Margaret Atwood's Labia Compared To Corned Beef

Another academic year starts; Margaret Atwood's promo. events start to bleed through the provinces. So it must be fall. I don't know if anyone's read Atwood's new book The Year of the Flood, but if you haven't you're surely jerking off to inferior material. An Eaton's catalogue, or maybe Spike TV ads. Flood is a fantastic read; I'd recommend it to anyone catheterized after minor surgery.

I went to an Atwood event last night in Toronto, and the usual crowd of supporters had gathered to kiss her feet, carry her around on a sedan chair, and generally cry in her presence. Seriously, I'm not sure why Atwood's such a Canadian deity. I know that we're not a crowded room of Updikes, but I know also that I'd love to read a book without waiting for the inevitable rape-inchoate rape scene. The maven-Atwood writes well, but you can't read her books without feeling that there's a cold-as-hell finger shoved deep up your ass.

That's just a man's point of view, so dismiss it out of hand Atwood fans. I know that Atwood doesn't hate men, she just hates John Moss (who know, by the way, walks around the city in a black watch cap and loves camping).

So, again, everyone was at this Random House-Doubleday book-hawking expo. And they'd all dressed up for Atwood. Except for one guy--an older man--who told me that he'd gone down on MA in the '70s, and compared the experience to licking hand-cut Schwartz's Montreal smoked meat that'd been left in the car overnight in February. I begged him for details, and he told me that there was really nothing more to tell, but that Peggy likes the missionary position 'cause it lets her imagine that the roof's about to cave in.

So this isn't a book review as much as it is a prurient look at the Atwood you weren't meant to see; the part usually concealed behind layers and layers of wool.

Fuck. Atwood was never better than she was in Surfacing, which, to me, is like saying that my shirt never smelled better than after I'd walked down Spadina from Bloor to King Street.

Now back to prepping for tomorrow's CanLit lecture: The Tin Flute and Canadian modernism. Drop in if you have a chance.

Alice Munro Out Of Giller Running, But Still Wants Those Pizza Pizza Coupons

The Star ran a story re: Alice Munro's hand-slap of the '09 Giller nominations. Alice wants to step aside, let other writers have a shot at taking home the cash, the award, and the little rag dolls that Margaret Atwood makes every year and hands out to nominees.

That's admirable, and I salute Alice for her gesture. She doesn't need the money; she has all the fame she can handle; her mantle is full.

But what wasn't reported in the Star's story was Munro's surreptitious acceptance of the book of Pizza Pizza coupons that comes with a Giller nomination. Pizza Pizza, which has sponsored the CanLit ceremony since its inception, has made a tradition of handing out the equivalent of a year's worth of Sundays of large pizzas. The idea is that working writers shouldn't have to worry about cooking dinner; Pizza Pizza delivers, and the fifty-two coupons are good for dipping sauce, a bottle of Coke, and chicken fingers. That's a family dinner.

I can understand why and how so few people know about the Pizza Pizza gesture. When you see that big cash prize and that black-tie dinner, the last thing you're going to drawn to is a vinyl tarp declaring the birth of the jalapeno pizza roll.

So a friend who works with the Giller administration tells me that while Munro effectively resigned from Giller consideration, she neglected to return the pizza coupons. A little off, but it doesn't surprise me. What's interesting is that the coupons don't include a tip. And all reports are that Munro doesn't tip. A famous CanLit author-at-large story has Munro at the Keg eating a New York strip steak and leaving $25.05 on a $25 cheque.

If only I could be the delivery guy who knocks on that Rosedale door.

Camilla Gibb Plays Softball At Battery Park

With nothing else to do yesterday--no reading, no shopping--I went to watch Camilla Gibb play softball. She plays on a team called the Raiders--I don't know if that has any significance--and the team plays most Saturdays and sometimes on Tuesday nights. I know this because a friend of mine named Marc Berger put together the team, and is constantly bitching to me about how bad Gibb is at baseball.

"So why let her play?" I asked him.

"She paid."

"Is that all?"

"Yeah. It's a rec. league. What can I do, tell her to fuck off and go swimming?"

"Can I play?"

"The team's full."

So I went down to Battery Park, bought a Crunchie chocolate bar and some Trident gum along the way, and settled down to watch the Raiders play an afternoon game.

Gibb does, in fact, suck at softball. She rotated around the infield on defense, and hit eleventh (out of twelve). The Raiders lost 34-21. For a normal softball team, that'd be a lot of runs. But when you can't throw or field, shit happens. It was probably the most poorly played game that I've ever seen, and even on a blank slate of a Saturday afternoon, I won't be going back.

Let me recap Gibb's at bats:

1: Strikes out looking.

2: Grounds out to the pitcher after swinging the bat with her hips. The coach had to tell her that you're better off using your shoulders and arms. Gibb was concerned about her manicure. Yeah...If she'd actually had one in the last fifteen years, that'd be something to worry about. Given that her 'nails look like they were lifted off the corpse of professional shit scraper, there was no danger of aesthetic harm.

3: Grounds out to the pitcher. This time the ball actually hit her hand and rolled to the mound. She winced, but did not cry. Gibb is famously stoic. When a good friend died, she once commented that her Tori Amos tickets wouldn't go to waste.

4: Strikes out swinging. A strike out is rare in softball, but, like I said, she's terrible.

In the field Gibb was even worse. A ball was hit to her at third base, and, as she jumped out of the way, it hit her shoe and died. She picked it up, tossed it in the direction of first base, and watched as the ball sailed about four feet before settling on the infield gravel. Since first base was about forty-five feet from third, this was not a good outcome.

Another grounder bounced up and hit the brim of her hat. She screamed and kicked it toward second base.

After the game I asked her what she's working on now, and she said a novel about a young woman who travels to BC in order to plant trees. Fuck, I can't wait for that to hit the shelves.

Things That I Found In Margaret Atwood's Garbage

Back from a six-month trip to Africa, I decided to take a stroll around the Atwoodian neighbourhood at the foot of Yonge and Davisville. It doesn't really have a name, but us Torontonians sometimes call it Atwood-ville, or The Finger Lick. What was I doing on the dark continent? Surely it must have been something altruistic, something nice and pure.

I tanned. Ate yams. I dug one well, but did not hit water.

Mostly, I was engaged in some artisanal diamond mining. Most of what I found I kept. The rest went toward Alice Munro's mortgage.

No...Really, I was doing research for my dissertation: Black Canadian writers go to Senegal: a corn roast.

So I get back to YYZ, pick up my car from the vault of Pearson's long-term lot, and drive into the city. What do I find? A garbage strike. Garbage piled everywhere; rotting garbage from Spadina-College all the way south to the last Pho Hung Noodle. Fucking Chinatown: an incredible amount of cabbage and ginger tops just sitting there on the curb. But I credit a group of UofT political science grad. students who led an "earth-greening" expedition from the Spadina JCC all the way down to Kensington Market. Many of their bicycles were later reported stolen.

I walked into my favourite liquor store, and was told that if I wanted a bag, it would now be an extra five cents. I said that was a "fucking joke," and was told that Margaret Atwood had reacted similarly when told of the levy.

"How is Peggy?" I asked.

"She hasn't been in since the garbage strike."

"The garbage strike? There's a garbage strike?"

"It's been on for weeks. Ridiculous, huh? I only wish I made what those guys make. And all the old record players they find...They keep those. The bed frames, too. What the hell else do they need? Like they're sick eighteen times a year? I don't even get it."

So there was a garbage strike in my old city. The homeless had built garbage igloos. Everything had decayed in my absence.

I immediately walked over to Atwood's house to say hello; to tell her about my trip.

Her small lawn was covered with garbage. Garbage bags everywhere--there must have been at least fifteen. I knocked on the door, but there was no answer. A neighbour came out--an older woman whom I'd met before--and told me that Atwood was away for the weekend. Somewhere out in Barrie or Orillia picking wild blueberries at a friend's cottage for a "jam session." Yeah, well, that's Atwood.

With nothing left to do for the rest of the afternoon, I sat down on her porch and started tearing through her garbage. What the hell had she and The Big G consumed over the past few weeks that would create so much solid waste?

The first bag had mostly cans and pickle jars, with some old tubs of coleslaw and potato salad. I guess it was recycling that wouldn't fit in the overflowing blue-grey bin. Had she put out a deli spread for some friends? Who knew.

The second bag had old US and Lucky magazines. A lot of people think that 'cause Marg's such an activist, that she's not into feminine gloss. That's not true: Atwood loves Mischa Batron; wouldn't miss her if Joy Kogawa herself descended with a rare edition of Eli Mandel's Foot, Feet, and Feeties: A Poetic Odd-iss-ey.

The third bag was dental floss, bagged hair, and some broken Hot Wheels toy cars. There were also some pictures of Atwood at a Colin James concert.

No used condoms, but many, many dried apples tied together with string.

After that third bag I kinda felt bored. I ripped open the other twelve bags, spread their contents on the sidewalk, and walked over to Harry Rosen. All of Margaret's secrets revealed, I bought a new tie.

No, I'm not too happy to be back, but what the hell can you do.

McGuinty To York's Bargaining Team: "They Couldn't Get Me Free Delivery Of The Sunday Times."

With the Liberals set to legislate CUPE 3903 back to work, the process of evaluating this strike can begin. What did it accomplish? Well, the union proved that York is nothing if not accommodating: Although, starting on November 6, the school was officially closed, it was still possible to park at any of York's faculty lots for the bargain rate of $6/hour. At $25,000/year, that's about half of what York contract faculty make to work at the school. Which explains why Mamdou Shoukri's limousine was parked across five spots.

I think the university spent something like eleven days bargaining with the union. In eleven days, Barack Obama created the world, and rested on Thursday. But York couldn't hammer out a settlement.

But that isn't exactly true: They wouldn't hammer out a settlement. As part of some strange, penurious stance, they decided that they simply had no money to give to contract faculty. And, when the union said, "Fuck money, just give us job security," they decided that they didn't haven't much security to give, either. "We can't just be giving out job security," a York official told me. "What are people going to do? Work here?"

Obama was inaugurated during the York strike. Last Monday, as I exited a coffee shop, I was approached by a man selling waving an American flag. "Anything is possible," he shouted at me.

"A negotiated settlement at York?" I asked.

"Shit, man," he said. "It's just an expression."

I Meet York's Chief Negotiator

Last night I met York's chief negotiator. I won't mention his name, but he represented himself as a very fine, able, upstanding man. The knees of his pants worn shiny by trips to the Communion rail, the felt of his hat clean and black with an orange feather tucked into the band.

I asked him what the university had to lose by giving contract faculty, say, five-year appointments.

"Nothing. They're working there; who cares if we hire them every year, every other year, or every five years. We wouldn't be employing them if they didn't do a good job."

I asked him why the university wouldn't agree to small changes in its health and childcare plans.

"We'll do that. It'll cost some money, but nothing serious. Same with the pay raise. Is tuition frozen? So we charge fifteen bucks more for a full-year class. It's no big deal."

"So," I said, "what the hell's going on?"

"A few grand a year we can handle, David," he said. "But tenure-stream jobs? No way. Not with our funding scheme. Where are we supposed to come up with millions?"

"Raise tuition."

"People are already screaming that it's too high."

"So they'll scream a little louder."

"Do you know how much it costs to go to school in the States? Tuition's high here? What does it cost? Five, six grand? They're paying three, four, five times that. No, we can't do that. And, by the way, those kids celebrating after that vote. Big mistake. Big, big mistake. I don't know how they let that happen. You're alienating an awful lot of people. An awful lot. This isn't the time to ask for anything from an employer, not to mention celebrating when you vote down a raise...Wait! I know what you're going to say: It's not about money. Fine. I know that, you know that. But does a guy picking up the Sun know that? He sees people cheering down a 10% raise. They look like a bunch of fucking spoiled brats. No public relations from that union. None at all. And they think that people are going to have sympathy after being held up in their cars, trying to get to Osgoode or wherever they're going? Trying to go to the library, and being stuck between a gate for ten minutes. Then being lectured?"

"But something has to change. You can't have people with PhDs working for you for twenty years without being given a shot at a steady job. It's obscene."

"That's the way it is. If the government gives us more money, we'll spend more money. But did you see the story: $100 billion in deficit spending over the next two years. You think they're going to give us a cheque? I don't think so."

"It's a bit of problem, isn't it."

"David, it's bullshit. I'll say that: it's bullshit. Kids want to pay less to go to school; kids want to be paid more to teach at school. What are we supposed to do for money? Grow it? David, the world's turning to shit. I don't know what to tell you. But if I make a good deal for the university, do you think that I get to take home the cash I saved? No. So why wouldn't we offer our best deal? It's not our money. We don't get to keep it. It's not coming out of our pockets. We're giving what we can give."

"And what about the president's salary? And his perks?"

"What does he get that Dick Fuld didn't, or John Thain didn't? He's a fundraiser. He raises money. Ok, he makes a nice buck, but he's the fucking president of the university. There's kind of an industry standard that we have to abide by. I may not agree with it, but that's reality."

"So what else can you do?"

"Nothing."

"So what's going to happen?"

"I don't know. I guess we wait."

CUPE 3903 Rejects York's Offer; Union Leaders Get LA Gear Shoes Re-Soled

I should've pointed this out before: I'm not a member of CUPE 3903. But as an English graduate student I know York TAs and contract faculty, so I've been allowed some insight into what's happening in the community.

Last night CUPE members voted down York's settlement offer. I watched coverage of the Novotel vote, and I swear that I saw a guy wearing LA Gear shoes.

York's position is actually pretty interesting: They're happy to pay their tenured and tenure-stream faculty six-figure salaries. They're happy to do it. But as far as their contract faculty go, they won't back away from this 9.5% three-year pay increase.

Consider that the average contract faculty member makes around $25,000/year. That's a 3% raise in Year One: $750. A 3% raise in Year Two: $772.50. A 3% raise in Year Three: $795.66.

That's still not even a third of what tenure/tenure-stream professors make for doing the exact same job.

And what's the strike really about? Opening up the hiring process so that contract faculty can actually become professors. But then the university says, "Publish. Publish. Then we'll hire you."

That's a crock.

But the problem is that as the economy turns to shit, no one has much sympathy for intellectuals. And intellectuals can't seem to help themselves. Remember a few months ago when Maple Leaf tainted meat was killing people? Well, Michael McCain, a good-looking man, a man with a nice chin, came out and spoke to the press. Food produced at his plant was actually causing people to die, yet the public had great sympathy for him. The man is a millionaire selling dangerous meat, yet he's beloved.

Now you've got a bunch of people fighting for very reasonable contract demands, and people want to throw paint on them.

Who does CUPE march out for the media? A couple of guys who cut their own hair. A guy who collects Betty Boop keychains? A guy who goes on the radio, on a very popular station, on a very popular show, and iterates and re-iterates the importance of adverbial connectors.

Even the letters to the editor published in Toronto's dailies have been darling: auxiliary verb, adverb, main verb. Check. Let's see some goddamn hacking and chopping. Mamdouh Shoukri won't bargain, but he spends $100,000/year on a chauffeurred limousine. He wouldn't typically spend that much money, but his SSHRC grant came through.

In terms of public relations, this strike's been a fucking disaster. My grandparents, who live in Toronto, keep asking me how the union has the balls to strike for more money when so many people are being fired, laid off, etc. I have to keep telling them that it's not about money; it's about these contracts and conversion schemes. But they can't understand what I'm talking about. The papers mention money; the six o'clock news mentions money. You wouldn't think that this strike was about anything other than three grand over three years. Bullshit. It's not about that at all.

These union leaders, these union negotiators...Great job. You've spent three months negotiating, you've received almost no concessions, and you're this close to splitting your membership. You get a 70% turnout on a key vote, and your TAs and research assistants are heading in different directions. Professors are signing petitions to get you back to work. Sure, they're making five times as much as you are for doing the same job, but they've got the benefit of condescension on their side. And they deserve to judge you; they've placed articles in The Journal of Eastern Produce, and Stubb's Review.

And the public hates you. Don't you have anyone with a sense of humour? Don't you have anyone with new clothes--a toqueless person who can speak without hitting on talking points. It's just pathetic to see a good cause fail so miserably. Why is it that the university looks so clean, and the union looks so dirty?

I love the cause, but the execution's terrible.