Travels with floyd

Got milk?

2011-08-30T19:52:00.003-07:00

Nothing like reproducing to remind you that very little separates us from the animals (opposable thumbs, sense of self, reality television, etc.). Pregnancy is Cartesian dualism writ up close and personal - your mind's doing the usual things (barring the odd bout of spontaneous sobbing at particularly touching fabric softener commercials), but your body has gone AWOL and is not responding to orders:

Mind: Okay, time to tie up your shoes!
Belly: HAHAHAHAHAHAHA whatever.
Mind: Where the hell did that come from?!#$#
Floyd: [is late for work]

And then there's labour, where your body completely takes over, chasing your mind into a tiny little dusty corner, where it curls up, shaking, amidst rapidly fading memories of what it's like to be able to go more than three hours without peeing.

A life revolving around instinctual behaviour, bodily functions and satisfying the most basic needs for water, food, sleep and randomly howling at people - never before had I felt so close to my animal sisters. Never, that is, until I found myself breastfeeding in public.

Show-off

I wasn't sure I'd ever be able to - not because I have a problem with public breastfeeding, but because I have a problem with my breasts being public. And for the first few months, feeding in public was a tangle of squawking, squirming limbs and Winnie-the-Pooh blankets. On the one hand, no one made a fuss about it; but on the other, I'm pretty sure it's because they thought I was trying to smother a particularly bad-tempered hairless cat.

Flash-forward a few months - and there I am, sitting at the local coffee/hipster festival with nothing but a baby's head and a successful music career between me and a Janet Jackson-style nipple slip. And, despite my tendency to make everything political (movie nights! family dinners! the food choices of people in front of me at the grocery store!) this particular action wasn't. I was there, boob out in a public place, because at this particular point in our lives, it's the easiest way to feed my child. No bottles, no battles, no cursing the Creator for giving humans a measly two arms...just me and my (no longer fussing) baby, sitting quietly and secretly envying how effortlessly cool everyone looks in their skinny jeans and pink high tops.

Did I offend someone with my public display of lactation? Maybe. But honestly, I barely have the energy to check my pants for spit-up before leaving the house, let alone concern myself with the delicate sensibilities of complete strangers in regard to a completely normal and unobtrusive action. And to be even more honest, people really do seem to have better things to do than get upset about it.

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What a difference two years make

2011-08-28T23:13:00.000-07:00

Whoa whoa whoa...has it really been that long? My dear sweet Blogger, how I've missed you. There's been a giant, B shaped hole in my soul that neither Typepad nor Wordpress could fill.

But it's not like I haven't been busy - why, I've moved twice or thrice, had a couple new jobs, and watched many new exciting television series!

And then there's the dog, and the house, and the kid. No, not a baby goat (not that those aren't adorable because: yes they are) but the fruit of my very own loins. And though I am resisting the urge to be a mommy blogger (and by "resisting" I mean too damn tired most of the time to care about the most recent innovations and debates in child-rearing, like whether allowing your toddler to play with your shoes will result in emotional detachment and/or a lifelong foot fetish*) Little One is going to appear here and there because he's along for the ride now!

*both, although the emotional detachment will be caused by the increasing awkwardness of family dinners once the who and why of all those missing shoes is discovered.

Tina Fey on virginity into one's twenties

2009-10-15T10:40:00.003-07:00

After yesterday's post, this seems serendipitous:

On doctors and lady parts

2009-10-14T19:22:00.002-07:00

Oh oh oh, it's TMI-time, travellers! This post has been brewing and stewing in my brain for a few months now, ever since a fateful day at the walk-in clinic proved to be the third strike against dudely doctors and dudes-who-aspire-to-be-doctors-but-instead-practice-what-is-largely-recognized-as-quacktacular-medicine.

Strike one occurred back in the 1980s when my mom's then-chiropractor responded to her not unreasonable request to examine her 8-year-old daughter's seemingly curved back with "She just has a large behind." Which a) I should be so lucky, b) is creepy and c) is a lazy, gross, patronizing excuse for medical treatment. (For the record, it is not so much the size of behind as the fact that it is constantly parked on the couch that accounts for my still lousy posture. Hey, do I get a pretend medical degree now?)

Strike two was back in the undergrad years, at the university's walk-in clinic:

Me: I'd like to get my pill prescription renewed, please.

Doc: When was your last physical?

Me: I'm a virgin.

Doc: Good for you!

"Good for you!", as if I'd spent the last eight or so years since menstruation fighting off an army of sweaty, shirtless James Masters-lookalikes, instead of being a gangly and self-conscious homebody who spent her spare time reading Stephen King novels and writing terrible poetry about not wanting to be a virgin anymore. "Good for you!" as if virginity was some sort of grand accomplishment and not the inevitable by-product of my particular blend of self-esteem issues, shyness and tendency to dork out to the extreme in front of any boy I liked. "Good for you!" as if 'virginity' is a medical term requiring no follow-up questions and not some sexist and heteronormative social abstract which means different things to different people and exists only in their minds, anyway.

Now that's a rant and a half, but I have saved the rantiest for last! Strike three happened just this summer when I, a grown lady who had spent a good half her life with (to the best of my knowledge) working lady bits, and had yet to cause some sort of international incident or natural disaster with them, went to get my pill prescription renewed yet again. In my mind, I was qualified to a)make requests as to my reproductive needs, and b)receive medical advice in a professional, objective, and non-douchetastic manner.

BZZZZTTT!!!! WRONG!!! At least according to the douchiest of all dudely doctors, with whom I had an unfortunate encounter at the walk-in clinic I was frequenting while trying to find a family doctor in my new town. (Which I totally have now, and she is also a lady, and she is pretty swell).

This guy was such a douche, he earned his own three strikes within our five-minute appointment, for:

1) Telling me that once every two years wasn't enough for women with multiple partners, after I had just told him that I was in a long-term, monogamous relationship ("Whatever, slut!");

2) Looking so pointedly at my (wedding ring-less) hand the whole time that I finally snapped a "I'm married; we don't wear rings", which I hate because a)marriage is a legal relationship and NOT a medical one and therefore NOT RELEVANT to this particular conversation, dipstick, and b)when I have to pull the marriage card it reminds me just how patriarchal and sucktastic a lot of people want marriage to be and means that I am in the presence of someone who is probably against things like same-sex marriage, women's equality, and kittens. Because he is an asshole.

3) After the marriage admission, writes me a six-month prescription, "Since [you've] been such a good girl."

If ever you needed proof that Angry Floyd still has self-control - I am currently blogging about this instead of serving time for "aggravated assault with various medical implements". So there.

Ladies, gents and every in-between? Any douchestactic doctor experiences?

Another female athlete still waiting for my title and estate

2009-02-05T14:09:00.002-08:00

Dear CBC sports,

"Lady" is the formal equivalent of "Lord" or "gentleman". Unless it's made up entirely of British aristocrats, it is a women's sport/event/competition.

Thanks,

Floyd

A gaggle of links

2009-02-04T18:29:00.005-08:00

Update: Had to add this one for all the techies out there - try this for your next office party! (Cake Wrecks)

Couldn't wait until Friday...so much good stuff out there on teh Interwebs.

Guess which political party is arguing against their country's economic stimulus package by measuring it in Jesuses? Contrary to what I say in the comments, Canada's is almost 3.5 Jesuses. Not too shabby! Er...holy?

The dudes' answer to "My Humps". Why I am not watching this show?

Two thousand words on why atheists are (and should be) angry.

Two thousands words on why feminists and anyone who cares about women are (and should be) angry, but maybe also a little bit hopeful.

Two very thoughtful pieces on the Michael Phelps "controversy" - a look at how pot-smoking is worse than rape and what Phelps should have said.

And let's end off with on a personal anecdote - I went to my first rugby practice with a new team this week and totally face-planted in front of everyone. This site makes me feel better.

RELATED POSTS:

Meet the Stupid

2009-02-03T12:39:00.009-08:00

Although the number one spot on the list of movies I hate is clearly, forcefully, undboutedly and angrily taken, it's important to remember that I only saw that particular pile of aardvark vomit within the last year - meaning there was, indeed, a different pile of aardvark vomit in the number one slot (and one before that one, and before that one, and yes my friends it is aardvark vomit all the way down).

Let's see if you can guess what semi-digested mass of termite remains once held the top spot with a simple hint: here's the article that made me think of it in all it's regurgitated glory:

Recruiting men to nursing remains a challenge (CBC)

Got it yet?

Here's another hint:

DeNiro makes a deal with the douchebag, OR
Suggest your own caption in the commments section!

I mean speaking, of course, of the totally irredeemable "comedy" Meet the Parents, which I saw on the plane during one of my frequents trips home from school, and by "saw" I mean "watched the first five minutes with interest and then slowly grew angrier and angrier as the plot unfolded before turning it off and trying to avert my eyes from the other screens lest my rage overwhelm me to the point that I must be tackled and restrained while trying to use the emergency exit at 10,000 feet".

Rather than recap the whole film (because, obviously, I didn't see the whole thing) let me present to you the scene in which two anonymous douchebags come up with the story:

DB1: Okay, so, our main guy, he's gotta be funny. How can we make him funny?Hmmm...He could be well-written and the centrepiece of a clever film? [pause] Naw, that's too hard.

DB2: Let's give him a funny name, like 'Weiner'.

DB1: Naw, too obvious...kay, let's get back to that f***ker later.

DB2: Focker! Awesome.

DB1: Awesome! [high-fives]

DB2: Okay, now we need to give him, like, a funny job. Something really embarassing...like, outhouse cleaner or something.

DB1: Hey, you know what's really funny to my emotionally-stunted mind? When men engage in activities considered by our society to be feminine, which, by illustrating the arbitrariness of gender boundaries and calling into question the rigid social structures based upon these boundaries, challenges my own innate sense of privilege based on my manly superiority to women.

DB2: Uh...what?

DB1: It's totally funny when dudes do chick stuff.

DB2: Yeah! Like, I have this cousin, and he and his wife run a ballroom dance school, and charge like $200 bucks for a lesson and he's always, like, dancing around with women and shit, and I'm like, dude - that's so gay.

DB1: Yeah, like, why don't you just go be, like, a male nurse or something!

DB2: [laughs uproariously] MALE NURSE! That's awesome. You can't make that shit up. I love it.

DB1: Yeah! So this Focker, he's a [giggles] male nurse, and he wants to marry this hot chick, but first he needs to get her dad's permission to take ownership of his property, because it's not like a grown woman is capable of making her own decisions, and would be angry rather than bemusedly tolerant of her father's inappropriate and borderline-abusive treatment of the man that she loves!

DB2: Whu-what?

DB1: Chicks know their place, and let the men duke it out because that's just how we roll.

DB2: Oh.

DB1: And the dad will be super-scary ex-CIA guy, but then he'll totally love sissy shit, like flowers and cats.

DB2: MAN WE ARE GONNA BE EFFIN' RICH!

And don't even get me started on the sequel. For the sake of my blood pressure, I try to pretend that it doesn't exist.

Friday Top Five

2009-01-16T17:50:00.002-08:00

Top video about food that made me hungry and smarter: Jennifer Lee Looks for General Tso (via Pandagon).

Top craft idea that might make me participate in a holiday I normally avoid completely, other than crawling out of my hole to snark at: Anatomically correct heart cutouts (via Craftzine blog)

Top craft idea that I don't really avoid but sometimes participate only grudgingly to but mostly do it grudgingly to it: FSM cookies for the holidays(also via the Craftzine blog)

Top piece on a feminist issue that I hadn't really thought of as a feminist issue and which helped explain why I was always kind of sympathetic towards Yoko Ono and, despite the awesomeness of "Live and Let Die", kind of alternatively underwhelmed and slightly creeped out by Paul McCartney: Cara on Yoko Ono (Pandagon once again).

Top piece of snark: The 50 Most Loathsome People in America: It's a bi-partisan list, with Obama at one end and an (in)famous Republican at the other. Can you guess which one? (via Pharyngula)

And a special bonus item:

Top new saying courtesy of Kanye West.

(Can you work this into everyday conversation? I haven't been able to yet - let me know if you can).

RIP, Ricardo Montalban

2009-01-15T17:46:00.004-08:00

He's been in a lot of stuff, mostly things that I'm too young for (Fantasy Island) or too old for (Spy Kids) but Star Trek II? Just right.

And I still can't watch that ear-weavil scene.

Library Love

2009-01-12T19:21:00.008-08:00

As in, love for the library, not love in a library, because then this would be a completely different kind of blog ("Dear Floyd, I never thought this would happen to me but [...] and then the reference librarian chased us out with an oversized atlas of northern Canada's waterways.")

No, this post is all about how much I love the library that I currently use, the ones I've used in the past, and the concept of libraries in general. Maybe I'm just on a library high because no fewer than five (5!) books that I've wanted to read for a very, very long time (like, maybe even, months!) all came in today and I just wanted to throw them on the bed and roll around with them but that would be gross a)for me and b)for everyone after me. So I didn't do that. But I did look at my bag o' books longingly all afternoon, waiting for the work day to end so that I could take them home and we could be alone...

Ahem. Moving on. Now, I'm not a super spendy (why yes, that is a real word, thankyouverymuch) person in general, but books have always been the exception that proved that I was a big liar. Graduate school was probably the worst time for this, because I spent so much time with smarty-pants academics with offices lined with smarty-pants books that I spent hundreds of dollars trying to look smarty-pants myself ("look" being the operative word, as the academics with their book-filled offices had, in fact, written or contributed to or worked with the authors of many of those books, whereas I mostly bought them, held them tight to my chest, and then put them on the shelf and admired them from afar) on a research topic which I eventually abandoned. (In a completely unrelated bit of information, if anyone's looking for some collections on the public sphere, I can totally hook you up.) It was just so convenient - go to Amazon.ca, click a few times, enter your credit card number and blammo! Brand new box of shiny books to be read once (maybe) and then collect dust on my bookshelf. I felt smarter just looking at them.

Now, film buff that I am, I've still never had this problem with movies. I love watching them, but I've never really owned many, mostly because there's maybe a few dozen movies out that I've actually watched more than once (although what I lack in quantity, I make up for in...a different kind of quantity, having seen The Lion King 30+ times back when it was the only kid's movie we owned when my oldest younger brother was...er, younger, not to mention having seen each of the Star Wars trilogy 25+ times). There's even fewer books I've read more than once, and yet I have such a hard time parting with them that I've finally realized the real solution is to just stop buying them.

And now, thanks to the power of the Intertubes, getting books from the library is almost as easy as buying, plus free, so if you include the work I have to do to earn money to buy books (which I do now, because that is how I roll) then the library is easier than a frat boy during rush week. (I actually have no idea what rush week really is, but I think it has something to do with frats, so that's my joke and I'm sticking to it.) Instead of going to Amazon, I go to the library site, look up the books I want, place a hold, and then go pick them up at the library when they're ready. IT IS SO AWESOME I WANT TO BARF, THAT'S HOW AWESOME IT IS. I pick out books, and the magical book fairies find them and email me and I come get them and sign them out and it's all FREE FLOYD AND LIBRARIES BFFFS 4EVA.

Of course I guess that makes me a business-hating, economy-killing, tree-hugging, freeloading socialist. So be it. They can have my library card when they pry it out of my cold, ink-stained fingers. Of course, then I'd just go to the customer service desk during operating hours and get a new one. And maybe browse the magazine racks at the same time, suckas.

Bountiful polygamy charges

2009-01-07T13:05:00.003-08:00

It's about freakin' time. I never quite understood why they could be breaking the law so blatantly with no consequences. Time to give up your harem, boys! And by "boys" I mean "dirty old men who abuse their power as religious leaders to coerce young women, who would otherwise be involved with people their own age, into having sex with them, and by "harem" I mean "women and girls who have been raised to believe they are sub-humans whose sole purpose in life is to provide household, sexual and child-rearing services to dirty old men".

Random acts of wingnuttery

2009-01-07T11:06:00.010-08:00

Via Pandagon, I found this site which details email forwards that get sent around by in wingnut circles. It's funny and terrifying at the same time (kind of like the movie Jesus Camp, where the Jeebus-fuelled antics of youngsters had me both cackling hysterically and hiding curled up in the fetal position, quaking in fear, under a blanket - sometimes both at the same time, like with adorable Levi with his spectacular rat-tail and precocious charm and public-speaking skills...which he used to preach fire and brimstone to his fellow pre-teens) in the way that only demonstrations of extraordinary ignorance coupled with insane amounts of hate can be.

"I may need a haircut, but you're going to hell!"

I've been on the receiving end of only a couple of these types of wingnutty emails (none that were nearly as bad as the ones on this site, thanks be to the Spaghetti Monster), but the few times it happened it's always a bit awkward. They only come from one family member (and people who know me can probably guess which gun-totin', rural-living', government-distrustin' one that is) who also happens to be someone I love, respect and admire. So what do you do when they display random acts of wingnuttery?

I've mostly taken the same stance with these types of forwards as the ones that tell me to Forward This to 10 Friends and Make a Wish and it Will Come True But If You Don't Your Hair Will Fall Out and You Will Get Scabies (Whatever That Is), or Bill Gates Will Donate $$$ If u Forrward this MessAge, or DANGER! my neigbor's SON/daughter/Goldfish was killed/raped/eaten because of HOT COFFEE EXPLODING IN THE MICROWAVE/Perfume bottels with DATE_RAPE druggs/HE tasted GOOD - ignore them.

This policy has worked pretty well for me in terms of emails, but it's often harder in person. I love me a good argument, but sometimes the time is just wrong, like the very uncomfortable Christmas dinner a few years ago where the host (a lovely man who is wonderful in many many ways) started in on the rabbi who had requested a menorah be included in the Christmas display at the Seattle airport, and how this was proof of the WAR ON CHRISTMAS!!! and part of the larger WAR ON AFFLUENT, STRAIGHT WHITE PEOPLE (PARTICULARLY MEN)!!!

Unfortunately, we were just about to eat, so I didn't have any delicious turkey on my plate, so I was actually listening to the conversation instead of stuffing my face and thinking "mmmm...tuuuurkey", and as a result I jumped in with "They could have just put up the menorah" at which point the conversation went south very quickly, and ended with the assertion that since Christian soldiers fought in WWII, Jews can never complain about anything, ever again.

Well, I couldn't think of which one of the approximately two hundred million things that are wrong with that statement to address first, then his daughter managed to change the subject, and the turkey was awesome, and we're still close with them, but boy did that memory stick out in my mind when I saw that website.

How about you guys? Any random acts of wingnuttery you've had to deal with?

My brain is fried

2008-12-30T15:25:00.002-08:00

Christmas is kind of a mind-numbing time of year for me already, so the addition of a sinus cold and a dreary, slushy city has done me in, thinkin' wise. In the meantime, here's some stuff from smart people:

From Pandagon - Part two of Dennis "Why yes, I am twice-divorced, what does that have to do with the quality of my marital advice?" Prager's piece on wives "submitting" to their husband's sexual "needs" gets taken apart by Jesse. You'll laugh, you'll cry, you'll hurl. And no, it's not satire, though you'll desperately wish it was.

From Failblog - Step One: Cut a hole in the box. I can't tell if this accidental or not. The facial expressions are priceless, either way.

Tributes to two awesome women that we sadly lost over the holidays: Eartha Kitt and Majel Barrett-Roddenbury (please ignore the terrible Star Trek puns and the fact that they overlook Barrett's role in the original Star Trek pilot, where she played the second-in-command to Captain Christopher Pike, until some network exec noticed that she had a vagina and would, like, menstruate all over the controls, and then probably made some "red alert" crack that he would later repeat over and over again to his wife to the point that she wondered whether to stab or poison him.)

Dinosaurs discuss zombies versus vampires.

Sarah Haskins of Target:Women made my holidays that much brighter with her piece on my absolute least favourite holiday advertisements - "Ladies like shiny things!" aka jewelry ads.

Ah, the meds are wearing off. Back with more later.

Snow survival tips for the uninitiated

2008-12-16T20:33:00.008-08:00

So, you're a Wet Coaster, and yet - snow. INCHES of snow. Yes, plural. Which has melted and then frozen again, creating this product called "ice", instead of just melting and going right into the ground where the green grass and flowers grow.

I feel your pain. I too was once brutally exposed to this thing called "winter". Repeatedly. Sometimes on purpose. And yet, I survived. And you can too, if you follow some simple survival tips!

Tip #1: How to walk on an icy sidewalk
This is all about centre of gravity. You need to keep your weight over each foot, eyes on your path,taking small deliberate steps and do not, under any circumstances shuffle your feet. If you are doing it correctly, random passerbys will think you are an elderly man walking through a minefield. They may point and laugh, or perhaps offer to walk you across the street.

Careful. CAREFUL! That's it...

Tip #2: Driving in snow
Don't.

Okay, fine. You may have to get somewhere (work, school, driving random passerbys to the hospital after they point at you, laugh and slip, cracking their tailbones) and the buses are probably a)running late and b)being driven by people who also don't know what do to in the snow.

The weakest of the herd are left to succumb to the cold.

So if you must - go slow. No, slower. No - SLOWER. Theeeeerrrrre. Thaaaaaat's iiiiiiit. Be as gentle on the pedals as a newborn baby...that you step on...

Tip #3: Dressing
In the temperature adjustment system, the people need to present two separate, yet equally important groups: the layers who protect against cold and the accessories that keep in the heat. These are their stories. (dunhk duhnk).

Toques may look dorky, but you know what else looks dorky? WHEN YOUR FROSTBITTEN EARS FALL OFF. Put it on. And the scarf (extra long so it can wrap around your face) and gloves and at least an extra two layers under your jacket. (bomp bomp)

So that's it! Three simple ways to survive the unbearable cold snap MINUS temperature that has afflicted the Garden City, even if it lasts for, like, a whole TWO WEEKS...or more! (duh duh).

A tale of three Punishers

2008-12-09T17:10:00.003-08:00

One summer, my older brother worked at the local video store, and would come home from late shifts with as many seven-day rentals as we could watch before his next shift, which meant staying up all night with our shared love of Arnold Schwarzenegger, Jean-Claude van Damme, Steven Seagal, and all the other heavy hitters of the “martial arts and/or-guns and/or plot plus lots of explosions” genre of the 80s and 90s.

This is also known as the greatest summer of my life.

It was also the summer that introduced me to the action stylings of one Dolph Lundgren, whose career can be accurately summed up here, or humourously summed up here. And it just so happens that, among my favourites of his many movies is the original Punisher. (Yes, I have more than one favourite Dolph Lundgren movie. Red Scorpion and Universal Soldier are the others, in case you were curious. And I know you were.)

It’s a dark movie - so dark they dye his hair black, which makes the normally blond, blue-eyed Swede look like he has, like, consumption or something. But he’s supposed to be dead inside, anyway (figuratively, not literally) (although a zombie Punisher would just be so much awesome that my head would asplode) so it only adds to the gloomy, morbid atmosphere of the film. Which is essentially about a guy who (spoiler? Maybe? Although you probably know this already if you’re at all interested in the film) takes the law into his own hands after his family is killed by the mob. Literally into his hands, with fists and guns and explosives and swords and knives. And sometimes his feet too. Awesome.

So I was more than a little excited when I was wandering around some European mall in 2004 and saw posters with a dark-haired Thomas Jane and the familiar skull symbol. This excitement was tempered half a second later when I realized that right next to that poster was one with John Travolta (entry #2 in “embarrassing crushes from Floyd’s youth”. Entry #1 can be found in this post). But still, I held out hope, even in the face of the dismal opening and turrrrible reviews. After all, I have liked unpopular, ill-received films in the past.

I finally rented it a few months ago, mostly fueled by the knowledge that a third one was in the works, with every major player (actors, director, writers) from the 2004 version unceremoniously dumped. I needed to know – was it really so bad?

Let me put it this way - if one measures the quality of a movie as being inversely related to how angry it makes me when I so much as think about the fact that it even exists, then the 2004 version of The Punisher is the Worst. Movie. I have ever seen. (I am not even going to link to its IMDB page, out of spite.)

The director, Jonathan Hensleigh, apparently blames this on having only $15 million and 50 days to shoot the movie. The director is an idiot. The problem with this movie is that it forgets the very simple, but necessary, formula of any action/revenge movie:

WBGD<WGDTBG. In plain language: what bad guys do must be exceeded by what gets done to bad guys. If the bad guy kicks a puppy, he should be hit in the face with a bat.If he attempts to rape your best friend and then insults and threatens her, he should be shot. If he kidnaps your daughter, you should slaughter of all his minions, accept his challenge to a knife fight - even though you know he will cheat - and then impale him with a steampipe with such force that it propels him backward into a live generator. It's simple math, people.

(Note – I’m about to get SPOILER-RIFFIC right here. It shouldn’t matter to anyone, though, ‘cause if you’ve seen the movie you won’t care, and if you haven’t seen the movie, do not make my sacrifice in vain by going out to rent it now).

So when the 2004 movie had the Punisher’s ENTIRE EXTENDED FAMILY - down to his second cousins and third aunt twice removed, including young children - BRUTALLY MURDERED ON-SCREEN, it upped the ante significantly in terms of what the bad guys did. Even by action movie standards, these were terrible, terrible men, whose actions went well beyond the comfort zone of what the audience expects. (Aside – and spoiler - Stallone did this with the most recent Rambo – having the bad guys be really, terribly graphically, evil - but then he spends the second half of the movie disposing of them with arrows, a machete and 10 glorious minutes behind a Gatling gun. Again - just do the math.)

So of course, when the Punisher gets hands on a member of the mob family behind this, surely he must exact a terrible, bloody and graphic revenge, right? Right? RIGHT?

Well, only if by “terrible, bloody and graphic revenge” you mean “pretend-tortures him with a popsicle in a scene played for laughs”. And it certainly isn’t what I meant.

Okay, but that guy was just small potatoes, right? And the play-torture was a way to get him to come around to the Punisher’s side, so that the Punisher could get really awesome, gruesome revenge on the real bad guys, right?

Sure, if by “awesome, gruesome revenge” you mean “tricks villainous John Travolta into killing his equally villainous wife and best friend.” Again – no, not what I meant. Tricks the bad guy to kill the other bad guys? Tricks him??!! Dude, this movie is not called The Trickster. It is not called The Manipulator. It is not called The super-dangerous guy who has a lot of guns and righteous anger, but would rather fool people into committing violence than resort to violence himself. Honestly, Dolph Lundgren would have turned in his grave. If he were dead. (Which he isn’t, since he’s currently in pre-production of The Expendables which features a cast that gives me a gore-gasm just reading it: Sly Stallone, Jason Statham and Jet Li.)

Not to mention that, just in case we forgot that these guys had massacred dozens of innocent people right before our eyes, we are reminded of how bad they are halfway through the film when they corner one of the Punisher's neighbors and tear out his facial piercings. Oh no! Shooting children point blank was one thing, but now you've gone and pulled out some guy's nose ring. On purpose!

So when the Punisher drags John Travolta behind his car and sets him on fire in the end, it's just waaaaaay too little, way too late. He should have done something like that to EVERYONE. For Travolta, it should have been even worse. The Punisher should have ripped out Travolta’s still beating heart, and stuck a popsicle in there, and said “I always knew you were cold-hearted” and then beaten him nearly to death with his own heart and then taken the popsicle out and eaten it to keep him cool as he burned Travolta alive, piece by piece, on a bonfire made up of the variously mutilated bodies of all the bad guys who worked for Travolta. And then he should have stabbed him in the eye with the popsicle stick. If that’s too much for you to stomach, Jonathan Hensleigh, than maybe you shouldn’t have made the bad guys do such terrible things. Maybe they could have just threatened his dog and stomped on his azaleas. Then your stupid movie would have made sense.

Man, I am just getting angry all over again.

So it was with a little bit of nervousness that I dragged DD to the theatre last night for Punisher: War Zone. I was hopeful, what with the new cast, including the awesome Ray Stevenson (if you see one new series this year, see Rome), Dominic West (if you see two new series this year, see Rome and The Wire) and Julie Benz, who, strangely enough, plays essentially the same role in this film as in the most recent Rambo (and, if you see three new series this year, see Rome, The Wire, and Dexter). The director, Lexi Alexander (Yes! A woman! Who made a film! Her vagina didn’t get in the way or anything!) was a bit of an unknown factor…

…but not any more. Because the movie? Is flat out awesomeness from start to finish. There are stabbings, and slashings, and explosions, and fisticuffs, and so many bullets that even John Woo is all “What? So many bullets!!”. The bad guys are bad, and they do crazy bad things, and then the Punisher kills them in new and interesting ways, and at the end of the day WBGD<WGDTBG and all is right in my world.

If I had to pick one word to describe my reaction to the film, it would be gleeful. This movie made me so goddamn happy, I just wanted to fly down to L.A. (the city) and give L.A. (the director) a big ole sloppy kiss for bringing some cheer to my holiday season. Unfortunately, with the movie not doing so well at the box office (I guess not that many of us want to start the holiday season with exploding drug-running parkour guys) a sequel is likely out of the question - although if Twilight is any indicator, even surpassing all box office expectations isn’t good enough for a female director to keep her job. Sounds to me like the studio heads need a little...punishment.

The wacky, wonderful world of Canadian politics

2008-12-02T17:59:00.005-08:00

I’d been working on a lengthy, verbose and profanity-ridden post about the single most exciting thing to happen in Canadian politics since that time I played touch rugby on the Hill with Peter Mackay, but then I realized that the entire situation, like most things in life, is best summed up by a single moment from The Simpsons:

And then I continued with my regularly-scheduled verbosity, regardless.

I mean, seriously – Harper goes in with the promise of a more open, cooperative Parliament, ready to work on the pressing economic concerns of Canadians, and he follows through how? By proposing to limit the rights of civil servants to strike and women to sue for pay discrimination, and trying to effectively gut his opposition financially*, of course. What, you were expecting actual substantive solutions to an impending crisis?

But what an amazing moment – not only for the unprecedented levels of cooperation between three different parties, but also for the incredible learning opportunity this presents. I am far, far from an expert, but all those years on the Hill taught me a thing or two, and still the nuances of this situation are fascinating, and not just for giant dorks like me.

And, unlike what Harper and the Conservatives are claiming, toppling the government and setting up a coalition in its stead is not at all undemocratic. It’s a very intentional feature of our Parliamentary system, and would feature a government that, with the Green Party’s support, represents the majority of Canadian voters (almost 8.5 million between the four parties, compared to the Tories’ 5.2 million).

Some people may make a big deal about the Bloc having signed on to support a Liberal/NDP government (the term “unholy alliance” being used) but I don’t personally have a problem with this. The Bloc are legitimately elected Members of Parliament, and while I may not support their ultimate goal, they are representing the interests of their constituents, as they should. This is how Parliament works (or is supposed to work), and Harper himself has counted on their support in the past to keep his government going (and to try and form a new one – hey, it’s just like now! Only with the roles reversed! Almost like the shoe is on the other foot! Or the pot calling the kettle so power-hungry that they’ll get into bed with socialists and separatists!)

Predictions? I think Harper will ask the GG to prorogue until January, and that she will take his advice. From what I’ve read, constitutional experts disagree on the most appropriate course of action, and there’s no direct precedent, but I think she’ll want to take a moderate path and give the government a chance to present their budget.

I also think the coalition will take down the government on the budget. The Conservatives are in a bit of a no-win situation here – you simply cannot please everyone with your budget, especially people who are looking for ways to criticize you. Add in a recession and you are screwed (pronounced “scru-ed”). However, Jean can decide to dissolve Parliament, or decide to let the coalition form a government, or she may decide to take all the party leaders into her office for a stern talking to (“Can’t I ever leave you kids alone? I go to Eastern Europe for a week and all hell breaks loose. Now, you all start behaving or I am going TURN THIS COUNTRY AROUND RIGHT NOW.”)

Whatever the outcome, though, it’s nice to see the top headlines a) about Canadian politics, b) interesting, and c) in a “this is history-making and thought-provoking” way, not a “oh man, what are those idiots up to again” way.

*As for the ranting about how the Bloc, Liberals and NDP are being whiny, greedy babies throwing tantrums at being cut out of the public trough: vote subsidies encourage voter turnout, represent voters proportionally and are a progressive way of ensuring a healthy democracy by keeping multiple parties competitive. Not bad for $30M every couple of years, eh?

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Friday Top Five: Favourite Fight Scenes

2008-11-27T18:03:00.005-08:00

If you know me/have read this blog for a while, then you know my deep, unabashed love for big, loud, violent movies. (And the shirtless men who often inhabit them...but I'm getting ahead of myself!) So there's no need to ask where I was Wednesday night - obviously, I was at the opening night of Transporter 3.

Which was alright, and far superior to Transporter 2, but not really up to the original's balls-out, non-stop mayhem. But it did get me thinking of some of my favourite fight scenes, and what made them so good.

Overall, I think the main elements of a good fight scene are:

The match-up: has to be challenging, yet attainable. If the good guy's clearly much stronger, than there's no suspense. If she/he's clearly outmatched, then there's too much suspension of disbelief required when the good guy triumphs. And QUIT IT with the convenient placed sharp objects. Victory by impalement is SO 1995.
Creativity: There are thousands of fight scenes put to film every year, according to a number I just made up. What makes this one different? How is it interesting? Does Jason Statham take his shirt off? are just some of the questions a good fight choreographer should ask.
Visuals: It's the ultimate tease: the big set, the powerful stars, the dramatic tension, the impending carnage that you know is about to come to a climax...only to have the moment totally ruined by blurry, shaky camera work and incessant cuts which the director thinks makes his film look "gritty" and "realistic" but actually makes it look "blurry" and incomprehensible" and, in my cause, "nauseating". Instead of a big finish, I am left puking in the bathroom. F*** you, Jason Bourne.

There's plenty more, but my lunch break is almost over, so here they are: five of my favourite fight scenes. Feel free to share your favourite fight scenes in the comments!

5) The Fellowship vs. a bajillion orcs and a cave troll
There's plenty of action in all of the LOTR movies, but this scene to me has a much more immediate and dramatic feel, with the fellowship forced to come together in battle for the first (and (SPOILER) last time), forging bonds of heart and strength and steel against the terrors of the infinite darkness that...juuuuust kidding, I love that cave troll.

4) Nicholas Angel and Danny Butterman vs. the Sanford Neighborhood Watch Alliance
If you haven't seen this movie yet, go. Now. No, seriously, go. I'l wait. [whistles]
If you have, then take a few minutes to enjoy this unparelled scene of gunplay and mindless violence that manages to be both an excellent action scene while parodying action scenes.

(This one can't be embedded - watch here)

3) The Bride vs. the Crazy 88

I knew this was one for me when the media reports first picked up that parts of the film had to be shown in black in white, because there was too much blood. AWESOME. It's 15 minutes of pure, visceral eye-candy, with multiple bad-ass women and 88 wild and crazy guys who get sliced and diced like it's discount day at RonCo.

Check it out here.

2) Neo, Trinity and many, many guns vs. hapless security guys, a SWAT team and various office building architectural features.

My friend Megan and I actually saw The Matrix three times at the Roxy, and the second two times were exclusively for this scene, which we affectionately dubbed "sexy gunfights in leather!". We would even chant it in hushed voices as the scene neared, something I'm sure the other patrons really appreciated.

1) The Transporter - Jason Statham and a vat of oil vs. a dozen bad guys
Cheesy, soft-core innuendo aside - this is actually an excellent scene, with intricate choreography, plenty of creativity, and beautiful shots. Of Jason Statham's toned and oiled-up abs...olute knowledge of martial arts techniques. Er, yeah. That's the ticket!

Friday Top Five

2008-11-21T20:53:00.002-08:00

Top news story: Secretary of State Clinton.

Even if I didn't admire her, I'd be happy with this decision - at the very least, it should mean Amy Poehler returning to SNL for guest spots.

Top way to waste time: Assembler.

This simple little game about moving green crates around is addictive. Whoever solves the level with all the round crates, please give me a clue, 'cause I've been stumped all week.

Top embarrassing dad moment:

B.C. NDP house leader and middle-aged white guy Mike Farnworth using the word "bling" during question period. Stay tuned for next week when NDP leader Carole James scolds the Premier with a sassy "Oh no you di'int".

Top source of schadenfreude: Brokers with hands on their faces

Top photo: the one where Floyd finds her soulmate

Chuck Norris can and should roundhouse-kick himself in the face

2008-11-20T16:58:00.003-08:00

I’m not going to link to Townhall, where this was posted, for a number of reasons (not wanting to boost traffic to their particular brand of unabashed pseudo-journalism being, surprisingly, secondary to how goddamn buggy their site was), so if you want to read the whole thing, you’ll have to use your google-fu. But here’s some highlights from Chuck Norris's recent column (yes, he has propelled himself into the realm of conservative punditry thanks only to his resurgent internet fame and cancer-curing tears) on the national backlash after Proposition 8 was passed in California:

There were many of us who passionately opposed Obama, but you don't see us protesting in the streets or crying "unfair." Rather, we are submitting to a democratic process and now asking how we can support "our" president. Just because we don't like the election outcome doesn't give us the right to bully those who oppose us….

And what exactly is this bullying that’s going on? Only the most terrible kind:

You even can find donor blacklists online. The lists include everyone who financially backed Prop. 8 -- even those who gave as little as $46 -- with the obvious objective that these individuals will be bantered and boycotted for doing so.

Yes, refusing to give money to individuals and organizations (and engaging them in a series of witty quips and catchy one-liners? Like, “Hey, if God wanted two men to get married, he would have made Adam and Steve!” “Well, if God wanted me to roundhouse-kick you in the face, he would have given me a foot, and you a face!” “Well, you’ve got me theOOOMPH”) is apparently a form of bullying. I guess I bullied about 17 different homeless people on my way to work, not to mention a Domino's, Subway and bookstore-that's-really-a-front-for-marijuana-dealing.

In his defense, he’s not the only one pushing this particular argument - that protesting Prop 8 is EVEN MORE WORSE UH HUH than initiating, organizing and funding a campaign aimed devaluing and defaming a particular group of people's lives, relationships and families - but in his…opposite of defense, just because lots of people say something doesn’t make him any less of a douchebag for saying it.

Because having your rights taken away by your fellow citizens in a referendum is not the same thing as having the other guy win the presidential election. Repeat after me: An election is not the same thing as a referendum. The former is the process by which citizens choose the representatives who will carry out legislative duties, the latter is, for all intents and purposes, a legally-binding poll of self-selecting individuals. Just because they both involve checking a box doesn’t make them morally equivalent actions. Representatives are chosen by the majority because that's just. Laws aren't chosen by the majority because that's just stupid.

In fact, the whole reason we have elections is so we don’t have to have referendums. We elect people to make laws so that they aren’t enacted by freakin’ popularity contest. The masses, we are not infallible - we’re irrational, prone to knee-jerk reactions and most of us lack the resources, knowledge, or desire to actual educate ourselves on anything beyond the current number of Brangelina’s kids. (Seven, apparently.) Not to mention an inherent flaw in the system, which Chuckie unsurprisingly highlights unironically:

What's wrong with this picture? Lots.

First, there's the obvious inability of the minority to accept the will of the majority.

THE STUPID! IT BURNS! Hey, I know, let’s have a referendum on whether people named “Chuck” can own property. I call shotgun on all the Walker, Texas Ranger blooper reels! Sorry, pal, but it’s the will of the majority! Oh, and also, women*, black people, First Nations, all other visible minorities, non-landowning males, and persons with disabilities, you may start quaking in fear….now.

And then there’s this jem:

I agree with Prison Fellowship's founder, Chuck Colson, who wrote: "This is an outrage. What hypocrisy from those who spend all of their time preaching tolerance to the rest of us! How dare they threaten and attack political opponents? We live in a democratic country, not a banana republic ruled by thugs."

Expressing outrage at people who voted to take away your rights is “hypocritical”? Being upset with business-owners who took your money knowingly and then donated it to a campaign to take away your rights is “hypocritical”? Protesting against a business or institution that contributed hundreds, thousands, or millions to devalue your family and relationships, all the while claiming they were about protecting families and relationships, is “hypocritical”?

I can’t believe the entitlement these people have. “I’m allowed to do whatever I want, say whatever I want, and invest lots of time and money into pushing the agenda that I want, with no repercussions whatsoever! If you complain, or criticize, or push back, you are a hypocrite!”

You know – ‘cause it’s not like the fundies ever boycott or protest anything. Oh wait, but they’re doing it for Jesus**, so it’s okay.

Better start now, Chuck - the line-up for roundhouse-kicks to the face is starting to get pretty long.

*Yes, I know women aren’t technically a minority. That doesn’t stop dudes (and self-hating non-dudes) from continually trying to stomp on women’s rights through popular vote.

**That would be Republican Jesus, of course, not the actual “Love God, judge not, blessed are the poor” Jesus.

RELATED POSTS:

Keith Olbermann on Prop 8

2008-11-15T10:09:00.004-08:00

Thanks to Michelle for flagging this - another excellent take on Prop 8, this time by Keith Olbermann.

This whole thing is déjà-vù all over again, eh, my fellow Canucks? You just want to tell the fundies to tilt their heads north and observe our still-stable society which somehow failed to crumble and dissolve into panic and random man-appliance weddings in the street.

RELATED POSTS

Dan Savage vs. Tony Perkins on Anderson Cooper

2008-11-12T19:53:00.005-08:00

Sometimes insomnia is it's own reward - yesterday's sleepless night meant I was up to see Dan Savage be his usual awesomeness on The Colbert Report.

He's equally as quick-witted in person as he is on the page - just check out this video of him taking on (heh) Tony Perkins of the insidiously named Family Research Councilwhich I'm not going to link to because it's one of those organizations that uses warm fuzzy words like "Family" "Values" "Life", etc., because "Douchebag fascists who want all up in your bedroom/uterus research council" wouldn't fit on the bumper sticker.

Also - bonus points if you watch the video right to the end, for the "Oh, snap!" moment. My exact word were, "Oh, you just got told, Tony Perkiiiiins!" Leave yours in the coments for double-plus fun.

Off to the races - Liberally

2008-11-12T18:53:00.003-08:00

I suppose that a month is a perfectly respectable mourning period, especially when you're announcing that you're not running.

Former premier of New Brunswick and ambassador to Washington Frank McKenna? "Clean up your own goddamn mess - I'm getting too old for this shit."

Former deputy prime minister John Manley? "I am also getting too old for this shit. And by too old, I mean too rich from my many high-paying jobs on boards of directors."

Grassroots phenom Martha Hall-Findley? "I'm too young for this shit. And by shit, I mean the crushing amounts of personal debt required to finance my previous leadership run, which - although awesome and inspiring to many young people, including an obscure and particularly foul-mouthed blogger - was kinda sorta the opposite of profitable."

Power broker and new MP Gerard Kennedy? "I am also too young and too broke for this shit. And - seeing as my one power-brokering moment was to throw my support behind Dion, thus winning him the previous leadership race - way, way unpopular. Like, atomic wedgie levels of unpopular."

So who does that leave us with? Would you be terribly shocked if I told you...the two frontrunners from the last convention who were overcome at the final stage by the Kennedy-Dion deal?

And some other guy, too...but dude, who are you kidding?

RELATED POSTS

We'll always have Lansdowne Park

From the Archives - What a difference four years makes

2008-11-06T22:02:00.002-08:00

Going through the dusty interweb archives and came across a blog entry reaction on the last U.S. election. Hope y'all savour the difference as much as I do.

Now that my mandatory two-week waiting period is up

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My country 'tis of thee

Stupid arguments against electoral reform - Part III - "It doesn't produce stable governments"

2008-11-05T21:59:00.006-08:00

Here's fun with semantics - people throw the word stability around a lot when talking about governments, when what they really mean is "majority". See, the fun thing about governments in Canada is that if you're the leader of your party, and you have a majority government, you can do whatever you want.

Legislatively, that is. You pick a cabinet minister, you tell him (or, 29% of the time if you're Harper, her) what bill you want introduced, you have it put on the House schedule, your party members vote for it, in the House and in committee, and ta daaa! Buffalo wings are now the fifth major food group. Of course, the PM has to have been around enough to have stacked the Senate with his appointees, or he can try and persuade opposition senators to his way of thinking, with many buffalo wings.

And this is what people mean by stability. No, not buffalo wings - the ability of a government to pass whatever legislation it wants, with only the threat of losing a future election to rein it in. And of course, the wisdom, foresight and good intentions of government members. So yeah, the threat of losing future elections.

Without this ability, the reasoning goes, the opposition will prevent bills from passing, effectively neutering our virile, manly and turgid governments. And with our current partisan system, it does kinda work that way. The Parliamentary system was conceived as adversarial, with an opposition holding the government accountable (the main vehicle of this being Question Period, or, as it is currently known, recess ("I'm rubber, the Honourable member is glue.." "No, I'M rubber, THAT Honourable member is glue...")).

And, thanks to three consecutive minority governments, we've had approximately 17 elections this millenium, and a 2000% increase in the use of the word "dysfunctional" to describe something other than the Spears family.

While the thought of going to another election in the next year makes me want to vomit (or maybe that's just all the buffalo wings I had), it's hardly a solid argument against proportional representation, for several reasons:

1) The "norm" of majority governments means that the parties aren't inclined to cooperation, preferring instead to engage in political (and, possibly, literal) dick-measuring;
2) If the first-past-the-post system isn't producing majorities, which it is already predisposed to do, then people are really divided on which party to support, then the answer is for the parties to work on not being so sucky, and not rewarding them for their suckiness with an artificial majority;
3) These shitty governments were produced by our current system - using them as examples of the ills of proportional representation is like microwaving tinfoil to prove the evils of the oven;
4) And, similar to Part II of this series, it assumes that "stability" (as defined by the ability of the govern to legislate as they see fit) it always preferable to "instability". Again - if that were the case - then we'd be better off under some form of dictatorship.

So here's the thing - proportional represenation may very well produce more minority governments. But only if that's what the electorate wants. And at the end of the day, that's the whole point of democracy - to get whatever government we want. Not for the government to get whatever it wants.

And maybe - just maybe - if minority governments become the norm, we'll see more groundbreaking policies developed through collaboration, and less "No, YOU'RE glue to infinity plus one nyah nyah nyah nyah boo boo."

RELATED POSTS

Ice cream and victory

2008-11-04T21:02:00.003-08:00

They both taste awesome.

Obamalution

2008-11-04T12:13:00.005-08:00

Your thousand words for the day.

And a few more:

Oh please, oh pretty please, with a cherry and chocolate sauce and sprinkles and coconut flakes and peanut butter on top, please let me have a delicious ice cream sundae tonight.

While I'm watching Barack Obama be elected President.

Get your own damn uter...er, coffee

2008-11-03T12:54:00.005-08:00

UPDATE - Per the discussion in the comments, here's some info from the National Advocates for Pregnant women on drug use during pregnancy. There's a fact sheet that refers to studies (although it doesn't name them! drat! My search continues!) and many articles that deal with how the "crack baby" myth is used to criminalize poor, and mostly African-American, women.

Back when I tried to keep my raging radical feminism separate from my raging political radicalism, I kept a separate blog called The Fetal Position where I angrily told theocrats, fundies, bitter folks young and old, be-penised or vagina-ed, to keep their grubby, most likely improperly-washed hands off and get their own damn uterus.

It’s also where I wrote this post, about an article from the Washington post detailing a report put out by the CDC in response to the U.S. ranking second to last in infant mortality rates in the developed world (in your face, Latvia!). According to the article, the report advised that all women who had functional ovaries should consider themselves ‘pre-pregnant’, whether they were planning on getting pregnant in the near future or otherwise, and therefore abstain from drinking fun things, eating fun things, doing fun things, or thinking of themselves as human beings entitled to have any enjoyment in their lives.

Of course, if you actually read the report, unlike me, then you would have known that it said a lot of things, including that the general health of women of child-bearing age could be improved. (Or, as John McCain would say, “health”.) But "Study gives detailed overview of complex issue with reasonable, science-based suggestions towards a solution" doesn't make for as catchy a headline as "Forever Pregnant".

Now, the CBC’s not going that far – but nothing exacerbates my Monday morning grouchies quite like two separate “Pregnant women who do X are bad!” stories. Don’t gain weight! Don’t drink coffee! Or else you are a TERRIBLE MOTHER who will probably want to have, like, ONE GLASS OF WINE, and should you suffer the tragedy of a miscarriage it will probably be YOUR FAULT because you went by a Starbucks and you INHALED.

Honestly, these types of reports are double-plus badness – another item on the already weighed-down shoulders of women, whose behaviours during pregnancy seem to be responsible for every possible aspect of their child and its development, from physical appearance, to character, to abilities and more (“damn you, slice of brie my mother had three months into her pregnancy, for preventing me from being a gorgeous, six-foot judo expert and concert pianist who solves crimes on her spare time using her hyper-sensitive sense of smell!”); PLUS another weapon for every self-righteous douchebag out there who gets off on judging a woman’s “morals” by her appearance, since nothing says irresponsible slut like a visibly pregnant woman, right douchebags? (Douchebags: “Nice sweater vest, man-hater.”) Better put her in her place, that uterus-having, life-creating, “I’m a human being with the ability to make decisions about what’s best for me, my body and my family”-thinking incubator.

Now, I’m not saying that research on healthy pregnancies isn’t important – it’s just frustrating that the studies (and the media coverage) focus on taking away stuff from women, rather than giving them stuff, like, say, comprehensive pre-natal health care. Because that would be SOCIALIST, and socialism is EVEN WORSE than having the second-highest infant mortality rate in the developed world. Or something like that.

Things that keep me up at night

2008-11-02T11:05:00.004-08:00

I remember watching the results of the last U.S. election and getting that sinking, disbelieving, mind-reeling feeling that comes when mass stupidity is combined with raging hatred and widespread corruption.

For, as much as Canadian election results may frustrate me, I've never doubted their legitimacy. That is - it has never once occurred to me that a Canadian election has been rigged. I may not like our current PM, but I have no doubt he came by the position honestly, and with many sweaters.

Not so in the U.S. And with election day in two freakin' days, it actually keeps me up at night that the Republican party's total disregard for the will of the voters will manifest itself in enough voter purges, campaigns of voter misinformation, fear-mongering and vote rigging as to steal the election once again.

So, here's to you, Canada - at least your politicians are honest.

Well, more honest.

Well, less likely to try and rig elections.

Well, less likely to succeed at rigging elections.

Well, less likely to have the resources, including vast numbers of blindly-partisan assfaces who will commit election fraud.

Well, more likely to have elections when it's cold and there's hockey on.

UPDATE

Nobody in the history of the world has deserved a kick to the box more than this lady.

Fun with Fractions: Cabinet Shuffle Edition

2008-10-30T11:54:00.007-07:00

Previous: 7/31=23%
Current: 11/38=29%

Stephen Harper: “Okay, I’ll add more women to my cabinet, but only if I can add almost as many more dudes.”

Had he kept to his previous cabinet size and appointed women instead of men:

11/31=35.5%

Believe it or not, my beef isn’t with Harper on this one (well, not completely). He’s not the one out there trumpeting the increased representation of women in his cabinet. He and his party are very open about their stance on women’s equality, which is that they don’t give a flying prairie oyster about it.

But at the very least, maybe media outlets could do a little math (gasp!) to put things into context. Pretty please?

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Extreme Makeover: Cabinet Edition

Stupid arguments against electoral reform - Part II - "It's too complicated"

2008-10-30T11:53:00.006-07:00

Okay, straight up – BC-STV is more complicated than first-past-the-post. There’s rankings, and transfers, and mathematical equations, oh my! But my issue is with the argument that this automatically makes BC-STV a less desirable electoral system.

It’s based on the premise that simple is always preferable to complicated. Now, simplicity may be a virtue when it comes to some things (the instructions that come with IKEA furniture), but it may not be the best course of action in other cases (“Cancer, eh? Chemotherapy is awfully complicated. Here, have a milkshake.”)

The fact is, there are plenty of times in life where we opt for complicated over simple because it gives us better results. It may be something as important as cancer treatments, or as simple as what’s for dinner (“Hmm, pasta with pesto and sautéed vegetables? Naw, I’ll just eat flour out of the bag.”)

But Floyd, some people might say, simple might not always preferable to complicated in every circumstance, but it is when it comes to electoral systems.

And to them, I say – well, why stop at first-past-the-post, then? There are, after all, even simpler systems out there, and by that logic, they are better. After all, with first-past-the-post, there are multiple names on the ballot – wouldn’t it be simpler to just have one? Or, keep the multiple names, but skip the whole “counting” part.

Again, it comes back to the same point – it’s not what’s simpler or more complicated, but what gets the best results. So if someone tells me, “The best results are declining voter turnout, governments elected by less than 40% of voters, millions of people feeling their votes are wasted”, then I tell them I guess they’ll want to stick with first-past-the-post.

But, when someone tells me, “I’m not voting for BC-STV, it’s too complicated!”, my only response is, “I’m voting for BC-STV because first-past-the-post is too simple to produce truly democratic results that accurately reflect the diversity of the electorate.”

And then I direct them to this cartoon which explains BC-STV. Simply.

Related Posts:

Stupid arguments against electoral reform - Part I

From the Archives - October Rocks

2008-10-28T17:54:00.003-07:00

In honour of my favourite month - a blast from my blogging past.

October Rocks

UPDATE - thanks to Scooter for the heads-up on the current weather conditions in O-town.

The Laws of Traffic vs. the Laws of Physics

2008-10-27T10:57:00.004-07:00

As I subtly alluded to in a previous post, one of the many things that I am still readjusting to upon my return to Vic City is the complete and utter faith pedestrians have here in the reflexes, attention span and general good-nature of drivers.

Living downtown means I don't do a lot of driving, which is probably a good thing, because years of living in O-town means that I am simply not used to pedestrians taking their lives into their own hands like this. Maybe it's the close proximity to Montreal (where, according to a recent study of my own anecdotal data and third-hand horror stories, being hit by a car while on the sidewalk is the second-leading cause of death, behind only choking on a frozen Joe Louis). Maybe it's the fact that crosswalks were obscured for half the year. Maybe it's the fact that nobody walked anywhere (which was certainly true based on my three years of living in the 'burbs, where DD and I were often the ONLY pedestrians, especially in the ginormous strip mall which was, in all fairness, actually three strip malls in a row, but still, people, do you really need to drive 150m from the Loblaws to the Wal-Mart? Do you? Really? You do? Yeah? ...okay, then.)

And certainly, my few brief months in France left me no more trusting in the driver-pedestrian relationship, either. (Although it did leave me a few pounds heavier and with a good appreciation of grocery store wine and unpasteurized cheeses, so we'll call that one a win.)

Now, let me be clear - it's not that I dispute the legal right-of-way of pedestrians. It's just that I put my faith in the laws of physics over the laws of traffic. The latter gives pedestrians right of way. The former allows me to predict the winner when "metallic structure moving at high velocity" takes on "soft, fleshy object". And this certainly dictates how I pedestrianate...pedestriage...pedest...walk around.

And, again, I do quite a bit of this. And Vic City has crosswalks EVERYWHERE. And when I come to one, I continue to be amazed at the consistency with which even three lanes of traffic will all come to halt when I approach the street. Quite honestly, it freaks me the hell out. How did they know I wanted to cross the street before I even made it to the crosswalk? Who are these people? WHY YOU WATCHING ME?????

So, it's been an adjustment from both sides. Yet even as I continue to get back into the "pedestrians ARE going to step out right in front of you, so you better start braking as soon as you see one, just in case" style of driving, I hope I never slip into that category of pedestrian. After all, I remain a soft, fleshy object.

At least until I save up enough for that custom-made titanium exoskeleton. Then it's jaywalk city, my friends.

Stupid arguments against electoral reform - Part I

2008-10-23T21:30:00.004-07:00

We in Soviet Canuckistan like to act all shocked and dismayed at the flawed U.S. system, shaking our heads sadly at the poor dears who, in 2008, elected a president who earned 47.9% of the popular vote, compared to his opponent's 48.4%. Many's the person (my person included) who has sadly and smugly sighed that the U.S. isn't a real democracy.

Well, the joke's on us, and has been on us a long time. At least Bush got 48% of the American people to vote for him. Our current Prime Minister was supported by just over a third of Canadian voters - 37.6% - with voter turnout at an all-time low.

And in all fairness to the man in blue, he's not the only PM to win this way - in fact, he's the norm, not the exception. In 2000, Jean Chrétien earned 3% more of the popular than Stevie this time around, but this gave him his third majority government. Go back to 1951 - 41.4% of the vote meant a majority of seats for Mackenzie King - although his own wasn't among them, having lost in the riding of Prince Albert (shout out to my peeps in P.A.!).

Now, maybe this doesn't bother some people...but it pisses me right the hell off. Like a lot of people, it strikes me as fundamentally undemocratic that the preferences of voters get so distorted through our system. And, on a more basic, kindergarten-esque level - it's just damn unfair.

Now 57% might be enough to elect a a government, but not enough to change the way we elect that government. But here's the thing - in just under seven months, the people of Beautiful British Columbia are getting another crack at changing the way our electoral system works.

I'm going to come right out and say it - I want this. I want it so bad that not only can I taste it, I have entire imaginary meals out of proportional representation topped off with a collaborative politics dessert, and topped with a tall, refreshing glass of increased voter engagement. Mmmm...democraticalicious...

But - and this astonishes and angers me - there's voter turnout sinking like a stone, antagonistic partisan politics that take the 'us vs. them' mentality to new heights of middle school cliqueness, (if middle schoolers took out ads trashing about each other on national TV), with so many orphan voters and wasted votes - and some people are absolutely fine with this. The chance for change is coming soon and they're not going to take it.

After thinking about it a bit (specifically, the time between performances on So You Think You Can Dance Canada), I came to a conclusion about the best, and easiest way, for me explain why electoral reform is so awesome that it makes my heart develop many boners. I'm going to start adding to the list of reasons I've heard against electoral reform, and take each of them, one at a time, out into the back alley, and kick its teeth in.

And by that, I mean, I'm going to carefully and thoroughly examine it for validity, soundness and accuracy...

And then kick its teeth in.

But not until after So You Think You Can Dance Canada.

You keep using that word. I do not think it means what you think it means.

2008-10-21T09:36:00.004-07:00

There's some terms out there that get so horribly misused I almost want to take out restraining orders on their behalf against the general population. Political correctness, for one (poor dear) Begs the question, for another. And unique, that which is one-of-a-kind, without equal, endlessly saddled with useless superlatives...listen, people, something is either unique or it's not. Your friend is not VERY unique. Your idea is not REALLY unique. Your band's sound is not SORTA unique. And your child is not TOTALLY unique - she's unique, sure, but just like EVERY SINGLE OTHER PERSON IN THE FRAKKIN' WORLD, and I don't care how well she finger paints.

But as much as the use and abuse of such terms tickles my grouchy bone, at least they're ACTUAL terms. Unlike certain other terms which are totally, completely, and without question MADE-UP because actual language doesn't reflect the fantasy world their users have concocted in their head. Sincethese terms have no fixed meaning, sincethey do not refer to an actual, specific thing, they are little better than fancy swears, multi-syllabic slurs that signify an excess of opinion in comparison to actual knowledge. (...don't look at me like that!)

However, as most of these are politically-loaded (the terms that one makes up when one cracks one's knee against that stupid support under one's dining room table for the UMPTEENTH time notwithstanding) the one tiny silver lining on the vomit cloud is that their use, while telling you nothing about the subject in question, tells you plenty about the speaker.

For example: "Partial-birth abortion." means "I somehow believe that women who want abortions wait until the last possible second. Why? I don't know. Maybe pregnancy is really fun? Maybe they just didn't notice? Maybe they were too busy washing their hair and talking about boys? Maybe they want the largest possible fetus to sacrifice to the secret cabal of aborto-feminists that runs the world so that now men have fewer rights than women, even though all the legal, financial and economic evidence points to the opposite? How am I supposed to know? Bitches be crazy."

"Slut." Sars at Tomato Nation says this better than I ever could.

And the one that is currently a hot topic in Vic City,, due to recent events:

"Judicial Activism", which means "I don't like this ruling, but I don't have the basic legal knowledge or intellectual standards to try and understand the judge's decision, therefore I am going to make a values-based argument against what I see as the outcome of that decision - that people are setting up a tent city in Beacon Hill Park - and fan the divisive flames of manufactured outrage, rather than dispute what is essentially a narrow legal decision that a municipal by-law forbidding the erection of temporary shelter in public parks when a)sleeping in public parks is not illegal and b)there is a vast and recognized shortage of shelter beds, violates section seven of the Canadian Charter of Rights and Freedoms which guarantees life, liberty, and security of the person. Because that would take, uh, effort. And brains. And a desire to be constructive and help solve a difficult, frustrating and tragic problem, rather than complaining that liberal elites and smelly street people are ganging up on me like a bunch of meanies."

FYI, Michael Smyth. Pass it on to your buddy Ian, too...maybe he'll calm down if he knows those "softheaded liberal activists" exist only in his mind...

We'll always have Lansdowne Park

2008-10-18T16:11:00.004-07:00

Oh, Stephane (whose name is spelled with an accent, I know, but I am too lazy to figure out how to provide one). You may not remember me (In fact you probably don't). It was almost 10 years ago now, and hundreds of young women (and men) just like me have come and gone. I, a lowly House of Commons Page, and you, the nebbish yet persistant Quebec lieutenant in Chretien's cabinet who kept me up all night...

...with the Opposition's filibustering of your much-maligned Clarity Act.

Oh, my dear, the memories from all those months around the House. Remember that time when you were on the MP team that played the pages, and we won? That was totally sweet. I scored the first goal and wrote a poem about it that was read into the record and then Peter MacKay, who was totally the handsomest (as in: "only handsome") MP asked me for a copy and...No, no, this is about you. You, who are equally at ease at the head of a federal party as you are hustling along the pitch in your matching green jersey and shorts. Well, maybe not equally.

Now, I wouldn't say this about just any leader of Canadian federal political party but...I like you. I really, truly, like you...as a friend. Well, acquaintance. Well, person who brought you water before your speeches...a couple of times. (And beat you at soccer). But that's not the point! The point is - why am I saying this? Why now, after so many years? Because you dear, sweet, ridiculously intelligent man...it's over. It's really, truly finally over. Who ever thought you'd make it as far as you did? But you just couldn't win over the hearts of Canadians from that tall, dark and sorta-handsome-but-those-dead-eyes-and-that-cold-smile-are-too-freaky-for-him-to-really-pull-it-off man. It's not you, it's them.

Well, it's sorta you.

But don't let that keep you down. Take heart in your many friends - all of whom are now secretly vyying for your job - and enjoy your last stretch as leader. Go for broke in Question Period ("When will the Prime Minister answer the question - what do kittens taste like?"). Play some soccer. I'll even let you win this time.

Adventures in Lotus Land - Of Bottle Returns and Homelessness

2008-10-18T15:28:00.004-07:00

Well, Double-Ds and I have been in town for over three months now, and it's been a mostly smooth transition for me back into the Vic City groove...with a few notable exceptions. Many of these have been fermenting in my brain, so expect later posts on them (if I'm not in jail because these freakin' pedestrians DO NOT LOOK BEFORE THEY STEP OUT INTO THE ROAD and with all of the elderly drivers here not to mention the ROWDY TEENAGERS and DRUNKS and PEOPLE WHO TALK ON THEIR PHONES do you really want to PUT YOUR LIFE INTO THE HANDS OF A COMPLETE STANGER'S REFLEXES although thankfully for you mine have been honed by non-stop Rock Band sessions which is seriously THE BEST GAME ON EARTH).

One area that makes us sorely miss O-Town (and Ontario in general) is liquor stores. In the big province, it's still a provincial crown corporation, and boy, is the LCBO a yuppies dream. Big spacious stores, attractive colour schemes, a gift section, free glossy magazine with recipes and pretty pictures. Together with the Beer Store (which is basically every beer-lover's fantasy - a building that's 1/4 open space and 3/4 fridge) they dot the Ontario landscape, beckoning to thirsty people with their size, cleanliness and consistent pricing which includes taxes right on the shelf tag.

A couple of years ago, Ontario also got on the bottle deposit bandwagon - for alcoholic beverages only. Now, this was actually a bit of a pain for the DD and I, because I, as a good little west-coaster, have been recycling since utero, and therefore needed no incentive to keep containers out of the garbage other than the feeling of satisfaction and smug superiority that comes with practicing the three Rs. Still, we dutifully stacked our empty booze holders in the garage, and packed them away with us to the beer store when we when to pick up our next case. There, we would wait in line to return the empty bottles and get the little ticket stub which was immediately put towards purchasing full bottles - thus completing the circle of life.

So it was a bit of a shock when we went to our yuppie wine store in downtown Vic City and, rather than a friendly greeting and recognition of our civic mindfulness, we were awkwardly given a flat and a wine crate and - I kid you not - asked to leave the store to sort them. Yes, leave the store, crouch over on the sidewalk, and rummage through our empties like (and if you are from this city, have been to this city, or know anything about this city then you know how this ends...) street people.

Because it seems that - in all my years away - recycling empties has gone from the noble task of suburbanites and high school sports teams to a dirty thing that only the pariahs of our beautiful city participate in. And, since it's now a task of the "undesirables", the business who must, poor dears, interact with these ruffians have NO OTHER CHOICE than to make the entire process as difficult and humiliating as possible.

And why not? This is, after all, the city which has bravely sought to tackle the tragic, complex and difficult question of homelessness, and the implicated issues of addiction and mental illness, by passing random by-laws which are so blatant and short-sighted as to fall short of being "band-aid" solution - these, my friends, are "little pieces of tissue that guys put on their face when they nick themselves while shaving" solutions. Like the genius one back when I was in high school which a bunch of us learned about while waiting for the crowd to disperse after watching New Year's Eve fireworks downtown and a couple of cops came up to us and told us to stop what we were doing (and we thought they were kidding so they had to repeat themselves that) sitting on the sidewalk was illegal. And, of course, the next big one which was famously struck down just this last week - the "Oh, you have no where to sleep and it's cold and raining? Screw you!" by-law.

Not that I have all the answers (well I do, but it involves people diverting resources for the good of their fellow citizens with noting but the warm fuzzy feeling that comes with being a decent human being in return, which makes me a socialiest/commie/terrorist bastard, I guess), but it's amazing what 2 minutes hunched over a cold sidewalk pawing empty bottles does the ol' empathy gland.

Nerve centre? Cortex? Empathy cortex...yeah, that sounds right.

Wait - so, pumping out kids isn't the healthiest thing in the world?

2006-12-27T13:43:00.001-08:00

This just in from the land of the obvious - larger families are harder on the parents' health than small ones.

I'll wait while you fetch the smelling salts.

[waits]

Ha ha, just a bit of drollness in keeping with the absolute hilarity that anyone ever doubted that having zero control over reproduction is bad for women. From the article:

The researchers, from the University of Utah, analysed nineteenth century data from the Utah Population Database.

They found that the couples had an average of eight children each, but family size ranged from one to 14 or more children.

The data showed that the more children a couple produced, the higher their risk of early death.

The situation was worst for women, because they were affected by the physical costs of bearing the children. [emphasis mine]

Are you listening to this, Jim-Bob and Michelle?

Decemberween Round-up

2006-12-22T18:15:00.001-08:00

Having just handed in my last paper of the term yesterday, I'm now trying to make up for the many weeks (and months) of neglect that most other non-school-related parts of my life have been suffering. Such as: talking to friends/family; drinking; watching season 5 of Xena; reading for pleasure; catching up on holiday cheer; successfully waging war on Christmas with wishes of 'Happy Holidays' (wishing people to be happy? Over the holidays? What an evil, oppressive sentiment! Time to go back to my original saying of "Shove a snowball up your a**!" Yes, much better.); drinking (the second one's a pre-emptive drink - it's only been one day, give me some time!) and finally, commenting on a few of the awesome and awful things that have been going around:

Item the first: Ironwoman sent me this vid a while back - coincidentally, the day myself and a fellow grad were discussing this exact topic - we laughed our collective asses off and raised our glasses to toast the destruction of the patriarchy (a fine toast if ever there was one). As much as this particular text is pretty funny, there's still an element of truth there as any woman who's worked in a male-dominated field will probably tell you. Like, say, being a political assistant who has to deal with smug little boys in expensive suits explain Parliamentary procedure to you incorrectly - and then smile at you smugly when you point out they're incorrect like a bunch of freakin' smugwads...you know, if I just had to pick a random example.

Item the second - don't know if this made the rounds outside the merry land of Blog, but my current academic institute was a hot topic for December, when the student union voted on a motion to deny support to anti-choice student groups, either through funds or use of space. Had a lively discussion in my class the next day about how I am ABSOLUTELY 100% SUPPORTIVE of this decision. FACT: CUSA is not the student government or the university government. FACT: A loss of $250 and a couple of spaces on campus is not an attack on free speech. FACT: The student union should stand up for the rights of students; groups that want to make 100,000 Canadian women into soulless murderers, groups that think the intelligence, humanity and morality are only carried on the Y chromosome, groups that would lie, threaten and manipulate women out of their rights, these groups have no place being funded or in any way supported by the students' union. Students shouldn't be supporting groups that then use the money to actively attempt to strip them of their rights; anti-choice groups deserve as much funding as KKK, Nazi or anti-LGBT groups. If they want to spout their hateful bullshit in the open air, they can pay to photoshop their own "OMG, look at this 8-week aborted fetus, yes, it DOES TOO have fingers and toes and weighs 6 pounds at 8-weeks, you baby-murdering whore!" photos.

Item the third - Apropos of nothing - Green Christmas this year, much like almost every single year of my child and no year of my adulthood. Save us Al Gore!

Item the fourth - How to sum up the movie (and, I'm assuming, book) Eragon: "Man, I hate being a teenaged-boy! I wish I lived in a different place, and was 17 going on 21, and had my own dragon that only served me, and magical powers, and a hot girl who was totally into me, and like, fought sorcerers and stuff...that would be soooo awesome."

That is all - happy holidays to you and yours!

Fear of cooties now extending to adults

2006-11-29T06:28:00.001-08:00

WHO. ARE. THESE. PEOPLE. ! ?

Alright, so you've got an administering pandering to the fundies, depriving teenagers of accurate sex-ed information, leaving the USA with developing-country rates of teenage pregnancy, encouraging the spread of STDs and who knows what other consequences when you OUTRIGHT LIE to people instead of giving them the facts.

BUT now that's apparently not enough for them. They're not satisfied with lying and endangering teenagers - they want all those young, hot, single adults to keep in in their pants/skirts and stop having all that haawwt sex that makes those fundies green with envy...er, filled with righteous anger.

Listen, sex-haters - sorry that your sex lives are nothing but a endless stream of of awkward, embarassing, semi-consensual fumbling with all your clothes on and an angry sky God watching, but stop trying to make the rest of us suffer.

A much better article on this here.

The Choice of a New Generation

2006-10-30T03:14:00.001-08:00

Hey y'all,

Like a lot of folks out there, I'm knee-deep in school and sinking fast...Those of you in school know what I mean, those of you being productive citizens will remember what I mean, so blogging has been a distant memeory for the past month. However, there's a couple of articles that have been stewing in my brain for the past couple of months, and in between bouts of drunken rage at The Man (and also The Man) I've been putting some specific thoughts together on the continued attacks on reproductive rights in the US and around the world.

What's gross and hateful and disgusting is that the fundies hide behind "Won't somebody please think of the innocent blastocysts!" when really, they're not just against that mystical "9 months minus a day" abortion that all women secretly long to have. They just don't see why should women have any reproductive rights at all. Not medical abortion, not preventative birth control, not anything. Because, after all, woman are here for one reason and one reason only - to be passive vessels for manly essence as decided by ~~men who could never get anyone to bear their children voluntarily~~ God.

Hat tip to Courtney who sent me this link which introduced me to that Kah-razy Karacter, Thomas Euteneuer. Like most self-proeclaimed experts on sex, pregnancy and child-rearing, Thommy has experienced none of those things. However, in his capacity as a Catholic priest, he does have the red phone to that big guy in the sky, and therefore feels qualified to dismiss contraception as it "interferes with a woman's duty to produce "a full quiver" of children for God." That's right ladies! In God's eyes, we are all his precious children/children factories. But hey, don't whine to Thommy about it - if God had wanted you to have an autonomous, spiritually-fulfilling life, he would have given you a penis. Duh!

Because obviously women aren't supposed to make reproductive decisions. I mean, when they do, look what happens (hat tip to Christine for the article): the crime rate goes down, thereby robbing fundamentalists of their "oh noes, society is crumbling!!11!1" arguments. And really, anyone who is actually surprised by the fact that women making their own choices is a good thing deserves the heart attack they get when it turns out that those walking sperm-incubators actually have the capacity to make moral decisions.

I mean, really - is this so controversial? Are we really all that surprised that when women can choose when to have children, said children are generally better cared for and less likely to wind up on the hopeless path of crime? And to those fundie groups that wave the strawman of adoption around, let me just point out three things: 1)Yes, there are plenty of families out there looking to adopt - healthy white babies. Which poor, non-white women don't tend to give birth to; 2)There are far more children without families than families looking to adopt; and 3)Denying reproductive control to women in order to turn them into broodmares for middle-class, white, Christian families is a terrifying and inhuman idea.

Anyway - just needed to get that off my chest. Next time I come up for air, I hope to deal with the issue of anti-contracpetion crusaders and how what they really need is a terrific lay with the consenting adult of their choice.

What have they done to my brain?

2006-10-02T09:35:00.000-07:00

Normally a two-week (or more) hiatus would mean that I did something really awesome or exciting...alas, that is not the case. I have been, for lack of a better term "buckling down". "Hitting the books". "Being a goddamn student again". Seeing as I have been coasting along in "adult" mode for almost three years now, shifting back into "student" was is proving to be a challenge - you could say I ground the gears on the transmission of my life, and now mom won't let me take the car out again until I learn to use the clutch of life transitions properly. Or something.

Actually, it's not all that bad, and it's downright enjoyable in certain aspects. But there are definitely some notable differences, such as:

The death of the 9-to-5. Okay, maybe somedays it was 8-6, and others it was 9:30-3:30, but the point is, there was a pretty marked distinction between work and non-work, in terms of time and space. I've been struggling to keep that distinction, and the guilt-free reality TV watching it implies, but we'll see how long that lasts.

Everyday is casual Friday! This one's a bit of a mixed blessing. On the one hand, I love wearing jeans everyday. On the other hand, 2+ years of professional work means I only own two pairs of jeans suitable for non-yardwork-related activities. Not that that would have stopped me as an undergrad, but now I am old and uptight, I guess.

People ask for my opinion! Again, a mixed bag. At my job, it didn't happen much, 'cause quite frankly, my opinion was irrelevant. Which it still is, only now I am being graded on it.

Reading is a chore again! The job years were a book-lover's dream - now I am reading 10 times as much, and (of course) being graded on it. I do actually enjoy most of my readings, though, I just don't like the terror that sinks in when I am halfway through one particularly interesting article and realize that I have 12 MORE TO GO IN TWO DAYS, and that MY NOTES ARE INCOMPLETE and dammit if I have to read one more POST-MARXIST CRITIQUE OF ANYTHING I am going to need a WAAAY STRONGER DRINK, which leads me to:

Drinking in the afternoon is okay again! Is it noon yet? Who cares, nobody's juding you! Rampant alcoholism and unabashed binge-drinking is both accepted and expected!

And on that note - why yes. Yes it is past noon. Now if you'll excuse me, I have a date with 200 pages of feminist discourse and a bottle of dry gin...

For the last time, Donald Rumsfeld, repeat after me: Correlation does not equal causation

2006-09-12T09:05:00.000-07:00

Like all exciting young sophisticates nowadays, DD and I spend many an evening working on our growing collection of puzzles and watching/making snarky comments at the evening news. Despite the somber anniversary which last night's program covered, the snarky comments flew fast and frequently. Not because there is anything remotely snarkworthy about the events of that day - far from it. But because certain individuals (who are either mayo-for-brains doofuses or who believe that we, the audience, are mayo-brained-doofuses, which is pretty goddamn frustrating either way because I don't want to listen to idiots or people who think I'm an idiot unless there is something in it for me, like unintentionally enlightening irony, or a doughnut) who kept on insisting that all the restrictions on freedoms and human-rights-violating laws were totally worth it because, hey, there hasn't been another terrorist attack in the US, has there?

So let's sum up this argument:

1)Since September 11th, 2001, there have been increased restrictions on freedoms.
2)Since September 11th, 2001, there have been no terrorist attacks on American soil.
3) Therefore, increased restrictions have prevented terrorist attacks.

HEY! This is a fun game! Let me try.

1)Since September 11th, 2001, people are more nervous when they fly.
2)Since September 11th, there have been no terrorist attacks on American soil.
3)Therefore, passenger nervousness has prevented terrorist attacks.

Oooh! What else can we dredge up:

2)Since September 11th, 2001, there have been no Twin Towers in New York City.
3)Therefore, the destruction of the Twin Towers have prevented terrorist attacks.

Or:

2)Since September 11th, 2001, I have aged five years.
3) Therefore, aging prevents terrorist attacks.

But wait! Why stop at violating human rights when you can use a false causality to claim responsiblity for any event and thereby justify any action, as outlandish, unreasonable or asinine as it may sound?

1)Last night, my friend gave me $20.
2)My friend was not attacked by a polar bear last night.
3)Therefore, giving me $20 prevents polar bear attacks.
4)No, I'm serious, send me money right now, or you'll be sorry. Polar bears are really vicious.
5)For $50 I'll throw in comprehensive dragon coverage as well.
6)Look, I've been doing this gratis for years, okay? I mean, come on, you've never been attacked by a polar bear or a dragon, have you? So obviously it's because of me.
7)I accept personal cheques.
8)Or doughnuts.

Death by toothpaste!

2006-09-06T05:33:00.000-07:00

So - three flights in two weeks and my brain is about to explode. I can only take so many arbitrary, unfounded and asinine "security measures" before the part of my brain that processes logic and reason (a small node, nestled between the part that produces sarcasm and the part the contains my undying love for Skittles) overheats and shuts down.

So - a bunch of dudes were allegedly going to blow up a bunch of planes using liquid explosives. Now, apparently airline security measures are put in place by people whose scientific knowledge of explosives comes primarily from watching Die Hard: With a Vengeance, and films of that ilk with their totally-stable-separate-but-mix-any-small-amount-together-and-BOOOOOMMM variety of binary-liquid explosives.

But here's the rub - THEY DO NOT EXIST IN REAL LIFE. So what the hell was going in the heads of the people who came up with this "security restrictions"? I imagine it's something like this:

"So, this plot was "near impossible"? Says who? Us administrators of transport security can't listen to a buncha scientists, for goodness sakes! Evolutionary, revolutionary, Big-Banging, godless scientists! What could those four-eyed geeks possibly know about The War on Terror, stuck in their little labs with their little white coats and their little nerdy glasses, just waiting to be wedgied....no, it's far better to just ban all liquids than to have to listen to a bunch of geeks lecture us important people on the actual real threats to planes! We'll just ban all liquids from planes! Oh wait...I think I remember from some high school science class...biometry or something...that people have to drink...okay, we'll ban all liquids except beverages. But those will only be served in cups, not bottles! Because bottles are dangerous. I mean, look at cousin Jimmy - lost two fingers to a bottle rocket!"

I mean - HOLY FUCK. After 9/11, if you wanted to bring an unsealed, unlabelled container of liquid on the plane (like, say, a FREAKIN' water bottle) - they made you take a sip. Ta da! No mysterious liquid here! But now - not only can you not bring ANY liquid of ANY sort into secuirty - you can't even buy a bottle of water at the gate or on the plane. Because, secretly, terrorists have also discovered the secrets of alchemy - sure, Starbucks can sell the contents of a bottle of water - but if they allowed people to take the actual bottle, terrorists could use their evil powers to turn it into - um...that mysterious explosive that only terrorists know about. But fortunately, some quick-thinking security experts foiled that plot by making sure the contents of the bottle are poured into a cup! HA! Take THAT, terrorists! Because even the stupidest morons to ever crawl out of a dog's anus know that you can't perform alchemy in a plastic cup!

Anyway - two last thoughts to wrap this up.

First of all - check out the fabulous piece at McSweeney's, which sums this whole issue up much better than my Skittle-infused brain can (especially the one called Your Flight Three Years From Now - scroll down).

Second of all - I found it very fitting that the hand-drawn signs posted up on the now-dangerous vending machines in the airport read:

Do Not Use

Due Security

We can too handle the truth!

2006-08-17T07:14:00.000-07:00

So there!

Let me start at the beginning - or, at least, this morning when I started watching the three-hour black and white epic that is D.W. Griffith's The Birth of a Nation.

I missed the day in third-year film class where we watched this one, but did the readings on it which basically state that everyone, including the director himself, were of the opinion that this film is waaaay too offensive to be considered for public viewing, and really should only ever be shown to film students and academics (not because they are smarter or anything, but because they will likely be interested enough in the technical aspects of the film to tolerate the mind-blowing repulsiveness of white actors in blackface portraying "renegade negroes" (not my term! From the film!)).

So anyway, this film made it to my Ziplist almost a year ago, and arrived in the mailbox last month, and I just didn't have the heart, stomach or patience to watch a 80-year-old racist civil war epic (call me crazy!) until this morning.

Having already seen Griffith's Intolerance (widely considered the greatest black and white film ever made) (yes, I lead an exciting life) I was semi-prepared for this film. Intolerance lacks the blatant racial discrimination, but does get in a couple of good jabs at the suffragettes (notably the title card that reads "When women cease to attract men, they often turn to sufferage as a second choice" which is, I guess, the 1916 version of "Feminists are just ugly jealous hags! They wouldn't want rights and equality and shit if random men shouted obscene "compliments" about their bodies at them!").

So, just how bad is Birth of a Nation? [Spoiler alert - like anybody is going to watch this movie anyway]. Well, let me put it this way - I'm currently at the scene where the good-hearted Southern girl is being chased by said "white actor in blackface portraying a renegade negro" who wants to marry her. But don't worry! She'll soon jump to her death rather than risk bring dishonour to herself and her family by being contaminated by a filthy coloured man! I only wish I was kidding - I also only wish that I didn't know that the KKK will soon make an appearance as the noble protectors of the "civilized white culture of the South".

Watching this film reminds me of watching Leni Riefenstahl's Triump of the Will (yes, same film class). Strip them both of their political, social and historical context, and they are technically masterful - flawless, innovative examples of filmmaking. But you can't really do that - strip them of all context, that is. Riefenstahl's gorgeous cloud montage set against Wagner's The Ride of the Valkyries is breathtaking - but not enough to make you forget that that is fuckin' HITLER'S plane.

So it's an odd feeling watching these films, because academically, it's like "ooh, check out that cut - wow, the lighting is incredible - omg, that wide angle shot!" but intellectually and emotionally it's like, "WTF, the blacks are evil because they want to be equal?" or "Those thousands of people are cheering for fuckin' HITLER!"

And that, my friends, is why these films, and other works like them, cannot be censored. Do they glorify tyranny, racism, xenophobia? Yes. (Am I currently watching a crowd of men in white robes dispense "justice" to that same white actor in blackface? Yes. Is it disturbing beyond words? Yes.)

These types of works are important not for the messages they seek to transmit, but for the message their mere existence denotes: that there were times and places where the notion of human rights was unheard of, where ignorance and hatred formed the root cause of most opinions, where blatant discrimination was not only tolerated, but openly celebrated.

And that is why censorship is more dangerous than lack thereof - because it is too easy to forget these lessons. When you take books off of library shelves, films out of public display, ideas of of public discourse, you hide a very real, very troubling part of humanity's history. Are there people out there who would watch one fo these films and suddenly be filled with a desire to make their own white robes, or don the backwards swastika? Maybe. But there are far more who will learn the very valuable lesson: "Never again."

Let's all give ourselves a little credit - it might not be pretty, it might be unpleasant, and it might be downright disgusting at times - but we can too handle the truth.

It's too darn hot

2006-08-04T04:14:00.000-07:00

Oh, wow - what a week. Tuesday was the SINGLE HOTTEST DAY OF MY LIFE. It went past 50 celsius (that's 122 farenheit) during the day. Also, the air conditioner broke at my work, meaning it was the first day that I didn't freeze my ass off in the office because I'm in a building with two hockey rinks that is kept below room temperature at all time. So that was good. But then the ice rinks almost completely melted, so that was bad. I guess.

And then the other night we had severe thunderstorms - and a tornado warning. As this flashed across the bottom of the screen during Rockstar Supernova, I was all "whuh? Wuh wuh?" Because it never occurred to me that I lived in the part of the world where such things happenend. So I looked at DD all, "So? Do we bring in the container garden? Tie down the patio furniture? Sleep in the basement? Tape the rest of the show?"

Fortunately, however, the warning was lifted, and I could enjoy my cheesy reality TV in peace, as nature intended.

Random old guys, second only to God in terms of moral judgement

2006-08-04T04:01:00.001-07:00

A friend of mine recently went back to work after a year off battling breast cancer, just in time for to hear all about this wonderful example of humanity spout off about how women aren't capable about making their own decisions regarding their bodies. At a "welcome back" lunch, we got into a discussion about abortion regulation, and the random old guys who wander around with signs just across the street, and who the hell they think they are to tell women about the morality of her decision.

See, said friend is pretty young for a breast cancer survivor - 27 - and one of the main issues she's dealing with now is sex and reproduction, post-cancer. To help prevent a reoccurence, she a) cannot take any hormonal forms of birth control, and b) is on a series of drugs that ARE NOT compatible with healthy fetal development. She asked her doctor point blank what that would mean if she got pregnant - to which her doctor replied that it was her decision, but he would advise her to have an abortion.

Now sure - random old guys on the street, because they are "Christian" men and therefore possessing far superior moral judgement to a young woman (or a medical doctor) as far as the issue of pregnancy is concerned - would simply tell her that she shouldn't be having sex anyway, because there's nothing in this world more EVIL than non-married adults engaging in consensual sexual behavior.

BUT! Here's the sticky point - she IS getting married. And, seeing as this story is taking place in Canada, I should clarify that she is getting married to a man.

So it's a very real possibility that some day in the next five years, she might have to walk past random old guys to get to the clinic, and they will wish they lived in a society where, sinless as they are, they could cast all sorts of stones at her (magic stones that hurt the murdering whore without touching the precious angel growing inside her).

Now, some may say that, to be fair, I should accept the possibility that the random old guys would probably understand if she explained her situation to them. They would probably accept her decision, and feel compassion that she was faced with so many challenges and such a young age.

But to anyone who says that, I say: SO FREAKIN' WHAT? Oh, would they understand? Would they be compassionate? Would they tell her she's not making Jesus cry - this time? Wow, what a couple of saints! What truly phenomenal human beings they are - a woman made a personal decision affecting her body and her body alone - and after a detailed explanation, they considered it justified! STOP THE PRESSES - here are the wisest, most noble of men! Yes, there! Hiding behind the "I'm a child, not a choice" signs!

ARRRRRGGGHHH.

Here's the thing about being pro-choice - it means that no woman, ever, anywhere, under any circumstances, needs to justify her decision to ANYONE BUT HERSELF. Not to her friends, not to her family, and certainly not to complete strangers who spend their whole day protesting abortions while thousands of children in this city alone go hungry.

It is her body, it is her business, and I am so goddamn TIRED of people who think that they should have the right to decide what are "good" and "bad" reasons for abortions. There is only one good reason for an abortion - that she wants one. There is only one bad reason for abortion - that someone else is forcing her to get one.

That is why it's "pro-choice", NOT "pro-abortion", and if people are so thick-skulled they can't understand that, then they have no place making moral decisions for THEMSELVES, let alone anyone else.

Saved from summer reruns

2006-08-02T02:59:00.000-07:00

...by Rockstar: Supernova. My love affair with reality TV pretty much ended this year, but that doesn't mean I can't have one last fling with this totally terrific show. Okay, Dave Navarro is pretty irritating (maybe it's the impending divorce) (but still, telling a female contestant to "eat a sandwich" is pretty rude) (especially when you're lounging around bare-chested, and said chest is more Twiggy than barrel), and Tommy Lee needs to stop his "I am a big ol' horndog who must talk to women in blatantly sexual innuendo only", but the show itself is pretty awesome. The singers are very talented, and there's a lot of rocking out, and not too much filler, and I'm actually pretty excited to see who will win (My hope? Dilana. My guess? Toby.)

Anyway - if you're not doing anything Monday, Tuesday or Wednesday nights, check it out.

Watch out, Melania!

2006-07-24T03:53:00.001-07:00

Your husband was auditioning replacements last night...

That's right, it was the 2006 Miss Universe pageant, yeeeeeeaaaah!!!

I tuned into City TV (one of the half-dozen channels I still get, what with the cable being cut and all) hoping for a decent Sunday night movie - and instead happened across this strange throwback extravaganza. Doubly strange was the fact that watching the first hour didn't make me nearly as angry as one would think (that one would be DD, who was visibly cringing as soon as the credits rolled - waiting for the inevitable "GGGGRRRRR PATRIARCHY" comment that was quickly at my lips, but which never fully-formed because - pretty! Costumes!)

Continuing that thought outside the brackets - oh, the costumes...they were very pretty. My personal favorite was Miss Trinidad & Tobago, which made her look like she was surrounded by these giant, gorgeous, black and red floating butterflies. I also liked Miss Japan because she was dressed up like a samurai, albeit a sexy one, because we are talking about the grrrr patriarchy here. But she had a sword! C'mon! And Miss...Peru, I think, had a big spear. I am all for arming these women, and I'm not just talking about when Trump's around.

I sat through the swimsuit competition, mostly to hear some former Miss USA try to convince Carson Kressley that his enjoyment of said competition meant he was a closted heterosexual - to which he did not retort (much to my chagrin) that she seemed to be enjoying it just as much. Honestly, people, it's a freakin' swimsuit show, not an infallible sexuality barometre (YEAH, that's right, I said it, DONALD TRUMP).

Anyway, like I said, I only watched the first hour, but I did tune in long enough to catch the mini-bios of the top ten contestants, in which I learned that Miss Canada was 6'1, Miss Japan spoke 4 langauges, and Miss Bolivia's interests included "Making people happy." I wonder if she also lives in a gumdrop house on Lollipop Lane? And then other women listed things like "Learning about new people" and "helping other people" and I finally snapped and snarked "Why don't they just list "Giving blowjobs" or "taking it up the a**"?" Grr...you know the rest...

But really, I stopped watching more out of boredom than anything else, because at the end of the day, 95% of these women were pretty much indistinguishable from each other, and were all basically trying to compete to fit the mold of "most attractive woman in the world according to standards set by insecure Viagra-addicts who build giant phallic buildings named after themselves, which, incidentally, rhymes with "frump"", and it was just generally kind of boring and a little depressing, but the women themselves seemed mostly pretty cool, and will probably accomplish a lot with their lives, and generally raise the status of women everywhere, as long as they are stunningly beautiful.

Some more good news!

2006-07-20T03:20:00.000-07:00

That was fast!

Who really makes that baby?

2006-07-19T03:36:00.001-07:00

I'm a frequent lurker on the Fark forums, which provide some of the funniest, most hilarious, most irreverent-and-not-for-the-easily-offended comments on all the Internet tubes.

However, it also provides an outlet for some of the most mind-numbingly asinine asshats to spout their stupidity, an example of which I came across recently in response to an article about anti-abortion groups buying out abortion clinics' leases to shut them down. A self-proclaimed atheist pro-lifer was arguing against abortion based on his own misguided version of property rights:

Pro choice = pro destruction of shared property. Its half the fathers DNA too, making it not "part of her body". It is "part of her body" in the sense that when you deposit money into the bank it is "part of the bank".

Sure, the bank is housing your money like the woman is housing your uterus. Sure the bank adds its own money onto yours as the woman adds her own DNA to the child. The fact that it happens to be temporarily residing in one place should not give the right to unilateral destruction.

Now there's a thoughtful, egalitarian and realistic view of reproduction: Women are like ATMs! You put in $100! A month later, you take out $100.05! And that's how babies are made! It's a fun update on the "Magic Sperm" view of gestation. If you've never heard of that one before, it's kind of like the belief that each sperm is a mini-baby, kind of like a pack of "magic grow" sponges. Stick one in a woman/put them in a bowl of water, and poof! Dinosaurs! Er, or babies, depending on the package.

This view - that women are passive baby containers - is at the heart of many anti-abortion arguments. And, like many other views at the heart of anti-abortion arguments, it is entirely false. Men and women do not contribute equally to the creation of a child. Men contribute 1 (one) (uno) (ein) sperm. That is it - one sex cell. That is it. That is all. The human body has anywhere from 10-100 TRILLION cells. At birth, you have anywhere between 5-10% of that (based on size), and EVERY SINGLE ONE OF THOSE CAME FROM YOUR MOM. They came from the food she ate, what she drank, the contents of her blood, the air she breathed, the substances that permeated her skin.

Forget about that "magic sperm" of yours, buddy - you didn't make a deposit in a bank. Making a baby is like building a house, and the man drops off half of the design plans, while the woman supplies the other half, as well as the concrete, the bricks, the mortar, the steel girders, the 2x4s, the nuts and bolts, the drywall, the shingles, the paint, the curtains, the major appliances, a couple of nice throw rugs, etc. Congratulations - you have viable gametes. But you didn't "make" a baby - she did. You just supplied part of the blueprint.

And to the ladies - be wary of misogynists who hide behind atheism - anti-abortion arguments are anti-women, and religion (or lack thereof) is just a convenient smokescreen for people who really just want those sluts to get what they deserve.

For the last time, you are not going to get blown up by a terrorist

2006-07-14T03:02:00.000-07:00

Amanda at Pandagon weighs in on the irrational fear of death by terrorist - almost as terrifying as death by shark.

Sure, you can have a cigarette, right after you pee on this stick

2006-07-11T04:50:00.001-07:00

The uterus-coveting, woman-hating, fetus-worshippers down south must really be doing a happy dance, if such a thing weren't so terribly sinful. States like Arkansas and Utah are moving closer and closer to their ideal world of poor women having the same legal status as brood mares from menstruation to menopause. This article (and bless them for using quotation marks properly) deals with the issue of states passing "fetal rights" laws, including one that would make it illegal for pregnant women to smoke.

Now, before anyone accuses me of encouraging pregnant women to smoke, that is obviously not the case. (Furthermore, that's not even relevant - am I a freakin' doctor? Who cares about my recommendations for pregnancy?) The issue here is that, if these raving fundies have their way, all of us will have countless inalienable rights as little cell clusters in the womb, and none when we're actual living, breathing human beings.

A pregnant woman has just as much right to smoke as anyone else. She has just as much a right to not smoke, or be exposed to smoke, as anyone else. She is still a person, she is still a FREAKIN' HUMAN BEING, and she is fully entitled to make the decision whether or not to smoke, or drink, or eat sushi, or play sports, or ride a bicycle, or have crazy hot sex. She also has the right to be presented with accurate, unbiased, scientifically-proven information regarding fetal development, so that she can have the tools to make the best decisions possible.

The logical progression of this type of thinking - that is, the "protect the fetus from all potential harms, real or imaginary" - is truly terrifying. I mean, so this law prevents pregnant women from smoking, and we get others that force them to adhere to a specific diet, specific activities, specific thoughts, etc. But what about other people? We could pass anti-smoking laws everywhere a pregnant woman might go, which would cover - well, everywhere. Probably just easier to ban pregnant women from these places. Easiest, in fact, to round them all up in one place where all these various laws regulating their activities can be enforced. Sure, lady, you're giving up all personal autonomy and living like a prisoner for commiting the heinous crime of fertility, but it's for THE GOOD OF THE FETUS. You must live your life for THE GOOD OF THE FETUS otherwise you are a terrible person. Of course, you're probably a terrible person anyway, because God made you woman.

This quotation almost hits the nail on the head, but then misses the point at the last second:

Even Mathis, the Arkansas legislator, harbors doubts about the state's ability to enforce an anti-smoking law. "The more I think about it... you might end up with a fat lip" if police approach a smoker who is overweight but not pregnant, he said.

Which, dude - yes, you are likely to get a fat lip, but I'd say more so from the pregnant woman who's been dealing with nausea, diarrhea, headaches, swollen ankles, food cravings, strangers fondling her belly, being defined by her condition, judgmental glares and holier-than-thou stares, people glancing down at her hands looking for a ring, and such, who decides that she just needs ONE GODDAMN CIGARETTE to try and get through the last month of this shit, and next thing she knows some rando's all up in her face about how that makes her a criminal.

Fat lip? Hell, if it was my mom, that person would have been off solid food for weeks.

For the last time - YOU ARE NOT GOING TO BE EATEN BY A SHARK

2006-07-06T04:37:00.000-07:00

Those of you who know me are likely aware that, despite having grown up on an temperate island with plenty of lakes and rivers, I am a piss-poor swimmer. But don't blame me! Blame my irrational fear, generated in early childhood by seeing the poster for the movie Jaws, of being attacked by a shark. Try as they might, my Bubbling Beetle swim instructors cold not get me to float on my back, and I never told them why, because even back then I knew it was a stupid reason. But still, deep down inside, I felt that if I turned my back to the water...that was when the shark would get me. And before anyone asks the obvious question - yes, I was in a pool. So what? Sharks are SMART. They'll find a way.

Of course I'm hardly the only person in this world to have this irrational fear - and it's certainly not the only irrational fear that people have. So I was smugly superior when I read this article about the six most feared but least likely causes of death. After all, one out of six isn't bad, right? Because I've never been scared of flying...or falling...or earthquakes...or axe murderes in my closet...or terrorists...gaaaahhh...okay, now I've got to finish my post from under my desk...

But, really, people get pretty freaked out over harmless things. Like with mad cow disease and avian flu and people getting all freaked out about how burgers and KFC will kill them. Which, it will, but just not in the way they think.

But that's the difference, isn't it? If it's our lifestyle that gets us in the end - we wind up killing ourselves. (Aside - the best retort I ever heard to the snottily-asked question "Why do you smoke?" was "I'm suicidal, but also a procrastinator.") If anything, we should be scared of us. Every time I go to the pool I should be afraid, but not of sharks - of my own reflection in the water. "Omigod! There's the person who's eventually going to get me! AAAAIIIIEEE!!!!"

Anyway - I guess all I'm saying is that it's pretty funny how people, on the whole, tend to fixate on way-out-there bizzarro things that are incredibly unlikely, and ignore the things which are actually dangerous.

Not that it matters - we're all going to be killed by a giant asteroid, anyway.

How much is a good sex life worth?

2006-07-05T09:09:00.000-07:00

According to a recent study, about $50,000. But I doubt this applies to lights-off, eyes-closed, man-on-top-of-women, God-is-watching-quick-don't-enjoy-yourself-this-is-only-to-create-viable-embryos sex.

The Wall Comes Down

2006-06-30T05:59:00.001-07:00

Last day at my job as political hack/office monkey/spin doctor. I'm currently packing up all the random shit I've littered around the office: two years' worth of clippings from various religious and political publications, various mementos like the matchbook from 24 Sussex, the freakin' sweet suit from Femme de Carriere that I kept here in case I had to pretend to be a competent young professional, and, my personal favorite, The Wall of Randos.

The WoR is (was?) my own personal shrine to the homobigots of Canada who saw fit to influence their federal leaders during the legislative run of Bill C-38 by faxing in a variety of letters and drawings that ranged from "mildly crude and laughable" to "incredibly asinine and offensive". I'll post some pictures later, but you can get the general idea here. Every morning my co-worker and I would gather round the fax machine and pull off a stack of few dozen of these (somedays I'm sure it must have been more than a hundred) and pull out those that were ridiculous enough to deserve a spot on the wall,. Which, technically, wasn't a wall at all, but the back of my door, but "The Back of the Door of Randos" just doesn't have the same ring to it.

It might sound masochistic, but it was actually quite cathartic - it was a reminder of the stupidity of these arguments. Many of them featured seatbelts/cutlery/nuts and bolts. Many of them featured trees or animals, complete with skirts for the females - you know, just like in nature. Many of them were from children, which was heartbreaking, and arguably reason enough for a call to Social Services.

I can't think of a stronger argument for free speech. As soon as these people opened their mouths (or in this case, uncapped their felt pens) the sheer banality of their reasoning was revealed. Every letter I read, every picture I saw, every single one of their so-called "arguments" only strengthened my convictions against their discriminatory cause. They were the best argument against their own beliefs, and the greatest reminder of the importance of secular law as the basis for civil society. There are people out there who believe that marriages, like seatbelts, require interlocking parts, and I don't want them shaping the social policy of my country.

So the wall's coming down, but it's coming with me. I promise picture goodness later. And let us all hope that it is truly the end of an era.

This girl kicks ass!

2006-06-22T09:33:00.001-07:00

Just stumbled across the story of 15-year-old Ava Lowrey from Alabama, a peace activist who makes Flash animations protesting the war. The story, as far as I understand it, is that she's made over 70 of these animations, gone on CNN (interviewed by a complete MORON - honestly - needs to be seen to be believed) and received (surprise surprise!) numerous death threats, a lot of which related to her "WWJD" animation, in which she has the unbelievable audacity and unrepentant gall to imply that were Jesus around today, He probably wouldn't be first in the "Indiscrimate-killing-of-Iraqi-children" line.

Yes, that's right - her animation attempts to show that war is un-Christian, using a hymn, passages from the Bible, and some downright heartbreaking photos of the consequences of violent conflict view it here).

She's a truly courageous person to stand up to the groups and invididuals who are co-opting (what I'm assuming is) her religion. The extent to which Christianity has been hijacked for political and personal motives by extremist groups is both tragic and terrifying. These people that hide behind the cross (or any other religion) in order to spew ignorance and hate need to be unmasked and disowned by the truly faithful. Non-religious types need to do their part as well, by not referring to the aggressive hatebots as representatives of a religion. Ann Coulter isn't a Christian, she's a marketing tool. (And just kind of a tool in general). Osama whatshisface isn't a Muslim, he's a cold-blooded psychopath. Doesn't matter if they self-described as such - if just saying you were something made you that something, then this world would have a hell of a lot more astronaut-rock star-veterinarian-presidents.

An Open Letter to Paul Steckle

2006-06-21T15:02:00.002-07:00

Dear Honourable Member for Huron-Bruce,

First and foremost, allow me to congratulate you on becoming the first MP to take advantage of the first (albeit minority) Conservative government in office for 13 years to introduce a Private Member's Bill restricting abortion access[link to follow]. My own pick for this dubious honour was a certain Maurice Vellacott, but this is hardly the first time he has disappointed someone with his actions, or lack thereof.

However, while I missed the "who" I do want to assure you that I was bang-on in the "what" - as in, what kind of legislation would be introduced. As has been the case in the US, the fundamentalist-anti-abortion-legislation-wedge of choice seems to be what they charmingly refer to as "partial-birth abortions" (which, as long as we are completely making up supposed medical terms, I prefer to refer to as "red herrings distracting people from the erosion of bodily autonomy"). And in that regard, you have come through, with your law restricting abortion access after 20 weeks.

Now some people may wonder why you believe a woman's ability to make a conscious moral decision somehow mysteriously dissolves at 20 weeks of pregnancy. At first, I simply assumed that you do not trust women's judgment, which seemed a tad bit ironic coming from the man who used, as his official House of Commons Christmas card, this photo of him and member of his family, in camouflage and bearing arms, inscribed with "Glory to God in the highest, And on Earth peace, good will toward men." (As far as celebrating Our Lord and Saviour's birth in such a manner, I can only imagine that my copy of the Bible is missing the passage where Jesus and the disciples bag some deer. Of course, it also appears to be missing the passages where He says "Abortions make Me cry" and "I hate gays", so I suppose that's par for the course.)

Fortunately, you have an answer to that - it's not that you don't trust women's judgment, it's that the poor fragile creatures simply aren't capable of handling the consequences of making their own choices:

If a woman is so ambivalent about having an abortion that she cannot make the decision until after she is in her 20th week, then a choice to terminate the pregnancy at this point is likely to be even more traumatic for her.

How terribly thoughtful of you to try and protect these women from the terrible, terrible situation of having to make and live with their own decisions! You are not only on a quest to save these helpless unborn babies, but also to save their hopeless mothers from being full human beings! It is so unbearably noble, I almost hesitate to point out that some women may, perhaps, feel perfectly qualified to make their own choices at whatever stage of the pregnancy they're in. And I am certainly even more hesitant to point out that some of the more hysterical ones may question even your qualifications to rule on the emotional consequences of a decision which you yourself could not, under any conceivable circumstance, face.

Yet I doubt that will persuade you. You have, in the face of epidemic poverty, rampant illness, international epidemics of child (and here I must distinguish between "living, breathing" child and "still technically a part of a woman's body" child) abuse and exploitation, chosen to devote yourself to bringing unwanted children into this world. I'm sure that the currently-endangered children completely understand your choice to ignore their needs in favour of the unborn, and are likely happy to rot away, alone and abandoned, if it means that you are doing your utmost to usher in their replacements. And if that isn't a morally sound decision, I suppose you don't really know what is.

Sincerely,

Floyd

PS. Get your own damn uterus.

On Chivalry

2006-06-14T20:39:00.001-07:00

Brace yourselves: I'm about to say something only a crazed, man-hating feminazi looking to incite fear and anger would ever consider...

I don't like it when men hold the door open for me.

Now, before you need to reach for your smelling salts, torches and/or pitchforks, allow me to add a little context: I don't like it when a man holds a door open for me because I am woman. If he's doing because I have my hands full, or he's gone through first and doesn't want the door to slam in my face, or there's someone right behind me he's holding the door for, then fine. But I hate, hate, HATE the concept of "Ladies first".

I haven't always hated it. Well, I hated it at first, and then I was told that I should stop being such a reactionary uppity bitch and accept these actions gracefully, and then I quietly stomached then, and then I grew up, grew a pair of ovaries, and decided that if chivalry wasn't dead, then I would track it down and finish it off once and for all.

Because this world doesn't need "doors-open-chairs-pulled-out-coat-in-the-puddle-ladies-first" chivalry - it needs simple human consideration. You should open the door for others because it's a nice thing to do, not because they have XX chromosomes.

And this cuts both ways, women on my bus who won't give up their seats at the front for the elderly or obviously pregnant.

Still, I like to think that we are moving more towards a "people helping people" society rather than a "men helping women who then fix sandwiches and/or sleep with them". But just when I start making my peace with it, of couse I stumble across an article by Bella Online's Sons Editor (no really, that's her title):

Everywhere we go, people comment on my son’s manners. Not just the ever-present
“please,” “thank you” and “you’re welcome” in his vocabulary, but holding the
door open for women, allowing ladies to exit the elevator first, and holding out
his elbow to “escort” me during our “dates”. All this, and he's not even eight
yet!

"Please", yes. "Thank you", yes. Letting other people exit the elevator first? Why not! BUT WHY JUST THE WOMEN?

Because chivalry is about the powerful being momentarily gracious to the powerless. The white knight who picks up the lady's hankerchief moments before he wins her, an ox, 13 chickens and a peasant or two in a jousting tournament. Chivalry is about perpetrating the myth that fine "ladies" do nothing for themselves - not dress, not sit, certainly not open doors. The less capable a woman is of taking care of herself, the more dependent she is on a male provider, the more attractive she is.

I am perfectly capable of opening my own doors. I am perfectly capable of seating myself. I am also perfectly capable of walking on my own, unescorted (unless I am wearing high heels in which case I must cling to the nearest friend, stranger or parking meter for safety).

One would think that any mother would want to instill in her children the idea that she is their caretaker, their protector - not the other way around. And yet:

From the time my son could walk and talk, as he saw his father open the door for
me, we always told him, “Ladies go first”. This became ingrained in his
thinking. At every opportunity, we explained to him what Daddy was doing and
why. Now, it is second nature to him.

Notice she never tells the reader what was explained to her son:

"Oh, Daddy's opening the door for me because I'm a lady!"
"Why?"
"Because 'Ladies First!'"
"Why?"
"Because...ladies should be treated special from men."
"Why?"
"Because! We, uh...aren't as strong as men."
"But you're stronger than me, mommy. Why do I open the door for you?"
"Because I AM A LADY!!!!!"

In a similar vein, this is why I don't go out of my way to open doors for people in wheelchairs. It's insulting for me to assume that they aren't capable on their own. If someone's right behind me, I'll hold the door the same for them as for anyone else, or offer my assistance if the building seems inaccessible - but I've seen people sprint to get to the doors first, and it's about as big a slap in the face as it gets. He made it all the way to the bank in the wheelchair, pal - I'm sure he can handle the button. You gonna offer to operate the ATM for him too?

I'm not saying we shouldn't be nice to each other. And I'm certainly not saying, as in the words of a commentor on a BBC article which I cannot find for the life of me so you'll just have to take my word on this more-or-less accurate paraphrase, that "Women got the vote, so they're not getting my seat on the bus - they can't have it both ways." We should be courteous out of human kindness, not out of outdated gender notions.

Now, this is likely a generational thing, and I respect that. And I'm also not about to judge couples who partake in chivalry together - knock yourselves out. But the day an eight-year-old opens the door for me because he's a manly man and I'm a mere woman is the day his parents get to explain just what "nice misplaced socialization emphasis, jerkwads" means.

Also - true story - the other day at the library as this post was fermenting in my brain, a frail-looking elderly man stopped to hold the door open for me and another woman. She was clearly of a like mind - that the person who looks as though a stiff breeze could blow him over should not be doing the heavy lifting for two healthy adults - and said firmly: "You didn't need to do that!" To which he replied, "It's what I do - I'm a Wal-Mart greeter!"

So - I guess the moral is that I hate chivalry, but I hate assumptions more?

Why anti-abortionists are anti-women

2006-06-14T07:33:00.001-07:00

Couple of great links - first, to Alas, a Blog and the terrific table done up there that shows anti-abortion policies and analyzes whether said policy is consistent with the belief that abortion is murder. I'd summarize it here, but it's terrific on its own already. Check it out.

And a post from from Amanda at Pandagon, who is currently my hands-down favourite non-friend blogger, looking at how fundies aren't really worried about the poor innocent ~~sex cells~~ ~~zygotes~~ ~~embryos~~ ~~fetuses~~ babies as much as they are about making sure the wimminfolk aren't out there exercising their own autonomy. Basically, if an embryo fails to implant because God so willed it/it was touched by His Noodly Appendage, that's okay - but if a woman makes a conscious decision to prevent pregnancy on her own, that's eeeeeevil.

Some good news!

2006-06-08T11:24:00.000-07:00

The FDA has approved a vaccination against certain strains of cancer-causing HPV.

Now - Canada needs to get its act together! If they can get it passed in the US despite some vocal opposition about how not being able to threaten pre-teen girls with a highly-fatal form of cancer will turn said girls into wanton, sex-enjoying women, then certainly it should be a cinch up here.

I hope.

Sorry I'm Late - Must Be the Daycare

2006-06-02T13:15:00.001-07:00

The Canadian Society for the Prevention of Cruelty to Children recently published a booklet containing some pretty startling facts about daycare in a totally reasonable, unbiased, unpatronizing, non-mysogynistic, scientifically-thorough and non-ideologically-motivated way! Oh, except for all those last parts.

The cover letter accompanying their ground-breaking pamphlet states that three studies found results that are "a serious cause for concern", such as:

1) The amount of time you spend away from your mom before you turn five is a "predictor of assertiveness, disobedience, and aggression." Whereas the amount of time you spend away from your dad is a predictor of how many fart jokes you know.

2)Daycare before the age of three increased anti-social behavior at age three. And we all know that nobody changes after age three. Now excuse me while I go play with my Barbies without sharing.

3)Children in daycare either become aggressive or compliant. This is totally in sync with the study I did just now in my head that shows that they also grow up to be tall or not tall.

Basically, they have 40-odd pages of poorly punctuated "articles" (honest to goodness - every single title uses ellipses...like this...it is terribly awkward...not to mention incorrect...) describing how anything less than 24/7 mothering turns infants and toddlers into, at best, emotional basket cases and, at worst, dangerous psychopaths.

I'm all for scientific inquiry into the effects of early childhood groupcare and education, but if you want to be taken seriously, maybe you shouldn't start the intro to your "scientific" report with:

I feel sorry for women who cannot look after their babies themselves[...].

Aw, that's so nice! You feel sorry? For my mom? Wow, I bet she really appreciates your pity. Here, why don't you go tell her in person! Oh, and just so you know, in our family we show appreciation by smacking people upside the head.

This issue really burns me because I went to two stellar, and one pretty good, daycare. I made good friends, had plenty to keep me busy all day, learned a lot about a variety of topics (including socialization because - duh, I had to get along with other kids) and had access to activites, toys, games, play structures and other things that my own parents could never have provided on their own.

Do I wish I had been raised at home? Do my parents wish they'd been able to do so? Maybe. But I'd say that's based more on the desire to have spent those precious years together, than out of regret that daycare has turned me into some sort of mentally unstable, violent, anti-social monster.

This type of argument does nothing more than pit people against each other, which is where the ideology seeps in. Are they really doing this out of concern for mothers and children? After all, if they'd managed to guilt my mom some 25 years ago into quitting her job, she could have reaped the glorious benefits of raising infants in abject poverty - which, as we all know, has no negative impact on children whatsoever.

It's not an either/or issue, no matter how hard they try to frame it as one. You can easily be in favour of both daycare and homecare. There is no conflict, no cognitive dissonance, in saying "I believe that both daycare and homecare are valid and valuable ways of raising healthy and happy individuals".

Oh, but there I go, asserting myself again! Damn you, daycare!

I Wish I Hadn't Done it; Therefore, No One Else Should Have That Option, and other sad moments from The March for Life

2006-05-31T10:05:00.000-07:00

They're probably the only anti-abortion group that gets to me: average women, sombre faces, black signs with white writing that proclaim "I Regret My Abortion".

And my first thought is: Dude, that sucks.

And my second thought is: That's not a valid argument.

And my third thought is: Why have you gone to the dark side?

Let's deal with those thoughts one at a time, shall we?

First of all - that really, really sucks. I can't imagine how much stress, depression, insomnia, and wordless rage that kind of regret must generate. Every day, every smiling family, every child, every parent, must provoke a numb hollowness that is unbearable.

BUT - and this brings us to thought number two - that is not a valid argument. You made one of the most difficult decisions any person will ever be faced with, and now you regret your choice. You have my sympathy. But you don't know better than I do what's right for me and my body. I'm sorry that you regret your abortion, and I'm interested in your story, but you don't get to make that choice for me.

Laws don't exist to protect me from making decision I might regret (hello, grade six perm), they exist to protect my fundamental human rights and freedoms. They exist to create a society in which fully autonomous citizens are informed and aware and capable of excercising free will.

Which leads me to my final point - these woman have(unwittingly, I like to think) gone over to the dark side by endorsing the same social factors which likely contributed to their regrettable decision in the first place: the systemic devaluation of women, their intellect, their contributions to society, and their intrinsic worth.

Did these women abort because of pressures from their partners, parents or peers? Were they made to feel selfish for considering what was best for them and not the interests of others? Were they threatened with financial abandonment, physical violence, or moral judgment?

Abortion wasn't, and isn't, the problem - it's a society which consistently undermine women's rights. And that is why, when I look at these women, I want to extend my arms and invite them over to this side of the fence, where they belong, where every woman can choose what is right for her and her alone and not fear retribution for daring to presume to act like a full human being with the rights and privileges thereby accorded.

It's only fun if she can be arrested

2006-05-26T07:47:00.001-07:00

Originally posted on The Fetal Position:

As a woman, prostitution has always been somewhat of a puzzle to me. The thought of paying someone for sex is so strange, so alien - like, I will give him money? And he will have sex with me? - just doesn't compute in my brain.

Whether this is a sign of moral superiority of my sex or the complete and total absorption of patriarchal hegemony that turns the female body into consumer wares, I don't know.

But I do know that Geoff Matthews needs to spend a few years being a sexually abused drug-addict living off the avails of prostituting himself before anyone should take him seriously when he spouts drivel like this - his recent story talking about why the legalization of prostitution is bad.

Which it is - but not for the reasons he gives, which are:

making prostitution legal would take all the fun out of it.
I dare say that most people who patronize prostitutes now don't do it because they can't get sex anywhere else -- from wives, girlfriends or people they meet at the neighbourhood bar.

They go to prostitutes because it's a thrill ... a chance to walk on the wild side ... to do something because it's against the law and there's a possibility of getting caught.

Well, he's sort of right - men do go to prostitutes because it's a thrill. The thrill of owning another person, of subjecting them to your will, of taking the single most victimized and powerless group in the world and lording over them, like a REAL MAN. Nothing more thrilling than making a drug-addicted teenage runaway give you a blowjob in a back alley. And of course you could have asked your girfriend/wife/stranger at a bar to do that, but then she might have asked you to wear a condom/expected something in return/kicked you in the balls. Ooops, I mean, "it wouldn't have been as thrilling". Riiiiight.

Legalizing prostitution is a terrible idea, though, but not because it would destroy one of the treasured benefits of the patriarchy, as Matthews claims, but because it would normalize what is essentially an abherration in our society born out of inequalities of power. If being a prostitute is legal, then wouldn't the next step be having pimps and madams at high school career fairs? Or a woman being denied social assistance because she refuses to take a job offer from a brothel?

The obvious solution, and one which is usually ignored because it is reasonable, practical, and unpatriarachal, is to target the real criminals in this situation, like they do in Sweden. There, the government has stumbled upon the fact thatthe abused single mother trying to support her children is not so much a threat to society as she is a victim of that society:

In Sweden, prostitution is regarded as an aspect of male violence against women and children. It is officially acknowledged as a form of exploitation of women and children that constitutes a significant social problem, which is harmful not only to the individual prostituted woman or child, but also to society at large.

OMG! It's not those wanton harlots tempting otherwise good and honest hard-working family men with their irresistible charms, it's a patriarchal society commodifying the female form to dominate and exploit it? That's kah-razy!

And the best part of that solution is, not only does it allow the state to protect and assist those who are forced to prostitute themselves, it also lets Matthews and their ilk enjoy the thrill of being criminals. Everybody wins!

Discovery of the Week

2006-05-19T09:42:00.000-07:00

Oh oh oh soooo exciting! So, I've been reading up more on this eating local, 100-mile diet thing...so DD and I found our way to the local farmer's market on opening day last week. And there were organic tomatoes and cucumber and asparagus and radishes and spinach and all the ususal suspects. And then there was (drumroll, bated breath, please): A LOCAL ARTISAN CHEESEMAKER AIEEEEE!!!!

So. Exciting. They were all sold out of everything but feta, but we sampled their blue cheese (divine) and a couple other soft cheeses and oooooohhhhh so good. So I'm thinking maybe this summer I'll try going full-out some week on a local diet, and see how it goes. I was sure about it, but at least know I know that, if nothing else, I can eat cheese all week.

In other news, the garden, she is growing - we've had over 3 inches of rain this past week, so the plants and veggies and lawn are just sprouting up like crazy. I mean, they are doing that because I am such an excellent gardener!

And - in work news - I guess I lost the bet I had...with myself. It wasn't Maurice Vellacott who introduced the first fetal rights bill, but his friend and party-member Leon Benoit. There'll be a post on this later at The Fetal Position, 'cause I'd like to go in-depth on this one. It is a very particular issue. But I'm still holding out for good old Mauriiice in the anti-abortion bill area. Don't let me down again!

Oh, wait - please do. Please let me down, now and forever.

That Was Fast! US Solves Infant Mortality Rate Problem

2006-05-17T07:21:00.000-07:00

...by declaring that all women of child-bearing age treat themselves/be treated as "pre-pregnant".

Read the article here, read Amanda' Marcotte's excellent post on it here (and check out the comments too), and then, if you're a breeder...er, I mean "female", go enjoy that pack of smokes and dry martini while you still can, before the government decides that it could harm the unborn child you may or may not be carrying to term within your body.

THIS IS FUCKING SICK. What's next? "Gee ma'am, I'd love to get you a beer, but first you need to pee on this stick and wait 5 minutes." Or maybe they'll just go one step further, and ban anyone without a Y chromosome from drinking, smoking, eating sushi, dancing, riding horseback, watching violent TV, standing, sitting, thinking, etc.

It's like the fucking twilight zone. Am I actually reading this correctly? The US is getting its fucking ass kicked in infant mortality rates, but that's not the fault of the corporate-controlled private healthcare system or the religious right's takeover of reproductive information...nooooo. It's those goshdarn ladies not devoting every aspect of their lives to being the best baby-machine possible!

How about giving women accurate, correct, scientifically-sound information and access to quality healthcare if and when they choose to have children? HOW ABOUT CARING ABOUT WOMEN'S HEALTH BECAUSE WE'RE PEOPLE WITH OUR OWN INTRINSIC WORTH AND NOT JUST FETAL-INCUBATORS?

If these mysoginistic wackos have their way, it'll only be a matter of time before us womenfolk learn that our place is in a Matrix-like compound of goo-pods, pumping out infants from puberty to menopause.

March for Life? Fuck off and die

2006-05-11T10:35:00.000-07:00

Thank Jebus it only comes once a year, or my head would asplode faster than you can say "Get your own damn uterus!"

Yes, it's the effin' March for Life on Parliament Hill.

I haven't dared do much more than peer out my window, lest I be overcome with the temptation to bash their stupid faces in with their "yes, of course an 8-week old fetus has arms, legs, and eyes, as you can clearly see in this totally accurate photo of a helpless aborted baby" signs.

I just...I can't. I just can't face these people. There is no reasoning with someone who believes that they are divine champions on a holy quest to be saviour to ~~zygotes~~ ~~cannon-fodder~~ adorable little cherubic angels trapped inside an demonic incubator-thing that ridiculously purports to be an actual, living human being with, like, "rights" or something.

What drives me bonkers is that these people are trying to frame the argument in that if you support abortion rights, than you despise babies. Well, I've always known I wanted to have kids. I want to have kids because I want to experience the full power of my body, a woman's body. I want to have kids because I've always loved kids. I want to have kids so that when I grow old I'll have people to nag about not calling me who'll listen 'cause they want whatever's left of my wealth that didn't go to feeding, clothing and educating them.

Whatever the reason - I WANT to have kids. But I want to have them WHEN I want to have them, under the circumstances I choose, with whom I choose, by whatever methods I choose, and that means controlling my reproduction by contraception, emergency contraception, or abortion, and it doesn't matter how much of a sinful whore you think I am, random old guy with a sign, because there's all of four men whose advice I would seek on pregnancy, and YOU ARE NOT ONE OF THEM, and it doesn't matter how fervently you pray, scary young woman my age, you are not going to influence my decision on whether or not to abort, and angry little grandma? Congrats on your daughter's fertility, but fuck off about mine. And fuck off about everyone woman or man out there who DOESN'T want kids, for whatever reason, because it is none of your GODDAMN BUSINESS.

These people, with their righteous anger and their holier-than-thou smugness, and their, "Big Daddy and the sky loves me more than you, nya nya nya" make me physically ill. How they courageously speak up for non-sentient blobs of tissue while ACTUAL, HONEST-TO-GOD children are being starved, beaten, abandoned, abused, exploited, and so forth; how they act like they are all "pro-life" for wanting to impose motherhood on woman, even though pregnancy is more dangerous than abortion; how they probably pray every night for this to be invented...

There are six billion people on this effin' planet. We are not likely to die out any time soon. We are likely to kill each other in a variety of increasingly diverse ways and poison our environment beyond habitability. Drop the anti-woman, anti-choice, anti-reason argument and go and do something that God ACTUALLY CARES ABOUT.

Maaaan...would you believe me that today's post was originally going to be on the suckitude of Hollywood Homicide and the awesomeness of my high school rugby team? See? The fundies RUIN EVERYTHING.

The Onion Gets It

2006-05-10T05:26:00.000-07:00

Today's lead article at The Onion is fan-TASTIC. I wonder how many uterus-covetors are nodding their heads in vigorous agreement.

New blog, and other things...

2006-05-04T10:14:00.000-07:00

Wow, this is an entry-riffic day so far. Coupla things; I'm gonna start with the small stuff first and work my way down to the heavies:

1)I have an rss feed now. I think. Maybe? Also possibly an atom feed, but I'm not 100% sure. It is so funny how my boss thinks I am some sort of Internet whiz...

2)I've started posting on a new blog called E-Parliament. For you political junkies out there...

3)I've also started a new blog called Fetal Position, at http://getyourowndamnuterus.blogspot.com. It's still under construction, and it's mostly there because to give me place to vent on issues surrounding reproductive rights. Maybe it's all the freakin' right-wing, pro-life, "fetuses are more important than woman" crap I get in the mail, maybe it's the creepingly regressive movement that's pushing back women's rights, maybe it's the time that I once sat at my computer typing with my 50-year-old mother of two co-worker doing the same while our boss was lectured on the pro-life agenda by a 23-year-old boy and the full assbackwardness of that fact finally surfaced in between thoughts on Bill Napoli and Canada's own uterus-covetor extraordinaire, Maurice Vellacott, but the last month or so I've found myself driven to the point of wordless rage more times than I can remember over the holier-than-thou crap that spews out of pro-lifers mouths as if recognizing women as full human beings is the single most immoral thing they've ever heard of.

SO! If that's your bag, check it out. And I'd like to thank everyone who spends their valuable time travellin' with Floyd. And also to those who shared their gardening stories/suggestions/memories of the time I killed their plants. I will try and have herbs and edible flowers to go with my radishes.

...in Gambia. Yes, while the

2006-05-04T07:48:00.000-07:00

...in Gambia. Yes, while the beacon of democracy and freedom that is the US continues to tighten its grasps on the the uteri of the nation, there are still some countries in the world actually progressing towards the recognition that there's a woman surrounding each uterus!

National Assembly Members (NAMS) on Tuesday unanimously ratified Articles 5, 6, 7, and 14 of the Protocol on the African Charter on Human and Peoples' Rights on the Rights of the Women in Africa.

Dota Kamasso, NAM for Wuli East; Netty Baldeh, NAM for Tumana; Halifa Sallah, NAM for Serekunda Central; Sedia Jatta, NAM for Wuli West; and Nyima Sata Sanneh Bojang, a nominated member, all spiritedly defended the motion. Mr Sheikh Tijan Hydara, Attorney General and Secretary of State for Justice, who tabled the motion before the NAMS argued persuasively why the motion should be ratified.

In respect of Article 5 of the Protocol which deals with the elimination of harmful practices against women, he said popularly, women are referred to as being the weaker sex and if it is true, the strong therefore are expected to protect the weak. " Women are the object of love and affection. They are the mothers of mankind, the salt of our world and the inspiration behind many lofty achievements. They not only nurture children, but also nurture adults, male, and female alike and including their husbands as well. Therefore, whatever concerns them should actually not be taken lightly but very seriously," he said.

Progress! But there's still a ways to go, and judging by the whole "pregnancy is a punishment for being a dirty slut" mentality of allowing abortions only for victims of rape (emphasis mine):

"[...]victims of rape, incest, or other sexual assault be given the opportunity
to rid themselves of the consequences forced upon their lives, just like where the continued pregnancy endangers the mental and physical health of the mother or the life of the foetus."

So - every time a woman consents to sex she is implicitly consenting to pregnancy, and therefore ineligible for abortion because a woman can't have her cock and eat it too. But at least it's a step in the right direction. And with any luck they won't look to Bill Napoli to define rape.

Why You Do Me So Wrong? Episode II redux

2006-05-04T05:50:00.001-07:00

Dear contributor to my already obscene amount of personal wealth,

Here you go. Now shut up about it already.

George

It takes a village to raise a child, but just one idiot to write a budget

2006-05-03T19:36:00.001-07:00

Oh, Jim Flaherty. Jim jim jim. Jimmy jimmy jim-bob bobby jim. What are we going to do with you?

I know, I know, you've got it tough. Minister of Finance for an entire country. The first budget for a party that has not held power in over a decade, and, technically, never governed really governed this country in its current incarnation. No matter what you did, somebody was bound to complain. I hear ya!

And really, I shouldn't be complaining about you. It's not your fault that your so-called economist boss put forward two of the most economically unsound campaign promises since...well, okay, since the Liberals promised to cut the GST. But at least they had the good sense to not follow through with it.

'Cause here's the thing, Jim. This whole 1% GST cut? Is awesome - for you. And your golfing buddies. And all other high-income earners in Canada. Here's some simple math for you (and it'd better be simple, for the guy who thought that 15.5% was a smaller amount than 15%).

Last year's income tax cuts put around 1$ back in taxpayers' pockets for every 100$ they earned between $8500-34,000. It also, by raising the basic personal exemption by $500, gave an automatic $75 back for everyone earning at least $8500. If you made $34000 or more, it meant savings of between $250-300.

In order to get the same savings out of a 1% GST cut, someone earning $34000 would have to spend $25,000-30,000. Yes, that's right - THEY WOULD HAVE TO SPEND ALMOST EVERY SINGLE PRE-TAX DOLLAR THEY EARNED. Genius! Spend to save! Brilliant:

Person 1: Love the new car!
Person 2: Thanks! It cost $50,000. I was going to buy the $25,000 one, but I realized I could save twice as much on the GST if I bought the more expensive one. Now I have an extra $500 towards retirement.
Person 1: But...couldn't you have an extra $25,000 by buying the cheaper one?
Person 2: Whuh?...I guess...you...SHUT UP YOU'RE STUPID I HATE YOU

And don't even get me started on your Universal Child Care Benefit. Oh, too late! So, let's see...study after study comes out showing that early access to educational and developmental programs is the key determinant in future success. Countries around the world (and Quebec right here at home) progress towards universal daycare. The former Minister of Social Development and Making Hockey Dads Stare in Awe manages to pull a goddamn miracle out of his ass and get ALL 10 provinces to sign Childcare Agreements whereby they will receive federal funding to creat childcare spaces that meet the QUAD criteria of Quality, Universal, Accessible, and Developmental.

And then your boss says, "Fuck that! $1200 taxable bucks a year per kid under six! For everyone! No matter if you're barely scraping by, or if you wipe your kid's ass with hundred-dollar bills!"

And you're all - fo sho, dawg. I've already helped out my privileged male friends with stay-at-home wives earning more than $100,000 grand once - why not do it again?

Because, here's the rub: those are the people who will benefit most. Well-off, single-income families (and not to make this a gender issue, but...OH WAIT. THIS TOTALLY IS A GENDER ISSUE. 'Cause the number of stay-at-home dads is about as high as the number of female heads of companies or states. WHAT A CRAZY COINCIDENCE. But now, thanks to this extra taxable $1200 a year, moms have a choice! They can choose to stay at home with their kid(s), or they can choose to...stay at home anyway because the real problem is that it is almost impossible to find quality, affordable daycare outside of Quebec!) will keep the most of the benefit. Lower income, two-earners households will keep the least. Plus, some of their other benefits are being rolled back. Oh, yes, Stephen Harper, champion of the working Canadian family - the way he wants it, with Dad off to the office and mom making dinner and babies.

Dammit, Jim, I'm a spin doctor, not an economist, but even I can see that your plan sucks. It sucks so much that even light cannot escape its swirling vortex of doom. Now, to be fair to you, I can hardly claim full non-partisan status. But, to be fair to me, the budget sucks. I don't want to save by spending, I want to save when I earn. I don't want you to throw spare change at parents, I want you to give them real choice. I don't want a transit tax credit, I want a bus with brakes that don't squeal like a group of teenage girls at a Simple Plan concert.

I don't want a paltry cheque, a slap on the back, and a hearty "Here you go - now fend for yourself!" I do want a village, a community, a country that grows and prospers together.

And at the end of the day, all I can do is rally the villagers. Normally that means pitchforks and torches and thunderstorms...so I guess that explains the extra 1,000 RCMP officers.

Maybe you're not such an idiot, after all.

So it's true!

2006-05-01T19:16:00.001-07:00

The truth about Stephen Harper's diet revealed on the GO trains...

How Does Your Garden Grow?

2006-04-27T06:14:00.000-07:00

Who am I kidding? I don't care about the "how". I only care about the "does".

There's an awful lot of self-esteem and responsibility tied up in having a garden, as I am finding out. DD and I put in 3 smallish beds last year when we went on our Landscaping Extravagan-zah!, and I spent the better part of the winter staring at the snow-covered yards and thinking "Well...they were nice plants while they lasted."

Because, seriously - how could any living thing survive that without the benefit of fourteen layers of fleece and a thermos of hot cocoa? HOW? Mentally, I had already said my farewells, and dreaded the spring melt where I would dig up the hosta and cedar corpses and put them to rest in that big black composter in the sk...er, backyard.

And then the spring melt came and, lo and behold: there was green! Actual, real live plants, right where I left them! Flush with success and drunk on my amazing powers of nurturing, I thought the only possible thought: "Hell! I should grow veggies this year!"

So I did the only reasonable thing - drag my partner to every home and garden store in a 15km radius inspecting every single planter until finally settling on some which, upon closer inspection, didn't really suit my purposes after all and therefore it's back to the stores with a rapidly-changing schematic in mind for building one ourselves using everyday materials such as wood, black plastic, four gajillion nails and screws and, of course, sections from a Derek Zeisman campaign sign.

In the meantime, though, I did actually plant a few things in my pre-purchased containers...and was that ever a nerve-wracking week, waiting to see if anything would actually grow. Every morning I'm out to water, all "any day now!" and every night I'm out back "stupid seeds! Why don't you freakin' grow, you stupid stinky seeds...oh, I didn't mean that, I love you! Please grow!" And you feel like a terrible, terrible person, especially if your record as a guardian of living things is four dead fish, one bird that flew away, and that one horrific summer where you killed every single plant (including bamboo) in the apartment you were subletting.

So would anyone be terribly surprised to learn that I did a full-out touchdown dance when the radishes started growing? Which, by the way, are my total favourite vegetables in the whole world, along with green onions, two varieties of lettuce, green onions, carrots and, if they know what's good for them, snow peas.

Now, all of these are still in seedling form, and they've just undergone a couple of days of frost, and my compost still isn't ready (stupid worms! Eat faster!) so it remains to be seen whether of them will actually make it to my tummy, but - it sure feels nice right now. And I've already got images of plump tomatoes, robust pole beans and abundant zucchini in the "so pretty that I'm not sure I want to get it all full of dirt and such" container that we built.

So here's hoping that if any of you make it out to the 'burbs this summer, you will have some of Floyd's bounty to enjoy. Even if it is just one radish.

As Bad As You Can Possibly Imagine

2006-04-19T17:27:00.000-07:00

Now, I know this story has been out for awhile, but I just wanted to weigh in on the whole South Dakota abortion ban boondoggle. Let me start off by giving my heartfelt thanks to Bill Napoli. Bill, or B-Nap, as I like to fondly refer to him, is one of those few men out there who really goes the distance to try and bridge the gender gap. He's one of those few dicks (and I mean that literally) who's willing to put his money where his mouth is and try to get into the mind of a pregnant woman.

Now, of course, being a dick, B-Nap can't ever really know what it's like to be either of those things. But at least he's thought about it. I mean, A LOT. Especially in the case of rape victims. I would imagine that, based on this video, he has selflessly spent at least the better part of his life since puberty thinking about rape victims. Especially young, nubile, virginal rape victims. To which I can only ask, WHERE ARE THE REST OF THE BILL NAPOLIS OF THE WORLD? Where are the rest of these men who will take the time out of their day, packed with important manly things, to ponder vivid and brutal rape scenarios, replaying them over and over in their minds until their wives can't help but wonder why they are suddenly being asked to dress up like Catholic school girls during sex? WHERE?

Now, a lot of people will say that just because men will never have to face the physical, emotional and psychological realities of pregnancies, their opinions are somehow less valid when it comes to that issue. But I think what B-Nap has shown is that if you think about something a lot, then you are totally qualified to pass judgement on it. This is also known as the "professional sports fan" syndrome, as in "You suck Redden! Learn to skate! If I could get off this couch without falling over, I'd show you a thing or two about [falls over]".

I would also be curious to now where B-Nap stands on gay rights. I would guess that he would be against them. Now, it may seem hateful and ignorant, ladies, but him and other supposed "homophobes" are actually doing us a favour! It is obvious that only heterosexual men can really care about women: after all, how much time do you think gay men (or women, for that matter) spend thinking about the violent sodomy of young female virgins? I bet not even one split second. Yeah, that's right, I said it. And what kind of debased pervert doesn't take the time to imagine the most terrible possible violation of the other sex?

So thanks, B-Nap, for reminding me that that certain type of man still exists. The type of man who doesn't need a medical degree, or a uterus, to know what the standard for pregnancy rights in this country should be. The type of man who's willing to spend countless hours imagining the most horrible rape he can, and then brave enough to go on TV and share it with the nation.

The type of man who knows that there aren't many women out there who would procreate with his type of man voluntarily, and so decides to make some important changes within himself, like becoming a politician and making a law that allows him and his type to rape women and then force them to bear their children, just like in that mythical Stone Age his blasphemous science teacher once told him about.

So to you, B-Nap, I say, may I never forget that your type is not yet extinct. And so determined am I to remember this fact, that I even purchased a little memento.

Opposing Forces

2006-04-12T17:33:00.000-07:00

There's few times more profoundly disorganized in politics than a change of governing parties. It's like moving to a new home, times one thousand. I mean, there's the actual moving part - defeated and retiring MPs cleaning out their offices, former Cabinet Ministers giving up the cushy corner spot for the broom closet in the attic, my co-worker and I living in fear that someone will notice we have a (small, cold, usually functioning) bathroom in our office and try for a hostile takeover, the new Government Whip trying to buck decades of tradition by abandoning the "MPs assigned those plum offices in Centre Block by seniority" in favour of kicking out all opposition MPs before the House opened, only to be stopped by the House of Commons Material Management staff who are a)unionized, and b)reasonable enough to explain to him doing a move of that magnituted before the House opens is nigh impossible, asshole (well...maybe that last part was silent) - and then some.

There are websites that need updating, contact lists that need changing, people out job-searching (Liberals), people out desperately looking for someone, anyone, who can stomach even the cushiest of jobs working for them (Conservatives), people upstairs at the vending machine wondering why they stopped stocking Twix (me), and so on.

So, it's been a pretty big change. Now, very few Liberal staffers have ever worked in Opposition before, and people were all "Oooh, it's going to be sooo hard, how're we going to do this, where's my cushy ministerial job at age 26 that I, like, totally am qualified for, I'm scared, hold me!" and yet...not so much. From a communications perspective, Opposition is a breeze. Opposition is not only shooting fish in a barrel, it's shooting dead fish who have been immobilized with tiny chains, using a laser-sighted bazooka. Because at the end of the day? It's waaaaaaay easier to complain about something than to actually do something.

For example: Let's say I am the Minister Finance. Everyday, people are all up in my face, all "My taxes are too high! Why are my taxes so high? This is bullshit! I drove all the way here my fancy SUV on these nice roads past all these structural sound bridges and first-rate hospitals to tell you this, you big jerk! Why aren't you doing anything about it? I pay my taxes! I know my rights! I'm a citizen blah blah blah blah" and so on.

Now I, the Minister of Finace, have to come up with a plan. It should, ideally, be a good plan, but thanks to the miracle of partisan politics, it doesn't really matter because whatever I propose, my party (the government) will support me and every other party will say that my plan's not worth the 100% post-consumer recycled paper it's written on. I cannot stress this enough - IT DOESN'T MATTER WHAT MY PLAN IS. I could have the best, most even-handed, most realistic, most scientifically-supported plan in all of creation, and the opposition will say that it is a pile of bear shit. Conversely, I could have a plan that IS actually bear shit, and my party will say that it's magical golden bear shit which will amazingly solve all problems, ever, and truth be damned!

But the bottom line is - I, the Minister, still have to do something. I have to get research done, hire policy analysts, economists, specialists in their fields; I have to go over this research and policy analysis and guide it and approve and have it go through the single most confusing internal process in the known world and throughout it all, defend myself against the inevitable attacks from the opposition.

And now, let's pretend I am in the opposition. Here is the sum of my work day: "Mister Speaker, the Minister of Finance has clearly come up with the single worst piece of legislation ever. When will he resign?". Then, I go have a martini in the lobby.

Okay, I'm exaggerate slightly. The MPs are far more likely to grab a Keith's.

Seriously, though, even my job as a staffer in an Official Opposition office is a lot easier. It's busier, but it's easier. Let me explain the first by explaining the second:

We've already discussed how much less effort it takes to complain than to actually accomplish something. So, I don't have to spend any of my time thinking up ways to promote and defend the government's policies. All of my writing can basically be summed up as "The government stinks. Like, ew. Gross!"

That being said - it's a lot easier to write those pieces. And somebody in the know caught on to this fact...so now I have to write a lot more. So! Like I said - easier but busier.

Also fun - when people call up to complain about how the government stinks - before, I had to get all informed about stuff and get the official line and explain to them that the stench was really the overpowering smell of the government's inherent awesomeness. Now, I can just go, "Oh yeah, they totally stink! Like, ew. Gross!" And it is waaaay easier to say that than to write it. Honestly, that is kind of my ideal job - people calling me up to say how much they hate certain sucky things (our current government, tailgaters, mushy peas, the fact that Everybody Loves Raymond ran for a zillion years and Firefly got pulled before one full season) and I would totally agree and we'd bitch together and maybe I'd have some Ben & Jerry's and later we could braid each others hair.

Yeeeeaaaah....this opposition thing isn't going to be that bad, after all.

A Meaty Issue

2006-04-06T07:30:00.001-07:00

I still remember the moment to this day: standing in the kitchen, trying to conjure up the words to explain to my mom how there was this girl, and she was different, and I thought I might be like her, and no, it wasn’t a lifestyle choice but something that was really true, felt deep down inside.

And I still remember my mom’s incredulous looks, and the disappointment in her voice when she looked me square in the eye and said “Are you sure you’re a vegetarian?”

That was in high school. I had gone on a science trip, and for some reason, spent an exceeding amount of time with the school’s foremost vegan, she who won the Concours d’art oratoire, like, a zillion years running with her speech about how awesome it was to be a vegan and if you weren’t a vegan then you probably weren’t that awesome. I remember one part of her speech was about how being a vegan meant she had more choices than other people in terms of diet, which is technically false, because of – well, logic; but also kind of true, because there’s about 400 varieties of beans and legumes and curds and whatnot that meat-eaters don’t even know exist, let alone serve up for dinner.

So, on this one particular trip, she lent me a book (isn’t that always where it starts? Curse you, literature! Socrates’s dire predictions were true!) that seemed pretty persuasive. And I returned home struggling with how to come out to my mom.

Because in our house? Not eating meat was an unheard of thing, right up there with regular church attendance. Like we were some sort of bizarro rednecks: if He happened to drop by, Jesus would be welcome to dinner, as long as he liked his steak medium-rare and didn’t talk about Himself.

Like any good mother who thinks that her daughter’s gone completely wacko, my mother tested my resolve.

“You’ll have to cook for yourself”

“That’s fine.”

“I’ll need you to come to the grocery store with me.”

“Alright.”

When those two failed, she pulled out the big guns:

“I’m making teriyaki chicken wings for dinner.”

And that was that. I was a vegetarian for all of about four hours.

It’s kind of strange, but twice I’ve taken up smoking on a regular basis (once in 2000 and once in 2004, both because of roommate conflicts) and twice I’ve quit cold turkey, no problem. I’m not trying to be flippant about a serious issue, like “Oooh, I’m so special, look at me, quitting smoking is easy, tra lalala, everyone should do it!” But it’s just that smoking doesn’t quite do it for me the way a pile of BBQ spare ribs does.

And that’s the real key, isn’t it? We all have our addictions, our crutches that allow us to deal with the insanity of the world. Some people smoke, some people drink, some people watch reality TV, some people watch reality TV with plate full of bacon.

But lately (as in the last year or so) a strange thing has happened: I don’t quite have the same taste for it. Reality TV, I mean. Also meat.

I don’t quite know how it happened. I mean, I still think meat is both tasty and delicious. And the whole “it’s wrong to hurt animals” thing is both true and yet somehow totally irrelevant in my mind. I’ve always been of the mind that if you couldn’t kill dinner yourself, you shouldn’t eat meat. I’ve never had to prove myself in that regard, but I’m pretty sure I could follow through.

I think what really got me was a)the nagging voice in the back of my head that tries to get me to live sustainably, and b)the discovery that there’s plenty of good non-meat food to eat out there.

In terms of sustainability, it finally sunk in that meat is just not an efficient source of food. You pump in tonnes of grain and water, you get back a few hundred pounds of meat. Sorry, Bessie, but that’s just not a good return on your investment. And, to make matters worse, in order to get a better return, Bessie gets pumped full of steroids and antibiotics and other crap which now means that the average age of menstruation is, like, 11 in girls (14 in boys).

In terms of diet, I had the good fortune to have a vegetarian roommate who loved to cook, and share what she cooked, and was a good cook. And all of a sudden, I’m like – damn, this is good! (This is in contrast to a vegetarian roommate whom I lived with for all of two months, who once came upon a pork chop I was defrosting and snarked “Who left animal in the microwave?”).

And I’ve also got the support of my body, who actually started telling me some nights “No, you don’t want any chicken in your stir-fry”. It was a little terrifying at first, like “Whose body are you and what have you done with my body, which used to pack away 6 pieces of cold KFC for breakfast?”

So it’s not that I’m meatless, it’s just that I meat-less. And while that’ not going to win me the Concours d’art oratoire anytime soon, at least it’s a start.

True dat! Sort of...

2006-03-29T18:49:00.001-08:00

I remember going to see Bowling for Columbine when it came out (and getting hit on by some middle-aged bureaucrat, which: just because I am at the theatre alone, doesn't mean that I am crusing for some tail that is older than my dad. Anyway, this dude thinks he met a nice economics student named Katherine who studied at Carleton, so whatev), and pretty much loving the whole thing.

Except for the one part where he goes to Canada, and goes opening people's doors in Toronto, and then is interviewing random city people, and then this pretentious hipster is all "In Canada, it's, like, locking your door isn't locking other people out but locking yourself in".

Now I ALWAYS lived in a home where the doors were locked, under penalty of getting THE LOOK, and also getting THE GROUNDED and what not. To be fair, I did grow up in one of the most dangerous towns in the country, if danger is measured in flower blossoms. But that's not what bugged me - it was more this "American's are X, and Canadians are Y" mentality, one favored by Michael Moore and devoted scenesters alike, where we get to take two diverse groups and sort them with a short, pithy truism like, d'uh, didn't you know how to tell an American from a Canadian? Just let yourself in to their house - if you can. Without getting shot.

But this is the joy and the curse of the social sciences - that of generalization. It takes a small bit of truth that applies to some and tries to spread it out to cover everyone, or at least as many people as possible, stretching it and thinning it until it's of no use to anyone. 'Cause it's true - Americans and Canadians are different. I mean, a)they're citizens of different countries. But any other statement - Americans lock their doors, Canadians don't, Americans like guns, Canadians don't, Americans like Toby Keith, everybody else wishes he would just shut his one-note, vitriol-spewing pie-hole, etc. are only true in general. Fortunately for Toby Keith, unfortunately for the rest of us with ears.

So - with that in mind - (OH! ASIDE! I'm currently watching Young Guys on APTN, and the guy who plays Locke on Lost is in it...also it's inspiring a future post entitled "From the object of my first childhood crush to walking STD catalogue: Why you do me so wrong, Charlie Sheen?") I'd like to engage in a little generalization of my own:

People who don't own dishwashers are dummies.

I am saying this as someone who did not live in a house with a dishwasher for the first 24.5 years of her life. It is the single greates invention of this or any other civilization (ooh, it's a generalization and hypberbole!).

But if you don't have one, you should put off buying little Jimmy's medicine and get one right now because it is the best investment you will ever make. Plus, if your kitchen faucet ever busts while your dishwasher is on, causing hot water to soak through your house, you will finally get to replace that busted 60s kitchen you hated so much, just like my mom.

Also: Battlestar Galactica is the awesomest show ever and you need to go rent the first season right now and then be prepared to scream in blood-curdling rage as you wait for the second part of the second season to be available in Canada.

Also: Stephen Harper is a scary, cranky man who hates all journalists, ever.

And: Conservatives like to scare little children on Hallowe'en and steal their candy and pray that some day all abortions will be stopped and there'll be more little children to steal candy from.

Okay...I don't know if that is even a little bit true, but I have my eye on you, Kenney. (Okay, I linked to his site, but just try googling "jason kenney stupid" and see what comes up).

Ooh - it's climactic gunfight time on Young Guns! Gotta run!

How the Mighty Have Fallen (Prey to Flawed Arguments and Rhetoric)

2006-03-22T17:00:00.001-08:00

As I have mentioned before, my job exposes me to pretty much every single publication circulated in the entire country. A lot of them immediately get filed in the big blue bin (sorry, Ontario Chicken Farmers), but some of them get read cover to cover as soon as I have a spare moment. And, perhaps because I am some sort of crazed masochist (I prefer to think of it as knowing my enemy but hey! po-tay-to, po-tah-to), this includes a trinity of newsletters from organizations whose very existence confuses and enrages me: REAL Women of Canada, Campaign Life Coalition, and LifeCanada.

So when the latter of these arrived today, a took a quick moment to scan through it, looking for irrefutable evidence that I am a shameless whore who God will punish with all forms of terrible STDs and cancers (if only those damn scientists would stop discovering treatments for them) (ASIDE: DD and I were going through customs together in Vancouver, and the officer was this, like, New Yorker with the accent and everything, and we were all "Oh, we're travelling together but we're not family and that's why we each filled out a declaration card" and he's all "So, living in sin, huh? Have a nice cruise!" and that was it. Maybe he didn't get the memo that I am a shameless whore).

Anyway, I'm looking through the newsletter, and it got me angry for approximately 30 seconds, then sad, then angry, then hopeful (they do actually have some good stuff in there, dealing with issues like stem cell research, euthenasia, rights of the disabled, and other topics that often get overlooked by other groups too caught up in the glamourous world of showing pictures of aborted foetuses), then angry again, then angst-ridden, and then I would have normally forgetten about it except for an article on the very back page. And I'm reading it, and it's an anti-abortion piece presenting about a half-dozen totally flawed arguments, but written with this folksy, down-home humour and gentle irreverence and I'm thinking "I know this writing style" and then I see the name and I'm all "No. Shit. Doctor Dave!"

Now, O-towners won't know this name, but back home, he was known to many as a doctor, a columnist, father of an crazy-talented and super sweet daughter who also played on my softball team, which he, incidentally, coached.

Oh, Doctor Dave...I wish LifeCanada had this recent issue up so y'all could read along at home, but you'll have to read now and fact-check later. Thing is, I have a ton of respect for this man, and he's done a lot for a lot of people, and he really is a likeable guy, and so it pains me to no end to have him write things like:

Every child is wanted. Every pregnancy is not [...] Doctors constantly
receive requests from those who would love the opportunity to raise a
child. Every child is wanted... by someone.

Which - nice sentiment, but try telling that to these kids. And then, this gem:

Q)What about a woman's right to do with her body as she pleases?
A: It is against the law for a woman to sell her body or do certain things
to or with it [maybe it shouldn't be, then!-Floyd]. But a growing fetus
is, in fact, not her body...An appendix or a toenail is part of our body but a fetus is a distinct society.

Dude - you are...a doctor. Like, an actual medical doctor. And, I have heard, a good one. So, this? Is a little weak, coming from you. This one reminds me of an argument I had in high school with Rikki about whether or not one could "fall off" of one's shoes, which she said one could, whereas I maintained that one could only "fall out" of one's shoes, and said argument went all the way to our English teacher, who soundly crushed me by siding on the "fall off and/or fall out" end of things. "Part of her body", "in her body", see above: po-tay-to, po-tah-to. (Also see - "Straw Man") Bottom line - HER BODY.

Also - man, is Quebec going to be le pissed when they realizes that foetuses everywhere beat them to the "distinct society" sucker punch. Also - man, are women everywhere going to be la pissed when they realize that their is a distinct society inside their wombs and the government starts to try to fund heritage and unity events up there ("Please, ma'am, just one "Canada" banner?" "NO!").

There's more, but this post has already taken me through half a Law & Order: SVU, a brand-new Lost, the inevitable Kevin Covais elimination and now the latter part of Tomb Raider: Cradle of Life (honestly? I think I am kinda in love with the awesomeness that is Angelina. Her hotness transcends all known sexual orientations. Huh... sort of like this guy's), and threatens to take me all the way to the midnight rebroadcast of The Daily Show.

So, unlike the comprehensive lists of arguments against abortions with appropriate rebuttals which I had intended, I will leave you with the thought that even smart, generous, and educated people will often sacrifice accuracy in favour of humour (no, I don't mean me...well, not just me :)); that even the best of us can fall prey to fallacious arguments when our most sacred beliefs are being debated; and that Angelina Jolie is like, way hot.

Seal of Approval!

2006-03-15T18:48:00.000-08:00

Dear Celebrity of some note,

It's that time of year again: the glamourous people of the world are flocking to Canada for the nation's signature cultural and economic event. No, not this one. Or this one. Or even this one. No, the one that brings together musicians, tv stars, and aging European sexpots:

SEAL HUNT 2006! The place where all the most CARINGEST famous people go to care!

Looking to branch out from "celebrity" to "celebrity who cares about something"? Aspiring to be a recognized humanitarian with all the prestigious awards and glamourous events that entails? Trying to find that perfect cause that only lasts a couple of weeks and affects one of the most stable, if not overabundant, species in the world, so that when it never goes extinct or even gets so much as edangered you can give yourself a well-deserved pat on the back in between hot stone massages and rolling in a pile of money? Well, this is the one for you!

Bring your hip waders! Wear your fanciest toque! Remember, EVERYTHING goes with white! By which we mean the adorable white fluffy baby seals that you will be photographed with! They're so helpless, they can't get away when you want to shoot them - with a gun or a camera! And fortunately, only the former is illegal, so you can get still get your pictures with them instead of their big ugly parents who'd probably just swim away or try to bite you, and who would look terrible during an awards night photo montage.

Here's what our satisfied customers have to say:

"I love all animals. That's why I'm a vegetarian. That's also why I'm protesting this hunt. Also, my hot, much-younger, former- model wife and I sure looked fab next to those adorable baby seals! Thanks, seal hunt, for giving us an easy out in the field of eco-activism! I'd love to do more to help the plight of the tens of millions of animals brutally butchered in slaughterhouses, but I don't fancy smelling like dung. Cheerio!"
Paul M, England

"These seals are a beautiful gift to the world. Beautiful things must be protected. I should know. If only I'd worn sunscreen when I was young and super-hot. Now, if the world runs out of seals, they will be coming for my pelt."
Brigitte, France

"I wish I really was the characters played on my hit shows, because then I could build a gate to another world using only an empty TicTac box, a spoon, and some ductape. Then my military unit and I would take all those precious baby seals with us to safety. Of course, once they outgrew their cute stage, we'd dump them back on Earth to take their chances with all the other animals, and Fred Savage."
Richard, USA

What are you waiting for? Sure, you could pick something a little more pressing, like third-world debt relief or AIDS, but those are wide-reaching, complex issues with no easy answer and real consequences to the earth and humanity. Maybe some people want the fates of poverty-stricken masses on resting on their shoulders, Bono , but do you? Maybe some people want to piss off the global-military-complex, Michael Moore, but wouldn't you rather just piss off a group of people that can't actually retaliate in any way, like economically-disadvantaged Canadians? 'Cause they don't get much more economically disadvantaged than the Newfoundland fishers and Inuit hunters who participate in the hunt!

Time is running out - for you to get that photo of a lifetime next to an ungodly adorable creature! This year, pick the cause that fits your busy lifestyle - pick Seal Hunt 2006!

Sincerely,

Whoever it is who keeps organizing this goddamn thing every year

Your Regularly Scheduled Post Has Been Delayed

2006-02-28T08:18:00.001-08:00

Hey all,

Spent yesterday writing my grad school essay instead of my blog. At least, I hope I did. It's kind of all a blur, seeing as Air Canada got me in two hours late and I was up six hours later and jet-lagged for work. So I really hope the department chair is not reading something that starts with "Dear Wonderful Airline Staff, thanks sooo much for leaving the plane uncovered overnight on the tarmac in Ottawa in February. There was nooo way to know that it would get covered in ice! Why, that only happens every single night during the winter here! And I really enjoyed spending nine hours at the gate, and paying those extra special airport prices. Sincerely, A Totally Satisfied Customer."

The Great Canadian Stereotype Contest

2006-02-15T11:08:00.000-08:00

These guys are officially my new heroes. "No Iranian is going to beat us on our home turf." BWAH! Love it. I think I'm going to learn a lot about Jewish stereotypes from this contest. (Like how I learned that there's a "Jews are cheap" from watching this past season of The Apprentice.)

It reminded me of a story Mo told me about a follow Quebecor being at a table with his football teammates, and one of them kept making jokes about, like, fried chicken, and he didn't understand why, and then another teammate was like, "It's because I'm black", so Quebec dude was like, "Oh, riiiiiight" but he still didn't get it, and neither did Mo, and neither do I, because we are all completely unfamiliar with black stereotypes.

But we were all over the French/English stereotypes, and even tried for a while to address each other in regional/linguistic slurs ("Hey, you tree-hugging hippie, if you're not too busy eating organic yoghurt and smoking pot, it's your turn to wash the dishes!" "Oh, go shack up with your boyfriend, poutine-eater".) If anyone else has any great Canadian stereotypes, please add them to the comments! That way, everyone wins! So it's not really a contest so much as it is...not a contest. But anyway...

The Writing's on the Wall

2006-02-14T09:25:00.001-08:00

One of the bathrooms at DD’s parents’ house is decorated with this whimsical wallpaper made up entirely of folksy sayings like “Children are a joy in your old age – and they help you reach it faster, too”, or “Just when you make ends meet, somebody moves the ends”. One of my favourites is “You grow up the first time you have your first real laugh at yourself”. It reminds me not to take myself so seriously. It also reminds me that there are a few people out there who could use that advice. Like, maybe, people who are committing acts of violence over a handful of cartoons.

When the story about these controversial ‘toons started gaining momentum this last month, I did what any average web-literate person in a free and democratic country would do: I googled them. My search led me to this article, and when I scrolled down to the cartoons, I was shocked. Shocked that buildings were being burned, death threats were being uttered and boycotts were being launched, all over a dozen editorial cartoons that, had they featured any other religion, wouldn’t have even made the news as much as Paris Hilton’s need for Depends did.

(Personally, I laughed my ass off at the one about heaven running out of virgins, because I always wondered a)where they got all these virgins, and b)what said virgins had done to deserve becoming the sexual slaves of suicide bombers in the afterlife, and c)no seriously, what gives with all the virgins?)

I’m not saying that some people aren’t genuinely offended by these cartoons. I am saying…how to put this delicately…"tough titty". One of the tenets of a liberal democracy is free and independent media. That means that sometimes, we are going to see things that offend us to the point where the next time we’re in a pharmacy and we see some ignorant prick buying Axe deodorant we want to smack him upside the head and scream “THIS WILL NOT MAKE RANDOM HOT GIRLS FUCK YOU! GET A GODDAMN PERSONALITY! AND A JOB! AND A BELIEF IN THE PRINCIPLES OF GENDER EQUALITY!”

“But!” people might say, “That is not the same thing! Here, they are making fun of religion!”

What? Oh my Intelligent Designer! Making fun of religion, you say! Why, no one’s ever done that before! Nope, never in the history of the world, right up until this very moment, has anyone ever mocked any religion whatsoever. IT HAS NEVER HAPPENED EVER. In a completely unrelated note: Do not look here. Or here. Or here. Or here. And do not google “religious jokes” because you will not find anything. Nope, nothing to see here folks! Move along, now, move along. (Also, definitely do not turn your speakers all the way up and look here or here.)

And yes, I am aware that you are not supposed to draw Muhammad. I know this because it is written in every article on this story, or told to me in somber voice over by well-coiffed news anchor. I also know this because I studied Islam in university, and while I’m not saying that taking three religious studies courses make me in anyway an expert on the subject, it does make me slightly more qualified than a whole slew of journalists and politicians who don’t seem to know the five pillars of Islam from the menu at their local shawarma joint; or their own religion for that matter. Because the whole thing about not drawing Muhammad? ONLY APPLIES TO MUSLIMS. So all you non-muslims out there? Doodle to your hearts' content. I drew Muhammad in my journal the other night. He’s saying “Don’t quit your day job”. Good freakin’ advice.

Also, this ban against drawing Muhammad? Not actually in the Qur’an. What is there is a condemnation of idolatry; that is, worshipping an object or image that may or may not be intended to represent God. The hadith (recorded oral tradition) forbids pictorial art of any sacred figures – these include not only Muhammad, but also Jesus and Moses, who are also considered prophets in Islam. Now we already know those other two guys/guy and saviour have been pictorialized to high heaven, seemingly without provoking riots. Does anyone out there believe that in almost a millennium and a half of Islam, a dozen editorial cartoonists are the first people ever to break this last tradition? That some tiny Scandinavian newspaper sullied this previously virgin (heh) territory? That some Danish editor was the first person ever in the history of the world to come up with the genius idea to draw Muhammad? I’ve got two words for that: Bull. Shit.

Also? Stop presenting this “Muslims are forbidden to practice idolatry” as if it’s some new and novel idea that nobody ever thought of before. Because I’m pretty sure Judaism beat them to the punch by several thousand years. Which means that Jews, Christians, and Muslims alike are all forbidden to create images of God. Which, again, obviously means that that has never happened, and should it have happened, it would have happened in some dirty, dank den of iniquity by filthy atheists and would certainly not be a celebrated piece of religious art displayed at the heart of a sacred place. Nope!

Which is why my beef is not only with (and I’m not going to call them Muslims because they are no more Muslim then the raging asshats at the anti-SSM march are Christian) the Islamic fundies who are causing this shit, but also with the Western media. Sweet Shesus, has it actually come to the point where I’m actually agreeing with right-wing superstar Ezra Levant? Has hell, if it exists, finally frozen over? Because Canada, the US and the UK (among others) are all “We’re not running these cartoons out of respect” and Ezra is all, “It’s not out of respect, it’s out of fear” and I am all “Amen, Ezra” and then I’m all “What the fuck? Did I just say that?” and then I’m all freaking out, curled up in the fetal position in the corner, rocking and moaning and wondering what the fuck happened to this world that people are being killed over cartoons and I’m with agreeing Eazy-L.

See, I too had thought of posting the cartoons here. And I didn’t, for two very good reasons: a)I don’t know how to load pictures on my blog, which is currently number one on my “blog to-do” list, followed closely by updating my layout and getting an RSS feed; and 2)I’m highly suggestible, in the sense that seeing the cover of the movie “Jaws” at age five prevented me from learning how to swim because I refused to put my back to the water. Yes, I was in a pool. Yes, I know it’s stupid, and there’s no monsters in my closet, no knife-wielding maniac in my bathroom, and the only person under the stairs is my roommate. But we’re just people, and threats of violence, real or imaginary, scare us. So I don’t blame editors or producers for being scared to show these images, but I do blame them for pretending it’s for some other reason.

Because censorship is really at the root of this problem. Other than one paper in Egypt, the images haven’t been published. Most protestors haven’t seen them. Some may have seen copies, others have seen false images designed to stir up angry protest.

People are dying because of these cartoons, and I am sick of being told that I don’t need to see them. When someone denies the Holocaust, I am told what he said, I am able to judge for myself and form my own opinions, whatever they may be.

So when people riot over supposedly racist cartoons (which, they’re not, since Islam is a religion and not a racial group), I want to know what all the fuss is about. When the head of the Canadian Islamic Congress says that he’s considering charges against the Western Standard for distributing hate literature, arguably one of the most serious offences in Canada, how am I supposed to know whether or not I agree? How can the accused defend himself fairly without being allowed to show us and say “Here. Here they are! What’s inciting more hatred against Muslims – a handful of cartoons, or images of violence, death threats, and declarations of war?”

When we are not allowed to judge for ourselves, when we are given half the story, no story, or the wrong story, then we are being manipulated. We become tools, or weapons, for the goals of others. We don’t need less freedom of the press, we need more, and we need it right now and we need it everywhere.

And, for the love of God, we need to step back, have a good laugh, and grow the fuck up.

Extreme Makeover: Canadian Edition

2006-02-07T08:06:00.000-08:00

Hey, it’s not every year we get a completely remodeled Cabinet! It’s more like every 18 months. Aw, sorry Paul, low blow.

If you are like me (a supreme dork) then you spent the better part of yesterday morning watching the swearing in of the new Cabinet, as well as using your supreme intellect and unquestionable judgment to appraise each choice quickly and with 100% infallible accuracy. So here they are, in order of precedence (which is a fancy term of saying “seniority”, based on when the were first elected, how long they’ve served, the most senior position in which they’ve served, whether they let Harper get to second base, etc.):

The Honourable Robert Douglas Nicholson:
Leader of the Government in the House of Commons and Minister for Democratic Reform

I don’t actually know anything about this guy. I remember being amazed to find out that Canada once had a Minister of Science. I don’t think we ever had a Minister of Math or a Minister of Social Studies, but that’s likely because there’s no obvious choice for a theme song.

The Honourable David Emerson:
Minister of International Trade and Minister for the Pacific Gateway and the Vancouver-Whistler Olympics

Biggest shock of the morning – the former Liberal Minister of Industry shows up at Rideau Hall for the swearing-in. First reports that suspect senility (“What? But I came here last year…”) are later proven to be false as he walks away with not one, not two, but three portfolios, and provides the fodder for the best quip of the morning, care of Peter Mansbridge, over footage of Emerson talking to Nicholson “Oh, now he’s saying to Rob Nicholson, “Hello, I’m David Emerson.””

AND! I can’t wait for all those Cons who called Belinda a prostitute and whore when she crossed the floor after 11 months of being at odds with her party to start calling Emerson “David Bigalow, BC Gigolo”. Huh guys? Anything? He’s a dirty slut, right? Hellloooo? Anyone there?

The Honourable Jean-Pierre Blackburn:
Minister of Labour and Minister of the Economic Development Agency of Canada for the Regions of Quebec

I don’t know this guy either, but he seems nice enough. I like his hair. It’s fun and fancy-free. It’s all, yes, I can afford $200 haircuts, but I’m not gonna get one!

The Honourable Gregory Francis Thompson:
Minister of Veterans Affairs

He’s one of three Ministers from Atlantic Canada. He also has a shiny head.

The Honourable Marjory LeBreton:
Leader of the Government in the Senate

Alright, who let the woman in here? Listen, when Stephen said you were going to be in Cabinet, he meant the kitchen cabinet where the sandwich fixin’s are.

Ha ha! Just a little humour at how a group of 27 people made up of 21 middle-aged white guys are going to be directing federal policy for the next however many years. Not that I am scared! Not that I am going to go lock up my uterus somewhere secret!

LeBreton, though, appears to be kick-ass. I heard good things about her on the campaign trail, such as stepping in when a bunch of volunteers/campaign workers were trying to intimidate a lone female protester (“Hey lady, nice uterus!”). Maybe LP can share some insight into her awesomeness, or lack thereof.

The Honourable Monte Solberg:

Minister of Citizenship and Immigration

Here’s where the role of the critic and the role of the Minister differ. The Minister needs to set policy and direction for his department. The critic needs to nag the Minister constantly about how his policies and directions suck and he’s a stupidhead. Therefore, Monte’s many, many years as Finance Critic in no way qualify him to be the actual Finance Minister. However, they do, apparently, qualify him to be the Minister of Citizenship and Immigration. Hey, immigrants – your policies and directions suck and you’re all stupidh…er, I mean, welcome to Canada! Er, no, I mean, sorry, no vacancy! Er I mean…excuse me, I need to go blog.

The Honourable Chuck Strahl:
Minister of Agriculture and Agri-Food and Minister for the Canadian Wheat Board

I’ve always had a soft spot for Chuck because a)He looks like he gives great bear hugs, and b)he should do books on tape because he has this really low, rumbly voice, like Mufasa. Or Darth Vader. On a sad note, he’s been diagnosed with a rare form of lung cancer because of his exposure to asbestos while working in the lumber industry years and years ago, and he’s not likely to make it past a couple of years, so I hope he has a really awesome time in Cabinet, and goes to negotiations all tough-ass and shit, like, don’t fuck with me, WTO, I got two years to live and I’m taking you corporate ass-kissers with me!

The Honourable Gary Lunn:
Minister of Natural Resources

My number one memory of Gary is from Nath’n’s grad. Everyone student got to write a little something, and his was (and I’m paraphrasing here, Nath’n, so correct me if I’m wrong) “Nath’n would like to remind to remind everyone that with height comes wisdom.” And then Gary came on later to speak and was all, “Gee, I hope he’s wrong!” because Gary is about two feet tall.

And yes, Gary – maybe he’s wrong, but, in that case, what’s your excuse?

The Honourable Peter Gordon MacKay:
Minister of Foreign Affairs and Minister of the Atlantic Canada Opportunities Agency

At least it’s not Stockwell Day.

The Honourable Loyola Hearn:
Minister of Fisheries and Oceans

Here’s another example where being a Critic in no way prepares you for being a Minister. Only in this case it’s worse, because the Fisheries Minister has tons of power that other Ministers don’t, so there’s way more pressure from everyone, and Loyola’s spent the better part of the last two terms nagging the former Minister and he was smart enough to not want to have the Fisheries portfolio but not smart enough to avoid getting stuck with it anyway. Welcome to the suck!

The Honourable Stockwell Day:
Minister of Public Safety

Aw, fuck.

The Honourable Carol Skelton:
Minister of National Revenue and Minister of Western Economic Diversification

History in the making – the first female Cabinet Minister from Saskatchewan! Also, after decades of farming, is 60 but looks 45. Unlike Harper, who is 48, but looks like he just ate a puppy.

The Honourable Vic Toews:
Minister of Justice and Attorney General of Canada

Stephen Harper: I can change the definition of marriage back to “one man + one woman” without using the Notwithstanding Clause.
134 Constitutional experts and leading legal scholars: Um, no. You can’t.
Vic Toews: Yes he can! Yes he can! Shut up! You’re all stupid lalalalalalalalala I can’t hear yoooooouuuu!!!

The Honourable Rona Ambrose:
Minister of the Environment

“Hey guys. Rona here. So, a lot of you are wondering, “How does a 36-year-old former civil servant, communications consultant and sometimes columnist become one of the youngest Cabinet Ministers ever and one of the most powerful people in Canada ?”. First of all, it helps to be a hot woman. Then you get to be in lots of pictures with Stephen, so that he can be all “Look! We DO have women in our caucus. Hot ones!” Second, be wicked smart. Third, make sure to hide just how smart you are so as to not make the old boys nervous. Fourth, wear lots of sparkly things to distract those old boys who might be catching on to just how wicked smart you really are. And finally, make sure to keep everyone guessing about you and Harper feel! About the Kyoto Accord, that is.”

The Honourable Michael D. Chong:
President of the Queen's Privy Council for Canada, Minister of Intergovernmental Affairs and Minister for Sport

“Hey guys, Michael here. So a lot of you are wondering, “How does a 34-year-old former IT geek and NHL fanboy become…hey, where are you guys going? Look, I’m wearing a sparkly tie! Hello? Hello!”

The Honourable Diane Finley:
Minister of Human Resources and Social Development

Alright, four women! Now they can play bridge!

The Honourable Gordon O'Connor:
Minister of National Defence

Now, Gordon, you are, despite my best (well, mediocre) efforts, my MP. So here’s a little bit of insight for you:

Last weekend DD and I were in the mall, and there were all these Canadian Forces exhibits set up – Army Engineers, Tradespeople, Navy, Airforce, etc. And most of them were pretty vacant, but there was one with a big crowd of guys – young boys, teenagers, twenty- and thirtysomethings and whanot. And that was the one where they had all the machine guns and bazookas.

No, I don’t know what it means. You’re the Minister of Defence, you figure it out.

The Honourable Beverley J. Oda:
Minister of Canadian Heritage and Status of Women

Logical choice. Provides experience and political savvy. Also provides some of the ethnic diversity for Harper’s Cabinet. By which I mean “all of it”.

ALRIGHT! That’s enough. My brain hurts. Good thing I didn’t do this for the Liberal Cabinet last year, when there were 37 of those bastards. There’s eight left, and I will sum them up thusly: "Looks like every other guy named "Jim"" guy; “Used to hit on you at frat parties” guy; “Always volunteers to be the office Santa and not in a perverted way” guy; “Don’t I look distinguished with my grey hair” guy, “Don’t these glasses make me look smart? Take your medicine!” guy; “I’ll trust you with my money when you trust me on my hair colouring advice” guy; “Typical Quebecoise impeccable fashion and grooming that make anglo women feel hopelessly inadequate (also, now we have enough for a volleyball team!)” gal; and “Want to make the PM contradict himself twice on the same day by appointing a non-MP to Cabinet and then announcing his first Senate appointment? Ask me how!” guy.

That’s it…I’m bushed. Later skaters.

Opus in the Key of C Minor

2006-01-24T10:29:00.000-08:00

So, it's over. FINALLY. Tear down the signs, turn off the news, throw out the flyers; in fact, don't even say the word "election". For awhile. June 2007 to be exact. By my count, at least.

So, the Libs are out and the Cons are in. Childcare is out, weekly cheques for $25 are in. Lower income taxes are out, a 6% GST is in. Funding for sustainable infrastructure (like, maybe a bus shelter? for the end of my street? for when it's -50 out?) is out, tax credits for bus passes are in. I guess I'm supposed to buy my own bus shelter with my $144. Hey, I shouldn't complain - that'll buy me a lot of pizza (for the boxes) (also for the pizza) and duct tape.

All in all though, I'm not as upset as one might imagine. In fact, I think that this is one of the better case scenarios, and I'll tell you why.

See in this crazy little thing called democracy, no one party holds power forever, otherwise it wouldn't so much be a democracy as it would be something that rhymes with "vascist mictatorship". So eventually there was bound to be a shift in power. At some point, a Conservative government would form.

Now let's say the Liberals had managed to win this one, despite their campaign (or should I say "campaign"?) (Yes. Yes I should.) and eke out a little minority. That'd leave us with another shaky government, and another election in a couple of years, during which time Harper cleans a few of the visible fundies out of the ranks, takes a few more smiling lessons, and asks his right-wing buddies in the US to leave less of a trail. That, my friends, could have spelled a majority Conservative government ("O-H-S-H-I-T-W-E-R-E-F-U-C-K-E-D").

But right now? The Cons have a tiny itty bittly little minority, they have three socially progressive parties on the other side, and they have a liberal media ready to skewer their every move. And they have, at my best guess, until next spring to do their worst.

And in the meantime, the Liberals can clean house, get rid of any dead weight, find a new leader, and come back to a majority win and pick up all the pieces.

At least that's how it goes in my mind! And also there's this part where Fox un-cancels Firefly and gives me a unicorn. But that's a whole 'nother travel.

Why You Do Me So Wrong? Episode II

2006-01-17T08:53:00.000-08:00

Dear contributor to my already obscene amount of personal wealth,

Congratulations on purchasing the single greatest movie trilogy of all time, the digitally-remastered Star Wars Episodes IV through VI. You may have heard that this edition features the cleanest, sharpest footage of these classic movies, painstakingly restored to their original glory. Well, it's true! I had all three films meticulously cleaned and digitized until the droids sparkled and the lightsabres popped. All for you. That's how much I love you, and all the Star Wars merchandise you buy.

You may also have heard that I've updated them...again. Now, based on what little of the outside world I allow to penetrate the sanctified walls of Skywalker Ranch, I have come to believe that a certain rebellious faction were less than pleased by the updates I made when the Star Wars films were re-released theatrically in the late 90s. I believe the term "butchery" was used. You know - a couple of new CGI backgrounds here, a couple of new CGI characters there.What can I say? CGI back then was the Emperor, and I was weak. I was led down the path to the darkside.

Many of you saw the DVD-release as my opportunity to make up to those I hurt the most, my most loyal fans. And so did I! And as I was preparing those DVDs for release, I knew what I had to do. Heed the calls of the fans and release the original theatrical versions with remastered picture and sound and God intended?

No. That would be the easy way out. I had to release a new version, a third version, and prove to all those pimply virgins that when it comes to Star Wars, I am their God, and they'd better like my freakin' creation because it's all they're going to get. If you can't appreciate my unquestionable genius, you can go kiss a wookiee.

Now I know a lot of people out there over the age of 10 have fond feelings for the original theatrical versions, and may tell me that they were just fine as they were, what with the record-breaking financial success, the cultural impact, the landmark achievement, blahblahblah. Look, those first three were good, I'll give you that. But let me ask you this - if Leonardo DaVinci were alive today, would he leave the Mona Lisa as it was just because it was "pretty good?". Because it was a "cultural landmark?". Because there's no need to "update a classic, because classic implies that it's already a timeless creation in its original form?" Hells no, people. If he was here, that lady would not only smile, she'd wave and say "Go buy the Star Wars trilogies on DVD!". Because even DaVinci knows a superior artistic genius when he sees one.

Now, the first time I remastered those movies, that was a mistake, sure. I was eager to jump on the CGI bandwagon. But on the bright side, it did give me the much-needed experience to create the world's first fully-animated character in that unanimously-adored fellow, Jar-Jar! And, when all of you flocked to the theatres, I knew I had a hit. So, no more location shooting for me! No more focussing on narrative and character development! Wacky creatures, slapstick comedy, dialogue more unnatural than most porn films (and I should know), and action sequences which look like they were designed by the ADHD kid next door! And, most importantly, all the CGI you can cram in! THAT'S what makes a great movie!

And those movies gave the know-how to finally give you the version that you've all been waiting for. That's what all my closest advisors tell me. "Yes", they say. "Put in that scene with Jabba the Hutt in Episode IV where Han calls him "a terrific human being" because it was originally filmed with a fat man, but why let that stop you?" Or, "Yes, I think that Hayden Christensen should be in Return of the Jedi, at the very end. Please don't fire me." Or "Yes, what all those movies need are new CGI-aliens all over the place, in random scenes, for no apparent reason, I agree completely, please don't throw me into the digitally-altered pit of the Sarlacc like you did with that guy who kept quoting to you from fan letters that started with "Dear Imperial Asswipe"."

So, enjoy your Star Wars Original Trilogy Version 3.0 DVD box set! And for those of you wondering how I sleep at night after all I've done to a treasured part of our cultural mythology, the answer is "on a pile of money, surrounded by many beautiful she-droids".

May the Force Be With You!

George Lucas

Rick Mercer Strikes Again!

2006-01-11T09:52:00.000-08:00

Check out his picks for a potential Conservative Cabinet.

Elect this!

2006-01-10T07:16:00.000-08:00

What better way to celebrate one's 62nd birthday than by watching the televised English leaders' debate? Maybe some Matlock and a nice bowl of creamed corn...

Anyway - such was my night, with much-appreciated birthday wishes coming in by phone, interspersed with my shouting random things at the TV, while DD went on with his evening, wondering if and when he would have to use the straightjacket.

I can't help it though - politics get me riled up. Actually, it's not really politics, but the fact that politics oftain contains two of the things that rile me up the most:

1)Rhetorical speech filled with fallacies of reason, instead of logical and enlightening dialogue; AND
2)Lies and the lying liars who tell them

Like a certain person who I won't name here but let's just call him CreepyMcSmilesalot, and his OUTRIGHT LIE that a transit tax credit will encourage more people to use public transportation (and I say this as a public transituser. Not just a sometime user, but a five-times a week, rain or sleet or snow or heat at the end of my street with no bus shelter for me...or my feet).

Oh, and also on the "things that keep Floyd up late at night" is the fact that we might have to endure the SSM "debate" (I use the quotations marks because it's not so much a debate as one side putting forth reasonable, human-rights based arguments, and the other side going "It's Adam and Eve, not Adam and Steve, lalalalalalaaaaa I can't hear you!") AGAIN. If it comes to this once more, I might just have to pull my eyeballs out and pour rum directly into my brain.

Actually, let me just get these out in the open right now - let's see, what do my notes say (yes, I took notes...don't judge me...No, YOU'RE analog!). Alright, the issues that bugged me the most (in chronological order)

1)Harper's creepy smile. Okay, that's not really an issue, but it's on the list because SERIOUSLY DUDE get a mirror because your mouth is saying you're going to stand up for Canadians, but your dead eyes and half-smirk says "Right before I devour these puppies, heh heh!"

2)The notion that Quebec will be offended by people voting for the Liberals because it shows people don't care about the sponsorship scandal. I honestly don't understand why Quebec is pissed off at the rest of Canada over this - they were Quebec members of the Liberal Party who misappropriated funds. So to paint with broad brush strokes, the sponsorship scandal was about QUEBECORS taking money from a fund designed to KEEP THE COUNTRY TOGETHER and using it to buy shiny things, or whatever, and QUEBEC is mad at the rest of the country for this? Because the Liberals tried to bribe Quebec? And failed because a bunch of Quebecors were corrupt? Does...not...compute...

3)Peter Mackay! Oh Peter, subject of many a page girl crush...(hey, have you seen the other male MPs? We're not working with much, here) what has happened to you? Now, he wasn't mentioned by name, but they brought up the subject of question period, and Layton and Martin were all "blah blah blah question period is an uncivilized shouting match" and Harper was all "blah blah blah you won't answer our questions" and I was all "that's because a certain deputy leader in a certain only has one questions to ask and that's "When will you resign?"". Seriously, P-Mac, you need to get a new trick, because it's really tiresome that everytime you stand up you're demanding someone's resignation. I pity the poor restaurant server who has you at their table: "My soup is cold! When will you resign!" "But sir, you ordered the gazpacho!" "This whole restaurant is corrupt! When will you all resign!"

4)Mandatory minimum sentences - here, just read this.

5)THERE IS NO FISCAL IMBALANCE AIIIEEEE AH! AH! AH! (punctuated by hitting the couch). Okay, here's the scoop. The so-called "fiscal imbalance" is a term used by the provinces (ahem, QUEBEC) to describe one of two things either a)That the federal government has more money than the provinces (this is the Quebec definition); and b) when the provinces pay more to the federal government when they get back (ahem, Ontario). And in response:

a)The federal government has more money than the provinces because it is federal. It has 30 million taxpayers versus whatever number each province has. Suck it.

b)It's not the provinces giving money to the federal government, anyway, it's the TAXPAYERS in that province. If you can't balance your books, raise taxes or cut programs or just TRY HARDER - don't whine that you don't want to raise taxes because it'll hurt your re-election chances. Aso, suck it.

Shit - this is already a pretty long post and I'm not even halfway through my notes. So here's the rest, without editorializing:

-Swingers: H (n) L (y) (denotes my belief about which party leaders are and aren't swingers, based on their reaction to the question about swingers clubs, although likely not for lack of trying, if that creepy dead smile is any indication) (also, Duceppe's answer to that question was the best, talking about the importance of social evolution built on principles, and it makes me wonder how often Mrs. Duceppe has heard that speech in their bedroom: "Gilles, I'm not sure about this..." "But cheri, it is simply a natural part of social evolution!")

-GST cut boo (seriously, cut my income tax, please - I save on GST already by not buying lots of crap)

-Students, tradespeople, people who ride buses, people who's name starts with the letter "T", my aunt Bertha (from when Harper starting naming Canadians who will benefit from his tax platform - I may have paraphrased a bit)

-Shout outs to Cutler, Easter and Loubier (the only three candidates who got one, to the best of my knowledge).

-Artificial growth..... (honestly, I forget what this one was about. But it probably had to do with Harper)

-Quebecors are polite! (Heh, Martin telling Duceppe not to interrupt him...one of my favorite moments of the night...honestly, I wish those two crazy kids could make it work! Just a couple of guys of good ol' QC).

Alright - so I thought taking notes would help me organize my thoughts, but as is often the case, I was dead wrong. Or it could be that I thought a stiff drink would help, but maybe my co-worker is right - maybe 11am is too early.

Aw, hell - not during an election, it isn't.

Yesyesyesyesyesyesyesss

2006-01-05T10:03:00.000-08:00

oh yeah...that's the spot...

Election Post #1 (of what is sure to be many)

2006-01-05T08:18:00.000-08:00

Alright, there's just under three weeks left in this campaign, and I can't fight this feeling anymore. Must...post...political...commentary...

So - the Cons are in the lead. Apparently. Oh, sweet Jebus, why have you forsaken us?

All blasphemy aside (and good thing, because who knows what that'd get me in a Stephen Harper government), if the one statistics course that all Communications students were forced to take has taught me anything, it is that polls are, at best, educated guesses, and at worst, flawed reports no better at predicting outcomes than cow shit bingo.

(Aside - whenever we have our beer/cat asphyxiation meeting, remind me to share the stories about what happens when Arts Students and Math Collide, As Witnessed by an Arts Student Who Also Took Physics 12 With Mr. Agnew, He Who Does Not Tolerate Fools, William!)

So - less than three weeks left, and as my handy spies in Vic City have reported (thanks guys!), outside of the surreal bubble that is Ottawa, nobody really gives a fart about this campaign.

But I hope that you all are going to vote! Vote or...well, not die, because I'm not Whathisface Coombs. Maybe a good solid wedgie. I've updated my sidebar with all sorts of election goodies, so proscratinate freely - I do! Also, if anyone has any questions, about the election or a political party or why Harper was a fear-mongering hypocrite when last time around he was all "Even if the Liberals don't win the most seats, Paul Martin's still going to try to form a government" (answer: Because the incumbent PM's supposed to - check out the "Term" section), then please post them!

Also - speaking of hypocrisy - check out the "They'll Go Neg" ad for a little bit of the pot calling the kettle black from the fine minds at the Conservative War Room. It's like "Gee, how can we get Canadians to think that Paul Martin's going to eat a puppy?" "Gee, I don't know...wait a minute! Let's dress a little puppy up like Martin, and then have Stephen eat it!" Seriously, marketing guys - if you're criticizing someone for something you think they're going to do, maybe that criticism shouldn't take the EXACT FORM OF WHAT IT IS YOU'RE CRITICIZING THE OTHER GUY FOR THINKING ABOUT DOING. Just a little tip from one communicator to another.

Alright...that's it for now...but not for long, I'm sure. Oh wait, before I go - check this out. It'll be especially handy come next Monday night!

Beware the sun, and other things I have learned about winter in Ottawa

2006-01-03T11:37:00.000-08:00

Six years of Ottawa winters, and it still gets me at least once every season. The sun, that is – all bright and glowy and shiny and raining down the UV rays and Vitamin D, calling out to me with its tendrils of burning gasses – “Come on out!” it says. “Look at me, all fiery and not obscured by so much as a single cloud! Leave your toque, your scarf, your thermal underwear, and come enjoy my life-giving light and warmth!”

And so I do – and instantly freeze all the way to my ovaries because DAMN! I keep forgetting that in this town, Sun=Cold Enough to Freeze the Bells off the Peace Tower.

Not so back home. In Victoria, sunny meant just what you’d think – a warmish day, at least, maybe cold and breezy in the evening, but certainly nothing to panic about. Only now, six years later, has it gotten through my permafrosted brain that Sun no longer equals Nice Out, that Sun=BAD!, that a sunny day means that I can look forward to those moments at the bus stop where I forget what it’s like to have feeling in my hands or feet.

Now I can’t even spell meteorologist (or can I? I’m too lazy to spell check) let alone explain what they do, so don’t expect some sort of in-depth analysis of why it is SO MUCH FREAKING COLDER on sunny days versus cloudy ones. I just state the facts, I don’t/can’t explain them. Stephen Harper’s gaining popularity in the polls, the sun makes things colder – don’t ask me to give you the why and how!

Another thing I have learned about winter is that West Coasters walk differently than the rest of the country. Every year, I slip and fall on icy sidewalks/streets at least three times. These incidents range from the minor (as in “smile abashedly at the concerned strangers”) to the spectacular (as in “write up contract for share of $10,000 American’s Funniest Home Video prize with random stranger with camera phone”).

And apparently, the reason for this tumbles are that I don’t walk the right way. My more winter-wise friends are constantly telling me to “Walk this way!” (not to be confused with Steven Tyler, who also tells me to “talk this way”). “This way” is apparently lightly and gingerly, like the sure-footed mountain goat, who sure as hell would be extinct by now if the mountains had the same snow and ice build-up and crazy aggressive drivers that Ottawa does.

Which brings me to another thing that I have learned about winter – nobody gives a shit about pedestrians.

Not the plows, that constantly dump snow from the sides of roads onto sidewalks, or pile it up and the edge of the crosswalk so that my walk to work more closely resembles the 200m hurdles. Not the sidewalk sweepers, those mini-plows with major attituded that barrel up and down the narrow walkways spraying salt and sand on everyone without slowing or stopping for foot traffic, thereby forcing pedestrians to leap for the safety of the snowbanks (aside – terrible, terrible aside – the first year I arrived in Ottawa, the body of an elderly woman was discovered in a snowbank on a busy downtown street – it was suspected that she had tried to get out of the way of one of these sweepers and fell into the snowbank, laying covered and unnoticed until she froze to death – not to be crass, but winter is serious business around here). And certainly not the drivers who refuse to let me cross the street to get to my house, and leave me standing on the side of the road, a mere 150m from warmth in the -20 or less weather while they cruise along in their dangerously unsafe SUVs.

Other things to know:

-The best way to keep warm is to gather all the clothing you have, and then wear it.
-If you can avoid going outside, then do so. Invent games, activities, or friends to keep you sane. If that fails, well, you might be crazy but at least you're warm.
-Do not, under any circumstances, think that you can just "run out" and get the mail/empty the composter/bring out the garbage without wearing your full winter gear, or years from now you will be the icy centrepiece of a museum exhibit entitled "Frozen in Time - 21st Century Humans and the Mindless Chores that Killed Them"
-Always keep a Tauntaun with you in case you need to slit open its belly and sleep in its guts.
-Actually, that about covers it.

Aunt Phyllis Don't Take No Shit From Nobody

2005-12-20T08:57:00.001-08:00

So I’m at the holiday party for a fine up and coming high-tech company called March Networks (remember this name – buy some stocks – etc). And the DJ’s playing all sorts of tunes, from current Top 40 to...well, past Top 40. And, because I can’t just shut my mouth and have a good time, I found myself spending a good part of the night puzzling over the supreme randomness of whoever it is that censors music in Canada.

My guess? Somebody’s spinster aun. Seriously – is it somebody’s spinster aunt? Because I don’t understand why some words make it in, and others don’t. I mean, I understand why Kanye West's ridiculously awesome Golddigger has a radio version. But why can't The Black Eyed Peas tell people that they’re the shit, or Gwen Stefani say that her shit is bananas, when John Travolta can sing about getting his rocks off in his pussywagon that all the chicks cream for?

?huh?

And that’s why I think it’s somebody’s reaaaaally old spinster aunt, old enough to think that John Travolta’s going to be rounding up stray cats in his cars, and really, what spinster doesn’t love a house full of cats? And the other stuff, she probably just can’t make out with her hearing cone, but she sure as heck knows that S-H-I-T spells “moral depravity of our youth!”

Anyway…this was a lot more thought-provoking after six glasses of wine. Hey, that’s not a bad idea…what? It’s almost noon here.

In other news – in case any of you were wondering, the madness last week was two-fold:

1)Planning and preparing for Dan’s surprise! birthday party. Which, in hindsight, I probably shouldn’t have held at the home we both share, because it makes it tricky to hide supplies for 20-odd people, as in “Hey, why do we have three cases of beer?” “Uh…because I’ve taken up drinking! I mean, more so!”

2)Being mistaken for a computer-savvy person, which I blame entirely on my Arts Student's ability to bullshit about anything. Or the fact that, apparently to the over-forty crowd, anyone under the age of twenty-five can do anything on the computer, up to and including designing professional-quality websites. Yes, the knowledge is downloaded into our brains through rap videos, or something. And since it just so happens that this is for a certain election campaign, I have to work on it outside of my full-time hours, which, boo! But it’s all for a good cause, and I think it’s way awesome, and even though I made DD stay up until 3am on the night of his surprise! party putting on the finishing touches, it was totally worth it. Right, birthday boy? Also, I don't mean to imply that I actually designed it, because, uh, no - that's what "hiring talented professionals" is for.

Speaking of the election, I came across an interesting site the other day called The Elections Prediction Project. I’d encourage you all to check it out, even if you’re not political, to see the kind of partisan blowhards I have to deal with all the time. Kidding! It’s a great site and it helps me keep track of what’s going on back home on the election front. BC is one of the big question marks this time around, so I’m curious about what you guys back in Vic City are seeing. Are their lots of signs? Any front-runners? Does anyone even care?

MADNESS!!

2005-12-15T06:53:00.001-08:00

Hey all,

So - as you can see from the title of this post, this week has been madness. Not angry madness, (well, okay, that too) but busy madness. If my head doesn't explode, then you can read all about it next week, on time, but for now try Scott Feschuk's Blog (Okay, it's Liberal propaganda, but it's also hilarious, which is how I like my propaganda) (and I mean hilarious-on-purpose, not "duck and cover" hilarious).

Floyd out! (See, there's so much madness I've actually gone back in time to 2003).

Just when I thought I was out...

2005-12-06T08:31:00.002-08:00

As some of you may recall, DD and I recently made the difficult decision (okay – it was only a difficult decision for me) to cut the cord. This decision resulted in the gaining of many extra hours which were previously filled with CSI (original series only), endless Simpsons reruns and whatever heavily edited blockbuster was currently playing on TBS (aside - anyone else remember the TBS "Monkeyed Movie Shorts?" 'Cause those were frackin' HILARIOUS).

So what, you may ask, have we done with all those extra hours? Well, for one thing – we watch a lot more movies.

Well, we signed up for Zip again. Remember that one, where you sign up online and they send you movies right to your mailbox? And then when you’re done, you send the movies back, and poof! More movies. Forget that 10 minute walk to the video store – that’s for suckers! We walk 10 feet to the mailbox – nay, skip giddily to the mailbox – and there they are, our little cinematic bundles of joy, waiting for us like adorable little flat, circular puppies, that just want to entertain us.

And entertain they do – so far my biggest find has been the freakin’ awesome Battlestar Galactica series. If you don’t watch it, you should, because it’s great. I never saw the original series, but I had the feeling it was kind of dorky – well not so with this version. It’s well-written with great actors and way-cool action scenes and the premise is intriguing and the storyline is captivating and – although he is, quite possibly, the homeliest man in all creation – I think I love Edward James Olmos, who plays Commander Adama. Actually, what I want is for him to be my new grandpa, and he and Gran’pa Floyd can form a gang and they would be the toughest, gruffest SOBs who ever cut someone down with a terse remark, stared them into submission, and then whupped them – for their own good (I mean for the individual’s own good, not for my grandpas’).

Zip is also a good way for me to broaden my movie-watching horizons – I mean, y’all know how I feel about good and bad movies. With Zip, I can finally pick out all those movies I keep meaning to watch, but don’t have enough pirate vs. zombie action to stand out in the video store. Now they show up, and I get around to watching them – eventually. Like Atarnarjuat, which is a really, really good movie, once we finally sat down and watched it, which took two rental cycles and three days. But so totally worth it!

It’s also nice because you don’t have to agree on a movie – I can watch The Philadelphia Story (which – awesome suggestion Payton) while DD talks on the phone; we both pick movies we want and watch what we want. Although we do have similar tastes in movies (like how the day after we met we stayed in to watch Army of Darkness – now that’s true romance. Oh, also a good movie!).

We still manage to find time to do other things though – like go to the theatre! Actually, we do that a lot less now, but we did catch a couple of flics this weekend: Aeon Flux (which - bonus - is one of those rare movies that is actually directed by a woman - so go see it and support the cause of doubling the percentage of women-helmed films to 2%!) and Harry Potter (A-Mac – we’ll have to see the next one together to relive the old tradition – try not to be getting more ivy league education then, mmmkay?).

I have to say I really enjoyed both, because I like sci-fi/fantasy and cool action sequences and Charlize Theron is waaay hot whether or not you swing that way. So I recommend both, although one is PG fluff with both cartoony sequences and some surprisingly dark elements, while the other has wizards.

Well, that's all for me as of late - although we did find time to put up our holiday lights, mostly because everyone else in our section had done it already and damn those Joneses if they think we're not going to keep up!

I Pity the Fool

2005-11-30T16:04:00.000-08:00

Dudes...sorry for anyone who's been checking the site...I know I am waaaay late. It's been a crazy couple of days, as you can imagine!

Anyway, in my odd spare moments, I've been trying to come up with things to write about. All day today at work I was thinking "Gee, I hope I come up with something to write about!"- that is, I was working very very hard and was not distracted at all. And I stumbled across a way awesome article, but I'm saving that for later, because first: just as I was leaving the office today, CBC Newsnet was covering a story on the New Hampshire abortion law currently before the Supreme Court. The older news guy who reminds me of that guy who always plays mobsters and whose name I just looked up only to find out he died was explaining the story and the very last thing I heard as I turned off the TV was:

"So if a minor wants to have an abortion, at least one of their parents must be notified..."

NO NO NO! I object, morally and gramatically!

Let's deal with the latter issue first: this is one of my own grammar dilemmas. I was taught that "they" is, first and foremost, a plural pronoun. However, social shifts threw a monkey wrench into that when people started to realize that writing everything with man-specific pronouns (eg. "If someone wants to be a teacher, he should get his B. Ed" or "If someone wants a sandwich, he should make it his own goddamn self, asshole") was pretty effin' sexist. However, as one of my professors told me, the "he/she" thing is just UGLY. Seriously, it's not pretty. So using "they" instead of he or she or he/she or he and/or she became acceptable (also acceptable - as same prof said "Pick a pronoun and run with it"; all of my essays thus used "she". Take that, Taliban!).

However - and this is a BIG "however"- in this particular case, not-Joe-Vitrella-anchordude - seeing as the action in question cannot apply to men, ya really could have been both accurate and gramatically correct using a simple "she".

Also - grammar aside now - WTF? That is a scary, scary law. If a kid doesn't want to tell her parents about her abortion, MAYBE THERE'S A GOOD REASON. Sheeeesus. Heh! I like that. Shesus! Like Jesus, but with ovaries.

Heh heh heh...

Anyway! I'm not going to go about abortion right now, because I really really really want to share this super awesome article with you guys because A) it's super awesome b) it's about one of the coolest people E-VAH, Mr. T and c) it almost made me cry and if you get to the part where the little boy writes Mr. T not to be afraid of a little old cancer and don't tear up a little? then you are not human. Just so you know.

Here it is, in all its glory.

This story made me happy because I normally can't stand these "And then I found God/Allah/Buddha/a shiny nickel" because they seem so preachy and disengenious. But the part where Mr. T talks about how he doesn't wear his big gold chains because after seeing the face of desperate poverty was just like, hell yeah!

So, Mr. T, thanks for making me smile. Although now I do regret, just the teensiest bit, my decision to cancel cable.

PS. Thanks for the awesome comments- they make me laugh all throughout the day.
Payton - I would have guessed you were the leader too! But there goes my "Cafetorium is an Ontario word" theory.
Nathan - I am so proud of you. Take that, sucky TV. Although I bet Mr. T's show is awesome.
Courtney - No, that's always how I wear my hair! Haha, just kidding...I use mousse, not gel.
Erica - oh no - if you've been taking two years of dance lessons, I'd better get much much better before we swap - maybe I can practice with some of those 37-year-olds who live in their parents' basements
Mo: We'll be performing at the hotdog lobbyists' AGM
Megan: Why does that not surprise me? Let me guess: "bad carbs" = "all carbs".

Fair Weather Not-Friends

2005-11-22T09:42:00.000-08:00

I remember when I used to love the first snow of the season. Or, as it’s called in Victoria, the only snow of the season. Oh, but wasn’t it magical? Those soft white flakes drifting to earth, blanketing everything as far as the eye could see, ready to be formed into snowmen or snow angels or snowballs or ice balls which are just like snowballs but with a chunk of ice at the middle so that you can finally test the old adage about the fun, the games, and the putting out of eyes.

And even when I moved out East (and yes, I’ve looked at a map, and yes, I know where I live isn’t technically East, and yes, I’m not going to change despite how ridiculous and inaccurate my statement, like how folks from PEI say “When’d you get home?” when they really mean “Hey, first-time visitor, when did you arrive in our fine province?”) snow still had that element of fantasy. The first snow of first year, a group of us went out in our totally-unsuitable-for-winter winter clothes and stood around gaping and then frolicked and giggled like children and threw handfuls of snow at each other and generally acted like doofuses who had never seen snow before; which, in all fairness, was actually true for my playmates as they happened to be from Mexico City. Also, in all fairness to me, I come by my dorkiness honestly.

So – we had our first snow last week and it was beautiful and magical and blah blah blah but today was the second snow of the season and I have already reached my saturation level for snow and the dumb things it makes people do in Ottawa which impact me personally, namely:

1) Drive like mentally-impaired chimps, almost doubling my commute time; OR
2) Get so scared of driving in the snow that they decide to take the bus, so I get to STAND during my twice-as-long-commute;
3) Use umbrellas when it snows – and I’m sure I’ve ranted about this before, but what is it with people who use freakin’ golf umbrellas ON THE SIDEWALK? ASSHOLES. And yes, you are going to have to go around me because I’m not going to WALK ON THE STREET because you’ve decided that you don’t want snow landing on or within a three-foot-radius of you. Also? ASSHOLES;
4) Crank up the heat to 28 degrees so that you nearly have a cardiac event by entering a building which is more than 50 degrees warmer than the outside;
6) Wear miniskirts and nylons after the temperature drops below freezing because looking good is more important than feeling good or even feeling anything – look, if you wanted to embody unrealistic female stereotypes, why not just stay home and darn somebody’s socks and talk about how you don’t always feel fresh, you know, down there? because just looking at you drops my body temperature by at least 10 degrees.
5) Say “Well at least it isn’t rain!” which…okay, freezing rain is worse than snow, so you got me there. Nevermind.

Aw…I know I’m being pretty negative and all (WHAT@#$!@$#??) but I guess it’s not all that bad. The lights are pretty, especially with snow, and the Canal will be open in a couple of months, and it’s fun seeing all the pretentious suits wearing dorky toques, and whatnot.

Plus – winter election? Ice balls? Need I say more?

Blogtacular!

2005-11-16T08:45:00.001-08:00

So, here I was, wracking my poor little mind, trying to think of a hott topic for today's post…the first snow (also in MTL, for darling Banana…welcome to winter!) of the season; the fact that DD and I are continuing our never-ending quest to fulfill the suburban yuppie dream by taking (don't laugh) ballroom dancing classes (fuckers…I told you not to laugh); the likelihood that this upcoming season will feature my two all-time super duper favourite sounds that I totally love and that in no way make me want to job flaming hot pokers into my eardrums, namely a)Christmas carols; and b)bloated partisan acting "talents" of various federal politicians.

But lo and behold – as I log-on to ramble my way coarsely and incoherently through another post (speaking of which – if you want to see something coarse and incoherent – check this movie out. Unless you are my Nana, in which case, I didn't see it, or even hear about it, or even know what you're talking about because I was busy been reading Psalms. Er, for 6 years) when I noticed a little something:

Happy 100th post! To me. Or you. To everybody!

This kind of took me by surprise, so I haven't really prepared anything. Of course, maybe it was my plan all along to go for broke on my 138th Post Blogtacular! Yeeeeeesssssss….that's it.

Anway...back to our regularly scheduled rant:

SO YOU THINK YOU CAN DANCE

Uh...no. That's why we took lessons. In DD's old high school cafetorium. And yes, that's a real word, although god knows why they couldn't just call it a multi-purpose room like everyone else. Apparently it's an Ontario thing, like calling the game where you play a miniature version of golf "mini-putt" despite the fact that you're putting normal distances, and that it is the field of play itself that is miniature, so that it's like calling a shoot-out "mini-hockey". Anyway, we just had our last class the other night, and let me just say that while we still constantly look at our feet and I occasionally forget to not lead (what can I say? As anyone who took dance in middle school knows, there are always way more girls than boys, and so some of those girls have to be boys, but certain girls absolutely refuse to be boys because nice girls don't want to cross the lines of arbitrary gender roles, so then girls like me are like WTF? I'll be the fucking boy, bitch, and so now we find ourselves 10 years later subconsciously trying to lead, and see where boy/girl sex role crossover leads to? MADNESS!) and we also address each other in phony accents depending on which dance we're currently attempting ("Oh Viscount Charles David Winchester-Smythe, Marquess of Bumbleberry, theThird, you foxtrot divinely" "Quite") we are above and beyond the best of the class, if you are judging on things like being able to do the steps in time to the music.

Now, not to downplay my time as a pupil of a certain middle school dance teacher, but most of it has to do with the fact that DD, unlike the other guys in the class, has rhythm. And if you want to see pain, you should see the look on a woman's face who's trying to do the cha-cha (one-two-three, cha-cha, four-five-six) while her partner is stomping around, as if in time to his own irregular heartbeat (one...twothree...chacha!...fourfivesix...), and she's trying to patiently guide him without leading, because nice girls don't lead, but she's also trying to get him to hear the music "one-two-three-four" and he's staring at the floor and stomping around and it's like some In Living Color sketch with Jim Carrey about how white guys even suck at white guy dances.

Anyway - it's been pretty fun, and we're going to keep it up, but it's not like we're going to the Olympics anytime soon. Unless some sort of mysterious tragedy befalls the Uzbekistan team...MWAHAHAHAHA....ahem...

SCROOGE MCHARPER

If the insipid, blatantly commercial and mind-numbingly uncreative holiday commercials don't get me, then the fine thespian skills of Peter "Keanu" MacKay explaining patient wait times will. Thank God we cancelled cable ("You're welcome" - God).

WHAT$%!!!:????

Yes...we cancelled cable.

Yes...it was my idea.

Yes...I was watching four hours of CSI every day.

Yes...we still have plenty of beer.

Just the Facts, Ma'am

2005-11-08T12:04:00.000-08:00

So I’m doing some research (work-related, for real!) and I stumble across a little interesting tidbit. Here it is, presented in a charming multiple-choice question format:

Q) What rank does Canada hold in terms of women elected to its highest legislative body?

a) 43rd
b) 1st
c) 5th
d) 24th

Hint - it’s the one that makes you cringe. And, as a follow-up question:

Q) Which countries are currently outperforming Canada in this regard?

a) Sweden
b) Wales
c) Rwanda
d) All of the above

Hint – see the hint above.

Yup – at a measly 21%, Canada is currently behind Sweden’s 45% (no surprise), Wales’ 50% (You go, land of my ancestors before being brought to Ireland, likely through slavery, centuries ago!) and Rwanda’s 48.8% (“Rebuilding from a horrendous genocide and promoting equitable gender practices – Ask me how!”).

Now, it may not always be clear from my ranting, but I actually really like Canada quite a whole freakin’ lot, and I really think that of all the times and places to be a woman, this is pretty much number one on my list (with Denmark a close second, although if I was a little more skilled in learning foreign languages…well, that’s neither here nor there. Whatev. Canada rocks yeeeeeaaaah!!!)

But, for all our awesomeness, we still lag behind countries like Pakistan and Portugal which, no offence to their ancient and rich cultures, but “equality between the sexes” isn’t really the first thing that comes to mind when I think of those two countries (incidentally – the first things that do come to mind when I think of those two countries are “Grade school report with lots of cut-out National Geographic pictures” and “foreign over-fishing/blatant disregard of NAFO quotas” respectively. And the second thing for the latter is “What the hell? Herb Dhaliwal!”, which is only funny if you remember Brian Tobin, the Turbot Wars, and are one of three people).

So if we’re so awesome in so many ways, why not this one? I’ve wracked my brains for the last five minutes and can’t come up with anything, so I’ve decided to blame the States.

Seriously though – Canada is pretty heavily influenced by our neighbour to the south (ooh – burn, Alaska), where the third-wave feminist backlash is well underway (“Girls Gone Wild”, anyone? No, I’m not linking to it. The thought that it even exists is painful to me…like, a century and a half of the contemporary women’s movement, and now there’s girls running around with shirts that say “I SHOWED MY BREASTS TO A MISOGYNISTIC CAPITALIST WHO VIDEOTAPED ME AND COUNTLESS OTHERS, THEN GOT RICH WHEN HE PACKAGED AND SOLD THE FOOTAGE TO HORDES OF LEERING PERVERTS WHO NEED CONSTANT REINFORCEMENT OF THEIR INSECURE NOTION THAT WOMEN JUST WANT TO BE OBJECTIFIED, AND ALL I GOT WAS THIS LOUSY T-SHIRT WHICH, INCIDENTALLY, I’LL TOTALLY TAKE OFF IN EXCHANGE FOR SOMETHING SHINY”).

Anyway – the long and the short of it is that it doesn’t seem like we’ve come that long a way from the “nice women don’t want the vote days” and honestly? We XXers have no one to blame but ourselves. ‘Cause we’re 51% of this country, bitches – and if we haven’t gotten our way by now, we’d better wake up and smell the arithmetic because better policies are ours for the making.

So – if you or someone who love are/is a woman, then check out this site and check up on when the next elections are coming to a town near you.

Prevent cancer? God forbid!

2005-11-01T10:05:00.000-08:00

So...I've been hemming and hawing all morning about what the subject of this weeks rant...er, well-written social commentary. It's been a couple of frustrating week. Auditors found that David Dingwall's expense were completely legitimate, and yet not one of the randos have apologized who wrote angry, ill-punctuated letters based entirely on a headline which they read and assumed was the gospel truth because in our country we don't have, like, a system which balances facts and evidence and arrives at an accurate conclusion; no, we have the Ottawa Sun "pork-barrelling" headlines and that is our judge and jury and if it's in print it must be true therefore let's all write reactionary shithead e-mails or make bitchface phone calls to anonymous staffers demanding to know the amount of Dingwall's severance, and then speak to said staffer like they are intellectually-challenged infant when said staffer tries to explain the actual situation to you, because you saw 10 seconds of a news story on cable 6 and therefore you are the expert and said staffer is an illiterate ass-monkey who isn't going to fool clever you, no sirree, and then when it turns out that said staffer was actually right, you're totally going to phone back and apologize, because you are an educated and informed and reasonable person, who may jump to conclusions but certainly accepts responsibility for your actions and can admit when you were totally, undeniably wrong, right? Right?

Still waiting for my apology. Bitchface.

Also - David Pallister? Now that it turns out you were just being a misleading shit-disturber, are you going to change your tune? Where's the catchy apology song? Here's a freebie from The Culture of Life:

Mother, didn't think that I was wrong,
Mother, didn't write a "sorry" song,
Mother, guess they're going to try to break my balls,
Oooh, mother, I should have stuck with being tall.

But honestly? As frutstrating as it is that politicians can say almost anything without fear of reprisal (did somebody say Parliamentary Privilege?), it's not the most frustrating thing of this past week.

No, the dubious distinction of the single most unreasonable, dim-witted and pessimism-about-the-fate-of-humanity-provoking thing this week is that a 100% effective vaccination for HPV-caused cervical cancer has been discovered (hooray!) but certain groups don't want it to be used, because then those little whores wouldn't get the punishment they deserve. Or something. Somehow, curing cancer is bad. Somehow, talking about abstinence is a "a better, healthier alternative than the vaccine". Uh huh. Like, this one time, I almost had polio, but then , like, my mom gave my immune system a good, long talking to, and that totally cleared all that up. Anyway, read about it here, and rant about it here.

Random Awesome Things Day

2005-10-25T06:11:00.000-07:00

Hey all,

There's nothing gnawing at my insides today - well, nothing interesting anyway - but I have stumbled across a couple random awesome things, so I'm just going to keep putting up the shit that's making me laugh today. So let's get started:

1)Go to Google. Type in "failure". Hit "I'm feeling lucky". Enjoy!

2)There's a bill going through Parliament right now on product labelling, among other things, and one specific clause in there (65.1, for those of you who want to look it up) which would make it unlawful to put a dairy term on a non-dairy item. Today,the Dairy Farmers of Canada sent out this little fact sheet explaining this clause's effects (and yes, they were implicated in the writing of this particular amendment). For example, you can't call your instant potatoes "Butter and Herb" flavoured if there's no butter in the ingredients. Same thing - can't say your popcorn is "Butter Lovers" if it doesn't contain any butter. And - AWESOMELY - you can't put the word "butter" on a margarine container - NOT EVEN IF YOUR PRODUCT IS CALLED "I CAN'T BELIEVE IT'S NOT BUTTER". How freakin' awesome is that? You have a product called "Definitely not a Dairy Product" and the dairy farmers are all, you can't put the word "dairy" on there, and you're all, but the word dairy is preceded by "not", and the dairy farmers are all,whatever, take it off, and you're all, but the name of my product clearly states that it's not a dairy product, and how I am I supposed to tell consumers my product isn't dairy without actually using the word dairy, and the dairy farmers are all lalalalalala we can't heeeeeeear you, and you're all, damn, bitches.

3)Check out this link (courtesy of la Kot) for one of the most awesomest things ever broadcast on television, ever...it's even more fun now that you know that these chumps have their days numbered when they recorded this..."I'm not saying you're not a smart guy, 'cause those things are hard to tie...". Aw yeah.

4)And thanks to Mo for this link which makes me wonder about a possible career change...sure, the pay's non-existent and the danger is life-threatening...maybe I can just start shouting COBRA! at work randomly...like when I'm collating, or sorting the mail, or whatnot. COBRAAAAAA!!!

Suckurity

2005-10-18T08:27:00.000-07:00

Well, that’s it. I’m on the lam. I shouldn’t be writing this, wasting precious time that could be spent deciding whether I want my new identity to be Francesca La Maradonna, Esq, flamboyant countess and lover of fine linens, or Jo-Mary Hoddwag, down-to-earth mobile home inhabitant and lover of fine collectible plates featuring the cast of Seventh Heaven.

See, yesterday I…ignored a security guard and snuck an unauthorized visitor into the Department of Fisheries and Oceans.

Now, in fairness to me, said visitor was the Parliamentary Secretary to the Minister of Fisheries and Oceans, and his photo is on file and all, like, six security guards are supposed to recognize him, and he’s been the PS for TWO YEARS, and the security guard on duty that day is about 800 years old and can barely see or speak and really was completely at fault.

And in his defence – um…he’s really, really old.

Now, I don’t want to come off as ageist here, because that’s not the issue. I mean, Gran’pa Floyd is 76 and he’s still the one I’d want watching my back in a zombie fight because a) he’s freaking tough and b) he owns many, many rifles.

But this guy? Is just…feeble. He is a feeble old man. If they replaced him with a sign that said “mumble mumble” they would achieve the same level of security. His job consists of two things – checking security passes (which he CANNOT SEE from ONE FOOT AWAY even with GLASSES as I found out yesterday) and making sure people without them go to the desk.

Which brings me to yesterday. My boss has no pass. He needs no pass. Dude does not understand this. So when he mumbles after us to check in at the desk, a low mumble which my boss does not hear, I made a split decision to IGNORE HIM. Because, dude? It is not my job to secure myself. It is your freakin’ job. And if you can’t do it, then too bad. I’m sure you’re a great grandfather, (and probably a great-grandfather too) and a wonderful person and a pillar of the community but you sure as hell aren’t making me feel any safer.

And you know what? That’s what security guards are for – to make things safer. They are the guardians of security – the place of business, the employees, the customers and visitors. This is a real actual job that requires a real actual skill set. My crazy obnoxious roommate from second year worked night security and, yes, she was crazy and obnoxious, but at least she’d be capable of a quick reaction to an emergency situation, even if that emergency situation is just stopping someone from getting in the elevator.

Hey, as long as I’m going down this road, I’m gonna make a pit-stop at How-do-they-decide-what-to-confiscate-ville. I’m talking about when you have to walk through the little scanner and put your shit through the x-ray machine, and then they single you out and thoroughly inspect your collection of wind chimes as if you’re planning on...shit, I don't even know what you could do with wind chimes... "Now turn this plane around, or I will fill the cabin with the sound of metal pieces hitting each other!" "Oh no! We'd better do as she says...she has miniature bejewlled dolphins on a string!!!"

Seriously, do they like, throw a bunch of shit into a bucket, and then the intern sticks his hand in and the first 20 things he pulls out are banned objects? Back when I was a tour guide, it really seemed like it. After September 11th, the staff who worked the scanners really cranked up their protection of our capitol building by neutralizing such threats as:

A )Elderly women with nail clippers
B) Girl Scouts with whistles
C) Elementary school kids with hand-held Canadian flags

I guess I wouldn’t be a very good security guard, because I fail to see how any of those pose a threat to the safety and/or decorum of Parliament. But a real security guard could tell you that a) DANGEROUS OBJECTS! b) LOUD NOISES! and c) SYMBOLS OF CANADA! are very, very bad things to have in Parliament (aside – if an old lady manages to kill you with NAIL CLIPPERS - survival of the fittest, that’s all I’m saying).

In all fairness, I guess you could make an argument for A) and B). But if you bring a whistle into Parliament for the sole purpose of making a scene, then you probably aren’t above, say, yelling really loudly. And god knows if your nail clippers get taken away, then you might have to use your hands, and I’d rather be attacked with someone’s nail clippers than someone’s fists.

Same thing for planes: I can’t bring my knitting needles, but some black belt gets to bring her hands? If we’re serious about safety, than martial arts experts, covert operatives and vampire and/or demon slayers should be forced to declare themselves as lethal weapons and then wear some sort of Hannibal Lecter-type full-body cage. And it should be sparkly, for the amusement of other passengers. I mean, knitting needles? Yes, some are sharp and pointy. But others are basically two dull sticks; the only way I could kill someone with a pair of those would be if I tossed the needles to them and then strangled them while their hands were full. (Editor's Note -Okay, I just did I little fact-checking, and it turns out that kniiting needles are A-OK. So...sorry, airplane guys. And thanks for allowing my fellow passengers to be armed with whips!)

I’m not trying to say that we shouldn’t have security policies and people to uphold them. I’m not saying said policies and people aren’t important. They absolutely freakin’ are. And because they’re important, the policies should be reasonable and sound, and the people should be capable of enforcing them. But when you get dumb-ass policies thrown together without reflection, and dumb-asses incapable either a) critical thought or b) doing two push-ups without a break in between, then there’s really no freakin’ point is there?