Canada’s Conservative Stephen Harper Government Emulates, Flatters, and Praises by Imitation Assad, Kim Jong-il, Various Dictators, and Anti-Christian Fellow Travellers

The story:

Canada’s Minister of Natural Resources, Joe Oliver, has become the latest politician to blame the United States for problems affecting his own country.

 At issue is the so-called “Gateway” pipeline from Alberta to British Columbia that, if built, would allow Canada to ship Alberta tar sands products to Asia.

Piqued by an American deferral of the “Keystone” pipeline, which would run north from Alberta south to the Gulf of Mexico, the Harperites, as they are known in Canada, thought they’d play a little hardball with the U.S. and say that Canada would take its oil and ship it to China as a result of U.S. dithering over environmental concerns.

What the Harper government knew, though, was that there was already plenty of opposition to a Canadian pipeline across territory that includes First Nations (Indian) land.  In an effort to get out in front of any opposition, the Harper government, in the voice of hapless Joe Oliver, decided to blame environmentalist American “billionaire socialists” (warning: massive CBC advertising amplification!! http://www.cbc.ca/video/#/News/TV_Shows/The_National/1233408557/ID=2185209491) for any potential impediments to the east-west Canadian pipeline.

Just one part of the reason Minister Oliver could not rail against his own citizens (Natives) was because they’d already shown themselves to be fairly savvy with respect to business and resource deals, and had in fact made agreements that didn’t involve pipelines.  Can’t criticize at home, better go abroad, is what Joe was counseled.

The implications:

By so doing, the Harper government has become just the latest one to blame the U.S. for pretty well everything.  Typically, I’m right out in front of that one; I’m ready to blame the U.S. for just about anything, and generally the U.S. richly deserves it.  There are big and/or powerful countries out there, besides the U.S., that don’t choose to bankrupt themselves by meddling in other countries. 

Look at the dismaying cartoon strip that is U.S. politics.  I’d like to go on.  But sometimes, you do have to feel for the U.S., which does contain some good and sensible people that you don’t see on TV every night.  And here’s good ol’ Joe Oliver, Canadian government minister, joining every tin-pot dictator and knee-jerk wingnut in condemning the U.S. for messing up Canada’s *own* pipeline dreams.  

In an interview with a Canadian radio show (http://www.cbc.ca/asithappens/episode/2012/01/09/the-monday-edition-8/), barely coherent (drunk, sleep-deprived, IQ of 74?) Joe refused to (obviously couldn’t) identify the “billionaire socialists” he’d named above.  He dismissed the fact that fewer than 20 of 4500 of those who signed up to comment on Gateway were American; the rest, he implied (he used the word “parrot”), were merely the equivalent of those who signed petitions (grassroots democracy is a hell of a thing, as Stockwell “Doris” Day found out early).  Meanwhile, of the 250 or so intervenors—those who are allowed to ask questions and not merely offer a few words of comment—multinationals like Exxon figured remarkably prominently.

Speaking of parroting, Oliver’s contemptuous term for democracy, one could note how, in his own open letter, Oliver slavishly emulates Newt Gingrich, the man who has been, in books and speeches, indeed in marriages, standing “at a crossroads” for some decades now: “Canada is on the edge of an historic choice,” the Minister intones.  For his full letter, read here: http://www.nrcan.gc.ca/media-room/news-release/2012/1/3520.  It’s probably worthwhile reading since, because the Minister himself probably doesn’t have a clue what it says, it may give you a random point on a map from which you can then re-orient yourself towards whatever thoughts the Minister may have but is not likely to reveal (unless Harper tells/lets him/gets around to reading them first).

Prime Minister Stephen Harper and his Conservative government, through Minister Joe Oliver, are attempting to cheapen and debase Canadian politics once again, by making outlandish claims about U.S. “billionaire socialists” that they can’t substantiate and honestly never really intended to try to.  (And they probably got scared like hell by lawyers, and that only shows what hick rubes they really are.) Using the Assad mode, Harper is trying to blame foreign interference in Canadian affairs.  Oliver, parroting Kim Jong-il, is attempting to suggest that it is the U.S. that is attempting to undermine the Canadian state, and thus build up Canadian support for projects that, in democracies, would come under public scrutiny.

A Handful of Hard Facts:

It may be that, relatively speaking, pipelines don’t present so much incredible danger.  In the sense that a loaded gun pointed at your head if the trigger isn’t pulled doesn’t present danger, or a bathtub full of water won’t empty if you don’t pull the plug, surely pipelines don’t present much danger.  But Americans just watched an Enbridge pipeline spill into a Michigan river, so how could anyone expect Oklahomans to leap with gaiety at the thought of a TransCanada spill in their own aquifers? 

As Natives point out, one massive oil spill off Kitimat could have ramifications for generations or more—this—this merits Minister Oliver’s contempt.  A man who probably couldn’t find Kitimat on a map with oven mitts is now in charge of it.  There is much to fear.

Get serious, Canada, you don’t even own the sludge you want to export, anyway; China sure as hell isn’t going to wait on a pipeline when it can just come over and buy pretty much anything it wants and mock Canadian energy sovereignty: http://www.calgaryherald.com/business/Chinese+firm+buys+full+stake+oilsands+project/5943628/story.html  Canadians might just as well live in Guangdong and murder dissidents and serve tea while they’re at it for all Minister Oliver knows or cares about his file. 

Gutless Joe Oliver, in defense of the American multinationals (not those chimerical “billionaire socialists”) he wants to build Canadian pipelines, quails and wheedles and whinges that Canada just doesn’t have what it takes to develop its own tar sands.  You go tell Tommy Douglas, or Lester Pearson, or, for that matter, John A. Macdonald, that.  (In his letter, that one of his 18-yr-old staffers wrote, Oliver hails Macdonald.  But what his keen undergraduate hiree doesn’t know, and what Oliver also doesn’t, is that Macdonald was a patriot who was determined to act in Canada’s interests, not sell them out.)  If the Harper government really wanted to stand up for Canada, it would create a national energy strategy in Canada. 

Bottom line:

Canada’s Stephen Harper Conservative government has emulated the world’s most discredited and despised right-wing dictators by blaming domestic shortcomings on U.S. interference.

www.cbc.ca/thenational/ : online advertising, now at triple the volume!!!

Yep, that’s right, CBC is more desperate than ever to covet advertisers, so CBC has really stepped up to the plate by ensuring that advertisers who are spliced in every few minutes will be able to ensure that their volume is a minimum **three times** as loud as the regular broadcast.

CBC has not expressed any concern about whether or not people could watch The National online; advertising, they know, is much, much more important.  One CBC correspondent, who declined to be named, fumed: “I go to all this trouble to file solid reports, and even I have to convulse away from my computer every few minutes when the ads come on.  I can’t watch this show, and I work for it!”

The Report, having verified by basic computer functions that CBC is now cranking the advertising to 3X regular broadcast levels, attempted to reach CBC officials for comment, but those officials kept saying “eh, eh?  What?  What?” or gestured via live cam at their ears, as if to say there were some problems in communicating.

Nevertheless, advertisers will be sure to jump on this serious CBC The National bandwagon—a chance to have their ads played online at fully 3X the volume of regular broadcasting.  This will make the ads so deafening (see above re: CBC employees) that even potential clients beyond the basic contracted catchment area (next door, around the block, etc., will be able to hear the advertising), too.  No word from advertisers yet on whether or not they want their products to be associated with extreme discomfort, having to disable/click off websites, and/or the known health risks and quality of life issues scientifically linked with hyper-volume and its debilitating long-term effects. 

Can’t Get a Decent Sandwich? Blame Subway’s Advertising Budget

Man am I getting sick of saturation Subway advertising.  There is no nook or cranny they can’t squeeze themselves into.  Canadian radio, American radio, TV, shows on my computer, you name it.  One ad trumpets how healthy they are, the next shows you a new cholesterol bomb they’re pushing.  That bloody annoying monkey.

What always has blown my mind about Subway is the truly stratospheric and stunning prices they charge for. . .a sandwich.  Why do they charge such prices?  Well, duh, look at the advertising budget.  I can’t believe anyone would pay $10 for a sandwich, but, well, obviously people do.  What is it that people in general find so hard about making a sandwich?  Let me give that a couple more ??.  People who eat at Subway are just driving up prices for anyone else who wants to eat.  It’s irresponsible consumerism.  Dorks who are willing to pay $3 for a Coke, when they could just go to a grocery store and buy a 12-pack for that price, put pressure on everyone else and hurt everyday people struggling to get by.  We all know how expensive staples like bread are getting, and sure I know about grain shortages and prices and so on, but I wouldn’t be surprised if the prices charged by a massive advertising conglomerate like Subway weren’t having a knock-on effect on the upwardly spiraling price of bread.  A lot happens, from field to store, to a kernel of wheat, but if you know that someone is going to pay 10 bucks for. . .a sandwich. . .at the end of the line, well, there’s gotta be room for lots of people to take profit along the way.

Now, of course I can’t cite actual prices for Subway, because, duh, they’d never publish them online.  If people knew how much they were going to have to pay for a sandwich, they’d be stunned.  I could make sandwiches for a scout troop for the cost of one Subway sandwich.  I suppose Subway would say, oh, well, we sell billions of sandwiches all over the world (and our prices are always trending up), so we could never offer a stable price quote beyond a very local area.  –but still, think about it:  what kind of business makes a specific practice of never revealing its prices online?  How does a producer sell a product if the producer won’t tell the consumer the price?  Just bizarre.

Obviously, I have had Subway sandwiches.  It’s been years, but definitely I have had them.  I remember a dismal little narrow Subway shop I went to in Toronto a few times.  It was situated next to two thriving pizza slice operations that I usually frequented.  Subway did have some seating upstairs, though (the store really was shaped and laid out just like a truncated Subway car, or a half Subway sandwich).  I’d usually use a coupon or something so I could get two sandwiches and have food for later on (I must say, though, that Subway sandwiches just do not travel well—put one in the fridge for a couple hours, and it sure doesn’t come out like a sandwich you’d made yourself—odd).  The Subway restaurant was a good place to go if you wanted total peace and quiet to maybe read or do some work on the upper level—you’d sure never encounter any other patrons, and you definitely didn’t have to wait, like you did at the pizza places.  I remember one day I read a certificate on the wall there, and it actually said that that franchise had received an award for being the most popular in Canada.  Well, that was another stunner.  I don’t know if I ever saw another customer in the tiny, dull place, but apparently it was #1 in sales.  Go figure.  Maybe everyone who gets a Subway franchise gets one of those certificates.  Who knows. What I figured was, I guess, was that because it was so comparatively outrageously expensive, no-one went to Subway.

And I suppose I hoped that was the case, and that the Subway blight that has become so universal would be removed from the landscape.  You see, I had bought sandwiches before, from the venerable Canadian Mr. Sub chain.  When a competitor in Subway appeared, I was intrigued and willing to give it a go, but the prices were so stunningly sky-high (gotta pay for that advertising) that it was a relationship that could not last.  And it broke my relationship with Mr. Sub.  What with Subway charging astronomical prices for. . .a sandwich. . .Mr. Sub got hip to that trip pretty quickly; they added a couple ingredients and just about doubled their prices and that was that.  If I went to a Mr. Sub today, I could get my sandwich on about 15 different breads (which, curiously, all taste the same anyway), but the money I’d have to pay would leave a bad taste in my mouth—so it’s probably been years since I went to Mr. Sub, either, and I did at one time like to hoover a regular assorted fairly frequently.  And with Subway boldly showing the way, through advertising to drive up the price of their products, other $10 sandwich chains, like Quizno’s, have been popping up like bedbugs.

Speaking of bread, there’s also the sheer stench of Subway restaurants.  I don’t know how they do it.  If you walk down an alley near one, or park near one, or go to a convenience store they’re attached to, you are assaulted by that peculiar and gross odor that emanates from Subway restaurant locations.  There’s a convenience store near me that I’ll go extra blocks to avoid just so I don’t have to face the horrible smell when I go into it.  I really don’t know how Subway gets that smell.  It’s as if somebody took some loaves of bread and threw them in a well used public pool and then rescued them and put them in a towel and kept them under heat lamps for hours on end.  Subway has always liked to tout its bread, but, well, if you’ve ever made bread yourself, you surely sure as hell do know that it does NOT smell like that.

Well, it’s all too bad.  Once upon a time, a person could get a decent sandwich just about anywhere for a price commensurate with what actually goes into the preparation and sale of a sandwich.  But Subway has helped to wreck that option, and they’re making sure you know, using every conceivable marketing platform available.  So the next time you feel cool for spending $10 on a sandwich you could make yourself for a fraction of the cost, just remember, you’re not just buying a sandwich, you’re buying ad space.

Necrescent Rex Murphy Slams NDP for Seeking to Replace Leader

View here:

http://www.cbc.ca/thenational/indepthanalysis/rexmurphy/story/2011/11/24/thenational-rexmurphy-112411.html

You would almost think his privately ordered Sea King dropped him off at the wrong port.

Still, good to see Rex really back.  Cough, cough, dribble.  Rex sure did take that opposition to task (never one to touch sitting Conservatives, Rex), calling out the NDP for having too many people in the leadership race while they should have been making hay in the House.

Oh, I see.  The NDP should have had a dessicated, candidateless “race” like the one that brought Jim (who’s got a chair, give me 50, give me 100, who’s got a, there’s a 200, who’s gonna give me 3?) Prentice, and traitor Pete and electric Steve together.  Or a Liberal coronation in which, in the end, a looney-tune candidate named Martha Hall-Findlay actually did use her ludicrous candidacy as a springboard to being a respected, durable MP.

Or maybe Rex, the Conservative fartcatcher, knows something we don’t know.  Rex’s boy, Harper, promised fixed elections (anyone who doubted Steve wasn't bilingual. . .).  No matter to you that Steve cut and run from that promise before the ink was dry (just great strategy, in Rex’s mind), but the next election is supposed to be _some years off_ (save another prorogation, which would give Rex another opportunity to exult at the genius of his paymaster).  If the next election is many years off, and if the Tories have a majority, and if the NDP is the opposition, then why would the NDP not want to have a big wide-open race right at the beginning?  In his desperate ideological attempt to heap calumny upon the NDP, Rex said the NDP was leaving the field open to the Liberals.  With an election years off.  That Rex, he *does* know something simple non-Conservatives don’t know—Rex clearly has it on the inside that Steve-O will prorogue again at first chance to shore up the fake “election dates” promise, a la Putin.

Triumphally touting the Conservatives, Rex observes that the NDP, by having a leadership race, gave the Liberals “oxygen” and “centre stage.”  So comical is Rex’s evidenceless assertion that, when one looks around in vain for support for it, one can’t even find his Tory cohorts sifting his excreted husks for repacking.  They were all a bit lost on that one, studying the ground for traces though they might.  By having an actual leadership race, Rex concludes, the NDP (years from an election), have given the Liberals a “critical break” at a “crucial time.”  Those resurgent Liberals, united behind everyone’s favourite, Bob Rae.  Makes you wonder what Rex would think up if the Liberals were the Opposition.  No doubt makes Rex, too, after a fifth of Jameson’s.

I guess the amazing thing about ideologues is that they never have to account for themselves.  Let’s set it up, here and now.  Today is early December, 2011.  Next time we have an election, I invite everyone to reflect on Rex’s reference to a “critical break” at a “crucial time.”  Again, of course, Rex is just mailing in his pure ideology; his public pay stub probably reads: “Tory hack: hired for Harper.”

It’s true—there have been so many entrants into the NDP leadership race that it does start to look a bit silly, and opportunistic.  One can clearly see that the NDP is thinking, “hey, we’re the govt in waiting, and I (insert candidate name) want to make sure that I’ve got a high profile when we stand on the promised land.”  Kudos to those veteran NDP caucus members who have stayed out.  But look at the NDP field so far: there really aren’t that many also-rans.  The race as it stands now shows a vibrant, eager party with intriguing and ambitious and talented people jostling for position, just like the ’84 Liberal race (the fog of that actuality would find Rex on a dory, facing outwards, desperately yanking at himself for Tory inspiration).  Still, when you look back on the ’84 Liberals (Chretien, Whalen, Munro, Macdonald, MacGuigan, Turner, etc. etc.), they do seem a rather seedy and opportunistic and old and male and establishment bunch.  The cherished right-wing media where Rex finds his home criticizes the NDP candidates for all singing from the same hymnbook, but strangely neither Rex nor his media pals ever apply that reasoning to their own treasured favourites.  Could it be that Rex wants to go up in a government ‘copter to shoot fish before he passes on?  Heaven knows he’s given enough service, on his knees.

*If* Rex could set aside his partisan politics for just an instant (he can’t, of course, for he was bred into it from diapers, and he’d never eat for free at Ruth’s Chris again), and set aside for even an instant his slanted, triple-hooked morality, then he might actually hail an engaging leadership race.  Anyone reading will note, for example, that I have been able to refer to several, just in this post alone.  No matter which party they involve, leadership races, for better or worse, often provide some of the best and only fora for contemplation of our nation’s present and future policies.

The Tories have clearly shown that they are driven by ideology and ideology alone—build the prisons, and those who have uncommitted crimes will come—so why not see what a host of aspiring politicians, astonishingly younger and more diverse and more gender-balanced than the Tories—have to say? 

Rex would never eat really high on the hog again, despite being pensioned off on the public CBC teat.  Oh Rex, we pay for your rants you probably wrote when you were a curly-headed rowing lad.  You’ve got your pension and you are not well, not well.  Go away and let someone capable of latitudinal thought take over. 

zr

Rogers, Nissan Lead in Christmas Crassness Sweepstakes

Oh, I like Christmas.  I’m lucky to live in a place where there’s often snow at Christmas, and I like the lights, the crowds, and so on.  Sure, the commercialism is soul-destroying, but for anyone with a long historical perspective, one knows that it was ever thus.  I see no point in fighting it.  I remember being a kid and wanting the newest toys.  What can you do?

Still though, this Christmas I notice a peculiar phenomenon, led by major marketers like the above-mentioned Nissan and Rogers.  Rogers has arguably been doing it for a few years.  What they are specifically doing is running ads saying “hey, buy something for yourself.”  Everywhere I go these days, marketers are saying: “buy a present for yourself.”

This does bespeak a new level of crassness.  Once upon a time, marketers did try to sell the old-timey peace-on-earth goodwill-to-all things as they got their ads going in November.  But now just about every ad seems to be NOT about buying something for someone else, but about buying for YOU.

Why?

Well, our selfishness and disconnectedness from others, even as we stare ever more deeply into our electronic devices—that’s obvious.

Or could it be something else.  Like most people, I used to shop at stores.  Now, as time goes by, I shop increasingly online.  When I used to go out to stores at Christmas, it was a weird, heady, different experience, and try as I might, I inevitably found things to buy for myself.  Now that I shop online, it’s much more targeted, with only the people I want to buy for imagined.  Oh, sure, the online marketers constantly try to make you buy for yourself, but maybe I’m just old or things have changed or whatever, but actually that doesn’t have much effect on me.  I tend to be a much more efficient shopper now, in the online world.  I know what I want for others, and I go out in search of it and buy it; there is little collateral commercial damage involving me.  Do TV and radio, and, I guess, online, marketers grasp this, and are they recalibrating to tell us to get gifts for ourselves accordingly?  I wonder.

Hey, I’m not anti-Christmas commercialism.  It just is what it is and has been for about 150 years.  But these new ads—everywhere—targeted almost exclusively at getting people to buy things for themselves—that *is* a new development. 

Well, Nissan and Rogers have really lost me.  They say in advertising, as in all other things, that all bad press is better than no press.  Fine.  But you can make a decision.  For example, my family pretty much only ever used Michelin tires.  They always did make good tires.  But then they came out with their ad campaign with babies in tires, suggesting that failure to buy Michelin meant that you were trying to kill your kids.  Well, bingo dingo, that was it.  Whereas I would have been the first person to buy Michelins for life, I now never will.  I’ve been buying tires for decades now, and whereas I would have bought many Michelin sets by now, I never have, and I never will.  I’m willing to pay more for inferior tires, just to not have Michelin.  So sometimes bad press is bad press.

Nissan, Rogers, all those other companies advocating buying for yourself above all before others, well.  I’m sure they’ll do fine as time goes by; Michelin sheds no tears over my non-patronage, I’m sure.  But I wonder.  I wonder if enough people just said: “Christ, this is enough.  This really is enough.”

Well, happy buying, anyway.  Yeah, buy something for yourself.  But if you really get more of a charge out of buying something for yourself than buying something for someone else, then maybe buy yourself a gun and put us all out of your selfish misery.

Update: November 2014: The Source is advocating that you buy for yourself first and has spent countless thousands on updating the Canadian Tire scrooge motif.

zr

Bubble Gum and American Expression: A Multi-Generational Romance

Bubble Gum and American Expression: A Multi-Generational Romance

(It is a "romance" because everyone is involved--like snakes in the Arizona desert.)

30s, 40s, 50s, 60s, 70s, 80s, 90, 00s—there would be no surer thing than to find a villain who chewed, obviously, gum. This is a peculiarly American phenomenon—one doesn't find it in other cultural or filmic expressions, anywhere in the world. The obnoxious chewer—chomping meaning—is unique to America.

Why?

Well, duh, obviously it's incredibly childish, and Americans go in for that, the incredibly childish. Still, the aghast eyes and astonished makeup of the silent era long ago passed on, but the big chewer (normally a villain, sometimes briefly sexy), kept on. At root, perhaps, it speaks to a kind of puritan fear of bad manners—people who open their mouths when chewing—some guy who lets that gum show—he is one bad dude.

Chewing gum was once a kind of middle-American indulgence—it was almost chic. But, then, the masses got hold of it, so it was only uncouth villains who chomped it all around. Class issues.

To chew gum, in America, is to bespeak a kind of raw and stupid villainy. Are you unable to act? Chew gum. Need to be a villain? Chew gum. Director/producer ain't got no smarts? Chew gum. Studio/network need a stereotype? Chew gum. Screenplay got no screen, or play? Chew gum. The sum the imaginationless Hollywoodians owe to those who honestly chew coulda made the Cubs a dynasty. Ernie Banks coulda said “let's play three!”

Well, I think it does go back to childishness. Americans just do not expect that their viewers are capable of nuanced thinking, so they make their actors externalize infantilism through chewing gum. Chewing gum is something that everyone gets, in America. The bunga-bunga orange Boehner-glo is tv, not reality. Simple signs, simple symbols. If America lives that long, chewing gum may one day equate to virtue. Wherever there's a need for a crass, gross, stultifyingly obvious symbol, though, you can bet Americans will be right in there with gum.

Hey, who says Americans didn't contribute to culture? God gave 'em slaves who gave 'em jazz who gave 'em gum. Gum'm gotta come from somewhere.

Gum daddy, go!

zr

Galleons o’ Torrents - Your White Wine Guide

Galleons o’ Torrents

I noticed I had a category for Wines – Red.  I was a bit taken aback, for I mainly consume white—there’s an old oenology fundamental which asseverates that the more you drink wine, the more you drink white—once you drink white, you’ll never go back. 

Of course those fruity Cape/SA wines are delightful; you just can’t beat them.  But let’s take a salty ship over to that other SA, South America.  You just have to love torrontes.

One of the only ones I can get here is Trivento.  I really like it, but it is dangerous.  It is so steely that frankly you could get electrocuted by it if you’re standing next to your tv. Distinct floral backnotes (the vase you’re clutching as you fall by the sideboard).  

Recently tried the Lorca torrontes--is it worth the 25-33% more in terms of price than the Trivento?  Probably not.  If the two were equal in price, I'd maybe trade off equally, but even if Lorca were cheaper, I don't think I'd sacrifice that lie-detector-hooked-to-the-wrong-place shrill thrill of Trivento.

Northwest detour—that Cline viognier from California—such a delightful wine.  Watery and without much flavour ballast, but so like a new piece of fruit with all of the scent and anticipation and none of the squinchy-face upon tasting.  For drinking a couple glasses on its own with no accompaniment whatsoever, this wine is nonpareil.  Its perfect companions are sunlight, a breeze perhaps, and (increasingly generous) thought(s).

Westward ho! for the Oyster Bay and the marlborough.  Tasty, indeed.  A bit thick like. . .tasty mutton. . . .   Critics would say that you could get the same effect by nuzzling up under the foreleg of a lamb who’d been hard at work in the fields all day.  Critics’d be right.  Frankly, I bet this marlborough goes outstandingly with lamb, but I am not a Kiwi.  So perspirational is the effect, that one really does want to pair oil with oil, wine with fish yanked from dark nether reaches.  It’s a pity it’s boutique expensive where I live, otherwise I’d saa- saa-mple it endlessly.

Short hop but long run to the true motor oil of wine of any kind.  For a time I lived within shooting distance of the Barossa Valley, where so much famous Australian wine is from.

In a nutshell, what happened there was that stateless but determined Germans, non-convicts but enterprising, planted bushes to provide themselves with hooch.  When they noted that it totally knocked the corks off bushmen’s hats in the up and beyond, they industrialized it further.  Soon, steel silos began to appear all over southern Australia.  Leftists said they were American military bases.  John Howard said it was diversification.  Actually they were vast wine vats containing up to 40 million hectolitres at a go.  A grape was top-mounted into each vat, then each vat was left to fester in the relentless sun for up to six months—presto—Australian wine.  And world’s away, I can now have it for one low price of about 8$/L.  I’ll say one thing for those Australian vineyardists: they are nothing if not industrial.

zr    

Why Can’t Americans Just Not Be Celebrities?

Why Can’t Americans Just Not Be Celebrities?

Well, I guess it’s because they don’t have an integrated, mature society in which others care for one another.  I often have heard Obama talk about values American cherish, I’ve heard him embrace Reagan and so on, but you just know his heart isn’t in it.  You know that Americans don’t believe it, either.  It’s the hollow chamber when the bullet’s gone and the stag has scampered away and you’re left with the grey sky and the chill echo and the dry brown reeds and your buddy’s silence around you. (Girl in the trailer, she wouldn’t know for shit.) It doesn’t take a village to raise an individual; it takes one man and an inheritance.  It takes dubya and some draft-dodgin’ tough talk.  And jogging with a gun. Trust Americans to bomb us back to the caves of pre-civilization.  I’m not sure the last time I went jogging with a gun, but I’m guessing, oh, 5 million years, give or take.

Such thoughts occur to me after watching tv and movies.  Say you like music, or movies, or anything popular in general.  Say you wonder: “what ever happened to. . . ?”  Odds are, if it was someone outside America, that person went on to have a functional, productive life.  But in America, you can’t.  Call it the _insert name of person or Scott Baio here_ syndrome.  All over the world, people go in and out of the celebrity business with _relative_ ease.  But in America, you are defined by your momentary fame, and you can never escape it.

Well, ok, let’s say I’m wrong about this.  Off the top of my head, I’m thinking about that John Tesh guy—I think he had an entertainment show, or something.  You could land a jet on his face.  I think he went on to become a singer with some success.  Ok, fine, so now I’m wrong.  Or am I right X2?

But wait—let’s stop blaming the Tesh guy; let’s not even try to get teshphobic about this.  Let’s blame it on the people, the people who really ought to be blamed.  Blamed for what?  Loving celebrity?  Well, yes, because if you turn every tesh into a celebrity, then you can’t even grow a radish to feed yourself.  You can’t adjust to reality.  The center cannot hold because there is not a center—you’re Tesh, he’s Tesh, we’re all famous and . . . .

Tesh.

That’s what the end of the world looks like: not a whimper or a bang; just a puff of ~tesh~ in the distance as leaden dreams reground in the far-off desert of the soul; a ~tesh~ of your grandmother wondering (no, really wondering, what you were thinking); a ~tesh~ a ~tesh~ as you flap that magazine back in the supermarket and the line advances.

Well, kudos to Tesh, unlike Jon Stewart (Johnny Leibowitz), for having the conviction at least to keep his own name (I’m sure it must be), instead of calling himself Rock Mayrifle or Mascotty Merican.

Motto: Celebrity is wise, for those who wish only to live and contribute for 15 mins.

Tim Hortons, Second Cup, Starbucks: Two Lines for Coffee or Lose All Your Coffee Business

Just like the whole world, I have long noticed that there are two kinds of coffee buyers—people who want coffee, and people who would like to buy something else.  –also a coffee, to be sure, but an _experience_.

Well, I gave up on Starbucks abt 5 years ago, and I gave up on Tims (with its deeply cherished bad grammar) at around the same time.

These franchises refused to respond to consumer demand in the most obvious of ways: one line for people who just wanted a coffee (not a macchiato or whatever), another line for people who didn’t.

Starbucks, Tims, they said to themselves, “well, we can keep people in line forever, and, once they finally get to the till, they will be so exhausted and influenced by other buyers that they will say to themselves, “yes, yes, I want the $14.95 macchiato.”  Didn’t happen for me; didn’t happen for many.  No wonder McDonald’s is so successful now.  Not only do they serve much better coffee than Tims, and come nigh on equalling anything else, but it just doesn’t matter whether some mom’s ordering 15 teenburgers for a softball team or not in front of you—you’re _still_ going to get your coffee much faster.  Bingo dingo.  I’m in there.  When I think fast decent coffee now, I think McDonald’s.  Oh, sure, I could stand in line at Starbucks or Tims for 20 mins, but if I haven’t got the latest encyclicals with me to read, no go.

The truth is (sorry multis) that I mostly only patronize 2 indies near me.  One is one where the woman I know (who, incidentally, runs a successful coffee shop _across_ from a Second Cup only cops go to) and can somehow, despite all the things she has to handle, get my order quickly.  Oh, she’s got all the liqueurs and shooters and so on, the console of machines, but, miraculously, even with all the black pens and cardboard sleeves, she can actually pull off a coffee in a couple mins. or so—I’d like to say she loves me, but really, she probably just wants my business.    I’d like to love her, but really she just gives me a good coffee 20X faster than Tims can.

Then there’s the trendy place I go to.  They don’t even pretend to make you wait.  You just go off and wait by yourself.  But they sure do call it out pretty quickly.

Anyway, massive failure by major chains like Starbucks, thinking it was ok to alienate coffee drinkers by prioritizing coffee experiencers.  Starbucks’ logo could be purple, for all I remember now, and Tims, sheltered in blacked-out marts along lonely sub-urban ways, well, it could be Toms, for all I know.  I want a decent coffee, and I want it fast, and McDonalds has beaten the shit right out of Starbucks and Tims and Second Cup and all the contenders.  I won’t leave my indies, but when I really need and want a coffee, McDonalds has pulled it off.  The latter has priced themselves out of the market, and demonstrated egregious contempt for consumers, while wily McDonalds has worked itself in.  Maybe one day McDonalds will work themselves out of it, but their track record suggests to me that I kind of doubt it.   You gotta have coffee, you gotta have coffee.  This is a restaurant/service concept Tims and Starbucks have showered with contempt, and in their race to provide sandwiches and tarts to people who don't drink coffee, I guess they will meet in the middle with McDonalds—but that middle is going to be a steep, hard climb.

zr

What is with the half-face photo thing for people on webpages?

I really don’t get around much on the web, you may have noted, but now it seems that, everywhere I go—friends, acquaintances, total strangers—they all seem to be putting half their faces on their webphotos.

Is this cool?  Why?

--Perhaps this is like getting a tattoo—a way for deeply conformist ~individuals~ who lack unique personalities to think to themselves that they have expressed something notable about themselves.  They think they can do this by putting some ugly blotch on their bodies (usually they do dislike or are insecure about their bodies, or they wouldn’t try to cover/deface them).  Or, as is so often the case, they’re shallow (and insecure) and can’t express, or have no confidence to express themselves, through their minds as well as bodies.  Is the half-face an extension of the tattoo aesthetic?  The tattooed person says: “here’s a tattoo that externalizes something about me than I can’t communicate or can’t be bothered to and that I want you to see and remark upon.”  The half-face person says: “I’m really quite mysterious and full of remarkable qualities, but, tee-hee, I’m not going to show you all of them until you stroke my ego enough to wonder (though I can stroke it myself just by looking at half of me and thinking of you) what the rest of ME is really like.”

I’ll say this for tattooed people, though—it could be their first and only contact with ink, and in a way that can’t be lamented.  Best tattoo guy I ever knew was a guy named Tracy, or something, that I worked with.  He was a bartender with a motley string of tattoos down his left arm (he was tattoo before tattoo was cool—old school), and he had about four that were ex-girlfriends.  So he’d have “Sheila”: line through it; “Wendy”: line through it; “Debbee”: line through it; “I mean Debbie”: line through it, etc.  Just goes to show, a chick does love a man with tattoos.

Anyway, I didn’t mean to sidetrack into tattoos; I grasp that they have a long history—Nazis putting them on Jews, and so on—and I obviously don’t want to take on all the people with PhDs in tattoos.  They know their uniqueness, and they needn’t deign to express themselves by noting the likes of me.

--it is a truth universally propagated by scientists (you know, those geniuses), that humans naturally are attracted to and like and trust people with symmetrical faces.  Most people aren’t blessed like that.  Most people have halves of their faces they prefer.  So they post those, the ones they like the most or think are most attractive.

--it’s just trendy (like tattoos).  You see one person do it, and you think: “hey, that’s neat; I’ll do it, too,” but you don’t realize 40 million other people just clicked on the same thought.

--in a world when people expose so much of themselves constantly—and, indeed, in many ways _have_ to (even those who would prefer not to), you just have to show something, so half a face is at least something.

Or is it something else?  Are those tiny pictures the web has given us just so small that you can’t put a whole face in there? 

Well, at least I’ve got a face.  Blue, querulous, Alfalfan, but at least a face.

zr

Mira Bergman-Tonic (drink recipe):

1/2 part lemon juice

1 part acquavit (chilled in freezer)

2 1/2 parts tonic water (preferably Canada Dry)

* in certain quarters, the surface of the drink is decorated with once-rinsed capers

This is a _very_ dry Scandinavian cocktail.  Partakers often like to listen to Goldstein’s _Wiretap_ on CBC while imbibing.  Typically, a herring is placed alongside.  When the herring begins to grin and make googly eyes at you (normally after 20 mins. or so), then you know the beverage is taking effect.

Harper Goes to School on Chretien

Harper Goes to School on Chretien

Stevie wasn’t just building a firewall around his unilingual desk when he was sitting across from John, oh no.  Note the shrugging, empty phrases—you dance with the one that brung you, Harper says, and if it’s 1 in 3 of the 2 in 3 who voted, good enough.  Shrug.  What, me miniscule majority?  Shrug.  Harper’s replication even of Chretien’s physical gestures are almost uncanny.

Jean would often hand off to other MPs, though in his case he had some trusted go-to people.  Harper has to adopt the Mulroney-Nielsen approach—so cloaked in scandal is Harper that he has to hand off to John Baird (wake me up after the fourth chin).  Clement, Ambrose, Bernier, Raitt, Oda—all stuck in the most disgusting muck Canada has seen for a generation, Harper has no choice but to go to his gay bachelors—Baird, Kenney, Moore, etc.

Weak front bench, no second line—clichés aside, is there a difference?

Chretien, the p’tit gars, normally liked to express himself as being on the side of the little guy, the average Canadian.  Harper seethes with open contempt for average Canadians, knowing he needs his pitchfork base and a few more glassy-eyed chinless dupes he can round up at the saloon on his way out without paying.  If they don’t speak English, “yes, your Papa Dum, Papa Dum.”  Yes!!

Harper regales himself on his empty Challenger at your expense (you can’t catch that with a swather, although some people did like Bennett buggies, too, when R. B. was in a dewy glen, at home, in England), but his just-enough commonality touch—he got his style suggestions from the man he supposedly most abhorred.

Nolan Ryan and the Death of Baseball

Put it on Pallid Puddle/Porridge-Faced Nolan Ryan! Fox Producers Hasten the Death of the Great American Game

That baseball has a lot of problems we all know.  For those of us who love the game, those problems are mostly situated with other people, who don’t get its beauty.  I saw Fox throw up a graphic about one of the teams, pointing out how there were a bunch of Hispanics, on one team, anyway, and how that made this “World” (oh the cringeworthiness of Americans, selling the sizzle and never the steak) Series really international.  May-be, but was there even one black American on either team?  I mean, on the playing field, as a regular?  I don’t know.  But I do know that 20-30-40 years ago, you’d sure see one hell of a lot more black Americans playing the game.  Somebody needs to break the barrier, again.  The last couple of World Series’ of baseball, involving Japan and Cuba, and Japan and Korea—man, now that was some baseball.  My lord that was good ball.  This 2011 World Series was such a joke, in terms of execution, that you really had to wonder if anyone out there knew how to play this game.  Abner Doubleday wouldn’t turn around in the street if somebody called his name after this fall classic. It sure looked as if Americans had handed the game over to those who cared more about it; hell, Canada shut down the U.S. at the Pan-Am games.  A little hustle and a little heart, which Canadians possess (forget talent), is enough to do in America now.

Anyway, I love the game, and, yes, sure, baseball has problems.  One is that it isn’t a very good tv sport, but that has everything to do with producers.  One can, of course, beg the question of just what is a good “tv sport,” and maybe Americans would have to travel before they realized the basic oxymoronic nature of the phrase “tv sport.”  How about we watch guys on couches watching sports?  ** wait—I just trademarked that.  It’s called: “real guys watch tv.”  Done and done.  That patent has pended. Baseball always shows us pitcher throwing at catcher, which is weird when you consider the number of players on the field.  Then, in that Sunset Boulevard death-in-life way American tv producers have, we get the 1 camera go-to of pudgy porridge-faced Nolan Ryan.

This, this was a series I just wasn’t much interested in.  When it began, I found myself in the impossible situation of kind of cheering for Texas, a team I never could have imagined cheering for.  But, for personal fan reasons, I just always had the hate on for Tony La Russa, whatever his baseball genius and tenacity (and then there’s the McGwire taint, etc.).  But as time went on, and I grew so completely sick of seeing camera 1 on Nolan Ryan every 10 seconds, well, I shifted my allegiances.  In the end, perplexing to me as it was, I had become a Cards fan.  By not being Nolan Ryan, the Cards seemed to become a symbol of baseball for people like me—people who like the game, not fat, ossified billionaire celebrities sitting next to brittle, evidently bored and uncomfortable wives, and ex-presidents who couldn’t spell “millionaire” despite being one.  The Fox camera 1 on Nolan Ryan puts many things about the state of the game in a nutshell.  A complete disinterest on behalf of Americans and tv producers regarding anything else but vapid wealth and celebrity, etc.  I mean, consider other sports.  When your go-to moment is, dozens of times per telecast, a picture of a fat, dull man in a black overcoat rubbing his eyes (many of these times well after midnight on the east coast), well, I think you could say that that black overcoat is a-coming to get your sport and yank it into history, where they only had black and white, and often not even the black to give the white any perspective whatsoever.

Baseball has so much to show us.  Defensive alignments that shift with virtually every pitch, to say nothing of every batter; batters warming up, signs being given—really there are endless ways to try to interest people in the game.  But we get fat puddle-faced Nolan.  “They say he threw 95 back in the day.”  Yeah, I remember that, very well.  But that was then.  That and five bucks will get me a coffee, today. 

Hockey has become infected with the same hopeless bug, too.  Now, instead of looking at anything on the ice, producers are ordered to lock on pictures of GMs, gleaming beneath the hideous fluorescent glow of upper booths, amidst the styrofoam diet-pop detritus of the end of the day; they might as well give us a downcast Willy Loman coming up the walk and mopping his brow and loosening his tie and wondering how he’s going to trade in that Chevy, or that fridge.  Or that Kotalik.

Anyway, this is merely a ragged rant that evidently has not got a lot in terms of constructive criticism (unless one draws from and *builds* upon it and so forth).  Maybe I’ll say more.  Others will.

I’ll just finish by saying what I started out to say.  This was a colossally badly played World Series, from every aspect (as they often are).  If you want to see real baseball, see the World Series played every four years, involving countries that really give a damn about baseball, the game.  Going in, I couldn’t believe it, but I probably did want to cheer for Ron Washington and the Rangers. ????  But it didn’t take me long, after watching Nolan Ryan every couple of seconds, to decide that, well, my allegiance was with baseball, not fat ol’ Nolan.  So I became a Cards fan.  And the Cards won.  Somehow I don’t feel really happy that my team won, but in the sense that fat ol’ Nolan didn’t, and baseball maybe did, I, as a fan, feel less bad than I could.

**[And a footnote.  All those who say, well, you could turn off the tv.  Duh, of course I did.  Most of the time I had Shulman, Valentine, and Hershiser coming through my computer or radio as I was raking leaves.  Those guys were mostly better than Sutcliffe and Horne – Thorne? – the tv talking heads were ok.  But surely to goodness every now and then you must go to the tv to see the most dramatic play—the home run, the inning-ending double play, and so on.  Surely you must see that!!  But no, you’ll see fat ol’ Nolan sitting there, like Pete Rose’s wife, inscrutable and unviewable.  Illusions shattered, you’ll go back to raking leaves, too, baby.]

Cards win! Cards win!  Bleh.  Whatever.  Minor victory for the game over dubya n’nolan, though.

If you love this game. . . .

zr

Kidsupfrontcalgary.com – An Ultimate Sleazeball Organization

Check ‘em out—under “About Us” and “Our Story,” you will find “no page could be found at this address.”  One could substitute “morals” for “page,” but I digress. 

“Kidsupfront” that, endearingly, has no story, nevertheless has some big corporate contributors.  The idea is that poor kids, offered free tickets by rich corporations so that those corporations can show they’ve really got a heart, can see a sporting event.  In this way, corporations can use *children* to suggest, by vast media advertising (on kidsupfront’s website and in the mainstream media, for example), that those corporations are really good people.  It’s just about the most disgusting form of child use you can imagine. Do the kids know it is happening?  Does kidsupfront gather in money and use it to advertise on mainstream media like CHQR? Do “supporters” eagerly advertise themselves on kidsupfront’s website?  This is just beyond disgusting.

Once upon a time, a pro sporting event might have been accessible to an average family.  Now it isn’t.  “kidsupfront,” with its corporate sponsors, has taken upon itself to urge others to sponsor its classist mandate.

For shame.  For shame.

zr

Hockey Season Is Here Again, and It’s Time for Combat Corner, with Don Cherry

Hockey Season Is Here Again, and It’s Time for Combat Corner (Coach's Corner), with Don Cherry

Back in the day, when I was a kid (like one of the ones Don addresses weekly), Coach’s Corner used to be about hockey.  Since Canada entered Afghanistan, though, Coach’s Corner has been transformed into Combat Corner.  Links between the military and sports, especially in North America, have always been prominent.  But of course, historically, links between sports and arts and culture have always been prominent.  Crushing someone with force is part of sports, but so has been deploying finesse, discipline, training, practice, intellectual flexibility and mental stamina . . . and – the ineffable occasional outbursts of pure magic that result, utterly inexplicably, from all of the foregoing.

I’m a Don fan, and always have been.  We are at polar opposites, but he is very often right and has the shrewd eye for the game that those who loved and played it but weren’t good enough to be stars often do (think a Kubek, say).

Don is all over the news right now because he accused former fighters (Chris Nilan, Stu Grimson, etc.) of going against fighting now, despite the fact that fighting was what gave them a paycheque.  Now those former fighters are speaking back. 

Well, anyway, all of that is tedious.  I’m not sure what I set out for on this post, and that you may be able to tell, but I’ll write it by offering a few wishes:

1) that he doesn’t die or go to a cable network or whatever.  Although, again, Don and I are polar opposites, I can’t imagine life without him, and I know for sure my watching of hockey would be diminished in his absence.  Essentially because the NHL lost a golden opportunity to gradually reshape itself by enlarging slightly its ice surface when every team in the league got new arenas, the sport has become somewhat unwatchable.  Why are World Juniors and Olympics tournaments often popular?  Duh;

2) that Don and his handlers somehow learn to drop his petty insistence on his often being presciently right.  Live long enough, and you will be.  Week in, week out, Don looks more and more like what he isn’t—a petulant, childish, old man regressing into childhood.  Don’s right maybe 50% of the time, but nobody logs that.  I’d like to see someone take up the issue of Vinnie Lecavalier’s being the greatest player in the world with Don someday, for example.  It will never happen, but Don’s unchallengeability actually ages him and makes him look older and more pathetic than he really is.  Shame.

3) that Don didn’t have to address every remark to “you kids out there.”  Yes, I realize it’s a tic, like “hold it, hold it, don’t show it yet!” but boy is it tiresome.  Does Don think he really is addressing kids?  Possibly, but I don’t hold much with that.  Do kids watch Combat Corner?  Of course they do.  Don is aware of his pulpit.  Fine.  But again, that diminishes him.  Every time he yells: “you coaches out there!!”, he diminishes his own show which, inaccurately or not, is named “Coach’s Corner.”    If Don were really a man, and a hockey man, and his handlers weren’t pantywaists, then Don could just talk about hockey.  If Don just talked about hockey, he might actually get himself into _less_ trouble than if he kept pontificating as if he were hockey Dad to a nation.  The more he wants to extricate himself, often, the deeper he gets.  Nasty Swedes.

4) we could just have two different segments, finally, Coach’s Corner and Combat Corner.  It’s a truth universally known that the last refuge of a scoundrel is nationalism, and Don bucks this one up in ways that would make his ancestors turn away in shame.  True patriotism is something you feel on an almost divine and ethereal plane, and to speak of the flag, or to use a telecast as a teary opportunity to beat your own breast is the saddest desecration of the memories of the fallen.  You don’t touch the Cup until you’ve won it, and you don’t make ratings out of the deaths of servicepeople unless you’ve fought with them.  I’ve certainly never met anyone who didn’t “support the troops,” though I do know many who are against the war in Afghanistan.

Sadly, Don’s momentarily felt sentimental gushes have been popular enough with CBC brass fearful of being pantywaists that they have allowed him now to cut his hockey commentary back even further, so that he can hail police officers and firemen and just about anyone he can’t remember once he gets in his Lincoln outside the ACC at 8:35 p.m.  Let’s put one or two things in perspective, even if only for just a second.  To a much greater extent than it is in the U.S., or many other countries, military service in Canada is a _choice_.  You don’t have to serve, and you probably aren’t in a community so desperately dirt-poor, as in America, such that really there’s no choice but to enlist.  In Canada, too, minimal education can also be a gateway to astonishing wages and pensions and benefits as police officers or firepeople that most Canadians, often with notably greater training and education, cannot even dream of.  It is trotted out endlessly that the war in Afghanistan is to “kill scumbags” (to use Canadian General Rick Hillier’s term—a cut and runner if there ever was one, who cut out and took his pension after barely finishing the word “—bags” and getting hailed for it) and protect women.  But yet, if you look at the police and firefighters, and/or even the military, where are the women, the minorities, the small of stature?  Organizations such as the police and firefighters have constantly fought as hard as they could against any kind of recognition of other people—precisely what Canadian troops are supposedly fighting _for_ in Afghanistan.  Some irony.  If you filled out an application to be a police officer or a firefighter in Canada today, you would see precious little recognition of the fact that, every day, across the world, women and men of every age and colour and size and orientation and whatever are—actually—fighting crime and putting out fires and making their communities stronger.

zr

CHQR AM 770 Steve Norton's screwups - ongoing

Well, as I indicated in a post earlier, it's at once funny and sad.  Say your daughter had been abducted and the media were charged with getting the message out.  And Steve, good ol' Steve, just couldn't manage as much.  That'd be a problem.

Anyway, what the hell.  Not like CHQR AM 770 cares.  I mean, if I were a CHQR AM 770 personality, or one of their advertisers, what the hell would I care if they had a clue what their employees were saying?  I mean, it's that old-timey feel, right.  It's like homes by Abi.  I'm in there for sure. I hear good ol' Steve only now and then, normally when he takes over at 1 a.m. to do the 4-min. newsbit to top the hour.  He goes on through the wee hours until 5 a.m., and I don't think he starts at 12 a.m., but I'll clarify.  Anyway, for the hell of it, I'll just start noting here the howlers I hear when I hear them and can be bothered to note them.

Steve--take it away!!!!

duh-WAR - Paul Dewar - the Ottawa politician, a longtime parliamentarian whose mother was a significant Canadian political figure and mayor of Ottawa.  His name is pronounced like "do-er," as in three-term Calgary mayor Al Duerr.  Or the Scotch.  Or. . . .  Just to be living in this world is not to be living around Steve Norton.

Bar-lee-UH - Chris Baryla.  A **Calgary-born** long-time member of the PGA and Nationwide golf tours.  His name, as it is spelled, is pronounced "Barillya."

McQuinlan - Matt McQuillan.  Another Canadian golfer who has played on the PGA and Nationwide golf tours.  As you can see from the last two, maybe CHQR AM 770 could just spring for a pair of eyeglasses for good ol' Steve Norton, and then maybe Calgarians could get something approaching accuracy in their news.

--couple days ago, Steve said Dany Heatley scored one for the Sharks.  Yes, Heatley used to play for the Sharks.  He plays for the Minnesota Wild now. Man like Steve, all he's gotta do is pull the spool like Bobby Troup on _Emergency 51_.  But no, Steve, having realized his error and bumbling and fumbling over it, continued nevertheless!!  Now _THAT_ is when your daddy really works for CHQR.  When you can brazenly screw up and know it, and then brazenly keep on screwin' up.  If Steve Norton were in charge of letting me know if there was a rapist on the loose, CHQR would have no ass left to sue.

--last night Pekka Rinne became "Reen-UH"; I thought it was Steve's prom date, but he did a double salcow on the second turn.  It's clear that sports are troublesome for Steve; he's only got 45 seconds or so of news to do, so if the Toronto Astronauts are playing, then blast off!!

It occurs to me, though, that maybe Steve really is developmentally delayed.  Maybe CHQR is giving an opportunity to a slow person.  If this is really the case, and CHQR is giving an opportunity to someone who (can barely stay awake but) really wants to do what he's doing, then I'll take this post away in a second.

--lately:

Referring to Raptors Italian player, Steve came up with Barn-yanni, as opposed to "barn-jhonni.  Yanni--hee hee, CHQR AM 770 says to its Italian listeners.

It's key, though, if you're CHQR, to really amp up your disrespect for other people, so CHQR has been lately pilin' it on, with, say, Peter Haight (hate?), who came up with Teemu Seleenee for Teemu Selanne, and the aforementioned Josie Fotah, who came up with "Randing Cunningworth" for Randy Cunneyworth, and, again, "Teemu Shelanee" for "Teemu Selanne."  Who would have thought reading would have been so hard?  But lo, it is, and a joyous disrespect for Canadians of all backgrounds mounts all CHQR AM 770 programming.

If anyone lets Steve Norton out of the building attempting to pronounce Milos Raonic, who is pretty much on the verge of the greatest tennis player this country has ever produced, then clear the area and I'll call the cops and bring in the traffic 'copter myself.

--Lately Steve came up with Pekka Ryne, for Pekka Rinne.

--During the recent Australian Open, Steve observed that the women's semifinals were still taking place, and that Maria Sharapova and Petra Kvitova were still "on the court."  The match had ended 20 mins. or more before he started his "newscast."  But hey, maybe I'm too critical.  Maybe Steve was broadcasting from Hawaii that night. 

--good ol' Josie (not Steve) came up with "Darn-eye-ay" for Canadiens forward David Desharnais.  Canada does have a couple official languages, and obviously CHQR would be outraged at having to know even one, but even in America, I've just kinda got a funny feeling most Americans wouldn't call it San Josie.

--new guy John Happy (?) came up with "Car-ta-Gee-Nuh" for Cartagena.  No doubt his parents are very prowd of him for his ignorance, and CHQR AM770 Program Director John Vos is thrilled at his new charge.  Ain't no sense being a dorcque if you can't be prowd of it.

--tonight on a couple of occasions Steve tried to call Martin Hanzal "Hazel."  I wouldn't point it out unless Steve-o didn't just keep doing it.

--Steve also came up with "Vuhberta" for Radim Vrbata.
--and in the same night, "Veh-barta."  And Petrangeloh for Frank Pietrangelo.  And "Incarnashun" for Edwin Encarnacion.  All in all, just a standard screwup night for what would take 1-2 mins. to verify on the web.

Reading Robert Carver - The Accursed Mountains - Albania

Reading Robert Carver’s (I know, he’s thrilled just to see his name) _The Accursed Mountains: Journeys in Albania_ (Murray, 1998).

Well, I have to agree with the general consensus on this one.  Carver approached the country with studied scepticism that determined his writing before he even opened his notebook.

It may be that much has changed in Albania between when Carver was there in the mid-90s and I was there around 2010, but I doubt that the change can have been all that huge.  Besides, if you read Carver, he will tell you that the country was never not and could never not be in a state of complete tribal chaos and corrupt political intrigue from start to finish, so . . . .

I think the travel books that tell you to steer clear of Carver are right, but still it’s worth reading Carver for his (distorted, snotty, public school) portraits of individuals, and his notations of other characters now gone.

What debilitates Carver most of all is his unironic stance and his lack of humour; these prevent him from gaining comprehension.  For example, I would say that Albanians are honest and helpful and hospitable, and I really—despite what is in his book—doubt that Carver would argue otherwise.  Yes, it is a corrupt society and so forth, but what one isn’t?  It’s a matter of learning the rules, and Carver, in very short pants when it comes to travel, can’t grasp as much.  It wouldn’t matter if _The Daily Telegraph_ had sent Carver to Mars; he ought to have been able to have a look around at the situation and adjust himself accordingly.  Sadly, nothing in his training or background had prepared him to meet other humans on their own terms.

Carver is essentially at war with himself.  There are bits of scenery, bits of girls, bits of values that he glimpses in Albania and that attract him.  Still, though, it’s a hopelessly backward place (you can’t sell books if you can’t make it grotty).  And yet he’s the great fearless (and here is does get a bit comical--~British~ intrepid man in the mountains—sometimes, you really want to say to him, ‘er, Roderick, I say old chap, do you not think you could just throw a rock, maybe?’).  Carver’s estimation of *his* importance to Albanians is just constantly comically completely out of whack.  He tries to pitch his narrative as a dangerous journey into a fearsome land populated by bumbling diplomats behind urban barricades while he sallies out red-eyed into the hinterlands, but. . .for Christ’s sake, come off it—who but a Brittwit toff would really, in a million years, think that his skinny white ass meant anything to any Albanian??  Good lord.  People—the British are still hard-up to find out—have other things on their minds than (hate to say it) Brits. 

But that’s the problem of Carver’s narrative.  He _has_ to pitch himself as an intrepid daredevil.  But he regards all those around him as sycophantic, lazy, useless scum.  He regards the country as utterly primeval, but, to buttress his sense of himself as a conquistador, he must allow himself magnificent moments in which he, say, sees a moon rise over a mountain, and he exults, “Imagine, I was the first man since Columbus to see. . .” or “I was the first Westerner to penetrate. . .” or “Not since WWII had a foreigner. . .”.  I mean, really, Roderick.  Maybe shooting tied-down rabbits was your vocation, after all.

It’s a pretty foolish book, and one that Carver is probably pretty embarrassed about now.  He was probably operating on the age-old imperial schema he’d imbibed in his youth, that, so long as no-one finds out what you’re up to, you can say whatever you want.  He couldn’t see the future because the past had dictated to him what he’d write in the present.

But I’m not lying—I read the book.  At first, I was amused by his faux-Greene (Carver himself would admit this) weary cynicism and the characters he introduced me to.  Increasingly, though, as he continued his travels, and went to places I’ve been to, too, I found myself reading to hear about him, though not in the way he’d intended (the intrepid traveller).  I started to read through him, and see his attempts to make himself seem bold and uncanny as silly or tired.  Carver’s book is predicated on a north-to-south terrible adventure, but even he apparently tired of that and gave in to petulant phrases when it became apparent that those were all he’d be able to work himself up to.  Give him another 150 pages, I say, and this turns right into Pickwick in the Balkans.  It would have been bloody hilarious, seeing him either attempting to sustain his Bond-ish persona or keep on mustering evil amongst peasants for whom evil was much less interesting than a bowl of yoghurt.

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Pat Boone and George Noory – Pushin’ for Hatred

Good ol’ Pat Boone was on George Noory’s Coast-to-Coast the other day, and Pat did kind of charm with his ol’ I’m just an aw-shucks kid routine. 

But then Pat went on to reveal something pretty telling.  He was struggling as best he could to attempt to point out that those without faith were unhappy—so he said that “psychologists and psychiatrists” (in Pat’s wisdom, things that start with ‘p’ kinda just go together like that) just, they all tended to commit suicide more than others.

Well, you could smell the smoke burning (could be a devil, no doubt) as he said that he heard one time that. . . .  Look, far be it from me to attempt to get into the hateful religious mind of Pat Boone.  I think what Pat started out to say was fairly simple enough, that people who had faith had a kind of beatified presence that made them immune to the tough and dark situations humans face.  This is if I’m being really, really charitable.

But Pat had to keep ‘er goin,’ and, well, wouldn’t you know it, right out there on George Noory’s Coast-to-Coast AM, Pat had to relate his joke about how a “mousey” (check George’s logs) woman went to a psychiatrist, and she complained “I feel so inferior.”  Gol’ darn’ if that psychiatrist (I thought he’d shot himself) didn’t say “you are inferior!!”  Yuk, yuk.  George Noory of Coast-to-Coast AM listened with rapt enthusiasm, as is recorded on his show.

On the one hand, you would like to think that religion—any religion—could be a force for good in this world.  You’d even like, just being white and being located somewhere on a gps and so on, to hope that that religion would be Christian.  That’s what you’d hope.  On the other,

Hope denied, howsabout just starting to act a little bit more humanely to those very close to you, religious or not?

Pat Boone made millions of dollars off of it; George Noory is making millions now, fostering hate; is there anyone out there willing to step up and say, hey, I’m willing to take one for the team and _give up_ a few dollars to make the world a better place?

You’ll never make as much money as George Noory, but when you die, your mind won’t be criss-crossed with the knowledge of the hate you’ve engendered.  If you really believed that you were going to live again, then wouldn’t you want to do something good now?

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