Rei Carol

      This is more for my own record keeping than for anyone else, but I'm trying to keep track of some of the obituary material gathered on Ray Charles in the past couple couple of days. (What can I say-- not only did I love the man's music, but he became both a kind of personal hero and a part of my academic research, to the point that my MA thesis featured Ray prominently enough to warrant quoting in the title.) Jools Holland's tribute in the Telegraph is telling enough. MTV's collection of material is truly bizarre in telation to its subject but typical in terms of its intended audience, rhyming off Justin Timberlake's description of RC as an "idol" and Wyclef Jean's association of RC with Martin Luther King. Here is Chris Heard's discussion for the BBC, and here is Glen Gamboa for Newsday simplistically reducing RC to "a single trick" performer. A surprisingly decent article from the Helena Independent Record is here. And a rather good piece on the coverage of Ray's death from Editor and Publisher can be found here. According to this article, RC's clearest "heir apparent," Van Morrison, heard of the news while performing in London-- and immediately launched into a version of "I Can't Stop Loving You" in tribute. Slate's piece by Stanley Crouch is almost entirely touchy-feely, and pretty bloody worthless; one would expect more from Crouch.

      All in all, though, it's pretty dismal coverage, and pretty uninsightful stuff so far. I'm impressed, however, by the number of suggestions in the blogosphere and more-traditional media to commemorate RC with some truly substantial memorial, from suggestions of putting him on a coin or a bill (yeah, right, like that's gonna happen-- just ask Susan B. Anthony!) to even putting him on Mount Rushmore (even more ridiculous, but amusing nonetheless). The curious imbalance in coverage-- between those lauding him as one of the most important figures in the last half-century and those desribing him as an award-winning crooner-- seems more the result of laziness and distraction (mainly with the Reagan mournathon) than anything else. Oh, our wonderfully nuanced and attentive media.

Taepo Negative

      Gee, I'm glad the Americans took care of that clear and present danger in Iraq.

      (And, yes, believe it or not, I didn't riff on the phrase "Jong, Dong, and Full of" *cough cough*.  I am, of course, far too urbane for that.       )

And Yet We Measure Times

      Believe it or not, I'm not invoking this here because of Mr. Charles' passing, but I've been stewing-- as, frankly, I often do, as I think anyone concerned with poetry does to some extent-- on these thoughts of late. They're from Edward Bouverie Pusey's translation of The Confessions of Saint Augustine, Book XI ("Chapter XVII" in some editions).

Suppose, now, the voice of a body begins to sound, and does sound, and sounds on, and list, it ceases; it is silence now, and that voice is past, and is no more a voice. Before it sounded, it was to come, and could not be measured, because as yet it was not, and now it cannot, because it is no longer. Then therefore while it sounded, it might; because there then was what might be measured. But yet even then it was not at a stay; for it was passing on, and passing away. Could it be measured the rather, for that? For while passing, it was being extended into some space of time, so that it might be measured, since the present hath no space. If therefore then it might, then, to, suppose another voice hath begun to sound, and still soundeth in one continued tenor without any interruption; let us measure it while it sounds; seeing when it hath left sounding, it will then be past, and nothing left to be measured; let us measure it verily, and tell how much it is. But it sounds still, nor can it be measured but from the instant it began in, unto the end it left in. For the very space between is the thing we measure, namely, from some beginning unto some end. Wherefore, a voice that is not yet ended, cannot be measured, so that it may be said how long, or short it is; nor can it be called equal to another, or double to a single, or the like. But when ended, it no longer is. How may it then be measured? And yet we measure times; but yet neither those which are not yet, nor those which no longer are, nor those which are not lengthened out by some pause, nor those which have no bounds. We measure neither times to come, nor past, nor present, nor passing; and yet we do measure times.

Try thinking about such matters without illegal or alcoholic substances. I assure you, it's a formidable task indeed.

      I'm thinking about such matters of late mainly because I've been revisiting a paper that I wrote what now seems an aeon ago on Mark Strand's Dark Harbor. It's a paper I'm more and more convinced I have to do something with eventually, if only because there's gold in them that hills. The paper is cursed with all the qualities I now associate with my Idiot Period-- when I readily invoked all the right theorists and all the right ideas, partially because they were impressed as necessary, but also because they did seem professionalizing, in a way, legitimating my own thoughts within larger current critical trends. I say Idiot Period, though, because I read such stuff now as very forced, very laboured, when I felt I had to trust more in the instruction of others than in my own interpretive insights. (Knowledge, I'm reminded, is not wisdom, and as Northrop Frye suggested, knowledge merely comes before the Law which itself comes before Wisdom.) Anyway, many of the questions the paper struggled with had to do with the Orphic and Marsyan dimensions of poetry -- and the poet proper-- and now I'm thinking there's a lot more I could do with that discussion that would, I think, serve to illuminate the volume very effectively. Leave it to me, however, to stumble into one of those koanish paradoxes that tends more to baffle than to clarify. Sometimes, I think I'm nothing less than fucked: too poetic by nature to be a typical critic, too prosaic, finally, to make a good poet. Regardless, there's something very profound at work in Strand's volume, and in my younger days I was inching towards its discovery, but never quite did. I think I'm closer, much closer, even if I'm sure most of my colleagues would accuse me of obscurantism. Such people, pedants I tend to think them, would also run kicking and screaming from the thought of seeing through a glass darkly. Northrop was right about one more thing, damn him: sometimes, one has to practice and unpractice, and critical labours-- genuinely significant ones-- may need to happen over years rather than weeks or months. Norrie said it took him forty years to write The Great Code. I believe him. It's taken me the plupart of a decade to begin to grasp with even a kind of fullness a volume of a mere 46 poems. It's enough to lead one to depression-- or, worse, a chain of self-complicating thought that paralyzes more than it liberates. The ripeness is all.

      By the way, for my more capital-L Literate readers: if you don't know Pusey, check out this biography of him. Not merely one of the founders of the Oxford Movement, he was also a mentor for the poet Gerard Manley Hopkins.

All The Useless Things These Hands Have Done

      Here's a bizarre little poem that I frankly cannot decide if I like or not. Although I like the conceit at work, I can't say I'm impressed by the belabouring of the metaphor; the poem becomes very heavy-handed, especially with the trite repetition of "arouse[d]" in the last stanza. Either way, I throw it out for you to judge. It's by the American poet Donald Finkel.

Hands The poem makes truth a little more disturbing, like a good bra, lifts it and holds it out in both hands. (In some of the flashier stores there's a model with the hands stitched on, in red or black.) Lately the world you wed, for want of such hands, sags in the bed beside you like a tired wife. For want of such hands, the face of the moon is bored, the tree does not stretch and yearn, nor the groin tighten. Devious or frank, in any case, the poem is calculated to arouse. Lean back and let its hands play freely on you: there comes a moment, lifted and aroused, when the two of you are equally beautiful. (1966)

Meh. Mark Strand or Leonard Cohen would have done a better job with this.

The Lady's Not For Spurning

      Gene W's introduction to his column this week is brilliant:

During a recent radio interview concerning our book about men and women, the female host suggested that Gina Barreca and I ask each other questions. Gina went first. She asked me how I thought my professional career would have been different had I been born a girl.

I said that, given my basic outlook on life, I probably would still be a humor writer. I just wouldn't be as funny.

Oddly enough, after reading the rest of the article, it's obvious: he was right.

Oh Haemorrhoid, Oh Haemorrhoid, Wherefore Art Thou Haemorrhoid?

      But remember, a rose by any other name would smell as sweet....

      Key quote, by the way:   "With characters that have a strong negative image, like the ones for 'excrement' and 'curse' parents should make a decision within the bounds of common sense."   I'm sure Chastity Bono is somewhere screaming in agony.

      (The obvious answer, of course, to the above question: "I'm down here.")

Lowered Expectations

      Me sez nussing, me sez absolewdly nussing.

Tickle-Down Economics

      A Pussy In Every Pot:   Now that's a slogan that'll get a man erected elected. It's even tailor-made for a certain incumbent candidate that might be able to rewrite his father's "read my lips" directive.

Everyone's A Critic

      I guess someone finally saw the video for "Rush Rush."

Pay-Lay

      Reading this article, I'm reminded of the old saw that weathermen and economists and are the only people in the world who can sustain entire careers without ever once having to be right. (And, as the commercial goes, once you pop, you just can't stop....)

Whisky A-Go-Go

      Robbie Burns would be proud. (And Dick Ewen's dream of world peace fulfilled.)

Doh, Canada! (It's A Good Thing.)

      This blog, as I'm sure most of you have noticed, hasn't given a tinker's damn about the Martha Stewart fiasco. I assure you, it still doesn't. But reading Slate today, I laughed out loud in reading this piece on the perjury of prosecution witness Larry Stewart. Why? See for yourself:

Larry Stewart, ostensibly the most awesomely credentialed witness in the entire Stewart/Bacanovic trial, has, for many years, been banned from testifying in Canada, apparently for overstating evidence in a case. [emphasis added]

Gee, I guess this little fact-- the testiomial record of your key witness-- didn't matter too much to the prosecutors. And they call us hosers.   

Really?

      "Was he only 73?," asks Richard Corliss at the beginning of his obituary on Ray Charles for TIME. It's an appropriate question, all considered. He seemed, after all, to have been around forever. He was so long a fixture of the modern music industry, so long a pop-culture icon, that he seemed to have been always already part of the scene. It's not that Ray Charles ever seemed "old" per se; in fact, even in his later years, he was perpetually energetic, though admittedly not in the James Brown sense of the word. But Mr. Brown is now 76, still remarkably athletic, still, in many ways, a kinetic marvel. Ray Charles, however, always seemed older, as if here of a previous generation, perhaps in part because Brown's career hit its apex after Charles' hit its, and perhaps because so much of Brown's performing style is a logical continuation, an intensification even, of the sexualized gospel that Charles effectively pioneered. It may be that Charles' association with "big bands" and his fondness for performing "old-standards" suggested that he was part of another era; after all, one can hardly imagine James Brown launching in concert into a cover of "That Lucky Old Sun" or "I Can't Stop Lovin' You." Charles seemed to have more in common with the music of Count Basie and Artie Shaw than he did with James Brown-- or, rather, that performers like Brown and Aretha Franklin, now 62, seemed more like inheritors of Charles' music rather than contemporaries in fact. It also has to do with the fact that Charles became an influencing figure in his early youth (he started as a professional musician at 15), a kind of wunderkind to whom others very much, and very eagerly, paid attention, including Elvis Presley, who was only five years Charles' junior. He was, in many ways, a mentor even to his seniors, a prodigy in youth, a titan in age. As much as he was a product and a symbol of a very particular time, he also seemed to be outside of time, constantly popping back up when one least expected, always seeming the same figure he always had been, perhaps a little greyer and a little less motile, but always there and always unmistakably Ray. Even most teenagers in 2004 have a fixed image of the man, despite more than likely never having listened to a single one of the man's albums: he was part of the North American cultural furniture, forgotten more often than not, but significantly there whether one realized it or not. Think "We Are The World." Think The Blues Brothers. Think of those Pepsi commercials and think of all those film cameos, so many of them featuring the world's most famous blind man driving a vehicle of some sort. He always seemed to be there. To think in terms of a number, like 73, is to quantify an intangible, to account for a presence we'd generally come to take for granted, and to note the limits of a man's being. And with Ray Charles, whether one thought of it consciously or not, noting the limits of his being is something of a cognitive dissonance: it's hard to think of him as having a beginning and ending as we tend to think of most people; it's hard to think of him as being subject to the same temporal conditions as the rest of us because he seems he's just always been there, the familiar object in one's house that no one can exactly remember how long it's been there. Actually begin to put a number to it, and the inevitable response is a slightly surprised rhetorical question: Really?

      Really. Most of us tend to not to think of-- or imagine, as the case may be-- of Ray Charles as a specifically "young" man (or as an "old" one, either). Most of us tend not to imagine how he came to be blind, or how he came to be the figure that he became; we tend not to think of his career as a progression or as a linear narrative, at least not in the past twenty or thirty years. For reasons I can't quite explain, it's easier to think in terms of beginnings and endings, up periods of ups and downs and befores and afters, with people like Ronald Reagan or Johnny Cash, giant figures in their own ways but somehow still obviously contained by time, than it is to do so with Brother Ray. It's tempting to remember Van Morrison's observation that Charles knew how "to play with time" in this regard, though it's also probably reaching for a conclusion more serendipitous in coincidence than purpose. A less-than-brilliant young "critic" once described him as

the singer whose existence resists the trends of history; he is the servant and the slave, singing songs of worship and desire; he is the saint and the sinner whose devotions are hybridizations of formal styles. He is, literally, the voice of soul, especially if, as Arnold Shaw defines it, 'soul is extremely uninhibited self-expression.... It is not just feeling but conviction. Not just intensity but involvement.'

There's some truth in this, I think. More than most, Charles seems astonishingly counter-historical, a remarkably relevant relic by one turn, an impossibly archaic contemporary by another. Indeed, to appreciate Charles' peculiar position in popular culture, one has to appreciate his paradoxicality-- to accept the counterlogical, as, effectively, we've done for decades without being entirely aware of it. Ray was the mess of contradictions that most us simply knew to accept-- and knew how to accept, that is, on a strange plane (to quote from Leon Russell's "A Song For You," which Ray covered so eloquently in the early 1990s) "where there's no space or time."

      Or so it seemed. I guess that's what yesterday refuted. He's now subject to history, as he always in fact was but so seldom seemed: subject, that is, to limits and numbers and such. Somehow, though, that just doesn't seem right, especially for someone who seemed so defiant of tables of probability and rules of convention. He was a professional musician for 58 years, and a hitmaker for 55? Somehow, that just doesn't seem right-- it just doesn't jibe. But it's true, hard as it is to believe. But, alas, what's true so very often is. It's too bad we can't stay in the world of involvement and conviction, in the more viscerally sure world in which facts are merely incident to what we feel and what we believe. Another titan is gone. No, that just doesn't jibe at all.

A Truly Profound Loss

1930-2004

"Music is nothing separate from me. It is me... You'd have to remove the music surgically."
--- Ray Charles

Quickly now, as if even he participated in the excitement over the unknown, he greedily reassembled himself into--- into a movie of Ray Charles. Then he enlarged the screen, degree by degree, like a documentary on the Industry. The moon occupied one lens of his sunglasses, and he laid out his piano keys across a shelf of the sky, and he leaned over them as though they truly were the row of giant fishes to feed a hungry multitude. A fleet of jet planes dragged his voice over us who were holding hands.
      --- Leonard Cohen, Beautiful Losers (1966)

      It's almost unfathomable. We've lost the High Priest, the Genius of Soul, the just-plain Genius, a man whose contribution to music has not been bettered and only occasionally been equalled. The tributes, I'm sure, will be effusive tomorrow once the musicologists have had time to digest the news and prepare their articles. I'll try not to say too much here, but I will say this: in a world of egos and icons, of superstars and idols, Ray was something else. He was a titan in the truest sense of that word. Modern music's debt to him is immense and probably beyond measure, with everyone from Bob Dylan to Bruce Springsteen, from the Beatles to Garth Brooks, from Van Morrison to Johnny Cash, Elvis to the Rolling Stones, Stevie Wonder to James Brown, owing more than most of us can now imagine to Ray's own very particular influence. In short, he was The Real Thing. He didn't just make a difference. He was the difference.

      The world just got smaller, a little greyer, and a lot less interesting.

REQUIESCAT IN PACE

And That Would Have Made All The Difference

      From The Globe:

The war in Iraq could have been avoided had Canadian soldiers been sent in earlier to scare Saddam Hussein, Conservative Leader Stephen Harper says.      [see rest of article here]

Oh, really!?!?!?!? Ladies and gentlemen, can we have at least ONE political party leader in Canada with at least an approximate grasp on reality? Prime. Minister. Harper. *shudder* Suddenly Ed Broadbent rapping no longer terrifies me.

Less Clichéd Than A Hummer

      I'll let you folks make the jokes on this one. It just wouldn't be sporting if I did them, would it? You don't bring in a master pervert when any adolescent could get the job done, right?

Eight Days A Week

      My apologies to everyone who has been waiting for me to respond to emails and the like. I am, as usual, way behind on individual correspondence. Please bear with me. (Yikes. And I haven't even responded to any of the recent comments posted here. Crappity. I'll never get through all this. Does anyone want to spring for a live-in secretary for the Not-So-Good Doctor? I could always use a Girl Friday. And a Girl Saturday, and a Girl Sunday, and....)

The Honesty's Too Much

      How ironic, dear readers, is it that when I viewed this article the page contained an advertisement for Polaroid Now with the slogan "Instant laughter"? Yeah, I thought so, too.

By Hooker By Crook

      This has got to be unconstitutional. Sickening, absolutely sickening.

Truly Important News Of The Day

      Brace yourselves: you want to make sure you're sitting down before you read this. I know, I know. It's gonna be hard on all of us. At times like this, though, we have to hold together and be strong for her sake. She needs us now more than ever. *sniff*

Mammaries of China

      And they thought the Great Wall would be impenetrable....

And For A Hundred Visions and Revisions

      Far be it from this blog to challenge the wisdom of CNN ("All Reagan, All The Time") and the rest of the American media, but Lawrence Martin's column in today's Globe and Mail is a lot closer to the way I remember things happening. It would be nice if more of the coverage of Mr. Reagan's accomplishments had, as Mr. Churchill once said, the added benefit of being true.

Via Negativa, or It's All Over Now, Baby Blue

      Yes, it's official: the Liberals have now decided to lose the election. I'm not talking about the Liberals simply not getting enough votes to win either a minority or a majority government; I'm talking about the decision by the Prime Minister's handlers to go starkly, and desperately, negative with attack ads in the vain hope of scaring Canadians away from voting for Stephen Harper and the Conservatives. Paul Martin can probably start packing his belongings out of 24 Sussex Drive now. Historically, such negative campaigning backfires in Canada, inflicting more damage on the perpetrators than the targets. Does anyone remember Kim Campbell's ridiculously offensive ads making fun of Jean Chrétien's face? Canadians tend to respond very negatively to negative ads (how's that for a tautology!), viewing them as cheap, indecorous and cynical, and Canadians have an unspoken tradition of punishing such tactics, because they seem to violate a basic principle of fair-play. As a result, Canadians very often react to this sort of thing with contempt, the implied response being something akin to Well, you may say these guys are bad, but at least they are NOT YOU. Really, I don't know what David Herle and the Earnscliffe goons are thinking. When these ads come out, I'm willing to bet support for the Conservatives will solidify rather than erode, and the already burgeoning antipathy for the Liberals will finally find a tangible shape, that of the proverbial straw that'll break the camel's back. Unless Mr Martin nixes Herle's plans, he'll have effectively signed his own political death-warrant-- and committed himself to the junk-heap of history's coulda-woulda-shoulda-beens. This decision by Martin's organizers may indeed be the most blisteringly stupid decision of the election, and quite possibly of the decade. I guess now I'm going to have to get used to saying-- and it's a difficult task, I assure you-- Prime Minister Harper. Prime. Minister. Harper. I never thought I'd have to say that. Now it's more or less a done-deal that we're all going to have to learn to say it. That fat lady's about to sing-- and her name is David Herle. Goodnight, sweetheart, / It's time to go.... shadoobydoooo....

A Portrait Of The Doctor As A Young Idiot

      Oh, it's a sad-- nay, horrifying!-- thing sometimes to stumble upon items from one's past, as I just did in discovering a number of old and natty papers. Among those yellowing files was a pastiche of a poem, written for a grad seminar as a lark many, many years ago. It's rather embarrassing to look at such a thing now, an embarrassment I will share with all of you here so it doesn't come back to haunt me when some pesky person threatens to use pieces of my juvenalia as evidence of a checkered history of competence. My poem was a response to one by the American (but Canadian-born) poet Mark Strand; Strand's poem is on the left, my ancient shame on the right. All I can say in my defence is this, that I was so much smarter then, I'm wiser than that now.

Poem He sneaks in the backdoor, tiptoes through the kitched, the living room, the hall, climbs the stairs and enters the bedroom. He leans over my bed and says he has come to kill me. The job will be done in stages. First, my toenails will by clipped, then my toes and so on until nothing is left of me. He takes a small instrument from his keychain and begins. I hear Swan Lake being played on a neighbor's hifi and start to hum. How much time passes, I cannot tell. But then I come to I hear him say he has reached my neck and will not be able to continue because he is tired. I tell him that he has done enough, that he should go home and rest. He thanks me and leaves. I am always amazed at how easily satisfied some people are. --- Mark Strand

Criticism He inches his way in, baby-stepping through the door, the hall and then bedroom, a bag of doctoring devices dangling from his hand. He hunches over me and vows he'll kill me. The job will be done in stages. He finds my feet and draws a scalpel from his bag. He scrapes the bottom flesh, strip by strip, through veins and nerves and blood and bone, up the leg and on and on. I'm stranded, mumbling O Sole Mio in rancour with the radio. I drift off for I don't know how long. When I return, he is paring my throat and getting quite impatient, his brows sweaty and fallen. I grimace and nod towards the door, offering recess until next week. He curses me and leaves. I am always amazed at how easily exasperated some graduate students are. --- Doctor J, in a previous incarnation

Yeah, yeah, yeah....     Get it all out of your systems, people.... Harrumph.

The Two Finger Taco Tango

      Most of the offerings here are pretty lame, but a few of them are good for a chuckle or two. This blog's favourites: "buttering up the whisker biscuit" and "feeding the bearded clam."

Black Gold

      Churlish as it may be to say, reading these offerings on the Iraq War, I'm reminded of how good Wilfred Owen and Siegfried Sassoon really were. These poems are just horrible. Fallujah-horrible. Yikes.

All-Together Now...

      "Behold, I saw a pale rider..."

Slippin' und-a Slidin'

      "It's not the destination, it's the journey, it's how you get there." Dumbasses.

Lemon Fresh

Face it, boys: you're just dying to check this book out, aren't ya? This blog's bet: it's not what you're hoping it is.       (I know. I was disappointed, too. *pout* But it looks at least like McDonald's has finally taken the plunge into publishing. )       UPDATE: It seems the introduction to the book is online, of which the key quote is this: In writing this book, the surprise for me -- and this may delight many readers -- was that the notions of those topless pillow fights may not have been so far off base after all. Oh.

"So, What Do You Do For A Living?" Errrr.....

      You'd think that in the academy, people would develop a sense for phrases that just sound wrong. You'd think.

QUIET!

      Oh god, oh god, oh god oh god.... It looks like the Americans might be noticing us up here.... Okay, if we all stand real still, maybe they'll look away. Sssssh.... Be very, very still.... We don't want to end up like Iraq. Or Afghanistan. Or Angola. Or....

Loitering With A Vacant Eye

      I'm feeling rather like a disc jockey today, fielding a request from RK to share some of the poems of A. E. Housman, but I don't mind doing requests, as they say, as long as I like the tunes. Housman is one of those poets that everyone should read in their late teens, particularly the poems that comprise A Shropshire Lad, all of which can be read online here. The trick with Housman, I think, is his deceptive simplicity: as with Robert Frost, it's tempting to reduce his writing to a kind of folksy pastorality, but to do so is to undermine the depth of his writing -- and, in fact, the intricacy of his poetic technique, much of which rests on a stern (some might say rigid) obedience to iambic rhythms. Some have accused Housman of being "metronomic," tick tocking his way through his verse, and while there's a sense that Flicka and Mr. Ed could have stamped out the stresses, that says more of our tendency toward relatively unmeasured speech patterns. Housman's best read, more often than not, with a musical wistfulness, the kind of wistfulness that isn't as sad as it seems, but just outside of contentment. Read Housman, one might say, with a young man's heart, a drink in one hand, and a thought of another in the back of your mind-- or, in Housman's phrase, read him "loitering with a vacant eye."

When I was one-and-twenty WHEN I was one-and-twenty    I heard a wise man say, ‘Give crowns and pounds and guineas    But not your heart away; Give pearls away and rubies    But keep your fancy free.’ But I was one-and-twenty,    No use to talk to me. When I was one-and-twenty    I heard him say again, ‘The heart out of the bosom    Was never given in vain; ’Tis paid with sighs a plenty    And sold for endless rue.’ And I am two-and-twenty,    And oh, ’tis true, ’tis true.

Could man be drunk forever Could man be drunk for ever       With liquor, love, or fights, Lief should I rouse at morning       And lief lie down at nights. But men at whiles are sober       And think by fits and starts, And if they think, they fasten       Their hands upon their hearts.

Tell me not here, it needs not saying Tell me not here, it needs not saying,       What tune the enchantress plays In aftermaths of soft September       Or under blanching mays, For she and I were long acquainted       And I knew all her ways. On russet floors, by waters idle,       The pine lets fall its cone; The cuckoo shouts all day at nothing       In leafy dells alone; And traveller's joy beguiles in autumn       Hearts that have lost their own. On acres of the seeded grasses       The changing burnish heaves; Or marshalled under moons of harvest       Stand still all night the sheaves; Or beeches strip in storms for winter       And stain the wind with leaves. Possess, as I possessed a season,       The countries I resign, Where over elmy plains the highway       Would mount the hills and shine, And full of shade the pillared forest       Would murmur and be mine. For nature, heartless, witless nature,       Will neither care nor know What stranger's feet may find the meadow       And trespass there and go, Nor ask amid the dews of morning       If they are mine or no. Oh, when I was in love with you OH, when I was in love with you,    Then I was clean and brave, And miles around the wonder grew    How well did I behave. And now the fancy passes by,    And nothing will remain, And miles around they ’ll say that I    Am quite myself again.

Loveliest of trees, the cherry now LOVELIEST of trees, the cherry now Is hung with bloom along the bough, And stands about the woodland ride Wearing white for Eastertide. Now, of my threescore years and ten, Twenty will not come again, And take from seventy springs a score, It only leaves me fifty more. And since to look at things in bloom Fifty springs are little room, About the woodlands I will go To see the cherry hung with snow. From far, from eve and morning FROM far, from eve and morning    And yon twelve-winded sky, The stuff of life to knit me    Blew hither: here am I. Now—for a breath I tarry    Nor yet disperse apart— Take my hand quick and tell me,    What have you in your heart. Speak now, and I will answer;    How shall I help you, say; Ere to the wind’s twelve quarters    I take my endless way. With rue my heart is laden WITH rue my heart is laden    For golden friends I had, For many a rose-lipt maiden    And many a lightfoot lad. By brooks too broad for leaping    The lightfoot boys are laid; The rose-lipt girls are sleeping    In fields where roses fade.

      It's worth taking a good look, too, among Housman's Last Poems all of which can be found here. His Preface to the poems may well be one of the saddest things I've ever read.

Bold Strokes

      "You can just feel the artist's passion leaping off the canvass..."

Three Sheets To The Wind

      It seems the word "unchivalrous" has a new definition.

My Good Deed Of The Day

      Since you're not gonna abstain, here's the least this blog can do. And remind you to please, please, please wash your hands afterwards.

It's Alright, Ma (He's Only Reading)

      It's official: Bob Dylan has now been added to the canon. Dylan's response? "Blah blah blah blah blah."

Yo, Yo, Yo, Ma Homeboy Ed

      Three words that will trouble you for the rest of your natural lives: Ed. Broadbent. Rapping.

Trouble In The Ranks

      Who knew there were ethical Bramptoids? Colour this blog impressed.

"I'll Be Your Lightning Rod Of Hate!"

      It looks like Dalton is dressed to the nines. I'll try not to gloat too much. *titter* *involuntary chuckle* *silence* *uncontrollable laughter followed by fits of fist-pounding on the floor*

      *swallowing back laughter in a vain attempt to be decorous* I'm sorry, I shouldn't be so smug. But.... *control* Let's just say, not even Dogberry wouldn't have done this to himself.

      This Just In: Dalton Camp, from beyond the grave, has asked to have his given name changed to "Wilbur." In respect and deference, this blog will now refer to him as such.

      (Points, by the way, to anyone who can name the source of this entry's title. Hint: he's the Patron Saint of Slightly-Balding Canadian Comedians.)

Hejjabawoojahbawhatsis?!?!?!

      Whoda thunk it? Natch! How dare they make me sound respectable!   

      (From today's Toronto Star, page D4)

      Key afterthought: "Slightly geeky"? Slightly?!?!?!

Why You Should Know Your Alec Guinness Movies

      Anyone remember the film The Last Holiday? This blog's betting these people are wishing they had. Oh, Mr. Priestley....

Makin' The Grade

      Parents, you might want to ask your kids what summa cum laude really means these days.... *snicker*

Reasons For Moving

      I think I've finally found *gulp* home....

      [Dr J wipes away a tear from his eye and smiles as the chorus of "Up Where We Belong" crescends in the background.]

Electile Dysfunction

      Paul Wells has a funny-- and typically on-point-- article in Macleans on, among other things, what might happen if nobody can form a majority in parliament. This blog's favourite bit is about Governor-General Adrienne Clarkson, and it sounds like it could have been lifted right out of Dave Barry: "I have been to Rideau Hall and I think it is only fair to warn you that she and her husband sometimes discuss literature when they think nobody can hear." Heaven forefend!   

---

UPDATE:    Stumbled upon this funny prediction quoted on David Olive's blog (see Day 15):

David of Waterloo, Ont. writes: "My election prediction: Liberal majority. Once people realize the Alliance (let's face it) might actually win, they'll come back to reality and see how insane that party really is. Then again, if the Liberal slide keeps going, I wouldn't mind seeing Jean Chrétien ride down Parliament Hill, white horse and white beard, saying 'I come back to you now, at the turn of the tide.'"

Sorry, but I found that too good to resist. Just picture it.

---

UPPERDATE (with a thought to blow your frickin' minds):    Excuse me a moment if I sound like Angela Lansbury, but it seems there's another possibility in all this that no one has yet considered. Say none of the parties can form a majority by any means possible-- the Conservatives can't sucker any Liberals over; the Liberals and the NDP refuse to work together, or if they do it's still not enough; et cetera, et cetera. The spoiler at this point is NOT the NDP but the Bloc, holding enough seats to spoil anybody's majority. There is an answer to this, beyond that of another election call. The three federal parties-- and they would never want to speak of having to do such a thing-- could, fathomably could, unite for one purpose and one purpose only, to create a makeshift government of the three parties that could band together to piece together and approve (wait for it) legislation that would disallow political parties whose stated goals are committed to the dissolution of Canada as we now know it. Whoa.

      Think about this a moment, not as a viable act but merely as a hypothetical. Does anyone remember the discussion after the Bloc's creation about whether or not the government should recognize them as a legitimate political party? The argument against the recognition of the Bloc was that its intentions were inherently treasonous, and thus should not be allowed to participate in parliament. This argument was defeated and the Bloc were "allowed" to exist within parliament. BUT, BUT, BUT.... Couldn't the other three parties, unable to form a majority in any way, align to disallow parties of such supposed intent? Would this mean the forced removal of such elected members from parliament -- and thus the evacuation of their seats? Couldn't this mean forced by-elections in as many seats as the Bloc wins, seats that would in the next by-elections have to vote for other parties (though not necessarily any of the Big Three)? Whoa.

      It won't happen, I'm sure-- and I wouldn't recommend it, either; the political fallout would be disastrous (and probably unconstitutional), and we'd no doubt be Meeching it all over again. BUT, BUT, BUT.... It's not entirely beyond the pale of technical possibility, is it? No, I'm not advocating any of this, but if the situation of government was stalemated, could the parties use the situation as a means to remove the Bloc as a political force? Could they? Would they? No, of course, not.... But.....

      Whooooooooa.

Josef Scorcese?

      Oh, this takes me back to my long-neglected Eisenstein research: the cinematic obsessions of Josef Stalin. Talk about your postcards from the edge.   

Anything For A Good Booking Girl...

      This blog would like to iterate that it's always interested in a few good, ahem, titles.    

Blue Girls

      He's fairly-regularly reviled these days as one of the, if not THE, proponent of the so-called New Criticism -- of which Northrop Frye once fliply suggested that the reason it was "new" was because it had only been around since Plato-- but John Crowe Ransom was often a better poet than he is often now credited for being. Skimming through a few volumes today, I landed on this poem which has a kinder, gentler Yeatsianism about it:

Blue Girls Twirling your blue skirts, travelling the sward Under the towers of your seminary, Go listen to your teachers old and contrary Without believing a word. Tie the white fillets then about your hair And think no more of what will come to pass Than bluebirds that go walking on the grass And chattering on the air. Practice your beauty, blue girls, before it fail; And I will cry with my loud lips and publish Beauty which all our power shall never establish, It is so frail. For I could tell you a story which is true; I know a woman with a terrible tongue, Blear eyes fallen from blue, All her perfections tarnished -- yet it is not long Since she was lovelier than any of you. --- 1927

Click here to listen to "Blue Girls" and here to read a short biography of Ransom.

Ah, yes, it's the sort of poem feminists loathe-- one of those "You may be pretty now but you'll be old and bitter soon" poems-- and I think loathe unfairly. But you have to admire Ransom's technique here. His sense of a line is impeccable: the breaks are pretty much perfect, and his cadences are impressive. Notice how the phrase "blue girls" provides its own kind of apostrophic caesura in its line, keeping the surrounding parts of the instruction from being pretentious; it injects a kind of wistfulness into the line, a spondee in a field of iambs. The rhymes work wonderfully well, too-- not too heavy, not forced at all. The last stanza works suprisingly well, considering that once one hits the word "true" one knows what the poem's final word will be. But Ransom's deftness with pacing, I think, saves it: instead of keeping the quatrain structure, he stretched it out to allow the intercessionary (and semantically and rhythmically misleading) "blue" to deflect attention from the poem's otherwise telegraphed direction. This is also the sort of poem that would be well-suited to getting the uninculcated into poetry, its lyrical action clear rather than enigmatic, its musical qualities palpably lilting even for the most tone-deaf ear. I'd add Ransom to the list of poets who warrant reconsideration. Reconsideration, that is, when our concerns in the academic and reading worlds are more interested in the poetic than the political and ideological. This is a good poem to set out before a bunch of undergraduates to gauge their responses. I'm willing to bet that most, if not all, of those that disliked the poem would be objecting to its subject rather than its technique, or its poetic qua poetic qualities. I'm thinking more and more that it's necessary to expose the extent to which people young and old are judging literature based on their own assumptions rather engaging a work on its own terms; that is, to expose the polemicists and the ideologues for what they more often than not are, talkers rather than listeners.

      Dare I note, too, that it it's also a poem worth faxing to Britney Spears. I'm not sure if she could read it, but....    

Big Daddy, JC and the Spook

      Whether for good or for ill, I suspect the lion's share of what Chantal Hébert argues in this piece is true. Would the big JC have survived the McSquinty Factor? Who knows. Chrétien would, however, have been much more tenacious -- and much more politically astute. Say what you will, Chrétien was a formidable campaigner, and it's hard to imagine him making the same mistakes that Martin has made-- or, rather, that Martin's idiotic Earnscliffe handlers have let him make. Martin, it seems, is a senior-aged Hamlet-- trying too desperately to live up to a dead father's image, while trying to escape the shadow of a King he disdains, and his uncertain definition of himself is causing him more problems than he can handle. He may eventually get the job done, but if he does, it will certainly be at much greater cost than he originally thought.

"Obi-Wan Was Wise To Hide Her From Me...."

      "His failure is now complete."   

      By the way: 23 percent, my ass. All of the statistics I've seen lately have suggested the number is around twice that (and then some).

There's A Seed In Your Teeth

      This blog shudders to think what might have happened if anyone had asked for Grey Poupon.

      So wrong, so very, very wrong....    

Bawdy Czeching

      Just wait until they come up with a Canadian version of this with hockey instead of soccer. It would, of course, have to be hosted by a woman named --- wait for it; don't get ahead of me here; let's hold the pause long enough that everyone realizes that we're heading toward the same inescapable punchline; is he really gonna say it, everyone wonders, the words "You bastard" waiting, just dying, to be said; oh, yeah, the anticipation is there, it's just a matter of time, a matter of course, inevitable, like maple syrup sliding off the edge of your bread or sidewalks icing over in December; yes, it's unavoidable, it's fate, it's... you guessed it... --- Dawn Cherry.

      Your may now begin rolling your eyes and groaning in comic agony.

The Whiteness Of Straight Ways

      Considering the current trends toward Puritanism, it seems to me worth recalling this poem from Anna Wickham.

Self-Analysis The tumult of my fretted mind Gives me expression of a kind; But it is faulty, harsh, not plain -- My work has the incompetence of pain. I am consumed with a slow fire, For righteousness is my desire; Towards that good goal I cannot whip my will, I am a tired horse that jibs upon a hill. I desire Virtue, though I love her not -- I have no faith in her when she is got: I fear that she will bind and make me slave And send me songless to the sullen grave. I am like a man who fears to take a wife, And frets his soul with wantons all his life. With rich, unholy foods I stuff my maw; When I am sick, then I believe in law. I fear the whiteness of straight ways-- I think there is no colour in unsullied days. My silly sins I take for my heart's ease, And know my beauty in the end's disease. Of old there were great heroes, strong in fight, Who, tense and sinless, kept a fire alight: God of our hope, in their great name, Give me the straight and ordered flame! --- Anna Wickham

I think the desire for the straight and ordered flame is natural, but I think I prefer the colous of my (our?) sullied days. It's hard to believe in sinless heroes anymore, but this blog suspects that if there were truly such people (forgiving, of course, those nasty notions of "Original Sin" and the like) they would have to be tense, very tense indeed. It's one thing to desire righteousness: it's another thing entirely to to be slobbering at its feet.

Now He'll Outstare The Lightning

      In the words of John Mahoney in The American President, "There's never an egg-timer around when you need one." Or an Enobarbus.

Now They've Stuck Their Fingers In It

      People are going to start thinking that I have something against the Dutch, but here's yet another bizarre story coming out of the Netherlands which suggests that one-third of the male population will soon find itself ceremonially castrated.

My Life As A Verse

What Poetry Form Are You? I am, of course, none other than blank verse. I don't know where I'm going, yes, quite right; And when I get there (if I ever do) I might not recognise it. So? Your point? Why should I have a destination set? I'm relatively happy as I am, And wouldn't want to be forever aimed Towards some future path or special goal. It's not to do with laziness, as such. It's just that one the whole I'd rather not Be bothered - so I drift contentedly; An underrated way of life, I find.

According to this quiz, if I weren't blank verse, I'd be:

Short, terse, unfriendly, Yet sometimes quite emotive; I am the Haiku.

I think I'd rather have been a limerick or a cywydd llosgyrnog. :-)

All considered, it's a pretty good quiz, worth taking. See also this to determine your Haxor Handle, by which Doctor J is "Leth@l Nightshade" -- or, as Dr J, "Leth@l Toxin." My real name comes out as "Leet Lunix P0is0n," which simply boggles the mind.

Serious News

      Former American President Ronald Reagan has died. I can't say I respected him as a president or even as an actor, but his death is sad nonetheless. Nancy's words not too long ago were moving then and are worth remembering now given his long suffering from Alzheimer's Disease, quite possibly the worst thing that could happen to a person:

Ronnie's long journey has finally taken him to a distant place where I can no longer reach him.

RIP, Mr. President.

Little Bidding

      Curiously enough, nobody is interested in an Italian Job from Sharon Stone. *tsk, tsk, tsk*

Can We Say "Cold-Hearted Bitch," Boys And Girls?

      I knew you could.

"Just Doin' Our Job"

      There's nothing quite like a positive humourist.

A Raisin In The Sun

      I hope he won't mind me linking to it here, but RK's description of bottling wine is priceless.

Alabama Grope 'Em

      Dave Barry's column this week is on the Poker Craze in the states. It neglects, of course, to mention the real reason for the craze. Oh yeah, I'm in. ;-)

Her Boob Gets In The Way

      Ah, yes, the wit and wisdom of Jessica Simpson. Cousin Homer since described as "the smart one in the family."

And How Does The Defendant Plead?

      Not Guilty, Your Honour.

The Old Angrediad

      According to this, I'm a Linguistic Thinker and an Interpersonal Thinker. Knock me over with a feather. Here are the results explained.

Once You Pop, You Just Can't Stop

      In the words of Ralph Bellamy in Trading Places, "Sell! Sell! Sell!"

      Marketers: still straining to be anything more than their unicellular selves.

Pretty Maids All In A Row

      "Class, today I'd like to talk... er, to talk to you about... er, Shakesp... er... about Shakespeare's use of... supple, fine thighs and...."

      (For those of you getting your knickers in a knot, I assure you, no lecturer that I've known has honestly given a damn.)

And Paul Wells As Obi-Wan

      From Warren Kinsella's blog, this curious tale (again, quoted here for lack of permalinks at WK's site):

I just left CBC, and I cannot believe what I just did. Of all of the shameless stunts in which I participated, that was the most shameless. Hands down.

Mark Ross, a producer at CBC's election show Spinoff, called me and asked me to do this weekly political analyst kind of thing. Sure, said I, because I know Mark and trust him (sort of).

Fine. But Mark and my assistant Jo had an idea: in a play on the "Prince of Darkness" book marketing persona shtick, Mark asked me if I would do the start of the show in Darth Vader get-up. Ex-squeeze me? Darth Vader? Are you guys crazy?

Okay. Sure, I said, after consulting with my children, ages two to eight. I'll do anything once.

Keith Boag saw me walk in to CBC's gargantuan Front Street complex. I told him what they had asked me to do. Said he: "And you AGREED?"

Um, er, yes.

Anyway, you get to see Warren's ritual self-immolation on CBC television tonight at 8 p.m. on Newsworld.

And, no, I did not say: "DAVID HERLE! I AM YOUR FA-A-A-THER!"

I can't wait until next week when Andrew Coyne is dressed up in Princess Leia's bikini. *shudder* Hugh Segal, of course, would be Jab... no, I won't say that, I won't say that at all....

Blame It On The Juice

      Tell me, dear readers, what is the most disturbing aspect of this article:

A.   That OJ is "angry," or I guess "still angry" (or is that "angry again"?), with his wife;

B.   That he might actually be on television again;

C.   That it would be a Punk'd rip-off, as if we needed it;

D.   That we might be getting a rip-off of Punk'd, period;

E.   That Greta Van Susteren is still on television;

F.   That she would actually get in the same room as O.J.;

G.   That anyone still gives a damn what O.J. has to say;

H.   That O.J. seems to have made no progress in finding "the real killer" (yeah, right);

I.   That seven years later, this story, herpes-like, can come back to haunt us;

J.   That I could actually find nine things to be disturbed by in a 400-word article;

or K.   Fuckin' all of the above.

Suddenly, I'm thinking that if we have to have another Simpson on television, Jessica might not be so bad after all.

Too Long In Exile

      From The Van Morrison Website comes this teaser:

Rumors of a Toronto gig for Van at the Molson Amphitheater on September 3rd. It should be noted that there has been no official comfirmation of this yet, but until then it makes a good conversation topic.

Considering it's been over nine years since he dropped by Toronto, I'd say he's due (long overdue, in fact), but I won't get my hopes up. Ah, memories....

The Lynndie-Hawk

      Curiously enough, I can see this happening sooner or later.

      On an eerie side note: from the Separated at Birth? file:

The pixie-ish Canadian novelist, playwright and media-personality Ann-Marie MacDonald....

and the smiling, dogface sadist (and "entertainer of the troops") Lynndie England.

I think Northrop Frye would have described Ms England as Ms MacDonald's demonic parody. I'm sorry, Ann-Marie, wherever you are. Is it ironic that Ms England redefined the phrase Fall On Your Knees? Meh? I know, I'll behave myself.

      Parenthetic post-script: The resemblance between the two is actually more pronounced in the Abu Ghraib photos, but I'd rather not post those things here for reasons that should not need stating.

The Paper Chase

      It seems that Brian Linehan has passed away at the age of 58. Any of you reading this outside of Canada may not recognize Linehan, but he developed a very particular reputation within Canada, and within the Hollywood community. Within the Hollywood community, he became the interviewer everybody sat down with, even more elusive types like Madam (she who ordains the world with her presence) Streisand, in part because he would give intensive interviews, and he would constantly stun his subjects with the depth of his research. In Canada, he was often described as -- dare I say it?-- the gay Don Cherry. Linehan's questions were notorious (see Martin Short's spot-on imitations of him from SCTV) for their length and their complexity, questions that would have made Dick Cavett seem like Geraldo Rivera. The irony, though, is that because of Linehan Canada got to see aspects and dimensions of major celebrities that were very seldom seen in American coverage. Linehan was the ultimate name-dropper, but say what you will, he managed to do some damned good interviewing, especially in the late 1970s. R.I.P., Brian.

Provocative Thought Of The Day

      Imagine, just imagine, if Marc-Boris St. Maurice-- say that ten times fast-- won in his riding.... (Strangely enough, this political coverage is provided to you by Australia's The Age, and the reporter in question evidently thinks Stephen Harper's first name is Ian.)

The Burning Bush

      Ya gotta have faith, a-faith, a-faith....

      Galling, absolutely galling.

Things That Go Lump In The Night

      Aw, FUCKSTICKS.

      Now you, too, can be ribbed for her pleasure....

      THIS JUST IN: Guys everywhere begin using the phrase "I'm dyin' for ya, baby" during sex. Women everywhere are unimpressed.

Perhaps The End Of The Beginning

      Excuse me a moment while I respond to this article: HAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHA!!!! *cough, cough, hack, hack, mild suffocation, deep breath, deep breath, extended pause* HAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHA!!!!!!

      I'm sorry. I shouldn't respond so cynically. Then again, there are two things that Churchill said that could fit comfortably in the Dubster's mouth: "History will be kind to me for I intend to write it" and "Broadly speaking, the short words are the best, and the old words best of all." Does anyone else, by the way, find it eerie that Churchill once told Roosevelt that he should call the Second World War "The Unnecessary War"? Churchill would have appreciated the irony in remembering this now. (Winnie, on the other hand, would have been dumbfounded by Bush's capacity to mangle even monosyllables.)

More News From The Nether Regions

      Parents to children: U Can't Dutch This.

Like A Tenet To A Pelting-Farm

      CIA Director George Tenet has resigned, effective in July, for "personal reasons." Ah. Translation: he's not jumping from the plane, he's being pushed, golden parachute et al. Is this punishment for the various errors and mismanagements of the CIA in recent years? I don't think so. My Spidey-sense tells me there's something coming down the pike, and Tenet's "resignation" is a pre-emptive (or preventative?) measure. We shall see.

      Update?: Hmmmmm.....

      Upperdate: Double "Hmmmm....."

More Onomastopoeia?

      Imre Salusinszky's triad of columns on ironically-named professionals has a few doozies in them, but my favourite bit comes at the end of the second piece, as he attends to the criticism that this gimmick has been done before. Imre's measured, polite response?

Several readers, by the way, point out that the New Scientist ran a popular column on this names and jobs theme for many years; one of those readers even accuses me of "reinventing the wheel".

First point, I have no plan to submit any of this material in fulfilment of the requirements for a PhD. Second point, it just goes to prove the old saying that you can please some the people all of the time, and all of the people some of the time, but you'll never please a bunch of callous bastards who have no idea what it's like to bleed your heart and soul onto this page twice a week.

Which also explains why I'll be returning to this subject for a third, and final, time on Thursday.

Priceless. (Besides, by the way, Imre already has his Ph.D.)

      ADDENDUM: Reading such stuff, I count myself lucky, indeed. For a pseudo-academic, I have to have one of the best surnames ever.

Cuckoo For Cocoa-Puffs

      How would you like your fags tipped?

Don't Let It Go To Your Head

      Christie, you're welcome. ;-)

      Personally, I prefer "that frozen concoction that helps me hang on" that is the answer to #3 of the quiz at bottom. Wastin' away again.... Yeah, you all know it. Searchin' for my lost shaker of salt / Some people say there's a woman to blame / But I know it's nobody's fault....

Second-Hand Smoke

      Does anyone out there want to list all the movies and TV shows that would be "Rated R" if this model of Puritanism run amok is adopted? Casablanca. Hell, just about every Humphrey Bogart movie ever made. Columbo. The Simpsons. Lawrence of Arabia. Citizen Kane. Every Sherlock Holmes movie. Any movie with a spy in it. All The President's Men. Any biography of Winston Churchill and/or FDR. Any Marx Brothers movie. It will still, however, be wholesome family entertainment to watch buxom young women in the skimpiest clothing swallow animal recta on Fear Factor. I swear, people like this Stanton Glantz really need to get fucking lives. Oooohhh, our impressionable little children!!!

Head Of The Class

      It just gets worse and worse, doesn't it? This is just too disturbing even to joke about.

Sign Language

      An early morning stroll through the neighbourhood-- okay, I was off to get cigarettes, so sue me-- brought me to a peculiar realization, that nowhere in my neck of the woods if there to be found a sign for the Liberal candidate. It's almost entirely NDP signs with the odd Conservative one (I'd say the NDP signs outnumber the Conservative signs 6 to 1, maybe 7 to 1), but not a Liberal one in sight, not even in front of the Main Street Mom-and-Pop shops, not even on the lawns of the people in the neighbourhood most adamantly Liberal in the past. Not a one. Considering this is Sheila Copps' old stomping-ground, this is truly bizarre. I'm sure there are signs in other places, particularly in Stoney Creek, but not here. Four blocks to the west of my house, the electoral boundary shifts, where Stan Keyes is running for the Liberals. He's not faring any better there, either, if the signs are any indication. I wonder how many people in this area are planning on voting Liberal but are deciding this time not to put signs out. At least in this area, it looks like a Liberal wasteland, the typical red and whites gone underground like Catholics in the old Soviet Union. I knew there was anger about-- hey, who didn't?-- but who knew it was this bad? I wonder if the Liberals have decided just not to bother, given the trouncing they got in the recent provincial by-election to replace the deceased Dominic Agostino, when they no doubt saw the anger with the provincial Liberals played out before the budget came down. I've got to admit, I've never seen it like this before, ever. The Liberals aren't just falling in the polls: they've quite literally become, it seems, personae non grata. The next four weeks are going to be really interesting. There's desperation in the air, and everyone can smell it.

      Addendum: Did a little scan through the archives here. Imagine what I found. See also these astonishingly prescient remarks on Dalton McSquinty. I can't say I've been right about everything (here's a good case in point), but I'm feeling a little I told ya so-ish right now, however distasteful it may be to be so. ;-)

Y Tu Harry También?

      Looks like the reviews (including this one from the NYTimes) for Harry Potter and the Prisoner of Azkaban are pretty positive the change in directors. It looks, however, like there are a few surprise appearances in the film, including Julie (Educating Rita, Calendar Girls) Walters and Lara herself, the other famous Julie currently playing Thetis in Troy. It looks, however, like John Cleese has been cut from the film. Wonder if this has something to do with the recent decapitation fad worldwide that Nearly Headless Nick has wound up, as they say, on the cutting-room floor.

But Momma....

      After Steel Magnolias, one has to wonder if there's hope for the world yet. And, yes, I am a mean-spirited sonuvabitch. This should not be news to any of you. ;-)

      By the way, to the evil person that suggested there should be Olsens Eleven and Olsens Twelve films: you are going *straight* to Hell. You know who you are.

From The Mail Bag

      From an email directed to (at?) Yours Truly:

You can't stop teaching and making jokes. You're compulsive, you know that?

Probably, probably. (Alternate answer: Duh.)

Better From Ezra

      Here, one of the better poems of Ezra Pound, at least in my worthless estimation:

A Virginal

No, no! Go from me. I have left her lately.
I will not spoil my sheath with lesser brightness,
For my surrounding air hath a new lightness;
Slight are her arms, yet they have bound me straitly
And left me cloaked as with a gauze of aether;
As with sweet leaves; as with subtle clearness.
Oh, I have picked up magic in her nearness
To sheathe me half in half the things that sheathe her.
No, no! Go from me. I have still the flavour,
Soft as spring wind that's come from birchen bowers.
Green come the shoots, aye April in the branches
As with winter's wound with her sleight hand as she staunches,
Hath of the trees a likeness of the savour:
As white their bark, so white this lady's hours.

Good, isn't it? So much better, I think, than the everso-desperately polymathic cantos that eventually plagued him to his death. It's also one of his very few sonnets. I love the use of the verb "staunches" in the twelfth line, as I do the entire eighth line, "To sheathe me half in half the things that sheathe her," surely a marvel of syntactical origami. And, alas, Pound's toughness with a romantic impulse is perfect: strange to think of days when one-- okay, I, though surely I am not the only one-- clung to a notion of an ideal instead of sidling up with the present.

      Strictly for quirk's sake, here's Pound's revision of the (anonymous) Middle English lyric "Sumer is Icumen In" (included at right for comparison):

Ancient Music Winter is icummen in, Lhude sing Goddamm, Raineth drop and staineth slop, and how the wind doth ramm,          Sing: Goddamm. Skiddeth bus and sloppeth us, An ague hath my ham. Freezeth river, turneth liver,          Damn you, sing: Goddamm. Goddamm, Goddamm, 'tis why I am, Goddamm,          So 'gainst the winter's balm. Sing goddamm, damm, sing Goddamm, Sing goddamm, sing goddamm, DAMM.

Sumer Is Icumen In Sumer is icumen in, Lhude sing, cuccu! Groweth sed and bloweth med And springth the wude nu. Sing, cuccu! Awe bleteth after lomb, Lhouth after calve cu Bulloc sterteth, bucke ferteth. Murie sing, cuccu! Cuccu, cuccu, Wel singes thu, cuccu. Ne swik thu naver nu! Sing cuccu nu, sing cuccu! Sing cuccu nu, sing cuccu!

Strange, isn't it? After all, most of us read Pound and end up sighing Goddamm.

      In discussion of Hopkins, RK mentioned Pound's The Seafarer. Here it is for those of you that have never read it before. The phrase "journey's jargon" is one for the ages, as is "a lasting-life's blast." Add them to your vocabularies, especially those of you in courses: use the first phrase in one of your classes in riposte to some academic pretension, and I will acknowledge you forever as "Grasshopper." Don't worry, you won't have to call me "Sensei." Unless, of course, you really insist upon it. ;-)

It's Off From Neder-Nederlands

      This blog has it on relatively good authority that this is not how RK got to Canada. Relatively. ;-)

Girls, Girls, Girls

      With the sickos of the world gathering around their timepieces awaiting The Blessed Turn, one wonders to whom said hitless wonders will next turn their pederastic attention. My bet is here. Then here. Just watch. Bets anyone?

      (And Jodie Foster thought she had it tough. I shudder to think how many Hinckleys are out there in wait.)

It's A Hard-Knock Life

      From the front page of today's Hamilton Spectator:

Rage Against Liberals Scaring Off Volunteers

      Local Liberal candidates are having trouble getting volunteers willing to be yelled at-- or even curses-- when they carry the party's message door-to-door.
      Liberal volunteers say they are having trouble recruiting people because of increasing anger at the party. Veteran Liberal politicians who had been sitting on the sidelines are suddenly being called upon to work for Tony Valeri in Hamilton-East-Stoney Creek.
      Canvassers say the party is falling back on a phone campaign in some areas because it's safer [emphasis added] than risking face-to-face tirades. All candidates say voters are cursing and lashing out at the Liberals when volunteers come canvassing.

'Tis to laugh. Not only are the Liberals afraid of the electorate, they're AFRAID of the electorate.

      I love the smell of napalm in the morning.

"Oh, Hey, Man, Where Were We?"

      The Marijuana Party has opened its campaign-- a week late. Ironists everywhere giggle.

I'll Huff And I'll Puff

      Pardon me while I go on a short rant here, but the claim made in this article is nothing less than utter bullshite. The claim: that banning smoking in bars and restaurants encourages people to quit smoking. To the simple-minded, this might seem viable. To those of us with any practical experience, this is self-justifying terditry (another Dr J-ism). This does not encourage people to quit, at least not "quit" cigarettes properly; instead, it creates a culture of beggary, as people (by the barful) claim to be "non-smokers" but then proceed to beg and pleade smokers in such establishments to bum one or two or several when they're among their company. These people are not "causal smokers," as the term is often bandied about; rather, they are "closet smokers," smokers who hitch themselves onto others for the sakes of their own financial and personal convenience. (They are otherwise known as "leeches.") People will still go outside if they want to smoke. The damage to be done here is in the alternate form of "quitting": the people that will quit going to restaurants and pubs because it has now become an inhospitable environment.

      Let's also get another thing clear: governments don't give a good god damn about the "health of smokers" and encouraging them to quit. I assure you, they do not. The banning of smoking from all establishments-- to the point even of removing the options of "Smoking Only" establishments which would be an "Enter At Your Own Risk" proposition for all concernced, clients and staff-- is a gesture of political pandering to the convulsive streak of Puritanism in North America. Governments, we're stumpingly told, tax cigarettes highly "because of health concerns"; they ban public access to smoking areas to "save people from exposure"; they make rules for the operation of smoking-allowed establishments so financially prohibitive as to discourage establishments from going against the directed grain. But the concern for public health is HORNSWOGGLE. If any government was really that concerned about smoking as social endemic, they would BAN it, or they would criminalize it: they would discourage access to the supposedly dangerous substance rather than discouraging one's right to use it. Why don't they do this? Because of the obvious: TAXES. Governments would make the whole-hog shift to criminalization if they weren't benefitting greatly from the revenue gathered by taxation (and, they wouldn't encourage tobacco farmers, as various levels of government, including the federal and provincial Liberals currently, do). Governments have a choice: they can make tobacco illegal, depress certain agricultural and industrial area, lose taxation revenue, but take a clear and consistent stand on smoking as public health issue; or they can keep it legal, continue to take in taxation revenues (hefty ones, at that), but make themselves complicit inheritors of that which they dissuade. Governments are like children watching their parents with a swear jar: they claim not to want to be around the damaging language, but they also wait for mommy and daddy to swear so they can benefit from it; they may not like mommy and daddy swearing all the time, but they know it's inevitable, so (g'all darn it!) they're gonna get what they can out of it. It's win-win! Hypocrisy triumphs again.

      So, let's get this straight. This whole process is NOT about public health; never has been, never will be. It is about political appeasement, about putting on "responsible" social airs, about laying claim to a pretense of moral authority. But this is all blatantly hypocritical. Imagine the government selling you what it describes as a poison, but then telling you that you can't use it anywhere publically. If the government is the crack-peddler, it has to allow people to run their crack-houses. If it's legal, there's no constitutional rationale for "banning." Limiting, yes; governing and controlling, yes; but banning, no. By my reading of it, the bylaws introducing such measures are profoundly unconstitutional and illiegitimately intercessional on the rights not so much of smokers but of business operators, all of whom -- and not the governments, which will, of course, be out in force to levy heavy, heavy fines for breaches of the new laws-- will be paying a price for all this, a price which, of course, will not be the government's problem.

      Added note: has anyone considered the idiotic implication of these bylaws? Minors-- from babies to adolescents-- can now enter bars again. Oh, I'm absolutely certain the kids in these bars-- especially those 16, 17 and 18 year-olds, lurking in the corner, pretending just to be having Cokes-- will have no trouble getting around the serving regulations. Congratulations, you moronic, hypocritical municipal governments, you may have created a monster perhaps even more damaging than smoking. Give it time, people, give it time.

      Rant over. I'll now shut the bloody hell up. As soon as I imagine the possibility of a group called MADAS: Mother Against Driving After Smoking.

ADDDENDUM: I'm reminded that laws governing the permission/banning of smoking in public places is generally under municipal rather than provincial or federal jurisdictions. Municipal governments, however, receive funding from both levels of government; and, more importantly, it seems to me highly bizarre that municipal proclamations should be able to override things which the national constitution does not prohibit.

Nip To Be Square

      Okay, I really, really, really should NOT link to this. Definitely not. *cough, cough* Hey, how did that happen? Damn, it's just so hard to control these things....

      (Sigh.... Reminds me of.... No-- no-- no-- Discretion, discretion, discretion.... Ah, better times.... )

Onomastopoeia?

      I don't even want to imagine the hell this poor man has been through in his life.

Let Your Fingers Do The... Er, Walking

      Suffice it to say, it's always more fun when you let somebody else do it for you, but if the need arises.... Just be careful: you might go blind doing that.

A Post By Any Other Name

      What was Orwell's instruction about breaking any rules rather than saying anything utterly barbaric? Evidently, even (especially?) our universities don't heed Orwell's warning anymore. (Well, to be fair, this isn't news, as RK and I both know all too well.) This blog's personal favourites:

Coordinator of Student Involvement. The job is daunting when one recalls that students are involved with members of the opposite sex, members of the same sex, blogs, Star Wars memorabilia, fashion accessories, and quantum physics.

Gender Faculty Specialist. I am not sure what that title means. But if this specialist is somehow responsible for determining the gender of faculty members, I would urge extreme caution.

Coordinator of Liberal/General/Interdisciplinary Studies. A mad slasher has discovered adjectives.

Coordinator of Organized Research. OK, it's only one adjective. But what are they trying to accomplish -- to distinguish organized research from disorganized research?

Pity the poor bastard that gets stuck with a title like "Coordinator of Interdepartmental Affairs."

Hell

      Yep, that's where I am right now. Awwww, Doctor J, what's wrong?, I can hear you all asking in that mock-pitying tone that you reserve for crying babies and mopey teenagers. *pout, pout* I am in the hellish position of having to put together a pedagogical statement which, for me, is like asking a baseball player how he (or I guess she) plays the game. Sure, there are core principles, core goals: sure there are basic tips and tacks; but it's all in the details, in the circumstances, in the actual act of doing -- as opposed to the often bloated pretensions of pedagogical theory. How does a hitter know when to swing at a pitch? How does he know how he should swing? And so on and so forth. Writing something like this isn't much different than asnwering questions like "Who are you?" or "What do you want?" (That one's for all you Babylon 5 fans out there, all two of you.) Sure, there are easy answers, obvious answers, but go any deeper than those, and one lands in a quagmire of explanations, complications, qualifications, and hesitations. I do what I do, and, I'm generally told I do it well and better than most. To theorize it, though, or to explain it, or to summarize it in terms of particularites of goal, method, or approach, and one opens up a Pandora's Box of questions such that one eventually feels like echoing Prufrock's declamation, "That is not what I meant at all." So the writing of this "thing" stops and starts and stops and starts, hems and haws and hews, and I eradicate the lot, pull out half my hair and start anew. Aaaargh. Writing this is-- pardon me, those of you dispossessed of a Y chromosome-- like trying to please a woman: something is always "not quite right," something is always missing, something is always begging to escape detection, there's always something. (Sorry if that sounds sexist, ladies, but I assure you, every man out there reading this is nodding in knowing agreement.) And yet, the more I try with this writing, the more I frustrate myself, the more things become unworkable, like those annoying Chinese Fingercuffs. I know, I know, the answer is just to relax, to ease one's way out. It just doesn't work that easily with writing. I wish it did. So here I remain, in Hell, though the rain outside suggests it's a watery inferno. Errrrrgh. Aaaargh. I am in Hell. Hell. Well, at least I know where everything is. *shrug*