This will possibly be the most boring blog ever (although I doubt that given some of the stuff I've come across - learn to spell check, people, if nothing else; oh, and complete disregard for the rules of punctuation and the absence of any semblance of sentence structure aren't creative, they're sloppy). But the machine must be fed if I am to stick to my write every day mantra, regardless of how long the day has been and how empty my brain may be. Hey, you only have to read it, but I have to live this stuff. Pity me.

* * * * *

My Furby hunt during Friday's lunch was successful. On my third store, The Bay across from the Eaton Centre, I had the choice between one of two colour combinations: a brownish pink and a pinkish white. I went with the latter, and got a great price. It's not the black-and-white one that she was hoping for, but I'm sure Brittany will be happy. It's actually pretty cute, and it makes some very odd noises. I also finished off my shopping for Nicole by picking up a pair of Disney on Ice tickets, which her mother will have to endure with her. We previously bought a pair of Hilary Duff concert tickets for Brittany, and that will be Maxine's to bear as well. I think it's fair. If we had boys, it'd be Leafs or Raptors tix - or maybe the Rock - and I would just have to manage.

* * * * *

We spent the day at dance class for open house, from 11:00 a.m. to 4:00 p.m. watching our girls dance. They are doing great in some classes, less wonderful in others. Brittany does the best and lowest splits of anyone in her classes, but is only minimally attentive in ballet. On the other hand, ballet is like princess class for Nicole, but her splits are less than wondrous. It's still early and what we saw today was very much a work in progress, but things are coming along well for recital. Three more days of this, and then Christmas break.

* * * * *

Monday is my food-and-alcohol shopping day, as well as for Maxine's Christmas present(s). As we did last year, we are having some of her friends and their spouses over for Christmas Eve, for drinks and finger foods. These people are all older than us, with adult children whose plans don't include their parents. They're nice enough, but not my crew, and I will pass my evening filling drinks, preparing food and avoiding too much conversation. Keith and his wife came last year, which got me more involved, and my brother Darren arrived late, as he will again this year. Keith can't make it this year - and, presumably, neither can the amazing cheesecake that his wife brought last year and that I ate almost by myself, for which I am actually thankful given a recent commitment to better eating habits, of which more shall be written in the future - but he and the Mrs. are coming over on December 30, and maybe Jonathan and his wife as well. As for Christmas Day, Darren will be here in the morning and maybe for dinner, and my uncle Sheldon has also been invited, although we are awaiting confirmation on his attendance. Regardless, I only need about a 10-pound turkey, plus all the fixings. Then, on Boxing Day, Maxine's sister Cindy will be coming over from Fort Erie with her family to eat all our leftovers from Christmas and the week before. I shall say no more.

* * * * *

As the girls get older the pile under the tree gets smaller but the cost doesn't go down any. After all, it probably takes 50 or more boxed Gameboy Advance games to equal the volume of one Fisher Price castle. This year, in addition to games, DVDs, books and music, there is an mp3 player in our future (for Brittany) and a karaoke machine (for Nicole). I think the karaoke machine will be a lot of fun for the girls, and I bought 3 CDs with fairly recent songs to get them started. The one we picked can be plugged in to a TV, but it also has a small screen on the unit itself. Both the girls love to sing, and I have a perhaps foolish hope that this will elevate the quality of their many impromptu performances. We shall see.

* * * * *

You've suffered enough. Good bye.

As planned, I called my mom last night. She was both pleased and surprised. I'm a good son.

* * * * *

I haven't seen the guy in the yellow coat since writing about him. I hope he found somewhere warm. Although it wouldn't surprise me if he used the money he scrounged off people more soft-headed than I to go to Florida or the like for the winter. Which if that's the case, the dirty crook deserves sun stroke.

The woman is still there though. A few days back I was riding the escalator down from ground level of my building towards the tunnel to the subway and she was nowhere in sight. Then I heard her plaintive call but still couldn't see her. As I reached the bottom, I could see that she had switched sides in the tunnel so that she was only a few feet from the escalator. It made it more difficult to ignore her, but I was up to the assignment.

Yes, I'm a hero.

* * * * *

Every Christmas, it seems there is one toy that one of our children asks Santa for that Mommy and Daddy somehow can't find, leaving us scrambling for (1) an appropriate replacement and (2) a good explanation for why Mr. Claus didn't some through (elves get blamed a lot in this scenario). Last year, it was something called the Little Mommy Shopping Cart, which was Nicole's heart's desire, but we had no luck. I can't remember what we bought instead, but our explanation was that Santa knew she was too old for that toy and that he saved it for a younger little girl. Nicole, as selfish as any seven-year old but with a heart as huge as the world, understood and accepted this explanation.

This year, it looked like it would be Nicole again, although it was her own fault. She had her eye on something called Cold Nose Puppy, but forgot to put it on her list to Santa. When realizing this error, she decided that a greater power had blocked that desire from her mind when preparing the list. That greater power was called Puppy, a small brown stuffed dog who has been her constant companion and in some ways best friend - certainly her most loyal friend, considering the treacheries of school-age females - since getting him five years ago when she was two. Nicole believed that Puppy was jealous of any other dog stealing her away from him, and she gave up on the idea. But it was clear that she still wanted this toy, so Maxine and I agreed that something had to be done. With Nicole in the room, I sat Puppy down and told him that he shouldn't be jealous of another puppy, that he would always be Nicole's best dog. I also told him that he should trust Nicole not to abandon him, since she trusts him not to run off with any other little girls that he meets. Puppy saw the cool logic of this, and gave his assent. But Nicole pointed out that Cold Nose Puppy wasn't on her list, and I explained that Santa Claus knows what's in your heart and what you truly need and he would take care of it. Last night, I bought the new canine at WalMart, and he'll be waiting for her on Christmas morning.

Not only am I a good son, but I think I'm a pretty damned good dad too.

Now my problem is a Furby for Brittany. I had my hands on one at WalMart a week ago during our annual shopping-for-the-kids extravaganza, but left it behind because Maxine told me she wanted a different colour. Well, one week and a half-dozen stores later and still no Furby. I'm off on Monday to do groceries and alcohol for our Christmas Eve party and Christmas Day dinner, and it looks like I'll be spending part of the day searching high and low for a fuzzy little "Gremlins" rip-off, and she'll be bloody happy with whatever colour I manage to get my hands on. Wish me luck.

* * * * *

By the way, I appreciate the incongruity of discussing beggars in one section and my efforts to spend an obscene amount of money on my kids in the next. I make no apologies for loving my children and wanting them to have everything I can offer, materially and otherwise. It may seem hard-hearted, but I am a big believer in personal accountability, and it seems to me many beggars are just unwilling to do the heavy lifting needed to compete in the world. Until you can show me a foolproof way to separate them from the genuinely down-on-their-luck, I remain untouched for funds.

I spoke to both my parents last night, which is a rare enough occurrence to be worthy of comment. My dad and I are not close, and this past summer we did not see each other despite my being in Cape Breton for more than two weeks. Basically, he wouldn't come to me, and I refused to go to him after the way he treated my mother on our last visit. He has been sick for a number of years, and I used to believe him when he told me that he couldn't drive very much because he was too weak. Since I don't drive, my mom would take us to him, about 1.5 to 2 hours from her place. After the last disaster in 2003, I learned that not only did he drive as far as the area where she lives, but farther, and on a regular basis. Making it worse is the fact that he himself told me this, conveniently forgetting his previous lies. Since none of us were too eager to see him, I resolved to see how interested he was in seeing us. As it turned out, not at all. I felt after that I had been wrong to call his bluff, that I had sunk to his level. On the other hand, I still was considering not calling on Christmas Day just to see if he would call us. Since he ended last night by saying Merry Christmas, I guess I'm off the hook.

The reason for the call was to get his address (I can't find my address book) so we could mail a parcel to him and my stepmother. Very quickly, however, the call moved on to his health. Every time I talk to him, I sense a man with regrets who either lacks the will or the words to express them. This comes up in particular when he talks about his health. There is a sense of missed opportunities in every line. He's 68 years old, and I never expected him to see 50 due to an awful lot of tobacco and alcohol. But as he often said about his ancient father, another world class drinker, only the good die young, and my father would not be considered "good" by any conventional standard.

He has had leukemia for quite a few years, and every time we speak the discussion is centred around white blood cell counts and platelets. He takes one Leukeran and two Prednisone each day in unknown doses. At this moment, his platelets are up and his white cell count is 18. I have no idea what 18 means, but this is apparently a good number, as is the increase in platelets. Despite this, he says he feels tired and has spells of weakness. I suggested that this may be a product of being 68, and he seemed hurt by this. It was a mean thing to say, I know, but I can never seem to resist taking shots at him for the many past slights, real and imagined, that define our relationship.

Now, there is a new problem, or at least new to me, since it was apparent from our talk that this has been going on for a while: his prostate. Back in the spring, his count was 6 (again, I don't know what this is 6 of, but I think it might be PSA, or prostate specific antigen), and now it is 12, sending him back to the specialist on January 4. He said that the elevated number doesn't mean cancer, but I could tell he was worried. But I couldn't comfort him, because I am not good at that and there is simply too much between us for me to summon those reserves of empathy for him. We moved on to my brother Stephen's disastrous marital situation, and ended with his Christmas greeting.

A few minutes later I was on the phone with my mother to get my grandmother's address, which she only sort of knew, although it was enough to help me figure out the rest. We talk all the time, although not much recently, no reason for it, just time. One of her closest friends is dying of cancer, and she clearly wanted to talk about it. But there was a lot of noise in the apartment, Maxine was trying to settle the kids down and clean up after wrapping presents and putting up our tree (earliest ever for us), and I got off in less than 25 minutes. I felt badly because my mother has always been my rock, the one person who seems to expect the best out of me without judging or exhorting (compared to my wife, who has practical considerations that must take precedent over our personal desires, or my children, who think I can do no wrong), and last night I couldn't be there for her. I'll be calling her again tonight, and I resolve to be a better son when I do.

A few years back, we introduced a movie night ritual into our family. Initially on Friday, this was switched to Saturday a year ago when Brittany had dance class on Friday evening. This year it's Nicole's turn to dance Friday night, and classes on both Saturday and Sunday don't end until 4:00 p.m. As a result, movie night has now evolved from a regular date to any night that we feel like watching a movie. Last night was one of those nights.

Outside of the Disney/Pixar canon and a few others of note, there is not a lot worth seeing that is appropriate for pre-teens. I would think the ratio of bad to good is something like three to one, and the good often tends to be good only in comparison to the alternatives. And while there have been some very pleasant movie night surprises (such as "Big Fat Liar", "Max Keeble's Big Move" and "What A Girl Wants"), these have been more than made up for by such terrifying experiences as "Uptown Girls", "Cheaper by the Dozen", "Are We There Yet?" and, the worst of the worst, "The Lizzie McGuire Movie" (which somehow sucked away the charm of a basically tolerable television series). By the way, if anyone can explain Brittany Murphy's career to me, I'm all ears. Because I haven't seen her breasts yet, and at this point I can only assume that a lot of producers have seen them and more.

(I did a quick Google images search to see if the public unveiling of Ms. Murphy's breasts had somehow evaded my antennae, and was disappointed to discover it had not. There were some quite pleasant photos caught in the Google net, but nothing so wonderful as to make me think there isn't more to her career than is evident on the surface. After all, there are many, many girls who are much more attractive than Brittany Murphy, and no one is throwing away money making movies with them that nobody goes to see.)

The girls stayed home sick from school yesterday afternoon, and we decided last evening to watch "Racing Stripes" on The Movie Network, now in its final week on the On Demand channel, which is where I watch most of my movies. As films go, it ranks in the bottom third or so of what I've seen: predictable, sentimental, manipulative, illogical - you get it, all the things one expects from a piece of cinema aimed at the softer parts of children's brains. After listening to Frankie Muniz for 90+ minutes, I am beginning to doubt that he has any future as an actor, since his vocal range is almost non-existent. But there were two redeeming performances from the voice actors: Joe Pantoliano as a Sopranosish pelican named Goose, and David Spade as a fly named Scuzz. A confession: I think Spade is hilarious, and can only attribute his lack of a real movie career to one of bad choices or poor opportunities. It may just be that I like him because he's a smartass, but as a guy who tends to sit at the back of the room making wisecracks himself, I sense a kindred soul.

That was over by 7:30, and since the ailing children and my wife all hit the hay early, I chose to watch another movie to flush the stench of "Racing Stripes" out of my nostrils. At 9:00 was the final Movie Network airing of "American Splendor", and I am glad I stayed up for it. The story of comic book writer Harvey Pekar, it mixes reenactments, archival footage and present-day interviews to tell the story. Scenes from Pekar's books are recreated then dissolve into the drawing from the book, and many scenes have thought bubbles or blocks of text setting the scene as in a comic book. It's a very clever and creative film, and Paul Giamatti is amazing in the lead, wearing a perpetual scowl on his face.

* * * * *

I hate my job today. Just thought I'd share that.

I wanted to comment on a great moment in a pretty good book by Kevin Canty, "Into the Great Wide Open". The protagonist, Kenny, is having coffee with his suddenly former high school English teacher. Through the course of the conversation, Kenny understands that she is attracted to him, and at one point when her hand is lying on the table he is considering whether or not he should touch it. The thrust of Kenny's thought process at this moment is that he would prefer to regret the things he has done rather than the things he didn't do. In the end, he doesn't touch her, the moment ends, and a future almost-romantic contact warrants only a passing mention near the end of the novel.

I know, of course, that I am like Kenny in my actions and not my intentions. I have few regrets about the things I have done, living by a very simple creed that there is no point to such regrets. The action can't be undone, after all, and the best approach to something that goes badly is to face your error and overcome it. This would all sound more admirable than it is if I had actually taken a few more risks during my life. But the truth is that I have mostly practiced risk management and avoidance, minimizing the opportunities for regret by trying to control as many variables as possible before entering into a situation. My life is uncomplicated, and this is not by accident.

This was a great problem for me during my single years, because I just could not ask a woman out unless there was a reasonably high probability that she would say yes. As a result, I often dated women who were not really what I wanted in a partner but was too intimidated to approach the women I did want. But what I really had most of the time was a series of platonic relationships with women who I wanted more than anything else to date in a traditional sense, but I either waited so long to be certain of not being rejected that her interest in me would have passed from attraction into friendship, or I was so enjoying the friendship that I didn't want to jeopardize it by pursuing something more. The only time I would try to move the relationship onto another level was when I valued the friendship so little that I didn't care if it ended or not, which should have been a pretty strong signal that this was the wrong woman to have for a girlfriend.

This still comes up even now. A month or so back (in fact, the day I began reading "Into the Great Wide Open"), I was in a coffee shop when a very attractive, very young woman made eye contact with me and smiled. Now, this could have been innocent eye contact, and she could have been smiling out of shyness or politeness or because my fly was down. One can never know with women, but I interpreted this as a smile of interest. The thing is, I have never trusted my instincts on this account, and therefore have no idea whether or not I was ever correct during any of the moments in my life when I thought a female might like what she sees. This girl couldn't have been more than 20, and I'm 41 and hardly a perfect physical specimen. But women are far less shallow than men, and maybe she likes them a little bit older. I have no idea, because I made no effort to find out if there was anything more to that smile. Let's set aside for a moment the fact that I am a happily married man who loves his wife and would do nothing to put at risk her love for me. Another man might have tried because part of the joy of life is the risk. Regret the things you've done, not the things you wished you'd done. I don't regret not talking to that girl; what I regret is the fact that I have allowed myself to become the kind of person who would regret not regretting that.

The one time in my life that I took a great risk was with my wife, and the result has been more than 13 years spent with a perfect partner. There is a lesson in that, and I really wish I had learned it earlier. I have two children who I am responsible for, and I no longer have the freedom to take the chances I ignored earlier in life. At 41, I am starting to regret the things I didn't do, and the timing is perfect, because for the first time I have both the attitude and the commitment to overcome my own instinct for the safe middle ground. Robert Frost wrote about taking the road "less traveled by", and this choice was his glory. I'm beginning to feel that, in some ways at least, I finally understand this poem, and I am ready to follow Frost into the undergrowth.

Thanks to Keith - and by no means is this a dig - the song in my head today (drowning out the voices to which I have become accustomed) is "Can't Stand Losing You" from The Police's first album, 1978's "Outlandos D'Amour", which I recall is loosely translated as "love outlaws". This predates Sting becoming self-important and boring, and also includes such great songs as "Next to You" and, of course, "Roxanne". Ignoring the chorus, the verses (courtesy of http://www.oldielyrics.com/ - and I resent the implication that anything from my youth is an "oldie") are as follows:

I've called you so many times today
And I guess it's all true what your girlfriends say
That you don't ever want to see me again
And your brother's gonna kill me and he's six feet ten
I guess you'd call it cowardice
But I'm not prepared to go on like this

* * *

I see you've sent my letters back
And my LP records and they're all scratched
I can't see the point in another day
When nobody listens to a word I say
You can call it lack of confidence
But to carry on living doesn't make no sense

* * *

I guess this is our last goodbye
And you don't care so I won't cry
But you'll be sorry when I'm dead
And all this guilt will be on your head
I guess you'd call it suicide
But I'm too full to swallow my pride

* * * * *

Rock on, Mr. Sumner.

Comments on an evening spent drinking:

It takes more than three adult males to safely consume two pounds of chicken wings with celery and carrot sticks, a basket of kettle chips with blue cheese and a huge plate of nachos with chili. I don't know what the exact number required is, but it's more than three. Which is not to say that three men can't eat all of the above, only that they are playing fire with their gastric health if they do so.

Female boxing would have a whole lot more credibility if contestants didn't dress like it was prom night.

When considering how cute your waitress is - keeping in mind that few young women's appeal can be harmed by a tartan skirt - and wondering what it would take to get her into a compromising position, it is important to remember that you are happily married and wish to remain that way, no matter how attractive the idea seems at the time.

By the way, even if your waitress isn't particularly attractive, she will still probably be the best-looking female in the bar on a Monday night. Unless, of course, you are at a strip club, where the waitresses tend to be older women whose clothes should stay on even when alone at home in the dark.

When telling a story in a very animated fashion, with hands flying around and enthusiasm bubbling over, always remember to move your beer first.

After you spill your beer, any chance you thought you had with the waitress is clearly gone when she offers to bring towels to clean up your mess and not a replacement beer.

There is no movie or TV show or standup comedy routine so good that it can't be improved by sharing it with your friends, even in a bastardized version, over a few beers.

Three men together for an evening will spend a disproportionate amount of their time discussing subjects that involve, in one sense or another, sex. That's just the way it goes.

They will also discuss sports, but it is unfair to somehow hold the one basketball fan at the table accountable for his team's poor performance. He's hurting, too, you know.

At some point in the evening, everyone will be the target of a barb or twenty. It is the spirit in which you receive these jabs that determines whether your friends will wish to drink with you again.

You can talk politics in a bar, but why would you want to?

It's bad form to get too picky when sorting out who pays what on the bill. Just ballpark it. On the other hand, it's usually the guy who consumed the most who becomes irritated by attempts at a too-exact calculation, and the guy who consumed the least almost always gets screwed. But it's still bad form.

Bars will not accept paper money that has the end bitten off, no matter how cleanly and even if you tell the waitress that it came out of the machine that way. In the end, your waitress is a businesswoman trying to make a living, no matter how good she looks in a tartan skirt.

That cute blonde on the subway isn't looking at you. And even if she is, see comments above about being happily married.

The same goes for the brunette.

That older woman is looking at you. But you don't care.

It is important to have your wife's consent when you spend an evening drinking. That way, she's sympathetic when you tell her you ate too much, and she's willing to drop your beer-splattered suit at the cleaners the next day. Now that's love.

Tums are a perfectly appropriate breakfast food. I believe it takes 16 of them to fulfill the daily recommended allowance for calcium.

And, finally, no regrets. Even if your head and stomach hurt, even if you really do wish you had taken a shot at the waitress, even if your wife wasn't completely on board with your evening's libations, even if you are completely unproductive at work the next day - unless you have a drinking problem, you just don't do this too often, and the rest of the world should cut you some slack when you do.

I used to read a lot of novels. I still recall with fondness a weekend that started with me about 100 pages into "The Fountainhead" as I returned from work on Friday evening and by Sunday evening I had finished that and "The Cider House Rules". Not one of the great debauches, I agree, but satisfying nonetheless.

In recent years, I've gotten away from longer fiction, although I still read short stories regularly. There were a lot of reasons for this. Time, of course. With two young active children, there really isn't much of an opportunity to read at home, and what time I had went to shorter pieces. I also had subscriptions for several years to two magazines - Harpers and The Atlantic - that did a fair amount of mental heavy lifting between their covers, and these were joined by The Walrus on its founding. Given that I enjoyed these magazines and had already paid for them, I felt an obligation to read them, but this could at times equal as many as 400 pages each month. Finally, it seemed that most novels I did read were major disappointments. For example, like many good sheep, I read Jonathan Franzen's "The Corrections", and thought that (1) it wasn't as good as "The Twenty-Seventh City", (2) the characters were, for the most part, self-absorbed boors and bores, and (3) the author seemed to think he was smarter than the rest of us and was getting too bloody much enjoyment out of telling us so. Some time later, Franzen went out of his way to confirm no. 3, and while Oprah got hit in the backwash from these efforts, redeeming them somewhat, it also confirmed my feeling that we had been conned into reading this book and that Franzen should just take his superior attitude and live in a cave for a few years.

I have recently returned to longer fiction, and I can thank Michael Chabon for that. First off, Chabon is my favorite short story writer, and highly recommend both of his collections ("A Model World" and "Werewolves in their Youth"). As for his novels, I long ago read and enjoyed "The Mysteries of Pittsburgh" and "Wonder Boys", and "Summerland" is a first-rate novel for younger folks. But, although I owned a copy of "The Amazing Adventures of Kavalier & Clay", even Chabon wasn't enough to drag me over the field of recent disappointments. I had become convinced that modern fiction had little to offer me personally, and resolved to start digging into the ample list of classics that had evaded my reading list.

Then I watched the movie version of "Wonder Boys", and was reminded that Chabon is not Franzen. So I pulled "Kavalier & Clay" down from my shelf and started in. It didn't take long for me to remember why I have read so many novels in my life, encountering characters and situations that took me out of myself and into the novel's world, all rendered in Chabon's glittering sentences. Since finishing it, and slipping in a few others like "The Know-It-All", I have been reading novels again, and have yet to be disappointed. My picks have been shaped by either familiarity with the author (Richard Russo's "Empire Falls") or a recommendation from a trusted source (Kevin Canty's "Into the Great Wide Open"). The result has been a flowering of my imagination, a greater joy in language than I have felt for many years, and a desire to write again when in recent times I wrote because I must, not because of a genuine want. I don't know if this can be attributed to reading fiction, but it certainly hasn't hurt.

Of course, my magazine reading is falling way behind, and I have cancelled my subscriptions to both Harpers and The Atlantic. I know less about the world these days, and more about my own heart and mind. It seems like a fair trade.

* * * * *

"The Passion of the Christ" was intense and violent, shocking in its rendering of Jesus' last hours on earth. Raised Catholic, I am well familiar with the crucifixion story, seeing it in stained glass every Sunday of my life for many years. I have no idea how accurate this depiction is, but the blood-covered Jesus and his torn flesh somehow seems more real than the cleaned-up version on the cross that hangs around people's necks. I am not one for gore and violence, and when the spikes were driven into his hands, blood splashing everywhere, I shuddered. My wife, with a much more tender sensibility despite her frequent viewing of slasher flicks as a teen, only barely managed to keep her gaze fixed on the screen. It is truly a powerful film, one that brings home the reality of how great was Jesus' suffering, and if you accept that this was done for us so that we could have hope, then you can't help but think that you have failed him. Something we should give serious consideration to as we dive into the commercial morass purporting to celebrate his birth that is Christmas.

A few thoughts for a snowy December day:

* * * * *

The company party Friday night went better than expected. I drank only two glasses of wine, talked mostly with our network manager, had a really nice dinner, and escaped just after 10:00. The articling students put on a skit which was surprisingly entertaining - I do believe entering the law was a mistake, not because the law sucks (which it does) but because they have genuine talent as writers/performers. But I could not get out of the evening without one thought-provoking moment. One of the young ladies, obviously quite buzzed, tried to drag me onto the dance floor, which I declined. She's an attractive girl, someone I rather enjoy as a person, and recently married. For her it was just fun, but I try to avoid dancing with women other than my wife. And it occurred to me why that is. For women, dancing is just about dancing, but for men it's about sex. Even if you enjoy dancing, which I do, the purpose is to serve as part of a grand scheme, sometimes years in the making, of ultimately ending up in bed (or somewhere at least partly unclothed) with your partner. And since I make it a rule not to put myself in positions of danger vis-a-vis possible infidelity, I don't dance with other women.

* * * * *

Having been taken to task for declaring Ashlee Simpson "hot", I have been considering what exactly "hot" means today. In truth, the word has been seriously devalued, and no better proof of that is the aforementioned Ms. Simpson. Let's face it, she is not even remotely pretty, and her lack of talent is frightening considering how successful she is. But put her in the right clothes, clean up her physical flaws with camera angles, soft lights or digital editing, and she can, for at least a brief moment, become someone who you find attractive that you otherwise would not. We live in a pornographic world, where desire can be manufactured just because you want it to be. Decide you want to be turned on, and one need merely fire up his or her computer. It's quite unnatural, this modern ability to be aroused on demand, instead of the way you had to work for it when I was a kid, waiting for your dad to be away so you could tear through the house looking for the newest hiding spot for his porno collection. In those days, you earned your arousal.

* * * * *

I haven't really been paying much attention to the election, other than to note that at this early stage the decision by the Conservatives and NDP to push for a campaign that stretches through the holiday season was a major tactical error. As dismayed as many of us are by the Liberals' poor record, that does not amount to a willingness to hand Stephen Harper the keys to Parliament. Already, we have seen the spectacle of the Canadian Auto Workers union advising their membership to vote Liberal if that's what it takes to stop the Conservatives in their riding. The fear in this corner is that we will see the same kind of vote-splitting that put Bob Rae in power in Ontario back in 1990. (Not that I have anything against Rae, a good man in power at the wrong time in history.) I also learned on Thursday that a significant core group of environmentalists are ticked at the NDP for supporting the defeat of the government and subsequent election campaign because it resulted in a deflection of attention from a very important two-week conference that was going on in Montreal related to the Kyoto deal. Again, any votes lost by the NDP will largely move right to the Liberals with the balance sliding over to the Green Party. The net effect could be the end of Jack Layton, which concerns me since the bugger will then be back in Toronto to take a run at council next fall. I can only imagine what would happen if Jack ever had to get a real job.

* * * * *

Continuing with the election, I am surprised that the NDP haven't sent anything my way yet for Karim Baboolal. Maybe he turned up somewhere else.

* * * * *

Another amendment to a previous position. As I expected, as the season progresses, I am exposed to a few additional Christmas songs which do not make me retch. Joining the chosen are Bob & Doug McKenzie's "The Twelve Days of Christmas", The Waitresses' "Christmas Wrapping", and, of course, "Do They Know It's Christmas?" (original version, not the cruddy and less-star-powered money-grab remake). At this rate, I'll soon have enough tunes for a mix tape that even the most committed Scrooge will enjoy.

* * * * *

"The Passion of the Christ" is debuting on The Movie Network tonight, and that's where I'll be from 9:00 p.m. on. I didn't get a chance to see this in the theatre or on DVD/video, and am very interested in seeing the cause of all the controversy for myself. Whether it's good or not, one has to respect Mel Gibson for the risk he took in getting this film made, and applaud the success he earned. This is a true independent film, no matter how much it cost, and it is so rare to see one man's vision come to life in the ultimate collaborative art form. I'm stoked.

* * * * *

At this moment, www.boxofficemojo.com lists the weekend grosses for "The Lion, the Witch and the Wardrobe" at just over $67 million, and www.metacritic.com shows a review score of 78 out of 100, or generally favourable. Another risk that looks like a W for the filmmakers.