Wistful Thinking

      The Not-So-Good Doctor found himself watching Shakespeare in Love last night for the first time since 99 (?), and realized how much that movie was a kind of temporal marker in his own life, the period before it seeming rather fecund and ambitious, the period after a long creative drought. It's not the movie itself, by the way; it just comes in that bizarre period when Things Changed. Odd, and a little disquieting. The Old J (pre-1999) was very different than the one you read now. That kid-- and that he definitely was-- had no problems writing jejeune but ambitious stuff: he could peal through writing, and he did, including theses (two of 'em) and articles and even a few poems, too, though maybe 1 in 10 might have been worth saving from the archival abattoir. The J Since, well, not so much, he of so many false starts and derailments, daunting writer's block, and a general distaste for what he tries to write (and he hasn't written a single poem of more than a trifle since).   His imagination, well, just sort of went.   The former J knew something of the movie Shakespeare's spirit, if not his skill; the latter knows so much more about the skill (or more than he used to, though certainly not to mistaked for Will's knowledge), but has all-but-completely lost the spirit. A shame he can't reconcile the two, though surely if he could, he'd end up disspirited and unskilled.   *shrug*

      But back to the movie, and a radical shift from the third to the first person: As I was watching the movie's ostensibly "passionate" scenes (in the creative, romantic, idealistic senses of the term), I kept finding myself wincing, and not because of the saccharine elements of them. Instead, watching those scenes was a bit like sitting in a church to which one does not belong and awkwardly going along with notions one does not observe-- or, perhaps, ones one used to observe but have since abandoned (shades of Larkin's "Church Going," now that I think of it). As the saying goes, "confidence is what I had before I knew better." It's strange, and rather Blakean; the transformed innocent will come to hate the innocence that fostered change, while the cynical experienced figure, after a while, will want nothing more than to be as innocent as he once was, even though one can't just run back across the Vales of Har like Thel. Fools rush in.... (And perhaps what wise men fear most is being proven foolish.) But it was an eerie experience watching those scenes of passion again, like that of an agnostic listening to childhood hymns, the words no longer meaning much, the rhythms no longer familiar, so he looks askance and fumbles to repeat the words he thinks he should be saying. I guess that's what happens when one's doubts are stronger than one's desire to believe, a hapless, unromantic thing, Macbeth fidgeting with the king's ill-fitting clothes. So much for wistful thinking. One can still observe beauty in ceremony even if it leaves one cold, and maybe a bit queasy. I probably should have dropped an Irish sixpence somewhere.

      Strange to think, the things we end up checking at the door.

Church Going

Once I am sure there's nothing going on
I step inside, letting the door thud shut.
Another church: matting, seats, and stone,
And little books; sprawlings of flowers, cut
For Sunday, brownish now; some brass and stuff
Up at the holy end; the small neat organ;
And a tense, musty, unignorable silence,
Brewed God knows how long. Hatless, I take off
My cycle-clips in awkward reverence.

Move forward, run my hand around the font.
From where I stand, the roof looks almost new -
Cleaned, or restored? Someone would know: I don't.
Mounting the lectern, I peruse a few
Hectoring large-scale verses, and pronounce
'Here endeth' much more loudly than I'd meant.
The echoes snigger briefly. Back at the door
I sign the book, donate an Irish sixpence,
Reflect the place was not worth stopping for.

Yet stop I did: in fact I often do,
And always end much at a loss like this,
Wondering what to look for; wondering, too,
When churches will fall completely out of use
What we shall turn them into, if we shall keep
A few cathedrals chronically on show,
Their parchment, plate and pyx in locked cases,
And let the rest rent-free to rain and sheep.
Shall we avoid them as unlucky places?

Or, after dark, will dubious women come
To make their children touch a particular stone;
Pick simples for a cancer; or on some
Advised night see walking a dead one?
Power of some sort will go on
In games, in riddles, seemingly at random;
But superstition, like belief, must die,
And what remains when disbelief has gone?
Grass, weedy pavement, brambles, buttress, sky,

A shape less recognisable each week,
A purpose more obscure. I wonder who
Will be the last, the very last, to seek
This place for what it was; one of the crew
That tap and jot and know what rood-lofts were?
Some ruin-bibber, randy for antique,
Or Christmas-addict, counting on a whiff
Of gown-and-bands and organ-pipes and myrrh?
Or will he be my representative,

Bored, uninformed, knowing the ghostly silt
Dispersed, yet tending to this cross of ground
Through suburb scrub because it held unspilt
So long and equably what since is found
Only in separation - marriage, and birth,
And death, and thoughts of these - for which was built
This special shell? For, though I've no idea
What this accoutred frowsty barn is worth,
It pleases me to stand in silence here;

A serious house on serious earth it is,
In whose blent air all our compulsions meet,
Are recognized, and robed as destinies.
And that much never can be obsolete,
Since someone will forever be surprising
A hunger in himself to be more serious,
And gravitating with it to this ground,
Which, he once heard, was proper to grow wise in,
If only that so many dead lie round.

--- Philip Larkin, 1955

Eye On The Ball, People: A Tirade

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The Value of A Good Fuck

      As Lauren Bacall said in My Fellow Americans, "If you're going to use the F-word, go for the gold." C'mon, everybody, say it with me: Fuck, fuck, fuck, fuck, fuck, fuck.... Now don't you feel better?   

Little Bo Peep

      This blog ain't saying NOTHIN'. Nope. Nosiree.... *cough cough*    Ahem.   Nope. Not. A. Thing.

And The Fire And The Rose Are One

      You've got to be Gidding, er, kidding me:

Held over from earlier Jim Rose circuses is "French nationalist" Bebe Aschard, whose speciality is blowing fire out of her vagina in what Rose calls a "bush-burning" act.

Dear lord, it's the crowned twat of fire....      

      (And all shall be well and all manner of thing shall be well....)

      (Burning burning burning burning)

      In related news, let's hope John Kerry has been reading Paul Krugman today. Let's hope he's read him over and over and over again, because if Kerry keeps going the way he's going, that vagina's not going to be the only thing in flames....

Rip Torn

      Lads, ye may not want to follow this link.... Key quote: "The pain was incredible." No kidding....

      Lads, if ye did read that, read this as consolation.   It perishes the imagination to think about what would make her feel dirty....

Call It Woman's In Tuition

      For once, this blog wants to be an Indian giver.   

Can We Say "Irresponsible Journalism," Boys And Girls?

      I knew you could.   

      And in related news....

Lava

      I don't know entirely why, but I like this bit from Carol de Chellis Hill's Henry James' Midnight Song, a book so flawed in so many ways but which captures me however briefly in this exchange:

He [Doctor Freud] would not lose her [Anna Kleibourg-Quim; sic: one of the worst-named characters ever] now. He did not want to fail. He must listen now for the next few days. Or her rage, which was volcanic, would destroy his efforts totally.

I won't say more until I finish the book, but there's something quite effective about the prose, though I must admit that at this point I can't put my finger on it, save for the lurid dimensions. I think it turns on the words "he must listen," words all men must keep in mind, even those of us avoiding relationships as if they were contracted. There's also the irony there: for all of Doctor Freud's listening, he never was a very good listener. He always heard "by options." No wonder the lava stirred.

      BTW: Why the hell-- er, HELL-- am I reading prose again? It's almost guaranteed that I'll give up on these papers before I finish them, their style too eye-roll-inducing to warrant further reading. I (grrr, arrrgh) dunno. There are bits and pieces worth the while, though few & far between. In that quote I cited above, I hate, hate, hate the clause "which was volcanic," even if other parts do get me, often in spite of myself. This may also be why I appreciate Greene's cleavage, as opposed to Dickens' excesses: Greene's the butcher that seldom issues fat; both popularists, both "issue-based; " but GG trimmed where The Dick exacerbated and exaggerated. Both moralists, GG alway left you to riddle matters through. But as much as I regret the clause above, I like the synoptic effect: there's an immediacy, though surely not a delicacy, of which James would have approved, at least in effort if not in performance. Effort, or effect-- who knows at this point. So often effort becomes effect; just ask George Lucas. The titanism of effort can sometimes create an effect larger than artistry could ever engender.

      RK's probably right, that I should better discover Durrell, among others. But, I have to confess, this is also why I love Strand and Housman, and Heaney too, poets otherwise very different, that cleave to directness and a notion of essentiality. None has much patience for they would deem false arabesques. (Not that Durrell, does, either, but that's a matter to which I do not profess the ability to converse properly, at least not yet; my preliminary reading of Durrell suggests an attention to finery of experience that's better compared to James, but surely with a more continental mentality, though with a comparable gift for encapsulation.) Perhaps my perspective is too provincial, too typically Canuck-- and not in the best way (i.e., unvarnished and insular, though assuming oneself not to be the latter). I can't truly imagine an island, or what it means to live on one. I also can't imagine lava-- at least not as it truly is. I also can't imagine the idea of "polish," a fact against which I've always perhaps-Quixotically (and, admittedly, perhaps even intolerantly) railed. In the end I just know what I love. And as much as I may resent that love, or the fact that I do so, there's no escaping it. And perhaps love-- every now and again-- can create an effect larger than artistry could ever engender.

      I know, I know, I know. But allow me to pet my own dissheveled head for a moment. Even a mongrel's allowed the occasional stroke.

Ducking and Dyking

      RK has a very provocative post on his blog that is very much worth reading, though the Not-So-Good Doctor's comment (as Mr Stewart would say), "well, not so much." This blog would like to suggest one minor disagreement in terms, though. RK posits that:

The greatest temptation, when one becomes on Old Man, is to be a curmudgeon. There's a lot to be said for it: you can become a Character, and bop people over the head with your cane. But in the first place it means you become a bore. 'Oh, there's old RK on his hobby-horse again, waffling on about the decline of the world,' people say, and avoid you....

I dunno about that. What RK in his later sentences describes isn't (at least in my terminology) a "curmudgeon" per se, but a crank. This blog has always found curmudgeonly types rather distinct, and certainly never boring: cranks (and you can infer the repetitive insinuation in the word itself, the idea of operating a crank implying repetition) are intolerable; curmudgeons-- again, at least in this blog's experience and operating vocabulary-- are another story altogether. (My apologies for the overly-convoluted sentence-structure there.) Despite the various definitions given over the years (especially those associating the term with churlishness), in this age it's attached, at least to this mind (such as it is) to a kind of doggedness and persistence. It's also developed-- again, and perhaps only to this churled head-- the idea of concealment (and so it comforts me somewhat to see that dimension included in the etymological associations outlined in the attached link). Curmudgeons tend to be allegorists, though often cantankerous and usually guarded ones: stubbornness has become their trademark (and often eccentricity their outward facades); they're the deeper dimension of what I call cynics, those who expect the worst 90% of the time but secretly root for the 10% of the time they might be wrong. Admittedly, that's a personal definition, or a (perhaps) overly-personal determination. That's because, I think, (and it comes down to my own experience) curmudgeons really are among the most idealistic among us, but they don't ever want any of us to think of them in that way.   My father is a curmudgeon, but he's not a crank, by this definition; he'd never, ever, ever admit to optimism, or to hope, or anything of that gird; but everyone who knows him knows it's there, lurking beneath every grumbling glare. And I'd be a liar if I said I didn't inherit any of that.

      But in the end, I have come to respect it, at least as I define it (and perhaps some of you out there might have better terminology than I possess, especially as I write this, uncharacteristically over a bottle of mezza-mezza Merlot). Curmudgeons, unlike cranks, always share space with the miles gloriosus, or the braggart-warrior. They're always attached to another ideal, whether or not they ever represented or stood for it; but theirs is the idea of longeur, a not entirely inappropriate thing, even if it's more often than not couched in bristling terms.

      I admit, I may have-- somewhere along the line-- redefined the term in regard to my own experience (and-- p'shaw!-- my own self-image). If so, well, there we are. But a curmudgeon, in my knowledge, will, when the situation demands it, admit error, will (like the true cynic) admit when he's been proven wrong-- which the crank would never do. The curmudgeon seldom has to eat crow because (s)he's usually right, but (s)he will if the situation calls for it-- and (s)he will do it more in swallowed gladness than usurped pride.

      But maybe here I've Doctor Johnsoned myself into a fallacy, though, like a curmudgeon, I'd hesitate to admit so. What I will say is this-- that some people that I've known that others have described with that particular C word have been as idealistic, though generally cautiously so, as anyone else, and perhaps moreso idealistic for knowing what slings and arrows will assail when given the chance. And still they persist, perhaps scarred, but never entirely as jaded as they may purport. And in that fact alone-- or that interpetation alone, if you'll allow-- matters are telling. Sometimes the curmudgeon is the veteran who's been driven into the closet (or the cave, if you wish to avoid the homophilial implications of the previous association) and wants nothing more than to be able to come out.

      All of this is probably a very long way to saying this: curmudgeons don't bore me; more often than not, they inspire-- even if that's a liberty of definition I have taken with time and experience. Curmudgeons crank, I've learned, because they love something-- some idea, some principle, some fact-- so much they dare not trespass upon a meaning that betrays them, or that which they love. You can see it in their defensiveness, you can see it their recalcitrance; it's the skunk's stripe, if only any of us dare to see it-- and not flee from it prematurely.

      (POST-SCRIPT: And YES, it's okay to be arbitary, as long as you acknowledge that you're being arbitrary. It's like handing out that grain of salt before you dare to speak. I give said salt out in chunks-- and this time, in cases.)

Runnymede Redux

      Watching a bit of the First Ministers Meeting today, this blog caught part of Prime Minister Martin's address to the Premiers, and one thing was absolutely striking: the utter contempt with which the Premiers "listened" to the PM.   Ralph Klein was talking to others during the PM's speech; Jean Charest was the very face of disbelief and disinterest; even Martin-"supporter" Dalton McSquinty was straining at the bit of seeming interested in the PM's words. The entire group of provincial and territorial leaders looked like a smug group of undergraduates sitting through a painful lecture on the virtues of morality.   And through it all, PM PM looked desperate, straining to be heard above the relative silence, trying like the unpopular kid to be find a universal chord. He stumbled on his own words-- a lot. The last time I remember seeing such visible disdain for the PM at such a meeting was on the face of René Levesque whenever Trudeau dared speak.   The Premiers were nothing less than rude, and the PM seemed to be praying he'd be able to do his Sally Field impression sooner or later. It was sad, really. The Premiers know they've got Martin ass-up over a barrel, and they're exploiting the fact for all that it's worth. In short, they're gloating. And PM PM is King John, ambushed at Runnymede (though this blog can't help but note a bit of Richard II's brittle glory shining in his face).   Martin looked weak today, almost beaten, as if he knew that all he could do was try to save face in front of the cameras. One thing is now certain: the strength and confidence that surrounded Mr Martin as he came to the top job has now completely evaporated. Today made it patently obvious, that the PM is governing on borrowed time, his credibility now something of a joke-- or, to those like McGuinty comparatively sympathetic to him, a shade of a former self. And the barons are just loving this.   There's something uncivilized, and certainly indecorous, about it all. The only thing the Premiers haven't done is provide the PM with a crown of eggshells. It seems that while the Prime Minister may have won the election, he's lost the seat of power, and it's not likely that's going to change anytime soon. Welcome to Canadian feudalism: the vassals are in charge now.

Crow-Magnon Politics

      Important words from Bob Herbert for my American readers as November 2nd nears.   Unbelievable.

Shakin' The Scene

      From The New Yorker comes this consideration by Adam Gopnik of "the life" of Shakespeare, ostensibly in a review of Stephen Greenblatt's Will In The World.   (A portion of Greenblatt's book was modified and published in the NYTimes on Sunday-- of course, just in time for the new movie, focussing on "the Jewish question.") Gopnik's is a surprisingly good discussion (though perhaps too long to read comfortably online), though I suspect he lets Greenblatt off the hook a little too easily for some of his more awkward speculations; I shouldn't speculate myself as I haven't read Greenblatt's book yet, but SG is one of those radically-polarizing figures in contemporary literary criticism, and I've landed far more often than not on the opposite side of his New Historicist way of thinking.   His Renaissance Self-Fashioning, hailed by some as a landmark text, is also held by some of us as a pissing in the academic pool, so colour me wary-- not uninterested, but certainly a bit trepidatious. I'm more inclined to splurge on Kermode's most recent volume.   Hmmm.   We shall see....

      In a related matter, some of you might enjoy the absurdity of trying to get through this young woman's attempt to put Hamlet into a more popular idiom -- that of the "Shakespeare impaired." (Key words of hers: "Blame Willie Shakespeare, not me!") Check out some of these jaw-droppers:

• Hamlet: Yikes! Creepy! Are you a good or a bad spirit? Are you from heaven or Hell? Well, since you came in the shape of my late father, I'll talk to you. Hi, Dad. Answer me! Why did you come out of the grave? And why are you in armor? You're scaring everyone! Why Dad? Why?
  
  
• Hamlet, To Being or Not To Being: Do I really want to live? Should I go on like this, being miserable, and try to beat my enemies? Or should I just kill myself and get it all over with? Life sucks. I wish I was dead. Death is like a nice, long nap. But the problem is, what if I dream of horrible things? It's definitely something to worry about. If there wasn't anything to fear in the afterlife, why would anyone suffer through his rotten existance [sic]? Why deal with life's troubles when it all could be solved with a dagger? No reason...unless something bad might lie beyond the grave. No one comes back from the dead to tell us what it's like, so we go on living and being unhappy. Sigh. Man, I'm depressed. But...whoa, check it out. There's Ophelia!
  
  
• The Ghost: That jerk is insulting the whole of Denmark by what he's done. And he's sleeping with my wife! That's what really irritates me! But don't harm her. Leave your mom alone. Let heaven deal with her. Well, it's almost sunrise. I've got to go. Good-bye! Remember me!
  
  
• Horatio: If you're looking for woe, agony and tragedy, you've found it.
  
  
• This priceless exchange between Gertrude and Laertes after Ophelia's death: Queen: There is a willow tree that grows by a brook. She came there with all kinds of elaborate flower garlands. There were crowflowers, nettles, daisies, and long purples, (you know, the kind that shepherds have a dirty name for, but which young ladies just call "dead men's fingers".) Anyway, she hung her flowers on the tree, but the branch broke and she fell into the stream. The air in her clothes kept her afloat for awhile. She looked like a mermaid, singing snatches of old tunes. She didn't seem to realize she was in danger. She acted like she belonged there in the water. But she didn't belong there, and before long the air seeped out of her clothes and she was pulled underwater, and she went down to a muddy grave.
  Laertes: Then...she drowned?
  Queen: Duh! That's I just said! Weren't you listening?
  
  
• Hamlet, in The Bedroom Scene: Father! Look, there's his picture on the table. He's standing next to Uncle Claudius. You'd never know they were related, though. Father was a real stud, a regular old Greek god, the perfect guy. This was your husband. And then look at what happened. There's your new husband, who looks like he's been bludgeoned with an ugly stick! Can't you see? You traded Leonardo DiCaprio for Meatloaf! And you can't tell me you're in love with him. You're so old I'm surprised you can still have sex. I used to think you were a smart person, but even I, a madman, can see how wrong this is! Shame on you! You slut!
  Queen: Shut up! You have a point, but I don't want to hear it!
  

The real killer is this section (IV.v), which had me laughing despite myself:

[Ophelia wanders in, distracted.]
Ophelia: Where is the beauteous Majesty of Denmark?
Queen: Here. How are you, Ophelia?
Ophelia: [Sings.] La dee dah de dah! It's like raaaaaaaain on your wedding day! La dee dah de dah! It's down the end of Lonely Street, it's Heartbreak hotel! La dee dum!
Queen: Alas, poor dear, what does this song mean?
Ophelia: What did you say? Never mind, just listen! Whee! [Sings.] It's the story of a lovely lady, who was bringing up three very lovely girls! Tra la la dee dah! Mary had a little lamb... Dum dee dah dee dum! La la la la Bamba! Hee hee! Memory, all alone in the moonlight! La dee dah de dum!
Queen: Uh...Ophelia...?
Ophelia: Shut up and listen! [Sings.] Great big gobs of greasy grimy gopher guts! La dee dah! Welcome to the Hotel California! Whee! When you wish upon a star, makes no difference who you are! Hee hee hee! Que sera, sera, whatever will be, will be! Do re mi fa sol la ti do! Doe, a deer, a female deer! Ray, a drop of golden sun!
[Enter King.]
Queen: Geez, dear, check out poor Ophelia! She's gone totally mad!
Ophelia: [Sings.] Twinkle, twinkle, little star! How I wonder what you are! Doo bee doo bee doo! Strangers in the night! Lah de dah! Monday, Tuesday, Happy Days! Hee hee! Whee! Hakuna Matata! It's our worry-free philosopy! Hakuna Matata!
King: Are you okay, Ophelia?
Ophelia: Well, they say the owl was a baker's daughter. Your Majesty, we know what we are, but know not what we may be. Yippee yi ki yi!
King: Are you upset about what happened to your father, Polonius?
Ophelia: Oh, don't mention that. Now, everybody sing! [Sings.] And Iiiiiiiiiiii-yi-yiiiiiiiii will always looooooooovvvve you! Ooh ooh ooh ooh! R E S P E C T, find out what it means to me! When a man loves a woman...! La dee dah! So no one told you life was gonna be this way! Your job's a joke, you're broke, your love life's D.O.A.! Doo bee doo bee doo! Every night in my dreams, I see you, I feel you! That is how I know you go on! Rawhide! Gettum up, movem out! Rawhide! Everybody, sing!
King: You're right, honey, she is nuts!
Ophelia: I sure am! Totally nuts! Whee! [Sings.] Stayin' alive! Stayin' alive! Whoah oh oh oh, stayin' alive! Stayin' alive! Hee hee! Figaro, Figaro, Figaroooooooh! Do re mi fa sol la ti do ti la sol fa mi re do! Maria! The most beatiful sound I ever heard! Maria! Say it loud and there's music playing! Hee hee! La dee dah! Happy Birthday to you! Happy Birthday to you! Dum dee dum dee dum! Play that funky music!
King: How long has she been like this?
Ophelia: I hope everything turns out okay, but someday we'll all die. I will be able to lie by my dear father in the cold ground and get eaten up by worms. Yipee! Have you told my brother Laertes that Father is dead? Well, anyway, I've got to be going. Taxi! Good night, ladies. Good night, sweet ladies. Good night, good night.

   Hakuna matata....      You've got to love Claudius' imposed line: "You're right, honey, she is nuts!" Hilarious. Talk about going from the sublime to the ridiculous....

cummings and goings

      For reasons entirely inexplicable, reading tonight turned my toward e.e. cummings, a writer alternately brilliant and bewildering, but arguably one of the most capital-I "Innocent" poets ever to put verse to page. My attention tonight turned toward cummings' love poems, which for various reasons tend to get forgotten when people think about cummings. So this blog figured it would turn your eyes three of ee's love sonnets, each as charged and as provocative any more deliberately-lurid writing.

"my girl's tall with hard long eyes"

my girl's tall with hard long eyes
as she stands,with her long hard hands keeping
silence on her dress,good for sleeping
is her long hard body filled with surprise
like a white shocking wire,when she smiles
a hard long smile it sometimes makes
gaily go clean through me tickling aches,
and the weak noise of her eyes easily files
my impatience to an edge--my girl's tall
and taut, with thin ligs just like a vine
that's spent all of its life on a garden-wall,
and is going to die.   When we grimly go to bed
with these legs she begins to heave and twine
about me,and to kiss my face and head.

"sometimes i am alive because with"

sometimes i am alive because with
me her alert treelike body sleeps
which i will feel slowly sharpening
becoming distinct with love slowly,
who in my shoulder sinks sweetly teeth
until we shall attain the Springsmelling
intense large togethercoloured instant

the moment pleasingly frightful

when,her mouth suddenly rising, wholly
begins with mine fiercely to fool
(and from my thighs which shrug and pant
a murdering rain leapingly reaches the
upward singular deepest flower which she
carries in a gesture of her hips)


"i like my body when it is with your"

i like my body when it is with your
body.   It is so quite a new thing.
Muscles better and nerves more.
i like your body.   i like what it does,
i like its hows.   i like to feel the sping
of your body and its bones,and the trembling
-firm-smooth ness and which i will
again and again and again
kiss,   i like kissing this and that of you,
i like, slowly stroking the,shocking fuzz
of your electric fur,and what-is-it comes
over parting flesh....And eyes big love-crumbs,

and possibly i like the thrill

of under me you quite so new

And there are some wonderful phrasal delights ("silence on her dress," "white shocking wire," "we grimly go to bed," "intense large togethercoloured instant," "a murdering rain," "your electric fur," to name just a smattering). "And eyes big love-crumbs" has to be one of the most inspired phrases in all of romantic poetry. Beautiful stuff. Now go make love to somebody.

Priorities

Statistics Canada has estimated that provincial governments are spending 37 per cent of their budgets on health care -- it's as high as 43 per cent in Ontario -- compared to 6 per cent for colleges and universities. Ottawa, too, is plowing far more money into health care than postsecondary education and research. In rich provinces such as Ontario and Quebec, the ratio of health care to spending on colleges and universities is 7 to 1.

Here's hoping the Prime Minister is reading Jeff Simpson today.

Martha Washington's Chocolates

      The History Channel in the US has decided do disinter the fetid corpse of The War of 1812 to put forth the sickening pule of American jingoism.   Oy vey.   My American readers will no doubt have difficulty understanding why the War of 1812 remains a Canadian sore-spot, even if "Canada" as we now know it didn't exist at the time.   Part of it is the extremely selective memories of our neighbours (once invaders), who tend to claim the war was something that it certainly was not, an attempt to liberate the northern colonies from the British yoke. Blech. Pap. Garbage. It was an invasion, a pure old-fashioned land-grab (timed while the Brits were supposedly distracted with the Napoleonic wars), and it didn't take. What few people outside of Canada realize is the extent to which "Canadian identity" was defined by the War of 1812, by the refusal to be a part of America. For all the jokes about Canada being "America Junior," there's no better way to get a Canadian's dander up than to call him or her an American: whatever a Canadian is, a Canadian is NOT an American, a principle held proudly, and sometimes quite fiercely, by most of my countryfolk. And Canadians, almost as a rule, tend to harbour some residual resentment for the War of 1812, a war Americans claim they won and which Canadians claim otherwise, with the latter obviously being the truth (or else, as the satirist Eric Nicol once wrote, we'd be eating Martha Washington's chocolates right now).

      The current spin on the burning of Washington as a terrorist attack roughly analogous to the attacks three years ago is also rubbish. The razing of the White House (still a source of pride for some Canucks) was largely the response of a bunch of drunken Fenians responding to the initial gestures of American *ahem* "liberation." It was tit-for-tat, classic one-up-manship; it was a variation on "the Chicago way," if you remember The Untouchables:

You wanna know how you do it? Here's how, they pull a knife, you pull a gun. He sends one of yours to the hospital, you send one of his to the morgue! That's the Chicago way, and that's how you get Capone!

The principle? They attacked us, so we went for their capital and sent Dolly Madison racing out of the White House with paintings in her hands. The lesson? Don't fuck with us.   Alternately: What goes around, comes around.

      I suppose it may seem tasteless writing about this stuff on September 11th, but there's also a purpose to it. For all of the very sincere tributes to those lost on this day three years ago, there's also a lot of mythmaking and falsification, the deliberate misconstruing of history for alternate purposes. It's a syndrome to which the United States seems perpetually susceptible, whether it's the declaration of a victory in 1812, or the "we-saved-the-world-in-WW2" pap that handily ignores the awfully-convenient American delay in entering the war. The History Channel's butchery of history should serve as a reminder of the dangers of twisting history to the point of inaccuracy (hello, Mr Bush; how are those weapons of mass destruction treatin' ya?). We all have to beware the tendency to see things as want to see them rather than as they were or are. We do a great disservice to those we lost when we distort the truth and indulge in grotesque nationalist vanity.

      As for today, well, I'll just refer you to what I wrote at this time last year. I said then that perhaps understanding is a luxury of the living. I still think that's true, but, as we all know, sitting at our computers surfing the web, even luxuries can eventually become necessities. Understanding may be a luxury, but misunderstanding is a corruption and it lingers and taints the ways in which we look at the world. Damn those unruly facts....

      (With that, I'm remembering Colin Mochrie's lacerating "Apology to Americans" (video here; requires Real Player) that so beautifully typifies Canadian passive-aggressiveness.)

Hello. I'm Anthony St. George on location here in Washington.

On behalf of Canadians everywhere I'd like to offer an apology to the United States of America. We haven't been getting along very well recently and for that, I am truly sorry. I'm sorry we called George Bush a moron. He is a moron, but it wasn't nice of us to point it out. If it's any consolation, the fact that he's a moron shouldn't reflect poorly on the people of America. After all, it's not like you actually elected him.

I'm sorry about our softwood lumber. Just because we have more trees than you, doesn't give us the right to sell you lumber that's cheaper and better than your own. It would be like if, well, say you had ten times the television audeince we did and you flood our market with great shows, cheaper than we could produce. I know you'd never do that.

I'm sorry we beat you in Olympic hockey. In our defence I guess our excuse would be that our team was much, much, much, much better than yours. As word of apology, please accept all of our NHL teams which, one by one, are going out of business and moving to your fine country.

I'm sorry about our waffling on Iraq. I mean, when you're going up against a crazed dictator, you want to have your friends by your side. I realize it took more than two years before you guys pitched in against Hitler, but that was different. Everyone knew he had weapons.

I'm sorry we burnt down your White House during the War of 1812. I see you've rebuilt it! It's very nice.

I'm sorry for Alan Thicke, Shania Twain, Celine Dion, Loverboy, that song from Seriff that ends with a really high-pitched long note. Your beer. I know we had nothing to do with your beer, but we feel your pain.

And finally on behalf of all Canadians, I'm sorry that we're constantly apologizing for things in a passive-aggressive way which is really a thinly veiled criticism. I sincerely hope that you're not upset over this. Because we've seen what you do to countries you get upset with.

For 22 minutes, I'm Anthony St. George, and I'm sorry.

Tighter Than A Something-Something's Something

      Just a brief note to any of you that have sent emails in the past little while: my apologies if you haven't heard back, as I've been horribly, shamefully, miserably delinquent with most such cyber-correspondence, and now the blasted Inbox is a cocked-up travesty of Bushian proportions. So, if you're waiting (or have been waiting) to hear from me, try sending things again. Once again, everything's just been,as they say, a bloody rectum-tearing bugger. (You'll be thanking me, I'm sure, for that imagery.)

      In other matters: the Not-So-Good Doctor's trying to get a grapple on matters, and part of this has included the (p'shaw!) reorganization of his books. For those of you that have seen what usually constitutes The Wreckage, you know what a task this has been.   For those that are simply trying to fathom it, imagine trying to sort through God-Only-Knows-Anymore how many books into a space only slightly tighter than --- no, no, no, I won't finish THAT old joke. But it's at last finally done, or at least the preliminary sorting is done.   This is partially why there's been little on this blog of late about literature; it's a bit hard to talk about the finer details of fishing when one's drowning.

      So there we are. Things will untangle eventually.   Or so one hopes. Cheers.

Quartos Online: The Bloody Terrific British Library Exhibit

      Okay, you KNEW this blog was going to link to this sooner or later, didn't you? Didn't you? Yeah, yeah, yeah, it was inevitable.   I am as constant as the Northern star... as all good Canadians should be....

      Actually, the scans are excellent (of which the one above is a smaller version; larger images are available so you could, at least in theory, read the entire texts online). It's fascinating just getting such clear glimpses of the texts without having even to lift one's ass from one's chair. It's too bad this sort of thorough exhibit was not available when I was teaching Shakie. See also this article from the BBC on the exhibit. The whole thing is just tits to knickers.

You've Got To Moooooove With The Mooooooosic

      Because we know, gay people all share the same fear of cows.  

      (This article brought to you by the Dutch Department of Really, Really Dumb Ideas.)

Hey, It's A Granular Problem!

      Well, it was only a matter of time before the New Puritans got bored with the smokers and the drinkers and sought out a new target.   It's that proverbial slippery slope, people.   (Pause. Thought: Does this mean I could get a tax refund? Oh, of course not, it wouldn't work that way....   )