My debt to Monty Python

Monty Python's comedy sketches are very much a part of my life. Decades ago, when I first began watching them, like so many others, I found them hilarious. However, even though so much time has passed, I continue to draw on their insights in every day life. It has been a long time since I sat down and watched anything by this group, and yet I think about their sketches all the time. While their art was at first an attempt to find humour in life, it seems now for me that much of life tends to imitate the art of Monty Python. It seems that on some days there will be several times that something reminds me of a Monty Python sketch.

I even rely on Monty Python to lighten up my classes from time to time. For example, one aspect of Cultural Anthropology is 'economics', wherein we examine three broad types of exchange, including reciprocity, redistribution, and markets. To show students how price-fixing often works in a face-to-face market system, I show them the following sketch from The Life of Brian. In this sketch, Brian finds himself in a Jerusalem market while trying desperately to escape some pursuing Roman soldiers. Brian stops by a stall to buy a fake moustache and beard, and even though he is desperate, the merchant will not sell anything to Brian until he 'haggles' for it first.



When we cover 'spatial orientations' in Psychological Anthropology, we consider how it is that various cultures perceive individuals in space. Hopi will perceive themselves as a cog in the natural environment, while we in the west see ourselves as individuals in houses, municipalities, states, nation states, continents, planet earth, our solar system, our galaxy, and on and on. To illustrate this really well, Eric Idle sings us the 'Universe Song'.



As discussed in a previous post, in Liberal Studies we cover the Malleus Malificarum, a dark 15th C work that instructs authorities how to find, try in court, and execute witches. In the 'Witch' sketch in The Holy Grail, Monty Python sums up beautifully the absence of logic, the fear, and downright ignorance of people living at a very dark time in western civilization. The logic in this sketch actually has a name: it is called the 'fallacy of the consequent'. In other words, 'A' is 'B', 'B' is like 'C'. Therefore 'A' is 'C'. A witch burns and so does wood, so a witch is made of wood. Wood floats and so does a duck, so wood is like a duck. And so, "If she weighs the same as a duck, she is made of wood, and therefore, a witch!" This logic is not too far off that prescribed by the real life Malleus to find witches.



We also cover the culture of the 'Yanomamo' people of the Brazilian rainforest. Politically, these people arrange themselves in villages that are in constant competetion with other villages. Villages must strike alliances with other villages close to them, or eventually they will come to blows. Often, a smaller village will attempt to strike an alliance with a larger village. When this happens, the smaller village plays down the importance of the alliance, as well as the fact that it needs the alliance more than the larger village. The smaller village will constantly deny its weaknesses while putting up a brave front, continually calling into question the strength of the stronger village. To illustrate this point, we sometimes watch 'The Black Knight' scene from 'The Holy Grail'.



Many, many thanks, Eric Idle, John Cleese, Michael Palin, Terry Gilliam, Terry Jones, and the late Graham Chapman.

Three German Words

Sometimes I listen to Denise talking with her relatives in German, and convince myself that I am able to understand some of what is going on. I don't really. Sadly, my comprehension of the language comes down to just a few words. Having said that, I really like some of those words a lot.

Perhaps my favourite is schadenfreude, which refers to the pleasure we derive from the misfortunes of others. There really is no English word for this, and yet, I for one indulge in it every day, and am pleased that there is a word for it, even if it is in a different language.  For example, I was really happy when the Calgary Flames did not make the play-offs, because I have seen them beat the Canucks in the seventh game of a play-off series a few too many times.  Were the Flames organization to undergo a massive scandal, with much heart-ache for management, players, and fans, I might be even happier.  I was also pleased that Real Madrid fell out of the Champions League, because this year they picked up Christiano Ronaldo, who has to be the most despicable athlete in the world today.  Ahh, schadenfreude.

Another is doppelganger, which is a ghostly double of a living person that haunts its living counterpart.   Seeing one's own doppelganger is construed by some to be an omen of death.  Others use this word to desribe a feeling one has when one has glimpsed one's own image in peripheral vision, even though there is simply no way it could have been a reflection.  Again, there is no English equivalent.

My third favourite German word is zeitgeist.  Someone has defined zeitgeist for Wikipedia as 'the general cultural, intellectual, ethical, spiritual, and/or political climate within a nation or even specific groups, along with the general ambience, morals, and sociocultural direction or mood of an era'.  During the Neville Chamberlain era of Britain, the zeitgeist may have been to appease the upstart dictators so as to lessen the chances of conflict.  During the George W. Bush era, the zeitgeist in America may have been that the world is full of enemies, requiring Americans to root them out, capture, imprison, and kill them.  Again, we lack an English equivalent to describe such a cool concept.

Two Close calls with Agony Bags

I have had two traumatic experiences with bag pipes in my life.

The first was while I was studying in Newcastle in North-east England, and some friends and I decided to spend a weekend at the Rothbury Folk Festival in the northern part of the County of Northumberland. I like their folk festivals. There were twelve pubs in the town, and each one was a venue for live music throughout the weekend. On Saturday evening, we all gathered for a ceilidh in the church hall, and then retired to our tent camp for the evening. On Sunday morning about 10:00 AM, we found ourselves with a pint in front of us, again in one of the local pubs, when we heard the strains of a pipe band passing in front of the pub. Like so many rats of Hamel, we filed out of the pub and followed the pipe band as it made its way to the village green. Once there, and as one, the band stopped, turned, and started marching towards us. Although its pace was not quick, still, we had to find a way to get out its way, and decided to file along the side of the buildings to the other end of the green. Now safely behind the band once again, we all listened until the band abruptly stopped, turned, and started to march towards us again. At that point we ducked into the nearest pub and ordered a pint.

Over twenty years later, I still wake sometimes in the night, covered in nervous sweat, having once again been pursued in my dreams by a slow but relentless pipe band playing 'Amazing Grace' or some such thing. I escape with my life, only to be pursued again, and again...













The second time was in the Roman city of Gerash in Jordan. Gerash was part of a system of ten Roman cities (the Decapolis) that spanned the eastern frontier of the Roman empire in the eastern part of the Mediterranean. All of these cities competed with each other, and because of this, Gerash had a hippodrome (race track), theatre, odeon (music hall), and wonderfully paved streets and a religious temple area. Gerash is somewhat unique in that it does not have a modern city built on top of it. One can roam the ancient Roman streets without all sorts of other historical distractions.

Kira and I decided to sit for a while in the theatre, and climbed the many steep steps to the top seats. And then it was there again... the tortured strains of a bagpipe. We made our way down the steps to get a closer look, just as two Bedouin soldiers marched in. They were wearing their full-length gelavias, with stripes on their arms and epaulets on their shoulders, and full head-dresses. One was carrying bag-pipes, and the other a bass drum. They took their place in the middle of the stage, and began playing Beethoven's Ode to Joy. They ended their song riffing on an Arabic ditty.

It was at that point that I nearly collapsed under the weight of such cultural disparities. This was a Roman theatre in an Islamic country. The musicians were Bedouin in the oddest looking military uniforms. They were playing bag pipes and a bass drum. They were playing Beethoven in a ruin. Yikes.

Have a listen to the video below. The screen below is blank, but if you look you will see a 'play' button.


To this day I wince at the strains of the accursed Agony Bags.

Bull Fights and Pult

A bull fight in Puerta Vallarta (courtesy, John Belshaw)

On our run last Friday, my colleague and friend John Belshaw had lots to say about his recent holiday with his wife Diane to the Mexican west coast resort of Puerta Vallarta. Westjet, a Canadian airline company, has been making runs from Canadian cities to Puerta Vallarta directly for a few years now, and John said that the local entrepreneurs have adjusted to the change in tourist demography in dramatic ways.  Instead of vendors hawking blankets on the beach, they now sell ponchos with 'Saskatchewan Rough Riders' stitched onto the back, or 'Vancouver Canucks', or 'Calgary Flames'.  Pubs sell Molson Canadian beer, and Labatt's Blue. 

John and Diane also went to a bull fight.  Happily, the bull had been drugged to reduce the chances of yet another Picador getting gored.  The stands were filled with both locals and tourists.  John and I discussed that this was kind of odd, because in the mother country of Spain, bull rings have been replaced almost completely by soccer stadia.  Cesc Fabregas and other Spanish soccer stars are the new Matadors and Picadors.  In Puerta Vallarta, the locals are hanging onto something Spanish, perhaps because they want to maintain such cultural links to the 'home' country, or perhaps because they are accommodating tourists' stereo-types of things Mexican.  If I close my eyes, I can picture row upon row of tourists with really big sombreros and ponchos with 'Saskatchewan Roughriders' sewn on their backs, cheering while drinking far too many Molson's Canadian beer.  Later on that day one of them just might go back to that hotel gift shop and buy the really special onyx chess set, the one with stone work on the back in the shape of a maple leaf.

The accursed pult

And this all reminded me of 'pult'.  Pult is a Swedish dish that my mom made when we were kids in a bid to celebrate the Swedish heritage of my father's side (see previous post).  As I remember it, pult was kind of like a dumpling, and like so many things Swedish and Christmas-sy, almost devoid of any taste or texture.  Another winner was Luttfisk:  herring cured in lye so that the tissues are broken down to the atomic level (an un-Swedish uncle once described it as 'boiled snot').  Imagine a plate full of tasteless dumplings and Luttfisk: Christmas dinner at our house was special. 

Luttfisk (on the right) is another Swedish culinary delight

I was on an archaeological expedition in Jordan three times with Lisa Soderbaum, a Swede with a great sense of humour.  One day I told her about pult, and how we ate it every Christmas when I was a kid. She informed me that her grandmother had eaten pult when she was a child, but that no-one in Sweden had eaten the stuff in probably three generations.  Like so many else, immigrants to a new country will hold onto cultural things and freeze them in time, while the mother country's culture continues to change, embracing new things, discarding other things. (I think there is a word for this: if you know it, please let me know in a comment to this post).

Perhaps in the same way that some Mexicans continue to slaughter bulls for fun, long after the mother country has found a little white ball far more interesting, we continued to eat pult generations after real Swedes had said goodbye to all that.

Pave paradise, put up a parking lot

A Walmart somewhere in the world

At the bottom of the hill near our house Walmart is building a store, and although the Grand Opening date has not yet been posted, it looks as though it will be ready soon. Hundreds of empty pallets littering the parking lot suggest merchandise is being placed on shelves.

About two years ago the city erupted in a display of defiance and civil disobedience when Wal-mart had made public its intentions to purchase estuary lands. City Council voted 3 versus 2 against the selling of the lands.

Undaunted, Walmart signed a deal with one of the local First Nations Reserves to build on several hectares of estuary on First Nations land.  Perhaps as a token of its victory, Walmart decided to build a 'mega' store instead of one of its regular, run of the mill behemoths.

Part of our Campbell River estuary lands

I don't like Walmart for many of the reasons other people don't. They pay their employees very little money, the profits leave the country, the merchandise is all made in China, they put the 'Ma and Pop's' out of business, they seem to have an ultra-conservative agenda, and of course, they could care less about the ecosystem of a marshland estuary.

Those estuary lands were home to bird species that would winter along the Amazon, and summer only in our Campbell River estuary. Some plant species grew only there. Fish spawned, frogs hopped, and sea otters frolicked. Bald eagles still sit atop their tree, but now look over a parking lot full of pallets.

There is more to it than this. Walmart is emblematic of a complete rejection of art.  The new building at the bottom of our street is a box surrounded by pavement. If one were set the task of designing a building devoid of esthetics, one would be hard pressed to best a Walmart mega store. It is as if someone took the basic design and wrung it like a wet rag to squeeze out all of the art.

Walmart is only one of many corporations that make such horrible box stores.  Some of them (Costco) even require a membership for the right to shop at their horribly ugly stores.  Why do they build such ugly buildings?

Another bloody Costco

We as consumers are conditioned to seek out and buy only those items 'On Sale'.  We are attracted to big box stores because we suspect that there will be more cheap things in them than at the smaller, family run businesses.  Further, we suspect that if the corporations have put zero money and effort into architecture and esthetics, somehow merchandise will be even cheaper. In essence, we as consumers have traded away art for cheaper stuff. This period may well earn us the dubious distinction of having the ugliest commercial buildings in the history of our culture. 

Gaudi architecture in Barcelona: what it could be like

Our mega Walmart has replaced something special with something lacking a soul. In a word, our Walmart is profane.

Talkin' 'Bout My (Grandfather's) Generation

My paternal grandfather, Magnus Anderson, was born in Sweden in 1891. His parents conformed to a long tradition of constructing their son's surname by adding the word 'son' to the father's first name (his father's name was Anders Munson). My grandfather apprenticed, became a carpenter and emigrated in 1911 to Canada when he was 20 years old.  The next year, in 1912, his mother, father, brother, and two sisters followed him from Sweden.  Originally, the plan was to leave Sweden for England, and then cross the Atlantic on the Titanic's maiden voyage.  However, as fate would have it, a storm in Sweden delayed the crossing to England, and so they booked passage on a different ocean liner. Eventually the family settled in Winnipeg. When WWI broke out, my grandfather still did not know much English, and in 1917 was conscripted as an orderly in the Tuxedo Military Hospital in Winnipeg.  He later married my paternal grandmother, another Swedish immigrant, and raised a family of four children. The children were raised as 'Canadians', which meant that only English was spoken at home, and only some 'trappings' of Swedish culture were preserved, such as the special food and decorations at Christmas. Keeping employed through the interwar years as a carpenter, in 1931 (the year my father was born), he was hired at Christie's Biscuits as an engineer to re-organize and maintain the machines on the factory floor. He was 48 when WWII began, and joined the Reserve Army in Winnipeg.  He outlived my grandmother, and in the late 1960's had a stroke, thereafter living out his life in a Nursing Home. He died in bed in 1973, at the ripe old age of 82.

His generation saw continual and rapid change in every facet of life. Perhaps most obvious were the terrific advances in transportation technology. He would have read about the first flight at Kitty Hawk in 1903. He'll have seen the cars produced by Ford in Canada for the first time in 1904. Sometime later he bought a second-hand Durant (he never bought a new car in his life), and built rather than bought the box that people used as trunks on those early cars. WWI saw huge advances in transportation technology, including planes, trains, and automobiles of every sort. WWII saw further advances in such transportation, and added submarine technology. In the post WWII period, cars became affordable to most people, and successive politicians covered Canada with an ever more elaborate web of highways. Before he died in 1973, my grandfather watched on television as Neil Armstrong stepped onto the moon. In his lifetime, he saw an advance from hot air balloons to landing on the moon, from dreadnoughts to nuclear submarines able to circle the globe without ever coming up for air, and from horse and buggies to a country full of cars.

At the same time, he was around for the first radio transmissions, and belonged to a world in which families eventually gathered around the 'wireless' to listen to the news and entertainment on a nightly basis. He also witnessed the change from families listening to radios to families watching televisions. He will have communicated by telegraph, a technology virtually replaced in his lifetime by telephones, and would live to see a telephone in every house. He was around for the first transistor which changed forever the world of electronics, and the first small computers required by the space race. He would have first played records made of glass, and later of vinyl, and would have seen the first 8-track tape recorders. His generation saw the invention of sulfa drugs and eventually broad spectrum antibiotics to kill all sorts of deadly bugs, and the first successful organ transplants. Such advances increased life expectancy in his society by a decade.

His generation witnessed dramatic changes in society. He saw universal suffrage in 1928 that allowed women the vote, and a steady advancement of womens' status in Canadian society throughout his life. Eventually, barriers began to fall that had preserved for men only certain types of work. By his death, his doctor may well have been female. He would have seen a dramatic change in how people of European descent in North America perceived people of different ethnicities. He witnessed US civil rights legislation that granted people of colour the same rights as white people.

His generation saw two world wars of staggering death tolls and horrific atrocities. WWI ended with a crappy international agreement that in many ways set the stage for WWII, which itself had the normal nation state rivalries at its heart, but the added dimension of racism and the atrocities committed in its name.

Things are changing so quickly today that I can barely keep up with some of them. I still don't really understand why people like Facebook so much, let alone Twitter, and I am typing away on a laptop with Windows XP as an operating system. 

However, can there ever have been a time that saw so much change in so short a time as my grandfather's generation?

My Beef with Harley Davidsons

Our subdivision was built by the same guy who owns an adjacent golf course, and so all the streets are named things like 'Fairway' and 'Sandtrap'. A lot of retirees from across Canada have chosen our subdivision to live in, and yet, confusingly, there is an elementary school smack in its middle. I like the subdivision because all of the utilities are buried under ground, and people make concerted efforts to grow colourful and interesting looking vegetation.

What I don't like about our subdivision is the fact that about three or four guys own and drive Harley Davidsons.

I don't have anything against motorcycles in general. I certainly think they are dangerous (one sits on a catapult), but we live in a reasonably free society, and if people want to risk their lives unnecessarily, it is up to them. Some motorcycles have good mufflers and are as quiet as cars: I have no problem with Kawasakis, Yamahas, Hondas and BMW's.

However, Harleys are different. They seem to be designed to create more rather than less sound. Those in my neighbourhood may even have been re-tooled so that they are even louder than they were directly from the factory. When these people drive through our quiet subdivision streets, they often engage the clutch and rev their engines to emit as much noise as possible. Sometimes it seems as if they are torturing some wild animal. The sound will drown out music on our home stereo, and completely disrupt conversation. A friend of mine, who has since moved, told me that their baby would cry every time the Harleys would go past. Why do people feel that they have to be so loud?

It might be a strange and wayward side effect of testosterone, as I don't know any women who are compelled to be so loud in public. Perhaps being so publicly obnoxious is a strategy for attracting a mate. Human nature is a tricky thing, and it is entirely possible that men drive Harleys and make horrendous sounds in public for the same reason peacocks plume their tail feathers when a female approaches.
















Then again, men who drive Harleys might be banking less on the appeal of loud engine noises than the persona they perceive is evoked by such behaviour. Perhaps they see themselves as James Dean or Marlon Brando-like 'rebels without a cause'. They might think women find such behaviour irresistably sexy.

However, what if it has nothing to do with sex, but is rather a display of aggression against society? Are these Harley drivers like the guys in bell towers with high-powered rifles picking off innocent people, or those guys who introduce viruses onto the Internet?

Whether such behaviour is a mating ritual or an egregious act of aggression against society, the Harley drivers in my neighbourhood are a pain in the ass.