Oh, Those Succulent Clams

A little update for you regularly confused:

I've returned from yonder (Toronto) with a job in hand (internship, actually) that will begin on January 17, 2007, at The Walrus Magazine on Duncan St. (essentially a block or so directly north from the CBC building).

I am excited, in part, because:

A. The Walrus is really something to aspire to; a thinking publication, and by far the most decorated magazine in Canada at the last few National Magazine Awards;
B. The internship itself pays enough to make eating every day a distinct possibility; and
C. The winning "essay" I submitted, written as per the editors' instructions on the topic of "Walruses" (but not The Walrus), was this:

Are You The Walrus?

A Self-Assessment Test™ for the Concerned, Curious, and Condemned

(Subtitle: Facts About Walruses Cleverly Disguised as a Questionnaire)

Instructions:
Please read each question before answering. We recommend a 2 HB pencil or equivalent.

Do not worry about filling in the bubbles entirely. This is not an automated test, and you will be asked to score yourself when the test is complete.

If you have trouble gripping a pencil for any reason — deformity, lack of opposable digits, slippery skin — please ask an aide for help.

Take no longer than one hour to fill out the questionnaire. When you are done, please turn to the back of the questionnaire booklet for scoring instructions.

Please note: if at any point during the questionnaire you feel a sudden and inexplicable urge to dive into cold water or consume shelled objects of any kind, at present or in the future, rate this urge on a scale of 1-10 (1 being “mild” and 10 being “uncontrollable”) and make a note of the number you have chosen at the bottom of your answer sheet. This number will be used in scoring.

Thank you, and good luck!


SECTION 1:
GASTRONOMY
Subtitle: What Walruses Like To Eat, Suck, and Digest

Please rank the following items from 1-4, with 1 representing your least preferred culinary item and 4 representing your most preferred. Do not repeat the same number twice. In the event that you prefer two items equally, stagger your rank (3,4; 2,3; etc.). In the event that you do not prefer any items, imagine that you are being forced to consume them.

Breakfast
1. Two Eggs
2. Grits (boiled)
3. Cigarette
4. Salt Water, preferably cold, w/ option of Mollusk and side of Sea Cucumber

Lunch
1. Salad (assorted greens)
2. Salad (assorted greens w/ option of Russian or Blue Cheese dressing)
3. Soup de Jour
4. Anything on a menu in Savoonga, Alaska

Dinner
1. Easy Mac
2. 12oz New York Strip Loin, prepared Medium Rare, with side of Fries and Salad
3. Guinness-brazed Lamb Shank with Onion-Roasted Shrimp Tails, Foie Gras (confit de canard), and Smoked Head of Canary (display only)
4. Clams, raw or otherwise


SECTION 2:
LEIZURE, ACTIVITY, AND EXCERCISE
Subtitle: What Walruses Sometimes Choose to Do With Themselves

Please rank the following items from 1-4, following the same guidelines as Section 1, but this time applying the ranking to each item individually.

1. Swimming
2. Sex
3. Sex, w/ option of cigarettes
4. Alcoholism
5. Watching Canadian Idol
6. Basking on rocks
7. Eating clams
8. Eating clams, w/ option of alcoholism
9. Watching videos on YouTube
10. Watching videos of seals, seagulls, or other wildlife on YouTube
11. Enjoying a good novel
12. Fighting over mates
13. Updating http://www.myspace.com/walruslover4life/
14. Visiting the dentist
15. Debating the circular logic presented by Descartes’ fifth and third meditations in Meditations on First Philosophy using only sentences that can be formed as questions
16. Protecting the pack, presumably as a result of No. 12, 11, 2 through 4, or in abstinence of 6.


SECTION 3:
SELF-ESTEEM
Subtitle: Facts about Walrus Behaviour and Walrus Depictions in Popular Culture

Please review the following statements and mark whether you “strongly agree,” “somewhat agree,” “somewhat disagree,” or “strongly disagree” with the statement. For each answer score yourself 1-4, with “strongly agree” being 4 and “strongly disagree” being 1.

1. I have, in the past or the present, desired to kill and eat a seagull, just to see what it would taste like.
1b. This has caused problems in my marriage.
2. I am an admirer of John Lennon.*
3. My name, or the name of one of my blood relatives, is Wally.
4. I often find myself unable to do things that my friends/colleagues/family can do with their hands, such as open a jar or write a note.
4b. I find this depressing.
5. I find it easy to defeat my friends/colleagues/family in competitions that require body pinning, deep diving, tusks, or sitting still.
5b. I find this depressing, too.
6. I am English soccer manager Sam Allardyce.
7. I enjoy the company of carpenters.
8. If I were disfigured and had (for example) flippers instead of hands, I would hang out with other people with similar malformations.
8b. I might be inclined to call these groups “packs.”
9. I often fight over females by brandishing my teeth. (This gets me nowhere in bars.)
10. I have an inexplicable aversion to ivory.
11. I have an inexplicable hatred for Marvel Comics.
12. The phrase “coo coo ca-choo” is not inexplicable, but I must keep this meaning secret from others.
13. I have met Woody Woodpecker.
14. I hate him.

*If you are John Lennon, please answer “strongly agree.”

SECTION 4:
FINAL QUESTIONS
Subtitle: Facts about Walrus Physiology, Blubber, and the United Nations

Please answer “yes,” “no,” or “N/A” to the following, scoring yourself 1 for “yes” and 0 for “no” or “N/A”:

1. Do you enjoy swimming, diving to depths of up to 90 metres, or spending about half of your time submersed in salty sub-arctic to arctic-arctic water?
2. Do you find pleasure in the thought of urinating through your skin?
3. Do you become irritated when others underestimate the length of your bones?
4. Would you, hypothetically, swim in near-to or sub-zero temperatures?
5. If surrounded in several tons of heat-preserving, blubbery fat, would you answer “yes” to question 4?
6. Do you think you look fat?
7. Do you think you look fat in the order of 1,600 to 1,800 kilograms?
8. If your friends/colleagues/family accuse you of being thick-skinned, do you take this to mean that your skin is literally thick?
9. Have you ever been mistaken for U.S. Ambassador to the UN John Bolton?**
10. Are you fond of blubber?
11. Do you despise friends/colleagues/family who are fond of blubber, or show any interest at all in the 1851 Herman Melville novel Moby Dick?
12. Was Zacharias Kunuk’s The Fast Runner one of the most disturbing motion pictures you have ever seen?
Finally,
13. Are you a regular reader of The Walrus?

**If you are U.S. Ambassador the UN John Bolton, please answer “N/A.”

Please add up your score and write to: Walrus Self-Assessment Test™, Halifax, Nova Scotia, B4A 3N9. We will get back to you regarding your Walrus status as soon as we can.

That's all for now. Posts coming soon...

A Brief Reprieve from Bloggophrenia

Subtitle: An Opprobrious Malediction of the Supposed and Very Much Barmecidal Operational Supremacy of Modern Technology

~or~

My Computer is Broken

(And I am a Luddite at Heart)

In an unforeseen turn of events, my trusty laptop of innumerable uses and years of companionship (complete with laptop drops, hits, slams, thwacks and squishy liquid-dumps) has finally "kicked the can" and gone yonder to the great big pile-of-technological-decay in the sky.

In the interest of full disclosure, actually, said events were not altogether unforeseen, nor did they change much (a straight of events?). The laptop is still sitting on my desk, in fact, and I've known the thing was going to die for a few months now. Somewhat absurdly, the computer itself works just fine -- but the motherboard connection to the laptop's screen is, as one might be inclined to say this time of year, kaput. So while I can "use" the computer, I can't see what I am doing, even if I plug my desktop screen into the laptop's monitor jack.

(And oh, Oh(!) how the computer gods taunt me: I can still hear that perky popping noise OS X makes when the on board volume is adjusted using the keyboard volume keys. I bet if I clicked around blindly for long enough I could get iTunes running....)

In any case, there is a new laptop on the way, care of my parents, Steve Jobs, Chinese and/or Taiwanese manufacturing prowess, and my 24th Birthday.

But I don't know precisely when the new machine will arrive, and I am heading out of town next week (Wed-Mon) for a brief but needed reprieve from the carefree humdrum of my Haligonian life.

What all of this onerous vituperation means is that any blogging or updating I may (or may not) undertake over the next week (or so) is more likely (than not) to be a bit spotty (more than usual, anyway).

Ahem.

Should the unpredictable and often maniacal passage of time deign that none of the above become true, I suppose then that he meaning of this post is simple: I am getting a new computer, and you aren't.

As the Hapsburg Holy Roman Emperor Joseph II used to say,
"Well, there it is."

A thought on the sometimes necessary, most times unecessary killing of other human beings

IMAGINE THIS: You wake up on a spring morning, the sun meekly peering into your room through its blinds.

It's early; dew still clings to the grass outside. There's a bit of mist at the top of your street.

Unable to negotiate with the sun, and knowing you've got a full day ahead of you, you get out of bed. Yawning, you lurch your way downstairs. You begin making coffee.

The sound of the coffee grind is your alarm clock. You scratch your head. The sun is warm, and you're looking forward to the new day.

Waiting for the pot to brew, you wander outside and open up your cold, metal mailbox. The mail hasn't been there long — it's still warm. Shuffling through what's arrived, you notice a big brown envelope marked "orders."

Your life, as you knew it, ends here.

You see, someone in a far away country is at war with some other far away country. And you just got a letter ordering you to suit up, check in, get fit, and ship out across the Atlantic — where you will sit in a trench, inside a tank, or behind a gun, watching your neighbours and countrymen die while you shoot and try to do the same to someone else's.

The whole idea is to stop that faraway was from reaching your still-moist lawn and your still-brewing coffee pot. If you don't go, that might just very well happen. Your country needs you, and you know it. And you're likely to give your life for it.

You put the envelope down. Your coffee's done. You scratch your head.

The sun is warm, and your life just took a U-turn.

Try to imagine what this must feel like.

Can you?

I can't.

And that's why veterans deserve far more respect than we give them —
— lest we forget, as they say.


再见。

没关系。。。

If there's one thing that's thouroughly disappointing when it comes to the foreign policy purviews of the Conservative government, it's their willingness to obfuscate the Canada-China relationship in favour of.... well, nothing, outside of what looks to be a bad case of diplomatic laziness.

This is just the latest in a series of articles run by the Globe outlining the sour grapes that have sprung up like lemmings in the Canada-China relationship. A question often asked by conservative bloggers when I (or someone else) mentions this usually entails: "should we really be disappointed in a government that has let slide its relations with one of the world's worst human rights offenders?"

My response? "Yes."

Change does not happen in a vaccuum. And change in China will not happen if the outside world continues to view the country as nothing more than either 1) a profitable manufacturing zone, or 2) a profitable manufacturing zone that threatens Western global hegemony.

A few points to think about:

• Cross-pacific economic platforms such as the Asia Pacific Gateway and Corridor Initiative are, business-wise, good news. They encourage increases in the number of business interactions that take place between Canadian enterprises and China's new global competitors, and as the China-Canada relationship widens and deepens, the depth of these business interactions between both our countries will also grow. This means Chinese businessmen at all levels will begin to learn more about Canadian culture, and vice versa — opening up long-term, generational opportunities for cross-cultural understanding, new exchanges of ideas (business and otherwise), and an increasing awareness of how modes of governance on either side of the Pacific tend to work. Following from this...
  
  
• Canada, being a multicultural nation whose interior makeup is less dissimilar from China's than one might think, has a lot to it can show China regarding how intellectual property rights, human rights, and vast cultural diversity can coexist within one functioning system — a democratic system in which geopolitical differences are an advantage, not a problem, and in which the centre does not need to oppress the periphery to maintain basic law and order.
  
  
• China, for its part, has indicated that it is receptive to new ideas and change. In a recent survey of new CCP membership, the top cited priority was government reform. The reasoning behind this phenonemon is simple: if the core is corrupt, the periphery will be corrupt, too. And bad apples equal bad business. Corruption at the local levels, in the market, and in the courts make up China's greatest development hurdle. The newer echlons of the CCP recognize the need in China for a more open and democratic governmental system from which the substance surrounding the seed — business, law, society — will take shape. China can look at the Canadian example — warts and all — and take from it ways in which some of the ideas explored above can be adapted to their own changing framework of governance and growth.
  
  
• Culturally speaking, Westerners on the whole know very little about Asian history, culture, and identity — so there's room to explore from our side as well. If business interactions lead to university partnerships, cultural exchanges, and an increase in cross-Pacific dialogue, we're headed in the right direction. Chinese entrepreneurs certainly have a lot to show their Canadian equivalents, and Canada's governmental system could probably learn quite a bit from exchanges with China's, if simply from a perspective of "here's how another society does things." China's government is adept at promoting business, inviting FDI, and successfully running a massive, decentralized country. Surely there's some nugget in there aside from Sun Tzu.
  
  
• Canada could reap economic benefit from an expanding cross-Pacific relationship. China needs resources. We have them. Increasing trade with China is Canada's best opportunity to diversify its export portfolio beyond trade to the U.S.
  
  To use a recent example, Canada has essentially put all of its eggs in one basket — for the benefit of an analogy, income trusts. Imagine if something terrible happens to income trusts tomorrow — following the analogy, a new tax platform. Don't you think Canada would have been better off if it had some dollars invested in mutual funds and other securities, too?
  
  The point: increasing China-Canada trade is in Canada's immediate and long-term interests. If the American political wind shifts course against an open border, softwood lumber, beef exports, or what have you, Canadians will have a safety valve — another market to fall back on. 9/11 has only made the dangers of our dependency on American import dollars more acute; imagine if tomorrow Americans shut the border down because of a terrorist attack traceable to Canada. Imagine if the border never re-opened, or at least remained restricted. The American economy would lose some steam, to be sure, but the Canadian economy would be the real loser. The Canada-U.S. trading relationship needs a counterweight — and China is it.

For all these reasons, the Harper government shouldn't be letting its diplomatic relations with the PRC slide into oblivion. A good economic relationship with China requires a good political relationship with China, especially if your government cares about things like cultural exchanges, human rights, and attracting more than just a trade deficit. And a good political relationship with China is, for the time being, Harper's job.

New Prediction(s)

The Dems take both houses -- or at least tie the Senate -- and Donald Rumsfeld steps down.

Oh wait, this seems to have already happened.

Update: What timing. Had Rumsfeld quit three weeks ago, the Republican Party might have appeared even more of a sinking ship than it already did. With Rumsfeld's resignation coming now, just after the election, the Repubs can paint this as "Party renewal." Brilliant. This is not to mention the fact that the resignation news lead has moved Nancy Pelosi's historic win (first female Speaker) off of the top spot of every online news organization's mainpage. Brilliant, indeed.

Afterthoughts: I wonder if this will hurt Bob Woodward's sales, or make them explode?

Edit: I took the word "Rummy" out of my post -- and I apologize for the brainless interlude. I absolutely hate how pundits/writers/unemployed bloggers often use nicknames for U.S. administration staffers ("Dubya," OK; "Condi," not). I don't normally hold myself to my own standards, but I figure there comes a time when a man should look himself in the mirror, realize that he is awash in his own self-inflicted shame, and make some effort against being the self-centred well of cynicism that he is -- put on a respectable face, and do his best to rid himself of the years of laziness, hypocrisy, and unfair criticism that preceded that moment, if only so he can grasp a brief reprieve of honesty; deliverance from the lies and deceit that so deeply pervade the modern human ethos.

(Wait, I think this is called campaigning...)

Nostradamus: BRB

Subtitle: A Non-Prediction Prediction About Tomorrow's Election

As Hendrik Hertzberg writes in this week's New Yorker, all the polls, predictions, and analyses of the American political theatre would indicate that a cast change may be waiting backstage in the 2006 midterm elections. The Republicans have never sat so high and stooped so low, losing precious political applause over Iraq, Katrina, a slew of inner-courtyard scandals, and the altogether scattershot public relations of a (literally) shotgun-happy administration.

The Democrats, for their part, have never had a better opportunity to upstage their curtained competition. Since the Reagan era, the Democratic Party has mostly been the understudy of the U.S. political system, failing to gain simultaneous control of both the legislative and executive branches of the American government for any more than the first two years of Clinton's run as President. But the lead actor is now sick, and governance of the entire U.S. Congress — something the Dems haven't been within earshot of since 1994 — is within the Party's sights.

If a quick reading of the national political dialogue in the U.S. is to indicate anything, the Democrats should gain one if not both houses by Wednesday morning.

But polls, as Hertzberg warns, only indicate so much.

The real race may in fact be, well, the real race — the race between each individual candidate in each individual Congressional district and State. Voters may err from the national line if they feel they should vote for one candidate over another. Ineffective Democratic contenders may simply appear unelectable to middle-of-the-run voters, especially next to Republican candidates who may have actually done something for their constituents over the last 12 years. This certainly won't be the case everywhere, but it may prevent the American electorate from turning the house over to Dean, Clinton, Kerry & Co. by the end of tomorrow night.

All this goes without saying; it does not mention that vast rural skew of the U.S. electoral system — now mostly painted Republican Red — that ensures urbanite Democrats will have to win a sweeping popular majority to even budge their seat count.

(An example: the current crop of Democratic Senators — 45 of them — represent more Americans than do all 55 Republican Senators).

Predictions made by outside parties, unless they involve bets, create strategies, or alter player conduct, are mostly rhetorical chaff — inevitably, the winner of tomorrow's election will win, regardless of what I write here. This post, likewise, will then become nothing more than an irrelevant curiosity amidst the post-election blogging landscape, what I may or may not have thought about an event beyond my control ground into the static earth by the great, unstoppable wheel of time.

If the polls are right, we could see a Democratic renaissance in the American legislature. If my gut feeling is right, and voters stick to the issues that pertain more to their individual fiefdoms than national ones, the renaissance may be put off by more annual rounds of GOP inquisition. Or two.

I suppose we will just have to have some patience.

谢谢。

A Tusk of Wisdom

So, my nativity celebrations at the Gradhouse and Stage Nine last night essentially turned from "Chris' 24th Birthday" to "Professor Frank Harvey, Distinguished Fulbright Chair And Writer of Many Books, Deftly and Unequivocally Defeats All of His Students at Pool."

A few good lines:
"Frank, are you sure you can handle that much wood?"

And...

"Chris, how do you want this racked? Oh wait, I already beat you."

(He didn't even buy me a drink!)

* * *

On to the purpose of this post. It's a new month, and that means new wisdom. November's selection has been brought to by none other than Devin DeCiantis, "Special Projects Manager" (fancy title, eh?) at The Walrus in Toronto. Drum roll...

Never believe anything until it has been officially denied. - Otto Von Bismarck

Coincidentally, I happen to have a Bismarck quote as one of the openers for my thesis -- a similar one, to boot:

When a man says he approves of something in principle, it means he hasn't the slightest intention of putting it into practice.

* * *

In other news, North Korea is now allegedly returning to the Six-Party Talks, meaning that I might have to rewrite another chunk of my thesis.... ugh.

再见。

If Youth Knew; If Age Could

As of today, I am 24 years old. I am not a big fan of Birthdays, given that they are -- in essence -- artificial constructs. According to the Gregorian Calendar, I was born this day 24 years ago. But I doubt the Earth has gone around the sun precisely 24 times since I came out kicking and screaming at the Halifax Grace Maternity Hospital (which, fittingly, is now a parking lot on University Avenue). Nor have I passed some great watershed or birthright of sorts from which I have emerged fundamentally different from how I was before. Graduations do that. Exams do that. Job interviews do that. Trips do that. Birthdays do not.

In fact, the Birthday Grinch in me would frame it as such: yesterday, I was 8766 days old. Today, I am 8767 days old. So what?

I suppose, in the end, Birthdays are meant to be happy reminders that we are getting older, bookends to years that might otherwise mesh into each other in long, seamless string of gradually disintegrating memory. Birthdays encourage the young to get on with living and warn the old that they will soon get on with dying.

They also give life a starting point. I was born on November 2, 1982, sometime in the morning, delivered through a caesarian section to Georges Robert LaRoche and Lois Robillard LaRoche at a hospital that no longer exists. As far as I can figure these things out, I was most certainly conceived in Houston, Texas. I was later baptised in the Notre Dame de Grace borough of Montreal. I was heavy baby, over 10 pounds. I had blonde hair. I listened to Bob Dylan in the womb. That's my start.

Birthdays help fill in details. If we count period of a month or more, I've lived in three houses, one apartment, one university residence, and one basement of a relative. I've accumulated two degrees, run a student newspaper, worked about a dozen different jobs, and travelled to four different continents, if I include my own. I can play three instruments to a reasonable degree. And I think I'm getting somewhere.

But what matters most, and what Birthdays point out, is that I have a roof over my head, a loving family, and great friends and colleagues, including you, the person reading this post. I am extremely fortunate. If I were dying of cancer, I would still be fortunate. In life, as in death, a human being cannot ask for much more than what I've already listed.

Life is good, grand, and happy -- and even though I'm only a day older today than I was yesterday, I'm glad an artifical construct of a day has reminded me.

谢谢。