Zach's turn -- happy birthday!

Yup, in an effort to streamline the birthday party thing, my brother and sister-in-law have clustered their children's birthday's at the end of July. A mere year ago, Zachary came into the world, and spent much of his first year with a deeply suspicious and slightly bewildered expression on his face. As you can see from the pictures below, he's lost that bewilderment and is now jumping into the world with both feet. Look at those eyes!

Happy birthday, Zachary!

Supervillain round-up, part the firste

OK, so I'm a little late on this post, having let a week and a half go by since seeing The Dark Knight without posting my review. Suffice to say, I was blown away (and apparently inspired to rhyme cheesily and inadvertently). If you haven't seen it yet, everything you've heard hyped is true, especially about Heath Ledger's sublimely chilling performance.

Do I need to offer a spoilers warning?

More on Heath in a moment, because I first need to cite the all-around strong cast: Maggie Gyllenhal as Rachel Dawes is a welcome change from Katie Holmes (would that we could have had Maggie in Batman Begins!); she plays the role with just enough snark and steel, and a very subtle pathos as well. Morgan Freeman and Michael Caine, the elder statesmen of the film, bring gravitas to what would otherwise be merely functional characters. Gary Oldman, unlike in Begins, is given some nice moments on screen.

It's perhaps a bit of a cruel irony that, having gotten the exposition out of the way in Batman Begins, Batman (or rather, "the Batman"), tends to be the least interesting character present. And with more dialogue than in the previous film, Christian Bale's hard-boiled rasp when in the cowl gets really irritating after a while. That being said, I still think Bale's the best Batman we've had yet -- if for no other reason that his moments as Bruce Wayne are so well drawn.

But I do think that one of the things that most impressed me about The Dark Knight was Aaron Eckhart's performance as Harvey Dent, later transformed into the villain Two-Face. The more I think about it, the more impressed I am, largely because Dent is presented in the film as a pretty one-dimensional character, and possesses some of the most stilted dialogue--as well as having some of the cheesiest things said about him (yeah, he's the white knight, as opposed to ... what was that other type of knight, again?)--in what is otherwise a pretty solid script. What's impressive is that Eckhart overcomes the poor hand he's been dealt in the script, and brings to Harvey Dent a depth and sympathy that few actors could accomplish with those raw materials. All of which makes his transformation to Two-Face the more poignant.

If I have a broad criticism for the film, it's that it tries to cram too much in. Dent's descent into insanity and subsequent criminal career as an agent of violent chance should have been the substance of the next film. As it was, having spent nearly two hours dealing with the gleeful machinations of the Joker, the film feels as though it does a somewhat uncomfortable shift and we get a hurried half-hour dispatching the Harvet Dent story. It felt tacked on: though done well for all that and containing some of the best moments of the film (this was where Gary Oldman's aforementioned acting moments appeared), it was a waste of such a subtly realized character.

But back to the best part of the film: with Heath Ledger, we get a raw, terrifying Joker, all the more frightening for his complete unpredictability, but also for the fact that as capricious as he is, he always has a plan. He's like Richard III, without the superego. Ledger's performance is also oddly restrained: whatever the temptation in playing such a character to chew the scenery (I'm looking at you, Jack), he's at his most frightening when he's quietest. I think the moment that sums it up best for me is just a brief instant when, upon seeing the batmobile for the first time as it causes some carnage to his henchmen, the Joker's head swivels to follow its path ... and he utters a interested "Hmm." In that moment, we see his mind take this new element in stride, curious but not shaken; it's a very subtle counterpoint to Jack Nicholson's oft-quoted "Where does he get such wonderful toys?"

That being said, I think that comparing the Christopher Nolan Batman with the Tim Burton Batman (we'll conveniently forget Joel Schummacher's attempts, shall we?) is a bit of a fallacy. It's like trying to compare apples and Vespa scooters. Both are great artistic accomplishments, and both changed the nature of the superhero film. And both have iconic moments: the shot of Heath Ledger's Joker dressed as a nurse walking through a hospital parking lot as the hospital explodes behind him will one day find itself on the cover of a film studies textbook.


BUT .... from the sublime to the ridiculous:

In what has to rank in the top five idiotic op-ed pieces I've ever encountered, Andrew Klavan writes in The Wall Street Journal "What Bush and Batman Have in Common." Seriously:

"The Dark Knight, currently breaking every box office record in history, is at some level a paean of praise to the fortitude and moral courage that has been shown by George W. Bush in this time of terror and war. Like W, Batman is vilified and despised for confronting terrorists in the only terms they understand. Like W, Batman sometimes has to push the boundaries of civil rights to deal with an emergency, certain that he will re-establish those boundaries when the emergency is past."

I'm honestly at a bit of a loss as to how to approach this, other than to repeat, Are you kidding me? Are you kidding me? First of all, I'm not entirely certain what film Mr. Klavan was watching, but I'm pretty sure it wasn't the same one I was. What is brilliant about Nolan's treatment here is, in part, a return to the central paradox of the Batman mythology: that he and the Joker are two sides of the same coin, that the Batman's vigilantism has less to do with altruism than his own borderline psychosis -- he fights the way he does as a means of confronting his own demons, and as a result is always already ambivalent about their methods and effects. Secondly, the "need" for vigilantism in The Dark Knight has less to do with an extraordinary enemy than with the fact that the system itself is corrupt and broken. The Batman is an acceptable ally to Chief Gordon and Harvey Dent because they know they simply cannot trust any of their own people.

Thirdly, while the Joker is undoubtedly a terrorist, he is no ideologue -- except insofar as anarchy and chaos are the basis of an ideology. Part of his glee lies in forcing people into situations where they make choices that dehumanize them. One of the great pivot-points of the story is the Joker's version of the Prisoner's Dilemma: two ferries dead in the water, wired with explosives, each of them with a detonator that will blow the other ship up. If neither ferry blows the other up by a certain point, the Joker will destroy them both. On one ferry, normal civillians; on the other, hardened criminals being transported. The point of the episode is that both ships choose humanity, much to the Joker's puzzlement and disappointment. Which choice do you think the Bush Administration have made, given their systematic dehumanization of detainees at Guantanamo Bay and Abu Ghraib? (For the record, the orange jumpsuits worn by the prisoners made my mind jump to Gitmo while watching).

Sigh. Here's a few more choice tidbits:

"The Dark Knight, then, is a conservative movie about the war on terror. And like another such film, last year's 300, The Dark Knight is making a fortune depicting the values and necessities that the Bush administration cannot seem to articulate for beans."

"Why is it then that left-wingers feel free to make their films direct and realistic, whereas Hollywood conservatives have to put on a mask in order to speak what they know to be the truth?"

"Leftists frequently complain that right-wing morality is simplistic. Morality is relative, they say; nuanced, complex. They're wrong, of course."

"And when our artistic community is ready to show that sometimes men must kill in order to preserve life; that sometimes they must violate their values in order to maintain those values; and that while movie stars may strut in the bright light of our adulation for pretending to be heroes, true heroes often must slink in the shadows, slump-shouldered and despised -- then and only then will we be able to pay President Bush his due and make good and true films about the war on terror."


I think my favourite moment is when he cites 300 as an exemplar of "the values and necessities" needed to fight terrorism. I hope Bush reads this and realizes he's only got a few more months in which he can kick the Iranian ambassador into a well.

I read this column incredulously, wondering what the hell has happened to The Wall Street Journal that this kind of tripe gets printed? And then I remembered: Rupert Murdoch bought it.
Speaking of people who need to be kicked into a well.

The President that might have been

Watch this. Please.



This is exactly the kind if call to arms that Roosevelt issued when he said "There is nothing to fear but fear itself," and when Kennedy said "Ask not what your country can do for you -- ask what you can do for your country." It heartens me that Stephane Dion seems to be working in the same vein.

When did we become so afraid of vision? Of big answers to big problems?

Happy Birthday, Morgan!

My wee niece Morgan turns 3 today, which seems impossible to me ... I'm pretty sure it was just yesterday that she was a tiny little loaf wrapped up in a hospital sheet. And look at her now!

Happy birthday, Miss Morgan! I'm so sorry I can't be there to celebrate #3 with you ....

Things I considered posting these last two and a half months

Oops, there went a week without a post. Did I worry you, my last three or four readers? Well, I won't make extravagant promises about returning to the old frequency with which I posted once upon a time, but I'll try to maintain a minimum of one post a week. Hopefully that will get me back into the blogging habit.

At any rate, my online silence didn't come about for lack of postings. Quite frequently topics presented themselves to me, but as a result of busyness, ennui, or simple laziness -- all coupled with the blog-killing tendencies of Facebook (damn you, Facebook!) -- these posting ideas receded into the horizon of my thoughts, finally becoming old news-enough that it felt odd to waste electrons on them.

So here's the Coles Notes, then -- all the stuff in a nutshell that was on my mind since the beginning of April. There's more than this, actually ... these are just the greatest hits, as it were.


1. Puffins, Icebergs, and my Mom.

My lovely mother visited me for a week in mid-May and was treated, much to my chagrin, to some of the most frigid May weather I've ever experienced here. She was also treated, much to her delight, to the biggest crop of icebergs in recent memory. Everywhere we drove, as long as we could see the ocean, we could see icebergs. To cap it all off, we drove down to Ferryland one day (the weather had mercifully warmed somewhat), and walked the trail past a massive grounded berg; and then drove to Bay Bulls and took the O'Brien's boat tour to get up close and personal with the ice ... and see puffins. Which, I must add, are the most comical of animals, even edging out penguins and ducks. Watching them try to take off from the water and end up skipping like stones while trying to get their speed up counts as one of the most hilarious experiences of my life.



2. My Father, the (Not-so-Ancient) Mariner

While my mother was visiting the Rock and bundling up against the cold, my father was in St. Maarten in the Caribbean preparing to sail with some friends to New York City. A friend of my parents, a member of the same yacht club as them, has been tooling around the Caribbean with his wife on their 36-foot sailboat for a few years. Unfortunately, the wife's health has deteriorated, precluding further shipboard life ... leaving the husband with the task of bringing the boat home. Enter my dad and two other sailor friends, who agreed to help. For somewhere in the neighbourhood of four weeks they sailed north, with a stop in Bermuda, braving everything from Coleridge-esque doldrums ("Down dropt the breeze, the sails dropt down, / 'Twas sad as sad could be, / And we did speak only the break / The silence of the sea") to a few genuine Atlantic gales. Said my father when all was done, he was happy he was able to do this ... and now, he'll never do it again.


3. The Endless Democratic Primary

Yeah, I'm not saying any more than that. I'm just happy we're on to the next stage.


4. My First Time as External Examiner

Back in, oh, April I think, I got an email from Kristen saying that Tim Blackmore -- a friend, and professor of Media Studies at Western in the faculty she works in -- had been casually asking her about when I might be visiting London this summer. I had just booked a flight for late June, but she couldn't remember the dates exactly, so she suggested I email him directly. This I did, telling him when I'd be in town. And received this response, in I think minutes (those who know Tim will recognize his markedly calm and retiring manner): "AHA AHA!!! I want to borrow you, son, for a verrrrry important, important I say, defense! (Some Foghorn rolled in last night)."

The long and short of it was, Tim needed someone as an external on a Masters thesis he had advised, and given that there is no money available for Masters' externals for travel &c, the fact that I would be conveniently in town anyway rocketed me to the top of the list (hey, it's an honour just being nominated).

I was, needless to say, quite delighted to be asked -- it was my first external examination, the thesis looked cool, and I was happy to do a favour for someone I hold in high estimation both professionally and otherwise. The thesis in question, "Augmented Ability, Integrated Identity: Understanding Sapienism, Adaptive Technology, and the Construction of Disability," was written by a quite remarkable student named Jeffrey Preston, whose muscular dystrophy has confined him to a wheelchair since a young age. Did I say confined? I mean he has been liberated by his wheelchair, a technological device that gives him a freedom of mobility he would not otherwise have. His thesis very thoughtfully reconsiders the cultural values and stereotypes attached to disability, and focuses on the way in which dystopian narratives of technology actually contribute to the negative perception of such devices as wheelchairs. Suffice it to say, it was a remarkable piece of work for someone that early in his academic career.


5. Rachael Ray: Terrorist

This one's my favourite.

You are probably familiar with that annoyingly saccharine Food Network personality Rachael Ray; what you might not know is that she's a terrorist sympathizer. In addition to her other (too many) appearances on television, Ray has been schilling for Dunkin' Donuts. In an ad for some iced coffee product or other, she is wearing a patterned scarf. Conservative pundette and blogger Michelle Malkin -- who now has the dubious distinction of being slightly more insane than Anne Coulter -- posted on her blog that the scarf in question is in fact a "keffiyeh" of the sort routinely worn by Arab men (Yasser Arafat would be the most obvious example here). OK ... I can see the resemblence ... but Malkin, making with the insane, goes further to note that this is an example of "jihadi chic" and "hate couture," and that she hopes Ray's fashion choice "was spurred more by ignorance than ideology."

Seriously? Seriously. Malkin later defended her comments by claiming that western designers have deliberately marketed such scarves as statements of solidarity with Palestinians. Even if this is true -- and I deem it highly suspect -- the easy conflation of Arab=terrorist, or sympathy with Palestine=support of Hamas is rhetoric of the worst, and laziest, kind. As one person commenting on this idiocy mildly observed, "what about all the Arab men who wear the keffiyeh who aren't terrorists?" Let me dig that particular ration out of my notes .... (Incidentally, once of my students wore a nearly identical scarf to class this week. I congratulated her on bringing America one step closer to destruction).

What makes matters worse is that, in an act of cowardice that makes the Lion in The Wizard of Oz look like John Wayne, Dunkin' Donuts pulled the ad. I wish we had one in St. John's so I could boycott it.

When irony fails

So this morning I was contemplating a return to blogging here after my rather unintentional hiatus, rolling around a tongue-and-cheek entry about the controversy over the recent The New Yorker cover, in which Barack Obama is depicted in Islamic regalia and his wife Michelle in circa-1968 Blank Panther gear. I was considering writing a mock-serious constitutional discussion saying that conservatives afraid that Obama's secretly a radical Muslim shouldn't worry, because while he'll certainly convert the executive branch to Wahabism, he'll have difficulty getting around the separation of powers to do the same to the legislative branch ... and indeed that the sheer difficulty of getting the senate to confirm his jihadist cabinet and Supreme Court nominees would effectively bog down his administration for pretty much the entirety of his first term.


Or something to that effect. Anyway, I was kicking this around in my head as I walked back from the student center with my lunch, only to sit down at my computer to see this: in an online poll conducted by WorldNetDaily, 59% of respondents said the image "isn't too far from the dangerous truth about the Obama family."


America, meet satire. Satire, meet America.


Of course, given that WorldNetDaily is an online forum that stands slightly to the right of Genghis Khan, this should not come as a surprise. What bothers me is that a lot of people on the left, including the Obama campaign -- which called the cover "tasteless and offensive" -- are taking offense at what is very obviously a satirical answer to the right-wing attacks on Obama's patriotism (why doesn't he wear a flag pin??), his wife (do we really want a militant black First Lady??), and of course the ongoing harping on his middle name and repeated suggestion that he's secretly a Muslim ... right down to their adorable little fist bump, labelled on Fox News as a "terrorist fist jab." Um ... what?


Part of my annoyance here is fueled by my increasingy frustration with what seems to be Obama's gradual shrinking from the kind of principled stands he started with. He's wearing the lapel pin now ... honestly, the presence or lack of which should never have been a story, never mind a major issue, but once it did he was going to get grief over it either way -- if he didn't wear it, he wasn't patriotic, and if he did, he was a flip-flopper. So why not leave it off? But no ... I swear to god, if he dresses up in camo and goes hunting a la John Kerry, I'm pitching myself off signal hill. (Incidentally, scrutinize the picture of John McCain here: do you see a flag pin? I guess he hates America, too).


I won't catalogue any of the other ways in which Obama has started pandering, reversing positions, and otherwise lurching to the right -- lord knows, you can pick all that up from conservative pundits gleefully fitting the senator out for a pair of flip-flops.

No, I'm just disappointed that his campaign felt compelled to respond to The New Yorker with the language of offense when this was a golden opportunity to rise above the fray like he has at times in the past: to point out that this is satire, and to further note the simplistic thought that underwrites the assumptions being satirized -- that Michelle Obama's ostensible lack of "pride" in America translates into black militancy, that a reluctance to be a jingoistic flag-waver translates into a hatred of country, that being Muslim translates into extremism. I would dearly love to hear Obama stand up and say, "I am not offended that people think I may be Muslim. But I am offended, as all Americans should be, by the suggestion that being Muslim necessarily makes you a potential terrorist. It's the equivalent of seeing every rural Midwesterner as a potential Timothy McVeigh."

Because, really, that's what The New Yorker is saying -- it's pointing to the absurdity and indeed stupidity of that mode of thought.

I suppose Jonathan Swift is lucky he's not writing today. Half the readers of "A Modest Proposal" would try to get him arrested, and the other half would be eagerly flicking on the Food Network in hopes of picking up some recipes.

Art therapy

I've started painting. I'd toyed for some time with the idea of dabbling with paint and canvas, not in any serious capacity, but as a hobby. The original idea was to try my hand at abstract stuff, not ever having had any talent for drawing; I figured it would be a good stress reducer -- it was about time I found a new hobby -- and that I might actually end up with a painting or two that might look good on my walls.

I've been at it for nearly two months now, and I've been surprised at how much I enjoy it. There is something deeply satisfying about sitting at my dining room table in the evenings with the stereo or TV on, and experimenting with different images and techniques (you only realize just how talented the impressionists were when you try to replicate what they did with colour), and having finished products that aren't half bad. They're not half good either, but I have produced a few things I've been happy to put on my walls.

I've also discovered a few things:
(1) people are reaaaaaaaaaaally hard to paint
(2) I quite enjoy, and am actually fairly good at, painting fish
(3) abstract expressionism is harder than you'd think
(4) living in Newfoundland stimulates the impulse to paint landscapes
(5) I have a bias toward compositions that juxtapose unlike elements
(6) buying painting supplies can become addictive

Anyway, here are a few of the pieces I'm happy with.

Ad ahistoricum

This little gem from the most Reverend John Hagee, evangelist, on Glenn Beck's show:

Anti-Semitism is an oxymoron. An anti-Semite is someone who is driven by hate ... a Christian is someone who's driven by love. Therefore, there's no such thing as a Christian anti-Semite.

Just a little reminder of how history has a way of messing up our tidy little syllogisms.

Buckley and Fraser, R.I.P.

Sorry for yet another protracted absence from the humble blog ... I looked at the calendar today and thought that perhaps I should have at least one February post, if for no other reason than to make sure there are no gaps in the monthly archive to the right.

Today I pay tribute to two writers, the first who died just recently and the other whose eulogy I've been meaning to write since the beginning of January.

Those of you familiar with my politics might be a bit surprised that I find myself compelled to say a few words about William F. Buckley Jr., who died yesterday at the age of 82. Indeed, I am a little surprised myself -- as the writer, thinker and pundit largely credited with being "the ground zero of the conservative" movement in the second half of the twentieth century, and who can be partially credited with (among other things) the cultural groundswell that paved the way for Reagan's presidency and, ultimately, George W. Bush's, it perhaps goes without saying that I vehemently disagree with pretty much anything he ever said or wrote. Besides being one of the most inveterate opponents of New Deal politics ever fielded by the right wing, he had a tendency at times toward rather breathtaking equanimity in the face of violence and tyranny -- such as in his unequivocal celebration of Spain's dictator Franco or Chile's Pinochet, as well as his enthusiasm for Joseph McCarthy in the 1950s (something he never relinquished over the course of his life). Or take, for example, this 1957 editorial in which he asserts the necessity of white minorities in the South to assert their dominance, violently if necessary:

The central question that emerges ... is whether the White community in the South is entitled to take such measures as are necessary to prevail, politically and culturally, in areas in which it does not predominate numerically? The sobering answer is Yes—the White community is so entitled because, for the time being, it is the advanced race …Sometimes it becomes impossible to assert the will of a minority, in which case it must give way; and the society will regress; sometimes the numerical minority cannot prevail except by violence: then it must determine whether the prevalence of its will is worth the terrible price of violence.*

Given these positions held by Buckley during his life, why do I feel compelled to pay tribute to him? Because however infuriated I might be made by his politics, I have to give credit to a thinker and writer who, for the most part, was unfailingly eloquent, intelligent and forceful in his rhetoric (the above egregious example notwithstanding). To be fair, I doubt I would be so inclined to speak of him in this way were there more figures of his ilk still around today; but when the likes of William Kristol is held up (by the New York Times, no less) as a bastion of intellectual, scholarly conservatism, and pundits like Anne Coulter, Bill O'Reilly and Rush Limbaugh hold the public discourse hostage to deliberate misdirection, buffoonery and one-note screeds, I find myself becoming nostalgic for the Buckleys and Wills and Safires of bygone days. I have known a significant number of highly intelligent and thoughtful conservatives in my life, and I know that my own liberalism has only benefited from discussions and arguments with them ... far more than agreement-fests with like-minded leftists. To paraphrase The Simpsons, in those cases my neck gets sore from nodding so much.

The only person on the public stage who comes close these days is Christopher Hitchens, but even he has been in a long slow slide into, well, insanity with his continued bloody-minded defense of the Iraq debacle. However, at least his writing (a) is extremely polished and readable, and (b) articulates a clear argument that (usually) gets the facts right ... even if it interprets them in what I see as a totally baffling manner. Conversely, when reading Kristol's columns in the NY Times, I grow weary both of his inane prose and his consistent wrongness. Here is someone who has been the premier cheerleader for the neoconservative movement and has been wrong on pretty much ever single prediction or assessment, be it on Iraq, Afghanistan, U.S. politics, or for that matter the historical record (for a good run-down of Kristol's gaffes, go here). And this is what qualifies as the "intellectual" wing of conservatism? Please.

R.I.P., William F. Buckley. I disagree with everything you ever said or wrote, but at least you said and wrote it well, and on accasion it gave me food for thought. Also, you once threatened to punch Noam Chomsky in the face -- a sentiment that, however much I admire the Chomster, I have occasionally felt myself.


Also mourned in today's post is the amazing George McDonald Fraser, the brilliant mind behind the character of Harry Flashman -- cad, bounder, coward, womanizer, and historical protagonist extraordinaire (Flashman, that is, not Fraser). Between 1969 with the publication of Flashman and his death on January 2 of this year, Fraser wrote twelve novels following the scandalous career of his eponymous hero (about whom I have blogged previously here), as well as numerous other books, both fiction and non-. The Flashman novels are historical fiction as practised by a master: interpolating a brilliantly conceived fictional observer into scrupulously and vividly recreated historical contexts -- fiction that teaches you about history even as you can't put it down. Fraser genuinely realized Horace's definition of literature as that which "delights and instructs." And I'm not certain whether it is disrespectful or a hearfelt testament to say that I a most devastated here at the realization that I will never now be able to read those adventures of Flashman hinted at in the extant but now lost forever ... and that when I reach Flashman on the March, the most recent of the narratives, there will be no more forthcoming.

Flashy, we'll miss ye. George McDonald Fraser, R.I.P.

-----------------

*Quoted by Paul Krugman in The Conscience of a Liberal.

News items from the Rock

The Fog Devils are moving to Quebec, so St. John's has lost its hockey team. AGAIN.

A motorist spotted Premier Danny Williams talking on his cell phone while driving, which is illegal in Newfoundland, and reported him to the police. Danny copped to the charge, offering to pay whatever fine is levied. Equal and opposite outcries of "Obey the law, Danny!" and "Stop picking on Danny!" can be heard across the province. I personally want an investigation into why our millionaire premier, who presumably spends a significant amount of time on the phone, has not been introduced to bluetooth technology.

Temperature in St. John's went from -15 on Tuesday to +3 and rainy yesterday with a new dump of snow in between. It was back down to -5 this morning, which meant that my street was effectively a slushy ice rink with an incline.

Dear stupid studio execs:

Your refusal to recognize the absolutely fundamental role played by writers in the creation of ... well, everything, is as idiotic as it is baffling. They are the plankton in the entertainment food chain, but do not deserve to be treated like the tiny organisms to your whales. I hope you can't make the payments on your Escalades because of the budgetary shortfall.

More importantly, your bloody-mindedness is making a mockery of the money I'm spending on digital cable. So pay the writers what they want or I'm sending my cat's last dozen hairballs in the mail to you.

Meanwhile, across the hall from my office ...

I'm beginning to suspect a conspiracy of various forces to keep me away from my office. A benevolent conspiracy, to be sure, but still ...

I believe the term for the irrational belief that there is a conspiracy to do you good is "pro-noia."

Lazy Sunday

Falling back into bad habits

OK, so I fell off the wagon blog-wise over the holidays this year. It was inevitable, though, given the huge volume of nothing I was managing to do while back in Ontario ... inactivity of that scale and scope really takes concentration.


So to sum up my holidays: Christmas? Excellent. Santa? Generous. Weather? Cold. Fireplace? Warm. Booze? Plentiful. Food? Yummy. TV? Lots. Family? Lovely. Niece? Adorably hilarious. Nephew? Laughing. Girlfriend? Beautiful. New Year's Resolutions? Yeah, right.


That's about it. I'm currently dotting my t's and crossing my i's for my first few classes and so will cut the first post of 2008 short, but not without posting this brilliant photo of Morgan posing with my brother's new Guitar Hero hardware.



Morgan, we who are about to rock salute you.


Happy new year, everyone!

Thoughts on shovels and pipes and the joys of home ownership

"You shovel like a champion ... but that doesn't make you a superhero."
--Mystery Men

Well, I beg to differ ....

In case we weren't sure before, winter decided to make its presence rather emphatically known yesterday, and I was treated to my inaugural digging-out-the-car-after-the-plough-has-been-past.

Conflicting thoughts running through my head as I spent over an hour bending my back to the task: "Good thing I don't have a nine o'clock class this morning"; "Why couldn't this happen when I have a nine o'clock class I could cancel?"

Ah well ... next term, I'm sure there will be a number of cancellation opportunities. I suppose I could make a point of getting up an hour earlier, but that doesn't seem likely.

Thought running through my head this morning when I saw that the plough had deposited a fresh load of snow against my car: "Sysiphus had it easy."

Still, I was quite proud of my shovelling, and made a point of taking some before and after pictures.

Further contradictory thoughts running through my head mid-shovelling: "Wow, I really need to get back to the gym." "If this happens frequently, I'll never need to go to the gym again."


And in the category of "Sometimes Stupidity Reaps Unexpected Benefits": When I came outside to take the "after" photos, I accidentally locked myself out of the house. D'oh! But fortunately my neighbour with my spare key was home. My front door has proved difficult of late, not accepting the key when it freezes up; not wishing to stand outside with my hands over the doorknob until it thawed, I let myself in through my back door.

My back door leads into my sun room, which is not well insulated. I opened the door to an odd hissing noise. Then I saw the water pooled on the floor. Then I saw the burst pipe near the floor that was gushing water about a foot up the wall. Then I dissolved in despair and panic.

Thoughts running through my head upon seeing the burst pipe: "Fuck fuck fuck fuck fuck fuck fuck."

Locking myself out was actually a stroke of luck ... I'd been planning at that point to leave for the day, and conceivably would not have noticed the burst pipe for hours.

My sunroom has a door in the floor that leads down to my basement/crawlspace, which is also where the shutoff valve is ... which, as I discovered, lacks a knob but is instead a short piece of metal with stripped threading. The water at this point was cascading down in a rather impressive waterfall that I had to duck through several times to get the water shut off.

Interesting mathematical equation: sweat from exertion of shovelling + uninsulated room + cold water + 1.5 hours of heavy shovelling = really really sore back this morning.

I took a picture for posterity's sake, but it unfortunately doesn't show the water well. If you look closely you can see the ripples in the deep puddle at the base of the stairs.



At any rate, I guess you could say it was an eventful day, with several important lessons -- the first one being, keep the heater on in the sun room, however much more I'll be spending on my hydro bill this winter.

The second one is that I should have become a plumber. $160 for five minutes work replacing the pipe. I'm tempted to calculate what my hourly wage worked out to this past semester, but I think it will just make me depressed.

Another great thing about CBC One ...

... is that occasionally you flip it on in the car to join it mid-sentence. Such as this evening, when I heard:

" ... a study to ascertain why pregnant women are so difficult to tip over."

I love the human-interest pot-pourri that our national broadcaster treats us to.


Said study, as it turned out, was to come at the end of a program, and I missed it while having dinner with friends. If I may speculate on the study's findings, however: "After lengthy clinical trials, scientists have concluded that weebles wobble, but they don't fall down."

The saga of the backhoe

One of the greatest changes wrought in my daily life in moving from an apartment into my own house has been the banishment of television to the fringes of my day. Instead of putting the television set in the living room downstairs, I put it in the third bedroom upstairs. The upshot of this rather simple shift is that I watch far less television, simply by dint of the fact that it is no longer the center of my principal living space.

In both the two-bedroom condo I rented for my first two years here in St. John's and the one-bedroom apartment I lived in for my last few years in London, I had open-concept kitchens and a living space that centered around the living room. Not being someone fond of silence while making dinner or otherwise puttering around the apartment, the TV tended to be on a lot -- not necessarily something I was focused on or even paying more than passing attention, but still an inescapable presence. It was particularly bad at my condo on LeMarchant here in St. John's, especially after the busier parts of the semester when I'd get home and become one with my couch.

Since moving into the house and banishing the TV to the upstairs, I have replaced the drone of the tube with CBC Radio One ... and let me tell you, I don't think I have had more entertainment from any medium than when I have taken days to work at home and followed the various building news stories from across Newfoundland -- the most recent of which was the saga of the ATM robbery that recently occurred just outside St. John's by Paddy's Pond, in which the entire machine was lifted and carted off.

The hourly news updates kept me posted as the day went on, from the initial report of the missing ATM as I had my morning coffee, to speculations an hour later on how an ATM could be stolen, with various theories being advanced. One report noted that there had been a backhoe stolen somewhere on Kenmount Road ... could there be a connection? And then! Some time just before lunch, it was reported that a backhoe had been discovered partially submerged in the Manuels River. The RNC (Royal Newfoundland Constabulary) acknowledged that it might be the backhoe stolen from Kenmount Road, and might well also be the tool used to steal the ATM ... but the spokesman demurred any further speculation, stating firmly that at the present moment, there was no solid evidence to connect the abandoned backhoe to either theft.

See, this is why we need a CSI: Newfoundland. I suggest Rick Mercer in the Gil Grissom role, with Mary Walsh as his Number Two and Shaun Majumder as the geeky put-upon lab tech. But only if it could air on CBC Radio One.

December

We had our first messy winter day yesterday ... not a massive dump of snow, but still enough to remind me of a key lesson of the Newfoundland winter: always have whatever work you need to be doing on you.

I woke up yesterday to a white neighbourhood and the sound of the wind blowing the snow sideways. It would have been a perfect day to work at home, to make coffee and camp out at the dining room table with my ongoing stack of marking ... except that I'd left that in the office. Ack. So I slogged up to campus, but quickly turned around again when all I could see was white out my office window. I have learned from hard experience that when visibility goes down to zero, it is best to vacate the office before the snow accumulates to levels best negotiated by tracked vehicles. Fortunately, it did not come to that -- the weather was clearing by the time I got home -- but it was pleasant to spend the rest of the day at the dining room table with tea and comfort food to take the edge off the grading process.

I should add that we got off easy in St. John's. The Bonavista Penninsula got absolutely creamed by a blizzard that knocked out electricity, and kept it out for over twenty-four hours -- and in some places, it's still not up and running. So I don't think I'll complain (much) about the few inches of snow I shovelled off my walk this morning.

Deep, deep disappointment ...

About half a dozen of my students are currently on exchange in England at our campus at Harlow. They make frequent day trips into London, and I ask you, none of them was there for this:


U2 play surprise gig in London
Band dust off rare track for acoustic show
NME, November 23, 2007

U2's Bono and The Edge played a surprise gig tonight (November 23) at London's Union Chapel. Playing as part of Mencap's Little Noise Sessions, the duo surprised the audience with a four song set which included rare track 'Wave Of Sorrow'. The identity of the 'special guests' was shrouded in mystery when introduced by host Jo Whiley as "a new band with a lot of potential: "Dave the guitarist is very nervous...If he makes a mistake forgive him, he's new. The singer is very shy."

The band opened with 'Zooropa' track 'Stay (Faraway, So Close)' with Bono reading the lyrics off a sheet on a music stand. The singer changed the lyrics: "You can go anywhere/ Miami, New Orleans, London, Belfast and Berlin" to " You can go anywhere / Miami, New Orleans, Belfast and Islington," which was met by roars of approval from the crowd. After the track finished The Edge said : "I hope you like our new direction."

Launching into 'Desire', Bono ad libbed parts of INXS' 'Need You Tonight' into the track. He sang the lyrics "I've got to let you know / You're one of my kind." He started clapping before taking out a harmonica to play on the track's distinctive finish. Bono introduced 'Angel Of Harlem' by saying : "This is our only Christmas song." After a false start which saw the singer sing the start of 'Like A Rolling Stone' by Bob Dylan over The Edge's riff, the duo continued.

Bono then introduced the next track by saying : "So about 20 years ago we started a tune on 'The Joshua Tree' and yesterday we just finished it. This song is based on the experiences that my lovely wife Ali had in Ethiopia. You forget that this was the land of the Queen Of Sheeba...I was 25 and it was an extraordinary time to be there ... It was an overwhelming experience. This (song) has never been played before. Just don't tell Larry (Mullen) and Adam (Clayton) we're doing it ... Oh Adam's here! This is for you sir."

They played 'Wave Of Sorrow' with The Edge playing the keyboards. Bono said : "Thanks for being so generous," and The Edge said: "I hope you didn't notice there were a few mistakes but I was told that was okay...I felt the love."


I am deeply, deeply disappointed that none of my students serendipitously happened to be at exactly the right place at exactly the right time to witness something I had no idea was happening to watch a band they probably don't like and send me pictures.

Obviously, I have failed in my pedagogical mission to inculcate young minds with a nigh-clairvoyant obsession with U2 that allows them to sense when and where the band will play surprise gigs. So much for getting tenure, now.

Adventures in the local cuisine

It's been a comfort food type of weekend here in St. John's, with a grey and rainy saturday and a bright but cold sunday, the kind of weekend where I spend more time in my pyjamas than not. And while in an ideal situation that entails sitting in front of a fireplace with a favourite book, I alas have no fireplace and instead have a mountain of essays to grade. It is probably good that I do not have the former when I have the latter. (To any of my students stumbling across this blog entry: that was a joke. I hardly, hardly EVER think about burning essays. Hardly.)

Still, it is very pleasant to lounge around the house on a chilly sunday when dinner is cooking away in the crock pot over a slow nine hours. I love my slow cooker. I camped out at the dining room table all day with the aforementioned stack of grading and multiple pots of tea while the stew I prepared at ten o'clock this morning filled the house with its savoury, peppery fragrance (I like pepper in my stews).



The above picture, alas, doesn't do my stew justice ... in fact, it looks a little gross. I need smell-o-vision.

At seven pm the buzzer went off and I ladled out a bowl of one of my favourite comfort foods for a cold evening, beef stew. And to get just the exact measure of comfort, it must be served on top of a slice of white bread (the kind that's really bad for you -- I'm talking wonderbread here), with a second slice put aside to sop up the juices after.

But the carb level in this stew was somewhat higher than usual, thanks to the addition of a local ingredient I bought recently on a whim and have been since stumped as to how to use it. I'm referring here to hard bread, or "brewis," a staple of the traditional Newfoundland cuisine left over from the days before refridgeration.

Now, I have to explain something: I have now read a respectable number of novels of Newfoundland historical fiction, and one of the recurrent meals mentioned is "salt fish and brewis." I think it's one of those things you have to include (a lot) if you want to be seen as writing authentic historical fiction about Newfoundland. And when I walk past Velma's Restaurant on Water Street, a homey little eatery specializing in traditional Newfoundland fare, "fish and brewis" is there on the menu (alongside the cod tongues, jigs dinner, lassy mogs and figgy duff ... no, don't ask).

The trouble is, I've never had any frickin' clue what "brewis" is, and I certainly never connected it with the bright red bags labelled "Purity Hard Bread" that are ubiquitous in all the grocery stores here.* That was, until I bought a bag out of sheer curiosity.



Now let's be clear on something: to call this product "hard bread" is misleading. Really, to be accurate, it should be named "rock bread" or "titanium bread" and come with warnings that this product should never never be used as a weapon, for it might cause serious harm.



I've read enough C.S. Forester novels to know that the British Navy subsisted on hard biscuit that they would have to dip in water to make them even gnaw-on-able, but my first attempt to nibble on a piece of Purity hard bread probably would have led to an emergency dentist's visit had I persisted. Happily, the instructions are pretty clearly and neatly laid out on the bag: break up bread into smaller chunks (I have, fortunately, a very serviceable cleaver), and soak overnight (at least) in water. Keeping them in the soaking water, bring them to a near boil -- but stopping short of an actual boil. Salt and pepper to taste.

See, here's the thing: they were kind of yummy. I was pleasantly surprised. Even after sixteen hours of soaking and then being nearly boiled, there was substance enough to the bread to be al dente, and while bland in and of themselves, a little salt and pepper -- and, I discovered, a few dashes of white vinegar -- made for a nice snack. Now, the full preparation as described on the bag called for the preparation of scrunchions, another traditional Newfoundland dish -- fried pieces of pork fat -- along with a gravy made from the drippings, plus the requisite salt fish.

I don't know if I'm ready for that yet. The pork fat gravy, maybe, but my preferred way to eat salt cod is fried in a fish cake or in a fish chowder.

HOWEVER ... While preparing the stew this morning, it occurred to me that hard bread, broken up sufficiently small, might make for a nice addition to the stew's broth -- sort of like dumplings, but with a bit more substance. And what do you know? Nine hours of simmering sped up the soaking process, and the bread absorbed the broth to become very flavourful ... it almost made my requisite slices of white bread redundant. Almost.

Sometimes when I think of my alternative academic paths, I imagine I might have become a military history. On days like today, I think perhaps a food anthropologist ... like so much else here in Newfoundland, the traditional cuisine speaks more powerfully to a concrete, lived history than almost anywhere else I have ever been. Hard bread, or "hard tack" as it's also called, is of course a holdover from the days when baking aboard ship was simply impossible. Brewis (which gets its name from the process of breaking it up for soaking, or "bruising" the bread) would not spoil for weeks, indeed months. And in a place of deep, isolating winters, a large stock of hard bread would keep a family in good stead for a very long time. That it is still so ubiquitous in massive corporate grocery chains here makes me happy.

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*A note for mainlanders: "Purity" is a traditional Newfoundland company specializing in baked goods, of which hard bread is merely one of many offerings. Walking into a Dominion Superstore here is pretty much like walking into one anywhere in Canada, which is why I'm always cheered when, upon walking down the cookies & crackers aisle, I am presented with a wide span of shelves all in the trademark deep red of the Purity products, such as the "Jam-Jams" and their quite excellent cream crackers. It is the grocery store equivalent of walking into a liquor store here and seeing an entire wall given over to Lamb's Rum. Seriously.