Glad to be Home

Sunshine

2010-07-19T16:05:00.000-07:00

date unknown

Woke up in the jungle bag, sun filtering past poorly hung curtains. Frosted flakes and seven-up for breakfast and somebody doing a bad Charlie Parker. Bear rose and had breakfast. Went out to work on his bike. Robbie took off downtown. I stayed.

It's weird, sitting here warm and snug. Hard to remember Edey's off in some unknown country called "Alberta". Keep expecting him to crawl out of the shower and start tuning guitars.

The Michael Jackson Post

2009-08-17T14:13:00.000-07:00

Life ain't so bad at all, if you live it off the wall.
Michael Jackson, 1979

I was shaving to Billie Jean - a dangerous thing to do - this morning when I decided to write this post.

Michael was a couple of grades ahead of me, but I still felt like he was growing up along with me. It wasn't just that the Jackson 5 - who admittedly lived in a different country and tax bracket - were there, on my transistor radio and floor model tv, all through the bell-bottom years. As my music tastes and sense of the world changed, so did his music and presentation.

Michael wasn't a monster star in white bread Atlantic Canada in the 70s. I'm not sure we had monster stars apart from Hollywood. As Motown morphed into disco, his voice was nearly lost. I graduated to the sound of Off The Wall, but what I remember talking about was that horrid Punk we pretended to like.

Then Thriller came along. Wow. The music, the videos, the dance steps.... Some cultural historian will write a properly learned paper about the synergy between Jackson performance style and the emergence of music video as popular music's dominant medium. All I can say is that we were mightily impressed.

And then it was over.

Yes, the Thriller videos played on. Yes, I remember the video of Dirty Diana getting some play. But mostly I remember the resurgence of classic rock, sometimes disguised as Seattle Grunge or "New Country", sometimes packaged in a kick-ass soundtrack or a reunion tour. In either case, Michael's music slid away from us.

At the same time, so did Michael.

Maybe if he'd stopped by the apartment, or come up to the house, things could have been different. Probably not. But in any case, Jackson began acting crazy and, too soon, became the Weird Al version of himself. By the mid-90s, he was tabloid fare, and not much else.

Of course, in a few years, the mp3 / ipod zaniness was upon us and, like the music industry, us 70s kids lost track of most popular music. Like Will Smith's character in I, Robot we might wake up to Stevie or Michael (and fall asleep to Dionne or Gladys), but those were memories - comfort food for when crazy George Bush was at us again.

In any case, young Michael was long gone. This new guy didn't even look like the little sparkplug who used to front the Jacksons or the funster who gave us Thriller. Sometimes the voice was the same. Sometimes, you could close your eyes and remember....

When Jackson died a little while back, the rightwing shock jocks and tabloids (a.k.a., the mainstream media) shouted the same shit they always shout. Left-leaning cultural critics, especially from the Black community, struggled to find a narrative of oppression or suppression or racism in his story. But, mostly, the news was about the news: for a day and a half, the internet was wall-to-wall wacko-jacko.

Off the wall, and long ago, there was another Michael Jackson. I remember him with the same fondness I remember so much of the 70s. (Sentimental mis-remembering is a foolishness old men are prone to.)

Which is why, when the news came out, I didn't know what to write or say or think. Every death is a loss, a waste. I'm sorry we drive our most talented people crazy. I guess I'm sorry Michael won't be here for 2010.

But, you know, it felt like he was already 10 years gone.

Readings

2009-08-09T17:22:00.000-07:00

Igor Merfert's been keeping me up at night with Sir Arthur Conan Doyle's Tales of Terror and Mystery - by way of Librivox.

Most recently, I listened to his reading of a story set underground called "The Terror Of The Blue John Gap".

Of Snowstorms and Earthrise

2008-12-22T17:11:00.000-08:00

Okay. My last "storm" post.

Here's a morning after pictures from uptown. Actually, they were taken mid-day.

Snow removal was a bit of a challenge, as you can see. I'm not sure if that had anything to do with a city councilor's weekend comments about cutting city workers' pay. In any case, it made for few people at the mall, and a little less craziness in the parking lots. I was able to get almost all my Christmas shopping done in relative peace.

In other news, 40 years ago today the Apollo 8 spacecraft was on it's second day out from Earth, and about half-way to the moon.

On December 21st 1968, Frank Borman, Jim Lovell (of Apollo 13 fame) and William Anders were lifted off the Earth's surface by the mighty Saturn 5 rocket. Three days later, on Christmas Eve, they passed behind the moon, orbiting about 125 km above it's surface.

And sent back our first pictures of "Earthrise."

Has anything been the same since?

Climate Wars

2008-12-02T12:13:00.000-08:00

I'm just about finished reading Climate Wars by Gwynne Dyer. It's a disturbing book - frightening and depressing. An interview he gave with an Australian network (ABC News) catches the flavour:

In a large belt around the equator, he says, there will be "huge falls in the amount of crops that you can grow because there isn't the rain and it's too hot."

That will apply particularly to the Mediterranean... and so not just the north African countries, but also the ones on the northern side of the Mediterranean.

The ones in the European Union like Spain and Italy and Greece and the Balkans and Turkey are going to be suffering huge losses in their ability to support their populations.

It may mean the collapse in the global trade of food because while some countries still have enough, there is still a global food shortage.

If you can't buy food internationally and you can't raise enough at home, what do you do? You move. So refugee pressures - huge ones - are one of the things that drives these security considerations.

India and Pakistan are both nuclear-armed countries. All of the agriculture in Pakistan and all of the agriculture in northern India depend on glacier-fed rivers that come off the Himalayas from the Tibetan plateau. Those glaciers are melting... at 7 per cent a year, which means they're half gone in 10 years.

India has a problem with this. Pakistan faces an absolutely lethal emergency because Pakistan is basically a desert with a braid of rivers running through it.

Those rivers all start with one exception in Indian-controlled territory and there's a complex series of deals between the two countries about who gets to take so much water out of the river. Those deals break down when there's not that much water in the rivers.

[Once] you go past 2 degrees - and you could get past 2 degrees by the 2040s without too much effort - things start getting out of control. The ocean starts giving back to the atmosphere the carbon dioxide it absorbed. That world is a world where crop failures are normal.

Where, for example, Australia does not export food any more, it is hanging on to what it can still grow to feed its own people but that is about all that it is going to be able to do, and many countries can't even do that.

The book, of course, is a lot more detailed and reasoned. Dyer builds his argument with facts, interviews and narrative scenarios.

Gwynne Dyer's not a crackpot. He's not even a hard-line lefty. He's a military analyst and author who has served in three navies and held academic posts at the both Royal Military College at Sandhurst and Oxford University. He's also writes regular current-events columns for about 175 English-language newspapers (except in Canada where he's mostly banned).

I enjoy his writing not least because of the "calm-down, it's not as bad as you think" tone that much of his work conveys. This perspective comes from comparing recent wars and upheavals to that absolute disaster called World War Two (where, for weeks on end, 30,000 to 40,000 soldiers and civilians died in each day's fighting).

But now he's not saying "calm down." He's saying, "I'm worried." He's saying, we have to stop producing more airborne carbon each year, and we need to have moved completely away from carbon and fossil fuels by 2050.

So, you can imagine my dismay at living in a city and province that absolutely celebrates (and pours tax money into) the building of a new oil refinery. My neighbours all want us to invest heavily in the future and long-term production of airborne carbons. As one Saint Johner put it, "Even if there's a little bit of flooding, I mean, people can always move."

Not, I think, far enough.

November

2008-11-21T07:05:00.000-08:00

The legend lives on from the Chippewa on down
of the big lake they called Gitche Gumee.
The lake, it is said, never gives up her dead
when the skies of November turn gloomy.
With a load of iron ore twenty-six thousand tons more
than the Edmund Fitzgerald weighed empty,
that good ship and true was a bone to be chewed
when the gales of November came early.

There are few November songs more chilling than Gordon Lightfoot's Wreck of the Edmund Fitzgerald. (Quality fan site here.) It is, I think, chiefly the empty sound, the slight echo behind the electric guitar, the rattle of the drum-kit, that gives the song it's atmosphere. Not that the lyrics don't count: they certainly do. But this is a long song, and the surprise is that we don't tire of it more quickly.

By the way, the photo above is indeed of a "laker" - a freighter on one of the Great Lakes. Unfortunately, I no longer know where it's from (I think some one emailed it to me years ago).

The music player below is from Grooveshark - hosting a legal and free way to use music on the web through their own agreements with artists and major labels (song and lyric copyright G. Lightfoot, etc.).

Murder on the the Accra / Kumasi Express

2008-11-02T17:24:00.000-08:00

I've come into some information. I'm not sure what to do with it.

According to an email received last Spring by a third party, a certain Mr.Andy Runyon, his wife and their only son perished in a car accident. The fatal crash happened in southern Ghana, along the Accra / Kumasi express road, on 21 April 2002. The family's lawyer is Barrister Paul Adams. Mr Adams has, since the crash, been looking for a relative to settle the unhappy family's estate. What size estate? A cool 10.4 million, US, plus substantial property.

Sad, but not remarkable, you say? Well, here the plot thickens. I have, this very day, received this communication:

I am Barrister Paul Adams a Solicitor. I am the Personal Attorney to Mr.Andy Dryden, who is a national of your country.... On the 21st of April 2004, my client, his wife and their only son were involved in a car accident along Accra / Kumasi express road. Unfortunately they all lost their lives....

Coincidence? I think not! Especially since Mr. Dryden also had a bank account holding millions of US dollars. Most chilling, Mr. Adams, working with his chamber of commerce, has proposed to share this money:

...55% to me and 40% to you, while 5% should be for expenses or tax as your government may require. I have all necessary legal documents that can be used to backup the claim.

Anyone can believe in a stretch of bad highway. It may be that expatriates share the same lawyer. Ghana is not a large country. But how are we to account for the deceased both being extremely rich men?

Who is this mysterious Paul Adams? What is his relationship with local government officials? What significance does April 21st hold in the murky sub-culture of Ghana? What really happened on that lonely stretch of the Accra / Kumasi Express?

I'll tell you what happened. Murder! Murder most foul!

stay safe. thks.

WKBW's Hallowe'en Show - 1968

2008-10-31T16:41:00.000-07:00

[Note: This is an automatic cross-post from my site at Multiply.com (more on that elsewhere).]

The first time I heard WKBW they were playing the Doors' album Weird scenes Inside The Goldmine. That was in the mid-'70s, when AM radio still had rock stations, and on rainy nights, with the atmospherics just right, you could pick up a station 900 miles away. Mind you, KBW was an exception with a 50,000-watt transmitter. I didn't know what I was listening - band or station - until the album ended, the call sign played "w k b w buffalo new york", and the DJ came on to introduce me to the Doors.

KBW ended as a top 40 rock station in 1988, when it adopted an all talk format. By that time - at least, in my perception - the ether was getting to crowded with ambient signals and white noise to allow my to enjoy far off stations.

One Hallowe'en night, 39 years ago, KB aired it’s own version of Orson Wells' Mercury Theatre radio play based on H. G. Wells' novel War of the Worlds. The play was updated and set in Buffalo. Like Wells' production, this radio play made the news: many people joining in mid-broadcast, including a small neighbouring police force, believed what they were hearing - at least until the producer broke in to remind everyone that it was just a play.

A tribute site exists to recall WKBW's rock and roll days. You can still hear the Hallowe'en War of the Worlds broadcast. Unfortunately, most of the original music is cropped: just the intro and fade out of most songs remains. I assume that has to do with licensing and copyright, etc. Still, listening to the play takes me right back to those late nights in the '70s, when a kid out in the sticks could listen to big city rock and roll across almost a 1000 miles of crackling air.

(To listen, click on the link, then use the scroll index on the left side of their page.)

War of the Worlds - KBW's Hallowe'en Show

Le Carré

2008-10-08T18:30:00.000-07:00

Sometimes, instead of lunch, I buy books.

The last time, I bought a triune. Two of them I consumed in quick order. First John Sandford's Virgil Flowers mystery Dark of the Moon. Then Martin Cruz Smith's 6th Arkady Renko novel Stalin's Ghost. The last...

The last has been harder to digest. It is John Le Carré's A Most Wanted Man. Le Carré novels, like George Steiner essays, often weary me, sometimes annoy me with their repetitiveness, and always break my heart.

When I finish this very beautiful, very present little novel - as with The Spy Who Came In From The Cold, as with The Looking Glass War, as with A Small Town In Germany - I shall be sad, and have no appetite at all.

Spy novelist John Le Carré is now 76-years-old. He worked as a secret agent for British Intelligence (MI5 and MI6) in Germany during the Cold War. He has an unromantic view of spys, and has also become a critic of more recent British and American intelligence tactics used in the "war on Terror."

Recently, he spoke out against his own government for voting to extend the 42-day limit that terror suspects can be held without charge:

We have been taken to war under false pretences, and stripped of our civil liberties in an atmosphere of panic. Our lawyers don't take to the streets as they have in Pakistan. Our MPs allow themselves to be deluded by their own spin doctors, and end up believing their own propaganda. We haul our Foreign Secretary back from a mission to the Middle East so he can vote for 42 days' detention. People call me an angry old man. Screw them. You don't have to be old to be angry about that.

He also said he didn't expect his latest book to get a warm reception in the U.S. And, indeed, American Public Radio agreed with the New York Times that Le Carré has been unfair and beastly to the upright citizens of the C.I.A.

Monster of the Week

2008-05-02T19:50:00.000-07:00

So, anyway.

Kate was on about this Buffy the Vampire Slayer show because they've been watching bad tv or something. And I'm like, shrug. But a few weeks later I see Season One of BVS in the used book store. So I buy it.

Kate's kindda, oh and too bad and stuff because she thinks Season One is boring silly. (She's into deep stuff and doesn't like Start Trek TOS either, so... you know.)

But me: I'm all about Season One Buffy now.

It was Wonderful!

All 1950's Nancy Drew meets Scooby Doo in the Night of the Living Dead with this Seattle grunge-band soundtrack.

Did you see that episode where a guy named Wendell opens a book and these spiders crawl all over him? Or that creepy puppet one? Man, it disappears from the chair and my feet came right up off the floor! And when the show wasn't scary it was hilarious with guy-in-a-monster-suit villain-of-the-week feel.

The Giles character / actor is kindda weak. But the Master's totally Malfoy or something. Well, anyway, he's way cooler than Snape. And Willow's more interesting than either Ron or Harmonie. True, some of Xander's shows are better than others - they don't seem to know who he is. On the other hand, I just knew Cordelia was going to turn out okay. And I was right.

And now Season One's over.

I can hardly wait til next year.

How come nobody tells me about these shows?

Stagnated Wages? Everybody Knows.

2008-05-02T07:25:00.000-07:00

Everybody knows that the dice are loaded.
Everybody rolls with their fingers crossed.
Everybody knows that the war is over.
Everybody knows the good guys lost.

Everybody knows the fight was fixed.
The poor stay poor, the rich get rich.
That's how it goes.
Everybody knows.

The 1950s, '60s and '70s was a time of real torment for the wealthy. They complained about a crisis of democracy (they said we had too much of it) and warned that socialist terrors like free health care or publicly funded education would be the death of us all. Finally, around 1980, they regained control of society. Business has had their way for the past 25 years or so. The result?

According to the latest Stats-Canada report, the rich got richer and the poor got poorer.

The small-L liberal - a.k.a. "neo-conservative" - argument has been that a rising tide floats all boats. Let the owners of private wealth become wealthier, they say, and the wealth of all will increase. Use public money to support private profit, they say, and business will create a society in which everyone prospers.

In fact, business created a society in which (some) businesses prospered while (most) workers and parents and children and seniors suffered increasing poverty and poor health.

Oh, and this just in: business is also tampering with our climate and may well bring about a global collapse of human society that will last for several thousand years.

The Adam Smith, small-L liberal, corporate-welfare, neo-con crew are adapt at blaming the victims. Note, for example, today's Globe & Mail's "what wrong with immigrants" editorial. (Answer: they chose Canada?)

The editorial also held up that tattered old "there is a clear link between higher education and better earnings" excuse.

That's certainly true. I'd earn about $1000 more each year doing the same job I do now if I invested $20,000 and four years in getting a University degree. When my job finally goes to a retired public school teacher with the right credentials (so you know the work is done well) and a pension (so you don't have to pay them much or employ them all year), people will agree that I "ought" to have gone back to school instead of wasting time... er, helping adults learn to read and write and add fractions? supporting family literacy and community development? winning awards for my work?

But that's all about credentialism - employment discrimination based on certification, not performance - and it is entirely artificial. It doesn't explain poverty anymore than poor health can be explained by saying people keep catching colds.

In other news, yesterday, multi-millionaire Frank Stronach (whose auto-parts company made $207 million in profit in the past 3 months) said the problem with the auto industry in Canada is that workers get paid too much. Presumably, he's not talking about himself, or planning to return whatever extra he thinks he's picked up undeservedly.

Everybody knows that it's now or never.
Everybody knows that it's me or you.
Everybody knows that you live forever,
when you've done a line or two.

Everybody knows the deal is rotten.
Old Black Joe's still picking cotton
for your ribbons and bows.

Everybody knows.

- S. Robinson, L. Cohen.

Comes Spring

2008-04-13T04:59:00.000-07:00

Disaster

And when the ice melts
the cold heart of you
softening, dissolving
something lost
to the dry spring wind

what becomes of you
what mudded trace
remains?

Once,
in the sun,
you shone brighter
than the stars.

Wendell Dryden

Whither Science, History, Hope?

2008-04-04T15:57:00.000-07:00

In the last few weeks I've met several people who think no one landed on the moon.

They think it was faked. A fraud. Something the Americans cooked up with the help of the television people.

I am... confused by this.

I understand mistrusting a bit of official history. I understand government trickery. I could understand someone's cultural or religious views helping them dismiss modern science or the claims of the mainstream press.

I mean, I've had first hand dealings with the press: I know they get things wrong on purpose.

But this seems different. It's like these people are cut off from history. They know stories and parts of stories and rumours of stories - some true, some false, some entertaining, some boring. Then, through who knows what process, they credit these stories and parts and rumours as either "true" or "false".

It's like they play the odds. They ask, "Is this likely to be true?"

"Likely" seems to mean "like something I know."

In fact, that's pretty much the heart of it for some people I talked with.

Nothing they know makes them think people from the 1960s could ever have gotten to the moon.

And I really don't know what to say about that.

So I posted some footage from the Apollo missions - or the backlot at MGM - on my multiply.com site. Just because.

Journey into Space

2008-03-31T15:55:00.000-07:00

I'm listening, again, to Journey into Space.

That's the name of a series of radio plays written in the 1950s by Charles Chilton and broadcast on the BBC. The series is made up of three science fiction stories - "Operation Luna", "The Red Planet", and "The World in Peril". Each story has a dozen or more 30 minute episodes, and each features key characters Captain Jet Morgan, radioman Lemmy, "Doc", and engineer Mitchell or "Mitch".

These radio plays are just plain exciting. The special effects are reasonable for the day, but it's the writing that really drives the shows. The dialogue manages to describe scenes and events without sounding narrative. Episodes end with cliff-hangers and begin with brief re-caps. The characters are ordinary humans with ordinary hopes and fears. The science is "science fiction" and not "science fantasy". Not bad for the 1950s.

There is a fourth, shorter radio series called "Return From Mars". Unfortunately, it was made around 1980 - the time BBC Radio got a new sound recording engineer or producer or something.... Or maybe it was the equipment that changed. In any case, the sound of radio play recordings changed then, and for the worse.

The most tell-tale feature of this new, lousy recording style is a habit of setting "background" sounds and music at the same - or greater - volume as the main dialogue. This often leads to people being drowned out by a throbbing bass or horns blaring excitedly. This more recent BBC episodes of Jet Morgan is hard to hear and far less enjoyable.

I know it's a cliché to say "they don't make things like they used to", but, well, at the BBC, they don't.

Anyway, for more info, you might check out the wikipedia entry for the series, or the fan page Jet on the Moon.

I first heard Journey Into Space through BBC's online radio player. That became less practical when the BBC made certain changes about 6 months ago (in an apparent attempt to cash in on the iPod / iPhone buzz). Then I found the episodes waiting online at my dear friend, the Internet Archive.

Don't Believe Everything You Read

2008-03-23T17:18:00.000-07:00

The advertising hype was explicit: "The service gives Facebook users access to footage from thousands of movies, ranging from "The Ten Commandments" to "Forrest Gump," to send to others on the popular social networking site."

So I added the application,VooZoo, and then searched "The Ten Commandments." VooZoo never heard of it. It suggested "How to Lose a Guy in Ten Days." I never heard of that.

Guess we're done here.

The Ten Commandments

2008-03-23T13:35:00.000-07:00

How many poets, painters, philosophers has this film inspired?

Well, maybe only me.

But I am inspired. Constantly. The language, the astounding converse and pacing echoes in so much of I want to write.

I don't know who to credit for this. The screenplay was written by a committee, if you can believe it. DeMille, the director/producer, had a reputation for bringing strong actors to a role and then letting them build their own character. I take that to mean it was the actors themselves who brought the film's language to life.

Yet, deMille was the guiding force. Presumably it was he, for example, who decided that the parting scene between Moses and the woman who raised him would be played without music. It is the right combination of acting, camera angles, and score that makes the scene of the old woman caught beneath the stone so exciting, or brings such tension to the scene of Pharaoh walking in on Moses when the stone pillar is being raised.

Throughout the movie, Heston speaks and moves like an actor on stage. (Some people will always laugh at it or call it over-the-top or something - mostly because they don't understand theater.) He and Brenner and give the movie all that dignity and weight Shakespeare is supposed to have. Maybe Shakespeare really has it, I don't know: Five hundred years down the road, I can barely translate Shakespeare. The Ten Commandments is written in an English I recognize and remember, and so it moves me.

Mind you, I don't exactly think it's a "great" movie in the way some films are "great". I don't think it's an important movie about freedom or truth or anything like that - though I'm aware that it may have had an important resonance in racially segregated America. Mark this interchange between Moses, now accepting his Hebrew heritage and rejecting Egypt's social structure, and the pharaoh who raised him:

Moses: No son could have more love for you than I.
Sethi: Then why are you forcing me to destroy you? What evil has done this to you?
Moses: The evil that men should turn their brothers into beasts of burden, to be stripped of spirit, and hope, and strength - only because they are of another race, another creed. If there is a god, he did not mean this to be so.

That's heady stuff for 1956. The same year, of course, The Searchers, starring John Wayne and Jeffrey Hunter, took an equally sober look at racism. And just a few months earlier, in December of 1955, Rosa Parks famously refused to give up her seat to a white passenger, leading to the Montgomery Bus Boycott and Martin Luther King, Jr.'s involvement in the fight against racial segregation.

On the other hand, the sourly racist (and sexist) The King and I was also a top box office earner that year; as was Guys and Dolls, starring Frank Sinatra, Marlon Brando, and Jean Simmons (released in November of 1955).

But, anyway, all that's beside the point. I was saying that I don't think The Ten Commandments is an important movie. I don't think children should be forced to watch it. I don't think it should form the spine of curricula or inform our understanding of history. It's too full of historical and biblical errors and wild fantasies. Nor do I think it needs to be treated like some kind of cultural landmark (though I know the Library of Congress defined it as "culturally, historically, or aesthetically significant" - like they don't say that about everything they meet).

I'm not interested in the religious message.

Hmmm...

Well, that might not be true. Admittedly, I find the humanist religion of the young Moses compelling - much more so than that of Moses the Prophet. Here's a snippet from the "old woman caught beneath the stones scene":

Yochabel: Wise and Noble One, I was caught. I had not the strength to free myself.
Moses: Your shoulders should not bear a burden, old woman.
Yochabel: The Lord has renewed my strength and lightened my burdens.
Moses: He would have done better to remove them.

And, a few lines later, to Joshua (whose action caused the commotion that lead to Moses saving the old woman):

Moses: You know it is death to strike an Egyptian.
Joshua: I know it.
Moses: Yet you struck him. Why?
Joshua: To free the old woman.
Moses: What is she to you?
Joshua: An old woman.
Egyptian guard: Lord Moses, send him to his death!
Moses: The man has courage. You do not speak like a slave.
[...Ah, but then the inevitable eyes-toward-heaven bit...]
Joshua: God made men. Men made slaves.
Moses: Whose god?
Joshua: The God of Abraham, the Almighty God!
Moses: If your god is almighty, why does he leave you in bondage?
Joshua: He will chose the hour of our freedom and the man who will deliver it!

Indeed, if there is a weakness in the movie it is in the gradual reduction of Moses' character (and dialogue), from a complex, searching human being to an eyes-heavenward, wooden mouthpiece for an always-right deity. Unlike Shakespeare's King Lear, who out in the storm learns to talk more like a human being, Moses becomes less intelligible during the heavy weather. He becomes less human, and more distant, more "other".

This makes it harder to indentify with and cheer for him. The young Moses, with all his idealism, is gone. It is a removal (unintentionally?) voiced in a conversation between Moses' two love interests near the third act of the film:

Nefretiri: You need have no fear of me.
Sephora: I feared only his memory of you.
Nefretiri: You have been able to erase it?
Sephora: He has forgotten both of us. You lost him when he went to seek his god. I lost him when he found his god.

Now, Moses' rival, Rames, is no one to admire. To Nefretiri he boasts: "You will be mine, like my dog, or my horse, or my falcon, except that I shall love you more - and trust you less."

Still, at least he never surrenders his voice. When the new, super-Moses appears undefeatable, Rames retains his hard dignity and determination to live as (his version of) a human being:

Commander of the Host: Let us go from this place, men cannot fight against a God.
Rameses: Better to die in battle with a God then to live in shame.

But, again, I don't think any of that matters much. For me, the joy of this film is in the rare prose. Anyone wanting to dwell on, to enjoy, the richness of modern English (circa 1910-2000) could do worse than fill a bucket with popcorn, drop some ice in their drink, and pull up an easy chair to watch this long, expansive, expressive film.

Or not. Don't matter.

I still know what I like.

I'm talking about her dialogue, of course!

: P

Fly Me To The Moon

2008-03-18T19:30:00.000-07:00

Did you see the moon last night? 'Course, I don't know what it looks like where you are. But last night, just as the sky was turning from blue to black, the moon above us was deeply gorgeous.

It was too cold to stay out looking at it. The wind blew all day and night, driving the temperature underground. When I looked out at the Bay this morning, it was all brown and full of storms.

Today was cold, but this evening wasn't too bad. Waiting for a friend, I watched the stars for awhile. There was a rainbow around the moon (ice in the upper atmosphere). Mars was further west than I expected. The 'big dipper' was standing on it's head. Another planet - Jupiter, I think - really stood out.

I could stare at stars for hours.

When I was young, I'd stare at the moon through my dad's 10x binoculers. Sometimes, when the light was just right. I could believe I saw the jagged edge of mountains. I could imagine setting down, in clouds of dust, into the Sea of Tranquility.

Those were the days of the Apollo missions and a brand new television show called "Star Trek". I was learning to read Issac Asimov, growing out of Tom Corbett, Space Cadet. Nowadays, its H.G. Wells or listening to old Doctor Who episodes - somehow, for me, science fiction has become nostalgia, a looking-back.

But I still love moonlit nights and wondering and staring at the stars.

Heard You Talking Tonight

2008-03-16T18:11:00.000-07:00

Maybe it's the refined sugar in the ginger-ale talking, but I was thinking the internet' s a swell place tonight.

I corresponded, briefly, with interesting people in completely different parts of the world.

I looked at photos from East Africa (mostly Kenya), Germany and Scotland.

I read through a half dozen blogs on my "will always read" list, following web-links hither and yon, and adding 5 more blogs to my "will probably read" list.

I learned about a new Facebook app - and learned enough to avoid adding two others - and downloaded another bit of Old Time Radio.

I found out John Sandford has another Prey novel coming out next month (yay!), read a really interesting piece on the U.S. election, and played with that LOLinator site that turns any webpage into a bunch of text-talkin cats.

Now I'm going to retire with a book.

You know, I've heard of television. I mean, I can remember it from when I was growing up. But the idea of watching television these days... I mean... Why?

All that starting and stopping. All those commercials. All that noise.

So little Africa, Germany, Scotland, me... you.

I'd just rather go online and see what's up with you.

Glad to be Home

2008-03-15T04:35:00.000-07:00

A learner.... No, a friend.

A friend was writing, getting better at putting ideas into words and organizing them on the page. She wrote two paragraphs about home - about what a home is.

I was thinking about that all week.

I decided that "home" for me is the place where I realize
how tired I really am.

Tanglewood Deer

2008-03-09T17:27:00.000-07:00

Hard Rains Gonna Fall

2008-03-05T13:31:00.000-08:00

There's a line I love, and almost remember, from one of the Winne-the-Pooh stories: "Christopher Robin didn't care what the weather was, so long as he was out in it."

I used to be more 'Christopher Robin'.

But today, the freezing rain kept me indoors, and lulled me to sleep around noon.

I didn't get to the library or the laundromat or the '50s exhibit at the museum.

I got to my corner store, slipping and sliding. Then home again, home again.

(jiggity-jig)

Do Not Operate Heavy Machinery

2008-02-10T08:56:00.000-08:00

... or make important decisions. Better yet, stay in bed.

But, still fuzzy-brained from a head cold, I was determined to get my life in order. I gathered up the garbage - tissues, food wrappers, empty bottles - and stuffed them in a garbage bag.

Then I picked up the clothing scattered across my floor and chairs. The clean stuff got put away. The dirty clothing I stuffed into another garbage bag.

I walked across to my neighbourhood convenience store for a jug of water, and on the way tossed a garbage bag into a dumpster.

I bought a bag of salt, and spread some in front of my door. Went inside. Started stacking dishes for washing. And noticed a garbage bag, full of garbage, sitting by my feet.

Garbage bag. Garbage.

Shit.

I just threw out my clothes.

Back out to the dumpster. Luckily, nobody else had gone out. I traded bags, tossed the garbage, and brought my clothes back in.

The Kandahar Question

2008-02-03T13:06:00.000-08:00

I haven't written much about Canada's six and a half year military involvement with Afghanistan.

In part, this is because I think war is too serious a thing to write about carelessly; and blog writings are often careless. In part, it is because I know only bits and pieces, and don't expect to find out what really happened until the dust has settled and careful scholarship has had time to sift documents and memories.

There is a big difference between "as it happens" war coverage, and a reflective, researched history of war.

It is the difference between, say, Rick Atkinson's In The Company Of Soldiers (2004) about the invasion of Iraq in 2003, and his book An Army At Dawn (2002) about the invasion of North Africa in 1942. The first gives us American officers' views of the war; all tussle and tension without any context or big-picture stuff. The second uses stories of privates, officers and politicians on both sides to explain the context and create the big picture.

It is the difference between Gwynne Dyer's short essays written for newspapers and gathered in With Every Mistake (2005), and Dyer's 2007 book The Mess They Made. Writing about his earlier, as-it-happened commentary, Dyer says "I am not proud of my own performance in the period 2001 to 2003." Perhaps not, but it unlikely he could have done much better. Writing well about war, during war, when one's own country is engaged, is just plain hard.

I haven't written much about Canada's involvement with Afghanistan. One piece, only - and that was really just a reaction to Robert Fisk's powerful book The Great War For Civilization (2005).

But....

I have two angers growing in me about Afghanistan. Or, rather, about the way others are writing about Afghanistan. One has to do with a consistent misreporting. The other has to do with an evasion.

Misreporting

Here's an example of skewed reporting. There are bombs or explosives going off in Afghanistan. These explosives are delivered in different ways. They fall from planes, get shot from cannons, are throw by hand, are hidden and then remotely detonated, are packed into the cars or under the clothing of suicide bombers. NATO and its Afghanistan allies are blowing things and people up. The insurgents or terrorists or freedom fighters or resistance - the "bad guys" - are also blowing up things and people.

Both sides are using explosives, but not at an equal rate. In rough figures, NATO is setting off 1000 times more pounds of explosive than the other side. In other words, for every 3 or 4 pounds of explosive that the "bad guys" use to kill soldiers and civilians, NATO uses 3000 to 4000 pounds.

A recent Washington Post story said NATO launched about 3600 air-strikes in 2007. At 500 pounds of explosive per strike, that's almost 2 million pounds of explosives - not counting artillery or hand grenades. Is 2 million pounds a lot? I don't know. Over ten days last month, according to the U.S. Airforce, planes dropped about a 100,000 pounds of explosives in a small area of farmland south of Baghdad. Is 10,000 pounds a day usual? It seems like an awful lot.

But, in any case, there's no way suicide bombers are setting off tens of thousands, or even hundreds of thousands, of pounds of explosives in Afghanistan.

So, what would be a sensible way to report things blowing up? Can we expect the Toronto Star to report every explosion in Afghanistan? Is it reasonable that Fredericton's Daily Gleaner would report only bombing involving a certain size of explosion - say, the combined detonation of 200 pounds or more? Would it be okay if the Vancouver Sun only reported on explosions that killed or wounded Canadians? Would it be okay if, in the Saskatoon StarPhoenix, people only read about explosions that troubled troops originally from Saskatoon?

When there's lots of stuff and people getting blown up, how do you decide which bombing story to tell. Which one do you show on the evening news?

Saturday, Jan 26 2008, the Globe and Mail's "Section 'D': Books", opened with a review by Peter Hart. He was looking at seven books on Afghanistan, Iraq, terrorists and so on. Hart began with Canadian Peter Dale Scott's The Road to 9/11 and this lead sentence: "The 21st century so far belongs to the suicide bomber."

Notice that. Despite the fact that suicide bombers have employed less than 1% as much explosive in Afghanistan (or the whole Middle East) as American and other NATO forces, Hart has decided that he will talk about them alone. He will ignore the hundreds of thousands of pounds of bombs "our side" has used, and call attention to the hundreds of pounds of explosives "their side" has set off.

"No building, politician or convoy is entirely safe from attack by these self-martyrs" he writes (line two of the piece). No building, politician or convoy is entirely safe from artillery strikes or bombers flying at 2000 feet either. Why point out the small threat instead of the big one? Why point fingers at the suicide bomber instead of the gunner or pilot?

Well, a book review or two isn't really important. It's a small thing, yes. But it's also a miniature, a scaled-down example of what goes on every day in our mainstream press. This sort of unbalanced commentary or presentation - cheerleading, really - is what I mean by misreporting.

An Evasion

Another Canadian newspaper, Halifax's The Chronicle Herald, has published a book titled On Assignment In Afghanistan: Maritimers At War (2007). What does "Atlantic Canada's largest newspaper" hope to do with this book? Well, in addition to relating some stories about Canadian soldiers and how they're getting on in Afghanistan, they promise this: "We'll also get an idea of why Canadians are in Afghanistan."

An idea. We'll get "an idea". We'll get some sense, a feel, a glimmer, a little better understanding.... Atlantic Canada's newspaper, apparently, can't tell anyone straight out why Canadians are in Afghanistan. The best they can manage is to give us an idea.

Dan Leger, the Chronicle Herald's Director of News Content, does allow that "the easy answer is they're here because the federal government sent them"(p.vi; he's quoting reporter Chris Lambie). But this answer isn't easy: it's evasive. Why did the government send them? That's what Canadians want to know.

Leger continues, "But you will see from [Leger's] coverage that the personal motivations run much deeper." Whose personal motivations? That of Generals Henault or Hillier? That of Prime Ministers Martin or Harper? That of past or present ministers of National Defense or Foreign Affairs like McCallum, O'Conner, Manley, Graham or MacKay? Whose personal motivations have put us in Afghanistan? Leger says, "Private Chad Wilkie for one...."

Look, Canadian troops are not in Afghanistan because of the personal feeling of Chad Wilkie or any other private! They are there because of the feelings and choices of a very few very powerful politicians, civil servants, generals and businessmen. We might reasonably expect that Atlantic Canada' largest newspaper would have something to report about that.

They don't.

And that's what I mean about an evasion.

If we are to have a sensible conversation in this country about the role we have given our troops in Afghanistan - about the men and women we sent over there, some of whom are now dead and lost to us - we need to be able to talk about the whole story. Not just the part about what the enemy is doing to us (i.e., how bad they are), or how courageous our troops have been thus far (i.e., how good we are). And we need to talk about the national and international reasons we are there, and choices made by people in power.

It's not that I don't care how Chad Wilkie feels. It's just that, if Private Wilkie changes his mind, that won't change our national policy one whit. Worse, if he decides to come back to Canada without General Hillier's permission, he could reasonably expect to be shot or imprisoned for life.

Since that's the case, its past time we all got clear on what he's doing there.

Not Dylan's Enemy At All

2008-01-31T16:28:00.000-08:00

The dawn it is howlin' and the mainframe shakes
I feel like I've been sleepin' in a cellarful of snakes
My wings have been clipped
and my shoes have been stuck with glue
Well if you'll be my enemy I'll be your enemy too

Now I've got goons on my landing, thieves on my trail
Nazis on my telephone willing me to fail
they were all sent by someone
Obviously you!
Well if you'll be my enemy I'll be your enemy too

I was watching Miami Vice the other night and looking up lyrics online, and was startled to discover that Be My Enemy is not a Bob Dylan song. It's by some blokes called The Waterboys (or maybe just "Waterboys") from the mid-80s. Very Dylanesque circa 1965 or maybe 1975 - but not at all like the 80s music I remember.

(I'd look it up on multiply.com, but you know what trouble that kind of thing causes - LOL.)

The Download - Upload - Pirate - Share Quagmire

2008-01-13T03:30:00.000-08:00

Credit for about half this post goes to Jamie Aves (http://skyllo01.multiply.com/) whose late-night comments helped me clarify my thoughts around this. The errors are mine.

"Create on the desktop, share online" used to be the mantra. But there's been a problem all along with that word "sharing". I don't "share" a file when I post it online. I copy it.

For example, I share a CD or DVD when I give it to a friend. It's clear I've shared it because they have it and I don't. But, when I post a copy of a CD or DVD online, I'm not sharing. After all, I still have the item in my position. What I've really done is reproduce the product.

Again, when I borrow a book or journal from the library, I possess it and, for a time, the library does not. After about a month, the library starts sending me letters demanding that I return the item. Such is the nature of sharing. But when I upload a digital book, I'm not sharing, I'm making a copy.

Copying copyrighted materials is illegal in most countries, including the U.S (30 sec. audio clips and brief written passages aside). It is also contrary to the terms of use of most social networking sites; in part because so many are housed in the U.S. and subject to its laws.

Downloading, while more "pirate-like", is no worse than uploading in this regard. Its the reproducing itself - not the way the reproductions are used - that requires permission.

By the way, in Canada, where I live, coping such materials is neither legal not illegal. That's because some years ago the recording industry convinced our government to place a tax on items like blank audio tape, video tape, writable CDs and so on. Proceeds from the tax were given to the industry to cover anticipated (!) losses. Having done this deal, and taken the money, the industry has been unable to use our courts to prosecute (well represented) copyright violators. The very complicated view of the courts - very simplified - is that this tax, in effect, sells limited copying rights to the public. Of course "limited" is a useless word, and nobody is very happy with the state of things now, so the government and industry are working on a new law.

Multiply.com, a U.S. corporate citizen, has been tip-toeing through this minefield for some months now. Their problem is they have a social networking site that allows the posting (reproducing) of audio and visual files. Many users employed their site as a means of distributing or obtaining - without permission - copyrighted music files.

As I noted in an earlier post, Multiply removed the in-house music search feature to slow the traffic in audio files. Determined users shifted to Google search.

Next, Multiply removed the download link to discourage downloading. That may slow the traffic, but probably not. As long as audio files stream, they can be copied: audio files play over our pc speakers precisely because they are being downloaded, even if only to a temp file. That means it is possible to capture the source-address (usually called the "property") of an individual sound file and enter it into a download manager (like Flashget). Then the file can be downloaded.

Meanwhile, there's the uploading without permission - equally a violation of Multiply's terms of use and the law. I can't imagine how multiply can keep an audio component to this site without risking that the majority of users will continue to violate the terms and U.S. law.

Confession time: I succumbed to temptation almost immediately after joining multiply. Then I worried about the implications from a professional point of view (I use Multiply in my work). Then I removed my playlists, hid the music application, and got on with my life.

I'm not unhappy about the decision multiply took. The one really disappointing piece in all this was the lack of a multiply official-blog post about it. Not as "warning", but as acknowledgment. Instead, they slipped this change in among some other site design changes that they did publicize on the official blog. By the time I caught up to that post, few hours later, there were already 275 comments on it - mostly about the (unacknowledged) removal of the download feature.

Writes Jamie, "I had a feeling that this music issue is going to be a problem when multiply changed their policy from 20 uploads per month to UNLIMITED. It was abused so much and they had to take action, but not informing everyone about it is not professional, seriously. Not all people here are committing copyright violation. If they want to act like internet cops, they might as well kill the video site then. There are lots of uploaded videos here with from youtube and other sites that are copyrighted. Oh and take down photos and multiply themes too. Some of the pictures on this site are copyrighted. Basically wipe out multiply."

Well, that's pretty strong, but not inaccurate. Mulptiply is awash in images and sounds being used and reproduced without permission. Of course, that's true of many other sites, including Youtube, My Space and Facebook. But Multiply doesn't have the deep pockets or social capital of those sites.

I think - and this is just my opinion - the company knew an audio and video "sharing" feature would be popular; especially among that increasingly important web demographic, younger users in India, China and Southeast Asia. Then, they got caught trying to have it both ways - being "cool" and "legal". They tried to duck the consequences by making these behind-the-scene changes. But nothing is behind-the-scenes online. That's the strength and weakness of the web. Meanwhile, here's Jamie with the last words, from an open letter to Multiply:

"You didn't warn us, but you keep updating your blog. Why? What's wrong with discussing it with the community?

I already smelled trouble by the time you changed the 20 uploads per month policy to unlimited music upload. Didn't you think ahead that it will cause a problem in the long run? Hoping for your response, or if not a response to me, then to the whole community."

Old Time Radio

2008-01-07T18:18:00.001-08:00

I spent the evening cleaning and sorting last night. For company I had the cast of the Jack Benny Program via the Internet Archive.

Benny's shows from the early '40s had my favourite cast members. The jokes were always funny (if corny and sometimes predictable), and the music pleasant. Best of all, this set of 5 programs streamed in one after another with little or no buffering, hesitation or distortion.

Canadian Cold

2008-01-05T20:04:00.000-08:00

... that post-Christmas chill.

Best Friends

2008-01-01T06:16:00.000-08:00

... Happy New Year!