The Agenda with Steve Paikin - Wanted: The Perfect Parent

Oh how true. Aunthood or Unclehood is parenting-lite. But I suppose the question to me seems why NOT support for the mother? Support for a decision that ensures your child's safety doesn't seem so outrageous to me.

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Subsidized Again

forever young?
Originally uploaded by smannion

As you may already know, my mum is a person who has mental health concerns. She has lately been forwarding all her mail to an imaginary person and her phone has been cut-off: probably because she didn't pay the bill.

She is also a person in subsidized housing. To maintain her subsidy her housing provider requires proof of income once yearly. Well since she's been ignoring all letters and she doesn't receive phone calls they were forced to jack up her rent to more than triple what she normally pays as of last December. In January her rent bounced altogether. I've been in touch with them and they're very sympathetic. In fact they are the ones that got in touch with me to inform me of the situation. I should also add that my mum would never accept what they're telling her because she insists, among other things, that rent is now free and that the prime minister has made it so.

Anyway, I called CPP and pleaded with them to send me her proof of income, or to even send it directly to her housing provider; but they said they couldn't because of privacy. In the end, however, they did agree to put my name on it and send it to her address.

So that Sunday I went to her house and told her that I was expecting a letter and to please save it for me. She said she would. Crossing my fingers I visited her again yesterday and lo and behold she produced the letter. Naturally she insisted I forward it on directly to a person she named (this person is in her head). Instead, I called her housing provider and faxed the information over. Yay! What's even better is that they will retroactively refund her money for the period she was charged market rent. Double Yay!

E-Mail From Aunt Accidentally Opened

So many aunts; so many emails exactly like this one. It's my worst nightmare.

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Clouds gather as 'sulky' Musharraf retreats to bunker

Just classic. We long to spread democracy throughout the globe, as long as your people vote for someone we like. When they don't all bets are off

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Community Activism

Make sure you check out the website Leon's Boycott for our community response to having our local Early Years Centre/Boys and Girls Club being evicted by its current owner a member of the Leon's family.

Feature: How to Stop Checking Email on the Evenings and Weekends

Feature: How to Stop Checking Email on the Evenings and Weekends

I gotta admit. These are some pretty useful tips.

Community Uprising

My neighbourhood is pissed at having our early years centre evicted by a member of the Leon's family.

Crazy Canuk Punk

How can you not love them. Featured recently on CBC's Sessions. Good punked out, high energy fun.

How I See My Wife

 

It's the classic soft focus, sepiatone nostalgia shot that's perfect for Valentine's Day.

Alarming Bus Trips

I'm on the bus with Asha taking her to a birthday party when I hear a squeal from the back of the bus. It peaks my attention but I don't think anything of it. A few minutes later it happens again and I can see that close the the back of the bus a man and a woman are sitting beside one another and the woman looks upset. As the bus moves along it's becoming more and more clear that the man is somehow hurting the woman (I can't quite tell how). I'm becoming concerned about letting this go so I tell the driver that I think there seems to be something up with the couple at the back. The driver says OK thanks but keeps going. Finally, she yelps again and I tell Asha to stay where she is and I go to the back of the bus. Something has heated up between the guy hurting the woman (I'll call him jerk from now on), and another guy sitting opposite them (I'll call him Ted-although I don't know him or his name). Ted saying things to jerk that he'd like to take jerk outside and beat the crap out of him. Jerk's responding things like "fine--anytime". It seems clear to me that Ted is on a similar page to me and sees jerk abusing his girlfriend or partner. I ask Ted if he needs any help but he doesn't quite understand me. I turn to jerk's partner and ask her if she's alright. She says "I'm OK". I turn to Ted who says "she's not OK". I think Ted's right. Ted and jerk continue by trading insults and challenges whereupon it seems like it's Ted's stop and, all the while Ted gets off the bus. The driver has come over by this point and suggests to the woman that she sit closer to the front. She moves to a two-seater in roughly the middle of the bus and I go back to be with Asha. A few seconds later jerk moves beside her. I go over and politely ask jerk to move. He says he says he just wants to talk to her. I repeat the request and he insists he just wants to talk to her. It's clear he isn't going to move. I shrug my shoulders and go back to my daughter. By this time it's out stop so I make sure the driver knows that the jerk is beside her again and get off.

I feel really badly about this. I wish I had done more. Maybe I should have been more forceful with the jerk. Maybe I should have insisted the driver call the police. It made me question some things. I guess there will be people in the world who will continue to do bad things no matter how nicely you ask them not to. That sounds ridiculously naive but it really was a shock to me. Particularly as a social worker and someone who really believes there are peaceful alternatives to every conflict. Am I wrong?

Wasted Day

48-Hour Internet Outage Plunges Nation Into Productivity

BOSTON-An Internet worm that disabled networks across the U.S. Monday and Tuesday temporarily thrust the nation into its most severe maelstrom of productivity since 1992.

I HATE it when I waste a day. I have a huge amount of work to do and it feels like a frittered the day away (especially on the internet). What it means is either I stay late or bring work home so that everything gets done. It would have made so much more sense to do it during the work day. My new plan for Monday is to not actually turn on my computer until I've done a good chunk of the reading I have to do. I think this will be a good way to manage things.

New hitch in Bobby Fischer's marriage plans

New hitch in Bobby Fischer's marriage plans

I love the way this just appeared in Google Canada's news feed. The story is from way back in 2004. I'm thinking the biggest hitch in his marriage plans is that he died yesterday.

Videogames and You

Half Of 26-Year-Old's Memories Nintendo-Related

BROOKLYN, NY—According to an fMRI of Philip Jenkins' brain during memory recall, his parietal lobe is activated equally for the words "mother" and "Banjo Kazooie."

Frighteningly, I can almost relate to this. Man I played some cool videogames when I was young. They seemed less high tech back then but somehow more engaging. Could of course have something to do with the fact that I'm older but I'm not sure that that's all there is to it. It's almost like filmmakers that make really crap movies that have amazing special effects. The F/X don't make them any less crap. I played some great games that were nothing but text, e.g., the famous Infocom games.

I should point out that most of my great memories of gaming were when I was with some buddy where we were either playing cooperatively or trying the beat the crap out of each other. Either way it was a very social experience and not really isolating at all. The great memory comes from that shared experience.

Mac Mojo: The Office for Mac Team Blog

Finally! (not that I have a mac. not that I wouldn't love one)

Mac Mojo: The Office for Mac Team Blog

Internet Connection BS

Ok so for three days my high speed modem has refused to line sync. No DSL. So we've gone through the usual Bell Sympatico hell of trying to find someone who doesn't treat you like a complete idiot and will acknowledge that there's something wrong on their end.
"yes I've turned it off and then on again"
"I know it isn't the jack. I tested the jack by plugging a phone into it and it works. It's worked for over two years"
She meanwhile insists that I have to move it to a different jack and try it because without that test she can't escalate the call. I know it isn't the jack and it's a nightmare trying to move the modem because of all the cords behind the computer that I'd have to fish out so I humour her and pretend to move the modem

"you'll call back within a half an hour to an hour while you run line tests? OK" She also tells me I shouldn't make any outgoing calls.
Two and a half hours later no call back so I go to bed.

On day three Irmina freaks out on them and gets someone who thinks it's the modem and wants to send us a new one OK. When I get home that day I look at our current modem. Low and behold it's line synched. Yay! But I still can't logon. I can't even get onto our router. So although the modem is now working there seems to be another problem also.So I call Best Buy to find out what the warranty on the router is. Best Buy's phone system is "option" hell. Press one for this and press two for that. About 5 layers in the phone actually rings only to tell you that the person you need is unavailable. You try a slightly different but almost as valid route through the decision tree only to get the same result. Two more tries later and I'm ready to press any button that is most likely to be answered by a person. I get someone who tells me it's one year (I'm within warranty) and I can get the number on the internet. Ah...no I can't. OK so he actually finds the number for me. Ah...the benefit of having a person. It turns out that Linksys tech support is actually helpful and 10 minutes on the phone with him leaves back in the wonderful world of the internet. Sheesh what a pain.

Day of Busyness and Fade Out

So today it's incredibly busy at work. Meetings and phone calls and many other things to do. Near the end of it I have one of my patented disassociative episodes. I get these now and then especially if I'm a) busy b) tired c) hungry. The best way I can describe them is that I can't feel what day or time it is or where exactly I am. If you ask me and I think carefully about it then I'd be able to tell you but I can't feel it. I know that may not make sense but it's the best way I can describe the feeling. The first few times it happened I panicked a little because I didn't know what was happening. Now, although I still don't know exactly what it is, I at least know that the feeling will fade away in a few hours.

The Misanthrope

Some of you know that I normally walk to work. Well lately I've been taking the streetcar instead and I'm startled by how heavily it affects my physical and mental well being. Although I can't be entirely sure that it's the walking the last couple of weeks that I haven't been doing it my joints are much stiffer and more painful. Moreover, I find that my mood and thoughts are nostalgic (not in a good way), sombre, and distracted. Although I can often be a bit of a misanthrope it's taken on a whole new level. I'm sounding positively decrepit writing this but that's the way it is. Not a kid anymore.

Church and Science

I was on a walk with Finn the other day and we passed by an old church that had been converted to condos. Although the prices were ridiculous, it was really nice because they kept the exterior as a church but renovated the interior to make it living space. Anyway, it got me thinking that IMHO church and religion as we know it is really a species on the verge of extinction. I think that really science and scientific study has replaced it. In a sense this isn't unlike ancient monasteries that were the centres of knowledge in their day. They've just been replaced by centres of scientific study (ever heard of anyone going on a pilgrimage to Cape Canaveral to watch the shuttle launch—it happens all the time). I think if the scientific community added a bit of ceremony and flourish, maybe a robe or two, you wouldn't be able to tell the difference between a PhD in physics giving a lecture on the big bang and a minister talking about creationism (content aside). I seem to remember one of the Asimov Foundation books playing on this theme where people essentially worshiped technological objects and the scientists that made them and understood how they worked. Of course even today, technological objects are "worshiped" as fetish objects—can you say blackberry.

Makeout Music

After I put the kids to bed I spent the rest of the evening making a mixed CD of good makeout music. I was inspired by a Peter Elkas song "Will Power" I heard on the CBC Radio 3 podcast. I've already got some good tunes on there but any suggestions are welcome.

Idealizing Leaving Something Behind

My consumerism of the last post definitely stems from my wish to pass on to my kids good stuff that's intimately associated with me. I like the idea of my son having/using the watch his father used or my daughter signing her wedding registry with the fountain pen her father always used. Watch company's try and sell you their top of the line watches and call them heirloom pieces; however, I've come to the conclusion that most of the time a mid-range product will do just fine. Moreover, I'm much more attached to the idea of an heirloom piece having value associated with the stories it comes with rather than any intrinsic value, e.g., solid gold. For instance, if I wrote my PhD thesis with my fountain pen that would be an object I could proudly pass on with a story attached to it.

My father, at my daughters baptism, has actually passed on a wall hanging to my daughter because it is something that has been passed down through the women in his family. Because my grandmother had no daughters, the brocade went to him and he passed it down to Asha. Irmina has had it appraised and it just so happens it is valuable but to me this is secondary to the fact that it's an object with meaning. It's another reason that I wanted to buy Asha and Finn expensive Steiff teddy bears (although I haven't yet). I want the expensive ones because I know that they will last for another fifty years without disintegrating. I'll always remember watching the antiques roadshow and seeing this elderly woman talk about the teddy bear that her parents gave her when she was a little girl (I think it was a Merrythought--another expensive brand).

This is why I really have less interest in cars or electronics (although I admit my interest isn't zero--those LCD TVs are really dropping in price.)