HomeMy WebLinkAboutThe Citizen, 1997-12-03, Page 5THE CITIZEN, WEDNESDAY, DECEMBER 3,1997. PAGE 5
Arthur Black
A squid’s sex life
is rough
I’d be willing to bet that you have not once
in your entire life, given so much as a
passing thought to the sex life of the giant
squid.
How self-centred can one person get?
Never mind, we're going to rectify that right
now.
I am here to tell you that the sex life of the
giant squid (architeuthis to his nerdy
scientific friends) ... is rough.Very rough. As
a matter of fact, if you were to come across a
pair of giant squid 'making out' on your front
lawn, you could be forgiven for thinking that
World War III had just broken out.
What happens is this: the squid stud
approaches the squid gal and casually drapes
three or four of his 10 arms around her.
Same old Saturday night, right?
Wrong. This is where things get nasty.
Basically, and without wishing to ruin your
dinner, I can tell you that the male squid cuts
little gashes in the female, then injects sperm
in a manner that scientists say is akin to
being "under hydraulic pressure, much as a
doctor's syringe injects medicine."
Fortunately, giant squid don't do this on
your front lawn. They do it in total darkness,
hundreds of fathoms down in the deep
vastness of the oceans, far from the prying
eyes of human voyeurs.
So how do we know it happens this way?
Because the scientists tell us so.
Doctor Mark Norman, a zoologist with the
University of Victoria, recently got to study
the body of a giant female squid which was
^BntemationalScene
Mixed results
One of the things that I most wanted to
observe during my stay in the Czech
Republic and my travels elsewhere in Eastern
Europe was what life was really like in the
post-communist era. After all, if a country
has lived under a communist regime for close
to 50 years, how much of the thinking do you
get rid of right away and how much lingers
on years after the last Russian has left?
I can report that the results are mixed. To a
degree it depends on how much experience
the country has had with a democratic system
of government during the last 100 years.
To cite one example, the Czechs have had
considerably more experience at this sort of
thing than have, say, the Bulgarians and the
Rumanians and it shows.
For the poor Albanians who have had none
at all, they are having one horrible time
getting their act together.
The Czechs, under their two great leaders,
Masaryk and Benes, put together a
thoroughly democratic system government
until they were sold down the river by
Chamberlain at Munich in 1938. After the
end of World War II they went right back
where they had left off only to run into
something called Stalinism in 1948.
brought up from a depth of more than a
kilometre by fishermen working off
Tasmania. Two of the squid's forward
tentacles were covered with cuts several
centimetres long. Each cut contained packets
of forcibly-injected sperm.
"I'm still surprised," says Doctor Norman.
"I think it's pretty bizarre behaviour."
Well, I think it's bizarre too, and the only
squid I've ever seen came as a side dish at a
Spanish restaurant.
But I can't say I'm surprised. Nothing
surprises me about sex anymore - whether
it's between butterflies, giant squid or two
computer nerds who meet at a singles bar.
Sexual behaviour is pretty whacky
anywhere you look in the animal kingdom.
Some female spiders devour their mate as a
post-coital treat. The lady praying mantis
prefers to munch on the head of her beau
while he's still "on the job", so to speak.
And then there's human sexual behaviour.
Consider Jimmy Bakker, a religious leader
with a cable TV network that brought in
$129 million U.S. in one year alone.
That would be the year before Bakker was
found to be spending a fair bit of his out-of
pulpit time nuzzling with Jessica Hahn, a 26-
year-old church secretary.
Fellow televangelist Jimmy Swaggart
mounted his pulpit to denounce Bakker as "a
cancer that needs to be excised from the body
of Christ."
That was just before Swaggart was photo
graphed going into a New Orleans motel
with a prostitute named Debra Murphee.
As the humourist James Thurber said,
"Love is blind, but desire just doesn't give a
good goddamn."
I'm not going to talk about my sex life
because I hate it when readers snore. But I
By Raymond Canon
In 1968, the Slovak Alexander Dubcek
attempted to put a human face on all this,
only to be turfed out unceremoniously by the
Russians. It was back to square on until 1989
when Gorbachev decided that the Soviet
Union no longer had the herewithal to
maintain communism in the Soviet Union let
alone the eastern European countries.
Communism was out, democracy was in!
Even the Czechs have their difficulties.
Many of the bureaucrats that were in place
during the communist years are still there:
the Americans could vouch, that in post-war
Germany when it came to getting rid of all
the Nazis, they discovered that there were
simply not enough competent non-Nazis
around to provide replacements, so many of
the Nazis ended up in their old jobs. So it is
here.
You simply cannot replace an entire nation
of experienced bureaucrats, no matter what
the nature of their experience is, by an entire
new core of slate employees, and hope to
have any level of efficiency. Nor can you
change their way of thinking overnight. The
same thing can be said about their way of
doing business or even their way of teaching.
Perhaps it is different in Prague, but from
where I sit, one of the noticeable aspects of
life is an unwillingness to make decisions
with any degree of rapidity.
In the building in which I am living I have
will tell you about my initiation.
It took place in a gravel pit. My father,
who was not much for man-to-man
conversations concerning the birds and bees,
decided it was time for me to learn the nitty-
gritty, sex-wise. So he took me down to a
gravel pit to witness the mating of a buckskin
palomino mare and an Arabian stallion.
You don't run across a lot of poems written
about the exquisite delicacy of equine coitus.
When horses mate it is not what you would
call a display of balletic daintiness.
It's more like the Japanese attack on Pearl
Harbour.
There is much thundering of hooves.
Much kicking. And biting. And whinnying.
It does not look like a helluva lot of fun for
either participant. And I don't recommend it
as positive motivation for teenagers. It sure
didn’t make me look forward to a lifetime of
pitching woo.
Besides, have you ever ... seen ... a
stallion when it’s ... hot to trot?
I felt utterly inadequate for the next 35
years.
It's quite different nowadays of course.
When the time came to "have a chat" with
my 13-year old, I resolved that I would do
things differently. No squalid gravel pit
blitzkriegs for him. I would deal with him
face-to-face and man-to...well, boy. So I
waited until after dinner, then I called him
down to my workshop in the basement. I
asked him to take a chair. We chatted about
the Canucks....the Blue Jays...and finally I
took a deep breath and said: Son, I think the
time has come to discuss the Facts of Life
with you.
"Sure, Dad," he says. "What do you want
to know?"
witnessed a classic case of indecision.
Nobody wants to take responsibility for some
rule. Finally I call a meeting, tell them what I
think is the best way to handle the problem.
They say, "Excellent idea", then go and
implement it.
After all, if someone criticizes it later on,
they can always say that it was that
Canadian's idea and that solves everything.
Since I am the "distinguished professor
from Canada" nobody has figured out ;a way
to tackle me. After all, I can swear in more
languages than any of them. And who knows
what hidden clout I have which I can call up
and which can pul them in charge of a gypsy
work camp for the rest of their lives.
Having spent some time in the diplomatic
service, I have learned to get along well with
most people and the Czechs are no exception.
In the vast majority of cases they are good to
me and their hospitality is like their beer, the
best in the world.
My job is to leave as much positive
thinking in the realm of foreign trade and
tourism as possible.
A Final Thought
No on has yet been able to perform the
feat of keeping the mind and the mouth
open at the same time.
Too into Christmas'?
"Mom, she thinks you're just a little too
into Christmas."
This comment came from my son recently
while he was talking on the phone and I was
in the midst of the early seasonal
preparations. Christmas music was floating
serenely through the house, carrying with it
the fragrance of homebaked cookies. Amidst
these pleasantries, I climbed, twisted, turned,
lifted and dragged, with the much
appreciated assistance of my daughter, to get
this festively scented home, festively
decorated.
I suppose I could have responded to the
bemused watching and listening, "What
choice do I have?". What with working full-
time and certain traditions to uphold, any
spare time has to be spent running around
like an aerobics instructor on benzedrine.
I suppose I could say that. Yet, despite my
often frenetic pace, I love every minute of it.
Too into Christmas? Absolutely, and I
can't understand that everyone isn't. Look at
the front page of any newspaper, then tell me
there aren't several good reasons to lose
yourself in this exhausting, very special
time.
I really start getting caught up in the spirit
of the season, pre-seasonally with the annual
arrival of the Christmas Wish Book. It is
aptly named, because, while I may never
order anything from it, I go through it
intensively several times, making my wishes
and checking them twice, as it were.
But what I really enjoy is how it
transforms my nonchalant teens into excited
children again. For mothers who have seen
their kids grow way too fast, it's nice to be
reminded of the sweet ingenuousness they
once had.
By mid-November this sentimentality has
been replaced, however, by panic as I begin
to contemplate how I will ever get things
ready. So I throw myself into the task like a
mad dervish, while my family does its best
swinging as swiftly as my moods, between
lending a hand and getting the heck out of
my way.
At this point, every year, I ask myself
why. Il’s extra work, extra running around
that quite honestly I really don't need. I'm
tired and, when you think of it, the real
reason for the season would still be
celebrated without the decorations, the
cookies or the presents.
So why? My immediate answer is that I do
it for my family, to make Christmas as
special as I can for them. The other day,
however, I recognized, beyond this
satisfaction, just what it does for me, loo. I
was feeling particularly frustrated by the
world around me. Already fed up with Bill
160, the postal strike and other front page
stories, a conversation with my mom,
covered the topics of the eight kids charged
with the murder of a 14-year-old runaway in
B.C. and of the kid who stabbed his
grandmother to death after asking her for
money. "What's going on in this world?"
Mom asked.
She had me there. All I know is our chat
was defintely not a mood lightener. Feeling
just a little downcast, I lit some candles,
plugged in the tree lights and as Silent Night
wafted over me rediscovered serenity. It
obviously didn't solve any problems, but for
a brief time, it made them go away.