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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.