Wednesday, January 12, 2005
If you haven't seen it, it's new to you
Have you voted yet today? No? Fie on thee, wastrel! Whatever that means.
Well, despite my best efforts (which are really not very good at all), my updates remain as sporadic as they are bad (though my sidebar's recently been culled - *five* missing and presumed dead? Shame on you, hack blogging circle!). It's not that there's nothing about which I could be writing. I mean, I could finally get to that Simon & Garfunkel album review, I could put up my Eric Kierans tribute, or I could write something on how my mind has been focussed on the importance of teachers to the world after attending both a lovely awards ceremony for my incomparable grade five and seven teacher (and a pretty good boxing coach, too) Pierre Rousseau and a lecture by the great Gordon Lee on the same day. Somehow, though, the urge doesn't strike me. I appear to be on a vacation, of sorts. With that in mind, I'm going to tear a page out of some cartoonists' books (not literally - I won't make that mistake for a third time) and publish a few of my past efforts.
Today's rerun is the first piece of writing I ever had published (in Paul Kane High School's student newspaper, the esteemed and defunct "Generation PK"), entitled "Writer's Block, Corporate Punishment, and Black Sevens on Red Eights"). While the piece hasn't held up quite as well as I'd like, apparent in it are some of the elements that make my writing so beautifully distinctive today, such as criminal overuse of paranthetical devices. Anyway, enjoy. Or don't. But don't complain about the lack of new entries.
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Have you voted yet today? No? Fie on thee, wastrel! Whatever that means.
Well, despite my best efforts (which are really not very good at all), my updates remain as sporadic as they are bad (though my sidebar's recently been culled - *five* missing and presumed dead? Shame on you, hack blogging circle!). It's not that there's nothing about which I could be writing. I mean, I could finally get to that Simon & Garfunkel album review, I could put up my Eric Kierans tribute, or I could write something on how my mind has been focussed on the importance of teachers to the world after attending both a lovely awards ceremony for my incomparable grade five and seven teacher (and a pretty good boxing coach, too) Pierre Rousseau and a lecture by the great Gordon Lee on the same day. Somehow, though, the urge doesn't strike me. I appear to be on a vacation, of sorts. With that in mind, I'm going to tear a page out of some cartoonists' books (not literally - I won't make that mistake for a third time) and publish a few of my past efforts.
Today's rerun is the first piece of writing I ever had published (in Paul Kane High School's student newspaper, the esteemed and defunct "Generation PK"), entitled "Writer's Block, Corporate Punishment, and Black Sevens on Red Eights"). While the piece hasn't held up quite as well as I'd like, apparent in it are some of the elements that make my writing so beautifully distinctive today, such as criminal overuse of paranthetical devices. Anyway, enjoy. Or don't. But don't complain about the lack of new entries.
As I so often do while playing solitaire, I recently got to contemplating the issue of corporal punishment after punching my sister. I blame this on writer's block.
It's really quite simple: submissions to this esteemed rag were due the following day, and I had assured the editor that I would submit something. Not wishing to appear utterly incompetent (I am utterly incompetent, of course, I merely did not with to appear as such) I was attempting to write an article and, to this end, playing solitaire.
Unfortunately, I was unable to locate either of the red eights, and this served only to worsen my already cantankerous condition, so when my ever-lovable younger sibling strolled into the room to point out the ludicrously obvious ("you need a red eight"), I did what any rational and compassionate human being would: I punched her.
This got me thinking about corporal punishment. Like most of my fellow liberal-intellectual-left-leaning-bleeding-heart-probable-communist-criminal-loving-wimps, I oppose it, often rather vehemently. Yet I did not hesitate to impose it on somebody who had committed no greater transgression than to tell me how to play my game of solitaire (it should be noted, in the interests of fairness, that I know several people who feel that this should be punishable by death by firing squad). As somebody who prides myself on abiding by my principles (at least when I'm not priding myself on successfully figuring out, in fewer than three attempts, in which class I'm supposed to be), this element of hypocrisy bothered me.
As I thought about this, I realized that until society elects to abide by reason rather than passion, until such time as we realize that compassion is owed to all, regardless of failings and shortcomings, and until such time as retribution is no longer considered a fundamental element of justice, we are doomed to social stagnation.
That evening, during dinner, I punched my sister for repeatedly chewing with her mouth open.
