Whether WikiLeaks founder goes down as a hero or a villain has yet to be seen.

But he has lifted the lid on Pandora’s Box. And it will be hard to screw it back down again, even if Julian Assange is thrown in jail.

The diplomatic information business is facing the same scenario as the music industry did ten years ago when people started helping themselves.

Here is my column on the subject. It should be live for another week.

Paul Gauguin’s paintings have interested me for his use of bold colour  and his depiction of  ”Other” in the figures of his Tahitian women.

So I was looking forward to seeing this collection of his life’s work. Interestingly, I came away from the show with a very different view of the man than I’d expected.

I’m not attempting to capsize the reputation of an artistic giant. I’m in no position to do that. I only offer an honest response based on my experience in the exhibition.

I do appreciate his accomplishments. He was a pioneer in his use of colour  - the dreamy blues, lush greens, tropical yellows and striking fushia evoke the heat and humidity and “otherness” of place. And he deserves credit for busting out of the bucolic French countryside of Impressionists in search of a new subject and way of seeing. He brought to modern art a new way of seeing.

But what a found in Gauguin was a wholly unpleasant man who exploited his subjects and showed (I thought) questionable talent in some respects. His early work in Brittany was unremarkable and it was clear that he needed something new to make his mark as a “world class” artist.

My strongest reactions emerged as I moved onto the Tahitian women who made him famous.  I began to turn on him, despite the seductive colours.

Gauguin arrived in Tahiti expecting a land and people untouched by Western sensibilities and values. To his disappointment, the Christian missionaries had beat him to it and his subjects were not the tribal water nymphs he’d hoped for.

He was just another tourist in paradise.

So he made up the story. He mythologized the women, imagining them as primitives and gentle savages, lounging by pools, their pert breasts displayed without shame, their eyes gazing in innocence. Imagine the contrast to the laced-up women of French Impressionism.

Gauguin called up a fantasy that predated the reality, if that vision ever existed at all.

I was unimpressed by the forms of his women. They appeared out of proportion, thick and squat, almost amateurish in some instances. The depictions weren’t disjointed in the purposeful Cubist sense seen in Picasso or in the native works of folk artists. They just appeared unskilled.

I had a similar response to his clouds. Unconvincing.

Syphilitic and nasty in character, it would be easy to dislike him as a person.

But I disliked him as an artist. He used these women to promote himself in the competitive market of French art. He made a fiction of subjects but sold them as the reality of the “Other.”

He was very successful in creating a legacy. He is regarded amongst the greats of post-Impressionism.

But I don’t buy it and that is the joy of visiting a life exhibition like this. You can see and decide for yourself – whether it’s the work of a master or not.

Thanks again to the lovely Zed for the prompt on this post.

Yes people, it’s no longer enough to have your downstairs region hot waxed, defoliated, tattooed and pierced.
Now you need crystals “down there.”

For more on this development,  link to my column here.

The frenzy seems to start earlier each year: November, October, September.

It’s spreading like a bad mould across the calendar.

Why not just leave the silly decorations up all year round. That way, we’d save the bother of having to put them up and take them down again.

Too much Christmas is like too much ice cream. It gives you a sore belly.

We haven’t even stood silent for the war dead.

Let’s kill Christmas Creep before it kills Christmas.

We’re going to burn an effigy tonight.

That’s what they do in England on this day. Effigy-buring is a real family affair and community event.

I was invited to several backyard burnings in my time there and always marveled at the fun-loving approach they take to effigy burning, you know, pretending to burn a man alive. Whoopeee!

If you recall British history, Guy Fawkes   (1570 – 1606) tried to blow up Parliament in the Gunpowder Plot in 1605. He was trying to replace Protestant Rule by killing the ruling classes and the King James I.

He was caught and tortured by the authorities and in the end climbed the gallows and jumped. He wasn’t actually burned.

But for hundreds of years to come, the people of England would burn him on “Bonfire night.”

It’s part of the Artful Penpals project started by Shelagh of Alice in Paris.

The project is designed to revive the art of letter writing.

It works like this: people send a short bio to Shelagh by a certain date and she matches you up with a penpal, based on your interests and experience.

You then write them a letter. Mine was a six-pager front and back with little *thought bubbles* peppering the margins.

The person I wrote lives in Reno Nevada. She’s a writer, editor, blogger, photographer and traveller. Sounds V. interesting.

I used to be a dedicated letter writer and even taught myself Italic cursive in order to make my letters more attractive. My italic has declined in recent years, probably because I don’t write much anymore.

I’m posting my letter today. Can’t wait to hear back.

Thanks to Shelagh for putting this project together.

There are similarities: both were staging a come-back, both were global celebrities and both died too soon.

And everyone was shocked.

Of course, Jacko was deeply troubled and far more *out there* than Diana ever was.

But our generation grew up with him, from his early child-star days in The Jackson 5 to his blockbuster Thriller days.  That music still crackles with energy whenever I hear it.

Not sure I’m one of those *mourning* his loss. I wasn’t that attached.

But I am sad for him and I do wonder what might have been if he’d managed this come-back tour.

RIP Michael Jackson.

In a letter to Pixar Linda Holmes points out:

Of the ten movies you’ve released so far, ten of them have central characters who are boys or men, or who are anthropomorphized animals or robots or bugs who are voiced by and imagined as boys or men. These movies feature women and girls to varying degrees — The Incredibles, in particular — but the story is never “a girl and the things that happen to her,” the way it’s “a boy and what happens to him.”

She say that girls also like to see themselves depicted as central characters in the animated blockbusters.

In Up, Ellie was one of those girls. She had the dream for adventure, but Ellie got old and died in the opening montage. She didn’t get to go to Paradise Falls. The movie wasn’t about Ellie. It was about Carl and Russel.

My understanding is that after the summer blockbusters of 2010 and 2011 — Toy Story 3 and Newt– you’re planning The Bear And The Bow, a Christmastime fairy tale rather than a summer adventure. And your first one about a girl — way to go!

The writer has nothing against Pixar flicks and she loved Up.

She’s just asking for more girls.

Let’s just say tissues were needed in the same way that tissues are needed whenever I open Robert Munsch’s book Love You Forever.

I’m generally not an easy-sell with these things. I find cheap sentimentality to be lazy, tiresome and cliche. And this makes me angry, especially when I spend good money and time on it.  Up managed to move without resorting to eash schmaltz.

It opens with a sweet montage covering of the life of 78-year old Carl Fredrickson (Ed Asner). We meet him as a child, learn of his fascination with aviation and we meet his sweetheart Ellie who shares a dream to go to Paradise Falls in South America. The rest is comes as a snapshot view of their lives together.

Next time we meet Carl he is  an old man grieving the loss of his wife Ellie, the loss of his old neighbourhood and the loss of his dream to go to Paradise Falls. So much loss. That’s when Boy Scout Russell appears at the door asking if he can provide an old person assistance so he can earn his “help an old person badge.”

Though a series events, the pair set out on an adventure to Paradise Falls, travelling  in the man’s house which is lifted into flight by thousands of helium-filled balloons. Picture perfect.

It’s a whimsical tale, rendered in a colourful, artistic animation that puts you in the mind of a circus or a fair (back in the days when they weren’t full of slimeballs.)  There’s adventure, suspense and villainy (voiced exquisitely by Christopher Plummer). There’s goofy humour in the gorky rare bird called Kevin and the dumb dog who appear along the way and help them though their adventures. All of this would be enjoyable on its own.

But it was the bitter-sweet observations on the old man’s compromises that moved me, the stinging regret and sorrow that he never pursued the dream to go to Paradise Falls. They saved money for the trip but something always got in the way: the car, house repairs, life.

How many of us can relate to that?

The old man confronts his regrets each time he opens the My Adventures scrapbook kept by his wife. But he can never turn the page and look at the chapter entitled “Stuff I’m going to do”. Carl can’t face his wife’s regret and lost dreams.

The moment of redemption occurs for Carl when he finally gets up the courage to turn that page. I’ll won’t spoil it here, but this moment is one of the most poignant, beautiful and tear-inducing of any moment in any animation flick, or non-animated flick, for that matter.

I could hear sniffles all around in this film and laughter, and at the end,  that rare thing in a movie cinema: applause.

I don’t often hear that.

But then I don’t often leave an animated film – or any film, for that matter – feeling so moved and satisfied by the sheer joy of the story.

The sky is buzzing with the sound of water bombers.

Over a thousand people have been evaculated.

Homes have been destroyed. Narrow escapes are being reported on radio, people running with kids, pet rats and computers.

The fire started as a brush fire yesterday afternoon.

Last night the city skyline was outlined by an orange halo.

It’s still burning out of control this morning.

Weather calls for rain and winds of up to 70 kph. Let’s hope for more rain than wind.

Here in GT land we’re out of the line of fire. We’re about 6K away and separated by a body of water. But we can smell the smoke in the house and outside.

But we are worried for those who are closer and threatened.

Wish our city luck.

Here is today’s Herald column. It’s about my quest to become a Bag Lady.