Clack, clack. . . went the Univac

Completely incomprehensible: Monkey's Uncle by Transogram!

My pick for worst board game ever. You run around the room doing completely inexplicable things, and it makes you a Monkey's Uncle.

Why is Facebook so fucked up?

I don't often post journal entries, because I make a distinction between blogging and journalling. But lately I have been more and more sickened and offended by what I see on Facebook. I have no idea what is going on here, as I used to enjoy it, with a few exceptions. I don't think this is just a case of "bad friend choices", as everyone is telling me.  Elections on both sides of the border have brought out the ugly in everyone, but there has been some real frat-house-level sexual humour and depictions of blow-jobs and menstrual blood and cunt pillows made of red velvet and that sort of thing, and I get sickened before I've even had my breakfast. "So don't go on Facebook any more! Get lost!"is the response. That's like throwing someone out of their country because they don't like its politics. Or something. Anyway. I want to preface this by saying I don't object to profanity if you are so incensed that your head is ready to blow off your body. The f-word, smeared around so liberally, should be reserved for occasions of rage mixed with headspinning nausea. Like - fucking right now!

FB makes me even more sick now, if that’s possible. That guy who wrote the sensitive, moving piece about his struggles with mental illness boasted that he was in a film in Toronto that played at a festival. Fine, if egotistical. Then I looked at it, and it was a film showing a woman giving a man oral sex, complete with grunts and groans and head-pushing. This was going on even as the movie began, so there was no preface for it, no context at all. It took a while to realize it was simulated, as it was obviously meant to look as much like a real live blow job as possible.

Are you surprised to hear me say I don't want to watch a blow job at 10:30 in the morning, or ANY time? It's all very well to say, "duhhhhhh, wellll, then just don't watch it, eh?" - but after looking forward to something half-decent from a friend, it was an ambush. This "don't look at it" does not work for me - the problem is once more "my fault". These posts are either impossible to ignore, or rotten and disgusting when (lured by an interesting headline) you open them.

Hard on the heels of the blow job, there was a giant pillow representing a vulva. A big fat. . . I mean, I've seen this kind of thing before, but isn't it getting just a little bit stupid? (As usual, it was wrongly called "a vagina", which is now slang for anything below a woman's waist. A vagina is a tube. Sperm goes in; babies come out. But "vulva" sounds erotic and dirty, so it's never used.)

(For further information on this topic, read my former post, which got a lot of views because it had the term "twat" in it until I changed it. To vulva.)

http://margaretgunnng.blogspot.ca/2012/04/vagina-vagina-lets-call-whole-thing.html

If it were a penis, would it fly (or whatever)? Who knows. But once again, the comments were all squeals of joy and enthusiastic praise, stating how "empowering" it was. But who would have it on their living room sofa? These liberals, put to the test, aren't liberal at all, because you can be anybody you want on Facebook, even a brave feminist who keeps her mouth shut in company. Then there was the picture of Donald Trump painted in someone’s menstrual blood, which everyone screamed and raved about and ooh-ed and ahh-ed over because it was, I guess, "feminist", but it still makes no sense to me. It was as much of a political statement as painting a picture of Alfred E. Neuman in your own snot.

Then the Stephen Harper thing. Yes. Stephen Harper, loathed by all my friends, just skewered in every post. Compared to Hitler, that sort of thing (which is a horrible insult to Holocaust survivors, but hey, haven't most of them died off already? It doesn't really matter what we say now.) The worst one, posted by Mick Gzowski (Peter Gzowski's son, who had up to that point been quite supportive of my posts) had a series of photos with Stephen Harper wielding a giant dildo. Yes, folks, because I am NOT a dried-up, prissy little old lady, I do know what a dildo is, and I still don't know why this is considered "good political satire". It's a fake penis, guys. Washroom wall stuff. A fourteen-year-old could come up with something funnier and more relevant. All the comments joined in the sniggering and "awe-some, man!" attitude. God. PLEASE bring back Mark Twain or someone who knew what it was to put a politician in his place without pulling out a fake dick!

I've been told over and over again that the problem is my own poor choice of friends, but it doesn't make a lot of sense that this has escalated so much in the last couple of months. It might be the friends of friends thing, which I don’t remember before. These are posts that friends supposedly "like" or "comment on" which are now shoved in my face, so they're not from friends at all. It’s getting so bad I just don’t know what to expect. I haven’t had any really good links in a very long time, and I used to get at least a few a day to interesting sites with some actual content.

I’d clean out all the dead wood, except that I have around 800 friends (a relatively small number by Facebook standards) and can’t anticipate who will send me this stuff. I had NEVER seen that kind of crap from Mick Gzowski before. If I housecleaned I’d be taking stabs, and end up with basically nothing. This has turned irreversibly sour for me, and nobody’s listening, I mean nobody. All I’ve been posting are complaints lately, it seems, because the stuff I’m seeing is either offensive or just plain stupid: oohing and ahhing over the wisdom of Pamela Anderson’s comments on politics and the coming election. PAMELA ANDERSON, Miss Tits and Ass herself! This was posted by someone I thought was smart! I don’t dare say what I feel, which is, are you out of your fucking MIND?! Has your IQ dropped by 20 or 30 points just by being on Facebook?

FB used to be more-or-less enjoyable and I went on it every day with a degree of anticipation, and now I just wait for the offensive material. I don't have to wait very long.  One of the problems is taking "friends" on for similar interests, such as silent film and other film-related things, then finding out they are Tea Party Republicans and have the personality and insight of Great White sharks. You can’t tell by the color of their eyes OR their interests whether they will possess a complete brain, vestigial insight, or a white uniform with a hood in their closet. I could not keep this meme because it made me want to vomit, but it depicted JFK at the top and Obama (with a circle around his picture) at the bottom, and said "If we're going to assassinate a  Democrat, next time let's make sure we get the right man."

Another Republican splat in the face, offensive for an entirely different reason, was one of those gooey religious ones about Jesus loving us all. It had a meme of the traditional picture from the Sunday School wall with some kind of message like, "Share if you love Jesus!" I could not believe what I was seeing. One of my friends had apparently commented on this, probably very negatively, so - there it was, clogging up my feed, making me feel like I needed some sort of Facebook Drain-o to flush all this crap away.

There is all sorts of stuff on the net, but the quality of it has really degenerated in recent (very recent) times. The "news" sites are just junk with no content at all. So-called satire, much of it of the look-at-my-penis variety, is muddled together with "real" news stories to create deliberate confusion. Newspapers are dead and are even closing their doors. Apparently the Edmonton Journal, whom I wrote for for more than 15 years, is now huddled in the corner of their old building, with the printing being farmed out elsewhere, probably the Third World. The ink is so pale you can’t read it, and the type is smaller and squashed-together, a shrinkage that has been going on for a couple of decades now. The image is extremely potent. My old-school milieu, the only place where I felt I had a sense of accomplishment, is slowly and ruthlessly being squeezed into oblivion. Once again I am left alone on the playground, which is the worst feeling in the world.

P. S. I have decided to vote for Harper. Why? I'll tell you why. Because of the Hitler moustache, and so many other things that are ludicrously over-the-top and even unfair. I am voting for Harper because you don't want me to. Because you have ruined my day with your tasteless and even stomach-turning frat-house crap. Because I am sick of lefties yapping about human rights from their plushy fat-cat houses with three-car garages. Because I'm afraid of protesting any of this garbage because I know I will be abused, and afraid of expressing my real views because I know I will be sniped at. Because I'm tired of the gooey idealization of that pretender-to-the-high-IQ, Justin Trudeau. I lived through his father TWICE, and I am sure as hell not going to live through him! As for that other guy, orange never looked good on me, and I'm sure it wouldn't look too good on my country either.

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This won't hurt a bit

Mother's not herself today

Another one of those nauseatingly narcissistic Facebook things

Yet another actual FB message, echoing three or four hundred I have read lately, tossed off to casually announce one's wild popularity as a human being, and thus dragging everyone else's mood down as they realize what pariahs they are:

"I've caught up on all my emails. I shall now bask in this small accomplishment for the thirty seconds it will last."

Translation: "OMG, I just have SO many friends! SO many people love me that they SWARM my inbox with messages of worshipful adulation. I just can't keep up with it all, and if I take a breath for 30 seconds, I am simply inundated. Please! Please, all my slavering sycophants. Give me a chance here! Give me a second to breathe! Curb your adulation for a couple of minutes, and I promise to favor you with a one- or two- word response (one word for every 500 of yours). What can I say? You are truly my fans, and you are precious to me. Now KNOCK IT OFF."

Howdy, ma'am

Now, now, NOW!

(From a short-lived mid-00s site called ABSURDITO (http://absurdito.blogspot.ca/2004/06/birds-schoolchildren-song.html)  comes this startling revelation about the most annoying song I've ever heard. Then some comments. Then some more.)

'The Birds' schoolchildren song

For years I've wondered exactly what the words are to the song sung by the children in that famous scene in Alfred Hitchcock's film, The Birds when Tippi Hedren arrives at the Bodega Bay School and sits outside smoking a cigarette while the birds gather in the schoolyard behind her (while the kids sing the song inside the schoolhouse). 

Finally, today, I've found the actual lyrics as sung in the film. Other lyrics I've found on the internet were shorter. It turns out that The Birds screenwriter Evan Hunter extended the song with new lyrics (and has been receiving royalties ever since!). 

I took these lyrics from the actual shooting script of the film, which can be found at: http://www.screentalk.biz/hitchcock.htm 
The following begins with the script's description of the action, and then I omit all other scene descriptions and present only the song's words: 

EXT. BODEGA BAY – DAY – LONG SHOT

Melanie’s car turns and goes up School Road.

EXT. SCHOOL – DAY – MED. SHOT

Closer shot of the car coming to a stop outside school.
Inside the school, we HEAR the children SINGING.

CHILDREN (O.S.)

I married my wife in the month of June. Ristle-tee, rostle-tee, Mo, mo mo!

…

I carried her off in a silver spoon. Ristle-tee, rostle-tee, hey bombosity, knickety-knackety, retro-quo-quality, willoby-wallaby, Mo, mo, mo!

…

She combed her hair but once a year. Ristle-tee, rostle-tee, Mo, mo, mo! 
With every rake, she shed a tear. Ristle-tee, rostle-tee, hey bombosity, knickety-knackety, retro-quo-quality, willoby-wallaby, Mo, mo, mo!

…

She swept the floor but once a year. Ristle-tee, rostle-tee, Mo, mo, mo!

She swore her broom was much too dear. Ristle-tee, rostle-tee, hey bombosity, knickety-knackety, retro-quo-quality, willoby-wallaby, Mo, mo, mo!

…

She churned the butter in Dad’s old boot. Ristle-tee, rostle-tee, Mo, mo, mo!

And for a dasher she used her foot. Ristle-tee, rostle-tee, hey bombosity, knickety-knackety, retro-quo-quality, willoby-wallaby, Mo, mo, mo!

…

The butter came out a grizzle-y-grey. Ristle-tee, rostle-tee, Mo, mo, mo! 
The cheese took legs and ran away! Ristle-tee, rostle-tee, hey bombosity, knickety-knackety, retro-quo-quality, willoby-wallaby, Mo, mo, mo!

…

I brought my wife a horse one day. Ristle-tee, rostle-tee, Mo, mo, mo! She let the critter get away. Ristle-tee, rostle-tee, hey bombosity, knickety-knackety, retro-quo-quality, willoby-wallaby, Mo, mo, mo!

…

I asked my wife to wash the floor. Ristle-tee, rostle-tee, Mo, mo, mo! She gave me my hat and showed me the door! Ristle-tee, rostle-tee, hey bombosity, knickety-knackety, retro-quo-quality, (the song slows – it is near the end) willoby-wallaby, Mmmmmmmo, Mmmmmmmo, MO!

Though the above is in the shooting script for the film, in the film the children shuffle around the lines to the song and change a few words. The changed words sound like they changed the unrhythmic "hey bombosity" to "hey donny dostle-tee". Also, "I carried her off in a silver spoon" appears to have changed to "I brought her off by the light of the moon." And "Mo, mo, mo!" sure sounds more like, "Now, now, now!" 

Finally, I *SWEAR* that, instead of the word "butter" (in the first stanza) the kids sing "poison"!! This would certainly be keeping with Hitchcock's macabre humor. So, I've taken the liberty to make these changes to the updated version below. 

So here are the above lyrics modified as sung in the film:

The poison it came out a grizzle-y-grey. Ristle-tee, rostle-tee, Now, now, now! 

The cheese it took legs and ran away! Ristle-tee, rostle-tee, hey donny dostle-tee, knickety-knackety, retro-quo-quality, willoby-wallaby, Now, now, now!

She let the critter get away. Ristle-tee, rostle-tee, hey donny dostle-tee, knickety-knackety, retro-quo-quality, willoby-wallaby, Now, now, now!

I asked my wife to wash the floor. Ristle-tee, rostle-tee, Now, now, now! 
She gave me my hat and she showed me the door! Ristle-tee, rostle-tee, hey donny dostle-tee, knickety-knackety, retro-quo-quality, Now, now, now!

I married my wife in the month of June. Ristle-tee, rostle-tee, Now, now, now!

I brought her off by the light of the moon. Ristle-tee, rostle-tee, hey donny dostle-tee, knickety-knackety, retro-quo-quality, willoby-wallaby, Now, now, now!

She combed her hair but once a year. Ristle-tee, rostle-tee, hey donny dostle-tee, knickety-knackety, retro-quo-quality, willoby-wallaby, Now, now, now!

Blogger's observations. The Birds is one of my favorite Hitchcock films (the other one being Psycho, which I'll have to devote a whole post to), mainly for the cheap thrills. You don't have to figure anything out in this movie. There is no intrigue; there are no plot twists; indeed, there is no plot. The birds come; they see; they conquer. Based on a short story (Daphne du Maurier?) which is in turn based on a true incident, nothing is ever explained here, much as in life. Terror and confusion hopelessly intermingle to bring a formerly happy and innocent community to its knees.

The song the schoolchildren endlessly sing (which drives me bananas with its nonsensical monotony) reminds me a lot of a song we "took", or rather sang, in about Grade 5. It was bad, but not quite THIS bad. It was called The Wee Cooper o' Fife (and doesn't that sound more Irish than Scottish?), and here is the part I can remember, spelled phonetically:

There was a wee cooper who lived in Fife
Nickety-nackety noo, noo, noo
And he has taken a comely wife
Hey willie-wallacky, hoo John Dougal a rain co-rushity roo roo roo.

Oh she wadna bake and she wadna brew
Nickety-nackety noo, noo, noo
For the spoilin' o' her comely hue
Hey willie-wallacky, etc.

Nobody knew what it meant. Nobody explained anything to kids in those days (or now, probably). This was right around the time of the Canadian Centennial, when we had to learn all sorts of daft folk songs that were supposed to be Canadian. Canadian meant Scottish, English and Irish. So we didn't know what a cooper was (a barrel-maker, it turns out), where Fife is (? Isn't that something you blow into?), what a comely hue was supposed to be, and what all that other shit meant, if it meant anything at all.

Though I thought we had every Burl Ives recording ever bleated, we didn't have a recording of him singing "that song". I've dug up the lyrics, and it's definitely the same one:

She wouldna wash, nor she wouldna wring (nickety-nackety, etc. etc. etc.)
For the spoilin' o' her gowden ring
She wouldna card, nor she wouldna spin
For the shamin' o' her gentle kin

So the wee cooper went to his woodpack
And laid a sheepskin on his wife's back
"Now, I wouldna thrash ye for your gentle kin,
But I would thrash me ain sheepskin."

"Oh, I will bake and I will brew,
And nae mair think o' my comely hue!
"And I will wash and I will wring,
And nae mair think o' my gowden ring!

"And I will card and I will spin
And nae mair think o' my gentle kin!"
So ye what has gotten a gentle wife,
Just ye send for the wee cooper o' Fife!

Charming, isn't it? This song (which may or may not be a somewhat simplified version of the song in The Birds) is all about domestic violence and a wife cowed into submission by her husband's threats of physical harm. Good, clean, wholesome fun.

This is the only Burl Ives version I could find on YouTube. WARNING: may be hazardous to your mental health if you loathe marionettes as much as I do. But for some reason, when I was a kid, they were everywhere, from the execrable Howdy Doody to Supercar, one of the better action-adventure series of the '60s. Except for that goddamn chimp.

ADDENDUM. Why I hated that goddamn chimp from Supercar, followed by an image of his death mask.

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16 basic principles of mass indoctrination

(From a blog called Aspie Savant)

1. Start while they’re young.

2. Create the illusion of political freedom.

3. Use simplistic stereotypes to sway public opinion.

4. Mix facts with lies.

5. A big lie is more convincing than a small lie.

6. Give the masses “bread and circuses” to keep them well-fed and distracted.

7. Simplify complex issues by portraying them as dichotomies. Eliminate nuance.

8. Spread propaganda by all means possible.

9. Ostracize dissident voices through ridicule or defamation.

10. Faith in the correctness of a religion or ideology is more powerful than force.

11. Manipulate history records to support your religion or ideology.

12. Control different sides of the same debate and you control the outcome.

13. The masses are less swayed by reason than by stirring their emotions.

14. Drive the opposition in a corner. When they fight back, act like a victim.

15. Label all non-conformistic behavior as pathological and promote “cures” for them.

16. Use rituals and mass events to keep people occupied and strengthen their faith.

(For more of this kind of thing, see Aspie Savant)

Blogarification: This is a typical internettish-Facebooky-Twitterish thingammy that goes all over the place and has everyone all exercised. It has some truth in it, but suffers from the same kind of heavy-handed, what? Fist-pounding, or whatever-it-is, that it decries. But it still makes some interesting, nay, important points.

The small drowned child has been a universally-embraced image which is supposed to spur humanity on to ever-greater heights of awareness and compassion in the refugee crisis, but it won't. When it comes to refugees and the chaos they could create in the developed world, we ain't seen nothing yet. Climate change is going to create unfathomable numbers of displaced peoples, perhaps in the millions, not just because their home countries are uninhabitable but because the food is going to run out. When the food runs out, humanity is not at its best and has been known to rip out the throats of its competitors. That's really the only reason homo sapiens exists.

THEN we'll see how much good a sensationalistic and tasteless photo of a drowned kid will do.

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Pop-Tarts machine

Rubber baby buggy bumpers

Some cool Harold Lloyd movie titles

Death of a hero

Today is World Suicide Prevention Day, though almost nobody knows about it or pays much attention. For the most part, the best sufferers of mental illness can hope for is pity.

But there is another way, something that might just break through public indifference and scorn, and that is the power of story. This piece ran in the Saint John Telegraph-Journal in 2005. It mourns the death by suicide of my dear friend and comrade Glen Allen, an award-winning journalist and great human being who suffered deeply from the effects of bipolar disorder.

I will not say he "lost the battle" with this sometimes-nightmarish disorder because I think he won, in that he lived for over 60 years, loved and worked and married and had children and wrote and taught and travelled all over the world. Even in the midst of unbelievable pain, he was articulate and wrote with a grace I'll never approach. I'd like to share this article again, just as it went down ten years ago, when my grief was very fresh.

December is long and dark at the best of times, and this year the merriment of Christmas was dulled by a death. When I opened my daily paper to the obituary section, I saw a face that made me gasp, a face I had never actually seen but knew as well as my brother’s. I read the account of his death in disbelief, shocked but not completely surprised that my friend had frozen to death beside some railroad tracks in Toronto, full of pills, after wandering away from a psychiatric ward.

My friend was Glen Allen, newspaperman, Maclean’s correspondent, world traveller, insightful and witty writer, gentle, courageous (and sometimes lost) soul. What brought us together was some ferociously honest writing about alcoholism, and what held us together for years and years was a mutual struggle with various demons. He always wrote about them better than I did. Or so I always thought.

I never knew Glen in the usual sense. I never saw his face. I had heard his voice a number of times, most memorably when he read his Getting Sober and Staying Sober pieces on CBC Radio’s Morningside. I sensed straight-from-the-shoulder directness and convoluted complexity in one person. This man was in pain, and so eerily distanced from the pain that he could write about it in prose that shimmered and shocked and stung. His writer's mind was so alive and focussed as to be almost crystalline, whereas the rest of him seemed to be slouching towards oblivion.

Sometime during his short tenure on Morningside, I began to write to Glen Allen. This guy just had a magical way with words, and seemed like a genuine (and pain-ridden, and large-hearted) human soul. I just had to get in touch with him. I was delighted to get responses, brief at first, then longer and longer, and over time we developed a sort of relationship through the mail. This was in the days of real letters on paper, written by hand, and I always delighted in his vital and elegant script, even if it deteriorated pretty badly towards the end. Often he’d write on beautiful blank cards, and I have one in front of me now, gorgeous sprays of crimson and gold called Flowers for Lord Buddha.

I think my letters must have gone on and on. I could hardly help myself, in those days, since I had no idea what was wrong with me and why I could not settle myself the way everyone else seemed to. But Glen had the same square-peg syndrome, which in his case registered as endearing eccentricity. He had a black lady cat named Imelda (I can’t think of a better cat name, can you?); he was concerned about his future once, and consulted a psychic in the backwoods of New Brunswick; when asked to be a speaker at a meeting, he shared his “experience (long), strength (not much), and hope (I’m going to hang on if it kills me)”.

Ten years is a long time, ten birthdays, ten Easters, ten Christmases. What did we write about? I can barely bring myself to open the file folder that holds all his letters, preserved and precious to me. The stark end of his life has made it impossible But I know we wrote about recovery: from alcoholism (we were both afflicted, and though his sobriety was patchy at best, he genuinely loved AA and treated it with the greatest reverence in his writing), from our parents (both of us had grown up with oppressive, cuttingly sarcastic fathers who withheld affection unless our performance in life was perfect: meaning we were never loved at all), and the worst thing of all, depression, the thousand-pound rock that weighs on the sensitive soul and destroys pleasure and joy and love. Both of us had bench-pressed thousands of pounds over the years, and though he told me his official diagnosis was manic-depression, now rather slickly called "bipolar disorder", I did not realize we shared the same affliction until this past spring, when I experienced what is delicately referred to as an “episode”.

I thought then of Glen, wondered where he was, how he was doing. It wasn't the first time. Wasn't even the twentieth. We wrote to each other for an incredible ten years, while Glen pulled up stakes and moved again, and again, and again, afflicted with terminal restlessness, an attempt to outrun his own pain. But in 1996, I finally lost the thread. I tried and tried. I even e-mailed his brother Gene, but got no answer. The trail was cold, and I had to surrender him to fate or the angels.

When I read his obituary, accompanied by a picture of Glen looking like a mere boy, sweet and shy, someone who just called out to be loved, I was barely out of my own thrashing battle, still trying to figure out what the hell happened to me, how the genie had exploded out of the bottle and derailed my life. But I kept thinking: Glen would know. He'd know just what to say to me, he'd know how to spread balm very gently on the raw wound of my mind. Like a sherpa, he'd been there before me, braved the elements and somehow survived it all.

Until now. When I read of the way he died, frozen to death like a street person (those souls he so identified with and wrote about with such compassion), with no one to hold him as the life ebbed out of him, I wanted to scream at the injustice of it all: at the medical community's complete inability to help such a large-hearted, lavishly gifted human being; at the gap between Glen and his loved ones (there was no doubt he loved them, but something always got in the way), at the grim, fearful, love-deprived boyhood that left scars on him, and in him, that would never be healed.

I did take out the folder, and looked at his dear, graceful handwriting, but haven't read the letters yet. I had thought of writing a piece about him, a sort of tribute, but I knew no one would really get it. When I think of him, which is often, tears well up, and I just want my funny, sardonic, gentle, wounded, wonderful brother back.

There is a song from the 70s by a group called Bread that I keep hearing in my mind. It has a haunting lyric that is like an impressionist painting of Glen's life:

"For a love that wouldn't bloom,
For the hearts that never played in tune.
Like a lovely melody that everyone can sing,
Take away the words that rhyme, it doesn't mean a thing."

The words seem to make a melody of themselves: I think I knew his name. I never knew him, but I loved him just the same. Wish that I had found the way, and the reasons that would make him stay.

But he couldn't stay; the pain was too great, the loneliness had hollowed him out, and the demons that screamed inside his skull had to be silenced once and for all. Such a person, making an intentional exit, is often described as "finally being at peace".

I think it goes beyond that. I think he is everywhere. I know he hangs around here, a warm spot in the room, a kind of disembodied smile, and I don't want him to go.

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