The post i carry your heart…i carry your heart with me by e e cummings set to music by g m cram appeared first on Glen Cram.

The lyrics are the first 2 verses of a poem by (possibly) Christina Rossetti, considered the best female poet of 1860s England. For those impressed by male relatives, her brother was Post-Raphaelite artist Gabriel Dante Rossetti, for whom she sometimes served as model, and her uncle was the father of the modern vampire story, and friend of Mary Shelley, Dr. John Polidori. The poem itself is common at funerals and on condolence cards, and when I first read it at somebody’s death, I immediately heard this music in my head, and thought it should be played that way at George Michael’s funeral. Alas, I didn’t know that funeral would be so soon. But both Rossetti and Michael are buried in Highgate Cemetery in London (where there was a reputed vampire in the 1970s), so maybe the connection is still made.

The music, of course, is Wake Me Up Before You Go-Go by Wham! Vocals are by Alice Spigariol, hired through Fiverr.

The original poem goes:
When I come to the end of the road
And the sun has set for me
I want no rites in a gloom filled room
Why cry for a soul set free?
Miss me a little, but not for long
And not with your head bowed low
Remember the love that once we shared
Miss me, but let me go.

For this is a journey we all must take
And each must go alone.
It’s all part of the master plan
A step on the road to home.
When you are lonely and sick at heart
Go the friends we know.
Laugh at all the things we used to do
Miss me, but let me go.

For another Rosetti rendition, see https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=2HcH5ogqAwg&list=PLKQP-FJ6lUqyGJbLJi7qHb6SjbaL7epFp&index=6

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Good Night Boogie was written for Thomas’s father, who had always passionately encouraged young Dylan’s poetic career, but was now dying of throat cancer, reduced to a passive shell of a man. Thomas was devastated and wanted his old dad back. So, being an arrogant young prick with no comprehension of the actual relationship between old age and death, he thought he would give his father some advice in the form of a poem, to encourage him to buck up and try to beat the reaper. He regretted that its subject, having also gone blind, could never read it, but he must surely have read it to him.*

The song was originally written as a sonnet but, at Hooker’s suggestion, Thomas changed it to a villanelle, as the 3-line-per-stanza format of the latter would be more appropriate to a blues rendition. Unfortunately the only surviving recording from that time is a rather dreary unaccompanied recitation by the poet himself, under the title Do Not Go Gentle Into That Good Night (Rage Rage Against The Dying Of The Light) – https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=g2cgcx-GJTQ – which sounds more like a voice beckoning from beyond the grave than a call to action against the ultimate foe. Thomas’s interpretation has been the model for generations of sonorous dirges by distinguished British actors – even Iggy Pop for God’s sake! https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=bSWQNcvB3qE , not to mention being featured in Interstellar (the worst movie ever made), but Hooker had in mind something much more upbeat, which might make someone actually want to stay alive and keep grooving. It didn’t happen, but here is my own take (in my own voice!) on what might have been.

Dylan Thomas – Glen Cram
John Lee Hooker – Quist

Note: “It is said” is an ancient Welsh expression meaning “Everything that follows is a lie”.

*”So Dad, did you like it?”
”Oh yes Dylan, it’s, uh, very good, really. And I’ll definitely be following your suggestion to spend my final agonizing days ranting like a lunatic against something over which I have not the slightest control; the only thing, in fact, that can release me at last from that same agony. Maybe if you spent less time raging and denying the reality of death, even as you enthusiastically seek it out at the bottom of a bottle, you could put it off even longer than I did. Please son, go gentle.”

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This was the first of my poems set to music, and it remains one of my best.

When I first heard Mr. Vain on the radio — on the late, lamented Brave New Waves on CBC in the early 90s — I immediately thought it would be perfect to accompany this poem. And I’m sure that William Blake would have agreed.

Hatsune Miku was the top Vocaloid in Japan, and “The Tyger,” of course, was an early form of rap — something you can definitely hear reflected in this song.

I went on Fiverr, a website where you can hire talent in any field, and hired rapper King Marino, while also recording the tune myself and sending it to a Vocaloid tuner, who was able to add the Hatsune Miku voice for the background vocals. As for the instrumental track, I simply used the original song itself and removed the lyrics. Unfortunately it means that due to copyright issues, I can’t monetize it, but art is art.

I think it turned out very well, don’t you?

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So I watched it. I didn’t know much about her beforehand, just that she had been a fashion model in her native Slovenia, was a semi-legal immigrant to the US, met her husband under rather questionable circumstances, and had laser beam eyes. Uniquely for a documentary, this one added essentially nothing to that knowledge. There was no mention of her background at all: birth, upbringing, career, it was as if she had miraculously appeared from nowhere to show us all the secret of how to live. She must have been married to him at least 18 years, because she had a son by him who was that age. Oh, and her mother died a year ago, so there is the obligatory candle-lighting, “heart of the family”, “miss her every day” stuff, as well as the “children are the future” crap when she talks about one of her phony charities. Basically, though, she comes across as totally shallow and narcissistic, which is no surprise considering who she’s married to. Whereas his only concern is that people worship him and hop to his every demented whim, no matter what the consequences for his country or the world, hers is how she looks. To that end, she surrounds herself with sycophantic fashionista/os falling over themselves to oblige her, delighted to have a fag-hag first lady who is a native speaker of their own language of vanity and vacuity. (Their efforts culminate in expressing their genius with a seamless gown (“A mystery!”) adorned with the Serpent of Eden in peeling duct tape.)

The documentary itself covers the days surrounding her husband’s second presidential inauguration. While she struts around looking fabulous, he frowns his way through the whole affair with his best Mussolini scowl, starting with the ceremony where he promises to uphold everything that he will later shit on. One thing the documentary does do well is to show their relationship, and why she has been able to keep hold of him for so long. At one point, he calls and asks if she watched one of his speeches, and she says basically no, she couldn’t be bothered, and he is practically begging her to listen to it. In another scene, she tells him exactly what words to use in a speech, in another, she mischievously invites the cameraperson into a place that is obviously supposed to be private. She understands him very well, and seems to be the only one in his orbit who doesn’t suck up to him. So yes, excruciating though the experience may be, you should probably watch this. But not if you have to pay for it.

When I wrote that analogy, this was the first thing I thought of.

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The cast were various people we had met around town (see our IMDB entry) and the videographer was Lee Sjostrom, an experienced Toronto filmmaker. We hired a limo for the final part, and recorded in the financial district. It took a day of filmmaking, and I edited it down to 1 minute on Adobe Premiere. I was panhandler #3. We were the 8th most popular film in the contest, with hundreds of entries.

For the YouTube version, I have added sound and credits. Enjoy!

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Though separated by 3000 years, the similarities between the Trojan War in Homer’s classic Iliad and the First World War are striking. Both feature an interminable war fought over a relatively tiny area, by soldiers who had more in common than what separated them. Both were presided over by divine, incestuously close figures. And both are tales of doomed heroes fighting both the enemy and their own incompetent commanders. See  IliumRidge.com for more information about the story and its mythical and historical roots, as well as some musical renditions of critical scenes.

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Read it here

And on a totally unrelated topic, a history lesson about the War of 1812:

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The first and original, Doctor Mabuse the Gambler, was a 4-hour silent film, released in 2 parts in 1922. Germany was at the time suffering the onerous effects of the World War I reparations, and it offered an escapist view of the doings of the rich and well-born members of society. The evil Dr Mabuse gains money and power through his hypnotic powers and finally, driven mad by the spirits of his many victims, ends up in an asylum.

The second in the series, The Testament of Dr Mabuse (1933), was a talkie, so the conventions were quite different. As were the politics of the time. During the filming, the Nazis were gaining power, and by the time it was set to be released, they had a firm grip on the country. However Lang, according to himself (though his recollections vary from interview to interview), was warned by Propaganda Minister Joseph Goebbels that, though they loved his work and wanted him as an official filmmaker, The Testament of Dr Mabuse must be banned in Germany. Why? According to Lang, Goebbels gave the nonsensical explanation that he objected to the ending, wherein Mabuse escaped being killed by the righteous wrath of the people. He could have pointed out, as he did later to a different audience, that the real reason was the fact that the story was a clear allegory of the rise of Nazism, as well as its possible overthrow. Unlike the first film where he was after strictly material gain, in the second Mabuse uses his dedicated followers to commit massive, senseless crimes on a worldwide scale. His goal: to destroy the establishment and emerge as the king of a chaotic new world order. Some of his rantings were direct quotes from Hitler himself.

So why did Goebbels tell Lang that the problem was with the ending? The answer is that both Lang and Goebbels knew what the real ending of Testament was, and what it meant. I thought I knew too, because when I watched the film recently, the ending seemed quite clear, laying the groundwork for an epic Part 3. But when I searched the net for reviews, none of them seemed to have picked up on what actually happened. Viewing it again, though, I think I was right.

In Testament, Mabuse supposedly dies halfway through the film, but Baum, the head of the asylum where he was confined, is possessed by his spirit and continues his crimes. Meanwhile, police spy Hofmeister (who bears more than a passing resemblance to Goebbels himself) has been driven insane and is confined to a cell in Baum’s asylum. As the authorities close in at the end (see the video below), Mabuse appears in spirit form and guides Baum to Hofmeister’s cell. He then fully possesses Baum’s body and introduces himself to Hofmeister as Mabuse. There is an unseen struggle between Baum/Mabuse and Hofmeister. Hearing the fray, the attendants rush in and, when the police inspector arrives, they lead Hofmeister out of the cell. Hofmeister smiles, chuckles and greets the policeman maniacally: “Herr Kommissar!” He then regains his composure and, indicaing the cell, announces: “That man is named Mabuse, Herr Kommissar. Doctor Mabuse.” The attendants lead him away, and the camera switches to Baum, lying on the bed in the cell, blank-eyed, ripping up Mabuse’s manifesto. And that is where it ends. We are supposed to believe, like all the reviewers I have read, that Mabuse, who has not made a false move in the entire film, has gone totally mad, and will live out his life trapped in the insane Baum’s head. Watch the video below to see the crucial scene. What do you think really happened?

Myself, I think that what Lang intended, and what Goebbels understood but could not say, is that Mabuse’s spirit has abandoned Baum and now possesses the body of the supposedly cured Hofmeister. And that he will go on, as Goebbels, to commit crimes unimagined by even the evil doctor himself (of course in real life, those crimes would lead to the total destruction of Goebbels, his master, his philosophy, and his country). If Lang had had the chance to make the third Mabuse film at that time (The Triumph of Dr. Mabuse?), I believe that is what it would have been about. What do you think? Let me know below.*

Whatever the case, Lang interpreted the ban as an excellent reason to leave Germany far behind. He moved to America and spent most of the rest of his life making Hollywood movies, but his last film in 1960 was a German production of The 1000 Eyes of Dr. Mabuse, the third and least memorable of the series (Mabuse wasn’t even in it!).The real Doctor Mabuse died in 1945, but he always comes back, and his political philosophy is apparently on the rise again. Here’s hoping it meets the same fate, and that it doesn’t take a world war to do it.

*And while you’re at it, you can also try to explain the other great mystery of this film. How on earth did the spirit of Mabuse pick up the papers and give them to Baum without CGI? Suggestions welcome.

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Ronny and I met in grade 8 and immediately hit it off, as both of us were oddballs interested in all manner of things both within and outside the regular curriculum. We enjoyed films of every kind, especially the early German ones, and finally decided to make our own. Blood Creature was set in the 19th century, but was supposedly made in the 1920s at the same time as movies like M, in which the criminal gangs acted where the weak governments of the time could not, Dr Mabuse and his hypnotic power over the masses, the self-destructive violence of Metropolis, and here in the US, the blatant racism of the early D W Griffiths, all showing the way to the horrors that followed when those same forces conquered Europe in the 1930s and 40s. Of course in 1970 we were well aware of those horrors, and in making a film from 50 years before, kept many of the same elements: the Jewish villain, the hypocritical priest, the victimization of the minority—all feature strongly in the film. If I may be personal, 1970 was supposed to be a new beginning for humankind. Our generation was supposed to be learning the lessons of history to make a different world. Little did we suspect that 50 years later, in the 21st century, that we would still have nationalism, war, poverty, environmental destruction… Well I guess, as they say, times change; people don’t.

Casting

Ron’s mother and grandmother both appear in the tavern scene, and there is a photo on the wall of Ron’s great-grandparents back in the Russian Empire. His sister Joanne played Lascivia, his brother Jeffrey was the dead body, and the family maid was Madame Voula, Queen of the Gypsies. My father was one of the crowd in Old Montreal. Of my sisters, Jenny was the unwed mother, Dikka was the little stone-throwing girl, twins Katie and Suzie played Jesus’s angels and other baby roles. And I was the daemon Baal Rakon, based on Mephisto from the Silver Surfer comics.

The rest of the cast were mainly school and family friends The average age was probably around 19, but they all played different ages brilliantly. David Weigens’ Baron was based on Lon Chaney in London after Midnight, and Alan Yanovsky’s alchemyst on the stereotypical rabbi of the time. Philip Goldblatt was the lecherous, but ultimately heroic, Father Basileus. The actor who played Jesus added an extra ethereal quality by being high on acid that day. But I think the real star was Marty Boodman as Johannes, with his transition from genial singing innkeeper and bootlicker to Hitleresque rabble-rouser, leading the mob to destroy the innocent Gypsies and overthrow the existing order.

Filming

In those days, you couldn’t make a multi-million dollar blockbuster with the phone in your pocket. Ron’s father was a surgeon and had a 16mm Bolex film camera for filming operations, so Ron grabbed it for Blood Creature. I think we paid about $400 for the film, which would be a lot more now. The camera held 100 feet of film, about 2-2.5 minutes before you had to change it. For example, in the tavern when the Baron removes his top hat, Ron ran out of film and had to tell the actor to freeze while he changed the cartridge.

It’s a credit to Ron that we barely wasted any film. We did extensive rehearsals and 19 times out of 20, the first take was the only take. Of course we didn’t really know that, because you had to wait a week for the film to be developed, but we trusted Ron, and he didn’t let us down.

We did the editing on a little lightbox, which let us squint at the action, cut it at (we hoped) the right place, and use special tape to stick the pieces together. The titles were hand-lettered by me on transparent acetate, then filmed against a black cardboard backing. Ron did the opening artwork.

Sound

For the music, Ron’s parents had an extensive selection of albums, including Gregorian chants, classical favourites and Gypsy folk songs, all of which we put to good use. A Pink Floyd fan, Ron also contributed the music for the Dimension of Dreams. Some of the music we picked has become cliché, for example, the Orff piece from the Ritual of Blood was used 10 years later by John Boorman in Excalibur. But we did it first!

The film we used had no provision for sound, so the soundtrack was on a separate reel-to-reel tape recorder, which was played simultaneously (we hoped) with the reel of film.

Locations

Ron’s house was the castle and tavern, mine was the dining room, inn hallway, priest’s cell, and the alchemyst’s lair. The skull was real, as was the foetus. The village of Moclu was played by Old Montreal. The Ritual of Blood was performed at a ruined convent on Nun’s Island. We asked the company who owned it for permission to film there, but they refused, so we did it anyway. Security was rather laxer then than it is now.

In the early 90s, we made a first stab at digitization, projecting the reel on an old sheet and filming it with a VTR camcorder. A couple of years ago, we finally had a professional digital copy made from the original patched-together film. I added the music from the tape, and subtitles in an old-style font. And here it is!

The painting of Ron at the top of this page is by myself.

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The Chaos book did not deny any of this. It does, however, look at those causes. The “Butterfly Effect” refers to the idea that small causes can have vast, unpredictable consequences. The term, coined by meteorologist Edward Lorenz in the 1960s, was born from a striking observation: when he entered slightly rounded data into a weather model—changing a number from 0.506127 to 0.506—the simulated weather diverged wildly. It was as if, in metaphorical terms, a butterfly flapping its wings in Brazil triggered a storm in China.

The Earth’s atmosphere is a swirling soup of temperature gradients, moisture levels, barometric pressures, oceanic patterns, and atmospheric particles—from volcanic ash to insect wings. One microscopic swirl of air, unmeasured and unnoticed, can blossom into a thunderstorm or break apart a cyclone. This doesn’t mean weather is magic—it obeys physical laws—but its sensitivity makes the system effectively unpredictable beyond a short window. The reason is simple: we can never know all the variables.

But, you might say, human society is surely not subject to these laws. We have “free will” whatever that means. There was a movie called Sliding Doors, which showed Gwyneth Paltrow both missing and catching a train, and the life-altering consequences of each alternative. But that action depended on something happening which was pre-determined. There is a quantum theory called the Many-Worlds Interpretation (MWI) which says that at every point the universe splits into multiple versions, one for every possible outcome. But can there be another possible outcome than the one which actually happened?

Consider a well- known event. Most people in the world were aware of the happenings of September 11, 2001, either at the time or soon afterwards. What is not as obvious is that on that day, Osama Bin Laden (or whoever was responsible) totally changed the human gene pool forever after. How? After that event, the daily behavior of billions of people shifted, even if only subtly. Some stayed home. Some moved cities. Some changed jobs, or fell into depression, or reached for connection. Some couples broke up. Others drew closer. And for any man who conceived a child after that day, the act of conception—the exact sperm cell that reached the egg—was subject to a butterfly chain of microscopic events. Sperm compete in a race governed by chance and timing. One heartbeat’s delay, one moment of hesitation or passion, and a different sperm wins. The result: a completely different child. Had 9/11 not happened, no one conceived after that time would ever have existed. Different ones would have taken their place, or none at all. Biologically, historically, and even philosophically, small shifts create vast consequences. That attack created everyone in the next generation—not just in the USA, but across the globe.

Of course, this applies not only to major events like 9/11, but even the most minor. For example, your grandfather was walking down the street sometime in the last century. His attention was distracted momentarily by a reflection in a window, so he turned his head slightly. In consequence, his body shifted, and the hundreds of millions of sperm he was carrying at the time moved just a bit. So when he and your grandmother created your mother later that night, it really was her. Had that reflection not impinged momentarily upon his retina, another sperm would have won the race, and it would not have been your mother at all, and you simply never would have been. And what caused that reflection? Obviously something totally unrelated—a stray dog, a passing car, the sun peeking out of a cloud—which just happened to play a crucial part in creating you, along with the countless other things that did and didn’t happen to him, and her, and every one of their ancestors, on that and every other day up to then.

I don’t know what the lesson is in all this. Maybe this:

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When I was young, long, long ago, there was a magazine called Fate. It was one of the only ones of its kind at that time, and dealt with “True accounts of the strange and unknown”, things like aliens & flying saucers, sasquatches, ancient astronomy, spirit possession, miracle healing, and all those things that go bump in the night when nobody’s listening. Now I was brought up in a let’s say non-believing household, and though I have always been fascinated by those things, I have always thought of them as more related to psychology and the infinite ability of the human mind to delude itself. As far as I can see, there is no place for those things in the universe I know. And yet…

Fate Magazine had a regular feature called My Proof of Survival, where readers would send in their own encounters with the shades of departed friends and relations. Here is mine.

In 1972, when I was 19, my father had recently been hired as professor of education at McGill University in Montreal. And one morning he was doing his exercises “One two, touch your toes” when he suddenly said to my mother, “Barb,” he said. “You better call the ambulance. I think I’m having a heart attack.” and he collapsed on the bed. So she called the ambulance, but despite the best efforts of the attendants, he died en route to the hospital.

He told me about it afterwards: watching as they put him on the bed in the hospital, the doctors desperately trying to bring him back to life. And he looked up, way up, and he saw, not the hospital ceiling, but that classic vision of the dead and dying: the tunnel of light, stretching off into the distance far above him, and all the old people who had gone before him playing the old familiar hymns on the old family piano and saying “Come on, come on” and he started floating up and into that tunnel and he felt so peaceful when BAM! he was back in his body again, in excruciating pain and cursing the doctors who had applied the electric shocks that revived him.

But he finally accepted his second chance at life; in fact it gave him an excellent excuse whenever someone wanted him to do something he didn’t want to do. He would just put his hand to his chest and say, “Regrets, my heart!”

He was there for some weeks, and before he went home they planted a pacemaker in him, which would restart that heart if it ever stopped again. After that he became more, not religious really, but maybe spiritual. He went on to become head of the Northern Institute at McGill and spent much of his time flying to remote aboriginal communities, working with native teachers to develop and deliver educational programs in their own languages. He also travelled far and wide outside Canada: studied Siberian education in the USSR, spent a year at Cambridge as visiting scholar, had an institute named after him in Peru, quite well known all around.

Anyway I got my own Master’s of Education in 1984, at the same faculty at McGill. There was a ceremony in May of that year, which he would have attended had he not been off on one of his many Northern adventures.

And two years after that, in 1986, at Iqaluit on Baffin Island, the pacemaker failed during the night, and they didn’t have the facilities to restart it. So he died for real that time, and is now buried in the Magdalen Islands in the Gulf of St Lawrence. But that’s another story.

So 4 years after that, in 1990, McGill decided that, due to all his good works, they would name an auditorium in the education building after him. I was living in Toronto at the time, but came down to Montreal for the dedication. My wife Roma and I spent the night at my mother’s house, and the next morning I was in the back room looking for something to read, to pass the time before the ceremony. And there on the shelf was a book called Calculus. Now neither he nor I had ever had much interest in that topic, but I pulled it down anyway and opened it at random, and stuck in that page there was a note, written by my father and addressed to me, and dated when I would have received my master’s degree. It’s in rather bad shape now, but I have finally laminated it and it should survive a while longer. Here it is:

And that afternoon the family went to the dedication of the Jack Cram auditorium. I don’t remember if the ceremony was either brief or brilliant, but there on the wall was a big photo of himself, winking down at the crowd!

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Our parents originally bought their house in Old Harry during the 1970s when they were developing educational programs with the Magdaleners, and spent many happy summers there. When they died, Suzie ended up with the house and has been living there for several years. Covid brought an influx of Québécois visitors, confined to their own province, to this remote archipelago. They were entranced by the spectacular views and endless beaches, and have been coming in increasing numbers every year. The rest of the world, too, has been discovering this gem of a place. So in 2022 Suzie, with twin Katie, decided to open a souvenir store in Old Harry, and it has been doing booming business ever since. You can see it for yourself if you travel to the Magdalen Islands, or go to the store’s website.

I have started thinking about making things to fit in Suzie’s store, and one thing I have come up with is earrings depicting Baubo, the unofficial Goddess of the Islands. The Eleusian Mysteries say that Demeter was the ancient Goddess of Fertility, responsible for all the growth of the land. When her daughter Persephone was stolen away by the God of the Underworld, she became so distraught that the world turned cold and dark, and nothing would grow. In vain did the people try to cheer her up, but nothing worked, and it looked like everything would die. Finally, however, old Baubo showed up, who suddenly flipped up her skirt and exposed her most private parts. Demeter burst into laughter, and the world was saved. Baubo figurines were popular in the ancient Greek world, and I have created a version for the modern age. You can buy the earrings at La Trappe, and Baubo figurines at my Etsy store.

The area was named after the Old Harry rocks in Dorset, England, coincidentally very near to where I used to live as a child in England. They look very similar, although they are white and those in the Magdalens are red. Old Harry is an old English name for the Devil, and here is the Devil of the Islands!

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However. A current song, released in the past year and apparently liked by the younger set, is the attached. It is catchy, but the singer-songwriter is pushing 50 and should really know better when he makes an observation in the first verse. It’s not a particularly original observation, having probably been made by most people at some point when watching older films, but hey, every generation has to learn the same lessons as they grow older. This one, though, is especially objectionable. Can anyone 63 or older say why?

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• If a nurse or doctor says, "Do it", do it. They know better. You don’t.
• If they ask, "Would you like to do it?" what they really mean is "Do it." So do it.
• If you don’t quite understand why they are telling you to do something, ask. Accept their answer, then do it.
• If you need something, or feel anything unusual, call the nurse. It may be nothing, but that is what they are there for. And of course, whatever they suggest, do it.

It’s surprising how many people fail to master these simple rules. They will make your hospital stay happier, and your homecoming healthier.

One more: If you are expecting a modicum of modesty or privacy in the hospital setting, I suggest you not get sick.

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Those who are familiar with my life will know that I have had an unfortunate encounter with the Old Man recently. My sister Dikka in Wales died in February 2022 and I went over for her funeral. And getting ready to come back I had a stroke.

Dikka was the first of our generation to go. She was young, only 58, even younger than my father who at 59 had almost kicked off the last generation over 30 years ago. Much of her life had been hard, full of whatever, but the love of her Welsh family had brought her back to the living, and she was making a new life for herself among the wreckage of the old. And now she was dead.

So off I went for the funeral. As usual in that musical land, it was a raucous affair, full of tearful memories and drunken songs to all hours. On the evening of March 10, I was packing for my flight home the next morning, when the world started spinning and my body came uncoordinated, and the next thing I knew it was next morning and I was being bundled into a car heading for the nearest stroke emergency hospital.

It was not a good kind of stroke, and the doctors are still not certain just what caused it. But it was certainly better than some in that place, who were totally incapacitated and worse. Within not long at all, I was walking around, my balance somewhat off but certainly improving over time. My voice is better now too, though still somewhat slurred when I try to say too much, and with an irritating lisp. The main effect been in my writing. When told to put down, for example, the alphabet, it requires real effort to do it properly. As you can imagine this could be kind of a drag to an artist such as I have always imagined me to be. Fortunately the impairment, through the mysteries of the brain, seems confined to the act of writing itself. Even typing on the computer (still, as with many of my age, a 2-finger affair) and actual drawing/painting, seems relatively unaffected; see the just-finished self-portrait above.

So that’s the story. I just heard about another sort-of cousin, about my (almost 70) age, who also bought it (though his father still lives at 93). I had not thought about mortality at all before this. I had retained the youthful tendency of my generation to imagine that we will live forever. I don’t take back my making fun of Dylan Thomas’s hopelessly naïve raging…

…but there will come a time when I am not here, and I guess I really have to make the best of it.

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/glen

PS: Please use the link above to order tickets, or mention Glen Cram at the door. Thx. /g

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I wish I could remember the name of the teacher of the art class I took at McGill in 1973-4; he was excellent. Every week our homework was a self-portrait in a different medium/style.The last one was a mask in papier-mâché, which has since been lost, but I have managed to hold onto a pretty complete set of the 2D series. Most are not dated, but I have arranged them in what seems to be a reasonable sequence. As you can see, I improved considerably, and it was really the best course I’ve ever taken.

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On the other hand, a recent (excruciating) survey of the most popular stations in Toronto revealed the following:

• Wimpy guys whining about relationships
• Slightly more assertive women complaining about relationships
• Both sexes dancing and partying
• The worst of the 70s, 80s & 90s

Uh, that’s about it. And has been for about 20 years. Of course back in the day (as the young’uns say) we had shows like Ed Sullivan and American Bandstand, which favoured originality over crap cover versions (see American Idol). Sad!

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While surfing Youtube for odd finds, I recently came across a really odd one: a film from 1930 called Sunny Skies. And as I flipped through it, a revelation hit me: this movie is totally gay! At first glance, it’s just a light comedy about two college boys pursuing and winning their respective (female) beloveds. But between the drunken antics, crazy mixups, drippy love songs and, of course, winning the big game, Sunny Skies also tells the tale of a young man hopelessly in love with his macho friend, desperately trying to persuade himself that he really likes girls, leading to almost—this is supposed to be a screwball romance, after all—tragic consequences. The whole film is full of blatant homosexual innuendo, at a time where such behaviour would have been beyond the ken of most of its audience.

Sunny Skies was made by Tiffany Productions, which specialized in lurid romances and action flicks. It was directed by Norman Taurog from a story by Andrew Percy Younger, a successful screenwriter who committed suicide a year later*, giving added poignancy to the obsessed and confused Benny’s self-defenestration at the end of the film. I couldn’t find any reference to Sunny Skies in historical lists of gay-themed films (I have corrected this) but its in-jokes seem darker and sometimes even more obvious than, for example, Way Out West with its “pansy” dude from the same year. By 1940, could there have been a major film starring, say, Randolph Scott as Jim and Cary Grant as Benny, exploring in depth the themes hinted at here? We will never know: the same year Sunny Skies was released, the Motion Picture Production Code, which severely restricted sexual references in American films, came into effect. Such references, especially gay ones, had to be concealed or obscured—the “gunsel” in The Maltese Falcon is a famous example—for almost 40 years.

*A common end for closeted members of the “lavender” (as the contemporary scandal sheets phrased it) persuasion. Strangely, the coroner didn’t buy Younger’s son’s explanation that his father had heard a prowler in the night, pulled out his gun, and decided to test it first by putting it to his right temple and pulling the trigger.

Those familiar with the time period may object that even quite intimate same-sex friendships were more accepted then, and didn’t have the sexual connotations they have now. That is true, but a quick flip through Sunny Skies reveals much more than a simple bromance. Here are some highlights; click for the relevant clips:

• He-man Jim (Rex Lease) arrives on campus and tries to pick up rather mannish-looking Mary (Marceline Day). For some reason she likes him, even though he’s an obnoxious, touchy-feely creep who wears more lipstick and eyeliner than she does.
• Jim saves stereotypically funny Jew Benny (Benny Rubin) and his father from a gang of rowdy students. Benny falls in love with Jim and his muscles, and becomes his willing slave.
• Jim puts Benny and Poppa (who also admires Jim’s ass) through a series of humiliating rituals before blowing a load in Benny’s face while naked in the shower.
• Benny is intrigued to discover that Jim’s luggage is full of women’s underwear.
• Jim persuades the very reluctant Benny to accompany him in picking up chicks, and off they skip, to this paradoxical tune.
• Mary’s goofy friend Doris (Marjorie Kane) tries to put the make on Benny, but he defends his virtue heroically.
• Jim tries roleplaying to show Benny how to act with a woman. This time Benny is more responsive; cue the music!
• Jim has to leave town, and Benny is devastated; even Jim sheds a manly tear. Jim offers him money—for services rendered? Benny refuses, but Jim slips it to him anyway. He is not comforted by a passer-by’s talk of glandular excretions.
• Benny puts up racy pinups and incoherently tries to convince Stubble, his out and proud roommate (Wesley Barry)—and himself—that he really should take an interest in women.
• Benny and Jim are touchingly reunited, and Benny must pretend to be supportive as Jim makes it clear that it’s Mary he really wants.
• Benny gets drunk, puts on a fur coat, and heads for the “orggy” to make a public declaration; then grimly sings, Pagliacci-style, a hilarious ditty about his life being a wreck, falling and being critically injured, being given only a short time to live and, after laughing himself to death, being condemned to Hell*. He then dances himself right out the window…
• …falls, is critically injured and given only a short time to live. He is reprieved from the divine punishment he obviously feels he deserves, however, when Jim saves his life with a shot of his own bodily fluids.
• Jim ends up with Mary, and Benny cuddles up with Doris, apparently resigned to his hetero fate. But in the last-second fadeout he winks over at Jim and reaffirms his true identity. I suspect that their marriage will not be a happy one.**

*St Peter’s exact words are “Go and shovel coal!“
**Though maybe not as bad as Jim and Mary’s. Apart from his extreme controlling and possible bisexual tendencies, in their most memorable encounter he basically tells her to fuck off when she catches him piss-drunk on Prohibition hooch with a blonde vamp. At least Benny and Doris like each other.

Clarification: Sunny Skies is not, in fact, a classic. Even by the standards of the time, it’s pretty terrible. But as a historical record of a largely suppressed chapter of modern history, I think it deserves recognition.

PS: I did my best picking out the coded references, but some mysteries remain. For example, what’s behind Benny’s repeated use of the phrase “one eye“? Who stuck Stubble back in the closet? How do you “Kodak as you go” without a camera? Any others? Answers below please.

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I haven’t seen the latest Star Wars movie, but did see The Force Awakens when it came. I wasn’t that impressed; it was basically the same as the first one with more realistic, if less interesting, special effects. But the critics generally praised its star (Daisy Ridley as Rey), and the makers were lauded for introducing a strong female lead who could swing a lightsaber and kick ass just as well as the mostly male heroes of previous episodes. I guess it’s the Margaret Thatcher thing; you have to be as tough as the guys to get their respect.

But one thing struck me as odd in a movie that was supposed to be putting a “feminist” face on the franchise, and that was the constant and consistent reference to Rey by pretty well everyone as a “girl”, rather than a woman, or even her name. So I recently downloaded the screenplays for The Force Awakens and the original Star Wars movie A New Hope to see what was up.

Of course one can understand if a sexist villain, or someone like Han Solo, uses the term, but here even Princess Leia calls Rey a girl rather than a woman, though she is the same age (19) as Leia was in the original Star Wars movie (A New Hope)*, and in most places that definitely qualifies you for womanhood. In A New Hope only Han called Leia a girl, and only (wisely) when she wasn’t in the room; one may imagine her reaction if he’d said it to her face. Strangely, Han is the only one in The Force Awakens who refers to Rey as a woman, if obliquely: “Listen [Finn], you’ve got another problem. Women always figure out the truth.”

The action directions for the two scripts tell a different story. In A New Hope, Leia is always called “girl” in the directions, and always with a descriptive qualifier: “beautiful young girl”, “lovely girl”, “petite young girl”, etc. “Woman” is reserved for old or matronly types. In The Force Awakens, Rey is introduced in the directions as a “beautiful young woman”, described as a “young woman” in a fight scene, and at the end, “The two women move for each other. And Leia takes Rey’s face in her hands…” It’s too bad some of this didn’t make it into the dialogue; most filmgoers don’t have the screenplay in their hands while watching. And it’s really too bad that in this day and age a resourceful, independent woman is still treated like a child by screenwriters who should know better.

And if you think I’m being picky, imagine the reaction if anyone had referred to Finn (played by John Boyega, an African-Brit of about the same age) as “boy”!

*Leia was described as “about 16” in the original script, but the official? Star Wars timeline makes it 19.

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So I am now a bought? sold? author. What is the correct term for someone who has sold at least one copy of their work? Surely that’s a major step. Just recently I wrote of young Simon having exactly the same experience as every single Amazon author, exemplified by this picture:

(you all reloaded a lot before that, right?). Granted the chart now shows only 11 buys over 16 days, but I got a good feeling. Fates don’t fail me now!

The next step is to get some reviews and a decent ranking on Amazon which, research suggests, can help in gaining a good agent and publisher. In future, I would also love to explore Simon’s story in various media.

Anyway please check it out at Amazonand maybe leave a review if you feel strongly enough one way or the other. It’s $2,99US for the Kindle version, but right now I’ll send anyone a review copy who agrees to write one (good or bad). Let me know at glen@simonmagus.com. Thank you very much!

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So why do we need it? What evolutionary advantage is gained from being able to beat the brains out of an opponent, especially since we had had weapons to do the same job possibly millions of years before? I think the answer is that when men (and it’s usually men) fight with their fists, they don’t actually beat each other’s brains out. In the animal world, when dominant males battle for supremacy, the fight rarely ends in death, but in one fighter submitting to the other, thus either confirming the current social order or establishing a new one. Like stags butting heads, a fistfight may end in unconsciousness or even concussion, but usually not. It’s more likely to end in one of the opponents being unable to continue, and submitting chimp-style to the now dominant fighter. If there is less at stake, for example the fight is a personal matter, the comrades of the fighters may let them go at it for a bit and then pull them apart before they do too much damage. Steam has been blown off, blood drawn, status established, without permanent damage to either party. If the fight had taken place with the readily-available weapons, one or both may have been lost to the gene pool for good. Weapons have always been, like the six-gun of the old West, the equalizer that allows even the weak to dominate the strong, and in the time of hunters and gatherers society needed its strong men. And so it needed a non-lethal means by which they could settle their differences.

Flashing forward to the present, we can see what happens when evolutionary inhibitions are broken down. The vast majority of murders are committed by young men in just such situations as described above: spontaneous outbursts of rage over often trivial matters, resulting in the need to settle up that minute with the one who has offended them. But now, since guns are freely available to all, and there is often no social stigma against using them, they fire first without thinking of consequences. Another example of how modern society, by indulging all human desires without reference to their original context, makes things worse for everyone.

See also why Homo erectus may not have been a sailor after all.

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Mr Santorum,

Having read with interest your interpretation of God’s instructions to Adam regarding his rights and responsibilities vis-a-vis the Earth, I would like to offer my services as steward to the Santorum household. If hired I will, to the best of my abilities, undertake to perform the following duties:

• Poison your flowerbeds
• Shit in your water supply
• Slaughter your pets
• Stink up your air with secondhand smoke
• Strip all your material assets and turn them into worthless junk
• Squander your fuel by turning up the thermostat to unbearable levels
• Use all your food to run my car
• Enslave the other members of your staff to accomplish the above and make myself rich

Thank you for your consideration, and I look forward to doing for you what you have so kindly offered to do for the nation and the world!

/glen

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The reality show, of course, is older than TV, but took a while finding its niche in the new medium. The first golden age of reality TV debuted in 1960 with American Camelot and its poignant sequel Death of a President. These were followed by the controversial war series Vietnam and inspirational I Have A Dream, and culminated in the mid-70s with Watergate, which kept viewers glued to their screens with its sweeping saga of corruption in the Oval Office, breaking all ratings records. But the momentum couldn’t last. In the 1980s Watergate sequel Contragate failed to seize the popular imagination, and the reality crown fell to the European geopolitical thrillers Fall of the Wall and Boris and Mikhail. By the early 90s (with the notable exception of Desert Storm, the first in the Blood For Oil trilogy) the genre had descended into farce, with such dismal efforts as Bobbitt and Buttafuoco.

American dominance, however, was re-asserted with the top-rated 1994-95 miniseries OJ, which reinvented Shakespeare’s Othello as a courtroom drama with a twist ending. As one of many young writers on OJ, Jim developed, among others, the character of attorney Robert Kardashian, the original inspiration for Keeping Up. “I had originally pictured him as Greek, a slightly comical character, but at the audition (actor’s name withheld) really stood out. He just worked better as an Armenian.” Even then, Jim had the idea of developing a spinoff featuring the character as the bewildered father of a trio of modern daughters, but couldn’t arrange the backing.

Jim worked on many popular series after OJ, including the soft-core political porn Slick Willy’s Intern-al Affairs and the tragic, grotesque King of Pop. For Survivor, he created Richard Hatch, the first great villain of the new wave of modern reality TV; more controversially, he also claims to have originated the iconic datemark which gave its name to the 2001 disaster epic 9/11. “Every time someone called Emergency Services, I wanted them to think about the show.” I pointed out that at least one other, also unnamed, writer has made the same claim (although her rationale was that the number 11 evoked the “destroyed” buildings). “There were a lot of ideas floating around that one. We wanted something that would really stick in the mind, and in the end I guess it was a group effort.”

Ironically, Robert Kardashian himself didn’t make it into the current series—the producers thought the audience would find him too Arab-looking. So according to the Keeping Up back story, Robert has died and his wife remarried (to an Olympic swimming star), and the show focuses on the whacky antics of his three older daughters as they drink, curse and whore their way through modern American high society. The formula, however, is as old as Leave It To Beaver: each episode features some kind of personal problem or conflict which is solved by the end through mutual respect and family loyalty. “Although it may look as if the show is ad-libbed,” says Jim, “it is in fact tightly scripted, with intensive rehearsals. The actresses playing the daughters are in their 20s and 30s, which makes their spot-on portrayal of slightly retarded 12-year-olds all the more remarkable.”

One hazard of this kind of show in the Internet age is the spoiler. The lavish “wedding” of lead character Kim had barely aired when showbiz media revealed that she was heading for divorce. When I asked Jim why he gave the groom the same name as the bride’s mother, he laughed. “Freudian psychology? No, the whole thing is so absurd that one more absurdity is hardly noticed.”

Although Jim’s contribution to TV history must remain forever hidden, he doesn’t seem to mind a bit. “Do you know my production company gets letters every day addressed to Kim Kardashian, or Donald Trump, or Michele Bachmann? There are people out there who actually think these outrageous characters I created are real! That’s reward enough for me.” /glen

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A recent article proposed a new theory regarding the origin of life on earth. Pumice, a rock formed by volcanic eruptions, can float on the surface of the sea due to its very low density, forming “rafts” ranging in size from small grains to large masses on which plants can grow and people can stand. The article suggested that floating pumice rafts could have accumulated the materials necessary for life in their travels, which were subjected to various natural phenomena such as lightning and solar UV rays, eventually combining into something approximating life. I don’t know the merits of this hypothesis, but it immediately made me think of another mystery uncovered last year in Crete. Tools of the Acheulean type, apparently produced by members of a homo erectus group 130,000 years ago were discovered on that island and, though erectus specimens are attested on the mainland at that time, there seemed to be no way their makers could have got there without some sort of oceangoing capabilities. Building boats, or even rafts, however, was considered beyond their abilities; their known repertoire comprised mainly generic flint tools for cutting, digging or butchering. It’s possible that they did more sophisticated work with organic materials that have not survived, but the dexterity and planning required for boatbuilding sounds rather out of their reach.

A similar conundrum concerns the so-called hobbits (homo floresiensis) of Flores Island in Indonesia. These are generally (though not universally) considered to be some type of homo erectus, stranded on the island and shrinking over time due to the limited resources available to them. But how did they get there? Other erectus remains in, for example, Java can be explained by the fact that those islands were connected to the mainland at the time. But Flores is across the Wallace Line, which divides the flora and fauna of Asia from the very different ones of Australasia, and was never in that period connected to anything west of it.

I think those pumice rafts may hold a clue. One thing the Indonesian archipelago and the Aegean Sea have in common is volcanoes, some of the most powerful in the world. The 1883 eruption of Krakatoa sent pumice rafts as far as Africa, and floating pumice is common today as a result of the frequent activity of the many volcanoes all through that area. In the eastern Mediterranean, the massive eruption on Thera in around 1600 BC wiped out the Minoan civilization and may have spawned the legend of Atlantis, and both it and a similar event on the island of Kos in about 160,000 BC produced masses of pumice over the sea which can still be identified today on the surrounding shorelines. The latter event seems to fit with the age of the Cretan tools. It has been suggested that the distinctive plants and animals across the Wallace Line were originally carried there at least partly by pumice rafts, and I suggest that the homones erecti in question may have been affected by such eruptions, perhaps washed or sucked out to sea, finding refuge on one of these rafts, and eventually ending up somewhere they logically had no place being. It makes more sense than building rafts to go someplace they had no reason to go.

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You stink: Literally, in the sense that your natural odour is inherently offensive, and that you are obliged to do anything in your power to either eliminate it altogether or cover it up with something deemed socially acceptable, in this case fake floral chemical shit. We have been convinced that for the past million years we have hated ourselves and our cavemates, waiting in eager anticipation for the day when we could be free of our own stink. Sweat is not dirt, people! And this extends to our entire environment. As soon as dinner is over, any lingering vestige of it must be immediately banished by same floral spray. As cleaning products have eliminated visible stains, the toilet bowl must now be purged of invisible ones, only viewable under the ultraviolet light your guests are undoubtedly using at this moment to confirm your total dedication to cleanliness.

You suck: In a wider sense, nothing you can do, be or have is ever good enough, except in the brief moment between spending all your money on it and getting more money. You must always strive, compete, leave your fellows behind in the dust. It will be painful, you will feel the burn, but instead of resting your aching and abused muscles, you must take a Tylenol and continue.

Other lies: Taste is more important than nutrition. Appearance is more important than reality – this applies to all senses including taste, smell and feeling

The universe revolves around you, and only exists to fulfil your every desire (as long as your desires are appropriate; i.e., make someone some money). You have the right to accumulate as much money as you can, by whatever legal means you can employ, and spend that money on anything legal that you might have a craving for, whatever the consequences to your own mental or physical health, the society you live in, or the natural environment.

Note that these rights are also obligations. The logic of capitalism demands that one must always keep buying stuff even when one can’t afford it, or the whole system will collapse (look up Ponzi Scheme). This is because the economy has to grow by at least as much as is necessary to pay the interest on all outstanding debts. Defaulting means the beginning of a spiral of destruction which will bring it all down. But not defaulting means borrowing more and more. More and more what? The money you borrow didn’t exist before the loan officer magically increased one of the numbers attached to to your bank account by $20,000. But now you have to pay it back by going out and producing something, or sell your body to someone else so they can produce something, using up a little more of the environment every time. Easy credit implies for many people ‘buy now, pay never’. ‘Do not pay until 2012’? Hey, I may win the lottery, and isn’t the world supposed to end by then anyway? Better to indulge now and fuck the rest.

Children do not like, and can never like, vegetables, as long as they know they are vegetables. It is therefore acceptable to deceive them with things that don’t taste like vegetables but have some kind of nutritional value.

Any amount of something good outweighs all the bad. Some crap food has some calcium in it so you should give it to kids. What kind of calcium is it? How much is there and what is its actual benefit? An ad for Froot Loops says it has 3 grams of fibre per serving and is therefore good to feed your kids, who need 20 per day or more. So it provides negligible benefit, along with this (note the first ingredient, which accounts for over 40% of the same serving):

SUGAR; WHOLE GRAIN CORN FLOUR; WHEAT FLOUR; WHOLE GRAIN OAT FLOUR; OAT FIBER; SOLUBLE CORN FIBER; PARTIALLY HYDROGENATED VEGETABLE OIL (ONE OR MORE OF: COCONUT, SOYBEAN AND/OR COTTONSEED OILS)†; SALT; SODIUM ASCORBATE AND ASCORBIC ACID (VITAMIN C); NIACINAMIDE; REDUCED IRON; NATURAL ORANGE, LEMON, CHERRY, RASPBERRY, BLUEBERRY, LIME AND OTHER NATURAL FLAVORS; RED #40; BLUE #2; TURMERIC COLOR; YELLOW #6; ZINC OXIDE; ANNATTO COLOR; BLUE #1; PYRIDOXINE HYDROCHLORIDE (VITAMIN B6); RIBOFLAVIN (VITAMIN B2); THIAMIN HYDROCHLORIDE (VITAMIN B1); VITAMIN A PALMITATE; BHT (PRESERVATIVE); FOLIC ACID; VITAMIN D; VITAMIN B12.

Like any addictive drug, the law of diminishing returns requires more and more of the active ingredient per fix, so portions get bigger as benefits disappear altogether.

The new green consciousness has produced this wonderful lie: This product will save the planet. For example, a cellphone company offers as a selling point that each of its products contains some plastic from a recycled water bottle. You can therefore feel virtuous and environmentally responsible, and even be able to justify buying a bottle of water because you know it will be put to good use. Note that saving the environment is only acceptable as long as it is compatible with economic growth and an ever-increasing standard of living. Sacrifice is not a word one hears often in this context.

Traditionally, guilt is supposed to be felt if you do something that is harmful to others, or to society as a whole. In the world of advertising, you are only expected to feel guilty if you do something harmful to yourself. For example, if you eat something with high fat content, you may feel guilty, but the guilt may be atoned for by eating something lo- or no-fat. Even so, just as many cases we are encouraged to indulge ourselves, guilt-free, in something which tastes great but is obviously unhealthy, again presumably on the grounds that the very short-term beneficial psychological effects outweigh the harmful long-term ones.

Does anyone fall for this crap? Obviously they do, or the companies wouldn’t keep doing it. The Soviet Union fell because its rulers did not understand human nature. They wanted to change people into their own vision of what people should be, and the people just refused to play along. They practised passive resistance, didn’t bother working and eventually it all fell apart. But our rulers understand us very well, and don’t want us to change a bit. They know that yes, we are indeed genetically programmed to fall for this crap. For example, we are made to worry constantly what others think of us, so the advertisers invent a story in which everyone loathes their own and everyone else’s natural scent, and offer a solution which profits them and makes everyone else’s insecurity even worse.

Why do we desire things that are so counter to our real needs anyway? Whichever process you believe moulded us (I believe it was natural selection myself, but some go for a conscious creator) had a serious flaw. Many of the characteristics that made our species invincible in the wild become downright detrimental when applied to the totally unnatural environment we have created for ourselves. Our ancestors, like us, needed exercise, but got it every day by necessity in the hunt for food. The urge therefore is not for activity but inactivity, of stuffing oneself with fat and sugar as often as possible to serve as a reserve until the next mammoth kill, which could be in a month’s time, then to lie back in a gorged stupor and relax from the strenuous activities of the day. And so the biggest urge now is to gorge on fake food and sprawl back watching the tube spur you on to greater and greater gluttony, sucking up the world’s resources and slapping them right on your belly. And that’s no lie.

Got more lies? Post them below!

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http://www.zombiestomp.com

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Hi,
I am craig Denis,as a business advisory consultant, i have been contacted by a client of mine for an advisory services regarding business improvement and profit increase.Having realized the world as a global business and communication village, part of my advise is for my client to acquire a website.

A website would allow a business entity to be viewed nonlinear across the world, thus brings more clients,which in turn brings increase in business turnover. I will like to have a quote for a simple six pages website and a year hosting, having a simple contact page directed to email.
I will like to have your quote as soon as possible. Thanks
Craig Denis.

Well, syntactically it did resemble a 419er, but the net is worldwide and who knew where Mr Denis was from. Anyway over the next couple of weeks we settled on a price and I did a preliminary mockup, which his boss apparently approved, because his next letter informed me that a cheque for the first $300 would be arriving soon. It did, in an envelope with Egyptian stamps, and here it is:

A nice bonus! I suppose I could have just kept it; what could he have done? Being an honest type, though, I immediately informed him of his error, and offered to send it back. His response:

Thank you for the check received and for your honest and patient this is the payment error from my Pa i want you to cash the check and deduct your own money out the $4500 Money order and get the remaining money sent to the information below
1) Sender’s Name
2)Receiver’s Name AFOLABI OLAWALE Address Cairo Egypt
3)10 MTCN Digit Number And Amount send with charges fee from western union
I will be looking forward to read from you as soon as possible so will can talk on how the job will be completed
Best Regards

Seem reasonable? Maybe. But that name sounded more like the ones on the 419 offers than Egyptian, and inspection of the “international money order” revealed some interesting anomalies:

• It is dated Feb 24, though my first contact was Apr 8
   
• These statements are not true:
  
  
   
• There is a Merchant’s Express in Camp Hill PA, but Camp Hell is the nickname for the local prison (apparently aptly named)!
  

Further investigation uncovered a complicated scheme whereby people are persuaded by various ruses to cash bogus money orders, deduct their share and send the rest to some faraway recipient. When the bank discovers the money order is phony, you are out the money and possibly under arrest on a fraud charge. It’s hard to believe any bank would fall for this particular specimen, so I haven’t tried, but just to give Mr Denis the benefit of the doubt, I told him the bank wouldn’t accept it and he could send me the $300 via PayPal. So far he hasn’t responded. Maybe the shock of realizing that he had inadvertently sent me a bad cheque was too much for him. But my PayPal account remains unpaid.

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In the American version, counselors try to reason with the poor victims of their compulsion, and persuade them that they really should do something about it. Sometimes they succeed, but more often than not a few things get grudgingly thrown out (with half of them secretly rescued) and the hoarder ends up basically in the same situation.

In the UK show How Clean Is Your House?, Kim (the SS dominatrix) and Aggie (the stern English nanny) simply march into the offender’s home and tell them what a dirty dog they are, should be ashamed living in such filth. They take biological samples from bathroom and kitchen and describe in detail the horrible diseases they will cause. Then they set the owner scrubbing the toilet with a toothbrush, while their crew clears out and dumps everything. At the end, the ex-hoarder sheds tears of joy at finally seeing the floor, and maybe even being able to have people around again.

Much more effective, one might think, and Kim and Aggie did try a similar venture in the States, but as my son just pointed out, the relative rate of gun ownership between the UK and US, especially among the more obsessive members of the community, may rule against too assertive an approach in that country.

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I live now in Toronto, arguably the most diverse and tolerant city anywhere, a model for the global culture of the future where everyone is accepted, welcome, and valued for their unique contribution. In agriculture, depending on a single crop is a recipe for disaster, as the 19th century Irish discovered. We have come a long way from the pure master race ideas of the last century.

And yet they linger. Sociobiology teaches us that people will still fear and distrust the stranger who does not quite fit in to our ideas of the ‘right’ way to look, speak and dress. And they especially do not like change. When a typical citizen of Nazi Germany looked at a Jew, they saw someone who was actively plotting against all they held dear. A Mississippian in the 50s and 60s must have felt that his whole world was turning upside down when he saw blacks walking into white universities or drinking from white fountains. But when the war and the marches were over, and the laws changed, those attitudes were effectively gone within a generation, and the people who held them were consigned to the fringes of society. On the other hand, 10 years ago a woman in a niqab may have got a curious glance on a Canadian street. Now, after a decade of 9/11 hysteria, she is faced with fear and a call to strip off.

The justifications are varied. My favourite is that she may be a suicide bomber and concealing explosives. Well, it’s been a while since I read the Quran, and my memory may deceive me, but I don’t remember the verse that said that suicide bombers have to strap their bombs to their face! By that logic you would have to ban any clothes that were not skin tight. The Quebec argument seems to be that she does not somehow fit in to Quebec culture. Well, they don’t ban anyone else’s national garb. And since Quebecois generally wear exactly the same generic Gap/Nike/Levi’s crap as everyone else in the global economy, it’s hard to see what national values they are defending. If they wanted to make it a condition of Quebec residence that everyone had to wear pure laine habitant clothes, complete with long red bonhomme toque, they could have a point, but I don’t think such a policy would last long.

Another justification is that the veil symbolises oppression of women by a patriarchal Muslim culture. The implication is that the woman is forced to wear it and that given the choice she would dress in Gap/Nike/Levi’s just like any other decent Canadian woman. That may be true in some cases. Maybe in other cases it is her personal choice, it’s what she is comfortable with, and forcing her to take it off would be like forcing the average Canadian woman to parade down the street naked. Does it matter? Do Canadian women never dress to please their men? Forcing a Muslim woman with a jealous husband to unveil would only lead to her not being able to go out all, and no one would ever know.

Ultimately the people who support the niqab ban in Canada are the same as the people they think they are criticising. When pressed they will say they don’t want Canada to be like Afghanistan. Well when I think about Afghanistan, I think of a place where narrow-minded people think they have the right to tell women (or men) what the hell they can or can’t wear, and I really would not want Canada to be like that!

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has like 100,000 150,000 320,000 486,406 hits on youtube!!! + its on or linked from like 1700 sites!! & shows no sign of stopping!!! they asked me if i wanted to put ads but the music was copyright so i couldnt – don’t tell ok? or theyll kick me off! and lots of people commented too, mostly they were just like “WTF???” but they ranged from positively negative:

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Waq indeed!

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