Man oh man, Doctor Strangelove is a great film. I remember in my first year film class, it was the only piece on the syllabus that struck the class dumb. A whole class full of would be critics and cultural scholars couldn't think of a thing to add - just a masterpiece.

It really is the definitive black comedy - never before has self induced mass-extinction been so hilarious. The performances of Peter Sellers, George C. Scott and Slim Pickens are brilliant. The sense of authenticity and verisimilitude is utterly believable. And the tension, induced by that understated martial drumming in the background, is just about intolerable.

And black comedy of course really is the only way such subject could be treated. Around the same time, a similar films called Failsafe was released, with Walter Matthau. Unlike Strangelove it played things completely straight. I remember it being gripping, but it had no lasting value; the reason being, once the credits rolled, it was impossible to take the scenario seriously. Were we <i>really,/i> to believe there was <i>no</> way to recall the bombers? As the politicians of this film (on both sides) are portrayed as inherently enlightened, reasonable men - leaving us to wonder how such eminently reasonable people could have gotten us into such an insane mess.

As a satire, <i>Strangelove</i> doesn't require that kind suspension of disbelief. It has no such faith in the sanity of our leaders or institutions Lunatics all! Not of them understands the enormity of their power any more than the rest of us. Which, paradoxically, feels closer to the truth.

Because the Cold War really was that crazy, there really were guys like Jack D. Ripper and Buck Turgidson on the US general chiefs of staff. General Curtis Lemay, having made his name with the firebombing of Tokyo and the charmingly named Operation Starvation, did indeed advise JFK to bomb the Soviets first during the Cuban Missile Crisis. The other side was no better: they had Joseph Stalin. . .

(Yes I know, dead in '53. But imagine if HE'd lived 'till '63. . .)

That's what the world was like at the time. The power to destroy the world, in the hands of men (all men) who half wanted to do it. Facing down enemies no one understood or could predict. In this context, even Turgidson's concept of the "mine-shaft" gap is crazily plausible: what if the Russkies <i>did </i> spend all their time in their own mines arming and mobilizing and waiting to emerge to conquer their neighbours? It's not so crazy: ask the Finns!

How did we get to such a ridiculous place? Alas, humanity's gadgets evolve faster than its brains. We had a lucky escape, but now, as climate change appears irreversible, we may yet get to do ourselves in. The only way we can really confront insanity on that level is through satire.

(And the best thing about it? It was all true:
https://www.newyorker.com/news/news-desk/almost-everything-in-dr-strangelove-was-true)  

Book Weeks. . .

Because someone else was playing this game earlier.  . .

Books are the greatest invention human beings ever game up with. Books are what justify our existences. Books are the encapsulation of human souls.

Here are the ones that matter most to me in no particular order:

The Halloween Tree - Ray Bradbury. 
Just about the only book I know that completely changes shape when you read it later in life: what was thrilling, whimsical and charming as a child becomes horrifying to the adult. But it is not an indictment of childhood naivete, but of adult cowardice.

Something Wicked This Way Comes - Ray Bradbury 
What do you fear? Mr. Dark knows! How can you stop him? Only you know. . .












Fahrenheit 451 - Ray Bradbury. 
Notice a trend here? About books themselves - lose them and we lose our souls. It's happening now, it's happening now. Books aren't being burnt, but we're not reading them. Pay attention, look around. . .






Life and Fate - Vasily Grossoman. Sandwiched between Hitlerism and Stalinism, war and genocide, tyranny and anarchy, can human dignity survive? In Grossman, it can and it has.








The Captive Mind -Czeslaw Milosz  Why did so many sell their souls to Stalin? Would you be any different?

Breaking the Spell - Daniel Dennett. It amounts to. . .what do we really know about ourselves?  How can we know? That's largely what I took from it anyway. . .

"Politics and the English Language" - George Orwell. I'm including essays - they count. To really know Nineteen Eighty Four, you have to know the context from whence it came. Read all the Orwell wrote, but most especially read this. Language has power. Don't fuck with it. If there is a way to save ourselves from ourselves (by no means a sure proposition), it lies with Orwell. Read this. Pay attention, and never EVER allow language to be distorted or abused. Seriously, read this. I mean it.

Momo - Michael Ende. 
I only reluctantly read this in grade nine. Only late did its significance really sink in. I believe it's a true story. Evil forces in the world are after your time and your stories. Only children can save you.

"Baloney Detection Kit" by Michael Shermer. An update of the Carl Sagan kit of the same name, this is an inoculation against bullshit. Don't worry about the nonsense Shermer puts on his Twitter feed, this is still valuable.









Harlan Ellison - Harlan Ellison. 

Neil Gaiman compared Harlan Ellison to a massive piece of performance art, of which the stories were just a part. A professional liar by admission, Ellison was a walking story, he lived and breathed stories, he was a story that never old and never got stale. It's impossible to list any one work, as they all seem part of a continuum, inseparable from the man himself. Ellison himself was the book, and every story, anecdote and aphorism a chapter.


The Farthest Shore - Ursula LeGuin. Something by LeGuin had to get in. Anything that can make sense of death deserves mention.

TimeQuake - Kurt Vonnegut Jr. 

Though by far not his best work, it does nevertheless encapsulate what Vonnegut was about.










The Hitchiker's Guide to the Galaxy - Douglas Adams. 
Profound in ways nobody got the first time.

The Book of Laughter and Forgetting - Milan Kundera. Deeply important, but I've forgotten why. . .













A Tale of Two Cities - Charles Dickens. 

Something by Dickens needed to get in. Courage, sacrifice, humanity. His boldest statement of purpose, his greatest moment of moral clarity.  Perhaps not as uplifting as A Christmas Carol but .. .fuck, I'll include that too.







"A Christmas Carol" by Charles Dickens. Cliche be damned, the book is joy-in-a-box. It's not about buying shit at Christmas time. It's an appeal to our better natures. Kindness is the only value that matters, and remains the only worthy goal of any philosophy or religion. Amazing how simple, but how difficult that can be.  . .






Hamlet - William Shakespeare. 
It's a play, so it doesn't really count. But it is the greatest story ever told by the most honest writer who ever lived. The writer who almost made all the others redundant. . . .

Math homework. . .

                I am not particularly concerned that Doug Ford might want me to take a math test. Mainly because I’m not convinced I will need to prove any more competence than the level I’m qualified to teach. I’m a Junior/Intermediate teacher whose teachable was English. I am the English teacher, I teach English. Will they really make me master grade 12 trigonometry? Nobody ever asks me to teach trigonometry because that’s not what I was hired to teach. I never claimed I could teach trigonometry.   It’s not on my resume, not on my OCT profile. In short, it’s not my field. I fully expect to prove competence in own field and don’t expect even the Ford Government to care what I can do outside of it (and Mr. Ford’s field exactly?).

                The other important words here are Junior-Intermediate. I work with kids. I know as much math as I need to teach to kids. That is, grades four-to-nine. At the junior-intermediate level, your ability to work with kids is more important that subject knowledge. It’s good to have subject knowledge, because kids are better served by knowledgeable people, but your specialty are your pupils, not your subject. So if Mr. Ford wants to test me, I will prepare for a grade nine test (maybe ten), and simply won’t worry about anything past that because I have nothing to prove beyond that.

                Having said all this, I have taught math, and I have enjoyed it. I once spent the better part of a year teaching math to a young man preparing for his college entrance exam. We started at Grade 6 and blazed through to grade eleven, before I had to hand him over to an expert. They didn’t give him to me because I was a mathematician; they gave him to me because I was the only teacher he trusted and could form a good working relationship with. In teaching, that sort of thing matters – or used to anyway. We learned together. I was challenged and stretched in brand new ways and pulled off things I’d never have seen myself doing. Any subject can be enjoyable if you like your students, but I actually found I myself enjoying the math – it was like working through a puzzle. Solving a mystery. Some nights it actually felt like a game. So I’m not afraid of Mr. Ford’s test.

                A lot of arsty-fartsy types have convinced themselves they’re hopeless in math, usually they’re shell-shocked by childhood horror stories – sleep deprivation, humiliation, self-loathing etc. They should tell themselves what they tell their pupils “You’ve Got This. You CAN do this.” It’s amazingly affirming and empowering to do what you never thought you could do.

                As teachers, I think it behooves us to step outside our boxes. Teaching only what comes easy to us can make us complacent at best or out of touch at worst. I found I had to work harder, prepare more, pay greater grater attention to different learning styles, and to empathize more. I had to teach myself before I could teach anyone else, and realized if something didn’t work with me, it definitely wouldn’t work with anyone else. I had to explain things the way I wished somebody would have explained it to ME back in school, and I could anticipate difficulties because they were the same ones I was having.

                On thing I noticed was how inadequate the resources tended to be. Text book examples often had nothing to do with the exercises the preceded (showing us how to do two step problems then giving us three step problems for example). Answer keys almost never demonstrated how the answers were arrived at. Instructions were often not clear. These materials were designed by experts, and deemed adequate by experts for the benefit of potential experts. They figured they need only demonstrate a concept, and all else could be extrapolated from that. It didn’t occur to them that it might not be enough. That some folks might need more examples, more explanations, more practice. . .

                Off topic a little, ESL resources are a lot like that. Native English speakers are all experts, having unconsciously mastered a ridiculously inconsistent and arbitrary system of rules and idiosyncrasies.  Even (presumably) experienced ESL instructors will assume prior knowledge, or overlook anomalies they themselves simply take for granted. I have yet to find an exercise book, for example, that doesn’t introduce new concepts half way through, say, switching the verb tense during an exercise on pronouns. For us native speakers, the adjustment is as natural as breathing and unconscious as digestion. For a language learner, it’s a whole new lesson, thrown at them while they’re trying to learn something else. We simply don’t anticipate how weird our language really is, and throw up more road blocks without even realizing it.

But that’s for another post. At the moment, we’re talking about Ford’s math test. Could Ford pass such a test? I don’t suppose it’d be any less important for a public official?  But what do I know, a mere teacher.

Now, I suppose they could insist on hiring only mathematicians to teach in schools, though they’d have a fine time finding teachers after that. I draw the parallel to French. When I graduated, only French native speakers and those with University degrees in French could teach French. Perhaps not coincidentally, they couldn’t find anyone to teach French. It was the only kind of teacher they did not have a superabundance of. I thought it curious that they would entrust me, expect me, DEMAND me, to teach kids all about budgeting, healthy eating, sex education, self-esteem, technology, spiritual awareness, consumer awareness (if not critical thinking), patriotism, bullying, geometry, geography, history, baseball, football, soccer, volleyball, reading, writing, and ‘rithmitic. . . but they didn’t trust me to teach nine-year olds how to count to ten en Francais. Whatever. Let ‘em find someone they do. Good luck with that!

A Word on The Jake

When my youngest brother was twelve (which would have made me twenty-one) my youngest brother finally convinced our parents to get a dog. A little Jack-Russel terrier with snow white fur.  He was given the anthropocentric moniker of "Jake", after a band my brother occasionally listened to.

It soon became very clear that such a small syllable was insufficient to encapsulate the force of nature unleashed upon the family - "The Jake" insisted on a title (born of mangling the words "I'm walkin' the dog!" with "I'm walking Jake!" once too often), more befitting his self-declared grandiosity. He was The Jake, the one, the only, the definite article.

It has been said that the Jake was a dog who thought he was a cat - indeed, he at times contained a Louis XIV-like haughtiness more commonly associated with the feline species. He felt entitled to your attention, was covetous of your personal space, and treated your belongings as his own. He could fetch a stick, but certainly wouldn't bring it back. He expected his supper on time, and would accept nothing but the best. He wouldn't touch processed cheese, and turned up his nose at the healthy, low-fat dog-food prescribed by the vet. He would eat standard dog kibble only if it was dipped in gravy, and expected a sizable portion of every evening meal to be set aside for him. He was not much for walking, though he loved going out - stopping to sniff every blade of grass, every pavement nook and cranny, every acorn, pine cone, apple core, turd or blob of bubblegum he came across. Mostly he would just park himself on the front lawn and be content to watch the world go by. This constituted a walk.   Often, he insisted on being carried places, even before his legs failed him and had a legitimate excuse. . . He really liked to be petted.

N

one of which is to say he lacked a dog's spirit or temper. In his early days, he was a little white lightning bolt that largely existed on the periphery of vision, his tangible existence only evidenced by the machine-gun pattering of little paws on hardwood, or sudden impact on the back of the legs. Though he wasn't much for walking, in those days he could run like a laser blast, and particularly liked chasing after cars known to be driven by members of the house-hold. He followed them with a single-minded determination that might have taken him to the end destination if not limited by the exhaustion of his handler.

Jack-Russel Terriers were originally bred to be hunting dogs, and the Jake certainly sought to do his ancestors proud, in braggadocio if not practical result: his method of barking madly in advance of the chase gave more than sufficient warning for any would-be prey.  He had a high pitched, rapid fire yelp that could hit about 100 decibels. This yelp served as greeting, warning, alarm clock and possibly small talk  - it was certainly his preferred means of communication. If he couldn't convince anyone to take him out on the lawn, he was content to sit at the window and watch the world for hours at a time. He was fiercely territorial, and woe-betide any passing pedestrian, dog, squirrel or tree leaf that dared make use of his sidewalk. Often I would go to investigate the source of his indignation, and find nothing there at all. I do wonder what he saw. . .

Vacuum cleaners were his particular nemesis - one needed only to drag it out of the closet to trigger paroxysms of furious barking. I'm sure the hunter in him thought he was confronting some great multi-tentacled beast, which he would take credit for slaying every time one pulled the plug. But any sort of tool or large object seemed to offend him - brooms, rakes, chairs - he would latch on to any one of these things and prevent their use until such time as he found some other distraction (usually food), leaving the intended task of said items irretrievably interrupted.

Office chairs were unquestionably his most bizarre quirk. Sitting on one was enough to draw the Jake's attention, and, following a barrage of barking, he would precede to press his nose against the chair legs right above the wheels, and just drool on the thing. He could produce prodigious amounts of saliva, which would build up in rank pools on the floor.  It was a behaviour he soon grew out of, but one I couldn't begin to understand - perhaps the stainless steel felt good on his snout.

Houseguests were another of the Jake's obsessions. Whether he loved company or hated it I could never quite tell. He would announce their presence with his customary air-raid siren, and challenge them at the door until he grew bored, or they bribed him with kielbasa.  If he took to them, he would claim ownership of them, often by parking himself on their foot until such time as they decided move. Privileged guests had their own unique treatment: when he understood that my grandmother intended to leave, he would promptly go into the closet and fetch my great-grandmother (that is to say, my grandmother's mother's) slippers. The slippers were knit by my great-grandmother some time back in 1984 or some comparable year, and rarely if ever worn due to their uselessness on hardwood floor (and that our shoe-sizes have changed since 1984). He only ever fetched these items when Grandma was leaving. Did he on some level detect the connection? I don't know how he could have, but fact remains he only showed interest in those items when that guest departed.

I'm not sure what the appeal was of sitting on someone else's feet; I suppose he was either being possessive or protective. There's no question he had a protective instinct in him. A cry of "Help Me Jake!" (especially from the window of a departing car) would always get him running, though what assistance he could render was never clear to either of us. The lake was where this instinct came out most strongly. If you jumped into the lake, he would follow you within seconds, and attempt to
shepherd you back to shore. He was an expert swimmer, though no one ever taught him, and he never encountered so much as a puddle outside cottage country, which was visited but once a year. With no doubt my best interests at heart, he would often leap off the dock and follow my canoe, no matter how far out I happened to be. His sense of duty would oblige him to follow until I were obliged to paddle up beside him, lift him out of the water and place him in the bough of the canoe, where he no doubt believed he had just rescued me.

The Jake's hunting instincts were never quite tamed; having failed to catch any squirrels, he contented himself with what he could find in the refrigerator, his crowning achievement being a brand new Maple ham, which he buried under some couch cushions. His ingenuity and athleticism in the pursuit of food knew no bounds - he could could open any fridge or cabinet, find his way onto any table. He could leap up a full metre in the air, snatch a piece of cake from the table and land again, like a Marineland dolphin. It was was probably the only time he could ever be accused of grace, and his clumping thumping stumbling gait certainly never lend itself to that adjective. He was known to make his way to the top of the dining room table and devour the contents of chocolate boxes, for which he would pay a steep price for later, but which seemed to do him no lasting harm - indeed, nothing he stole from the fridge, swiped off the table or found in the yard seemed to do him any lasting harm, as his NINETEEN YEARS would attest.

Nineteen years of rapid-fire yelps. Nineteen years of pitter-pattering paws. Nineteen years of burying his nose in the snow. Nineteen years of welcoming tongue and curious nose. Nineteen years. . .Healthier dogs with healthier diets haven't lasted half so long. 

As the years drew on, and his hunting progress declined, the Jake turned to psychology. He became expert at manipulating his so-called owners into bending his dietary restrictions. He could be reasonably certain of suckering any one of us at any given time into slipping him a little piece of wiener or cheese. With a large family, it only needed to work once. After a while we stopped even trying to resist - when the conversion from dog years was done, and it became clear he would outlive Methuselah, it seemed pointless, almost perverse, to deny him.

He would slow down and quiet down, but still liked to sniff about the lawn, splash about the lake, and never stopped begging for treats. Several years ago he made his peace with the squirrels, and they coexisted quite harmoniously. As recently as this past fall he would up to the bridge and back with me. He needed to be carried in and out of the house, but set down on the lawn he'd get some of his bounce back. He never lost his curiosity. Till the very end he liked being scratched behind the ears, and always obligingly licked the hand that fed him.

Deep down, I don't suppose anyone thought he could go on forever. All the same, no one wanted that fateful day to come. One day he started having seizures, and that was that. He'd overcome all kinds of illnesses in the past, cancer and infections and tooth decay and whatever nature could throw at him, but this time there'd be no coming back. Even if they could have stopped the seizures, the treatment would effectively leave him brain-dead. Nothing could have been done.

In the end, it was not my decision to make, but I wouldn't have done things any differently. Nature chose the day - I'd like to think Jake himself chose the day. He went when it was right for him and not a minute earlier. I absolutely don't regret not rushing him. Again, it wasn't my decision, but if no one else in the family saw any reason to take that road before it was absolutely necessary - to jump the gun so to speak - I certainly didn't disapprove. Sometimes, society seems to me a bunch of Carlsons from Of Mice and Men, all too anxious. I'm conscious of the idea of animal suffering. But I also know it's the instinct of every living thing to survive, to stay alive. Always ask yourself who's misery you're putting them out of.

The Jake was a survivor. He clung to life. When he got sick, we always tried the treatment first - it always worked, and he always rebounded. Until one day he didn't. I don't think he knew what death was, but I don't think for a minute he would have embraced it. I don't believe for a minute he resented us for making every effort and meeting every expense to make him well, and if he got another year, another six months, another week of walks, naps and snacks out of the deal, I don't believe for a minute he regretted it. He snatched up every possible minute, and finally went at a time of his choosing.

I still haven't set foot in the laundry room where he used to sleep. I don't want to see his empty bed, his untended dog dishes half-filled with untouched kibble. I don't want to see his little blankets covered in doggy paws and little bones. I don't want to see his leash hanging from the doorknob, but I don't want to see the doorknob without a leash hanging from it. I don't want to trip over another chewy toy (mainly ignored - shoes were preferable). I don't want to remove the poop-bags from my coat pockets because I don't want to know I won't be needing them. 

Technically, I never got to say goodbye. I'm not too bothered about it because our every parting for quite a while had been something of a good-bye. To my mind dealing with loss largely means being at peace with the impermanence of everything. Failing that, there are always dreams of heaven. If the Jake finds himself in doggy heaven, I doubt it'll be too different from what he left behind. There will mountains of kielbasa and cheese, and no idiotic peoples going "uh uh". There will be legions of squirrels (who can still outrun him) sweeping across endless lawns, and miles and miles of sidewalk he can sniff at leisure. And should I find myself lucky enough arrive in such a place, I will be greeted by the thumping of little paws, a shrill little bark and a tugging at my hem. The meaning will be the same as it always was: "Where you been?"

Until then, so long pal. You were a pain. But you were my kind o' pain.