Love may be blind but lust has a pretty sharp eye

My very own aphorism!

What does a sexy linguist wear on vacation?
A diphthong.

What's invisible and plays hockey?
A ghoulie.

Why was the cannibal expelled from school?
He was buttering up his teacher.

My favourite recent headline: Lawyers challenge Harper's same-sex position —CBC online

Today's thought: Nothing can bring you peace but yourself. —Ralph Waldo Emerson

Words words words

From Jann Arden's "Good Mother"

I’ve got money in my pocket
I like the color of my hair
I’ve got a friend who loves me
Got a house, I’ve got a car
I’ve got a good mother
and her voice is what keeps me here

Feet on ground
Heart in hand
Facing forward
Be yourself
I’ve never wanted anything so bad...so bad

Cardboard masks of all the people
I’ve been
thrown out with all the rusted, tangled
dented god-damned miseries
You could say I’m hard to hold
But if you knew me you’d know
I’ve got a good father
And his strength is what makes me cry

Feet on ground
Heart in hand
Facing forward
Be yourself
I’ve never wanted anything so bad...

***

I hope you are well.

L

Her Honour The Lieutenant Governor of Alberta
The Honourable Dr. Lois E. Hole, CM, AOE

or Lois...

I just finished making the Thank-you ad for the family to be published in the Journal and the Calgary Herald. It started out with a long-ish list of people who donated their time or services and add a longer list of people who went above and beyond to make the last few months something to be remembered.

In the end though, the ad holds nothing but the thanks of the family. There truly were too many people to thank, too many people who didn't want thanks, too many people that we didn't even know needed thanks. There were too many people touched by this event and by Lois' legacy. I think teh simple thank-you suffices.

I still get shivers when I do something involving Lois, I still discover new dimensions to how she touched my life, I still regret being unable to express the inexpressable and I really wish I had of asked her over for tea like I planned when we first bought the house.

Because you see, we all learn from our experiences, often without realization that learning has taken place. I learned along time ago from Lois' daughter-in-law that wealth is relative and the 3 bucks in my pocket is way more precious to another that it ever should be to me. I learned when I spent my first week working out of Lois' office that wealth and power aren't really synonymous with ambition, jealousy and unending moral compromise. I learned from working at Hole's that strength & confidence is actually one of the keys to charity. In the past month I have learned so much about myself, about the perceptions of truth that we all hold as a society and about the importance of strenght and the insidious eroding power of fear.

I learned a lot.

Kate, Lois' granddaughter, wrote a poem for her memorial which clarified some of what was racing around my mind.



...
I am not afraid to cry.
I will be strong of character
Strong of conviction
Strong of ethics and morals and values
And I will be strong in my beliefs.
...

We need to be strong and to be true and from this great things can come. To live up to Lois' legacy, we need not do great things, we need only to think, to learn, to listen and to do...


"and I said to myself, what a wonderful world..."

So this dyslexic walks into a bra...

I haven't felt much like writing, or anything else, lately. As you've probably heard, Her Honour Lois Hole, Alberta's Lieutenant Governor, died last week, and her death has hit me hard. She was an extraordinary woman, and I will miss her.

So, completely inappropriately, here's a melange of other stuff to amuse you. Perhaps after the memorial service on January 18 I'll be able to prepare a more fitting response to Lois' passing. In the meantime, if you want to read a beautiful tribute, click here.

And now, without further ado, my Friday blog.


• What do you call a fish with no eye? A fsh.


25 Most-Played Songs on My iTunes as of today

Tiny Thing, Jenson Interceptor
Fire Lake, Bob Seger and the Silver Bullet Band
I Drove All Night, Cyndi Lauper
All Hell For A Basement, Big Sugar
This Little Girl, Gary US Bonds
Without Me, Eminem
The Man Who Shot Liberty Valance, Gene Pitney
Crazy in Love (featuring Jay-Z), Beyoncé
I Did It for Love, Harlequin
Get Closer, Seals & Crofts
I'm Your Baby Tonight, Whitney Houston
Don't Stand So Close to Me, The Police
How Do I Make You, Linda Ronstadt
Pour Some Sugar on Me, Def Leppard
Wednesday, Tori Amos
Summer Breeze, Seals & Crofts
Girl, You'll Be a Woman Soon, Urge Overkill
Brand New Lover, Dead Or Alive
Summer Night City, ABBA
Welcome, Heather Nova
Billie Jean, Michael Jackson
Hush, Deep Purple
Steppin' Out, Joe Jackson
A Sorta Fairytale, Tori Amos
What You Waiting For?, Gwen Stefani

(please don't comment on my execrable taste: I already know!)


A new outlook for the new year, courtesy of Dear Abby

JUST FOR TODAY, I will live through this day only. I will not brood about yesterday or obsess about tomorrow. I will not set far-reaching goals or try to overcome all my problems at once. I know that I can do something for 24 hours that would overwhelm me if I had to keep it up for a lifetime.

JUST FOR TODAY, I will be happy. I will not dwell on thoughts that depress me. If my mind fills with clouds, I will chase them away and fill it with sunshine.

JUST FOR TODAY, I will accept what is. I will face reality. I will correct those things I can correct and accept those I cannot.


• Doctor to patient: "I've determined the cause of your illness. You have Tom Jones disease." Patient: "That sounds bad. Is it rare?" Doctor: "It's not unusual..."


Steinbeck's hometown to shut down libraries

SALINAS, CALIF. - The cash-strapped hometown of author John Steinbeck will close down its library system, including a branch named after the Nobel Prize-winning author of The Grapes of Wrath and Of Mice and Men, starting in early 2005.

Cutbacks in state funding, rapid growth of the city and rising heath-care costs have forced the city council of Salinas, Calif., to slash $8 million from its budget over the past year. It faces a similar cut for the 2005-2006 fiscal year.

Earlier this month, council voted to shut down its three libraries by spring 2005, after residents rejected in November a number of tax increases aimed at funding city services.

"The reality is that we live in a blue-collar community where people are struggling, and they're afraid of new taxes," Salinas Mayor Anna Caballero told the Associated Press. "I don't think they realized the enormity of what we were facing."

Steinbeck once described the region, which is dominated by produce farms, as "pastures of heaven" and memorialized the area in many of his works, including the 1952 novel East of Eden. Located about 160 kilometres south of San Francisco, Salinas also goes by the nickname "The Salad Bowl of the Nation."

A large number of Salinas's 150,000 residents are poor farmworkers and immigrants who regularly visit the three branches – The John Steinbeck Library, The Cesar Chavez Library and The El Gabilan Library – for books as well as for other resources, including citizenship information, literacy courses, English-as-a-second language material, after-school programs and to access the internet.

Library officials estimate that almost 2,000 people make use of the library system on an average day. The closings could leave Salinas the most populous U.S. city without a public library. About three dozen people employed at the libraries will lose their jobs.


• "If we have not quiet in our minds, outward comfort will do no more for us than a golden slipper on a gouty foot." —John Bunyan


L

New Year Notes...

We had a limited budget Xmas this year and it actually was a bit funner ..."fun funner funnest" ...

Actually we blew a tone of moola on climbing stuff including a year's pass to Virg. Went climbing and took some pics. But hopefully the investment will be worth it. I actually seem to be feeling a bit better as I get more exercise... who'd a thunk eh?

Doug's in... mostly. So far he hasn't complained but we'll see.

Anyway... just a note to start 2005.

Merry Christmas!

Just woke up, it seems, and suddenly it's Christmas. We're off to my aunt's house in a few moments, but here are some winter thoughts to entertain you in the meanwhile. I promise to write next week, when I will have hours and hours of free time.

Snow can wait
I forgot my mittens
Wipe my nose
Get my new boots on
I get a little warm in my heart
When I think of winter
I put my hand in my father's glove
I run off
Where the drifts get deeper
Sleeping Beauty trips me with a frown
I hear a voice
"'You must learn to stand up for yourself
'Cause I can't always be around"
He says, When you gonna make up your mind...

— from "Winter" by Tori Amos


December will be magic again
Don't miss the brightest star
Kiss under mistletoe
I want to hear you laugh
Don't let the mystery go now

— from "December will be magic again" by Kate Bush (who is promising a new album in 2005)

with stars in my eyes from watching the Christmas lights of Beverly,
Leslie

It's not OK to throw stones ... unless they're small ones

The CBC news reports: "Premier Ralph Klein says it should be OK to discriminate against gays and lesbians when it comes to marriage." A reporter quotes him saying, "I do feel that gays and lesbians ought not to be discriminated against in any other form other than marriage, because I think that marriage is a sacred thing that exists between a man and a woman."

Why why why why why why why why why do I live in this province?

(banging head repeatedly on desk)

L

C'est chouette!

Just a quick one today, because I must race off to a final exam and have piles and piles of marking still to get through. But there's always time to play!

1. One of my favourite words was recently the Merriam-Webster Word of the Day:

ludic \LOO-dik\ adjective: of, relating to, or characterized by play: playful

According to the lexicographer's notes, "Ludic is ultimately from the Latin noun ludus, which refers to a whole range of fun things — stage shows, games, sports, even jokes."

2. Looking for something to cheer you up? Check out this link. Reason number 431 to hire a professional professional designer. Sigh.

More as soon as sanity permits...

L

That terrible, terrible time of year

I know I owe many people letters, or at least notes, if not phone calls and visits. I'm sorry to be so pokey lately. I will try to write or call you soon! I promise!

In the meantime, here's something to provoke comments, perhaps, or at least amuse you. Have you been watching the storm between Naomi Klein and the US administration in the Guardian? Wowsers!


All those with agency are confronted by a choice. We can use that agency to secure for ourselves a safe and comfortable existence. We can use our life, that one unrepeatable product of four billion years of serendipity and evolution, to earn a little more, to save a little more, to win the approval of our bosses and the envy of our neighbours. We can place upon our walls those tombstones which the living erect to themselves: the framed certificates of their acceptance into what Erich Fromm has called the 'necrophiliac' world of wealth and power. We can, quite rationally, subordinate our desire for liberty to our desire for security.
Or we can use our agency to change the world, and, in changing it, to change ourselves. We will die and be forgotten with no less certainty than those who sought to fend off death by enhancing their material presence on the earth, but will live before we die through the extremes of feeling which comfort would deny us. — George Monbiot


Please forgive me my lapses! Surely you know by now they're always mindless and never mindful. Or something like that... Anyway ... Must go "attack a stack" now.

Flitting around the stars,
L

PS: And lest you think B is the only one to comment on climbing, I will chime in that 1) I was surprised we passed our lead checks, given that we both had to fall off the wall AGAIN and neither of us wanted to (somehow I doubt it was a good idea to re-read "Saturday Climbing" before taking my lead test); and 2) B placed third in the Novice category at the Rip and Grip on Friday, which was only his second time taking part in the event (I didn't actually place at all, but I was feeling wispy, etc.). So congratulate the man with the rippling shoulders and massive biceps when next you see him!

PPS: Oh ya — EARL! That's KATE BUSH, not PG, singing the "jeux sans frontiéres" BV on "Games Without Frontiers."

PPPS: Check out the iTunes store!!! Click here and then follow the "Download Here" link. I've already spent much more money than is seemly to disclose, almost all of it on eighties hits... Yes, there were hits in the eighties ... though you probably don't remember most of them ... How about "Geronimo's Cadillac" by Modern Talking? I bet I'm the only one among us who remembered that particular gem ... probably with good reason ... bear in mind my penchant for both sarcasm and cheez ...

PPPPS: Being unreasonably indulgent tonight ... Remind me to tell you my thoughts about pie.

And in the lead...
...it's Bouncing Bruce and Lead-foot Leslie, scrambling to the top!

Well we had our last climbing class and miracles of miracles we overcame age and adversity to actually get our Lead Checks. This means we are now qualified to dispense with rope dangling and just put our trust in the fact that enough knowledge got into our heads that we we won't die without a rope...

Our team:

Aspire

Well, there ya go... L and I officially graduated from VIRG last night. With our fancy new Aspire T's and official certificate we are good to go. Very very interesting experience and some great people. One of our instructors was Jake the owner and more awesome, high-energy entrepeneur you are never gonna meet. If you are interested go and climb...

We have our lead checks to to next week and then we are set for the indoor climbing world. I'd liketo try rock climbing but don't see it as a passion in the making...too much risk, too much effort. Then again maybe I need to challenge my fears a bit more... you never know.

Those of you who know Leslie should come climbing with us cause she will rock your world with her bodacious belaying, brazen bouldering, terrific top roping and liquid leading. Seriously, it is amazing how much we developed in such a short time. It is also intersting how much a sport based on fear and trust can affect your outlook. Time was dangling from a rope was a real nail-biter... now its dyno'n for the jug whilst upside down with no hope of making it... I still get nervous the first time I let go of the wall but it passes. Actually the fear of falling is much less that the fear of letting go. I will posta few pictures when I remember to bring the camera along...

Walls
On other fronts, I learn more and more what a curse it is to be famous (not me of course). Everyone is yur best friend and and the pressure of keeping the world at large in its place isolates you more and more-- building a wall just begets more and bigger walls until you find yourself alone surrounded by impermeable layers... It seems to be unavoidable no matter what your inclinations.

Sort of makes you scratch your head because generally people who become famous are the ones that like people, want an audience or succeed because the play well with others...
Gives you an appreciation for the Princess Di's of the cosmos. Personally I like the recluse idea; Rapunzel had it good until that dang prince came along.

In conclusion...
Well must trundle: remember to doubleback and do your checks...always!

Falling in love again...

with Chaucer! Do pay attention. From Troilus and Criseyde:

She was nat with the leste of hir stature,
But alle hir limes so wel answeringe
Weren to womanhode, that creature
Was neuer lasse mannish in seminge.
And eek the pure wyse of here meninge
Shewede wel, that men might in hir gesse
Honour, estat, and wommanly noblesse.

...

For ay the ner the fyr, the hotter is,
This, trowe I, knoweth al this companye.
But were he fer or neer, I dar seye this,
By night or day, for wisdom or folye,
His herte, which that is his brestes ye,
Was ay on hir, that fairer was to sene
Than ever were Eleyne or Polixene.

Eek of the day ther passed nought an houre
That to him-self a thousand tyme he seyde,
`Good goodly, to whom serve I and laboure,
As I best can, now wolde god, Criseyde,
Ye wolden on me rewe er that I deyde!
My dere herte, allas! myn hele and hewe
And lyf is lost, but ye wole on me rewe.'


...so there!

L

Bloggy Bits

Time for more merry-go-round the language tree, courtesy of the goldarnedest grammar teacher north of the Sturgeon River (at least at the time of writing).

Thought 1: Censorship reflects a society's lack of confidence in itself. — Potter Stewart, former associate justice of the US Supreme Court

Thought 2: It is better to debate a question without settling it, than to settle it without debate. — Joseph Joubert

• According to This magazine, on each day that you live in Edmonton, you inhale the equivalent of 32 cigarettes, based on the mean NOx content of city air. That's slightly better than the air in Calgary or Vancouver (equivalent of 38 and 34 cigarettes a day, respectively), but much, much worse than Hamilton, with the equivalent of only 18 cigarettes a day.

• A CBC comedian gave me my favourite one-liner of the last twelve months: "You've heard of J.Lo? Well, my wife has a bottom like Jell-O." Hmm. And now, this just in...

NEW YORK (Reuters) - J.Lo and Beyonce can take another bow. The booty-shaking stars have shaped the newest generation of mannequins, with hundreds of well-rounded plastic backsides appearing in shop windows across New York.

Bootylicious figures clad in tight low-rise jeans have spilled from the city's street fashion stores into more established labels.
"It's absolutely the trend," said Dwight Critchfield, creative director for mannequin firm Goldsmith. "These mannequins look great, and there is a real sex appeal about them." Am I reading this correctly? Does this man actually find mannequins sexually appealing?

The recent pop culture fixation on large bottoms has been around since at least 1992, when rapper Sir Mix-a-Lot scored a hit with "Baby Got Back." But some credit the recent booty shakin' efforts of shapely stars Jennifer Lopez and Beyonce for the fresh emphasis on bigger and rounder posteriors, coupled with the fashion explosion of the Brazilian-style low-rise jeans.

"J.Lo was the first to stress that women shouldn't be afraid to show their curves, and the popularity of rap made that shape more acceptable," said Critchfield. "And it is about these low-riding jeans looking good on a sexy, tight fit."

The company launched a "Sex" mannequin with "a larger booty and body" tailored for fashion label Express and for stores carrying lower-end trend clothing, said Critchfield.

On the juniors' floor of Macy's in Manhattan, Guess jeans and streetwear label EckoRed display jeans on a fuller rear-end bottom-half mannequin, known as a pants form, opposite a large poster of J.Lo and her clothing label, while a DJ mixes hip hop and reggae to teen and 20-something shoppers.
EckoRed launched the new mannequin — called the J.Lo butt form — at the store almost two years ago and sales have since tripled.

"It is a serious sociological trend that is positive for retailers and customers in that the tyranny of the undernourished perfect model is over," said Rich Rollison of Lifestyle Forms and Display, which designed the pants form mannequin. Other companies also are developing more realistic mannequins with larger posteriors in maternity and plus sizes. US label Lane Bryant, which caters to plus sizes 14 to 28, is launching a more voluptuous full-body mannequin across its 250 stores after a successful test run in New York.

"It originated from urban ethnic street wear, but it has transcended that," Rollison said. "Now you are going to see it projected in more urban markets and it will get bigger." Here's where pronouns can be fun: does Rollison's it here refer to the "serious sociological trend" identified several lines above, or to J.Lo's bottom? Or perhaps just her ego?

Too cool to wear jeans,
L

So much to read, so little time...

Another installment in my condensed news of the world... Did you know stories like this are called brite? Well, now you do.


NEW YORK (Reuters) - New York officials were red-faced on Friday after they discovered that clothing ads on city buses that appeared to promote reading suggested a love of books could be rewarded with oral sex.

The advertisements that ran on about 200 buses across the city in recent months carried posters displaying a suggestively posed woman in hot pants kneeling among a pile of books beside the snappy slogan "Read Books, Get Brain."

What unhip, unsuspecting local transportation officials did not know was that "get brain" is street slang for oral sex.

The ads -- from hip-hop clothing maker Akademiks, which intended the double-entendre -- was stripped off New York buses on Friday after transportation officials discovered the street slang meaning.

Metropolitan Transit Authority spokesman Tom Kelly condemned the "vulgar street phrases" in the racy ads he said were "demeaning women."

"To me and I believe to everyone else, while it was done by a clothing line, it would give the impression that it was also promoting reading and literacy," Kelly told Reuters.

"It's easy enough to understand how that would get by based upon someone not knowing the expression."

A spokesman for the New York-based clothing maker noted the ad campaign had run since September and "we hadn't had any complaints at all."

New York officials may not be the only ones caught out.

Akademiks also placed the ads on buses and bus shelters in Miami, Chicago, Los Angeles, Detroit, San Francisco and Philadelphia, the company spokesman said.

Kelly, who said he was his 60s, said that after he was tipped to the hidden meaning of the phrase on Thursday he ran a test among some young MTA workers.

"I went downstairs to the mailroom and showed some of the young guys a copy of the ad," he said. "I was watching their faces and they all start smirking.

"Apparently it's on all the music, in music that's how they refer to it," Kelly said. "I didn't know anything about it and I'm sure the people that approved the ad didn't."

Kelly said it was sad that "you can't take things at face value any longer," adding, "We'll have to learn from experience before we accept ads." — Larry Fine

ex tempore
the mechanism of power are such that the more the power
the less the power means

the curve is against you, faster, harder - more more more
the slower and slower and slower you gain

in pursuit and never catching
the goal
keeps moving
on...

I think I like this side of the fence (it's easier- isn't it?)

Just a note.
A ground fall isn't unheard of... Actually we've heard of it often, repeatedly and incessantly. It also has many synonyms. I think its because they don't want us to try it, but I'm beginning to think its because they think its inevitable... ouch.

Climbing is very interesting. We do so at Virg. Eventiually I will add pictures but instead look at our newfie ones...

ciao for now

bruce

Tuesday's Thought

Flying through the ether, landing softly by your side...


"By words the mind is winged." — Aristophanes


Incidentally, from the online Webster's, the following etymology:

ether
Function: noun
Etymology: Middle English, from Latin aether, from Greek aither, from aithein to ignite, blaze; akin to Old English Ad pyre (SEE edify ... Etymology: Middle English, from Middle French edifier, from Late Latin & Latin; Late Latin aedificare to instruct or improve spiritually, from Latin, to erect a house, from aedes temple, house; akin to Old English Ad funeral pyre, Latin aestas summer...)

Oh for a less hypertextual brain!

with all my hert / heorte / herza
L

What did you get for your money's worth?*

Things I learned in Newfoundland

(the truncated version ... since it's been two months since I first promised to get to this)

• That in Grand Banks your day always starts with waking up.

• That the song lyric isn't "I's the guy".

• That, despite claims to the contrary, the moose in Newfoundland are mythical.

• That lighthouse keepers, like hatters, were made mad by mercury.

• That you shouldn't park a rental car on things that burn.

a buzzing buzzing bee with no voice,
L

* Asked of me by the customs agent in Fortune, Newfoundland, upon our return from St-Pierre. My answer was "A corkscrew, a commemorative spoon, a T-shirt, and ... some groceries" (including chocolate-chip-cookie cereal). Not exactly a stellar moment for international trade.

For my grandfather

W.W. Lowrie, 1912–2004

Farewell to Nova Scotia

Good-bye to Vestochk-Shotlandii, to you have a swim along the coast permission seabound to your dark and dull mountains at the moment when I remotely far on the will it is into air by ocean brimy to which you not you podnimayete never sigh or desire for me?

The sun placed in the West of bird kishes on each shaft entire, is which nature it pokazalas' inclined but there not ostalo by any rest for me

I afflict so that it would begin from my native soil that I afflict so that would leave my comrades all and my parents, that, I was which it considered so that it would be gamine so to the road and my bonny, bonny which I so much fell in love with

The drums of pobili and by the wars of potrevozhili my zvonoki of captain, I must it obeyed thus good-bye, good-bye with
charm Of vestochk-Shotlandii for his place of takings earlier it tripled, I will be the remote, distant party

I imeyu of 3 brothers and they on the rest to their handles fold in their centers but the poor and usual right seaman in proportion to me necessarily it threw news in air in the dark and blue sea


** This is the text of a traditional song babelized by translating the English lyrics to French, representing my maternal grandmother; and then translating the text back to English, representing my mother (and mother tongue); then translating the resulting English text into Russian, representing my paternal heritage; and finally the Russian text has been translated back into English, representing me.

Goodbye, goodbye, goodbye my love, goodbye.

Tonight I Have Officially Lost It

Good evening, and welcome to my mind. It's a weighty thing, my mind, on this cavernous October night, and so I'd like to share the burden with others. Read on if you dare.


A. My end-of-pennies campaign

How many times have you tossed a penny down the mall just to watch it skitter or thrown a penny out the window when you received it with your drive-through change? Many people perform these and other unusual behaviours to rid themselves of pennies, the laughably anachronistic coin. And when was the last time you stooped to pick up a penny? Perhaps, with the average hourly wage for a Canadian worker at $17.28 (Statistics Canada, April 2004), bending to retrieve a single cent simply isn't worth your time?

Pennies are silly in an age when the price is of the average Canadian home is $217,498 (2003, Canadian Real Estate Association, latest available figure). Minting pennies each year is a dreadful waste of money and resources, a harm to our environment, and a now-irrelevant support of the market apparatus. My campaign of four simply steps will do away with one of the biggest unnecessary costs in Canadian society.

1. Everyone turns in their pennies. Think about how many pennies you have stashed somewhere in your home: in your piggy bank, in your mad-money jar, in your wallets and purses, in your glove box, in the utility drawer, etc., etc., etc. OK? According to some informal estimates, the average Canadian has ready access to about $3.00 in pennies (obviously some of us have a few more than others). Imagine the economic benefits if all thirty-odd million of us suddenly donated all our pennies to the charities of our choice. This injection of some $100-million into the economy would have a substantial, and reverberating, effect.

2. The government rolls back the GST to five percent. Many people have campaigned to get rid of the GST entirely, but I don't believe that's on the government's agenda at this time, despite the fact that the GST is a regressive tax that unfairly burdens lower-income earners. A five-percent tax potentially eliminates the need for pennies, provided we gain the cooperation of one important party...

3. Retailers end the ridiculous practice of pricing by pennies. Can anyone explain the economic difference between $4.99 and $5.00? Right: there is no economic difference, just a certain psychological appeal. Well, the year-on-year savings to taxpayers offered by my end-of-pennies plan should more than pacify the right-wing capitalists among us who actually believe we're entitled to save a penny or two on the backs of third-world workers whenever we buy new shoes, shirts, sporting goods, incense holders, or superpacks of will-o-crisp at Wal-Mart. Pul-eeze!

4. The Canadian mint ceases to make new pennies. According to documents tabled in the House of Commons, since at least the mid 1990s (possibly earlier), a penny has cost more than its face value to mint, leading the Royal Canadian Mint to reduce the copper content of the Canadian penny and introduce other substances in its place. There are certainly enough pennies already in circulation to see us through the change to a decimal system. Within a year or two, pennies will disappear quietly from common coinage, like two-dollar bills and fifty-cent pieces: still acceptable as currency but rather unusual. Collectors can make their fortunes collecting pennies, and the rest of us will be relieved of the burden of this antiquated copper.

I know my campaign is hardly unique. Americans have been having this argument for years, and here's how one commentator summed up the situation in the US:

The Government's experience with the metric system and the Anthony dollar suggests that the public must be convinced that there is a pressing need to change anything which has become embroidered into the social and commercial fabric of society. Despite careful examination of the various arguments supporting the elimination of the penny, we cannot identify any benefits associated with price rounding and the cessation of penny production.

Aargh! It's time for Canada to be a leader and stop the insanity! Won't it be nice to know that those who buy and sell really are nickel-and-diming us? And can you tell that my heritage is only one-quarter Scottish?

The penny: its time has passed.


B. My end-of-daylight-saving-time campaign

Speaking of time: did you realize that most Canadians spend more months living on Daylight Saving Time than on so-called Standard Time? It's true: since 1986, North Americans (in those jurisdictions that follow Daylight Saving Time) set their clocks ahead one hour on the first Sunday in April and turn them back an hour on the last Sunday in October, giving us seven months on "daylight" time and only five on "standard" time.

The situation is even weirder in Europe. In the European Union, "Summer Time" begins on the last Sunday in March and ends on the last Sunday in October — creating a one-week lag between the two western continents. And Russian clocks are two hours ahead of Standard Time during the summer months, to take advantage of the early sunrise and lingering twilight. These discrepancies must pose some mathematical puzzles for international businesses!

Daylight Time has been with us consistently for almost a century, although the concept has its roots in the 1700s; it has been neither uniformly applied nor uniformly well received. The U.S. Department of Transportation, which is responsible for overseeing Daylight Time in the United States, promotes the adoption of Daylight Time for three reasons:

1. Daylight Saving Time saves energy.
2. Daylight Saving Time saves lives and prevents traffic injuries. (This point is contested by some agencies.)
3. Daylight Saving Time prevents crime.

These are all good reasons to adopt Daylight Time universally — that is, to get rid of the habit of swapping back to Standard Time for five months of the year. Since it would hardly affect the Majority World (areas of the globe between the Tropics of Cancer and Capricorn, which receive roughly the same number of daylight hours year-round), I propose an international movement to shift the clocks forward by one hour globally.

Opposition to extend Daylight Time rests with the farming lobby, which argues that farmers' needs, production, and local conditions vary too widely to accept uniform application, and some religious groups (also with a few people who have sleep disorders or trouble setting their VCRs). The compromise position, of permanently setting clocks ahead thirty minutes, has been ruled out because of astronomers' preference that noon reflect the highest point of the sun in a time zone (although, given the geographical span of time zones, this preference is fairly arbitrary).

Perhaps a change would be the way to celebrate the centennial of Daylight Time, in 2016. I'm up for a campaign; how about you?

(In case you're interested in even more details about Daylight Time, here and here are two informative, if fairly similar, sites.)


C. The loss of Jacques Derrida

The intellectual world is a darker, sadder place today.

As CBC.ca put it: "World-renowned thinker Jacques Derrida, who helped found the school of philosophy known as deconstructionism, has died, French officials said Saturday [October 9]. Derrida was 74."

OK, so some of you are mourning other news, such as the death of Christopher Reeve or the announcement that Melissa Etheridge has breast cancer, or a personal loss, such as strikes us all. And these are equally terrible events, in their way. But I believe our world, caught up in its techno-positivistic late-capitalism tensions of the demands for ever-increasing production exceeding the capacity of sustainable consumption, needs more thinkers, more philosophers, more critics, and Derrida was one of the greatest.

Sure, maybe you can't define deconstructionism and maybe you wouldn't recognize a postmodernist if she tweaked your nose, but the world you know today was shaped by Derrida and other intellectuals in the late 1960s. Our society doesn't value intellectual labour very highly, but if we did, Derrida would have been one of our most valuable citizens.

Shortly before his death Derrida said, "Learning to live should also mean learning to die, taking into account and accepting the absolute nature of mortality with neither resurrection nor redemption." A person should keep this advice in mind, especially around family holidays.

I, for one, will miss Derrida.


And this just in...

VANCOUVER - A giant squid surprised a fisherman in British Columbia, worrying scientists who say its appearance could be another sign of global climate change.

Last Saturday, Goody Gudmundseth hoped to net a couple of salmon off the coast of Vancouver Island in Port Renfrew. Instead, when he felt a tug on the line, Gudmundseth knew he'd hooked into something else.

"When the rod went, I thought we got a really big chunk of weed or something," recalled Gudmundseth. "It was acting really different than usual."

The squid weighs 20 kilograms and measures about 1.5 metres long.

Scientists call it the Humboldt or giant flying squid [Dosidicus giagas]. They said it prefers warm water, which means Gudmundseth's catch is likely a long way from its home in the Gulf of California. The find is fuelling speculation about climate change.

"It may have come up with a ton of warm water or it might be that they're making their way north comfortably now," said Kelly Sendall, senior collection manager at the Royal BC Museum.

Gudmundseth almost decided to keep the squid for bait or to eat it as calamari. The squid has now become a reference specimen for the species in BC, Sendall said.

Another Humboldt squid was captured last month off the coast of Alaska. Scientists don't know whether the creatures' appearance will be a short-term one, or what effect they may have on the ecosystem.

Courtesy of CBC News Online Staff


Well, that's it for me. Thank you, thank you very much!

L

Leslie's Language Round-Up

An irregular feature about language in our time


From the "There's no defence like a good defence" File...

Library mural littered with misspellings

LIVERMORE, Calif. (AP) - It didn't take a nuclear physicist to realize changes were needed after a $40,000 ceramic mural was unveiled outside the city's new library and everyone could see the misspelled names of Einstein, Shakespeare, Vincent Van Gogh, Michelangelo and seven other historical figures.

"Our library director is very frustrated that she has this lovely new library and it has all these misspellings in front," said city councilwoman Lorraine Dietrich, one of three council members who voted Monday to authorize paying another $6,000, plus expenses, to fly the artist up from Florida to fix the errors.

Reached at her Miami studio Wednesday, Maria Alquilar said she is willing to fix the brightly coloured five-metre-wide circular work but offered no apologies for the 11 misspellings among the 175 names.

"The importance of this work is that it is supposed to unite people," Alquilar said.

"They are denigrating my work and the purpose of this work."

Alquilar said creating and installing the work took a lot of time and money and the mural sat at her Santa Cruz, Calif., studio for two years until the city cleared the way for its installation.

There were plenty of people around during the installation who could and should have seen the missing and misplaced letters, she said.

"Even though I was on my hands and knees laying the installation out, I didn't see it," she said.

The mistakes wouldn't even register with a true artisan, Alquilar said.

"The people that are into humanities and are into Blake's concept of enlightenment, they are not looking at the words," she said.

"In their mind, the words register correctly."


Editorial Comment: The ability to form words is not writing
Too few people have the ability or time to work out exactly what they want to say and then say it. They fall back on boilerplate text, shop-worn clichés, or inarticulate paraphrases of their real meaning. That isn't a matter of correct grammar, good punctuation or impressive vocabulary, and curing it will need more than style guides or diatribes. — Michael Quinion


Entertainment: Pink Words
Excerpted from Pink's fabulous single "God Is a DJ"

(Verse 1)
I've been the girl with her skirt pulled high
Been the outcast never running with mascara eyes
Now I see the world as a candy store
With a cigarette smile, saying things you can't ignore
Like mommy I love you
Daddy I hate you
Brother I need you
Lover hey fuck you
I can see everything here with my third eye
Like the blue in the sky

(Verse 2)
I've been the girl, middle finger in the air
Unaffected by rumors, the truth: I don't care
So open your mouth and stick out your tongue
You might as well let go, you can't take back what you've done
So find a new lifestyle
A reason to smile
Look for Nirvana
Under the strobe lights
Sequins and sex dreams
You whisper to me
There's no reason to cry


Births and Deaths
Noted poet and fascist T. S. (Thomas Stearns) Eliot was born on September 26, 1888 in St. Louis, Missouri. In his 1935 essay "Religion and Literature" he reflects, "It is not enough to understand what we ought to be, unless we know what we are; and we do not understand what we are, unless we know what we ought to be" — demonstrating in this observation both chiasmus and paradox. How rhetorical!
(with information from chiasmus.com)


and finally...

Fashion News from the Personification Department
Excerpted from Sarah Slean's much-anticipated single "Lucky Me"

(Verse 1)
Science wears a new suit
To his coffee toast and eggs
But he has to skip the stairs now
Because of two broken legs
Whine whine I cannot climb
Everytime's the same
I'd be more inclined to help him
If he could remember my name

(Verse 2)
Faith can't fill the dance hall
'Cause her powers have declined
But at the beauty pageant
She will always take the prize
Light light Easter white
Roll her in the dirt
When it comes time for kneeling
She'll say "You go first"


Pictures at 11! : P