Victory!

No, no, it's not the speedskating
medals at the Olympics, gratifying though those are.

It's the Calcutta Cup, of course!

I will freely admit that I don't pay an awful lot of attention to international rugby, and given that the Scottish team have been perennial wooden spoon contenders of late, I don't think I can be blamed. That said, it's always nice when they beat the English. And now, with wins over both traditional powers under their belts, am I crazy for hoping they could win the whole shooting match?

So they lost

Fortunately, the feeding frenzy appears to be more restrained than it usually is when Team Canada loses at hockey. Perhaps the slew of medals our speedskaters, cross-country skiers and so on quelled people's tongues, but I think if there had been an eruption brewing it would have exploded eved had Canadian athletes swept every medal on offer.

I think people realized that the team lost simply because they didn't play well. I mean, there were certainly better picks to be had at the margins (see my previous opinions about Draper) but the core of the team wasn't one you would change. Unfortunately, it was also one that played poorly.

Anyway, with three days left in the Games Canada's greatly exceeded expectations, which is always nice. Maybe we actually can get to the twenty-five medals I was scoffing at a month ago...

And Another Thing

More Olympics stuff, this time from the manly sport of ice dancing.

US figure skater Tanith Belbin was born in Canada and raised here until she was 14, at which point she went to the States to further her skating career. She did just that, having just won the silver medal in ice dancing with her partner Ben Agosto. Obviously, this is wonderful for her, her family and friends and etc, etc. Also obviously, people in this country are interested in ice dansing, so we should be covering it regardless of whether Canadians have a shot to win it, which we didn't after our top pair had to pull out because of injury.

But do we have to pretend she's Canadian?

This isn't surprising, and it isn't a big deal, but it's pretty pathetic. She chose to become an American and compete for the States, and good for her and I'm glad it worked out for her, but I'm no more interested in her progress as an athlete than I am in any other American athlete's regardless of where she was born. To be clear about this, it cuts the other way as well-I'm just as proud of Lascelles Brown's silver medal as I am of any other Canadian's achievements, to take the obvious counter-example.

There are two streams of thought that these two medals bring up, one about the absurdity of nationalism based sport and the other about the nature of patriotism in a civic nation. I'll take the trivial one first. These two cases show up just how goofy it is to have nationally based teams at an event that is ostensibly about the best in athletic achievement. Brown has been Pierre Lueders' brakeman on the (non-nationality based) World Cup bobsled circuit for the past two years, because he and Lueders together make a very good team. But to compete at the event that is without question the biggest event in bobsledding, Brown had to change his citizenship, which is pretty clearly:

a) a major bureaucratic hassle and;

b) completely unrelated to athletic performance.

I'm not saying Brown wouldn't have wanted to become a Canadian citizen, but he shouldn't have had to to compete with his team on his sport's biggest stage. I'm not saying that I don't understand the appeal of these nationalistic appeals, or even that they don't work remarkably well on me. I'm just saying that they cut against the idea of athletic competition.

Now, on to the psuedo-sophistication. The pathetic attempts to have it both ways on Belbin and Brown's respective silver medals speak to a sort of confusion as to what makes someone Canadian. On the one hand, celebrating Belbin as a Canadian medal (not that any as far as I know is putting half a silver or some such ridiculous thing in the Canadian tally) says that being Canadian is a matter of where you come from. Celebrating Brown's says that Canada is the community of people who are Canadian citizens.

I know which vision of citizenship I prefer. I was born in Vancouver, but my father was born in Scotland, and he'll sometimes say that he's the best Canadian in the family because he chose to be one. There's nothing wrong with choosing, as Belbin did, to be something else. But it does mean, unless you maintain your original citizenship, that you aren't Canadian anymore. And, in the specific and incredibly rare cases of people athletically gifted enough to compete in the Olympics, if you choose another country, you aren't competing for Canada in any way. That's not to say that people who know Belbin shouldn't be over the moon for her, just that attempts by Canadians who don't know her to claim a little share of her reflected glory are more than a little sad. Besides which, we've got enough to be proud of as it is: the athletes who decided, regardless of where they were born, that they wanted to compete on our behalf.

Sometimes That's The Way Things Are!

A brief tangent off of the post about David Irving below. I describe myself in it as a "free speech absolutist," and it occured to me that I wanted to think a bit about blood and thunder politics, because I indulge in it quite a bit - probably more than some of my friends would like.

In the unlikely event that anyone I don't know is reading this, I'm a fairly left-wing guy with more conservative (for Canada) friends than I would imagine is the norm for fairly left-wing guys. This is especially true when I consider my reputation among said circle of friends as an intemperate hothead, at least in argument. The title of this goofy blog is an in-joke, in addition to being a pun - I often don't see things in said shades of grey.

And sure, I've no doubt that on some issues the truth does lie in the middle between my clearly correct position and the incorrect one of the conservatives or moderates or defenders of putting Kris Draper on the Canadian Olympic hockey team, depending on the discussion. But other times I'm equally sure that what some people see as intemperance is simply calling it correctly. George Bush is in the conversation, as we say, about the worst President in US history. Free speech should be absolute, barring specific threats to people's lives. Kris Draper has no business being listed on what is ostensibly the best hockey roster possible of Canadian players. The New York Yankees are pure, unadulterated evil (and the Boston Red Sox are only slightly better.) These are all, of course, debatable opinions, but I doubt you're going to budge me an iota from any of them, and that's because I believe that they're right.

Because ultimately, while some debates are unresolvable, there is a right answer, whether I have it or not. It might not be one we can find or agree on, and it may wind up buried in history or under the weight of millions of Yankee-hat-wearing zombies. But it's there, and it isn't "shrill" to say that you think you have it.

Or that's what I think, anyway. Or is that too absolute?

On the bright side

The women's hockey team just completed their entirely predictable but still satisfying gold medal run with a 4-1 victory over Sweden. I'm very glad that it was Sweden rather than the States that our team defeated, because it's a sign that women's hockey is becoming a sport worth taking seriously as an Olympic event.

With any luck, Sweden and Finland (and maybe Russia, or so I hope,) will continue to improve to the point where it isn't a huge upset, but only a moderate one in 2010 if they should beat one of the North American teams. That would be great for the sport, and I hope it happens. Until then, it's time to bask in Canada's third gold medal of the Games. Well done, team!

On disagreement and loathsome speech

I love me the pretentious titles.

I see that loathsome Holocaust-denying "historian" David Irving has been sentenced to prison for, well, denying the Holocaust today. Irving is a truly horrible human being who has done more harm in the service of pretending the Holocaust never happened than probably anyone else. That said, this is absurd.

The government of Austria is sending a man to prison because of books he wrote. The books were vicious, hateful lies masquerading as works of history, but they advocated violence against nobody-though, of course, they sought to whitewash mass murder-and did real, concrete harm to nobody that I'm aware of. I don't mind-hell, I approve-if people want to throw rotten eggs at Irving or call him nasty names or refuse to publish or stock his books, but putting him in prison for three years? That's nuts.

Irving is a spectacularly unsympathetic case for free speech absolutists like myself, but you have to fight them all (or impotently blog about them all, I suppose) because it really is a slippery slope. In Britain, it is now illegal to "glorify terrorism," which seems like a terrifyingly broad basis on which to prohibit speech, while the American government is talking about prosecuting the journalists who published the story about their secret illegal surveillance program.

And then there's the Danish Mohammed cartoons. First, let me say that it's my opinion that the editors of the Jyllands-Posten were being intentionally offensively provacative-the cartoon equivalent of shouting insults across a playground. That said, the riots and flag burnings and embassy stormings and so forth were, of course, appalling and far worse than the cartoons.

But it's crazy to insist that newspapers and magazines in the West have some sort of obligation to run these cartoons as some sort of expression of freedom of speech. I think the paper had a perfect right to run them, just as I believe that David Irving has and had a right to say that the Holocaust didn't happen, or wasn't Hitler's fault, or whatever other ahistorical lie he chooses. But that doesn't mean I have an obligation to run sections of Hitler's War on this blog, and there's no reason that less immaturely anti-Muslim papers than the Jyllands-Posten should feel obliged to run their cartoons. To be sure, there's an important differences between the thoughtless, callow cartoons and the conscious, sophisticated smears of Irving, but it's the same principle. We all have, or should have, freedom of speech, and we all have the responsibility to use it responsibly. The important thing to remember, which Tony Blair and his allies have forgotten, is that responsibility is ours to exercise, not the state's to proscribe for us.

If you can keep your head about you while all around others are losing theirs...

...you just might not have grasped the seriousness of the situation.

Our glorious boys in red and white lost to Finland today, and while they probably played better than they did against Switzerland, I wouldn't seriously argue that they deserved to win. This is a serious crisis. Not because of the Canadian hockey team's medal chances, but because of the frenzy that back-to-back losses are likely going to provoke from hockey fans across the country.

As a baseball fan with a mild liking for hockey, the all-hockey, all-the-time focus of the country's sports media is enough to drive me crazy during the early months of the baseball season, and I'm anticipating something similarly irritating in the next couple of days before the game with the Czechs. With any luck, they'll win that, because I don't know if I want to be in a country with millions of people fretting about three losses heading into an elimination game.

Oh, and one more hockey thing: why is Kris Draper on this team again?

Thoughts on Jetlag (or, Jetlagged Thoughts)

(Note: The last of my entries from the trip home. This one is something of a running diary of the first hour of the flight.)

The thing about being really jet-lagged is that it's possible to be awake and even alert, it's just that it really sucks and is a chore. You have to focus on staying focused, or else you wind up staring and things, usually people, who then get justifiably creeped out by the dishevelled looking guy in the leather jacket staring at them. And it's no good picking something innocuous, because then you wind up staring slack-jawed at a supporting pillar or something like that. So if you stay still while jet-lagged, you're going to look either like an idiot or a pervert. Or both.

My problem is that I'm too stupid when I'm jet-lagged to read good books, but not stupid enough to read bad ones without realizing how dumb they are. Something about adverbs works on hack writers like solipsistic similes on sophomoric ones. You wind up reading sections like "Bond grunted dubiously. Bond paid negligently," and all the while your critical judgment is screaming at you to drop the book and back away slowly, and the rest of your brain just keeps on trucking, because the braking distance of a brain on a trans-atlantic flight and no sleep for twenty-four hours is considerable.

So I wind up walking around the terminal, because I can't read and there's no one to talk to and I can't really go to sleep unless I use my laptop as a pillow. This being the post-9/11 world, in my paranoid jet-lagged state I worry about being arrested for suspicious loitering and thrown in jail, causing me to miss my flight.

I can hear the announcement now: "Canjet flight 164 is paging Mr. Ian Gray, please board immediately at gate C25, the flight is leaving and your bags are being taken off the plane." (Note: this was perhaps second sight on my part: Canjet lost my suitcase, and is still looking for it a day later. Joy.) Only I will be being interrogated, and unable to heed the call.

What happens to those people? Not the ones being interrogated, the ones who vanish between check-in and boarding. I mean, I understand missing your flight outright-I've done that. What I can't understand is getting yourself to the airport in plenty of time to check in and then somehow contriving to miss your flight. What happens to these people? Are they people stopped from leaving the loves of their lives by frantic last minute dashes by the aforementioned lovers, as we've seen in a million terrible romantic comedies? Do they drink themselves into stupors in the airport bars? Have they been apprehended by the airport cops, and are they even now being interrogated for the crime of walking along the moving sidewalks in a loop to stay awake?

Who knows? I'm sure the answer is disappointingly less dramatic even than the getting-soused explanation, but I can't for the life of me figure out why it seems that roughly one passenger per flight is throwing away their cash and delaying everyone else while they do it. I hope it's the last-minute dashes, though.

I really ought to sleep on the plane from Toronto to Halifax, but I figure that if I get to Halifax at midnight and stagger up the stairs to La Maison Gray at 1:30 or so, I will be able to sleep the sleep of the just without screwing up my sleeping patterns (ha!) too much. I am a genius! I am an idiot. And now it appears that someone checked-in to my flight has gotten drunk at the bar, or arrested by the cops, or perhaps has been won back at the security counter by an impassioned speech by the boy or girl he or she thought she or he had to leave behind forever. Good for them, if so, though why my flight has to be delayed another half hour so the course of their true love can run a little smoother is a question I'd prefer not to ponder in my current cranky state. I expect an invitation to the wedding reception at the very least...

I probably shouldn't laugh, but the guy across the aisle from me has said "I never really thought of that" in exactly the same wide-eyed tone of wonder three times in the past fifteen minutes in his conversation with the guy next to him, and from what I can tell they're not really talking about subjects that will Change The Way You Look At Life. I suppose that everyone has pet phrases that they overuse, but I think we should all try to find pet phrases that do not proclaim "I am an ignoramus" to all the world.

Here's a question for you: why does no airline I've ever flown on serve root beer?

Here's another one: If you were to buy a bottle of vodka the exact size and rough shape of a Kalashnikov assault rifle like the one I saw in the Moscow duty free, would you ever drink it. I mean, it seems like a hard sort of drink to introduce with any sort of panache at all. "Who wants a bloody mary-I've got 'em all mixed up except for the vodka. I know! I'll just add a 'shot' of vodka from my giant assault rifle sized bottle of Kalashnikov vodka!" I, for my part, would not go for drinks at a person's house where the drinks come in fake implements of death.

But if you didn't drink it, what on earth would you do with it? It would make about the most godawful conversation piece I can imagine. "Look here at my giant bottle of assault rifle-shaped vodka! I don't drink it because that would spoil the effect." So again, I have an insoluble problem on my hands: who is paying hundreds of euros for these awful things? And in the name of all that is holy, why are they doing this?

(Real!) First Names I Am Glad I Am Not Saddled With

(Note: Again, written in the Pearson departure lounge on very little sleep)

Mungo
Dalton
Montmorency (Montgomery would just be tolerable)
Chauncey
Reginald
Zeke
Zane
Jordan
Brendan
Augustus
Ronald
Henry
Donald
Bo (or, even worse, Beau)
D'Brickashaw
Dweezil
Sue (you can bet I'd shoot my dad if I were named Sue)
Major
Bertram
Marmaduke
Alonzo
Cornelius
Walter
Sherwood
Herb
Any fruit, vegetable or plant (Apple, Oak, etc.)
Archibald
Seymour
Horatio
Adolf
That fucked-up 100+ character string of letters and numbers that Danish couple tried to give their baby a couple of years ago.
Gunther
Hamish
Napoleon
Phineas

Things you can't get at Pearson International Airport

(Note: I wrote this while waiting for my delayed flight from Toronto to Halifax last night.)

A notebook
A decent, sit-down meal
The time of day
A witness
A phone number
A hell-yeah
Enough of it
Satisfaction
Three elephants on pogo sticks
Red Army Vodka
A cheap flight that leaves on time
A decent night's sleep
Ninety-nine red balloons
No respect
Peace of mind
No respect

Joining the crowd

So this, then, is blogging.

Huh.

I'm not entirely sure how this is going to work-I set this bloody thing up so that I'd have somewhere to put some musings of mine I thought were funny, or insightful, or what have you where people could actually read them, rather than laboriously passing around whatever notebook I had had to hand when I felt to the urge to scribble. Now, instead of imposing on people, I can just say, "check out my blog," thus establishing myself as a cool, hip, new media sort of person.

Or so I might hope.

Anyway, I'm going to start with things I wrote in Toronto's airport, while waiting my my final flight home to Halifax.

I can feel the wind in my hair already.