I recently had the privilege of purchasing the Astronaut Love Triangle’s very first piece of non-performance art! There’s a picture of me and it on their site.
I heard through the grapevine that they might be donating a piece of art to Everybody’s Art Show & Auction, which will be taking place at Irene’s Pub on January 27th. I checked when I stopped in there last night to drop off my own artistic contribution, but I didn’t see theirs on the wall yet. Nevertheless, I remain optimistic. (Note to absolutely everybody: If you want to donate art, it’s not too late. The official deadline has passed, but Pat’s pretty easy-going. Email her for details at art@irenespub.ca. This is an art show that is literally open to everybody. Even you and me.)
The Elgin Street Irregulars had an emergency meeting, and the highly entertaining and somewhat illuminating minutes have been posted. (deBeauxOs, you might want to check it out because, among other things, it addresses your question about whatever happened to the Also a Talker blog.)
Also, my socks are fixed! GC and I went to visit Grace on the weekend, and she very kindly tinked back four and a half rows on my sock and one row on GC’s sock, and now they’re both good to go again. I feel very happy about that. Thank you to all of you who offered your help – I will most likely take you up on your very kind offers the next time I mess up.
Posted by zoom! on January 12, 2010, at 11:27 am |
Awhile back I posted something about welfare cheating, which led to an interesting discussion in the comments about how extensive it might or might not be.
1. Ontario’s social assistance recipients would need a 55% raise to bring their incomes back to the levels they were at in 1993, before Mike Harris’s Conservatives slashed welfare incomes.
2. Ontario’s welfare system has more than 800 rules and regulations that must be applied before a person’s eligibility and benefit level can be determined. The system is far too complicated to be explained to recipients.
3. A report for the Justice Department asserts that corporate crime, white collar fraud and tax evasion cost Ontario more than its entire welfare system each year. It added that, “More people cheat on their income taxes and lie about their cross-border shopping than defraud the welfare system.”
The article goes on to talk about how the Auditor General’s report claimed Ontario’s welfare system costs $5 billion, while overpayments amounted to $1.2 billion. Which actually does sound pretty bad, until you realize that the $5 billion is annual, while the $1.2 billion is cumulative all the way back to the early 90s. The fact that the annual overpayments are only about $26 million – and most of that is not even due to cheating – did not stop provincial Conservatives from calling welfare abuse a “billion-dollar boondoggle.”
There’s irrefutable evidence of a mouse in the house, but Duncan seems either oblivious or indifferent to it. The mouse is running roughshod all over the basement, which Duncan visits several times a day, since his litter box is down there. The mouse even destroyed a gorgeous wool sweater, while Duncan sat back placidly and did nothing.
The sweater was my fault. I left my hand laundry in the basement for quite a long time, waiting, I suppose, til I was seized by an irresistible urge to do hand laundry. The urge took months to arrive, and it wasn’t really so much as an urge as it was a nagging sense of guilt combined with a desire to wear things in the hand laundry pile.
But when I picked up the sweater, I saw that it had been irreparably damaged by a small rodent with sharp pointy teeth and a fondness for wool.
This wasn’t the first evidence of the mouse. I’d seen mouse turds on top of the little table in the laundry room. I knew he was down there. I figured Duncan would take care of him, just like he took care of the 2008 mouse.
After I found the sweater, I sat Duncan down and tried to have a serious talk with him.
“Is there a problem?” I asked. “Can you see okay? Do you need glasses?”
Duncan yawned and snuggled up and wrapped his arm around me.
“Is it a workload issue?” I asked. “Do you need an assistant?”
Duncan dozed off.
I think that might be the problem. Duncan sleeps a lot. Probably somewhere in the neighbourhood of 20 hours a day. That leaves him only four hours to eat, go to the bathroom, cuddle, play with his toys, throw up, get high on catnip, look out the window, trip people on the stairs, shed, and demand extra food.
Personally, I have about 16 hours a day to do stuff, and there still isn’t enough time to get everything done. Duncan has far less free time than I do, so maybe I’m being unreasonable by expecting him to catch mice. Perhaps it’s time to buy a mousetrap.
Posted by Zoom! on January 10, 2010, at 11:33 am |
If I were to win the lottery, I think I’d like to travel for a year or two and then become a student.
There are lots of things I’d love to study, starting with creative writing, political economy, mass communications, art history, fine arts, literature, pottery, cabinetmaking, and chemistry.
Years ago I completed a vocational interest test to help me decide what kind of career I wanted. According to that test, I possessed an unusually broad range of interests. It said I had a high level of interest in enough things to pursue any career except those related to religion or sales. (Note: This test only measured interest, not aptitude. So I wouldn’t necessarily be good at any career.)
I went through a period after completing university where the last thing I would have wanted was to be a student again. It was such a relief to finally be caught up and not have all that reading and studying and writing to do at the end of the day. Having a job – and being done each day at 4:00 – seemed quite luxurious by comparison.
But with the exception of those two or three years, I’ve always thought that in an ideal world, being a professional student would be my ideal occupation. (We can, for the purposes of this fantasy exercise, ignore the fact that being a student doesn’t pay, which would be a significant strike against it in the real world.)
Most people I talk to seem to find the idea of going back to school either very appealing or very unappealing. What about you? Would you want to go to school? What would you study?
The polling booth is open for votes. If you’re reading from email or a feed reader, you’ll probably have to click on over to knitnut.net in order to vote.
While wandering around the Internet yesterday, I came upon an article about a Nevada brothel that’s looking for male sex trade workers to service its female clientele.
This is a new service they’re offering. The local licensing body recently changed the law that required prostitutes to submit to weekly cervical screening. Since men didn’t have cervixes, they couldn’t legally work as prostitutes. The law now also allows for urethral testing, and the Shady Lady aims to be the first Nevada brothel with legal male prostitutes.
The nay-sayers are saying the business plan isn’t viable, because no woman wants to get laid bad enough that she’d be willing to drive two and a half hours into the middle of nowhere and pay hundreds of dollars for it. Especially when she could just leave a note on Craigslist and instantly get a dozen offers of free sex. But others think women will be willing to go the extra mile for the professional touch.
The couple who runs the brothel have received over 100 applicants so far (“including two foreigners”), ten of whom have been deemed “promising.” (A lot of the applicants apparently hail from Detroit, where unemployment is high.)
The female owner, Bobbi Davis, is conducting the interviews and will personally select the successful candidate(s).
According to the brothel’s website, she’s looking for men who are:
Between 21 and 40.
Have a Good Work Ethic.
Must be Service Oriented.
Have a Willingness to Please.
Have a Positive Attitude.
If you think you have what it takes, please send pictures
(head shot and body shot, no nudes)
and a short Bio to
ShadyLadyRanch@starband.net.
The Madam will contact those whom she feels will do the best.
Interestingly, the qualifications are identical to the qualifications the Shady Lady looks for in its female sex trade workers. I like that.
But it raises an interesting question about the differences between being a male sex trade worker and a female sex trade worker. Lots of men are joking around saying this sounds like their dream job. They’d get all the sex they want, and they’d get paid for it too.
But they seem to forget that in addition to all the sex they want, they’d also be required to have sex they didn’t want.
The brothel owners point out that the man must be able to “entertain whatever lady walks in and give her a fine experience.”
No matter what.
Female sex trade workers service unappealing clients all the time. If they’re grossed out or turned off, nobody needs to know; they can still do their job.
So I guess what I’m wondering is, if a male sex trade worker was completely grossed out by a client, would he be able to just close his eyes, use his imagination, and get the job done anyway?
I attended Constable Eric Czapnik’s funeral procession today. I didn’t know exactly what to expect, since I’d never witnessed a cop’s funeral procession before. But it was a pretty impressive sight, and a remarkable display of solidarity.
Lately I haven’t known what to think of cops anymore. I’ve met some who don’t deserve my respect, and I’ve met others who very much do. I’ve heard some disturbing stories both in the media and from individuals. But I know there are some very good cops in this city too. I guess I just don’t know anymore whether most cops are good or bad. I don’t know how to think of them collectively.
So when I saw thousands of them today, marching solemnly in honour of a slain fellow officer, it was against this backdrop of conflicting thoughts and feelings.
Police officers certainly do respect their profession, and their so-called ‘brotherhood.’ (I wonder if female police officers resent that term?) I heard the number on the radio beforehand, but it didn’t prepare me for the visual and emotional impact of seeing four thousand cops, in full dress uniform, marching down Sunnyside Avenue on a cold winter day, in honour of a fallen brother most of them had never met.
Here in Canada, we don’t lose a lot of police officers in the line of duty. Eric Czapnik was the first one in Ottawa in 26 years, so I think it’s safe to say that being a Canadian cop is not a particularly hazardous profession. More construction workers die on the job in Ottawa than cops. But cops are a lot more devoted to their professional identity than construction workers. And they honour their dead in style.
Eric Czapnik was slain by a police officer from another police force, which makes things a little odder than usual. Usually it’s the ‘bad guys’ killing cops, and I imagine it’s more than a little weird for them to reconcile the fact that this time the ‘bad guy’ was one of their own.
The funeral procession was a moving sight. I was surprised by the lump in my throat.
I’m steaming mad about Stephen Harper proroguing Parliament again this year. Mad enough that I joined that Facebook group, wrote letters to my MP and to Harper (pm@pm.gc.ca), and joined the Ottawa organizing chapter.
Parliament does not exist to serve the interests of Mr. Harper, but of all Canadians. We should not be allowing him to flagrantly and arrogantly dismiss democracy when it doesn’t serve his interests. He’s counting on Canadians’ apathy and indifference to let him get away with it.
The whole thing is so wrong on so many levels, I don’t even know where to begin. Fortunately, many others have already written thoughtful and intelligent pieces about it. Some have also written about the lame, enabling response of the official opposition. Here’s a sampling:
If you haven’t already, I hope you’ll all take the time to familiarize yourself with what’s going on here, and take a stand, write a letter and attend a demonstration. I believe there will be protests all across Canada on January 25th. [UPDATE: JANUARY 23RD?]
When my son was about six or seven years old, he was seized with a sudden urge to see a dead body.
“I want to see a dead body,” he informed me solemnly.
“Why?”
“I don’t know.”
“How about a picture of a dead body?”
“No,” he said. “A real one.”
I wavered and procrastinated. Sometimes he had these sudden impulses that disappeared as quickly and mysteriously as they appeared.
Other times, he wouldn’t let go until I conjured up whatever it was he needed, like the time he needed to touch a pig.
In the case of the dead body, as in the case of the pig, procrastinating didn’t work. He kept bringing it up, day after day.
“I want to see a dead body.”
“I want to see a dead body.”
“I want to see a dead body.”
I started scanning the obituaries, looking for a suitable dead body. Someone old. Someone we didn’t know. Someone being waked at a funeral home within walking distance. Someone with a large family, so we could just blend it amongst the legitimate mourners, sidle up to the casket, catch a quick glimpse and slip out again.
Eventually someone met my criteria. He was an old man with a large family, and he was being waked at the Kelly Funeral Home on Somerset Street.
James was very serious and quiet at the wake. He hung onto my hand and at the moment of reckoning, he hesitated and hung back a little.
“We don’t have to,” I said, “If you’ve changed your mind.”
“No,” he said grimly, “I want to.”
We approached the casket and he peered at the old man for a few moments.
Then he squeezed my hand, whispered “okay” and we slipped away.
He seemed more relaxed after he’d seen the dead body than before, and it seemed to put the matter to rest.
Contrast this with my first dead body. Eleanor was a woman in my community and I liked her very much. She had a horse named Star and she would invite me over to ride him. Then she’d make me grilled cheese sandwiches and we’d chat. She was 27 years old when she suddenly keeled over during a baseball game. I was about 12 or 13. She spent the next few months in the Civic Hospital, where she died. I still don’t know what she died of.
I went to her wake. It was an open casket and there were two lineups by the casket. As you approached the casket you had to go through the lineup of her in-laws. As you left the casket, you had to go through the lineup of her parents and siblings. You were to shake each person’s hand and say something nice.
As we neared the first lineup, I suddenly felt acutely anxious and veered away. I didn’t want to shake anybody’s hand. I didn’t want to say anything. I didn’t want to see Eleanor’s dead body. But one of her in-laws seized me by the shoulders and pulled me back into the lineup. I was propelled forward and pushed toward the casket. I saw her dead body.
Eleanor was a farmer. She dressed for comfort and practicality. She didn’t wear makeup. She wore her hair in a ponytail. She was beautiful and healthy. Eleanor’s dead body wasn’t anything like Eleanor. It was heavily made up and powdery and its hair was fancy and it wore a dress and jewelry. And it was dead.
I found it very disturbing.
I’ve seen lots of dead bodies since, and I’ve found pretty much all of them disturbing, especially after the embalmers and undertakers have had their way. Dead bodies are so chalky and thin and groomed and transparent and…corpse-like. I think it’s the artificiality that disturbs me the most. The way they get stripped of their personal style. The way their hair is done. The way their suit is too big for their shrunken body. The way their hands are folded on their chest. All the attempts to make them look more lifelike just seem to emphasize the fact that they’re dead.
Maybe James had it right. Maybe it’s best if your first dead body is a stranger, when all you have to deal with is the fact that it’s a dead body. You don’t have to feel any grief, and you don’t have to reconcile the dead body with your memories of the person you loved who used to inhabit it.
The date almost slipped by unnoticed, but I suddenly remembered…It was two years ago today that Duncan and I adopted each other. We met on January 3rd, I went back for him on the 4th, and he got his name on the 5th.
It’s a fresh new year, and it even looks like one, with that blanket of freshly fallen snow, which just keeps on falling, endlessly, out of the sky.
The year’s been good so far. I went cross-country skiing on New Year’s Day, just for half an hour around the Experimental Farm, and it was lovely. Then I went over to GC’s house and worked on a jigsaw puzzle for a couple of hours. We’re doing a Gustav Klimt painting, which means a thousand pieces of greens and blues. We’re hoping The Dog doesn’t eat any pieces this time.
Saturday GC headed off to Montreal and I met up with Mudmama, Papa Pan, Sprout, XUP and XUP Jr at Irene’s Pub for the open stage. Papa Pan played a set, and he sang a song he wrote the night before. It was called Zoom Zoom! I was honoured. They headed back to the Maritimes on Sunday morning – into the eye of the ferocious blizzard raging out there. I haven’t heard if they’re safely home yet.
Central Park Hoodie, blocked
I started knitting the Baltic Sea Stole, since all my socks are on sick leave still. It’s my first attempt at lace knitting. I have no illusions that I’ll ever finish it, but I had to at least start it. I also blocked the Central Park Hoodie.
A fresh new year. Everybody’s headed back to work and I guess it’s time for me to start thinking seriously about how I’m going to support myself. I’ve registered for an eight-day course starting February first, which will help me assess my skills and explore my career options. It’s through Northern Lights/Employment Ottawa. I get to do all those aptitude and interest tests. I love those things.
Apparently I don’t qualify for a Second Career retraining allowance, though, because I haven’t been actively job-hunting since I got laid off. I explained that I had 118 medical appointments and three surgeries in the nine months since my layoff, and the employment counselor was sympathetic, but Rules are Rules.
Rules are Rules. Hmph. That’s right up there with Zero Tolerance policies. A substitute for thinking. A way to ensure your employees have no power to use their judgment. A way to be officially obtuse.
Ah well. You never know what’s around the next corner. I have a feeling it’s going to be an interesting year, career-wise. It’s time not just for a new job, but a whole new career. After 18 years in my old job, I was stuck in a rut. A comfortable rut, to be sure, but a rut nonetheless. I was definitely overdue for a change, and sometimes you need to have change foisted upon you.
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