The future anchor of CTV News?

My eldest granddaughter, Caitlin. I watched her get born, and now she's thirteen years old and sitting at the anchor's desk! No doubt her career aspirations will take many twists and turns - but she does look great up there.

Bob Dylan on Nobel Prize

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Chicken love

Bentley the cat walks out on me!

"Definitely difficult to process" - the disaster that is Donald Trump

"I understand Trump is a polarizing figure. I understand his rise to power (first-ever president without any political or military experience, just for starters) is odd, unusual, shocking, etc.

But that’s precisely why the ramifications need to be discussed among citizens in a cool, calm, compassionate manner. Take a cue from the concession speeches of Hillary Clinton and Barack Obama – I particularly liked Obama’s comment (I’m going to miss that guy) to the effect of “this was an intramural scrimmage … We are Americans first.”

You and your friend are Americans first. It can be hard, I think, particularly for Canadians to understand, but America is, at heart, I believe, a rebellious country, a country that began in rebellion – a punk country, if you will, and Donald Trump was a punk choice for president.

So it’s definitely difficult to process, but shouldn’t cause a rift between you and your friend. When one Oscar Wilde character says accusatorily to another “You always want to argue about things,” the other character says “That is exactly what things are made for.”

I’ve often felt the truth of that. And never more so than with Trump. Go ahead and argue about him until you’re blue in the face and the bottle of chardonnay is empty.

Just respect the fact not everyone will always have the same opinion as you. And never, ever let it get personal." - David Eddie, The Globe and Mail.

Blogger's note. I am seeing this sentiment (in this case, a Canadian's advice to an American friend) in various places, and keep thinking of that line in The Way We Were: "People ARE their principles." If that is so, I cannot stay friends with someone who "is" Donald Trump, or embraces his hateful ideology. 

Can I keep on my friend list (real or Facebook-ish) someone who fiercely supports a racist, sexist, homophobic, xenophobic, misogynist, wall-building, and just plain stupid world leader, someone who (if American) maybe even voted for him and thinks the country made a brilliant choice?

Can I stand to hear ANY more of that hateful Hillary-bashing?

The truth is, no one seems capable of the kind of calm, dispassionate discussion over a bottle of wine that this guy is recommending. He seems to be asking for witty repartee, a la Oscar Wilde, while all around us corruption is sprouting and flourishing like a cancer. Not much protest or social change ever emanated from a drawing room, no matter how cutting the witticisms. 

Even us so-called civil Canadians are screaming at each other about the terror of Trump. Am I happy about that? Of course not. It makes me terribly sad. But what's the alternative? 

I can't help but see this man's advice to his American friend as a version of "yes, he's a Nazi, but he's your friend! Why not talk it over? Don't ever let it get personal." But if we remain dispassionate, keep our emotions out of this, let our convictions go to sleep or be overtaken by that "oh, come on, be nice" mentality, we are truly doomed. 

And minimizing the horror of Trump's win by saying he's a "punk" President is - just that. Minimizing. If people believe this is a realistic or healthy way to proceed, they are wrong.

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President Trump: are you ready for this?

President Trump: the way the bee buzzes

Call this an extreme example of internet strangeness. This is an excerpt (a short one, at that) from something called Vaught's Practical Character Reader. Someone apparently found/scanned this very old and dusty book about - what? Phrenology? That's the assessment of character by feeling bumps on a person's head. So it can't be that. This is more like - well, what IS it? Face-reading? Making stuff up, more-like, based on a whole lot of strange drawings of heads and faces.

So if someone's face is a certain shape, well, good. They're obviously a worthwhile person. If not, get away from them! A woman is plainly a rotten mother because she has a sort of dip or curve in her head. On the other hand, HE would make a good husband because of the shape of his ears.

And if a bee buzzes around your head, you're going to be President.

A number of people in these illustrations have holes in their heads, or what looks like tape wrapped around them. Strange things, words, spring out of the heads of others. Eyeballs sprout out of someone's scalp. Very little is explained, though a lot of it is described as "needs no explanation".

None of this makes a damn bit of sense!

What this does point to however is something we still do, consciously or otherwise. We assess, or, more likely, judge others by their appearance, particularly facially. This usually happens in a split-second, upon meeting someone for the first time. We file away that impression and may stick to it, unless something else dissuades us.

In the case of Vaught's Practical Character Reader (and who is this Vaught, anyway? I don't like the look of this guy), it's all set in stone, unchangeable. Even if the fat man lost weight, he'd still be evil.

We now know that not one jot of this is true. People with big heads aren't evil. People with small heads aren't evil. (Note. Donald Trump IS evil - Ed.) Steam doesn't come out of people's skulls (too often). An "honest head and face" isn't necessarily a perfect oval. This is something that someone made up, perhaps to reassure themselves and/or others that their prejudices were correct.

This last one, not explained at all, has to be the strangest of all, but perhaps it's saying that if you set a bee loose in a room full of politicians, it will make a bee-line to the most suitable candidate. This system is more logical than democracy, or at least yields more favorable results. It might have worked in our favour last night. Instead, we had a stampede of barbarians at the gates, and all was lost for those who live by reason.

By many people's reckoning, this means that racism, a low grumble in a huge part of the world, might just rise to a mighty roar (as it has so many times before in history), unchecked by the counterforce of reason. It's a grim fact that the KKK voted Trump, and celebrated mightily last night.

What does this have to do with an old brown-paged book about face-reading? There is a connection.

The so-called innocent analysis of character by facial features isn't really innocent at all. It led to atrocities such as the dismissal of both Irish and African peoples as basically worthless, of "low type". If you're of low type, obviously you can't hope for anything better (so get away and keep your hands off MY resources).

The Iberians are believed to have been originally an African race, who thousands of years ago spread themselves through Spain over Western Europe. These remains are found in the barrows, or burying places, in sundry parts of these countries. The skulls are of low prognathous type. They came to Ireland and mixed with the natives of the South and West, who themselves are supposed to have been of low type and descendents of savages of the Stone Age who, in consequence of isolation from the rest of the world, had never been (?) competed in the healthy struggle of life, and thus made way according to the laws of nature for superior races.

I don't like what I'm seeing now, I don't like how the White Right just seized back power from the so-called liberals. There's a kind of civil war going on. Maybe we'll be drawing up facial comparison charts again. Or taking measurements of facial features. They did that once, remember? It kind of had something to do with your future. Or lack of one.

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November 8, 2016

After great pain, a formal feeling comes –
The Nerves sit ceremonious, like Tombs –
The stiff Heart questions ‘was it He, that bore,’
And ‘Yesterday, or Centuries before’?

The Feet, mechanical, go round –
A Wooden way
Of Ground, or Air, or Ought –
Regardless grown,
A Quartz contentment, like a stone –

This is the Hour of Lead –
Remembered, if outlived,
As Freezing persons, recollect the Snow –
First – Chill – then Stupor – then the letting go –

Emily Dickinson

Do tomatoes scream when sliced?

 

Back in 1948, there was apparently nothing weird about riding across a lake on a motorized surfboard while wearing a nice suit and bowler hat and smoking a cigarette. Forget his lack of safety gear – inventor Joe Gilpin looks cool gliding along on the water.

The 20th century saw many astounding technological innovations. The automobile revolutionized the way people live and work, the internet changed the way people think about information, and the U.S. of A put a man on the moon. But some technological advances that came in the earlier part of the 20th century weren't exactly meant for the history books. Because they were stupid. Take, for example, this M3 sub-machine gun with a curved barrel for shooting around corners. It's the perfect gun for the "shoot first, look where you're shooting later" kind of guy.

You can carry it anywhere and everywhere. Like, office, public washrooms, even in public transport.

Inventor John H T Rinfret demonstrates his anti-bandit bag. To foil thieves the chain is pulled and the bottom of the case falls out so the contents are scattered over the floor. That'll stop those thieves from getting at the contents of your bag! No, wait. It won't.

President of Zeus Corp., Robert L. Stern, smoking a cigarette from his self-designed rainy day cigarette holder.

A woman adjusts her stocking by the light of the Goodyear's illuminated tires. The tire is made from a single piece of synthetic rubber and is brightly lit by bulbs mounted inside the wheel rim.

A man at a shipping exhibition in Olympia, London, demonstrating the ''Laryngaphone, '' a noise-excluding telephone which only transmits vibrations from the vocal chords when the microphone is placed against the throat or cheek. For the man who wants to annoy both his wife and his mistress.
(Blogger's note: not to be confused with Sonovox). http://margaretgunnng.blogspot.ca/2016/11/incredible-sonovox-do-not-listen.html

A nanny supervising a baby suspended in a wire cage attached to the outside of a high tenement block window. The cages were distributed to members of the Chelsea Baby Club in London who have no gardens, or qualms about putting a child in a box dangling over a busy street.

American science fiction writer and founder of the Church of Scientology L. Ron Hubbard uses his Hubbard Electrometer to determine whether tomatoes experience pain, 1968. His work led him to the conclusion that tomatoes "scream when sliced."

Can Bob Dylan paint?

Blackbird, fly

Swift, slow; sweet, sour; adazzle, dim

Pied Beauty

GLORY be to God for dappled things—

For skies of couple-colour as a brinded cow;

For rose-moles all in stipple upon trout that swim;

Fresh-firecoal chestnut-falls; finches’ wings;

Landscape plotted and pieced—fold, fallow, and plough;

And áll trádes, their gear and tackle and trim. 

All things counter, original, spare, strange;

Whatever is fickle, freckled (who knows how?)

With swift, slow; sweet, sour; adazzle, dim;

He fathers-forth whose beauty is past change:

Praise him. 

Gerard Manley Hopkins (1844–89). Poems. 1918. 

If people are their principles, who or what is Trump?

"Hubbell, people ARE their principles" - Barbra Streisand, The Way We Were. 

I just saw an article - admittedly, from a pretty shallow source, that said we should not unfriend someone "just because they support Trump". You can agree to disagree. Can't you? 

No, personally I can't. If my "friend" were a neo-Nazi, a misogynist or a KKK member, I doubt if they'd still be on my friend list. 

But what a bizarre thing to say! I can understand it under ordinary circumstances - agree to disagree - but these are NOT ordinary circumstances. Not at all. 

Katie is right.

Breast Cancer Awareness Game: HOAX!

I recently saw, from someone who has been a Facebook/actual friend for a very long time, a sudden, dramatic announcement on her status update: WE'RE MOVING TO VERMONT AT THE END OF THE YEAR! This was followed by a ton of comments from her friends: "Oh no!" "Why didn't you tell me?" "I thought you said you'd never leave (your hometown)!", etc. etc.

Then I got a message from her that made no sense at all:

Bahahahaha~~ You shouldn't have liked or commented on my last status! Now you have to pick from one of the below and post it as your status. This is the 2016 Breast Cancer Awareness game. Don't be a spoil sport. Pick your poison from one of these and post it as your status.

1. Just found a squirrel in my car!
2. Just used my kids to get out of a speeding ticket.
3. How do you get rid of foot fungus?
4. All of my bras are missing!
5. I think I just accepted a marriage proposal online?!
6. I've decided to stop wearing underwear.
7. It's confirmed I'm going to be a mommy/daddy.
8. Just won a chance audition on America's got talent!
9. I've been accepted on master chef.
10. I'm getting a pet monkey!
11. I just peed myself!
12. Really thinking about getting butt implants!
13. Just won 700 on a scratcher!
14. We're moving to Vermont at the end of the year!
15. Mayonnaise on Reese's peanut butter cups is sooo good! 

Post with no explanations. Sorry, I fell for it too. Looking forward to your post. Ahhh don't ruin it. (Don't let the secret out). And remember it's all for the 2016 Breast Cancer Awareness." Go Pink!!

This was an invitation to play a kind of Facebook tag, the kind I never participate in anyway. I'm offended by all these kinds of things, but this one. . . The fact that it was somehow (?) connected to breast cancer awareness particularly offended me. It felt as if something incredibly serious was being trivialized. I was given no choice but to be a good sport and go along with it, when it wasn't funny or constructive at all. When I checked this on Snopes, it turned out this sort of thing has been going on for years and years, with variations in the nature of the status posts. The worst of them involved women claiming to be pregnant ("Surprise!"). Not surprisingly, none of this has anything whatsoever to do with breast cancer funding or research, or even (as far as I am concerned) "awareness".

There is a sense that if people are aware of something, it's always a good thing that can only lead to MORE good things. Oh yes? The Kardashians? Donald Trump? Awareness on its own means nothing, and can lead to the kind of endless, pointless blather that is currently choking the internet.

I messaged my friend back and pointed out that this was a hoax, which she denied: she said she had researched it (in other words, she was right about it and I was wrong). Furthermore, she had a friend with breast cancer who loved it, supposedly making it not only OK but (?) desirable and effective, though no donation button existed anywhere. Then she prescribed (presumably, for my bitterness and anger in NOT playing the game)  a favorite self-help book of hers called Loving What Is.  Self-help/acceptance for someone who obviously needed it. The message seemed to be: if I didn't go along with her cancer boondoggle, I must have something wrong with my emotional health.

I cannot really describe the welter of feelings I have right now. I feel condescended to, and jerked around. It just isn't funny, but if I don't play along with it I am a "spoilsport" and don't care about all those suffering women. I wonder if any of her other (baffled?) Facebook friends are having the same reaction, but it may well be the usual Greek chorus thing: "ohhhhh, you fooled me there!" "Oh, I'm so glad you're not moving to Vermont."

The following is an excerpt from a powerful 2013 blog post by cancer warrior Lisa Bonchek Adams.
http://lisabadams.com/2013/10/04/breast-cancer-still-facebook-game/

I will not say she "lost her battle" in 2015, as everyone seems to phrase it. Rather, she lived with her disease as fully and openly as is humanly possible, and wrote magnificently while doing so. I quote her here because nobody has ever said it with more eloquence:

"Once again Facebook games about breast cancer are making the rounds now that it is October. I posted this last year and got some flack from people who thought anything that 'raised awareness' about breast cancer was good and couldn’t understand why I am critical of these messages.

My point is that this isn’t awareness.

There probably isn’t anyone on Facebook who doesn’t know that breast cancer exists. But there certainly is a lot of myth-busting to be done. This is not how to do it. . . There’s a lot of work to be done educating. Education is awareness, these Facebook posts are not.

(There follows a version of the above list of options)

The above instructions are not awareness. This is offensive. Breast cancer is not a joke, awareness does not come from sharing the color of your underwear or your marital status (the whole “tee-hee, wink-wink” attitude adds to my disgust). Even if it ended up on TV, that still would not be educating people about breast cancer they didn’t know before. All it does is show the world that lots of people are willing to post silly things as their status updates.

Just because it says it’s about breast cancer awareness doesn’t mean you have to agree. Go ahead. Ignore it. Or write back and tell them why you don’t want to be included in these things anymore. Another blogger, Susan Niebur, wrote about her take here. She was an astrophysicist, by the way. She died of metastatic breast cancer.

Anyone who has breast cancer and uses your FB status update as an indicator of whether you support their cause is not very enlightened. When I rank 'how to help those of us with cancer,' sharing one of these paragraphs as a status update is the lowest possible method of showing support. There are endless ways to do that. I think it actually is the opposite; sharing these status updates makes people feel they are doing something real for breast cancer causes when they aren’t. (emphasis mine)

I say: count me out of these Facebook games.

I have stage 4 breast cancer and it is no game to me."

LOL, YOU SHOULD NOT HAVE LIKED OR COMMENTED!!!! NOW YOU HAVE TO PICK ONE FROM THESE BELOW AND POST IT TO YOUR STATUS. THIS IS THE 2014 BREAST CANCER AWARENESS GAME. DON’T BE A SPOILSPORT, PICK YOUR POISON FROM ONE OF THESE AND CHANGE YOUR STATUS, 1) DAMN DIARRHOEA 2) JUST USED MY BOOBS TO GET OUT OF A SPEEDING TICKET 3) ANYONE HAVE A TAMPON, I’M OUT 4) HOW DO YOU GET RID OF FOOT FUNGUS? 5) WHY IS NOBODY AROUND WHEN I’M HORNY? 6) NO TOILET PAPER, GOODBYE SOCKS. 7) SOMEONE HAS OFFERED ME A JOB AS A PROSTITUTE BUT I’M HESITANT. 8) I THINK I’M IN LOVE WITH SOMEONE, WHAT SHOULD I DO? 9) I’VE DECIDED TO STOP WEARING UNDERWEAR. 10) IT’S CONFIRMED, I’M GOING TO BE A MUMMY/DADDY! 11) JUST WON £900 ON A SCRATCH CARD 12) I’VE JUST FOUND OUT I’VE BEEN CHEATED ON FOR THE LAST 5 MONTHS. POST WITH NO EXPLANATIONS. SO SORRY I FELL FOR IT TOO!!!!! LOOKING FORWARD TO YOUR POST HA HA.

I realize I take the risk of my friend seeing this and being offended. But if we are real friends, there will be a conversation about it, not just "here, read this self-help book, you obviously need it". I have no idea if she will get anything but positive feedback from her other friends on her baffling, confusing post, and I suppose it's none of my business.

People have pointed out that the "ice-bucket challenge" of a few years ago was gimmicky, too - but I seem to remember it was tied to actual donations of money. I am not "against" all awareness projects, nor am I "against" cancer research. I am not grim and humourless, nor do I believe that breast cancer can never be approached in a light-hearted way.

But there is a difference between light-hearted and goddamn stupid.

Social media, so promising at the beginning, has become a cheap and silly game, and I often wonder why I stay with it. I only opened a Facebook account because I had a book coming out and my publisher required me to do so. Especially during the American election, I've seen comments that made my hair stand on end from people I thought I knew.

It saddens me to say I had to unfollow my friend, and I may have to do more than that because my insides feel like a milkshake. Social media would say, "Don't feel that way" or "ignore it", the good old turn-off-your-feelings advice that has the world on the brink of total meltdown. Or, I guess, embrace acceptance as a way of life and never be angry again.

It's hard to unfriend someone I've known for 30 years. But I don't want to feel this way because of something she sent me. It's my life, and I can feel what I want to - and I will.

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