the screaming pages

In November of 2006 I participated in the first Dona Nobis Pacem blog blast for peace. It was the brainchild of Mimi and two others have since occurred. In my first post, I asked “If social connections exist and what we write has power, why can’t a group of people posting a similar graphic calling for peace – whatever the word peace means to you – wield similar power?”

Today, I am once again participating in Mimi’s call for peace throughout the world. I am hoping that through education and exchanges of experiences we can find a solid patch of ground from which we can build a world where understanding is the ultimate goal. While I have no issues with independence overall, I believe a collectivist vision with a view to acceptance is required in order to succeed. As before I believe that this shared understanding can be developed through communication.

I invite everyone to spend the day communicating with others. Perhaps someone you might not normally speak to. Only through exposure to the new can we attempt to break free from the bondage of the past.

I’ve made it through the day – side illness that I don’t feel like sharing details about and all. It’s now later in the evening and – after spending a chunk of my afternoon reading blog after blog discussing the current BC Human Rights Tribunal events relating to Mark Steyn and McLean’s – I’ve yet to see anything on the local or national news that mentions these events. Sure, Andrew Coyne is liveblogging the “trial” on the MCLEAN’S web site and a tonne of other bloggers have taken up the torch, but it strikes me as incredibly lazy for any journalist or newscaster to turn a blind eye to this story.

UPPERDATE 03/06/08: Apparently a few people have picked up on the events and are starting to include them in the day’s news reports. Still, it’s a startingly small number of reports considering the size of the country. Check them soon as I don’t know how long they’ll be available online. National Post. The Province. CBC. Vancouver Sun. Canadian Press (CP). The CP article was in this morning’s Sun here in Edmonton.

Last night we dismissed our plans to view a movie after being invited across the alley to a BBQ.  Since so many were arriving, we brought our BBQ over to help handle the giant mass of food to be cooked.  Our neighbour’s son’s fiancee was celebrating her birthday so we had a few new faces in the mix.  Early on in the evening, the boys pulled down the tailgate on a truck parked in the driveway to add extra seating.  Drew, Amanda and Ryan had plates of food on their laps and had been sitting on the back of the tailgate for a while when there was a loud banging sound.  There they were, flat on their asses on the concrete with the tailgate at their backs.  The chains holding the tailgate to the back of the truck had separated.  Amanda had a look of deep shock across her face while Ryan was nearly rolling on the ground in tears – laughing of course.  Drew, true to his natural reaction, took one look down at his plate of food in his lap, picked up a chicken kabob and continued to eat as if nothing had happened.  None of the three of them are overly large indivduals and I’d be shocked if their combined weight reached 600lbs.  Apparently that was enough to break the tailgate however.

Between bouts of loud laughter the others in the area kept asking if everyone was alright.  Thankfully, aside from a few bruised egos, everyone was fine.

Later, Les brought out a screaming monkey to throw around the yard.  It’s a stuffed monkey with elastic arms and a small electronic device in the chest that “screams” when the monkey is sent flying.  The boys proved they had rotten aim – usually off by a mile when trying to send it from one to the others.  Then Mariah got her hands on it.  Years ago she was a champion marksman and has competed at the national level.  While her fiancee jokingly told her to “aim for the head” she let loose a monkey flying at 3-5x the speed of anything the boys had previously managed.  Drew, in what we assume was an attempt to catch it, deflected the monkey off his wrist and into his eye.  Within minutes he was developing quite a shiner!

A few hours later while he was cleaning up the BBQ grills, Drew dropped the cover on his hand and jammed his thumb.  ‘Twas a night of bruises and abuse for a guy who’d barely had anything to drink.  I think I may be able to relinquish my standing clutz title to him.  If nothing else, we have some great stories to tell on Monday morning.

It’s the weekend so I’m supposed to be sitting in the basement – oft denoted by the appearance of the pretty black & grey blog theme – and working away at my homework assignments and readings for classes. I just can’t seem to motivate myself to do so today. I’m sure it has something to do with the box of books from Chapter’s arriving yesterday. My nightstand now includes the new Anita Blake novel (Laurell K Hamilton’s Blood Noir) and Kevin Patterson’s Outside The Wire. I’m going to have to toss up a few coins to determine which one to read first. All I know for certain is that both of them appear to trump reading the DND Environmental Assessment Manual or Forsyth’s Group Dynamics. I’ll get back to my homework tomorrow but for today I fully intend to sit down with a non-school related book and enjoy. Later this evening I see a trip to the theatre and a movie in our future. w00t!

Whatever the weekend brings you I hope you have a wonderful day today.

I love the way our neighbourhood gathers together for weekends and holidays.  I love the way we trade off BBQ nights and gather around fire pits to share stories and laugh during the week nights.  However, sometimes there’s a bit too much beer drinking going on for a week day and I have to bow out of the festivities.  So while I was sitting on the back deck reading Steyn’s America Alone, Drew’s off jawing away at the neighbours house.  At around 8:30pm I popped in to say hello and he tells me he’d like to get to sleep early and will be home around 9:30pm.  At 11pm I’m still sitting on my back deck reading a book – one of the benefits of living up north are the amount of daylight hours in the summer – and can hear the boys’ voices progressively getting louder.  My neighbour calls to say she’s heading off to bed and asks if I can collect zee hubby from her yard.  I trot across the alley way to discover the boys in the garage measuring stairs and debating on how straight they are and whether or not they would form matched pairs.  And of course they’re all three sheets to the wind.

Cause I’m such a good wifey, I drag him home and put him to bed.  And now I can’t sleep. The worst thing about the evening is knowing that in the morning he’ll feel fine (evil metabolism) while I’ll spend most of my day yawning.