Timing

What unfortunate timing for my previous post. Here's why.

Camo-rama

It's a funny thing to see these sights on the streets of Montréal: members of our police force not dressed in their uniforms. This had been going on for so long that I'm not sure that we actually notice anymore. We might, in fact, do a double-take if we saw them in full uniform.

The reason behind this is a contract dispute with their employer, the city. Their contract actually expired more than two years ago, which seems a little extreme to me, as well as irresponsible on the part of the city. Why would you let a situation like this go on for so long? Because you know that they can't really strike, so you think you have all the power.

Now the tactic started out with a simple change in the outfits that we have seen here before: jeans substituted for the uniform pants, red baseball caps with the logo of the Fraternité des policiers et policières de Montréal (their union).

On those occasions that called for it, the baseball caps gave way to other headgear.

Unfortunately, I couldn't find a picture of the bicycle cop I kept seeing last summer wearing his cycling helmet over his red cap turned backwards. Lovely.

Now I'm not sure if this tactic has had the desired effect. Yes, the city is outraged, but the citizens not so much. I stole the first picture above from the blog of someone passing through town who saw the police in jeans and thought it was cool. My personal reaction was to notice that some of the officers looked better and more comfortable in their jeans than others. I would even go so far as to suggest that jeans become the uniform, but we'd have to agree on a flattering style.

The jeans being too accepted and too little noticed, they moved on to something else.

The city, quite predictably, was beside itself with rage. So much so that they have kept trying — most recently this week — to have the Essential Services Commission rule this pressure tactic illegal. (They keep failing in these attempts; maybe they should just negotiate instead of trying to coerce.)

I have to admit that I was a little put off by the jeans to camo change, as it looked a little like we were being occupied by a paramilitary force.

But with time and lots of exposure, including exposure to varieties of camouflage I have not seen in nature (although not yet the pink version in my little checkerboard above), it's kind of growing on me.

After all, if you put a cute boy in relatively good shape into any kind of outfit, he will still be a cute boy, no?

UPDATE

For another point of view, here is the editorial cartoon from the Montreal Gazette today (Saturday, 14 March). I found it here and Aislin's (Terry Mosher's) own web site is here.

Aaaargh!

You will need to read this in order to understand my emotional reaction, but what is this scab rag doing in front of my neighbour's door?

Now I Know Why Al Gore Invented the Internet

I am someone who can while away his every minute and hour seated in front of my computer, either playing endless simple games, single endless games, or just following different blogs and such to wherever they will take me.

In that context, I really needed another reason to glue myself to that glowing screen. That reason is called Cam4.

If you ever wondered why Al Gore invented the internet, you need look no further. At every moment of every day, you will find countless men from countries around the planet seated in from of their web cams, whacking off live for you. To add to the spectacle, each cam has a chat room with an endless stream of instructions from watchers, often in languages not spoken by the featured man, and predictably intelligent in their content. Some of the cammers have found ways to make a few dollars for private shows, but the bulk of this is free, free, free.

There are people whose profiles describe them as 'straight' insisting that other men take out their penises (peni?), take off their shirts, etc. There are others whose self-identification as 'bi-curious' flows into actions that are downright bi-inquisitive. And the people who you would think might risk the most in identifying as 'gay' — those in various eastern European countries where attempts at gay pride parades are met with threats and actual violence and those in a number of middle eastern countries where people meet terrible punishments for their homosexuality — are the ones doing the real self-identifying.

Oh, there's sometimes more than inanity and 'mature' content. Some of them actually chat and some of the people in the chat rooms are fun and funny to boot. You can hear the cammers' taste in music and watch them do funny things. And, in my favourite Cam4 moment, there was a cute boy in Switzerland whose cam is integrated into his laptop who picked us up to walk downstairs to go outside for a cigarette. I felt like I was being carried around the house (and a little bit like a needed a gravol).

So, thanks Al Gore. For the internet.

One-Sentence Movie Reviews

I have probably seen more movies this year (think school year) than I saw in the last several years before that combined. I remember that when I started my blog I did a few short movie reviews and I thought I ought to catch up with my many recent viewings. True to form, however, I will be very superficial about this and I'm determined to cover each in a single sentence, even if I have to make that sentence inordinately long.

I am also not paying any attention to conserving the surprises, so be warned in advance!

I sing you to me, Hugh Jackman, and I have something creamy in mind for you, too.

If you wear the same outfit as your friend, you might get what your father deserves.

(v.o.f. : Entre les murs) Sometimes those rigid hierarchical structures will make you the pétasse, and a pétasse ratatiné to boot.

If I wait around long enough, the wrinkly old man might become Brad Pitt, and then I will live for the moment, knowing it won't last.

Don't shoot the giant metal thing: it might get mad and swarm you.

No, I want to be Daniel Craig's forest wife.

I didn't know I could grow to have a degree of grudging respect for a pinched and bitter old nun.

We show some skin, but not-not enough.

Those Italian loafers really are quite effeminate.

I loved it, I hated it and I loved it again as I cried at the end, just like all the young women and their dragged-there boyfriends we saw it with.

I do enjoy watching Brendan Fraser, especially when he is taking care of a child he cares about and dealing with things supernatural.

Why are nerds so cool and can this guy play anything else?

I'm not sure if I would hide my illiteracy or my childhood affair at the price of a lengthly prison sentence, but then again I'm not a Nazi.

Contain your dreams or they will ruin your life.

There's nothing like a life of adversity to make you remember stuff, but I'm not sure when you learned how to dance the credits like that.

So that's it for now, except one final comment: what's with all the Nazi themes this year? (3 of the above and one I didn't even see.)

Unfortunate Usages

When I first started participating in chat rooms, many years ago, I found that one of the more difficult things was to refrain from commenting on the spelling in people's posts. Now, with greater development of our capacity to communicate, comes an even greater challenge to the language which is probably more revealing of the writer's language skills and cultural knowledge than of manual dexterity or typing accuracy. It is the misuse or misrepresentation of common sayings that serves to demonstrate that the writer is using them without even understanding what they mean.

This goes beyond the internet and into daily life. I watched an episode of Jeopardy where someone lost almost all her money by providing as an expression for drunkenness sheets to the wind rather than three sheets to the wind. Alex was neither kind nor forgiving.

I just can't stop myself from commenting on some of the instances I have observed, but without identifying the sources…

It's toe the line not tow the line: an unfortunate military metaphor for stepping up and obeying just like everyone else (each person's toes on the same line), not some kind of strange game of tug'o'war.

It is bearing witness to something, not stripping the witness of all clothing, as you would be if you were baring witness.

A friend of my mother's used to use the word (okay it isn't really a word) predictament, which must be that sticky situation that you just knew you would get into.

One battens down the hatches to prevent the sea from swamping one's boat in a storm, and figuratively to preserve one's integrity in the face of a daunting challenge. I'm not sure what one would achieve by battening down the hatchets unless that is a kind of 'swords into ploughshares' type of thing.

I suppose that the prostrate gland is responsible for keeping us down. The more familiar prostate doesn't have that impact.

Someone along the way noticed how often people referred to that building material used to ensure that the heating and cooling system does not leak as Duck Tape. That person actually registered the name and came out with a product, but it is destined to become the kleenex of duct tape as people keep using the wrong configuration to refer to the generic.

And let me close with one that is a lovely example of the mixed metaphor: loose cannon in the attic. I'm not sure how many people might have attached cannons in their attics, or why this would be as serious as it would, say, on the deck of a ship heaving in the waves, where it might actually swing around and shoot the wrong thing.

As aggravating as they are to me, I'd love to hear more.