We need a law requiring restaurants in Canada to label their bathrooms either “MEN / WOMEN” or “HOMMES / FEMMES”. Period.
I hate it when restaurants get cute with the signs on their Water Closet doors. When I make the commitment to leave my pleasant company and my glass of Shiraz to search out the bathroom is not when I want to devote a portion of my mental energies to solving a brain teaser.
I had breakfast in a restaurant recently where the washroom doors are labeled “Marco” and “Rita”. OK, that’s manageable – because one is generally male, the other female. (They also have a menu item called “Eggs Ben et Dictine”. You can see what we’re dealing with here. Thank goodness the owner’s grandchildren weren’t named Michael and Morgan.)
But there is also a restaurant here in town whose washrooms are not labeled with words, but rather with little pen and ink illustrations of Shakespearean stage actors. Now I have a passing familiarity with a number of Shakespearean traditions, and I know that one of them is to build occasional high comedy out of gender confusion. Plus a lot of men in Shakespeare’s day tended to look pretty damned effeminate! (It’s the one with the little beard, guys!)
There’s another restaurant in town whose motif is pigs with wings. And it is a really good restaurant, one of my favourites in fact. But its bathroom doors are labeled with illustrations of pigs with wings! And it’s only on closer examination that you can deduce that the one with long lashes and eyeliner is the sow. Thanks a lot. (“No alcohol for me, please. Later, I’ll need to be able to see the eyelashes when it’s time to visit the facilities.”) Still another, with a Western theme, tells you you're either a "bull" or a "heifer". (Why aren't women complaining about this? At least being called a bull or a boar can have an occasionally positive connotation, but just try going home accompanied after you've told your companion, when she asks where the "powder room" is, to join the parade with the rest of the cows or sows.)
German restaurants who label theirs “DAMEN” and “HERREN” are evil. I read the word “DAMEN” like Tattoo, when he used to announce the arrival of another airborne load of fantasy seekers – “Boss, boss – da men! Da men!” and because “HERREN”’s first three letters are “HER”, it simply reeks of the sensibility that it is the women’s washroom. But, of course, nein. Du bist ein dumkopf. “DAMEN” shares with the French the root word “dame” and anyone who’s ever sat through an episode of any old WWII TV series will recognize the relevance of “herr”, as in, “Jawohl, Herr oberleutengruppenuntergrossenkaisermeisterfuhrer!”
Replacing them, or backing them up with little quasi-international symbols is becoming less and less helpful, too. Because that little guy just seems to be getting chubbier and chubbier and I ‘ve noticed in several food court environments that they’re becoming almost androgynous.
So restaurateurs -- we’re there to enjoy a meal or a post-dinner coffee and dessert. If we want to play word games, we’ll bring the Globe and Mail’s Cryptic in with us. Help us out – alright? It’d be such a relief.
Sunday, March 28, 2004
Friday, March 26, 2004
Jurisprudence 101 ~ make sure your star witness is not loopier than a box of rotini.
The day before yesterday, Myriam Bedard appeared in front of the Canadian government Committee investigating the exploding sponsorship scandal. (Who was it who said, “Once you’ve opened up a can of worms, the only way to get them back in is with a bigger can”? Paul Martin must today have been wondering why he and his handlers forgot that when he so urgently announced the launch of this Committee.)
In her testimony, Ms Bedard said she “had been told” (i) that the advertising agency around which most of the misuse allegations have been swirling was also involved in the trafficking of illegal drugs; and (ii) that Canadian Formula 1 race car driver Jacques Villeneuve had been paid the staggering total of $12 million ($US) simply to sport a Canada flag on his competition togs. She also claimed that the intercession of her husband was instrumental in determining the Canadian government’s decision not to send troops in support of the US invasion of Iraq.
As Toronto Star columnist Chantal Hebert put it, the not-much-lamented Jean Pelletier (he who lost his job after publicly referring to the biathlete as a “pathetic single mom”) must be just kicking himself for not having kept his mouth shut. Who would have thought that, mere weeks later, several bizarre comments would have emerged from the mouth of your former employee that have the combined effect of making “pathetic single mom” look like incisive understatement?! Who today can argue with “pathetic”, in the sense that there is a head-shaking listener’s pathos attending the utterance of these surreal accusations? Which leaves “single mom” to stand as nothing more than an inaccurate description of circumstance. (“Whoops! You say she’s married? Sorry, my goof.”) Had Pelletier just murmured “No comment”, job, perks and pension would today still be happily secure.
Meanwhile, despite initial comments from some Committee members congratulating Ms Bedard on her courage in coming forward, most today began running for cover in an effort to distance themselves from the list of “I had been told”s that were swiftly, unanimously and vehemently denied by Ms Bedard’s alleged “tellers”. Another national columnist, John Ibbitson, launched and ended his 26 March Globe and Mail column with direct quotes from the play “The Crucible”, Arthur Miller’s thinly veiled blast at that most egregious of US Senate “investigations” – the House UnAmerican Activities Committee under Senator Joe McCarthy. Oh goodie, now that’s just the public link that Opposition Party Committee members want to have associated with their line of questioning (or lack thereof – Ms Bedard was let go with a smile and a nod, instead of the blistering grilling that her wild allegations deserved.)
I think, if I were either a Liberal or an accused misuser of sponsorship money today, I’d just quietly embark on a microphone- and notebook-free long weekend while the anti-Liberals on the Committee frantically try to assemble enough flotation devices to get themselves clear of the post-iceberg Titanic that this “investigation” suddenly seems to stand a very good chance of becoming.
So one more chorus of “Nearer, my God, to Thee” anyone? (Or was it “Autumn”? It’s been a while since 1912.)
The day before yesterday, Myriam Bedard appeared in front of the Canadian government Committee investigating the exploding sponsorship scandal. (Who was it who said, “Once you’ve opened up a can of worms, the only way to get them back in is with a bigger can”? Paul Martin must today have been wondering why he and his handlers forgot that when he so urgently announced the launch of this Committee.)
In her testimony, Ms Bedard said she “had been told” (i) that the advertising agency around which most of the misuse allegations have been swirling was also involved in the trafficking of illegal drugs; and (ii) that Canadian Formula 1 race car driver Jacques Villeneuve had been paid the staggering total of $12 million ($US) simply to sport a Canada flag on his competition togs. She also claimed that the intercession of her husband was instrumental in determining the Canadian government’s decision not to send troops in support of the US invasion of Iraq.
As Toronto Star columnist Chantal Hebert put it, the not-much-lamented Jean Pelletier (he who lost his job after publicly referring to the biathlete as a “pathetic single mom”) must be just kicking himself for not having kept his mouth shut. Who would have thought that, mere weeks later, several bizarre comments would have emerged from the mouth of your former employee that have the combined effect of making “pathetic single mom” look like incisive understatement?! Who today can argue with “pathetic”, in the sense that there is a head-shaking listener’s pathos attending the utterance of these surreal accusations? Which leaves “single mom” to stand as nothing more than an inaccurate description of circumstance. (“Whoops! You say she’s married? Sorry, my goof.”) Had Pelletier just murmured “No comment”, job, perks and pension would today still be happily secure.
Meanwhile, despite initial comments from some Committee members congratulating Ms Bedard on her courage in coming forward, most today began running for cover in an effort to distance themselves from the list of “I had been told”s that were swiftly, unanimously and vehemently denied by Ms Bedard’s alleged “tellers”. Another national columnist, John Ibbitson, launched and ended his 26 March Globe and Mail column with direct quotes from the play “The Crucible”, Arthur Miller’s thinly veiled blast at that most egregious of US Senate “investigations” – the House UnAmerican Activities Committee under Senator Joe McCarthy. Oh goodie, now that’s just the public link that Opposition Party Committee members want to have associated with their line of questioning (or lack thereof – Ms Bedard was let go with a smile and a nod, instead of the blistering grilling that her wild allegations deserved.)
I think, if I were either a Liberal or an accused misuser of sponsorship money today, I’d just quietly embark on a microphone- and notebook-free long weekend while the anti-Liberals on the Committee frantically try to assemble enough flotation devices to get themselves clear of the post-iceberg Titanic that this “investigation” suddenly seems to stand a very good chance of becoming.
So one more chorus of “Nearer, my God, to Thee” anyone? (Or was it “Autumn”? It’s been a while since 1912.)
Monday, March 22, 2004
Some random thoughts about a too-brief vacation spent not far from one Periwinkle Drive:
A wild dolphin, if you exhibit no apparent desire either to net him or pay to see him swim from one end of a concrete tank to the other, will quite happily swim leisurely by within about 15 feet or so of where you’re standing chest deep in the Gulf, and even puff through his blowhole by way of a greeting.
An osprey (fish hawk), if you exhibit no apparent desire to cadge his catch for sushi, will stand on a tree branch a scant ten feet or so away from your rooftop deck and methodically consume – from nose to tail – a fish as big as himself that he had rather harshly yanked from the Gulf just moments before with talons that make ice tongs look warm and fuzzy.
No wonder they call them bath SALTS! Gulf water proved to vanquish any bit of corn-hard skin on the soles of my feet within a day and a half of my submitting them to several relaxing wades.
No wonder they call them FIRE ants! Moments after I stepped from a sandy path to frame a camera’s viewfinder on our beachside rental unit, I had the distinct sensation of someone having taken the point of a knife which had been resting on a red hot stove burner for an hour or so and pressing it into my middle toe. When I looked down to see who had initiated this unspeakable cruelty, I saw a tiny insect sitting right where I felt the knife point being pushed into my toe. Here endethed the lesson. For the rest of my stay, I never strayed from designated pathways, especially if barefoot.
Key lime pie served after a mahi mahi dinner in an outdoor café called the Key Lime Bistro while Chuck Mangione’s former guitarist plays a George Benson tune after you’ve watched the sun settle into the Gulf is the best key lime pie on the face of the Earth. (And an added bonus is finding the recipe for precisely that key lime pie in the current issue of Bon Appetit magazine, because the waiter – who was as laid back as it was physically possible to be without actually arriving on a gurney – was gracious enough to tell you that’s where it could be found when you raved about the quality of the dessert, its publication thanks to a couple from Iowa who wrote the magazine and asked.)
A Florida island setting challenges your traditional views of tippling. There is no such thing as a morning or afternoon drink when you’re sitting in a lanai overlooking a Gulf beach. Single-barrel bourbon works just as well after lunch in the fresh air as it does late in the evening at home in front of the fireplace. And ice-chilled quality port is a mid-afternoon delight, given the same setting. Likewise, air temperature quality port is fabulous in the dark, poolside, at about 11pm.
There is such a thing as a three-bedroom house that lists for $4.3 million ($US), if it happens to be sitting on the beach on a relatively small island on the Gulf side of Florida. That being said, when one’s residence is built on an island whose highest point of land is nine feet above sea level, and a ten-foot plus storm surge is not so infrequent as to even be called “once in a generation”, the foundation and entire first floor of your house had better include a healthy measure of salt-water resistance. Otherwise, you’re living atop what will inevitably become the most expensive pile of beach bonfire kindling in the world.
There are a bazillion and six varieties of the seabird called “gull”. Representatives of every last one of them will appear on a Gulf beach at sunrise. If you walk towards them, they will shuffle grumpily out of your way, but will not be any more perturbed than that. Plus they will drop a splat of gull poop on the sand before moving aside, forcing you to step around where they were. Fair’s fair, after all.
US airport security post-911 is intensely more heightened than it was before that bleak day. Things I had to do that I didn’t have to do pre-911: remove my shoes and have them x-rayed; have my physical appearance scrutinized for its match to the hideous image that is fused to my passport on no fewer than three separate occasions in the interval between my arrival at the Sarasota airport to boarding the plane. Canadian customs policies, by contrast, seem to be only slightly more security-heightened – they simply wanted to be sure I possessed no fruit.
A post-vacation mystery that awaits solving? Finding out who belongs to the 27+ images – assuming they process alright – on the disposable camera I found buried in the beach sand. And if they show several swarthy types in black wetsuits wading ashore from a black Zodiac, I won’t say a damned word more about it.
A food ingestion business called Cheeburger Cheeburger is going to offer exactly what you’d expect from a food ingestion business called Cheeburger Cheeburger. In American portions. But your 13-year old will be in heaven because the only vegetables in the place are either deep-fried or garnishes.
You know you’ve raised your daughter right when you ask her carte blanche what she wants to shop for, and she says a bag of black and white M&M’s, because they’re not yet available in Canada.
I’ve thought about it and when, as you are being driven home from the airport in the gray late-afternoon light at the tail end of a daylong snowfall that has added about ten cm of late March snow to your world, your taxi driver’s radio airs Jimmy Buffett’s “Margaritaville”, it is even crueller than the bite of a fire ant.
The best souvenir of all is the memory of a great holiday. The worst is the first VISA bill that follows such a trip. (Tied for last place with a fire ant bite scab.)
A wild dolphin, if you exhibit no apparent desire either to net him or pay to see him swim from one end of a concrete tank to the other, will quite happily swim leisurely by within about 15 feet or so of where you’re standing chest deep in the Gulf, and even puff through his blowhole by way of a greeting.
An osprey (fish hawk), if you exhibit no apparent desire to cadge his catch for sushi, will stand on a tree branch a scant ten feet or so away from your rooftop deck and methodically consume – from nose to tail – a fish as big as himself that he had rather harshly yanked from the Gulf just moments before with talons that make ice tongs look warm and fuzzy.
No wonder they call them bath SALTS! Gulf water proved to vanquish any bit of corn-hard skin on the soles of my feet within a day and a half of my submitting them to several relaxing wades.
No wonder they call them FIRE ants! Moments after I stepped from a sandy path to frame a camera’s viewfinder on our beachside rental unit, I had the distinct sensation of someone having taken the point of a knife which had been resting on a red hot stove burner for an hour or so and pressing it into my middle toe. When I looked down to see who had initiated this unspeakable cruelty, I saw a tiny insect sitting right where I felt the knife point being pushed into my toe. Here endethed the lesson. For the rest of my stay, I never strayed from designated pathways, especially if barefoot.
Key lime pie served after a mahi mahi dinner in an outdoor café called the Key Lime Bistro while Chuck Mangione’s former guitarist plays a George Benson tune after you’ve watched the sun settle into the Gulf is the best key lime pie on the face of the Earth. (And an added bonus is finding the recipe for precisely that key lime pie in the current issue of Bon Appetit magazine, because the waiter – who was as laid back as it was physically possible to be without actually arriving on a gurney – was gracious enough to tell you that’s where it could be found when you raved about the quality of the dessert, its publication thanks to a couple from Iowa who wrote the magazine and asked.)
A Florida island setting challenges your traditional views of tippling. There is no such thing as a morning or afternoon drink when you’re sitting in a lanai overlooking a Gulf beach. Single-barrel bourbon works just as well after lunch in the fresh air as it does late in the evening at home in front of the fireplace. And ice-chilled quality port is a mid-afternoon delight, given the same setting. Likewise, air temperature quality port is fabulous in the dark, poolside, at about 11pm.
There is such a thing as a three-bedroom house that lists for $4.3 million ($US), if it happens to be sitting on the beach on a relatively small island on the Gulf side of Florida. That being said, when one’s residence is built on an island whose highest point of land is nine feet above sea level, and a ten-foot plus storm surge is not so infrequent as to even be called “once in a generation”, the foundation and entire first floor of your house had better include a healthy measure of salt-water resistance. Otherwise, you’re living atop what will inevitably become the most expensive pile of beach bonfire kindling in the world.
There are a bazillion and six varieties of the seabird called “gull”. Representatives of every last one of them will appear on a Gulf beach at sunrise. If you walk towards them, they will shuffle grumpily out of your way, but will not be any more perturbed than that. Plus they will drop a splat of gull poop on the sand before moving aside, forcing you to step around where they were. Fair’s fair, after all.
US airport security post-911 is intensely more heightened than it was before that bleak day. Things I had to do that I didn’t have to do pre-911: remove my shoes and have them x-rayed; have my physical appearance scrutinized for its match to the hideous image that is fused to my passport on no fewer than three separate occasions in the interval between my arrival at the Sarasota airport to boarding the plane. Canadian customs policies, by contrast, seem to be only slightly more security-heightened – they simply wanted to be sure I possessed no fruit.
A post-vacation mystery that awaits solving? Finding out who belongs to the 27+ images – assuming they process alright – on the disposable camera I found buried in the beach sand. And if they show several swarthy types in black wetsuits wading ashore from a black Zodiac, I won’t say a damned word more about it.
A food ingestion business called Cheeburger Cheeburger is going to offer exactly what you’d expect from a food ingestion business called Cheeburger Cheeburger. In American portions. But your 13-year old will be in heaven because the only vegetables in the place are either deep-fried or garnishes.
You know you’ve raised your daughter right when you ask her carte blanche what she wants to shop for, and she says a bag of black and white M&M’s, because they’re not yet available in Canada.
I’ve thought about it and when, as you are being driven home from the airport in the gray late-afternoon light at the tail end of a daylong snowfall that has added about ten cm of late March snow to your world, your taxi driver’s radio airs Jimmy Buffett’s “Margaritaville”, it is even crueller than the bite of a fire ant.
The best souvenir of all is the memory of a great holiday. The worst is the first VISA bill that follows such a trip. (Tied for last place with a fire ant bite scab.)
Friday, March 12, 2004
Just how complicated can luggage tags be made to purchase? I picked up two today at lunch hour in a local mall luggage shop. Rigid plastic, with soft plastic cord loops and a clear-faced pouch with a blank card you remove, fill out with your name and address, and replace. They were, in other words, luggage tags. And they were identical, except for their colours. One was black with red lettering; the other was fluorescent green, with black lettering. I took them to the cash; the cashier scanned them one after the other, and then stood staring at her monitor for (and I am not exaggerating) at least 30 seconds. Just before deciding she had been frozen into a narcoleptic seizure, I leaned across the counter and asked quietly if there were some problem.
She blinked a couple times, thought some more about it and finally said, “One scans at $3.99; one at $1.99”. (I know you can get them wholesale for 49 cents each in Filene’s, but don’t forget this is $Canadian.) “I’ll take two of the $1.99 ones,” I said. “Which is it?” (I just assumed the fluorescent one was probably harbouring a microscopic colony of luminescent insects or something to make it the more expensive one.)
She repeated the scans and delivered her verdict. “Ah, the black one is $3.99… because it’s more common.” Now it was my turn to stare. Behind my quiet exterior was welling up a lengthy stream of pithy debate over this rather unique pricing application of “common” in a basic market economy, but after a second or two I thought, “Ah, to hell with it.”
I took it from her and walked back to the display rack, replaced it and took a second fluorescent tag – a yellow one – from among the 65 remaining fluorescent collectors’ items on the hook. The “common” black one I replaced then became the sole black one in the entire display.
At least I’ll have no trouble spotting my suitcase when it comes sailing down the airport’s luggage carousel. Why bother with executive dignity when I can flaunt my preference for gaudy and rare in luggage identification?
Offline for a few days… unless I find a keyboard-enabled seashell with a free wireless link. (Luggage tags, seashells – you figure it out.)
She blinked a couple times, thought some more about it and finally said, “One scans at $3.99; one at $1.99”. (I know you can get them wholesale for 49 cents each in Filene’s, but don’t forget this is $Canadian.) “I’ll take two of the $1.99 ones,” I said. “Which is it?” (I just assumed the fluorescent one was probably harbouring a microscopic colony of luminescent insects or something to make it the more expensive one.)
She repeated the scans and delivered her verdict. “Ah, the black one is $3.99… because it’s more common.” Now it was my turn to stare. Behind my quiet exterior was welling up a lengthy stream of pithy debate over this rather unique pricing application of “common” in a basic market economy, but after a second or two I thought, “Ah, to hell with it.”
I took it from her and walked back to the display rack, replaced it and took a second fluorescent tag – a yellow one – from among the 65 remaining fluorescent collectors’ items on the hook. The “common” black one I replaced then became the sole black one in the entire display.
At least I’ll have no trouble spotting my suitcase when it comes sailing down the airport’s luggage carousel. Why bother with executive dignity when I can flaunt my preference for gaudy and rare in luggage identification?
Offline for a few days… unless I find a keyboard-enabled seashell with a free wireless link. (Luggage tags, seashells – you figure it out.)
Thursday, March 11, 2004
Follow-ups to a couple recent whines.
1. That vicious Todd Bertuzzi hit reaped its “reward” earlier today when the NHL announced he’s done for the 2003-2004 regular season and barred from any playoff games. The Globe and Mail's website called it “potentially the stiffest suspension in league history”. At his pay scale, it will cost him over $600,000 in salary for the 12 games left in the regular season, plus whatever playoff bonuses he might have earned for up to 28 possible playoff games (now a much less likely scenario for the Canucks, given that Bertuzzi is one of their star playmakers). The team was also fined $250,000, essentially for failing to do more to prevent the incident. Finally, Bertuzzi was also told that his playing next season is conditional on a pre-training camp review by the league commissioner (presumably to ascertain that he didn’t pummel or kill anyone on his summer vacation). That last bit could well be a moot point, however, if the whole season goes out the window because of a forecast labour dispute between owners and players.
This, after Bertuzzi had held an “emotional” news conference last night claiming he never intended to hurt the player – Steve Moore – now lying injured in a Vancouver Hospital spinal ward. (Paraphrasing) “I snuck up on him, slammed my fist into the side of his head, rode him down and, when he hit the ice, ground his face into a surface with all the warmth and consistency of a concrete sidewalk… but I didn’t try to (*sob*) hurt him. Please don’t be like me, kids.”
To their everlasting credit, many sportswriters who have commented on the subject (and there have been literally hundreds) blasted not only Bertuzzi, but also the league and the owners for fostering and encouraging an “acceptable” level of violence as “part of the game”. The vast majority of the commentators definitely seem to have united around a common message: “This is a huge problem. Fix it!”
And I learned something I never knew. Apparently US President Teddy Roosevelt, with everything else that was on his plate in 1905, called a meeting of representatives of American College football. That sport by then had badly degenerated, with tactics like gang tackling and the “flying wedge” (an arrowhead-shaped phalanx of bruising runners preceded the ball carrier down the field, crushing anyone in their way) actually resulting in game deaths. In response to a growing public demand to ban the sport entirely from college, President Roosevelt’s message to the athletics reps was simple: “Fix it or lose it”. The result was the National Collegiate Athletic Association (NCAA), who crafted a well-disciplined, university-level sport whose popularity today needs no more analysis than the 125,000 people in the Pasadena stands and the countless millions who watch the Rose Bowl each New Year’s Day.
Could the same thing happen to professional hockey? Certainly, said one writer. We already have the way. There are political and legislative paths in place that, if walked today, could compel an end to fighting and thuggery in hockey tomorrow. The hard part, he said resignedly, is changing the owners’ / coaches’ / players’ / broadcasters’ (take a big bow, Don Cherry) / fans’ mindset and finding the will. Piece of cake.
That old joke, “I went to the fights last night and a hockey game broke out”, just isn’t funny any more.
2. I have worn my new walking shoes for two solid days and already have logged many miles in them. I’m not yet ready to give them an unqualified endorsement. But even if my curse of the “family foot” will never be dispelled, it is for the moment being quietly submissive to this brand. (No money changed hands – or feet – in exchange for the appearance here of this link.)
1. That vicious Todd Bertuzzi hit reaped its “reward” earlier today when the NHL announced he’s done for the 2003-2004 regular season and barred from any playoff games. The Globe and Mail's website called it “potentially the stiffest suspension in league history”. At his pay scale, it will cost him over $600,000 in salary for the 12 games left in the regular season, plus whatever playoff bonuses he might have earned for up to 28 possible playoff games (now a much less likely scenario for the Canucks, given that Bertuzzi is one of their star playmakers). The team was also fined $250,000, essentially for failing to do more to prevent the incident. Finally, Bertuzzi was also told that his playing next season is conditional on a pre-training camp review by the league commissioner (presumably to ascertain that he didn’t pummel or kill anyone on his summer vacation). That last bit could well be a moot point, however, if the whole season goes out the window because of a forecast labour dispute between owners and players.
This, after Bertuzzi had held an “emotional” news conference last night claiming he never intended to hurt the player – Steve Moore – now lying injured in a Vancouver Hospital spinal ward. (Paraphrasing) “I snuck up on him, slammed my fist into the side of his head, rode him down and, when he hit the ice, ground his face into a surface with all the warmth and consistency of a concrete sidewalk… but I didn’t try to (*sob*) hurt him. Please don’t be like me, kids.”
To their everlasting credit, many sportswriters who have commented on the subject (and there have been literally hundreds) blasted not only Bertuzzi, but also the league and the owners for fostering and encouraging an “acceptable” level of violence as “part of the game”. The vast majority of the commentators definitely seem to have united around a common message: “This is a huge problem. Fix it!”
And I learned something I never knew. Apparently US President Teddy Roosevelt, with everything else that was on his plate in 1905, called a meeting of representatives of American College football. That sport by then had badly degenerated, with tactics like gang tackling and the “flying wedge” (an arrowhead-shaped phalanx of bruising runners preceded the ball carrier down the field, crushing anyone in their way) actually resulting in game deaths. In response to a growing public demand to ban the sport entirely from college, President Roosevelt’s message to the athletics reps was simple: “Fix it or lose it”. The result was the National Collegiate Athletic Association (NCAA), who crafted a well-disciplined, university-level sport whose popularity today needs no more analysis than the 125,000 people in the Pasadena stands and the countless millions who watch the Rose Bowl each New Year’s Day.
Could the same thing happen to professional hockey? Certainly, said one writer. We already have the way. There are political and legislative paths in place that, if walked today, could compel an end to fighting and thuggery in hockey tomorrow. The hard part, he said resignedly, is changing the owners’ / coaches’ / players’ / broadcasters’ (take a big bow, Don Cherry) / fans’ mindset and finding the will. Piece of cake.
That old joke, “I went to the fights last night and a hockey game broke out”, just isn’t funny any more.
2. I have worn my new walking shoes for two solid days and already have logged many miles in them. I’m not yet ready to give them an unqualified endorsement. But even if my curse of the “family foot” will never be dispelled, it is for the moment being quietly submissive to this brand. (No money changed hands – or feet – in exchange for the appearance here of this link.)
Wednesday, March 10, 2004
Bits and Pieces today.
“I’m a Muse.” “Well, I’m glad SOMEBODY finds this funny!” (Kira / Olivia Newton-John and Sonny / Michael Beck, at first fail to connect in that quintessential bit of 80s glitz on roller skates, Xanadu)
Why, you might well ask, did a five second exchange from a 24-year old Olivia Newton-John / Gene Kelly movie cross my mind? Because I sat down this evening in front of my keyboard and thought: I really need a Muse this evening. (Is it Erato who is the Muse of writing… ? – minimize screen; open Google; search “Erato muse”… Oops.) I meant Calliope, or Clio, or Polyhymnia, or Thalia, or maybe even Erato for that matter…
From the “Ummm… OK” file, this from a 14 December 2003 article in Time Magazine, “Notes from Saddam in Custody: ‘When asked ‘How are you?’ said the official, Saddam responded, ‘I am sad because my people are in bondage.’ When offered a glass of water by his interrogators, Saddam replied, ‘If I drink water I will have to go to the bathroom and how can I use the bathroom when my people are in bondage?’”
So here we are, three months later -- and assuming Saddam has maintained his self-denial – by now we are witness to a desperately urgent new meaning to the plaintive cry, “Let my people GO!”
And tonight’s CBC news led with a major squirm-inducing item. The RCMP, investigating the horrific multiple disappearances and murders of perhaps dozens of women, allegedly committed by the owners of a pig farm in British Columbia, have asked anyone who might still have frozen meat products from the farm to turn that meat over to the RCMP. Like I said, it is to squirm.
“I’m a Muse.” “Well, I’m glad SOMEBODY finds this funny!” (Kira / Olivia Newton-John and Sonny / Michael Beck, at first fail to connect in that quintessential bit of 80s glitz on roller skates, Xanadu)
Why, you might well ask, did a five second exchange from a 24-year old Olivia Newton-John / Gene Kelly movie cross my mind? Because I sat down this evening in front of my keyboard and thought: I really need a Muse this evening. (Is it Erato who is the Muse of writing… ? – minimize screen; open Google; search “Erato muse”… Oops.) I meant Calliope, or Clio, or Polyhymnia, or Thalia, or maybe even Erato for that matter…
From the “Ummm… OK” file, this from a 14 December 2003 article in Time Magazine, “Notes from Saddam in Custody: ‘When asked ‘How are you?’ said the official, Saddam responded, ‘I am sad because my people are in bondage.’ When offered a glass of water by his interrogators, Saddam replied, ‘If I drink water I will have to go to the bathroom and how can I use the bathroom when my people are in bondage?’”
So here we are, three months later -- and assuming Saddam has maintained his self-denial – by now we are witness to a desperately urgent new meaning to the plaintive cry, “Let my people GO!”
And tonight’s CBC news led with a major squirm-inducing item. The RCMP, investigating the horrific multiple disappearances and murders of perhaps dozens of women, allegedly committed by the owners of a pig farm in British Columbia, have asked anyone who might still have frozen meat products from the farm to turn that meat over to the RCMP. Like I said, it is to squirm.
Tuesday, March 09, 2004
I guess it’s “easy shot” day, so here we go.
This is from an Associated Press report of last night’s “hockey game” between the Colorado Avalanche and the Vancouver Canucks:
“Bertuzzi jumped on Moore's back and drove him face first into the ice, knocking him unconscious. Bertuzzi was assessed a match penalty for attempting to injure. Trainers from both teams rushed to Moore's side while players from both teams squared off for more fights. Moore was motionless on the ice with a puddle of blood pouring onto the ice around him.”
What leaps out of this paragraph is the mismatch of the penalty call – “for attempting to injure” – with the result described in that last sentence. “Attempting” to injure? Does the NHL not recognize a pool of blood as a sign of a successful attempt? What is it about NHL hockey that exempts players from facing appropriate consequences to actions that I have seen opening an episode of Law and Order? A “match penalty”? For an attack like that anywhere but in an NHL hockey game, he’d be looking at a charge of attempted murder.
Yes, I’m one of those who gave up my faithful following of NHL hockey years ago. Even before the Plager brothers made their collective careers as “enforcers”; and before the team from Philadelphia, “The City of Brotherly Love”, acquired their less than loving nickname, “Broad Street Bullies”. When I abandoned the game, Dave Keon wore #14 for the Toronto Maple Leafs, Jean Beliveau was class personified and Gordie Howe’s elbows were generally held in great respect by his opponents, especially in the corners. But the team that tried to win a game by fighting inevitably saw its opponents’ backs as their wingers raced in yet again to score.
This past weekend I went to watch my nephew play minor hockey in a non-contact league. The 11-year olds played a game that was fast, exciting and a joy to watch. With no recourse to assault as an option in their playbooks, players focused on hockey skills – things like controlling the puck, playing their positions, connecting on their passes and following up by repositioning themselves correctly even when they weren’t carrying the puck. The winning team was the team that performed these skills best.
The game also had the tension of a “grudge match” because the team my nephew’s team was playing against was the league’s powerhouse, and had lost only one game this season – to my nephew’s team. So they were looking to redress that embarrassment. Yet despite this factor, in the entire 60 minutes there was exactly one instance where a mid-ice collision resulted in a player taking a swing at his opponent, followed by a few seconds of pushing and shoving in response. The player who threw the punch was immediately consigned to the penalty box for five minutes as the instigator and, during that time, the opposing team scored. My nephew told us afterwards that several of his teammates let the offender know verbally after the game how little they appreciated his action.
The NHL now is on the cusp of a crisis. The end of this season marks the expiration of the present player contract deal. Several small-market teams are courting bankruptcy and there is every sign of a “Western Front” prolonged war shaping up between owners and players as both sides dig in to defend their negotiating positions. It’s possible there may be no NHL hockey at all next season.
Even poor players these days command enormous salaries. So teams need to push ticket prices higher and higher to produce a profit. But that’s having the opposite effect of driving fans away from arenas and into their living rooms to watch hockey on TSN, leaving many more arena seats empty than full. Here in Ottawa, the cost for a night out at a Corel Centre Senators game for a family of four – factoring in tickets, parking and some kind of modest snack during the game – begins around $250 (and that’s for tickets in the “nosebleed” section of the arena). There aren’t many sportswriters left any more who wonder why season ticket sales are down. They know. And so do the players and owners, although neither group will admit it, choosing instead to argue possibilities like taking away the centre line or enlarging the ice surface to “make the game more exciting”. (Hey guys – how about adding “assault with a deadly weapon” – which a four-foot long hockey stick becomes when you swing it at someone’s head – to your list of penalties, along with making the local police force the “referees” in such a case?)
Like a badly healing broken leg, it might just be time to consider re-fracturing the tibia to ensure that it eventually heals. But if what I’ve been reading is any indication, both sides seem prepared to let gangrene set in, after which, of course, it will be too late and someone is going to have to amputate.
Watching my nephew and his peers play the game rekindled a hopeful spark in me that maybe there’s a chance professional hockey could become what it once was. But my brother-in-law tells me that his son’s age group is closing in on the leagues where contact is allowed. That, and reading today’s news, snuffed it right out again.
(Update: There may be a bare glimmer of hope. Follow-up news stories reported that Bertuzzi, who inflicted among other injuries two fractured vertebrae, was suspended “indefinitely, without pay”, that the Vancouver Police are “looking into it”, and that he faces a disciplinary hearing at the NHL office tomorrow. To me, that last one still smacks of being called in to see the principal for throwing snowballs in the yard at recess. I will be very surprised if, with the playoffs coming up and Bertuzzi so important to the Vancouver team, the NHL will reveal that it has anything between its legs but a crotch-chafing athletic supporter. But on the positive side, the overwhelming public response has been one of disgust. So I’m going to reserve further judgment pending what conditions the NHL announces they will impose on Bertuzzi’s “time out”.)
This is from an Associated Press report of last night’s “hockey game” between the Colorado Avalanche and the Vancouver Canucks:
“Bertuzzi jumped on Moore's back and drove him face first into the ice, knocking him unconscious. Bertuzzi was assessed a match penalty for attempting to injure. Trainers from both teams rushed to Moore's side while players from both teams squared off for more fights. Moore was motionless on the ice with a puddle of blood pouring onto the ice around him.”
What leaps out of this paragraph is the mismatch of the penalty call – “for attempting to injure” – with the result described in that last sentence. “Attempting” to injure? Does the NHL not recognize a pool of blood as a sign of a successful attempt? What is it about NHL hockey that exempts players from facing appropriate consequences to actions that I have seen opening an episode of Law and Order? A “match penalty”? For an attack like that anywhere but in an NHL hockey game, he’d be looking at a charge of attempted murder.
Yes, I’m one of those who gave up my faithful following of NHL hockey years ago. Even before the Plager brothers made their collective careers as “enforcers”; and before the team from Philadelphia, “The City of Brotherly Love”, acquired their less than loving nickname, “Broad Street Bullies”. When I abandoned the game, Dave Keon wore #14 for the Toronto Maple Leafs, Jean Beliveau was class personified and Gordie Howe’s elbows were generally held in great respect by his opponents, especially in the corners. But the team that tried to win a game by fighting inevitably saw its opponents’ backs as their wingers raced in yet again to score.
This past weekend I went to watch my nephew play minor hockey in a non-contact league. The 11-year olds played a game that was fast, exciting and a joy to watch. With no recourse to assault as an option in their playbooks, players focused on hockey skills – things like controlling the puck, playing their positions, connecting on their passes and following up by repositioning themselves correctly even when they weren’t carrying the puck. The winning team was the team that performed these skills best.
The game also had the tension of a “grudge match” because the team my nephew’s team was playing against was the league’s powerhouse, and had lost only one game this season – to my nephew’s team. So they were looking to redress that embarrassment. Yet despite this factor, in the entire 60 minutes there was exactly one instance where a mid-ice collision resulted in a player taking a swing at his opponent, followed by a few seconds of pushing and shoving in response. The player who threw the punch was immediately consigned to the penalty box for five minutes as the instigator and, during that time, the opposing team scored. My nephew told us afterwards that several of his teammates let the offender know verbally after the game how little they appreciated his action.
The NHL now is on the cusp of a crisis. The end of this season marks the expiration of the present player contract deal. Several small-market teams are courting bankruptcy and there is every sign of a “Western Front” prolonged war shaping up between owners and players as both sides dig in to defend their negotiating positions. It’s possible there may be no NHL hockey at all next season.
Even poor players these days command enormous salaries. So teams need to push ticket prices higher and higher to produce a profit. But that’s having the opposite effect of driving fans away from arenas and into their living rooms to watch hockey on TSN, leaving many more arena seats empty than full. Here in Ottawa, the cost for a night out at a Corel Centre Senators game for a family of four – factoring in tickets, parking and some kind of modest snack during the game – begins around $250 (and that’s for tickets in the “nosebleed” section of the arena). There aren’t many sportswriters left any more who wonder why season ticket sales are down. They know. And so do the players and owners, although neither group will admit it, choosing instead to argue possibilities like taking away the centre line or enlarging the ice surface to “make the game more exciting”. (Hey guys – how about adding “assault with a deadly weapon” – which a four-foot long hockey stick becomes when you swing it at someone’s head – to your list of penalties, along with making the local police force the “referees” in such a case?)
Like a badly healing broken leg, it might just be time to consider re-fracturing the tibia to ensure that it eventually heals. But if what I’ve been reading is any indication, both sides seem prepared to let gangrene set in, after which, of course, it will be too late and someone is going to have to amputate.
Watching my nephew and his peers play the game rekindled a hopeful spark in me that maybe there’s a chance professional hockey could become what it once was. But my brother-in-law tells me that his son’s age group is closing in on the leagues where contact is allowed. That, and reading today’s news, snuffed it right out again.
(Update: There may be a bare glimmer of hope. Follow-up news stories reported that Bertuzzi, who inflicted among other injuries two fractured vertebrae, was suspended “indefinitely, without pay”, that the Vancouver Police are “looking into it”, and that he faces a disciplinary hearing at the NHL office tomorrow. To me, that last one still smacks of being called in to see the principal for throwing snowballs in the yard at recess. I will be very surprised if, with the playoffs coming up and Bertuzzi so important to the Vancouver team, the NHL will reveal that it has anything between its legs but a crotch-chafing athletic supporter. But on the positive side, the overwhelming public response has been one of disgust. So I’m going to reserve further judgment pending what conditions the NHL announces they will impose on Bertuzzi’s “time out”.)
Monday, March 08, 2004
There is a wonderful Norman Jewison movie called “The Russians Are Coming! The Russians Are Coming!”, now decades old, that plays on cold war paranoia purely for slapstick with an hilarious script. In one scene, Sheriff Jonathan Winters wades into a melee with a cry of “Oh why can’t we all just get along?” At precisely that moment, someone with a huge right cross decks him.
It’s probably more revealing of my mind than is healthy, but rather incongruously I recalled that scene recently when I hit the last page of a thoroughly depressing book entitled “Abandon Ship”. It’s the story of a terrible US Navy tragedy that occurred near the end of World War II. Like so many tragedies it is one that, but for the slightest variation in any of the dozens of possible great cosmic dice rolls of Fate, might never have happened.
The battle cruiser USS Indianapolis was en route to the Pacific base of Leyte after unloading its cargo of uranium from which came the first atomic bomb dropped just days later on Hiroshima. Traveling unescorted, it was torpedoed and sunk by a Japanese submarine. Some 300 of its approximately 1200-man crew died in the attack but, for the 900 or so who made it into the water, the ordeal was just beginning. They were only found by accident after floating for nearly five full days, during which a further 500+ sailors died of exposure, their wounds, shark attack, or delirium.
A postwar trial initially found the captain was to blame for failing to zigzag in “enemy” waters. It was only much later when he was exonerated (Too late for him. Captain McVay eventually committed suicide after receiving yet another angry letter of blame from a relative of one of his lost crew) that the real tragedy was finally identified as a misguided naval bureaucracy that dictated one does not report the arrival or non-arrival of combat vessels, in order to avoid having the enemy discover where a major ship might be berthed. Thus, the Indianapolis’s failure to arrive went unreported.
For me, an equally disheartening part of the story was the almost unbelievable after-the-fact effort expended by the US Navy to affix blame almost anywhere but on its own system. In their statements of defence, they made repeated efforts to suggest that dictates of “simple common sense” were not observed. (Should not the Leyte harbourmaster, for example, have had the good sense to question the non-arrival of the Indianapolis?) But the Navy repeatedly failed to acknowledge that, in that most hierarchical of societies – a military command structure – the rules were plain. In such a culture, “common sense” is simply no defence if one should choose to disobey an order, however irrational the order might seem.
The book bogs down a bit in its meticulous presentation of courtroom evidence. But the story itself is so overwhelming, even a simple recitation of its facts makes for riveting, if grim and tragic reading.
It is, as a contemporary reviewer might say, a “searing indictment” of the dangers inherent in ironbound enforcement of the rulebook. There’s a nice memorial to the ship, its crew, and a telling of their story, including their beloved Captain’s long overdue exoneration from blame, at the official USS Indianapolis survivors’ webpage.
But like Jonathan Winters, as I read the account of the US Navy’s blame-dodging machinations, I almost felt compelled to cry out, “Why can’t you people just admit you were wrong?” But I was decked by the “right-cross of reality” that to acknowledge that your very system is “wrong” would be to admit that it was very likely unnecessary that many of those sailors had to die, some of whose families received their death notices quite literally on the exact day the rest of the country was celebrating the surrender of Japan and the end of World War II.
It’s probably more revealing of my mind than is healthy, but rather incongruously I recalled that scene recently when I hit the last page of a thoroughly depressing book entitled “Abandon Ship”. It’s the story of a terrible US Navy tragedy that occurred near the end of World War II. Like so many tragedies it is one that, but for the slightest variation in any of the dozens of possible great cosmic dice rolls of Fate, might never have happened.
The battle cruiser USS Indianapolis was en route to the Pacific base of Leyte after unloading its cargo of uranium from which came the first atomic bomb dropped just days later on Hiroshima. Traveling unescorted, it was torpedoed and sunk by a Japanese submarine. Some 300 of its approximately 1200-man crew died in the attack but, for the 900 or so who made it into the water, the ordeal was just beginning. They were only found by accident after floating for nearly five full days, during which a further 500+ sailors died of exposure, their wounds, shark attack, or delirium.
A postwar trial initially found the captain was to blame for failing to zigzag in “enemy” waters. It was only much later when he was exonerated (Too late for him. Captain McVay eventually committed suicide after receiving yet another angry letter of blame from a relative of one of his lost crew) that the real tragedy was finally identified as a misguided naval bureaucracy that dictated one does not report the arrival or non-arrival of combat vessels, in order to avoid having the enemy discover where a major ship might be berthed. Thus, the Indianapolis’s failure to arrive went unreported.
For me, an equally disheartening part of the story was the almost unbelievable after-the-fact effort expended by the US Navy to affix blame almost anywhere but on its own system. In their statements of defence, they made repeated efforts to suggest that dictates of “simple common sense” were not observed. (Should not the Leyte harbourmaster, for example, have had the good sense to question the non-arrival of the Indianapolis?) But the Navy repeatedly failed to acknowledge that, in that most hierarchical of societies – a military command structure – the rules were plain. In such a culture, “common sense” is simply no defence if one should choose to disobey an order, however irrational the order might seem.
The book bogs down a bit in its meticulous presentation of courtroom evidence. But the story itself is so overwhelming, even a simple recitation of its facts makes for riveting, if grim and tragic reading.
It is, as a contemporary reviewer might say, a “searing indictment” of the dangers inherent in ironbound enforcement of the rulebook. There’s a nice memorial to the ship, its crew, and a telling of their story, including their beloved Captain’s long overdue exoneration from blame, at the official USS Indianapolis survivors’ webpage.
But like Jonathan Winters, as I read the account of the US Navy’s blame-dodging machinations, I almost felt compelled to cry out, “Why can’t you people just admit you were wrong?” But I was decked by the “right-cross of reality” that to acknowledge that your very system is “wrong” would be to admit that it was very likely unnecessary that many of those sailors had to die, some of whose families received their death notices quite literally on the exact day the rest of the country was celebrating the surrender of Japan and the end of World War II.
Sunday, March 07, 2004
I am afflicted with the family curse. We call it delicately – the family foot.
My “family foot” curse is best understood from the viewpoint of standing directly over my feet and looking down at them. But since I am the only body physically capable of occupying the space required to achieve this perspective, it also appears that I am the only one capable of appreciating the magnitude of the curse that is my “family foot”. Because Lord knows I have yet to encounter a shoe salesperson who can confidently and correctly size my foot and clad it in comfort.
In a polite shoe seller’s parlance, my feet are politely labeled as having a width “bigger than triple E”. In a sniggering shoe seller’s parlance, my feet are sniggeringly referred to as “gunboats”. In a nutshell, my duly-cursed foot resembles a flipper, or Chuck Jones’ interpretation of a duck’s foot – based on how he draws Daffy Duck’s. Had I known this at an earlier age, I probably could have opted for an aquatic training program that would ultimately have cut into Mark Spitz's medal count the year he won all those Olympic swimming events.
So with that unfortunate pedestrian baggage, today I set off in search of a “walking shoe” for the simple reason that I have a brief vacation upcoming during which I plan to do some walking.
I’ll skip the multi-store details, but suffice to say I reaffirmed that next to an internationally agreed version of the metric system and global peace enacted under the principles taught at Star Fleet Academy, what the world could really use is a common basis for defining shoe sizes.
In the course of my search, I discovered that Chinese feet as a genre must be significantly smaller than Canadian feet, and that Portuguese men, based on their shoe brands, must feel the need to compensate for something by imprinting a number scale a point or two larger than everyone else’s onto their men’s shoes. Further, one nation’s “EEE” can easily be nothing more than a Canadian “D”. (In the course of my quest, I also saw a size 16 sneaker and I have no desire to encounter the person – in any setting but broad daylight on a busy street – who would require an object that big on his foot.)
I also discovered that shoe store sales personnel seem to have the collective hobby of exploring just how many configurations are possible using only a pair of shoelaces and a line of between four and eight grommet pairs to lace the shoes up. The really creative ones also factor in the challenge of discovering the least number of grommets through which laces can be passed and made completely immovable, making it impossible for a wearer to tighten the shoe unless he first untangles the Gordian knot and unlaces the shoe back to the second or, in one astonishing case I experienced today, the very first pair of grommets before I was able to begin snugging the shoe about my foot. I was very close to announcing, “We have a WINNER!!!” in a loud voice, but thought better of it in case the owner of that size 16 was friends with the staff. And was nearby.
By day’s end, I found a pair that, after several minutes of tramping about the shoe store, seemed to fill the bill. But I’ve had that feeling before and I will be packing bandaids in my vacation luggage.
Just in case.
My “family foot” curse is best understood from the viewpoint of standing directly over my feet and looking down at them. But since I am the only body physically capable of occupying the space required to achieve this perspective, it also appears that I am the only one capable of appreciating the magnitude of the curse that is my “family foot”. Because Lord knows I have yet to encounter a shoe salesperson who can confidently and correctly size my foot and clad it in comfort.
In a polite shoe seller’s parlance, my feet are politely labeled as having a width “bigger than triple E”. In a sniggering shoe seller’s parlance, my feet are sniggeringly referred to as “gunboats”. In a nutshell, my duly-cursed foot resembles a flipper, or Chuck Jones’ interpretation of a duck’s foot – based on how he draws Daffy Duck’s. Had I known this at an earlier age, I probably could have opted for an aquatic training program that would ultimately have cut into Mark Spitz's medal count the year he won all those Olympic swimming events.
So with that unfortunate pedestrian baggage, today I set off in search of a “walking shoe” for the simple reason that I have a brief vacation upcoming during which I plan to do some walking.
I’ll skip the multi-store details, but suffice to say I reaffirmed that next to an internationally agreed version of the metric system and global peace enacted under the principles taught at Star Fleet Academy, what the world could really use is a common basis for defining shoe sizes.
In the course of my search, I discovered that Chinese feet as a genre must be significantly smaller than Canadian feet, and that Portuguese men, based on their shoe brands, must feel the need to compensate for something by imprinting a number scale a point or two larger than everyone else’s onto their men’s shoes. Further, one nation’s “EEE” can easily be nothing more than a Canadian “D”. (In the course of my quest, I also saw a size 16 sneaker and I have no desire to encounter the person – in any setting but broad daylight on a busy street – who would require an object that big on his foot.)
I also discovered that shoe store sales personnel seem to have the collective hobby of exploring just how many configurations are possible using only a pair of shoelaces and a line of between four and eight grommet pairs to lace the shoes up. The really creative ones also factor in the challenge of discovering the least number of grommets through which laces can be passed and made completely immovable, making it impossible for a wearer to tighten the shoe unless he first untangles the Gordian knot and unlaces the shoe back to the second or, in one astonishing case I experienced today, the very first pair of grommets before I was able to begin snugging the shoe about my foot. I was very close to announcing, “We have a WINNER!!!” in a loud voice, but thought better of it in case the owner of that size 16 was friends with the staff. And was nearby.
By day’s end, I found a pair that, after several minutes of tramping about the shoe store, seemed to fill the bill. But I’ve had that feeling before and I will be packing bandaids in my vacation luggage.
Just in case.
Saturday, March 06, 2004
Ohfergawdssake! This is a message to all of the wall-to-wall talking heads across the US news channels who are today dissecting the Martha Stewart verdict and frantically lining up economists to provide some sort of learned measure of the impact that it can be expected to have on the shuddering ramparts of the world's fiscal fortresses... let me save you the trouble.
Friday, March 05, 2004
“Any day that starts with getting out of bed and stepping on a lump of cat poop is only going to get better.” (You can quote me.)
No entry last night because my wife thought it would be a great idea if I made this weblog update-enabled. “It’s so easy,” she said.
There are blogsite “subscribe” tools that can tell blog subscribers when anything new has been added, thus saving them the trauma of linking to their pet reads and discovering that nothing new has appeared since their last visit. These systems, in fact, are already apparently sophisticated enough to allow a frequent net surfer to program updates by choice of subject, regardless of where in the World Wide Web that subject has been updated. Thus if you are, say, Belinda Stronach, and it would warm your heart to get up in the morning and discover each new overnight internet appearance of the subject, “Paul Martin is a miserable failure”, you can do this. (Similarly, if you are Paul Martin and you need to know the same thing, you can tell at a glance if the volume of such updates from all over the internet means you’re probably better off just staying in bed today. Or at least avoiding microphones.)
These systems go by a variety of designations: RSS, XML, “Atom enabled”. I have also discovered that “RSS” means “Real Simple Syndication”. This leads me to wonder just who names these things. On a long ago comedy album, Steve Martin once commented about the necessity of establishing credibility if you are starting a major new business. He contrasted the potential for attracting new savings accounts to, for example, the “Security First Mortgage and National Trust” vs “Fred’s Bank”. So maybe “Regulatory Subscription Standard” or “Regionally Sub-integrated Signalling”. But “Real Simple Syndication”? It reminds me of my first e-mail program.
So after a bunch of false starts and reprogramming my “Publish format” preferences, now I’m updatable. (For a good time, call me!)
Part II involves pasting a little symbol on the blog, probably somewhere in that strip of (so far) dead space to the right. After a further 45 minutes last night of reading far more about coding than I ever want to know – why does it not occur to direction-writers to make a small section entitled, “Posting your update icon on your blog”? – I turned bleary-eyed from my monitor and decided Part II could wait. When I mentioned that to my wife early this morning, she said, “Oh that’s easy. I just thought you didn’t want to tell anyone.”
To be fair, she was partly right. At this early stage in my bloggerizing, I’m honestly not sure just who I am doing this for. To me, a weblog seems more analogous to a diary than to a newspaper (albeit a dairy left out on my desk while I’ve gone to the bathroom, because I have told my wife and one or two close friends that I’m playing with a blog, and where it can be found). And despite the so far reasonable regularity of new posts, I certainly have no intention of maintaining a daily schedule, or a schedule at all for that matter. For now, it’s fun. But I harbour this fear that the more organized it gets, the more will be my obligations. And I don’t want to start down the road of one day hearing from a duly-delegated representative of the Greater Nairobi Graphic Arts Council that they are finding some difficulty with the placement of my RSS icon and could I please move it?
(Move this!)
So if you see an “RSS” logo or one of its similar little clones anywhere on your screen, congratulate me (OK, congratulate my wife). You are now instantly alerted every time I hit “Publish”. Why don’t you have a life?
---
Sponsorship scandal update: Oh, how the mighty are fallen! Today’s headlines initially reported that another VIA head was on the block and that the fate of two other crown corporation executives will soon be announced. Why the Business Development Bank’s Michel Vennat is still in harness is beyond me. He has already been the subject of a verdict by a Justice of the Quebec Superior Court that he spearheaded a vendetta of egregious proportions against the Bank’s former director, who had rejected a further loan to a business closely linked to former Prime Minister Jean Chretien. His is not even a case that needs to await further evidence. (By day’s end, “on the block” became “in the basket” as PM Martin turned over to Transport Minister Tony Valeri the responsibility of announcing that VIA Rail president Marc LeFrançois had also been fired.)
Meanwhile, today the French language newspaper, La Presse, said Jean Pelletier has hired a lawyer and plans to sue Ottawa over his dismissal. If so, this’ll be a tricky one for him to win. All of these plum positions, simply because of their nature as patronage appointments, are “at the pleasure of the Prime Minister” and I can’t see a really credible defence being mounted around a principle of, “But he gave me no sign that I no longer pleasured him”. Perhaps Pelletier should consider a good divorce lawyer for this one.
And I am crushed! It looks like Ste Myriam’s halo is somewhat askew. The “pathetic single mom” whose revelations led directly to Pelletier’s firing, it seems, accepted a gift shortly after retiring from competitive biathlon. And no small gift it was – a Mercedes. One of the gift’s underwriters was Groupe Action, the ad agency at the very heart of the scandal. But it’s OK, she says. It was a “thank you from friends and sponsors” and she’s already given the car to her partner, Nima Mazhari, who plans to turn it into a sculpture (??) Future plans also include possibly donating it to a Quebec museum. Now there’s a mixed blessing! Can you just imagine the museum director who takes that call – “Oh wonderful, you want to bequeath a representation of a Quebec Olympic champion to grace a corner of our little gallery. Ah, c’est merveilleux! What exactly is it?... C’est QUA!????”
No entry last night because my wife thought it would be a great idea if I made this weblog update-enabled. “It’s so easy,” she said.
There are blogsite “subscribe” tools that can tell blog subscribers when anything new has been added, thus saving them the trauma of linking to their pet reads and discovering that nothing new has appeared since their last visit. These systems, in fact, are already apparently sophisticated enough to allow a frequent net surfer to program updates by choice of subject, regardless of where in the World Wide Web that subject has been updated. Thus if you are, say, Belinda Stronach, and it would warm your heart to get up in the morning and discover each new overnight internet appearance of the subject, “Paul Martin is a miserable failure”, you can do this. (Similarly, if you are Paul Martin and you need to know the same thing, you can tell at a glance if the volume of such updates from all over the internet means you’re probably better off just staying in bed today. Or at least avoiding microphones.)
These systems go by a variety of designations: RSS, XML, “Atom enabled”. I have also discovered that “RSS” means “Real Simple Syndication”. This leads me to wonder just who names these things. On a long ago comedy album, Steve Martin once commented about the necessity of establishing credibility if you are starting a major new business. He contrasted the potential for attracting new savings accounts to, for example, the “Security First Mortgage and National Trust” vs “Fred’s Bank”. So maybe “Regulatory Subscription Standard” or “Regionally Sub-integrated Signalling”. But “Real Simple Syndication”? It reminds me of my first e-mail program.
So after a bunch of false starts and reprogramming my “Publish format” preferences, now I’m updatable. (For a good time, call me!)
Part II involves pasting a little symbol on the blog, probably somewhere in that strip of (so far) dead space to the right. After a further 45 minutes last night of reading far more about coding than I ever want to know – why does it not occur to direction-writers to make a small section entitled, “Posting your update icon on your blog”? – I turned bleary-eyed from my monitor and decided Part II could wait. When I mentioned that to my wife early this morning, she said, “Oh that’s easy. I just thought you didn’t want to tell anyone.”
To be fair, she was partly right. At this early stage in my bloggerizing, I’m honestly not sure just who I am doing this for. To me, a weblog seems more analogous to a diary than to a newspaper (albeit a dairy left out on my desk while I’ve gone to the bathroom, because I have told my wife and one or two close friends that I’m playing with a blog, and where it can be found). And despite the so far reasonable regularity of new posts, I certainly have no intention of maintaining a daily schedule, or a schedule at all for that matter. For now, it’s fun. But I harbour this fear that the more organized it gets, the more will be my obligations. And I don’t want to start down the road of one day hearing from a duly-delegated representative of the Greater Nairobi Graphic Arts Council that they are finding some difficulty with the placement of my RSS icon and could I please move it?
(Move this!)
So if you see an “RSS” logo or one of its similar little clones anywhere on your screen, congratulate me (OK, congratulate my wife). You are now instantly alerted every time I hit “Publish”. Why don’t you have a life?
---
Sponsorship scandal update: Oh, how the mighty are fallen! Today’s headlines initially reported that another VIA head was on the block and that the fate of two other crown corporation executives will soon be announced. Why the Business Development Bank’s Michel Vennat is still in harness is beyond me. He has already been the subject of a verdict by a Justice of the Quebec Superior Court that he spearheaded a vendetta of egregious proportions against the Bank’s former director, who had rejected a further loan to a business closely linked to former Prime Minister Jean Chretien. His is not even a case that needs to await further evidence. (By day’s end, “on the block” became “in the basket” as PM Martin turned over to Transport Minister Tony Valeri the responsibility of announcing that VIA Rail president Marc LeFrançois had also been fired.)
Meanwhile, today the French language newspaper, La Presse, said Jean Pelletier has hired a lawyer and plans to sue Ottawa over his dismissal. If so, this’ll be a tricky one for him to win. All of these plum positions, simply because of their nature as patronage appointments, are “at the pleasure of the Prime Minister” and I can’t see a really credible defence being mounted around a principle of, “But he gave me no sign that I no longer pleasured him”. Perhaps Pelletier should consider a good divorce lawyer for this one.
And I am crushed! It looks like Ste Myriam’s halo is somewhat askew. The “pathetic single mom” whose revelations led directly to Pelletier’s firing, it seems, accepted a gift shortly after retiring from competitive biathlon. And no small gift it was – a Mercedes. One of the gift’s underwriters was Groupe Action, the ad agency at the very heart of the scandal. But it’s OK, she says. It was a “thank you from friends and sponsors” and she’s already given the car to her partner, Nima Mazhari, who plans to turn it into a sculpture (??) Future plans also include possibly donating it to a Quebec museum. Now there’s a mixed blessing! Can you just imagine the museum director who takes that call – “Oh wonderful, you want to bequeath a representation of a Quebec Olympic champion to grace a corner of our little gallery. Ah, c’est merveilleux! What exactly is it?... C’est QUA!????”
Wednesday, March 03, 2004
At home, I have a desk telephone from which run two wires. One is connected to a small 9V transformer that converts household alternating current to direct current in order to power the phone. The second is the phone line. For the past week, I have been getting all sorts of strange electronic hiccups from the phone – most often a simple, dead silence. Multiple readings of the manual failed to provide even a hint of the problem. Moving it to a different phone jack somewhere else in the house did nothing. Occasionally, after much manipulation, it would sputter briefly to life, but would die again moments later. I disconnected a resident fax machine thinking that it was possibly throwing some interference into the system.
Nothing re-awakened my dead phone.
It was a not-so-long-ago purchase, so I managed to find the receipt. The brief period for replacement had expired, but it was still well within the repair period allowed by the warranty. So, after much fiddling – even opening up the back of the phone to expose the internal half of the transformer connect, and after no result whatsoever other than my breaking a cheap Philips screwdriver – I finally decided tonight to box it up and take it back. As I bundled up the transformer and wound its wire up, I suddenly brushed a tiny bit of jaggedness somewhere along its length. On closer investigation, I discovered that the wire had been chewed almost completely through at two separate points about eight inches apart.
Did I mention we share our home with three cats?
I think Charlie Brown summed it up – from high in the air in an inverted position into which his own velocity had carried him after missing a football that Lucy had once again yanked away at the last minute: “AAAUUGGGGHH!!”
Nothing re-awakened my dead phone.
It was a not-so-long-ago purchase, so I managed to find the receipt. The brief period for replacement had expired, but it was still well within the repair period allowed by the warranty. So, after much fiddling – even opening up the back of the phone to expose the internal half of the transformer connect, and after no result whatsoever other than my breaking a cheap Philips screwdriver – I finally decided tonight to box it up and take it back. As I bundled up the transformer and wound its wire up, I suddenly brushed a tiny bit of jaggedness somewhere along its length. On closer investigation, I discovered that the wire had been chewed almost completely through at two separate points about eight inches apart.
Did I mention we share our home with three cats?
I think Charlie Brown summed it up – from high in the air in an inverted position into which his own velocity had carried him after missing a football that Lucy had once again yanked away at the last minute: “AAAUUGGGGHH!!”
(In the interests of equal time for the cola giants): A few days back, I griped about Pepsi’s marketing a new “baby” can of its sugar water. Well, it appears Pepsi’s chief competitor is also getting into some creative marketing with a line of bottled water it sells under the brand “Dasani”.
Normally you’d expect something called “purified water” to start out in, oh, I don’t know, maybe some crystal-pure source waters of the mighty Monongehela River nestled high in the mountains of Colorado, or some such place, where the spring snowpack melts and the bubbling clear product of nature begins the laborious process by which it finds its eventual way into your kidneys. But as it turns out, the “spring” for Dasani (UK) is, in fact, the London water treatment system, specifically the main pipeline delivering chemically treated water to South London.
Here’s part of how it played on the BBC’s website: “Coca-Cola says ‘reverse osmosis’, ‘a technique perfected by NASA to purify fluids on spacecraft’, is then used to filter the water further before minerals are added to ‘enhance the pure taste’. Finally, ‘ozone’ is injected to keep the water sterile, the company says.“
That NASA reference for me echoed the long-ago Tang campaign calling its synthetic orange-coloured drink “the juice that went to the moon” – solely because its powdered convenience made it easy to pack into the already-crowded Apollo capsules.
But it’s really a lose / lose position for the soft drink giant. If they argue they “improve” the tap’s output, they’ll have the municipal water managers on their backs and, quite possibly, everyone across the UK who works to supply Britons with drinking water. If they argue that they don’t mean to suggest there’s anything wrong with the UK’s tap water, then anyone in their customer base who isn’t a complete idiot can reasonably be expected to ask, “So why am I paying a markup of at least 80X its value to drink the same stuff from a shapely bottle with a pretty label on it?” And short of arguing perceived fair value for the erotic fantasies the bottle triggers, Coke is going to have a really tough time defending this product for a while with anything more than, “But… but… but…”
The corporate legal issue Coke first has to answer to is whether or not they violated the use of “pure” in its Dasani marketing. Apparently UK law is pretty explicit on the limitations of the word in advertising. According to an article in a voice from Coke’s US corporate headquarters, the Atlanta Journal Constitution, the UK’s Food Standards Agency (FSA) requires that anything labelled “pure” be “single ingredient foods”, and chemically purified tap water ain’t that.
Will Dasani go away for a couple weeks and re-emerge in a dramatic new (old) form? Will it disappear entirely? Will the remaining inventory quietly be shipped to a thirsty nation in a huge burst of corporate charity? Stay tuned.
PS… Oddly enough, this is old news in Canada. The CBC website reported on June 16, 2003, that in Canada, “Coca-Cola uses Calgary tap water for its Dasani label.” Dasani: Italian for “one born every minute”.
Normally you’d expect something called “purified water” to start out in, oh, I don’t know, maybe some crystal-pure source waters of the mighty Monongehela River nestled high in the mountains of Colorado, or some such place, where the spring snowpack melts and the bubbling clear product of nature begins the laborious process by which it finds its eventual way into your kidneys. But as it turns out, the “spring” for Dasani (UK) is, in fact, the London water treatment system, specifically the main pipeline delivering chemically treated water to South London.
Here’s part of how it played on the BBC’s website: “Coca-Cola says ‘reverse osmosis’, ‘a technique perfected by NASA to purify fluids on spacecraft’, is then used to filter the water further before minerals are added to ‘enhance the pure taste’. Finally, ‘ozone’ is injected to keep the water sterile, the company says.“
That NASA reference for me echoed the long-ago Tang campaign calling its synthetic orange-coloured drink “the juice that went to the moon” – solely because its powdered convenience made it easy to pack into the already-crowded Apollo capsules.
But it’s really a lose / lose position for the soft drink giant. If they argue they “improve” the tap’s output, they’ll have the municipal water managers on their backs and, quite possibly, everyone across the UK who works to supply Britons with drinking water. If they argue that they don’t mean to suggest there’s anything wrong with the UK’s tap water, then anyone in their customer base who isn’t a complete idiot can reasonably be expected to ask, “So why am I paying a markup of at least 80X its value to drink the same stuff from a shapely bottle with a pretty label on it?” And short of arguing perceived fair value for the erotic fantasies the bottle triggers, Coke is going to have a really tough time defending this product for a while with anything more than, “But… but… but…”
The corporate legal issue Coke first has to answer to is whether or not they violated the use of “pure” in its Dasani marketing. Apparently UK law is pretty explicit on the limitations of the word in advertising. According to an article in a voice from Coke’s US corporate headquarters, the Atlanta Journal Constitution, the UK’s Food Standards Agency (FSA) requires that anything labelled “pure” be “single ingredient foods”, and chemically purified tap water ain’t that.
Will Dasani go away for a couple weeks and re-emerge in a dramatic new (old) form? Will it disappear entirely? Will the remaining inventory quietly be shipped to a thirsty nation in a huge burst of corporate charity? Stay tuned.
PS… Oddly enough, this is old news in Canada. The CBC website reported on June 16, 2003, that in Canada, “Coca-Cola uses Calgary tap water for its Dasani label.” Dasani: Italian for “one born every minute”.
Tuesday, March 02, 2004
National Obligatory Rant About Service Day! Pass me the Festivus pole.
CASE STUDY 1: I spent some time today trying to get someone to go to my house and take a look at my 16-18 year old gas boiler (furnace) because its water pressure, according to a gauge mounted right on top of it, seemed lower than it should have been and a water feed pipe was making a quietly pathetic gurgling noise, which suggested less water was being fed into the system than is supposed to be the case.
I had to co-ordinate this visit from work because, despite the fact that I was making arrangements with this company’s ** service ** division, their hours are almost a mirror image of the daylight hours during which my wife and I are both in our respective offices. Ergo, they could only get in to service our boiler if one of us remained at home, or had made an alternate arrangement with, say, a retired neighbour or a scrupulously reliable neighbourhood tomcat, to be there to let the “service” person in.
CASE STUDY 2: Not so long ago, we took my parents out to a nice restaurant in Perth (where they live) called Fiddleheads. My mom has had a few key teeth – most notably her incisors (the front cutting teeth) – replaced with a denture plate. That is relevant to know because the sandwich she ordered arrived on bread called panini, a delicious Italian quasi-sourdough bread, but with a firm, almost tough – even when it’s fresh – exterior crust. After a couple of valiant efforts at a first bite, she wondered whether softer bread might be available for the same sandwich.
When the waitperson arrived, we were told, “Sorry, that’s the bread this sandwich comes with”. I looked around Fiddleheads and noted an array of bread options on plates in front of other customers – admittedly with different sandwiches, but clearly in the kitchen’s current inventory. I suggested to the waitperson that perhaps a visit to the duty manager would clear the rails for replacing my mother’s sandwich with another, made with softer-crusted bread. Reluctantly, our waitperson undertook this task, and soon delivered a new sandwich to my Mom, which met with her complete satisfaction.
CASE STUDY 3: Not too far from our neighbourhood is one of those massive cineplex things where the showing of a movie is now carried out in a building that also houses a large and noisy video arcade, a large and noisy food court, $8.00 bags of single-serving sized popcorn (extra for “golden topping”) and, for all I know, optional water polo. They also co-ordinate kids’ birthday parties. Once, when I delivered my daughter to a matinee movie (the first thing showing that day), for which her friend’s parents had arranged one of these kids’ parties, we shared outdoor waiting time with a wheelchair-bound patron and her caregiver.
It was a cold day, but we didn’t have long to wait and the person who came to the door from inside the theatre asked, “Who’s here for (the birthday party)?” In we all went, but I noticed the wheelchair, its occupant and her caregiver were left outside. I touched the shoulder of our handler, who said, “Oh, that person’s handicapped and our handicapped host isn’t here yet.” “Um…,” I suggested, “Maybe you could allow the ‘handicapped person’ to wait indoors, because it’s a little cold outside.” “I’ll see if we can do that,” said our birthday party handler and waved another worker over, swiftly dispatching him to seek out upper-echelon authority to admit a wheelchair before the “handicapped host” had arrived on station.
CASE STUDY 4: I work as a tiny cog in a bureaucratic engine that rushes frantically along in support of the Government of Canada. At home, I have a webmail account with my Internet Service Provider (Rogers) and have always been able to open it from my work computer – up until about a week ago. Now I get a bright red “Forbidden by Ratings Access” warning. When I spoke to one of our IT people, he told me that Rogers webmail has now been blocked by the department’s new firewalls. I joked that the day is possibly not too far off when our department will block all external e-mail. He didn’t laugh, but replied, “Could be”.
I’m frankly stuck for a common theme to link all these sorry tales together. It would have something to do with my becoming ever more disappointed by how little decision-making leeway is allowed to front-line employees, coupled with bemusement over a sledgehammer approach to problem-solving (a rogue virus might come in an e-mail, so shut down e-mail for thousands of people), to wondering what the devil ever happened to Faith Popcorn’s prediction that our new Millennium social trend to “cocooning” would lead to an explosive increase in the number of home service providers, the most successful of which would accommodate the schedule of the home owner, not that of the service provider.
There’s probably a country and western song for the New Age in there.
PS: Oh, I eventually spoke to the boiler service guy by phone. He was in my house. (I owe Fluffy a catnip mouse.) It turned out our last service guy – who we needed sometime last winter – gave me entirely the wrong pressure to which this boiler should be set and what I had been thinking all along was “low” is, in fact, “normal” for this boiler. He also told me that the gurgling sound I heard was not water flowing too slowly. It was water flowing too quickly. So he turned a key valve to partially shut down the inflow. The gurgling stopped immediately. (This PS is for those of you who needed closure on that story.) (PS 2: Oh, and yes I’m an idiot and could have turned the tap partway closed myself and saved the $96 minimum labour charge for the service call. That PS is just for those of you who need closure – and are also my wife.)
CASE STUDY 1: I spent some time today trying to get someone to go to my house and take a look at my 16-18 year old gas boiler (furnace) because its water pressure, according to a gauge mounted right on top of it, seemed lower than it should have been and a water feed pipe was making a quietly pathetic gurgling noise, which suggested less water was being fed into the system than is supposed to be the case.
I had to co-ordinate this visit from work because, despite the fact that I was making arrangements with this company’s ** service ** division, their hours are almost a mirror image of the daylight hours during which my wife and I are both in our respective offices. Ergo, they could only get in to service our boiler if one of us remained at home, or had made an alternate arrangement with, say, a retired neighbour or a scrupulously reliable neighbourhood tomcat, to be there to let the “service” person in.
CASE STUDY 2: Not so long ago, we took my parents out to a nice restaurant in Perth (where they live) called Fiddleheads. My mom has had a few key teeth – most notably her incisors (the front cutting teeth) – replaced with a denture plate. That is relevant to know because the sandwich she ordered arrived on bread called panini, a delicious Italian quasi-sourdough bread, but with a firm, almost tough – even when it’s fresh – exterior crust. After a couple of valiant efforts at a first bite, she wondered whether softer bread might be available for the same sandwich.
When the waitperson arrived, we were told, “Sorry, that’s the bread this sandwich comes with”. I looked around Fiddleheads and noted an array of bread options on plates in front of other customers – admittedly with different sandwiches, but clearly in the kitchen’s current inventory. I suggested to the waitperson that perhaps a visit to the duty manager would clear the rails for replacing my mother’s sandwich with another, made with softer-crusted bread. Reluctantly, our waitperson undertook this task, and soon delivered a new sandwich to my Mom, which met with her complete satisfaction.
CASE STUDY 3: Not too far from our neighbourhood is one of those massive cineplex things where the showing of a movie is now carried out in a building that also houses a large and noisy video arcade, a large and noisy food court, $8.00 bags of single-serving sized popcorn (extra for “golden topping”) and, for all I know, optional water polo. They also co-ordinate kids’ birthday parties. Once, when I delivered my daughter to a matinee movie (the first thing showing that day), for which her friend’s parents had arranged one of these kids’ parties, we shared outdoor waiting time with a wheelchair-bound patron and her caregiver.
It was a cold day, but we didn’t have long to wait and the person who came to the door from inside the theatre asked, “Who’s here for (the birthday party)?” In we all went, but I noticed the wheelchair, its occupant and her caregiver were left outside. I touched the shoulder of our handler, who said, “Oh, that person’s handicapped and our handicapped host isn’t here yet.” “Um…,” I suggested, “Maybe you could allow the ‘handicapped person’ to wait indoors, because it’s a little cold outside.” “I’ll see if we can do that,” said our birthday party handler and waved another worker over, swiftly dispatching him to seek out upper-echelon authority to admit a wheelchair before the “handicapped host” had arrived on station.
CASE STUDY 4: I work as a tiny cog in a bureaucratic engine that rushes frantically along in support of the Government of Canada. At home, I have a webmail account with my Internet Service Provider (Rogers) and have always been able to open it from my work computer – up until about a week ago. Now I get a bright red “Forbidden by Ratings Access” warning. When I spoke to one of our IT people, he told me that Rogers webmail has now been blocked by the department’s new firewalls. I joked that the day is possibly not too far off when our department will block all external e-mail. He didn’t laugh, but replied, “Could be”.
I’m frankly stuck for a common theme to link all these sorry tales together. It would have something to do with my becoming ever more disappointed by how little decision-making leeway is allowed to front-line employees, coupled with bemusement over a sledgehammer approach to problem-solving (a rogue virus might come in an e-mail, so shut down e-mail for thousands of people), to wondering what the devil ever happened to Faith Popcorn’s prediction that our new Millennium social trend to “cocooning” would lead to an explosive increase in the number of home service providers, the most successful of which would accommodate the schedule of the home owner, not that of the service provider.
There’s probably a country and western song for the New Age in there.
PS: Oh, I eventually spoke to the boiler service guy by phone. He was in my house. (I owe Fluffy a catnip mouse.) It turned out our last service guy – who we needed sometime last winter – gave me entirely the wrong pressure to which this boiler should be set and what I had been thinking all along was “low” is, in fact, “normal” for this boiler. He also told me that the gurgling sound I heard was not water flowing too slowly. It was water flowing too quickly. So he turned a key valve to partially shut down the inflow. The gurgling stopped immediately. (This PS is for those of you who needed closure on that story.) (PS 2: Oh, and yes I’m an idiot and could have turned the tap partway closed myself and saved the $96 minimum labour charge for the service call. That PS is just for those of you who need closure – and are also my wife.)
Monday, March 01, 2004
Last word on the subject, for now...
From the Globe and Mail's website:
"Paul Cote, the interim president and chief executive officer of VIA Rail Canada, said Monday he has launched a review of Ms. Bedard's allegations and will report to him (the Prime Minister... ed) 'in the shortest possible time' on the findings. 'VIA Rail Canada would like to offer its sincerest apologies to Ms. Myriam Bedard for the comments about her that we're reported in the press last week,' Mr. Cote said in a statement. 'We regret the pain that these comments have caused Ms. Bedard, her daughter, her family and friends. We would also like to extend our apologies to all Canadian women for the nature and tone of these remarks.'"
Piece of cake. Three days late and an employee short, but certainly -- finally! -- the post-insult language that should have been there scant minutes after M Pelletier jammed foot firmly in mouth.
From the Globe and Mail's website:
"Paul Cote, the interim president and chief executive officer of VIA Rail Canada, said Monday he has launched a review of Ms. Bedard's allegations and will report to him (the Prime Minister... ed) 'in the shortest possible time' on the findings. 'VIA Rail Canada would like to offer its sincerest apologies to Ms. Myriam Bedard for the comments about her that we're reported in the press last week,' Mr. Cote said in a statement. 'We regret the pain that these comments have caused Ms. Bedard, her daughter, her family and friends. We would also like to extend our apologies to all Canadian women for the nature and tone of these remarks.'"
Piece of cake. Three days late and an employee short, but certainly -- finally! -- the post-insult language that should have been there scant minutes after M Pelletier jammed foot firmly in mouth.
STOP THE PRESSES!
From the Globe and Mail's website, a mere "15 minutes ago"...
"The federal government fired VIA Rail chairman Jean Pelletier Monday, just days after he called Olympian and former VIA employee Myriam Bédard a 'pitiful' single mom after she came forward with allegations of misspending at the Crown corporation."
There's a moral here about the antithesis of wisdom exemplified by the decision to bad-mouth a Canadian hero... in public... for reasons that had nothing to do with the comments to which you were asked to respond... I'm thinking maybe a rewrite of Jim Croce's "You don't mess around with Jim" would probably say it best. (Oh, not to mention probably misusing an enormous amount of public funds, but that would've taken a whole lot longer to prove and probably would not have developed nearly the "public indignation" legs as antagonizing just about everyone in the country by slagging single moms did in just ten seconds of foot-in-mouth ranting.)
Na-na-naaaa-na; hey, heyyyyy... good bye!
From the Globe and Mail's website, a mere "15 minutes ago"...
"The federal government fired VIA Rail chairman Jean Pelletier Monday, just days after he called Olympian and former VIA employee Myriam Bédard a 'pitiful' single mom after she came forward with allegations of misspending at the Crown corporation."
There's a moral here about the antithesis of wisdom exemplified by the decision to bad-mouth a Canadian hero... in public... for reasons that had nothing to do with the comments to which you were asked to respond... I'm thinking maybe a rewrite of Jim Croce's "You don't mess around with Jim" would probably say it best. (Oh, not to mention probably misusing an enormous amount of public funds, but that would've taken a whole lot longer to prove and probably would not have developed nearly the "public indignation" legs as antagonizing just about everyone in the country by slagging single moms did in just ten seconds of foot-in-mouth ranting.)
Na-na-naaaa-na; hey, heyyyyy... good bye!
An update on the “Did she jump or was she pushed?” question about the circumstances under which Myriam Bédard left VIA Rail, this from a report on the CBC’s website:
“VIA chair Jean Pelletier, formerly Jean Chrétien's chief of staff, told La Presse last week that Bédard was asked to leave because she was insubordinate and didn't fit in with the team. Bédard says she was told she could either quit, or accept a job with Groupaction Marketing Inc., a company at the heart of the sponsorship scandal and one that had contracts with VIA Rail. She refused a transfer and subsequently resigned. One month before that, she got a letter praising her work at the rail company, she told CBC News.”
Let’s see – resign or accept a position with the ad agency that is smack in the middle of the whole affair for allegedly accepting enormous sums of money that apparently were way out of whack when set against the actual work performed? Even if she did “jump”, it certainly looks to me like it was to get clear of a burning building. As the Aussies would say, “Good on ya”.
Speaking of Down Under (Smooth Segues “R” Us), I’ve been reading some of today’s coverage of last night’s media saturation presentation of the Oscars. Given the array of the Academy’s Awards that were thrown at New Zealand Director Peter Jackson (for, I suspect, not just “Lord of the Rings III – The Return of the King”, but for the body of artistry that is the three-year trilogy), there are literally thousands of headlines available from the media watch file today, and I’ve been looking for puns. Sadly, most have leapt no farther than into the pool of bland. “Lord of the Oscars” is a frequent favourite. But The UK’s Guardian certainly rose to the occasion with “Mordor by Numbers”. (Surprisingly, I have yet to see “One ‘Rings’ to Rule Them All”, which would have been the headline on my newspaper’s Oscar story.)
Most writers are bemoaning the ennui of the whole affair, but what was one to expect? After Janet Jackson’s mammarable demonstration at this year’s Super Bowl halftime show, and the resulting announcement that major media events like the Oscars would be broadcast with a five-second delay, why would anyone be surprised that no one was willing to step very far from the safe road? (Although I did read that apparently Angelina Jolie’s dress shared with terrorists post-9-1-1 concerns over, shall we say, “fallout”.)
I gave up actually watching the event live many years ago, exactly for reasons of a consistent failure to find any but occasional glimmers of watchability in the marathon. Anything even remotely worth seeing or hearing is certainly going to light up in the following day’s papers. And Google News has them all (1100 different stories and counting as of 0900 today).
Besides, in an effort to draw viewers away from the Oscars, the Family Channel last night showed a past Oscar great – “Gone With the Wind” – a film in which it is hard to find a moment NOT worth watching.
I hasten to add, he said defensively, that I am not feeling “Holier than Thou” about this. My wife, for example, finds some joy in watching the Oscars as they happen “just to see what people are wearing” and I certainly begrudge no one’s choosing to watch the lavish fashion parade.
But even within those parameters, I confess I would probably watch with a male-typical hope of another “wardrobe malfunction” from one or more of the artfully cantilevered designs. And this year, even that unlikely outcome would have been bleeped away from the five-second broadcast delay.
Anyway, my wife would no doubt swiftly tire of hearing me shout that Star Trek staple when a warp core breach is imminent, “Captain, we’re losing containment!”
“VIA chair Jean Pelletier, formerly Jean Chrétien's chief of staff, told La Presse last week that Bédard was asked to leave because she was insubordinate and didn't fit in with the team. Bédard says she was told she could either quit, or accept a job with Groupaction Marketing Inc., a company at the heart of the sponsorship scandal and one that had contracts with VIA Rail. She refused a transfer and subsequently resigned. One month before that, she got a letter praising her work at the rail company, she told CBC News.”
Let’s see – resign or accept a position with the ad agency that is smack in the middle of the whole affair for allegedly accepting enormous sums of money that apparently were way out of whack when set against the actual work performed? Even if she did “jump”, it certainly looks to me like it was to get clear of a burning building. As the Aussies would say, “Good on ya”.
Speaking of Down Under (Smooth Segues “R” Us), I’ve been reading some of today’s coverage of last night’s media saturation presentation of the Oscars. Given the array of the Academy’s Awards that were thrown at New Zealand Director Peter Jackson (for, I suspect, not just “Lord of the Rings III – The Return of the King”, but for the body of artistry that is the three-year trilogy), there are literally thousands of headlines available from the media watch file today, and I’ve been looking for puns. Sadly, most have leapt no farther than into the pool of bland. “Lord of the Oscars” is a frequent favourite. But The UK’s Guardian certainly rose to the occasion with “Mordor by Numbers”. (Surprisingly, I have yet to see “One ‘Rings’ to Rule Them All”, which would have been the headline on my newspaper’s Oscar story.)
Most writers are bemoaning the ennui of the whole affair, but what was one to expect? After Janet Jackson’s mammarable demonstration at this year’s Super Bowl halftime show, and the resulting announcement that major media events like the Oscars would be broadcast with a five-second delay, why would anyone be surprised that no one was willing to step very far from the safe road? (Although I did read that apparently Angelina Jolie’s dress shared with terrorists post-9-1-1 concerns over, shall we say, “fallout”.)
I gave up actually watching the event live many years ago, exactly for reasons of a consistent failure to find any but occasional glimmers of watchability in the marathon. Anything even remotely worth seeing or hearing is certainly going to light up in the following day’s papers. And Google News has them all (1100 different stories and counting as of 0900 today).
Besides, in an effort to draw viewers away from the Oscars, the Family Channel last night showed a past Oscar great – “Gone With the Wind” – a film in which it is hard to find a moment NOT worth watching.
I hasten to add, he said defensively, that I am not feeling “Holier than Thou” about this. My wife, for example, finds some joy in watching the Oscars as they happen “just to see what people are wearing” and I certainly begrudge no one’s choosing to watch the lavish fashion parade.
But even within those parameters, I confess I would probably watch with a male-typical hope of another “wardrobe malfunction” from one or more of the artfully cantilevered designs. And this year, even that unlikely outcome would have been bleeped away from the five-second broadcast delay.
Anyway, my wife would no doubt swiftly tire of hearing me shout that Star Trek staple when a warp core breach is imminent, “Captain, we’re losing containment!”
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