I thought that I was like everyone on the planet in my close following of the soon to be called Second Great Depression. It turns out I was wrong. There are people on the planet who aren't thinking about this crisis. More about them later.
As an Irish person living in Canada I am having a mild schizoid response to the soon to be called SGD, as the Irish person in me wants to sit in a corner Peig-like, rocking myself into a hysterical fit with my smelly shawl over my face.
The east coast Canadian resident in me, who doesn't work in an industry related to cars and petroleum could give a shit about the whole thing.
The reader in me is interested in the narrative of the STBCSGD.
Which of my faces to wear? Which, which??
So far, I've been veering towards 'it'll be alright, Nova Scotia can't really tank much further, pass the potato chips and put on the next episode of The Wire'.
Then a couple of things happened this evening and my potential panic got viralled (is that a verb? It should be.)
A friends noted what appeared to be concern at the crisis on Facebook. As this friend is one of the few of us who is understood to understand money stuff he got some 'what have you read? what? what?' comments.
To which he responded, the Dow.
Classy!
Another friend, whose opinion I also respect, wrote that he had tried to blog about the Irish demiracle-isation and found it too depressing. As this friend is one of my 'black humour and pithy analysis of the underlying themes' reference points on world affairs, I had to restrain myself from the 'no! no! no!' comments. I don't want to further depress him.
Then I had to get back to normal, and have supper with my beloved and then upload his cool photos of a snowy owl for his friends to see on Facebook.
How much of our world we live online now?
During which time we discussed the soon to be called Second Great Depression over the pork chops and baked potatoes and subsequent PhotoFiltre action and photo-posting.
I explained the premise of the article I had found when I typed Credit Default Swaps for Dummies into Google. After I had decided maybe I should give a shit after all.
Firstly Himself laughed uproariously at the punchline. Which appeared to be, you didn't have to own the asset to buy insurance on it.
Then he spent a bit of time figuring out how we'd work such a scheme in our favour if in fact, we had our own version of a CDS.
If we could buy insurance on say, our friend's Kevin's house, even though we don't own it, and get a big pay out if the house burned down.
Then he spent some more time figuring out how many other people we know would have been filled in enough on the situation to have bought insurance. Say, if people started to notice that Kevin had a stupid habit of dumping his still-warm wood stove ashes in the green bin and figured he'd been leaving it a little close to the side of the house. And then looked up the forecast and fixed on a particular night when it wasn't going to snow or rain. And then bought the insurance.
Then he got mad.
Who in the hell sold this insurance to other people?
All of which, on top of everything else, got me a little upset.
But thankfully, I keep our green bin out in the middle of the yard away from everything.
Himself said 'it's like the fishery.'
When you live with a fisherman, even a former fisherman, everything in the world is like the fishery.
Major things like the bible are of course, all about the fishery.
And of course, global finance is like the fishery.
You grow up in the fishery and there's loads of fish, but you can't afford a boat so you go out on someone else's boat and fish, but you can't get much fish. You spend your time thinking about all the fish you could catch if you just had a licence. And a boat. And some nets. And sonar/ radar/ GPS.
Then one day, after a lot of lobbying, the government sets up a fisherman's bank and you get a cheap loan to buy a boat and all the accoutrements and you go out fishing a lot. And you make a lot of money and have a much better life than your parents.
But that's not enough, because you can catch more fish, and there's a market for it and so you buy a dragger.
And so there was a whole generation that left school early and grew up making eighty, ninety, hundred thousand a year just catching boatloads of fish. And a whole generation of financial services executives left college early to get bonuses giving these guys cheap money to buy toys, because they could afford to pay for it out of next year's catch.
And then one day, Queenie, we went out to catch next year's boat payments and car payments and ATV payments and whatever else payments, and there was nothing out on the ocean for us but a bare hook.
That's all it is now, Queenie, it's nothing but a bare hook.
Yes dear, I know it's like the fishery and that means it's really terrible and sad.
- I may seem slightly cynical, but I have heard this story one hundred thousand and four times.
It's just this time, dear, I think maybe the whole world's run out of fish at the same time.
It got me thinking though.
What makes former fishermen really squirm and rage and howl about the death of the fishery is the deadweight of the guilt of their own culpability. The fact that they knew they were destroying the fishery by dragging, but they did it anyway to make their boat payments.
Despite the efforts of legions of university researchers, despite the warnings of generations of environmentalists, nobody who had the power to break the cycle even tried to figure out how to stop it.
They try to make themselves feel better about it of course.
Nobody did anything because it was all about the fish processors needing big catches to pay for their processing plants and value chain modifications.
Goddamn big business.
Maybe.
But nobody made them go out fishing.
Or did they?
It was also all about jobs in rural communities. Crappy, back-breaking, seven bucks an hour processing jobs in rural communities that had nothing else and never would, unless they found oil offshore.
Goddamn small rural communities thinking they have a right to survive and rear another generation of kids on minimum wage jobs!!
Doesn't have quite the same righteous ring to it as goddamn big business, does it? In fact, who'd be against that?
Who'd be against a whole generation being able to stay home if they wanted to?
The deep depression caused by this deep depression is related to the fact that we all knew we were heading towards the bare hook a long time ago and nobody did anything to stop it.
There's no amount of trade union marches going to get rid of that nagging sense of guilt.
Standing on the deck after supper, listening to the sea pound behind us and the coyotes howl in the woods beyond the house, Himself said 'there isn't one person I work with ever talks about any of this. It just never comes up.'
Interesting.
Why do these guys not worry about the future?
Where we live, the bare hook swung by a while ago.
And not just through the fishery.
People adjusted.
They take a short view on things here now.
There are disadvantages to that.
And some advantages.
The guilt lingers though.
Maybe it's our lot to be the ones who feel that guilt.
Tuesday, February 17, 2009
Sunday, February 08, 2009
Mid-February mid-Atlantic weather advisory
Sometimes I love to post blog entries with titles that will mess up or just get in the way of serious Google searches undertaken by serious people looking for serious information.
And so with this one.
Please be advised this posting will mostly be about vitamins. Not maritime conditions.
So eventually the weather systems aligned. What I mean is, the weather systems that are pounding Atlantic Canada eased off slightly and the weather systems pounding Ireland and the UK ramped up slightly and so there was almost a condition alignment. It brought about some interesting consequences.
The Queen Parents started to get quite panicky about the idea of me driving to Cape Breton by myself, until I pointed out that the snow is scraped/ pushed/ ploughed off the roads here, so it is safer than at home.
Certain random people sent me emails that said 'yeah, okay I understand now'.
I got to see photos of people I know to be grown ups making snowmen when they should have been at work.
I would just like to point out that people don't make snowmen in Canada as a rule. They're too busy getting on with the day. Tobogganing now or skiing is considered acceptable snow fun.
In fact, there's such an absence of snowmen in politically correct Canada, I am beginning to think snowmen is one of those Enid Blyton things along with all those bad, unmentionable things she seems to have encouraged many generations, including mine, to do in her seemingly innocent children's writing.
Maybe we'll all wake up one morning sometime soon and realise that to build a snowman is a really bad thing.
Anyways, back to the weather.
Now that you have the same weather as us, here's some advice.
Take plenty of Vitamin D. At least 1,000mgs a day. This week in Canada, it was announced that they're pretty sure that there's a positive link between Vitamin D deficiency and multiple sclerosis. So take it for that reason too.
Go on. Vitamin D is really cheap. It's sunshine in a bottle.
If the wind is cutting your face, and you live near the sea where there's lots of salt, or near the airport, where there's lots of salt right now, you're going to have dry skin by the end of March. Then one day in April the sun will shine very brightly and you will look in a mirror and go 'ohmygod deh wrinkels!!'
Don't panic!!! Go get some Vitamin E capsules, and take them if you feel like it. But about once a week, cut a capsule open and gently pat the goo onto the skin around your eyes. Let it dry in. Don't do this unless you have an hour to spare to just sit around and do this, as the goo is very very sticky. Do not under any circumstances go for a walk on the beach.
INSTANT WRINKLE REMOVER, EH! EH! EH! FOR LIKE NO MONEY AT ALL!!
See, the Queenie knows how to look after you all.
Those tissues with the goo in them to make your nose feel nice when you have a cold are really great for getting snow/ salt/ sand/ all the winter crap off your shoes/ boots.
WEAR A HAT!!!!
Look after your hair.
It is very important to use the right shampoo and conditioner in the winter because the snow/ ice ruins your hair and the continuous hat wearing gives you a bad case of hat head.
I have tried them all. Organic, non-organic, every supermarket brand, every stylist brand, Aveda, all of them.
The absolute best shampoo - conditioner combo for the winter hair that comes with wind, rain and snow is Head and Shoulders shampoo followed by Pantene conditioner for coloured hair.
So there you go.
Just think... for you guys, this is an exciting period that will end soon with snowdrops and tulips and daffodils. For us, this is what it's going to be like until April.
April is when the snow melts into the rivers, the birds come back, the fishing season begins, the hardy among us get out the camping gear.
And the black fly wake up.
And so with this one.
Please be advised this posting will mostly be about vitamins. Not maritime conditions.
So eventually the weather systems aligned. What I mean is, the weather systems that are pounding Atlantic Canada eased off slightly and the weather systems pounding Ireland and the UK ramped up slightly and so there was almost a condition alignment. It brought about some interesting consequences.
The Queen Parents started to get quite panicky about the idea of me driving to Cape Breton by myself, until I pointed out that the snow is scraped/ pushed/ ploughed off the roads here, so it is safer than at home.
Certain random people sent me emails that said 'yeah, okay I understand now'.
I got to see photos of people I know to be grown ups making snowmen when they should have been at work.
I would just like to point out that people don't make snowmen in Canada as a rule. They're too busy getting on with the day. Tobogganing now or skiing is considered acceptable snow fun.
In fact, there's such an absence of snowmen in politically correct Canada, I am beginning to think snowmen is one of those Enid Blyton things along with all those bad, unmentionable things she seems to have encouraged many generations, including mine, to do in her seemingly innocent children's writing.
Maybe we'll all wake up one morning sometime soon and realise that to build a snowman is a really bad thing.
Anyways, back to the weather.
Now that you have the same weather as us, here's some advice.
Take plenty of Vitamin D. At least 1,000mgs a day. This week in Canada, it was announced that they're pretty sure that there's a positive link between Vitamin D deficiency and multiple sclerosis. So take it for that reason too.
Go on. Vitamin D is really cheap. It's sunshine in a bottle.
If the wind is cutting your face, and you live near the sea where there's lots of salt, or near the airport, where there's lots of salt right now, you're going to have dry skin by the end of March. Then one day in April the sun will shine very brightly and you will look in a mirror and go 'ohmygod deh wrinkels!!'
Don't panic!!! Go get some Vitamin E capsules, and take them if you feel like it. But about once a week, cut a capsule open and gently pat the goo onto the skin around your eyes. Let it dry in. Don't do this unless you have an hour to spare to just sit around and do this, as the goo is very very sticky. Do not under any circumstances go for a walk on the beach.
INSTANT WRINKLE REMOVER, EH! EH! EH! FOR LIKE NO MONEY AT ALL!!
See, the Queenie knows how to look after you all.
Those tissues with the goo in them to make your nose feel nice when you have a cold are really great for getting snow/ salt/ sand/ all the winter crap off your shoes/ boots.
WEAR A HAT!!!!
Look after your hair.
It is very important to use the right shampoo and conditioner in the winter because the snow/ ice ruins your hair and the continuous hat wearing gives you a bad case of hat head.
I have tried them all. Organic, non-organic, every supermarket brand, every stylist brand, Aveda, all of them.
The absolute best shampoo - conditioner combo for the winter hair that comes with wind, rain and snow is Head and Shoulders shampoo followed by Pantene conditioner for coloured hair.
So there you go.
Just think... for you guys, this is an exciting period that will end soon with snowdrops and tulips and daffodils. For us, this is what it's going to be like until April.
April is when the snow melts into the rivers, the birds come back, the fishing season begins, the hardy among us get out the camping gear.
And the black fly wake up.
Thursday, February 05, 2009
MonoMeme to while away some time
I got this from Jersey Girl. You have to provide a one word response to each prompt. It is more difficult than it looks:
1. Where is your cell phone? bag
2. Your significant other? home
3. Your hair? limp
4. Your favorite thing? campfires
5. Your dream last night? unmemorable
6. Your favorite drink? juice
7. Your dream/goal? independence
8. What room you are in? 117
9. Your hobby? snapshotting
10. Your fear? poverty
11. Where do you want to be in 6 years? home
12. Where were you last night? sofa
13. Muffins? usually
14. Wish list item? iPod
15. Where you grew up? Birr
16. Last thing you did? Peed
17. What are you wearing? sweats
18. Your TV? convex
19. Your pets? murdered
20. Friends? scattered
21. Your life? stabilised
22. Your mood? grumpy
23. Missing someone? usually
24. Car? Icy
25. Something you're not wearing? shoes
26. Your favorite store? Biscuit
27. Your favorite color? Biscuit
28. When is the last time you laughed? yesterday
29. Last time you cried? Tuesday
30. Who will resend this? irrelevant
31. One place that I go to over and over? beach
32. One person who emails me regularly? mum
33. Favorite place to eat? Chives
34. Why you participated in this survey? whiling
35. What are you doing tonight? whiling
1. Where is your cell phone? bag
2. Your significant other? home
3. Your hair? limp
4. Your favorite thing? campfires
5. Your dream last night? unmemorable
6. Your favorite drink? juice
7. Your dream/goal? independence
8. What room you are in? 117
9. Your hobby? snapshotting
10. Your fear? poverty
11. Where do you want to be in 6 years? home
12. Where were you last night? sofa
13. Muffins? usually
14. Wish list item? iPod
15. Where you grew up? Birr
16. Last thing you did? Peed
17. What are you wearing? sweats
18. Your TV? convex
19. Your pets? murdered
20. Friends? scattered
21. Your life? stabilised
22. Your mood? grumpy
23. Missing someone? usually
24. Car? Icy
25. Something you're not wearing? shoes
26. Your favorite store? Biscuit
27. Your favorite color? Biscuit
28. When is the last time you laughed? yesterday
29. Last time you cried? Tuesday
30. Who will resend this? irrelevant
31. One place that I go to over and over? beach
32. One person who emails me regularly? mum
33. Favorite place to eat? Chives
34. Why you participated in this survey? whiling
35. What are you doing tonight? whiling
The View from the EconoLodge
So I'm in the EconoLodge in Port Hawkesbury, whiling away a February evening.
A February evening in Inverness County, Cape Breton is a pretty bleak affair to while.
Snow everywhere. Not much else. If things are not shut down due to arrival of the global meltdown, they're closed until the spring melt arrives.
The car is parked at a jaunty angle outside my motel room door, because I got the room at the corner where the snow drifts.
The room is cold, no matter how much I crank the heat.
The bathroom is not conducive to bathing.
I'm not seeing any extra blankets.
The whole thing is a little Bates Motel for me.
I drove up through the mainland of the province in the damp cold afternoon grey of a Nova Scotia day after the day after a twenty hour snow and ice storm. The roads were finally clear, but the landscape is starkly white on black. The only depth in the view is the chiaroscuro of the sky.
Up over Mount Thom, that depth flattens to a couple of feet in front of the car.
I do my usual thing and don't want to stop for fuel because it's too cold. Then I drive twenty kilometres on fumes searching for an exit with a gas station.
I stop at the Dragonfly in Antigonish for a latte and some chocolate cake. The break was warming inside and out, but it meant I drove the last fifty kms in the dark, spitting snow, facing the glare of the oncoming lights.
Driving up to Cape Breton on a snowy Thursday in February puts me in the kind of grumpy mood it takes me days to get out of.
Hopefully, the sunshine forecast for tommorrow will make the drive home bearable and I will be home by seven at the latest.
I still don't know what to blog about... February numbs my brain.
Maybe tomorrow.
A February evening in Inverness County, Cape Breton is a pretty bleak affair to while.
Snow everywhere. Not much else. If things are not shut down due to arrival of the global meltdown, they're closed until the spring melt arrives.
The car is parked at a jaunty angle outside my motel room door, because I got the room at the corner where the snow drifts.
The room is cold, no matter how much I crank the heat.
The bathroom is not conducive to bathing.
I'm not seeing any extra blankets.
The whole thing is a little Bates Motel for me.
I drove up through the mainland of the province in the damp cold afternoon grey of a Nova Scotia day after the day after a twenty hour snow and ice storm. The roads were finally clear, but the landscape is starkly white on black. The only depth in the view is the chiaroscuro of the sky.
Up over Mount Thom, that depth flattens to a couple of feet in front of the car.
I do my usual thing and don't want to stop for fuel because it's too cold. Then I drive twenty kilometres on fumes searching for an exit with a gas station.
I stop at the Dragonfly in Antigonish for a latte and some chocolate cake. The break was warming inside and out, but it meant I drove the last fifty kms in the dark, spitting snow, facing the glare of the oncoming lights.
Driving up to Cape Breton on a snowy Thursday in February puts me in the kind of grumpy mood it takes me days to get out of.
Hopefully, the sunshine forecast for tommorrow will make the drive home bearable and I will be home by seven at the latest.
I still don't know what to blog about... February numbs my brain.
Maybe tomorrow.
Tuesday, February 03, 2009
Friday, January 30, 2009
Settling down to it
After a couple of weeks, we are starting to feel settled into our new home, and maybe even I will be able to sit still long enough to blog - I have a list of forty books to review if nothing else - but right now, after foostering around with the title for an hour this morning, I really should go outside and refill the bird feeder and chip some more ice from the driveway and get some fresh air.
So far... chickadees, jays, sparrows, pheasants, rabbits, and a big old ginger tom cat that visits us from next door every day. We saw four deer foraging in a group when we walked the trail behind our house last weekend.
No sign of any human neighbours yet...
Maybe when the ice recedes...
So far... chickadees, jays, sparrows, pheasants, rabbits, and a big old ginger tom cat that visits us from next door every day. We saw four deer foraging in a group when we walked the trail behind our house last weekend.
No sign of any human neighbours yet...
Maybe when the ice recedes...
Sunday, January 18, 2009
It's about not being eaten...
This is an excerpt from an interview in the Observer with Bruce Springsteen:
"So the idea is: how do you manage that thing that's eating at you, without letting it eat you? 'Cause that's what it wants to do. The thing that's eating at you, wants to eat you. And so your life is... how do you keep that from happening? That's a pretty interesting story too, and that's what a lot of my records are about, maybe all of them. So now, you know - my records and the music and everything are me attempting to keep from being eaten."
'Xactly...
I think
"So the idea is: how do you manage that thing that's eating at you, without letting it eat you? 'Cause that's what it wants to do. The thing that's eating at you, wants to eat you. And so your life is... how do you keep that from happening? That's a pretty interesting story too, and that's what a lot of my records are about, maybe all of them. So now, you know - my records and the music and everything are me attempting to keep from being eaten."
'Xactly...
I think
Sunday, January 11, 2009
Giving up Chocolate
Our neighbour called up last night with a box of Okanangan Valley apple cider. Which normally would be what I would call 'a class thing to happen'...
What happened was typical Eastern Canada January behaviour.
It was late on a Saturday night in January.
Himself and I were half asleep on the couch. We were trying to remember why we are friends after a trying couple of days arguing over stupide things.
Also we were just about managing to yawn our way to the end of Episode 3 of Series 4 of The Wire.
So we ignored the first knock on the door.
Well, I said, 'that's our door' and Himself said 'no it's not' even though he KNEW it was.
After the second knocked we fessed up to ourselves and shouted 'come in' and then of course it was fine once it was our neighbour and not the landlord or an ax murderer or anyone like that.
But it was late which meant we didn't partake of any of the nice cider because we were too 'tired'.
(Before I continue, can I just say.... after the end of Series 3, which was STONKING, and I have to disagree with JB, I thought Series 3 ending was better than Series 2 ending, although Series 2 overall was GREAT... I'm finding it difficult to re-engage with The Wire, which I assume is the point of the early part of Series 4... also the political candidate it is portraying is too close to the reality of a political candidate to be funny and is indeed scary, and when is George Pelecanos going to write another episode?)
Anyways, we woke up and sat up and switched off the dvd (and now Himself is out ploughing snow all night and I can't watch the end of the episode because the deal is we watch it together.... grrroooaaaannnn) and made nice like grown ups because really, this is our last normal weekend at Chocolate Lake.
Next weekend we'll be moving and the weekend after we'll be sitting in our house in the country being all Johnny No-mates and Jenny No-neighbours, so we should enjoy our neighbours while we still have them....
Fuck me though, it's hard to be enthusiastic about anything in Eastern Canada in January.
Cold, dark, snowing, cold, snowing, did I mention cold.
My life revolves around my snow boots and packing tape.
A heady combo, I can tell you.
No wonder I'm dreaming about eloping to Cuba.
Atlantic Superstore is running an ad campaign that says 'we're lowering prices to cheer you up because it's January'.
They don't even have to pretend it's 'because we know you all maxed out your cards in December and we're trying to lure you into the shop to buy some food with what's left of your income'.
That's how bad it is in Eastern Canada in January.
Count your blessings, Queenie, count your blessings.
New house.
Exciting new house in approximately FOUR DAYS.
When one thinks of all the people in a certain part of the world who are having their houses blown up and if the reports are true, are having to clear up depleted uranium shells from the debris, and walk to hospitals miles away to get treatment for the phosphorous sticking to their children's skin etc...
... and you think about all the people in the world who are losing their houses at the moment because some arsehole told them they were 'richer than they think' and nobody introduced them to the credit union movement as opposed to the sub-prime predators...
Having a new house is an extremely rich blessing.
Thank you to the gods who are overseeing it.
I'm having a profound week, intellectually.
I'm reading Nino Ricci's Testament. It's like reading an award-winning Rolling Stone four part series on an early U2 Stateside tour, told from the point of view of a number of key entourage members.
Except it's the story of one Yeshua of Notzerah.
The four viewpoints are:
Yihuda of Qiryat,
Miryam of Migdal,
Miryam his Mother,
and Simon of Gerghesa.
See.... it's really smart, and yet beautifully simple. Four points of view retelling the greatest story ever told.
It won't get out of my head.
I think the fact that the war is going on right now in a relatively close location is making it stronger for me, but still...
We are nearly packed.
I have good friends who have provided me with all the necessary equipment and I scored big time by buying one of those plastic trays for packing tape so I don't have to keep picking the tape off the next layer of tape (people who are moving will know what I'm talking about - buy one of those devices, they are $4 and they are a life-saver).
I have only had four near-meltdowns.
Which is okay because there is a lot of other stuff going on right now too. Which will too work out, but which involve a lot of 'getting our heads into the right space'.
But happily, I know myself well enough to know that this morning I woke feeling better, and more importantly, in the zone.
I'll be okay now.
Whatever is thrown at us.
And Himself has only gotten annoyed with me the once.
We're doing okay.
We'll make it to Eagle Drive and/ or February in once piece, I think.
The main trouble in our lives right now is a divergence of views on the role of packing.
For Himself, packing is a way to move possessions from Point A to Point B.
Simple but effective.
Himself is nothing if not of the 'simple but effective' school of thought.
For me, packing represents many things....
... mourning the past moments that each of my possessions represent...
... considering the complexity of all of the possessions which are now randomly stuffed in a box...
... opportunities to worry about the lack of flat surfaces upon which to place the possessions in their new home...
... moments of concern that all this movement in my life is really for naught and I should just have stayed in that crappy one bed in that crappy block of flats in crappy south inner city Dublin all those years ago...
all of which are to do with needing to CONTROL MY ENVIRONMENT because despite being a Cancerian, I don't actually get to walk around with my house on my back and so have huge home environment anxiety whenever there is change.
Which in my case happens a lot, because my ascendant is Gemini.
I am truly fucked personality-wise.
The only person on the planet who gets this about me is Gypsy, because she are one too.
Add to this heady mix, the fact that I am living with an Aquarian, who is all about THE FUTURE.
Not HOW TO ACTUALLY MOVE EVERYTHING THERE.
Don't sweat the small stuff was written with Himself in mind.
I am so jealous of his laid back attitude it's making me ugly, I swear.
You see, I see the point in spending three hours separating cables and iPod wires and camera stuff (or the contents of the drawer that has all the pharmacy type stuff in it) and putting them in separate, labelled, Ziploc bags that are then placed in a box that's marked CABLES ETC. The point is:
1. I will be able to find things quickly if I need to. Which I will need to, because Himself will ask me to find the goddamn things for him some day when he's busy/ rushed/ sick/ whatever. And if there not findable, then psychically I will have failed him in some way.
I know, I know... it's january and I'm a crab..
In a pathetic attempt to offload the psychic payload onto Himself, I explain the system to him. Even though I know he will not even listen to the explanation because he is an Aquarian and knowing where stuff is is for LITTLE PEOPLE.
AND PROLES.
Of course, because of this fatal flaw in his personality (which he quite naturally doesn't see as such a bad thing), I will be able to LORD IT OVER HIM FOREVER when he can't find things because the afore-mentioned conversation took place.
That's what keeps me at it. In January.
I know, I know, I am truly pathetic.
... I told you it was in the Cable box...
Of course, being a Cancerian, I'm damned if I'm going to do all this work and not get any appreciation...
So Himself comes home from work and then gets moaned at over the home-cooked dinner because I'm tired. Then he asks why 'm tired if I had a day off, and I tell him why and then he, not unreasonably, trying to be helpful no doubt, points out that if I dumped all the cables onto the kitchen table, and then SWEPT them into a box with an arm, and wrote CABLES on the box and THREW it in the corner, we would still find them IF AND WHEN we ever needed them again.
And also I didn't have to cook dinner if I was that tired.
And that's when I have a meltdown.
Because the 'only' reason I am wasting time packing them is because if he catches me throwing them out he'll have a fit. Because he's an Aquarian packrat.
SO IT'S ALL HIS FAULT.
This is typical January behaviour in Eastern Canada, btw.
Couples all over the Maritimes are having equally stupid arguments over equally stupid stuff.
The advice is, this will end mid-February.
And as Myles said in a recent post, perhaps this global gloom and doom is affecting all of us in some way.
But still.... new house....
No more chocolate...
But in a good way.
What will I call the blog next?
Feel free to make suggestions which I will probably ignore, because I am a control freak.
What happened was typical Eastern Canada January behaviour.
It was late on a Saturday night in January.
Himself and I were half asleep on the couch. We were trying to remember why we are friends after a trying couple of days arguing over stupide things.
Also we were just about managing to yawn our way to the end of Episode 3 of Series 4 of The Wire.
So we ignored the first knock on the door.
Well, I said, 'that's our door' and Himself said 'no it's not' even though he KNEW it was.
After the second knocked we fessed up to ourselves and shouted 'come in' and then of course it was fine once it was our neighbour and not the landlord or an ax murderer or anyone like that.
But it was late which meant we didn't partake of any of the nice cider because we were too 'tired'.
(Before I continue, can I just say.... after the end of Series 3, which was STONKING, and I have to disagree with JB, I thought Series 3 ending was better than Series 2 ending, although Series 2 overall was GREAT... I'm finding it difficult to re-engage with The Wire, which I assume is the point of the early part of Series 4... also the political candidate it is portraying is too close to the reality of a political candidate to be funny and is indeed scary, and when is George Pelecanos going to write another episode?)
Anyways, we woke up and sat up and switched off the dvd (and now Himself is out ploughing snow all night and I can't watch the end of the episode because the deal is we watch it together.... grrroooaaaannnn) and made nice like grown ups because really, this is our last normal weekend at Chocolate Lake.
Next weekend we'll be moving and the weekend after we'll be sitting in our house in the country being all Johnny No-mates and Jenny No-neighbours, so we should enjoy our neighbours while we still have them....
Fuck me though, it's hard to be enthusiastic about anything in Eastern Canada in January.
Cold, dark, snowing, cold, snowing, did I mention cold.
My life revolves around my snow boots and packing tape.
A heady combo, I can tell you.
No wonder I'm dreaming about eloping to Cuba.
Atlantic Superstore is running an ad campaign that says 'we're lowering prices to cheer you up because it's January'.
They don't even have to pretend it's 'because we know you all maxed out your cards in December and we're trying to lure you into the shop to buy some food with what's left of your income'.
That's how bad it is in Eastern Canada in January.
Count your blessings, Queenie, count your blessings.
New house.
Exciting new house in approximately FOUR DAYS.
When one thinks of all the people in a certain part of the world who are having their houses blown up and if the reports are true, are having to clear up depleted uranium shells from the debris, and walk to hospitals miles away to get treatment for the phosphorous sticking to their children's skin etc...
... and you think about all the people in the world who are losing their houses at the moment because some arsehole told them they were 'richer than they think' and nobody introduced them to the credit union movement as opposed to the sub-prime predators...
Having a new house is an extremely rich blessing.
Thank you to the gods who are overseeing it.
I'm having a profound week, intellectually.
I'm reading Nino Ricci's Testament. It's like reading an award-winning Rolling Stone four part series on an early U2 Stateside tour, told from the point of view of a number of key entourage members.
Except it's the story of one Yeshua of Notzerah.
The four viewpoints are:
Yihuda of Qiryat,
Miryam of Migdal,
Miryam his Mother,
and Simon of Gerghesa.
See.... it's really smart, and yet beautifully simple. Four points of view retelling the greatest story ever told.
It won't get out of my head.
I think the fact that the war is going on right now in a relatively close location is making it stronger for me, but still...
We are nearly packed.
I have good friends who have provided me with all the necessary equipment and I scored big time by buying one of those plastic trays for packing tape so I don't have to keep picking the tape off the next layer of tape (people who are moving will know what I'm talking about - buy one of those devices, they are $4 and they are a life-saver).
I have only had four near-meltdowns.
Which is okay because there is a lot of other stuff going on right now too. Which will too work out, but which involve a lot of 'getting our heads into the right space'.
But happily, I know myself well enough to know that this morning I woke feeling better, and more importantly, in the zone.
I'll be okay now.
Whatever is thrown at us.
And Himself has only gotten annoyed with me the once.
We're doing okay.
We'll make it to Eagle Drive and/ or February in once piece, I think.
The main trouble in our lives right now is a divergence of views on the role of packing.
For Himself, packing is a way to move possessions from Point A to Point B.
Simple but effective.
Himself is nothing if not of the 'simple but effective' school of thought.
For me, packing represents many things....
... mourning the past moments that each of my possessions represent...
... considering the complexity of all of the possessions which are now randomly stuffed in a box...
... opportunities to worry about the lack of flat surfaces upon which to place the possessions in their new home...
... moments of concern that all this movement in my life is really for naught and I should just have stayed in that crappy one bed in that crappy block of flats in crappy south inner city Dublin all those years ago...
all of which are to do with needing to CONTROL MY ENVIRONMENT because despite being a Cancerian, I don't actually get to walk around with my house on my back and so have huge home environment anxiety whenever there is change.
Which in my case happens a lot, because my ascendant is Gemini.
I am truly fucked personality-wise.
The only person on the planet who gets this about me is Gypsy, because she are one too.
Add to this heady mix, the fact that I am living with an Aquarian, who is all about THE FUTURE.
Not HOW TO ACTUALLY MOVE EVERYTHING THERE.
Don't sweat the small stuff was written with Himself in mind.
I am so jealous of his laid back attitude it's making me ugly, I swear.
You see, I see the point in spending three hours separating cables and iPod wires and camera stuff (or the contents of the drawer that has all the pharmacy type stuff in it) and putting them in separate, labelled, Ziploc bags that are then placed in a box that's marked CABLES ETC. The point is:
1. I will be able to find things quickly if I need to. Which I will need to, because Himself will ask me to find the goddamn things for him some day when he's busy/ rushed/ sick/ whatever. And if there not findable, then psychically I will have failed him in some way.
I know, I know... it's january and I'm a crab..
In a pathetic attempt to offload the psychic payload onto Himself, I explain the system to him. Even though I know he will not even listen to the explanation because he is an Aquarian and knowing where stuff is is for LITTLE PEOPLE.
AND PROLES.
Of course, because of this fatal flaw in his personality (which he quite naturally doesn't see as such a bad thing), I will be able to LORD IT OVER HIM FOREVER when he can't find things because the afore-mentioned conversation took place.
That's what keeps me at it. In January.
I know, I know, I am truly pathetic.
... I told you it was in the Cable box...
Of course, being a Cancerian, I'm damned if I'm going to do all this work and not get any appreciation...
So Himself comes home from work and then gets moaned at over the home-cooked dinner because I'm tired. Then he asks why 'm tired if I had a day off, and I tell him why and then he, not unreasonably, trying to be helpful no doubt, points out that if I dumped all the cables onto the kitchen table, and then SWEPT them into a box with an arm, and wrote CABLES on the box and THREW it in the corner, we would still find them IF AND WHEN we ever needed them again.
And also I didn't have to cook dinner if I was that tired.
And that's when I have a meltdown.
Because the 'only' reason I am wasting time packing them is because if he catches me throwing them out he'll have a fit. Because he's an Aquarian packrat.
SO IT'S ALL HIS FAULT.
This is typical January behaviour in Eastern Canada, btw.
Couples all over the Maritimes are having equally stupid arguments over equally stupid stuff.
The advice is, this will end mid-February.
And as Myles said in a recent post, perhaps this global gloom and doom is affecting all of us in some way.
But still.... new house....
No more chocolate...
But in a good way.
What will I call the blog next?
Feel free to make suggestions which I will probably ignore, because I am a control freak.
Saturday, January 10, 2009
Your turn to intern
From this morning's Guardian:
This year's graduates face the toughest battle in a generation for jobs, with tens of thousands facing unemployment, according to evidence documenting the impact of the economic downturn.
Ministers are so concerned that they are drawing up a rescue package to help the class of 2009 find a job or get new skills when they graduate this summer. The proposals, from the universities secretary John Denham's office, will target the 18-24 age group amid fears that a generation of young people will be scarred by recession. They include an internship scheme where students would work at a reduced wage to gain experience. Four firms - including Barclays and Microsoft - have agreed to take part in the scheme, which is being called the National Internship Scheme.
Denham told the Guardian: "This year there will be a large number of graduates - the children of the babyboomers - and we are keen to make sure that they get as good a chance as we can give them to get jobs and build good careers. We will not leave them to fend for themselves.
He says: "We don't want these spells of unemployment to get long. A spell of unemployment is bad when young, and the longer it is, the worse it is. We want to do everything to prevent it becoming long-term unemployment."
Evidence of the extent of the downturn in graduate recruitment uncovered by the Guardian includes:
• Major companies have narrowed their search for graduates to five elite universities as they cut recruitment numbers.
• The organisers of the annual graduate recruitment "milk round" say jobs in finance and retail are drying up. Even where companies are recruiting, vacancies will not necessarily last until summer as the economic slump worsens.
• The management consultancy KPMG, seen as a recruitment barometer, says its 600 graduate entry jobs are nearly all taken months ahead of schedule as students scramble for the top jobs.
First of all, don't panic, it'll be fine.
Back in the day, when I were a young one, whiling away my days in the Free Palestinian Liberation Cafe drinking god-awful organic coffee from Chiapas, the milk round dried up regularly. I still managed to get a free weekend in England (I think it was with Lloyds Bank) where I had a very nice time and failed miserably to get a job in finance because I didn't have the killer instinct they needed for retail banking.
Imagine if I hadda gotten that job. I'd be an unemployed branch manager by now probably.
More importantly, I'd be miserable.
When we left university, we had a two stop trip.
Stop one. Out the college, turn right, down to Tara St. dole office to sign on.
Every Thursday morning you had to go down to get your money - £59.63 if I remember rightly, and yeah it was a pain because you had to queue for an hour, but you met everyone you knew there and spent the time figuring out where to meet up that night.
Stop two. Continue down Tara St. to the quays, turn left, then left again onto D'Olier St. to the FAS office. Ask the nice man in the FAS office if you could get on a FAS scheme.
A FAS scheme was/ is like a National Intern Program, except the government paid you to work for a theatre or a charity, or a hospice or a school, or a community radio station, something in the public sphere that needed help and had no money. It differs from the new National Intern Program in that it didn't subsidize labour for a multinational that should be paying proper wages. And unlike the new NIP, if you needed to change your hours, or make your point strongly, or try new things, you were allowed. I have a feeling you'll have to work very hard in the NIP to be one of the interns that gets kept on.
On a FAS scheme everyone worked about 20 hours a week. Lots of important social capital got made and spent. There was a lot of sitting around chatting and learning about other people's lives and dreams. A lot of bad coffee was drunk. I sat in a Portakabin in Coolock for a few months and dreamed up a community arts festival. A friend of mine ran a radio station. Another friend of mine managed a domestic abuse shelter.
The other twenty hours a week, you lived your life. You made art, or wrote, or helped run a magazine, or a theatre collective and of course you had some class of a nixer job so you could eat meat a couple of times a week.
You went to the cinema during the day.
Eventually, the world turned, the economy got better, all those compatriots of mine who had studied real subjects, like computer engineering, got the multinationals interested in Ireland, and we all landed in the real world. Started making a little money.
A little money.
That's the thing. The wages will be lower now. You'll have to work your way up to the big bucks for a few years.
Life's a bitch to random generations.
This recession business happened to us.
It's happening to you.
It didn't happen to the one in between.
But, far worse things happened to previous generations.
And the fair trade coffee is at least drinkable nowadays.
You'll be the better generation for it.
And we should spare a thought for those Palestinian 18 - 24 year olds who have no future to look forward to, only the bitter harvest of what's being sown today.
This year's graduates face the toughest battle in a generation for jobs, with tens of thousands facing unemployment, according to evidence documenting the impact of the economic downturn.
Ministers are so concerned that they are drawing up a rescue package to help the class of 2009 find a job or get new skills when they graduate this summer. The proposals, from the universities secretary John Denham's office, will target the 18-24 age group amid fears that a generation of young people will be scarred by recession. They include an internship scheme where students would work at a reduced wage to gain experience. Four firms - including Barclays and Microsoft - have agreed to take part in the scheme, which is being called the National Internship Scheme.
Denham told the Guardian: "This year there will be a large number of graduates - the children of the babyboomers - and we are keen to make sure that they get as good a chance as we can give them to get jobs and build good careers. We will not leave them to fend for themselves.
He says: "We don't want these spells of unemployment to get long. A spell of unemployment is bad when young, and the longer it is, the worse it is. We want to do everything to prevent it becoming long-term unemployment."
Evidence of the extent of the downturn in graduate recruitment uncovered by the Guardian includes:
• Major companies have narrowed their search for graduates to five elite universities as they cut recruitment numbers.
• The organisers of the annual graduate recruitment "milk round" say jobs in finance and retail are drying up. Even where companies are recruiting, vacancies will not necessarily last until summer as the economic slump worsens.
• The management consultancy KPMG, seen as a recruitment barometer, says its 600 graduate entry jobs are nearly all taken months ahead of schedule as students scramble for the top jobs.
First of all, don't panic, it'll be fine.
Back in the day, when I were a young one, whiling away my days in the Free Palestinian Liberation Cafe drinking god-awful organic coffee from Chiapas, the milk round dried up regularly. I still managed to get a free weekend in England (I think it was with Lloyds Bank) where I had a very nice time and failed miserably to get a job in finance because I didn't have the killer instinct they needed for retail banking.
Imagine if I hadda gotten that job. I'd be an unemployed branch manager by now probably.
More importantly, I'd be miserable.
When we left university, we had a two stop trip.
Stop one. Out the college, turn right, down to Tara St. dole office to sign on.
Every Thursday morning you had to go down to get your money - £59.63 if I remember rightly, and yeah it was a pain because you had to queue for an hour, but you met everyone you knew there and spent the time figuring out where to meet up that night.
Stop two. Continue down Tara St. to the quays, turn left, then left again onto D'Olier St. to the FAS office. Ask the nice man in the FAS office if you could get on a FAS scheme.
A FAS scheme was/ is like a National Intern Program, except the government paid you to work for a theatre or a charity, or a hospice or a school, or a community radio station, something in the public sphere that needed help and had no money. It differs from the new National Intern Program in that it didn't subsidize labour for a multinational that should be paying proper wages. And unlike the new NIP, if you needed to change your hours, or make your point strongly, or try new things, you were allowed. I have a feeling you'll have to work very hard in the NIP to be one of the interns that gets kept on.
On a FAS scheme everyone worked about 20 hours a week. Lots of important social capital got made and spent. There was a lot of sitting around chatting and learning about other people's lives and dreams. A lot of bad coffee was drunk. I sat in a Portakabin in Coolock for a few months and dreamed up a community arts festival. A friend of mine ran a radio station. Another friend of mine managed a domestic abuse shelter.
The other twenty hours a week, you lived your life. You made art, or wrote, or helped run a magazine, or a theatre collective and of course you had some class of a nixer job so you could eat meat a couple of times a week.
You went to the cinema during the day.
Eventually, the world turned, the economy got better, all those compatriots of mine who had studied real subjects, like computer engineering, got the multinationals interested in Ireland, and we all landed in the real world. Started making a little money.
A little money.
That's the thing. The wages will be lower now. You'll have to work your way up to the big bucks for a few years.
Life's a bitch to random generations.
This recession business happened to us.
It's happening to you.
It didn't happen to the one in between.
But, far worse things happened to previous generations.
And the fair trade coffee is at least drinkable nowadays.
You'll be the better generation for it.
And we should spare a thought for those Palestinian 18 - 24 year olds who have no future to look forward to, only the bitter harvest of what's being sown today.
Thursday, January 08, 2009
A shift from Victorian thinking
I have mentioned to people here a number of times that I find the Victorian model of caring for the poor that is played out in Nova Scotia quite stunning in its dinosaurosity. I usually get the Nova Scotia huh stare for that, and it's not just my unacceptable use of the non-word dinosaurosity.
Poverty is usually structurally-based, I explain.
More staring.
People who are poor are generally poor because there's some flaw in the design of the society's structures, not because they are lazy or bad, I explain.
Shift to polite staring.
For example, the best way to get a job here is through networking, yeah... so, if you're poor and you don't know any working people/ golf people/ can't join a gym/ drive to a volunteering event, then your chances of getting a job go down, yeah... and that's a structural issue in society....
Extreme polite staring with added uncomfortable shuffle.
Sheesh.... I never know if they think I'm wrong, or they think I'm insane, or if they just don't know what the hell I'm talking about.
Then today, I get this in an email from some social policy institute in Canada (the Caledon Instititue I think.... I get so many).
How I chuckled... hahahaha.... they just think I'm a bleedin' socialist, that's what!!!!
Community Roles in Policy Sherri Torjman, January 2009
There has been growing interest in recent years in place-based interventions and their unique contribution to tackling complex issues, such as poverty. While communities are pursuing a range of direct interventions, they are recognizing increasingly that the problems faced by individuals and households living with low income result not from their own weaknesses but rather from problems and barriers in the broader economic and social system. This paper discusses the following activities in which communities can engage with respect to policy:
· monitoring policy developments
· building an evidence base
· enabling access to existing benefits
· improving programs and services
· creating new programs or services
· reducing basic costs
· designing appropriate environments
· creating contextual change
· reducing barriers and disincentives
· assessing policy impact.
ISBN - 1-55382-328-1
29 pages
Read away, boys and girls.
Now, I wonder if the wonderful Irish policy-makers who gave us the national anti-poverty strategy and the partnerships approach to urban regeneration, etc, have figured out the structural causes of the latest kerfuffle in the nation's finances.
Or do they give a crap about some rich blokes who've got caught with their billions exposed?
Prob'ly not.
Poverty is usually structurally-based, I explain.
More staring.
People who are poor are generally poor because there's some flaw in the design of the society's structures, not because they are lazy or bad, I explain.
Shift to polite staring.
For example, the best way to get a job here is through networking, yeah... so, if you're poor and you don't know any working people/ golf people/ can't join a gym/ drive to a volunteering event, then your chances of getting a job go down, yeah... and that's a structural issue in society....
Extreme polite staring with added uncomfortable shuffle.
Sheesh.... I never know if they think I'm wrong, or they think I'm insane, or if they just don't know what the hell I'm talking about.
Then today, I get this in an email from some social policy institute in Canada (the Caledon Instititue I think.... I get so many).
How I chuckled... hahahaha.... they just think I'm a bleedin' socialist, that's what!!!!
Community Roles in Policy Sherri Torjman, January 2009
There has been growing interest in recent years in place-based interventions and their unique contribution to tackling complex issues, such as poverty. While communities are pursuing a range of direct interventions, they are recognizing increasingly that the problems faced by individuals and households living with low income result not from their own weaknesses but rather from problems and barriers in the broader economic and social system. This paper discusses the following activities in which communities can engage with respect to policy:
· monitoring policy developments
· building an evidence base
· enabling access to existing benefits
· improving programs and services
· creating new programs or services
· reducing basic costs
· designing appropriate environments
· creating contextual change
· reducing barriers and disincentives
· assessing policy impact.
ISBN - 1-55382-328-1
29 pages
Read away, boys and girls.
Now, I wonder if the wonderful Irish policy-makers who gave us the national anti-poverty strategy and the partnerships approach to urban regeneration, etc, have figured out the structural causes of the latest kerfuffle in the nation's finances.
Or do they give a crap about some rich blokes who've got caught with their billions exposed?
Prob'ly not.
Thursday, January 01, 2009
The real New Year's Post
I've had a quick scoot around some of my favourite blogs and people are talking about resolutions and stuff. Some people are even looking back at last year's resolutions and seeing how they did.
So how did Queenie do?
Queenie didn't have any resolutions in 2007 that she wrote down.
I had to go back to 2006, and it's not even a list of resolutions, it's more a stream of consciousness about various aspects of my personality and life, some of which I really should improve if possible, and some of which is beyond my control completely.
http://sadpercy.blogspot.com/2007/01/in-response-to-my-previous-post-when-i.html
However, having looked at it, there's been some progress, so here is my new dictat.
New Year's Resolutions should run for TWO YEARS. That way, you get to faff around for a year not doing them, then get your act together the second year.
Much easier.
Which means less possibility of feeling bad because you've 'failed' in some way. Which I have always felt is the Achilles Heel of New Year's Resolutions.
So.... how did I do?
Sitting around feeling sorry for myself in November.
Many many Novembers have been spent this way. It was something that really really annoyed me about myself, but not something I ever felt I could change. However, this year I didn't sit around depressed and feeling sorry for myself. Instead, I bought a house and gave up smoking in November, which meant that I was very stressed (very very stressed) some of the time and my sleep pattern went to hell in a handbasket.
But I got shit done in November. For the first time ever.
December, I did some weeping. But that was due to tiredness, the crappy weather, and the lack of a trip home. And the continuing stress of moving, not smoking, etc.
And it was nothing like the depression that used to floor me in November years ago.
(I have a confession to make by the way, I fell off the smoking wagon over Christmas, but in my defence I can say: I was being driven demented by the karmic activities of the world, I didn't buy any cigarettes, I didn't smoke a daytime cigarette, I am back on the smoking wagon again, and 2009 is the year I won't smoke any cigarettes, so I am okay about it).
Wean myself off television.
We still have a television. When Kitty was here it was necessary, because she needed to have the tv on all the time, being a member of the reality tv generation. But now Kitty is gone, there's no need to have a tv package, which incidentally costs $54.95 per month plus tax.
Which is $745 a year.
Which is a tank of furnace oil.
Or a new laptop.
Hmmm, I wonder whether we should have a tv service this year. I should talk about it to the man who uses the service. The only shows I watch are News at 10 in the winter, The Tudors and The Border. That's nine hours a week for twenty four weeks. Himself only watches about another hour a day in the winter.
That's $3.10 per hour of television watched.
Christ, it's cheaper to park downtown.
Although, if you add in the NHL play-offs in the spring, that would come down some.
Needing other people's affirmation to feel good about myself.
Much better. Much much better.
Fuck other people. I mostly don't care what they think anymore.
Although I must say, the reader who made anonymous comments about how boring and self-indulgent my blog was really needled me and has me second guessing my writing a bit. But, then again, if it's that boring, move the fuck on.... Having said that, I suspect it may have been someone I have the joy to know, who has the personality of a thirsty rattlesnake trussed up in a plastic bag, which would make it less hurtful.
Also, I got my Permanent Residency last year, which meant I could get a better job, which meant I got away from a lot of negative stuff, which was great. Of course, there's negative stuff in my current job, because there always is negativity in a paid working environment, but I don't care about it, because it's just other people.
With regards to my appearance, getting a proper job meant all kinds of exciting, albeit really basic health and dental activity this year, which improved my confidence a lot.
Also, I have started using NeoStrata's Oil Free Smoothing Lotion, Level 3, which is one of those AHA type products, and it has taken about five years off my face (even before I stopped smoking).
The beauty manager in the Shoppers Drugmart on Herring Cove Rd. deserves a big shout out. She worked with me until we got a moisturiser that dealt with all my issues, and she didn't charge me a penny until we got the right one. She just gave me a bit in a little jar and got me to report back in a few days. Then onto the next one until we hit paydirt.
That's what a beauty manager should do. She's an older woman of course, so she understands its not about the packaging or the price, it's about pushing back against the inevitable as cost effectively as possible.
I went into her yesterday and showed her the bags under my eyes (which are gignormous right now) and she sent me off with some products to try out for a week.
If she sorts out the bags under my eyes I am going to nominate her for the Order of Canada.
Fuck the novel.
Well, this resolution went exceedingly well. I have had two guilt-free years where I can read whatever I want now without having to think that I should be trying to write something myself.
In 2007, I sold a lot of photos and photo cards, but 2008 did not go well at all, because I didn't have time to work on my photography at all. I didn't even take many interesting pictures this year. This year's third resolution is to take the Digital Photography course in the NSCC. I will leave it till the spring though, as I have too much on over the next two months.
I have enough things.
So I went out and bought a house to put them all in and a car to drive them over there.
Well done, Queenie. Nice bit of non-consumerism there.
Although, to be fair, I did save like a bastard this year, in order to afford deposit on said house.
But I have not stopped buying books. The African tribal art collection is growing apace. I made a few trips to Biscuit this year for some new clothes. And I invested in a couple of pieces of furniture so that we can have people to stay, a table to eat on, etc.
However, I think Himself and I do pretty well on the recycled, frugality stuff, so I'm not going to sweat this. And next year I will have no money at all, so I guess I will achieve the non-consumption resolution pretty easily.
Auld Dog column
That went pretty well, and I loved the stuff people wrote in their columns. I still treasure them. I was hoping to put them together with some photos and publish a little book of them, but we never got to the magic number (I can't remember what it was now), so I never got round to it.
Maybe this year....
So.... what is my resolution for 2009?
Apart from the three or four I've already listed, my main resolution for this year is to innoculate myself better against the irrational, self-obsessed rage that has pounded us for too many years now.
I hope this year is a good one for everyone, and that all the panic and mayhem settles down and we emerge from it feeling more like neighbours and less like consumer capitalist spending units.
And if you are in trouble, cut up your fucking credit cards.
It's the most liberating thing you will ever do, trust me.
Bless xx Queenie
So how did Queenie do?
Queenie didn't have any resolutions in 2007 that she wrote down.
I had to go back to 2006, and it's not even a list of resolutions, it's more a stream of consciousness about various aspects of my personality and life, some of which I really should improve if possible, and some of which is beyond my control completely.
http://sadpercy.blogspot.com/2007/01/in-response-to-my-previous-post-when-i.html
However, having looked at it, there's been some progress, so here is my new dictat.
New Year's Resolutions should run for TWO YEARS. That way, you get to faff around for a year not doing them, then get your act together the second year.
Much easier.
Which means less possibility of feeling bad because you've 'failed' in some way. Which I have always felt is the Achilles Heel of New Year's Resolutions.
So.... how did I do?
Sitting around feeling sorry for myself in November.
Many many Novembers have been spent this way. It was something that really really annoyed me about myself, but not something I ever felt I could change. However, this year I didn't sit around depressed and feeling sorry for myself. Instead, I bought a house and gave up smoking in November, which meant that I was very stressed (very very stressed) some of the time and my sleep pattern went to hell in a handbasket.
But I got shit done in November. For the first time ever.
December, I did some weeping. But that was due to tiredness, the crappy weather, and the lack of a trip home. And the continuing stress of moving, not smoking, etc.
And it was nothing like the depression that used to floor me in November years ago.
(I have a confession to make by the way, I fell off the smoking wagon over Christmas, but in my defence I can say: I was being driven demented by the karmic activities of the world, I didn't buy any cigarettes, I didn't smoke a daytime cigarette, I am back on the smoking wagon again, and 2009 is the year I won't smoke any cigarettes, so I am okay about it).
Wean myself off television.
We still have a television. When Kitty was here it was necessary, because she needed to have the tv on all the time, being a member of the reality tv generation. But now Kitty is gone, there's no need to have a tv package, which incidentally costs $54.95 per month plus tax.
Which is $745 a year.
Which is a tank of furnace oil.
Or a new laptop.
Hmmm, I wonder whether we should have a tv service this year. I should talk about it to the man who uses the service. The only shows I watch are News at 10 in the winter, The Tudors and The Border. That's nine hours a week for twenty four weeks. Himself only watches about another hour a day in the winter.
That's $3.10 per hour of television watched.
Christ, it's cheaper to park downtown.
Although, if you add in the NHL play-offs in the spring, that would come down some.
Needing other people's affirmation to feel good about myself.
Much better. Much much better.
Fuck other people. I mostly don't care what they think anymore.
Although I must say, the reader who made anonymous comments about how boring and self-indulgent my blog was really needled me and has me second guessing my writing a bit. But, then again, if it's that boring, move the fuck on.... Having said that, I suspect it may have been someone I have the joy to know, who has the personality of a thirsty rattlesnake trussed up in a plastic bag, which would make it less hurtful.
Also, I got my Permanent Residency last year, which meant I could get a better job, which meant I got away from a lot of negative stuff, which was great. Of course, there's negative stuff in my current job, because there always is negativity in a paid working environment, but I don't care about it, because it's just other people.
With regards to my appearance, getting a proper job meant all kinds of exciting, albeit really basic health and dental activity this year, which improved my confidence a lot.
Also, I have started using NeoStrata's Oil Free Smoothing Lotion, Level 3, which is one of those AHA type products, and it has taken about five years off my face (even before I stopped smoking).
The beauty manager in the Shoppers Drugmart on Herring Cove Rd. deserves a big shout out. She worked with me until we got a moisturiser that dealt with all my issues, and she didn't charge me a penny until we got the right one. She just gave me a bit in a little jar and got me to report back in a few days. Then onto the next one until we hit paydirt.
That's what a beauty manager should do. She's an older woman of course, so she understands its not about the packaging or the price, it's about pushing back against the inevitable as cost effectively as possible.
I went into her yesterday and showed her the bags under my eyes (which are gignormous right now) and she sent me off with some products to try out for a week.
If she sorts out the bags under my eyes I am going to nominate her for the Order of Canada.
Fuck the novel.
Well, this resolution went exceedingly well. I have had two guilt-free years where I can read whatever I want now without having to think that I should be trying to write something myself.
In 2007, I sold a lot of photos and photo cards, but 2008 did not go well at all, because I didn't have time to work on my photography at all. I didn't even take many interesting pictures this year. This year's third resolution is to take the Digital Photography course in the NSCC. I will leave it till the spring though, as I have too much on over the next two months.
I have enough things.
So I went out and bought a house to put them all in and a car to drive them over there.
Well done, Queenie. Nice bit of non-consumerism there.
Although, to be fair, I did save like a bastard this year, in order to afford deposit on said house.
But I have not stopped buying books. The African tribal art collection is growing apace. I made a few trips to Biscuit this year for some new clothes. And I invested in a couple of pieces of furniture so that we can have people to stay, a table to eat on, etc.
However, I think Himself and I do pretty well on the recycled, frugality stuff, so I'm not going to sweat this. And next year I will have no money at all, so I guess I will achieve the non-consumption resolution pretty easily.
Auld Dog column
That went pretty well, and I loved the stuff people wrote in their columns. I still treasure them. I was hoping to put them together with some photos and publish a little book of them, but we never got to the magic number (I can't remember what it was now), so I never got round to it.
Maybe this year....
So.... what is my resolution for 2009?
Apart from the three or four I've already listed, my main resolution for this year is to innoculate myself better against the irrational, self-obsessed rage that has pounded us for too many years now.
I hope this year is a good one for everyone, and that all the panic and mayhem settles down and we emerge from it feeling more like neighbours and less like consumer capitalist spending units.
And if you are in trouble, cut up your fucking credit cards.
It's the most liberating thing you will ever do, trust me.
Bless xx Queenie
Finally 2009 is here. Which means 2008 is over. Which is probably a good thing, but still, every year is precious.
I wonder what it will be like?
So far, it's a screaming white blizzard that started last night. My world has disappeared into white. All I can see from the window is next door's trees and the side of their house. No paths, no road (where is the plough?), no horizon. The wind is blowing the snow off the neighbour's roof onto the ground below. Thankfully they are not there, because they would not be able to open their front door now.
CBC Radio 2 is playing the full length version of Star Wars, by John Williams, on their classical music show this afternoon so I am listening to that. We are at the bit in the music where Leia and Luke find themselves having an irresistable pull towards each other, but somehow know it's not the gold bikini type of pull.
OH NOOOOO!!!! We're onto another piece!!
BOM BOM BOM BOMDIBOM BOMDIBOM...
I'm sure you know which bit we're at now.
One of my new year resolutions for 2009 is to convince Himself that I am walking down the aisle to this piece of music.
So far, he is pretty sure I am only messing when I say it.
Himself is ploughing snow of course, so I am on my own for New Year's Day until at least 11pm tonight. Oh Joy.
Count your blessings, Queenie!!!
1. I am not out ploughing snow. 2. The power is still on. 3. The Internet cable is still working. 4. I don't have to go to work until Monday.
I have to start packing though. Today is the day I promised to start packing up the stuff I have accumulated over the last three and a half years in order to be able to move it across the city to the new place in two weeks.
I do not want to do this. I do not want to pack. I do not want to move. I do not want to organize. I am completely fed up of the endless endless logistical and organizational bullcrap I end up doing here in Canada.
I want to go to bed for four days and not get up for anything apart from a hot drop in my coffee mug or a new book.
In fact, my second New Year's Resolution is to become afflicted by some mysterious ailment that reduces my vastly superior organizational skills to those of a normal person, after which I won't be compelle to organize everything and everyone anymore, because other people can in fact do it just as well, or... shock, horror Queenie... better than me.
In layman's terms, I will chill the fuck out this year.
Time passes as Queenie looks at vacation brochures.
Himself has just called and told me not to pack anything today. We will do it at the weekend together.
Sometimes, I swear he must have implanted a listening device in my brain early on.
His knowledge of what I'm thinking is uncanny.
Now the CBC is playing Beethoven's Ninth.
Very uplifting.
More time passes as Queenie messes around on Facebook.
Facebook was the crack of 2008, wasn't it?! I would sit down at the computer in the evening, all ready to blog, and after an hour of desultory faffing on FB, my eyes/ hands would be sore and that would be it.
It is very handy though. For checking up on your friends, without having to ever speak to them.
More time passes as Queenie starts to clean up last night's debris and sweeps half the floor.
Rich Terfry, aka Buck 65, hosts the CBC Radio 2 Drive show from 3 - 6pm every day, which is a most excellent Canadian, indie and some world music extravaganza every day. (That would be available on http://www.cbc.ca/ from 7 - 10pm every evening, for Buck's Irish fans). Right now he's doing a Montreal special for New Year's Day.
I am going to post this, because it is going nowhere. And start again.
So far, it's a screaming white blizzard that started last night. My world has disappeared into white. All I can see from the window is next door's trees and the side of their house. No paths, no road (where is the plough?), no horizon. The wind is blowing the snow off the neighbour's roof onto the ground below. Thankfully they are not there, because they would not be able to open their front door now.
CBC Radio 2 is playing the full length version of Star Wars, by John Williams, on their classical music show this afternoon so I am listening to that. We are at the bit in the music where Leia and Luke find themselves having an irresistable pull towards each other, but somehow know it's not the gold bikini type of pull.
OH NOOOOO!!!! We're onto another piece!!
BOM BOM BOM BOMDIBOM BOMDIBOM...
I'm sure you know which bit we're at now.
One of my new year resolutions for 2009 is to convince Himself that I am walking down the aisle to this piece of music.
So far, he is pretty sure I am only messing when I say it.
Himself is ploughing snow of course, so I am on my own for New Year's Day until at least 11pm tonight. Oh Joy.
Count your blessings, Queenie!!!
1. I am not out ploughing snow. 2. The power is still on. 3. The Internet cable is still working. 4. I don't have to go to work until Monday.
I have to start packing though. Today is the day I promised to start packing up the stuff I have accumulated over the last three and a half years in order to be able to move it across the city to the new place in two weeks.
I do not want to do this. I do not want to pack. I do not want to move. I do not want to organize. I am completely fed up of the endless endless logistical and organizational bullcrap I end up doing here in Canada.
I want to go to bed for four days and not get up for anything apart from a hot drop in my coffee mug or a new book.
In fact, my second New Year's Resolution is to become afflicted by some mysterious ailment that reduces my vastly superior organizational skills to those of a normal person, after which I won't be compelle to organize everything and everyone anymore, because other people can in fact do it just as well, or... shock, horror Queenie... better than me.
In layman's terms, I will chill the fuck out this year.
Time passes as Queenie looks at vacation brochures.
Himself has just called and told me not to pack anything today. We will do it at the weekend together.
Sometimes, I swear he must have implanted a listening device in my brain early on.
His knowledge of what I'm thinking is uncanny.
Now the CBC is playing Beethoven's Ninth.
Very uplifting.
More time passes as Queenie messes around on Facebook.
Facebook was the crack of 2008, wasn't it?! I would sit down at the computer in the evening, all ready to blog, and after an hour of desultory faffing on FB, my eyes/ hands would be sore and that would be it.
It is very handy though. For checking up on your friends, without having to ever speak to them.
More time passes as Queenie starts to clean up last night's debris and sweeps half the floor.
Rich Terfry, aka Buck 65, hosts the CBC Radio 2 Drive show from 3 - 6pm every day, which is a most excellent Canadian, indie and some world music extravaganza every day. (That would be available on http://www.cbc.ca/ from 7 - 10pm every evening, for Buck's Irish fans). Right now he's doing a Montreal special for New Year's Day.
I am going to post this, because it is going nowhere. And start again.
Thursday, December 18, 2008
The Cruiser departs
I see the Cruiser is departed this world at the ripe old age of 91. He had a good long life anyway.
His books always made me feel incredibly stupid, so I shall continue that tradition by not saying anything intelligent now either.
His books always made me feel incredibly stupid, so I shall continue that tradition by not saying anything intelligent now either.
Monday, December 08, 2008
Immaculate Shopping Lennon Day goes pear-shaped
When I was growing up, 8th December was a religious holiday in Ireland (well it still is I assume). The Feast of the Conception of the Virgin. Who was conceived by Elizabeth. Who is my favourite saint. For a number of reasons I won't go into, mainly around not really wanting to be the mother of the flippin' Virgin Mary.
It was also culchie shopping day in Dublin. Which is also known as GOIN"ONNATRAINTOSEESANTY!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!
Santy is the Irish for Santa.
Then it turned into John Lennon Died Day around thirty years ago, which was too early to mean anything much to me, even though I know it's important.
Now I live in Canada it's just another day when I feel all weird and homesick and everyone else has no idea why.
I am sitting in Cape Breton International Airport as I begin to write this, but there is no wi-fi so I will post when I get home.
If I get home…
Today was a day. I am going to rename this day Queenie's realization that winter is going to happen every year till she leaves Canada Day.
I wake at 4am because Himself’s cell phone is ringing. Normally when Himself’s cell phone rings at that hour of the morning in the winter, it means there is snow on the ground. I am so sleepy I don’t figure that out this morning, even as I listen to Himself wash, dress, make coffee and get ready to leave the house. I am irrationally annoyed because he is up so early.
Above me, the neighbours German Shepherd is pounding around begging to go out for a pee.
Finally, I call out to Himself and he says, ‘there’s a foot of snow on the ground, baby, be careful driving to the airport’ and then leaves to plough it away from all the shopping malls.
After an hour’s pointless worrying about snow and driving and lateness and the complexity of my day, I get back to sleep and have a bizarre dream about my aunt and cousin from Dublin who are visiting us in Halifax, but actually the city is Florence, Italy (this is my subconscious not wanting to deal with snow, I think). And in the dream Himself is a famous artist working in scrap metal (I don’t want to know what this is my subconscious not dealing with right now).
The alarm clock doesn’t wake me up at 5.30am when it was supposed to because I have forgotten to switch it on, so when I wake up in a panic at 5.47am, my day is already pear-shaped.
It takes about 15 minutes to scrape the snow off the car, see. And I have to be at the airport for 7am.
Up. Shower. Dress for a formal workshop presentation.
Coffee. Pot full.
I put snow clothes on over proper clothes.
Tramp downstairs. Scrape snow off car.
Tramp back upstairs.
Get coffee mug, laptop, proper boots for inside.
Tramp back downstairs with an armful of stuff.
Check I have torch, blanket, safety blanket, reflector panels, etc in the car.
Defrost the front windscreen again.
Finally, I back the car out of driveway at 6.36am. Everyone else in the building is still asleep. Apart from the dog of course.
Dogs don't shovel snow though.
Not too bad on time. My day is not too pear-shaped, but pear-shaped enough.
I drive to airport in the lightly falling snow.
In the dark of course.
On unploughed roads of course.
At 60kms per hour.
Because I’m too scared to drive any faster in case I crash, or in case Himself finds out somehow that I’ve done it, and has a fit at me for being so stupid.
I still haven’t recovered from the time I tried to sneak up to Cape Breton by road in the snow last winter because I was new at my job and thought it was important and Himself KNEW I was doing that, even though he was at work, and called me on my cell on the highway and told me I was to come home now or not at all.
Himself places a care call from the plough truck.
What speed am I doing?
I tell him.
Am I in four wheel drive?
Yes.
Good.
Keep ‘er slow now.
He listens to me moan through my blue tooth device about how unfair my life is from December to March every year. And how my snow driving stomach knots are really bad this morning, etc.
Then he has to go plough more snow.
At the airport, the signs for the long term carpark are covered in snow, and I have never parked there, so I drive around in confusion for a bit, then get lucky and follow the recently arrived LTP bus to the car park.
I park the Explorer in a snow drift.
There was nowhere else.
Anyways, it’s an Explorer, for chrissakes. It’s for moments like this.
I get on the airport bus at 7.35am.
Then I realize I am still wearing my snow boots.
I apologize to everyone on the bus for delaying the bus. Get off bus. Climb over snow drift to car. Change into proper leather-soled boots. Slither back down snow drift to bus. Re-embark bus.
We drive to the Departures Lounge in the dawn glimmer.
I have to re-check-in at 7.52am because my mobile device barcode check-in foolishness is just that.
That makes it too late for the latte and muffin I’d been promising myself on the highway…
I take off my boots and my belt in the security zone because I am beeping.
I put them back on.
I sit in the Departures Lounge for one hour with no coffee.
Finally, with the permission of the ground crew, I make a break for Tim Hortons…. Starbucks is too far away, way over in the International Flights Departure Area.
I get back to Gate 6 to find everyone has boarded.
But I can take my Timmy’s on the plane.
Hooray!!
Fifteen of us sit on the commuter plane to Cape Breton for two and a half hours while every other friggin’ plane at the airport gets de-iced before us.
No wonder Cape Bretoners are pure mule.
Now I am going to be late.
Frantically, as we barrel up to the de-icer, I email how-to-facilitate-workshop instructions to a colleague in Cape Breton and beg him to save my ass.
Then we are taking off and I have to switch off my phone without knowing whether my ass is being saved.
I panic the whole way to Cape Breton, while sitting in front of the man with the worst halitosis on the planet.
I can still smell his breath.
I decide to take my Champix on an empty stomach because I couldn’t feel any more nauseous.
Actually I could.
We get to Cape Breton only an hour after the start of the workshop.
Hoo-fuckin-ray.
The single taxi parked outside the airport has nobody in it.
I run around the airport trying to find the taxi driver.
I find the taxi driver.
I impress the urgency of my trip on the taxi driver.
He tells me he’s been here since 7.30am without a fare, so he’s taking a carload.
The taxi driver takes his time rounding up a full mini-van load.
It includes halitosis man.
I get into the front of the taxi, speechless with fury.
SPEECHLESS!
The workshop venue is the last stop on the taxi route.
I throw the money at taxi-driver who throws the receipt at me.
I burst into workshop to find everyone working quietly at correct point in workshop, thanks to innate genius of my colleague.
He is more pleased to see me than I am to see him, however, and he hands workshop over to me in alacratious relief before I even get my snow coat off.
I manage to complete the workshop in only a mild state of anxiety, which eases when I realize the participants are enjoying it.
This workshop is my baby right now. Everyone must coo at it. Everyone.
My colleague drives me back to Cape Breton International Airport.
I blag my way onto the early flight home. Which is late of course.
I go to the restaurant and order sausages and pancakes and tea for my nerves.
They burn the pancakes.
How can you burn pancakes?
The plane was due in at 4pm, but it’s arrives at 5pm covered in de-icing goo.
I wonder why…
Right now, I am sitting with seven other people and the pilot on the commuter plane from Cape Breton, bowling through the winter skies towards home.
Himself has texted to say he will be home around nine, hopefully.
That means it has probably stopped snowing in Halifax. But it’s supposed to go down to minus 10 tonight, so I hope that I scraped enough snow off the car so it’s not frozen too much.
If it’s not frozen too much, I can open my car door to get my snow boots on. With my snow boots on, I can stand up long enough to haul the ice scraper out. With the ice scraper in my hand, I can scrape the ice off the windscreen and windows and car lights. With my car in compliance with the highway winter code, I can see my way out of the snow drift and then out of the car park and finally onto the highway and home.
If not, I’ll have to hang onto the door and yank at it till it opens and I fall on my ass.
Normally I don’t drink on a Monday, but all I can think of right now is that I am two hours and a snow drift away from a big glass of red wine.
I get to the airport and I find the bus and we find my car and I get the door open after a couple of yanks and I sit there until my fingers are warm enough to drive (it's now -18) and I drive home in the dark and I get home and it's HOME and then I realise...
... NOBODY'S FUCKING SHOVELLED THE FRONT DOOR STEPS.
Anyways, it only took a few minutes and now I'm inside in the warm listening to Dragon's Den and finishing this and soooo glad I'm not out in the cold.
I hates the winter....
It was also culchie shopping day in Dublin. Which is also known as GOIN"ONNATRAINTOSEESANTY!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!
Santy is the Irish for Santa.
Then it turned into John Lennon Died Day around thirty years ago, which was too early to mean anything much to me, even though I know it's important.
Now I live in Canada it's just another day when I feel all weird and homesick and everyone else has no idea why.
I am sitting in Cape Breton International Airport as I begin to write this, but there is no wi-fi so I will post when I get home.
If I get home…
Today was a day. I am going to rename this day Queenie's realization that winter is going to happen every year till she leaves Canada Day.
I wake at 4am because Himself’s cell phone is ringing. Normally when Himself’s cell phone rings at that hour of the morning in the winter, it means there is snow on the ground. I am so sleepy I don’t figure that out this morning, even as I listen to Himself wash, dress, make coffee and get ready to leave the house. I am irrationally annoyed because he is up so early.
Above me, the neighbours German Shepherd is pounding around begging to go out for a pee.
Finally, I call out to Himself and he says, ‘there’s a foot of snow on the ground, baby, be careful driving to the airport’ and then leaves to plough it away from all the shopping malls.
After an hour’s pointless worrying about snow and driving and lateness and the complexity of my day, I get back to sleep and have a bizarre dream about my aunt and cousin from Dublin who are visiting us in Halifax, but actually the city is Florence, Italy (this is my subconscious not wanting to deal with snow, I think). And in the dream Himself is a famous artist working in scrap metal (I don’t want to know what this is my subconscious not dealing with right now).
The alarm clock doesn’t wake me up at 5.30am when it was supposed to because I have forgotten to switch it on, so when I wake up in a panic at 5.47am, my day is already pear-shaped.
It takes about 15 minutes to scrape the snow off the car, see. And I have to be at the airport for 7am.
Up. Shower. Dress for a formal workshop presentation.
Coffee. Pot full.
I put snow clothes on over proper clothes.
Tramp downstairs. Scrape snow off car.
Tramp back upstairs.
Get coffee mug, laptop, proper boots for inside.
Tramp back downstairs with an armful of stuff.
Check I have torch, blanket, safety blanket, reflector panels, etc in the car.
Defrost the front windscreen again.
Finally, I back the car out of driveway at 6.36am. Everyone else in the building is still asleep. Apart from the dog of course.
Dogs don't shovel snow though.
Not too bad on time. My day is not too pear-shaped, but pear-shaped enough.
I drive to airport in the lightly falling snow.
In the dark of course.
On unploughed roads of course.
At 60kms per hour.
Because I’m too scared to drive any faster in case I crash, or in case Himself finds out somehow that I’ve done it, and has a fit at me for being so stupid.
I still haven’t recovered from the time I tried to sneak up to Cape Breton by road in the snow last winter because I was new at my job and thought it was important and Himself KNEW I was doing that, even though he was at work, and called me on my cell on the highway and told me I was to come home now or not at all.
Himself places a care call from the plough truck.
What speed am I doing?
I tell him.
Am I in four wheel drive?
Yes.
Good.
Keep ‘er slow now.
He listens to me moan through my blue tooth device about how unfair my life is from December to March every year. And how my snow driving stomach knots are really bad this morning, etc.
Then he has to go plough more snow.
At the airport, the signs for the long term carpark are covered in snow, and I have never parked there, so I drive around in confusion for a bit, then get lucky and follow the recently arrived LTP bus to the car park.
I park the Explorer in a snow drift.
There was nowhere else.
Anyways, it’s an Explorer, for chrissakes. It’s for moments like this.
I get on the airport bus at 7.35am.
Then I realize I am still wearing my snow boots.
I apologize to everyone on the bus for delaying the bus. Get off bus. Climb over snow drift to car. Change into proper leather-soled boots. Slither back down snow drift to bus. Re-embark bus.
We drive to the Departures Lounge in the dawn glimmer.
I have to re-check-in at 7.52am because my mobile device barcode check-in foolishness is just that.
That makes it too late for the latte and muffin I’d been promising myself on the highway…
I take off my boots and my belt in the security zone because I am beeping.
I put them back on.
I sit in the Departures Lounge for one hour with no coffee.
Finally, with the permission of the ground crew, I make a break for Tim Hortons…. Starbucks is too far away, way over in the International Flights Departure Area.
I get back to Gate 6 to find everyone has boarded.
But I can take my Timmy’s on the plane.
Hooray!!
Fifteen of us sit on the commuter plane to Cape Breton for two and a half hours while every other friggin’ plane at the airport gets de-iced before us.
No wonder Cape Bretoners are pure mule.
Now I am going to be late.
Frantically, as we barrel up to the de-icer, I email how-to-facilitate-workshop instructions to a colleague in Cape Breton and beg him to save my ass.
Then we are taking off and I have to switch off my phone without knowing whether my ass is being saved.
I panic the whole way to Cape Breton, while sitting in front of the man with the worst halitosis on the planet.
I can still smell his breath.
I decide to take my Champix on an empty stomach because I couldn’t feel any more nauseous.
Actually I could.
We get to Cape Breton only an hour after the start of the workshop.
Hoo-fuckin-ray.
The single taxi parked outside the airport has nobody in it.
I run around the airport trying to find the taxi driver.
I find the taxi driver.
I impress the urgency of my trip on the taxi driver.
He tells me he’s been here since 7.30am without a fare, so he’s taking a carload.
The taxi driver takes his time rounding up a full mini-van load.
It includes halitosis man.
I get into the front of the taxi, speechless with fury.
SPEECHLESS!
The workshop venue is the last stop on the taxi route.
I throw the money at taxi-driver who throws the receipt at me.
I burst into workshop to find everyone working quietly at correct point in workshop, thanks to innate genius of my colleague.
He is more pleased to see me than I am to see him, however, and he hands workshop over to me in alacratious relief before I even get my snow coat off.
I manage to complete the workshop in only a mild state of anxiety, which eases when I realize the participants are enjoying it.
This workshop is my baby right now. Everyone must coo at it. Everyone.
My colleague drives me back to Cape Breton International Airport.
I blag my way onto the early flight home. Which is late of course.
I go to the restaurant and order sausages and pancakes and tea for my nerves.
They burn the pancakes.
How can you burn pancakes?
The plane was due in at 4pm, but it’s arrives at 5pm covered in de-icing goo.
I wonder why…
Right now, I am sitting with seven other people and the pilot on the commuter plane from Cape Breton, bowling through the winter skies towards home.
Himself has texted to say he will be home around nine, hopefully.
That means it has probably stopped snowing in Halifax. But it’s supposed to go down to minus 10 tonight, so I hope that I scraped enough snow off the car so it’s not frozen too much.
If it’s not frozen too much, I can open my car door to get my snow boots on. With my snow boots on, I can stand up long enough to haul the ice scraper out. With the ice scraper in my hand, I can scrape the ice off the windscreen and windows and car lights. With my car in compliance with the highway winter code, I can see my way out of the snow drift and then out of the car park and finally onto the highway and home.
If not, I’ll have to hang onto the door and yank at it till it opens and I fall on my ass.
Normally I don’t drink on a Monday, but all I can think of right now is that I am two hours and a snow drift away from a big glass of red wine.
I get to the airport and I find the bus and we find my car and I get the door open after a couple of yanks and I sit there until my fingers are warm enough to drive (it's now -18) and I drive home in the dark and I get home and it's HOME and then I realise...
... NOBODY'S FUCKING SHOVELLED THE FRONT DOOR STEPS.
Anyways, it only took a few minutes and now I'm inside in the warm listening to Dragon's Den and finishing this and soooo glad I'm not out in the cold.
I hates the winter....
Saturday, December 06, 2008
The Fall of the Court
Chocolate Court went on the rental market this morning.
Sniffle.
Queenie is sad.
Hopefully the next people will have as much fun here as we did.
Sniffle.
Queenie is sad.
Hopefully the next people will have as much fun here as we did.
To Coalesce or not to Coalesce
I can't be bothered trying to write about the mess that's going on in Canadian politics right now, so just read Jeffrey Simpson's article from the Globe and Mail this morning. It just about sums up what's going on.
http://www.theglobeandmail.com/servlet/story/RTGAM.20081205.wsimpsonessay1206/BNStory/specialComment/home/?pageRequested=1
Alternatively, if you want a sense of what real Canadians think, you can read this article by Rick Mercer, from the same organ.
http://www.theglobeandmail.com/servlet/story/RTGAM.20081205.wPOLmercer1205/BNStory/politics/home
With apologies to Knut fans.
Actually, the best comment I've read on all of this recently was from some Joe Bloe writing on the G&M site, who said what he wanted to see was Harper and Dion gone, replaced by Prentice and Ignatieff. Then we could get back to normal and watch them wiggle their stupendous eyebrows at each other across the floor of the House.
He he he...
http://www.theglobeandmail.com/servlet/story/RTGAM.20081205.wsimpsonessay1206/BNStory/specialComment/home/?pageRequested=1
Alternatively, if you want a sense of what real Canadians think, you can read this article by Rick Mercer, from the same organ.
http://www.theglobeandmail.com/servlet/story/RTGAM.20081205.wPOLmercer1205/BNStory/politics/home
With apologies to Knut fans.
Actually, the best comment I've read on all of this recently was from some Joe Bloe writing on the G&M site, who said what he wanted to see was Harper and Dion gone, replaced by Prentice and Ignatieff. Then we could get back to normal and watch them wiggle their stupendous eyebrows at each other across the floor of the House.
He he he...
Thursday, December 04, 2008
The trouble is, we used to make things in this country....
... and now we just put our hands in the next guy's pockets....
We are about to watch Episode 12 of Season 2 of The Wire.
I don't know when normal service will be restored - there's too much to think about right now.
I still don't smoke.
Himself nearly doesn't smoke.
I don't know what kind of unfucked Canada is the last of right now, but it sure isn't democracy.
TTYL
We are about to watch Episode 12 of Season 2 of The Wire.
I don't know when normal service will be restored - there's too much to think about right now.
I still don't smoke.
Himself nearly doesn't smoke.
I don't know what kind of unfucked Canada is the last of right now, but it sure isn't democracy.
TTYL
Friday, November 21, 2008
House search: installment the latest
So the brilliant news is that Himself told his boss that he didn't want to do salt patrol this year because he was supposed to be getting married next year and he would like for that to happen and it definitely wouldn't if he worked 95 hours a week every week for the next five months. And his boss said that was fine, that he totally understood, so now he will be in charge of the biggest snow plough in the stable (big is best, of course) which means that he only has to go out when it's really bad. Instead of all the time. So we may even have a bit of a life this winter.
But of course we can't celebrate, because of course that has happened on the first day that we are all on storm watch here in Nova Scotia, with 30cm of snow and blowing snow forecast, and 80kmh winds until late tomorrow, so Himself is catching a few snores before he has to go plough the stuff away in the BIG PLOUGH (yet to be named), so people can go shopping tomorrow.
Why on earth people would bother leaving the house the day after that is beyond me, it's the first weekend of the year when you have an excuse to do absolutely nothing. But only five shopping weeks to christmas, so there you go.
So that means I am sort of alone right now and can blog. Hurrah!! Although James downstairs told me he was having a bonfire in the yard tonight. So I may have to go downstairs at some point to join in. Although it's too cold to stand in the yard, even in front of a fire. Plus the wood was all piled beside the firepit instead of under some cover, so it is wet and will take forever to light and will be smoky.
By the way, Accent Monkey, Himself and I are still laughing at that comment about trying to read your book .... still .... a day later....
I think some of you know now that we are coming to the end of an era. Apologies to those of you who don't. I can only send so many emails a day and then my hand seizes up. And I got an injection this afternoon and my left arm and hand is aching for some strange reason.
Yes, barring a major catastrophe, which is of course not unheard of Chez Queenie et Himself, we will be moving lake - and house - in January. The Melwood era will be over. We will be landing on Eagle, near Porters Lake.
We are finding solace in the continuation of the 'dark stuff' imagery.
But of course we can't celebrate, because of course that has happened on the first day that we are all on storm watch here in Nova Scotia, with 30cm of snow and blowing snow forecast, and 80kmh winds until late tomorrow, so Himself is catching a few snores before he has to go plough the stuff away in the BIG PLOUGH (yet to be named), so people can go shopping tomorrow.
Why on earth people would bother leaving the house the day after that is beyond me, it's the first weekend of the year when you have an excuse to do absolutely nothing. But only five shopping weeks to christmas, so there you go.
So that means I am sort of alone right now and can blog. Hurrah!! Although James downstairs told me he was having a bonfire in the yard tonight. So I may have to go downstairs at some point to join in. Although it's too cold to stand in the yard, even in front of a fire. Plus the wood was all piled beside the firepit instead of under some cover, so it is wet and will take forever to light and will be smoky.
By the way, Accent Monkey, Himself and I are still laughing at that comment about trying to read your book .... still .... a day later....
I think some of you know now that we are coming to the end of an era. Apologies to those of you who don't. I can only send so many emails a day and then my hand seizes up. And I got an injection this afternoon and my left arm and hand is aching for some strange reason.
Yes, barring a major catastrophe, which is of course not unheard of Chez Queenie et Himself, we will be moving lake - and house - in January. The Melwood era will be over. We will be landing on Eagle, near Porters Lake.
We are finding solace in the continuation of the 'dark stuff' imagery.
Sunday, November 09, 2008
Third time lucky
I see Myles has a nice photo of poppies on his blog today, it being Remembrance Day.
Lest we Forget.
Remembrance Day is a holiday in Canada, as there are many many veterans here from all kinds of wars, including two (I think) veterans of World War I who are still alive.
Of course, I totally forgot about what day it was, and booked a house viewing for the eleventh hour of the eleventh day of the eleventh month. Because I am from Foreign. So, when we tried to get down the road to see the house it was blocked off by the cops to keep it clear for the Legion parade.
The Legion won't mean anything to Irish readers, so I shall explain.
The Legion is a community centre for war veterans that serves cheap booze. Anyone can join a Legion and partake of said cheap booze whenever they want. They also hold dances and other socials and are the social centre of many small communities.
I suppose Legions are the Canadian equivalent of the local rugby or GAA club. Except that, instead of having to go to the odd rugby match in order to pretend you are in it for more than the cheap booze, you have to go to the Remembrance Day ceremonies.
Anyways, I digress, we got to the house eventually and it was not worth the gas to go look at it.
As usual.
I hate househunting. This is the third time I have done this.
Third time lucky I hope.
I keep moaning at my realtor; just find me a house and tell me what to write on the cheque. (Yes, in Canada, the purchaser has an estate agent as well as the seller).
She hasn't come up with anywhere yet. Well, to be fair, she only started being our realtor last week, when the old man we tried to buy a house from withdrew it from the market and wasted everyone's time for a week and a half. So in return for being nice about it (christamighty, it's HIS house, he doesn't have to sell it if he doesn't want to, although it would be nice if he didn't pretend he did), she said she'd help us find a house.
Up till now, we've found every house we've looked at. Himself spends hours on the Internet every night researching houses on MLS.ca (website of houses for sale through realtors) and kijiji (houses for private sale). If he makes me look at more than three a night I start to hyperventilate, so I am very glad that he is an Aquarian and likes this kind of work.
Those who know me know that the twice I bought a home, it was the first place I looked at. I just wanted a place.
However, this place has to be right, for the simple fact that it's not just me. It will be Himself's place too.
Also, it just has to be right. This is the house I will spend most of my forties in, I presume, so it needs to be hugely reaffirming and positive, so I can get on with whatever it is happens to me in my forties.
One of my friends, who is very organized, suggested we draw up a list of all the things we want in a house. That way, we can be sure everyone's needs are included and we can prioritise what we can do without.
It has to be the one.
That was all we could come up with.
I suggested we try harder. We thought for a while.
A garden, I said.
Not too difficult in Canada. Most houses come with a garden.
I came up with a house that you can have a puppy in.
Himself came up with woodstove.
That helped to narrow it down in wintery, pet-loving Nova Scotia, I can tell you!!
We're hopeless.
We'll know when we see it.
Anyways, after spending three months wandering around District 7 and telling each other that it was District 7 or nowhere, today we thought to hell with it and headed off in the opposite direction. I don't even know what District we were in. It was on the edge of the map.
An adventure.
Of course, even though it was a day off work, and the sun was shining and the sea was beautiful and it wasn't really too cold for Remembrance Day, I am on Champix right now and not supposed to want to smoke.
hahahahaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaa.
For most of every day right now, I am the Dark Overlord of Thundering Bitchland, and for the remainder I am a weeping mess. Also, because I am on Champix (the wonder drug that removes cravings, so you can break the habit- not), I am having the most vivid, lurid dreams every night and waking up completely freaked out by them at odd hours of the morning.
Put it like this, if I know you, you have been in one of my dreams lately, and you should be very relieved that I can't put them on You Tube.
Oh well, I want to quit. Third time lucky I hope.
As well as dealing with me, Himself has been fighting a deeply infected root canal gone wrong for the last couple of weeks, that has gotten so bad, it has sprouted a greenish-yellowish river of pus that seems to have spread up to his ear. He is on his second bout of penicillin and Tylenol 3 is his friend right now, so he snores like a bear all night and walks around with hot things attached to his face all day.
My, it was fun. Him driving around one-handed with a Large Double Double pressed against his jaw, and me crying with rage every time he didn't hear the mental directions I was reduced to thinking at him, because if I spoke out loud I would say 'give me a fucking cigarette NOW'.
Despite this, we found a house we liked.
If we manage to get this house, I will offer all my nicotine withdrawal rage up to whatever it is that ensures world peace and improved living standards for all.
If we don't, I will have to kill something. Hopefully just in one of my dreams.
Lest we Forget.
Remembrance Day is a holiday in Canada, as there are many many veterans here from all kinds of wars, including two (I think) veterans of World War I who are still alive.
Of course, I totally forgot about what day it was, and booked a house viewing for the eleventh hour of the eleventh day of the eleventh month. Because I am from Foreign. So, when we tried to get down the road to see the house it was blocked off by the cops to keep it clear for the Legion parade.
The Legion won't mean anything to Irish readers, so I shall explain.
The Legion is a community centre for war veterans that serves cheap booze. Anyone can join a Legion and partake of said cheap booze whenever they want. They also hold dances and other socials and are the social centre of many small communities.
I suppose Legions are the Canadian equivalent of the local rugby or GAA club. Except that, instead of having to go to the odd rugby match in order to pretend you are in it for more than the cheap booze, you have to go to the Remembrance Day ceremonies.
Anyways, I digress, we got to the house eventually and it was not worth the gas to go look at it.
As usual.
I hate househunting. This is the third time I have done this.
Third time lucky I hope.
I keep moaning at my realtor; just find me a house and tell me what to write on the cheque. (Yes, in Canada, the purchaser has an estate agent as well as the seller).
She hasn't come up with anywhere yet. Well, to be fair, she only started being our realtor last week, when the old man we tried to buy a house from withdrew it from the market and wasted everyone's time for a week and a half. So in return for being nice about it (christamighty, it's HIS house, he doesn't have to sell it if he doesn't want to, although it would be nice if he didn't pretend he did), she said she'd help us find a house.
Up till now, we've found every house we've looked at. Himself spends hours on the Internet every night researching houses on MLS.ca (website of houses for sale through realtors) and kijiji (houses for private sale). If he makes me look at more than three a night I start to hyperventilate, so I am very glad that he is an Aquarian and likes this kind of work.
Those who know me know that the twice I bought a home, it was the first place I looked at. I just wanted a place.
However, this place has to be right, for the simple fact that it's not just me. It will be Himself's place too.
Also, it just has to be right. This is the house I will spend most of my forties in, I presume, so it needs to be hugely reaffirming and positive, so I can get on with whatever it is happens to me in my forties.
One of my friends, who is very organized, suggested we draw up a list of all the things we want in a house. That way, we can be sure everyone's needs are included and we can prioritise what we can do without.
It has to be the one.
That was all we could come up with.
I suggested we try harder. We thought for a while.
A garden, I said.
Not too difficult in Canada. Most houses come with a garden.
I came up with a house that you can have a puppy in.
Himself came up with woodstove.
That helped to narrow it down in wintery, pet-loving Nova Scotia, I can tell you!!
We're hopeless.
We'll know when we see it.
Anyways, after spending three months wandering around District 7 and telling each other that it was District 7 or nowhere, today we thought to hell with it and headed off in the opposite direction. I don't even know what District we were in. It was on the edge of the map.
An adventure.
Of course, even though it was a day off work, and the sun was shining and the sea was beautiful and it wasn't really too cold for Remembrance Day, I am on Champix right now and not supposed to want to smoke.
hahahahaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaa.
For most of every day right now, I am the Dark Overlord of Thundering Bitchland, and for the remainder I am a weeping mess. Also, because I am on Champix (the wonder drug that removes cravings, so you can break the habit- not), I am having the most vivid, lurid dreams every night and waking up completely freaked out by them at odd hours of the morning.
Put it like this, if I know you, you have been in one of my dreams lately, and you should be very relieved that I can't put them on You Tube.
Oh well, I want to quit. Third time lucky I hope.
As well as dealing with me, Himself has been fighting a deeply infected root canal gone wrong for the last couple of weeks, that has gotten so bad, it has sprouted a greenish-yellowish river of pus that seems to have spread up to his ear. He is on his second bout of penicillin and Tylenol 3 is his friend right now, so he snores like a bear all night and walks around with hot things attached to his face all day.
My, it was fun. Him driving around one-handed with a Large Double Double pressed against his jaw, and me crying with rage every time he didn't hear the mental directions I was reduced to thinking at him, because if I spoke out loud I would say 'give me a fucking cigarette NOW'.
Despite this, we found a house we liked.
If we manage to get this house, I will offer all my nicotine withdrawal rage up to whatever it is that ensures world peace and improved living standards for all.
If we don't, I will have to kill something. Hopefully just in one of my dreams.
Saturday, November 01, 2008
Sunday, October 19, 2008
The doctor will see you. And then decide.
Sitting here not quite knowing what to blog about but feeling I should blog.
The worst kind of blogging feeling...
End of the weekend except it's not, as I have a day off tomorrow.
Tomorrow morning, I have an interview.
With a doctor.
I kid you not.
Here in Canada, we have the world famous Medicare, which means you don't have to pay for a doctor.
Which is great.
Except that it means there aren't enough doctors.
Apparently, there are five million Canadians without a family doctor.
Queenie, Himself and Kitty are three of those people.
So when I drove past the Spryfield Family Medical Centre and saw the sign saying lady doctor accepting patients, I was on the phone quicker than you could say 'take your clothes off and get up on the bed there love'.
So I had to make an appointment to meet the doctor.
I'm not quite sure what I should do.
Apart from bring the lashings of private medical insurance we have with me in an attempt to bribe her...
Oh yes, didn't you know, Canada, home of Medicare, has lots and lots of private medical insurance.
Himself and I pay out approximately $200 a month for coverage that includes pharmacare, massage, naturopathy, accupuncture, physiotherapy, counselling, dentist, medical emergency, etc. etc.
Of course, because everyone who has medical insurance pays so much for it, you tend to use it up as much as possible - hence the trips to the dentist, the massages, etc.
Which puts the cost of medical insurance up...
So it goes.
Anyways, I hope Lady Doctor takes us on. That will take a load off my mind.
The worst kind of blogging feeling...
End of the weekend except it's not, as I have a day off tomorrow.
Tomorrow morning, I have an interview.
With a doctor.
I kid you not.
Here in Canada, we have the world famous Medicare, which means you don't have to pay for a doctor.
Which is great.
Except that it means there aren't enough doctors.
Apparently, there are five million Canadians without a family doctor.
Queenie, Himself and Kitty are three of those people.
So when I drove past the Spryfield Family Medical Centre and saw the sign saying lady doctor accepting patients, I was on the phone quicker than you could say 'take your clothes off and get up on the bed there love'.
So I had to make an appointment to meet the doctor.
I'm not quite sure what I should do.
Apart from bring the lashings of private medical insurance we have with me in an attempt to bribe her...
Oh yes, didn't you know, Canada, home of Medicare, has lots and lots of private medical insurance.
Himself and I pay out approximately $200 a month for coverage that includes pharmacare, massage, naturopathy, accupuncture, physiotherapy, counselling, dentist, medical emergency, etc. etc.
Of course, because everyone who has medical insurance pays so much for it, you tend to use it up as much as possible - hence the trips to the dentist, the massages, etc.
Which puts the cost of medical insurance up...
So it goes.
Anyways, I hope Lady Doctor takes us on. That will take a load off my mind.
Saturday, October 18, 2008
Passchendaele should have been called Passiondale
Christ almighty, I managed to delete the entire post and now I have to write it out again.
I thought auto save had a function.
SOOOOO, Himself and I went to see Passchendaele last night.
The movie.
The new Canadian movie, written, directed by and starring Paul Gross, who you will all remember as Constable Benton Fraser in Due South, the weird Canadian cop show of the nineties.
This movie is being plugged as the great new interpretation of Canada's coming of age as a nation during World War I.
Himself was very excited about it, being one of those (millions of) Canadians who has a deep interest in the subject. He even remembered the date we had to go to the cinema. Usually, Queenie gets to remember this kind of stuff on his behalf as part of her high end personal assistant role, the one with added benefits such as cooking and doing laundry tagged on.
Anyways, enough of that nasty sarcasm.
We remembered.
And we went.
We stopped into It's all Greek to me first for a stomach-stretching gastro-fest of Greek yumminess. We had the platter for starters which meant of course that we couldn't eat the main course, but we did our best and Himself did a lot better than me.
Himself and I are on a mission to check out the best restaurants in Halifax for the visitors who will be here next year, to ensure the euro-dollars go to the best places. Like I say regularly, we are dealing with the big issues before the big day.
Anyways, we were a little concerned the food would put us to sleep, but then we figured the film would be so good it wouldn't.
As it turned out, we didn't go to sleep, but we should've.
Yawn.
As one of the cinema reviewers in this town said, the movie is Saving Private Ryan meets Titanic.
I would add the scenery from Brokeback Mountain to that mix. And there you have it.
As we left the cinema to walk home (and get rid of some of the greekfest), I overheard someone say 'shit story, terrible plot, but that's what you get when the Tories fund culture.'
I thought auto save had a function.
SOOOOO, Himself and I went to see Passchendaele last night.
The movie.
The new Canadian movie, written, directed by and starring Paul Gross, who you will all remember as Constable Benton Fraser in Due South, the weird Canadian cop show of the nineties.
This movie is being plugged as the great new interpretation of Canada's coming of age as a nation during World War I.
Himself was very excited about it, being one of those (millions of) Canadians who has a deep interest in the subject. He even remembered the date we had to go to the cinema. Usually, Queenie gets to remember this kind of stuff on his behalf as part of her high end personal assistant role, the one with added benefits such as cooking and doing laundry tagged on.
Anyways, enough of that nasty sarcasm.
We remembered.
And we went.
We stopped into It's all Greek to me first for a stomach-stretching gastro-fest of Greek yumminess. We had the platter for starters which meant of course that we couldn't eat the main course, but we did our best and Himself did a lot better than me.
Himself and I are on a mission to check out the best restaurants in Halifax for the visitors who will be here next year, to ensure the euro-dollars go to the best places. Like I say regularly, we are dealing with the big issues before the big day.
Anyways, we were a little concerned the food would put us to sleep, but then we figured the film would be so good it wouldn't.
As it turned out, we didn't go to sleep, but we should've.
Yawn.
As one of the cinema reviewers in this town said, the movie is Saving Private Ryan meets Titanic.
I would add the scenery from Brokeback Mountain to that mix. And there you have it.
As we left the cinema to walk home (and get rid of some of the greekfest), I overheard someone say 'shit story, terrible plot, but that's what you get when the Tories fund culture.'
Monday, October 13, 2008
It must be chilly in hell tonight
If anyone had told me two years ago that British Prime Minister Gordon Brown would save the stock market by nationalising the banks on the day that Paul Krugman won the Nobel Prize for Economics I would have laughed.
I would have.
And remember boys and girls, Queenie and at least four of her New Canadian friends can't vote tomorrow, so please, if you have one, use it for us, if not for yourself.
I don't think any of the four would go blue, if you're interested.
I would have.
And remember boys and girls, Queenie and at least four of her New Canadian friends can't vote tomorrow, so please, if you have one, use it for us, if not for yourself.
I don't think any of the four would go blue, if you're interested.
Sunday, October 12, 2008
Being Thankful is difficult in the current world paradigm
No, I'm not going to talk about the world economic crisis.
Charlie Brooker wrote the piece I was going to write, so I don't need to do it now.
He of course wrote it much better than I would ever have done.
He of course doesn't have to weave tales of domestic bliss and gardening into everything he publishes, which makes it easier.
But still...
... I know when I'm in the presence of writing genius.
geneflects sortof...
I had to look up the spelling of that word. I don't often have to do that, but when I do, I always find I'm trying to put a U in the word somewhere.
I wonder why that is?
You'd think I'd be trying to put an I into the word.
I'm not going to talk about reality television either.
When did you change to accentmonkey.com? How posh!!! I'm all jealous now...
Even though I love So you think you can dance?, which is what we watch over here in Canader.
It's too early in the season to have an opinion on it, apart from the obvious one which is why are all the contestants from Ontario? Which I'm not going to address because the answer is that Ontario is where all the funding for extra-curricular youth activities is spent, because Ontario decides the government.
And I don't want to get into politics tonight.
Apart from one thing I need to say: the Canadian election is actually very interesting this time around, because we get to choose between:
the Tories: who are bastards according to everyone you talk to, even Tories, but who did actually did foresee some of this mess and tightened some, possibly relevant, banking rules just in time - not difficult in banking-conservative Canada though (it costs $3 to take money out of your bank account with another bank's ATM here, I kid you not) - so no big kudos for the grey eyed robot and his lackeys out there,
the Liberals: who have a John Bruton type geek leading them, but have a very interesting Green Shift policy that would shift the economy's taxation system to a carbon tax based one with reductions in income tax and investment in green jobs. Which is a great idea as far as I can make out, but which of course is really scary now because no one knows whether they'll have a job in a year's time. Unfortunately, the policy is incomprehensible when explained in a thick Quebec accent so nobody understands it except its author, Stephan Dion, soon to be former leader of the Liberal party (although this man won the leadership against Bob Rae and Ignatieff, so who knows....)
the NDP, which is doing pretty well right now touting their usual business bashing stuff. People are getting it this time round of course. But they have a strange and inevitably pro-business take on energy, i.e a cap and trade approach, which is obviously a curved ball thrown in to demand blind obedience from the intelligent yet committed NDP voter (or else the outcome of the Canadian Auto Workers' union having five seats on a four seat energy policy committee),
the Bloc, who were supposed to die this election, but who are having far too much fun picking on Harper for cutting cultural funding just before the election to leave the party on time (and of course, where would they go, now that money to spend on good parties has been withdrawn),
and the Greens, who were on 13 per cent last time I checked, which means they are going to fuck the numbers up for everyone else in their version of the Nader approach to saving the planet. Why don't Greens just vote for other people? Instead of trying to be in charge? It would work. Honest.
Results on Wednesday morning with your oatmeal for all you international political junkies. Will Canada be a weathervane for the lumpen prols worldwide? Probably. Will the prols save us? Probably not.
Not a lot to be thankful yet.
Charlie Brooker wrote the piece I was going to write, so I don't need to do it now.
He of course wrote it much better than I would ever have done.
He of course doesn't have to weave tales of domestic bliss and gardening into everything he publishes, which makes it easier.
But still...
... I know when I'm in the presence of writing genius.
geneflects sortof...
I had to look up the spelling of that word. I don't often have to do that, but when I do, I always find I'm trying to put a U in the word somewhere.
I wonder why that is?
You'd think I'd be trying to put an I into the word.
I'm not going to talk about reality television either.
When did you change to accentmonkey.com? How posh!!! I'm all jealous now...
Even though I love So you think you can dance?, which is what we watch over here in Canader.
It's too early in the season to have an opinion on it, apart from the obvious one which is why are all the contestants from Ontario? Which I'm not going to address because the answer is that Ontario is where all the funding for extra-curricular youth activities is spent, because Ontario decides the government.
And I don't want to get into politics tonight.
Apart from one thing I need to say: the Canadian election is actually very interesting this time around, because we get to choose between:
the Tories: who are bastards according to everyone you talk to, even Tories, but who did actually did foresee some of this mess and tightened some, possibly relevant, banking rules just in time - not difficult in banking-conservative Canada though (it costs $3 to take money out of your bank account with another bank's ATM here, I kid you not) - so no big kudos for the grey eyed robot and his lackeys out there,
the Liberals: who have a John Bruton type geek leading them, but have a very interesting Green Shift policy that would shift the economy's taxation system to a carbon tax based one with reductions in income tax and investment in green jobs. Which is a great idea as far as I can make out, but which of course is really scary now because no one knows whether they'll have a job in a year's time. Unfortunately, the policy is incomprehensible when explained in a thick Quebec accent so nobody understands it except its author, Stephan Dion, soon to be former leader of the Liberal party (although this man won the leadership against Bob Rae and Ignatieff, so who knows....)
the NDP, which is doing pretty well right now touting their usual business bashing stuff. People are getting it this time round of course. But they have a strange and inevitably pro-business take on energy, i.e a cap and trade approach, which is obviously a curved ball thrown in to demand blind obedience from the intelligent yet committed NDP voter (or else the outcome of the Canadian Auto Workers' union having five seats on a four seat energy policy committee),
the Bloc, who were supposed to die this election, but who are having far too much fun picking on Harper for cutting cultural funding just before the election to leave the party on time (and of course, where would they go, now that money to spend on good parties has been withdrawn),
and the Greens, who were on 13 per cent last time I checked, which means they are going to fuck the numbers up for everyone else in their version of the Nader approach to saving the planet. Why don't Greens just vote for other people? Instead of trying to be in charge? It would work. Honest.
Results on Wednesday morning with your oatmeal for all you international political junkies. Will Canada be a weathervane for the lumpen prols worldwide? Probably. Will the prols save us? Probably not.
Not a lot to be thankful yet.
Thankfully, by the time you read this....
... it will be Canadian Thanksgiving.
This year, most of us here in Canada are thankful that we are not American.
Yet.
This year, we are also thankful we are not Icelandic, although we have started going there on holidays as a nation, because of the special offer flights.
Me, I'm currently thankful I like to cook.
Up until last Thursday, I was going to my out-laws for Thanksgiving, which is what I normally do (unless I am lugging a canoe around a lake, which is what I did last year). Then, Himself's work took a swerve towards winter hours. So for the last three nights and the next seven, Himself is working a twelve hour shift from 7pm - 7am.
So not only do I have to cook Thanksgiving dinner, I have to have it on the table by four pm.
Bah.
I figured I would just not do it.
I told Himself we'd just have pork chops or something, because I don't like turkey and I didn't feel particularly thankful this year anyways.
Oh, he said.
Oh...
Himself, being a youngest child, has said family member's innate ability to pull THE SAH-DED-EST FACE IN DEH WOR-ALD EHV-HER when he needs to.
Oh, he said, with his sad face on.
I held my ground for a bit.
Then I heard him telling Kitty on the phone that he would do a meal for everyone on Sunday .... if he wasn't too tired.
Or sad, I assume.
Or dead from the H2S levels.
I don't actually know if Kitty was on the phone or this was just a ploy of course.
Anyways, it worked.
Christ almighty, I can't be one of those women who sends her bloke off to work a twelve hour shift in a place where the H2S levels are higher than the highest H2S levels ever recorded in the world ever, forcing him to be extremely BRAVE and RESOURCEFUL and CAREFUL and SUCCESSFULL at STAYING ALIVE and then forces him to take a shower as soon as he gets home from the FREEZING COLD and DANGEROUS oil rig bilge barge pumping whatever the fuck it is he's gotten Himself into doing now thingummy.
Just so he can cook a nice supper for her.
Without even asking about the H2S levels that day.
Well, I could be that kind of woman, but I choose not to be.
Actually, I'd quite like to freak out about the H2S levels, but I'm not allowed. Because it's not an issue. Because Himself is TOO CAREFUL TO DIE.
Phew.
Why am I living with a danger junkie?
Oh that's right, everyone else bored me to death eventually.
Maybe Himself will scare me to death eventually.
Or H2S me to death. According to Wiki, a buildup of hydrogen sulfide in the atmosphere could have caused the Permian-Triassic extinction event 252 million years ago.
There you go.
Okay, how did we get here from Thanksgiving?
Get back to the point, please.
Yes, anyways, I'm thankful I can cook. Because that means I don't have to cook a turkey.
I hate turkey.
I worked on a turkey farm once, long long time ago.
Some of my readers will know why.
It wasn't for the glamorous surroundings or the wages I can tell you.
My job was to get the plucked turkeys, cut out all the oozing scabs from the fighting that goes on in a turkey barn, and sew the skin together like new with white thread.
So, I don't like turkey.
So we're having rib of beef instead.
With a Dijon mustard and cumin crust.
And Yorkshire pudding.
With mashed and sweet potatoes, butternut squash (roasted, with brown sugar and butter) and turnip.
Because you can't have too many Fall colours on a plate in our house.
It will be preceded by a nourishing barley and lentil soup.
And followed by pumpkin pie, of course.
With lashings of cream.
A careful blend of Old and New World autumnal cooking.
It's all prepped so I don't have to do anything until 2pm and can spend the morning in the garden.
I texted the dinner menu to Himself at work.
To cheer him up.
And distract him from his H2S monitor.
Which beeps constantly, such is the danger that man puts Himself in in order to put prime rib of beef on the small pine dining table in our apartment.
(I'm not taking the piss out of Himself, by the way, I am dealing with the slight, scratching the back of my brain dread I am feeling about this job by using my lifelong friend and ally, sarcasm.)
He texted me back with the standard text I get when he's getting what he wanted all along.
UR the best babe.
Yes, I know I am.
You're completely spoiled is what it is, I texted him back.
So now we're actually having Thanksgiving, I guess I should be thinking about what I'm thankful for.
I'm so going to make everyone at the table tell each other what they're thankful for this year.
Just to make a point.
About gratitude.
This year, most of us here in Canada are thankful that we are not American.
Yet.
This year, we are also thankful we are not Icelandic, although we have started going there on holidays as a nation, because of the special offer flights.
Me, I'm currently thankful I like to cook.
Up until last Thursday, I was going to my out-laws for Thanksgiving, which is what I normally do (unless I am lugging a canoe around a lake, which is what I did last year). Then, Himself's work took a swerve towards winter hours. So for the last three nights and the next seven, Himself is working a twelve hour shift from 7pm - 7am.
So not only do I have to cook Thanksgiving dinner, I have to have it on the table by four pm.
Bah.
I figured I would just not do it.
I told Himself we'd just have pork chops or something, because I don't like turkey and I didn't feel particularly thankful this year anyways.
Oh, he said.
Oh...
Himself, being a youngest child, has said family member's innate ability to pull THE SAH-DED-EST FACE IN DEH WOR-ALD EHV-HER when he needs to.
Oh, he said, with his sad face on.
I held my ground for a bit.
Then I heard him telling Kitty on the phone that he would do a meal for everyone on Sunday .... if he wasn't too tired.
Or sad, I assume.
Or dead from the H2S levels.
I don't actually know if Kitty was on the phone or this was just a ploy of course.
Anyways, it worked.
Christ almighty, I can't be one of those women who sends her bloke off to work a twelve hour shift in a place where the H2S levels are higher than the highest H2S levels ever recorded in the world ever, forcing him to be extremely BRAVE and RESOURCEFUL and CAREFUL and SUCCESSFULL at STAYING ALIVE and then forces him to take a shower as soon as he gets home from the FREEZING COLD and DANGEROUS oil rig bilge barge pumping whatever the fuck it is he's gotten Himself into doing now thingummy.
Just so he can cook a nice supper for her.
Without even asking about the H2S levels that day.
Well, I could be that kind of woman, but I choose not to be.
Actually, I'd quite like to freak out about the H2S levels, but I'm not allowed. Because it's not an issue. Because Himself is TOO CAREFUL TO DIE.
Phew.
Why am I living with a danger junkie?
Oh that's right, everyone else bored me to death eventually.
Maybe Himself will scare me to death eventually.
Or H2S me to death. According to Wiki, a buildup of hydrogen sulfide in the atmosphere could have caused the Permian-Triassic extinction event 252 million years ago.
There you go.
Okay, how did we get here from Thanksgiving?
Get back to the point, please.
Yes, anyways, I'm thankful I can cook. Because that means I don't have to cook a turkey.
I hate turkey.
I worked on a turkey farm once, long long time ago.
Some of my readers will know why.
It wasn't for the glamorous surroundings or the wages I can tell you.
My job was to get the plucked turkeys, cut out all the oozing scabs from the fighting that goes on in a turkey barn, and sew the skin together like new with white thread.
So, I don't like turkey.
So we're having rib of beef instead.
With a Dijon mustard and cumin crust.
And Yorkshire pudding.
With mashed and sweet potatoes, butternut squash (roasted, with brown sugar and butter) and turnip.
Because you can't have too many Fall colours on a plate in our house.
It will be preceded by a nourishing barley and lentil soup.
And followed by pumpkin pie, of course.
With lashings of cream.
A careful blend of Old and New World autumnal cooking.
It's all prepped so I don't have to do anything until 2pm and can spend the morning in the garden.
I texted the dinner menu to Himself at work.
To cheer him up.
And distract him from his H2S monitor.
Which beeps constantly, such is the danger that man puts Himself in in order to put prime rib of beef on the small pine dining table in our apartment.
(I'm not taking the piss out of Himself, by the way, I am dealing with the slight, scratching the back of my brain dread I am feeling about this job by using my lifelong friend and ally, sarcasm.)
He texted me back with the standard text I get when he's getting what he wanted all along.
UR the best babe.
Yes, I know I am.
You're completely spoiled is what it is, I texted him back.
So now we're actually having Thanksgiving, I guess I should be thinking about what I'm thankful for.
I'm so going to make everyone at the table tell each other what they're thankful for this year.
Just to make a point.
About gratitude.
Charlie tells us it's over, so it must be over.
The inimitable Mr. Charlie Brooker, from the Guardian today... the only person who was more scared reading The Road than I was, for which I will love him forever.
Great. I go on holiday, turn my back for a few weeks, come back and what has happened? The banks are on fire and we're at war with Iceland. As I type these words (on a Friday morning, fact fans), Sky News is zooming in on a screen full of red flashing numbers, apparently willing them to fall yet lower. The problem is a lack of confidence, they keep saying, cutting away every so often to show a big plunging downward arrow or a shot of a City trader holding his head in despair.
I'm a bit sick of that whole holding-his-head-in-despair schtick, to be honest. It's about time they tried something more spectacular. Surely it's time for a revival of that great cliche of the 1930s, the ruined City whizzkid hurling himself out of the window? The credit crunch high dive.
Extra points if you manage to pull a backflip on the way down, or crack your jaw on a window cleaner's cradle somewhere around floor 35. The ultimate high score goes to the first one who manages to successfully update his Facebook status using an iPhone seconds before slamming into the pavement. "Danny is plummeting to his doom." Click here to tag him in a photo.
Is this the end of the world? If so, it's a bit more boring than I'd imagined. So far, it's been an invisible apocalypse. Poke your head out the window and there's little evidence of charred debris. Perhaps that's yet to come. Like I say, I'm writing this on Friday morning. By the time you read it, it'll be Monday. Maybe we're already bartering with coloured pebbles or fighting over water or something.
Still, there's no point in worrying. If we're going to be plunged into some kind of barbaric medieval dark age, I might as well be philosophical about it, because there's no way I'll survive more than a month. I'd be hopeless at fighting over basic resources and don't have any essential manual skills, such as the ability to hunt and skin rats. Perhaps I can learn the lute and become a minstrel, or perform bawdy jigs in exchange for pennies. Assuming there are any pennies. Hey, maybe just before all currency is finally declared worthless we'll get to experience the whole wheelbarrows-full-of-worthless-banknotes thing, like they did in Germany just before the war. That'd be a blast.
It all seems particularly bizarre, because just over a week ago I was in Las Vegas, as part of a US road trip I'm writing up for the Travel section. The casino put me up in an outrageous suite the size of a millionaire's bachelor pad. It had a pool table, a butler, and a shower in the lounge with a lapdancing pole in the middle of it. The windows looked out over the Las Vegas strip; specifically over the multimillion-dollar fountain show at the front of Bellagio. I visited a nightclub full of pricks who danced around tossing banknotes in the air, then returned to the suite, which alongside a pool table and a butler, also came equipped with about six gigantic, wall-mounted HD plasma TVs, every single one of which was screaming bad news about the economy. I felt like I was trapped inside a terrifying satirical sci-fi flick.
And it had to happen, obviously. For years, money was just appearing from nowhere, or so we were told. People bought houses and bragged about how the value kept zooming up, and up, and up. In fact they didn't seem to be houses at all, but magic coin-shitting machines. It was all a dream, a dream in which you bought a box and lived in it, and all the time it generated money like a cow generates farts. Great big stinking clouds of money. And none of it was real. And now it's gone. Your house is worth less than your shoes, and your shoes are now, in turn, worth less than your mouth and your arse. Yes, your most valuable possessions are now your mouth and your arse, and you're going to have to use both of them in all manner of previously unthinkable ways to make ends meet, to pay for that box, the box you live in, the one you mistook for an enchanted, unstoppable cash engine. I hope you've got a nice kitchen. Maybe that'll take your mind off things. And sell that Alessi smoothie maker while you're about it. You can't afford fruit any more. It's tap water at best from now on. It's good for you! Really, it is.
All of it was a dream. All that crap we bought, all the bottled water and Blu-Ray players and designer shoes and iPod Shuffles and patio heaters; all the jobs we had; all the catchphrases we memorised and the stupid things we thought. Everything we did for the past 10 years - none of it really felt real, did it? Time to snap out of it. Time to grow our own vegetables and learn hand-to-hand combat with staves. And time, perhaps, to really start living
Great. I go on holiday, turn my back for a few weeks, come back and what has happened? The banks are on fire and we're at war with Iceland. As I type these words (on a Friday morning, fact fans), Sky News is zooming in on a screen full of red flashing numbers, apparently willing them to fall yet lower. The problem is a lack of confidence, they keep saying, cutting away every so often to show a big plunging downward arrow or a shot of a City trader holding his head in despair.
I'm a bit sick of that whole holding-his-head-in-despair schtick, to be honest. It's about time they tried something more spectacular. Surely it's time for a revival of that great cliche of the 1930s, the ruined City whizzkid hurling himself out of the window? The credit crunch high dive.
Extra points if you manage to pull a backflip on the way down, or crack your jaw on a window cleaner's cradle somewhere around floor 35. The ultimate high score goes to the first one who manages to successfully update his Facebook status using an iPhone seconds before slamming into the pavement. "Danny is plummeting to his doom." Click here to tag him in a photo.
Is this the end of the world? If so, it's a bit more boring than I'd imagined. So far, it's been an invisible apocalypse. Poke your head out the window and there's little evidence of charred debris. Perhaps that's yet to come. Like I say, I'm writing this on Friday morning. By the time you read it, it'll be Monday. Maybe we're already bartering with coloured pebbles or fighting over water or something.
Still, there's no point in worrying. If we're going to be plunged into some kind of barbaric medieval dark age, I might as well be philosophical about it, because there's no way I'll survive more than a month. I'd be hopeless at fighting over basic resources and don't have any essential manual skills, such as the ability to hunt and skin rats. Perhaps I can learn the lute and become a minstrel, or perform bawdy jigs in exchange for pennies. Assuming there are any pennies. Hey, maybe just before all currency is finally declared worthless we'll get to experience the whole wheelbarrows-full-of-worthless-banknotes thing, like they did in Germany just before the war. That'd be a blast.
It all seems particularly bizarre, because just over a week ago I was in Las Vegas, as part of a US road trip I'm writing up for the Travel section. The casino put me up in an outrageous suite the size of a millionaire's bachelor pad. It had a pool table, a butler, and a shower in the lounge with a lapdancing pole in the middle of it. The windows looked out over the Las Vegas strip; specifically over the multimillion-dollar fountain show at the front of Bellagio. I visited a nightclub full of pricks who danced around tossing banknotes in the air, then returned to the suite, which alongside a pool table and a butler, also came equipped with about six gigantic, wall-mounted HD plasma TVs, every single one of which was screaming bad news about the economy. I felt like I was trapped inside a terrifying satirical sci-fi flick.
And it had to happen, obviously. For years, money was just appearing from nowhere, or so we were told. People bought houses and bragged about how the value kept zooming up, and up, and up. In fact they didn't seem to be houses at all, but magic coin-shitting machines. It was all a dream, a dream in which you bought a box and lived in it, and all the time it generated money like a cow generates farts. Great big stinking clouds of money. And none of it was real. And now it's gone. Your house is worth less than your shoes, and your shoes are now, in turn, worth less than your mouth and your arse. Yes, your most valuable possessions are now your mouth and your arse, and you're going to have to use both of them in all manner of previously unthinkable ways to make ends meet, to pay for that box, the box you live in, the one you mistook for an enchanted, unstoppable cash engine. I hope you've got a nice kitchen. Maybe that'll take your mind off things. And sell that Alessi smoothie maker while you're about it. You can't afford fruit any more. It's tap water at best from now on. It's good for you! Really, it is.
All of it was a dream. All that crap we bought, all the bottled water and Blu-Ray players and designer shoes and iPod Shuffles and patio heaters; all the jobs we had; all the catchphrases we memorised and the stupid things we thought. Everything we did for the past 10 years - none of it really felt real, did it? Time to snap out of it. Time to grow our own vegetables and learn hand-to-hand combat with staves. And time, perhaps, to really start living
Why do we insist on leaving a vaporous vapour trail?
We are truly the generation that won't allow ourselves to get drunk in peace, aren't we.
First of all, there was drunk behaviour.
Which was frowned on, but forgettable mainly due to the fleeting nature of it (unless there was a video camera in evidence). Or photos. But they could be lost in the move, couldn't they.
Then there was drunk telephoning.
Bad.
Then we invented drunk texting.
Pretty bad.
And now there's drunk Facebooking.
Two types.
Actual Facebooking when drunk. Well, not drunk so much as slightly tipsy so that you can't remember what stellar thought was in your head at the time you wrote the thing.
And then there's the really scary Facebooking of the past through image and sound.
Why do we leave this vaporous vapour trail behind us constantly?
We should have one day a year when there's no technology and we all just have a party or a debate or whatever we want, in peace, with no phones or Interweb.
I hereby command that August 8th be that day from now on.
I'll organize the party next year, howzat?!
Sitting here waiting for the breadmaker to finish making the bread.
When you peer inside, the weirdly contorting dough looks like the beginnings of a clone or something equally nasty.
First of all, there was drunk behaviour.
Which was frowned on, but forgettable mainly due to the fleeting nature of it (unless there was a video camera in evidence). Or photos. But they could be lost in the move, couldn't they.
Then there was drunk telephoning.
Bad.
Then we invented drunk texting.
Pretty bad.
And now there's drunk Facebooking.
Two types.
Actual Facebooking when drunk. Well, not drunk so much as slightly tipsy so that you can't remember what stellar thought was in your head at the time you wrote the thing.
And then there's the really scary Facebooking of the past through image and sound.
Why do we leave this vaporous vapour trail behind us constantly?
We should have one day a year when there's no technology and we all just have a party or a debate or whatever we want, in peace, with no phones or Interweb.
I hereby command that August 8th be that day from now on.
I'll organize the party next year, howzat?!
Sitting here waiting for the breadmaker to finish making the bread.
When you peer inside, the weirdly contorting dough looks like the beginnings of a clone or something equally nasty.
So if I didn't do it, and your dad didn't do it, and you didn't do it, then who did it? The fuck-up fairy?
'Utter carnage' is how one trader described events as he caught the train home from Canary Wharf on Friday
Yeah whatever, go on...
More than £600bn has been wiped from the value of shares of companies listed on the FTSE 100 since it climbed to 6,732 on 15 June 2007. Now the index is trading at around 4,000, a 40 per cent slump in 12 months,
By my calculations that is 4.553 to the power of -7. Of course, I don't know what that means. I think it means that every point of the FTSE was worth 4.5 Billion before. So the FTSE used to be worth 30,294 billion. So now the FTSE is worth 18,000 billion.
Yep. They're right.
59.4177.
I thought you rounded it down if it was less than five?
That will have a big impact on the value of pensions
Yes, they told us that at work.
Mark Otswald, an analyst at Monument Securities, describes the last few days as 'sheer, bloody panic. The Western financial system is breaking down.'
They didn't tell us that.
Apocalypse now? 'Let's hope not,' says Gerard Lyons, chief economist at Standard Chartered
Hear hear, Gerard...
they don't know how bad things are going to get, so the temptation is to dump assets, no matter what.'
They always trot out that line, don't they. I always wonder who 'they' are.
The first priority is to free up the money markets where banks lend to each other to ensure there is sufficient credit around to lend to businesses and mortgage borrowers. Ominously, that isn't happening,
I wonder where the money is ending up.
David Frost, director-general of the British Chambers of Commerce, says: Companies are being squeezed and capital expenditure will be cut
Oh well, that's all right then. Capital expenditure is planned for and paid for in advance, by the government sometimes, isn't it.
Many businesses are already low on cash because of higher costs - such as fuel bills - and weakening consumer demand
Aaah, is that so.
(I saw three Hummers in the carpark at the superstore in Spryfield today... I swear to god I did).
The bank also charged £35,000 in fees. Derek Simpson, general secretary of the Unite union, says: 'The banks are trying to hoard cash and squeezing everyone down the chain
Aha. The banks are hoarding cash are they? There's a surprise.
September, there was a net outflow of $72bn from American mutual funds, and the figure for this month could be even higher.
In Britain, retail investors have held their nerve, although there was a £500m outflow in August
I have no idea what this means. But it sounds important.
But hedge funds are major sellers. That is happening for one of two reasons: either because banks are making margin calls, where they ask for more security as debt becomes dearer to service, or because investors are taking fright and cashing in their chips.
This is where I started to get interested. Why does the journalist not know why this is happening? He's already pointed out that the banks are hoarding cash.
Rich individuals, including Russian oligarchs, are also selling, in particular where loans are secured against equity stakes in companies under their control. As stock prices fall, banks are demanding more security from tycoons, many of whom have tied up their wealth in shares
If I were the banks, and I had totally fucked things up, and broken all the rules, and destroyed the meaning of the word trust, and been cast out in the street, and had to break back in and sit in the corner snivelling and begging, until I got the shrug that meant you had gotten away with it for about fifteen minutes, I would be hoarding too, obviously,
Ukrainian oligarch and iron ore miner Kostyantin Zhevago was forced to sell a 20 per cent stake in metal company Ferrexpo last week because of the steep fall in the price of commodities. Russian billionaire Oleg Deripaska has sold 20 per cent of Canadian car parts maker Magna
To whom have these people had to sell their said to be one time ill-gotten gains?
who bought 20 per cent of Magna?
and why was it not on the news?
Or did I miss it?
When the world's wealthy elites are forced to sell shares, it not only adds to the downward pressure on financial markets, but also takes spending power out of the economy, with spin-off effects for sectors as diverse as luxury goods, property and investment in jobs
Why? Do the people that buy them not have any fun ever? Do they just sit and count their money?
Who could these people be?
Who doesn't like to have fun?
The Depression of 80 years ago was compounded by the fact that wealth was controlled by an even narrower spectrum of society than today; the effect of wealth destruction for a few was felt disproportionately by the rest of the population. Nevertheless, a version of that nexus exists today
What does this mean? It is counter-intuitive to me? Surely if a wider range of people have money the risk is spread? Am I missing something important about percentages here?
I was never any good at gambling.
Oh no!! I get it now. It's the same as I think, it's just too academic for me to understand it.
the insurance companies have escaped relatively unscathed, and fears that they might have to sell shares to increase their solvency ratios to make good a decline in equity prices appear overdone.
In 2001-02, British insurers such as Standard Life were forced to sell equities to meet capital adequacy requirements, but today insurers are less vulnerable.
Ahaaa!!!! This has happened before.
But not to the banks.
That's why it's terrible this time.
Of more concern are the potential liabilities hanging over credit default swaps, a huge unregulated sector that few people know about or understand.
Does anyone know what a credit default swap is?
Over the last 12 years, the value of the CDS market, where these contracts are traded like other derivatives, has grown to $55 trillion. CDSs have been used to insure risky mortgage bonds, as well as the debt of collapsed institutions such as Lehman Brothers. The worry is that insurers and banks that underwrote these instruments will not be able to meet their liabilities.
And they are?
With judgement, and perhaps a little luck, the financial crisis that has enveloped the world can be brought under control via a global rescue plan, but the aftershock will almost certainly be with us for years to come.
Yes, boys and girls, that's the end of the article. I swear to god it is. And there are no comments.
Investopedia says that a credit default swap is
A swap designed to transfer the credit exposure of fixed income products between parties.
The buyer of a credit swap receives credit protection, whereas the seller of the swap guarantees the credit worthiness of the product. By doing this, the risk of default is transferred from the holder of the fixed income security to the seller of the swap. For example, the buyer of a credit swap will be entitled to the par value of the bond by the seller of the swap, should the bond default in its coupon payments.
So in the case of Lehman Bros, they sold 'toxic something or others' and then they did a credit swap with someone else. The someone else gets the insurance. And then the insurance company can sue Lehman Bros for the pay out costs when the 'toxic something or other' collapses.
So the government is buying the toxic something or others so that means the government will have to guarantee the creditworthyness of the product.
So how will the government do that? Does it have to guarantee it to itself and just take the hit?
Why on earth would anyone do any of this?
If I am reading this article right, somebody has done this to the tune of $55 trillion.
This is the teenage equivalent of being in so much trouble that it's worse than the time that despite your best efforts at being sorry the cops rang the house in the middle of the night after they'd picked you up when you were puking up on the street purely to wake your parents up straight after they'd finally gone to sleep right after they had had an argument.
You'd think someone would fucking understand the pain they're all in, wouldn't you.
I do.
he he he
What has to happen now is that trust has to be re-established.
How many times have I heard that this month.
And now I finally understand
Who do YOU trust?
With the greatest respect to Richard Wachman and Tim Webb.
Yeah whatever, go on...
More than £600bn has been wiped from the value of shares of companies listed on the FTSE 100 since it climbed to 6,732 on 15 June 2007. Now the index is trading at around 4,000, a 40 per cent slump in 12 months,
By my calculations that is 4.553 to the power of -7. Of course, I don't know what that means. I think it means that every point of the FTSE was worth 4.5 Billion before. So the FTSE used to be worth 30,294 billion. So now the FTSE is worth 18,000 billion.
Yep. They're right.
59.4177.
I thought you rounded it down if it was less than five?
That will have a big impact on the value of pensions
Yes, they told us that at work.
Mark Otswald, an analyst at Monument Securities, describes the last few days as 'sheer, bloody panic. The Western financial system is breaking down.'
They didn't tell us that.
Apocalypse now? 'Let's hope not,' says Gerard Lyons, chief economist at Standard Chartered
Hear hear, Gerard...
they don't know how bad things are going to get, so the temptation is to dump assets, no matter what.'
They always trot out that line, don't they. I always wonder who 'they' are.
The first priority is to free up the money markets where banks lend to each other to ensure there is sufficient credit around to lend to businesses and mortgage borrowers. Ominously, that isn't happening,
I wonder where the money is ending up.
David Frost, director-general of the British Chambers of Commerce, says: Companies are being squeezed and capital expenditure will be cut
Oh well, that's all right then. Capital expenditure is planned for and paid for in advance, by the government sometimes, isn't it.
Many businesses are already low on cash because of higher costs - such as fuel bills - and weakening consumer demand
Aaah, is that so.
(I saw three Hummers in the carpark at the superstore in Spryfield today... I swear to god I did).
The bank also charged £35,000 in fees. Derek Simpson, general secretary of the Unite union, says: 'The banks are trying to hoard cash and squeezing everyone down the chain
Aha. The banks are hoarding cash are they? There's a surprise.
September, there was a net outflow of $72bn from American mutual funds, and the figure for this month could be even higher.
In Britain, retail investors have held their nerve, although there was a £500m outflow in August
I have no idea what this means. But it sounds important.
But hedge funds are major sellers. That is happening for one of two reasons: either because banks are making margin calls, where they ask for more security as debt becomes dearer to service, or because investors are taking fright and cashing in their chips.
This is where I started to get interested. Why does the journalist not know why this is happening? He's already pointed out that the banks are hoarding cash.
Rich individuals, including Russian oligarchs, are also selling, in particular where loans are secured against equity stakes in companies under their control. As stock prices fall, banks are demanding more security from tycoons, many of whom have tied up their wealth in shares
If I were the banks, and I had totally fucked things up, and broken all the rules, and destroyed the meaning of the word trust, and been cast out in the street, and had to break back in and sit in the corner snivelling and begging, until I got the shrug that meant you had gotten away with it for about fifteen minutes, I would be hoarding too, obviously,
Ukrainian oligarch and iron ore miner Kostyantin Zhevago was forced to sell a 20 per cent stake in metal company Ferrexpo last week because of the steep fall in the price of commodities. Russian billionaire Oleg Deripaska has sold 20 per cent of Canadian car parts maker Magna
To whom have these people had to sell their said to be one time ill-gotten gains?
who bought 20 per cent of Magna?
and why was it not on the news?
Or did I miss it?
When the world's wealthy elites are forced to sell shares, it not only adds to the downward pressure on financial markets, but also takes spending power out of the economy, with spin-off effects for sectors as diverse as luxury goods, property and investment in jobs
Why? Do the people that buy them not have any fun ever? Do they just sit and count their money?
Who could these people be?
Who doesn't like to have fun?
The Depression of 80 years ago was compounded by the fact that wealth was controlled by an even narrower spectrum of society than today; the effect of wealth destruction for a few was felt disproportionately by the rest of the population. Nevertheless, a version of that nexus exists today
What does this mean? It is counter-intuitive to me? Surely if a wider range of people have money the risk is spread? Am I missing something important about percentages here?
I was never any good at gambling.
Oh no!! I get it now. It's the same as I think, it's just too academic for me to understand it.
the insurance companies have escaped relatively unscathed, and fears that they might have to sell shares to increase their solvency ratios to make good a decline in equity prices appear overdone.
In 2001-02, British insurers such as Standard Life were forced to sell equities to meet capital adequacy requirements, but today insurers are less vulnerable.
Ahaaa!!!! This has happened before.
But not to the banks.
That's why it's terrible this time.
Of more concern are the potential liabilities hanging over credit default swaps, a huge unregulated sector that few people know about or understand.
Does anyone know what a credit default swap is?
Over the last 12 years, the value of the CDS market, where these contracts are traded like other derivatives, has grown to $55 trillion. CDSs have been used to insure risky mortgage bonds, as well as the debt of collapsed institutions such as Lehman Brothers. The worry is that insurers and banks that underwrote these instruments will not be able to meet their liabilities.
And they are?
With judgement, and perhaps a little luck, the financial crisis that has enveloped the world can be brought under control via a global rescue plan, but the aftershock will almost certainly be with us for years to come.
Yes, boys and girls, that's the end of the article. I swear to god it is. And there are no comments.
Investopedia says that a credit default swap is
A swap designed to transfer the credit exposure of fixed income products between parties.
The buyer of a credit swap receives credit protection, whereas the seller of the swap guarantees the credit worthiness of the product. By doing this, the risk of default is transferred from the holder of the fixed income security to the seller of the swap. For example, the buyer of a credit swap will be entitled to the par value of the bond by the seller of the swap, should the bond default in its coupon payments.
So in the case of Lehman Bros, they sold 'toxic something or others' and then they did a credit swap with someone else. The someone else gets the insurance. And then the insurance company can sue Lehman Bros for the pay out costs when the 'toxic something or other' collapses.
So the government is buying the toxic something or others so that means the government will have to guarantee the creditworthyness of the product.
So how will the government do that? Does it have to guarantee it to itself and just take the hit?
Why on earth would anyone do any of this?
If I am reading this article right, somebody has done this to the tune of $55 trillion.
This is the teenage equivalent of being in so much trouble that it's worse than the time that despite your best efforts at being sorry the cops rang the house in the middle of the night after they'd picked you up when you were puking up on the street purely to wake your parents up straight after they'd finally gone to sleep right after they had had an argument.
You'd think someone would fucking understand the pain they're all in, wouldn't you.
I do.
he he he
What has to happen now is that trust has to be re-established.
How many times have I heard that this month.
And now I finally understand
Who do YOU trust?
With the greatest respect to Richard Wachman and Tim Webb.
Cross-posting from the Farm
Farmer Brown found an article in The Washington Monthly that I loved.
Here it is:
There are some great comments on this article, isn't it funny that already, online newspapers have found a way to tap into the great forum that is the human need to hours every day in the schoolrooms of their childhood...
The McCain/Palin ticket is "historical" on several levels.
First POW/First Sow (with lipstick even.)
First pill popping, beer heiress, trophy wife/First Dude.
Oldest ever/Dumbest ever.
Fought for the U.S/Wants to secede from the U.S.
Air jockey dad/Hockey mom.
Joe 12 homes/Joe Six pack.
Maverick/Moose hunter
That's all I can think of, I invite others to come up with more
You suck too.
You do.
If you haven't already realised, this is an article about the McCain/ Palin ticket.
I wonder if they have an article about the banking crisis?
http://www.washingtonmonthly.com/archives/individual/2008_10/015130.php
I do link, but I'm not going to do it before I explain why.
Here it is:
There are some great comments on this article, isn't it funny that already, online newspapers have found a way to tap into the great forum that is the human need to hours every day in the schoolrooms of their childhood...
The McCain/Palin ticket is "historical" on several levels.
First POW/First Sow (with lipstick even.)
First pill popping, beer heiress, trophy wife/First Dude.
Oldest ever/Dumbest ever.
Fought for the U.S/Wants to secede from the U.S.
Air jockey dad/Hockey mom.
Joe 12 homes/Joe Six pack.
Maverick/Moose hunter
That's all I can think of, I invite others to come up with more
You suck too.
You do.
If you haven't already realised, this is an article about the McCain/ Palin ticket.
I wonder if they have an article about the banking crisis?
http://www.washingtonmonthly.com/archives/individual/2008_10/015130.php
I do link, but I'm not going to do it before I explain why.
Saturday, October 11, 2008
Tonight
I was going to stay in and blog tonight.
But I got invited out.
So I have put on a dress.
Yes, I have.
And now I am going to put my make up on prop'ly.
And go out.
HURRAHHHH!!!!!!!!!!!!
Happy 18th Birthday Kitty.
You look so grown up in your new purple killer-sex-kitten boots.
The Queenie Knows about Boots.
Oh yes, she does.
May the next 18 years be what you want them to be.
But I got invited out.
So I have put on a dress.
Yes, I have.
And now I am going to put my make up on prop'ly.
And go out.
HURRAHHHH!!!!!!!!!!!!
Happy 18th Birthday Kitty.
You look so grown up in your new purple killer-sex-kitten boots.
The Queenie Knows about Boots.
Oh yes, she does.
May the next 18 years be what you want them to be.
Tuesday, October 07, 2008
Everything changes and everything stays the same
This from Miriam Lord's Irish Times' daily political sketch today:
Once there (in Irish Parliament building), they (Fine Gael front bench) will have come across a press release from Sinn Féin's Arthur Morgan, who is his party's spokesman on their latest relationship with the banks.
Sinn Féin has always enjoyed a unique relationship with banks.
"Morgan to set out minimum terms and conditions acceptable to Sinn Féin for deal with Irish banks," said the press release.
The financial institutions must have been agog. In their hour of need, were they going to get some of their money back?
hahahahahaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaahahaahahaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaa.
That's cheered me up no end.
That and the fact that Manolo Blahnik has opened a shop in Dublin.
And the fact that we in North America are soon to be joined by Mr. Charlie Bird for a spell.
What's that, Charlie?? I can't hear you!!
La plus ca change, la plus ca c'est la meme chose..... as they say in Paris Fashion Week.
Once there (in Irish Parliament building), they (Fine Gael front bench) will have come across a press release from Sinn Féin's Arthur Morgan, who is his party's spokesman on their latest relationship with the banks.
Sinn Féin has always enjoyed a unique relationship with banks.
"Morgan to set out minimum terms and conditions acceptable to Sinn Féin for deal with Irish banks," said the press release.
The financial institutions must have been agog. In their hour of need, were they going to get some of their money back?
hahahahahaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaahahaahahaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaa.
That's cheered me up no end.
That and the fact that Manolo Blahnik has opened a shop in Dublin.
And the fact that we in North America are soon to be joined by Mr. Charlie Bird for a spell.
What's that, Charlie?? I can't hear you!!
La plus ca change, la plus ca c'est la meme chose..... as they say in Paris Fashion Week.
Sunday, October 05, 2008
Mellowed in Melwood
So we're home at last. The Great Ontario Moosehunt is over, with nary a moose to be seen, except for the ones on the front of the Moosehead beer bottles.
And we didn't even see very many of them.
Not a bear.
Not a moose.
Not a beaver.
Lots of deer though, and squirrels.
And trees of course.
We went horse riding. Or horseback riding as it's called in Canada.
To distinguish it from horse front riding???
WTF?
We found a horse farm that had a nice lady and her husband who got rid of the kids, sold the suburban detached, bought three hundred acres of the Canadian Shield and 22 horses, and built their own cabin out of their own lumber which they got from their own trees which they cut down and milled themselves.
Pretty impressive.
When I say 'got rid of the kids', I mean completed rearing them, not doing away with them of course.
So we had a nice three hour ride through their land, I was on Sass (of course) and Himself was on Doll, Sass' sister. It was his first time on a horse and he did very well.
Now of course, we have to add horses to the future plans (he doesn't understand the concept of feed bills yet, but he'll learn).
Then we had to go back to the hotel, sorry, resort, because I had to go back to work and attend Ontario's Digital Economy conference.
It was okay.
I am truly shocked at how far Canada is lagging behind countries such as Ireland in the digital economy.
Of course, if you have millions of acres of land with trees, and water, and oil, and potash, and copper, and uranium, etc., you don't really need to be up to speed on the new economy.
We watched the bloodbath that is the global financial meltdown on tv a bit and also the Canadian election debates. Which were fun in a sad political junkie kinda way.
Then we had to get back in the car and drive home.
It was the second time in my life I arrived in Nova Scotia at dawn. It is the best way to do it, even if it is exhausting and I am still so tired from the hours and hours in the car.
Twenty two hours later we pulled into Melwood to see the sun out and the neighbours in the yard.
Thankfully we had brought back wine for everyone so we sat in the yard in the sunshine and then we had a big bonfire when it got colder and everyone caught up with what everyone else has been up to in the last two weeks. Some of the previous occupants arrived too to liven things up, and we called Shelley in Manitoba, so nearly everyone was present in some way.
So, laundry, shopping and clean up today, and back to work tomorrow.
Sigh.
And we didn't even see very many of them.
Not a bear.
Not a moose.
Not a beaver.
Lots of deer though, and squirrels.
And trees of course.
We went horse riding. Or horseback riding as it's called in Canada.
To distinguish it from horse front riding???
WTF?
We found a horse farm that had a nice lady and her husband who got rid of the kids, sold the suburban detached, bought three hundred acres of the Canadian Shield and 22 horses, and built their own cabin out of their own lumber which they got from their own trees which they cut down and milled themselves.
Pretty impressive.
When I say 'got rid of the kids', I mean completed rearing them, not doing away with them of course.
So we had a nice three hour ride through their land, I was on Sass (of course) and Himself was on Doll, Sass' sister. It was his first time on a horse and he did very well.
Now of course, we have to add horses to the future plans (he doesn't understand the concept of feed bills yet, but he'll learn).
Then we had to go back to the hotel, sorry, resort, because I had to go back to work and attend Ontario's Digital Economy conference.
It was okay.
I am truly shocked at how far Canada is lagging behind countries such as Ireland in the digital economy.
Of course, if you have millions of acres of land with trees, and water, and oil, and potash, and copper, and uranium, etc., you don't really need to be up to speed on the new economy.
We watched the bloodbath that is the global financial meltdown on tv a bit and also the Canadian election debates. Which were fun in a sad political junkie kinda way.
Then we had to get back in the car and drive home.
It was the second time in my life I arrived in Nova Scotia at dawn. It is the best way to do it, even if it is exhausting and I am still so tired from the hours and hours in the car.
Twenty two hours later we pulled into Melwood to see the sun out and the neighbours in the yard.
Thankfully we had brought back wine for everyone so we sat in the yard in the sunshine and then we had a big bonfire when it got colder and everyone caught up with what everyone else has been up to in the last two weeks. Some of the previous occupants arrived too to liven things up, and we called Shelley in Manitoba, so nearly everyone was present in some way.
So, laundry, shopping and clean up today, and back to work tomorrow.
Sigh.
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