[NON BLOG] Coffee-free, Day 5

The changes I've experienced since I've cut off the coffee surprise me. Even though I've boosted my consumption of tea and assorted other caffeinated beverages, I've found that I'm sleeping more and more soundly, that I get tired more easily, and that I have had some minor withdrawal headaches. Coffee-free is an interesting way to be, I think, though I wonder if I want to keep up with it.

[URBAN NOTE] A TTC tanka

Among the poems visible in TTC buses, streetcars, and subway cars as part of the Poetry on the Way program Vicki Goodfellow Duke's untitled tanka, a winner of cyberslam 2003.

shy wildflower found
peeking out from winter's bed
serendipity
seeing you after so long
a brief collision of joy

[BRIEF NOTE] Our Next Governor-General

The whole controversy over whether or not Michaëlle Jean, Canada's next Governor-General, was a Québec separatist or not strikes me as bizarre. Unless you believe that Québec separatists are consciously trying to infiltrate the highest ranks of the Canadian polity, hoping to subvert Canada for their nefarious ends, you are left with the question of why any ethical person would want to become head of state of the country that she (supposedly) wants to destroy. One can assume that Québec separatists as a rule aren't ethical, that, in fact, the entire separatist desire is motivated by a base desire to butcher all the Anglos and ethnics within la Belle Province before setting off on a bloody path of North American conquest. One can, but one really shouldn't.

[URBAN NOTE] The Weather

It's dark and cool and humid out, and raining only lightly, with Pulse 24 reporting worse possibly to come:

Environment Canada has issued a tornado watch for a large of the G.T.A. The advisory doesn’t mean there will be twisters coming down, only that two fronts are colliding in the atmosphere above us, creating the possibility that such activity could occur.

Other cities covered by the advisory include Kitchener-Waterloo, Stratford, Barrie, Midland, Orillia, Guelph, Cambridge and Orangeville.

Some O.P.P. officers up north have already reported sightings of a twister, but the weather office hasn’t been able to confirm any funnel clouds.

The city itself is facing a severe thunderstorm watch, with the chances of heavy downpours and potentially damaging winds gusting up to 90 kilometres an hour. Large hail is also a possibility.

The unsettled weather will remain until at least Saturday and will be accompanied by an old friend – high humidex values.

The first day of the weekend promises a return to the sticky conditions, with temperatures near 30C feeling closer to 40. And if you thought Friday was loud, just wait.

[MUSIC] Blue Man Group featuring Venus Hum, "I Feel Love"

One of the more interesting songs Wednesday night at Woody's was the Blue Man Group's cover of this Donna Summer classic, featuring Annette Strean of Venus Hum on vocals. The video (available here) was entertaining enough, featuring Strean as a pink-outfitted diner waitress taken by the Blue Men and their silent blue-skinned shaven-headed attractiveness. The song was good, too.

I really should get the surplus income needed to pick up new music, I think.

[BRIEF NOTE] One Canadian's Money Troubles

Leonard Cohen, famous Canadian poet and musician, claims to have been almost bankrupted by his former manager, Kelley Lynch. If the story in MacLean's is true--and none of these allegations have been proven in court, to be sure--Cohen has suffered a massive financial blow. Retirement, alas, may be difficult for him. But then, there's hope:

There's an irony here, that a man who has struggled much of his life to distance himself from the material world now, at 70, finds himself in an intense battle with it. Still, he's not defeated. "This has propelled us into incessant work," he says of himself and [collaborator and girlfriend Anjani] Thomas. He exudes optimism about their new CD. "It's one of the best albums I've heard." It's not closing time quite yet.

Cohen should have another hit album. Something as cracking as 1988's I'm Your Man would be fantastic, but I won't quibble.

[BRIEF NOTE] Another Canadian's Financial Troubles

I feel sympathetic for Cohen. I don't feel sympathetic for Conrad Black, famed press magnate and right-winger, famous for his ruthless consolidation of the Canadian press, his international aspirations, and his grand ego until it all came crashing down amidst allegations of massive fraud. Now, it looks like he may face criminal charges in the United States.

While Hollinger International, publisher of the Chicago Sun-Times, began a fraud probe of Black and others nearly two years ago, U.S. authorities did not bring criminal charges related to the case until Thursday when the two deputies were indicted.

David Radler, who was president and chief operating officer of Hollinger, in-house lawyer Mark Kipnis, and Ravelston Corp. Ltd., Black's insolvent Toronto-based holding company, were charged in a seven-count indictment charging they cheated investors out of $32 million.

Chicago U.S. Attorney Patrick Fitzgerald said Radler is cooperating with prosecutors and is expected to plead guilty, but sidestepped the issue of Black, who was not mentioned by name in the indictment.

"From what the U.S. Attorney is saying, the fact that they've indicted his closest colleague and the fact that they have a continuing investigation, all that spells trouble," said Bradford Lewis, an attorney with Fenwick & West and a former federal prosecutor.

I highly recommend McNish and Stewart's Wrong Way to get an overview of Black's spectacular egos and frauds. It's worth noting that if only he hadn't gone out of his way to provoke curious minority shareholders, his empire might still be intact.

[LINK] Chechens in Europe

The Institute for War and Peace Reporting an article up now by Timur Aliev describing the new phenomenon of Chechen emigration to Europe, as Chechens displaced by war in their homeland and unable to find secure tenure elsewhere in the Russian Federation head west, despite the high odds against getting admitted.

The latest figures suggest that around 70,000 people from Chechnya have applied for political asylum in Europe in the last few years. Only a few of them have had their asylum requests granted.

Many more wish to join them. "What is there for me?" said Aslambek Isayev, a 35-year-old father of three from Grozny. "I would go to France or Germany, not for my own sake but for my children’s future. They can get an education there and if they want to they can return home."

"Xenophobia in Russian society towards Chechens and also the lack of security guarantees and financial problems in Chechnya are basically forcing many of them to leave for Europe," said political analyst Idris Amayev.

Those who wish to leave face two main problems: getting a foreign passport and obtaining a visa.

The issuing of foreign passports was halted in 1999 at the beginning of the second Chechen conflict and still only Chechens officially registered outside Chechnya can obtain them. The only exception is for top officials and those performing the Haj to Mecca. To buy a passport on the black market can cost as much as 500 dollars.

Amayev says that the Russian authorities are deliberately not giving Chechens passports out of fear of causing an even bigger tide of emigration. “If Chechens began to ask for asylum in other countries in still greater numbers then it would be glaring proof that everything is not so wonderful in Chechnya,” he said.

[LINK] How homogeneous ad markets break down

Over at the BBC, journalist Peter Day examined how advertisers in Germany had to tailor their television advertisements--and doubtless, advertisements in other media--for different markets in German-speaking Europe.

Persil's the current advertising stressed its pre-eminence as the whitest wash in the world.

"East German housewives don't want that," said Mr Mackat. "They just want decently clean clothes."

The pan-German Persil ads showed a German hausfrau at work, beautifully turned out and glowing with health.

In the background was her spacious home, shining with the latest gadgets.

"East German women can't identify with that sort of thing," said Fritzsch and Mackat.

They took the hausfrau and the bungalow out of the ads, and toned down the world beating claims.

The ad they unveiled for the Ossies said something modest such as "Best for coloureds". And it worked.

And not just in Eastern Germany. A day after it aired for the first time, the phone rang.

It was the Austrians, long included in the catch-all German advertising,.

"We've had to endure these West German ads for years," they said. "We want yours," they told the East German advertising pioneers.

This isn't particularly surprising, or new: The differences between Francophone Europe and Francophone Canada, say, or Australia and the United States, or Mexico and Spain, are well-known. Is Day correct in arguing that Persil's new regionalized approaches to advertising will augur a new era of more precisely targeted advertising? Doubtless. The only question is how precisely ad agencies will be able to target their potential markets.

[BRIEF NOTE] The Menezes Affair

I know that this will be a derivative post, but it goes without saying that the remarkable incompetence in the affair of Jean Charles de Menezes verges upon criminal negligence if it is not, in fact, that already. Killing Menezes may have been a plausible decision with the information that they had. The problem, I fear, is that the information that they had on hand was so globally flawed as to be lethal.

[NON BLOG] Chopsticks

I had supper this evening at Imojay Korean Fast Food (661 Bloor Street West), a bulgogi plate with rice assorted side dishes (miso soup, kimchi, et cetera). Korean is quick becoming one of my favourite cuisines; the Queen Street West streetcar diversion had at least some pleasant consequences. I think that I'm slowly developing better chopstick form, moving the fulcrum joining the two sticks further back. I'm determined to shed the rudimentary style that angelevangeline thought was cute, that raphinou corrected me upon in detail while gently telling me that the Thais tend not to use chopsticks, and that schizmatic pragmatically observed at least let me take up food to my mouth.