Sounds like Hades to me...

 

In what seems to be turning into a chilling summer theme, I offer this latest bit of literate humour from Wrong Hands' John Atkinson.

He's from Ottawa, but I don't hold that against him.  

Not much.

Maybe I should just avoid comedians with names starting with "J"...

I know this is a few months old, but I just heard it, and it's been haunting my week. 

 I've set this video by Josh Johnson to begin at the spooky part, but you can watch the whole thing if you'd like the context -- and because it's entertaining.

And quite terrifying, to be frank -- or Josh Johnson -- or John Oliver...  

Pride and prejudice

Iphis texted me earlier this week.  He wanted to drop by our house for a meal.

- Neat! I responded.  - Are you in town for Canada Day or for Pride?

- For Pride! I don't celebrate Canada Day.  What are you up to on Wednesday?

- Younger daughter and the Resident Fan Boy usually hit the library on Tuesdays, but, because of that holiday you don't celebrate (clutching my pearls, which makes it *really* difficult to text), they'll probably do it Wednesday -- unless you have a really exciting suggestion for lunch....

- I know, the scandal!  Not liking nationalism and big crowds of loud strangers!?! I could do dinner Wednesday. 

I agree to the Wednesday dinner, but think to myself:  Nationalism and big crowds of loud strangers?  Isn't that a description of Pride?

From far and wide -- redundant

It's a Canada Day with an interesting vibe. 

The usual clichés, but with a slightly siege-like feeling. 

This year, I started seeing red teeshirts and maple leaves early, appearing on the streets around our home in the week leading up to our national holiday. 

The Resident Fan Boy, jet-lagged from several hours spent with Air Canada (long story), hung up our flag on what we laughingly call the patio, and tuned into the ceremonies from Ottawa, the usual sea of red-and-white, alarmingly resembling a MAGA rally -- except for the gentle smiles and effusive, but polite applause.

This short offering from the National Film Board of Canada is fourteen years old.

I don't care.

Made to mark the presentation of the Governor General's Performing Arts Award for Lifetime Achievement to William Shatner in 2011, it features Shatner out-Shatnering himself.  It doesn't get old.  (Except for the tweeting bit.)

Stay for the credits.  It's worth it.

Should I also add "heartbreak?"

 

In my ever-dimming hopes of becoming a better person, I keep scores of qualities on slips of cardboard in my blessing bag, drawing them out three at a time.  I learned this practice during my years volunteering in the hospice.  I do have cards inscribed with "discipline", "honesty", "love", "patience", and "humility".

I'm seriously considering "not clapping on 1 and 3".

Putzing around Putney

Don't let the rather twee titles and descriptions of these videos put you off.

I can't quite recall how I stumbled across this extensive list of walking tours of London neighbourhoods and beyond, but I find them enormously cheering. 

On a down day, I pick an area of London associated with either my family history or that of the Resident Fan Boy, and usually it's just the ticket.  The guide is Julien McDonnell of Joolz Guides. He's from the Muswell Hill area originally, studied philosophy (of all things) in Manchester, and his video walks - usually chatting companionably with his videographer - are charmingly informal, and cover pretty well any area of London you can think of.  (He's a pretty snazzy dresser, too.)

Here's a recent one about Putney.

Fault lines

 

I've never sat down and counted the number of anniversaries the Resident Fan Boy has missed, but it's probably at least a quarter of the available ones.  It's not always his fault.

This one is; he's spending it in London, Ontario, of all places, under a heat dome.  He sent me a view from his hotel window; it looks exactly like the view from the St Laurent Transitway station in Hades. Here in Victoria, the June weather this year has been cool and temperate. -- his loss.

Anyway, I got a text from my Friend of the Right Hand, offering to drop over over with some ginger loaves.  It turned out the RFB had sneakily persuaded her to deliver some roses, seeing as this anniversary is one of those ending in 5.

The first house on the left

Too tired, again. Just three more nights and days. 

This song is by 30-year-old Katherine Priddy of Birmingham, West Midlands. 

 Maybe we've all known houses like this, but the house in this song is an English house, and probably a lot older than most houses in Canada. There is a house on a hill 

One little corner where time has stood still 

And as though caught in some pendulum swing 

I try to go, but home pulls me back in 

Centuries passed through this door 

The stories we write have been told here before 

All of their voices still breathe in these walls 

It’s as though things never change here at all 

Oh, is this the boat made of old bricks and mortar 

That’s kept us afloat as we sail through the years? 

Or is this the light that shines from the shoreline? 

The port where we know we can rest? 

Or is it just the first house on the left? 

The garden tells most of the tales 

With fragments of china, old horseshoes and nails 

Flower seeds planted by hands gone before 

Asleep through the winter, then blooming once more 

And is this where they slept on the way to the jail? 

Or the shop where the lady had sweeties for sale? 

Or is this just the nest that was emptied by war? 

Or the room where the next generation was born? 

Tone-deaf hockey

Social media may be a double-edged sword, but it has introduced me to some wonderful things.  Among them is Louisiana-born Josh Johnson, a 35-year-old comedian, who looks younger and sounds older.   

I was initiated into Johnson's prolific, articulate, and compassionate comedy a couple of months ago, with a story he told in Little Rock Arkansas on March 28th of this year.  This was in the middle of the "Signals" scandal - y'know, when an Atlantic Monthly journalist got included by accident in a supposedly top secret security group-chat in Washington.

Johnson writes and performs for The Daily Show, so his main topic in his ever-changing stand-up act is often on the news of the moment, which has a limited shelf-life. However, he almost always includes a personal anecdote of more universal appeal.  Here, he tells the story of a time when he got inadvertently included in a private group chat, and decided not to disabuse the others.  (I've set up this video to begin when the story begins.  It lasts about eleven minutes, and is worth every second.) Johnson has sold out shows everywhere on his latest tour, which includes pretty well every U.S. city, the UK and Europe, and a handful of Canadian locations. The following gem comes from a Calgary show from about a month ago, in which he details his initial reactions to hockey -- which pretty well mirror my own. (The Resident Fan Boy knows I did try...)

Anyone that had a heart

Amid the distractions of this week, I almost missed a news item on the BBC web site. Mick Ralphs has died. I suppose, on this side of the Atlantic, he's most famous for being part of the super-group Bad Company, which is scheduled to be inducted into the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame this year. 

For me, though, he was the original lead guitar for Mott the Hoople. Mott had many splendid compositions of their own, but they also did amazing covers. Their cover of Lou Reed's Sweet Jane is a classic, ending with a meandering and wistful solo by Ralphs. 

The part I love starts at about the 3:15 mark.

La Chanson Démodée

Today is La Fête de la Saint-Jean-Baptiste, a day many Québecois celebrate instead of Canada Day, for a bunch of historical, political, and complicated reasons.

So I'm offering this gem from Les Séguin, Richard Séguin and his twin sister Marie-Claire, singing, in 1975, a song written in 1966 by Gilles Vigneault, who, at age 96, is still on the planet.

J′ai trouvé ma mie en haute montagne 

La lune était ronde, le hibou, muet 

En haute montagne je l'y ai laissée 

À la nuit tombante j′irai la trouver 

Ma mie a les pieds comme biche vive 

Sa peau est plus blanche qu'aubier de sapin 

Si je l'emmenais courir par la plaine 

Comme biche vive s′en irait bien loin 

La maison que j′ai n'a pas de toiture 

De porte non plus, de fenêtre point 

J′entre par le haut comme en cheminée 

Rentre la fumée quand le temps est doux 

À qui j'ai loué, c′est à la chouette 

Qui radote un peu mais qui veille à tout 

Ma mie est logée, ma mie est à l'aise 

Demandez au lièvre, demandez au loup 

Ma mie a fleuri dedans une souche 

Coupée en hiver, vidée au printemps 

Une fois saison la lune s′y couche 

Ce qui donne à l'oeil couleur du beau temps

(I found my love high up in the mountains,

The moon was round, the owl was silent.

In the high mountains I left her,

At nightfall, I will go find her again.

 

My love has feet like a lively deer,

Her skin is whiter than pine sap

If I took her running through the city,

Like a lively deer she would go far.

 

The house that I own has no roof,

It has no door either, no window;

I come in from the top, as one would a chimney

The smoke enters when the weather is mild

I rented it out to the owl,

Who rambles a little but watches over all;

My love has a house, my love is at ease:

Ask the hare, ask the wolf.

 

My love has blossomed inside of a stump

Cut during winter, emptied during spring

Once in season, the moon lies down,

Which shows the eye the colour of good weather.)

Maybe it ain't over

Nope.  

One of those days. 

Here's a song I like. 

I once was a dancer, I was young once like you, though I know I don't look it

Jumped high as the sky, had fire in my eyes, had legs like a stallion

And I had a girl, and I loved her, oh, my best friend was her brother

We were on top of the mountain that summer

We thought we'd never be swallowed by the crack

Fallen so far down like the rest of those clowns begging bus fare back

Swallowed by the cracks

Our pride worn down talking times gone by, like everybody else

Swallowed by the cracks 

We would talk through the night about what we would do if we just could get started

I would choreograph, Eileen, she would act while Steve was a writer.

Then Stevie ran away and got bored

Eileen took a job in a store

While I became this drunken old whore

'Cause you see we'd be swallowed by the cracks.

Maybe it ain't over, I can see it's up to me,

You're only out when you stay out

You stay out when you don't believe

We could drive around in circles getting nowhere all night long

Getting drunk with strangers telling lies, and singing along with the jukebox, baby.

- David Baerwald

Some despondent evening

So I decided to watch Last Week Tonight with John Oliver tonight, because it's a current affairs show, and thus rather time-sensitive.

I knew I was in trouble when a notice in red appeared just before the opening credits:  "This show filmed the evening of June 21st, 2025".

Oh gawd.  This meant, of course, it was filmed before the news about the Creature joining in the bombing of Iran came out.  

The show was pretty damn depressing anyway.  John Oliver devotes about the first ten minutes of his rapid-fire satirical/cynical/ironic commentary to recent events, followed by roughly twenty minutes of a chosen topic.

Tonight the topic was "AI slop", a term I hadn't heard before, although, naturally, it's been around for more than a year.  

I never claimed to be swift.

Nevertheless,  I've noticed, particularly in the past few months, that my social media feeds are less about the people and institutions I have voluntarily followed, and more about accounts that I have not invited.  So far, a lot of them seem to be associated with arts groups, but tonight, after John Oliver's show - which I really shouldn't watch alone, but the RFB is winging his way to Ontario as we speak - and spurred on by the CNN article in the above link, I went through my Facebook feed for a bit and systematically blocked a lot of accounts, as innocuous as most of them seemed to be.

Then I'll wash the dishes and go to bed.

Reading an actual book seems to be a good idea.

Am I?

Moka House in Spring 2018

I sure hope so. 

Not in the coffee shop, necessarily - not that I'd mind.  

The Resident Fan Boy is charging off to London, Ontario tomorrow to attend yet another Anglican Synod, for the next week and a bit.

And I'm running out of day, and making lists, so I guess I am where I'm supposed to be.

Spirit of '76 (1976, that is)

Following on yesterday's frog theme, I found myself remembering and re-examining "The Frog Song", a fairly hefty hit for Québecois singer Robert Charlebois during the summer of 1976.

It's a song which has had some popularity for anglophone Canadians taking part in French immersion courses in the province of Quebec over the years, probably due to the chorus in English, with the cheeky reference to the ancient English insult to francophones.

It's a song that gets a bit lost in translation, and not just because of the joual:

Ton beurre est dur pis tes toasts sont brûlées. 

Ton lait est sûr, ton jaune d’œuf est crevé. 

T’as pus d’eau chaude pour te faire un café instantané. 

You’re a frog, I’m a frog, kiss me! 

And I’ll turn into a prince suddenly! 

Donne-moi des peanuts, j’m’en va te chanter "Alouette" sans fausse note.

(Your butter is hard; your toast is burnt/ Your milk is sour; your egg yolk is broken/ You don't have hot water to make instant coffee . . . . Give me some peanuts; I'll sing you "Alouette" flawlessly)

Yeah.

The following verses are about grabbing your bag, getting on the bus to get to work, and your boss (doubtless some rich Anglo) is spending the winter on the Ivory Coast, while you work too hard, and your family is unappealing, and you are uncomplaining and polite...

See, another song popular with immersion students in the 80s and 90s (mainly the adolescent and post-adolescent males) was "Bye Bye, Mon Cowboy" by Mitsou, because, like "The Frog Song", it also had some English words, and, unlike "The Frog Song", the message was unmistakeable - and the French was really easy to decipher.

"The Frog Song" (composed by Jean Chevrier, about whom I've been able to find out nothing, apart from some random blog saying he is/was a writer in Montreal) came out in the midst of widespread frustration and anger with Quebec premier Robert Bourassa, who was swept out of power the autumn of 1976 by René Lévesque and his separatist/sovereigntist Parti Québécois.  (Bourassa got back in less than ten years later, and stayed in power for almost another ten years, ultimately defeated by cancer.)

The adolescent immersion students who danced and hopped and kissed happily to the song were, for the most part, blissfully unaware of the satire and rage between the lines and the notes.

Ko-ack-ack-ack

I know darn well that doom-scrolling at bedtime is a foolish thing.

However, last night, I encountered a little Tik/Tok-like thingie of a cheerful Swedish lady chattering animatedly about Midsommar traditions, including a weird song-and-dance about frogs. To my astonishment, I found myself singing along! In Swedish!

This isn't the Swedish lady in question; it's some sort of international school in Sweden, I think:

Små grodorna, små grodorna är lustiga att se.

Små grodorna, små grodorna är lustiga att se.

Ej öron, ej öron, ej svansar hava de.

Ej öron, ej öron, ej svansar hava de.

Kou ack ack ack, kou ack ack ack,

kou ack ack ack ack kaa.

Little frogs are funny to observe/ They don't have ears or tails/ Kou-ack-ack-ack 

(Apparently Swedish frogs sound like that.)

When I was eleven, I used to attend a sort of international friendship group, consisting entirely of white Canadians, because it was Victoria, after all.  This was one of several songs we learned.  I don't ever recall being told it was about frogs; I thought it was about ducks, of course.  I'm certain that I didn't know the song's association with Midsommar.  I suppose we must have done the dance; this was so long ago, yet I remembered the words perfectly -- albeit in fractured Swedish.

There are worse ways to fall asleep, on a wave of forgotten memories.  While looking up this song, I encountered another song of a distant time, and got inundated by another wave of memories.  I may talk about it tomorrow, on the longest day of the year.

How the cat shrunk

Art by Marlene Llanes, a surrealist artist based in Austin, Texas

Our cat is large.

His weight hovers around fourteen and fifteen pounds, and if a vet is meeting him for the first time at the local animal clinic, s/he will note the weight on his record, and expect to see a roly-poly feline, only to be confronted with a long and lithe leonine tabby, capable of knocking things from the counter with his hind paws on the floor.

We have always fed him carefully, but changes in routine over the past couple of years mean that the Resident Fan Boy has taken over the feeding regimen.  I had the dry food food bag set up nicely in a cupboard beyond the cat's long reach with an ancient metal measuring cup as a scoop - used because it is a) old, battered, but clean, and b) it fits into the bag. 

After a few months of feline-feeding, the RFB took the cat into the clinic for a routine pedicure.

The vet informed the RFB that the cat now weighed twelve pounds, not a bad weight for your average tabby, but rather too svelte for our puny puma.  The vet recommended, the RFB told me that afternoon, upping the dry food serving to a cup and a half from one third of a cup.

I gazed at him for a few incredulous seconds.

"Uh, one third of a cup?  The bag says "1 1/4 cups" for a cat of his size.  You've been feeding him one third of a cup per day?" 

The RFB shrugged sheepishly. "That's the measure that was there, and you said to cover the bottom of the bowl...."

"That was for kitty litter!!!!"

No wonder the cat has been eating the toilet roll.

(He's back to his normal weight now.)

He's not a man, he's a reading machine...

In an era when books are routinely used to train artificial intelligence, usually without the author's permission,  it was a little unsettling to see this sign outside of my local bookshop this morning.

 

Girls will be boys

I was something like thirteen, when I first heard "Lola" by the Kinks.  The lyrics and content flew over my barely adolescent head.  

Well, that was a long time ago.  A lot has happened since then, including the coming-out of one of my relatives.

When Iphis announced he was a trans man about five years ago, our family circle adjusted accordingly.  Elder daughter, who switched Iphis' pronouns seamlessly, worried about younger daughter's reaction.

"She's so binary," she told me.

She needn't have worried.  One of younger daughter's music coaches switched from "Mr Lucas" to "Lucy" years ago.  As long as younger daughter is acknowledged as a woman, her life on the spectrum, both neurological and and sexual, seems relatively in balance.

Having a relative in the rainbow has made me somewhat more aware of gender differences, and last week, I stumbled across a video labelled "I'm a Boy - 1966":

And yes, this song by the Who did first appear in 1966:

One girl was called Jean Marie

Another little girl was called Felicity

Another little girl was Sally Joy

The other was me, and I'm a boy.

My name is Bill, and I'm a head-case

They practise making up on my face

Yeah, I feel lucky if I get trousers to wear

Spend evenings taking hairpins from my hair

I'm a boy, I'm a boy

But my mother won't admit it.

I'm a boy, I'm a boy, 

But if I say I am, I get it.

Put your frock on, Jean Marie

Plait your hair, Felicity

Paint your nails, little Sally Joy

Put this wig on, little boy

I want to play cricket on the green

Ride my bike across the street

Cut myself and see my blood

I wanna come home all covered in mud

However, the clothes in this video are from two decades later, and, furthermore, closer viewing revealed that "Bill" is a biological girl.  In those far-off times, Bill would be called a "tom-boy", but now, this video seems way ahead of its time; Bill would definitely be considered a nascent trans man in 2025.

But what the heck is this?  It turns out to be a BBC programme from the mid-to-late 80s called The Golden Oldies Picture Show, the mission of which was to provide 80's-style music videos for songs predating the same.

Don't think I'll be forwarding this video to Iphis, though.

Braced

 These Sundays, I'm almost too scared to watch John Oliver...

(Warsan Shire was born in Nairobi in 1988 to Somali parents, grew up in London, and now, I think, lives in Los Angeles, so she must be having quite a nightmarish year.  I believe she wrote the full poem "What They Did Yesterday Afternoon" in 2015.)

Zoned out

In a timely follow-up to my post about AI, this showed up, courtesy of Janel Comeau, who is based in Halifax, and writes for satirical news site The Beaverton, among other things.

Google and Meta search both report that Cape Breton Island has its own time zone 12 minutes ahead of mainland Nova Scotia time because they are both drawing that information from a Beaverton article I wrote in 2024

[image or embed]

— Janel Comeau 🍁 (@verybadllama.bsky.social) 9 June 2025 at 17:50

A more detailed article about what happened, the fall-out, and some good advice on dealing with AI-generated answers - I think ignoring them would be a good start, but what would I know? -  from As It Happens on the CBC Radio web site is pretty good. 

I quit Twitter in favour of BlueSky several weeks ago, but seldom check in. It doesn't seem to have quite a big enough following - at least not yet - to not be a bit of an echo chamber. (But, I repeat, what would I know?)

As long as there are stars above you

Ah. 

This week. 

So, on top of plane crashes, bombings and missiles, starvation, the latest spate of nonsense from south of the border, there have been the deaths of Sly Stone (Sly and the Family Stone) and Brian Wilson (The Beach Boys).

We've been hearing a lot of "Everyday People", which is no hardship; I've always loved the song. It seems even more pertinent now than in the late sixties.

"Ooh-sha-sha, we gotta live together!" exhorted Sly, something the Creature in the White House doesn't get, and wouldn't believe, if he did.

Here's a splendid cover from Playing for Change, from about nine years ago, filmed just before the Creature got in the first time, judging from a couple of key Washington, DC locations.  And with the death of Wilson, there are hundreds of covers of "God Only Knows" flooding on to social media in tribute. 

My favourite Beach Boy song happens to be "Wouldn't It Be Nice?", but I fully understand. 

"God Only Knows" is the song Paul McCartney says he wishes he had written, and then there's its eternal niche at the closing of Love, Actually, and in the soundtrack of countless weddings.  That's a sort of double paradox:  Love, Actually isn't actually about love, and the lyrics of "God Only Knows" contain strangely unmatrimonial sentiments:  "I may not always love you . . . . If you should ever leave me . . . ."  

It is a helluva song, though, and currently, this is my favourite non-Beach-Boys version, recorded ten years ago in Toronto by Choir! Choir! Choir! (with a nice focus for the altos, for a change!).

Hooked on a feeling

I'm returning to my building on a lovely sunny morning.

There's a police car parked outside - always unnerving.  For the past while, it's been a sadly common occurrence. We've had a "battling Bickersons" couple on the fourth floor - we can't hear them, but their immediate neighbours can, and sometimes get alarmed enough (and ticked off enough) to call the police.  The lady of the couple has actually addressed Strata Council meetings to apologise.

To my surprise and consternation, the front door of our building is off the latch, and refuses to snap shut.  I check the mat and the hinge - nothing.

I report this to the Resident Fan Boy, a current Strata Council member.  He's watching television, and merely shrugs.  I head out again for another look, and this time, I notice a brown hook of some kind, placed over the very top of the door, with an "unlocked" icon imprinted on it.  It's way out of my reach, but not that of the Resident Fan Boy.

Checking back with the RFB, I learn he's emailed other council members.  The husband (?) of the warring couple has been asked to leave, and had come back to collect his stuff, before being escorted off the premises.  Not sure at which point the police got involved, nor whose door-jam hook this is.  As you can see, it's readily available online.

I find it bloody creepy, and I see no reason for the hook to remain, so prevail upon the RFB to fetch it down.  He places it on the shelf in front of the mailboxes.  When I ask why, he says he doesn't want anyone knocking at our door.

"Who would know it was you?" I reply, in some exasperation.  "Besides, you could hand it in to the council president."

It's gone when I leave for Demeter's breakfast call shortly afterwards.  So is the police car.

Good night, Grace

I've known for some time that there is next to no documented evidence that the comedian Gracie Allen ever responded to her husband George Burns' instruction "Say good night, Gracie" with "Good night, Gracie."

It's one of those things that everyone thinks is a quote, but isn't -- like "Play it again, Sam" in Casablanca. 

Look it up. 

The person who put together the following video has pieced together about six instances of Gracie Allen simply responding "Good night".  Predictably, people are arguing in the comments. 

I probably looked up "Good night, Grac(i)e" back in the decade before Spotify became available in Canada, when I fell in love with a song by the Weepies, which makes me not care whether Grace Allen said, "Good night, Gracie" or not.   

Citywide rodeo, you set on the stage

Where all the clowns will go when they feel their age 

I know that you think you’re not good for anything 

The world makes you feel so small 

Get on your wooden horse 

This is a ride, not a fight 

No need to save face, say goodnight, Grace 

“Good night, Grace.” 

There’s dust on the stadium seats, there’s dust in your hair 

You wonder how fast you’ll go when you hit the air 

And oh, isn’t it strange how things can change you? 

Isn’t it plain that some things unname you 

So don’t ask anybody else. 

 

Citywide rodeo, step into your car 

Look up at the indigo and pick out your star.

The road to hell

New Yorker cartoon by Robert Leighton

For years, I've followed the writings of journalist Ian Brown. It's getting a little tougher now, since I deleted my Twitter account a few months ago, but Brown is worth searching out, for his deep-dive articles that take ages to read.

Last summer, he interviewed Geoffrey Hinton for the Globe and Mail, and I carried the article around in a cloth bag, intending to re-read it.

And being too scared to re-read it.

I suspect that, unless you have a G&M subscription, the above link to the article will lead to a paywall.  Here are some "highlights", in no particular order - you can click on the parts with smaller print to make it more legible: 

In the ensuing months, I've watched uneasily as aspects of AI encroach upon my daily life.  A small irritation is the rather useless summary that now appears at the top of my Google search results.  QI, the British panel show, tells me that if you add f***ing into your query - as in "f***ing Tony Award winners" - the AI summary will not appear.  I haven't quite had the nerve to try that yet. I can swear like a sailor, but I don't like writing it down as evidence against me.

Then there was the weekend before last, which involved a series of slip-ups and poor decisions, leaving me in a cold sweat, and all arising from my attempt to do the prudent thing.  The road to hell is paved with good intentions, y'understand.

This is a cautionary tale.  I'm reasonably bright; this could happen to you.

It all started with my checking Demeter's email.  Demeter has given up on devices in general, but I go into the Shaw Communications web site regularly to check on her church updates, and to retrieve messages from people who know her, but not me.

I hadn't checked for a few days, and there were two emails, duplicates, saying something about having to update the Shaw Web mailbox, because the current version was being shut down -  2 days ago.

Blue button saying "Update".  I pressed it, and then thought:  Wait a damn minute.  Check at the website first.

Couldn't find anything about this at the Shaw web site, so decided to "Google" it, to see if there were any news about a scam.  There was a query about the matter, which seemed to be in some sort of forum, which seemed to be connected to Shaw.

All of a sudden, a conversation form popped up, asking what my problem was.  It appeared to be from a male with a little blurb under his name stating how well he was rated for answering questions.  I laid out my problem, i.e. determining if the emails my mother received were genuine, even copying-and-pasting the text of the messages.  I noticed that a female picture had supplanted the photo of the guy I thought I was asking.

Then I noticed that she was restating everything I said.  When I was preparing to be a hospice volunteer years ago, they trained us in a technique called "active listening".  The idea was divorce yourself from responding to people in distress with your own experiences, and to check if you understood by restating what you thought you had heard.  We were cautioned to rephrase carefully, to avoid sounding like a parrot.

No such caution was being applied here.  She texted pretty much like a parrot - if parrots could text. I looked below the photo icon of the smiling lady, and saw:  "ChatBot".  Apparently, my query was being prepared for the male champion question-fielder, and he would respond, after I registered, for a refundable fee of $2.

I was getting impatient, but two dollars seemed a pittance, and I registered.

Then my phone harped a text notification.  It was Bank of Montreal:  BMO Security Alert: (name of the "answer supplying company") $66.00 (date) (last four digits of my card) Was this yours? Please reply Y or N.

Sixty-six dollars? They said two dollars, I thought to myself.  

I broke into a cold sweat.  

I'd given them my information.  

I called the number on the back of my card, in order to jump the hoops of yet more automation, so the artificial female BMO voice could give me my balance, and the dates and amounts of my previous few purchases.

Nothing unrecognisable.  No $66 deduction.

In agony, I pondered whether to stop my card, or report it lost, or something.

I decided to wait.  

During the next few days, my newsfeeds seemed to feature stories of other Canadians bilked of thousands of dollars, and their banks refusing to help, saying they'd voluntarily done business with the scammers.

It's been ten days.  Still recognising my purchases, and not seeing a terrifying leap in what I owe.

It's a Sword of Damocles, but I guess it's a learning experience.  But no more lessons from chatbots, please. Back in your cage.

Bed-making music

I was changing Demeter's bed linens the other day, and taking off the edge of the task by playing my "Liked Songs" from Spotify on "shuffle". I have over 2000 "liked" songs now, which means I don't always recognise the tunes that turn up.

So this one came on, and when I looked it up, I discovered it's a Bob Dylan composition that's almost 30 years old.  This cover is about eight years old.  I never was much for being on top of things.

 

Shadows are falling, and I've been here all day.  It's too hot to sleep; time is running away.

Feel like my soul has turned into steel; I've still got the scars that the sun didn't heal.

There's not even room enough to be anywhere.  It's not dark yet, but it's getting there.

Well, my sense of humanity has gone down the drain. Behind every beautiful thing, there's been some kind of pain.

She wrote me a letter, and she wrote it so kind. She put down in writing what was in her mind.

I just don't see why I should even care.  It's not dark yet, but it's getting there.

Well, I've been to London, and I've been to gay Paree.

I've followed the river, and I got to the sea.

I've been down on the bottom of a world full of lies.

I ain't looking for nothing in anyone's eyes.

Sometimes, my burden seems more than I can bear.

It's not dark yet, but it's getting there. 

I was born here, and I'll die here, against my will.

I know it looks like I'm moving, but I'm standing still.

Every nerve in my body is so vacant and numb,

I can't even remember what it was I came here to get away from.

Don't even hear a murmur of a prayer.

It's not dark yet, but it's getting there.

- Bob Dylan - 1997

Waiting in the wings

 While "dead-heading" the plants on Demeter's balcony yesterday morning, I couldn't bear to clip this blossom quite yet.  It looked for all the world like a falling angel, supported, however briefly, by four cherubs.

(Yes, there are four.)

If I take the wings of morning

Someone is catching up behind me; I can see his long early-morning shadow overtaking mine.

He's waving his arms above his head, presumably to catch the attention of a friend not quite within hailing distance.  He's done this before, always in this section of the block, and I've never caught sight of whomever he's greeting.

He makes my shadow look as if it has sprouted grey ghostly wings.

Corvid and COVID

This is not the crow.

I've just crossed the quiet street in the early morning, on my usual way to the coffee shop, when I feel a light tap to the back of my head, on the right side. Looking around in bewilderment, I spot a crow on my left, standing quietly on the sidewalk, beady eyes fixed on me.

Oh dear.

The last spring this kind of thing happened, two or three years ago, the crows were aggressive for a chunk of the summer.

Two or three years ago - it was three, actually - the Resident Fan Boy caught COVID.

From the Resident Fan Boy, Friday morning

I guess these things go in cycles.

Perhaps it is time to look

A couple of years ago, Spotify sent me a song that seemed to emanate the best things about a summer evening.  Spotify sends me rather more Scandinavian music than I really asked for, so I assumed this song was Swedish.  

About a year later, I noticed it wasn't Swedish.  (I'm so observant.) It's Estonian, and performed by a folksy band called Rüüt. 

It's fair to say that what I know about Estonia could probably be scribbled in the palm of my tiny hand.  It's south of Finland and north of -- Latvia? However, a couple of King Singers' concerts alerted me to the fact that Estonia is known for song.  They have a major Song and Dance Festival in the capital city of Talinn every five summers - this year, for example - and in the intervening years, they hold Youth Song and Dance Festivals, also huge.  

So here's the song, "Mina Ja Meri", sung by a lot of very young, very blond people in 2023.  I'm following it with a translation of one of the verses; the other verses are in much the same vein.  

Perhaps it is time to look at one another

Me and the sea, the sky and the earth

Tired from storms, but warmer than warm,

Me and the sea, the sky and the earth

Like flowers, we turn towards the light

Me and the sea, the sky and the earth

I give my heart's song into your care....

So, not so much about summer.  But it feels like summer.

Flushed with triumph

 

This amused me.

Camera-shy

 

Yesterday's urban wildlife encounter reminds me of an incident last fall, when I was on my way to set up breakfast for Demeter.

It's a short walk, and I caught the eye of a very young buck deer having a nosh in the plantations of a neighbouring apartment building.

"Don't worry," I told him.  "I'm not coming anywhere near you."

I'm pretty sure he didn't understand me, but he didn't challenge me, so I continued to the corner where I usually cross.  I got held up by what I call "funeral corteges", long lines of cars heading down Fairfield Road after being held up themselves by traffic signals further east.

While I waited, a young woman in grey sweats barrelled across the road from the other side, seemingly undeterred by the cars bearing down on her.  She was clutching her phone, and evidently intent on filming four or five deer that had now joined the buck, including a couple of young fawns.

I called to her, from where I stood:  "They have young with them; they might charge you!"  There have been reports of people being hurt by frightened urban deer over the years since they started appearing in Victoria, about twenty years ago; some dogs have had to be euthanised.

The woman, predictably, ignored me, gesturing uselessly as one deer came alarmingly close to her, although I don't think she understood the danger, then stretching out her arms to the sides, and pleading with them not to bolt -- as they were doing.

Did she really think they understood her words and gestures?  Did she believe she was in a Disney film?

A doe fled across the busy street, leaving her fawn behind, which eventually ventured after her.

None of them were run down -- including the clueless woman, still brandishing her phone, still calling after them to stay, to come back.

Breaking breakfast

In the midst of a stressful time, I skipped my usual route to the coffee shop, which takes me down a two-block arch of plane trees, and instead, took the narrow stairs to the basement level of our building, which, via a grim hall, takes me to the lower parking lot, where I strode into the full morning sunshine, crossed the street -- and stopped in my tracks.

Ahead of me (much farther ahead than it appears in this image), stood a young doe with the tiniest fawn I've ever seen.

I know enough about urban wildlife to never approach an animal with young, especially deer, which have been known to charge.  She may look like Faline, but those hoofs are sharp.

After taking my snaps, I took a generous half-circle path around the pair, keeping my distance and walking at a moderate pace.  The little fellow bolted into the bushes anyway, and Mum, after a lengthy wary stare, turned and followed her offspring.

It was only when I examined my shots on the phone while sipping my mocha that I realised I'd interrupted breakfast.

It's never what you think it's for

Not the most auspicious beginning of the month for me, I'm afraid.  I'll spare you the sordid details.

Life is.

It's never what you think it's for, and I can't seem to set it off,

And lately I've been insecure.

The chances of a lifetime might be hiding their tricks up my sleeve.

Used to be the greatest,

Now I see

Time is time, and time and time again

(And what would you say if you can't get out of here?)

Time is time, and time and time again,

To make your escape, you've captured the captor's fear.

'Cause I can feel my luck has turned it all around, 

And when you've fallen out, get both feet on the ground.

The curses you keep won't follow you now.

And so I try to be myself.

It's the same as always, I get tripped up.

And each and every time, it takes me away.

I'm often living on, just to be outside these walls again.

It's the age of what's to come, and, baby, you're on.

-Jessica Pratt

Going for Late Baroque

Gotta love this Rococo hopscotch that was meandering around the corner from us, courtesy of the young sidewalk artists residing on Chester Avenue.

Caught it before the spring rains washed it away.

And then who the hell was I?

I can't understand why I am exposing us all in this way . . . . Is this the tsunami that she unleashed when she went, and all of us still flailing in her wake, trying to put her together in the wreckage, and her slipping away, over and over, just as we begin to see her face? - Sarah Polley, in an email to her father Michael Polley

Looking to see what family connections there possibly could be connected to me and enjoy building hopefully a happy picture - From the profile of a recent DNA match to the Resident Fan Boy

Stories We Tell has that quality shared by all of my favourite films: the ability to draw me back, again and again, noticing new details every time; being a completely different movie every damn time.

The subject is the gradual revelation of a family scandal, and how widely the narrative varies: from those directly involved, to the those affected by it, to those who witnessed aspects of it.

We tend to screen books, music, and movies through our own uppermost concerns, so my first viewing of Stories We Tell, about ten years ago, reminded me of the myth-making and myth-busting of family research and the resulting clashes of narratives and identity.  More personally, I had a similar, but not identical, revelation in my own family at almost the same time, resulting in everyone affected having to rewrite their own family story.  I think few amateur genealogists fully appreciate the risks of their research, but this risk applies to anyone setting out to tell the story of their relatives.

Our changes in perception are constantly evolving, so a few months ago, I re-watched the film following the tsunami in the wake of the death of Alice Munro, the Nobel Prize-winning author who died last spring. The figurative family bombshell that hit Sarah Polley's family about a decade and a half after the death of their matriarch is not of the legacy-tarnishing quality as that affecting the Munro family, but it was also deliberately kept out of the papers, initially to protect Michael Polley, Sarah's father, and then, because this documentary was being made.

Sarah Polley in the 1980s with parents Michael and Diane

Diane Polley, an actor and casting director, died in 1990, when Sarah Polley, then a busy child actor and now an award-winning writer, was eleven.  Diane had four older children:  John and Suzy Buchan, from her first marriage, and Mark and Joanna Polley, from her second marriage.  They all take their seats at the beginning of the film, like a family gathering at an intervention - except none of them are in the same room; this is footage from separate interviews, during which Sarah Polley asked each to "tell the whole story, from the beginning", as if to someone who is hearing it for the first time.  The backing music is "Skinny Love" by Bon Iver:  And I told you to be balanced/ And I told you to be kind....  

And the late Diane Polley also seems to take her place as well, via footage of an audition from the mid sixties.  But she doesn't say a word.

Someone who doesn't take a seat is Sarah Polley herself, who deliberately keeps silent through most of the film, aside from the occasional question or brief comment, and appears in the occasional re-enactment of events, but with no soundtrack. Sometimes this makes her presence seem oddly impassive, but, as her father astutely points out, she has the ultimate control over what makes it into the film.

Here, I must alert you to spoilers, if you're planning on watching this movie -- and you should.

Polley moves back and forth in time, revealing the surprises and twists out of sequence, but closer to the timeline of their discovery.  She illustrates events with authentic family movies and (*first spoiler*) reconstructed Super 8 footage, using actors.  The Resident Fan Boy didn't notice the latter, but I did, mainly because I recognised Rebecca Jenkins, a friend of Diane's, an actor who also sang back-up for Jane Siberry in the eighties.

Polley is careful to illustrate the differences in  the many narratives about (*big* spoiler) finding out the identity of her birth father. The stories are similar, but vary in small, but important, details, revealing, in particular, the biases of her father, actor Michael Polley, and her birth father, producer/writer Harry Gulkin.  At one point, Gulkin tells Sarah, with some intensity, that the story belongs to him, because he's the one surviving person who experienced it directly.  (I have to restrain myself from shouting at the screen every damn time - if the story belongs to anyone, it's Sarah Polley herself.)

One of Polley's greatest assets is the thoughtful articulateness of her interviewees, particularly her siblings, all evidently very bright people with greater comfort in front of a camera than most people.  It's particularly fun when her brothers give her a hard time, in the way that big brothers do.

Close to the end, we have another moving montage of the storytellers, this time to "Demon Host" by Timber/Timbre: All those messages you sent, clear as day/ But in the night, oh, I couldn't get it right.... The camera lingers on each bereft face: Diane's grown children, her husband, her lover, her friends, her brother.  Years later, she is clearly so missed.

Michael Polley and Harry Gulkin both died six years after the release of this film, within a few months of each other.

The unreliable narrator is a new concept for me, and I seem to be coming up against the term multiple times over the past few months.  (Don't know how I missed this while studying literature in university.) This film demonstrates that we are all unreliable narrators; human memory is just too malleable and mutable.

I think Harry Gulkin was mistaken.  The truth, while ever elusive, is closer through the mesh of narratives, rather than sticking to one voice -- even if that seems the more intelligible way.

But then, perhaps truth is never singular.

As you finally get rid of them (Rid of them!)

It's the Ninth Day of Christmas, not the Second, but it's been about sixteen years since I last posted the lyrics to this Elvis Costello ditty (co-written with Paddy Moloney of The Chieftains), and it's been playing in my head a lot this holiday -- not that anyone got drunk, I hasten to add, and we finished the tourtières days ago:

I knew of two sisters whose name it was Christmas,

And one was named Dawn of course, the other one was named Eve.
I wonder if they grew up hating the season,
The good will that lasts til the Feast of St. Stephen

For that is the time to eat, drink, and be merry,
Til the beer is all spilled and the whiskey has flowed.
And the whole family tree you neglected to bury,
Are feeding their faces until they explode.

There'll be laughter and tears over Tia Marias,
Mixed up with that drink made from girders.
’Cause it's all we've got left as they draw their last breath,
Ah, it's nice for the kids, as you finally get rid of them,
In the St Stephen's Day Murders.

Uncle is garglin' a heart-breaking air,
While the babe in his arms pulls out all that remains of his hair.
And we're not drunk enough yet to dare criticise
The great big kipper tie he's about to baptise.

With his gin-flavoured whiskers and kisses of sherry,
His best Chrimbo shirt slung out over the shop.
While the lights from the Christmas tree blow up the telly,
His face closes in like an old cold pork chop.

And the carcass of the beast left over from the feast,
May still be found haunting the kitchen.
And there's life in it yet, we may live to regret,
When the ones that we poisoned stop twitchin'.

It is a far, far better thing

Over the past couple of decades, what passes for Christmas television programming has bemused me.  As far as I can tell, some underpaid minion, saddled with slapping some sort of viewing schedule together, had assumed that, since Charles Dickens wrote A Christmas Carol, anything connected with Dickens is Christmassy:  Great Expectations, Bleak House or even A Tale of Two Cities.

With that in mind, I can pompously intone:  "It was the best of times; it was the worst of times . . . . " when talking about this year's Christmas, can't I?

(Well I can.  You weren't there.  Lucky you.)

It was the worst in the sense that I knew it was going to be stressful, took steps to prepare and plan against that eventuality, and it was all exactly as stressful as I feared anyway.  

A house guest (delightful, courteous, and omnipresent).  

Extended family with temperaments diametrically opposed to the introverted temperaments in our household. 

An unusually deaf Demeter, plagued by a small and stubborn ball of wax in her so-called "good ear", and totally bamboozled by aforementioned temperaments. 

A daughter on the autistic spectrum, to whom Christmas is vital, abandoned for a few heart-wrenching minutes, by her panicky father on a holiday carousel.  (It's a long story, please don't make me repeat it.)

And the Resident Fan Boy, whose instinctive defence is shutting down his brain, whenever something emerges from left field, which happens a lot at Christmas.

It was the best of times in the sense that I didn't kill anybody.  I didn't yell at anybody -- except the Resident Fan Boy, and only a couple of times, at that.

The shopping was done on time, and the presents seemed to go over well.  There are still three Christmas cards to mail.  (For those of you not resident in Canada, we had a postal strike from mid-November to mid-December.). What food I managed to produce has been edible, even marginally festive.

So I really have nothing to grumble about.  My expectations weren't overly great, and my house is, in no way, bleak.

Besides, there has been very little Dickens on the telly - apart from A Christmas Carol.  The specialty channels are jammed with scores of Christmas-themed romantic movies, in the vein of Harlequin and Mills & Boon.  They play them year-round now.

Oh, joy.

Merry Eighth Day of Christmas, to you and yours.