What's he on about now?

In case the articles, essays and opinions throughtout this site just weren't enough for you, here's my online diary (a.k.a. 'blog'). It's as close as you'll come to the inside of my head, so don't say I didn't warn you
(and remember, you can always e-mail me if you love or loathe anything you're about to read)...


   Thursday, May 25, 2006

   REEKING OF TESTOSTERONE

This is a post for people who love bad writing. Really bad writing. Even if you don't know the story of US Senator Bill Frist -- stocks grifter, cat killer, doctor-by-videotape -- I hope you'll love this wildly-fawning profile of him by Laura Blumenfeld in yesterday's Washington Post as much as I did. I couldn't help but highlight my favourite bits of this astonishing literary blow job:

The houses were dark on Bill Frist's street. A morning bird chirped; the others were waiting for dawn. But Frist was awake, and his bedroom light was on. "I'm going to take a shower," the Senate majority leader said brightly. Ten minutes later, the blow dryer roared.

Absolutely gripping opener, no? But fasten your seatbelts -- it's about to get sexy!

Frist, at heart, is a doctor. At 5:45 a.m., before a recent Senate workday, he prepared for a quirky slice of surgery. During congressional breaks, Frist, 54, has been known to fly to Africa to operate. But in Washington, he has quietly cultivated another practice: gorillas at the National Zoo.
...
He climbed into the back of his black SUV; his driver steered toward the zoo. "I gravitate towards insurmountable problems," Frist said, his long legs spilling between the front seats. "I try to use creative solutions." One day, he hopes to cure AIDS or cancer. He sucked on the stem of his glasses: "The typical person around here may not understand."

At the zoo hospital, a team of four veterinarians, three technicians, an animal keeper and a veterinary dentist were wheeling a 350-pound gorilla into surgery as Frist arrived. They would perform an ultrasound of the heart, a root canal and a physical. Frist joined the team, as he had on other mornings, tying on a mask. He unbuttoned his business shirt, revealing jungle-pattern surgical scrubs and a pair of hairy, toned biceps.

"A little bit like Superman," said the dentist, Chuck Williams.
...
He pressed his stethoscope to the gorilla's chest and narrowed his eyes. Kuja, a silverback patriarch, was breathing isofluorine. He was the Senate majority leader of the gorillas, who negotiated disputes, back-slapped the ape boys and owned exclusive mating rights with the females. When Kuja started to stir, a veterinarian injected more anesthesia. One backhanded swipe could break Frist's neck.

Frist listened to the heart; the gorilla's lub-dub sounded human. "When you're this close, you feel this kind of oneness with them," Frist said. The stink of ape sweat and gorilla testosterone soaked his hair and clothes. "Gorillas, people, men. You look at the people here, a symphonic flow of people pitching in. It's the oneness of humanity."
...
Afterward, Frist buttoned himself back up, into his blue shirt and into his senatorial reserve. "I need to be talking to the Israeli prime minister in 18 minutes," he told his driver as the SUV rumbled toward the Capitol.
...
At 9:30 a.m., Frist opened the Senate, gripping the corners of the lectern, as he had the operating table...Frist smiled and spoke unremarkably from the lectern, reeking of silverback testosterone.

Laura, please, you're embarrassing yourself -- Senator Frist is married! I can't really blame her though...by the end of the article, I wanted to sleep with him.

Meanwhile, here in testosterone-drenched Canada, Stephen Harper has been whining this week that the national media is biased against him, that "the press gallery at the leadership level has taken an anti-Conservative view." Maybe, or maybe it just seems that way because he's not getting his profiles from the Washington Post.

Labels: Canada, Stephen Harper