Going mediaeval on our asses

As a semimythical coyote, I recognise that mythical cosmogonies, including mine, may be internally consistent, yet correspond only roughly with what most people think of as reality. One side of the (mythical) line, I'm a totemic critter of some religious import. The other, I'm just a mouthy talking doggie with a sideline in eating your cat. Having had about 6,000 years' practice at being semimythical, I've learned to deal.

So it's with a practiced and critical eye that I watch the government attempt to build its own mythical cosmogony. You know, the one where empirical science never happened, and all must defer to the Prime Minister's gut. The one that spills out over the dinner-plate belt buckle he wears once a year at the Calgary Stampede, and tells him that basing decisions on actual facts is less desirable than just making crap up and calling it the truth.

Having had his mythical dogma (heh...) called out so often by the empirical facts on stuff like safe injections sites, mandatory sentencing, rising crime rates and blahblahblah ad nauseam, he's apparently started screwing over the people who collect these facts, such as Statistics Canada. Because nothing is more inconvenient than having your irrefutable gut feelings and cherished truthinesses shot to hell by your own government agency.

Give the guy credit. He and his base are doing their best to willfully ignore the entire Renaissance. You know, that insignificant 400-odd years when empirical science, ummm, evolved. Would they prefer the ignorance and superstition that came before? For an entire modern nation? How's that for going mediaeval on our asses?

As an over-opinionated quadruped with long experience in issues that rise when one's core beliefs reject the, you know, actual world in which you must exist, I gotta say: no matter how stubbornly you cherish that mythiness, sooner or later reality whacks ya upside the head. How's that for cognitive dissonance? And how ya gonna deal with it?

Item: 95+ to run for city council

Fair enough. We need some new faces in the electoral race. But if they all show up in the same teensy-weensy car, I'm leavin'...

Lug nuts and the census

So, even when faced with near-universal opposition, and even when the Chief Statistician quits in protest, the government has no problem trashing the mandatory census long form: "It's intrusive!!!! We're pandering to our loony fringe base, dammit!!!!"

So we coyotes will try to explain the issue in terms that make sense to the would-be defenders of this move, WHO ALWAYS SEEM TO FULL-CAP THEIR (OFTEN FURIOUSLY UNGRAMMATIC AND ANONYMOUS) FORUM COMMENTS: the lug nuts on that cherished Chevrolet half ton you use to earn your living.

Suppose your neighbourhood garage guys - call 'em Steve and Tony - say outta the blue that they want to replace all your lug nuts with Dodge lugs, because they think Chevy is arbitrary and intrusive for insisting on Chev lug nuts. Hell (they reason), Dodge lugs look pretty much the same, so no problem, right? Oh, and? Steve and Tony can pump gas, but neither's ever worked as a mechanic.

Would ya buy that, Durango? Nope. Because you, lug nut connoisseur that you are, know that Chev and Dodge lugs have different diameters, thread pitches and chamfers. Assuming they even sorta fit, those babies are gonna strip out, or leave wheel slop. Your wheels will come off, someplace inconvenient and possibly fatal.

There are a bunch of trucky things you could customize that, arguably, wouldn't wreck the ol' Silverado's utility: running boards, exhaust stacks, a big pair of them fine-looking chrome bull balls hanging off the trailer hitch. Dodge lug nuts, not so much.

Now, assume your pickup is a census. (It's a metaphor, Durango. Work with it.) See, reliable census information is Canada's business edge. Lotsa smart people rely on it to make sure the country as a whole can earn its living more efficiently. As every civilized country in the world aspires to.

A mandatory long form is intrusive, but a small price to pay for citizenship in this country you claim to love so much. Much like obeying stop signs at intersections. We work co-operatively toward common goals, unlike, say, those anarchists you hated so much at the G20. To do anything else is to court rump of skunk, and madness.

A voluntary long form is pretty much like Dodge lug nuts on your Chevy - doesn't match. Reading statistical trends properly makes tracking changes accurately over time really important. Even if you label the data you collect by the same name, changing the method you use to collect it means that you can't reasonably compare it with, well, anything that came before. The wheels come off. Just like that Chevy.

Now, I'm only a dumb coyote, so here are my questions: why would you trust an ill-fitting lug nut named Steve to change that? Why does Steve think some lug nuts are more equal than others? And why, if Steve keeps saying his opponents are unpatriotic and unCanadian, is it always him that seems hell-bent on changing this country, lug nut by lug nut, into something unrecognizable...?

Just askin'...

Emergency Meeting Minutes: 2010-07-19

Venue: The Usual Spot
Present: 4th Dwarf, Woodsy, Aggie

1) Nobody blogging

It is noted that poor Coyote is carrying the blog and nobody else has blogged for weeks.

A: I would like to start again.

W: Me too, but I like to say “continue to blog”. It’s less negative.

4D and A agree.

A: Maybe using the camera is the key.

W: A picture with a couple of words is not so intimidating.

A: And maybe sketching...

Some discussion ensues about factors that limit blogging.

A: Then there’s perimenopause.

W: Or menopause, and 4D, how is your andropause?

4D: My andropause?

2) Vampires

A: Why are vampires so hot right now?

W: Because relationships suck?

Aggie groans. 4D pointedly does not.

A: Is it about gender power differences?

W: Huh?

A: In True Blood, vampires are an oppressed minority group, even though they are powerful beings. Like the white male narrative that they are now marginalized.

4D: Hmm. Maybe the Chair would like to come back to the blog as a vampire persona.

W: What is our official position on vampires?

4D: I don’t feel a need to have an official position.

W: What if Aggie and I do?

4D: [Shrugs and makes confusing hand gestures] Well... Why?

A: They seem to have taken on a cultural importance.

Some discussion ensues, but nothing is resolved on the vampire topic.

3) Coyote Carrying the Blog

A: Coyote is carrying the blog.

W: We should give him an award... Dinner and drinks from everyone else.

4D and Aggie agree and the motion is adopted by consensus.

A: Where is he?

W and 4D: It’s a mystery.

4) Back to Vampires

4D: Perhaps our official position on vampires could be reporting on who is not a vampire and who might be. For instance, our mayor Is not a vampire because he was captured on videotape outdoors during the day.

W: And we was married in a church.

A doesn’t seem to be fired up by this idea.

5) BOLO

A: Woodsy, how was Blog Out Loud Ottawa?

W: It was fun.

BREAKING NEWS: Conrad Black Appointed Head of Statistics Canada

Long census form records to be stored in his car trunk, never to be seen by anyone, anywhere, ever...

Like Zoom says!

Y'know, I've been watching the whole Census Long Form thing and thinkin' that the Prime Minister must be denser than a black hole to have decided to scrap it. Exactly what kind of hole that makes him is a subject for a whole 'nother post. I dogress.

Anyway, I'd lined up my arguments and was about to launch 'em into the near blogosphere when I happened upon Zoom's latest post over at Knitnut. You tell 'em, Zoom! Our personal styles might differ a little teensy bit, but in the particulars we agree. 100 per cent, as statisticians would say. If they weren't hobbled by idiotic governments...

Six AM on Nepean Point

Nights, lately, we coyotes have spent on the move, too hot, too restless to sleep. At the end of one such, I dogtrotted to Nepean Point at sunrise. Near the base of Champlain's statue, I settled on my hind legs, panting a little, thinking to watch the shadows of the bridges shorten on the moving water.

"Nice view, isn't it?" said a near voice.

I was surprised. Not too many people actually see semi-mythical coyotes in this city. They usually dismiss us as figments of imagination. We encourage this, and in fact know a few small charms to help it along. This was an unusual person. I looked over my shoulder into a very tanned face with intelligent eyes.

"It is," I agreed, turning, taking in details of the man in the shade of the statue's plinth: clean copper-sand hair as dark and weatherbeaten as his skin, shabby-neat clothes, open book overturned beside him, indeterminate age, relaxed raffish air. In the growing brightness over his shoulder was Parliament Hill, clouds piling over it into a sky the same deep blue as his eyes.

"I like to catch the breeze off the river about this time of day," he offered.

"It's good," I agreed. "In this heat." I pointed my pointy nose into a scrap of moving air and sniffed gratefully.

"I like the heat," he said. "I spend six months a year cursing the cold."

Then, seeing I wasn't quite poised to flit, as we coyotes often are wont, he began to talk. He seemed have traveled and to know about minerals. He told stories about planting gardens in glacial sand deposits in the Arctic, of holding huge black onyxes in his hands, of illegally moiling for opals in the Australian outback, of diving for emeralds at the bases of South American waterfalls.

His current state suggested none had stayed in his hands, if ever he'd held them. He was obviously knowledgeable and intelligent, but there was hazy point in each story where the facts as I understood them seemed to drag their anchors and begin to drift.

It also might be that he was being completely truthful about the way he saw the world. I did not see fit to get into this. It might, I decided, seem a touch rich coming from a six-odd-millenia-old, semimythical talking dog. Who's not really from around these parts.

His stories had a humorous flair. He seemed serene about the wealth he did not have. He was amiable. I enjoyed his company. That was enough.

As the breeze died in the growing heat, I stood. He closed his book, placed it carefully into a battered pack, and uncoiled elegantly from the base of the statue. We walked companionably down the hill. At the bottom he wished me a very fine day. I wished him an equally fine day. He turned toward the Market, and I turned toward the alleys of Centretown.

It occurred to me as I re-entered the city's heated maze that many of the elite who sit in that fairy-tale Gothic-revival castle just across the bay, the one that had hovered over his shoulder while we spoke, probably wouldn't have much regard for my nameless new friend. I think that perhaps he wouldn't have much use for them, either...

Canada Day, 2010...

...have a good one.