Matthew's an Auld Dog

Matthew is a 38 year old, married father of three (Evelyn, Charlie and soon to arrive baby - Q): a veteran, a liberal, a hopeless romantic, and a walking cocktail party of information from Minneapolis/St. Paul.


If your rational for getting fit is a date on the calendar, it will fail. It has to be a lifestyle change. I can see why some people get real frustrated. I can gain 20 pounds in two weeks easy, but to lose that 20 pounds will take me 6 months of working out and watching what I eat.

Let's face it; the USA is the bi-polar nation. We tell everyone that looks don't matter that it's what is on the inside that matters, and then have our NEWS reporters telling us all the latest Paris and Britney gossip. We tell everyone that they need to be healthy, flooding them with exercise options and healthy advice, only to immediately follow it up with monster burgers, out of control portion sizes and junk food cheaper than healthy food. We tell people it's not what you want, it's what you have, and then create a society of lemmings with false desire for the newest and latest gadgets,often in a brazen quality that suggests that this one phone/car/television is the thing that will finally make you happy.

I love Minnesota, and Canada for that matter, but Ireland is truly wonderful, with the most beautiful people in the world.

Don't ask someone about their past if you don't want to know about it. Just know they are with you now.

Here is the great debate. Work something mindless, with limited interruption, put in your hours and leave, have some physical labor involved, but you never will bring work home, and earn $30,000, or work that skilled position where you work way over 40 hours for the week, constantly bring work home, think about work even when you don't have to, sacrifice family functions and make $70,000. There are times I wish I were still pouring beers in a bar.

I will say I am glad I am eating steak and fresh veggies instead of spaghetti and bananas.

We in the USA really push ourselves hard, much harder than I think we have to. I think it is a vicious pyramid where the guy at the top feels that making 40 million a year is not enough and then pushes upper management, who in turn push middle management, who then in turn create long hours and tough shifts for the workers, so that the next year they make 42 million. In that same time, no one calculates the accumulated cost of lost family time, stress on workers at work, stress in workers lives caused by work. I think we devalue the cost of actual living.

I had a boss tell a staff meeting that if you have a loved one who is getting ready to pass away, that she had no problem refusing to let you go be with them because you shouldn't wait until the end to let them know how you feel. It told me more about her than I ever wanted to know.

I love the men and women who choose to fight for the ideals that originated in the greatest democracy the world has ever seen. They have come freely to serve. They give themselves and their blind faith in our country fills me with pride. There is only one thing they ask in return for their service; don't send them into personal or unjustified conflict.

Do I love the troops? Of course I do. That's why I don't want to see them come home in body bags from a country that doesn't want us there, for nothing more than potential corporate profit.

George W. Bush is the worst president the United States has ever seen. He is the Anti-Lincoln. Instead of sacrificing his personal agenda for the betterment of the country, he sacrifices the betterment of the country for his own personal agenda. He is even worse than William Henry Harrison, the President who died a month after his inauguration.

I have to live somewhere that has four distinct seasons. Change is good.

Auld Dog is an intermittent column on this blog, which offers the collected wisdom of an individual for the rest of us to ponder. If you want to be an Auld Dog, send 600 - 700 pearls of wisdom, with a bio and a photo to Queenie, at auld.dog@gmail.com

Auld Dog - the first instalment

If you scroll down to the previous post, you will see that I have invited people to submit an Auld Dog post, which is a summation of all the nuggets of wisdom you have collected to date. Several people have mailed me back looking for guidance, headings, questions, etc.

If I do that, then I will be imposing my agenda on your thoughts. Which is not what I want to do. This isn't This much I know, this is Auld Dog.

In other words, just write the goddamned things will you! You're all talented people.

But here's one I prepared earlier, in case this happened.

Auld Dog

By Queenie

Queenie is a thirty six year old Irish woman who now lives in Canada and works for the NDP.

______________________

The rate at which we, as a species, are consuming every single thing on this planet terrifies me. I saw a documentary recently on seahorses, which will be extinct soon because people like to have dried seahorses to hang on their walls, or to eat, or something.

My first tattoo was of a seahorse. I love their shape. And the way the males nurture the babies.

They harvest them alive and leave them to slowly dry out in the sun by the way. The seahorses.

I fell in love with my partner when he and his buddy Martin cooked a romantic, candlelit, lake-side dinner for me and Martin’s wife and two other girl friends on a camp stove. Next day, I overheard the other women talking about how great he was, and I had this lovely warm feeling of ‘he picked ME!!!’ inside, which is still there every morning. He’s taught me how to make our love for each other spill over into everything else we do and make it shine.

I think what we need to do now is hold every action and object in our hands and ask ourselves, what’s the impact? It’s so tiring sometimes, though, I have to go to BurgerKing and rebel for a minute or two.

Good politics (by that I mean dialogue) does good things for good people. It’s power that’s the problem. The man who said power corrupts and absolute power corrupts absolutely was the cleverest one ever.

Ohmygod! I just assumed it was a bloke said that. That says it all, really.

Every single morning for the last two years I have woken up and wondered whether or not I should have a baby.

But imagine if I had a child, and when it saw my seahorse tattoo it assumed it was like a unicorn? An allegorical symbol, not real?

When I watched the German film Stalingrad, I was so moved that I was lying in a foetal lump bawling my eyes out at the futility of it all when the last soldier walked out into the snow. That’s why I rent dvds. Catharsis is so much easier in the comfort of your own home.

There’s a selfish little bit of me that just doesn’t understand why all my Irish friends won’t come and live here in Canada. But there’s always the telephone.

Technology is a tool, not a status symbol. People who use technology in public to highlight their status are the tools.

I always thought if you gave teenagers the vote the world would be a better place, but now I reckon the people who tell them what to buy will tell them who to vote for, same as the rest of us.

I wonder who tells me to vote Left?

I had a boyfriend once who reckoned everyone was one or more G&Ts below par. I try to be just one, but some evenings I feel a good way down the bottle below par. So I don’t keep gin in the house.

I always took my parents far too seriously, until one day about a year ago they asked me to stop. I think they just want us to enjoy each other’s eccentricities now.

We developed social networks for a reason. For our survival. And yet the whole modern success mythology is based on the need to be a redoubtable individual.

For that reason, I was hugely relieved when we invented the Internet, but now we have MySpace…

If I were locked alone in a tower in deepest Albania from which no sign of life could be spotted across the mountains, I would find a party. It’s the Irish in me.

I can’t imagine a life in which I don’t talk about politics every single day. I blame my dad. He made me read the Irish Times when I was too young to know any better.

Sometimes I wish I weren’t so serious-minded. It played havoc with my sex life when I was single. Men just don’t want to sleep with the Head Girl.

One of the things I love about my partner is that even though the Head Girl was on vacation when he met me, he took it completely in his stride when term started again.

On the Future, and its coincidence with New Year's Resolutions

In response to my previous post, when I was using prevarication about what to write on as a space filler to make the post look like a half decent sized one,

Andrew Farrell said...

Talk about the distinction between your New Years Resolutions and your hopes for the future!I'm not just taking the mick, I'm interested in what bits of your future you do and don't see yourself having control over.

Which comment has been mulling around in my head all day. Without much of a breakthrough so far.

I have however:

• painted the bedroom set an ivory base-coat,
• tidied the utility cupboard, the linen box and the fridge,
• sorted out the recyclables,
• filled a garbage bag of clothes and shoes I don't wear anymore to send to the SallyAnne,
• spray-painted the red fold up chair black,
• shouted at Himself about something that needed shouting about,
• read the Observer online,
• talked online to my mate Juicy Lucy in Aswan, Egypt, where she is currently leading a Dragoman trip,
• made a stew,
• ordered photographs online,
• made Himself's birthday present,
• started a new photobook on Shutterfly (DON'T do this - dreadful interface, I am only doing it because it comes free with this year's photo print plan),
• finished John Updike's Terrorist, which is pretty darned good for an Updike,
• and played numerous games of Farm Hustle (and got to round three finally).

A typical lazy Sunday afternoon Chez Queenie.

I jest.

All of those things had to be done today because I should have done them all in November. In November I sat on the couch feeling sorry for myself, drinking wine, eating chocolate and watching television. Which is the only way I can get through November after trying every other possible alternative.

Which brings me to the first of my NY resolutions, to wean myself back off television.

Which leads me to Andrew's essay title: The Distinction between Queenie's NYR and her hopes for the Future.

I made an interesting realisation recently. As I am a person who needs other people's affirmation in order to feel good about myself, putting myself in a situation where the only people I have in my life are workmates and television actors is a bad thing.

Yes, I know, I know, I should know this. I do know this, I have known for a long time, for example, that working in politics, which is dog eat dog at the best of times, is bad for a girl who needs a lot of affirmation. I have also known for a long time that television is bad for the soul generally, but particularly for \ sensitive soul, who is worried about the colour of her teeth, skin, hair, size of her bosom, hairiness of her arms, blackheads on her nose, shape of said nose, etc. most of the time, not to mention every second sentence that comes out of her less than tactful mouth.

But there is a hell of a difference between knowing something and realising it about yourself.

There is.

Hence the decision to wean myself off all television except for Heroes, Ugly Betty, and Grey's Anatomy, which are all full of flawed people and therefore ALRIGHT TO WATCH.

Great, I hear Andrew say. Just great. But what about the dog eat dog world of Monday to Friday?

Hmmm... I guess that's where we enter the realms of 'parts of my life I have no control over', albeit temporarily. Seeing as my Canadian residency permit is conditional on my having a job in Canada, and my work permit is for this job only.

But if I spend the evenings undertaking self-affirming stuff, I'll be better set up for the day.

I had another realisation recently. I am a creative person.

I am.

I am a creative person who thinks I should be a writer because I love to read and I admire authors, but I am a creative person who needs constant affirmation from others, so taking photos and making calendars and painting furniture and making pretty cards to sell in the market and writing in my blog is much more satisfying.

Which leads me to the second of my resolutions.

Fuck the novel.

It's never going to happen.

An enormous weight of self-loathing is lifted off Queenie's shoulders.

However, the desire to write novels was always grounded in the need to try to make some money from being creative (those of you who wish to sneer should examine the bank balance of one JK Rowling), so the downside of the resolution is that I have to try and make some money from my photos this year.

Especially since I sneaked the Canon EOS in before 1 January and the third of my resolutions.

I have enough things (apart from a car).

I have enough clothes. I have enough shoes. I have enough art. I have enough pieces of pottery. I have enough dishes. I have enough books (until I have finished reading them all). I have enough music. I have enough make up and body lotions. I have enough jewellry. I have enough throws. I have enough linens. I have enough curtains.

I don't have enough money in my travel budget. I don't have enough savings. I don't have enough money to invest in a business someday. I don't have enough money to buy a piece of land near the Tobeatic Wilderness, and build an off-grid house on it.

So this year I resolve to cut down on my expenditure and start saving for the future.

Which leads me to the issue of the future. And my control over it.

I must say, Andrew, I laughed my ass off when I saw that.

Control??????????? ROFLMAO!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!

Does anyone?

No I am not giving the lecture on global warming, although Himself's son has copped it now and apparently we are all going to be flooded in thirty years. You have been warned. Start practising your paddling.

Then I started to think about it.

What can I not control?

I can't control the decision to be made by Immigration Canada. I can't control the way Ireland is now and the loss of what I liked about Dublin. I can't control Himself's dreams of the future (although I can influence them to a certain extent. not that I ever would. much. :-), which have a pretty strong impact on my future. I can't control what happens to my family and when and if they will need me to care for them.

I can't control the price of property in Ireland and the ECB rate and its impact on my mortgage. I can't control my income too much at the moment. I can't control when the Tories are going to call an election, which will impact on my life.

So I guess my resolutions are all about how I fill in the time while I wait for these forces to move me one way or another.

Most people call this time life. I call it this year. I don't think any further than that. I never have.

Maybe I should extend my view. I don't know...

Whacha think, Andrew?

And my final resolution for this year is to start a 'This Much I Know' column, a la Observer magazine. I'm going to call it 'Auld Dog', as in 'the auld dog for the hard road'.

For those of you who don't read This Much I Know every week, it is a column in which a person, old/ young, famous/ normal, male/ female, etc. etc. is asked to summarise the things they have realised about life. Sometimes they are funny, sometimes they are sad, sometimes they are downright sensible and useful to think about, sometimes they highlight just how shallow the person is, sometimes they reveal hidden depths. My favourite last year were Bill Nighy's and an elderly guy who sells vegetables in Covent Garden market.

To submit an entry, email 600 - 700 words of wisdom, not less than ten individual Auld Dog conclusions if you can, along with a short bio and a photo if you like, to Auld.Dog@gmail.com and I will post them here.

Happy New Year everyone. Finally.

Queenie's back in Canada

Having had a month’s break from blogging, it is as difficult to go back to as it was to go back to school.

Or work.

Or to get those essays in by early January.

Or face into exams.

Queenie has spent ALL DAY tidying her apartment: and by tidying her apartment she means the kind of tidying that entails laying her socks and tights out in orderly lines in their drawer, which has been dusted and lined.

Of sorting her tops into piles named: basics, summer, funky all-year, sporty (there was just the one), outdoors, and sparkly (lots of them of course).

Of rearranging her rock collection.
And her ornaments.
And her candlesticks.

That kind of difficult.

Studying for her finals kinda difficult.

A big ‘uuuuunggghhh’ of boredom mixed with guilt and a tincture of panic squeezing her temples everytime she tries to tackle it kinda difficult

At least her future isn’t riding on her blog…

But now she is bored of tidying, not that she’s finished, no sirree bob, it will have to be in order to find the bed tonight.

So maybe a bit of writing might break the monotony of folding.

So why the long break?

It wasn’t intentional, although Queenie could pretend it was and no one would be the wiser. It just panned out that way. Early December was frenetic – pouring four weeks of work into two so that Queenie could go on holiday; going on holiday for three weeks; and then another frenetic week in work while she tried to figure out what she was supposed to be doing in 2007.

Watching the federal government try to work out how much of a threat to their planned June majority Stephan Dion is, and watching the provincial government drive itself out of office through its own incompetence, whilst trying not to laugh at either of them because we are a RESPONSIBLE Opposition is what I’ll be doing mostly, it would appear.

Also, watching the Labour party fuck up the election in Ireland AGAIN is on the cards too. But at least that won’t lead to any canvassing on my part.

Queenie will sit this one out.

A lot of politics is sitting waiting patiently for the other shoe to drop. More difficult than it looks.

Anyways, more of that anon, I don’t want to talk about politics today.

What should I talk about?

New Year’s Resolutions?

The Best of 2006?

My trip to Ireland?

My impending application for residency in Canada?

My hopes for the future?

The band of uuunnnggghhh tightens imperceptibly at the thought of all of them.

Queenie is coming home soon...!

I am going to be in Ireland in 283 hours!

And I keep thinking about whether or not it will be the same.

Which is pointless.

Because I have forgotten what it is like.

Some time is passed trying to remember what Dublin is like...apart from pub interiors...

I remember them pretty well.

I think it's because they're where all the light and colour were.

I can't get my Control button to work. I'm stuck in italics.

Some time is spent fixing the italics button.

Okay... where was I?

Oh yes. Light and colour.

That's how I remember things.

This journey I have been on, for the last year and a half, has ramped up so much speed that I am now HURTLING through time and space in my own time machine with my own assistant.

And I am about to step into a new episode, which will be Dublin in the Future.

Christ I hope there aren't any Daleks.

They're like bears. Only worse.

Or zombies.

Himself will probably try to shoot one of them. For supper.

Final Ballot and new Liberal leader

Total Valid Poll - 4,605
Needed to Win - 2,304

Candidate - 1st - 2nd - 3rd - 4th

Dion - 858 - 974 - 1,782 - 2,529
Ignatieff - 1,412 - 1,481 - 1,660 - 2,076


Well, at least the environment will have a champion at a very senior level in Canadian politics, as Dion is one of the architects of the Kyoto second level targets and actually named his dog Kyoto.

It will cause upset in the Liberal party as all the old guard were backing Iggy or Rae. But who cares about that.

And poor Iggy. I do admire his journalism and intellect. But he's not a very good politician.

So now Canadian politics are remarkably like Irish politics. Without the personality.

Stephen Harper is Michael McDowell without the personality.
Stephane Dion is Michael D. without the personality.
The Greens are just as annoying and lacking in personality as their Irish counterparts, but they're in trouble now with a viable Liberal alternative.
And Jack Layton is Enda Kenny with a porn star moustache.

And I'm done with politics for a month. Onto nicer things.... my forthcoming holiday to Ireland.

Third Round Results

Total Valid Poll - 4,817
Needed to Win - 2,410

Candidate - 1st - 2nd - 3rd

Dion - 858 - 974 - 1,782
Ignatieff - 1,412 - 1,481 - 1,660
Rae - 977 - 1,132 - 1,375

Well, there you go. It's a Dion - Ignatieff race and Dion is in charge.

So Bob Rae is the kingmaker.

The expectation is that he will let his delegates vote freely. (Like he has a choice). Iggy is gone to talk to him now.

Iggy is very arrogant. He probably won't eat crow enough to pull it off. But what the hell do I know.

Third Round Ballot Results not even in yet and it's chaos

Well, the prevailing sentiment amongst the pundits is that Bob Rae is out. So there goes my prediction. The Dion camp is very smug. The Ignatieff camp is showing off minority delegates they are snaffling from other camps.

The DJ is playing "We are Family". As the family is tearing itself apart on live television.

Again.

This is truly the most bizarre event I have ever seen. Rick Mercer, who is the Gerry Stembridge of Canadian politics, is on the panel now and is pointing out how everyone in the convention centre is lying through their teeth and how it is complete chaos.

You can email Peter Mansbridge who is hosting it. Most of the emails are from concerned citizens wondering how the candidates get to go to the toilet without being followed by a media scrum.

The answer is they don't. As far as I can see.

Twenty minutes before the results are out the Rae camp is unofficially conceding.

NOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOO!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!

How things might shake out

Ooookay... there are 1,100 votes up for grabs.

Here's what I think.

Ignatieff probably won't win now. In fact, he's left the convention floor to huddle with his advisors.

Kennedy asked his delegates to go to Dion. The reason he has done this is because he is from Ontario and wants a Quebec leader, so that the next time it will be an Ontarian (traditional the Liberal leaders alternate).

The polling shows that Kennedy's delegates are evenly split between Rae and Dion. If this happens, Dion will remain in third place and will be knocked off the the ballot paper. Then Rae will beat Iggy as Dion's people will go to Rae.

If Dion gets 2/3 of the delegates, and Rae gets 1/3 (including the Dryden votes), then they will both pass Iggy and he will fall off the ballot paper. That will be really interesting, as the final showdown will be between a francophone policy wonk and an Ontarian former socialist. The Liberals need Rae, but they might not be able to stomach him and go for Dion. That will be a mistake. Dion will not beat Harper.

If Dion gets all of Kennedy's votes, then he will jump into the lead and Dryden's votes will decide who comes second. Rae could fall off the ballot then. If that is the case, then possibly his vote could give it to Ignatieff.

But I don't think Dion will get that much of a transfer. He's too francophone.

Second Ballot Results

Total Valid Poll 4,690,
Needed to win 2,346

Dion 974 up 138

Dryden 219 down 19

Ignatieff 1,481 up 69

Kennedy 884 up 30

Rae 1,132 up 155

The vote is down on the last one. So people are holding their fire.

So Ignatieff is the only one who only needs just one candidate to move to him to win. His people are more tail up than before. Rae and Dion both need Kennedy and Dryden to win on the next ballot.

Dion is calling for all delegates to move to him. They're waiting for Kennedy to call for his delegates to go to him. Dryden will go to Rae, presumably.

And there's about 1,100 votes up for grabs now and there's twenty minutes to snag them. Even though a candidate can ask his delegates to move to another candidate, they don't have to do it. They can vote for whomever they want. As can anyone after the first ballot.

Very strange system.


Rae only got about half of the votes he was trying to get from Volpe and Brison's camp, whereas Dion got all of Hall-Findley's votes. Now Dryden has offered him 219 votes, but if Kennedy drops out, he has over 800 which, if he delivers them to Dion will push Dion ahead of Rae.

Michael Ignatieff is sitting looking a little lonely as no one is offering him votes. There's a substantial Anyone but Iggy campaign going on.

Watching water polo in murky water

While we are waiting for the results, Ignatieff and Rae, who were room mates in University, had a staged meet and greet where they said that friendship is more important than politics.

I wish.

Speculation is rife that Rae and Iggy are going to combine to defeat Dion and Kennedy. Kennedy will go over to Dion if he comes in fourth. The word is that Dryden's people will go over to Rae.

So it is starting to look like I might be right and it will be Rae and Dion on the final ballot. Which is Ontario v Quebec.

When is it otherwise??

But will the next ballot be the third or the fourth.

I am such a junkie for this shit....

The vultures have appeared

Just little dots in the sky over the conference centre at the moment.

They are particularly zoning in on Iggy, as he is sitting in the hall with his wife in an obvious sulk about something. His inexperience in politics plays against him at times like this - he forgets he has to pretend that everything is hunky dorey even if his whole strategy is falling apart.

What is going on now is that each camp is trying to poach delegates from other camps so that they can a) get more votes in the second ballot, and b) persuade the media that they have the momentum.

They are all in groups in the conference hall, each of the groups shouting and singing, carrying banners and posters.

Tambourines with the face of the candidate on them are big this year, boys and girls, for those of you who will be running election campaigns next spring/ summer. I will work on the first campaign to offer me free tambourines. They rock.

Ignatieff supporters are now shouting and roaring and tambourining loudly as he has poached 40 South Asian minority delegates from other parties. Rae's people are quietly tambourining the news that he has poached Dion people. Dion has changed his colour scheme today from Liberal red to Green. To symbolise growth. Yeah, Stephane, I believe you. Why don't you just leave and form an environmental party called the Greens.

Dion has poached Ignatieff people, but.

Wolfie Kennedy has managed to poach one person from the other camps. I think his youth is showing now and the momentum is not going to the whitest teeth in the room.

Politics is so peurile sometimes, isn't it.

My gut is telling me it will be between Rae and Dion and that Rae will win. Second ballot voting is just finished so we will know more in a few minutes

Now they're playing ground hurling...

Okay, official results of the first ballot:

Brison 192 - Scott has announced he is dropping out and going to Bob Rae.
Dion 858
Dryden 238
Hall Findlay 130 - Martha has announced she is dropping out and going to Stephan Dion
Ignatieff - 1,412
Kennedy - 854
Rae - 977
Volpe - 156 - Joe Volpe has announced he is dropping out and going to Bob Rae

They are doing everything in French and then English, so I keep getting the numbers wrong as the Quebec accent is difficult for me to understand.

So basically, the first ballot went as expected, except Stephane Dion (former Environment Minister and all-round good guy) edged ahead of Kennedy (toothsome guy I instinctively don't trust).

Himself and I almost had a row about Kennedy last night. Himself thinks he's the best. I had to explain that you had to not listen to what they say too closely and look at their teeth. Having said that, Himself is as entitled to his opinion as everyone else. And Kennedy is younger and more energetic.

Scott Brison (former Tory, gay MP, Nova Scotian and former star of this blog) is giving his 'I give up' speech. He has told his delegates that he will vote for Rae now, but they can go to whomever they like. How many of them will stay with the herd?

In terms of the second ballot, what was supposed to happen was that Dryden would drop out as well and then the second ballot would be a sudden death knock out between Dion and Kennedy (who are in third and fourth place). Fortunately for us junkies, Ken Dryden is being as bull-headed as he obviously was to be a hockey Hall of Famer and so there will be an interesting second ballot now. Interesting for that and for a number of other reasons:

- a number of delegates didn't get to vote yesterday because bad weather delayed them
- there are people called ex-officio delegates who can vote for whomever they like and they voted for Martha Hall Finlay and Ken Dryden last night for heart-tugging reasons.
- lots of people voted before the speeches last night, and Ignatieff in particular thinks he will get more votes in this round.
- the only person with any momentum is Dion, who is real, old-school, Quebec Liberal.

There is ongoing television coverage on three channels, but there is nothing going on, so the journalists are basically roaming the halls looking to see who's talking to whom.

Worse than the Fianna Fail Executive convention.

Gerard Kennedy - the uberkind

Gerard Kennedy is up now. He's positioning himself as the new Trudeau.

He has Trudeau's son introducing him.

Young Trudeau is possibly the most annoying Canadian on the planet. Bar George Stromboulopolous. Except George has a job and s not just an opinionated social butterfly. No, I don't really mean that. I like George, I'm just jealous because he has the best job in Canada, hosting The Hour, CBC's edgy, pop culture-y, witty current affairs program which goes out at eleven pm every night.

Secretly I like George because if Luke McManus was Canadian he'd be George Stromboulopolous.

And his teeth are too white.

Kennedy's I mean. Not Luke's.

Never trust a man who claims to care about the poor if his teeth are too white. Kennedy ran the first Food Bank in Canada.

That's my learning for today.
Kennedy is being even more boring than Dion.

Bob Rae is up next. And then the Prince of Darkness himself. Ignatieff.

Moving from critters to political critters!

This weekend sees the election of a new leader for the Liberal party of Canada, the long long battle for power which has been going on for almost a year now.

There are eight contestants: Michael Ignatieff (intellectual and former journalist), Bob Rae (former NDP premier in Ontario), Gerard Kennedy (social reformer young type), Stephan Dion (Quebecois candidate, former Minister for the Environment here), Ken Dryden (former hockey goalie and newbie politician), Scott Brison (Nova Scotian who has been the star of this blog before), some other non-entity I can't remember and Martha the woman with the double barrelled name who is coming in last.

There's a huge conference in Montreal where they are all giving speeches tonight and so I am in happy land.

Prepare to be bored for the next twenty four hours.

Very very bored.

Obviously I am up for Bob Rae. Although Ken Dryden's my underdog hero and his speech rocked just a bit ago. And when he came offstage a journalist asked him what he wanted and he bellowed "I want my canada back" at her. V. funny. I know exactly what he meant.

Stephan Dion is talking now and he has a very strong Quebec accent which I find offputting (along with most of Canada although they won't admit it). Although Dion was a good Minister of the Environment.

But he won't win I think. Although traditionally Liberal leaders come from Quebec.

Paul Martin was from Quebec, but he didn't sound like Dion.

Happy happy junkie politics place....! They're all taking lumps out of the Tories.
I should get myself a beer now.

Your seduction style

Another quiz from the blog of myles'.

Exciting (or possibly tragic) news on the critter front!

Queenie went out last night and had a few pints to mark the last night of being able to smoke in the pub and needless to say the pub was packed so she crawled home too late. And all day today she had a headache. Until she left work at four o'clock, whereupon the headache miraculously disappeared.

Which just goes to prove that it is work that I am allergic to and not too much alcohol.

I always knew that.

Anyways, on to critter talk and then we will be done with it.

Himself shot Mr. Buck through the lungs the other night with his Swedish early twentieth century sniper rifle and now we have a freezer full of venison.

So there. No more critter talk, there's too much death in it.

Tragic perhaps. Yummy definitely.

Tragic news on the critter front!

Alexa and Peter are dead.

I was home from work on Friday so I didn't feed them till eleven when I realised that Alexa was dead. Peter was pushing her body around the fish tank sort of aimlessly.

So I took her out and cleaned the tank and the filters and checked Peter for lice etc but he looked okay.

But today, when we got up he was sitting on the bottom of the tank, obviously in trouble. And when we tried to push him gently to see whether he would move, he shot forward, knocked his head against the filter and died!

I feel like such a failure. I'm sure I overfed them.

It's very quiet now with no tank bubbling away in the corner.

Himself has taken them back to the island to bury them under the chestnut tree in the yard.

Together forever...

They were only goldfish but they were great company for me when I was alone here last winter.

Moose Doosie and other critters - two

Not having a green bin down at the house on the island, we dump our organic waste outside the house where it lasts approximately forty seconds before it is taken by one of the many critters that share the neighbourhood with us. Usually the crows get to it first, having a helicopter view of the food situation, but it can attract raccoons and our pet deer too. If the location and time of day are right.

Crows are very intelligent critters, aren’t they? Down on the island, we have a mess of crows that wake us up every morning – quaaw, quaaw, quaaw they go - from about 6.30 onwards, insistently stirring up the whole house.

Usually I burn the toast in the morning, as I forget I am using the oven grill and not a toaster. Plus it’s the morning, so I can’t handle complicated technology.

Also it’s an excuse to put burnt toast out on the deck and watch quietly to see what will come for it.

If we sit quietly for a few minutes, momma crow (that’s who we think she is anyway) usually sidles up along the wall of the house, NYPD style, and slowly sticks her head around the edge of the patio doors for a look-see.

The first hint we get is when the sharp corner of a beak appears in the bottom right hand corner of the door. The trick is not to laugh, no matter how much you want to, as she takes the hump and flies off if you do.

She checks four or five times, exposing more of her head each time. We have to stuff our fists in our mouths to stop shaking with laughter.

Then, when she thinks it’s safe, she whips her head around to signal to the others – quaaw, quaaw, quaaw – who swoop down and carry off the booty.

A sort of crow version of Heist.

Not only that, but if you nip over to the back of the house and check out the kitchen window, you can watch them dipping the toast in a puddle to moisten it.

Very intelligent critters.

We got apples for the deer, to try to get them to come up to the back of the house, and all day that day you could see the crows hauling them, one at a time, off to wherever it is they stash their food.

We see the deer at night usually: a doe and two fawns. They come out of the woods at the back of the house and walk down to the orchard to eat the rose hips growing around the pond. If you drive up to the house at night, the headlights of the car will pick out three pairs of glistening eyes.

Himself is hoping that deer will evolve soon and start to realise that looking at a light is what gets them killed. There’ll be a new breed of super-deer, all wearing designer shades. Of course, it doesn’t stop him from shining a light out the back of the house every night in search of Mr. Buck. Who’s fair game apparently. Who knows this. Who’s far too canny to come down to the house in search of rose hips.

That’s what the missus is for.

She in her turn sends the fawns out first.

They gently nuzzle each rosehip off the branch individually, legs all akimbo trying to balance eating and standing.

It’s hunting season in Nova Scotia, so we are desperately hoping that no one will shoot them by mistake (or design). Hence the apples to keep the doe and fawns coming to our yard at night when the woods are full of people trying to shoot something.

Some people, who are the epitomy of ‘the market will solve everything’ philosophy that results in so many selfish actions, and the reason why this planet is in such bad shape, put apples in piles in the woods and then sit in a tree above the apples and shoot the deer when they come out to eat them.

Those people shouldn’t be allowed to shoot deer. In fact, those people should be invited to a free party, in a big fenced off area, which has a bar under a tree, and see if they like being duped.

Last Saturday morning, Himself had driven to work and I was upstairs when I heard a ‘come quick’ hissed from the kitchen. I went down and K was gesticulating wildly in the direction of the kitchen window, which looks out up the hill behind the house into the orchard and the woods behind.

The doe was frozen to the spot in the yard, staring in the window at us. She’d never been that close before. Then I realised, the car was gone, so she must have assumed the house was empty.

Little minx. She’s been coming down to eat the rosehips when Himself is gone to work.

I get such a kick out of watching animals engage with the possibilities offered by human neighbours.

Last week we had mackerel for supper and left the heads and tails on a platter on the deck for the raccoons.

Bad idea. The raccoons came alright, but hauled the mackerel heads off the platter round to the side deck to eat them in peace. Next day there was dried blood everywhere and teeny, tiny, blood-stained raccoon footprints running over and back across the deck, down the steps and along the footpath to the brook that runs in front of the house.

They snuck them out from underneath our noses that time. During the summer, we often got to see them sneak onto the deck to grab whatever we’d left out for them. I always imagine they’re a form of guerrilla fox with their bandanas and small handlike paws.

Then there are the squirrels.

Last weekend we went walking in the woods to see if we could find the buck that must be around somewhere and sure enough after about twenty minutes of tracking prints and scraped earth and trees (it being the rutting season) we turned a corner into a glade and there he was, just about to leap into the trees and freedom. If I was one to anthropomorphise animals I would say he tossed his antlers disdainfully at us before he leaped.

We came out of the woods eventually and met a guy on the road who was going to tend to his apple pile. Himself told him all about the buck we’d seen, up back of the old road, over a piece and toward so and so’s place, just by that alder stand where the such and such happened etc etc.

Captain Golden Delicious was delighted with the news and roared off in his pick-up. We walked on.

“Why did you tell him about the buck?”

“So he’d go lookin’ for it.”

“Why did you do that?”

“Well, he won’t find it where I told him it was, now will he?”

I had to take his word for it. News of his demise has not filtered through the community yet, though, so I have to assume he’s safe.

Not that we didn’t make a desultory effort to get him.

Towards dusk Himself loaded his gun and we went back up to the woods and climbed a tree where he has an old door lashed into place as a deer stand. We sat there for over an hour but Mr. Buck didn’t show.

Of course not.

We were sitting in the wrong tree, as far as I could see, it being about two hundred yards off the deer tracks we’d found earlier. There was another tree a bit further on that would have been more suitable. But I didn’t say anything.

I think Himself doesn’t have the heart to shoot a deer in front of me. I think he just wanted us to sit in a tree and hear the music of the woods settling down for the night.

After twenty minutes it was so quiet I could hear my blood running around my body.

Then a squirrel came along. He jumped from tree to tree underneath us, taking his time. Then he landed on our tree and scurried past and on up the hill. He was headed to another tree further up the glade, where his lady friend lives. I know this because I was sitting under that tree in the sunshine by myself a couple of weeks ago and they started going at it with great gusto, right above my head.

It was nearly dark anyways, and I had to climb out of the tree, so we decided it was time to leave.

You know you’re re-connecting with your environment when you leave the squirrels to enjoy the twilight in peace, don’t you!!

Moosie Doosie and other critters - one

I’m no Kate Moss.

For one thing, I’m dating a bassist. Not a lead singer. The bassist in Bandit, doncha know. Not the highly strung, former Libertine and current frontman of Babyshambles. My bassist is not a crack head neither, although he likes his vodka.

I’m not dressed like her neither. No thigh high boots topped by a pair of slinky shorts for this girl, although I’ve had my fashion moments. I’m wearing jeans and a fleece top, to ward off the evening fog creeping in from the Bay of Fundy.

I’m not chopping high grade cocaine into lines on top of an amp, long brown hair hiding my face.

I’m not hanging with Pete and his mates in a recording studio somewhere in trendiest London. I am in Freeport, Long Island, Nova Scotia. With Himself and his band mates, who are tuning up and drinking beer and doing all the noisy, pointless things that men do when they’re getting ready to play.

We are sitting in Bandit’s band shed. And it is Saturday night, just as it is all over the world.

We all find our own level of glamour. This is mine currently.

No rock stars in my firmament. Just real ones. Peeking through the fog swirling around Freeport.

Moosie Doosie is staring at me from underneath his fez. At least, I think he is. I can’t see behind his enormous yellow Elton John sunglasses. When I asked the guys, they said Himself had gotten him in Cape Breton and brought him home. He’s their mascot. He being the head of a four hundred pound bull moose, mounted onto a mahogany panel for display purposes. I found out later that Moosie Doosie used to hang on the living room wall in Himself’s house, where he convinced his young nieces and nephews that Moosie ran down the hill so fast he burst through one day and got stuck.

Looking at Moosie, I thought nice buy, dude, despite the fez and the sunglasses. Well spotted. He has a great eye for the eclectic, my man. A nip into some grubby ‘antiques’ store in Cape Breton must have resulted in this find.

Then I’m told Himself found Moosie Doosie standing in a swamp in Cape Breton, tracked him, circled him, shot him in the heart, then shot him six more times to stop Moosie’s death charge towards them in its tracks, tagged him, bled him, then winched him onto a truck and drove him home.

Of course.

Silly me.

Anyways, he’s retired from the house onto the wall of the band shed, alongside a poster of Elvira looking very 1985, pouting down from where she is draped over the bonnet of a classic car.

This is not the first band shed I have hung out in during a long life of trying to score the coolest guy in the room, but it is by far the coolest. And I’ve scored the coolest guy in the room.

Band sheds. As women have houses and living rooms and kitchens beauty parlours and shopping malls to bond in, men have band sheds.

Being a doyenne of these things, I understand the privilege of my position – a girl in the band shed. So I sit and drink my beer and stay quiet.

Across from my perch on the sofa (or cot as they say on long island), the wall is lined by an enormous baby blue cooler, lifted from a Dairy Queen years ago. Its got wonderful fifties curved lines. A relic of the days when things were made by people who had jobs in factories and mortgages and cars, not life sentences for sedition and a cot in a labour camp.

Down at the far end is a wood stove and a dart board.

Male heaven. Aren’t I the privileged little Queenie. Being allowed into the bandshed.

I am sitting on a green sofa, which is surprisingly clean and comfortable for a band shed sofa. I have a twelve pack of Schooner and three of the Bandits are tuning up while the drummer, who’s had quite a bit to drink today apparently, tries to crawl to the drum kit.

It’s proving pretty difficult for him to manoeuvre his way through the cables and amps and mike stands arranged around the practice area, even on all fours. In happy acknowledgement of his master’s quadrapedic behaviour, his Mamaluke is wandering around knocking things over with his tail.

Hell that’s a big dog. He can eyeball me when I’m sitting down. An Alaskan canine version of Boxer (Animal Farm), bred to pull extraordinarily heavy weights over short distances on ice. Because of that breeding, his shoulders are huge and his haunches are over-developed, but because of his thick fur you can’t see the muscle, and so he looks like an obese huskie without their cold cold eyes. After he knocks over my beer twice in vain attempts to lick me with his loofah of a tongue, I get his owner to put him outside.

This proves more traumatic for the owner than for the Mamaluke, as outside can only be reached by a steep staircase that plunges into the darkness of the hall. I forgot to mention that, didn’t I. The band shed isn’t a shed, it’s an old house the guys have done over to hang out in.

Of course.

What do you do when you’re in your thirties and you can’t play guitar at home anymore because you’ll wake the kids? You buy an old house in Freeport, near the Legion of course, and turn it into your dream hangout.

Why there is a worker shortage in Nova Scotia

I am tired listening to employers whinge about how they can't get workers. I really am.
Serious rant alert boys and girls...

There is a growing workers shortage in the province of Nova Scotia. In order to solve this problem we must admit to ourselves exactly why there is a growing shortage.

There is a shortage primarily because there aren't enough people to work in the Halifax Regional Municipality, where most of the jobs are. You might think this is a no-brainer, but in Poland for example, they have an 18% unemployment rate and a shortage of workers. So it is important to make this distinction. Demographic shifts, an ageing workforce, a baby boomer generation who have good pensions and can retire early, and a massive drop in births are the big drivers of this.

I say primarily because there are two other reasons why there are worker shortages.

In some parts of Nova Scotia (Cape Breton, South West Nova) there are high-ish levels of unemployment side by side with worker shortages. In this situation, the government's labour market policy has failed to shift workers from a declining sector (usually primary production or traditional manufacturing) into a developing sector (usually business services or health services). Alternatively, labour market policies have failed because they didn't make it easy for unemployed people to enter the workforce, take up a trade, for example, or to learn IT skills when it became clear that there would be a shortage of these workers.

In some sectors of Nova Scotia (mostly health) there are shortages because there is no one with the available specialist skills and it takes a lot of time and money to create these workers. Tomes have been written about the shortage of health workers in the developed world and there is no consensus apart from the fact that you get what you pay for.

Basically, it is not just demographics. A lot of this is the government's fault. They should have prepared for this.

Now that it's happening, the first thing we need to do is find out what shortages are there exactly, in what sectors, how many and for how long (if there will be too many nurses in three years, then there's no need to panic is there)?

Do what the Paddies did. Set up an Expert Group on Future Skill Needs. Get business, labour, post-secondary and labour market people involved. Make them responsible for their own recommendations. Do separate reports on key sectors - healthcare, trades, ICT transport.

Identify the shortages, identify the reasons for the shortages, identify the ways in which we can eliminate those blockages, identify the future workers, identify how we will train them and when they will be ready. They can be immigrants, or unemployed people brought back to work, or Nova Scotians lured home, or young people coming up, or women, or Mi'k Maq or African Nova Scotians who have been ignored until now or whoever.

Leave no stone unturned.

The next thing we need to understand is why people are leaving. So we can staunch the bleed. All the people I know who left for Alberta did so because they were tired of scratching a living on Nova Scotian wages, paying Nova Scotian taxes and paying off huge Nova Scotian student loans. They would rather live here (where their wives, children, families are) but they can't afford to.

Rant alert

The middle class in this province has its head in the sand about poverty. If you make $60k here and you're in a dual income household you have a pretty good standard of living - two cars, cottage, meals out, bottles of wine, etc with few of the strains of big city life. Why is that? This nice lifestyle is on the back of people who get paid crappy wages to deliver services to you. That's why they're so cheap. This has not sunk in with most people. Europeans take it for granted that in order to have social stability and low levels of poverty, you must have good service wages and a high cost of living.

Extreme rant alert

Here, poverty is an opportunity to show how generous you are. I have never, ever, ever in my life encountered a place where you have to buy a lorry-load of tinned food at the start of the Christmas party scene and pop one or two Campbell's Soup cans into your velvet purse every time you go out. Why? Every social occasion in Nova Scotia is used to collect food for the Food Bank.

I'd rather pay more tax, really I would.

I feel like Mr Bumble in Oliver Twist. It's off to the poor house with you me lad!!

- Pharmacy assistant - $8 an hour x 40 = $320 per week
- Call centre person - $11 an hour x 40 = $440 per week
- Labourer - $10 an hour x 60 = $600 per week
- Truck driver - $15 an hour x 90 = $1,350 per week

Crappy work environment examples:

- A friend recently told me that she earns $10k less in Alberta than she did in Nova Scotia and she still comes out $5 richer on a pay packet.

- Overtime starts in this province after 48 hours. It's worse in the construction sector.

- OHS standards in the construction sector are the worst in Canada. More people die at work here than anywhere else.

- They've just started discussing whether to have legislated lunch breaks here. I kid you not. Even the queen of white collar herself - i.e. moi - rarely gets one.

Enough said.

Okay, back to demographics - a key issue, but one that occurs in other provinces and in other countries. They solve that with immigration. Atlantic Canada's immigration policies have failed for a number of years and very little has been done to redress that. People talk about the need for more immigration. This is true, and we need to develop innovative immigration policies but we also need to look at why there are so few immigrants, apart from the fact that we are not made feel very welcome in AC.

Let's see:

- It's really difficult to get a well-paid job here if you are a graduate.

- Most immigrants to Canada are graduates.

- Immigrants are not prepared to work for $7 - 15 an hour while paying off heavy student debt loads any more than Nova Scotians are.

The business community, having lost the opportunity to lord it over average joe Nova Scotians with crappy jobs, terrible labour standards and mediaeval human resource practices, are now grasping at immigration as a straw.

They have missed the point completely.

Instead of asking themselves - why are all our former workers sitting homesick in Fort McMurray (or Fort McMoney as it's called now), working long hours in terrible weather in a polluted atmosphere, paying exorbitant rents for crappy trailers, when they could be home with their families - they are now thinking, ahaa, we'll get immigrants to come over and fill these spots. Sure they'll be delighted to be let into this great friendly little province.

- Immigrants are not stupid.

They will wonder where all the young people are. And then they will find out and why and move to join them. Because you don't move yourself and your family halfway across the world for $10 an hour.

Yes, in the long term we need better immigration levels, but it's going to take years to convince people to come and settle here, particularly as many young people are leaving. What we need is flexible, innovative migrant worker policies for key sectors. Both skilled and unskilled.

Lots of people would come to work here for a year if it were possible. Then they might possibly like the place and ask to stay for longer. Of course, you would have to attract these people with good wages and resettlement packages and have a govt unit that works with employers to ensure they can drive, get car insurance or health insurance, a credit card, a health card, etc - all the things that are an incredible hassle to organise if you are a migrant worker at the moment.

Extremely extreme rant alert

The government spends all its time advertising Nova Scotia as a place to live to the people who already live here. See www.novascotialife.com for an hilarious look at how important Nova Scotian media analysts think Nova Scotia is.

They should maybe think about advertising it to people who think Halifax is a place in England with a crappy football team and don't realise that it's actually the centre of the universe and the best little city in the world etc. Most people in the world don't know where Halifax is.

I know that's a terribly shocking thing to say but I know my geography and this time two years ago I didn't know where Halifax was. Never mind Pictou County.

So I should wrap up this rant. What I'm trying to say is that there is a reason why this is happening, that is cultural, that is much deeper than ageing population or not enough immigrants. This cultural identity, which is 'I'm alright Jack, so it must be your fault if you're not getting on' fits quite nicely with right wing ideology. It is rampant in Nova Scotia. People have had enough and are leaving in droves. Immigrants are not settling here because it is anathema to them.

Yeah, immigration, training, improved access to education and interesting labour market interventions are exactly how we should solve this problem. They should have a conversation about why they're in this mess sometime too.

We could have a potluck. Talk it over. Don't forget to bring a can for the food bank with you though, or we'll think less of you!!

Tie a yellow ribbon to your SUV!

This is very funny.


http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=KmsOIjzQ1V8

Call myself an English graduate

So insouciance is a no.

The word I was looking for was sanctimony.

Breathtaking insouciance

I hope I'm using this word in the right context.

Today I sat and watched a presentation from a senior manager in a company that specialises in building systems for fighter jets. He showed a picture of Albert Einstein while talking about 'not knowing the things you don't know', which is of course Rummyspeak. Then he gave us all a lecture on the importance of ethics in business.

I didn't know whether to laugh or cry. So I just went back to the office and ate sweets all afternoon and wrote questions on the Nova Scotian economy (which according to this morning's seminar is going down the tubes fast).

And then it snowed.

Thank you for today Baby Jesus. I'll not forget this one in a hurry.

A Stern Warning

Read the Stern Review on Climate Change.

Well, read the Executive Summary anyways.

The Long Version if you don't mind.

Go on, it's only 27 pages. I read it on the bus home.

Thanks...

Happiness, by Robertson Davies

Happiness is always a by-product. It is probably a matter of temperament, and for anything I know it may be glandular. But it is not something that can be demanded from life, and if you are not happy you had better stop worrying about it and see what treasures you can pluck from your own brand of unhappiness.

Don't say you weren't told now...

I hate when my horoscope orders me around

"It's my job to be emotional," rock music goddess Bjork told Nylon magazine. "Doctors cure diseases and shoemakers make shoes. It's my job to go through emotions and describe them to other people." By my astrological reckoning, this is also an apt description of the role you should play in the coming weeks, my fellow Cancerian. It's a perfect time for you to commune with every feeling on your vast palette, as well as to add some new colors and textures you've never imagined before. One more piece of advice: As you express the richness of your inner world to interested parties, be artistic and entertaining, never self-indulgent or sloppy.

Free Will Astrology (c)

I LIKE being self-indulgent and sloppy. 'Specially when I'm tired.

I've opened Queenie's Store on www.lulu.com by the way, for all your Christmas calendar shopping. You can shop for my stuff here. My margin is very small. I'm going for the bulk sales business model.

Actually, I was going for the high end market and then I looked at the competition and they were all charging less than me.

Maybe you should check out their stuff. Some of it is pretty good.

But then again, you KNOW me, don't you. Brand loyalty and all of that. Cradle to grave marketing.

Speaking of, I could probably do a baby calendar when I go home to Ireland, such is the level of fecundity on the big island. I have friends emailing me in extreme excitement to tell me they're going to be GRANDPARENTS these days.

ENOUGH!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!

I want to hear about other things now please.

That sounds very Sarah Jessica doesn't it. I don't mean it to.

Thing is, there's a lot of baby talk in my physical surroundings and on my electronic airwaves, which is lovely and I'm all for being excited about new lives and new people arriving on the scene.

But I can't help thinking that there must be some people who have to listen to this stuff day in day out who don't want babies, or can't have babies, or won't have babies, or don't feel capable of rearing children, or have had miscarriages or have chosen to have terminations, or are facing into the emotional centrifuge that is IVF, or are trying to get accepted for adoption, or fostering, or whatever.

And I think that people who are lucky enough to produce issue with fuck all effort or thought (although I'm sure a huge amount of thought has gone into most of the issue I know about recently) - watch Queenie tiptoe around the sleeping baby of this issue - still, people who are lucky to have a perfect baby in their lives (or two or three) should be a bit more understanding of the huge range of emotions that constant babbling about how easy/ fantastic/ brilliant/ tiring/ exhausting/ etc etc babies are can bring on in those of us who fit into one or more of the other categories.

There. I've said it.

It needed to be said.

Back to lulu.com.

Now that I've alienated my entire customer base!

My photobook will be on electronic shelves soon as they get the template out of Beta.

Will SOMEONE please effing explain Beta to me sometime!

Mr. Monkey??

Anyone??

One final baby thought... wouldn't it be great if people could be as open about not having babies as they are about having them. That would sort it all out wouldn't it.

That'll never happen of course.

But it would get over the whole 'there I was just being excited about reproducing myself and hoping my mates were and now they're bitching about me on their blog which they have time to write because they're childless selfish bitches' backlash I totally deserve now.

I do love my future pension contributors. Everyone of them. And I promise to check out early to save them a few bucks.

Am I forgiven now?

I'm wondering why this is news

Some guy who used to run faith-based initiatives for Bush said:

There is no precedent in any modern White House for what is going on in this one: a complete lack of a policy apparatus," he said. "What you've got is everything - and I mean everything - being run by the political arm."

Jesus Christ on a bike, what did he think he was getting into when he went into politics?

Harvest Full Moon tomorrow night

Autumn is a second spring when every leaf is a flower.
Albert Camus

Modern day Clampetts

I had to meet with some oil people again yesterday. I keep having to meet with oil people who are over from Alberta politically schmoozing, as I am the researcher with responsiblity for stuff like that.

Because of what the oil industry in general is doing to the prairies, I am usually very cross with them and manifest my anger by looking over the top of my glasses at them and locking stares, which is becoming a more effective put down strategy as I get older.

Unfortunately they are almost always slightly modified cowboys, who act like they just happened upon enormous oil patches and the accompanying business wheeling and dealing, and they don't wear thousand dollar suits or smoke big cigars, or have Crackberries like other people who just think they are important, and consequently they are very charming in a completely non-schmoozy way, with strange body language and a hatred of having to suck up to politicians that's palpable. It's so funny and endearing I have to keep poking my guard to make sure it stays up.

Sometimes my job is very difficult!

Do headless android chickens run in electric circles?

I am starting to forget things. I don't know if it is my age, or if I am too mithered with work and other things to focus properly. I am a bit worried about it, as what I do is very much dependent on remembering a gazillion little things and multi-tasking them all the time.

But work is getting out of control. Today, the bus was late and slow so I spent most of the time reading the Halifax Regional Economic Development plan while getting into work. I got a good chunk of it read and hoped to have it finished by eleven. Since getting into work though, I have been interrupted so many times I gave up. I have had to deal with: school sidewalks, or lack thereof, adult literacy, energy efficiency in public buildings, the alcohol and gaming authority, trade union recognition in the food sector, violence in the workplace, workers compensation and wind energy. I have had to take calls, visits from lobbyists, journalists, members of the public, politicians, civil servants and colleagues.

I am now eating my lunch and writing this on my lunchbreak which I never get, because I am too tired in the evening to blog.

After lunch, I will try to get back to HRM economic development. Then after that, I have reading/ policy work to do on: gambling and young people, the Nova Scotia oil and gas industry, energy demand side management strategies, comparative Canadian labour relations legislation, elementary education policy in rural areas, pensions, the economic implications of trade liberalisation with east Asia (I kid you not), chronic pain in women workers (I assume my tendonitis is included in that), after which time my inbox will be full and it will all start over again.

My work outputs range from verbal briefings to written briefings, to meeting positions, to letters, to legislation, to parliamentary questions, to press releases, to spreadsheets.

My outcomes... well as with most knowledge workers I don't have any. Cos they're kinda hard to measure. But I'm sure I'm doing a great job. The key thing is to always know the answer to the question that you're being asked or to know how to get the answer in ten seconds.

Is everyone's job like this nowadays? Or is it just my sector? I think I am getting too old for this. Would someone like to give me a job where I don't have to multi-task so much all the time?
Where I could sit around and think about stuff for just a minute or two?

My kind of bear

Recent news reports from Washington State are telling the story of a bear who ambled up to a campsite and got into someone's cooler in a national park, drank 36 cans of beer and climbed a tree (unsteadily, I'd imagine) to sleep it off. Park rangers managed to coax him down from the tree and capture him, for release away from the campsite, using two cans of beer.

The hair of the dog etc..

Cape Breton Fall Colours

Everything you've ever heard about Cape Breton in the Fall when the leaves turn is true.

Magenta claret plum lilac crimson fire engine red rose peach apricot sienna umber terracotta traffic light orange tangerine lemon gold blonde palest yellow leaves all bouncing and shaking in the autumn wind against the backdrop of evergreens - sage, emerald, moss, Sherwood green. Tufts of heather and blazing ferns at the base of every tree. Rivers winding slowly through boulder-strewn valleys, waiting for rain to fill up the channels.

Winding roads up and down the North Mountain and Smokey, hugging the side of the hills with nothing beyond the cliff edge but a vast cerulean sky and a dark blue ocean capped with off-white tufts of foam meeting at a horizon that stretches all the way east to home.

Doubting the need for doubt is a doubtful strategy

I always try to remember the words of the great man himself, Plato:

One of the penalties of refusing to be involved in politics is that you end up being governed by your inferiors.

Then sometimes I wonder whether he wasn't talking about me.

But it's not something I can ever have a conversation with my colleagues about, because doubt is a scarce commodity in political staffers.

Which is a bad thing, I think.

But maybe that's just me.

Tired. Of politics. And crazy men shooting women and children in schools because of the way they were raised. The men I mean.

Why do we raise our boys so badly?

The beginning of the end - edited version

So here it is.

Queenie is a bit stretched.

blah blah blah edited out rant that would get Queenie into a lot of trouble if anyone other than Ammonite saw it....

So would someone please give Queenie a reason why she should bankrupt herself and give herself an early nervous breakdown in order to keep trying to please a whole load of people who just fucking please themselves all the time without any regard for the financial, emotional and psychic strain of being all things to all people that being Queenie entails, just because she's an accomodating type of gal?

Oh that's right. There's no fucking reason is there. Just some obscure sense of responsibility somebody inculcated in her at an early age that makes sure she'll never just say fuck it and disappear into south america with the funds.

more ranting..

But of course there's a good reason. And Queenie is just being unreasonable when she can't see it on a wet Wednesday when she can't afford to eat supper even. And she's homesick. And sick of spending the supper money on calls to other people.

And what the hell is this 'Anonymous' 'how many peope read your blog?' bullshit?

Sign your effing name if you make a comment on my blog you mingy bastard.

All Queenie has to talk to tonight is Lady Moonbeam.

You can tell, can't you!

I'm going to bed now.
Yous can all fuck off.
Goodnight.

G'wan ya mad t'ing ya, Hugo!

Hugo the Boliverian Dragon Slayer has a liddel pop at Dubya the Devil today in the UN Assembly.


http://today.reuters.com/tv/videoChannel.aspx?storyid=410b4a1c3482483d2596efaf5e0b930fd1e4fb68

Understanding rural Nova Scotia

Apparently I never really will.

Ha, you puny mortals! I have studied under the great Kavanagh. I understand everything!


Epic
by Patrick Kavanagh

I have lived in important places, times
When great events were decided, who owned
That half a rood of rock, a no-man's land
Surrounded by our pitchfork-armed claims.
I heard the Duffys shouting "Damn your soul!"
And old McCabe stripped to the waist, seen
Step the plot defying blue cast-steel -
"Here is the march along these iron stones."
That was the year of the Munich bother. Which
Was more important? I inclined
To lose my faith in Ballyrush and Gortin
Till Homer's ghost came whispering to my mind.
He said: I made the Iliad from such
A local row. Gods make their own importance.

Love is blind

This is on the newswire this afternoon:

Forty-three-year old Mark Brian Harshbarger of Pennsylvania has been identified as the man who was accidentally shot during a hunting trip in central Newfoundland.

R-C-M-P initially reported his wife apparently mistook him for a bear.

The incident happened last Thursday night near Buchan's Junction. The hunting party also included two children and a guide. (VOCM)

Harvest full moon on Long Island

More about the Beta move

As I said before, I've moved over to Beta. It involves a lot of administrative work, which is always a mixed blessing. On the one hand, it means you don't have to be creative if you don't want to. On the other hand, it is grindingly boring when it involves a lot of click and point and click again on the laptop.

Also, my aching wrist/ elbow/ shoulder joints which are getting really bad again are not able for more than an hour of tagging old posts. And then typing for another thirty minutes is out of the question.

But I have 150 posts done.

I'd have more done, but I keep stopping to read old posts.

I was quite witty and interesting for a while back last winter wasn't I?

I wonder what happened to me?

le's have a liddel look at what we is blogging about...

Politics (47)
Work (30)

AHAAAAAAAAAA!!!!!!!!!!!!! Methinks.

All the same, 24 themes is pretty good. Well rounded.

Scatty probably. Not able to settle on anything as usual.

I'm reading a very strange book at the moment.

Little Chapel on the River, by Gwendolyn Bounds.

It's strange for a number of reasons.

It's about a woman who had a very high flying career as a journalist with the Wall St. Journal. Admittedly she was the fashion correspondent, but fashion is big business and she had the designer clothes/ girlfriend/ apartment on Wall St./ hectic glamorous lifestyle us over-achieving thirty somethings aspire to.

Then 9/11 happened and she took stock.

She was out house-hunting north of New York, her apartment having been very badly damaged by the explosions, and happened upon a little town called Garrison Landing, in which there is a pub run by a man called Jim Guinan, who used to live beside the golf course in Springtown, which is of course my hometown.

And he reminds me of someone in the photos of him that scatter the book.

And the pub sounds just like my favourite pub ever, Smoothies (moment with head bowed in memory of Smoothies and all its memories), just a little bar below the house, with flexible opening hours and a laconic owner.

So she fell in love with the pub and the family that ran it, and the people who drank in it, and the town in which it was situated, and all of that, and moved to Garrison Landing and took a leave of absence from her job to work in the pub.

Which is of course what I did a year and a half ago, except the job in the pub never quite materialised. And I had nothing that I had fallen in love with apart from an idea of a place which turned out to be wrong, but in a good way.

And the book is structured very like my blog. A bit of narrative about my life. Some pen pictures of other people. Snippets of introspection and memories. Descriptions of the surrounding countryside.

No politics but. Just the occasional mention of Donatella. Or Tommy. Or other random rich people.

And a severe case of the attachments to a manky old camp that she spent summers in at an impressionable age. the fact that she was nine and I am thirty six is irrelevant.

So the parallels exist but are a bit bendy, not truly straight as parallels should be.

The existence of which mean that I have many emotions concerning this book and the woman who wrote it.

Firstly, the emotion I always have when I read a book.

Someone sat down and wrote this. So why don't I? Because I'm a lazy cow, that's why.

This one is getting annoying and is what stopped me reading before so I have to just get through it and get over myself as someone would say.

Secondly, a kind of patronising pity - if she were Irish, she would have been able to blend the glamorous life with having a nice little local. I mean, look at Bertie! Or Bono!

Thirdly, a kind of vicious hatred masquerading as pity. Effing Yank! She was ar muin na muice (I'm taking the piss here now because she keeps quoting 'charming Gaelic phrases' that Jim Guinan taught her), on the pig's back with her nice life and then it all went awfully wrong when her apartment was in the line of disaster from the Twin Towers destruction. And I'm halfway through and she still hasn't mentioned the fact that they brought it on themselves.

Fourthly, huge shame: why am being so uncharitable about what appears to be a thoughtful intelligent woman who has used the tragedy of 9/11 to figure out what is important in life?

WHICH ACTIVITY I TRY TO ENGAGE IN CONSTANTLY AND CONSEQUENTLY SHOULD ADMIRE IN OTHERS.

If I was to be brutally honest, I suppose the vicious hatred masquerading as pity is just jealousy.

Fifthly, a kind of smugness: I have done the same as her (changed my life to figure out what the important stuff is) and I haven't felt the need to write a book about it. And get an agent and get it published and write a gushy acknowledgement to just about everyone on the planet.

Sixthly - well you can imagine - a blog is just a book without a plot or an editor now isn't it, yes sirree bob, so get off your high horse MADAM.

More shame, in other words.

Maybe if I apologise to the woman I will be able to get over myself and finish the book and get over myself.

Sorry, Gwendolyn. I am enjoying the book despite my horrid little black soul.

Books I've read since March... that I can remember

More reviews - this time of books

The Colony of Unrequited Love
and
The Navigator of New York
By Wayne Johnston

An election co-worker got me onto Wayne Johnston. A great writer from Newfoundland. Colony is the story of Joey Smallwood, the Liberal Premier who brought Newfieland into Confederation after the Second World War.

Great book.

Joey Smallwood was a relentless little bastard who tried to make his name by organising the rail workers and fishermen of Nova Scotia. By walking or sailing around Newfoundland in the snow. He didn’t do so well on the left but the Liberals spotted his potential and made him their whipping boy and eventually he got the Premiership.

Mostly the book is the tragedy that was his personal life – his alcoholic father, his unrequited love for the journalist Fielding, who delighted in tormenting him and whose hilarious History of Newfoundland a satirical look at the history of The Rock interspaces the fictionalised biography.

The Navigator is more fiction, but has biographical elements to it. Set in Newfoundland and New York, it is the story of a boy, abandoned by his father who ran off to be a polar explorer, who grew up and went to New York to be a polar explorer. And got in with Peary. Who sounds like a right little bollocks.

Not as good as Colony, but probably just as if you are into polar exploration.

The Delicate Storm
and
Forty Words of Sorrow
By Giles Blunt

My eternal hunt for the new James Lee Burke led me to this crime writer who writes out of Algonquin Bay, northern Ontario, a place I have always wanted to visit, due to its isolation and natural beauty. But it sounds terribly grim in the winter-time. Which is most of the time.

Detective John Cardinal is the same type of tortured soul that Robicheaux et al are, this time it’s money he stole from a crime boss to pay for his daughter’s expensive American education, and a wife with a bad dose of the blues. The crimes are pretty good though, the side-kick is a well-drawn female character and I can see myself following this series for a while.

Other detective novels

Pegasus Descending
By James Lee Burke
And
Hard Revolution
By George Pelecanos

Two of my favourite American crime writers. Pelecanos writes about DC, still mourning the loss of one Eoghan Barry. James Lee Burke writes about Louisiana and the bayou, still mourning the loss of most of New Orleans.

New Orleans gets mentioned. Surprisingly, Eoghan Barry does not. But then again, Hard Revolution is set around the assassination of Martin Luther King, a bit before his time.

So maybe that’s why.

Skin Divers
By Anne Michaels

I was blown away by her novel Fugitive Pieces a few months back, so I bought a book of her poetry just to see.

We roll over the edge into the deep field
Rise from under the rain,
From our shapes in the wet grass
Night swimmers, skin divers.

Very nice it is too to be reading poetry again. This is a book of love poetry and in the third section, usually the most innovative in your average book of poetry, Michaels takes on the personae of Marie Curie and Kathleen Scott and imagines their emotional state after the deaths of their spouses.

Did you know that when Scott was dying, he crossed out the word wife, which was on the inscription - ‘give this to my wife’ printed on the front of his diary and wrote ‘widow’ instead?

Bad Land
By Jonathan Raban

A history of the badlands, by the second best travel writer in the world – the best being Colin Thubron. Haven’t finished it yet, but it’s great so far – organised thematically as well as chronologically – Fences, Pictures, Heavy Weather, Clinging to the Wreckage – stuff like that. He captures the mournful emptiness brilliantly and following on Keepers of Truth, gave me some idea of what it would be like to live in Manitoba, which is why I didn’t want to move there.

Keepers of Truth
By Michael Collins

This guy is Irish apparently. I’ve never heard of him. Keepers was shortlisted for the 2000 Booker Prize, but I’ve never heard of it. I must have been out the day they announced it that year.

Again, annoyingly, this was in the Literature section of Doulls and not in the Irish literature section. I was about to move it as I always do (some day I will get caught doing this and barred from the shop forever) but I decided to buy it instead.

Wasn't I the lucky girl!

I really enjoyed this book. It’s a rant about the destruction of Middle America and I’d love to hear his take on things now that Bush and the Neo-Cons have swept the boards in that part of the world.

Bill, the narrator is the sub-editor on a small town newspaper in a once-prosperous manufacturing town. He gets caught up in a murder he’s reporting on with disastrous results. The characters and their over-intense interaction are well drawn and he has a great eye for the American media and the nuances of a small town and their intersection in the modern world.

Saving the World
By Julia Alvarez

My birthday book.

A story within a story. Author Alma Huebner is caught in writer’s block and ambivalent about her husband’s trip to the Dominican Republic to run an environmental project. She loses herself in the story of Isabel Sendales y Gomez, the head of a Spanish orphanage who, by chance, ends up accompanying the first expedition to bring the smallpox vaccine to the New World. Lots of story in a story parallels about the joys of being in love with an obsessive man and a ripping good story – two stories in fact – that intertwine very well. This woman is an Allendes who knows how to structure a story without making her protagonist fly when necessary.

Ta very much Mrs. Monkey.

Albums I've bought since March

Time for some reviews I think.

Sleator-Kinney: The Woods
The brilliance of this album was driven home to me when it was nicked from the car by one of the teenage boy wonders only four days after I bought it. Usually it takes a couple of weeks for the sound to percolate through his curly mop, grown to hide his seventeen year old face from the rest of the world.

Thankfully I had uploaded it. I need say no more, it has all been said by people more qualified than me to talk about grinding guitars and screaming bass lines.

Precisely, it should have been the other way round.

Corinne Bailey-Rae: Corinne Bailey-Rae
Just Like a Star is a great love song. I like this album like I like my pink suede stiletto boots, because I bought it on the basis of a review and often that’s a bit hit and miss (unless it’s Franks of course). And just like my pink suede stiletto boots, it turned out to be totally me once I got it home.

I believe it’s being uber-hyped across the pond. Over here, it made a little splash, but nothing much, too soft for the R ‘n’ B sistas in Halifax, too girlie for the boys, too English for the Yankified. Just right for this girl.

Bruce Springsteen: The Seeger Sessions
Well, you knew I was going to buy this one didn’t you. Mweh… I do like the idea of it very much, and it is great for round a campfire when you’re getting the beers into you and the fire going, but it gets on my nerves after a while. Plus I can’t upload it as the cd/dvd thingummy setup it’s on won’t fit in my cd-rom.

Mundy: Live and Confusion
Somebody sent me this for my birthday. Again it’s a cd/dvd combo disc so I can’t upload it which means I don’t play it very often, as I don’t have a car anymore.

Keane: Under the Iron Sky
U2. Joshua Tree. Updated only slightly.

I feel old now.

It’s very whingey. And I believe Chaplin’s gone for a little rest in the Priory, so maybe the rest of them are getting a break now. But there are lyrics like:

Sometimes I get to feeling that I’m stranded in the wrong town…Is it any wonder that I’m tired/ Is it any wonder that I’m uptight

Bless him. He should try being sent to Glace Bay Nova Scotia for an election campaign.

When are the people who invent formats on computers going to invent something additional to Bold, Italics and underline.

The album’ll do for a Thursday night listen with a glass of wine and an absorbing task though.

Sam the Record Man: Halifax Indie Sampler 2006
Terry, my main man in Sam’s (who sells me my medicine, as he says) made me buy this the other day. It was only six bucks though. I’m just popping it on now, so I’ll go onto books and come back to this when I’ve had a listen.

I’ve had a listen. That was a bit of a letdown. Not as good as Ian’s magic Ireland mix. Honestly, I didn't like one song on it and the production values were crap.

NOT WORTH SIX BUCKS EVEN.

Condi was here today

I suppose I'd better do the 9/11 thing. No disrespect to anyone who was affected badly by it, but better people than I can mark the occasion.

Condoleeza Rice marked the occasion by coming to Halifax, Nova Scotia to thank us all for putting up all the stranded air travellers when their planes were diverted from US airspace after the Twin Towers attack.

I'm suprised she kept a straight face while she was doing it.

Several times over the last few days, I have button-holed a Canadian and said the following:

So the Yanks diverted all the flights north to Canada after the Twin Tower attacks, eh?

Yes, they would say, all proud that they did their bit to save the free world from Terrorism again.

I would crack up laughing then, pointing and saying succccckkkkkkkkkkkerrrsss!

Time would pass.

The small sound of a Canadian penny dropping would be heard somewhere in their head.

Facial muscles would contort slowly as the mood changed from calm pride to wounded pride.

Eventually.... Those cocksuckers!!!!

Everytime... I swear it happened everytime I did it.

Granted, I mostly did it to people who don't really care about politics, but this is 9/11 we are talking about.

Seriously, there are 33 million LOVELY people up here in Canuckstan, who would mostly do anything for their neighbours, be they Yanks or whoever, who are being buttfucked by the Americans, with the assistance of their own government of course, and only 57 of them turned up to tell that 'disgrace to her gender' neo-cow to go home today.

And I wasn't one of them.

I must be growing up finally.

Anyways, the day that will never be the same again has come and gone again.

Jersey Girl in the Ovens with Travel Chests - Part II

So I had left off at the glimmering.

Anyways, the trunks turned out to be dead handy, in several ways:

- we sat on them around the campfire;

- we used them to block the not inconsiderable wind blowing up the east coast of America towards us that night as we camped;

- we piled all the camping stuff in them and strapped them to the roof of the car, and that is the only way we got all of the gear back up to Halifax;

- we packed everything in them to move to the new apartment;

- they provide useful end table, chest of drawers and table functions which means Queenie and Himself don't have to spend any more money on furniture than they absolutely have to (both of them having more than one set of furniture already, more seems like a stupid idea - it's one thing to have ninety pairs of shoes scattered across the western world, it's completely different to have ninety end tables.

Anyways, our night camping was great fun, if a little windy. We went down to the Chapin's family campsite family restaurant and bar, where we happened upon the Chapin Family Annual Get Together, which was why the campground was packed, this being an annual highlight of the Nova Scotia folk music calendar.

Queenie is very glad she didn't grow up loving the Nova Scotia folk music scene as she would have been a very sad (anorak sad) girl.

There was a grown man who had driven all the way from New Jersey to volunteer as a photographer at the event. He never missed one, he told me.

After just one or two songs we skedaddled out of the restaurant and left the table for REAL fans, bought some firewood (Himself was not too impressed with the need to pay for wood seeing as we were surrounded by the stuff) and lit a fire to see our beers by.

And talked about politics and the environment.

You know you have the right boyfriend when he and your friend's boyfriend can sit around agreeing that come the Apocalypse the world would be a better place due to the absence of nasty machinary and combustion engines (BH) and modernity in general (Himself).

Except for no more Anthropologie, I thought to myself but didn't verbalise it because it wasn't in the spirit of the evening and also because I was fairly sure Jersey Girl would be thinking the same thought, so I didn't need to.

After a few beers of that kind of talk it of course morphed into 'how can we speed up the apocalypse'. I think Himself was all for heading to the Albertan oil pipeline with a chainsaw and a vice grip, but I can't really remember for sure.

We managed to stop him from heading off right that night, so he went and got some more wood instead. Thankfully, he didn't burn any of the signs saying 'do not gather wood, not even dead wood - you will be fined and thrown out of Chapin's Happy Camping Place'. That would have been too cheeky. Instead he just cleared up a bit of brush and other bits and pieces, in an environmentally responsible way that was unfortunately highly unprofitable for the Chapins.

But there are some Canadians who think that the trees are for everyone.

Later that night after the moon came out and the stars were glowing really brightly, as if they were down in our atmosphere checking on the progress of the apocalypse, we went to bed. A couple of hours later I woke to find my face buried in the side of the tent, through which a storm force wind was blowing the canvass against my mouth.

bzrbzrbzrbzzrbzrbzrbzr.........bwbwwbwbwbwww.....

I can't really describe the sound properly.

I tried to move, but I was pinned. Himself was cold, so he had burrowed up against my back and wasn't for moving. Eventually I managed to wake him up, shivering in his sleep as he was.

He had brought the wrong sleeping bag.

He had to get up and put all his clothes on and then go back to sleep.

But it was dawn at that stage, so not a great night's sleep really. Some nights camping are like that.

This blog's gone Beta

So I was talking to one of my uber-techie friends tonight by the miracle of Google Chat, and I said the blog was going Beta and he asked what that meant.

As if Queenie would effing know!!

What it boils down to is lots and lots of new gadgets to play with on the blog and the introduction of tags, which I have wanted for ever and ever, but could not figure out the HTML for, despite several patient coaching sessions from friends who have more time than sense. (in terms of dealing with my facility with HTML).

But now I get to label my posts.

Those of you who know me know that I LOVE to label things.

I should have been a Victorian botanist.

So that's a job for all the boring afternoons in the office when I should be reading some mind-numbingly boring energy sector report on effing wind turbines or solar panels or demand side management or some other yaaawwwwwn (I mean why don't they just do what the Germans did and build the effing things and clean up the air) subject. Instead of just sitting there reading the yawnathing, I can sit there and half read it and glance longingly over at the computer.

And dream of tags.

Summer's over.

Blog's gone Beta.

Back in a mo'.