The day of reckoning...yawn...approaches

I had hoped I wouldn't be doing this, but I just can't help myself. The truth must be spoken, and it must be spoken quickly, before we all die...of boredom.

It's been a hard task -- incredible really -- who would have thought it possible? -- but the Islamist hordes have managed to pull it off. Against all odds, these sweetly demented men of bile have somehow contrived to make terrorism boring. Tedious even.

Their madness, mayhem, death and screaming-meenie hatred has become about as electrifying as leftover mashed potatoes. Stunningly predictable. Eye-glazingly trite. Devoid of any entertainment value. So derivative and petty it makes your teeth ache.

Stop me if you've heard this one....

Trains, planes and restaurants. Full of people. Blow them up. Hee hee. Body parts flying. Blood everywhere. Parents crying. Wives widowed. Children orphaned. Panic everywhere. Oh the humanity! Oh the terror! Ain't we something! Yahoo! Look at us -- uber alles!

To me, it looks more like a bunch of scruffy misfits. Bent over their workbenches mixing chemicals. Strutting in front of drooling crowds. Muttering malarky to the press. Huddling in dreary rooms, plotting the mass deaths of people who wouldn't know them from a hole in the fabric of the universe.

Day after day. The same whines. The same self-serving drivel. The same old putrid rants.

Call me reactionary, but I find the whole thing boring and empty and stupid. And I really, really wonder about the people who listen to these bearded bozos.

In any event, I've tired of it. Let's turn the page and get on with real life.

The Writer's Burden

Writers have a very difficult role in Canadian society and, truth be told, they're not doing a very good job at it these days.

The first task of writers is to define the national persona.

Seen one around the Canadian landscape lately?

Exactly.

So who will take up the challenge? Everyone? Anyone?

Margaret Atwood, bless her heart, has already shot her bolt on the Canada of the '60s, '70s and maybe the beginning of the '80s. We thank her. But we really cannot rely on her to define us to ourselves in the new millennium. She has more or less earned a nice retirement from our angst in which she can focus on writing the kind of stuff she wants to write. In other words, this is her shot to go global, in a big way, to earn a place in the literary hierarchy of the English language.

So it's now up to the young, the ballsy, the up-and-comers to take up the challenge and tell us who we are.

Anyone up to it? Please step forward quickly, because we've got very little time to play with here.