get Physical

      Relatively. (How's that for a short post? Did it feel longer than it was?)

Share and Compare?!?!?

      Colour this blog confused, so very, very confused....

Mail Chauvinism

      I tested the veracity of this claim today and I didn't have any problems, but it certainly wouldn't surprise me.

Breaking News: Pack Up The Van

Remember what I said about it seeming I wasn't going to post anything else for the day? Er, I guess I was wrong. Oh yeah.....       (With major thanks to the Zaniac for tipping me that this had gone past the rumour stage.)

Pinky and the J, J, J, J....

      Just a few bits and pieces:

• The comments are screwing up again-- sorta. You can't read them without going into the "Edit Comments" section. You can still enter your remarks and the like, but they're just acting funny. I'm told it shouldn't take too long for things to return to normal....


• There won't be much of an update today. Doctor J is tired and cranky-- er, well, more than usual, anyway.


• As for the template change, we shall see how long this lasts. Although-- as Greg puts it-- "hot pink" is not a personal theme colour by any stretch of the imagination, it's the result of the mind's eye never quite getting what it wants. The background image I selected for this was much darker. This is also why we don't let Doctor J do anything colour-related. At the very least, it's nice to shake my readers up now and again.   By the way, this looks better before Blogger mangles the page by adding its infernal banner at the top of the page. Those of you that have asked: the image is of a coast in Ireland.

Anyway, I think that's it for now. I've been workin' on the graveyard shift, and my coffin's been waiting for me. Cheers.

Oh, Dear Lord, Please No....

      I think all of us that live in Canada are sick to death of election coverage, but we can rest easy in knowing that it'll all be over next Monday.  Or will it?  James Bow offers on his blog speculation of a scenario so horrifying that one would have to be a masochist to appreciate its Floridian perversity. *shudder*

Mirth Comes For The Archbishop

      And next week: the Pope on South Park....

Another Reason To Venture To Australia

      Mmmm.... virgins....

Sigh-Diddy-Shrug-Shrug

      Okay, boys and girls, this is what happens when an artistically-challenged Luddite struggles to change things around to make things look a bit better. I'm not sure what I think of this new design-- and probably won't be sure for a while; like haircuts and condoms, template changes always take a bit of getting-used-to. Feel free, of course, to let me know what you think. Feel equally free to be (gasp!) honest. If I decide to stay with this, I'll still have the bugger of a task ahead of remodifying the side-panel for all the links I've temporarily shunted aside. Oy vey.

      Why did I do this again?  Oh, yeah, I'm an IDIOT.

      By the way, some of you may be seeing things in screwy formats if you don't have all the right fonts working on you machine. So, I take absolutely no responsibility if you're not seeing Chaucer and Cooper fonts (among others).

---

      Not sure you're seeing things the way they were designed? You can check against this screen-shot, although this is a full-screen capture in only rough quality.

I'm Shocked, Shocked....

Major Strasser:   What is your nationality?
Rick:   I'm a drunkard.
Captain Renault:   That makes Rick a citizen of the world.

Oh, guess what was on last night....       There's something about watching a movie on a normal TV schedule-- probably the serendipity factor-- that's very different than playing a tape or a DVD. Watching the film again for what must have been the twentieth or the thirtieth time, I was struck by a thought-- that we don't have many people in movies like Captain Renault anymore. We know there are no real Ricks (just wannabes, and even they're occasional), but no real Renaults? You'd think that in this very cynical day and age we'd be resplendent with them.

God Love Academic Discussion

      From this, on the T. S. Eliot list:

Fuck the Candians . . . .and the French. The only sane people in the world live in the United States, Israel and Britain. All of the rest have turned postitively mad. Indeed so. And forgive my language.

To which I replied:

We'll forgive your language, but not your self-righteous, jingoistic pule.

Judge for yourself. (And, by the way, it's CANADIANS, not Candians.)  I'm honkerin' now for som o' dem Freedom Fries.

Impressed Nods

      It seems one of my former students has just won the most valuable scholarship the increasingly self-parodying YU English Department has to offer. She's a bright kid-- and she was by far the most ambitious student from that year's particular group. So this news is good to hear, very good.  I may have to toast this.  

      And in similar news-- since he hasn't said it, I will-- RB, a former-student in everything but fact, got accepted to Grad School. He may come to rue this, but in the interim, congrats, good sir. May you do well and may you enjoy it.   (I kept expecting him to announce it, but since I'm happy for him and he hasn't said it aloud, like a bad parent, I'll do it for him.    ) Cheers.

Testing, Testing, One Two Three

      RK forwarded this article to me yesterday, and it's one of those pieces that makes you (okay, me, and perhaps a few others) wince in frustration. The added "bonus" to reading this article is that you may-- or may not, I haven't fully decided yet-- catch a glimpse of the future look of this blog. I'm considering revamping the template here, and the background image and the basic layout of this article may be a way I'll go. Still teasing it through. Let me know what you think, if you think anything of it, that is.

      It may be time for another, er, toast.

      (Note: the site at which the file is being hosted is being rather irregular-- bloody uppity, if you ask me-- so you may get "Internal Server Error" messages. My apologies. It is there; you may just have to try again later.)

Toast For Breakfast

      It's not even 10am on a Saturday morning and I'm setting down with a glass of "Canadian Champagne" (read in: sparkling wine with a God complex). Why? Because I can. (And because it's more like 8pm for me. Insomnia's a bitch.)

Has He Laden AmBush?

      Scary prediction here, from this article in The Guardian:

Anonymous, who published an analysis of al-Qaida last year called Through Our Enemies' Eyes, thinks it quite possible that another devastating strike against the US could come during the election campaign, not with the intention of changing the administration, as was the case in the Madrid bombing, but of keeping the same one in place.

"I'm very sure they can't have a better administration for them than the one they have now," he said.

"One way to keep the Republicans in power is to mount an attack that would rally the country around the president."

Food for frightening thought.

Oh My God, It's Panda Porn

      Er, or should that be, "Hua Mei, God, yes, yes, yes...." (In the words of Homer Simpson, "And it was finger-ling-ling good.")

Phones Penyeach

      Alright *I* found this amusing --- and, oddly enough, not at all beyond the pale of possibility. Any hackers creative enough to do such a thing would actually have my respect. After all, it's only another twenty-odd years until the centenary of Finnegans Wake....

~~Push It Real Good~~

      Alas, an article on a subject which Doctor J knows far too well: creative constipation.

      And I cannot believe I gave this entry the title that I gave it. I'm now going to have that goddamned annoying song in my head all day.

Spite Is A Powerful Thing, My Child

      This blog now knows one thing: that Christie is going to vote for Stephen Harper.   

      On a similar note: Winston Churchill one said that the best argument against democracy was to spend five minutes with an average voter. Prepare to have your belief in the value of democracy dashed (providing it hasn't been already). It seems Layton has the drooling Cougars lined up, while the Liberals are inheriting the guys who think politics isn't a lady's game, and Harper has the support of people who hate Liberals and don't want to waste their votes on the NDP. Vox populi, in-frickin'-deed....

      SATIRICAL UPDATE: Oh, those Yanks, always casting their interested glances askance...

More Canadian Election Nonsense

      This blog can only imagine the thinking in the Tory War Room, or at least one of the battle tents:

Okay, we can't say that Paul Martin was "a reptilian kitten eater." Natch, been done before. So, what's the next best thing? Hmmmm.... Can we call him a kittenish reptile eater? Nah, too soft, and most people don't like reptiles anyway.  Have to go harder, meaner, nastier.  After all, he's saying we're gonna rip up the Canada Health Act. That makes us look like monsters, and not just the ones that hide in kids' closets at night.   Hmmm, kids' closets.....  Hey, wait a second....  I GOT IT!

Yikes. One can imagine the added bonus: "Hey, if it'll work on the Liberals, it'll work on the NDP too!"  Oh, wait, the charge against the NDP was done first.  But it's obvious the smear can work both ways.

      Well, you can imagine how PM PM responded.  How bad is all this?  It's hard to say, as Mr Harper has only partially retracted the accusation (retraction, plus partial restatement = partial retraction), but even some more rabid supporters of the Conservatives are shaking their heads in dismay.  But they're still not going to remove the implied slur against the NDP from the website.  Go figure. So, Mr Harper, what are you trying to allege, exactly? Do you even know? Do you even care?

      This is despicable.  None of these paramecia deserve to govern.  And they wonder why the electorate is cranky.  They just don't get it, and I'm thinking more and more they never will.

      You know, if I were writing a column for a newspaper or a magazine, I'd probably put together a piece on the strange juxtaposition of matters right now: in Canada, we languor through a campaign that is unremittingly mean-spirited, ill-mannered, and empty--- right at the same time that Ray Charles is feted as a kind-hearted and generally-civil symbol of soul and substance.  It would be nice if the latter could bring into relief the misanthropy of the former.

      Two other thoughts occur to me as I consider all this.  The first is the bizarre question of whether or not all of these guys are desperately trying to LOSE the election rather than win it.  The second is equally troubling realization that if we took this campaign and told its basic facts in a film, you'd think the film was a satire on the absurdities of politics.  ("Gee, Bob, we really need to win, so how do we do it?" "I know: kiddie porn!" "Eeeeee-ksellent....")  Forget The Candidate. We're talking Bulworth here. As Bulworth says, "You know, there's a lesson here, which is never try to make life or death decisions when you're feeling suicidal."

"He Saw The Dream, He Didn't See The Nightmare"

      I promise, this is the last post on this topic, but it sounds like Ray Charles' funeral was incredibly moving, a genuinely ecstatic (in the original meaning of that word, ex-stasis) experience. This is the sort of ceremony I admire: earthy, genuine, celebratory, with a lot of obvious real love in the room. Hallelujah.

      For those of you with some time on your hands (and a decent connection to the Internet), you can hear the ceremony by following this link.

On Julia's Lips

This course examines collaborative writing by women, by which I mean the over co-authorship or co-signature of women's texts.

Oh, gee, I'm glad she cleared THAT up about her course.  It's good to see that English students are getting a good grounding in the literary experience.  Ahem.

Just A Closer Grind With Thee

      I guess these "Christians" missed the part about not worshipping false idols....

Oh Sure....

      Effing figures, effing bloody figures.

Four-Letter Words, Basically

      This is just too bizarre to describe. I may have to start drinkin' early today....

Gather Ye Rosebuds While Ye May, or To The Bastards To Make Much Of Time

      With so many women now in the sciences, this blog has to announce with a heavy heart: Chaps, we're screwed.  Seriously, permanently abandon-all-hope-checkmate-don't-let-the-door-hit-you-on-the-ass-on-the-way-out screwed.

      (But we'll remember with advantages the feats we did this day....)

She's Enthusiastic, That's For Sure

      Forgive me in advance: she swallows, but she's *got* to watch the teeth.   

      (Perhaps she did more than she remembers? A revision perhaps, RK, of Petruchio's line?   )

Lonely Retinue

You're still crazy, baby.... RIP.

---

      A few final takes on matters in this regard.

•   A long, long (long!) time ago in my residence days, I was sitting around talking with a few female friends about-- among other things-- being parents. As the discussion went on, I guess it became apparent that I'd be more protective of a daughter than a son. After a while, the group dribbled down to myself and one particular young woman, she insisting (politely and laughingly) that I was going to make life Hell for any daughter of mine when she wanted to start dating. No, of course not, I shrugged, honestly believing myself far more liberal-minded than I probably was. "Oh yeah," she said, developing a smart-alecky look of a darish "I got you now" sensibility about her: "Tell me," she continued, "A boy comes over to pick up your daughter. What's the first thing you ask him?" After smirking back with the recognition that she'd got me with a damned good question, I thought for a minute or so and said that I'd ask him if he liked Ray Charles. My friend sat there looking very puzzled indeed. "Why," I'm reporting she asked, although I'm sure it was closer to a textually-indeterminate "Huh?" I explained it to her (in moreorless these words), that if he didn't like Ray Charles he didn't have any soul and he wouldn't last very long with my daughter and at least I'd know what to expect of this kid. My friend chuckled and said something to the effect of, "That's a good one." You know, all these years later, I can still think back on that exchange (as I often have), and I can still say with some surety that I'd stick by that question. What this means, or does not mean, I leave to you to interpret. I can think of no better question now than I could then.
  
•   My remaining feline is named Trouble. Some years ago my partner (horrid word: how businesslike!) at the time and I realized that we didn't know when he was born, so we agreed to set, however arbitrarily, his birthday as September 23rd (and figuring on 1992 as the year). Why? Well, kinda complicated-- the 23 was a factor-- but it seemed right; it was Ray's birthday. Yeah, yeah. I was younger then and much more sentimental. Trouble is still in perfect health, and he still thinks he's John Wayne.
  
•   My M.A. thesis is possibly (probably?) the only one ever written in Departments of English that takes part of its title from an RC song, and even devotes one of its sections to making connections with the singer. The section, called "Ray Charles and the Hiro-Koué," was probably the only truly novel section of that thesis.

So, there. I guess you could say RC's effected not just my musical tastes but also some of the ways in which I think. Go figure. It's still one of my favourite images in all of literature-- that of a narrator "greedily" transforming himself into a film of Ray Charles against the Montréal sky. There's something positively beautiful about it, something liberatingly apocalyptic. I guess that's the way it'll end in my mind's eye tomorrow evening. Now if only someone in Montréal would do something about it.

      (Yeah, I'm probably idealizing a bit here, but for how often I do that, I think I'm allowed. And I can think of few as deserving of it.)