Category: Civil Liberties

here comes the future

yech.

Miss Margot gets fixed on Friday.  It is possible this will affect my ability to go to Pondfilk, we’ll see.  Also, I have been invited to go to Hot Springs soon, and that may be interesting in terms of timing as well. I can’t put it off any longer, she could go into heat at any time.

The vet says Miss Margot will not grow substantially bigger than she is now.  This explains a lot.  Considering that she was born Dec 9, she’s tiny… she weighs in at 2.35 kilos.  So in addition to cute, smart and phlegmatic, she was bred to be pocket sized, thus her mother’s birthing difficulties and the breeder’s insistence she be spayed.

She advised us with regular bulletins on the way to the vet, one of which was actually Meow (she said meow, how odd) ’bout how very disturbed and unhappy she was about her mode of locomotion. After we got home I left the carrier out with the jailer’s peephole open and she jumped into it for fifteen minutes.  Gizmo watched with a look of disbelief and distaste.  Both the boys are learning to deal with her, as ignoring her is simply impossible.  Gizmo curled up on me the other day, only the third time that has ever happened.  Other cats make a big production of getting into your lap; Gizmo flows into your body heat like a furry puddle and evaporates with the same skill.

Jeff is steadily advancing his chief project “The Audio visual dungeon made of awesome” and the living room is now fit to sit in.

so many layers of wrongness

Take your kid to work day goes really wrong.

On the other hand, brute force and ugliness DOES work for some applications. Just ask any guy who fixes aircraft.

You’ve gotta be shittin’ me.  This is CANaDA? I just don’t remember Montreal being like this.  Trigger happy anti immigrant cops, sure, but this is ridiculous.  Okay, I’m definitely learning a cop brutality song. Pukka Orchestra’s Cherry Beach Express, here I come.

Humour is ever so much better than violence

Prop 8 takes one in the goolies.

The cats, each in his own way, mourn Jeff’s absence; one by pissing copiously all over the chair he normally occupies in the kitchen, I’ve already Feliway’d it, and the other by voluntarily sitting in my lap for the first time in six months.  Gizmo was sitting in my lap when Eddie started howling piteously at the back door (the wind is rattling the doors and windows) so I had to stand up and push him off my lap.  He sat in the kitchen doorway, tail switching and with a miffed look.  He let Eddie have a cuff on the way by for good measure.

Transphobia

Quoted from today’s tyee.ca:

 

Ten Signs of Transphobia in Our Culture, by Christopher A. Shelley

 

  1. Denial that the problem exists in the first place. 

     

  2. Inability to distinguish between categories such as queer, gay, lesbian, and trans. 

     

  3. Lack of meaningful discussion in educational and workplace settings. 

     

  4. Anxiety over not being able to tell if a person is male or female. 

     

  5. Crude jokes directed towards trans people or with trans-related content. 

     

  6. Refusal to accept trans people as one’s own teacher, doctor, politician, dentist, etc. 

     

  7. Thinking that being trans is OK but also dismissing the idea of ever dating a transperson. 

     

  8. Reducing trans to being merely and solely a psychiatric category. 

     

  9. Trivialization and media spectacles centred on trans-ness as an object of ‘fascination.’ 

     

  10. Refusing the fundamental claims of transpeople as being genuinely mis-sexed.

 

Book launch for Transpeople: Repudiation, Trauma, Healing. Event begins at 7 p.m., Thursday, Sept. 25, at Little Sister’s bookstore, 1238 Davie St., Vancouver. RSVP to awilson@utpress.utoronto.ca.

Peaceful weekend

It was the kind of weekend when I did a little cooking and a little laundry and a lot of lazing around, so I consider it a success.  The crows are flying to their day jobs, the sky is strewn with grey, pink and purple, there’s a siren in the distance and it’s just like a regular Tuesday….. except there’s tapioca in the fridge.

So what happened in the world.  Looks like Canadians are headed to the polls, although the date has not yet been set.  McCain picked a running mate without vetting her seriously first, which strikes me as mildly insane but not really surprising.  The Tories want to revamp public health in the wake of the food borne pathogen outbreak.  I thought this meant they were going to hand out free Pepto-Bismol but apparently they are going to do something a little more substantive.  Well, good luck on that; it’s kind of hard to enforce standards when you have no inspectors.  Maybe they will get more inspectors. Funny family story; when my uncle Gary was a youngun he helped inspect food production facilities in Ontario for a summer and at the end of it the only thing he would eat was Laura Secord chocolates.  I really don’t think much has changed.  When I was a puppy I worked for a structural engineering firm that did the upgrades to the Maple Leaf plants in Toronto and the boys would come back from site inspections and regale the other employees with what actually goes on in a meatpacking plant, especially if the other employees decide they don’t like you.  Blech.  Plus ça change, baybee.

I guess it wasn’t a peaceful weekend for everybody.  Amy Goodman discusses her arrest.

Pride

I’m off to Pride for 11:30. Mike came over last night; we swapped bodywork and drank beer and my shoulders FINALLY feel good enough to hold a banner for however many hours we have to for the parade.  The rest of my back is also so much better, but I am very much hoping I don’t have to carry for the whole three hours.  Somewhere around here is the “Queen’s Fluffiest Pillow” t-shirt Keith designed and had made for me.  It’s amazing how good life can be when your kids grow up and get money and start buying you little gifties.  I am still stunned that he did that for me.

The new downstairs tenants didn’t stop running the dryer until midnight last night. The buzzer went off under my head just as I was dropping off to sleep.  I will have to go have a firm and pleasant chat.