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.)

No one can do the Evil Eye like a Welsh person

Ran out of day again.

I'm cheating and leaving you with one of my very favourite clips from the panel show Would I Lie to You?, based on the party game where you tell a story and the players have to guess whether it's true or false.

The story-teller is chief BBC newsreader Huw Edwards (who I know from his wonderful limited series The Story of Wales).  This episode of WILTY is from ten years ago, but the Resident Fan Boy and I are re-enjoying it on the new television.

Not taking debate

There's quite a war going on in social media about whether this is the time for debate about the continued existence of the British monarchy, especially when the debate consists of tweets, some in decidedly questionable taste. 

I'd take the hint to take a break from social media until say, October or so, except I keep running into the occasional gem.

I do think comic relief will become increasingly necessary over the next couple of weeks of lamentation, no matter what you thought of the late Queen, so here is a possible way to joke gently, done by a Canadian, of course. 

The Canadian is "Brittlestar" (real name: Stewart Reynolds), who is based in Stratford, Ontario, and if you're unclear of the situation with Lisa LaFlamme -- well, actually, this video explains it pretty well.

Leaning hard to keep from toppling over

 I'm having some doubts about today, which is slated to be a bit on the frantic side.

After a rough night, in which my body lodged some complaints with me about my benign neglect of it, I was ambushed while scrolling through my Facebook feed in the coffee shop. Apparently the guy the United States hired four years ago is, in his festive way of marking his approaching departure from the White House, fast-tracking about five executions, presumably because his successor is known to be against the death penalty.  

I've always been rather cranky about the way the BBC lumps Canada in with the US in its news categories, although scanning headlines on Canadian news web sites isn't any more cheering.

On the bright side, elder daughter's Christmas parcel, which cost a small fortune (well, a medium-sized fortune) in postal and customs fees, arrived in London yesterday, containing her filled Christmas stocking, a wrapped present for her tree, and an "ugly" Christmas sweater, purchased from the street racks in front of a Yates Street boutique.  Elder daughter tells me it has a "90's" vibe, which I gather is a good thing.  After all, she's a 90's baby.

A soft target

This cartoon by Kate Curtis appeared in the New Yorker

When I went to sleep, we'd heard about shootings in northern Nova Scotia. Details were vague: "multiple victims" - no word about injuries or deaths. Something about a guy dressed up as an RCMP officer and driving a car made to look like an RCMP vehicle. By dinnertime, we knew an RCMP officer (a real one) had been killed, leaving her husband and two children to grieve. When I woke up this morning, the number of dead had risen to eighteen, worse than École Polytechnique shooting of December 1989. It's now the worst shooting in Canadian history.

The RCMP in Nova Scotia says the number is likely to rise.

Elder daughter, who trained in journalism in Halifax, has the surreal experience of recognizing the names of the people reporting on this bleak story. She spent four years in Nova Scotia, amid people known for their friendliness and willingness to help. The people shot in cold blood were no exception.

Daylight saving whine

I was standing at the pick-up counter of our local drugstore this morning when I realized how peculiar I was feeling. It was 8:30 am, but 7:30 standard time and that was the whole problem. I was navigating myself through the day in a city full of sleepy and cranky people, and it will take at least three days before I feel anywhere near normal again.

Arguments for and against daylight savings time can be found here, but I found myself laughing hysterically at this item from HBO's Last Week Tonight

Beware, it's not very respectful to Germans, and downright rude to cows:


I admit I'm a bit punchy, so I may not find this as funny when my circadian rhythms recover.

The sweetest sound in the world

Got home from sitting in one of our local eateries, having written another eight or so Christmas cards. Turned on the computer to be confronted with horror. Various Facebook statuses, one of them that of elder daughter finishing her university term in Halifax, spreading the word. An elementary school in Connecticut, equipped with same buzz-in devices that I've encountered at my daughters' schools over the past decade. But the gunman was one of the dads, so they let him in. (*Dec 16 This was based on "information" that appeared at the Globe and Mail web site and the BBC web site when all was still confusion.)

The phone rang.

"Mum! You picked up!" My younger daughter, somewhere out there on the autistic spectrum, sounding delighted and astonished.

"Of course I picked up, sweetie!" I say, keeping my voice light and dabbing at my eyes. "I was listening for you."

She's going to be home a little late. Her lift was delayed by traffic.

Have I been grousing? I take it all back. My girls are coming home.

Too bad, Greenland

 About a week ago, someone got ticked off at a block party in a suburb of Toronto and shot some people.  A few days later someone else decided a midnight movie premiere in Colorado would be a great place for target practice.  Elsewhere in the news, there's a crisis in Syria, and a truly frightening and sudden ice melt in Greenland.  Both these stories and many others have repercussions for the entire globe, but pages and pages, and hours and hours of news coverage are being devoted to these violent suburban incidents.

I'm not belittling their impact on hundreds of people, the relatives and loved ones of the slain, wounded and yes, even the murderers.  However, I don't think the obsessive attention to these events benefits anybody and indeed, increases the likelihood of more murders.  Why?  Because, judging from the number of hit "reality" TV shows, everyone wants to be famous, and blowing a bunch of people away (unless you happen to be in Syria) seems a really efficient way to do this.  Take a gander on this item from British journalist and screenwriter Charlie Brooker.  

Now, personally, I find Brooker's sarcastic comments a tad redundant, but I think the recommendations to the media made starting at the 1:42 mark in this video by forensic psychiatrist Park Dietz are worth repeating, particularly #2 (and I'd add "Avoid mentioning the name of the killer whenever possible."):

1.  "Don't start the story with the sirens blaring."
2.  "Don't have photographs of the killer."
3.  "Don't make this 24/7 coverage."
4.  "Do everything you can not to make the body count the lead story."
5.  "Don't make the killer some kind of anti-hero."
6.  "Do localize this story to the affected community and make it as boring as possible in every other market . .  . ."

How likely are newspapers and news programmes likely to take this advice?  The answer is in the sixth point.  We're talking about a market.  They're selling this as news and we are gobbling it up.

Too bad, Greenland.

The cheese stands alone

We've finally got younger daughter a lift to school --- but only for Fridays. Nevertheless, that meant I could hang around the television set and look frantically through the crowds that congregate outside NBC in New York during the weather portions of the Today Show. Elder daughter's school tour was scheduled to stand out there this morning. I'm not sure if they did; it was listed in the itinerary as optional. At any rate, I didn't see them.

I used to watch the Today Show quite regularly when I was much younger. Was it always this bad? We had the show on for two hours, and I learned four things:

1) President Obama is in a sweat over the discovery of an "underground nuclear facility" in Iran.

2) A pretty woman has disappeared after being in police custody. The fact that she was young and pretty seemed to weigh heavily.

3) Apparently children who have been spanked have lower IQs than those who haven't.

4) Michael Jackson is still dead.

They spent quite a bit of time on the Obama item, a little bit less time on the disappearance, less than three minutes on the spanking; and tons of time on Michael Jackson. The rest of the programme, totaling about ninety minutes I'd say, was spent on weather reports, local news (we get the Detroit feed), and commercials. Interminable, loud commercials, the longest of which focused on some guy who sits on his deck reading and petting an animal while the voice-over details a very long list of side-effects to the drug being advertised.

I turned off the set at 9 am, having failed to glimpse elder daughter and with the feeling that my brain had been turned to cheese. There are people who routinely begin their mornings this way. How can they bear it?