ALL I WANNA DO IS HAVE SOME FUN
(OR REMEMBER WHEN I DID)
My Edmonton friend Sarah Kelly has posted
about her recent attempt to reclaim the past by trolling
among old CDs. She writes, "Kevin Grace got me Andy
Partridge's autograph when I was well past my degree's
halfway point." What a charming story, except that
I'm Kevin Grace, and I don't remember anything about it.
Perhaps she can remind me.
Peter
Augustine Lawler tells me (and he's in a
position to know) that if current trends continue we'll
all be dying of Alzheimer's soon enough. A chilling
prospect, especially as my own past seems rather
evanescent these days. Nostalgia has been my begetting sin
since I attained consciousness, so I'd better start on my
memoirs before my own brain becomes mostly spinal fluid.
Sarah has the habit of associating particular times with
particular songs, and in that we are soulmates. Like that
liar Nick Hornby. If Closer is the phoniest movie
I've ever seen, then Fever Pitch is the phoniest
book I've ever read. I could do a much better job, and
maybe I shall.
I find myself thinking, "Did I ever really live in
San Diego?" My CV says I did, so it must be true.
Musical associations were particularly powerful there. The
first Veruca
Salt album is what I remember about
Escondido. Later, after I got my own place in town, the
soundtrack derives from a low-rent tavern in the Hillcrest
district popular with students. Twenty-six ounce
"schooners" of Budweiser sold for $1.75 there,
and I played the Nirvana single "Heart
Shaped Box/Rape Me" incessantly. Which
tells you all you need to know about my mental state.
("Black Hole Sun" and "Livin' on the
Edge" were also among my favourite stacks of wax at
the time.)
But the real soundtrack of my (SD) life was Sheryl
Crow's "All I Wanna Do," especially ubiquitous
because my talkradio station shared the same building with
two "sister" rock stations. The minions within
preferred Bad Brains (or was it Bad Religion?), but what
they were forced to play was that longing for the sun
coming up over Santa Monica Boulevard. (Amusing
catchphrase of the minions: instead of "Is the Pope
Catholic?" they used to say, "Is Joan Jett a
lesbian?")
I never got to see the sun coming up over Santa Monica
Boulevard, although we headed out one Sunday morning in
quest of it. We never got there, as my girlfriend quailed
before the immigration roadblocks. Can't really remember
why, as I was fully legal, but we only got as far as Del
Mar, before turning back and then spending the afternoon
in La Jolla. My word, it was beautiful; too bad I didn't
have the money to properly enjoy it. And that is my
primary regret about San Diego—lack the readies there,
and you might as well be dead.
A decade later, and I can't even remember her name
properly. Either her legal name was Stacey (or Stacy)
Rubin, and her "on-air" name was Stacey (or
Stacy) Cohen or vice (or vice) versa. Our
"affair" was stupidly secret, as we both
believed that our boss, that somewhat fantastic figure
Peter Weissbach, would fire both of us if he found out.
Easier for her than me, actually, as Stacy (or Stacey) had
another job besides her talk gig at KOGO: weather or
traffic (or weather and traffic) at one of SD's Mexican
stations beginning with X. Further complicating the
situation was that one of my (Canadian
—Edmontonian, actually) colleagues lived right
next to me in my "motel-style" apartment complex
just off the Pacific Coast Highway. But he was a raging
alcoholic whose grasp of reality was tenuous at best. At
worst, I found myself in his car convinced my violent
death was imminent, like after the Chargers won the AFC
championship.
The San Diego-Coronado Bridge: A preferred terminus of
suicides, as I recall
Stacy (or Stacey) lived in Coronado Beach, and it was
only after she took me to her home that I fully understood
America. A toytown village connected to the mainland by an
engineering marvel. Of course no one thought that odd,
except me.
Stacey thought me odd from the beginning, as the first
time we went out together in public was when I took her to
see Shallow
Grave. What sort of man would take her
to a picture like that, was her unspoken rebuke. Well, a
Canadian, I wanted to say, not that that would make any
sense to her. Since I began this reminiscence, I've done
some Googling and found that my secret girlfriend is now a
big
deal in radio syndication. Good for her; I
will always remember Stacey
as a kind woman.
Kevin
Michael Grace, 11.59 p.m., 31 March 2005►
PROSIT!
Someone called C---- has written to accuse me of defaming
the People's Republic of China and its "State
Beer," Zhujiang. This disturbed me, as I can consider
myself a friend to all men and to all peoples. He begins,
"I have been to China many times, and I enjoy the
country very much. The reality is not this totalitarian
regime perpetuated by Western media." There is
considerable truth to the latter claim, although it is
difficult to understand the PRC's revolting "one
child" policy as anything other than
totalitarian.
That said, we must all be grateful that the China is no
longer characterized by the wholesale insanity and mass
murder manifested since 1949 and especially
during the Cultural
Revolution. It is interesting to note that
the PRC got much better publicity when it was a much worse
place. A number of my colleagues at the University of BC
visited China during the dark days of the 1970s and came
back raving about how glorious it all was. This resulted
in dark speculation on my part regarding the ability of
people to see beyond the noses on their exceedingly well
fed yet irrevocably stupid faces.
I simply wish that the PRC would stop wrecking
Tibet and stop its infiltration of Canada,
as demonstrated in the suppressed Sidewinder
report. To be fair, this infiltration could not occur
without the connivance of Canadian politicians and
(probably) without the consent of the Canadian people. But
the first group is in it up to their necks, while the
second appears not to care. Not that our craven media have
deigned to give the people much information on this
matter. One wonders how many Canadians (in government,
business and the media) have been bought off.
C---- continues:
As for the poster you see
everyday...well I think it's nothing that has dark
overtones...there is no hidden message as you put it. The
Chinese on the poster says...Zhujiang Beer, that's
all. As for the "State Beer" part...well I can
say after visiting the brewery many times that they are
proud to supply their beer for all official functions.
That is why it says "Official State Beer." I
disagree that there is some sinister message!?...Millions
of Han people do drink this beer, and it is a larger
brand, but certainly in China they don't broadcast that it
is "your patriotic duty to the State to drink this
beer." I see nothing Fascist in it.
By saying what you said in
your article...you have stereotyped the country and its
people. There are thousands of beers to choose from in
China; Zhujiang is one of those. It is your perception
that somehow the message is forboding. It's a girl holding
a beer smiling.
Yes, well, that's exactly why I find the poster
sinister. Big Brother is so much easier to swallow when he
appears in the form of a pretty girl promising alcoholic
refreshment. To designate a "State Beer" is to
assert that said Beer is authorized and approved by the
State. The Han people are a intensely nationalistic bunch,
and I am not persuaded they are any less nationalistic
even after they have "immigrated" to Canada and
elsewhere. For example, I am reliably informed that the
Tibetan flags were removed from student residences at UBC
during the APEC
conference of 1997 because of complaints
from Chinese students there. (And see here.)
I've never tasted the stuff, but I'll take C----'s word
for it that Zhujiang is a delicious light lager. Just
don't expect me to switch my allegiance from such
non-State brews as Pilsener Urquell, Tuborg and Faxe. A
new poster adorning the Chinese restaurant in my
neighbourhood (the Vietnam Garden, actually; I assumed,
perhaps wrongly, that the owners of this establishment
are, like so many Vietnamese refugees in this country,
ethnically Chinese) suggests that Zhujiang (now spelled
Zhu Jiang) intends to make a splash in the Canadian beer
market.
It is glorious to be rich—and
refreshed!
The poster directed me to a new Canadian website,
wherein the claims of Zhu Jiang are made in much better
(though not completely idiomatic) English than in the
website I
linked to earlier. It claims that
After an intensive search,
Zhu Jiang engineers discovered a pristine water source at
the headwaters of the East River. But it was far away. So
to get the water to the Brewery, engineers built a
dedicated 10 kilometer pipeline.
Call me cynical, but I dubious as to whether
"pristine" water sources exist anywhere in
China. Then again, why would they lie to us? Visit the
website, and you can enter a contest to win a trip to
China. I'm not interested, but I'm sure others will be.
Try as I might, however, I can't find any details as to
the exact nature of this free trip, but it doubtless
promises to be the excursion of a lifetime.
A final note and three questions. The poster and the
website instruct us to pronounce Zhu Jiang as "Joo
Jung." Shouldn't it be pronounced "Zoo
Jang"? Who invented this idiotic pinyin
transliteration system, anyway? And can we dig him up and
shoot him?
Kevin
Michael Grace, 10.23 a.m., 30 March 2005►
THOUGHT FOR THE DAY
Affluence
doesn't make people happy; and the more affluence there is
around, the truer this is. On the other hand, poverty can
make you unhappy. So the ideal solution is to be rich but
to behave as if you were not.
That is what
we should aim for: grow a few vegetables, keep chickens,
count the pennies, pretend to be self-sufficient but have
plenty of money in the bank. And, above all, don't go
anywhere. There is nothing to be found at your destination
that could make up for the pain of getting there.
—Alexander
Chancellor
Kevin
Michael Grace, 8.52 a.m., 30 March 2005►
CHECKING IN
For the first time in a while because my computer
packed in it three days ago. Every time I booted it up, it
informed me it had not been shut down properly. I was then
given the option of various safe modes plus the "last
configuration that worked" or "normal"
Windows operation. Choosing any of these simply scrolled
back to the same choices.
I went to the local computer store and discovered that
fixing the computer would likely cost about 100 dollars,
money I do not have at rent time. So in desperation I
bought a 10-dollar can of compressed air and cleaned out
all the schmutz inside. Then I said a prayer. To my
amazement, when I next booted up the computer and pressed
the "last configuration that worked" option, I
got the check disk screen. This was agonizingly slow:
about an hour. As I observed the progress, percentage
point by percentage point, it was if I was awaiting the
results of a biopsy. I was led to consider, not for the
first time, the ridiculous importance computers have
assumed in our lives. Earlier, while crawling on my belly
in the gloom, flashlight stuck in the rat's nest under my
desk, trying to get the cables back into their prescribed
positions, careful not to smash my head on the underside
of the desk, I was led to reconsider, not for the first
time, who is the "master" and whom the
"servant" in this relationship.
So now my computer works, but I'm afraid to turn the
damned thing off. More TK.
Kevin
Michael Grace, 8.38 a.m., 30 March 2005►
THOUGHT FOR THE DAY
The Lions and
the Foxes
In the last part of his Treatise,
Pareto
attempts to show how the distribution of residues in a
population is related not only to its belief systems and
intellectual life but also, and most importantly, to the
state of the polity and of the economy. Here Pareto deals
only with the first two residues, those of
"combinations" and of "persistence."
Residues of the first type impel men to system making,
that is, to elaborate pseudo-logical combinations of
ideas. Class I residues lead men to manipulate various
elements found in experience. They are at the root of
magical practices to control, as the case may be, the
weather, the course of a disease or the love of a maiden.
At more complex levels, Class I residues lead people to
engage in large-scale financial manipulation—to merge,
combine, and recombine enterprises. At still more complex
levels, they explain the urge of politicians and statesmen
to join and fuse political forces, to make political deals
and to build political empires. Men primarily moved by
Class I residues are like Machiavelli's
"foxes," capable of experiment,
innovation, and departure from common use, but lacking
fidelity to principles and to those conservative virtues
that insure stability.
The conservative forces of
"social inertia" are represented by men in whom
the second class of residues (persistence of aggregates)
predominate. Such men have powerful feelings of loyalty to
family, tribe, city and nation; they display class
solidarity, patriotism, and religious zeal; and they are
not afraid of using force when necessary. These are
Machiavelli's "lions."
In the world of his day,
more particularly in Italy and France, Pareto believed
that the foxes were in the ascendancy. The political and
economic scene was dominated by political wheelers and
dealers, by unscrupulous lawyers and intellectual
sophists, by speculators and manipulators of men. Pareto's
concern was that if this condition were to remain
unchecked, social equilibrium would be fundamentally upset
and the social order would totter. Yet he felt that the
chances were high that, as had so often happened in the
past, men of conservatism and persistence would finally
rise, sweep the reign of foxes aside and make sure that
stability could again come into its own. Faith,
patriotism, and national honour would once again claim the
allegiance of all.
After a certain period of
time, the foxes will again infiltrate into the seats of
government, for their mental skills and expertise cannot
be dispensed with for long. They will slowly undermine the
certainties that the lions uphold, and their corrosive
intelligence will undermine the uncomplicated faith of the
militant lions. As a result, the wheel will come full
circle and a new age of deceit and manipulation will dawn.
All belief in progress or
evolution was for Pareto so much nonsense. Human society
was bound to repeat forever the same cycle from rule by
lions to rule by foxes and back again. It is characterized
by a continually shifting but ultimately unchanging
equilibrium. There is nothing new in history; it is only
the record of human folly. Utopia is, literally, nowhere.
—Lewis
Coser, "Vilfredo
Pareto: The Person And His Thought," in Masters
of Sociological Thought (See also James
Burnham, The
Machiavellians: Defenders of Freedom)
Kevin
Michael Grace, 11.35 a.m., 26 March 2005►
THOUGHT FOR THE DAY
There may be modifications to
the law, but abortion will never again be banned. We are
either too enlightened for that, or too far gone in
decadence. Take your pick.
I’ll go for decadence. The
culture of death masquerades as the culture of life.
Nothing must be allowed to impede the pursuit of
happiness. It has to be said that there is something
appealing in this philosophy. Scientific advances make it
at least possible that we could all enjoy a life of
sensual (and intellectual) delight followed by a painless
and fear-free death. Only life-haters and sexual
inadequates can find that disturbing. People like me, in
other words.
Next on the menu: euthanasia
on demand, followed by compulsory euthanasia. Arm
yourselves, oldies.
—Stuart
Reid
Kevin
Michael Grace, 12.46 p.m., 24 March 2005►
THOUGHT FOR THE DAY
When Paul visited Athens and
found that the people weren't Christians, he didn't
propose to remedy the situation by moving large numbers of
Levantine Christians there. Instead, he tried to
Christianize the people already there by persuading them
of the truth of Christianity by reference to their
existing concerns and understandings. Quite possibly he
thought it was the genius of Christianity to transform
peoples through conversion—thus letting grace perfect
nature—rather than transform localities through
invasion. Catholic leaders may want to consider the point.
—Jim
Kalb
Kevin
Michael Grace, 1.10 p.m., 23 March 2005►
HE'S A LIFE TAKER AND A PEACE
MAKER
Those who deny abortion is a form of eugenics should be
forced to declare their position on Steven
Levitt's utilitarianism: "The theory
that legalizing abortion in the early 1970s lowered the
crime rate in the late 1990s by pre-natally capital
punishing a lot of bad apples" (Steve
Sailer).
Steve says he has "demolished" Levitt's
argument, and on the facts I would tend to agree. But
let's not be naďve: science, social or otherwise, has
little to do with data these days—it's all about
politics.
"Difficult hero" Henry Morgentaler (and what
a heartwarming immigrant success story is his, wouldn't
you say?) endorsed Levittism in 1998
and again in 2004.
But of course Canada's own Doctor Death has more than a
sociological interest in this. According to Paul
Tuns of Campaign Life Coalition,
Morgentaler Enterprises (formerly NativiDeath LLC) is
responsible for one-third of all abortions performed here,
and if, contra Sailer, Levitt is right then we all
must agree (as does the University
of Western Ontario) that you can't make a
Canadian omelette without crushing an awful lot of human
skulls.
As I wrote in the late, lamented Eclectica, 16
November 1998:
If you seek Henry
Morgentaler's monument, look around you. In the November 4
Vancouver Sun, the man who made "Do you want
to keep this baby?" as ubiquitous a catchphrase as
"Do you want fries with that?" ponders Canada's
falling crime rate and suggests we have him to credit. He
explains that some demographers attribute this trend to
"the fact there are fewer young men around, and it is
mostly young men who commit crimes." That's true as
far as it goes, he argues, but "even more important
is that among these young men likely to commit offences
there are fewer who carry an inner rage and vengeance in
their hearts from having been abused or cruelly treated as
children."
"Why is that?"
Morgentaler asks. "Because many women who a
generation ago were obliged to carry a pregnancy to term
now have had the opportunity to choose medical abortion
when they were not ready to assume the burden and
obligations of motherhood." So as we walk our safer
streets, let us give thanks to Henry Morgentaler and his
colleagues for rubbing out over a million embryonic punks
before they could bust out of the womb and start whining
about their Charter rights.
One might think the
75-year-old Morgentaler could prepare to meet his maker
with confidence, the plaudits of a grateful nation ringing
in his ears, but like any hero, he muses not on his
successes, but on the ones that got away. He writes
dreamily, "Most of the serial killers were neglected
and abused children, deprived of love. Both Adolf Hitler
and Josef Stalin were cruelly beaten by their fathers and
carried so much hate in their hearts that when they
attained power, without remorse they caused millions of
people to die."
Oh, for a time machine!
Kevin
Michael Grace, 2.05 p.m., 22 March 2005►
ALTERNATIVE HISTORY
TODAY
From the Globe
and Mail ("Tuesday, March 22, 2005
Updated at 5:57 AM EST")
via Associated Press:
A few years after Mr
Fischer's victory in Iceland, he defended the title
against another Soviet, Anatoly Karpov. He then fell into
obscurity before resurfacing to play an exhibition rematch
in the former Yugoslavia in 1992.
Yes, yes, but who won this clash of the titans? Where
was the match played? What was the purse? How many times
did Fischer walk out? What did Karpov's camp accuse
Fischer's camp of? What a tease.
Kevin
Michael Grace, 6.16 a.m., 22 March 2005►
THOUGHT FOR THE DAY
It is surely a curious
characteristic of democracy: this amazing ability to shift
gears overnight in one's ideological attitudes, depending
on whether one considers one's self at war or at peace.
Day before yesterday, let us say, the issues at stake
between ourselves and another power were not worth the
life of a single American boy. Today, nothing else counts
at all; our cause is holy; the cost is no consideration;
violence must know no limitations short of unconditional
surrender.
Now I know the answer to this
one. A democracy is peace-loving. It does not like to go
to war. It is slow to rise to provocation. When it has
once been provoked to the point where it must grasp the
sword, it does not easily forgive its adversary for having
produced this situation. The fact of the provocation then
becomes itself the issue. Democracy fights in anger—it
fights for the very reason that it was forced to go to
war. It fights to punish the power that was rash enough
and hostile enough to provoke it—to reach that power a
lesson it will not forget, to prevent the thing from
happening again. Such a war must be carried to the bitter
end.
This is true enough, and, if
nations could afford to operate in the moral climate of
individual ethics, it would be understandable and
acceptable. But I sometimes wonder whether in this respect
a democracy is not uncomfortably similar to one of those
prehistoric monsters with a body as long as this room and
a brain the size of a pin: he lies there in his
comfortable primeval mud and pays little attention to his
environment; he is slow to wrath—in fact, you
practically have to whack his tail off to make him aware
that his interests are being disturbed; but, once he
grasps this, he lays about him with such blind
determination that he not only destroys his adversary but
largely wrecks his native habitat. You wonder whether it
would not have been wiser for him to have taken a little
more interest in what was going on at an earlier date and
to have seen whether he could not have prevented some of
these situations from arising instead of proceeding from
an undiscriminating indifference to a holy wrath equally
undiscriminating.
—George F. Kennan, American
Diplomacy
Kevin
Michael Grace, 1.25 a.m., 21 March 2005►
