Toronto 18 Connection

Oh my. I wish I had known this this morning when I wrote my Fort Hood Shooter story.

This imam in Yemen, said to be a hero to Nidal Hasan (and who praised Hasan on the internet today as a great hero and model for Muslim American soldiers), was also a hero to the Toronto 18.

It is staggering the influence a charismatic religious authority can have over teenagers and early-twenty-somethings. John Paul 2 (good). Al-Awlaki (bad). More on this later.

seraphics branes are fryed

lol it is me the inner child reporting on the mental stayt of my outer adult seraphic her branes are fryed.

seraphic is a riter she shud be riting fun things spining fantasees for the deliktayshun of the masses insted she has been riting boaring prose for her noospayper for 2 days and befor that reeding other peeples books.

'it pays brat' sed seraphic 'go away i hav a hedake.'

her hedake is big becos she rote 1 colum that got terned down so she had to scrambel and rite 800 words about the fort hood shooter without hirting anyones feelings nise try. ackchooally it is an interesting colum but for shure she will get in trubble she sez. But she always sez that and she never dos.

wat my outer adult needs is a cuppa cofee and a nap but she has been so buzy she has not had a chans to bi any cofee how sad t is not the same. i will try to xert my inflooens and mayk her bi not just cofee but choklit.

there is a man at church he is funny he sed the hole poynt of marige is to get the other persons bank card number rofl but sadly altho seraphic knows benedikt ambroses bank card number she doesnt think it is a lisens to spend all bas money wy not. if it were me i wud be in harvy nicks 24/7 but seraphic sez that is a criminal thot harvy nicks is too xpensive 5000 pownds for a dress when children are starving it is a crime. can you not fantasiz insted abowt jenners ackchooally it is troo i like jenners beter

okay the superego has convinsed seraphic to put her clothes on and now she will tayk me to the cafay in tesco for a cofee i want to go to edinburrah but the superego is being a bich and sed 'no seraphic must buy groseries today.' i hate the sordid nesessitees of lyfe wy was i not borned the inner child of sarah jessica parker insted. this sucks. and so this is me the inner child singing off to say I HAYT TESCO WAITROSE IS FUNNER and BYE-EEEE!

Counselling Soldiers

I see the media is still hanging onto the "Shrink Snapped After Too Many Horrible Stories" explanation for U.S. Army Major Nadal Malik Hassan's murderous spree.

And all of a sudden I remember that the U.S. Army is full of military chaplains who have also heard many ghastly stories over the years. A good friend of one of my American great-grandmas was Father William Corby, who heard confessions on the battlefield of the U.S. Civil War.

So, people. Know of any military chaplains who suddenly went berserk from hearing terrible war stories and shot up a bunch of people? 'Cause, you know, I have never heard of secondhand PSTD before. Let me know in the comm box.

The Cold and Canadian Literature

Brrrr! I am shivering, freezing, trembling as I write. I have just finished writing 1186 words about approximately 150,000 pages of recent Canadian Literature and have only now discovered that the heater was not on. My feet are blocks of ice. It seems fitting, somehow, to slowly freeze while contemplating Can Lit.

This morning I looked out the window at the back lawn and fields and saw a thick layer of frost.

"Oh no," I wailed. "There's frost in the field!"

"That's nice," said my sleepy husband.

"No it isn't! If I don't seen frost or snow for the next 40 years I'll be delighted."

I hadn't realized just how much I've enjoyed Scotland's long springs and long autumns. This may be a country of rain (doubtful: it must be England that gets most of it) and damp, but it's not a land of ice and snow. The damp chill that greeted me in the hallway last night was so uncharacteristic of the Historical House that I started worrying about ghosts. Behind me, the sittingroom light went out suddenly and I screamed. But it was just Benedict Ambrose.

I have turned on the radiator, but I am still shaking, perhaps because I am excited that I managed to write my 1186 words in four hours and send them off to the Books Editor before he arrived in his office. Clever, clever me. I still have to write my biweekly column, though. I told the General Editor I could before deadline. Easy-peasy. No problem. Except my fingers are icicles. Aaargh!

Another reason to shake is out of fear that the Books Editor is going to take my little baby article and cut its arms and legs off. For some reason, my columns escape amputation unscathed, but my bigger book reviews are unluckier. And this drives me wild because I think carefully about everything I put in, aiming for a conversational style to interest readers, room enough for both plot summaries and critical reflection, and characteristic jokes so that my reviews will stand out from other reviews.

But now I have had a bowl of soup and time to wind down, so I am feeling less shivery. On with my biweekly column.

Sunday Social Solecisms

It is Sunday, so of course the event of the day was the Usus Antiquor Mass at the end of our hour-long bus journey. I idly thought about bringing our bulky missal, but as there are always helpful paper sheets to go with the slim missal with the superhero-priest cartoons, I left our missal at home. But today we had a Requiem Mass, to commemorate Remembrance Sunday, and there were no paper sheets. Sigh.

Also troubling to my Sunday peace was the absence of a White Mantilla. As an inveterate counter of mantillas, I have a pretty good idea of which Mantilla or Beret is who, and where it usually sits, and how likely it is to show up on Sunday. This White Mantilla is there every week, so its absence niggled at me. Where, o where, was this White Mantilla? We Black Mantillas have a soft spot for White Mantillas, especially when we do not have baby White Mantillas of our own. I decided to telephone the White Mantilla's wearer as soon as I could.

There were no warnings of immanent martyrdom in the announcements. Instead we had a good homily about the love of the Fallen for their country. And after Mass there was a nice procession to the memorial the parish Fallen. Unfortunately, I didn't quite catch that this shrine was by the doors. I thought it was somewhere outside, so I put on my boots and my overcoat and my bag and followed the Procession to the door where I suddenly discovered myself in the way. I crept back sneakily to my pew.

Mass being over (abl. abs.), I called up the White Mantilla's owner and left a message on her answering machine. I hoped she wasn't laid up with swine flu or foully murdered by a Mantilla-hating maniac. Then I had a cup of tea at the weekly Cup of Tea of Peace. There were lots of students today, although none, I believe, from St. Andrew's. I thought of asking some male students if they had seen the Missing White Mantilla, but I decided it would not want me bandying its wearer's name about.

Next there was the weekly Gin of Good Cheer, where I sat in a now very cold, draughty drawing room and listened, rapt, to good British male anecdotes, including one about a "smashing" car. When we were all chucked out, my husband and I had lunch in a friend's magnificent New Town flat and I discovered, to my horror, that my jumper was inside out.

My black cashmere jumper (which in Canada we would call a V-neck top) had been inside out since I carelessly pulled it on at 8:30 this morning. It had been inside out when I took off my red overcoat in the choir stall. It had been inside out when I went up for communion. Fortunately, its half-detached label hadn't been out for all the TLM community to see, for of course I was wearing my mantilla, which is black and comely and terrifically lacy and thick. At lunch, however, I was no longer wearing my mantilla, so I rushed off to the loo, squeaking with dismay.

Jihadist Single

Sunday Update: Oooh! The "graffiti" comment I made on another blog was quoted by Mark Steyn. Love him or hate him, you have to admit that he is an awesome writer, so I am flattered.

Later Sunday Update: Also quoted by the uber-bratty fellow former Catholic schoolgirl, Kathy Shaidle. Like Steyn, she is a master wordsmith who can draw blood with the flick of an adverb. And she is 100000000000000 times meaner than me.

Monday Update: Steyn on the latest. Courage, as every prolifer knows, sometimes includes saying things people don't want to, but need to, hear.

***
I made the mistake of checking the online news when I returned home from Bonfire Night. The story of the Fort Hood massacre was just breaking; the murderer had been named. To be frank, if his name had been reported as Pte. Robert Lee Smith, I would have gone straight to bed. Just another nutter. But his name was Major Nadal Malik Hasan, so I stayed up and waited for more news.

At the time various news outlets were turning somersaults in their efforts to assure everyone that this had not been a terrorist or a Muslim attack. People were unsure if Major Hasan had been (for the initial reports were that he had been killed) a Muslim and, if he had been a Muslim, if he had been a convert. Apparently, media people thought he "looked white" whereas it was quite obvious to multicultural me that he "looked Arab." He could have been a Maronite Christian, of course, but Maronite Christians don't really jump to mind when bullets are flying.

Early blog comments were divided among people who assumed the massacre was a Muslim thing, people who scolded those who assumed it was a Muslim thing and people who came up with narratives that made Nadal Malik Hasan the principal victim. People suggested secondhand Post-Traumatic Stress Syndrome, caught from the returning soldiers he, an army shrink, had counselled. His cousin claimed that Hasan had been made fun of by other soldiers for being Middle-Eastern and a Muslim.* And, inevitably, some brainy person observed that Hasan was a devoutly religious 39 year old with no wife and no children.

Aha. The argument ad singleton.

Single women over 30 often complain that Single men over 30 are weird, twisted, crazy. A married high school buddy consoled me with this thought when I was 30 and unmarried. She felt there was simply something WRONG with bachelors over 30. Women over 30, she said, were different. We're fine. It's the men. Bonkers.

But I disagree.

My very first boyfriend was from the Middle East, a refugee, and I remember going for a picnic with him and two of his friends. The friends knew I was Catholic because they had wanted to know if I put out, and Iqbal (not his real name) honestly admitted that I did not and explained why. I think the friends were all amazed since I was, you know, a Canadian girl, and it had not yet occured to them that not all Canadian girls put out.

This Catholicism of mine inspired Iqbal's friends to ask me about it, so I answered, using a clover to explain the Blessed Trinity. (Iqbal, unimpressed, ripped the Son and Holy Spirit from the clover, presented me with the one-leafed clover and said, "THIS is God.") But even more mysterious to Iqbal and his friends than the Blessed Trinity was the celibate priesthood.

"I don't believe it," said one Muslim flatly. "It is impossible for a man. Impossible."

Then, as now, I had many celibate male friends who weren't even priests, and I said so.

"Impossible," said Iqbal's friend. "Or they are gay."

Iqbal often complained that since I was not putting out, his friends were calling him gay. I rolled my eyes. Eventually Iqbal suggested that we get married. My first proposal! I broke up with him.

This idea that celibacy is impossible for men or that celibacy curdles the male brain is not limited to Middle Eastern refugees. When Psychotic Single shot all those women in his health club, the internet featured American men saying, in effect, "Poor guy. No sex for 20 years. What do you expect?"

I expect long-term celibate men to be as non-violent as any other celibate man. I expect them to be like celibate women, for that matter. Set in their ways. Perhaps a little too interested in their creature comforts. Perhaps a bit insular. Either untidy or fanatically clean. Their worst temptation? Self-pity, perhaps. Self-absorption. I do not expect them to get a gun and start shooting.

From all that I've read, I'm inclined to think Nadal Hasan had what Daniel Pipes calls "Sudden Jihad Syndrome." It is quite clear he identified as a Muslim, although he hid this when he first joined the military. And his brand of Islam was a dodgy one. He has been saying seditious things about America and America's war against jihadists for quite awhile. He is alleged to have blogged in defense of suicide bombings. He signed up with a Muslim matrimonial service, but was too picky about the Perfect Muslim Wife to find a match.

In the days before the massacre he walked around in Muslim religious dress, handed out copies of the Koran and gave away his possessions. This was a man who had thought things through in advance and was performing butt-covering acts of dawa and charity before he was "martyred." Amusingly (for me), he didn't quite manage the martyrdom part. He's still alive.

Why Hasam decided to betray his country and his fellow soldiers in a treasonous jihadi fit is still a mystery. I hope we find out if and when he gains consciousness. I doubt it had much to do with being Single and just wanting to collect the 72 virgin sex-slaves some believe are meted out by God to Muslim martyrs. If, however, that's how self-pity took him, I will be completely disgusted. The Single life can be a lonely one, the Single life can be a challenge, but the Single life is no reason or excuse for murderous violence.


Update: Poll: I have been mocked off and on my entire life (including on this Bonfire Night) for having unusual hair. How about you? Is there something about you that has inspired jokes from friends and insults from strangers? If so, please mention below and also tally the number of people you have killed in retaliation.

Backlash Watch: The BBC reports that the Arab-American Institute has had ONE threatening phone call. The population of the USA is over 360 million, so do the math. Why is it that when men claiming to be devout Muslims kill people in the USA or Britain, there is an immediate fear that the majority Christian population is going to slaughter the Muslims in its midst? I mean, has that ever happened? In the 9/11 and 7/7 attacks, the only Muslims around who were killed were killed by the Muslim attackers.

Update 3: Unbelievable. Muslim guy on Belief.Net suggests the American soldier of Jordanian-Palestinian descent carried out his massacre because it was Guy Fawkes Day. The stupidity of this will be more clear to British and European readers when I explain that there is no Guy Fawkes Day in the USA (or Jordan or Palestine or Canada or anywhere outside the UK). H/T Kathy Shaidle.

Other Kinds of Poverty

This morning I was awakened by the sound of BBC Radio. I wriggled closer to B.A., who was much warmer than the air outside the duvet, and listened as a woman's old-fashioned BBC voice accused an American woman's voice of "snobbery".

The issue was a prestigious book award, for which a glamour-model named Jordan aka Katie Price was once nominated. The American woman argued that Jordan hadn't actually penned the ghostwritten book, that this nomination was a slap in the faces of real writers, and that this fawning over celebrities would prevent real writers from being published. The money publishers made from celebrities' "books" would not trickle down to real writers but would go to million-pound advances to other pseudo-literary celebrities. A British male voice, belonging to someone in publishing, pooh-poohed her arguments. Novels by real writers account for a small percentage of overall sales. Et cetera. The word "snobbishness" was repeated in the "posh" old-style BBC accent.

Jordan, or Katie Price, belongs to a class of woman that does not exist in Canada. She is, or was, a glamour model, which means a woman who poses barebreasted for tabloid newspapers. Naked breasts are not a staple of Canadian (or, I think, American) newspapers. It is impossible for a woman to launch a lucrative career merely by straightening her hair, painting herself brown and exposing her breasts to the camera. Any would-be porn stars move to the USA. To put all this into perspective, Canada's most high-profile beauty seems to be the Governor-General, upon whom legions of male journalists seem to have a crush.

I don't yet quite understand the workings of Britain's celebrity factory, but it seems to be inextricably linked to visual media. The fastest way to become a U.K. celebrity is to appear on television, usually reality television. Then the celebrity is featured in the kind of semi-pornographic gossip magazines I find in barber shops and our local Chinese takeaway. Katie Price, with her balloon-sized artificial breasts, alleged sexual promiscuity and alleged poor parenting skills, is a staple feature of these rags.

Now, what I find most staggering about Katie Price is that she is a hero and role model not only to women across the UK, but to little girls. Not to all women, obviously. Not to all girls. At the risk of some BBC-voiced Englishwoman accusing me of snobbishness, I will hazard a guess that Katie Price is a hero and role model to neither university-educated women nor the granddaughters of earls.

There is more to poverty than not having bread on the table, than not having a roof over your head. For the most part, the United Kingdom has eliminated homelessness and starvation. Unless he or she is insane or is actually hiding from the welfare system, the poorest man or woman in the U.K. is not going to starve or freeze to death.

No-one in my part of Scotland goes without shoes or a coat. And yet a short walk from the Historical House (which, I hasten to point out, we do not own) leads to a world of poverty, a world of obscenties, screaming mothers, public drunkeness, complexions pasty with malnutrition, obesity, grafitti, shuttered shops--and yet rose gardens of great beauty. They are amazing, those little gardens. And if poor people do not have a bit of land where they live, they can sign up for an "allotment": a bit of public land set aside for people to tend.

Love of gardening and admiration for Katie Price. What a strange juxtaposition. But I find it very strange, this living cheek-by-jowl with council housing and teenagers who curse as they breathe. And I've worked for the Ontario Ministry of Social and Family Services: I've given out support cheques to crack addicts and prostitutes. I've worked alongside madwomen who scooped what they could from the food bank we all volunteered at. But I've never been around people who despise books, good grammar, clear speech, education, good architecture--in fact, most of the things I value--as "posh".

"I asked them, what do you mean by posh?" a British schoolteacher told me of his students. But they couldn't explain. Instead they said, "You're posh."

This hatred of "posh" is as weird and alien to me as the balloon-breasted glamour model Katie Price, as the idea that outrage that she should get a literary award for her ghostwriter's efforts is merely "snobbery".