Turns out Mark Taylor didn't leave Flashpoint voluntarily after all.

Shit. And DAMMIT, show! I get wanting to shake things up, I do--but I do not approve of this.

Yeah, I'll still watch and I still think this is shaping up to be a terrific season--but it could have been terrific in some other way, you know?

DAMMIT, show!

(Edited to add: Yeah, I know--I really like Leah too. I'm interested in her character. It's just... DAMMIT!)

I have been kind of testy all week (I'm working on it) and last night, as I lay awake at three AM, it occurred to me that this makes three nights this week I have gotten almost no sleep. I'm not lying there worrying about anything, I just can't fall asleep.

And it occurred to me there might just be a connection between that and the current flaws in my disposition.

Ya think???

Fugly Horse of the Day blog--I no longer read the "serious" posts because you can never tell when she's going to fall into hatefulness, but I do sometimes check out the less serious ones, like when she pokes fun at overpriced gear sold by Big Name Trainers to their acolytes. Right now she's on about "training flags," which I have always thought resembled those flags we'd attach to the rear of the banana seat on our bikes when we were kids in the seventies. They're pretty good for getting a motorist's attention, but I've never tried to use one in horse training. And at the prices she quotes, I am unlikely to ever do so.

She points out, quite reasonably, that a longe whip is a perfectly useful piece of training equipment. (And if you know people who freak out at the name "whip," just do as Mitzi and I do and call it "the stick with the piece of string on it."*)

Then of course she has to get in a little dig about the bright colours they come in, and how you risk "a traditionalist beating you to death with your own lime-green whip."

Which I did in fact expect, because Fugly certainly doesn't know when to shut up and she apparently can no longer tell the difference between a situation where people should get involved (abuse, training that endangers horses or people) and situations which are none of anybody's fucking business (someone choosing to purchase bright-coloured gear for use around the farm.)

So all I will say is, Fugly, it would take you a long time to beat someone to death with a longe whip. And considerably less for me to kick you to death with my sensible brown steel-toed barn boots.

It is nobody's business, certainly not some humourless twat on the Internet, whether Mitzi wears pink or lilac halters, or pink and purple and psychedelic-flowered polo wraps. None. If I want to get a pink synthetic saddle and wear that on her when we ride in the arena? Nobody else's business. Don't like my choice of colour? Then leave my gear alone--half the time people buy these silly colours not just because they amuse them, but also so everyone knows the lime green longe whip belongs to A, and please do not help yourself to it. My current barn has lockers, but I've had whips lost and broken at other barns because nobody looked for the tape with my name on it before they took my whip out and left it lying in the arena until someone finally trampled on it.

Also, the type of "traditionalist" who can't shut up about other people's colourful tack sometimes turns into the kind of "traditionalist" who shares their unsupported opinions that Appaloosas are hardheaded stupid Indian ponies, and I'll give you fair warning, that is the kind of opinion it is best to share with me via long-distance telephone call. My horse doesn't bite, but I can't guarantee I don't.

Also, I have no sense of humour about people who have no sense of humour. At least not if they're self-important idiots about it.

__________________________________________________

*Yeah, some people get all freaked out about the word "whip." It's a noun, not a verb. I use mine because early on with Mitzi it began to seem like a good idea to de-spook her about anything following her. If you're ever dealing with one of the real spookers, here's my tiny tip: I began by taping up the lash (or "string" as Mitzi calls it) so I just had a long stick. When she got used to that, which took no time at all because I never threatened her with it, I let down the lash in two sections. It's not an issue for her.

Mind you, it's possible to scare a horse pretty badly with a whip, but that seems to be related to poor longeing technique. A while back I posted a video of a woman longeing a young horse with a line that was much too short, and when the colt went to loping, the woman had to chase after him because he couldn't lope a circle that small. And she was waving the whip as she chased him, so of course he got scared of it and she had to stop and re-introduce the whip and of course was quite self-congratulatory about how she was curing his fear of the thing, which she didn't seem to realize she had created in the first place.

Ahem. Anyway--people can be weird about words. Just because I own a longe whip doesn't mean I beat my horse with it (try it yourself--the damn things are so awkward I don't know how you could!)

And also, while I'm ranting, I am damn tired of people who freak out over the word "break" related to horse training. NH trainers and Tempe Grandin and God knows who else squawk "If you 'break' a horse, he's broken! It's a cruel, cruel process!"

Look, if I boot my computer, my feet are not involved. And I bet all those people use words with multiple meaning all the time. I could point out that breaking in a horse is more analogous to breaking in a baseball glove than anything else, but you know what? It's a damn word. If you spot me doing something stupid or abusive to Mitzi, feel free to step in. (Although if you don't know what you're talking about, I might gently and calmly explain that to you.) But don't pick on my use of old training words unless they are clearly linked to a disposition to break my horse's spirit and disrespect her as an individual.

And leave my damned bright-coloured tack alone.

It's apparently Prime Minister Harper's 50th birthday today. I sent him greetings.

Well, actually I sent him an irate letter on behalf of my regional health library association, protesting budget cuts to the National Research Council which will have the effect of gutting Canada's national science library. But who's counting?

A couple of weeks ago someone on a writing list recommended an author named Temple Grandin, who apparently writes extremely well about her autism--the person who recommended the book has a brother with autism and she said Grandin explains autism better than anyone.

The specific book she directed us to was called Animals In Translation and its subtitle refers to using "the mysteries of autism to unlock the secrets of animal behaviour."

The fact I didn't link the book or verify the subtitle is probably telling you something right now...

( Belated cut because it's longer than I thought it was. )

This is definitely a warning to writers about generalizing from too small a sample, or making claims based on information we might not adequately understand. It seems to be a good way of creating unbelievable characters.

And, based on this book, pretty unpalatable non-fiction.

...but a colleague of mine just consulted me about an assignment her son, who is fifteen, was given in school. The assignment cannot be completed without reference to academic journal articles. Which means, as it usually does, that it also can't be completed unless the student knows how to navigate the subject-related databases that index the journals the student will need.

Oh, yes, and it also means the student has to find a way of actually getting the full text of the articles because naturally not all academic journals are open-access and the high school almost certainly does not subscribe to them. In fact, it's highly unlikely the high school subscribes to the databases.

I'm not saying this isn't a useful exercise, because it could be, if the students were properly prepared. But apparently the teacher gave the students no guidance in how to conduct the literature search or how to access the required articles. And it appears they were also on their own regarding access to the resources they needed.

Which is reminiscent of my Killing Mr. Griffin post from a few days ago. If you want your students to know something, you have to teach them. And giving an assignment they have no idea how to approach, with no guidance and no appropriate resources, is not "teaching."

And saying "they should know this already" is pointless, counter-productive, and stupid. You want them to know it now. That means it's your puppy. If you feel the need, bring it up at the next staff meeting--don't take it out on the kids. They're not the ones tasked with deciding the curriculum and teaching it.

This particular kid will be told that if his teacher asks how he found his articles, he should respond, "I consulted an academic librarian." If the teacher doesn't think that is a valid element of the research process, I will be happy to discuss it with him.

Apparently they don't have a proper library or librarians at this school, which is supposed to be academically rigorous. So it appears that some of the teachers are defining "academic rigor" as "punishing the students for not already knowing the things I want them to learn."

I know, teachers are human, and humans screw up. But that is the goddamned basics of the profession, y'all.

Reading the f'list this morning I encountered a post explaining that Pixar is better than Dreamworks (I hope I have this point right) because Pixar movies are about the story as a whole, with the assumption the whole family can enjoy them, whereas Dreamworks animated movies tend to shoehorn in pop-culture references that are explicitly intended to amuse adults by going over the heads of children. (And incidentally sometimes making the movie confusing to and less enjoyable by kids.)

I endorse this point and would add that I HATE that gambit because it feels so much like slumming. If kids' movies are beneath you, go make something else, okay?

Also, do you really think parents are all proud of themselves for getting pop-culture references their six-year-olds do not? Really, is any sensible adult proud of themselves for having more worldly knowledge and life experience than a six-year-old kid?

Yes, I know: shows like The Muppet Show used to slide in all sorts of sophisticated stuff. Hell, the second Charlie Brown Christmas special included a character quoting WB Yeats (which I believe they put in specifically for my dad, the biggest Snoopy fan ever) But I notice I was still delighted and entertained by the Muppets and Charlie Brown as a child.

( Stuff I love, especially classic CBC kids' shows you may know, too. Video clips included. )

Anyway--to tie this together, these shows respected the children who watched them, and valued them as children who thought and reacted like children. They made no effort to wink over the kids' heads at the parents, to try and create a "just us adults, who are smarter!" dynamic that left the kids out.

Which is why the parents sometimes put their grownup jobs down for a minute and got under the blanket on the couch too, to listen to Friendly read the story or see what Mr. Dressup would pull out of his Tickle Trunk next.

Hmm... I guess this entry has a moral for writers, but I respect you readers enough not to hit you over the head with it!

I just ran across something on the f'list that made me think of this--nothing to do with the f'list member or their post, they just referenced something that reminded me...)

Canada is not a single small neighbourhood. If I ask an American where he or she comes from, they will never reply "the United States." They will, at a minimum, tell me the state.

So why do writers, on TV and in books, tell us that someone "went to Canada" or "comes from Canada" or "is going to meet their co-conspirators in Canada" as if that's an address? I mean, if I arrange to meet someone in Halifax, I don't just count on randomly encountering them on the street. If we don't both haunt Tribeca on Tuesday evenings, I will generally arrange a specific time and place, you know? The coffee shop at the corner of Carleton and Spring Garden, or something.

It's a big country, you know? With many options. Telling the reader that someone hitchhiked from Bangor, Maine, to Fredericton, New Brunswick, is not the same as saying the character hitched from Bangor, Maine, to La Ronge, Saskatchewan. Even if you're pretty sure your reader won't know where La Ronge is, details. They are still the friend of vivid fiction.

I posted yesterday about a small kafuffle on an LJ horse community I'm on--some guy showed up, spent a couple of days lecturing everyone about his style of training as if we'd never heard of it (it's called "Natural Horsemanship" by some of its proponents/marketers, and there are currently just under eleventy billion people trying to make a living training that way. We've heard of it.)

( Read more... )

I may have to add this entry to Memories or something, just so I can remind myself if I'm ever out there with something to promote...

No, not what English riders call trail rides.

I was on my way to the barn last night when my cough came back. I have no other symptoms, but by the time I got to the barn I had a headache and had begun to seriously question the wisdom of...

..sitting at the bar coughing at Scotty all night, actually.

When I put it that way, I stayed home and got on the Nyquil. (Still feeling a little headachey, and I'm not sure if it's the cough or the hangover.)

Blargh. I realize I'm not the only person in Halifax or on my f'list with a cold that won't give up, but I feel sorry for all of us right now.

No, really, it can be boiled down to one thing: I can't get away from them.

I was thinking over the holiday that it was a little hypocritical of me, a woman who gets a kick out of Buckcherry's "Crazy Bitch" (yeah, I have a trashy streak) to feel homicidal whenever Nickelback's brain-dead new single appears on the radio.

My problem, I have decided, is that I have heard several Nickelback singles, and they're all equally stupid, with equally ham-fisted non-grooves, and they're practically all about oral sex. Had I heard one of them I might think fondly of Nickelback as "that band with that one stupid song I like." But no. They don't know when to stop, and neither does the local radio that plays them constantly.

Because you may have noticed I've only ever listened to one Buckcherry song.

(Which, as Dave remarked at Tribeca the other night, is a pretty scummy one. He and Rob recommended a different one as an even better example of Buckcherry's trashy oeuvre. I'm pretty sure I've actually heard that one, but I sort of think I don't dare download it and ruin a good thing.)

(Also, Dave claims never to have heard the new Nickelback single--which I am carefully not naming lest I have to sing "Kumbaya" aloud to chase it away again--how can you get an earworm of a song that isn't even catchy?--and that makes him, in my opinion, the luckiest bastard in Halifax.)

I should probably be ashamed to even admit that I ever watched Ghost Whisperer, but I did. Sometimes. And would weep over dead-kid storylines.

( Spoiler cut in case anyone cares. )

Honestly, way to fuck up a show that used to be good for a nice sentimental weep to end the week on.

Thank God for Supernanny, which occasionally fills the void. No, really. Jo the nanny is kind and sensible and gives the ineffective parents credit for wanting to do better, as well as strategies with which to do so. She's very likable, and most of the time the families really are, too.

And when they're not, I can go to bed.

Or watch Numb3rs. The relationships between the father and sons is just Rockford Files enough to be endearing.

I know Friday night is supposed to be a TV dead zone, but I need to want to go out awfully damn bad to go out on a Friday. Aside from that, me and the cats and the guitar on the couch are about all I can handle.

I said something in a comment to buymeaclue that I may have posted about before, but will post about again. I never used to wear a helmet on my Western head. I wear one now, and so do most of my Western riding friends.

I wear gloves when I longe, and not just when Mitzi was green and unpredictable.

I keep my head up and do not do stupid things around my horse if I can help it.

In the Parelli DVD, not only was I concerned about the potential for longeing accidents, I was concerned that none of the students were wearing gloves while longeing or whatever they call it. I don't care if it's a soft cotton rope, if a horse spooks you're going to lose a lot of skin off your palms, and I am here to tell you it hurts.

I may have encountered the reasoning behind the lack of safety equipment when I was rereading bits of The Horse Whisperer (shut up, up until the last hundred pages or so it's a pretty good story.) Anyway, the girl in the story asks the trainer guy whether she should wear a helmet. He says, "Only if you plan to fall off."

Oh, fuck that. I mean really. I don't hold with that The Secret bullshit about bringing bad stuff on yourself, and I don't hold that people plan to have accidents so a positive attitude will protect you. In fact, the US Government publishes a statistical document on unintentional injuries in the US population. It used to be called Accident Facts, but seven or eight years ago its title was changed to Injury Facts, and the reason given was that if you call something an "accident" you are implying, or people take it to mean, the incident could not have been avoided.

And since the vast majority of all unintentional injuries are entirely avoidable, Injury Facts is a much better title.

In other words: take sensible precautions. I don't plan to fall off Mitzi, but I wear a helmet. I don't plan to have a car accident, but I wear a seatbelt. I don't plan to burn my apartment down, but I have a smoke detector.

I mean, what part of "common fucking sense" don't you understand, you know?

Yeah, didn't get any guitar practice in last night. I came home from the barn and settled in to practice--and I couldn't even get the tuner to recognize what string I was playing. I had a little trouble on Sunday kind of circling the tuning, but last night I couldn't do a thing. I changed the batteries in the tuner even though the display wasn't dimming, but that had no effect. I couldn't figure out whether the guitar was badly effected by all the humidity from the last couple of days or whether the tuner has lost its mind. I kind of suspect the latter.

According to the package inserts, letting the batteries get too low can really affect the tuner and might even damage it, so I was trying to keep an eye on that. Like I say, I don't think the display was dim but there's definitely something wrong and it doesn't really make sense it's the guitar.

I moved the guitar to a different location in the apartment, with lower relative humidity, anyway. The tuner is stored with it so hopefully the two will sort themselves out. I'll check again tonight, and if it's still messed up at least I can ask Dave or Jason about it tonight.

In the meantime I loosened the strings a crank or so, which means the guitar is totally out of tune anyway, so I'll have fun tuning it anyway!

Argh. But only a little argh, I guess.

It's amazing how philosophical you can get while cleaning crud off a horse's back legs.

Well, actually, this post has been coming on for a while, inspired as it is by various small situations that crop up over and over.

Don't worry. It'll make sense eventually.

As noted in the first line, last night after tai chi I ran out to the barn to clean Mitzi's back legs. She's had her fall rain sheet on for about a week now. It has chest buckles, straps that criss-cross under her belly, and legs straps to keep it from sliding sideways. For those who don't know how that works, there are two rings on each side of the sheet, one in front of the leg and the other behind. You fasten the leg strap to the first ring, pass it between the hind legs, and fasten it to the other ring on the same side. You can also pass one strap through the other before hooking it on the same side, to keep the blanket more steady. Frankly, I have had about the same results either way--blankets do shift, but my horses have never had much trouble with that, even Mitzi who is a dedicated roller.

I don't know if it's a "thing" or a mistake, but this week I've been noticing the leg straps criss-crossed--attached to the front ring on one side and the back ring on the other. I assume one of the kids just misunderstood Coach Girl's instructions, but I do notice this method really keeps the blanket from moving so it may be on purpose. I mean, the back half of the blanket stays down.

( TMI about equine hygiene. )

Anyway, the only thing the non-horsey need to know about this situation is this: I suspect the leg strap thing was a mistake made by one of the kids, but if it was done on purpose it would reflect some other horse person's beliefs about the correct way to fasten a blanket. Which means that I may get a mini-lecture from Coach Girl about how the method I have always successfully used is wrong. This is not a reflection on Coach Girl, just recognition of the fact that horse people do many things differently, and most of us believe the way we do things is the only correct way. Despite the fact that other people do the same thing in a different way with equal success. I mean, I try to be self-aware but I know I'm guilty as well.

Which brings me around to the title line of this post. A while back, on a blog I don't remember, someone remarked that an awful lot of arguments boil down to "horrified exclamations of, 'You're not me!'"

True.

( No, you're not me. And I'm about to go on and on about that. )

And while everyone is entitled to their own opinions about everything, I see no reason to try and make other people feel defensive or ashamed of their own harmless pleasures or preferences. I tell people I have no guilty pleasures anymore, by which I mean that, since none of my stupid little pleasures are harmful to anyone (including me) I refuse to feel guilty about them. I am quite comfortable with my own frivolity.

And also, if cornered I may bite.

(Incidentally, the above holds true for anything I read, but not for anything I write, because if I am the writer I need to take the considered opinions of the reader seriously. Because if I create something for your consumption, that immediately assumes that you will have an opinion about it, and accepts that opinion as valid. But for stuff I consume myself? My business only. Mine, mine, mine.)

Yeah, I know, it's a bit too early to get discouraged about the guitar playing, but I seem to be worse this week than I was last week. I think part of it is, last week I wasn't being careful about my left-hand position so I learned a few chords with my hand in one position and now I have to relearn them with my thumb straight against the back of the neck.

Also, for some reason I'm tired this week (and it's only Tuesday) so that might be causing me to be stupider than usual.

I did start to get down on myself the other day thinking that I actually picked up horseback riding faster than the mechanics of chords and strumming--when I was in the horse care program and riding an hour a day, five days a week, it seems to me I came along pretty quickly. Mind you, I had an instructor right there telling me when I was going wrong.

And then I remembered that, no, I actually sucked at that for a good long time as well. I seem to recall being completely unable to master posting on the correct diagonal--which was something I had been previously taught--until one night I had a dream and woke up on the correct diagonal, if you see what I mean. I haven't had any trouble with diagonals since, although obviously there is much to correct about my horsemanship.

But we'll worry about that--at least the riding part--in the spring when I can do it again.

I have been having back pain, not a lot but enough to remind me all is not well, because I can feel the disc is out of shape. When I sit back in a chair with a hard back, I can feel the disc pressing on the seatback in ways it should not be doing. I had sort of a pain in my leg over the weekend that worried me--I don't want to go down that road again--but it didn't seem to amount to anything. It was probably some completely unrelated little twinge and there's no reason to freak out, but NOT a happy feeling. And then I was thinking, "Shouldn't the disc feel better by now?" And my answer was, "Why would it? It took five months for the sciatic symptoms to abate. Why would anything else about this situation go faster?"

So I think, despite having a nice weekend, that I'm tired and it's making me discouraged, or possibly I'm discouraged and it's making me tired.

I did do twenty minutes on the treadmill last night (five minutes warming up, ten at a strong walk, five cooling down) which is better than nothing. And I have something made to heat up for dinner tonight so I can go to the barn after work and have a chat with Mitzi. Hey, I can clean her feet now, which is progress for sure.

Also, and this should cheer me up, Matt Mays in a white suit (no, I don't understand that one either) playing "Girl From the North Country" on an acoustic guitar. I don't know if it's the suit or the lights, but does his hair ever look red!

I've been trying to work out when the new episode of Flashpoint is going to air on CTV this Sunday--the times I've seen don't match up.

And I just looked, and it's no longer on the CTV schedule. Also, there is no episode synopsis or air time given on the show's CTV Web site. I can only assume CTV has belatedly decided to follow CBS's lead in airing their own damn show!

If I had a gun right now I would totally need someone to talk me down...

Edited to add: I forgot to add, in honour of lyonesse:

PS. DON'T DESTROY THE WORLD.

Appropriate, considering my current stage of mind.

(No Flashpoint content, promise.)

One thing I find I do not like is when my favourite crime shows go to the spend-a-season-tracking-down-the-master-villain plot. CSI: Classic spent one whole season on that damned "Miniature Killer" plot, and while I enjoyed it for a couple of episodes I confess by the end I just didn't care. And Bones, which I also like, got into that "Gormagon" serial killer thread and it just got so boring.

I think my problems are these: first, I don't believe in Super-Intelligent MadMad Serial Killers, because in practice, serial killer are bottom-feeding scum suckers like Robert Pickton. I mean, Ted Bundy had a superficial glamour but he wasn't a criminal genius, he just killed strangers.

Second, when the focus is on the Super-Intelligent MadMad Serial Killer... the victims become secondary. And I can't really get interested in the resolution of a case that is completely not about the victim.

I know, my two examples are a couple of the silliest crime shows on TV. But I used to enjoy them, and then they got tiresome. I hope they drop the single-thread seasons next year.

Also--please, writers-of-Flashpoint, if you happen across this blog--DO NOT spend a whole season chasing a stereotyped Super-Intelligent et cetera. It's such a cliche, and so boring.