« May 2006 |
Main
| July 2006 »
Since the gun registry is such a boondoggle already anyway, I think all its information should be publicly posted. I want to know who has guns in their house. Afterall, they could be terrorists.
Well, as predicted (not exactly in writing) on this blog, a guy who worked for Homeland Security has been hired by Lockheed Martin, the defence contracting company hired to collect data for Canada's 2006 Census. Damn, but I wish I wasn't such a gosh darned Canadian and hadn't filled that sucker out.
Why do rightwingers think The Daily Show is leftwing? Because it's funny? Or am I just really leftwing... Luckily, I'm a woman and therefore can't be funny. Which makes it doubly ironic that Fox News is going to try to parody The Daily Show with its own show starring Laura Ingraham. The first irony being that Fox News already parodies itself, which makes The Daily Show a parody of a parody and which would make the new show a double parody once removed but done by the same...
Here are two gross stories inspired by a post on sooeys the other day.
We had an old farmhouse in our family that had been passed down from when the first of us made the trip across the sea from cold damp rocky Scotland to find a cold damp rocky spot to settle on in Northern Ontario. Every summer my mom would send us down there - with my grandmother, who lived with us in the Sault - for a few weeks so we could fantasize about owning a cottage on the water - like our neighbours.
Anyway, one of the weekly rituals involved my mom coming down for a couple of hours to visit, after which she'd take the week's worth of garbage back to the city to put out for pick-up. Well, this particular summer, my grandmother broke her leg and had to be at home in the city so the summer farm visit for us was cut short (Are you there, god? It's me - sooey) and that was that.
After a day or two, we noticed a weird smell in the car. Nothing we couldn't put down to July heat, but with each passing day, it seemed to get worse. By August, no one was asking for a ride anywhere - that's for sure.
Eventually, the smell got so bad, my mom decided she should take the car in to a mechanic (c'mon - she was a widow in the '60s - what the hell would she know about cars?) to investigate the mysterious smell. But for some reason no one can remember now, my sister decided to check the trunk in case her missing bathing suit was there.
Oh! My! God! She opened the trunk and what seemed like hundreds of flies flew in her face and after she was done screaming she looked down to find the trunk alive with maggots and rotting garbage from the farm.
The second story also involves my sister (I was smart and kept a low profile around our house so I wouldn't ever be asked to go down the basement and bring up a can of whatever from the cellar for supper). There had been a bit of a stink coming from the basement for a while, my gram kept saying, "I'll go down there and see what's what", but then she got called away to visit another relative and so never did investigate. In the meantime, my mom went on a trip somewhere and one night my sister - who was alone in the house - decided to go down the basement to seem if by chance there was a can of smoked oysters in the cellar (she loved smoked oysters - LOVED THEM!!).
Anyway, she headed down the stairs and halfway down (we always went down the basement stairs in slow motion - our basement was really creepy) she became aware of a low buzzing noise. Thinking it was the dryer or somesuch, she continued on down. When she turned on the light at the bottom of the stairs (because of course you had to actually be IN the basement before you could have any light...) it looked at first like the walls were black.
And moving.
Flies. Big fat flies were crawling all over the basement walls.
She backed up in a semi-hysterical state, backed up the stairs, and ran from the house to get out next door neighbour - the most squeamish guy on the planet - to go down with her to the basement again and get a window open to get the flies out of the basement (I know - she must have really wanted those smoked oysters...).
Somehow - and our neighbour suited up in dishwashing gloves and his dad's welding mask - he got the window open without dropping dead of a heart attack - and the flies all headed out into the waning light of evening to live out their disgusting one day lives.
Some time later, my gram went down to investigate and notice the outline of a dead rat on the floor near the sewer drain (of course we had to have a sewer drain in our creepy basement). "I guess that rat must've crawled up that sewer drain to die and the flies got him."
Thanks for that, gram. See you in hell, too.
I am so sick of wealthy people being hailed as heroes because they give money to charity. Look - the only real charity is anonymous. Not only that, but if you get a tax receipt to boot - it's not even really charity. It's just financial savvy.
And since it doesn't hurt people with lots of money to give up a bit of it, even if it is anonymous and even if a tax receipt wasn't issued - I don't think it's charity. Not really. It's something, I guess... Being a sentient humanoid, maybe?
Here in Ottawa, the former publisher of the Ottawa Citizen would annually be heralded in his own newspaper for running (administering, lending his name to, something like that) the Snowsuit Fund. Now, aside from the Dickensian picture a country like Canada even having a Snowsuit Fund conjures up for social agitators like moi - I have to say, snowsuits, good quality snowsuits in good repair, are a dime a dozen at Sally Anns and St. Vincent de Pauls all across this cold, Presbyterian country. There really is no need for a Snowsuit Fund. I outfitted three children for years in almost new snowsuits (in some cases - never worn) because snowsuits are nowadays both cheap and well-made. People give them away rather than throw them out because a kid can barely make a dent in a snowsuit before he's outgrown it and it's time to pass it along.
So it's a pretty... anachronistic endeavour these days to have a Snowsuit Fund at all, let alone laud publicly the guy who perpetuates such a bizarre carry-over from... his own childhood? I doubt it. He looks like he was born with a silver dollar in his navel.
The Christmas turkey drive is another annual charity drive that DRIVES me nuts. What is the point of giving poor people turkeys when it is quite likely these days that they don't have the pot to roast it in? Or even know how to cook a turkey? I've never cooked one - and I took home economics in high school. My mother, an old-fashioned Liberal, once said to her friends who are every year so burdened with goodwill that it's almost all they talk about for several weeks leading up to the big giveaway, "Why not just give people money to buy what they want to eat for Christmas Dinner?" The predictable answer, "Oh dear. Because they'd just spend it on beer and cigarettes." To which my mother replied (this is why I love her), "So what? It's Christmas."
Anyway, I feel the same way about celebrities donating money to hurricane victims, Oprah giving away millions, well-heeled retired politicians travelling the globe on our dime to raise AIDS awareness, rock stars holding concerts to raise money for famine. You name it. If you are so obscenely wealthy that you can advertise your own charity to millions of people worldwide, then you are wealthy enough to buy an African country and make it over in your own image.
I know. Very uncharitable of me. Indeed.
Have you ever met one of those adults you just can't picture having ever been young? And it's not like you can picture them old, either. They just seem preternaturally middle-aged. Those people. You know who I mean. Them.
I had one of those friends when I was a kid growing up in the Sault. Which is weird because I was pretty much always a kid and still am. People are always surprised by my age and it's not because I'm particularly young-looking - it's because I'm kid-like.
Some kids are middle-aged, some adults are kid-like.
Anyway, this friend was fully developed by age nine, started smoking king-sized menthols at age ten (that was back in the days when parents would send their kids to the corner store for smokes) read Ayn Rand's Atlas Shrugged at age eleven and declared God dead at age twelve.
And when she declared God dead, she did it by way of writing "Fuck Off" in the Bible during Sunday School. I worried about the Karma of that act for years. When my Mother told me she had found out via her mother that my friend had multiple sclerosis...
In any case, by age thirteen, of course, not only did my friend have a boyfriend - she was having sex. Regular sex. Like middle-aged married people have sex. Her boyfriend was sixteen (he turned out to be gay - but that's a whole other entry) and they used to "hook up" at his place in his bedroom which was down the basement in his parents' bungalow. She used the rhythm method and he used condoms and she never got pregnant or venereal disease or anything. They went out for a couple of years, broke up, she got a part-time job in a fast (in those days) food restaurant, and got a new boyfriend - a part-time dishwasher.
These days, I suppose everybody and their uncle would be up in arms about her behaviour but I'd don't know how they'd reconcile being up in arms with the fact that her first purchase after getting her part-time job at the fast (okay... it was A&W) food restaurant was - a parka. Yup. She bought a parka. Why? Because she needed a warm coat to walk to work in since she was too young to drive and her parents had seven other kids to not drive around to their part-time jobs or swimming lessons or whatever else. And she wanted something with fur trim around the hood because she liked that look. Timeless, she said. So she bought a wool, knee-length powder blue parka with white fur trim around the hood and polar bear decals stitched around the bottom.
By way of contrast, after my first year of university I headed out west to look for a job and my first purchase after getting off the train in Banff, Alberta - where I'd sat for a couple of days having had neither food nor drink because I didn't know how to cash traveller's cheques - after randomly running into my friend Judy who had a couple of bucks cash on her - was a Fudgesicle. In later years, I've tried to settle an upset stomach with Vodka Sodas. Today I used medication that expired in 2002... You get the picture.
So, my point really is - in this sibling society that is paradoxically one of obsessive watchfulness over children, would my friend even be allowed to be who she was? Or would she be thrown into some kind of treatment program for children born into middle age...
Maybe I should ask Dr. Phil...
Okay. Not to sound like a Montana Freeman, or anything, but... I really didn't want to fill out my Census Form. I did - because I'm Canadian, but it really pissed me off to have to do it - especially on the heels of having just done my taxes - gratis (see previous entry) . And do I believe it to be confidential? No. No, I do not. But I'll tell you this - it had better be.
Why?
Because the firm it's been contracted out to is Lockheed Martin - defence contractors r us.
Yup. Canadians were legally obliged - or so the government says - to fill out a Census conducted by Lockheed Martin for Statistics Canada. As a Canadian - that bugs me, not just because it's so... unCanadian, but because it suddenly seems so... American. Sure, as a Canadian I followed the rules and filled it out, but I'm telling ya - our government is one straw form short of breaking this citizen camel's back.
And the threats. Jesus H. Can the government really fine individuals $500 for not filling out the Census form? Or is it a bluff? How does it collect? Does it take individuals to court? Under whose authority? And to whom does the guilty party pay the fine? Laugheed Merkin? It's one thing to hold the Census at all, another to contract it out to what I consider to be an objectionalbe firm, but a third altogether to threaten us with fines and jail terms for declining to provide - gratis - confidential information about ourselves when it really isn't clear why we are being told to do it.
I dunno. Maybe I'm getting old or maybe I'm just getting libertarian, but I don't like it. I don't believe for a minute that the Census is confidential any more than I believe it's even remotely constitutional to threaten taxpayers with fines for not filling out a Census form conducted by a defence contractor for a government outfit like Statistics Canada that serves no vital purpose that I can ascertain.
Canada - turning Canadians against it one form at a time.
I don't own a car and I live in an apartment. That's all I'm doing for the environment. Oh - and I'll take no lectures from anyone who either does own a car or does live in a house. Especially if it's a house in the 'burbs. Because we all know the real cause of pollution is - single family suburban homes.
Oh - and thriving economies.
I mean, who are we trying to kid - really. I worked hard to save up for a house and once I had one there was no end to the consumer goods I needed to purchase in order to fill it. It was like a cancer. And it wasn't even a big house. But even with 3 kids and a husband, there was one room that never really got used but that still had to be furnished. Why, I don't know. Except that having a bare room in the suburbs is not socially acceptable. Or something.
But now I'm in an apartment and I don't own a car and I like it that way because I'm not constantly cleaning and doing maintenance and shopping for all the stuff you need to make your single family suburban house just like everybody else's single family suburban house.
It makes me feel like I'm doing my bit for Planet Earth. That's why I tune out now when I hear anybody in business, politics or the media going on about the environment. It's not that I don't care - well, maybe it is... - it's just that there's not much more I can or will do. That's it for me. I have committed myself to apartment living and public transit. So when I do listen to environmental talk - it has to do with plans to improve apartment living and public transit or I'm not interested. And I've decided that since I've chosen this lifestyle - and like it - I will do what I can with regards to getting involved in - apartment living and public transit. I'm not even going to bother with the "Think Global" part of "Think Global, Act Local".
Act Local. That's it for me. I'll let the big guys "Think Global". And maybe that'll keep them busy so that the rest of us can get the improvements we need for the little guy lifestyles we live. Because I can tell you this - I've never seen a "big guy" walking down my street and heading for his apartment. Walk the walk or go talk amongst yourselves.
I was a volunteer usher at a matinee dance recital this weekend put on by my daughter's dance school. The matinee performance consists of the most junour of dance classes with a few seniour numbers thrown in to spice up the show a bit for the audience. My daughter was in one of the seniour acts asked to perform at the matinee - which fell on Saturday afternoon between a Friday night and a Saturday night evening show featuring just the older kids.
My, oh my. Have I forgotten new parenthood? Or are new parents suddenly a new breed of rude and selfish individuals who only care about THEIR kids... Because I have never, ever, encountered such a truly awful group of people in my life. Opening doors during performances, talking audibly to each other during performances, fathers trying to brush by volunteer security to get to changerooms to pick up little girls - even though they aren't allowed "back there" because OTHER parents' BIG girls are in various states of dress and undress - complaining about ticket prices that barely cover the cost of renting the facility. I could go on...
Now, this may sound petty to any non-dance parents reading this but really - it's not. The recital is a huge extravaganza - the dancers work up to it all year. There are signs posted everywhere on Show Day explaining the protocol, parents are instructed ahead of time as to the necessary cooperation of all parents to make the show a smooth running success. But it was as if none of the parents at the matinee had heard or read a single word as to what was expected of them at the show. Except that they had - because I was pointing to the signs and explaining everything before, during - and in the case of one father - AFTER the show to counter the obnoxious behaviour that was going on all around me. True, I'm a rule follower, but these people went beyond rule breaking to showing a complete disregard for the feelings of others - including other children dancing in the show.
That was what really got my goat. The parents weren't just concerned with their own children - they were completely unconcerned with the children of others. After the show, a few of us older parents - with teenagers - sat tired and cranky discussing this behaviour and one mother said, "You know, you've got to wonder why these people had kids."
And you do have to wonder because they didn't seem to care about anybody else's kids. And if you don't care about anybody else's kids, what DO you care about?
Just asking...
When I was between 10 and 12 years old I did a couple of summers at day camp. I think it was a YMCA camp - up in the Sault. At the end of each 2 week session, we'd go on an overnight camping trip. The idea was to paddle a few canoes out to an island where there were tents already set up. Nothing too outdoorsy, but enough to make the camp administrators feel like the kids had, at least, mastered canoing.
Anyway, this one session ender the year I was 12 turned out to be SOMETHING COMPLETELY DIFFERENT. I remember we all assembled at the end of the camp day to do our camp song around the flagpole, holding hands, substituting dirty words for the real ones, and then the kids who wouldn't be joining us on the overnight campout got on the buses and left for home.
The boys headed off in one direction - they always went to a different overnight location than the girls (to prevent shenanigans - like i said, it was a YMCA camp) - and we girls headed off in another.
Things started out fine, it was mid-August so we all had what we'd need to stay warm through the night - it starts to get cool at night up there around that time in August - there were probably 5 or 6 canoes - maybe one counsellor/ten girls or so. And I remember there being at least three counsellors - as well as feeling pretty packed into the canoe, so, there were likely around 30 girls out on the water singing, "Ohhhhhhhhhhh, they built the ship Titanic, to sail the ocean blue" and so on down the list of tragicomic camp songs.
We paddled and sang and paddled and sang and then one of the counsellors suddenly yelled, "QUIET!" So we stopped and the counsellor, Patty?, Debbie?, Sue?, said in a surprisingly matter-of-fact voice: "I think we're lost."
Well, I certainly hadn't been paying any attention to where we were going. I'd just been paddling hard like a *1 canoing graduate. But I had noticed that my voice was hoarse and the songs were becoming ridiculous "Row, Row, Row Your Boat" had been the last round. Which was around the time I noticed it was getting dark, too. And within a few frantic minutes of searching for the map to the island where the tents were (the counsellor in charge had been winging it from memory until she realized we were lost) it was confirmed: WE WERE LOST!!! and it was confirmed: DARK! Not only that, but the map that had been found safely stashed in the counsellor in charge's backpack, turned out to be a Purple Lantern chinese food menu and even if we could see two feet in front of us, we still didn't have a map to the island with the tents.
We were REALLY lost then.
But being good little campers, and we'd all had at least 10 minutes of canoe lessons - which involved paddling out far enough into the water to tip it - not to mention the 2 or 3 hours of paddling we'd just done - we gamely paddled on without knowing exactly where we were going except, I guess, hoping to bump into an island in hopes that it would have nice cosy little tents set up all over it.
"Okay", said one of the lesser counsellors (we'd ceased singing and were inexplicably paddling harder'n ever to get... more lost? so she didn't have to yell, "QUIET!" like the now disgraced leader of the mission had earlier) "here's what we're going to do. We're going to stay put. Right here. Until it's light enough to see where we're going at least."
And that's what we did. We stayed put. Like good little camp girls we decided - the whole lot of us - that the safest thing to do was stay put. Wait until dawn. Then start paddling again. We spent the night playing cards - holding them right up to our faces to read them - and singing songs, telling ghost stories, making up bullshit about our families. And eventually, it was light enough to see.
Well... we must have drifted a fair bit in the night because if we'd waited much longer we would have bumped up against the dock of the main camp where the camp director was standing with a bullhorn and his faithful waterfront director at his side - these days people would call them: "GAY" - "Okay! Everybody out of the canoes! It's skinny dipping time followed by pancake breakfast time and nobody - NOBODY - is ever - EVER - going to mention this to their parents! Am I right?" "Yay! Skinny dipping! Right! Pancakes!"
And he was right. I was in my 20s when I mentioned that night to my Mom. What was really funny was her reaction to the unbelievable lack of planning and safety that had gone into that overnight camping trip (although I'm pretty sure I was at a YMCA camp because it WAS cheap): "I trust that religious nut of a camp director went into his office, at least, while all you girls were skinny dipping".
And you know... I really can't remember if he did... God. Leave it to my Mother...
|
