A snapshot of Kamdyn taken last week at the cottage 

Big Willie Styles

To kill time before my shift began, today, I wandered past the history section at work--Chapters. I glanced at the shelf, always curious, and came across a book on Shakespeare: Clare Asquith's Shadowplay. After reading the excerpt on the inside leaf, there is no doubt in my mind this book will infuriate those who declare New Historicism anathema in scholarship. You can read the following summary and recognise anon:

The wife of a British diplomat who was posted to Moscow during the Cold War, Asquith first started to suspect that Shakespeare's plays possessed an unexamined political and religious subtext while watching a seemingly innocuous performance in a Soviet theater and realizing that it was embedded with secret meanings and double entendres. In a tome both literary and dense, though thankfully not prohibitively so, Asquith shines an extraordinary light on the symbolism and possible intentions of Shakespeare's work. The Catholic playwright, Asquith contends, wrote to outsmart the "Queen's men," who caught up to him only after he had written dozens of plays reflecting the mournful frustration of Catholics oppressed by Elizabethan Protestantism. Asquith uses Shakesepeare's plays as prisms through which to observe the tremendous upheaval of the times. A second look at Julius Caesar reveals the Roman conspirators to be Protestant instigators, and Troilus and Cressida is, according to the author, a commentary on the state of Catholic opposition to the Reformation. Described as "an upstart Crow" by Robert Greene-playwright for the rival theater company Queen's Men, which Asquith characterizes as a Protestant propaganda machine-Shakespeare found protection in the patronage of Lady Magdalen Montague, a Catholic, and even worked her into a number of his plays, including A Winter's Tale, Romeo and Juliet and Comedy of Errors. Though occasionally didactic, Asquith's multifaceted examination reveals as much about the history of 17th-century England as it does about the playwright and his plays, and should intrigue admirers of both.

The significant tip-off that this book takes a New Historical approach, ala Greenblatt, could be that Amazon.com offers this book in tandem with Greenblatt's Will in the World. That, and Asquith suggests Sir Philip Sidney as a model for Shakespeare's Hamlet--for example, "Was the 'wavering soul' of this remarkable and highly intelligent man a model for Hamlet? Shakespeare surely meant his audience to think so, and therefore to identify Hamlet with the man who more than any other embodied a covertly disaffected group of what we would now call England's intelligentsia." (150). Apparently, too, the reference made by the ghost in Hamlet to Hamlet's hair standing on end like a porcupine is a covert reference to the heraldic symbol, or family crest of Sidney, which was a porcupine. These ideas are quite certainly far out there, if not far-fetched by most scholarly standards I've met. However, I can't deny that I am not interested in reading this book, pungent as it seems, especially after reading Greenblatt's Hamlet in Purgatory for an assignment months ago. While I overtly disagreed with much of that book, I cannot deny that it did not shape my take on the ghost in Hamlet. The fact remains, New Historicism critics, such as Greenblatt can shine a new light on a text--though the path that leads to these claims tend to feel like shortcuts, otherwise known as a stretch of the imagination. Perhaps these stretches are causing cramps in the minds of scholars because their minds are out of shape, or no longer fit for such a strenuous intellectual workout.

A young punk of 8 months

Most of the family gathered together for an engagement party/BBQ on Saturday July 23rd, at the cottage on Crystal Lake.

The Apple Doesn't Fall Far From The Tree

My youngest nephew, Kamdyn, just over 8 months old.

Heading to the newly renovated cottage this weekend for a family bash, including Viv's family.

The Big Over Easy

Eagerly awaiting the release of this book - a new Jasper Fforde Nursery Rhyme series

From the Publisher The first book in the series introduces Detective Inspector Jack Spratt and Sergeant Mary Mary of the Nursery Crime Division, the small and highly underfunded department that is part of the Reading Police. It is Jack and Mary to deal with any crimes involving nursery rhyme characters - who have inexplicably taken up residence in Berkshire. Ever wanted to know why Humpty Dumpty fell off his wall? Was it an accident? Suicide? Why was he buying shares in the failing Spongg footcare empire, and who had most to gain from his death? His ex-wife? His Lover? Solomon Grundy of Winsum & Loosum pharmecuticals or even Lord Spongg himself? What is the link with St Cerebellum's woefully inadequate and outdated mental hospital? And is it merely coincidence that Humpty died not five days before the Jellyman's celebrated visit to Reading to dedicate the Sacred Gonga's visitor's centre? And whose was the 28 foot long human hair found in Humpty's apartment?

The Odyssey: A Modern Sequel

After I finished Frye's The Educated Imagination, a book highly recommended for any English undergrad, I moved on to a minor, almost forgotten book and author. The author is Nikos Kazantzakis, also known for writing Zorba the Greek and The Last Temptation of Christ among many others, a twentieth century Greek (Cretan) modernist writer. I call him a modernist on the basis that his stories are highly satured with mythological content and subjects, virtual interrogations of the role of myth in humankind's development. His situation is nothing unique: everyone knows the movies he spawned, but rarely show interest in the novels themselves. It is a sad predicament as his stories are very easy to understand with a sound understand of chiefly Greek and Christian mythology, and for those advanced thinkers a bit of Bergson and Nietzsche, and a sprinkle of Marx, too.

The novel I am reading is The Odyssey: A Modern Sequel, written by Kazantzakis, and translated by Kimon Friar. Kazantzakis takes the classical tale of Odysseus, but begins his story after the slaughter of the suitors. After reading Frye's The Educated Imagination, this novel, which I have tried to finish countless times before, is starting to make sense, maybe dollars in time. It is a novel about many things, such as the inner world of myth, its role in our lives, man's fallen, wandering spirit, as well as the tempestuous, sometimes turbid soul of man seeking true enlightenment, or spiritual fulfillment. Above all things, I believe it's a complete interrogation of the meaning of myth in, and for the twentieth century - it is a search FOR our identity in the twentieth century, exploring the great ideas that have shaped our century. The story is saturated in the classical, mythological world of Greece, because for Kazantzakis myth holds the key to the true inner workings of our souls - especially the tale of Odysseus, who is the quintessential mythological wanderer, a lost soul in a mucked-up world. Hence, in the novel, Odysseus goes on a reckless adventure to the edge of our (inner) world, from the Mediterranean to heart of Africa to the South Pole to explore from pole to pole his wanderlust and fallen soul. Except, of course, the novel allegorically interrogates some of the great "mythologies" of our time, from Marx to (his two masters) Bergson--whom K. studied as a pupil--to Nietzsche, as well as classical and biblical concepts through a new (allegorical) odyssey. This Odysseus, however, is a true Ubermensch, one worth following from creation to Last Judgment like a medieval drama cycle.

Truly, I cannot stress how important this ill-appreciated book is to our times, ignored or forgotten by the academic establishment. Accuse his novel of being antiquated, in verse and subject, as you please, but he is one of the last, great masters to write a modern epic in noble verse. He is the odd man out, as Blake and Dali were, once upon a time. But it is the rebel without a (modern) cause who always stands the test of time.

O Sun, great Oriental, my proud mind's golden cap,

I love to wear you cocked askew and to burst in song

to rouse our hearts, so long as you and I both live.

Good is this earth, it suits us! Like the global grape

it hangs, dear God, in the blue air and sways in the gale,

nibbled by all the birds and spirits of the four winds.

Come, let's start nibbling too and so refresh our minds!

Where The Wild Things Are

Here I am writing a blog entry, safely at home as millions are tearing bookstores apart across Ontario for the newest book in the Harry Potter series. In truth, I feel sorry for the saps who volunteered to work tonight for the midnight release - staving off wild, ravenous lunatics who desperately need to get their smack of teenaged wizardry. For a minute I thought I was describing junkies, or something crawling out of a gutter, or a William Burroughs and/or Irvine Welsh character. No doubt someone will relate stories of wacko, deranged customers to me this Sunday, though nothing will ever top the amusing tale of the man who stripped down and ran stark naked through our store before hightailing it to the bus terminal across the street. To this event - the midnight release of Harry Potter and the Half-Blood Prince - I dedicate to you, O wild, savage Naked Man Who Ran Through Chapters Many Saturdays Ago, who ended up where the wild things are.

Lost In A Good Book

Earlier I forgot my copy of Dianetics at Vivian's place, so I hadn't much of a chance to read it tonight. Besides, to pass the time while taking public transit to my fiancé's apartment yesterday, before leaving Hubbard's book there, I started perusing Frye's The Great Code. Now it sounds like I carry a thousand and one books on the bus with me, always prepared to pass the time with one of countless titles. However, I had the Frye book with me because I was toting it, among many other Frye and McLuhan books over to Vivian's to let her start reading them in advance. I like to appear to be a studious bookworm chiefly because the average rider on the bus will see what I'm reading, stereotype me as a learned, stuck-up intellectual, and thus won't bother me. Truly it is a win-win situation as I get to read something I enjoy, read it in peace, and it follows that the bus ride is bearable. Even if I try hard to curb unwanted attention, trust me it will find me if it must.

Later, following a side-trip to a Canada Post pick-up centre to pay for one of my Frye books ordered used from the US of A on my way back home, I ended up with two books at the end of the day. One of these books, which had come with our daily mail was The Educated Imagination by Northrop Frye, while the other book I claimed at the post office was his Anatomy of Criticism. The former book looked like something I could read in one evening, wishful thinker that I was, so I started reading it. In fact, it was the initial reason I started this post - to quote a passage (among countless many) I thought worth posting.

Without further ado:

This story of the loss and regaining of identity is, I think, the framework of all literature. Inside it comes the story of the hero with a thousand faces, as one critic [Campbell] calls him, whose adventures, death, disappearance and marriage or resurrection are the focal points of what later become romance and tragedy and satire and comedy in fiction, and the emotional moods that take their place in such forms as the lyric, which normally doesn't tell a story. (21)

The Modern Science of Mental Health

There has been much press and/or debate on the newfound religion of L. Ron Hubbard: Scientology, in the news lately. Especially with the wild-eye evangelical antics of celebrities such as Tom Cruise, or the bad book-to-movie translation of Battlefield Earth compliments of John Travolta, a person such as I begins to wonder "what's the big deal?". Initially, I suspected that it is merely a mis-understood, threatening, new idea or concept, like Christianity was to the Romans during the time of the Apostle Paul. I still hold to this belief, in all fairness because I know nothing about Scientology other than the stereotype of wacky, proselytizing celebrities, which is a bad first-step to take towards an understanding of something 'different'. All the bad press, which you can get an idea of here compliments of Salon.com, leads me to liken the 'medja' to a mad Nero attacking and blaming "those meddlesome, troublesome" Christians; no doubt, everyone's slipping into the grip of the mob, be it Sadducee or Phrarisee, mentality seeking to martyr Scientologists like Christ, Stephen or Perpetua. I ask once again as I did on the topic of racism, what sort of threat does this mean against the average person's traditional beliefs? What are people fighting to preserve? Or is it plain fear of the unknown, or blissful ignorance?

Don't think for one second that I'm for Scientology, which I'm not well-informed enough to judge, I'm just trying to think critically about this occurence. I started reading Hubbard's fundamental text, Dianetics, recently to decide for myself. So far, all I can comment is that this book may be a bit too radical or heterodox for the common, orthodox mind. His concepts on the science of the mind I find to be quite original and sound, not warped or mad as alleged by countless writers, commenters and editors.

Go ahead, consider me mad if it makes it easier for you to live your far too happy, blissful existence. Even Hubbard understood the imminent buffets his ideas would encounter as they became more widespread; go ahead, read the introduction to his book, I dare you. You might be surprised, or indignant, which ever way you have decided to act. Or, more so, it might be frightening to see some ideas, which many are touting as modern, original ideas these days, such as Gladwell's Blink, to be written fifty years ago using different, original phrases instead of the catch phrases of today.

ADDENDUM: Check out this amusing parody of Tom Cruise and Scientology here.

Turkish Delight

So this is why mom always warned: "Just because your friends jump off a cliff, should you too?" Or did the sheep misunderstand that possessed swine (Matt 8:28-32, Mark 5:1-20, and Luke 8:26-39) are supposed to be cast into the sea, not Turkish sheep?

It's The Clichés That Cause The Trouble

Today, I worked at Atron for 8 hours--my mom's workplace--for the entire shift on the skinning machine (no, it doesn't flay things, just laminates products). When I have to spend the best part of close to eight hours standing in the same zone, doing the same mechanical motions, I tend to shift into autopilot and think about ideas, books I've read lately. Evidently I was thinking about clichés, after all, because I pondered if McLuhan had written about clichés being a waste by-product of modern Gutenburg print culture. It occurred to me as I was working that print culture is wont to cement, or fix words in place. Or perhaps it's a by-product of the thesaurus. Either way, an unfortunate side effect, or misunderstanding created by this technology is people are shaped to see one definition of a word or phrase as fixed, immobile or cemented in place--denotations which are often amiss or wrong--hence a cliché. Or, errors are more wont to spread in print, because everyone gives print authority over the oral word. Either way, people take things too literally, mis- or over-use it (too literally) to the point that a word becomes blunt, trite or an axiom. It looses its symoblic, metaphorical, allegorical meaning. Or, an erroneous use of a word or phrase takes hold of people's brains who don't know any better. Or a word becomes a fad, blunted to ugliness in such a short time like musical pop tarts.

Truly, I'm curious what others think, such as Dr. J, and other well-informed readers. It's an interesting theory, I don't think anyone's written a full-fledged book on the emergence of the cliché, right?

Digging A Hole Tonight: A Rant

Yesterday I had an argument with a co-worker at Chapters over all the hullabaloo about the new Harry Potter book. My co-worker, we'll call him Joe for name's sake, signed up to work a late-night shift from 10 PM (Thursday) to 5 AM (Friday) to set up the geegaw for our store's Harry Potter event--orbs, et all to be hung from the ceiling. Well, I popped my head into the staff room to check the time, as my shift was near over, and Joe asked me what I thought about the overnight shift. Specifically, he asked (whined, to my ears) if I thought it was fair that whoever is working that shift won't get any form of bonus (he suggested an increased wage was apt) for working so early into the morning. Being the curmudgeon that I am, I told him frankly I thought that was bull to ask for special pay--he voluntarily signed up to work late, and to me, it didn't matter what time of day you worked, you get paid by the AMOUNT of hours you work, plus he should be so grateful he could get these extra hours, which have been diverted from my section to facilitate this one-time, special event, which has been ENTIRELY VOLUNTARY. People must forget that. VOLUNTARY. Nope, Joe figures he's entitled to extra pay for working normal hours, on a normal day because HE volunteered for a SPECIAL EVENT. He's so special, right?

Evidently he's never heard of overnight shifts in the workplace before. Not to mention that the company would pay for pizza for those who worked overnight.

I thought he was acting like a spoiled, whiny brat; he volunteered to work overnight, so what's he complaining about? He's getting extra work hours, free food, no bugging customers, and he's being paid to set up geegaws. Sheesh. What ever happened to ACCOUNTABILITY?

Everyone wants something for free, but never are willing to EARN their rewards, or deserts. I still can't understand the big fuss over a child's book. What happened to the classics?

Am I the only one who finds this absurd?

The Life of the Party

I don't remember my parents providing entertainment like this for my birthday. All I got for my 16th birthday was money, and a lecture on how my lazy ass needs to start working.

Everything Went Black

Starting to read Northrop Frye - Fearful Symmetry - which I received in the mail recently.

Two Turtledoves

Cleta, aka Cleo, the neighbourhood darling killed a young turtledove Wednesday. According to our neighbour, too, she kills mice on a regular basis. Leaves them as presents for the neighbour. If she's not killing birds, she's killing humans with cuteness.

Who's Afraid of Virginia Woolf?

Just got off the phone with Vivian, now sitting with Garbage's "Bad Boyfriend" playing in the background, and thinking about the weekend ahead. I am thankful the rat-race is over for two days, I've nearly had it with the nonsense and drudgery of Chapters--picking up after loiterers, and co-workers. This particular day, Thursday, was bad after I had clean up a bunch of sh*t a female co-worker who worked the morning shift left for me. The list of things she messed up, even though she's worked in the section for a year, is chock-full of assinine, befuddling incompetence. This was not a run-of-the-mill, "oops" sort of mistake, but plain old carelessness or laziness. Unfortunately, it is becoming a regular adverse thing, to the point I may have to discuss her behaviour with management--something I hate to do, but for her job's sake, and because it has to be checked before it gets out of control. Her constant, crucial mistakes are taking a toll on other hard-working co-workers, including myself, who have to pick up the slack, which is unfair to them, really.

The problem with this course, though, is I know there may be indirect causes (whether these should mitigate the issue is uncertain) for her absentmindedness, or simply, these may have no bearing.

For now, I will talk to my co-worker before I discuss it with management. There's no need to kick a fuss, or blow it out of proportion. Really, I have the next two days off, so who cares, right? I'm spending most of the day with Vivian, Friday at the waterpark in Wonderland, Saturday at two church gatherings--most likely another day filled with jubilation and congratulation from friends, peers, &c. Now The Cranberrie's "Saving Grace" is playing in the background, so I'll take this as a cue to bow out, and head to bed soon. If I can't sleep I'll continue reading Malcolm Gladwell's Blink.

Mrs. Havisham Comes To Dinner

I learned a valuable lesson last night at dinner: I can't turn water into wine and vise-versa, although I gulped down my glass of wine as though it were water. I think my fiancé, Vivian's parents observed the evanescent wine in my glass, as Vivian later notified me. This morning, however, I'm a bit more perspicacious, now realizing how stupid, and selfish it was of me to escape into the wine (and the food, too) to ease the nerves - though I did have an appetite to slake. I ate a garden salad with dressing, an 8 oz. filet mignon, a chicken breast half, and a bite-size piece of my fiancé's filet mignon. Perhaps it's not much to some, but I've never been a big eater (mainly because I never had the opportunity as a kid, I suppose) until now. Hopefully my fiancé, Vivian's blog will offer a better 'review' of our engagement dinner family get-together.

I shouldn't forget, too, to mention how classy, ravishing and beautiful my fiancé looked - like a professional model - last night. You can see a photo of her below, no doubt wondering what about her wouldn't ease my wracking nerves instantly, right?

Unfortunately, I have to skedaddle off to work soon. Sorry.

It Could Happen Here Today

Dave & Viv Outside of Le Biftheque

Waiting To Order

Families Together (Minus My Mother Taking The Photo)

Grabbing The Bull By Its Horns

I Walk The Line

My confession: I finished reading Defoe's Robinson Crusoe tonight, though my zeal for the novel dissipated in the last few days. It's become much harder to read classic novels outside of school especially as I enter my fourth year of university. Perhaps this is the predicament of an average university student, or someone who's recent engaged--my thoughts are elsewhere, worrying about tomorrow's dinner meeting between families, mine and Vivian, my fiancé's. Truly, I'm worried about, not for, my parents' behaviour; after all, they are socially illiterate--completely out of touch with social traditions, norms, behaviour, protocal, &c of the adult world. As Robinson Crusoe might say, I'm rather worried about the Middle Path--my parents being younger than her parents, older than her offspring, but their attitudes often wandering askew. Oy vey.

Wish me luck.

That Old School Love

My apologies to those who read this blog, it's been such a busy weekend. Saturday, I went to church, as our engagement was being officially announced to the congregation (which was greeted with thunderous, congratulatory applause), followed by a convivial potluck meal, and a brief stint at Chapters to close the evening. Vivian, my fiancé, will confirm, if necessary, that there were tears of joy in my eyes when everyone applauded. Yes, I'm a sap, I know. Can you blame me? I owe my fiancé, as well as her family, very much for being so good to me in love, learning, and life. I discovered who I truly was, by being with them.

The only other excitement happened on the bus ride home from work, Saturday night. Our bus driver got into a bit of a kerfuffle with a rude, uncouth punk twenty-something girl (not lady) who decided to cuss at the bus driver after he told her to step aside to let a man in a wheelchair on the bus first. For the entire bus ride till she got off the bus she yawped on her phone about the bus driver, over and over again to her loser friends waiting at the bar, much to the chagrin of her fellow passengers. When the girl got off at the stop in front of the pub her friends came to threaten and curse the bus driver, who told them plainly, in obscene terms, to f*ck off. Yep, good 'ole transit on Saturday night.

The Praise of Folly

For the past several days I have been reading Daniel Defoe's Robinson Crusoe in my free time. I borrowed the book from my fiancé because I wanted to read the story for myself, especially after hearing it put down by errant post-colonialists--much like Shakespeare's Tempest--according to their reading of the text as an allegory for colonisation. Last year I had a showdown with a post-colonalist in my Shakespeare class who kept advocating this type of reading, she even went so far as to suggest Caliban had to be "black" or "non-white"--calling me a racist for pointing out her claim to be a "modern interpretation" as Caliban is not shaped by 'skin prejudices' as we interpret in the last few centuries. To make my point I stressed that Caliban was 'monstrous' according to the characters in the play, opening the door to see Caliban as shaped by the 'monster lore' passed down from the medieval era--still current in Shakespeare's time. The book to read is: David William's Deformed Discourse.

As I mentioned, I am well aware how most students, shaped by post-colonialism, are (mis)intrepreting classic books--especially Robinson Crusoe--and shoehorning them as racist texts. So, I wanted to read the book to decide for myself, not to take another person's word (most likely someone who hasn't read it either, but is merely passing on hearsay) for it.

Speaking after reading over half of the book, I definitely think the post-colonial intrepretation does not value the book's merits. The main issue I have with the post-colonial interepretation of this book is how it is not read in context (of the 'public imagination' or) of the tropes of the time, rather opting for an erroneous, modern, literal allegorical reading. Defoe's novel, for example, is shaped by a Christian allegory that runs throughout the novel--a Christian, or Puritan spiritual bildungsroman ala Job, &c--which interacts with other covert ideas. For instance, there is a fine passage Viv highlighted when she read the book for a post-colonial class (no doubt snickering when she found it) that blows a hole in the straightforward post-colonial reading. The character, Robinson Crusoe, in this part is paranoid that cannibals are coming to eat him after he finds bones, skulls, and a fire on a beach of 'his' maroon island. It isn't much later, he comes to realize the folly of this superstition, pointing out:

That this could justify the Conduct of the Spaniards in all their Barbarities practis'd in America, where they destroy'd Millions of these People, who however they were Idolaters and Barbarians, and had several bloody and barbarous Rites in their Customs, such as sacrificing human Bodies to their Idols, were yet, as to the Spaniards, is spoken of with the utmost Abhorrence and Detestation, by even the Spaniards themselves, at this Time; and by all other Christian Nations of Europe, as a meer Butchery, a bloody and unnatural Piece of Cruelty, unjustifiable either to God or Man; and such, as for which the very Name of a Spaniard is reckon'd to be frightful and terrible to all People of Humanity, or of Christian Compassion: As if the Kingdom of Spain were particularly Eminent for the Product of a Race of Men, who were without Principles of Tenderness, or the common Bowels of Pity to the Miserable, which is reckon'd to be a Mark of generous Temper in the Mind.

(124-5)

The great folly with this shortsighted reading of the text--as I have stressed with Hamlet--is we often err in thinking every protagonist is a hero, flawless, to believed, or empathised. Even the narrator/protagonist of Defoe's novel is a flawed, sinful human being--CAVEAT LECTOR!

Fight Club

This morning, while taking the bus to work, an older lady sitting at the front of the bus exited using the front doors at a stop, instead of using the rear exit (which made complete sense as she was sitting up front). Apparently this pony-tailed white guy was very upset--irate--because this woman used the front doors to exit. When he got on to the bus, he looked to his girlfriend with ire, turned and pointed to the sign at the front of the bus that said "Please exit at the rear doors", cursing the woman (who was black). I am not wont to point out 'racial' labels, but this guy sat down a few seats nigh to me, and began a fervent racist rant to his girlfriend. For the entire trip to the bus terminal he was ranting about "those people"--referring to Sikhs and Blacks mostly--especially complaining about the outdated issue of Sikhs in the RCMP wearing turbans rather than the 'traditional' (translate: old-fashioned) caps, etc. Thank the Lord he wasn't on the bus for long, no more than 8 minutes, and the hum of the bus muted enough of his raving. This wasn't the way I hoped to start my work day.

While I was on break, later, I asked a (more open-minded) co-worker the essential question I ask after I witness a racist rant--or accusation:

When people wish to preserve, or conserve something worth saving they fight tooth and nail to maintain--because it is worth something to them. What do people like this--WASPs--have, culture-wise, which is worth preserving? Most WASP scions I know are cut off from their roots, abandoned, forgotten or dispossessed heritage when some ancient ancestor experienced a diaspora to N. America. They claim all its perquisites--rich cultural history, be it Celtic, Scottish, English--but know nothing about their heritage. Whether conscious or unconscious, it's a plague on its bearers. Is racism the Black Plague of our times? Is that why people are racist--out of infectious ignorance, or, as I figure, a fear of the unknown (the greatest fear according to Lovecraft)

The only thing I can think to compare racism is to a cliche--its original denotative power forgotten or lost to its users who give the word(s) a bad name by using it with a mistaken, obsolete meaning in mind. It reminds me of the essay (which my fiance perfected with her editing) I wrote on J.M. Coetzee's Disgrace. You can read it here, if you desire.

HAPPY CANADA'S DAY - Here's to Canada (for its vices and virtues): the country we love to inhabit.