Tuesday, July 10, 2001 (10:05pm)
How were your Independence Days? Mine was OK, I suppose. As I predicted, it rained on our parade. I showed up for a little while before it let loose. I had sort of forgotten how rednecked the parade experience is, especially in the vicinity of the bar district between the creek and Elm Street along the parade route. The drunks were out in full force along there. There was this one guy, completely plastered and all sloppy, who was right out in the street yelling at this one poor guy from the Church of God, saying how he didn't need Jesus, beer was his salvation. I think he might have needed to reassess his faith since he was about 30 seconds away from getting arrested. I saw a few people I knew, though surprisingly few, and nobody I really wanted to talk to, so I eventually just ended up leaving and spent the rest of the day reading and listening to the rainstorm. Luckily, the fireworks weren't until Friday night, which was beautiful and quite warm relatively speaking. The fireworks were pretty good this year, or at least seemed like it. I was there with friends and afterwards we drove out to Irvine to see if Nick was home yet, as we knew he was supposed to be home from the Academy Friday night. They hadn't gotten back from the airport yet, though, so it was a wasted trip. We ended up sitting down by the creek at my friend Paul's house bullshitting until les petits heures du matin, as they say in French. As it turned out, we had just missed his arrival back home. I have, however, seen him since of course, several times. It was nice to sit down and talk with him. I hadn't really seen him since he came to visit me up in Montréal in December. I've also seen my other Naval Academy friend, Kurt, who just got back this week as well, though from a Navy SEALS combat tactics training program or some such thing, not Europe. That Kurt, always a go-getter. I didn't talk to him very long, though I'm sure I will. Still, it was nice just seeing him since I had only done so once for five minutes in more than a year. Quite a long time for one of my best friends.
All of my other friends are back now too. Toby (with Brian) and Shikha both got back on the 4th as well. I haven't been able to talk to Toby yet about his trip to Ireland, which I am eager to hear all about, but I did talk to Shikha on the phone on Sunday. She's had a good trip. Now we're planning our road trip back to Montréal, which I guess is going to pass next week sometime. Not too much planning yet....
In addition to the heady patriotic festivities of Independence Day, I should take this moment to acknowledge that the good people of North Korea also celebrated a special national moment in the last week, the 7th anniversary of the death of The Great One, Kim Il Sung. Even the country's birds, good doctrinaire socialists that they are, took a moment to commemorate, as you can read here.
In other communist news, it seems it is possible that G.W. Bush may finally be the president who gets to wish adieu to Fidel Castro, if news reports are to be believed. Of course, people have been predicting that basically since Eisenhower was boss, but, assuming he actually is not superhuman, I guess it has to happen sometime. I really can't endorse communist despotism, not least of all in light of my current reading project, but I am a bit fascinated by Fidel Castro. If you recall, I did see him in person last October, making me certainly one of the very few Americans to have done so. I had a dream the other night where I was in Cuba, of all places. It was rather nice in a kind of ratty, run down way. As far as left wing despots go, Fidel is one of the least bad, I guess. Still and all, I'll not be sorry when he's gone.
There's actually a computer game out now called Tropico, based on the rather outstanding premise that you are a dictator of a small banana republic which you have to develop as you see fit. It looks rather like Civilization and could be quite enjoyable. If I can find a Macintosh version, I would like very much to play it. I am not a huge video game fan, really, but they can be fun. I haven't been playing my Game Boy Advance very much lately. It's really neat but I only have one game for it, Super Mario Advance, which I bought since it was the best the store had at the time. And I had forgotten how much I actually really didn't like Super Mario Bros. II when it first came around. It really has not aged well either. My friend's little brothers have one also, but with Tony Hawk and Castlevania. Better games for sure. I ought to get one of those sometime, then I'd probably get more use out of the system. Of course, I can play all my old games with the Advance, but that isn't quite the same....
Anyway, I've said all I really have to say, which isn't much. Until next time. Evan
Wednesday, July 25, 2001 (11:37pm)
Greetings all, and a special thanks to those of you who have been so gracious as to send me multiple copies of the Sircam worm this week. You're ever so kind. And if any of you have actually been waiting with bated breath for an update to this site, I apologize for making you wait two weeks this time.
I've been rather busy the last couple weeks, though, at least relative to the rest of the summer. Last Monday and Tuesday I was down in Lancaster, PA, helping my uncle pack up his apartment and move back here to the northwest. Trips to southeastern Pennsylvania are always a little strange for me, and not just because they are so rare. It really is a surprisingly different place than around here. Hotter, flatter, more farms, fewer trees, more people, more freeways, different accents and dialects, and yet at the same time still indefinably Pennsylvania. There's quite a lot of fairly mind-blowing scenery out there, too, along the Susquehanna and Juniata rivers for instance, but its most inescapable difference from the northwest is its proximity to civilization. Lancaster is about an hour from Baltimore and Philadelphia and about an hour and a half from Washington. Quite an important distinction from my isolated backwoods region.
Then on Wednesday I affected an escape to civilization by driving up to Toronto. I stayed with Shikha in North York on Wednesday night and then we drove up to Montréal the next morning with her dog. We were nominally up there to accomplish some errands, but aside from paying some bills, I really didn't have much to do and she was foiled in most of her tasks. Despite that, we didn't really do anything sensationally fun and exciting either. The Just for Laughs and African Nights festivals were in full gear, either of which would have been a lot of fun I think, but somehow we never got around to them. We did visit some people, including my friend Dorey who has been up there taking an organic chemistry class, which had its final today. I dunno, it was a pretty good time in spite of nothing especially happening. I got to see some of my Toronto friends as well, so that was nice. I came back Monday evening. I got searched at the border, second time in a row returning to the United States. I'm beginning to take it a bit personally, though I've decided that it might be a good idea to start shaving before traveling internationally from now on. I think that's what my problem has been. The guy in Buffalo this time was also ever so much more thorough than the bozo in Montréal, and had a bit more personality as well. Had I actually been smuggling anything, I think I would have been busted (whereas I could have been carrying a brick of uncut cocaine last month). Weird. The last time my grandmother went through customs, her conversation went like this:
Border Guard: "Hi, anything to declare?"
Ma: "Eighteen bottles of wine."
Border Guard: "OK, go ahead."
I might as well grow a pink mohawk and start wearing "Crush the System" t-shirts since I'd probably be treated about the same. Oh well, I shouldn't complain. First of all, I've crossed the border about two dozen times this year, at the minimum, and only been searched twice. That's about 5%, probably less than the rate of the population overall that gets searched coming into the country. Secondly, the border patrol on the Canadian border caught some Algerians trying to bring in high explosives last year, and I think everyone can be thankful they were doing their jobs up there.
So what's next for me? Well I've just realized that Nick is going back to the Naval Academy on Sunday - yes, already! - and that I haven't seen him very much at all, so I should try and hang out with him a bit. On Friday I'm picking up my uncle Scott at the airport in Cleveland, marking the beginning of the annual McElravy "Teacher Week" backwoods camping expedition, which is always a good time. I'm going to try to bring a few friends out for a couple days as well, see what they think of my strange, strange family. Then after that, Albert is coming down from Hamilton and we are going to have a Pennsylvania field trip, check out Gettysburg and Pittsburgh. He always enjoys coming to PA. (I've been trying to convince Shikha into coming down as well sometime, maybe dragging Annika the Homebody along as well; if they are going to tease me about being a hick, they ought at least to be accurate in their volleys.) Then around the middle of the month, my mother's family from New York are driving over to visit for a few days, in their new and apparently much larger motorhome. I'm picturing it coming down the highway with a flashing flag car leading 50 years ahead and another taking up the rear. After that, I'm not exactly sure how I'll pass my last week or so at home before returning to school. Time will tell.
Oh, and let us not forget the most important event looming on the horizon, the release on Friday of The Planet of the Apes, which I'm sure you are all looking forward to. I mean, Tim Burton, how could you go wrong, even without Roddy McDowell and Moses? I've noticed that the original novel is back in bookstores now, which is tickling me a bit since its author, Pierre Boulle, shares his name with one of my McGill professors, a favorite actually. I made that connection about half way through the fall term last year and it lent a certain drollness to his lectures on medieval France, which let it be said were quite excellent anyway. I wonder if he's going to see the movie. I'll have to ask him next term.
Anyway, I've said basically all I can. I've been trying to figure out a good space to fit in a bit about this really amazing show on cattle breeding I watched at 2:00 in the morning last night on Discovery, but it's a difficult subject to fit into a conversation. I'll spare you the details, but it answered the life-long curiosity I've had about how semen is collected from bulls and other livestock. A little knowlege is a dangerous thing but suffice it so say that bulls are not so different from human males in many regards. One important difference, though, is that if seed bulls' testicles don't measure 30 cm by one year of age, they get castrated and sent to be turned into Big Macs. As if puberty isn't hard enough anyway, without that kind of pressure.
P.S. As some of you may know, today marks the one year anniversary of the Concorde crash in France. This might be a good occasion to reread my overly emotional posting from the time.
P.P.S. I wasn't going to remark on this, but after publishing my article in Reason about the Québec anti-FTAA protests, I guess I'm now a recognized opinion-leader of sorts on the field. So before anyone asks, let me state that vis à vis the Genoa protests, while I wasn't there and don't think that anyone should be killed for their political beliefs, no matter how obnoxious they are, the death of Carlo Guiliani was more an act of Darwinian justice than state repression. Yeah individual cops sometimes over-react and act like ass holes but let's not assign that deep significance. Anyone who claims that he was murdered by a savage system instead of being the victim of his own stupidity - I mean, he was attacking a police vehicle, what did he expect?! - is being either dumb or disingenuous. Beyond that, do all of these people actually believe they should be allowed to rampage all they want without any penalty at all? But no matter, they have their martyr now and I fear we all have hell to pay.
Thursday, August 9, 2001 (4:12pm)
Well I knew it all along: listening to Aaron Carter's music can be hazardous to your health. Of course, the way the weather's been, there hasn't been much of anything that's been real easy on the bod. Still and all, while I sit around here quietly cooking in my own juices (which by now are about 60% Lipton Brisk Iced Tea), I'm going to stick to my Santana and keep clear of the teeny bopper specials.
I think this is the hottest I've been for the longest since the summer of '98, which I think was also the last time I've been south of the Mason-Dixon, and spent two weeks in Austin and New Orleans in record heats. Pennsylvania has a muggy, life force-sapping kind of heat, much more like New Orleans than the dry heat of Austin. It's really grotty and I would like very much for it to end soon, or perhaps just rain a bit, we need the water. At least, though, I'm not in the city. It was pretty hot for a few days in Montréal in late May - though nothing at all like this - and that was really bad. City heat is an ugly business. All that concrete and grime and abundance of cars. Ugh.
The summer really is starting to wrap up fast, though. Some of my friends start heading back to their schools in a week's time. I think I'll probably be ready to go back as well when my time comes. It's been exactly four months since my last lecture at McGill, if you can believe that. A long time. I'm pretty excited about some of my classes (Henry VIII! The St. Bartholomew's Day Massacre!) and miss some of my Canadian friends whom I haven't seen as recently as Shikha, Dorey, and those few others. Plus, not that I'm not getting along with everyone, but I don't think a break from family will be unwelcome either. And although I hate to say it, I think I may be in need of more structure to fill my days. I haven't really gotten as much done this summer as I might have liked - especially in the reading department, though that didn't stop me from dropping $50 more at Amazon the other day, about which more anon). I'm not chomping at my bit or anything, but I'll be ready, that's all I'm saying.
My Amazon order consisted of several books about the Down Under, which has been much on my mind these last few days. I got bored and reread Bill Bryson's In a Sunburned Country two weeks ago and have been obsessing about visiting ever since (the high point was an abnornally vivid dream - the heat perhaps? - night before last about flying down there, which excited me immensely despite depicting 14 hours on an airplane). Now I've been jonesing to visit Australia for about as long as I can remember, and it has always sort of come and gone as a mania, but it's really hit me this time. I'm worried. I think it may have bumped France down to number two on my Top Places to Go list (just ahead of Helsinki/St. Petersburg in case you're the sort who keeps a list), which, if true, means I'm going to call off the Reading Week vacances en France and be a skinflint all during school (e.g., no weekly DVD splurges) in order to come up with the cash for the airfare. I might even be persuaded to do some more actual work: I have an idea in mind for another Reason article, albeit one that will actually require research and analysis, those two devils I avoided in my last opus. (By the way, and I know you're thinking this Matt, this isn't just because I've been seeing on the weather maps that it's been ~60º F and partially sunny in Melbourne - pretty close to my climatic ideal - for the past two weeks.)
Thinking about all this has reminded me how much I actually do get excited about travel and its aviation component, neither of which I had been much interested in (aside from a bit of jealousy for my globe-trotting friends) after a year of flying regularly back and forth between school and home, unappealing travel that is hard to get fired up about. Indeed, I'm suddenly very excited to visit - of all places - Philadelphia. Intelligence from the Airline list brought to my attention that US Airways is operating it's last DC-9 flight after 35 some years of service next Saturday, between Philadelphia and Pittsburgh. With the same-day return fare at $69, I really couldn't pass on taking part. So I booked myself a seat this morning. Albert and I are going to fly out there early in the morning and hang out for a day, see all the famous sights I've never seen (my total experience with Philly has consisted of seeing it whizzing by a few times at 60 MPH on the way to the Jersey Shore, which I had always thought was good enough) and then catch the historic flight back to Pittsburgh at 8:00. I'll grant you that it is a rather flaky thing to do, but I need something adventurous to end off the summer with, and this is about the most budget-minded alternative that's come up.
Anyway, I'll give you the full report afterwards, fear not. In the mean time, I think I'm going to wrap it up here. I would have liked to talk about my camping week on the Clarion River, my night at the County Fair last night (featuring the lawn and garden tractor pull free of cost), or what a disappointment Planet of the Apes was, but maybe next week if you're all good boys and girls. Until then.
P.S., Wasn't my entry last week insufferably pretentious?
Wednesday, August 22, 2001 (10:46pm)
I'm not sure that I'm even going to be able to get through this entry. I've been having all sorts of weird short-term memory issues lately, worsening I think, and I'm actually starting to get actively concerned. I'm not sure whether this is some sort of adolescent Alzheimer's or just too much resin on the brain or what, but either way it's starting to concern me a little bit: I feel increasingly like the guy from Flowers for Algernon. Anyway, I'm not sure what's to be done about it at this juncture, and at any rate I suspect that it's unlilkely to be permanently debilitating. More than likely more sleep, better food, and more focused activity will alleviate the symptoms, though it would be tragic to end up like the guy in town who went on one too many acid voyages in the '70s and now spends all his days silently walking hunched over around town, apparently searching for his wasted years in public restrooms. Oh well, I suppose the world needs another pretentious know-it-all college student as much as it needs global warming (though if I'm going to spend my days wandering the streets of Warren, some milder weather would be nice).
The week after my last entry was a classically misspent one and I harbor some lingering suspicion that this phase I'm living through now, which of course I'm exaggerating, may have grown out of some of the less than productive hours spent. On Monday I ended up driving to, of all places, Altoona, PA, with a friend of mine. It was a totally doomed missions to...well I don't really remember what now, but I don't think it matters because it was totally unsuccessful in nearly every regard, I remember that much clearly. The rest of the week was about as aimless and exhausting as that trip. I have dim memories of, for instance, my friend Kaled breaking into a party at the municipal pool and jumping into the water with all his clothes on and then us speeding away with him dripping in the back seat or, possibly the same night, wandering around Long Point State Park up in New York in the middle of the night trying to figure out just where the fuck we were (we didn't know it was a park even though I've been there - in daylight - many, many times) and whether those really were dogs we kept on seeing. We weren't drugged out, lest you make any unsavory assumptions, but when it comes to wandering around strange places, it's always better to err on the side of caution vis à vis large canines.
Anyway, the last few days have been a little more focused, though to what end I have no idea. After much dicking around in the execution, Albert finally showed up in Warren late Friday afternoon, no more than seven hours late. His life was spared by my good fortune in running into my friend Nate at the mall. I hadn't talked to him in a long while and my mood was greaty enhanced (though not before claiming Mom as a victim). We drove straight-away down to Pittsburgh and stayed at a hotel near the airport, getting up early to catch our flight to Philadelphia. Albert got us upgraded to First Class, which was a weird experience. Flight attendant called us by our names. I'm not sure I'm comfortable with that level of intimacy on an airplane, though Albert ate it up. He always upgrades.
Filthydelphia was pretty cool. It was easy getting in and out of center city - the R1 commuter train line runs from the terminal to the convention center in about 15 minutes. One of the stops en route was at University City, Penn in West Philly, where I might be returning to this week instead of McGill had things turned out differently. I've never been sorry I essentially sabotaged my Penn application with two fairly subversive essays (which I still have though no one will ever see them). I'd been told that Penn is a pretty conformist school and I figured that I didn't want to go anywhere that didn't like my attitude. McGill might not like my attitude either but they never asked for an essay. Anyway, getting off subject here, but the point is that going past and looking at things I guess I'm still not very sorry.
We did all the classic touristy stuff like Independence Hall, the Liberty Bell, and the Mint. Albert, despite his nationality, seemed to appreciate everything with due reverence for our illustrious history, though I got the distinct impression he was getting a bit bored with the endless rows of essentially identical portraits of unfamiliar dead white men in the Second National Bank's gallery.
The final flight left Philadelphia at 7:30. Before departure there was a party with cake in the gate area and quite a lot of people around enjoying themselves. The flight itself was exceptionally joyful. Nearly everyone on board was there for the last flight (many employees) and the handful who just wandered in mostly managed to get into the spirit as well. I've never seen so many people pay attention to the safety briefing before. Taxiing out, we received a water cannon salute in front of several TV cameras. Take off was a languorous affair, the captain stretching out the moment for all it was worth. Once under way, we all got special certificates and champagne to toast the airplane. Landing back in Pittsburgh - with skill absolutely unequalled in my experience - we were greeted to another water cannon salute and an even bigger party in the gate area. The captain - a real gentleman whom I was pleased to shake hands with twice - gave a speech and another toast and everyone was overcome with sentimentality and warm feelings. I was very pleased to be a part of it, though the thought occured to me that subsequent DC-9 flights on other airlines (inevitable on account of my relationship with Northwest) would really seem anti-climactic.
I stayed in Pittsburgh with my dear friends the Kaufmans until yesterday morning, which was very special indeed. Sitting ahead of me on the flight had been a man named George Lokey, a 30 year veteran of Allegheny/USAir/US Airways's Pittsburgh maintenance facility. Apart from being a job, it was evident taking to him that aviation was also a passion for him. We got to talking about our mutual appreciation for the Nine and aviation in general (and in Western Pennsylvania in particular), and he ended up inviting me to tour "his" hangar. Well I can just say that it was wonderful. The more you learn the more you realize you know nothing at all in the grand scheme of things (how Confucian). The amount of knowledge that George and his 3,000 some co-workers down there have and the skill they use in applying it to keep our butts safe and punctual is phenomenal. I saw some really amazing things and got to act familiar with airplanes in a way that I haven't since I stopped taking flying lessons. I know I've said it before, but what great machines. So, thank you George and everyone else at US Airways, except for Steve Wolf, Rakesh Gangwal, and the rest of upper management who can go fuck themselves.
Well I think I've said more than my piece for the evening. I'm gonna go to bed now, prepare for a day of preparations for returning to Montréal in the imminent future. Crazy, but then most of my friends are already back at their places. There's hardly anyone left I know in Warren now. Summer's over it seems. It's been pretty great all in all, despite not having really done anything particularly noteworthy. But no real regrets. Anyway, have a good week everyone and I'll talk to you next time from the other side. Evan
Thursday, August 30, 2001 (7:30pm)
Well here I am, as promised, from the "other side," as I amusingly dubbed it last week. The view is different from up here in some ways, I must say.
I drove up with Dad - or rather was driven up, since I'm not insured on his big green truck anymore - on Saturday with my things, what little they actually amounted to. Most of my important stuff was already sitting around up here, so I mostly had a lot of clothes (needed them in PA too!), my computer, and a few pieces of furniture I had just recently acquired. I must say that they have really made a world of difference in my room. I lived up here for a month at the beginning of the summer, as you undoubtedly know, as did my roommate Shikha (though not at precisely the same time; we had about a two week overlap), but neither of us managed to get too much furniture in the place. She had in her bedroom most of what civilized people have in their bedrooms, though it wasn't until her last week here in May that she finally got a mattress for her otherwise serviceable double bed. And I managed to get a bed in short order for my room too, which I had stuffed in one corner and surrounded by many, many boxes, most of which were filled with other people's things (at the peak, we had seven different people's possessions stored in our apartment). But other than that, the place was really very bare. The guys across the hall left us some decent, if random, items, but not enough to make the place very habitable. (The kitchen, let it be noted, was pretty well outfitted and we did get a junk couch for our porch.) Imagine simply this: a twin matress in the living room functioned as our couch, and really the only piece of "furniture" even slightly able to accommodate guests, who you won't be surprised to hear were a bit scarce in coming.) But anyway, it did work for a month, albeit a long one.
Things are better now. My room is all outfitted with a lovely big desk, leather office chair, my bed, end table, and chest of drawers. I still need a bookcase and there's still a lot of things that need put away, but overall things are getting to be civilized. We've got a pretty decent second-hand futon now, which makes the living room infinitely better, and more furniture on the way when Annika, roommate #2, arrives here on Saturday. All in all, the makings of a real habitation! Even Shikha's room has managed to be enhanced when, this afternoon, after several bungled, abortive attempts earlier this summer, we finally managed to hang her mirror up.
Even so, with our apartment becoming more like a home, it's still pretty weird to be back. I had really gotten used to being home in Pennsylvania, not that it didn't take some time, and wasn't actually entirely ready to come back here. I think it may be more of an adjustment coming back this time than it was last fall, which I have to say was totally friction free. (I must have been really pissed off about home because I didn't have even a passing gasp of homesickness the whole year.) I guess maybe being away from home for a year and then going back has made me appreciate certain things more. I suppose that's what happens: the places you are the most desparate to get away from are the places you soon realize you're most intimately attached to. Added to that has been a certain level of awkwardness with certain persons, which I suppose has been a long time in coming (see June 3 entry; also, more obliquely, the 4/28/00 entry). I guess there are some things you can't deny or be blind to indefinitely after all, but, anyway, I haven't the faintest fucking idea what to do now except to acknowledge a pretty balled up mess that, for all the heartache it may cause me, will probably be the easiest and safest just to ignore. But I don't think that's the best course either. And it's certainly always hard to admit you've been an ass hole. Fucked up, eh? (Of course most of you are thinking, "What the fuck is he talking about?") As a side note, my usual sounding board for these sort of issues, bless his heart for he's heard it all, has gone totally AWOL since about mid-July, and due to his living some 10,000 miles away in another season, I guess I have few options other than to wait until - and if - he resurfaces. But probably just as well for him.
Anyway, all this rambling is not to suggest that I'm ready to pack it in and head back to Pennsylvania and feel sorry for myself, just that there's still some reaclimatizing yet to be done. And, while I will conceivably someday regret my eagerness to jump back into the thick of things, I also must say that I am pretty excited to get back into classes and some regular, focused ritual. One realizes the benefits of daily toil better when he understand that free time is the ultimate double-edged sword.
Monday, September 3, 2001 (1:54pm)
Feeling a bit better today. I'm not really sure why. It could be I'm recovering my old eternally optimistic attitude or that the passage of time is making things look better. Or it could be that I drank copious alcohol last night and let out some of my frustrations on my unwitting drinking partner. A word about the drinking, though: it's really beginning to become an expensive habit. I drank four rather strong 2-for-1 gin and tonics in a short space of time and, though I was plenty drunker than I'd been in several months, I really could have been significantly more spiffed. In fact, by the time I got home I was basically totally sobered up. On one hand, it's rather classy - and in living up to the family tradition - to be able to hold back liquor (especially gin, which tends not to sit well with us McElravys) but still in all, on a student budget there's something to be said for being a lightweight. Oh well.
I also had a pretty good dinner that evening, pre-booze. We found a cool 24 hour lunch counter near Laurier and St-Denis that serves Québec food with wine and plays oldies. All-day breakfast too. It was really cool. I spoke French to the proprietor a bit. I really like the idea of me becoming a regular there - though it's a bit far away and being able to sit down and shoot the shit with the old guy. That would be cool and good practice with the language. Something to work on, I suppose.
Anyway, off to enjoy my mood before it gets ruined.
Wednesday, September 12, 2001 (4:02pm)
I'm supposed to be at Canadian Tire now but I was stood up, so you get a journal entry in the newly available time slot. My roommates were supposed to meet me in the McGill métro at 2:45 but were both very late. Since I was expecting them to arrive separately, I assumed that I had the wrong coordinates and left. I'm not really mad, though after the succession of weirdos that came up to me with increasingly disturbing requests in multiple languages (ever spend a half hour sitting on a subway platform before?), I'm in a rather bad mood, which I guess is ideal for writing about what I'm about to write about.
I was going to post something yesterday, even before the attack happened, but I sort of got sidetracked by talking to other people in the real world and online, trying to ascertain in the early confusion whether everybody I know was OK or not. So far the prognosis is good, though my good friend Sue, who goes to Pace University a few blocks away from where the World Trade Center used to be, has gone totally AWOL, at least from my end (I can only assume someone out there knows whether she's dead or alive). What with the condition of the telecommunication networks in New York, I'm not really too nervous about her conspicuous silence, but it's still a worry. At any rate, one of my emails has ended up being posted online, by the incomparable Virginia Postrel, whose web coverage of the disaster has been absolutely extraordinary. I wasn't being brilliant by any means, but it's probably about what I would have written here last night. Click here and scroll down to "View from Montreal."
At any rate, I went to all my classes today so I now have an even better feel for how it's like to be out of your country at its darkest hour in recent memory. Really rather disturbing it must be said, though I'm sure it's easier on me than my friend Jessica who is actually from New York. There were a lot of people on campus today discussing the attack, of course, but I sort of gathered from the tenor of their conversation that I really didn't want to listen to what they had to say. What little taste I had for sniveling, pretentious pseudo-intellectual leftist babble, of the type that I seem to be forever subjected to around here (as at any university I guess) has been totally eviscerated. I've already heard a bit of morally equivalent posturing - my communist friend suggested that the CIA did it to build support for missile defense - and as sickened and shocked as I am by everything, I suspect I'd have not reacted quite rationally; in fact I'd go so far to say that if I had encountered anyone seriously making a defense of the bombers - and no doubt they are out there, though probably in more conspicuous quantity here than in any U.S. schools - I very likely would have had to make them bleed right then and there (I was wearing my steel-toed teeth-kicking shoes today; amazing how even libertarians can get brown-shirt streaks under the right circumstances). Western Anti-Americanism always fascinates me (more than angering me; certainly people can think what they want and I'm not about to say that my country is perfect), not just in the way that it manages to absolutely blind people, but also because its adherents always seem to think they are making some sort of original stand or fight against the Man or fringe statement, or that they are just smarter than everyone else, when in fact it's just about the most hackneyed political view imaginable. For God's sake, everyone hates America, including a lot of Americans. (To be really avant-garde, try defending the U.S. in a room full of ungrateful left-wingers!)
So now we - and by we, I of course mean they - need to decide what happens next. I have concluded that what I suspected all along, but had wanted to deny, having a bit of the idealistic university student in me too, namely that the Middle East peace process is a complete waste of everyone's time, is the reality we must now operate from. It seems abundantly clear to me from the reading of history that no peace has ever resulted between a free and unfree people (or really between anybody else for that matter) through talking and negotiating, and that the most peaceful - if not always free and productive - times in history are generally those when one group enforces its will on everybody else around. That's not necessarily a happy truth, and one which 48 hours ago I would have been shocked to hear myself express, but I think we have to start operating from that assumption. It's time to begin deciding who are friends are - and after yesterday, I should think that there ought to be little dispute about which side in the Middle East actually does have the moral high ground - and who our enemies are, and act accordingly to decisively back the former and send the latter back to the stone age, possibly to be rebuilt as a civilized culture along the lines of Germany or Japan. This does not mean, as one of my dad's coworkers put it, turning everything between Jerusalem and the Khyber Pass into a sheet of glass, but it is going to require a significant amount of bloodshed, which I think we should take no pleasure from. At the very least, the hairbrained Carter-era nonsense prohibiting government assassinations - which allows us to, for example, kiil everyone in Baghdad except Saddam Hussein - should be immediatly repealed. I'd say our first target needs to be Afghanistan, where we've tolerated the vicious Taliban for far too long; after we can move our energies onwards to the other hideous despotisms we've coddled for too long. And to the extent that this was an attack on liberal Western Civilization itself, not just on the United States per se, all the western world should participate in punishing the terrorists and those who give them comfort (perhaps pursuing some common program would help our chilly relations with Russia as well, not that it worked especially well in World War II). Unfortunately, it's going to be a very interesting few years to be alive now.
P.S. For an idea of the potentially ugly domestic reaction against good American Muslims which we should strive to avoid, I would recommend watching The Siege, a little-remembered Denzel Washington vehicle which seemed outlandish at the time, but suddenly rather docile; for a more intellectual look at how the same American instincts are likely to come to bear in the coming weeks and months, read this article by W.R. Mead.
P.P.S. I guess I had better get used to being searched at the border all the time from now on, eh?
Friday, September 14, 2001 (9:41pm)
Shithead alert: Here's one of those very smart people who seem to think that nothing is too monstrous to be owed America and who actually believe that there is anywhere in the world freer than the United States, including Canada - which I love mind you, but freer it's not by a long shot - and (doesn't this have to be a joke?) Germany, where one has to have a license to golf yet where a man who beat up a policeman in the '60s while cheerfully singing the "Internationale" gets to be Foreign Minister. Anarchists, of the cyberpunk variety or otherwise, are just another kind of totalitarian - eliminate authority, but put everyone in some sort of supposedly more democratic collective where everything is everyone's business. What's the point of abolishing government if you're less free than before? It's amazing how many people don't even know what freedom actually means; I guess Friedrich Hayek was right. God help us all.
Thursday, September 20, 2001 (10:22am)
I'm starting to feel a bit more optimistic about things. Nothing I've written here so far doesn't still apply, though I would perhaps put it in slightly more moderate sounding terms now. Why I am I feeling better? Well first off, I haven't heard about anyone I personally know having been hurt or killed. My friend Sue finally turned up a few days ago. She's back in Warren now, her neighborhood still being, in every sense of the word, a war zone. She was actually supposed to be down there when it happened but - should I be saying this online? - she apparently overslept her alarm, finally to be awakened by the first plane crash. That brings the total of people I know who watched the second crash and collapse in person to four: her from the Brooklyn waterfront, my roommate's mother and sister from a midtown hotel, and my uncle from his office in Jersey. (And I thought it was intense on live TV.)
Secondly, we Americans have behaved much better than I predicted towards our Muslim compatriots, and I think that does us a great credit, regardless of what the folks at McGill Anti-Racist Action say. I know I'm always so hard on these groups, but their self-righteous, holier-than-thou act really gets my craw. I'm sure there are many people of good-will involved with the organization, but mostly they come off sounding like inflammatory, anti-western Trotskyite pricks. I'm sure that there have been more incidents against Muslims than there otherwise would be, but the numbers seem to be in the low double digits from what I hear, which means that out of our two countries with a combined population of about 300 million, 99.999999% of the population is doing nothing at all. I wish they'd recognize that fact and stop preening for attention. Of course, this goes for other groups as well. As Glenn Reynolds, writing from Tennessee, said on InstaPundit this morning, "[W]hat has really impressed me is the spirit of resolve mixed with tolerance.... I guess this is why I'm so bemused by all the comments out of places like Berkeley, decrying the jingoism and intolerance of America's reaction. It's not what I see, but maybe things are different there. I hope that, one day, Berkeley will be as cosmopolitan and tolerant as Knoxville." A certain degree of liberal goodwill may outlast this incident as well - he also reports that the military has quietly dropped its ban on gay soldiers, though I suppose that's not necessarily permanent. Evidently one of the heroes from Flight 93 (the one that crashed in western Pennsylvania) was openly gay.
And lastly, we haven't started indiscriminately blowing up stuff yet either, as I had feared we might. That gives me hope that the adults are in charge and working on getting this right. (Too much optimism?) There are a lot of annoying anti-war people demonstrating and the like up here. That's a bit stupid, this isn't Vietnam - in fact, it really isn't a war in the traditional sense. I guess you'd call it a strategic reprisal? I really can't imagine that we're actually going to invade and occupy Afghanistan, and at any rate bombing it back to the the Stone Age as some (including me in my rasher moments) have suggested would be redundant: twenty years of the Soviets and the Taliban have taken care of that nicely. Today the Afghans are the world's largest group of refugees (as the good people at the McGill Médecins Sans Frontières reminded us all last week), and the blame lies largely on the same sort of people who carried out this attack. It would be wonderful to be able to help these people at the same time as we crush the terrorists, though I'm not getting too optimistic on that score. "War" as a humanitarian instrument is pretty clumsy, as the Kosovo conflict ought to have demonstrated. What I really wonder about with these peaceniks is what they really think is going on. Do they honestly think that doing nothing is realistic at all, or that it would really bring about peace? What poor students of history. What ever happened to "He who turns his back on evil commands that it be done?" And if you shower your enemy with kindness, as they say, what do you do for your friends? (Impose protective tariffs it seems.) One of the signs I saw said "An Eye for an Eye Makes the World Blind." I can sympathize with the sentiment and these platitudes sound all good and logical but have no applicability to the unfortunate way the real world actually works. One would think that at least the self-proclaimed anti-fascists (see above), thinking of Hitler as they no doubt do from time to time, would understand that but I guess a lot of idealistic left wing "intellectuals" can't get over their hatred of the United States. One wonders what they would say if the tables were turned. To quote Muammar Qaddafi, "The white man must pay." At any rate, we're not talking an eye for an eye; more like a lung for an eye.
But enough of that. I've half expected to get a nasty email or two from some anarchists challenging my comments about their views. But I guess I've sort of let this site fall into disrepair and have also rather hidden it away over the last year, like the retarded relative in the attic in a Victorian gothic novel, so maybe its readership in the wider world is a little slack just now. I don't think that even most of my friends up here know it exists. My hit counter, which crossed 20,000 in three years, died back when Earthlink took over my local ISP last year. Anyway, I'm working on remedying that a little bit, and this redesign (which I'm sure you're all admiring now) should go a little ways towards that end. (I also want to update a bit more often, though I kind of doubt I will.) My last design was really quite a piece of good work, but I'm ready to move on. This version here is going to need a little more work to be up to snuff, but it's a good start. Keep checking back.
I promised some time ago to discuss my classes a little. I'm starting to get a little longwinded here (I adapted this from an email I sent to a friend in the military last night, so it didn't take much), so I'll keep it brief: Things are good.
In all seriousness, things are going quite well. I haven't done a lot of work yet, but it is starting to accumulate. I have an oral presentation on the religious dichotomy in 16th century France next week and some papers and tests and the like will start to pile up immediatly thereafter, so it's time I start to buckle down and do some real work. Good thing I got this out of the way or I might never have come up with it. Anyway, enjoy and until next time.
P.S. We're having a housewarming party here on Saturday night, so if you know where we live, stop by and say hi, maybe have a cold one or two.
Reason's Jesse Walker, my contact person when I was working on my article, has written a fairly spot-on analysis of the options available to us now. I disagree somewhat with his assessment of the so-called "Gandhi Option," which I think ignores the extent to which American culture, not just policy, has antagonized the Islamic radicals. I think he would agree with me that that presents a serious problem with turning the other cheek; however he also leaves out the best argument for supporting the "Gandhi Option:" that Bin Laden apparently really wants the United States to hit back so he can have a true Holy War with us. That's not a reason to sit on our hands, of course, but is important to bear in mind as we fine tune our foreign policy. Other than that, however, it's treatment of the material is excellent, and has the virtue of pointing out in a non-provocative way how many of our past policies really have exacerbated the situation. Read it here.
Sunday, September 23, 2001 (12:49pm)
Our party last night was good. We probably had about thirty or so people here over the whole course of the evening, with probably around twenty or so at one time at the peak, though spread out across three rooms. It's weird to realize how many people we know when there's a lot of them all together at once. I had quite a good time, especially when I started mixing my own drinks later on in the evening. First time I've drunk in nearly two weeks. Lots of good people came. My friend Meredith, who is one of the nicest people I know despite being a communist, brought us Iranian cigarettes. We each got one. Tasty.
She and some of my other friends including, alas, one of my lovely roommates, are downtown now at a peace march. They asked me if I wanted to go and I was significantly less tactful than normal in telling them no-way, José (Bové). In all honesty, I actually find the whole movement to be rather obscene. There's an AIDS march in the city today at the same time; why don't they go support something actually worthwhile and tasteful? It's too late to march for peace: the peace was killed on September 11. The idea that we should now just surrender while bodies of victims are rotting under concrete in New York is revolting, especially since, as Virginia Postrel pointed out Friday, further attacks are basically inevitable regardless of what we do in the short term. I got an email the other day from my aunt Louise, a native New Yorker, about the impact on her bedroom community and it was really very sad to read. If these good-hearted but misfocused Gandhi disciples and cork-headed '60s chic poseurs want to march for peace, they should go to Pakistan and face down this crew.
I saw some more signs up yesterday about "Stop the Racist War," and I just about blew a gasket. I think I need to stop worrying about people's feelings - they obviously aren't worried about mine (do white male Americans have feelings?) - and just scream and shout about this stuff. It would make me feel better and I would probably not go around seething with rage as much. But it's probably not worth it; easier just to pout. Here's a great article from the Sunday Times of London - courtesy of InstaPundit - which expresses my own sense of anger extraordinarily lucidly. Glenn Reynolds' coverage of the attack has been really great, and I would encourage you all to read him regularly. Another great article from the L.A. Times linked to by him puts my Imperial ideal from 9/12 in a more humane and realistic context. As for myself, I think this is the last entry here that I feel like dedicating to the subject for a while. It's starting to get to me.
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