Tess of the d’Urbervilles

I finally finished this book.

It was a hard one to get through. I found Thomas Hardy’s writing hard to read through at times, although that probably had a lot to do with the fact he voiced the dialogue. The dialogue was in many cases tough to understand, as it was as the Brits of that era and locale spoke.

On the whole, despite this book being a legend and a classic, I’m not a huge fan. I try to read some of the well-renowned classics, to see what I’m missing, but this is one where I’m not sure what I got out of it. I just found it a tough slog and hard to truly see what was going on.

There were some events and episodes only alluded to, and not explicitly stated. Like Alec d’Urberville’s rape of Tess. Or whether Tess and Angel had sex while at the dairy. For the former, the only indication of what happened with Alec as far as I could tell is that suddenly Tess was with child. In the case of the latter, I believe there was reference to Tess and Angel ‘making love,’ which is code for having sex. But by no means is that spelled out. I’m sure the Victorians would have seen the true facts, but I could not.

Now, don’t for a minute think I was looking for graphic depictions of rape and consensual sex. I just would have been better with being able to tell what happened.

Anyway.

I don’t really have that much more to say on the book. I found it hard to get through because of the language and allusions used, and I never really got into it.

It may be a classic, but I didn’t feel it.

This can’t be happening to me

I think I’m losing my Ontarioness and my elitism.

Allow me to explain.

When it comes to road and street names, I prefer to refer to them by their actual names. For example, if I were to tell someone how to get to Linaria from Barrhead, I would tell them to head north on Hwy 33 to the intersection with Hwy 18 and head east to Hwy 776. Because that’s how you get there. Linaria is just off Hwy 776.

Now, I’m noticing my language is changing. I’m starting to adopt the colloquial speech of the locals. And it bothers me. It really does.

What is this colloquial speech, you ask? I shall explain by stating how the locals here would tell you to get from Barrhead to Linaria.

Head north out of town. Turn east at the two-mile corner. Then turn north up the Linaria highway.

To be clear, that only works for locals. For someone who has no clue about the geography of the area, you still have to use the road numbers.

But I keep catching myself refer to roads as “the Pickardville turnoff” or intersections as “the Clyde corner.” Yes, I know those are probably the easiest ways to refer to those places, but it still grates at me. I’m not some yokel. I’m a sophisticated city dweller who uses the proper names for things.

Although, perhaps I should go whole hog and start calling them bunnyhugs. Because that’s such a cool word.

I like word play…

So I found this online:

And this as well:

Anyone have any guesses what they are?

A little annoyance

Just reading a story on bad trades NHL teams have made.

In many cases, the story talks about draft picks that were traded, including the player selected. For the most part, it’s written as if the position of the draft pick directly resulted in the player selected.

A prime example:

The Anaheim Ducks receive a first-round pick (Corey Perry) for two second-round picks (Vojtech Polak, B.J. Crombeen) from the Dallas Stars.

The Dallas Stars were looking for more picks so they traded down, which proved to be costly. The Ducks wound up with Hart Memorial Trophy winner Corey Perry while the Stars got two players who only played sparingly at the NHL level.

I’m sorry, but this makes it appear as if the Ducks got Corey Perry in the trade, while the Stars essentially gave him away.

My issue here is that it’s pointless to mention who the draft pick became. The Stars may have used that pick on someone else entirely, and therefore did not give away Perry. Maybe they had no intention of drafting Perry even if he was available.

–

On another note, just because he’s back – Sidney Crosby.

People need to realize that the only reason he’s a Penguin is because Pittsburgh won the lottery that year. It fundamentally has nothing to do with how bad the Penguins were the previous season; it was pure luck.

Don’t believe me?

Read this. It discusses how the Penguins had a greater chance at the top pick, but not an iron-clad guarantee.

Wow

I was looking at my LinkedIn profile today, and I came to a surprising realization.

I’m in my seventh month here in Barrhead.

I spent nine in Westlock.

And both of them lasted longer than Meadow Lake did.

Wow. Time sure does fly.

Here’s what I think about Valentine’s Day

Like I promised, albeit a few days late — my thoughts on Valentine’s Day as a grumpy, old, single curmudgeon.

Enjoy.

Well what do you know? It works out that I get to write a Valentine’s Day column. On Valentine’s Day, no less. Sometimes I wonder whether the fates conspire to let me do what I want. I think they do.

So. I’m not a fan of this day. Nope. I don’t particularly like Valentine’s Day.

Well, that’s not completely true. I like it in as much as I know that it’s the day I can set my watch by to know when I can get cheaper candy and chocolate. You know the drill. The day after major holidays, the junk food goes on special. And I often like to take part in that ritualized overspending by a lesser degree than I could have two days earlier.

But that’s about the only part of the day I enjoy.

The rest of it? The lovey-dovey hugs and kisses and endless declarations of love for one’s significant other? No thanks.

It’s overkill, and frankly, offensive.

Here you have these people, who by some corrupted sense of entitlement, think they can rub their mutual weirdness in the faces of others.

OK, if you’re wondering where I got the idea to link love and weirdness together, here you go: “We’re all a little weird. And life is a little weird. And when we find someone whose weirdness is compatible with ours, we join up with them and fall into mutually satisfying weirdness – and call it love – true love.” That’s from Robert Fulghum’s True Love.

Sure, I suppose I am a little bitter about my current situation. Scratch that. I am quite bitter about my current situation.

But I’m pretty sure that if I were in a better position at the moment, I would still feel this way. I’m confident I wouldn’t be buying into the outright consumerist malarkey that everyone is encouraged to buy into on special occasions. It’s not my style.

Romantic dinner out at a fancy restaurant? Too expensive. It’s cheaper, and more fun, to cook together.

Expensive jewelry? What value would it have if you weren’t encouraged to buy it? Think about it, jewelry is just a metal or coloured rock dug out of the ground.

Fancy lingerie? Well, I’m cool with that. It has its practical uses outside Valentine’s Day. Go nuts, I say.

Whatever happened to showing your significant other that you love and care for him or her through words and actions? Have we become so tied to our things that we forget that we once had to make do in the world with little more than the clothes off our backs?

I like to believe our caveman ancestors didn’t go around showering their spouses (if such a thing existed back then) with gifts. Instead, I tend to think they were too busy, oh, I don’t know, staying alive.

And what shows more love than being able to protect one’s family?

Actually, I think I’ve figured out what all this consumerist hogwash is. Since we don’t need to fight off sabre-toothed tigers and other predators, maybe now the only way to show love IS through material things.

Bah. I’m still not buying it.

Sudden changes

It is beyond remarkable how quickly things can change. How quickly your life can be thrown for a loop that you never see coming.

But isn’t that how things work? You can never predict what’s going to happen one moment to the next. Sure, you can read the signs, if there are any, but you can only speculate what the signs may mean.

I wish I could say more about what I’m referring to, but I’ve been asked not to say anything. And that’s hard, because I like talking about things. And what has just happened begs for me to be talking with people. I need to be talking to people about this.

It’s left me scared and shocked. More scared than I’ve ever been.

And there’s nothing I can do about it. I’m too far from where everything is happening, and I don’t like that feeling of being so far away.

I’m not ready for this. Can you ever be ready for something so life changing?

I don’t think so.

Sometimes I wonder

So I’m listening to the podcast of an episode of CBC’s This Is That, and they just played the section where listeners call in with their thoughts on last week’s stories.

And I know the CBC had to run news stories that stressed unequivocally that This Is That is improvised comedy. But, sometimes I think that there are people who don’t realize that the show is all fake. One of the callers said she put shame on the Alberta MLAs who settled scores with a snowball fight.

Of course, maybe I’m too sensitive. Maybe these callers are all in on the joke and are feigning indignation. I hope so, but I doubt it.

Tom Sawyer and Huckleberry Finn

Well, I finally did it. I finally read me some Mark Twain. I knew I always meant to sit down and read some Mark Twain, but I simply never got around to doing it.

That was until I found a combined copy of The Adventures of Tom Sawyer and Huckleberry Finn sitting on a shelf in the house I used to live in when I was still living in Westlock. (For the record, the official titles are The Adventures of Tom Sawyer and The Adventures of Huckleberry Finn. But, since it’s a combined book, the titles were combined. However, the two stories are clearly separated.)

I have to say, they were quite interesting books to read. I already had a bit of an idea of what they would be like and what the story was, given that the books have been spoofed by many different TV shows. But, as is usually the case, the spoofs leave a lot out.

In both books, I had some trouble understanding everything, which had to do with the type of English used by Twain. It was Southern U.S. English, so it was chock full of words and turns of phrase that aren’t seen today.

One example that sticks out is “warn’t,” which appears to be what we today call “wasn’t” or “weren’t.” In some cases, it really was a form of “weren’t,” and it was only “warn’t” on account of the Southern drawl Tom and Huck had.

In the Huckleberry Finn story, I really had a hard time with the speech of a certain set of characters — the niggers. Their nigger-speak was quite difficult to discern in written form.

Now, at this point I’m sure you’re all calling me some form of racist for using the word nigger. Well, as an erstwhile scholar, I feel justified in using the terms Twain used, even though they’re out of vogue now. In short, grow up. I’m using it in context, which is acceptable.

Back to the nigger-speak. Yes, that was how they spoke, or how Twain interpreted them as having spoken, but it’s quite foreign to today’s eyes. Today’s ears surely could understand it, but to see it written down, it was quite a challenge to understand.

Since I’ve brought up the now-racist language in the books, or rather assumed you, my loyal readers had accused me of something, I may as well touch on that.

I actually thoroughly enjoyed the now-racist language in these books. Why? Because I’m tired of all this politically correct B.S. that today’s society throws at us. I think it’s refreshing to read something that just calls it like it is. Now, it’s necessary to remember that when Twain was writing these books in the 1870s and 1880s, such language (nigger, injun, etc.) was common for everyone.

No one thought of the devious meanings. I dare say no one even saw anything wrong with the words. I would argue there’s nothing inherently wrong with those words, only that they’ve been stigmatized because of the past negative situations in which they were used.

I wouldn’t go around proclaiming that Black people should be called niggers, nor that Natives should be called injuns (although some do prefer to be referred to as Indians), but strictly speaking there is nothing wrong with those words. In my opinion, of course.

Anyway, I seem to have rambled off my planned course. Oh, who am I kidding? I never really plan any of these things out.

So with that in mind, I’m going to wrap this up. I want to get to reading some Margaret Atwood. The Blind Assassin is an interesting read, for different reasons than Tom Sawyer and Huckleberry Finn were.

It’s good to go home

Many people will tell you you can never go home again. I know it’s a lot more complicated than the words make it out to be, but I do have to disagree. You can ALWAYS go home.

Sure, it might not feel like home, but it will always be home.

Take, for example, my recent trip back home to The Centre of the Universe.

i.e. Muddy York.

i.e. Hogtown.

i.e. Toronto.

I went back, really, for only one reason — a wedding. Alas, it was not mine. Instead, it was the wedding of a friend I’ve only known since our first year at Carleton. I would call K a good friend. We had many classes together, and we had many dinners together in our fourth year, as we lived on the same floor.

This wedding marked the second time I had travelled half way across this wonderful country to get to the nuptials of a friend. And interestingly enough, both weddings saw my fly from YEG to YYZ. It seems the only reason I use YEG is to go to a wedding. Strange.

Anyway, the wedding wasn’t the only reason I went home. Well, it was, but that’s not all I did while I was there. No sirreebob. Is that even a word? It is now.

But seriously, the wedding is not all I did when I was home. I took advantage of being back in the 416 to see some people I hadn’t seen since last year when I left that thriving metropolis.

And let me tell you, being with them again, even for only a short while, was something I needed. I needed to be reminded that there are people out there who love me and are there for me if I need them.

Sure, that may sound cheesy, but it’s true. Of the five people I made it a mission to see, one I’ve known since I was only 27 days old. Two I’ve known since we were both four years old. The other two I’ve known since Grade 9. In other words, I’ve known them all for more than a decade. That’s a long time for being only 25.

And with each of them, I caught up on what was going on in their lives. And it gave me a chance to vent about things in my life that I can’t easily vent about out here. And if you can’t tell from reading this, venting is something I like to do.

Then there’s the things you can learn about the people you’re with. And the things we trust each other with. I’m thinking about what one of the lovely ladies I saw said, and how it’s something I never thought I would hear from her. It was quite the bombshell she dropped on me. Then again, she now knows something about me that I never would have admitted. Granted, she did pull it out of me, so yeah.

So what else happened at home? Well, I think I met a girl. We’ll see how that goes. Wish me luck. The story behind our meeting is quite interesting and fraught with worries that I cocked up.

I got to ride the new Toronto Rockey subway train. So cool. If you’ve never done it, I highly advise it. But, word to the wise (wow, I never thought I’d use that phrase in real life) ride it during off-peak hours. You’ll get a better impression of it when it’s not packed to the gills like in rush hour.

I also got back on our glorious streetcars. And the SRT. I prefer not to think about that.

Got to see the Santa Claus Parade for the first time since high school. That was nice, except for the kids and parents who seem to think that they can jump to the front of the crowd five minutes before the parade starts when some of us (i.e. me) were there for hours beforehand.

And now I’m back in Barrhead. Back at work. Not nearly as cool as the CotU, but it’s my home. Ish.