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I worked for politicians who travelled extensively and I worked for businessmen who travelled extensively and if we're going to point fingers at the people who are most likely responsible for the spread of contagions, like swine flu, I think we should start with them. They eat in restaurants, almost exclusively, and stay in hotels, whether they are abroad or at home. New immigrants are are more likely to be cleaning those hotels and restaurants than travelling back and forth to home, bringing exotic flus to Canada.
It's not even a chicken or egg argument. My guess is the business people who do all that travel are simply carriers of contagions that then infect the people who clean up after them here.
Yes. I'm bringing a new tactic to the blame game. Suck it up.
So, I ended up watching a CBC documentary about Michael Ignatieff tonight. It's still on, droning away senselessly in the background. Anyway, at one point about half an hour ago there was a behind the scenes look at Ignatieff's office and the morning powwow that takes place there with the background boys. And there wasn't a woman in sight and I thought, "Oh, you know, just go fuck yourselves Liberals".
I hate politics now. It's sick with men. And women who might as well be men for all the difference they make.
By the way, CBC, Canadians are NOT intrigued by Michael Ignatieff. They are indifferent to, even slightly bored by, Michael Ignatieff. Even the nicknames they've given him are lame and uninspired. They ARE intrigued, however, by Stephen Harper, and, more particularly, how it was that the CBC seemed to buy his own P.R. about what a whiz kid he was. Because that guy's the biggest dud since... Jaws IV, The Revenge.
Listeria in pork products kills people.
How embarrassing, just as the pork industry launches a campaign to have swine flu called something else, hoping to get the message out there that "pork doesn't kill people", there's another listeria outbreak and pork products are recalled from the shelves of grocery stores.
And, you know, eating pork might not give us swine flu, but... well... actually - if we didn't consume so much cheap pork, it's unlikely conditions on hog farms would be such that they'd produce swine flu - would they...
But the way, when all is said and done, I'll bet dollars to donuts that more Canadians died in the hushed up listeria crisis than will die in this sound the alarms swine flu epidemic.
Apparently, the swine flu epidemic we're about to experience (or not) may be thanks to an American corporation operating a hog farm in Mexico. The re-location from the United States to the country of Montezuma's Revenge followed a hefty fine levied against the corporation by the Environmental Protection Agency.
What's ironic to me is that this country, Canada, has spent grabillions of dollars on a Public Health Agency to prepare us for the sort of pandemic we may be facing, and yet, it may well turn out that the pandemic is all thanks to our insistence on cheap meat and the dubious and healthless meat products made from it.
So, really, the money we save as consumers, we spend as citizens - while corporations, which are often treated like citizens by our governments, get away with murder. Because it's not like people living near and working at the factory farm in Mexico haven't been falling sick and dying ever since it set up operations.
I was reading a blog post today about how often 9/11 is invoked as the reason for action or inaction by politicians and I was wondering if anybody has devised a university course called "9/11" yet. It would interesting, too, to include, as part of the public education curriculum, a before and after snapshot of 9/11 so that students could learn how quickly even modern democratically elected governments can strip citizens of their civil liberties given the right excuse/reason - depending on your politics.
I was just doing a mental perusal of pundits on the Right and how often in their columns and blogs they threaten women with a future of rape by the Islamic Menace. Seriously, they make two arguments these days, one is that we must deliver freedom to women, the other is that we must deny freedom to women, but both are must dos in order to save women from a future of rape by the Islamic Menace:
Argument #1: Canadian (male) soldiers must continue to fight the male oppressors of women in Muslim countries in order to save women here from a future of rape by the Islamic Menace.
Argument #2: Women in the west must be denied the right to sign up for active duty to fight the male oppressors of women in Muslim countries in order to save them from a future of rape by the Islamic Menace.
There's a third argument, kind of, but it's mostly just blaming Feminists for the rape scenaries of arguments 1 and 2 - so I don't count it.
There was a recent incident in Ottawa involving some students taking pictures of OC Transpo property (property which is advertised on the OC Transpo website) and an OC Transpo "cop" who manhandled one of them. I assume it's before the courts, or whatever, but I'm here to tell you without reservation that the "cop" exceeded his authority whether he did or he didn't, if you catch my drift.
Because I've been on the bus when these thugs-for-hire board to check all passengers for proof of payment. It's an invasion of our civil rights, in my opinion, and I'm not sure why we put up with it. If the system whereby people enter through the side doors of buses, thereby not necessarily having paid the fare, is not working, then people need to enter through the front door in order to pass by the driver and either pay or show their bus pass or transfer.
Hiring sketchy characters to randomly board buses and harrass passengers for proof of purchase is an insult to the users of public transit and we, the good citizens of Ottawa, need to say "enough".
And, by the way, what does this questionable service cost us on top of the high fares we already pay for not-the-best service? Because there is no way on this earth that it would worth it even if these hirees were volunteers. I'm tired of suddenly realizing I forgot to ask for a transfer and madly dashing back up the aisle to request one from an often surly driver who then gets to chastise me for not having remembered to ask for a transfer when I paid the fare (and let me tell you - if the transfer machine worked any slower, I wouldn't need to take public transit to work at all - having been fired for chronic lateness...). The system is patently unfair because it should be up to OC Transpo to provide proof of payment to the passenger - it shouldn't be up to the passenger to remember to ask for it. I've paid my fare, the driver has neglected to give me a transfer, but I'm the one at fault when the OC Transpo thug-for-hire boards the bus to demand "proof of purchase"?
I don't think so. And if you think that's kind of whiny, think again. I've got three teenagers and I'm tired of reminding them every time they use the transit system - don't forget to ask the driver for a transfer. Because they DO forget. And I can only imagine how freaked out I'd be as an already freaked out teenageer if proof of purchase was suddenly demanded of me by some muscled up jerk and even though I knew I'd paid, I couldn't find my transfer (OC Transpo's proof of payment...) because I'd forgot to ask the driver for one. And, as a parent and public transit system user, I just know an OC Transpo driver would take the opportunity to stick it to a teenaged passenger (just because he can) and pretend he has no idea whether said teen paid the fare or not.
Nope. This questionable (at best) "service" is not something I believe my taxes should support and I think it's time we said good-bye to OC Transpo cops, whether the one in the news is guilty of overstepping his overstepped authority or not.
I was reading about the middle-class homeless in the United States this morning and I remembered a woman who used to ride the same bus to work as I did. She was probably in her late 40s and I'm guessing worked somewhere at Queen's Park. Her attire was business/professional, hair all done, nails manicured, expensive footwear whether it was a pair of sleek leather boots or open-toed high-heeled sandals.
One day, on my lunch break, a hobbled old bag lady approached me for money. It took me a minute, then I realized it was her. That was when I also realized she hadn't been on the bus for a while. Anyway, I looked down at her feet for some reason, and her toes were hooked, like bird claws, over what appeared to be makeshift sandals of carboard, string and masking tape.
I was in my early 20s then, and that experience really drove home the message that we're all just one step away from disaster. Still, I rationalized that she must have had some pretty serious shit happen to her to go from working professional to bag lady.
Then the bus strike happened last winter in Ottawa and I was walking three hours per day to and from my contract job in the government. I got run down (not literally, although several drivers certainly tried their damndest) and the next thing I knew, I'd picked up some kind of virus that affected my hearing. For a while, I couldn't hear anything out of one ear. A couple of times, I had vertigo, too. It only lasted about an hour, but that "not knowing up from down" feeling makes for one long hour. One day, I was at lunch with a co-worker meeting her former co-workers, one of whom offered me a ride downtown after work. All during lunch I had to keep asking, "pardon?", and I could feel myself panicking about how odd they must think I was. I'd explained what was wrong but I guess because I looked fine and was faking good humour about the whole thing, everyone around me had just assumed it wasn't a big deal.
But it was. And I only took the ride home once because I just felt so awkward and out of it that I decided it was easier to walk home than to put myself (and others) through the social tension of a shared ride downtown a second time. It was easier for me, by far, to forego that ride in favour of an hour and a half walk home through unplowed sidewalks - at the end of a working day, and a day which started with an hour and a half trudge in to the office. And now that I'm in a better frame of mind, I can tell you that I was the only one feeling the tension. The people around me were mildly concerned, but assuming it would go away in due course, and in the meantime just going about their business as usual.
I was in a complete state of panic with paranoia on the rise and my fight or flight response on high alert. Partly because I sensed in those few weeks how close it can come to everything completely falling apart - for me, anyway. I have no illusions about my ability to cope with adversity.
And I don't think it matters how it happens, whether it's illness, bad luck, or the government's failure to regulate the financial industry. The fact is it can happen to anyone and that's the lesson I think we all should take away from the middle-class homeless in the United States.
They aren't the exception, they're the rule. Homelessness can be just one step away from having everything no matter who you are.
I notice, too, that Michael Coren, in time honoured, desperate pundit fashion, raises the spectre of a captured female soldier being "raped repeatedly" by the enemy. Women are supposed to be afraid, we're supposed to look to the good guys here who would deny us self-determination to save us from the bad guys there who would rape us repeatedly. Be careful what you ask for from the dolers out of human rights, girls - you might get it (nudgenudgewinkwink).
Really, you can't win for losing in Michael Coren's world - if you're female.
So just get it done and let 'em howl.
I remember reading a column by Michael Coren in which he pinned the "what was she wearing" label on a 10 year old victim of rape and murder. What made it extra disgusting was that he did it to plug his pet project - school uniforms - as the answer to all that Michael Coren believes are the ills of society which, of course, are caused by Feminism.
Sigh. Have you ever noticed that the men of the "Blame the Feminists Club" see everything that isn't spanking or Christmas carols or mandatory childbirth for all white women as an ill of society that was caused by Feminism? And have you ever noticed that all the things they like, you don't?
Well, not to be outdone by himself, apparently now he has used the death of a 21-year-old Canadian female soldier in Afghanistan to hump his personal pet peeve about women signing up for duty - as opposed to doing their duty as defined by the men of the "Blame the Feminists Club", which is to provide the west with white Christian babies to fend off the encroaching hordes of brown Muslim babies.
Gawd, I wish I was kidding, but, alas, I am not.
The column is as egregiously sexist as the, "Should a black man REALLY be President of the United States?!" tirade is racist, but it was published by the Sun and, as far as I know, nobody put a gun to its head - so cancel your subscrip... aw heck... nevermind. Who the hell has a subscription to the Sun anyways?
Whatever. The important thing is that Michael Coren denigrated the death of a soldier, in print, because she was female. So, I'd say his end-run dash to declare himself ChairAss of the "Blame the Feminists Club" was successful.
Bully for you, Michael Coren.
It's funny but now that I spend so much time watching the struggles of women in countries like Afghanistan as they go up against the men of their countries in trying to access the most basic of human rights, I have to wonder why it is that all the historical heroes world over are thought to be men. I mean, I can't imagine how brave the women of Afghanistan must be to demonstrate in the streets and agitate for their rights in a country that is defined by its misogyny, but clearly this isn't the first time in history women have risked life and limb to go up against the ruling patriarchy of the day.
But you'd think so, wouldn't you, judging from western history books. Gawd, it's tedious, and I hate to sound like a bitch, but women have always had to go through men to get somewhere from back of nowhere, but only men get to be heroes. Even now, western media reports of Afghani women demonstrating in the streets don't do their heroics justice - even though we all know these women are in mortal danger. Rather, they're portrayed as reckless, a benign version of the suicide bomber, because the myth is all over town like a cheap suit that the men of the west are there to liberate the women of Afghanistan.
I just hope those women don't know how brutally western governments put aside memories of Tiannamen Square to do business with the Chinese government. Or maybe I hope they do, so they don't harbour any illusions about what is to come. For that matter, why do we? We'll abandon the women of Afghanistan and we'll do business with whatever misogynistic government is there to do business with - that's our real history. We freely and willfully elect the sorts of male dominated governments that do that sort of thing.
I can't help but wonder, too, why it is we're not educating the men of Afghanistan about women's human rights while we're there arming and training them to fight the Taliban. Afterall, we have no real assurances that the Afghani men supposedly on our side (and hopefully not planting the roadside bombs that are killing our soldiers - but let's not go there now) aren't going to turn around and do worse to the women of Afghanistan than what's been done to them by the Taliban. Which makes me wonder why we aren't exclusively arming and training Afghani women to fight the Taliban. Afterall, it seems to me the men of Afghanistan, no matter which side they claim to be on, can't be trusted not to be against women's human rights as soon as they're in power - Hamid Karzai come on down.
Sexism and money, still running the world after all these years.
On my last trip home to visit my mother in the Sault, I had a pair of teeny tiny fingernail scissors and a bottle of lotion confiscated from my carry-on knapsack by an airport security officer. It was annoying, especially now that I know the officer might well have been a former biker or terrorist, but what concerns me even more is - what happens to all the stuff our biker/terrorist/security officers confiscate from our carry-on luggage?
Oh, and in case you weren't aware of this, government ministries have greening operations departments now. Just think, whole departments devoted to cutting down on government waste.
I know, the irony is mind boggling.
With Hugo Chavez in the news lately for giving an American President a book to read (thanks, Hugo - the world owes you another one) I got to thinking how much better things are today than they used to be when the American government would simply have had someone like Hugo Chavez assassinated.
Things are looking up.
While I'm in the running for Best Personal Blog over here: VoteForSooey,SheLuvsU! I thought I'd blog a comment I made over at Broadsides: VoteForAntonia,She'sNotSooey'sCompetition!! except I'll correct the egregious grammar error (making these grammar errors in pithy comments on public blogs reminds me of exiting a room after a brilliant retort - via the closet...):
It really makes you wonder about the persistance of anti-Feminism in the west when we have the advantage of seeing how medieval life is for everyone in countries where Feminism doesn't exist.
Also, because I'm full of Feminism this morning, I want to add this observation: I finally figured out that anti-Feminists see human rights as a finite pool of resources - like oil - which makes the people trying to access more of them (Feminists) for people who have less of them (women) from the people who think they own the pool through progeniture (anti-Feminists) - the enemy.
The thing I don't understand about the killing of Robert Dziekanski is, why were those RCMP officers so seemingly intent on killing him?
While I was visiting my mother at her retirement residence, I was able to engage in a fair bit of sociological study. I was surrounded by the elderly in varying stages of health, and since we ate our meals communally, it was a wonderful opportunity to watch them in their natural habitat.
Seriously, I did not mean the above to sound like "The Nature of Things", but to be honest, there was something of the voyeur to my visit. I'm obsessed with aging and death, not in any kind of negative way, I'm more reassured by it than anything. And while I realize that sounds somewhat negative in terms of the part that comes before death - i.e. mid-life - I don't think I mean that in a negative way, either - although, I am certainly at a crossroads in terms of work (see entry below).
Okay, maybe I am looking forward to death. But I've been working for the government in between doing interviews for jobs working for the government.
Anyway, there's definitely a hierarchy at play in this particular retirement residence, with a separate hierarchy reserved for couples (of the heterosexual variety). Couples have their own special status in the retirement residence, simply by virtue of both parties having stayed alive long enough to enjoy their remaining years in a retirement residence, the average age of my mom's retirement residence being somewhat closer to 90, than actual retirement age (I think by "retirement residence" the owner simply means "not a home for the aged" - as using words like "home" or "aged" to describe the "residences" of "retirees" is not good marketing). The couples who live together, sharing an apartment, are regarded almost like royalty. Or lottery winners. They live socially apart from the singles, who are mostly women, whether they want to or not, and only become part of the mainstream elderly society once their partner passes on to his great reward.
And it had best be him who goes first because leftover men really don't have the same quality of life as do the ladies who outlive them. In spite of what you may have heard, older ladies have no use for older men who are not their husbands. In fact, and I saw this with my own eyes, once their husbands pass on, older ladies make an almost seamless transition into the world of other older ladies - who have no use for older men who are not their husbands. It's just the way it is. Not great for the husbands who've lost their wives. Ladies d'une certaine age, no matter how solicitous they may have been of men in their younger years - are having none of it when there are precious few left to spend gambling with the girls.
As a middle-aged visiting daughter who grew up without a father and who was somewhat terrified of her friends' fathers (who all seemed cartoonishly brutish - but it was Sault Ste. Marie) I had a surprising amount of empathy for the poor old guys and went out of my way to engage them in conversation. I had no trouble putting myself in their shoes, but boy - I had to put up with some eye-rolling of the "don't encourage him" variety. Maybe it was because what the old guys ALL wanted to talk about was their late middle years when their wives were alive and they were the boss of something somewhere. Old ladies, on the other hand, want to talk about anything but. Gossip, politics, food, drink, children, grandchildren - whatever is going on now is what old ladies want to talk about.
Old men, not so much...
So the single ladies wave off the men and smile sweetly at the passing couples, who always pass by as couples (I can imagine the married men would prefer to go without dinner rather than head off alone to the dining room), being very solicitous to the ladies who are living in the retirement residence while their better halves live on the outside - or worse - a home where more care is required. But although the couples clearly have a special status, I would say it's more a courtesy, a nod to the days when 'til death do us part meant to "endure" for the sanctity of marriage, rather than anything covetous. Because what matters more than anything to the single ladies with their marbles and a certain degree of mobility is to be friends with another lady with her marbles and a certain degree of mobility - who still has her driver's licence.
Indeed, the friend with the driver's licence in a retirement residence is every bit as precious as was the friend with the driver's licence when you were a teenager too young or incompetent to have your own driver's licence. Talk about the circle of life - except that when you're the 80-year-old with the driver's licence, it's not about getting it, it's about hanging on to it. And there's not a former lady driver who won't tell you that the worst thing that happened to her by virtue of age was losing her driver's licence. Of course, most of them have long since lost their husbands, so they're not necessarily thinking of them when they say that, but I have a feeling that, even if they were, they really do mean that losing their driver's licence was the worst part of growing old. Because you can still be independent when your partner is gone, but when your driver's licence is gone, so is your independence. Oh sure, you can say to them as a middle-aged woman who doesn't even care to own a car, "take a taxi, ride the bus" but those are just meaningless words to ladies d'une certaine age. No, losing your driver's licence means you must sell your family home and move into a retirement residence where you must make friends with another older lady who still has her driver's licence.
Why not an older man, you ask? Because older men don't want to drive to Winners just to see what's come in since yesterday. They don't want to eat out at the newest restaurant when they've pre-paid to have perfectly good food served to them in a cafeteria by nice young women who smile a lot and ask them how they're feeling. And they don't want to put on a bathing suit and do aquafit classes for an hour.
They just want to talk about the good old days - before they got old.
I recently turned 50 and am looking for work in Ottawa. I have work, don't get me wrong, I'm looking for work that doesn't give me chest pains at the thought of going to the office for 8 hours/day in an office with no window (the government is still rather a Dickensian hierarchy on certain matters - since there is plenty of empty office space available where there ARE windows) and a 1/2 lunch break which cannot, under any circumstances, be combined with the fifteen minute coffee breaks to form an hour lunch break. Oh, and I should say there's not no window - there's a window between my office and my supervisor's office, so that neither of us has any privacy and she can conveniently pass work through the open space between our offices, even though it would be relief to get up and walk it around to my door (not really, I don't have a door - I'm in administration).
Anyway, the people are fine, although the work environment is so French it's a little alienating for this technically bilingual communicator-at-large. In fact, the first language of everyone I've met so far is French, which is not their problem - it's mine. I'm clearly in the wrong workplace. Conversation, communication, these things matter to me so I'm on the lookout for a job more in line with my personality and sense of humour - which is all in English in spite of my efforts to obtain an intermediate level of French reading, writing and oral communication skills.
Also, the fact that my job, which is all about having excellent written English communication skills, was previously done by someone whose first language was French and who left on her own accord to go to another job because she wasn't comfortable working in English, is somewhat less than inspiring.
So, I apply to lots of jobs (not from work where we can't access anything strictly not workplace related, another needlessly soul-crushing aspect to government employment) and recently went to an interview in which I was very clearly the token 50-year-old. The panel interviewing me was made up of two young men in suits and one young woman in casual wear - much like my own except that I didn't wear mine sprawled all over my chair and I didn't interrupt her mid-question like she interrupted me mid-answer, every answer (yes, you guessed it - she was the human resources person sitting in on the interview). The one young guy, clearly a young New Conservative, was so chuffed at the idea that he was interviewing a middle-aged woman who had worked for the NDP, that he found it difficult to keep the giddiness from showing. He also prompted me to use the word "product" (when the word "service" would have been more appropriate) but I appreciated the friendly gesture just the same and kept the screaming in my head, "You are public servants! Not private profiteers!" down to a dull, and I hope, barely audible mutter.
The other young man stared intently at me every time I said something of note (which was often enough for anyone of sense to hire me on the spot) and then didn't write any of it down, lest he have any record by which to remember me by when it came to assessing the no doubt zillions of applicants for the gawddamned stupid and pointless (say goodbye to another forest) government job.
The awful part of it all was that I knew what they needed - but they didn't. They need someone who can write well (sigh... okay... communicate effectively) and think strategically (sigh... okay... and politically - so that the Minister doesn't have to - since the key to good policy is writing it up such that the Minister thinks it's the best darn idea he's ever had). But since they had no idea that's what they needed, there wasn't much point in me sitting there for an hour being interviewed by them, with me telling them that around irrelevant questions that didn't pertain in any way to the work I knew I'd actually be doing.
But that's the way it works in Ottawa these days. Heck, I had one young manager (the government hires them right out of university) snort and roll his eyes at an answer to a question the panel shouldn't even have been asking of applicants, if they knew anything about the Public Service Act - which they don't. When I got my assessment back, it said I lacked effective communication skills (among other things). To say the panel consisted of the three most inappropriate people I've ever met (one was so abrasive the only word for it was rude, the other made no eye contact, and the third, the young manager just described above was barely a half-step up from idiot) would be an understatement.
Words like "client" and "stakeholder" and "product" are key words that must populate every other sentence in government job interviews these days. And gawd forbid you don't mention what a team player you are, even if your job is archiving ancient government documents alone in a basement somewhere out in a long forgotten bunker - you wouldn't be there if you hadn't had the foresight to mention during the interview what a team player you are. I even had my current boss do me the courtesy of telling me i was a team player when we'd reached the end of the interview to everyone's satisfaction and he realized I hadn't used the magic words, "So, what I heard from you during this interview is that you're a real team player". Which is true enough since I have no idea how anyone could derive satisfaction from doing the work of government these days unless they enjoyed working with others - at the very least.
Thank gawd he couldn't see through to the real me, who was sitting there my chest tightening, my stomach all knotted-up, as I knowingly sought work that was so beneath me I deserve to be struck dead for jumping through the million and one hoops I did to get it, the screaming gettng louder and louder in my head, "I don't want to be doing any of this!"
Alas, the people are nice, the job and pay decent - so it's clearly me who isn't fitting in.
Acceptance is the first step.
I went to church last Sunday with my mom's friend. My mom won't go anymore because her church was one of the United Churches that voted against ordaining homosexuals. For a while, she just sent money. Then she stopped doing even that. This same church also just recently voted overwhelmingly not to amalgamate with another local church, thereby scuttling any chance either church had of surviving.
Looking around at the average age of the existing congregation, I'd give it two more years before everybody's gone to their great reward. Gawd religious people are stubborn idiots.
Anyway, it's been years since I went to church, but I used to enjoy going to this one because I liked a guy whose mother was a bigwig alderthingy and he had to go every Sunday, so I went every Sunday, too. Gawd only knows how I managed to sit through all that BibleSpeak without listening to any of it, but as I sat there last Sunday listening to the zippy new minister read dreary passages from the Bible that would then be regurgitated in modernspeak by families that looked like they'd just popped out of the 1950s, I realized it was all brand new to me.
I also couldn't believe how absolutely absurd it felt to be sitting in a United Church as if we were living 2,000 years ago with people taking it all so seriously and with such solemn reverence. Really, anybody who thinks organized religion is any less of a cult than Scientology is deluded. There is nothing weirder to my mind than sitting in church listening to teenagers from 2009 try to "hip up" BibleSpeak as some kind of antidote to the obvious fact that 99% of the congregation is over 80 years of age.
And no one could have been more aware of that than my mom's friend, who I'm pretty sure goes to church because she likes to sing hymns (which is something I like to do, too - it's just too bad the entire service isn't hymn singing). Certainly she didn't pay much attention to the service as she'd jab me every now and again to point out a fellow parisher who'd just nodded off (or died... it was hard to tell) and later, as we headed to her car (she's one of the few drivers left in her circle of friends so they're after her to be really sharp for her upcoming driver's test) she said, "I'm sorry the service was so dreary".
"Oh well, I guess it's Easter, so..."
"Oh my goodness! You're right - THAT'S why it was so dreary. I must not have been paying very close attention. It's too bad you won't be here next Sunday - we could go again."
To which I said, "Yeah, now I'll never know what happened to Jesus. Those disciples sure turned out to be jerks, eh?"
Anyway, she has a good sense of humour and we both laughed at that one. Then she told me about an old school chum of mine (who'd recognized me from high school and said "Hi, Sooey" as if it hadn't been 30 years since he'd last seen me) who sings in the choir and whose wife sings in the choir, too, except that she wasn't his wife when they met because they were both married to other people and wasn't it nice how people could still meet at church and get married.
We shared a laugh over that one, too. Anyway, I'll go back next time I'm home because she really enjoyed bringing me (and where else does one get to belt out hymns?) but honest-to-Pete, remind me not to drop acid before I go - church is trippy enough, thanks.
Addendum: I should mention the fact that as I sat there and listened to the story of Christ, I wondered how it was that a Conservative could sit there and listen to the story of Christ and not spontaneously combust. I mean, I felt politically to the right of his message and I'm a Socialist. Being opposed to Sunday shopping is one thing, but throwing a rock through the store window by way of protest is something else entirely. Although, I guess it's not technically trespassing, which, unless I heard the Lord's Prayer wrong (the theme from Maude was running through my head while I recited it) is one of the seven deadly sins. Still, crucifying a guy for smashing up a temple seems pretty harsh - even for Biblical times.
I'm curious why there's so much outrage in the New Conservative ranks about Karzai's cave-in (haha - unintentional pun!) to the whoevers of the Islamic militants in Afghanistan re wives having to sexually submit to their husbands. I mean, that's long been a hobby horse of R.E.A.L. Women (which has nothing to do with women and everything to do with Conservatism, of course).
And New Republican, David Frum's, wife, Danielle Crittenden, made a name for herself telling society that women should have to sexually submit to their husbands. This is the sort of society many New Conservatives have long sought for Canadian women. So I find it a bit disingenuous that New Conservatives are flapping their arms about the same devolution of women's rights they've espoused here, happening in Afghanistan.
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