taking stock

This decade and I have never been close (10 years in and I still don't know what to call it) but I'm not going to let that stop me from saying something potentially definitive about it.

I've chosen to concentrate on those features of the '00s (the decade we were all licensed to kill) with which I will no longer put up:

1. Dream Sequences. If the only way you can derive interest from a story line is to abandon it completely in favor of a pointless, plotless, feverish romp with dwarves and dead people and ducks (we're looking at you, Mr. David Chase!) it's probably time for a new story line.

2. User Forums. When I have a problem with my computer hardware or software, what I require is a user-friendly SOLUTION. What I do not require is a page of posts from people who a) have the same problem; b) had the problem but solved it by retying their shoes while facing north; c) had the same problem but solved it by rebuilding their computer from scratch, switching operating systems and re-reading The Art of Computer Programming; d) think my inability to solve my own problem makes me a Nazi.

3. Nasty Reality Show Judges. Enough, already. I don't even watch these shows and I know who Simon Callow is - and I know someone should sit up all night and SLAP him. Do people really get off more on seeing untalented people humiliated than seeing talented people triumph? If they do, then they should be ashamed of themselves, these people.

4. Celebrities. I call for an Age of Obscurity. Let's not talk about anyone who hasn't accomplished something of real worth (as determined by a panel that does not include Simon Callow) for the next 10 years.

5. "Green" Products. You want to save the earth? Stop buying so much shit!

6. Dick Cheney. Traditionally, the only way a former vice president of the US could continue to command media attention was to become president (this explains why George Bush Sr is occasionally in the limelight and could even be said to explain Al Gore's continued prominence - he did, after all, become president; he was just rudely deprived of the opportunity to serve). Why does Dick Cheney continue to appear, Jacob Marley-like, in our lives? I submit that if the media are to continue giving air time and column inches to Cheney, they should devote equal attention to Dan Quayle and Walter Mondale.

I know that for this to be a proper end-of-decade list it should have 10 items, but you know what? Life just isn't that tidy and rather than add four, half-hearted final items to make the quota, I will end here. Abruptly.

(Pictured above right: Walter Mondale. I'm doing my part to redress the imbalance.)

learning english?

I happened to hear Radio Ceska's English lesson this morning and I may never be the same.

I stopped what I was doing to write it down, dictation-style, and I present it here to see if you find it equally disturbing.

It's a conversation between an unidentified man and woman (the point, apparently, is to teach the phrase "to look at"). You hear the sound of babies cooing throughout:

Man: Look at the twins.

Woman: I can’t tell them apart.

M: Which one do you like better?

W: The one on the left.

M: Why do you like her better?

W: She seems more friendly.

M: What makes her seem that way?

W: I’m not sure.

M: Look at her eyes.

W: Oh yes, her pupils are bigger!

M: Now watch as I shine a bright light in her eyes.

W: Her pupils just got smaller!

M: Yes, and she seems less friendly. Next time you meet somebody, look at their eyes and see if the size of their pupils changes.

Is it just me, or does this sound like "Learning English with Dr. Mengele" to you too?

I don't know which is creepier - the fact that the man asks "WHICH ONE DO YOU LIKE BETTER?" or that the woman HAS AN ANSWER.

They finished up by illustrating the difference between "to look" and "to watch." An admirable goal, but why do it this way:

M: Stop talking and look at this photograph.

M: Stop talking and watch the action in this film.

I was half expecting the whole thing to be punctuated by slaps. The funny thing is that I had been considering suggesting these English lessons to an analyst at my place of work, who actually does need to brush up on his understanding of "to look at" (I asked him to "have a look at" a report I'd edited and he responded by email that he would "take a vision on it.") I've reconsidered, however. Lessons like these would have him telling me to "stop talking" and gauging my dislike of him in the size of my pupils. And we CAN'T have that.

who's who: part I

It's been brought to my attention that some of you have a tendency to confuse famous people with other famous people. This is dangerous, particularly if you sign royalty checks for a living, but my real fear is that, if allowed to progress unchecked, this tendency could lead to non-famous people being mistaken for famous people, and that would bring the entire, elaborate, sequin-studded structure that is North American culture crashing down around us.

So I'm here to check it. What follows is hardly an exhaustive list, but covers some of the most common cases of mistaken celebrity identity:

1. Georg Wilhelm Friedrich Hegel (German philosopher who developed a comprehensive philosophical framework, or "system", to account in an integrated and developmental way for the relation of mind and nature, the subject and object of knowledge, and psychology, the state, history, art, religion, and philosophy) and Katherine Marie Heigl (American actress best known for her role on Grey's Anatomy and her starring role in the movie Knocked Up).

I blame Movie Entertainment for the confusion - they were clearly conflating the two when they described Heigl as "an actress known for her dramatic roles who really wants to do comedy and explore the ontological implications of such Kantian topics as freedom and morality."

2. Kate Bush (English singer, song writer and record producer) and Jeb Bush (former governor of Florida).

Their uncanny resemblance caused the former governor considerable embarrassment on numerous occasions, as his attempts to deliver speeches were interrupted by cries of 'Sing Wuthering Heights!'. On at least one occasion, I'm told, he gave in and sang, acquitting himself quite well.

3. Benjamin Franklin (Founding Father of the United States) and Bonnie Franklin (star of the popular American sitcom One Day at a Time). The confusion here, I believe, stems from the original title for One Day at a Time which was Fish and Visitors Stink in Three Days, the famous Benjamin Franklin quote. (In passing, One Day at a Time was produced by Norman Lear, an American television writer and producer, who should not be confused with King Lear, fictional monarch and central character of a play of the same name by William Shakespeare.)

the perils of a canadian summer

My sister found an article in a Canadian Living magazine (tucked between a pemmican recipe and a feature on resoling skidoo boots) offering health and safety tips for the Canadian summer.

In addition to advice on coping with bee stings, food poisoning, and poison ivy, the editors included some helpful words on what to do if you CUT YOUR FOOT OFF WITH THE LAWN MOWER (emphasis mine, the editors gave it no more play than the bee stings or the rusty nail punctures).

Curious to know how common summer lawn mower-induced foot loss is, I consulted Stats Canada, and discovered their lighthearted "Summer by the Numbers" section. While they don't keep track of power lawn mower-related injuries, they do track deaths, and in 2004 (the most recent year for which numbers were available) these totaled 1. (Making lawn mowers as big a threat as lightning strikes).

Canada did, however, have 58,945 acres of sod in need of mowing in 2006, so it's not hard to imagine some portion of that acreage littered with severed feet.

I took the precaution of ensuring I never mowed the lawn and, as a result, have returned from vacation with both my feet.

Thank you, Canadian Living!

and we're back!

I waited months for season three of Mad Men - long, lonely months without Don or Peggy or Roger or their early '60s fashions or their rampant smoking and marital infidelity (fortunately, I live in a country where smoking and marital infidelity remain rampant, which eased the separation anxiety).

I've read that the man behind the show, the former Sopranos writer whose actual name I cannot be bothered to google right now - especially for people who clearly have both internet connections and time to burn - is obsessed with getting even the tiniest period details correct (as in, looking up actual train timetables from 1962 and ensuring the fruit in the bowls on the dining room tables is appropriately small and bruised).

I'm not sure that this is why it took them so long to get season three underway, but it seems to me it couldn't have helped. And I was willing to wait. Which got me to thinking...maybe I could claim to have been busy all these months getting the period detail correct.

What period, you ask? Well, I'm not exactly sure. But as I write, I'm wearing a dress I bought 13 years ago for an office Christmas party [See photo above] so maybe it's 1996. (I'm trying to pretend it's some sort of triumph that it still fits, but I think the truth is that it still doesn't fit - just in a different way. I find it hard to put a triumphant spin on that).

But if I were to get the period detail absolutely correct, I would have to find a Portuguese hairdresser. And she would have to squeeze me in on a day when she was also doing an entire Portuguese wedding party. And I would have to have spent all my money on my party dress, leaving me nothing for stockings. And I would have to have arranged to meet my friend Kevin in Toronto's gay village to borrow money for stockings and I would have to go directly from the hairdresser's, giving him the opportunity to boom across a gay coffee shop in his "That boy really should be a radio announcer" voice, "MY GOD! YOU LOOK LIKE AN IMMIGRANT BRIDE!"

(Which, of course, I did, at the time, having been mixed in with the actual immigrant bride and her attendants; and which I would have to do again, were I to get the period detail absolutely correct.)

That seems like an awful lot of effort to go to to avoid admitting something my three readers already know - namely, that I'm lazy.

So how about I just leave it at - "Good to be back"?

great ideas

I've been having so many great ideas lately, I feel it's time to get a few down on paper so that, in about 10 minutes, when someone else has the same idea and actually finds a way to make money from it, I will be able to look smug and say, "I could have done that."

GREAT IDEA NUMBER 1

Make companies and sports teams that use animals as their symbols pay endorsement fees to the World Wildlife Fund. Penguins alone would bring in a fortune, once the Pittsburgh Penguins, Linux, and countless ice- and ice cream- vending companies were forced to pay up. Of course, the animals would have to be provided with adequate financial guidance to ensure they didn't immediately blow their earnings on bling and Cadillacs for their mamas.

GREAT IDEA NUMBER 2

Rather than clubbing baby seals to save fish stocks that are already, to the best of my knowledge, past saving, I propose a brief period each spring during which anyone with the proper license can club factory trawler captains.

GREAT IDEA NUMBER 3

Someone (don't look at me) should design a "smart fridge" that determines when food is past its best-before date and pelts you with it when you open the door saying (in a computerized yet vaguely hip-hop voice that may also have to be invented - let's call this great idea 3a) "Bish, don' tell ME you plan to eat no three-month-old ricotta!"

GREAT IDEA NUMBER 4

Women's magazines featuring stories about "new" products that "really work" should be forced to list (and apologize for) all the products they've endorsed in the past that apparently don't.

how's that again?

A BBC announcer discussing a film just now said it was "what the Americans call a 'tough watch.'"

"Do they?" I found myself thinking. "Do the Americans call dark films 'tough watches?'" I ask because I know a number of Americans (I say this not by way of boast) and I read a considerable amount of American news coverage, and I am not familiar with the phrase.

So I googled it, and got more than I bargained for. While most Americans (judging by the returned results) use "tough watch" to describe wrist-borne timepieces able to withstand the vicissitudes of wind and weather, at least one American - Chris "Mad Dog" Russo, to be exact - used the phrase "tough watch" to describe "an impending game between two inept teams."

Apparently, this remark was an alleged case of nonsentential assertion (as opposed to nonessential assertion, which describes my blog).

Reinaldo Elugardo and Robert Stainton took up the question of Mad Dog's remark in their paper, "Ellipsis and Nonsentential Speech" which is, let me be the first to say it, a tough read (and would probably be a tough watch too, if anyone ever took a notion to adapt it for the cinema).

Tough watch is a "post-deletion fragment of what linguists call a 'tough construction,' a canonical example of which would be, 'Chuck is tough to talk to.'"

"Chuck is tough to talk to" is in turn derived from a structure like, "It is tough to talk to Chuck," often called a "tough movement." (I refuse to consider what the Americans I know use the phrase "tough movement" to describe, call me a coward, I don't care.)

The authors then trace a four-step path from "It will be tough to watch that game" to "tough watch."

Which leaves me feeling both more informed and strangely ignorant, a state the Brits call a "soggy crumpet."

Or not.

daniel

I've had the song Daniel stuck in my head today (no idea why, I don't think I actually heard it anywhere).

I've never understood this song, but I've also never attempted to analyze it -- until today. And folks, I'm here to tell you, analyzing the lyrics of an Elton John song is not something anybody should do as long as there are more potentially rewarding occupations open to them, like brushing their teeth again. Or lying face down in a ditch.

But since I've done the legwork, I feel I might as well share the results: the song makes no sense.

Consider:

Daniel is traveling tonight on the plane/I can see the red tail lights/heading for sp-ai-ai-ain/Oh and/I can see Daniel waving goodbye [1]/God it looks like Daniel/Must be the clouds in my eyes [2]

OH-OH-OH/Daniel my brother/You are/Older than me/Do you still feel the pain/Of a scar that won't heal?/Your eyes have died but you see more than mine[3]/Daniel you're a star/In the face of the sky.

They say Spain is pretty/though I've never been/Daniel says it's the best place/he's eh-eh-eh-eh-eh-eh-eh-ver seen [4]/Oh and/ he should know/he's been there enough [5]/Oh I miss Daniel/Oh I miss him so much [6]


[1] I can see Daniel waving goodbye, although I've just told you I can see the tail lights, which suggests I'm BEHIND the plane, and more importantly, I can see them 'heading for Spain,' which suggests that the plane is OFF THE GROUND, so how exactly I'm seeing Daniel waving goodbye is puzzling but I don't really think it's [2] the clouds in my eyes because I've also told you Daniel is traveling TONIGHT, a time of day during which clouds are not usually an obstacle to vision -- PITCH BLACKNESS is. If, on the other hand, the clouds are truly in my eyes, then it sounds like cataracts, which means (as will become clear in the chorus) that this song is about ocular health.

[3] Daniel has, apparently, been the victim of an accident that's robbed him of his sight, but how the scars from that accident could have failed to heal is puzzling, and why Daniel and his unhealed scars would be permitted to board an airplane perplexing. Moreover, the image suggested is grotesque. 'Your eyes have died but you see more than mine' is, of course, just bad English, unless Daniel's eyes have died but he sees more than my eyes -- i.e. he sees the stewardess coming to ask him if he'd like a hot towel for his scars that won't heal.

[4] Although he's blind, so that's not really a rousing endorsement. And you're going to say, 'What if he saw it BEFORE he went blind?' in that whiny tone you adopt when you think you've trumped me and I'm going to respond, 'Then he still is hardly in a position to discuss it in reference to other places because presumably, he no longer sees the places he travels. Plus, I just get the idea Daniel is young. Don't ask me why.'

[5] I don't think multiple visits would have made a difference. Did I mention he's blind?

[6] Although he left approximately three minutes ago and I apparently pursued his plane right out onto the runway.


Well, there you have it, Elton John's Daniel deconstructed. Next week, who is Delta Dawn and just what is that flower she has on?

[Above right: Look closely, you can see Daniel. No, really. He's waving goodbye.]

cheaper by the dozen

My mother loves a sale. Her most recent purchase was a new furnace and I know that if she was given the option of buying one and getting one free, ours is now the only house on the block with surround heating.

Her inability to resist a good deal meant that one year, when she had to replace some broken figurines in our Christmas nativity scene (broken, most likely, by my little sister who used them like barbies in a way that would probably have gotten us excommunicated had anyone notified the papal authorities) we ended up with five kings, no Joseph and two Baby Jesuses (Babies-Jesus?). I've milked this particular story in print before, but my mother has to forgive me - my siblings and I provided much of the fodder for a newspaper column she wrote during our formative years. She's known payback was a possibility since we learned to read. (Which is probably, come to think of it, why she delayed that so long, telling us reading was "un-Canadian.")

Besides, my point today (and I do have one, don't be fooled by the cleverness with which I've so far hidden it) is that I have inherited my mother's love of a deal. I can no longer pay full price for anything without cringing - often visibly. But my mania also makes it hard for me NOT to buy things that have been marked down.

Today, for instance, it caused me to buy an exacto knife (with extra blades), a set of precision screwdrivers, and two bungee cords although I have no immediate plans to hijack a commercial airliner, customize my home electronics, or leap off the Sydney Harbor Bridge. (To be strictly truthful, the bungee cords are the mini variety, and would not support my leaping off anything, although they might support one of the cats. I'll let you know how that turns out.)

I bought them because each item, although of little to no use to me at present, cost only 30kc.

THIRTY CROWNS PEOPLE! How could I afford NOT to buy them? And why didn't I also buy the mini flashlight (complete with AAA battery) and the duct tape and the sanding block? Won't I feel the fool if tomorrow some tragedy, easily avoided with a little timely sanding, befalls me? What CAN'T be improved by duct tape? And I could be using that flashlight right now to see what's under my fridge!

I swear, I'm almost ready to pull on my boots and go back to the store right now. It's not like I'll be able to sleep tonight, knowing all those BARGAINS are happening just meters away from my front door.

And as my cousin T.C. once said (I've decided to start referring to members of my family by their initials, like they're characters in an 18th century roman a clef - or United Nations programs):

"There's a fine line between being cheap and being wise with your money.

And I'm cheap."

There's a great book by Muriel Spark called "A Far Cry From Kensington" about a woman who works in a publishing house.

I read it a number of years ago, and two things (a stupendous number, by my standards) have stuck with me.

One is the phrase "pisseur de copie" which the main character hisses at one of the company's hack writers as she passes him in a park. It's presented as one of those moments of liberating revolt we all experience from time to time (most recently a friend of mine who, faced with yet another stonewalling Czech bureaucratic type refusing to do anything to assist her said - in fluent Czech - 'I understand about your regulations. But you're a cow.' ) The sort of moment that leaves you both pleased and appalled at your own sheer gall.

The other thing I remember is the advice the main character gives a would-be author (a retired British admiral, if I recall correctly) who is having trouble making himself write. She tells him to get a cat. A cat, she says, will curl up on his desk and sleep, providing the tranquil atmosphere necessary to composition.

I've been thinking about this advice this morning, as I sit at my desk attempting to 'compose' while my cats re-enact the Battle of Guadalcanal around me.

I think my mistake was in assuming twice the cat would mean twice the tranquility. This, for all of you would-be writers out there, is not so.

the ghost of employment past

The company that employed me when I first came to Prague has long been a source of comedic gold for those of us (and we were legion) who worked there.

I left many years ago, after I'd been rudely deprived of the opportunity to quit, but my understanding is that subsequently, wearied by the demands of dealing with adult employees, they switched first to part-time students, then later to one of the less-uppity breeds of monkey to staff their enterprise.

I've always been vaguely aware they were still out there, doing that thang they do, but today I found them listed as a sponsor of a seemingly presitigious world alternative energy summit, and their company "bio" is worth reproducing.

[NAME EXCISED TO BE ON THE SAFE SIDE, THESE PEOPLE ARE LITIGIOUS] is a digital news provider and media monitoring service scanning more than 50,000 news sections from over 5,000 newspapers and online publications and indexing nearly 80,000 new articles every 24 hours. [NAME EXCISED] is hand edited providing the most comprehensive and up-to-the-minute information available in various delivery formats regarding world affairs including the latest developments in every country's economy, business, industries, politics, international relations as well as human rights, religion, terrorism, and much more.

Hand edited. Did you catch that? None of that funky foot editing we were all up to in the early years, or that brief, glorious period when Stepan introduced his 'editing machine' (bulky and coal-fired, but surprisingly accurate nonetheless).

And I have been searching high and low for a source monitoring the "latest developments" in terrorism! Bravo, old company of mine! Most news sources refuse to acknowledge terrorism as a sector with a future.

I also like how emphatic they are about covering every aspect of "every country." The evil ex-employee in me wants to write and ask why they don't have any coverage of Freedonia, or Aftakislamastan, or Shangriladida Valley because, I can assure you, if they didn't immediately launch such a service, they would certainly consider it.

oh what a night

Oh sure, Michelle Obama looked like she was having fun on the night of the inauguration but did she wake up with gum in her hair?

I ask because I did, and as I'm trying to spin it as a sign I had a really good time that night, it would help immensely to know the First Lady had had a similar experience.

I honestly can't explain the gum: I remember noticing a piece of paper with writing on it in an ashtray, I remember being intrigued enough to try and open it and read it (found correspondence and all that), and I remember realizing it did not contain a piece of someone's life but rather, a piece of someone's gum. I do not, however, remember transferring that gum to my hair.

My companions that evening claim not to remember either, but I'm not sure I believe them.

I will endeavor to rise above this unfortunate beginning to what was supposed to be a brave new era. After all, Obama began it by retaking his oath of office, what's a little gum by comparison? (Although I have to say, it would be way better if I could blame it on the Chief Justice of the American Supreme Court, but try as I might, I just can't seem to do that).

what to wear to a financial crisis

Finally, the antidote to all the "gloom and doomers" who will go on about credit crunches and bad loans and looming financial ruin when all I really want to know is, WHAT SHOULD I WEAR?

Stepan, who clearly shares my concerns, was kind enough to send me this clip, in which New York Times photographer Bill Cunningham takes to the streets of New York to find out how women in that fashionable city are coping with the current financial crisis. As Stepan put it, "It's like if Jimminy Glick got on his bike and started stalking women, snapping photos of them around NY and rambling about what they're wearing."

What New York women are doing, it seems, is wearing old clothes - and so can you! Dust off that classic Balenciaga coat from the '60s - you remember it, the one with the spiral seam? The masterpiece you loaned to the Metropolitan Museum of Art? It's still there? Well, get it back, sister! Break the glass if you have to - this is an emergency!

Reach into the family trunk and pull out a Schiaparelli from 1938! Preferably one with a large sea urchin embroidered on the shoulder (I believe 'schiaparelli' is Italian for sea urchin).

I don't have access to the "family trunk" at the moment (my own fault, of course, for having opted to live abroad, my sisters are no doubt sashaying around covered head to toe in decorative crustaceans even as I write), but I reached into my closet (actually a wardrobe thingy from IKEA but passons, passons!) and found clothing so old it should have been given to the Smithsonian, never mind the Metropolitan Museum of Art! Much of it, mind you, is ragged, or moth-eaten, or too small, but I'm sure if I wear it with the proper devil-may-care attitude, I'll be able to carry it off.

On the other hand, the ragged, moth-eaten, too small look was big during the last major financial crisis, and could very well come back. Fashion is cyclical, after all - just like something else I could mention but won't. No "gloom and doomer" I!

[Pictured, above right: Another woman who managed to dress well during trying times - Scarlett O'Hara, who found the answer hanging not in her closet, but in her window.]

and another thing

I have to say one last thing about my new apartment and then I promise I'll find something else to talk about (just a heads up, though, that "something else" might be Joan of Arcadia, a TV show I've become addicted to this holiday season about a teenage American girl who talks to God).

As I type, somebody up there (as in my upstairs neighbor, not God) is learning to play "Killing Me Softly" on a saxophone. This is so wonderful words almost fail me. "Strumming my pain with his fingers/Singing my life with his words." It doesn't work on any level - you can't strum a saxophone (and yes, that is the voice of sad experience talking) nor can you sing and play one simultaneously. This may be the most inappropriate song for saxophone ever, second only to "While My Guitar Gently Weeps" or "Piano Man."

And just when I thought things were as good as they could possibly get, his DOG started HOWLING along! Clearly, that puppy has been the victim of a love gone wrong.

This is all greatly preferable to the ambient noise in my old apartment, which consisted of all the other people in the building getting along smashingly because they were all RELATED. The hallways echoed their happy family chatter, the footsteps of children running upstairs to visit Grandpa (whose old Hustler magazines were stacked merrily in the hallway outside his door, awaiting some lucky recycler), the clink of glasses as they picnicked in the verdant backyard, the buzz of the circular saw from their in-house sawmill - it was like an entire village crammed into one building.

They were killing me softly with their sheer propinquity.

And yes, that's a word you'll be seeing more of in 2009.

snow

I started reading Orhan Pamuk's "Snow," and lo and behold - it started snowing. Coincidence, or is 2009 to be my year to control the weather? I'm leaning toward coincidence, personally, but will put off reading "The Perfect Storm" until 2010, just to be safe.