Adventures in Collingwood (Saturday August 20, 2011)

This journey would have taken days in a wagon or on a horse, but we spend two hours in our car, heading north along the escarpment. We drive between the ranks of lazy high-spired wind turbines and the bodies of dead porcupines, down the mountainside and into a land of big farms and small villages,  thunderclouds overhead.

Collingwood is hosting jazz but the storm moves in and the musicians run for cover. We eat food on the only patio table immune to rain. Soon we are sitting in a river and the waiter periodically tips the awning to preempt a downpour. Soaked shoppers huddle from the threat of lakefront lightning.

The storm retreats momentarily. We drive out to the famous grain elevator and explore the wet loading bays, our hair standing on end in a way that is both comical and scary. A loon darts underwater and reappears an impossible distance away, and he does this over and over, a game he plays for tourists.

Up Blue Mountain in the pounding rain which threatens to wash us back down the muddy bike trails. Our scenic view is of gray slopes and distant mist. Back down the mountain, we visit the artificial Village, a mirage, a magical entertainment tower which intimidates humans and engineers. Near the bathrooms, the wobbling mercury bubble inside a broken fire alarm is a mystery revealed to me.

Beach. The rain has stopped but people find no joy on a suddenly-chilly overcast day. We roll up our clothes and walk through the waves, shuffling over mud and rocks to a picnic table surrounded by tidewater. A joyful dog stumbles over our buried feet which swarm with minnows. Far off: a flat island covered with weeds, a Canadian flag its only vertical feature. When the tide goes out we leave.

Fat Americans and Skinny Italians

Italians conspire and shush politics with their wife-birds, bedraggled, bluntly confused. They are Europe's ambassadors to this crass continent of progress and cannibalism; we are the ones who fall the fastest, but our huge gravity will pull them down with us, all those staring dark-eyed peasants and pilgrims and artists. They would declare us guilty if we believed in their gods but their quaint piety is antichrist to our admittedly divided forces.

"You have broken the rules and wandered too far from us!" they scream at the back-ends of our boats, and we respond: "Denial of your beloved elder statesmen! They are too fat on food that took them too long to cook and eat! We, here, eat only the quick things, which we have invented ourselves, the burgers, the beans! Our fat is made of proteins alien to your history, and therefore we are brand new men and women!"

Scrutable Poetry Corner: "It Rolls On" by Morris Bishop

A poem for the uneasy modern, from the November 1, 1930 issue of The New Yorker.

This is the time of wonder, it is written;
Man has undone the ultimate mysteries.
(We turn from the Chrysler Tower to watch a kitten,
Turn to a dead fish from Isocrates;

Drinkers on five-day boats are gladly smitten
Unconscious on the subjugated seas;
Einstein is even more dull than Bulwer-Lytton;
You cannot smoke on the Los Angeles.)

Science no longer knows the verb-form "can't,"
Fresh meat will soon be shipped by radio;
Scholars are harnessing the urgent ant
And making monstrous bastard fruits to grow,
Building machines for things I do not want,
Discovering truths I do not care to know.

You can find out more about Morris Bishop and his elf-loathing here.

"Earth" Review, Plus Bonus John Candy

The New Yorker film reviewer of 1930 ("J.C.M."), after pooh-pooing the trend toward larger-format films (so-called "three-dimensional films" that "fill the whole proscenium"), provides a great review of a movie that has always confused me: "Earth" by Alexander Dovzhenko (translated in this case as "Soil").

To conclude my memoirs on a lofty and dignified note, I should mention "Soil," a new Russian film. The picture is concerned with the favorite dramatic theme of the Soviet artists: the introduction of new methods of farming to the local wheatlands. Of more interest to these unusual people than the awakening of pure love or the dawn of passion is the coming of the tractor. I must say, too, that there are more persons in this town absorbed in this subject than one might suspect. Down there at that little Eighth Street house, where the picture has been shown, the crowd gets very excited, and there is applause, and even now and then a hiss... In "Soil," a silent picture, a caption was thrown on the screen, a comment of the older peasant as the tractor comes over the hilltop. "There is no God," he says at the sight, and this statement was suddenly met with applause by some of the guests. You will be happy to learn that at once the faithful downed the applause with pious hisses. The whole moment was very intense, and it was a great relief to everyone when the picture passed on to some closeups of apples seen from various angles.

I can certainly understand and appreciate most propaganda, but "Earth" left me totally confused. I couldn't figure out if it was a love song to the soil, a warning to farmers, or an outright parody. Maybe it was all three?

You can hardly say the same about "Hey Giorgy!" This was one of several hilarious SCTV spoofs of Russian television.

Giorgy! If he's not helping somebody, he's helping somebody else! Featuring a bevy of Eastern European immigrants waving at John Candy somewhere in North York.

Gary Jennings: Smut, History, Purity, Coincidence, and Torture

I'm re-reading "Aztec," the Gary Jennings book that I first read many years ago, and I have a few things to add to my previous post about the Jennings formula (at least as it applies this novel and "Raptor").

Yes, Jennings does his research, and combined with a perfect sense of pacing he manages to convey a realistic impression of what it was like to live at the time (in this case, to be an Aztec before, during, and after the Spanish conquest). I'm re-reading this particular book because I want to learn a bit more about Central American civilization, and "Aztec" is telling me a hell of a lot.

But Jennings isn't content to write 750-page books about dry old history, he must also introduce characters who are almost Ayn Rand-ian in their purity: the loyal and innocent servant, the battle-hardened and kind-hearted soldier, the intelligent and noble protagonist, the honest craftsman who pours his entire soul into his work.

These characters would be the first to disappear in an Ayn Rand novel, though, because they are so noble and pure that they can't even be CAPITALISTS (what sort of craftsman would give away his work for free simply because he is proud of what he does?), but they do share the Rand-trait of being such focuses of ideology that reality seems to WARP AROUND them. Thanks to their unswerving characteristics they form impossible alliances, get out of impossible (but clever) traps, and discover impossible things...you know, like Mayan eyeglasses.

During all of this they engage in meticulously-described sexual acrobatics, and they also witness meticulously-described tortures that make even the most hardened reader (me) physically ill. When reading either "Aztec" or "Raptor" you can rest assured that if things are getting a bit bogged down in philosophy or natural beauty, a flaying or an orgy is right around the corner.

As amazed as I am by Gary Jenning's audacity at writing historical novels which are simultaneously accurate and wildly exploitative and impossible, I have to admit that he's an incredible writer. In the pauses between the lesbian couplings and the guys whose guts splash out, his characters meditate on civilization and love, on warfare and writing, on the beauty of the universe and the beauty of the flowers. I have never read any other author who could pull this off so seamlessly that it becomes a genre unto itself...and for 750 pages, no less!

Here's to Gary Jennings. I wish I knew more about the man who wrote these books. In fact, I wish I could read at least one other review that bothered to mention this curious juxtaposition of brilliance and cheap smut.

Bonus Wisdom of the Taxi Drivers

I love talking to taxi drivers, and I think they sense this because whenever I get into a taxi they take note of where I've been and then they ask me personal questions.

They also dispense wisdom from distant lands. Yesterday, when I caught a taxi outside the Belmont Medical Centre, the taxi driver instantly asked me if I was sick.

We started talking about pain and he said "When you have pain in some part, all of your soul is in that part! Everything is important where there is soul!" He then told me exactly what's wrong with North Americans: "Mortgages!"

He has a good point. He says that instead of spending twenty years saving enough money to make a huge payment on a house -- the way they do it in Turkey, apparently -- we put ourselves into immediate debt by buying a house that we can't afford. Our mortgages are so big that we live in perpetual fear of losing our jobs, and the threat of joblessness is held over our heads by our employees and our government. We don't dare step out of line lest we lose our earning power and therefore our beloved houses.

I don't totally agree. Some of us (most of us?) don't step out of line because we don't see a big enough reason to; we are not convinced that things are so bad and the alternatives are so good. He also admitted that other parts of the world are beginning to embrace the idea of big mortgages for early houses, as advertised by America-own companies on television...on television even in Turkey.

But I do see his point. The problem probably has more to do with us not SAVING money as opposed to going into extravagant debt. Even before I had a mortgage I was afraid of losing my earning power, entirely because I didn't have a financial safety net to land in (and I still don't).

To all Turkish taxi drivers: stick to your principles. Speak truth to power. Remember that Park Street is closed and you will waste my money by trying to drive through it.

Goat-Goo in Roman Plays

I've never had a sense of human history; other than Geography, History was the class I was LEAST interested in during school. But now I'm learning everything for the first time from scratch, and what fascinates me most about human history is how little we have changed.

It's for this reason that I'm thoroughly enjoying "Five Roman Comedies," a collection of Plautus and Terence plays translated into "modern verse" (eg., "the modern verse of Classical Studies professors in 1970").

It is really, really wonderful to know that we find the same things funny today that we did 2200 years ago: the irony of confused identities, the bumblings of a cocky idiot, the old routine of "Go quickly! And wait, don't forget what I told you to do! Now go, hurry! Wait, remember to be careful! Now hurry up and go! Wait a second, don't forget to be as quick as you can!"

Isn't this touching? Obviously our brains have changed little (if any) since Roman times, but neither have our joys and fears. And there is something ESPECIALLY touching that -- so long ago -- we had a theatrical system to entertain each other with, and that -- against all odds -- so many of these works have survived for us to read today.

Anyway, while reading these plays I'm torn between enjoying the "modern verse" translations and wishing they were a bit more literal. Like, I know instantly what "knucklehead" means to us today, but I sort wonder how the ROMANS had expressed such a thing. I'm currently reading the hilarious "Mostellaria," and the translator (Palmer Bovie) has really gone to town with the idioms. Here's my favourite section, which I hereby decree to be the best part of any play, anywhere:

TRANIO:

Why don't you go up in smoke? I'll see you inhale first,
you halitosis garlic-green rotten excuse for a rustic
retreat, with goat-goo on your feet. I repeat:
You whiff of damp air, what's it like down there in your pig-sty?
Whew! What a combination of nanny goat and mongrel bitch!

That's great stuff! Then, as now, we've always found it enormously funny when two unlikeable people insult each other.

Not Much Has Changed in Eighty Years: Sunday Afternoon Cartoon

(From the June 14, 1930 issue of The New Yorker, by Art Young)

It Is Doubly Difficult to Get Out

I am reading William T. Vollmann's second-latest enormous book -- "Imperial" -- and I came across this apt, wonderful, and terrible paragraph which addresses why the New River (in Mexico and California) remains so terribly polluted.

Maybe the New River wasn't anybody's fault, either. People need to defecate, and if they are poor, they cannot afford to process their sewage. People need to eat, and so they work in the maquiladoras--factories owned by foreign polluters. The polluters pollute to save money; then we buy their inexpensive and perhaps well-made tractor parts, fertilizers, pesticides. It is doubly difficult to get out. And it's all ghastly.

Sigh.

"Why Helen?"

Hey! If you read more than just this blog (gasp!) you might be interested to know that I'm in the latest issue of India's first (and only) queer periodical, Bombay Dost.


It's a three-page spread with pictures, featuring an article I wrote about Bollywood film idol Helen...or at least the mythical version of Helen that I adore. If you're interested in getting a copy, you can order the issue (number two) online.

It looks great and the article is lots of fun, even if you wouldn't know Helen of Burma from Helen of Troy.

Videosex (No, It's Not What You Think)

I have long been enchanted by this cover of "Across the Universe." It is somehow -- inexplicably -- both heart-wrenchingly beautiful and David Lynch creepy. Likewise the video, which gives me goosebumps and makes me want to run away fast at the same time. It all makes me think of a cross between "O Superman," a church choir, and a meeting of the Hitler Youth.



The band (and tongue-in-cheek presentation) is certainly Laibach, but the singer (Anja Rupel) was in her own band: Videosex, '80s darlings of the former Yugoslavia.

"Videosex" is very weird to the contemporary, non-Yugoslavian listener. Their early new wave/post-punk music has aged poorly with its generic drum machine and vomit-inducing keyboard sax, but even then there was something INTERESTING about their work...a little twist, a little something added to make it stand out, even when they were working in a straight-forward pop genre.



Fortunately they didn't stay there for long. It's on their third album ("Svet Je Kopet Mlad") that they start performing a weird electro-cabaret-swing, as exemplified in this (fortunately translated) video for "Zemlja Pleše."



It's the final album -- "Ljubi In Sovraži" -- that's truly great. It's full of crazy beats and wild stylistic changes...from the quiet ambient booping of "Space Lab" to the over-the-top Foetus-like swing of "Snip Snap" (a cheerful English song about a boy whose thumbs get cut off because he sucks them). "Computer's First Christmas Card" is like nothing I've ever heard, a nonsense scat montage that you'd consider impossible until you actually hear it.

Fortunately the final album is available on iTunes, and so is their enormous "best of" compilation (at a very cheap price). The catch is that the sound quality ranges from "good" to "terrible." It's poorly mastered, has no mid range, and the bass sounds occasionally clip with an awful ripping sound.

The other sad thing is that I can find very little information about the band or their music. They obviously never made a dent in the English-speaking world, and their CD re-releases seem to have made fast-and-loose with the discography, transplanting songs from various eras as "bonus tracks."

Anyway, I'm happy to have found these little gems. If you're a fan of odd pop with a healthy tinge of complete insanity, check out "Ljubi In Sovraži" or -- since the "best of" collection contains most of those songs at the same price -- just get "Arhiv." "Across the Universe" is on there as well, though they've amusingly tried to remove the Laibach grunts at the end.

Torchwood Season 3

I thought that Torchwood season one was generally bad, and that season two was downright terrible, but I've stuck with the series because it has potential. I felt that if the writers would only recognize the strengths of the premise -- and brutally stomp out all of the self-introduced weaknesses -- they'd end up with something truly great.

Usually my prayers go unanswered, but season three of Torchwood is absolutely amazing. They've darkened the tone, chucked the juvenile sexuality, trimmed off the extraneous character complications, and written within the budget. It is five episodes of perfectly-maintained suspense, anxiety, and outright horror. The aliens -- known as the "456" -- are the most terrifying creatures I've seen since...well, Alien.

In true Russell T. Davies style, however, the focus of the show -- and the REAL monsters -- are the buerocrats and functionaries who serve to represent humanity at its worst. It's bad enough that the 456 exist...what makes it TRULY bad are the petty foibles of those we expect to protect us.

If you've never watched Torchwood, go out and rent season three. Skip seasons one and two entirely; don't worry, you'll catch on quick enough. You might squirm when John Barrowman does his obligatory crying, but this time around it's kept to a tolerable level, and he really DOES have something to cry about.



PS: Actually this was very similar in tone and theme to a 1998 British mini-series called "Invasion: Earth." You might even accuse Davies of (perhaps unconsciously) copying it. Still, the particulars are different enough to make both series' distinct AND worth watching.

The Changeable Changeness of Change

The last three weeks have been bizarre. Nothing in particular has happened, nothing too shocking or surprising, but I can't help feeling that my world is moving pretty rapidly into a new place. What's surprising about this is that I'm pretty comfortable with the idea.

I've never really understood before the Tarot idea where the "Death" card actually means "change." I figured it was just a conceit to keep suburban housewives from screaming when they get their cards read. But when things are changing -- both your environment and you -- it really DOES feel a bit like death: a little bit scary and exciting and a whole lot of wondering.

Some things are going on that I'm not going to talk about here, and they're all interrelated so I can't give a full sense of what's happening on this end, but one of the cruxes involved is: how long am I going to continue doing drag? I've always known that there'd be a time when I'd want to stop, and I figured I'd just wake up one morning and say "No more!", but instead it's been a series of gradual waves of thought during the last few years. Every year I give the idea of quitting more serious consideration, and this year I'm really on the cusp of saying "Yeah, that's it."

Why? One reason is vanity. Each year it gets harder and harder to look good, and the failures are more and more apparent. The pictures of me which look attractive are taken from increasing distances. I keep thinking about the song that goes: "Nice legs, shame about the face," and all it takes is one terrible batch of photos to make me go "Ugh! No more!"

Another reason is reward versus effort, and the rewards are getting smaller. It's not that the WORLD has stopped rewarding me, it's just that those rewards mean less and less to me, and as the effort increases, doing drag starts to lose its point.

A third reason is the sheer pain of doing it. My shoulder isn't getting better and there's a possibility that it never actually will (I'm going to a shoulder specialist soon and will probably be scheduled for surgery). The ability to "look good" in drag involves having access to all those parts of your body that you need to modify, and I don't have access to some of those parts anymore. It's depressing and causes me a lot of anguish.

And finally, I've realized over the years that I'm GOOD at a large number of things, but I'm not GREAT at any of them (except for my job), and the reason is because I haven't focused all my money and energy on a single activity. "Doing drag" competes with all the other interests I have in my life.

But the thing is, drag is such a part of my identity that I've always been TERRIFIED of losing it. Who would I BE? This year, however, I can actually see myself doing without it, and I realize that my life would be a hell of a lot simpler and easier without it.

I'm not going to be one of those people who throws out all their drag stuff on a whim. If I do decide to stop doing drag, it'll be a gradual process, a "letting go." I'm still performing at next week's "OK2BME" Pride Prom, and today we were going to do a Daily Muffy (but it was canceled). What happens will depend entirely on where my life goes from here.

In any case, all this stuff is the major reason why I haven't been blogging lately. When my life becomes unsettled I tend to withdraw from creative pursuits (such as this one) and just do a lot of reading and game-playing (yes, The Sims 2).

Tramps, Dishes, and Bins o' Sin

When the Tri-City Roller Girls put out a heartfelt plea for volunteers, I simply couldn't resist. "Yes!" I said. "Simply tell me what to do!"

I guess they couldn't resist either, because they asked me to be one of the "sin bin" timers. How hard could that be? Errrr...

Today's match -- the first of the season -- was at the spiffy new Wilmot Community Center. Since the Car Share charges me by the kilometer, I did what I always do (and regret later)...I forsook the loopy highway and tried to take the back roads. But here in Canada, May is the month of road construction, and when I realized that Erb Street was closed...

...well, I wish I could show you the totally stupid route I actually drove, trying to be "smart" and find my way. I ended up in BAMBURG. What's "Bamburg," you ask? It's a place you don't want to be in. Forget the fact that you don't actually want to LIVE in Bamburg (we used to call it "Bumburg" when I was in high school), but it's a road to absolutely NOWHERE. Being in Bamburg is like trying to get to the North Pole via Australia. Like, so off the path that the Blair Witch can pick and choose her victims at will, and then have a big party without the police even noticing.

But I did finally arrive at the arena, where I discovered that timing the "sin bin" is at least THEORETICALLY a really difficult thing. The rules involving seating and special exceptions are MAMMOTH, so I figured I'd rely on my volunteer partner to tell me what to do. But she was "Perky Set." Wonderful. Brilliant. Never timed a sin bin in her life.

Fortunately she'd spent plenty of time IN the sin bin, so between us we managed to figure out the rules. And since both teams were uncharacteristically sweet we got by without too many challenges.

The show? Wonderful! It really is an engaging sport and it's great to feel like you're part of something. I'm a Venus Fly Tramp at heart, but I (accidentally) wore Vicious Dishes colours, so I felt like I could sort of remain impartial. Sadly, the Tramps lost. Impartial my butt.

After pumping gas and returning the car (I've taken it out four times and NEVER ONCE has the previous user filled the tank), I decided to try something totally new: I'd refresh my face and go to the after party.

This is a difficult thing. If you've never done drag, think of it as like putting a big pancake over your face and then walking around and trying to look pretty. You can do this for about five hours before you start to look -- shall we say -- like a crack-whore-f*cked-up-clown. But sadder. I am SO paranoid about being ugly in drag. I have NIGHTMARES about it. I'd rather have two broken legs than be a really ugly drag queen, but please don't take me up on that.

I really wanted to go to the party, though, so I got out the wet sponge and dabbed...and dabbed...and reapplied...and eventually I just prayed for dim lighting and went out anyway.

What fun! Booze, booze, booze. Pizza appeared and then just as quickly disappeared. Ben Ong kept everybody dancing. I drank too much and then realized that I'd better leave before the ultimate collapse.

Now? Home and happy. What a wonderful night. I'm exhausted and hungry and spinny, and my shoulder feels like a roller girl just stuck a straw into it and then kicked it with a lead-filled skate, but it was a worthwhile and fun night and I look forward to doing it again.

Here's to the Roller Derby Girls, past and present. Here's to all the work they do, all the rehearsals and planning and money they spend. In a perfect world they'd be rewarded. I hope they feel they are.

Weird Ceremonies of Real Indians

Oh wow!

Unfortunately we're almost eighty years too late to take a Santa Fe-Harvey Company "Xcursion," but I think we can imagine what they were like.

Weasel Compilations

You know all those budget-priced "Best of the [Insert Era Here]" compilation CDs you often see in point-of-purchase bins at Chapters? The ones chock-full of classic songs at a price that's simply too good to be true?

Sometimes CDs are cheap because of a low advertising overhead or a high production run, but at other times they're cheap for a very simple reason: because the people who made the CDs found a sneaky way to avoid licensing fees. Hence "weasel compilations," for lack of a better phrase.

When I started DJ'ing retro nights I fell prey to several of these CDs before I finally learned my lesson. They always START OUT with three or four of the classic recordings that you're expecting to hear, but then they slip in the FAKE songs.

How are they fake? They either use a live performance by a few original band members -- always recorded at some highschool dance or small-town festival, with stadium reverb added for odd effect -- or they get the elderly, coke-addled lead singer to come into the studio and record a new version with karaoke session musicians. These ones are the worst, because the instrumentation is terrible Casio keyboard stuff and the production is bottom of the barrel. Even if you don't know the song, you know it's a fake version because no record company would EVER release it as a single.

Hence the cheapness of the CDs. By only including a few of the classic songs -- which cost a bundle to license -- they then find the surviving members who own the music themselves, convince them to do a budget recording session or a live soundboard recording, and then mix those "updated" versions into the bulk of the CD...without ever revealing this in the song titles. If you're lucky they'll include a weasel notice on the back, in tiny letters, somewhere down near the corner:

"To achieve the best sound quality possible, some of these songs have been updated or re-recorded with one or more of the original band members."

YOU JERKS! It's no wonder we're cynical nowadays, and also no wonder that most of us probably have two or three of these compilations in our own collections, in which Marvin Gaye or "(Two-Fifths of) The Temptations" sleepwalk through their hit song in the backroom of some Legion building in Iowa, cheered on by the one man drunk enough to have a good time.

My point? Just a cautionary tale, that's all. Look for that weaselly notification before you buy a box-set of classic songs from a bargain bin...and even so, expect to get ripped off.

PS: Strangely enough, if the CD company is from Eastern Europe or Russia, you'll probably get all the classic songs intact, albeit with humorous spelling-mistakes in the titles. THEY get around licensing laws because nobody can untangle the international copyright issues in order to actually prosecute (that is, if the company's address is real in the first place).

Humans, We Are As Though Cancer Cells

Another wonderful thing I read this morning was a quote by Ed Abbey:

Growth for the sake of growth is the ideology of the cancer cell.

I think he's one-hundred percent right. As humans, one of our biggest failings is a belief that everything MUST grow. I'm not sure if this is a societal thing or just part of our evolution, but we seem incapable of equilibrium, even in the face of real emergency. Whether it's a government or a business or a family or a single person, we too often ignore long-term consequences or the needs of others because we have a single bottom line: growth for the sake of growth. It's like we're hardwired for it.

I don't believe that capitalism has a corner on this, not by any means. And I'm not saying that I have a solution, or that I'm in any way less growth-centered than anybody else. All I'm saying is that Abbey's quote speaks volumes to me, and it should be painted in huge black letters on the walls all around us.

Alas, Beckzy, We Hardly Knew Ye

I decided to drive to work this morning so I could pick up cat supplies on the way home. At the corner of Erb and Caroline, however, Beckzy stalled...and just wouldn't start again.

That intersection is a bit of a zoo during rush-hour and people were honking and waving at me, so I put on the hazard lights, got out of the car, and locked the door. For the first time I was acutely aware of not having a cel phone. I was alarmed to see tiny wisps of smoke coming out from under Beckzy's hood.

Just as I'd decided to walk to the nearby police station, a sweet guy named Ian pulled over and offered to call a tow truck for me. While we were debating who to call, Beckzy made up our minds by releasing an enormous plume of smoke, so Ian called 911 and asked for a fire truck; we stood and watched as Beckzy became obscured by a black, evil-smelling cloud, and then we backed up another twenty feet when the undercarriage began to burn.

So there I was, at nine in the morning, watching my beloved car catch fire with a sweet stranger who was kind enough to stick around. Policemen arrived and they blocked off the road. Firemen came with gas masks and smashed the hood open, spraying water everywhere. It was the most surreal moment of my life.

Once the fire was out I asked the fireman why it happened. "It just happened," he said, and gestured at the melted mess that was once the front of my car. Then he laughed. "You'll never know now!" The policemen were delighted because they'd never seen a burning car before. Ian remarked quietly that the policewomen were very pretty.

I felt a strange giddiness. While waiting for the tow truck we stood around and talked about mundane things, one of the policewomen occasionally running off to chase people who were trying to run the barricade. I learned that Wednesdays are quiet days for crime until 10am, when house thieves traditionally break into homes vacated by the 9-5 crowd. I learned that the police station is too small and that they send their criminals to the holding tanks in Kitchener. I became intimately familiar with the smell of burning toxic chemicals.

Then the old people started to arrive. Nothing makes an old man happier than a melted car. "It just burned up!" they'd say, peering through the windows and poking around underneath. "You won't be driving this one again!" Women brought their children to look. "What a car!" they'd say, and the children would stare, terrified.

The Practical Side of Things

A company came and towed my car to the pound for $269. Since they'd charge an extra $25 for each day the bill was unpaid, my boss was sweet enough to drive me to Breslau and settle the account. They told me to go to a scrap dealer and sign the car over to them, and my boss drove me there too. It was an amazingly cramped and greasy building full of "Beware of Dog" signs, where you have to sign in and wear workboots if you want to go past the counter. Lots of stubble in that place. They had their names embroidered on their overalls. They gave me $150.

I had declined the non-liability portions of my car insurance so I was unable to get any other money for Beckzy's burned-out carcass.

What I Think About the Situation

Thank goodness this didn't happen on a highway during a snowstorm with me in drag. And thank goodness for the kindness of strangers, the cheerful professionalism of the police and firemen, and the guy who ran over with a tiny extinguisher and volunteered to fight the fire singlehandedly. Thank goodness for the instinct that makes humans huddle up when something freaky happens. Thanks most of all to Ian, who calmly directed the situation until the police showed up, and then stood around to shoot the shit, and THEN called my work to tell them I'd be late.

I'm sad because I bought the car and then barely drove it...but the point IS that I didn't drive it very much. I bought it to take me to family functions and drag shows -- which rarely happen -- and to take me to bars, which I decided never to do. I also wanted to drive to remote places and perhaps go camping, but I was never totally confident that Beckzy could take me that far (with reason, it turns out).

I liked knowing that Beckzy was there in case of an emergency, and it was also nice to know that she could take me to places I otherwise couldn't go.

One group of people are now telling me to lease or buy a new-ish car...then I could feel confident driving it, and it would be more comfortable, and I wouldn't worry about people making fun of it or denigrating it. Another group are encouraging me to check out a car share instead...that way I could still get to out-of-town events when necessary...in an emergency I could always take a cab.

In a way, Beckzy's sudden end is a relief because I no longer have to worry about her; I lost enough money to make me sad, but I am no longer faced with thoughts of euthanasia; she can't be repaired, she's already scrap, she's gone. I will no longer sit here on weekends thinking "I should go out and USE the car but I just don't FEEL like it."

I like to think that Beckzy decided to go out with a bang. Instead of whimpering and stalling and dragging along, she burst into flame and created a fiery spectacle. It's how she wanted to die.

Dialects in the 1920s

I have read an unusual number of '20s novels during the past year, and it seems that all of them are OBSESSED with dialect. Every character in these books -- the Swedish immigrants in Martha Ostenso's "Wild Geese," the Chicago gangsters in MacKinley Kantor's "Diversey," and now the uncouth westerners in Thames Williamson's "The Stride of Man" -- has their own distinct way of talking, and in case you need some help their dialog is spelled out phoenetically, to varying degrees of success.

I've been thinking recently that North Americans must have been particularly interested in dialect during the late '20s...then what should I read this morning but a fun New Yorker piece called "Mammy!"

In the piece, Robert M. Coates is planning to visit the south, so he takes "Southern accent lessons." When he arrives he tries out his accent on a black man.

"Hiyah, yo bleck reskil," I hailed him, pitching my voice to a mellow, throaty drawl. "Whah yall gwine gwine?"

"I beg your pardon?" he replied.

"Ah sade," I repeated, "de mos thing Ah is wantin' is tuh diskiver whah-all de Mainshun House Hotail is a-locatid et, an' ef yall is a-gwine in that dee-reskshun, Ah'd be raight smaht obleeged ef yall ud..." I paused, for an expression of bewilderment had crossed his otherwise placid features.

"I'm sorry," he said, "but I haven't the slightest idea what you mean."

After similar problems communicating with a waitress, Coates decides that the problem is one of education: the southerners were never taught to understand their own language.

If these people don't know the right way to talk, the only thing is to teach them. It might come hard at first, but we could soon have them saying "Suh" and "Ah raikin" almost as well as our own character actors do.

Beautiful sting at the end, and it makes me wonder if the dialect prevalence in books -- assuming it existed and isn't just due to the books I'm sampling -- was due to the character actors and songwriters of the time.

(The New Yorker, February 6, 1929, page 59)

A Plague of Junk and Silent Calls

About a month ago I started receiving the "Waterloo Record Save & Sell" in my mailbox. This flimsy excuse for junk-mail advertising is as thick as a phone book and gets shoved, weekly, into my tiny receptacle. It crushes legitimate mail and leaves the mailbox lid jammed open. I don't read it and I recycle it every week. What's the point?

So I finally had enough and I called their mail-carrier line. I was on hold for several minutes, but then managed to speak to a very nice person who said she'd "take me off the list." I should have asked her how I ended up on their list in the first place -- maybe I could track my pervasive junk-mail hydra back to its roots -- but I'm glad to remove at least one source of soliciting-annoyance from my door.

Incidentally, like many people I get several calls a day from telemarketers, but in most cases I pick up the phone and I don't get an answer...the line is dead. I've discovered that this is something called a "silent call" (or an "abandoned call") which means that a computer has randomly dialed the digits in my phone number and -- when I picked up the receiver -- it notified the telemarketing company that my phone was active. But since no bottom-feeding, scum-sucking telemarketers were available to respond to the pick-up at that moment, the call was simply abandoned.

Incredibly rude.

This happens about six times a week. It's a relatively slight annoyance but I can't help wondering: who regulates this stuff, and how much money do they receive from call-center lobbyists?