TALK TO THE HUMP

Jurisdiction Shopping…in a Teapot!

2012-01-12T21:48:00.000-05:00

Well, what a storm can be ignited when a journalist — and then more journalists, and then bloggers, etc. — fails to understand a point of law. Yes, today was all about the evil plot of our dreaded Conservative government to nullify the marriages of all the same sex couples who have been married in Canada since such marriages became legal here. For a short period, some extra panicky people opined that the government was rethinking the law itself (going back on a promise to let it be) or even nullifying all the same sex marriages of Canadians, too.

Now, I am not one to overlook an evil Tory plot, but this is not one.

From what I hear on the radio (and we all know how thoroughly researched that must be!), the argument about the invalidity of the marriage of two women — one from Florida and one from England — was raised by one of the women's lawyers in the context of their trying to get a divorce. The problem with their getting a divorce in Canada is that one has to live for a year in the province in which one applies for the divorce before filing, and these women have never lived here and have no intention of doing so. The lawyer then called in a lawyer from the Department of Justice, presumably as an expert witness.

Let's step back from the particular case and take a little look at private international law. You can't go jurisdiction shopping to avoid the effect of the laws of the place you live. If you want to marry your first cousin in a state or a country that doesn't allow you to do that, you can't run off to somewhere that does, get married and return to live as a married couple. The place whose law you would have broken if you had conducted the ceremony within its borders will not recognize your marriage (or therefore grant you a divorce or an annulment).

If there were no legal barrier to your marriage at home, but you decided to have a "destination" wedding, you wouldn't have this problem: your marriage would be as valid at home as it was at your exotic destination. The difference between this case and our divorcing lesbians being that you would not have been running to another place to escape the narrow-mindedness of your laws at home.

The other element you need to bear in mind in these matters is the attachment of laws to the people who live in and intend to live in a particular jurisdiction. In the wild romance of getting married, few people actually consider the financial implications of their adventure. For those who do not think to draw up a marriage contract (colloquially known as a pre-nuptial agreement, but I won't go into why that is sometimes inaccurate), the laws of the place they are domiciled (living, intending to live) set out the rules of property division should the marriage unthinkably come to an end. If the two spouses come from different places, the law that will apply will be the law of the place of their first common domicile.

In Québec, we had a family law reform that now makes it impossible for someone getting married to opt out of an equitable distribution of basic family assets in the event of the dissolution of the marriage. You wouldn't be able to escape this rule by running off to Tahiti to get married: the laws of Tahiti would only apply to you if you lived there or established you first common home there with the intention to stay.

I had a law professor at McGill who had developed a certain expertise in the presumptive matrimonial regimes of Moroccan Jews (getting divorced here, but had been married there while living there, so those were the rules that applied to them). This is about the expectations and understanding one can have of the laws in the place you live, an appreciation you cannot have of an exotic destination you go to for a fantasy wedding.

So this point of law is not surprising: if you came to Canada to get married because the laws of the place you really live won't let you get married, your marriage is unlikely to be seen as valid. If you came for your wedding and liked it (and the fact that it was even possible here, as opposed to where you come from) so much that you wanted to make a home in Canada together, there would be no problem with the validity of your marriage.

It's because you tried to do an end run around your own backward laws that you find yourself in a peculiar situation of having wed, but not having your marriage recognized at home. That is an evil right wing plot, but it's one that belongs to your home state/country, not to Canada.

I prefer to blame our evil right wing government for the things it is actually doing with which I don't agree, and there is no shortage of those.

The Old Man and the T…V

2012-01-10T00:09:00.000-05:00

How about a little anecdote from my recent visit with my family over the holidays? Well, if you insist…

Let's start by stating right out there that I very much enjoy visiting my family, and will never understand those who don't get along with their siblings and parents. But that would be my apparently bizarrely idyllic childhood speaking. The only regrets from this year were that my oldest sister couldn't join us and that my brother and sister-in-law couldn't stay for the whole time the others were there. I did, however, get the chance to know my niece-in-law a bit better, which I am very glad to have done! We accomplished this over a very cutthroat game of Pictionary (boys versus girls) and even managed to defuse our most competitive moments before anyone's evening got ruined!

So what's with the Old Man?

My father has been fighting a long battle with squirrels. These are not the imported-from-Europe type that overrun city parks in the east where I live. They are the little red ones that naturally inhabit the forests of the west…and also naturally raid the various bird feeders that Dad stocks with seeds to draw an amazing variety of rather impressive birds (like the Stellar's Jay pictured here in a photo stolen from the internet).

Dad also gets pileated woodpeckers, which are scarily huge birds!

But I digress. The squirrels had another bad habit that my father is — er — helping them with. They managed to bypass various security measures to take up residence inside his roof, which is intolerable, so he was helping them to move to more appropriate quarters for rodents…the landfill!

Living in the country and away from such amenities as cell phone coverage, the internet and cable TV, Dad does what others in his situation do: he has a satellite dish to capture TV signals that offer him way more choices than I get on my basic cable plus service at home.

As we gleefully watched reruns of everything during the holiday season, something annoying started to happen. The satellite was blinking off, robbing us of our sedentary pleasures! Sometimes the blinking was so extreme that we couldn't even get through a 30-second commercial without as many as four or five blinks off. And we do love our commercials, so that was extremely annoying.

The theories abounded. Dad opined that there seemed to be a particular temperature range where there were more problems with the TV: above or below, things worked just fine. My brother's theory was much more entertaining (getting back to the squirrels). He painted a picture of a lonely squirrel sitting in the satellite dish, holding two ends of the TV cable and cursing down the hill. "You've killed my whole family! How do you like this TV reception, Old Man?!"

While that got us laughing through the blue screen times, it wasn't until my little sister (she's only 49, after all) found a loose connection and tightened it that we got back to watching such important works as Jerry Springer's "Baggage" on the tube.

Still can't keep myself from chuckling as I think about what the evil combat squirrel might do next to make Dad's life a living hell!

Happy New Year 2012

2012-01-01T02:02:00.000-05:00

Well, here we go again.

Harold Camping's predictions of the Rapture on two occasions in 2011 didn't really pan out, but we now have that Mayan calendar thing to get through this year. Unless the Mayans pull it together and issue a new calendar before the end of the year....

I thought I would start the year with a word of caution for anyone who might think it is a good idea to ring in 2012 by participating in a Polar Bear Swim. Here is a polar bear swimming (thanks to David for the image!). I don't think you ever want to be this close to one, unless it is your final wish.

Enjoy your year safely!

Forever Young

2011-12-06T23:45:00.000-05:00

If there's something that I think I have managed to hold onto through all these years of incessant aging, it is my often childish sense of humour. Oh, I might dress it up from time to time in the trappings of witty remarks, but it's basically laughing at silly things, then laughing at laughing, and so on.

I even like to think that I might be getting better at it. My friends might find this hard to believe, but I just might be loosening up in my old age, more easily laughing out loud in public places, and not suppressing any of my reactions to what happens on the screen on front of me when I'm in a cinema.

The best part will always be the out of control laughter with friends. Hmmm…like the time we had been to see the rather silly movie Fired Up! And then, waiting for a bus and anticipating an imminent visit to another friend's home for dinner, we practiced a cheer that we could deliver to her and her family. Most of our time was spent doubled over in laughter, WASPy me not even concerned about how the other passers-by perceived us. (The cheer went over well, but we could have used more practice!)

I think I just needed to name that as one of the things that makes my life more enjoyable. Thanks Andrew, and thanks Eileen for all the silly laughter.

If I were…and I am!

2011-12-01T00:01:00.001-05:00

If you haven't yet seen the new edition of this anti-stigma campaign from COCQ-SIDA — based on a campaign created by AIDES in France and taken up in multiple countries since — then you really ought to give it a look. It will help if you understand French, but you would still be able to make your own message in the language of your choice through the Facebook application.

There are very few occasions where one's serostatus really ought to matter, and very many situations in which others make it the issue. That's what this campaign is about. It's about reflecting on those impulses we have to pull back from something, looking deeper to see whether they really make sense. They mostly don't, but this is the stuff of stigma that makes it hard for us all to have open discussions about HIV, further feeding the stigma and the epidemic.

Being somewhat "officially" positive, I had a challenge to come up with a phrase that would work for me. Last year, I asked if I would have the support of my friends and family if I were seropositive, adding in a Facebook photo caption that the response for me, luckily, is yes.

This year, I wanted to smile, so I asked if you would still appreciate my sense of humour if I were seropositive. Still having to provide the answer in order to fit with my actual status, my photo caption this time around is "I hope so, because otherwise the joke's on you!"

This campaign makes me reflect on how lucky I have been with my own experience of HIV. I've had three supportive work environments since my diagnosis. I had no hesitation at telling my family about my diagnosis, having already tested them with my coming out and finding them fabulous! I have a solid circle of friends and a health care system that provides me with everything I need to survive and thrive.

I only wish that everyone, in our society and elsewhere in the world, could have the advantages that I have come to take for granted.

Mission accomplished!

2011-11-29T19:46:00.002-05:00

I was going to use that other image — you know the one: George W. Bush on the deck of the aircraft carrier with the big "Mission Accomplished" sign behind him, announcing the…uh…middle? of the Iraq war. I really didn't want to be associated with that venture or that player.

No, my mission was actually accomplished. I set out to reactivate my blog writing after a too-long period of silence by challenging myself to produce thirty posts on the theme of Thirty Rants Hath November. And I have done it.

I expect I will be a little less prolific in the coming times, as I return to a pace a little more normal for me, but I am determined not to neglect this space, even in the midst of a number of difficult funding applications at work. The month of November was not my easiest and I still managed to do this, so I can do anything with enough determination behind me.

The other challenge I have coming up, lobbed my way by a friend, is to balance my curmudgeonly observations with a little more positivity. It won't be an exclusive series, and it won't follow the same blistering pace, but I will share the good stuff with you. I'm going to file these ones under the label "Life's Beauty and Magic," which already exists on the blog. It will have to be my ongoing mission to grow the size of that label so its font is bigger than that of the label "Rant."

And I know I can do that. Will you join me?

Thirty: Own It

2011-11-29T08:47:00.000-05:00

It probably won't come as a surprise to any of my readers that I don't tend to agree with the views or the priorities of the current federal government. Sometimes I wonder if we even come from the same planet. I do recognize, however, that our political system works in such a way that they are in control of certain things in their jurisdiction and we who disagree can work to ensure that they play within the rules and that our own opinions are heard as loudly and clearly as possible, but at the end of the day, they get to make the decision.

We had the comfort of a minority government for a number of years, where dissent could serve to influence one or more of the players in such a way as to bring things around to a more tolerable result. That is gone. That is not the subject of my rant: as a respecter of the democratic process, I get it, even if I and many others want changes to the current system that might make things a little more fair in the end. (Proportional representations, change in the voting system to ensure the winner has majority support.)

No, this rant is about acting openly and above-board. It's about owning your decisions and stepping up to defend them.

If you were in Canada prior to the last election and not hiding under a rock, you will be familiar with the scandal involving International Development Minister Bev Oda and the funding application of Kairos, a faith-based international development agency. The group's funding had been through all the usual reviews and had been signed off on by two of the top public employees in the file. When it arrived at the minister's desk, however, she decided to veto it in a most clumsy fashion, inserting a handwritten "not" into the sentence regarding project approval, leaving the impression that this was the point of view of all three individuals who had signed the letter.

Now, she would have the power to veto the funding of a group, albeit within a recognized process of application review and recommendation. She might also, having determined within the rules that her department did not want to fund the group, had the letter re-written to reflect the negative decision. She didn't do that. She inserted her sloppy handwritten "not" and then tried to blame that on someone else, too.

Cowardly, and unfortunately not the only example of how this government, even in its majority status, hides behind rhetoric, half-truths and diversionary tactics instead of standing up and owning the decisions it makes.

Twenty-nine: Stamp This!

2011-11-28T19:56:00.000-05:00

I'm going to drag this next one out of my distant work memories from a job long past. It does, however, remain valid today, even as 'snail' mail becomes less common in the face of electronic communications.

As the diagram above shows, there is a certain expectation that one might have of where everything on the outside of the envelope will be found. The stamp, you will notice, is up in the top right corner and it is well-aligned with the edges of the envelope.

My job experience came in the form of a horrifying experience I had, having delegated the sending of a number of letters to a colleague. I watch in utter disbelief as this person applied the stamps to the envelopes any which way: crooked, even upside down! I didn't say anything at the time — we had just competed for the same position and I, as the one who got it, was feeling a little odd about delegating things to this particular colleague. I quietly resolved just to send my own letters in order to avoid a repetition.

What's the big deal? I feel like the attention one pays to the elements on the outside of the envelope are a cue to the recipient as to the degree of care I am taking with our relationship. Slap-dash means I really don't care about you, and I would never send such a message to anyone. Being an uptight WASP, I wouldn't send that message to my worst enemy.

So if I should ever have the occasion to send you a letter, you will see that the stamp is as straight as my failing eyesight and trembling hands can make it. I only expect the same in return.

Twenty-eight: Look Both Ways

2011-11-28T08:32:00.000-05:00

I live downtown. I work downtown. I expect that when I step out onto the sidewalk, there might be someone walking that same sidewalk in proximity, so I look out before inserting myself into the traffic.

People in cars or on bicycles do this all the time, although many of these might be faulted for only looking out for their own, to the detriment of the smaller traveller (sometimes the victim in this is a pedestrian). We don't tend to talk about pedestrian-pedestrian collisions quite so much, although I have dozens of near misses every month.

We all recognize the situation, but I'm going to illustrate with something that happened to me this past week. I was proceeding up the street after finishing work, on my way to do a little shopping just north of my office. A woman stepped out of a doorway and quickly assumed the speed of the pedestrian traffic and blended right in. The man who exited the same door after her, however, stopped dead in front of me to watch the woman walking away, never even glancing to determine if there was oncoming pedestrian traffic. I almost ran him over!

Luckily, I can put on a show almost as well as a professional soccer player (you know, the horrible falls suggesting that a terrible foul has befallen them), to I made a big braking and avoiding gesture that elicited a brief embarrassed apology from him. I suspect that it was as much guilt about being caught looking at the woman as it was about obstructing my path, but I'll take it.

Don't count on my continued agility, however. As I age, I am getting more likely to just trample you if you get in the way!

Twenty-seven: Yes, I Can Hear You Now

2011-11-27T19:24:00.000-05:00

It's bad enough when you can see the phone in someone's hand. The loud 'private' conversations in public places (are we going back to the public transit again?).

This happened in my vicinity this past week as I waited for the bus. A woman also at the bus stop was having a heated argument with someone on the phone. All we could hear was her very rude side of the conversation; no one wanted to look her in the eyes either for fear of being similarly attacked or because we were embarrassed on her behalf for the rude public display.

When the phone is invisible, it can be downright unnerving. If you're on the wrong side of the person with a Bluetooth device or on any side of someone with one of those 'phones' that looks like they're just listening to a music device, their audible utterances seem like they might be directed to you. I, for one, have responded on many an occasion and gotten a glare back at me.

If you don't want me to listen to your conversation, maybe even insert myself unwittingly into it, then don't have your conversation in public.

Twenty-six: Deflection

2011-11-27T16:36:00.000-05:00

There has been a fascinating difference between how the Occupy movement was received in Canada versus the US. The occupations themselves seem to have ended the same, although more violently in some parts of the US, but the beginning of the occupations provoked quite different reactions.

In the US, everyone to the left of Fox News seems to have heralded this understandable reaction to the excesses of the banking sector in particular and big business in general, along with their disproportionate influence on politics. It took the Democratic Party quite a long time to embrace them with somewhat open arms.

In Canada, a whole other approach. Deflection. The Governor of the Bank of Canada expressing his understanding of the frustration that people can feel, but this is really about supporting the US movement, because they have something real to be upset about. Things just aren't that bad in Canada. This approach later repeated by other high level individuals, cabinet ministers, etc.

Oh really? I will give you that our banks were not as deregulated as their US counterparts, and that we have a somewhat less porous social safety net, what with medicare and all. If our banks did not teeter on the brink during the worst of the banking crisis, it is because they have been gouging us for a long time, so they are very solvent and stable. Is political power more widely distributed here than there? Wealth? Not particularly, but pointing southward worked.

Canadians didn't (and don't — it isn't over) take the movement as seriously and were more dismissive, less upset by the expulsions from public spaces. We sit here in our smug superiority pointing south to the real disparities and not seeing those at home.

A clever strategy on the part of our own ruling class, but no more respectful of the majority than the bare shows of force in some of the evictions in the US.

Twenty-five: Back of the Bus

2011-11-26T06:30:00.000-05:00

More bus etiquette, I'm afraid.

When you get on the bus and the seats at the front are taken, move to the back! It is truly not helpful for you to take up a position next to the wheel wells — the narrowest part of the interior of the bus — blocking the progress of everyone else toward the empty part of the bus in the back.

Extra props to those who do this with their shopping carts or baby carriages. I can't imagine how anyone thinks this is a good idea. Now, I will recognize that people are just not very good about getting up and offering the baby carriage area to the person who actually has one of those. Half the time that that area is available, the carriage pusher opts to sit somewhere else and make a big show of pulling the carriage as close to the seat as possible, still effectively blocking the passage.

I have to say that when I get on a bus and find myself facing a bottleneck because two people, often with backpacks, have installed themselves on either side of the wheel well area, I am starting to push through. I know that I won't fit through the ten-centimetre space that is left, so I just push, disgusting them with contact with my oversized stomach.

If you don't like it, stop blocking the front of the bus!

Twenty-four: Listen to Your Mother

2011-11-26T00:04:00.001-05:00

I'm heading into a public transit theme here, I suspect…

Earlier this week, I was standing on the bus near the back doors — you know, the ones you are supposed to use to exit, rather than fighting your way to the front — and the man in the forward-facing double seat AND his child both had coughs.

Did they cover their mouths when they coughed? Oh no. How better to demonstrate your concern for your fellow humans than to cough openly on a crowded bus. And directly onto the guy with no immune system to boot!

Now I am exaggerating a bit. I do not wear a sign indicating that my immune system is compromised (not entirely absent), and the man may have turned his head a bit to cough directly onto someone else. His example to his child, however, was quite clear and the uptake was swift and efficient. Cough, cough, cough. No attempt to cover the mouth or to engage in what we are now urged to do: coughing into our elbows.

Nope, just get those germs out there and spread them as widely as possible.

Twenty-three: Get a Grip

2011-11-25T23:04:00.000-05:00

Anyone who takes public transit regularly has seen this. Well, maybe not the version above, but the person who leans against or so wraps her/himself around the vertical pole in the bus or metro that no one else can use it for support.

What, what, what are they thinking?!! The answer, of course, is that they are not thinking. Absorbed with thoughts of their own comfort, they are oblivious to the needs of those around them. I feel that when someone does this, I am entitled to stand uncomfortably close to them, so that they will break my fall if there is a sudden stop.

My other observation about this comes from my bus ride home the other day. The boy w2as draped all over the vertical cushion meant to line up with the back of a wheelchair and his arms snaked around the available poles. Cute, yes, but not so cute as to avoid my scorn from taking up all the hand grips on a crowded bus.

Twenty-two: Emotions in Their Place

2011-11-24T01:14:00.000-05:00

Specifically crying. There is no place in a debate for tears.

I've had this experience before, where a group is discussing a serious issue that raises the emotional level all around and someone bursts into tears. I tend to feel blackmailed by that. We all want to be considerate and respect that someone is profoundly emotionally affected by the debate, but not to the point of giving in to that person's position.

One group I was a part of got to the point of offering a few moments to the person to gather themselves back up before returning to the debate. Fascinating how quickly those tears dried up and how seldom they returned in later debates.

Twenty-one: Just the Facts

2011-11-22T23:32:00.000-05:00

You'll never understand how little time a journalist might have to grasp the meaning of all of the facts behind a story and the impact that might have on the quality of the information you are receiving until the story is about something with which you are familiar.

This happened to me today when I got home from work and listened to a radio reporter explain the situation currently unfolding at Citizenship and Immigration Canada. It seems that the often-criticized appointments of adjudicators to the Refugee Determination Board (hey, no fact-checking on my part, just going with what was on the radio) will be no more. The positions are being transformed into professional public service jobs and it seems that a number of currently-serving adjudicators have taken and failed the exam designed to test their knowledge of the subject matter.

This is where the story goes off the rails for me. The reporter asserted that these positions are currently called Governors in Council.

There are a large number of positions that are designated as being appointed by the Governor in Council. This means that they are executive branch appointments (ie: the Prime Minister appoints them), or, in our antiquated constitutional monarchy, by the Governor General in consultation with the Privy Council.

So, no, those positions are not known as Governors in Council. This is pretty basic government structure stuff. Some people need to make a little more effort to understand their subject matter before they charge ahead with confidence to mislead us all.

Twenty: Reading and Repeating

2011-11-19T20:39:00.002-05:00

Moving on… (I've actually never had so many comments or so much traffic as for that last post).

The comments to my last post served up a dose of that thing which annoys the hell out of me: getting my name wrong.

It's written right in front of you, so how did you collapse my first and last names into one, which is wrong? This is not, as you might imagine, the first time that this has happened to me. I've had it verbally in meetings, I've had it in the quick response writing that would be Facebook posts or blog comments, but I have also had it in an official response letter from a government official to whom I had written a complaint.

How little attention must one offer to detail to get wrong the name of the person who wrote a complaint while responding to that complaint in writing on paper? And in a context where these things usually go through a few re-reads before they get sent off, that means a number of people got it wrong. It's really a basic lack of respect with a dash of laziness mixed in.

I have responded to this in the past by politely correcting (doesn't have lasting effect) and then by ridiculously reproducing the mistake in my response, applying it to the name of the offending individual (better results). For the purpose of this blog (Whose space? My space!) I believe I will respond by not publishing any comment getting my name wrong. Comments not being a big thing for my posts, there won't be widespread anguish, but I will get a certain degree of satisfaction from that.

And I'm mostly here to satisfy my own need to express myself, hoping that someone is interested in listening, but not controlled by that.

Sign me…Ken Monteith (or else!).

Nineteen: Return to Sender

2011-11-18T22:02:00.000-05:00

I graduated from this institution. Twice. And the truly ironic element is what McGill taught me while I studied Industrial Relations and then Law. My lessons are clearly not reflected in their actions now.

I'm ashamed to be associated with an institution that shows such contempt for its employees that it has forced them to the curb just to achieve what other workers in similar positions in other universities in Québec already have. I'm embarrassed to be identified with an organization which ought to value free speech, but which has pursued a series of injunctions to silence and distance its striking employees.

I'm not going to bring McGill to its knees with my refusal to donate to the Alma Mater Fund during the strike, but I want to make a point. If you are going to run roughshod over the rights of your employees and their reasonable expectations with respect to their working conditions, you will not have the benefit of my generosity, however small that might seem to you.

I hope I'm not alone.

Eighteen: Decorum Before Democracy!

2011-11-18T08:58:00.000-05:00

Today's lesson in democracy from the federal government: when riding roughshod over democratic procedures, always try to provoke the opposition to use 'colourful' language in their critique of your actions. That way, you can make a big deal of the language used and no one will pay attention to the fact that you are overriding democratic procedures.

Yes, NDP MP Pat Martin apparently tweeted some naughty words in response to the government's invoking closure to pass its budget. And the language seems to be a bigger issue than the cutting off of debate.

You have to wonder why a government is unable to respect the rules of debate and move its own legislation through to adoption. Yes, I realize that closure is one of the rules, but isn't it meant to be the exception, for cases of urgency, and not something you should have to use with legislation that is not unexpected? Either they are tired of hearing voices in opposition, or they are bad legislative planners.

But all that, of course, pales in comparison to using the f-word!

Seventeen: Sliding Sideways

2011-11-17T08:00:00.000-05:00

I'd hate to start looking all Pollyanna about this next point, but I am forced to acknowledge that there is an upside to the construction on my block, even in connection with winter.

When the rather narrow space on which this too-tall building is being built was mere land, someone used it as a place to park. While the city has done a good job on clamping down on unauthorized parking spots, there was an accommodation built into the sidewalk that helped the cars to pass that was not immediately done away with.

I am, of course, talking about the driveway entrance slope built across the entire sidewalk to help the cars get to the street without scraping their undersides on the curb. These things are hell on pedestrians and — as you can see from the diagram — on people in wheelchairs whose forward progress is suddenly challenged by a sudden slope to the side.

In winter, the challenge is even greater. If the sidewalk plows don't manage to get all the frozen precipitation off (and they can't when there is a sudden and uneven dip in the sidewalk) or if the latest precipitation has been freezing rain, the car accommodation in the sidewalk becomes a severe hazard for the foot- or wheelchair bound individual. You might have your travel interrupted by an embarrassing fall or a tipping over of your chair, or you may just be hurled against the car parked in the street next to this unfortunate element of urban terrain.

When that happens, I always hope to go chains first into the offender. But I also hope no one sees me fall!

Sixteen: Looming Ordeal

2011-11-16T22:24:00.000-05:00

The weather forecast is calling for the temperature to actually go down to where it ought to be at this time of year, but also a chance of precipitation. That, my friends, translates into a chance of snow. A chance of snow at a time that the construction project at the end of my block remains incomplete.

All last winter it was the same story every time it snowed or warmed up: a dreadful obstacle to get past in order to get to the bus stop on my way to work. Our crazy Montréal sidewalk tanks zoom down the unobstructed parts of the sidewalks, clearing a lovely path on which to walk. Put an obstacle in their path, however, and the system crashes down around your ears.

A blocked sidewalk end combined with a car parked too close to the scene of that crime makes for a mountain of snow to navigate to get to the corner. Add a few degrees of temperature and you either have a vast field of slush or a large lake separating you from where you are and where you need to be.

The sidewalk seems destined to be blocked for a second consecutive year. I guess I'd better get hip waders with crampons for the daily ordeal.

Fifteen: Pot and Kettle

2011-11-16T19:36:00.000-05:00

Some of the frequency of the inspiration for today's rant has died down with the waning popularity of a certain candidate for the Republican nomination for the Presidency in the US, but it's still a worthwhile point to make.

I want to know just what the activists who delight in referring to Michele Bachmann's husband as Ladybird Bachmann think they are doing. Are there some traits of former President Lyndon Johnson's wife hidden from me by my own ignorance of American political star culture of the past that are being transposed to Mr. Bachmann, or is this something else?

Oh, I am certainly not going to defend this whole "ex-gay therapy" thing. I find it objectionable and stupid, not to mention futile. But if you are an activist who is working to put an end to homophobic attitudes and practices, and then in the course of your work you mock someone with a name that you have based on your perception of his sexuality, how are you different from any other homophobe?

Fourteen: Quantity

2011-11-14T22:30:00.000-05:00

Do you see these two signs? Notice the difference? Which one do you think is right, or do you think both might be right?

This is, of course, a question to bring me to yet another rant about the state of the English language in its common usage. There is a terrible tendency to mix things up and use the inappropriate expression of quantity, so I thought I would share the lesson I learned from my Mum.

Can you count, or can you only measure the thing you are talking about?

Take some of this away and you get LESS sugar.

Take some of these away and you get FEWER apples.

So if your local supermarket express line says "10 items or less" you can approach the store manager with confidence to complain that the sign is destroying the English language.

You're welcome.

Thirteen: Class

2011-11-13T00:23:00.000-05:00

I tend to take the train to go to meetings out of town, particularly when they are in Toronto or Ottawa. People in western Canada don't get to experience the level of train service we get in the Québec City to Windsor corridor, which is a terrible shame, but this is an extremely viable option to get to where you're going here.

Particularly appealing in this age of airline security, lineups, taking off your shoes and being very careful about what you pack in your suitcase is the fact that you can pretty much arrive a half hour before departure and be among the first on the train. Your luggage is generally with you, not winging its way elsewhere, and you can bring your extra large size of cologne without having to throw it into a barrel before you get to the invasive security screening. Oh yeah, that's because there is none of that invasive security screening. Then again, it would be a bit difficult to hijack a train, they're notoriously difficult to turn around.

But let me get to the train-related rant. When you buy them early enough, tickets in business class (Via1) are extremely affordable and compare favourably to air fares. Plus, you get fed (looks even better than the last time I received a meal without specifically paying for it on a domestic flight) and provided with a cocktail and wine with dinner. Pretty sweet deal.

It all leaves me with just one question: if we're in first class, why do we have to walk the furthest to get to our train car? How's that for an entirely bourgeois self-indulgent rant?! ;-)