Feeling Funked Up

The past couple of weeks have not been happy ones for coyotes. After a series of events that would confound even the most optimistic contrarian among us, we have been reduced to sitting in the dark, sucking our frozen paws in what might be considered an anguished funk.

Why am I so depressed? I mean!

City buses are running around with HO HO HO on their route signs so they can whiz by you in the freezing dark, a topic Shorty has already raised in some detail.

The mayor, as some appalling cynic infamously predicted, now mistakes his erstwhile legal acquittal as a resounding endorsement of his term in office. Worse, he is flying trial balloons about running again, now that he's nearly finished his error-ridden first term of egregious cluelessness.

The current federal government's unprecedentedly aggressive campaign to prove that it can out-yell, out-lie, and out-sleaze all previous comers continues unabated. If possible, with a side-dish of fatally hobbled democracy.

Stephen Harper's Canada increasingly is being revealed as a wannabe-autocracy that only serves people who have the same shamefully narrow world view as he. The fact that people who think like him are still (Yay!)in a minority does not stop him from pulling Bush-administration-style dirty tricks, so he can pretend.

The prime minister has also heartily approved of the non-binding sorta-not-quite-agreement on global warming mitigation that came out of Copenhagen, which to thinking coyotes everywhere is pretty much a dead-certain sign -- emphasis on the 'dead' -- that the deal sucks for this small blue planet we share.

All of this relates to people elected by far less than a majority of the franchised voters, in each case. Weakening democratic underpinnings effectively gives control to people who are not necessarily entitled. And makes coyotes froth at the mouth. Not rabies! Just the soap I use to wash out my mouth after reading and commenting on what I see in the morning papers.

The increasing loss of daylight through December has really been the last straw. We semimythical coyotes get Seasonal Affective Disorder, too, people! So: get out there and celebrate the passing of the Winter Solstice. Days are getting longer again. And about bloody time. And start thinking again about the things that make democracy work. Like voting when there's an election. It's also about bloody time...

Image: Arctic solstice, by Eric Hoogstraten at Cambridge Bay Blog, Victoria Island, Nunavut

Unfit to print...?

We coyotes like news papers. Probably due to puppyhood training, about which the less said in polite company, the better. So when the vivacious Jo S. began a thread on the health of the media, many, including your faithful/unreliable reporter/narrator, had things to say. I had a lot. You may safely surmise that I have not finished sucking my paws and, ummm, pawndering. And I'm not the only one. Just the only coyote...

Current world economic woes are not themselves killing newspapers and legacy electronic media. They've exposed pre-existing rot. Newspapers were a disruptive technology for their time, an artifact of (mostly) the 19th century, freshened for the 20th by the advent of giant, costly, high-speed presses. These allowed papers to meet radio, then TV, pretty much head-on, even as pundits forecast the end of hard copy.

But papers' attempts to compete with later media on their (newer) terms have lost subtle ground with each new disruption, and the Net changes the game totally. In developed societies, it's faster, more accessible and scalable than its ancestors, and cheaper for content makers. The computers we pay for download many of their distribution costs - legacy media need printing presses, delivery trucks, transmitters - right onto our desks.

And the Net's tuned to the ADD nanosecond. Why write, edit, publish and distribute articles about Paris' latest deep thinkage or Britney's wardrobe malfunctions when they can be fully, ummm, exposed in 140-character Tweets? The Craigslists and Kijijis efficiently nabbed the papers' classified lifeblood from under publishers' noses. Topping it all, media outlets began more than a decade ago to throw up content on the Net - often badly, always for free - hoping to somehow gain beachheads there until they somehow figured out how to make a buck from it. They never really did.

Newspaper presses used to pretty much print money for their owners. The Thomsons, Blacks and Aspers of Canada, and the Hearsts and Knights and Murdochs of the world, got into the business because profits were so amazingly fat. But rather than improving the product when faced with competition or adversity, they too often acted to protect profit margins with chiselling economies that made newspapers less enjoyable and more irrelevant. And unhealthy.

Oh, the Petfinder's former editor in chief tried to regain hip cred by hanging major news stories on movie and comic book leads - complete with movie publicity stills instead of, like, actual news photos. Maybe he could have thought the other way around, instead of trivializing his content. Now the paper's latest owner, Canwest-Global, tries to economize by half-gutting local newsrooms to centralize its newspaper chain's content, inappropriately like the network feed for its TV stations.

These band aids and others do not play to the strength of a good paper, which is to reflect and record local thoughts and events and people. Placing them well within in their larger regional, national and global contexts, yes, but with the aim of really good local coverage. People trying to understand themselves, and their place in the world, are constant. I think.

I'm not saying that that newspapers need to be all serious. There's plenty of room for playful print. But there should be room for context and analysis too. And maybe they could back off a little from brain-dead takes on LiLo and Amy W. That's what the Net is for.

Record snowfall accumulation?

No. Nope. Noooooooo. Hell no! Not until we've had at least another eighty-seven freakin' centimetres....

Drowning in The Current

While life in Florence offers many pleasures (blog entries passim), I frequently pine for a slice of Canadiana. A little Eastern Ontario maple syrup, the distinctive sound of a loonie jingling with a toonie, a good rant by one Donald Cherry, or the clink of glasses with a rousing Caribou! toast.

So I find myself tuning the shortwave to Radio Canada International in hopes of hearing a familiar voice from across the pond. Now let me be clear in the best Paul Martin fashion: I am a grande fanatico of CBC and a special admirer of its talented employees.

But regrettably one of the shows I catch most often is The Current, the daily gabfest that began with such promise, yet has descended into a ritual guilt spiral of histrionic horror. I realize the men and women of the fourth estate must dutifully skulk among the dregs of our ailing global village, overturning slimy stones in an effort to expose the charlatans and evildoers of the age. But enough is enough! Anna Maria Tremonti's radio program is a steady diet of apocalyptic calamity, the aural equivalent of pitching one's holiday weekend smorgasbord tent at the lip of an active volcano.

A mere half-hour of this sonic scare-o-rama makes me want to double-latch the apartamento door, open another bottle of chianti and crawl back beneath the comforting blue duvet.

The Current doesn't have to go all Pollyana on us. It just means less problema, more soluzione.

Why not the occasional documentary about an unsung underdog who has overcome great challenges? A sound-rich missive on an emerging musical talent the record companies ignored? An empowering look at combatting workplace stress? Or what the average Jane, citizen's group or mega-corporation can actually do to reverse global warming?

Meantime, don't stay tuned.