The Nazis and Legolas

Always suspicious of Legolas, weren't you? C'mon, now, admit it. The flowing blond locks, the Aryan good looks . . . the Nordic Archer Supreme . . . Hitler would have immediately made him a poster boy.

Well, guess what? Legolas turns out to have a very strong connection with the Nazis. As I'm sure you've seen, there's a commercial that for some reason always runs twice in a row -- featuring Orlando Bloom muttering some Brit nonsense and generally acting model-agency-pretty-boyish . . . but guess what he's hawking?

Hugo Boss cologne.

Guess who Hugo Boss was? He was one of the original Nazi party members -- a fervent, anti-semitic Hitler worshipper who designed first the Brownshirts of the S.A,, and then the dreaded black uniforms of the Shutzstaffel: the SS.

Good one, Legolas.

My God . . . Score One for the Nazis!!

I cannot fucking believe it, nor would I have if I hadn't just discovered it: the Nazis were the first persons in the history of humanity to establish an anti-smoking campaign. Too bad they didn't extend it into an anti-death campaign.

Not Kobe Beef

A long time ago I had a steak blog (there's a link to it over there in my links section) in which I sought the fabled "Kobe beef." The difference between me and perhaps some other food bloggers is that I actually was able to go to Japan to look for Kobe beef. Well, guess what: I didn't find it. I had a hunch I wouldn’t, and I was right. Because you can only get Kobe beef in Kobe, Japan. THERE IS NOWHERE ELSE IN THE WORLD that you can get Kobe beef. I knew that then, but there was nowhere at all on the Internet that could prove me right. Now there is.

Read this, and if you ever go out, DO NOT be tempted to order anything called “Kobe beef." Or if you do, ask the chef to come out and prove to you that it is genuine Kobe beef from Kobe, Japan. Otherwise, you’re paying Grade A prices for USDA steak.

It's like truffle oil. NINETY-NINE PERCENT of the time there won't have been a truffle within 10,000 miles of it.

Trust me, FOR I AM CALLED CHEF NICK FOR A REASON.

No Food

I'm really sorry for posting absolutely nothing about food in Montreal. Or food in my house. The reasons are complex, but basically: the food scene in Montreal is all covered like twenty coats of Kelly-Moore latex beige. It was not that way when I started out. These days, you can find 50 very fine blogs and websites about every aspect of food and restaurants in Montreal. When I started going to restaurants, taking pictures of my meals and posting reviews of them, the word "blog" was at least five years in the future and I can honestly say that was not one SINGLE dependable website about food in Montreal. Most were of the college-dorm kind: Best Pizza, Best Late-night eats blah blah blah. Some of the sites were just lists of restaurants with their addresses and phone numbers, and dozens of pages labelled "Under Construction" with that atrocious graphic of a man with a shovel that we remember so well.

So that is where I began, when the site wasn't even a site, just a place on a server called "Boulevard Montreal."

That lasted quite a while. The reason was, that no one else was doing anything even as remotely comprehensive. After acquiring talented colleagues, we began going to food events and blogging about them (again, before there was the word) and basically covering all sorts of aspects about food.

The blogging -- that came much later, in 2006. The format had become so popular and easy to use that I just switched to that. And stopped going to restaurants. I had no particular reason to go to restaurants and I still don't; many, far too many restaurants in Montreal are atrociously bad and I'm not about to go around spending my hard-earned cash finding that out.

The truth of the matter is, Montreal is a remarkably food-poor city. Yes, I will stand by that. I thought so fifteen years ago and I think so now. A place like San Francisco and its surroundings just put Montreal to complete shame. I'm not going to bother with New York, but the state of food in Montreal, and I don't just mean restaurants, I mean the availability of food and the quality of it, to use a word my sister uses and I despise but is appropriate here, "sucks."

If you throw a dart at a map of the San Francisco Bay Area and just go to the four or five restaurants closest to the dart, you will be guaranteed to find at least one amazing treat. If you threw a thousand darts at Montreal, you'd have spent a lot of time throwing darts.

The produce in supermarkets suck. The meat sucks, the fish sucks, the "ethnic section" (I can't believe they call it that! No, better yet, "Produits Chinoises!") completely sucks, the vegetable section is a complete and utter joke and the "deli" section, if they even bother to have one, is ATROCIOUS by any stretch of the imagination.

Even the specialty stores, the ones where you're SUPPOSED to find authentic ethnic foods, COMPLETELY SUCK. You find the same goddamn pasta that you find at a dozen common supermarkets, the fish, if it exists, stinks, the delis are full of surly Quebecois fuckfaces who come from halfway houses and the "gourmet" products, such as they are, are DOUBLE the price they should be; try finding decent truffle oil and you'll find out what I mean.

Oh sure, you CAN find what you're looking for, but it's as rare as a fucking snowman in Benghazi.

So . . . maybe I can get a rise out of at least ONE of you apathetic Montrealers who grind through life like this, day after day, listening to the blandishments paid our fair food scene by people who come here once in a lifetime but by now you're so grey, dishevelled and resigned to your fate that I know you won't bother.

All I can tell you is that ANYTHING to do with food in the Bay Area is a pleasure, a wonder, a discovery; cooking a meal is so easy because you don't have to go to fifty different stores to find what you want, any restaurant you eat at is practically guaranteed to be a gem and I'd live there if it weren't so bloody expensive and inconvenient (viz: transportation).

To sum it all up, last night Brigitte and I were at our wits' end of what to eat; neither of us wanted to cook and it was too late anyway, so we decided to order out. Since all the places we regularly (meaning twice a year) order from are so bad, we took a chance and threw a dart on the map, so to speak. An Asian (they make em' all! All except Hmong hill-tribe food!) place in Westmount. How could we go wrong?

Let me count the ways . . . the food wasn't fit for a fish-tank sucker fish: a mishmash of horrifically overdone rice, glutinously sweet muck that billed itself as curry and so on and so on (they forgot the spring rolls and I'm very glad they did) and it ended up costing $40.

Now you know why this blog never says much about food in Montreal any more.

A Question

Question: What do you get when you have a very drunk French person at a café late at night listening to samba music and trying to speak English?

Answer: A sober Portuguese person

Typical Portuguese person

Times You Really Wish They'd Studied Harder

I remember posting on my stopping-drinking blog (invitation only, email me for an invite) that there are exactly two things in my life that I consider deal-breakers: events so shattering that because of them, the entire course of my life was changed. And both of these moments were things that I chose to happen, not things that happened, like losing a father or parents divorcing or things that are obviously earth-shattering but that you have no control over.

No, these two things were decisions I thought long and hard about, knew even at the time that I was making them that they would be life shattering and went ahead and made them anyway. In both cases, chance events beyond my control could have stopped me in my tracks but the way I had planned them, I was pretty sure nothing would go wrong unless I myself fucked up at some point.

I'll keep my explanations of them brief, because I just want to use these incidents as an adjunct to the main point I want to eventually make.

The first thing that shattered my life happened purely by chance, an opportunity that I spotted and took advantage of. My elder brother and I were at Brussels airport in winter of 1972. We were waiting at the gate of a BEA flight that was to take us to London, where we would board a train and return to our boarding school. We had just taken a four-day vacation and had flown all the way back to where my family lived, in Kinshasa of what is now the Congo. We were able to fly on such ridiculously short trips because my father worked for Pan Am and all our flights were free. As our school had this five-day "half-term" break, it was no big deal to fly to Africa for a couple of days and then come back.

Our faithful BEA Hawker-Siddely Trident

Except this time there was a blizzard at Brussels airport and our flight to London was delayed. Very coincidentally, just about three gates down on the other side of the aisle was the gate for the Air Zaire flight that we'd flown to Brussels on, making preparations for its return flight to Kinshasa. It was due to leave actually a few minutes before our delayed plane was scheduled to leave for London.

People were milling about, Africans, mostly, in the gate area. There was about an hour before the plane was due to leave. I said to my brother, "Geoff, what if I just got on that plane and went back to Kinshasa tonight?" (I had my return ticket).

We laughed about it at first, as we both knew it was a ludicrous idea. Complete and utter heresy. All Hell would break loose on both corners of the Atlantic. My school would go ballistic and my parents would also go ballistic. Basically, it had never been done -- we had never heard of a boy simply not coming back to school when he was supposed to. It was like breaking your parole when you were an axe murderer sentenced to fourteen life terms; they'd have the entire police forces of the United States mobilized for your recapture. At least, that's the way WE felt.

But slowly, as the snow sheeted down, we both began to get more and more serious about my actually doing it. To cut a long story short, with Geoff's wave and good wishes, I boarded that flight back to Africa. All Hell did break loose just as we knew it would. But the result was what I wanted: I was pulled from British boarding school and began life in the American school system for ever more.

Just because of a blizzard in a Brussels airport one February night in 1972.

The second life changer is much easier to relate: on some evening in the summer of 1984 I lit and smoked the last cigarette I would ever smoke, after a ten-year habit in which I was finally cracking the three-pack-a-day mark. (Want to quit? Join my blogsite by emailing me above. I guarantee you'll be quit in 30 days and will never smoke again, no gimmicks).

The consequences of all this on the world? Negligible. No one was affected seriously in any way except me and perhaps my family dynamic.

Now consider something else, which is the point I was leading up to. In October, 1907, a young man took the two day entrance exam for a school called the Vienna Academy of Fine Arts. He was sure he would pass the exam; was sure his talents were enough to get him through. He was supremely confident.

But his test drawings were judged unsatisfactory and he was not admitted, with the explanation that "his drawings showed a lack of talent for artistic painting, notably a lack of appreciation of the human form."

He was told, however, that he had some ability for the field of architecture.

His name was Adolf Hitler.

Don't you, and the souls of 80 million human beings, wish that he'd studied just a bit harder, or that his examiner hadn't had such a bad hangover that particular day?

Note: Forgot to mention (this post was a complete coincidence) that today is Holocaust Memorial Day. I hope the temperature in Hell has been doubled in the WWII German section just for today.

montrealfoodblog Closing Its Doors

It has been decided that montrealfoodblog will no longer be operating, starting tomorrow, April 19, 2012. Notice that is in the passive voice.

Blog owner Nicholas "ChefNick" Robinson comments: " None of my readers seems to understand completely how much effort I put into this blog, and since I'm going so underappreciated I'm just going to close down." He could not be reached for further comment.

However, a statement was issued at 2 p.m. EST yesterday, April 19, in which Robinson said the following: "I'll be open for business as usual tomorrow, however, mind you, except everything around here is going to be totally different. I'm going to turn on spell-check as I've been doing without it for all these years so I keep having to reread all my posts after I've published them and discovering errors so I have to go in and fix them and that takes even more of my valuable time. So that's one thing thing that's going to be different around here. I haven't thought of the other thing yet but I'll issue a statement when it has come to me."

His assistants declined any further comments, citing "Fatigue and overwork on top of a prescription drug side effect" as a reason.

Great Commercial

Hey, there's a great commercial on around here . . ."If you've ever used Predaxa and experienced any of the following symptoms . . . bleeding blah blah blah blah blah, EVEN DEATH, you may be entitled to compensation . . ."

Now THAT is some compensation I WANNA SEE.

Nasty Food

There's a recipe that Brigitte uses to make chocolate pie that's as old as the hills -- from my old friend Matt Pfeffer, back in the days when a cigarette, cognac and a line of coke would be the post-prandial treats after the mushroom chicken and Matt's pie, which is what I call it these days.

It's still delicious, but one of its main ingredients is Cool Whip. Cool Whip is an evil food. One guy did an experiment where he put a bowl of Cool Whip out next to a bowl of home-whipped cream and while the normal whipped cream was a melted mess the next day, as it should be, the Cool Whip looked exactly the same 14 days later. At room temperature, uncovered.

The hydrogenated oils must be what gives the pie its greasy mouthfeel -- incredibly unctuous, really, and extremely delicious. But the ingredient list is a nightmare . . .  hydrogenated vegetable oil (including coconut and palm oils), high fructose corn syrup, corn syrup, skim milk, light cream, and less than 2% sodium caseinate (a milk derivative), natural and artificial flavor, xanthan and guar gums, polysorbate 60, sorbitan monostearate, and beta carotene.

Brigitte just made two pies last night, and like I said, they're delicious. But next time I'm going to have to try to find a substitute for Cruel Whip (howdya like my retouch job?)

Thought For The Week

Surprise Party for the week

As we approach this, a new week, Dear Flock, I have a Thought; yes, a Thought. One might even consider it a Vision.

The Vision is this: all the Taliban leaders, the rulers of Iran, Kim-Jong-Un of North Korea, Raul and Fidel Castro, Bashar al Assad and everyone in his court, most of the governments of Africa, especially including dear Robert Mugabe and his retinue, the entire government of Pakistan, plus all of its military, all the sub-contractors for the US Military who are really just a bunch of thug mercenary arms merchants, several Republican candidates including ex-candidates and dolts such as Sarah Palin, most of Iraq's leadership that are being propped up by the US, the entire Russian Oligopoly including Dear Comrade V. Putin, all the rulers of the junta in Myanmar, that oafish president of Argentina, Kirchner, and finally, Donald Trump and most celbuwannabes, to gather together at a designated spot in Alamagordo, New Mexico, under flowing tents, lots of Crystal champagne, the finest illegal caviar from Iran, heroin, opium and cocaine laid out on the finest silver, porn movies running 24/7 and lots of Playboy bunnies hawking Cialis to aging rulers (and their wives!) and then ceremoniously plant a large flag with a big series of concentric circles on it entitled "Ground Zero" smack-dab in the middle of all the fun.

Then load up a Classic Warbird B-29 bomber with a payload the equivalent of the Hiroshima bomb (trust me, it'll be enough) and drop it as close to the flag as possible.

In one fell swoop, we will have made the world a vastly better place, and to think it would only take seconds.

Damn, damn, damn.

I forgot the Pope and the Catholic church.

Remembering Music

Funny how he remembers one of my favorite pieces of music: I'll Be Home for Christmas" . . . . and he sings it like a jazz pro, as well.

You Can Be Tojo

And I'll be Hitler!

Can you imagine being a sadder bunch of excuses for the human race than these clowns? Oh, sorry, forgot the sad bunch of excuses for the human race here.

If they weren't so virulent -- like a bag of gaboon vipers who've just been maced -- they'd be hilarious. Can you imagine growing up wanting to be just like Hitler? The sad thing is that they DON'T grow up wanting to be just like Hitler. They grow up wanting to be just like Dad and Mom. Who want to be just like Hitler.

I know it's only playing their game to say it, but there ought to be a limit on free speech. I'm not a big proponent of "Hey, this is a free country: I can say I hate niggers if I want to!" I say about those people: string 'em up, hang 'em high, squeeze their balls until they cry. (I had a different last word there synonymous with "cease to live" but that would be hate speech.)

Just take a moment and read the vitriol that spews forth from these people who walk freely among us -- I'd actually prefer to spend the night in a hole with 100 jihadis than one in a hole with four of these people. Last time I checked, all the Nazis promise is a heaven full of white people, not a heaven full of 72 virgins. And the Baptists: well, the only thing they promise is Hell and I'm already going there and I don't need a free ticket and a kind reference from the likes of them.

Chapter Four: Maybe a Real Chapter?

I asked a friend of mine who reads this blog (Hi Ironman!) if I should write something about some period in my life. For some little-as-yet understood reason, he likes my writing, so I proposed I write sections from completely different chapters of my life and he choose one that I should continue on. Well, I wrote the following for one section, and he liked it. Maybe I'll add it to the book. Unfortunately, none of it is made up. I swear, this time, you CAN'T MAKE THIS STUFF UP! It really happened to me . . .

A Day in the Life: Zaïre, 1972 by Nicholas Robinson

That morning I hopped the short, ornate wall surrounding the terrace and jumped into the garden. It was a short walk to the back gate and then I was on the road beside the river. This morning a low haze slung as far as the eye could see, and the opposite banks of the river were almost impossible to make out. It wasn't a river, it was more like an inland sea, I thought for the millionth time as I crossed the street to walk on the side at the top of the grassy bank that led down to the lapping shores.

A lone fisherman paddled his pirogue about half a mile out, among the vast swaths of emerald-green water hyacinth that crowded the entire river all the way to Brazzaville, on the opposite bank. Here the mighty Congo was more than a mile wide. I didn't know for sure but it must have been that. Maybe even two miles. Many, many times a haze obscured the dark outline of the opposite bank, to the point where you could almost believe it was the horizon of an ocean, not a river.

I walked briskly. It was already hot, the African sun piercing malevolently through the morning haze, bracing itself for its noontime rule, when temperatures would soar and the birds themselves would cease their flight and take cover in the shade of the mango trees.

I felt grainy, unfocused. I'd been awake for more than 48 hours. The day before I'd done eleven Ritalin. I'd spent the entire night alone in my air conditioned room, listening to Jethro Tull and Savoy Brown and cutting pieces of flower-patterned sticky drawer liner to fit on the pickguard of my electric guitar.

Now I was on my way to my job. I didn't feel like going, but I didn't feel like lying sleepless on my bed while the world awoke around me, either. It was a simple job and I could smoke as many cigarettes as I wanted. This was quite a thing for a fifteen-year-old boy, to be working with adult Africans, all in the same room, signing diplomas for students from far-off provinces like Katanga and Bandundu and many names from the interior that I'd only ever vaguely heard of. The Congo was vast, the biggest country in Africa, and there were many towns in it. And from the stacks of diplomas I had to sign, carefully, with a quill pen, there were a lot of eager students out there in small, malaria-ridden villages deep in the gigantic, brooding hugeness that was the forest.

I'd flown over it, in a Fokker Friendship, the kind of plane with the wheels just outside your window, the wings above you, and we had flown for hours above the greenness that held no sign at all that humans had ever been there. Not even a small puff of smoke emerged from that endless green carpet; not a thing moved within as we flew several thousand feet above.

I was jerked out of my reverie by something that made my hair stand on end. In a tree just off the side of a road was an enormous web, delineated by tiny drops of dew that glittered along all the strands of its silken labyrinth, and precisely in the center was a giant spider, the largest I'd ever seen, the size of a small dinner plate. But this was no tarantula, with stubby, hairy legs; it was large, sinuous and muscular, and though it was stock still, it looked like it could move with lightning speed.

I stood, mesmerised for at least a minute, as the sun sparkled along the web strands, and the giant orange insect sprawled, as if soaking in the morning sun for strength for the day's work to come.

A car stopped beside me and broke the spell. “Would you like a ride?” the smartly-dressed driver asked me in good French. Recognizing him as a coworker, I laughed and gratefully accepted and we drove off down the road towards the office.

Idea For a Chapter

Here's an idea for a chapter -- maybe even a whole book: regional airline pilot is underpaid and overworked! There's a switch on his overhead console that hardly anyone knows about, called the "Ref" switch! You turn it on if you suspect there will be a danger of icing on your plane! If you do, it'll start the stick-shaker warning earlier than normal, indicating a stall!

The pilot turns it on, but then the plane accumulates too much ice and  the stick shaker warning goes off! But instead of pushing the stick forward to pull out of a stall, he pulls it back! Furthermore, his co-pilot reduces flaps, which gives the plane less lift!

The plane does not land properly -- at all! The only things walking from the plane to the terminal are the woodlice who've been shaken out of their nests 12 feet beneath the ground!

Turns out the pilots were underpaid -- and overworked! There -- isn't that a book? Would you like me to write such a book? Oh, it's been done? By the National Transportation Safety Board? Okay, I guess someone else already wrote my book.

Okay, I'll have to come up with another idea. Feel free to step in. Maybe a book about a little girl writing a diary during the Holocaust . . . naah, no one would buy it. Toooo depressing.

Chapter Three! The Book is Racing Along!

Did you know something? Everybody, but everybody says fact is stranger than fiction or, "You can't make this stuff up!" but the truth is, fiction IS stranger than fact, and you CAN make this stuff up!

This is the key, in my opinion, to writing a good book. Making LOTS and LOTS of stuff up.

Ask former President Nixon about his official biography. No, ask ALL the former presidents about their official biographies. They all practically fabricated maybe 90% of everything in their books.

In fact, ask any popular public figure, past or present, if anything they ever wrote was all God's honest truth. The answer, if they were telling the truth, not their version of the truth, would have to be a resounding YES! They probably WERE all telling the exact truth! Marilyn Monroe was smothered in her bed after being given a heavy dose of morphine by her doctor, by the mafia on orders from then-president John F. Kennedy!

I'll stop there, because the Conspiracy Theorists, who are watching my every move, will say that I blogged about 9/11. And they'll be mighty riled up about that. You see, the truth really IS stranger than fact! They'll accuse me of having a fling with Clay Aiken. See, now in the blurb about this book I can write stuff like "Did the author have a secret affair with not-then-outed American Idol star Clay Aiken?" That alone should guarantee at least fifty sales of the book, at $29.95 apiece! Prettttyyyy damn good, if I must say so myself!

Listen, if there's a world in which Ellen de Generes even exists, all things are possible, even the rise of an obscure Montreal blogger to a best-selling mega-author! I'll buy you all houses in Petawawa, Ontario, flock, because the town has such a silly name. (Everyone knows Wawas don't want to be petted, they want to be rocked! Just listen to George Harrison's misspelled song, "Wah-wah!")

Post Script: Talk about making things up . . .  ask Greg Mortensen

Chapter Two, Part Two

I figure a chapter can't just be three paragraphs long. Well, it could be, and I've seen people do it, but this is MY book and I say a chapter can't be just three paragraphs long.

Now: to go on with my theme of who would actually read a book that had no central premise (well, that was sort of my theme. You can argue that it wasn't really a theme, just a hint of a theme, but since this is MY book, I'm allowed to call it anything I want!)

You have to define what is boring. Like, my English teacher always taught us that lists are boring. So, making long lists of things will not keep people's attentions. Like maybe things I took on a vacation:

Socks, black and white
Several pairs of underpants
Some T-shirts for laying around the hotel room
A dress shirt for going out
Casual shoes
Dress shoes
An Iron Cross with Oak-leaf Clusters
Psoriasis cream
Two packs of peanut M&Ms
Lonely Planet's Smart Guide to Packing Your Bag

See? There's a reason why people shouldn't write lists in their books. Because it's BO-RING.

Also, another thing that should be in books are interesting sentences. What are interesting sentences? Ones that grab the reader's imaginations immediately. Things like "When my oxygen-valve needle finally clicked over the zero KrungTep pulled his mask off and put it over my nose and mouth. He looked like he was at the end of his rope but so was I and I couldn't lift a finger to protest his suicidal action."

See how that sentence is interesting? It ends up with you wanting to know MORE. Tell you what, you're the reader and I can write anything you'd like to read, so would you like the whole book to be like that? See, unfortunately I don't have a clue who Krung-tep is or where we are and why I'm running out of oxygen -- I'd have to come up with a story for all that. Could be a project but it sounds like a whole lot of WORK, too! And what if even after a whole bunch of sentences like that one you got bored and said "This book is BO-RING." See, I'd have to know in advance that you'd like the book if I was going to work so hard on it. Right? I mean, doesn't that make a whole lot of sense?

Here's my advice to you: get some pot and get stoned and then just read everything I've just written. I swear you'll be on the floor choking with laughter.

I guess that's enough for Chapter Two. Anyone up for Chapter Three?

Chapter Two: Oh Dear

Oh dear; I've just realised that the way the blog format is, you'll have to read my book backwards. For example, if you're reading this first you won't have any idea that it's Chapter Two of a book I'm writing because I announced that in the post below. That means that if this book is to succeed, I'll have to write the last chapter first! So when you finally get to the last chapter, which will actually be way, way on top of this one, THAT will actually be the FIRST chapter. Why don't these blog people think of these things?

How tiresome. That means I'd literally have to write the entire book offline and then post it in its entirety.

There is only one way to avoid that supreme annoyance: make no chapter contingent upon anything that happened in the previous chapter. In other words, to make each chapter entirely self-contained. To have none of it depend on ANY OTHER chapter. There would be no characters, except myself, that had been mentioned in other chapters that you would be expected to be familiar with.

Whew! That makes my life easy. Except at the beginning of each chapter I'd have to mention all this, so someone who was coming in in the middle of the book wouldn't get confused. Well, I'll try to find a way around that. Meanwhile, looky-here! I've almost written an entire chapter about writing a chapter! This book can definitely say that it is "writing itself!"

But even a book typed by a chimpanzee and edited by a bonobo should somehow be readable. That is to say, if I reduced the potboiler "Alabaman Politics: the First Hundred Years" to the ones and zeros they would first need to be made into in order to become digital, and then LEFT THE BOOK THAT WAY, yes, it might be fascinating to an assembly-language  compiler, indeed, to the degree that the compiler might not be able to put the book down, so to speak, but once into the third or fourth paragraphs of ones and zeros even Tolstoy would throw up his hands and groan exasperatedly "Yes, but where is the hero? Every book needs a hero . . !!!" . . .  and he'd be right.

But is that true? Can a book be leaderless, rudderless, storyless, character-free, issue-free, message-free, content-free and yet still be a book? Need a book be a collection of pages? Can a book only be ONE PAGE? Can a book be one paragraph, repeated over 200 pages in 200 different typefaces?

I guess a book is anything anyone agrees with anyone else to call a book. In other words, just one person holding up something that consists of paper declaring that it is a book does NOT MAKE IT A BOOK.

However, if several (meaning an amorphous blob of "uncountable" individuals) people get together in some fashion and agree that it is a book, then it is a book.

Here, in fact, is an online "definition" of a book:

"A written or printed work consisting of pages glued or sewn together along one side and bound in covers."

Good. So all I have to do is print this out and put it between covers and say that I wrote it and it will BE A BOOK.

Just for the record, this was once Chapter Two.

My New Project

Flock, my dear and endearing flock, who've stuck with me through thin these many years and haven't complained once when one of my posts have failed to attain the normally extraordinarily high standards to which you have become accustomed, namely, the very, very few misspellings, abuses of grammar and other literary abominations up with which I have not put; the usually high grade of subject matter with which, if you were ever so inclined you could use as the syllabus for an entire university sub-doctorate; the sublime political wisdom I have contributed quite freely and without demand of referendum nor plebiscite; the use of unbelievably difficult words (such as "acromegaly") which, if I am using them so carelessly hither and thither like peonies after a summer sprinkle must mean that I, the very author of those words represent the pinnacle of human intelligence.

That you have worn out countless computer screens reading and rereading my pronouncements brings tears of joy to these tired old eyes. But cry not for me, cry not thy useless tears of joy as I tell you today's subject -- a new project! Yes, I have a new project.

I am going to write a book. There is only one problem; I don't know what the book is going to be about. So I am going to write about the PROCESS of writing a book when one does not have a clue what the book is going to be about. You see? My book will be about the writing of it! That way, I don't actually have to write anything at all. I just write about the PROCESS of trying to write a book without the benefit of either ideas or subject matter. And then the cardinal question: why should anyone read it? The answer is that they SHOULDN'T! That there is absolutely no reason for anyone to read it!

But I'm not THAT totally stupid. I know thousands, if not MILLIONS of books have been written with absolutely NOT ONE REASON for a sane person to read it. Mein Kampf comes to mind, but the person who read it was also its only reviewer, so we must take his word for what exactly the content of it was. I mean, have YOU read it? But it became a best-seller on just ONE CONFIRMED SALE (he was a functionary at Woringen Bicycle Repair and Tobacconists in Bad-aim-Werzl in lower Thuringia).
So if he can do it I can do it, I can do it. So, without further ado, here is my book.

When The Word Stood Still by Nicholas Robinson

With a catchy name, my book begins! Now it has to live up to its title! (Strong opening line.) Perhaps I should use a Churchill quote to "launch" a theme. "Never, in so many years, have so few owed so much to so many." That's strong, isn't it? It could be referring to almost anything.

Good. Now that my book is safely off to the races, I'll take a short break and get some orange juice and Perrier. I'm watching "The World at War" with Laurence Olivier, that sly devil who made his entire livelihood pretending to be people he was not. I can do that too! Chapter two coming up soon!

Remember This? Maybe It's Why We're Still in Afghanistan

(Taken from the front page of the San Francisco Chronicle, Sept. 11, 2001):

World watches in horror as terror unfolds in New York; Palestinians rejoice

BETH GARDINER, Associated Press Writer

Tuesday, September 11, 2001

Breaking News Sections

(09-11) 11:59 PDT LONDON (AP) --

People around the world watched in horror as images of terror in the United States filled their television screens Tuesday. On the West Bank, Palestinians celebrated but most world leaders expressed solidarity with an America that looked more vulnerable than ever.

Iraqi television played a patriotic song that begins "Down with America!" as it showed the World Trade Center's towers falling.

Afghanistan's Taliban rulers condemned the attacks and rejected suggestions that suspected terrorist Osama bin Laden could be behind them.

"It is premature to level allegations against a person who is not in a position to carry out such attacks," said Abdul Salam Zaeef, the Taliban ambassador in Pakistan. "It was a well-organized plan and Osama has no such facilities."

In the West Bank city of Nablus, thousands of Palestinians poured into the streets to celebrate, chanting "God is Great" and distributing candy to passers-by, even as their leader, Yasser Arafat, expressed horror over the attacks.

Audiences everywhere were transfixed by the devastation, as both World Trade Center towers collapsed in New York and the Pentagon took a direct hit from an aircraft.

Key indexes sank on world stock markets and some European airlines canceled flights to the United States and recalled planes already in the air.

Canada tightened security in major cities and along the U.S. border. A Canadian Foreign Affairs spokesman said on condition of anonymity that the border had been sealed, but traffic continued to flow at a crossing point at Buffalo. The U.S. border with Mexico remained open.

Many countries beefed up security at American embassies. The U.S. embassy in the United Arab Emirates closed indefinitely and the ambassador in Egypt suspended nonessential operations at U.S. facilities there.

Europeans offered condolences at American embassies -- Norwegians left bouquets of flowers in a park near the embassy in Oslo, Russians placed flowers near the Moscow mission, and in Budapest, there were dozens of candles.

U.S. armed forces in Europe and Asia were put on high alert. In Brussels, NATO called an emergency meeting for 3:00 p.m. while European Union institutions took special security measures, including partial evacuations.

Israel closed its airspace to foreign flights and evacuated staff from diplomatic missions and Jewish institutions around the world.

In Paris, Moscow, Warsaw and Berlin, police and security were put on high alert.

"It is impossible to fully comprehend the evil that would have conjured up such a cowardly and depraved assault upon thousands of innocent people," said Canadian Prime Minister Jean Chretien.

Russian President Vladimir Putin expressed condolences to the American people, calling the attacks "terrible tragedies."

"This mass terrorism is the new evil in our world today," said British Prime Minister Tony Blair. "It is perpetrated by fanatics who are utterly indifferent to the sanctity of human life, and we the democracies of this world are going to have to come together and fight it together."

U.N. Secretary-General Kofi Annan said "there can be no doubt that these attacks are deliberate acts of terrorism, carefully planned and coordinated, and as such I condemn them utterly."

Queen Elizabeth II said she watched developments in "growing disbelief and total shock" and offered her prayers to Americans.

President Jacques Chirac of France called the attacks "monstrous."
"There is no other word for it," he said in a televised statement.

Palestinian leader Yasser Arafat and his top aides followed the events at his seaside office in Gaza City, gathered around a TV set.

"I send my condolences to the president, the government and the people for this terrible incident," Arafat said. "We are completely shocked. It's unbelievable."

The leaders of Northern Ireland's joint Protestant-Catholic government, Reg Empey and Seamus Mallon, also offered condolences.

"As a society that has suffered from the effects of terrorism for over 30 years, we have some recognition and understanding of the hurt being felt by the American people," they wrote. "It is hard to comprehend what could motivate anyone to cause such misery, destruction and deliberate loss of human life."

Egyptian President Hosni Mubarak condemned called the attacks "horrible and unimaginable."

In Berlin, German Chancellor Gerhard Schroeder said "my government condemns these terrorist attacks to the utmost."

Airlines including British Airways, Scandinavia's SAS and Belgium's Sabena canceled flights across the Atlantic and recalled planes that were already in the air.

In Puerto Rico, people scrambled for news of relatives and friends in New York, where an estimated 2 million Puerto Ricans live.

Groups gathered on the corners of cobble-stoned streets in the colonial city of San Juan, clinging to strangers in search of more details.

"Dios mio, have mercy!" exclaimed a whited-haired man, making the sign of the cross as he watched the second tower explode on TV.

Broadcasters around the world broke into programming to show images of the disaster. "It's incredible. I thought I was watching a Hollywood movie," said Hong Kong school teacher Doris Tang.

In the Nigerian capital of Abuja, aghast hotel workers at the local Hilton stopped their chores to watch.

"If this can happen in America, then the whole world is not safe," said one, Augustine Okweche.

The "War" in Afghanistan

Has anyone every heard of "Zangaboom? Nor had I. Ever heard of Panjwai? I'll bet you haven't. Do you have any idea, any idea at all, how the Taliban are doing in their effort to recapture Afghanistan? Even a tiny inkling? Enough to say at a party "I think the Taliban is getting the better of us," or "Oh, the Taliban is getting its ass kicked."

I would say that there is a 99.9% possibility that you have no idea whatsoever what is going on in Afghanistan. Zangabad is a place but they call it Zangaboom because, well, LOTS of things go boom there. Panjwai is a godforsaken district where we're constantly losing heart and minds.

Oh sure, you hear about this and that -- another Canadian soldier killed in an IED strike, senior Taliban commander hit by drone blah blah blah talks deadlocked blah blah blah but did you know that there really is an Afghanistan? It doesn't exist just as a news item. Right now, as I type, some 22-year-old boy is grumpily getting dressed to go out on patrol. He's carrying enough firepower to severely hurt Parliament Building in downtown Ottawa and those in it. And he's being told that he not only can use it, he should use it any time he feels his or any of his pals' life is in danger.

Isn't that as alien a thing to think about as you can contemplate?

Well, look at it this way: one day, he's going to come back here and be told with a rap on the head "No, no no, we don't solve things here with violence!"

You never think about him being over there. And he has no idea what it's going to be like being back here.

30 Years Doesn't Seem To Be Long Enough

I'll bet you don't have a clue what happened on April 2nd, 1982. In fact, I'll give you a great big pass and ditch the suspense, because you'll never get it.

Argentina invaded the Falkland Islands. Yep, they moved in, lock, stock and many barrels. In fact, they went in with guns blazing! There was an actual battle for the possession of Government House, the only British post of officialdom in the islands. People were hurt.

But no one thought the Argentinians were stupid enough to go to war with Britain, one of the world's nuclear superpowers, whom, need I remind you, fought the Second World War all the way down to the last American. (Just kidding, Winnie, just kidding!)

Even the Argentinians didn't think they were stupid enough to go to war with Britain.

But go to war they did, and more people than would fill four packed jumbo jets breathed their last breaths on those godforsaken piles of rock in the middle of nowhere.

That's a lot of people who aren't here today. A lot of kids without fathers, wives without husbands, mothers and fathers without sons. You can see it all here. A nurse about men who'd been burned when the Argentines bombed their ship: "And next to where they were there was a sort of tiny galley, and it smelled sort of like burnt toast . . . you'd open the door and there were about 40 beds of black faces . . ."

And just imagine: that bitch who runs Argentina today whose government is snaking its way down the tubes is sabre-rattling again for the "Malvinas." Maybe this time it'll take four packed Airbus A-380s to persuade them . . . hmm, or better yet, a well-placed ICBM.

Get 'Em While They're Hot

Here is a drawing I did from a photograph of an 80s band I was in. I'm third from the left with the printy polyester shirt. Next to me at the end, partially unfinished, is my good friend to this day, Mike. On the other end is a friend I went to Charterhouse with. His name is Mike too. He went on to become a semi-famous drummer.

That scruffy-looking fellow on my right is Bob. He went on to smoke too much pot. Click on the drawing or go here to buy a shirt with this design on it! All proceeds go to the endangered Lesser-spotted Weaver's Wombat preservation.