aMMusing

There’s no wind and it’s mild and humid tonight. It became hot and sticky by mid-afternoon in Halifax, but it’s continued to be very hot in nearby New Brunswick, thus triggering a chain of nasty thunderstorms.

My take is that Nature is preparing for Steph’s arrival next week. After all, coming as she is from the thunder and lightening capital of the U.S., she wouldn’t feel at home, would she! So, not one but two bolts of lightening hit this church in Ste-Anne-de-Kent (about 1 hour north of Moncton), which caused the wooden structure to burn to the ground in a matter of two hours.

So, the Maritimes should be just like home for Steph!

Last night, Canada became the third country in the world to legalize same-sex marriage. Bill C-38 passed third reading in Parliament, meaning that Senate approval and royal assent — both formalities — are the only steps left for the bill to become law.

Once again, Conservative and Leader of the Opposition Stephen Harper is trying to suck and blow at the same time. Last month, he had no problem cozying up to the Bloc Québécois in his attempt to defeat the Liberals’ budget (and consequently toppling the minority government), all the while denying that such cozying up was occurring. But this month, he’s insinuating that the passage of the same-sex marriage legislation lacks credibility because it’s supported by the Bloc, arguing that the majority of federalist MPs are opposed to this legislation. So, it seems, “Bloc MPs are the legitimate representatives of Quebec voters,” but Quebec voters aren’t legitimate by virtue of sending Bloc members to Parliament.

Despite the reservations I expressed a while back about the whole project, I am happy today the bill has passed. It bugged me to see social conservatives ignore that the legislation was worded to protect religious freedom by clearly stating that no church, mosque, synagogue or temple can be forced to perform a same-sex marriage. Yes, on the grounds that love is love is love, same-sex marriages should be allowed; however, despite the societal myth that’s been constructed, marriage has traditionally been more about regulating property rights than about love.

I know a lot of gay and lesbian couples who today, while they’re also happy the legislation has passed, are no more interested in marriage than when it wasn’t an option to them. Indeed, there hasn’t been a torrent of same-sex marriages in recent years in places where they’ve been legal (all provinces and territories except Alberta, PEI, Nunavut and the Northwest Territories). In fact, the gap between what ought to be and what people ultimately want for themselves is rather striking.

I do believe that, with time, people in general won’t give a shit about same-sex unions, just as they don’t about interracial unions. To be sure, some people out there still object to the latter, but generally it’s just accepted as a fact of life. In Canada today, instances of racial discrimination are tougher to identify because they’ve become more covert; I suspect the same fate is now reserved for gays and lesbians.

I still think an opportunity was missed. I still think the political thrust should have been to remove governments from marriage and have them grant the right to civil unions for both opposite-sex and same-sex couples, leaving marriage as an optional, religious institution. But what is done is done. Now I just hope those who advocated so fiercely for SSM aren’t going to make pests of themselves and waste time antagonizing religious sects that avail themselves of their right not to recognize SSMs.

Every time I look at the forecast for tomorrow (Saturday), it seems to get more incredible. The expected high is now a remarkable 34C (93F). That’s warmer than Florida! But there’s a glitch:

A mix of sun and cloud in the afternoon and evening with 30 percent chance of showers in the afternoon and evening. Risk of a thundershower. Fog patches along the coast. Wind becoming southwest 20 km/h in the afternoon. High 34 except 20 along the Atlantic coast.

Remember I told how a southwest wind is not a good thing in these parts? It might end up being 34 in the city itself but nippier than 20 at the beach. That’s just insane!

Sometimes you just have to go with your intuition, or follow your cravings, even if you think you’ll regret your decision later.

Gamble I: Blasting Off!
I love Raisin Bran ™. Always have. But I haven’t eaten the stuff in years because …well, you know why most people eat bran or, should I say, what effect they hope to achieve by eating bran, right? Well, let’s just say that bran works too well for me. Explosively well, in fact.
     As I was nodding off for my last two sleeps, I simply couldn’t get Raisin Bran off my mind. My whole body seemed to be craving it! And I believe that sometimes your body actually does call out for something it needs. For instance, I’m convinced I crave bananas when I need potassium, though I don’t make that connection when the craving is happening. It’s not like I say to myself, “Hummm! I’m cravin’ me some yummy potassium!” The craving just happens. So obviously I’m craving something in bran cereal these days.
     So what the heck! I got myself some Raisin Bran this evening, and less than three hours after I ate a huge, generous bowl of the stuff, the grumbling in my lower stomach began, as well as the farting, of course. I expect …you know… *BOOM* …real soon. So I wonder if my body was telling me that it’s craving a natural laxative, that it needs to expel some stuff. How weird is that?! It’s not like I …err …you know, I think I’m going to stop now. I can’t believe that, like the delightful Mac, I’m blogging about fecal matter today.

Gamble II: Patching Out!
I haven’t blogged much lately about how my smoking cessation program is going. And the reason for that is that there isn’t a program anymore.
     Now hold on! I did not just say that I quit quitting. What’s happening right now is a bit more odd than that.
     I switched down to Step 2 last week, as scheduled. But as some of you remarked, I was still smoking 3 cigs or so per day while on the patch. I skipped my patch on the Saturday before the step down (no point explaining why) and I didn’t go crazy. So, since last Saturday, I thought I’d try not wearing the patch anymore. And I’m still only smoking 3 cigs or so per day. This was Day 6 of No Patch …heading into Day 7.
     Now know that I recognize this is still short of my goal. But I’m comfortable with this for now. The stale smoke smell is gone from my apartment and my clothes, my smoker’s hack is gone and my breathing is so much clearer, and I love the extra cash I suddenly have! Finally getting rid of the 3 cigs or so per day might be tougher than the 25-30 or so per day I’ve eliminated, for I’ve kept those I really enjoy. But you know what? Right now, all I feel prepared to deal with is not lapsing back to anywhere near where I was before May 3, 2005. In other words, I don’t feel I can cope with anything more right now. Mind you, I do feel much more in control than I did before May, and I think that lack of control — perhaps more than the definite health issues — is ultimately what inspired me to try quitting.

Gamble III: Switching Time
Summer has finally arrived and it’s suppose to be a humid 30C around Halifax on Saturday, so that’s a call for the beach for me. The trouble is that my internal clock is completely fucked. It’s as though my body refuses to fall asleep for its “night” before 5:30 am — usually even later. However, I usually sleep until 2:00 pm, which is good because I’m obviously getting all the rest I need (as the virtual disappearance of the nasty bags under my eyes can testify). The problem is that I’m not resting when I should be.
     Yesterday evening around 8:00, I decided to force my internal clock to switch. Fast. So I had a nap for about an hour and a half, got up, and I’m not going to go to bed until sundown today. So if I stick to the plan, I’ll wake up at a decent hour Saturday morning and go to the beach.
     The thing is, I know I’m nocturnal by nature; I’ll never be one to get up at 6:00 every morning and be happy about it. Never! But if I could eventually not sleep through all my mornings, especially during the summer, that’d be a nice change.

Except for the Raisin Bran, I see these gambles as fitting into something bigger in my life right now — an overall feeling I haven’t been able to express, especially at aMMusing. One of these days I’ll figure an easy way of getting a password to those of you with whom I don’t mind sharing those thoughts so that I can password-protect those blog entries.

When a new library was built at my alma mater and a physical link was built to join it with the neighbouring building, the Royal Bank made a donation for the link’s construction and thus the link became known as the Royal Bank Link (corporate logo included). After industrialist families gave oodles to allow the building of a library or another major building at a given university, the resulting library or building was named after the family matriarch (hence why the names McCain and Irving resonate on Maritime campuses). If you want to go to a NHL game in Montreal, you end up going to the Molson Centre; in Ottawa, the Corel Centre.

Ah, those benevolent corporations! What would we effin’ do without ‘em?!

Well, from the looks of things, we couldn’t name landmarks anymore. Or events. For instance, isn’t the biggest curling event in this country named the Nokia Briar? And on and on it goes.

But what really bothers me with all of this is how we just accept how corporations have managed to incrust their names into popular culture and turn them into household words. We accept without questioning the fiction of corporate personhood. And the next step (when we ascribe a personality to a corporation) is that some of us feel compelled to “do something nice in return” for the corporation.

Think I’m exaggerating?

I think Air Canada’s real swell for comping tickets to fly RuPaul to Halifax for Pride. But do I think we should plaster the Pride site with a banner ad for Air Canada?

Absolutely not!

Sure, give the airline full credit for its contribution and let lots of people know exactly what its sizeable contribution is. After all, I’m sure Air Canada can use all the “good PR” it can get given how it’s reviled domestically compared to its discount competitors. But a banner ad? Nawh. Next thing you know, we’ll be offering to call the whole event the “Air Canada Halifax Pride Festival” or something vapid like that. Isn’t it already bad enough that the word “gay” no longer stands next to “pride”?

Okay, I’m going off on a tangent now (you’ve been warned!) …but I can’t help being reminded of the “You’ve come a long way, baby” commercials that objectified women, effectively slapping down the strides towards equality third-wave feminists made in the late ’60s and early ’70s. I fear gays and lesbians, in their attempt at mainstreaming themselves, are heading in the same direction, just as many young women today take for granted the gains made by their foremothers. At Pride events today, we no longer march; we “parade.” After all, heaven forbid we should “disturb” people by coming across as being a little militant or anything nasty like that! Plus, I am told and should understand, the whole parade is to be a “family” event.

Oh good grief…

In my mind, that’s very disingenuous since all that does is flatten the range of diversity. While the right-wing’s fiction of a “homosexual agenda” is just that — fiction — there are significant differences in world views resulting from centuries of marginalization. Ironically, RuPaul him/herself, commenting on a recent Pride event, commented on her blog:

i guess what bothers me about today’s gay culture is that it seems to disassociate itself from people who dance to the beat of different drummer. hell, these kids weren’t dancing at all! they were just emulating straight culture. i can already hear my pundits saying “ru! get over it! you’re old! times have changed! gays don’t wear head to toe MYLAR anymore!”

In another post where she comments on the Michael Jackson verdict, she correctly reminds us that “remember, it was the queens who started the GAY RIGHTS MOVEMENT, not the ‘straight acting’ cowards.” I may not fully follow or agree with her connection of that statement to the MJ trial (let alone her usage of the term “gay/straight ‘culture’”), but I do agree with her that we are endebted to the 1969 Stonewall queens for setting the wheel in motion and declaring that gays and lesbians weren’t going to take [the marginalization] anymore. And although Ru’s usage of the word “coward” isn’t “nice,” it rings true, for only by disturbing the mainstream did we get where we are today, not by meshing into the mainstream and all its (bland, materialistic) so-called values.

I think that’s the main reason why I expressed so much reservation two years ago about same-sex marriage; I felt government — the de facto regulator of the mainstream — needed to get its nose out of the business of marriage so that perhaps the institution could be re-created to fit everyone’s needs, not only the regulation of property rights or the religious symbolism. But two years hence, one of my best friends has married her (same-sex) love of her life, and the Liberal minority government in Ottawa is trying to get the House to sit through the summer in order to finally get the federal same-sex marriage legislation passed. Much hangs in the balance now, so the failure to pass this legislation would be catastrophic — not just for its own sake or my friends’ sake (as considerable as those stakes are), but also because mostly all the other issues, on which the GLBT community should have been working, have for the most part been neglected or, worse, co-opted into the mainstream.

I mean, Article 15.1 of the Canadian Charter of Rights and Freedoms still doesn’t (and won’t) include sexual orientation as grounds on which “every individual is equal before and under the law.” I’m just sayin’ that it’s far from over. And that’s just the basic legislative stuff.

I just have to come to the conclusion that my threshold for tolerating noise is low — much lower than most people’s. I mean, don’t forget that I actually moved (or, as some would say, shifted) to get away from noise. But I realize that I get easily irritated by everyday sounds most people don’t even notice.

Take weed whackers. In my opinion, they’re the vilest things. Why, I wonder, do the smallest instruments make the most noise? What is it about small motors — from lawn mowers to vacuum clearners — that make them proportionately noisier than car motors? It’s nuts! Is it to leave the user no doubt that the bloody instrument is working?

Now, I’ll also admit I don’t like motorbikes — mostly because of the noise they make. But, at the same time, I’m mixed about the noise they make. I realize that in a world of cars, motorbikes have to be heard, for they aren’t seen as much as they need to be. But just this instant, I heard a motorbike which I suspect was at least half a mile away. Isn’t that a little excessive?

There’s a lot of noise pollution out there, and I swear it’s getting worse. Before I started writing this entry, I did ask myself if perhaps I’m more sensitive to noise because of my quasi-constant crankiness of late. But I don’t think that’s the case, or, at least, I don’t think it’s something that just came up in me in the last year or two. I don’t know if most of us these days could stand real, absolute silence. I bet it would make many nervous, and they’d have to do something just to break the silence.

Recently I found this blog where the author urges people to send him anonymous postcards containing their deepest, darkest secret.

© 2005 PostSecret

This site has struck a chord in me. Some of the cards made me laugh; others made me want to cry. We all harbour secrets based exclusively on their real or perceived incorrectness.

Shame is very powerful and, in some cases, needlessly destructive. I strongly encourage you to visit PostSecret …as long as you do so thinking about your own deep, dark secrets. You needn’t (and shouldn’t) pass judgement given how these “revealers” are already, for the most part, doing a “good” job at beating themselves up.

After writing my blog entires yesterday, I did most of the things I set out to do. I ran out of time for the groceries, but that’s no big deal.

Since I’ve been on the patch, I’ve developed this habit of taking it off as I get up, and get in the shower almost immediately. Yesterday, however, when I drew up my to-do list, I decided to delay my shower. So given that it was well after 9 pm by the time I did shower, I opted not to put on a new patch, as it would make my night’s sleep more hellish than my sleeps have been already.

I went out for a few drinks and, even sans patch, having people smoke around me didn’t bother me much. I went to bed around my usual time — about 5 am — and slept like a log. While I know I dreamed, the dreams weren’t anywhere as wildly and deranged as they are when I’m wearing a patch. And when I woke up shortly before noon, I felt as though I had slept around the clock. Not only that: I felt that my mood was perceptibly better than it has been in recent weeks.

It then occurred to me… Nicotine, like alcohol, is a depressant, right? I know smokers often don’t think of it as such, since we get a kind of jolt when we light up, but its real net effect is a downer. Well, if that’s the case, what’s to be said about getting a steady dose of nicotine, 24/7?

Now don’t get me wrong! I’m not insinuating a simple cause-effect relationship, nor am I suggesting that the patch is somehow worse than smoking. It clearly isn’t! Ironically, I fell asleep to the sound of my upstairs neighbour going through a bout of smoker’s cough and was awaken by the same neighbour’s same cough while he was on his balcony, having a smoke — that cough I no longer have even though it hasn’t quite been 6 weeks since I’ve become a quasi non-smoker or, if you prefer, an extremely light smoker.

I still have my eye on the ball. I showered as soon as I got up and slapped on a new patch for the day, even though I didn’t feel an overwhelming desire to smoke my brains out. I haven’t lost sight of the direction I’m going nor the reasons why I’m heading there. But my little experience of going without a patch for 24 hours is certainly making me look forward to the end of this therapy and see how I’ll feel by then, mood wise. Maybe, if you’ll pardon the pun, the patch is rough on a guy…

Can you believe that we’re already coming up to Junior‘s second birthday? The Bush Whacker helped me with the adoption on the 20th and I took possession of my baby boy on the 28th.

He’s still in mint condition, but dirty as hell. I wanted to bring him to the spa in May, but the ongoing nasty weather didn’t seem to make it worth it. And now that we’re already the middle of June, I don’t feel like bringing him in anymore. So, shortly, I’ll be heading downstairs and “doing the job” on him, inside and out. It’s a gorgeous day outside — it would have been an excellent beach day — but I really felt I should pay attention to Junior’s needs instead. It might not be as nice as a spa job, but it’ll do …plus I can’t really afford a spa job for him right now.

While I’m at it, I might as well be thoroughly domestic. I really need to get some groceries, and the bathroom and kitchen floor need some attention, too. I saw Indiana Jones last week and he dropped by, and I think he was shocked by how well I’ve been managing at keeping my new place presentable. For most people, this is a non-issue — just life as an adult! — but for me it’s a big deal — part of all the changes in the last year.

And speaking of changes, I’m having an absolutely horrible day cigarette wise, so don’t ask. Seriously, though, I still desperately want to quit, but today I don’t give a shit. I’m wondering if this might be the result of not having given much thought to my official start date, for as you may recall, although I’d been thinking about quitting for a while, I more or less woke up one day and decided to go on the patch. My frame of mind today is that of a non-smoker who would like to have a few leisurely smokes, and nothing more after that. I’m told, however, that for a (former?) smoker, it can never be like that.

But why couldn’t it be for me? And, for a bunch of reasons I’m not going to get into right now, “it just doesn’t work that way” is not a satisfactory answer. It’s just not.

A while ago, I volunteered with my Web host to translate, from English to French, the strings of text that you find in cPanel, the set of domain management utilities that come with each hosted account.

I was given fair warning that the file was long, and it is. However, I didn’t expect so much repetition. For instance, with TextStyleM — and by no means am I trying to imply that my CMS is somehow better than the very sophisticated cPanel! — I’ve translated some basic words right from the top (e.g., “e-mail,” so that if one day the undisputed standard in the original language becomes “email” or the translation changes, I’ll be able to edit the word in one spot and, provided I reused the word in its variable form, it will change to the new spelling throughout the program. This practice proved very useful when I had to change slightly the name of TextStyleM itself, which fortunately I had stored in a variable I called $TSR_Str[prog_name] and used consistently in all subsequent strings. A simple search-and-replace for something so fundamental might have caused some damage.

Alas, the strings of text in cPanel aren’t designed in this manner. It seems like each screenful was examined, its strings of text extracted and then placed into variables. As a consequence, so far, I’ve found myself translating the exact string of text as many as three times. Given how anal I am about consistency, this is driving me a little nuts.

As a result of this volunteer effort, though, I found an excellent site for computer and Internet terminology in French. The authors of the site take the time to give the origins of words, especially those that are controversial or still contested (e.g., webillard for “discussion forum” or “bulletin board” has taken only in Quebec). I was also amused by the suggestion from some French to refer to e-mail as mél (pronounced a lot like “mail”), as it would be derived from messagerie électronique. Fortunately, courriel (derived from courrier électronique) has caught on quite well in recent years among French speakers.