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2005-03-14 - 11:37 p.m. If I Watched TV I'd Be Channel-Surfing Right Now It drives me absolutely bonkers when I go searching the int0rw3b in vain for entertainment, when I could be making my own fun! So here are some random thoughts that are, at the very least, incredibly entertaining to me.
Mmmm. Beer. If the monkey looked really, really, REALLY drunk, it would look like me on International Women's Day. Because really, what better way to celebrate my emancipation than to get wasted with the ladies. I should never, ever try to hit every bar between Sals' and the C-train ever again. That damn Moxies' in the hotel on 8th and 7th is starting to have WAY too many sweet memories! p.s. Thanks to one of the aforementioned ladies for the picture -- not like I asked you before I stole it or anything, but still! The workshop in Mount Vernon with FGB was sweet as. Still processing its effects, so I'll come back to it later. The Guy Who Shot the RCMP etc. So there was a huge memorial service a few days ago for the four RCMP officers who were shot down by Jim Roszko the week before. From all the convoluted pieces about the incident, I'm gathering that the police weren't actually going in to shut down Buddy's grow-op or anything, which is why there were only four of them and no vice squad. Including one officer who was off-duty at the time. Wow. That's call for some serious mother-fucking overtime pay, I would say. So in class the day of the memorial service, my prof asked us to stand and observe a few moments of silence for the lives of the officers -- adding, of course, that we were all entitled to our beliefs and we didn't have to if we didn't want to. I was the only person who remained seated, which weirded me out for a zillion reasons. But here's the gist of my objection: Five people died two weeks ago. Four of them had a huge memorial service last Thursday afternoon attended by an estimated 10,000 + people. One of them was estranged from even his immediate family, and I don't suspect will have more than a pastor attend his funeral, if there is even a ceremony planned. He also died in a way that our society tends to view with a great deal of shame: no one likes to talk about mental disease (asssuming he was emotionally unstable), addiction (assuming his psychosis was caused by narcotics), or murderers. Oh, and child molesters. We hate to think of child molesters as people. It would seem that Mr. Roszko had a few charges against him in that area as well, relating to a young boy whom Jim started abusing when the boy was 10 years old. The abuse continued for seven years. His prison sentence (which appears to have been 2 years, although this article is somewhat unclear) which included anger management seminars, which much informed scholarship (see particularly feminist counseling research into battered wives) has found to be ineffective when the perpetrator cannot understand the reasons behind their abusive behaviour. I should get you a link for that, too, but I'm sure y'all* can figure it out yourselves. *the first, but not the last, apparition of cowgrrl slang in this particular entry. Quoi le fuck. But here's the problem. He was still a human being, and he still died. And in failing to acknowledge his death, we're failing to acknowledge the tragedy of his life and the way he lived it. So there are all these trust funds being set up for the families of the RCMPs, who will all get HUGE pensions from the death of their male members, while the money could be going towards addiction treatment programs or rehabilitation programs for murderers or sexual offenders. And more than anything, it just pisses me off that more women are killed every year in Canada by their intimate partners (40 last year, not to mention the countless hordes who were hospitalized or who suffered at home or on the street in silence) and are never memorialized to this extent, while men who die in the line of duty in a job that requires the acceptance of death as a distinct possibility get thousands of weeping mourners. I am not saying their deaths were not tragic, but I am saying they are being blown out of proportion. It will be interesting to see the results of any investigation the police force commissions; obviously, someone fucked up in ordering those men to that lone house with barbed wire on the lawn and guns inside. 1. blown out of proportion Sorry, I needed the list, because I felt I was trailing a bit. Numbers 2 and 4 are the big ones for me. And it really creeped me out when I flipped through The Sun** at work and found out that one of the cops was my age. As a humanitarian sidenote. **Please don't think poorly of me; I didn't buy it and it was just THERE. I SWEAR!!
So I'm reading another Tom Robbins, cuz it's been a while since Tom and I had some quality time, and I've been hanging out with all these other Toms and I'm sure Mr. Robbins, in his own little way, is probably getting a teensy tiny bit jealous, thinking I might be leaving him to the side in favour of the other fabulous Toms*** the world has to offer... Anyhow, he constantly astounds me with the retarded brilliance of his little quips. Like the fact that there are so many newspapers dedicated to the sun but none called The Moon or Lunar or anything****. *** The joke kind of runs out here, since none of my friends named Tom actually have websites and I haven't seen any movies with Toms in them recently and... yeah, you get the point. ****Unless there's some hippydippywoowoo magazine that I've missed, which there probably is, pagans and zines being what they respectively are: lunar and prolific. But this was the closest I could find, and it isn't all that hippydippy at all. In fact, it's pretty boring and tame. Hooray for middle america. Anyhow, Mr. Robbins has some wonderful shit to say about journalism and love***** and royalty and ecofreaks and saving the planet and redheads as the Master Race. Yep, I think it should be pretty clear by now why I'm enjoying this book. *****at least one person will chuckle at the way i've juxtaposed those two words. Snippet to amuse y'all Consider a certain night in August. Princess Leigh-Cheri was gazing out of her attic window. The moon was full. The moon was so bloated it was about to tip over. Imagine awakening to find the moon flat on its face on the bathroom floor, like the late Elvis Presley, poisoned by banana splits. It was a moon that could stir wild passions in a moo cow. A moon that could bring out the devil in a bunny rabbit. A moon that could turn lug nuts into moonstones, turn Little Red Riding Hood into the big bad wolf. For more than an hour, Leigh-Cheri stared into the mandala of the sky. "Does the moon have a purpose?" she inquired of prince Charming. Prince Charming pretended that she had asked a silly question. Perhaps she had. The same query put to the Remington SL3 elicited this response: Albert Camus wrote that the only serious question is whether to kill yourself or not. Tom Robbins wrote that the only serious question is whether time has a beginning and an end. Camus clearly got up on the wrong side of bed, and Robbins must have forgotten to set the alarm. There is only one serious question. And that is: Answer me that and I will tell you whether or not to kill yourself. Answer me that and I will ease your mind about the beginning and the end of time. Answer me that and I will reveal to you the purpose of the moon.
These beautiful women were in town last Saturday, and I got stuck working late and missed the show. And I know one of them, which would have meant possible "extra attention" from the stage. And since I'm an Attention Whore, particularly when said attention is coming from an only-partially-clothed beauty (of either gender, really -- who am I to be picky?), you should feel EXTRA sorry for me. Excuse me while I finish pouting.
Too many footnotes again. If I knew how to superscript, I could number them. Someday I'll figure it out, I promise. Really. --mopheaded makes another run for the back door
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