Bill Bryson Comes to Toyota

I spend much of my life running from allergy-induced symptoms: headaches, itchy eyes, blurred vision, asthma, and throughout the summer, on top of the already-pervasive problems of dust and seasonal moulds, I, along with millions of people, have to contend with tree pollen, grass and ragweed.

So it was in this condition I took myself off to Toyota last Thursday morning to wait for a fuel injection, throttle body cleaning, and a little piece of something that has something to do with the return of oil, much the same way (the Toyota employee named Tony said) that an air filter works on behalf of the exhaust. In other words, I was going to be there for some time.

I sat in the farthest corner of the waiting room beside the in-house phone, because you never know what kind of emergency might come up during a half-day stay at a car dealership. (In fact, while I was there, a woman in her eighties – I heard her talking – lost her husband, which was proving quite dire until he showed up in another part of the dealership altogether. She eventually left the building holding his hand, muttering something about the Lost & Found.) Anyway, relieved for her safety, I basked in the air conditioning, my head and lungs freeing themselves up from the pollen and dust. My terminal headache began to disappear.

I picked up my book, Bill Bryson’s Notes from a Big Country, my next reading assignment for June. I started to read. About three sentences in, I started to laugh. And laugh harder. And laugh harder again. I stared at the pages before me, unable to believe the deliciousness spread out before me – page after page of sentiments that I am sure millions of readers have shared; mundane subjects coming to life on the page, written by a man of my generation (well, he’s a little bit older…what can I say?), whose good sense of circuitry (I think I mean circuitousness) and hyperbole ring so resonantly in my own ear that I felt as if I had found a long-lost brother.

Oh my God.

I sped through entries on motels, taxes, winter, computers, garbage disposals, junk food, moose, statistics, American presidents – simultaneously admiring Bryson’s well-researched, perceptively idiosyncratic details and a sense of humour that can make a reader sick with laughter – the whole time barely noticing the customers around me, their newspapers creeping higher and higher in front of their faces (Torontonians can be so infuriatingly, and amusingly, pickle-arsed) as I choked on gulps of laughter, tears of glee streaming down my face.

I tried to stop myself, honestly I did, but the image of the author scurrying around the grocery store scooping up box after box of illicit sugar cereal, fumbling with endlessly redundant options on a computer keyboard, and hunting for weird objects to stuff down the kitchen sink disposal – well, you can see, if you have any sense of the ordinary at all, how tremendously funny this would be. Add to that that I cannot remember the last time I laughed this hard over anything, and you can only begin to imagine how happy I was.

I read on and on, chapter after chapter, as the auto mechanics fiddled with inner workings of the little blue Yaris, and the waiting room eventually emptied of every customer but me. In fact, by the time the car was ready I had made it through 200 pages. I had at this point laughed so hard that I could feel the small arrhythmia of dehydration, a slow throbbing beginning at my temples and working its way to the back of my extraordinarily large head. The pain lodged itself in behind my eyeballs, encroaching my mid-brain (which ordinarily a person cannot feel), making its way in steady persistence toward my medulla oblongata.

I am sure the irony of this isn’t escaping any of you.

Anyway, my point is that there are all kinds of ways to get a headache: red wine; a winter cold; caffeine; screeching neighbours; worry; holding your breath too long under water (or even above water, I suppose); oxygen deprivation (which might be the same thing as holding your breath too long. I am so scientifically challenged); emotional upset; cheese; pollen, dust and moulds. But if a headache were inevitable, and I knew I had to choose, hand me Bill Bryson’s Notes from a Big Country any day. I would rather hurt myself from laughing than by any other method. And once I finish the book, I can’t wait to begin reading excerpts to Mary and Sarah and see if they won’t get headaches, too.

ISBN 0-385-65859-1

Reel to Real

Sometimes I sit down to write and I have so many thoughts I don’t know where to begin. I hate the navel-gazing aspect of blog-keeping, and generally I try to put out something that is useful to someone besides me.

I had intended to write about my favourite films, so far, in the 2010 Inside Out Toronto LGBT Film and Video Festival, but there are already so many – The Topp Twins: Untouchable Girls; Sea Purple; Undertow; Lion’s Den; Joan Rivers: A Piece of Work; Beyond Gay: The Politics of Pride – see what I mean? – I don’t know where to begin or even how to rank them. The most I can tell you is that we have had the best seats in the house (for our needs and desires, that is), and that the general company has been convivial, receptive, engaged, transfixed and supportive. To cap this off, Jason St-Laurent’s introduction of films and directors has been so enthusiastically warm and unabashedly delightful that he alone has made the festival worthwhile. Still, I feel bad that I am unable to do justice to the films.

Then I thought…I know, I’ll write about the loss of Edith, a little memento for all of you goldfish lovers out there. I could speak about ich (a German disease, apparently, affecting the ego) and parasites (been there) and swim bladder (but not there), and address the dangers of PH imbalance and water that’s too warm (like the south shore of the island or, more specifically, the Argyle Shore, in July), and how, in the case of my dear little friend, some fish die from tearing a gill on a plastic rock that sits at the bottom of the now-empty tank. But I am too sad and sadly under-educated in the ways of goldfish to be of any real help to any of you. All I can say is God bless Edith, who will be buried under the rose bushes in a formal ceremony this weekend – invitation only.

Or perhaps, I thought, I might write about reality TV (“Again?!”), and the predictable outcome of Dancing With The Stars. Cam on! You mean to tell me you didn’t think that the lead dancer for the Pussycat Dolls stood a really good chance of winning?! You actually fell for that “Moo hoo hoo, I’m an artist” doubletalk? (At least we were saved a lachrymose victory lap had the bachelor pilot whatever his name is won, or the four-hour glowering defence from Kate Gosselin had she placed second.)

And then there’s Lee DeWyze’s victory over Crystal Bowersox on American Idol, which surprised me, although I confess I was terrifically happy for him because of all the contestants he seemed the least likely to have expected the win. Crystal is a powerhouse singer, and I hope a record producer snatches her up lickety-split. (Hmm…I’m thinkin’ I could afford to add to my synonym list.) My only too-bad about this season was the early demise of Siobhan Magnus, but even Simon regained my heart with his overt display of loyalty toward Paula Abdul. Now that’s a friend.

I’m afraid I missed most of both finales, however, because of the film festival, so I can’t offer up anything truly worthy. And as for So You Think You Can Dance, I can’t even go there now that Mary Murphy is out and Mia Michaels is back in. While some of you might object to the heightened vocals of Ms. Murphy, I would take her any and every day over the tendentious egomaniacal flake-ball that is Mia Michaels. What a shame. Bonnie Hunt gone; New Christine gone; Mary Murphy gone. Bing bang boom.

That all sorrowfully aside, I even had a thought that I might try to make something creative of this list that’s sitting next to me, right here on top of my address book. But when I look at it and read things such as back up computer (which looks more like a command than a task…as in, “Back up, computer!”) and burn Beatrix Potter (which downright frightens me, at least until I get to the cd part at the end of that tiny clause), I realize that there isn’t much point trying to be entertaining with a list I can’t even make out.

There are other things I could write about perhaps. Hard things, like illness and loss and injury – not mine, exactly, and not even Edith’s – but more painful and frightening and difficult. But I decided a long time ago that, even though I don’t mind being occasionally personal, this blog was, and is, intended for my grandchildren (thus far, Isabella, Lainey, Simon and Blue) as a kind of historical familial guideline, and not as some disengaging exposé or litany of family woes. Crises come and crises go, and I learned a long, long time ago that the poem was accurate: Laugh and the world laughs with you. Cry and you cry alone. And that’s perhaps as it should be.

So here I am with nothing of value to say and three more movies to attend before the festival ends. What a shame. I look forward to Inside Out every year – the weather, the line-ups, the Slushies, the scrambling for parking, the choosing, the people, the overall warmth – and I am always a little sorry to see it end, no matter what excitement is waiting on the other side. Sometimes when I sit in the theatre balcony next to Mary, and I see all of the people in the audience below us – they roar with laughter and cry big wet choking tears in the dark – I am reminded that each of us has a struggle we have to attend to, and that life is short, and that there is comfort in community, and all kinds of other important wonderful thoughts that seem to preclude my saying anything intelligent about anything at all.

Feast, and your halls are crowded;

Fast, and the world goes by.

Succeed and give, and it helps you live,

But no man can help you die.

Ella Wheeler Wilcox

Beyond Gay: The Politics of Pride

Barbara Kay in “Support Pride Or You're A Homophobe” (see: http://network.nationalpost.com/NP/blogs/fullcomment/archive/2010/05/10/barbara-kay-support-pride-or-you-re-a-homophobe.aspx#ixzz0oxlz85AF) seems to have gone off a little half-cocked.

It isn’t that I disagree with Kay’s contention that it’s a mistake for Pride to allow (or perhaps more accurately, not prevent) Queers Against Israeli Apartheid (QAIA)’s marching and spewing, the very fact of their word “Apartheid” here inaccurate and enraging.

But Pride is supposed to be about equality for and among the LGBTQQ (LMNOP, as I like to say tongue-in-cheek. Let’s face it, at my age it’s hard to remember any abbreviated series) community, and the parade has no business sanctioning anyone’s hatred toward or rage against anyone. The entire purpose of the parade, in fact, is to speak to a feeling and substance of inclusion, and in so doing highlight what is entirely unacceptable about exclusion in any form, which includes QAIA’s sweeping hatred toward Israelis.

And it isn’t that I haven’t developed my own strongly personal feelings about the Middle East situation, but Pride is not the place to air my views.

No. The problem I have with Kay and her article is her simplistic toss-off: “Who should the MFEP fund, if anyone? If Ottawa is to persist in the questionable practice of using tax money to choose winners and losers among the thousands of arts events on offer, it should focus on those that appeal to interests in which all Canadians feel welcome and engaged. The Montreal Jazz Festival and the Montreal Just for Laughs Festival will receive $3 million each this year, as they have in past years. They create massive tourism, they are unpoliticized and they unify their populations in positive, peaceful ways. The federal government should fund arts, sports and culture, not ‘queer arts,’ ‘Jewish sports,’ ‘black music,’ or ‘Ukrainian pride’ is reprehensible.”

What is she talking about – winners and losers? What does she mean – reprehensible? And how is Toronto’s Pride not positive; not peaceful? Can she not make out the difference between a world where two gay Milawi men, for example – Tiwonge  Chimbalanga, 33, and Steven Monjeza, 26 – face up to 14 years in prison for holding an engagement party?! How does this compare with the Montreal Jazz Festival or Just For Laughs? Or does Kay not understand the corollary between Toronto Pride and its representation of freedom for people all over the world?

Rather than cast her own banal aspersions, Barbara Kay might (and I only say might because I question her intellectual flexibility) find herself better served spending ninety minutes watching Bob Christie’s documentary – Beyond Pride: The Politics of Gay – of what it means to hold Pride in places like Moscow and Warsaw and Sri Lanka, where oppressive regimes dictate what, and who, qualifies as viable candidates for human – and humanity’s – survival.

The Victoria Times Colonist writes:

“Christie’s colourful overview is also a harsh and disturbing reminder, however, of ongoing, mind-boggling intolerance in places where homophobia is rampant (Jamaica is the world capital, according to Time). It’s shocking to learn, for instance, that archaic British colonial sodomy laws are still in place in Sri Lanka, where ‘curative rape’ is sanctioned as a ‘cure’ for lesbianism; that homosexuality carries stiff prison terms in some countries; and to witness protesters pelting Pride participants with eggs and tomatoes in Budapest, where gay clubs are firebombed. The most fascinating of the sequences — linked by graphics of a a ‘Freedometer’ charts each location’s tolerance levels — focus on gay rights activists risking their lives for the cause.”

See: http://biggaymovie.com/raves-reviews/

As if the commentary supporting Kay’s assertions isn’t enough to prove how desperately Pride is needed:

Mike Murphy writes:

An update on the Red Stars poll

Do you think the federal government should fund Toronto's gay pride festival?

Yes (30%)

No (67%)

Not sure (3%)

Total Votes: 21282

The wankers over there must be having convulsions one of their pet groups is taking it in the chin - or is that on the buttocks. Will we see an editorial later about the new wave of homophobia afoot in the land?

Johnny Quest writes:

Look, this is how the game goes.

Rick Mercer and the Canadian taxpayer subsidized 'entertainment press' will blow a gasket and funds will be diverted to lobbying and ridiculing the government on homophobia instead of actually entertaining.

It happened during the same-sex marriage 'debate' and it will happen again.

Sadly, nobody else in the media has the cohones to admit that the taxpayer subsidized system has been hijacked by gay activists.

Disagree with Mercer and not show your bare ass on National teevee, and you are a homophobe.

Jeff Foxworthy should do a ‘you know you are a homophobe routine.’

It would be immediately hauled before a Human Rights Commission.

Gays activists are the new thought police. Truth is no defence.

Whittih writes:

I'm a homophobe and damn proud of it. There is no way that tax money should be spent on this atrocious spectacle of freaks and geeks parading downtown. They have already forced us to change the definition of the word ‘gay’. They are still homosexuals and lesbians and they are not permitted to sully my home with their presence.

Sassylassie writes:

Good analogy bob, I like the skit with the shurbery now that was funny. Homophobe, Islamophobe gawd I'm sick of the shakedown artists hurling names at anyone who doesn't duck march to their agenda.

Nice summation Mrs. Kay.

Taxibill writes:

faggots are useless.

[end quotes]

There will always be Jerry Springer Show idiots in the world. What frightens me more (because Jerry Springer Show idiots cause infinite despair) are the number of articulate, well-educated people who haven’t the quantum-leap intelligence to look past their noses and see how damaging – how dangerous – their pompous, ridiculously narrow-minded journalistic judgements, their smug declarations, are – and how, rather than help in exponential ways, they reductively situate themselves among the lowest common denominator, setting all of us back dozens of years.

The Blue Lantern

I went all the way across town today looking for a blue faux lantern – the metal kind that you open up and put a candle in and set on your porch on warm summer evenings. I saw them yesterday, in fact, when Mike and I went to IKEA. (Mary told me, too late, that she would like one for the backyard. Well, what she really said was for wherever outdoors, but anyone looking at our porch would know that blue is definitely out.)

I went all the way across town, knowing that the Gardiner is under construction and that the cost of gas was going to supersede the lantern’s purchase price and that, sometimes, when there is congestion on the highway, my anxiety factor can creep up and suffocate me. But Mary wanted that blue lantern, and she hardly ever asks for anything, and what with her birthday coming up I thought that she would love an extra surprise.

So off I went in the elevated tarmac heat, crawling along the Gardiner Expressway behind an over-sized van – cars and trucks and motorcycles bumping along at greatly reduced speeds. (Greatly reduced reads oxymoronically. Mind you, morons run in my family – which was another thought I had on the highway. Well, not morons exactly, but crazy people. I wonder which is worse.)

Anyway, I was listening to Cheryl Wheeler’s new cd – we picked one up for $20.00 at her Syracuse concert – and la la la-ing along, the wind and perfectly blue sky carrying me away into a reverie (there’s nothing like weather to pin a person down), eventually pulling into the IKEA parking lot, my head full of strangely nostalgic thoughts for a group of sorority-like women, most of them unkind, that I knew long ago in Ottawa. Funny what a sudden configuration of cumulus clouds can do.

I went into IKEA and marched toward the lanterns, and to my dismay discovered that the blue ones of yesterday were the lime green ones of today. I wondered if there had been a recall, although I couldn’t imagine why. Anyway, while I was there peering and pecking, ambling about for no more than ten or fifteen minutes, I lit on another present I had initially spied coming into the store, which I bought. (The item, not the store.) So, one purchase later plus Pepsi, I was on my way back home, caught up again in the lingering thoughts afforded me by the ever-slowing traffic.

This time, still listening to Cheryl Wheeler, my eyes were taken up by the distant turbine windmill (if that’s even what it is called), its (I almost wrote ‘petals’) arms spinning around and around, reminding me of those lovely colourful windmills that are tacked to candy sticks that children play with. As I was gazing at this monolith (if it truly is a monolith) (and even if it isn’t, I suppose), I spied an airplane heading for Toronto Island – it looked like a white licorice allsort, flying downward toward the lake – Cheryl Wheeler singing a song about walking and taking a day at a time.

Something Brent once said to me popped into my head, about those patients who you just know are going to have complications, and I thought of my son, walking through his life one day at a time. I glanced over to my left, the cars on the Gardiner at this point stalled, and I saw the corner near the store where I used to work until the alcoholics and the dust became too oppressive…and I thought of the number of friends, or people I thought were my friends, who used me or who let jealousy get in their way of a friendship it seemed they once earnestly, even passionately, wanted.

I know it sounds funny, but the whole time this was happening I was, in relative terms, happy: resigned to the state and nature of things and the world, and only minorly wishing – apart from my son, that is, where my wishes are major – that some relationships had turned out better than they have. That said, I can’t complain (although, clearly, I do). I have many wonderful people around me, who love me and who are – thus far – my friends.

I spun around the corner from the Gardiner onto Leslie Street, feeling like a teenager again, reminded of the time I stood in the back of the speeding work van singing Sweet City Woman, newly in love (or whatever that meant to me then) with Homer.

Cheryl Wheeler, in the meantime, was singing about her dead cat, although the song was terribly funny and tragically light-hearted.

I raced through every (green) light, flying up Greenwood toward home. I turned up the cd, louder and louder, hanging on to the last gasp of her song, fully grateful for the slowed-down drive to IKEA in search of a blue lantern that wasn’t even there.

I don’t think I believe in fate the way some people do, although I know, Horatio, that there are more things in heaven and earth that are dreamt of in my philosophy. But sometimes when I am alone in the car, pressing my way along the highway, I see my past rise up behind me and crash into a glowing future, the white licorice airplanes bearing down toward a runway whose margins are currently ink-etched in place, the pilots engineering their landing along a route that will someday be overgrown with delicate island flowers and tortuous weeds.

A New Leaf

Do you remember the O’Henry (William Sydney Porter) short story about the young woman who had pneumonia and thought she would die when the last autumn leaf fell off the courtyard tree?

I won’t give away the ending – you can read the story for yourself by way of the link at the bottom of this entry – but it’s an O’Henry story, which if you know anything about him means you ought to be able to guess.

Funny, you’d think it would have been Hans Christian Andersen who would have written exclusively happy endings, but then there’s his story, The Little Match Girl, and if my memory serves me at all, the little match girl met with an even worse fate than that terribly tragic salt shaker in the TV commercial – the one I can barely look at, I find the whole thing so upsetting.

I have no idea where I am going with any of this.

I was up late last night, reading Linda Spalding’s Who Named The Knife (2005) – and who knew until this minute that Linda Spalding’s ‘Michael’ – the man she fell in love with oh so many years ago – is Michael Ondaatje? Small world.

Anyway, there was something in her prose and in the nature of her story that made me think of Don, and of people dying with cancer, and of the arbitrary nature of our world. I can’t count the number of times I have become infuriated with the terminally optimistic notion that as long as you believe you will be well, you will – the corollary being, of course, that people like Don who died had no desire or passion for life or for living; that only those people with good thoughts get to survive. Nothing could be further from the truth.

And then, as I was falling into a deeper sleep, I had what for me was a most lyrical thought and I said to myself, I must write that down tomorrow – perhaps this will mean something to someone.

And then I woke up several hours later and I had forgotten. I hate when that happens.

Anyway, the new leaf that I am about to turn over is to fulfill the promise I once made to myself to keep a notebook close to my bedside so that when I am drifting off to sleep with someone’s chapter or movie script in my head, and those old home movies start unravelling through the REM portion of my sleep, I will be ready and able to write down any stray thoughts that occur to me.

It isn’t that I believe what I have to say is more profound or revelatory than the next person; it is merely that I think that many of us come to our own sorts of crucial truths at that juncture where story meets memory meets sleep. Lots of good things happen in bed, actually, at least until that very last act of our lives – and who can say how good or how bad that might turn out to be? (As far as I know, we have no way of knowing.)

Anyway, as I was saying…lots of good things take place while we are in bed, and if you don’t believe me, take a look at O’Henry’s short story The Last Leaf, and see for yourself.

http://classiclit.about.com/od/lastleafohenry/a/lastleaf_ohenry.htm

Gay Radio Firings Spark Listener Protests

By Greg Quill Entertainment Reporter

Toronto’s  queer community is up in arms over the firing May 5 of four marquee stars of Proud FM 103.9, the world’s first commercial gay and lesbian radio station.

Fans of the popular hosts have set up a Facebook page, Proud FM The Shame Of Toronto, on which more than 1,600 listeners have vented their anger and protested against the station’s actions. The administrators of the page claim the firings “leave our LGBT community without a true voice on the radio.”

Dance artist Nancy Rancourt has also urged other musicians in the lesbian, gay, bisexual and transgender community to join her “loyalties outweigh royalties campaign” and ask Proud FM to withdraw their music from the station’s roster.

On-air hosts Deb Pearce, Patrick Marano, Shaun Proulx and Mark Wigmore were sent email termination notices after refusing to meet individually with station executives over several issues they wanted to discuss, including pay raises and advertising policy.

They had asked for a group meeting on May 3 but were offered individual meetings instead, Proulx told the Star. They were notified of their dismissal two days later.

The notices cited breaches of employment agreements, he added.

“I have never signed an employment agreement,” said Proulx, who co-hosted the afternoon drive show with Wigmore for the past three years.

Marano, who is Proulx’s fiancé, co-hosted the popular four-hour morning show, earning $24,000 a year.

“We still don’t know why this happened,” said Proulx, “We had a laundry list of radio basics we wanted to discuss with management, but they wouldn’t even hear us out.

“Money was only a very small ingredient in our list of concerns.”

Also on that list was a gripe about the insertion, without consultation, of advertorial content into their shows, Proulx added.

“It wasn’t just a list of complaints. We notified the program director that we had solutions to these problems as well, and wanted their input. I know the radio business is brutal, but I never thought it could be this brutal.”

Because the four hosts filed a joint wrongful dismissal suit against station owner Evanov Radio on Thursday, station management refused to comment, referring inquiries to the company’s in-house legal counsel, Sean Moreman.

Moreman did not return calls.

Proud FM applied to the federal broadcast regulator recently for permission to boost its signal from 50 watts to 128 watts, and asked listeners to support their plans. The station issued a statement last week refuting speculation that it was planning a format change.

“Ideas have been mentioned that the community has been duped, and that management intends to convert the station to a mainstream, straight format,” it said. “Rest assured these rumours are unfounded.

“Although it is understandable that there is confusion among listeners at this point, we are confident that once all the facts have been revealed to the public, (listeners) will be satisfied that there is no ulterior motive behind these staffing changes.”

thestar.com

Weather Update

ARTIST: Allan Sherman
TITLE: Hello Muddah, Hello Faddah (A Letter from Camp)
Lyrics and Chords


[Music from Ponchielli's "Dance of the Hours" from La Gioconda]

Hello Muddah, hello Faddah
Here I am at camp Grenada
Camp is very entertaining
And they say we'll have some fun if it stops raining

/ G - D - / D7 - G - / F#7 - Bm - / D A D7 - /

I went hiking with Joe Spivey
He developed poison ivy
You remember Leonard Skinner
He got ptomaine poisoning last night after dinner

/ " / " / B7 - C - / G D7 G - /

All the counsellors hate the waiters
And the lake has alligators
And the head coach wants no sissies
So he reads to us from something called Ulysses

Now I don't want this should scare ya'
But my bunkmate has malaria
You remember Jeffery Hardy
They're about to organize a searching party

Take me home, oh Muddah, Faddah
Take me home, I hate Grenada
Don't leave me out in the forest where
I might get eaten by a bear

/ Gm - Cm - / / Gm - Bb - / Eb - D7 - /

Take me home, I promise I will
Not make noise, or mess the house with
Other boys, oh please don't make me stay
I've been here one whole day

Dearest Fadduh, Darling Muddah
How's my precious little bruddah
Let me come home if you miss me
I would even let Aunt Bertha hug and kiss me

Wait a minute, it's stopped hailing
Guys are swimming, guys are sailing
Playing baseball, gee that's bettah
Muddah, Faddah kindly disregard this letter 

http://www.guntheranderson.com/v/data/aletterf.htm

Toronto Weather Report

And the Lord said unto Noah, Come thou and all thy house into the ark; for thee have I seen righteous before me in this generation. Oh oh.

Of every clean beast thou shalt take to thee by sevens, the male and his female: and of beasts that are not clean by two, the male and his female.

Of fowls also of the air by sevens, the male and the female; to keep seed alive upon the face of all the earth.

For yet seven days, and I will cause it to rain upon the earth forty days and forty nights (true to His word); and every living substance that I have made will I destroy from off the face of the earth. Oh oh.

And Noah did according unto all that the Lord commanded him. Well, wouldn't you?

And Noah was six hundred years old when the flood of waters was upon the earth. I ask myself -- how is that possible? And yet I know this is how old I feel some days. Perhaps it's a metaphor.

And Noah went in, and his sons, and his wife, and his sons' wives (name two!) with him, into the ark, because of the waters of the flood.

Of clean beasts, and of beasts that are not clean, and of fowls, and of every thing that creepeth upon the earth,

There went in two and two (inch by inch, row by row) unto Noah into the ark, the male and the female, as God had commanded Noah.

And it came to pass after seven days, that the waters of the flood were upon the earth.

In the six hundredth year of Noah's life, in the second month, the seventeenth day of the month (I think they have their dates wrong), the same day were all the fountains of the great deep broken up, and the windows of heaven were opened.

And the rain was upon the earth forty days and forty nights. and forty days and forty nights -- where would I be without my woman? Oh...sorry.

In the selfsame day entered Noah, and Shem, and Ham (great...now I'm hungry) , and Japheth, the sons of Noah, and Noah's wife, and the three wives of his sons with them, into the ark; they, and every beast after his kind, and all the cattle after their kind, and every creeping thing that creepeth upon the earth after his kind, and every fowl after his kind, every bird of every sort. And that includes Boots, Galoshes, Sneakers, Slippers, and Ralph. And Pooh Bear.

And they went in unto Noah into the ark, two and two of all flesh, wherein is the breath of life.

And they that went in, went in male and female of all flesh, as God had commanded him: and the Lord shut him in. Oh oh.

And the flood was forty days upon the earth; and the waters increased, and bare up the ark, and it was lift up above the earth.

And the waters prevailed, and were increased greatly upon the earth; and the ark went upon the face of the waters.

And the waters prevailed exceedingly upon the earth (they really know how to hammer home a point); and all the high hills, that were under the whole heaven, were covered.

Fifteen cubits upward did the waters prevail; and the mountains were covered. I want a piece of cheese.

And the waters prevailed upon the earth an hundred and fifty days.

News at 11.

Archived Friday, August 8, 2008 -- just to show you how much things don't change all that much (or something like that)

In The Mostly Gay News

I have too many opinions corrupting my brain:

PRIDE FM fires four of its radio hosts…wow! Deb Pearce’s Man Murray is worth a thousand shows alone. Despite the hue and cry, “We eat our own!” the station is run by all or mostly all (whatever that means) heterosexuals, and I am having a hard time imagining that the expulsions are not based in/on something punitive or arbitrary. Cam’ on!

CanWest is sold for over 1 billion dollars, with emphasis to be placed on a 25% increase in digital (plus advertising) output. I wonder what that means – if anything – to their employees.

Regis and Kelly are headed to PEI…not confirmed, but why would Kelly mention Anne of Green Gables in connection to her daughter if they are not headed to the island (or as my kids used to say – the oiland)?

Apparently, according to Newsweek and Ramin Setoodeh, gay actors are not believable as straight characters – tell that to Kevin Spacey! – or to the accused, Sean Hayes, who is starring as a heterosexual in the Broadway revival of Promises, Promises. Seems anyone can be a journalist these days. Go figure.

Today City Hall will vote on whether or not they will continue to partially fund Toronto’s Pride parade, depending on that parade’s Palestinian insistence against Israeli apartheid. (Frankly, I do not understand how Israeli apartheid has anything to do with LGBTQQT issues, but what do I know?)

Mia Michaels is returning to SYTYCD. ACHHHHHHHHHHH! That’s it for me. I can take Nigel (barely) and Adam (somewhat), but with Mary gone and Mia in, bye bye Flakeland…

Cannes is on and the Toronto Inside Out LGBT Film and Video Festival begins May 20th, with some of the best-looking films they (Toronto) have offered in their history (not that I’m partial or anything…but it’s true).

Tainted lettuce: “The federal Centers for Disease Control and Prevention says there are 23 confirmed cases of E. coli and seven probable cases connected to the tainted lettuce. That is up from 19 confirmed by CDC earlier this week.”

Big Mike leaves Idol as third runner-up. He has a powerful voice, but I wonder if he lost votes because he seems less devoted to his partner than he does to the microphone. Mike’s departure leaves Casey, Crystal and Lee to fight it out for the top three spots. Still, I am missing Siobhan Magnus, and cannot compare this year to the magnitude of last year’s Adam Lambert.

Tens of thousands flock to Portugal papal mass, which, if you ask me, reads direly, which, if you ask me, reads ambiguously, which, if you ask me, is what everyone is saying about Elena Kagan.

That said, and if I do say so myself (and who better?), I have found THE best hairstylist in Toronto, who shall remain nameless for purposes of this blog and covetousness.

And I said “mostly” – not completely.

Laura Schlessinger Is An Abomination

Dear Dr. Laura,

Thank you for doing so much to educate people regarding God's Law. I have learned a great deal from your show, and try to share that  knowledge with as many people as I can. When someone tries to defend the homosexual lifestyle [it’s always a lifestyle, never a life], for example, I simply remind them that Leviticus 18:22 clearly states it to be  an abomination ... End of debate. I do need some advice from you, however, regarding some other elements of God's Laws and how to follow them.

1. Leviticus 25:44 states that I may possess slaves, both male and  female, provided they are purchased from neighboring nations.
A friend of mine claims that this applies to Mexicans, but not  Canadians. Can you clarify?  Why can't I own Canadians?

2. I would like to sell my daughter into slavery, as sanctioned in  Exodus 21:7.  In this day and age, what do you think would be a fair price for her?

3. I know that I am allowed no contact with a woman while she is in  her period of Menstrual uncleanliness - Lev.15: 19-24. The problem is, how do I tell?  I have tried asking, but most women  take offense.

4. When I burn a bull on the altar as a sacrifice, I know it creates a pleasing odor for the Lord - Lev.1:9. The problem is my neighbors.  They claim the odor is not pleasing  to them. Should I smite them?

5. I have a neighbor who insists on working on the Sabbath. Exodus  35:2 clearly states he should be put to death. Am I morally obligated to kill him myself, or should I ask the  police to do it?

6. A friend of mine feels that even though eating shellfish is an  abomination, Lev. 11:10, it is a lesser abomination than  homosexuality. I don't agree. Can you settle this? Are there 'degrees'  of  abomination?

7. Lev. 21:20 states that I may not approach the altar of God if I  have a defect in my sight. I have to admit that I wear reading  glasses. Does my vision have to be 20/20, or is there some wiggle-room here?

8. Most of my male friends get their hair trimmed, including the  hair around their temples, even though this is expressly forbidden  by Lev. 19:27. How should they die?

9. I know from Lev. 11:6-8 that touching the skin of a dead pig  makes me unclean, but may I still play football if I wear gloves?

10. My uncle has a farm. He violates Lev.19:19 by planting two  different crops in the same field, as does his wife by wearing  garments made of two different kinds of thread (cotton/polyester blend).

He also tends to curse and blaspheme a lot. Is it really necessary that we go to all the trouble of getting the  whole town together to stone them? Lev.24:10-16. Couldn't we just burn them to death at a private family affair, like we do with people who sleep with their in-laws? (Lev. 20:14)

I know you have studied these things extensively and thus enjoy  considerable expertise in such matters, so I'm confident you can help.

Thank you again for reminding us that God's word is eternal and  unchanging.

Your adoring fan,

James M. Kauffman, Ed.D. Professor Emeritus, Dept. Of Curriculum, Instruction, and Special Education, University of Virginia

http://www.homorazzi.com/article/lisa-reimer-lesbian-teacher-vancouver-catholic-school-little-flower-academy-music-discrimination/

Down With Dora!

I don’t mind the hours and hours of questions. Truth be told, I quite like them. And I couldn’t care less when it comes to opening tab-top cans of Chef Boyardee spaghetti and meatballs. I would stand at the counter all day long and de-lid dozens, if that were a requirement.

And there’s nothing tedious about the day trips. We have been to the zoo so often, in fact, we are on a first-name basis with several of the animals. But the zoo is only one of many common haunts that include the Royal Ontario Museum, the Art Gallery of Ontario, Toronto Eaton Centre, the Bay Cafeteria (mmm…peaches and cottage cheese), the local park, the corner store, the back yard, the front porch, and so on.

And who doesn’t love an afternoon spent poring over Beatrix Potter or Thomas the Tank Engine, or listening to the sweet sounds of Max and Ruby or the woes of Franklin. I have so grown to love Franklin that even when I am home alone I have been known to dial up Kids on Demand and watch a few reruns of that petulant turtle as he makes his ponderous way toward puberty.

But woe…oh…woe is me when the big hand is on the twelve and the small hand on the two because oh…ice pick in the head…it’s time for Dora the Explorer.

Is there a cartoon character as shrill, didactic, rude, repetitious, strident, screaming, shrieking, pedantic, loud, annoying, headache-inducing as that wide-faced, heavily-banged, pie-eyed irritant who, for reasons that are so far beyond me I have given up seeking them out, seems to have enraptured the hearts of little girls all over the world?

As if she isn’t bad enough (except that she’s worse), I sit up here in the back room and listen as her offensive Dora-voice creeps into several other cartoon characters in such pervasive panoply I am liable to break my head open on a cement wall. Oh, for an earmuff.

Anyway, I would do anything I am asked for, and by, that adorable three-year-old, but I have to confess that I am not sure how much longer I can suffer the eardrum-shattering sounds of Dora the Explorer, her voice ringing through my head like giant clackers. In fact, I wish somebody would kill her. NOW.

We did it! We did it! Hurray! We did it!

A Song For My Mother

Lineage

I rifle through the pages, the paper thin and rippled

From the water in the river – you had hurled your book at me –

And I hear your high-pitched laughter calling out across the current

Spots of sun across your freckles through the branches of the trees.

 

The air is flecked with dust motes and the sound of shrill cicadas

And a butterfly flits past you and you glance across to me;

I can feel your childlike shyness and I love your girlish passion

For the simple things that counter what’s too hard for you to see.

 

I remember too, the quarrels, and the silly instigations,

The scattered separations and the phone calls fraught with tears;

The extended explanations and the sad exaggerations

And the dagger-fisted silence stabbing through the troubled years.

 

Was there ever time to conquer all the sorrows that you suffered?

Were there words enough to chase away the monumental ghosts?

Could there ever be an answer that would calm your anxious hours

In a world where hungry horror fed upon you, its glad host?

 

The pages faintly whisper as I ruffle through their edges

And I strain to catch the thing that they insist on telling me,

But all I hear above my breathing and the momentary murmur

Is your laughter calling out beneath the shadow of the trees.

 

Jennifer Coffey 

1998

Siobhan Magnus Voting Error?

From the Internet:

Siobhan Magnus Contestant from Season 9 of American Idol was cheated due to the phone number on her facebook page was the phone number of Aaron Kelly. FB id#266023071895 I think this gave Aaron Kelly most of Siobhan’s votes and this isn't fair.

The number was never changed even when we complained and told them to change it on her fan page.

If you agree this is unfair & if Siobhan Magnus is in the bottom & has to go home i think it should be a non-elimination week.

Sincerely,

CAPE COD

http://www.ipetitions.com/petition/savesiobhan/

You know, there are many worse and far less (and fewer) delightful people and things I could write about: kidney stones; lima beans; income tax; root canals; vicious neighbourhood dogs; Ernest Angley; fleas; bubble jet cartridges; George Bush; pollen; ringworm; hominy grits; Sarah Palin; Toronto’s ‘top two’ mayoral candidates; It’s Complicated; Judge Judy; hangnails; paint cans; Stephen Harper; the Bubonic Plague; tile grit…

Besides, who couldn’t love a girl who has Edward Gorey’s The Gashlycrumb Tinies tattooed on her arm?

Paula Abdul: M-I-S-S-I-N-G

I never thought I would write these words, especially not after posting the Paula and Simon K-I-S-S-I-N-G entry so many months ago.

I hate to be an egomaniac (okay, that’s not exactly true. I hate for anyone to see me as an egomaniac), but I received a lot of response to my Paula and Simon speculation and, I swear, it wasn’t a week later when Simon started moving away from Ms. Abdul and behaving as if he hadn’t been clamouring after her throughout the previous weeks. (Liar, liar pants on fire is what leapt into my head, although of course these are merely alleged thoughts, not real ones.)

Well, I have to tell you, I have lost most of my Idol hopes this year, having spent the last two months embarrassed and appalled by

• Simon’s rudeness toward Ellen DeGeneres, who has handled his childish behaviour with grace and equanimity
• Kara’s condescension and utter lack of appreciation for the fact that she is still a relative newcomer to the program
• The alignment between Simon and Kara, which seems to me to have been fostered by Simon as a way of a) deflecting his earlier and lavishly affectionate treatment toward Paula  b) winning the power struggle he seems to be having with Ellen DeGeneres, as he shows – as he needs to show – the world who is boss/king/supreme c) reducing the show’s popularity, which he seems to need to do so that his absence will be that much more greatly missed, and talked about, and so that his new show will bypass (usurp) Idol
• The way Simon treated, first, Siobhan Magnus (God help anyone who doesn’t agree with Simon Cowell or who dares have a mind of her own), and now Crystal Bowersox, who thank the same God seems perfectly indifferent to Simon’s (tendentious, in my view) comments. We all know that it doesn’t take a Svengali to manipulate the minds of thirteen-year-old voters (remember, too, who won last year – and who didn’t), but Simon has gone so far beyond the bounds of fairness that I don’t think anyone can put a stop to him
• And perhaps worst of all for me, the way Shania Twain made so subtly-but-not-so-subtly obvious that she was not the same kind of fan of Siobhan that she was of the others. I think, in fact, I saw Shania crying twice during performance hour, but my oh my, she certainly made it clear who she favoured and who (whom?) she did not. And if you think that didn’t affect the way viewers voted, guess again. Funny thing, too, but when Siobhan was performing that night, I said to Mary, “Wow, doesn’t she look like a younger Shania Twain?” My oh my oh my.

To hell in a handbasket is what an old friend of mine used to say about anything that was deteriorating faster than the speed of light, which is exactly how I feel about American Idol. And I wonder, in the end, how Kara DioGuardi will feel then – a little duped, perhaps? a little bit silly? (Although, as long as I never have to hear her call anyone else “honey…”)

In the meantime, I truly miss seeing and listening to the affectionate, occasionally teetering Paula Abdul, who would never make Ellen feel ostracized, who would always include Randy, who never once aspired to the ‘women against women’ ethos, and who genuinely hoped for the absolute best for every contestant. In fact, if you had asked me a year ago who I would rather have lunch with – Paula Abdul or Shania Twain – I would have said, in a heartbeat, Shania Twain. And if you had asked me if I would, or could, feel outright disdain for Simon Cowell, I would have laughed and said no.

Times have changed. People, clearly, have not. I miss Paula Abdul.

The Verdict Is In

The people whose opinions matter most – and that’s mostly because they have been my friends for a long time (although there are a few exceptions) – and they have been my friends for a long time because we understand and appreciate one another, and because they are kind – I can’t stand an absence of kindness. This world is a difficult enough place as it is, without making people feel bad by way of what we say, or don’t say – and I am happy, delighted and even occasionally – because the implication of too-much is problematic in terms of vanity and delusion – thrilled that they (as Sally Field once said, much to her inadvertent detriment) – really, really like it.

I hope this means that I will take this feeling, and this minor (because I didn’t write War and Peace, after all) success, and add it to my previous wins last year and the year before, and my novel, and start looking for an agent. I ought to know how to go about this – I have attended enough classes, workshops and seminars to have figured it out by now – but we shall see.

In the meantime, for anyone interested in an update – although I hesitate to put too much detail in a blog. I agree with the man on the radio who said yesterday that young women (for whom I do not want to set a bad example) are losing their identities because they are putting too much of an idea – a romantic idealized idea – of themselves out into the world by way of Facebook and Twitter…keeping nothing of their private lives for their private diaries or left to be scattered among the secrets of their friends – which is to say that today, who cares about those deluded girls (well, I do, but…) my son’s brain (the suspicious lump in his abdomen is no longer there) tumour has been labelled “grade 2 benign” (I say this with guarded optimism), and might be an indicator of another type of illness. He is supposed to go home today, most of the staples having been removed yesterday, and I am begging, across the airwaves, that he take life easy for the next few weeks.

In all of this there are grandchildren waiting to be visited, which I am eager and intend to pursue sooner than later. I wonder, too, if I am not the youngest grandmother in the history of grand-parenting. (Or as my father once said to me in response to my lament about my lack of talent in the sciences: “Without biology there would be no history.”) In fact, on the advice of my younger son’s wife, I might just have to write a book for all four of them. Mind you, does a person have to first be an actor in order to write a children’s book? Perhaps an agent could tell me.

In the meantime, there are all sorts of verdicts waiting to happen, but for the current little minute I am satisfied with what has come through today. Most things we cannot know, even from hour to hour, but I am happy to hang onto an idea of what seems possible and positive, and move forward from here.

“The jury has returned, Your Honour.”

http://www.thestar.com/entertainment/books/article/803239--short-story-contest-3rd-place-oracles

Sunday Star

Well, there it is in the Sunday Star. I can barely look at it. In fact, the closest I have managed is one couch, three cats and a lampshade away.

Funny where your head goes. Well, not your head, but the thinking part of your brain. (Which reminds me of that Alka Seltzer commercial with the hung-over cartoon man, rolling his head down his arm and back up again – which is redundant – back up again – but scans better...I think.)

My first thought was, “Oh no! It’s a mistake! People are going to read this and think, ‘Wow, what a mistake!’”

My second thought was (apparently enclosed by quotation marks), “So many people write convincingly, compellingly. How does anyone choose? And is this convincing? Is it compelling?” And then I shuddered as the resounding Falstaffian “Noooooooooooo”s echoed through my cavernous head.

My third thought was about Nino Ricci, who (like Don, comes from Leamington, and) spoke at Humber about the folly of publishing anything: the flukish-feel part of it and then the part that says you’re not only going to have to replicate the task, but improve on it.

My fourth thought, which I hope will speak to the nature of perspective and hardcore reality, was, “I hope we’re going to have oatmeal this morning” (stated to myself in such a way as to imagine that I hadn’t the wherewithal to take out a pot, boil some water, and toss in a half-cup of oats).

My fifth thought was, “It’s raining,” which, while to some people stands as a mere comment on the meteorological state of things, reads to me like an omen…roiling thunderclouds and particularly pointed bolts of lightning heading straight for the house sort of thing.

And my last thought, as I race off for the now-cooked “Oatmeal!” (does she have to yell?) is that, just for a little minute, somewhere between this chair and the bottom stair, I’m going to feel like a Sunday star.