2025 Redux

It's going on Christmas, and you know what that means

Time to take stock and look back at what took over our screens

Some highs, some cringes, there was much sturm und drang

Let's take but a moment to see all that went bang

Like him or hate him, it was all about Trump

There was hardly a genre that didn't get bumped

The list practically endless, the outcomes diverse

Some thought it tremendous, many others, the worst

Energy, taxes, gender and trade

Tariffs, diversity, crime, foreign aid

Troops in the streets, no woke in the arts

Economic whiplash, and that's just for a start

Beyond the disruption he has brought to our shores

In hot spots beyond he's affected the score

In Gaza some progress, but the fighting's not ceased

Despite playing all sides, Kyiv can't find any peace

Meanwhile Congress seems to just tilt and squawk

But when it came down to budget, the Dems they did balk  

A shutdown, the longest, and neither side budged

Then 6 weeks later the blue wall got smudged

A waste? Perhaps not. There seemed a new theme

With Mikie and Abby, the resistance gained steam

Still, as this hits the page there's a definite shift

Will the movement continue? Or will his numbers get lift?

Is Zohran a movement? Will the swing be to blue?

Is the tide turning leftward? So say quite a few

Predictions are tough, it's a fool's path to tread

It's forever till the midterms, we've a long year ahead

Meanwhile, elsewhere, (yes there is elsewhere indeed)

A new Pope took over, an American breed

Thieves hit the Louvre, fires swept through LA

Melissa flooded Jamacia, turned streets into bays

In seven games for the ages, the Dodgers slipped past the Jays

While in Bball the Thunder put the Pacers away

The Panthers netted the puck, the Eagles they flew

While in Las Vegas and roundball the Aces did too

The word of the year, well, two letters for sure

If you've played with AI then you know the allure

It's like there's a ghost that lives in the box

A savior or devil?  Neither side has a lock

On the big screen (yes, some still like to sit in the dark)

Lilo & Stitch hit it out of the park

The Impossible Mission came to an end

And Hunters of Demons sang to a KPop trend

Ozzy, Gene Hackman, Willie Mays, Jimmy Cliff

Brian Wilson, George Forman, Dick Cheney, Loretta Swit

Just some bold names that passed, they departed this fray

For me, the boldest of all, my mom slipped away

In spite of all that, there were high spots indeed

With family and friends, and helping others in need

We took trips, went to concerts, had dinners with pals

Saw sights, had adventures in different locales

It's simple but I'm happy, and yes, that's a trope

But it's true none the less, so I'll end with this hope

Add to laughter and good times, whatever your kicks

May you find peace, love and happiness, and a great ‘26

-END-

Marc Wollin of Bedford thanks all for spending some time in this space. His column appears weekly via email and online on Substack and Blogspot as well as Facebook, LinkedIn and X.

The Other Left

Ask someone if they are "left" or "right" and there will be no uncertainty. Sure, they might demure that they are open-minded, that they don't like being pigeonholed into one bucket, that they try to fairly evaluate the facts and use their best judgment when examining an issue. But, yes, if push comes to shove, they will allow that more or less / most of time / if you have to pick one, they are quite willing to come down solidly on one side or the other of the political spectrum. There will be no confusion.

But ask them to scroll left or right? That's another story

Good chance that more than a few will go the wrong direction. Ask someone to step to the right? Same thing. Offer directions that include "go left after the gas station?" Yup, even money that they will wind up in the wrong place. You rarely have that problem if you ask someone to "go upstairs" or "move to the front." Most head for the correct escalator or jump to the first in the row. But left/right? Not so much.

We're not talking about a physical state of affairs where there is some organic reason that a person gets confused. Such a condition does exist. A rare neurological disorder called Gerstmann Syndrome, it is caused by damage to a specific area of the brain, and often related to a stroke. The effects include difficulty writing, a lack of understanding of the rules of arithmetic, an inability to identify fingers and... wait for it... the inability to distinguish right from left.

Hopefully that's not your issue. Rather, what we're talking about is what some might call "directionally challenged." It turns out that there are many fellow (confused) travelers. About 9% of men and 17% percent of women stated that they frequently experienced left-right befuddlement in their daily lives, while some studies estimate the numbers to be as high as 30%.

There are two main reasons that we get confused. The first is that right and left shift depending on the perspective of the person. Are you giving the instruction or receiving it? If we're looking at each other, your right arm is on my left; turn around and your left is my left. On top of that, the concepts of "right" and "left" are arbitrary constructions. There are no physical laws defining one or the other. Contrast that with up and down. Hold a ball in the air, it's up. Release it and it goes down. That never changes, regardless of where you are standing, so there is no doubt which is which. But did it land to the left or right? Ahhh... there's the problem.

We see this confusion more since we spend so much time looking at screens, A person is showing you an app; they say "swipe left to accept." Are they standing in front of you or are they looking over your shoulder? And are we talking about moving the whole screen or the information on it one way or the other? Likewise, the GPS in your car. Do you have it set to match the way you are driving, or have it so that the map is oriented to true north, in which case the avatar might be going down not up. A "turn right" direction might mean the little car goes left. So you go which way?

It gets complicated even more if we are looking at selfies or on a Zoom call. Most cameras have an option called "mirror" when looking at your own image. If on, everything makes sense: your left hand is your left, your right is your right, and the part in your hair is correct. But any printed material is backwards: that tee shirt you got on vacation reads "!imaiM." Turn it off, and now all can see you were in Florida. But your left is now your right, your right is now your left, and your part popped across your head. Not a problem if you are follically challenged, though small consolation indeed.

In most cases the error is easily correctable. After all, how often have you had to say, "No, the other left" and adjust someone's movement? Unless they are standing next to a cliff, they will probably survive the tweaking. It's just one more on the list of things we thought we knew but mix we up. Socket/sprocket, concrete/cement, it's/its? Ummmm... it's definitely that one... or the other.

-END-

Marc Wollin of Bedford thanks his friend Joel for getting confused and pointing it out. His column appears weekly via email and online on Substack and Blogspot as well as Facebook, LinkedIn and X.

Title Titlist

It's been a tough year for Canada. President Trump made noises about making it the 51st state, and slapped high tariffs on imports from it of automotive, steel, aluminum, and wood products. Shifting focus from political to contests of another type, things went no better. The Florida Panthers defeated the Edmonton Oilers to win the Stanley Cup in six games, while the Toronto Blue Jays lost a heartbreaking seventh game to fall in the World Series to the Los Angeles Dodgers. Even nature kicked them in the teeth: it was the second worst wildfire season in Canadian history, with more than 6,000 wildfires in nearly every province and territory. And all Canadians are wrestling with what to make of the Justin Trudeau/Katy Perry relationship. The country badly needed a win.

Well, they got one. 

The venue was in the somewhat stuffy world of book publishing. Awarded annually since its inception at the 1978 Frankfurt Book Fair, the Bookseller/Diagram Prize is awarded to the Oddest Title of the Year. From the initial winner "Proceedings of the Second International Workshop on Nude Mice," it has recognized such standouts as 1986's "Oral Sadism and the Vegetarian Personality," 2004's "Bombproof Your Horse" and 2019's "The Dirt Hole and its Variations." 

Anyone who has ever tried to come with a catchy entry for the "Subject" line of an email can appreciate the challenge. Concocting a catchy nom de guerre which draws in readers regardless of content is indeed an art form, right up there with movie trailers and sale circulars. You need to hook the reader, and get them to care about the information contained regardless of how banal the subject. Excel in that arena, and this prize can be yours.

This year, in the tightest race since the voting changed from a judges' panel to a public plebiscite, Montreal's Concordia University Press captured the crown. Though it managed to corral just 23.7% of the vote, that was enough for "The Pornographic Delicatessen: Midcentury Montréal's Erotic Art, Media, and Spaces" to be named the winner, besting the runner-up by just one tenth of one percent. Still, a win is a win. As Ryan Van Huijstee, the Director and Acquisitions Editor for the publisher put it, "It's a salve after a bumpy 2025, accomplishing what the Blue Jays couldn't: bringing a celebratory honour (not a typo, that's Canadian spelling) back to this side of the border." It's also worth noting that this is the second time that Canada has taken home top honors, with McGill-Queen's University press being named the winner in 2020 for "A Dog Pissing at the Edge of a Path: Animal Metaphors in an Eastern Indonesian Society."

Mathew Purvis' book is about "how eroticism became intertwined with the city's art scene, thanks to a thriving red-light district, nightclub scene and pornography industry." Like a movie in limited release so that it can be nominated for an Oscar before it hits the metroplex, the book isn't even scheduled to hit the bookshelves until mid-December. Still, the pre pub buzz is strong, even if it is just from other Canadian literary professors. "An enthusiastic and fascinating approach to Quebec media and artistic phenomena," wrote Adrien Rannaud of the University of Toronto. "This volume is a weighty, interdisciplinary contribution to Quebec studies and North American art history, chimed in Thomas Waugh, Distinguished Professor Emeritus at Concordia. And... well... that's it. You take your praise where you can get it. 

Still, in terms of this particular competition, the scholarship contained inside is beside the point. The contest isn't about the content, it's about the cover. Even the non-academic among us can appreciate the click-bait the top contenders represent, joining ranks with some other equally well word-smithed tomes. The runner-up was "Whack Job: A History of Axe Murder." Right behind that was "Why the Hindenburg Had a Smoking Lounge: Essays in Unintended Consequences." Rounding out the top five were "Killing the Dead: Vampire Epidemics from Mesopotamia to the New World" and "Self-Recognition in Fish: Exploring the Mind in Animals."

While there is no award for the annual champion save fame, the nominator does receive "a passable bottle of claret." However, for the past two years the winners had been nominated in-house. As such, the decision was made to roll over those two bottles, and so West Yorkshire's Graeme Innes-Johnstone will take home a flight of adequate wine. Something to sip while he contemplates the final finalist, "Whiskerology: The Culture of Hair in Nineteenth-Century America." Congrats to all.

-END-

Marc Wollin of Bedford struggles with titles for these columns, as you can see. His column appears weekly via email and online on Substack and Blogspot as well as Facebook, LinkedIn and X.