The worst (worst, worst) product name EVER

(OK, if you don't believe me about the product described below, I've seen them. They made my jaw drop. I saw them in a drug store, so I assumed they were for medicinal use only.  I didn't buy any (didn't think I could chew them) and forgot about it until I saw this article by Campbell Webster, which kind of says it all. The post-script is an ad for a related product which is probably just about as palatable.)

Last week, a bag of cookies caught me by surprise. This may seem unusual, especially considering the location was a Charlottetown grocery box store, where the most startling sight might be someone you haven't seen in a while, and you would prefer to keep it that way. Large grocery stores have been planned with the accuracy of a large-scale military invasion: their layout is designed to comfort and entice, lulling you into overconsumption. Shock is not the goal.

Still, not all plans are perfect, proof positive being the huge bags of cookies for sale, under the brand name, 'Bowel Buddy'. As you may have guessed, the Bowel Buddy cookie brand is particularly high in fibre, and therefore promises to keep your bowel moving at a pretty good clip. (An unusual need, it seems, at least taken from my three-month-old son's viewpoint, who needs no such buddy at any time of day or night).

(Editor's note. Notice subtitle: "Snack on the GO and get regular!" Yum.)

What is startling about the Bowel Buddy is that we usually don't name our foods after their last stop in our bodies; sewage being something that in many ways is the anti-thesis of food. Even more amazing is that somebody had to come up with this name, or perhaps a few people, on salary no less, delivering this brand name to the market. It stimulates the imagination, this stimulating cookie, as to how the cookie company settled on a name which is the marriage of friendship with an excrement organ.

"Marketing! Get in here! We've got a heck of a new cookie! It'll clean you out faster than a truckload of raisin bran. Need a name by Monday!"

And so the naming process may have begun, begging the question: What names finished out of the top spot? Rectal Recess? Anal Allies? Sphincter Sojourn? And did somebody shout, "Eureka!" or "Bingo - Bowel Buddy!" when the winning name for the cleaning cookie was declared?

Health claims for foods is, of course, a heated battlefield, with aisle after aisle of packaged foods screaming their benefits to your longevity, energy levels etc. Accordingly, the pursuit of your dollar can be as much about the name and the claim of the food as it is about the food itself. As a result, truth is constantly endangered with amazing product claims like Campbell's Soup products claiming to have "25 per cent less sodium". This is an accurate statement, except that it is still a very high amount of sodium, and might as well say, "25 per cent less sodium . . . than the Dead Sea."

Government regulatory bodies attempt to assist us by forcing manufacturers to be accurate in their naming strategies, leading to products such as 'grated cheese flavoured product' and 'real juice-flavoured beverage' (i.e. no cheese or juice is involved in either product.) Painfully awkward descriptions such as these no doubt sends cookie companies and other food manufacturers to break the mold, and come up with branding like the Bowel Buddy, which just seems ridiculous, and even likely to repel consumers.

Or will it? I bought two bags.

Campbell Webster is a writer and producer of entertainment events. He can be reached at campbell@campbellwebster.ca

Whinny Wafer
Homemade Horse Cookies

www.WhinnyWafers.webs.com
Making homemade horse cookies, with no preservatives, or any of those items we can't pronounce

All cookies will be cooked and ready to mail to your location
Taking bulk orders as well.
 
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You seem fine to me

I don't know when I first heard this thing, but it was probably when I was six years old and fell down in the playground and banged my knee so hard I could barely walk. Trying not to cry, I walked as normally as I could into the nurse's office. The nurse was smoking a cigarette and flipping through movie magazines.


"Whatsammater, sweetheart?" she wheezed. I almost fell through my facade of control at the "sweetheart", for no one had ever used a term of endearment on me

“I uh. . . I uh. . .” I held up the knee in question. It wasn’t bloody or bruised, or at least wouldn’t turn black-and-blue until the next day.

Then came the words I would hear for the rest of my existence.

“You seem fine to me.”

She didn’t send me home or even put on a bandaid, but pushed me back out into the playground. I walked normally until I hit the door, then staggered and limped ‘til the end of the day. Then my mother looked at me and said,

“Why didn’t you ask go to home? When are you going to learn?”

That was the first of many.

I won’t list them all because I’d be here all day. Doctor, I feel like I’m sinking into a depression. A close look, narrowed eyes, then the verdict.

“You seem fine to me.”

Doctor, I have this excruciating abdominal pain that won’t go away. It’s over here in the –

“You seem fine to me.”

I have this thing, have always had it, and I have had it so long and practiced it so well that I don’t even know I’m doing it. The mask comes up, a cool, blank mask like Mr. Sardonicus, with God-knows-what distress and anguish lurking behind it.

How did this happen? Oh, guess.

I had a friend once, and he died. The friendship lasted about three months, until he was no longer able to put a coherent sentence together. We would get together at Starbucks – both of us were wrangling problems so massive, I can’t even begin to outline them here.

“Well, Margaret, I went to the doctor yesterday. Know what he said?”

“I just can’t guess.”

“He said – “

“Don’t tell me - let me guess - "

"YSFTM!”

“Yes!” Then we would both dissolve in howls of laughter – or maybe they were just howls.

“What do they expect you to do, anyway? Stagger in there like the Hunchback of Notre Dame?”

“Yes, except that they’d probably accuse you of malingering.”

Peter’s telescoping of that awful refrain into a set of initials started something. YSFTM began to take on a significance far greater than LOL, WTF, OMG, or, for that matter, SNAFU or LSMFT (hint: it has something to do with cigarettes).

So if I have a disappointment and my mood drops into my shoes, and I meet somebody who has known me for years and years, this is what I hear:

“YSFTM.”

It even happened at the gastroenterologist’s (is that how it’s spelled?) who was supposed to do a bunch of x-rays of my insides. I told her I was having heart symptoms – or, at least, that’s how I interpreted the crushing pain in my chest, numbness in my left arm and thundering, unstable heartbeat I was experiencing several times a day. (My doctor claimed I had an irritated esophagus.)

She looked me up and down. She sort of turned me this way and that. She almost patted my cheek.

Then she said it.

“YSFTM.”

Whenever I see those programs on TV about Your Health, they say that women having even the mildest heart symptoms should rush to their doctors immediately. OK, probably they’ll be able to do it without feeling like a total idiot because they don’t have the smooth white waxy Mr. Sardonicus mask that automatically ascends to cover me when I am in any kind of distress.

You may say, well then, just remove the mask. It’s like saying just remove every fingernail at the cuticle. Go on, just do it.

And that’s another one – perhaps I should save this for another post – the “just” syndrome. Just get over it. Just stop thinking about it. Just pull yourself together, just snap out of it.

This is allied with an even worse one, said in an edgy, judgemental tone:

“Can’t you just. . .”

Can’t you just, for God’s sake, stop wasting my time when it’s obvious that nothing is wrong with you except self-absorption?

Can’t you just do the most obvious thing to help yourself, like take a walk? (when I’ve been walking an hour a day for 25 years).

Can’t you just count your blessings instead of sheep?

There’s nothing I can do about this. It’s a defense built when I was maybe two or three years old and first discovered that I was not in a hospitable environment and never would be.



I had to hide myself, from myself. And thus I fooled the world. But there were exceptions: the time I burst into tears in the specialist’s office and was given one of those mild downers that women used to eat like candy. And then marks on my chart indicating empty histrionics.

“It’s not that I’m calling you a malingerer,” one doctor said. Oh, no, not at all. But who brought the subject up, me or you? It’s about as helpful and supportive as “Not that I think you’re ugly.” Then defending it with, “I was only trying to help you! Constructive criticism, you know.  You’re a writer, you’ve had lots of rejections, I thought you’d be used to it by now.”

Besides, they weren’t really saying it, were they?

I wonder if this is just a continuation of yesterday’s “mood”. But I have wanted to write about YSFTM for a long time now. I guess I’m not supposed to reveal myself as being this vulnerable.

Or this invincible.


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I don't want to do SQUAT today

I don't want to do SQUAT today.  Everything seems pointless. I try to walk and find I'm on a treadmill rapidly moving backwards. I don't want to leave my chair. I don't want to put away the dishes, thank you very much, or clean the birdcage. I don't. I don't want to check the mailbox, with that creak when you open up the top, and find rejection letters, more rejection letters. I don't want to sit here and diddle. I don't want to think about Christmas. I don't want to think about Christmas with dread. I don't want to think about how Christmas has been ruined. I don't want to think about the fact that my blog tells me I've had 30,000 views in a year, when I only get 2 views a day. Obviously it can't do math. I don't want to go take a shower. I don't want to feel like this. I want some hope. I don't want to feel this alone. I don't want to stare out at my cedar boughs and see rusty, brown, dead growth. I don't want to hand back a review copy to my editor because I don't goddamn understand the book, or perhaps it's because I loathe it. I don't want to see a writer win every award in the book after my rapturous review of his novel. I don't want to keep handing the lifeline to the next person, and the next person, and the next person, until I drown. I don't want to think about the future. I don't want to think about my grandchildren getting older and not wanting to be seen with me. I don't want to think about how they will soon see through me, and therefore probably stop loving me. I don't want to think about how the best moments in my life flew by so fast that I didn't even notice, and can only be longed for in retrospect. I don't want to sit here. I don't want to not sit here. I don't want to think about positive thinking and all that crap, I hate it. I don't want to be accused of being "negative" even though I know I AM "negative". I don't want to feel that my whole life has somehow been a miss. It went wide and I don't know why and I can't retrieve it. I don't want to realize how late it is for certain things and how I will probably never achieve them now. I don't want to think about my dream slipping through my fingers like a nasty little bar of soap. I don't want to think about something awful happening to my loved ones. Being widowed. Not wanting to live any more. Living thirty more years alone. I dont want to think about the sense of living in a void where no one hears me. I don't want to think about publishing this and having one or two people (or maybe zero!) read it and think I am a loser and/or haven't tried hard enough. I don't want it to be Thursday. I don't want it to be today.

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You've got to hear this to believe it

We had to devote at least one post to the incredible Florence Foster Jenkins, a performer so godawful as to reach the realm of the sublime.

The legend is that she truly believed she was a great and gifted singer. Certainly she had a loyal following and once even played Carnegie Hall. Her devoted accompanist, a man with the astonishing name of Cosme McMoon, would sometimes make faces behind her back as she sang, thereby explaining to her why so many people were laughing.

Only a few recordings of Jenkins (whose real first name was Narcissa) still exist, probably because she was boycotted by every record company in the country. Jenkins albums are always padded out with a few other awful singers, no doubt her friends. My theory on how she got recorded: someone melted down an old record, then ran around and around and around it with a needle. No doubt this primitive technology improved her sound.

Oh, it's just astonishing when I listen to this, for every time it seems to get worse!


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Thomas Burns sings Salut! Demeure Chaste et Pure

In contrast to the excruciating Florence Foster Jenkins, here is a man who truly can sing.

At least, one person thought so.

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DAM IT ALL: beavers kick polar bear ass!

(To celebrate July 1, I'm going to goof off and eat those cheese thingies and stuff like that. In other words, I don't want to work. But here's a nice piece, so old it's new, almost! Enjoy it, folks, and remember to respect your beaver friends, or they will gnaw down a tree that will pound you into the ground like a tent peg. Happy Canada Day!)

Adrian Humphreys, National Post  
Oct 28, 2011 – 7:00 AM ET | Last Updated: Oct 28, 2011 12:55 PM ET

Polar bear should replace 'dentally defective rat' - the beaver - as Canada's national emblem: Senator

A Canadian senator has called for a national “emblem makeover” by replacing a vegetarian rodent that defends its territory with urine with the world’s largest walking carnivore that thrives in the cold.

Referring to the beaver as a “dentally defective rat,” Nicole Eaton called on Ottawa to replace the critter as the national emblem with the polar bear, an animal she hails as strong, majestic and brave.

“It is high time that the beaver step aside as a Canadian emblem or, at the least, share the honour with the stately polar bear,” Ms. Eaton said in the Senate Thursday.

“A country’s symbols are not constant and can change over time as long as they reflect the ethos of the people and the spirit of the nation.”

The Department of Canadian Heritage has the beaver as the only animal on its list of “national emblems,” a tally that includes the maple tree, the maple leaf and maple leaf tartan.

The beaver is certainly deeply entwined in Canada’s history.

The trade of beaver pelts during European colonization was so lucrative the venerable Hudson’s Bay Company put the beaver on its coat of arms in 1678, four of them, in fact. That same year, the governor of New France suggested the beaver as a suitable emblem for the colony.

When designing the first Canadian postage, they . . . awww, screw the rest!

WE HAVE THE BEST!

Didja ever see a beaver makin' lodges in the lake

And the way he chews on tree bark

It can can make your tummy ache

For beavers are so busy,

busy, busy all the way

You can keep your goddamn polar bears

Coz beavers rule the day!

(Chorus) Beavers, beavers, beavers, beavers,

Beavers rule the day!

Now a beaver never ate someone

But bears eat kids all day

Their breath it stinks from all that fish

We know it's not OK

But beavers only eat the trees

And chop the maples down

And swamp the fields and wreck the roads

and flood the whole damn town!

(EVERYBODY!)

Beavers, beavers, beavers. . . OK, you get the idea, eh?

Now the beaver once was very big

Just like a buffalo

And cave men kept him as their pets

They loved his flat tail so

So you shouldn't say he's boring

You shouldn't say he's small

Cuz when the earth began, he was

The meanest rat of all!

 

(Patriotic interlude)  Where would our country be without the beaver? Maybe people wouldn't make fun of us so much for having a rodent as our national emblem. But hey, he made good fur, didn't he? I mean for those, like, fur hats for Hudson's Bay or something?  He's busy all the time eating wood and chopping down the trees. Bears lie around and do squat all day, almost as bad as those eagles. Who needs trees anyway? There are way too many of them. But there can never be too many beavers. Eh?

Beavers! Beavers! Beavers!
We really think they're fine

We love him more than stinky bears

He's yours, he's ours, he's mine

He's part of our, like, history

He sacrificed his pelts

Let's hear it for the BEAVER:
We don't want no one eltse!

 

Dear Sir or Madam, will you read my book

    It took me years to write, will you take a look

Order The Glass Character from:

Amazon
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Thistledown Press

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Chapters/Indigo
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Gabrielle Giffords: a bizarre miracle

Last night I watched the much-anticipated Diane Sawyer interview with Congresswoman Gabrielle Giffords, the woman gunned down ten months ago by a maniac outside a grocery store where she was chatting with her constituents. Her head was literally blown apart, the top of her skull shattered in an injury so catastrophic that the press initially announced she was dead.

The culture loves success stories, and comeback stories are even more remarkable. I watched the interview in fascination, wondering if the radiantly-smiling, vibrant and confident Gifford we saw before the shooting had retrieved enough of herself that she could be considered completely recovered.

Much was made of her charismatic, determined personality as a public figure, and indeed she did seem appealing, a go-getting kind of woman who appeared to disregard every personal obstacle. Her astronaut husband spent much of his time away on missions, truly living the American dream.

All that was blown apart in an instant. There was an explosion: a bullet; a ruptured skull. Life itself was shattered and remained attached only by the thinnest of threads.

The scenes of her early recovery are gruesome: her eyes are open and glassily staring while she listlessly raises a hand or a finger in response to commands. Then comes the long and impossibly gruelling daily therapy to try to drag her back to her former self, or at least some semblance of it.

Watching this, I was reminded of Christopher Reeve, a man stricken down in his body more than his brain. He was the person whom I first heard say, "Anything can happen to anyone at any time."

He should know.

I had a strange, even uncomfortable feeling watching this program. Though Giffords smiles radiantly through most of it, and intelligence still flashes in her eyes, she can barely put a sentence together and gropes for words. Her husband, who comes across as a sort of emotionless personal trainer, prompts her and even finishes her thoughts.  In that stalwart, never-say-die American way, the way that brooks no obstacles nor even recognizes them, we hear him insist that she will attain nothing short of "100% recovery".

It's the astronaut's way, isn't it? Figures; percentages. There is no doubt this man cares about his wife, but I never once saw a hint of tears, vulnerability, or the kind of  traumatized shock that would be natural even in the most emotionally-reserved of spouses.

The thing that astonished me the most about this fascinating but deeply unsettling interview was the fact that Diane Sawyer wanted to know if she would go back to Congress next May. The spectre of a woman struggling with massive aphasia while trying to keep up a stressful political career was almost macabre. But it's the hallmark of that "100%" myth: we can't just recover part of the way. It must be total. We must go back to being the person we were, our "old self" again.

There is no "old self".

There is the self of today, which is fluid and which changes and fluctuates moment-by-moment and can be interrupted or even destroyed in a nanosecond. If we were fully aware of this, we probably wouldn't be able to go out the door. So we wrap invincibility around ourselves, a sense of special protection by supernatural forces (that is, if we believe in "God"). We see tangible outcomes and cling to them, throw them up like grappling hooks in hopes of being able to gain purchase and pull ourselves up.

I find it interesting, in cases of extreme brain damage, what it is that remains: in the program, Sawyer states that science has no idea which part of the brain is responsible for "personality" (whatever that is). In the case of Giffords, the smile remains - in fact, its dazzlement is a little eerie - along with a coached-looking gesture of a determined, waved fist. This is "the old Gabby" shining through. One wonders how much is locked up inside a badly-damaged structure, like a liver or pancreas severely compromised and barely able to perform its usual function.

And yet, wrapped inside what seems like a desolate truth, that flexibility of personal identity, that fluidity, offers the key to a different kind of recovery: a self not "whole" in a conventional sense - certainly not the "old self" - but someone radically new. What is retained is a kind of bare essence (and where in the brain does that reside? How much do we know about the mysterious structure that supposedly calls all the shots in human existence?). Gabrielle Giffords has become not so much a shadow-self as a sister-self, a kind of spiritual twin, someone who looks like her, gestures like her, but is (in the words of the great poet Yeats) "changed, changed utterly."

"A terrible beauty is born," the poet says. And because of this bizarre miracle, beauty has somehow emerged from the very worst kind of terror.

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Suddenly, when you least expect it

Suddenly
when you least expect it:

the sky balloons in a fever of fire

all is changed, disarranged        and

retrieve though you try

there is no rely       or re-try

suddenly

when you

least

expect

it:

all

falls

away

in

an instant

then

life

meets

leap

and the eye

of i-dea

the chime

of mine

or thine:

Suddenly, when you least expect it
comes the sweetest taste you will never-ly know
on the lips like God's very kiss
but oh can you know it
oh can you know?

and when's-it your turn?

do you think you know when?

Don't say that you know

it comes when

it comes when?

if your tears were the ever-last thing that I saw -

if your sweet fruits of mirth were my last burst of song

                                                                   if
all pink things
were
                 sweet-ripped, yes

today: then

today,         then -

                                                    today

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