2012

Having a toddler and blogging is hard work.  Especially when there are other considerations like job, house, family and whatever to take into account.  And then there's the actual interest and drive that one requires to actually write a blog.  I have the interest but not the drive.  By the time I get home from work, have dinner, spend time with Henry, put him to bed, do the dishes and/or tidy up enough so that Elisabeth will feel that I'm pulling my weight in a somewhat passable way, all I'm really thinking about is TV, internet, wine, video games, beer or some combination of the above.

Blogging just doesn't feel like the kind of fun escapism that I'm looking for largely because all by entries work in the following way:  I get an idea; start tapping away fueled by hate; attempt (generally unsuccessfully) to transfer that hate into humour and then get bogged down in the specifics of grammar or a particular word which I don't feel conveys the exact emotional meaning I'm trying to express.  Then I get distracted and by the time I get back to the entry in question (At which point 48-72 hours have passed), I realize that what I was writing was a parade of tirade which doesn't befit my demographic as I am neither a spotty teenager or a cantankerous old bastard.

Feel free to disagree with the latter.

With that in mind, I've set a series of New Years resolutions for myself, all of which are practical, boring and a secret so that come April, I'll be the only person out there who knows what an abject failure I am.  Suffice to say, a little blogging is on the menu.  With luck I'll be able to fart something out weekly.  At least that's the goal.  Come April, I'm sure the blog have collected a nice layer of dust..

A Touch of Bad Taste

On our anniversary, Elisabeth gave me Pablo Neruda's Residence on Earth.  I took it upon myself to read Henry Spain in Our Hearts, which is to me, the centrepiece of the whole book.  It's a beautiful poem, don't get me wrong but for the first time I felt uncomfortable reading something to Henry.  It was beyond the fact that for whatever reason he couldn't settle or get into the rhythm of the voice; it had to do with the horrible images of war, especially those of rivers of dead children's eyes floating in hell, gazing upon their killers face.  Such is war, however and, as many have expressed, anyone who glamorizes it encourages the acts of war.  This poem is a very harsh reminder about the reality of oppression, the resistance it will incur and the fate waiting for those who would put their greed above society's.

I'm more than happy to gently push my politics on my kid, without a context (In his brain), it felt weird reading him this.  If he understood any of it, I'm sure he didn't get the joyous contrast, after all the horror and war, of the Solar Ode to the Army of the People and not the floating eyeballs.

It was also the first time that Henry hasn't connected with a piece of writing.  Next up will be Rimbaud's Season in Hell with, hopefully, better results.

As and aside, I find it impossible to believe that Crass were not intimately with Neruda.  The repetition of phrases and imagery, as well as pentameter of his verse suspiciously mirrors a lot of their music, especially their later work dealing with the Falkland Wars:

Freedom

The other night Elisabeth and I had a conversation we've had a few time before, centring on how it seems that new parents seem to be under the impression that raising children is something no ones ever done before.  While I think I'm a bit more forgiving than Elisabeth on the subject, I do think that it's interesting that a lot of attention seems to be given to the idea that this is the first generation of kids growing up with unprecedented access to technology and information; less attention is paid to the fact that this is also the first generation of parents raising kids with this kind of access too.

If you compound this with the dichotomous fact - I feel fairly certain I can use the word 'fact' here - that our generation will be the first to have a lower standard of living than our parents (And that more than likely the following generations are going to have, if not increasingly lower standards, radically different realities.), it seems that all this weird arrogance that new parents have may be related to a darker zeitgeist that has yet to be acknowledged.

This sort of ties into my thoughts about finishing Jonathan Franzen's newest novel, Freedom.  In all honesty, I don't mind if he only publishes one novel a decade if those novels are able to weave together such insightful and venomous deconstructions of the spirit of the age (I refuse to use 'zeitgeist' again out of fear of appearing too pretentious) into family dramas which explore the damage that history does to a person.

I'm embarrassed that I let the book sit on my shelf as long as I did before finally giving it a shot.  I'm also not too sure what the sales are like (I suppose we'll have to wait for the paperback to come out to find out) but am fairly sure that they would be tripled had the setting taken place somewhere exotic like India.  People would be able to talk about the culture, how barbaric things are, how his descriptions make you wish you were there, and how foreign yet relatable the characters were.  Instead he writes about the American mid-west with the kind of you-are-there exactitude of Rohinton Mystery that I think would make a lot of readers uncomfortable at how close to home (and below the belt) Franzen comes.  I'm going to totally rip off CBC radio and say "If you're only going to read two books this year, this should be one of them."

Derailed

Totally forgot about the blog for the last fortnight what with two weekends of family and Henry getting his first cold and subsequently giving it to me.  Sick babies are no fun and any schedule he was on has been thrown off completely.  This has not been helped at all by the time change already making things a tad shaky.

In other news, I'm 5 books behind in my Beatrix Potter opus, can now blog my thoughts on Jonathan Franzen's Freedom thanks to Elisabeth finishing it and not having to worry about ruining it for her.  I've also got to get around to fixing that cupboard and do a few other odds & ends that I've been putting off.

And will continue to put off.

In other news, I'm making pizza tonight and I really don't like Arcade Fire.  I've tried and tried but my God they make boring music.  What's the point of being fiercely independent when your sound is a whinier and more anemic version of Coldplay?

TV Made me Stupid... and then Sell Out.

So I kind of love Community.  I've not really wanted to admit that I could possibly enjoy an American sitcom as much as I enjoy Community, but there it is.

There's something that just doesn't work with the American sitcom style of airing 76 episodes a season.  There's no way a steady level of quality can be maintained and, unless it is a rare case (Seinfeld), ends up falling back on repeating jokes & catch phrases to the point of saturation (Big Band [Typo I'm keeping] Theory) or is just the same damn episode over and over and over again (Two and a Half Men [Which could break that cycle if they would start filming yesterday and create one of the most bizarre & innovative TV shows the world has even known.])

But Community seems to work by virtue of embracing the notion of an ensemble cast (Unlike, say, Friends, who would focus on two characters in an A plot, two characters in a B plot and Joey and Phoebe as afterthoughts.), genuinely good writing that eschews beating you over the head with the same dumb catchphrase.  Bazoonga!

 [Aside 1: I wonder how different Seinfeld would have been if it aired today in the age of viral videos and video memes.  One of the odd things is how ahead of its time it appears in terms of coining catch phrases in an age before DVD box sets and YouTube.]

[Aside 2: Am I the only one who now finds Seinfeld uncomfortable to watch in light of the tremendous amount of less than subtle racism that emanates from it, its cast and its legacy?]

Community is the American re-make of Spaced without realizing it.  It's got the same themes (Friendship, an obsessive love of pop culture, a meta-awareness that it's a TV show.) and in spite of what may go on in each episode, a tremendous amount of heart, in which the characters deal realistically with whatever zany adventure that might have.

The characters are also real.  One of the characters has Asperger's and I would compare how the actor plays it verses how another Emmy Award winning actor plays his interpretation and let the difference speak for itself.  Not just in how it's acted but in his interaction with the audience and show as well.

There's an intelligence and an understatement behind the show that American sitcoms lack, avoiding the obvious jokes (Then mocking them when they go there) and a heart that grounds it in reality.  At the end of the day, if you said to your friends and family a third of what characters say to each other on other TV shows, you would be disowned as a social leper.  Community deals with this in a realistic way and as such, makes the antics of the characters a community you actually want to join.  God, how corny is that.

TV Made me Stupid

Oh my God, I love Survivor.  It's been an on again / off again affair (Mainly off) but I have once again fallen in love with it's unique brand of lowest common denominator entertainment.

I was an avid fan of its first few seasons.  I think that a warning flag went up for Elisabeth early in our relationship when I'd insist spending Friday evening at my mom's place watching a recording of Wednesday's episode of Survivor because the TV I had didn't get the channel that it aired on.

Then England happened and Survivor and I drifted apart and I had a passionate but ultimately unrewarding dalliance with Big Brother.  We didn't reconnect until recently, now that I have a lot more time in the evenings and weekends thanks to Henry's presence and online TV.

So a few weeks ago I sank into the morass of Survivor 21: Heroes vs. Villains and re-discovered a lost love.  In the first episode a toe was broken, a shoulder dislocated and a bikini top maliciously ripped off a piece of anorexic eye candy.  It was my grade eleven prom all over again.

There has been a dynamic shift in the mechanics of the game with the contestants hyper-awareness of the history of the game, strategies which have worked, failed, worked then failed, failed then worked and a meta-meta reality/ entertainment/ manipulation through editing and/or competitions and fucks deliciously with the contestants heads and viewers expectations.

Season 22 is gearing up to be a good one.  It feels like the first two episodes were the best first two ever, due to the selection of at least three sociopaths, two personality disorders, one full on nut-nut and and an evangelical Christian who is already food for the lions.

If reality TV is supposed to hold a mirror to ourselves and/or our society (Really, who believes this other than studio execs and the producers of this exploitive dreck.), Survivor continues to outdo itself by putting on display the kind of greedy, capitalistic paranoid over-thinkers with no sense of self awareness or shame that will do anything for money.  These are the people who own businesses, buy up property and run corporations.  For me, it's endless hours of entertainment watching them scheme, screw each other over, be manipulated and, ultimately eat each other alive (Figuratively - though we all know what being 'voted off' really means.) for the sake of an anti-human ideology.

Pooh Thoughts

While Elisabeth was pregnant, I read Winnie The Pooh to her stomach.  I'm fairly well versed in Winnie the Pooh and didn't feel the need to comment on it.  Also, I was lazy.

With Henry's bedtime routine fairly set in stone now, I've been reading to him every night.  We plowed through Beedle the Bard fairly quickly as I wasn't very good at picking up on his I Want To Go To Bed Right Now signals and read to him for far too long.  The House on Pooh Corner has been a bit of a long slog but last night we finally got through it.  what really stood out for me was how different it was to the first book, especially as I realized while reading it that I'd never read it before.  These are my random and poorly developed thoughts on it:

1) Walt Disney ruined Pooh.  A.A. Milne's characters are so strongly realized (And linked to the original illustrations) that when reading Pooh, there's a weird dichotomy where it's easy to confuse the two interpretations.  I'm happy that I never watched the cartoons beyond the original adaptations because it would mess with my brain too much.  Like Harry Potter, this is something I'd like Henry to experience before he watches the movie (fat chance!)

2) A.A. Milne got the 'Pooh' double entendre and used it to excellent effect, never milking it.

3) While the first book is filled with the whimsy of childhood, Pooh Corner focuses on the confusion of growing up.  The animals bicker about who is smarter; Christopher Robin is absent and becoming Educated while the animals feel threatened, not just by Tigger's sudden arrival but by Pooh and Piglet's perceived stupidity.  All the while those who claim to have something other than fluff for brains come across as curmudgeonly, dull, petty and, in the end, dumb.

This is a central conceit with Pooh Corner:  There is an awareness through Christopher Robin becoming Educated that the magic is coming to an end.  The animals are petty, bicker more, have an awareness of the dangers of the world and are jealous towards each other.  These are all externalizations of the fear an adult (A.A. Milne) would project on a child growing up and seeing less and less magic in the wonders of his toys and imagination.

Pooh Corner ends on an especially depressing note with Christopher Robin trying to articulate his fears and the reality of his leaving of the forest, accompanied by Pooh's vain attempts to understand what he's not able to articulate.  In the end, Christopher Robin gives up as neither of them are able to communicate any more.  There is a final promise that Pooh will wait for him for 100 years (Which I take to mean his death - at which time he might be able to re-cnnect with his childish ways) and a coda, almost as badly tacked on as the final chapter to The Deathly Hallows which promises, almost too desperately, that things will be all right.

At least that's how I read it.

My Life According to Dragons Den

Today we met this lady in her craft booth. She was exactly as she appeared on TV:


And, thanks to Dragon's Den, I found our diaper service:


The CBC continues to influence my day-to-day life in ways I'd never dreamed. It's only a matter of time until I get to flirt with Chantal Hebert on the At Issue Panel.

Sunday = Choreday

1. All laundry - Whites / Colours;
2. Put guest stuff away;
3. Food shopping, cooking, all dishes get done;
4. Put empties away;
5. Weed the front; <- There is no way in hell this is going to happen.
6. Put up curtains;
7. E-mail J & S, M;
8. Do some blogging 1, 2, 3;
9. Call M & T; <- Answer your damn phone, T!
10. Haircut;
11. Water all the plants - Upstairs / Downstairs.

Edit: Horror delay: Lack of coffee: Next time remember that you need to add water to the coffee maker.

Edit 2: 1st lie of the day: by 'put up curtains' I mean 'install curtain rod.'

Shrine on you crazy diamond

Toronto was shut down today as the Shriners, in an attempt to out do Pride's parade of epic length (In all fairness, a full one third of it was made up of 'gay' Jews protesting 'gay' not-Jews protesting Israeli apartheid), conducted a five hour long bonanza of fez's, miniature cars and Depends undergarment models marching down University Avenue in 40 degree heat.

I don't know if the Shriners parade was as exciting as Pride was, however, on a sexiness scale, I imaging it was a lot lower. As much as I would have loved to have seen 40,000 octogenarians partying down, beating the heat in leather thongs, jock straps, or nothing but a pair of sneakers... Wait, was I writing about the Shriners or Pride? Either way, childhood memories came flooding back of going to the Shriners Circus in a shopping mall parking lot, crossing lines of Shriners protesting protesters protesting animal cruelty... Maybe the Shriners and the Pride have more in common than I thought.

After a quick search of the Shriners on the internet in an effort to find out something about them and their relevance to modern society (Wikipedia), I gave up because they're too damn boring. Even cross-referencing them with "Shriners + Conspiracy Theories" led to nothing more than implications that their founder was (brace yourself) Muslem or that they're all pedophiles.

(For the record, accusing an organization of institutionalized pedophilia (Except NAMBLA) is as unimaginative as comparing a politician to Hitler. Unless you're comparing Hitler to himself. I wonder if anyone has. I'm sure there's a PhD lurking out there somewhere. E-mail me if you're written it and are reading this. I'd like to interview you.)

I invite someone with more imagination than me to please, please, please come up with a better conspiracy theory about the Shriners. With todays society of scandals and trash, there must be someone with with a website and more spare time than me who wants to take on this challenge.

In other news, Lindsay Lohan is going to jail.
Maybe it's because a Shriner fingered her.
Damn you lazy pedophile jokes!