Pulitzer My Finger

The other day I got the urge to write a memoir. I sat on the couch and thought about what I'd write. I haven't been to rehab; I wasn't sexually molested as a child; after 30 years, my parents are still married; so, I can't write about that. When I grow up I want to be a; police investigator, writer, author, prolific cartoon voice; cereal-box model; fashion victim; movie of the week; one-hit wonder; junkie; spiritual junkie; heart-throb; bus driver; blind painter; lip-reader; movie-goer...

It's pretty clear that I don't know what I'm talking about. I'm your priest who has turrets-syndrome, every blessing is followed by a curse. But this isn't about me, it's about what I'm going to write about me. This is a memoir, though we can bend the rules for the sake of fiction. Don't get me wrong, I'm not out to self-immolate on the lawn of James Frey's house, I just want to create a piece of art.

I want to tell you about the worst night of my life. When I was staring a twelve story fall in the face, but I spat into the night and laughed while I did. I was unemployed, no money, no prayers for rain, lost, random. That's how I lived my life. I read until I started repeating the same sentence over and over again, out loud, until the words lost all meaning. I do that with names too. I spent a lot of time sitting on the floor. Reading books, watching movies, playing guitar, writing poetry, listening to the static sound of nothing that surrounds my apartment, and lives in it like a silent roommate.

I wanted to be back following her down the road. The setting sun going down on us as we laughed, and held eachother, felt pulses, relaxed, opened our eyes as wide as the galaxy so I could really see who she was. My camera still remembers when it caught her being human. She put the makeup down, sex still in her hair, and before she left the room, she looked over her shoulder and smiled at me. As she did, her fingers pushed her hair aside, revealing the most beautiful delicate I've ever seen. A light dusting of snow that would blow away any second if you moved. So I froze, I didn't want to look away, yet it was burning my eyes just to behold. I wasn't made for this moment, when she would look to me for my love and I would release it through my eyes leaving trials down my face so she could see that my love was a more than a trickling spring a heat-wave could just evaporate. I need her again. When I fall asleep I want to know she's there counting my breaths. And I can feel her body twitch, and I'd be there in the morning to watch her open her eyes.

This is what I would have in my memoir. But I wouldn't use drugs, NO. I wouldn't want her to know that the only thing I could do to forget about her was to try and erase her image from my brian. To rub it out at the expense of what else I stood to lose in the process. Wake-up, burn. Lunch, burn. Movie, burn. Dinner, burn. Homework, burn. Poetry, burn. I burned out and felt like the stuff that was crusting the ash-tray.

I wouldn't replay this story with funnier sounding words. It won't mean the same.

Our World is Blurry to the Fish

And now it's happened, we don't know why, we can't look back, we can't let go. Things we want to do now seem like a memory, a distant spot on the horizon that we cannot touch.  We can fly across the date line and admire the curve of earth, but we cannot go back. The things we used to dream about have turned into a question mark that floats between us as we sleep. We can turn off the bedside light, roll over and hug the pillow, but our nightmares will surface on the other side. 

What can I say to your naked back, that I can't say to your eyes.  In my head I've forgotten how they sparkle and burn like rebel stars on vacation from the galaxy. Your sky, my sky, three moons over the deserted island in the middle of a crystal sea. Our world is blurry to the fish. They are introduced to it as they flop around trying to free themselves from their metal-lined fish hook dungeon. The instruments of torture we use to feed our children.  

I remember nights when the earth stunk of human ignorance.  The moon tried desperately to soak up what the sun couldn't burn away. We are drowning in rivers of concrete, incarcerated in phallic towers threatening to collapse. It's hard to learn about cooperation and survival in a world were the basic instinct is kill to stay in the game. We don't look in the rearview mirror because objects are as big as they appear. 

This history, this forgotten story, this rhyme without a chorus, this struggle to repair a broken quilt that we've ripped apart with our hands, cannot happen because the sweat from our skin and blood from our mouths have made it poisonous to touch. A flesh eating virus will leave you naked to the bones, and strangers will turn away and shrug their shoulders saying you didn't have the guts. And you still don't know what you're made of. 

Soon, our life stories will be written on gravestones that kills any flower placed underneath. Our last lay will be a dare-haunt for drunken distant coeds hot for a chill. You can't follow the footsteps to here because the dirt road of our entrails will be paved over by eye-candy arsenic draped over plastic people in strip-malls. 

I was walking down the street when I saw a homeless man smiling. 

Why are you smiling? 

I am free. 

Doesn't it rain on you at night? 

Only when it rains. 

 

 

  

Sean Connery Sings Love Songs

We left the house early in the morning. Heavy curtains of fog obscured my view of the other side of the street. In the distance, I could hear the hum of early morning traffic. Sharp rays of sunshine burned my pupils, too slow to react to the brightness of the day's new dawn. We took cameras, a lens bag, and some cigarettes, putting them in the trunk before starting the car.

The car meandered through narrow streets that more closely resembled back-alleys. There was hardly room for one car on the road, when another was approaching head-on, it felt like you were locked into a game of chicken. Not that the sidewalks were any safer; people ride their bikes on the sidewalk all the time here, and try to fuck with you by coming too close. You try to regain your composure, as they laugh it off on their way to school.

Once, during the first few months of my friends arrival in Japan, he was walking one way while three teenage boys, who were riding their bikes and were approaching him head-on. He had made up his mind that we wasn't going to get out of the way this time, and right as the middle boy's bike approached, he dropped his shoulder and sent the kid flying.

"I don't really know where I'm going," my friend admitted with a sheepish grin, as we traded directions and asphalt roads for dirt. "So if we get lost, we may have to ask for help," he added.

"I thought you didn't speak Japanese very well?" I replied.

"I don't." he answered.

I lit a cigarette and rolled the window down just enough to let the smoke escape into the air. "Your Japanese sounded good at class the other day," I said, trying to encourage him.

"Trust me, it isn't. In order to read the paper here, I need to know 2000 Kenji symbols - I only know about 300."

"I guess you'll have to watch tv and let the host read you the paper." I joked.

"It makes no sense to me." he added.

Our car continued through sections of specifically laid out rice fields, which had nothing to show for themselves save the dried, crusted leftovers of the fall harvest. The air was still cool. As we made our way to the foothills of the mountains, the sun played coy with the earth, shyly retreating behind the clouds, and out again, casting curious shadows on the trees in the distance. The farther and farther we moved away from the city, the only people we saw were the occasional tree-trimmer, or farmer.

Along the highway, a tree bearing round fruit shaped like Christmas tree bulbs and coloured orange, gently swayed in the breeze.

"What type of fruit is that?" I asked my friend.

"Ah, I think they're called a persimmon, or something. I don't like them, so I'm not really sure." he answered. "Meg likes them though, try it when we get back."

"Maybe I'll pick one from a tree while we walk." ---

"Can you look at this map. We have to find highway 643, and I don't see it." he interrupted, handing me the folded piece of paper.

"Where are we?" I asked.

He ran his hand over the map, but had to return them to the wheel after the car began to veer off of the road. "Gimme a sec." he barked. Up ahead he noticed a gas station. "I'm going to pull over, gas is cheap today."

"Oil fell to $65 a barrel yesterday," I added. "Cheap gas all over the place."

"Well, it's never really that cheap here because most of it comes from elsewhere." he said. "But, it's cheaper than it has been, so I'll take it."

"That's why I don't have a car," I offered. "Too much money right now. Then again, so is a Happy Meal."

He filled the car as I went into the store to get some hiking essentials - chocolate bars and more cigarettes. I, apparently, had made a pact with myself that while I was on vacation, I would act as if my better judgment was as well. Not that cigarettes here were stronger or anything. The Marlboro Lights I smoked were like smoking a straw. This was the only sign of my stress. Let's be honest, it was either smoke, take out a city block with a big-hairy weapon, or go skydiving with a holey parachute... I chose smoking. Stress makes you feel like the world is limiting your options.

"We need a new soundtrack," my friend said as he plopped himself back down behind the steering wheel.

"Find that Rob Thomas song," I suggested.

He opened the console between us and carelessly rummaged through an assortment of mini-disks. "Maroon 5," he said, before throwing it off the glass of the rear window.

"You're not a fan I take it," I inquired rhetorically.

"It's like every video of theirs is one of his wet-dreams played out." he said.

"Sounds messy." I added.

He popped in a clear disk and began hitting the search button. One, two, three, four; and slowly, the sound of guitar and piano accompaniment filled the car. The voice came next.

It's never easy and you'll never know. What leaves you crying is what makes you whole. There ain't nobody who can show you how to find the surface when you're underground.

"That's a great lyric." he said, as he turned up the dial.

"Appropriate." I said, as I opened a fresh pack of cigarettes.

"That's why you're over here man, to forget about things."

"Feels more like I'm delaying them, than forgetting. I've put them on a shelf for ten days, and sure they'll collect a week's worth of dust, but I'll brush them off when I get home." I said as I exhaled a ploom of smoke. "Hey, stop the car a second!" I shouted.

"Okay, I'll pull in at the parking lot up ahead." he said.

"That's a great photograph. See how the fog is hiding the powerlines, you can just see the tip of the tower." I declared.

In the distance, power lines stretched across the countryside like robotic caterpillars. They were connected at intervals to large metal skeleton-towers, painted red and white. It was the type of juxtaposition I came to love about Japan, power lines and pagodas...21st century, and 1st century in the same shot. I jumped out of the car, opened the back door, and grabbed the camera.

To my dismay, I looked through the lens just in time to witness the fog clear, revealing too much of the tower. "Shit!, the photo's gone," I said.

"It isn't gone, it's just different. You have to find it again." he said, in an attempt to reassure. "Here, let me see the camera." He began firing away, and after about eight clicks, he took the camera away from his eye socket, and held it in front of my face. "Look," he insisted.

After exchanging photos, we capped our lenses and drove off. Not far from where we had just stopped, my friend turned the car suddenly, and took us up a short incline and onto a road atop a ridge that ran between two large vegetable gardens. On the other side of the ridge, a large flood plane snaked under bridges and continued into the mountains ahead. In the middle of the plane, a tiny stream of water trickled along, more closely resembling a natural spring than a river.

"You should see this river when it rains...full...this whole riverbed." he said.

We parked the car and walked along the river, taking pictures of the morning dew clinging to spider webs and flowers.

"Shoot on the apeture setting. You'll get some nice up-close shots of the flowers, and you can blur the backdrop." he instructed, handing me the camera.

"Look at the way the sun creates those shadows on the mountain," he said as I pointed to it.

"Shoot it, you have five-hundred pictures." he said in a stern voice.

"I'll take pictures all day, but I still wish I had the camera out for the cattle love back there!" he said, stuttering my steps as I laughed.

"Should've had the camera on your lap, so you're ready." said my friend.

"Next time. I don't think my girlfriend would appreciate pictures of cows fornicating, funny as it was." I replied.

When we got back in the car, the song came on again.

Will you still be there when the heartache ends?

"Imagine Sean Connery singing this song," my friend said as he and I burst out laughing.

Change: it comes in steps

Democracy is a state of grace that is attained only by those countries who have a host of individuals not only ready to enjoy freedom but to undergo the heavy labor of maintaining it.

- Norman Mailer

In the wake of the election of Barack Obama for President of the United States, the notion of change is swimming vigorously in the currents of global conversation. And as the President-Elect mounted the podium in Chicago's Grant Park, Tuesday night, he was greeted with an overwhelming sense that this change, this reformation of the familiar, was not only welcomed by the American electorate, but spilled from their bodies in the form of tears and chants of YES WE CAN.

As important as the election of the first African-American President in the history of the United States is, we must not live to dwell in this numbing state of euphoria. Though I do not doubt the visceral desire of the American citizenry for change, I fear the election of Barack Obama will be seen as change itself.

Alcoholics Anonymous relies on 12 steps to kick addictions, a personal journey that begins with the all-important first step; admitting there is a problem. We citizens of the world must remind ourselves change also comes in steps, and that this election has cemented merely the first; a person with a strong belief in the power of communities.

War Photography

An angry mob attacks a man who stumbles down the street in a semi-conscious attempt to escape the clutches of their fists, clubs and knives. As blood runs down his face from a fresh head-wound, it mixes with his tears and clouds his vision; he falls...

A young Tutsi man turns his head, as if sitting for a closeup, exposing a series of deep laceration scars on his scalp and cheeks; with half of his right ear missing, he wonders if anybody is listening...

In a bunker in war-torn Grozny, a Chechen rebel clutching a M-4 assault rifle with white knuckles, lets out a battle-cry captured in the silence of black and white photography...

These images are but a few examples of the places and events which American photojournalist and war photographer James Nachtwey has seen, and been witness. His images equal the power of the explosions that have ripped through Grozny, and Sarajevo, leaving us to wonder who, or what type of evil can explain the pieces leftover.

The importance of capturing humanity at its worst in order to hope for the best, is the driving force for Nachtwey, who has photographed acts of war, terror and human suffering from the African famines of the early 1990s, to 9/11. For Nachtwey, news of these and other tragedies like them are most intimately and honestly captured in photographs. It remains a mystery to him (and myself) that humanity could be pushed to such liminality, that the only means of defense, the only means of hope, the only act of freedom, is to kill that which shares our suffering...our fellow human beings.

It is hard to deny the power of photography. Photojournalists force us to look not only with our eyes, but with conscious reflection at the consequences of human suffering. Nachtwey's quest to stop the cycle of human violence through photographs -a quest undeniably noble and necessary- begs some questions as to whether or not such a revelation of understanding can be instigated by silent observers - the photojournalist. Are not these photographs simply lost in the milieu of images we see everyday?

There is a visceral haunt that festers in the minds of photojournalists; they see the violence; they capture a newly-fired bullet leaving a white-hot chamber; but they cannot move the targets, lest they should become targets themselves - they can do nothing to stop the violence in the heat of the moment. Like journalists, whose pen is their pistol, the knowledge we gain from war photography is in retrospect, forever carrying the hope of never again.

Nachtwey has tasked himself with understanding something much bigger than himself; for war is a needle in the vein of humanity. It blurs our vision and dilates our pupils with power and greed, leaving precious life in the blind spot.

Perhaps it is too easy look away;
too easy to say their problems are a world away;
to convince ourselves that they are them,
not us.
To do this, is to deny that the sun shines and rain is wet.

Away from me

I don't want you

to only be a memory; 

though I'm starting

to think of you that way. 

My showers are your tears,

piped in from where you are

away from me. 

Let`s Go (let go)

I think of you from time to time,
when nobody is looking at me.
But you just can`t find the time,
and I mumble the words I want to rhyme.

I`m a window, you`re the curtain,
what you`re hiding, I`m not quite certain.
I`m the rowboat on an angry sea,
you`re the rippled reflection staring up at me.

So, let`s go,
through the trees, past the forest
where we can witness heaven
on our knees.
Let`s go,
through the city, past the limits
through the neighborhoods
of simple ways, the good old days.

Get lost in traffic lights, crumpled maps
and afternoon naps.
Cloud your conscience in the rain;
barefeet on pavement doesn`t feel the same.
This cold that surrounds you now,
sets in without a sound, but my hands
to hold you up are bound.

Pick up the leftover pieces of me,
and put them back together
like I`m your puzzle.
Your ink outlines me like a muzzle
as I stare with blank eyes from the wall,
didn`t get the chance
to lay down beside you.

Let`s go,
to your bedroom so I can come
to know you well, promise
I won`t kiss and tell.
This is a secret for you and me
two locks,
but you have the only key.

You are my care-taker,
my heart-breaker,
the pepper to my salt-shaker,
fork and knife, save my life
plan written down in dreams

so it seems
the stars keep moving back on me.

Reflections

Awake to the sound
of rain on the glass;

The bathroom mirror
still remembers the way
your face looks when you smile;
the candle`s still glows
to warm your hands;
the naked piano keys don`t
dance without your fingers.

All I see in the window
is myself without you;
as my saddness runs down the glass.

Funding Artists: a sign of the times

In his recent article entitled "real artists don't need grants," writer and author D'Arcy Jenish confronts Canadian cultural legend Margaret Atwood's attack on the Harper government's planned cuts to the arts community, with some thoughts of his own.

While Atwood makes the case that government funding for the artistic community is vital, Jenish seems to think that funding should only go to those that have talent, 'and precious few really do.'

Though he doesn't offer a definition of what 'talent' might be, he opens the closest of literary and artistic creativity -- embodied throughout the 20th century by such names as; Morley Callaghan, Sinclair Ross, Frederick Philip Grove, Ernest Buckler, Stephen Leacock, Gabrielle Roy, and artists Emily Carr, A.Y. Jackson, and Jean Paul Lemieux -- to make the case that these artists were not government funded and were able to produce works of high artistic merit and inspiration. And he is not wrong, they did.

Morley Callaghan was a Governor-General Award winning novelist (1951), who began publishing in the late 1920s. Sinclair Ross was known for his novel As for Me and My Horse (1941). Frederick Philip Grove, a immigrant from Western Prussia (now Poland), was frequently published in many genres until his death in 1948. Ernest Buckler, a mathematician from Nova Scotia became famous for his The Mountain and the Valley (1952). And rounding out the writers, the legendary Stephen Leacock, who died in 1948.

As for artists, Jenish names the Canadian icon Emily Carr, a native of British Columbia who drew her inspiration from the indigenous peoples of the Pacific Northwest of Canada, who died in 1945. Also, Alexander Young (A.Y.) Jackson -- founder of the Group of Seven artists who rose to fame in Canada during the 1920s -- who became famous with his painting Red Maple (1914).

Jenish was right to highlight their creative brilliance and their influence on Canadian culture heritage. However, while his appropriate name-dropping may seem clever, his article illustrates an ignorance to context. Yes, they had all established their careers pre-1957 --when the Government of Canada began subsidizing artists --but this time period is left unexplored in this article.

If he had bothered to, he would have discovered that there is a difference in the lives of artists then and artists now.

The nature of entertainment was different prior to the late 1930s, when televisions were first made commercially available. The average household got their entertainment, not from hours upon hours of cartoons, video games, and movies, but from novels, and radio plays.

In addition, what we consider cultural experience is different today than it was then. Prior to the television-revolution, people were more likely to get their entertainment from the theatre, art galleries, and novels. If you took a poll today, I'm willing to bet that many people would consider going to a foreign film, a football game, or a fashion show a cultural experience.

In sum, artists today live in a ultra-competitive creative world and face illegitimacy not only from critics, not only from other artists, but from other artistic and cultural mediums like television, movies, the Internet, and a plethora of sporting events.

Just because art -- be it in the form of the novel, sculpture, or painting -- doesn't seem to have the prominence it once had, doesn't mean that its funding is not important. Jenish's argument does little more than to highlight the conservative attitude toward public spending -- and that's fine -- but if that's the argument you're going to make, considering the whole picture and not just pieces of the puzzle would be a better way to make the argument.

Politics

Night air surrounds 

the students at the pub -

philosophy on the patio;

linguistics with the silverware;

sexuality in the cross-room stare.

I don't see the point of this;

though at times I myself

am unaware.

Backyards in New York City

Midnight in New Amsterdam,

America's bedroom for a one-night-stand.

Sexy jazz and jazz club sex,

sour house wine and cigarettes.

Confessional notes on the bathroom walls,

and sleeping it off in hotel halls.  

Awake with her lipstick still on your face, you search

yourself in the bathroom mirror.

You look from atop the Empire State Building,

and see a vision of prosperity the world traded. 

 

You, Me and Democracy

Elections for public office remind us that we have choices to make. If our aim is the improvement of our democracy, the most important choice any citizen living under a democracy can make, is to undergo the necessary work of participating in the decision making processes of our country.

This interaction must take place at the community level, and work up; the momentum of top-down government trickles out before reaching the neighborhoods and school yards that would benefit from the inertia of large-scale politics.

To produce charge, to motivate change, and most importantly to mother positive changes in the community, gathering the voices of the suburbs and neighborhoods should be step one. And the changes don't have to be national to make an impact. 

Consider these simple activities:

1) Promote local food networks:

Community gardens play an important role not only in controlling the cost of food, but also as a necessary component of conservation, partnership and cooperation. Considering the continual processes of urban sprawl, designating areas to be used for green space is the first step to ensuring natural habitats for local wildlife, creating space to plant new trees, and most vitally, making room to produce food for the community, which goes along way to ensure greater food security.

Cities across Canada have in recent years begun to grow their own community garden partnerships; the Toronto and Ottawa Community Garden Networks, for example. These networks play a useful role in the creation and city-wide expansion of areas designated to public gardens. Public gardens have also been useful in the restoration of run-down urban neighborhoods. By replacing abandon buildings, houses and vacant lots with productive gardens, they play a large role in shaping healthy gathering venues.

Above and beyond, however, community gardens foster good democratic values such as cooperation, participation and comradeship. The right to peaceful association is a right guaranteed to all Canadian citizens, creating space for peaceful assembly is up to us.

2) Get up and clean up!

Organizing highway and park cleanups is another useful tool for fostering and building participation in the democratic community. Canadians are fortunate to have such a large country with lots of space for everybody. Sometimes, though, our knowledge of this space allows us to forget that no matter how much space with think we have, it's important to use it wisely and treat it with respect.

Neighborhood-size cleanups are easy to organize. You can start by posting flyers in your community to get the word out fast; post them on lamp-posts, the local public library, grocery stores, liquor stores -- just be sure to ask the manager! Give a contact number for people to call for information. Once your message is out there, word-of-mouth is a useful tool to spread the idea around and build community involvement.

When I was in high school, our geography teacher organized a highway clean-up for the class. It was a great way to spend the day, outside, with friends -- after that, pitching in and doing our part for a greener globe was just a bonus.

For those living in apartment complexes, you can help by organizing building recycling days, where once a week, tenants go around and collect recyclable materials from participating apartments. Often times high-rise buildings have garbage shoots conveinatley located on each floor, while the recycle bin is down in the parking garage. More often than not, separating rubbish becomes an unlikely chore people are unwilling to do.

These exercises promote physical activity and play an important role in building community consciousness around a healthy environment.

3) Clearity for Charity

Getting physical exercise regularly promotes a healthy body. In times of stress, going for a workout can provide the clearity you seek, while putting problems in perspective. This too can be an opportunity to promote democratic values such as charity.

Why wait for the local Running Room race weekend, or M+M Meat Shop Charity BBQ, organize an event yourself. A simple community activity for example, would be a race-walk. It doesn't have to be long, only 5 or 10k, to be effective. Walking is something that almost everybody can do; it doesn't require expensive equipment, great physical strength or endurance; and most importantly, it doesn't limit the activity to a particular demographic. By using the same advertising message I previously mentioned, you could charge participants a small fee, and at the end of the day give the proceeds to a good cause in your community, like the Ottawa Mission, for example.

Group sporting activities are a great way to spread comradeship and sportsmanship around a community. Everybody goes at their own pace, everybody cheers for everybody, everybody crosses the finish line.

4) Volunteer

Almost everybody can say they're too busy to spend time volunteering. They have work, they have kids, they have soccer practice, band camp -- lots of reasons why they can't pitch in.

To working moms and dads; bring your kids! Participating in volunteering at a young age can be a useful tool to promote cultural sensitivity, compromise and understanding. Having your children volunteer on local political campaigns - handing out flyers, et-cetera - helps build the notion that it is their birthright to participate directly in their local, provincial and federal governments.

They will learn about the issues that will impact their futures; they will learn about the range of choices they have before them; they will learn how to achieve goals; they will learn to be passionate.

To the local jocks: bring your teammates! Sports teams are be effective at mobilizing change because, especially in small towns, they have a following. If you took a hockey team for example, and added all the people that come to their games, it wouldn't be long before you had a small army of helpers ready to clean up highways, hold bake sales, canvass for local political candidates. The energy of a team can also be inspiring.

These are just a few of the many examples that illustrate and emphasize the importance of community in democracy. If nobody knows what's good for the community, than those who live in it must make take the lead.

CFL or NFL?

On December 7, 2008, the Buffalo Bills of the National Football League (NFL) will play the first of eight games (scheduled over the next three years) in Toronto at the Rogers Center, formally the SkyDome. For the Canadian Football League (CFL) this is cause for concern.

The League and its American counterpart have always shared the continent, and both are rich in history. While the American league featured the NFL Championship until the merger of the American Football League (AFL) and the NFL in 1967 created the Super Bowl, the CFL (offically formed in 1958) can trace its origins back to the 1860s.

Growing up in Windsor Ontario gave me the chance to indulge in both forms of the game. During the high school week I played football the Canadian way, on the weekend I watched football the American way. To this day I watch both leagues.

If you ever get the chance to attend a CFL game live, say in Winnipeg, or Edmonton, or Calgary, you might be swept away by the seemingly cult following on which the CFL game survives. With only eight teams in the league, over the course of the 20th century some storied rivalries have developed. From Calgary and Edmonton to Hamilton and Toronto, these games have polarized fans, and have helped provide heat to the simmering crazy of game day at Ivor Wynne Stadium, for example.

However, the history of the CFL has seen teams become renamed, plagued by season after season of financial losses, with Ottawa's own team returning only to disappear four seasons later. While the NFL has seen teams relocate -- the St. Louis Rams from Los Angeles and the Indianapolis Colts from Baltimore --and has had teams leave and return again --the Oakland Raiders returned from Los Angeles and the Cleveland Browns reincarnated --these goings-on never seem to affect the financial success of the NFL.

If a team opens up in a new NFL city --the Jacksonville Jaguars, for example -- they land in an untapped resource of NFL followers, and the market soon expands on this. In the CFL, not only does the league not have enough money to infiltrate new football markets, when they do open a new team, the following isn't always there.

This is not an argument for Canadian football fans lacking a passion for football, or that the CFL lacks history; after all, the Grey Cup saw its 95th game last season! This is about marketing.

After many seasons watching both CFL and NFL games, I believe the NFL began doing something the CFL should have, long ago. PICK A DAY TO PLAY!!

It's hardly an epiphany or a ground-breaking revelation to proclaim that people like routines. The NFL has created its own image in the cornerstone of routine in people's lives --the same way that Hockey Night in Canada has also. The way the NFL clusters its games on one day --Sunday --has shoehorned itself into the lives of ordinary Americans.

The CFL doesn't do this; games could be on Thursday, Friday, or Saturday afternoons for example, which makes their tv schedule hard to follow.

Of course we can't chastise the CFL totally, the NFL has more money. Ever wonder why? The Super Bowl, Monday Night Football (now Sunday Night Football), have become regular events because they fit nicely into everybody's schedule, and everybody knows when the games are played. When is the Super Bowl? the first Sunday in February (it moved from the third Sunday in January); when is Sunday Night Football? EVERY SUNDAY NIGHT, like clockwork.

The bottom line; when you cement your games into the convenient routines of ordinary people, they will watch, they will become FANatics. The CFL needs a Sunday night!

Harbour Leaves

Here I sit quietly, sipping coffee by the sunless sea.
Billowing rain clouds shaped like pillows
pout as they silently float past.
Giant arms of rock hug the harbour,
as my pen catches them trying to
embrace like long-lost lovers.
High above the town, a castle
keeps watch over the inlet waters,
as it waits for a ship to pass below.
The island's weather has
been recorded on its stones
and its tears have been
blown cold and dry
by the north Atlantic wind.
Fishing boats are docked on the opposite shore;
four or more rest out of season.
Wooden-covered island houses coloured like rainbows
are scattered amongst the rock,
while their roofs are littered with golden leaves
as they fall from autumn trees.

Ginsberg & Friends

For Those Stary-Eyed Dynamos Burning Up in the Machinery of Night

Take three deep
mind breaths

and forget everything you know -
dock the censorship
and open your eyes.

The poems read like
uncooked rants from
the bleeding heart of chaos;

Who's words appear as naked as he was on stage;
reliving his nightmares on stage.

He mocked America;
taunted America;
begged a cross-dressing America to take off her clothes;

Wrote to Gary Snyder through
a holy cloud of laughing gas;
visited Kerouac in Queens, while Hunke talked to Kinsey;

Cried for Cassidy to beat him while
he screamed crazed confessions to
the secret hero of his poems.

He read Blake; heard Blake; saw Blake in 1948.

1952 - starred as David in JC Holmes' Go -
Holmes kept going until 1988.

Howl on trial 56;
elders screaming
while he was riding around in green automobiles
shouting Europe!Europe!

He saw afternoon in Seattle,
and road the Witchita vortex
all the way to Tangier where
Burroughs went to the junk-house for a naked lunch.

O'Hara gone in 1966;
1968 - Cassidy counts railway ties until he dies.

Wrote eulogies for Kerouac, 1969;
Converted to California-Buddhism
like B. Kaufman (b.1925 -d.1986), who spent the 1950s speaking poetry
into San Fransisco cars -
sat on Carson's couch in 1970.

No Pulitzer;
No Poet Laureate;
No Lew Welch after 23 May 1971.

National Book Award in 72.

Ask him about
the Jester, Carl Solomon, Rockland,
O'Hara's ghost wandering Fire Island, Moloch, Buddhism, Natalie Jackson, Cassidy,
suicidal dreams, penetration,
Dr. Williams, Louis Ginsberg,
J. Edger Hoover, the West,
Kerouac, Kammerer,
secret police, state terror,
anger, self-loathing,
the callous stench in the capitol air,
what research shows,
partying with Kesey and the Angels,
hitchhiking with Snyder,
the virtues of Corso,
the sins of Times Square,
the cold-water flats of the East Village, the apartments on the Negro streets,
the couches and blowing smoke rings from tea,
the sage-like advice of Rexroth,
the cottage in Berkeley,
3119 Fillmore Street,
Ferlinghetti shining the City Lights on Howl,
Uncle Max, Orlovsky,

& Naomi.

Video Sites Sharing More Than Entertainment?

These days, you can see just about anything on the internet. If it has a name, you will most likely find it. From Surf the Channel, which boasts an impressive catalogue of streaming movies and popular television shows from around the world, to Knickerpicker.com, where women (and most likely a few gentlemen) can watch real models strut down the runway in order to get a visual before ordering lingerie - the internet has everything!

In recent years, the internet has grown out of its information super-highway wardrobe, and is, in ever-increasing fashion, becoming a place where individual users come to share. From online encyclopaedias, such as Wikipedia, to video sites such as Youtube, the internet is rapidly becoming a personal place in the world.

However, there is something scary about sharing – you never really know what you are looking at. In the same way that spam emails can be used to con the everyday person out of money, or other sensitive information, video sharing sites can be used to advertise illegal behaviour. Alarmist, perhaps, however, I was recently watching Youtube, and came across a person’s video file, wherein they shoot movies of fires. The video I happened to be watching depicted an electric-power transformer exploding. The shaking camera filmed the night creeping in on the flaring ball of fire, as voices of concerned citizens looked on.

Let me be clear, videos such as this, are, doubtless, produced with the intention of advertising news (if we broaden, and perhaps sensationalize what we consider to be news). However, arsonists are, not always, but in extreme cases, pyromaniacs; and in a world where bizarre crimes happen yearly, we cannot rule out the role that video sharing sites play in advertising their crimes by passing them off as entertainment.

Think I’m out to lunch? Not really. In the late 1990s, the popular crime show America’s Most Wanted ran a story involving a serial arsonist, who – wait for it – videotaped his crimes as they were happening. In similar videographical style as the Youtube post, this man set fire to expensive homes, and watched them burn. On the tapes that were released, his voice can be clearly made out, narrating the fire’s destruction.

BY NO MEANS, am I branding this Youtubeer with the same charge; I’m simply saying that with the anonymity of video sharing sites, you never really know if you are looking at something intended to be more than entertainment.

An Atheist’s Best Friend, or Light in the Dark of Night

At the end of The Dark Knight, the latest addition to the Batman canon, viewers were left with the image of the Joker – played brilliantly by the late Health Ledger – hanging upside down, staring a fatal tumble from the steel canopy of Gotham City in the face, while Batman – played by Christian Bale – looks on, and then leaves him hanging in the balance. It would have been too easy, perhaps, for Batman to unclench his fist and send the Joker his final punch-line, but Batman would never do such a thing.

The reality is something that Batman understood thoroughly when he left the Joker hanging in the balance – not the balance of law and order – however, the balance of good and evil. The movie is but one portrayal of the ongoing conflict between what is understood to be ‘good’ and ‘evil.’ The dilemma is that one cannot exist without the other. This is something that the Joker mentions while being interrogated by Gotham City police detectives, when he compares himself to a dog chasing cars, saying he ‘wouldn’t know what to do if he actually caught one.’

The Joker wouldn’t know what to do because he would be involuntary thrust into an argument for his own validity. To be the ‘evil’ counterbalance to Batmans’ ‘good.’

This reminds me of another argument, or conflict, between two other columns of society – the believer, and the atheist. While both argue from completely different angles, it is important to realize that Atheism is the second oldest idea in the history of Theology – the first being, belief, or faith itself.

Where the believer has the Holy Scriptures to backbone his favour for Christ, Allah, Thor, Buddha, et-cetera, the Atheist grounds his ‘faith’ in the wisdom of science and reason. Both are perfectly appropriate sources of validation. However, these two groups never admit the necessary existence one group represents to the lives of the other.

In this sense, Atheism needs the Believer, and vice-versa, as much as the Joker needs Batman. Because the Atheist argues for revolution, and the Believer for revelation, the Atheist would consider hoards of Believer’s abandoning their faith to be a revelation, and the Believer would consider the same feet, a revolution.

NRA Barbeques and Texas Afternoons

It’s hardly surprising that the most recognizable public figure, next to the Pope perhaps, is the President of the United States. People around the world know where he lives, what his daily schedule is, who he meets with, who he sleeps with, where he went to school, whether or not he inhaled marijuana, or exhales lies on a daily basis. It’s pretty safe to say, with all proceeds going to the United States political machine, that most people recognize the Leader of the Free World. But what happens when George W. Bush leaves the Oval?

The ceremonial thing to do is open a Presidential Library. Since Hubert Hoover, every subsequent President has built a facility meant to house his papers, books, and basically everything he has ever said out loud in his life – even the things he wished he didn’t say! Most Presidential libraries have faux-Oval Offices, with all the trappings of the White House: personal gifts they were given while in Office, perhaps a portrait standing ornate beside a silent shelf of dusty books; journals; his favourite pen; and lots of press photos. President Reagan’s Library in California even has the Air Force One that was used up until George W. Bush.

Trouble with George W. Bush is that, when you say library, your mind does work together images of him looking stately, sitting comfortably thumbing through an Allen Bloom translation, under a Stetson hat. NO. Keep in mind this is the President who is on record saying, ‘the best thing about books is some times they have interesting pictures.’ When somebody says that, my gut reaction is usually to vomit until I pass out. So you can see how I find it interesting to question just what would Bush put in his Presidential Library?

Honestly, a water-slide. Have you ever seen George W. Bush at a press event or the G8 last month for example? He doesn’t walk around like a concerned man with the weight of the world on his shoulders – as one might expect. NO, rather, he acts like a 12 year old at a father and son picnic. There he will be, grinning a silly grin, and calling world leaders by nicknames – screaming ‘YO Harper,’ with the same enthusiasm as one kid calling the neighbourhood’s attention to the ice-cream truck. So far, no books.

There might however, be a journal: Reveries of Nap Time, by George W. Bush. The President is usually a man who never gets any sleep because he stays up all night with staff and advisors from the Pentagon, participating in vigorous debates about some important and perhaps dangerous world event. Not Dubya. For the first time in a long time, there was an Executive Order regarding the President’s bedtime: 9:30pm, no exceptions; well, okay, wake only in case of national emergency. In addition to the adolescent bedtime, Dubya would also take naps during the day. This is what throws me; in between the jogging and frat boy reunions in Crawford Texas, when does he find the time to nap? Lucky for him the Oval Office comes equipped with couches, ready and waiting to carry the weight of Operation Dreaming Eagle.

Something else about former Presidents is that they are entitled to lifetime protection from the Secret Service. This decision however, was amended by Congress in such a way that the last President to receive life time protection is Bill Clinton. The current rule mandates that once a President leaves Office, he is protected by the Secret Service for ten years. In the wake of 9/11 and the mystery of Osama bin Laden’s whereabouts, Congress has gone back to the drawing board on this one. It’s probably a good thing, because all the ten year protection does in guarantee somebody is waiting, with full metal jacket and landmines, in the tall grass for the 11^th year. Probably not, Bush is surprisingly popular.

Former Presidents get into all different types of work once they leave Office. President Carter won a Nobel Peace Prize in 2002 for his work with Amnesty International; President Clinton went to marriage counselling, and followed the lecture circuit for $1000 a plate; Nixon became a recluse; Reagan forgot who he was; and George H.W. Bush still reads CIA briefings (every former President is entitled to them). SO, WWDD: What Would Dubya Do?

Bush The Younger is one of the few Presidents never to have penned a book before being elected. And he might as well be the first sitting President never to have read one either; what with all the napping and traveling and bruiting at G8 summits. SO, it pretty safe to say HE won’t be writing his political memoirs; but he will probably pay a ghost writer – Karl Rove might be looking for work. It is also safe to say that after eight years of Republicans waging wars based on erroneous information, setting up extra-legal prisons, and turning a budget surplus into a history breaking deficit, nobody in their right mind would pay over $2 dollars and a stroll across the street to hear Dubya spin colloquially behind a podium, with flash cards and a colouring book in case he gets bored.

Wait, I’m wrong, there might be one group that would not only sit and listen to Dubya, but actually extend him an invitation to speak: the NRA. Upon hearing the news of Dubya’s triumphant return to his ranch in Crawford, the local chapter president of the NRA might suggest a barbeque honouring George W. Bush’s time in the White House, with an afternoon of skeet-shooting, over the wide-open Texas sky.

The Sycophant and the Big Mouth

I have studied politics for several years; at Carleton University, at Mike’s Place, in the locker room, walking down the street, at the bookstore - everywhere. During these conversations, doubtless, I have traversed the political spectrum, ideologically and even emotionally, with whomever I happen to be talking. And while I have become engaged with several different types of political minds - academics, students, street-poets - I can tell you this: politics is responsible for two types of people: the sycophant, and the big mouth.

The sycophant is a political nomad, wondering the wilderness in search of ideas on which he or she can sustain themselves. They live in swing states. For these people, general elections are side-walk sales and campaign speeches have them perpetually perched on the edge of their seat. They are drunk with hope, but they are hopeless. They are also the type of voter that candidates and incumbents like the most; they can be won over with smiles, promises, town hall meetings, and poll-tested electioneering tactics.

Sycophants are not the type of person who watches political commentary shows like the Cobert Report, or The Daily Show with John Stewart, and they are certainly not the type of person who watches CTV’s Question Period with Craig Oliver on Sunday mornings. NO. The sycophant watches Oprah, and runs out to buy a copy of so-and-so’s new book. If the House of Commons where a Golden Calf, sycophants are the people living it up at the base of the mountain.

On the other hand, is the Big Mouth. Obnoxious, to be sure, the Big Mouth can be identified by a few characteristics. Firstly, they are usually the ones that are formally educated. Some of them have more acronyms behind their name than the alphabet has letters. They insist that you call them doctor, but if you went to them to fix a broken leg, all they would tell you is that they are actually a Ph.D.

The big mouth is also someone who claims to have studied politics from a breath of standpoints, but could not locate objectivity on a map. They are the ones that you can start a conversation with, and listen to as they finish it. While the sycophant resembles a political schizophrenic, the Big Mouth is a born-again. Big Mouths have ‘seen the light’ and make sure they tell everybody they lecture, that that person is entitled to the Big Mouth’s opinion. Big Mouths are also the type of person who prescribes to a certain political ideology: Marxism, Libertarianism, Anarchism, Federalism, whatever it is, they make sure you know about it. This becomes their screening process, which you can practically hear when you’re talking to them.

Houseless, not homeless.

This past week, the world surprised me. Maybe I've become jaded by Springer, or have become complacent by GST cheques, whatever the case may be, it totally shook me from my repose.

I live in Ottawa's downtown. I'm a ten minute walk to work, three blocks from a grocery store, two blocks away from my cousins, and I can see a Tim Horton's from my bedroom window. Most nights I can hear whatever is happening on the street below me, with the same clarity that I would if the events were taking place in my living room. Bus doors opening and closing, road construction, domestic disturbances, drunk Ottawa Senators fans honking their wild horns, and drunk people Russian waltzing between watering holes. The only time I can't hear anything is when it's raining. As I type, there is a large high-rise construction crane, painted yellow, staring at me through my window. Nobody's there. Every time I look at the crane, my eyes go straight to the three slabs of concrete that are bolted to the opposite end, which constitute the counter-balance. Every time I look at the crane, I think of one of two scenarios: the first is that the crane operator is watching my every move, like some undercover Big Brother; and the second, is that the three slabs of concrete will become loose and fall crashing to the earth, either killing whomever may be passing on the sidewalk below, or seriously maming them.

On my way to work, I become a part of the not-so-random acts of the city. I never understood while people call cities jungles. When you look at them from a higher vantage point, you realize the happenings and peculairities of a given city, more closely resemble a hamster on a wheel. Each day the same people walk the same streets, to work in the same parts of the city, take the same bus to walk (and why wouldn't they?), meet the same friends for coffee, at the same coffee shop, while ordering the same thing they always order, smiling the same smile, laughing their work laughs and flexing all the important work muscles: good handshake, not too firm, you don't want your boss to think you're trying to impress him/her, shit, your palms are wet with nervous sweat, but she can't see you wiping it on your pants. This isn't exciting.

Another thing about downtown, is that there are a lot of homeless people, some of whom are travelers trying to find help staying at a hostel. When I walk to work, I usually stop at the Tim Horton's I can see from my bedroom window, get a coffee and leave with my pocket ringing of change. The first person that asks me for change, or that I see sitting as dosile as Hindu cows on the side of the sidewalk, I will give them the change. I give more if I have it on me. Most people I see, pass by them without a care in the world, or even an acknowledgement of their existence. Now, I can't say that I haven't done this either. But after a while, you start to see the same people, standing, sleeping, or sitting on the same patch of sidewalk, and after a while, you start to expect to see them. On my walk to work, I usually pass a woman who asks you for a dollar for coffee - at any time of day, I've never seen her at night. She's hard to understand because she has speech impediment that disrupts her words. She also walks like she's commanding a battalion of Monte Pythons performing the Ministry of Sillywalks. I don't know anything about this woman, this isn't judgement, these are my observations. Somebody looks after her though, because when it's cold, she'll have a warm jacket.

Another man I see, sits in a wheel-chair, and has a gigantic Basset Hound that stops and smells all the roses. I passed him once and remarked that I admired his dog, whose name it turned out was Moe, and he said, 'oh he could sniff that damn wall all day if I let him.' You could tell he and Moe had been together for quite some time.

When I walk home from work, I used to see a man that looked like Walt Whitman reincarnated. He would sit beneath the awning of a government building when it rained, or a little further up the street when it was sunny. He also had a dog, a black one that looked like a Husky/Lab mix. The man would speak a foreign language I didn't understand, very quiet to himself whenever anybody walked past him on the street. He had a map of the world on his face, deep blue eyes, and an old fishing hat on his head, which covered his wirey gray hair. Tucked away in his thick gray beard (hence the Whitman comparison), his aging teeth showed when he smiled. I've worked downtown for almost a year now, and every time I walked home from work, for a span of five months, I would see him sitting at his corner, with his dog and an overturned hat.

About three weeks ago, he was gone. There was nothing left of him, except a piece of paper taped to the bricks of the building he always leaned against. I passed by not thinking anything of it. Next day, same thing, I was walking home, about to cross the street onto the block where he sat, but there was two pieces of paper and a bouquet of flowers laying on the ground underneath the papers. As well, there were two women in business suits kneeling down, looking like they were reading the paper, and talking to each other. So I stopped, and took a look at the paper. One of the pieces of paper had a name and a life span written across it, the other, advertised a picture. In the picture, was the portait of the gray-bearded Whitman twin, fishing hat and all. Over the course of the week, when I passed by, I noticed more flowers and people stopping to read the sign and look at the picture.

Most of these people I could tell worked in the area, meaning, that they would probably have seen this man during the course of their routines as well. I'm not sure who put the signs or the picture there, but I am sure of the effect it had on the neighbourhood. Everybody stopped to read the sign, or lay flowers, or reminisce with their co-workers, as I would overhear a couple of times, about the homeless man who died.

Every once in a while, we are reminded about humanity - the day I noticed people caring about the absence of this man from the sidewalk was mine. Anytime you see a homeless person, you may wonder about their situation - what got them there, does anybody know they are spending the cold nights huddled under cardboard - but then you walk away. You never notice that, while they may not have a house, the streets are their home. My mother likes to believe that maybe some are angels. Maybe she's right, I'm not really sure. But I know one thing, you still miss them when they're gone.