So This Is What Democracy Looks Like

With a majority government voted in by less than forty percent of Canadians, I feel like the math I learned in school is somehow flawed. But I know it's not. The system is.

Time for electoral reform. It took me this long to understand how much is wrong with the current system, but now I'm fully on board. Alternative vote, proportional representation, democratic reform. The UK may be breaking ground on the 5th. Let's hope they do. If they do, they may set a precedent for other countries, especially those in the Commonwealth.

Canada's politics are so archaic compared to Europe. That's why so many people are apathetic about it. They know the system doesn't work right, that if they vote their vote might not even have an effect.

I wonder what the next four years (and more?) are going to look like, with polarized politics, an Opposition that can't hold the Government accountable, and a Prime Minister who acts like he owns the place - which he kind of does now.

Time to move to Liberia.

Existentialism Is Depressing

When our identities evolve, we grow apart from those once closest to us; we drop our friends and they drop us. It's nothing personal, just a case of our identities no longer merging. Sometimes we evolve together and manage, for awhile, to fight off the claws of time and experience that pull us all in different directions. Eventually, though, every relationship's pulse grows weaker.

Nearly five years ago, I arrived in St. John's. Now I'm almost done my degree. Maybe it's cliche, but I am not the same person who stepped off the plane into this windy Canadian city. That person makes up a part of me, as does my nine-year-old self watching the school library flood as another typhoon soaks the red sandbar that is Cotonou; my eleven-year-old self watching the new millenium come in on a dirt street darkened by a power outage; my thirteen-year-old self flinging the words to a depressed poem onto my desk; my fifteen-year-old self blushing at the surprise birthday party put together by my sister and our dance group; my seventeen-year-old self watching anime with my bilingual friends in my mom's apartment while she's away in Belgium; my twenty-year-old self starting a new relationship in the pounding Texas sun.

As I sit with Stabilo's "Rain Awhile" crackling from my laptop, my mood slips from its recent state of fierce contentment to that more familiar sense of dissatisfaction. I think of movies: "1776", "Freedom Writers", "Pray the Devil Back to Hell". I search for the deeper meaning, the balance of life that leads to happiness and fulfillment. How much must I embrace this socially constructed reality in order to find meaning? Is my cause within or without it?

I pull the blankets (really a sleeping bag and some spare parts from the thrift store) up around my chest and put my hood up over my fuzzy head to warm up my ears. I'm going to a party tonight. The past few weeks have left me over-socialized. I'm hungry and cold.

Tomorrow I can sleep in.

Born Again

I feel like a child again, except that the people who are behaving like my parents have no right to treat me that way.

My landlord and especially my landlady have a lot of rules about what I can and can't do in their house. I respect that they leave part of their house untouched except for visitors and I can even allow that they charge money for laundry, even though their ad said that utilities were "all included." I can even understand that they would rather not see me too much (or at least that's the impression I get from them).

But I feel like they're going too far when they indirectly tell me that my sister can't visit me. They haven't actually said that yet, but I feel like they might. And even if they do let her stay, it's like they're making a huge sacrifice and doing me a gigantic favour. It's not a favour and I'm an adult and I have the right to let my sister stay with me in my room that I'm paying rent for. She's not loud and she doesn't use a lot of utilities (and I even offered to pay for what she does use).

I don't like paying people that make me feel like it's an honour that they let me stay here at all. If it wasn't such a good deal (compared to other places), I would be out of here in a second.

(Don't get me wrong; they're nice people, but they are not my parents and even if they were, I'm 23 and paying them for the space I use, so I think I should have a few more rights.)

Let's Lie to the World! Whee!!!

It's scary. Sun TV is set to start off sometime soon. Sun TV is Harper's propaganda channel, sort of like Fox News in the States. It was supposed to be obligatory for all cable companies to provide it and for public funding to support it, but people got up in arms around it and quickly shut that one down.

So now they're going after the journalism laws. They want to change it so that journalists are allowed to broadcast or report information that they know to be false. If that doesn't scare you, then sit back for a second and think about it. If this goes through, we won't be able to trust any news source again. It'll be pretty hard to discern truth from lie.

Also, it will be easy to publicize propaganda, as well as almost impossible to keep an eye on the government. That's one of the main jobs of the media, by the way. Letting the public know what the government is doing in their name.

Not anymore.

At the same time as all this, CBC news is suffering staff and funding cuts. No biggie, right? Well, essentially, since radio and TV have now been combined, there's no competition between the two, which means it's more regulated from the top, which means there's a lot less independent journalism going on. Which means, we don't get as much information and it's much more selective.

The Harper government isn't stupid. It's so clever, it's scary. Really scary. It's surreptitious and doesn't seem to be related, because it doesn't seem to all be happening at once or in relation to one another. Even though it is. Which is what gives them away.

Oh. And they have a little sub-clause in the proposed amendment to the journalism laws that says the misleading or incorrect information can only be reported if it's not obvious that it will directly harm anybody. Pretty thin protection, if you ask me. Anyone with a good legal mind can argue that they didn't know it would harm someone, at least not directly.

Avaaz has this to say: "The proposed changes to regulations protecting Canadian airwaves would require any complaint to include proof that the broadcaster knew that the news was false AND that the lies spread could endanger the lives, health or safety of the public -- so a journalist could tell any lie they liked as long it didn't kill or sicken anyone. Proponents within the CRTC are claiming that this change is in reaction to a Supreme Court decision, but that ruling was made fifteen years ago and has almost nothing to do with TV news standards.

Television news is regulated by the CRTC precisely because news that spreads lies degrades public discourse and destroys the ability of Canadians to cast an informed vote. These kinds of lies may not directly threaten our lives or personal security, but they do threaten our country and our democracy."

Sign the petition here: http://www.avaaz.org/en/canada_fair_and_balanced/?cl=944297857&v=8398

Paths

Everywhere we go, we follow paths. Our cars drive along paved pathways, many of which were once horse or dogsled trails. When we walk, even when we take shortcuts, we follow the same trajectory that others have followed. Over time, these trajectories become physically apparent. Grass wears down to dirt; the streak of dirt widens. Eventually, it gets covered in gravel or concrete. The path has been institutionalized, petrified. It is now a physical reality.

Snow covers our pathways so completely that an outsider would never know there is a path at that spot. A fresh white blanket obscures where we walk, making it difficult to take our normal routes. But humans are obstinate and plow their way through (sometimes literally). At first, a single person plods through the snow, creating a trail of footprints that marks the way. Others follow and soon the trail of footprints begins to blend into a wider, packed path. If it doesn't snow again too soon, the trail widens and becomes more packed (and more brown).

Paths are a collective effort, a group expression of pedestrian travel across a certain distance. We take them for granted and yet we follow them with precision, even when obstacles appear. We are determined to recreate our paths. Recent newcomers are shown the pathways and pass on that knowledge to later newcomers. Paths are engrained in us and yet very rarely do we stop and contemplate the many footsteps, the many single instances of recognition that have gone into creating them.

I'm Not Speaking in Code

I have this friend who is very cryptic. A lot of the time I feel like maybe he doesn't really want to be friends anymore, or maybe I've said or done something that he really dislikes. He never says so and I think maybe he doesn't even think so, but it's hard to tell. In some off and on way, we remain friends, hanging out once in a while and chatting when we see each other on campus or at work. For a few months we might not speak much, but then one of us will invite the other to something and then we might start hanging out more regularly again.

It's disconcerting. But today I realized that I really don't know him that well. I have this affinity with him, which makes me feel like I know him, but in reality, I don't. We haven't spent that much time together or talked about anything too important, really. So I have this version of him in my mind; I think we do this with everybody. This version of him tells me what will offend him and what he'll enjoy, but when it comes right down to it, I have to admit that I simply don't know.

I have been told that I am cryptic and hard to read, so maybe I'm just getting a taste of my own medicine. Maybe sometimes he's just tired or moody or in his own world. It's really hard to tell. Or maybe he just really doesn't like asking/being asked for favours of any kind, even if it's something simple, like getting a ride somewhere. Who knows. It makes me kind of sad though, because he seems like a great person and I wish I knew him better. Or would stop offending him, or saying things that make him disapprove. But maybe it's not like that at all. Who knows.

Like I said, he's pretty cryptic. It's all just wild speculation at this point.




(PS. You get bonus points redeemable anywhere for absolutely nothing if you can tell me where the title of this post comes from.)

Greasy Soup? Brown Walls?

There's something are two things I don't understand: how can soup be greasy, and why would anyone paint their walls brown? Out of all the colours you could pick, why brown?

I know it covers up dirt. But that just means that it looks dirty all the time. And it's not that hard to clean a wall. Unless you're a really, really dirty person. Or you believe that the only way to see if spaghetti is cooked is by lobbing it at the wall.

As for soup being greasy, that's just gross. I mean, what do you have to put in a liquid to make it greasy? How much fat or oil or butter (essentially the same thing) are you consuming in greasy soup? You shouldn't need a napkin for your fingers after eating soup. Just saying.

That's it. Short post about absolutely nothing this time. Deal with it.

(N.B. There are lots of other things I don't understand, other than these two, but these seemed the most immediate right now.)