UNTAMED MIND - Synaptic Leaps

Slang: A rose by any other name......oh yeah!

2011-12-20T22:37:00.000-08:00

I got to thinking about slang and cultural expressions. We have terms that are terribly confusing to new English speakers.

Once at my children’s elementary school -- which had at that time about a sixty per cent ESL population -- puzzled new Canadian parents were told in a notice to bring a “brown bag lunch.” WTF? [And is there a Chinese or Spanish, Estonian or Tahitian expression for WTF?]

What do new English-speakers make of expressions like “cooking the books,” ... “flatliners,” ... or “bling bling?” How on earth would a new English speaker translate these into anything comprehensible?

That got me wondering what kind of things people speaking other languages devleoped slang expressions around. Ah, Google: “slang in other languages:”

Herbert Giles on the World Wide School website has a few examples of Chinese slang. Three thousand years of creative language mangling:

· A flowery bill: “A flowery bill is understood from one end of China to the other as that particular kind in which our native servants delight to indulge, namely, an account charging twice as much for everything as was really paid, and containing twice as much in quantity as was actually supplied.”

· He’s all rice-water: “He's all rice-water, i.e., gives one plenty of the water in which rice has been boiled, but none of the rice itself, is said of a man who promises much and does nothing.”

Wikipedia says that Mandarin slang is different and “consists of many slang words and insults involving sex.” Interesting. A few examples from the article on Mandarin slang:

· Bad egg: Huàidàn (壞蛋/坏蛋).

· jībā (simplified Chinese:) 鸡巴 (traditional Chinese: ) 雞巴/鷄巴, IM abbreviation: J8/G8) = cock (used as early as the Yuan Dynasty and 11 different slangs for penis and 12 for vagina in Mandarin in case you’re interested.

· qù nǐde (Chinese:) 去你的) = fuck off/shut the fuck up (milder).

And this may be useful for North American youth to incorporate into their repertoire of swears. Made in Taiwan:

· wǒ kào (我靠 or 我尻) – "Well fuck me!", "Fuck!", "Fuckin' awesome!" or "Holy shit!" (Originally from Taiwan, this expression has spread to the mainland, where it is generally not considered to be vulgar. 尻 originally meant "butt.")

And how many centuries we’ve been picking on the poor beleagured male member:

· diǎo (屌) / niǎo (simplified Chinese: 鸟; traditional: 鳥) = cock; this was an insult as long ago as the Jin Dynasty. Now it sometimes also means "fucking cool" or "fucking outrageous", thanks in large part to the pop star Jay Chou "鸟人" (bird man) sometimes has a derogative meaning as a "wretch", but also often used between close friends as affectionate appellation like "fellow."

This Wikipedia article is absolutely fascinating. Seems people ahve been saying "no shit" for eons, and telling others to eff-off since forever. Some very "questionable" words here at ChinaSmack.

But I was more interested in daily usage kind of slang, the kind we use at work -- an abbreviationary type of the vernacular. Finding that is a bit more of a challenge.

I found BuzzWhack, a dictionary of buzzwords

(buzz.whack.er (buz´wak er) n. A person who receives some degree of pleasure in bursting the bubbles of the pompous.) Very interesting and amusing and like most techno/slang, to the point.

But how to find these expressions in other languages?

The Australians are pretty good at it. Islands are a great place to grow buzz and slang, from the Australian Dictionary of Slang. There’s

bludger;
earbash;
on a good lurk;
open slather;
spit the dummy;
wanker;
the wedding tackle;
and from the Aussies we also got those old familiars: cakehole, butt, chinwag and cockeyed, crapper (which they may have borrowed from the Brits) and many more lyrical mouthfuls all in “strine” (strine = Aussie English).

That’s more like it.

The Americans seem very good at generating new words, slang, buzz words, and all sorts of language playfuls. But maybe that’s only because I watch their TV and other nations are equally as creative with their languages.

Proverbs are another way at getting how a culture thinks about things. Given the human experience is universal, you’d expect there would be crossover on proverbs in all cultures. Here’s Spanish proverbs and sure enough we find those old chestnuts:

· Don't look a gift horse in the mouth - A caballo regalado no se le miran los dientes;

· A man's home is his castle - A cada nidito le gusta su pajarito (lit.: each little bird likes his small nest; n.b.: Mexican saying)

But here’s one that’s kind of culturally specific:

· A mule and a woman must be defeated with blows from sticks - A la mula y a la mujer, a palos se ha de vencer. (n.b.: a Mexican saying; probably not the best approach with women)

Most of them were all the same old tired clichéd proverbs, but this one was new to me:

· Hunger is the best sauce - A mucha hambre, no hay pan duro (lit.: when very hungry, there is no hard/stale bread).

The Spanish had longer listings for slang than any other country listed.

The Italians have been swearing at each other for centuries. The BBC has come up with some “cool” Italian slang in English. All divided into categories. The “Pulling” list (?) has all sorts of classifications of men’s and women’s attractiveness:

Un rospo - Lit. a toad. An ugly, unattractive girl; un ciospo - an ugly, unattractive guy. Un bel tipo - a handsome guy) and 4 lyrical terms for condoms;

then Interjections from

Merda! (shit; but not as rude as in English they say) to
boh! (I don’t know and I don’t care--you shrug with this one).

Slang evidently isn’t just generated by countries and cultures; it’s also generated by being a roadie, by subcultures, dialect, sexual orientation, military special forces [recon, civvies, black bird etc.]; crimes and prisons, illicit substances, all of which you can review at http://www.peevish.co.uk/slang/links.htm

My nomination for most creative and funnest slang dictionary. Strafe’s Guide. Computer/ internet slang. Some creative self-mocking gems:

· aardvarking - v. Having sex with an ex just because both of you have nothing or no one better to do.

· rasterbator - n. 1. A compulsive computer user. 2. Someone who has an hyper-inflated opinion of their own digital work.

· etch-a-sketch - v. Trying to draw a smile on a woman's face by twiddling both of her nipples simultaneously.

· badd ass pipe - n. A high-bandwidth Internet connection. Also see riding glass, squirt the bird.

· wankware - n. X-rated software.

· hurl - v. To email only URLs with no accompanying commentary.

· Would you like fries with that? - exclm. Ironic reply to someone who asks you to do something that is a complete waste of your training, talent, education or experience. Also see I don't make the fries.

Kind of amazing how evocative and creative with language these pixel monkeys have been. And we thought they couldn’t even spell!

The ultimate compendium of worldly worldwide slang - the ForeignSlang Dictionaries online.

Language and expression, like everything else, is ultimately going to morph and change; after all, it's fúyún.

Bah humbug Dole and Bengard

2011-12-04T20:20:00.000-08:00

I was delighted to be able to buy cauliflowers this summer at the farmers’ market for an “each” price.

I hate buying a cauliflower and paying really top prices like $1.99 a pound, and then I open it up and find that fully one third of it is waste that I have to toss in the garbage …. and which bumps the price up to about $2.50 a pound. For a cauliflower!

I’ve found this with Dole caulies and Bengard caulies which are from Salinas CA. What a scam.

I wrote to the president of Safeway: I'd much rather you took your suppliers on, and got your customers a better deal on cauliflowers. Much better you spent your time on that, than coming up with stuff like that phonybaloney campaign where you make your overworked cashiers pause after they print it out the bill, find our names in that weird light blue almost unreadable ink, and say “Thank you Mrs. So & So. Have-a-good-one.”

Please.

They don’t have a clue who I am, and neither of us cares. You are not my friendly neighbourhood greengrocer: you're a great big giant multinat, so let's drop the pretense that your cashier is ever going to remember me when I go back.

I’d much rather have 75 cents a pound off my cauliflower, Mr. President. You could say: "Look here, Dole: cut some of that greenage off the caulies already. I don't want my customers paying for greenage they have to toss in the trash."

But no.

He never bothered to write back.

The First Anniversary of Mum's Death

2011-07-10T14:42:00.000-07:00

Even writing those words, “Mum’s death,” still feels weird. It’s been one year but time, somehow, does not seem to apply, at least not in linear terms. I feel as if, in some ways, I actually get sadder and feel more bereft at the loss as time goes by.

Yesterday for example. Memories arose and stabbed and jabbed at me and I started crying in the car – and then again in London Drugs – then I held onto it until I got home an could let fly. I just suddenly felt her gone-ness so keenly. It is very strange to feel orphaned at sixty-four years old.

I guess this is the stage at which men and women cleave more closely unto their spouses. But my spouse an I separate last year too, five months after she died. It was a year of losses and new things.

Losing Mum. Emotionally, as with earthquakes, it’s “the big one.”

We were so lucky. She was ninety-six. Almost a century. But there is no one else I will have known for sixty-three years in this life, ever, except my brother. But of course Mother and Sibling are such very different relationships. There is just nothing like your Mum, nothing that comes close to Mother, its positive or negative aspects.

I miss her every day.

Long, long ago, when I was a teen and interested in the concept of reincarnation, I remember we said we’d have a sign so we could let the other know if we had come back. We hadn’t talked about it for decades. Now I can’t remember what the signal was.

I do know I have been even more careful than always about not killing insects, though. Just in case. I think we thought she might come back as a butterfly, because she loved butterflies. So I have even been careful about the moths who seem to colonize my closet in this new apartment.

Even if a butterfly did land on me and wink, I’m not sure what coming back as a butterfly would signify though? That there is something more, I guess. Plus that Mum’s first-life-after was going to be pretty short.

And then what?

What is this impulse to want to know there is more?

It’s ruled human beings and the world—through religions—for eons. Is it this desperation to think “this isn’t just it” reason enough to have let ourselves be legislated, sent to wars, imprisoned, corralled, controlled from birth to death—even crucified—throughout the ages?

And why are we prepared to believe others (priests, gurus, pastors) know the answers – the “truth” – the secrets – and that old books written by other humans (bibles, gospels, sutras, scriptures) hold the key to what our consciousness is all about?

I don't now. But with my Mum dying, I guess I understand the impetus a whole lot more now.

__________________
© June 1, 2011 Margo Lamont
E: wonderwords@shaw.ca

.

The most important person alive today

2011-05-23T00:34:00.000-07:00

I was asked: who do you think is the most important person alive today?

For me, it’s His Holiness, the 14^thDalai Lama. And the reason he is the most important is the same reason that you—very likely not a Buddhist nor a Tibetan—know the name of the spiritual leader of a tiny, once-isolated nation at the top of the Himalayas, about as remote a place as there is on Earth. Because this self-effacing man came from absolute obscurity and a tiny country and, at 16 years old, had to grapple with the might of the People’s Republic of China and the evil genius of the legendary Mao Zedong, a world class geopolitical bully.

Think of any 16 year old you know and you’ll realize immediately how extraordinary was that cloistered youth who had never been out of his tiny country when, at Mao's command, he went to China in 1954 to meet The Great Helmsman……..and then went on to defy Mao and China and has done so—lovingly—for 57 years since, under the most excruciating kind of pressure and terror.

My mother went to hear His Holiness speak in about 1972 in Vancouver, and he filled a modest room at the University of British Columbia. Nowadays it’s hard to find a stadium large enough to accommodate all the people who want to hear him, probably 1% of whom are Buddhists.

So why is he so important? Because he has demonstrated that he knows how to oppose the absolute worst kind of tyranny without violence. And amazingly—with love.

An obscure “simple monk” (as he characterizes himself) has shown us how we could, if we chose, do things in peace, with what he calls “loving kindness.”

The other so-called important men of this age—who has done anything comparable? Barrack Obama? The Georges Bush? Tony Blair or David Cameron? Angela Merkel? Nicholas Sarkozy? the late Ayatollah Khomeini? Donald Trump or Bill Gates? Pope Benedict XVI or even Queen Elizabeth II?

Who has done as much as The Dalai Lama to give us a living blueprint for how hard it is, but how it is done?

One guy in a wraparound robe and a pair of sandals. He’s my nominee.

Pix from the Federation of BC Writers open mic at the AGM 2011

2011-05-14T08:01:00.001-07:00

CBC Radio supporting speeders?

2011-04-24T13:29:00.000-07:00

Many mornings on CBC Radio’s drive show, I hear warnings to drivers of police having set up radar speed traps.

Every time I hear these warnings, it jars.

Is it even ethical of the peoples’ radio to give these warnings?

I actually want the speeders to get caught.

Long ago I read that most accidents are caused by sudden, unpredictable actions - the kind of things speeders do when they are pushing you from behind or weaving in and out of traffic trying to go faster and faster.

Now, with the news that some of those people are texting while they’re at it - I want them pulled over and ticketed. I want there to be a big huge financial disincentive. I’m sick of people riding my bumper when I’m going at the speed limit or when, for safety reasons, I choose at times to drive a bit below the limit.

CBC Radio, what's your point in helping these dangerous drivers slow down just long enough to not get caught at it? Please, CBC, stop giving the show away.

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

Why "Don't Buy Gas on [date]" Days are a waste of energy

2011-04-23T14:17:00.000-07:00

Every time the price of gas goes over $1.25/L, emails full of !!!!s start circulating: "DO NOT BUY GAS ON [...fill in the date...]!!"

Let's think about why this is basically a waste of time -- and probably a big belly laugh at the water cooler for oil company execs.

Select any date and say "Don't Buy Gas" -- and what are people who participate going to do? Fill up a couple of days before or the day after. Gas companies know this. They know they just have to wait out the day - and it's only a matter of time before we have to guzzle up again. So why would the one-day boycott motivate them to lower prices?

The gas companies don't lose the revenue on these "don't fill up" days except for maybe 24 hours and they seem to be able to ride that out.

Losing revenue is the only language corporations speak. Or respond to. So what might work is a "Don't Drive Week." Imagine a week when we all stayed off the roads. (Should I add some !!!!s here?)

A week when the fillings-up simply would not happen (or the $20 top-ups that most of us who can't afford a fill-up do).

A week when we would make the sacrifice we really need to make to get the attention of both the petrol corporations and governments.

And then maybe make it a week every month. And then maybe…..

We don't need designated days when we stop filling up. We need periods when we stop driving altogether. Stop consuming the over-priced petrol. And it needs to be long enough that it has an impact on their cashflow and their just-in-time inventory process. So their tanker farms start backing up, and the ships are sitting in harbours, full of product.

One day they can manage. But seven?

That would send a meaningful message. It would also help us rehearse how we absolutely have to lower our consumption of petroleum products and learn to use the dreaded public transit and walk.

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

My Tribute to Palden Gyatso, amazing human being

2011-03-28T22:44:00.000-07:00

Tribute to Palden Gyatso

by Margo Lamont

To Palden Gyatso, a Tibetan Buddhist monk, incarcerated in 1959 and tortured for 33 years by the Government of the Peoples’ Republic of China.
Released from prison in 1992, he escaped Tibet to Dharamsala, India, home of the Tibetan Government-in-exile and His Holiness, the Dalai Lama.

Nineteen Fifty-nine Lhasa, the top of the world Tibet, a country of peace monks, nuns, lamas, nomads; the gentle people of Tibet their country occupied nine years by the Peoples’ Liberation Army of China: rapes, re-education, torture, interrogation, thramzing; slave labour, humiliation, degradation, chaos, crime; Tibetan land—redistributed; Han Chinese— moved in; pawns themselves. Tibetans second-class citizens in their own country: An anti-communist occupation uprising ensues.
You were only 26 the year the Tibetan people rose up, an ill-fated rebellion against ten years of tyranny. You were arrested and imprisoned just for participating in a protest over the annexation of your country by a country three hundred times its size. That same year, 1959, HH The Dalai Lama escaped Tibet to exile in India.
We bopped in bobby sox on Dick Clark’s American Bandstand ...while you were enduring the Great Proletarian Cultural Revolution... And what you called Tibet’s “deepest hell,” We rocked around the clock with Bill Halley & the Comets ...while Buddhist sacred texts were used as toilet paper, while you were woken in the middle of the night, slapped and kicked by guards, while you endured the sick cold of leg irons in Tibetan winters, the blisters on your shins, the chafe and cruel pain. And all over the planet streams still danced downhill over river-rounded rocks We gorged on years of Christmas groaning boards, our tables laden with turkey and stuffing, vegetables, mashed and roasted potatoes, gravy, cranberry jelly, and four desserts, ... while you used your coveted spoon on the bowl of watery soup you were fed only twice a day; …while you lay bruised and bleeding on the flat bare board that was your bed... And the ocean tides rolled over undulating kelp beds, the waves talking the rocks as they hit the shore We swooned over Elvis Presley, jived in crinolines and penny loafers ...while you were imprisoned and tortured for thirty-three years: hand cuffs, thumb cuffs, serrated knives, hooked knives, electric cattle prods, Electric shock guns (70,000 volts); scalding tea emptied on your arm by sadist guards. And all the while the tides went in and out relentlessly while we lived our tiny lives and you endured yours	Richard Nixon & Nikita Kruschev have their famous “kitchen debate.” Mao Zedong declares himself China’s “Great Helmsman.” Che Guevara and Fidel Castro take over Cuba. Charles De Gaulle is president in France. Vatican II is announced. Disney’s *Sleeping Beauty* is released, the 16^th animated film ever. Two monkeys return from space. Canadian Government cancels the CF105 Arrow program. Hawaii becomes the 50^th U.S. state. First picture of Earth from space. The brand new St. Lawrence Seaway opens. First Americans are killed in action in Vietnam. Bonanza and The Twilight Zone begin. Ben-Hur, the first “Technicolor” movie opens. First known HIV death (in the Congo). The Caspian Tiger goes extinct in Iran. Pantyhose is introduced. Magic Johnson, Kevin Spacey, and the Barbie Doll are born; Buddy Holly and the Big Bopper died. My parents got divorced.
1969: You are 36. You have been in Chinese prison for 10 years. A third of your life:
Woodstock: we bought bangles and bracelets, sang about freedom, gave the Fish Cheer, felt free, and unbound ...while you were tied with your hands behind your back, and suspended from the ceiling; interrogated I went to Cape Breton; A new sun rose over the Rawdin Hills and the Moon shone down on the sea, slicing a silver path through modest waves. Rain fell on the misty lakes of Bras D’Or.	Woodstock. The Beatles give their last public performance. The final episode of *Star Trek* the original series. First Gap store opens. The Boeing 747 makes its maiden flight. UNIX is invented. John Lennon records Give Peace a Chance. He does a Bed-In in Montreal. In Prague’s Wenceslas Square, a student, Jan Palach, sets himself on fire to protest the Soviet invasion of Czechoslovakia. In the same year, Neil Armstrong walks on the Moon – the Mai Lai Massacre – Chappaquiddick -- the Chicago 8 trial. The first Battlestar Galactica series concludes. Diddy is born and Ho Chi Minh dies. Sharon Tate is murdered and Dwight Eisenhower and an era pass away.

1979: You’ve been in jail for 20 years for your religious beliefs. You’re 46, it’s been almost half your life:

We drank B52s and boogied the night away

in stiletos at Studio 54 and Régine’s,

...while you wore shackles
all day as you toiled

then slept in them
all night.

The mountains bore their snowstorms
and avalanches...the Sun eclipsed; ; hurricanes blew; Summers passed,

Leaves fell. Autumns came,

And winters: snow fell

softly on the Drepung Monastery

near Lhasa, your home

before you were incarcerated

We went to spas, cruised on ships, were pampered and overstuffed,
lay luxuriously in hot tubs and jacuzzis

...while you were squatting on a plastic bucket for a latrine, your legs in shackles. You needed people to help you walk to the bucket; you were unable to wipe yourself after defecation

I drove back home to BC

Water fell over Niagara Falls in

a thundering cacophony

Horses galloped over the

grassy plains of Saskatchewan

Loons called out over pristine
Canadian lakes, skies electric blue;

Bears dipped into mountain
streams for salmon feasts

Jimmy Carter is president of the U.S. The Iranian revolution occurs.

Voyager 1 passes Jupiter.

Three Mile Island melts down.

Margaret Thatcher rules Britannia.

The Unabomber.

Smallpox is declared eradicated.

The USSR invades Afghanistan.

The McDonald’s “Happy Meal” is launched …

Nobel Peace Prize to Mother Theresa.

Snow falls for 30 minutes in the Sahara Desert.

Heath Ledger is born; Nelson Rockefeller; Josef Mengele and “Mr. Ed” the talking horse all die.

1989: You are 56 years old. You’ve been in prison for 30 years — more than half your life.
We went on shopping trips. We shopped in Paris, London and L.A. We bought and bought and bought -- at Holt Renfrew, Tiffany’s and Harrod’s, WalMart, PriceClub, SuperStore & SaveOn…. ...while you spent these years shivering in one outfit of rags: locked away, interrogated with electric prods, …while you were forced to attend thamzings* after a full day’s work— twelve hour berating sessions where you and your fellow prisoners had to denounce and beat each other or be denounced and beaten yourselves – and always, always facing the prospect of execution Killer whales migrated up the BC coast, sounding and spouting; Lazy days in the Strait of Georgia	George Bush Sr. is president in the U.S. The Tiananmen Square massacre occurs – and the Eastern Bloc revolutions of ’89. Ted Bundy is fried in Florida. Seinfeld premiers. Sim City is released. Motorola’s cell phone and GameBoy are introduced. The Exxon Valdez; An Iranian iman declares a fatwa against Salmon Rushdie. Solidarity wins Poland. Burmese dissident, Aung San Suu Kyi, placed under house arrest. Voyager 2 passes Neptune and apartheid is being dismantled. Taylor Swift is born. Emperor Hirohito, Ayatollah Khomeini and Bette Davis die. Nicolae Ceausescu is executed in Romania, Huey P. Newton, founder of the Black Panther Party, is murdered in Oakland.
1992: The year you were released after 33 years at the mercy of the Chinese Government. You were 59 years old.
While you were imprisoned the sun rose, resplendent , ten thousand, nine hundred and fifty times And it fell into the sea deliriously as many times; and then once more again	George Bush Jr. is president of the U.S. Boris Yeltsin in the USSR. The Soviet Union falls … Charles & Di separate. Japan apologizes for forcing Korean women into sexual slavery in WW2. The Bosnian War. The Rodney King riots. X-Files’ pilot episode. Jay Leno takes over the *Tonight Show. Dr Dre invents gangsta rap. Dan Quayle misspells potato.* Albert Pierrepoint, who hung 608 people as Britain’s Chief Executioner, himself expires.
Palden Gyatso, you went to prison and torture for three decades Because you stood up for your beliefs. Yet fifty years later sixty per cent of us cannot be bothered to vote. While your life was brutality and torture, ours went on; While horror was visited upon a trapped and powerless you, we went about our lives, asleep and unaware.
And what if we had known -- would we have done anything? Was it ignorant Dark Ages behaviour? Was it the communists, the Chinese? Could it ever happen here? Is that the price of revolution or reform? And now, half a century later - is that kind of confinement and torture of our fellow man a thing of the past? Has anything changed? -- Have we evolved? Is it over? Is democracy and dissidence alive and well?
2002: Maher Arar, Canadian citizen 2009: Burma’s Aung San Suu Kyi arrested once again, imprisoned under “house arrest”
And what are we doing now …are we asleep or unaware, …or still too busy shopping and dancing?
2009: Canada’s Afghanistan torture scandal
Is this the Canada we want us to be? We can’t say it’s somewhere else anymore We know it’s going on… But. what are we to do? And what can we be expected to do? What happens after the knowing?
2010: Aung San Suu Kyi finally released after house arrest in Burma for almost 15 of the 21 years from July 1989 until November 2010

And 2010...2011... Lest We Forget:

Claudina Velásquez … Guatemala

Johan Teterissa … Idonesia

Ronak Safarzaden... Islamic Republic of Iran

The Deep Sea Settlement people … Kenya

Thongpaseuth Keuakoun, Sen-Aloun Phengpanh, Bouavanh Chanmanivong, Keochay & Khampouvieng Sisaath … Laos

The Me’phaa Indigenous People’s Organization … Mexico

Chekib El-Khiari … Morocco

The Women’s Rehabilitation Centre … Nepal

Patrick Okoroafor … Nigeria

MasoodJanjua and Faisal Faraz … Pakistan

Comunidad Indigena Yakye Axa and Communidad Sawhoyamaxa Indigenous People … Paraguay

Ibragim Gazdiev … Ingushetia

Frances-Xavier Byuma … Rwanda

Petrija Piljević … Serbia

Park Rae-gun … Republic of Korea

Maher Ibrahim and Tarek Ghorani … Syria

Ferhat Gerçek … Turkey

Aleksandr Rafalsky … Ukraine

Troy Anthony Davis … USA

Isroil Kholdorov …Uzbekistan

Le Thi Cong Xhan … Viet Nam

WOZA, Women of Zimbabwe Arise … Zimbabwe

Djameleddine Fahassi … Algeria

Eynulla Fatullayev … Azerbaijan

Khu Bedu, Khun Kawrio and Khun Dee De … Myanmar

Huseyin Celil …People’s Republic of China

Nurmemet Yasin … People’s Republic of China

The Peace Community of San José de Apartadó … Colombia

Mohamed El Sharkawi … Egypt

Ernestia & Erlinda Serrano Cruz …El Salvador

The beat goes on.

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

Book: Palden Gyatso's account of those 33 years: Fire
Under the Snow (Random House, 1998).
Film: http://www.fireunderthesnow.com/site2009/

Jesus would approve

2010-12-24T11:18:00.000-08:00

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

2010-12-06T18:57:00.000-08:00

Can't say I saw Carole James's resignation coming. But now that she's done it, based on what little I know about her and having been in the same room while she spoke on only one occasion, I'm not totally surprised. I think we are seeing a woman of principle in action. Here she is pulling a 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 and are held resolutely by people whom (you discover when you inquire) 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 phenom. 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 wasn't able 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 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 was not able to counter that initial KO punch no matter what he did. He could have walked on 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? 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 leaders have in 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. 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 - 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 appear as if they are 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 (of which I am one) back to work during the 2004 job action. Jenny seems to be woman of principle as well. I am 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......

2010-11-28T09:40:00.000-08:00

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…

2010-09-27T18:45:00.001-07:00

· 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

2010-09-27T18:20:00.000-07:00

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

2010-08-22T12:43:00.000-07:00

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

2010-07-21T12:04:00.000-07:00

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

2010-07-21T00:15:00.000-07:00

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

2010-07-11T22:20:00.000-07:00

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

2010-04-24T11:40:00.000-07:00

Wu, a review

2010-04-11T14:18:00.000-07:00

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?

2010-04-11T10:16:00.000-07:00

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

2010-04-07T23:38:00.000-07:00

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

2010-04-03T03:50:00.000-07:00

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

2010-03-22T20:33:00.000-07:00

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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Cows are cool...

2009-11-28T11:18:00.001-08:00

http://www.cowsarecool.com/cows.asp

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Subaru Sumos

2008-05-20T22:53:00.000-07:00

I don't get it. I just watched a TV commercial for Subaru cars featuring half a dozen really really really big sumo wrestlers. They are only wearing big banana hammocks, thong-style, so that their backsides are hanging out. Nothing on top of course.

Now if women were to be featured in an ad on television wearing a thong and bare breasts, with their backsides hanging out ...... well........ look at the huuuuuuuge collective continental conniption that took place when Janet Jackson's nipple popped out by accident. Look at the tsunami of media coverage when Britney displayed her, uh, underpantless self. Massive public commentary.

Yet there's nary a word about these almost-naked enormous Japanese men.

I remember hearing men HOWLING when it was proposed where I live that women be allowed to go about without a top on, the way men are allowed to. Their biggest argument against was that they might be exposed (no pun intended) to women with big ugly floppy breasts.

How is it any more adorable to watch these massively overweight Japanese dudes in their odd little thong thingies?

You know what? I think there are a lot of men who have a monumental fat phobia, and especially a gnarling fear of big fat swinging pendulous breasts on women.

I wonder why, what's at the root of that?

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It's been a while

2007-10-13T19:26:00.001-07:00

I'm new to this, and seem to have lost the post I just wrote. I was talking about how I had recently sent a piece I wrote out to six people for feedback and what an interesting exercise that had turned out to be. I saw the possibilities in that process for a continually-unfolding story, one that you could actually use a blog for. You revise the story based on the feedback. They send feedback and you revise it - repost it - get more comments - revise, repost -- and it becomes an organically unfolding piece, never really finished.

Nothing wrong with that.

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*Synaptic piggyback (a watered down mind**)

2006-01-22T00:00:00.000-08:00

How intimidating is this? A big, blank, lavender-coloured space waiting for me.

The universe of Internet stretched out before me. Potential 6.5 billion readers. Oy.

Less the ones who are infants and toddlers, people who don't read English, people who don't read, the billions glued to their TV sets, people busy in the bedroom, and the billions that won't be the slightest bit interested anyway.

Whew. We're down to a manageable three very loyal folk who will come here at least once, at my bidding.
(You know who you are.)

Today's big news: We turned on cable TV again, having had a vacation from it, an interregnum, a leave-of-absence, a furlong, for three years.

By mistake we ordered the package with 100 channels. And no remote.
Holy Mindmelter.

If you have not watched TV commercials for a couple of years, it is hard to believe how moronic and juvenile they are.

Sometimes they are visually interesting - some good CGI. But, on the whole - pathetique, mes cheres.

And the repetition. Oy.

If you haven't done it, you owe it to your mind to shut the cable off for a few years, and clean it out (your mind) - kind of like One Second Plumber for your basal ganglia.

And you really do want to make sure your basil ganglia are clean, baby!
-- George Costanza

Now, in the name of Office CTRL/ALT/DEL -- go forth and yank your Cable cables out of the wall.

What remains of your mind will thank you for it. And your waistline. No more tempting, no mo' by poptarts and pizza, chocolate bars and fries and cereals and little white fattening pastry ball guys wearing chefs' hats & being Impossibly Cute, and dancing and shimmying Skittles.

You be free, fellow global villagers. Free to be You & Me.

Aside: How old do you think Marlo Thomas is by now anyway? Do you think her face has fallen off? Remember all that plastic surgery and then the ten pounds of pancake makeup she had - and those eyelashes and the eyeliner? She'd bat the lashes and a butterfly would croak in Tokyo and another hurricane start up in Florida. Marlo's eyelashes may actually have been the source of Katrina.

At the End of the Day: May we now terminate the expression At the End of the Day? Terminate in the good ol' USSR Cold War sense of the word.

I've heard George Bush say it. At the End of the Day ... I heard a guy running for mayor say it four times in a 10 minute interview. It's everywhere, all the time.

When At the End of the Day inherited the throne of The Bottom Line, at first I was happy. I was so glad to see The Bottom Line bottoming out that I didn't notice At the End of the Day creeping up like some sleeper finalist on American Idol, from the Irritating Things People Say list to take its place as the No. 1 Most-Overused Annoying Expression in the Entire World.

I wish we could have an Expressions Idol where we could vote these hackneyed old buzzwords out of the language. The French are trés smart that way; they have a government commission to retain control of their language.

The first thing, the very first thing, I will do when I become Empress of Canada, is make saying At the End of the Day illegal, punishable by a week in Ottawa in mid-August.

The very first thing. I won't wait until the end of the day.

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