To Be Right Is To Be Wrong
The bus strike is over. We saw our first buses since mid-December(?) rumbling down Bank and Elgin Streets yesterday. And in spite of local hate radio hosts (who don't even take the bus) it appeared as if violence would be one less thing drivers would have to worry about in getting back on the streets.
It's Winterlude, too, and a sunny mild Sunday for skating on the canal. I won't likely be out there - again - this year. I'm exhausted from getting to work and home every day this winter and just don't have anything left over for fun. It's a mistake, I'm sure, but so is working, I'm starting to realize.
I'm trying to get a permanent job so I can get a mortgage. I'm the safest bet in the world, but the banks won't lend me a dime. Ottawa in 2009 is a city of contracts, but apparently, the banks haven't caught up to 1999 yet, so there's not much point in arguing with them. One day this spring I'll transfer all my money to a credit union and say goodbye to banks forever and hello to a new set of problems.
But one can't complain too much, unless it's on behalf of the people who lost their jobs during the bus strike - for which City Council is pretty much 100% to blame. I don't believe in public sector strikes, I don't even believe in public sector unions anymore, but no matter what you've heard - this strike could easily have been avoided altogether. It'll be interesting to see if the same radio hosts who demonized the transit strikers and whipped up daily doses of hatred toward them will do the same when the Mayor goes on trial in the spring for allegedly bribing a candidate to drop out of the race.
I say "allegedly" loosely (and probably spelt wrong). For what it's worth, I believe the guy who says Larry O'Brien bribed him to drop out of the mayoral race with the promise of a job which was supposed to come to him via John Baird. It's unlikely he'll be convicted - New Conservatives have a way of fixing these things, I've noticed, so that the guilty go free - if they're New Conservatives - and the rest of us are left shaking our heads at the judgement of others.
The poor and the marginalized in Ottawa had a lot to suck up this past winter. I'm neither and I feel like my life is being mismanaged on every front by forces beyond my control. I've always had my nose to the grindstone in one way or another, so it's an important lesson to learn that a piece of work like, for instance, Larry O'Brien, can suddenly show up at the head of the class to hand out the gold stars. Because working is for chumps, isn't it. That's the message our politicans seem to be sending out. Parliament is difficult? Prorogue it. Caught doing something illegal? Sue your accusers into silence. Want to be mayor? Bribe your competition into dropping out of the race.
Money is cheap, isn't it. And it cheapens people. It cheapens society, too. And yet, I beaver away, wearing myself down to the bone (sadly, I'm not exaggerating) in an effort to insulate myself from economic disaster by making more of the stuff. It's been so ingrained in me that money equals security. And yet, it doesn't. Because most of us will never make enough money to be secure in a society where people with MORE money can bring everything crashing down on all our heads with their bad judgement, grotesque greed and inflated personal ambitions
Yet we're so conditioned to try, try, try again, taught from grade school to keep at it, to get those straight As.
I hope I have time left in my life to learn to give up.
