A Skewed View

I have been ranting since last Thursday, both on FB and in my front room to my television.   I have been too angry to really articulate my thoughts here until I saw this online today: It was just so... apt. The unprecedented level of hypocrisy, flagrant and pathological dishonesty, flippant disregard for lawful behaviour, and an inexplicably overinflated commitment to his own untouchable sense of entitlement... I was at a loss.  I truly never thought a politician could sink lower in my estimation than he/she could by simply being a politician.  Kudos.  He's taken a subset of society for whom I had no previous respect or admiration (with barely a handful of exceptions), and made those who came before him kings in my eyes.  No one - and I am talking NO ONE - has ever made me feel better about the homophobic knee-jerk conservatism of my home province politicians than this guy. And no one has ever made me feel better about the men a...

People gripe about funding for the arts.   It’s all touchy-feely, hippie crap, am I right?   And by that I mean, you think money spent on the arts is like tossing cash into the crapper, for as much good as it offers the world at large.   Well, it’s harder for me to convince you of the fallacy of that argument when a recent city-wide all night arts festival offered the following “pieces”: “An artist/poet silently wanders the financial district completely covered in Velcro-like hooked burdock seedpods accompanied by two assistants and a docent.” “Two driverless luxury sedans circle each other in an endless figure eight, teetering on the verge of collision but never quite doing so.” “Participants spin a wheel of fortune to select questions that are put to a 12-foot tall child oracle who offers answers privately over headphones.   These relatively benign proceedings are made menacing by the vengeful spirit of an even larger inflatable hanging spider exploring...

One of the officers involved in the streetcar shooting is going to be charged with second-degree murder in connection with the shooting. (This one incident - and my choice in using it as shorthand to discuss the larger issue - does not invalidate the arguments presented.)

[I haven't had the drive to share anything here lately, but I was just about to post an obscenely long response to someone on FB, and decided not to do that to her.  It's more appropriate here, I guess, as it is a bit of a rant:] A few days ago, I stumbled upon a protest rally outside Toronto Police Headquarters.  I'm not positive about exactly what incident people were protesting, but some of their signs were deriding the police for killing mentally ill suspects who were committing acts of aggression.  I couldn't help but think: this mob is protesting the wrong location.  Their beef should have been with a lack of funding available to provide assistance to the mentally ill before one of the ill climbed aboard a TTC streetcar and threatened the safety of others (I think that was the inciting incident for this rally).  I couldn't help but think that if mental illness was funded at an appropriate level -- a level that actually met the need, rather than just p...

Monday morning.  A new day.  A new week.  I was going to start this one out right.  Needing to pick some things up from an organic grocery store about a twenty minute walk away, I set my alarm, got up, get dressed and sat down to tie up my walking shoes... ...bumping into the table next to my chair, dumping a vase of flowers onto all the papers and notebooks sitting on that table, effectively destroying my handwritten notes on a story I had worked on all weekend. Don't panic.  It's a glitch.  No need to let it ruin my day.  My plan to start the week off right remains sound.  So clean up the spill, press the papers between absorbent towels, cross my fingers, put on my coat, in with the ear buds, and off I am to the store.  About two blocks away, my favourite song is playing so I kick up the walk with a little bounce in my step... ...tripping over a pit in the sidewalk, twisting my ankle and skidding across the cement on my elbow and sh...

I am pleased to announce that I have four plants currently living in my apartment!  Two are peace lilies that haven't flowered -- but I've had them for maybe four to six months and they remain alive! One is a pointsettia I've had since Christmas.  Still alive. The fourth - and the one that has prompted this post - is my attempt to make up for my epic failure with its earlier relative.  Remember this poor soul? Well I picked up another one yesterday.  Except the one I have now is naturally camera-shy, given what happened to its predecessor. All my plants have begged me not to show their pictures online, lest there exist some curse involved in being associated with my care.  But maybe one day...

Some time ago, I took an extreme close-up picture of one of my moles next to a ruler, so I can keep an eye on whether it changes in shape or size.  Because, you know, I've reached that age where I scrutinize every mole wondering if it has changed in shape or size. So what's the problem? I can't remember where on my body to find the mole in order to compare it to the picture.

I had heard that one way of thwarting telemarketers was to make them think the number they have dialed is in fact a fax machine.  I've tried different tones on my cordless phone, all to no avail.  Then I had an epiphany: When I turned sixteen, my sister bought me a new-fangled telephone.  It had push buttons, but it was still just a rotary phone - when you pressed each button to dial, you still heard the rotary "tat-a-tat-tat-tat" with every number.  I had held onto this phone ever since.  It's cute.  It works.  There was no reason to get rid of it. I was willing to bet that, in this day and age of advanced technology rendering yesterday's device obsolete on a daily basis, a telemarketer - who is likely going to be decades younger than my phone - would be unable to even identify a rotary phone by sight much less by sound. And voila!  Answering the phone with my rotary phone, and constantly pressing the buttons, the telemarketer kept repea...

A number of years back, I went for a job interview for a job that I didn't really want in the first place.  Because I didn't really have the drive to show off a sparkling wit, or a dazzling intellect, or an amazing level of competence in my responses, I was calm, relaxed, confident and personable.  To this day, I think it was the best interview I ever gave. As I walked out of the building into the spring sunshine, I descended the steps marvelling at what a cake walk the interview had been.  Then my high heel caught in the fallen hem of my dress pants and I tipped over straight-legged onto the unforgiving cement sidewalk below like an AT-AT Walker into the frozen ground of Hoth. The Universe does not like me happy.  It really doesn't.  The above is what I think is one of the most humourous of my examples, but it is by no means the only example of how I have been taken down a peg by the Powers That Be because I was too pleased with myself, my abilities or my g...