felis_ultharus | Damn you Geoffrey Chaucer and your Fowl Parliament, too!

Life

So yesterday was my fourth Valentine's Day single.

montrealais and I had a night in, with pizza.

Normally I can handle it quite well, but for the first time in my life almost everyone I know is part of a couple. It's just really difficult because I'm almost at the point where I've given up hoping for Mr. Right, and I'm ready to settle in for a life of quiet monasticism.

Writing is gradually getting back on track. School is less painful than usual -- that thing with Shakespeare I was complaining about a couple of posts ago? We read two scholarly articles on just that issue, including a copmplete history of homophobia in interpreting the sonnets.

For more than a century, many of the sonnets were only availible in censored form, covering up the love sonnets to a male. I wonder how they handled Sonnet 20...?

Politics

So, Harper promised that no one would be able to go from lobbying to politics without a five-year interval between the two. This is remarkable since his Defence Minister is a former arms-industry lobbyist.

And half his cabinet voted for a bill requiring politicians crossing the floor in federal politics to return for a by-election. Now they have Emerson.

If they keep fighting corruption, they won't be able to operate as a party.

The real joke this week was that the official who ran the much-maligned gun registry -- a woman with a remarkable name right out of 1950s science-fiction, Maryantonett Flumian -- is now Deputy Head of Service Canada and Associate Deputy Minister of Human Resources and Social Development.. According to the Auditor General, financial mismanagement was at least partly responsible for the registry costing about 20 times more than expected. Flumian was in charge of the registry, and the Conservatives blamed her for the disaster.

The Liberals gave her a similar plum job last year, putting her in charge of a lot of the bureaucracy's spending, and the Conservatives ripped them a new asshole for it. After all, she was running the crossroads of the government bureaucracy, which coordinated everything from passports to job assistance. That meant she'd be playing with a lot more cash.

Now they've given her this job. No one's quite sure if this is a promotion or not, but she seems to have most of the same duties, plus several new ones.

As for Flumian herself, the only explanation is she has a bottle of Felix Felicitas stashed away somewhere. How does a person screw up so badly not only get promoted by the party that hired her, but also by the party that tried to destroy her?

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My conclusions from the past week or so have gone from worried because the Conservatives were so evil to hopeful because they're imploding way faster than I thought they would.

My new estimate is zero budgets for this government, or one co-written by the NDP and the Bloc and shoved down their throats. These guys are undercutting the parody artists, giving this kind of stuff away.

I'm hoping!

But I've also been studying Harper for 4 years. The man is shrewd. He's an expert at this game. Why throw it that he's so close to victory?

I know why he got Emerson. Emerson was within a hair's breadth of closing a deal on softwood lumber with the US. Paul Martin told Emerson to hold off on it until after the election, because Martin wanted the opportunity to talk tough.

When Harper poached Emerson, he poached the deal, so that should be announced soon. And Harper will make it look like his own success.

Fortier is part of his Quebec strategy. He wants to do an end-run around the Bloc and rebuild the Westerner/Québécois coalition that kept Mulroney afloat. He must have something up his sleeve, though, to prevent the obvious weak point: the Western conservatives and Québécois conservatives despise each other.

But Flumian makes no sense. She has no strategic value, and Harper should be avoiding her like the plague.

I don't like it. The man's an expert chess player. I don't believe he's losing now. He does everything in secret, and most of his tricks don't come to light until it's too late.

A theory is running that he's getting all the really nasty stuff done early, in hopes people will forget. Question is, what he's building the groundwork towards...?

Should I get ready to cover my ears when the big bang happens in Ottawa? [grins] It's cool that your course at least acknowledges the homophobia in the sonnets. BTW, are these sonnets in music form? Are they sung or read like poetry? I always keep wondering if they have been adapted to be performed in a any way one wants.

I meant the censoring of the sonnets, not that the sonnets themselves were homophobic! I always get mixed up!

'Sokay. I understood :)

But most of what we were reading flat-out denied anything was going on there, without actually presenting a supporting argument or evidence. The history of intepretation is still fairly new.

A lot of the stuff we've been reading is virulently bigoted. In the late 18th/early 19th century, there was a kind of sonnet debate between those who thought it represented a queer relationship, and those who thought "that's just how men talked back then."

It was especially important for the English back then, because racist nationalism was on the rise, and Shakespeare was going to be the artistic proof of the superiority of English culture. So his work had to be purified before they could use it.

One guy who thought it was a queer relationship decided to leave the sonnets out of his complete Shakespeare, on the grounds that they were so disgusting that "not even ... [an] act of parliament" could force someone to read them.

It's frightening to see how psychotic well-educated people can be.

As for sonnets, they're typically read. But the word "sonnet" means "little song," and many sonnets were put to music. It requires a little adaptation, however.

I don't know of any of Shakespeare's being put to song, but it must have happened somewhere.

Thanks for clearing it up for me!

No problem ^_^

My Valentine's day was spent writing an exam, studying and listening to my roommate talking about her boyfriend. I know how you feel... (says the one who has given up on the whole relationship thing)

Please keep writing your political reviews, not that I think you'll stop doing it but just in case. I don't follow politics enough and I find these interesting (in an OMG this can't be true even if it is kind of way).

Thanks. And thanks about the political stuff, too. I worry that I'm stressing the less-political-type people out, sometimes, but I'm glad to hear some people find it interesting.

Why have you given up on Mr. Right?

A cross between being shy, and having a far-from-ideal body. Mostly, though, it's just living in Canada's queerest city, at a very queer university, surrounded by gay men at work...

...and no one seeming to express the slightest interest in me in about four years. I'm not even sure I'd know what to do if someone did anymore :/

Oh Hamish, you know Mister Right is out there for you. I'd almost given up and somebody found me. A great guy like you will be scooped up in no time :)

I hope so. I guess I haven't really given up. Just feeling especially whiny around Valentine's Day :/

It is frustrating, though. I haven't dated anyone in about 4 years, and my last relationship was really dysfunctional.

Well, I have a boyfriend and our idea of celebrating Valentines day was him picking me up from work then window shopping until his 6h30 train. There wasn't even pizza. ^_^ *shrug* We've never really celebrated it.

But I don't think you should give up, it can take time to find the right person.

As for the political posts, I like them a lot and I don't think you should stop. If I don't often comment it's only because, like

maidenofirisa, I don't really know that much about politics. I was always the type (and still am to a certain extent) who knew more about governemnt in foreign countries centuries ago. Want me to tell you about politics in 12th Japan? ^_^

Thank you :)

I'm not giving up the political posts, because a lot of people have asked for them.

I would to hear about sometime. Though if the anime version Tale of Genji is any indication of Japan's distant past, people spent most of their time a) drifting silently through halls, b) spinning while holding a fan, and c) sexually assaulting relatives.

Maybe I shouldn't be getting my history through anime 0_o

Probably not, like hollywood movies, it is not always an acurate history. >_<

However c) sexually assaulting relatives (or really any woman of rank) was a very important part of politics of the time. Yeah, Genji wasn't just a lech, he was trying to become the most powerful man in Japan. To understand how that works would require a lot more explanation. ^_^

Oh, I was entirely joking.

I'll have to hear that explanation sometime :)

Damn you Geoffrey Chaucer and your Fowl Parliament, too!

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