Kvetch of the Day

My Christmas Playlist

2011-12-25T15:16:00.000-04:00

It's long seemed strange to me that, with such a surfeit of good Christmas carols and songs available (in sharp contrast to Channukah, which only has one song and not a particularly good one), radio stations and shopping malls persist in just playing Walking In A Winter Wonderland, Jingle Bell Rock, Rocking Around the Christmas Tree, and Drummer Boy over and over again until everyone wants to throw up. With breaks for annoying kid's music like Frosty the Snowman, Rudolph the Red-Nosed Reindeer, and Santa Claus Is Coming to Town.

No wonder some people wind up feeling grinchy. So as a public service, I have decided to offer a list of underplayed Christmas songs. Each song title is linked so that you can buy the MP3 download if you choose, although granted that could get a little expensive....

Oh, who am I kidding? You're all using Bit Torrent to download pirated copies, and nothing I say is going to change that. Go ahead, then, acquire these songs in whatever way you prefer and download them to your player. Then, when the repetition of the well-worn standards gets to be too much, you can pop your earbuds in, have an escape and remind yourself that Christmas music, as well as Christmas itself, need not suck.

Classics

Adeste Fideles (Oh Come All Ye Faithful)
Oh, you can get the English version if you want. But isn't it more fun to listen to the original, in medieval Latin?*
Three Ships
God Rest Ye Merry Gentlemen
This and the previous are good sing-along songs because they have a ton of verses that are all sung to the same tune, and so are easy to learn. Why not print out the lyrics and go caroling?
Hark The Herald Angels Sing
Ding Dong Merrily On High
Aside from the tune, what I like about this carol are the bizarre lyrics. Isn't it great that something written back in the nineteenth century includes, "Yo, yo, yo,"? It's like primitive hip-hop. Plus there's Latin in this one too. Hosanna in excelsis!
Tannenbaum (Oh Christmas Tree)
Again, listening in the original German is more fun.

Mary's Boy Child
Just in case you were confused and thought Mary had a girl.
Petit Papa Noël
As far as I'm aware, this hasn't been translated into English, but if it has... you know it... it's more fun to listen to in the original French. Come on. Broaden yourself culturally.
Santa Baby
There aren't enough sultry Christmas songs, don't you think? Here's one. Much better than the insipid I Saw Mommy Kissing Santa Claus.
Welcome Christmas
Yes, from the cartoon How the Grinch Stole Christmas. But it's a good tune. Why not a good tune, from a toon?

Rock

2000 Miles by The Pretenders
My favourite Christmas rock song. I think I've heard it on the radio all of twice.
A Mistress for Christmas by AC/DC
Who the hell would want a hippopotamos for Christmas? What for? Imagine how it would destroy your house, and how much you'd have to feed it. The AC/DC boys have more sense. I have never heard this song played on the radio, much less in a mall. Why on earth not? If there were more Heavy Metal Christmas music blasting out of the speakers at this time of year (which is to say, if there were any at all), the world would be a better place. Really. Just think what a great antidote it would make for all the sickly sweet stuff on offer at this time of year.
This song is off The Razor's Edge album, and shockingly, HMV Digital does not have that album, and therefore does not have the original version of the song. What better proof of how underappreciated it is? So no link for this one.
A Wonderful Christmas Time by Paul McCartney
This one gets less airtime than Happy Christmas (War Is Over) by John Lennon. That's why it's on the list.

And that's my list. If you think I've missed out a worthwhile and underplayed Christmas song or carol, please comment below. Heavy metal or hip-hop offerings particularly appreciated.

* Medieval Latin is not genuine Latin. It is a creation of the Christian church, coming after true Latin had died. There is a tendency to use different verb forms, but more importantly, the pronunciation is altogether different, which is to say wrong. You see, nobody had invented the gramophone yet, so medieval speakers were unable to determine how Latin was actually pronounced. Scholars eventually were able to recover some (who knows how much?) of the correct pronunciation through the study of poetry (i.e. which vowel sounds were long and which were short), and spelling (for example, Caius and Gaius are alternate spellings of the same name, which shows that c's and g's were hard, not soft). But that must have happened post-medieval times.

One of the big medieval errors was to change the short terminal e into a long e (as in, Et tu, Bruté? Caesar never said it like that). Another was to pronounce every syllable. The ancient Romans didn't do that. They elided adjacent vowel sounds. The sad result of this error of the medievals is that you can't sing Adeste Fideles with classical Latin pronunciation even if you want to; with the elisions in place, it won't scan. I know—I've tried. (I majored in Classics at university.) Back

Dumb Things People Say: Stop Grossing Me Out!

2011-11-22T16:20:00.004-04:00

When I wrote my last word on this subject, Dumb Things People Say: The Mangling of Popular Expressions, I didn't anticipate that I would one day write a sequel. I should have. People do say an overabundance of stupid things, after all, and there is not one category of ill-conceived speech but several. This particular one puts the "gory" in "category."

WARNING: The following contains images of violence, as well as the most notorious and versatile four-letter word in the English language. If you have delicate sensibilities... then I don't know how you manage in modern society, and I sympathize. Oh, and you read on at your own risk.

You wouldn't expect to find an image of horrifying bloodiness in a discussion of the best science fiction and fantasy books of the year, would you? I certainly didn't. But in Genreville's blog post on the subject, Rose Fox states that Daryl Gregory's short story collection Unpossible "blew my head off and then dumped cold water down the bleeding stump of my neck. Fortunately that’s how I like it. "

No Rose, you wouldn't like that. I admit that once your head was actually off, you wouldn't mind the cold water being poured down your neck, because you'd be too dead to feel it or care one way or another. But I maintain that if somebody came at you with any instrument of decapitation, explosive or otherwise, you'd put up a vigorous argument, even if that somebody was as talented a writer as Daryl Gregory.

I'm normally a fan of Genreville, and I sincerely believe that that metaphor was not Rose Fox's finest moment.

Do people think about what they're saying? Do they picture in their minds the thing they are describing, really picture it in something other than an oh-look-Wile-E.-Cayote-is-alive-again-after-falling-off-that-cliff cartoonish sort of way? I'm sure they must not, because if they did, they would never post something like that on their blogs. They might say it in conversation—and be sorry an instant afterwards. But writing and posting takes more premeditation.

I can't help myself. When somebody talks of chopping off a head and pouring water down the stump, I immediately picture just that, and I don't enjoy it one bit. I have a vivid imagination. I know that not everybody does. It surprises me that somebody so lacking in that area that she can comfortably speak about pouring cold water down bloody neck-stumps, gets much out of reading novels. It's a wonderment.

As is the concept of skull-fucking. So many questions arise. Why would you want to? Where exactly would you insert your penis?* The ear hole? The eye socket? What sort of pleasure could you possibly get out of such an activity, other than the vengeful, twisted satisfaction of degrading your enemy's remains? And finally, just how much would you have to hate somebody to want to do this to them?†

Exotic as it sounds, skull-fucking has apparently become a part of the common discourse. I first encountered it maybe sixteen, seventeen years back. I was in a fit of pique over the bug-ridden unusability of a piece of Microsoft software (some things don't change). I don't remember what I typed into the search engine (this was pre-Google. Imagine! I think my favourite search engine at the time was Infoseek); probably something like "Microsoft sucks." Up came a link to, "Fucking the skull of Microsoft." Curiosity overcame repulsion, and I clicked. I was sorry I did. It was an illustration, you see. Since then, skull-fucking has become sufficiently socially acceptable that Jon Stewart sometimes mentions it in an offhand way on The Daily Show.

Likewise, Steven Colbert, host of The Colbert Report, often invites his interview guests to "rip me a new one." Considering that this is short for "rip me a new asshole," isn't it amazing that this expression has become an acceptable part of polite discourse? Just think about the implications. Think about what is involved. Unless you'd rather not. I think I'd rather not. It's much more horrible than skull-fucking, which, after all, can only take place once the victim is mercifully dead, probably for a long time (unless the perpetrator is so eager to begin the ritual that he uses artificial means to remove the flesh from the bones).

It seems to me that any culture in which such grotesqueries are so casually bandied about is one that has become extraordinarily numbed and hardened to images of violence. How did that happen? If, in fact, it happened. I'm sure some would argue that it's a normal part of the human condition. But this is a discussion worthy of a whole other blog post, one which I will probably write soon. For now, back to the topic at hand: things people say.

At my old job, my coworkers and I once got into a discussion about the internet acronym WTF. I probably don't have to tell you what this means, since you know the internet well or you wouldn't be reading this, but just in case (and because I like my naughty words typed out in full): it stands for What The Fuck. My coworker found it strange that the average internet user thinks it's perfectly polite to type this, even in forums where they'd never use the full four-letter word. He quoted a comedian as saying,"Now you've made me think of that word. I don't want that word in my head!"

I don't mind that word in my head, but there are any number of blood-soaked images I don't want in my head. I would appreciate it if the young people of today could keep them to themselves.

* I don't mean to be sexist in my assumption that a penis must be involved in skull-fucking, and I hope I haven't offended any young women who want equality in the realm of doing disgusting things. It's simply that I believe—perhaps wrongly, and feel free to correct me if I err—that if a vulva rather than a penis was involved, the activity would be called something else. Skull-humping, perhaps. Back

† Actually, that's not my final question. My final question is, Is this something that a great novel or short story collection might do to Rose's skull after blowing it off its neck? Just asking. Back

Dumb Things I Read in the Saturday Globe and Mail, Oct. 8, 2011

2011-10-21T20:30:00.007-03:00

The masses demanded, so they got. Well, one mass anyway. At first, it was looking like I wasn't going to get any material. The articles were all reasonably intelligent, or at least not outwardly idiotic. I turned to the Style section, which can usually be counted on to serve up something stupid. It's the Style section; isn't that what it's for? There's Chris Nuttal-Smith, right on the third page. I remember the time some guy wrote in to say he liked top hats and wanted to bring them back into fashion. Naturally Chris had to nip this kind of dangerous fashion dissension in the bud, so he got out the big guns (I picture an haute couture gun, perhaps with feathers hanging from it, unless they're not in fashion this year) and informed the reader that HE was not someone who could bring back the top hat and he'd better not even think of wearing one in public unless he wanted to make a fool of himself.

Of course not. A lowly citizen can't bring back the top hat. You need someone like Karl Lagerfeld, someone who already has a design house and is respected in the field. If Lagerfeld put on a top hat on one of his models, it would be heralded as revolutionary, everybody would be wearing one, and then the reader would be permitted his top hat. But put on a top hat when Lagerfeld hasn't done it yet, and you're just an ass.

Not being a fashion victim, I thought that was pretty stupid, and I expected to enjoy more, similarly stupid pronouncements. But this time, Chris was tackling the question of middle-aged people wearing clothes meant for young people. He nixed it, of course. "Cheap casual clothes are simply not flattering on imperfect men: This is why tailored suits are one's greatest support in old age. The same principle is true for women," he argues, and... I agree with him.* Apparently, if I wanted stylish stupidity, I'd have to dig deeper.

So I did, but page after page, I wasn't finding stupidity. Some perfectly credible furniture, a recipe, a piece about wines: all reasonable stuff. Hideous clothing on the two-page spread for Paris Fashion Week, but that's visual. I needed stupidity in print.

Just when I thought all was lost, I found it. Page 18. Katrina Onstad's column, entitled: Swedish for emasculated baby-men. First sentence:

It has been said that there is no greater test of a relationship than navigating the life-altering choice between a Krunst and a Gertllos throw rug.

And we have a winner. Thank you, Katrina Onstad! You have maintained G&M's vital stupidity quotient. Hear that, everybody? No greater test of relationships than shopping for a throw rug, so forget degenerative diseases and child rearing; they're insignificant.

OK, you could argue that she was being tongue in cheek, but I'm not so sure. The scary thing about the Globe and Mail is the peek it gives into this alien world of Toronto upper-middle classness where things that nobody else gives a shit about, like where to go to eat weird extruded, foam-covered nouvelle cuisine or which thousand-dollar handbag to buy, acquire a quasi-mystical, fetishistic significance. If you are the kind of person who cares about such things, then maybe throw-rug shopping really is the greatest relationship challenge you expect to face.

But perhaps I should get to the point. Katrina was very upset because IKEA had the temerity to try to rescue men from the pain of shopping. In a location in Sydney, Australia, they have installed Manland, a room that men can hang out in while they wait for their wives to finish shopping. It is said to contain entertainments such as foosball and hot dogs. As a Torontonian with no real problems, Katrina is deeply offended by this proposal.

"The set of assumptions behind Manland doesn't flatter either sex," she claims. "Once again, here comes the baby-man meme, wherein men are unable and unwilling to participate in the rote side of domestic life." Leaving aside the implication that all ideas are now "memes," whether or not they originated on the Internet, isn't it interesting that women are the ones who get to decide what constitutes "participation in domestic life"? One could argue that women don't adequately participate in the garbage-removal and snow-shovelling side of domestic life. Once they've been together a year or two, couples invariably and naturally split up tasks according to the inclinations and abilities of each spouse. Somehow that's never a problem until some woman says it is. I never heard a man say that a woman's not pulling her weight in the coupledom arena unless she's walked alongside him while he pushed the lawnmower, so it's not clear to me why men should have to shop with their wives if they find it a genuinely painful experience.

And they do. I can't count the number of times I've been in a store and seen a man sitting in a chair outside the women's changing room with a dead look in his eyes. One glance, and I know he's gone well beyond boredom. He hit boredom after the first half-hour. Now his brain has shut down. Ladies, if you love your man, why would you want to put him through this?

Mind you, that's clothes shopping. I think furniture shopping probably induces a fair bit of male unhappiness as well, but at least a sofa doesn't have to be tried on. If any store needs a Manland, it's a clothing store. Still, IKEA is to be commended for its innovation, and clothing stores may well follow suit.

There's more to Katrina's argument. "To be a man..." she claims, "is to participate fully in your relationship and muster up a civil opinion on a bath mat from time to time. Manland is a country populated by the lowest forms of manhood: the whiner who can't even put aside his own (adolescent) proclivities for an hour to help his wife carry a Shrompfken - one that he's probably going to enjoy sleeping on himself." In other words, a woman can't manage the shopping-at-IKEA task herself because there are two things she needs from her man: an opinion and help carrying things.

All right, I can accept that a woman might value her husband's input while shopping... for real furniture. You know, something major, like a dining room table or a sofa. Not a bath mat. A BATH MAT, Katrina? Are you kidding me? You need your husband's opinion on a bath mat?

I can't imagine why you would care about something so insignificant as which precise bath mat your spouse decided to bring home, unless you're a middle-class Torontonian, in which case I suppose it's a matter of crucial importance.

But yes, for larger purchases, your spouse's input might be desirable. Fine, but you need to be aware that compromise is a two-way street. That is, it means something other than what Katrina seems to think it means: Man does everything woman tells him to do. Compromise may mean, for example, that the woman moves through IKEA and makes purchasing decisions more quickly than she would like to. Contrary to popular belief, men are quite capable of shopping... at their pace. They know what they want, they go in, they get it, they leave. Done. What makes men miserable is the lingering that women like to indulge in.

As for the Shrompfken-carrying business, Manland is still in the store, meaning the man is still available to do whatever carrying is required. You only need to carry from the store to the car or bus. While you're in the store, you have the cart.

Katrina further claims, I can't help but suspect dishonestly, that women are being altruistic when they shop: "Perhaps there are those whose perfect Saturday includes Swedish meatballs and picture frames, but I suspect that almost no one actually wants to go to IKEA, regardless of gender." Really? That's news to me, because I love IKEA. I have ever since it was first introduced in Montreal. I loved the tyranny of the little maze you had to walk through when you went into the furniture section. There was a little gap you could squeeze through if you knew where it was, thereby skipping to the end, but to fully appreciate the IKEA experience was to walk the whole thing, seeing everything from living room sets to kitchens in the order that the designers intended. We have too much choice in our society, and studies have shown that that makes us unhappy. I appreciate the IKEA genius who took away not only our choice of where to wander but also rejected the alienating warehouse look of the average big box store in favour of a cozier, more human-sized maze. And you can even get Swedish meatballs at the end, in lieu of the traditional piece of cheese.

I'm not the only one either. I know that because Cristina Perissinotto once wrote a fabulous poem about how much she loves IKEA (I have no idea if she published it, unfortunately). [UPDATE (2011/11/16): Cristina herself has informed me that the IKEA poem can be read in her poetry collection Exhale, Exhale by Guernica Editions. Buy a copy at Book Depository and get free shipping.]

Angry as she is, Katrina is not afraid to toss in thoroughly spurious arguments if she thinks it will win her her point. "I look forward to my pedicure room at Rona," she says sarcastically, but since when do men make their wives come to the hardware store with them?

The arguments just get more spurious as she goes on. A few tweaks, and suddenly this is some sort of feminist, political issue. Comparing Manland to the newly-popular man caves, she decides that these phenomena mean that men are feeling "elbowed aside," and having invented the problem, rushes to undermine it. All of a sudden, she's quoting statistics ("in 2010, less than 30 per cent of Canadian MPs were female"), after which she declares snidely, "it's a touch difficult to see 'invisibility' as a male issue."

Invisibility? Lack of female MPs? I thought we were talking about men shopping at IKEA.

Still, man caves are an interesting subject, one that hardly helps her argument. They may be partly about retreating from the world and indulging in entertainments such as XBox and foosball, but they're also about a man having a space that he can decorate precisely as he wants to (even Katrina admits as much, with her fleeting reference to "an electric guitar as wall art"). That implies that the rest of the house is the woman's domain, where she holds sway and decorates as she sees fit. It is difficult to reconcile such a vision with Katrina's assertion that women value the male opinion on decor, even on such items as the lowly bath mat. One might rather be tempted to conclude that there is truth in the stereotype that a woman wants a man's opinion on decor as long as it jibes with her own, all the while reserving the right to summarily dismiss deviating opinions. If this is what men are experiencing, no wonder they'd rather hang out at Manland, or in the man cave, than join their wives in the IKEA maze. I suspect that Katrina—poor, furious Katrina—has no one to blame but herself.

* Actually, reading this statement over, I realize it merits mockery as well, for the claim that "tailored suits are one's greatest support in old age." Hello? What about walkers? Canes? Medicare? He would have done better to word that differently, but G&M columnists appear to be like Tinkerbell, unable to hold more than one thing in their heads at a time, and so the rest of the world is forgotten as they make wild overstatements to support their arguments pertaining to whatever trivial topic they happen to be discussing. Back

"Genre" is not a Synonym for "Formulaic": a rant

2011-09-30T20:49:00.003-03:00

[I]f you haven't had a life, and therefore have nothing to write about, don't worry unduly; this guarantees your dreary novels will be reviewed positively in all the posh papers, because posh papers are staffed exclusively by graduates who haven't had a life and therefore don't realise you're writing about nothing, or if they do realise it, rather approve of it. (This is called 'non-genre fiction', and, contrary to popular belief, it is much more profitable than popular fiction, because it is subsidised by taxes stolen from the working classes.) ~Mat Coward, in Success... and How to Avoid It.

The Globe and Mail from Saturday, Sept. 10 has an article in its Books section called Why Fiction is Good For You. Psychologist and fiction writer Keith Oatley claims that reading fiction makes you more empathetic. Sounds interesting, right? And to an extent, it is, although Oatley’s oftentimes bizarre ways of expressing himself don't improve the reading experience (at one point he says, "It is not that one puts bread into a toaster and makes toast."). For me, the article was spoiled, as is many a promising work of fiction, by the ending. The third paragraph from the bottom reads: "For his part, Oatley is convinced that the better the writer, the more powerful the simulation, and he makes a distinction between literary and genre fiction."

Instant raising of the hackles. Mind you, I have no way of knowing whether Oatley himself chose to use the words "genre" and "literary" or whether he spoke more intelligently. That is not revealed in the direct quotes which follow:

"You can have a good read, but it is sort of like going on a roller coaster. […] You get off, your heart is beating a bit, but you are still the same person."
"Chekhov was a great artist: The effect is different – the extent to which [the reader] can really inhabit another mind."

And that’s all fair enough, as long as one doesn’t pointlessly slam genre. Writer Kate Taylor continues to make an ass of herself by ending the article as follows:

The roller coaster may be fun, but the flight simulator … now that’s art.

What?

I have often thought of doing a series of blog posts that would be collectively called Dumb Things I Read in the Saturday Globe and Mail. I can usually rely on reading at least one stupid thing in every issue. The only thing that’s stopped me is, it takes me a week or two to get through an entire Saturday Globe and Mail, which would result in the posts being embarrassingly out of date. However, genre-bashing never goes out of style among the snobigensia, and apparently, neither do bad metaphors. So although this post has a different title, it could also be considered number 0 in my possible new series: Dumb Things I Read in the Globe and Mail.

It has already been pointed out ample times, mostly by fans, that genre fiction does not have to be superficial and formulaic, that it can in fact contain character development and whatever else you might expect to find in quality fiction. No matter how many times it’s said, it won’t penetrate the heads of those who don’t want to hear it. This selfsame article sings the praises of Jane Austen, a blatant genre writer who never wrote anything that wasn’t a romance. Snobs don’t want to think of Austen as a genre writer, though she clearly was, as it would interfere with their negative perception of genre fiction. So reality must be ignored.

This post is not yet another genre fiction apology. Rather, I want to make the opposite point: not that genre fiction doesn't have to be formulaic, but that literary fiction often is.

While the term "literary fiction" is generally understood to simply mean good-quality fiction, when one has read enough literary magazines and novels, it becomes clear that literary fiction, is, in fact, itself a genre. After all, it has clearly-defined rules. One of those rules is that it not be what is traditionally known as genre (ironic, isn’t it?). Other rules of the literary fiction genre include:

It needn't have any sort of satisfying ending.
The writing style should be "lyrical," that is, poetic.
A shovelful of symbolism is always good.
Also good is a recurring image, shoehorned in to create a feeling of "resonance." The image may be symbolic, though it doesn’t have to be. (For a particularly obnoxious example, read The Jade Peony by Wayson Choy.)
If the story lacks both symbolism and recurring, resonant images, it can still be considered literary if it adheres to the other rules and is a slice-of-life vignette of the sort that gives reviewers the opportunity to use adjectives like "stark" and "gritty."

What is formulaic fiction? It is fiction that adheres too strictly to the rules of its genre. These rules or guidelines do have their uses. Without genres or categories, the sales people at publishing houses wouldn't know how to sell a book, and book store workers wouldn't know where to shelve it. But an important part of art is breaking the rules, and to the degree that the author fails to do that, art is compromised. Just as a writer working on a thriller may say to himself at a certain point, "It's been a while since that last car chase; I'd better stick in another one," the literary writer may worry that there aren't enough deeply meaningful symbols in his lyrical story and he'd better work in some more.

This strict adherence to rules is why a lot of literary fiction sucks, and when literary fiction sucks, it sucks worse than most traditional genre fiction possibly can. Why? Because whatever else it may be lacking, genre fiction has to be at least entertaining. The market demands it. By contrast, literary fiction need not be; indeed, if you are enough of a snob, entertainment value may actually be a drawback because it detracts from the "seriousness" of the piece. (Snobs like to refer to short stories and poetry as "pieces." If you would like to make it in certain literary circles, be sure to refer often to your "piece." But make sure you are in the right circle or people may think you have a gun.)

I fear this discussion has become a little confusing, and not just because of the gun remark. After all, "genre" normally refers to certain specific genres that are considered genre (romance, science fiction, mystery and so on), while I am claiming that something normally thought to be outside genre (literary fiction) is actually a genre as well. I’m trying to make the distinction clear by referring to what is normally thought of as genre (romance, science fiction, mystery and so on) as traditional genre (meaning what is traditionally considered genre), while referring to fiction that follows the rules outlined above as the genre of literary fiction. So, having defined my terminology, I will sum up by saying that while some traditional genre fiction may be formulaic at times, it is also the case that the genre known as literary fiction is often, in its own way, formulaic as well, and boring to boot.

Clear as mud?

Mind you, I’m not saying that all literary fiction sucks. Just that too much of it does. And while I’ll read good-quality literary fiction, when I can find it, which is not often, I prefer good quality science fiction, fantasy fiction, mystery or horror (would any brave snob like to step forward and claim that Edgar Allen Poe is formulaic and low-quality?). But not western. Even though western is a genre and I identify as a genre fan, I don’t generally care for westerns (although the movie High Noon was quite good). Also not romance, except Jane Austen, who, romance writer though she was, is in a class of her own.

Perhaps we need a better vocabulary to discuss these things. That is to say, less misleading, less freighted with prejudice, and more accurate. What do you think? I think throwing out the meaningless expression "genre fiction" would be a good start.

A Radical Restaurant Proposal

2011-08-16T21:17:00.001-03:00

How about bringing me what I ordered? And nothing else?

Today I met a friend for lunch at a restaurant. I ordered a chicken Caesar salad... very carefully. No croutons. Dressing on the side. I thought that should have done it. I mean, I know what goes into a Caesar salad. But the salad arrived with two big slices of garlic bread sitting on top.

Expressing my surprise, I picked off the offending slabs and explained to the waitress that I neither wanted the bread nor could eat it, since I have celiac disease. An agonizingly drawn-out conversation followed.

"Should I have them make you a new salad?"

"I don't think that's necessary. I hate to waste food."

"Are you sure you'll be OK?"

"I don't think I'm so sensitive that one breadcrumb is going to affect me."

"But it might be better to be safe..."

"It sounds like you'll feel more comfortable if you make me a new salad."

"No, this is for you..."

And on, and on. Finally I persuaded her that the salad was all right for me to eat, and handed her the bread. I like to dump pieces of bread right in the hands of serving people. They seem reluctant to touch it. Maybe they don't want to get butter on their hands. But what do they expect me to do with it? Leave it in a heap on the table? Perhaps make it into an impromptu centrepiece?

Before the waitress left, she told me that in the future, I should always tell my server about any allergies I have before ordering.

"She's right," I said to my lunch companion. "I should." I wondered why it is I'm reluctant to do so. Perhaps it's a desire to avoid that scarlet letter feeling, that public declaration of oneself as a sickly oddball. But something else was bothering me. I thought I'd ordered pretty carefully, and somehow it wasn't enough. Why did I feel as though the waitress, indeed the entire restaurant business, is somehow trying to fob its responsibilities off on me?

Later that day, I figured it out. I'm tired of restaurants serving me food that I didn't ask for and don't want. Is this such a radical notion: serve me what I ordered, and not what I didn't order?

I don't think I'm merely being whiny. It's true that I don't enjoy the necessity of giving a spiel on my digestive health to the wait staff every time I eat out. But in fact, this is not just an allergy problem. Once, I ordered chili at Boston Pizza and it arrived with cheese all over it. I didn't want cheese. Nothing in the menu said that the chili came with cheese. I could not have avoided this situation by discussing my allergies with the waitress, since I have no dairy allergy.

I didn't send the chili back. I carefully scooped off the cheese and deposited it on the side of my plate.* As I said earlier, I don't like to waste food. Also, I think today's prevailing restaurant climate may have affected me. I felt as if the situation was my responsibility because I hadn't read the cook's mind all the way from the dining hall. I had failed to anticipate that he might put unrequested cheese on my chili.

Ketchup can also be a problem. It's an oddly popular condiment, so restaurants tend to assume you want it. Many wait people will slap a ketchup squeeze bottle on your table as soon as you put in an order, whereas if you prefer vinegar on your fries, you have to ask. I don't mind the ketchup squeeze bottle, but I hate it when a little ketchup-filled plastic tub appears on the side of my plate with my meal because I know that every ounce of it is going to end up untouched in the garbage, along with the once-unused plastic tub. All waste, which could have been avoided if only they'd asked.

And what happened to asking? Remember when wait staff used to ask you questions? "Fries or baked potato? White or brown toast?" Some of the higher-end restaurants, like Swiss Chalet, still do this.† But many don't. I think this may have to do with the newish trend of dropping by your table after you've received the food and asking something like, "How's everything tasting?" or "Is there anything else I can get you?" Perhaps wait staff decided that there are only so many questions they can deal with having to ask, and if they had to ask these post-order questions, then the pre-order questions had to go.

Well, I don't think this is a worthwhile trade-off. The pre-order questions are more important. Rather than abandon pre-order questions in favour of the repetitious and potentially disruptive "Can I get you anything else?," restaurants should provide patrons with some sort of signalling device they can use to let the wait staff know when they need something. I have long thought it would be great if restaurant tables each came equipped with a little flagpole and flag that you could raise when you needed service. This would be easier for the customers and easier for the staff. Further, the flags could add to the overall design motif. They could be brightly coloured, or styled to match the room decor. Restaurateurs, please feel free to use this idea without giving me credit. The joy I may one day feel upon walking into a restaurant and seeing a mini-flagpole on each table will be reward enough for me.

If you don't want to ask questions and you don't want to equip the tables with flagpoles, why not print on the menu everything that comes with the dish by default? Then at least people like me will be in a position to specify what we want and don't want on our plates. We won't have to wrack our brains to work out every surprise ingredient the cook might decide, on some crazy, onion-fume-influenced whim, to plunk on top of the meal.

I know I can't change the world. I can't make restaurants stop serving me things I didn't ask for. So I resolve from this day forward to tell wait staff that I have celiac disease. Frankly, I doubt it will solve the problem. I fully expect that at some future date, I will order by saying, "I have celiac disease. I can't have any wheat. So I'll have the chicken Caesar salad, no croutons, dressing on the side." And the salad will STILL show up with garlic bread on top. And the waitress will be all like, "Oops, garlic bread has wheat in it." Because waitresses aren't paid to think. If they were, they might wonder why a person who didn't want croutons would want garlic bread, which is, after all, a larger chunk of the same exact thing.

So I'm quite sure that the scenario I've described will eventually come to pass. But when it does, I'll be able to send the food back with a clear conscience. Likewise, my other resolution is to return any dishes that come with unexpected cheese on top. Yes, there will be food waste, and no, I won't be the one responsible.

* When my husband proofread this, he suggested I could dump the cheese into the waitress's hand, the way I did with the bread. I thought this amusing enough to share, although I want to make it clear that I do not advocate waitress abuse of any kind. [back]

† I live in Fredericton, New Brunswick. Here, Swiss Chalet is one of the higher-end restaurants. [back]

How to Make Gluten-Free Bread: a Quick Primer and Three Recipes

2011-07-22T16:51:00.008-03:00

Gluten, that super-long protein string that gives wheat bread its delectable fluffiness, can also make some people sick. In celiac disease, the consumption of gluten creates an immune reaction in the intestines and flattens the villi, the little hairlike things that are responsible for absorbing nutrients. No villi, no nutrient absorption. You can see how that would not be a good thing, but it gets worse. People who have celiac disease but continue to eat gluten are at increased risk for colon cancer and type I diabetes. So if you have this condition, it's really important to lay off the gluten.

An interesting fact about gluten: no human being can digest it. That's right: even if you're not celiac or gluten-sensitive, you're not breaking the stuff down. Not being birds, we're not designed to eat grains. It's just that in most people, the little strings sit around quietly in the intestine not causing trouble, while in a minority of people, the intestine gets fed up with the alien presence and launches an immune system attack.

So what to do if you belong to this minority? Whether we're designed to eat grains or not, most of us don't want to give up eating pizza and sandwiches.

The trick is to find another substance that will bind your dough together the way that gluten does. Two types of ingredient that will have this effect are gums (xanthan, guar, etc.) and eggs. In most cases, you'll need to add either a gum or some eggs to your dough, or the resulting bread will crumble to bits, and that's a pain when you're trying to butter it. (For the one exception I know of to this rule, see socca bread. That's a flatbread though.)

Most gluten-free recipes also include some sort of starch, typically a mixture of some of the following: potato, corn, tapioca and arrowroot starch. Starch lightens up the bread so it can rise higher. It is not a requirement though, as we'll see later.

As for the flour, a blend of flours are typically used. One popular flour in gluten-free recipes is garbanzo-fava flour, a mixture of chick pea flour and fava flour. This flour, often referred to as garfava for short, is said to rise well. Rice flour is commonly used as the base flour. Buckwheat is sometimes added for extra fibre. Sorghum flour, from the seeds of a grasslike grain, is added for flavour, as it has a natural sweetness.

This is about all I know about gluten-free flour blending, which appears to me as an arcane science akin to alchemy. Still, I say, don't be afraid to experiment. The worst that can happen is that you'll have to throw out a loaf of bread. And most of the time it isn't that bad. At the least you can usually turn it into breadcrumbs and bread fish with it, or make it into turkey stuffing.

But maybe you don't want to bake. Baking is a lot of work. You might want to go to the supermarket and buy a gluten-free bread in a bag, premade. Fair enough, but there a couple of things you should know:

Most store-bought gluten-free bread is disgusting. It's like chewing on a mattress, only with less flavour.
Most store-bought gluten-free bread is very low in fibre, because it is made primarily out of white rice flour*. This goes a long way towards explaining its lack of flavour as well.

That said, I do know of a great gluten-free bread mix that you can buy in a supermarket. It's not a premade bread, so you still have to do some work, but it's worth it. It's better than any other gluten-free bread I've tried. It's Bob's Red Mill Homemade Wonderful Bread. The name sounds boastful, I know, but they're telling the truth.

If you're just starting out with gluten-free baking, you may be reluctant to go out and purchase a weird and freaky ingredient like xanthan gum. I know I was. So try the following two recipes, which can be made without it. They also don't contain any starch. The third and final recipe is a more traditional, gummy, starchy, gluten-free bread recipe; basically, it's my attempt to duplicate Bob's Red Mill Homemade Wonderful Bread, and I think I didn't do too bad a job of it, if I do say so myself.

Recipe #1: Rolls

This recipe is really passover rolls with gluten-free flour taking the place of the matzoh meal. You see, during Passover, in commemoration of the escape from Egypt when the Jews had to make a quick snack before fleeing, leavened bread is forbidden. That means no yeast or baking soda. However, Jews have a long history of getting around the letter of the law while doing what they want: witness that string that Hassidim put around their neighbourhoods during Shabbos. So naturally they found a way to make rolls light and fluffy without yeast or baking soda. It just takes a lot of eggs.

This recipe is adapted from the recipe for passover rolls in Second Helpings, Please! Revised edition. Mt. Sinai chapter #1091, B'nai B'rith Women, Montreal, Canada.

2 cups gluten-free flour (whatever kind you want: I used 1 cup brown rice flour and 1 cupbuckwheat flour. If you like it sweet, throw in some coconut flour)
1 tsp. salt
1 cup water
1/2 cup oil
4 eggs

Combine dry ingredients. Bring oil and water to a boil and add to dry ingredients. Mix. Beat in eggs one at a time. Let stand for 15 minutes. Preheat oven to 400 degrees F. Oil a cookie sheet.

Oil or wet your hands so that the dough won't stick, and shape rolls. Place on cookie sheet. Bake for 1 hour or until brown.

The resulting rolls are nice and crispy, and surprisingly puffed up inside. Now, you may be concerned about using such a lot of eggs. I find you can reduce it to three eggs and still get good results. Just replace the missing egg with 1/4 cup of water. You can also replace as many eggs as you like with egg white, for a lower-cholesterol roll.

Recipe #2: Socca

This recipe is from Mediterranean Light: Delicious Recipes from the World's Healthiest Cuisine by Martha Rose Shulman. Shulman does great cookbooks.

2/3 cup chick pea flour
1/4 to 1/2 tsp. salt
1 cup cold water
Pepper
Olive oil

Beat together the flour, salt and water with a whisk or blender until there are no lumps. Add freshly ground pepper to taste.

Now, some timing issues. The oven has to preheat for 30 minutes, but the pan has to heat up for 15 minutes. So as soon as you've got your batter beaten up, turn the oven to 475 degrees F, then set a timer for 15 minutes. Oil a pan with the olive oil; a 12-inch pizza pan will do nicely. When the timer goes off, stick the pan in the oven and set the timer for another 15 minutes.

When the timer goes off again, yank the hot pan out of the oven (don't forget your oven mitt!) and pour in the batter. Put it in the upper third of the oven. Shulman says to bake for five minutes, then turn the oven to broil and broil for 3 to 4 minutes. I don't think I bother to do this. It's been a while since I made this bread, but I think I probably just bake it for 8 or 9 minutes.

Full disclosure: the reason I don't make this bread often is because it's wildly addictive and I ate myself sick on it the last time.

Recipe #3: Sandwich Bread

As I said above, this is my attempt to make something similar to Bob's Red Mill Homemade Wonderful Bread.

1 1/4 cup chickpea flour
1/4 cup fava flour (or: replace the above with 1 1/2 garfava flour)
1/2 cup sorghum flour
1 cup starch (I don't think it matters terribly which one you use. To get closest to Bob's recipe, try 1/2 cup potato starch, 1/2 cup minus 1 tbsp. Corn starch and 1 tbsp. Tapioca starch)
1 tbsp. Xanthan gum
1 1/2 tsp. Salt
2 1/4 tsp. Yeast
1 1/2 tbsp. Maple syrup
1 beaten egg + egg whites to 3/4 cup
1 tsp. Cider vinegar
3 tbsp. Olive oil
1 2/3 cup water

Warm up the water. I like to put it in the microwave for about half a minute. It should be about bath temperature, not so hot that you can't comfortably wiggle a finger in it. Add the yeast, stir and let sit 5 to 10 minutes while you blend the rest of the dry ingredients together. Mix the eggs, egg whites, maple syrup, cider vinegar and oil in a separate bowl. When the yeast is ready, add to the wet ingredients and then mix the dry ingredients to the wet ingredients until well blended. Bob's Red Mill actually says to use an electric mixer, but I find a fork adequate to the task.

Preheat the oven to 375 degrees F. Oil a loaf pan and pour in the batter. Smooth out the top with a rubber spatula. Cover and let rise in a warm place for 20 minutes. Place in oven and bake for 45 minutes. Bread is done when it makes a hollow sound when you tap it. Let it cool in the pan for 20 minutes before removing and cooling all the way on a rack.

Variations:

Egg-free version: You can reduce or remove the eggs by substituting water. One egg is equal to about 1/4 cup of water. If you remove all eggs, you should also up the xanthan gum by a teaspoon.
Starch-free version: Starch is not essential to gluten-free baking. It is just used because people are accustomed to light and airy baked goods. You can substitute the starch with the same amount of brown rice flour.
Egg-free, starch-free version: You can do both the substitutions described above at the same time. However, the result is not as tasty, in my opinion. It might be worth replacing some of the egg with apple sauce, although I haven't tried this myself.

Rest assured that all suggested substitutions (aside from the apple sauce one) have been tested in Vivian's kitchen have have been found to give acceptable to delicious results.

Review of Among Others by Jo Walton

2011-05-27T15:56:00.005-03:00

Among Others by Jo Walton
My rating: 2 of 5 stars

There's such a lot wrong with this novel it's hard to know where to start. On the one hand, it's easy to read, even though I got to a point where I was thinking, enough with the shopping excursions and book purchases, have something happen already! Morwenna's sad situation, her out-of-place feeling at school and her struggles with her handicap (something the author herself obviously has an intimate knowledge of) are all movingly detailed. And I like the idea of a daughter having to face an evil magical mother. Usually in fantasy fiction, it's a son contending with an evil father. As well, there is an attempt to imagine how magic might work in the real world that we're all familiar with, through coincidence and such, and that gives the story a verisimilitude that's appealing.

Now that I've got the positive aspects out of the way, let's look at the shortcomings. There is so much talk of science fiction in this novel, including specific authors and books, that it can feel at times more like a recommended reading list than a novel. I found myself thinking of a statement in Brenda Ueland's book, If You Want to Write: "You cannot move people by a second-hand infection" (p. 119, Graywolf Press paperback edition). In other words, when Heinlein, Zelazny, Le Guin et al wrote the books that Jo Walton loved so, that was art, but when she wrote a book that was eighty percent, "Squee! SF is so great! I love Heinlein and Zelazny and Le Guin! Squee!" that was not art.

Another problem is that the most climatic event in the heroine's life happened before the novel begins. That put me off balance. I kept wondering, are we ever going to get a detailed description of what happened? (The answer is no.) I also wondered, why didn't she just write a novel about that event? Maybe it would have been more interesting.

Since novels need climaxes, another climax has to happen, and compared to what has gone before, it feels anticlimactic. The worst part of this anticlimactic climax, maybe the worst part of the book, is that it violates the laws of magic that Walton took such pains to establish beforehand! All through the novel she's telling us, "Magic is always deniable," and then at the very apex of the plot, gives us a thoroughly undeniable piece of magic, with no explanation. What happened there? Was the ending rushed? I don't know, but it's a boner of major proportions. (Hey, Morwenna's a horny teenage girl. Why not throw in a double entendre?)

In summary, it's another one of the most wildly overrated books around. There appear to be a lot of those. Why is that?

View all my Goodreads reviews

Dumb Things People Say: the Mangling of Popular Expressions

2011-05-11T20:32:00.002-03:00

Language is for communication. Isn't that obvious? It shouldn't even need to be said. But in fact, it is popular these days to use language for something other than communication. Marketingspeak is meant to lull the reader's brain to sleep with babble that means little, yet is somehow comforting. Meetingspeak and Scholarspeak are meant to make the speaker sound intelligent through the use of polysyllabic, imprecise words that do not make their meaning anywhere near as clear as shorter, simpler words would have done. It appears that as a society, we have largely abandoned the idea that our sentences should make sense. So when common expressions get mangled over time and become nonsense, who's to remark upon it? Other than me, that is.

The language is always changing, of course, and these changes do not always result in nonsense. The word "foundering" has largely been abandoned for the similar-sounding "floundering." Foundering made more sense, but floundering is not altogether nonsensical. One pictures a flounder, out of water, desperately flopping around. On the other hand, when people talk about "flaunting the rules," that's ridiculous, as if rules were a party dress a girl wanted to show off. (The correct word is "flout.")

I, for one, think that language should be used for communication, and hope to turn people back to the path of correct speech through the use of judicious mockery, and, where desirable, cartoons. Here we go.

I could care less

People used to say, "I couldn't care less." It meant they cared very little indeed, or not at all. Now they often say, "I could care less." This should mean that they care somewhat, since it would be possible for them to care less. It could even mean that they do care a fair bit. Yet it is meant to imply a lack of caring, just like the original expression, despite the fact that that's not what the words are saying. This is why people who use this expression tend to sound like idiots.

Party hardy

I am pretty sure that this expression started out as "party hearty," with a t. But in North America, t's tend to be pronounced as d's, so that "party hearty" and "party hardy" sound the same. And in a society where sense is not expected, it doesn't matter that "party hearty" means "to party with gusto" and "party hardy" means, one can only suppose, "to party in difficult, inclement conditions." So when the expression got written down, "party hardy," whimsically nonsensical and having one letter fewer, won the day.

One could argue that, strictly speaking, the expression should not even be "party hearty" but "party heartily." But that wouldn't rhyme. Mangling grammar a little in order to achieve a rhyme may be an acceptable exercise of poetic license, especially where common expressions are concerned.

Saying "literally" when you really mean "figuratively"

Global News did this. "The eyes of the world are literally on Iran," the broadcaster said. No, the eyes of the world are figuratively on Iran.

If worst comes to worst

If worst comes to worst, then nothing's changed, right? You started out with worst, and you ended with worst. Nothing's happened, so while things might be at their absolute worst, at least they haven't gotten any worse. Not that they could, when they started out at their very worst to begin with. You can't get worse than worst.

If worse comes to worst. That's the expression, OK people? Really, a better expression would be, "if bad comes to worse." Maybe that's what the expression used to be, and people didn't think that was strong enough. But at least, "if worse comes to worst" makes some kind of sense. Things got worse, and then they got as bad as they possibly could—the worst. "Worst comes to worst," on the other hand, makes no sense at all.

If you think [fill in blank], you've got another thing coming

Another thing! You've got a thing coming. I love that. It's so idiotic, it's good. And no less an intellectual than Susie Bright used this expression (in her article about Camille Paglia: "If you think Pat Buchanan calls up Hurricane Camille for strategy sessions, you've got another thing coming"*). Et tu, Susie! What is this thing, exactly, why is it coming, and where is it coming from? Is it not a mystery?

Think. You've got another think coming. Doesn't that make more sense? Of course it does. So do, please. Think before you speak. Ask yourself if what you are about to say makes sense. Think. We'll all be better off for it.

* "Camille Anonymous," San Francisco Review of Books (January/February 1993).

Review of Rut by Scott Phillips

2011-05-10T16:08:00.001-03:00

Rut by Scott Phillips
My rating: 3 of 5 stars

This story is set in a near-future dystopian United States. Climate change, pollution and peak oil have all taken their toll on a small town in Colorado. Once a popular tourist destination but now dying, its only visitor is a young biologist, come to study the local frogs. Although frog populations are declining worldwide, frogs are flourishing near this town. However, effluent from a mining operation is having an odd effect on some frogs, leaving them stuck in the tadpole stage; they'll grow up to a foot long, but remain legless, a fate that parallels that of many of the town men, who are missing legs from all the wars they've served in, and a boy named Cole, who's seventeen years old but looks eleven. Like the frogs, his development has been stunted by his environment.

Although this is definitely science fiction, it's not a fast-paced novel with emphasis on action and thrills. Rather, it focuses on the everyday lives of the townspeople and how they react to the arrival of the newcomer. One might classify this as literary fiction, but that doesn't mean it doesn't go anywhere; this ain't The Shipping News. To the contrary, the ending is explosive... and I don't just mean that figuratively. While it's not a page-turner, if you stick with it until the end, it will stick with you.

In fact, I was a little sad to have to give away my copy. This is a Concord Free Press book, which means you get a copy for free but you have to give a donation to a charity of your choice, then pass the book on so that someone else can do the same. So if you want to read it, you can either ask Concord for a free copy (they have a form for that purpose on their web site), wait until somebody gives you their copy, or wait until the novel becomes available from a traditional publisher and buy it. Take your pick.

View all my Goodreads reviews

The Hobbit by Théâtre Sans Fil: Not That Great, Really

2011-03-03T21:13:00.004-04:00

Sometimes, when you take in something that's famous or has been heavily praised, and it doesn't live up to your expectations, it's hard to admit that to yourself. You want to like it, because you think you should. After all, everybody else seems to. I experienced this recently in the context of the puppet show The Hobbit by Montreal-based troupe Théâtre Sans Fil. (I daresay that if you're going to be mediocre, it's a good idea to aim your work at children, who tend to accept things the way they are and don't have extensive critical faculties.)

It was therefore lucky for me that I happened to sit down next to a certain acquaintance. Fredericton is like that. You can decide on the spur of the moment to go to the theatre by yourself, find your way to your reserved seat, and discover that you're right next to someone you know. The city is just that small.

This particular someone is the most upbeat, positive, easily-delighted human being on the planet. She loves everything. For example, I saw she had a Kobo ereader with her in the theatrre. "Oh, I have one too!" I exclaimed. "Do you love it?" was her response. And I felt duty-bound to say, "Uh, yeah," even though, really, I just like it.

But when the show was over, she said, "Well, that was fun." Ouch! Coming from her, that's some pretty damning criticism. So I feel justified in my conclusion that despite its having toured all over Europe, Asia, etc., Théâtre Sans Fil's puppet show is not that great. My friend didn't love it.

The strong point of the production has got to be the puppets, some of which are spectacular. Gandalf and the elves flounce and glitter in their flowing finery. Bilbo, on the other hand, is kind of unattractive. I wondered if his face had been copied from that ugly animated version of The Hobbit. I also wondered why he had green hair.

Another aspect of the Bilbo puppet that I found somewhat distressing is that he never got to use his legs. They just dangled. Is that world-class puppetry? Honestly. With most of the characters, this wasn't a concern because they didn't have legs. Gandalf, the elves and the dwarves were all robe people. But there's Bilbo with an obvious pair of legs and he's swishing around like a seahorse.

I should probably mention here that Théâtre Sans Fil, which means Theatre Without a String, lives up to its name: the puppets are not manipulated from above with string; instead, the puppeteers stand behind the puppets, shrouded in black, and manipulate them directly. It's the same principle that works so well in the Famous People Players shows. Indeed, Théâtre Sans Fil also makes use of ultra-violet light, and the puppets can be seen to glow in moments of low light. It all works to great effect in dark scenes, such as the one in Mirkwood Forest. Indeed, that scene is the highlight of the show. When Bilbo loses contact with the dwarves, glowing filaments appear and spin themselves into spider webs as we watch. Glowing spiders make an appearance soon afterwards, and they're pretty neat too, although they tend to cluster together in suspiciously human shapes.

In well-lit scenes, which, bizarrely, constitute most of the show, the illusion is ruined by the clear sight of people in hoods behind the puppets. One is at a loss to explain such unprofessionalism. Why did they choose to beam lights all over the puppeteers during most of the scenes? Didn't they check how it would look beforehand?

Mind you, this gaffe did add an interesting element to the dwarf puppetry. Most of the dwarves in The Hobbit are fairly anonymous and interchangeable, as suggested by their rhyming names: Fili and Kili, Bifur, Bofur and Bombur,and so forth. In tacit acknowledgement of this fact, the puppeteers often lined up a row of dwarf puppets on a pole or rod of some kind and waved it back and forth, making it look as if the dwarves were playing see-saw in the park. Well, when you could see the puppeteer's heads sticking out from behind the waving dwarf-row, which was most of the time, it looked as if there were extra, black-hooded dwarves behind the first row. Like mirrors in a dining hall, it made the dwarf entourage appear bigger than it was. Definitely what you want when you're going up against a fire-breathing dragon.

But back to Bilbo's limp legs. When doing this kind of puppeteering, it is a simple matter to control the legs, more so than with marionette puppeteering I should think. All one needs are sticks connecting each leg of the puppeteer to the corresponding leg of the puppet. Indeed, this was done with the trolls, who had legs, and Gollum, who also had huge feet and was one of the most appealing personages in the show. Yet Bilbo, the main character over whom one would expect more care to be taken, was left dangling, literally.

With the exception of Bilbo and his legs, most of the production design effort went into the puppets. The set was exceedingly sparse, consisting mostly of Bilbo's front door and a couple of big wooden things that looked like boxes with jointed lids. These two boxes were moved around to be made into everything: Bilbo's table, hills, cave openings and so on. Sometimes this worked out better than at other times. In particular, things became odd and confusing as Bilbo wandered around looking for food before running into the trolls. He approached a box, hovered over its open lid, ineffectual legs flapping, and when he got to the other side, the lid apparently tried to close on him, but he managed to wiggle out of the way. I wracked my brain trying to figure out what this alien landscape was supposed to represent. I don't recall troll country being described that way in the book.

In addition to Bilbo's leg handicap, fortunately compensated for by his hovering abilities, Bilbo is haunted by two oppressive forces that follow him around: irritating music and excessive narration. The music is the sort of relentlessly peppy stuff that gets foisted on kids. Maybe they like it; I don't know, but like it or hate it, it sometimes makes the narration difficult to hear.

As for the narration, I realize that if you want to condense a novel with a complex plot into a puppet show that last an hour and a half, you're probably going to have to narrate something. But you ought to refrain from narrating things that could be better expressed in dialogue. The tendency to overnarrate got underway fairly early on and worsened as the show continued. Near the end, practically everything was narrated. Thorin Oakenshield's rage at having the Arkenstone withheld from him as well as his eventual conciliation is all dispatched in one sentence. They seemed in a raging hurry to get the play over with so that everybody could go home.

Earlier I mentioned the dragon, Smaug. The Smaug puppet is a fine one, decked out in glowing ultraviolet reds and greens. Ironically, its failing is its lack of flaw. Smaug is supposed to have a vulnerable, bare spot on his left breast. This is mentioned no less than three times in the play, once by the narrator, once by Bilbo, and once by a helpful bird. Furthermore, Bard of Laketown stabs at it with a sword. (In the book, he uses an arrow, but I suppose that's difficult to pull off with puppets.)

But where is this bare spot? Nowhere to be seen, and I think this may be the stupidest oversight of the whole sadly mediocre puppet show. It would have been so simple a matter to, say, glue or sew a piece of black felt onto the left underside of the puppet. It would have shown up so well against the ultraviolet colours. But they didn't. Why didn't they? Why did they allow this confusing inconsistency to stand? My guess is that they didn't give a crap. After all, if they were interested in or capable of attention to detail, I wouldn't have found so many details to pick on and the whole production would have been much more enjoyable.

In conclusion, while some spectacular performers and troupes have emerged from Montreal, Théâtre Sans Fil is not one of them. At the end of the play, the senior member of the troupe announced that they are working on a puppet version of Weaveworld by Clive Barker. I expect it will be similarly mediocre. But the puppets will look great.

My Christmas Dinner 2010: Recipes and Suggestions

2010-12-25T20:12:00.003-04:00

You may be wondering what a Jewish woman is doing preparing Christmas dinner, much less writing about it. It's true that I'm nominally Jewish, but the ubiquitousness of Christmas--the carols, the TV specials, the shopping madness, the time off work--is a reality of the culture in which I live. Anyway, Paganism has always spoken to me more than Judaism or any other religion that emerged from the Middle East, and really, Christmas is Yule, a pagan celebration of the winter solstice. None of the customs, from tree decorating to lights, have a thing to do with Jesus, who, if he ever existed (which some have called into question), was born in a desert in July, and was, to boot, a nice Jewish boy. So there. Now on to the food.

Sweet Potato and Apple Stuffing

This is a modified version of a recipe I got from The Good Cook: Poultry, by Time-Life books, who in turn got it from Louisiana. I'm always interested in stuffings that don't contain bread. In addition to being a pleasant change from the ordinary bread-based stuffing, they are gluten free and good for celiacs and anyone else who doesn't do well with wheat. It's delicious too.

The original recipe calls for sugar. A lot of recipes with sweet things in them call for sugar. Sweet potatoes with sugar. Beets with sugar. And so on. I have always found this to be insane. It's like putting blue eyeshadow on a blue-eyed woman "to bring out her eyes," except that instead of simply being in bad taste, it's bad for your health as well. No sugar in this version, and it's still plenty sweet.

4 cups diced apples
1 cup chopped celery (I didn't have any, so I used white turnip)
1 cup water
6 sweet potatoes (about 3 lb.)
2 tbsp lemon juice (I used cider vinegar)
1 tsp ground cinnamon
4 tbsp butter
1 cup chopped pecans or walnuts
grated peel of 1 lemon (I left this out)

The recipe said to peel the apples and sweet potatoes, but I didn't bother. Both have perfectly edible skins. Yes, the sweet potato does too. Try it some time; it saves effort and reduces food waste.

Steam or boil the sweet potatoes for 25 minutes. While you mash the sweet potatoes with the butter and cinnamon, simmer the apples and celery in the water until tender. (If you use turnip, as I did, you'll need to put it in first because it takes longer to cook than the apple.) Mix the apples, celery and chopped nuts into the sweet potato mush and stuff it into your turkey.

Turkey-Cooking Suggestion

Cookbooks and every other turkey-cooking expert I've ever heard of advise you to place the turkey on its back to cook it. It is, I believe, a presentation thing, but results in the quickest-cooking part of the bird--the breast--being exposed to the most heat. You are then expected to get around this by basting, or by covering the breast with bacon. If you're lucky, it works out. More likely, you end up eating overcooked breast meat, or slicing off the breast meat and eating it first while you put the still-uncooked remains back in the oven, because you've been waiting for hours and you're starving and you can't take it any longer.

Well, try this. Place the turkey on its breast instead. Now the dark meat, which takes longer to cook, is getting the most heat, while the white meat is protected from being overcooked. Doesn't that make more sense? I think so. It's what I did this year and my turkey came out perfect. The stuffing was fabulous too--better than cranberry sauce.

Mince Pie

A modified version of a recipe from The Vegetarian Feast by Martha Rose Shulman. Here's another recipe that cries out to have its sugar removed. It's made mostly from dried fruit, which is very sweet, plus it contains juice. Why would you add sugar, or even honey or other sweetener? That would be dumb. Leave it out, and you can actually taste the fruit. And buying mince pie filling in a jar, when you can easily make a more delicious version at home, is also questionable.

1 pie crust (see below)
1/2 cup currants
1/2 cup raisins
2 apples (I used russets; they're very nice)
1/3 cup chopped, pitted prunes
1/3 cup chopped, dried, pitted apricots (get the sulfite-free ones from the health food store; they're better for you)
1/4 cup chopped, pitted dates
1/2 cup broken pecans or walnuts
Juice and grated peel of 1 orange (I used a Mandarin orange)
1/4 cup water
1/2 tsp ground cinnamon
1/2 tsp ground clove
1/4 tsp ground nutmeg
3 tbsp rum (I used Screech rum from Newfoundland; good stuff)

Since preparing Christmas dinner is a huge chore, a job for a masochist, it's a good idea to make the filling part the day before. Grate the orange peel, then cut the orange in half and juice it. (At which point, if you used a Mandarin orange as did I, you will discover that the peel disintegrates under the stress. So proceed with care.) Throw the dried fruits, nuts, juice, peel and water into a pot, bring to a simmer, cover, and cook over low heat for 20 minutes or until it's all nice and mushy. Add the spices and booze, mix and cook for another 5 minutes. There. You're done. Told you it was easy.

Pie crust

One of the things that has mystified me all my cooking life is why cookbooks call for such a small amount of water in pie crust. "Oh yes," they coo, the liars, "just chill those 3 dainty tablespoons of water with those ice cubes, and your crust will be fine." Then you try to roll it and it cracks into particles like a freshly-unwrapped ancient mummy. (Sorry if that metaphor wasn't appetizing.) Well, I've had it. I'm doubling the water quantity, and if any pie crust experts out there want to float over to this blog and mock me, feel free. I'll just ignore you.

2 cups some kind of flour (this year, I used 1 cup brown rice flour and 1 cup buckwheat)
1/2 tsp salt
1/2 oil or fat (I used chicken fat. There, that's Jewish)
1/2 cup or more water, and I don't believe it makes any difference whether it's iced or not

Preheat oven to 350 degrees F. Combine dry ingredients. Work fat into flour mixture with hands, a butter knife or one of those pastry cutter things until the little bits are smaller than peas. Mix in the water and add as much as you need to make a dough that holds together. Roll the dough out on a floured surface, or if that doesn't work out for you, which it often doesn't for me, pick it up in little pieces and press it into the pie pan, as you would for a crumble crust. There's no shame in that. Pie crust is like love and war: all's fair so long as it gets the job done. Poke a bunch of holes in the bottom with a fork and prebake for 5 minutes.

Remove from oven and cool, then spoon in the mince. Top with a lattice crust if you like, or with an unbroken top crust, or even sprinkle the dough on like a Dutch apple pie topping if that works better for you. Did I mention pie crust is like love and war? Now stick it back in the oven and bake for 40 minutes. Cool and eat, if you have any room after all that turkey. If not, it makes a delightful breakfast.

--Brought to you by The Rebel Cook (my new name for my cooking alter ego)

Mildly Amusing Writing Exercises: Nursery Rhyme + Genre

2010-10-11T20:25:00.006-03:00

In writer's groups I belong to, or have belonged to, we sometimes do writing exercises. Most of them have been focused not so much on honing specific stylistic skills as on getting the creative juices flowing while having fun at the same time. As a result, we tend to lean toward the funny and silly exercises. After which, one is left with a piece of writing that one doesn't know what to do with. (Look, I just ended a sentence with a preposition. If only my writing exercises were more highbrow, I might have known better.)

I have old writing exercise results lying around that I am fond of, even perversely proud of. It seems a shame that they are only seeing the inside of my underwear drawer. Still, it's not as if I can submit them for publication. But here's a thought: I could post them on my blog.

One of my writing friends is fond of nursery rhymes, and she came up with the following writing exercise. Write several nursery rhymes down on little scraps of paper and put them in a hat. Then write down several genre names and put them in a separate hat. Each participating writer draws one piece of paper from each hat, that is, one nursery rhyme and one genre. The challenge is then to write a short story in the given genre, that somehow references the nursery rhyme.

I did two of these. See if you can guess both nursery rhyme and genre.

"Captain Wutax!" A note of alarm crept into the ensign's voice. "A Knitter's Guild vessel just decloaked off our starboard bow."

Before Captain Wutax could respond, the ensign cried, "They're powering weapons, Sir!"

"Raise shields," barked Captain Wutax, his jaw jutting out manfully.

"Shields at maximum. They're hailing us, Sir."

"Open a communication link. Onscreen."

With an electronic chirp, the hated face of Mrs. Connor, compulsive knitter, appeared onscreen. Fear and loathing twisted in Captain Wutax's guts as he saw she was swathed in a hand-knitted Victorian lace shawl over her hand-knitted cable sweater. The woman had no notion of when to stop. It was said that the Guild kept its ship ice-cold. Otherwise they'd swelter under all that knitted stuff.

"This is Captain Wutax of the Black Sheep. What do you want?"

"I think you know exactly what I want," drawled Mrs. Connor. "We know you've got wool. Hand it over."

"The Black Sheep has no wool for you!" thundered Captain Wutax.

"Don't hand me that. I know you have three bays full."

"Yes, for Master Blaster and his wife. They're going to share it with little Kimmy. We have wool for honest, paying customers, not pirates like you."

Mrs. Connor's mouth twisted. "Fine. If that's the way it's going to go. Let's see if your shields can stand up to our Needle of Doom!" The screen went black.

"Evasive manoeuvres," barked Wutax. "And arm... the Crotchet Hook!"

* * *

Nursery rhyme and genre: Baa Baa Black Sheep/Space Opera. I know it sounds a lot like a Star Trek rip-off. That's because I haven't been exposed to much space opera, so Star Trek naturally came to mind. By the way, I was going for a cheesy, overwritten effect. That's why so many faces are twisting and jaws are jutting manfully. I don't normally write that way. Honest.

As the police officer outlined the body in chalk, Sherlock Columbo took in the sumptuous surroundings. "Lovely place you've got here," he remarked absently to the distraught young woman on the sofa. She'd stopped crying, but her eyes were red-rimmed and the tissue in her hands had disintegrated into moist little shreds. "That's a very nice sofa," Columbo continued. "I bet that's no later than 18th century." She gazed at him with bewilderment.

"That's a nice piece too." He nodded at the grandfather clock that rose above the corpse. "Excellent condition."

Watson, his assistant, leaned in close and said in a low voice, "Sherlock, the young lady is obviously upset. Do you think it's appropriate..."

"Oh! I'm sorry." Columbo smiled at the woman, who dissolved into fresh tears. "Oh now... here, take my handkerchief." He whipped the white cloth out of his breast pocket and handed it to her. She blew her nose with a loud honk.

"Keep it. I have plenty."

He turned to Watson. "One thing we know," he murmured, "is that the murder occurred between midnight and one in the morning."

"We do? How do we know that?"

"You'll notice the mouse." Columbo pointed, and Watson saw the tiny black eyes peeking out from behind the pendulum. "As we know from the scientific reports the deceased published in Nature Journal, this mouse was in the habit of running up the clock at midnight, and back down at one. It was like... well, clockwork." Columbo allowed himself a small chuckle. "And yet the mouse is still in the clock. Why?"

Watson looked at the body. "The mouse was afraid to come down because of the body at the base of the clock. Very clever, Sherlock!"

"Elementary, my dear Watson."

* * *

Nursery rhyme and genre: Hickory Dickory Dock, the mouse ran up the clock/Mystery.

Wasn't that fun? Maybe I'll post some more later.

FYI: Eighties Music Really Did Suck

2010-09-12T19:02:00.003-03:00

How do you know when you're getting old? Is it when that first grey hair appears, or the first time you groan as you hoist yourself out of a chair? Well, here's my definition: you know you're getting old when the music of your youth develops nostalgia value. This has happened to me. It's become a common thing for night clubs to have "eighties nights." That makes me feel ancient.

Is it just a matter of the eighties getting their turn? After all, clubs used to have sixties nights and seventies nights (maybe some still do) and many radio stations devote themselves to these decades. But you see, there's a difference: the eighties were musically wretched. It wasn't all Duran Duran, Thomas Dolby and Bruce Springsteen. It was also Mr. Mister, Soft Cell and Toto.

I decided that there was a need for this essay one summer evening. I was at a friend's house watching a DVD of the eighties stage musical, Chess. If no bells of recognition are going off in your head, this might help: the eighties hit, One Night in Bangkok, is from this play.

Watching this eighties play led to talk of eighties music. The youngest person in the room, a striking beauty in her twenties, mentioned eighties nights in clubs and how fun they are. I felt a moral obligation to speak up.

"You know, eighties music really sucked. People don't realize that because nowadays they only play the good stuff. They never play all those shitty songs that were on the radio when I was a teenager."

"But that's true of any decade," our hostess pointed out. "They only play the good songs from the seventies, too."

She had a point. So what is my basis for claiming, nonetheless, that the eighties sucked worse than other decades, musically speaking?

The Argument

For one thing, I've lived through other decades, so I do have a basis for comparison. I can vouch for the fact that the radioscape improved immeasurably once the eighties ended and the nineties began. It was great; finally we were through the bland desert of tinny electropop and into a verdant landscape of Third Eye Blind, Matchbox 20, etc. The noughts were also good, as far as I could tell, though I've spent the latter half of them in a town largely devoid of decent music radio.

I can't speak with authority of the decades that preceded the eighties, since I either wasn't around yet, or was too young to tune my own radio dial. But I have some idea, at least of the sixties, because my brother had Woodstock on a set of vinyl records. Not just the best of Woodstock—the whole thing. It stands to reason that the decade's most massive, notorious concert would include artists that faded into obscurity as well as the ones who are still remembered, and it does. Many of the songs on the Woodstock album were just OK, or even forgettable, but there is not the killing monotony of sound that marked the eighties.

I don't think so, anyway. This is only my opinion, and you may well be asking yourself why should give it any credence. That brings me to my other point: I am not the only one who found the eighties to be musically monotonous. The Fifth Estate did a segment on it once. I have tried to find out which episode it was, but the CBC has been diligently at work making its web site ever less navigable and functional, and I was unable to glean anything from it. I'll have to settle for estimating that the episode aired in the late eighties to early nineties. It discussed the bland sameness that possessed radio stations in this period and the independent music industry that sprang up in response. I remember the narrator stating that many of these new outsider bands sounded angry, and they had reason to be: radio was neglecting them. Alternative bands existed throughout the eighties, but did not get played on mainstream radio stations until the nineties. Not on any that I had access to, anyway.

The Evidence

I can argue myself blue in the face on this point, but unless I can give you a listen to the sort of crud I heard as a teenager every time I turned on the radio, you are unlikely to be persuaded. And thanks to Jango, I can do just that.

Jango is a free, web-based service that lets users create their own "radio stations." Here's how it works: you type the name of a musical artist into the search box. If it's found, Jango will create a new station named after the artist (you can rename it if you want) and begin playing a random selection from that artist. But it will go one better than that. It will provide a list of similar artists that you might also enjoy and want to add to your station, and it will insert their songs into the playlist. Jango is pretty good at finding matches by style and period.

The idea, of course, is to present you with music you will like, but there's nothing to stop you from using it for other, more nefarious purposes. I found it an invaluable tool for digging up all those old forgotten bands that dissolved my brain cells during my youth. I got the ball rolling with The Thompson Twins, and soon I had a whole stack of dismal bands. Mind you, The Thompson Twins weren't the worst the eighties had to offer. (I'd tried Chalk Circle first, a band I remember with deep disgust, but Jango didn't know it.) However, Jango helpfully brought up other bands that were even lamer, and I added the worst of them until I created a station that is truly soul-destroying. I offer it here for your listening displeasure: Vivian's Bad Eighties Music. Take only in small doses, and bear in mind that this is what about three-quarters of airplay sounded like during my formative years. Condolences accepted.

To be fair and balanced, I also created a Jango station of good eighties music. This one, Vivian's Good Eighties Music, reproduces the experience of going to one of those eighties club nights.

The Playlists

Here are the playlists for my two Jango radio stations. Keep in mind that these lists do not encompass everything you will hear on these stations, since Jango inserts its own "recommendations" from time to time.

Bad Eighties Music

Icehouse
Book of Love
Depeche Mode
Johnny Hates Jazz
Love and Rockets
Mr. Mister
The Housemartins
Soft Cell
Orchestral Manoeuvres in the Dark
XTC
The The
Missing Persons
Berlin
Cutting Crew
Thompson Twins
China Crisis
Toto

Good Eighties Music

Simple Minds
Fine Young Cannibals
The Fixx
Eurythmics
Duran Duran
Pet Shop Boys
The Human League
ABC
The Cars
T'Pau
Spandau Ballet
a-ha
Bronski Beat
Arcadia
Thomas Dolby
Wham!
Yazoo

Omigod What an Awful Sentence

2010-08-16T17:22:00.003-03:00

It is said, "Those who can't do, teach." At times I think one could just as well replace the word "do" with "write" and the word "teach" with "edit." Which is fine. After all, we writers need editors so that we can get our work perfected and published. That's the theory, at least. The reality is more like, we writers need editors to send us rejections containing foolish remarks or cryptic "advice." I got a particularly disturbing rejection letter yesterday, which I may make fun of later. But not right now. Right now, I'm making fun of something else, because I need to find another place to send this rejected story, a need that sent me to the Internet, which in turn led me to an article entitled, "A Comprehensive and Totally Universal Listing of Every Problem a Story Has Ever Had."

Just the thing for a writer who's been rejected, right? Well, you would think. But there's the problem mentioned above: editors often can't write. This fellow admits as much, calling himself "a tolerably mediocre author who has seen more form-letter rejections than penis-enlargement spams." Having gotten just short of halfway through his article, I agree with all of that statement except the "tolerable" part. Now, it's great that he has found a way around his unfortunate handicap--by becoming an editor--and kind of him to share his hard-earned knowledge with us writers so we can improve ourselves... I guess. I confess, I'm always a little suspicious of constructive criticism, especially the unsolicited kind. What portion of the motive is sincere helpfulness, and what portion is smug superiority? Even putting that aside, good intentions and frank admission of shortcomings are nice but not enough in themselves. If you know you don't write very well and you still want to get your wisdom out to the world, you need to get yourself--now, this is ironic--an editor. Or perhaps a ghost writer. If you don't, you're liable to end up embarrassing yourself in front of the world with sentences like this:

Point of view failures are usually some kind of loss of containment, such as when the narrative voice is first person but the narrative perception starts slipping off to places where the narrative character could not carry the reader or a third person POV that usually stays outside on the shoulder of characters but sometimes jumps inside the head for a first-person peek.

No joke, I read this sentence five or six times and I'm still not sure what he's trying to say. The latter half of the sentence is particularly scary: a mess of interlocking, ambiguous subordinate clauses. Sentences like this happen when a "writer" gets more involved in showing how clever and imaginative he thinks he is than in conveying his meaning to the reader. That this particular "writer" was absorbed with his cleverness and imagination, or imagined cleverness, is shown earlier in the article. Unnecessary zombie and condom metaphors abounded, but the thing was still readable. It is this one sentence, the sentence from the eleventh layer of hell (also mentioned in the article) that stops a reader dead, like the sight of two shattered cars by the side of the road. And when said reader stops reading altogether in order to make fun of the sentence on her blog, then clearly the article has failed. Which is a shame, because the world can indeed use a comprehensive listing of things that can go wrong in a piece of writing. I can't help but notice, however, that this one isn't completely comprehensive. After all, it makes no mention of long, convoluted, horrible sentences. Hmm. Maybe that's a blind spot.

Mockery aside, the article does make some good points. Read it, if you can.

Installing Adobe Flash Player on Firefox

2010-06-25T17:55:00.008-03:00

Or: forty years of wandering in a desert of unhelpful Adobe links

After one tooth-gnashing hour of frustration, I have managed to install the Adobe Flash Player 10.1 plug-in on my Firefox 3.6.4. Why it was so difficult, I don't know. I'm pretty sure I performed the same installation at work without a hitch. That discrepancy may have something to do with the fact that my work computer is running Windows 7 Enterprise and this computer is running Windows XP Professional. I don't know.

One thing I do know is that if I'm having problems with Adobe, I'm probably not the only one, so I feel it is my duty as a citizen of the human race to provide the solution I eventually uncovered.

But first, a detailed description of my travails. It will be like Passover in summer. (You can go straight to the solution if you want. I won't be offended.)

Why is This Installation Different From All Other Installations?

Firefox usually takes charge of installing its own plug-ins. But Adobe Flash Player 10.1 doesn't want to let Firefox install it. It wants to install itself, via its own installation manager plug-in, GetPlusPlus. It's like a boy who doesn't want Mommy to dress him anymore, because he's a Big Boy now, only he winds up putting his underpants on backward and his shoes on the wrong feet.

How Did It All Start?

I downloaded the latest Firefox upgrade. Everytime you download a new version of Firefox, it takes you to a web page detailing what's new with this release. This time, the page included a scary yellow message telling me I must install the latest Adobe Flash Player for security reasons.

I followed the link provided to the download page. By the way, as long as I'm kvetching about Adobe (which didn't used to suck), may I remark on how annoying it is when a download page includes another piece of software without asking you, with the checkbox already checked, so that if you don't notice and uncheck it, you can end up installing something you don't want or need? In the case of Adobe Flash Player, McAfee Security Scan Plus is the piece of stealth software. However, I'd already had that experience at work, so I was prepared, and unchecked the checkbox.

Then I hit the installation button, and it took me to the Thank You page. These pages usually say, "If the download does not start automatically, click here." This one had a twist on the old theme: "If it does not start, click here for troubleshooting information [italics added]." It was my first moment of annoyance, and there were many more to come.

What Went Wrong?

The download didn't start automatically, of course. Firefox helpfully popped up its little top frame letting me know I was missing a plug-in: the aforementioned download manager. Since there didn't seem to be any way to download one plug-in without first installing another, I clicked on the button on the frame. A window opened asking me if I wanted to manually install the plug-in, which was in a file called gp.xpi. So I agreed to that, Firefox downloaded the file, and a window asked me what application I wanted to use to open the file. Surprisingly, it suggested an application, but that didn't matter because it didn't work.

After a few futile tries, I thought I might have to look at Adobe's troubleshooting page. It was no help, but the thank you page did also say, "For Firefox users, please see the Installation Instructions." So I did, and that's when my blood pressure really started going up, because the instructions, and screen shots, seemed to have no relationship to Firefox whatsoever. "LOOK FOR A YELLOW BAR AT THE TOP," the instructions advised (in all caps). The screen shot showed a button marked "Edit Options."

If I ever found that button, I certainly would have clicked it. At the top of WHAT? (I was starting to think in all caps myself.) Not at the top of the browser, since that bar didn't have any button marked "Edit Options," only the button that led me on the merry dance with gp.xpi. I looked all over the place. I opened the Add-ons window: not there. I went into Options. There, under Security, I found something that looked hopeful. Not anything mentioned in Adobe's instructions--no, those appear to have been written by space aliens. But I did find a checkbox marked "Warn me when sites try to install add-ons" next to a button marked "Exceptions." I clicked that button and it did indeed open a box that looked just like the one in Adobe's second screen shot ("ADD THE WEB SITE TO THE SITES WHICH ARE ALLOWED TO INSTALL ADD-ONS").

So I got there in the end, even if not by the non-existent button Adobe recommended. I added Adobe to the list of sites, and hit the Refresh button as advised in the next step. Unfortunately, it didn't work. None of the things that Adobe said would happen as a result of that action actually happened. I remained unable to install the plug-in that would let me install the plug-in.

Did You Eventually Get GetPlusPlus Installed?

Yes I did, and I highly recommend you not bother. Once I was finished letting Adobe's useless instructions work me into a lather, I turned to Oracle Google and found this handy page: Install a Firefox Add-on Manually. Manually installing a plug-in turned out to be very easy once you knew how, and soon GetPlusPlus was safely ensconced. Thinking all would be well, I went back to the Adobe download page and refreshed it. GetPlusPlus launched, it showed me a progress bar, it filled the bar up with a pretty green colour, and then it choked. "Installation failed," it said. And that was all. No more meaningful error message, no useful information. Nothing. I tried three times, with identical results.

So How Did You Finally Get Adobe Flash Player?

I got creative. As much as Adobe wanted to download and install its own plug-ins, it didn't seem equal to the task. So here's what I did. I went to YouTube. I selected a random video. Firefox opened its top frame letting me know I was missing a plug-in. I clicked the Install button. And it installed. Firefox was doing the installing, so it worked. This is the route I would recommend to any Firefox user who is having trouble getting the plug-in at the Adobe page. Until they get their act together, don't even waste your time trying to do it their way. Save yourself an hour or two of aggravation.

IMPORTANT NOTE: If you already have an older version of the Adobe Flash Plug-in in your Firefox, remove ~~or disable~~ it before trying this trick. I didn't have to because Adobe's abortive installation attempts had already done it for me (I think). If you already have an older plug-in, going to a video will only make the video play.

The Kobo eReader: a Long-term Review

2010-06-11T10:18:00.002-03:00

The Kobo eReader, a lower-priced alternative to devices such as the Kindle, has launched in Chapters and Indigo bookstores across Canada on May 1, and will launch in Borders bookstores in the United States on June 17. Having rejected the Kindle as too expensive and proprietary and the Sony as too slow in its page-turning, I awaited the Kobo eagerly and pounced on it as soon as it became available. Had I reviewed it during those first two weeks, the result would have been about ninety percent gush. Now that I've had a month to live with the Kobo and learn its little quirks--now that the honeymoon glow has faded, I am in a position to dispassionately discuss its strong points and shortcomings, and even those bugs that reveal themselves only upon extensive use.

Advantages

Price

Indeed, the $149 price tag is what first attracted me to the Kobo. The first e-reader I ever heard of was the Kindle, which at that time cost over $300. My initial question was, how many e-books would you have to buy to make back your money? Thirty? It would take years. I didn't see the point of bothering with e-books when such an extraordinary initial investment was involved. (Let's not even get into the iRex iLiad, with its US$859 price tag.)

Pre-Kobo, I'd looked into the possibility of getting my hands on a Sony e-reader that is no longer made, the PRS-505. For reasons known only to themselves, Sony chose to discontinue this e-reader, cutting their line down to only two, one that is too expensive (the PRS-600) and one that is too small (the PRS-300). If you don't want to shell out for the touch-screen, your other option is the piddling 5-inch screen. I don't care if my e-reader has a touch screen or not, and in my experience, they don't respond very well, in addition to getting covered in finger grease. Neither do I require all the other bells and whistles, such as 3G wireless access and the whiz-bang rotating display, to say nothing of Internet surfing. I want an e-reader in order to read books on it; isn't that really the point? Kobo, it seems, is the first company to clue into this. I might not have bought the Kobo e-reader if I'd found a reasonably-priced PRS-505 before it came out, but owners of PRS-505s charge high prices for their used e-readers. They seem to believe they are collector's items.

Page-turning Speed

I am glad that I didn't get a PRS-505, though, because it probably wouldn't have turned pages fast enough to suit me. I have tried out both the current Sony e-readers and the page-turning is uncomfortably slow, taking as long as 4 seconds. This is the Sony e-readers' primary weakness. I'm a fast reader, and I want to be able to turn pages on an e-reader at least as fast as I turn them on a real book. Kobo pages turn in about 2 seconds, which is just about right. New chapters are slower to load, but as that's an event of much less frequent occurrence, it's not a concern.

Design

I like the uncluttered design of the Kobo. Why does the Kindle have an entire keyboard? What is the need for that? It's space that they could have given over to a larger screen. Despite its smaller overall dimensions, the Kobo's screen is 6 inches across, same as the Kindle. It has a matte finish that emits minimal glare, providing a comfortable reading experience.

100 Free eBooks

The Kobo comes with 100 free public domain classics, more than any other e-reader. This is a nice perk. While it's true that all those books and more can be downloaded for free from sites like Project Gutenberg and ePubBooks, it would take some time to download all one hundred of them. Plus the Kobo versions come with prettier covers. It feels as if you're getting your money's worth immediately. After all, if you wanted to, you could read your Kobo for years without having to buy any new e-books, and fill in all those gaps in your classical literature education.

Prompt, Respectful and Helpful Customer Service

In response to a discrepancy between my experience and what was stated in the user manual--which I will describe in more detail later on--I wrote an email to Kobo customer service. I got a better response than I have received from any other customer service agent I've ever dealt with via email. This may say more about the dismal quality of online customer service in general than it does about Kobo's, but I had never before had the experience of having my issue fully understood and appropriately addressed on first contact. I'm more accustomed to the agent not reading my email carefully and so telling me things that I already know and that have no bearing on the problem. Or worse, copy/pasting a section of their help file into an email and sending it to me. Obviously I read all available documentation before contacting customer service. I don't need to have customer service waste my time in this way, nor am I an idiot, but the average customer service agent appears to assume that all the emails they receive come from idiots, and treats them accordingly. It is insulting and ultimately does not solve the problem.

I didn't get this from Kobo customer service. I got an email that carefully addressed every issue I'd brought up and told me exactly what I needed to know. It was most refreshing.

Kobo's shortcomings

User Settings Not Retained

When I'd just brought the Kobo home and was still working out what I could do with it, such was my enthusiasm that I read the user manual all the way through. I know, I know--I'll have to turn in my Techno Geek membership badge. Anyway, I discovered I could change the display of the book list, to make it look like books sitting on shelves--cute! I could also change the sort order from title to author. I preferred that. I liked seeing how many books by a particular author I had--Jane Austen is especially well-represented.

I was perfectly happy with these features until I turned the e-reader on the next day and discovered that everything I'd changed had reverted back to the defaults.

The Kobo e-reader will remember what books you are reading, displaying them in a separate list, and will bounce you straight to your current page when you select them. Why on earth can't it also remember and retain your display settings? This seems like quite the careless oversight.

Missing Features

Another thing I learned by reading the manual is that you can remove books from your "I'm Reading" list--that's the list of books you have started to read but not finished--by plugging the e-reader into your computer, logging into your Kobo account and clicking on "I'm Reading." I tried that, but could not locate "I'm Reading."

When I contacted customer service, (a positive experience, as mentioned above,) I was told is that there is no "I'm Reading" section in Kobo Online, and no way to remove books from your "I'm Reading" list. This feature hasn't been implemented yet.

I daresay it might have been wiser to hold off on adding its description to the manual until the feature itself was safely functional in the Kobo. After all, it's not as if the manual is a print publication. Appropriately enough, it's an e-book. Reprinting it and sending it to the customers when appropriate should be no very difficult or expensive thing. Furthermore, it's not a great idea to draw your customer's attention to handy little features that your product doesn't have.

Minimal Formats

Kobo supports only two formats, ePub and PDF. This is not very many, and is the one thing that made me hesitate before buying one. I bought it anyway because I knew I could convert other formats, such as HTML and word processing documents, into PDF. When I did so, I discovered quite the colourful bug. More on that later. Kobo promises to add more formats later. Readers who feel it important to have good format support might want to wait until then before purchasing.

Room for Improvement in the Big Blue Button

In his review of the Kobo Reader in the National Post, Mark Medley memorably declared about its famous big blue button, "a pox on whoever designed this thing." I have not found it as troublesome as he has, but it doesn't need to click so emphatically. One day, I was sitting on the couch reading one of my freebie Jane Austen novels. James sat at the other end, using his computer. Several pages later, James turned to me and said, "Reading e-books is a lot noisier than reading regular books." My clicking was disturbing him.

We also wonder why the choice was made to place the big blue button (Kobo calls it the directional pad or D-pad, but that's never going to stick) in the right corner. It would have been more convenient to have it in the middle, where it would be equally accessible to both hands. I suppose they might have been imitating true books, whose pages you turn by grasping the right corner, but there was no need for that and no advantage in doing it. No button is going to feel like turning pages anyway, and they may as well have put it where it would have worked best.

eBook Formatting and Proofreading (or Lack Thereof)

About those free e-books... they're not that nicely formatted. There is no indenting, and italics are represented with underscores. Sub-chapters have not been properly rendered. James is reading Madame Bovary on the e-reader, and was puzzled when he finished chapter 13 and turned the page, only to find himself apparently back at chapter 1. It turns out that Madame Bovary is in multiple parts. There are 13 chapters in Part 1, and when you finish that part, you come to Chapter 1 of Part 2. But the parts are not shown in the table of contents; only the individual chapters. James also found multiple misspelled words, as though the novel had been scanned in and then not proofread.

Kobo is using the 100 free books as a selling point. It would have been a better one if they'd gone to more effort to format the books.

Unnecessary Lights That Don't Work Properly

Besides reduced eyestrain, the greatest advantage of the non-backlit E Ink screens found on true e-readers like the Kobo (as opposed to multipurpose devices like the iPad) is the low power usage. Eco-friendly E Ink screens only draw power when the image onscreen is changing, for example, when you're turning a page. So it seems a shame that the Kobo company chose to put two indicator lights into their e-reader. I don't know how much this ups the power consumption, but I would imagine the percentage must be sizable.

The red light is meant to go on when your e-reader is fully charged. This is useful and arguably necessary, or at least it would be if it worked. In actual fact, this untrustworthy light often goes on well before the e-reader is fully charged, and pointlessly stays on even after the e-reader has been unplugged.

The blue light, on the other hand, is useless and silly. It goes on when the e-reader is processing: when you're turning a page or bringing up a new book or chapter. Or rather, that's what it does some of the time. It seems to operate fairly randomly. But in any case, you don't need a light to tell you that a page is turning; you know when a page is turning, because the screen flashes a negative image of itself. All the E Ink screens I've seen do this; it seems to be an unalterable part of their functioning. The e-reader also displays a little sunburst shape in the upper right corner when loading a new book or chapter, and in contrast to the light, it does so consistently, rendering the light even more redundant and pointless.

The only positive aspect I've noted about these lights is that they both come on at the same time when you turn the e-reader on, resulting in an attractive purple colour. Other than that, their primary impact is to force you to charge your e-reader more frequently.

Bug Report

After converting a Word document to PDF and loading it into the e-reader, I decided I wanted to make a change to its table of contents. I regenerated the PDF and reloaded the document into the reader.

To add a new document to the Kobo, you plug the e-reader into your computer's USB port, where it is treated just like a memory stick, and copy the new file onto it. But when I copied the new version of my file onto the Kobo and booted it up, the document turned out to be unchanged. My alterations to the table of contents were missing. It looked as if the Kobo did not recognize and implement the file change when a file with the same name was copied over the old version. What I had to do was delete the original version, unplug the reader and let it recognize the change, then plug it back in and copy the new file. I had to go through that whole tedious process every time I changed the file. That's bug number one.

After deleting the old file and copying the new one, I discovered that each chapter title now appeared twice in the table of contents! Neither of the two pointed to the right page either.

Thinking something must have gone wrong with the generation of the table of contents, I went back to the Word document, regenerated the TOC, and generated and loaded a third PDF. It looked fine in Acrobat Reader, but once loaded into Kobo, it now had three of everything in its table of contents.

After much frustrating deleting, unplugging, plugging back in, copying, regenerating and so on, my table of contents getting ever longer, I began to wonder if the file deletion was in fact complete. Perhaps the file was only removed from the document list, its table of contents remaining intact? Then, when a new version was introduced, perhaps its new table of contents entries were being appended to the old.

Acting on this hunch, I renamed the file and copied it into the reader. This time, its table of contents was fine.

Apparently, Kobo accumulates ghostly tables of contents that can never be eliminated, never sent to their rest. Whooooo...

Conclusion

Although the Kobo eReader has its shortcomings, they are minor (except for the lights; as an eco-worrier, that really bugs me), outweighed by the device's advantages, and many of them can probably be repaired in later software releases. If money is no object for you, you'll probably want to go with something more high-end--the iRex iLiad looks quite nice. But if reluctance to drop a few hundred dinero is the only thing preventing you from shelling out for an e-reader, then the Kobo may be the one for you.

Silliest New Product Award 2009

2010-04-26T20:48:00.009-03:00

Once again, the time has come to bestow the Silliest New Product Award. A long time has passed since I last gave out this award, for Bagel-fuls. But please understand that this award is not just for any minor foolish product. If it was, I could give it out weekly. But no--a Silliest New Product must scale the Everest of foolishness. And at last, we have a contender.

Once again, the product in question is a food product. I will have to start keeping an eye out for foolish devices or articles of clothing. I don't want to limit myself to food, although admittedly it's something I get passionate about. This food product is even sillier than Bagel-fuls was. It add a whole new dimension to silly food, in my opinion. There's no denying that our society is loaded with silly food, even dangerous silly food. Yes, we keep trying to find ways to stuff more caffeine into our beverages. Yes, our desserts are so sweet that sugar is often the first ingredient. And let's not forget poutine.

The thing is, though, we know that that sort of stuff is junk food. People may joke that poutine is a meal, but they don't eat it as such too often, unless they actively want to die young. As much junk food as we eat--and we eat a lot of it--at least we are aware, however dimly, that it's not a real meal, and not something we should be eating very often.

But what if some daring and black-hearted individual should redefine the meal? What if you could eat something that was incredibly bad for your health, but still feel as if you'd had a perfectly adequate meal and were not doing anything wrong? For such is the cunning of my award recipient that he, whoever he may be, has entirely redefined the concept of "meal" in just such a revolutionary way.

Oh, we've had meal redefinition before. Don't get me wrong. I am aware of the bold stroke that created the TV dinner: meals apportioned out in a partitioned foil tray. (That was before the advent of microwaves, of course; now it's a partitioned plastic tray.)

Still, the TV dinner, and its offspring, the nukeable dinner, continue to give lip service to the idea of food groups. Some form of vegetable matter still constitutes part of the meal. Said vegetables may be limp and tasteless and people may not eat them, but at least they're there.

Then there's the junk food meal, with its three food groups: hunk of meat with filler, bun, and fries stuffed into a little cardboard packet. Admittedly, the vegetables are absent, but at least some degree of food groupage remains. Also, look at the name. We recognize that this is junk. We don't take it seriously. That's important. In this age of rising obesity and diabetes rates, it may be little enough to hold onto, but it's something.

The real coup has come with the throwing out of food groups altogether. Now, it seems, we are ready to accept the concept of a meal consisting of just one food group, and in a form almost totally devoid of fiber and nutrients. At least, somebody thinks we are, and frighteningly enough, he may be right. It is a stroke of Lex Luthor-like genius. Ladies and gentlemen, I give you... drumroll, please... Domino's Pasta in a Bread Bowl.

That's right. What's pasta made of? White flour. What's the bread bowl made of? White flour. So you have a situation where someone can consume a great big lump of refined flour product with a little bit of creamy sauce on top (also containing white flour) and consider that he or she has eaten a meal.

This is bad, folks. This is very, very bad, although perhaps it is the logical end of decades of addiction-fueled, simple-carbohydrate binging. But I don't think we can just blame the consumer in this instance. I refuse to believe that Domino's has been hounded by people crying, "Stop serving us our pasta in real bowls--we want it in pizza dough! It's the only way we can get enough bready stuff!" No. I think what's going on here is that Domino's is actively trying to kill us.

This brings up the question: Why is Domino's trying to kill us? My best guess is, for the fun of it. I think they're serving up those bread bowls and then hunkering down like Kilroy and peeking through the little window where the waitresses leave the orders, watching as the customer eats his "meal" and giggling maniacally to themselves. Perhaps saying things like, "Oh my God, he's eating it! What a moron!" Much like Colbert Report viewers did when that suicidal guy ate a fifteen-pound burger.

Now, you may argue that this is a shortsighted way to do business. Sure, you have a little fun watching the mayhem. Sure, your customers' addiction to simple carbohydrates gets even worse, and you do a brisk business for a while. But then they die, and where is your business then? OK, there's a new generation, but if they do the same thing, they'll die untimely deaths as well, and eventually the shrinking population is going to impact your bottom line, right? It's not a good long term plan, is it?

To which I'd respond, hey, it's worked for the producers of cheap alcohol. So far, anyway. And let's face it, most businesses are based on short-term gain. Hell, the whole economy's based on short-term gain. That's why nobody wants to do anything about global warming.

But I sense myself drifting off-topic, so let me just return to the point and say, Dominos, you suck. Once, you seduced me with your Extravaganza pizza. But with Pasta in a Bread Bowl, I have lost all respect for you.

Cast-on, the Foundation of Knitting

2010-04-16T17:42:00.005-03:00

Before you can knit anything, you have to cast on. That is, you have to place a row of stitches on your knitting needle. Casting on is an essential element of knitting that does not always get the attention it is due. I suspect that there is many an elderly lady out there who has been knitting all her life and never used anything but the buttonhole cast-on, thus impoverishing many a knitted garment. It's unfortunate, especially since these grandmotherly types often don't know their way around a computer very well and are not likely to find their way to my blog. Still, I hope my cast-on roundup with be useful to those who do.

Cast-Ons All Knitters Should Know

Buttonhole Cast-On

Let's get the most basic cast-on out of the way first. The buttonhole cast-on is the easiest and commonest of the cast-ons. Here's how you do it:

Step Zero

Make a slip knot in the yarn, slip the needle through the loop, and tighten.

I call this step zero because, in the case of buttonhole cast-on, it's not really necessary. I don't usually bother to do it. I just do one stich more than I need (see following steps), which falls away once you've knitted all your required stitches.

In fact, if you're using buttonhole cast-on for its eponymous purpose--to create a buttonhole--Step 0 is completely pointless and must be skipped.

Step 1

Loop yarn counter-clockwise around your index finger.

Step 2

Insert the knitting needle into the stitch in the same direction as the finger. Slide finger out and tighten stitch on needle, but leave a little slack. Overly tight buttonhole-cast-on stitches are hell to knit.

Repeat steps 1 and 2 until you have sufficient stitches.

The buttonhole cast-on has its advantages. It's easy and fast to do, and that makes it fun as well--watching the stitches pop off your finger and onto the needle, one after the other, as if by magic. If you're a brand-new knitter, it's the cast-on you should learn to do first, as it's easy and will help you get the hang of cast-ons in general. It's also serviceable if you need to add extra stitches to a piece of knitting already in process--say, if you're making a buttonhole. But the cons outnumber the pros. The buttonhole cast-on is more difficult to knit than any other. Being only loops with a twist, the stitches readily tighten up until you can't get your needle in, and then you have to work them loose with your fingers. There is no distinction between one stitch and another, so as you go, the loose piece of yarn between the knitted stitch and the stitch not yet knitted gets longer and longer. For this reason, buttonhole cast-on should only be used when a small number of stitches are required.

Finally, buttonhole cast-on results in a tight, unyielding edge. If you want an edge that is at all stretchy, for a cuff for example, your best bet is the longtailed or thumb cast-on, but even the cable cast-on will work better than the buttonhole.

This is the tragedy of so many handmade knits. If you have ever received a gift of hand-knitted socks or mittens, or perhaps a sweater, or if you have ever taken a close look at such products in a flea market, you have probably seen it: a ribbed cuff that terminates in an unyielding little band that renders all that nice stretchy ribbing pointless, a band that barely permits your hand (or foot, whichever the case) to pass. That's the buttonhole cast-on. It's the only cast-on that many people know. Let's all work to change that.

Cable Cast-On

A step up from the buttonhole is the cable cast-on. While still not your best bet for a stretchy edge, it's an improvement on the buttonhole. The advantage of both these cast-ons is that you can use them to add stitches to a knitted piece in progress, something you can't do with the stretchier (and more fun) longtailed cast-on.

Step 1

Make a slip knot in the yarn (as shown above), slip the needle through the loop, and tighten.

Step 2

Insert the other needle into the stitch knitwise. (To insert a needle knitwise means "as if to knit." This is in contrast to purlwise: "as if to purl." When you knit, you insert the right-hand needle in the same direction as the left-hand needle. When you purl, you insert the right-hand needle in the opposite direction as the left-hand needle.)

Knit, pull the stitch through and over the tip of the left-hand needle. This makes the second stitch.

Step 3

Insert the right-hand needle in between the last stitch created and the one before. Knit, pull the stitch through and place it over the tip of the left-hand needle.

Repeat step 3 until you have sufficient stitches.

So basically, with cable cast-on, you knit the stitches onto the needle, first through the original stitch, and subsequently in between the last and next-to-last stitches.

Why is the cable cast-on called that? I don't know, so I'll hazard a guess. It's called cable cast-on because it's used as a beginning for cable knitting, and the reason it's used for cable knitting is because cable knitting doesn't require an especially stretchy edge. If you're knitting a cable sweater, it will probably have ribbed cuffs and lower edge, and for those you'd want a stretchy edge. But you could be knitting a cable afghan, for which a stretchy edge is not so vital. You could still use longtailed cast-on if you wanted to; it's just that there'd be no big advantage to it.

Don't start your cable afghan with a buttonhole cast-on though. Don't start any major project with a buttonhole cast-on. Save buttonhole cast-on for buttonholes and practice pieces that you plan to unravel afterwards. Or use buttonhole cast-on to knit for your enemies (if you are so saintly a soul as to knit for your enemies).

Longtailed or Thumb Cast-On

As I've already stated, longtailed cast-on is the undisputed best for a stretchy edge. If you're making socks, mittens or a sweater, you should start with a longtailed cast-on. You owe it to yourself to learn to do it, even though... you knew there was a catch coming, didn't you?... getting started is a little more complicated than it is for the other cast-ons.

Longtailed cast-on gets its name from the fact that you need to start it off with a long tail. More to the point, you need a tail of the right length, and that length will vary depending upon how many stitches you want to cast on. If you give yourself too short a tail, you'll run out and will be a most unhappy knitter when you have to unravel all your cast-on stitches and start over again.

What to do? The average knitting book would have you calculate the necessary length. I can't remember what the calculation is, and anyway it will vary depending on needle size and yarn gauge. But it doesn't matter. Screw all that. There's a much better way to determine the required length of your tail and it involves no calculating or measuring. It's a method I've developed myself and it's never failed me.

Determining Tail Length

Step 1

Hold up your needle in your left hand. Let a length of yarn hang past it, say six inches. You want to start off with some excess so you'll have a margin for error.

Step 2

Wrap the yarn around the needle, counting the wraps as you go.

If you run out of needle, squish the yarn over to the far end of the needle to give yourself more space.

Keep wrapping until you have counted as many wraps as you need stitches. (If you need ten stitches, wrap the yarn ten times.)

Step 3

Firmly grasp the yarn in front of the wraps between thumb and forefinger and let go of the needle. Let all the wraps unroll until the needle falls out. You now hold the correct length of tail.

The Actual Cast-On

Step 1

Don't let go of that yarn! The spot you're holding on to is the spot where your first stitch needs to go. Tie a slip-knot in that spot (as shown above), slide the needle through the loop and tighten.

Step 2

Arrange the yarn so that the long tail is to your right and the ball of yarn is to your left. Hold the needle in your right hand. Take the yarn leading to the ball and wrap it around your left thumb counterclockwise. The speedy way to do this is to hold the yarn in your left fingers and bring your thumb down upon it from the top, then swish your thumb around counterclockwise to wind up the yarn. (This is the reason that the other name for this cast-on is thumb, in case you haven't figured that out by now.)

Step 3

This part is similar to Step 2 of the buttonhole cast-on, only with a thumb instead of a finger. Insert the knitting needle into the stitch in the same direction as the thumb. But here's where it varies from the buttonhole cast-on: don't slide your thumb out of the loop. Keep it there.

Step 4

Transfer the needle from right hand to left hand, pick up the long tail in your right hand and wrap it over the top of the needle.

Then use your thumb to pull the thumb loop over the tip of the needle.

Pull on both loose ends of yarn until the stitch tightens.

See how it works? The loop from the long tail makes the stitch, and the loop from the thumb holds that stitch in place around the bottom. That's what makes this cast-on stretchy.

Repeat Steps 2 to 4 until you have the required number of stitches.

You can see that this cast-on requires more dexterity than the other two, what with handling two lengths of yarn and passing the needle back and forth between hands. But with a little practice, you'll fly along and this cast-on will be just as much fun as buttonhole cast-on, only it will be much more fun to knit on because your stitches won't keep shrinking on you. And your cuffs will look and feel fabulous.

More Esoteric Cast-Ons

The three cast-ons I have shown you here will serve you well for a lifetime of knitting, but if you care to experiment, there are others to try. In the same way that buttonhole cast-ons are for buttonholes, cable cast-ons are for cable knits and for adding stitches to knitting pieces in progress, and longtailed cast-ons are for stretchy ribbed edges, the more unusual cast-ons were created with specific knitting situations in mind.

Double-Knit Cast-On

Double-knitting is a technique whereby every even stitch becomes part of the front of the fabric and every odd stitch becomes part of the back of the fabric. The result is a fabric that's double thickness, and you need twice as many stitches to achieve the same width. Frankly, I'm not sure what double-knitting is good for and why it exists, but it does, and so there's a special cast-on for it. You don't have to use it--other types of cast-on will work for double-knitting--but it has a peculiar advantage.

Double-knit cast-on, like longtail cast-on, requires a long tail, so do the three steps given in Deterining Tail Length. Then, instead of making a slip knot, fold the yarn in half at the point where you gripped it between your thumb and index finger. Now you're ready to begin.

Step 1

Hold the needle in your right hand and the folded yarn in your left, and slip the point of the needle into the fold from underneath.

Step 2

From above, slip your index finger and thumb into the fold and open it up. You will need to hold onto the yarn with your remaining fingers. Like longtail, this cast-on takes dexterity.

This is where things get complicated, so from now on, the yarn held taut by your index finger will be called "the far yarn" and the yarn held taut by your thumb will be called "the near yarn."

Step 3

Tip the needle away from you and bend it around the far yarn. Then tip the needle towards you and bend it around the near yarn. Finally, bring the needle under the far yarn. You now have two stitches on the needle.

Step 4

Tip the needle forward over the near yarn and wrap under it. Tip the needle back over the far yarn and wrap over it as well, then duck the tip under the near yarn. You now have three stitches on the needle.

Keep alternating Steps 3 and 4 until you have enough stitches (an even number, which means you will end on Step 3, not on Step 4).

Complicated enough for you? Well, yes, but after you've done a few of these, you'll see that the alternating stitches face in different directions. That makes the odd stitches appropriate for the front of the fabric, and the even stitches appropriate for the back. It really is a cast-on you'd only want to use for double-knitting, and maybe not even then.

I got this cast-on from the Spring 2003 issue of Knitter's Magazine, the greatest knitting magazine in the known universe. Look for it on your local newsstand. If your local newsstand doesn't carry it, instead seeing fit to fill its knitting section only with more pedestrian offerings such as Vogue Knitting, tell them they suck.

That's all I have to teach you about casting on for now. Let me know what you thought of my first instructional blog post by leaving a comment. Thanks.

Recipe: Maritime Bean Dip (and bonus Pizza)

2010-02-05T16:32:00.002-04:00

Jacob's cattle, soldier and yellow eye are three varieties of bean that are commonly grown in the Maritimes of Canada. If you buy one of these types of beans at the supermarket, it will in all likelihood come with a recipe on the bag, a recipe that never varies. It is Molasses Baked Beans. It is always, always Molasses Baked Beans, as if no Maritimer has ever done anything else with a bean.

That seems a shame to me, not to mention boring, so I have taken it upon myself to provide the bean-buying world with other things to do with a bag of yellow eye or soldier or Jacob's cattle beans, starting with this tasty bean dip that may, if you are so inclined, be made entirely with Maritime-grown ingredients.

The Dip

Ingredients:

1 cup yellow eye, soldier or Jacob's cattle beans
1 or 2 cloves garlic
2 tsp. apple cider vinegar
1 tsp. salt
Ground black pepper, to taste

Soak the beans 4 to 6 hours or overnight in 3 cups of water. If you're not good at advance planning, you can use the quick-soak method: bring water and beans to a boil, cover, turn off heat and let sit for an hour.

Whichever soaking method you use, once the soaking is complete, bring the beans to a boil, reduce heat, cover and let simmer until soft--from 30 minutes to an hour.

Drain beans, place in a bowl and mash. (If you're feeling lazy or have arthritis, use a blender or food processor.) Mince or press garlic and add to mashed beans. (For extra points, use garlic grown in the Maritimes. We have many fine organic farmers ready to supply you. Points will be deducted for garlic that comes from China.) Add cider vinegar, preferably made in the Maritimes. I use Boates vinegar from Nova Scotia. (You can substitute lemon juice, but do note that lemons don't grow this far north. Points will be deducted if your lemons come from Argentina.) Add remaining ingredients. Go to the head of the class if your peppercorns were also grown in the Maritimes. I have yet to come across local pepper, but I know it must exist. I've seen pepper grown in Quebec, and that's the same climate.

Mix well. Taste and adjust seasonings. Yummy, right? And you can't spread molasses baked beans on a cracker.

If you want to get fancy, you can use this bean dip in a pizza. Here goes.

The Pizza

Ingredients:

Pizza dough, enough for 12-inch pie (to make your own, see recipe below)
1 recipe Maritime Bean Dip
A few handfuls of spinach or other leafy green vegetable (precision is not vital here)
1 cup grated cheese

Preheat oven to 450 degrees, 400 if you have a black pizza pan. Oil a 12-inch pan and flatten the pizza dough until it fits the pan; feel free to get fancy and work it between your hands in midair like the pros. It's not that hard, though you toss it into the air at your own risk. Place in pan.

It's not absolutely necessary, but if you want to ensure as crispy a crust as possible, bake the untopped dough for 8 minutes. Spread the bean dip over the dough.

If you are using spinach, wash, spin dry and slice up. You don't need to cook it. If you're using a tougher vegetable like kale or cabbage, you will probably want to sauté it a little first. Sprinkle the vegetable on top of the bean dip.

Top with the grated cheese. As always, extra points for cheese made in the Maritimes; you might want to try some of that asiago that they sell at Aura Foods in Fredericton.

Pop in the oven and bake for 15 to 20 minutes.

Pizza Dough

There are probably a lot of people who have never made their own pizza dough and would be amazed to discover that such an option is open to them. That's a pity, for although it takes time and planning, it's not hard, and kneading the dough is fun and good for stress release.

Ingredients:

1 1/2 tsp. dry yeast
3/4 cup warm water
1 tsp. salt
2 cups flour, preferably whole grain
1 tbsp. oil

Dissolve the yeast in 1/4 cup of the water and let sit 10 minutes. Here's a tip: buy yeast by the jar instead of in those silly little packets that come in strips. The packets may be convenient (it's just sooo hard to use a measuring spoon after all) but they're much more expensive, and if you do any amount of baking you're just wasting your money. Plus they constitute wasteful packaging and produce more garbage. Even if you don't do that much baking, jarred yeast will keep a long time if you store it in the fridge.

While the yeast is doing its thing, mix together the flour and salt. When the yeast is done, add the yeast mixture to the flour along with the remaining 1/2 cup of warm water and the oil. (I have a confession to make: I use olive oil. If I knew of any local oil appropriate to the task, I would try it instead. Actually, I'm not aware of any cooking oil being made in the Maritimes.)

Mix, gather into a ball and knead until smooth. If you knead dough frequently, you will get to know the feel of sufficiently-kneaded dough. It is a satisfying moment.

Oil a bowl, stick the ball of dough into it and turn once to oil the ball on both sides. Cover with a damp cloth and leave to rise for an hour in a warm place. If you're using white flour you can expect the dough to double, but with whole grain flour the rise is slightly less. No worries; it will still be delicious.

The Prorogued Blog

2010-01-24T18:53:00.008-04:00

I think I have probably followed the pattern of many a new blogger. When I started out, I tried to put up something new at least a couple of times a week, mostly because the author of Blogging for Dummies said I should. That didn't last long, especially when the posts began to get longer. Multiple postings per week may work well for short posts, but not so much when each post is at least 2,000 words long and takes several hours to research and write.

But I did maintain a steady if plodding pace for a while. However, life has a way of intruding sometimes. In my case, I went into therapy and recovered memories of being molested by my grandfather. That kind of thing can throw you into a tailspin. It's nice to know, finally, why you're plagued with chronic pain and other problems of mysterious origin, but the revelation is a distracting one, to say the least. At times like this, investing a lot of time in a blog that makes you zero money falls to the bottom of your priority list.

Still, even with a good excuse, it was disconcerting to realize I'd let more than a month go by without updating my blog. This happens to many a well-intentioned beginning blogger, and the proof can be found in the apology-ridden blog posts that abound all over the Internet. Apologizing and explaining is an option, but not the most dignified one. Have we done so badly, after all? At least we haven't abandoned our blogs. Abandoned blogs are another thing you can find all over the Internet.

What to do, then? Simply slap up a new post, make no remark about the large gap, and proceed as if nothing happened? That was an option. But then I realized that I could take inspiration from an unexpected source.

Nobody knows the value of not apologizing like Stephen Harper. A demagogue can't apologize--it would be tantamount to admitting imperfection. You can't have that. Such an admission would hamper his ability to bully his lackeys. So when such a demagogue faced with a pesky opposition that won't stop going on about the multiple memos he ignored concerning the torture of Afghan detainees, what does he do? Especially when the knee-jerk counter-attacks are starting to sound tired and contrived?

Why, he prorogues Parliament. He got away with it before, why not a second time? So what if 36 bills, representing incalculable hours of work and therefore tax dollars, get flushed down the toilet? He places much more value than that on his own hothouse-flower ego.

After I got back from the protest rally, I realized this could work for me too. I don't want to apologize either. I don't happen to have a perfectly pliant and obedient governor general to sign all my forms without question, but that's OK because this blog is entirely under my control. I have absolute power over my own blog. I already have the autocracy Harper would like and is working towards.

I therefore announce that I am retroactively proroguing my blog, from the date of my last post (Remembrance Day) to the present. That's right, I even went back in time to prorogue! Eat your heart out, Harper. (Or did you already? Maybe that's where it went.)

There are differences, of course. One might argue that the need to apologize for not updating one's blog is negligible to nonexistent, given that it's not a true responsibility but just for fun, and one's failure to do it hurts nobody. The same cannot be said for letting people get tortured. For that matter, a prorogued blog doesn't have the national impact and expense of a prorogued Parliament. It doesn't cost millions of dollars and waste everyone's time. It's not a show of disrespect towards an entire nation.

I'm glad I don't have that level of responsibility. That would be burdensome indeed. But then, someone who runs for Prime Minister has some idea of what he's getting into. If he should find he doesn't want to do the job he's being paid a great deal to do, he should step down, forthwith, and let someone else, someone more willing and able, take over.

A Remembrance Day call for a change to army culture

2009-11-11T11:52:00.009-04:00

Remembrance Day is a day to think about war, and I have been, although not in the way pop culture seems to encourage these days. I do not fetishize war or worship soldiers as heroes. When yet another young man (or woman, but usually man) comes home in a flag-draped casket, it doesn't make my heart swell with patriotic pride. Quite the opposite, if anything.

What I was thinking about was Post-Traumatic Stress Disorder (PTSD). Soldiers lucky enough to return alive often suffer from it. There is growing recognition of this problem, but the focus tends to be on getting soldiers treatment once they get back home. And that shouldn't surprise anyone. The army is a well-honed system that was created to do one thing only: maximize kills. An important part of this is desensitization. Soldiers are trained to see the enemy, whoever that may be at a given time, as less than human. Disregarding the humanity of the enemy means discarding some of one's own humanity. This is inevitable. One can't become desensitized in one area and remain sensitive in others. Therefore, the army is a culture where nobody is allowed to have feelings.

This produces an efficient army, an array of killing machines. It also produces an environment where PTSD becomes entrenched. After all, a soldier who has suffered through a traumatic experience is not free to talk it over and have a good cry. He has to pretend to be strong, "masculine" and unaffected. The feelings that cannot be expressed have but one place to go: into the body, where they manifest as physical problems, behaviour disorders, flashbacks and nightmares.

Rather than concentrating entirely on dealing with the damage once the soldier has come home and the disorder has had time to become well-established, wouldn't it be nice if some measures were taken to prevent PTSD while the soldiers are still in the field?

Of course, when you're at war, there's no way to prevent traumatic events from occurring. What could be prevented is the blocking of expression. If, following a traumatic event, soldiers were free to express themselves as needed--not only with therapists but with each other--there might be less occurrence or severity of PTSD.

Clearly, this would take a major change to army culture, if not to our culture as a whole. I say it's high time for such a change. We haven't had an appreciable and permanent change in our cultural attitudes towards war since the days of the Roman empire. All we've done is come up with better chemicals and machinery for wreaking mayhem. Not much of an accomplishment.

So I say, let's start changing culture, including army culture. The time is late and the need is desperate. And if it leads to a loss of killing efficiency, so be it. There's something worse than not being stronger than everybody else, and that's being stronger than everybody else, at such a cost. Death may well be preferable.

Links of Interest

Broken Heroes

This documentary by the CBC News show The Fifth Estate looks at three soldiers recently returned from Afghanistan and suffering from PTSD. You can watch the entire documentary online, see clips of each soldier's interview, or read transcripts of all three interviews.

Operational Stress Injury Social Support (OSISS)

A support network founded by Lt.-Col. Stéphane Grenier, one of the soldiers interviewed in Broken Heroes.

Dr. Horrible Wins Hugo

2009-10-03T15:30:00.000-03:00

Back in February, I complained that the brilliant short musical comedy Dr. Horrible's Sing-Along Blog was shut out of the Oscars. So I am very pleased to report that the film has at last gotten the recognition it deserved. It won a Hugo for Best Dramatic Presentation - Short Form.

The Hugos are presented yearly at Worldcom, an enormous SF convention that takes place at a different location each year. This year, it was in Montreal, Quebec. According to Locus Magazine, Colin Harris accepted the award on behalf of Joss Whedon and the other creators.

But who is Colin Harris? He does not appear to be any relation to Neil Patrick Harris, who played the title role. Airlock Alpha describes Colin Harris as a "prominent fan." On the other hand, a commenter to Whedonesque.com says he's a past WorldCon co-chair.

Hmm, I guess Joss Whedon and the gang were pretty convinced they wouldn't win. The only person they sent to pick up the award was someone who had nothing to do with the actual making of the film.

This unfortunate lack of self-confidence was also displayed in the acceptance speech that Harris read. "Hugo, you need to get your act together, man.... You must have too many categories if we win one of them" (Source: Locus, Sept. 2009).

Enough of this modesty, false or otherwise! At a time when most movies are soulless reworkings of last year's movie, Dr. Horrible's Sing-Along Blog was a lone gem shining out of a pile of Hollywood garbage. Yes, it deserved that award. It wouldn't have beaten out two Dr. Who episodes otherwise. (In case you're wondering, not only doctors were nominated, although they did top the heap. Other nominees were Battlestar Galactica and Lost episodes.)

Take heart, Dr. Horrible. At least Hugo respects you.

Scoop! The True Nature of Fredericton Bus Station's "Shuttle Service"

2009-10-03T14:21:00.001-03:00

As this is not a news blog and I am not a reporter, I never expected that I'd ever be able to scoop the local papers. But the improbable has happened, and quite by accident. All I did was make a phone call. Amazingly, I've even scooped Charles LeBlanc.

It's big news in Fredericton that the bus terminal has been forced to move from its handy downtown location to some awkward spot in an industrial park. Indeed, there has been widespread anger and protesting. It's no secret that this has happened because Irving owns the land that the bus terminal was on, just as Irving owns a frightening percentage of New Brunswick soil, and they booted Acadian Bus off the spot so that they can build a parking garage. But this post is not about the ugliness of replacing a bus station with a parking garage at a time when everyone is supposed to be so keenly aware of the need to slow climate change. It's not about the weakness of every level of government in this province and how they let the Irvings do whatever they want and never lift a finger to stop them. Believe me, I could do a long and heated rant about that if I wanted to. But that's not what this post is about.

It's about the alleged shuttle service. Both the CBC and The Daily Gleaner reported that for the first two weeks of the move, there would be a shuttle service to take passengers to the new location. Sounds good, but nobody reporting the story gave any details about this shuttle service and when it would run.

So I phoned the bus terminal and asked, "When does the shuttle bus run?"

There was silence. I elaborated on the fact that there was supposed to be (as I'd understood it) a shuttle bus to take people from the old location to the new.

"There's no shuttle bus," said the man on the phone.

"Oh, because they said on the news that there was--"

"What there is," he explained, "is two guys with a van, and they're there for people who show up downtown and didn't know we'd moved."

In other words, there isn't a shuttle service. If you're aware that the station moved--which you will be if you heard about the "shuttle service" in the first place--that van's not for you. Oh, maybe they'll be nice and give you a ride anyway. After all, New Brunswickers are nice people, and besides, it's got to be boring sitting there in a van all day. They'll want something to do. But it's not for you. No, it's for the probably-nonexistent person who lives under a rock and never gets news or talks to anybody and consequently heard nothing about the move.

You heard it here first. Great reportage, CBC and Gleaner!

If you enjoyed this bit of mockery aimed at our fine institutions of journalism, you may also appreciate my short post on a CBC host's musical difficulties.

Recipe: Vivian's Spinach Dip From Scratch

2009-09-28T10:30:00.007-03:00

This recipe came about because I wanted to make spinach dip for a barbecue. Spinach dip is usually made with dried soup, but after I bought a packet, I read the ingredients, which I've gotten into the habit of doing these days, and was put off by the presence of monosodium glutamate, disodium guanylate, disodium inosinate and sulfites. (For more information on some of these chemicals, see my earlier blog entry on food additives.)

I decided it would be an interesting challenge to create my own, soup-mix-free dip. And here it is. You can replace the goat yoghurt with standard cow yoghurt or the more traditional sour cream, but I find that the goat yoghurt imparts an unusual and delicious flavour to the dip. It is also easier to digest (for humans, that is) than cow dairy and lower in fat than sour cream.

1 1/4 cup goat yoghurt (or 1 cup thick sour cream)
10 oz spinach
1 cup mayonnaise
1 clove garlic, minced or put through press
1/4 cup onion, finely chopped
1 cup red bell pepper, chopped
4 oz water chestnuts, chopped (optional)
1/4 tsp salt, or to taste
Freshly-ground pepper to taste
1 large round bread (optional)

Line a colander with cheese cloth and put the yoghurt into it. Place the colander in the sink or a bowl and leave for an hour to strain. If you are using thick sour cream, skip this step.

If you are using fresh spinach, tear off stems (unless it's baby spinach, in which case you can get away with leaving the stems on). Wash and leave some of the water on. Cook until wilted--a couple of minutes on the stove top, or ten to fifteen minutes in a preheated solar oven*. If you're using frozen spinach, thaw. Either way, squeeze out excess water and chop.

Mix the sour cream and mayonnaise together in a bowl. Add garlic, onion, red pepper, water chestnuts, salt and pepper and mix well. Blend spinach into mixture. Chill for a couple of hours.

If you are using a bread bowl, prepare it just before serving so the bread won't get soggy. Slice the top off and cut or scoop out the inside, leaving walls of reasonable thickness, at least an inch I'd say. Spoon dip into hollowed-out bread. Cut up the leftover bread (from the top and inside) to use for dipping.

If you're not using a bread bowl, serve the dip in an ordinary bowl with tortilla chips, crackers, pita chips, toast points or... anything you want, really.

If you try this recipe, please let me know what you think by posting a comment. If you think the version with dried soup in it is better, feel free to let me know that too.

*We bought a solar oven this summer. I am thoroughly enamoured of it and yes, I used it to cook the spinach for this dip. The brand we bought is Sun Oven, but as that's the only type of solar oven I've ever used, I'm not going to advocate it over other brands. The Sport Solar Oven looks good too. It is more basic as well as cheaper, and the reflector is sold separately. If you want to make your own solar oven, you can find oodles of directions on the Internet.

A message from prot?

2009-09-03T10:56:00.006-03:00

Here's a curious piece of synchronicity. While we were in Grand Manan, we paid a visit to the local library and James found a copy of K-PAX. Remember the K-PAX movie, about a guy in a mental hospital who calls himself "prot" and insists he's an alien from the planet K-PAX? Well, it was a novel first. In New Brunswick we have this nifty system where all the libraries are on one network, and we can use our cards anywhere in the province, so James checked the book out of the library.

In the movie, prot says he's returning to K-PAX on July 27. In the original book, the date is August 17. It's repeated several times: pyschiatrist Gene Brewer (who just happens to have the same name as the author) has very little time because of this cut-off date, August 17. Well, take a look at this slip, from the library book, and see what the return date was.

Coincidence? What are the odds? No my friends, this is a message. Prot lives! See you on K-PAX.

A Book Club Gone Bad

2009-08-24T22:31:00.005-03:00

I have a bit of a dilemma. I'm sort of a member of a science fiction book club. It's a pitiful, limping creature and always has been. Only four or five people show up with any regularity, which would be fine if everyone read the books. They don't. I have gone to meetings where it was revealed that not a single person actually read the book. This is a common enough occurrence that our (for want of a better word) leader has taken to sending out mass emails saying, "The book we're pretending to read this month is ...."

Then too, there's the time that I showed up for a meeting and no one else did, as far as I could determine. I waited for half an hour and wandered throughout the place before giving up and leaving. It turned out later that there had in fact been a meeting, though I never worked out how the others managed to give me the slip. I found the experience disheartening, so much so that I haven't been to a meeting since, though I keep meaning to go. In fact, I have continued to think of myself as a member of the book club. I'm simply a member who hasn't shown up at a meeting in a while. I obtain the assigned books and don't read them, or I read a couple of chapters and lose interest. Because (and here's another problem I have with the book club) the books chosen represent a very particular taste, which I don't happen to share. The themes are either military, online gaming or space opera (a subcategory of military, come to think of it). The field of interest is so narrow that I think I can pinpoint exactly who is making the recommendations. This is not a good thing. A book club should represent as many literary tastes as there are people in the book club. That is, in fact, the advantage and perhaps even the whole point of a book club: the opportunity to experience a range of tastes, and read books you'd never pick up in the normal course of events.

Well, I'm certainly picking up books I'd never touch in the normal course of events, but they're all the same! And I don't like them. And the person who's making the choices is not experiencing anything new.

None of that is good. The lackadaisical nature of the club--not good. Book suggestions coming from only one, or at most two, of the members--not good. Said suggestions being consistently contrary to my personal taste--not good, at least for me. And yet none of those things is the reason why I am now saying to myself that it may be time to throw in the towel and drop out of the club for real. Because on top of all that, it seems that this one person (or at most two people) who is supplying us with all our reading material is not terribly discerning in terms of literary quality.

To put it another way, the latest book is pure cheese.

When I first held it in my hand and looked at its cover art, which consisted of space ships shooting at each other, I groaned and thought, "Not another bloody space opera!" Which was a bit unfair of me, since I hadn't bothered to read the previous one (New Space Opera, in case you're interested). That being the case, I decided to give it a chance. After all, I reminded myself, book clubs are all about being exposed to new reading material, and I am being so exposed, even if certain other people in the group are not. Let me then benefit. Let me open my mind.

So I began to read. The story is certainly action-packed, though convoluted as hell, what with all the faster-than-light travel through multiple dimensions. I read a lot of sentences twice, trying to figure out what was going on. Still, the captain of the ship is a woman, which is nice--it reminds me of Captain Janeway. The concepts are kind of interesting, and it certainly isn't boring. It begins with an enemy attack and hasn't slowed down for a moment. It is, in fact, paced like a short story, which is odd. But what really got my literary spidey-sense tingling was the second sentence of Chapter Three: "Fifty-three sleepless hours might explain her gaunt, hollowed cheeks, but not the ghosts behind her eyes."

Ghosts? Behind her eyes, of all places?

And things did not improve from there. Five pages later, I reached the paragraphs that stopped me in my tracks.

His face was blank for an instant, and then understanding flared.
"Of course." Life returned to his eyes--the blazing life of a man who has accepted the inevitability of something far worse than his own death and then been shown a possible way to avert it after all--and suppressed excitement lent his voice vibrancy as he nodded jerkily. "Of course!"
--from The Apocalypse Troll by David Weber

I shouldn't have to explain why this is terrible writing, but the sad fact is that this guy's a bestselling author, so I probably do. Note the melodrama, the pumping up of rhetoric in a flailing attempt to artificially excite the reader. Good writers know better. They know that if the story is exciting, they don't have to do anything extra to wring a response out of the reader. Not this writer. He follows up the flaring understanding with life--blazing life! Hallelujah! Also note that the character's voice is vibrating while he's nodding jerkily. This is quite amusing, as it was explained earlier in the book just how serious a problem conflicting harmonics can be when you're hopping dimensions in order to travel faster than light: "If a ship hit the wall just wrong or with the slightest harmonic in her translation field, she simply disappeared. She went acoherent, spread over a multitude of dimensions and forever unable to reconstitute herself..." I should think similar difficulties await the man who nods jerkily while his voice vibrates. Perhaps his head would explode.

Anyway, that's where I reached my limit. I'm sorry, but I'm not devoting hours of my life to swimming through such Cheez Whiz.

When did this happen? When did it become OK to publicly read and shamelessly tout crappy fiction, even to the point of suggesting it as a book club selection? Is this Stephanie Meyer's fault? Or did it begin earlier, without my noticing? Maybe Dan Brown is to blame? John Grisham? Danielle Steel? Sidney Sheldon? Should we have a line-up? Whodunit?

What ever happened to the good old days when reading crap was a private, guilty pleasure? Maybe they never existed and I only imagined them? Do book clubs read Harlequin Romances these days? Have I asked enough questions by now?

In any case, I realize that I'm beaten. I was going to show up at the next meeting and suggest Pandemonium by Daryl Gregory, which Locus selected as one of the best first novels of 2008. But it seems so hopeless. The book is not even a mass-market paperback. It's a trade paperback, and therefore more expensive. I've already been told that price is a concern. On top of that, it contains no gaming, space ships or bombs. Just noncorporeal demons and excellent writing. No one's going to be interested in that. Why bang my head against a wall? With or without harmonics in my translation field?

That's how I feel right now anyway. Perhaps later, as I consider the possibility that I could help these literary innocents discover good writing, my hope will revive, much as hope revived for the crew of the TNS Defender. And when that happens, life will reignite in my eyes--blazing life. My excitement, which I will be suppressing for some unexplained reason, will lend my voice vibrancy and I will nod jerkily. And then my head will explode.

Fredericton's Architectural Atrocities: A Tour

2009-07-24T11:28:00.003-03:00

Founded in 1783, New Brunswick's capital city is replete with beautiful old architecture of a range of periods and styles, from Georgian to Victorian and beyond. When people and places are fortunate enough to have an abundance of something, there is a tendency to take it for granted. The scars of this attitude are visible all over Fredericton, where few people think anything of busting a hole in the side of a grand old home, church or other building so that they can put up some tasteless but convenient addition.

That is why I am proud to offer the only tour of Fredericton's Really Bad Architectural Decisions available either online or off. At the end of the post, you will find a map of this walking tour, suitable for printing, so that if you are ever in Fredericton, you can get the full experience. In the meantime, I hope you enjoy this virtual tour.

King's Place is a good spot to begin, as it is right in the centre of downtown, and all the buses stop there. Let's gather at the side door, where the pharmacy is located, and begin to walk south down York Street.

Crossing Brunswick Street and York Street, the first notable piece of architecture we come to is the Brunswick Street United Baptist Church. I believe this would be considered an example of Gothic revival. You can see that it has a tower so tall that I couldn't fit it in the picture. It's not my favorite--that would be St. Paul's United Church, just a short way down the street--but it's still quite an attractive church.

However, keep walking, and you will soon see that something odd is attached to it.

It's not a terrible piece of architecture in itself. It bears some slight resemblance to York House next door (not shown here because it's not part of the tour, but if you want to see a picture of it, click on the link). The one thing it does not resemble, in any way whatsoever, is the church to which it is attached. Not that I think that would make it OK. Putting an addition on a lovely old church is tasteless and wrong, period. But if you're going to do it, the least you can do is make some effort to make it match. That was not done here. Indeed, it appears to be part of this church's tradition to show utter disregard for historical structures. That building next door I just mentioned, York House? They wanted to tear it down, and the city had to buy it to prevent that happening.

Let us move on from this unfortunate church. At the next corner, look across George Street and you will see my favorite church in Fredericton: St. Paul's United Church. It is quite similar to the Baptist Church, and I don't know why I like it so much better. I just do.

According to the plaque out front, St. Paul's was built in 1886 (in the same time period as the Baptist Church, which was built in 1883) and is "a fine example of High Victorian Gothic Revival architecture." Indeed it is. Unfortunately, that's not the only thing it's an example of, as you'll see if you continue down York Street:

Here we can at least say that some effort was made to make the addition match its host. Although the new structure's windows are rectangular in contrast to the original church's arched windows, and it has the flat-roofed stumpiness of all additions, the stonework is similar. Still, there is no getting around the fact that the effect is not at all what the architects of the original church had in mind. Earlier on, I mentioned the tall towers that are a feature of this kind of church. These, the pointed arches, and other features of a Gothic-style church are meant to draw the eye upward, towards God. Stick a stumpy thing on the church's side and the effect is much diminished. Further, Gothic churches like this are constructed in the form of a cross. The addition interferes with that effect.

Still, it could be worse. And later in the tour, it will be.

Continuing down York Street, we come to Charlotte Street. Turn right and walk down Charlotte for a block. You will see many nice old houses, and if you take care to look between the houses, you will see many additions. Here's an entertaining example from the corner of York and Charlotte. Usually, additions are at least the same colour as the host house. Not so here, and that's not the only odd thing. There is a tree in the way, but if you look closely, you will see that although the addition has a sloping roof, the wall at the edge of the sidewalk is rectangular. It's a false front, like something out of a frontier town. Just plain weird.

Now we come to Westmorland Street, and our final church. (I didn't mean to squash all the churches to the front of the tour; it just worked out that way.)

On the right in the photo below is St. Anne's Chapel of Ease, which dates back to 1847. Like the other two churches, it is an example of Gothic Revival, though because it is a chapel, it lacks the towers and cruciform structure we saw earlier. You can't see the stained glass windows from the outside, as they are covered, but they are visible on the inside and are beautiful, as is the rest of the interiour. Do go inside if you get the chance. There are free tours on offer during the summer.

On the left is the Christ Church Parish Church, built in 1962. It is not beautiful. It does have a tower, which looks something like an electrical pylon. Well, there's no help for that, is there? The congregation grew too big for the old chapel, so a new church had to be built. And it would never be beautiful like the old one because, let's face it, we are living through an architectural dark age. So what could they have done differently?

Here's what: they could have made the new church a completely separate structure. In fact, the new church is attached to the old chapel. If you look closely at the photo, you will see the walkway that connects them, making the new church a kind of immensely bloated addition.

There's no way to do something like that without damaging the old structure. From the inside of the chapel, you can see that one of the stained glass windows has been shortened from the bottom to make room for the door to the addition. The bottom of the window is gone, and the chapel has been diminished--in a small way, perhaps, but diminished nonetheless. And all to permit people to walk between the two buildings without going outdoors. One would think this was done because of our cold winters, but the old chapel isn't even heated! What was the point, then? Why did they do it?

I suspect because it never crossed their minds to do otherwise. Additions are a way of life in Fredericton, and therefore are seldom recognized as the acts of vandalism they so often are.

Continue up Westmorland Street, and turn right at the next corner. We are back on George Street, which like Charlotte Street has many fine old houses with strange additions. I particularly like Number 329. It's a great example of the Serial Additionss Phenomenon.

An addition is generally smaller than whatever it is attached to, so when there is more than one addition, you can get a sort of regressive effect, as here. The last and shortest thing you can see at the end is probably a deck, or a fence around the backyard.

Crossing at York Street, we're back at St. Paul's United Church. This time, we're passing it on the other side, and you can see that the addition is large enough to stick out quite a bit at this end as well.

We now have a couple of long blocks to walk before we get to the next notable addition, so have a look around at all the old houses on George Street, and their peculiar additions.

Once across St. John, we come at last to 734 George Street. At first glance, it's a stately Georgian-style home. But wait, what is that puke-coloured stripy thing on the side?

No. Can it be? It is! Somebody took a nice old brick house and attached a garage on one side, and some sort of other thing on the other, and painted them... green and red with amber trim! And to top it off, there are those triangular... I guess decorative elements, for lack of a better word, coming off the eaves.

These structures don't even look good on their own, much less stuck on the house. The tastelessness is breathtaking. It's so bad, it's almost good, in a sick sort of way.

This house went on sale a few years ago. The owner was so proud of what he'd done to it that his asking price was half a million. I recall that it was on the market for some time. The best part of this was the picture on MLS of the back view of the house, with its horrible yet hilarious addition. I emailed the link to my family and we all laughed our heads off.

On the front of the house is a plaque. Here is what it says:

The Rectory 1829
This Georgian residence, built by St. Anne's Parish Church for the rector, was the home of the famous literary Roberts family.

This is when the laughter dies. This house is a heritage site, and the city still let the previous owner do this to it. It's disgraceful, but apparently rich people can do whatever the hell they want.

Let's have a moment of silence and retrace our steps a little bit. Back to St. John, turn left, walk to the end of the block and turn left again. Now we're at the other end of the block, and can get a little glimpse of the back end of the house, in between Numbers 719 and 729. (Yes, they're consecutive. Don't ask me why they're numbered that way; ask the city.)

I wish I'd had the foresight to save that MLS picture, but I didn't. This is the best I can currently do to show you the magnitude of the addition. You can see the top, but the bottom is obscured by a hedge. Perhaps in the winter I will be able to obtain a better picture. Still, look at those two tower/dormer-window things jutting up, remember the two other pieces you saw before, and keep in mind that they are all connected. No kidding, that's one big monster, stuck on the back and wrapping around like a parasite feeding off 734 George Street.

Let's move on. I can't say "the worst is yet to come," because that was pretty bad, but the next one is pretty bad too. It's hard to say which is worse.

Continuing down Charlotte Street, we come at the next corner to Church Street. You'll spot the next site as soon as we round the corner; it's hard to miss. Right across the street is one of Fredericton's most beautiful houses.

811 Charlotte Street was built in 1895, in a style called Queen Anne. Look at the trim on the eaves and the veranda. It makes me happy just to look at it. I've been inside, and the interior is even more spectacular.

However, when we turn left and walk up Church Street, we see this.

This irregular, boxy affair with its ridges, inexplicable window configuration and overall unwholesome appearance would be ugly all on its own. It becomes all the more hideous when you realize it's attached to 811 Charlotte Street.

811 Charlotte Street currently houses the University of New Brunswick's Renaissance College. Prior to that, it was a student residence with 21 beds. Since it would be difficult to fit 21 beds into one house, the addition must have been built at that time. It is remarkable that something that ugly could have been built in 1949, the year that the house became a residence, but the conclusion is inescapable. The architect responsible should be thoroughly ashamed.

Fortunately, we have a bit of a stroll to get to the next site in the tour. That will give me the opportunity to calm down. Proceed North on Charlotte Street for another two blocks, past Christ Church Cathedral on Brunswick Street, make a left at King and a right at St. John. This will bring us in view of the Fredericton Playhouse at the corner of Queen's Street.

Although it is, for the most part, a reasonably attractive building, the Playhouse is not a heritage site, having been built as recently as 1964. So we don't have to feel too bad about the fact that it has a great bloody rainbow-striped box sticking out of its roof, and we can enjoy a hearty laugh at its expense. The box was added in 1972. It is a fly tower, a space used to house draperies, lights, set pieces and other equipment that can be lowered into place when in use, and raised back up into the tower afterwards. It sounds quite useful, but again, could they not have tried to come up with something that would match, at least a little, the original building? Instead of making the Playhouse look like a nest for a giant bird that laid a square Easter egg?

I once saw the Playhouse addition figured in a pamphlet on Fredericton's outdoor art. That's right, folks, somebody thought the rainbow box was art! Or pretended to.

Speaking of boxes, we have one more stop, so let's turn left on Queen Street and walk three blocks, to where Queen intersects with Carleton. Across Queen Street you will see another heritage building.

This lovely old structure dates from 1881. The original part is Second Empire style. The addition is Modern Brick Box style. Back in the 19th century, this was the Post Office and Customs House. In 1970, it became the New Brunswick Sports Hall of Fame. That date sounds about right for the brick box. Let's take a closer look at it.

As you can see, it has an attractive crest right in the middle, as well as some lettering that reads "NB Sports Hall of Fame" in both official languages. That was a clever touch. Without the crest, anyone who looked at this addition would immediately think, "Why is there a brick box sticking out of the side of this nice old building?" But with the crest, your eye tends to glide on by. It takes time and many viewings, preferably from different angles, before you become aware that, crest or no crest, you are seeing a graceless brick box sticking out of a heritage structure, and that this involved making a hole in the side of the building and eliminating the windows that used to be there. You become aware that this damage, so cavalierly done, probably can never be undone. The architectural tumour is inoperable.

On that cheery note, this is the end of the tour. If you'd like to return to the spot where we started, you can either continue on Queen Street until York Street, then make a left and walk one more block, or you can turn left here, onto Carleton. Which way is better depends on which post-tour beverage you'd rather ingest. If you'd like something with whipped cream and drizzled chocolate, there's a Starbucks in King's Place at the Carleton-Street end. If you'd prefer an actual coffee, I recommend taking the York Street route. That way, you can get a good coffee at Read's magazine store, right across the street from King's Place.

Enjoy the rest of your day.

And here, as promised, is my walking tour map. Be sure to change your print setting to Landscape before printing.

Healthy Songs

2009-07-03T14:51:00.000-03:00

In my last entry, I presented an Honourable Mention list of songs that were a little bit off, and yet were not messed up enough to make the Dysfunctional Top Ten list. In this entry, I will finally get a little more positive and attempt to present, for contrast, a few healthy songs.

If it's so easy to dip into the pool of top 40 hits and come up with a whole whack of songs depicting dysfunctional relationships, how hard can it be to come up with a decent list of songs depicting functional, healthy relationships?

Very hard. Part of the difficulty is that there are, let's face it, way more songs about unhappy relationships than the contrary. Then too, just because a song is about a happy relationship, does that automatically make it a healthy song? Or is it just as probable that it's a load of sap?

Take Honey by Bobby Goldsboro. If one takes the lyrics at face value, the relationship was a happy one before poor Honey kicked the bucket. The same could be said for Having My Baby by Paul Anka. Apparently this couple is delighted to be starting a family. The trouble is, both these songs stink to high heaven. Especially Honey. Here's a sampling of lyrics for your delectation: "She was always young at heart/Kinda dumb and and kinda smart, I loved her so." What can one say about that but, "Oh my God?" Words can never encompass the wretchedness. And then, "One day while I was not at home/When she was there and all alone/The angels came" (Source: Bobby Goldsboro lyrics - Honey @ OldieLyrics.com). Why bother waterboarding prisoners? Just play them Honey over and over again. They'll tell you anything.

And Having My Baby is little better. Check this out: "The need inside you/I see it showing/Whoa, the seed inside you/Baby, do you feel it growing?" (Source: Paul Anka Lyrics, You're Having My Baby Lyrics @ STLyrics.com). Help!

So those songs are definitely out of the running, as is anything else of excessive sappiness or outright badness. A couple of other possibilities I came up with were Danny's Song by Kenny Loggins and Hey There Delilah by Plain White T's. Danny's Song is a pleasant, easy-listening depiction of a fellow who's in love and eager to start a family with his beloved, but who has the decency not to brag about his seed growing in her. Here's the chorus:

And even though we ain't got money,
I'm so in love with you, honey,
And everything will bring a chain of love.
And in the morning, when I rise,
You bring a tear of joy to my eyes
And tell me everything is gonna be all right.
(Source: Loggins & Messina Lyrics - Danny's Song @ OldieLyrics.com)

That's nice, but it is veering dangerously in the direction of sappiness with the line about "a tear of joy." That's exaggerated. Maybe if you have a reunion with your beloved after a long separation, you'll cry tears of joy, but not if you see her every day. Can you imagine getting up every morning and crying tears of joy? Come on.

I also don't care for the line, "Think I'm gonna have a son." That strikes me as sexist. A loving father wouldn't care about the gender of his child. What if he has a daughter? Will he be able to hide his disappointment from her?

As for Hey There Delilah, it's a song about a musician who's a thousand miles away from his love, Delilah. He tells her:

Hey there Delilah
Don't you worry about the distance
I'm right there if you get lonely
Give this song another listen
Close your eyes
Listen to my voice, it's my disguise
I'm by your side
(Source: Plain White T's Lyrics - Hey There Delila @ PLyrics.com)

I find the song moving, but all the same, it depicts a long-distance relationship. It's easy to idealize someone when you're a thousand miles away from them. If these two were to get their wish and be able to live together, who knows if the relationship would survive? It has not yet been tested.

An interesting fact about Hey There Delilah is that the song was not even written about a real-life relationship. The woman in question, an athlete, was already spoken for, but that did not stop the song writer from turning his crush into a musical fantasy (Source: Hey There Delila - Wikipedia: Inspiration for song).

So if Danny's Song and Hey There Delilah don't really belong on my list of healthy-relationship songs, what does? Well, it's a very short list. In fact, it's a "list" of one.

Lovely Day

This song, by R&B singer Bill Withers, hit the charts in 1977 and has gotten plenty of airplay ever since (Source: Lovely Day (song) - Wikipedia). It has been covered several times, and was even used in a Gap ad. There's no sap here, and not even any detail about the couple's life together. All he has to say is that when he's not feeling well, for example that "the day that lies ahead of me/Seems impossible to face/And someone else instead of me/Always seems to know the way..."

Then I look at you
And the world's all right with me
Just one look at you
And I know it's gonna be
A lovely day
(Source: Bill Withers - Lovely Day Lyrics @ MetroLyrics.com)

And that's the way love is, really. It's not about pain. It's not about suffering for the sake of your love. It's not about being "strong enough" to put up with your partner's insanity. Love is supposed to make you happy, and when you're in a healthy, genuinely loving relationship, seeing your beloved really does make you feel better, in just the way Withers describes. Trust me, I know. After many years of dysfunctional relationships, I now know. Withers describes it better, more simply and more accurately, than anything Shakespeare ever wrote in his plays and sonnets, or anything that Cyrano de Bergerac ever called up to Roxanne in her balcony as he hid in the shadows below. (What a dysfunctional relationship that was!) There will always be a place in my heart for Lovely Day.

More Dysfunctional Songs: Honourable Mention for Weirdness

2009-06-30T19:33:00.000-03:00

Back in May, I presented my top ten countdown of popular music's most dysfunctional songs, as scientifically determined by the fact that I remembered hearing them on the radio, and thought the relationships they described sounded ever so messed up.

At the end of the countdown, I rashly promised to do a follow-up post presenting some Honourable Mentions, as well as a few, rare healthy songs. A promise is a promise, so here we go.

The criteria for my Dysfunctional Top Ten were:

The songs had to be big hits--popular enough to have been in high rotation on the radio, and preferably to still be heard on the radio from time to time;
The lyrics of the song had to scream dysfunction, either displaying an unhealthy attitude towards romantic relationships (like Love Hurts), or outright describing an unhealthy relationship (like Wonderful Tonight or Beth).

Well, the following songs certainly hit the big time in the real world, but are not quite screwed up enough to hit the dysfunctional big time. They don't scream dysfunction, but they do whisper or murmur it. Their attitude towards relationships may not be disastrous, but it is peculiar.

Like You'll Never See Me Again

This song, a hit in 2008, was written and performed by Alicia Keys (Source: Like You'll Never See Me Again - Wikipedia). This is the same Alicia Keys who came out with A Woman's Worth in 2002, a song that contains the line, "a real woman knows a real man always comes first." How fabulously retro and sexist! She may not have made the Dysfunctional Top Ten list, but if she keeps this up, perhaps she can look forward to some kind of Dysfunctional Lifetime Achievement Award.

But on to the song at hand. Keys doesn't want to be taken for granted in a romantic relationship. Who does? As she says, "Lord knows another day is not really guaranteed." So here's the formula she imposes upon her lover:

Every time you hold me
Hold me like it is the last time
Every time you kiss me
Kiss me like you'll never see me again

Aw, isn't that romantic? No, it's awful, as you will realize if you stop to think about what it would be like to actually live that way. Every time you touched the person that you love, you would have to pretend that you're never going to see them again. Imagining it as thoroughly as possible, even believing it at least for a brief period of time, would be the only way you could obey the injunction to "hold me like it is the last time." But if you could manage this, it would make you terribly sad. The more you love the person, the sadder it would make you to imagine that you're about to lose them.

If indeed, the time you have with someone is limited and another day is not really guaranteed, then you should be enjoying your time with that person rather than getting all weepy over the thought of losing them. Ironically, by not wanting to waste or take for granted the time that she and her lover have, Keys guarantees that she and her lover will waste that time, by being sad about something that hasn't happened yet. Isn't that a stupid thing to do? Songs like this should come with a warning label: "Don't try this at home."

I Touch Myself

This song was released by Australian band The DiVinyls in 1991 (Source: I Touch Myself - Wikipedia), and is the song for which they are most remembered. If you don't remember it from its airplay and video, you may be familiar with it through the movie Austin Powers: International Man of Mystery; It's featured in the scene in which Austin seduces the fembots.

Like Cruel to Be Kind, which made number 3 in my Dysfunctional Top Ten list, it suggests a domination-submission relationship. This is also true for the next Honourable Mention song. However, while the protagonist in Cruel to Be Kind was suffering, the ladies in these two offerings appear to be quite enjoying themselves. This makes their relationships good (clean?) fun rather than dysfunctional, hence their appearance in the Honourable Mention list rather than in the Top Ten.

The singer makes a number of interesting declarations to the object of her affection. "When I'm feeling down/I want you above me," she says in the first verse. Hmm. In the second verse: "You are the one who makes me come running," like a puppy dog, one presumes. The third verse is worth quoting in its entirety:

I close my eyes and see you before me
I think I would die if you were to ignore me
A fool could see just how much I adore you
I'd get down on my knees, I'd do anything for you

Of course she'd get down on her knees; that's her job, as a submissive. The first couple of lines of that verse are a little more worrisome. Seeing him before her when she closes her eyes suggests an unhealthy degree of obsession. And anyone with such a desperate need of attention that she feels she'd die if her lover ignored her has serious self-esteem problems. Still, these could be just lines that are part of the role she has to play, similar to "Yes, Master." After all, she knows how to take care of herself when he's not around:

I don't want anybody else
When I think about you I touch myself
Oh I don't want anybody else oh no oh no oh no
(Lyrics source: I Touch Myself Lyrics - DiVinyls @ Elyrics.net)

Yes, she's enjoying herself, all right.

Perhaps because the DiVinyls were a one-hit wonder, at least outside of their native Australia, there is a lot of misinformation on the Internet about this song. Many, many lyrics sites attribute the song to Blondie. Duh, Blondie broke up in '82 (Source: Blondie (band) - Wikipedia). How could they be responsible for a 90's hit? This is one of those pernicious Internet myths, similar to the one that attributes the song Bitch to Alanis Morrisette. (It was Meredith Brooks.) And that's not the only thing they get wrong; several turn the line "You are the one who makes me come running," into "You are the one who makes me happy honey." Good grief, that doesn't even scan.

That's why I want to recognize Elyrics.net for a job well done. While zillions of other sites simply copy content from each other, thus ensuring that the same mistakes and even in some cases the same typos proliferate all over the Internet, this site took the trouble to get the lyrics right. Good job, guys.

Because the Night

This song has gone through a number of reincarnations. Bruce Springsteen wrote the original version, but was not happy with it. He gave it to Patti Smith, who reworked the lyrics and had a hit with it in 1978. Then 10,000 Manics covered it in 1993 (Source: Because the Night - Wikipedia). It is their version that gets the most airplay these days.

The song was always erotic, but Smith made it more so. Springsteen saw fit to dilute the eroticism with lines like, "I work all day out in the hot sun." (Who cares, eh?) Smith replaced that with, "Desire is hunger is the fire I breathe/Love is a banquet on which we feed."

She also added some kinkiness. Springsteen's chorus began, "Come on now, try and understand/The way I feel when I'm in your hands." Patti Smith kept that for the first refrain of the chorus, but for the second refrain, she changed it to "Come on now, try and understand/The way I feel under your command."

The sentiment apparently resonated with Natalie Merchant. When 10,000 Maniacs performed the song, she sang "under your command" in both refrains.

Stating that you are "under the command" of your lover falls comfortably into the realm of kinky. Not that there's anything wrong with that. As long as it's all between consenting adults, knock yourself out (though not literally). But it's a pity, I think, that Smith had to spoil this song for the karaoke crowd. It's embarrassing to get up there and sing about how you feel under somebody's command. I know karaoke didn't exist in 1978, but still. It's a great song, and I think it would be nice if vanilla people could enjoy it too, and even sing along, without discomfort.

But she's a strange one, our Patti Smith. Here are a few lyrics from her version of Jimmy Hendrix's Hey Joe:

Honey, the way you play guitar makes me feel so
Makes me feel so masochistic
The way you go down low, deep into the neck
And I would do anything and Patty Hearst
(Source: Patti Smith Lyrics - Hey Joe @ MP3Lyrics.org)

That's about all I have to say about dysfunctional songs. Coming soon: compiling a list of healthy songs. Can it be done? We will see.

Is CBC Information Morning Host Terry Seguin Tone-Deaf?

2009-06-10T19:18:00.001-03:00

Here's one for my fellow New Brunswickers:

As you may know, Bon Jovi will be playing in Moncton on June 27. CBC Radio in New Brunswick is offering a chance to win tickets. To be eligible to win, fans must record themselves "rocking out to the famed band's songs," as the web site puts it.

Well, this morning on CBC radio, host Terry Seguin played one of the entries, and it wasn't pretty. The "singers" showed themselves incapable of staying on tune for longer than ten seconds at a stretch. It was good for a laugh, but not good in any other way.

When it was over, Seguin said something like, "Wow. Not only are young people listening to the show... they hit all the high notes."

Terry! Dude! Not only didn't they hit the high notes... or the low notes... they failed to hit many of the in-between notes.

I see two possibilities. Either Seguin was just being nice, or he has the musical appreciation abilities of a rock.

Which do you think it is? Brunswickians, please weigh in on this important issue by adding a comment to this blog post. Anyone can comment, even anonymously. We look forward to hearing what you have to say.

Recipe: Vivian's Very Easy Vegan Paté

2009-06-05T20:18:00.002-03:00

Ingredients:

8 oz soft tofu (about 1 ½ cups cubed)
½ cup peanut butter
1 clove garlic
½ tsp salt

Put tofu in a bowl and mash. Stir in peanut butter. Mince garlic or put through a garlic press and add to mixture along with salt. Blend well.

Refrigerate several hours or overnight. Spread on toast or crackers.

I invented this all by myself, so please give feedback. I think it tastes a bit like chopped liver--good chopped liver, like you'd get at Snowdon Deli in Montreal, only less fatty. Maybe it would be good with fried onions.

Dysfunctional Top Ten, Part 2

2009-05-25T19:00:00.009-03:00

Time to continue the countdown I began in my last post, Dysfunctional Top Ten, Part 1.

Number 5: When You're in Love with a Beautiful Woman

This song was recorded in 1978 by Dr. Hook and the Medicine Show, and became a hit one year later. It was not, however, written by any of the band members but by Evan Stevens, about whom I am unable to find out anything (Source: When You're in Love with a Beautiful Woman - Wikipedia). Thematically, it's similar to Number 6 in this countdown, When a Man Loves a Woman, and so it's appropriate that they fall so close together in the list. Both songs assert that falling in love with a woman is something of a disaster for a man. The major difference is that Stevens is more specific: beautiful women are the problem. Still, did Percy Sledge experience his agony by falling in love with a plain woman? Certainly not. It is alleged that Sledge wrote the song after his girlfriend left him to pursue a modelling career (Source: Percy Sledge - Wikipedia).

It appears that some men get a little confused about the difference between love and lust. Stevens and Sledge, and perhaps also Eric Clapton (back at Number 8), would have done well to get clearer on the point. It could have saved them some pain.

Indeed, the protagonist of this song is suffering a good deal, even more than the protagonist of When a Man Loves a Woman. Neither of them can trust their women, but this guy can't even trust his friends, as he tells us: "When you're in love with a beautiful woman/You watch your friends." Why? Because:

Everybody wants her, everybody loves her
everybody wants to take your baby home (Source: When You're in Love with a Beautiful Woman @ Gunther W. Anderson's Home Page.)

He can't trust his lover. He can't trust his friends--which means, really, that he has no friends. He can't seem to trust anybody--a very unhappy position to be in.

Number 4: Beth

This ballad, released in 1976, was not a typical KISS offering, yet it became their biggest hit (source: Beth (song) - Wikipedia). Beth is another loving sufferer. Her man spends his time playing rock and roll with his bandmates while she sits at home all alone. The lyrics tell the story from the musician's point of view, as one might expect:

Beth, I hear you calling
But I can't come home right now
Me and the boys are playing
And we just can't find the sound
Just a few more hours
And I'll be right home to you
I think I hear them calling
Oh Beth, what can I do?
(Source: KISS - Beth Lyrics @ metrolyrics.com.)

The tone of the song is mournful and pitying, but I think the subtext is nevertheless detectable: Beth is a pain in the butt. The musician wants to get on with work on the sound and she won't stop phoning up and whining at him. It's quite clear where her man wants to spend the bulk of his time, and it's not with her. Indeed, by the end of the song, he breaks the promise he made in the first verse: "Beth, I know you're lonely/And I hope you'll be all right/'Cause me and the boys will be playing/All night."

One wonders about the legitimacy of Beth's complaint. We only hear his side of the story, after all. Perhaps he really is gone so often, and puts so little energy into the relationship, that it is fair for her to complain that "our house just ain't a home." On the other hand, perhaps she's too clingy and needy. Doesn't she have any friends and hobbies of her own?

What's certain is that mutual feeling is lacking. The musician simply isn't interested in spending as much time with Beth as she would like him to. Further, he's willing to lie about it. He puts her off saying he'll only be a few more hours, but ends up spending the entire night away. His promises are casually broken, her feelings not important. Surely this relationship is doomed.

Number 3: Cruel to Be Kind

This song was Nick Lowe's biggest hit, peaking at number 12 on UK, US, Canadian and Australian charts in 1979 (Source: Nick Lowe - Wikipedia). I find it frankly kinky in a way reminiscent of 10,000 Maniacs' take on Because the Night (about which more later). I might have left it off the list if I felt it simply portrayed some kind of sadomasochistic roleplaying, which may take place within a functioning relationship. However, the consensuality of the torment is in doubt.

The protagonist declares himself mystified by his love's behaviour. "You say your love is bona fide/But that don't coincide/With the things that you do." Further, "I pick myself up off the ground/To have you knock me back down/Again and again..." But the chorus is where it gets interesting. When he asks her to be nice, or to explain herself, she says:

You gotta be
Cruel to be kind
In the right measure
Cruel to be kind
It's a very good sign
Cruel to be kind
Means that I love you
Baby, you gotta be cruel to be kind
(Source: Cruel to Be Kind lyrics @ lyricsmode.com.)

It doesn't sound like a good situation that this fellow finds himself in, and yet he almost appears to be enjoying himself. The song is a bouncy, infectious little number. Still, it can't be good for his self-esteem to be knocked down again and again, whether literally or figuratively, and he does profess to confusion and to being at his wit's end. So I'm going to assume this activity is not consensual, and award Cruel to Be Kind the Number 3 slot.

Number 2: Lovefool

At this point, you may be wondering if dysfunctional relationships are a thing of the past. After all, the most recent song I've mentioned so far was recorded in 1982 (Sexual Healing). Don't I wish! If there are more neurotic songs in ancient than in recent history, it's because ancient history is a lot longer than recent history. So fear not; these next two songs are more recent--and they top the list! Maybe we're getting more dysfunctional rather than less, or at least more willing to sing openly about it.

Another interesting thing about these two most recent songs is that they are both sung and written (or co-written) by women. All the previous selections were written by men. Female dysfunction is at last coming to the fore. You go, girl! To a shrink, as quickly as possible.

In this strange, very unfeminist piece of work recorded in 1996 by Swedish band The Cardigans (source: Lovefool - Wikipedia), the protagonist cries, prays and begs her increasingly disinterested boyfriend to: "Love me love me/Say that you love me/Fool me fool me/Go on and fool me/Love me love me/Pretend that you love me/Leave me leave me/Just say that you need me."

Her mother is, quite rightly, concerned: "Mother tells me I shouldn't bother/That I ought to stick to another/Man, a man that surely deserves me, but/I think you do." She appears to be saying that her boyfriend is better and more worthy of respect than she is. After all, he deserves to have her despite the fact that... he doesn't really want her that much. She, on the other hand, does not deserve the opportunity to find someone better (an opportunity she is unlikely to have if she can't let go of this guy).

It's all a bit convoluted, and to find a clearer truth, we need to look beyond what the lyrics are, on the surface, saying. She is afraid to leave him. Most probably, she is terrified to be alone, afraid that she will cease to exist without someone to see her reflection in. So she clings to him no matter what, even to the point of losing her grip on reality. She begs for the opportunity to live in a dream world, where she can pretend she is loved when she really isn't. Even that is better than the alternative.

When you lose your grip on reality, you begin the dangerous slide into insanity, and that appears to be happening here. Although she declares in the chorus "Leave me, leave me/Just say that you need me," she concludes in the second verse, "I don't care if you really care/As long as you don't go." So, leave... but don't leave. No wonder she also declares in the second verse, "Reason will not lead to solution/I will end up lost in confusion" (Source: The Cardigans - Lovefool lyrics - Lyrics on Demand). You already are, honey.

It is interesting to note that her mother, although wanting to help, does not appear to have a better conception of a healthy relationship than her daughter does. Consider that mother says she should, "stick to another man." What does this mean? Usually, "stick to" is a colloquialism meaning to stay with what you currently have. But this woman doesn't have another man. If she did, she'd be comfortable letting go of the one who no longer loves her, knowing that she wouldn't have to experience the terror of being alone, even temporarily. The fact that she clings so desperately to the current disinterested man indicates that there is no one else.

So what does her mother mean? The only possibility left, as far as I can see, is the more literal meaning of the word: find another man and stick to him, cling to him, glue herself to him. Mother does not see the clinging and terrible neediness as a problem, only the choice of target. But then, if mother had been capable of modelling a healthy relationship for her daughter, she wouldn't be in this position. We get our conception of relationships from the earliest relationship we witness: that between our parents. If our parents had a dysfunctional relationship, we are liable to waste years of our lives duplicating the sort of relationship we witnessed. In short, we are screwed, as is this unfortunate creature.

Number 1: Strong Enough

This Sheryl Crow single hit number 5 in the US in 1995. It has since been covered by Cher, among others (maybe because she couldn't resist covering a song by an artist with a name so similar to hers?) and the Dixie Chicks have performed it live. Travis Tritt, whoever that is, recorded an answering song, Strong Enough to Be Your Man. God help him. (Source: Strong Enough (Sheryl Crow song) - Wikipedia.)

This song takes a little time to get into its dysfunctional stride. The first couple of verses seem not so unreasonable: "God, I feel like hell tonight/Tears of rage I cannot fight" and "Nothing's true and nothing's right/so let me be alone tonight." Fair enough--she's having a really bad day. Everybody has those from time to time.

But things deteriorate from there. "I have a face I cannot show/I make the rules up as I go." And worse: "When I've shown you that I just don't care..." Don't care about what? Presumably the man himself. What else could this refer to? And then the chorus: in spite of all this, "Are you strong enough to be my man?"

This is so wrong on so many levels. First and foremost is the implication that a strong man will stay with a woman who treats him like crap. (Maybe "do you have low enough self-esteem to be my man" didn't scan well enough?) Then there's this plea: "Lie to me/I promise I'll believe/Lie to me/But please don't leave." That makes two songs that frame lying as a positive thing, something that allows the relationship to keep limping on instead of getting a decent burial. This is actually a first-rate portrayal of how people behave in dysfunctional relationships: there is little openness or honesty. Instead, anything that allows the status quo to continue is embraced, being it lying to your partner or to yourself.

And as if that isn't enough, she attacks his manhood! Later in the song, the refrain changes to, "Are you man enough to be my man?" She is saying that if he leaves her, despite the fact that she's inconsistent and crazy-making ("I make the rules up as I go") and has shown him that she doesn't care, not only is he weak, he's not a real man. Whoa, talk about manipulative! And certainly, immature people in dysfunctional relationships are manipulative. They basically have to be, because once they've given up on honest, open communication, they have no other way to get their needs met.

On a side note, the site where I looked up the lyrics allows comments, and the first comment claims that this song refers to Sheryl Crow's trials with breast cancer. According to commenter kooki, "she's asking her boyfriend if he is strong enough to understand what she's going trhough" [sic]. I say, bullshit. It's plausible if you look only at the first two verses, but beyond that the theory falls apart. What about "Lie to me/I promise I'll believe"? What about "I've shown you that I just don't care"? How does that fit in with cancer?

It doesn't. Furthermore, while Sheryl Crow was diagnosed with breast cancer fairly recently--in 2006 (see Wildflower section of Sheryl Crow - Wikipedia)--Strong Enough came out in 1994. So, nice theory, and self-serving for any Sheryl Crow fan, but... totally wrong. Sorry.

If this and other comments are any indication, fans do sense that there is something about these lyrics that is not entirely kosher. There are several attempts to explain away or gloss over the troubling aspects of the song. Some of them are quite amusing, and not just for the bad grammar and spelling, so if you've got a little extra time, you might want to read a few. See Sheryl Crow - Strong Enough lyrics @ sing365.com.

While the other songs in my list are dysfunctional in just one way, Sheryl Crow serves up a smorgasbord of immaturity and messedupedness in this wonderfully multilayered paean to relationship dysfunctionality. For this, Strong Enough is the hands-down winner.

So that's it for the dysfunctional countdown. Readers, if you see yourself in any of these songs, I hope you will take action. Remember that, whatever Sheryl Crow might say, sometimes the strongest thing you can do... is leave.

Coming Up: Later, I hope to have an Honorable Mention section, and perhaps a list of all those wife-beating songs I ended up leaving out of this list. I would also like to present a list of healthy songs, as contrast. Unfortunately, it will be much shorter. I don't expect to even have ten. So stay tuned for more song discussion.

Dysfunctional Top Ten, Part 1

2009-05-16T19:39:00.003-03:00

Do you ever listen to a popular love song, perhaps something that's in heavy rotation on the radio, and think, wow, that is messed up?

OK, maybe you don't, but I do. Popular songs often portray, if not celebrate, remarkably immature, neurotic and generally dysfunctional attitudes toward romantic love and relationships. I have long thought it would be fun to compile a Dysfunctional Top Ten list. Well, I finally got around to it.

In order for a song to make the list, I decided, it must be both dysfunctional and a big hit, something that was, and preferably still is, played over and over again on the radio. That helped narrow the field; there may be lots of incredibly screwed-up, obscure songs out there--in fact, I know there are, having listened to Black Flag--but I didn't have to worry about them. If it wasn't something that most people have heard on the radio, it didn't count.

Even with these criteria, I ran into problems. At one point, it appeared that songs about beating or killing women would dominate the list. There are a lot of such songs, and some of them are extremely popular. Granted that beating your wife or girlfriend is dysfunctional, and killing her even more so, I didn't want such extreme stuff to take attention away from the subtler, more everyday ways that people make their relationships miserable.

What to do? I toyed with the idea of selecting just one song to represent all the musical wife-beating. But that didn't work out. For one thing, how do you choose between Run For Your Life by The Beatles and Only Women Bleed by Alice Cooper? Any such selection could only be arbitrary. For another, where would it go in the list? If I put such a song anywhere other than first place, I would be guilty of minimizing such abuse. But if I made it number one, I would have the same problem as before, with showy wife-beating taking attention away from everyday neurosis.

I decided that wife-beating deserves its very own category. Perhaps later I'll do a separate post devoted to the Battering Top Ten, if I feel like it. I make no promises. Anyway, this is why there are no wife-beating songs in the list. And now, on to the songs.

Number 10: Love Hurts

I'll 'fess up--this song may be dysfunctional, but I love it. What a great ballad. Still, it clearly was not inspired by a happy, healthy relationship.

I've always thought of this as a Nazareth song, so I got a surprise when I looked it up on Wikipedia and discovered that it was first recorded by The Everly Brothers in 1960. That's 15 years before Nazareth did their version. Apparently I'm not the only one who loves it--Wikipedia's list of covers of Love Hurts is so extensive they had to use a table to hold it, a table that extends over four screens. (See Love Hurts - Wikipedia.)

Most people have been through bad relationships at some point in their lives, and can identify with the lyrics: "Love is like a cloud/It holds a lot of rain" and "Love is like a flame/It burns you when it's hot." Sure, sometimes it's like that. However, in the bridge, the protagonist denies that it can ever be otherwise. "Some fools rave on happiness/Blissfulness, togetherness/Some folks fool themselves I guess/But they're not fooling me," he says, and then concludes, "Love is just a lie/Made to make you blue." (Source: Love Hurts lyrics @ stlyrics.com.)

To claim that love hurts in certain situations, with certain partners, is fair and accurate. To claim that love can never make you happy, that it is in fact a lie, earns you a place in the Pantheon of Dysfunction.

Number 9: Why Do Fools Fall In Love?

This song was first recorded way back in 1956 by Frankie Lymon and the Teenagers, but has been covered by multiple artists since then, including Diana Ross, who covered it in 1981. (Source: Why Do Fools Fall in Love (song) - Wikipedia)

The song asks, essentially, since we can take it as understood that love can only be a bad thing, why are people stupid enough to get into it? This question, why do fools fall in love, is juxtaposed with questions about things that can be taken for granted: Why do birds sing so gay? Why does the rain fall from up above? The implication is that the foolishness of falling in love is as much an incontrovertible fact of life as the birds singing and the rain falling. (See Why Do Fools Fall in Love lyrics @ metrolyrics.com.)

It's this attitude that earns this song the Number 9 spot. Why Do Fools Fall In Love? and Love Hurts have a similar message, but at least in Love Hurts, the protagonist makes a case for his conclusions. The second verse of Love Hurts begins, "I'm young, I know/But even so/I know a thing or two/I learned from you." His condemnation of love is based on his own experience. That makes Love Hurts a notch less dysfunctional than Why Do Fools Fall in Love?, a song that not only doesn't make a case but never considers the possibility that anyone might see things otherwise.

Number 8: Wonderful Tonight

Ooh, I'm going to get in trouble now. So many people love this song and think it's sooo romantic. And it's Eric Clapton. How dare I criticize the guitar god? Well, I don't care. This song is a train wreck.

The first verse is largely about the woman's appearance and her attention to it: "She's wondering what clothes to wear/She puts on her makeup/Brushes her long blond hair." After all that, she asks him, "Do I look all right?" like an insecure child seeking validation for her existence. Yes, he assures her, "You look wonderful tonight." And that's what it's all about, as the second verse reveals: "We go to a party/Everyone turns to see/This beautiful lady/Walking around with me." He's already focused laserlike on her looks in the first verse, and now he returns to her looks in the second verse and states it flat out: she's beautiful. Can there be any question of this man's priorities? He's with this woman because she's beautiful. No doubt he loves looking at her--he appears to be watching her intently in verse one as she fixes herself up--but he also loves knowing that other people are looking, seeing him with his delicious little trophy wife draped over his arm. There's no indication that anything else matters.

I think it's interesting that we know only one specific thing about her appearance: she's got long blond hair. That's important. Blond hair is highly valued in our society, especially on women's heads. If she had brown hair, she wouldn't have the same cachet. I wouldn't be surprised if he dumped a brunette to go out with her.

The bridge goes, "I feel wonderful/Because I see the love light in your eyes," (pardon me while I puke,) "And the wonder of it all/Is that you just don't realize/How much I love you." (Source: Wonderful Tonight lyrics @ lyricsfreak.com.) Well of course she doesn't. For one thing, she's terribly insecure, as her question in verse one made clear. For another, he doesn't love her, he loves her looks, and she probably senses that.

Songs that come right out and knock love are, to my mind, less dysfunctional than songs that describe or celebrate troubled relationships with no apparent awareness of how dysfunctional they are. For its chilling portrayal of a shallow, status-seeking man and his beautiful but desperately insecure wife, this song earns the eighth spot.

Number 7: Sexual Healing

I didn't plan for Wonderful Tonight and Sexual Healing to come out next to each other, but I'm happy they did, because they both make me twitch with revulsion. Sexual Healing is a song about a guy who won't let his lover get a good night's sleep because he "needs" to get laid.

But let him speak for himself: "Get up, Get up, Get up, Get up, let's make love tonight/Wake up, Wake up, Wake up, Wake up, 'cause you do it right." These lyrics make me want to yell, "Leave her alone, dammit! She's sleeping!" Has it ever crossed his mind that maybe his lover doesn't want to be roused in the middle of the night for sex, that maybe she'd rather sleep?

Apparently not. It's all about him. "Baby, I'm hot just like an oven/I need some lovin'." He's got a keen awareness of his own needs, as the lyrics make clear. He goes on to add that when he's not feeling well--say that "blue tears are falling," or his "emotional stability is leaving" him--he knows he can get relief from her and her services. "If you don't know the thing you're dealing/Oh, I can tell you darling that's it's sexual healing."

I'm sure I read somewhere, although I'm not sure where, that the mark of a sexual addict is that instead of learning to deal with his problems, he escapes them by seeking sex. He doesn't care particularly who it's with (although if he's got a steady lover, that's obviously convenient), he doesn't care about connecting emotionally with his sexual object, he cares about getting his fix and making his feelings go away. Gaye describes this grasping, selfish stance so well: "You're my medicine/Open up and let me in" (Ugh!)

I knew most of this song's lyrics, certainly enough to disgust me, but reading them in their entirety has been illuminating. Apparently I missed a bit of ad lib about masturbation. The sites are divided on whether he says, "Please don't procrastinate/'Cause I may have to masturbate" (Sexual Healing lyrics @ stlyrics.com) or "Please don't procrastinate/It's not good to masturbate" (Sexual Healing lyrics @ metrolyrics.com). If it's the latter, Sexual Healing should be higher up in the Top Ten list. (What's wrong with masturbation? Any man who wakes his woman up from a sound sleep demanding sex needs to become better acquainted with it.) If it's the former, it fits in well with the overall selfishness displayed throughout the song.

But enough. If I read any more of Gaye's lyrics, I'll have to go take a shower. Let's move on.

Number 6: When a Man Loves a Woman

I guess this is a classic. One comes across it often. When I looked it up on Wikipedia, I was surprised to find out how old it is. It was first recorded in 1966 by Percy Sledge. (See When a Man Loves a Woman (song) - Wikipedia). It has been covered by several artists, including Montreal-based singer Luba. What was she thinking? I wondered at the time.

I hate this song. What a negative portrayal, not only of love but of women. "When a man loves a woman... she can bring him such misery," he tells us. According to this song, nothing could be a bigger disaster for a man than to fall in love with a woman. He won't be able to keep his mind on anything, he'll spend his last dime, sleep out in the rain... sounds like a good argument for turning gay, doesn't it?

After all, Sledge assures us, all that abuse and badness is only going one way. "When a man loves a woman, he can do no wrong... he can never own some other girl." (Source: When a Man Loves a Woman lyrics @ stlyrics.com.) Own? I assume he means sleep with. A man in love, he appears to be claiming, is incapable of cheating. This should come as quite a surprise to the many cheated-on wives who have had to listen to that old chestnut, "It didn't mean anything."

Personally, I find the song misogynist, if subtly so. Unlike Led Zeppelin, Sledge didn't go in for starkly condemnatory statements like, "The soul of a woman was created below" (from Dazed and Confused). But the message is clear that falling in love means that the man--that saintly man who is incapable of doing wrong--is going to be used, abused and cheated on. Not a glowing endorsement of women as a gender. Also interesting is the use of the word "own" in relation to women (or "girls") and its suggestion that sex puts a woman in a one-down position.

Still, it's got a good tune, one that a powerful singer can have some fun with, as Luba did. This probably accounts in large part for its staying power.

Oh my goodness, I'm only halfway through and I've topped 2000 words. That's enough for now. Look for the other half of my dysfunctional countdown in a few days.

Can You Believe It? Chemicals in Canned Foods

2009-05-03T19:29:00.005-03:00

As fear is de rigeur these days--fear of terrorism, fear of disease, etc.--and swine flu is the illness du jour, James decided that we should stock up on a lot of canned food and bottled water in order to be prepared for any upcoming pandemics that may bring civilization to a crashing halt.

I don't buy a lot of canned food, and this shopping trip reminded me why. Many canned foods that are not desserts have sugar in them, in flagrant disregard of common sense and the obesity epidemic. It is also disheartening to see that high-fructose corn syrup has crept north across the border and is insinuating itself into more and more prepared foods, though studies show it destabilizes your blood sugar levels and encourages weight gain even more than plain table sugar does.

But it was the raft of mysterious chemicals in the cans that really made an impression on me. Actually, the worst offender didn't come in a can but in a jar. We happened to wander into the multicultural section of the supermarket. I saw they had gefilte fish, which made me come over all nostalgic. Gefilte fish was no big deal when I lived in Montreal, but here, Jewish things, edible or otherwise, are harder to come by. So I got a jar of Manischewitz Gefilte Fish. I picked that brand because it was the only one without sugar, but it turned out to be an unfortunate choice. There are worse things than refined sugar. I know that now.

It should have been good. How can you go wrong with carp, mullet, whitefish and pike? All tasty fish, or at least hairdos of the 70's. But it had an unpleasant, metallic taste, like a thallium patty. What could have imparted such a disgusting flavour? It wasn't the fish. It couldn't have been the onion or the egg whites. It probably wasn't the monosodium glutamate; sometimes I get a reaction to MSG, but I've never noticed that it had a taste. But it could have been the sodium hexametaphosphate. Or perhaps the sodium tripolyphosphate.

If my hair falls out, I'll let you know.

Manischewitz wasn't the only offender. Most of the canned foods we bought had some kind of laboratory oddity in them. I thought it would be interesting to round up all the chemicals in all the canned and bottled foods we bought and find out more about them. So here they are, in alphabetical order.

Chemicals in Cans

Autolyzed Yeast Extract: In No Name Chicken Stew. A flavour enhancer similar to MSG, which is also in No Name Chicken Stew. Why do they need the same thing twice? They must not have a lot of confidence in their stew. According to Wise Geek, autolyzed yeast is created by adding salt to yeast, which causes the yeast to digest itself^[1]. Some sort of undisclosed further processing creates the final product. Autolyzed yeast extract is chemically similar to MSG and may therefore produce similar symptoms.
Calcium Chloride: In canned tomatoes, all brands I've checked. Used to keep canned vegetables firm. Disconcertingly, it's the same stuff they put on the road to melt ice in winter. Can be an irritant, though presumably in larger quantities than one finds in canned food. Considered safe.^[2]

Citric Acid: In Aylmer's Canned Tomatoes. Naturally occurring in fruits and vegetables, especially citrus fruits. Added to foods as a flavouring and preservative^[3]. My can of tomatoes explains that citric acid is an acidulant. Acidulants, also called acidity regulators, change or maintain the PH balance of foods^[4]. This is a bit confusing. Tomatoes are acidic on their own. Why do they need an acid added to them? Could they lose acidity otherwise? Anyway, no safety concerns there.
Disodium EDTA: In Unico Bean Medley. EDTA is short for ethylene diamine tetraacetic acid. Now there's a mouthful. One study shows that sufficient quantities of the stuff cause negative effects in rats. All rats dosed with the rat equivalent of 500 mg died within nine days^[5]. And 500 mg is not all that much. Vitamin C comes in 500 mg pills. The study concludes that "because of its effect on calcium, the use of disodium EDTA as a food additive is not recommended" ^[6]. Oh dear. Perhaps the bean medleys will have to go back to the store. The study adds that calcium disodium EDTA is safer than plain old disodium EDTA. That's good, because I just noticed it's in my mayonnaise.

The Health Canada Food Additive Dictionary explains that disodium EDTA is a sequestering agent^[7]. Sequestering agents "combine with metallic elements in food, thereby preventing their taking part in reactions leading to colour or flavour deterioration"^[8]. So though it does bad things to blood calcium levels, at least if you're a rat, disodium EDTA is permitted in our food so that our canned beans will stay pretty. Uh, yeah. That's worth it. Not.

Granted, this is quite an old study. But I can't find anything more up to date. There's surprisingly little information out there about disodium EDTA as a food additive.
Monosodium Glutamate (MSG): In No Name Chicken Stew, all Campbell's Soups, and Manischewitz Gefilte Fish. A sodium salt of glutamic acid. Glutamic acid occurs naturally in seaweed and was traditionally used in Asian cooking. MSG is added to foods as a flavour enhancer^[9]. Although it is considered safe, in sufficient quantities it can cause a reaction known as MSG symptom complex or--more colourfully--Chinese restaurant syndrome^[10]. I have experienced that myself. I get a weird, itchy feeling in my throat. Other people get headaches. Asthmatics may experience temporary worsening of their asthmatic symptoms^[11]. I have only had problems in Chinese restaurants; presumably the amount found in some restaurant dishes is larger than in canned food. I suspect that the original seaweed extract caused fewer problems than the MSG cooked up in labs, but progress marches on.
Sodium Hexametaphosphate: In Manischewitz Gefilte Fish. This is another sequestering agent (see Disodium EDTA). Its Wikipedia entry claims it can cause chest pain, and in sufficient amounts, pancreatic cancer, but the citations are missing^[12]. According to Cosmetic Database, there are a number of concerns regarding this chemical: it is persistent and "bioaccumulative," which means that it builds up in your body tissues^[13]. As well, studies in animals show that it affects the brain and nervous system in high doses ^[14].
Sodium Tripolyphosphate: In Manischewitz Gefilte Fish. Used as a preservative in meats and fish. It is also added to soaps and detergents to improve their cleansing ability!^[15] Polyphosphates are irritating to the skin and may induce metabolic acidosis^[16]. Which, by the way, can be fatal.

Sulfites: In No Name Chicken Stew. The specific type of sulfite was not mentioned; the ingredient listing simply said "sulfites (in potatoes)." Sulfites are used as a preservative. In some cases, they just make the food look prettier. If you've ever seen dried apricots in a health food store, you've probably noticed that they are dark brown, in contrast to supermarket apricots, which remain bright orange. That's because the health-food apricots have no sulfites in them. They still taste good though.

Sulfites occur naturally in wine and some foods. Yet they are a health concern. They can cause headaches, skin irritation and breathing difficulty^[17]. Asthmatics are at greater risk of having a reaction to sulfites, a reaction that can sometimes be fatal^[18].

Bon appétit!

Notable Exceptions

Having gone on at length about the additives in canned food, some benign and some scary, I feel it's only to fair to mention that some of the canned food we bought had no chemicals in it at all. If you prefer your food unadulterated, here are some products to watch for.

I have to hand it to Blue Menu. They really do make healthy products without unnecessary additives. Their soups are free of MSG and their canned beans contain nothing but beans, water and salt, in constrast to Unico's beans with their rat-sickening disodium EDTA. Furthermore, Blue Menu's canned corn kernels contain no added sugar. Yet they still taste sweet, probably because they come from good quality corn.
A can of Del Monte's Pineapple Chunks contains nothing but pineapple chunks and pineapple juice.
President's Choice Just Apples "Appletreet" consists of little individual plastic cups of applesauce. It's not canned food per se, but it is similar to canned food, being sealed in airtight containers, and does indeed contain just apples. Too bad about the silly name though.
NATUR Peanut Butter comes in a glass jar and consists of nothing but ground peanuts. Unlike most peanut butters, NATUR contains no hydrogenated oil.

References

Dr. Fool

2009-04-18T17:02:00.006-03:00

This past Good Friday, CTV aired an episode of Dr. Phil called "Growing Up Too Fast?" It concerned a teenage girl, Demi, and her habit of dressing provocatively. Demi's behaviour earned the concern of her mother, the censure of her father and the epithet "slut" at her high school.

The family identified Demi as the problem. If only she would dress more modestly, everything would be fine. The father was notably hostile to his daughter, going so far as to say that she disgusted him. The mother paid lip service to the idea that Demi's behaviour was a problem, but paid for the clothes that brought her daughter this attention. Demi's relationship with her sister was also marked by hostility. Although the videos showed that the two girls habitually interacted through screaming and name-calling, the sister went along with the prevailing attitude and declared, most improbably, that the trouble between them was all due to her sister's style of dress.

In short, the family was a tinderbox, sparking hostility, desperate for help. But they weren't going to get it from Dr. Phil, who rolled up his sleeves and got to work bullying the girl. That teenage girls often dress provocatively as they try out their shiny new sexuality, that girls can easily get labelled "slut" in high school for doing anything and nothing--these facts got not a moment's consideration. Dr. Phil asked Demi an array of leading questions: How do you feel about being called a slut? Do you want to have sex? Well, don't you know that when you advertise it, boys expect it? These questions were all meant to get this 14-year-old girl to admit that her behaviour was wrong. Big surprise--it didn't work.

Meanwhile, a screen behind them played an endless loop of Demi modelling her skin-tight dresses and low-rider jeans. In light of Dr. Phil's disapproval of Demi's clothing, this is odd and certainly contradictory, but I suppose that when you have your own TV show, being a hypocritical sleazebag pays the bills.

While Dr. Phil was intent on getting Demi to see how wrong she was, he showed himself to be utterly uncaring and disinterested in her as a person. He asked Demi only one genuine question, and that only because she led him in that direction: what sort of career did she want to have? Then he stopped listening to her in the middle of her answer. Any attentive viewer could see how he sniffed in contempt and looked away, how poor Demi dwindled off in the middle of a sentence. The performance was a blatant display of his seeing her not as a person but as an object--perhaps even more blatant than the sexy fashion show looping behind them all.

What kind of therapist is this? The show's producers could have gotten a performance no worse, and perhaps even better, if they'd dragged some random person off the street. The very minimum prerequisite a therapist needs to help anyone is caring. Dr. Phil flunked on that point. But his failure is bigger than that. Any competent therapist, observing the family dynamics, would have immediately picked up on the fact that there was more going on than Demi's clothes. He would have asked himself, what is the underlying problem that the family is using Demi and her "inappropriate" clothing to distract them from? For Demi was working very hard to draw all the attention to herself, and her family was eagerly accepting the distraction.

What could the real issue be? Due to Dr. Phil's lack of interest and insight, we can only speculate. Perhaps the parents' marriage is not so hot. Certainly the father has anger issues; no loving, emotionally healthy man publicly declares that his daughter--his normal, intelligent daughter--disgusts him.

And Demi clearly was intelligent. Dr. Phil himself admitted it, albeit grudgingly, on the basis that she used to get good grades. But Demi gave better indication of her intelligence than that. After an extended period of questioning on her habit of dress, Demi finally admitted that she did it "to get attention." When one of her parents declared, "She has low self-esteem. I don't know where she gets it," Demi retorted, "I get it from you guys." Not one but two perceptive, self-aware statements. Demi may not wholly have a handle on her problem--she's probably not consciously aware of her service as family lightning-rod--but she's got some idea of what's going on, and she tried to give Dr. Phil some hints.

But Dr. Phil persistently dropped the ball, by not listening and not really caring but instead choosing to be a bullying and prudish yet faintly lecherous creep (that video looping in the background). Because he never looked below the surface but chose instead the easy route of accepting the parents' definition of the problem, he was unable to be of any real help.

You may be wondering, how do I know all this? I'm no therapist, but that family dynamic is all too familiar to me. But for some minor differences, Demi's family could have been my family, and Demi could have been me at about that age. Even the incompetent shlub posing as therapist is familiar; my parents also subjected me to one of those. Eventually we had real family therapy, but it took years and a great deal of suffering. It pains me to think how much longer Demi might have to wait before she gets the sympathetic listener she deserves.

I would like to urge parents to get their children and themselves real therapy, and not settle for quacks like Dr. Phil. But in the end, it all comes down to parental priorities: do they want to get real help for their problems or do they want to make spectacles of themselves on TV? Clear enough which choice Demi's parents made.

My Unauthorized Guide to the Discworld Novels

2009-04-08T16:56:00.007-03:00

This is the longest gap I've ever had between entries. Prior to this one, I did quite a long post, so that entitled me to take an equally long break. That's my story and I'm sticking to it. Still, eleven days is more than enough, so I've decided to finally get down to business and write this post I've had in mind for a few weeks now. I hope it proves more enjoyable than offensive.

Reading Discworld novels is a particularly poignant experience these days. Author Terry Pratchett has early-onset Alzheimer's disease. His fans are fond of saying that "he aten't dead yet," in reference to the sign that Granny Weatherwax wears around her neck while out of her body. I, like all his fans, hope he'll hang onto life and most of his faculties for a good long time.

Still, the experience has affected him and his writing. His latest novel, Nation--not a Discworld novel--is filled with more grief and anger than, to the best of my knowledge, anything else he has written. This is understandable. Pratchett has spoken with much honesty and humour about his anger over his condition and his treatment by the NHS (England's National Health Service), which considers him too young to have Alzheimer's and is therefore refusing him coverage. What he is going through is, in more ways than one, a life-changing experience, and even if he writes more Discworld novels, they will not be quite the same.

I suppose that's what made me take a nostalgic look back at the Discworld. I read one of the novels I hadn't gotten to before and took another look at some of the ones I had. Which has resulted in this, my Unauthorized Guide to the Discworld Novels.

What Is The Discworld?

The Discworld is a flat disc of a world that rests on the backs of four elephants, which in turn stand on the shell of a very large turtle. This world has different physical laws. Light moves slowly, flowing over the disc like syrup. Magic exists, and has its own colour: octarine. There are two types of magic practiced on Discworld: men's magic, the type practiced by wizards at the Unseen University in the city of Ankh-Morpork, and women's magic, practiced by witches in small villages.

That's a basic introduction. It's not my intention to reproduce The Discworld Companion. In fact, I don't mean to produce a guide to the Discworld itself, only to the novels.

Things You Should Know About The Discworld Novels

They contain footnotes

Novels don't usually contain footnotes. I've read a lot of novels and that's one of the major things I've noticed about them. The Discworld novels are different. Usually, the footnotes are used to insert jokes that entertain Pratchett, if nobody else, but aren't essential to the story. A startling exception can be found in the first Discworld novel, The Colour of Magic. The entire lower halves of pages 20 and 21 are taken up with one giant footnote explaining "the shape and cosmology of the disc system." One wonders why this information couldn't have been included in the prologue, which the book does have. Perhaps Pratchett was using this giant among footnotes to demonstrate to readers, right up front, just what they were getting into.

They contain puns

The Discworld novels are satirical and humorous. Some of that humour involves puns. For example, from the second Discworld novel, The Light Fantastic:

Tumbling past, totally out of control, is the bronze shell of the Potent Voyager, a sort of neolithic spaceship built and pushed over the edge by the astronomer-priests of Krull, which is conveniently situated on the very rim of the world and proves, whatever people say, that there is such a thing as a free launch.

Just so you'll know.

Now that you have been warned, I shall proceed to the heart of my unauthorized guide, the intention of which is to provide you with some handy rules of thumb to help you determine which Discworld novels you are most likely to enjoy. Note that they are based on my opinion, and are therefore not at all scientific--but then, neither is Discworld.

Vivian's Rules of Discworld Novels

Rule #1: Novels with Rincewind the Wizard in them are not as good as Rincewind-free novels

Rincewind is a sad-sack sort of character. I think I can best describe him as Wile E. Coyote without the malevolent intent. Aside from his fantastic trunk that follows him around on lots of little legs and gets him out of scrapes, He hasn't got much going for him. He's not a good wizard. He's not brave or morally upright. He can't even spell, as shown by his hat, which has "Wizzard" written on it. On top of all that, he appears to be cursed: everything bad happens to him, and everything that involves him goes wrong. So it shouldn't be surprising that he also has an unsalutary effect on the novels he inhabits. It's probably some sort of magical influence that has not been sufficiently studied. The wizards of Unseen University should look into it at their earliest convenience. It could be the subject of someone's dissertation.

This doesn't mean that the Rinceworld novels are not worth reading. All Discworld novels are worth reading. Even Rinceworld novels contain funny bits and brilliantly insane ideas such as watercrafts that are kept aloft by water-hating wizards called hydrophobes. But if you are new to Discworld, you may want to choose non-Rincewind novels first, and face the annoying "wizzard" only once you have become a diehard fan.

Discworld novels that include Rincewind are:

The Colour of Magic (#1 in the series)
The Light Fantastic (#2)
Sourcery (#5)
Eric (#9)
Interesting Times (#17)
The Last Continent (#22)
The Last Hero (#27)

Rule #2: Novels that contain wizards other than Rincewind are good

Wizards in Discworld generally reside at, or at least have dealings with, the Unseen University, and that's an interesting place. There's so much magic bouncing around in there that unexpected and often disastrous things keep happening. Which makes it very similar to male-dominated institutions in our own world, with the advantage that since it's happening in a humorous novel, everything works out all right in the end.

Unseen University is also graced by the Librarian, who was turned into an orangutan some time before the series started. (Correction: see below.) The wizards don't change him back, not because they can't, but because he's happier this way. I'm fond of the Librarian and wish we got more of him in the Discworld novels.

The University is located in Ankh-Morpork, a crowded, smelly, vice-riddled city--basically a magical, medievalish New York. If you prefer urban settings, stiff hierarchies and an absence of women, the novels involving wizards and Unseen University are right up your alley and you may want to disregard Rule #3.

Books that have wizards in them but do not have Rincewind include:

Equal Rites (#3 in the series)
Lords and Ladies (#14)
Reaper Man (#11)
Soul Music (#16)
Hogfather (#20)
The Unseen Academicals (#37)

Rule #3: Novels that contain witches are better

Witches on the Discworld stand in sharp contrast to wizards. Wizards are urban; witches are rural. Wizards love their rigid hierarchy; witches have no hierarchy but are communal. Wizards are celibate; witches are not, at least not always. It's unclear whether Granny Weatherwax ever got any action, but Nanny Ogg certainly did, and is not shy about letting people know how much she enjoyed it. Even Tiffany Aching is growing up and experiencing a little romance in Wintersmith (#35). Wizards practice dangerous, destructive magic, whereas witches use magic only when necessary, and then always in harmony with nature.

Pratchett's portrayal of women is interesting. They frequently come across as more multifaceted and human than the men, who are often simply figures of fun. Pratchett writes a lot of strong women. The formidable grandmother character crops up repeatedly, most commonly in the form of Granny Weatherwax, but there is also Tiffany Aching's grandmother, and in addition, the main character in The Dark Side of the Sun (not a Discworld novel) has an overbearing, interfering grandmother to contend with. (One wonders who may have been the inspiration for all these tough old ladies. Pratchett's grandmother, perhaps?) Pratchett's tendencies to write complex female characters while so often making the men play the fools explains the superior quality of the witch-themed novels. These include:

Equal Rites (#3)
Wyrd Sisters (#6)
Witches Abroad (#12)
Lords and Ladies (#14)
Maskerade (#18)
Carpe Jugulum (#23)

Rule #4: Novels that contain both witches and Nac Mac Feegles are the best

The Nac Mac Feegles, also known as the Wee Free Men, are a lot of fun. Like Picts, they are blue, and like Pixies, they are small. They speak in a sort of Scottish dialect, love fighting, and engage in strange antics. It's worth reading a Nac Mac Feegle book just for the dialogue.

As far as I know, books about the Nac Mac Feegle always have Tiffany Aching in them. She is a young witch-in-training that the Feegles are sworn to protect, and that's a good thing, because like any adolescent girl, she doesn't always do what she's told. And when you're a witch, that can have serious consequences.

The books that contain witches and Nac Mac Feegle are:

The Wee Free Men (#30)
A Hat Full of Sky (#32)
Wintersmith (#35)

Rule #4: Many novels contain other characters that are also worth reading about

Death, the personification with hood and sickle, stars in a number of worthy Discworld novels:

Mort (#4)
Reaper Man (#11)
Soul Music (#16)
Hogfather (#20)
Thief of Time (#26)

The Watch, who enforce the law in Ankh-Morpork, dominate several novels. One of the benefits of Watch Novels is the presence of The Patrician, Ankh-Morpork's lovable benign dictator.

Guards! Guards! (#8)
Men at Arms (#15)
Feet of Clay (#19)
Jingo (#21)
The Fifth Elephant (#24)
The Truth (#25)
Night Watch (#29)
Thud! (#34)

Resources

Wikipedia has extensive information on Terry Pratchett's books in general and the Discworld series in particular.
LSpace is a worthwhile site.
Thanks to Weaveworld for grouping the novels by topic. He/She made my life a little easier. It's also gratifying to see that Green doesn't care for Rincewind any more than I do.
Terry Pratchett's official site is OK too.

Erratum

I wrote above that the Librarian was turned into an orangutan before the series started. I've just discovered that in fact it happens at the beginning of The Light Fantastic. (It is the side effect of a spell cast by the grimoire Octavo to save Rincewind from falling over the edge of the world, if you wanted to know.) The first time we meet him, he's an orangutan, but technically he was a human until Book 2. My apologies for any inconvenience caused by this error. --April 15, '09 Back

Tumbarumba, the Random Story Dispenser

2009-03-27T14:49:00.003-03:00

If you use Firefox, enjoy reading science fiction and fantasy stories (especially free ones!) and don't mind surprises while surfing the web, you should consider giving Tumbarumba a try.

Tumbarumba is an art project and Firefox add-on that comes with twelve stories. When it is first installed, the stories are inaccessible to you. You need to unlock them, one by one, which you do by doing what you usually do with your browser anyway: surfing the web.

Tumbarumba looks through the web pages you access for words that are also found in its twelve stories. When it finds a match, it splices the rest of the story's sentence to the beginning of the web page's sentence, producing a new sentence that is syntactically sound but doesn't make much sense.

To take an example from my own Tumbarumba-tinted surfing, the Tales of the Talisman's web site contains this sentence:

The hadrosaur talisman logo is inspired by a duckbilled dinosaur called a tsintaosaurus.

As well, the Tumbarumba story "The Little M@tch Girl" contains this sentence:

As Nera tossed him his fare, he called, 'Have fun, little sluts.'"

The word common to both these sentences is "called." So when I came across the Tales of the Talisman web page, I was faced with this puzzling declaration:

The hadrosaur talisman logo is inspired by a duckbilled dinosaur called "Have fun, little sluts. [sic]

When you come across one of these gibberish sentences, you can either conclude that the writer was smoking some bad weed when he wrote it, or that your Tumbarumba has kicked in. To find out which is the case, slide your mouse pointer over the anomalous sentence. If it changes to a link pointer , that's Tumbarumba. Click, and the add-on will insert another chunk of story text. If you keep clicking, eventually (in my experience, it varies from one to five clicks) the original web page text will fade out and the story will fade in.

Tumbarumba stories don't have their own web pages. The only way you can read the twelve stories is to allow them to hijack the web pages you are reading. The story text is forced into the format of the web page, sometimes with awkward results. I had one story that began in the thin left-hand column where the original web page had had its menu. Another story took over a form, which resulted in the story text being interrupted by fields. If you don't like the resulting format or find it unreadable, just wait, and eventually that same story will hijack a different web page.

To go back to reading the original web page, open the Tumbarumba pull-down menu in your Firefox browser, and select "Disable Tumbarumba on this page."

If you go to the Tumbarumba Table of Contents, also accessible from the pull-down menu, you should find that the story is now unlocked; that is, it is no longer plain text but is clickable. (Should: Tumbarumba does have bugs. See below.) One thing I haven't figured out yet is whether clicking just once on the gibberish sentence will unlock the story, or whether you have to keep clicking until the story hijacks the page. I suspect it's the latter but haven't experimented enough to be sure.

Obviously, this add-on is not for everyone. Some people would find it annoying. However, there's no risk involved in trying it, as you can always turn it off completely, again via the pull-down menu.

I have unlocked seven stories so far, and gotten around to reading three and a half. (The fourth was not to my taste.) Mostly, they're quite good. "Little M@tch Girl," a futuristic retelling of the Hans Christian Anderson classic, could haunt your dreams.

But the stories are not the only pleasure Tumbarumba has to offer. There's also the experience of coming across a sentence that produces a mental double-take. I've found it interesting to observe my brain's reaction to these sentences. First, it tries to go on reading, thanks to that built-in mechanism we all have in our brains that glides over anything that doesn't compute. This makes us more robust than those women robots encountered by the Starship Enterprise, that would break down when faced with paradoxical or nonsense statements.

So I tended to read on for a couple of sentences, then think, wait a minute, and rewind to the offending sentence. I'd reread it a few times and wonder what the author had been thinking. Only then would I remember: oh yeah, Tumbarumba. But this reaction varied if the sentence made sense in a whimsical sort of way. When I saw the dinosaur sentence mentioned above, my first thought was, "What a silly name for a dinosaur!"

I have since found that as I get more accustomed to the effect, I become quicker and quicker to recognize the gibberish as the result of Tumbarumba. Recently, I've even been able to skip the whole double-take routine. I kind of miss it. It's a reminder of what a small piece of reality we normally perceive. I also like feeling the shift in perception that comes at the moment of understanding. It feels like a bit of enlightenment.

Happily, I can still be tripped up in certain situations. Recently, I was searching the provincial government's web page for information on their latest budget, as research for my blog post on the subject. I read that the budget "provides Leadership for a Stronger horizontal," and laughed with glee at the lengths to which officials will go with their obfuscating jargonspeak. I had no idea what was meant by "a stronger horizontal," but I didn't doubt for a moment that it was something that would be put on a government web page. Like other inhabitants of modern society, I long ago abandoned the expectation that government officials would make sense, either linguistically or ethically. I decided to copy the sentence, because it was so funny, and it was only when the mouse pointer changed to a link pointer that I realized, at last, that I'd been Tumbarumba'ed.

The original phrase was actually "a budget that provides Leadership for a Stronger Economy." OK, that does make slightly more sense, even if it's hard to imagine how a budget can provide leadership.

To download Tumbarumba and try it yourself, go to the Tumbarumba home page and click on "Download." Note that you have to have Javascript enabled in your browser to navigate the home page.

Bug Notes: After I'd unlocked my first Tumbarumba story, I found that the hijacking mechanism kept failing. The original web page would fade out, but the story would not fade in, nor would it become clickable in the Table of Contents. I contacted support, and was told that there was probably something about the web pages that was interfering with Tumbarumba. I found this unlikely, since it had happened three times in a row. When I went back to the one story I'd unlocked, I found that I had disabled Tumbarumba on that page. I enabled it, and after that everything worked fine. This leads me to conclude that there is a bug in the disable mechanism, though the support guy might not agree with me. I feel even more certain of that since the most recent story failed to unlock in the Table of Contents. I had disabled that page as well. So if you have problems with Tumbarumba, try enabling all the disabled pages and see if that does the trick.

The New Brunswick Government's Plan to Provide More Jobs for People in Other Countries

2009-03-21T14:45:00.001-03:00

A couple of days ago, I was asked to do a survey over the phone on what I thought of the New Brunswick's government's new budget. At the time, I didn't know anything about the new budget, but I did the survey anyway, answering in the negative to almost all of the questions, because that's how much confidence I have in this government. By adjusting taxes so that the poor and middle class pay more and the rich less, Shawn Graham has demonstrated that he is in the pocket of big business (which in New Brunswick is usually spelled I‑R‑V‑I‑N‑G).

Today I decided I should become a little more informed on the subject, so I went to the government web page. I found a hefty document that I am not going to read, ever, because life is too short. However, its title, The Plan for Lower Taxes in New Brunswick 2009-2012, makes the budget's main point clear. Somehow, lower taxes will boost the flagging economy and create jobs. Conservatives have a remarkable faith in the magical power of lowering taxes. The funny thing is, this government is Liberal. At least in name.

Luckily for me, Charles LeBlanc has his own shorter and more readable summary of the budget. According to him, 700 civil service jobs are being cut. It is curious that the government plans to create jobs by cutting jobs, but I'm sure Shawn Graham can explain it, or at least whitter on in a confusing manner until everyone has forgotten the original question.

But here, for me, is the kicker. That telephone call I got, about the survey? The heavily accented voice at the other end made it clear that the call centre was located in India.

There are no shortage of call centres in New Brunswick. In fact, in the 1990's the provincial government of the time put a lot of effort into attracting call centres to New Brunswick. They wanted to make New Brunswick the call centre capital of the world. That didn't work out, yet New Brunswick still has a lot of call centres.

But when the New Brunswick government wants to survey its own people about its budget, where does it turn to find a call centre? India.

I think that says everything we need to know about how sincere Shawn Graham and his government aren't about creating jobs in New Brunswick.

Going Outside

2009-03-18T20:40:00.001-03:00

We all know it's good to go outside when the sun is shining because you can get your Vitamin D, as well as some exercise and fresh air.

We also all know it's bad to go outside when the sun is shining because you can get sunburns, as well as skin damage and melanoma.

We're actually kind of ambivalent about going outside, and not just because of ultraviolet light. We love to bask in the sun, and some of us even like to bake our pale skin in it until it's brown (those of us who have pale skin, that is; I don't want to make anybody feel left out here). Yet we also love to sit in our comfortable homes with our sofas, books and television sets.

Isaac Asimov wrote a great essay once about why he hated "nice days," that is to say, days when the sun is shining. People would say to him, "What are doing inside on such a beautiful day?" (Of course, this was back in the days when people said such things. Nowadays we just call up whatever weather or world we want on our various little screens and monitors.) Asimov didn't want to go outside, even on beautiful days. He wanted to stay inside and write. And the results speak for themselves--you don't churn out a jaw-dropping 500-plus books in one lifetime by doing outdoorsy things.

Given this propensity of human beings to stay indoors on occasion, you would think we'd have a little more understanding of and sympathy for chickens. Have I just confused you? Let me explain. I have sometimes heard the argument that there is no point in raising chickens free-range--in giving them access to the outside--because chickens don't want to go outside anyway. Personally, I have visited small, organic farms and I am here to tell you that chickens do go outside. I was at a farm on an overcast day and almost all the chickens were outside. Perhaps on sunny days they like to be in the shade. I don't know. My point is that just because chickens don't always choose to go outside doesn't mean they're just as happy being under permanent house arrest. Think about it: sometimes you like to stay inside; does that mean you wouldn't complain if you were locked in your house and never allowed out again? Isaac Asimov often chose to stay in his office and bang away on his typewriter (which was a mechanical thing that people used before desktop computers were invented), but do you think he would have liked it if somebody locked him up in a little cage? Even if it had a typewriter in it? Of course not! He would have been very upset, although not nearly as upset as he would have been had the cage had no typewriter.

Try to put yourself in the chicken's place, mentally. Walk a mile in the chicken's... uh, talons. We're really not that different from chickens, if you think about it.

My Weekend In Prince Edward Island

2009-03-12T18:20:00.000-03:00

I may not be in primary school anymore, but that doesn't mean I can't write about What I Did On My Summer Vacation. It may be an odd time of year for it, but keep in mind I only started this blog in December.

We were only there for a weekend and had time only to see a tiny fraction of PEI, so don't take this as a comprehensive review, but my favorite spot was the national park in Cavendish. Lucy Maud Montgomery, author of Anne of Green Gables, was also fond of it, and is quoted on some of its placards. From a boardwalk leading through a marsh, you can see a tremendous array of life. When I saw that parts of the water were bright green, I was at first concerned it was an algae bloom. On closer inspection, the green carpet turned out to be made up of thousands of tiny plants that floated on the water. I'd never seen anything like it before. I still don't know what it was, since they had no placard for it.

Close by the marsh is a beautiful beach where the famous red sand and sandstone cliffs are on full display. Though it was July, you could only wade into the seawater for half a minute before the ache of cold in your bones would send you running screaming back out again.

Don't expect me to continue in this cheerful vein; not as long as there's something to complain about. I don't call this blog Kvetch of the Day for nothing.

I think PEI must be located in some sort of Canadian version of the Bermuda Triangle. What I mean, if you will excuse a brief slide into vulgar colloquialism, is that there is some weird shit going down over there.

Foremost of which is the tendency of shopkeepers to peel the "Made in China" stickers off their merchandise. When I first saw this, it was in a restaurant in Cornwall that had a few touristy items for sale at the counter: little wooden boats, doodads with shells glued on, that kind of thing. I picked one up and turned it over to discover paper and glue remnants in a partial oval. This surprising discovery led me to turn over all the knick-knacks. One or two still had their "Made in China" stickers; all the rest had been peeled.

I thought it must have been an oddity of that particular restaurant until we went to another restaurant, a huge slop-dishing affair in Cavendish with a gift shop attached. I don't know what possessed me; maybe it's just what I do in stores because I like to know where things come from; in any case, I turned their souvenirs over and found the same thing.

Excuse me, but isn't this illegal? Those stickers are there for a reason. People are entitled to know where their purchases came from. What possesses shopkeepers to do this?

I decided that the shopkeepers must be embarrassed that their souvenirs of P.E.I., seashells and all, were manufactured at the other end of the planet. I wouldn't blame them--for the embarrassment that is--but a better reaction would be stock locally-made souvenirs. Then they wouldn't need to engage in shameful, furtive sticker-picking.

This theory took a bit of a beating when I purchased a metal water bottle at Moonsnail Soapworks & Nature Store in Charlottetown. A very untouristy item, yet when I turned it over... I think you can guess what I found. In fact, you can see it in the picture. PEI has several symbols, including a provincial bird (blue jay) and a provincial flower (lady's slipper), but if they want something that will capture the essence of the tourist experience in PEI, they should consider adding the vaguely oval glue-and-paper smear to the list. I hereby offer this photo to the PEI government for consideration.

The effect of Canada's Bermuda Triangle on the human brain is indeed mysterious, as was brought home to me yet again when I forgot my bathrobe in the room we'd rented at Obanbrae Farm Bed & Breakfast. I called the hostess a couple of days later, only to be told she'd already thrown it out. She didn't even give it to a charity shop. At least then I would have the satisfaction of knowing that somebody somewhere was getting use of a bathrobe that was still in perfectly good condition. But no, I suppose that would have taken up to much of her valuable time, and nothing that did not belong in her neurotically neat domain could be permitted to stay there for more than a couple of days. So into the garbage it went.

Another big surprise was the driving in the Charlottetown area. The sheer number of times you get cut off in a single journey is astounding. It was like driving in Montreal--also an island. Is there something about islands that makes people drive badly? You would think they'd be afraid that their fellow islanders would get fed up and pitch them into the surrounding sea or St. Laurence River. Come to think of it, that's not such a bad idea.

The bad behaviour does not necessarily come to a halt when the vehicle does. James and I stopped at a roadside stand to get junk food. An elderly couple arrived in a truck. The old man parked and left his wife in the idling truck while he bought two ice creams. I expected that he would drive away and eat the ice creams on the road. Instead, he and his wife sat in the truck licking their ice creams, while the truck continued to idle, rumbling pollution into the parking lot so that everyone else lined up at the stand could enjoy the fumes.

After ten minutes, my brain was sufficiently addled by exhaust that it seemed like a good idea to ask him why he was doing this. The influence of the Canadian Bermuda Triangle might also have been a factor. I walked up to the truck and tapped on the driver's side window. He rolled it down.

"Hi," I said. "I'm just wondering why you're idling your motor."

"I don't know," he said. "Why?"

So I enumerated the drawbacks as I perceived them: pollution, noise, waste of gas and money. I finished by saying I couldn't understand why he was doing it.

"No," he said, "I don't expect that someone like you would."

I was still chuckling over this clever witticism when he informed me indignantly that he had to idle the motor or it wouldn't start again.

"Oh," I said.

"And it's none of your business anyway!" said his wife, glaring at me as her husband rolled up the window.

"I just asked a question," I protested through the ever-narrowing gap in the window, but the woman continued to glare at me. So I gave her the finger.

Later, having had some time to think it over, I decided the old goat was probably lying through his teeth. There was a garage a short distance from the food stand. Any sensible person with a non-starting truck would take it to the garage before going for ice cream. If he'd had such a hankering for soft-serve, he could have walked over and bought some while they worked on his truck. Besides, his first response was that he didn't know why he was idling. I suppose he had time to cook something up while I talked.

Why even bother to come up with a story? Why not just say, "I feel like idling my truck. I don't give a damn about pollution. Go away,"? It could be he lied because I'd caught him out and he was feeling embarrassment, much like the merchant peeling "Made in China" stickers.

We spent most of our time in Charlottetown, which in retrospect was a shame. It hasn't got a lot going for it, other than Province House, which is OK. The downtown core consists of restaurants, mostly mediocre, and boutiques which seem chi-chi until you go inside and discover that they're full of merchandise from China with the stickers peeled off. The Chocolate Factory has a lot of mediocre chocolate that is mostly sugar. It is attached to The Anne of Green Gables Store, the ultimate destination for Anne fanatics. (Maybe they should be called Anneatics?) At a nearby theatre, you can see Anne of Green Gables: The Musical, which costs as much as an opera and doesn't have any good songs. You can save a lot of money by hanging out in the Anne of Green Gables Store, where they play the soundtrack. Stay there long enough and you'll hear the whole thing.

It may be PEI's capital city and it may be comparatively near the Confederation Bridge, but Charlottetown is not where you should spend a lot of time in PEI, especially if you're there for a short time as we were.

Speaking of the Confederation Bridge, I'm sure it is a marvel of modern engineering and blah blah blah, but I wish they hadn't built it. They used to have a ferry that went that way. For the same price ($40) we could have been on the water, enjoying the salty spray that they sing about in Anne of Green Gables: The Musical. Instead, we spent ten minutes--and felt every individual minute--staring at a strip of grey cement running off into the empty sky. There is no more boring drive in the world. So what if it's quicker? People need to get over the idea that quicker is better. And they need to make a similar mental shift with regards to "bigger," as exemplified by the hideously inflated tourist "village" that awaits you at the other end of the bridge. That's another wonder of modern engineering that should never have been built.

But to return to my point--don't waste your trip by spending any length of it in the Charlottetown area. Spend your time at the beaches and parks. Our trip improved noticeably when we headed north to Cavendish, and I wish we had sooner. We did not have time to see all the sights in the area, such as Montgomery's house. Next time I think we will immediately head north after crossing the Confederation Bridge, and stay there.

Silliest New Product Award

2009-03-06T13:33:00.012-04:00

Welcome to the premiere Silliest New Product Award. I hope it will be the first of many. This award will be presented on my blog, on an irregular basis, to the silliest new product that I happen to see advertised or for sale in stores. The prize will consist of exuberant mockery.

The lucky first-ever recipient of the Silliest New Product Award is... excuse me while I open the imaginary envelope... Kraft Bagel-fuls.

What are Bagel-fuls? According to Kraft, a Bagel-ful is "a golden bagel and Philadelphia cream cheese rolled into one." The bagel part of that is debatable. A bagel is not a bagel unless it has been first boiled, then baked in a brick oven. Is Kraft really going to that kind of effort? I doubt it, especially since they have no prior bagel experience. It's no easy matter to find a decent bagel unless you live in Montreal or New York. Otherwise, what passes as a "bagel" is more like ordinary bread baked in a doughnut shape. So let's say, rather, that the Bagel-ful is a large breadstick with a little cream cheese stuffed inside.

We have determined what it is, but the larger mystery is what it's for. The description on the Kraft web page contains the phrase "on-the-go, " so it appears that the Bagel-ful is aimed at busy people who lack the time to slice a bagel in half and spread cream cheese on it. No doubt these people also insert catheters every work day, because if bagel-slicing and spreading is too time-consuming for you, there is no way you can afford a trip to the bathroom. Not with your "on-the-go lifestyle."

To be fair, I suppose slicing a bagel can be a little challenging, especially if you're not Jewish and didn't learn the technique in childhood, as I did. Luckily, there are devices to help you do it. And if you're not toasting the bagel (because that takes too long), it can be difficult to spread hard cream cheese over it. But that's why spreadable cream cheese was invented. Anyway, Philadelphia does not constitute good cream cheese. One of the great mysteries of the food world is that people all over North America are convinced that Philadelphia cream cheese is the best around. Hell no. Good cream cheese does not come in a hard block wrapped in shiny paper, nor does it contain ingredients like "guar gum." Want good cream cheese? Try Liberty.

There are really two points I want to make here. One is that if you think you're so busy you can't stop to eat a decent meal, then you have bigger problems than food preparation, and are en route to ulcers, heart disease or myriad other stress-related ailments.

The other is that good food is worth taking trouble for, and slicing a bagel and spreading cream cheese on it does not take much trouble. And if you do it yourself, you can put on as much cream cheese as you want. Apparently Bagel-fuls are skimpy on the cream cheese.

A product this silly is bound to have silly advertising to go with it, and indeed Bagel-fuls does. I laugh myself silly every time the Bagel-fuls ad comes on TV. Two women are on a bus. One watches enviously as the other eats a Bagel-ful, and says, "Aren't you afraid someone's going to steal it?"

Yes, pretend bagels containing paltry amounts of cream cheese are so sought-after that Bagel-ful Crime is a real concern in urban areas. They're the new Vuarnet sunglasses.

Poll Results

2009-03-01T16:22:00.010-04:00

The results of my first poll are in--and when I say "first poll," I mean the first poll to actually have results. I had another poll up before, but no one answered it.

This particular poll looked all right as a form but made a terrible results display. The reason for this is that I had long questions. For reasons known only to the programmers, the questions wrapped in the form (that is, where the reader makes a selection), but not in the results, which led to a horizontal scroll bar appearing. It was quite unsightly, and I didn't want to keep such an ugly thing on my page. If you ask me, the poll widget could use a bit of work. This is not the only problem I have had with it. If you try to change the poll ending time, and you do not stick exactly to the original format (right down to all caps for the AM/PM!) the thing freezes. You can't save and you can't go back. You lose your poll and have to start from scratch and retype everything. Very frustrating. Probably the best thing to do is not change the ending time, but alas, I'm anal and I like my polls to end at midnight, so in the future I will be very, very careful to capitalize AM and PM.

But in any case, it's nice to put the results in a post so that they are archived. The poll widget does not provide an archive feature. It's a buggy bare-bones kind of a thing. But enough kvetching; on to the results:

What does the future hold?

Flying around in hovercrafts like the Jetsons	2 (40%)
Utopia of clean energy and sustainable living	0 (0%)
Return to subsistence farming	1 (20%)
Relocation to another, earthlike planet	0 (0%)
Mass death from global-warming-related starvation, plague or war	1 (20%)
The Rapture: all good Christians floating up to heaven while non-Christians are left down here to rot	0 (0%)
Other	1 (20%)

Number of votes: 5

As you can see, "flying around in hovercrafts like the Jetsons" got the highest number of votes! I'm hoping that the respondents were just being funny. I mean, it's cute but terribly naive. Then again, I'm heartened by the fact that nobody voted for The Rapture. I'm guessing that that particular subset of Christians prefers to hang out at other blogs.

Mass death got one vote, but in all fairness I should admit that that vote came from me. This is not because I am in favour of mass death in any way, but because in my pessimistic moments, which are frequent, I think it's our likeliest fate. It's not just me; James Lovelock thinks so too (see his interview in New Scientist, January 24, 2008). There's also one vote for subsistence farming, which is my outlook as well, when I'm in a more optimistic mood. But come to think of it, you can have both. First mass death, then subsistence farming for whoever is left.

A utopia of clean energy and sustainable living would be nice, but none of my respondents think it's going to happen. That's a shame. On the other hand, none of my respondents think relocation to another planet is going to happen. Some people see that possibility as a way to save the earth: all the humans leave and the earth recovers in their absence. Scott Westerfeld explores the concept in his novel Extras, the sequel to the Uglies trilogy. But that scenario necessitates everyone leaving. I wouldn't do it. I don't think I could bear to leave earth. It would kill me. Also, were it an option, some people would see it as license to make as big a mess as they want. Why worry about a planet's environment if there's always another planet to hop to? The universe is infinite, after all. Such a prospect makes me ill. That's why I don't support the planet-hopping option.

I hope to get more respondents for my future polls, as it's impossible to draw conclusions, scientific or otherwise, from such a small sample.

The Decline of Asimov's Science Fiction Magazine

2009-02-27T14:27:00.004-04:00

Asimov's used to be my favorite science fiction magazine. There are stories I read in past issues that I still remember today. For me, it was what a science fiction and fantasy magazine should be, the standard by which all such magazines were to be judged.

After Isaac Asimov died, things changed. Some of these changes were harmless. Isaac Asimov liked to have the each issue's number of pages appear in the top-right corner of the cover, to let people know what a good deal they were getting. He also released 13 issues a year instead of the more traditional 12, as if he was going by the Jewish lunar calendar instead of the Gregorian solar calendar. I enjoyed these little eccentricities, but didn't grieve when they were discarded. I was much more concerned about the sharp reduction I eventually perceived in fiction quality.

Until recently, I wondered if it was just me. After all, art is a subjective thing. I felt vindicated when I read the February 2008 issue of Locus. On page 77 is quite an illuminating table. It lists the number of short stories that Locus has singled out for recommendation from each science fiction and/or fantasy magazine, as well as from anthologies. Here are their data for Asimov's:

2008	2007	2006	2005	2004	2003	2002
18	22	25	32	29	29	33

You can see an almost steady decline. In fact, Locus recommended almost half as many stories in 2008 as it did in 2002. It would be interesting to look at the summary for 2002 and find out if the decline in Locus recommendations has been going on since Asimov died in 1992. I wouldn't be surprised if it has.

What is the cause of the magazine's decline? I believe it is twofold. The editors indiscriminately publish work by established authors while seldom giving new writers a break.

In issues following Asimov's death, the same author names began to crop up with unreasonable frequency. The names Brian Stableford and Michael Swanwick often appeared over stories that left me bewildered as to what they were doing in a magazine like Asimov's, either because they seemed pointless, came to no resolution or were boring. These two authors had apparently achieved the dubious distinction of being editor-proof, at least as far as Asimov's (post-Asimov) was concerned.

These days, the list of authors who appear in Asimov's magazine over and over again includes not only Stableford and Swanwick but also Kristine Kathryn Rusch and Kate Wilhelm and Nancy Kress. In fact, all fivefour of these authors appear in the latest issue (April/May 2009).

Somerset Maugham once wrote, "Only a very mediocre writer is always at his best." This is as true of Stableford, Swanwick and company as it is of mainstream writers. But that's not the only problem with this magazine's tendency to dip too often into its too-small stable of favorite writers. Even when these writers are at their best, they cannot encompass all of the possibilities of SF. By operating this way, the editors are not only reducing the quality of the stories in their magazine but also the scope and variety and therefore, ultimately, the level of interest the magazine can arouse. After all, a plurality of possibilities is just what SF readers are seeking, just what attracted them to the genre in the first place.

Too, when editors insist on publishing the same writers over and over again, there can only be that much less space available for new talents to make their debut. Which is ironic, because if you Google "asimov's science fiction magazine", the following text will appear under the link: "As one of science fiction’s most influential and prolific writers, Isaac Asimov wanted to provide a home for new SF writers--a new magazine for young writers ..." I'm sure this is true, just as I'm sure that the current editors have no such priority.

A new writer can get into Asimov's. It's just very, very hard. I know of two new writers who have recently managed the trick. One is Nick Wolven, whose story "An Art, Like Everything Else" was published in the April/May 2008 issue. It was one of the best stories, if not the best story, to appear in that issue. Another is this blogger, whose story, "Camera Obscured," has been accepted and will appear in a future issue. Both these authors have something in common: they took the Clarion workshop, an SF-writer boot camp of six weeks' duration.

It is possible, and may well be the case, that these writers only became publishable once they'd passed through the Clarion grinder. It is also possible that Asimov's makes a point of harvesting Clarion graduates. It strikes me that if an editor, for whatever reason, is reluctant to rely on her own judgement to select stories, she might like to publish mostly well-known authors, selecting an occasional new writer only if he'd proven himself by... oh, I don't know... ponying up four thousand dollars to attend SF's most prestigious workshop. And if a new author chose to hone his craft in some other fashion, he might be unable to wrest an acceptance from this editor until he'd racked up a number of publishing credits from other magazines. In which case, of course, he'd no longer be a "new" author.

I am speculating here. I don't know if Asimov's magazine has a prejudice against new writers that haven't graduated from Clarion. It just seems awfully coincidental that of the two new writers I know about who have recently appeared or will appear in Asimov's, both attended Clarion.

Isaac Asimov was able to found a great magazine because he cared, above all, about publishing good stories. His namesake needs to regain that spirit. If it cannot, some other magazine will take its place. I can only hope that one or the other will happen soon.

Edited Feb. 28, 2009 at 10:18 AM.

The Missing Oscar Nomination

2009-02-24T15:43:00.010-04:00

The 81st Academy Awards have come and gone. Slumdog Millionaire won eight awards including best picture. Milk can be said to have come in second, as it took two awards: Best Actor and Best Original Screenplay. The Curious Case of Benjamin Button got one more award than Milk did, but it got them for Visual Effects, Art Direction and Makeup; in other words, it was a movie that looked good.

I didn't go see Benjamin Button because I thought the premise sounded silly. Given how many times Jon Stewart has mocked and trashed the film on The Daily Show, I'm happy with my decision. I wanted to see Milk, but it disappeared from our local theatre before I got around to it. Such is the price one pays for living in a rural area. The one award-winning movie I did see was Slumdog Millionaire, which was a fine movie with a great soundtrack. If you haven't seen it yet, and you've been hearing it's a "feel-good" movie, I have to warn you that it contains scenes of torture and, most horribly, the deliberate blinding of a little boy. Really, it's only a feel-good movie if you forget everything that happened in the first half, something I'm not capable of. If you do go see it, have fun watching the main character Jamal's skin get lighter as he ages.

As far as I'm concerned, none of the above were the best film of 2008. The best film of 2008 didn't even get a nomination. I waited in vain to hear some mention of it as I watched the Oscars. I thought it might have made it into the category of Short Film (Live Action), but no such luck. Maybe it's too long to qualify. I don't know. At 40 minutes, it's too short to be called a feature film. It may fall through the cracks, not fitting into any category. Maybe it wouldn't have gotten a nomination no matter what, given the circumstances of its release.

The film in question is Dr. Horrible's Sing-Along Blog.

I love this movie. For one thing, it's a musical. Hollywood doesn't make musicals anymore, unless you count the putrid Moulin Rouge, and I don't. For another, it's a story of superheroes and supervillains, but it's told from the point of view of the villain, who is not a villain at all, really, but a nice guy who's too shy to talk to the woman he's got a crush on. The superhero, on the other hand, is a conceited jerk. What's not to love about such a subversive story?

What's also subversive is that Joss Whedon wrote the screenplay during the writer's strike, and screened it for free over the Internet last July. Not being a Joss Whedon fan, I missed all of this and only got to see it on DVD last weekend. The movie is a tragicomedy in three acts. Acts 1 and 2 are comedy--there are some hugely funny lines--and Act 3 is mostly tragedy. All the way through are nifty musical numbers and fun visuals; for a film made on the cheap, it's got high production values.

Try not to miss the real best film of 2008. While you can no longer see it for free on the Internet, it is available on DVD and is quite reasonably priced, especially when you factor in the extras: making-of featurettes, commentary and musical commentary. (Yes, really. It's called Commentary! The Musical.) Besides, the makers need the money. As Joss Whedon says in his master plan: "We have big dreams, people, and one of them is paying our crew."

More on Repressed Emotions

2009-02-18T19:15:00.015-04:00

Here are some things that I didn't find space for in my last post on repressed emotions.

Writing From The Body by John Lee and Ceci Miller-Kritsberg is ostensibly about becoming more creative, but also covers the freeing of repressed emotions, since this also frees one up to be more creative. This is a wonderful book that deserves to be much better known than it is.

Here is my favorite exercise from the book (in my own words, since I gave my copy away and haven't bought a new one yet). Choose a memory from your childhood that you want to write about. Sit and think about it for ten or fifteen minutes. Come up with a short sentence, the shorter the better, that sums up how you feel about this event. Scream the short sentence. If you live in an apartment or otherwise don't want to make too much noise, scream into a pillow. Sit with the release of emotions that follow. Finally, write about the event.

I came up with a modified version of this exercise to use when you don't have a memory in mind. Instead of starting with a memory, start with whatever symptom you have. As I mentioned in the first post on repressed emotions, a repressed emotion can manifest as a physical symptom like headache or back pain. What you can do is focus on the symptom for a while, and then ask that part of your body if it can give you a few words or a short sentence related to the feeling. It can take a few tries before you get an answer, especially if you're not accustomed to communicating with your body. It helps to get into a meditative, relaxed state. It also helps to suspend disbelief, because your body can come up with stuff that sounds weird and illogical to your mind. Resist the urge to dismiss; instead, take the words you're given and scream them. The rest of the exercise is the same.

Screaming can be helpful for releasing repressed emotions. Just ask the Primal Therapy people. What I appreciate about this exercise is the way that it works in verbalisation. Sometimes you feel something and you don't know why. Finding words can clarify what is going on.

Finally, I have a suggestion for people with chronic muscle tension. If you're one of those people, you can spend an inordinate amount of time stretching your ridiculously tight muscles out in an attempt to feel like a human being. It helps for a little while, then everything bounces back. Or you have a massage, which is not cheap, and everything bounces back. So the next time you stretch, try making some noise: a sigh, groan or even a scream if you feel like it. If the tension is connected to repressed emotion, making noise will release some of that emotion and loosen you up better than stretching alone. Try it next time you stretch. I'd like to say, try it next time you get a massage, but I find that massage therapists are not always up to speed on the repressed emotions thing and sometimes they will freak if you start crying on the table. I don't know why; they should know better. I imagine the reaction would be even worse if you screamed. You might end up like Jerry Seinfeld, unable to get another massage appointment.

Four Flavours of Horror

2009-02-12T15:41:00.028-04:00

After a long hiatus, I've been reading and thinking about (and even writing, a little) horror fiction again. My father introduced my brother and I to horror as soon as we were old enough not to wet our pants and start crying. He read us Dracula by Bram Stoker, one chapter a night. He read us the short stories of Edgar Allen Poe, swooping his voice up at the climax, making me almost jump out of my skin. When I became a teenager, I went through the usual rite of passage of reading my way through the works of Stephen King.

But as an adult, I drifted away from King and horror in general, tired and bored of blood and guts. King once said, "If I cannot horrify, I'll go for the gross-out". He's far from being alone, and therein lies the problem. The easiest, laziest thing you can do in horror is be gory and disgusting. It's not a coincidence that this easiest of routes is also the least effective. I remember that ho-hum feeling creeping over me (not the kind of creeping the horror writer wants to induce) when I read Brian Keene and Steven L. Shrewsbury's short story "Death Comes For All" in Apex Magazine (vol. 1, iss. 12). Going nowhere and making no sense, this story features an army of zombies that emerge from the sea and have to be cut down in the usual tedious, limb-chopping way. Zombies have been so done to death (ha!) that their mere presence in a story usually signals mediocrity. This kind of thing gives horror a bad name.

The trick is to find horror that does something other (or at least more) than gross out. Sometimes you have to turn to the classics to remind yourself what horror is supposed to be. Poe had the ability to put the reader into the mind of his rage- or madness-driven characters. King, at his best, achieves this too. He develops Carrie and describes her miseries so well that even when she goes on her murderous rampage the reader cannot help but sympathize with her. This second flavour on offer in Horror's freezer might be called "psychological horror."

This is a bit parenthetical, but I'd like to mention that what made Poe a horror writer of unparallelled greatness was his ability to orchestrate the climax of his story so beautifully, getting it to land not merely on the last paragraph but on the last sentence or even on the last word. One of Poe's best-known stories is The Telltale Heart, and rightly so, for the climax is in the last two words. But though The Black Cat is less-well known, in it Poe achieves something even more impressive: a single-word climax. If you have not yet read these stories, do so now. Poe made horror into poetry. (Appropriate, given his name.)

H.P. Lovecraft came along about a century later than Poe but is no less influential. I hadn't read any Lovecraft until quite recently, when I played Munchkin Cthulhu and decided to find out what all that Cthulhu business was about. Somebody told me that Lovecraft stories are psychological. I disagree. Poe was much better at that sort of thing. Lovecraft makes his characters go mad a lot too, but it isn't as convincing. He seems to have conceived of the human mind as terribly fragile, as if you could go mad after finding something gruesome in your box of Cracker Jacks.

He also differentiates himself from Poe by his fondness for monsters. Many of Poe's short stories have nothing of the supernatural in them, and that is their strength: the recognition that every manner of evil arises from human beings, alone, unaided. Lovecraft, on the other hand, loves a good monster. To him, there is something monstrous about life already--"Life is a hideous thing," he wrote in his short story Arthur Jermyn, and I believe he meant it. So it was not a great leap for him from humanity to monstrosity.

Consequently, his flavour of horror is not so much the horror of psychology as the horror of the icky idea. A man breeds with an ape and produces a line of half-human creatures. An isolated family becomes so corrupted over generations that they transform into killing, burrowing creatures. Lovecraft was the master of concepts that were interesting in an awful sort of way.

The Holy Grail of horror is, of course, to genuinely frighten the reader. To induce not merely a wave of nausea or suspense or pity or laughter but actual fear in the reader, to keep him from dropping easily off to sleep that night, to affect his dreams--that is surely the horror writer's ultimate achievement. Few have managed it. King never has, and probably won't. I don't think Lovecraft did either. Poe could do it, in brief flashes. Curiously, the most frightening thing I have ever read was in not a horror but a science fiction novel.

Ventus by Karl Schroeder is mostly concerned with terraforming robots that are slipping out of control and need repair. But there's also a man who is part machine, and he's operated as a machine for so long that his humanity is completely lost to him, for a time. During this time, three grave-robbers cross his path in a catacomb. He murders one. Another escapes. The third has the worst fate:

Choltas had heard the footsteps of the devil fade away. He knew it would be back unless he stayed very still. This was the thing's home; it world not venture out into the world above. So though he couldn't hear it, he knew it was there. If he stayed completely still, wrapped around himself in this corner in total darkness, it might not find him. But if he so much as sneezed, he knew it would be on him instantly.
Even now it might be creeping up on him silently. He wrapped more tightly around himself, and tried not to breathe. Time passed, but Choltas did not move. When thirst began to torture him. he stayed still. He wet himself and shat in his pants, quietly. And eventually, delirium overcame him; he heard his mother's voice, saw drifting pictures of his home.
He kept his arms around his knees, and his face buried there against his own flesh. And he breathed weaker and weaker, aware at last only of the murmur of his own head and the torment of cold and thirst, overridden by a fear he could no longer identify.
Stay still, stay still.
Its hand hangs above me.

This is the most perfect depiction of primal, frozen terror I have ever encountered.

Bad Apples

2009-02-09T17:18:00.010-04:00

One of the difficult things about winter in these northern climes is the lack of local fruits and vegetables. I try to avoid buying food that has travelled 2000 miles to get to me, due to the environmental impact, but at this time of year it's so much more difficult. At least in the case of apples, I don't have to buy Galas from New Zealand and Fujis from China, because locally-grown apples are available in bags. Unfortunately, they suffer a loss of quality with the long-term storage. Here is a roundup of things that can go wrong in your bag of supermarket apples. I've given each condition a punsy name, just for the fun of it.

Crapples

A crapple is an apple devoid of any hint of tasty apple flavour. It is blah, lifeless, a waste of time and teeth. One bite, and you don't even want to bother eating the rest. In short, it's crappy. It's a crappy apple. It's a crapple.

How to avoid crapples:

Smell the apples before you buy them. The nose is such an underappreciated organ in our culture. People think I'm a weirdo when they see me sniffing apples and tomatoes in the supermarket. One guy cracked, "Does it smell like a tomato?" Well yes, but that's why I bought it. Many tomatoes, especially the ones imported from the U.S., smell more like, I dunno, Royal Doulton figurines than they smell like tomatoes. Which is to say they smell like nothing, and taste like nothing too. Oh, they look perfect, of course. It's all about looks these days, about things being shiny and pretty and perfect. Well, some of the worst-tasting crapples in existence are shiny and pretty and perfect. But usually (though there are exceptions) an apple that smells good will taste good.

It is a bit harder to smell apples when they're encased in a plastic bag, but even then you can often manage it. The plastic bags that the apples come in usually have perforations. Look for a perforation and stick your nose right up next to it. Don't worry if your fellow shoppers look at you funny. Let them eat crapples.

Booby-Trapples

This illustrates perfectly the moral that looks aren't everything. The booby-trapple is an apple that looks fine on the outside--firm, red, pretty--but is completely rotted away on the inside. I fell for one of these this weekend. When I bit into it, a gruesome flavour filled my mouth. The heart of the apple was completely black. I rinsed my mouth out, but even that didn't get rid of the taste. Aaargh, it was awful. Since then, I've been slicing all the apples in half before I eat them. I don't trust them anymore.

How to avoid booby-trapples:

I wish I knew. I don't know if smelling would have helped because I have to admit I forgot to sniff this particular bag. But it might not have, since the rot was on the inside. One thing I know is that this has never happened to me with Cortlands. I buy Cortlands whenever possible, because they're the best apple breed ever. But they didn't have any the last time I was at the supermarket. What I bought was a bag of Spartans. It will be a while before I buy Spartans again.

Beaten-Upples

Our previous bag of apples (the one before the bag that contained the deadly booby-trapple) was loaded with bruised apples. It seemed there wasn't an apple in the bag that hadn't been mercilessly worked over. Poor beaten-upples; who did this to you? And when will you see justice done?

Actually, this is the least bad of all the bagged-apple defects (for the human, that is; the beaten apple itself might feel differently). You can cut off the bruised bit if you want, or you can eat it. It's not that bad, just a bit mushy. And the rest of the apple usually tastes fine.

How to avoid beaten-upples:

Careful physical inspection should do the trick. Feel the apples through the plastic bag and make sure they feel firm and that you can't find a lot of squishy bits.

In general, my best piece of advice on buying tasty apples is: don't get them at the supermarket. Get them at a farmer's market or, even better, pick your own apples at a u-pick farm. This is the next best thing to having your own apple tree: it's cheaper, it's fun exercise out in the sun (if it happens to be sunny at the time), and the apples are so much better than anything you'll get at the supermarket. It's like an entirely different fruit. I wish I could get all my apples that way, and if I was a master canner and fruit-dryer, maybe I could. I'm not there yet. I did some canning and drying, but two litres of applesauce and one little bag of dried apples is not going to last you through the winter.

So if you're like me, and you live somewhere cold, you'll have to buy some supermarket apples too. For those times, my best advice is to remember to sniff, and buy Cortlands. Hang in there. Spring and strawberries will be here soon.

Eros in the Night Kitchen

2009-02-04T14:16:00.030-04:00

In the last entry in this series on things that are unexpectedly sexy, I discussed a Muppet movie. Well, like Benjamin Button, my subjects keep getting younger. This one's about a classic children's book.

Maurice Sendak picture books were a part of my childhood. There are two I remember well. One was Where The Wild Things Are, with its beautiful monsters done in ink and tempera. The ending made a big impression on me: after sailing back "over a year and in and out of weeks and through a day," Max returned to his own room, where his supper was waiting for him, "and it was still hot." It didn't matter that I knew this to be impossible. When you're a child, you don't question things like that. You accept, and feel awe.

In The Night Kitchen impressed me in a different way. Right from the start, it was a more sensual experience. I remember the way the book smelled. It had a strong smell that was unlike other books, whether because it was newer or printed on a different type of paper, I don't know, but I liked it. The smell seemed right for a book involving dough, milk and nudity.

A little boy named Mickey falls out of his bed and pyjamas and into the Night Kitchen, where he gets mistaken for milk and mixed into cake batter by a trio of cooks who look like Oliver Hardy (my thanks to James for pointing this out). He makes his escape in an airplane made of bread dough, but the cooks still want milk to put in their cake. Happy to help, Mickey flies to a giant bottle of milk (the Milky Way), immerses himself in it and swims out with a cupful of milk. Mission accomplished, he slides down the side of the giant milk bottle and back into his bed.

It's all very tactile. Mickey experiences air, cake batter and milk on his skin. This is not a genitally-focused, adult sexuality but a whole-body sensuality. Still, that doesn't mean there is nothing sexual about it. I distinctly remember being turned on as a child when the bakers obliviously cracked eggs and poured sugar over Mickey and mixed him into the batter. It is probably this childish sexuality, so well captured by Maurice Sendak, that has initiated so many spasms of prudery. In the Night Kitchen has been making the ALA's most frequently challenged/banned lists for years. Librarians have been known to vandalize the book by painting a diaper on Mickey (source: Time Magazine, Dec. 29, 1980).

They need to get over it. Children are sexual, something Freud was well aware of back in the Victorian Era. It should not need to be said that this does not make it acceptable for adults to exploit them sexually. Children have the right to their sexuality and to explore it, on their own or with other children, without interference or abuse from adults. In that regard, a book like this might even be helpful.

If you think it's inappropriate for a children's book to contain anything erotic, even the innocent sort of eroticism of In the Night Kitchen, consider that Eros, the Greek God of Love, is also called Cupid and is depicted as a naked boy or baby with wings. Trade those wings for a dough airplane and he could be Mickey.

Serendipitously, Freedom to Read Week is coming soon. The displays are already up at my local library and perhaps yours too. Support freedom of expression. Read a banned book this February.

The Eros of Labyrinth

2009-02-02T15:03:00.014-04:00

Welcome to the second installment in my series on things that are unexpectedly sexy. The first installment explored The Eros of Jeeves. This one looks at a children's movie that isn't a children's movie. Enjoy!

Labyrinth is a Jim Henson movie featuring David Bowie, Jennifer Connelly and a host of scruffy Muppets. David Bowie plays Jareth the Goblin King, ruler of the eponymous labyrinth. Jareth has a thing for a whiny teenage girl named Sarah. Much like the schoolboy who expresses his feelings for his crush by yanking her braid, Jareth steals Sarah's baby brother Toby (on her request, it should be said, though she regrets it instantly). Sarah must find her way through Jareth's labyrinth and brave its Jareth-created terrors so that she can rescue Toby and get him back home before her parents return from their party and discover him missing.

Labyrinth has never been a darling of the critics. Yes, it has its flaws, but it's got a lot going for it as well. It's got a great soundtrack courtesy of Mr. Goblin King himself, it's got some brilliantly creative scenes, it's got lots of amusingly ugly goblin Muppets, and it's got Bowie, looking scrumptious in eye makeup and big eighties hair.

The flaws include the movie's opener, which features dialogue and acting so unpersuasive it makes your teeth hurt; a bunch of irritating hairy creatures who sing the movie's one lousy song and pull off their own heads; a wholly unnecessary fencing chihuahua; and "The Bog of Eternal Stench". It's all worth sitting through, to get to the good bits.

What I think hurts the movie overall is its lack of focus. Its makers, it appears, were unsure of what, exactly, this flick was supposed to be about, so they shoehorned in extra themes like the importance of family and friendship (yeah, we really need more movies about that, don't we?) and made Sarah excessively bratty right at the beginning so she could mature as the movie progressed. Utterly beside the point. If only Jim Henson, Terry Jones (who wrote the script) et al had realised what the movie was really about: a girl's erotic coming of age.

Well, it's not surprising. Our culture has always had difficulty with the idea of girls having their own sexuality. We've no problem with the sexuality of boys; look at American Pie. But girls? God forbid. Girls may struggle with the sexual interest of boys but are not supposed to have any of their own. So perhaps the moviemakers could not bring themselves to admit, even to themselves, what sort of movie they were really making.

And yet there is at least one occasion when it becomes perfectly blatant. Sarah solves a well-known logic puzzle involving two guards and two doors, only to find herself falling down a hole full of hands that grab at her. At first, she is understandably perturbed, but the hands explain that they are "helping hands" and are holding on to her to prevent her from plummeting to her death. She then accepts their grappling.

Excuse me? A teenage girl falls down a dark tube, somewhat reminiscent of a vagina, and gets felt up by a bunch of hands, and we're supposed to believe that this is just another innocent kid's movie? No no no.

This scene is one of my favorites, not only because it's naughty but because the hands speak by clustering together in several different configurations to form faces. It's brilliant. Labyrinth is worth seeing for this bit of artistry alone.

Vagina-like tunnels abound. Sarah falls down them, slides out of them and walks through them. In one scene, we even get a scary penis. Sarah and her goblin guide Hoggle are walking down a tunnel when Jareth shows up and asks her how she likes his labyrinth. "It's a piece of cake," says Sarah, and is punished for her hubris. Jareth vanishes and a dangerous-looking cylindrical metal apparatus comes chugging towards them, filling the tunnel completely. According to Hoggle, the device is for cleaning the tunnel, but that doesn't explain the blades swirling around on the front (or glans, as I like to think of it). Sarah and Hoggle escape into a nook, and as the mechanism sweeps by, we see that it's operated by a couple of goblins working pedals, one goblin per pedal. The cleaner seems dangerous at first but becomes funny once you get a closer look at it. It is a symbolic disarming of the penis.

Speaking of penises, something I'm always happy to do, a certain web page brought to my attention just how much Jareth's, or rather Bowie's, package is on display in this feature. I didn't notice, at least not consciously, but far be it for me to object to an attractive man in form-fitting pants.

Near the end of the movie, as Sarah draws closer to Toby, Jareth meets her on a collection of impossible stairways out of the Escher woodcut "Relativity". This scene rivals the helping hands scene for clever effects. Sarah and Jareth chase each other up and down the stairs and finally come face to face for the movie's most smouldering exchange. Jareth tells Sarah he's been generous to her, and she reacts with scepticism, but he points out that everything he's done, he's done for her, starting with taking Toby away. "Just let me rule you," he says, "and you can have whatever you want. Fear me, love me, do as I say, and I will be your slave."

In other words, the labyrinth and its seeming dangers, the Goblin King's show of menace and tyranny, were all a sort of sadomasochistic seduction. Jareth was never any threat to her. He never wanted to be anything but her top. Everything he did was to give her the erotic thrill of fear.

Sarah's next statement seems on the surface to be a non-sequitor, but it is in fact an admission that she understands, and agrees: "You have no power over me." Indeed, Jareth, like any top, can maintain the illusion of power only as long as Sarah chooses to participate in his sadomasochistic game. As soon as she speaks these magic words, the spell is broken and she is back in her room, and Toby is back in his playpen. Her parents haven't even come home yet.

It's the perfect setup for a girl like Sarah. She can spend some time with an attractive male and mess around a little but put the brakes on as soon as she feels things have gone far enough. All the while, her parents remain completely unaware of what's going on. What teenager doesn't want that? Every girl should have a Goblin King.

In the next installment of this series, I will get even more controversial and argue that a children's picture book can have content that is erotic--to children. Yikes! So keep an eye out for that, or flee, depending on how openminded you are.

The Eros of Jeeves

2009-01-29T16:28:00.015-04:00

Whew, my blog posts have been heavy lately. It's time for something lighter. It's time for a series of posts about things that are unexpectedly arousing.

Such as Jeeves and Wooster, a British comedy that aired on TV (or, as the British would call it, "telly") from 1990 to 1993. Jeeves, the ultimate valet, is played by Stephen Fry, and his goofy employer/charge is played by Hugh Laurie. They make quite a contrast. Those who are familiar with Laurie from the medical drama House might be surprised to see him in a Jeeves and Wooster episode, with his goofy facial expressions, randomly poking-out hair and popping eyeballs. (And of course his British accent. Laurie fakes an American accent so perfectly that many House viewers don't even know he's British.) In contrast, Fry as Jeeves is forever smooth, unruffled and as calm as the surface of a lake on a windless day.

When the two of them are on the screen together, it's Jeeves that I look at, even though Wooster is the funnier one. I like his oval face, so much more appealing than Wooster's skinny, twisted-up one. I love to watch him going about his duties in Wooster's house. I want Jeeves to come to my house and wait on me, the way he does on Wooster. I want him to serve me tea, to iron my shirts and turn down my bedsheets, smoothing the fabric down in that careful, sensual way he has. Watching Jeeves at work gets me all tingly.

Yes, I know that Stephen Fry is gay. So what? When you have a fantasy that would never, ever come true in your lifetime, because it is about some famous person you are never going to meet, why should their sexual orientation be relevant? I know it matters to some people. A guy I used to know once who told me that his wife took down her Keanu Reeves poster after she heard that he was gay. Isn't that silly? A better reason would be that he lost too much weight, and looks like a junkie. No, Fry can be as gay as he wants as far as I'm concerned.

Actually, his gayness fits nicely into the Jeeves and Wooster storyline. Here's an interesting fact: fag, which in my country means a male homosexual, in Britain means "a schoolboy forced to do menial work for another, usually older boy" (source: The Chambers Dictionary). Jeeves is a sort of grown-up fag, doing menial work for Wooster. But don't think that Jeeves is a submissive servant. Anyone who has seen the TV episodes, or read the original stories by P.G. Wodehouse, knows that Jeeves is the one in charge. Many of the episodes/stories start with Wooster acquiring an article of clothing that Jeeves, with his superior, faggy fashion sense, finds objectionable, be it a hat, vest or overly-flashy pair of socks. At first, Wooster refuses to part from the item, but by the end of the episode/story, overwhelmed with gratitude for the way Jeeves has masterfully solved all his problems, he tells Jeeves he may dispose of the item, at which point Jeeves admits that he already did. Jeeves rules Wooster with a hand in a velvet glove. Not necessarily an iron hand. More of a soft, gentle hand, one that I imagine would touch the objects of its affection with the same gentleness that it demonstrates with shirts, sheets and cups of tea.

Of Interest

Now that Hugh Laurie is playing a mean doctor instead of a rich fop, people think he's sexy too. You can see the evidence on You Tube, in the form of clips from House set to the tune of "Sexyback" by Justin Timberlake. There are a whole bunch like this.

If you enjoyed the TV series, and don't mind books, you really must read the P.G. Wodehouse stories upon which the show was based. You can find them in The World of Jeeves: A Jeeves and Wooster Omnibus. If you don't want to buy it, there's probably a copy at your local library.

If you've never seen the TV series and would like to, the complete Jeeves & Wooster series is available on DVD.

Coming up next: can a movie with Muppets in it be sexy? Apparently so.

Repressed Emotions

2009-01-27T16:37:00.012-04:00

In part 3 of my Yoga Snobs series, I mentioned repressed emotions and the importance of releasing them. I thought it might be helpful to follow up with an entry delving into the subject in more detail.

Symptoms of repression

First of all, how do you know if you are repressing emotions? Not because you feel them. If you could feel them, they wouldn't be repressed. Still, they leave traces. When you bury emotions, you're like that guy in Poe's "Telltale Heart." Something always emerges to haunt you.

Physical Symptoms

Chronic problems like muscle tension, back pain, headaches and digestive problems, for which your doctor can find no organic cause, may be symptoms of repression. Obesity often has an underlying emotional cause; it's fairly common for people who were sexually abused as children to be obese. Such symptoms are called psychosomatic. Even serious conditions such as cancer can have a psychosomatic component. This shows how important it is to release repression: not only your happiness and general wellbeing but your health or even your life could be at stake.

Strong, Inappropriate Emotion

Now that's weird. How can emotion be a symptom of repressed emotion?

Some emotions are more socially acceptable than others. This can vary depending upon who you are and what sort of background you come from. For example, it has traditionally been more acceptable for women than men to express sadness (especially when tears are involved), and more acceptable for men to express anger. So men may repress sadness under anger, and women may repress anger under sadness. On the other hand, I grew up in a home where sadness was derided as weakness while anger earned respect, so that, although I am a woman, I repressed sadness under anger for many years.

If you often find yourself caught up in a strong, even overpowering emotion that seems out of proportion to the situations that trigger it, you're probably repressing something.

Obsessive Thoughts

Obsessive Compulsive Disorder (OCD) is a complex condition with many causes, perhaps even physical. One of those causes is repression, though you'd never know it to read most of the information available out there. It is currently trendy to treat mental conditions primarily with drugs and Cognitive Behavioural Therapy, in keeping with today's treat-the-symptom philosophy. This is unfortunate, as it means that all too often the underlying issues are never dealt with. And when the underlying issues aren't dealt with, they always emerge again, in another form.

It's possible to have the obsessions without the compulsions. Obsessive thoughts are a clever technique of the mind to distract you from whatever you don't want to feel.

How to Release Repressed Emotions

The first thing you have to do is give yourself permission. You have to allow yourself to cry, even loudly or as unrestrainedly as a child, even without knowing why you are crying. This is important. If you insist on behaving in a dignified and restrained manner at all times, you will likely just push the repressed emotions back under.

The next thing to do is to look to your symptoms. They are your body's way of screaming at you that something is wrong. Listen to them.

If your symptoms are physical

Focus your attention on the part of the body that hurts. Feel it fully. This is the opposite of what we usually do. We naturally want pain to go away, and the pharmaceutical industry helpfully steps in with a raft of drugs to help us not feel. If you can go off pain pills and completely feel your pain, you may finally receive the message your body is trying to send you. But you have to be willing to receive whatever comes and not push it down again, whether what comes is an image you don't like, a thought you think is ridiculous, or the urge to scream.

Expect resistance. You've spent years repressing. You're good at it. Your defensive mechanisms will kick in. Probably the most universal one is the wandering mind. Everybody who tries any kind of meditation gets this. I have an interesting one: I get tired and start to yawn. It helps to recognize defensive mechanisms for what they are, so you can stop them from derailing you.

Raphael Cushnir suggests that you can get at repressed emotions by asking yourself two questions: "What is happening right now?" and "Can I be with it?" If you take one of his workshops, he'll give you a handy magnet you can stick on your fridge to remind you to ask the two questions. He has also written a number of books on the subject, including The One Thing Holding You Back, which I recommend. (I can't recommend the other ones because I haven't read them.)

If your symptom is strong, inappropriate emotion

Find somewhere private. This is especially important if you cover up other emotions with anger; by removing yourself from the situation that is making you angry, you can avoid doing or saying something you'll regret later. Handy tip: public washroom cubicles are a good place to escape to. Once you're alone, feel the emotion fully (are you noticing a pattern here?) If you feel the emotion fully for long enough, the other emotion that it is covering up is likely to come to the surface. When that happens, feel that emotion fully too, emoting as necessary.

While feeling the first emotion, you can try asking yourself directly if some other feeling is underneath. Talking to your own body is not a sign of insanity at all but a good habit to get into.

If your symptom is obsessive thoughts

If you've got OCD, you may need professional help. If you only have obsessive thoughts, you may be able to handle it yourself. Either way, try this: when you catch yourself in an obsessive thought or compulsive action, ask yourself, "What am I feeling right now?" This is similar to Cushnir's two questions mentioned earlier.

We live in a society uncomfortable with the expression of emotion. We are told to "put on a happy face" and "laugh and the world laughs with you; cry and you cry alone." It is time for a change. In her book Transformation Soup, SARK writes, "I think that until we cry as often as we laugh, we are not fully alive" (p. 136). I like this thought. I don't know how literally to take it. I don't know if the correct ratio of tears to laughter is 50/50 or 40/60 or 25/75. But I know that we need to become as accepting of tears as we are of laughter. We need to feel freer to cry, to scream, to express whatever is in us.

Faces of the Powerful

2009-01-21T15:18:00.006-04:00

Note: This strikes me as a piece that cries out for illustrations. However, I don't want to either violate anyone's copyright or pay Reuters for pictures. So instead of inserting pictures, I'm inserting links to articles that have pictures. The articles have nothing to do with this entry; in fact, most of them are quite old. The point is the pictures. So to see pictures of what I'm talking about, click on the links. Thanks for understanding.

As you are no doubt aware, Barack Obama became President of the United States yesterday. He made a beautiful, moving speech about responsibility and sacrifice. That, of course, does not prove anything. Many people can make wonderful speeches and promise all sorts of things without following through. Many people have. But I feel sure that Obama is a man of integrity who will spend his time in office doing the right thing to the best of his ability, rather than covering his butt and sucking up to corporations and the wealthy in order to secure a second term.

How do I know this? Because Obama has something to back up his pretty words. He has his face. I saw a wonderful photo of him on the cover of a magazine, last week's Newsweek I think. He was smiling and looking relaxed and confident. His face is open. He is a man with nothing to hide.

By stark and terrible contrast, here in Canada we have Stephen Harper. Here we have a man whose conception of governance is to alternate attacks against every perceived threat to himself with long vacations and interruptions to Parliment. He has, since taking office, done much that is destructive and almost nothing that is useful and constructive. He is secretive to a degree that is sometimes pathological. He is probably paranoid, which is why he is secretive. And none of this comes as a surprise to me, nor should it to anyone, as it was all plain to read in his face, his distressingly masklike, expressionless face that looks like a Botox treatment gone too far.

We have a new leader of the opposition party. The old leader, Stephane Dion, was not a man of extremes, neither great like Obama nor terrible like Harper, as could be read in his average-looking face, but a good man. Strangely, that wasn't what Canadians wanted, and Dion had to go. His replacement, currently temporary and possibly to become permanent in May (though I hope not) is Michael Ignatieff. Here too, there is something disturbing to be read in the face. It doesn't reach the soulless extremes of the Harper rubber-face, yet all is not well. There is a hardness and an odd squinching up around the eyes, as if either to hold something in or keep something out. His eyes remind me of Karla Homolka's. I don't mean to imply that Ignatieff is like Homolka. I am fairly certain he will neither serve as an accomplice to murder nor mail his underwear to prisoners. Still, this narrowing of the eyes must mean something. I don't know what, but I know it isn't good. I do not have high hopes for Ignatieff.

The mouth can lie, the face does not. If you really want to know your leaders, hit the mute button when their faces appear on your television. If everybody did that before every election, we could probably save ourselves a lot of pain.

Further Reading: "The President's Speech" describes an incident in which brain-damaged people laughed at a televised speech by Ronald Regan, while people with normal brain functioning were taken in. This fascinating essay can be found, along with several other fascinating essays, in The Man Who Mistook His Wife for a Hat by Oliver Sacks.

Yoga Snobs, Part 3: Yoga Versus Psychology?

2009-01-14T07:30:00.006-04:00

In the first two installments of this series, I described my experiences with two different Yoga Snobs. Both these incidents happened several years ago. What reminded me of them, and moved me to write about them at this time, was an interview in the latest issue of Ascent Magazine (Winter 2008, issue 40) titled "anarchy of yoga." The subject of the interview is the Yoga Snob under the magnifying glass in this third installment of Yoga Snobs.

Michael Stone is a yoga teacher who studied psychology in the past, but appears to have turned against it:

Western psychotherapy is caught in the delusion that our problems are primarily derived from memories in our personal past. So we go looking to the storehouse of memory in our personal past to heal our wounds in the present. Yoga disagrees.

I find this an interesting statement, not only for its content but for the little back-and-forth dance of tone the speaker executes. He begins with full-tilt arrogance: Western psychology is caught in a delusion. Then, as if realizing too late how he has exposed himself, he backs up: yoga disagrees.

Here's a handy tip on how to keep your disagreements friendly: don't tell your opponent he's deluded.

This is not the first time I've encountered arrogance in the pages of Ascent Magazine. It seems to be all too common among those who are supposed to be on the spiritual path. Sometimes I wish Ascent Magazine would print a disclaimer with their interviews, maybe something along the lines of: "Ascent is not responsible for the arrogance expressed herein. We just do the interview."

Stone goes on to say: "Yoga... is suggesting that the past is fictional. When you talk about your past, you are generating a fiction that gives you a sense of self. ... Health or liberation... from the yoga perspective, is seeing through the mechanism in the mind that always superimposes a self on everything."

There's that bad, naughty story again. Stone appears to be saying that the past is irrelevant, and that the key to health is to live in the present. Certainly it is a good thing to live in the present as much as possible. But surely there is much to be gained from looking at your past experiences and understanding the effect they had on you.

Stone claims he's seen a lot of people who have been through scads of therapy but remain unable to "let go" of their problems. Curiously, he provides no contrasting examples of people who have learned to let go of their problems through the practice of yoga.

Another curious omission: he makes no mention of repression, whether of memories or emotion. The past would indeed have no power to hurt us in the present if we did not drag something of it behind us. In what way do we do that? In part, by storing up repressed emotion, which, until it is released, continues to reside in the body and affect us.

Psychologists are well aware of the importance of releasing repressed emotion. That's why they always have a box of tissues located conveniently close to the couch. Their way of encouraging such a release is to dig up the past. Yoga too can be of help in initiating such a release; since the repressed emotions and memories are stored in the body, the right posture may release them.

But how many yoga students feel free to openly weep or scream in the middle of a class? And how many instructors would encourage such a display, and welcome it when it occurs? In both cases, I would guess the number is close to zero.

Kripalu yoga has an advantage over other yoga forms in this respect. Students are encouraged to sigh or groan after completing a series of postures, offering some opportunity for release. I have my doubts that much open weeping would be tolerated. I don't know what type of yoga Stone teaches or how much noise he encourages his students to make. However, his failure to make any mention of the issue does not give me high hopes.

It is a curious and sad thing that Stone feels yoga and psychology are somehow in opposition. Indeed, why not have both of them? Really, don't we need all the help we can get? What sense does it make to throw out anything potentially useful?

Stone's dismissal of psychotherapy and its "delusions" is ironic, given a comment he himself makes earlier in the interview:

Whenever you create a system, something gets left out. And so when two systems come together, all those left-out pieces come out of the shadows because one system points out the shadow of another system. That's why it is really good to study different systems and different teachers, because it will always point out your shadows.

Stone sees that yoga can point out the shadows of psychology. He does not see that psychology can point out the shadows of yoga. Those are the shadows that will continue to elude him.

Yoga Snobs, Part 2: The Anti-Story Yogi

2009-01-12T07:30:00.004-04:00

In the last installment of this series, I described a yogi who, in my belief, chose to look down on certain people for physical reasons. In this installment, I will describe a yogi who looked down on people for reasons more mental/spiritual.

At my yoga studio, we sometimes had guest instructors. There was one in particular who taught a couple of times and then did not come again. I thought it might be interesting to take more of his classes, so I sent him an email asking him where he usually taught. He wrote back and told me that he taught regularly at the Y. We got to chatting. He told me he worked as a speech writer to supplement his yoga income. I told him that I worked as a Technical Writer to make money, but what I really loved was fiction.

His response was that he did not read fiction because fiction was untrue and he was opposed to untruth. He said that "at least" I did technical writing and that was based on fact (as if to say that the writing I did for a living took the curse off the writing I did out of love).

I was flabbergasted. This man thought that his allegedly spiritual, yogic beliefs made it acceptable for him to insult what I did!

I wrote back and pointed out that in fiction, no deceit occurs because there is an understanding between the writer and the reader that what is described is not literally true. On the other hand, there is ample potential for deceit in speech writing, especially when done for politicians.

I never communicated with him again, nor did I attend any of his classes at the Y.

The notion that a story can be a negative thing is not uncommon among yogis and meditators. Someone once told me about a type of meditation whose goal is to help the meditator achieve a state of "no story." I think they were referring to Vipassana, though I have not been able to find any references to "no story" on Vipassana-related web pages. Perhaps it was some other type of meditation beginning with "V." In any case, she explained that people cause problems for themselves and avoid seeing the world accurately by making up stories about the people around them. For example, an insecure person might walk past a group of people, hear them burst into laughter, and conclude they are laughing at him. He does not know this with any certainty; it is a belief, a story he chooses to tell himself. With sufficient practice of the right type of meditation, I have been told, one can free oneself from this habit of hurtful storytelling.

Are we to take this to mean that all fiction and storytelling is to be avoided? That is apparently how this yoga instructor took it. And yet, storytelling is an important feature of every culture on earth. Even Zen Buddhists use stories, called Koans, to teach and illustrate Zen principles. Many of them describe events that (gasp!) never actually happened.

Most likely, the yoga instructor had no problem with this type of instructive storytelling, despite what he said about being opposed to untruth. He would have understood that there is a higher purpose, indeed a higher truth, in such storytelling.

What he didn't understand is that the same is true of all good storytelling. Any decent-quality novel, short story or myth tells "untruths" in order to get at deeper truths. This man's avoidance of fiction is his great loss. I feel a little bit sorry for him. Not that sorry, because he was a jerk, but a little sorry.

Apparently I'm not that spiritually evolved.

Are you a Yoga Snob or a Balanced Yogi? Find out by taking the Yoga Snob Quiz. Actually, this quiz is more of a joke than anything. It's worth doing for the fun of it, and also to generate a signature so that you can show everyone in your forum, or everyone you email, what kind of yogi you are.

Have you ever been the target of a Yoga Snob? Please share your story--yes, story, because stories are good--by leaving a comment. Anyone can post a comment; you do not need to register. Thanks!

Yoga Snobs, Part 1: Snobs and Dabblers

2009-01-09T14:39:00.006-04:00

I initially intended to have a single entry about Yoga Snobs, but once I started writing, I discovered I had a lot to say, more than could comfortably fit into a single blog entry. So I divided it into three parts. Parts 2 and 3 will be posted later.

I am a yoga dabbler. Every now and then, I show up at a class. There was a time when I was more committed. I had a specific teacher, studio, and yoga tradition (Kripalu). I went to classes a couple of times a week for two years. Even so, I never progressed beyond a certain level. I never developed a home practice. I never went vegetarian (for more than a couple of weeks at a time). And I never was comfortable doing the Plow, the shoulder stand or the Upward Dog, nor could I balance in the Crow for more than a couple of seconds. Having never attained the upper echelons of yoga, I have the perspective to see that there are upper echelons of yoga, and that there are yoga snobs. I have witnessed yoga snobbery on a couple of occasions. This is one of them.

It was the end of a class. We students were rolling up our mats. The instructor-- let's call her Debbie--approached one of the women (yoga classes are mostly women, as you'll know if you've ever been to one) and asked her if she was planning to go to the picnic. The woman was not aware about the picnic, so Debbie explained that "some of the yogis," as she put it, were planning a picnic, and that she should come along.

I perked up. "What's that? There's going to be a picnic?"

Debbie turned to me with visible reluctance and repeated that some of the yogis were planning a picnic. She did not invite me to come.

I pressed no further, not wanting to impose myself where I wasn't wanted. It was clear enough that the other woman had been selected and I hadn't. As to why, I can only speculate. It wasn't an issue of seniority; in fact, I'd been attending classes at that studio longer than Debbie had been teaching there. So perhaps this other woman was slimmer, younger, or could go more deeply into the Pigeon pose, even possessing the ability, which I didn't have then and still don't have now, to bend the back leg upwards and tuck the foot into the crook of the elbow.

None of that should matter. In yoga, where you are now is supposed to be perfect. The studio's founding instructor--let's call her Kathy--was always careful to remind us not to force or push ourselves too far, and that putting your face in your lap or your nose to your knee is "just a direction you're moving in."

And yet, when I asked her once if she could do a handstand, she said, "Of course!" and sounded insulted.

So apparently this kind of thing does matter.

It is of course possible that Debbie made her selections and exclusions for reasons other than physical. Perhaps she thought the other woman meditated better than I did or was closer to enlightenment. However, it is interesting to note that for a time, Kathy, the studio founder, was fierce in her defense of the idea that one can develop spiritually simply through the practice of the physical poses known as Hatha yoga. She'd gone so far as to promote this idea in the local newspaper, and start what she called "a controversy" (somebody wrote one calmly-worded letter in response). All this, because she believed that Debbie, the invitation-issuing instructor, had "come so far" simply through the practice of Hatha yoga.

It seems, then, that the physical was Debbie's primary focus, and Kathy felt the need to defend the position of the instructor she had chosen to work at her studio. In consequence, she needed to convince others, and perhaps herself, that postures alone could initiate spiritual development.

And yet, there's more to yoga than postures. One of the six branches of yoga is Seva or Selfless Service. I like this one, because it makes a lot more sense to me that you can evolve spiritually by getting out in the world and helping people than that you can do so by wrapping your body into a pretzel.

I'm not saying that there is anything wrong whatsoever with doing only Hatha yoga for the benefits it provides. After all, increased strength and flexibility, relaxation and getting more in touch with your body are all fine achievements in themselves. But anyone who tells herself that she is more spiritual because she does Hatha yoga is heading for trouble.

Come to think of it, anyone who tells herself that she is more spiritual than other people is heading for trouble.

Different people have different bodies that are capable of different things. There are many people who will never be able to get into the full Lotus position, no matter how devoted they are to their practice. Are they lesser than the person who always had wide-open hips, whose body has never been tightened by trauma?

In some circles, the answer is yes. And what a shame this is, as it hurts people like myself, the yoga dabblers of this world, the people who show up for an occasional class when they feel like it. We have as much right to yoga as the more committed, more flexible, more whatever. We have a right to practice in our own way. Indeed, the Yoga Snobs need us. If we go away, who will they feel superior to?

Have you ever encountered a Yoga Snob? I encourage you to share your experiences in the Comments section. Anyone can post a comment; you do not need to register. Thanks!

Being Erica

2009-01-06T10:44:00.004-04:00

Last night was the debut of the new TV series Being Erica. The CBC's been advertising it like mad for the past few weeks. (You Canucks know what I'm talking about. For those of you who live elsewhere, I think--and hope--there is still something in this entry to entertain you.)

Being Erica is the story of a young woman who feels deeply dissatisfied with her life, in all the usual TV ways: her career is going nowhere and her friends are getting married off while she has yet to find a good man. She is haunted by the bad choices she has made in life.

On one terrible day, she gets fired, her date cancels at the last minute, the sky opens up and pours on her, and she goes into anaphylactic shock from drinking a free latté containing nuts. In the hospital, she is approached by a mysterious stranger (funny how many of those there are on TV) who promises to help her turn her life around... by sending her back in time.

We turned in with low expectations, and that was a good thing. Besides offering up a nice assortment of clichés, the show relies heavily on the sexual exploitation of its actress (the delightfully onomatopoeically-named Erin Karpluk) to drum up viewer interest. To some degree, that was made clear in the ads, which show Erica spinning around and magically appearing in a succession of hot-looking outfits. While in one of the outfits, an ensemble involving a little pair of shorts and a shoulder bag, she wiggles her hips unsubtly, not once or twice but five or six times. It was unintentionally hilarious.

Still, I was unprepared for just how low they were willing to stoop. While she is reliving the high school dance that led to her being branded a slut, Erica, despite being completely sober, does something so ridiculous that no one in their right mind would ever do it, something that culminates in her walking into the middle of the party naked but for strips of toilet paper wrapped around her naughty bits.

The shot was as close to soft-core porn as prime-time CBC gets. Why were they willing to squander their character's credibility to achieve it?

James suggested that they did it in order to get the men to watch a show centered on a female character and female interests. But most directors find a display of cleavage to be sufficient. The debut episode of Being Erica had that and much, much more.

This morning, with the salient details still burned into my brain, I found myself wondering how much of a role boob size and shape had played in the casting. You don't get that Penthouse silhouette by sheer chance; they must have made it a priority. Oh, to have been a fly on the wall at that booty, ahem, casting call.

Despite this shameless pandering, and other noticeably protruding flaws on display, there is hope for this show. The ending was a refreshing reversal of expectations, both for Erica and the viewer, and the message a worthwhile one.

Also, for those of us who came of age in the eighties, the soundtrack has ample nostalgia value.

So if you can get past these problems, you might want to tune in. If you're in search of cheesecake, you'll definitely want to.

Shitty Poetry

2009-01-05T15:45:00.003-04:00

The world is full of shitty poetry;
you've probably heard some yourself.
It's not on a shelf.

It's read aloud in coffee shops
to the tinkle of laughter and glasses,
or poetry classes,

by people who never rewrite or edit
because they have so much to say.
Sit down. Go away.

It even emerges from precious small presses,
giving the unheard a voice.
Unfortunate choice.

It's loaded down with awkward or
self-conscious metaphor
(it's a bit of a bore),

devoid of feeling but full of pretense,
stretched out with big long words
that fall like turds.

Yes, the world is full of shitty poetry;
we've quite a bit more than we should.
So write something good.

Oprah's Ego

2008-12-30T17:08:00.010-04:00

For several years now, I have wondered if Oprah's ego is not getting a wee bit out of control.

It started a decade ago, when Oprah began having Phil McGraw, another character not exactly known for his modesty, on her show regularly. Dr. Phil would make sweeping pronouncements regarding a guest's problems and what she (almost invariably she) should do about them, based on a few minutes of listening to her talk. If the guest showed any reluctance to accept the instant diagnosis, Oprah would jump in with a comment like, "Did you hear what he told you? I mean, did you really hear that?" The implication seemed to be that if you didn't agree, you must not have been listening. There was never discussion of the possibility that other interpretations and diagnoses could be made.

This happened about the time that Oprah apparently decided she was some kind of spiritual leader. The show's opener was changed to give more of a Baptist church feel, and the format was modified to include things like the ever-sappy "Remembering Your Spirit" segment. For this reason, I don't think Oprah automatically backed up everything Dr. Phil said because she idolized him. Rather, I suspect she saw him as a peer, another Great One like herself.

Then of course, there is her decision to put herself on the cover of every issue of her magazine. I was just in the grocery store and I saw the latest issue of O magazine (January 2009) on the rack. To my surprise, there were two people on the cover. My first thought was that Oprah had finally deigned to share her cover with someone else, and that perhaps her ego was not as overinflated as I'd thought.

But when I picked up the magazine, I saw that both people were Oprah. On the left is a slim Oprah in a tummy-exposing white workout suit. On the right is a chubbier Oprah in a purple workout suit that displays only some carefully-arranged cleavage. (Oprah's putting some rack on the rack this month. Sorry, couldn't resist.) The headline: "How did I let this happen again?"

That's right: the only person Oprah has shared her magazine cover with... is herself. OK, there is a reason behind it. She's discussing her weight gain and is illustrating it with contrasting images of herself. But still... once, just once, O magazine features two people on the cover and they're still both Oprah?

On the other hand, Oprah declared this summer that she's tired of being on the cover. So there's hope that she has not crossed some kind of ego Rubicon, from which there is no return.

...But I'll Have a Handicapped Christmas

2008-12-26T15:46:00.014-04:00

I had my second blog topic all planned out, but you know what they say about life happening while you're making other plans.

We had a tremendous snowstorm on Saturday night. This Tuesday, I attempted to walk downtown, but faced my nemesis in the form of a huge ridge that the snowplows had left between the street and the sidewalk. I'd already climbed over two ridges to get that far, and the sidewalk in between them had been plowed, so I naturally assumed that the sidewalk beyond this ridge was also plowed. This was the grandest ridge of all, but I worked my way up it sideways, congratulating myself on my cleverness, and stepped towards the smooth white surface beyond. In midair, too late, it occurred to me that the flat white surface was too high to be a sidewalk. Then I plunged feet-first into powder snow up to my crotch, felt my right foot twist as I hit the sidewalk beneath, and pitched forward chest-first into the snow.

The familiar pain I felt as I struggled to my feet told me I'd twisted my ankle again. This is the second time I've seriously twisted my ankle. I don't want to go into the first time in too much detail, so let's just say it involved a moving vehicle. My ankle had looked as if it had an Idaho potato growing out of it.

I managed on adrenaline to stump all the way back home through the snow. Once home, I checked the foot and found the swelling to be surprisingly small. It seemed disproportionate to the pain; I could not flex my foot or spread my toes. I managed to get around via a bizarre pointed-toe shuffle.

What both incidents of sprain had in common was a feeling of longing for the moments before the injury, which felt so close and yet so unattainable. Had it really been just ten minutes ago that I'd been walking out the door on two strong feet? How come I couldn't get that moment back, correct the mistake, restore my strong and healthy body? It was only ten minutes away.

The next morning, I had a good look at the foot and saw that the ankle was no longer swollen at all. The only swelling was on the actual foot. This made me concerned that I might have broken a bone. James took me to the emergency room at the hospital, where we were lucky enough to be seen within an hour. The doctor told me it couldn't be a broken bone. In the area of the swelling, he explained, the bones are very large. You can't break them unless you, and I quote, "fall off a roof or get in a high-speed car accident." It was a sprain, but in the foot rather than the ankle. He recommended the usual sprain treatment (rest, ice, elevation, compression--often abbreviated to RICE) and we picked up a pair of crutches at a nearby drug store.

Today, I'm much better and can walk around the house comfortably without crutches. We went out for a short walk and I found I did need the crutches for that, what with the uneven ground and the ice.

So I hope that soon I'll be walking and kvetching normally. It's an odd thing about serious injury or illness--you stop complaining. You can't afford to complain because you'll really get yourself down if you do. When things are going relatively well, that's when you can complain, and feel like complaining, about the small things. I think it's one of the ways we seek balance in our lives.