Song of the Day

What a Friend We Have In Jesus
by the Mennonites
or the Baptists
or the Anglicans
or the Episcopalians
or how about Aretha Franklin...

Douglas Coupland

Go here for an amusing and creative review of Douglas Coupland's latest novel, JPod. NY Times, of course. Probably if you click around you can get back to the page that will let you read the first chapter...

Never mind. The link for the first chapter of the novel is wrong. It takes you to a few poems by Jane Kenyon from her Collected Poems. But you could go there too...

bad potes

even bad potes need a nite out
an occasional vacational
from riddim and rime
meter and time
and syntaxical crime

yessir bad potes need an escape
claws from their pockets
from lint in their bellies
dust bunnies and hellish
hot dogs and relish

why even bad potes need luvluvluv
cuz they can’t pote their way
out of wet paper bags
or pauper pote rags
or spell-chek flags

it ain’t easy bein bad
a dillery dallery drudge of a drag
from pillar to post
a merciless roast
the wretch the wreck the hungry ghost

Yoni School (US) Election Watch Pt. 3

More on Gore

Among those said to be pushing Mr. Gore are billionaire venture capitalist and high-tech entrepreneur John Doerr and Laurie David, a global-warming activist and producer of the film, and wife of "Seinfeld" and "Curb Your Enthusiasm" creator Larry David. "When people see this movie, I know they're going to see the real Al Gore, and they're going to demand that he run," Ms. David says. But, she adds, he changes the subject whenever it comes up, and had to be talked into making the movie when she pitched it.

Mr. Gore has begun assembling a Nashville, Tenn.-based operation to help with the demands on his time. He has hired longtime friend and top aide Roy Neel to head the office, and environmental activist Kalee Kreider, from a Washington public-relations firm, to handle communications. Mr. Feldman says their work will focus on global warming, not on maneuvering for 2008.

Yet the talk of a political second act for the man who won the 2000 popular vote, but lost in the Electoral College after a U.S. Supreme Court ruling, exceeds anything before 2004, when Mr. Gore could have sought a grudge match against President Bush.

In recent weeks, he has been on the covers of Vanity Fair, Wired (its headline: "The Resurrection of Al Gore") and American Prospect, a liberal Democratic magazine. Defeated politically, he nonetheless makes Time's list of the world's 100 most influential people; Mr. Gore is featured under the headings "Heroes and Pioneers" and "America Takes a Fresh Look at 'Ozone Man'" -- the derisive nickname coined by the first President Bush in 1992 after Mr. Gore's previous environmental book, "Earth in the Balance," came out.

"His star will never be higher than it is right now with his movie coming out," says Democratic consultant Karen Skelton, Mr. Gore's former political director.

From the Wall Street Journal, May 8/06 by Jackie Calmes

Yoni School (US) Election Watch Pt. 2

Al Gore For President in '08

I'm telling you...I told you...I predicted it...

The buzz is growing for an Al Gore nomination. Check out Howard Kurtz's bloggy thing in the Washington Post. Kurtz starts out by talking about Gore's appearance on Saturday Night Live. The video clip is available here.

This is way better than Joe Who returning to lead the Permanently Constipated Party back in the 90's.

Not that I didn't like Joe when all was said undone. But "I like Joe" doesn't have quite the same ring as "I like Ike".

How about "I'd like to see Al Gore the Republicans in '08!"?

Best American Fiction of the Last 25 Years

I was going to put this on DoveTale blog, but we're trying to keep Sher's post on top for a while, so it's here. From the New York Times.

Don't wait too long to go to this page cuz I think they take them down after about 2 weeks.

The thing that bought my eye about this list was the number of novels by Don DeLillo. I've always meant to read him...Underworld in particular...but haven't yet got around to it.

Soon...as they say in Jamaica mon.

Also, the Updike novels, the Rabbit Angstrom series. I've only read the last one, but really liked it.

Finally...the #1 novel is Beloved by Toni Morrison. Never read it...but the review included in this article is by Margaret Atwood!

Thought-Provoking

Woman stands at a bus stop in the driving rain
holding three empty 5 gallon water jugs...

Testimonial From a Fan

Song of the Day

Rosalita by Bruce Springsteen.

I remember one of my brother's good friends on the beach at Port Elgin wearing a t-shirt with the words: Bruce Springsteen is God.


Update June 5/07: The fact is, there is nothing...nothing at all like seeing Springsteen and the E Street Band perform this song live. Even after 30 years (!) an aura of unrestrained joyousness emanates from the band when they play Rosalita.

Song of the Day

Home at Last by Steely Dan.

I'm not sure I woke up with this song...that was so long ago. But it's been coming back repeatedly all day. Even that may be inaccurate. It's been an underground current frequently bubbling to the surface.

Politics as Usual

Soooo....Stephen Harpie snubbed Malton McGuilty in favour of John Snory then went to Quebec City to kiss Jean Charade's freckled butt...

Canajun politics, eh?

I can't wait to get my 1% GST reduction. I think I'll buy a lottery ticket with it. No Encore.

A Shot From the Blogosphere

Lifted from the comments section of The Daily Kos:
How many members of the Bush administration does it take to change a light bulb?

1. One to call Fox News so they can broadcast a story denying that the light bulb needed to be changed in the first place


2. One to attack the patriotism of anyone who says the light bulb needs to be changed


3. One to blame Bill and Hillary for burning out the light bulb


4. One to arrange the invasion of a country rumored to have caused the light bulb to burn out and to find the stockpile of light bulbs


5. One to give a billion dollar no-bid contract to Halliburton for the new light bulb


6. One to arrange a photograph of Bush, dressed as a janitor, standing on a step ladder under the banner: Light Bulb Change Accomplished


7. One administration insider to resign and write a book documenting in detail how Bush was literally in the dark


8. One to viciously smear 7


9. One surrogate to campaign on TV and at rallies on how George Bush has had a strong light-bulb-changing policy all along


10. One to arrange a Press Conference where Bush will tell everyone that he is the "Decider" and he decided all alone that the light bulb needed changing

Update on Minnie Van Nice

OK, OK, I haven't had a chance to get around to this.

Last week, Minnie spent four days at the Body Shop getting a makeover...mud pack, manicure, pedicure, new paint, new parts.

While she was gone, I admit I was unfaithful...After all, I gotta make a living. Insurance covered the cost of a rental.

You should have seen the rental! A 2006 GMC Z71 pickup with full-size box and extended cab. Completely...totally...indubitably loaded. Man what a rack! What a smooth ride!

This thing did everything but drive itself, and it nearly did that. Over the four days I had it I didn't even discover all the options, I'm sure. But here are some: completely adjustable seats...forward, backward, up, down, reclining, heated, adjustable lumbar support; the rear-view and driver's side mirrors were light-sensitive so you didn't have to adjust them at night -- bright lights dimmed the mirror and as the lights moved farther away, the mirrors brightened; LED turn signals, of course, in the mirrors; LED compass and thermometer in the rear-view; OnStar; fully adjustable heat/AC -- for driver and passenger; built-in phone; stereo controls in the steering wheel; blah blah...

The thing that most blew me away was the stereo...naturally...Bose speakers, beautiful sound. CD and cassette, which was very nice. But get this...the volume automatically adjusted itself depending on whether you were on the highway or city streets! Way cool!

The only thing this pickup didn't have was a lock for the gas tank, which is odd. Because when all is said and done, that's just what the GMC Z71 pickup truck is: one big gas tank.

New Link

Please note new link under "Links": Lama Yeshe Ling, which is the website for the amalgamated Waterloo, Burlington, Oakville and Hamilton Dharma groups currently morphing into a CENTRE.

World Religions at the Yoni School

Things have taken a decidedly cultish turn at the Yoni School for Wayward Poets ever since the arrival of Miss Blythe Lee Looming-Catastrophe.

I don’t think I’ve told you about Miss Blythe Lee Looming-Catastrophe. First of all, she insists on having her full name used all the time, including the Miss.

Miss Blythe Lee Looming-Catastrophe. A product of WWII, the big one, her mother was one of the Philadelphia Loomings of “Automatic Awning” fame. Her father was a drill sergeant in the Italian army, one Giuseppe Catastrophe. They met during the battle of Monte Cassino where Faith Looming had been airdropped in order to service the servicemen. After searching high and low on the Monte, she finally discovered a serviceman to service…one Giuseppe Catastrophe. She found him under a small round table covered with a red and white checked table cloth at an outdoor café just around the corner from the Cassino. Giuseppe was hiding. Whether from the Allied troops or from his own lieutenant was never clearly established. What is known is that it was love at first sight. Faith and Giuseppe were united before daybreak.

Miss Blythe Lee Looming-Catastrophe was the result of that union, a true prix de guerre. As it turned out, though, Giuseppe could never get out of his habit of running and hiding. One morning he left the villa to grab a pack of smokes and never came back. Faith Looming was thrown upon her own ample resources in the raising of her daughter Miss Blythe Lee Looming-Catastrophe. The lack of a father-in-residence had only one apparent consequence. Miss Blythe Lee Looming-Catastrophe developed an abiding faith in the eventual manifestation of a spiritual father-figure, and so she has spent her entire life engaged in the practise of assorted occult rituals designed to turn the dross of her family history into golden slumbers.

And she’s had quite an effect on the inmates of the Yoni School. Suzy Homemaker is now a member of a group called the Castrati di Naturo Pathogen. The founder of this society, she says, was an alchemist in the south of France during the ninth century. Little else is known about him, but it seems he was a demanding taskmaster. Devotees risked his wrath at their peril, for he was known to possess a quick temper and a biting sarcasm that could flay the flesh from one’s very bones. The main ritual these Castrati seem to engage in is to anoint themselves with oil (by jumping in the bathtub), wrapping themselves in flannel nighties and repeatedly mumbling arcane phrases such as “I toleja so I toleja so I toleja so…” The result is a hypnotic trance similar to voodoo practices, followed by sleep during which one dreams of lettuce.

LaLaLeo has joined the Vibratos. As far as I can tell, they’re similar to the Sufi Dervishes. Except they don’t whirl. They just perch on their hind legs, imitating humans, and oscillate.

Finally, Cosmicat, not to be outdone, has become the most vocal cultist of all, thanks to her membership in the Flying Yowlengas, a reputedly demonic sect whose main ritual is to pace stealthily within an inverted pentagram at midnight while uttering bloodcurdling howls at a preferably full moon. Cosmicat’s main problem is that she can’t decide whether to do this indoors or out. One minute she wants out. Next she wants in. The keepers of the zoo, excuse me, the school, are at their wits’ ends, not knowing whether to make the sign of the Cross, shoot silver bullets or use wooden stakes. Mostly they open the doors when required.

Some of the inmates celebrated Easter in the old-fashioned way. Chocolate bunnies.

Song of the Day

The Night They Drove Old Dixie Down
The Band's version. Never liked Joan Baez'z'z'z'z version much.

Song of the Day

Who Stole the Keeshka

Update June 5/07: This is not really the version I was thinking of. As far as I'm concerned, the Black Forest Band plays the definitive version. But it's only available on a cassette, recorded live, not commercially available. (ie. it's in HWSRN's basement.) This is a version by the Polka Family.

Busman's Tour of the 401 Corridor

I ventured farther east today, by land at least, than I have for twenty years, having abandoned Montreal to the French in the last quarter of the 20th century. Lunchbucket to Cornwall, all in the name of commerce. A rarity, that…a direct drive package going that distance.

The tour starts with the skunk just outside Lunchbucket at the entrance to the 401 eastbound. ‘Nuff said.

The next major point of interest is the Niagara Escarpment. Several things may be said about the escarpment. It is the backbone of southwestern Ontario, winding its rocky way from Niagara north until it plunges unceremoniously into Georgian Bay. (According to the geological map, it actually then curves around the north end of Lake Michigan and winds up in Wisconsin! I never knew that…) The escarpment is breathtaking in the fall when the fall colours fall. The escarpment is apparently composed mostly of gravel, or aggregate as the road-builders like to call it. Finally, there’s a big long hiking trail on it.

Ten minutes down the road is Milton, where I spent nearly every Sunday for ten years playing in the house band at a dubious German restaurant. Frozen schnitzel, exploding Hungarian sausages, and gravy that performed the same function as Ex-Lax. Periodically, members of the Bruce Trail Hikers Association would come into the restaurant after exploring the gravel byways of the previously mentioned escarpment hiking trail. Somehow they always managed to find things not gravel along their path. They would come in, eat iffy goulash and dumplings, dance a polka or two and leave large clumps of mud on the floor.

After Milton comes the sixteen-lane metromadness stretching across perhaps 100 kilometres of alien landscape sometimes referred to as the GTA. Somewhere near the middle of this, one passes over the longest continuous road in North America (the world?) with barely a whimper.

Then, off to the mythical mystical east. Pickering. Darlington, where you see a commercial strip plaza perched precariously in the shadow of the nuclear power plant. Ajax. Whitby, home of a former world championship hockey team. Little more than GTA now.

Oshawa, where in 1937 Mitch Hepburn, the irascible Liberal premier set back the Liberal cause in Ontario for decades by organizing a private police force known as Sons of Mitches to put down the General Motors strike. How easily we forget how hard the workers had to fight in those days for anything resembling rights, and how bare-faced our governments sometimes were in their acts of repression. But then, Mike Harris did remind us now and then, didn’t he?

Never mind. Keep driving. Bowmanville, home of World Records, where the band had its first vinyl albums pressed. Personal history. Went to pick them up myself. Eleven boxes or something like that. I think we still have some!

The Big Apple at Colborne. Over 2 million pies sold. Through Trenton I whistled a few bars of In the Mood, passing by Glenn Miller Rd. and thought about the one gig I played at CFB Trenton. Belleville and the Bay of Quinte, other gigs, and Al Purdy mooning around. On to Napanee, home of a doe-eyed waitress I once knew who worked, in fact, at that same Bavarian restaurant. During that same Trenton trip, we actually did the Highway 2 Kingston Road scenic version. I always loved that Kingston Road in Toronto was in fact the road to Kingston. “Here,” you could say, “Get on this road, follow it all the way and you’ll end up in what might have been the capital of Canada.”

And we’re getting there. Stop for gas in Napanee, the cheapest along the entire route. A nod to Prince Edward County, the occasional view of Lake Ontario. See the sign for Sharbot Lake where my buddhabuddy Lynn now lives in rustic simplicity and relative solitude. I would have phoned her but discovered I neglected to load her number into the cell phone. By the map, it looks like a hell of drive north from the 401, but I’m sure she’s said it’s only about an hour.

And Kingston. Raise a glass to Sir John A. More gigs here. In particular one we played at Queens for homecoming, along with a band called Phil ‘n’ the Blanks, who, as of a couple years ago, were still gigging. We all got very drunk along with purple and yellow face-painted froshes, and went to a greasy pizza joint in downtown Kingston where the keyboard player from the other band demonstrated that he could touch his Adam’s Apple with his tongue. Ahh, those were the days.

Let us not forget that this is also Prison Alley, from Warkworth up there in Campbellford, to Collins Bay to Kingston (where I got yelled at for taking pictures of that musty old pile of bricks and broken hearts) to Joyceville.

Cruising out of Kingston I pondered the sight of the old City Hall and its farmers’ market in the back yard. Lunchbucket used to have one of those. Now, it’s Your Farmers’ Market, if you please. Anyway…the highway reminds us that we live in a land of granite and pines. Explosives. Whether you’re blowing the gates to the Kingston Pen or the Gateway to the East.

Here comes Gananoque and the Thousand Islands. I counted five of them.

And Brockville, hometown of Xena the Kayak Princess, where I caught a fleeting glimpse of the St. Lawrence. Prescott, which in latter days has bad connotations. Iroquois with its strange First Nations vibe.

The last stretch is long and straight and nondescript. It’s a headlong rush to Montreal, really. But you notice that the transports begin to have more French names on them. And Quebec license plates. And Maine, Vermont, Massachusetts. See, that’s different! In our neck of the woods it’s New York and Michigan.

Cornwall? What do I know? I drove on three streets in Cornwall: McConnell, Marleau and Campbell. In and out. It’s what couriers do. All the streets in Cornwall are French and English. Everyone I spoke to, three people I think, spoke English, though one only barely because he arrived from Pakistan only three weeks ago.

And so home. I ran the reminiscences in reverse. Stopped for a sub in Brockville and gas again in Napanee. Just over 1100 kilometres. Eleven hours there and back. And a half tank of gas from Napanee to Lunchbucket.

Visiting Teacher

Plexus

The last chapter of Plexus (the second volume of the trilogy The Rosy Crucifixion) by Henry Miller is in fact an essay in praise of Oswald Spengler and his book The Decline of the West.

In it he says, among other things:

The dragon snorting fire and smoke from his nostrils is only expelling his fears. The dragon does not stand guard at the heart of the world--he stands at the entrance to the cave of wisdom. The dragon has reality only in the phantasmal world of superstition.

I remember now...the first time I read Plexus, Miller's enthusiasm for Spengler was so infectious I went to the Lunchbucket Library and took Decline of the West home with me...read it and even made notes, which might, possibly, still be in my filing cabinet. That was so long ago now, and reading Plexus again has renewed my interest. History repeating itself, what?

Funny how we pursue knowledge. Reading Miller led me to Spengler. And also Knut Hamsen. Reading Kerouac convinced me to read Celine, Buddhist writings, Ginsberg and other Beats, Thomas Wolfe. (Reading Thomas Wolfe didn't lead me to anything...) Funny, also, but I'd completely forgotten this...at one point Miller spends a couple pages talking about a book called In Tune With the Infinite by Ralph Waldo Trine. I'm sitting here at the computer looking at that very book on the shelf above me. That book I read in my New Age period, what I call my "attitude adjustment" phase. Miller had nothing to do with my picking up that book, as far as I know, but I think it's fascinating that it should have been known to him.