TriumphAnt

When I was in university, one of the annual wordplay jokes among my group of Friday night pub-going friends was, “Must be Spring; the Leafs are out”, a reference to the Toronto NHL team’s inevitable yearly collapse in the Stanley Cup playoffs.

If the recent wave of hand-wringing national angst in this country’s sports headlines is any indication, you can probably add, “Must be the Olympics; Canada’s whining has started” to the list of alternative ways to say, “You can bet on it”.

In the wake of not one, but two, 2-0 “stunning / shocking” Canadian men’s hockey losses to supposedly inferior hockey teams (Switzerland and Finland), the headline writers and sports columnists are already agonizing over how to frame their “What went so terribly wrong?” opinion pieces. Already, I’ve read excuses that the players – whose combined annual salary runs to over $90 million – are playing like fat-cat “superstars”, out for individual glory rather than coming together as a team. Or they’re distracted by the NHL betting scandal that erupted just before the Olympics began and which has threatened to tarnish the reputation of their manager, Wayne Gretzky. Or that the larger European ice surface is tiring them out before the full 60 minutes have been played.

Meanwhile, from the other ice surface where Canada has not been doing as well as was expected – the curling arena – I have read some truly astonishing laments. If I ever need someone to take over this forum in the event of an extended vacation, I will look no farther than among those who bleat about Canada’s curling teams to find a world-class whiner to fill in for me. These people have actually tried blaming everything from the quality of the ice on the curling sheets to the very rocks themselves, although that last one didn’t last too long when someone pointed out that the 40-pound chunks of polished granite used in Olympic competition all come from the World Curling Federation, and that to blame the rocks would require believing there is a highly-organized international conspiracy at work aimed at screwing up the Canadian curlers’ game.

Which, astonishingly, has at least been considered, if this note in a recent Globe and Mail sports column on the subject is any indication: In a column by Bob Weeks, Hans Wuthrich of Gimli, Manitoba, whose claim to fame is apparently that he makes fantastic ice surfaces for curling, “offered one other eyebrow-raising suggestion for the straight ice, one that would certainly upset Canadians teams. ‘It could be politics, too,’ Wuthrich said, then quickly covered his tracks by adding, ‘I'm not saying that's what's happening.’”

Uh huh. I’m just saying it could be happening. Not “is”. See the difference?

I have since learned that “straight ice” refers to the relative smoothness of its “pebbling” – a feature which enables a curler to give his or her rock a turning capability. Europeans apparently make their ice with smaller surface “pebbles”, reducing a rock's ability to turn or “curl”, hence its label: “straight” ice. Canadian curlers view such ice as – no surprise here – an inferior condition. (Not to be confused with taking one’s drinks “straight”, which of course means with no ice at all, generally held by aficionados of single malt scotches to be a superior condition.)

Where was I? Oh yes.

Mr Weeks himself then goes on to further rationalize the wisdom of blaming the ice: “Certainly, straight ice is quite common in Europe, which doesn't have the resources or technology to make ice as swingy as is common in Canada. A one-foot or two-foot curl is standard in many European competitions, while Canadians favour three or four feet. Keep the ice straight and the two Canadian teams are at a definite disadvantage.” (“Bad conditions at Olympics throw curlers for a loop”, Bob Weeks, Globe and Mail, February 20) Mr Weeks is better known as a golf columnist and editor. This column on curling makes it pretty clear why.

Now I know it’s been a while since I curled, but one thing I distinctly recall – and which I don’t believe has been changed for the modern winter Olympic games – is that both teams in a curling match (a “draw”, in the language of the sport) still play on the same sheet of ice. In other words, good ice or bad, the surface condition is neither advantageous nor detrimental to either you or your opponents since you’re both, in turn, hurling 40-pound blocks of granite along precisely the same path. And whether that path is “straight” or “swingy”, the winner therefore should be the team with the most skill. Now there's a concept!

By the time you get to read this, Canada in fact might well be on the way to yet another men’s hockey gold medal, if not already will have won one; the two losses accumulated at this writing did not knock Canada out of the medal round. Or Canada’s NHLers might have actually been beaten for that bit of hardware by an “upstart” team of foreign NHLers and the public sportswriter moaning in this country will have risen to a truly blizzard-like torrent.

But regardless of the outcome and this year’s final medal count, if they ever make whining and fingerpointing an Olympic competition, we are so going to kick the rest of the world’s BUTTS!

And so to all those who believe in mythology, superstition and the power of external charms, or their absence, I’m afraid I don’t share your thinking that if we are beaten for the men’s hockey gold medal, it’ll be because we somehow failed to embed that damned loonie deep beneath the Turin hockey arena surface at centre ice.

But on the other hand, I won’t entirely discount the possibility that a just and merciful God was less than happy with Team Canada’s naming whack-job Todd Bertuzzi to the men’s hockey team, thus embodying the modern Olympic ideal of “win at all costs”. (Bertuzzi is, of course, the Vancouver Canuck “enforcer” who in March 2004 sucker-punched Colorado Avalanche player Steve Moore and then fiercely rode him down to the ice, grinding his face into the surface and causing him such tremendous injury that Moore’s professional hockey days are probably over, as was damned near his ability ever to walk again – before Bertuzzi wept openly on TV that he hadn’t meant to hurt him.) And Yea! He, the just and merciful God, didst spake thus unto Team Canada – “Have it all your way? Nnnnnnnnnnnnnnn… no. No way. Not this year.”

And it doesn’t bother me a bit that this year – so far – they have already been dancing in the streets of Basel and Helsinki.

(A same-day posting update, or “This just in…”): The Canadian women’s hockey team earlier today gave the men’s team something to shoot for. A gold medal. The women won it by finally solving the mystery of Sweden’s sparkling goaltender and beating the Swedes 4 – 1. At this writing the Swedish women, who are going home with silver medals in the sport, have not yet complained about “straight” or “swingy” ice, and no doubt their media will be simply beside themselves with joy at celebrating their women’s Olympic hockey accomplishment – not berating their players for “losing gold”, but rather heaping plaudits on them for “winning silver”. What the hell is the matter with that country?)

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Meanwhile, long-time readers of this Whine will probably recall that one of my pet peeves is the trumping of accurate record keeping for the sake of political correctness.

Recently, a news release crossed my desk that opened this way (the news release, that is, not my desk):

“TORONTO -- The Original SoupMan(TM) will celebrate the long anticipated grand opening of their new location at The Toronto Eaton Centre on Thursday, February 23 at 12:00 p.m. The Original SoupMan features the Zagat-rated soups of legendary soup man Al Yeganeh, who inspired the famous 'Soup Episode' on Seinfeld.”

Apparently, Mr Yeganeh has founded a charity called “Soup for Life” that makes generous contributions to area food banks and feed-the-homeless programs.

(“Homelessness” is one of my work-related files and it’s why I occasionally get wonky news releases like this, or like the one sent out when the Hollywood mansion that was Wayne Manor in the original TV show, “Batman”, burned down and several newspapers carried a story under the headline, “Batman is homeless”, or when a west-coast NFL team’s stadium was damaged in an earthquake and there was a news release-driven sports page discussion about where the temporarily-“homeless” team would have to play in order to have home-field advantage. But I digress.)

Back to the Seinfeld “Soup Episode”.

Talk about being afraid of words.

Al Yeganah might well be the founder and figurehead behind a 25-year old and now-blossoming franchise called “Original SoupMan”. But the reason he exploded into public consciousness, and the whole point of his character as written into a Seinfeld episode that many fans rank high on their lists of favourites, was that he was a soup “Nazi", not a soup “Man". The business, not surprisingly in this day and age, must of needs be the politically-correct "Original SoupMan", but the "legendary" character – his incarnation on Seinfeld – was the "Soup Nazi".

(Google "Soup Man": 11,800 hits
Google "Soup Nazi": 161,000 hits)

In my home library, I have a trio of books – “Penrod”, “Penrod and Sam” and “Penrod Jashber” – that are among my fondest childhood reading memories. All are by Booth Tarkington, a turn-of-the-century US writer, and all are about the highly creative adventures of one Penrod Schofield, a remarkably adventurous 12-year old, who plunges into encounters that leave one searching for synonyms for “extreme mischief”.

In Tarkington’s day, and in Tarkington’s environs, black Americans were labelled with terms and characteristics we would today characterize as “politically incorrect”, if not outright racist. But so labelled they were. And so labelled were they in Tarkington’s novels. Here’s how the discomfort that a modern reader might experience is qualified in the introduction to my 1985 Indiana University Press Library of Indiana Classics edition of “Penrod”:

“What has changed most dramatically since the time when Penrod was written is our attitude toward race. Today’s reader will be struck by the offhand, unconscious prejudice in Tarkington’s description of black people. We see this in his casual reference to a 'darky boy' or a 'nigger lady', and more elaborately in his treatment of the black brothers, Herman and Verman, who serve as attractions in Penrod’s backyard carnival and who, in their 'simple, direct, African way' drive a bully from the neighborhood. Because of their no-holds-barred manner of fighting, Herman and Verman are described as 'beings in one of those lower stages of evolution.' Like some equally painful moments in the works of Mrk Twain, say, or William Faulkner, such passages reflect the prejudices of the author’s own time and place and social background – which is not to excuse or deny them, but to see them as an expression of a widely shared racism that we have begun, haltingly and imperfectly, to outgrow.”

A very affectionate reminiscence of the Penrod stories by Washington Post book critic Jonathan Yardley (“Attaboy! Booth Tarkington's Rascals”, Saturday, August 7, 2004) gets it exactly right when he writes:

“In only one instance does ‘Penrod and Sam’ seem anachronistic by today's standards, and that is a familiar one. In language and in stereotypes, Tarkington portrays black characters in antiquated and occasionally offensive ways. This is unfortunate, to put it mildly, and some parents may decline to lead their children to his work for that reason. Yet here we must step carefully, for a good deal of evidence indicates that Tarkington is more respectful and sympathetic to his black characters than first impressions suggest. Penrod and Sam play with their black friends Herman and Verman pretty much as equals, and Tarkington invests them with a certain dignity. When Verman is insulted by Georgie Bassett with a racial slur, Sam quickly and emphatically comes to his defense, making plain that Verman ‘won't let anybody’ call him that. Here we see the racial divide not through the eyes of the adults to whom Sam is speaking but through those of the boys. Yes, the divide is still there, but it's a lot narrower than it is in the adult world. Sometimes bad boys can be very good.”

My simple point, probably being made with excessive cumbersomeness, is this: rather than run away from language when changing times impart meaning that is perhaps offensive in a modern context, we should instead embrace the fact that we are aware the language is offensive. But at the same time we display the words, we should teach the context of the times when, rightly or wrongly, they were part of everyday speech. And rather than ban the books or digitally expurgate the language of films whose “offensiveness” derives from reasons of propaganda, or simply their world when they were produced, we should celebrate the fact that we’ve probably grown up a little since then.

There's (a) politically correct, and there's (b) historical accuracy. I hate it when (a) trumps (b).

(Oh, and while we’re on an “accuracy” jag, “NOO-cyu-lar” is the WRONG way to pronounce “nuclear”. The fact that the current US President says it that way does not make it right, nor is it – Merriam-Webster Dictionary take note – an allowable “var”.)

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In a February 16 National Post column lamenting that a flamewar between two writers would be taking place in public in the paragraphs of their respective columns, Warren Kinsella quoted one of the columnists’ comments about a book the other had written recently:

"’The Continuity Girl’ illuminates the limitations of my thesaurus. Uber-lousy? Fifth-rate? Super-bad? None of the above. There exists no English word that adequately describes the not-so-goodness herein. Even the German word SaumassigeSchreibmaschiene, which roughly translates into 'putrid garbage typewriter prose,' fails to convey the stench of this slush pile."

Now it occurs to me that ”SaumassigeSchreibmaschiene” would be a heck of a cool name for a blog. For that matter, so would its English rendition, “Putrid Garbage Typewriter Prose”. Kinsella goes on to debunk the term’s very existence, based on a run through a couple German-to-English sources at his disposal – certainly the online Babelfish translation site gags on it – leaving one to suspect it is made up. But to my mind that doesn’t reduce its cool factor at all. Therefore, let me hereby declare it to all and sundry that SaumassigeSchreibmaschiene will be the name under which “Baby Duck” is read, the moment I am linked through the BerlinerZeitung’s Am Auzgeseichnetestenbloggenbabblekolumm.

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Speaking of “cool”, just outside my window is what remains of an old spider web. During a recent snowfall in the nation’s capital, I noticed it had snagged a few wayward flakes of snow. I was delighted to observe that these were absolutely classic crystalline, symmetrical snowflakes. And sure enough, of the half dozen I could see, no two were alike! So I trust that puts to rest any suggestion to the contrary. (What? Six is not a scientifically sufficient snowflake sample size? Oh sure, and you probably believe that evolution is just a “theory”.)

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And finally, in the spirit of those Canada’s Olympic athletes who this year committed the cardinal sin (at least in the eyes of the media) of “failing to meet expectations” and were beaten out in sports in which they were expected to win medals, and who offered as excuses: ice conditions, snow conditions, biased foreign judges, or by heaven knows what, perhaps by an unexpected brand switch of the fat-free margarine they had on that morning’s toast – by anything, in other words, but a faster, higher, stronger and more passionate opponent – there’s this:

I just got our family’s espresso maker back from the repair shop where it had been residing for a week because it hadn’t been making espresso. Having run the gamut of trouble-shooting suggestions in the manual, and having been given no espresso whatsoever from its twin spouts, I took it to the appliance hospital. After a week, I received a phone call telling me that it was working fine – and in fact that it had apparently been working fine when I brought it in, because their “espresso machine technician” had test-brewed not one, but several batches of coffee and had been rewarded with a perfect product every time.

I was dubious – because that had not been my result – so I did a number of variations on “Are you sure?” in my phone conversation with the store rep who called. "Yes," she said, “We are sure.”

So of course, when I got it back home, I filled it with water, loaded a batch of first-rate genuine espresso coffee into the filter and switched it on.

Nothing. Just – again – the same gnarly hum of the motor but no coffee.

So being me, now I start to seethe. Quickly, I yanked the instruction manual from the shelf, spun once more through the troubleshooting chart, ticking off each possible problem with a “did it; did it; did it; did it; did it” (a mental rhythm that also led me to start humming the saxophone theme from the “Pink Panther” movies, but I digress).

So, on a whim, I rolled back the manual’s pages to page 1 – “First-time set-up” – and there I read (re-read, I assume, since I had to have read it at least once before, when I first set the machine up many months ago) – a brief paragraph on “priming your machine”.

Oh.

Oh yeah.

An espresso machine’s pump motor works on the siphon principle. Before fluid will actually flow, there needs to be fluid in the system. Since the fluid in this case is water, after a few days have gone by without your having made an espresso, it is possible that the small volume of water that actually sits in the pumping mechanism will have evaporated, and the dry mechanism will therefore need to be re-primed.

Now that being said, am I being unreasonable in thinking this would be a perfectly logical consideration to include in the troubleshooting options already listed in the manual under the title, “Motor runs, but machine does not make coffee”? To be followed by, perhaps, a simple suggestion on the order of, “The priming water might have evaporated. Please re-prime as per instruction on p.1”? Because it isn’t.

And it honestly did not occur to me, when the machine failed to work after sitting idle for a few days, that I should re-visit the “First-time use” section of the manual, for the simple reason that this was not its first time being used. (Needless to say, that troubleshooting possibility is now handwritten in large bold text and underlined on the front cover of the manual.)

Baby Duck: Our motto (because I AM CANADIAN! tm.reg.): It’s always someone else’s fault.

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