Thursday, November 30, 2006
Time Wasting
Have you ever had a time-travel fantasy? I think most people at some point or other have imagined themselves as pirates, knights, princesses, pharoahs and such.
This story in the news reminded me of an ancient Rome daydream I used to indulge when I was a teenager. It was actually more of a world domination fantasy, to tell the truth. The idea was that I would go back in time and take over the world by reinventing rudimentary technology. It was a sort of brain teaser for me that I pursued the way some people pursue crosswords or sudoku. On long road trips or sleepless nights, I would try to visualize the story in great detail. If I ran into anything that seemed fuzzy or improbable, I would go back and learn more about Roman history or basic technology.
Until now, I have never spoken to anyone about this. On the one hand, I suppose I felt a little foolish investing so much time and energy into such a pointless pursuit. On the other hand, I think in some irrational back corner of my mind I was afraid that others would steal my time-travelling-world-domination ideas if I revealed them.
Now that I am older and further along on my path to enlightenment, I find that I am less concerned about world domination than I once was and, in any case, I no longer regard time travel as the most feasible means to achieve it. So here, dear readers, for the first time ever, I give to you Mentok's Certified Ancient Rome World Domination Plan:
1. Create a back story. Remember that in ancient Rome anyone who looked or sounded funny had no legal rights and could be sold into slavery. To avoid this, when you first arrive try to convey through gestures, drawings and Latin-based English words that you are an ambassador from a previously undiscovered country. The Latin word for ambassador is "legatus". Mentioning mythical kingdoms, like Atlantis and Ultima Thule might help. Say "Caesar" a lot, but remember to say it the right way - 'Kie-saar', sort of like the German "Kaiser". There is no soft C in Latin and the letters "ae" create a "i-e" sound.
Hopefully, this will land you in the Imperial court as a guest. If not and you end up in slavery, be sure to emphasize that you know how to read and write and that you can do math (but remember to do it in Roman numerals.) This should secure your position as a well-treated house or office slave with the potential to earn or buy back your freedom while making valuable business contacts. This is a solid plan B that allows the remainder of the world-dominaiton plan to proceed unhindered.
2. Learn Latin. Given the strong Latin influence on English and the intense immersion environment, you should be conversant within a year and more-or-less fluent within two years.
3. Establish a wealthy patron. Roman society was built on an extensive system of patronship, so it shouldn't be hard for an exotic creature from a far-away land to find a sugar-daddy. Hopefully, Step 1 should provide you with such a patron one way or another.
4. Set a foundation for franchising. Before you go about reinventing technology, you will want to establish a distribution network in advance. Travel and communication in ancient Rome was very slow, so you will not be able to manage an empire-wide business on your own. Go on schmooze-and-booze trips to Athens, Alexandria and northern Italy to cultivate a network of potential cash-up-front franchise partners. Romans will be quite familiar with this concept, since their tax system was privatized and run, essentially, as a form of franchising.
5. Develop paper. Romans used papyrus, a natural form of paper which had to be laboriously pieced together by hand in Egypt where papyrus plants grow. Papyrus was therefore expensive and scarce, so Romans would be all too eager to buy a cheaper, domestically made product. Paper can be made from any cellulose-based organic substance, like wood-chips, sawdust, old cloth or used papyrus. Just boil the stuff up into a mash, pore it over a very fine sieve, smooth it out and let it dry. Once you have this down to an assembly-line routine, franchise it out quickly for big cash before someone steals it (remember, there were no patent laws in ancient Rome).
6. Develop the printing press. You'll need a carpenter and a metal-smith to do the detail work for you, but the basic idea is simple: create metal letters and put them in a wooden frame that has line-by-line vise grips to hold them in place. Once again, franchise this out for big upfront cash.
7. Experiment with assembly line production. Most ancient people had no clue about industrial efficiency. With your new pot of cash, try buying up a few manufacturing businesses e.g. shoe factories and see if modern assembly line methods help make them more productive. If you develop any systems that work, immediately franchise them.
8. Acquire a secret island base. By now you are fabulously wealthy and ready to plan your next phase of world domination. Set up a secure base where you can carry out further scientific experiments and train your army of world domination away from prying eyes.
9. Develop gunpowder and gunpowder weapons. The formula for gunpowder is 75% potassium nitrate, 15% sulfur and 10% wood ash. This sounds more intimidating than it is. Potassium nitrate (aka saltpeter) is a powdery crystalline substance that occurs naturally in caves containing limestone, which was a common building material extensively mined in ancient Rome. Sulfur was also easy to find in ancient Rome; it was the white powdery stuff left caked on to the walls of the urine pits of industrial dye makers (human urine was a chemical ingredient in Roman dye). Gunpowder weaponry will be trickier; you'll just have to work this out - carefully- through trial and error with the help of metalsmiths.
10. Develop advanced transportation. Any 21st century school child should be able to create a working hot-air balloon with enough time and resources. Balloons are useless for transportation but are very useful for gathering military intelligence. You should also try your hand at creating cattle-powered paddle-wheel boats, which would be much faster and cheaper to operate than Roman slave-paddled galleys. This is a relatively simple matter of hooking up oxen to a rudimentary system of revolving gears to spin a pair of paddlewheels.
11. Recruit and train an army of world domination. German tribes would make excellent recruits, since they were notoriously tough and had plenty of grudges against Rome. They were also technologically inferior, making it relatively unlikely that they could figure out how to make gunpowder and turn your weapons against you.
12. Invade Rome. At this juncture in history, an adequately supplied gunpowder army should be practically invincible. However, until you can absolutely prove this, stick to the old military rule of thumb of engaging the enemy only when you outnumber him 10 to one. Start with a few remote outposts in France to test the efficacy of gunpowder weapons against Roman armor and tactics, then move south into Italy once you are confident.
Following your conquest of Rome, you can pursue some secondary objectives, such as using your paddle-wheel boats to reach the riches of southern Africa and the Americas. Eventually, as your wealth and grip on power increases, you'll be able to consider conquering and colonizing further afield.
There you have it...easy as pie, eh? Now it's your turn. What are your time-travel fantasies? What periods in history are most attractive to you? Are there any historical figures you admire? Tell me your fondest historical daydreams, in as much or as little detail as you like.
posted by Mentok @ 11:34 a.m.,
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Monday, November 27, 2006
Quotable
A neighbouring province is going through a political leadership race (American translation: sort of like a gubernatorial primary). A returning officer, who was swamped with a rush of voters, was quoted in the paper with what I thought was most hilariously diplomatic statment I've ever heard.
"Any time you have hundreds of people involved in something, you encounter what I like to call the richness and diversity of the human condition."
I can't think of a nicer way to say that there were a lot of cranky jerks, which is clearly what he's getting at.
posted by Mentok @ 2:25 p.m.,
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Thursday, November 23, 2006
The Rink
I would like to start by wishing all my American readers a Happy Thanksgiving. You know we Canucks are jealous of that holiday, because our thanksgiving is so lame and too early. All the best to you, dear friends.
Speaking of Americans, I was wondering: What do American towns, especially Southern ones, do without a rink?
This past weekend, my family and I went out for the breakfast special at a local rink where our oldest son takes curling lessons. The meal came with a heaping side-order of patriotic nostalgia.
I should stop here and explain, for the benefit of American readers, that curling is a winter sport that's like shuffleboard on ice. It is, shall we say, a low-impact sport. In my hometown rink, back before anti-smoking laws, there used to be ashtray stands strategically placed every six feet along the side of the ice. People fool themselves that they curl for fitness, but it's really about the socializing.
There's a hit comedy in Canada called Corner Gas that's filmed in our neck of the woods. It's a sitcom set in a typical Saskatchewan small town. In their famous curling episode, a curling team loses a long-time player, an elderly woman, because she is hospitalized with a broken hip. Grudgingly, the team agrees to allow a newcomer from Toronto to replace her. This city-slicker is, naturally, hopeless at the game. Mere hours before the tournament starts, the old team member suddenly reappears, hobbling on a walker and towing an oxygen tank. The team unceremoniously dumps the Torontonian and welcomes back the invalid.
Of course, there is another sport played on a rink, namely hockey. I expect I don't need to go on too much about the importance of that sport to the Canadian psyche.
In small-town Canada, the local rink is the heart of the community, a veritable citadel. In many small towns, the rink is not just the home of winter sports. It's also the local tavern, coffee shop, short-order restaurant and meeting hall. During the summer, it plays host to the town fair. Town dances and socials are held there. At election time, it is likely to be a polling station. Everything centres on the rink.
As a kid, I wasn't very athletic but I nonetheless remember spending whole weekends hanging out at the rink. We had few TV channels back in those pre-cable days and Pong was the only video game available, so there wasn't much else to do. To me, the rink was always a wonderland of childhood discovery. The underside of the bleachers was like a giant play structure. The concession sold a mouth-watering assortment of penny candies. There seemed to be an endless number of change rooms, unlocked storage closets, meeting rooms and other nooks-and-crannies to explore. Heaven knows where our parents were - watching the game, I expect - but it didn't matter because we knew and trusted all of the adults.
So much for childhood nostalgia. Here in grown-up life, I hadn't been to a rink for years before last weekend. My wife and I both expected that a city curling rink would be, you know, urban and lacking in that small-town charm. We were totally wrong. It was a honest-to-goodness slice of Canadiana right in the middle of the city. The rink patrons looked like rink patrons everywhere. The coffee tasted just as bad as in every small town. The coffee shop area was full of the same sorts of characters. One wise old owl, who was clearly revered by the younger curlers, held court and lectured his admirers about, of all things, alternatives for the expansion of broadband internet in the province. I remember hearing similar conversations 30 years ago, except I think they were about CB radios back then.
So what do American or British towns do without a rink? What's the centre of the community? I find it hard to imagine another institution encompassing the many functions of the rink, but I suppose there must be. I'd like to invite my Canadian readers to share their memories of the rink and my foreign readers to share other sorts of small-town or neighbourhood childhood memories.
posted by Mentok @ 10:23 a.m.,
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Tuesday, November 21, 2006
Belated Birthday Wishes
I would like all readers to join me in wishing long-time reader Bathroom Hippo a very happy but slightly belated birthday.
In case you were wondering, Hippo was originally based on a character in the excellent cartoon parody Harvey Birdman Attorney At Law, the show that also features Judge Mentok. So, you see, we cartoon parodies must stick together.
In his early blogging days, Bathroom Hippo based his posts almost exclusively on excerpts from the show. Since then he has become an accomplished cartoon producer in his own right. If you have yet to experience Hippo's unique brand of whackiness, I advise you to do so now.
Happy Birthday Hippo.
posted by Mentok @ 11:22 p.m.,
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Thursday, November 16, 2006
The Perfect Gift
Well, that Remembrance Day thread was fun, wasn't it? But it is time to move on. Here in Canada, where we don't have the American Thanksgiving holiday to get in the way, the great retail machine has already started pushing Christmas on us.
I should start by admitting a bias. I'm not a big Christmas fan. I'm not a Scrooge or anything. I enjoy the season as much as anyone. I just don't get off on the whole process of Christmas the way some people do - not mentioning any names (Mrs. Mentok).
For one thing, I have a hard time with acute hypocrisy of this season. We honour the birth and philosophy of Jesus by indulging in a month-long orgy of rich food and unabashed materialism. Even that catch-phrase of every Christmas movie - "the real meaning of Christmas" - has become utterly hollow.
What really cracks me up this time of year are all the retailers who use the mantra "makes the perfect gift" without a second thought. Here are a few classics I've encountered over the years:
- an oil change garage
- an adult movies and novelties store
- a funeral home
- a septic-tank cleaning service
...all boasting that their gift certificates make "the perfect gift".
So here's our discussion topic for this week. It may be a bit early, but let's get all of our Scroogisms out of system now so that we can enjoy the season without a further ba-humbug. Have you seen any weird places pushing "the perfect gift"? Have you ever received a horribly bad, inappropriate present? Have you ever witnessed behaviour grotesquely out of line with the spirit of Christmas?
posted by Mentok @ 9:36 a.m.,
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Friday, November 10, 2006
Remembrance Day
Tomorrow is Remembrance Day in Canada. It occurs to me that this day is not just the most sombre one in this country, but also the most patriotic. I think it says a great deal about the character of Canadians that we have little taste for jingoistic nationalism but we are very disciplined about honouring those who have sacrificed for this country.
This year will involve a very special act of remembrance for me. My father, who passed away a year and a half ago, was a World War II veteran. This weekend I'm going to be working on editing his memoirs. I'm currently right at the chapter where he talks about his war experiences. He was in the dental corps but ended up being assigned to a ship that was torpedoed by Nazi submarines off the coast of Norway.
I think this will be a very poignant Remembrance Day for all Canadians. This is the year, it seems, that it has really sunk into the the Canadian public that we are currently at war in Afghanistan.
Back in the 70s and 80s, I think many of us in this country had fallen into thinking of conventional infantry war as being sort of old-fashioned and obsolete. After all, our country hadn't been in a war for a generation. What military we had was kept up, it seemed, purely for appearances sake. The umbrella of the American nuclear deterrent and the dynamics of the Cold War made the very notion of a ground war almost absurd.
How things change.
Those of you (apparently few) who read my movie review of Flags of Our Fathers will recall that I was once a great student of Sun Tzu's Art of War. It deserves to be said that even that great Chinese strategian spent the first several chapters of his text discouraging war. He goes to great lengths to describe how war will bankrupt a nation on every level. Much of his strategic advice is aimed at showing kings how to avoid war by outmanoevering the enemy and creating a deterrent. To Sun Tzu, all-out war was something to be left as a last resort and resolved quickly. His words are as wise today as they were then.
But what is the last resort? Especially these days with international public attention focused on that screwed-up war in Iraq, it's useful to step back and consider what exactly a "just war" would look like in this day and age.
It's tempting to take the total peace-nik attitude of saying that no war is ever justified unless you are fighting in self-defence. But then there's that big fat stinky exception of Nazi Germany. Realistically, Nazi Germany could never have invaded North America, but few would question that we were justified if fighting that profound evil.
Yet, if you look back at the records, people at the time either weren't all that aware of the crimes against humanity or weren't all that concerned about them. They fought and died for somewhat different reasons than the ones we project on them now, but thank goodness they did.
So given that we live in a 'hindsight is 20/20' world, how do we tell the next time we are faced with a Hitler? Are we in fact justified in taking aggressive action in fighting Hitlers? Who should make these determinations? For example, Canada's war in Afghanistan has the full blessing of the United Nations, yet not everyone agrees that this is justification enough. When we see people suffering elsewhere in the world, when is it our duty to step in and when is it none of our bloody business? Are we in the West hypocrites in our moral self-righteousness? Would another country be justified, for example, invading Canada in order to liberate the (arguably) oppressed native people? Just what sorts of rules should we set before we embark on this most drastic of human actions?
These are all very sad questions to think about, but necessary ones. On this Remembrance Day weekend, I'd like to invite you all to voice your deepest thoughts on the topic of war - both war in our time and in general.
The Pogues - And the Band Played Waltzing Matilda
posted by Mentok @ 10:14 a.m.,
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Wednesday, November 08, 2006
Polygamy
There's an attention grabbing title, eh wot?
Weirdo polygamist cults have been making the news in Canada and the US lately, so I thought it might be fun for us all to noodle about the topic.
Disclaimer: I have no personal interest in polygamy. My wife, Mrs. Mentok, is both beautiful and fearsome, like a great warrior queen. She is more than woman enough for me. Please don't hurt me, honey.
OK, with that out of the way.
It seems to me that polygamy is one of those things, like orgies or smoking cigars, which excite the male imagination but which are much, much more appealing in fantasy than in reality.
I suppose when most fellows imagine polygamy, they imagine themselves as buff, heroic Arabian princes surrounded by buxom I Dream of Jeannie beauties.
The seedy reality of polygamy in places like the notorious Bountiful BC colony is fat, poxied old men consorting with scrawny, pale, terrified 15 year old girls.
I don't think there can be much doubt this the traditional patriarchal form of polygamy - one man and many women - is an exploitive, repugnant institution on every level. The fact that the Old Testament version of Jehovah once tolerated this type of marriage says little about the nature of God but a great deal about the editorial licence taken by the authors.
Further, patriarchal polygamy would tend to destabilize society, since it allows some men effectively to stockpile sexual goods and services, shall we say, to the discontent of everyone else. Amongst our hominid brothers, the chimpanzees and the gorillas, polygamy is the single greatest source of political unrest and the cause of many very bloody political coups.
But while patriarchal polygamy is a no-go, there is another, more fantastical version of it that is fun to think about. On the departed Star Trek: Enterprise show, one of the alien characters, Dr. Flox came from a society with both-gender polygamy. He had six wives and each of his wives had up to five additional husbands.
What I find fascinating about this model of polygamy are not the prurient aspects but the socio-political ones. People in such a society would be bound much more closely to one another since virtually everyone in the society would be related by marriage.
In one's immediate family (the people who would have an interest in showing up to a child's music recital, namely one's self, one's spouses and one's spouses' spouses) would number 217. A more moderately extended family gathering - such as a Thanksgiving dinner, with grandparents, parents, uncles, aunts and cousins - would number in the thousands.
The economic implications are similarly staggering. If you're like me, you probably keep a little mental inventory of relatives who have a useful skill or own a business - your brother-in-law the electrician, your cousin the lawyer and so on. People tend to do business with relatives, whether out of a greater sense of trust and loyalty or out of the expectation of a discount. In a both-gender polygamous society, the entire economy would be based on buying from your relatives. Anyone going into a skilled trade or profession would instantly have a locked-in clientele numbering in the thousands.
Of course, there would be downsides. Heaven knows, just because people are related to one another doesn't guarantee that they will like each other and get along. Establishing the paternity of children would be next to impossible without a DNA test (but, on the other hand, perhaps that wouldn't matter so much in such a village-raising-a-child environment.)
It's all very curious to think about. What do you think? What would you see as being the upsides and downsides of a both-gender polygamous society?
posted by Mentok @ 11:55 a.m.,
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Tuesday, November 07, 2006
Contrast Podcast
It's Contrast Podcast day! Go check it out.
The theme this week: When.
My contrib: Elvis Costello's When I Was Cruel No.2.
Let me know what you think of my schmancy intro.
My alternate choice: that ultimate song of Canadian good times by that ultimate Newfie / Canadian good times band.
Great Big Sea - When I'm Up I Can't Get Down
posted by Mentok @ 2:32 p.m.,
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Sunday, November 05, 2006
And now for this commercial message...
Like everyone, it seems, my blogging appears to be caught in a bit of post-Halloween doldrums. Fear not, I shall soon recover. I'm even noodling over a few fake-news type posts for the near future.
In the meantime, I did a movie review for Flags of Our Fathers over in the movie reviews section, so please go check that out while I build up some steam in the kettle.
Soon ...
posted by Mentok @ 10:42 p.m.,
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Wednesday, November 01, 2006
Strange Names
Boy, did I have a mean candy hangover or what!
We had a great haul on Halloween night, but the cold cold wind nearly killed us. I am dreaming of the time when I can stay home on Halloween and work on a front-yard display. My long-time favourite notion has been to get a bunch of cheap shanks and soup bones from a butcher, wrap them in sleeves and legs of old costumes and pile them up by a sign that says "Unsuccessful Trick-or-Treaters". I've recently come up with a notion to kick that up a notch: move a barbecue to the front yard and start grilling up some of the shanks as the kids come up the walk.
But all of this lies several years in the future for me.
So, moving on to a new discussion topic: Weird names.
Happy and Blue 2, a reader at my wife's blog, recently commented that, at election time, he votes for people with the funniest names on the ballot, on the perfectly credible theory that people with funny names are hard workers.
I recently ran into a couple of people with strange and/or cool names, but I can't vouch for their work ethic.
At the Stones concert (ha ha tough luck Vancouver), I met a fellow named Mr. LeMauviel.
Now, isn't that a great name? Sounds like a James Bond villain's name, doesn't it? He claimed merely to be a real estate developer, but the artist conception of his condo development (printed proudly on his business card) looked very much like some sort of elaborate secret lair.
Just last week, while taking my vehicle into the shop, I met a gentleman with an even better name. A timid little old man approached the service desk to request a service appointment, of all things, to change a headlight on his van. His name:
John Cobra !
Only it wasn't spelled that way. C - O - B - R - O - U - G - H. He pronounced the letters very slowly and clearly, his voice dripping with annoyance at a lifetime of being jibed about his name.
Well, I tell you, if my name was John Cobra, I wouldn't be ashamed of it. In fact, I would revel in it. I would wear an eyepatch and get a snake tattoo. I would walk into parties with my head held high and say in a strong, clear voice:
"Hello, everyone. My name is John Cobra."
When I got old and needed my headlight fixed (assuming I didn't have minions to do that for me), I wouldn't creep timidly up to the snot-nosed punk at the service desk. I would stride in, look him square in the eye and say:
"Young man, I'm John Cobra and I require a mechanic."
That's what I would do.
On the other hand, if I had a name like Dick Assman (who got his fifteen minutes of fame on David Letterman) or Harry Reamsbottom (an honest-to-god real name in the local phone book), then I'd be thinking hard about changing my name.
Now it's your turn, dear readers. What are your favourite stories about weird, funny or cool names?
posted by Mentok @ 9:14 p.m.,
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