Judge me by the company I keep...

I've just scanned through the Vancouver Police's list of "Wanted" and "Most Wanted" suspects, and fondly recognized no less than five mug-shot individuals (more than double last month's total of two!), wanted for theft and assault, theft and assault times two, drug code violations and breach of probation, possession of stolen property, and "theft, breaking and entering, theft, and fraud," respectively.

Sadly, no one I know has yet to make the elite "Most Wanted" list, which ranks only ten individuals at a time.

Also of interest...there is a wanted person listed solely by the name "Pringle." No crimes or bodily descriptions are mentioned. I think someone at the police station is hungry.

Feeling special because you recognize someone on the Most Wanted list is kind of like feeling special because you used to go to elementary school with a celebrity - you become vicariously special and celebritized because of that person - or in this case, vicariously sad. And you, too, could feel vicariously sad! Check out if you know any wanted criminals today!

Christmastime

American Thanksgiving Weekend has come and gone and so, officially the Christmas season is upon us.

This time of year is many things...a consumerist feeding frenzy which forms the tennant of the Western economy, a perversion of various pagan rituals in support of the Catholic church, an opportunity for kitty cats, everywhere, to eat and then vomit up brightly coloured tinsel. In brings about many a warm-fuzzy feeling inside...be it love, or anaphylactic shock brought on my nut-laden fruitcake.

But I like to see Christmas time as an opportunity to take stock of your life. The holiday season, for most of us, brings all the things we love and hate about ourselves and those closest to us into sharp focus, so it’s worth taking note - all the better to appreciate the good things, and revel against the bad.

If, for example, you are currently a student, and consequently brain-deep in a cesspool of papers and exams, then take note. You are an unhappy person. Your life, in general, resembles the sort of scum one finds at the bottom of a wind-swept marshland, and you’d probably rather be licking toilets for a living than writing one more properly formatted footnote. But that’s your life.

Or maybe you’re bogged down by December’s diverse obligatory social gatherings - including family gatherings, which have been known to render adults of otherwise sound mind and judgment into huddled masses of unravelling rage and despair. Unreasonable expectations abound, there’s not enough money or time to appease everyone you care about, and of course there’s that sickening feeling, deep within your gut, knowing that in two week’s time you’re going to come face to face with your much-loathed, commandeering, passive aggressive mother-in-law, Pam.

I don’t have a mother-in-law named Pam - I don’t have a mother-in-law at all. I do have a grandmother who once hit me with a soggy rolled up newspaper and then publicly announced she was disowning me (Christmas 2007), and a stepfather who beat another family over the head with a lead pipe...but no matter.

The point is, take stock. Recognize that certain circumstances are likely to make anyone miserable. And if, like me, you find yourself all by yourself this Christmas season, dropped out of university without even a basic bachelor’s degree, isolated and out of touch with many of your friends, and separated from your nearest relative by a staggering mountain range and about a thousand miles...rejoice.

My Christmas plans include sitting alone, in my apartment, obsessively crocheting tiny animals composed of yarn according to the Japanese art of amigurumi, and watching reruns of Buffy the Vampire Slayer, and yes, you can think that I’m sad, but honestly, I’ve never been happier.

In support of my argument...

It’s a seal...or baby walrus, or maybe a fish of some sort...and a turtle!

The Legality of Polygamy, and why it really doesn't matter

Confused? Read this first!

The problem isn’t polygamy. The problem is abusive religious institutions - a problem which our laws are currently ill equipped to face.

Which is why we need new laws. BC judges and political leaders, it’s time to step up to the plate.

Going after religious organizations isn’t an act which will win many friends - most people are opposed to the concept of judges and politicians telling them how to practice their individual faith. If we go after fundamentalist sects of polygamous Mormons, who’s next? Pentecostals and Catholics? Amish people, and Hasidic Jews?

However, even the strongest dissidents can agree that, in extremist religious sects like the polygamous community of Bountiful, BC, something is very wrong. Girls are groomed for sexual contact by elders from an early age. Boys are driven out. Women are told - and believe - that opposing the will of church elders is tantamount to opposing the will of God. And if young girls and women refuse to marry, or decide to leave, they lose absolutely everything - their entire community, family, and their chance at religious salvation - which they’ve been taught to believe is the most valuable thing a person can possess.

So we have to ask...in such a context, can anyone give informed consent to marry? And in doing so, does it really matter if you’re becoming a person’s one-and-only, or their sixteenth wife?

Polygamy is a problematic practice, because it is often coupled with abusive communities and scary religious practices. But it in itself is not the problem. Consenting and competent adults can, and likely do, make up their own minds whether they want to share their lives and beds with however many people they choose. One wife? Two? One husband, or six? One wife, one husband, and a transgendered person named Phil? I really don’t care, nor do I want to know the details.

We can’t really know if polygamous marriage is ever a good thing, because the practice is currently outlawed. Functional and competent polygamous couples (er, threesomes? sextuples?), and other non-traditional marriages, are likely to shy away from the limelight, with good reason...the current court cases are proof that the government is not opposed to prosecuting polygamists using existing archaic laws.

Of course they’re only pressing charges against polygamy in order to address the polygamist community’s religious practices...which are abusive and should be illegal, but have little to do with polygamy.

Teaching children that you are a spokesperson for God, and then using that power to engage in sexual relationships with them (whether they are of a consenting age or not) is an obvious and blatant abuse of power. Teaching children that they will lose their entire family, community and salvation if they refuse to consent to a potentially abusive marriage is wrong. Teaching children that they will burn in the boiling lava of Hades for all of eternity if they refuse to believe a very specific religious doctrine, and then using that religious doctrine to compel them to marry, have sex, have children, or make any decision at all...it’s abusive, and it’s wrong.

That last example doesn’t come from the Mormons, who don’t actually believe in Hell, which is nice.

The point being, someone needs to address these abuses of power, in the same way we’ve addressed other abuses of power in the past. Tackling child abuse wasn’t easy, but it was necessary, and we’re all glad that beating your children unconscious is no longer viewed as acceptable parenting. In fact, it’s illegal. Raping your wife is no longer legal. Whipping your wife, servants, and children...no longer legal. Abusing children, spouses, and elders, or failing to report a suspected case of abuse? Illegal.

All with very good reason.

It’s time for our definition of abuse to include abuses of religious power. It’s time to address such issues with enforceable laws, and using those laws to prosecute the leaders of Bountiful.

And then maybe then we could address other forms of abusive religious doctrinarian....

...Wake up, Ivy. This is the real world, and it’s very likely that no justice will arrive for anyone involved in this case, ever. And also, I’m a very jaded person, and its rainy outside, I’m feeling pretty disenfranchised by the existing politico/legal structure at work and powers-that-be....but even so, it’s not reason enough to stop trying.

Life as a Rock in a Lake

I believe that, in the natural state of the world, human beings are intrinsically selfish. We live our lives as a series of expanding rings and pay the greatest attention to the innermost - ourselves, then our immediate family, then our extended family and friends, our neighbours, our community, our world. In the far reaches lie the people and things with which of which we have little experience or knowledge. It’s not that we don’t care - it’s that we haven’t the energy or interest to look into those things and decide whether we care or not.

In the natural order of things, we feed ourselves so we have energy to feed our young, and once our young are fed, we start to think about the greater world, and whether their young have all been fed. And too often, the inner circles consume so much of our lives that we forget that the wider world exists - and understandably so. It’s a poor parent who neglects their own children to care for an old man they’ve never met in Nepal. And let’s remember our basic airline safety training - apply your own air-mask before applying the air-mask of your dependent child, lest you both pass out from being oxygen deprived in a depressurized cabin and all hope is lost. Even though the bag may not inflate, oxygen is flowing through the mask.

Sadness, despair, and frustration occur when we have a chance to observe the larger world, and the mammoth inequities that exist. So much of the world is given to so little of its people. Abject poverty and neglect abound, everywhere. We have too much, and we save so little - of our resources, thoughts, and energy - for the wider circles far away from ourselves.

And while I have a great many issues with most of the many religions that abound, a few very nice themes thread through them all. It’s against human nature, so it never will work - just like abstinence based sex-ed, which has failed to teach teenagers what thousands of years of evolution has not - but think, as monks, rabbis, and preachers have before: wouldn’t the world be a beautiful place if we did things backwards - starting on the outside and working our way in, and feeding the neighbour’s children before our own?

Canada's sticky past...sadly, nothing to do with Maple Syrup

Today is Canada Day but, eternally stuck in the past, I must recall what happened four days ago - last Sunday. (OR, at least, this chronology would make sense, since I wrote this on Canada Day, four days ago...argh...still no internet at home, kids, bear with me and my wonky timeline.)

Drawn in like moths to a flaming police cruiser, thousands of spectators came in from the suburbs of Toronto to see what all this protesting was about - among them my brother, a former foot soldier turned women’s major from York University.

The massive international attention of the G20 summit meant that anyone with any sort of cause was out, armed with signs and rhyming slogans. A group of Hasidic Jews protested Israel. Another group of Hasidic Jews protested the Hasidic Jews protesting Israel. Yiddish insults were vaulted back and forth. And the police, seemingly absent the day before and only too happy to sacrifice shop windows and vehicles to angry mobs, were suddenly everywhere with militant force.

Black-clad in riot gear, a line of police officers halted the progression of protesters. The protesters protested, as protesters do. But then another flank of officers approached from behind the group, blocking them in, and leaving the protesters and spectators with nowhere to go. My mother, hearing this, thought of the Tiananmen square massacre - the news of which ruined her birthday some 20 years ago.

Caught in between in an ever-shrinking space, the civilians banded together in fear and confusion. Groups like this existed throughout the city, bordered in on all sides, held for hours in the rain. Some hoped to be arrested, fearing tear gas. Plain clothed officers roamed the city, grabbing civilians and throwing them into vans, breaking into houses to arrested suspected protesters and those with affiliations with groups deemed dangerous. Suspects, many of whom were simply outside on their way to work, were held without charge for days at a time.

My brother saved a boy from being trampled by charging officers on horseback. He said his legs hurt, from all the running. And surrounded by riot gear, he and the civilians he was trapped with decided, together, to sing ‘O Canada.’

I can’t say I would have joined in.

People, no doubt, were thinking about the Canada that used to be progressive in civil liberties; the Canada which, while fiscally conservative, was rated consistently as one of the most livable and socially responsible countries in the world, where human rights and human dignity were valued in a way which other countries admired and wished to emulate. They were thinking of the Canada of Trudeau, of universal healthcare, of Peace Keepers and bilingualism and care for ailing brethren.

Well, even the USA has universal healthcare, now, and Canada’s fallen behind Scandinavian competitors of many, if not most, of the factors which used to make it a symbol of democracy and human rights. Our minority government is the most conservative in decades, and, to add insult to injury, our monarch, the Queen of England, has decided to visit to remind us all that we’re still under British Empirical Rule...an indignity that India sloughed off decades ago.

Child soldiers being tortured in Guantanamo Bay, despite courts telling our Prime Minister that it is against Canadian and International Law...Internationally praised safe-injection sites universally deemed a medical and fiscal success, which the federal government keeps trying, in increasingly convoluted ways, to shut down...Children being trampled by marauding police, who apparently have limitless power and no recourse...and the Queen of England, spending Canadian tax dollars to shovel piles of dirt on pre-planted trees.

That’s Canada, to me. Canada, true North, great white, a rapidly disappearing image of its former self, like a snowman too late in the spring. That’s my home and native land. Though, it should be noted, that several impoverished aboriginal women always sing the lyrics to this hymn as ‘Home and White-man’s land,’ speaking to the realities of Canada's not-so-glorious past, continued on today.

Happy Canada Day, chums.

Burn, Baby, Burn

Yesterday, a woman screamed at me and called me various pejorative terms, bitch and cunt among them. She then promised that she would ‘get’ me outside of the centre, augmenting the statement later to say that she would gather a group of friends to beat me to death. At this point, she began punching the piano where she sat, and then grabbed a closed can of Pepsi and punched it into the wood, causing a minor explosion and spraying pop into my eyes.

My crime? I’m not really sure. I like this woman, and she’d been giving me high-fives throughout the afternoon. We played bingo together. Also, she claimed that I was her daughter. She was clearly upset about something, though.

After the scary woman left my workplace and I’d washed the toxic corn syrup from my eyes, I watched the news coverage of the G20 summit, and the protests today in Toronto - the most violent in Canada’s history.

Amidst the pictures of bleeding civilians and riot police beating batons, various officials from all levels of government have condemned the non-peaceful protests. A police chief used the word ‘wanton.’ Certainly, angry. The smashed storefronts and torched police cruisers speak for themselves.

Now...I work with the homeless and don’t eat meat. I like to think that I’m a good person. And I know firsthand how scary it can be when things get violent. Seriously...corn syrup, sprayed in my eyes. Obviously, there were many victims of those protests - people who were scared, people whose property was damaged, and people who were hurt.

But...violence can have meaning. Violence is powerful. Violence is employed, all the time, by the powers-that-be, and violence of disenfranchised passion for change, when its directed exclusively at inanimate objects...I can respect that, kind of.

The targeting of storefronts and empty cars full of police ammunition - it’s not exactly the same as punching a kitten, you know? I express outrage all the time - there is so much that happens, every day, that makes me furious. And if I thought it could actually change things, and make the world a better place, or at least communicate clearly how fucked up things are - I might throw a rock through a storefront or two. And I have to admit it’s a fantasy of mine to throw a molotov cocktail into a police car (it would be empty, though. Seriously.)

Unemployed kids standing up against the man? Taking to the streets? Screaming that this is THEIR city and country, that it belongs to them, not corporations and conservative minorities, and that military police in terrifying riot gear will not intimidate them...these things bring me great happiness, on the inside.

I’m way too chickenshit to do any of these things myself...and I’m not an anarchist, I don’t think. I believe in trying to find solutions within the current system whenever possible. But the system is, in so many ways, fundamentally broken. And the willingness of downtrodden citizens to scream and smash and say that we will not tolerate the intolerable...it’s the founding principal of democracy. It’s enough to make me proud to be Canadian.

Scream on, angry mob. May the flame of your passion burn the vehicles of oppressive authority, quite literally. I didn’t hear any reports of police injuries, today...but you, the mob, will be hurt. And arrested. And subject to much ridicule, and probably called a bunch of whiny spoiled brats (by baby boomers with very selective memory). You’ll bear the brunt of it all, because the system is set up that way, and you are all small and squishable and the big guys always win.

It’s wrong to hurt people. It’s wrong to cause pain. But sometimes, it’s the right thing to scream.

When I Rule The World...

...Plastics will be banned, outside of electronic and medical use (with appropriate review for situations in which human lives are fundamentally improved through the use of plastics and there is a consumer and manufacturer commitment to ensure that all plastics are recycled and appropriately disposed-of).

...Shampooing of hair will be optional.

...Transit will be free (and collectively paid for through taxation of members of the communities the transit system serves).

...Tuition will be abolished - currently, university tuition only makes up 25% of schooling costs anyways (donors and government pay 75% of schooling costs), but the continued and rising existence of tuition makes even minimally-adequate education prohibitively expensive for the vast majority of young adults. Governments and donors need to step up, just a little, and in doing so education becomes universally accessible, and young adults and their families are no longer strapped with massive debt in an effort to make themselves more employable and thus better for the economy. Student loans disbanded. Economy saved. Problem solved.

...Oil spills will probably still happen, sometimes, but they will hopefully happen much less,  and the human toll on the oceans will be lessened through increase transit use, decreased personal car use, and the abolishing of all but essential plastics.

...Manufacturers whose products result in negative impacts will be fairly and equitably charged for the toll of said impacts, and any resulting increases in cost should be passed down to the consumers.

For example, say you chew gum, and your gum ends up on the sidewalks of my city, and my city does not like having gum on its sidewalks so it hires street cleaners (preferably through a supported-work program designed to rehabilitate adults who have been chronically underemployed). The city could then very justifiably bill the gum manufacturer (say, Trident) for the cost of the street cleaners as it relates to cleaning up gum.

School boards whose janitors find themselves spending 25% of their time knifing gum off the underside of desks could charge gum manufacturers 25% of their janitorial budget, too. Everyone can get in on the fun.

As a consequence of these ‘billings,’ Trident is forced to pay out a few million dollars, and in order to maintain profits, Trident passes the buck on to you, the consumer. So the cost of the average pack of gum goes up, and you, the consumer, may decide to chew less gum, which means less cleaning up for the city and the schools. Or Trident could theoretically try to educate consumers about proper gum disposal, in order to limit future cleaning bills. It’s really up to them, and to you.

But the point is that the actions of the consumers and the manufacturers DO have a cost, in the form of litter, or pollution, or lung disease...and these costs are generally swallowed by the very accommodating public and governments. But if smoker’s cigarette butts are filling up Vancouver’s gutters, then the manufactures, and the smokers, are the logical people to pay for the clean-up. The same goes for medical costs related to first and second hand smoke, which the province could theoretically then bill to the cigarette manufacturers.

As a result, it may not be financially viable to run a cigarette company, when you actually have to pay all the costs, or to operate a coal mine, or to drill for oil off the Coast of Mexico. And if you stick your chewing gum on my sidewalk and I step in your gum, and it takes me twenty-five minutes to extricate your gum from my shoe, and even now my shoe still seems to stick a little as I walk...Pay.

Anthony the Whale and Other Stories

On Wednesday, a grey whale swam into the crowded waters of False Creek - the shallow, saltwater centre on my city, which I cross under and over an average of twice a day, coming to and from work downtown.

Like most Vancouverites, I was in awe. I wished desperately to leave work to go see. When the whale was spotted again, the next morning, I spread the word - we have a second chance! We must go look for Anthony! (By this point, my coworkers and I had gotten into a heated debate over the name of Mr. Grey Whale, who everyone agreed was a ‘he.’ Our cook suggested ‘Kirk.’ I suggested ‘Anthony.’ Naturally, as this is my blog, I will record my pick as victorious.)

Anthony the Whale, while a giant and amazing creature, had a visible spine along his rising hump, and all thoughts, beyond ‘Oh my god! A whale! How cool!’ have been of his sad and sobering story. Five grey whales have washed up along Washington State and Vancouver Island Coasts, while starving brethren like Anthony go far, far off course, looking for food, desperately hungry.

The grey whales are starving. And that is the story, and that is the reason why Anthony came to visit in the shallow waters of False Creek.

Their summer feeding grounds are in the Bering Sea, but winters are spent near Mexico, meaning the average grey whale covers half of the span of the earth within a single year, losing weight and energy along the way, finally succumbing to the forces of starvation on their northward journey, back towards the fertile Arctic feeding grounds.

When the previous summer has been a poor feeding season with limited krill, the following spring will tell the tale, in the form of washed up bodies and beachings as the whales attempt to feed in dangerous shallow waters, sifting sand and mud through their baleen in an attempt to find anything of sustenance.

I complained to coworkers, longing to gaze at the emaciated creature, “But I’ve never seen a whale!” On second thought, this isn’t actually true. I’ve seen killer whales in captivity - though I don’t know especially where. I’ve seen belugas, in Chicago and Vancouver aquariums. I’ve even seen narwhales, with their unicorn-like tusks, in the Chicago Aquarium. (Darwin thought these tusks to be secondary sex characteristics, designed solely for the attraction of females, who rarely have tusks of their own. Supporting this theory, male narwhals have been known to sword-fight with their tusks to attract some bussom-bodied young she-nar, although they’re also used for more boring tasks, like breaking ice. Apparently phallic symbols aren’t unique to man.)

The point that I was trying to make is that, yes, I’ve seen whales, and I’ve seen many, many dolphins - from Canada’s Wonderland to Niagara Falls and every shoddy aquarium in between. But I’ve never seen a whale outside an encased glass container, and I’ve never such creatures in the wild.

And maybe that is a point which deserves more attention than Anthony the Whale, languishing hungrily some five hundred feet from my workplace.

I’ve come to realize, over the past twenty years, but mostly the past two hours, that keeping dolphins and whales in captivity is horribly, horribly wrong. I came to this conclusion after watching “The Cove,” which you should watch if you haven’t. It’s not the uplifting sort of thing that a person should be watching on a sunny Saturday afternoon, but it entails an uplifting message of a story being uncovered, despite massive opposition, and that story being told...even if that story is the sort of thing which turns your stomach and makes you want to quietly scream.

I was resistant to watching “The Cove,” mostly because of my general distain for dolphin lovers, spurred by my discovery that dolphins often gang rape and kill the children of other dolphins (and many porpoise babies), and that just as many people near death are pushed out to sea by curious dolphins as are brought into shore. They’re kind of scary.

Also, chimpanzee tribes have been known to go to war against one another, raping females of the opposing tribe (using sex as an act of violence), and killing males by dragging them repeatedly across jagged rocks. But that’s not important, right now.

Chimpanzees aren’t the problem, and neither are dolphins. Human-like acts of violence and depravity are clues which can be paired with evidence that we already have in great abundance - clues that these animals have very complex social structures, and that these animals are incredibly intelligent. (Not so intelligent that they’d ever be able to commit, in a lifetime, atrocities which compare to those we have committed, as humans, within the last twenty-four hours, but close enough.) When it comes to the whales, and the dolphins, all damning evidence points to us, and we owe these creatures a massive apology.

Take, for example, the most persuasive scene in The Cove, and the one that had me covering my eyes and yelling at my computer screen...two free-divers are at the edge of the ocean beside the cove where the dolphin killing takes place, and can see the reddened water pouring out. The woman describes, in tears, what we are seeing...babies being cordoned off from their parents, who are being killed, and a single, injured dolphin, trying to swim away from the killing area, making it over a couple of fences, red water streaming behind it, and eventually slipping underwater never to be seen again.

Other scenes show harpoons being driven into the water, blindly, as the fenced-off patch of ocean turns opaque with bright red blood.

Dolphin meat, which is eaten in certain areas of Japan, is the result of the hunt. But it is not the main motivator. The main motivator is Me, and my love of seeing belugas, and orcas, and dolphins, doing adorable flips and tricks...the reason is me, and us, and our fascination with marine mammals and their strangely intelligent, human ways.

The reason is this: the killing waters of the Taiji, Japan (the site of The Cove) are also a principal exporter of captive dolphins to aquariums and amusement parks around the world.

Hundreds of dolphins are driven into the cove, where trainers pick out the lucky few, mostly young and female, who will spend the rest of their lives in captivity, somewhere, riddled by stress reactions including ulcers and premature death. For these dolphins, the fishermen are paid upwards of $100,000 apiece. The remaining dolphins are comparatively worthless, but they are killed for their meat (gaining a few hundred dollars each), and then the process is repeated, day by day, week by week.

And when we clearly value dolphins and whales so much, so much that we want to touch them and hold them and watch them do endless tricks...then how can we allow this to continue? How can we allow them to exist, for our amusement, in captivity...how can we allow them to be slaughtered by the hundreds while their cordoned babies hear their creepy dolphin screams?

...Free the dolphins. Let them go about their business and gang rape in peace.

Whales: we owe them an apology (on Slate.com)

The Cove (you should actually buy it, cause it probably helps dolphins more than watching it online, but, whatever)

Step One of Master Plan to Save Vancouver

For further explanation, please see the previous post, entitled ‘Vancouver, My Beloved,’ and ranting about all that’s wrong in the world of my city and how we should fix it. Or don’t. It’s really up to you.

The first step in Ivy’s Vancouver-Wide Master Plan of Positive Investment and Social Change?

Transit.

As in, get rid of transit fares, and impose a tax across the lower mainland charging every adult the equivalent of $200 per annum for transit use. This will actually give our transit system more money than their current passenger-fare revenue and eliminate a great deal of administration costs, which is capital that can be used to invest in our infrastructure, which is in desperate need of expansion.

This change will give money back to current riders, who are now spending $81 a month for use of a single fare zone...or $970 per year. That, according to conservatives, will boost the economy. But the main benefit is that those individuals who are currently reluctant to spend on fares are far more likely to leave their car at home and hop on a bus, or a skytrain, and the benefits of this are huge.

Pollution, policing, and the cost of maintaining roads and bridges (which is a very huge amount)...all of these go down as transit ridership goes up. Driving a car within a city is a luxury, and always has been, and some individuals will continue to drive...but there’s no reason why anyone should have to. And without fares - or, more accurately, with a system which requires every citizen to pay - less people will drive, the transit system will improve, and we all reap the benefits.

As for a tax on those who may not use the transit system...well, tough. The system is there, free and accessible for your use, just like education, libraries, parks, and policing...none of which have a charge-per-use payment. Everyone in the lower mainland absorbs the cost of single-car use - we do this in the form of pollution, asthma, and health care, and in cost of maintaining our roads and bridges. All of problem areas stand to benefit from getting people out of their cars. In fact, the fiscal benefits of increasing transit use are overwhelming.

Added bonus? Tourism, which tends to boost in cities with an easily accessible infrastructure and no cost-per-use fares. Plus, Vancouver can actually put some weight behind that ‘greenest city’ crap they’ve been throwing around for years.

And...yes, full disclosure, I am a transit user. And I’m poor, and fares are really expensive and just increased, and I recently tried to initiate an employee program to lower transit costs through my work, but that fell through. So I stand to benefit quite a lot from this proposal. But that’s not the point. Or, actually, it is. Because I am a person, and so are you, and universal lower fees allow us all to benefit. Win, win, win?

...I'm right.

Vancouver, My Beloved...

Vancouver is the most expensive city in North America. More expensive than the city of New York...maybe even more expensive than London. (I’m not convinced on that - but maybe London only seemed more expensive because I drank a lot more when I was there. As did everybody else. Cheers, mates!)

As the cost of living skyrockets, wages are plateauing in hard-hit sectors and benefits being cut across the board. (My union cut my massage benefits, and I was sad.) Costs continue to rise. Housing strategists claim Vancouver’s ridiculous housing prices are due to a lack of land - nestled between the mountains and the ocean, there’s nowhere to go but up (in price). And since a functioning city depends on its people’s ability to function, and our collective ability to occasionally go grocery shopping, it seems like a recipe for impending doom. Much like an expanding city built on an extinct volcano and due for a major earthquake with a rapidly eroding infrastructure...which it is.

Others see Vancouver’s metaphoric rock-and-hard-place situation as an massive opportunity for social change. Environmentalist decriers of urban sprawl rejoice that Vancouverites have nowhere to sprawl to. Advocates for social justice see the rising visibility of poverty as political leverage. Proponents of all things green continue to have very high hopes.

And there is a solution. But it seems to be the exact opposite of what the current federal and provincial governments have in mind.

Take, for example, health care costs. Time and time again it has been shown that positively investing in individuals’ health yields greater returns down the road...that whole ounce of prevention to pound of cure adage, multiplied. Canada is proud of touting its ‘universal health care,’ but seems oblivious to the fact that health care cannot exist without nutrition, housing, drug coverage, or the ability to buy a bandaid when you’re cut and bleeding.

The most vulnerable are losing their ability to buy birth control, because clearly that makes fiscal sense. We continue to lack adequate shelter for the homeless, or a national housing strategy...and yet we know that housing someone actually saves $100,000 a year in health care costs. Investing in programs like parks and recreation has been shown to reduce the disparities in health between the rich and poor, saving massive health care dollars. And adequate childcare and education spending have been shown to have direct and immediate, as well as future health care benefits, as well as being a poverty reduction tool, which is good for the economy.

And can we not just make cigarettes illegal and have done with it already? Enough is enough. Smokers, your time has come. Free rehab and massage for you.

The Vancouver government is not responsible for many of these things. Federal and provincial idiocy are largely to blame. But we can demand better, and we can do everything within our power, locally, to act.

Positively invest, people. And give people on welfare their birth control back. We’re not the Vatican, let’s stop being ridiculous.

For the Love of Neil Patrick Harris

I love you, Neil Patrick Harris.

Not only for your effortless charm, charming good humor, and the last two hours I spent watching “Dr Horrible’s Sing Along Blog,” which I enjoyed very much. (It’s a short film...I watched it twice. Ahem.) And how every moment of my life gets about three shiny-gold-stars better when my brain cries out “Neil Patrick Harris! He’s amazing!” which happens, periodically. That’s all good, but, there’s something else, too.

You see...you’re gay. I know, you probably knew that already. And while I clearly have a giant crush on you, more importantly, my brother also has a giant crush on you. Which is spectacularly amazing, because...you’re gay. Which means my brother has a crush on a gay guy. Which means my brother is himself a little bit gay, or at least forced to accept that gay guys are cool, because he thinks you’re cool, and possibly because he’s a little bit gay inside, too.

So, for your heroic efforts to end homophobia inside one desperately confused young Ontarian man, I thank you.

...And now, on to the angry, ranty part of my blog, which is really getting quite redundant...

Reasons to Renounce Democratic Socialism and take up Dr. Horrible-Style Anarchy:

Our country is a monarchy. Every law and declaration that comes to pass is signed by the Governor General, who is Canada’s representative of the Queen of England (Elizabeth II), who is still officially in charge. Again, not even our queen - England’s queen. She only visits once every decade or so, and yet...oh, Canada. In fact, our country only has a parliament, at all, because the Queen of England (Victoria, this time) willed that it be so in 1867, when she decided that it would be nice if Canada gained some self esteem by running their own affairs for a while.

Our Prime Minister (who, let’s not forget, has no real power if his actions go against the will of the Queen of England) is Stephen Harper. ‘Nuff said.

The majority of Canadians who voted did not vote for Stephen Harper, but our system is not representative, so only the big parties get a chance of going to Ottawa at all, and...Stephen Harper. That’s apparently the very best our country can do.

While a small group of Canadians voted Conservative, and a larger group voted for a myriad of other more liberal parties, an even larger group of Canadians did not bother to vote at all. Our country’s citizens are among the worlds most complaining and complacent - we’re well informed about the issues that shape the world, and yet we have absolutely no will to lift a finger for change.

Feelings of laziness, disenfranchisement, and understandable bewilderment at our current political system prevail, leading to a population which is theoretically dissatisfied with the status quo, but comfortable enough not to bother to do anything about it. Or so it seems. Maybe if we took away hockey, Canadians would have a bit of gusto left over for social change.

Until then....sigh.

Mustache

I was in a bad mood, which was unusual - or at least, unusually bad. And on the bus they were transit officers checking fare-cards, which is more than unusual - it’s unheard of. Never before has this happened, in the history of my riding the 99 B-line, so I was flustered, and embarrassed, and spent five minutes digging in my purse before I found my monthly pass.

The transit officer was patient and understanding - a latino man in his mid thirties, he smiled kindly as I stammered my way towards my seat. But then a flood of annoyance hit me, coupled with a sugar low and a desperate desire to be wrapped in the warmth of my puppies, which this stupid fare-checking had almost kept me from.

Seriously, though...who the hell does that man think he is, wearing that mustache?

The man’s mustache was flowing and long, extending from the farthest reaches of his nostrils and engulfing most of his lower lip. The volume was significant, and he’d obviously put effort into keeping it healthy and clean - the dark black hair had a lustre to it and was free of any debris. Still, it reminded me of pubic hair - overflowing, tumescent pubic hair. Mustaches always remind me of this, which I guess is my central problem with them.

And I tried to think, well, he’s foreign. It’s kind of charming and endearing, how entirely out of touch with local fashions he must be? But no. The man spoke perfect English. His gainful employment as a transit officer kept me from excusing his mustache as an awareness deficiency. He obviously knew.

(It was at this point I realized that a significant parental figure from my past, who turned out to be a child molester, also had a giant mustache, and that was probably affecting my judgement on the matter. I’ll try to keep my irrational anger in check.)

Because...I don’t HATE all mustaches. Jack Layton, I respect, with a wise old-man mustache that I can certainly get behind. Tom Selleck, also, a rocker of the mustache (also kind of attractive, though I’m pretty sure that’s in spite of the facial hair). You see, there are many different types of mustache. There’s Friendly Cultural Stereotype Mustache that reminds me of Mario and Luigi, which is always accompanied by terribly broken english, and an excessive amount of smiling. How can you hate a mustache like that? And the Older Gentleman Mustache (employed by aforementioned Jack Layton), where the man in question is well aware that his look has fallen out of fashion but, dangnammit, knows that respectable men of his day kept their bootstraps fastened and wore sweater vests and had giant, face-engulfing mustaches, and that’s just what he’s going to do. (Bonus points to the gentlemen who find the time to wax their mustache-edges into curlicue tips, making them look like a cartoon villain. Bravo, good sirs...You are amazing in so many ways.)

And of course there’s the porn-stash, which I do find offensive, and sexist, and terrible in so many ways. I know that it’s somewhat inflammatory to claim that the appearance of the opposite sex is offensive to me (in the way that a porn-stash man might claim that breast reductions are to him ‘offensive’). But...come on. For such beer-bellied men, in their stained, yellowed shirts, the food-stuttered mustache is a crescendo of a look that says, “I do not care.”

“I do not care,” and “I will not put one ounce of effort into looking like anything but a repulsive turd, because any such effort would make me,” *scoff with abhorence* “a woman.” And such porn-stashed men are often featured, in certain risque films, where the fantasy of beautiful women sleeping with repulsive men is created for the benefit of slovenly males, everywhere. Is this degrading to women? Yes, yes it is. But the concept of the porn-stashed man...it’s degrading to men, too. Outside of the realm of porn, such men are often found, eating a melting cone of ice cream, masturbating on a park bench to the local high school’s coed track team.

And that, I suppose, is the end of my psychological analysis of the mustache. I still do not have any idea what that transit officer thought he was doing, nor do I particularly care...a mustache like that has no excuse. And the moral of my story is only this: Please, good men of the world, and women, too....Unless you're Tom Selleck, or Jack Layton, or Mario or Luigi, or a twee older gent from a simler time...If you’re capable of growing a mustache, for the love of baby Jesus, just please, please don’t.

Ironic mutton chops are encouraged, as are villainous goatees.

Thank you.

Soapbox, Please!

Ahem...

I know that these thoughts are not very original or profound, but, at the same time, I’ve never heard them directly articulated - or if I have, then their truth never struck me in its full, ridiculous magnitude.

And my thoughts are this... If someone were to piss me off, and I were to kill them, it would be illegal, and it would be wrong. Even if I really believed that they deserved to die, and the world would be a better place without them, it would be ethically, socially, legally wrong, and I would spend a long time in jail, thinking about what I had done.

If a family member were to tell me to kill someone, and I carried out that act, it would be wrong. If a senior member of my clergy, or a well-respected advisor, or a teacher, or a boss, were to tell me to kill or harm another person, and I did it, it would be wrong. If any individual who has earned my full respect, who has nurtured me from birth, or who has taught me every lesson in life worth knowing, were to tell me that they believed that a person should die, and then I were to kill them, it would be wrong.

Most people, I think, would agree that this is the way it has to be. We can’t just go blowing up other people because of personal opinions or religious branding. We can’t go shooting those who cut us off in traffic, or steal our bike, or throw our ailing mother down a flight of stairs - no matter how much they have harmed us, and our loved ones, and no matter how pissed off we may feel.

This is law. This is society. This is the social decorum to which we all ascribe. And though they’re often unsatisfying, rules are rules.

But here’s another rule.

If your federal government tells you to kill someone, that’s okay. If your federal government tells you to blow up a city of civilians and combatants and insurgents, that’s okay. If your federal government decides, “I do not like...Yemen,” and you, voluntarily, join up with your government’s military and kill a bunch of people from Yemen (who, admittedly, were just following orders to kill you, too), that's Not Wrong.

Or...it’s certainly not illegal - it's encouraged. The money’s okay, and you could get a medal, and a speech, and a bank holiday in your honor. In every country around the world.

Huh. Could that be because the government makes the laws?

Stopping people from killing each other is a bit like stopping soil erosion, which is to say, it’s impossible (or, if possible, then I have no idea how to do it). But...come on, people. Stephen Harper? George Bush? Are these the sort of people you want to be setting your moral compasses to? Do you trust their ethics more than your family's, or your own?

Don't join the army. Be nice to people. Don't kill other people, if you can possibly avoid it. Done.

Hate Lines

Queues.

Line-ups. Shuffling paths of the morose. Processions entirely lacking in applause or dignity. Cavalcades of quiet retching and silent screams.

These are the gateway to any Olympic experience.

The venue, finally visible at the end, is often bitterly disappointing - like Quebec House, whose ten-minute line yielded a warehouse full of people all trying to find the exit (and a diner, and an empty stage...yay?) Saskatchewan House appeared similarly empty and desolate, though, to be fair, I think those qualities very much embodied the feel of Saskatchewan itself.

Rumors continue to fly - of good pavillions, and free goodies, hiding, somewhere (today apparently Bell was giving out headphones), but I can’t help but feel suspicious... Yes, we could let others know which venues are good, and which a total waste of precious time, but then, inevitably, everyone would line up at the actually good pavillions, and the lines would go from excessive to f*ing insane....and it’s already next-to-impossible to get into any venue with your sanity intact. Not to mention how especially difficult it is for those of us who actually live here, and have jobs, and can’t spend our youth trapped in a line, at the end of which there may or may not be a Vancouver-made "German sausage" of decent quality.

Ugh. Olympics. You had me so close to being won over with your promise of free goodies and plentiful free concerts.

But, no matter how much I love Corb Lund, I just can’t spend three hours in a line to get through security in order to see him, not after an eight hour day. I have puppies. They need me, and they pee on my floor if I don’t go home. And it’s not like I can take the puppies into the free concert, even though it’s located in a large park, because you’ve surrounded the park with chain-linked fences and forced everyone to enter through a single security entrance...which, even though there are 16,000 police in the city, the gate is so understaffed and slow that, even when there are no scheduled events taking place, the line is a half hour long.

Longest wait reported (for the zip-line, and concerts of well-known bands): 5-6 hours. I die inside.

Does security actually make anyone safer? If I were bent on causing terror, wouldn’t I just get on a bus, or a skytrain, or go to a movie theatre, or walk into one of the countless crowds of slow-walking tourists, milling in the streets like cholesterol? ...And would I really want to go to a Sam Roberts concert anyways? Really?

(For the record, I am not a terrorist, nor do I condone the terrorist actions of others, no matter how pissed off they may be. Please do not shoot me. God bless.)

Oh, Canada

Oh, Canada.

During the Opening Ceremonies of the Vancouver Games, the cameras kept cutting to the nematode-like face of Stephen Harper. This was, at first, upsetting - I was trying to have a good time and get into the spirit of the white-clad celebratory dancers in their puffy, puffy skirts - the face of Stephen Harper was not going to help anyone do that. But then, as the cameras panned back to show the face of other dignitaries, the jubilant cheer of Joe Biden, the broad smiles and practiced looks of pride, I had to wonder...is Stephen Harper capable of smiling??

The man, with his greyish, pasty pallor, and his beautiful, lesbos, news anchor hair...he does not know how to smile. He never has. Not once, ever, have his lips parted to reveal his perfectly nice, aligned teeth. And as a practiced shut-lipped smiler myself, I know that there’s a way to smile without revealing teeth that, while not jubilant or cheery, certainly conveys the message that you are, at least, trying to look a little happy. But not Harper.

He looks...bored. Despondent. Like a nematode. And as I continue to relay the inappropriateness of his face to friends and family, laughing at his expense, I begin to wonder...does Stephen Harper have Bush-like potential??

Because Bush was a very hateful and even evil president, but as a man, he never really bothered me. The problem was the systems which has put such a man into power and supported him along the way - the American populous, the Republican party, Bush senior, Cheney, oil executives, the CIA, Fox news, and so on - but poor George W. himself was just a horribly incompetent man. All he wanted was to roam free on a farm somewhere, shooting turkeys, drinking whiskey, talking about those damn Arabs.

Laughable, but lovable...that was Bush, to me. Terrifying when wielding even an ounce of power, sure, but...awww, he’s just a weird, racist old man who doesn’t know any better.

Now, I spent the better part of a year convinced that Stephen Harper could shoot laser beams from his eyeballs, so sweet, racist Southerner is not a look he’ll ever pull off. His look is best described as chilling, and sometimes, nausea-and-hives inducing. It’s a little like corporate evil, personified - the sort of person who, if they were to kiss a baby, would open their mouth wide, Dementor-style, and suck out the baby's soul.

But still...demonic nematode that he may be, Stephen Harper doesn’t seem happy. He’s not enjoying himself, licking his lips as he sucks the marrow from our country, tap-dancing as he demolishes our environmental accords...he’s not celebrating at all. The man doesn’t even know how to smile. He’s kind of...sad. Not in a capable-of-feeling, emotion-y way, but in a broken, robotic, ‘does not compute,’ ‘what is this wetness leaking from their eyes,’ programmed-to-destroy-but-secretly-wonders-what-it-would-be-like-to-receive-a-hug, kind-of way.

And whatever caricature we depict him as, he really is, in the end, a sad cartoon. A sad, incompetent, evil cartoon. God bless, Stephen Harper; I hope for your sake, and everyone else’s, it will all be over soon.

A Fatigued Rage

I’m tired.

I’m tired of the Vancouver police pulling innocent men out of their homes at 2am and beating them so severely that their facial bones were fractured and their eye swollen shut. I am tired of statements released to the press of “attempting to hit officers, resisting arrest,” hastily withdrawn, and icy apologies which fail to account for the problem: NOT police incompetence (though that's not good, I suppose), but police brutality and a total lack of public accountability. (The 911 call regarding domestic violence came from the basement apartment - Oops!)

I am tired of the Olympics, which has all the feel of a military coup, and will make my commute marginally more difficult. I am tired of the circling black American-military helicopters, and the show of militaristic security which has been proven, time and time again, to make citizens less safe. But more importantly, I am exhausted by the international gathering in a city which has no level of government accountability. I like our mayor, but...ahhhhhh.

We have No Federal Government. Stephen Harper walked out with his middle fingers (metaphorically) raised when the opposition (majority) asked questions regarding Afghanistan torture.

We were (and ARE) implicit in international torture, in Afghanistan and Guantanamo Bay. We still have a child-soldier locked up there, the last dual citizen held in Guantanamo Bay and youngest detainee, and all because our government has declined to ask for his return. (Oh, AND apparently nobody cares that in addition to torture, there's also lots of murdering happening in Gitmo, too.)

I am tired of the "opposition," who apparently completely forgot about their plans to take over the government last year (distracted by something shiny, no doubt). I am tired of their laissez fair attitude, and I am tired of the failed party system and the entire failed political structure. I am tired of the Queen of England, and I am tired of the Governor General, and I am tired that we as Canadians simply don't care enough to revoke our status as monarchy.

I am tired of the provincial government, where a voter turnout of 30% is considered an optimistic guess for the next election, because no party feels it necessary to shake up the status quo and elect an electable leader.

I am tired of being implicit in all of these things, because I do not know what to do to change them, and I have allowed, along with the rest of my country, for these systems to continue despite full knowledge of their failures.

Do I need to riot in the streets? Would anybody join me, or...would I just be shot?

Revelations

Huh. So I kind of think that, outside of electronic and medical uses, plastics should be banned completely.

As I say this, pretty much every one of the fifty-or-so items on my desk is composed of plastic, so make no mistake - I am a giant hypocrite. But change was never supposed to be easy, and radical change is sometimes really, really necessary. Screw fabric bags, Vancouverites - those are a token solution. Unless we as consumers stop purchasing items composed of, or wrapped in, plastics, the Pacific Garbage Heap of Doom will continue to grow, albatross chicks will continue to die, and eventually, we will live in a Wall-E type dystopia where human life is impossible and only cockroaches and adorable robots have survived. Do you want that future, as cute as it may possibly be?

Plastic is made of oil, oil is expensive (and in itself a giant environmental and societal hazard), and the remnants last forever. But these baby chicks paint a picture much more vividly than I can. Enjoy. Or, cry. Environmental punditing over.

The above pictures were shamelessly stolen, along with the following text:

Midway Message from the Gyre These photographs of albatross chicks were made on Midway Atoll, a tiny stretch of sand and coral near the middle of the North Pacific. The nesting babies are fed bellies-full of plastic by their parents, who soar out over the vast polluted ocean collecting what looks to them like food to bring back to their young. On this diet of human trash, every year tens of thousands of albatross chicks die on Midway from starvation, toxicity, and choking. To document this phenomenon as faithfully as possible, none of the plastic in any of these photographs was moved, placed, manipulated, arranged, or altered in any way. These images depict the untouched stomach contents of baby birds in one of the world’s most remote marine sanctuaries, more than 2000 miles from the nearest continent. ~cj, Seattle, October 2009

The Naughtie Aughties

If you’re going to start analysing the decade, you might as well do it from the perspective of an American Baby Boomer.

Try as we might to acknowledge that Canadian culture is slightly different than that of our Southern neighbour, or that we and most people we like were actually born in the mid 1980s, it really doesn’t matter. The vast majority of our culture’s influence is from the perspective of a white, middle class American man born sometime in the winter of 1947. And like it or not, this is his story.

Our protagonist knew a simple, homey life within the 1950s. This era will remain synonymous with the good old days and the American dream - mostly because our baby boomer was too young to observe the nuances of domestic conflict, rising feminism, and racial inequities which were rampant and rising. He remembers a slightly hazy, very comforting time. He remembers his parents and they seemed happy. Milkshakes...I remember milkshakes. They had cherries on top. That sort of thing.

Along with the development of our baby-boomers brain came the rise of his hormones and the experience of social awareness, conflict, and rebellion. This was the sixties. Our baby boomer kissed a girl, smoked some pot, went to college and felt that he was smarter than everyone he had ever met back home. He railed against injustice. He argued about Vietnam. He did not grasp the concept of gentrification, or the hypocrisy of berating the establishment of his parents while simultaneously eating their food and making daisy-necklaces on their lawn. Those were judgements reserved for a different time...fucking hipsters. This was a time of passion, truth, and ideals.

Eventually, our baby boomer stopped smoking so much pot and got a job. And while we’re still pretty vague as to what, exactly, happened during the 70s, by the 80s things were going well. There was excess enough for hairspray and globular lipstick. And by the 1990s, our baby boomer had risen through the ranks of his respective career and found himself to be established, secure, and indomitable. He had money. He had power. He was, in his own way, ‘the man.’ And being the man, it turns our, is generally a kickass thing to be.

Which isn’t to say that he flaunted his power, or entirely forgot his impassioned, pot-smoking days. He gave to charity. He rallied for AIDS. He has treated his own children, now young adults, in a manner which would have been unheard of within his father’s belt-whipping heyday. (And herein we learn that our baby boomer, likely, has some very deep seeded psychological issues.) And generally, there is no question that The Man is, for all of his prestige, a pretty great, down-to-earth guy.

Enter the aughties, step into the 00's.

Think what you may of the preamble, the causes, and the specific acts and consequences, but at some point or another, our baby boomer, and the North American, middle-aged, middle-class society he represents, was complacent in some of the following: the invasion of Afghanistan, the invasion of Iraq, the election and re-election of President Bush (or if you’re Canadian, Stephen Harper), Abu Ghraib and Guantanamo Bay, unprecedented greed, unprecedented profit, and the eventual collapse of Wall Street and the global economy. Did you personally rape an Iraqi teenager, insight a civil war, or take a smiling photograph of yourself in front of a pyramid of naked torture victims? Well, no. Certainly not. And yet, in another way, in the way that happens when you yourself are an intrinsic part of a society that commits unconscionable, terrible acts...you did.

(Canadian Society, don’t get smug. If you don’t think your country was complacent in torturing child soldiers, burning crops of Afghan peasants, and committing a series of acts which gall the human spirit on an equal level to our American counterparts, you’d be wrong. We’re a smaller country with a much smaller military, but considering that, we did good.)

So, the year 2010 is upon us, and our protagonist in the the verge of turning 63. The decade ahead could be a time of simpler things, of leisure, of mutual funds, of establishing his legacy as he gives up the reins and begins to think ‘retire.’ It could be many, many things.

A man who’s not as handsome or persuasive as he once was has a slightly shaky hand and greying hair when he says, “I did what I had to do. Don’t you dare judge me.” And I look at him coldly and I say that, I do. I am railing against the man that I may inevitably become. But it’s barely 1970, to me, and I still think that, this time around, anything could happen.

Got to Admit It's Getting Better

A great deal of the time, I feel an overwhelming need to declare, “This sucks. The world is an abysmal and horrible place full of abuses of power and random acts of pain filled-destruction. Our lives are a chasm of meaningless torment and inevitable pain at the end of which we die and hope and light seem to exists purely to illuminate our downward plight…of doom.” And I’d be right.

The world is, often, a horrible place. There’s a lot to get upset about. And for those who are educated, caring, and concerned, the usual recluse of bliss in ignorance ceases to be an option. We must acknowledge things like corruption and AIDS if we expect those things to improve - we must give our time, attention, and energy to things which we have the power to change. And, generally, I do.

But sometimes, amid the exasperating hopelessness of it all, there is a time for other things. Like acknowledging that, right now, for me at least, things are the best they’ve ever been.

***

Right now, I do not have exams to study for. I do not have lectures to go to at 8am, or even 10am, and I have no papers to write. I do not have to cite sources or format my margins to match MLA or APA formatting. I do not have to do anything. When I read, I do so solely for interest and pleasure.

I do not have to pay tuition, and I am able to work full time, which means I have enough money to pay my bills. Every month, I pay off student loans, and in less than three years I’ll be debt free. I make more money than I spend. I can pay my rent. I know where my next meal is coming from.

I have employment benefits - I don’t full understand them yet, but I know that they exist (this is all very new). I get a cheque to reimburse me for money spent on pharmaceuticals, speaking of which, I have Fair Pharmacare, which means the government of BC feels sad for me, and makes me pay only $40 for over $200 worth of prescription drugs every month, and for all of next year. Oh, and I bought myself a SAD lamp to combat the effects of season-affective depression, so I have that, too.

I have a gorgeous, underutilized bicycle (of European styling!). I have free internet, and cable, and way nicer clothes than I’ve ever had at any point throughout my life. I have a new macbook (arriving in time for Christmas), and functionally large accommodation, and a fenced back yard for my puppies - which is actually quite a huge deal.

I have rapid transit, fifty feet from my front door, which takes me downtown in five minutes. My commute has never been shorter, and I have a job that I’m good at and enjoy. My boss does not secretly hate me or believe that I am in any way her arch nemesis…I’m pretty sure. In other words, I have security, and my day-to-day life, while filled with lots of angst, does not feel like a giant pressure cooker where the odds are stacked against me and my heart is a panicking caged bird and it’s all going to explode.

I guess, a lot of my life has felt like that…school has a way of exploiting over-anxious, perfectionist girls.

And finally, I have my puppies, and really, any life with multiple puppies can kick the ass of a life without puppies, any day of the week. It’s a small, fuzzy family, and some people will judge us for our interspecies affection, but, whatever. I love my puppies, and they love me, too.

And now, I’m going to eat a chocolate pecan butter tart and watch whatever I want on TV, because I can.

Goodnight.

On Notice: Vancouver Drivers, Standard Time

Last “night,” one pedestrian was killed and six others were sent to the hospital (in five separate incidents) because Vancouver drivers could not be bothered to slow down.

Now, there’s a few factors here which I could rant about - one being the end of ‘daylight savings time,’ which puts us all in darkness ridiculously early and decreases visibility on the roads.

Daylight savings was originally proposed as a permanent plan to put human activities in sync with daylight hours, thus saving millions of dollars annually on artificial lighting (thus conserving precious resources during World War II). Like many good ideas subject to a democratic (and bureaucratic) process, it was whittled down to half a year of synchronized daylight…which, okay, that really doesn’t make sense, and won’t we all have to change our clocks twice a year, that sounds pretty inconvenient, but at least we’ll save a lot of money during the summer, so, okay….Yeah. That’s how we got out current daylight savings/standard time clock-changing system. And it doesn’t make any sense.

During the shortest days of the year, sunlight becomes all the more precious - and even more-so now that we know about Vitamin D and Seasonal Affective Disorder. For those of us who live in the land of perpetual cloud-cover, Vancouver, a chance to see the sun feels a little like winning the lottery...and a reduction of those odds feels especially cold.

Today, the sun rose at 7:44am, and it set at 4:18pm - total hours of daylight just eight and a half. This puts the sun’s central point in the sky at high noon (12pm), which has a nice ring and historical significance (and is how Standard Time is determined, I presume). However, high noon is not the central point of most Canadian’s days, even if we are an agricultural and rather lame country, comparatively. Today was my first day off in a traumatic, sickly week, so I slept in until about 10am…which is really super late, but not entirely uncommon. So I missed over 25% of that day’s meagre dose of sun - a huge proportion. For a time system to be logical and fair, it would make the best use of daylight, proportionately, for all Canadians - so for every young adult sleeping in to 10am and missing two hours of sun, someone else would be going to bed at…2pm. Seriously. Does that happen?

The logic for Standard Time simply does not exist - we should get our daylight so that it coincides with times that all (or at least, most) Canadians are awake to enjoy it. This might mean going to work at 8am when the sun hasn’t risen…which sucks. But spending the majority of your day in darkness is always going to suck…it’s just the reality of living in the far North during the winter. Suck it up or more to Hawaii, I guess.

The net result of proper ‘daylight saving’ means that more Canadians are out-and-about during sun-lit hours, which means fewer Canadians with SAD, fewer lights being turned on (and millions of dollars in energy savings, which is kind of popular right now, for the sake of the polar bears), and fewer pedestrians being killed in the dark at 5pm by speeding motorists. (The old man who was killed was hit along with another woman…meaning that the driver somehow didn’t see both pedestrians in the middle of the street?)

Now, on to the speeding motorists…*

*Being a speeding motorist doesn't necessarily mean that you're going fifty miles above the speed limit...it means that your speed is too high given your competencies as a driver and the current road conditions. So...the motorists was 'speeding' if they could not slow down in time to not hit the two elderly people walking very slowly in the middle of the road (and they were going fast enough to kill and critically wound said elderly people....so, fast enough.)

About a month ago, I almost died when a motorist decided to turn right, despite the fact that I was crossing the street a foot from his bumper (at a crosswalk, on a green light). My hand hit the bumper (as the driver screeched to a stop), and my body did not, and I get to live to pass on this angry tale.

Two years ago, another car making a right turn on a red light ran over my puppy, on leash, crossing the road, at a cross-walk, and then paused before speeding away. My puppy, despite going in to shock, survived. Two thousands dollars and immeasurable psychological trauma later, I was happy to have my puppy home, and it’s not about the money, or the trauma, it’s about the value of life.

So, seriously, Vancouver drivers…slow down. Stop turning right on red lights - it is clearly an option that you do not know how to handle. Stop running stop signs and yellow lights - slowing down is not an arbitrary instrument of the man. A friend who bikes to work (who is also, actually, pregnant) recalled the many near-misses she’s had on Vancouver’s bike paths, due to early morning motorists failing to stop at stop signs - most motorists get that they have to make sure another car isn’t coming, but forget the subtleties of looking out for men, women, children, on bicycle or on foot.

And this is the thing, Vancouver motorists - when you inevitably commit vehicular manslaughter, whether or not you decide to hit-and-run or to stay on the scene, it’s going to mess up YOUR day. It’s going to make you late for work, or to your daughter’s piano recital, or wherever it is that you’re rushing off to in such a hurry. It’s going to mess up your life. Did the police find bits of silver paint chips on the crushed little boy during the autopsy - did they match them to your brand of SUV? These are the questions you’ll have to ask yourself, at night, and when you hug your kids, you’ll have to know that they are as worthless to everybody else as that person you hit is to you. Watching them walk down the street, cross the road….these are the things that will fuck with your head.

So, Vancouver drivers, SLOW DOWN. Obey traffic laws. Stop killing pedestrians. It’s not for my sake, or my dog’s, or my friend’s or her baby’s, or for the minimum of seven people you hit with your cars last night…seriously. It’s for your own good.