The Iraq War Comes Home to Onion Field, Ontario

Today the son of a friend of mine is being sent to Iraq. My friend's son joined the U.S. military months ago, and this is the culmination.

Also, I once knew one of the Canadians who was taken hostage in Iraq. His name is Jim Loney, and he was a good guy. I hope that he and the other hostages are returned quickly and safely.

Christian agency blames U.S. for kidnappings

Video

From my as-yet-unpublished novel -- an experience I had in New York City with Jim in the late 1980s when I belonged to a Christian youth group:

New York City, March 1988.

One afternoon, I found myself standing on the sidewalk of Times Square, with two alcoholic, drug-addicted teenagers—each a year older than I—wondering how the hell that came to be.

... Jim asked if I wanted to join him on a visit to “some radical Catholics” who ran a Catholic Worker House—a soup kitchen and neighborhood mission—on New York’s Lower East Side. Having spent the day with Gary and Reg, I needed a break from them, and from the cramped hotel room. I said sure. Around seven o’clock, we went out to the van, leaving Gary and Reg to play cards and watch TV in the room.

The ride to the Catholic Worker House was like a descent into the murkiest neighborhoods of Scorsese’s Taxi Driver. From the van’s window, I watched with growing apprehension as the neighborhoods we passed grew increasingly grim, increasingly dingy and forbidding. I said nothing, though—the cornerstone of his beliefs was faith.

The Catholic Worker House stood in the most blighted, blown-out neighborhood I ever saw in my life. After Zak dropped us off, Jim and I inadvertently saw more of the neighborhood than we intended—it was only then that Jim told me he wasn’t sure of the address of the Catholic Worker House.

We stood on the sidewalk, looking up at the crumbling, weathered buildings before us, searching for a light, the flicker of a television, any sign of life. There was none. Few of the darkened doorways even had addresses. Finally, Jim and I walked down the block.

As he looked for the address we needed, I surveyed the neighborhood, and felt a sick-certain sense that the street was almost entirely abandoned: seeing crumbling staircases leading up to unlit doorways; garbage strewn in moldering, reeking heaps on the sidewalks, spilled across the potholed road; dented toppled-over trashcans; abandoned, stripped-down, burned-out automobiles parked partly on the road, partly on the sidewalk. The place stank of sewage and garbage and rot. Part of me wondered if the street even appeared on a map. Surrounded by the utter desolation, I thought of the squalor along the southern highways—all those tiny slanting shacks with their fields of busted refrigerators and stoves—as Zak and I drove to New Orleans the previous summer.

The wind picked up, and I turned up my jacket’s collar.

After fifteen minutes, which passed with the slowness of hours, we came to a doorway, above which was a nearly illegible sign: CATHOLIC WORKER HOUSE. We knocked on the door, and waited. No answer. We knocked again. And waited. An excruciating procession of seconds passed before we heard footsteps inside. A naked light bulb winked on above us. The footsteps inside stopped, and I figured that Jim and I were being scrutinized through the fisheye lens in the faded red door. Finally, the door opened and a tall, cadaverous man stood before us. He looked to be in his sixties, wore black-framed Buddy Holly glasses, and had gray hair hanging down to his shoulders.

“We’re closed for the night, boys,” he said. Although he spoke in a subdued, mellow voice, I was nonetheless startled—until that moment, I figured we were visiting people whom Jim knew; with whom he might have previously worked, or gone to school. This was not the case.

“We’re not looking for help,” Jim said, and introduced us. “We’re missionaries,” he said, “and wondered if we could talk to you about how you run a Catholic Worker House.”

“I’m Harvey, I run the place,” the man said, and stepped aside. “Come in if you like.”

The interior was bare and neat; larger than I would have guessed from outside. There was a grungy easy chair with a mismatched seat cushion in the sitting room, an old couch with a coffee can as one of its legs, and a stack of wooden chairs in the corner. Harvey led them through a large, paint-chipped doorway into the kitchen, which looked like an old restaurant galley. We sat at a lopsided kitchen table, on mismatched chairs.

“Will you have some tea?” Harvey said.

We said sure.

He shuffled to the far corner and ran the hot water tap in a large laundry tub. The water came in a torrent, and within seconds a cloud of steam wafted up. He filled a kettle, and from that he poured our tea. When he finally joined us, with his old, stained mug, Harvey and Jim spoke about the poverty in New York.

I sipped his tea, and looked around the room, through the large, paint-chipped doorway, and realized there were no windows looking onto the street. Just as well.

They talked for twenty minutes. Then Harvey rose from his chair. I feared he was going to walk us to the door, say goodnight, and leave us outside until Zak came.

When is Zak coming for us? I wondered, and realized he drove off before we discussed a time. Well, he won’t leave them out here all night, I thought.

“I’ll show you around,” Harvey said. “Not much to show, but you can have a look.”

The second floor housed two makeshift offices, with avalanches of paper overwhelming two slanting desks. We went up another set of stairs, to a third floor, which was a large, dark, unheated room. I was surprised to find people there, seated at a long foldout table, folding pamphlets. Harvey introduced them around. There was a couple who appeared about Harvey’s age, a tall, stocky girl who was about twenty, and a Puerto Rican priest in his thirties, who looked like a prize-fighter. They welcomed us in the same low-key manner as Harvey.

Jim and I sat down, and helped fold the pamphlets—Catholic Worker newsletters—working by the wan light coming through the windows from the street lamps outside. The Catholic Workers told them about their various missions in New York and abroad.

Around ten o’clock, I turned to Jim. “When’s Zak coming back?”

Jim looked at me, puzzled. “He’s not.”

I began to smile, thinking he was joking. Then froze. He was as serious as the night he and Zak asked me to go to Covenant House, posing as a runaway.

“Don’t worry,” Jim said. “We’ll take the subway back to the hotel.”

I blinked, as though flinching from a blow. “The subway?!”

“Yeah.”

The room around me seemed to tilt. “The hotel’s in New Jersey. Do you know how to get there?”

Jim thought for a moment. “No.”

The Puerto Rican priest overheard us. He rose from his chair, and took me over to a faded map of New York City hanging on the wall. He pointed to an area and said, “You ever hear of this place?”

He pointed to HARLEM.

I nodded.

“If you and your friend take the subway, you’ll go through Harlem. I don’t recommend you do that. It’s rough all the way, but Harlem isn’t the place for guys like you.”

I asked Jim to come over. The priest reiterated his warning. To which Jim replied, “We’ll be okay.”

“I hope so,” the priest said.

When Jim and I made our exit, the Catholic Workers wished us luck, and slammed the door. I heard bolt slide home. Then I zipped my jacket, turned up my collar. The wind had not abated. It was beginning to snow.

Walking through that decimated neighborhood, a helpless terror rose in my throat. I slid a hand in my pocket and confirmed a fear that had nagged me since hearing Zak wasn’t coming back for us—I only had a few coins with me; not even a dollar.

We passed an abandoned playground where four rimless backboards stood on a potholed basketball court. Through the fence, on the other side of the playground, I saw a man. He just stood there: a black figure under a lopsided streetlight, watching us.

It was three blocks to the subway, and the street was so dark and deserted we almost walked past the subway entrance. I looked down the stairs, at the dingy urine-colored tiled walls, and knew that every step would be an act of will. Halfway down the stairs, the stench of human waste hit us like a blow.

As we approached the token booth, I showed Jim the few coins I had. He pulled a five-dollar bill and bought our tokens.

Passing through the turnstiles, I glimpsed a transit cop off to the side, watching them with sullen disinterest. I didn’t figure he would be much help if someone robbed us—and wondered if he might not try it himself.

We went to the platform, and waited.

“It’s just like riding the bus,” Jim said. “We’ll have to change trains a few times.”

“Where?”

He shrugged. “We’ll ask for directions.”

I turned away, feeling his stomach sink. Our luck, hedge of protection, whatever, had run out. I was sure of it. There was no way we would get out of that subway alive. It was one thing to stumble into danger, but Jim may as well have led me onto the subway tracks, and started walking toward the growing circle of light at the other end of the tunnel. All I could think about were the hustlers, beggars, pushers, and freaks of Times Square, and I struggled to keep myself from imagining their subterranean counterparts.

And I could be sitting in the hotel room, watching TV, I thought. If I’d only said no.

Then I heard the far-off rumble of an approaching train. When it screeched into the station, we got on, and for the next two hours my thoughts and senses turned inward, readying for the moment we would be robbed, or killed.

I followed Jim without question. We changed trains several times, ran up and down flights of stairs in different stations, catching trains just as the doors were closing. I was not aware of passing through Harlem; it must have come and gone with the blur of place-names I saw in each station. We eventually came to a bus station on the New York-side of the George Washington Bridge.

There was some relief in seeing the bridge; our hotel wasn’t far from it. Just when I was beginning to believe we might survive that night, we were approached by a large man who looked like all the other street people I’d seen that week. I braced for him to ask for money; thinking, if it came down to it, Jim and I could probably take him. When the man smiled, it made no difference—I was terrified; suddenly closer to tears than I had been in years.

“You guys need help?” the man said.

Before I could utter a word, Jim said, “Which bus will take us across the bridge?”

“Most any,” the man said. I watched him. The smile on his face held. “Bus oughta be here in ten minutes.” Then he gave them a few bus numbers for which to watch.

“Thanks,” Jim said.

“No sweat.” The man walked away.

One of the buses he named arrived soon after.

Jim paid the bus fare used with the last of our money.

As we rode across the George Washington Bridge, I gazed at the light-spangled spectacle of Manhattan behind us. It looked vast and unapproachable, yet beautiful in the same dangerous way as spewing lava. Hemmed in by the night sky, and the dark body of the river, Manhattan looked like a constellation, and I marveled that not an hour before, Jim and I had been immersed in it.

The bus driver let us off at the foot of the bridge on the other side of the river. By then, my blood teemed with exhilaration, my head reeled with the sense of having dodged a bullet. Still, we had to find the hotel. There wasn’t even a quarter left between us to call Zak.

The snow continued, and the wind whipped around us. Soon, we began jogging. At one point, the sidewalk down which we ran came to an end. The road forked, veering into a darkened neighborhood, and dropping down to an empty expressway—the one we traversed every day heading to and from Manhattan. Without a word passing between us, Jim and I ran down the on-ramp. My enduring image of that night is the two of us jogging along the shoulder of that vacant thoroughfare, snow flying around us, wind screaming in our ears, the sky dark and indifferent.

We rounded a bend, and the hotel appeared in the distance. It didn’t seem real; part of me was still on the subway, sure I would never see another familiar thing again. We climbed over the concrete median, crossed two lanes of empty expressway, and ran up the access ramp.

As we jogged into the hotel’s parking lot, as we entered the building—where I nearly collapsed in its welcoming warmth—the night’s events suddenly accordioned in my mind. By the time we came to the elevator, I thought, Of course we made it back. What was I so worried about? I looked at Jim, and saw in his eyes a glimpse of realization—he knew we had dodged a bullet, too.

The Wind's at My Back - the Blowhards of Bull Sessions Past

Going back to the theme of "Never mistake a drinking buddy for a friend," I remember all too well the painful conversations he and I so often fell into -- either drunk or suffering with hangovers. Being in one's "right mind" was absolutely not a prerequisite to these drone sessions.

For whatever reason, this drinking buddy was morbidly into "proving" that human life wasn't worth a shit. Or, had any of us lived during more heinous, turbulent moments in history (though the current one is pretty hard to beat on that score) we would have been conquistadors, Nazis, or torturers at Abu Ghraib -- because in that git's groping mind our inability to time-travel made it impossible to conclusively prove we wouldn't have been barbarians in another time.

To my shame, I sat through these dull, windy dissertations. Worse, I actually attempted arguments to the contrary. Christ, just feeding the fire.

During a time when I was reading about the assassination of President John F. Kennedy, the drinking buddy informed me that no single human life was of particular significance. Even that of a president. The conversation is somewhat hazy to me now, but I do recall bringing up the idea that surely someone like Jonas Salk or Albert Einstein were not insignificant (Jesus Murphy, if only I had been content to speak my thoughts plainly: no human life is insignificant!). Oh, how I misjudged the drinking buddy's infatuation with his pet theories. He explained that Salk and Einstein were entirely insignificant because it would only have been a matter of time before someone else made the discoveries attributed to these men.

Rest assured, the former drinking buddy does not work for a suicide hot-line. He could take the gem out of Gidget's donut.

My punishment for being unable to extricate myself from these wretched ramblings was having to sit through the myriad variations of "If you lived in Germany in the 1930s, there's no conclusive way you can prove you wouldn't have been a Nazi." Or, an Egyptian slave-driver, or a blood-thirty Inquisitor, or a village-burning grunt during the Vietnam War. Or, whatever.

When I think of the waste of mind behind such pointless, negative, shit-begotten theories, I again rouge-over with embarrassment at the thought that I sat through thirty seconds of such talk. But I did. O, me.

Well, hindsight and hindthought are upon me. I have finally extricated myself from the rubber-room of the ex-drinking-buddy's bilious theories and arguments.

The only satisfaction I have in retrospect is that, for some reason, the old drinking buddy never forgot an off-hand remark I once made about his cats being very narrowly removed from vermin. If he only knew that I am now the proud property of a cat, for whom I would give a kidney or an eye or a portion of my battered liver to keep her scampering through the house. She is a true friend.

Oh, How the Liberals So Don't Get Why People Are Pissed Off With Them

Not that I want to provide one scintilla of help or advice to Paul Martin's Liberal Party, but I cannot help pointing out just how deaf-dumb-and-blind this shower of wankers really is:

Most Canadians believe the Liberal Party to be fiscally irresponsible. The Gomery Report illustrated (for anyone still requiring written proof) the Liberals' corrupt handling of public funds. So, what are the Liberals doing to make their case to remain in power? Doling out $10 billion in pre-election promises. Or, what we would call in my neighborhood, bribes.

The response the Liberals are hoping for (I'm guessing here, but I think it's a good guess) is that people will hear about all of this money being lavished on Canada, and say, "Oh, well, we've got to keep Paul Martin & Co. in office."

The way I see it, this spending spree by the Liberals only motivates me to vote against them. For twelve years they've proven they can't be trusted with the nation's purse strings, so I'm hoping the election comes in time to stop all or part of this spending frenzy.

Update 11/26/2005

Grits' spree: $2.6B a day: Poll finds 67% cynical about spending vows

Canada Topples Toward Polls - Another Excercise in Flaccid Tyrannical Shake-up

So, Canada topples toward another federal election, and what the hell is the electorate supposed to do?

Go to any of the Canadian political party Web sites and you'll read how each of them believes they are the Second Coming of the Messiah. From the rumblings in the media, I think most voters are like me: they just want to see the Liberals out of power. After a dozen years of arrogant, unresponsive rule, pretty much everyone who isn't part of the Liberal Party has had enough.

While I respond well to fiscal responsibility as preached by the Conservative Party, I'm concerned that they will do for Canada what premier Mike Harris did for Ontario. I realize the Conservative Party aren't PCs, but much of the same "common sense" rhetoric can be heard from them as from the Tories who ransacked Ontario ten years ago.

I'm all for responsible spending of tax dollars and ending waste. Who isn't. But the Mike Harris government approached this like piranha on PCP. When Harris took power Ontario was like an overweight person who had to shed a few pounds -- the excess weight being an analogy for excess spending. Rather than systematically cutting back, the Harris government achieved its fiscal weight loss by amputating the arms and legs from the patient. Yes, Ontario had shed those unwanted fiscal pounds, but was definitely the worse for it. This is what I fear the Conversatives will do.

Plus, the thought of a gaggle of born-again Christian ideologues leading this country gives me the anxiety-fueled screaming-meemies. The only thing worse than Liberal corruption would be the crisp, doily-edged righteousness of right-wingers.

The NDP seem intent on turning the keys to Canada over to the tide of immigrants it lusts to entice and embrace. My family came to Canada as immigrants, so I don't have a bad thing to say about that -- that is, about immigrants who arrive here seeking to contribute. But with the chronic outsourcing of good paying jobs, what exactly are these new Canadians going to do for a living? I fear that the NDP would have us all working for Wal-Mart for starvation wages. Then to turn up the "Tax Treadmill" to supersonic.

The Liberals? Not even an option.

Parti Quebecois? I'm more apt to vote for the Liberals.

Not vote at all? I'm more apt to vote PQ than do this.

So, the funnel of my own rhetoric narrows painfully. Who the hell to vote for?

Immediately Remove Bureaucraps Who Abuse Their Power! Begin with David Marshall

Ban on hiring white men overturned - Nov. 22, 2005. 01:00 AM

HALIFAX—Public Works Minister Scott Brison has overturned a short-lived ban on the hiring of white men by the federal department.

Last week, the department's top bureaucrat sent a memo requiring all new hires from now until April to be "persons who are visible minorities, aboriginal peoples, persons with disabilities and women."

Bureaucrats quickly leaked the memo to the media and the subject was taken up by talk radio stations.

Yesterday, Brison announced he had rejected the policy.

Deputy minister David Marshall should be immediately removed from his position as the miscreant who issued this ridiculous memo and policy.

Bureaucraps like David Marshall are the cogs in the flaccid tyranny that has become Canadian politics. The man should be terminated from his position and forced into the private sector where the arcana of his worldview will sink him like the Edmond Fitzgerald.

It's great news that this discriminatory policy has been quashed, but troubling that the mind that formulated it is still receiving government of Canada pay cheques.

Click this e-mail link and ask that David Marshall be terminated from his position immediately.

My note to Public Works Minister Scott Brison:

Mr. Brison, I am pleased to read in the Toronto Star today that you have rescinded the short-lived discriminatory policy created by Deputy minister David Marshall, regarding the hiring freeze on any and all white men.

I am writing to ask you to follow through on this move and terminate David Marshall, as he has proven himself wholly unfit to hold his position. It's good news his wrong-headed policy has been quashed, but troublesome that the mind that would conjure such a ridiculous solution to a perceived problem is still on the public payroll. He should be asked to step down immediately, as his presence in the Department of Public Works undermines the department's integrity.

Update 11/30/2005:

Response from the Department of Public Works:

On November 18, Public Works and Government Services Canada (PWGSC) issued a policy concerning a special measure to increase hiring of designated group members from outside the Public Service. While this was a short-term measure intended only to address current shortfalls in representation, it may have been perceived by some as being non-inclusive. This was not the intention.

However, as a result of the concern expressed in this regard, the Department has rescinded this special measure. We apologize for any confusion this proposed measure may have caused. PWGSC remains committed to having a representative workforce.

Working together with key federal departments and stakeholders, including the unions, PWGSC will put in place a comprehensive, long-term strategy to ensure that it is representative and inclusive.

Corporate Communications I Public Works and Government Services Canada
Communications ministérielles I Travaux publics et Services gouvernementaux Canada

Questions@pwgsc-tpsgc.gc.ca I 1 800 O CANADA (1 800 622-6232)
TTY/TDD 1 800 465-7735
Téléscripteur/ATME 1 800 465-7735

Racism is Always Wrong: White males need not apply - "Internal e-mail reveals hiring ban at Public Works"

From The National Post: A major federal department has temporarily banned the hiring of able-bodied white men in an unusual move critics say could spark a backlash against the very disadvantaged groups it is meant to help.

I am sure there is someone (and fear there are many people) out there who could justify this racist policy up and down to me. I'm not interested in justifications. David Marshall, the deputy minister of the Public Works department should be fired immediately because he is not interested in seeing the most competent person for a job hired, but the most visibly politically correct person get the job. This is a policy that is as ludicrous as it is unhelpful and damaging to Canada.

The most acceptable prejudice to have these days is against white males. Sure, in the face of Nortel's implosion and Conrad Black's malfeasance, plus two thousand years of Christian atrocities, it's not hard to understand the backlash. But in this society that proclaims to be color/cultural blind, a policy of banning the hiring of any group is utterly and completely unacceptable. Our society is proving that it's simply blind, period.

Whenever I've had the misfortune in my life to deal with bureaucracy, I stop and ask myself, "Who the hell does this system fit?" It sure as shit doesn't fit me.

I honestly believe the only answer to Canada's lust for bureaucracy, and our continual mistreatment by bureaucraps is to systematically empty every single office and department in the Canadian government -- fire, terminate, release, sack every last employee of the Canadian government. Stories of politicians misusing public money are always fraught with outrage, but these desk-bound bureaucraps are truly the thieves of our tax dollars.

Every government employee in Canada should be fired by March 2006 (when David Marshall's racist plan is set to be reviewed), so that, for instance, every single gray-faced minion in the unemployment office will know the feeling of being on the other side of the desk. So that every bureaucrap in this nation will be subjected to the beast they have sustained.

And from this cleansed and purified "zero" point, the most competent people for each and every position should be hired.

Where should The Great Bureaucratic Culling begin?

With David Marshall, of course.

My note to the PM on this matter:

Mr. Prime Minister, I am a resident of Windsor, Ontario and I couldn't be more dissatisfied with the job you're doing leading our country. But that is beside the point of this email message.

I am writing to voice my outrage over the patently racist policy implemented by David Marshall, the deputy minister of the Public Works, which stipulates a hiring freeze on any and all white males. This is a ridiculous, insulting, counter-productive policy that is absolutely contrary to what Canada is all about.

Is Canada not about the most competent person for the job being hired?

Is Canada not about having government employees hired based on their qualifications, experience, and education?

Is Canada not about giving tax payers the most value for their tax dollars by having the most qualified people occupy jobs within the government?

The Canada that David Marshall would have us live in is more about public relations spin, and superficial appearances. It's not about competence and effectiveness, but about complexion, pamphlet photo ops, and political correctness.

You so seldom do the right thing, Mr. Prime Minister, but I hope on this matter you will put your foot down and not allow David Marshall to implement this ridiculous, racist policy. Be assured you would be receiving this note from me regardless of what racial group David Marshall sought to discriminate against. Racism is always wrong. It's an indefensible position from which to form policy.

Please ask for David Marshall's resignation immediately. In fact, do not extend him the courtesy or opportunity to resign from his job -- please terminate him as your way of sending a message across the country that racism in government (or anywhere) is not tolerated in Canada.

To David Marshall:

I am writing with regard (and with great angst and disgust) to David Marshall's racist policy to freeze the hiring of white males in the Department of Public Works until March 31 2006.

Mr. Marshall, it saddens and angers me to think that you need to be informed at this point in your life (and position in my government) that racism in any form is ugly, unacceptable, and a completely invalid position from which to form policy.

You, sir, are a public servant. As part of the public you serve, I tell you straight out that you are wrong in creating a hiring policy that does anything other than bring the most qualified person onboard for whatever job happens to be open. You seem to be more interested in pamphlet photo ops and presenting a superficially "acceptable" look to your department. This is rank and despicable. You appear to be more interested in a Canada based on public relations spin rather than having the most qualified, educated, experienced people take jobs in your department.

As one member of the public you serve, I request your immediate resignation. I have written to the Prime Minister asking him to terminate you outright because I don't even believe you should be afforded the courtesy or opportunity to resign.

Your racist policy is reprehensible, and I assure you that you would be receiving this message from me regardless of the group you sought to discriminate against.

It's clear you're in the wrong job. With your focus on the superficial and cosmetic aspects of commercial life, I think you would be much better suited to work in the advertising agency where you would have free reign to create the phony smiling society your heavy-handedly trying to create starting with you're department.

Update - 11/23/2005

Reply from the Prime Minister's Office:

Dear Mr. St. Amand:

On behalf of the Right Honourable Paul Martin, I would like to thank you for your e-mail, in which you raised an issue that falls within the portfolio of the Honourable Scott Brison, Minister of Public Works and Government Services.

Please be assured that the statements you made have been carefully reviewed. I have taken the liberty of forwarding your e-mail to Minister Brison, so that he too may be made aware of your comments. I am certain that the Minister will give your views every consideration.

P. Monteith
Executive Correspondence Officer
Agent de correspondance
de la haute direction

Today I Became a Verb

A friend was being reamed-out at werk today by his boss -- a place where I once werked in the past. At one point, my friend's boss accused him of "pulling a Matt St. Amand"; as in not bending over and taking the corporate line up the ass.

How I imagine the interchange taking place:

BOSS (insensed): What do you mean you're not going to take the company electric eel between your butt cheeks?! You're either with us or you're against us!

FRIEND silently sticks to his principles

BOSS (spittle flying): You're pulling a Matt St. Amand!

Old Boss, from me to you:

Authora Non-Grata: The Local (F)Lit Scene

There was a filthy, forbidden word in the English department from which I graduated almost a decade ago. This word was seldom uttered in the hallowed halls, only spoken by the uninitiated; rubes; naifs. That word was "publication."

It was the strangest thing. Accomplished professors who were published authors taught literature and creative writing classes -- one poet had more than 1,400 poems published -- and the few times a student had the nerve, the naivete, the sheer idiocy, to inquire about the process of getting one's work published, a pall fell across the seminar room as though a wet fart had been cranked against a hardwood chair. A look of embarrassed bewilderment invariably passed across the instructor's face (an expression uniform to them all), as though the student had asked for public guidance regarding masturbation or revealed a frightening red boil on the underside of his penis. A few muttered words from the instructor to the effect of, "Well, there will be time for that later," and then the writing seminar continued with a palpable air of its rarified hymen having been broken; and the culprit's gaze shunned by the eyes of everyone else.

It seemed the department was devoted to cultivating an entire generation of closet writers whose work was meant only to go from word processors into desk drawers.

More than a few times, I made such a pariah of myself. My question was dodged and ignored every time. I could never understand this, especially when a friend came home to visit from a far-flung, larger, more prestigious university, where he said there was an entire office in the English department devoted to finding publication homes for everything students wrote: when a student wrote an essay or poem or short story, they simply dropped a copy off to the folks in this office, and the folks in the office then busied themselves with submitting the work on behalf of the student until the work was published. It seemed this other, far-flung university had the strange notion that seeing its students' work in print was somehow a feather in its cap; viewed as something positive. I knew that my English department didn't have the resources to run such an office, but the complete intellectual black-out on the subject always struck me as weird and wrong.

In the mid-1990s, my university was so depleted of resources that it could no longer fund a proper "Writer-in-Residence." At one time, my university was known for having such people as Morley Callaghan, W.O. Mitchell, Peter Robinson in the English department as writers-in-residence; accomplished authors available to meet with students.

As my time in the department drew to a close, the department settled for a "resident-writing-professional," a tired local newspaper writer whose reputation for hokum and hollow nostalgia in his work was matched only by his unreliability. I made numerous appointments to meet with this person, and he stood me up every time. It appeared his only function on campus was to occupy that demoted job title and cash the university's cheques.

I once attended a lunch-time lecture he gave on the art of publishing. Finally, I thought, someone's going to speak about the dirty word. My excitement was for naught. This sad, has-been-who-has-never-been stood before a small audience of eager students and rationalized his career of bastardizing his "poetry" in WonderBra advertisements and other such worthy venues. The man was clearly ashamed of his work and his use of it, and vigorously justified himself before us. No one had uttered a challenging word about his career. No one knew anything about it. But the man's shame was like a surface boil. He needed to confess, and confess he did -- wasting a solid hour of our time... never touching upon the dirty word.

One thing those writing seminars taught me is to never mistake a drinking buddy for a friend. A few years after finishing my education, a drinking buddy opened a bookstore and even had a hand in organizing a "festival of the book" in my city. I heard about this around the time my first book was published. The timing could not have been better. A five-minute slot during the book fest, at whatever point they could squeeze me in would have been a wonderful debut for my book. And so it was like an anvil landing on my head when my drinking buddy haughtily informed me I was not invited to read at the book festival. Hurt, I still bought four tickets to the event to show support, though I didn't attend.

The next year, I was again shunned by the book festival. And the year after that.

This weekend the book festival is once again in session (under an altered name, which makes me wonder if its dogged financial troubles haven't necessitated this), and once more I am authora non-grata.

If I didn't care about not being invited, I wouldn't be making this blog post. It's a situation fraught with conflict for me, being shunned by a group I've never sought to be a member of; ignored by people whose opinions and work mean nothing to me; uninvited by people who are not invited into my life and work. So, why would I want to be a part of the book festival? Because it supposedly belongs to the city, not our little tea party literati elite. In 2006, my 5th book will be published -- a full-length novel. And if the rarified folks who run the book festival were true to their word, true to their trite mandate, I would be invited. What grates on me is that this festival, which could be such a positive event in my city, is in fact one more little soiree for our self-appointed elite to masturbate one another.

The moral of the story for me is "Never mistake a drinking buddy for a friend," and never ask anything of professors who view their students as competition.

More Science Fiction Canadian Judas-Prudence

EDMONTON (CP) - A woman who admitted to concealing her pregnancy and later placing her newborn baby in a garbage bag was spared further jail time Thursday.

A Court of Queen's Bench justice sentenced 23-year-old Nicole Anderwald to 90 days for causing the baby's death by neglecting to get help after giving birth and another 40 days for disposing of the infant.

But because she had already spent 3 1/2 months in custody, Justice Terrance Clackson decided to let Anderwald go free. She will be on two years probation.

[Obligatory judicial clarvoyance] "The emotional repercussions will be a cross to bear for a long time to come," the justice added.

... At one point, the court heard, her mother gave her a note asking: "Are you making plans or are you going to dumpster the baby?"

My outrage over this insane, demoralizing story has drained me of satire, vocabulary, and the nearly the will to make this post. I received harsher treatment in school for not finishing my math homework, than this confessed baby-killer has received at the hands of Canadian Judas-Prudence.

Do not be a victim of crime in Canada. If only the citizenry could harness the clarvoyance with which our judges mete out punishments, then maybe we could steer clear of these criminals whom Canadian justices love and empathize with so much. And maybe this story will be a lesson to fetuses, everywhere, that they show better sense in answering biological birthcalls from potential murderers.

I don't even know what the fuck I mean by that. This is just so sickening...

Mr. Justice Terrance Clackson of the Court of Queen's Bench of Alberta should be removed from the bench and disbarred