Things I Just Don't Get.

Kopi Luwak, also known as Civet Coffee.  It is said to be the world's most expensive beverage.  From the Wikipedia article:

Kopi luwak (Indonesian pronunciation: [ˈkopi ˈlu.aʔ]), or civet coffee refers to the beans of coffee berries once they have been eaten and excreted by the Asian Palm Civet (Paradoxurus hermaphroditus) and other civets.[1] The name is also used for marketing brewed coffee made from those beans.

Get that? Some cat like animal eats the beans, poops them out, then some enterprising person, who most likely gets paid a pittance, gathers them up so some rich dude may then sit down and have a drink of the very, very expensive coffee.

Me, I don't even drink normal coffee. To me, coffee tastes like crap even without being pre-excreted.  I've been told coffee is an acquired taste, which means it tastes like garbage, but you get used to it.  I cannot be bothered to force feed myself stuff that tastes bad until I like it, just so I can then pay Starbucks five bucks for a double decaf mocha chino with whipped cream and caramel swirl and chocolate sprinkles, much less... this stuff.

So this stuff must taste wonderful for people to be willing to fork out so much cash for it whilst ignoring the source, right?  Some say yes, others, not so much.

A coffee professional cited in the SCAA article was able to compare the same beans with and without the kopi luwak process using a rigorous coffee cupping evaluation. He concluded: "it was apparent that Luwak coffee sold for the story, not superior quality...Using the SCAA cupping scale, the Luwak scored two points below the lowest of the other three coffees. It would appear that the Luwak processing (Now there's a euphemism if I ever heard one) diminishes good acidity and flavor and adds smoothness to the body, which is what many people seem to note as a positive to the coffee.”

Hold on there:  doesn't saying "Luwak coffee sold for the story, not superior quality" mean that it is sold not despite the fact that it is made from excrement but because it is made from excrement? Are people really that stupid?  Here's another reviewer weighing in.

Tim Carman, food writer for the Washington Post reviewed kopi luwak available in the US and concluded "It tasted just like...Folgers. Stale. Lifeless. Petrified dinosaur droppings steeped in bathtub water. I couldn’t finish it."

So this reviewer has descended from the mountaintop to let us all know that a drink made from poop tastes like sh-t.   I hope they paid him extra for that review.


People forking out top dollar for the privilege of saying: "I drink poop."  I just don't get it.

Today's Earth Shattering Non News Story!

NHL goes back into action tonight! 

Among my co-workers there s mainly a sense of relief that they may finally go back to watching hockey and watching as the Leafs fail to make the playoffs again.  I am among those who could not care less.  Actually, previously I could not care less.  I now wish them ill.  Why? Because I live in Toronto.

The latest strike/lockout on the whole was millionaires arguing with billionaires to see who gets more money out of the poor fans.  In the Leafs' case, however, we have the most profitable team in Hockey, and one of the most profitable in all sports, despite the fact that they stink and regularly fail to make it to the playoffs.  No wait: it's because they regularly fail to make the playoffs.  The arena is always sold out, and has been for decades, no matter how bad the team is.  Any other team in the league would be playing to an empty arena, but not the Leafs.  Ownership has cottoned on to this, and realized years ago that they could hire a bunch of mediocre players at a cut rate, and make more money than if they actually made an effort to put a viable team on the ice.  Case in point: Wayne Gretzky wanted to end his career playing for the Leafs.  He offered to play for them at less than half the pay he was asking from any other club, about three million.  The GM ran to the owner, Steve Stavros, all excited that he could get the Greatest Player Ever, who was still a top player even then, for a song.  Stavros asked: "How many tickets can Gretzky sell?" The answer was none, because the arena would be sold out whether the team had Gretzky or not.  So Gretzky was passed over. 

They have poured even more contempt on their fans since then.  Now roughly seventy per cent of the seats in the ACC are sold to corporations, who hand them out on promotions or perks.  Fans are left to fight for the remaining few seats and are charged a premium.  For example, for me to take Elder and Younger out to a game, (leaving Puff and Frodo at home) would cost somewhere in the region of five hundred dollars. That is money I don't have.  But the Leafs think it is worth that much for me or someone like me to go and see them get blown away year in, year out.  And the players think they deserve their pay to go out and suck, night in, night out, when a line made out of snow white and any five of the seven dwarves would be an improvement.

They will not get one cent of my money.  I will not even watch their games on tv, in case I inadvertently bump their ratings, and increase their advertising revenues.  I hope there are more fans out there who think as I do, and the NHL millionaires and billionaires club starts to feel the hurt.  They've earned it.

The abject failure of the Canadian Educational system...

...is driven home to me every time I stand in the express checkout line, and see how many people cannot count to eight.

Sic Transit Gloria Mundi

I was going over my old university books to see if I could sell any of them to get a little money for Christmas this year.  I was loath to sell any of my novels and books of poetry, save for some of the modern stuff. That left doubles- books that both Puff and I had bought in our courses- and the secondary novels, commentaries and works on literary theory.  Philosophical works on language and literature, leading lights of the time, what was considered brilliant and cutting edge at the time.  The books are all now out of print, unwanted, worthless.

This isn't too much of a surprise to me:  I thought the books were pretty much worthless back when I bought them.

The professors who put those books on reading lists and pushed them on me are still around.  I wonder what they are now pushing.  I don't think they've had any big conversion experience, so I wonder what they are teaching now, what their new reading lists are.

I went through university when Literary Theory was all the rage, although anti-literary theory would be a better name.  I thought it was all nonsense, even back then, but like most nonsense, it did contain a grain of truth.  If nonsense through and through, it would not have lasted as long as it did.

Literary theory of the kind I was taught began around 1900 when a new professor by the name of Ferdinand de Saussure took over the general linguistics course at a European university.  He taught the course for three years, and taught maybe thirty students. He changed the usual course of study by switching from a diachronic approach to a synchronic one. Allow me to explain.

Previously, linguistics was taught diachronically, or historically.  Students were taught that words had the meaning they had because they acquired that meaning from earlier words.  Thus, the English word "table" came from the French word "table" which came from the Latin word "tabula" and so on.  The goal of linguistics was to trace language back to the original language of humanity, the language of Adam, which he in used to name the animals (more on that in a minute), the language inherited from God.

Rather than look at language historically, and trying to reconstruct a lost language, he looked at languages synchronically- what was happening in language right now.  Thus the English use words like "table", whereas the French use words like "table" (pronounced the French way, of course) or "school" where the French say "ecole", and so on.  Different languages, Saussure was saying, use different words to say basically the same thing.  Different words, or sounds, were used for the same things, or rather, ideas of things.  From the earlier courses, words had a definite, inherited, intrinsic meaning.  from Saussure's point of view, meaning was arbitrary, random, based on consensus.

From this observation, Saussure created a theory of semiotics, or signs, based around the simple idea that a sign was made of two elements: a signifier, which is the word or sound, and a signifiied, which is the idea to which the sound is connected.  So the word table, either English or French pronunciation, has nothing to do with the thing that we call a table, but with the idea in the speaker's mind that they associate with the sound  "table".

Over the course of the twentieth century, the connection between a signifier and its signified was of great concern to philosophers of language, as they reasoned more and more that there was no inherent connection. As they pushed this idea to its limits, they reasoned that the signifiers are inherently meaningless,  and therefore language is inherently meaningless, and communication is fraught with dangers of misunderstanding and incomprehension.  They wrote thick, fat books explaining this problem in tremendous detail.

Others celebrated the disconnect, and made new pronouncements, turning the literary and philosophical worlds on their heads.  There is no real meaning in a text, said one, only and endless interplay of signs.  Since there can be no perfect reading of a text, said another, then any reading will be in part a misreading.  Another turned that on its head, and claimed that since there is no perfect reading, and since every valid reading will be in part a misreading, then a misreading is still a valid reading (thus proving that logic is truly dead).

In practice, the usual tactic of theorists was to take an argument, reduce it to its premises, and then show how the premises really don't exist, or are contradictory, or are ironic.  They were really big on irony- or as Elizabethan writer George Puttenham called it, "the drie mocke."

The flaw in all this thinking, to me, is that the theory turns all language into nouns- words are all a series of names (signifiers) given to ideas.  There was another theory that came out around the same time, to my way of thinking a better theory, that took language from another point of view.  Essentially, it turns all language in verbs- action.

Saussure and his heirs all looked at language from the premise of "what/how does language say?" and concluded that it says, in the end, nothing.  My preferred theorist, J.L. Austin, looked at language with the question "what does language do?"



This theory challenges the other theory because, whereas the one theory definitively says nothing can be definitively said, the other theory holds that language can definitely do things.  For example, the word 'bet' may have different meanings, if not in denotation that perhaps in connotations to different people, but  if a bet is offered and accepted, the bet is definitely on.  Or, take the example of the archetypal clear statement: "The dog ran down the street."  A practitioner of literary theory may point out for various reasons (the fact that none of these signifiers are tied to absolute signifieds, or various psychological or experiential factors) that there is no definite meaning to this statement.  One reader, upon seeing those words, may envision a husky running down a city street, while another may see a spaniel mutt running down a suburban one.  One may see a street lined with trees, another may not.  Nothing is definite.  All are equally valid.  But the other theory holds that this was an example, a statement used to illustrate a point.  As such, it either worked, and illustrated the point, or it failed to do so.  One way or the other, something happened through the use and agency of words.

I explored the idea of words acting, doing, persuading, amusing or affecting the reader in my time as a doctoral student, at a time when my colleagues were either saying that written works followed the narratives of their theories- either the words and works and texts revealed the Marxist narrative, or the feminist one, or the postcolonial one, or they said nothing at all, and so on.  In order to do my work, I had to take classes wherein I was taught the theories I did not believe, and I was about as welcome as a skunk at a tea party.  I had to buy their books, learn their theories, and prepare myself to teach them one day myself.

And now, those books are literally worthless.  I could not even get the price of the paper on which they are printed.  They are not worth the price of a match to set them all alight and burn them to ash.  I am reminded to something I read once while in high school.  It was a muscle and fitness magazine, about as lowbrow as these university books were high.  The magazine contained an article about ten commandments of fitness, and it ordered the reader, among other things to "never follow any information more than five years old."  The reasons being were that science was always progressing, and what was cutting edge and advocated today may be found to be harmful and destructive tomorrow.  (A more cynical mind may say that the editors of the magazine had a vested interest in this command.  If one could keep following the same advice endlessly, there would be no need for future magazines, and sales would plummet. I actually am of such a cynical mind.  Like Lily Tomlin, it seems that no matter how cynical I get, events always prove that I was never cynical enough.)   As I read those words, it occurred to me that, in order to follow this advice, in five years I would have to ignore the advice contained in the magazine in front of me.  The thought then occurred to me 'Why wait five years?  I could start ignoring it right now.'  That's what my education meant.  What was once true is set aside, not because it is false, but because it is outdated, old.  Back then, I should have realized that in twenty years I could ignore what was written then.  The books may be worthless now.  I should have realized they were worthless then, no matter what the price tag said.

They're getting dumber

When I started working at the bookstore, we would get customers who would come in around exam time looking to buy their books, so they could study for their exams.  Every now and then we would have a customer who did not know what book they were looking for.  The conversation would go like this:

Customer:  I'm looking for a book.

Me:  You're in the right place.  What book?

Customer:  I'm not sure about the title.

Me:  Who wrote it?

Customer:  Ummmmm...

Me:  What's your course?

Customer:  Humanities.....  Humanities one thousand and.... one thousand and... one thousand and something.

Me:  Who's your professor?

Customer:  I don't know.  I don't go to the lectures.  But the book does have a red cover.  I know that.

Me:  Follow me.  (I lead him to a stretch of shelves six feet high and forty feet long.)  This is the Humanities one thousand and something section.  Knock yourself out.

Later.

Customer:  I couldn't find it.

Me:  I'm not surprised.

Customer:  I really need that book.  I'm writing an exam on it tomorrow.

Me:  (inside):  You think you're going to read a book tonight and be prepared to answer questions on it tomorrow, even though you skipped all the lectures?  Plus, given the fact that you don't know your course number, are you certain that your exam is tomorrow?  (outwardly):  I'm terribly sorry, but I can't help you.

Customer:  You guys suck.

That was the exception ten years ago.  Today, it is the rule.  One customer after another comes to the desk asking for help to find a book they don't know written by an author they don't know for a course they don't know taught by a professor they don't know. Then there is their sense of entitlement.  The other day I had this exchange with a "customer":

Customer:  I need this book for an exam on Monday, but I don't have any money.  Is there any way I can borrow it for the weekend?

Me.  No.  If you want to borrow a book, you need to go to the library.

Customer:  Where's the library?

Me:  (This question does not shock me any more.)  It's the really big building in the centre of campus.

Customer:  What if they don't have it?

Me:  Inside  Then you need to change your major.  Outside:  I'm terribly sorry, but I can't help you.

Customer:  You guys suck.

 Where did they come from?

They came from our high schools.  Once, we would have turned the students away, but not now.  That changed a few years back when we had the double cohort.  The double cohort, for those outside of Ontario, was the result of a cost cutting measure by the Ontario government.  High school in Ontario used to go up to grade thirteen, whereas most provinces only went up to twelve.  The government decided to bring Ontario into line with the rest of Canada, and save a lot of money, by cutting off grade thirteen.  That meant that for a few years, universities took on students from twelve and thirteen all at once, hence the double cohort.

To prepare for the double cohort, the university built extra buildings and parking lots to hold and teach all the new students.  Then, after three or four years, the cohort was gone.  The university was stuck deciding what to do with the extra space and how to fill it, and they came up with the obvious solution:  they would lower their standards, and let in more students.  No, seriously.  That's what they did.

We are also stuck in a paradigm shift, or perhaps between two paradigms: that of the professors, and that of the students.  Or perhaps the official rules of the university, and the actual application.  Let me give you an example.

About two years ago, a guy I know became a teaching assistant for the first time, teaching first year history.  he sat down one fine day to mark his first batch of essays, always a real eye opener, and discovered to his dismay that eight of his twenty four students, or one third, had simply downloaded papers off the Internet.  He marched into the program office and demanded these students be expelled as per university rules regarding academic dishonesty.  He was told, flatly:  "No." 

No reason was given, but it isn't hard to figure out.  The university currently has around fifty thousand students who pay roughly five thousand dollars a year tuition.  Assuming his class was normal and average, enforcing the rules would mean expelling one third of the current student body, or approximately seventeen thousand.  That would mean the loss of    $85,000,000. If we were to tack on future lost revenues, the money lost over three years, assuming we caught them in their first year, would be $255,000,000.  So the losers stay, and the university education is downgraded.

Or is it?  As I said, we are in a paradigm shift, although I think that term may be inaccurate.  The shifts are occurring so fast and so often, that no new paradigm is ever established- or rather, the shift itself is the new paradigm.  At this point in the curve, originality is not valued.  Collation, quotation and parody are the products of the Internet and the skills valued now.  I spoke to a friend who runs a tech department of a major corporation recently, and told him the story of the cheating students.  I mentioned that it wouldn't take long for employers to notice that a university degree is worthless, and he said: "Not necessarily.  When I ask my people to write up a report about a new technology, I am not looking for an original piece or writing.  I need them to look up sources of information, and evaluate them, and then report on their findings."

So perhaps downloading and copying is the wave of the future, at least for the time being.  On the other hand, the down loaders will still need someone original to quote, and those are getting rarer.

Watching the Santa Claus Parade

Two things.

First, I remember when the parade floats were mainly fairy tales.  Companies would sponsor floats that had a tie their products, but without being overtly so.  For example, a candy making company might do a float of Hansel and Gretel and the witch's candy cottage, or perhaps the witch being turned into chocolate in her oven. They invoked old stories, the ones we all knew, the ones that tied us all together in our memories of childhood. Almost all the floats this year are large moving billboards, featuring the company products in the most blatant, crass fashion possible.  They shut down traffic and create chaos in the city for a bunch of mobile ads, the sole purpose of which is to get the kids in the crowd to turn to their parents and say "I want one! I want one!"  They aren't telling stories, they aren't about Christmas, they aren't even about winter.  Movies, toys, stuff.  Just stuff.

Second, if I were a sniper, the guy with the vuvuzela would have a nice round dot in the middle of his forehead by now.

NOOOOOOOOOO!

Someone is making a movie out of Milton's Paradise Lost.

This after last year, when someone turned Dante's Inferno into a video game, except Dante was now a hardened and disillusioned crusader returning from battle to find Beatrice murdered and her soul stolen, so he steals death's scythe and starts cutting his way through Hell.  I shudder to think what they will do with Paradise Lost.

By the way, the video game apparently had disappointing sales.

Why, oh why, can't movie makers and video gamers leave the classics alone?

The silence is deafening

UPDATED
The Vatican has made a statement


One of the commentators over at Fr. Z's said, in response to the Australian bishop being removed from his post for, among other things, advocating women's ordination, that he wished the Vatican had issued such a response to Cardinal Law, because the liberal wing of the Church would attack the Vatican's decision in the Australian case on just those grounds: Sure, they're silent about pedophiles, but just try and say that women should be ordained and they lower the boom....  A few days later, the Catholic Reporter did exactly that.

The accusation is used, and it has traction, because there is truth to it.  The Vatican has not reacted as forcefully to pedophiles as it has to the Australian bishop, and they've done it again.  Yesterday, Canadian bishop Raymond J. Lahey (who is, among other things, responsible for the Catholic Book of Worship III.  More on that another time.) pleaded guilty to possessing child pornography on his computer as part of a plea bargain. He would plead guilty to possession, and the crown would not charge him with distribution.  Thus far, the Vatican has had this to say on the case:



But they did accept his resignation.

Something, anything, would be better than this.They are making it too easy for the liberals in the Church.  It is like shooting fish in a barrel.  I could write it myself:  "The priests and bishops can prey upon the very weakest members of the flock, and there is no reprisal, but just try and question the sacred brotherhood, or suggest it needs some changes, and you're fried."  Too easy, and too true.

This is just idiotic

The first annual slut walk.  It was organized as a protest against comments by a police officer who was inviteed to speak to a group of female university students about the subject of rape when he apparently said: "women should avoid dressing like sluts in order not to be victimized.”  (I said "apparently" because I have read several different versions of what he actually said.)


Feminists in the class objected to what they perceived as him blaming the victims of rape for being responsible for being raped.  The officer apologized, but the women decided to have a protest to show that they are in control of their own sexuality, and that no one deserves to be raped.  I actually agree with them.  No one deserves that.  No one asks for that.  Males who rape women alone are resposible and should be locked up and forgotten. 
 
However, they have now made this subject verboten.  No one can mention how women dress in the context of rape now, not even to warn women that how they dress might, just might, increase their risk.

I am in total agreement with this message

It is getting worse.  The newspapers are picking up on the attacks and portraying them as news.  Today the Toronto Sun took dictation from the Conservative Party, and put up a photoshop picture of Michael Ignatieff dressed up as Uncle Sam, and asked why he hasn't been in his riding lately.  As far as valid points go, this one is near rock bottom.  It is a stupid complaint brought out for idiots.  With all due respect for anybody in Iggy's riding, none of the federal leaders have been in their own ridings lately, because they are campaigning federaly.  This attack is as valid for Harper and Layton as it is for Ignatieff.

Meanwhile, the Toronto Star spent its front page defending Ignatieff against the Conservative attack that he is not a Canadian.  So, even though the newspaper is taking the opposite point of the Conservative ads, it is still talking about the Conservative ads.  We are not hearing a word about policy, or promises, or their stands on any issues. Just taking our cues from these stupid, stupid ads.

So far, the only leader who has shown any of their policy is Layton, leader of the left wing NDP.  He is outlining his policies, which, like most left wing ideas, are stupid ideas masquerading as good ones, but at least he has some policies.  Even so, his ads begin with an attack on the other leaders as inadequate, and then portray Layton as the solution.  So, a few weeks into this campaign, the positions of the federal leaders are as follows:  Harper claims he is not Ignatieff; Ignatieff claims he is not Harper; Layton claims he is neither Harper nor Ignatieff; what's her face, the leader of the Greens, claims she is neither Harper, Ignatieff nor Layton; and Gilles Duceppe, leader of the bloc Quebecois, claims he is not Canadian.  Given a choice, I prefer Duceppe over the rest, except I live in the wrong province, and I can't vote for the traitor.

Team Building Meeting

We had the team building meeting I mentioned a few posts down on Friday.  In some ways, it wasn't as bad as it might have been.  We didn't role play.  No one was asked to fall backwards into someone else's arms.  It could have been worse.

It's all about perspective, he told us.  Try and see things positively.  Stop holding onto the past, we were told.  "In the surveys, people brought up something the head manager said five years ago as proof of his unreliability.  Do you not think a man can change in five years"  He steered us away from rocky waters.  It ended with feelings of warm and fuzziness and appreciation for his skill.  We would meet again.

It's all about perspective, and the only one that mattered was his.  Let me offer my perspective.  Let's start with the "a man can change in five years" thing.  Yes, a man can change, but what was it he said to us back then?  Promises about the way he would run the store.  He broke them all.  Either his word means nothing to him, or it means nothing to his bosses.  Either way, he has proven himself untrustworthy.  Perhaps the Christian thing to do would be to put that behind us, to forgive and forget, to take a leap of faith that he can be trusted now.  Perhaps.  But there is also some wisdom in the saying "Fool me once, shame on you.  fool me twice, shame on me."  He has shown, repeatedly, and more recently than five years ago, that he cannot be trusted. Even if we were to go by the biblical seven times seventy seven, he would be running low.

I was actually deeply impressed by the guru.  One rarely sees such skilled manipulation these days.  so skilled was his manipulation few of the workers saw that we were being lead over a cliff, and the few who did were quickly silenced.  The meeting started with a seething anger.  The results of the surveys were handed out, but not the managers surveys.  They saw our answers, we did not see theirs.  As this was being done we were told, and I quote, "Trust is a two way street."  Our survey results were, on the whole, very negative, which is why we were encouraged to change our perspective.  But, the guru admitted, the results were even more negative than the handout showed.  Some surveys were too inflammatory, and were deemed unhelpful and sarcastic, and omitted.  Perhaps it would have been a bad idea to introduce these survey results, but even so, some people were silenced, their views passed over.  We then broke into groups, where we were to discuss the problems as we saw them, with management forming one group, and the rest of us broken into groups of five.  Each group was to nominate a representative, who would present our findings to the whole meeting.  Management went into a separate room.  Our room seethed with anger as we went over our problems (each problem was the variation of a single source problem: gross managerial incompetence.)

When the time for the group meeting was over, management came back into their room, and the leader of that group (the head manager- incidentally, the worst public speaker I have ever heard.  I wish you could have heard some of the inept priests and terrible lecturers I have heard down through the years to understand the full depth of that statement) gave an overlong presentation, as he has a tremendous inability to make a point.  Then the guru decided it was time to step in and give his own little presentation- about, you guessed it, perspective, and the need to understand each other- and then it was time for lunch. When the meeting reconvened, the guru decided to go off in another direction, and have everyone, management included, discuss a few problems- as he said, challenges- that the bookstore faced.  The results of the group discussions were never presented.

Perhaps the guru thought that our discussions were too inflammatory, and would result in a flat out fight.  It was a tense situation, and he defused it very well.  At least, that's their perspective.  From mine, he manipulated us into silence once again. 

Three of us, myself included, tried to raise this point, but we got nowhere.  We want to play nicely, we were told.  We need to build peace.  The word "healing" was tossed out.  Perhaps we would have ruined everything.  Perhaps we would have started a war, but I see no reason why we shouldn't.  We may not be able to win a war, but we sure are losing the peace.

We had a chance to speak, to send a message to our incompetent managers, instead we were lead away into everyone giving everyone else a warm, fuzzy hug.  We were manipulated into participating in our own silencing.  We deserve whatever happens next.

Curse you, Viagra ads!

There's nothing like sitting down with your eight-year-old daughter to watch an episode of Doctor Who, only to get stuck explaining what 'erectile dysfunction' means.

Pot, meet Kettle.

The Conservative Party of Canada has started its 'don't vote for the other guy' campaign, again.  Once again, they are doing it despite the fact that there is no election on the horizon at the moment.  They have done this before, and I have blogged about it before.

However, recently, the Conservative Party, in parliament, in a stunning display of hypocrisy, condemned the other parties for polishing off their campaign strategies when there is no election on the horizon.  If the other parties have run a single election style commercial, I have not seen it.

Usually, when seeing the Conservative ads, and the other party ads, when they run this style of advertising, my reaction is this: I  say words to the effect that it is insufficient to tell me why I shouldn't vote for the other guy. I know why I shouldn't vote for the other guy. What I want to know is why I should vote for you. Give me a reason to give you my vote. That is what I usually say.

That is not what I say today.  What I say today is this:  If you guys were thinking about coming up with an ad telling me why I should vote for Stephen Harper's Conservatives, don't bother. You will never get my vote.

This is not to say I have any love of the other guys.  They are all despicable, and I would not want to vote for any of them, given an option.

Where are our leaders?  Where are the men who were once capable of inspiring and energizing us?  Where are the people who are capable of taking a stand on principles, who can say, sincerely: Here I stand, and I will not say otherwise.? Where is a Lester B Pearson, who, during the flag debate, went into the Legion Halls, to face his greatest opposition, and tell them, I understand how you feel about this issue, yet I still believe this is the right decision?

And, failing the leaders, where are our members of parliament, the people for whom we actually vote?  Years ago, Trudeau said the average member of parliament, the back benchers, were a bunch of nobodies.  Why did they not rise up and tell him and the other leaders that they are in fact the ones who hold the power of the parliament?   Instead, they have sank down, and descended to the levels of nobodies, who follow whatever their leader says, like a cubicle dweller following some mediocre middle manager, in the hope of a promotion. 

What a pathetic, despicable bunch of fawning, lying hypocritical bootlickers. I can't think of one of you who deserves my vote, unless it would be to vote for your incarceration for gross, criminal incompetence.

The loathesome state of television

I hate television.

Every now and then I climb aboard my high horse and pen another jeremiad against the state of television. Yet I am still in possession of a television and still find myself occasionally watching the odd show, and I actively follow two shows: Doctor Who and the Woodwright Shop. I also like to catch the odd war documentary. Which war isn’t all that relevant: such is my obsession for blood and fighting.

However, although I still imbibe upon the occasional show, I still despise television. The thoughts that drove me to write a little post on the subject tonight go around three things:

1. procedural cop shows.
2. Mad Men.
3. What the heck happened to the channels I once loved?

Procedural cop shows really need no further explanation. There’s about three hundred of them and they’re all the same, all pretending to be hyper realistic and all a cheat and a fraud, all written to satisfy the left leaning politics that are acceptable today in Hollywood. A right point of view is only raised as the thinnest of straw men. Beyond that you have the CSI shows, where the scientists arrest and question suspects, or Criminal Minds, where the profilers arrest and question suspects, or cross the border into Canada, and work with the wrong police force, and then arrest and question Canadian suspects on Canadian soil.

Mad Men may seem a bit odd on this list, and requires a little more of an explanation. I have watched it on occasion, and find it to be a very well written, well acted and well directed show about a bunch of despicable characters. Yet, like the cheating cop shows, I continually hear it proclaimed to be ‘real’, as though a group of hard drinking, chain smoking philanderers and adulterers is a glimpse into the core of human reality. Yet why is that? Why is this show seen as an antidote to the vision of the sixties given in Leave it to Beaver? Why is Leave it Beaver trotted out as a foil to Mad Men in the first place, as I have often heard?

This reminds me of a passage from the Screwtape Letters, where Screwtape explains two different ways of viewing reality- as an emotional revelation, or as an iteration of mere physical facts- and goes on to explain that there are reasons to support each view of reality, but the devils have so worked it that if humans feel degraded, that is the reality, whereas if humans are uplifted, only the physical facts are real. So the destruction caused by a hurricane, and the horror and terror of bloated corpses floating in the flood waters are a revelation of the deep reality of the world, whereas a sunny day is merely a weather phenomena about which people have pleasant associations. In giving birth, the blood and the pain is real, the feelings of having a child in your arms a mere association. And so on.

In the case at hand, a father who drinks, cheats on his wife, and tears his family apart is real, whereas a father who is fond of reading the newspaper in his den, and cheerfully dispenses hard earned wisdom to his sons whenever they come to him with a problem is a fiction. But why is the one real but not the other? Are they not both extremes, and not both equally as real and as not?

And yet, the sartorially splendid and well coifed men of Mad Men are inexplicably being held up across the internet as paragons of manhood, when nothing could be further from the truth. The women on the show had the measure of the male characters. In an interview, the ones who play Peggy and Joan were asked if men of that era had qualities sorely lacking in today’s men, and they laughed and answered ironically: “Gosh, I wish my husband would cheat on me more often!” “Yes! I wish mine would drink and smoke more!”

Lastly, what the heck happened to my once favourite channels? I speak of the channels I liked back in the paleolithic nineties: TLC and A&E. Both produced excellent television, or brought in excellent shows from elsewhere. I remember the Furniture Guys, or the James Burke series, Connections and The Day the Universe Changed, both some of the finest documentaries I have ever seen. They later imported Junkyard Wars, another show that I watched every week. And A&E had excellent arts programming, and they even co produced, with the BBC, some excellent adaptations of historical novels, including the still popular Pride and Prejudice, one of the finest adaptations from page to screen ever.

So what are they now? TLC features programming about large, preferably dysfunctional families, or shows about bad clothes, or cooking shows which teach us nothing about cooking, or shows about little people, or, in the case of Little Chocolatiers, a show about little people who cook, but still teach us nothing about cooking. And A&E, O how it pains me to say it, has gone from producing brilliant adaptations of great books to featuring reality shows about washed out stoned out rock stars, and long marathons of Dog the Bounty Hunter and Billy the Exterminator. I imagine people tune into the last two shows for the same reason they tune into car racing: to see a crash, and possibly a death.

How is this possible? How can any channel run a Dog the Bounty Hunter Marathon, segue into a Billy the Exterminator Marathon, and still call itself the Arts and Entertainment Channel?

At least I still have the History Channel. Hmmm what’s on tonight? Let’s see, let’s see. Ah here it is: The Mummy Returns. On History.

I hate television.

On Celebrities and other matters

I concluded the post below with the words: Why does anyone pay any attention to celebrities at all?  I said this, of course, after paying attention to a celebrity and quietly approving her words at least in part, so my question could be adjusted to: Why do I pay any attention to celebrities at all?

I do so, personally, mainly to the exent that it is virtually impossible not to.  There is a tremendous amount of energy, effort, and above all, money involved in following around celebrities, catching them in their dress and undress, following their every word, every move and especially every hookup with a single minded determination that would constitute criminal stalking were this effort to be applied to any poorer, less famous, private citizen.  Yet this activity continues unabated, even accelerating, as the number of magazines, newspapers, websites and television shows, including pseudo news shows, are devoted to following and reporting the seemingly glamorous, miserable, empty lives of Paris Hilton, the Kardashians, and any other flavour of the week the public seemingly wishes to consume.  Someone once said "television allows you to be entertained in your living room by people you would never allow in your house."  But the television you could shut off.  Nowadays, it is impossible to tune them out completely.  Some noise will always bleed through the shutters, or be met at the watercooler, or somenew tidbit will be shouted at us through a headline on a glossy magazine as we go out to buy milk, bread, and a stick of gum.

The news is skewed, giving us a distorted view of the reality of their lives.  We hear about disasters and breakups, hookups and benders, and of course, the inevitable trip to celebrity rehab, possibly with cameras in tow to create a new television reality series over this 'important' event.  Missing from the news, of course, is any celebrity who lives their life with a grain of common sense, remains faithful to their spouse, and manages to do their job and go home for the evening without bedding twelve strangers while getting stoned and/or drunk and afterwards driving into a tree.  We had much rather watch the disastrous life of, say, Lindsey Lohan, than a stable life of, perhaps, a Morgan Freeman- about whose personal life I know nothing beyond the fact that he an avid golfer. If he were a bad golfer, or threw his clubs on occasion, it is possible I would know more of the man.

Is it schadenfreud, then, that drives this morbid curiosity?  A love to witness the sufferings of these 'celebrities', perhaps making us feel better about our own lives?  Perhaps, but perhaps not.  Advertising companies seem to think not.  Many of these 'celebrities', people who are famous for being famous, earn a comfortable, nay, lucrative living simply by being their own, obnoxious selves.  Paris Hilton, for example, who before being famous for her sex tape, was famous (but much less notorious) for being an heiress.  She is no longer an heiress, as her grandfather, the family patriarch and the one who ultimately holds the purse strings, disinherited the entire younger generation, choosing instead to leave the bulk of his wealth to charity.  The party continued on unabated for Ms Hilton, as she is given money, toys and jewelry by many companies who simply want her to be seen using their products as she goes from party to party, picking up one male chew toy after another, believing her to be a solid, sound investment in encouraging consumers to use their products as well.  In short: they believe she is a role model, and many people out there watching her are encouraged to live like her.

If we return back to the example of Ms Welch and the post below, while I am happy that Ms. Welch has seen the light, or at least stand enough in the light to see a shadow cast elsewhere, she is drawing on her status as a former sex symbol to get her message across. She encourages us to listen to her not despite the fact that her greatest achievement in her chosen profession was the popularization of the fur bikini, but because her greatest achievement in her chose profession was the popularization of the fur bikini. Listen to me, she is saying. I used to be really, really, hawt.

The website where I first picked up her article contained a debate over the status of Ms Welch and her article.  Some were for, some were against.  One commenter pointed out how Ms Welch glossed over some elements of her history. 

Ms. Welch skips, almost parenthetically, over her own four marriages and single parenthood and blythely, or boastfully, tells the reader how it didn't hurt her career but "matured her." Well, maybe being a single parent did "mature" Raquel Welch, but to note that is just entirely missing the point. The point is that almost every woman on this planet is not in the position of Raquel Welch, who had a successful and lucrative acting career. At the risk of resurrecting the spectre of Dan Quayle, most women do not have Murphy Brown's wherewithal. Single parenthood impoverishes most people. They can't, and never could, do what Welch has done — thumb her nose at the consequences of her less than wise decisions.

Ms.  Welch's 'less than wise decisions' have been multiplied over and over with even more disastrous decisions by today's celebrties with even fewer consequences.  Ms. Welch may have thumbed her nose, but today's celebrities extend the middle finger, vigorously, with force, and often.  Indeed, today's celebrities are rewarded with endorsements, contracts and their very own reality television shows for their public missteps which would be disastrous for the ordinary people the advertisers hope will emulate the celebrities.  The average person does not have the wherewithal to raise a child alone, nor do they have the wherewithal to go out drinking every night, or to pay for rehab to dry out after drinking every night, nor can they afford to 'pimp out' their 'ride' or their 'crib' after the fashion of the celebrities, but many are driving themselves into enourmous debt in an effort to do so anyway, an effort to be like someone who started their career, or whose career got a great lift from a home made porno video.  To quote the host of the above site, writer John C Wright: "This is the first era in human history when the vices of the rich man's prodigal sons, thanks to the mass media, can be seen, and envied and imitated by the poor man's sons."

This is a point Antony Daniels, who writes under the name of Theodore Dalrymple, has made this point time and time again.  We see reported, again and again, the most horrible peronal lives and disasters, and then we turn the page to see the latest horror.  Nothing is learned, for learnign requires judgement and no judgement is made.  In Dalrymple's words: "The only permissible judgment in polite society is that no judgment is permissible."  As much as I tend to agree with Dalrymple, there does seem to be one permissable judgement to be made:  endorsement.

We endorse these people for 'bravely' living their own lives, for taking charge.  If the celebrity is a woman who has serial hookups, she is praised for taking charge of her sexuality, and if she has a sex tape to her credit- seemingly de rigeur these days- or a photospread in some 'men's' magazine, her control over her sexuality is all the more on display and praised, as though inspiring men to masturbate is an accomplishment, and the number of civilizations spilled onto the floor or wiped off a man's chest by an old, grey sock a measure of her control over, nay, a monument to her sexuality, her control, her power.

Why are these people of any consequence in our lives?  How often are actors out there, shilling products and or causes they think we should purchase or support?  Why would an actor's opinion matter on anything?  They are a class of people whose main job in life is to look cute while they speak the lines another has put into their mouths.  We may as well take political advice from Ernie the Muppet.  In a just world, teachers and soldiers, those who really put their money where their mouth is, would be millionaires, and these unspeakably beautiful celebrities would be standing on street corners, holding out cups while bearing signs which read:  "I will pout for food."

The unchecked proliferation of media devoted to following these celebrities has lead to people believing that the celbrity lifestyle is the normal lifestyle, or it should be the normal lifestyle.  All fun, all the time, no consequences.  And should one of them realize that maybe, just maybe, something is a little wrong with this lifestyle, as did Ms Welch, and they write a little piece saying as much, the media puts a disclaimer on the piece, distancing itself from the content as far as possible:  The opinions expressed in this commentary are solely those of Raquel Welch.  They wouldn't want any young readers, to whom Ms Welch addressed her words, to get the wrong idea.

Looking to them at all is the wrong idea.  There are so many other places to learn and grow.  Why have we chosen these as our models?  Why do we still look to them?

I cannot answer these questions.  I have tried to protect my daughters to the best of my abilities, but the media still leaks in, as it must.  I cannot make them go away, much as I wish I could.  All I can do, when the children ask me questions about these celebrities, is to teach my children to take them as a different kind of example:  Not something to emulate, but to shun.  Not as a model, raised upon a pedestal, but as a scarecrow, raised on a stick.  Flee from them, I tell my children, as you would from the plague.

Defending the Church

I have been spending some time on another website defending the Church against an accusation that the tanks should roll into the Vatican due to the abuse scandal.  I usually try and avoid getting sucked into these debates as they generally go nowhere and serve little purpose, but this was a website I frequent because there used to be little or nothing of this sort of thing, and I was loath to lose it.  That, and I had the Bible in my mind, of how if we deny Our Lord He will deny us and so on, and so I decided to take a stand.  Those of you who have defended the Church yourselves will understand when I say just what a lousy defense "It wasn't as bad as the media makes out" is.

So far, I am holding my own, but I will not convince the other.  There will be no victory in this, and I feel exhausted even after a few exchanges.  I'd rather be working on history, or my writing, or chewing tinfoil, than doing this, but there was no one else stepping forward.

The Bishops who left us open to these charges, and put us in a position where we are obliged to do this have much to answer for.

Canadian academia embarasses itself. Again.

I was going to put up another chapter of the history of the Church in Toronto, (yeah yeah, no one cares.  I'm writing it anyway) when recent news events inspired a different  post.  I will instead post about Ann Coulter cancelling her scheduled talk at University of Ottawa last night, after protests by about 2,000 'threatening' students.

First, let me say I don't much care for Coulter.  I find her neither a gifted writer nor a deep thinker.  She dismisses complicated problems with an oversimple stroke of her clumsy pen.  Her writing style leaves me cold.  She uses easy targets and blithe statements to score easy points against her enemies.  I remember reading a few of her posts, and every one of them, no matter what the ostensible topic, contained a jab at Ted Kennedy and his drinking, rather like Old Cato ending every public statement with "And furthermore, I say Carthage must be destroyed!" only "And furthermore, I say Ted Kennedy is a drunk!" In other words, rather than argument she gave cant, cheap shots, and glibness.  In addition, she has in the past made several rather petty remarks about my homeland, so I am not inclined to care for her much. All of this is a way of saying I would not bother myself to cross the road to go to a free talk of hers.

That being said, I am appalled that once again the paladins of tolerance came out in the name of tolerance and shut down someone with whom they disagree, doing it, I repeat, in the name of tolerance.  Irony is lost on academics.  Incidentally, they just gift wrapped and hand delivered to her a metric ton of material about the left and more fodder for her glib attacks on my home. 

In my wasted time in academia, I had many, many, many encounters with the Left.  They were everywhere, and I even flirted with the Left for a time.  From experience I say the academic left has a huge, gaping blindspot:  they so sincerely believe themselves to be absolutely right, it is a complete mystery to them that any educated person could ever possibly disagree with them.  Their reaction to anyone who thinks differently than themselves is, at first, confusion and disbelief.  How is it possible, they think, for someone to be so blindingly wrong?

It is this blindspot which makes them so unaware of their own irony.  It could be seen several years ago, when Parliament was to have a free vote on the subject of Same Sex Marriage, (free vote meaning the members of Parliament were free to vote according to conscience and not according to party lines), and the leader of the NDP (New Democratic Party, or our Left Party.  Conversely, the No Democratic Party, as shall be seen) declared the free vote did not extend to his party, and his party would vote as a bloc in the name of freedom, rights and democracy.  It can be seen here, when in the name of tolerance the students and some staff at U of O shut down someone with whom they disagreed.

They are sincere in their beliefs, which makes them so dangerous.   They believe they are not stepping on anyone's rights when they attempt to pass their laws limiting speech or action, because they are only enacting laws against that which should not be done.  In their opinion, they did not step upon free speech last night, because, in their opinion, the person who was to speak should not have been speaking in the first place.

What convenient fools.  Whatever happened to the old left?  Who still remembers the darling of the Left, Voltaire, and his famous dictum:  "I may disagree with what you say, but I will fight to the death over your right to say it?"  A University was once a place where ideas were encountered and debated freely.  Had the students attended her speech and fiercely debated her ideas with her, I may have applauded them for acting in the tradition of academic freedom.  Instead they shut her down, and turned their university from a place where new ideas are encountered to, a place for the propagation of ideas, to a place of propaganda, and the silencing of voices not currently acceptable.  Then they declared victory for freedom and tolerance. I don't agree with Coulter, but I believe the best response, the most intelligent response, is to debate her ideas, not try and silence those ideas altogether, and in so doing give her a ton of free advertising and time on the news and commentary on blogs such as this.    Congratulations, U of O.  We are all a little dumber for your actions last night.

Review of a Concert by The Priests

Last night Puff and I went to see The Priests in concert at St Paul's Basilica. Here's a link to them singing there earlier on in the year. The singing was good, Puff and I enjoyed ourselves for the most part, but I have three little negatives to say about the show.

First, the sound system was terrible.

Second, while the singing was good, as I said, there was hardly any singing. The show was supposed to be an hour and a half according to the ticket, but it was barely an hour, including the encore. This situation was exacerbated by the MC asking questions in between the songs, and since he was questioning three men together, the answers went on for some time. By my most generous calculation, that means we heard about a half hour of music. Every time that MC stepped up with his blasted microphone I found myself longing for a Kanye West* to jump up on stage and rip the microphone from his hands. "Yo, yo, yo, you got your own radio show, you can speak your piece tomorrow, but for tonight, I just wanna say we wanna hear the priests way more than you."

Third, related to the second point, two songs were sung by some local 'talent' who were in the backup choir. Their voices often disappeared into the background of the wretched sound system, which was actually a blessing, because when we could hear them, they stank. And the Priests were asked questions by the MC both before and after the backup singers were given a chance to sing their overwrought ditties. So now we're looking at, generously, twenty minutes of music I wanted to hear. Now when you factor in that I forked out seventy bucks for my two tickets...

On the plus side, I love going to St Paul's, it is our most beautiful church (here's a link to some photos). Also, the crowd contained the largest collection of Irish expats I have ever run into. I regret that I neglected to ask any of them how they felt about the recent France Ireland World Cup Qualifying game, which ended in a result so corrupt even Hitler himself is ranting about it. (Language alert on that link) I ended up speaking to my neighbour in the pew about where our families came from. And the Priests themselves sounded very good together. Their best piece, in my humble opinion was the encore when they sang Panis Angelicus a capella- and no, not that version.

This one.




This kind of singing is their real strength. As soloists they are alright, but as a trio the blend of their voices is truly beautiful. I wish they would release an a capella album of such music.

On the whole, Puff and I don't get out often, and we enjoyed ourselves, I only wish we had been given more. I felt like I had paid for supper and was tossed an hors d'oevre. Tasty, but not very satisfying.

*by the way, Hitler rants about Kanye West as well. Language alert there, too.

I hate growing old.

Warning: The following is gross.

My encroaching decrepitude proceeds apace. The signs of it are becoming more and more present. Some, like the growing grey in my hair, can be passed off as 'distinguished.' Some are unpleasant, such as the little aches and pains that are becoming a chronic reminder that I am no longer the young buck I once was. Most, however, are just plain gross. For example, I now have hair growing out of my ears. My eyebrows, for decades nice orderly arcs of hair have suddenly began growing again, and send mutant hairs that can reach down to my eyes, if I did not trim them.

But the real disgusting part of growing old comes when aging is combined with the secular miracle that is modern medicine. Thanks to the history of cancer in my family (short story, about 80% of my relatives have died of one form of cancer or another, and it is my most likely end) I now have to undergo a regular battery of singularly unpleasant tests on a regular basis. For example, tomorrow I get to have a colonoscopy. If the procedure itself was not sufficiently undignified, I spent today preparing for the test. The preparations involved two relatively simple steps: 1. Starve. 2. Drink four litres some kind of solution misleadingly called "Kleenprep". There are several things I really dislike about the 'kleenprep'. First is the taste. It's horrible. Some idiot gave it a kind of vanilla flavour, which calls to mind an ancient Chinese proverb: "Adding Ice Cream to manure improves the taste of neither." Second is the quantity. I don't want to drink four litres of something I like, much less this garbage. Third is the cutesy misspelled name. Why make the name cute? It can't be a marketing ploy- the only people who would buy this gunk are the ones getting ready for this or a similar test. It's not like a hip and trendy name will boost their market share. Why not just call it what it is: "Instant Diarrhea."? Which brings me to the last thing I hate about it, but I won't go into any further details.

After all this, and I still have tomorrow to look forward to. The highlights of tomorrow include: 1. more hunger, and 2. having something unspeakable rammed up my unprintable. And the best possible outcome for all this is that it will have been for nothing.

I've begun to wonder: What's wrong with death? What's wrong with just dying? I can remember when we used to say somebody died of natural causes, or somebody died of old age. That would be nice, I think: dying of old age. Instead I read in newspapers that a 94 year old man died as a result of complications following a myocardial infarction, or that a 101 year old women died of respiratory failure. We have categorized and subdivided death to the point where it no longer seems natural, and is therefore unnatural. It is always an aberration, or a disease, and essential wrongness that might yet be corrected. This headlong rush from death seems culture wide, and few seem willing to point out that it will end in failure. There is a word for people who turn their face from reality, who flee from the most basic facts of their existence: Insane.

We all got a date with the reaper. We may be able to put it off for a time, but in the end, all the probes and tests will only delay the inevitable. However, a delay in the inevitable means I get to see my family a little longer, get to see my kids grow a little more. Growing older is a fair price for that. In the meantime, I'll pray that the next medical advance involves the discovery of a less invasive way of checking out my gizzard.

Further adventures in first communion preparations.

We are continuing on through the deeply crappy "We Discover God's Paths" series of books for Younger's first communion/first confession, and I want my money back. So far the book is working to prepare younger for her first confession without once mentioning 'sin'. I would have thought some idea of sin would be kinda, sorta important for first confession, but those farther up the chain and wiser than me have decided it isn't necessary.

This week's lesson came close to mentioning sin, but not as sin, just as a Bad Thing To Do. And what was the sin they almost mentioned, you may ask? Why, failing to protect the environment.

Life is beautiful, but it is also fragile. And God has entrusted to us the care of the precious life that fills the universe. Are you doing your part to look after it? Write about or draw something you could do to care for the world around you.

Then the book goes into a mini biography of St Francis, focusing on his care for the animals. She asked me what she should draw. I told her to draw a picture of herself driving an SUV over an endangered species.

I'm not normally so anti environment. I have written in the past that I believe it is important for us to look after the planet God has entrusted to our care. We know from our own experience that there are tyrants and there are benevolent leaders (at least in theory there are benevolent leaders. I've never seen any but I'm willing to admit the possibility) and I don't believe we are meant to be creation's tyrants.

But what got me piqued about this passage in the book were a few things. Firstly, this is the first thing they mention that one should do. Failing to take care of the planet is the first, worst thing one can do.

Every era has its obsessions and failings. Every era seems to draw on one sin or another, and priests and preachers have thundered from their pulpits and street corners about one of the sins over all others at one time or another throughout history. One era condemns lust, while another condemns gluttony, and yet another time sees pride in every nook and cranny, and so it goes. In our time it has become the environment, as though the worst thing anyone could ever do, the most damaging thing one can to one's own soul, is to mix newspapers with pop bottles in the recycling.

Secondly, the writers of this book have just dumbed it down so far. They are trying to write at the level of children. But here's the problem: you can only dumb something down so much before you get to mere stupidity. Kids aren't stupid. People who try and write down to a child's level invariably fall below it. As a writer you don't try and lower yourself down to a child's level, you try and raise yourself up to it. Kids are capable of so much more than the officials in our era believe them to be, but they have to be asked, or required, or demanded to be. Dumbing things down just makes a bunch of idiots in the long run.

Lastly, the passage above expresses some fine sentiments, but it is mere sentiment. The book goes on about feelings and such, as though feelings are the most important reality there is. Feelings are important, but they are not the be all and end all of our existence. In time we must all learn to set aside our feelings to get the job on hand done. Part of maturing is to inure oneself against one's feelings, to develop a thick skin, as they used to say. Furthermore, this feeling nonsense is leading the kids to believe that God is some kind of warm and fuzzy bunny in the sky, ready to affirm all our feelings and sensibilities with a big, fluffy hug.

They tried something like this on me when I was getting catechised in school. I managed to avoid it through a few things. One was my mother, who used her old catechisms on me when she saw how bad the ones the school and church were using were, and the other were a few nuns who were still of the old school variety. But of my entire class, schooled and raised on this sort of nonsense, I know of only two or three who still occasionally go to church, including myself. That is the fruit of this sort of teaching.

I'm getting rid of these stupid books.