Knitnut.net. Watch my life unravel...
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Posted by zoom! on September 2, 2008, at 11:11 pm |
Once upon a time, a very long time ago, I was sitting on an OC Transpo bus, looking out the window at the cold wet November evening rush hour. Somewhere on Laurier Avenue East, a well-groomed middle-aged man in a trench coat boarded the bus and sat in the seat beside me.
Like all good public transit users in Ottawa, I respectfully ignored my seatmate, at least until I noticed an unusual amount of unusual activity on his part. I studied his reflection in the window. The activity was coming from under his trench coat; his left hand was under there too, and he was breathing heavily.
It certainly looked suspicious.
I tried to come up with an alternative explanation. Itchiness, perhaps. A nervous tic.
Suddenly he stood up, reached over, and rang the bell. Apparently he was getting off (the bus).
But no, no he wasn’t. He sat back down again, closer, closing the gap between us. His right leg was almost touching my left leg. His right hand started rubbing his right leg, on the outside of his trench coat. The back of his hand was sliding against my outer thigh.
His left hand disappeared under his trench coat again and the activity picked up again. His breathing quickened.
The bus stopped; he didn’t get off. The bus pulled away again and again he stood up, and again he rang the bell, and again he sat down. This time he pressed his thigh against mine as he slid his left hand inside his trench coat.
For the previous two years I had always had a baby or toddler with me. People treat you differently when you’ve got a baby, and I had gotten used to being treated that way. Now that I had returned to school and my son had started daycare, I was facing the world alone again, and it was a bit weird. But it wasn’t usually this weird.
So. A dilemma. A quandary. What to do about the trench-coated stranger? Confront him? Tell the driver? Ignore it? I wasn’t even sure what to feel, let alone do.
I don’t like to accuse anybody of anything unless I’m absolutely certain, and I was only 99.9% certain. I don’t like confrontation. I don’t like telling other people what they should or should not do. Besides, we were almost at my stop; it would all be over soon. I could just ignore it. It was a relief to realize I didn’t have to do anything about it.
So nobody was more surprised than me when I suddenly turned to face the man and said in a loud, clear voice, “Excuse me Sir, but would you mind not rubbing my leg while you masturbate?”
Heads swiveled. Everybody spun around to see the Masturbator, who immediately sprung from his seat and ran for the front door. The bus driver swung open the door and the Masturbator leapt nimbly into the cold wet November evening and scurried off into the darkness.
I felt a little bit sorry for him. I still do.
Posted by zoom! on September 1, 2008, at 12:29 pm |
It’s September, the buckle-down, summer’s over, back-to-school month. The hint-of-autumn, apple crumble, crispy morning month. I love that it’s starting on Labour Day this year, so we can launch the buckle-down month with a lazy Labour Day. And I love that the weather’s nothing short of glorious.
The first thing I did when I got up this morning was look up the word transmogrification, because I awoke several times during the night wondering “What is transmogrification?”
Transmogrification: (n): the act of changing into a different form or appearance (especially a fantastic or grotesque one).
Then I went and looked in the mirror to make sure everything was okay.
After showering and feeding Duncan, I settled back down at my computer and googled “how to destroy a wasp’s nest.”
My next-door neighbour, Brian, pointed out yesterday that there was a wasp’s nest on the wooden box outside my back fence. I thought he was just pointing it out as a thing of interest or a conversation piece. GC thought maybe he was pointing it out because it was on my property and it was a nuisance to him so he thought I should do something about it.
That made sense too.
But, instead of doing something about the wasps yesterday, I continued on with Plan A, which included canoeing and biking and cooking and eating, and I added “do something about the wasps” to today’s to-do list.
But do what about the wasps exactly? My first instinct is to live and let live. As far as I know, we all get just one life and when it’s gone it’s gone. Life is precious, and it doesn’t matter if you’re a wasp or a human being, it’s all you’ve got, it’s all you’ll ever have, it’s everything. The idea of doing something that would wipe out the lives of a dozen wasps makes my conscience queasy.
[Brief break while I google “how many wasps in a wasp nest.” (From Wikipedia: “Social wasp colonies often have populations exceeding several thousand female workers and at least one queen.”)]
gulp.
At any rate, I can’t do anything about them today since the stores are closed and this job requires products, nerves of steel and moral gymnastics.
But when I am ready, I think I’m going to use this method, which I found on WikiHow:
“Spray adhesive works remarkably well (better than some poisons) and is about the same price. The wasps may begin to come out but will get stuck to the nest and then each other clogging the exit hole. Spray plenty of it on the exit after they have stopped coming out for the returning wasps. Spray adhesive however does not work for bees which unlike wasps will eat the dead clogging the hole, wasps will not.”
Either that or I’ll see if my brave young friends Daniel and Dakota are still in the business.
Posted by zoom! on August 31, 2008, at 10:33 am |
 I was playing with my new camera and decided to try out the panoramic feature, in which you take several pictures of a very wide subject and then stitch them together to make a single wide horizontal panorama. Normally you would use this feature for a landscape, but it also works for very large cats.
Here’s Duncan basking in a sunbeam in the art room this morning.
Here he is right this minute, curled up in his basket beside the computer.
Duncan says to say hi to everybody out there in blogland, and to apologize for not having responded to your emails and comments and follow-up questions for his Dear Duncan column. He says he now has a better understanding of how blogging ennui can strike down bloggers in their prime.
However he still wants to know the Elgin Street Irregulars’ official policy on shaving and everything else, and he is prepared to take whatever steps are necessary to find out.
 To be honest, this sounded kind of ominous and I tried to press him for details but he wasn’t forthcoming. He just looked mysterious and said something cryptic about how everything would reveal itself in due time. And then he yawned and went back to sleep. If I were the ESIs, I think I’d start hammering out an official policy immediately.
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Posted by zoom! on August 29, 2008, at 4:55 pm |
 The reports of my death are greatly exaggerated, but I do appreciate the blogging community’s offer to hold a bake sale.
Posted by zoom! on August 28, 2008, at 6:39 pm |
Tonight I had the pleasure of traveling home from work on the #14 bus in the company of a naked, sweaty, extensively tattooed man and a fat toddler who could make wine glasses explode with his voice alone.
They weren’t together. The naked tattooed man was standing up on the packed bus and looming over me, and the shrieking toddler was the sole occupant of a gigantic double stroller at the front of the bus.
Okay, I’m exaggerating. The naked man wasn’t completely naked. But I’m pretty sure that toddler really could break wine glasses.
You know me, I try to make the best of every situation. I was sitting there thinking how unpleasant it was having all my senses assaulted simultaneously, but at least it would make good blogging material.
So I took out my camera and tried to surreptitiously take a picture of the looming naked tattooed man. My camera’s got a handy little swivel screen so if I’m feeling gutsy I can sometimes get a sneaky shot of someone without them even knowing, even if they’re only two inches away from me, like the sweaty naked badly tattooed man.
I almost got away with it. I angled my screen and twisted my camera until I could see him on the display, and I was just about to snap the shutter when the man standing next to him nudged him and gestured at me. I immediately pretended I was just sorting through my stored pictures. I don’t know why I did that. I wish I had just taken the picture.
Anyway, the two men struck up a conversation and naturally I eavesdropped.
“All them tattoos musta cost a lot of money,” observed the not-tattooed man.
“No, not really,” said the naked smelly tattooed man proudly, “Some of ’em people did for free, and some I did myself. I bought my own tattoo gun to save money.”
Personally, I think there are certain things you shouldn’t skimp on by doing yourself, such as tattoos and cosmetic surgery. But, if you insist on being your own tattoo artist, at least get a buddy to proofread your tattoos before you permanently etch them into your body. You don’t want spelling mistakes. I didn’t look too closely because I didn’t want to be rude, but I noticed at least one spelling mistake on his stomach, along with lots of incomprehensible writing and diagrams. I was able to read “gin is love” scrawled on his abdomen, and the word “wolf” formed a ring around his belly button. (Speaking of rings, did I mention he had a ring in his nipple? Have I ever told you how I feel about nipple rings?)
About that fat toddler. Every time the bus braked, the brakes would squeal. All the buses are like that; you get used to it. But I guess the toddler wasn’t used to it. Every time the brakes squealed, the toddler would out-squeal it. He would take a giant lungful of air and then he would release it along the uppermost ranges of his taut vocal cords in an impossibly long, loud, shrill, violent, blood-curdling, ear-splitting, soul-searing, seizure-inducing shriek.
I looked around at the other passengers and the survivors were all straining to get a glimpse of the creature capable of making such sounds. The teenagers were vowing never to have children. The seniors were yanking out their hearing aids. If looks could kill, that fat toddler and his freakishly placid mother would be pushing up daisies already. I think he’s going to be an opera singer if he grows up.
Posted by zoom! on August 27, 2008, at 6:12 pm |
Monday is garbage day in Centretown and I’m a big fan of garbage day. You never know what kind of treasures you’re going to find.
I was crossing the street at Somerset and Lyon when I spotted something interesting in Top Copy’s garbage. Top Copy is that pink building that used to have the rabbit on it and the motto “We reproduce like crazy.”
I zeroed in on it, swooped down and scooped it up. It was one of those finds that you don’t know why you want it or what you’ll do with it, but there is no question in your mind that you must have it because it is an excellent and unusual find.
Without further ado, here it is – you can click the pix for a better view.
It’s one of those hair dye sample books! I can’t even tell you how thrilled I was; it was almost unnatural.
At this point I don’t know what I’m going to do with it, but I’m pretty sure it’s either going to become art or it’s going to be the subject of endless musing about how it could become art. (Suggestions are more than welcome. So far I’ve had one suggestion: create an artistic Periodic Table with it.)
Posted by zoom! on August 26, 2008, at 7:55 pm |
I have a bit of a reluctant relationship with my iPod because of the opportunity costs associated with plugging my ears with sound while walking to work. If I listen to music I can’t listen to the morning unfolding all around me. I can’t listen to the Canada geese, who have definitely been up to something the past week or two. I can’t be fully balanced on the cusp of summer and autumn if one of my senses is otherwise occupied.
Lately I’ve been listening to podcasts on my iPod. Podcasts!
I stumbled upon the podcast collection on the CBC Radio site, so I loaded up my iPod with a bunch of podcasts. Now I can walk to work and listen to trippy stuff like this:
- A documentary about this addictive stuff called paan which is sold at roadside stands in India and which is regarded as an unsavory but common habit. You chew it up and spit blood red juices all over the place. There are different kinds of paan – tobacco paan, sweet paan, viagara knock-off paan, opium paan. (Sweet paan, apparently, is not seen as unsavory.)
- A show about the sex lives of young people with low mental functioning. (What would you do if your 6-foot-4, 16-year-old son suddenly, in a grocery store, loudly demanded “MOM, HAVE YOU EVER HAD A PENIS IN YOUR MOUTH?” and when you told him that you would talk about it later, in private, he started shrieking “NO MOM, TELL ME NOW IF YOU’VE EVER HAD A PENIS IN YOUR MOUTH!”)
- A show about beat mixing, which is my son’s hobby. If I understand it correctly, you have two turntables, and you make a new piece of music by layering together two existing pieces of music, but you have to get the timing exactly right so the beats sound right together. I don’t think it’s meant to work with songs, but with instrumental techno kinds of beats.
- An interview with a writer who laments ‘buffet Buddhism’ which is the western trend of taking the more palatable parts of Buddhism and leaving the more difficult or less appealing bits behind. For example, convincing yourself that it’s okay to give up your attachment to luxury objects rather than the objects themselves.
- A documentary about the the zabaleen, who are the garbage entrepreneurs of Cairo. Garbage is not a public service in Cairo, a city with a population of 15 million people, and it probably has the highest recycling rate in the world.
It makes me realize there are a million fascinating things I’ve never even thought to think about.
I like listening to podcasts on my way to work, but if I listen to podcasts, I can’t be listening to the morning unfolding OR the music. Not only that, but I can’t experience that pleasant, lyrical, stream-of-consciousness thinking that occurs naturally when I walk to work unplugged.
I think the solution is to try to balance all three things: podcasts, music and Canada Geese, which isn’t as easy as it sounds for a creature of habit like me. Sigh.
Anyway. I’m looking for podcast recommendations, since I’ve barely scratched the surface of the podcast universe and I will most likely be plunging headlong into it for awhile.
Posted by zoom! on August 25, 2008, at 10:51 am |
Supposing there were an addictive little pink pill that would:
1) make you feel good all the time
2) have no negative side effects
3) not impede your ability to function in the world
4) only cost you ten cents a day, and
5) be legally obtainable on an ongoing basis
Would you take the addictive little pink pill? Why or why not?
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Posted by zoom! on August 23, 2008, at 8:24 pm |
Conservative politicians seem to think it’s a simple enough matter to quit doing drugs. Just quit, that’s all. Just stop doing them. Just say no. They believe a more punitive approach to drug use will yield the desired results. If we wield a big enough stick, addicts will decide drugs aren’t worth it, and will quit.
But of course it doesn’t work that way. Look to the US for evidence of this. Their hugely expensive war on drugs continues to be an unmitigated failure of colossal proportions. (Unless you consider massive expansion of the prison industrial complex to be a success, which is probably true of current US and Canadian leaders.)
The reason the “tough on crime” approach does not solve the drug problem is because addiction is not, at its heart, a crime problem. Addiction can not be conquered by the threat of punishment. Most addicts are already risking far more than punishment, and are living lives that would serve as the ultimate deterrent to anybody who still has a choice.
People are vulnerable to addiction if they don’t have enough dopamine receptors in their brains. Dopamine is a brain chemical associated with a sense of well-being. If they take stimulants, they experience an increase in the levels of dopamine and a profound increase in perceptions of well-being.
Unfortunately, the very drugs that flood their brains with dopamine, thus compensating for the shortage, also further reduce the natural levels of dopamine receptors in their brains. This leads to the vicious cycle which characterizes addiction. It also means that the original condition which led to the addiction is even worse than it was before the addiction.
I became addicted to amphetamines the first time I tried them. They made me feel exactly the way I’d always wanted to feel: energetic, creative, confident, connected, exquisitely happy. I spent the next few years as a full-time drug addict, although the high became increasingly elusive over time and I felt like I was always in pursuit of that exquisite happiness rather than in possession of it. I obsessively adjusted the dose and other variables in hopes of recapturing it; occasionally I succeeded.
One reason it’s so hard to quit is because you’re attempting a supremely difficult thing while you’re emotionally and physically depleted. You’re doing the hardest thing you’ve ever done with the fewest resources you’ve ever had.
It can also be a lonely and isolating experience. You can’t hang out with your usual friends and the larger society doesn’t want anything to do with you. You don’t belong in either world for a long time. Your social support systems may long since have abandoned you because addicts have a way of burning out their families and friends. Caring about an addict is exhausting, frustrating and heartbreaking, especially if you’re trying to “fix” them; people give up.
So, given that an addict is likely to be physically, emotionally, nutritionally, financially and socially depleted, and that the original problems leading to the addiction are now worse than ever, and that their only friends are other addicts, and that they’ve given up everything in order to sometimes feel the way they want to feel, it’s amazing that anybody ever successfully breaks free.
But people do. Sometimes the stars just align themselves. Sometimes the transcendental or defining moment just strikes a person like a lightning bolt out of nowhere. And if the necessary help is available at the critical moment, the stranglehold of addiction can be broken and recovery can begin.
Insite is there for addicts in Vancouver. It’s there in a harm reduction capacity, to help protect them from death and disease while they’re caught in the trap, and it’s there to offer treatment at those critical moments when escape is possible.
The four pillars of an integrated drug strategy – prevention, harm reduction, treatment and enforcement – are not mutually exclusive. This is not complicated stuff; I don’t know why it’s so difficult for Conservative politicians to wrap their heads around it.
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Posted by zoom! on August 22, 2008, at 9:44 pm |
 Federal Health Minister Tony Clement addressed a meeting of the Canadian Medical Association on Monday where he deliberately and publicly denounced the ethics of doctors who support Insite*.
“The supervised injection site undercuts the ethics of medical practice and sets a debilitating example for all physicians and nurses, both present and future in Canada,” Mr. Clement declared.
Mr. Clement’s accusation stirred up quite a reaction in Canada’s medical community.
The Chair of the CMA’s Ethics Committee, Dr. Bonnie Cham, said “I found the use of medical ethics to justify a political decision, which will affect social policy to be troubling at best and misleading at worst.”
 Dr. Gabor Maté, a physician who works directly with Vancouver’s Downtown Eastside drug addicts, reacted with some ferocity to Mr. Clement’s attack.
“The repugnant aspect is his attack on the morality and ethics of human beings who are trying to work with a very difficult population,” said Dr. Maté in an interview, “I mean where does he come off? Where does he appoint himself as a moral judge of professionals who he doesn’t understand and knows nothing about?â€
In a subsequent letter to the Globe and Mail, Dr. Maté wrote: “The minister ought to resign if he cannot tolerate disagreement without personally attacking health professionals who, under challenging circumstances and with no help from his government, are attempting to relieve suffering of which he seems to have no understanding,”
Ann Livingston, spokeswoman for the Vancouver Area Network of Drug Users, says “I almost feel a certain amount of pity for the guy (Clement) because I think he doesn’t seem to grasp just how sophisticated the level of discussion (has been) that’s gone on around ethics.”
This is the thing. This government has an ugly habit of imposing its ideology on the rest of us, even when that ideology is unsupported by the evidence of professionals and researchers who have dedicated their careers to understanding and studying the issue.
Canada’s Conservative government has set its sights on Insite. In addition to publicly attacking both the program and the professionals who work there, the government is appealing the BC Supreme Court’s ruling which allows Insite to continue operating. At the same time, Conservative MPs recently swamped Vancouver with offensive we’re-tough-on-drugs-unlike-those-pansy-assed-liberals propaganda.
If anybody’s on shaky ethical ground here, it’s the politicians, not the nurses and doctors.
To learn about how you can help protect Insite from the federal government, check out their Facebook group.
*Insite is a safe, clean facility where addicts inject their own drugs in the presence of nurses who will save their lives in the event of overdose. A side benefit is that these addicts have daily contact with non-judgmental health care professionals, which means they will be more likely to seek treatment for their addiction as well as for other health issues such as infections, wounds, diseases and pregnancy.
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