A Skewed View

Ecch.  I had me some plans for this here New Year.  Big plans.  Good plans about what I'd do, starting bright and early Jan 1.  Then Jan 1 came, and all I could do was languish in bed coughing and choking on my sore throat and cursing my social activities over the holidays -- because that's where germs are, boys and girls.  On other boys and girls!! I had every single solitary intention of starting this blog over with much more positive thoughts than I had in past.  But heck, since the year's already blown anyway : Note to Tortorella: Saturday's face off was an abomination. Period. But if you send your dancers out to what you suspect will be a promenade, you have no right to track the fiddler down at first intermission feigning outrage that a square dance broke out. Happy 2014!

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...