LIFE AS A MOVIE

My life is a movie, and others are watching it for their own enjoyment.

This is a common fantasy I had as a kid, and I've heard others voice the same thing -- that there were times, when young, when they suspected that the life they were living was not what it appeared to be on the surface, that it was actually part of a larger cinematic enterprise that was being played out for unseen, possibly uncaring, spectators.

For example: I'd watch a movie and think: These people don't know they're in a movie, so why can't it be the same for me? Maybe I'm in the movie, and right now people are eating popcorn and drinking Coke and getting up to pee and making out and checking their watches because they find the story of my life boring.

Maybe that's the case. Maybe we're all trapped behind an unseen silver screen. Maybe the air that we breathe is Cineplex Odeon's.

So it all makes sense -- our personal problems and failures, our ridiculous trials and tribulations, not to mention tsunamis and earthquakes and other natural disasters, like Chernobyl, or Anna Nicole Smith. We're all part of an out-of-control disaster flick, that's all.

Comforting, really.

I'm wondering how it ends, and whether a sequel is possible...

THE WIT AND WISDOM OF NORM 'SATURDAY NIGHT LIVE' MACDONALD

I was in my peak physical condition when I was about, like, uh...one. Oh God, I looked good, young and fresh! You wouldn't know me now if you'd seen when I was one, you know? I even looked good for my age. People would come up to me and go, "What are you, zero?" And I'd go, "no, I'm one over here!"

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INTERVIEWER: You're Canadian. What do you think is the biggest difference between you guys and Americans?

NORM MACDONALD: I guess Canadians are without opinions. Normally, Americans always have these opinions, and I always find that funny because I don't have any. Like, you can tell me two sides of an issue, and I'll just think they're both right. I don't know how people come up with opinions.

MY KRIS KRINGLE

Watching The Polar Express yesterday on DVD, I was reminded of how much I love Santa Claus. The very idea of him, the image of him, the execution of the concept -- wonderful. Love the guy. (Loved that movie, too -- very dark and strange and magical and a little creepy and the type of movie I would have flipped for at age ten.) I'm still not entirely convinced that Santa is actually, certifiably, provably fake; I still think that somewhere between Norway and Finland his hideout waits for my detection. Who's to say that he isn't real, anyways?

When I was in Grade 6 we had to write a Christmas story for class, and I wrote this morbid little tale concerning a certain elf of Santa's who was pissed off at how hard he worked without receiving any credit whatsoever, so he shot down a couple of other elves and kidnapped Santa; I even providedillustrations for my readers' enjoyment, complete with jet-black uzis and maroon-red blood. My teacher wasn't pleased.

Not the usual Santa story, no, and not one I'd write now, but I still would like to write the ultimate, kickass Santa Claus story.

I'm serious.

Richard Christian Matheson, son of the great genre writer Richard Matheson (The Incredible Shrinking Man, Duel) had a neat little story in his short story collection Scars about a burnt-out, middle-age executive type who bumps into Santa himself at Club Med one July. Very touching and funny.

Personally, I'd like to write a novel about a burnt-out Santa himself. He would be fifty-five, sixty, as he eternally is. Hanging out in bars. Drinking too much. (If I turned it into a screenplay, I could see Gene Hackman playing my version of Santa.)

The thing is, I would like to write it totally straight and serious, as if this dude really existed. He would be full of guilt and self-loathing; here he is, living for generation after generation, and everybody's stopped believing in him. He's been co-opted by the media and the advertisers. Department stores cheapen what he represents, cloning him for the masses. He resents the fact that he's never been able to bring gifts to the Jews and the Hindus and the muslims. He mourns the disintegration of his North Pole empire. He's the ultimate overacheiver who's flatlined. Lost his mojo.

I'd go into his whole backstory -- how he became Santa, why he stayed Santa, why Mrs.Claus left him, the whole deal.

We all have our own crazy ideas, and mine is to write a novel about Santa.

Don't mock me. It will just give me the ammunition needed to write the ultimate realistic story of Santa's downfall and redemption, a Santa Claus for the new millenium for those who don't believe in him anymore.

I just might do it.

BIN LADEN, TONY DANZA, GEORGE SOROS, AND THE LAW OF UNINTENDED CONSEQUENCES

An article I read the other day raised an interesting point, namely that Osama Bin Laden, attempting to destroy (or at least seriously disrupt) western democratic systems, unintentionally set in motion a chain of events that had actually led to the opposite of his original goal -- thus, the Law of Unintentional Consequences once again comes into play.

In other words, Bin Laden and his deluded cronies seek to get payback against America for what they perceive as meddling in Middle East affairs. So what happens? America decides to meddle even MORE in Middle Eastern affairs, resulting in a wave of democratic movements stretching from Afghanistan to Iraq and Lebanon.

Not quite what Bin Laden had in mind.

I'd never thought of his before, at least in connection to 9/11. Puts a new slant on how to view global-international relations.

Bush certainly wasn't originally elected by proclaiming his desire to spread democracy; quite the opposite. And yet, because of one madman's malevolence (alliteration alert!), he's doing his best to spread the gospel according to Dubya.

We plan to do something to achieve A, and, instead of A, we get B, which turns out to be better than A, which makes us glad that we didn't actually get what we wanted.

You order the wrong drink by accident and get a tastier one than what you had wanted.

You mean to tape Fear Factor: The U.S.Senate, but end up taping The Tony Danza Show instead, and find yourself enjoying it anyway. (Though you would never admit it. And when did he get his own show, anyway? The weird thing about living abroad is you go home once a year and discover all these people who are famous to everyone but you, and the people you do know are popping up where you least expect them.) It makes me think of something George Soros, the billionaire/philanthropist often talks about. (I mean, it's not The Tony Danza Show that makes me think of George Soros, but the Law of Unintentional Consequences. Although, who knows, maybe George Soros watches Tony Danza every afternoon. It's possible. Stranger things have happened. The fact that Tony Danza has a talk show is one of them. )

Soros states that one of the prerequisites of a free and open society is not only the ability and responsibility to make our own decisions, but also the ability to recognize that what we decide could, in fact, be wrong. A notion of our own fallibility is necessary to maintaining a democratic order, or else we simply live day to day by our own unbudgeable convictions. (Is that a word, 'unbudgeable'? As in, 'won't move'? I don't think it is, but I'm feeling very vulnerable and inadequate right now because I watched this documentary called Spellbound last night, about the U.S. National Spelling Bee, and I saw all these twelve year old kids spell all these words that I've never even heard of, let alone be able to spell, and it reminded me of how I participated in a spelling bee in Grade 7, and I was doing all right, working my magic spelling mojo pretty suavely, until I got the word 'restaurant', which I started to spell r-e-s-t-e-r only to hear Kendra Thorne in the audience clap in glee because she knew I made a mistake, and her team was the other team, not mine, and the memory still digs deep, so now I'm continuously trying to expand my bloggatic vocabulary, but I don't think it's working.) Recognizing that we have the power to make our own choices, and that those choices may not always be the correct ones, is essential to an understanding of our own democratic limits and possibilities.

The Law of Unintented Consequences allows an escape clause to any worry you might have about accepting that responsibility, because who knows? Your screw-up could actually lead to better results than your successful follow-through.

So, don't fret about your decisions. Decide, see what happens, go from there. It may not be what you planned, but you could end up with green lights all the way down the road.

SO, WHAT DO YOU THINK?

The weird thing about writing is that it forces you to constantly monitor your thoughts, translate them into words, and then figure out what they mean. (To you, and to others.)

Going through our daily lives, our thoughts come and go, drifting through our minds with a random, relentless rapidness (alliteration alert!) that would be almost comic if so many of them weren't so strange and unclassifiable; we usually don't stop and take stock of them. (Unless you're seriously into Buddhism, of course, where you can sit and chill in the lotus position, keeping mental score of what you think about all day long. Could be scary.)

We think something, then something else, then something else. That's what life is -- a succession of thoughts we try to grasp hold of, then clarify. I can be sitting here typing a post about writing, and suddenly I'm thinking about one of the teachers at my elementary school, Miss Watson, large and kind, calmly sitting in the centre of a circle while a group of kids shrieked their way through 'Kumbaya'. I wasn't planning on writing about her; wasn't thinking about her at all. But there it was, that blast from the past, and what does that mean? What neurons or photons or protons or whatever-they're-called are firing their synapses off in my brain? And what compels us to put them down in concrete form?

I think writing is like speech, which means it's freakin' bizarre, is what I'm saying. What goes on in her heads is somehow transferred to our fingers (tapping keys) and our lips (forming shapes). Out comes something approaching, hopefully, wisdom or insight or, most of the time, if we're lucky, comprehension.

And how much of these thoughts bopping around in our heads do we control? It's interesting, because I think, to a certain degree, we can control our emotions. (I just remembered that Jenn at www.1ljenn.blogspot.com had a similar post about controlling your emotions awhile back, I think, so maybe I'm unconsciously-and-now-consciously stealing her idea. Not a good thing to do from a future lawyer, I know, but...) If we are sad, we can pop a Jim Carrey movie into the DVD player. (If you think he's funny, of course.) If you're angry, you can try and think warm, soothing thoughts. If you're happy, you can think of even happier thoughts and continue in your state of bliss.

In other words, you can will your emotions; I do believe that. You can choose which emotions to have, at which time. (By no means is this easy, or always possible, but I think when we feel ourselves in a funk, we tend to dwell in that funk, make it our home, hang a mental sign on the door that says 'do not disturb'; when we are happy, we do what we can to stay happy.)

But thoughts?

Thoughts are formed by the colour of the sky and the song on the radio and the latch on the door that won't stay latched and the slow and steady trickle of snot that is sneaking its way down your nephew's face against his will and the sound of popcorn popping and the fact that your foot on the brake thankfully, one could say miraculously, pushed down just in time, right on time, avoiding the slightly annoying autistic kid crossing the road who would, otherwise, have been toast, buttered and jammed, and the myriad and multiple other things that control and contain and liberate us on a yearly, monthly, weekly, hourly, second-by second basis. (Not that that autistic kid was annoying because he was autistic, of course, but because of the fact that his mother always dresses him in a bright green coat that makes him look not like Green Lantern, which would be cool, but Kermit the Frog, which is decidedly uncool. And did you know that Sylvester Stallone has an autistic son? Close to my age, actually. And do you see how stupid and cracked my thoughts can get?!? Somebody stop me...)

All we can do is see what comes up and out of our heads, try to figure out what to do with them, and then see how they affect the (so-called) real world around us.

And hope they don't do any damage.

THE C.I.A., DREW CAREY, POLITICS, ST.ELSEWHERE, AND WHAT TO SAY WHEN YOUR BOSS JUST... AIN'T... LISTENING TO YOU

"Oh, you hate your job? Why didn't you say so? There's a support group for that. It's called EVERYBODY, and they meet at the bar."

-- Drew Carey

The C.I.A. is America's elite intelligence service, conspiring and plotting and planning with some pretty shady characters in all corners of the globe, known for its covert, relentless attempts to achieve whatever it is that it wants to achieve, at whatever the cost -- so I was pretty surprised to see its new director, Porter J.Gross, basically whining about his new job in public.

The other day he gave a speech at the Ronald Reagan Presidential Library, where he mentioned how he had to spend five hours a day simply preparing President Bush's daily security briefings; he also said: "The jobs I'm being asked to do, the five hats that I wear, are too much for this mortal." He went on to mention that he's not exactly sure what his duties are, given all of the new intelligence apparatuses that are now being established.

Doesn't this strike anyone else as supremely, possibly galactically, weird?

Bush thinks so -- he went to C.I.A. headquarters yesterday for some much-needed morale boosting and damage control.

Think about it. Put aside the fact that the C.I.A. has a pretty strong, secure image it has to uphold and maintain. Put aside the fact that its new director is basically saying he's stressed, overworked, can't handle it. Just think of it from the 'new job' angle -- can you imagine the CEO of McDonald's, Procter-Gamble or Toshiba reading a speech where he states, quite clearly, that the demands of the job are too much for him to handle. I've never heard of that, anywhere, by anyone. Is he shooting himself in the foot?

Maybe not.

Before travelling abroad, I was basically politically ignorant, but I now I try to follow what governments say and do, and why. (I'm usually wrong, but...) And I'm starting to think that politics is all about the signals you send. It's all about indirection.

So brand-new-CIA-director Gross says publicly, at a major event at a major institution, that his job sucks big time, and he's not sure what he's supposed to do, and what signal does that send to Dubya?

It says: We're in trouble here. Things aren't working. And if you aren't going to pay attention to me, I'm going to say this publicly, loud and clear, plain and simple. Maybe his whining was a ploy and a tactic; seems like it, anyways.

I just find this fascinating. (But I also found the final episode of St.Elsewhere fascinating, too, so there you go. The thing is, it actually was a really weird episode, because it turned out that the whole hospital, the whole series, for that matter, all took place in the imagination of a young autistic boy who stared for hours on end at a little shake-em-up-and-watch-the-snow-fall-Christmas-thingee that held a tiny building that looked exactly like the hospital. It was all a dream, the whole show. Haven't seen the series since I was a kid, but I remember liking it even then. Denzel Washington started out there. Canadian comedian Howie Mandel was suprisingly effective in a dramatic turn. But what the hell was that snow globe about, anyway?)

Politics is a big game that involves money, power and death. Assassinations. Coups. The media. Even fashion. (I'm serious. Imagine Laura Bush strolling out onto a stage dressed like Courtney Love. People would freak out. Actually, the same thing would happen if the opposite occurred, too, only there would probably be more beer involved. And crystal meth. Not that Laura doesn't partake in a little of both now and then.)

And sometimes, if your boss isn't listening well, all you have to do is give a speech.

And then call it a day, take Drew Carey's advice, and head on over to the bar. There'll be a lot of folks waiting for you.

IMAGINARY PATS ON THE BACK

When westerners come to third-world countries attempting to do what they think is good, and noble, and riteous, it is, instead, the worst form of ego-massage imaginable -- thinking that our mere presence is going to improve the lives of those who never asked for it to begin with.


True? False?

I don't know.

I'm asking because I watched the Oscar-winning documentary Born Into Brothels last night, and it depicts the lives of the children of prosititutes in Calcutta, the streets ofwhich looked not unlike Phnom Penh (from the little I saw of it in the film). These children are given the gift of cameras by a white Western woman, and they learn about art, each other, themselves. They shoot the world around them for our entertainment, so we can ooh and ahh and cry at their misery before seeing who's on Letterman.

Nice, right? Humanistic, in the best sense of the word?

I think so.

Although there's some criticism of the film for it's somewhat paternalistic (maternalistic?) nature: I, the western white man/woman, will come and help you, the poor, brown, helpless Asian. And you will thank me for it, and I will feel good.

That's what happens, and it's true -- you do feel good for helping those who need it.

Is that wrong?

I don't think so, necessarily, but I can see why detractors might think so. Are we just getting off on other's misery, and redeeming ourselves by doing what we think might help, imaginary pats on the backs all the way home?

There's no easy answer, I guess. Anytime anyone helps anybody else, there's always accusations of selfishness, which seem to me to be pretty much beside the point, anyways. Everything we do is selfish, even the goodwill we offer to others; in the end, we're looking to fulfill what we feel needs to fulfilled within ourselves. If others benefit, and we feel good, it's a two-for-the-price-of-one deal.

Perhaps it is only a movie designed for our entertainment and our own guilt. (That's the harsh, cynical way of approaching the subject -- not the way I particularly want to view it, but a valid view, I admit.) But by watching it you are able to enter a new round of empathy; and perhaps that same empathy, actualized, can benefit those around you. All art may be exploitive, but this kind of art could, if deeply felt, lead to action. And that can only be a good thing.

And yet, the anxieties linger. Most of the world is in a desperately wretched condition, poor and getting poorer, yet somehow still filled to bursting with the goodwill and generosity exhibited by the kids in the documentary, the kids I see on the streets every day, the kids who have nothing to give, but who still, more often than you'd think, offer even that to a passing stranger.

If we match our goodwill (backed with money, and resources, and expertise) with their goodwill (backed by only their honest intentions), then both sides gain, even if the inital intentions have more to do with our own internal needs than those we are helping. No?