[Photo
by Jay Arnold]<<Stuff I Done Wrote
Mon, 02 Dec 2002
He is the stockboy that gathers the carts
In the parking lot, left here and there
By customers shopping for artichoke hearts
And products for styling their hair.
He is the peon who pushes a train
Of stray shopping carts to the door,
As bolts of sheer apathy shoot from his brain
And harmlessly bounce off the store.
He is the poor humble cretin who treks
Across this uneven expanse
Of wind-blasted asphalt, while brushing the specks
Of shopping-cart grease from his pants.
Yet he, though he be lowly, mean, and servile,
In trousers not recently pressed,
Was once just a stockboy at work in the aisle,
No different from all of the rest.
Perhaps you have seen him at work, on his knees,
His pride, more or less, still in place,
Hunched over a crate of Cheez Whiz processed cheese,
A slightly pained look on his face.
"But where is that slightly pained look now?" you ask,
As he trundles a stray cart inside,
No clues on his face, an expressionless mask.
"What happened," you think, "to his pride?"
Don't worry; although much diminished it be,
He still keeps it near to his heart;
His pride sits upright, like a small child of three,
In the basket of that shopping cart.
God versus the aliens.
Saw "Signs" finally. First off, those were the wussiest alien invaders
ever. What, they can't break out of a locked pantry? They can be defeated
by one guy with a baseball bat and a glass of water? Moe's board-with-a-nail
from "The Simpsons" looks pretty sophisticated by comparison. ("Someday
they'll make a baseball bat and a glass of water so large it will destroy
them all! Bwa-ha-ha-ha!") And even if these aliens somehow manage to trap
you in the cellar, don't worry - just jamming a pickaxe under the doorknob
is enough to foil them completely. The zombies in "Night of the Living
Dead" had an easier time breaking into the old farmhouse, and they could
barely walk upright, let alone pilot a spacecraft across the cosmos and
coordinate a massive global invasion.
But okay, whatever, the aliens were pretty scary anyway, so long as
you only glimpsed them out of the corner of your eye, and so long as you
didn't dwell on how stupid they were, being allergic to water and all,
not to put on wetsuits before visiting the planet that's two-thirds ocean.
But what's really scary is the nature of God's involvement in repelling
this particularly feeble invasion.
I guess the first and most obvious question to ask is why, if God was
so interested in protecting this particular farm family from the aliens,
he didn't just take the much simpler step, being omnipotent and all, of
preventing the aliens from invading earth in the first place. Or, assuming
that his omnipotency has been exaggerated, at least of striking the aliens
down with a thunderbolt, as even a second-rate deity like Odin would have
done. Causing Mel Gibson's wife to be bisected by a speeding truck months
before, just so that her dying words could eventually trigger the actions
that would save his asthmatic son, seems not only needlessly complex, but
also downright cruel. If God finds it necessary, for whatever reason, only
to interpose himself into human events obliquely, could he not have arranged
for a pizza delivery boy to show up at the climactic moment, bearing the
requisite message? "Here's that extra-large pepperoni, sir, and by the
way, tell your brother to Keep On Swingin', wink-wink." A dead wife for
a living child might seem like a fair trade-off for Mel Gibson, but only
if God couldn't have just as easily orchestrated an outcome where both
family members survived.
I read a review of "Signs" that said a movie that uses supernatural
occurrences to promote the existence of God is inevitably a cheat, because
a movie director IS God, insofar as his cinematic universe is concerned;
being able to rewrite the script, he can plant whatever evidence he wishes
in order to ordain an outcome that "proves" God's existence. But this criticism
is overly generous to "Signs". The problem with the movie as a piece of
religious propaganda is that, even with the writer-director shuffling the
deck to make God seem like the hero of the piece, He still comes off like
a fool. He's either a lousy deity, who works elaborate, subtle miracles
where a simple, big one would do the trick much better, or a vicious one,
who toys with an innocent farm family because it amuses Him. And yet, by
the end of the movie, Mel Gibson has gone from open hatred of God to a
renewed faith in Him. I guess if God had only killed a couple more family
members, Mel Gibson would have given away all his possessions and joined
a monastery. What a sucker. It would be funny, at least, if "Signs" were
intended as a satire of Christian masochism; and maybe someday, in a more
enlightened era, people will interpret it that way, just like modern stoners
giggle at anti-pot propaganda films from the '50s.
But anyway. The aliens were kinda scary.
Adam and Eve.
So I'm sitting in the break room, reading my book, and two of my female
co-workers are complaining about the Indians. "I'm not a racist, but..."
one of them begins, and the discourse unwinds predictably from there. I'm
ignoring them, trying to concentrate on a boring passage in Herodotus where
he describes the religious rites of the Egyptians. Finally, one of
the girls pulls out this rhetorical capper: "You always hear these natives
going on about how they deserve this and that because they were here first.
But, you know, by that logic, then WE were here first, because of Adam and Eve!" And
she bangs her coffee mug on the table, satisfied that she's made her point.
Even her friend - the one who's Not A Racist - seems a little confused
by this outburst, but she just shakes it off, and they continue. Eventually
they get sidetracked onto a discussion of how we're too soft on pedophiles,
but unfortunately our break ends before I get the chance to hear their
opinion of queers and the French.
A little later, I listen in as the woman who works at the cosmetics
counter calls McDonald's to complain that the counterperson took too long
assembling her breakfast muffin, and that as a result, she was late for
work. She's shouting into the telephone: "I want your name! No, your last
name!" I'm in the oral hygiene aisle, hanging toothbrushes on pegs. "Silver
Bells" is playing over the intercom. The cosmetics woman is shouting, "How
long does it take to make an Egg McMuffin?" I notice that there's a toothbrush
on the floor, underneath the bottom shelf. I crouch down to retrieve it,
and I notice that a few other stray toothbrushes have been kicked under
the shelf. I get down on my hands and knees and reach in to get them. The
floor is dusty and sticky. Fifteen more minutes, fifteen more minutes.
Anti-Americanism.
I have a theory that our resentment of the U.S. is rooted in our suspicion
that their uneducated opinion of Canada - that it's a cold, dull country
populated by good-natured lumberjacks - is actually pretty accurate. I
guess we're not supposed to talk about our boringness in the presence of
outsiders - we're just supposed to proudly thrust out our maple leaf lapel
pins and talk vaguely but at great length about the importance of Marshall
McLuhan and the Canadarm. But we can admit it among ourselves, right? We're
boring, Farley Mowat is a blowhard, the Tragically Hip aren’t that great,
and, mythology aside, the Avro Arrow was an overpriced boondoggle. There,
I've said it. Just don't tell the Americans.
The anti-war demonstrations.
--Peter Garden, Saskatoon peace activist. What a pretentious twit...how does this guy think he's won anything...? Me, I'm rather impressed that Bush and (especially) Tony Blair appear
steadfast in their war planning, even in the face of mounting public and
diplomatic opposition. Usually the rap against politicians is that every
position they take is poll-tested and spin-doctored for maximum inoffensiveness
to the greatest number of people. Bush probably hasn't suffered too much
political damage for his Iraq position right now, but Blair has - yet he
still hasn't jellyfished out. I see the British government as the Olin
Valbys of the pro-war movement - constantly running back and forth between
the White House and the UN, cajoling the Security Council, placating the
true-believers in Washington, crafting conciliatory statements - doing
all the hard work while Bush and Cheney and Rumsfeld, like the hairiest
of the hippies, sit in the Oval Office making grand, impractical plans.
I liked Bush's response to the German suggestion that Saddam be given
"another chance": "You mean another, 'nother, 'nother chance?" Occasionally
he says something moderately clever even without the assistance of speechwriters.
Good and bad metaphor.
The Greek Myths, by Robert Graves. I enjoy the myths, but find myself
being distracted by Graves' demystifying explanatory notes. I guess I don't
really want to know exactly which pre-historical tribal turf war was being
allegorised in the story of Theseus and the Minotaur, or whichever. And
maybe I'm a little unconvinced by the idea that the Greeks invested their
myths with that degree of allegorical specificity.
I was watching Preston Sturges' "Sullivan's Travels" last night. There's
a great bit where Joel McCrea, as a pretentious director, is deconstructing
the big final scene of his new movie. The scene in question involves an
exciting fistfight between two men atop a speeding train. After some wrestling
and a little gunplay, one guy lunges forward and tackles the other and
they both fall to their deaths. Music swells, credits roll. "See?" explains
Joel McCrea, as the lights come up. "Capital and labour destroy each other!"
I guess there's a difference between good metaphor and bad metaphor,
but right now - perhaps it's the strain of trying to explain in this grant
application what the rock opera "means" - I'm feeling a little impatient
with metaphors in general. I guess that's why I like rock-n-roll. Most
of the songs are about girls.
Ararat.
"Ararat". Atom Egoyan's film about the Armenian genocide. Pretty good.
I was expecting lurid wallowing in brutality, but if it's possible to make
a dispassionate movie about genocide, this is it. All the atrocities we
see are in a movie-within-the-movie, also called "Ararat", which is a conventional
Oscar-baiting historical epic in the "Schindler's List" mould. Most of
the scenes from the movie-within-the-movie verge on being crassly melodramatic,
and it's possible that Egoyan is subtly arguing that to make a spectacle
out of mass murder is inherently exploitative; but then, other scenes from
the movie-within-the-movie are quite wrenching, in a conventional Hollywoodish
kind of way, and it's possible Egoyan is saying that being exploitative
is a necessary risk if you're going to meaningfully connect people to their
history. So I'm still puzzling out what it all means, which is probably
good. Or maybe not. I hate to be one of those people who comes out of the
theatre going, "Yeah, it really makes ya think," when what you're actually
thinking is that the main character's French-Canadian girlfriend had nice
boobs. Which she did. But that's not what I'm thinking about, really.
Casualties.
"Here are the first images of civilian casualties from the war with
Iraq," said the CBC anchor, and we saw a little eight year old girl lying
in a hospital bed. "According to the Iraqi government," she continued,
"U.S. cruise missiles struck and destroyed a customs office, while others
landed in a suburb outside Baghdad." And we saw a pregnant woman with a
bandage on her stomach.
Of course, there will be civilian casualties in this war, and it's even
possible that these two conveniently pathetic specimens are among those
casualties. But it would be nice if the CBC would at least read a disclaimer
before showing these images - something like, "Bear in mind, this footage
was released by a totalitarian government which has a vested interest in
spreading misinformation."
As much as I'm relieved that it's finally started, this is going to
be a depressing war. It's depressing that, due largely to his own inept
diplomacy, a significant part of the world is less willing to trust George
W. Bush's public statements than it is Saddam's. In their minds, there
is no difference in credibility between the more-or-less elected leader
of the world's greatest democracy and an autocratic thug who routinely
murders his own citizens.
It isn't just the dirty-toed hippies who feel this way. It's becoming
routine to hear even the ordinarily apolitical schmoes on the street discoursing
on the evils of depleted-uranium shells. I hope this war is quick and relatively
painless. Otherwise I expect I'll be biting my tongue a lot in coming weeks.
The power of positive thinking.
The mind is its own place, and in it self
The thought is expressed by Satan in Paradise Lost, when he looks around
and contemplates the sulfurous landscape of his new home, shortly after
he and the other rebellious angels have been cast down by the armies of
God into Hell. I doubt Milton would have allowed one of his heavenly characters
to communicate such a blasphemous idea: If one really can make a Heaven
of Hell, then damnation is no big deal, and God isn’t as all-powerful as
he’s cracked up to be. Milton didn’t mean for us to be inspired by Satan’s
philosophy of self-determination; he’s supposed to be the bad guy. But
somehow in the last three hundred and fifty years we’ve all come around
to Satan’s relativistic point of view.
Olin, the guitarist in my band, talks a lot about thinking positively,
and sometimes it makes me want to kick him. A few weeks back, there was
a controversy down at the local community radio station, CFCR, where many
of our friends volunteer. The Promise Keepers were holding a rally here
in town, and they’d bought some advertising time on the station. A number
of our friends were quite upset that CFCR would play their ads. They argued
that the Promise Keepers are anti-gay and anti-feminist, and that their
philosophy goes directly against what the station stands for. Olin, who
is usually the first guy to pick up a sign and join a protest, angered
some of these friends by staying aloof from the controversy.
“Last time the Promise Keepers were in town,” Olin explained to me,
“There was a big protest, and a bunch of us went down there and stood outside
the door waving signs and chanting, ‘Anti-woman, anti-gay, Promise Keepers
go away!’ But all the men who came to the rally were very respectful and
friendly to us, even though we were shouting these vitriolic slogans at
them. After a while, the protest kind of petered out, and I wound up talking
to some of the Promise Keepers. I came away very impressed with their movement.
They weren’t a bunch of wild-eyed bible-thumpers, like we thought. They
weren’t ranting about gays and feminists. They were focussed on changing
their lives for the better. It was a very caring, supportive, positive
atmosphere.”
Now, I didn’t really know enough about the Promise Keepers to have an
opinion about the whole CFCR advertising controversy. But something about
Olin’s comments really annoyed me. “I’m sure all the Nazis who went to
the Nuremberg rallies,” I said, “Thought that it was a very caring, supportive,
positive atmosphere.”
That was kind of a mean thing to say to Olin, but my point still stands.
Perhaps it is possible to make a Heaven of Hell, or a Hell of Heaven. But
we shouldn’t be distracted from the underlying reality of things. Maybe
the Promise Keepers are just a harmless, warm-and-cuddly men’s support
group. But if their philosophy is dangerous, then masking it with smiles
and positive thinking doesn’t make it any less dangerous. In fact, it makes
it more so.
In the end, Satan’s positive thinking doesn’t get him anywhere. God
knows exactly what he’s up to, every step of the way, and his ultimate
defeat is predetermined. I’m optimistic that we have more freedom to decide
our fate than Milton’s characters do. But if our fate is predetermined,
what is the sensible way to respond? To rebel, like Satan, even if we know
we’re doomed to lose? Or to meekly submit, like Adam & Eve, in the
confidence that we’ll eventually be rewarded with entry to Heaven? Positive
thinking gives us power only to the extent that we really do control our
own destinies. Beyond that, it can be self-destructive – but nobly self-destructive,
perhaps.
Letter to the Department of Immigration concerning the residency
of Anne Ross.
To whom it may concern;
As I recall, I first met Dean Drobot in 8th grade at Vickers School
in Prince Albert, Saskatchewan. He claims to have memories of running into
me prior to 8th grade, but I can't be sure. I do know that we were present
on opposite ends of a telephone conversation between me and our mutual
friend Brad Dyck during the 1989 Grey Cup between the Saskatchewan Roughriders
and Hamilton Tiger-Cats. He was over at Brad's place, I was alone in my
basement, and we all watched the game and cheered together as Dave Ridgway
kicked the winning field goal. The point is, we've known each other for
quite some time.
In 9th grade, my friends Andrew Hall and Brad Wilson enticed Dean, who
played percussion with the Vickers School band, to join our rock-n-roll
group "Beenz" as drummer. "Beenz" eventually evolved into Non Compos Mentis,
which evolved into Peter, Paul & Pus, which evolved into the band known
as Sea Water Bliss, and Dean at one time or another has been a part of
all of those groups. For a brief time in 2000, just before he left for
a two-year stint travelling through Great Britain and the world, the band
was actually known as the Drobotics. Of course, Dean went off to Europe
just as we began to play seriously in public, so he's missed out on a whole
lot of swinging groupie action. And all he got in return was a small Scottish
girl.
Now, Anne. The first time I heard the name was when Dean was emailing
us from Southeast Asia. He said he'd met a couple of cute Scottish girls
and that they kept on giving him backrubs. Of course, he made this all
sound far more erotic than it probably was. Next thing you know, he's finished
his Asian tour and he's back in the UK and we start getting these messages
about his girlfriend Anne Ross. I believe I commented on the fact she shared
the same name as the jazz singer Annie Ross, of the vocal trio Hendricks,
Lambert & Ross. I don't think anyone else found this remotely interesting.
Anyway, we were all intensely curious to see this girl. So Dean arranged
to stand in front of a webcam in George Square in Glasgow at a certain
hour of day - it wound up being seven in the morning, Saskatchewan time
- and wave a Canadian flag, with Anne at his side. So I woke up early on
the appointed day and turned on my computer and tuned in the webcam, and
just as the clock ticked over to seven, these two miniscule dots appeared
at the edge of the square, and made their jerky way to the middle. My friend
and bass player Andrew Hall called me on the phone.
"So, are you watching?" Andrew said.
"Yup."
"So I guess the little dot is Anne," he said.
"Must be."
"And that little red dot above Dean's head must be the flag," he said.
"Guess so."
After standing there for about ten minutes, the two dots walked offscreen,
and I turned off my computer and went back to bed. As Dean tells it, waving
the Canadian flag was quite an ordeal. Most of the folks walking through
George Square had no idea that there was a webcam broadcasting their image
around the world. To their eyes, Dean and Anne were just a pair of lunatics,
standing in the middle of an empty public square, waving a flag.
So that's the story of the first time I saw Anne. Later, my friend Warren
Brooke returned from a visit to Scotland with pictures of Anne and Dean
together. He reported that she was very nice. After careful inspection
of the photos, my friends and I concluded that a) Anne was surprisingly
cute, and b) Dean had put on a few pounds.
So this year, Dean returned to Canada and brought Anne with him. I've
spent a fair bit of time hanging around with the two of them since their
return, and I still think Anne is pretty cute, and I still think Dean could
stand to lose a few pounds. Now that I can decipher Anne's accent most
of the time, I think I'm qualified to say that she'd make a pretty good
Canadian citizen, or Landed Immigrant, or Resident Alien, or whatever it
is she's applying to become. Her one complaint about Canada (apart from
the difficulty in purchasing Irn Bru, her favourite beverage) is that she's
not allowed to work, so I think she's getting kind of bored. I keep telling
her she should paint. She's a pretty talented artist - I got her to do
some drawings (pro bono, of course) for the show we put on at the Saskatoon
Fringe Festival this year. Also, with her degree in marketing, I was happy
to listen to Anne's ideas for promoting the show; and when she and Dean
were in town for the long weekend, they were both very helpful in harassing
passersby with handbills.
To sum up, I'm a big fan of allowing Anne to remain in the country.
If it turns out we don't have enough room, I vote we kick out Dean and
keep Anne.
Sincerely, etc.
Jungle Gym.
I'm sitting in the grass out by the jungle gym with Jon, a nineteen-year-old co-worker. He's short and stocky and talks constantly. Most of his
stories end with him staggering into the bathroom at Overdrive or Ryly's to vomit copiously.
I've finished eating my lunch, and I've got my pillow, and I'm just
waiting for Jon to go back inside so that I can catch a few minutes of sleep
before I have to be back at my desk. Finally Jon finishes his monologue and
adds, "Well, I guess I'd better head back. Don't want that bitch Linda to
get on my case about taking long lunches."
"See you later," I say, as Jon heads back to the building. I lean back
on the pillow to rest.
A quiet voice says, "Hi." I open my eyes and look over at the jungle
gym. There's a little girl in a green dress, maybe four years old, standing
in the sand.
"Hi," I say.
She scampers around the back of the jungle gym and kicks some sand around,
glancing back at me under the slide. Then she runs back around and comes
a bit closer, standing in the grass a few feet away from me.
"Is your brother going home?" she says.
"That's not my brother, he's just a friend from work."
"Is he your little friend?"
"I don't know. He's not very little, is he?"
"He's this big," she says. She runs over to the nearest tree and reaches
for the lowest limb. She can barely touch it. "Look, I'm not even on tiptoes,"
she says.
"That's impressive," I say.
"I've got a little friend," she says, returning to stand above me.
"Oh, yeah? Where's your little friend?"
She points to the slummy townhouses behind the park.
"Is that where you live?" I ask.
"Uh-huh."
She runs back to the jungle gym and scoops up something half-buried
in the sand. When she returns, she's got a tiny little wooden chair, maybe
a foot tall. She places it upright in the grass and sits down on it.
"What's your name?" she says.
"Michael. What's yours?"
"Morgan. Why are you sleeping in the day?"
"I'm tired."
"You shouldn't sleep in the day. Look what I found."
Morgan is holding a pointy, palm-sized rock.
"It's a rock," I say.
"It's a stone," she says. "Watch what I can do."
She runs over to the tree and throws the stone up and over the
lowest-hanging branch. It lands in the grass. "Well done," I say.
"I can throw far," she says. "Watch." She picks up her tiny chair and
throws it as far as she can - about six feet. It lands in the sand by the
jungle gym. She retrieves it, plants it in the grass again right beside
me, and seats herself in the chair again, her hands folded primly in her
lap. "Huh," I say.
"Where's your little friend going?"
"He's going back to work."
"Is he going to your house?"
"No, I don't live there. That's where I work."
"Where do you live?"
"Oh, a ways that way," I say, gesturing in the general direction of
Market Mall. Morgan stands up and cranes her neck, trying to see where I was
pointing. "No, it's too far away, you won't be able to see it." She
sits down again.
A small group of young people comes marching out of the townhouses and
across the park toward the jungle gym. The oldest is perhaps twelve.
The youngest, a little girl with an unusually large head, is around Morgan's
age.
"My little friend!" says Morgan, catching sight of them.
"Why don't you go play with your little friend," I say. Morgan runs
off to join the group, leaving her chair behind. I close my eyes. I hear the
sound of children playing.
After a few minutes, I look up again. Morgan is playing by herself in
the sand. The other children are digging holes in the sand some distance
away, ignoring her.
The big-headed girl detaches from the group and walks across the grass
toward me. Morgan looks up from her private game. She runs over and
stands between me and the big-headed girl. "Don't!" Morgan shouts at the
big-headed girl. "That's my little friend!"
The big-headed girl looks confused, then turns around and toddles back
to her group.
"Morgan, did you say I was your little friend?" I ask.
"Uh-huh."
"What about her?" I say, indicating the big-headed girl.
Morgan shrugs. She sits down in the chair beside me.
"Do you like my chair?"
"It's a good chair."
"My mom made it for me."
"Hmm. Where is your mom?"
"She's playing video games."
Morgan folds her hands in her lap and looks down at me possessively.
I look back at her.
After a few seconds, I close my eyes. I've been out here almost an hour.
I should really be heading back to work.
Hoist on my own petard.
Dammit. I finally glanced at the results from the civic election. Just
a bunch of no-names defeating other no-names, right?
Well, one of those no-names, and now a trustee (for the second time)
on the public school board, is my ex-high school principal, Lindsay Fast.
I suppose that I should have loftier concerns, in my fitful engagement
with civic politics, than merely rooting for the defeat of a particularly
disagreeable nemesis from my high school past. But frankly, city council
could vote to build six mega-casinos on top of Farley Mowat's childhood
home, and I would merely yawn. The news that my principal has returned
makes me gnash my teeth.
Some background. When I was in grade eleven at Marion Graham High School,
Principal Lindsay Fast shut down our school's talent show - our yearly
festival of awful basement bands and even worse stand-up comedians - citing
"offensive material". When the whole school rose up in confused protest,
he refused to meet with student representatives, or even explain precisely
what about the show had been so "offensive". (Most of us thought the culprit
was a lame sketch comedy routine swiped in its entirety from "In Living
Colour" - does anyone remember Jim Carrey's character "Fire Marshal Bill"?
- but we never found out for sure.)
Then it emerged that the principal had intimidated our school's representative
to the Saskatoon Star-Phoenix's "High School News" page, threatening to
suspend her if she addressed the controversy in her weekly column. She
publicised the story anyway, and there was a two-day mini-controversy in
the Star-Phoenix, in which some editorialists took the student's side,
while other editorialists argued for the right of high school principals
to be as secretive and autocratic as they wished. In the end, the student
in question was never suspended, and the story died.
It was these events that led me to my lamest act of teenage rebellion,
publishing the "student newspaper" RISE! with a couple of my nerdy friends.
I had intended it to be a scathing attack on the school's administration,
but my friends were all A-students and college fast-trackers, so they resisted
my attempts to smear the principal with false accusations of Satan-worship
and pederasty. Instead we padded out the first issue, along with an earnest
editorial about the talent show controversy, with some kid's essay on democracy
in Russia. We printed it by selling a half-page ad, under false pretences,
to the management of the Lawson Heights Mall.
We distributed a couple hundred copies of the paper to students over
lunch hour one day, but most of our run was seized by the teachers and
destroyed. Still, our attempt at rebellion was too dorky to get us into
real trouble. My dreams of being gloriously expelled, a martyr to free
speech, were dismally squelched, and we never bothered to put together
an issue 2.
(Eventually Lindsay Fast did oversee my expulsion from Marion Graham,
but I don't hold that against him. I was only showing up a couple days
a week by then, so getting kicked out wasn't that big a deal.)
Last election 'round, Lindsay Fast was the chair of the school board,
which was then engaged in an expensive and badly-organised attempt to build
itself a new headquarters. I didn't care about the headquarters; I just
thought Fast was an asshole. I enlisted Andrew and his roommate Matt Jones,
who lived in Fast's ward, to go out and vote against him, which they actually
did - the one time, I believe, that Andrew has participated in a civic
election. All my organisational efforts turned out to be superfluous, however,
as Fast (along with nearly the entire school board) was turfed out by several
thousand votes. The knock against him, as reported in the Star-Phoenix,
was that he was secretive and autocratic.
You'd think that would be enough to disqualify him permanently from
holding office. But no - damn our wishy-washy democratic process! Now he's
back. He snuck in while I wasn't looking, running in a completely different
ward. Dammit.
I suppose that I should have expected my nemesis to reappear. He wouldn't
be much of a nemesis if he weren't as malevolently unkillable as Doctor
Doom. I suppose that, like Doctor Doom, he will reappear at intervals with
a new scheme for world domination (or at least public school board chairmanship)
and it will be my duty, like Reed Richards of the Fantastic Four, to thwart
him with a blast of gamma radiation (or perhaps by getting off my ass and
voting).
Incidentally, I haven't heard much lately from my other nemesis, author
and playwright Kevin Chong. I imagine he's in secret negotiations with
Doctor Octopus right now.
Fri, 06 Dec 2002
Wed, 18 Dec 2002
Wed, 18 Dec 2002
Tue, 18 Feb 2003
That's harsh. I figured he just meant, "Wow, this is what it feels like
to be involved in an activity that receives sympathetic media coverage
and isn't viewed with derision by the average Canadian." Still, one hopes
the hippies don't buy into the fallacy that multiplying an opinion by eleven
million somehow makes it more correct. It's just more widespread.
“Here are the most up to date figures on the number of people
out marching against the war in Iraq. Global attendance at the marches
has topped 11 million. It is safe to say that this is the largest demonstration
in human history. Everyone who participated in and supported the demonstrations
deserves a big pat on the back. It is amazing to be on the winning side
of an issue for once.”
Andrew Hall wrote:
Fri, 28 Feb 2003
Thu, 13 Mar 2003
Thu, 20 Mar 2003
April 7, 2003
Can make a Heav’n of Hell, a Hell of Heav’n.
Fri, 08 Aug 2003
Fri, 22 Aug 2003
Fri, 24 Oct 2003