Category Archives: Culture

Coffin for one, Prime Minister?

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Bay doors open 

As part of his ongoing mission to pretend the bad stuff isn't happening, Stephen Harper has banned the media from filming the coffins of fallen Canadian soldiers or, indeed, being anywhere near them.

From the CBC, although Metro called it first, and with perfect accuracy, on this very website several days ago. Please note that these pictures are several years old, from the Canadian deaths in Afghanistan resulting from the American bombing.

Reporters were not allowed into the military airbase at Trenton, Ont., to cover the Tuesday evening arrival of the remains of four soldiers who died in a weekend bombing.

Coffins

Harper said the policy has been implemented to respect the privacy of the families.

*

"It should be up to the families to decide whether they want reporters present at such ceremonies," said Richard Leger, whose son Marc was killed in Afghanistan four years ago.

"I know, in 2002, it was a great thing for us to have the media there… We wanted to show all Canadians what the cost of their liberty is," he told CBC Newsworld.

"People saying, 'Thank you for the life of Marc' – as a parent that's hard to hear, but knowing what's the reason behind it helps us to move on."

Coffins being carried

Maureen Burrowes, who is a cousin of Payne, said the government is depriving her of her chance to be part of Tuesday night's ceremony.

"I honestly believed I would see my cousin's return on CBC as I could not be present today," she wrote in an e-mail. "I really feel that our current government has made a very bad decision and voters will remember this in the next election."

"The timing is absolutely horrendous and I would love to know how to get this reversed."

Coffin with final honours

True North, East Van

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A couple of pictures to put me in context for ya. I walk by both of these places every day, and can even tell you that the second pic, while labelled "Chinatown" in Wikipedia, is in fact on the Downtown EastSide, a block from Pigeon Park.

You know you're in Canada when:

Muskox Burgers. Arctic Muskox, not like that crappy sub-tropical muskox

Yeah, insist on Organic Wild Arctic muskox for your burger. Don't settle for that crappy, Ritalin-dependant, domesticated sub-tropical muskox.

And now for Carrall Street, the. worst. part. of. town.:

Carrall Street

Yeah, even our shitholes are purty.

The Fine Prints

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The Best Things in life are punishable by five to fifteen"Step behind that gate and they'll come for you."

Not exactly the words you want to hear when you've just asked the nice clerk to run a criminal records check on you. Let's back up a bit.

I wondered why Brad's calves were bright pink. Standing in a bureaucratic lineup, you have a lot of time to study the feet and legs of the people in front of you. Then, because you are Canadian, you skip a bit and then you can study them again from about the bottom of the shoulder blade to the top of the head. And because this is not merely Canada but Vancouver, the feet of the person in front of you are invariably in white sneakers which feature more advanced technology than the computer we used to send astronauts to the moon. Then white tube socks, with or without racing stripe at the top. Then, because it is, as I said, Vancouver, you have calves; except for me and a couple of holdout bank presidents, Vancouver does not do pants. If it's a man, the calves will be hairy and poking out of manpris or chino shorts; if it's a straight woman, the calves will be waxed and poking out of capri jeans or aforementioned chino shorts; if it's a lesbian, the calves will be hairy and poking out of 14-ounce black denim cargo shorts and will feature a dragon tat. Also, they'll be disappearing into Docs.

And Brad's were coming out of white shoes and white socks, and disappearing into said manpris, but in the middle part, the hairy part, the fleshy part, they were the colour of underripe strawberries.

Which was odd.

But then, I thought, people have all kinds of allergies in the Springtime. Or skin conditions. Or maybe he has congestive heart failure, besides being about twenty years and fifty pounds away from such a thing.

But then I looked at his arms.

Same thing. Pink like nicely-done shrimp.

Back of the neck, shaven head, right up to the part where it disappeared into the (also mandatory in Vancouver) ballcap. Pink like a thirteen-year-old's first corsage. Not the image he was going for, I imagine, when he decided to come down to the Vancouver Police Department and run a CPIC on himself.

He'd filled out the paperwork and checked it twice, just like Santa. And he'd trundled on the bus with the rest of us from The Program (aforementioned, although largely unmentionable) and stood in the Insufferable Lineup of Boredom Except When Excitable Japanese Crankheads Come In to get the paperwork run.

And now, this.

Somehow, although he was blushing crimson in parts by now, he managed to give an impression of blood-drained faintness as he shuffled over to aforesaid gate, it at least not bearing any slogans in Latin. That would have been too much, I think. Not that cops can read Latin. Or, in some cases, much at all.

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The Day the Clown Smiled

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Boomchucka, Jerusalem 

Well thank god somebody did it. Stomped the hell out of the atrocity that is Jerry Lewis' The Day the Clown Cried. About bloody time, too. The tradition of the clown has been vindicated. Thanks to Psimon of the BoJo Blog for this info on the Boomchucka Circus:

Chillyboo…Chillybah…Chilly bye byes…1st April 2006 Well it's all over now, over 50 shows in 3 months on a shoestring budget!!! Personally for me,It's been amazing, any doubts that I had about coming and doing Circus here have been blown away big time, so thanks to Jo Wilding and Boomchucka I now I have more reasons than ever to do this again, PS We would like to assure anyone who wants to join us in the future that no clowns were hurt during the making of this Circus, any rumours are not true and may involve large amounts of alcohol ;o-)

Yes, all very ordinary until you realize those 50 shows took place in Palestine and Israel. Before that? Iraq. The Clowns Must Be Crazy!

Boomchucka Bethlehem

From The Economist:

THE Jenin refugee compound, more than 50 years old and one of the oldest camps in Palestine, is home to 13,000 people, half of them under 15. It was the centre of some of the fiercest fighting during the second intifada, and even today many of its schools remain closed. When Israeli soldiers used to enter the camp, the children would automatically put down their schoolbooks and pick up stones… Boomchucka Circus, formerly Circus2Iraq, has been touring Israel and Palestine for two months. Originally from Britain, it is made up of six fools who answered an advertisement last November looking for performers to create a circus show for children living on both sides of the conflict. For the children, the show is a new experience: a humorous, high-energy piece of foolish theatre that transcends the boundaries of culture, language, age and race. But there are lessons for the actors as well. The troupe operates as a collective, with each clown funding his own way. Riding on buses, eating handouts on the street and sleeping on floors, often in return for nothing more than the offer of a chance to learn a little sleight of hand, has given the six actors a clearer insight into the daily lives of the local people and the reality of trying to conduct a relatively normal existence within a war zone than any number of subscriptions to 24-hour television ever could.

Perhaps the politicians should sign up for the tour.

Boomchucka, Jenin Refugee Camp

shit-eating grins, Nyarlathotep, and LiveJournal

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Satan's Shit-Eating GrinLike many humanoids, I have several friends who use the expression "shit-eating grin" on a regular basis. Probably more than they use their shit-eating grin muscles. And, unfortunately, like most of the world, they're using it wrong.

Every. Single. Time.

The expression "shit-eating grin," which surely deserves to go down in history as one of the 20th Century's greatest contributions to vocabulary (think about it…vocabulary of the 20th Century…you take my point) was originated, like white suits and pretentious hepcatism, by American author Tom Wolfe. It comes from…oh god, I hope I can find it before WordPress goes down again…lately it's been up and down more than a toi- what was I just saying about 20th Century vocab? See!

Ah, bugger it! When in doubt, go to memory. Since I haven't read that piece for at least ten years, I'm quite impressed with my own memory. It's from "Mau-Mauing the Flack-Catchers," of course. And it's the expression the poor white flack-catcher affixes to his face for the duration of his verbal beat-down by the Samoans.Bill Gates Shit-Eating Grin

The man is being paid to go out there and listen to these people, or at least to sit there and take shit and nod as if he's paying attention, and then to go away and undertake lengthy and expensive therapy to forget about the whole thing. And he has to sit there and take this shit with a polite, encouraging smile on his face, which is somewhat hard to do in a room full of hostile, seven-foot, three hundred pound Samoan activists who are pounding on the floor and chanting. And so his grin becomes fixed. It becomes a rictus. It becomes the grimace the kindly country doctor finds on the face of the mindless yet still uncannily animated corpse of the poor sap who only came out to Arkham to do geneological research and has instead glimpsed the undisguised visage of Nyarlathotep and now cannot stop giggling. And crying.

This, ladies and gentlemen, is what a shit-eating grin truly is.

So…

I have one on my face right now, for lo, thanks to Gawker I have found something of value on LiveJournal.

Fuck.

P&Ls and how books make (or don't) money: part the first: the mass market original complete failure

In which I explain how we figure out how much money to pay authors for their advance, and also in which I explain how sometimes books make money and sometimes they don't…

Which is really just a more detailed version of something Lori Dunn did at the Shebeen Club a few months back. Sooo nice to be ahead of Manhattan. Still, I'll be an wizened old grannie by the time Gawker gives ME a shout-out. Mark is so much more accessible!

DeLay Shit-Eating Grin