Hostage Comedy, part 5: A Hermit with a Modest Proposal or Three

As it turns out, the race days themselves were not so disruptive. Yes, we had crazy loudspeaker radio broadcasts from 8 am that you could hardly ignore (although as we speak, with the windows closed and the air conditioning on, it’s a low rumble in the background), but the cars themselves make a funny whiny sound that one friend compared to something out of Star Wars. Way quieter at this proximity than the Formula 1 cars were at a distance before they built all those condos to absorb the sound.

There’s a certain amount of crowd noise — mostly some annoying whistles that they must have been giving out (stop that!) — but nothing unbearable. A little helicopter noise that I could do without as well. As a whole, however, I stayed in my apartment (not the first weekend I have given over to sloth) and the inconvenience of being walled in slipped by almost without notice. While I didn’t go out to watch, I did watch the main races on TV — and I’m loving that my corner was dubbed “the bus stop chicane”. I may call it that going forward.

But that’s the two days of the race. The three weeks plus all around it is the annoying bit that the city needs to fix if it wants to get me on side.

“On side” might be a bit of an exaggeration. I will likely never see the point of driving around in circles, or believe in the “athleticism” of driving any kind of car. I’m much more sold on the human-powered sporting events, like the marathon and the Tour de l’Île cycling events. They often come past my house, and I find those part-day interruptions of my regular life to be soothing and welcome. Replacing car traffic with runners and cyclists is always a plus, even if it makes crossing the street a bit of a game of Frogger.

So what could make this experience better for me, especially if it comes back next year and the year after? I have a few ideas.

1. Make the installation of the track more green and more friendly to the residents. Work during the day and leave the bus stops operational until the last minute. I really don’t care about the personal car traffic, and I’m sure that will set me apart from many of my neighbours, in particular the ones with cars. If you think your event is going to promote green transportation, especially electric transports, then you bend over backwards to accommodate as long as possible the single-passenger (yeah, I often notice that) combustion engines to the detriment of public transit and the sleeping time of the people who live around the track, you are doing something terribly wrong.

2. Give the residents some real advantages. Everyone in the neighbourhood, inside the track and around it, is living with some degree of inconvenience from the event and the preparations (and doubtless the dismantling to come). Many would say that my last statement is really soft-pedalling it, even though our mayor (who notably lives somewhere far away from all this) is happy to assume the inconveniences as the price of a notable event. So how? Give us all good tickets with seats, accessible from where we live. Rumour has it that many of the tickets were handed out free of charge in the days leading up to the event (can’t wait to see the final accounting on this!), so why not give those tickets to the residents first, before handing them out on the street to other people or making the residents jump through hoops to get standing room tickets? I’m not sure if I would go (didn’t go at all this time, with my stand-in-the-sun-and-get-melanoma tickets), but you never know. (I made no effort to catch Stockholm Syndrome this time around.)

3. The best change of all would be to move the thing to the Formula 1 racetrack we already have (and already have commitments to spend a bunch of money upgrading), avoiding all the inconvenience for the neighbourhood and those who pass through it daily. That’s a winner of an idea — you wouldn’t have to be giving away a bunch of tickets or saddling the public transit system with your apparent unilateral declaration of free transit for the weekend. You would avoid suspending all the parking for kilometres around the site (no parking outside my office 1.5 km away) and avoid ordering the restaurants and bars that count on their terrasses to draw customers in the nice weather to tear them up for the weekend.

So a few modest proposals to consider, while I consider looking for an apartment elsewhere, pushed out of my central neighbourhood where I have lived for 22 years because of the city’s bad planning and worse communication skills.

Oh, and yes, there IS an election coming in November. Will the mayor’s party be riding a wave, or be submerged by it?

Hostage Comedy, part 4: You Can’t Get There From Here

Sunday morning I had an interview, and it wasn’t even about this! The International AIDS Society conference in Paris was getting underway and we had requests for interviews from RDI and ICI Radio-Canada. Did I say early interviews? Not early in the broad scheme of things, but for a Sunday morning when I was expecting to laze about and take my time doing the most basic of things, it was early.

I set out to walk the three and a half blocks from my house to the Maison Radio-Canada with a few minutes to spare. It was a short trip after all, and since my apartment and my destination were both inside Gaytanamo — er, the Formula E track — I figured it would be a quick walk.

A block and a half in, clearly not so simple. I skirted around the “trottoir barré” sign and then a security guard came into view, making signs for me to stop and not to proceed any further. He started to tell me that I would have to circle around the whole area on which the CBC building sits and I cut him off. "I have an interview right there in ten minutes," I said. Subtext: I have no time for your ridiculous bureaucratic attempt to have me take a circuitous path to my clearly visible destination. Oh, and I really have no interest in stealing the bleacher parts that you seem to be guarding.

So I am here to report that bullying (not so proud, but pushed to it) works. I made it for my interview inside the building and then proceeded to interview #2 which we filmed outside (and outside the fences) in the Parc de l’Espoir, our park commemorating those we have lost to HIV/AIDS. (I was happy they agreed to the choice, as we have been trying to make sure to use the park for HIV-related activities as a means of reinforcing its purpose.)

Back to the matter at hand…I will be very interested to see how our movements are restricted within the zone on the weekend. It’s almost enough to persuade a boy to get up early and wander the perimeter!

If you’re interested, you can find the interview here.

Hostage Comedy, part 3: Antici...pation

I’ve spent some time reading the things I have received from the city about my impending imprisonment in my neighbourhood, and I am left with plenty of questions. I decided to send an e-mail with six questions to the contact address. Now I know that I sent this on a Saturday, so I don’t realistically have any expectation of an answer before Monday. Instead, I thought I might share those questions (and the incomprehensible contradictions) here.

The first of the questions was about the two « L’occasionnelle » transit tickets they gave me. There’s some degree of irony in giving me transit tickets while the transit authority has cancelled all the buses I usually take, but we won’t go there. Not again, or more than this anyway. ;-) I just wanted to know how long they are good for once used and if there is an expiry date for the first use.

Second, their delightful booklet says that those accessing Gaytanamo (okay, that’s my name for the ‘hood soon to be fenced in, not theirs) will not have access to the residential zone. I’m trying to figure out how that can be, unless we can look forward to having yet more fences keeping the spectators away from the inmates. And doing that, will they be blocking our views of the event, in case we get curious, or our Stockholm syndrome develops more than it seems likely to at the moment?

In case of said Stockholm syndrome, they did give us tickets for the two days of the event, but specifying a particular spectator entrance. This is not the residents’ entrance. Does this mean that if I want to use these tickets — generous standing room only places — that I will have to leave through the resident access, go back in through the spectators’ access and then repeat in reverse when I want to go back home?

Is the ticket supposed to also serve as my proof of residence? If so, what will stop the probably zealous security person hired at minimum wage to police the residents’ entrance from redirecting me to the spectators’ entrance indicated on the ticket? Do I need to carry other ID with me to prove I am a resident to get back in?

Now those tickets also say no backpacks and obligatory search. Does this mean I must have transported any groceries, drinks, etc. that I might need for the weekend before the walls close? If I try to come home with 4 litres of milk and they try to seize it or disallow it at the gate, I may just throw it on the track. Okay, I didn’t say that last part, and I probably wouldn’t do that. But I do wonder if we can expect some common sense at the access and worry that we can’t.

And my final question is about the time of the ultimate closure of the wall. I have a habit of going to see a movie on Friday night and I want to be sure that I will be able to get home as usual afterward, or will I have to plan ahead to have ID/tickets/etc. and direct myself to the access bridge?

So many questions. I hope I get answers in time!

Hostage Comedy, part 2: Building Gaytanamo

I have the great fortune to be in the middle of the Formula E track and not on the edge of it. Great fortune because I have been spared the noisy work of erecting a multi-layer enclosure on both sides of the eventual “track”, work that the city has decided is best carried out in the middle of the night, so as to most perturb the neighbours. Oh no, so as NOT to perturb the daytime traffic. I may feel differently about my fortune when the walls close around me, isolating me from the rest of the city.

Multi-layer enclosure, you ask? Well, it starts with the custom-made cement blocks at ground level. Not just any block would do — for an event like this, you really need your cement blocks to have an embossed version of the city’s logo on them. On each of them. On both sides. Atop the blocks, metal cage fences with the prison-type angle at the top, although I should not complain about that, as it seems designed to deflect any flying car parts back onto the track and there is not yet any razor wire attached to it.

On the outside of that structure, yet another metal fence erected the whole length of the route. And — I see from friends on Facebook — this will also include opaque plastic sheeting, just to make sure that ground-level apartments will be sheltered from any sun. Or air.

Good thing they are installing all this now, because the two-day race is only a week and a half away. You want to have people confined to their sunless, airless cells — er, apartments — for at least a week before the paying guests arrive. Or will there actually be paying guests?

More updates to come as the walls close in around my neighbourhood. Gaytanamo or bust!

Hostage Comedy, part 1

It started months ago, a ring of my doorbell and a good-looking young man probably taken aback by my rather hostile reception. He was gathering contact information from residents who would be affected by the city’s plans to hold an electric car race (Formula E) around our neighbourhood. The kicker: we were referred to as “special guests” of the event.

I am not a guest. I am a hostage. My apartment is in the middle of the track and the city is currently erecting walls around us. The race is still eleven days away.

I grudgingly shared my e-mail address only with him and each time I received an e-mail from the organizers, I replied with questions about things they had not yet told us. There would be four access points to the “special guest” area. Would they be accessible, I asked? In the next e-mail, it was noted that one of the access points would be accessible. Somewhere along the way the residents (er, special guests) access points became two, not four, and there are three other points for those who are coming for the event.

My questions may have had some impact, I suppose. At one point, I got an answer asking me to specify my address, just to make sure that I was indeed living in the hostage area. I guess I was not communicating enough enthusiasm for the delightful event that would be gracing our neighbourhood.

The inconveniences started early, as the city felt the need to scrape the pavement and repave in anticipation of the race. They worked on that 24 hours a day, much to the delight of some of the residents on the other side of the coming wall, on the north side of René-Lévesque Boulevard. (I am fortunate enough to live on a street perpendicular to that one, and the cars will not be driving right past my house, so no new pavement for us. We did’ however, get to benefit from the interruption of our bus services for much of the repaving process. All without warning or details.

Imagine my delight this morning to discover that the event, still (as I said) eleven days away, has put an end to bus service both north-south and east-west for the next three weeks (see signs in the photo above). I was expecting a day or two, not three weeks more of disruption.

I wanted to make sure that I wasn’t just being a horrible curmudgeon, and I resolved to try to poke fun at all the foibles instead of just whining. Hence “Hostage Comedy” rather than “Hostage Drama”. Looking forward from today, however, I’m at pains to figure out how I will keep a smile on my face while mocking this event.

Stockholm (with its namesake syndrome) has never seemed so far away.

Sleight of Ham

Image credit (because the watermark is so faint): Happy Toast

Well, we’re there. There’s a side show on the main stage spouting truths (if they happen to align with your beliefs) or outrageous lies (if you’re at all connected to reality), and keeping our attention on the antics in front of us while other things happen in the shadows. And the stuff he is producing on stage looks more like it is being pulled out of something other than his nose.

Lest I sound like a conspiracy theorist, let me clarify that the shadows would be the levers of government that are normally quite open and which command the attention of critics and the press. They’re pretty much just as open now, but our collective attention, including the attention of much of the now oft-vilified press, is on the clown at centre stage doing his unwired act while the Republican majority in the House and Senate do whatever they want. And whatever they want seems to have nothing to do with the best interests of their constituents, which is why they are avoiding any encounters with those people back home.

With their trademark thoroughness, they are proposing such delights as reducing bank regulations (remember what the less-regulated banks did a few years back that plunged the world into a giant recession?) and eliminating the environmental protection agency. You can see the thoughtful authorship and research that went into this last one by reading the text of the so-called bill here. Really? You want to just let companies pollute at will and you couldn’t even come up with a piece of legislation that is longer than its own preamble?

There’s a whole list of legislation in the works by the current Congress in this article, which I’m sure would be denounced by some political actors as “fake news”, despite the fact that you can find the texts online just as I did.

And let’s talk about the “fake news” rage. It does seem like a large part of the population has become uncontrollably gullible overnight. When you see a story with an outlandish headline and share it like it’s real news, shame on those who swallow it as real. They might cast their eyes to other stories on the same web page that are equally outlandish, or maybe click on the “about us” tab to discover that the site is humorous or satirical. Instead, in this crazy mixed-up world in which we are living, I find myself having to caption my reposts of the funny satire with a reminder that it is satire and still some readers will go to Snopes to “disprove” it. What’s next, denunciations of the Daily Show’s Trevor Noah’s voice impersonations of the Prestidigitator-in-Chief because the fit black comedian on TV is not actually the T-Rump? I like to think we knew that.

So while he waves about his tweeted rants in front of the crowd, it seems that health care, environmental protection and any controls on the avarice of the super-rich are not the only things disappearing — satire and the capacity to enjoy it in the face of the sad (“Sad!”) reality unfolding before us is also being taken away.

L’INjustice à sa pire

The English version of this article is published on PositiveLite.

Il est possible que mon fil de nouvelles sur Facebook ne se ressemble pas au vôtre, mais vous avez peut-être vu au cours de la dernière semaine l’histoire d’un jeune athlète universitaire dans l’état de Missouri — gai et noir — trouvé coupable de deux chefs de transmission du VIH et de quelques autres d’exposition au risque de transmission du VIH. La peine? 60 ans, mais son équipe de défense essaie de faire purger les deux peines de 30 ans de façon concurrente au lieu de consécutive. Pour avoir omis de dire quelque chose. Si je ne le nomme pas et si je n’utilise pas son image, c’est un choix de ma part : je refuse de participer à la stigmatisation de ce jeune homme en republiant son nom et son image.

C’est le pire cauchemar d’une personne vivant avec le VIH (PVVIH), être accusée par un ancien partenaire de ne pas avoir divulgué son statut avant d’avoir des relations sexuelles, relations qu’il n’aurait jamais eu si seulement il le savait d’avance. Le cauchemar devient encore plus grotesque dans ce cas, un jeune homme gai noir à une université plutôt blanche dans un état avec une histoire difficile au niveau du racisme. Ajoutons que cet état s’est donné des lois criminelles spécifiques au VIH qui ont peu de liens avec la science et qui transforment des fournisseurs de soins en témoins pour la poursuite.

La loi au Missouri

C’est une crime au Missouri pour une PVVIH d’être ou de tenter d’être donateur de sang, produits sanguins, organes, sperme ou tissus (sauf dans le cadre de la recherche), ou d’agir d’une manière insouciante en exposant une autre personne au VIH sans conscience et consentement de cette personne. La loi précise que les expositions défendues comprennent le sexe oral, anal ou vaginal, le partage de seringues ou la morsure d’une manière qui permet le liquide séminal ou vaginal ou le sang de la PVVIH d’entrer en contact avec les muqueuses ou la peau
« non intact » de l’autre personne.

On permet comme preuve que la PVVIH connaissait son statut avant un acte sexuel ou de partage de seringues, un diagnostic de syphilis, gonorrhée ou chlamydia après le diagnostic du VIH ou la preuve d’une autre personne d’un contact sexuel avec la PVVIH après son diagnostic de séropositivité. Et quand on est diagnostiqué au Missouri, il est obligatoire de signer une déclaration reconnaissant le diagnostic, un formulaire qu’ils gardent dans les archives comme preuve de la date de diagnostic. Vous n’aurez pas du counseling sur les conséquences de cette signature, ni accès à un avocat avant de signer.

Qu’est-ce qui n’est pas permis? La preuve d’utilisation du condom lors de la relation sexuelle ne sert pas de défense. Même si on met à côté le fait que plusieurs situations décrites dans la loi ne mèneraient pas à une transmission du VIH, il est clair que le but de la loi est de punir des personnes plutôt que de freiner la transmission du VIH. (Ils veulent décourager les PVVIH de se faire dépister pour les ITSS? Vraiment?!!)

Vous pouvez consulter la loi de Missouri (en anglais) ici si vous souhaitez le faire. La peine maximale est de 30 ans s’il y a transmission et de 10 ans s’il n’y en a pas.

L’autre chose qui me paraît étrange de ma perspective confortable au Canada est que les jurés ont été appelés à déterminer la peine. C’est probablement la rêve de notre gouvernement fédéral actuel, qui cherche depuis des années à réduire les pouvoirs discrétionnaires des juges professionnels et bien formés (mais je ne défendrais pas le bilan de nos juges par rapport à la criminalisation du VIH). Ses « pairs » les jurés? 11 blancs et un seul noir.

Le cas actuel

Mon désavantage en analysant ce cas est que je dois me fier sur les reportages des autres, et plusieurs d’entre eux manquent d’expertise en la matière (soit le droit, soit le VIH). La meilleure chose que j’ai lue en termes de détails est l’article de Stephen Thrasher sur Buzzfeed (encore en anglais). Il ne fait aucune référence aux traitements ni à la charge virale, donc on va laisser ces questions à côté.

Il semble que le jeune accusé, suite à son diagnostic de séropositivité au VIH, a contacté un ancien partenaire pour partager la nouvelle avec lui. On dirait comportement exemplaire de sa part, mais son partenaire a réagi en l’accusant d’un crime, ce qui a vite mené à son arrestation (devant les autres étudiants à son cours), expulsion de l’université et, bien sûr, la une du journal local avec nom, photo et statut. On connait trop bien ce qui suivait — la recherche d’autres « victimes » par un appel au public et par la fouille de son ordinateur et son téléphone. Je soupçonne que la police ne cherchait que des noms de possibles « victimes » et non pas des preuves de divulgation (en chats et échanges de courriel, par exemple).

C’était quand la dernière fois que la police a lancé un appel public avec nom et photo à la recherche d’autres victimes de la brutalité policière? De la conduite dangereuse au volant? De la fraude? Non, il semble que ces actions se limitent à ce qui nous fait le plus peur, peu importe la validité de la science derrière cette peur.

Notons dans l’article sur Buzzfeed quelques déclarations de la « victime » #1. Il a déjà eu des relations sans condom avec d’autres dans le passé, mais c’était avec des amis ou des connaissances, ou bien des gens qui paraissaient « clean ». Voilà celui qui fait sa part pour mettre fin à la transmission du VIH. Bien que je ne souhaite jamais que quelqu’un soit infecté, j’ai de la misère à tolérer une personne qui blâme les autres tout en se reposant sur ses propres « stratégies » inutiles et mal conçues pour éviter une infection. Je lui dirais en bon anglais « Bite me! », mais ça pourrait lui exposer à une poursuite au Missouri, donc je m’abstiens.

S’il y avait des bonnes nouvelles dans toute cette histoire sordide, c’est que plusieurs des « victimes » ont refusé de porter plainte, mais je n’explore pas de près leurs raisons par peur d’éteindre cette lueur d’espoir. Même avec ces refus, la poursuite s’est permis de se prévaloir du fait que l’accusé a filmé plusieurs de ses rencontres (on me dit que c’est pas si rare que je penserais) pour informer les jurés que ses rencontres étaient beaucoup plus nombreuses que les accusations devant eux. Je présume que le but de cet exercice était de faire peur du
« monstre » devant eux avant qu’ils prononcent la peine.

Les problèmes du dévoilement

Ma parole contre la vôtre. C’est ça, le problème de base avec la divulgation ou la non divulgation dans un cas de criminalisation. Même si un juge ou les jurés ont l’obligation de chercher une doute raisonnable, il me paraît que la tendance est toujours de trouver l’accusé peu crédible parce qu’il cherche à s’exonérer. On ne pense jamais que les « victimes » cherchent à s’exonérer de leurs propres rôles, ou de leur honte, en insistant qu’il n’y avait pas de divulgation?

Donc comment prouver la divulgation? On suggère de l’enregistrer sur caméra (ou téléphone) ou bien de faire signer une attestation de divulgation et consentement par son partenaire. Personne ne fera ça, à défaut d’avoir vécu personnellement ce cauchemar.

Les tribunaux ne semblent pas comprendre l’autre côté de la divulgation du statut de séropositivité au VIH. Quand je divulgue, je m’expose à la discrimination et au non-respect de mon droit à une vie privée — tout dépend de la volonté de la personne de garder mes informations confidentielles. On voit des cas d’emplois perdus ou refusés, du non-respect de la confidentialité des personnes et de leurs informations médicales — suffisant pour dire que la discrimination relié au VIH est un gros problème dans notre société. Si mes droits ne sont pas respectés, si on me discrimine, ça revient à moi de poursuivre et de chercher le dédommagement ; si je ne divulgue pas mon statut sérologique à un partenaire, l’état se montre plus que prêt à me poursuivre afin de satisfaire chez la « victime » l’esprit de vengeance, de peur, ou de honte de ne pas avoir demandé mon statut, ou de ne pas avoir déployé ses propres mesures préventives.

Si je dis que la divulgation est difficile ou que les moyens de la prouver sont irréalistes dans un contexte où je viens de rencontrer la personne, je sais que je vais recevoir plein de commentaires que je qualifierais d’anti-sexe à l’effet qu’on peut attendre le mariage ou le passage de toute période fenêtre pour se faire dépister ensemble. Je ne reconnais pas la planète d’origine de tels commentaires. Chez moi, il arrive d’avoir des relations sexuelles à la première rencontre et cela n’implique pas la transmission du VIH.

Je me permets de penser que ma séropositivité fait notoriété — je l’affiche sur tous mes profils, mon blogue, mon Tumblr, etc. — mais je sais que cela ne suffirait pas comme défense d’une accusation de non divulgation de mon statut. Je ne divulgue pas toujours, mais j’insiste à ajouter que je ne prends pas de chances de transmission non plus. Souvent, je me trouve dans la position de divulguer mon statut afin d’arrêter quelqu’un dans son désir de faire quelque chose qui comporterait un risque et que je ne voulais pas faire en tout cas.

J’ai partagé dans le passé sur ces pages l’expérience que j’ai eu avec un homme qui m’a posé la question après notre activité sexuelle — j’ai dû jouer au travailleur social pendant une demi-heure pour le calmer (nous n’avions rien fait de risqué et ma charge virale était indétectable). Ma deuxième ligne de défense dans ce cas-là allait être son honte : sa réticence d’admettre et de décrire comment nous nous sommes rencontrés. (Pas de honte de ma part!) C’est probablement une bonne chose que je n’ai pas eu à tester cette approche devant les tribunaux.

Oui, la vie serait beaucoup plus simple si on pouvait tous et toutes divulguer son statut. Mais le monde qu’on habite en est un qui punit la divulgation socialement ou par discrimination et qui punit la non divulgation au criminel. C’est tout un choix à devoir faire.

Pouvons-nous en parler?

(The English version of this article is published on Positive Lite)

Le titre est un petit clin d'oeil à Joan Rivers (Can we talk?), mais j'essaie de ne personne insulter par mes propos, même à la recherche de rires ou d'applaudissements. Ce billet se veut un aperçu de la qualité du débat autour de la prophylaxie pré exposition, dont vous avez certainement entendu parler beaucoup plus que vous auriez prévu il y a seulement une année. J'utilise le format anglais PrEP parce que PPrE est plus difficile à prononcer comme un mot.

Les débats que j'ai témoignés au cours des dernières années sur ce sujet ont rarement été calmes ou raisonnés. La première réaction de l'organisme américain AIDS Healthcare Foundation a établi le ton d'un côté du débat : une campagne qui déclarait à haute voix, et dans un nombre impressionnant de médias, qu'il n'y a pas de pilule magique. À mon humble avis, quand l'essence de ton argument se résume dans un court slogan de trois mots, il faut te demander s'il manque de nuances de ta position publique.

Étrangement, la réaction anti-PrEP est très forte, avec des prévisions apocalyptiques de vagues d'infections au VIH qui vont résulter du barebacking sans frein qui suivra certainement toute indication d'acceptation du concept de la PrEP. De plus, il y a les autres infections transmises sexuellement à une quantité pour bloquer les rayons du soleil! Toujours pas très nuancés, ces propos. Les gens anti-PrEP doivent respirer par le nez et prendre un peu de temps pour lire les résultats des études sur la PrEP. Ils vont peut-être sortir de cette pause avec des points de vue plus nuancés qui risquent de moduler le ton alarmiste qu'ils maintiennent jusqu'à maintenant.

La question se pose donc : l'autre côté de ce débat, est-il plus raisonnable et raisonné? À mon avis, pas tellement. J'ai eu l'occasion au cours des fêtes de poser une question – vous allez juger si c'était innocente ou bête – sur la validité statistique de tirer des conclusions sur les résultats d'un petit sous-groupe dans une étude de milliers de personnes. Un-e expert-e statisticien-ne dans la foule? Ce que j'ai reçu comme réponse était une demande d'amitié de la part de la personne qui a affiché l'item original (quel plaisir!) et ensuite un argument sans cesse sur mon « attaque » à la PrEP (moins agréable pour moi).

Même l'argument que la PrEP est « soutenu par la science » manque un peu de nuance. À part ma question très innocente (je vous l'assure!) à propos de l'analyse de statistiques, je vois beaucoup de proclamations des résultats d'études qui ne sont pas encore arrivées a leurs fins, telles que définies dans le design de ces études. C'est un terrain un peu moins que solide pour les champions de la science, je trouve. D'ailleurs il serait également une bonne idée de laisser tomber les comparaisons entre les études condom « vraie vie » et la PrEP dans son utilisation optimale. Quand on fait ce genre de comparaison inégale, ce n'est pas que les condoms qui perdent.

Je vois à répétition cette attitude : si on n'est pas pour la PrEP – probablement pour tous – à 100%, on est réactionnaire résistant au changement qui veux priver tout le monde des plaisirs de la sexualité. Ce n'est pas un chapeau que j'aurais voulu porter, donc je refuse de permettre à quelqu'un d'autre de me l'imposer. Si je peux me permettre de juger (quel horreur!), je trouve que la qualité du débat laisse à désirer.

Avant de vous laisser me classer parmi les pros ou les antis, permettez-moi d'exprimer ma position nuancée quelque part entre les deux. La PrEP est là pour y rester et démontre son utilité comme outil de prévention de transmission du VIH approprié pour plusieurs, sinon beaucoup, de personnes. Les condoms aussi sont là pour y rester et leur utilisation continue à être très pertinente pour plusieurs, sinon beaucoup, de personnes. Il y a aussi d'autres outils dans notre trousse de prévention, dont le dépistage, les traitements efficaces pour les PVVIH, le sérotriage,le choix d'activités sexuelles à moindre risque, et j'en passe. Toutes les stratégies ont des avantages et des désavantages, et ceux-ci devraient idéalement être évalués par la personne qui souhaite les déployer, à partir de l'information la plus complète que possible que nous pouvons fournir.

Donc j'encourage tout le monde à prendre un p… (oups, c'est pas le choix de tous et toutes). Que tout le monde prend une pause pour apprécier qu'il y a deux côtés (ou plus) à chaque débat et que nous devons tous et toutes arrêter de stigmatiser ou de ridiculiser les choix que l'autre peut prendre dans sa propre vie. Je suis assez certain que nous sommes tous et toutes du même côté de la lutte contre le VIH; on pourrait ressembler un peu plus à des allié-e-s.

Scary, or just ridiculous?

Well, we’ve done it. Our delightful right wing government, which has at least persuaded itself that we are on the ever-rising crest of a crime wave, has gone the way of prolonging sentences to their extreme. It doesn’t matter that statistics show a steady downward trend in crime rates — let’s just put an end to that particular information gathering activity if it doesn’t show what we want it to.

I always thought it laughable to hear those law and order sentences coming from the United States: 300 years in prison! And now we are there in Canada. The federal government changed the Criminal Code to allow for consecutive, rather than concurrent, sentences. So if the penalty for homicide is life and you commit three of them, you will spend three lifetimes in prison! That’ll teach you!

In fact, the penalty for first-degree murder in Canada is life in prison with no chance of parole for 25 years.  First-degree murder means it was pre-meditated or the person killed was a police officer on duty. Today, a person convicted of the murder of three police officers was sentenced to life in prison with no chance of parole for 75 years. The 24-year-old will be 99 when he becomes eligible for parole. If he is still alive at age 99 and not deemed a risk for society and sufficiently penitent, he will presumably be released into poverty to suffer on his own dime. But the question that begs to be answered: if he dares to die earlier than that, will they keep his corpse around for the reminder of the sentence?

I don’t want to make light of a serious criminal offence. Someone who commits murder must be punished. But it used to be that the criminal law had more purposes than just punishment, like rehabilitation. I’m not sure how much is left of the programs that would serve to help people rehabilitate themselves while in prison, but I’m willing to bet that they are less available than they ought to be, and even less so when we have to plan to feed and house a prisoner for the next 75 years. How soon do you think this guy might have access to a program?

We also have a parole board that, with the advice of a number of experts, assesses whether the person will be able to return to society and lead a productive and peaceable life, but this government doesn’t seem to trust that body at all. They will point to the spectre of recidivism when in fact the cases of people committing crimes after their release are actually much rarer than we are led to believe.

As usual, the facts matter little. The fear of crime we have trumped up wins and we look good by meting out a mockery of a sentence. Way to go. If only this philosophy of sentencing applied to electoral fraud we might be rid of some of these politicians for a good long time.

Rings a little untrue…

Something funny happened during my sleep-deprived morning wandering in Paris waiting for my hotel room to be ready. An attempted scam that I almost fell for…until it happened all over again just minutes later.

We're walking down the street and suddenly a man stoops and "picks up" a gold (coloured) ring to ask if I have dropped it. I know it's not mine – I don't wear jewellery. But he continues and almost talks me into keeping it, although I am sure there is some kind of catch that he didn't quite get to that would have removed some of the weight from my wallet. We walked away.

Literally moments later, a woman made the same move. By now I was completely jaded and onto her and we just kept walking. But it made me think of what should have been inscribed on the inside of the ring:

One ring to scam them all,

One ring to fool them,

One ring to reel them in

and in the confusion rob them.

Throwing Cold Water on Things

By now, we are probably almost as tired of the critiques of the ALS Ice Bucket Challenge as we are of the videos of people dumping ice water on their heads or the videos of people failing to do so in hilarious ways. Well, I have never shied away from going where others have already been, so I’m going to wade into the fray, head held high and dry.

As someone who has worked in charities and continues to be associated with an identifiable health cause, I’m terribly jealous of what the ALS organization that started this has managed to achieve. Not only have they succeeded in mobilizing a whole lot of people, many of them famous (more about this later), but they really managed to translate their internet phenomenon into actual donations. Watching the countless videos and the one live version I saw while waiting for a bus the other day, it is not really clear that the challengers and the challenged actually understand anything about the disease or that they are particularly attached to charitable giving. After all, the challenge is to do this OR give to the ALS cause in the next 24 hours. To go from that to tens of millions of dollars in donations over the course of the summer is phenomenal.

The critiques are as predictable as they are valid. The waste of potable water in a context in which large portions of humanity have no access to it, and even in the US there are serious water issues like drought in California and heartlessness toward the poor in Detroit. There is also no apparent link to anything relating to ALS in the action or in most of the words spoken in the videos.

I’ll add one more objection: name-dropping. I roll my eyes every time a minor star “nominates” three (sometimes more) people in that casual way that suggests they hang out on weekends. I doubt it. When that happens, the whole exercise becomes something more about promoting one’s own brand than actually helping with support and research.

The HIV/AIDS movement has challenges in fundraising, especially at the grassroots level, and especially since things got better on the treatment front. Oh, there are some big headline events that raise significant amounts of money, but the big stars seem to have moved on to other issues, some not even stooping to acknowledge the cause when they win major awards for depicting stories from our bad old days, right, Matthew McConaughey?

Our challenge now is to try not to undo our work with our fundraising messages (and to not undermine our prevention messages as we work to make a place in society for people living with HIV). No more death messages, no pity messages…we try to do actions that raise awareness of HIV and familiarize people in order to reduce stigma, but these have not proven to be very lucrative.

Maybe it’s because the organization I work for now is actually not a charity (non-profit, but we kept away from charitable status to avoid restrictions on our advocacy activities), but I prefer to spend time and effort encouraging people to get a better understanding of the realities of HIV today. How is and — more importantly — isn’t HIV transmitted? What might HIV stigma feel like from the receiving end? What can I do to prevent transmission of HIV and what can I do to help improve the quality of life of people living in my community with HIV?

So, ALS, you won this summer’s internet and you managed to translate that into cash for your cause, too. But very few people who have been literally or figuratively swamped by your challenge have any better understanding of the realities of your disease. And let me tell you that living with HIV today, with all of the advanced treatments that have made our physical health better, can still be like getting a bucket of cold water dumped on you when you run headlong into the stigma and discrimination that many in our society reserve for us.

With a nod to people living with ALS (hey — do they call themselves PALS?), here is the ice bucket challenge of someone living with the disease, and then the video of an astute Australian newsreader who has some pertinent advice for us all.

Encore une campagne pharma dans la rue

(The English version of this item is published on PositiveLite.)

Il y a des choses qui ne vieillissent pas, et d’autres dont la « peau neuve » ressemble trop à l’ancienne.

Ce qui ne vieillisse pas, c’est la Déclaration de principes publiée en 1999 par le Conseil canadien de surveillance et accès aux traitements (CCSAT) sur la question de la publicité directe aux consommateurs (PDC). Parmi les conclusions de la déclaration, on trouve :

• Il y a une absence de preuve d’un lien entre la PDC et les meilleurs résultats de santé.
• Il y a une absence de preuve par rapport aux coûts de la PDC. Attendu les sommes énormes dépensées en publicité, il serait raisonnable de nous inquiéter que ces coûts vont faire partie du prix des médicaments sur le marché.
• Les données probantes démontrent un effet négatif de la PDC sur les pratiques de prescription des médecins et sur leurs relations avec leurs patients. Les médecins sentent une pression de la publicité et de leurs patients pour prescrire des médicaments particuliers, que ceux-ci soient les plus appropriés pour leurs patients ou non.
• Il n’y a pas de preuve que la PDC mène à des consommateurs bien informés. La nature de la publicité est de promouvoir un produit, et non pas de fournir de l’information par rapport au produit d’un concourant qui serait peut-être un meilleur choix pour le patient.

Je n’ai nommé que quelques-unes des conclusions de cette déclaration. Je vous recommande de la lire au complet.

Avant de discuter la campagne courante, permettez-moi de citer l’expérience d’une autre, qui date de quelques années. Des personnes qui avait des problèmes à tolérer un certain inhibiteur non-nucléosidique de la transcriptase inverse (INNTI) se présentaient chez leur médecin pour insister sur une ordonnance pour le traitement « une pilule, une fois par jour » dont un des composants était le même INNTI qu’elles ne toléraient pas. Qui a profité de ça?

Et la nouvelle campagne?

Au premier regard, cette campagne fait bien plusieurs choses : une grande variété de personnes représentées dans les images, une emphase sur la préparation pour le rendez-vous avec le médecin avec une liste de questions à poser.

Mais elle n’est pas vraiment nouvelle, cette campagne. Elle essaie quand même d’influencer le choix de traitement avec peu de mots (c’est vrai qu’on ne lit pas des annonces avec beaucoup de mots en tout cas) et sans information équilibrée sur les alternatives ni référence à une source d’information plus complète et neutre. En fait, j’étais étonné de découvrir que, sur le site associé à la campagne, on peut bien choisir les questions qu’on veut inclure sur notre liste de questions pour le médecin et on peut même ajouter ses propres questions, mais la liste s’enregistre sur l’ordinateur avec un nom de dossier préétabli de « demandez à votre médecin si [nom du produit] est approprié pour vous » et ce message est imprimé tout en haut de la liste en format PDF.

J’ai parlé aux représentants de plusieurs compagnies pharmaceutiques à propos de leurs campagnes. Je demande toujours s’ils ont prévu de faire une évaluation de leurs campagnes et la réponse est toujours négative. Une évaluation coûterait presque aussi cher que la campagne, ils disent. Donc ils continuent avec leurs pratiques publicitaires et demandent aux payeurs de rembourser leurs produits à des prix de plus en plus élevés pour couvrir les frais de développement du produit. À la fin, nous payons tous et toutes.

J’ai porté des modifications aux images que j’affiche de la campagne : j’ai couvert le nom de la compagnie et du produit et j’ai substitué mon propre code QR. Le mien vous mènera à la déclaration du CCSAT et non pas au site de la campagne. Je ne voulais pas promouvoir le produit ou la campagne par ma critique. Et, pour m’amuser, j’ai inclus la photo d’à travers la station du métro qui démontre que les annonces illuminés ne peuvent pas être captées en photo…comme un vampire!

Quels sont les règlements aux Canada?
 
Ce serait facile à croire que les annonces pharmaceutiques sont généralement permises ici, car les États-Unis est un des deux pays dans le monde à permettre la libre publicité de médicaments d’ordonnance et les médias américaines traversent facilement la frontière.

La règle au Canada est que la publicité peut mentionner le nom de la compagnie et celui du produit ou la condition que le produit traite, mais jamais les deux ensemble ni en parallèle d’une manière qui permettrait aux personnes de voir le lien. Une compagnie souhaitant annoncer son produit pharmaceutique cherche une pré approbation de ses annonces auprès d’un de deux agences privées qui semblent avoir été mandaté par Santé Canada pour jouer ce rôle.

En 2014, l’absurdité de cette règle est claire : je peux trouver à l’intérieur de quelques secondes la condition traitée par le produit en utilisant mon téléphone et ses fonctions internet. La fiction que le règlement canadien nous protège de la publicité pharmaceutique sans contrainte est, en effet, une fiction.

Nous devons mettre fin maintenant à cette pratique qui coute cher et qui ne sert à rien.

Nightfall in the Cinema of the Apes

Well, that was an interesting evening at the movies.

First, the woman in front of me (not even a teen!) kept pulling out her cell phone, until she was heckled by someone behind me, and then ordered by a cinema staff member to put it away...she must have been EXTREMELY important to need to be so in touch.

Then we got to see what happens when there are technical difficulties in the automated age — I am old enough to have seen film break and even burn in front of the projector, but here the bulb burned out and the soundtrack continued (dangers of not having someone watching the machinery). Since we were watching Dawn of the Planet of the Apes, people started hooting like apes, and some clever person actually went out to tell a staff member there was something wrong.

We didn't get a rewind, but we got a quick fix and a coupon for a free film on the way out. Highly entertaining, despite the few minutes we missed out on in the middle.

Oh, the film? I quite liked it, but I have always been a science fiction geek with a penchant for the post-apocalyptic. It was certainly seamlessly done, with full application of the latest technology, and having seen some “making of” moments, I am terribly impressed by the actors playing the apes despite their being covered in CGI effects on screen.

Signs of an Election

Ah, the election signs. They pollute our view of the city for all of the rather short 33 days of the campaign, and for much longer afterward, until they are scavenged for other uses. One of the better uses has been by artist Yvon Goulet, who uses the fronts of these corrugated communicators as canvasses for his art with an urban edge.


Until they can be salvaged and transformed, however, they are out there trying to persuade us to vote for party X and candidate Y. And they are generally out there early, too, as candidates jump the gun to have their posters out there even before the election writ is dropped, if only by a few hours. So shall we have a look at this election’s crop of imagery?

Parti québécois (PQ)

I’ll start with the Parti québécois, the governing party (at least that’s where they were at the beginning). This time they have gone with a very simple approach: name of the party very prominently, large colour photo pf the candidate with the first and last names printed across the chest to the left (from the viewer’s perspective) and the party logo at bottom right with the web address in simplified form and the Facebook and Twitter logos to entice us to look for content elsewhere.

My first reactions to these, apart from being annoyed at how they went up overnight the day before the election call, was to note that this is the first time I remember seeing the PQ logo presented all in white. I speculated that this might be the effect of the party’s proposed Charte des valeurs (the real name of the legislation ended up far too long to remember): excluding all the colours and variety. In the search for images on the web, I discovered that this is in fact not the case, as it was all white last time around, too! I stand corrected, but not chastened…the imagery of the all-white logo in the context of this divisive social debate is fascinating.

Parti liberal du Québec (PLQ)

The Liberal Party would have done well to follow the simplicity example laid down by the PQ. They have gone with prominent slogan — or at least the first word of the slogan is prominent, as the other words are too small to read except from a very proximate position. Even the Ensemble loses its punch on the bilingual version of the posters that are to be seen in some areas. (Apologies for the fuzziness of the second photo: I was waiting for a bus after seeing a movie and took it with my phone in the cold.)

If even the most prominent word on the poster is at times difficult to make out, the candidates’ names are even harder to discern. I wouldn’t be hiring the same firm next time around if I were the PLQ.

Coalition Avenir Québec (CAQ)

The CAQ might have the most graphically interesting posters. I have always found their logo — if not their policies — very pretty and interesting. This time around, they are taking full advantage of that by deconstructing the colourful logo or showing parts of it only in the images. The actual posters outside (and here I am relying on what I found online, as they seem not to be spending a lot of time promoting their candidate in my part of town, where they finished 4th last time out, with just under 15% of the vote) have a black and white photo of the candidate with the full colour logo and the name of the candidate. Sometimes, it’s just the top or the bottom of the logo and that lends an air of sophistication to the whole campaign. Or at least the visuals.

One of my colleagues has pointed out that in some regions of Québec, the slogan On se donne Legault takes a turn for the juvenile, as le go is slang for diarrhoea, which has got to be unfortunate for them.

Québec solidaire (QS)

Québec solidaire might be poised to pick up a couple more seats in central Montréal because of the perceived right-wing turn of the PQ, and they are running hard, with posters that went up almost as early as everyone else’s. Unlike everyone else, however, they have a series of issues-oriented messages almost as abundant as their candidate posters. I kind of like the sharp candidate photo with the blurred (and oranged) background, but I would have to say that the posters are a bit wordy and there is a bit of a disconnect between voting with your head (as the slogan would have it) and the omnipresent heart pictogram.

On the issues posters, there are unfortunately two different styles. And as I paired them up I discovered that there are different dimensions, too, as some have text trimmed from them for me to fit them into the same space. I like the ones with the photos, as they really click with the whole of the campaign. The messages on the other ones are attractive too, but the hors série look doesn’t help make for a cohesive campaign. I will confess, though, that I have not seen the plain colour ones anywhere but on the Facebook page of the party…the only ones on poles outdoors are the ones that fit together with the candidate posters.

Oh, and one more thing that I wanted to share, especially in light of our divisive Charter debate: from a distance, I was sure that the young woman pictured with the metrosexual guy in the Québec libre poster was wearing a hijab. It wasn’t until I got much closer that I realized it was a knitted hat, and that made me chuckle all the more, as the distinction between the two is so very artificial.

Parti vert du Québec

Oh come on now! If you can afford to put a full-colour photo of your leader on your posters (only one model out there, all leader, no local candidates) and you can spend money on having them all over the place (how ecological is that?), you could at least deploy a little creativity to take your look beyond high school.

Option nationale

You would think that Option nationale might have a stronger presence in my sovereignist neighbourhood, but no. No posters here; all images drawn from their Facebook page. They probably have even fewer resources than the Greens (don’t quote me on that though — ON seems to have a campaign car and maybe it’s still too cold, but I haven’t seen any campaign bicycles for the Greens), but they have managed to put together some imagery that looks sophisticated and a simple well-constructed slogan. They couldn’t contain themselves, though, and tended toward the wordy in some versions.

Parody and graffiti

Sometimes it is very funny to see what people can do to the posters that are all out there for us to appreciate — and apparently write on! Sometimes the graffiti is just not clever and downright offensive. If you want to see ongoing examples of both, I would suggest this Tumblr, which seems to be posting regularly. Two that I will talk about, however, are parodies done with computer graphics rather than felt markers.

The first is my own, of which I am excessively proud. Since the announcement only one week ago of the candidacy of Pierre-Karl Péladeau (PKP) for the PQ, there have been big waves in the campaign, and not necessarily all in the direction that the PQ hoped for. Here was a successful entrepreneur coming out clearly in favour of Québec independence, which might be a boost if that is your issue. However, PKP comes with some other baggage, notably a huge number of lockouts of his employees and the exploitation of gaps in the anti-scab law that made it possible for his company to hire telecommuting journalists to replace the locked-out ones. For a party like the PQ that used to have a left wing (this has been a bloody stump for quite some time now, regularly hacked off), the Lockout King of Québécor might also be the cause of lost votes to the left.

So, while I am not the inventor of the name “Parti Québécor” I did take the logo of the media conglomerate and put it into the format of this campaign’s representation of the Parti québécois, even replacing the “Q” with the PQ’s traditional logo, but in black to go with the company name.

A well-meaning young woman photoshopped a hijab onto the election poster featuring PQ leader Pauline Marois. While the symbolism of this image is interesting and the young woman herself says she thinks the Première ministre looks beautiful in it, the act plays into the hands of the supporters of the Charte des valeurs, in my opinion. She has imposed a hijab on Pauline Marois (as opposed to Mme Marois having chosen to wear it) and in doing so she has also covered up (erased) Mme Marois’ name. That’s too bad. It might have been a stronger message to put the hijab on Bernard Drainville, the minister responsible for the Charte, subverting the symbolism and erasing the identity of a man for a change.

TV ads, too!

From an article on the site of l’Actualité, but rearranged into the order of presentation above, and selecting only one per party:









(I guess the high school camcorder was not available for the other two.)

How [not] to choose a movie

I confess: I’m shallow. And easy. I’m a total sucker for a pretty face, especially when it’s attached to a pretty torso that may or may not be fully covered by the work of some costumier with any degree of consistency in the film projected before me. However, after a few experiences of stories that I didn’t particularly care for (or that didn’t really hold together), should I put into question this movie selection method?

I don’t get the fuss
Self-important like their hair
And no abs to scam

The boy can wear clothes:
suits, jeans and sweats. But the tale?
Beneath his talent.

Horse-dog and a man
Who lives forever to save
Not this, but that one

Now I won’t deny that there were some lovely shots in these three films, but the stories either failed to make me laugh (when they were trying) or succeeded (when they were not) and provoked so much rolling of eyes that I almost needed to recover with a sleep mask when I got home.

So have I learned my lesson? Well, Pompeii is coming out next week, right Jon Snow (Kit Harrington)?

The Seven Film Itch

As we count down the last hours of 2013, I have a short list of films I have seen and so far failed to review — or whatever that thing is that I do when I write about the films I have seen. I set myself the challenge of writing about each and every film I saw this year in a cinema (no counting the airline films or the ones I might have caught on TV or on the internet), and with these seven we are up to 35 for the year, which is not a bad score, I must say. So let’s just get these last seven out of the way, shall we? And I’m sure we’ll do it with our usual attention to detail and comprehensiveness.

Philomena
A lovely story of a faithful and humourless woman who recruits a jaded and sarcastically funny journalist to help her track down the son she had to give up for adoption as a young unmarried girl. The contrast between the characters couldn’t have been more striking, and the journalist’s coming to care about the story and his subject couldn’t have been more moving. They almost dragged a whole other movie into the mix when we found out what the son had done and what had happened to him.

Out in the Dark
I saw this at Image et nation, our LGBT film festival. An Israeli production, I was a bit worried about possible pinkwashing in this boy-boy version of the old Romeo and Juliette tale. I needn’t have worried about that. Yes, the Palestinian family (and the community around them) are rather homophobic, but there is a kind of sinister “use and discard” approach taken by shadowy Israeli intelligence operators with respect to the gay Palestinians they run into that is itself deeply homophobic. And just like real life, nobody’s really happy at the end.

Freier Fall
A second film at Image et nation! (I’m so bad at getting myself out the door to see films in this festival that it is well worth underlining my success in doing that this year.) This time around, these police trainees are indeed from the same ethnic background, but we are seized with the complicating factor of a pregnant wife who finds herself in the middle. Nobody ends up happy here, either, but some of the characters were so little developed that we don’t really understand why or what motivated them.

The Hobbit: The Desolation of Smaug
I’m as geeky as the next guy (only because the next guy is the friend with whom I go to most of these movies), but I have to say that when I heard that The Hobbit was being turned into no fewer than three films, I thought it was just the extreme manifestation of Hollywood trying to milk what they could from the fans of the story. I, and probably most of the other Tolkein fans, would be happy to sit and watch the whole thing in one giant movie, but we shall have to content ourselves with playing them back to back when they’re all out on DVD or Blu-Ray. As it is, I loved the depictions of those creatures that remain familiar, despite the fact of my last having read the books in my youth, the scenery is fabulous and there is just enough humour — even a little sex appeal — to fire one up on all cylinders. But even after more than two and a half hours, I still felt that this segment of the story was only half told. Four films, maybe?

Nebraska
I’m afraid I did my best in the viewing of this film to emulate the habits of the father character, falling asleep with great and unpredictable regularity! Don’t blame it on the film, though, but on my exhausted state just before the holiday sleeping in time. What I did see (I kid…I saw much of it!) was quite a touching account of an elderly man bamboozled by promotional materials into believing that he is the winner of a big prize (you know the kind: you have won…a chance to win) and the decision of his son to accompany him on the trip to claim his prize. Spectacular views of dying communities and people with long and convoluted memories of each other, plus the strange state of the children who have left all that and come back as visitor-strangers, something I find rather familiar to my own experiences visiting my old hometown. You will love what the son does for his father after the unsuccessful prize claiming and leave smiling.

Inside Llewyn Davis
The friend I went with to this film kidded me at the beginning that it was before I was born…but she was wrong! Must be my youthful looks, right? And speaking of youthful looks…Oscar Isaac should drop everything and come marry me. Or I’ll go marry him because it’s now legal there, too. This has nothing to do with the movie, but maybe everything to do with how I could have warm feelings toward a character who is chronically unsuccessful in his folk music career (hey, it was the early sixties, not such an oxymoron back then), couch surfs well before the term is invented, leaves behind a series of unwanted pregnancies and can’t even abandon his music career well. Still kinda liked him at the end, and that folk music can be catchy if it’s sung right… Also of note, some big name small parts, including John Goodman, Justin Timberlake and Adam Driver (Adam in HBO’s Girls, in case the image didn’t spring right into your mind).

12 Years a Slave
I needed to see this, although my usual movie buddies were not hot on prioritizing it in the run up to the holidays. I will not fall into that awful mess of what some noted commentators have been saying in the US — that now they understand why slavery was bad. Really? I think I knew that already. The violence and the attitudes of the slave owners are all there in their disturbing reality, but there were two things that really haunt me from this film (saw it earlier today, so it’s fresh): the passivity of the acceptance of the situation by most of the white characters, and the feeling of guilt that I got on behalf of the main character as he was being rescued from his slavery by the sheriff and a friend from the north, leaving behind all the others, who would probably pay for his freedom with their own pain and blood. “How could he do that?” I wanted to ask, knowing that the answer was “How could he not?”

So that’s my year in cinema. Thirty-five films in fifty-two weeks. Not bad for an amateur.