NEWSPAPER COLUMNS
 ¶ Most Recent
¶ Miscellany
|
COMMENTARY
May 28, 2005
Catfish
I gave the prime minister until today to present me with one of his Canada Steamship Lines sausage freighters, or I would resume supporting the Opposition. I have received no response. But I'm a patient man, and will now allow him another 24 hours. There is incidentally no truth to the rumour I have been offered the ambassadorship to Uzbekistan as an alternative. (Italy, and we're talking.) Let me assure my reader there is nothing corrupt about this public act of extortion. It might have been considered so, in the old days, but I notice that open trading for political support is now quite acceptable in Canada. * Catfish were back in the news this week, when Tim Pruitt of Alton, Illinois landed the largest blue catfish on record -- below the Melvin Price Dam on the Mississippi River. It weighed 124 pounds, was 58 inches long, and 44 inches in circumference (whatever that is in metric). I should have liked to help eat this fish, but Mr. Pruitt preserved him live, and he (the catfish) will now become an exhibit in a tank at Cabella's Outfitter store in Kansas City. Hope he's not shy (the catfish). So far as I know, this story has not yet been politicized. But taking the evolutionary tack, catfish are half-way to being lungfish, already, so I'm not surprised this one could survive some time out of the water. My most mnemonically accomplished readers may recall my experiments on catfish, at the "Swamp House" of some friends near Penetanguishene, a few summers ago. Did I mention how I tried to evolve them into land animals? Having established that they (the catfish) were extremely partial to Wonder Bread -- went into feeding frenzies when I dropped crumbs into the water from an overhanging porch -- I used this food to lead them towards a muddy embankment. Now these were just bullheads, rather smaller than the channel catfish for which one might grapple in the shallows of Ontario's wider rivers and lakes. But lively little guys, when they're hungry. In the spirit of scientific inquiry, I then let the bread drop out of the water, just on the edge of the mud. Soon, to my delight, their snorting snouts emerged to seize it. Then, I dropped the crumbs a little farther, progressively inland. I was finally able to get a couple of the catfish to squiggle on top of the mud, for the sake of a fairly large hunk of Wonder Bread. But having scoffed that, they rolled right back into the water. Spent more than an hour on this project, to say nothing of the four loaves, but at the end of it, not one of the catfish had evolved. So much for Darwinism. * On the subject of fishing, a local priest has angled a packet of superb aphorisms from the Internet. They are by Nicolás Gómez Dávila (1913-1994), a Catholic writer from Colombia, of whom I had never heard. I give a tiny selection below, which happen to be pertinent to our current situation in Canada. They are from a book entitled Succesivos Escolios a un Texto Implícito (1992), or in English, "Annotations on an Implicit Text". Not since I encountered the Chilean poet, Vicente Huidobro, twenty years ago, have I been so excited by the discovery of a new writer in Spanish. -- Democratic parliaments are not places where debate occurs but where popular absolutism registers its edicts. -- Love of the people is an aristocratic calling. The democrat only loves the people at election time. -- The individual shrinks in proportion as the state grows. -- The one who renounces seems weak to the one incapable of renunciation. -- Violence is not necessary to destroy a civilization. Each civilization dies from indifference towards the unique values which created it. -- To have opinions is the best way to escape the obligation of thinking. -- Nothing multiplies the number of fools so much as the example of celebrities. -- The importance of an event is inversely proportional to the space which the newspapers devote to it. -- An individual declares himself a member of some group with the goal of demanding in its name what he is ashamed to claim in his own name. -- The anger of imbeciles is less frightening than their benevolence. -- "To be useful to society" is the ambition, or excuse, of a prostitute. David Warren
© Ottawa Citizen
|
Top