Saturday, April 23
"We used to live in a paper bag on a rubbish tip..."
Tart Cider doesn't like something I wrote. As I pointed out in an email: guy, it ain't "self-loathing" if it's other people you hate... Sheesh.
Chris explained that he was afraid readers wouldn't "appreciate my tone" or "realize I was kidding" or something (hey, I lost the email...)
As regular readers know, my personal motto is: Noone is ever just kidding (and if anyone can cobble together a Latin translation, I'd be much obliged). [UPDATE: so far we have Nemo nunquam solum joculatur and Nemo ridiculus umquam -- fight amongst yourselves...]
And my readers don't seem to be struggling under the false consciousness Chris attributes to them, judging by the many emails I got about that very post that went, "I agree with everything you said", "I hear ya!", "Don't change your hair for me," and so forth.
Besides, if people don't like or understand what I post, they are free to visit other sites. I just don't care. So Chris' concern for the well-being of my readers seems misplaced and somewhat insincere.
Chris then expressed his (highly paraphrased by me) belief that Canada is an inherently noble nation marred by the temporary existence of certain bad politicians. I have no such mystical beliefs in Canada's cosmic wonderfulness, although I once did, as I think most Canadians do. For the first thirty-five years of my life, my mind was pleasantly stuffed with great Canadian poetry and Gordon Lightfoot tunes and the Hockey Night in Canada themesong (which still brings a tear to my eye) and NFB documentaries and Terry Fox and Hinterland Who's Who and whatever.
But: who elected those bad politicians? Surely there is something wrong with the people who live here, now. Maybe there always has been and I'd just been caught up in the hype.
Unlike Chris, I'm not startled when someone expresses brash, unflattering opinions about an entire nationality. Sounds like half of English lit to me. I reminded him that it won VS Naipaul a Nobel Prize, and would, if there were any justice in the world, win Theodore Dalyrimple one, too.
As for poor people, well: having spent much of my childhood living below Not The Poverty Line, I'm entitled to post my observations on their behaviour. To get a feel for my old milieu, think of The Trailer Park Boys, sans trailers. Or the people in this poem.
Your mileage may vary, Chris, but the folks I grew up with were most assuredly concerned mostly with cigarettes, beer, donuts and lottery tickets, especially on the last Friday of the month, when The Cheques came in. My estranged father, the cab driver (who died owing me tens of thousands of bucks in child support, with interest), hated that day with a tireless passion; he was obliged to ferry the newly-rich from home to bank to beer store to fast-food joint every 30 days, and did not find this a particularly inspiring experience. Not that Dad's priorities were much different than those of his passengers. He was just mad he had to work to make money...
My ability to sit still and read unillustrated books for hours at a time was a source of awe & wonder to these people, who would poke their heads timidly into my room every so often, and point mutely, as one might at Koko and her kitten.
I am not poor today because I became the first person in my family to finish highschool. And unlike my mother and two older sisters, I did not have a child out of wedlock. Imagine my satisfaction when I discovered, many years later, that that's pretty much all I'd needed to do, all nearly anybody in North American needed and needs to do, to avoid poverty. You don't have to become a pro hockey player or marry a rich guy or invent something incredible or win the damn lottery. You just have to NOT be a stupid lazy slut. I listened to the nuns, the other kids didn't. I'm entitled to gloat once in a brief while.
The fact is: Jesus talked over & over again about how we need to go out of our way to love the poor -- because He knew as well as anybody what a frickin' pain in the butt so many poor people are to be around.
***
UPDATE: here Chris reponds and says some nice things but I can't quite keep my mouth shut. Sorry.
"The pension that's waiting for you"?! Dear God, man, didn't your older brother own any Clash albums? In the Bible, Esau foolishly sold Jacob his birthright for "a mess of pottage", i.e., a bowl of stew. In Canada, our birthright is a message of pottage -- and I'm supposed to be proud of that? And PS: don't be countin' on that there pension...
I'm not convinced our quality is life is so great. Americans have 30% more disposable income that we do, for instance. I would prefer that to a pissant (& possibly imaginary) pension. They have more neat stuff to buy, better tv, better weather, better history. AND they can still insult George Bush and look at skyscrapers and fields. So...?
Chris accuses me of doing two things I wasn't trying to do.
First, I wasn't making fun of "Canadian poetry" etc (note the word "pleasant" and the phrase "which still brings a tear to my eye"); I happen to write Canadian poetry and still think it is superior to the American variety. I kinda like all the things I mentioned in that graph, but don't believe they add up to anything like, say, a similar list of great American things. They invented the Space Shuttle, we donated the "arm".
Secondly: to observe that my characterization of Canadian poor people isn't exclusively Canadian is just pointless argumentation. Were I to write: Jamaican rastas smoke a lot of weed, that would still be a telling observation about Jamaican rastas, and therefore, Jamaican society as a whole, whether or not "other people do that too". When Theodore Dalyrimple writes about the "chav" underclass in Britain, his concerns about this infestation are in no way mitigated by the undeniable fact that the same species of louts can be seen each day on Jerry Springer.
Chris explained that he was afraid readers wouldn't "appreciate my tone" or "realize I was kidding" or something (hey, I lost the email...)
As regular readers know, my personal motto is: Noone is ever just kidding (and if anyone can cobble together a Latin translation, I'd be much obliged). [UPDATE: so far we have Nemo nunquam solum joculatur and Nemo ridiculus umquam -- fight amongst yourselves...]
And my readers don't seem to be struggling under the false consciousness Chris attributes to them, judging by the many emails I got about that very post that went, "I agree with everything you said", "I hear ya!", "Don't change your hair for me," and so forth.
Besides, if people don't like or understand what I post, they are free to visit other sites. I just don't care. So Chris' concern for the well-being of my readers seems misplaced and somewhat insincere.
Chris then expressed his (highly paraphrased by me) belief that Canada is an inherently noble nation marred by the temporary existence of certain bad politicians. I have no such mystical beliefs in Canada's cosmic wonderfulness, although I once did, as I think most Canadians do. For the first thirty-five years of my life, my mind was pleasantly stuffed with great Canadian poetry and Gordon Lightfoot tunes and the Hockey Night in Canada themesong (which still brings a tear to my eye) and NFB documentaries and Terry Fox and Hinterland Who's Who and whatever.
But: who elected those bad politicians? Surely there is something wrong with the people who live here, now. Maybe there always has been and I'd just been caught up in the hype.
Unlike Chris, I'm not startled when someone expresses brash, unflattering opinions about an entire nationality. Sounds like half of English lit to me. I reminded him that it won VS Naipaul a Nobel Prize, and would, if there were any justice in the world, win Theodore Dalyrimple one, too.
As for poor people, well: having spent much of my childhood living below Not The Poverty Line, I'm entitled to post my observations on their behaviour. To get a feel for my old milieu, think of The Trailer Park Boys, sans trailers. Or the people in this poem.
Your mileage may vary, Chris, but the folks I grew up with were most assuredly concerned mostly with cigarettes, beer, donuts and lottery tickets, especially on the last Friday of the month, when The Cheques came in. My estranged father, the cab driver (who died owing me tens of thousands of bucks in child support, with interest), hated that day with a tireless passion; he was obliged to ferry the newly-rich from home to bank to beer store to fast-food joint every 30 days, and did not find this a particularly inspiring experience. Not that Dad's priorities were much different than those of his passengers. He was just mad he had to work to make money...
My ability to sit still and read unillustrated books for hours at a time was a source of awe & wonder to these people, who would poke their heads timidly into my room every so often, and point mutely, as one might at Koko and her kitten.
I am not poor today because I became the first person in my family to finish highschool. And unlike my mother and two older sisters, I did not have a child out of wedlock. Imagine my satisfaction when I discovered, many years later, that that's pretty much all I'd needed to do, all nearly anybody in North American needed and needs to do, to avoid poverty. You don't have to become a pro hockey player or marry a rich guy or invent something incredible or win the damn lottery. You just have to NOT be a stupid lazy slut. I listened to the nuns, the other kids didn't. I'm entitled to gloat once in a brief while.
The fact is: Jesus talked over & over again about how we need to go out of our way to love the poor -- because He knew as well as anybody what a frickin' pain in the butt so many poor people are to be around.
***
UPDATE: here Chris reponds and says some nice things but I can't quite keep my mouth shut. Sorry.
"The pension that's waiting for you"?! Dear God, man, didn't your older brother own any Clash albums? In the Bible, Esau foolishly sold Jacob his birthright for "a mess of pottage", i.e., a bowl of stew. In Canada, our birthright is a message of pottage -- and I'm supposed to be proud of that? And PS: don't be countin' on that there pension...
I'm not convinced our quality is life is so great. Americans have 30% more disposable income that we do, for instance. I would prefer that to a pissant (& possibly imaginary) pension. They have more neat stuff to buy, better tv, better weather, better history. AND they can still insult George Bush and look at skyscrapers and fields. So...?
Chris accuses me of doing two things I wasn't trying to do.
First, I wasn't making fun of "Canadian poetry" etc (note the word "pleasant" and the phrase "which still brings a tear to my eye"); I happen to write Canadian poetry and still think it is superior to the American variety. I kinda like all the things I mentioned in that graph, but don't believe they add up to anything like, say, a similar list of great American things. They invented the Space Shuttle, we donated the "arm".
Secondly: to observe that my characterization of Canadian poor people isn't exclusively Canadian is just pointless argumentation. Were I to write: Jamaican rastas smoke a lot of weed, that would still be a telling observation about Jamaican rastas, and therefore, Jamaican society as a whole, whether or not "other people do that too". When Theodore Dalyrimple writes about the "chav" underclass in Britain, his concerns about this infestation are in no way mitigated by the undeniable fact that the same species of louts can be seen each day on Jerry Springer.
