Sentences to which I wish the reporter had given a few seconds of extra thought before hitting “Save” (Number 1 in a series):

“Thefts from feminine-hygiene dispensers have been spotty in the past, she said.”

– in an MSU StateNews story / June 16, about an unusual rash – uh sorry... series – of thefts on the campus of Michigan State University).

= = = = = =

Another thing I suspect the speaker wishes he had thought about. (Number 2 in a series):

A Globe and Mail story on June 20 described a coming judicial hearing at which Canada’s laws on prostitution are expected to be at the centre of an intense debate.

The story’s focus was a recent appeal by a coalition of religious groups seeking to be granted something called “intervenor” status at the hearings. The group’s spokesman and lawyer, Ranjan Agarwal, however, would probably like to ask for a verbal “mulligan” after he tried to assure a Toronto judge that his clients have no intention of trying to derail the process by offering nothing more than a series of diatribes on the immorality of prostitution. On the contrary, he said, “What my clients seek to do is simply stand up after five days of hearings and make oral submissions.”

= = = = = =

Some random notes on the coverage attending the death of Michael Jackson. (Oh c’mon, surely you knew I wasn’t going to say nothing about it!)

You just know, I’m afraid, that we are on our way to a tabloid-style ghoulish media orgy the likes of which hasn’t been seen since Elvis Presley died. Already, there are stories swirling around Mr Jackson’s personal physician and his (to put it delicately) lack of availability in the hours immediately following Jackson’s death. The Jackson family, meanwhile (his surviving siblings and parents, not his children) are rumoured to be seeking an “independent autopsy”. (Which begs the question, what is a partisan autopsy? And do you want to know?)

But even in the early hours of the post mortem period, the endless media post mortem has not been without its humour. The morning after, a former Jackson lawyer was already waxing indignant about what he believed to be the cause of death, and in a clip heard on CBC radio spluttered his certainty that Jackson was the victim of his doctors’ enthusiastic overprovision of prescription drugs, “And I just knew that one day Michael Jackson was going to wake up dead and on that day, I was not going to keep silent any longer.”

Keep silent, given the triggering event of a dead man waking up? I should think not.

Meanwhile, in one of those interviews that made me clap my hands delightedly, again on the day after Jackson’s death a BBC reporter from his home studio in London was speaking to a reporter just outside the Jacksons’ California home. The studio anchor was obviously wrapped up in his own soaring rhetoric as he speculated on the likelihood of an excessive consumption of prescription drugs, quoting physicians who apparently were authorities on overusing prescription drugs, and then finally winding down to a halt. There followed a silence of a good five to ten seconds – an eternity in airspace time. Then the California reporter piped up, “And was there a question in there, Peter?”

(There hadn’t been and it was wonderful to see an anchor so rhapsodized by what he imagined to be own self-importance one second get so jarring a reminder of his role – to ask questions – in the very next second.)

As Friday’s media Jackson wallow unfolded around the world, the thought occurred to me that the family of Farrah Fawcett-Majors must have sacrificed a goat in gratitude as they watched the Multitudinous Media Morbidity Militia hurriedly pack up their equipment from the late Angel’s front lawn and hasten over to the LA hospital even as Jackson’s body was being helicoptered in for its lengthy post-passing analysis.

Just to inject a note of legitimacy here... I just re-watched the music video for “Thriller” and it is a damned fine piece of entertainment. When you place it in its context – contrasting it to everything that came before, and comparing it to everything that followed – you swiftly realize just what an “ELE” (Extinction Level Event) it was for those who would continue to try to model themselves only on its predecessors. And you realize too, just how awful the subsequent Thriller wannabees, without exception, have been.

To paraphrase William Holden when he buried “Thompson” in the opening scenes of “Bridge on the River Kwai”: Rest in peace, Mr J. God knows you found little enough of it while you were alive.

= = =

Spam filters? SPAM FILTERS??? Here’s what we theenk of your steenkin’ spam filters! Here’s the title of a message that got by my usually efficient spam filter to wind up in my in-box:

“Girls: Here’s the ultimate or gasmic device ever!”

So apparently, girls... You can have “ultimate” or you can have “gasmic”, but you can’t have both. I must admit my first thought was that the idea of a device to help reduce late night heartburn might actually be worth a look. But then my morning coffee kicked in and suddenly all was clear. It wasn’t about a gastric device after all.

= = =

If you’re looking for evidence of just how drastically the economic times have changed, you need look no further than the latest information about the employer’s “final offer” in the last-ditch negotiations underway between the management and union of the Globe and Mail:

“The union, which represents 450 workers at the national paper, said the paper's offer included pension benefits cuts of up to 50 percent; salary reductions in some wage categories; a general two-year wage freeze for all employees; longer work days and a longer work week.” (Reported by Reuters.ca June 28)

Phew! Good thing they didn’t seriously entertain those shabby earlier offers. Clearly this demonstrates to trade unions just how much more generous a company will become over time.

= = =

Fun with quotes:

1. Blogger "Canadian Cynic" describes the lens (June 21) through which to view a couple quotes he posted recently. In the process, he taps a well-known cultural reference (“well-known” if you saw the movie “Deliverance”) to give us his opinion of a blogger known as “Raphael Alexander”:

"Holding true to its motto of misrepresenting all the news that's fit to print, the [National] Post saves a few bucks by dipping into its pool of excitable, wanky bloggers to tab the one known as 'Raphael Alexander', who does to journalism what a couple of banjo players once did to Ned Beatty."

2."Dawg's Blawg" author John Baglow writes (June 21) about McGill University's Margaret Somerville, a specialist on bioethics:

"This time she's on about stem cell research and the sacredness of the embryo. (The article is helpfully illustrated with pictures of fully-formed fetuses in their eighth or ninth month, but in fairness, that's not Somerville's fault.) 'We are all ex-embryos,' she says, in her sloppy way. We are, of course, all pre-corpses, too. That might lead some to draw quite novel conclusions about the sacredness of human life. No matter."

3. I remember when the Rolling Stones avoided getting into all kinds of hot water because Ed Sullivan told them they would not be able to sing the chorus lyric to their hit, "Let's Spend the Night Together" on his show. They relented and, for the sake of ensnaring the multi-million number of eyes in the typical Sullivan audience, sang it as "Let's Spend Some Time Together".

I must admit that, when I read the following, I realized that I kind of miss those days:

"Billed as a tribute to New York, Gaga began the performance trapped inside a fake subway car - which she later exploded with a stick of faux dynamite - and followed with a raunchy setpiece that featured fake police officers (they later stripped), gyrating, leather-clad dancers and finished with Gaga posing with sparklers shooting from her bustier." (A summary of Lady Gaga's "music" performance at this year's Much Music Video Awards. Canadian Press, June 22)

Isn’t it nice to read about a contemporary performer who chooses to focus on her music, instead of pushing it to a distant and forgotten second place behind a visual orgy of cheesy showmanship and spurious titillation?

= = =

So how long did it take me to pour out our France travel yarn – 127 months or so?

Well I just got a message from another BD regular who himself has just returned from a three-week overseas trip – and here’s what he had to say about his family’s experience, which in three short paragraphs is every bit as interesting as my travel diary was. (Certainly it’s more tightly written!):

“Hello World,

The family did the European trek from May 2 to May 24. Six countries in three weeks. (England-London only, France – Paris and Strasbourg, northern Italy, southern Germany, part of Austria and Prague in the Czech Republic). Wow, the trip was fantastic, the weather great, and not that many tourists. Too many highlights to put into this communication. Being history buffs, we did the following: War Cabinet Rooms and Churchill Museum in London, Versailles – finally saw the Hall of Mirrors, toured The Maginot Line, visited Dachau (Hitler’s 1st concentration camp), was overwhelmed by The Eagle’s Nest (Hitler’s Tea House) in Bavaria, and Prague was amazing.

My son wanted to go to a football match, so we went to see AC Milan versus Udinese in Udine, Italy – great atmosphere. My daughter wanted to spend time at the ocean, so we went to Duino, Italy on the north Adriatic Sea. Some interesting sights there.

Back to reality now. Instead of looking at masterpieces in The Louvre, I am staring at a mountain of files and paperwork in my office.”

= = = = =

And finally this go round, I know that SPAM is a pretty easy shot, but I must admit this one, which I received just as this BD update was being put to bed, is in a class all by itself. It opened to a beautiful graphic – identifying it as coming from the “Main Bodies” division of the “United Nations System of Organizations”, and then got right down to business. As you will see, they were writing to advise me that after an extraordinary board meeting (hey, it was six months long) they have been authorized to tell me that, apparently, I can pretty much retire!

UNITED NATIONS (UNITED NATIONS ASSISTED SCHEME) DIRECTORATE OF INTERNATIONAL PAYMENT AND TRANSFERS UNITED NATIONS LIASION OFFICE
LONDON UNITED KINGDOM WIRE TRANSFER/AUDIT UNIT
Our Ref: WB/NF/UN/XX027
Cell PHONE: +448715031631
Home +44 7024031962

This is to officially inform you that we have been having a meeting for the passed 6 months that ended 3 days ago with the UNITED NATIONS BOARD OF TRUSTEES AND AUDITORS with new secretary to the United Nation Mr. Ban Ki-moon.

This email is to all the people that have been scammed in any part of the world, the UNITED NATIONS have agreed to compensate them with the sum of US$500,000,00 Dollars each. This includes every contractors that may have not received their contract sum and people that have had an unfinished transaction or international businesses that failed due to Government problems etc.

We found your name in our list and that is why we are contacting you, these have been agreed upon and have been signed.

You are advised to contact the United Nation Agent Mr. Jim Ovia immediately for your Cheque/International Bank Draft of USD$500,000.00. These funds are in a Bank Draft for security purpose. He will send it to you through Courier Services and you can clear it in any bank of your choice.

Therefore, you should send him your full Name and telephone number/your correct mailing address where he will send the bank draft to you. Contact Mr. Jim Ovia the United Nation agent
immediately for your Cheque:

Person to Contact Mr. Jim Ovia
Emails: mr.jimovia01@sify.com
Phone:

Thanks and God bless you and your family. Hoping to hear from you as soon as you cash your Bank Draft. Making the world a better place.

MY BEST REGARDS.

Congratulations in advance.

Mr. Kofi Anan And
New Secretary to
The United Nation.
http://www.un.org/

It concluded with a “grip and grin” photo of “Mr Kofi Anan And New Secretary to the United Nation”.

Needless to say, I was delighted to discover that the UN seems suddenly to have acquired the apparent net worth of every profit-making institution on the face of the earth, including the past few days of Michael Jackson song and album sales. Meanwhile, I eagerly await the news that “US $500,000,00 Dollars” has been transferred to my account in compensation for having had to endure the endless bombardment of... well, frankly, of letters exactly like this.... since the Internet began.

After all, that’s why I wired them the $3,500 (Canadian) “transfer fee”, I’m sure my half million dollars’ll arrive any day now...

Yep... any day now.

Meanwhile: 2000 km this season already, and counting!



A la next time.

My D-Day story:

June 6 this year in our region was a stunningly beautiful, warm sunlit day, so I was out chugging about on the Triumph and actually got as far as the Tim Horton’s in Perth. After parking the bike, I stopped for a few minutes to chat with another fellow who had also parked his bike and was standing outside sipping his coffee. I noticed he was wearing an olive drab t-shirt on which was emblazoned a logo and phrase, “C.A.V. : Canadian Army Veteran”. He told me he was part of a whole group of veterans from Trenton – their club was called the “Juno” Group, in fact – and his own service included Afghanistan and Bosnia.

Elsewhere in the parking lot, someone else had parked a pick-up truck with a trailer on which he was towing a magnificently restored 1946 version of one of the motorized workhorses of WWII – the Willys Jeep.
(No, I’m not so attuned to the Willys that I can pinpoint the year of manufacture – it had a small plaque mounted on its dashboard to inform admirers of this fact.) (Photo: www.dyna.co.za)

Anyway, I opened my conversation by asking if it was someone else in his group who was responsible for the restoration. He replied no, but he had no doubt it was en route to the same destination to which he was bound – the D-Day commemoration at the Canadian military cemetery in Ottawa. At which point he pointed just down the highway where a string of about 15 enormous motorcycles was just in the process of swinging into the Petro-Canada station beside the Tim Horton’s to gas up. “There’s the rest of my group now,” he said.

At this moment, a gnarled old guy in a rumpled cowboy hat stepped out the exit of Tim Horton’s and, noticing two heads of thoroughly greyed hair atop all the biker gear we were wearing, came over and made a mock, “Ooooo... bad bikers” introduction, followed by a laugh.

He joined in our chit chat. After discovering that the fellow I was talking to was a veteran, he tapped himself in the chest and said, “Well I am too... but I was with all those ‘killers’ that your side fought”, which suddenly brought to the fore that his accent was indeed clearly German. “Not in the war... after,” he added. “But in 1943, I was 7 and living in Hamburg.”

Anyone with more than a passing familiarity of WWII history knows that Hamburg in mid-war was one of the unfortunate cities in Germany (along with Cologne, Dresden, Nuremberg) to suffer sustained annihilation-level allied bombing, on one occasion creating a whirlwind of fire so fierce that it actually sucked the oxygen from bomb shelters deep underground, suffocating thousands of the sheltering civilians where they lay.

He told us how, after coming to Canada as a refugee after the war -- and presumably after his service in the German Army -- he had started working a lifetime of whatever jobs he could get. One time, he was hired as a driver to join a half dozen other men whose job it was to go to Pennsylvania and drive a group of cars back to Canada for a used-car dealer who had bought them there because they were rust-free. During an overnight stop on the return trip, the drivers had struck up a conversation and one of them turned out to have been a British Lancaster bomber pilot during the war. “Oh,” our new German friend had said, “What were you doing in July 1943?” The ex-Lancaster pilot thought about it a minute and said, “I was flying night bombing missions over Germany.”

“Ever bomb Hamburg?” our new friend said he'd asked.

“Twice,” replied the pilot.

At this point, I think the C.A.V. guy and I were both thinking that this conversation was on the verge of becoming an account of a short-term acquaintance that took a disastrous turn. But our German raconteur simply stopped for a few seconds, then continued, “So I told him, ‘You know, we almost met in July 1943. We were only 18,000 feet apart.’” And he chuckled. Whatever the intervening 66 years had done deep within, at least on the surface it had left him a punchline.

After a few more minutes, we all shook hands, wished each other well, and went on our three very different ways.

= = =

Why the Internet can sometimes seem to be as stupid as it is amazing... at least to me (Number 1,635,882 in the eternal series)

Not so long ago, I clicked on a link to further explore some topic or other – what it was is irrelevant – and found myself being subjected to an audio version of an old song by Rick “The Little White Man with the Big Black Voice” Astley, a song entitled “Never Gonna Give You Up”. Apparently, I had just been “rick-rolled” or, in the medium in which a title is nothing until it has been even slightly abbreviated, “rick-roll’d”. It’s someone’s idea of an hilarious prank, and there are random places all over the internet that will lead you unexpectedly to either a video or an audio performance of Mr Astley’s catchy little tune. Somewhere out there, someone supposedly laughs mightily whenever this happens. Even if he doesn’t know exactly when it happens. (Cause you just know it’s a “he”.) And according to Wikipedia, it happens a lot – people were unintentionally led to a “rick-rolling” link of the song over 36 million times as at the end of 2008.

Har de har har.

Whatever. If you're interested, Google it. I would never do anything so crass as rick-roll anyone here.

From rick-rolling to bogarting. Any of your online discussions been bogarted yet? As it applies to the internet, there are four pretty much interchangeable interpretations, most of them variations on “bullying” or to use the old 60s descriptor, “losing your cool”. In no particular order, these are: 1. (slang) Excess. There are over two dozen related terms for station? What a bogart!; 2. (slang) One given to excess, whether good or ill; Smith is the writer, director, star and producer. What a bogart!; 3. (slang) An obnoxious, selfish and overbearing person; an attention hog. He walked in, swiped my beer off the table and chugged it. I said “Dude, don’t be a bogart”, but he didn’t care; 4. (slang) A disappointment. Then right in the middle of their best song, the power went out? That’s a bogart. (From Wikipedia, of course.) For some reason, it started out meaning, “For God’s sake, hurry up and get to the point!” because Bogart, you see, (Humphrey, that is) is believed by some of his more passionate fans to take way too long to finish a cigarette whenever he lights up onscreen.

And here’s a term the Internet definitely needed. If you’re a regular, or even an occasional participant in discussion groups on any subject whatsoever, you’ve probably noticed that with the inevitability of night following day, the discussion will eventually heat up and someone will call someone else a fascist, or a Nazi, or Hitler, or peripherally remind everyone how men died in the war to win exactly the freedom that allows you to be a complete jerk, or suggest that your opinions are so full of crap that you probably laughed at the Holocaust. Well believe it or not, there is a name for the rule that describes that argumentative descent: Godwin’s Law. In a nutshell, the law itself is typically worded, with minor variations, this way: “As a Usenet discussion grows longer, the probability of a comparison involving Nazis or Hitler approaches 1.”

The law was first articulated in 1990 by a man named Mike Godwin and, while it originally applied only to the massive discussion web that is Usenet, its use has since widened to include any internet-based discussion, indeed even face-to-face meetings. Like Murphy’s Law, Godwin’s Law has also spawned a number of corollaries, including one that says the first person to descend that low is automatically declared to have lost the argument. There is also a Hollywood variation that says that as a star’s career progresses, eventually he or she inevitably will assume a role that requires wearing a Nazi uniform. And at least one wag, obviously tired of hearing “I call Godwin” invoked whenever a discussion got to that point, coined the alternate accusation: “reductio ad Hitlerum”.

And in a variation that plainly has already been adopted by Canada’s federal Conservative Party, in October 2008 US National Public Radio talk show host Rachel Maddow postulated this corollary: “As the time a liberal candidate is believed to be winning an election or argument increases, the probability that he or she will be labeled communist or socialist approaches 1.” In this country, the “socialist” label has already been flung at Michael Ignatieff by Conservatives from the Prime Minister on down who want nothing to do with implementing standard Employment Insurance eligibility criteria uniformly across the country. I wonder what would happen if someone in the Opposition stood up to respond to the charge by thanking the Conservatives and their “Honourable Member from Godwin”, with no further explanation. At the very least, the speed with which Conservative staffers would leap to their Blackberries would be absolutely heartwarming to watch.

Uppest update of all: As this Baby Duck entry was being “put to bed”, I just happened to read this in a blog called “Searching for Liberty”, generally sited somewhere to the *ahem* right of centre. Talk about timely (Here it is... “reigns” warts and all. You can read through to the end; it’s just a few extra seconds, but if you’re in a hurry, it’s really only the last three lines that matter):

“Thursday, June 4, 2009

Ti-Guy raises an interesting.. and troubling Question.

Most political bloggers have come across Ti-Guy at some point. He (or she) is a regular poster on political blogs, and, of late, has been giving me some grief on some of my thoughts and ideas.. from his (or her)anonymous nom de plume, he (or she) throws thoughts around like Molotov cocktails - often not very directed or precise, but seeking to damage the target against whom they are thrown.

But today, Ti-Guy raised in my mind a very interesting and unsettling thought about what we might expect if this Country were to give the reigns to the liberal left untrammelled.

On BigCityLib, I was engaged in some debate about the effect of libel chill on free speech, and the complicity of our Courts in hampering free political debate.

On my own blog, yesterday, I engaged in a discussion about the need to prevent the Government from being permitted to indoctrinate our children, and my support for Alberta Bill 44, in respecting a parents right to raise children according to their own religious faith.

On both of these positions, I was taken to task by Ti-Guy, and, in posting to my blog yesterday, he called me a hypocrite for taking these two positions. It was at that point, that something crystallized in my mind.

The left is apparently very opposed to two things:

a) Allowing children to be raised with a moral sensibility which is, perhaps, different from that of the Liberal left; and

b) Allowing open and free debate by those who oppose the Liberal left's point of view.

Think about that. Let that sink in for a moment. If they had their way, they would determine what is "politically acceptable", and they would broach no debate or expression which went beyond those boundaries, and, apparently, they would assure that the education of our children regarding what is "politically acceptable" would be assured by government, with no ability for parents to say otherwise.

That was the central goal of Nazi germany. That is the central goal of all fascist dictators. That is not, and cannot be, my Canada.

For clarifying this intention of the Liberal left, I say, thank-you Ti-Guy.”


Sorry, Searching for Liberty, but (a) you lose, and (b) leaping to Godwin’s in the very first post in the thread has to be some kind of record. So congratulations AND condolences.

= =

Here are a couple of headlines and first paragraphs to make you go, “Hmmmm...”:

1. Police: Conn. woman bitten after 'bite me' remark
An analyst at the Connecticut Police Academy says a co-worker responded literally to her "bite me" remark and chomped on her. Former Waterbury police Capt. Francis Woodruff was charged Tuesday with disorderly conduct and released on a promise to appear in court. (Associated Press online / May 27)

2. Think tank pulls copyright reports after admitting plagiarism
[The Conference Board of Canada], One of Canada's most respected research organizations has a black eye after being forced to withdraw three reports on copyright and intellectual property because they contained plagiarized information from a study by a U.S. lobby group for the entertainment industry. (Globe and Mail online / May 28)

= =

A follow-up footnote. It wasn’t so long ago that I described our (Leslie’s and my) visit to an exhibit of Titanic artifacts during a weekend in Montreal. As a part of that post, I mentioned that the last known survivor of the tragedy was still alive. Sadly, Millvina Dean – who was just two months old when she and her mother made it into one of the lifeboats (she famously being passed in a sack over the rail of the sinking ship) – passed away at a Southampton nursing home on Sunday, May 31 at 97, ironically on the 98th anniversary of Titanic’s official launching. In the grand scheme of things, it’s not the passing of a woman who has no personal memories of the event that carries the weight of significance; it is the passing of the last living direct link to the sinking.

“The Moving Finger writes; and, having writ,
Moves on: nor all thy Piety nor Wit
Shall lure it back to cancel half a Line,
Nor all thy Tears wash out a Word of it.”

-- The Rubaiyat of Omar Khayyam

= =

I swap messages regularly with a small but fascinating group of inveterate internet browsers and finders of fascinating things. We call ourselves “The Cabal” because like “The Brain” character of the “Pinky and the Brain” cartoon, we are planning every day how to take over the world. Coincidentally, each of us in the group has at least one daughter, which has led to the occasional intra-cabal tale of one of the latest episodes featuring her / their displays of brilliance. To save time, we introduce such cyber-conversations with, “Here’s the latest from YAGG”. It means “Yet Another Girl Genius”.

So, that long-winded introduction was merely so that you wouldn’t be prompted into scratching your head when I said, “Let me tell you what our household’s YAGG has just come up with.”

Recently, I had a birthday (my tribute to Heinz, if you’re wondering) and received a shiny new laptop computer, carry bag, a fascinating object called a mini-mouse, which is about half the size of a regular mouse, for people like me who still haven’t developed a love for a laptop’s touch pad but don’t want to take up a full-sized mouse’s space in the carry bag either.

At one point in my discovery of its features, I noted that the laptop is also equipped with a webcam, a camera manifest by a lens roughly the size of a housefly’s eye that sits in the top centre portion of my flip-up screen. So I immediately expressed to YAGG that I’d read “somewhere on the internet” about how there are these hackers who can secretly link into your webcam via your internet hookup and, Wham! Bob’s your uncle (brother-in-law in my case, but I digress) suddenly there you are picking your nose all over You Tube. It must be true because I read it online, I argued to a look from YAGG that could be a poster for the generation divide.

Well this birthday, I opened an envelope from her to find what she called a perfect “old guy’s” computer peripheral. She had designed and printed a small image of what looks a lot like the Eye of Sauron from the "Lord of the Rings" movies, and stuck it onto a self-adhesive label. After giving it only the barest of trims (because my screentop frame is slightly narrower than was her sticker) I placed the eye label in a position that will give these webcam hackers nothing but darkness if they ever tap into the backside of my webcam lens. Hah! Score one for me and the EFF!

= = =

So tell us how you really feel!

The Globe and Mail obviously triggered some vigorously expressed reaction to news that appeared on Thursday, June 4. The story was about a federal court judge’s ruling that the Conservatives have broken just about every rule in the book when it comes to protecting the rights of a Canadian who has pretty much lived in the Canadian embassy in Khartoum, Sudan under asylum. The government has steadfastly maintained that Abousfian Abdelrazik is a “threat to Canada” because his name appears on an old Bush-era US terrorist blacklist that alleges he has al-Qaeda connections, despite the fact that neither the RCMP nor CSIS could find a shred of supporting evidence and have cleared him for travel. The government has been ordered to bring him home within 15 days or offer concrete reasons why not. They can appeal, of course, as they already have done once, prolonging the process to yield this latest ruling, which could not possibly be clearer. The Supreme Court of Canada is now the last appeal left to them, but short of a few die-hards gathered worshipfully at Stephen Harper’s feet, there is no one left in Canada who thinks the government’s position is in the least bit defensible.

But as I read the Globe’s online version of the story, what struck me as funny (if any humour can be found in this travesty) is that within an hour or so of the story’s going up on the Globe and Mail’s website, this note appeared:

“Comments have been disabled: Editor's Note: Comments have been closed on this story because an overwhelming number of readers were making offensive statements about other commenters and/or the individual or individuals mentioned in the story. That kind of behaviour is a breach of our commenting policy, and so the comment function has been turned off. We appreciate your understanding.”

Makes me wish I’d read the story a few minutes sooner. I suspect I would have discovered several brand new adjectives with which to describe Lawrence Cannon, who has been given the impossible task of defending the government’s unconscionable handling of this case so far.

= =

A review.

I recently grappled with “Do I like it?” or “Do I hate it?” after watching a movie called “Across the Universe”. I decided that not only do I like it, I like it a lot. But I concede it’s not for everyone.

If you’re already familiar with the “make our music into a story” genre that has yielded such results as the stage show, “We Will Rock You” (the music of Queen) or the stage show AND movie, “Mamma Mia” (the music of ABBA), then the concept of “Across the Universe” will not be strange. In this case it’s the music of The Beatles, but of the admittedly limited list of such movies with which I am familiar, it is far and away the strongest at making the music ADVANCE the story, rather than weave a story around the tunes, or having the tunes rendered as dance numbers across the movie / show’s length.

The very first scene of “Across the Universe” shows a thoughtful Jim Sturgess sitting on a seashore. He turns to the camera and sings the first couple lines of “Girl”: “Is there anybody going to listen to my story, all about the girl who came to stay?” and thus are we launched into his story. It’s not entirely music end to end, but in this movie when the songs are performed, they are moving the plot forward. And what a list of songs. Think of a few Beatles tunes you know, then take a look at the following list, lined up in the order they appear in the movie. (I guess I should say “Spoiler”, because if you know these tunes well, you might well get a moderately good idea of where this movie will take you. So… Spoiler if you haven’t yet seen, “Across the Universe”):

"Girl" Performed by Jim Sturgess;
"Helter Skelter" Performed by Dana Fuchs (reprised later in the film, during the "Across the Universe" sequence);
"Hold Me Tight" Performed by Evan Rachel Wood, Lisa Hogg and Jim Sturgess;
"All My Loving" Performed by Jim Sturgess;
"I Want to Hold Your Hand" Performed by T.V. Carpio;
"With a Little Help from My Friends" Performed by Joe Anderson, Jim Sturgess and "Dorm Buddies";
"It Won't Be Long" Performed by Evan Rachel Wood;
"I've Just Seen a Face" Performed by Jim Sturgess;
"Let It Be" Performed by Carol Woods and Timothy T. Mitchum;
"Come Together" Performed by Joe Cocker and Martin Luther McCoy;
"Why Don't We Do It in the Road?" Performed by Dana Fuchs;
"If I Fell" Performed by Evan Rachel Wood;
"I Want You (She's So Heavy)" Performed by Joe Anderson, "Soldiers", Dana Fuchs and T.V. Carpio;
"Dear Prudence" Performed by Dana Fuchs, Jim Sturgess, Evan Rachel Wood and Joe Anderson;
"Flying" Performed by The Secret Machines (performers not seen on-screen);
"Blue Jay Way" Performed by The Secret Machines (performers not seen on-screen);
"I Am the Walrus" Performed by Bono (accompanied by the Secret Machines);
"Being for the Benefit of Mr. Kite!" Performed by Eddie Izzard;
"Because" Performed by Evan Rachel Wood, Jim Sturgess, Joe Anderson, Dana Fuchs, T. V. Carpio and Martin Luther McCoy;
"Something" Performed by Jim Sturgess;
"Oh! Darling" Performed by Dana Fuchs and Martin Luther McCoy;
"Strawberry Fields Forever" Performed by Jim Sturgess and Joe Anderson;
"Revolution" Performed by Jim Sturgess;
"While My Guitar Gently Weeps" Performed by Martin Luther McCoy (joined by Jim Sturgess for one verse);
"Across the Universe" Performed by Jim Sturgess;
"Happiness Is a Warm Gun" Performed by Joe Anderson and Salma Hayek;
"A Day in the Life" Performed by Jeff Beck (brief instrumental extract);
"Blackbird" Performed by Evan Rachel Wood;
"Hey Jude" Performed by Joe Anderson (joined by Angela Mounsey for one verse);
"Don't Let Me Down" Performed by Dana Fuchs and Martin Luther McCoy;
"All You Need is Love" Performed by Jim Sturgess, Dana Fuchs, T.V. Carpio and Martin Luther McCoy;
"She Loves You" Performed by Joe Anderson (brief rendition sung during the last part of the "All You Need Is Love" sequence);
"Lucy in the Sky with Diamonds" Performed by Bono (with backing vocals by The Edge. This song is played over the end credits. Performance not seen on-screen)

I don’t know about you but there are a couple Beatles songs there I’ve never even heard of before (“Soldiers”? “Flying”? “Blue Jay Way”?) and a couple others of which I’m aware, but I don’t exactly go around humming (“Happiness is a Warm Gun”; “Dear Prudence”) but oh my are they perfect here!

Now if you’re so inclined, you might also take a look at the cast list for this movie and you’ll discover something else – all the cast members perform their own music. And they do it damned well, too! And yes, there are indeed appearances by Joe Cocker, Bono, Salma Hayek and Jeff Beck. In fact, the whole movie is an occasional spot-the-celebrity / guess-the-allusion run for those who lived through the late 60s early 70s, and the more so if you did so at an age when student activism mattered and ending the War mattered, and civil rights marches mattered… (“Is she supposed to be Janis? Is he supposed to be Jimi?”) It is, as a result, a movie I automatically want to see more than once because only by the end, when I realized just how many cultural references are embedded in it without actually having labels hung on them, did I really start paying closer attention to that sort of thing.

Visually, it is stunning, in part because it warps you though the Beatles’ career beginning with their days as leather-jacketed Elvis wannabees playing Liverpool’s The Cavern Club to their firmly-in-command dabblings that produced the colour swathes of “Yellow Submarine” and the Sergeant Pepper’s Lonely Hearts Club Band album cover.


After agreeing with myself to love this movie, I wallowed in it. You may or may not agree with its wallow factor, but whatever your film-going experiences to this point in your life, I doubt you will find much with which to compare the experience of this one.

Another review (mercifully brief): the new Star Trek movie.

To quote Mick “Jumping Jack Flash” Jagger, “It’s a gas, gas, gas!”

As a long-time (only since episode 1 of Star Trek: The Original Series) fan, I liked it a lot. As someone who groans whenever any Star Trek rerun crosses our TV screen, Leslie said it was “OK, a bit loud at times”. You have to understand that, relative to her customary view of all things Trekkian, this is a quantum leap on the order of the space-time warp that threw Janeway's Voyager into the Delta Quadrant. Yes, they play (eyebrow-raisingly play, in a couple of examples) with Trek canon, but they pre-set the canvas in such a way so as to enable them to do so.

Their villain in this one – Nero – is a great villain. (Although I confess I always wonder why so many sci-fi villains, with all the running around, leaping and fighting they have to do, inevitably seem to make questionable fashion choices – in this case to wear one of those giant Outback-looking raincoats that flaps all over the place during all of the aforementioned running around, leaping and fighting. Seems to me that when the occasion calls, the difference between the time required to whip your disruptor out of its holster vs the time required the clear away the tent-like folds of a heavy coat and then whip your disruptor out of its holster can have a significant impact on your winnability quotient.)

For a Trekkie, it’s a terrific add to the never-ending story; for a non-Trekkie, it’s a pretty darned good action movie. If a bit loud at times.

Thanks for sticking with this longer-than-usual whining, all!

A la next time.