Archive - Mar 2009

Retrograde politics. Wait I'll say it again retrograde politics. An article from the G&M called Enough of multiculturalism – bring on the melting pot. I am sorry but who missed the memo - re: Racism is bad for politics. Maybe that weird half and half to the south is the aberration but somehow I doubt it. American's are known for making history not otherwise. I guess Canadians can now be known for trying desperately to avoid the inevitable march of cultural globalization. Lucky us.

You are appealing to an increasingly smaller demographic when you start randomly requesting that people must start behaving as if they were white just like you just to satisfy some baseless fear that difference is somehow more difficult to manage than 'sameness' imposed from above.

I am kinna obsessed with Amanda Zelina's song Obsessed for two reasons:

#1/ She has a nice rich but reedy voice;

#2/ Wherever they recorded this, I love that I can hear the bump of the pianos pedals? is that what they are called? Anyways, that hollow noise behind the instrumentation but not behind her voice is fricking genius;

Wednesday morning while helping Lola up the stairs I threw my back out in this major way. I know I am a whiner about health issues so I will assure you this was not some, 'looking for pity injury' this was like full on fainting whenever I tried to stand up stuff.

Awful, annoying, made me weep with frustration.

The good news is I have a wonderful friend who was willing to stay with me all day and even to help me pee. Also I have a wonderful neighbour who is a yoga instructor/osteopath, so she helped me to both relax my lower back and feel less panicked that I was going to be 30-something quasimoto for the rest of my life.

Around 3:00pm the pain got so bad I couldn't even sit up, I ate a bowl of chili lying down which is both humiliating and instructive. I realized that I have been working way too hard, that I am really conflicted (not just oh leaving montreal will be so sad) about this future move, and I am terrified that when I arrive in Toronto all my amazing connections, like the neighbour Osteopath, and the friends who are both willing and able to hold me up over a toilet, all that will be gone.

Maybe I will end up with a job I hate, an apartment the size of a Ritz cracker, and the worst part no community left. I know I have family, and I have lots of friends, but I think the sine qua non definition of community is lying on your back in agony and having 3 or 4 people, all of whom live within steps of your home, to walk your dog, go get back-pain medication, rub your achey places etc.. That is not something that develops overnight, that's what comes from 8 years of living in the same place, and I am going to be so sad when I leave it behind.

The other thing I realized when I woke up this morning and the pain was no longer making me stupid tired and dizzy was that I am an "performaholic" or maybe a "planaholic". I don't know the word for it, but as soon as I got up out of bed this morning, while drinking a coffee painstakingly made by yours truly, I started two searches, one on Monster.com for work in Toronto, and one looking at the various social work programs and diplomas available in the city.

Yet another one: Feminism in the Web era: It ain't pretty. This one, by Judith Timson, is a little less virulent - at least.

But it's still wrong.

At the outset Timson ponders the bigger issues that may lie behind an increased trend towards extreme violence (and especially in the context of intimate relationships) perpetrated by young women: