Willowmist's Wanderings

So my husband makes me wake up every morning to NPR.  That’s National Public Radio for those who are not familiar with that particular combination of letters. 

Because I believe that people should be free to live as they please in accordance with basic laws, a lot of folks assume that I am liberal.  I’m not.  In fact, I am libertarian.  They’re different.   Trust me.  Although I make a few exceptions, I don’t believe that it is generally the government’s job to either support my lifestyle or regulate it.  And that is a point at which most democrats and I part ways.

So, as I was saying, I don’t like NPR for the most part.  It’s biased, bleeding heart tends to stain my rugs and I find most of the regulars to be rather patronizing and condescending and pretentious.  That Terri Gross woman asks some of the most torturously inane questions I’ve ever heard.

I wake up to that stuff.  I’m tired and grumpy and still a little groggy, and I’m listening to someone talking about how little press time is being dedicated to important topics like Iraq and Afghanistan (or, let’s be serious for a moment, really any topic of any real international importance.)  They were comparing the coverage of boring ol’ Iraq with that of, say Michael Jackson’s death.  Someone was trying to make the point that trivial shit like Michael Jackson maybe being murdered distracted the American public from things like the failed hunt for Osama bin Laden.  And I’m laying there in bed, contemplating dragging my ass to the shower, when it occurs to me that Michael Jackson’s death is really very convenient for bin Laden.  And I turn to my husband, who is similarly laying in bed, but not even contemplating getting up yet (in fact, he may actually be snoring,) and I cry:

“Ohmigod!  Osama bin Laden killed Michael Jackson!”

Tom’s been married to me for a long time.  Eleven years, in fact.  So he just grunts in a vaguely affirmative way and rolls over.  But I really think I’m on to something here.

Happy August 25 everyone.

Just so everyone knows:  it is illegal to shoot ducks with a rifle from the window of your car.

I know it sounds like it should just go without saying, but apparently, not.

Three guys have been arrested after they posted a video on Youtube showing themselves having a grand ol’ time shooting ducks (and baby ducks) on a little pond in a small town in Saskatchewan.  I’m not talking about teenage boys who are inherently stupid and cruel.  The oldest was 30 years old - along with his 23-year-old brother and their brother-in-law.  They were caught after a maelstrom of pissed off hunters and animal lovers reported them to the wildlife authorities upon viewing their video. 

It turns out, according to the one guy who has evolved enough to speak anyway, that, although they laugh like fools on the video, such apparent bloodlust is not characteristic of them.  They have pets and children and of course orphaned ducklings are not funny at all, and they are very sorry, but they are from a big city so they didn’t know it was illegal to just shoot ducks out of season whilst hanging out their car window and they are very sorry…

So, I hate these guys on so many levels that it’s hard to know where to start.

First of all, the good people of Saskatchewan already have a low opinion of city people in general and Toronto people in particular.  We don’t need idiots blaming their stupidity on their city-ness.  The guy said that the only birds they’ve ever seen up close are seagulls and pigeons.  Really?  Because I grew up near Toronto and I happen to know that there are ducks there too.  It’s right on Lake Ontario for crissakes! 

But, setting that aside, I still have to ask — so what?  I’ve never seen a duck up close so my first instinct is to start shooting them and laugh?  What sort of explanation is that?

And secondly, what sort of person shoots unsuspecting mothers and children and laughs about it?  I admit that I don’t understand hunting as a sport anyway.  I’m not sure what is fun about taking a life that you don’t have to take after stacking the odds heavily in your own favour.  Even hunting advocates are mad at these guys because, one, hunting out of season is called poaching and it’s very illegal, and, two, they do not exactly advance the cause for hunters, do they?  In fact, secretly, they personify what hypocritical meat-eaters, such as myself, who do not like hunting believe that all hunters are really like.  You can almost be impressed by how three guys managed to offend two diametrically opposed parties with a single stupid act!

Happy August 10 everyone.

For chrissakes, I spend so much of my time in the United States being smugly superior and then my moronic prime minister bumbles into yet another embarassingly avoidable faux pas and I am forced to admit that not all Canadians are so much better than everyone else.

Ok.  I watched the stupid video.  He did not eat the wafer and it’s absurd and insulting for his aides to stand there on camera and tell us that he did eat the wafer.  His hand never goes near his mouth for crying out loud.  I’ve always suspected that Stephen Harper wasn’t quite human, and I’ve often suggested that his brain is located about three feet lower than everyone else’s, but I’ve generally assumed that he ate with his mouth which sits rather ostentatiously on the front of his face.  So, unless he has another mouth hidden in his pants (and we are treading dangerously into a vision that no one wants to carry around in their heads here!) he did NOT eat the goddamned wafer!

For my American friends and allies who have no clue about what I speak:  Canada’s Prime Minister, Stephen Harper, who is a Protestant by claim, attended a Catholic funeral recently and, although he presented himself for Communion and he accepted the host from the priest, he did not eat it as the ceremony calls for; rather he suddenly became a magician and the wafer disappeared.  Unfotunately, the funeral was a televised event (for a former Governor-General in fact,) and soon the whole world wide web was wondering where the wafer had gone.  Devout Catholics, never really known for their generous senses of humour, are offended and the rest of us shake our lowered heads with shame.

I don’t even care what he did with the morsel entrusted to him by the priest.  Please, he palmed the damned thing and then tossed it in a nearby trashcan.  Maybe he pocketed it for a little Jesus snack later in the afternoon.  Seriously, who cares?  As much as I hate Stephen Harper, I don’t honestly believe that he intended to mistreat the body of Christ.  He probably didn’t know what the fuck he was doing or what was expected of him or even what options he had.  That pretty much sums up Canada’s Prime Minister.  Let’s face it:  if you’re not Catholic, you’re not likely to know the intricacies of the Catholic Mass.  He didn’t want to partake of the transubstantiation, but he didn’t know that he could bow his head for a simple blessing rather than take the wafer.

My problem is simply that the standards are higher for heads of state.  If you’re going to a Catholic funeral and you don’t know what is going to happen - find the fuck out before you go!  Ask one of the eight million aides around you, read a book, google it for chrissakes.  On second thought, don’t bother asking any of your aides.  They are clearly lying fucks.

Happy July 9 everyone.

Seriously.

A guy in Pennsauken, NJ was on his second week of a new job at Cocoa Services factory, in which he fed solid chocolate into a giant melting vat, when he fell into the vat.  He was fatally injured by one of the agitators before anyone could shut the machinery down.  Firefighters had to remove his body from the vat and he was pronounced dead at the scene.

Setting aside the tragedy of wasted chocolate…

Inevitably, the family is adamant that their kinsmen was not a careless man and are perplexed over how such an accident could have occurred given the improbability of falling into a giant vat from 9 feet above it in an industrial setting.

Does anyone else smell litigation?

What an absurd thing to say:  he’s a very careful person, I don’t understand how he could trip and fall.

How does one go from much-maligned pedophilic circus freak to honoured hero in twenty-four hours?

The answer is to die suddenly from a relatively inoccuous-sounding cause, most likely brought about by drug use of which no one else was aware until after you die and then everyone can say how much sense everything makes after the fact.

He was, as every single news station is now reporting, a heartbreakingly talented, ground-breaking artist.  I just can’t stomach the way the very same reporters who covered the child molesting stories with such obvious relish are now pretending to such respect and mourning.  I understand that people like to feel like they are a part of something, but I’ve never had any respect for people who congregate at hospitals and such to ‘mourn’ someone they never knew, much less understood in any way whatsoever.  I mean, come on, I loved him in the eighties too.  I saw him live during the Victory Tour at the height of his career.  I wore the glove.  I even have all the songs on my mp3 player now.  But the man was a freak.  Whether or not he was a kiddie-diddler, he had some really serious psychological issues without any of the common sense to deal with them in private like the rest of us.  The last couple of decades of his life were bizarre and sad.  The only real tragedy here is in the fact that he didn’t die sooner so he could have retained some shred of his dignity in the public memory.

So let’s not sit around his star on the Walk of Fame and gloss over twenty years by saying that although his life had been overshadowed of late with scandals and legal trouble, he will be sorely missed.  I’m sure his family and friends will miss him, but most of us won’t even notice once the media finds something juicier to suck on.

Happy June 25 everyone.