…increasingly, you identify with Sid from User Friendly.
15/09: Violence and crime
It’s been an uneasy week. Road crews, nearby, pounding away with the hammers all through the day, wearing on the nerves, punctuating several days of rain, wind, violence, crime.
On the weekend, my lovely wife mentions this odd character on Bank Street—the nice little corridor of coffee shops, hardware stores, pharmacies, grocery stores a few blocks over, where we principally supply our lives. He’s working the crowds on the sidewalk, apparently semi-randomly, tries to hand her a card in the street, says he’s a hairdresser. “I do great hair,” he says.
She refuses, a little put out. His timing is terrible: she’s literally just stepped out of her regular hairdresser’s place, from her regular appointment; it’s not like she needs him. And it’s a bit off-putting. Even faintly insulting.
And then he crosses her path, somehow, three more times on the same street, both sides, over the next several minutes. She’s a little wary, says, only half laughing, “It was like he was stalking me.”
It’s just odd enough that she bothers to mention it to me, her description just odd enough I remember, and I see him myself later the same day—just as I’m stepping out of Nicastro’s—the truly great place at Bank and Third where you can get ten year old cheddars, and absolutely the best sliced roast beef I’ve yet encountered. It’s the same pitch: “Need your hair done? I do great hair.” Guy with a business card or leaflet or something, arm extended toward a woman waiting on the corner, at the lights.
I don’t really look at him. Not that curious. I’m a typical guy that way; my own hair care needs aren’t what you’d call elaborate; I try to remember to get it cut every month or two, tend to keep it short, low maintenance, all’s good. So I don’t tend to pay much attention to hairdressers, as a rule.
But even passing, I kind of get why my wife had mentioned him. There’s something about him, beyond the rather odd method of selling that particular service. He stands out, just a bit. He’s giving something off, there’s something in the air around him, something I really don’t like. Glance, walk past, file it away, for then.
Wednesday, of course, the news is all Montréal, all the time. In the early reports, it’s as confused as it always is, no one knows quite how many are dead, how many are shooting. Rumours and first-on-the-scene coverage will go up to three shooters, four dead, before dropping back down to one and one, and two with life-threatening injuries—head wounds, we hear later.
It really does bring it all back, like it did, apparently, for just about everyone in the country. Shooter on the rampage, at a school in Montréal. Suddenly it’s December 6, 1989 again. I’m at Parliament Hill, on one of the first stories I’ve ever covered, night fallen hard and early, it’s so close to the solstice, and it’s pretty late, now, the first shots fired at 5 pm. I’ve just begun at the student paper, heard it on the news, called my editor, told her what I’d heard, where I was going to be, got up here from campus on foot.
It’s half protest, half vigil, ad hoc, impromptu, already begun, only hours after Lépine fired his first shot. The first such event I’ve covered, not quite the first I’ve been in. But it’s got none of that occasionally incongruously celebratory quality you sometimes see at peace marches. It’s appropriately grim, angry—yelling bands of women with hastily penned signs in small groups shouting ‘Stop the misogyny, stop the violence!”. Something eerie, ghostlike, spectral about the scene—angry, grieving faces lit too harshly, lit only by flickering candles, by the too-white lights of the camera crews threading their way through the throngs of protesters, onlookers. I’m so green, still relatively apolitical. I don’t quite know how to spell ‘misogyny’. But not so green that I ask anyone who looks too upset. Figure I can always look it up later.
Back in 2006, my lovely wife is listening to the news, notices one of those details I tend not to: she’s more the places and dates person. Me, not so much.
“We were right there,” she says. “A few weeks ago. When we bought the sweaters.”
She’s right. There’s a mall close by the college where Anastasia DeSousa was killed this Wednesday, a Souris Mini inside. When we’d come into the city from Oka, we’d augmented our kids’ clothes a bit, prior to hunting for restaurants—had just discovered how rapidly things get dirty on a camping trip, with little ones about. Must have walked right by the college.
It’s odd, doesn’t bug me much, somehow, even realizing that. I read a lot of news. It’s a bit closer to home, it’s true, but somehow, still, it’s nothing I don’t already know. It happens. Ugly world, sometimes. I know I’d grieve, and grieve in pain like anyone if I knew someone involved closely enough, but I don’t. Or maybe I do grieve—a little, but only a very little—a few seconds thought: someone’s daughter is dead, and now they must bury her; that bruise isn’t going to heal, not entirely, not ever. Is that vicarious, is that voyeuristic, or is that just human? Can’t say I can call that. Know I’m not going to try.
My cello instructor’s dwelling on it, too, though—like everyone else. “Sometimes, I just don’t recognize this country anymore,” she says. But still, I do. There’s still 1989 at l’Ecole Polytechnique, and Taber. Not to mention Oka, Ipperwash, the Somalia affair, drive-bys at the local deli. Hardly exactly a new thing. I guess it depends on how far back you’re thinking, what you count. And against the larger tapestry of the world, it almost seems petty, self-interested to get too wrapped up in it. I say nothing, let her vent a little, before we get to technique. Later, I’ll keep an ear on the radio, and otherwise, move on.
Today, the other shoe drops, and there’s a hairdresser in the news. The story making the rounds and on the local news is the guy roaming Bank Street with the cards may have been and may still be one Jonathan Bell—onetime televangelist, convicted of three counts of child molestation, and occasional target of richly deserved derision on God Stuff and the Daily Show. Seems he’s served his time, he’s out, and he’d been briefly working as a hairdresser somewhere nearby in a salon, before he was spotted. What he’s doing on the street with the cards isn’t clear—mebbe a bit bitter that he’s been let go, figuring it’s only fair to freelance on his former employer’s turf.
I dunno, but I’m more than a bit creeped out. Also find myself contemplating my own reaction. I’ve always been a bit leery of the whole lynch mob mentality around people who do crimes like this. Ask me a few weeks ago about paedophiles who’ve served their time, and I probably woulda said something like: it’s ugly, yes, it’s terrible, yes, what they do to children is awful, yes, I know perfectly well the recidivism rates for said crimes are truly terrifying—so much so that yes, some of the people who know the phenomena say there’s a lot of offenders who are virtually untreatable, outside such truly extreme measures as chemical castration… But damn, I guess, they gotta live somewhere.
Ask me now. I’m more thinkin’: find his house. Post a sign. Post a watch. I’ve got kids, dammit.
Well, in my defense, let’s remember he’s not just a convicted child molester. He’s a convicted child molester and a whackjob televangelist. Two things I can’t say I much like (And damn, there has to be an essay, here, somewhere in the curious frequency with which the uber-religious types get nailed for that particular sort of utter rottenness). Cut me some slack here.
And he’s strolling my neighbourhood.
And my lovely wife’s first reaction to the guy was: “It’s like he was stalking me.”
Great. Hand me that torch. I’m off the join the mob.
Like I said. Uneasy week.
On the weekend, my lovely wife mentions this odd character on Bank Street—the nice little corridor of coffee shops, hardware stores, pharmacies, grocery stores a few blocks over, where we principally supply our lives. He’s working the crowds on the sidewalk, apparently semi-randomly, tries to hand her a card in the street, says he’s a hairdresser. “I do great hair,” he says.
She refuses, a little put out. His timing is terrible: she’s literally just stepped out of her regular hairdresser’s place, from her regular appointment; it’s not like she needs him. And it’s a bit off-putting. Even faintly insulting.
And then he crosses her path, somehow, three more times on the same street, both sides, over the next several minutes. She’s a little wary, says, only half laughing, “It was like he was stalking me.”
It’s just odd enough that she bothers to mention it to me, her description just odd enough I remember, and I see him myself later the same day—just as I’m stepping out of Nicastro’s—the truly great place at Bank and Third where you can get ten year old cheddars, and absolutely the best sliced roast beef I’ve yet encountered. It’s the same pitch: “Need your hair done? I do great hair.” Guy with a business card or leaflet or something, arm extended toward a woman waiting on the corner, at the lights.
I don’t really look at him. Not that curious. I’m a typical guy that way; my own hair care needs aren’t what you’d call elaborate; I try to remember to get it cut every month or two, tend to keep it short, low maintenance, all’s good. So I don’t tend to pay much attention to hairdressers, as a rule.
But even passing, I kind of get why my wife had mentioned him. There’s something about him, beyond the rather odd method of selling that particular service. He stands out, just a bit. He’s giving something off, there’s something in the air around him, something I really don’t like. Glance, walk past, file it away, for then.
Wednesday, of course, the news is all Montréal, all the time. In the early reports, it’s as confused as it always is, no one knows quite how many are dead, how many are shooting. Rumours and first-on-the-scene coverage will go up to three shooters, four dead, before dropping back down to one and one, and two with life-threatening injuries—head wounds, we hear later.
It really does bring it all back, like it did, apparently, for just about everyone in the country. Shooter on the rampage, at a school in Montréal. Suddenly it’s December 6, 1989 again. I’m at Parliament Hill, on one of the first stories I’ve ever covered, night fallen hard and early, it’s so close to the solstice, and it’s pretty late, now, the first shots fired at 5 pm. I’ve just begun at the student paper, heard it on the news, called my editor, told her what I’d heard, where I was going to be, got up here from campus on foot.
It’s half protest, half vigil, ad hoc, impromptu, already begun, only hours after Lépine fired his first shot. The first such event I’ve covered, not quite the first I’ve been in. But it’s got none of that occasionally incongruously celebratory quality you sometimes see at peace marches. It’s appropriately grim, angry—yelling bands of women with hastily penned signs in small groups shouting ‘Stop the misogyny, stop the violence!”. Something eerie, ghostlike, spectral about the scene—angry, grieving faces lit too harshly, lit only by flickering candles, by the too-white lights of the camera crews threading their way through the throngs of protesters, onlookers. I’m so green, still relatively apolitical. I don’t quite know how to spell ‘misogyny’. But not so green that I ask anyone who looks too upset. Figure I can always look it up later.
Back in 2006, my lovely wife is listening to the news, notices one of those details I tend not to: she’s more the places and dates person. Me, not so much.
“We were right there,” she says. “A few weeks ago. When we bought the sweaters.”
She’s right. There’s a mall close by the college where Anastasia DeSousa was killed this Wednesday, a Souris Mini inside. When we’d come into the city from Oka, we’d augmented our kids’ clothes a bit, prior to hunting for restaurants—had just discovered how rapidly things get dirty on a camping trip, with little ones about. Must have walked right by the college.
It’s odd, doesn’t bug me much, somehow, even realizing that. I read a lot of news. It’s a bit closer to home, it’s true, but somehow, still, it’s nothing I don’t already know. It happens. Ugly world, sometimes. I know I’d grieve, and grieve in pain like anyone if I knew someone involved closely enough, but I don’t. Or maybe I do grieve—a little, but only a very little—a few seconds thought: someone’s daughter is dead, and now they must bury her; that bruise isn’t going to heal, not entirely, not ever. Is that vicarious, is that voyeuristic, or is that just human? Can’t say I can call that. Know I’m not going to try.
My cello instructor’s dwelling on it, too, though—like everyone else. “Sometimes, I just don’t recognize this country anymore,” she says. But still, I do. There’s still 1989 at l’Ecole Polytechnique, and Taber. Not to mention Oka, Ipperwash, the Somalia affair, drive-bys at the local deli. Hardly exactly a new thing. I guess it depends on how far back you’re thinking, what you count. And against the larger tapestry of the world, it almost seems petty, self-interested to get too wrapped up in it. I say nothing, let her vent a little, before we get to technique. Later, I’ll keep an ear on the radio, and otherwise, move on.
Today, the other shoe drops, and there’s a hairdresser in the news. The story making the rounds and on the local news is the guy roaming Bank Street with the cards may have been and may still be one Jonathan Bell—onetime televangelist, convicted of three counts of child molestation, and occasional target of richly deserved derision on God Stuff and the Daily Show. Seems he’s served his time, he’s out, and he’d been briefly working as a hairdresser somewhere nearby in a salon, before he was spotted. What he’s doing on the street with the cards isn’t clear—mebbe a bit bitter that he’s been let go, figuring it’s only fair to freelance on his former employer’s turf.
I dunno, but I’m more than a bit creeped out. Also find myself contemplating my own reaction. I’ve always been a bit leery of the whole lynch mob mentality around people who do crimes like this. Ask me a few weeks ago about paedophiles who’ve served their time, and I probably woulda said something like: it’s ugly, yes, it’s terrible, yes, what they do to children is awful, yes, I know perfectly well the recidivism rates for said crimes are truly terrifying—so much so that yes, some of the people who know the phenomena say there’s a lot of offenders who are virtually untreatable, outside such truly extreme measures as chemical castration… But damn, I guess, they gotta live somewhere.
Ask me now. I’m more thinkin’: find his house. Post a sign. Post a watch. I’ve got kids, dammit.
Well, in my defense, let’s remember he’s not just a convicted child molester. He’s a convicted child molester and a whackjob televangelist. Two things I can’t say I much like (And damn, there has to be an essay, here, somewhere in the curious frequency with which the uber-religious types get nailed for that particular sort of utter rottenness). Cut me some slack here.
And he’s strolling my neighbourhood.
And my lovely wife’s first reaction to the guy was: “It’s like he was stalking me.”
Great. Hand me that torch. I’m off the join the mob.
Like I said. Uneasy week.
08/09: Yes, I'm obsessed
Three and a half months ta go.
(The ‘buy your season’s pass now’ email just went by. Thus the anticipation. As you were.)
(The ‘buy your season’s pass now’ email just went by. Thus the anticipation. As you were.)
08/09: Da bombe
A former colleague sent me a link to this. We’re talking very, very cool. A bunch of (very) dedicated enthusiasts have rebuilt a Turing bombe.
That, in case you’re wondering, is the beast that broke Enigma—the German WWII cipher. More details after the link. But for perspective, yeah, that could easily be one of the most (if not the most) significant cryptanalytic achievements of the 20th century. Cracking Enigma was both an incredible technical achievement, and of enormous significance to the Allied war effort.
Most awesome. Somebody post the plans, please. I want one in my living room.
(See also Wikipedia’s bit, which has a passable explanation of how the thing actually worked.)
That, in case you’re wondering, is the beast that broke Enigma—the German WWII cipher. More details after the link. But for perspective, yeah, that could easily be one of the most (if not the most) significant cryptanalytic achievements of the 20th century. Cracking Enigma was both an incredible technical achievement, and of enormous significance to the Allied war effort.
Most awesome. Somebody post the plans, please. I want one in my living room.
(See also Wikipedia’s bit, which has a passable explanation of how the thing actually worked.)
