News from the front

I'm now a legal Canadian Landed Immigrant! It only took us 4 years, 3 to scrape the various fees and documents together, and 1 long year waiting for them to process the application. I don't recommend doing it unless you are either very much in love, very wealthy, or a refugee from a war-torn land. Even then.. think twice.

More news:

Because I'm now legal to work, I started job-hunting online and discovered that I wouldn't qualify for positions I held previously in the US. In my field, bilingualism is mandatory. There is a customer-service outsourcing company in the area, and I sent my resume in. Got a phone call from HR literally within 4 minutes after sending. That was a bit creepy. Went in for pre-interview testing and passed everything with high marks, interview 2 days later and got the job. Not so impressive, considering the reputation of the company and the extremely high turnover rate. It seems to be populated by either very young people or women like me, who've had a few kids and are looking to get any type of work that pays above the minimum wage.

Yes, I'm another sold-out corporate monkey. My inner hippie is weeping.

Hubby says if I don't like it, walk. So that's the plan. I don't anticipate any skills-related problems, it's customer service and tech support for digital technology in a field I have some experience with. If I can keep my nose to the terminal and stay out of office politics and never mention the naughty word (union) I should get by fine. I plan to stay long enough to get some good Canadian work history behind me, maybe longer. I'm still planning on finishing my degree after we get ahead and put a down on a house.

Kids are back in school, and they seem pretty satisfied. Son says high school isn't nearly as demanding as Grade 8. The kids on the bus roll doobs and smoke up at transfer points. Daughter already loves her teacher and is doing well.

Don't know how often I'll be able to post, but I will stay in touch. Thanks to all who left the thoughtful comments. I was without a pc for a while and checked in when possible at the library. Made me smile.

I'll be sitting in a cubicle soon, saying "Aum" frequently and thinking of you all.

Ode to Bubbles and Little Runt

*note: Bubbles was my pet Araucana chicken, and Little Runt was my sister's pet pig.

"Grace To Be Said at the Supermarket"

This God of ours, the Great Geometer,
Does something for us here, where He hath put
(if you want to put it that way) things in shape,
Compressing the little lambs into orderly cubes,
Making the roast a decent cylinder,
Fairing the tin ellipsoid of a ham,
Getting the luncheon meat anonymous
In squares and oblongs with all the edges bevelled
Or rounded (streamlined, maybe, for greater speed).
Praise Him, He hath conferred aesthetic distance
Upon our appetites, and on the bloody
Mess of our birthright, our unseemly need.
Imposed significant form. Through Him the brutes
Enter the pure Euclidean kingdom of number,
Free of their bulging and blood-swollen lives
They come to us holy, in cellophane
Transparencies, in the mystical body.
That we may look unflinchingly on death
As the greatest good, like a philosopher should.

author: Howard Nemerov

twisted: i bought some atkins protein-shake stuff, has no sugars, laxatives
twisted: but holy shit does it ever taste nasty
female sibling : atkins is a bad diet
twisted: i agree, but I figure the shake is harmless
female sibling : my doctor forbade me from doing anything fad diet related
twisted: I could never do an atkins diet with no gallbladder and a turtle-ish metabolism
female sibling : that diet blew me away when it started getting all popular, all my coworkers would down all this fried meat
twisted: yeah I know, logic and common sense went out the window on that one
female sibling : i know
twisted: I can't believe mom and dad were doing it
female siblingv : lol... i know
twisted: good thing I was too broke to buy all that meat.
female sibling : heehee... you saying you would have jumped on the bandwagon?
twisted: no, it would have made me sick
twisted: I can't eat much meat at all
female sibling : when I eat it, I get the guilts for eating animals
twisted: me too
female sibling : i think about Litte Runt and Bubbles (childhood pets, pig and chicken, respectively)
twisted: I would like to go all-vegetarian
twisted: but T is such a carnivore
female sibling : i don't have any issues cooking it and serving it to people... lol weird huh
twisted: no, I'm the same way
twisted: but I can't eat it without thinking 'this is wrong'
female sibling : i know
twisted: not just because I know I can survive without it, but I don't like buying meat that is mass-produced
female sibling : i just think of how cute they are
twisted: I don't think about that, I have no problem with killing and cleaning my own chickens and rabbits
female sibling : oh man.. i couldn't do that
female sibling : i can't look an animal in the eye and then think about killing it

Granfalloons and Flag Worship

The Blasphemy of Flag Worship

I'm still not sorry that I refused to stick flags on my car after 9/11. I've yet to contract blind patriotism.

America's brand frightens me, and Canada's Molson beer version (I. AM. CANADIAN!) just makes me giggle and feel thristy.

At least in Canada nobody gets pissed off or suspicious if you don't display a minimum level of zealous enthusiasm for the national logo er.. 'emblem'.

Anyone can point out qualities to admire and abhore in any nation. And what is a nation except a silly granfalloon?

"A granfalloon is a proud and meaningless association of human beings."

If you wish to study
a granfalloon,
Just remove the skin
of a toy balloon.

Kurt Vonnegut, Cat's Cradle

Fog of War

Clearing the Fog of Endless War

By Eric Frances

Huffington on drugs

America's Other Costly, Counterproductive, Under-Reported War

It's about goddamned time. Too long have people been thrown in prison for insignificant drug possession violations. If Bush manages to implement these changes I might actually find something complimentary to say about his administration.

Enough with the anime

My kids love anime, and I have to admit I can't stand the stuff.

I love traditional and modern Japanese art and culture, but I find anime to be nauseatingly sentimental. The crudely drawn figures with garishly oversized (and usually moist) eyes, the simpering voices, the coos and whimpers of female characters, the dorky bravado and machismo of the male characters, set my teeth on edge.

The very youngest female characters flash disproportionately elongated legs under impossibly short skirts, hair in pigtails, eyes wet (of course), and trembling with whatever emotion they are conveying, while they communicate with little whimpers and cries of surprise. It smacks of pedophilia porn to me.

I don't understand the western interest in anime at all, particularly with young people. What makes it so attractive that scores of young women decorate websites and blogs with anime characters? How can they identify with these characters, and why would they want to?

I've waited a long time for this fad to die out.

Bob the Mind Bomber

I moved to Toronto in October 2001, and my husband used to keep CityTV's BT (Breakfast Television) on in the mornings to listen to the traffic and weather reports before work. I don't watch a lot of tv, but I'd watch friendly suspender-clad Kevin Frankish doing a run down of the day's top stories, we'd both laugh and wink at each other when Mika the sexy transit reporter came on for a few seconds, mute the tube when Liza Fromer, the station bimbo giggler came on and didn't pay much attention to anything else. Then came the day I caught a glimpse of this old hippy in a kimono bathrobe scanning a stack of newspapers with a highlighter on a segment called "Papercuts", so I turned up the volume and gaped.

That was my first introduction to Bob Hunter, and I became a devotee. Bob, with his receding, ponytailed hair, sporting the groovy bathrobes and reading through and commenting on a variety of reports from the morning papers, is responsible for enlightening me on a wide variety of subjects, including the Kyoto Protocol, global warming, oil supply politics, activism, nuclear power issues, eco-journalism, as well as internal Canadian, US-Canada, and global politics. I watched Papercuts for many months before googling Bob's name, and was amazed to discover that he was a co-founder of Greenpeace, and largely responsible for the organization's media savvy. He is noted not only for his eco-activism, but for his journalism. To read some of Bob's articles, check out his contibutor section on Eye.net. He has authored many books:

Erebus; The Enemies Of Anarchy; The Storming Of The Mind; Greenpeace; Greenpeace III: Journey Into The Bomb; To Save The Whale; Warriors Of The Rainbow; The Greenpeace Chronicle; Cry Wolf; On The Sky: Zen And The Art Of International Freeloading and 2030 : Confronting Thermageddon in Our Lifetime

I had noticed that Bob's Papercuts segment had disappeared from BT's daily broadcasts, but I was stunned to hear that he had passed away on May 2nd after a fight with prostate cancer. His funeral is set for May 15th, and I hope the media covers it to the hilt so that the world will know what kind of hero we've lost. He was one of a kind, and meant a lot to me.

Apocalypse Bob