Canéla’s First Year-End Review

Hi Canéla, come in and sit down. Sit. Yes, sit. 

There you go - good girl. I see you brought Douglas with you; that's fine, emotional support stuffies are a longstanding tradition in this house.

So you have been with us for a year now, a year as of... [rustles paper] January 24th! Wow, time really does fly when you are having fun. And I hope it has been fun for you too, but this annual review is a chance to look at the year that was, celebrate achievements and, you know, look for opportunities to improve.

You certainly have come a long way from the underfed mongrel we picked up in Canmore, that's for sure! You barely stuck your head out from the kennel on the trip home, and you snapped at Glory that night too. No, no, there are no hard feelings - you had given ample warning, we were just too unfamiliar with you to pick them up.

There were some concerns about allergies at first, but those all seem to have worked themselves out, because we all felt like you were worth the effort. You took to housetraining very quickly and have only had one indoor incident in the past six months - good girl! Let's see if we can go twelve in a row, eh?

With house training largely sorted, the next big opportunity is - well, how to phrase this... you can be a bit of a maniac, can't you? At the dog park you are generally very polite and good about greeting and playing with other dogs, but if you are on the leash, you leap and bark and snarl and sound generally like a daemonic werewolf. 

And heaven help us if you see a rabbit while you are on a leash! Last March you pulled me off my feet and my shoulder was out of sorts for eight weeks.

No, it is fine now, thank you, and no hard feelings - it was icey, after all.

You are also a little hard on your toys - yes, even Douglas - and your depredations often require intercessionary stitching by Audrey. But honestly, they are your toys, so it is hard to find fault with them being used as intended.

Also, I have to confess I find some of the places you choose to sleep in or the poses you sleep in to be unsettling as well.

But perhaps you have as little choice in this as we do. Mostly I am glad you are able to find comfort in our home, given that such coziness was inaccessible to you for much of your life.

Still, the organization is really hoping you take some time to reflect and can perhaps focus on not losing your damned mind when another dog comes within half-a-block of the house. Yes, we, will make allowances for rabbits that have the unmitigated temerity to sit on your front lawn.; I agree, that they should never feel welcome nor comfortable. What's that? Open the door just once, you say.

Sorry, dear - not a chance.

But honestly, that is about it - you don't chew things you aren't supposed to, you reserve your biting for playtime, mostly, anyhow, and you aren't too much of a mooch in the kitchen.

You are a boon companion during my workdays as well, even if you do get a little pushy if I need to work past noon. And how do you tell? You have shown no interest in clocks and wear no timepiece that I am aware of. Anyways, thank you for those times that you have displayed patience,even begrudgingly.

You have come from being somewhat aloof to being a creature that enjoys contact, plopping down for a cuddle whenever there is an open seat or space on the bed you can squeeze yourself into. There have been a few incidents where you have been disturbed when half-asleep and have responded with the fiercest of growls, though. And let me tell you, if I am getting up in the middle of the night to go to the bathroom, that kind of fearsome startling is not something I appreciate!

But I do enjoy our lunchtime walks (when it isn't terrifyingly cold or treacherously slippery) and I know Audrey enjoys her time with you at the Lauderdale off-leash park.

And not everyone is into dogs, but those who are certainly seem to appreciate you. I know my cousin Parker really enjoyed roughhousing with you and taking you for walks over Christmas.

And of course, we were presently surprised that you were able to graduate your training session last summer - once there were no other dogs present. Perhaps we will revisit that at some point in the future, eh?

At any rate, you have been a boon companion this past year, and we look forward to the next one together.

Shake?

Good girl.

Cinematic Amnesia Therapy

Our understanding of how human memory works is expanding all the time. Modern advances in neurochemistry. psychology and physiology mean that we know more about how memories are stored and recovered than ever before. These advances will make it easier to recover memories made inaccessible by trauma, injury or simply time. But maybe they will also let us selectively forget things, at least for a period of time.

In the movie Eternal Sunshine of the Spotless Mind, the main character hires a company to have memories of a broken relationship permanently deleted after receiving notification that the other party has already done so. But what if a similar procedure could be done, even temporarily, for more trivial purposes? Maybe with a pill that would suppress specific memories for 3-4 hours?

Think of how much fun re-experiencing some of your favourite movies would be!

The spoilers that could be undone alone would make this worthwhile. When I was 13, we saw The Empire Strikes Back the first Tuesday after it came out, but that was still enough time for a Sunday school classmate to spoil the identity of Luke Skywalkers' father. 

And I don't know too many people watching Citizen Kane who are surprised to learn the meaning of the titular character's final words, or who are shocked, shocked! to see Rick make his fateful choice in Casablanca. The iconic statue at the end of Planet of the Apes pre-spoils that movie for almost everyone who has seen it since maybe 1985.

How many movies might you rewatch even to re-experience the thrill of revelation like when you learn who Kyser Soze is? Or "what's in the box?"  The kid who sees dead people?

And there are smaller reveals that have become major movie touchpoints as well. Did your well-intentioned friends tell you about Indiana Jones fighting that swordsman in Cairo? Well, take the patented cinematic amnesia therapy (CAT) tablet and in the words of Tony Soprano, fuhgeddaboutit! Want to be shocked and delighted at the monster at the end of the original Ghostbusters? The newly upgraded CAT will also block memories of the recent sequel, even the trailers!

Everyone knew going into Terminator 2 that Arnie was the good guy this time around, but onscreen they played their cards a bit closer to the vest. Wouldn't it be cool to experience the same fear and relief that John Connor had? Or better yet, the same reaction to John Hurt's stomach troubles in Alien as the cast? (Well, okay, maybe not that close...)

Every surprise, every twist, every reveal, resolution and solution to a whodunnit could be revisited again - and again, I suppose.

Ideally, the CAT would only suppress memories regarding a specific movie experience, but it would make sense that movies whose spoilers have more cultural cache or are immortalized in parodies, art or even toys and action figures might require a higher dosage. After re-watching the film, your original memories would return, but you also maintain the feelings of surprise and delight from your recent experience.

Home video and streaming services have made it easy to re-experience our favourite films over and over again, but you can typically only be surprised once, as the saying goes. How wonderful it might be to re-experience it!

If a safe and tested version of the cinematic amnesia therapy tablet was available for $50 a pop, I have no idea how many films I would rewatch with it, or which one I would start with. Probably Empire Strikes Back though - that spoiler still burns me up a little, even four decades later.

Feel free to put your choices to revisit in the comments!

Erasure of History, Repeating

 A recent article in The Guardian about mounting opposition to a sitting president contained a number of chillingly familiar elements:

"...political firebrands and white supremacists eagerly fanned the paranoia of socialism, global conspiracies and threats from within the country.”

“A divided country and […] emboldened powerful enemies made the plot to overthrow him seem plausible. With restless uncertainty, volatile protests and ominous threats, America’s right wing was inspired to form its own paramilitary organizations. Militias sprung up throughout the land, their self-described “patriots” chanting: “This is despotism! This is tyranny!”

"'...if they had been able to maintain secrecy, the plot certainly might very well have succeeded … When times are desperate and people are frustrated, anything could happen.’”

Interestingly, this is not about Trump supporters in opposition to Joe Biden, but powerful financiers and industrialists in 1933 who sought to overthrow newly elected president Franklin D. Roosevelt in a coup.

This supposed "Wall Street Putsch" is eerily analogous to much of the current situation in the U.S., and I was shocked to read about this brazen attempt to undermine democracy. How had I never heard of this before, especially in the last year?

Despite being orchestrated by the rich and powerful, there were plenty of people at the grassroots level opposed to FDR, and who unironically emulated the methods and appearance of overseas fascists like Hitler's and Mussolini's brown- and blackshirts. The leader of the Silver Shirts mounted a presidential bid in 1936, and would have installed himself as a despot called "the Chief" as opposed to il Duce or der Fuehrer. 

The American Liberty League's $30M plan was to organize half-a-million disgruntled veterans under a charismatic leader, arm them with rifles provided by Remington Arms and remove Roosevelt and his cabinet by force. Thankfully they picked the wrong man for the leadership role - retired Marine General Smedley Butler, a Congressional Medal of Honor recipient. Butler instead reported this perfidy to J. Edgar Hoover and the FBI, and Hoover alerted FDR.

The fact that the coup was prevented is a worthy enough story, but the fact that none of the wealthy or powerful organizers were prosecuted or even named in the final report is absolutely astonishing, and a little disappointing. There are suggestions that FDR let them off the hook in exchange for dropping their opposition to his New Deal policies.

Like the burning of Black Wall Street in Tulsa in 1921, the Non-Coup of 1933 is probably something a lot of people would prefer most of us to forget (something that had largely happened with the former example until the release of HBO's Watchmen in 2019) but in light of the events in Washington a year ago, I can't help but feel this is a disservice for those of us who favour the rule of law.

With the mid-term elections coming at the end of this year, and possibly setting up a return of You-Know-Who for another run at the White House in 2024, I am really hoping there are more pronounced consequences for those who either abused their powers or neglected their responsibilities on Jan. 6, 2021. The recent addition of sedition charges to prominent members of the Oath Keepers organization is encouraging, but by no means am I counting on there being much in the way of comeuppance, particularly for those in the upper echelons.

Meanwhile, commentators even here in Canada like Stephen Marche are discussing the risk to democracy in the U.S. and the possibility of a non-democratic government taking power in 2024 or beyond. 

Was the 1933 Business Plot a credible threat? Could it have succeeded? Probably not, by most accounts, but it is difficult to say with any certainty. What if Gen. Butler had been an eager accomplice, instead of a patriotic informant?

Would someone trying again today, but with greater support, decentralized communications and an even more disaffected strip of the public have a better shot as success? And what if they were attempting to perform their machinations from within the government, aided by willing accomplices within the Senate or House of Representatives? 

And might punitive measures taken back then have given pause to those determined to erode democracy in the present day?

It is chilling to consider just how much history, and precisely which parts, might actually be repeating.

(Propellorheads - History Repeating)

What We Learn From What We Play

 Understandably trepidatious about visiting us when 2-3 other households were already here, Audrey's sister Vera finally made it up to see us this past weekend.

It was a great visit - she and Audrey made a pile of wontons for soup and I made barbacoa beef for our burritos last night. but the real highlight for me was the games.

Like all too many of our friends and family, she circulates with fewer people these days, largely out of fear of infecting them with omicron, as she works in a health care facility. And not a lot of those people are into board games, especially unfamiliar ones to them, like Ticket to Ride or Settlers of Catan.

Catan is one of Vera's favourite games though, so I can always count on getting a game in when she is here. And because Bobby was over on Saturday too, it meant I got to play my first-ever six-person game of Catan, which Glory won handily.

She almost blew it when she announced she was going to win next turn. I mentioned how much I wanted to thwart her by taking her longest road award but was short a few cards, at which point EVERY OTHER PERSON at the table offered to trade me the wood and brick needed to push me to the four additional roads I needed to usurp those two points from her. This roiled her up to no end, but also taught her a valuable lesson - namely, the Catan victory chant:

Watching a competitive game momentarily devolve into something collaborative (or at least mostly collaborative) is always entertaining, and happens in almost every corner in Formula Dé. It is difficult to find these moments outside of games, frankly, where the competition is far healthier and rule-bound than many other examples in our lives.

Before Vera joined us, we journeyed out to Rocky Mountain House to visit Audrey's other sister Betty, and her family, including my two nieces, nephew, one niece's husband and another's fiancé. The latter is a nice young fellow hoping to become a conservation officer in B.C., and is also a board game fan. Blake introduced Bobby and I to a much-loved vintage game of his called The Farming Game. I have little interest in farming and almost as little in games from 1979 that look like off-brand Monopoly, but was compelled by Blake's ardour and gave it a shot.

I am very glad I did. and for two reasons. The first that The Farming Game's poor production values and limited graphic appeal concealed a tremendously fun and competitive game. Like Monopoly, players go around a square board, but instead of buying property, they attempt to expand the farm they start out with (which, tragically and appropriately enough, begins in debt). 

One side of the board lets players prepare for a variety of harvests and paying a variety of expenses, while the other three sides detail a series of harvests, organized similarly to the colour groups in Monopoly. once per group, you can earn profits from the particular harvest, but only if you have invested in it previously. Your hayfields can produce 2-3 times for each go-round, but gamble on cattle or fruit and you will be praying to land in a strip only 3-4 squares long.

More importantly was watching Blake run us through our paces in the game. He was highly conversant in the rules, but also keen on answering questions, and to offer earnest advice to players who might be lagging behind. When Bobby ended up winning due to a bumper fruit harvest, Blake was tickled pink, and gratified that we enjoyed a game that he has enjoyed so much since he was 12 that he used to play it by himself to see how long it would take him to exhaust the bank of $10,000 bills.

When I flew out to my job interview for Games Workshop way back in 1995, they actually scheduled time for me to play a game with the warehouse staff. It was a new game at the time that I was completely unfamiliar with, but it turns out that my knowledge was not why I was playing it. A small part was to see how quickly I could pick up on new rules and mechanics, but a larger part was to see if I was a good sport, a team player and fun to play with.

At Betty's table in Rocky, I was unsure if I was the interviewer or the interviewee, but I was glad we played, and that I came away with very favourable impressions of both The Farming Game and Blake. And playing Catan, Jackbox and Ticket to Ride with Vera made me reflect on how lucky we are to have people in our lives to share the things we enjoy. 

Web Re- and De-Tangler - Spider-Man: No Way Home, Reviewed

The most recent collaboration between Marvel Studios and Sony Pictures, Spider-Man: No Way Home, is not just a satisfying conclusion to Peter Parker's high school years, or even a great adventure movie with real stakes and emotional heft - these filmmakers have stuck the landing and made the best superhero trilogy to date.

It's weird to think back to the formative days of the Marvel Cinematic Universe, when Shane Black's Iron Man 3 was racing with Christopher Nolan's The Dark Knight Rises to make the first-ever "good" third entry in a superhero franchise. To be fair, Superman 3 and Batman Forever are hardly steep competition, but when Nolan won the race in 2012, his film proved that the III curse could be broken, even if his final entry was perhaps the weakest of the three. Shane Black's IM3 though was maybe my favourite Iron Man picture overall and also the largest grossing MCU film up to that point, eclipsing a banal and disengaging Iron Man 2. 

More currently, Thor Ragnarok has got that franchise back on track (with Thor: Love and Thunder in the works) after a brutal misstep with The Dark World (which works far better if you view it as a Loki movie that happens to have Thor in it). But the Spider-Man trilogy? All killer, no filler, in this nerd's opinion.

Tom Holland's third go-round as a title character leaves us with a franchise that has no weak entries and caps things off in grand style. Picking up shortly after the ending of Spider-Man: Far From Home, which had the villainous Mysterio not only framing Spider-Man for his misdeeds, but also with longtime foil J. Jonah Jameson revealing his secret identity to the world.

As the trailer describes, an attempt to solve the issue magically with the aid of Dr. Strange backfires, resulting in enemies from parallel universes arriving and wreaking havoc - enemies we recognize from previous cinematic iterations of Spider-Man (as portrayed by Tobey Maguire and Andrew Garfield). This could have set up a "greatest hits" style series of battles, but is taken in a fascinating new direction when the morality-driven hero starts looking for ways to help these erstwhile enemies instead of simply rounding them up and sending them back home to die.

Look, Batman is probably my favourite superhero, but I am forced to admit that in many ways, Spider-Man is simply the best hero. He has probably the strongest origin story in all fo comics, a rogues gallery at least equal to Batman's and has always been driven by a compulsive need to do the right thing. Even when it is unsaid, that timeless mantra of "with great power, must also come great responsibility" that reaches all the way back to 1962 is never far from mind.

No Way Home is a great action-adventure story with some wonderful laughs and certainly the best cast of any single superhero film, but is also upfront about dealing with themes that really resonate with me - themes like accountability, consequences and love. I am not going to lie, parts of the film are bittersweet and some moments border on heartbreaking, but throughout a story that is bigger in scope and scale than anything Peter Parker has faced by himself, every choice and action feels consistent and earned for the characters that make them.

In addition to touching base with previous franchises, there are multiple connective points to the greater MCU, which I always appreciate, and the cynical detachment of Benedict Cumberbatch's Dr. Strange is a wonderful counterpoint to Holand's earnestness as Peter Parker.

Here's the thing though: I am always telling my girls, "don't grow up too fast."  I know full well that childhood and innocence and freedom are fleeting, and growing up is always just around the corner. No Way Home is a chance to watch a beloved and iconic character grow up, which - as it probably should be - isn't always easy.

There is a lot of crash-boom-wow in the setpiece finale, but it all feels earned and it always feels like there are stakes, due to the rules being so loose now that a multiverse is in play. And it never feels like just a spectacle, and the spider-gags and stunts get better and better the further into the film you get, especially once teamwork comes into play.

Director Jon Watts has captured a lot of the nuances of high-school-age Peter Parker, and we owe him and Civil War writers Christopher Markus and Stephen McFeely for finally capturing the wisecracking webslinger so many of us had been waiting to see onscreen. Maybe someone else is better suited to take Spidey into his college years, and if so, I hope they were taking notes from his earlier MCU appearances - lead with your heart, not your webshooters.

You could potentially end the depictions of Tom Holland's Spider-Man at this point, but I selfishly hope we get a few more outings from him and Kevin Feige's braintrust, but this trilogy will be a hard act to follow. Excelsior!