hel - pez dispenser of happiness

In response to the latest "but I'm just asking *questions* and raising reasonable points" letter in the Record, I have once again put pixels to screen. We'll see how the Record feels about this one.

Regarding Big, big questions, Friday Dec 30, 2011

In his letter, Mr. Matan suggests we google Europe's abortion rates, a suggestion designed to refer to a BBC report on European abortion restrictions. The BBC report lists 27 European countries and their abortion restrictions. He seems to imply that reasonable countries regulate abortion. However, it must be noted that more than a third of the countries listed actually have higher abortion rates than does Canada, according to the work of Wm. Robert Johnston, who has compiled a list of Percentage of Pregnancies Aborted by Country (http://www.johnstonsarchive.net/policy/abortion/wrjp334pd.html). And the number of abortions in Canada is steadily decreasing.

It's almost as if the restrictions placed on abortion (or lack thereof) have almost no impact on the actual rate of abortions or whether they trend up or down.

Currently, Canada does something revolutionary: it trusts women to make decisions. It allows women, in consultation with their partners and doctors, to do the crucial work of balancing and re-balancing conflicting rights and responsibilities when it comes to abortion. And the women of Canada, along with their doctors, are doing that at least as well as the governments and medical panels of European countries. The vast majority of abortions in Canada (over 90%) occur before the 12 week mark used by most of the European countries in the BBC report.

It is unclear to me why we should pass a law restricting abortion when we are having comparable results to Europe without one. The effect of a European-style restriction would presumably be to enforce what is already happening; it is, or should be, generally considered unnecessary to legislate the status quo.

This article discusses the recent request by the management of Trails End Farmers Market in London to one of their vendors to either get rid of the transgender employees working at the booth, or find another farmers market to vend at. According to the booth owner, the manager of the farmers market offered as his explanation "This is a family place, a family market and this just isn't right."

When called, the owner of the market said that it "wasn't discrimination", it was just about "which washroom these people would go to". Excuse me while I shake my head to get my eyes back into position; unfortunately, they got a bit stuck when I gave that the eyeroll it deserves.

There's a petition linked to from the story and also a piece about it on Jezebel. The booth owner is filing a case with the Ontario Human Rights Commission and I wish her success with it. I've never been to the market, and I'm now really glad about that.

As an aside, kudos to AM 980 News for consistently getting Dani's gender designation correct. Yay for respectful news outlets!

Let's see if they print it..

After reading the article comments on the Record's Car-Free Sunday articles and the opinions of those angry about "hippies", the "waste" of money, and "bums" downtown, I look forward to November. I'm sure that there will again be a raft of letters and article comments decrying the "waste" of closing off King Street for the benefit of a bunch of freeloaders, who've never worked a day in their lives but who expect something for nothing.

I speak, of course, of the kids who'll be gleefully watching the Santa Claus parade.

All satire aside, kudos and thanks to the planners and volunteers of the June Car-Free Sunday.

-Me

Good morning, Mr. Braid

I'm writing as one of your constituents to express my concern about the announcement on the Canada Revenue Agency website about mail delivery in the event of a strike or lockout (http://www.cra-arc.gc.ca/gncy/pstlstrk/menu-eng.html).

I am deeply unhappy that the decision was made to deliver CCTB benefits over EI benefits, and I say that as a fully employed Canadian who receives the CCTB. I question the thought processes behind this; did no-one making the decision think that perhaps a program that delivers 100% of a person's income when they can't find work might be slightly more important than the nice supplementary income that at least some people just stick into their kid's RESP? Who made this decision, and was any concern paid to the plight of unemployed Canadians? What will happen to the economy when people cannot pay their rent, pay for food, pay for a bus ticket to the library to look for jobs or to an interview? Is it really the best decision for Canada to push vulnerable people into an even more untenable situation? It's hard enough to escape EI for many people, given the high unemployment rate; if people are made homeless, it will be even harder for them to climb out of the hole.

How is that reasonable or fair?

This is a terrible, terrible prioritization that makes no sense on either economic or moral grounds.Shame on the people who made this decision. This is something that needs to be fixed quickly, before vulnerable people have their situation degraded past the point where they can reasonably be expected to escape it.

Sincerely,

me

While packing my fabric up, I've separated out a bunch of stuff that I'm unlikely to use, mostly because it's too small. Of course, my too small might be some craft-type person's just right, so I've got a bunch of pieces ranging from 1/4 yard to ~1.5 yard. Mostly cottons, with some linens, and a bit of silk.

Mostly, as I said, it's good for crafting, but there's some veil-weight stuff in there in sufficient quantities to be useful for same.

Let me know if you'd to look through the pile and we'll Make Arrangements.

+ woke refreshed
+ made the bus (even if it was the more circuitously routed one) in perfect time
+ mechanic figured out what was wrong with the car
+ it was a simple fix, and relatively inexpensive (>half the cost of the bill was the tow)
- the fix involved disconnecting my battery, and thus my radio from my battery
- the previous owners did not supply the security code for the radio
+ the mechanic can discover what the security code is by removing the radio and calling the dealership with the find-out-what-the-code-is code inscribed therein
- it will cost, at worst, another 90-100 dollars to remove the radio, call the dealership, replace the radio and enter the code
+ dinner tonight with good friends

So now I have to decide how important a radio is to me, in a car I hate and want to consign to oblivion. Normally, it wouldn't be an issue, but right now, the route of prudence would seem to be to cut out unnecessary spending in advance of next month's biggest-purchase-of-my-life.

I want a new car.

Remember this?

I didn't, until today.

So, one post for tonight and I'll get to the rest this weekend.

the_nita asks: What would you want for yourself (yes, I'm talking about material things), presuming your daughter's needs are taken care of?

At this point, I think I'd most like a house that a) looks like its decor was actually planned and not just thrown together and b) is maintained by someone other than me.

I mean, I also want a new (to me) car, but that's in the pipeline.

So, as a piece of back story, Mer is currently sleeping in our room and I'm back to sleeping in my own bed (most of the last 6 months was spent with Mer sleeping in her crib in the dining room while I slept on the living room couch. But I'm back at work now, so..)

Mer's in our room because her room has insufficient wall-age to make for a happy sleeping baby. There's a night light, which is behind her pack and play, which has a tent-like cover. The side toward us is mesh.

So this morning at six, she starts coughing, which wakes me up, and I slowly sit up and look at her. She's fast asleep, on her tummy, and between the shape of the pack and play (plus lid) and the backlighting, I could only think, as I fell back to sleep, "my daughter sleeps in a terrarium."

I wonder how long it'll sit at Export Scan *this* time; given that it was apparently scanned twice, it'll likely be twice as long. So its next little side jaunt to Maryland should occur next Monday. Sunday if I get lucky and they decide to move packages around on the weekend.

FML

I was invited to see the dress rehearsal of KWLT's The Penelopiad and I must confess that I went in somewhat .. well, begrudgingly is the wrong word, but it definitely wasn't eagerly. Why? It wasn't because I expected it to suck; it among its cast a number of women I admire greatly and a director who's produced great work in the past. So why? Well, honestly, for two reasons:

1) I'm crazy-sensitive to violence (it was all I could do to keep from bolting out of my seat and out the door right beside me during the Valmont attacks Tourvel scene last year, and I couldn't actually *watch* it all), and a lot of the discussion around Penelopiad has been about the dark and twisty.

2) Frankly, I like my visual entertainment light and somewhat fluffy. That's just who I am.

So yeah, I went in expecting to appreciate it, but mostly I went because I was asked to.

With that said, I was blown away with how riveted I was. The script itself was way more compelling than I'd expected, and the actresses completely worked it. The choreography, specifically the weaving, was, IMO, inspired and the music/singing was some of the best I've heard in a KWLT production. Of special note, there were two points in which the harmonization of Erin, Mel, and the lady whose name escapes me right now was sublime, but all of the cast members have clearly been working hard on the music as much as the dialog.

While the piece is definitely a strong ensemble work, and the entire cast was strong, a couple of people really stood out for me. Jessica C was an inspired and solid anchor as Penelope, and to say that she had me at hello isn't an exaggeration. No-one who hasn't been reading Ange's LJ for the past month would guess that she was a late replacement; she's especially wonderful as Telemachus. And the lady who played the nursemaid evoked some very strong responses (I'm not going to say more since to explain why would be a total spoiler) from me.

The play opens on Thursday, and runs for three weeks (Thurs-Sat). I'll be going again towards the end of the run.

And now, to bed.