What Book's It Going to Be Then, eh?

Several blogs have posted this test that matches your personality with a great novel.

I was A Clockwork Orange (57% Great Book – whatever that means, no one seems to know). Interesting that the novel follows the protagonist through his hedonistic, unsympathetic youth to his jail time and then his integration back into society. He looks back at his youth, and although he knows what he did was wrong, he believes it is part of growing up.

Interesting because, I took the test after I witnessed several adolescents at lunchtime the other day, not doing anything untoward, but just being adolescents. And I thought, as I often have, what a horrible age, but also necessary. I had to go through being 14 to learn those lessons. I wish the 30 year old me could have imparted wisdom on the 14 year old me, but I know that she never would have listened…

Oh, and I won't take it personally that the book I was aligned with has one screwed up main character...

Running in Tokyo

My friend Mikael is in Tokyo, having just run the marathon there. He and his boyfriend have kept a blog and I’ve provided links to the posts that made me laugh out loud at Mikael’s clever writing:

"...both of us feel like shiny neon magic this morning!"

”Under different circumstances this might have been strange.”



Photo used without permission. (Is that okay, Mark? I just love it!)

Rugby vs. Politics

Ireland have beat England 43-13 in a Six Nations rugby match played at Croke Park, a setting steeped in the history of Irish-British relations.

It was here, in November 1920, that British forces fired into the crowd during a Gaelic football match in what was thought to be a retaliation for the killing of several members of the Cairo gang (a group of British Intelligence agents) by the IRA. These deaths, along with several shootings in Dublin later that evening and the death of some Irish prisoners at the hands of British guards, is why November 21st became known as Bloody Sunday.

The recently refurbished Croke Park, home of the Gaelic Athletic Association, has only hosted national sporting events (Gaelic football and hurling) up until this year. The Irish rugby union and soccer teams have been granted permission to use Croke Park while their sporting ground, Landsdowne Road, undergoes construction. The first international game was against France two weeks ago, and unfortunately for the Irish, France won by 3 points.

The historic Ireland-England game follows several key events in the Northern Ireland Peace process in the last 18 months. In September 2005, the IRA decommissioned all of its weapons; this past January, Sinn Fein, the political wing of the IRA, voted to support the Police Service of Northern Ireland ; and on March 7th we will see elections for the Northern Ireland Assembly which has been suspended since October 2002 following allegations of Republican spying. This is all leading up to the March 26th deadline for devolution (Irish home rule).

Just as in the political sphere, the rugby game was not without tension. There was much discussion as to whether or not England’s national anthem, God Save the Queen, should be sung before the match. The expression of English pride was perhaps not appropriate in light of the former Croke Park events, however the anthem was sung and the Irish fans were respectful. It was, though, an emotionally charged game for the Irish team and some players had tears in their eyes as they lined up at the beginning of the match.

Victorious, perhaps on several levels, the Irish team shook hands with the English players at the end of the match. And so sport reflects the political climate. It has been a long and slow move toward peace in Northern Ireland, but if politicians can take inspiration from the Croke Park match, perhaps the different sides can meet, debate, and then shake hands at the end of it.

For more on Irish history, read my post on Ireland's Many Histories.

You Might As Well Skip Lavalife When...

There was a Seinfeld episode where Elaine breaks up with a man she's dating because he failed to use an exclamation mark in a note relaying a phone message about the birth of her friend's baby. I, myself am prone to overreactions at the flagrant misuse of grammar and have been known to apologize for a date's inability to spell common words before apologizing for his inability to be respectful and caring. However, I have never actually broken up with someone over punctuation.

I have, though, been guilty of breaking up with people over ridiculous reasons. Purely for your enjoyment (and not your psychoanalysis, thank you very much), here is a list of five boys (names have been changed) and the arbitrary reasons why I elected to discontinue the "relationship" (using a variety of break up strategies about which I have previously written).

1. Chet, from Ottawa, was driving us downtown and failed to stop behind a streetcar that was letting passengers off, eliciting a loud streetcar honk and several angry faces as we whizzed by. I know, I know - he was from Ottawa, but we're not talking rational explanations here. Someone could have died.

2. Another time, when I was gesturing to the lake with my arm (we were romantically strolling along the beach), Pablo reached up and took my hand so that we were posed in an awkward hand-holding arrangement. I brought our linked hands down, casually extricated myself, and promptly implemented the phone-call fade away strategy.

3. Boris's bald head would not stop sweating for the entirety of the date and he actually had to go and wash it twice.

4. Bobby thought it appropriate to stick his finger in my mouth whilst I was mid-yawn for a second time, even after I had previously requested that he not place his digits in that vicinity (in quite a nasty manner, I might add).

5. Randy, a recycled high school boy, showed potential until he asked for change (and I'm talking the silver kind) after we split the bill at dinner.

And one wonders why I'm still single...

You Know It’s Time To Join Lavalife When…

Have you heard of this SIMS video game? It simulates the day-to-day life of virtual characters that you programme into your community. You get to make decisions about when they eat, sleep, read, exercise and brush their teeth. You also have to take time to have fun - there is a fun level bar that goes up and down on the game screen.

So here’s the thing. A little over a year ago, two of the girls in my class asked me who I had a crush on. At the time, I was smitten with a boy called Ben, so named him. Unbeknownst to me, they had inputted him as my boyfriend into their SIMS world. Well, yesterday they announced that in the SIMS world, I had just had a baby with Ben (to whom I had been married for a year). I asked them what my job was and they told me that I didn’t have to work because Ben paid for everything. I just read and did fun things like go on vacations.

How bad has it gotten when your virtual self is doing better in life than your actual self?

Dartmouth Chicks?

I hadn’t realized the full impact of Dixie Chick Natalie Maines’s off-the-cuff comment about being embarrassed to come from the same state as President Bush that she made to London audience back in 2003 until I saw the documentary “Shut up and Sing.” The film details the incredible fallout from Maines’s comment, showing fans’ desertion and aggression toward the band, mainly in the southern Jesusland states. The film flip-flops between the 2003 tour and the band’s resolve to make a new album, two years later, and to restructure their musical identity.

The documentary, ads for which were not run on several American networks, premiered at the Toronto International Film Festival and had a modest run in theatres this past autumn. (Interestingly enough, when sales for their 2003 tour dropped off in the southern states, they remained strong in Canada and several dates were added – Moosejaw was a possible gig mentioned in the film.) But their five wins at the Grammys last week was a quiet vindication for the band. They left behind their country roots and fans and were embraced by the arts community and a whole new rock fanbase.

Welcome to the United States of Canada, ladies. We’re happy to have you.

The Sony Reader

This is interesting: Sony has come out with kind of an iBook (wait a minute, where have I heard that before?) where you store digital files of books and then read them off a small computer screen (“smaller than many paperbacks”!). It even comes with an iTunes-esque managing system you load onto your computer.

This could just be one of those new-fangled things that scholarly types decry at first (“But I need to feel the well-worn pages in my hands!” "How can I make notes in the margins?”), but then eventually get used to. We store our music on devices the size of a package of gum, so why not books?

Well, I must agree with those elbow-patched intellectuals – it IS nice to feel the pages beneath your calloused hands (don’t you love the mismatched widths of the pages of some hardcovers, jutting out from between the smooth book jacket?). Folding over the top of a page to mark a particularly good piece of prose is an archaic practice, yes; but has not met with any innovations in the last 600 years, save for the hallowed bookmark, which would be rendered obsolete by the Sony Reader. And though I have browsed extensive CD collections in people’s homes, it is not the same as browsing the shelves of tightly packed books, head cocked to the side, scanning spines.

And, somewhat tellingly, the sample text displayed on the Sony Reader is from The Da Vinci Code. This is a device for the masses. And though I have read (and enjoyed) The Da Vinci Code, I do understand Stephen W. Beattie when he says “if my girlfriend ever chose The Da Vinci Code over me, it would be her way of telling me that we were done.”

Compare and Contrast: Sinead vs Britney

After checking herself into rehab and then checking out the very next day, Britney Spears has gone and shaved her head (and got a few more tattoos it would seem). Emily Wynne-Hughes, a woman who was present for the tattooing part of the identity crisis, said Britney was “tired of having things plugged into [her hair] and she didn’t want anybody to touch her…”

This coiffure overhaul harkens back to Sinead O’Connor, another troubled songstress, who shaved her head in reaction to her record company telling her to grow her locks to appear more feminine. Could this mean a dalliance into the priesthood for Ms. Spears? Let us compare and contrast...


SINEAD O’CONNOR

Born: December 8th, 1966 in Dublin, Ireland

Children: Jake, Roisin, Shane and Yeshua, by a variety of fathers

Famous ex-boyfriend: BloodSugarSexMagik singer, Anthony Kiedis

High point: covering Prince's song, "Nothing Compares 2 U"

Publicity stunt: tore up a picture of the Pope on Saturday Night Live, sans lament

Insightful Lyrics:

How could I possibly know what I want
When I was only twenty-one?
And there's millions of people
To offer advice and say how I should be
But they're twisted
And they will never be any influence on me

- from The Emperor’s New Clothes


BRITNEY SPEARS

Born: December 2nd, 1981 in McComb, Mississippi

Children: Sean Preston and Jayden James, by a father to a variety of kids

Famous ex-boyfriend: SexyBack singer, Justin Timberlake

High point: covering (barely) her backside with a Catholic schoolgirl-inspired kilt

Publicity stunt: tore up the town on a Saturday night, sans lingerie

Insightful Lyrics:

There is no need to protect me
It’s time that I
Learned to face up to this on my own
I’ve seen so much more than you know now
So don’t tell me to shut my eyes

- from I’m Not A Girl, Not Yet A Woman

So Tense and a Whip

The Wordsmith website says that "all the life's wisdom can be found in anagrams. Anagrams never lie," then offers to find the thousands of anagrams your name (or any other word or combination of words) can produce.

The website speaks the truth. Anagrams of my name include:

we step on a danish
a poet had new sins
one pint, sew a dish
nee a hand, piss two

And perhaps the most worrying:

a hand, two penises

(Thanks to Sarah for the link.)

Conjuring the Cold

So the debate continues: can a writer be trusted to properly evoke a setting where she or he has never been? Marcel Berlins doesn’t think so. Writing in the Guardian, he wonders if an author can “be trusted to deliver the crucial human and emotional elements” if they “can't get the geographical and social background right.” Berlins says he would have been "more satisfied [with Stef Penney's The Tenderness of Wolves if she] had absorbed the atmosphere, the cold and the scenery at first hand." But could he really tell? He even states in his column that perhaps only some Canadian readers will notice minor discrepancies in Penney's descriptions.

My goodness, this issue is getting a lot of press. Note to self: when publishing first novel, admit to some affliction that has some sort of bearing on the creation of the novel, sit back and count the column inches.

Creates, Sweats and Publishes

I’m always pleased when I hear of authors who set their stories in places they haven’t been. Most of my fictional writing is set in places I have been, and I even embarked on a trip to parts of Africa, as my current writing project is set in Zimbabwe. I never made it to Zimbabwe (due to a mugging incident in Cape Town which occurred within four hours of our arrival there), and this has always remained as an uneasy disconnect in my writing process (as well as in my life in general). I have continued the piece, but with much more research into the landscapes, botany and customs of the region.

So I was gratified to hear that the winner of the Costa Book of the Year Award, Stef Penney, set her novel The Tenderness of Wolves in the wilderness of Canada; a place she had never been. Her writing was based on research she had done in the British Library (partly due to her agoraphobia, as was widely reported).

But then along comes Lynn Truss, she of Eats, Shoots and Leaves fame, with this article in which she scoffs at the idea that writers must “write what they know” (a concept that was first taught to me by Natalie on the Facts of Life back in ’86, just as I was finishing my first short story, Sandy Runs Away, a bittersweet tale of a mongrel dog who runs away from a mean family into the arms of an 11 year-old girl with striking similarities to the tenderfoot author, who, coincidently, wouldn’t stop asking her parents for a dog).

Truss writes: “The thing is, we fiction writers are quite touchy when people fail to appreciate the supreme importance of imagination in our work. I love the idea of Penney constructing the landscape of her book from maps and records in the British Library. That was a true creative act. Any fool with a Visa card can buy a ticket and go to look at an expanse of snow.”

I do see her point: a good author relies on their imagination and abilities as a wordsmith to present a scene and transport their reader to a different place and time. And granted, novels have been set in the past (and future) by authors who haven’t actually lived during those times, so why can’t space be as negotiable as time?

But still, there lingers within me that troubled disassociation from my setting that leaves me lacking literary confidence: I can’t properly describe the msasa trees or the sounds of the dark nights, even when people show me pictures or try to evoke a scene for me. No matter how often I re-read Alexandra Fuller, I still don't have a complete sense of Zimbabwe. The smell of wet cedar leaves that lie browning over lichen-covered rocks in Algonquin is easy. So is the gentle slope of Church Lane, Tooting, with its orange-bricked Victorian row houses, windows framed by lace curtains. It takes little effort to picture the brilliant sun bouncing off waves in Sydney Harbour, the unexpected smell of Chinese jasmine wafting by. But I lose all creative confidence when writing scenes in locales I haven’t been to.

But maybe this is the old adage that writing is 10% inspiration and 90% perspiration. When you “write what you know,” there's a little less sweating. When you must describe a place you are unfamiliar with, you have to do a bit of research to write with familiarity. Stef Penney chose to sweat it out in the British Library for her book – perhaps my apprehension to write about Zimbabwe comes not from a fear of unknown places (and repeat muggings), but from a fear of Truss's proclaimed "true creative act": constructing a time and place through a combination of some imagination (say, 10%) and a whole lot of sweating.

Better Blogs

This week marks the one year anniversary of the inception of my blog [applause]. The purpose of starting Because I Said So was to get myself to write more often – I so often avoid working on longer pieces of writing because I’m tired, I don’t have enough time to get into it, I’m uninspired, blah, blah blah. My goal was to post something at least once a week, which I’ve pretty much done, although some of the posts contain barely any writing (but are interesting, nonetheless, no?).

With my blog, came the “Next Blog” button at the top of the screen. It allowed me to randomly peruse other people’s blogs from around the world, which tended to be self-indulgent and generally quite boring (for more on this, read my post about the Banal Blogosphere).

There is certainly a grand proliferation of banal blogs out there – websites that are perhaps only read by a handful of people known to the author (including this one – hi Mum!). Because of the unstimulating subject matter and limited audience, the blog form was first thought trivial. However, many blogs have caught on and log thousands of readers a day. Popular media types have started blogs (Rick Mercer, Kevin Frankish from BT, and George Stroumboulopoulos are a sample of some that I’ve read). The blog is now a valid media form and several “blogging communities” have cropped up – friends with blogs who link to each other.

My friend Lee, who used to write the now defunct See The Donkey blog, linked my blog to his when I first started (and I linked his to mine). We talked romantically about starting the new Toronto Literati – we were both in the process of writing novels and trying to make money off this creative writing lark. But what we talked idealistically about, I think is happening amongst the bloggers of the world.

I have found several intelligent, well-written blogs which I check semi-regularly – and I often find more by following the links on the good blogs. Bloggers comment on each other’s posts, thus providing me with links to a variety of appealing blogs. That Shakespeherian Rag has turned me onto Bookninja and Moonlight Ambulette (not only does this girl have a Virginia Woolf doll on her website, she also writes a piece about reading Flannery O'Connor, ending the post with a photo from a Sunday Times article about O'Connor and her own caption expressing her desire for a bag in the photo). I have all but abandoned the “Next Blog” button in favour of my own personal blog web in which I am often lost on a Sunday morning.

So happy anniversary to me, and here’s to another year of forcing myself to write, and a new year of finding more clever, engaging and readable blogs.

Acceptable Bullying

I watched the documentary Spellbound with my grade 4/5 class the other week, a movie about several kids competing in a spelling bee. One of the boys profiled in the film elicited quite a reaction from several of the older boys in my class. They laughed at the boy’s mannerisms, mocked the way he laughed and called him “the geeky kid.” These are students who have participated in various anti-bullying programmes and workshops throughout their school careers, as well as being in classrooms that promote empathy and community.

But they still found it socially acceptable to denigrate and belittle someone they considered weaker than themselves (in status and in physicality) in front of their classmates and teachers. My colleague quickly stepped in and took the opportunity to analyze and criticize their behaviour, but it made me think about the acceptable forms of bullying that seem to cropping up in the popular media these days.

Take American Idol, and the caustic condemnations that Simon and Randy so flippantly cast upon the hopeful contenders, too cockeyed and tone deaf to realize they’re being slammed until half-way through the tirade. The three judges consistently dissolve into fits of derisive laughter, to the exclusion of the befuddled cantor, who just stands, the unfinished lyrics hanging heavy in the air. People are made fun of for their looks (“you look like one of those creatures that live in the jungle with those massive eyes”), their voices (“I’m not being rude, but…that was appalling”), and their exit strategies (“other door”).

The recent furor over bullying on the British reality show Celebrity Big Brother shocked audiences, spurred discussion in British parliament and peppered the newspapers of India. The collusion of Jade (a previous Big Brother contestant) and other housemates against Bollywood star Shilpa Shetty had more than a whiff of racism, Shetty being referred to as “the Indian” and “Shilpa Poppadom”.

And the public mudslinging that has gone on between Rosie O’Donnell and Donald Trump in the papers and on television is yet another example of adults reducing themselves to schoolyard name-calling, the nadir for me being when Trump used O’Donnell’s sexuality as an insult.

So, why are the people who make media decisions sanctioning these public displays of harassment? Why are well-adjusted adults reducing themselves to petty smear tactics, trotted out for all the world to see?

I think this is another trough in the sea of reality TV shows that push the envelope. Just as the full-on brawls on Jerry Springer were a draw, the viewing public enjoy a bit of nasty verbal repartee at the expense of those somehow deemed less than us.

The good thing in all of this is that a lot of television viewers don’t seem to be standing for it. Channel 4, who broadcast Celebrity Big Brother in Britain, received over 30 000 complaints to the British broadcasting watchdog Ofcom. Carphone Warehouse, a major sponsor of Celebrity Big Brother, withdrew their sponsorship of the show after the offensive footage was aired. And there has been public condemnation of the over-the-top insults on American Idol.

These shows and public figures are presenting bullying as an acceptable way to gain and display power. They make it easy for us to dismiss "the geeky kid" or the bad singer or the person that is culturally different from us. How can we expect our children to operate in a civilized, empathetic manner, when all around them are examples of adults bullying each other?

Screw The SUV...

...we're loading up our bikes!

Hotter Than I Should Be

It seems that the world may be slowly waking up to the reality of climate change…

In an effort to draw attention to energy consumption, the whole of France participated in a five minute power switch-off, during which the power grid operator reported a decrease in consumption that was equal to 1% of the national consumption. The Eiffel Tower, normally ablaze with 20 000 bulbs, joined in the national campaign by switching off power at 7:55pm. Several other European cities followed suit, participating in country-wide blackouts.

Our own Stephen Harper, who, five years ago, wrote a letter “downplaying climate change”* and then concluded that the greenhouse gas reduction targets outlined in the Kyoto Protocol were unattainable, is now acknowledging what a pressing issue climate change is becoming. George Bush even mentioned the environment in his State of the Union Address by introducing the Clear Skies legislation.

I saw David Suzuki (see his website under Websites That Might Just Change Your Life to your right) speak this time last year about the state of our earth. He spoke of a document that was signed by 100 scientists “greater than [him]” that was submitted to world leaders 10 years ago (I may have some of those numbers wrong – we’re going on my memory here) that outlined the urgent need for the world’s energy consumption to be decelerated. And if we did not do something about the amount of greenhouse gases we were putting into the atmosphere, it was only a matter of a decade or two before most of the earth was uninhabitable. The document was largely ignored at the time.

So why the attention now?

I think it started with An Inconvenient Truth, Al Gore’s documentary about our planet’s shaky future. It was a film by an American for Americans (some of the largest energy consumers in the world) – it was one of their own telling his country where they were going wrong.

And then much of eastern North America experienced a mild December and beginning of January. They were playing golf in P.E.I. Blossoms came out on the trees in Central Park. Meanwhile, the west coast, normally accustomed to mild, rainy winters, experienced some of the worst snowstorms in living memory. And everyone got a little bit uneasy, Al Gore’s warning still echoing in their heads.

What will be interesting to see is if people begin to make changes – even small ones as are listed on David Suzuki’s Nature Challenge – changing lightbulbs, getting out of the car, turning down the heat by 2 degrees. Will people begin to think about alternate forms of transportation, moving closer to their work, eating meat-free meals with locally grown produce more often?

Or will we allow our cars lots of idle time to warm up in this colder-than-usual week in January, all the while mumbling, “Climate change? What climate change?”

*Toronto Star, January 31st, 2007