Certainties – Page 19

February 2017

It’s tough to be apolitical. Sometimes you just can’t. There’s an old saying in aerodynamics. If it looks right it’ll fly right. And that’s not happening here.

Something doesn’t look quite right here. The aerodynamics are off.

Mattel, makers of the talking Kellyanne Conway doll, announce a life-size version.

There was a time when this reporter said, and he always said this, whether he was just trying to be funny or who knows what, “It’s probably the greatest name that was ever invented. I never met a “Steve” I didn’t like.”

It sounds stupid but those days are gone. It didn’t start with this guy exactly. But the expression itself had its origin in something a guy named Will Rogers once said. “I never met a man I didn’t like.” However improbable or implausible a concept, Will did apparently say that.

The Globe&Mail published a piece on the weekend by Robert Everett-Green about Masha Alyokhina. in 2012 Masha Alyokhina was tried and jailed with two other members of “Pussy Riot” after a performance at a Moscow cathedral.

Masha, 28, has some interesting things to say. “The modern history of Russia is written in the courtroom. There are really no opposition politicians who don’t have criminal cases against them.”

Masha co-founded “Mediazona” in 2014. Mediazona “Mediazona covers all topics connected with freedom in Russia, police violence, political violence and political courts,” says Masha.

“In two years we have changed the media discourse. Before us, nobody covered political courts, prisons and police violence. Now, because we are quite big (in terms of readership), others have to cover it too, even state media. They do it in the old way, like propaganda, but they have to cover it, to be in opposition to us.”

Masha rejects comparisons of Donald Trump with Vladimir Putin. “The difference between Trump and Putin is really big. Putin is a product of the Russian state-security service, which has a long history of repression, almost a century. Trump is just an asshole.”

This is a general, all ages site that doesn’t go in for a lot of swearing and cursing. We save that for the TV. But I thought that if the Globe can publish that word I can do it here once.

Back to “Honey Badger” Steve-o Bannon. You may have read that the honey badger is his favourite animal and an animal he compares himself to. Yes, he wasn’t joking. Something to do with the badger’s thick skin and how Bannon, like the badger, can make it through the most violent personal attack. He is unperturbed. You can tell that by the simpering expression usually adorning his face.

Bannon’s due for a spanking and it’s only a matter of time. Maybe it’ll be Kellyanne Conway, maybe it won’t, but one of these days somebody’s going to pull down his pants and tan his hide.

Here’s a link to the Globe&Mail story if you’re interested in reading the whole thing.

Dissident Russian artists try to break through ‘the zone of message control’

Have a great evening…

January 2017

Coming over the hill is almost always worth the terrible struggle it takes to get back here. I love this town.

We took the Crown Mountain trail.

I love that Los Angeles Times story comment a couple of days ago about, “fascist scum in the White House”. My immediate thought? Wrong network. That show’s on NBC. It’s kind of copy-catting the big hit of the new year. Looking forward to another episode of “Alien Zombies In The White House” on ABC tonight at 10. Starring, you better believe it, the gorgeous Chris Hemsworth.

I was surprised, and I’m serious about this, that Mattel is in negotiations to bring out a talking Kellyanne Conway doll. Everything she says, including “and” and “the” is a lie.

You can’t make this stuff up.

That was a tough January and I’m glad I wasn’t around to experience it because I’m marshmallow soft. I’m white and just a little ole piece of pudginess. It’s too bad. I mean good. And I can’t make out why no one has mentioned “The Peter Principle”. I guess no one remembers the 1970s. I certainly don’t. The lost decade.

Actually, on further review, “The Peter Principle” was published in 1968. The author was Laurence J. Peter and the central argument of his book, which is still valid today, because that’s what principles do, is that people rise to their level of incompetence. They go along, they rise based on what they’ve done, or said they’ve done, and then they get up to a place where they really have no idea what they’re doing. Sad. Big bad disaster. A killer.

Laurence J. Peter was born in no place else but Vancouver, British Columbia, Canada. He made his name though, like so many of us beaver people, in the United States of America.

Some smart person or publisher should get that book out again. These days have done wonders for George Orwell’s career and Aldous Huxley’s career so how about the career of Laurence J. Peter? It doesn’t matter if you’re dead.

Looking forward to February. February’s got one thing going for it that January doesn’t have. It isn’t January. It’s also got that silent “r” in there and no other month’s got that either. Cool. Feb-u-ary.

We’ll be right back after these important messages

Charles Baudelaire (1821 – 1867)

Charles Baudelaire was born in Paris, France in 1821. Except for one brief period he lived in Paris his entire life.

Charles Baudelaire’s father was 63 when Charles was born, and his mother just 29. Charles Baudelaire’s father died when Charles was 6. A year later his mother married a general in the French Army. Charles Baudelaire, for the most part, was on good terms with General Aupick.

In 1841, at the age of twenty, Charles Baudelaire, at the urging of his parents, who had the money, and were disturbed by his propensities to what was known at the time as “dandyism”, embarked on a voyage bound for Calcutta. The hope was that the experience might straighten him out.

He got as far as Réunion Island, a French protectorate east of Madagascar, where he decided to give up on the voyage and return to Paris. In later life he regretted not completing the voyage. He died in Paris in 1867.

The thing that struck me early is the emotion in Charles Baudelaire. The conviction. And what appeared to me as his disdain for just about everything. He’s not actually disdainful of everything. He despised convention, and mediocrity. He managed to get himself very heavily into debt.

Charles Baudelaire lived to be 46. For the last 20 years of his life the poet, translator and critic suffered from the varying effects of syphilis.

Charles Baudelaire is what one writer has called the greatest French poet of the nineteenth century. He’s simply a great poet. He’s the most modern of nineteenth century poets.

Representative of his cool critical eye, Charles Baudelaire knew of and translated the works of Edgar Allen Poe. Poe died in 1849 at the age of 40.

Charles Baudelaire wrote about a land of grace and measure. He also wrote about angst and personal suffering and the chasm separating disillusion and the ideal.

Charles Baudelaire wrote about a wild ride. His poems are a mix of the morbid and the ecstatic ground up in a terrible wit.

On Sunday January 8, 2017 at 3pm I’ll be reading from the works of Charles Baudelaire for the Dead Poet’s Reading Series Reading Series at the Vancouver Public Library Main Branch, 350 West Georgia Street, Vancouver.

As the usual venue, the Alice MacKay Room, is unavailable due to flooding the reading will take place on the library’s 3rd floor in the “L3 Program Area” just to the left of the escalators.

I’m privileged to be reading with some fine writers January 8.

Hope to see you there.

Share this:

Share this:

Share this: