written by Charles Hart and Shannon Four, 1918
A writer first made the connection between the poppy and battlefield deaths during the Napoleonic wars of the early 19th century, remarking that fields that were barren before battle exploded with the blood-red flowers after the fighting ended. Continue reading
Here, out west, it’s hunting season, and typically that means that NoMeansNO should be passing through the territory. I take a gander at the band Web site and see that, yes indeed, the best Canadian band ever set off on a countrywide peregrination just yesterday.
See them while you can, fellow sapiens, for the season will come when that wizened trio gaze out onto the vastness of the Hardcore Logo circuit and judge it no country for old men. That’ll be a sad day for Punk Rock, implacably sad like the end of the Selfish Giant (which reminds me not to pogo so much this time; this is no country for old knees).
We don't quit on a tour poster just cuz it's got a little wear and tear
And for your further edification, here is an old short story/review I wrote about seeing the band on their Mr. Happy tour (93/94).
Dedicated to Ian Thatcher, Trotsky scholar and my office-mate who got this story started when he said, and here I paraphrase; Nationalism is terrible, internationalism is even worse. Parochialism – that’s the thing!
Also to Fyodor Mikhailovich Dostoevsky, from whose Besy (The Devils or The Possessed) I have thieved liberally.
Believe everything you hear. Nothing is too impossibly bad.
Balzac
The whine of the radio followed Evil Jim as he sauntered from his van up the access ramp toward the Trans-Canada highway. He reached the highway proper and made his way along the shoulder against the flow of such traffic as there was an hour before the first sign of dawn. He wore a faded denim jacket under an armless shirt in lumberjack plaid. His right hand gripped a small paint can and thin brush, a rickety step-ladder creaked and rattled in his left. Kicking an unrecognizable dead furry thing out of his path, he set the ladder down into shallow divots in the earth just off the highway shoulder, and clambered up to the face of a road sign. “Next Exit Moose Flats, All Services 4 Kilometers” it read. With a sure and steady hand, Evil Jim drew a slash above the 4, then a 1 above the slash. The patch over which he had painted was substantially thicker than the rest of the sign, layer upon layer of old paint, revision, correction, revision, correction. Just how far was it to Moose Flats? A mere point two five kilometers, for the moment.
Job done, Evil Jim strolled back the way he had come, chortling. That was another easy fifty the mayor owed him. He swung the open paint can to the beat of his strides, then wheeled it full-circle over his head. From somewhere in the misty past, the strange word ‘centrifugal’ came into his mind and he felt all the more pleased with himself for the recollection of it. As he approached the off-ramp Jim spied a near-mirror image of himself coming the other way – same shaggy appearance, same wiry frame and ambling cocky gait, the same implements in hand. The image saluted him with a paint brush and called, “How’s it hanging, Evil Jim?”
“Hangs straight down but it drips a little, Gator Bob.” Evil Jim’s voice remained flat with a slight ironic curl, a studied manner of speech rendered less effective by the fact that his nasal passages whistled at each sibilant, an effect of cartilage displaced by one of an uncounted number of blows to the face. Pulling the paint brush out of the can, Evil Jim flicked the excess reflective white into the off-road gloom, and then tapped the handle on the rim of the can. “It’s all good,” he concluded. “Good good good.”
“Geoff” is some sort of Viking affectation. Guys who spell their name with a “Geoff” think they have some sort of blanch when it comes to Yid-bashing a la carte. The whole thing – and I have yet to see this happen – invariably devolves into a total tabloid Rasta of Jamaican dick-swinging proportions. Till you tiddle in your trousers, pressed by a fear of the men’s room and preferring to be derided for a Piss-in-Boots. I think you know what I am saying (with a non-verbal wink). The hole does not bare fruit enough for me, and that is horde won booty. Know doubt.
Sorry, I was channeling a disconcert of beatnik Jazz. It has passed, though not entirely. Where was I?
Okay, before you all start calling in to complain, I know that that was a crap song. I played it so I could complain about it. I’ve been a fan of Weatherproof for years, but this latest release stinks so bad it makes me want to go home and ritualistically destroy all of their albums. We’re used to seeing bands start out full of fight and beans, only to get all soft, mellow and vague as commercial success approaches. These guys are running in the opposite direction, getting more and more strident. But it all rings false, like they’ve totally run out of their own ideas.
I hate it when bands start trumpeting the big causes like they’re the first ones to think of them. Side one, track three – Ozone Tan. Gee, I hadn’t heard about that issue. I guess the rhythm section spends its spare time monitoring greenhouse gas emissions. And side two, track one – Disney Dream Killer. What? This multinational mega-corp isn’t run by sexless, selfless, fun-loving elves? I find that so hard to believe.
When we do finally get it through our heads that chanting Give Peace a Chance gets us nowhere. Might as well be Hare Krishna.
To top it off, they’ve got Rosa Luxemburg on both sides of the album waving a big red banner. It says Greed Kills on the front and Fight Corporate Conformity on the back. Let me tell you, fight corporate conformity all you like, it won’t even notice. It’ll just step right over you. It might break wind, but it won’t break stride.
Now I’ll shut up and play a heart-ripper of a love song, the sort of thing that takes actual guts to perform. Some are merely haunted by memories of a romance gone bad, others are visited nightly, lashed to the bed frame and thrashed without mercy. Here’s For Shame of Doing Wrong, a Richard Thompson song rendered by Yo La Tengo.
Mayor Nathaniel Malech assumed his chair at the head of long and ostentatiously appointed hall. Mock chandeliers gave the room a warm yellowish glow. The who’s-who of Moose Flats were sprawled around the hall, chatting of this and that. He perched his posterior on the tip of his chair and cracked his knuckles. Everyone was talking. Into the hum of babelogue he said, “Committee is about to be in session. None of us is quite so stupid as all of us put together. We will begin dumming down to the weakest link.” Scanning the room, he said, “I believe that would be you, Duncan.” Duncan Mackie gave him a lazy middle finger. Malech smiled in response, then looked at his watch. “Dumming down in four, three, two, one – we are all stupid, and committee is now in session.”
“Ladies,” he paused to draw a weary breath, “ladies and gentlemen, four score and twenty years ago brave and strong men settled here, our forefathers. They built a modest settlement into a town, and a modest town into a great municipality – Moose Flats. I have been your mayor for eighteen years. Prior to that, my father endured the burdens of this office for an even greater tenure, and I tell you honestly and with profound gravity that our fair city has never faced a challenge more threatening in all that time than the one with which it must grapple today.
Continue reading
Believe everything you hear. Nothing is too impossibly bad.
Balzac
On the morning of the first murder, Moose Flats awoke as usual, early but lazily. The town yawned, stretched its workman’s muscles, scratched itself in damp, hairy places, and lumbered into the day, half-blind and blinking but confident of encountering nothing new or unusual, let alone dangerous.
From the dried-out marshes surrounding Greyere’s Hill in the north east, to West Point, where the C.P. railroad emerged from a thicket of grain elevators to cut across the highway access road, the town sweltered in the August heat. Long before noon, tar patches on the streets were beginning to melt. Black, thick, sticky ooze crept down the creases and cracks of the asphalt, drawn by a purposeless gravity, making meaningless progress through a day dead and dull.
Continue reading
Across the blistering town, nestled under the bald glower of Greyere’s Hill, sat the cozy two-level home of Dr. Speck, on what had been swampy ground ideal for hunting frogs and snakes before it had been drained, filled, leveled and planted with trees that had yet to expand into any kind of shelter. The hill itself was not part of the doctor’s allotment, but he regarded it as such and had been known to come bursting out his back door, storming up the hill and waving an ax handle to frighten off children who had gathered there to play. Kids who had already reached their defiant years returned the favour by periodically pasting his stucco with eggs. The good doctor endured this indignity only briefly before acquiring a pair of vicious mastiffs named Frankenstein and Mengele. So the kids taunted the dogs – making them meaner – and tossed their little white bombs from a greater distance, and the civil war of petty means but implacable animosity bubbled on.
As the only significant point of elevation in the municipal area, Greyere’s Hill had, in winters past, attracted tobogganners, sledders and super-slider-snowskaters from all over the district. Happy days of exploiting gravity for fun and thrills came to an abrupt end when young Ronnie Renchuk flew down the hill on an immaculately waxed crazy carpet and into a string of barbed wire that mysteriously lay concealed in a drift fifteen yards nearer to the hill’s bottom than it had been when the snow first began to fall.
Continue reading
By the evening of the first (and second) murder, Moose Flats had swollen up like a blister. Tortured all day by an implacable sun and oppressive humidity, it now seethed with resentful and bloody-minded gossip. Hours of climatic punishment had taken a toll on civility, discretion, patience, and manners. The phone lines in the cool beneath the city streets might have melted in their casings had they been heated by the contents of the conversations they carried. The Rorshak killing received the greater attention. The couple had always been much talked about. What with their wealth, epic drinking bouts, and the frequency with which they left visible marks on each other, there was never a shortage of unkind things to say. Cruel things were still being said, now that one had slaughtered the other, but with less venom. In fact, every word on the subject, irrespective of the spirit in which it was uttered, had taken on a singular awe that verged on reverence – reverence, not for the loss of the victim, the soul of the killer, or the violence of the event; it was, instead, the giddy natural animal response that attends a visit from death – thank you for taking someone else.
Less was said about the CRAK murder – less could be. The victim and very likely, it was agreed, the perpetrator were aliens, and the event really might have occurred on another planet. Many who expressed the strongest opinions could not have named the young man from Kitchener who had been strangled, stabbed and left dead in studio B. Had the Rorshak incident not eclipsed his killing, the general emotive response would have been the same. The borders of human compassion were as parochial in Moose Flats as anywhere else you might hit the map with a dart.
Continue reading
Mickey’s was far emptier than usual and the CRAKers had the coveted rear patio to themselves. Out of respect for the day’s tragedy, most locals thought it unseemly to head out for evening cocktails. Concerned friends and neighbours converged on the Rorshak homestead, intending to share their shock, grief and concern with young Kevin, the sole member of the family still at liberty. They brought pans of squares, casseroles, pots of bland and hastily prepared soup and plates of perogies that had languished at the back of the freezer since the previous Christmas. But Kevin was not there and as there was, perforce, naught to be done but mill about and exchange meaningful glances, so they did in their wake without a body. It fell to Millicent Mesanchuk, nearest and dearest friend of the family, to serve as surrogate hostess. She moved the substantial contents of the Rorshak liquor cabinet to the dining room table where the visitors would feel less awkward about helping themselves to dead man’s booze. She located a strategic outlet for Father Pat’s electronic keyboard, whereupon he soundtracked the occasion with a series of solemn dirges: March of the Slavs neatly segued into Wreck of the Edmund Fitzgerald. Millie tended the event as one might coax a campfire on wet ground: guiding each new piece of kindling to the spot where it was most likely to take, encouraging each spark of conversation with her own delicate puffs and, when things began to fizzle, pouring on the accelerent.
The arrival of the mayor and his wife took the pressure off. He would hold the floor now, glad-hand and make grave and compassionate pronouncements. And his good wife would do the rounds as well. Kitty Malech’s talents lay in two areas: manicure and an ability to infer saucy innuendos in every comment ever addressed to her by any male interlocutor. “How do you do, Mrs. Malech?” “Oh, and wouldn’t you like to know, you naughty thing!” She arrived in fur despite the lingering heat, with her hair bound up into a vertical column and cascading down on all sides like a ginger shower. Whether time would have been cruel to her looks would never be known – surgical interventions intended to extend their shelf life had left her resembling the last peach in the barrel. She’d lost none of her airs, though, and the rough-handed farm women hated her and never missed an opportunity to snigger at the unnatural tightness of her cheeks or the bouffants terribles she sported.
Continue reading
