the screaming pages

It’s true.  This past week I have struggled to complete my readings and assignments in my classes.  Tired and sore, I was at least calmed by the knowledge that my first Enviro Chem paper wasn’t due until next weekend. I still had time to finish all my readings and take notes for my paper.

Apparently I don’t know how to read the assignment calendar.  Our prof sent out a nice mass email reminder to the class that our paper is due on the 26th. The 26th, of course, is not the 28th.

This semesters’ round with the beast includes strange formulas and mathematical equations.  WTF?  The whole point of signing up for Enviro Chem was so I didn’t have to struggle through math class while attempting to meet my math/science course requirements for my degree. Life would be so much easier if Statistics had counted towards the math/science requirement.  While Stats may make my head spin I can easily identify WIIFM.

Well, I might as well stop panicking and get back to reading my texts and attempting these multi-part questions that appear to have been written in gibberish by a drunk monkey experimenting with crack.  Eutrophication?  Biomass pyramids?  Nitrogen and Phosphorous cycles? All my prof would need to do to make my head explode at this point is to throw in some DAODs, CFAOs and QR&Os.

All of a sudden my *gulp* upcoming Canadian and Military History courses are looking mighty appealing.

I’m still suffering from my klutz induced injuries but I caught something in the news today that’s royally pissed me off.  My dad used to say that “we’re all equal in Canada; some of us are more equal than others“.  It’s a sad truism that can be proven by looking no further than our national media and it’s response to ongoing issues in the latest Federal Election campaign.

The TV, radio and online news is buzzing about the Conservative aid’s comment that could be construed as racist.

The exchange was caught on video and broadcast as the lead item Wednesday by the Aboriginal Peoples Television Network.

“If you behave and you’re sober and there’s no problems and if you don’t do a sit down and whatever, I don’t care,” said Mr. Cannon’s assistant Darlene Lannigan to Mr. Matchewan. She then added: “One of them showed up the other day and was drinking.”

“Are you calling me an alcoholic?” replied Mr. Matchewan.

“I’m not calling you an alcoholic. No. It was just to say that you’re in a federal office. If you’re coming in to negotiate, I expect, there’s [decorum] that has to be respected,” said Ms. Lannigan. [Source: Globe and Mail]

Ms. Lannigan has since apologised. For those of you who are unaware of her position, Ms. Lannigan is an assistant to Transport Minister Lawrence Cannon.

So what am I so hot under the collar about?  It’s taken over a week for any real notice to be paid to the racist comments made by two Liberal Party candidates during their campaigns.  Sure, a few newspapers have carried the story.  Most notably the National Post [here and here] and Le Soliel [here].  It’s all over the blogosphere.  What I want to know is why hasn’t it been all over the TV and radio news for the past week?

Meanwhile the Liberals have also had issues this campaign related to aboriginals.

Two Liberal candidates in Quebec resigned last week in relation to controversial remarks.

Simon Bédard is no longer the Liberal candidate in the riding of Quebec for comments the former radio-host made in French to the Le Soleil newspaper about his views during the 1990 Oka standoff.

“Everyone was scandalized because I said: ‘Send in the Army and let’s clean this up once and for all!’ But maybe we should have done that because 17 years later, it’s still the same thing. If anything, it’s worse,” said Mr. Bédard, according to Le Soleil.

The Liberal candidate in Beauharnois-Salaberry, Ricardo Lopez, also resigned after attention was drawn to remarks he made in 1988 when he was a Tory MP.

“I think all the Indians should be sent to Labrador, to go live together and have peace and leave us in peace,” Mr. Lopez was quoted as saying at the time. [Source: Globe and Mail]

The Globe and Mail indicates that Simon Bedard was fired on 9/11 for his comments. Canada.com indicates that Bedard resigned and was not fired. CBC.ca posted a similar message. I watched the big 3 news casts in Canada on Sept 11 and I don’t recall – granted my memory could be very fuzzy from pain pills – any sort of media frenzy or time spent calling out Mr. Bedard or the Liberals for comments that were made.

I realize that in the above comments, what M. Bedard said doesn’t seem overly evil. After all, he’s had the benefit of hindsight to change his opinion, which he reiterated in the above quoted materials.  What he originally said on a CJRP radio program in 1990 was:

You go in there with the army, then you clean up all that. Fifty dead, 100 dead, 125 dead, that would put it out. We bury it and life goes on. [Source: Montreal Gazette]

Adds a bit of a chill when you think about what M. Bedard was advocating – the use of the Canadian Forces to slaughter Aboriginal Canadians.  M. Lopez desire to round aboriginals up and ship them off to the far regions (Labrador) are repulsive in their own right.

But of course, our TV and Radio news media are all about providing Canadians with a serious and non-biased review of the day’s events as they occur.  Excuse me while I prepare a chunk of swampland in Florida for sale.

I’m on vacation this week. Pretty much a forced vacation.  I booked a 4 day weekend with visions of catching up on homework and possibly getting ahead in a few classes.  Then I went grocery shopping.  The fall I took on Saturday turned out to be much worse than I’d thought once Sunday rolled around.  Muscles in my back, neck and shoulders I didn’t even know I had ached.  I’m used to permanent lower back pain from my car accident over a decade ago but this was new.  I couldn’t take a full breath for the pain.

So, instead of returning to work today, I’m returning next Monday.  At least I might manage catching up in classes while I struggle through the week.  Focus is a bit difficult to keep when you’re hopped up no on muscle relaxants.

Still trying to find a bright shiny new position.  Until then I need to keep working in the previous position to pay all those not so shiny bills and my tuition and book costs at university.

Considering that it took us until yesterday to see Indiana Jones 4, I’m the last person who should be commenting on movie-going experiences.  I’m falling back on the excuse that I just wasn’t all that interested in the latest installment of the Indy series and decided to wait until it hit the cheap seats before doling out any $$ to see it. So much for our hard earned movie junkie titles of the past.  We haven’t been traveling to the theatres very often of late (exemption: Hellboy II).  Waiting for the movie to be released on DVD seems to be the modus operandi du jour.

Yesterday we decided to take a break from the garage build and drive out to the local discount theatre to see Indy.  Well, it was more like I gave in.  I wanted to see Prince Caspian or Iron Man.  Drew was adamant about seeing Indy.  We so rarely disagree on which movies we’re going to see and he’s been hard at work on the garage forever. I agreed to see his preferred movie.  I was dreading the experience. I had such fond memories of seeing Indy movies with my dad when I was a kid.  I loved the movies, the music, the storylines and the silliness.  I didn’t want my memories tarnished by a movie made many years later.  Some things are sacred.  Like childhood. You can never really go back again.

If you do, you shouldn’t do it at the early afternoon matinee showing of a movie on a long weekend!

Yeah.  I’m a idiot.  Not only did I agree to go see Indy 4 (sadly disappointing) but I also agreed to see it as a matinee instead of a midnight showing.  Glutton for punishment.  That’s me.

This is a good time to mention that despite popular belief amongst our friends, Drew and I do not hate children.  We just don’t want any of our own.  We do, however, adore our godson and various children of friends.  We love to spoil them rotten and then hand them back to their parents.  All that good stuff.  I don’t want to get into a childfree vs. parenting rant so let’s just leave it at that for the time being.

Children are, while discomforting, fine in our books.  Our problem is with some (not all) parents.  Breeders actually.  There’s a big difference between breeders and parents.  Parents teach their children social norms.  They give their children everything they need, but not necessarily everything they want.  They teach them that it’s OK to fail; it’s making the attempt that’s important.  Parents hand down morals and values.  Through their parents children learn that they are a small segment of a larger world around them.  In my experience Breeders are self-involved.  They could care less about the world around them – they’re far more interested in being lauded for the wondrous performance of plopping out kids.  They shove others out of their way with their giant strollers and teach their children that nothing matters other than fulfilling their immediate desires.  Their kids learn that they’re “special” and more important than others.  Their mantra appears to be “look at my kid, he matches my couch.”

Behind us in the movie theatre was a set of Breeders and their 4 kids.  From the moment we sat down until the end of the movie, the kids loudly babbled away through the movie.  At points their voices were so loud that others in the theatre couldn’t hear the dialog.  While everyone around them (us, the couple sitting next to us, the family sitting behind them, and the couple sitting beside them) tried the tried and true method of shushing the kids, they continued to babble non-stop.  Why didn’t they quiet down during the movie?  Perhaps it had something to do with the fact that dear old dad was happily talking – at a normal voice level and with no attempts to whisper – to the kids throughout the movie.  One of the children spent the movie kicking the back of Drew’s seat.  No attempts to ask the child to stop were successful.  More annoying than a small child kicking your seat was the father kicking the back of mine throughout the movie.  Can’t expect a kid to behave when they’re watching daddy dearest do the exact same thing throughout the movie.  Twice the alarm on his watch beeped and flashed for two minutes.  Loudly.  He made no attempt to turn off the alarm.  His expensive fancy schmantzy watch was doing exactly what it was designed to do.  Call attention to it’s owner.

What was mom doing during all of this?  Smiling indulgently at the children.  No reprimands.  No explanation as to why everyone around them was *shushing* them repeatedly.  The kids asked why.  Repeatedly.  In their outside voices. We couldn’t help but hear them.  Must have been a completely new experience.  Rather than explain social norms and tell the kids to be quiet (other than the standard “ooohs” and “awwws”) and wait until the end of the movie to ask their questions, they studiously ignored the question.  It’s the only question the children asked that daddy didn’t respond to during the entire movie.

If I’d been at the normal theatre and paid 13$ for my ticket I’d have immediately launched out of my seat and demanded a refund from the management.  Having only paid a dollar to attend and not really caring about the movie, I just couldn’t be bothered.  Management at this particular theatre wouldn’t have made the attempt to placate angry customers.  I’ll never go back to a matinee.

Perhaps not.

I have finally found a few moments peace wherein I can post photos of the garage build. It’s lengthy and has a lot of pictures.  Click below the fold to check them out.

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