Blogging at the Big Dog

Post: 17 Word count: 9324 Words to go: 90,676

Okay, it looks like I’m going to have to adjust my expectations. Less than three weeks into the 2010 Blog Project, I realize it is just unrealistic to think I am going to be able to do this every day, at least not to the standard to which I hold myself.

When I made the 365-day resolution, I created a few rules for myself, which I did not publish. For example, I was never going to cop out with a single line post such as: “I don’t feel like blogging today,” which would have technically counted; I wouldn’t publish without doing my very best to make sure it was grammatically correct, factually accurate, fair and balanced; and I would refrain from stream-of-consciousness ramblings in favour of coherent, editorial-style columns.

Finally, I set a goal of writing an average of 500 words a day.

Alas, as so many resolutions go, that bar is much too high. Perhaps that is why so long ago I decided not to make New Year resolutions. If I were making a living at this or had some kind of motivation for concrete gain other than the satisfaction of succeeding, it may be a different story. If thousands of people were reading in daily expectation of my profundity, I would likely be compelled to a new level of discipline.

Unfortunately, I have far too many other things on my plate and I must admit I have failed in just 21 days. Sigh.

All is not lost, however. The exercise did prove to me that I can at least keep the thing going. As such, I have modified the goal to keep up Blogging at the Big Dog with a modified goal of one year and 100,000 words.

Day: 16 Days to go: 349 Word count: 9038

It is heartening to see such an outpouring of compassion for Haitians in their hour of dire need. One thing that is completely lacking in the coverage of Haiti is analysis of why the need is so great. Why is an event like the earthquake of a week ago particularly devastating to a country such as Haiti?

Most people in Canada now know that it is because Haiti is incredibly poor, or, more accurately, 97 per cent of the population of Haiti is incredibly poor. In fact, Haiti is the poorest country in the Western Hemisphere, except, of course, for the three per cent of the elite who are incredibly rich.

Obviously, the immediate priority is relief, but if we really want to help in the long run, we need to focus on the question of why Haiti is so poor in the first place.

Prior to the “revolution” of 1804, Haiti was the richest colony in the world, “the jewel of the Antilles,” as it was known. The main reason it was so rich was because it was almost entirely populated by slaves. Then, as now, all of the wealth serviced rich overlords, just different rich overlords. The “revolution” made Haiti the second “free” country in the western world and the first black republic.

Unfortunately for the now “free” slaves, their former oppressors in France and other slaving nations including the United States (the first “free” country in the western world) would not recognize the new regime or trade with it. Also unfortunate for the “former” slaves was that the practice of forced, cheap labour did not leave with the French, it merely got passed on to the emerging Haitian elite. The slaves were no longer owned, per se, but how different were their lives, really?

This is classic human behaviour. If you’ve ever read Orwell’s Animal Farm you know what I’m talking about. The oppressed becomes the oppressor. What is amazing is that basically a handful of families descended from the offspring of French owners and black slaves have managed to keep this going for more than 200 years. Or perhaps not. They did have the help of the French who kept the country indebted from 1838 to 1922 in exchange for the recognition the native Haitian elite so desperately sought and, who else?, the United States, which occupied the country from 1915 to 1938 and dominated it economically thereafter propping up corrupt regime after corrupt regime. It may not currently be the intention of Americans to create misery among the Haitian masses, but its continuing policy of controlling the region through supporting friendly governments, no matter how corrupt, is legendary.

Also legendary, one of the worst human rights records anywhere on the planet. Two words: Tonton Macoute.

Of course, historical root causes are only part of the problem. The present institutionalized oppression in Haiti is perhaps unmatched. This includes, but is not limited to: the education system, which actively ensures the majority of the population remains illiterate and ignorant; lack of infrastructure, which prevents the development of a local economy; lack of access to potable water and adequate health care, which ensures the masses are incapable of providing for their basic daily needs much less getting ahead; and an export-exclusive agricultural regime that services only the needs of the few, not the many.

All of these realities exacerbate natural disasters such as the recent earthquake. Unfortunately the world’s attention is fleeting. What will happen to Haiti once the debris is cleared, supply lines are restored and the cameras are packed up and moved on to the next emergency?

People are very good at feeling sorry for people in need and even pitching in to help them get over an exceptionally bad situation, but we are not so good at identifying root causes and correcting long-term malaise. In other words, we are very good at treating symptoms, not so good at curing diseases.

The horrific human toll of the present situation is nothing compared to the past 200 years or the next 100 if we don’t provide the means by which the Haitian population can finally overcome centuries of oppression.

This is particularly pertinent for North Americans. We spend billions, even trillions, fighting wars in far away places like Afghanistan and Iraq ostensibly to uplift the people and promote democracy. Haiti is in our own backyard. If we know so little about and can’t help our own neighbours, what hope do we have of understanding and influencing the complex machinations of Asia and the near East?

Day: 15 Days to go: 350 Word count: 8284

Okay, I realize I’ve missed a couple of days, but I’m not taking the rap for it. For some unknown reason, I have not been able to login to the site since Sunday.

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Sometimes I think we take for granted how much our lives have changed. It is obviously because our lives don’t progress by decades or years or even months. They pass second by second and minute by minute.

And because it is so gradual we rarely really think about it unless confronted by some adult who was born in the 1990s who asks some bizarre question like, “what kind of computer did you have when you a kid?” To which, of course, the answer is, “I had a bicycle… and when confronted by a blank stare, “that’s a pedal-powered vehicle that you ride on,” followed by a 20-minute diatribe about walking 20 miles uphill both ways to school in the snow etc.

Ultimately, though, we aren’t so different than our much younger contemporaries except perhaps in our capacity to embrace, adopt and adapt to the new technologies. I noticed it the other day when I was taking off to go to the grocery store and realized it had been a while since I had used a grocery list. In the old days, I would dutifully ask my lovely bride what she wanted or needed at the store. Now I just text her when I get to there.

“What kind of cereal do you want?”

“What have they got?”

“Hang on.”

Take a photo of the cereal aisle with my camera. Send.

“Honey Nut Cheerios.”

And it all happened without us even noticing it.

On the weekend we found some old VHS tapes. On Monday afternoon, I took them into the local electronics store. Within a couple of hours I had them on DVD. I took them home, downloaded a free ripper off the web, converted to a web format, edited it with the built-in video editing software on my computer and by midnight it was uploaded to YouTube, automatically linked to my Facebook and Twitter accounts and available for the whole world to see.

Think about it. When we were kids, we had to beg, borrow or steal a Super-8 camera, carefully plan out the scenes and cuts, film the sucker, take it to a developer, wait (with bated breath that it wouldn’t come back over or under-exposed), physically cut the film and splice it back together to edit, find a venue where someone would let us screen it, draw up posters, go somewhere to have them printed or photocopied, run all over town putting them up and then hope somebody showed up to see it.

At least now if nobody ever watches it, I’m only out a few hours. Of course, the down side is, because of how little effort is involved, instead of being the only show in town you’re one of billions being uploaded every day.

Despite the technology and ease of using it, however, the quality isn’t necessarily any better. I will admit my first foray into the YouTubiverse is somewhat crude, but it’s the Tim Hortons Song, which really deserves to go viral, if I do say so myself. Which I do… say so… myself, that is.

Help me out and check it out: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=-ptQ5i4WPcQ

Day: 14 Days to go: 351 Word count: 7733

To screw up is human. To cover up, rationalize, justify or otherwise ignore our screw ups is even more human.

I was going to ask the question: when are our public health officials going to admit they screwed up in their overreaction to swine flu, but the answer, of course, is never.

They will claim that it was precisely because of their execution of the pandemic plan that it was not a critical and widespread calamity. Of course to do that, they will have to completely ignore the fact that by the time they got the vaccination rolled out, the season had already peaked. They will also have to ignore the fact that despite the media hysteria and the Public Health Agency of Canada’s (PHAC) massive advertising campaign that fewer than 45% of Canadians have lined up to get their shot (according to PHAC’s own stats as of Jan 6).

And finally, they will have to ignore that the bottom line is this strain of flu was never the threat they made it out to be. In total, through two waves of swine flu, there have been less than 3,000 deaths worldwide. That is fewer than Canada alone experiences every year from the everyday ordinary seasonal flu. And most nations did not have nearly the comprehensive vaccination program we did.

Neverthless, David Butler-Jones, Canada’s top doc, continues to throw good money after bad by flogging the vaccine on TV commericals instead of coming clean and apologizing for the fiasco. This is not my first quibble with Dr. Butler-Jones. As keynote speaker at a media awards ceremony I attended in 2008, he had the nerve to suggest journalists were partners in getting the Health Canada message out. We are not partners with any organization to promote its message. We are, or at least we are supposed to be, an objective lens through which the public can draw its own conclusions.

Neverthless, the doc got his wish in the early days of the vaccination program as virtually every news organization in the country blanketed their respective mediums with wall-to-wall coverage without much investigation of whether it was a significant threat or not.

It is kind of a sad reflection on the credibility of both PHAC and the media that less than half the population bought the hype.

What we did buy, without our consent, was a program MacLeans Magazine estimates will have cost us more than $2 billion by the time the dust settles.

Some people have suggested to me that even if the program saved a handful of lives (which it undoubtedly did) it has been worth it. That is a really nice sentiment, but it flies in the face of our reality, doesn’t it? If that were the case, why do we not invest more heavily in seasonal flu prevention, poverty reduction, drug and alcohol rehabilitation, cancer research, or traffic safety to name just a few things that claim many more lives than swine flu ever will.

And how many lives were lost because, for a couple of months, other aspects of the health system ground to a virtual standstill to accommodate flu clinics? We will probably never know.

What does swine flu have that these others do not? Aside from a scary name (I have to wonder whether any of this would have happened if we called it Teddy Bear Flu), it has not been normalized. We simply accept there will be a certain number of casualties from these other causes.

And now that we have cried wolf and blown the budget, what if something really nasty comes along? Will we be able to mount another response like this and will people take it seriously? Somehow, I doubt it.

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Today I want to add a new feature to Blogging at the Big Dog. It will be my pet peeves section. It won’t be a daily feature, but I will add them as they strike me.

Pet Peeve #1: How advertising is ruining the English language

This is a general complaint I have about the disappearing adverb inspired by an ad in which the announcer suggested people should “eat healthier.” If she were saying, our useless crap is better for your health than our competitor’s useless crap, “healthier” would be appropriate. But since she is modifying the verb “to eat,” we need an adverb not an adjective. “People should eat more healthily.”

Advertisers are not the only guilty parties. Sports announcers are the worst. It seems as if they have never even heard of an adverb despite the fact most are college grads. I have even heard journalists, who really ought to know better, do this on occasion.

Of course, it is understandable that professional wordsmiths would have difficulty with the concept of adverbs and adjectives because it is a Masters level subject. No wait, it’s undergraduate. No, well, at least late high school, right? NO! It is Grade 3. Third grade. We are eight or nine years old when we learn about this stuff. Sheesh!

Day: 12 Days to go: 353 Word count: 6917

I woke in a panic this morning. It is really the only way I can describe the feeling. A runaway train of anxiety driven by my own existence.

Periodically, for as long as I can remember, I have been haunted by this uncontrollable spiral of helplessness in the face of the impossibility of me.

Whether you believe in the Big Bang; or God; or that God created the Big Bang; or that you’re a battery in a computer-generated reality; or you’re a figment of the imagination of some unimaginable being; or that the entire universe and everything in it only exists in your own head; at some point you have to reconcile that nothing comes from nothing, therefore if there is anything there has always been something, which is, of course, impossible.

Yet here I am, trying once again, in vain, to force a square peg into a round hole.

The vast majority of the time, I just accept I exist and go about my business finding shit to do do and other stuff to think about and tricking myself into thinking it matters.

I think maybe that’s why we attach so much importance to so many unimportant things; to distract ourselves from the fact that maybe nothing matters. Maybe Hitler was right. Maybe Charles Manson is sane. Maybe the Yankees actually do deserve to win the World Series. Maybe Sarah Palin isn’t a complete idiot.

I think maybe that’s why we invent answers for questions that are unanswerable; to grasp some sense of control over the uncontrollable.

I think it is definitely why we keep pushing forward to discover answers to questions that are answerable; to keep the dream alive that at some point we will be able to understand the answer to the only question that truly matters: why?

When this helplessness befalls me, I usually feel very alone in the world. I know this cannot be. The fact that billions of people the world over pray every day tells me they must also be in doubt of their own existence. At the very least René Descartes must have, at some point, felt that way to have been inspired to write his famous line “I think, therefore I am” or perhaps more accurately, “I think, therefore I exist.”

Unfortunately, it is usually small comfort that I am not alone, but I always find some way to get over it.

This morning I got up and made bacon and eggs.

Somehow that made Hitler wrong, Manson insane, the Yankees undeserving and Palin stupid again.

Thank God, or the Big Bang, or at the very least pigs and chickens for bacon and eggs.

Day: 11 Days to go: 354 Word Count: 6470

As I get ready to embark on yet another career adventure, ticking off another province on the list of places I have lived, I can’t help reflecting on the long and winding road that got me here.

I have done more jobs in my 46 years than most families can claim, but the funny thing is, the road could have been very short and very straight had I listened to some sound advice 29 years ago.

When I was seventeen and on my way to becoming homeless and starving, my dad gave me a book called What Colour is Your Parachute? The basic idea was to read the book, complete the questionaire and, voila, it would tell you what your ideal profession was.

Although I viewed the exercise with a bucketful of skepticism, I dutifully went through the questionaire. The result would be moot, of course, because I already knew the colour of my parachute. It was the rainbow of poetry, painting and music. What can I say? I was a starry-eyed, dreamy-headed teenager.

The questionaire had a different take, though. It said I should be a newspaper reporter. Ha! Like that would ever happen. I could see myself being a famous novelist, maybe even a screenwriter, but journalism? That was beneath me.

Apparently, being a grocery bagger, gas jockey, vacuum cleaner salesman, insulation installer, roof truss maker and a number of other less than glamourous jobs were not beneath me, however. But it was okay because they were the means to the end, the hardscrabble dues you had to pay in support of your art.

Unfortunately, I just wasn’t a very good writer, but I was collecting a warehouse full of bitter angst that was sure to come in handy eventually.

Somewhere along the line, idealism did give way to practicality and perhaps at that time I might have revisited the journalism idea. But alas, I was still not ready to sell out the dream, as if somehow being a working writer would taint my creative purity. What an ass I was.

Some people think everything happens for a reason. I’m not so sure, but had I not been such an ass, I would not have gone on to get my Bachelor of Science degree, which would not have led to my years in the computer business, which would not have instigated a mid-life crisis that finally brought me full circle.

What is the colour of my parachute? It’s the colour of ink on newsprint.

I was recently chatting with a friend who was also considering a return to the newspaper business. She said: “I miss breathing newsroom air.” I knew exactly what she was talking about.

If my life was a Star Trek movie, Spock would be saying to me. “If I may be so bold, it was a mistake for you to accept that administrator position. Writing for newspapers is your first, best destiny.”

If my life was Apocalypse Now, I would be walking through the press room saying, “I love the smell of newsprint in the morning.”

I am a newspaper man, through and through, but I could not, would not get there in a direct way. And I think I’m a better journalist because of it.

Day: 10   Days to go: 355   Word count: 5926

“Loser!”

“I know you are, but what am I?”

“Nanny, nanny, boo, boo.”

And so the daycare antics begin… sigh… again. In Saskatchewan, following a smattering of name-calling directed toward Premier Brad Wall by Dwayne Lingenfelter, the Saskatchewan Party started running ads demeaning the new NDP leader. It was eerily reminiscent of the federal Conservative Party’s “Just Visiting” campaign against Grit top dog Michael Ignatieff.

With all the talk of proroguing Parliament until after the Olympics, here’s a thought: Can we just prorogue it permanently? And while we’re at it, how about doing the same with the provincial legislatures?

I jest, you may mock, but seriously, what do we get from the bozos we’re electing that we couldn’t get from just having a professional bureaucracy and a functional judicial system? A policy vacuum, you say? What could be more vacuous than the policy we are currently getting? If we really need new policies, maybe we could put out a tender then vote on the bids using Facebook or Twitter.

Okay, I will admit that perhaps I haven’t really thought through all the details of the new paradigm (there’s a blast from the 90s, eh?), but all I’m saying is there has to be a better way of doing things. Maybe a decade or two of anarchy would finally give us the impetus to usher in a period of real democratic reform.

I watched a documentary on chimpanzees today. While our divergence from our closest living relatives is extraordinary, indeed, I still see a lot of them in us and vice versa (self-interest in case you haven’t clued in).

As a corollary¹, the outpouring of cooperation and compassion over the earthquake in Haiti today, something that truly does separate us from chimps, is truly commendable.

But why, so often, does it take a horrific natural disaster to bring out the best in us?

¹You can quibble with me on the use of corollary here if you must, but I submit the one proposition does naturally follow the other in the sense that the exception proves the rule.

Day: 9    Days to go: 356    Word count: 5585

I knew when I embarked on this effort to blog for 365 days in a row, I probably would not get away with not doubling up on some subjects. I honestly didn’t think it would happen in the first two weeks, however.

Nevertheless, what tickles my fancy today is a couple of observations about the Olympics. Granted, some might say my first foray into the subject was a thinly-veiled excuse to talk about evolution and had very little indeed to do with the Olympics. They would be right. Hey, it’s not easy to do this every single day without an objective editor on hand. Try it.

Some time ago, I wrote a column about how it was not good enough for Canada to simply accept being a bronze medal nation. For a long time, Canada has been like the Fokker family. “Hmm, I didn’t even know they had ribbons for 10th place.” And it is all fine and good to build up every person’s self esteem, but ultimately we want to win and there’s nothing wrong with that.

Let’s not be Americans about it, though. I am talking, of course, about the “Do you believe?” campaign. These ads are really starting to get on my nerves. Yes, we believe. Yes, we want our kids to do well in Vancouver and Whistler. But bellicose blustering about it? Well, it’s just not very Canadian, is it? Not to mention the pressure it puts on our athletes. Provide the proper funding, cheer them on, but let their coaches kick their asses up onto the podium.

Far more disturbing are the attempts by the City of Vancouver and over-zealous VANOC officials to shut down any dissent on the subject. I won’t go into all the details, but there is a decent website to check out, http://2010legalobserver.wordpress.com/censorship-gallery, with a map and everything. 

I will admit some of the examples on the site are kind of lame and in most cases the city and/or Olympic committee have backed down, but these are only the ones we’ve actually heard about. What about all the voices that will never be heard because people just don’t have the balls to stand up to the pressure of big money, big government and the thought police, not to mention the real police? And if there is nothing to it, why is the BC Civil Liberties Association involved?

It gets way more insidious than that. I personally was refused publication of an article in an Olympic-themed magazine not because it said anything bad about the Olympics, but just because it might offend somebody. Everything offends somebody. Personally, I’m offended by anything that reads more like a Glee Club press release than objective reporting.

Then there’s the social pressure. How many people are holding back because all their maple leaf mitten-wearing friends and neighbours are just so excited about the Games coming to Canada.

And what about CTV? As official broadcaster of the Olympics, how much pressure is on the news department to put a positive spin on the Games and overlook the blemishes. I am not saying they are, it’s a very professional news organization, but I guarantee there have been some heated “discussions” about it.

Ultimately, if the Games can’t stand up to the criticism of a few relatively powerless journalists, artists and poets, why are we hosting them? We are not China. We believe we are as free as a society gets. So why would we not celebrate that fact by letting anyone who wants to have their say, say it.

Personally, I am a huge fan of the Olympics, but I am an even bigger fan of free speech and even the faintest whiff of censorship just makes me want to find something negative to say.

Now I’ve said it. Hopefully VANOC doesn’t have any sway over blog.com.

Go Canada!

Day: 8   Days to go: 357   Word count: 4936

If there is a God, and He is a god who cares about what human beings are doing, he must look down on the Westboro Baptist Church of Topeka, Kansas (aka, godhatesfags.com) and think, “hmmm, maybe I took this free will thing a bit too far.”

If you are not familiar with this bizarre cult that puts the whack in whack job, it is a hate group that claims to be Primitive Baptist. But even Primitive Baptists, not exactly the most progressive thinkers themselves, want nothing to do with the Westboro group.

And even though the “church” claims to be run by the only person on the planet who truly understands scripture, it has only managed to gather about 70 people to its cause, the vast majority of whom are the indentured progeny of its founder Fred Phelps.

According to Phelps, God hates fags. And because God hates fags, he hates fag enablers. And who are these fag enablers? EVERYONE ELSE IN THE WORLD except his tiny flock of twisted hate-mongers who may just have well issued directly from the loins of Hell. T0 that end they have made it their mission to let everyone else in the world know that God hates them and they are going to burn in hell.

This mission includes picketing at the funerals of soldiers, victims of hate crimes and virtually anyone who meets an untimely death to let family members and friends of the deceased know that their loved one died due to God’s wrath and is burning in hell.

Presumably this means that if any of Phelp’s family members were to, say, get hit by a bus, the “church” would assume that person was a fag enabler and applaud her burning in hell. In fact, one of Phelp’s granddaughters said as much in a documentary by Louis Theroux.

Also in that documentary, the same granddaughter expressed what seemed to be genuine confusion as to why people treat her and her family so badly considering they have never done any violence to anyone (I truly feel sorry for the children in this group).

No, you just showed up at a funeral of a dead soldier with placards reading: Fag Troops; Thank God for 9/11; God Hates America; and worse and told a grieving mother her daughter is burning in hell. No violence in that.

Normally, this kind of thing really scares me, but I honestly believe this group will be gone within a generation of Phelp’s death, which I hope is imminent and happens by a bolt of lightning.

In the meantime, a couple of things occur to me. These people somehow make money. They send their kids to public schools. They talk on cellphones, take commercial airline flights and drive cars. Unless they are completely self-sufficient and living off the land, doesn’t that make them fag enablers, too?

I’m shocked to think there could be hypocrisy in religion, but if that’s the case, God must hate godhatesfags.com.

Day: 7 Days to go: 358 Word count: 4436

A weird thing happened the other day. I was sitting watching the BCS National Championship game. No, that’s not weird, I always watch the BCS National Championship game.

I was watching the game and for the briefest instance I smelled my Grandpa’s gnocci. More accurately probably, it was mostly the tomato sauce he always made with the gnocci, but when we refer to it in “the family” it is assumed the two are inseparable.

Virtually everyone I’ve related this anecdote to said Grandpa was visiting me. I will defer to them on the potential spirituality of what I will hereafter refer to as the “incident” because I’m not inclined to draw supernatural conclusions from odd occurances.

Don’t get me wrong, it was weird. Sensory experts say our most accurate memory sense is smell. Usually the smell triggers the memory, though, not the other way around. But there was nothing about the circumstances of the incident that could have been mistaken for the smell of Grandpa’s gnocci. Neverthless, it wasn’t really like a memory of a smell, I actually perceived I was smelling it.

As much as I’d like to think Grandpa was actually visiting, more likely, as in the case of deja vu, a subconscious memory tricked my conscious senses into experiencing something that wasn’t actually there.

Far be it from me, however, to pass up an opportunity to rekindle the gnocci passion regardless of the nature of the inspiration.

Here’s the thing about old family recipes, it’s not really about the food. From the moment I started browning the meat, it was as if the family was there. Not just Grandpa, but everyone who has ever shared the gnocci experience.

And as I rolled out the thin dowels of pasta, flour flying everywhere, I was transported to the kitchen at 1140 Garnet and the calm and comfort of the chaos in that iconic place. As those scrumptious little potato dumplings bobbed and weaved in the boiling water, I was embraced by extemporaneous anticipation transcending generations.

Ultimately, it didn’t matter if Grandpa was there in spirit or just in memory, he was there as sure as the aroma of the simmering sauce.

And, as always, it was delicious.