An Open Letter

to Stephen Harper, PM of Canada.

You are a disgrace. You are a dreadful leader and your policies on everything from the environment to Canadian detainees at Guantanamo Bay evince your self-centred, smug, arrogant worldview. You are a tireless sychophant, an opponent of women's rights, gay rights, and more interested in capitalistic expansion than in health care and humanitarian projects. Even when your complete insensitivity produces an almost-admirable effect, it is for the wrong reasons. I very nearly had to align myself with your apparent stand on the Beijing Olympics until I realised that your absence was blamed on scheduling conflicts. Some people might take a scheduling conflict and use it to make a stand; you've taken what could have been an admirable stand on human rights and the idiocy of the free-spending spree that is the Olympics and turned it once again into a petty, trite, and laughable day-planner malfunction.

The merest whiff of a media blackout in what was once a relatively shining example of democracy and liberty in the western world should have been enough to ensure your early political demise. Your continued presence as the national and international representative of my country makes me shudder at thoughts of returning to take up my career and live out my life under your reactionary, right-wing, short-sighted, militaristic, and archaic governance.

The world does not need another politician more interested in numbers than people, in the short-gain over the long-loss. We need leadership that demonstrates the best of the people being lead, not the worst - or even the lackluster mediocre. We worry that children lack respect, are more given to instant gratification, indifference, and apathy - yet we offer them examples of how these strategies seem to work at the highest level. You are the leader of what could be the brightest and best country in the world, gifted with wealth, health, beauty, and difference. You have squandered that opportunity.

I can only hope that the damage you do is minimal and repairable. And may you always itch in unreachable places.

'mad-crazy-blazing brilliant'

I hope one day something I write, wear, or do is described thusly. Though in my critical little heart, I know it sounds ridiculous. Nothing like superfluous adjectives and stacked superlatives to make a sincere appreciation/admiration tip over into possible parody of the same.

Anyway, I didn't like the first of this sequel series - or are they prequels? Or haven't they caught up to Burton's efforts anyway? Why are we still watching these? And what happened to Superman? Now there's a hero for the times. Batman. Honestly. If someone could read the psychology of the day from the heroes we regurgitate what would they think? Batman. Crushingly self-aware, paranoid, tortured, dark; - it's Dirty Harry with a gym-membership, a therapist, and a better gadget guy. Same vigilanteism - but for Brucey, it's a hobby; for Harry, it's a job (and therefore suspect - though I've always thought it rather funny that immense wealth is what puts Batman above suspicion).

Okay, so I haven't seen the film yet.

And that wasn't the point of sitting down to blog a bit...

Graduating from my PhD was by far the most rewarding. I think it was the hat. And it was the only graduation I've attended where I got to sit with a group of friends who were also graduating, go out for lunch with families in tow - all that fun stuff. Natually, since we had guests over, it rained for a week. But it was a really relaxing and nice, unrushed and calm visit with my parents.
*post silly picture here eventually*

moving and shifting

Our new flat feels like our first - well, maybe second but I'll get to that - real grown-up place to live. It is clean, bright, and furnished with some modicum of taste. I love it. Those visiting must, in the words of Po, might be 'blinded due to overexposure of pure awesomeness'. It is so great that I feel retroactively embarassed for having my brother and sister and parents over to our old, crappy, dark and dingey back-to-back terrace - a special kind of housing that I think pretty much explains the curmudgeonly-ness and occassionally downright miserable-ness of some Leodeans. The new place reminds me of our best place in Canada - the apartment in Windsor just a few blocks from the Ambassador Bridge. It was small but bright, with four massive windows, a kitchen with a table and a huge main room. So it's our second non-studenty home. I think we'll stay for awhile. Logan and Laila love it too - Laila discovered last night that she can travel much faster than Logan on the laminate floor, to the amusement of Nas and I. Logan routinely slides by doors and around corners. Getting Laila into her box at the old house - which, fair enough, had been her entire world - and to the new flat was very unpleasant. She hates her box and with the excitement of the move, all her familiar surroundings gone and two strangers blocking her escape routes, she was not a happy kitty. But we got her there in the end. Luckily, they both seem to have forgiven us the indignity and Logan was back sleeping on our bed last night.

The library is still unbelievably quiet.

Facebook has reached a level in my mind of too much information. I wonder how much of casual friendship (or whatever status is achieved by the action of 'friending') is based on deliberate or indifferent ignorance? Groups on FB are a source of interest to me: I don't know how much they actually accomplish (particularly the political interest groups) but they do reveal a lot about people. So I was kind of shocked to see friends who had joined (whatever level of affirmation that speaks to) a group demanding that Dr Morgantaler be stripped of his recent Order of Canada - particularly female friends. It is the same shock I feel when I discover female friends have changed their names upon getting married. Hey, to each her own and all that but seriously - it's like realising that someone actually thinks the world is flat, or the moon-landing was a government hoax, or the government invented AIDS -- or that feminism is a dinosaur; obsolete, slightly embarassing, and unnecessary. I especially love the defence that feminism is about the right to choose - a defence so brilliantly scripted - so apparently water-tight, so graciously 'pro-woman', that it deserves its own module in undergraduate law degrees - therefore, what a woman chooses is necessarily feminist. As though women spoke with one mind out of some homogenous common body. Anyway, sorry - this wasn't intended to be a discussion of feminism.

Right, too much information. Yes. It's a curious thing. I wonder often how I appear - what things about me might shock and how I might defend myself. I do think sometimes about my own contradictions and inconsistencies. I should probably be more generous with people.