Lovely, this…

I was reading a recent Globe and Mail article about a backpack that uses what the writer claims is an “ingenious” bungee cord and pulley system to redistribute the load with every step the wearer takes, either walking or running. Seems like a great idea, I thought. Then I hit this line:

“By hanging the backpack load from springy cords suspended from a frame, a 55-pound backpack like Ms. Slack's can be transported using the same energy required to carry a conventional pack weighing 48 pounds.”

OK, hands up – everybody who is capable of recognizing the difference between 48 and 55 pounds when it’s slung on your back. (For the record, I have not raised my own hand.)

= = =

Peace on Earth…

Why is there a shortage of good news from Iraq, one might wonder? In fact, if one is among the ever-shrinking minority of Bush supporters, one might well whine that the bad news seems to be the _only_ thing on which the media is casting its eye these days. Well, there’s a very good reason for that, and it’s very well articulated in an online article from the Columbia Journalism Review. (December 14, “The ‘Good News’ Chorus Sings On”, by Paul McLeary)

The author makes one very good point here…

“There's a reason the press dwells on the constant stream of car bombings, mass kidnappings, suicide bombings, the ineffectiveness of the Iraqi government, and the daily discovery of mutilated bodies dumped on the streets of Baghdad: These things are, in part, the reality of life in Baghdad, and to a lesser extent, cities like Karbala and Mosul -- the population centers of Iraq. In other words, imagine that New York, Los Angeles and Washington, D.C. were engulfed by an endless cycle of bloody violence, and people were complaining that the media was focusing their energies there, while ignoring a new irrigation project in Kansas. Of course there's more happening in Iraq than car bombs and sectarian murder -- children are going to school, couples are getting married, having children. But the job of a journalist, in Iraq or anywhere else, is not to write about the 99 percent of things that function as they should. How do these "good news" stories in Iraq stack up against 70 civilians getting blown up in back-to-back car bomb attacks, furthering the spiral of civilian casualties?” …

and cites (perhaps with his cheek not entirely tongue-free) another US reporter who lived in the region for two years and makes a second very good point here:

“More to the point, as Washington Post reporter Rajiv Chandrasekaran noted in his excellent book about Iraq, "Imperial Life in the Emerald City," there were times during his two years in country when a reporter would request to go with the military to a newly opened power plant or school, but the military would turn the request down, saying that if the project got too much press, the insurgents would attack it.”

It all reminds me of a classic bit from the comic strip Doonesbury at the height of the Watergate crisis (a long time ago – well, 1973-ish – in a galaxy far, far away) where then-White House press secretary Ron Ziegler is fielding yet another wave of negative questions from the press:

-- “Ron, does the President have any comment on the most recent disclosures in the Watergate case?
-- NO! Watergate! Watergate! What is the matter with you guys?! What is this senseless orgy of recrimination week after week?! I've already said all that I'm going to! So why don't you stop wasting both our time and ask me questions I can deal with?
-- Ron, what color shirt is the President wearing today?
-- That's better. Blue."

That’s what we need – more sartorial exploration and less investigative reporting from Iraq. I’m just afraid the answer to the question, “What are most Iraqis wearing these days?” would more likely than not be “bandages”.

Or shrouds.

- - -

If Rick Mercer can rant, and Dennis Miller (both before and after he became an unfunny pro-Bushite) can rant, then I guess I can rant too.

In the Globe and Mail on Thursday, December 14, a story about Michael Ignatieff noted that he has called on the Liberal Party not to let itself “split” over the issue of Afghanistan.

The reporter also noted that Mr Ignatieff’s unselfish call for total Party unity came at a “private” social event held to honour him, and to which organizers had invited only those MPs who had supported Ignatieff’s recent and, as everyone now knows, ultimately failed leadership bid. But most pointedly, they also had deliberately not invited the newly-elected leader of the Party – Stéphane Dion.

Well here’s a memo to the Liberals – it isn’t going to be Afghanistan that keeps you possessed of more cleavage than what’s down the front of Belinda Stronach’s shirt, it’s going to be stuff like this. I mean for heaven’s sake! The odour of carpet cleaner still wafts through the halls of the Montreal hotels where your stinking drunk youth delegates threw up the excessive gallons of “hospitality” offered in various candidates’ suites, and already the knives are out for Dion, wielded by Ignatieff supporters who just can’t seem to grasp the fact that they lost the war? And in the continuing search for a new benchmark for “irony”, one of the partygoers is cited as having said that Mr I (he of the perpendicular pronoun, as Sir Humphrey Appleby might have cast him) “wanted to ‘emphasize that he’s on board for the future of a united loyal party’.”

Just so long as it’s united behind, and loyal to, him, I think we can safely assume.

What is wrong with you people?

Here’s what I think. I think we need a new political Party in Canada. Oh I know, you’re thinking, well sure. After all, look how well the last major “new Party” creations – Reform-stroke-Alliance-stroke-Conservative Party of Canada, and the Bloc Québécois -- worked out when it came to bringing the country together; and so you can certainly be forgiven for being skeptical at the thought of yet another new-Party stab at telling the “traditional” Parties to go stuff themselves. But bear with me, because (a) I think I’ve got a couple good ideas here; and (b) it’s my blog so I can say whatever the heck I want.

So, let’s pause for a moment while we savour this brief musical introduction:

Lion:
“If I were King of the Forest, Not queen, not duke, not prince.
My regal robes of the forest, would be satin, not cotton, not chintz.
I'd command each thing, be it fish or fowl.
With a woof and a woof and a royal growl - woof.
As I'd click my heel, all the trees would kneel.
And the mountains bow and the bulls kowtow.
And the sparrow would take wing - If I - If I - were King!
Each rabbit would show respect to me. The chipmunks genuflect to me.
Though my tail would lash, I would show compash
For every underling!
If I - If I - were King!
Just King!
Monarch of all I survey -- Mo--na-a-a--a-arch Of all I survey!”

My New Party would begin with all those former Liberal supporters in the land who, really deep down, would genuinely like to vote for the Liberal Party platforms but really dislike how those platforms became subverted (and, for that matter, perverted) under the stewardship of Chretien and Martin, whose respective “ites” (i.e. Chretienites, Martinites) made defeating the other guy the first priority on their agendas.

It would include people who are small-l liberal in their thinking, but who hate being labelled “the radical left” – people with broad societal concerns whose boundaries range from their own bedrooms through their own backyards all the way to the edge of the fragile atmospheric shell that surrounds this little planet of ours – but who hate being labelled “socialist”. It will consist of people who can gracefully and appreciatively accept government funding announced either with a special announcement or as part of a larger overall package like a budget, without immediately railing, “IT’S NOT ENOUGH!!”

It will drag leader-loyal “ites” out to the parking lot and beat them over the head with hardbound copies of The Red Book until they are genuinely devoted first to the Party’s platform, rather than whoever happens to be wearing the “leader” hat at any given time. (Those who persist in calling themselves “Dion Liberals” or “Ignatieff Liberals” or “Whoever Liberals” will be vigorously marginalized, shunted to a distant place where they can be neither seen nor heard. If they still insist on a label, shall be called “The Ignorati”, in honour of Mr Ignatieff.)

(A late-breaking PS… Somewhere between first draft and this Baby Duck upload, Mr Dion announced he is naming Mr Ignatieff to be his Deputy Prime Minister. Now there’s a novel idea! Naming a rival who heads a pack of really angry sore losers to a senior position within the Party. After all, that worked out so very well the last time, didn’t it – when the Prime Minister named his chief rival to be Finance Minister – does anyone remember that?)

But back to my Party.

For a name, I’m not quite sure what would work best here. It would have to acknowledge some roots in liberalism – if only because to be a “small-l” liberal thinker these days is generally to be possessed of an ability to, oh, you know… actually use your brain when it comes to discussing policy and making choices. But it would have to eschew (in the sense “run speedily away from”) any link to Big-L Liberalism. At the same time, the name would have to make it clear that your membership is in support of the national platform, not the woman / man at its head.

And finally, I suggest that the Party logo be a Klein Bottle, because such a Party simply cannot exist in the real world. Not in Canada, anyway.

Hmmmm… a Klein bottle. Maybe… Yesss….. That’s it! This Party will be driven by the mantra: Regular Application of Logical Philosophy on the Hill.

Thus, I eagerly await the birth of the RALPH Klein Bottle Party.

- - -

‘Tis the season. To all of you, and to all of yours (let me channel Kathleen Harrison here: “And a Merry Christmas to you… in keeping with the situation… Bob’s your uncle!”)

AND a Happy New Year!

As for me, well around about this time of year I like nothing better to immerse myself in a crowded shopping mall, find a central point where just scads of people are rushing by, studiously ignoring the Salvation Army Christmas kettles en route to yet another “Early Boxing Week Pre-Christmas Blowout SALE”, their VISAs and MasterCards so hot in their pockets they’re imprinting scorch marks in their denim, straighten up and, at the top of my lungs, bellow out one of my personal seasonal favourites (and if I find someone willing to accompany me by banging on a nearby display of half-price Lagostina cookware, well that’s just a bonus): “Fairy Tale of New York”, written by Maire Brennan and most famously performed by those poster boys for good dental health and clean living, The Pogues:

“It was Christmas Eve babe
In the drunk tank
An old man said to me, won't see another one
And then he sang a song
The rare old mountain dew
I turned my face away
And dreamed about you

Got on a lucky one
Came in eighteen to one
I've got a feeling
This year's for me and you
So happy Christmas
I love you baby
I can see a better time
When all our dreams come true

They've got cars big as bars
They've got rivers of gold
But the wind goes right through you
It's no place for the old
When you first took my hand
On a cold Christmas Eve
You promised me
Broadway was waiting for me

You were handsome
You were pretty
Queen of New York City
When the band finished playing
They howled out for more
Sinatra was swinging,
All the drunks they were singing
We kissed on a corner
Then danced through the night

(chorus)
The boys of the NYPD choir
Still singing "Galway Bay"
And the bells were ringing out
For Christmas day

You're a bum
You're a punk
You're an old slut on junk
Lying there almost dead on a drip in that bed
You scumbag, you maggot
You cheap lousy faggot
Happy Christmas your arse
I pray God it's our last

(chorus)

I could have been someone
Well so could anyone
You took my dreams from me
When I first found you
I kept them with me babe
I put them with my own
Can't make it all alone
I've built my dreams around you”

On a closer-to-but-still-not-there traditional note, if you’re looking for a huge pile of seasonal esoterica – a good lot of it hilarious, a bad lot of it groaners, some of it just plain out-and-out gross, and some nonsense that can charitably be called “wide of the mark” (for me anyway) – Miss Cellania is a blogger who regularly posts waves of material on a seemingly endless variety of themes. Her stream of Christmasing is here and if you arrive late, just scroll down to the entries tagged with seasonal titles, for example, “Letters to Santa”, “Christmas Links Volume… [whatever]”. Don’t say you weren’t warned.

Or if you just want to look at cute little animals, a great many of them decked out in Christmas colours at this time of year, pop on over here.

So don you now your gay apparel ("Not that there’s anything WRONG with that!”), get out there and enjoy yourselves, damn it! Back in double-oh-seven, the good Lord willin’ and the creek don’t rise.

If you’re wondering what sort of media / communications nonsense makes my mind shift from amused hilarity or resigned complacency to, well, to angry… here’s an example. At work recently, the following “Media Advisory” landed in my in-box:

- - -
“Photo Opportunity - Needy families receive free toys for Christmas…
News release via Canada NewsWire, Toronto 416-863-9350 -ME- Attention News/Assignment/Photo Editors:

Photo Opportunity - Needy families receive free toys for Christmas from The Scott Mission”
- - -

The anger kicked in by the time I’d read the first four words: “Photo opportunity – Needy families”.

I wonder, for example, if the needy families in question are aware that, in what may be for them an act of quiet desperation – the decision to go to the Scott Mission to get something to give their children this Christmas – this news release suggests that they will be confronted with TV crews and newspaper photographers from media outlets responding to this advisory, whose editors have decided this assignment will help convey the “true sprit of Christmas” to their readers and viewers, readers and viewers who may or may not even discover the photo or watch the 30-second clip, nested as it likely will be among the ads for multi-hundred dollar “stocking stuffers”, home electronics or even (and I am not making this up) special Christmas deals offered by a local SUV dealership.

And of course it’s not the act of supporting needy families that makes me angry.

It’s the fact that someone has decided that the act has to be converted into a “photo opportunity”. I think a timely thump upside the head from the ol’ clue-stick (to crib shamelessly a favourite bit of management advice from a friend and long-time reader) would be appropriate at this juncture.

With an echo of the advice from the charitable solicitors who had the misfortune to visit Ebenezer Scrooge at his place of business before he underwent his tri-spirit conversion (“Because it is at this time of year that want is most keenly felt”), I would strongly encourage the perpetrators of this “photo-op” at the expense of needy families to revisit one of Christ’s parables. As rendered in the King James Version of the Bible, it goes a little something like this:

“KJV Luke 18:10-14

(10) Two men went up into the temple to pray; the one a Pharisee, and the other a publican.
(11) The Pharisee stood and prayed thus with himself, God, I thank thee, that I am not as other men are, extortioners, unjust, adulterers, or even as this publican.
(12) I fast twice in the week, I give tithes of all that I possess.
(13) And the publican, standing afar off, would not lift up so much as his eyes unto heaven, but smote upon his breast, saying, God be merciful to me a sinner.
(14) I tell you, this man went down to his house justified rather than the other: for every one that exalteth himself shall be abased; and he that humbleth himself shall be exalted.”

People… do support the needy… please. And not just during the Christmas holidays, but all year round. But just turn off the damned spotlight, OK?

= = =

The Great Canadian “Quebec as a Nation” debate, Chapter 3,214.

OK… 1. I agree with everything so far said by Maclean’s columnist Paul Wells, National Post columnist Andrew Coyne, and columnist-at-large Warren Kinsella on this issue. You can Google all three, and I recommend all three of their immensely readable blogs. 2. For my part, I’m going to begin and end – period – with an especially brilliant comment made by my better half while one of the evening newscasts was grinding away on TV during the most recent eruption of this mind-numbing issue in Canada: “I’ve just figured it out – in Canada, people with any intelligence at all don’t go into politics!”

Insofar as this issue is concerned, anyway, QED.

= = =

There is, in New York City, an annual meeting of a group known as the Corduroy Appreciation Club. Their meeting date is always November 11th. Now at first glance, one might think that there is perhaps some meaningful affiliation of corduroy with the military that would prompt the annual linking to what we observe in Canada as Remembrance Day and what is observed in the US as Armistice Day.

But no. If you check the boxed notation in the lower left corner of the framed certificate that is here, you will note: “11/11 is the date which most closely resembles corduroy.”

So it occurs to me that, by the same logic, the Snowman Appreciation Society should meet on August 8. (Although on sober second thought that seems a tad unworkable in this hemisphere.)

= = =

It’s really a no-brainer when it comes to understanding why North America has so far proven to be barren ground for the brand new Al Jazeera English language television news service to take root and find a western audience.

Here is a list of the leading news items that appeared on its English language news website the day it launched its television service worldwide:

Africa: Raid on Niger oil facility; Sudan to help southerners return.
Central / S. Asia: Pakistan and India in security deal; Bangladesh gripped by protests.
Europe: Vatican steps into veil debate; Euronext favors NYSE over Deutsche;
Americas: Climate change worsens biodiversity; Rice snub for Iran and Syria.
Asia-Pacific: Racial tensions on rise in Malaysia; China set to let foreign banks in.
Middle East: US general favors staying in Iraq; Mubarak meets Palestinian leader.

And on the same day on Google News (US and Canada), this news story yielded 152 separate clippings, most with a large accompanying photo: “La Senza soars with bid from Victoria's Secret owner (Canadian Press) MONTREAL — Shares of La Senza soared by almost half in early Thursday trading after the American owner of Victoria's Secret announced it will pay $710 million for the Canadian lingerie rival.”

So we just need to find a way to reconcile those two apparently divergent news priorities. (Maybe if Arab women removed their veils…)

= = =

Future deer-in-the-headlights topic alert. Recently, I bought myself a tiny electronic box with an unbelievably huge (well, “unbelievably” to me, that is) memory – an Apple 80GB iPod. Here’s what I was thinking: I decided finally to succumb to the global iPod Borg-like assimilation – after receiving some pretty strong assurances from Santa that there likely would have been a positive response to my request for a turntable that converts vinyl to digital media – so I could copy and store virtually (Hah! In this case, “virtually” does NOT mean “almost”! It means, in fact, “in a virtual format”. Take that, cunning linguists!) my entire collection of a couple hundred LPs, plus a sea of cassette tapes and 45 rpm “singles”, and consign the actual disks in their cat-shredded sleeves to a yard sale or perhaps the local “Legend Records” outlet. (Although, to confess, I expect I will find it hard to let go of the album art for Herb Alpert and the Tijuana Brass’ “Whipped Cream and Other Delights”.)

Where was I? Oh yes… After I bought the virtual warehouse, I discovered immediately that Apple seems to take the attitude that purchasers of this memory behemoth are likely upgrading from an earlier generation of iPod. Because the instruction “book” that came in its box amounted to a couple pages telling you how to download “iTunes” from the Apple homepage and charge the device’s battery so that it’ll work. I received a longer owner’s manual with my Tilley hat, for heaven’s sake!

So I found an online 72-page “Features Guide” that I printed out – something that many in my comfort-in-paper generation still need – to begin my latest techno-adventure.

And I discovered in very short order two maxims I really should have remembered: “Plug and Play” won’t. And “User Friendly” isn’t.

So after several hours of my unsuccessfully grappling with an utterly useless “operator’s manual”, my better half is now the happy if somewhat puzzled owner of an unsolicited 80GB iPod. Because the alternative was to take it out to my concrete garage floor, unhook a nine-pound sledgehammer I have hanging on the wall and smash the damned thing to little tiny pieces of Gigabyte. While it would have been immensely satisfying, it would also have been tantamount to converting the machine’s cost into paper money, taking that out into the backyard and setting fire to it.

As for me, I am now in the process of exploring software options to convert my LPs and cassette tapes. And I have decided I will convert them to CDs, rather than a wholly virtual format like mp3. And since CDs take up much less room than LPs, in our house that means everyone’ll be happy.

I’ll keep you posted.

= = =

Recently at work we had an “employee recognition day”. Everyone duly recognized was the (I really hesitate to use the word “proud”; let’s go instead with… oh, “hapless”) recipient of a gold pin and personalized certificate recognizing his or her accomplishment.

There were 100 or so people in the room. They handed out 96 employee recognition awards.

Now how inept, I wondered – in fact just how plain gawdawful – a worker does someone have to be in order to become one of the teeny minority that did not receive a 2006 employee recognition award? (I can answer that question – I didn’t win one. But in fairness, my boss nominated our entire team, rather than single out any one member over the others. And the team did, indeed, win one of the 96.)

But the director presenting the awards actually had the gall to announce in advance that the Department is exceedingly sensitive to the risk of criticism of spending public money for the purpose of expensive personnel recognition and so, consequently, assured us all, “Don’t worry; because the gold is not real gold.” So not only is this little award, she said, in effect, so meaningless that we gave it to just about everyone with a pulse, it is a dirt-cheap little award.

The Government of Canada. Nothing is too good for our employees. (So we’ll give you less than nothing.)

= = =

And utterly-boring-future-postings-to-this-blog alert:

I’m going to try to lose some weight, I think.

As I make what a cockpit crew would call my “final approach” to Runway 55 at the Airport o’ Life, I’ve been reading everything from actuarial charts to BMI (Body Mass Index) articles to well-intentioned columns offering gratuitous advice on how to live healthily. And if nothing else, I find I’m paying more attention to them. So it’s a start.

Of course, I’m also paying more attention to the President’s Choice Holiday Insider’s Report where a single serving portion of, for example, PC Campania Gnocchi Pomodoro, rings in with 510 calories and a whacking 1510 mg (63% of the recommended daily value) of sodium. Or a mere 37g (1.3 oz) of the all-new President’s Choice white chocolate cranberry pistachio bark – an amount that I think I accidentally dropped when offered a complimentary sample by a cheery “Try some” sample hostess at the store where I shopped last weekend – tilts the calorimeter at an even 200.

But the bottom line for me is that, regardless of who the authority is, I’m carrying more pounds or kilos or stone than I should be. And when you reach a certain point in life, it’s a whole lot harder to lose than say, when you’re at that same point in life minus 20 years.

I have no trouble at all with intellectually understanding that, when all is said and done, the best diet plan one can follow is hinged to a simple, inescapable and unarguable bit of mathematical logic: burn off more calories than you take in. But like the guy with the cartoon angel on one shoulder and the devil on the other, listening to my inner intellectual and ignoring my inner imp is not always the choice I make.

And since, at my present rate of typical daily consumption, achieving that by “burning off more than I take in” would require running all the way to and from work, instead of taking the bus, I’m going to attempt to reduce my intake.

But here’s what I’m up against. First of all, I love to eat. And what I love to eat most is rarely what falls entirely on the good-for-you side of the ledger. If it’s high-sodium, or high-fat, or high-sugar, then chances are very good that it’s also high on my favourite foods list. And frankly, it’s damned near an addiction.

Second, I have an especial weakness for being an inveterate sampler and snacker while I prepare a meal. Again turning to my intellectual shoulder-dweller, it’s easy to understand that while I’m working with preparing food, of course I’m going to associate that with thoughts of… well, eating food. That doesn’t prevent me, however, from succumbing to the urgings of my alternate shoulder-perched imp.

And third, I’m a nighthawk. I usually head to bed about midnight, typically some five hours after dinner. Which means I’m reaching an almost mealtime hungry state of mind at about bedtime. Definitely not conducive to weight loss.

My idol of the moment is a comedian who has made a career out of routines based on overeating. But John Pinette has also gone from being a grossly overweight 450 lb to being just a moderately overweight 300. Now admittedly to do that, he went somewhere I am not going to go – the surgical suite. He lost all that weight five years ago and (so far, knock on wood) he seems to be keeping it off. He also does some of the best overeating-themed comedy routines of any entertainer on the comedy circuit.

Being a man, he’s working in comedy territory that has traditionally been more the domain of women comics. And that may help account for why so much of the “fat comedy” is even funnier coming from him. In one hilarious routine, for example, he describes counseling sessions with a nutritionist, noting that he was told he’s free to eat all the food he wants, so long as the food in question is salad. Salad, he explodes, is “not food. Salad is a promissory note that food will soon arrive.”

Other Pinette bon bons?: "My cholesterol count has a comma." (Commenting on performing in Las Vegas): "It doesn't matter if I lose money at the tables, 'cause I can always make it up at the buffet. $2.98 breakfasts? Hell, I can eat $2.98 worth of toast! I go up to the Prime Rib table and say 'Hit me!'"

So bear with me. Baby Duck could become home to some boring bits in the weeks and months to come if reading about food discoveries is not your piece of cake… (Hmmmmm. No no no! Make that, “your cup of tea”.) But just as the old adage holds that confession is good for the soul, I’ve also read that making a public announcement of your intent to lose weight can also be a big help in keeping one at last closer to the path of nutritional righteousness.

Because who wants all of one’s friends to know that one failed?

A la prochaine...