STOP THE PRESSES -- ooops, too late

Get hold of the new Ikea catalogue -- 'cause they're being recalled; not that the company will be able to get them back from those they were mailed to.

In what is among the finest bits of corporate sabatoge ever, flip open the double front cover and take a look at the hind end of the dog laying on the couch with the happy family.

A disgruntled layout designer has placed there a human penis. And it's not like you gotta squint and hold the magazine at any weird angle under black light to see it -- it's there and it's not a weird bend of the dog's skin or leg, it's a graphic designer's revenge, it's a man's penis on a dog.

WAH!

Ah, hello!

Not until today have I seen a photo of Tony Blair's oldest son, Euan.

Yowrlll...

http://www.cnn.com/2006/WORLD/europe/08/25/blair.son/index.html

Let's wish Euan a speedy recovery, shall we. Or at least lets start a rumour that he's sleeping with Prince Harry...

Five

My friend Evelyn turned five this past weekend. She's the younger sister of Duncan Jr. Both are the kids of friends of mine.

Evelyn begins kindergarten next month and in answering my question as to whether she would be going just half days, she replied: "Yes, but I think it will be very much reading and not so much play."

This is the same wee lass who, a couple of summers ago when her grandmother shouted a question off the cottage front porch to Evelyn's mom and I as to whether we wanted anything to drink with lunch (and we answered in the negative), chimed, "Grandma, I think I'll just have a glass of wine."

Anyway, I thought Sunday's answer about the pressures of Kindergarten should be made known to every idiot who wants to rob this culture of summers off from school for kids. If we can't wait 18 years before putting the young on the efficiency/productivity/global competitiveness/MBAs-for-all train, then we're doomed to, er, heck (Evelyn can read, thus the quick edit , and she's quick to point out indiscretion with the language as I discovered with my attempts to explain that it was her father taught me the word "shit" when I said it by mistake in front of her).

School's back soon and the tug to return remains still. (As a student I mean, since I get to go to school everyday now.)

Virgin Mary -- I would have thought (pure) white chocolate...

Go to the link and ask yourself, do you eat the head or the tail first?

http://www.cnn.com/2006/US/08/17/chocolate.mary.ap/index.html

The World Cup of... War?

So this weekend I saw people driving around with flags fluttering out of sun roofs or windows of their cars. Nope, not the World Cup being celebrated still.

The flags were of Israel and Lebanon. One each -- the Israeli flag out of the window, the Lebanon flag, on a pole, held out the sun roof. Both in Yorkville.

Now I guess we cheer for one side or another in wars: "Night raid, dawn raid, rah rah rah. Hit 'em with rocket fire, draw the UN's ire!"

And here I was not figuring out that the daily body count on the news was actually the score.

Sigh.

The Member for East (and West) Drooling Idiocy

Chilling.

So, so easy to deny to one's self or maybe just forget outright that dangerously dumb and stupid people continue to be given positions of public athority and responsibility.

As I read the chilling (when taking it all at face value) accounts of how close the world was to having 10 airplanes drop into the Atlantic Ocean on unscheduled stops, the chill grew yet colder with this simple sentence in the globeandmail.com story I was reading (prepare yourself to fear):

"In Vancouver, federal Public Safety Minister Stockwell Day told a news conference Canada's anti-terror laws and regulations are working well and don't need further tightening."

I can't shake the image of Day slapping a Gatorade out of a kid's hands, yelling: "Don't you know that stuff can blow your lips off!"

I hope the Minister's PR people had him dressed in Keystone Cop garb for the oh so very reassuring sentiments from Canada's very own public idiot.

"Good night, Eddie..."

Anne Carson -- yoohoo, Anne!

So, one of the finest writers in the English language (ever) has a new book out -- a translation of four of Euripides' tragedies: "Grief Lessons: Four Plays By Euripides"

Not sure how even a bad translation could deaden Euripides for a reader, but the thought of Carson's pen at the job has me slobbering, so's I head out into the cooler than expected evening to gets me a copy.

As an aside, if you are virginal via Carson, might I suggest a start with Carson's "Autobiography of Red." If that don't make your literary bone stiffen then nothing will and you can forget all about her -- even though she won the American prize, "genius award" (can't remember what it's officially called but it's for like half a million bucks!) a few years ago. I should also warn that she's a poet and a classics scholar and academic. Canadian.

Anyway, I go to Book City on Yonge St. and they don't have the book. Of greater sadness is the clerk (I've come to rely on Book City clerks actually being readers) has never heard of Carson.

I'm forced to go to The Bitch's Books (the big blue machine) where the computer explains they have 5 copies in stock, although they are mysteriously said to be shelved in general poetry. When I can't find nary a copy, I ask for assistance and one of Heather's sad minions surprisingly and reassuringly snorts derisively and questions why the book would be in poetry -- a book store clerk that knows Euripides is a playwright. But the book ain't playing with the plays either, nor is it on the "new and hot" tables. One computer search on Indigo's very own system reveals nothing at all Euripides having been touched by Carson. My search on the same system brings Carson's new book up as first hit and suggests those now mystical 5 copies. A third search in the employee stock checking server thingy says they don't have the book in any store, ain't never heard of it. Much amusement is had by He is Here Now from the clerk's "what the fuck" face twisting at that computer response.

The Globe had a lovely review of the book today which compared translations and there was a an excerpt too (I didn't read that -- something I avoid much like I avoid reading the last line of a book first -- although it appeared it was one of Carson's essays accompanying the plays.

Her translation of Sappho was excellent. Her book of poetry "The Beauty of the Husband: A Fictional Essay in 29 Tangos" which responds essentially to Keats’s suggestion that "beauty is truth" is just really smart writing that slaps the intellectual off yer mug with its beautiful beautiful handling of the language. “Men in the Off Hours” is damn lovely too, but again it's poetry and well who the fuck reads poetry any more among this blog audience?

I'll bet Carson's publisher would be delighted that neither Indigo nor Book City can cough up the new Euripides volume. Now THAT's a tragedy (not quite worthy of Euripides)...

SAVE the WHALES

"Call me Ishmael."

Ooops, wrong whales.

It would appear it is too late to save the ju jube blue whale, once so abundant in the warm, protected waters (saliva, really) of childhood cake holes across this mighty land.

[Canada doesn't figure too prominently in the history of whaling, although whales are still legally hunted in our far north. The first historical evidence gives (stone age) Koreans the distinction of being the first known killers of whales -- there's a carving depicting whale hunting found in South Korea that dates to 6000 BCE. The New England States, of course, have a rich history of chasing the behemoths around the Globe until kerosene ignited lamps instead of whale grease, of and of course, when most all the whales were kaput anyway. Japan--as with Canada's stance on northern whales and the Inuit--continues to suggest it's a cultural right to (eat) hunt whales and is the modern standard bearer of hunting the big mammals to extinction in the name of not insulting a people based on what their relatives have done for a long time. The same sort of sound cultural argument that perpetuates female circumcision in parts of Africa and gun ownership in Florida.]

But I digress. The true ju jube blue whale seems lost to us. Gone with nary a whaling commission peep.

Anyone who surfs candy stores, especially those outlets that stock the more nostalgic sugar vehicles, knows that where once in between the mojos and sponge toffee or next to the red hot lips or candied peanuts would be blue whales.

Well, while technically it seems candy whales of ocean blue still exist, the original true blue whale (and with it its original taste) seem to ply the oceans of candy stores no longer. Instead, now there is a novelty (read cute) shaped whale (still blue) at about a third of the size and without the near gummy stretch of the original. The new sugar rendition of the mighty baleen also imparts (bleeds, really) it's distinct, darker blue to one's lips and teeth -- as if mimicking the hypothermic chill of one's own blood that arises with one's realization the great blue whale is extinct and will never know the gentle harpooning of one's tongue again...

_________________




The photo is of the result of the not completely satisfying attempt to offer contemporary candyists a replacement for the ju jube blue whale. If anyone visits a real candy store (most now seemingly gobbled up by a couple of big chain stores) please do search for the original blue whale. There used to be a great candy store on the main drag in Banff, Alberta that would surely have the originals if they were still being squeezed out of a candy maker somewhere...

Bullshit

Just this past week someone at work suggested to someone else at work that they not believe anything I say.

Yesterday as I and a group of friends walked south on Bathurst and approached Toronto General (Western) Hospital it reminded me of my slice and dice there a few years ago, but instead of 'going there' directly I instead pointed to one of the tar-shingle-siding covered row homes that line the street before giving way to the hospital complex and said something along the lines of, "I had my surgery there [pointing to one of the rickety houses]" "There!!?" said a couple of my friends simultaneously. "Yah," I said, "knee surgery. I couldn't afford the hospital [to which I gestured as it came fully into view]."

"Really?!" said one of my friends.

And that was it, the belief didn't last more than a couple of seconds before I bark laughed and said, "ah, no, I made that all up, of course!" But the reward really is that couple of seconds of belief. There's also some weird sense of reward in the profound exasperation in people as they realize they've been had :) As a friend at Big Accounting LLP used to say, "why do you do that? Damn!" Why, indeed.

My best pal, Kelly in Calgary, and my relationship might even be marked across time by her exclamations, "Really!?"

The incident yesterday prompted my remembering --from a perhaps too long list of what is a highly regular, daily practice -- the examples of the bigger stuff, the stuff I can't believe people believe, even for moments.

Personal Highlights:

1) 1978 Toronto Reference Library. Outside a severe late spring storm breaking an unseasonably warm and calm end to winter. Inside, the lights flicker and I mutter under my breath, but so my roommate studying with me can hear: "Fucking Ontario Hydro." 15 minutes later the lights extinguish completely for maybe 4 seconds, re-ignite with hesitation. I say: "Assholes at Hydro." That prompts my friend to ask what I'm on about to which I explain that with the earlier than usual spring, Ontario Hydro has jumped at the opportunity to use the extra crews hired on in winter to get the winter wires down and the summer wires up. The problem however, as the day was proving, was that with a bit of a late spring ice storm the too-early-installed summer wires weren't up to the job and now it appeared a power outage was nearly upon us. My friend was well into mentally digesting the huge job of restringing the Province's entire system of hydro poles when he asked a question that would have started something like this, "So, every spring and then again in the winter they..." when I likely grinned. He called me a very, very bad name.

2) 1981 Brandon, Manitoba. Farm director's wife has just had a baby, by cesarean section. Three news types, the farm and sports directors are discussing. Sports director is generally nervous talking about anything but box scores and trading deadlines for fear (as almost always happened) he was made to look a fool for lack of any knowledge about damn near anything. Sports director trying however to be part of the conversation about new baby asks if the new mother will be breast feeding. I immediately jump in with a scoffing noise and with an "of course not" tone say that's not possible after a cesarean, silly. The others jump in with, "yah, for gawd's sake, don't you know anything?" chorus. "Oh," says the Sports Director. "Yah," I tell him. "There are triggers in the birthing canal that if not pushed by the passing baby are not tripped and thus certain processes don't take place. For example, without the trigger for milk production being "pressed" by the baby, well the breasts remain dry..." The conversation moves on. Jump ahead at least a decade and a half. Sports director is telling one of those Brandon day news guys that sports director wife is going to have a baby but because of trouble likely going to be c-section, which bothers sports director cause his wife has always talked about breast feeding. Sports director is finally set straight and the question is relayed to me all those years later, "Why?"

For the record -- this blog entry is pure truth.

PS -- I wonder if the "hook" of the hydro line story is apparent to readers younger than a certain age? It just occurs to me that with energy efficiency technologies that people don’t' have to put up and take down "storm windows" each fall and spring, anymore. I can see all the heavy storm windows stacked against a wall in the dark coolness of our basement or my father struggling with the big wooden extension ladder when it came time to put the windows on or take 'em off. Really.

Art Surfing

Porn aside, my main Web surfing activities are viewing art. Despite the fact that art either looks better, worse or the same captured online versus in person, gallery window shopping is still tremendously satisfying via the World Wide Web (amazing how that term died completely).

I've bought art a couple times having only seen it first in emailed JPGs. Mind, any reputable gallery would take the work back if I was disappointed when standing in front of the work. In my own experience good paintings only become profoundly better, of course, when physically in front of you, while bad paintings can have their awfulness hidden by the flattering lack of depth or detail inherent in digitally viewed photographs.

In any event, amidst the many bookmarks I have for galleries or individual artists' sites, is this gem (link below), which has SO many artists represented from every corner of the world. The stuff ranges from wide eyed cats looking sad next to spilled milk to work of unparalleled skill and artistic ability.

I find the site to be just slow enough to be annoying (which is a surprise given what gallery hosts it -- but it's likely because I'm using a Mac, perhaps) as one has to jump back and forth from pages viewed to the main list, but I can spend VERY large amounts of time on this site, especially as many (but again annoyingly not nearly enough) artists have links to their own Web sites where you can view more examples of their work, and usually in larger format.

The sheer expanse of works, the number of artists listed... It's art porn really.

I've started conversations with artists from London to Tel Aviv to Germany to Huston inquiring after their works, following the "contact" links. And come close to buying. More often the firm decision to buy has crumbled once galleries email me prices. One work was $18,000 US, for example. Sheesh.

Anyway, if you're so inclined, jump in:

http://www.saatchi-gallery.co.uk/yourgallery/

PS -- there's a "square foot" show at a AWOL gallery in Toronto this weekend -- all works no larger than a square foot and no more than $200. Check it out here: http://www.awolgallery.com/

Such shows are a great way to start a collection by finding new artists with work at prices much less than that Ikea framed poster you've been considering.

Blame (tv) POTUS

Have had several things to blog about this week.

However, Mark lent me Season Six of West Wing and I've been consuming that at 2 or 3 episodes each evening instead of writing.

Just thought you might be suffering from my silence. Ahem.