The Friday Fillip Archives - Slaw: Recent Episodes
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Each Friday, we share the latest job listings from Slaw Jobs, which features employment opportunities from across the country. Find out more about these positions by following the links below, or learn how you can use Slaw Jobs to gain valuable exposure for your job ads, while supporting the great Canadian legal commentary at Slaw.ca.
Current postings on Slaw Jobs (newest first):
- Family Lawyer (4-6 years) (Full-time) | Chilliwack, BC
(Waterstone Law Group) * Civil Litigation Associate (3-5 years) (Full-time) | Langley, BC
(Waterstone Law Group) * Tax Litigation Lawyer (Full-time) | Toronto, ON
(The Heller Group) * Municipal Lawyer (Full-time) | Toronto,
. . . [more]
The post Friday Jobs Roundup appeared first on Slaw.
It is with a heavy heart that I share the news that our beloved Slaw founder, Simon Fodden, passed away on February 10th, 2018. Simon had been fighting cancer for the past four years, and died surrounded by his family at the Kensington Hospice in Toronto.
Simon’s accomplishments were many. From the family’s eulogy, he was beautifully described as “law professor and associate dean of law, author, blogger, founder/publisher of slaw.ca, lifelong learner, eclectic collector of interests and curiosities, aesthete, fashion plate, craft beer lover, foodie, charming conversationalist, music lover, technofile, web designer and all-around early adopter of innovation. Online . . . [more]
The post Simon Fodden (1944 – 2018) appeared first on Slaw.
After many hundreds of Friday Fillips, it’s time to call it quits. It’s been an honour and a whole lot of fun to be able to punctuate your weeks in this way.
I thought I might spend a moment or two here looking back at the Fillips published at this time of year.
- 2005 Fillips hadn’t begun then, the year Slaw started. But my announcement of a holiday break contains a nice set-break quote from a band I (still) like that serves to round out a decade of Fillips too: “Thanks for the applause, we’ll take a pause for a
. . . [more]
The post The Friday Fillip: My Last Friday Fillip appeared first on Slaw.
We love to rank. High and low, higher and lower yet: Social standing — whether “brow” or “class” — seats in the coliseum, credit cards, professors — whole universities1, come to that — even art2. You’ll know high art by where you find it. It’ll be in museums and grand concert halls, which are created to define high art. There’ll be a salon des refusés perhaps, for the near misses. And then — maybe even daubed on the outside of the same walls — there’s ephemera: pop, journalism, illustration, the work of hacks, jills and jacks . . . [more]
The post The Friday Fillip: Let Me Illustrate appeared first on Slaw.
There’s a kind of pleasure you can get from contemplating an unopened parcel. I think of it as the “brown paper packages tied up with strings” phenomenon. Of course part of the delight is in the anticipation of what might lie within, the knowledge of (and control over?) a coming discovery or surprise, as though you’d called a time-out after the set-up and before the punch line of a joke in the way the best comics can work their timing.
There’s enjoyment, too, in attending to the wrapping itself, I find. That’s easy when the wrapping is artful in some . . . [more]
The post The Friday Fillip: The Surface of Things appeared first on Slaw.
I don’t know about you, but I often like to bang on things . . . make a noise, as rhythmically as possible. Not very, in my case. Drumming. It’s the old heart beat thing, I suppose, which leads to dancing (the reason, so the joke goes, that Baptists — or is it Methodists? — are opposed to pre marital sex1). Staying still was a hard-learned lesson for most of us, I’d wager. And staying quiet even harder. If you have hung around little children for any length of time, you’ve probably been entertained by a kitchen concert . . . [more]
The post The Friday Fillip: Bang On appeared first on Slaw.
I once threw a book across the room in annoyance and disgust. I might have done it more often, I suppose, were it not for my dubious but stubborn position that meaning can be had from almost all prose. But at that moment Derrida defeated me, I recall. It’s no secret, and presumably no shame, that I prefer the analytical school to the post structuralists, when it comes to philosophers. Clear writing seems … better writing.
(I pass over the argument that it’s hard — perhaps impossible — to tell us something new in “clear writing.” That “clarity” is bred . . . [more]
The post The Friday Fillip: A Very Very Important Small Book of Rights and Things You Are Free to Do appeared first on Slaw.
We tend to repeat ourselves. We like doing that. Perhaps because if “it” was good, we’d be crazy not to want “it” again. After all, as Voltaire said (though he laid it off on a “wise Italian”), better is the enemy of good. So why risk loss, when the gain promised by repetition is assured? And, too, there’s something about the fact of repetition itself, regardless of what the thing is that gets repeated, that is pleasing, soothing: a child being rocked, jiggled gently — or a heart beating again and again and again . . .
Things can go . . . [more]
The post The Friday Fillip: Lather, Rinse, Repeat appeared first on Slaw.
I’m lucky enough to have experienced what might have been the sweet spot of airline travel. I started flying — well, being flown — back when DC-3s were semi-pressurized and loud as all hell, and though I was young enough to be captured by the excitement of it all, I wouldn’t have hung in there if things hadn’t improved. And boy did they improve: Good cabin pressure, longer hauls, lots of attentive service, and casual trips up to the flight deck for a chat with the crew. The thrill was still there and to it was added the luxury of . . . [more]
The post The Friday Fillip: This Is Your Captain Speaking appeared first on Slaw.
I confess: I have never read the big whale big book. Sorry, Herman. I’ve just picked up the usual tid-bits, like everyone else, the “Call me Ishmael” snippets, as it were (and, whether I might have wished it or not, “Starbuck”). I have, though, read Melville’s massively shorter Bartleby the Scrivener, and I invite you with this Fillip to do the same.
Never fear. It’s not a gateway drug leading inexorably to your being caught up in the Moby tale. It’s just a short story of stubbornly puzzling import. Oh, and it’s told by a lawyer about a man . . . [more]
The post The Friday Fillip: Passive Aggression (And Other Kinds) appeared first on Slaw.
I’m a big fan of Hayao Miyazaki’s movies. Yes, I’m an old man and these are animated films for children. And that’s okay, because both of the defining features of these movies can be the source of much pleasure for adults. Animation, especially the hand-drawn cells that come out of Miyazaki’s Studio Ghibli, lets the filmmaker do whatever he can imagine; and for me that’s one major value in art — its ability (I’d say “duty”) to take us to places we cannot go in our short, gravity-bound, lived lives. Then, to enter into the world of children is to . . . [more]
The post The Friday Fillip: King of Dreams appeared first on Slaw.
I’ve just come back from Germany, where I got a close-up view of the social and logistical problems in that country arising out of the refugee crisis. This is not the place, and I don’t have the skills, to go into those problems; but one small aspect of the situation struck me, the matter of translation.
I speak enough German to get by, but even so, there were plenty of moments of mutual incomprehension, as I struggled for le mot juste or even just a mot that would do. Imagine how difficult it must be for Syrians in Germany. Arabic . . . [more]
The post The Friday Fillip: How Do You Say It? appeared first on Slaw.
Limber up your ears, because here comes Brian from Melton with his Suffolk accent, not always intelligible to those who are strangers to the “south folk” who reside in the bottom of the big bump on the right side of England. But it’s worth the effort to understand Brian, because he’s funny. And he’s made even funnier by this delightful animation by Steve Kirby. It’ll blow you away.
Together, Brian and Steve tell the story to a phone-in radio show of Brian’s now 94 year old mother, Doris, who may well have predicted the 1987 hurricane when the BBC failed. . . . [more]
The post The Friday Fillip: If the Cuckoo Don’t Crow appeared first on Slaw.
This is the last episode in the serial publication of Measuring Life, a crime novel. As ever, it is followed here by a reference to some material on the internet that might interest or amuse you.
The whole novel may be had as a PDF file for the next few weeks. Should you read the book entire, you will see that it bears the marks of a work of fiction written in weekly instalments. No “do-overs” were possible; culs-de-sac entered in week 9, had to be backed out of in week 23; many openings were drawn never entered; and . . . [more]
The post The Friday Fillip: Epilogue appeared first on Slaw.
For the prior thirty weeks the Friday Fillip has been be a chapter in a serialized crime novel, usually followed by a reference you might like to pursue.
Next Friday’s Epilogue will be the last of these instalments of fiction.
Both this chapter of the book and the whole story up to this point can be had as PDF files. You may also subscribe to have chapters delivered to you by email.
MEASURING LIFE
Chapter 30
Pluck
On Saturday, two days after the shootout at Backton Aggregate, Nancy Tomasini knocked on Rangel’s door. Rangel answered it . . . [more]
The post The Friday Fillip: Pluck appeared first on Slaw.
For the next while the Friday Fillip will be a chapter in a serialized crime novel, usually followed by a reference you might like to pursue. Both this chapter of the book and the whole story up to this point can be had as PDF files. You may also subscribe to have chapters delivered to you by email.
MEASURING LIFE
Chapter 29
Lawyer, Guns, and Money
The odour was complex, an olio of scents now uncommon. All the woods: sweet cedar, rosewood with its attar, dark and mossy mahogany, cherry, walnut. Then the fungal, metallic tang . . . [more]
The post The Friday Fillip: Lawyer, Guns, and Money appeared first on Slaw.
For the next while the Friday Fillip will be a chapter in a serialized crime novel, usually followed by a reference you might like to pursue. Both this chapter of the book and the whole story up to this point can be had as PDF files. You may also subscribe to have chapters delivered to you by email.
MEASURING LIFE
Chapter 28
Keep Calm and Carillon
“Quite the firecracker, our Nancy,” said Alan Bodley. He and Rangel were walking down Orchard Street, away from her office and toward the rise where Millbrook Lane cut across.
A . . . [more]
The post The Friday Fillip: Keep Calm and Carillon appeared first on Slaw.
For the next while the Friday Fillip will be a chapter in a serialized crime novel, usually followed by a reference you might like to pursue. Both this chapter of the book and the whole story up to this point can be had as PDF files. You may also subscribe to have chapters delivered to you by email.
MEASURING LIFE
Chapter 27
Vectors
As it happened, Mitman didn’t get around to snooping until the next day. Sanders’ office had been on the second floor of what everyone called the Base Building, although Base Metals, the original . . . [more]
The post The Friday Fillip: Vectors appeared first on Slaw.
For the next while the Friday Fillip will be a chapter in a serialized crime novel, usually followed by a reference you might like to pursue. Both this chapter of the book and the whole story up to this point can be had as PDF files. You may also subscribe to have chapters delivered to you by email.
MEASURING LIFE
Chapter 26
Getting the Lead Out
“We’ve got a pretty good picture of it now,” said Alan Bodley. There was coffee in china cups. Bodley put his down on the saucer with that gentle click that . . . [more]
The post The Friday Fillip: Getting the Lead Out appeared first on Slaw.
For the next while the Friday Fillip will be a chapter in a serialized crime novel, usually followed by a reference you might like to pursue. Both this chapter of the book and the whole story up to this point can be had as PDF files. You may also subscribe to have chapters delivered to you by email.
MEASURING LIFE
Chapter 25
Finding Out
Dominic Archer looked to be one of the hearty sort — tall, plump, rubicund, moving with a bounce. His bald head shone under the spots in the motorhome like an outsize incandescent . . . [more]
The post The Friday Fillip: Finding Out appeared first on Slaw.
For the next while the Friday Fillip will be a chapter in a serialized crime novel, usually followed by a reference you might like to pursue. Both this chapter of the book and the whole story up to this point can be had as PDF files. You may also subscribe to have chapters delivered to you by email.
MEASURING LIFE
Chapter 24
Pulling Focus
Nancy Tomasini was almost in uniform. But instead of the regulation peaked hat she wore a navy watch cap done up in an accordion double fold. A wind had come up, and some lumpy . . . [more]
The post The Friday Fillip: Pulling Focus appeared first on Slaw.
For the next while the Friday Fillip will be a chapter in a serialized crime novel, usually followed by a reference you might like to pursue. Both this chapter of the book and the whole story up to this point can be had as PDF files. You may also subscribe to have chapters delivered to you by email.
MEASURING LIFE
Chapter 23
The Unbearable Impossibility of Complete Harmony
Rangel woke knotted in the bed sheets, struggling out of a dream in which she was escaping danger through a very narrow passage. She lay there for a . . . [more]
The post The Friday Fillip: The Unbearable Impossibility of Complete Harmony appeared first on Slaw.
For the next while the Friday Fillip will be a chapter in a serialized crime novel, usually followed by a reference you might like to pursue. Both this chapter of the book and the whole story up to this point can be had as PDF files. You may also subscribe to have chapters delivered to you by email.
MEASURING LIFE
Chapter 22
Where Is Everybody?
The sun would rise at one minute after seven on that October Saturday in Backton. But half an hour earlier, Rangel had an applewood fire going in the little fireplace and . . . [more]
The post The Friday Fillip: Where Is Everybody? appeared first on Slaw.
For the next while the Friday Fillip will be a chapter in a serialized crime novel, usually followed by a reference you might like to pursue. Both this chapter of the book and the whole story up to this point can be had as PDF files. You may also subscribe to have chapters delivered to you by email.
MEASURING LIFE
Chapter 21
I’ve Got Your Number
Dennis Abudo was waiting for her when she got to the hospital lobby. He put down the Cottage Life magazine, gathered up the detritus from his coffee, and dumped it . . . [more]
The post The Friday Fillip: I’ve Got Your Number appeared first on Slaw.
For the next while the Friday Fillip will be a chapter in a serialized crime novel, usually followed by a reference you might like to pursue. Both this chapter of the book and the whole story up to this point can be had as PDF files. You may also subscribe to have chapters delivered to you by email.
MEASURING LIFE
Chapter 20
Worlds of Speculation
They were civilized about it. The right amount of please and thank-you. Calm. Prompt with the reassurances. Clearly, Rangel thought, some brains were at work here. It made her suspicious.
“Coffee?” . . . [more]
The post The Friday Fillip: Worlds of Speculation appeared first on Slaw.
For the next while the Friday Fillip will be a chapter in a serialized crime novel, usually followed by a reference you might like to pursue. Both this chapter of the book and the whole story up to this point can be had as PDF files. You may also subscribe to have chapters delivered to you by email.
MEASURING LIFE
Chapter 19
A Crow’s Eye View
A small town early on a fine fall morning. Friday.
A lone dog barking sporadically somewhere out past the abandoned Bethel granary. Wanting in. Wanting out. Either way pointing up . . . [more]
The post The Friday Fillip: A Crow’s Eye View appeared first on Slaw.
For the next while the Friday Fillip will be a chapter in a serialized crime novel, usually followed by a reference you might like to pursue. Both this chapter of the book and the whole story up to this point can be had as PDF files. You may also subscribe to have chapters delivered to you by email.
MEASURING LIFE
Chapter 18
Snark Hunt
“It’s murder.”
“Take it easy, Nancy. Simmer down.” Ronnie Dabord moved the plastic stirring stick through his coffee in desultory circles.
Tomasini, wired as usual, said in a rush, “Dr. Mukhuti took . . . [more]
The post The Friday Fillip: Snark Hunt appeared first on Slaw.
For the next while the Friday Fillip will be a chapter in a serialized crime novel, usually followed by a reference you might like to pursue. Both this chapter of the book and the whole story up to this point can be had as PDF files. You may also subscribe to have chapters delivered to you by email.
MEASURING LIFE
Chapter 17
A More or Less Random Run
Mitman drove her electric blue truck.
In the passenger seat Rangel had her head still buried in a couple of files, going over things. And over and over . . . [more]
The post The Friday Fillip: A More or Less Random Run appeared first on Slaw.
For the next while the Friday Fillip will be a chapter in a serialized crime novel, interrupted occasionally by a reference you might like to follow up. Both this chapter of the book and the whole story up to this point can be had as PDF files. You may also subscribe to have chapters delivered to you by email.
MEASURING LIFE
Chapter 16
The Morning Aftermath
The Jack Russell, whose full name was Vicar of Swimbridge and who answered, some of the time, to Vickie, would not stop barking. A surly Reg Bettleman hauled his sorry . . . [more]
The post The Friday Fillip: The Morning Aftermath appeared first on Slaw.
For the next while the Friday Fillip will be a chapter in a serialized crime novel, interrupted occasionally by a reference you might like to follow up. Both this chapter of the book and the whole story up to this point can be had as PDF files. You may also subscribe to have chapters delivered to you by email.
MEASURING LIFE
Chapter 15
Winter’s Hem
It had been a tiring day. Most days were tiring now. But the talk of Jared and of arrangements after her death seemed to have taken even more out of her . . . [more]
The post The Friday Fillip: Winter’s Hem appeared first on Slaw.