The first in a weekly series of recommended links from The Walrus Blogroll…

1. “The ten most irritating politicians of 2009” by Jane Taber | Ottawa Notebook
In the spirit of end-of-year lists, Globeandmail.com presents the least likeable politicians of 2009. Michael Ignatieff, the subject of our January/February 2010 cover story, tops the rankings.

2. “The top ten stories of the last 4.5 billion years” by The Onion staff | The Onion
Speaking of list journalism, America’s finest news source presents the year-end summary to end all year-end summaries. Number one with a man-made bullet: an interview with a trilobite, who reports, “Yup, this evolution thing is going great.”

3. “Proof that goats cannot be trusted” by Maggie Koerth-Baker | Boing Boing
Research by “Professor Eustace P. Toffeynuts III, Ph.D., D.D.T., L.S.D.” on the subject of goat eyes and their association with the Dark Lord Satan. Read at your own peril: you’ll never be able to look at a goat the same way again.

4. “It’s  down to dollars” by Alice Klein | Rabble.ca
The co-founder, editor, and CEO of NOW Magazine presents a primer on the issues facing delegates at the close of the UN climate change summit in Copenhagen.

5. “The Simpsons turns twenty; next year, it can play its own drinking games” by Linda Holmes |Monkey See
Everyone’s favourite cartoon family celebrated two decades of airtime (in series form) this week. Readers are encouraged to share their favourite character or phrase from the series, as well as which “Simpson-ism” they would like to see banished from Earth.

6. “The end of handwriting, finally!” by Jeff Severns Guntzel | Utne Daily
Commentary and links to an article by Anne Trubek, an associate professor at Oberlin College who’s on a crusade against teaching handwriting in schools. Guntzel and Trubek both argue that teaching typing would have a “democratizing effect” on learning — rather than the “robotic” method by which students are currently taught cursive.

7. “Uganda’s gay genocide in the making” by Cate Simpson | This
Simpson, writing for This’s “Queerly Canadian” blog, explains how North America’s “ex-gay” movement is at least partly responsible for Uganda’s move to make homosexuality a crime punishable by death.

8. “Judge rules on grammar, syntax” by Simon Fodden | Slaw.ca
We here at The Walrus are naturally quite concerned with proper use of grammar, punctuation, and syntax — and are delighted to see that U.S. bankruptcy judge Robert Kressel shares our interest. (Note: any grammatical or syntactical errors in this post are purposeful and satirical ;))

9. “The art of the interview” by Marc Pachter | TED.com
In this video clip, the former director of the Smithsonian’s National Portrait Gallery shares a wealth of trade secrets, as learned through his “Living Self-Portrait” series of public interviews with famous figures.

10. “Blogger ticks off The Walrus for not linking to the source of his quote” by D.B. Scott | Canadian Magazines
The “civilized” discussion of The Walrus’s unattributed use of a blogger’s quote in a magazine article — read about it here, here, and here — continues on Scott’s catch-all blog for happenings in the domestic mag industry. (Who’s afraid of hyperlinks? Not us!)

Over at eaves.ca, David Eaves raises some interesting and important questions about journalistic citation, after The Walrus quoted his blog in Gil Shochat’s “The Dark Country” (January/February 2010) without noting the exact source in the piece. In his post, David mentions his perception that journalism operates collaboratively, and cites our oversight as an exception to this rule. As the editor of the piece, I saw the decision a bit differently.

First, my personal experience is that most media enterprises jealously emphasize their original contributions to stories, and try to mask the fact that a sizable chunk of their content originates with competitors (even ones working in other media entirely). I’ve always found that mindset a little craven, mind you, and I do think it’s changing in the Internet/death-of-print-media age.

In this case, it wasn’t a question of being proprietary. As a monthly magazine, we don’t face the same competitive pressures as, say, a daily paper that doesn’t want to highlight that it has been scooped. Plus, we’re fans of eaves.ca, and would generally want to drive traffic there. (Disclosure: David and I know each other a little bit.) It was more a question of how including that information would affect the flow of the narrative, and what readers needed to know for the quotation to have its intended effect.

Going back to reporting classes in j-school, I’ve always tended to think of citation in journalism, by contrast with academic work or blogging, as primarily a question of relevant detail, more than of fair dealing or reader enrichment, as David casts it. Note that expert commentary of the kind David’s quotation was providing often appears without much context, partly because many stories would otherwise get bogged down in dreary repetitions of “reached by phone in her office, Professor X said…”

Insofar as I was making a conscious decision as an editor, I would have been asking myself whether mentioning eaves.ca bolstered the authority of the quotation or added narrative value. Ultimately, I concluded that David’s credentials were all readers needed to know. In hindsight, I might have chosen otherwise, in part because the quotation wasn’t a spoken one, and in part because this is a rare instance where the source actually ended up caring.

David also asks in his post why The Walrus hasn’t linked to his blog in the online version of the story. “When The Walrus doesn’t link to others, it is a policy decision,” he writes. “They believe in the myth that they need to keep people on their website — which means they also believe in keeping their readers away from the very material that makes their stories interesting.”

Ouch! We definitely don’t believe in that myth. We’re simply a monthly magazine first. We don’t go in and insert links into our magazine pieces because we don’t have the resources, and because the decisions about what and where to link would be difficult and time-consuming to navigate, especially given that we rely on freelance writers, who might have opinions about what should be linked to or not. It’s certainly not policy.

Generally speaking, we want to do anything that will help us be part of the public conversation on the issues we cover — in fact, doing so is part of our mandate as an educational publication. And we’re well aware of the value of linking to and from other publications. We do plenty of linking on our blogs, and the magazine’s Twitter feed (not to mention my own) is generally abuzz with links to and from other media.

It’s more that until a literary journalism–loving Web 2.0 billionaire shows up to bestow an endowment upon us, we’re limited in what we can accomplish. (If you are said billionaire, please click here.)

(Illustration by Tamara Shopsin)

Few people these days can still excite my interest on climate change. The topic has been excessively reported, argued to death, and converted into more than a few apocalyptic box office hits. This week we’ve been hearing about it even more, throughout the fifteenth United Nations Framework Convention on Climate Change in Copenhagen. Many observers expect this round of climate talks will be different, with U.S. support influencing China and India to join an accord — at last overcoming the three powers’ notorious reluctance to engage on such issues. The anticipated result of the eleven-day conference will be a new climate treaty to enhance the Kyoto Protocol that’s been in force since 2005.

Why even the debate? First and foremost, because we remain far from any pervasive agreement about the immediacy and impact of climate change. While some scientists argue that environmental catastrophe will soon result from carbon dioxide emissions, others believe that this has been drastically overstated. Moral and political discussion is another hot topic. Supporters of climate change resolutions often approach the topic with moral indignation and a doom-and-gloom mentality, but also the firm belief in a worldwide commitment to curbing carbon emissions. The opposition posits that the costs of climate change policies far outweigh their environmental benefits, and may reallocate resources away from more immediate global concerns such as poverty and health.

Last Tuesday, four well-informed and passionate experts had it out on this very subject — i.e., whether “climate change is mankind’s defining crisis and demands a commensurate response” — during the fourth instalment of Toronto’s Munk Debates. Their lively discussion focused on policy priorities and public will.

The pros, Elizabeth May and George Monbiot, began the debate with a decided advantage. Among the 1,100 people in attendance at the Royal Conservatory of Music, a pre-debate poll showed that 61 percent of the audience supported the resolution, while the remaining 39 percent voted against. However, 79 percent were open to changing their vote. Lord Nigel Lawson and Bjørn Lomborg argued the con position.

Below is a summary of the speakers’ arguments, followed by a list of major themes and accompanying arguments from the three-hour event.

SPEAKERS

» Lawson (former Chancellor to the Exchequer and the immediate past president of the British Institute of Energy Economics) argued that climate change has become a new secular religion where dissent is neither tolerated nor heard. He opposed the notion that it is the most important issue of our time by citing a survey which shows that only 8 percent of climate change scientists believe that claim to be true. He then debunked the credibility of a widely cited report by Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC) by referring to the recent “Climategate” scandal, in which hacked emails provided evidence that scientists had doctored data for the sake of the report. Lawson argued that even in the future worst-case scenario, as presented by the IPCC report, changes in living standards for the developing world by 2100 will be marginal — thus, the cost of drastically de-carbonizing the economy would exceed any benefits. He said that in developing countries where poverty is an overriding concern, economic development should be the higher priority. Since the carbon energy is the cheapest, it is immoral to impose anything else. Lawson spoke against the carbon trade bill in U.S. Congress that aims to impose punitive taxes on imports from countries that refuse to cooperate, such as India and China. He declared that mankind has adapted to climate changes over time, and will continue to do so, especially aided by technology. To behave otherwise, he concluded, would be scientifically unfounded, economically damaging, and immoral.

» May (environmentalist, writer, activist, lawyer, and leader of the Green Party of Canada) provided evidence that climate change is the top threat of our day — followed by the freshwater crisis, which will be exacerbated by climate change. Her fatalistic presentation argued that the change is demonstrated over generations, not individual years, and dramatic scientific evidence is found in melting glaciers and rising sea levels. The biggest threat, she said, is rising carbon dioxide levels — they are 30 percent higher today than at any time in the past million years — that will change the chemistry of our atmosphere. She claimed that we need to reduce fossil fuel use and protect and expand our forests. Finally, she emphasized that our political will has thus far failed to deliver on what we’ve been told by scientists, and that fact must change. (Shorter version: We need to act now!)

» Lomborg (director of the Copenhagen Consensus Center and author of The Skeptical Environmentalist) argued that superlatives  — i.e., whether this is the greatest challenge of our century — lead to a poor, reactionary way of thinking about helping the world. He suggested that we have many global pressing crises, like poverty, hunger, access to clean water and sanitation, and death from curable and infectious diseases. Economists, Lomborg continued, have said the greatest good that can be done for the world can be achieved through simple solutions like micro-nutrients, agricultural R&D, immunization, and the schooling of girls. He argued that though climate change is important, obsession with an immediate reaction neglects these issues and overlooks smarter environmental solutions. The costs of curbing global warming outweigh the benefits, he said, and the better response is to invest in research and development in order to cheapen environmental technology until it becomes ubiquitously accessible.

» Monbiot (columnist for the Guardian, and author of the best-selling Heat: How to Stop the Planet Burning) began by contradicting the notion that climate change supporters purport inaccurate and optimistic scenarios. He presented the evidence that eight out of ten of the warmest years on record have taken place between 2001 and now. He drew on the largest study commissioned by the U.K., the Stern Review on the Economics of Climate Change, which shows there are minimal costs to preventing climate change — as compared to the tremendous costs of living with it. Monbiot dispelled the idea that humankind can adapt to our changing environment, because in regions like sub-Saharan Africa, droughts have often lead to desperation and killing. He then argued that climate change versus foreign aid is a false dichotomy, because foreign aid budgets are very small, and will not be affected by increased spending on climate change. He finished by averring that Copenhagen is a historic moment which requires us to recognize our responsibility and do something about the environment.

THEMES AND ARGUMENTS

» IPCC Report: Both teams debated its credibility in the wake of Climategate.

» The Stern Review: Lawson reminded the audience that it’s never been peer reviewed, and is commonly disregarded as justification for governmental policies. Monbiot replied that there was no need for a peer review, because the Stern document is an “uber” review — a review of all other reviews.

» Scientific basis for climate change: This topic was surprisingly under-debated — except by May, who reiterated all the major points from Al Gore’s An Inconvenient Truth.

» Impact of climate change: May dominated this discussion with simplified explanations about how carbon dioxide in our atmosphere acidifies our oceans, and that the effect of losing permafrost is the release of more carbon dioxide into the environment. The debaters also discussed the effect of temperature change on global food production. Health concerns were briefly addressed when Lawson suggested that the only projected negative health outcome is the reduction of deaths from cold exposure.

» Global priorities: Whereas the pro debaters argued that climate change exacerbates problems in the developing world like drought, poverty, and HIV/AIDS and other diseases, the con side declared that there are smarter methods to help developing countries than by expecting them to cut carbon emissions. May and Monbiot argued that development agencies prioritize climate change above all, but Lomborg brought the contradictory point home when he suggested that OXFAM would never choose to negligibly slow climate change by end of the century over saving thousands of lives today.

» Global energy choices: This discussion centered on the costs of energy. Monbiot spoke about our current reliance on oil and the future need to rid ourselves of fossil fuel dependence for our own economic well-being. Lawson dismissed the notion that oil will peak soon, or that we are presently running out of it. He suggested that developing countries especially will continue to rely on oil for years to come because it is the cheapest energy, and they have already invested significant amounts of money in its use. Monbiot made the great point that it is often cheaper to implement new energy technologies in developing countries.

» Solutions: The pro side held that the Copenhagen convention is moving us in the right direction, and that cutting carbons is key. The con side recommended economic development as the most efficient way to protect humans and species. Focus should therefore be placed on immediate concerns, and energy solutions should be made cheaper in order to be implemented worldwide.

*

Monbiot was the most thorough debater, holding strong opinions and citing sources on every topic. Unfortunately, his melodrama about his experiences in Africa (and his overindulgent repetition of the phrase, “How lucky do you feel?”) detracted from the strength of his arguments. May emerged as perhaps the weakest speaker of the evening, with an overly defensive and defiant personality. This was especially clear when her opponents denigrated her for using enormous exaggerations as truths, such as her proclamation that climate change is humankind’s most immediate problem because it aggravates the incidence of HIV/AIDS.

Lawson was very comprehensive and perhaps the most calm contender, though sometimes it appeared as if he had checked out halfway through the event. There is no question that Lomborg was the evening’s most persuasive and charismatic speaker, although he was derided for creating false dichotomies. Unfortunately, at times he seemed to slip into May’s cheap-shot trap, such as when he claimed that both opponents were actually standing on his and Lawson’s side. But in all honesty, he was the one who won my support.

In the end, the audience voted once again, with 53 percent still believing that climate change is humankind’s defining crisis and demands a commensurate response. The con side scored a marginal increase in agreement, with 47 percent now doubting that claim. No one position ever seemed to dominate the debate, and I was left eager to learn more.

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Tonight at 8 p.m. EST, TVO’s The Agenda with Steve Paikin presents a debate on the subject of censorship. The program, titled “Censorship and Forbidden Reading”, will include a discussion of Nick Mount’s article “What Thunder Bay Burned,” from the January/February 2010 issue of The Walrus. Guests on the program include Carissima Mathen, associate professor in the Faculty of Law at the University of New Brunswick, Joanne McGarry, executive director of the Catholic Civil Rights League, and David Kent, president and CEO of Harper Collins Canada. The panelists will discuss questions such as when does knowledge become dangerous, and who decides when there is a threat?

Check out TVO’s website for more information. You can read Nick’s article here, or pick up a copy of the January/February 2010 issue of The Walrus on newsstands now.

Hawksley Workman has always been something of a Canadian secret. Over the past decade, the Juno Award–winning singer-songwriter has released ten critically acclaimed albums on which he played most, if not all, of the instruments. He has produced records for the likes of Tegan and Sara, Great Big Sea, and Serena Ryder, and plays shows to consistently packed houses across the country. Musically, the Huntsville, Ontario native transcends definition and expectation. On the same album, you might find soft acoustic ballads, sexually charged rock, and glam-cabaret numbers, all enhanced by Workman’s soaring voice and nuanced lyrical sensibility.

Despite his seemingly endless store of hummable tunes, Workman’s name has scarcely risen above a whisper south of the border, leaving his legions of Canadian fans simultaneously puzzled and eager to keep him to themselves. This month, however, the secret is out, as Workman has just released his ten-year-old debut  album, For Him and the Girls, in the States. Canadian fans needn’t feel cheated: Workman will soon release his eleventh and twelfth albums. Meat will be out on January 19, and Milk will be digitally released over a five-month period beginning in the new year. In addition, Workman will embark on a twenty-two-city national tour in the spring.

In the midst of preparing for his big year to come, Workman was kind enough to sit down with me and chat about his upcoming albums, the limitations of genre, growing up in rural Ontario, and more. What resulted was a fascinating glimpse into the mind of one of Canada’s most hardworking and gifted musical virtuosos.

You have two new albums coming out in 2010, and one of them, Milk, is set to digitally release all the music before the physical product actually comes out. Why did you choose that strategy?

Now that I’m without a major label (which is a blessing), we just decided that we would do things unconventionally. It’s hard to know how to play the game anymore — there are no rules. For a while, it was sort of our standard idea that [illegal] downloading was somehow helping [the indie musician's] cause. Now I’m not so sure. I’m starting to feel the pinch of it. But using the internet as a way to sell music is incredible.

You’ve always had a very distinctive, cryptic web presence. Your Twitter account and mass emails are full of riddles and ambiguities that really draw people in.

A lot of people I know have decided to embrace the internet in its entirety, and I don’t know if I could go quite there. So I meet in the middle and just do what I feel comfortable with. Twitter seemed like my kind of thing. It’s 140 characters, sort of like Polaroids.

That’s a great way of putting it, because I find that your music is characterized largely by its use of imagery and atmosphere. Your lyrics are much more rooted in poetry than narrative. Is that intentional? Do you generally find yourself gravitating toward depicting a series of images rather than a linear story?

I’m a horrible storyteller. It’s my nature to speak in images. I live in a rather cloudy, constant state of observation, which is a hassle for anybody who’s with me. What happens is a convoluted clump of images ends up being the song. It’s not very tidy. I used to beat myself up about it. I always wished I was a songwriter who could tell a story, but I think I’m more of a songwriter who paints a dozen or so pictures.

Along with being visual, your music is very whimsical. Do you find music to be an escape through which you can shape an idealized world?

I do, now that I think of it. My first couple of records were very idealized. I was a kid who never really experienced anything, so I was trying to write from a place of, “What if I had these experiences? What if I had these great lovers? What if I’d been to these great cities?” And what’s interesting is that when you live a little and you have these experiences, the fantasy kind of morphs into a complicated reality. You don’t realize when you’re young how horrible it can all be.

This growing awareness of the world’s harsh realities is especially apparent on 2006’s Treeful of Starling.

You’re right, Treeful was my big political record. I tried to be elegant about it, because a lot of the political songs that have been written post-Vietnam have not really lasted. “Born in the U.S.A.” has a real shelf life. I’d love there to be more political music. I wish people were speaking out more.

This month, you released your first album, For Him and the Girls, in the States. It came out domestically back in 1999.

Yeah. Weird.

Yeah! Why did you pick that album as your American debut?

I’m one of those artists who thinks the story of my career makes a little more sense if you read it in order. [Meat and Milk] would confuse a lot of people who thought they were coming to me for the first time. But I don’t know how I’m going to draw the parallel between what I was ten years ago and what I am now, because there’s just a lot of life between now and then. Nobody tells you that things are so difficult. They don’t teach you what you really need to know.

Do you still feel good about For Him and the Girls?

Oh, yeah. It’s a scary record for me to listen to. I hear a very young and naïve, very strange fellow on there, who had never been on an airplane, who had never been anywhere, who had never had a real relationship. It’s like time travelling. I don’t even know how I made that record. I broke a lot of rules, and I don’t even remember quite how I did it.

What else can we expect from the new albums?

Both records are cohesive, but they don’t sound anything alike. Milk is an electro Europop record produced officially by a Swedish dude, [Martin Trome,] which I’ve never done before. Thematically speaking, the records are funny because they were written between the end of a devastating relationship and the beginning of an absolutely brilliant relationship. I don’t know how to say that in code; I’m going to have to work on that. I usually try to avoid bringing that kind of stuff to my public life, but it’s kind of inevitable.

Especially when you’re doing something as personal as songwriting.

Somebody said the other day, “How well do people know you just based on your music?” They know me pretty good, because I find it pretty hard to fib in songwriting.

Well, in the early years of your career, you received a lot of press accusing you of developing a false persona. You published a series of personal ads in Toronto’s Now Magazine devoted to Isadora, your fictional underwater muse. [These ads were later collected into a book of poetry, Hawksley Burns for Isadora]. Then, there was a controversial biography on your website [which has been removed] in which you claimed to have tap-danced at a Dutch academy and made a living as a lake ice-cutter. Journalists raised quite a stir about these embellishments.

In the early days, I felt uninteresting to myself. I was a kid who grew up in rural Ontario. I never really fit into my surroundings, but I also really fit in. I grew up a hick and I still am one, but I also had a certain desire for refined things. Journalists definitely felt like I was trying to pull one over on them…People were saying, “Hey, we know you’re a rural kid who grew up pushing cars out of snow banks. You’re not pulling one over on us, you faux feather boa wearing…” But people are completely willing to buy into the artifice of David Bowie or Bob Dylan or any of the great artificials. There’s a certain unproductive nature to it, and I think our culture can use all the help it can get at the moment. That kind of glib dismissal just for the sake of hearing one’s own voice is a bit sad.

You’ve done a lot of collaborative work to boost the careers of other Canadian musicians: you’ve produced albums for Tegan and Sara, Sarah Slean, and most recently, Hey! Rosetta. Do you feel that this collaborative initiative is an important part of Canada’s music culture?

I’ve always wanted that. I’ve always felt like I was a good hub on a wheel that had a lot of very interesting spokes on it. Everyone I’ve worked with has had a remarkable amount of staying power, and I’ve been a part of their careers at a very early time. To think of the people I’ve been able to make records with is a bit of a mind-blow to me. Working with somebody like Slean, for instance. She’s absolutely brilliant. Tegan and Sara, they were eighteen when we made their first record together, so they were so energetic and ready for anything. With Hey! Rosetta, my job with them was to stay out of the way and keep reminding them how good they are. Most of my collaborations now are songwriting, which is, in a way, the most exciting. I realize that I’m getting older and more funny-looking, so my chances of being on MuchMusic are getting slimmer, but it’s interesting for me to write songs for these kids who are doing that.

This communal aspect of Canadian music seems to be something you’re deeply invested in, from the collaborations to your frequent participation in folk festivals.

It’s everything. I think it’s because I grew up in the church. I learned so much of the nuance of writing music and performing music by going to church, realizing that the best part of it was singing and the sandwiches afterwards. When I was in my early teens, I thought I’d go either way — that I’d either be a musician or a preacher. They both involve music and community, which spoke to me at a very young age.

Do you feel influenced by the Canadian folk tradition?

Absolutely. If you’re including Leonard Cohen, Joni Mitchell, Gordon Lightfoot, Bruce Cockburn, and Neil Young into that, our folk traditions have inspired and influenced the whole world…It’s because of our observational nature. Americans shoot first and ask questions later, and that’s not the best way to write great music. Canada is all nuance and survival, because it’s too easy to die here. The seasons will kill you. The winter will kill you. The mountains will kill you. Consequently, we’re on our creative toes to keep us warm and safe. I think we sit inside and look out at what’s going on. Then, we have a big, loud teenage brother to the south that does things that embarrass us. Our cultural disposition is very strange, but it has allowed us to develop a refined ability to make songs.

It seems that one of the more limiting aspects of the music business is the idea of genre, and any article that’s written about you will classify you differently. How do you feel about being put into these categories?

Genre is something I’m fascinated by, in that it usually comes with a hairstyle and fashion attire. On the CBC’s website [recently], they described me as hip hop, and I thought, “Well, that’s interesting.” I mean, hip hop is what I listen to almost exclusively now, but I don’t know if I’m a hip-hop artist. When I was young, I was just under the impression that there was good and bad, not that there was a need to define it.

Which of your songs are you most proud of?

If I made the list it would be embarrassing. There are some I’ve written that I think are intimidating, like “Don’t Be Crushed” or “Ice Age.” They’re really good, and I don’t know how to do that. There’s a certain astrological alignment that has to happen. I can write a good song any old day of the week, but something that has that kind of weight to it, that’s not just me. That’s having something a little more special.

You’re participating in the CBC’s Great Canadian SongQuest, for which you wrote a song about Algonquin Park. Are you happy with how it turned out?

Yeah, it’s pretty kooky, but it’s fun. You only are who you are when you write. If you’re going through personal crisis, that’s what ends up on the record; if you’re disengaged with your career, that’s what goes on the record, and it becomes such a human experiment. So unfortunately — or fortunately — I was sick and a bit depressed when I wrote that Algonquin Park song. Maybe that bleeds into it. It wasn’t the song I was expecting to write, but it’s what got written.

(Photo by Ivan Otis)

Tonight at 8 p.m. EST, TVO’s The Agenda with Steve Paikin presents a debate on Roger Martin’s November cover story for The Walrus: “Who Killed Canada’s Education Advantage?” The program, titled “Healthy But Stupid,” will feature Martin alongside other guests including Bill Robson, CEO of the C.D. Howe Institute and friend of The Walrus, Matthew Mendelsohn, director of The Mowat Centre for Policy Innovation, Hugh Mackenzie and Sheila Block. The debaters will discuss the questions provoked by Martin’s article, such as where should governments spend money, and which social programs are the most important to policy and the electorate? Check out TVO’s website for more information on tonight’s program.

November 27, 10:10 AM. As I race down the halls of the Toronto Eaton Centre, I expect blood. I expect a line in front of the Apple Store — one of several retailers trying to import America’s Black Friday shopping tradition to Canada — that snakes down the length of the mall. I expect this one-day megasale will have people climbing over their own grandmothers for the chance to buy a discounted Macbook or iPod Touch. It will be a classic affirmation of everything right and true and decent in the capitalist character; it will be a gross physical salute to the fantastic possibilities of life with high technology.

But I am mistaken. This is the emptiest I have ever seen the store. No confusion, no pushing — at least not yet. Why could this be? Is it a credit to the Canadian work ethic that we’re unwilling to take time off work to shop? Is it the unseasonably warm weather? Is it just too early to think about Christmas shopping? Stay tuned. For now, I need coffee and a new copy of Fear and Loathing. Thank God there’s a Starbucks in Indigo.

11:00 AM. The clerk approachs me cautiously: “Perhaps this is the call you’ve been waiting for all this time, sir.” I say nothing when he hands me the pink telephone, merely listen. Then I hang up and turn to face my attorney. “That was headquarters. They want me to return to the Apple Store and make contact with the Geniuses. They’ll have all the details.”

12:00 PM. High noon near the Genius Bar, crowd thickening like the knot of a noose. There is no way to explain the terror I feel as I lunge up to the red-shirted attendant and begin babbling. My well-rehearsed lines fall apart under her stony glare. “Hi there, my name is… ah, Bob Duke… yes, on the list, that’s for sure. Free lunch, total coverage… why not? I have my attorney with me. I realize his name is, of course, not on the list, but we must have our free MacBook Pro. Yes, just check the list and you’ll see.”

The Genius never blinks. “We don’t have your name here, sir. We’re pretty busy today. If you like, you can book an appointment with us and we can help you with whatever you’re looking for…”

An appointment? At a retail store? “No!” I shout. “Why? I haven’t done anything yet.” My legs feel rubbery. I sag toward her as she produces a list of sale prices. She holds out the pamphlet, but I refuse to accept it. The woman’s face is changing: swelling, pulsing… horrible green jowls and fangs jutting out, the face of a moray eel! Deadly poison! I lunge backward into my attorney, who grips my arm as he reachs out for the paperwork. “I’ll handle this,” he growls. “Prepare the appointment at once. We’ll be at the bar…”

“But sirs, we don’t serve alcohol in the Apple Store.”

What the hell is this world coming to?

12:20 PM. My attorney and I find two stools by the Genius Bar. We order Cuba libres, but nobody seems to notice or care. I can’t concentrate, terrible things are happening all around me. A huge reptile holding an iPhone is gnawing at a man’s neck. The slate tiles are becoming slick with blood — impossible to walk on, no footing at all. “Order some golf shoes. Otherwise we’ll never get out alive,” I whisper. “You’ll notice these lizards have no trouble moving around this muck — that’s because they have claws on their feet. And somebody’s giving consumer electronics to these things!”

1:00 PM. My attorney is displeased. “They’ll never let us back in that place — not after your scene at the Genius Bar.”

“What scene?”

“You bastard, I left you alone for three minutes! You scared the shit out of those people! Waving that goddamn marlin spike and yelling about reptiles. You’re lucky I came back in time. You’re lucky I said you were only excited about the low, low prices, and that I’d get you an Orange Julius to calm down.”

And so we venture forth, the Julius but a ruse. We’re out for more blood, a place where people will claw out each other’s eyes for a bargain. A place where people care about nothing more the latest ironic fashions, where moustaches and cheap plastic wayfarers are the way of the land. The last bastion of the 1980s for people too young to remember the fall of the Berlin Wall — American Apparel’s Black Friday rummage sale.

1:40 PM. The horror, the hipsters…

4:00 PM. Safely inside Walrus HQ, I can contemplate the terrifying scene I’ve just witnessed. Plaid shirts, hooded sweatshirts, black jackets, leggings (girls), skinny jeans (boys), varied shades of Chuck Taylors — a clone army of hipsters amassed on the downtown streets. My arrival was badly timed, the lineup already winding around one block and then on for two more. The diehards had shown up early and staked out good positions, from which to stare grimly at the newcomers. Things had become ugly, at least according to the armed security men at the front of the line. People were shoving, so anxious to secure $15 hoodies that they’d ignored even the most basic rules of society. “Things are beginning to calm down now,” he said as he patted his gun. Fearful of what was to come, my attorney and I left in search of cheap hamburgers. We never saw what laid beyond the gaping maw of the shop’s front door.

5:15 PM. Apple Store redux. This is more like it. Mayhem. I’ve had to elbow no less than three people to even get near a laptop, and now fear that if I don’t type quickly enough, one of the red-shirted gatekeepers will have me escorted from the premises by the armed gu—

5:18 PM. This is Mr. Duke’s attorney. Black Friday started out slowly, but has come roaring on. Heaven help anyone who’s just venturing out now. Stay home. Be afraid.