Jesus would approve

Yesterday - two days before Christmas - as I went around to a couple of stores food-shopping, I couldn't help but notice how desperately unhappy everybody looked.

At Safeway, for example, the parking lot was absolutely chokker, so you had to go around & around waiting for someone to leave. Inside: relentless fluorescence; aisles of way-too-much and-way-too-many-choices; high prices on everything; masses of "Xmasy" stuff - all the extra decos and elements one is supposed to have to make the family Christmas dinner the Dinner of All Dinners. Masses of people pushing carts, trying to get down an aisle and all looking so stressed and pressed and miserable.

But everyone was pushing away.

Pushing through traffic. Pushing to get a parking spot. Pushing around the carts. Standing in long lineups to pay and finally get out of there. All the while, "I'll Be Home For Christmas" is grinding away in the background sound track.

Lugging stuff to the car. More pushing in traffic to get to the next place, and the next.  Need this, need that, gotta have it all. Christmas has to be perfect or........

You read articles during December on "how to manage stress at Christmas" - TV shows on ways to pace yourself so you can "get through it." Lots of serious talk about how awful Christmas is for many people,  how to manage your budget around gifting, and how to navigate the family dynamics, oy. So much stress around this holiday of "love."


People were putting so much energy into getting all this stuff done and so much money into it. Millions of people worldwide pushing and shopping to create this one-day event. The day when all your love is on the line with everyone you care about - plus gifting the postman, your hair stylist, the kids' teachers, the cleaning lady, your building manager.

No pressure there........

As I saw all these grim-faced people, so determined, and pushing themselves to get through their To Do list and for the best of intentions ... I thought, wow, if only the money spent on "Xmas" and the collective energy that goes into trying to create that perfect day for individual families could be re-directed towards world peace, what a different world this would be.

It would indeed be Good News, a joy to the world, and I'm sure Jesus would approve.

Carole, we never knew ye

Can't say I saw the Carole James resignation coming. 

But now that she's done it, I'm not totally surprised.  I think we're seeing a woman of principle in action. This is her pulling the pound-of-flesh number and saving the baby.

I've been intrigued for a long time about how opinions are formed -- and widely held -- about leaders like Carole James, how they're held resolutely by people who have never met her and often haven't seen more than a 30 second clip or two. But they know they don’t like her. Hmn………

Joe Clark suffered under the same phenomenon. He was basically rejected nationwide as being a geek (in a time when being a geek was definitely not cool) because he lost his luggage on an international trip. 

The negative branding of Joe-Who? was so well done that even though the airlines lost the luggage and everyone knows that, Joe took the fall. 

In the campaign and for years afterwards, he was unable to recover from the media branding of him as a goof.  Then, years later (after he'd stitched the PC Party back together and especially after he  had served a term or two as Minister of Foreign Affairs--and represented us so credibly abroad) people began to see his merits and murmured nationally that maybe he would have made a good prime minister. As I recall that was around year six of the Reign of Ol' Jawbone.

Stéphane Dion is another recent example of how absolutely impossible it is to undo initial negative branding. He simply wasn't able to counter that initial K.O. punch no matter what he did. He could have walked on the surface of the  Rideau Canal in July and it wouldn’t have made a difference.

Similarly, I can see Carole James being appointed to head up this or that public inquiry or commission and people over time coming to see that, wow, she was a woman of substance--how come we didn't see that in 2010? (By then, the media will be able to give her some good press because she won’t be a threat anymore.)

So how does this happen? How does a good person, perhaps even a really good leader, just never get the chance? 

Is it some kind of media bullying?  

I saw her recently talking with Vaughn Palmer and he seemed to think she was okay, so we can't blame him. Michael Smythe? The Sun or Province? CKNW? CBC?

What I fear is that it's none of the above, but rather the untrained, ill-informed quasi-pundits who are looking for glam & telegenics in our leaders, not substance.

That makes me wonder about how much power leader any leader has a political party.

The NDP, like all the parties, has committees and riding associations that feed ideas into vehicles like policy conventions - big huge affairs where people spend a weekend wrangling over policy. And voting it in or out. So how much policy can a leader actually set on their own then? 

I was really shocked at the news that the BC Federation of Labour paid of $72,000 of Moe Sihota's salary as president of the Party. I love listening to Moe take on Erin Chutter on the CBC Radio's Early Edition’s political panel every week, so this was disappointing news to learn about Moe too. Naturally, I don't know all the circumstances around that whole deal, but I’m unable to conjure up any instance in which that situation would not feel very, very icky. Did Carole countenance that?

Was Carole James just one vote on that BC Council that said yes to the BC Fed fund-infusion to Sihota -- or does the leader carry more than one vote on the Council? 

Because if the Council can overrule the leader or the leader is just one vote in many -- then why do we fuss so much about who is the leader of a political party? If it’s truly democratic that should not matter as much should it?

The amount of time we spend in BC (and in national politics) on leadership politics would be amusing if it wasn’t so annoying and essentially shallow.  

Don't the parties and all the party members and all the MLAs or MPs - count for anything? Aren’t the councils and the caucuses the major influence on the directions the party takes? 

IS a leader like Carole James able to abrogate all the work of riding associations, policy conventions, caucuses?  Really?--how?

It's unfortunate that the BC-NDP appeared to be shooting themselves in the foot at a time when they were riding so high in the polls, although polls are a very fickle measurement of anything at all.

I have admired Jenny Kwan since she and Joy McPhail rose in the Legislature and talked nonstop through the night to try and stop a Bill from passing that would send hospital workers back to work during their 2004 job action. 

Jenny seems to be woman of principle as well. I'm disheartened , though, that these two women of principle, and their followers, were not able to get together, iron it out, and work together: it would have been the proverbial test of the pudding wouldn't it? 

And this is one pudding that's kind of fallen in the middle.

 

Chronic chemical pollution & your liver......

I’ve just moved into place and when I  first replaced the toilet paper roll, I discovered an unusual toilet roll holder.  It isn’t solid like most of them. It made a noise like a rattle when I removed it and when I examined it I saw it has a little ‘cage' full of plastic-y beads. 

Long story short, these beads turn out to be some kind of fragrance. I can’t find the original toilet roll holder so I’m temporarily stuck with this beady fragrance dispenser.

I don’t know how to say this prosaically enough not to offend the sensibilities of people who buy fragrance-emitting toilet roll holders so, Gentle Reader, if that’s you, skip the next sentence.  But I don’t want chemicals going into the delicate membranes of my ass through chemically-scented toilet paper. It’s bad enough the toilet paper is white and probably full of dioxins. 

Is it any wonder there's so much rectal cancer when people are artificially smelling-up their toilet paper? Why do we even need to scent-up toilet paper before it has been, uh, deployed?  Think about it: what is actually being fragranced here?

Don’t people realize yet that when they spray chemical air freshener products (a misnomer if there ever was one) all over their house, they’ll be breathing the chemicals in or having chronic skin contact with it? Rug rats are especially vulnerable to upholstery and carpet sprays and cleaners; they spend half their life on the floor. Pets too.

Think about your clothing imbued with fabric softeners. How strong they smell. What are they made of? Gynecologists are actually advising women not to use scented fabric softeners with their underpants in the dryer. (But don't think the 'unscented' types are necessarily chemical-free either).  Also they say it takes several sessions with a wet towel going around in the dryer just to remove fabric softener residues from the dryer. Imagine how sticky that might be inside the body once it's gone in thru your pores.

When folks libate their bodies with chemically-fragranced body washes, again they are sending chemicals into the pores all over their body. On a daily basis.  And then there’s the daily shampooing and conditioning. Do any of us know what's in those products we get off the drug store shelf? (I believe industry has gone to some lengths to resist labeling these products and I've been told there are some pretty scary ingredients).

Imagine the chronic build-up of these chemicals inside your body over time.

Same with chemical perfumes, powders, body butters - and those things you hang in the car with chemically-induced  smells: you're locked in a car breathing that stuff in - what is it exactly? And those other ghastly things people inflict on you - air 'fresheners' that plug in an electrical outlet. Certain stores now 'condition' their air and imagine how much of that is organic or natural scent in the dog-eat-dog retail climate. But you're getting a snoot-full of it the whole time you're shopping in those windowless caverns.

It’s all chemicals, and we’re breathing it in or absorbing it trans-dermally.

Can the average liver actually manage the daily absorption of that much chemical?

__________________________________

My notes on possibly helpful Saints…

·      St. Lucy – “Lucia” luce = light. Invoked against eye trouble. Often depicted holding her eyes on a plate. RC legend that her eyes were put out by a tyrant. Dante made her the symbol of illuminating grace.

·      St. Zita – Patron of Servants – A servant herself – who used to give her own food (and later her master’s) to the poor … who was lent her master’s fur coat one Xmas Eve to go to Church in, on a freeing night – only to give it to a freezing, coatless beggar outside the church (“the Angel Door”). But later that night a mysterious stranger returned it to her master.

·      St. Joseph – Saint of Silence, Patron of Patience; father of Jesus; Patron of Refugees; also of ill people (Notre Dame); model of faith—humility, prudence.

·      St. Christopher – Patron of Travellers.

·      St. Jude – The Saint of Last Resort; Saint of the Impossible; Saint of Desperate Cases. So close to Christ—cousin of Christ, says one book; one of the Apostles.

·      St. Frances of Rome – “It is most laudable in a married woman to be devout but she must never forget that she is a housewife. And sometimes she must leave God at the later to find him in her housekeeping.”

·      St. Monica – mother of St. Augustine, one of the father’s of the Western Church.

·      St. John of God – Patron of the sick and of all who take care of the sick. Portuguese. Kidnapped as a child – later a shepherd. Joined an army, abandoned his faith, forgot moral law. Got really sick – reformed and took to taking care of the sick.

·      St. John the Apostle – Beloved of Christ – 4^th book New Testament. “Woman, behold thy Son” and “Behold thy mother.”

·      St. Agnes – helps all those who want to remain pure.

·      St. Anthony of Padua – Patron for lost articles and small requests.

·      St. Bede – Writer saint. Talents only loaned.

·      St. Bernard – Patron of Skiers and mountain climbers.

·      St. Blaise – The blessing of throats.

·      St. Fracre – Patron of gardeners. Shrines in backyard gardens. Cures. Louis XIV; Louis XIII.

·      St. Francis of Assisi – Poverty, no fear.

·      St. Francis de Sales – “God and I wil help you. All I require of you is not to despair.”

·      St. Jean Vianney – Ptaron of parish priests and of parishes. Confessions.

·      St. Luke – Patron of doctors.

·      St. Maurice – Patron of infantry soldiers.

·      St. Mechiades – Second of 3 black popes. c. 331.

·      St. Noel Chabanel – Canada – Algonquin first nations. Total resignation to the divine will.

·      St. Pambo – Discipline of the tongue and sanctity of silence.

Married Saints:

·      St. Jutta – patroness of Prussia – saw all her children join religious groups before setting off herself. Widowed young. painful illness/self-poverty/exile foreign country. Three ways lead a person closer to God.

·      St. Elizabeth of Hungary – Queen of Hungary (and her aunt, St. Hedwig, ditto) – Married Louis of Bavaria – happy marriage 6 yrs., had children – then he died. She gave away castle funds to the poor. Provided for her 3 children, then renounced the world completely. Died 3 years later, still in her 20s.

·      St. Bridget of Sweden – Had 8 children with Ulf. Her daughter, Catherine, also later became a Saint.

………………………………

How the plebes shop

People talk to each other at the St. Vincent de Paul. An English lady customer  gives advice on what “will do” for what when it is:

·      hemmed

·      done over

·      polished

·      brought up

and she tells a dark young guy how the Belgian tablecloth he is holding would “do” for  doorway curtain, a wall hanging, a throw for a sofa, a throw rug.

            Poor people don’t have the luxury of getting things that they like or things that match, but things that will “do.” Do for this, do for that. Curtains that “do” as bedspreads, bedspreads that “do” as curtains. Throws that “do” for making a horrendous old couch less grotesque. Old mismatched ghastly things that will “do,” rather than having nothing at all…….

The lady rooting through the immense pile of curtain remnants next to me is, by her accent, Irish. She’s the first to guess that the woven “velour-y” swatch of material the guy is holding is a tablecloth. “Me mother,” she says, “used to have one on the parlour table.”

The lady at the front desk, Nicki, later tells us that it is Belgian, is a tablecloth indeed, and that the Belgians and the Dutch (“we”) use them as window hangings, rugs, etc.

The dark guy says to me and the Irish woman that he’ll take it if we don’t want it. 

The prices depend on you. If she doesn’t know you already as she obviously does the English lady, Nicki fondles the object of your desire while furtively looking you up and down. The obviously-not-wealthy dark guy gets the rug/curtain/tablecloth for five dollars. The English lady gets a five dollar suit for three because she says, rationalizing it, she’s going to have to spend a lot of time repairing it. She’s a regular. She calls Nicki ‘Nicki;’ that’s how we know her name.

I’m trying on some shoes. Suede, an awful mustard colour that I can dye, a high heel, size 10B. They fit, but I can’t get the ankle strap to do up. I try. A man called Joe tries, and fails. Finally a young, handsome, but scruffy young guy sits down and does what Joe and I could not. He works with leather, he tells me. His social worker got him into it. He has some dye too—brilliant purple.

“Tell her you’ll give her three for them,” he whispers, handing me back the shoe.

I finally do get the buckles to do up. On the bottom of each shoe is written 8.50.

Nicki addresses me from behind the counter. “You can have them for five.”

The handsome scruffy guy whispers “three” again, almost but not quite pinching my arm. Then he leaves.

I look at my new shoes in the mirror. Even at five...suede; brand new, even the heel isn’t worn.

Handsome scruffy comes back in the shop and gets Nicki to get something out of the window for him. Looks it over. “I’ll give you two dollars for it that’s all I’ve got on me.” A companion out of Nicki’s sight smirks. He gets it for two. He probably doesn’t have more than another five on him.  

I pay five for my shoes and three for some other plastic Fifties junk I found there. After all, it’s for the St. Vincent de Paul charities. 

 Nicki has a pinkie and a ring finger on her left hand and an enormous round mound where her other two fingers might be which goes over the top of her hand—it looks like one of those yellow gourds, only no bumps—in between her fingers and the teeny but agile little stump that serves as her thumb. In repose she covers her left hand, demurely, with her right. Her rings are on her right hand.

There are two high school girls, both black-haired and quite, quite pretty, done up in New Wave outfits: tights worn under heavy Navy jackets, high heels. One of them holds up a horrendous bathing suit.  “Oh, I’ve got to get a really tacky bathing suit…” She wears gloves and contemplates an arcane instrument which Nicki demonstrates to her – a glove-puller-onner.

The St. Vincent de Paul seems quite expensive compared to the run-of-the-mill capitalist second hand stores in Vancouver, as does the pensioners’ store. Can’t be sure, but I suspect the written-on prices at the SVdP are to discourage the well-off vintage-hunters and that Nicki & Co. make drastic reductions on ticket prices according to the customer’s face value.

The Irish woman who spends half an hour methodically going through a pile of lace and doilies, muses aloud that her husband by this time is usually pestering or her to go. But he’s nowhere in evidence—he’s actually in the back, and later he comes forward to collect her holding a small tower of green plastic planters.

It’s Saturday and this is how the plebes shop.

Maybe the customers talk to each other at Holt Renfrew and New Look Interiors. And they may share a camaraderie too, though perhaps not while rummaging through mountains of used sweaters in a bin or massive heavy piles of old curtains.

The St. Vincent de Paul store always did, and still does, smell dank and mildewy. In some kinky, weird reincarnation—where someone has thought fit to mimic IKEA, a back room of furniture has been created called the As Is Room.  The furniture in there is every bit as creaky and worn out, saggy and uniformly ugly as the furniture in the regular rooms…the old rump-sprung mattresses and springs; horrible chrome and plastic Fifties chairs and occasionally two of them match, and rarer still there is a matching table.

These chrome chairs are priced at $15 each. Absolutely absurd. The right person will take them away for five or three or two. Mr. and Mrs. MiddleClass will pay fifteen, as it should be. But they probably wouldn’t be caught dead there anyway, unless they thought there were painted-over Chippendale chairs in the back.

Quite obviously, no mistaking it, this is where the English lady buys most of her clothing her knickknacks and likely most of her house linens, those she doesn’t have already from a lifetime of living.

This is really poverty.

And it smells.

As is.

______________________________________

©Margo Lamont

Have heard this song before. It's from an old familiar score.

I’m really really trying to get upset that the BC’s chief electoral officer is refusing to take the 700,000-signature HST petition to the BC Legislature in accordance with the law.


Pundit Bill Tieleman who has been helping the former BC premier Bill Vander Zalm (talk about strange bedfellows…) with a little PR on his blog and on his Facebook page, has a blog heading from Aug 10 that says: Total Recall!  Elections BC verifies success of Fight HST citizens Initiative petition - but won't act because of big business court action!

Oh-kay.  But where do the !!!!!s come in to this?  People are surprised?

Bill Tieleman says the reason the electoral officer won’t submit petition is “because a big business coalition is attempting to take legal action to block the entire [Fight HST] Initiative process - a bogus excuse for refusing to do their duty as required.”

I can see where Bill Vander Zalm might be a teeny bit surprised -- it is a bit flagrant -- but I thought Tieleman would know this type of thing is S.O.P.  (standard operating procedure) when the establishment wants to block those who disagree with them.

Ask any political activist from the Left.  It’s why they all burn out. They slog away year after year, decade after decade, following “the law” -- going through the process of legal dissent -- while governments or their agents, slalom around them and block them at every turn.

A recent example would be David Orchard, who tried valiantly to stop the takeover by the Canadian Alliance Party of the Progressive Conservative Party of Canada - the “merger” that produced that rough beast called The Conservative Party of Canada which slouched towards Ottawa and became our federal government soon after.


The Electoral Chief of Canada actually opened his office on a Sunday -- yes a Sunday in Ottawa -- to accept the paperwork for the merger.  And you know all about the signatorial derrings-do that Peter MacKay pulled when he made the deal with David Orchard promising on paper, in writing, no merger in order to become leader of the PC Party then later enabled that merger. 


But the Right, in the person of people like The Zalm and his followers -- because they tend to be the Establishment in everything -- are not accustomed to having their legal initiatives blocked and stymied like people on the Left are.


Speaking of Vander Zalm’s followers, don’t be surprised to find out that that his intention around the Fight HST Campaign was to call forth the undead of the old Socred party and do grassroots (a favourite word of his) organization around the HST issue, with a view to supplanting Right Wing Party #1 (the Liberals) with Right Wing Party #2 in the next provincial election -- a Socred rehash.  Not that the Liberals aren’t that, but this would be a re-branded Socred rehash.


And isn’t the Left playing into the former premier’s hands around the notion of supporting his anti-HST thing because Vander Zalm cares “the people?” Remember when he was Human Resources Minister of this province and told people on welfare to “pick up a shovel?” That’s Mr.  Peeps for you.


Listen to Bill T., bless his heart:

The Recall and Initiative Act is extremely clear - if the petition is verified as having met the threshold, then ‘...  the chief electoral officer must send a copy of the petition and draft Bill to the select standing committee.’ 

Not ‘may’.  Not ‘whenever he or she feels like it’.  Not ‘after business groups take a legal run at the petition’ - the Act says the chief electoral officer "must" - no ifs ands or buts.

This is the same government that tore up legal union contracts in BC, the government that has shown again and again it will do whatever it bloody well pleases.  Law-schmaw.


********************************

Media Release, Friday, March 5, 2004

Why did the Chief Electoral Officer create the Conservative Party of Canada on a Sunday?


There will be a motion in Federal Court in Toronto on Monday, March 8th asking the court to order the Chief Electoral Officer to provide more information from his files concerning the creation of the Conservative Party of Canada.

The Chief Electoral Officer registered the Conservative Party of Canada as a result of a purported merger between the Progressive Conservative Party and the Canadian Alliance on Sunday, December 7th, 2003.  One consequence of the registration was to eliminate the Progressive Conservative Party.

The Honourable Sinclair Stevens, on behalf of a number of "PC Party loyalists," has launched an application to judicially review the Chief Electoral Officer's decision to register the new Conservative Party.

The Notice of Application alleges that there was no proper "merger resolution" as required by the Canada Elections Act.  It further alleges that registering the merger on the day after the vote by the Progressive Conservative Party denied natural justice to those who wished to make representations to the Chief Electoral Officer that he should not accept the purported merger.  

The Notice of Application also alleges that PC Party leader Peter MacKay usurped the role of the Management Committee of the PC Party in selecting the PC Party members to sit on the interim joint council of the new Conservative Party.  The Notice of Application further alleges that the Conservative Party of Canada did not have any structure whatsoever at the time that the Chief Electoral Officer registered it as a political party.

As part of the application for Judicial Review, the applicant requested that the Chief Electoral Officer provide all notes, memoranda, correspondence, emails, voice mails and any other documents concerning the Conservative Party of Canada that he had in his possession.

The Chief Electoral Officer provided some such documents but withheld others on the ground that they were irrelevant to the Chief Electoral Officer's decision.

The documents that were provided show that the initial presentation to the Chief Electoral Officer concerned the creation of a new party, not a merger.  To date no explanation has been given for the changed wording or of how it was arranged that the Chief Electoral Officer received the merger application on a Sunday.  There remain many other mysteries concerning the discussions between the Chief Electoral Officer and those who were pushing the merger.  The applicant submits that further information from the Chief Electoral Officer's files is required in order to properly adjudicate the application for Judicial Review.

The motion for an order that the Chief Electoral Officer be required to produce all the documents will be argued in the Federal Court in Toronto on Monday, March 8th, 2004 beginning at 9:30 a.m.


Court Hearing: 9:30 a.m., March 8, 2004
Federal Court, 8th Floor - Canada Life Building
330 University Avenue, Toronto

-30-

_________________________________

The Greening of America - still a ways to go

I received my Staples order at work in a plastic bag that was 20 times larger than necessary to hold the two mini-BIC Wite-Out® correction tape holders it contained. (People wanting to talk to me about the ecology of correction tape, please take a number and line up to the left there).

The 20-times-too-big plastic bag had a big green sticker (!!GREEN!!) on it that said:

Make a difference.

Recycle your ink and toner today.

Staples claims on the green label that they have recycled more than 50 million cartridges!  Wow! Go Staples.....  Sounds admirable doesn't it?  And 50 million sounds like a lot, doesn't it?  But, hmn… is it really?

If you figure one printer per 10 people in the U.S. - that's at least 30 million home printers, not counting business printers.  So the 50M they boast about is 1½ cartridges per personal printer recycled in----how many years was that?

Hmn….

I opened the 20-times-too-big bag and took out the 2 little packages of mini-Wite-Outs®.  They are the size of thumb-drives, but themselves are blister-packed onto a cardboard backing.  And I had ordered the "ECOsolutions" version of the BIC Wite-Out®.

Any notion that this was "green" was in shreds because the two little containers had been sent out to me in a separate order.

So first, there was the over-packaging and the huge plastic bag (petroleum products in the manufacture and now landfill issues) … then the petroleum used to drive the thing to my work site … then the staff person used to deliver it from our Receiving area to me … and soon there'd be the cleaning person required to deal with the disposal of the 20x-too-big plastic bag and the cardboard (since we don't recycle cardboard or paper at my big worksite).  BIC says "we can be part of the solution."

What a waste of energy, time, resources this one little order was. 

I'm thinking maybe I should go back to the traditional "correction tape"-just crossing stuff out with my pen.  That seems about the greenest I could go on this one.

All those print cartridges, recycled or not - another reason not to print out so much stuff in our "paperless" work environments.

Read more about BIC's "eco solutions" - http://www.bicecolutions.com - I'm dying to see how they are "greening" the ubiquitous BIC disposable shavers and lighters....

.

Chainsaws and spelling

I hate people who are picky about spelling (unless it's in a copy-editing situation).  But recently I was trying to search out a blues musician called "Chainsaw Davidson" on Facebook.

If you really want to know how bad the literacy level is in North America, maybe in the world -- search the word "chainsaw" in Facebook and start reading at about result #100.  Not that people don't know how to spell chainsaw.  It's--well, it's ...  well, here are some of the spellings I saw:

• The Texas Chainsaw Masica
• Texas Chainsaw Massacher
• Chainsaw Mascer
• Chainsaw Texas Masacre
• Texas Chainsaw Masakr
• The Chainsaw Masacure
• Texas Chainsaw Masecar
• Texas Chainsaw Massaccare
• The Chainsaw Massicure
• Texas Chainsaw Masaquer
• Texas Chainsaw Massaker
• Texas Chainsaw Masscre
• Chainsaw Massacra

The I-don't-know-how-to-spell-Texas-either list:

• Texaz Chainsaw Massacare
• Texes Chainsaw Massicar
• Texes Chainsaw Massacare
• Texes Chainsaw Masacer
• Texsas Chainsaw Massacare 

The NASCAR spellings:

• Texus Chainsaw Masicar
• Texas Chainsaw Massicar
• Texas Chainsaw Masacr 

• Texas Chainsaw Mascara  (my personal favourite)
• Chainsaw Masicka  (the gangsta rap spelling?)
• Texas Chainsaw Masscre
• Chainsaw Masscre the Beginning
• Texas Chainsaw Masequer  (Eh, garçon, it must be French!)
• Texas Chainsaw Massacrecre
• Texas Chainsaw Masakre
• Texas Chainsaw Msacre
• Chainsaw Massa  (This guy wasn't going to take any chances on 'massacre')
• Texas Chainsaw Beggining (This guy must have decided to sidestep 'massacre' altogether and just go with beginning as a keyword.  Oops.)
• Texas Chainsaw Masika  (3rd reich spelling)
• Texas Chainsaw Masakar
• Texas Chainsaw Masicer
• Chainsaw Masicare
• Texas Chainsaw Massequere
• Texas Chainsaw Masachar
• Texas Chainsaw Maccacre Texas Chainsaw Mascure

I mean there is Google for checking the spelling of things and since you're already on the internet creating your page on Fasebook, er, Facebuke, er Phacebook...

.

Sad, sad, sad...Tibetan culture struggling to survive

I went to the Tibetan Cultural Festival this afternoon. It was put on to raise money for the earthquake victims (many of them ethnic Tibetans) in Jyekundo, also known as Yushu Tibetan Autonomous Prefecture, Qinghai Province, China where a devastating magnitude 6.9 earthquake struck April 14th, 2010. 


The theme of the festival was "Celebrating Survival."

It was sad, though, to watch minuscule numbers of young Tibetans performing -- part of an increasingly desperate attempt by Tibetans to preserve their culture in the face of what often seems like insurmountable odds - and the very negative energy of the might and not entirely good will of China.

Today I saw a handful of Tibetan performers where you would much prefer there would be hundreds.

As a Canadian, I feel a poignant kinship with Tibetans. We Canadians, too, live adjacent to a huge superpower -- one that at any time could decide it wants our resources, as China did with Tibet, and could just roll over the border and help themselves.

As much as we have trouble defining just what Canadian culture is, I know that we would suffer and mourn it just as much as the Tibetans do if it was taken away from us.  (I'm not quite sure where we could possibly go to in exile to preserve it though - at least the Tibetans had India).

It is awful to watch the remnants of a once-magnificent culture being bullied out of existence.

Namaste.

................................

What to do with all those old runners

Wu, a review

WU: The Chinese Empress Who Schemed, Seduced and Murdered Her Way to Become Living God by Jonathan Clements (Gloustershire, UK: Sutton Publishing, 2007)

Here is another able woman empress, administrator, commander-in-chief (China 625-705 AD) who, because she was a woman and her history was written by her enemies, has been excoriated as a terrible terrible figure largely because a woman should not do the things she did.  Only thing is, pretty much every emperor or conqueror worth their salt in history had to do the things she did.  At least Clements does acknowledge that fairly frequently in this fascinating biography.

She rose from very humble beginnings (daughter of a lumber merchant); at 14 she became the Taizong Emperor's companion/concubine, then managed to become a concubine then wife of the Taizong's son & heir, the Gaozong Emperor - and then she went on to become the only woman who ever became a reigning empress of China.

Of course she made a few enemies along the way.

And it's like Cleopatra: you never get the real story of Cleopatra because the Romans, who hated her, wrote her history  (I can't wait until they discover the hidden scrolls on her  written by Egyptian biographers and we get the real Cleopatra).

Those fearful historians (sorry, they were all men) went to Imagination Town with the stories of her witchcraft and enchantment of Julius Caesar and Marc Antony and her legendary beauty.  The fact is, there are very few likenesses of Cleopatra, and those that exist show a plug plain woman. 

This:

 

Not this:

So the fact that  a plain-jane Cleopatra was so captivating to two of the world's most powerful men makes her ever more interesting than the whole "siren" thing. 

Wu, on the other hand, was said to have been absolutely drop-dead gorgeous.  The only thing people didn't seem to realize (except for her two emperor patrons/hubbies) was that she was also extraordinarily intellectually gifted, quite a brilliant strategist and yes, if you want to use pejorative terms, a master 'schemer.' But what great ruler is not a master schemer?  These adjectives all hit 10 on the nasty-o-metre when they are applied to women.

Yes, she also had a 'harem' of strapping young lads when she was in her 70s and single, having buried her husband.  Cudos to Clements because he writes:

"But, even if the Zhang brothers were servicing Empress Wu on a nightly basis, the censorious attitude of the courtiers betrays a remarkable double standard.  Nobody would have thought twice about a similar set-up for a male emperor in his seventies.  In fact, old emperors were encouraged to spend their time with a variety of fresh young concubines, spiritually feeding on their yin essence in order to prolong their lives."

Wu, too, was accused of using witchcraft.  Sigh, yawn, ho hum: what is with the witchcraft thing?  Is that the best shot historians throughout recorded history can come up with? Every able woman in history is accused of using witchcraft, for Goddess's sake.  Hilary Clinton's enemies probably accuse her of using witchcraft (but if anyone has need of certain elixirs in the Clinton family, it's probably not Hilary).

The only thing I didn't notice in this biography was Wu taking making any effort to support fellow women in moving the up & out of the concubines' courtyards,  no surprise in an age when women were pitted against women, deadly rivals for the favour of the men, especially emperors.  Nope, they continued to be firmly anchored below the bamboo ceiling.  But I've seen America's Top Model and The Bachelor and we've come a long way, right?

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Communi-whahh?

If we really are all born equal into this world, wouldn’t that mean we all 'own' one-seven-billionth of its resources?  Yet we don’t all seem to be getting our share of the bounty.  I just read that the president of Bolivia, Evo Morales

“soon after taking office in 2006, moved against the foreign- owned natural gas and petroleum companies to take 50% of the revenues, and to make the state-owned petroleum company the administrator and, in some cases, a co-investor. Similar deals have been made with transnational capital in the iron-mining sector, and the government is in the process of negotiating state-dominated agreements for the exploitation of Bolivia´s huge lithium deposits.

“While it is true that Morales has not launched a full assault on capital, his government along with the other New Left governments in Latin America have ended the neo-liberal era in which the International Monetary Fund and the World Bank imposed free market policies, severely curtailing social spending, and enabling transnational corporations to gain unprecedented control of the region’s nonrenewable resources. 

"Now many of these governments are using the state to exert greater control of the economy and are renegotiating the terms of investment in order to capture a greater portion of the revenue for social programs and to facilitate internal development and industrialization.”

Morales calls this 'communitarian socialism.'  A convoluted-sounding name,  but this idea of having 50% of the revenues from schemes that use or consume resources that we all own, come back to the people for social programmes sounds good to me. What about our oil and gas industry--are you getting any?

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Let's commit to Canadian workers too

I just bought a pair of running shoes and when I put them on, I found a tag on them with this message:

“Committed to American Workers.  Congratulations:  You now own a pair of shoes that were made or assembled by the New Balance team in one of our five U.S. factories. New Balance proudly relies on our manufacturing associates to produce a quarter of our North American footwear worn by consumers (approximately 7 million pairs of shoes) in the U.S. each year.  We made our first pair of running shoes in 1938, and hold the distinction as the only company that still manufactures athletic shoes in the U.S.  As a company, we are proud to invest in American workers, who provide some of the greatest working spirit, commitment to advancement and ingenuity known in the industrial world. Committed to American Workers is more than a slogan or viewpoint – it is the heart and ‘sole’ of our company.”

I admire this (except for the lame pun). I realize there are problems here – that phrase ‘our manufacturing associates,’ whatever that means; the fact that only ¼ of the shoes are made in the USA; and the questions about where the other 3/4s are made and under what kind of working conditions, yadda yadda.  But still, I wish we had initiatives like this.

It’s also appalling that NewBal is the only U.S. company left who manufactures running shoes in the U.S.   The situation is probably worse in Canada – do we have any domestic running shoe manufacturers, let alone any who manufacture on Canadian soil?

As a consumer, I would like to have things labeled so I could make the choice to support Canadian manufacturers and other Canadian workers having jobs and homes. I’m all for that. Why don’t we do it?


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The Cove

The red you see in the photograph. That's dolphin blood.

Just finished watching the  Oscar-winning docu The Cove.  

It's about a beautiful little cove in Japan into which dolphins are driven every September and either captured to become show dolphins in SeaWorld-type shows around the world, or they are slaughtered in the cove for their meat.

The film makers had to go in by stealth mode to get footage of the carnage, so well guarded and off limits has this little cove been made.

Scientists who have studied dolphins now believe that they are self-aware. Meaning, when they are driven into that cove, they know what's going to happen; they can think - they can predict things, ..... they know they and their babies are going to be slain.

Could our species be any more cruel?

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Baby time in the cyber-world

A kid on the bus. So young she can't speak intelligibly yet. She's sprawled over an iPhone with her mum. She has a still-baby set of fine down-like head curls so light and fine they float in a golden halo. She’s wearing a home-knit sweater over jeans embroidered with strawberries and flowers down the pant legs, and shiny new yellow rubber boots that are almost as high and wide as they are long.

At one point she looks up at me suddenly, obviously pleased with herself and says, “Dwhwa!” which her mother quickly translates as “Dora.” I realize the little girl is telling me the game she’s looking at with her mother on the little computer phone is Dora the Explorer.

The infant touches the screen, moves her finger and a scene on the little screen moves along at her command. She is interested but not awestruck and I realize this game is not something new to her. I don’t even have an iPhone. By eight she’ll probably have a bank card and by ten a reloadable VISA card instead of a cash allowance. She will never undergo the steep digital learning curve that my generation has faced. It will literally come out of her fingertips.

Like any toddler, she grows bored after a while and shifts around. Thank goodness at under-two she’s interested in Dora, the iPhone, but is not mesmerizingly engaged. When another little kid comes on board in a stroller, she turns her attention to the other little girl. There's still room to be intrigued and drawn into the world out there.

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