Getting Drunk at Christmas

What is it about Christmas that makes getting drunk such an institution? We know it couldn’t be family, because mothers are against drunk driving. And now we know it couldn’t be Jesus either. Turns out he never turned water into wine. That’s a bad translation of grape juice, says the Christian Post’s party-pooping Reverend Mark H. Creech. So, it’s gotta be jolly old St Nicholas. Because he got himself sainted for saving three boys some madass had chopped up and plopped into a pickling vat. It’s in Nick's memory that we can get ourselves pickled at Christmastime. Dirty martini, anybody?

Image: William Hone’s Every-Day Book.

The Sounds of the Season

The Sounds of the Season are ringing out at CBC today, “as we celebrate the holiday season with fans and raise thousands of dollars for GTA food banks.”

I’m all for a shindig. And this must be, what, the thirtieth year or so for this one? It’s an institution. Today many people will run in to throw some shekels in a hat and nudge past some kid on a crutch to get at Shakura S’Aida. (“God bless us, every one!” the kid shreiks embarrassingly: no sense of decorum, him.) Then it’s back into the Uber and on to Best Buy.

Image: CBC.

Gifts for Her

When people ask me what I want for Christmas, I usually fall back on something I heard some woman say years ago on the radio—and I always include this preamble.
     I cannot recall her name, but she was part of a regular panel on Morningside and the host, Peter Gzowski, was asking them all for their holiday gift suggestions. She was an older lady and she, like me now, felt she already had way too much stuff in her life.
     “Please, don’t give me anything for Christmas,” she said, “unless I can eat it, drink it, or burn it.

Out of the Snouts of Babes

What is it that propels us to put our lives and small intestines at risk by eating things children have made? We’ve all chanced the malarial lemonade stand and cootie-ridden bake sale. Yet the holidays offer an especial Logan’s Run of puerile poison and nothing evokes my inner germaphobe like having to eat something somebody else’s kid has created: A sticky paper plate tacoed by damp and bilious pizza, no-bake refrigerator cookies laced with a Russian Roulette of preschool effluvia or a grubby magic-markered mittful of popcorn. Class parties are probably the real reason why teachers need their summers off.

Image: Grin and Bake It.

Not Totally Shallow

Today at work I bought peanut butter macarons from students selling them in aid of Syrian refugees. This was so confusing. Part of my brain was thinking, peanut butter in a macaron, seriously? Part was thinking, a little salt and they'd be exceptional. Part was thinking – and I wish to point out it was a biggish part – that the Syrian refugees would think there was something shallow about this version of “Act locally, think globally”. I also bought a slice of chocolate cake with a peculiar extruded foam texture and pitched it after one bite. See, I'm not totally shallow...

Image: Whiskitforabiscuit. (They have the recipe.)

October 25th

They fired him October 25th, but they botched the job… leaving him to wander the halls for another full week, like a spectre contemplating his future with a company who’d taken away the department he had built from scratch and then offered him shit.
     Even as everyone dressed up for Halloween, he made a point of wearing his very best suit—professional to the end—until you realized that someone had actually plunged a rather large knife into his back, complete with a disturbingly realistic wound that oozed blood the entire day and ended up ruining a beautifully cut Armani.

Photo by Salcedo-Marx.

Earl Grey Gardens

When he died the late ’50s split-level bungalow stopped breathing. But his widow preserved the place, nicely, like a curator might so that by the time I visited, it was a time capsule containing things from happier times. I met Queenie through her son, himself a solitary, acquired taste. She was lovely, and I felt ashamed for my voyeurism. When she passed fifteen years ago the house began to putrefy. The son is now mad; his sister madder still. They buried her ashes by the dried and cracked shell of her once-lovely lily pond, then they dug her up again.

Photo by Donnie Johnston of Windsor, Ontario. Click here to see more of his work.

Crazy

Summer weather brings back memories of sitting on a musty green-and-tan plaid couch with my grad school roomie, Diane, looping “Crazy” on our tape recorder. Diane was engaged to Bob, who would come in from out of town and buy her filet mignon dinners, Bob, whom she loved but wasn't in love with, and we mulled this distinction over as if she'd invented it, wondering what she could do. Our other roomie, the Other Kathy, would walk into the living room and find us singing along, tears streaming down our cheeks. She’d laugh at us, but she was in Economics.

Karl August Schulze

Turns out my dad died exactly thirty years ago today, when I was twenty-two . . . and way too young. But then the story I’d gotten was that his father died young, and so Dad had convinced himself that he would too.
     Not the best lesson for me, and so I took to telling people he’d died in his 49th year, in fear of turning fifty—a joke, I thought, until I found myself approaching that very same deadline, only to discover that, in fact, he had died at 47.
     I’d made it, I thought, and with plenty of time to spare.

Photo from DistantCousin.com.

Harbinger

I fell in High Park today in spite of my cleats. And not a diminutive pretty girl tumble, either. My dogs carried on, covertly anticipating a mutinous gnaw on my frozen leg and left me, a big green corduroy-wrapped mammoth, to wallow in my Pleistocene nadir. I’d reached my limit wearing my stupid coat and stupider trapper hat. But before another crazy-woman expletive escaped from my mouth Nature rewarded me with the promise of Spring. I know it is nigh because the minute my cheek hit the ice I smelled it, brown and melting and two centimetres from my nose.

Image by Christianm on Dreamstime.

Farch!

I had a history teacher who had fashioned a second career for himself as the “Wizard of Words.” Between lessons, he’d regale us with tales of etymology and enthusiastically promote the words he’d coined in his spare time, perhaps in the hopes that one of them would might just catch in our young minds.
     At the time, the smart money was on sesquilingual; but I was partial to Farch, a name he’d proposed for a single long month combining both February and March, and which today, on Farch 32nd, would go a long way to explaining this seemingly interminable winter.

Original pin-up by Enoch Bolles.

Sexism Isn’t Rocket Science: A Response to Schulze (2014)

Schulze (2014) maintains that, for Baby Bear’s porridge to be “just right”, albeit smaller than the “too cold” dish of Mama Bear, the tale of “Goldilocks” must contravene a law of thermodynamics. Viewed through a feminist political economy lens, however, “Goldilocks” is devoid of science-fictional convolution. Obviously, Mama Bear has relinquished the opportunity to taste her cooling portion because she has been performing the emotional labour of consoling Baby Bear (traumatized by a raisin, or the like, in his dish), whilst manually labouring to provide Papa Bear and him with second / new (read: “too hot” / “just right”) helpings.

Image: “Mama Bear”, by Hannah Blosser.

Goldilocks and the Three Laws of Thermodynamics

Most parents eventually come across a beloved fairy tale that now offends their adult sensibilities. Mine was Goldilocks and the Three Bears.
     Yes, the story correctly posits that, given three servings of porridge at the same initial temperature, those portions, being of various size, will indeed cool at different rates. And yes, after an allotted time, the largest might still be too hot; but if the medium bowl is now too cold, the smallest couldn’t possibly be just right, because that would violate the Second Law of Thermodynamics.
     And I really don’t think children should be reading stuff like that.

Photo by James W. Blinn. Bowls by Certified International. Oatmeal by Quaker.

Flight

Remember that long flight home, when they sat you next to that fidgety kid, and you didn’t know how you'd make it until finally, somebody offered to switch your seat? Remember how everyone got their own little screen and for the first time you could choose the movie you wanted to see? Remember back when the drinks were free, and maybe you did have too many, but the nap did you good, then a little nosh, more booze, and another movie?
     Not bad at all when you’re flying, but perhaps not the best way to spend a weekend at home.

Image by Paul H. Daines, United States Patent Number 5,740,989.

Eglinton West

Two-hundred tons of aluminum and glass meet 500 feet of rail and concrete at speeds that can approach 55 miles per hour—and yet for all the brute force behind it, the first sound you’ll hear at the Eglinton West station is a strange, slow trill that echoes up and down the tracks to tell you the next train is coming. It’s the sound steel might make if it was allowed to sway free in the breeze; a celebration of release from the long, cold wait; a song, high and sweet, that tells me I’m finally on my way home.

Photo by Kevin Dooley

Where have you gone, Vicki Gabereau?

A friend of mine once found himself studying overseas, finally putting to use the Japanese lessons his parents had forced him to take. To that end, he took to making puns that could only be understood by people with a working knowledge of two languages—something I’d only ever appreciated in the abstract, until yesterday, when I wrote a tweet I thought particularly funny, but which could only be untangled by someone who knew their Simon and Garfunkel, followed Toronto politics (circa 1974), listened to CBC Radio, and still had enough wits about them to pull the whole thing together.

Me, Myself and I

So, lots of languages have both polite and familiar words for you. Because you’re special, cold, or unfamiliar, and I’m just being polite, playing it safe, I don’t presume. But at work, myself has gone viral as the polite way of saying me. As in, “Give the form to myself when it’s complete.” Because myself puts everyone on notice that it’s special? More special than those who fumble their way through the form? It’s impossible to explain to the myselvers that me would suffice. They get this special, cold, and unfamiliar look on theirselves faces. Like something’s wrong with me.

Image: last.fm

What, child, is this?

At some point near the end of her marriage, my mother again started going to church, our Christmases became a little less secular, and it fell upon me—at a mere nine years old—to assemble our family’s first nativity scene. The crèche I built out of Lego, of course; Joseph was the Olympic judo figurine I’d got from a box of Cheerios; and Mary was swiped from my sister’s set of Russian nesting dolls. The greatest abomination, however, was saved for the baby Jesus, where I pulled the hair off a tiny troll and wrapped him in swaddling clothes.

Photo based on a dim memory and the necklaces sold by Hannah Nuttall.

Our Atheist-Agnostic German-Canadian Christmas

Our parents were in a mixed marriage: our father an atheist and our mother agnostic. Fortunately, both believed in stories and neither could forgo German Christmas cookie traditions. These joint enthusiasms meant that Christmas got the go-ahead. We’d be shooed out of the house while Mama put the finishing touches on the tree (real), lighting candles (real), and hanging strands of German angelhair (limp and silvery). Our presents were being delivered by German Engeln, entities of secular fantasy unrelated to Canadians’ Jesus. Meanwhile, we’d hunker in the Volkwagen with Papa, turning on the emergency blinkers to scare away the Grinch.

How Great Thou Art

French Canadians will tell you that while you can put up your Christmas nativity scene any time during Advent you never include the L’Enfant Jesu until Christmas Eve. My mémé had a plaster Baby Jesus that was chubby and white with blonde hair and a diaper. The thing was the size of a large toddler and so old that it probably was suckled by the Roman she-wolf. But after midnight mass and until Epiphany this Colossus dominated my grandmother’s fibreboard mantle, dwarfing the tiny manger and imposing its Godzilla-like reign of terror among the cowering wise men and frightened donkeys.

Photo by Riccardo De Luca

AYRE-240

Nola and I are walking to school, and I’m trying to get her to read the words spelled out on the license plates of the cars parked along the way.
     Understand, most of the plates here in Toronto begin with an A or a B and are prone to a strange insufficiency of vowels; and so, although there aren’t likely many words to be found, the perfect parent is forever alert to a Learning Opportunity.
     “A–Y–R–E,” asks Nola. “What’s that?”
     “It’s what you put in your TYRES!”
     . . .
     I swear, I’m wasting my best material on a six-year-old.

Believe it or not, you can read more stories about license plates here and here. I picked the photos for this story from the extensive collection of Jerry Wood.

 

The Illuminating Power of Football

We played two-hand touch on the street. Someone on defence counted Mississippis while the quarterback narrated his own exploits for imaginary viewers at home. We were always the Roughriders, the quarterback was always Ron Lancaster. “Lancaster, dropping back to pass... Here comes the rush! Lancaster scrambles, rolls out, here’s the throw... Complete! What a catch! George Reed at the curb, caught immediately and smacked into a Buick – but he’s okay, folks, he’s getting up! It’s just a bruise!” The receiver was always George Reed, who was black, and no one in Saskatchewan was black, but he was one of us.

Image:   CFL

The Slow Storm

“Slowflakes,” said Jakie, soft but clear, pointing out the window from his high chair. His mother smiled, but he was right. Slow flurried overnight and all next morning. The news came on late and said the roads were full of slow, cars trickling along at four miles an hour. Schools were closed because children would never reach them on time. Instead, Jakie’s sisters built a slowman in the front yard, pondering each handful, tenderly gnawing clumps of slow off their mittens. Their mother asked them why the slowman had no eyes. “They’re shut cuz he’s sleepy,” they said, and yawned.

Image: SireneTzukiDark.

To the People: Another Apology

I apologize for finding his apologies tedious, disingenuous, and meaningless.
I apologize for his lies, excuses and false denials.
I apologize for his do-what-I-say-not-what-I-do “leadership”.
I apologize for his claim he had nothing more to hide.
I apologize for his hypocrisy.
I apologize for him clinging to office like a limpet mine.
I apologize for thinking he’s only sorry he got caught.
I apologize for all these apologies, but as the man himself has said, “the past is the past and we must move forward... I know I have let you down and I can’t do anything else but apologize.”


Image:  CBC

A Failed Photograph of the Night Sky

It began at 3 a.m. as another failed experiment. She wrote her shopping list on the back in hard lead pencil, sighed, and shoved it into the pocket of her tweed skirt. That day, she handled more invoices for the Milliken account, stubbed her toe on the filing cabinet, and – it must be confessed – nodded off into an inchoate dream, in which tidy rows of figures became gentle, supple shadows. That evening, when she took out the list, she saw a few lines had appeared on it from nowhere, suggestive of a figure. Over the years, she watched her emerge.

Image: Edgar Degas, Danseuse ajustant sa bretelle.

but can you touch

                                                      a praying mantis?
       can you smell rain or snakes or cancer?
       can you see russia from alaska?
       could you hear music as it’s playing on the moon?
       could you see mars last night or tuesday
            or taste spinach in a smoothie?
       should you feel guilty killing zombies?
       would you feel
                                       getting shot
                                                                in the head?
       oh: you. should you now be inclined to censure,
       you who touch your chest on bench press,
       you who hear from your ex-boyfriend everyday
                                      (that’s a lot)
       i suggest that you drink heavily
       i suggest that you tread lightly
       i suggest you let a praying mantis pray.

Image: Mantis.

Dans l’estomac de la Loire

The river swallowed
her, turned
her into a bolus, slid
her into a slow stomach in
 the middle of pre-primeval Nantes.

    And waited.

      Time churned, silts settled,
       her tender toes now tap twenty
        thousand leagues beneath
        the Jules Verne Museum beneath
        a dancing salon named
         Sea of
          Dreams.
            Her serpent twines
              expectant near her cunt – ou,
                       disons-nous, near the école élémentaire
                                    named after Gustave Roch, scholar
                                        of surfaces topological until he
                                          died untimely in the coils
                                           of tuberculosis . . .
                                           Her nipple
                                          perks the Palais
                                          des Sports de  Beaulieu,
                                            where Real Madrid played
                                                PAOK Thessaloniki
                                                    in a beautiful ’92
                                                       Eurocup
                                                        game.

Image: le jardin, by Max Ernst. For other stories it inspired,
see Magpie Tales.

Sparks

Passing through the smokers out behind the Dufferin Mall, I caught the scent of that old round table lighter in my grandmother’s apartment, or maybe the Zippo my dad let me play with because he never did get around to refilling the thing . . . a whiff of the fuel, the smell of flint against steel, and the chime of metal on metal when you snapped it shut. Except that this one belonged to a younger man, who had taken a pass on those disposable plastic jobs for something more substantial, flipping it open just out of the corner of my eye.

Image from Found Walls.

Backache, Scotch and Chickpeas (Breakfast with the Linguists)

My breakfast of Backache, Scotch and Chickpeas is, according to Richard Lanham, a paratactic list like Veni, vidi, vici, i.e., a list that makes the reader do the work of figuring out how its elements connect. Deborah Tannen would point out how the three elements run parallel in containing k sounds and in being two-syllable nouns, “and” being the linguistic equivalent of Hamburger Helper. Roy Peter Clark tells us that once a list runs to more than three elements, it starts feeling endless, whereas trinities – like Carrie-Anne Moss’s adorably fucked-up little sweaters in The Matrix – do the trick. Slainte!

Heavy Horses

Until last night my exposure to Prog-Rock was limited to enforced snippets of Rick Wakeman and weedy, gravitas-rich Pink Floyd liner notes. Then Sherry and I went to the Jethro Tull concert. She was fabulous; attuned to every trill and tempo change like a true Ian Anderson aficionado. Thirty minutes in I realized why I preferred a post-Gabriel Genesis, an epiphany exacerbated by the demographics of the average Tull fan. This is where Comic-Book Guys go to die and given the arduous ascent to Massey Hall’s upper balcony, I was amazed that these whiskered mastodons had the energy to air-flute.


Image: Popular Mechanics (1952)

Taken from the Spine

bloodletting & miraculous cures
behind the scenes at the museum
alone of all her sex
paris was a woman
loitering with intent
to kill a mockingbird –
the door into summer.

salt fish girl
salt fish girl,
interpreter of maladies,
when fox is a thousand
always
never let me go.

fugitive pieces
tender buttons leaving earth
eight cousins, tender is the night
the children of men voyage in the
dark green shadows, white whale, ammonite
a mouthful of air taken at the flood
tales from the thousand and one nights
the book of small fugitive pieces
charms for the easy life.

Wait! Now, go back to the beginning and touch each line in turn. And, if you like this sort of poetic puzzle, make sure to check out For 20 weightings.

Twinkle, Twinkle, Fortune Spy

In 1806, Jane Taylor didn’t have Google Translate to help her write “Twinkle, Twinkle, Little Star.” Finnish, Armenian, and Hindi translations would have let her daub it with wistfulness: Twinkle, twinkle, little star, I wonder how you are doing.
     Adding Gujarati, Maltese, and more, she’d have had MI-5’s first coded message: Sparkle, twinkle, little star, somebody doesn’t know the enemy’s paying. You are a Solitaire in the heaven across the world.
     Or, the world’s first fortune cookies: Star hotels are a little festive for this. Put your trust in enemy ships being constructed. In a specialized world, enjoy fresh air.

Images: Margaret Tarrant, Daily Mail, Unravel a Gift.  

Sorry, Margaret Atwood

So, Margaret Atwood has joined other Canadian feminists in calling for the anthem to be edited back to its original. I like Margaret (and feminism), but I have to disagree with her. The line in question reads “true patriot love in all thy sons command.” They want it to read “in all of us command.” But being commanded to feel true patriot love is a bit much. Feelings can’t be commanded, and I’m not big on the whole patriot love concept either. Sorry, Margaret, but I’d rather just stick with an anthem that sticks that one to the sons.

Image: Canada's Walk of Fame.