Friday Cat Blogging

At right, the cats uncharacteristically dozing together on the futon, itself an unremarkable fact except that Trouble (left), the older and surlier one, never sits on the futon, much less sleeps on it. (Too bad I wasn’t fast enough to snap them cleaning each other.) Like Mutt and Jeff, these two. As I write this, Trouble’s back on the futon, fast asleep with his head in his paws, while Jenny (right) ogles squirrels from the back window. And while Jenny is always the darling, the ever-affectionate one, it’s Trouble who always surprises me: he’s acting more and more now like he did twelve years ago than six months ago. Why? Damned if I know. I just do what I’m told. As a friend likes to remind me, "Dogs have masters, cats have servants."

Am also going to try adding a bit of music to the blog now and then, though only for a day or two at a time. Here’s today’s offering, from an old master. Enjoy.

Out Of The Mouths Of....

From Overheard In New York:

NYU ditz: Oh, I know, I love philosophy classes. You can just feel your mind turning in new ways, grasping at straws.

Aha! Proof-positive: Several wrongs do make a right!

But someone should tell that poor girl that it's not nice to do such things to perfectly innocent metaphors.

Seedy Gonzales

I think the U.S. Attorney-General's ouster is pretty much inevitable now. (See also Slate's discussion of same here.) Frankly, I don't see how President Shrub can justify keeping him on at this point. Then again, I don't see how President Shrub can justify keeping himself on. Dangling apricocks and noisome weeds and all that.

This blog, however, can't help but observe that it's a chap named Sampson bringing the house down. In an Allen Drury novel, such a coincidence (should we call it onomastopoeia?) would have been considered a little too "on-the-nose. "

Follow-Up: Andrew Sullivan brings my attention to this seconder (or thirder, or...) of the Shrubbie jiggering of the justice system.

Boelyn For Dollars

Call it Parr for the coarse? (And somewhere, RK is shaking his head in magnificent despair.)

Gettin' Icky With It, Part Deux; or Ooze Lines Are They Anyway?

This blog can't wait for the sequels. Arse Poetica, perhaps? Pus in Boots? And this blog won't even consider the panoply of pubescent possibilities...

More-than-slightly discomforting key quote: "There is education there, but it is not rammed down their throats." Ahem...

Waiting to Exhale

Because there's nothing worse than a long Pooh dispute. (Redefines the term "press release," non?)

Gettin' Icky With It, or Whose Hairline Is It, Anyway?

Your disturbing image of the day, courtesy the Washington Post: Karl "Turd Blossom" Rove rapping, with Brad Sherwood and Colin Mochrie. Make sure you check out the video so you too can have a little taste of vomit in your mouth for the remainder of the day.

So we’ll go no more a Roving...

Afterthought: Maybe "Scene to Rap" wasn't such a bad choice; we all know Rover wouldn't have done very well with "Questions Only."

Licking Alec Guinness

C'mon, you know you wannnnnna.... (Feel free to vote here.)

I wonder if the Yoda one will taste like a peanut.

Walker, Texas Asshat

Because what the United States needs most right now is policy advice from the star of The Octagon.

Now Waaaaaait A Minute....

Just testing something out here....

Tuesday Tosses

Just some short takes on a few items of potential interest:

Curious about some of those academic cliches? Then see here. Keep in mind, of course, that cliches arise from the preponderance of experience resorting to pithy familiarity to explain itself.

2Blowhards go on a bit about 300 in this piece. Still have to see the blasted thing myself, though girding oneself for an engorged video game of rampant decapitations is tougher than it used to be.

Stephen Greenblatt has a piece from the New York Review of Books about Shakespeare and the uses of power. Not as bad as some of his stuff, at least.

FreewareGenius has brought my attention a few progs worth checking out, some of which are really quite neat: I recommend Spyware Terminator and KlipFolio (a variation on the Google Desktop sort of thing). When you’re like me, working with a computer that went obsolete in the Carter administration, you get very picky about the progs you’ll keep, especially since so many of them these days tend to be as resource-taxing as a trophy wife. (Yeah, Firefox, I’m looking at you, ye who could suck Uranus through a garden hose.) Terminator does fast, efficient and regular scanning for spyware, and (unlike Spybot and such) offers a real-time protection function. KlipFolio sets up your widgets for email, RSS feeds, Flickr and YouTube updates, among other things, in a fashion that’s flexible and resource-light. It provides a nice little gestalt of what’s new on the Net before you even have to open your browser. Give ’em both a try.

File it under Interesting Times, as Quebec has elected its first minority parliament in almost 130 years. It’s a bit of a rebuke against Premier Jean Charest, but a slap in the face of the Parti Quebecois.

In need of a good laugh? An old chestnut for your savoury finger, Fry and Laurie’s Barman sketch. It’s almost as funny as an episode of 24, which yesterday brought President Palmer the Younger out of his medically-induced coma, even though we’ve still to learn anything about the status of President "Douchebag of Liberty" Logan, stabbed episodes ago by the former First Lady when she inexplicably mistook her ex-husband for a giant kiwi. Somebody really has to tell the 24 writers that nearly losing one President is unfortunate, but nearly losing two-- well, that just seems like carelessness.

Enough for now. On to Other Stuff.

The End Of Rome (updated, briefly)

In a few days, HBO will air the last episode of Rome, its two-season series about the rise and fall of Caesar (Season One) and Mark Antony (Season Two). Apparently the cost of producing the show became prohibitive, despite the raves and ratings it regularly gathered, so HBO's ending it outright, even though there are hundreds of years of possible stories to tell. Too bad, but this blog’s wondering if HBO will be tempted to end the show in a fashion familiar to viewers, rather than merely follow history, given the programme’s willingness to junk history for spectacle. (See, for example, Brutus’ death in battle rather than his historical suicide.) So, let’s consider some of the possibilities:

• Camera comes in on a woman in bed, and then pans up to reveal the sleeping figure of Calpurnia. She wakes up, rubs her eyes, and sleepily makes her way to the vomitorium (last night being what it was); and there she discovers--- gasp and haw--- Caesar, alive and well! It was a dream! It was all a dream!


• Or, in a similar fashion, Pompey wakes up one morning to find himself in bed with Suzanne Pleshette. (A Pompous circumstance, no less.)


• Octavian, having eradicated Antony and Cleopatra accordingly, sails away from the Egyptian shore and discovers that Antony has left, in stone marks upon the pyramids, the word "Goodbye." [Cue "Suicide Is Painless" as everyone begins crying and rending their garments.]


• Alternately, Octavian, sailing away, perceives three figures, covered in something vaguely resembling powdered-sugar: the ghosts of the First Triumvirate. Caesar gently pats Pompey on the shoulder, while Mark Antony appears, finally at peace with himself. Octavian then goes off and, ahem, "hugs" his sister, while soldiers dressed as teddy-bears dance goofily in celebration.


• Antony goes backwards and forwards on his commitments to Octavia and Cleopatra, and takes off, ostensibly to marry one or the other, while his friends idle about and drink, lamenting the end of an era. Eventually Antony returns, miraculously single, reclaims Egypt, and gets royally sauced with his much-more-important-than-women fellows in drink. A ninety-minute reunion episode follows, hosted by Jay Leno.


• Octavian and Pullo, sauntering away from the dead Tony and Cleo, gaze knowingly at one another, until Octavian suggests that this could be the beginning of a beautiful friendship.


• Octavian, now Augustus Caesar, is drinking wine in Agrippa’s office, just having discharged Posca for his latest information. Then Octavian looks into the bottom of his goblet, as Agrippa explains the order to his chaos, saying that you have to see the whole picture. Cassius, Cassius, Cassius: and there at the bottom of the goblet, the maker of it, while the camera pans away to a lean and hungry bastard walking gleefully away. "The greatest trick the devil ever pulled...."


• Frogs fall on Egypt. But at this time, no one can be bothered to notice.


• Antony, in committing suicide, swears, upon that dying sword, that it’s a far, far better thing that he does than he has ever done before. No one, curiously, disagrees with him.


• Atia, returned to Rome, so much having happened, rests in bed, caressing herself. And yes he would say yes he would yes, she moans, as the closing credits roll.


• Octavian chases Antony and Cleopatra to the top of the Sphinx, where, naturally, she falls off and hangs by the creature’s nose, until he pulls he up (Octavian having fallen off in the interim), and pulls her into a sweet and decadent embrace. On a barge and in a bunk together. (Surprise, surprise.)
  


• Marcus Aurelius appears, and snottily says, "Stop this! Stops this!" He immediately arrests the entire cast and shuts down production.


• Octavian and Agrippa, successful at last in their vanquishing of Antony ("that’s Anthony!") and his scourge, sail off into Mediterranean--- and then inexplicably land. They debark and walk into the sunset, toward a waiting limousine, which carries them off as an appropriate Eastern anthem burgeons....

What’s your favourite? Got one of your own? Toss ’em up in the penis pitchfork peanut gallery.

/and, yeah, I guess I’m kinda back; kinda....
// and yeah, made it all this with way without a Caligula reference. I must be getting mild in my old age.

FOLLOWUP:  Naturally, it ended with a little bit of historical fantasy.  I'll be kind and not spoil it, but suffice to say there was a little Caesarion resectioning, with a note of Casablanca to boot.  Oy vey.  

Finally, We Have Found Dr J's Ideal Mate

She may be rusty, but damned sure she’d also be appreciative.

And in other news: See, even her family wants to be rid of her....

Has the whole world gone gay?

Forget about that ridiculous wardrobe malfunction incident. Apparently this year’s Superbowl halftime prompted 150 disgusted complaints to the FCC from viewers and The Smoking Gun website has posted some of them. Basically the Superbowl seems to be more of a revelation about the twisted psyches of the viewers than it is about the football. Here is one of the most insane complaints and it begs the question of whether most of these people have the IQ required to work a spellchecker:

It was obscene to show Prince a HOMOSEXUAL person through a sheet as to show his siluette while his guitar showed a very phalic symbol coming from his below-midriff section. I am very offended and I would preffer not to have showed it to my 4 children who love football. One of them has hoped to be a quarterback and now he will turn out gay. I am actually considering to check him for HIV. Thanks CBS for turning my son gay

Most of the complainants agreed that Prince was giving a graphic phallic display (not realizing it was his symbol from when we couldn't call him Prince), however their versions are pretty different. Some described seeing stains on the curtain he was behind (they were looking very closely I guess), his stroking of the guitar neck, some saw testicles (on a guitar?) and one was appalled that the protrusion had the appearance of a massive pitchfork (Yowzah!). Apparently one man was so ashamed of his size in comparison that he couldn’t perform that night. Sure buddy, keep telling yourself that...

Other than Prince, half the complaints to the FCC were focused on the Snickers commercial that was pulled because gay rights groups rightly protested that the men who accidentally kissed had to do something ‘manly’ to wash away the taint of gayness. Naturally if thoughts of Prince’s package prompted such complaints, imagine the homophobic outrage this commercial caused. Again, some people claimed they saw tongues intertwining and heard them making ‘prurient noises’, one person wrote something about one of the men simulating an erection in the other’s face??? Um, what commercial were you freaks watching because it sounds like you stumbled onto a wicked episode of kink. They were all upset however about being tricked into watching ‘gay sex’ when they thought they were just going to see some football.

What astounds me is this: isn’t football kinda gay to begin with? All those guys in tight spandex pants, who run around and dive on one another, wriggle around and then smack each other on the ass for a doing a good job with the pinning and wriggling??

p.s. the title of this post has a link just for fun

The Hand That Rocks The Something-Something

Had to share this, blog-break or no: the best internet ad ever. Enjoy.

Touching Me, Touching You

This isn’t quite a return to blogging (I’m still savouring my indolence), but was posed an interesting question the other day, and it seemed a fun one to answer here. Some of you might want to chime in with your own answers, if you dare. The question that’s not really a question: Name TEN songs you’re embarrassed, or should be embarrassed, to have in your music library, or that people would never expect you to have in it. My threshold for shame being what it is, here goes, with a few extras in the hope any confessional overage counts toward karmic bonus-points.

• INXS, "Please (You Got That)": A revolting band from a revolting age for music, but this song featured Michael Hutchence making the deadly mistake of trying to keep up with Ray Charles, who was only phoning it in and still kicking Hutchence’s Aussie ass.


• Jann Arden, "Could I Be Your Girl?": Here’s something that probably says something about the occasional derangement of my imagination, because every time this song plays, I hear Tom Waits doing the chorus in full-throated snarl. This, of course, gets very funny when the title words come up.


• Tom Jones, "What’s New Pussycat?": Easy to forget sometimes the man has a helluva voice, so thoroughly he’s now dipped in cheese, and this song has to be one of the most ridiculous, even by his standards. But c’mon, how can you not have it?


• Rod Stewart, "People Get Ready": I hate, hate, hate, hate, hate Rod Stewart, especially for his horrifying mutilations of other people’s lesser-known hits (Van Morrison’s "Have I Told You Lately," Robbie Robertson’s "Broken Arrow," Tom Waits’ "Downtown Train," to name just a few). But this Curtis Mayfield classic is almost miraculously immune to Rod’s butchery. Almost.


• Corinne Bailey Rae, "Put Your Records On": I don’t know why I actually kinda like this song, though maybe it has something to do with the central evocation and it’s strangely catchy hook.


• Billy Ocean, "Get Outta My Dreams": Oh Good God. Enough saccharine here to fell an elephant, but (here’s that derangement again) every time I hear this song, I remember Bob Robertson from Double Exposure singing his Iraq War The First (A New Hope) parody, as Joe Clark addresses the United Nations. Hey Saddam, Get out of Kuwait, / Go back to Iraq....


• Prince, "Raspberry Beret": As one scarred in my teen years by the horrors of "Purple Rain" and "When Doves Cry," and having to dance to them no less, I should despise this song. But I don’t. In fact, quite the opposite. Don’t ask me to justify this, because I plainly and simply can’t.


• 10,000 Maniacs, "Because the Night": A limp band with a pretentious and passionless lead-singer, but the strings are cool, and this (i.e., the original) song is a classic all-round. And it’s just well-enough performed that I don’t always barrel over in laughter when Natalie Merchant instructs us to "take [her] now."


• Elton John, "I’m Your Man": More kitsch in this cover of the Leonard Cohen classic than in a dozen John Waters movies, but it’s there because I don’t have the heart to delete it. I dare you to listen to this, ahem, extraordinary rendition and not laugh.


• Sophie B. Hawkins, "Damn, I Wish I Was Your Lover": It has to be the only song in the past thirty years to use the word "shucks." And how can you resist imagery like, "I’ll do such things to ease your pain, / Free your mind and you won’t feel ashamed?" Oh, and I guess I should confess that I probably had a lascivious thought or two when the song was released, and may or may not have bought the CD because of them. (And don’t any of you say you didn’t do that, either. We’ll all know you’re lying. Something has to explain Color Me Badd and the Spice Girls.)


• Steve Winwood, "Valerie": I confess, I like Steve Winwood, even though he’s whiter than a frightened eggshell; but he had a great voice, and this song has some great lines, including "she was like jazz on a summer’s day" and "oh, she can’t be that one, / with the wind in her arms." A onetime involvement described Winwood’s oeuvre as "happy fuck music." True enough. (Now there’s a genre to check for in your record shops. Would parental advisories be required or implied?)


• King Harvest, "Dancing In The Moonlight": It uses the every hippie cliche it can muster, but it’s (appropriately?) catchier than herpes. Listen to it with two drinks in you, even if you’re a pro with the potables, and you’ll be dancing, too. See also James Taylor, "Mexico," and Jimmy Buffet, well, just about anything in his collection.


• Dooley Wilson, "As Time Goes By": Yes, the song from Casablanca. If any of you dare to say I’m a romantic because of this, I am not responsible for the Hostel treatment you more than surely deserve and will inevitably receive.


• Neil Diamond, "Sweet Caroline": Four words: Touching me, touching you.


• The Charlie Daniels Band, "The Devil Went Down To Georgia": Some awesome fiddle work here, and a lyric recasting the Robert Johnson myth. At least it’s not The Oak Ridge Boys.


• Tom Cochrane, "Life Is A Highway": You’re like a highway, and I wanna ride you all night long....


• Aretha Franklin, "I Say A Little Prayer": No shame at all in my Aretha collection, but since that stupid Julia Roberts movie, whichever one it was, it’s almost embarrassing to admit to liking this song. See also Roy Orbison, "Pretty Woman," and Van Morrison, "Brown-Eyed Girl," two other songs unfortunately sliced, diced, and Julianned.


• J. Geils Band, "Centerfold": "Oh no, I can’t deny it / Oh yeah, I guess I’m gonna buy it...." All that and whistling, too.


• Jim Croce, "Bad, Bad Leroy Brown": If you can resist this song, you are shamelessly and unforgivably Modern. Leroy looked like a jigsaw puzzle / with a couple of pieces gone is better than Verdi. (Then again, what isn’t?)


• Tom Jones, "Mama Told Me Not To Come": Unkind as it must seem to pick on him twice here, if there’s anything more spine-chilling than Tom Jones ejaculating, it’s the thought of his mother offering instruction upon same. That ain’t no way to have fun, as the song goes. Could only be worse if Joe Cocker sang about taking a dump, a long toothpasty one, and how his great-great-grandmother coached him through it. *shudder*

And with that image of Joe Cocker in your head (worse: imagine the spasms!), it’s back to my blogging break I go. Aren’t you glad I don’t listen to Pete Townsend? Or, heaven forfend, Ashley McIsaac? Oy vey....

looks like I picked the wrong week to quit sniffing glue

I guess there is something worse than being seating next to a crying child on a long flight. At least she won't be a jerk when you have to climb over her to get to the bathroom.

crotch shot

An eyetracking experiment found that men and women tend to fixate their gaze on different areas of an image. Apparently men tend to give the crotch area a good staring even if the subject is not a Hollywood princess getting out of a car.

Coyne adds that this difference doesn’t just occur with images of people. Men tend to fixate more on areas of private anatomy on animals as well, as evidenced when users were directed to browse the American Kennel Club site.

The kennel club?! hmmmn, I'll take the Dr. J route and refrain from commenting!

Goodbye Mr. Humphries

Sad and belated news (I’m a couple of weeks behind as usual), I’ve just found out that John Inman passed away March 8th. Are You Being Served was one of the staple shows I grew up watching (disclosure: I caught it in reruns of course since I did not actually exist when it was in its first run), it was a Friday or Saturday night PBS thing that our family did until us kids were all too cool to stay at home. We usually watched some combination of AYBS with Fawlty Towers (again reruns), Blackadder later in the 80s and often we were forced to sit through Rumpole of the Bailey. This all took place way, way, way back in the days where there was one TV in the whole house, we only had antenna channels and the final decision for what we watched rested with the pater familias.

Anyhow, here's a good clip of John Inman as Mr. Humphries taking over as the Bliss Girl in the store



Having spent the last few hours scouring clips of these shows I think I have a new understanding of how my sense of humour developed the way it did and I'm a little surprised I was exposed to these shows but not allowed to watch Married with Children for some reason! A plethora of sexual double entendres to corrupt a young mind -thanks mom and dad.

FYI

The Ever-So Rotten Not-So-Good-Dr is absenting himself from his blogging duties for the next little bit, ostensibly toward refreshing the unrefreshable. Any posts here in the interim will be from nic, whose tenure here seems to be going remarkably well, and to whom I owe much. She is to be thanked in advance.

As for me: like a bad rash, I'll be back soon enough. Until then, nic's in charge here. Please be as good to her as you have been to me. She deserves it.

The Berk and The Burke

A lazy Monday-night-cum-Tuesday-morning, and a few short takes to toss off as I cozy up with a beer or two or more and listen to the last few albums from the magnificent Solomon Burke. (And if you don't know Solomon Burke, shame on you.)

• Monday was Paternal Unit's birthday. Maternal Unit's to follow shortly. March is always Birthday Month. There's a "Pisceans in the gene pool" joke in there somewhere, but I'm too lazy to make it.
  
• Laugh-out-loud-spit-beer-all-over-myself line of the night, from the increasingly risible 24, uttered by the currently-institutionalized former First Lady: "What would I do without that man's produce?" Lauren Bacall, eat your heart out. (Follow-Up: Seems Dave Barry had the same reaction I did. Sad minds think alike, one gathers.)
• Seems nic has posted her very first Truly Doctor-J-Like entry, with the requisite elements of gross-out humour and topical perversion. (Hold for applause.) Mind you, given the image attached to her post, I'd have gone for the genuinely retch-worthy title The Juice of Haggard. Which should, of course, make you appreciate nic's discretion all the more. ;-)
  
• How many faux-hyphenations can one use in a single blog entry?
  
• Random observation: Ironic, isn't it, that the only thing Oscar Wilde ever got wrong was assuming that the Marquis of Queensbury would play by his own rules? Ah, the first known case of truly thinking "outside-the-[witness]-box."
  
• Solomon's "Fading Footsteps" is bloody brilliant. He reminds me that a soul-shouter's worth is directly related to his ability to spike the words "Good God!" with genuinely relevant oomph.
  
• Much as it will probably be to everyone's surprise, I finally saw Dreamgirls, and thought it little more than cheesy, manipulative drek. I'm no fan of musicals generally, but you'd think that the genres at stake would be right up my alley. But, alas, no. The tunes were forgettable (when they weren't insufferably grating), the performances hokey, and the script as inventive as a Law and Order episode's. It also reminds me of Dr J's Rule Of Musicals Number One: Dialogue can't just be a means to get to the next song. I will spare you the diatribe the movie deserves, but I'll say two things in short: Jennifer Hudson got the Oscar for this???? and Jamie Foxx's performance here should be that the Academy does not have a retroactive award-annulment policy.
• Since it came up: It's (past) time NBC finally put Law and Order out of its misery. The Law part isn't there anymore, and the Order part is most significantly characterized by the camera's emphasis on the (albeit lovely) wonder that is Milena Govich's chest. But if every episode is just going to be a fictionalization of some celebrity's recent scandal, just euthanise the show before we're forced to watch something about Screech's videotape.
• LandO Part III: Evidently, the Arthur Branch doesn't fall far from the Reagan tree. Now, if it were Adam Schiff....
  
• Solomon's "Let Somebody Love Me" is awesome. If this entry serves no other purpose, let it be that at least one of you goes out and buys a Solomon Burke album. Old or new, I frankly don't care.
  
• As one might have expected, Iranians are complaining about the depiction of the Persians in 300. Methinks the word Farsical might be coming into our language. Mark my word.
  
• My old friend Zelda defends her dissertation next week, and this blog--- and certainly many of its associate ones--- is choking with anticipation for inevitable success. Her situation reminds me of the only time in ten years that I ever had to have someone else cover one of my classes, because I had to go and write one of my comprehensive exams. Said he to my charges, I was later told, "Send out all the good karma that you can." (Or something to that effect.) Let's all do the same for Zel. At the very least, it can't hurt.
  

My almost-as-old-friend Sylvia reminds me, accidentally and not a little shamefacedly on my part, how very, very little I have accomplished with my own writing in recent years, especially as she plugs away so conscientiously at her work, while I shrink from mine like a twelve year-old fumbling from his best friend's hot mom. Argh. But there's the rub: Solomon Burke can do more with an impromptu "Good God!" than some of us other berks could ever say with novels. And yet, there's probably a novel in there. Wish I could write it.

Here's An Interesting Idea....

And thanks to it, Hotmail now has no use whatsoever.

Deal of the week

For sale now on ebay -the one and only Ted Haggard massage table! You could be the proud owner of a piece of Evangelical history and reach that higher plane just as Ted did. The top bid as of tonight is $1,250 US but there are still 5 days left.

The Squeaky Wheel

Call it yet another victory for personal freedom.

(Much as I hate the old slippery-slope metaphor, occasionally it is apt.)

He Flees From Them That Sometime Did He Seek

This blog wants you to know that it would never link to something like this.

(pause)

Ruh-roh.

And now, for my next impression: Jesse Owens....

Churchill Downs

Three guesses as to how the contemporary, or post tempore, academy will respond to this. And, as the cliché goes, the first two don't count.

(If you're still inexplicably uncertain, reread the article and notice what makes the lede and what doesn't.)

Absolutely Fabulous

Best line yet from a review of 300, from The Toronto Star: "If there's not a 300 float in this year's Pride parade, then someone deserves a Spartan spanking."

UPDATE: As I might have expected, the most vapid review comes from Slate's Dana Stevens; it's predictably pretentious, sneering and self-amused, yet another smug and shrill offering from film criticism's Maureen Dowd.

Slings and Harrows: A Random Thought

Contemporary critical theory is like a trebuchet: its design is sophisticated, but it's also cumbersome, often impractical, and for the complex calculations involved, it misses its mark more often than not. For those seeing it in action for the first time, it can seem awesome and powerful; but its advancement on its predecessors is minimal, and almost always-already obsolete, and so it impresses less and less as one discovers its virtues are seldom as great as its detractions, especially as one realizes how long it takes to set the damned thing up properly before it fires its first shot. Ultimately, it's just an elaborate device for slinging things, capable of great devastation, but one that demands extensive defending if it it's going to remain of any use at all. Yet no object quite like it allowed for the offensive hurling of stones and at-hand garbage in a fashion so admirably; the number of principles involved and accounted for, set in motion largely under their own weight, combined David's weapon with Goliath's magnitude, enabled the scientific siege. But ironically, for all its grandeur, its range was often significantly less than that of a skilled marksman, and maintaining it regularly cost more than it warranted. The larger, and less-defensible, the apparatus, the more self-defeating it becomes, even if now and then it could unleash Hell. Which, of course, was its entire raison d'etre.

Up On My Soapbox

I’ve been told that Russian men traditionally give flowers or gifts to the women in their lives on International Women’s Day. That sounds real nice and all but it’s a shame that the social and political roots of the ‘holiday’ have been lost.
I see it as a day to promote awareness of the prejudice and persecution that still occurs in the world against 50% of the population.

For example:

In Tehran just last week, over 32 women were arrested for protesting outside a courthouse. The women were protesting against the previous arrests of women’s rights group leaders who were planning events on IWD to call attention to Islamic laws that discriminate against women.

Since 2001, more than 2,000 women and girls have been murdered in Guatemala and almost no convictions in these gruesome cases (men in Guatemala are allowed to rape women so long as they eventually marry the victim and she’s over the age of 12).

These horror stories are almost expected in developing countries and it is easy to feel distanced from their suffering, however we have displays of our own here in North America even if we choose not to see them. Last year for example we had two shocking and prominent examples of men walking into American schools and selecting girls to assault and kill. Everyone scrambled afterwards to address the issues violence in schools and society (or why someone might hate the Amish) while few acknowledged them to be brutal hate crimes against women. At the New York Times, Bob Howard wrote an article “Why aren’t we shocked?” about how our culture is so saturated with misogyny that we don’t notice it anymore even when it walks into a school and executes innocent children.

It doesn’t take a school shooting to see modern misogyny either as Forbes magazine demonstrated in August last year when it ran the article "Don’t Marry Career Women:"

Guys a word of advice, marry pretty women or ugly ones. Short ones or tall ones. Blondes or brunettes. Just whatever you do, don’t marry a woman with a career.

Naturally there was a deserved backlash against the piece from women yet curiously I read few rebuttals from men. And men should be offended by its outdated portrayal of their gender as emotionally stunted, insecure and laaaa-zy, but strangely I don’t think too many men saw it as an affront to them.

Dang, I'm afraid I've gone off on a tangent and that was not my intent here. I have a feeling that most people (regardless of gender) aren’t even aware IWD exists nor give any more than a passing thought to it. Instead of giving out flowers to those who were born with a womb tomorrow I just wanted anyone reading this to take five minutes to reflect on the roles and rights of women here and abroad and consequently what that means about roles and rights of men -I think one has a lot to do with the other.

There, I’m off my soapbox.

Say You Will

In case you needed it, here's proof positive that fey white boys should never goof around with a classic. Check out the originals here, from 1959, lip-synching the first half of the song.

Reminds me of goofier times at a now-defunct pub when I (yes, I, believe it or not) wound up teaching all the young kids how to dance to that song. Or, rather, giving everyone their cues like the mad conductor of a motley , clueless choir. (Six, half-dozen or the other.) Now, any of you daring to imagine that scenario will probably want to gouge out your eyes like Oedipus Potato after discovering where you got your ato from.

An Old Classic

Because some of you may not have seen this before, an old treat: Tim Burton's Vincent. Enjoy.

The Guinness Stout of the Renaissance

Not often I find an article about Shakespeare worth sharing here, but this one strikes me as quite good, offering not just a broad survey of Shakespeare's international influences but also a few appropriately stinging shots against Historicism and its cluckingly reductive parochialism. The author's especially right about Shakespeare's translation in non-English cultures, especially in Japan, China and India.

Historicism, I'd glibly suggest, grew up around the question of how to isolate Shakespeare and keep him from contaminating other branches of literary and cultural study. Or, more accurately, to cut him down to size; the only thing historicists despise more than the notion of universality is the notion of great or titanic figures. Except, of course, when it comes to Stephen Greenblatt.

Bugs of Iwo Jima

For those of you that think South Park can get offensive, here's a reminder of how deeply propagandistic some cartoons have been over the years. In a word, Wow.

But He Frowned Like Thunder And Went Away

Hopefully I'll be able to post something of my own on this subject shortly (time permitting), but Slate reminds me that last week would have marked the centennial of Wystan Hugh Auden, and it is commemorating the event by publishing an email exchange between three of their local scribes. The first discussion can be found here. Until I can put something more tangible down ("though this might take me a little time"), I strongly encourage any of you out there with the inclination to do so to read through a few of Auden's finer poems, some of which can be found here. The Auden Society also provides links to a bunch of neat stuff in his regard.

Happy 100th, Wystan, such as it is. I shudder to think what he'd have thought of the Internet Age.

FOLLOWUP: I had forgotten about this entry from three years ago, which includes some of my favourite Auden poems. "In Praise of Limestone" is especially good.

FOLLOWUP FOLLOWUP: RK reminds me of this poem by Auden that's not in the collections above. I reproduce it here for your consideration:

THE TRUEST POETRY IS THE MOST FEIGNING

(For Edgar Wind)

By all means sing of love but, if you do,

Please make a rare old proper hullabaloo:

When ladies ask How much do you love me?

The Christian answer is cosi-cosi;

But poets are not celibate divines:

Had Dante said so, who would read his lines?

Be subtle, various, ornamental, clever,

And do not listen to those critics ever

Whose crude provincial gullets crave in books

Plain cooking made still plainer by plain cooks

As though the Muse preferred her half-wit sons:

Good poets have a weakness for bad puns.

Suppose your Beatrice be, as usual, late,

And you would tell us how it feels to wait,

You’re free to think, what may be even true,

You’re so in love that one hour seems like two,

But write —As I sat waiting for her call,

Each second longer darker seemed than all

(Something like this but more elaborate still)

Those raining centuries it took to fill

That quarry whence Endymion’s Love was torn;

From such ingenious fibs are poems born.

Then, should she leave you for some other guy,

Or ruin you with debts, or go and die,

No metaphor, remember, can express

A real historical unhappiness;

You tears have value if they make us gay;

O Happy Grief! is all sad verse can say.

The living girl’s your business (some odd sorts

Have been an inspiration to men’s thoughts):

Yours may be old enough to be your mother,

Or have one leg that’s shorter than the other,

Or play Lacrosse or do the Modern Dance,

To you that’s destiny, to us it’s chance;

We cannot love your love till she take on,

Through you, the wonders of a paragon.

Sing her triumphant passage to our land,

The sun her footstool, the moon in her right hand,

And seven planets blazing in her hair,

Queen of the Night and Empress of the Air;

Tell how her fleet by nine king swans is led,

Wild geese write magic letters overhead

And hippocampi follow in her wake

With Amphisboene, gentle for her sake;

Sing her descent on the exulting shore

To bless the vines and put an end to war.

If half-way through such praises of your dear,

Riot and shooting fill the streets with fear,

And overnight as in some terror dream

Poets are suspect with the New Regime,

Stick at your desk and hold your panic in,

What you are writing may still save your skin:

Re-sex the pronouns, add a few details,

And lo, a panegyric ode which hails

(How is the Censor, bless his heart, to know?)

The new pot-bellied Generalissimo.

Some epithets, of course, like lily-breasted

Need modifying to, say, lion-chested,

A title Goddess of wry-necks and wrens

To Great Reticulator of the fens,

But in an hour your poem qualifies

For a State pension or His annual prize,

And you will die in bed (which He will not:

That public nuisance will be hanged or shot).

Though honest Iagos, true to form, will write

Shame! in your margins, Toady! Hypocrite!

True hearts, clear heads will hear the note of glory

And put inverted commas round the story,

Thinking —Old Sly-boots! We shall never know

Her name or nature. Well, it’s better so.

For given Man, by birth, by education,

Imago Dei who forgot his station,

The self-made creature who himself unmakes,

The only creature ever made who fakes,

With no more nature in his loving smile

Than in his theories of a natural style,

What but tall tales, the luck of verbal playing,

Can trick his lying nature into saying

That love, or truth in any serious sense,

Like orthodoxy, is a reticence?

Pounding The Spud

Because some of you, I’m sure, have been waiting for it.... (Perhaps not entirely SFW, and worse, requires Quicktime.)

Say what you will, it at least looks more convincing than 300.

A Lint Of An Explanation

Wordsmith alerts me today of a word so Canadian, you’d think we’d invented it:

omphaloskepsis (om-fuh-lo-SKEP-sis) noun

Contemplation of one’s navel. [From Greek omphalos (navel) + skepsis (act of looking, examination). Ultimately from the Indo-European root spek- (to observe) which is also the ancestor of suspect, spectrum, bishop (literally, overseer), despise, espionage, telescope, spectator, and spectacles.]

A little on the button, non?

Speaking of "on the button," every now and then it's amusing to note some of the search terms that have brought people to this blog. In the past, such terms have included "Whoopi Goldberg nude" and "Dr J's nose drops." Today's term of note: words that melt a woman's heart. Let's safely assume that poor chap's quest remains incomplete. After all, if I knew words that would melt a woman's heart, do you honestly think I'd share them?