I threw this together because another blogger (www.brettlamb.com/blamblog) suggested a challenge. Or perhaps not so much a challenge as he did it and I wanted to do it too. It was fun... you all should try... copycats...!
1. I come from a family of five.
2. Both my parents are dead. My mother since 1982, my father since 1995.
3. My brother and sister live on Vancouver Island – my sister in Victoria and my brother in Duncan. They don’t speak, but I speak to both of them. My sister is 18 months older, my brother is 7 months younger.
4. I was born in Montreal, but we moved when I was 4. I’ve been back three or four times since, but I don’t really know it at all.
5. We moved, on average every 2 years when I was growing up.
6. The order was this: Montreal, Toronto, Nassau, London, Toronto, London, Seattle (Bainbridge Island) Calgary.
7. I went to 17 different schools before University.
8. I spent two years at the University of Calgary before leaving to act in the movies.
9. As an adult, I’ve lived (in this order) Calgary, Los Angeles, Calgary, London, Menton (France)London, (also Uppingham in Leicestershire – Rutland if you prefer) Victoria, Toronto.
10. I am 5’ 3” tall and weigh about 116 pounds.
11. I have shockingly bad eyesight (distance) but can read without glasses.
12. I had a pony when I was 12 – his name was Paintbox.
13. I have won prizes for show jumping and I won a real horse race on a real racehorse. It was terrifying and exhilarating.
14. I pretended I was a dog when I was four. My name was Alfred and I’m pretty sure I was an Irish Setter.
15. I pretended I was a pony with friends at school in England. We’d set up jumping competitions in the school grounds and have horse shows. Then we’d go to the stables and ride real horses.
16. I have never felt I fit in anywhere.
17. I love clubhouse sandwiches and French fries and if I were to be executed, my last meal would probably be entirely fried, and would also feature soft shelled crabs. I wouldn’t order desert, unless the prison guard wanted one and was too polite to ask for himself.
18. I hate my hair.
19. I am pathologically shy, though most people wouldn’t believe me – I’m good at social situations because of all the moving I suppose, but I am horrified at the thought of going to a party where I don’t know anybody.
20. Strangely, I love auditions.
21. I have a great voice for radio, commercials and (I think) phone sex – though I have only been employed professionally to perform the first two.
22. Virtually my entire life has happened by accident; perhaps this is true for everybody, but I am constantly aware of the magic of timing and the power of having an open mind and saying: “I could probably do that. Let me try.”
23. I liked working in radio, but I didn’t love it.
24. I loved working in television, but I don’t think I’d want to do it again.
25. For a time I suffered from panic attacks – and no one knew.
26. I want to write another column and eventually, a book.
27. I miss my mother every single day.
28. I never appreciated how honest and decent my father was until a few years before he died and then not properly until a few years after that.
29. I have terrific breasts which some people think are fake, but they are completely real.
30. I am too short.
31. I have a dog – Lily, a Yorkshire Terrier – who is so adorable, she has actually stopped traffic and from time to time has been swarmed by people who shriek: “She’s just SO CUTE!” I agree with them and she holds this over me.
32. When Lily almost died I was shocked at how devastated and hopeless I felt.
33. I’m afraid when I die, no one will remember me because I forgot to have children. (Lettuce, tomatoes, chicken, dog food, shoelaces, dishwasher soap, children... whoops...)
34. I have never cheated on a boyfriend.
35. I thought I’d been in love half a dozen times, but really it was only once.
36. I’ve been engaged three and a half times. The half a time was because there was no ring.
37. I returned all the rings. But kept the stones. (Ha ha – not true…old Zsa Zsa Gabor joke…)
38. A diamond ring can loose nearly half its value when returned to the store where it was purchased. Even the next day in some cases.
39. My idea of bliss is a great book and someone to love.
40. I read my favourite books over and over – I read 'The Grapes of Wrath' every year, and all of Jane Austen every other year. ‘Persuasion’ is my favourite novel and comes close to being my favourite film of all time.
41. But my favourite film of all time is either ‘All About Eve’ or ‘Now Voyageur’. Both Bette Davis movies.
42. The greatest source of some of the smartest lines ever is ‘Broadcast News’. Fact.
43. I cannot tell jokes and should never try.
44. My favourite place to live is London, but it’s tricky as some of my memories are rose-tinted.
45. New York takes my breath away. It is absolutely thrilling.
46. I would love to live for a while in Hawaii. Preferably in Maui.
47. I cannot smoke dope – it makes me paranoid and miserable.
48. Cocaine is just stupid.
49. I still smoke. But hardly at all now. I just feel quitting would be quitting.
50. In a mass exodus some of my closest friends left Toronto in the last two years and I wonder often why I stay.
51. I have been rejected for not being Jewish.
52. I am forgetting how to do math.
53. Sometimes, at the strangest times, I will forget how to spell words. I still have to think hard before writing ‘forty’ to remember there’s no ‘u’, and to write ‘ninety’ and remember there is an ‘e’.
54. Salt and Vinegar is my favourite flavour of potato chip. Though Hedgehog flavoured comes close.
55. I have many watches, but the one I always wear is the cheapest because it has indiglo. I’m not really comfortable without indiglo now.
56. Volunteering is an enormous part of my life.
57. I love children – but not in that ‘oh – I love little children!’ way. I have friends who haven’t yet hit puberty. We hang out, write, phone etc.
58. I don’t have natural style. But every now and then I can pull a look together.
59. I am panicking right now because I am not working. Except a little.
60. I have broken most of my toes a lot of times.
61. I had my appendix out when I was 10 and my tonsils out when I was 14. I had a private room with my own nurse in a Harley Street clinic.
62. I despise all things cheese.
63. I never have anything to wear.
64. I cry at the drop of hat – or when I see someone else cry (the way yawning makes you yawn) I am too sentimental, which cheapens it, but I can’t help it.
65. Lighting is very important in life. I don’t think enough people appreciate this – not to look good, but to create a comfortable and comforting atmosphere.
66. My role model is a widowed lady in her sixties who is absolutely brilliant at bringing out the best in people – even the horrible, irritating, tedious ones you just want to smite.
67. I am often inspired to write just so I can incorporate a great word. Like 'smite'.
68. I don’t actually like most of the friends of my friends. Some though – I like some.
69. I love sex but haven’t had it for a long time.
70. I broke up with the last fellow I went out with because he spit. I get an involuntary shiver just thinking about it.
71. I follow American politics closely and am constantly amazed at the rock bottom quality of individuals who put themselves forward for election.
72. I am bored with people who don’t like Joe Clark because he was plain and Jimmy Carter because he wasn’t charismatic enough.
73. I am hooked on a few reality-based television programs, but won’t say which because of the shame.
74. Okay. Survivor – but most of all Big Brother.
75. I feel a lot of shame.
76. I have never stolen anything except change off my father’s dresser.
77. I feel guilty about everything.
78. I was baptized Protestant – which is a good thing, because the year I was born, they weren’t giving out birth certificates and a baptismal certificate is the only way I managed to get a passport. Otherwise, I pretty much think religion, and particularly those who feel righteous about their beliefs are at the centre of all that is wrong with the world.
79. I am a homebody.
80. I cook a few things really well and make the most delicious salad dressing you ever tasted. I made Boeuf En Croute once, which is the tenderest filet of beef, covered in sautéed mushrooms and onions and surrounded by pastry.
81. I love going out to restaurants. It’s still a great treat.
82. I don’t really like sweets and ice cream and such.
83. I can pick things up with my toes. Even the broken ones - though they are the ones from which I'm most likely to drop stuff.
84. I live in fear of breaking my teeth.
85. I am a good driver and only like to drive standard.
86. I work out 5 - 6 times a week so that I can continue to eat French fries once a week.
87. I like my eyes and my cheekbones.
88. I was known for having a great ass in high school and it’s still pretty good.
89. I have a higher set point body temperature than most people.
90. I can type fast but I still have to look at the keyboard.
91. I need a good small suitcase on wheels. The one I have is too big for short jaunts.
92. I like to sleep on a completely white bed.
93. Right now I am reading three books and I am on the waiting list at the library for ‘The DaVinci Code’. I am #316 of 599 people waiting and I’ve been on the list for two months. I am not holding my breath.
94. I wish I had finished university.
95. My car has a name. It is Sylvia.
96. I still wear clothes I wore in high school. They still look good.
97. I am pretty good with a hammer and screwdriver. If you show me how to do something, I’ll probably do it reasonably well.
98. You want me with you in an emergency or during a diaper change. I’m not afraid of blood or a little poo and a couple of friends have named me their power of attorney because they trust me to make the right decisions when they are non compos mentos. (A condition that has nothing whatsoever to do with mints.) They have made a wise choice.
99. I hope I marry a man with children.
100. I hope I marry a man.
101. I hope I marry.
Thursday, August 19, 2004
Wednesday, August 18, 2004
It's your duty to be beautiful...
Sephora is coming! Sephora is coming! Let the bells ring out and the banners fly – Sephora is com…
Oh wait; check your pants. (For your driver’s license! License in pants = man; in purse = woman…) If you’re not a woman, you may have no idea what Sephora is – so let me be the first to tell you: it’s paradise. Paradise! Paradise with enough lip gloss to lubricate the parched pouts of a thousand dried out dames.
Sephora is to make-up what an idol is to a savage: an object of worship – an earthly symbol of heavenly delight.
Sephora (and doesn’t the name just evoke a hundred heartfelt sighs?) is the marketing brainchild of European luxury goods retailer Moet-Hennessey Louis Vuitton, a gang of designer shilling thugs who have reinvented the art of selling cosmetics by shifting the context in which they’re sold.
It’s brilliant is what it is – by simply refocusing the way in which make-up is displayed, from brand to use (from separate department store islands of Dior or Chanel or Estee Lauder presenting every product they make, to separate islands of lipsticks, peninsula’s of eye shadow, isthmuses of mascara – in every brand and shade ever imagined…altogether!) Sephora has created a make-up ‘experience’ that invites women to play and experiment and try every product until they find exactly what they want – or simply have a wonderful, colourful time. An Aladdin's cave of cosmetics. Acres of lip-gloss… great, sweeping swaths of blushers… aisle after aisle of perfume and concealers and enough brushes (tiny though they are) to clean and curry-comb the entire Canadian olympic equestrian team. And probably the humans too. Am I being clear? Sephora has EVERYTHING.
Until recently, though Sephora operates nearly 500 outlets in 9 countries, Canadian women were shut out – unable to purchase Sephora’s products even over the internet: the American site was sorry but adamant. If Canadians wanted to test one of the outlet’s hundreds of lipsticks, they had to leg it over the border to shop at one of Sephora’s 91 US outlets.
But last autumn, Canada got its own Sephora web site and now we’re just a couple of varnished-nail biting months from being able to shop in person at the new retail outlet set to open at the Eaton Centre.
I first came across Sephora in 1999 on a visit to New York with a newspaper Style editor (Ottawa Jane) and was knocked nearly breathless with the desires it aroused in me; Shopper’s Drug Mart – The Bay, Holt’s – whatever. No cosmetics department, drug store display or fashion magazine had ever touched off the feelings of completeness and excitement that this altar to alteredness created within me. I had found the Promised Land… and its name was Sephora.
Funny thing make-up. In North America and Europe, its use by over half the population is now near ubiquitous. Like it or loathe it, most women in business would as soon go without underpants as eye shadow. Piled on, smeared on, delicately applied, or the result of an hour of work to achieve the no-make-up, make-up look, a professional appearance just isn’t complete without the refining touch of a smooth complexion and a moist pink lip.
And most of us don’t do it just because we feel we have to – the way men wear neckties to work but can’t wait to wrest them off the moment the day is done and the martini appears – most of us do it because we enjoy it, some of us love it… but still, a great many of us think that we need it – and need it in a way that doesn’t feel so good.
It starts when you’re a little girl. How long before we realize the two defining characteristics of womanhood are a bra and a lipstick? (Some other time - remind me - have I got a bra story for you! You'll laugh, you'll cry...)Sometime after toddler-hood – whether we have the words for it or not, the transformational quality of cosmetics is apparent and the desire to take part is almost irresistible. TV tells us, our mothers show us, our dollies prove to us that bigger eyes, bigger lips and softly blushing cheeks symbolize not just beauty, but a certain ‘rightness’ of womanhood that eschewing make-up puts into question. Little girls who can’t even say ‘lipstick’ without lisping, will be reaching for their mother’s ‘Cherries in the Snow’ before they can tie their shoes.
So most of us, (even the ones on their way to eating the requisite three pounds of lipstick some list-maker or other figured out we’d eventually consume through licking of lips, eating and drinking etc. ick…) are also somewhat ambivalent about the stuff. Subtly (or not so) the message is sent and received that without it, we just won’t be pretty enough or polished enough to compete; that intrinsically, our plain faces just aren’t as attractive as our made-up ones.
Though cosmetics have been around for centuries, it’s only in the last hundred years or so that mass market make-up became available, and a little less than that since it became respectable. But as mass marketing grew, so did the sale of make-up and the branding of beauty… and so too did the product go from luxury to necessity.
For myself, though I admit ambivalence – and a near-unshakeable belief that my naked face just won’t do it – I also equally love the stuff. I’m hooked.
Because it is transformational. When a man gets up in the morning, that’s pretty much as good as he’s going to look all day. For a woman, it’s ground zero – with options galore to perk up that tired old phiz. We can make our eyes look bigger – and deeper and less saggy. We can cover up any little blemishes or bags. We can make our cheekbones more prominent and our lips look plumper and lusher and… to a certain extent, by brightening and tightening and perking and plumping – look younger.
I like it because it’s a little meditation, a little how ya doin’? a little centreing on me. The mirror creates a connection and the smoothing and highlighting and glossing can be physical and tender and care-taking. By doing it, one becomes worthy of care-taking. I usually feel better after the near-daily ritual; as I shadow my eyes or colour my lips, I’m having an inner dialogue – about me, about the day, about what lies ahead. By the time I’m done, I’m prepared in a way that has to do with coming in touch with myself – with smoothing down my feathers and stroking myself into calm readiness.
I may be a pawn of the mighty cosmetics giants, a victim of advertising and magazine images of unattainable perfection and the unspoken deal that though I’m not good enough without their products, with them I just might improve, and that with enough of them, my chances are better… and that by re-purchasing again and again, I own a little piece of that glamour. Maybe. Possibly. Probably.
But like a victim of the Stockholm Syndrome, I have come to love my captor – I just can’t wait for Sephora to open the Toronto doors.
Sephora is coming! Sephora is coming!
Oh wait; check your pants. (For your driver’s license! License in pants = man; in purse = woman…) If you’re not a woman, you may have no idea what Sephora is – so let me be the first to tell you: it’s paradise. Paradise! Paradise with enough lip gloss to lubricate the parched pouts of a thousand dried out dames.
Sephora is to make-up what an idol is to a savage: an object of worship – an earthly symbol of heavenly delight.
Sephora (and doesn’t the name just evoke a hundred heartfelt sighs?) is the marketing brainchild of European luxury goods retailer Moet-Hennessey Louis Vuitton, a gang of designer shilling thugs who have reinvented the art of selling cosmetics by shifting the context in which they’re sold.
It’s brilliant is what it is – by simply refocusing the way in which make-up is displayed, from brand to use (from separate department store islands of Dior or Chanel or Estee Lauder presenting every product they make, to separate islands of lipsticks, peninsula’s of eye shadow, isthmuses of mascara – in every brand and shade ever imagined…altogether!) Sephora has created a make-up ‘experience’ that invites women to play and experiment and try every product until they find exactly what they want – or simply have a wonderful, colourful time. An Aladdin's cave of cosmetics. Acres of lip-gloss… great, sweeping swaths of blushers… aisle after aisle of perfume and concealers and enough brushes (tiny though they are) to clean and curry-comb the entire Canadian olympic equestrian team. And probably the humans too. Am I being clear? Sephora has EVERYTHING.
Until recently, though Sephora operates nearly 500 outlets in 9 countries, Canadian women were shut out – unable to purchase Sephora’s products even over the internet: the American site was sorry but adamant. If Canadians wanted to test one of the outlet’s hundreds of lipsticks, they had to leg it over the border to shop at one of Sephora’s 91 US outlets.
But last autumn, Canada got its own Sephora web site and now we’re just a couple of varnished-nail biting months from being able to shop in person at the new retail outlet set to open at the Eaton Centre.
I first came across Sephora in 1999 on a visit to New York with a newspaper Style editor (Ottawa Jane) and was knocked nearly breathless with the desires it aroused in me; Shopper’s Drug Mart – The Bay, Holt’s – whatever. No cosmetics department, drug store display or fashion magazine had ever touched off the feelings of completeness and excitement that this altar to alteredness created within me. I had found the Promised Land… and its name was Sephora.
Funny thing make-up. In North America and Europe, its use by over half the population is now near ubiquitous. Like it or loathe it, most women in business would as soon go without underpants as eye shadow. Piled on, smeared on, delicately applied, or the result of an hour of work to achieve the no-make-up, make-up look, a professional appearance just isn’t complete without the refining touch of a smooth complexion and a moist pink lip.
And most of us don’t do it just because we feel we have to – the way men wear neckties to work but can’t wait to wrest them off the moment the day is done and the martini appears – most of us do it because we enjoy it, some of us love it… but still, a great many of us think that we need it – and need it in a way that doesn’t feel so good.
It starts when you’re a little girl. How long before we realize the two defining characteristics of womanhood are a bra and a lipstick? (Some other time - remind me - have I got a bra story for you! You'll laugh, you'll cry...)Sometime after toddler-hood – whether we have the words for it or not, the transformational quality of cosmetics is apparent and the desire to take part is almost irresistible. TV tells us, our mothers show us, our dollies prove to us that bigger eyes, bigger lips and softly blushing cheeks symbolize not just beauty, but a certain ‘rightness’ of womanhood that eschewing make-up puts into question. Little girls who can’t even say ‘lipstick’ without lisping, will be reaching for their mother’s ‘Cherries in the Snow’ before they can tie their shoes.
So most of us, (even the ones on their way to eating the requisite three pounds of lipstick some list-maker or other figured out we’d eventually consume through licking of lips, eating and drinking etc. ick…) are also somewhat ambivalent about the stuff. Subtly (or not so) the message is sent and received that without it, we just won’t be pretty enough or polished enough to compete; that intrinsically, our plain faces just aren’t as attractive as our made-up ones.
Though cosmetics have been around for centuries, it’s only in the last hundred years or so that mass market make-up became available, and a little less than that since it became respectable. But as mass marketing grew, so did the sale of make-up and the branding of beauty… and so too did the product go from luxury to necessity.
For myself, though I admit ambivalence – and a near-unshakeable belief that my naked face just won’t do it – I also equally love the stuff. I’m hooked.
Because it is transformational. When a man gets up in the morning, that’s pretty much as good as he’s going to look all day. For a woman, it’s ground zero – with options galore to perk up that tired old phiz. We can make our eyes look bigger – and deeper and less saggy. We can cover up any little blemishes or bags. We can make our cheekbones more prominent and our lips look plumper and lusher and… to a certain extent, by brightening and tightening and perking and plumping – look younger.
I like it because it’s a little meditation, a little how ya doin’? a little centreing on me. The mirror creates a connection and the smoothing and highlighting and glossing can be physical and tender and care-taking. By doing it, one becomes worthy of care-taking. I usually feel better after the near-daily ritual; as I shadow my eyes or colour my lips, I’m having an inner dialogue – about me, about the day, about what lies ahead. By the time I’m done, I’m prepared in a way that has to do with coming in touch with myself – with smoothing down my feathers and stroking myself into calm readiness.
I may be a pawn of the mighty cosmetics giants, a victim of advertising and magazine images of unattainable perfection and the unspoken deal that though I’m not good enough without their products, with them I just might improve, and that with enough of them, my chances are better… and that by re-purchasing again and again, I own a little piece of that glamour. Maybe. Possibly. Probably.
But like a victim of the Stockholm Syndrome, I have come to love my captor – I just can’t wait for Sephora to open the Toronto doors.
Sephora is coming! Sephora is coming!
Monday, August 16, 2004
I'll stumble for ya
Britney did it, JLo’s done it and now 20 year old hotel heirette Nicky Hilton is the latest to sign on to the ubiquitous 'ill advised celebrity marriage'. At 2:30 AM, Sunday morning at the Las Vegas Wedding Chapel (and what good ever came of any venture entered into at 2:30 AM in Las Vegas?) Hilton and New York Money Manager Todd Meister got spliced, and according to Hilton’s spokesperson, are “doing well.” Imagine! Less than a day and a half after the nuptials and they’re “doing well”. Who could have predicted such a smashing success?
The fact that absolutely no one would bat an eye if I were to stumble into a kitsch Vegas chapel in the dead of night to tie the knot with a virtual stranger indicates simply that I have done the wise and elegant thing: waiting until I was in my middle years (or at least legal in all 50 states, 10 provinces and two territories) before attempting a second childhood.
But for me the tumble into late life infancy hasn’t been evinced by a mad marriage, or a predilection for dotting my i’s with hearts, or staging a temper tantrum in a supermarket (yet) but rather by behaviour more consistent with an accident prone toddler, tripping and falling and doing everything save wedging my head between the stairway banisters.
Since Saturday night I’ve been in a car accident, broken another toe (middle, right foot) and had a nasty fall, injuring my hands, skinning my elbow and banging up my knee. Whatever is left unbruised, unwhacked, or similarly unscathed doesn’t actually amount to a whole hell of a lot. I am a mess.
This is nothing new.
I’m convinced it’s genetic; my mother was an inveterate burner of hands, cutter of fingers and bumper of hips. I myself rarely get through a week without the appearance of a mystery bruise or two – the deep purples, sunset yellows and fading siennas simply a palate of technicolour tributes to coffee tables, desk edges and drawer corners.
The toe thing though has been my most consistent accident site. I’ve actually broken two chasing the dog around the coffee table (she likes it) one live on the radio (it’s a talent of sorts) and the most recent one the result of a lead crystal juice jug slipping through my fingers. (I screamed and jumped around like a cartoon character for a good five minutes – stars, tweeting birds, the lot. Then I took three Advil and slugged back a glass of wine. The toe is now just a dull red throb, but the juice jug is solidly, squarely, heavily unmarked. Bastard jug.)
The car accident really shouldn’t merit a mention since everyone in the car (me, my friend and her three children)survived the rear-ender unscathed – though my neck is a wee bit sore and frankly, my biceps ache – and the car came through without a scratch. (At least on the spot we were hit.) I was surprised by how much I wanted there to be a dent when I pulled over and squeaked at the guy who drove into me. “There are little children in the car!” I exclaimed. (Though all are in the double digits age-wise, and all are taller than me.) But I was rattled. Seriously rattled. Shaken even.
But the fall was the worst. I was crossing Bay at Dundas with the friend and the three whatevers yesterday afternoon, when I caught my toe on an uneven bit of paving stone. I absolutely flew through the air – in slow motion – and had time to think about how it would feel when my face hit the pavement and my front teeth all snapped off and the blood started to flow and my lips swelled up and bits of street embedded themselves in my poor blameless face. I could actually hear myself saying (through a mouth full of shattered shards of teeth) “Really (reweewy) I’m fine (Ah’mm fahhn)”. And how I’d smile through the pain and insist we go on to lunch. (“I’ww jusht haff the shoop.”) As it turned out, I just banged and bruised and scraped my hands and elbow and knee, and scratched up my handbag. But it could have been worse! And I was shattered.
So what’s next? Mistaking some under the sink poisonous cleaning product for a tasty treat? Slamming my fingers in a door? Flying off a swing and landing awkwardly, shattering both feet? (They couldn’t look any worse.) Falling down the stairs like a bag of laundry on speed? Your guess is as good as mine.
For now I’m just glad my flat is all on one level – no stairways or banisters of any sort. Though perhaps something can be arranged by wedging my head between the decorative iron bars of my headboard… an ill advised marriage to a cute fireman come to my rescue sounds an infinitely more amusing and potentially less painful way to celebrate my return to immaturity.
The fact that absolutely no one would bat an eye if I were to stumble into a kitsch Vegas chapel in the dead of night to tie the knot with a virtual stranger indicates simply that I have done the wise and elegant thing: waiting until I was in my middle years (or at least legal in all 50 states, 10 provinces and two territories) before attempting a second childhood.
But for me the tumble into late life infancy hasn’t been evinced by a mad marriage, or a predilection for dotting my i’s with hearts, or staging a temper tantrum in a supermarket (yet) but rather by behaviour more consistent with an accident prone toddler, tripping and falling and doing everything save wedging my head between the stairway banisters.
Since Saturday night I’ve been in a car accident, broken another toe (middle, right foot) and had a nasty fall, injuring my hands, skinning my elbow and banging up my knee. Whatever is left unbruised, unwhacked, or similarly unscathed doesn’t actually amount to a whole hell of a lot. I am a mess.
This is nothing new.
I’m convinced it’s genetic; my mother was an inveterate burner of hands, cutter of fingers and bumper of hips. I myself rarely get through a week without the appearance of a mystery bruise or two – the deep purples, sunset yellows and fading siennas simply a palate of technicolour tributes to coffee tables, desk edges and drawer corners.
The toe thing though has been my most consistent accident site. I’ve actually broken two chasing the dog around the coffee table (she likes it) one live on the radio (it’s a talent of sorts) and the most recent one the result of a lead crystal juice jug slipping through my fingers. (I screamed and jumped around like a cartoon character for a good five minutes – stars, tweeting birds, the lot. Then I took three Advil and slugged back a glass of wine. The toe is now just a dull red throb, but the juice jug is solidly, squarely, heavily unmarked. Bastard jug.)
The car accident really shouldn’t merit a mention since everyone in the car (me, my friend and her three children)survived the rear-ender unscathed – though my neck is a wee bit sore and frankly, my biceps ache – and the car came through without a scratch. (At least on the spot we were hit.) I was surprised by how much I wanted there to be a dent when I pulled over and squeaked at the guy who drove into me. “There are little children in the car!” I exclaimed. (Though all are in the double digits age-wise, and all are taller than me.) But I was rattled. Seriously rattled. Shaken even.
But the fall was the worst. I was crossing Bay at Dundas with the friend and the three whatevers yesterday afternoon, when I caught my toe on an uneven bit of paving stone. I absolutely flew through the air – in slow motion – and had time to think about how it would feel when my face hit the pavement and my front teeth all snapped off and the blood started to flow and my lips swelled up and bits of street embedded themselves in my poor blameless face. I could actually hear myself saying (through a mouth full of shattered shards of teeth) “Really (reweewy) I’m fine (Ah’mm fahhn)”. And how I’d smile through the pain and insist we go on to lunch. (“I’ww jusht haff the shoop.”) As it turned out, I just banged and bruised and scraped my hands and elbow and knee, and scratched up my handbag. But it could have been worse! And I was shattered.
So what’s next? Mistaking some under the sink poisonous cleaning product for a tasty treat? Slamming my fingers in a door? Flying off a swing and landing awkwardly, shattering both feet? (They couldn’t look any worse.) Falling down the stairs like a bag of laundry on speed? Your guess is as good as mine.
For now I’m just glad my flat is all on one level – no stairways or banisters of any sort. Though perhaps something can be arranged by wedging my head between the decorative iron bars of my headboard… an ill advised marriage to a cute fireman come to my rescue sounds an infinitely more amusing and potentially less painful way to celebrate my return to immaturity.
Monday, August 09, 2004
Alligator Pie, or More than you ever, ever wanted to know about Secret Storm
That bloody President has gone and done it again, and I swear if American voters don’t catch on soon we’re going to have to muster all the forces at our disposal and… well, make a phone call or something. Possibly collect.
Much like the ‘America is safer from terrorism’/’America is in grave danger of terrorism’ Presidential flip-flopping over the past few weeks (one imagines he looks over at Cheney during a campaign stop in Ames, Iowa: “Quick Dick – is this the group we comfort or scare?”) the “The economy is strong and growing stronger” pitch just doesn’t match up to the actual facts. According to Bureau of Labor statistics, actual jobs grew by only 32,000 in July, which in an economy the size of the US is tantamount to standing still. Things don’t look good – the stock market sucks, tax cuts aren’t helping and the poor job outlook is taking its toll on wage growth. The only thing trickling down in America is its crap economy dribbling down into ours.
I should know – I’m looking for work.
I’ve had 4 and ½ careers in the last 20-something years (5 altogether if you count a short but disastrous foray into selling sponsorship of the England International Football team – though I hasten to add, this was pre-Beckham)in radio, television, voice-overing and writing, and the ½ split into equal parts film acting and specialty book writing.
Interesting you say? Absolutely. Exciting? Without a doubt. Fun? Well, fun – yes, but with such abrupt detours, also disconcerting, bumpy and at times really, really scary. My life: a ride through an amusement park haunted house; listen closely – the laughter verges on hysteria.
But this is the life of the peripetath (my word – brand new! I see a possible extra 1/8th of a career: wordsmith…) the mercurial change from one career to the next, leaping as if from one alligator head to the next to get over the swamp, praying I don’t slip off and become done like alligator dinner.
Way back when, I took a year off after high school; I didn’t know what I wanted to do or be and I was bored at that moment at the thought of carrying on academically. Come the following September, I was in enrolled in University faster than you can say ‘knife’, realizing the world would never be all that kind to the under-educated.
But a couple of years in – and quite by accident – I was cast in a big Hollywood movie that came to town and the idea of taking off, dropping out and pursuing HOLLYWOOD STARDOM was just too delicious to ignore. So I pursued.
But Hollywood (for me) was straight out of a Jacqueline Suzanne novel – the seedy parts, which come to think of it, was all of it – and I came across randy agents, casting couch scenarios, hookerish type women and ugly Los Angeles news. (Babies found dead in garbage cans, the freeway killer popping people off from Van Nuys to not so very Nuys on a regular basis.) If it hadn’t been for my boyfriend, I’m not sure what would have happened; I’d grown up traveling all over the world, but was anything but a seasoned sophisticate. I was a nice, sheltered, Canadian goody-two-shoes girl, and the horror of Hollywood was way beyond my ken.
But luck stepped in with an actors strike, making a move back to Canada a necessity that also saved face. Hallelujah! And so the boyfriend transferred out of University at UC (University of California) Northridge, and back into U of C (University of Calgary… Calgary…) and we toiled back up north, me with still only a couple of years of Uni behind me and no actual skills, talents, qualifications or contacts to call upon.
Thank heaven for the boyfriend once again – “You should be in PR,” he said. “I think it’s like having lunch and being nice – you’d be good at it.” Then he drove me straight to a local radio station and tipped me out into the street, figuring (I guess) that all I had to do was appear and the gates would swing open. It didn’t happen that way; they had no need for a PR person (to this day I don’t know what PR folk do, but if all it is, is having lunch and acting nice, I think I’m ready to seriously look into it) but they offered me a job as a disc jockey and within 6 months I was off the all night show and into first mid-days (11-2), and then became the first woman in Calgary to host and afternoon drive (4-6) program.
I was at the radio station 3 or 4 years (my memory, like my life is just the teensiest bit fluid) and was anxious to try something new – but to do it in an old familiar place – so I convinced the bf to pack up again and we moved to London England; he to the University of London and me… to France as it turned out. (Surprisingly, London was not waiting for me with open arms: “We have enough bloody yanks on the air – piss off”. I was, to say the least, a little disconcerted. We didn’t know anybody and those we did, didn’t want me.)
But like so much of my life, rescue came again by accident; we were walking down a street we’d never walked before and came across a newspaper kiosk displaying an absolutely enormous broadcast industry magazine (huge – as big as The New York Times at least) which was advertising on the Situations Vacant page ‘WANTED FOR RIVIERA RADIO STATION: ANNOUNCERS – BRITISH OR AMERICAN – APPLY TO:” and so on, giving a name and address to send tapes and C.V.’s. With the almost unearthly speed of British Post (at least at that time) I heard back from the fellow the next day, met him on the day following that, and was hired then and there.
Aidan Day his name was. I never saw him again, but he was altogether great.
So the bf packed me up (again) drove me across the channel over to France (he’d had his beloved car shipped to England from Calgary) found me a flat while I got acquainted with the radio station and instead of driving back, surprised me with his car, saying he’d feel safer if I had it, so would I drive him to the airport in Nice? (Where is this guy now you ask? Married – to somebody else - with three children. Quite possibly the luckiest children in the world.)
So I lived on the Riviera for about a year, and then bored living in a holiday town, moved back to London to live with an English (Welsh if you want to be sticky) girl I’d worked with at Riviera 104. Numerous adventures and romances later, I managed the promotions department of Hereward Radio in Cambridgeshire for a time, hosted a morning show for BBC Network Africa, took on the (hideously wrong for me) job of promoting soccer teams, then was asked by a man of questionable reputation, (though thick wallet) to write the copy in a book of photographs of interesting jobs.
I met the keeper of the Panda at London Zoo (as well as a little troop of baby chimps running around the Monkey House in teeny tiny Pampers) went down a mine in Nottingham, interviewed the world’s oldest bell making company (Liberty Bell, Bow Bells etc) and was on my way to chatting with the owner of city’s oldest butcher shop (1600’s if you can believe it) when I accidentally came across my employer emptying shopping bag after shopping bag of money onto his desk. Huge tottering piles of used and dirty pound notes, stacked almost to the ceiling. Things I hadn’t understood before suddenly made a horrid amount of sense (why did a private business man/photographer need a full time bodyguard?) and I hightailed it back to Canada as fast as British Airways could carry me.
I had no idea what I would do next. I was 27 years old, not really interested in radio anymore and living temporarily with my father and my brand new wicked stepmother. The fairy tales are all too terribly true - but I have to give Margaret her due; she shamed me into applying at a television station, which against all odds hired me to host a daily, hour long, LIVE news and public affairs show. Until our first show, my entire television experience was as a 4 year old birthday guest on Montreal’s ‘Magic Tom’ TV show. I suppose the portents were all there…
For three years I hosted that show, with just one producer and an assistant. 3 – 5 interviews a day, 5 days a week, on anything from Native land claims to environmental issues, and from national politics – Brian Mulroney, Kim Campbell, Paul Martin, John Crosbie, Sheila Copps, Michael Wilson, (and more) to local politics – B.C. Premier Bill Vanderzalm at his nuttiest, Gordon Campbell at his then Mayoriest – the lot.
I interviewed Robertson Davies (charming) WO Mitchell (naughty) and Margaret Atwood (haughty – until we began talking about her child).
I chatted with Linus Pauling about the healing power of vitamin C, and Norman Cousins about the healing power of laughter. (Linus smelled exactly like a big brown vitamin bottle and was aboslutely adorable.)
I did all the research and wrote all the questions and scripts. It was totally Dickensian – the best of times and the worst of times. I was permanently exhausted, but totally engaged.
After 3 years, Canadian content rules changed and my show was cancelled. I could have done another show, but I didn’t like the ideas, and anyway it was time to move. This time to Toronto, where once again, I landed in town waiting for the parade and the keys to the city and instead suffered in ignominy for nearly a year, before a magical accident brought me to the best paid job of my life – as staff announcer for CTV. I won’t tell you how much it paid because it was ridiculous… and all for about 20 minutes of work a week. 3 years into that, I stupidly trusted someone with my career (I can still get sizzlingly warm on cold winter nights just thinking about it…) and made a huge mistake which cost me my job, but was able to get on as staff announcer with the new Life network.
During that time I was experimenting with writing – scripts and show ideas for CBC, pitches to advertisers for teen magazine shows… all sorts of stuff. And then another one of my storied accidents occurred when I managed to get a try-out for a column in the National Post. I got it. And not only wrote the weekly advice column, but articles for the entertainment, style and children’s pages as well.
Sadly, those were the days of the Weekend Post, which was shelved along with all the freelancers about a year in. I can’t tell you how disappointed I was. But then, the Toronto Star offered me another advice column (and a syndication deal) which was going swimmingly until Ellie Tesher, long time editor (and first class cow) decided she was being called to replace Ann Landers (who died on my birthday – a bad day for Ann too, I suppose) and though there was space and an interest from other editors in my column continuing, had me knocked off with the stated reason that I was writing something too similar to what she was planning.
That sucked.
But then I happened to park in my lucky parking lot and accidentally bumped into a man who got me a job writing for an international medical publisher – a job that paid stacks! And this was a publisher that somewhere in the neighbourhood of 4 hundred years ago published Galileo. From Galileo to me! (A virtually straight line I would tell everybody…)
I talked to Nobel Prize winning researchers and writers, and contributors to The Lancet, and authors of the cutting edge text books and computer programs that are teaching the next generation of specialists. Every day something new, something fascinating. I loved it.
All was going well – until George W Bush went to war and my international company decided to cut off its contract consulting ties to North America.
Since THAT ignominious day (and I believe I’m not the only person who has suffered as a result…) I’ve been freelancing, doing a little research here, a little pamphlet writing there, and a whole lot of being turned down for published writing gigs.
All of this to say, that I resent the President.
I dislike his manner, his attitude and his grammar. I am unhappy with his international policies, his domestic policies and the way he smirks. I hate the war, I loathe the economy he’s trying to suggest is a triumph and I remain incensed at the fact that he seems to be getting away with it.
I blame him for the fact that I’m not working, even though it isn’t, strictly speaking, anybody’s fault but my own.
I think my old boyfriend should be President – though he’s unlikely to be considered, seeing as he’s (sadly) a successful, decent CANADIAN lawyer. But maybe it’s time to change the rules.
Otherwise, I'm going to need another miraculous accident... or at least a job in P.R.
I’m hungry, and I think it’s fair to say that on a good day I’m quite nice.
Finally – something I’m actually qualified to do.
Much like the ‘America is safer from terrorism’/’America is in grave danger of terrorism’ Presidential flip-flopping over the past few weeks (one imagines he looks over at Cheney during a campaign stop in Ames, Iowa: “Quick Dick – is this the group we comfort or scare?”) the “The economy is strong and growing stronger” pitch just doesn’t match up to the actual facts. According to Bureau of Labor statistics, actual jobs grew by only 32,000 in July, which in an economy the size of the US is tantamount to standing still. Things don’t look good – the stock market sucks, tax cuts aren’t helping and the poor job outlook is taking its toll on wage growth. The only thing trickling down in America is its crap economy dribbling down into ours.
I should know – I’m looking for work.
I’ve had 4 and ½ careers in the last 20-something years (5 altogether if you count a short but disastrous foray into selling sponsorship of the England International Football team – though I hasten to add, this was pre-Beckham)in radio, television, voice-overing and writing, and the ½ split into equal parts film acting and specialty book writing.
Interesting you say? Absolutely. Exciting? Without a doubt. Fun? Well, fun – yes, but with such abrupt detours, also disconcerting, bumpy and at times really, really scary. My life: a ride through an amusement park haunted house; listen closely – the laughter verges on hysteria.
But this is the life of the peripetath (my word – brand new! I see a possible extra 1/8th of a career: wordsmith…) the mercurial change from one career to the next, leaping as if from one alligator head to the next to get over the swamp, praying I don’t slip off and become done like alligator dinner.
Way back when, I took a year off after high school; I didn’t know what I wanted to do or be and I was bored at that moment at the thought of carrying on academically. Come the following September, I was in enrolled in University faster than you can say ‘knife’, realizing the world would never be all that kind to the under-educated.
But a couple of years in – and quite by accident – I was cast in a big Hollywood movie that came to town and the idea of taking off, dropping out and pursuing HOLLYWOOD STARDOM was just too delicious to ignore. So I pursued.
But Hollywood (for me) was straight out of a Jacqueline Suzanne novel – the seedy parts, which come to think of it, was all of it – and I came across randy agents, casting couch scenarios, hookerish type women and ugly Los Angeles news. (Babies found dead in garbage cans, the freeway killer popping people off from Van Nuys to not so very Nuys on a regular basis.) If it hadn’t been for my boyfriend, I’m not sure what would have happened; I’d grown up traveling all over the world, but was anything but a seasoned sophisticate. I was a nice, sheltered, Canadian goody-two-shoes girl, and the horror of Hollywood was way beyond my ken.
But luck stepped in with an actors strike, making a move back to Canada a necessity that also saved face. Hallelujah! And so the boyfriend transferred out of University at UC (University of California) Northridge, and back into U of C (University of Calgary… Calgary…) and we toiled back up north, me with still only a couple of years of Uni behind me and no actual skills, talents, qualifications or contacts to call upon.
Thank heaven for the boyfriend once again – “You should be in PR,” he said. “I think it’s like having lunch and being nice – you’d be good at it.” Then he drove me straight to a local radio station and tipped me out into the street, figuring (I guess) that all I had to do was appear and the gates would swing open. It didn’t happen that way; they had no need for a PR person (to this day I don’t know what PR folk do, but if all it is, is having lunch and acting nice, I think I’m ready to seriously look into it) but they offered me a job as a disc jockey and within 6 months I was off the all night show and into first mid-days (11-2), and then became the first woman in Calgary to host and afternoon drive (4-6) program.
I was at the radio station 3 or 4 years (my memory, like my life is just the teensiest bit fluid) and was anxious to try something new – but to do it in an old familiar place – so I convinced the bf to pack up again and we moved to London England; he to the University of London and me… to France as it turned out. (Surprisingly, London was not waiting for me with open arms: “We have enough bloody yanks on the air – piss off”. I was, to say the least, a little disconcerted. We didn’t know anybody and those we did, didn’t want me.)
But like so much of my life, rescue came again by accident; we were walking down a street we’d never walked before and came across a newspaper kiosk displaying an absolutely enormous broadcast industry magazine (huge – as big as The New York Times at least) which was advertising on the Situations Vacant page ‘WANTED FOR RIVIERA RADIO STATION: ANNOUNCERS – BRITISH OR AMERICAN – APPLY TO:” and so on, giving a name and address to send tapes and C.V.’s. With the almost unearthly speed of British Post (at least at that time) I heard back from the fellow the next day, met him on the day following that, and was hired then and there.
Aidan Day his name was. I never saw him again, but he was altogether great.
So the bf packed me up (again) drove me across the channel over to France (he’d had his beloved car shipped to England from Calgary) found me a flat while I got acquainted with the radio station and instead of driving back, surprised me with his car, saying he’d feel safer if I had it, so would I drive him to the airport in Nice? (Where is this guy now you ask? Married – to somebody else - with three children. Quite possibly the luckiest children in the world.)
So I lived on the Riviera for about a year, and then bored living in a holiday town, moved back to London to live with an English (Welsh if you want to be sticky) girl I’d worked with at Riviera 104. Numerous adventures and romances later, I managed the promotions department of Hereward Radio in Cambridgeshire for a time, hosted a morning show for BBC Network Africa, took on the (hideously wrong for me) job of promoting soccer teams, then was asked by a man of questionable reputation, (though thick wallet) to write the copy in a book of photographs of interesting jobs.
I met the keeper of the Panda at London Zoo (as well as a little troop of baby chimps running around the Monkey House in teeny tiny Pampers) went down a mine in Nottingham, interviewed the world’s oldest bell making company (Liberty Bell, Bow Bells etc) and was on my way to chatting with the owner of city’s oldest butcher shop (1600’s if you can believe it) when I accidentally came across my employer emptying shopping bag after shopping bag of money onto his desk. Huge tottering piles of used and dirty pound notes, stacked almost to the ceiling. Things I hadn’t understood before suddenly made a horrid amount of sense (why did a private business man/photographer need a full time bodyguard?) and I hightailed it back to Canada as fast as British Airways could carry me.
I had no idea what I would do next. I was 27 years old, not really interested in radio anymore and living temporarily with my father and my brand new wicked stepmother. The fairy tales are all too terribly true - but I have to give Margaret her due; she shamed me into applying at a television station, which against all odds hired me to host a daily, hour long, LIVE news and public affairs show. Until our first show, my entire television experience was as a 4 year old birthday guest on Montreal’s ‘Magic Tom’ TV show. I suppose the portents were all there…
For three years I hosted that show, with just one producer and an assistant. 3 – 5 interviews a day, 5 days a week, on anything from Native land claims to environmental issues, and from national politics – Brian Mulroney, Kim Campbell, Paul Martin, John Crosbie, Sheila Copps, Michael Wilson, (and more) to local politics – B.C. Premier Bill Vanderzalm at his nuttiest, Gordon Campbell at his then Mayoriest – the lot.
I interviewed Robertson Davies (charming) WO Mitchell (naughty) and Margaret Atwood (haughty – until we began talking about her child).
I chatted with Linus Pauling about the healing power of vitamin C, and Norman Cousins about the healing power of laughter. (Linus smelled exactly like a big brown vitamin bottle and was aboslutely adorable.)
I did all the research and wrote all the questions and scripts. It was totally Dickensian – the best of times and the worst of times. I was permanently exhausted, but totally engaged.
After 3 years, Canadian content rules changed and my show was cancelled. I could have done another show, but I didn’t like the ideas, and anyway it was time to move. This time to Toronto, where once again, I landed in town waiting for the parade and the keys to the city and instead suffered in ignominy for nearly a year, before a magical accident brought me to the best paid job of my life – as staff announcer for CTV. I won’t tell you how much it paid because it was ridiculous… and all for about 20 minutes of work a week. 3 years into that, I stupidly trusted someone with my career (I can still get sizzlingly warm on cold winter nights just thinking about it…) and made a huge mistake which cost me my job, but was able to get on as staff announcer with the new Life network.
During that time I was experimenting with writing – scripts and show ideas for CBC, pitches to advertisers for teen magazine shows… all sorts of stuff. And then another one of my storied accidents occurred when I managed to get a try-out for a column in the National Post. I got it. And not only wrote the weekly advice column, but articles for the entertainment, style and children’s pages as well.
Sadly, those were the days of the Weekend Post, which was shelved along with all the freelancers about a year in. I can’t tell you how disappointed I was. But then, the Toronto Star offered me another advice column (and a syndication deal) which was going swimmingly until Ellie Tesher, long time editor (and first class cow) decided she was being called to replace Ann Landers (who died on my birthday – a bad day for Ann too, I suppose) and though there was space and an interest from other editors in my column continuing, had me knocked off with the stated reason that I was writing something too similar to what she was planning.
That sucked.
But then I happened to park in my lucky parking lot and accidentally bumped into a man who got me a job writing for an international medical publisher – a job that paid stacks! And this was a publisher that somewhere in the neighbourhood of 4 hundred years ago published Galileo. From Galileo to me! (A virtually straight line I would tell everybody…)
I talked to Nobel Prize winning researchers and writers, and contributors to The Lancet, and authors of the cutting edge text books and computer programs that are teaching the next generation of specialists. Every day something new, something fascinating. I loved it.
All was going well – until George W Bush went to war and my international company decided to cut off its contract consulting ties to North America.
Since THAT ignominious day (and I believe I’m not the only person who has suffered as a result…) I’ve been freelancing, doing a little research here, a little pamphlet writing there, and a whole lot of being turned down for published writing gigs.
All of this to say, that I resent the President.
I dislike his manner, his attitude and his grammar. I am unhappy with his international policies, his domestic policies and the way he smirks. I hate the war, I loathe the economy he’s trying to suggest is a triumph and I remain incensed at the fact that he seems to be getting away with it.
I blame him for the fact that I’m not working, even though it isn’t, strictly speaking, anybody’s fault but my own.
I think my old boyfriend should be President – though he’s unlikely to be considered, seeing as he’s (sadly) a successful, decent CANADIAN lawyer. But maybe it’s time to change the rules.
Otherwise, I'm going to need another miraculous accident... or at least a job in P.R.
I’m hungry, and I think it’s fair to say that on a good day I’m quite nice.
Finally – something I’m actually qualified to do.
Monday, August 02, 2004
Sitio Secreto de la Tormenta Secreta
The above, as I recently discovered, is the name of my site translated into Spanish.
Great eh?
It’s so much more evocative than boring old ‘Secret Storm’s Secret Site’. I picture an idealized version of myself (my bangs have grown in properly and I’m wearing a pair of high-heeled black slingbacks I’ve had my eye on for months) writhing in exquisite anguish… sort of a cross between the heroine on the cover of a gothic romance (all heaving bosom and wild eyes) and cranky Medusa – just without all the snakes and bitterness of course.
Why so tormenta-ed Secreta? Is it because you’ve just read about the letter issued by the Vatican (and approved by the Pope) written by chief papal advisor Cardinal Joseph Ratzinger, blaming women for everything from original sin to homosexuality?
Why yes, come to think of it, that’s exactly what vexes me!
The Vatican would probably disagree with my characterisation of the document titled “Letter to the Bishops of the Catholic Church on the Collaboration of Men and Women in the Church and the World”. No doubt they’d emphasize the positive nature of the title and the few sections paying lip service to the notion of equality of the sexes, but the central message, the res ipsa loquitor – the full, flaming implication of the letter, is that feminism is at the root of all evil – surpassing money and war, not to mention testosterone, as factors in the equation.
The (no doubt unintentional) irony of comment on the missive - as interpreted by the church’s Toronto office – was the sex of the spokesperson designated to deal: Suzanne Scorsone, representing Archbishop Aloysius Cardinal Ambrozic in the religious imbroglio.
Scorsone (who hopefully did not abandon her children or husband in order to nip down to the diocesan headquarters to deliver the message) points to the ‘lethal effects of feminism’; the thinking that the more drastic arm of the feminist movement has made it less about equality in human rights, and instead that “…male and female relationships became all about the domination of one or the other.” She further elucidates (using the charming if decades outdated phrase ‘A woman needs a man like a fish needs a bicycle’ to back up the contention) that women began to equate getting married with “…wimping out.”
Wha…?
And get this: Scorsone further extrapolates that this way of thinking “…could be what led to many homosexual relationships.”
I have to say right off the top that I am almost 100% certain that homosexuality pre-dated bra-burning by at least a few million years – to be fair though, I’m speaking without the searing scientific proof of ‘A woman needs a man like a fish needs a bicycle’.
(Actually, women need men like homosexuals need the Pope – without love and acceptance and equality, it’s about as incongruous as a trout in the Tour de France.)
It’s hard to know where to begin. Perhaps with the date – July 31st, 2004. In case you were wondering, this letter isn’t some sort of amusing historical document, pulled from the dusty Vatican files and shared with the public as a sort of “ha ha – look how wacky and backward we were back in the 70’s”. No. This is a discussion paper, issued to church officials the world over, pointing out the inherent dangers of a movement created to lift women out of virtual societal bondage.
It seeks to identify (and vilify) what are referred to as two current strands in feminism: One that “…emphasizes a radical rivalry between the sexes, and the other that seeks to cancel the differences between the sexes”.
It’s propaganda like this that incites rivalry. Identifying the most radical element of an organization and characterizing everyone within it as supporting that agenda. (See: Muslims = terrorists.)
Feminism is at the root of divorce. Feminism is at the root of single mothers. Feminism is at the root of unemployment… impotence… crime… Athlete’s Foot.
Feminism is at the root and is the cause of men being forced to turn to homosexuality. If only we’d known that men were that malleable!
To be lectured on the evils of feminism by a group that eschews females in every way from marriage to ordination, is a bitter pill indeed. It’s bitter because it’s divisive. It’s bitter because of the decidedly strained quality of mercy the Catholic priesthood has traditionally distributed among those it has so horrendously abused – from buggering alter boys, to denying poverty stricken third world women access to birth control, to ignoring the starving, diseased children they later bear – offering instead blessings and bibles and laminated photographs of the Holy Father.
I could (as ever) go on. But what really makes Secreta Tormenta-ed is the fact that all this crap about feminism and the destruction of family values and the bewildered subjugation of men is nothing more than a red herring - with or without a two-wheeler. This isn’t about women. This isn’t about feminism - this is about same sex marriage.
This is about the traditional family, living in obedience and obeisance to the church – the family being the currency of the Catholic church, it’s continued propagation the continuation of the faith. Altering that image, creating a new definition that includes virtually any type of loving adult relationship raises fears of bankrupting the spiritual account, a situation the church is loathe to allow.
So in the end, this isn’t about women at all. It’s what it’s usually about - men and power.
That’s the sitio secreto that torments me.
Great eh?
It’s so much more evocative than boring old ‘Secret Storm’s Secret Site’. I picture an idealized version of myself (my bangs have grown in properly and I’m wearing a pair of high-heeled black slingbacks I’ve had my eye on for months) writhing in exquisite anguish… sort of a cross between the heroine on the cover of a gothic romance (all heaving bosom and wild eyes) and cranky Medusa – just without all the snakes and bitterness of course.
Why so tormenta-ed Secreta? Is it because you’ve just read about the letter issued by the Vatican (and approved by the Pope) written by chief papal advisor Cardinal Joseph Ratzinger, blaming women for everything from original sin to homosexuality?
Why yes, come to think of it, that’s exactly what vexes me!
The Vatican would probably disagree with my characterisation of the document titled “Letter to the Bishops of the Catholic Church on the Collaboration of Men and Women in the Church and the World”. No doubt they’d emphasize the positive nature of the title and the few sections paying lip service to the notion of equality of the sexes, but the central message, the res ipsa loquitor – the full, flaming implication of the letter, is that feminism is at the root of all evil – surpassing money and war, not to mention testosterone, as factors in the equation.
The (no doubt unintentional) irony of comment on the missive - as interpreted by the church’s Toronto office – was the sex of the spokesperson designated to deal: Suzanne Scorsone, representing Archbishop Aloysius Cardinal Ambrozic in the religious imbroglio.
Scorsone (who hopefully did not abandon her children or husband in order to nip down to the diocesan headquarters to deliver the message) points to the ‘lethal effects of feminism’; the thinking that the more drastic arm of the feminist movement has made it less about equality in human rights, and instead that “…male and female relationships became all about the domination of one or the other.” She further elucidates (using the charming if decades outdated phrase ‘A woman needs a man like a fish needs a bicycle’ to back up the contention) that women began to equate getting married with “…wimping out.”
Wha…?
And get this: Scorsone further extrapolates that this way of thinking “…could be what led to many homosexual relationships.”
I have to say right off the top that I am almost 100% certain that homosexuality pre-dated bra-burning by at least a few million years – to be fair though, I’m speaking without the searing scientific proof of ‘A woman needs a man like a fish needs a bicycle’.
(Actually, women need men like homosexuals need the Pope – without love and acceptance and equality, it’s about as incongruous as a trout in the Tour de France.)
It’s hard to know where to begin. Perhaps with the date – July 31st, 2004. In case you were wondering, this letter isn’t some sort of amusing historical document, pulled from the dusty Vatican files and shared with the public as a sort of “ha ha – look how wacky and backward we were back in the 70’s”. No. This is a discussion paper, issued to church officials the world over, pointing out the inherent dangers of a movement created to lift women out of virtual societal bondage.
It seeks to identify (and vilify) what are referred to as two current strands in feminism: One that “…emphasizes a radical rivalry between the sexes, and the other that seeks to cancel the differences between the sexes”.
It’s propaganda like this that incites rivalry. Identifying the most radical element of an organization and characterizing everyone within it as supporting that agenda. (See: Muslims = terrorists.)
Feminism is at the root of divorce. Feminism is at the root of single mothers. Feminism is at the root of unemployment… impotence… crime… Athlete’s Foot.
Feminism is at the root and is the cause of men being forced to turn to homosexuality. If only we’d known that men were that malleable!
To be lectured on the evils of feminism by a group that eschews females in every way from marriage to ordination, is a bitter pill indeed. It’s bitter because it’s divisive. It’s bitter because of the decidedly strained quality of mercy the Catholic priesthood has traditionally distributed among those it has so horrendously abused – from buggering alter boys, to denying poverty stricken third world women access to birth control, to ignoring the starving, diseased children they later bear – offering instead blessings and bibles and laminated photographs of the Holy Father.
I could (as ever) go on. But what really makes Secreta Tormenta-ed is the fact that all this crap about feminism and the destruction of family values and the bewildered subjugation of men is nothing more than a red herring - with or without a two-wheeler. This isn’t about women. This isn’t about feminism - this is about same sex marriage.
This is about the traditional family, living in obedience and obeisance to the church – the family being the currency of the Catholic church, it’s continued propagation the continuation of the faith. Altering that image, creating a new definition that includes virtually any type of loving adult relationship raises fears of bankrupting the spiritual account, a situation the church is loathe to allow.
So in the end, this isn’t about women at all. It’s what it’s usually about - men and power.
That’s the sitio secreto that torments me.
Thursday, July 29, 2004
Dems and Dose
It’s not that I buy wholesale the concept the Democrats are trying to sell – that the Dems are for the good guys, the regular working stiff type guys and gals, and the GOP is for ‘Dose’: the rich, the super-rich and the ‘don’t ask how much, you can’t count that high’ sort. Not entirely I don’t. But ever since I heard the clip of W at a squillion-dollar-a-plate fundraiser telling his rich and rapt audience “Some people call you the elite – I call you my base” I’ve had a sinking suspicion that the rhetoric isn’t just spot on, but that I truly can’t count that high.
It’s simply an economic fact: for those of us who think of money because we have to, listening to and obeying our economic superiors, who truly never have to listen back, is the way of the world. You’re silenced before you even attempt to speak, because as like attracts like, power only really ever listens to power – and bigger power at that. And way down south where the cotton blooms and blows, the Republicans have made a religion out of the notion – and they’ve pulled off the biggest coup of all: they’ve managed to attract middle class and even poor voters who presumably buy into their vision - of trickle down economics, and fighting for oil disguised as 'fighting for freedom'.
There have always been folks who believe that the rigidly observed class system that has existed in Britain– and in many ways still does – works because the lower classes themselves want it. The ‘Upstairs, Downstairs’ viewpoint if you will – Hudson and Rose and Mr. and Mrs. Bellamy all maintaining a status quo that suited them for its predictability, its streamlining of life and habit; knowing your place – not as a put down, but as a comfort.
In the United States there’s a class system too, but marching in tandem with to-the-manor-born Vanderbilts and Astors is the highest class of all: the rich and powerful. The difference is that in Britain the upper classes may have looked down upon their working poor, but respected their place in the chain; in North America the attitude of the rich and powerful feels more like contempt – the middle and lower classes useful as dependable taxpayers and not incidentally, as useful cannon fodder.
So in the modern Americanized version, ‘Upstairs, Downstairs’ becomes ‘The Outsiders’. John Kerry is Darryl, John Edwards is Ponyboy; just a couple of millionaire greasers, fighting the billionaire Soc incumbents, and playing out the time-honoured class-based scenario that could still go either way.
But I have hope – apparently, it’s on the way. Or at least it is according to the Democrat VP in waiting, the glowing, scintillating, coruscating John Edwards who spoke so eloquently last night.
(Pity really how those primaries work out isn’t it? In a nation that puts charisma above accomplishment, and rhetoric above reality, the fact that John Kerry won the nomination is still a bit of a mystery; character judgment and ability aside, he may not have the spark needed to fire up this crucial campaign at this dangerous time. My dream ticket: Joe Biden for Prez, John Edwards for VP.)
And Edwards did scintillate and coruscate last night, pulling out all the stops, then laying down the law in the ‘2 Americas’ speech that raised the roof at the Fleet Centre. Maybe it’s enough.
He began with: “It doesn’t have to be that way”, then finished off the night with “Hope is on the way!” I’m a little sensitive myself to hyperbole and obvious sound-bitery, the ‘born in a hole in the middle of a highway', po' folksing that is all but ubiquitous in the modern American campaign, but in an election it’s all about the obvious, and the devil with the subtle, the complex and compromise.
But now I find (to my everlasting dismay) that as I get older I’m both more frightened and more sentimental, so when John Edwards praised his mill worker dad and hard working mom – and bless them, they looked like they’d put in those years - and evoked the image of a modern working class mother, sitting at her kitchen table (I see it as one of those retro style chrome and plastic numbers, with a sticky bottle of ketchup – Heinz natch – and a diner-inspired napkin dispenser) going over the bills she can’t afford to pay, and thinking of her husband on a second tour of duty in Iraq, a tear came to my eye. It did. Really.
And when he outlined a bunch of other similar scenarios – abandoned veterans, seniors unable to afford health care, the working poor – reeling them off in 4/4 time, with a cadence that spoke of long experience in church basements and town hall covered-dish get togethers, I was practically snapping my fingers in time to the rhythm.
What if, I thought, he and Kerry really could roll back tax breaks for the rich and tax cuts to companies profiting through outsourcing? Properly take care of veterans because “they’ve taken care of us”? Reward work, not wealth… help people not just get by, but “get ahead”?
What if eh?
All right – so I bought it. The swamp, the farm and the kitchen sink. But I want to believe – I want to feel safe again, and I want to see the back of the Bushes, as they load up their platinum sided, diamond studded U-Haul with all their contempt and all their entitlement, and haul it out of the White House.
I believe in fairies, I believe in magic – and I believe in hope. I really do believe in John Edwards.
I just hope he’s enough.
It’s simply an economic fact: for those of us who think of money because we have to, listening to and obeying our economic superiors, who truly never have to listen back, is the way of the world. You’re silenced before you even attempt to speak, because as like attracts like, power only really ever listens to power – and bigger power at that. And way down south where the cotton blooms and blows, the Republicans have made a religion out of the notion – and they’ve pulled off the biggest coup of all: they’ve managed to attract middle class and even poor voters who presumably buy into their vision - of trickle down economics, and fighting for oil disguised as 'fighting for freedom'.
There have always been folks who believe that the rigidly observed class system that has existed in Britain– and in many ways still does – works because the lower classes themselves want it. The ‘Upstairs, Downstairs’ viewpoint if you will – Hudson and Rose and Mr. and Mrs. Bellamy all maintaining a status quo that suited them for its predictability, its streamlining of life and habit; knowing your place – not as a put down, but as a comfort.
In the United States there’s a class system too, but marching in tandem with to-the-manor-born Vanderbilts and Astors is the highest class of all: the rich and powerful. The difference is that in Britain the upper classes may have looked down upon their working poor, but respected their place in the chain; in North America the attitude of the rich and powerful feels more like contempt – the middle and lower classes useful as dependable taxpayers and not incidentally, as useful cannon fodder.
So in the modern Americanized version, ‘Upstairs, Downstairs’ becomes ‘The Outsiders’. John Kerry is Darryl, John Edwards is Ponyboy; just a couple of millionaire greasers, fighting the billionaire Soc incumbents, and playing out the time-honoured class-based scenario that could still go either way.
But I have hope – apparently, it’s on the way. Or at least it is according to the Democrat VP in waiting, the glowing, scintillating, coruscating John Edwards who spoke so eloquently last night.
(Pity really how those primaries work out isn’t it? In a nation that puts charisma above accomplishment, and rhetoric above reality, the fact that John Kerry won the nomination is still a bit of a mystery; character judgment and ability aside, he may not have the spark needed to fire up this crucial campaign at this dangerous time. My dream ticket: Joe Biden for Prez, John Edwards for VP.)
And Edwards did scintillate and coruscate last night, pulling out all the stops, then laying down the law in the ‘2 Americas’ speech that raised the roof at the Fleet Centre. Maybe it’s enough.
He began with: “It doesn’t have to be that way”, then finished off the night with “Hope is on the way!” I’m a little sensitive myself to hyperbole and obvious sound-bitery, the ‘born in a hole in the middle of a highway', po' folksing that is all but ubiquitous in the modern American campaign, but in an election it’s all about the obvious, and the devil with the subtle, the complex and compromise.
But now I find (to my everlasting dismay) that as I get older I’m both more frightened and more sentimental, so when John Edwards praised his mill worker dad and hard working mom – and bless them, they looked like they’d put in those years - and evoked the image of a modern working class mother, sitting at her kitchen table (I see it as one of those retro style chrome and plastic numbers, with a sticky bottle of ketchup – Heinz natch – and a diner-inspired napkin dispenser) going over the bills she can’t afford to pay, and thinking of her husband on a second tour of duty in Iraq, a tear came to my eye. It did. Really.
And when he outlined a bunch of other similar scenarios – abandoned veterans, seniors unable to afford health care, the working poor – reeling them off in 4/4 time, with a cadence that spoke of long experience in church basements and town hall covered-dish get togethers, I was practically snapping my fingers in time to the rhythm.
What if, I thought, he and Kerry really could roll back tax breaks for the rich and tax cuts to companies profiting through outsourcing? Properly take care of veterans because “they’ve taken care of us”? Reward work, not wealth… help people not just get by, but “get ahead”?
What if eh?
All right – so I bought it. The swamp, the farm and the kitchen sink. But I want to believe – I want to feel safe again, and I want to see the back of the Bushes, as they load up their platinum sided, diamond studded U-Haul with all their contempt and all their entitlement, and haul it out of the White House.
I believe in fairies, I believe in magic – and I believe in hope. I really do believe in John Edwards.
I just hope he’s enough.
Saturday, July 24, 2004
Everything makes me mad... including me
I’ve had a bee buzzing around in my bonnet this week, and as another 52nd'th of this year wends its way to a close, the buzzing, far from abating, is getting louder.
The Mess in the U.S. (say it like: ‘The Killer in Manila’) just gets murkier as the 9/11 Commission Report is released. Long it is, and detailed it may be, but placing responsibility it certainly is not, as the official line muddies the waters by criticizing both Clinton and Bush administrations.
I can just hear the Sunday spin now (though I can’t see who’s wielding the stick with which the press will be encouraged to roll through the hoop): Bush has made America safer from terrorism because though mistakes were made, they were made by the previous administration; we will be asked to imagine how much WORSE things would have been had W not been there to clean up after the evil, wicked, stupid, lazy, unpatriotic, venal (and so on) Democrats who were. Mark my words, Clinton will be making an appearance at the upcoming Democratic National Convention, but not in person; rather as the potentially fatal distraction the Kerry/Edwards ticket cannot afford. Like most political contretemps, for the incumbent the goal is not losing – winning can wait for Election Day.
But as sour as my puss is at the gathering southern storm, I’m just as distressed as what’s going on up here; and what’s going on up here has been going on for centuries, as it has everywhere else. It’s just that I had higher hopes for here – higher hopes that women might be able to make those few extra strides in government – that the Prime Minister (or PM PM as wags would have him) would have made good on his promise to draw more women into the centre of the political universe.
But no. Though he has appointed some good and true gals to cabinet (yay Carolyn Bennett! My personal MP and role model) those numbers are far outweighed by other Prime Ministerial priorities that focused far more on geographical balance than on achieving representation for a group that can somehow manage to be described as both 52% of the voting population and at the same time as a minority. That’s some trick. But that’s women – versatile don’t you know.
But why the surprise oh fellow bonnet wearers? With the exception of Belinda Stronach (and please don’t make me describe how a pretty blonde billionairess with absolutely zero political experience parachuting into first a leadership and then a national election, garnering much media attention – though possibly more on the fashion and gossip pages, than on the national and editorial ones – is NOT a positive sign for the women’s political movement… unless there are some other pretty blonde billionairesses with a yen for public office massing somewhere out there) no other female was seriously considered for a leadership role either here or south of the border.
So when in today’s paper, story after story just seemed to leap out at me screaming (in a high pitched girly whine no doubt) the ongoing inequities, I just felt this rant building inside.
Item: ‘Sex abuse allegations spur probe by RCMP’. Seems a chummy little group of polygamists in the charmingly named Bountiful British Columbia who go by the name of the Fundamentalist Church of Jesus Christ of Latter Day Saints, have since the 1940’s (with the ongoing knowledge of police and government) been forcing teenage girls within the creepy sect to marry much older and much married men (who must take three or more wives and have as many children as possible in order to enter heaven - no word on what it takes or even whether women can get there) within their community. B.C’s education ministry has been paying nonstop about $500,000 a year to Bountiful schools, despite charges that the schools teach both racism and white supremacy. The RCMP were involved in an investigation that urged charges be brought, but the province looked the other way. Scratch the surface and we’re not just talking about multiple marriages – we’re taking about sexual abuse, exploitation and betrayal on a colossal scale – and this is going on not in some banana republic or sultan’s tent, or even God forbid, in Utah, but right here in beautiful Bountiful British Columbia. Canada. The province should be ashamed of itself, and can only hope that once the cult has been charged and the allegations are proven in court, all they’ll have to do is provide homes and counseling and psychiatric help to women and girls abused since birth, by birth, and not have to pay out millions upon millions of dollars to people who were allowed to be so abused for so long with the full knowledge – and it must be assumed, consent – of those whose job it was to protect them. Ask yourself: would such a situation be allowed to continue if men and boys were being so cruelly subjugated by women? (You can ask after you pull yourself off the floor where you no doubt fell, unbalanced by paroxysms of hysterical laughter imagining that such a situation could ever occur. Just take a deep breath, count to ten, and try not to break down again.)
Item: ‘Rape: A deadly weapon of war’. Well no kidding. And it seems the weapon of choice not just in Eastern Europe, or the Middle East, but right here in the west, where somewhere in the 9/11 Commission Report is not doubt some small and smudgy paragraphs detailing the abuses of prisoners by American soldiers. Though it’s probably best not to dwell.
This article however, deals with the international tribunal of the Hague declaring sexual assault a war crime. (Finally, she said, with absolutely no irony at all.) In Africa specifically, the new problem associated with it is the possible extra charge of murder, as the victims are often raped by abusers knowingly afflicted with AIDS. But to be honest, this almost seems the least of it, as besides the darkest shame attached to being raped in that part of the world (still grappling with the notion of victim as victim, as compared to victim as filthy dirty pig who brought it on herself) witnesses report the not uncommon sight of pregnant women raped, then killed as their bellies are sliced open and their children murdered. The endless litany of kidnappings, gang rapings and worse. “…girls as young as 8 years old were kept. Five to six men would rape us in rounds, one after the other, for hours during those six days, every night.” Disgusting, evil and wicked as all war is, remember, these are civilians, and the most vulnerable civilians of all. Oh, and PS, in virtually every circumstance, not a single attacker has been charged or arrested. I’m not for a moment suggesting that innocent men have not been captured, kidnapped, tortured and killed everywhere from the Sudan to the Sahara in the name of unholy war, just that it’s more often the ones burdened down with children and infants and the food and water they have to carry, and even the clothes they are forced by their societies to wear (so as not to tempt helpless men) who are the ones most victimized by the difficulty in simply running away.
I could go on. (And on and on.) I could rant on once again about the average woman still stuck (depending on region) to somewhere between 69 and 75 cents to a man’s dollar. I could, really, I could. I’d want to rail against the notion that because there are a few women in high profile positions (the ultimate tokenism, but you go girl… at least you’ve got a hope) the problem of the glass ceiling and equality in the workplace is long gone. Situation resolved. Problem solved. (You have to wonder how long Margaret Thatcher and Indira Gandhi are going to be able to remain part of any argument on how fair and open are the minds of voters, how the obstacles to power and equality have been removed. As the decades with few other examples roll by, I mean.)
Believe me: I do know I’m writing all this sitting as I am in the middle of middle class luxury in Canada, having the had the sense to be born white (not to mention middle class) and Canadian in order to achieve it, and remembering with a certain searing amount of shame how contemptuous I once was of women who complained about their poor lot in life. I mean there I was, 23, cute, coming from a rich family (who could and would have bailed me out of anything approaching the slightest discomfort for me) working four hours a day as a disc jockey, working in a time when cute young girls were the flavour of the minute, making more money than I was worth, and being taken out to dinner paid for by cute boys and wondering why the whiners didn’t just get off their asses and do the same as I was doing. I’m mortified just writing it down.
And even now I’m doing just fine – better than fine by virtually anybody’s standards – but I’ve seen a little more. Read a little more. Heard a little more. And the thing that’s hardest to hear, and sometimes hardest to counter simply because of my own great good fortune, is how equality – at least in North America - has been achieved.
And then there’s this item: ‘Bureaucrat seeks pension re-dress’. The story of the guy who’s got his panties in a bunch over some perceived inequality over his ability to retire at the same age as women once were able… all that has been equalized now (though women are still struggling with how to halt a career to bear children, then get back in and have any hopes of building up anything like a raise or a pension or anything that will help them care for and educate those children down the line, never mind organize their old age) but he’s as mad as a wet hen, wearing a skirt (re-dress – get it?!) to work to protest how unfair his life is and how marvelous it would be if he were a woman.
Actually, I support his desire to achieve equality in compensation; I just think that attacking women to achieve that goal is pretty cheap. I should know – I’ve done it.
The Mess in the U.S. (say it like: ‘The Killer in Manila’) just gets murkier as the 9/11 Commission Report is released. Long it is, and detailed it may be, but placing responsibility it certainly is not, as the official line muddies the waters by criticizing both Clinton and Bush administrations.
I can just hear the Sunday spin now (though I can’t see who’s wielding the stick with which the press will be encouraged to roll through the hoop): Bush has made America safer from terrorism because though mistakes were made, they were made by the previous administration; we will be asked to imagine how much WORSE things would have been had W not been there to clean up after the evil, wicked, stupid, lazy, unpatriotic, venal (and so on) Democrats who were. Mark my words, Clinton will be making an appearance at the upcoming Democratic National Convention, but not in person; rather as the potentially fatal distraction the Kerry/Edwards ticket cannot afford. Like most political contretemps, for the incumbent the goal is not losing – winning can wait for Election Day.
But as sour as my puss is at the gathering southern storm, I’m just as distressed as what’s going on up here; and what’s going on up here has been going on for centuries, as it has everywhere else. It’s just that I had higher hopes for here – higher hopes that women might be able to make those few extra strides in government – that the Prime Minister (or PM PM as wags would have him) would have made good on his promise to draw more women into the centre of the political universe.
But no. Though he has appointed some good and true gals to cabinet (yay Carolyn Bennett! My personal MP and role model) those numbers are far outweighed by other Prime Ministerial priorities that focused far more on geographical balance than on achieving representation for a group that can somehow manage to be described as both 52% of the voting population and at the same time as a minority. That’s some trick. But that’s women – versatile don’t you know.
But why the surprise oh fellow bonnet wearers? With the exception of Belinda Stronach (and please don’t make me describe how a pretty blonde billionairess with absolutely zero political experience parachuting into first a leadership and then a national election, garnering much media attention – though possibly more on the fashion and gossip pages, than on the national and editorial ones – is NOT a positive sign for the women’s political movement… unless there are some other pretty blonde billionairesses with a yen for public office massing somewhere out there) no other female was seriously considered for a leadership role either here or south of the border.
So when in today’s paper, story after story just seemed to leap out at me screaming (in a high pitched girly whine no doubt) the ongoing inequities, I just felt this rant building inside.
Item: ‘Sex abuse allegations spur probe by RCMP’. Seems a chummy little group of polygamists in the charmingly named Bountiful British Columbia who go by the name of the Fundamentalist Church of Jesus Christ of Latter Day Saints, have since the 1940’s (with the ongoing knowledge of police and government) been forcing teenage girls within the creepy sect to marry much older and much married men (who must take three or more wives and have as many children as possible in order to enter heaven - no word on what it takes or even whether women can get there) within their community. B.C’s education ministry has been paying nonstop about $500,000 a year to Bountiful schools, despite charges that the schools teach both racism and white supremacy. The RCMP were involved in an investigation that urged charges be brought, but the province looked the other way. Scratch the surface and we’re not just talking about multiple marriages – we’re taking about sexual abuse, exploitation and betrayal on a colossal scale – and this is going on not in some banana republic or sultan’s tent, or even God forbid, in Utah, but right here in beautiful Bountiful British Columbia. Canada. The province should be ashamed of itself, and can only hope that once the cult has been charged and the allegations are proven in court, all they’ll have to do is provide homes and counseling and psychiatric help to women and girls abused since birth, by birth, and not have to pay out millions upon millions of dollars to people who were allowed to be so abused for so long with the full knowledge – and it must be assumed, consent – of those whose job it was to protect them. Ask yourself: would such a situation be allowed to continue if men and boys were being so cruelly subjugated by women? (You can ask after you pull yourself off the floor where you no doubt fell, unbalanced by paroxysms of hysterical laughter imagining that such a situation could ever occur. Just take a deep breath, count to ten, and try not to break down again.)
Item: ‘Rape: A deadly weapon of war’. Well no kidding. And it seems the weapon of choice not just in Eastern Europe, or the Middle East, but right here in the west, where somewhere in the 9/11 Commission Report is not doubt some small and smudgy paragraphs detailing the abuses of prisoners by American soldiers. Though it’s probably best not to dwell.
This article however, deals with the international tribunal of the Hague declaring sexual assault a war crime. (Finally, she said, with absolutely no irony at all.) In Africa specifically, the new problem associated with it is the possible extra charge of murder, as the victims are often raped by abusers knowingly afflicted with AIDS. But to be honest, this almost seems the least of it, as besides the darkest shame attached to being raped in that part of the world (still grappling with the notion of victim as victim, as compared to victim as filthy dirty pig who brought it on herself) witnesses report the not uncommon sight of pregnant women raped, then killed as their bellies are sliced open and their children murdered. The endless litany of kidnappings, gang rapings and worse. “…girls as young as 8 years old were kept. Five to six men would rape us in rounds, one after the other, for hours during those six days, every night.” Disgusting, evil and wicked as all war is, remember, these are civilians, and the most vulnerable civilians of all. Oh, and PS, in virtually every circumstance, not a single attacker has been charged or arrested. I’m not for a moment suggesting that innocent men have not been captured, kidnapped, tortured and killed everywhere from the Sudan to the Sahara in the name of unholy war, just that it’s more often the ones burdened down with children and infants and the food and water they have to carry, and even the clothes they are forced by their societies to wear (so as not to tempt helpless men) who are the ones most victimized by the difficulty in simply running away.
I could go on. (And on and on.) I could rant on once again about the average woman still stuck (depending on region) to somewhere between 69 and 75 cents to a man’s dollar. I could, really, I could. I’d want to rail against the notion that because there are a few women in high profile positions (the ultimate tokenism, but you go girl… at least you’ve got a hope) the problem of the glass ceiling and equality in the workplace is long gone. Situation resolved. Problem solved. (You have to wonder how long Margaret Thatcher and Indira Gandhi are going to be able to remain part of any argument on how fair and open are the minds of voters, how the obstacles to power and equality have been removed. As the decades with few other examples roll by, I mean.)
Believe me: I do know I’m writing all this sitting as I am in the middle of middle class luxury in Canada, having the had the sense to be born white (not to mention middle class) and Canadian in order to achieve it, and remembering with a certain searing amount of shame how contemptuous I once was of women who complained about their poor lot in life. I mean there I was, 23, cute, coming from a rich family (who could and would have bailed me out of anything approaching the slightest discomfort for me) working four hours a day as a disc jockey, working in a time when cute young girls were the flavour of the minute, making more money than I was worth, and being taken out to dinner paid for by cute boys and wondering why the whiners didn’t just get off their asses and do the same as I was doing. I’m mortified just writing it down.
And even now I’m doing just fine – better than fine by virtually anybody’s standards – but I’ve seen a little more. Read a little more. Heard a little more. And the thing that’s hardest to hear, and sometimes hardest to counter simply because of my own great good fortune, is how equality – at least in North America - has been achieved.
And then there’s this item: ‘Bureaucrat seeks pension re-dress’. The story of the guy who’s got his panties in a bunch over some perceived inequality over his ability to retire at the same age as women once were able… all that has been equalized now (though women are still struggling with how to halt a career to bear children, then get back in and have any hopes of building up anything like a raise or a pension or anything that will help them care for and educate those children down the line, never mind organize their old age) but he’s as mad as a wet hen, wearing a skirt (re-dress – get it?!) to work to protest how unfair his life is and how marvelous it would be if he were a woman.
Actually, I support his desire to achieve equality in compensation; I just think that attacking women to achieve that goal is pretty cheap. I should know – I’ve done it.
Thursday, July 22, 2004
Hard to discard
Remember the scene in When Harry Met Sally when Harry and Sally bumped into Harry’s ex around the Karaoke machine while shopping at The Sharper Image?
Sally: I don’t know, I’ve never seen her before.
Harry: Trust me, she looked weird. Her legs looked heavy. Really, she must be retaining water.
Sally: Harry…
Harry: Believe me. The woman saved everything.
I get it.
I can’t throw things away either.
I mean, of course I can throw away garbage and recycling stuff and everything, and if I should ever come into possession of vials of either commemorative water collected from Princess Diana’s fountain in London (put up for sale on ebay) or even Christina Aguilera’s dirty bath water (ditto ebay) I feel fairly certain I could part with them.
I wouldn’t keep a petrified penis even if it did come from Rasputin, or Napoleon or John Dillinger… though there are those who would – and did. And do. Eww...
But a nice clean piece of cardboard? That’s a little harder.
Faithful readers may recall me describing how the seeds for the end of a committed relationship were once bitterly sown during an argument about a piece of cardboard (a nice clean piece of cardboard!) which I wanted to keep for some deeply important eventual use, and the b.f. shortsightedly wanted to consign to the recycling bin. There was more of course, but I think that at that moment each of us sized up the other in some profound kind of way that forever precluded, well, ‘forever’.
Cardboard? Present and accounted for. Boyfriend? Not so much. (Possibly time to consign ‘not so much’ to the linguistic recycling bin, but until the freshness totally fades, I’m keeping it.)
But it’s weird – I know it; so I’m always comforted when I discover I’m not alone in my strange little pack-ratty behaviour.
Did you hear about the little old man who got lost on holiday in Germany because he was using a 90 year old guidebook for reference? True story.
The 79 year old American tourist had kept the book – purchased by his father back in the day – practicing the German phrases and imagining all the lovely attractions he’d see when he finally visited ‘Beautiful Bayreuth’. Sadly, all he got was lost. The locals were disappointed for him – though pleased they’d manage to rescue him from the isolated cart track he’d gotten himself lost and his car stuck in for two whole days - but said they hoped he’d still enjoy a tour round their altered town. It may have changed completely since 1914 (a coupla wars and all don’t you know) but in their opinion it was still very nice.
I’d laugh, but I currently have in my possession a couple of ancient Fodor’s and two Frommer’s (‘Ireland on $25’ a Day and ‘The 1985 Guide to London’) as well as the 1972 edition of the British Automobile Association map and guidebook, all of which I’m loathe to throw out. Though I know London has changed a little (!) in the past 20 to 30 years, I figure SOME of it must still be accurate… perhaps I could save a few bucks and just pencil in the changes myself. As for ‘Ireland on $25 a Day’, I have to admit that ship may have sailed.
I am my father’s daughter.
The man who would not throw out a box of crackers if even one stale Wheat Thin remained. When he died I found half a bag of Oreos and a packet of Cream Crackers moldering away with best before dates stamped well over a year before his death.
The man who saved the little twist ties he didn’t use that were included in the package of GLAD garbage bags. Terrified he might one day be caught short, he had a drawer in the kitchen full to bursting with little green wire twists; what he didn’t have were the garbage bags we needed to throw them away.
The man who wouldn’t use his turn signal. “There are only so many clicks,” he’d say. “There are a finite number - you can't argue with that. The problem is we don't know what that number is, so I'm not taking any chances.” It turned out he was right: I couldn’t argue with him. He was adamant - and his turns remained clickless until he stopped turning altogether.
(No word on whether he’s spinning in his grave at the thought of me mentioning all this now; not that it was a secret, as at least half a dozen bent fenders bore mute, though crumpled testimony.)
But let me repeat what I’ve written before: I am not some nut living in a home stacked to the ceiling with ancient newspapers, dodging down the narrow corridors created by my collection of creepy detritus – old headless babydolls and empty tin cans and broken three-legged chairs piled cheek by jowl next to boxes filled with mismatched shoes, yellowing love letters and rusting cookie cutters.
But when I find myself identifying with an ancient befuddled European tourist without the sense God gave a goose, it gives me pause.
It’s one thing to collect cardboard – but to bounce a boyfriend over it smacks of values gone astray and priorities misplaced.
But like any habit – it’s really hard to discard.
Sally: I don’t know, I’ve never seen her before.
Harry: Trust me, she looked weird. Her legs looked heavy. Really, she must be retaining water.
Sally: Harry…
Harry: Believe me. The woman saved everything.
I get it.
I can’t throw things away either.
I mean, of course I can throw away garbage and recycling stuff and everything, and if I should ever come into possession of vials of either commemorative water collected from Princess Diana’s fountain in London (put up for sale on ebay) or even Christina Aguilera’s dirty bath water (ditto ebay) I feel fairly certain I could part with them.
I wouldn’t keep a petrified penis even if it did come from Rasputin, or Napoleon or John Dillinger… though there are those who would – and did. And do. Eww...
But a nice clean piece of cardboard? That’s a little harder.
Faithful readers may recall me describing how the seeds for the end of a committed relationship were once bitterly sown during an argument about a piece of cardboard (a nice clean piece of cardboard!) which I wanted to keep for some deeply important eventual use, and the b.f. shortsightedly wanted to consign to the recycling bin. There was more of course, but I think that at that moment each of us sized up the other in some profound kind of way that forever precluded, well, ‘forever’.
Cardboard? Present and accounted for. Boyfriend? Not so much. (Possibly time to consign ‘not so much’ to the linguistic recycling bin, but until the freshness totally fades, I’m keeping it.)
But it’s weird – I know it; so I’m always comforted when I discover I’m not alone in my strange little pack-ratty behaviour.
Did you hear about the little old man who got lost on holiday in Germany because he was using a 90 year old guidebook for reference? True story.
The 79 year old American tourist had kept the book – purchased by his father back in the day – practicing the German phrases and imagining all the lovely attractions he’d see when he finally visited ‘Beautiful Bayreuth’. Sadly, all he got was lost. The locals were disappointed for him – though pleased they’d manage to rescue him from the isolated cart track he’d gotten himself lost and his car stuck in for two whole days - but said they hoped he’d still enjoy a tour round their altered town. It may have changed completely since 1914 (a coupla wars and all don’t you know) but in their opinion it was still very nice.
I’d laugh, but I currently have in my possession a couple of ancient Fodor’s and two Frommer’s (‘Ireland on $25’ a Day and ‘The 1985 Guide to London’) as well as the 1972 edition of the British Automobile Association map and guidebook, all of which I’m loathe to throw out. Though I know London has changed a little (!) in the past 20 to 30 years, I figure SOME of it must still be accurate… perhaps I could save a few bucks and just pencil in the changes myself. As for ‘Ireland on $25 a Day’, I have to admit that ship may have sailed.
I am my father’s daughter.
The man who would not throw out a box of crackers if even one stale Wheat Thin remained. When he died I found half a bag of Oreos and a packet of Cream Crackers moldering away with best before dates stamped well over a year before his death.
The man who saved the little twist ties he didn’t use that were included in the package of GLAD garbage bags. Terrified he might one day be caught short, he had a drawer in the kitchen full to bursting with little green wire twists; what he didn’t have were the garbage bags we needed to throw them away.
The man who wouldn’t use his turn signal. “There are only so many clicks,” he’d say. “There are a finite number - you can't argue with that. The problem is we don't know what that number is, so I'm not taking any chances.” It turned out he was right: I couldn’t argue with him. He was adamant - and his turns remained clickless until he stopped turning altogether.
(No word on whether he’s spinning in his grave at the thought of me mentioning all this now; not that it was a secret, as at least half a dozen bent fenders bore mute, though crumpled testimony.)
But let me repeat what I’ve written before: I am not some nut living in a home stacked to the ceiling with ancient newspapers, dodging down the narrow corridors created by my collection of creepy detritus – old headless babydolls and empty tin cans and broken three-legged chairs piled cheek by jowl next to boxes filled with mismatched shoes, yellowing love letters and rusting cookie cutters.
But when I find myself identifying with an ancient befuddled European tourist without the sense God gave a goose, it gives me pause.
It’s one thing to collect cardboard – but to bounce a boyfriend over it smacks of values gone astray and priorities misplaced.
But like any habit – it’s really hard to discard.
Saturday, July 17, 2004
This Board was never meant for one so sensitive as me
So there I was, reclining naked on the chaise, fanning myself with my bra and trying to shove the dog off the end in such a way that she’d think she thought of it herself. I’m nice that way. You?
Yeah, it’s all about being gracious in this crazy old world – thinking of others, considering their feelings and needs and innermost desires, and not simply blundering heavy-footed and arm-swingingly careless through the paper-thin crystal and porcelain landscape that is the fragile real-life reality of so many of us.
Sensitive? Like an exposed nerve I am.
I’m a flesh covered Geiger counter… a human earthquake early warning system… a sensory-rich zone of a woman, calibrated to the nth degree to pick up the most microscopic of emotional feedback.
So what, you must be asking yourselves, am I doing on the board of directors of my stupid condominium corporation? Good question. Huge mistake is all I can come up with.
I wrote some months back about the political minefield that is the condo corp. How running for the board of directors was as much an exercise in self-flagellation as it was in futility – as going up against the ancient monolith of self-perpetuating condo-governing arbiters was virtually guaranteed to fail.
Surprise, surprise. In a series of coincidental circumstances, the four toppermost Directors fell from grace and Board like an animated (just) Mount Rushmore doing a stoney face-plant. President and chief operating asshole? Gone. Exiting with a flounce and a harrumph that could be heard from the basement laundry room to the rooftop antenna, he made the classic sixth grade mistake of thinking they’d all beg him to come back and never question his garage floor-washing schedule again.
Whoops.
Vice President and all-round bitch from H E double-hockey sticks? Like the ventilation system she systematically refused to consider for inclusion on the capital expenditures wish list, to the tree replacement program she mercilessly excised from every call for ‘Other Business’ during board meetings, she’s disappeared.
The Secretary and head of the former Landscape Committee? Quit. The near-invisible yes-man who made the lives of no-persons such H E double-you-know-what for so many years? Now completely invisible.
Hip hip hoo-not-so-fast…
In the void that followed the unprecedented leave-taking, I and a couple of other saps stepped selflessly up and agreed each to a three year term of directorship, committing ourselves to the endless monthly board meetings, thankless committee groups and deer-caught-in-an-elevator confrontations with residents who want immediate answers to such brain-teasers as the exact date and time of the next window washing (don’t ask me – not my committee) why doesn’t the elevator go all the way to the basement (dunno – see above) and chummy gossipers who want to know the REAL reason the President left so abruptly (murder I suspect) and so on.
Now, three board meetings in, member of the NEW Landscaping Committee, Secretary in charge of newsletters (I was considering both a sports and an entertainment column) I want nothing more than to quit, to run away, to disavow, disabuse and basically disco dance my way out of this nightmare.
In the last six weeks I’ve received a nasty letter, a vicious phone call and have been cut dead on three separate occasions in three separate locations. My taste in flowers, colour and tree pruning not just disagreed with, but despised. Eyebrow raising, eyeball rolling, lip-lifting sneers – I’ve seen them all. My motives are routinely questioned, my character and honesty routinely trashed and in the past few weeks, I’ve noticed some people if not actually ignoring the dog, certainly holding back from the gushing infatuation that is her due.
How much more is a sensitive flower like myself supposed to take? How is the human Geiger counter supposed to withstand this earth shaking less-than-universal approval? I take the stairs now to avoid confrontation with the meanies who replaced the people I thought of as my neighbours as recently as June. I don’t answer the phone unless I recognize the number on the call-display and I drive the dog to a park several blocks and a world away from those who suspect my every vote is a ploy to steal their parking spot, their bike rack or the fake plastic ornamental lobby trees they love so much.
(Actually, the ornamental trees are in a certain amount of danger.)
Well, sensitive is as sensitive does, as a paraphrased Forrest Gump might have said (if I had written the script and received the wages and royalties amounting to millions of dollars and could move out of here without a 'by your leave', or even have to pack the furniture or bubble wrap the crockery myself – I’d have that much money) so I'd like to take back everything critical I ever said about the last board. I retroactively forgive them all the underhanded, dishonest, self-aggrandizing and self-serving stuff I might have accused them of… if only they’ll take my apology along with their discarded board memberships.
Come back you bastards – all is forgiven!
Yeah, it’s all about being gracious in this crazy old world – thinking of others, considering their feelings and needs and innermost desires, and not simply blundering heavy-footed and arm-swingingly careless through the paper-thin crystal and porcelain landscape that is the fragile real-life reality of so many of us.
Sensitive? Like an exposed nerve I am.
I’m a flesh covered Geiger counter… a human earthquake early warning system… a sensory-rich zone of a woman, calibrated to the nth degree to pick up the most microscopic of emotional feedback.
So what, you must be asking yourselves, am I doing on the board of directors of my stupid condominium corporation? Good question. Huge mistake is all I can come up with.
I wrote some months back about the political minefield that is the condo corp. How running for the board of directors was as much an exercise in self-flagellation as it was in futility – as going up against the ancient monolith of self-perpetuating condo-governing arbiters was virtually guaranteed to fail.
Surprise, surprise. In a series of coincidental circumstances, the four toppermost Directors fell from grace and Board like an animated (just) Mount Rushmore doing a stoney face-plant. President and chief operating asshole? Gone. Exiting with a flounce and a harrumph that could be heard from the basement laundry room to the rooftop antenna, he made the classic sixth grade mistake of thinking they’d all beg him to come back and never question his garage floor-washing schedule again.
Whoops.
Vice President and all-round bitch from H E double-hockey sticks? Like the ventilation system she systematically refused to consider for inclusion on the capital expenditures wish list, to the tree replacement program she mercilessly excised from every call for ‘Other Business’ during board meetings, she’s disappeared.
The Secretary and head of the former Landscape Committee? Quit. The near-invisible yes-man who made the lives of no-persons such H E double-you-know-what for so many years? Now completely invisible.
Hip hip hoo-not-so-fast…
In the void that followed the unprecedented leave-taking, I and a couple of other saps stepped selflessly up and agreed each to a three year term of directorship, committing ourselves to the endless monthly board meetings, thankless committee groups and deer-caught-in-an-elevator confrontations with residents who want immediate answers to such brain-teasers as the exact date and time of the next window washing (don’t ask me – not my committee) why doesn’t the elevator go all the way to the basement (dunno – see above) and chummy gossipers who want to know the REAL reason the President left so abruptly (murder I suspect) and so on.
Now, three board meetings in, member of the NEW Landscaping Committee, Secretary in charge of newsletters (I was considering both a sports and an entertainment column) I want nothing more than to quit, to run away, to disavow, disabuse and basically disco dance my way out of this nightmare.
In the last six weeks I’ve received a nasty letter, a vicious phone call and have been cut dead on three separate occasions in three separate locations. My taste in flowers, colour and tree pruning not just disagreed with, but despised. Eyebrow raising, eyeball rolling, lip-lifting sneers – I’ve seen them all. My motives are routinely questioned, my character and honesty routinely trashed and in the past few weeks, I’ve noticed some people if not actually ignoring the dog, certainly holding back from the gushing infatuation that is her due.
How much more is a sensitive flower like myself supposed to take? How is the human Geiger counter supposed to withstand this earth shaking less-than-universal approval? I take the stairs now to avoid confrontation with the meanies who replaced the people I thought of as my neighbours as recently as June. I don’t answer the phone unless I recognize the number on the call-display and I drive the dog to a park several blocks and a world away from those who suspect my every vote is a ploy to steal their parking spot, their bike rack or the fake plastic ornamental lobby trees they love so much.
(Actually, the ornamental trees are in a certain amount of danger.)
Well, sensitive is as sensitive does, as a paraphrased Forrest Gump might have said (if I had written the script and received the wages and royalties amounting to millions of dollars and could move out of here without a 'by your leave', or even have to pack the furniture or bubble wrap the crockery myself – I’d have that much money) so I'd like to take back everything critical I ever said about the last board. I retroactively forgive them all the underhanded, dishonest, self-aggrandizing and self-serving stuff I might have accused them of… if only they’ll take my apology along with their discarded board memberships.
Come back you bastards – all is forgiven!
Sunday, July 11, 2004
Still crazy after all these years?
What is it called? The name for the practice of doing the same thing over and over and expecting different results? I’m not sure if it’s a psychological term, or sociological term or a made up syndrome type thing… my mind’s a blank. Let’s just call it nuts.
I’m the habitiest creature of habit whoever developed a routine and stuck to it.
I find enormous pleasure in repeating a well-ingrained series of rituals; it’s calming, comfortable, delightfully, deliciously, decidedly predictable. (I even have a particular contentment sigh that’s as much a part of my rituals as the lip-smacking ‘Ahhh!’ after the first swig of coke (diet) on a sweltering hot summer afternoon.)
For example, I begin each day – barring early morning auditions, unexpected long distance calls, or early morning flights - in exactly the same way. Upon awakening, I immediately slip out of bed and make a beeline to pat the dog (lying in state on the nearby chaise) on the way to the kitchen where I heat the water for the coffee. As the water boils merrily away, I prepare the coffee and destination cup, then whilst it steeps I toddle down to the front door, (looking through the peephole so’s not to shock the neighbours with my typical wanton dishabille) and should the coast be clear, I whip open the door and whisk the paper through the narrow aperture, as quick and precise as a trapdoor spider snagging a fly.
Paper in hand, I separate the advertising flyers and sports section, installing them neatly in the recycling bag, then flow back up the front hall, detouring briefly into my room to drop the paper on my bed, fluff and arrange the pillows in precisely the right way for maximum paper-reading and coffee-sipping pleasure, then turn on the computer, before gliding purposefully toward the kitchen, where if my timing is right (it is) the coffee will be ready to be poured into my lucky cup (the best days start with my lucky cup – that’s why it’s lucky) and my return to bedroom, computer and paper complete with piping hot coffee will have been completed in just over 2 minutes - rarely more than 3.
I could go on (trust me) but perhaps you get the picture; I like what I like. If anything interferes with the routine – even things I enjoy, like friends staying for a visit, a call from someone dear, preparations for an audition I feel certain of nailing – I’m uncomfortable… discombobulated… disconcerted, and not entirely happy.
I remember feeling distinctly out of sorts the morning I woke to fly to Barbados for a much anticipated holiday: the dog wasn’t there – she’d been taken to a kennel the day before – I showered before making the coffee, didn’t have time to read the paper and didn’t turn on my computer for fear of forgetting to turn it off. It took me a few hours to shake off the feelings of dislocation and I wasn’t completely comfortable again until I returned home 10 days later. That’s when I started to question my love for habit and ritual – considering 10 days in tropical heaven an annoying break from routine.
So it doesn’t surprise me in the least to see symptoms of my slightly neurotic need for sameness played out time and again in the bigger picture – in that arena that worships form over substance like a savage worships an idol – politics.
Take the most recent Canadian election (please). In a move that stunned the pundits, the loathed and despised Liberals pulled a qualified victory out of a predicted near certain defeat, from the snarling and accusatory Conservatives who had done everything bar measure the PMO for new drapes in their smug conviction of a win. I, of course, voted Liberal. (Truthfully, I had many other reasons besides the comfort of familiarity, but I’m still deeply grateful that it wasn’t curtains for the Grits.)
But in watching the political machinations as Americans contemplate the upcoming Presidential election, I find myself ready to abandon same old-same old, now-now-now! But watching and reading reports of reaction to findings of lie after lie, mistake after mistake and death after death in relation to the war in Iraq, I’m beginning to suspect that the citizens south of the 49th are a little closer to insane than in sync.
How else to explain that there haven’t been more demonstrations, a bigger change in the polls, or even the wholesale dragging of Bush, Cheney, Rumsfelt et al, out of the White House and through the streets of Washington like Aristos during the French Revolution? I’m not saying public decapitation, or heads mounted on poles lined up along the bridge over the Potomac, but a little righteous anger folks! A little less Fourth of Julying and a little more May Firsting!
Somehow, some way – and it’s a trick I’d like to learn – W has taken the damning results of the 9/11 commission, the recent reports of CIA misinformation on WMD, and the American atrocities committed in both Abu Grhaib and Guantanomo, (not to mention the box office success of Michael Moore’s scathing documentary ‘Fahrenheit 9/11’) and rolled it all into a ball called ‘might have been a boo boo, but the world is safer from terrorism’ and pitched it back at Americans who seem to be pondering whether what was first considered a home run is merely a first or second base hit, and completely missing the fact that it’s the foulest foul ball the baseball-loving Bush ever lobbed.
(Texas Democrat Jim Hightower on W: "George Bush was born on third base and thought he hit a triple".)
There is a real possibility that Bush could win a second term. Looking over the most recent polls (all conducted in the first week of July) released by Newsweek, Time, Zogby, AP/IPSOS and NBC, the President maintains a higher rating on average for ‘Job Well Done’ (average 48%) than ‘Fair to Poor’ (average 47.8%). You’ve got to wonder, what does this guy, this administration have to do to piss off Americans? To make them question doing the same thing over and over? To make them vote the Democratic ticket?
I am pledging as of now to change my routine. Kick over the traces of repetitive behaviour… open my mind to the possibilities of change. I’ll begin by picking up the paper before getting the coffee; maybe not turning on the computer until I’ve eaten breakfast. I draw the line at kicking the dog instead of patting her, but besides that, it’s no holds barred – I’ll pull the curtains off the window and install Venetian blinds… whatever it takes. I won’t vote Conservative, but I am considering the NDP.
You don’t have to be Einstein to know that doing something over and over and expecting different results is actually (I just this minute remembered) the definition of insanity.
I’m the habitiest creature of habit whoever developed a routine and stuck to it.
I find enormous pleasure in repeating a well-ingrained series of rituals; it’s calming, comfortable, delightfully, deliciously, decidedly predictable. (I even have a particular contentment sigh that’s as much a part of my rituals as the lip-smacking ‘Ahhh!’ after the first swig of coke (diet) on a sweltering hot summer afternoon.)
For example, I begin each day – barring early morning auditions, unexpected long distance calls, or early morning flights - in exactly the same way. Upon awakening, I immediately slip out of bed and make a beeline to pat the dog (lying in state on the nearby chaise) on the way to the kitchen where I heat the water for the coffee. As the water boils merrily away, I prepare the coffee and destination cup, then whilst it steeps I toddle down to the front door, (looking through the peephole so’s not to shock the neighbours with my typical wanton dishabille) and should the coast be clear, I whip open the door and whisk the paper through the narrow aperture, as quick and precise as a trapdoor spider snagging a fly.
Paper in hand, I separate the advertising flyers and sports section, installing them neatly in the recycling bag, then flow back up the front hall, detouring briefly into my room to drop the paper on my bed, fluff and arrange the pillows in precisely the right way for maximum paper-reading and coffee-sipping pleasure, then turn on the computer, before gliding purposefully toward the kitchen, where if my timing is right (it is) the coffee will be ready to be poured into my lucky cup (the best days start with my lucky cup – that’s why it’s lucky) and my return to bedroom, computer and paper complete with piping hot coffee will have been completed in just over 2 minutes - rarely more than 3.
I could go on (trust me) but perhaps you get the picture; I like what I like. If anything interferes with the routine – even things I enjoy, like friends staying for a visit, a call from someone dear, preparations for an audition I feel certain of nailing – I’m uncomfortable… discombobulated… disconcerted, and not entirely happy.
I remember feeling distinctly out of sorts the morning I woke to fly to Barbados for a much anticipated holiday: the dog wasn’t there – she’d been taken to a kennel the day before – I showered before making the coffee, didn’t have time to read the paper and didn’t turn on my computer for fear of forgetting to turn it off. It took me a few hours to shake off the feelings of dislocation and I wasn’t completely comfortable again until I returned home 10 days later. That’s when I started to question my love for habit and ritual – considering 10 days in tropical heaven an annoying break from routine.
So it doesn’t surprise me in the least to see symptoms of my slightly neurotic need for sameness played out time and again in the bigger picture – in that arena that worships form over substance like a savage worships an idol – politics.
Take the most recent Canadian election (please). In a move that stunned the pundits, the loathed and despised Liberals pulled a qualified victory out of a predicted near certain defeat, from the snarling and accusatory Conservatives who had done everything bar measure the PMO for new drapes in their smug conviction of a win. I, of course, voted Liberal. (Truthfully, I had many other reasons besides the comfort of familiarity, but I’m still deeply grateful that it wasn’t curtains for the Grits.)
But in watching the political machinations as Americans contemplate the upcoming Presidential election, I find myself ready to abandon same old-same old, now-now-now! But watching and reading reports of reaction to findings of lie after lie, mistake after mistake and death after death in relation to the war in Iraq, I’m beginning to suspect that the citizens south of the 49th are a little closer to insane than in sync.
How else to explain that there haven’t been more demonstrations, a bigger change in the polls, or even the wholesale dragging of Bush, Cheney, Rumsfelt et al, out of the White House and through the streets of Washington like Aristos during the French Revolution? I’m not saying public decapitation, or heads mounted on poles lined up along the bridge over the Potomac, but a little righteous anger folks! A little less Fourth of Julying and a little more May Firsting!
Somehow, some way – and it’s a trick I’d like to learn – W has taken the damning results of the 9/11 commission, the recent reports of CIA misinformation on WMD, and the American atrocities committed in both Abu Grhaib and Guantanomo, (not to mention the box office success of Michael Moore’s scathing documentary ‘Fahrenheit 9/11’) and rolled it all into a ball called ‘might have been a boo boo, but the world is safer from terrorism’ and pitched it back at Americans who seem to be pondering whether what was first considered a home run is merely a first or second base hit, and completely missing the fact that it’s the foulest foul ball the baseball-loving Bush ever lobbed.
(Texas Democrat Jim Hightower on W: "George Bush was born on third base and thought he hit a triple".)
There is a real possibility that Bush could win a second term. Looking over the most recent polls (all conducted in the first week of July) released by Newsweek, Time, Zogby, AP/IPSOS and NBC, the President maintains a higher rating on average for ‘Job Well Done’ (average 48%) than ‘Fair to Poor’ (average 47.8%). You’ve got to wonder, what does this guy, this administration have to do to piss off Americans? To make them question doing the same thing over and over? To make them vote the Democratic ticket?
I am pledging as of now to change my routine. Kick over the traces of repetitive behaviour… open my mind to the possibilities of change. I’ll begin by picking up the paper before getting the coffee; maybe not turning on the computer until I’ve eaten breakfast. I draw the line at kicking the dog instead of patting her, but besides that, it’s no holds barred – I’ll pull the curtains off the window and install Venetian blinds… whatever it takes. I won’t vote Conservative, but I am considering the NDP.
You don’t have to be Einstein to know that doing something over and over and expecting different results is actually (I just this minute remembered) the definition of insanity.
Tuesday, July 06, 2004
Don't fight fat - argue with it...
When I discovered this morning that my fat was talking to my brain, I experienced that mental ‘Ah ha!’ that signals a profound truth has been instantly internalized – one of those ‘light bulb’ moments Oprah Winfrey is always rattling on about. (And speaking of Oprah, I wonder what her fat says to her?)
According to a recent article in The New York Times, an associate professor of cell biology and medicine at Albert Einstein College of Medicine in New York, a Dr. Philipp E. Scherer has been studying fat cells for more than a decade and quite apart from admiring them (which he does – he says they’re beautiful and he still enjoys looking at them after ten years… one can only hope he feels the same about his wife) his study has opened up flabby new vistas in understanding how fat affects not just our bodies, but our brains.
Dr Scherer has discovered that fat cells – once considered more or less an inert storage space for the unflattering effects of French fries – are actually an extremely impressive chemical delivery system, comparable to glands like the pituitary and thyroid, secreting hormones that have a powerful effect on our metabolism as well as our overall health and weight. Diabetes, heart disease and even cancer are being traced to this endocrinic source of so much that obsesses us in North America, as obesity rates rise to unprecedented levels. It’s pretty scarifying – to the World Health Organization if to no one else – as the statistics on victims of the side effects of piling too much on pile up at an alarming rate. (65% of adults are overweight – and 15% of children over the age of 6. Yikes.)
So, far from just sitting there and pushing our collective pants and sweatshirts evermore horizontally, those bastard cells are chattering away like teenagers on a party line, telling our brains heaven only knows what, as ‘keeping it all’ has now surpassed ‘having it all’ as the unconscious aim of the North American subconscious.
Personally, I’m not fat. I’m not skinny, but slenderish might be a fair assessment – certainly nothing north of normal. There’s a little genetic luck at work here, but mostly I figure, my figure stays pretty much the same because I work out at least 5 times a week. There’s nothing altruistic about my cardiovascular exercise, just the desire to continue my lifelong love affair with potatoes and bread, coupled with the need to maintain a flat, or at least a flatish belly. I’m not sure when or why I picked up this little personal quirk, but for all I care, my thighs could expand to soccer star proportions, my bottom could be hanging down, trailing behind me, brushing the daisies, but so long as my belly is flat all’s right with the world.
But focused as I am on my own avoirdupois, the pois of others troubles me not a titch. I quite like a man with a little meat on his bones - truth be told, I've always had a thing for Robbie Coltrane.
And clearly I’m not alone. I can’t remember where I read it (I always like to attribute where possible) but it was pointed out recently the surprising number of sitcoms that pair a fat man with a trim and attractive wife. There’s the show with the guy from The Full Monty (who has been inexplicably saddled with a somewhat less than believable American accent) that Jim Belushi show that teams the actor up with a little blonde babe, a soon to be seen new sitcom starring John Goodman and the wonderful Jean Smart, and of course the original sex bomb Jackie Gleason with mate and regularly threatened moon unit Audrey Meadows.
Relax. I’m not going to go all “Why can’t there be shows with fat women and skinny adoring men? Eh? Why?” (Though it is interesting to note that the one show that starred a fat woman in a successful marriage, (Roseanne) had her partnered with a man even heavier than she. Apparently reality has about as much stretch to it as a pair of skintight jeans.)
But chubby chasing aside, the more I learn about fat – garrulous or otherwise - the less able I am to slough off the wider (no pun intended) implications of too many pounds in unhealthy places.
That’s the other thing about fat – it not only matters that the pounds appear – but where they land, how they expand and even what sort they turn out to be.
The apple versus pear body shape argument still hold true; apples, who store their fat in their bendy place are at potentially greater risk than those who pack it on south of the equator in their hips and thighs. In the past we thought the fruit fight was just an inexplicable indicator issue, but it turns out there’s a type of fat known as visceral fat, that lurks inside the abdomen posing a much greater health risk than the subcutaneous fat that sits out front in the cheap seats. It’s also wilier, remaining unaffected by liposuction, requiring serious diet and exercise to shift - the twin demons of an increasingly quick fix society.
It remains unclear why visceral fat is more dangerous than the common or garden type, but scientists suspect it may be more metabolically active and therefore more toxic to organs that regulate insulin and cholesterol levels.
Tougher to get at, more toxic than its subcutaneous cousin, able to turn overweight adults into hospitalized patients, visceral fat is Superfat – the worst kind of fat around.
Lucky me then – who has been fixated on keeping my abdominal fat at bay for a lifetime. But then there’s my sister – a roundy-shaped girl who took after our spherical father rather than our straight up and down mother - in her late thirties diagnosed with Type 2 Diabetes and never off the merry-go-round of diet plans and low fat food – measuring carbs and calories like a mad scientist in a muumuu. I worry about her. A lot.
I still don’t know what my fat cells are saying to my brain, but I’m glad they’re only talking. I hope for both my sister and others similarly afflicted that they get a handle on the type of fat they sport and discover better ways of paring it down before it’s too late.
The way I figure, it’s not over until the fat cells actually sing.
According to a recent article in The New York Times, an associate professor of cell biology and medicine at Albert Einstein College of Medicine in New York, a Dr. Philipp E. Scherer has been studying fat cells for more than a decade and quite apart from admiring them (which he does – he says they’re beautiful and he still enjoys looking at them after ten years… one can only hope he feels the same about his wife) his study has opened up flabby new vistas in understanding how fat affects not just our bodies, but our brains.
Dr Scherer has discovered that fat cells – once considered more or less an inert storage space for the unflattering effects of French fries – are actually an extremely impressive chemical delivery system, comparable to glands like the pituitary and thyroid, secreting hormones that have a powerful effect on our metabolism as well as our overall health and weight. Diabetes, heart disease and even cancer are being traced to this endocrinic source of so much that obsesses us in North America, as obesity rates rise to unprecedented levels. It’s pretty scarifying – to the World Health Organization if to no one else – as the statistics on victims of the side effects of piling too much on pile up at an alarming rate. (65% of adults are overweight – and 15% of children over the age of 6. Yikes.)
So, far from just sitting there and pushing our collective pants and sweatshirts evermore horizontally, those bastard cells are chattering away like teenagers on a party line, telling our brains heaven only knows what, as ‘keeping it all’ has now surpassed ‘having it all’ as the unconscious aim of the North American subconscious.
Personally, I’m not fat. I’m not skinny, but slenderish might be a fair assessment – certainly nothing north of normal. There’s a little genetic luck at work here, but mostly I figure, my figure stays pretty much the same because I work out at least 5 times a week. There’s nothing altruistic about my cardiovascular exercise, just the desire to continue my lifelong love affair with potatoes and bread, coupled with the need to maintain a flat, or at least a flatish belly. I’m not sure when or why I picked up this little personal quirk, but for all I care, my thighs could expand to soccer star proportions, my bottom could be hanging down, trailing behind me, brushing the daisies, but so long as my belly is flat all’s right with the world.
But focused as I am on my own avoirdupois, the pois of others troubles me not a titch. I quite like a man with a little meat on his bones - truth be told, I've always had a thing for Robbie Coltrane.
And clearly I’m not alone. I can’t remember where I read it (I always like to attribute where possible) but it was pointed out recently the surprising number of sitcoms that pair a fat man with a trim and attractive wife. There’s the show with the guy from The Full Monty (who has been inexplicably saddled with a somewhat less than believable American accent) that Jim Belushi show that teams the actor up with a little blonde babe, a soon to be seen new sitcom starring John Goodman and the wonderful Jean Smart, and of course the original sex bomb Jackie Gleason with mate and regularly threatened moon unit Audrey Meadows.
Relax. I’m not going to go all “Why can’t there be shows with fat women and skinny adoring men? Eh? Why?” (Though it is interesting to note that the one show that starred a fat woman in a successful marriage, (Roseanne) had her partnered with a man even heavier than she. Apparently reality has about as much stretch to it as a pair of skintight jeans.)
But chubby chasing aside, the more I learn about fat – garrulous or otherwise - the less able I am to slough off the wider (no pun intended) implications of too many pounds in unhealthy places.
That’s the other thing about fat – it not only matters that the pounds appear – but where they land, how they expand and even what sort they turn out to be.
The apple versus pear body shape argument still hold true; apples, who store their fat in their bendy place are at potentially greater risk than those who pack it on south of the equator in their hips and thighs. In the past we thought the fruit fight was just an inexplicable indicator issue, but it turns out there’s a type of fat known as visceral fat, that lurks inside the abdomen posing a much greater health risk than the subcutaneous fat that sits out front in the cheap seats. It’s also wilier, remaining unaffected by liposuction, requiring serious diet and exercise to shift - the twin demons of an increasingly quick fix society.
It remains unclear why visceral fat is more dangerous than the common or garden type, but scientists suspect it may be more metabolically active and therefore more toxic to organs that regulate insulin and cholesterol levels.
Tougher to get at, more toxic than its subcutaneous cousin, able to turn overweight adults into hospitalized patients, visceral fat is Superfat – the worst kind of fat around.
Lucky me then – who has been fixated on keeping my abdominal fat at bay for a lifetime. But then there’s my sister – a roundy-shaped girl who took after our spherical father rather than our straight up and down mother - in her late thirties diagnosed with Type 2 Diabetes and never off the merry-go-round of diet plans and low fat food – measuring carbs and calories like a mad scientist in a muumuu. I worry about her. A lot.
I still don’t know what my fat cells are saying to my brain, but I’m glad they’re only talking. I hope for both my sister and others similarly afflicted that they get a handle on the type of fat they sport and discover better ways of paring it down before it’s too late.
The way I figure, it’s not over until the fat cells actually sing.
Friday, July 02, 2004
It All Adds Up
Have you seen the ad for tourismtoronto.com? Laugh? (I nearly bought a round…)
The commercial opens in a skateboarder park with a kid about to launch himself off on to one of those curvy, near-vertical ramps, defying death (and likely his mother) as he sets up for lift-off. Suddenly another skaterboy appears and stops him abruptly; he whips out a pad and pencil and works out the rate of lift and velocity and distance of the maneuver, showing the fascinated kid just what he’ll be doing… as represented by x’s and y’s and cosines and symbols of Pi and fractions and such.
Clearly, the spot indicates, as it goes on to shots of Ontario Place and the Science Centre, ‘Come to Toronto – and do arithmetic!’.
Yeah, well, you do the math… could we be any more boring or tedious? (Come to Toronto – and take all the fun out of skateboarding!)
How about –
‘Toronto – it’s hot, but it’s a sodden wet heat…’
‘Toronto – just like home… and it’s your turn to do the dishes.’
‘Toronto – just like anywhere else, but more expensive than most places.’
‘Toronto – just try parking!’
‘Come to Toronto – the drinks are on you!’
And so on…
I’ve lived in Toronto for close to 12 years now – the longest I’ve ever lived anywhere in a row; previous record: 4 years – and I can’t tell you why I’m still here.
I hate the weather. Loathe it. I actually prefer the cold, wet, grey, icy winter to the trapped-under-a-wet-and-smelly-brown-blanket summers. The trees are pretty (the ones not choking to death on carbon monoxide fumes) and the brick houses are attractive (if repetitive) but the magnolias only bloom for a couple of weeks at most, the beaches are for the most part dirty and unsafe for swimming, and it costs a freaking FORTUNE to pull your car over, stop and get out. (A few blocks from me it’s $3.25 per half hour!)
Most of my friends have left – to Stratford, Ottawa, Goderich, Florida and soon to Los Angeles. Years ago, when I was thinking of moving back to Europe, they simply refused to let me go; but exactly like rats deserting the foundering S.S. Toronto, scuttled away as soon as they could, leaving me to make the restaurant reservations, standing all alone like Bette Midler in The Rose (“Where’s everybody going!” and then dying of a drug overdose I feel compelled to remind you) to captain the bad ship Toronto as she sinks slowly to the bottom of Lake Ontario. Glub…glub…glub…
But why, really, do I stay?
Inertia keeps me here. My lovely little home keeps me here. My friends (not the stinking awful deserter ones) keep me here. My work at the Hospital for Sick Children makes the time pass a little more worth-whilely. Those glorious trees that meet in a canopy of brilliant green over my street are like a little tunnel of love just for me. That’s nice. Some of the restaurants are fantastic – world class. Films open before anywhere else like New York and Los Angeles. The theatre, both in the city and a few hours from town, is often brilliant. The architecture in spots is breathtaking, and the museums and art galleries often exhibit stunning collections you’d never expect. The nightlife ain’t bad. The cool green parks and parkettes surprising you around corners right in the heart of downtown are an oasis. The hotdogs the street vendors sell are out of this world. The international flavour of Greektown, Chinatown, Little Italy and all the other little pockets and knots of citizens of the world create a blistering energy that is like no other on the planet. The churches are grand and glorious and the bells pealing on Sundays (while I’m still cozily reading the paper in bed) are heavenly. The newspapers and their endless wars and everywhere-on-the-political-spectrum stances mean information flows here in a something-for-everyone fashion. Fashion here is exciting: designers of furniture, clothes, accessories and jewellery are some of the most daring and different anywhere. The shopping is wonderful – the shoe stores are cutting edge. The film industry (when it’s not making parking even more impossible than ever) brings a zip and fun into the downtown, which carries on operating behind barriers and orange cones, business as usual, nothing out of the ordinary here. Spring here is like Utopia in Lost Horizon and fall is blazingly, heartachingly over-the-top gorgeous.
And when the magnolias bloom for those few short weeks, I know with near mathematical certainty that I belong.
The commercial opens in a skateboarder park with a kid about to launch himself off on to one of those curvy, near-vertical ramps, defying death (and likely his mother) as he sets up for lift-off. Suddenly another skaterboy appears and stops him abruptly; he whips out a pad and pencil and works out the rate of lift and velocity and distance of the maneuver, showing the fascinated kid just what he’ll be doing… as represented by x’s and y’s and cosines and symbols of Pi and fractions and such.
Clearly, the spot indicates, as it goes on to shots of Ontario Place and the Science Centre, ‘Come to Toronto – and do arithmetic!’.
Yeah, well, you do the math… could we be any more boring or tedious? (Come to Toronto – and take all the fun out of skateboarding!)
How about –
‘Toronto – it’s hot, but it’s a sodden wet heat…’
‘Toronto – just like home… and it’s your turn to do the dishes.’
‘Toronto – just like anywhere else, but more expensive than most places.’
‘Toronto – just try parking!’
‘Come to Toronto – the drinks are on you!’
And so on…
I’ve lived in Toronto for close to 12 years now – the longest I’ve ever lived anywhere in a row; previous record: 4 years – and I can’t tell you why I’m still here.
I hate the weather. Loathe it. I actually prefer the cold, wet, grey, icy winter to the trapped-under-a-wet-and-smelly-brown-blanket summers. The trees are pretty (the ones not choking to death on carbon monoxide fumes) and the brick houses are attractive (if repetitive) but the magnolias only bloom for a couple of weeks at most, the beaches are for the most part dirty and unsafe for swimming, and it costs a freaking FORTUNE to pull your car over, stop and get out. (A few blocks from me it’s $3.25 per half hour!)
Most of my friends have left – to Stratford, Ottawa, Goderich, Florida and soon to Los Angeles. Years ago, when I was thinking of moving back to Europe, they simply refused to let me go; but exactly like rats deserting the foundering S.S. Toronto, scuttled away as soon as they could, leaving me to make the restaurant reservations, standing all alone like Bette Midler in The Rose (“Where’s everybody going!” and then dying of a drug overdose I feel compelled to remind you) to captain the bad ship Toronto as she sinks slowly to the bottom of Lake Ontario. Glub…glub…glub…
But why, really, do I stay?
Inertia keeps me here. My lovely little home keeps me here. My friends (not the stinking awful deserter ones) keep me here. My work at the Hospital for Sick Children makes the time pass a little more worth-whilely. Those glorious trees that meet in a canopy of brilliant green over my street are like a little tunnel of love just for me. That’s nice. Some of the restaurants are fantastic – world class. Films open before anywhere else like New York and Los Angeles. The theatre, both in the city and a few hours from town, is often brilliant. The architecture in spots is breathtaking, and the museums and art galleries often exhibit stunning collections you’d never expect. The nightlife ain’t bad. The cool green parks and parkettes surprising you around corners right in the heart of downtown are an oasis. The hotdogs the street vendors sell are out of this world. The international flavour of Greektown, Chinatown, Little Italy and all the other little pockets and knots of citizens of the world create a blistering energy that is like no other on the planet. The churches are grand and glorious and the bells pealing on Sundays (while I’m still cozily reading the paper in bed) are heavenly. The newspapers and their endless wars and everywhere-on-the-political-spectrum stances mean information flows here in a something-for-everyone fashion. Fashion here is exciting: designers of furniture, clothes, accessories and jewellery are some of the most daring and different anywhere. The shopping is wonderful – the shoe stores are cutting edge. The film industry (when it’s not making parking even more impossible than ever) brings a zip and fun into the downtown, which carries on operating behind barriers and orange cones, business as usual, nothing out of the ordinary here. Spring here is like Utopia in Lost Horizon and fall is blazingly, heartachingly over-the-top gorgeous.
And when the magnolias bloom for those few short weeks, I know with near mathematical certainty that I belong.
Wednesday, June 30, 2004
Who ARE those guys?
A squib in the newspaper caught my eye this a.m. An apologist for the New Conservatives (party co-chair John Baird it was) jumped nimbly on the new party line, agreeing with the pundits and pooh-poohers who claim their loss was solely due to "the Liberal party’s fear campaign and the missteps of a handful of rogue Conservative candidates".
Personally, I don’t agree (but then I wouldn’t would I?) because I believe that anyone who was daft enough to base their vote solely on the campaign commercials was just as likely to be turned off - or even on - by the Conservative message. Or possibly deserved what they got…
That, plus, I further believe that the Conservatives do have a secret agenda; the coyness and obfuscation offered up by Steven Harper in response to questions about his plans for use of the Notwithstanding Clause (for instance) made interpreting his answers an exercise in ambiguity.
(Folks whose religious views - of any type or stripe - inform their opinions make me mighty nervous, and Steven Harper, let me tell you, makes me very, very nervous indeed.)
But it was Baird’s comments eschewing the scattered nutterguff spouted by Conservatives such as Randy White (“To heck with the courts, eh?”) and MPs Rob Merrifield and Cheryl Gallant (anti-abortion mutterings) that struck a sour note.
“Randy White and Cheryl Gallant do not speak for the party on these social issues,” said Baird. “Former Ontario Premier Mike Harris had the right formula; you can be a solid Conservative while staying away from social issues.”
You can?
Baird, MPP for Nepean-Carleton and former Harris cabinet minister presumably believes this – but why? The fact that he isn’t aware that many of the New Conservative party members – particularly those whose votes delivered the ridings of the Bible Belt west, and therefore the majority of new seats - are there specifically because of the party’s (sotto voce during the run up to election) take on social issues like same sex marriage and abortion rights is worrying in the extreme. Or perhaps he like many other blue Tories would rather live in a Cloud Cuckooland where those whose fundamentalist views differ from the opinions of the disgruntled Liberals they'd like to attract would somehow magically disappear – their usefulness and their votes no longer wanted on the journey.
So who do these people represent, and more importantly, who represents them?
I may disagree (vehemently) with them, may unfairly stereotype them, or describe them in terms neither they nor their families would find flattering (nattering nutbars of negativism or somesuch) even be nervous of their fundamentalist beliefs and prefer not to be seated next to them at a revival meeting, but I do sincerely believe that they deserve representation, particularly when they had every reason to believe they were represented – that their opinions were valued – and that their votes actually counted for something.
If anyone deserved to be really mad about their leadership, feel they’d been lied to, used and thrown carelessly aside, it’s the grass roots of a party who are now being used as an excuse for why their candidates didn’t do better.
Is it possible now to get some straight answers? Now that the votes – for the time being anyway - have been made and counted? Does the Conservative party represent Tories of all stripes, leaning heavily toward these solidly ‘uninterested-in-social-issues-just-the-economy-stupid' members, or do they in fact also represent and value the people whose red necks made unwelcome the party’s former proud tradition of red Toriedom?
There's something unutterably hypocritical about a group of people using another for the benefits a short term alliance with them can bring. But now that the New Conservatives are properly established, they really don't need the people who all but brought them there. And it looks as though they don't want them; they're an embarrassment - a reminder of their fundamentalist wacky right wing genesis. Like a homely girl used and abused, then discarded when someone more attractive comes along, these new New Conservatives have caught a glimpse of the mainstream and with just the right cutting and pruning they believe it can be theirs.
Can they do it? Can they lure back the red Tories and toss their far right wing supporters over the side?
I don’t really know – it’s all rather murky still. But if I remember anything from my Sunday school classes it’s that betrayal and denial was central to the creation of Christianity – which may ironically represent the sole nod to the Christian wing of the party as the fundamental truth about the New Conservatives continues to evolve.
Post Script @5:55 p.m....
Jim Flaherty announces his candidacy for leadership of the provinicial Conservatives and describes the party thusly:
"There are two wings in the Conservative party - the red Tories and the mainstream..."
Personally, I don’t agree (but then I wouldn’t would I?) because I believe that anyone who was daft enough to base their vote solely on the campaign commercials was just as likely to be turned off - or even on - by the Conservative message. Or possibly deserved what they got…
That, plus, I further believe that the Conservatives do have a secret agenda; the coyness and obfuscation offered up by Steven Harper in response to questions about his plans for use of the Notwithstanding Clause (for instance) made interpreting his answers an exercise in ambiguity.
(Folks whose religious views - of any type or stripe - inform their opinions make me mighty nervous, and Steven Harper, let me tell you, makes me very, very nervous indeed.)
But it was Baird’s comments eschewing the scattered nutterguff spouted by Conservatives such as Randy White (“To heck with the courts, eh?”) and MPs Rob Merrifield and Cheryl Gallant (anti-abortion mutterings) that struck a sour note.
“Randy White and Cheryl Gallant do not speak for the party on these social issues,” said Baird. “Former Ontario Premier Mike Harris had the right formula; you can be a solid Conservative while staying away from social issues.”
You can?
Baird, MPP for Nepean-Carleton and former Harris cabinet minister presumably believes this – but why? The fact that he isn’t aware that many of the New Conservative party members – particularly those whose votes delivered the ridings of the Bible Belt west, and therefore the majority of new seats - are there specifically because of the party’s (sotto voce during the run up to election) take on social issues like same sex marriage and abortion rights is worrying in the extreme. Or perhaps he like many other blue Tories would rather live in a Cloud Cuckooland where those whose fundamentalist views differ from the opinions of the disgruntled Liberals they'd like to attract would somehow magically disappear – their usefulness and their votes no longer wanted on the journey.
So who do these people represent, and more importantly, who represents them?
I may disagree (vehemently) with them, may unfairly stereotype them, or describe them in terms neither they nor their families would find flattering (nattering nutbars of negativism or somesuch) even be nervous of their fundamentalist beliefs and prefer not to be seated next to them at a revival meeting, but I do sincerely believe that they deserve representation, particularly when they had every reason to believe they were represented – that their opinions were valued – and that their votes actually counted for something.
If anyone deserved to be really mad about their leadership, feel they’d been lied to, used and thrown carelessly aside, it’s the grass roots of a party who are now being used as an excuse for why their candidates didn’t do better.
Is it possible now to get some straight answers? Now that the votes – for the time being anyway - have been made and counted? Does the Conservative party represent Tories of all stripes, leaning heavily toward these solidly ‘uninterested-in-social-issues-just-the-economy-stupid' members, or do they in fact also represent and value the people whose red necks made unwelcome the party’s former proud tradition of red Toriedom?
There's something unutterably hypocritical about a group of people using another for the benefits a short term alliance with them can bring. But now that the New Conservatives are properly established, they really don't need the people who all but brought them there. And it looks as though they don't want them; they're an embarrassment - a reminder of their fundamentalist wacky right wing genesis. Like a homely girl used and abused, then discarded when someone more attractive comes along, these new New Conservatives have caught a glimpse of the mainstream and with just the right cutting and pruning they believe it can be theirs.
Can they do it? Can they lure back the red Tories and toss their far right wing supporters over the side?
I don’t really know – it’s all rather murky still. But if I remember anything from my Sunday school classes it’s that betrayal and denial was central to the creation of Christianity – which may ironically represent the sole nod to the Christian wing of the party as the fundamental truth about the New Conservatives continues to evolve.
Post Script @5:55 p.m....
Jim Flaherty announces his candidacy for leadership of the provinicial Conservatives and describes the party thusly:
"There are two wings in the Conservative party - the red Tories and the mainstream..."
Monday, June 28, 2004
Smells Like Bush Spirit
Oh my aching back.
I spent the weekend up to my elbows in sheep manure and loam, planting roses and lilacs and impatiens, and discovering just how irritatingly anal I can be trying to find the perfect equilibrium between little lavender-coloured flowers and prickly little bushes.
How many times did I rip up and re-plant the same five or six little bunches, aiming to create more balance in the bed? Enough to make moving about this a.m. a virtual cartoon of the ancient whiner, complete with little squiggly lines radiating out from the hand-supported spot on the small of my back, little moans escaping my frowning puss, impressing precisely no one.
I’m on the landscaping committee of my condo (our motto: “if it bends it’s comedy; if you break it - you buy it”) and I had no idea showing up last year’s landscape committee was going to come at such a high personal price.
And speaking of manure, howsabout this election?
And speaking of anal, howsabout those candidates?
Steven Harper – hiding out on the campaign trail, attending only those events mounted by Conservative riding associations, speaking only to those already committed, making sure to be on the same (bible) page as his audience, preaching (as it were) to the choir.
Jack Layton – who simply cannot believe his luck, copping votes he could never otherwise hope to win, gliding up the centre aisle, gladhanding all the way. Who knew he had a sincere smile in him? (If he Nader’s this election, it just might turn that smile upside down.)
I have no idea what Gilles Duceppe is doing – just that he’s likely doing it in a calm, relaxed manner, sitting pretty as he pulls in more votes than he, like Layton, ever thought possible.
And Paul Martin – he’s here, he’s there – he’s everywhere; driving his staff and supporters crazy, flying frenziedly from coast to coast, leaving no hand unshaken, no baby unkissed, no vote unasked for. You’ve gotta give him credit – the man’s not afraid of hard work, not afraid of admitting the going’s getting tough – not afraid of getting going.
Oh my aching head.
I’m afraid – really actually afraid that we could wake up tomorrow to an Alliance/Reform government. Because let’s face it – that’s what it really is. This election has fooled some people into forgetting that until recently, these were people who occupied a space on the continuum, just a few too few towns away from Kookoobananasville.
A party created by a lie told by a lying liar. (If Peter McKay had kept his promise during the leadership race, none of this would be happening now.) A party born in deceit, (manipulated behind the scenes by Brian! Mulroney!)sharing few if any qualities with the once great Conservative party, and peopled by some of the most narrow-minded, me-firster’s, me-righter’s Canada has ever produced, now has an actual crack at running the joint.
If so, wave goodbye to our most hard won principles and policies; flap your hankie at social programs that actually separated us from other countries like opposable thumbs separate animals from humans; bid farewell and adieu to soon not being able to tell even the slightest difference between Americans and Canadians. And by 'Americans' I don't mean American Americans; I mean George W. Bush Americans - the ones currently running that country into the ground.
You can shovel all the manure you like, spread dirt around from coast to coast, but if we don't watch out, what comes up tomorrow with the sun won't be smelling like roses...
More like Bush.
I spent the weekend up to my elbows in sheep manure and loam, planting roses and lilacs and impatiens, and discovering just how irritatingly anal I can be trying to find the perfect equilibrium between little lavender-coloured flowers and prickly little bushes.
How many times did I rip up and re-plant the same five or six little bunches, aiming to create more balance in the bed? Enough to make moving about this a.m. a virtual cartoon of the ancient whiner, complete with little squiggly lines radiating out from the hand-supported spot on the small of my back, little moans escaping my frowning puss, impressing precisely no one.
I’m on the landscaping committee of my condo (our motto: “if it bends it’s comedy; if you break it - you buy it”) and I had no idea showing up last year’s landscape committee was going to come at such a high personal price.
And speaking of manure, howsabout this election?
And speaking of anal, howsabout those candidates?
Steven Harper – hiding out on the campaign trail, attending only those events mounted by Conservative riding associations, speaking only to those already committed, making sure to be on the same (bible) page as his audience, preaching (as it were) to the choir.
Jack Layton – who simply cannot believe his luck, copping votes he could never otherwise hope to win, gliding up the centre aisle, gladhanding all the way. Who knew he had a sincere smile in him? (If he Nader’s this election, it just might turn that smile upside down.)
I have no idea what Gilles Duceppe is doing – just that he’s likely doing it in a calm, relaxed manner, sitting pretty as he pulls in more votes than he, like Layton, ever thought possible.
And Paul Martin – he’s here, he’s there – he’s everywhere; driving his staff and supporters crazy, flying frenziedly from coast to coast, leaving no hand unshaken, no baby unkissed, no vote unasked for. You’ve gotta give him credit – the man’s not afraid of hard work, not afraid of admitting the going’s getting tough – not afraid of getting going.
Oh my aching head.
I’m afraid – really actually afraid that we could wake up tomorrow to an Alliance/Reform government. Because let’s face it – that’s what it really is. This election has fooled some people into forgetting that until recently, these were people who occupied a space on the continuum, just a few too few towns away from Kookoobananasville.
A party created by a lie told by a lying liar. (If Peter McKay had kept his promise during the leadership race, none of this would be happening now.) A party born in deceit, (manipulated behind the scenes by Brian! Mulroney!)sharing few if any qualities with the once great Conservative party, and peopled by some of the most narrow-minded, me-firster’s, me-righter’s Canada has ever produced, now has an actual crack at running the joint.
If so, wave goodbye to our most hard won principles and policies; flap your hankie at social programs that actually separated us from other countries like opposable thumbs separate animals from humans; bid farewell and adieu to soon not being able to tell even the slightest difference between Americans and Canadians. And by 'Americans' I don't mean American Americans; I mean George W. Bush Americans - the ones currently running that country into the ground.
You can shovel all the manure you like, spread dirt around from coast to coast, but if we don't watch out, what comes up tomorrow with the sun won't be smelling like roses...
More like Bush.
Thursday, June 24, 2004
For Want of a Nail...
By the time my niece was about four years old, she was running her parents and relatives like a drill sergeant preparing troops for inspection. It wasn’t just the nerve with which she approached such maneuvers, but her commitment even as a toddler that inspired such awe. I predict a future in politics.
One incident that captured my attention (instilling fear in my heart for my rather soft and sweet sister) was the occasion of the bath. While visiting a friend with like-aged children, after a day of games and treats my niece was popped into the bath for a quick sluicing off of grass, mud and chocolate. Much splashing and giggling of course, a few high pitched shrieks and fake drownings later, my sister told her she mustn’t pour the shampoo down the drain. She told her again – there would be consequences – she told her for a third and final time (Vidal Sassoon for Normal to Dry Hair now almost completely drain-bound) before heaving her out and demanding she say sorry to the friend. The niece refused; she even denied pouring out the shampoo. Demands for apologies continued, until in frustration, my sister placed her in a corner (still dripping wet – but it was a hot summer day) telling her she wasn’t to turn or move until she had apologized.
…two hours later, my sister gave up, yanked her out of the corner, dressed her and took her home. My niece is in her teens now, and sorry still seems to be the hardest word. There’s a terrible sort of power in refusing to apologize – but there can be an agonizingly high price too.
It’s interesting, the concept of apology – after all there are so many types, rarest of all being the sincere sort.
There’s the ‘forced to make it, sullen’, ‘forced to make it, fake’, ‘forced to make it, sarcastic’ and ‘forced to make it, ingeniously devised to imply exactly the opposite’ – and all the shades and colours in between. There’s also point blank refusal, and ‘over-the-top but completely crap’, which is just as annoying.
But sincere – not to mention unasked for? Don’t hold your breath (until your face turns blue.)
Why is it so hard for some people to say they’re sorry?
Political apologies, which should be the easiest (if greasiest) of the lot, are just about the blue moon, four leaf clover, hen’s teeth rarest; you don't have to be a four year old to approach them as sullenly and mutinously as a President in front of a congressional committee - but obviously, it helps.
W’s inability to say sorry became almost comical for a while; his ‘I’ll let you know when I think of a mistake I made, but I just can’t think of one now’ answer to questions from the press about responsibility in the Abu Grhaib abuse allegations was itself painfully tortuous.
Secretary of Defense Donald Rumsfeld obviously made note of the public’s astonished reaction to the President’s personal ‘no fault’ policy, and decided to take responsibility when he testified before the house and senate committees, but couldn’t quite make the leap of actually admitting any decisions were regrettable or mistaken, deciding instead to blame the entire affair on the ‘few individuals’ we were led to believe were really the sole culprits, thereby by-passing any actually consequences – and any genuine responsibility.
Former President Bill Clinton may be the most artful dodger of the last century. His recently published book My Life performs the astonishing feat of seeming to apologize for Monica Gate, but falls at the last crucial fence, as he ‘but’s his way to blaming the entire affair on Ken Starr. The outrageous costs of the investigation, the stress and horror for the country (and in fact the entire world) of the impeachment proceedings, the endless, revolting descriptions of cigars and thongs and girlish gossip, the retelling of squalid stories of former girlfriends and pleasures taken at the expense of credulity, trust and honour – all of this we are to understand, was the fault not of the President, but of the investigator.
Lost in all of this is the fact that had the President told the truth – or even had he stonewalled instead of outright lying – ninety-nine per cent of the horror would have been avoided.
(Let us not forget – the reason for the Presidential probing was in order to ivestigate a possible pattern in a very real charge of sexual abuse against another woman; the sordid facts were relevant in terms of the law, however intrusive or insulting upon the Presidential person. Only when all was truly lost, did a small – though heavily qualified and agonizingly worded – apology squeak out. But much the same as a kid saying “Okay, I’m sorry I broke the window – but Kenny made me do it!” the admission loses considerable sincerity if not all actual meaning along the way.)
And now Steven Harper – as he stumbles and trips in this last crucial week of campaigning before the federal election on Monday – cannot bring himself to say sorry. Staking out the high moral ground (built on steadily shifting sand) the leader of the New Conservatives refuses to step back from accusing Prime Ministerial rival Paul Martin of actively supporting child pornography. This despicable insult, which even in the most broadly brushed interpretation of the facts is patently absurd, could well be reflected back upon on as the initial swipe that ripped defeat from the jaws of near certain victory as recently as late last week.
For want of a nail, the shoe was lost; for want of a shoe the horse was lost; for want of a horse the rider was lost, for want of a rider the battle was lost; for want of a battle the kingdom was lost.
For want of an apology, the Liberals will win.
One incident that captured my attention (instilling fear in my heart for my rather soft and sweet sister) was the occasion of the bath. While visiting a friend with like-aged children, after a day of games and treats my niece was popped into the bath for a quick sluicing off of grass, mud and chocolate. Much splashing and giggling of course, a few high pitched shrieks and fake drownings later, my sister told her she mustn’t pour the shampoo down the drain. She told her again – there would be consequences – she told her for a third and final time (Vidal Sassoon for Normal to Dry Hair now almost completely drain-bound) before heaving her out and demanding she say sorry to the friend. The niece refused; she even denied pouring out the shampoo. Demands for apologies continued, until in frustration, my sister placed her in a corner (still dripping wet – but it was a hot summer day) telling her she wasn’t to turn or move until she had apologized.
…two hours later, my sister gave up, yanked her out of the corner, dressed her and took her home. My niece is in her teens now, and sorry still seems to be the hardest word. There’s a terrible sort of power in refusing to apologize – but there can be an agonizingly high price too.
It’s interesting, the concept of apology – after all there are so many types, rarest of all being the sincere sort.
There’s the ‘forced to make it, sullen’, ‘forced to make it, fake’, ‘forced to make it, sarcastic’ and ‘forced to make it, ingeniously devised to imply exactly the opposite’ – and all the shades and colours in between. There’s also point blank refusal, and ‘over-the-top but completely crap’, which is just as annoying.
But sincere – not to mention unasked for? Don’t hold your breath (until your face turns blue.)
Why is it so hard for some people to say they’re sorry?
Political apologies, which should be the easiest (if greasiest) of the lot, are just about the blue moon, four leaf clover, hen’s teeth rarest; you don't have to be a four year old to approach them as sullenly and mutinously as a President in front of a congressional committee - but obviously, it helps.
W’s inability to say sorry became almost comical for a while; his ‘I’ll let you know when I think of a mistake I made, but I just can’t think of one now’ answer to questions from the press about responsibility in the Abu Grhaib abuse allegations was itself painfully tortuous.
Secretary of Defense Donald Rumsfeld obviously made note of the public’s astonished reaction to the President’s personal ‘no fault’ policy, and decided to take responsibility when he testified before the house and senate committees, but couldn’t quite make the leap of actually admitting any decisions were regrettable or mistaken, deciding instead to blame the entire affair on the ‘few individuals’ we were led to believe were really the sole culprits, thereby by-passing any actually consequences – and any genuine responsibility.
Former President Bill Clinton may be the most artful dodger of the last century. His recently published book My Life performs the astonishing feat of seeming to apologize for Monica Gate, but falls at the last crucial fence, as he ‘but’s his way to blaming the entire affair on Ken Starr. The outrageous costs of the investigation, the stress and horror for the country (and in fact the entire world) of the impeachment proceedings, the endless, revolting descriptions of cigars and thongs and girlish gossip, the retelling of squalid stories of former girlfriends and pleasures taken at the expense of credulity, trust and honour – all of this we are to understand, was the fault not of the President, but of the investigator.
Lost in all of this is the fact that had the President told the truth – or even had he stonewalled instead of outright lying – ninety-nine per cent of the horror would have been avoided.
(Let us not forget – the reason for the Presidential probing was in order to ivestigate a possible pattern in a very real charge of sexual abuse against another woman; the sordid facts were relevant in terms of the law, however intrusive or insulting upon the Presidential person. Only when all was truly lost, did a small – though heavily qualified and agonizingly worded – apology squeak out. But much the same as a kid saying “Okay, I’m sorry I broke the window – but Kenny made me do it!” the admission loses considerable sincerity if not all actual meaning along the way.)
And now Steven Harper – as he stumbles and trips in this last crucial week of campaigning before the federal election on Monday – cannot bring himself to say sorry. Staking out the high moral ground (built on steadily shifting sand) the leader of the New Conservatives refuses to step back from accusing Prime Ministerial rival Paul Martin of actively supporting child pornography. This despicable insult, which even in the most broadly brushed interpretation of the facts is patently absurd, could well be reflected back upon on as the initial swipe that ripped defeat from the jaws of near certain victory as recently as late last week.
For want of a nail, the shoe was lost; for want of a shoe the horse was lost; for want of a horse the rider was lost, for want of a rider the battle was lost; for want of a battle the kingdom was lost.
For want of an apology, the Liberals will win.
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