The Rest Is Silence

...hmm.

In other news, it's done. Before midnight on the date of the deadline. Off to defence with fingers crossed.

L

Have You Bleached Your Underarms Today?

B often reminds me that we live in a highly decadent society on the edge of decay. As a socialist, however, I try to maintain a more hopeful outlook, believing in some remnant of the social good and humankind's historical fumbling toward progress.

That remnant hope became just a little more tattered last night when I watched an advertisement for deodorant that masks the signs of underarm discoloration. Seriously.

Admittedly, we live a society that believes in bleaching teeth and other ... parts ... of the anatomy, lest these parts be socially or intimately offensive. And we believe that surgery can correct cosmetic issues with faces, breasts, bottoms, and other regions.

But underarms? Seriously?!?

Perhaps one's underarms do in fact become discoloured over time. So what? Must humans be infinitely perfect? Must we appear as ageless and timeless at fifty as we did as newborns?

Apparently the people who sell deodorant feel we don't have enough social concerns: now we must also worry about (in addition to revealing that our healthy, functioning bodies sweat) underarm discoloration. Of course. We need another rhetorically constructed socio-physical anxiety. Toe cleavage and unibrows and cankles and cellulite and curly/straight hair just don't move us sufficiently today, I guess.

After seeing this ad, I have to say that I agree with B. If a multinational corporation feels it should invest its advertising revenues in the made-up issue of underarm discolouring, then this society really is on the downward slope.

L

Now that's a review!

As I was explaining to my book-editing students the other day, Canadian book-reviewing practices are quite anemic, mostly because most well-known writers and reviewers know each other (or have friends who know each other), have encountered each other on panels and juries, or are afraid of burning bridges on someone they may work with in the future. Thus we end up with terribly pabulum-like reviews much of the time.

But this review of a film shows us what's really possible. An excellent review — and a movie to avoid, I suspect!

L

Karma...

... has got a mean left hook.

Gob-smacked,
L

Stats, Damn Stats, and Lies

According to a recent study of 1,000 Alberta men, some men still believe it's OK to hit a woman if she makes a man angry enough, and quite a few more think that by acting or dressing in a certain way, a woman is inviting rape.

Srsly. I think the sands of time are running backward. Is it 2012 or 1962?

See one article on this study here (click on the word "here" for the link).

Sigh and sigh again.
L

Bugs Bunny understands

The Winter 2012 term has been, so far, quite unpleasant. To put it in perspective, I'll use the words of Bugs Bunny (here illustrating the rhetorical scheme of apophasis): "I won't say it hasn't been a pleasure, because it hasn't."

Here's to an improvement after Reading Week. Or, failing that, here's to a lot of drinking ahead.

L

Nouns and verbs

Somewhere in the twisted jungle of my mind, the children's song "No More Monkeys Jumping on the Bed!" morphed into "No More Monsters Lying in the Bed!". Huh. Apparently someone had a disturbed childhood.

L

Metrical patterns are cool!

These are the final nine lines from a sestina. Who doesn't adore poetry?

No matter what may come
give me this: that all this time I stood here
ignored to death and loved you while you let
every chance go; say your glances at me
suggested almost anything but love;
say I know you cried in bed, poor you.

Believe in love. You know that I am here
to let you loose. Here is my flesh for you
who may abide with me till kingdom come.

— Miller Williams, "Love in the Cathedral"

(In case you don't get it, read the final word of each line for the poem's integral message.)

iTunes' Big Surprise

Although I live in a culture obsessed with size, it would seem that bigness is a limited song-writing concept. Or at least it is in my iTunes library, which features only the following "big" titles:

"Big Bang Baby" (Emm Gryner covering Stone Temple Pilots)
"Big Big Love" (k.d. lang)
"Big Bird in a Small Cage" (Patrick Watson)
"Big Boned Gal" (k.d. lang)
"Big Bottom" (Egg covering Spinal Tap)
"The Big Bright Green Pleasure Machine" (Simon and Garfunkel)
"Big Fun" (Inner City)
"Big League" (Tom Cochrane and Red Rider)
"Big Log" (Robert Plant)
"Big Love" (Fleetwood Mac)
"Big River" (Rosanne Cash)
"Big Shot" (Billy Joel)
"The Big Sky" (Kate Bush)
"Big Stripey Lie" (Kate Bush)
"Big Time" (Peter Gabriel)
"Big Wheel" (Tori Amos)
"Big Yellow Taxi" (Joni Mitchall)
... and the comparative "Bigger Man" (Tom Cochrane) and superlative "Biggest Part of Me" (Ambrosia).

Interestingly, for the sake of comparison, I own only the following:

"Small Blue Thing" (Suzanne Vega)
"A Small Dose" (Minstrels on Speed)
"Small Illusion" (Jorane)
"Small Town" (John Mellencamp)
"Smalltown Boy" (Bronsky Beat")

and

"Tiny Angels" (Roger Whittaker)
"Tiny Dancer" (Elton John)
"Tiny Grief Song" (Sinead O'Connor)
"Tiny Thing" (Jensen Interceptor).

Unexpected. But now I've discovered more title themes to consider...

Here's to Sunday!
L

204

Have begun 2012 with the aim of continuing to count the books I read. Week one has been fabulous: a book a day.

How does she do it?!?

The secret is volume.

No, no, the secret is variety. I read poetry, drama, young-adult novels, and mysteries in addition to all that serious scholarly stuff.

OK, but 200+ books in a year means an average of four a week.

Yup.

When you're an insomniac, you have a lot of time for reading.

Happy new year, one and all!

L
(204 is the number of books I read in 2011; it does not include most of the graphic novels or any of the children's picture books)

Quite Quarrelsome

It's been months since I've posted. Too much else to write, I suppose. In the absence of a real post, here's a placeholder.

Top 25 Most Played Songs on my Desktop iTunes

1. "Dirrrty" — Christina Aguilera
2. "Map of Tasmania" – Amanda Palmer
3. "Tiny Thing" — Jenson Interceptor
4. "Feel It Again" — Honeymoon Suite
5. "Firecracker" — Frazey Ford
6. "Gold Guns Girls" — Metric
7. "I Did It for Love" — Harlequin
8. "TikTok" — Ke$ha
9. "Burning Bridge" — Kate Bush
10. "Hidin' from Love" — Bryan Adams
11. "Pour ton sourire" — Jorane
12. "Girls with Guns" — Tommy Shaw
13. "Black on Black" — Dalbello
14. "Caramelldansen" — Caramell
15. "Evacuate the Dance Floor" — Cascada
16. "Silver Blue" — Roxette
17. "When I Get You Alone" — Thicke
18. "Whiskey in the Jar" — The Limeliters
19. "The Adventure" — Angels and Airwaves
20. "What the Water Gave Me" — Florence + the Machine
21. "Superstitious Feeling" — Harlequin
22. "Hazy Shade of Winter" — The Bangles
23. "Just Dance" — Lady Gaga
24. "How Do I Make You" — Linda Ronstadt
25. "Summer Breeze" — Seals and Crofts

Despite that I reset my play counts a couple of years ago, I see some continuity in my listening habits.

Currently, I'm listening over and over (on streaming audio) to "Snowed in at Wheeler Street" from the forthcoming Kate Bush album 50 Words for Snow — can't wait for the disc to arrive!

Poetry finds us

Back to school: week two. Sometimes, ironically, words are what sustains me.

Raise an unexpected glass to long, cold winters
and sweet, hot summers and the beautiful confusion
of the times in between.
To the unexpected drenching rain that leaves you soaking
wet and smiling breathless.

— Taylor Mali from "Silver-Lined Heart"

White Daisy Days

... quickly heading for another one of those autumns. You know, I already know how this one turns out. Couldn't we do something else instead?

Sigh.

L

The Radio in My Head

You can't hear it, but I'm listening to Heather Nova's South album over and over and over again. Great summer music!

Trudging toward the conclusion,
L

OMG, Another Sequel

A review of Sisterhood Everlasting: A Novel by Ann Brashares, published by Random House, 2011

After reading Ann Brashares' first novel for adults, the dreadful The Last Summer (of You and Me), I told myself I would not read her work again. Last week, when I saw Brashares has published a new volume in the Sisterhood of the Traveling Pants series, I relented, thinking I would enjoy a light summer novel. My mistake.

The characters of the Sisterhood are now twenty-nine years old. Once again, as in the earlier books in the series, they have lost touch with one another. Carmen is an actress based in New York. Lena teaches art in Rhode Island. Bridget remains restless after years of doing nothing in San Francisco. At last Tibby initiates a get-together in Greece, where a death occurs. The plot then focusses on grieving for and reassembling the Sisterhood.

There are so many things wrong with Sisterhood Everlasting that reviewing the book seems almost futile. The protagonists (sections are narrated from various characters' perspectives) are still as vapid and self-absorbed as they were as teens — apparently they all failed to mature in the decade since their last book together. Other characters appear only to advance the plot. Eric, Brian, Effie, Jones, Eudoxia, and various walk-ons are flat, wooden, undeveloped, and sadly uninteresting. Unlike many other writers, Brashares rarely digresses to provide back story for the people Carmen, Lena, and Bridget interact with or to flesh out the details of the Sisterhood's world. Her narrative camera follows strictly her main characters, reducing the story to something like paper dolls marching across various cardboard backdrops. As writing technique, it's unsatisfying.

Although they are staring down thirty, the members of the Sisterhood still act like girls. Carmen and Bridget are unwilling to commit to, or break up with, the men in their lives (with whom they have sophomoric, simplistic relationships), and Lena has not moved beyond Kostos, her long-ago summer love. Only Tibby has set down roots — in Australia — and only unintentionally. These spoiled, privileged girls flit around the globe carelessly, apparently without having to worry about work, bills or rent, other friends and family, or the larger world. As in her previous work for adult readers, Brashares treats sexuality coyly, off stage — an ironic choice, given the plot. Characters' emotional arcs are self-centred and adolescent; apparently for Brashares, adulthood doesn't arrive until one's thirties. None of these characters are likable as women in their late twenties, and the story of their coming together again is stupidly implausible. (And haven't any of these characters heard of Facebook?)

The novel concludes, as have all previous books in the series, with the Sisterhood's renewed commitment to love one another and themselves. Brashares has also introduced at least two plot points that will keep the series alive. For some readers that may be good news, but this book is my last journey with the Sisterhood. The hackneyed prose, the overburdened sentimentality, and the Oprah-style affirmations are simply too cloying for my taste.

The novel is ostensibly intended for adults but reveals the genealogy of a weak strain of YA books. It is formulaic, superficial, and trite. It is also likely to be a summer 2011 bestseller, as the readers of the original Traveling Pants books may follow the author into chick-lit lite. Even as beach reading, Sisterhood Everlasting is a throwaway effort, not worth your time.

When is a contract not a contract?

For the last few days, Premier Ed Stelmach has been blaming teachers — and the Alberta Teachers' Association in particular — for the coming layoffs in schools. According to Stelmach, it is teachers' fault that the government is unable to fund schools appropriately; he is quoted in the Edmonton Journal this morning saying that this year's contractual increase is "'unachievable' for a government struggling financially." Clearly, Mr Stelmach hopes the electorate has a very short memory.

Mr Stelmach's tactics are the worst form of political deceit. The contractual increase is an artifact of the contract that Mr Stelmach initiated in the early days of his leadership. The ATA didn't seek the contract; rather, the government approached the ATA with a deal that would guarantee the province five years of labour peace in education. It was the province, too, that offered the terms tying salary to cost of living; the province also agreed to cover the teachers' unfunded pension liability in exchange for a five-year deal.

In retrospect, such generosity was surely too good to be true. The ATA should have predicted that the government would fail to honour the terms of its agreement. The Alberta government doesn't honour its citizens; why would it honour a contract?

But for Mr Stelmach to blame teachers themselves for the state of the Alberta economy — arguably still the strongest economy in Canada despite the recession — is particularly galling. Mr Stelmach is supposed to be the leader — is supposed to set the agenda for the province. It is by his government's choice that we "cannot afford" basic social rights like health care and education. Perhaps if Mr Stelmach had had the guts to demand an appropriate royalty rate on behalf of the citizens of Alberta, we could "afford" to pay for schools and hospitals. Or perhaps if the Alberta government didn't subsidize tar sands development as richly as it does, sufficient funds could be allocated to citizens' needs — rather than corporations' needs.

Blaming teachers for a mess of the government's own making — for a contract for which Mr Stelmach himself is directly responsible — is flagrantly dishonest. In doing so, Premier Stelmach dishonours himself, his office, and the citizens of Alberta.

Excellent book title!

This is the best book title I've seen in ages:

Hold Me Closer, Necromancer by Lish McBride.

Apparently a YA novel; sounds like urban fantasy perhaps. Will have to check this out — all based on the title.

Thus, the moral of today's story is that a good title sells books. (Or at least encourages readers to take books out of the library.)

Fondly remembered and deeply missed

"He was a bright man who made bad puns and verbal quips, injected trivia, big words and foreign phrases into his teaching, joked about popular culture, politics, the world around us. No one like this had entered my orbit before, and I was transfixed by both his intelligence and his obvious love for his profession." — from an assignment for EDSE 504, July 2006

There are no words.

L

How Social Media Will Contribute to the Erasure of History

Have you ever looked up one of your favourite musicians or actors on Wikipedia? Was that person ever involved in any sort of criminal activity (for instance, spousal battering)? If so, chances are the celebrity's PR people are actively monitoring the Internet to ensure that any references to that criminal activity, whether proved in court or not, are absent.

Say you were a relatively important Seventies folk-rock singer. Say you were involved in the 1980s with a beautiful, talented, well-known actress. Say your relationship ended and subsequently allegations of domestic assault arose. Could it be possible that you, formerly important musician, have enough resources to sue the allegations out of existence, and to ensure that these allegations (now "retracted") stay extinguished? Even to the point of ensuring that your PR handlers tell journalists foolishly seeking to interview you NOT to raise "The Thing"?

Well, ha, Mr Formerly Famous Musician. Ha. I may like your music, but you personally just may be a waste of skin as a human being.

The Insomnia Defence

The Best Health blog reports today that "A study done by business school professors and published in the Academy of Management Journal that looked at the behaviour [of] sleep-deprived students and nurses found that those who lacked sufficient shut-eye increased bad behaviour such as rudeness, inappropriate responses and even stealing."

This explains a great deal, I think!

Sleepy and surly,
L