I Don't Eat Animals, And They Don't Eat Me

I don’t eat meat these days. And I don’t eat fish. In theory I could call myself a “vegetarian.” I don’t, often. That’s mostly because I only just started doing these things, or not doing these things, recently. So, especially compared to many people I know who have been vegetarians all their lives, it feels sort of presumptuous. I prefer to tell people simply that I don’t eat meat or fish, or that I’m “on a vegetarian diet.” This puzzles people of course. But I was not put on this earth to settle peoples’ minds.

Sometimes people ask me why. Not often. And it tends to annoy me. I’m not sure why. I think it’s just because it’s difficult to explain without getting on a soapbox. “I decided that I don’t like eating corpses” does in a pinch, but then people just think (correctly, undoubtedly) that I’m demented.

Then there a people that don’t ask me why. That tends to annoy me too. Like Hey! I’m making a statement here! Don’t you even care?

But I am having great time. I now have 8 vegetarian and vegan cook books, with names like The Vegetarian Cookbook (great title, that), The Accidental Vegan (Ouch! Are you ok? I think so, but now I’m a vegan!), and The Part-Time Vegetarian (though, as my intrepid daughter pointed out, the last named could have meat recipes and still be accurately titled). I make recipes with tofu and miso and broccollini. I make quinoa salad and lentil burgers and salad with cashews and capers and poppy seeds. I make things that my kids will never eat.

Oh, kids, right. I still have these kids around. I have a tendency to feed them too. And I decided that it wouldn’t be fair suddenly to deprive them of the meat and bones and gore (did I say that out loud?) that they’re so used to. So I still cook chicken for them Friday night, and the odd hot dogs, though doing so actually violates all the principals I’m trying to stand up for here. But eventually they’ll all move out and I’ll clean up my kitchen for real.

So no, I don’t miss eating meat. And no, not eating meat does not make me tired. And yes, I do miss eating fish, a bit. And yes, it takes more effort to plan meals. And yes, I get funny looks. And yes, people think I am senile.

And yes, I’m hungry all the time. But I’ve always been hungry all the time.

And remember, chips are TOTALLY vegetarian...

My Life In 100 Songs: Song #77 - Diamonds And Rust

The unwashed phenomenon
The original vagabond

It is a truism that you either get Bob Dylan or you don’t. The fact that it is a truism does not mean that it is not true. It is true. But more, you either get those who don’t get Dylan or you don’t. The Bootleg Series, vol 1 – 3 was released in 1989. There was a song called Moonshiner. The liner notes proclaimed that this ought to still all those voices who claimed that Dylan couldn’t sing. "...If anyone should dare question Bob's ability as a singer, play them [sic] this track." I don’t know. To me it sounded like everything about it exemplified exactly why the “not getting Dylan” crowd said he couldn’t sing.

John J was my classmate in law school and he was a Dylan fan. John J was one of those short-hair types, probably voted conservative. But he was a Dylan fan and the owner of some interesting bootlegs. And John J let me listen to those bootlegs, because Dylan fans stick together, even when their political agendas clash.

It was about that time that Shot Of Love was released, and neither one of us having been enamoured with Dylan’s pin-headed expressions of Christian faith, we were both somewhat relieved to note that at least some of the tracks had secular themes. He lent me his copy of that too.

I got my first Dylan bootleg in Toronto in 1979. It had a plain white cover and with a piece of paper under the shrink wrap, with fake song titles, and the artist's last name was "Dillon.". I guess that gave it away. I remember that it listed a song as “Masking Tape.” That was the Carnegie Hall bootleg; all but one of the tracks had never (then) been officially released.

Later I went to a record collectors’ convention and I got what I thought was the Albert Hall bootleg. It wasn’t; it was a live recording of Dylan’s UK concert from 1965, one year too early. Still, a Dylan bootleg was a Dylan bootleg, and I owned it.

I did finally get the Albert Hall album. This was before it became legally and commercially available. I got it at Into The Music, the last real reliable source of used LPs in Winnipeg before I left. Now, of course, you can buy it, it’s called The Bootleg Series vol 4, and the fun is gone.

The whole Bootleg Series thing started just a few years after Biograph, which started the ball rolling really. Biograph was a self-contradictory mix, a greatest hits package which would appeal to newbies, with previously unreleased tracks that would appeal only to seasoned fans. It was the first appearance of I’ll Keep It With Mine, recorded c. 1964, and Abandoned Love, recorded for Desire and shelved. We knew that Dylan didn’t release all his good stuff, but this was incendiary.

And so came the legal bootlegs: the Rolling Thunder Review concert from Montreal, A Philharmonic Hall concert from 1964, outtakes from Self Portrait, outtakes from the mid-60s, demos, rehearsals, studio talk. It goes from revelatory to incestuous.

And all that past parallels an increasingly demented present, as Dylan records an unironic Christmas album, a radio show, a standards album, and who knows what next. I lost track after Oh Mercy.

So there are those of us who claim to get Dylan and those of us who don’t. And Dylan himself has dedicated his entire career to turning everyone into someone who doesn’t get him. And I think that he has succeeded...

You who are so good with words
And at keeping things vague...

My Life In 100 Songs: Song 67 - Fish And Whistle By John Prine

I been thinking lately ‘bout the people I meet
the carwash on the corner and the hole on the street

The people I meet talk about Netflix. Or else they talk about their overseas vacations, with emphasis on package tours, hotels, costs, and food. We meet in restaurants and order dinner, beer, wine, and coffee. We meet in groups that talk about books or current events. But Netflix rules.

The carwash on the corner is attached to a gas station whose prices fluctuate every day. I am imagining a world where all the prices do this, where you never know how much change to bring to the store because the price of milk is so volatile, where a basket full of groceries could cost you $100 this week and $175 next week, and $85 the week after. But I’m also imaging a world where oil companies are made to act responsibly, and the corruption of the gas price game is seen for what it is. While I’m at it, I’m imagining a world where banks can’t charge 20% on credit card balances and insurance companies have to pay for medical procedures whether they want to or not. And imagine what might happen if someone woke up and realized the implications of a financial world that’s based on speculation, fear, and panic.

The way my ankles hurt with shoes on my feet

I take off my shoes in the morning. I do this at work, while I sit at my desk, usually with my feet tucked under me. I am short enough to do this, which is one advantage to my lack of height. The other advantage is fuel efficiency.

And I wonder if I’m gonna see tomorrow

Tomorrow will take care of itself whether I see it or not. Meanwhile, I need to worry about my blood pressure, so I need to make an appointment with my cardiologist, because I’m lucky enough to have one, and he will yell at me for taking so long to get back to him, and for sure he will scold me for not buying a monitor, and all that yelling is really bad for my blood pressure, so I probably shouldn’t go...

Father forgive us for what we must do

Yes. Forgive us. Sometimes we cross when the light says don’t cross. Sometimes we sneak a peek at Facebook during work hours. Sometimes we eat food with trans-fats. We shop at Wal-Mart. We eat meat and eggs which supports factory farms which promotes cruelty to animals and the brutalization of the people that work there. Forgive us.

You forgive us, we’ll forgive you
We’ll forgive each other ‘till we both turn blue

We’ll forgive you for creating banks and insurance companies. We’ll forgive you for the bone-headed city engineers that don’t know how to co-ordinate traffic lights, which encourages people to run red lights and to cross when it isn’t safe. We’ll forgive you for creating food that tastes good and makes us unhealthy. We’ll forgive you for cancer and murder and terrorism and death.

And we’ll whistle and go fishing in heaven

I’ll pass on the fishing, and even on the whistling. Give me all the music I want, and give me coffee, and give me some really good pastry with no trans-fats, and something good to read, and give me the ability to read and listen to music at the same time. And I’ll be happy for all eternity.

I was in the army but I never dug a trench
I used to bust my knuckles on a monkey wrench

We guys have all these expectations thrust upon us. I couldn’t use a monkey wrench either, nor barely a pair of pliers or a screwdriver or a hammer. I’d hire someone. I do my building with words.

I’d go to town and drink
Give the girls a pinch

But I don’t think they ever even noticed me

I wasn’t in the army but I was in school, and we weren’t drinking much then, but for sure the girls didn’t notice me. If I pinched them they’d slug me. Or worse, they’d just whine “stop it!” real loud.

Fish and whistle, whistle and fish
Eat everything that they put on your dish

Giving up meat, fish eventually. Buying free range eggs. I no longer want to eat eggs from chickens who have their beaks ripped off to prevent them from killing each other because of stress caused by lack of space which is necessary to reach an economy of scale.

And when we get through
We’ll make a big wish
That we never have to do this again,
again...
again...

Sometimes (often) I wonder where my years have gone, and yes it’s a cliché, but being a cliché doesn’t make it untrue. But it also doesn’t mean that I’d go back and do any of it again...

On my very first job I said ‘thank you’ and ‘please’
They made me scrub a parking lot down on my knees
Then I got fired for being scared of bees
And they only give me 50 cents an hour

On my very first job I had to account for my time by results, and I got a bonus if my results exceeded the hourly expectation, but the bonus did not double the pay for double the results, so that left me having to play games. It was an auspicious beginning.

And being scared of bees was the only thing I didn’t get fired for...

Father forgive us for what we must do
You forgive us, we’ll forgive you
We’ll forgive each other ‘till we both turn blue
And we’ll whistle and go fishing in heaven
we’ll whistle and go fishing in heaven
we’ll whistle and go fishing in heaven...

We'll whistle and go fishing in heaven...

10 Ways To Improve The Quality Of Your Life (for non-materialists only)

1. Get a library card and use it
2. Find a place that has a pleasant ambience, outdoor tables in summer, good pastry, and good coffee. Go there, order said refreshments, find a comfortable table, pull out the book that you got at the library, and make yourself at home. If weather permits, find an outside table and sit there.  Do this as often as you can, particularly when there is much to do at home.
3. Listen to music that is sublime and well-respected, like John Coltrane, The Beatles, and Gustav Mahler symphonies recorded by Leonard Bernstein.
4. Listen to music that is corny and despised, like The Partridge Family’s Greatest Hits, John Denver, Donovan, and Gustav Mahler symphonies recorded by Leonard Bernstein.
5. Feel free to dance to said music, anytime and anywhere, with the possible exception of funerals and religious services, but especially in public places like bus shelters.
6. Live in a big city, and walk a lot.
7. Get into the reality of the weather; don’t keep wishing it were different.
8. Eat pecan buns.
9. Cook, especially vegetarian recipes, like lentil burgers, chick pea stew, and black eyed pea soup.
10. Drink soy milk
11. Create your own daily routine, and if people laugh at you because you have your coffee at 9:30 every day, screw ‘em.
12. Promise 10 things, and deliver 12. Accuracy is overrated

The Last Word On The Charter

My girls attend a school called Beth Jacob. It’s a private Jewish girls’ school. Every year they do a musical, and every year I am barred from attending the performance because I am male. This bothers me. I do not understand the “religious” reason they use to justify this and I don’t care what it is.

I’ve heard that Hatzalah, the Jewish paramedical organization, does not permit women to join as paramedics. This bothers me. I do not know whether they use a “religious” reason to justify this nor do I care.

I know for a fact that in certain Hassidic communities, women are not allowed to drive. I also know that in Haredi communities generally, women do not have the same career opportunities as men, though, to be honest, the opportunities for both men and women are limited, as secular college  / university is considered out of bounds. All of this bothers me.

I do not speak here of gender separation, nor of gender differences in the context of religious services. That’s a whole other discussion. We leave that for another day.

I now quote from the preamble of the English version (surprised that there is one? So am I) of the Parti Quebecois’ Charter of Values:

The purpose of this bill is to establish a Charter affirming the values of State secularism and religious neutrality and of equality between women and men…

Later on it says:

…obligations are set out for personnel members of public bodies in the exercise of their functions, including a duty to remain neutral and exercise reserve in religious matters by, among other things, complying with the restriction on wearing religious objects that overtly indicate a religious affiliation.

There’s been a lot of ink spilled about the charter, about its discriminatory attitude, and about its divisiveness. The response seems to be:

1.        Gender equality is already entrenched in Quebec law
2.        The “religious symbols” provision is an instance of unjustifiable discrimination, and contrary to Quebec’s values, and the values of western society as a whole.

But let’s do a little bit of thinking here and see if we can come up with a way to make sense of this. I mean, we know that discrimination is bad. Despite the untold numbers of people among us who continue to practice it, nobody seriously argues in its favour. And yet, religious groups (I cite Jews as an example because that’s the group I belong to and that’s what I know best, but other groups have their own issues) seem to do it with impunity.

So maybe, just maybe, the PQ has a problem with groups that practice gender discrimination, and maybe that’s why they don’t want people advertising their allegiance to such groups on their turf. And I’m not sure I totally blame them.

If that’s the case, then I’d say that Marois and her useless band of lowlifes actually have a case. And if so, then I wish they’d be honest, say what they mean, discuss the problem openly, and let’s find a solution we can all live with. Taking a heavy-handed approach to anyone who wears a kipa or a hijab or a crucifix or a shtreimel for that matter will make the situation worse, not better. Discrimination can’t be fought with more discrimination. But it ought to be fought. Marois knows this. But if she were smart, she’d find a better way to do it. I don’t think she’s very smart.

There is, of course, also the reality that not all religious groups are equal. And not all adherents to any one group agree with every value of the group. There’s much that needs to be discussed, but nobody is discussing it, because the (now defunct) government is hiding behind the façade of “neutrality” and “secularism,” neither of which is an accurate description of the real issue.

So let’s be honest...

And I think next year I’ll make an issue out of that musical. BJ, you’ve been warned... 

The Long And Winding Road To Nowhere,,,

So today is February 9, and it’s the 50^th anniversary of The Beatles’ first appearance on Ed Sullivan, and I may have watched it, and if not I saw the one the week after or two weeks after. I remember, seriously. I was 7. But all that talk has got me thinking not of the beginning of their career, but of the end. That’s the way I am.

The Beatles recorded most of what would become Let It Be in January of 1969. It was a fiasco, and in the end they were left with tapes featuring hundreds of hours of musical chaos that nobody wanted to touch.

A few months later they got back together and recorded what would become Abbey Road. This was released in the fall of 1969 and took its rightful place in the canon of Beatles masterworks.

In January of 1970, George Harrison went back to the studio to put some finishing touches on one of the songs recorded the previous year. Then the whole mess was given over to Phil Spector to sort out and render presentable. This is an over-simplification of a complicated history. There was a promo version of the soon-to-be-released album, called Get Back, which I heard on the radio as a “CFRW Exclusive,” and which had the pre-Spectorized versions of some of the songs, but what ultimately hit the stores was an album called Let It Be, named for the song that became the first (of two) hit singles from the LP, though the single version was somewhat different from the album version. (That’s important; if you don’t know why, you probably shouldn't be reading this.)

The album came packed in a box, with a big book, which accompanied the film, also called Let It Be, that was released to cinemas at the same time as the LP, but by the time I got around to buying the album, which was in August of 1970, not a single copy of the book version was to be had, and I had to settle for the LP, sans book, but with a red apple label. (The film didn't do very well, and it’s on YouTube if you’re curious. I was.)

It was the last Beatles album. I emphasize that because I've read so many latter day discographies that put Let It Be before Abbey Road. They do this, presumably, because the tracks for Let it Be were recorded earlier than the tracks for Abbey Road. This may be so, but that doesn't make Abbey Road the last Beatles album, the poetic correctness of ending that album with The End notwithstanding.

Abbey Road was well ingrained in our minds before Let It Be made its public appearance, the neural pathways of our brains permanently altered by the bang bang of Maxwell’s Silver Hammer. This is important information for all the no-brains who insist that Let It Be came before Abbey Road.

But the most important part of this story is that I bought the album in Minneapolis. I was 13. My hair was short, much shorter than I wanted it to be. It did not feel right to be buying a Beatle album with such short hair, but there was nothing to be done about that. I had to buy it anyway, and I scoured the downtown area for a copy with the book, unsuccessfully. I bought the copy without the book, with the red Apple label. I was familiar with most of the songs from the CFRW exclusive, which I had surreptitiously taped on my Sanyo portable cassette recorder, but they had not played Dig It, Maggie Mae, One After 909, Across The Universe, or Two Of Us, though I had heard Two Of Us on the promo that the featured on Ed Sullivan earlier in the year, the last such appearance of the group on the show, on which Paul looked as if he hadn’t slept (or washed his hair) for a month.

I want to know who’s playing bass.

And The Long And Winding Road, which became The Beatles’ final hit single, sounded quite different from the version I’d heard, having all those strings and angelic voices added by Maestro Spector. Paul was, reportedly, incensed. Paul, though, not surprisingly, has had the last laugh. He has redone the song, changing the arrangement each time, and never quite scaling it back down to basics, on Wings Over America, Give My Regards To Broad Street, Tripping The Live Fantastic, Good Evening New York City, and Back In The USA, just in case we didn't get the point.

And then there was Let It Be Naked, consisting of remastered takes of the tracks from Let It Be, at the behest of Sir Paul, without M. Spector’s overdubs, released in 2003, and which seemed to take the world not exactly by storm.

If you want to hear The Long And Winding Road the way I heard it back in early 1970 coming from the promo copy of Get Back on the radio, listen to the version on Anthology 3; that’s it.  

So let’s hear it for Let It Be, the last Beatles album...

One Apostrophe More Or Less...

I have this CD by Matthew’s Southern Comfort [sic] called The Essential Collection. It wouldn’t do to have called it Greatest Hits, because the group (actually called Matthews Southern Comfort) didn’t have all that many hits – one, in fact, if by “hit” we mean a song that did better than number 96 on Billboard. If we are more liberal, then the group can be said to have had three “hits.” So their greatest hits would have made for a very paltry collection indeed, especially given the fact the “greatest” is presumably a selection from a bigger selection, which I don’t know how you’d manage to do with only 3 tracks to begin with.

So The Essential Collection it is, and here is where it gets interesting. The selections are taken from 3 albums, released in 1969 / 1970, and this is a bit odd because the group only released 2 albums. The 3rd, which was actually the 1st (confusing, see?) was a solo LP by Ian Matthews, called Matthews’ Southern Comfort. Good title, so good that he adopted it for his band (minus the apostrophe – though Whitburn included it), a six-piece unit which went on to record, as I said, 2 albums, one called Second Spring and one called Later That Same Year, the latter of which yielded Woodstock, the one real hit, and both of the other chart singles, which were, in case you are curious, and even if you aren’t, Tell Me Why, a cover of Neil Young’s song from After The Goldrush, and Mare, Take Me Home.

Another interesting point is that whoever put this collection together didn’t seem to have listened to it. The liner notes make several reference to this being “country rock,” which it decidedly isn’t – acoustic, yes; folky, yes; country, no.

And being the odd type of person that I am, I do this thing where I like to post YouTube videos of music I’ve been listening to on Facebook (no, not listening to on Facebook – go ahead, you reframe that sentence). And what I found in my quest to find some suitable postable content by MSC was this: 1. There are, altogether, not many songs by MSC on YouTube; 2. Most of the songs posted are not on The Essential Collection, and this makes me wonder how Essential the collection really is; 3. There are no live videos from the original group; 4. There are live performances from 2011, some in someone’s living room, and some in some concert hall somewhere, by group calling itself Matthews Southern Comfort, which patently and obviously is not Matthews Southern Comfort, having only 3 members (the original group had 6), one of whom is female (there were no girls in the group), and none of whom is Ian Matthews. Now it could be, possibly, that one or both of these guys were at one time in the original band, but so what? Imagine Ringo Starr picking up a kazoo player and the two of them touring as The Beatles; 5. There are more videos of Woodstock than of all the other songs together.

None of this is bad, I say. Their music is nice to listen to in the same way the Joan Baez’ early stuff is nice to listen to, well played, easy on the ear, not especially engaging. But there are exceptions, and if you’re going to post something, I suggest you start with their cover of James Taylor’s Something In The Way She Moves…

Turcotte

Back in the days when I sat behind a lawyer’s desk, a woman came to see me wanting a divorce. I don’t remember her name; let’s just call her “Mrs. Callous.” My husband is in the hospital, she told me, in the psychiatric ward. Can he accept service, I wondered out loud. Oh sure, she said, he’s depressed, but he’s not “out of it.” Ok.

Now Turcotte is in the news again, Guy Turcotte. You know the story if you live in Quebec. You probably know the story if you live elsewhere in Canada and you read out of province news. Anywhere else, I doubt it. So here’s a recap:

The man is a cardiologist, not practicing at the moment. His ex-wife is an EMO. They had two kids, and a few years ago, the wife decided that having an affair with their personal trainer (who was a friend to both of them) was a good idea. Dr. T had a different opinion. Traumatized by what was going on in his life, he got hit by a serious bout of depression, and, in what is alleged to have been a psychotic (though I have not yet seen the word actually used) episode, he murdered his two very young children, rather brutally. He then drank a bottle of windshield wiper fluid, in an apparent attempt to commit suicide (though it’s been pointed out that being a doctor and all, he ought to have known about better and more reliable methods).

That’s the story. He was tried and found not criminally responsible for his actions. (They don’t use “insanity” here). There was an uproar. People are outraged. There is an appeal pending.

I’m not sure why people are so upset by the verdict. I guess there’s a feeling that this guy is responsible, and should be held accountable. I was not at the trial. I did not hear the evidence. But I read the same news reports as everyone else. From what I understand, they couldn’t possibly convict. He had no history of violence. He had no history of “abnormal” behaviour. The psychiatric evidence of his having “snapped,” (as the papers now put it) was fairly strong. The jury, as far as I can tell, made the right decision.

We like to think that there is a one-to-one correspondence between criminal responsibility and moral responsibility. Anyone with any familiarity with how the justice system really works is disabused of that notion fairly quickly, but from a distance the system seems to work well enough, and the correlation seems intact. Throw a bit of “insanity” into the mix, though, and the system breaks down.

And here is where people are confused. “Not criminally responsible” does not mean that whatever the guy did is ok. Killed his kids? Sure. Ok. No problem.

Not so.

Now here is Dr. Turcotte (never referred to as “Dr” in the press, note), subject to a hearing to determine whether he can be released from the institute in which he has been incarcerated since his trial. It’s very difficult to tell from the press reports what is really going on. But the sense that one gets is that he is taking back control of his life, he is moving on, he feels that he is emotionally much healthier than he was a few years ago. He feels “less shame, less guilt, and has more self-esteem.” Therapy “has worked wonders” says the article in Friday’s Gazette. He is no longer depressed, it says, nor on medication.

Well, that’s wonderful news, isn’t it? For him. Sure. And the crown attorney, who wants to keep him where he is, is correctly pointing out, echoing psychiatrist Pierre Rochette, that there is a “missing link” here, a piece of the story that’s not being addressed. “We don’t know why he was able to snap,” she says, “how do we know what danger he represents to society now?” True enough, and hopefully enough to keep him locked up. But there’s more.

Have they addressed the question of how Turcotte can look at himself in the mirror every day? How much ownership has he taken of the destruction that he’s caused, how much responsibility has he expressed. He’s ready to go on and face life’s challenges as a healed man? Very nice. What about the rest of us? What about his ex-wife, the mother of the children he murdered, who is left to deal with a trauma none of us can imagine. What about the family’s inner and outer circle, everyone who’s been touched by the tragedy, whose lives have been altered in ways that life can never prepare you for? The good doctor asserts that he was sick and now he’s better and everything’s ok? So that takes care of everything. “Not criminally responsible” means what? That he gets “better” and walks away? If so, then no wonder people are outraged.

Criminally responsible? No. Morally responsible? Yes. Let’s hope that the verdict is upheld and that Turcotte stays where he is, at least until the guy can show a realistically human attitude to his own malfeasance, and until those treating him have a better understanding of what happened. May never happen? You kill your kids, you take your chances…

So Mrs. Callous came back to sign her papers. By the way, she said, he’s out of the hospital. She gave me an address. What will happen, I asked, thinking about the process server who had to hand the guy a divorce petition, when he gets served? Oh, she said, with a tone of utter contempt, it’ll probably send him right back to the hospital. I could not, at the time, understand her utter callousness. I get it now. And she got her divorce. And I don’t know what happened to him.

The "Expert" Speaks...

The thing about bad writing is this: as the T-shirt says, good grammar costs nothing. So does good syntax, correct word usage, and correct punctuation. I will leave for another day a discussion about whether rules are still relevant. Let us assume, for the purpose of discussion, that they are. So here are the VSL Poltroon’s rules for writing:

• Don’t say “amount” when you mean number. I can’t count the number of times I’ve read “the amount of people.”
• Don’t say “less” when you mean “fewer.” I saw a Starbucks napkin that read: “more trees, less napkins.”
• Don’t use “disinterested” when you mean “uninterested.” I know it sounds fancier, but it’s wrong.
• Don’t use “insure” when you mean “ensure.” Don’t use “assure” either. Unless there is insurance involved, use an “e.”
• “Candelabra” is plural. The singular is “candelabrum.”
• “It begs the question” does not mean “it raises the question.” If you don’t understand the expression, don’t use it.
• Don’t use “what’s more.” It’s dumb. Say “moreover.”
• Never never never never never never never use “to be sure.” Use “certainly” or “indeed.” Use anything else. DO NOT use “to be sure.”
• Don’t say “leverage” when you mean “use.”
• Never use “utilize” unless you are a scientist. It is an exact synonym for “use,” so save the earth the two syllables.
• Don’t use “is able to;” just say “can.”
• Try very hard to avoid claptrap clichés like “to say the least,” “to name a few,” “says it all,” “not to mention.”
• “However” should always begin a sentence.
• “Which” should never begin a sentence, unless it’s a question.
• Do not put a comma after “is” –“the problem is, I have no friends." Just use “that.” The problem is that I have no friends.
• Speaking of which, restore “that” to its rightful place. Consider: “I saw the people walking very quickly around the room like they’d all had too much of a very intoxicating substance mixed with some mind-debilitating drug purchased from some faraway foreign shady dealers were happy.” Now put a “that” after “saw” and see what happens.
• Don’t write long stupid sentences like that last one, even with a “that.”
• Don’t split infinitives. I know the rule is silly. I know that it’s arcane. I know that it’s not even a “rule.” I don’t give a flying f**k about that. Just don’t do it. Star Trek be damned.
• Don’t use “they” if the gender of the subject is unambiguous. “The patient must inform the nurse if they are pregnant.”
• I know that otherwise it’s difficult to avoid the use of “they” in the singular. The world today does not tolerate “he” as a universal pronoun. Too bad. Still, no excuse when you are referring to an inanimate subject. “The company must file their annual report.” Hello? (Still, don’t use “she” as a universal pronoun. If “he” doesn’t work, neither does “she.”)
• Do not drop the subject of the sentence, like I just did. In fact, I dropped the predicate too. “No excuse” should be “there is no excuse.” Unless you are me. Then you can do what you want.
• Do not use sentence fragments, like “unless you are me.”
• Unless you are me.
• Don’t use qualifiers that don’t work: “almost infinite,” “very unique.”
• Remember that “almost taller” means shorter.
• Don’t qualify the wrong word. “We offer limitless possibilities.” I wonder how many limitless possibilities they offer.
• Don’t use “infinite” when you mean many. “There are infinite possibilities.” No there are not.
• Never use “deeply” for any reason whatsoever. “He loved her very deeply.” Yuck. And he probably didn’t even.
• Never end a sentence with “even.”
• Don’t say “shocked” when you mean “surprised.” Don’t say “devastated” when you mean “disappointed.” Don’t use “slammed” when you mean “criticized.”
• Never use “that said.” Never use “going forward.”
• Don’t use “if” if you mean “whether.” “The test indicates if you are pregnant.” Whether.
• Don’t put two time-frame expressions in the same sentence. “They released their second LP two years later in 1965. “ I can do the math, both ways.
• Don’t use exclamation points ever, unless it’s within a quote.
• It’s “try to,” not “try and.” UK writers seem to think “try and” is ok. I’ve seen it across the board, from Ian Fleming to J. K. Rowling.
• “All of a sudden” can be “suddenly,” and you haven’t lost anything except three unnecessary words.
• The present tense of “lie,” as in to recline, is “lie,” not “lay.” “We were laying in bed” means something entirely different. Be careful. I bet even Bob Dylan didn’t know that he was getting it wrong (nor did he care, I’m sure).
• Don’t put “and” after a semi-colon. It may be technically correct, but it’s definitely stupid.
• The reason is “that,” not “because.” I ate because I was hungry. The reason I ate was that I was hungry.
• Don’t follow “including” with another participle.
• When you write a negative statement followed by a reason, it’s not clear whether the statement is really negative. “We didn’t implement the system because of security concerns.” Well, then, why did you implement it?
• Don’t use expressions that are absolutely completely totally meaningless, like “accused killer.”
• “You can buy margarine the colour of a sunset in Ireland.” Is the sunset in Ireland? Or is that where you can buy it?
• Why would anybody want to buy sunset coloured margarine?
• Watch out for pleonasms: “ATM machine,” “NDP Party.” Look it up.
• Watch your pronouns: “The lawyer stopped representing his client when he was deported.”

So you can learn these rules, then feel free to break them to achieve you own personal style (except for the rule about “to be sure;” no exceptions will be tolerated).

Or you could forget about them, and get a job writing for the Montreal Gazette…

What About Noodles?

I am not the world’s most sophisticated cook, but I make soup.

I don’t make the world’s most sophisticated soup. I have limits. I don’t use meat. I don’t use chicken, which may or may not be meat. That depends on how you feel about chicken being meat. I don’t use fish. My chicken soup has no chicken, and my chowder has no existence.

I have 4 soup recipes, and I alternate among them. All of them have beans. Besides those four, I have more. That means, doing a quick calculation, that I have more than four soup recipes. But I have four that I keep on an Excel spreadsheet, because they came from a cook book to which I no longer have access. I typed up the ingredients into an Excel file, without quantities, but that matters little, because I have no use for quantities. I don’t believe that quantities have any real meaning in soup. In cake, yes. In soup, no. The four recipes have names like white bean soup, black bean soup, Israeli bean soup. There is nothing, as far as I can determine, Israeli about Israeli bean soup. It doesn’t spit sunflower seeds on the bus or speak Hebrew or drive like a psychotic orangutan. It is tasty, which it has in common with many fine Israeli dishes, but it does not taste like hummous or bamba or chocolate lentils or noga bars.

One of the four is called Caribbean chicken soup. As the astute reader may have guessed, I don’t put any actual chicken into it, which is particularly fortunate, given that I have never seen Caribbean chicken on sale here. I put curry powder into it.

One of the soup recipes that I’ve been using the longest is for chickpea soup. I found it on the back of the label on a can of chickpeas. I don’t have that can anymore, but I remembered the recipe. It’s an easy one because you don’t have to fry anything. The onions, you could fry them if you want, but the recipe doesn’t call for it. Just chop them up and throw them in. Me, I fry the onions. I didn’t used to. I do now. Someone convinced me once that frying them brings out the flavour. If there’s one thing I like to bring out, it’s flavour.

Another one I like a lot is minestrone. I’m not sure if it’s ok to say "minestrone soup," because minestrone, as far as I know, is soup. It could be like saying "tuna fish," which is ok, or "salmon fish," which isn’t. Minestrone [soup] is really just chili, without the meat, and wetter. And with macaroni. And with some other different stuff. Minestrone isn’t really anything like chili.

The thing though, to think about, is soup powder. Soup powder is powder that you mix into water and heat up, and it becomes some kind of faux soup. It’s usually very salty, and full of MSG. And it’s a cheat. I buy chicken soup powder and vegetable soup powder and beef soup powder. None of it has any meat in it. None of it has anything with any nutritional value in it. Each flavour tastes like every other flavour. And I always add some to my soup. I do that because if I don’t do that there is never enough flavour in my soup. I’m still working on that, trying to wean my soup off of soup powder. And when I say always, I mean sometimes. Soup with tomatoes doesn’t need powder so much, because the tomatoes give it enough flavour. If I put soup powder into soup that has tomatoes, it could kill you.

And so I have soup for supper every day. I feed soup to my kids; some eat it; some don’t. Some of them are big soup eaters, meaning that they are small people who eat a lot of soup. Big soup eaters are small. I am a big soup eater. And I shall continue to make soup until I can make soup no more…

Floyd The Barber

I don’t remember the name of the barber that cut my hair in the summer of 1970. It wasn’t Pete. Pete was my regular barber, but he was away. It probably wasn’t Floyd. He didn’t listen to me when I told him how I wanted my hair cut. He interrupted me. He was very nasty, cut my hair too short. I spent the entire summer feeling bad about my hair. No 13 year old in 1970 wanted his hair to be short. In August I went with my family to Minneapolis. I bought a copy of Let It Be, an American copy with a red Apple label on it (the Canadian pressings had a green apple). I felt bad listening to it, because my hair was too short.

My barber’s name is Norma, and I’m betting that she’s a hair stylist, not a “barber.” She talks to me when she cuts my hair, and she cuts it how I like it.

Pete was ok but he was allergic to hair. His place was called Scissors Inn. (It’s still there.) He wore a mask because of his allergy. It seemed odd that someone with a hair allergy should become a barber, but it seems that his allergy developed from his occupation. He worked with a couple of other guys, and they had contests and magazines. The contests were you put your name on a paper, and they put the paper in a box, and once a month someone would win a scale model. One month I won a model of Quasimodo. The magazines were Playboy. They probably had others. I remember a mother reading one. She had a small boy with her, who presumably was the haircut patron. “Look,” she said to the small boy, pointing to something in the magazine. “Wow,” said the boy, glaring at something in Playboy. “I’ve never seen that before!” They both stared for a while. I worked very hard at surreptitiously finding out whether they were looking at a blonde or a brunette.

They were looking at a double page spread of sports cars.

When Pete left town, though, I got stuck with the evil barber on McGregor. He plays a part in my psyche to this day.

I outgrew Pete and ended up with Sal. He was at Garden City and eventually opened his own place. Last time I saw Sal, he was whining about his life to one of his colleagues. I didn’t enjoy that haircut. That’s why it was the last time I saw Sal.

I lived in haircut wilderness for a while until I found Pat. Pat, short, presumably, for Patrick, not Patricia, not only cut my hair how I liked it, but he had a perfect length beard. So I’d say trim it like yours and voila! Perfect beard.

The Greek barber near the IGA asked about my beard. ¼ inch I told him. He made it ¼ of ¼ of an inch. You could see parts of my face that had been hidden since I was 18. You have a fat face, said my second son. He didn’t use those exact words. What he actually said was something like you look different. But I knew what he meant.

I do my own beard now.

I’m happy with Norma the hairdresser. She asks me about my life, about my kids, about the holidays that are invariably coming up. There are always holidays coming up. She isn’t too chatty. She isn’t too quiet. She doesn’t whine. She doesn’t thrash what’s left of my hair to within a micron of its life.

The call came at about 3:00 PM one typical workday. “Are you interested in new opportunities? We have a position downtown.” It was a local headhunter. “No.” I said. “I’m very happy here,” I said. After all, I don’t want to lose Norma the hairdresser…

Saturday In The Park

Actually is was Sunday and it was the 14th of August...

It's still radio...

I listen to internet radio.

I have a real radio. It’s a clock radio that I bought at Zeller’s. It wakes me up to some random station I set it to. When I hit the snooze button it tells me the time. “Good morning, 4:54 AM” it tells me, in a woman’s voice. There is only one voice. No choices. In the PM, it just says “Hello” followed by the time.

I don’t use the radio for actual radio purposes. I haven’t listened to an old-fashioned radio since about 1980. Well, not on the radio, anyway.

I have taken, though, to listening to radio while I work. It helps to pass the day and to keep my soul from dying. I’m lucky that my young colleague, with whom I share an office, is indulgent. Indeed, he comments every so often. “This is pretty old” he says, referring to something that may have been recorded in 1990.

The real challenge, though, is finding suitable stations. You wouldn’t think it would be so hard. There are thousands of stations.

Try it. How many jazz stations can you find that play a good mix of 50s and 60s jazz. The answer, so far, is zero. You find stations that play Dixieland, classic jazz (that means Dixieland), cool jazz, bop, “smooth jazz” (as if there could be such a thing), vocal jazz, jazz trumpet, jazz saxophone. I like Mingus, Davis, Coltrane, Cannonball, Monk. But I can’t imagine listening to nothing but bebop from 7:30 AM until 4:30 PM. Mercifully AOL has a station called “Jazz Mix.” It’s not bad, eclectic style, but with a limited artist repertoire. So if you don’t mind hearing Louis Armstrong followed by Ella Fitzgerald followed by Miles Davis followed by Vince Guaraldi followed by Louis Armstrong followed by Ella Fitzgerald etc etc then you’ll be happy.

Classical music stations suffer from the same disease. Take your pick: piano music, vocal music, baroque, chamber music, symphonies. Baroque music is nice and all, but with all those staccato notes all day long, I’d get so jittery that I wouldn’t need my caffeine fix. Vocal music is an ok diversion, but listening to those sopranos and tenors scream their heads off all day… well… And hey, I love chamber music, nothing better than a good string quartet, but after a few hours it all starts to get kind of screechy. Again, AOL to the rescue: they have a decent “classical mix” station among their more narrowly focused selections.

Some of these internet-only stations play nothing but music streams; other mimic real-world stations with ads, station jingles, “announcements,” and the like. And I listen to those too. But the best, hands down, are the real-world radio stations, the ones that have news, and real life announcers, and up-to-the minute traffic and weather reports (and who cares if the traffic report is about the 401 into Toronto and the weather is the forecast for the Boston area), and even real commercials. I’ve tuned into classical music from Toronto and from The Netherlands, jazz from Hamilton, (pure coincidence that some of the best stations are Canadian?) country from San Francisco, oldies from Toronto (again), and even some stations from right here in Montreal (check out 99.5, quatre-vingt dix-neuf virgule cinq – ecoutez comme c’est beau! – one of the most idiosyncratic classical stations I’ve heard yet).

So having abandoned radio in my early adulthood, I have come back to it in my dotage. What goes around comes around. And what comes around is radio Bop, playing “all the hits YOU REMEMBER” from the first decade of rock and roll!, Merle Haggard and Kitty Wells from Loud City, Shostakovitch on NPR. My grandmother had a floor standing radio that I remember from her house and which now sits in my sister’s living room, and I had a vacuum tube desktop radio and then a little black transistor, and I now have high speed internet access that gets me Myrtle Beach in full fidelity, and I can email my request half way across the continent in a few seconds, but radio is still radio, and the feeling of having company while you work hasn’t changed.

So, what IS the forecast for Boston, anyway…

"Hear how nice it is..."

Help...

On Côte Ste-Catherine, near the Jewish General Hospital's outpatient pyschiatric clinic. I took this on August 1, 2011, not that it makes a difference...

Encore un jour à la bibliotheque

I got beeped on the way out of the library. BEEP! Like that. J’ai un livre d’une autre bibliotheque (I have a book from another library), I said to the lady. She passed it ‘round the sensors and I narrowly escaped arrest.

The people that work at the library are generally bilingual, but not so the individual books. I haven’t done any actual statistical analysis but my rough visual estimate tells me that about 30% of the books on the shelf are English. But they are all mixed up together (apart from fiction that is. The fiction sections are clearly marked romans français and romans anglais – the absurdity of marking the English section in French having occurred to no one).

Fiction aside, the books sit peacefully side by side. They don’t argue. The French books don’t try to separate from the English books and the English books don’t complain about having French “shoved down their throats.” Nobody insists that French books be bigger than English books. Nobody accuses the English books of not being “Quebecois.” Nobody at the checkout tells me that I have “too many English books.” The language police do not come here.

It’s the big downtown library I’m talking about. The library in Côte Saint Luc is about 90% English; the one in Ville Saint Laurent may be 60% French. Unlike the laws of this province, the book collections at our libraries reflect the linguistic needs of the communities they serve.

And so at la Grande Bibliotheque, as the central provincially operated downtown library is called, I approach the desk with a book to renew. “C’est pour renouveler” I say, hoping she won’t ask me to repeat it. She says the inevitable “pardon?” and my eyes must say “don’t make me say it again!” because she immediately follows with “pour renouveler?” and I breathe a sigh of relief.

“Oui, si c’est possible…”

And I’m all set… until the sensor goes off….

Hail

August 1, 2011, Dollard des Ormeaux, QC

Never Talk To Strangers?

The woman was African and looked African – very dark. She was from The Ivory Coast, “Eevory Coast” she pronounced it. The man with her was French Canadian, and he was teaching her English.

I was supposed to be browsing used books. La Grande Bibliotheque, the downtown library, was having a sale, Friday, Saturday, and Sunday. I went to catch the tail end, wondering what dregs would be left. I showed up Sunday afternoon around 4:00, and couldn’t find a book sale anywhere.

I trudged around, asked a man at the information desk. Ou est le “marché aux livres?” I asked, where is the book market? “Pardon???” he said, which is what everyone says to me when I try to speak French. Is my pronunciation that bad? Apparently. “Pardon?” (You have to imagine the French intonation here – “PARRDOHH?” ) I gave up. There is a book sale somewhere? I asked in my best English. After looking at me like I was out of my mind he growled: “DAHRR!!! “à l’entrée!” I walked away back downstairs towards the exit and wondering how I’d missed it. “Dehors!” I realized suddenly. Outside. That’s what the gowl was. I love Canadian French. Words are never pronounced the way I expect them to be.

I wandered around looking for the book sale. I saw the signs, but no sign of the sale. Oh wait, there it was, another sign telling me that everything had been sold by Saturday afternoon, and the sale had ended prematurely. Nice. I saw the empty tables.

So I found a little coffee shop, still in the library building, though not in a part I’d ever been in, and indulged myself with some java, and found a table outside (Dahhrr!!) . And there I was in this little alley type place, looking up at the spires of a Catholic church in one direction, and in another direction I could see through the alley to the street and the stone buildings, and it’s one of those picturesque little spots that I keep discovering in this adopted city of mine.

And I was reading my book, and drinking the coffee, and marvelling at the weather, and the odd little spot that I was in, and the only other people around were at the next table, and the man was trying to get the woman to understand and say “it’s as if I had the book in my head.” “C’est comme si” he kept saying to her, “it’s as if,” and she kept trying to get it, “j’avais le livre dans la tête.” English, I thought to myself, is a hard language to learn.

And I got up to leave, and I thought, oh why not, and I walked over and I said, you are trying to learn English? And the man said to me, she is, but my pronunciation is not that good. (He had a slight accent, but it was good enough). She was, as I said, from the Ivory Coast. Combien de temps êtes-vous ici? I asked her, how long had she been here. Quatre ans she said, four years. You like it? I asked in English? Apparently she did. Il fait froid! I said, it’s cold here! She did not argue. It is hard to learn English I said, but her tutor assured me that she was determined, and would succeed. I wished her good luck, and headed back to the Metro.

I don’t know if my mother ever told me not to talk to strangers, but it matters not, because it is common wisdom. But it occurred to me as I walked away, that not only had I disregarded the said maternal injunction, but I’d had a very pleasant exchange with two very interesting people, and, for all the French I spoke to her, she did not say “pardon” even once…

Open House...

... Montreal style...

Sitting On The Fence...

Warning: Contains superficial content

When I was 10, I watched a fencing match at the PanAm Games. My father took me, and my kid sister came with us. (That's an irrelevant fact, about the sister, but there are family issues here that I can't get into.) I don't remember much about the fencing (let alone the sister, I don't even remember her being there) - who competed, who won - but it remains a piece of my personal history.

That was 1967. This is 2011. What I'm looking at now is the aftermath of a federal election. Now everything there is to say about the election has been said, or will be said, or even won't be said, and there's no need for me to add anything, and anyway the last thing I want to be is a political blogger. I'd like to keep my soul, thank you.

What I want to talk about here, besides fencing, is scenery. Around my neighbourhood, all those election signs have become part of the landscape, kind of like those à vendre and à louer signs that persist from year to year. I've gotten used to seeing Martin Cauchon's ugly face on each and every lamppost and hydro pole within 5 miles. Given the homonymic meaning of "Cauchon" (fr "cochon" = "pig") it's not difficult to imagine what the kids have done with markers. Still, Cauchon is Clark Gable compared to the now-disgraced Gilles Duceppe. Mulcair, the incumbent, I'd say he's presentable. I'd even date the guy, if I was into dating guys.

But what I really want to talk about, besides fencing, is the Bloc candidate. Her name is Elise, and if the poster pictures are accurate, well then she is, how shall I put this ... well... I'd say that she's drop-dead gorgeous.

How clever, I thought, in a riding where you don't stand a ghost of a chance, run a bimbo. You'll never get votes for political values or ideology, so go for looks. The concept, not totally untried in the world of political strategy, at least has aesthetic value. I found myself walking around the neighbourhood quite a bit over the past few weeks. And I got curious. So I decided to do some stalk... research, purely in the interest of political analysis of course. And what I found out was this:

1. She looks like this:

and ...

2. She is a fencing champion, if a Silver medal makes you a champion. She has played for Team Canada in the Pan Am Games, though it has been suggested that playing for Team Canada and running for the Bloc Quebecois are ideologically mutually exclusive. I will not render an opinion. She did better at fencing then at politics, where she garnered fewer than 4000 votes, and finished a distant third (maybe that’s a bronze).

I was thinking about all that when I walked into the polling station to vote Monday afternoon. I was confronted with a list of 7 (!) candidates, including communist and rhino, neither of whom I knew about beforehand. The ballot was plain text, no graphics, and that was good, because I ended up voting without reference to aesthetic considerations. When we get into online voting, though, with Flash and everything, well, it could change the face of democracy as we know it.

And tomorrow I’m going out to buy a sword...

Multiculturalism, Montreal Style...