all about pamusement

please don't stop the music

2008-11-25T16:03:00.004-05:00

random netizens seem to be on the scent of the peptides music project, modest though it is. this review of 'stereo stereo' popped up and holy shit, it's pretty positive. then this writer singled me out and posted my aimee mann cover on a track list. oh god!

also, the host of CHUO's 'do you hear what i hear' played a couple of tracks on his show last week and announced that he'll be spinning the whole album tomorrow night. eeps.

lord knows music is one of the only things that makes me feel better. that's why i'm glad to be back to guitar lessons and mediocre songwriting, why i've accepted to sing a couple of soul tunes at a friend's wedding next weekend, why i'm hopeful about the acoustic set we're planning to perform at the mercury lounge next month, and probably why i've been downloading the likes of otis redding and martha redbone at itunes today.

neat how things curiously percolate out there as i'm holed up in the house, fretting about whether or not to get a real job and how the hell to kick my own writing ass to let loose all the seemingly important things my gut wants to purge. oh but i've got big plans for enforcing a new (and strict) schedule wherein despite the absence of a benefactor to bankroll my stupid dreams, writing will be more disciplined than ever. it may be the same plan i announce to myself at the top of each month, but this time will be different godammit.

on the health front, i'm in no hurry to ascertain why my body has downshifted so drastically. the coma quest continues, too. i found myself formulating kiddie rhymes in my hazy head this morning in an attempt to justify another day and night of unwellness: "maybe it's the pillows, maybe it's the bed, maybe it's cuz mine is such a messed up head..."

late yesterday, the snow finally decided to come. and stay. i find myself relieved. there is something comforting about the world chilling down beneath a layer of frosting, if only for a few months. i'm charmed by the prettiness of this season, sure. but winter makes people run inside and curl up under things, slow down, hide out. so i guess it's the season when my habits are less peculiar. yeah, that's it.

old news and catchup

2008-11-16T23:28:00.006-05:00

a couple of webby things came and went -- never too late to share.

my friend and fellow communicator robin phoned me in columbus on october 30th to interview me about vote today ohio for his social media podcast. the interview appears halfway through this episode, posted november 3rd. i sound a bit rhaspy and out of it, but reasonably intelligible, thank god.

and an update on the peptides: popular music blogger 'cover lay down' reviewed our covers at the bottom of this post. other than his reference to us as a 'musical theatre troupe', i don't disagree with anything he had to say. relief. in related news, we launched 'stereo stereo' at the mercury lounge's 12th anniversary party last weekend, and i took a small handful of photos to mark the occasion.

me? 1.5 weeks home from the ohio experience and not much less discombobulated than when i unlocked my door and crossed back over the threshold. i'm working on it, though. the gloomy weather ain't helping. there hasn't yet been a solid snow, but it is going to land and stay any minute. til then, the days are dark, damp, and short, which makes me want to curl up and read more than clamor back to sustainable routines.

the emotionality and fear of post-ohio processing are less intense, but i still haven't managed to jumpstart the writing-down-of-it-all, which needs to happen soon in order, i think, for me to get repositioned and forwardly postured. i have, at least, decided on an approach -- one that seems less overwhelming than 'omg write down Everything. NOW'. i'm taking it one anecdote at a time: blurbs about voters and funny or edifying moments and places and instances. i figure they will serve well enough on their own or somehow weave together to reveal macro level conclusions. doesn't really matter, i just need to download the stuff, run my fingers over it, and move on.

meanwhile, i've been laying low. not quite ready to socialize yet, at least not in that energetic, enthusiastic kind of way. i've spent some time with a couple of VIPs, but that's it. and i'm ok with that. being away so long under such intense circumstances can't help but force you to think about who you missed or didn't, and why.

i shan't linger in this limbo too much longer. but lord knows i'm less than sure about what's next.

this is it

2008-11-04T19:40:00.003-05:00

i can report that a few minutes ago, the last phoner was talking to the last identified voter and as soon as he said 'but no sir, there's still time, here's the address where you should run to get in line to vote' we all started yelling into the phone GO GO GO GO GO like bona fide lunatics. then we piled on for a weird group hug. and that pretty much sums up many things.

i can report that i am presently nursing a mix of nausea and excitement. not bad, considering i've spent most of the day wondering what to feel at all. auto pilot. numb. numb.

i can report that our voter taxi operation today surpassed even my wildest expectations. whereas last night erik and i were speculating we'd field maybe 20 ride requests, our final number as of ten minutes ago was somewhere near 60 happy, chauffeured obama voters. it was nutty at times, lulled at times, but so profoundly satisfying to transport those people - THOSE VOTES - when they almost mattered the most.

i can report that no one here in this coalition staging site is feeling SURE of anything, but that HOPE is in every air molecule i smell and breathe right now. in moments, i will pack my car and hurtle up the highway to columbus where i will meet the 'family' with whom i've lived and worked for damn near seven weeks and no matter what the historic results are tonight, there will be cocktails to consume and comas to slip into. and when i wake up, i will wend my way up interstates in a haze of relief to wrap myself up in my home and friends and delicious, amazing memories.

campaigning in ohio - dispatch #6

2008-11-03T16:42:00.007-05:00

this november 3rd has been as balmy as any warm summer's day here in cincinnati. the line-up at the early voting center is already challenging the lengths it achieved on saturday. twas apparently wrapped around a downtown city block by 7.30 this morning, and by all accounts, will be that long when the sheriff makes an arbitrary cut-off at 4 pm.

i have been staffing our voter taxi dispatch line since 8 am. i'm in the america votes election staging office in a cute office with a cute view of cincy's west side on a very cute E-minus-1. i share this office with the lively jessie jenkins of the naacp voter fund, who has kept me pretty much in stitches with his punchy mouth. beyond the thin walls, we are surrounded by the determined voices of telephone canvassers leaning in for the final push of confirmed or almost confirmed progressive voters. it is so cool to overhear them giving voters the toll free number that would lead straight to my ride line. i've been making canvass calls too, in the spaces in between, and am actually enjoying that contact, however limited, with the very people who could bring this thing home. as the day plods on, logistics people are keeping us watered and fed and coffeed here as members of my intrepid cincy voter shuttle team flit around this buzzing town to drive ohioans to the early voting center.

well now here it is: today is the last chance for early voters to get it done. the crowd is evidently thick, mostly enthusiastic. you really get the sense that people are doing more than show up to vote -- they're taking some sort of stand. i've managed to grab a few interviews and am always heartened to hear about the motivations of folks: 'a black man is so close to the white house you can almost taste it', 'i ain't never done anything that felt this important'. oh sure, people are cranky pants in those lines, but generally, the atmosphere i've seen is festive. there is music and dancing and whooping among the groans of pained feet. volunteers from any number of campaigns are doing their best to distribute water and snacks and folding chairs to the waiting voters; others are just helping keep spirits up with comedy and chants. the critical task is to keep people from defecting. we're just so aware of the unlikelihood of dropouts ever coming back -- even on election day. speaking of which, none of us is sure what tomorrow will bring. as for my organization, we hardly know whether to expect 20 or 200 ride requests. of greater concern is what trouble of a macro kind we might face. ohio voters know damn well the kind of problems that possibly await them at regular polling places tomorrow. that's why the early voting period has yielded such tremendous turn-out. and that's why it's been easy to feel fulfilled about the kind of work we have been able to do. meaningful.

bitter am i that i missed the mary j blige/jay-z event today. would have been uplifting, i think, if only for some tension relief. that tension would have either been aided or exacerbated had i attended the big barack/michelle rally in cincy last night -- i just wasn't sure how my crowd tolerance would hold up, not to mention the work erik and i knew was priority: oh driver-map-making and leaflet-dropping, you time suckers.

(i've been amused by the extent to which corporations seem to have climbed aboard the democracy express: starbucks is offering big coffees for anyone who claims to have voted; those same people can exchange their proud votership for a krispy kreme, too. jesus.)

most difficult to grasp, i think, is the notion that the end is finally here. the polls say things i should like, as does the pulse of the situation on which my finger has been firmly placed all this time. but i refuse to celebrate until it is time to celebrate. this night four years ago in a decorated madison ballroom was absolutely the saddest night of my entire life -- and we didn't even like john kerry that much.

i think i've been surprised by the range of emotions this roller coaster has been. what was first fatigue has given way to homesickness that is thick. every single feeling is amplified by the fatigue and intensity of it all. i miss my bed and routine and the easy silence of close friendship. i've come to realize just how deeply i appreciate things like the fidelice bakery, prolific middle eastern cuisine, and the daily presence of the french language.

on the one hand, my ohio stint has flown by, but on the other, it is a lifetime. there just winds up being such an attachment to a place the longer you work in its roots, you know? i'm glad i chose to spend the duration in ohio, not play political tourist as i once thought i might. there are pros and cons to either choice, i suppose, but i'm sure content with mine. i have learned things yet to sink it and felt things never to be forgotten. i'm wobbling over all that i've built here, and all that i'll have to leave behind in just a few fleeting days. including people. if this whole nutty edifying draining thing hasn't been all about the people, nothing ever will be.

campaigning in ohio - dispatch #5

2008-11-02T14:47:00.000-05:00

i/we crafted an op-ed that just went up at alternet.org. BEHOLD AN EXCERPT:

"I've thought of more excuses why not to vote, why not to do this," Bobby told us. "And each time, it has cost me more than it would have cost me to get up off my a** -- excuse my French -- and try to make a change."

So said Bobby Johnson in the back of one of our Vote Today Ohio shuttles. When he spotted our van at the Bishop Cosgrove Centre, a food pantry in Cleveland, he climbed right on in. He hadn't voted in years, but on October 4th, 2008, Bobby became one of the 67,408 Ohioans who cast a ballot during the first week of Ohio's new Early Voting period.

We have seen and heard Bobby's story repeated from Cincinnati to Youngstown, from Athens to Toledo. So many unlikely voters we drove to Ohio Early Voting Centers represent this truth: elections are changing. You might even say democracy itself, in fact, is changing. For the better.

Ohio no longer has an Election Day. Innovative updating of the process has now yielded an Election Month. And we've seen the embracing of this change in the faces of the very voters most positively impacted by it.

This year, an estimated 1 out of 3 Americans will cast their ballot either through absentee or early voting. Colorado is even expected to see half its turnout amongst early voters. Ohio Secretary of State Jennifer Brunner opened Early Voting Centers in every county on September 30 and will keep them open through November 3. She has gone openly and vehemently on the record as supporting Early Voting as a means of broadening access, and estimates that "25 percent of Ohio's registered voters, or the number of voters voting, will have voted before Election Day."

...

Our vans have transported all manner of Ohioans -- of Bobby Johnsons -- who are unlikely to have voted otherwise. Nick drove an elderly Dayton man to vote early who figured his absentee ballot would be lost at the housing project where he lives. Caty drove Columbus college students who were too excited to wait until November 4. Erik drove a transient Cincinnati woman who for forty years, has abstained from elections, thinking her vote didn't matter. Rafiq has driven countless young Cleveland men who most people fear or overlook as part of the urban scenery.

Moving nearly 3500 Ohioans to Early Voting Centers has helped us understand all too well why opponents would devote precious time and resources to convincing the public that early voting is trouble: because it helps bring marginalized people in from the margins. And that must threaten them to the bone. Challenging democracy, indeed.

Vote Today Ohio is eagerly calling any and all volunteers to help with the final push.

5th saturday in ohio

2008-10-25T21:50:00.007-04:00

whatever was i thinking that a day unplugged from this campaign wouldn't risk peeling back the glorious distraction from my shit that this trip has so far been. back at the headquarters after my afternoon excursion to the movies, i am enveloped now by the sheer chaos that is homecoming -- the buckeyes' big game against penn state -- with this neighbourhood and surrounding streets ablaze with the fervor of team spirit, of misspent youth, of obnoxia nervosa. it is amidst this jarring, surreal soundtrack that i attempt to shove back under the folds the coils and batting that anxiously poked through today. where've i been, they wonder - almost audibly - and who do i think i am leaving them untended this damn long. and i well know the answer: i am as deserving as anyone of a fresh break from old pain, thank you very much, and so i have managed to find myself as sublimely immersed in political passions as anyone could wish.

but handy they are, my neglected bits, or i might not have been so rocked - gutted, even - by the poem caty read me just now:

What lips my lips have kissed, and where, and why,
I have forgotten, and what arms have lain
Under my head till morning; but the rain
Is full of ghosts tonight, that tap and sigh
Upon the glass and listen for reply,

And in my heart there stirs a quiet pain
For unremembered lads that not again
Will turn to me at midnight with a cry.
Thus in winter stands the lonely tree,
Nor knows what birds have vanished one by one,
Yet knows its boughs more silent than before:
I cannot say what loves have come and gone,
I only know that summer sang in me
A little while, that in me sings no more.

- Edna St. Vincent Millay

campaigning in ohio - dispatch #4

2008-10-11T19:07:00.000-04:00

it sort of feels like i've actually re-located to columbus, not just popped by as a political tourist in search of a hot campaign. i mean, today i did such 'i live here' things as shop at Target for scouring pads and a brita, get a massage, and visit the market for produce. i'm currently preparing a sweet potato chipotle soup. feeling harassed by that bandwagon, i picked up a copy of 'the secret life of bees' which i shall curl up and read on the porch tonight instead of seeing margaret cho at the palace theatre - an expense i really couldn't justify.

after our 'golden week' grand finale on monday, the campaign has temporarily suspended. tate, the director, drove back to brooklyn for a few days to stroke shawna's baby bump; plus he's up to his eyeballs in FEC paperwork. other members of the core team have scattered away for a few days of rest/play. and here i remain in columbus, holding down the fort while tending to neglected contract work for clients from home.

and of course, i saw OBAMA yesterday at genoa park, downtown. it was all that. i'm so glad i came down here to this intensely heated battleground state. what a freaking historic election.

i've had occasion to weigh options and consider other points of interest in these here united states. i thought about checking out philly, looking for campaign work in florida, or even heading to colorado where the race is tight and fascinating. then amy, our field director - who is now home in new york state with her ducks and congressional races - suggested my role in the next phase of our project could be that of more press officer duties while continuing my regional oversight of cincinnati. that suits me fine. i feel invested in ohio now, especially after these two weeks of fervor. and i like the idea of staying with this team and seeing something really cool to it's end.

what exactly are we going to do? well now that 'golden week' is over, we are planning some variation on the same theme: mobilize registered voters to continue to take advantage of the early vote scheme. it all returns to full swing in this makeshift HQ on monday morning.

here's what we/i posted just the other day to the Vote Today Ohio website:

LOOK WHAT HAPPENED IN OHIO!

Monday was the final day of Golden Week here in Ohio, and we ROCKED IT!

That was the day we banked just over 800 Obama votes (exact tallies to be confirmed).

That was the day we hit our single biggest total.

That was the day when all our advance work and publicity paid off. It shows the cumulative power of our relentless organizers, drivers, team leaders, and supporters. We built a great organization together, and no matter what curveballs came our way, we persevered with our mission.

That perseverance touched people. As corny as it sounds, our work here hasn't just added votes to Obama's column. It has changed lives. Original volunteers have decided to stay longer to keep driving early voters. New recruits found over the course of our activities have thrown themselves into the cause. One of our team leaders in Cincinnati called on Tuesday to announce "The amazing volunteers here just won't be stopped!"

Deep down, I think he's why all of us do this work -- to make our democracy work for the people that need it most. That's justice.

Also, of course, we do this work to WIN. So, how does it all add up? What do we have to show for our blood, sweat and tears?

During Golden Week, Vote Today Ohio banked ~3300 Obama votes and 621 voter registrations. Did we make a critical contribution in America's #1 battleground state? Absolutely!

Our 3300 votes were far more than just a drop in the bucket. Consider this: In Franklin County (home to Columbus), 9264 people voted early during Golden Week. Vote Today Ohio vans (and cars and marches) moved 1369 of them to the polls. Yes, we directly moved 14.8 percent of the early vote in Franklin County. It's safe to assume that thousands more heard about Golden Week directly from our work. That's powerful. We were THE game in town.

Plus, we broke new ground. We asked ourselves a risky question -- could a hard-working and intrepid group of volunteers actually make good on an untested Golden Week voter mobilization program? Would voters respond? Could we pull it off in just three wee weeks? The answers are a resounding YES. Sure, we learned some tough lessons. But we learned them well, and by the end of the week, we had the kind of smooth, professional operation that any campaign would die for. With some strategic tweaks, our Golden Week program will now become a powerful tool in the progressive arsenal.

Now for an important announcement: Over the next few days, our core team will be processing and analyzing this amazing experiment. We're already planning our next steps. We've built something strong and effective, and are compelled to keep it moving. So please stay tuned for our next phase, and don't be surprised if we invite you back!

We should all feel immensely proud of the work we did -- from driving voters to the polls to engaging with them directly, from supporting us with donations to housing our volunteers, to a zillion other things. We've accomplished an historic feat this week. Go ahead. Pat yourself on the back. Celebrate our success. And when Obama wins in November, you'll be able to say, "That's MY victory!"

With deep, deep respect for all you've done this week,
the Vote Today Ohio team

campaigning in ohio - dispatch #3

2008-10-06T13:17:00.005-04:00

for starters: i finally got some photos of this nutty ohio TRIP up onto flickr. a photographer i am surely not, but hey. everyone has gone to bed and the house is quiet. i can't sleep. not because i'm wired up but more because i'm wired down. oddly. tomorrow is our Grand Finale -- the last day for one-stop early voting. and unlike my counterparts who are each, in their own way, nursing pangs of anticipation and anxiety about it all, i feel fine. plans have been laid, teams prepped, assignments assigned. in a way, it's all out of our hands now. yet in another, we carry it all.

so how has the week gone for our humble project? the numbers tell part of the story: several hundred the first day to almost a thousand on friday. the weekend stats are weird, given that so many EVCs (early voting centers) were closed half or all day. our teams did lots of visibility work when EVCs were closed, like flyering cars and postering shelters and what my team dubbed 'the dorm storms' -- targeting students with sign-ups for monday rides.

the trajectory of numbers has been promising, to be sure, though not necessarily what we'd projected. the exercise of identifying any numeric targets had been arbitrary, at best. that's the trick about inventing a brand new thing -- you have nothing to compare it to, no lessons to correct, and everything to gain. early voting is a new concept in and of itself, never mind the fact that this 'golden week' portion of it was the first time (ever? anywhere?) voters could register and vote at the same time. so when t ate conceived of and initiated this idea, he also took on the task of making everything up. from scratch. sure, he assembled a dynamo team to do it with, but still, no one knew what to shoot for... at least not in comparative terms. that's not to sound defensive. i'm just sharing those realities of field organizing that anyone who's done it can relate to.

in spite of those deeper matters, our teams and activities have been rocking. it took a couple of days to hit our stride, but once we did, that shit got HOT. from allied groups to average voters, everyone can feel it. and they're buzzing about it. reports from the field have all ended the same way: "this thing is gaining momentum, and tomorrow, we're gonna do even better!"

in addition to my regional director role, i've been put on a bit of press officer duty -- and we've been getting covered! -- so i've had lots of occasion to think and talk about this project. the thing i keep reminding folks is that we can only track numbers of voters we physically take to the polls. but those don't reflect the thousands of ohioans who learned about early voting thanks to our visibility, materials, media, and people, then took themselves to vote. there's no telling how many voters hurried up and registered because Our Work reminded them that tomorrow is the last day. that's not spin, that's fact.

so we're feeling stoked and proud and energized about it all. the whole concept of early voting still blows my mind. and you just know it came at too crucial a political moment in too tense a place because those other guys tried to shut it down. unsuccessfully. but it still makes folks nervous that this could be the only year for early voting because some people are too antsy about it -- likely because it favours the types of folks whose voices are mostly unheard.

meanwhile, it has been tremendously rewarding to help mobilize the very people whose belief in democracy will most benefit from this early voting scheme. amy, our field director, has been comparing our one week initiative to a single election day -- which means tomorrow (last day) is like the final hour of a typical e-day. no holds barred blitz, baby. overdrive. full steam. home run. analogy-palooza, basically. we're gunning for some SERIOUS VOTES.

the teams i've been overseeing couldn't be more ready for tomorrow. they've pimped up the vans like nobody's business, and even rented a major megaphone system for one of them to be blaring loud and clear "last chance to register and vote early". people here at headquarters have been teasing me about the crushes i seem to have developed on my team leaders out there, but with them turning out such kick-ass organizing skills and energy day in and day out, who the eff can blame me?

btw, saw springsteen (again) today -- he stopped in columbus as part of a special tour for obama. it was an incredible acoustic set under a beautiful, warm, fall sky. granted, we worked the crowds for van sign-ups and whatnot, but still, it sure felt nice to take a break from the frenzy to enjoy a simple outdoor concert. i may not be his biggest fan, but it has to be said The Boss has never sounded better. more importantly, he gave what has to be one of the best (albeit inadvertent) political speech i have maybe ever heard. no speechwriters, no tele-prompter, no spin. just a poet with heart, movingly imploring ohioans to grab hold of the early voting advantage as a way to get obama elected because "i want my america back. i want my country back."

campaigning in ohio - dispatch #2

2008-10-01T15:05:00.002-04:00

as i unwound on the porch in the dark rain late monday night, my mood could best be described as misty. the day spent doing our volunteer training session both exhausted and inspired me. our compact core team shuffled back to headquarters in the late evening as aching zombies. we had successfully briefed, papered, and assuaged the 100+ volunteers and deployed them out to various parts of the state. we were feeling confident and hopeful about the project kicking off with a bang. as pretty much the sole operation in ohio focused solely on mobilizing targeted populations to take advantage of the early voting scheme, we had all the sense in the world that what we're doing is profoundly worthwhile and electorally important.

yesterday, we awoke nervously to sit all day on pins and needles, waiting to get word from our team leaders in the field about how things are looking and feeling. as it turns out, it was a day full of highs and lows. in some locales, our vans were filling up like gangbusters while at others, the same work yielded smaller results. in some instances, team leaders came up against campus administrators, security guards, and feisty republicans. in better news, there were no hiccups at the actual early voting centers (EVC). frankly, this stunned us. by all accounts, the staff and process at all of the EVCs are smooth as silk. this, of course, would have been the side of things on which we would have expected trouble to reside. BUT HELLS NO. the secretary of state for elections here in ohio is apparently progressive and helpful and openly devoted to making voting easy for EVERYONE (hunh, imagine). we had one incident at a campus in cleveland where a volunteer of ours – a middle-aged former cop, no less – was handcuffed by a campus security guard for calmly asking a student if she knew she could vote early, but it all got sorted out and we're certain today will go smoother. since operations at voting centers seem to be relatively free of kinks, the crack legal minds of the ACLU, America Votes, and AFL-CIO who had been put on stand-by for initiatives like ours are languishing with little to do, which means they've descended upon our handcuffing situation with gusto. they're re-confirming campus access issues and hopefully issuing a memo to all colleges and universities state-wide instructing them to let our people do their THING.

by the way, even the least significant story of voter access problems left me rather teary. ok, the fatigue makes for a lower weepiness threshold, but still - i don't think i'll ever get over the complete insanity of how in canada we get a piece of paper in the mail and choose to walk over to a polling place (or not) to cast a ballot. yes, i know, there are still problems with the census and Elections Canada tracking and some voting procedures and of course that whole proportional representation thing. but in general, it is not hard or complicated or discriminatorily unjust for us like it continues to be down here. that makes me feel a great many things, the overriding of which is SAD. but never mind that for now.

i've pretty much averaged an 8 am to 1 am workday since arriving, and last night went way later than that. it was the first round of nightly check-ins between me and my team leaders, and all the reporting forms and notes that go along with that. i'm sure tonight's calls will be shorter, but it took awhile to debrief day one, then turn around and brief the field director on what i'd learned. i cannot possibly put into words how amazing my team leaders are -- four bright, young, committed guys whose dedication to what this is about really rocks. they move me. seems like every time i hang up the phone after a question or update or alert, i need to take a couple of deep breaths to let it soak in just how amazing i think they are, this is. and how glad i got over my last-minute cold feet and decided to come here to support, advise, and motivate them.

i am jotting down drafty bits about upper level strategy and analysis and progressive numbers later, but the past couple of days have really just been about people. the american friends i've made over the years prove it to me over and over again that there are indeed pockets and movements of amazing progressive work happening down here, but it's super easy for us to stay caught up in our (mostly justified) frustration about americans – or more to the point, the american electorate (as if our own is any less confounding). what a world of good to be in the company of such committed, progressive AMERICAN activists – spanning the range of ages and backgrounds and geographies – all of whom are devoting every ounce of intellect and energy to changing this country. i think every once in awhile, it's important for canadian progressives to be among these people... in person, in real time. i mean, it's not like we don't know 'these' americans are down here, fighting the good fight and feeling the way we do. but at times like this, i love getting to KNOW them.

IN (PSEUDO) CELEB NEWS: i was giddy to meet mrs. andree dean, mother of howard, who is one of my team members in youngstown. she'll be moving her adorable, 83 year-old self around communities of colour this week and even agreed to be exploited as we need her to be. she found me funny, and i found her tiny. also, this guy who I TOTALLY recognized from various secondary character roles is one of our columbus volunteers, is deliciously sarcastic, and eager to talk up early voting whenever he's promoting his new movie "W" (a bio-pic about Dubya).

also, here's my new friend cristina moon narrating a promo video we (VTO) put out last week. oh, the cuteness.

campaigning in ohio - dispatch #1

2008-09-28T11:55:00.004-04:00

the Vote Today Ohio office is on a hectic columus street on the periphery of Ohio State University. we are in what was formerly a frat house, so indicated by the giant team mascot and logo painted on the kitchen wall, the air hockey table in the living room, and the faint lingering smell of beer.

after a very long drive on friday night (thank you NPR, cigs, ipod, and bad coffee) – hurtling through black space across the interstates of America – i arrived in columbus at 3.30 in the morning, quietly let myself into this house, and dropped onto an uncomfortably small couch at the back of the main floor. i'd barely napped for four hours until the morning rustling of housemates woke me up. by 8.20, i was rocking a wild afro and black eyes while sipping desperate espressos and engaging in fatigued small talk with lively strangers. by 9 am, i was meeting with the field director – amy little, a political operative from new york – and by 9.30, i was appointed regional director (RD) for the cincinnati area.

since then, i have pretty much been ensconced in writing organizing materials and attending meetings. we are pursuing three primary objectives: information saturation; voter recruitment; volunteer recruitment. the main push of this effort focuses on 'Golden Week', during which we want to turn out more than 10,000 new or unlikely voters. the team is fairly impressive – organizers from california to new england who are young, smart, and pumped. i so far feel my experience and skills are being put to excellent use.

seriously, this is the most cush political campaign i have ever worked on. we are pimped out with wi-fi, office supplies, and strong, endless coffee. whereas in 2004, the modest little office of the Young Voter Alliance in madison had a lone cupboard stuffed with raman noodles, here is another freaking story. thanks to the generosity of donors, the kitchen of this frat house is overflowing with so much deliciousness. the project director's partner shopped til she dropped yesterday and began cooking up what will be a week's worth of meals for this bustling house. the fridge contains such shockingly non-campaign items as sunflower seed butter, Sriracha, and wine. we are spoiled. oh, and i've been moved into my own room upstairs, replete with air mattress and rusty windows. like i said: cush.

so this morning, i'm studying the site analysis and DPI (Democratic performance index) of my region, and the maps. tonight, our 20 state-wide 'Team Leaders' (TLs) descend onto this HQ House for their training. after their special session tonight, drinks are on tap at a place called the surly gurl saloon, then ready ourselves for tomorrow's big training. by tuesday morning, our keener pods will be on the ground doing their kicking-ass thing, and i'll be able to report on how the whole thing is playing out.

the VTO operation is working in concert with other initiatives like america votes, league of young voters, rock the vote, and swing semester. tomorrow morning, i'm going to try to hit a concert before the training: john legend will be performing on campus to kick off the early voting drive. i love him.

more mat leave for me - hooray!

2008-09-16T18:02:00.000-04:00

harper’s gift to self-employed women of extended parental leave shows he cares. we apparently shouldn’t have to “choose between starting a family and starting a business” - aww.

from the sanctimonious tone of the announcement, you’d think harper has decided to bestow onto self-employeds all the benefits afforded other working moms … at least the ones fortunate enough to work in settings where a full-time/secure status gets them access to health plans, dental benefits, sick leave, paid vacation, A Pension, even THE WEEKEND.

the media has hyped the announcement as an election gimmick, and they sure got it right.

um, thanks, harper, for taking notice of the one million or so women you want to lure with this extended mat leave idea. those of us still on the fence about you will now surely belly up to your kool-aid. gosh, you really ‘get’ us!

puh-leez. throwing this bone to the small constituency of women who could benefit from the proposal after having mocked/decimated/overlooked so many policies that would advance women’s equality is akin to tossing out a couple of life preservers while denying the ship is even sinking. if canadian voters are so gullible as to think this makes you progressive or clued-up, then we surely deserve you as our PM.

anyone in touch with the realities facing women in canada - self-employed or otherwise - would rather harper (or any federal leader) put his suddenly-gender-inequality-addressing money where his mouth is by:

putting ‘equality’ back into status of women canada and augmenting funding to equality-seeking groups
incentivizing health plan providers to serve the increasingly non-traditional workforce of which a majority are women, including self-employeds, consultants, freelancers
conceding that fewer than 20% of children in canada have access to a regulated childcare space and heeding the calls for a universal childcare system
including self-employment within areas covered by the EI program - you seem to know that one in 10 employed women is now self-employed, so why allow 10% of employed women to be automatically excluded from EI?
increasing the amounts and categories of what we self-employeds can write off as business-related expenses, including more related to parenthood

harper seems incapable of recognizing - let alone comprehending - matters related to work/life/familiy balance that women of all sorts of employment status in canada face. maternity leave is but one modest piece of a far more nuanced, complex puzzle than harper could ever handle.

may will get to play - so what?

2008-09-11T21:40:00.003-04:00

careful boys - it’s been awhile, but a woman is coming to debate you. a smart and sassy one, at that.

elizabeth may being allowed into the debate is a communicator’s dream. but it may be a sort of hell for the comms strategists in the various party war rooms. no sooner were they in damage control mode for having shunned her in the first place, now they’re brainstorming about how to use her inclusion to their party’s advantage.

even before her foray into electoral politics, may had a reputation for being scrappy. now that her lobby for an official podium has surged both her campaign AND her confidence, she’s sure to arrive at the debates in full form. if she’s smart, though, may will play the thoughtful and intelligent leader to the others’ boy-club-as-usual brand of banter.

may could transform the debate into something palatable, giving the usual testosterone fest a real shake up. her presence - never mind performance - could add value to a pro forma exercise that typically turns more people off than on to the leaders and their prized electoral process. folks might actually watch this one.

may has a lot riding on this appearance. in addition to cramming as much platform and persuasion as she can into her allotted time, may will have to give layton a run for his money in terms of presenting an ‘alternative’ political choice, especially on those finer policy points that have average voters wondering how to tell the ndp and greens apart. and while all the leaders have big plans for pointed attacks on harper, they will now have the added noise of may to break through - noise she’ll direct at harper sharply and effectively, i suspect.

with the sarah palin factor in full effect down below, may will be watched with even keener eyes. at the risk of coming across as another ‘novelty’, she has to up the ante on substance in a way palin thus far has not. why? i’d like to believe that unlike our sheep-y neighbours to the south, we canadians are a scrutinizing bunch who prefer substance over style and purpose over pomp.

may is unlikely to break any important ground with her interventions on the economy, social policy, or even peace. her mettle will obviously be most tested on the environment. most canadians tend to believe that no federal party really gives a shit about planet earth. with this access to the mainstage, may has a golden opportunity to generate real, credible urgency about climate change and the environment. at the debates, she will no doubt save her best assault on the prime minister for the conservatives’ appalling record on the environment.

i’ll be tuning in with high hopes, organic popcorn in hand.

life by lists

2008-07-06T01:28:00.009-04:00

lessons (or confirmations) from my stint at CUPE

i pretty much suck in offices, LEEDS-standards sexy or otherwise.

i’m more capable, professionally, than i even thought i was, but…

my above-average ability to effectively navigate (endure?) bureaucratic systems may well be over.

even four shrill alarms and contractual obligations can’t guarantee me out of bed before 10.

what for most people are the ‘witching’ hours are my most creative.

the strange pride that comes from good ghost-writing still got nothing on a byline, however unnoticed.

talented people cannot thrive unless or until they are trusted to.

my gut really should get more air time.

i have become quite the misanthropic loner.

reasons to cling to the freelancing dream as long as i can

see above.

things i want to accomplish before the end of 2008

play the guitar without looking down at it.

polish off a new batch of vocal demos.

spend at least every other saturday night outside this house and/or being social.

take at least one week of bona fide, unplugged vacation… possibly in cuba.

spend time campaigning somewhere in the US during the presidential election.

feel better than this.

take to their conclusion at least two dangling personal writing projects.

secure a regular column/commentary on a web zine.

replace this with a new, lighter, less assholic laptop.

get a new tattoo.

what concerns me most about the post-presumptive-nominee-becoming obama (aka: see! 'supporter' doesn’t mean 'zealot', haters)

his recent disclosure of the possibility of slowing a previously-promised 16-month withdrawal from iraq.

the disturbing comfort with which he pandered to pro-israeli influencers the day after he clinched the nomination.

his repeated dodging (hiding?) of a clear stance on the historic DC handgun ban case.

his abandonment of the very public financing he has so strongly advocated.

his support for letting religious charities that receive federal funding consider religion in employment decisions.

the way he insists on categorizing being called a muslim a 'smear'.

Apologize This

2008-06-13T15:32:00.002-04:00

guest rant by arlo yuzicapi-fayant:

APOLOGIZE THIS

Well here I am recovering 36 hours after receiving the Apology.

Apparently, I appear to be one of few who felt quite unsatisfied with the long awaited and quite eloquent script from Prime Minister Stephen Harper regarding Indian Residential Schools in Canada. It was like one of those moments where one truly needs, and is ready, to sneeze and then is suddenly circumvented.

I guess it is because in any other country, these past actions would be considered genocidal, outright war crimes or just plain mean.

Don’t get me wrong. I do not doubt the sincerity in every word issued in the Apology. It brought tears to my eyes along with most everyone who witnessed this epic event at the House of Commons or on big screens throughout Canada. Or for others who faithfully reviewed and re-winded for hours on CPAC and CBC just to make sure one heard it accurately.

The pomp and pageantry just made me want to weep with pride. Especially the old Inuit doing his first drum dance ever, live on national TV with a humidex of 38 degrees to boot. And the beautiful Metis violinist who defied the code by playing something other than the Red River Jig.

The interviews with the survivors were especially poignant. I would know, I come from 4 generations of them.

What makes me crazy is they only said sorry. I should feel elated like my many relations who travelled here to our nation’s capital to hear the mea culpa in person. We have been demanding some kind of a formal apology since the 80’s and yesterday we got what we wanted. A big fat one.

I am sorry myself for expecting more. They could have said “Like okay you win, we did you wrong, messed up about 13 generations of your people, committed unethical acts of parliament and here is what we’re going to do about it to make it all better.” But no, it was more like:

“We NOW recognize that it was wrong to separate children from rich and vibrant cultures and traditions that it created a void in many lives and communities, and we apologize for having done this.

We NOW recognize that, in separating children from their families, we undermined the ability of many to adequately parent their own children and sowed the seeds for generations to follow, and we apologize for having done this.

We NOW recognize that, far too often, these institutions gave rise to abuse or neglect and were inadequately controlled, and we apologize for failing to protect you.”

Thank goodness Indians started ranting in the early 20^th century despite Indian Act legislation preventing us from doing so. Creator only knows how long it would have taken them to say “Sorry we NOW recognize…” if we had waited much longer. Like duh, till hell froze over.

Three things prompted me to write this diatribe:

On Tuesday June 10, my 16 year old daughter and I attended a fundraiser in Ottawa for the Kelly Morriseau Education Fund established by Paul Dewar, MP. NDP in cooperation with the Native Women’s Association of Canada (NWAC). Mahalia had recently completed a history report on Indian Residential Schools and I wanted her to see more of the outcomes.

Kelly was a young Aboriginal woman brutally raped and left dying in Gatineau Park, Quebec in December 2006. Her killer has never been found. She leaves us with young children and much heartache. She joins many Aboriginal sisters whose deaths are no longer overlooked or forgotten due to the tireless work of NWAC and supporters.

The film “Mohawk Girls” by award-winning director Tracey Deer was screened followed by an up close and personal chat with Tracey and NWAC president Beverly Jacobs. The documentary looks at the lives of three Mohawk teens that grew up on the Kahnawake Mohawk reserve near Montreal. The National Film Board documentary won 'Best Documentary' prize at ImagineNative, Canada's most important Aboriginal film festival.

After a heart-felt speech by Ms. Jacobs, enjoyable commentary by Ms. Deer, my companion Sylvia Smith (teacher) was asked to share a few words for Project of Heart, an interactive hands-on approach to educating students, church groups and active citizens about the travesty and legacy of Canadian Indian residential schools. For each child who died or went missing in Residential Schools, the participants in the Project of Heart paint a tiny tile to commemorate that child’s spirit and if possible, a name. It is expected the tiles will number in excess of 50,000 when assembled.

Sylvia told the audience how most of the people (students, average citizens etc) she works with in Project of Heart share similar questions – WHEN did this happen? WHAT are we apologizing for? WHY don’t we know this? This struck home for me. We know about the holocaust, when JFK was assassinated, Japanese interment camps and the crucifixion of Jesus Christ but have barely a clue as to why our first peoples are the way we are… The most an average school child knows is that we invented wigwams and popcorn.

The second event that motivated me to say something was the fact I and most of my group could not attend most of the June 11^th Apology festivities and hoopla in down town Ottawa. We were in our last stages of trying to heal from residential school, either as a student or as a child of a survivor, or other traumas due to our lot in life as Aboriginal women. Each week, we tell our own stories and we make every effort to attend each session to support each other, even if it means foregoing the excellent catering at the Westin Hotel and opportunities for 10 second sound bites about our residential school impact.

These circles are where the real healing and forgiveness has to occur. Not in the House of Commons with scripted speeches nor with huge individual cash settlements that are likely to kill the remaining survivors who haven’t yet died of old-age and a hard life.

So last night I watched every Apology broadcast after my return from healing. I was envious of who was all there because in my past life I knew them or had helped them in some way. I wanted to be there up front and center with a designer dress (equivalent to one month’s welfare) or even a head dress. I wanted to shed a tear on national TV and be broadcast around the world.

I wanted my great-grandparents, my grandparents, my aunts and uncles, my parents to be there, all giving poignant statements about their abuse and survival. I wanted my children and grandchildren there to report what a horrible mother and matriarch I was because I didn’t know how to give a real hug if I was paid a hundred dollars for each attempt, because back in the day hugs were a bad thing.

But alas, the old ones are all dead, except the birthmother, who is just simply damaged beyond repair. Most of my young ones don’t give a shit what has happened for 150 years unless it makes a nice tattoo. I went to bed quite grumpy.

Third motivator is this: Here in Ottawa we have a phone in show on CBC from 1:00 – 2:00 pm covering topics such as the Apology, gardening pests, Alanis Morrisette, recycling, etc. The question was: what is your reaction to Stephen Harper’s apology? I have to give them kudos for their coverage on residential schools though, so much I am totally saturated and just want to listen to BOB-FM and songs from the 80’s for awhile…

They announce the call-in number once every hour or you may have to e-mail for it 2 days in advance. I ended up phoning CBC’s corporate headquarters and went through the whole press #1 for this and press #9 for that and finally got through on a local line. I was asked my name, phone number and what my comment would be.

I said I was pretty disappointed with the Apology, where was the rest? What about the offspring of the survivors, where was our sorry? She said I am putting your through right now, and she did – me - immediately live on air.

At this point I turned into a blithering slightly ranting Cree woman on a Thursday afternoon with no purpose in life other than to commend Dion, Duceppe, and Layton for stating what really should have been said. The guest speaker immediately informed me for about all the virtues of the Truth and Reconciliation Commission and talked about this for awhile.

Eventually, I was able to interject how it was supposed to be the listeners’ time to state their reactions I mentioned I was the first generation not to have to attend residential school and I was still pretty damaged.

I did share that when my boys were fighting (I have four) they were put on the couch and couldn’t get off until they were sorry. Not to SAY they were sorry, but to BE sorry. Then I was pre-empted by a beautiful sounding young woman who made a documentary about residential school survivors, especially her granny. DVD available at Chapters.

I was sad because everyone else that called in was so encouraged by the Apology and had heart-felt tales of their abuse and fond wishes for this move to heal our peoples. I did not see one comment on any channels of people who said “this is BS!” We had this mapped out years ago for Kelowna and how many tax-dollars and lives would this have saved in Canada if not for a certain party’s “intervention”?

In my opinion, we should not be kicking our heels up in glee because we finally got a “We’re Sorry”. We likely have to vote PC for the next 7 generations out of mere gratitude for this momentous apology and awesome finger food. Nope, I’m going to hang out and wait for the “Please Forgive Us”.

Arlo Yuzicapi Fayant, retired activist, Ottawa

The Pound, obama style

2008-06-04T18:40:00.006-04:00

HONEST TO CRAP i have been going on and on about this all freaking day - i can't believe someone managed to get such a sublime shot of it: seconds before obama took the podium last night to make one of the best speeches i have maybe ever heard, he and his purple-sleeveless-dress-wearing (what politico woman on earth would ever be caught dead in an armsless garment before this broad I ASK YOU) partner michelle gave each other The Pound. when it happened, i gasped, squealed, then busted into a (slightly worrisome) wave of cry-laughter. i really couldn't believe my eyes. i became a delirious schoolgirl. before obama even began speaking, my brain did a nanosecondic scan of the thousands of political speeches i have seen on tv or in person or on film or even in my wildest dreams... and none of them featured The Pound. seeing barack and michelle acknowledge one another that way took my breath away, literally. anyone unfamiliar with the gesture will probably miss the significance of it's appearance at a globally-telecasted US presidential nominee's speech. but i cannot overstate what it means, this first-ever Pound between a political couple at anytime, anywhere, EVER. and that, internet, is why i dig it all. that is why i'm aboard this here train. sure, there's all that heady 'Change We Can Believe In' stuff - mostly to do with policy and washingtonism and politics as we know it, which i am for sure behind - but last night's POUND is the kind of change people like me have thirsted for. holy shit, is it ever a new day! i can't wait til those people get all up in that white house. i'm so giddy.

means to an end

2008-05-28T23:54:00.004-04:00

the workload is rather heavy of late. silly, really. but i see it as a means to an end, an end i like to call Two Months Working On The US Presidential Election Campaign.

the pace and to-do lists and sheer volume of thoughts in my head has resulted in me being, well, a bit loopy. even claude - when i dropped by earlier this evening to record some stuff to accommodate his production deadline - said i seemed 'a little nuts'. fair. and when i inadvertently busted into the chorus of 'turn the beat around' as i was leaving, he said my eyes sorta glazed over when i got to 'percussion'. that's nice.

i would describe the feeling as the auto-piloty delirium of an election campaign, only without the election or the campaign. unlike those bouts of crazy, though, i'm at least getting (mostly) paid during this one.

i'd say i'm not working so hard as so much. thank christ i generally enjoy whatever task is in front of me at a given minute. it just seems like an insurmountable pile. it's my own doing, so i'm not complaining. just blathering. see, in addition to the full-time media relations contract i'm doing with CUPE (more on that later), i'm trying to wind down a couple of other contracts, write my wordsmithy pants off (more on that later, too), and tend to domestic administrivia that lately includes the seventy thousand things one has to do when one's purse gets stolen. super fun. i'm also fielding (and in some cases, beginning, in others, trying to put off) new contracts, too. little but oh so interesting ones that i'll be tickled to describe at another time.

did i mention i got a standing freaking ovation from the 100-or-so adorable student leaders to whom i gave a two hour anti-oppression workshop? that was a few weeks ago out in the country at the annual SFUO retreat for all the students elected to executive positions within their respective faculties. and it was awesome. but the problem with being so (quite unnecessarily) warmly and audibly embraced for one's anti-oppression training is that the masses just want more. i have so far received calls from four separate faculties inviting me to facilitate smaller follow-up sessions with their execs. of course i enthusiastically accepted. For Good Reason. but more work it sure is, to be done when? who knows. but who am i to turn down an opportunity to play even a bit role in the anti-oppressionizing of potential freedom fighters? and so i shall impart the wisdom of my long, embittered years on those leaders of tomorrow, and they will love it.

lots of work, sure, but some play, too. last weekend, i was damn near knocked into a bliss coma when i attended a house concert performance by coco love alcorn, whose mind-blowing vocal stylings simultaneously decimated me about my road not traveled and intoxicated me to want to sing as much as i can until i die. and a few nights ago i got to play b&b host to songstress amy campbell and her lovely partner alice after partaking of her mesmerizing set at rasputin's. there's been a bit of socializing here and there and a new orleans cooking class and failed attempts to visit a certain newborn. So Much Going On.

i just ate a quarter watermelon.

rabbling about hillary, again

2008-05-27T02:15:00.005-04:00

god i'm slow, i know. i've got a dog's breakfast in the works that includes such hits as the deadline conga line and cat burglar blues. but for now, politics. again.

a reworked version of an earlier post was published on rabble last week - not as commentary, like other times, but as news. what the? since when does my unyielding obsession with the democratic presidential nomination qualify as news? um, thanks. i'm simultaneously tickled and daunted about having been asked to 'cover' the us elections for rabble this year. don't tell anyone, but we're even trying to figure out how to finance and get credentialed for the republican and democratic national conventions where i'd probably get thrown out of all kinds of press rooms for chair-wetting or obnoxious outbursts or some such inappropriateness. i'll take my chances.

anyways, my dad says i'm too hard on hillary. i think other perhaps less forward people in my life would agree with him. screw all of you. why can't i stop questioning hillary? why can't any of us?

but for the record, and for the love of all things rational: not supporting hillary is not an attack on feminism. the generational chasm on this point is palpable. and worrisome. to all the haters who would insist that anyone with a pair of ovaries and progressive dna should support hillary or be sent to exile island: i am a so-called ‘third wave’ feminist. i find it difficult to identify with clinton or her candidacy as a symbolic challenge of the proverbial glass ceiling. i, like thousands of other women, have thoughtfully reviewed clinton’s credentials and chosen to back obama. i do not see her as a sister, ally, mentor, or representative, but as an old-school politician. and all the women's movements in the world have brought me to this precious place called choice. as a proven progressive working for serious change, i get to decide who i want leading the charge to those lofty goals. as a radical feminist, there is plenty i'm willing to challenge in the name of putting women - or a woman - first. but in this case, it isn't even that radical a notion to support a black man over a woman. because she's THIS woman.

i’m with 32-year-old liberal writer michelle goldberg, who suggested that older feminists "seem to identify with clinton so profoundly that they interpret rejection of her as a personal rebuke." holy fuckballs, is that ever true. she claims to be sticking it out in this race more because of all the calls for her to leave it. but of course its as much about all those women who have pinned their EVERYTHING on her. clinton’s is a campaign of and about perseverance, one that regards surrender as worse than defeat, that sees the fight as for a cause as much as for a candidate. now usually that's the kind of gutsy stick-it-to-em position i can get behind. just not this time.

dear superdelegates

2008-05-10T01:34:00.008-04:00

everybody is talking about it this week, especially after the anti-climactic results of tuesday’s indiana and north carolina primaries: hillary should bow out.

you, the superdelegates, have the clout to make it so. a few of you had the good sense to wake up to the light on wednesday morning and declare support for obama. some of you even had the gumption to switch your support from clinton to obama - reborn, brave, strategic? whatever, we'll take it.

i can’t begin to speculate about the psychology of a superdelegate, never mind the fairness of a system that affords you such power, but power it certainly is. given how critical the situation is, i say wield it. what are you waiting for? don’t you want to take over the white house more than make some sort of unclear, ill-timed point?

while it smacks of anti-woman sentiment akin to the anti-Black undercurrents that have me enraged, some of the harsh commentary this week couldn’t be more on point if the head was this continent and the hammer was falling from space. in march 6th's new york daily times, columnist mike lupica blasts clinton for a vanity campaign run amuck. monday, his colleague thomas defrank submitted that clinton’s resistance to forfeiting comes from a crass desire to capitalize on the fears of racist voters. you can’t go two clicks of the mouse through wired news without landing on more of the same, disturbing suggestion.

with the voting math soundly against her and the temperature rising among voters who are ever antsier to turn the campaign against presumptive republican candidate john mccain instead of increasing the damaging democratic party divides, one has to wonder what exactly hillary is fighting for.

an outright win? empirically impossible now. and her contention that the equation be amended to include the illegal florida and michigan results simply won’t fly: how could the democratic national committee alter formulas at this 11th hour, especially in a way that would penalize obama for actually abiding by party rules?

a strong showing? she’s already got one. she began as the one to beat, got up each time the going got tough, and has done everything possible to stay til the end – adjusting everything from personnel to strategy to tone. it is impossible to deem her campaign anything but impressive.

her dignity? politics should ALWAYS be about dignity – so let’s leave the needless bloodying to the UFC ring, shall we? the longer hillary stays in this race, the more imperiled her dignity is. everyone loves a fighter, but human nature requires us to cringe when that fighter stays past the moment when a win is viable, or even safe. to step aside is the best thing hillary can do for her dignity at this point, while she has some political capital and future left. before we pity or resent her to the point of no return.

for the sake of democracy? c’mon. it is one thing to wish mightily for a democracy that celebrates process, access, and a level playing field. it is quite another to cling so tightly to such a notion in the face of a reality that dictates entirely otherwise. we all now how skewed the US electoral system is towards the privileged, the dominant culture, the elite. hillary’s ongoing candidacy does not a crusade for electoral reform make. the longer we consider this battle a testament to some romantic notion of democracy, the more we risk gift-wrapping a victory for the republicans at a moment in moment history when the fewest people want it and the planet simply cannot afford it.

if democrats were really enamored by or committed to true democracy, elevating the voices and struggles of the proletariat, or designing a process that allowed real access to ordinary aspirers, the US political field would be home to more than just two overbearing parties. there's be proportional representation and quotas for underrepresented demographics. we’d be holding a kucinich/rdwards ticket by now, OR BETTER. we’d be celebrating, not vilifying, ralph nader’s candidacy. we’d be shaming hillary’s (or anyone's) personal campaign injection of 11 million instead of excusing it. how easily we stomach our own hypocrisy.

this is all strange coming from me, i’ll admit. i fancy myself more of a ‘fuck the status quo’ resister than it would seem now. but my plea to you, the superdelegates, is spurred more by a panicked desire to see a serious, post-bush shift in washington than some kind of callousing towards the game of politics. if life is a series of battles, i say seeing this democratic nomination process through to it’s formal (and let’s face it, embittered) end is not worth it. things are getting uglier by the day: the slung mud is reeking more and more of racism, sexism, classism, elitism, of Nasty ... all of which will inevitably harden into unwieldy, crusty divides within the politicized Left. not only can we not afford that, we really shouldn't be ABOUT that.

and don't even get me started on those colours or states or income levels some claim obama can't win in the general. i've combed the voter breakdowns and polling data, too. it ain't as clear as all that and too much of a straw man argument for me. plus it only leads us back to that horrible and inappropriate dichotemy, because isn't the reverse that hillary can't deliver black voters in the general? electoral politics is surely a complex ball of wax, but sometimes reality can be this simple: neither can win everyone, but the sooner everyone gets behind someone, the better chance we have of rallying most.

besides, any way you slice it, democracy has already spoken. the numbers tell the story of a smart and trialed-by-fire candidate named obama. what more could we possibly expect of him before green-lighting him into a general campaign? he’s weathered the ‘upstart’ and 'poet-not-politician' labels. he’s weathered realtor-gate and Muslim-gate and every other feigned hurdle constructed for his passage. the most ominous obstacle he’s weathered, perhaps surprisingly? a certain passionate and provocative preacher named reverend wright – dubious ally turned dubiously media-hungry.

you play the hand you’re dealt, it is said. and where the US electoral system is concerned, it is an ingrained and unfair hand, indeed. but unless we’re prepared to suspend all electoral activities in the world’s so-called superpower – and i mean an outright moratorium on politics as usual – in favour of getting messy with some genuine electoral reform, then jagged pills for us all. hillary’s may be the most bitter, but fold her hand she must – if not for the sake of her party, then for us - the progressive global community at large that so eagerly desires the republican toppling to begin. STAT.

my post-pennsylvania primary salve is ALICE WALKER.

2008-04-23T00:40:00.004-04:00

the number crunchers will wrestle to the end with delegate counts and popular vote percentages and the like. team clinton will flog tonight's pennsylvania "win" like the dead horse it very well may be. meanwhile, i take comfort by taking stock of all the reasons i want OBAMA to win, all the challenges he has had to overcome and still must, and how good it feels to know he is still IN IT, and still ahead in EVERY WAY.

to help, i return to perhaps the best commentary i've read during the whole sordid democratic leadership race. in a piece published april 2nd, alice walker sprinkles an important OBAMA endorsement over a moving racial analysis as only she can.

AS IF ALICE WALKER ISN'T THE KIND OF WRITER, WOMAN, AND THINKER I HOPE TO BE WHEN I GROW UP.

white people have a racial history too [excerpts]

How dishonest it is to portray Obama as the only candidate with a racial inheritance...

When I joined the freedom movement in Mississippi in my early 20s it was to come to the aid of sharecroppers, like my parents, who had been thrown off the land they'd always known, the plantations, because they attempted to exercise their "democratic" right to vote. I wish I could say white women treated me and other black people a lot better than the men did, but I cannot. It seemed to me then, and it seems to me now, that white women have copied, all too often, the behavior of their fathers and their brothers, and in the South, especially in Mississippi, and before that, when I worked to register voters in Georgia, the broken bottles thrown at my head were gender-free.

I made my first white women friends in college; they were women who loved me and were loyal to our friendship, but I understood, as they did, that they were white women and that whiteness mattered...

I am a supporter of Obama because I believe he is the right person to lead the country at this time. He offers a rare opportunity for the country and the world to start over, and to do better. It is a deep sadness to me that many of my feminist white women friends cannot see him. Cannot see what he carries in his being. Cannot hear the fresh choices toward Movement he offers. That they can believe that millions of Americans -- black, white, yellow, red and brown -- choose Obama over Clinton only because he is a man, and black, feels tragic to me.

When I have supported white people, men and women, it was because I thought them the best possible people to do whatever the job required. Nothing else would have occurred to me. If Obama were in any sense mediocre, he would be forgotten by now. He is, in fact, a remarkable human being, not perfect but humanly stunning, like King was and like Mandela is. We look at him, as we looked at them, and are glad to be of our species. He is the change America has been trying desperately and for centuries to hide, ignore, kill. The change America must have if we are to convince the rest of the world that we care about people other than our (white) selves...

It is hard to relate what it feels like to see Mrs. Clinton (I wish she felt self-assured enough to use her own name) referred to as "a woman" while Barack Obama is always referred to as "a black man." One would think she is just any woman, colorless, race-less, past-less, but she is not. She carries all the history of white womanhood in America in her person; it would be a miracle if we, and the world, did not react to this fact. How dishonest it is, to attempt to make her innocent of her racial inheritance.

I can easily imagine Obama sitting down and talking, person to person, with any leader, woman, man, child or common person, in the world, with no baggage of past servitude or race supremacy to mar their talks. I cannot see the same scenario with Mrs. Clinton, who would drag into 21st century American leadership the same image of white privilege and distance from the reality of others' lives that has so marred our country's contacts with the rest of the world.

And yes, I would adore having a woman president of the United States. My choice would be Rep. Barbara Lee, who alone voted in Congress five years ago not to make war on Iraq. That to me is leadership, morality and courage; if she had been white, I would have cheered just as hard. But she is not running for the highest office in the land, Mrs. Clinton is. And because Mrs. Clinton is a woman, and because she may be very good at what she does, many people, including some younger women in my own family, originally favored her over Obama. I understand this, almost...

Imagine, if he [Obama] wins the presidency we will have not one but three black women in the White House; one tall, two somewhat shorter, none of them carrying the washing in and out of the back door. The bottom line for most of us is: With whom do we have a better chance of surviving the madness and fear we are presently enduring, and with whom do we wish to set off on a journey of new possibility?

FULL COMMENTARY IS HERE.

7 random things

2008-04-20T17:10:00.005-04:00

everyone's doing this meme, incessantly, even. so i figured i may as well, too. behold, a batch of 7 random (perhaps not weird) things about yours truly:

1. i pretty much let creepy crawly things roam without fear of death in my house, mostly cuz of laziness and compassion combined. but i am so irrationally afraid of mice that i have, in the past, chosen snapping over trapping to evict them.

2. my low-grade version of ocd manifests in mostly inoffensive ways like being obsessive about keeping the number of messages in all my email inboxes under 50 AT ALL COSTS, except for my hotmail account to which i wander only once every couple of months or so in order to plough through mountains of e-newsletters from the likes of the green party of canada, young democrats of america, amazon, and code pink.

3. my highball and cocktail of choice, for years, have been the gin & tonic and cosmopolitans, respectively.

4. entering the regina public library and most shopper’s drug mart outlets instantly makes me have to go pee.

5. no bed covering whatsoever can EVER touch my ears while i’m trying to fall asleep otherwise i go completely bonkers.

6. relatedly, i MUST have some or all of one or both (naked) feet sticking out of the covers, or at the very least, MUST have access to be able to do so without unconscious violence [this is the impetus for the immediate and ritualistic untucking of constrictive bed linens the second i walk into hotels rooms]

7. i derive unreasonable amounts of pleasure from discarding Things; finding (even inventing) garbage and recycling for the bins the night before pick-up gives me a high. perhaps not coincidentally, i tend to be quite the hanger-on to 'other' clutter – an emotional ‘hoarder’, if you will.

contradictions, whaa?

strumming my pain

2008-04-09T01:29:00.004-04:00

five shortened fingernails.
two thirty-minute lessons.
eight chords.
three strumming patterns.
one guitar pick.
six fifteen-minute practice sessions.
one pop song ('basement apartment' by sarah harmer, to be precise).

oh guitar, you mood enhancer, you.

yes, i said glassy sand

2008-04-01T19:04:00.009-04:00

well, my first top priority task at the new gig is now substantiated on the internet, so it's official: big box corporate childcare BOO, non-profit universal child care YAY. oh sure, the press conference went off as smoothly as any, if you don't assign importance to shit like media turnout or pick-up. those problems are thankfully beyond me (at least for now). i'm just pleased as punch to have managed to effective book a room, edit talking points, and photocopy stuff. awesome. not much of what i've been up to is particularly brain-taxing, but holy tamale has it ever trumped the shit out of most other to-do list items and made me freaking tired. actually, the whole situation be making me tired. i just got home 11 hours after leaving my house this morning. the transition from work-tons-but-mostly-whenever-the-hell-you-want even-in-pajamas to this has SUCKED, not just because my body feels as though i'm being dragged slowly through gravel by a truck. but at other levels especially, thanks to the ongoing awkwardness that is the circumstance of my contract. at this point, i'm trying to keep all things in perspective while seriously contemplating my options. won't be long before i know exactly what i'm doing and how i truly feel about it.

in other news, i started guitar lessons last night with this sassy broad at the OFC. she's been playing since she was 10, rocks out regularly with a local blues band, and apparently one of her "specialties is working with up and coming singer-songwriters looking to work the guitar and voice at the same time" so yahoo, here i go shaving down my left-hand fingernails for some New Fun.

in other other news, my ever-encouraging embed in team obama - a friend of a delicious friend - invited me to kick some organizing ass in rural pennsylvania. what with all my cycloning contract commitments, i surely cannot. but i tossed the idea out to some folks i know and two cool gal pals are climbing onto a greyhound bus tonight, scranton-bound. i'm seething with jealousy but of course am super happy they get to go experience some of it. i'm also glad that obama's pennsylvania crew gets to benefit from their amazing energy. BUT OH HOW I WISH I WAS GOING, TOO.

lastly, what's with all the infuriating pussy drivers out there? i know i'm an aggressive driver at the best of times... and maybe it doesn't help that these days i'm driving home as though i'm all element-beaten and delirious, clawing my way through the glassy sand toward a mirage. but still.

hey hey ho ho, this slave-to-wage shit's got to go

2008-03-28T19:53:00.017-04:00

not to brag or anything - cuz its actually more sick than dazzling - but i pretty much stayed stuck to my my desk for the past 13 hours. my back hurts, i'm parched, and let's just say i'm a tad cantankerous (although deeply in solitude, so - like 'if a tree falls in the forest' - am i actually crabby if no one is around to suffer it?)...

and thus concludes my first week doing media relations at cupe national. the circumstances surrounding this latest contract appointment are pretty shady, but i'm trying to make the best of it, at least for now. oh, progressive organizations that just can't quite seem to make internal operations and external rhetoric JIVE. if i had a nickel! so as i figure out reconciling my principles with my debt load, there is straightforward enough work for me to do at cupe -- me and mediatic shenanigans get along just fine. i likely won't acquire new skills, but will at least be able to stretch and show off existing ones while getting to think and walk amidst some bright, cool people. others might see this sort of hire as a step towards a possible full-time, permanent, benefits-n-pension riddled gig, but i'm just glad to do good work for even a short time.

the thing about working out there in the real world is that in addition to having to be 'there', one has to BE there. the beauty of freelancing mostly from home is that shit gets done regardless of whether or not i'm peppy or pissy. to some extent, every single person who works outside the home has to leave a fair chunk of their true disposition AT home. separating myself from all that genuineness doesn't suit me well. at all. nor does what one has to dig up to meet acceptable social norms out there. it has been difficult extracating myself from the glorious home office this week, trading in my rituals and unapologetic scheduling and blaring music (or spectacular silences, mood depending) for a commute and regular human contact and a communal kitchen. the only part of my contract i couldn't do exceedingly well from home is the obligatory face-to-face time given (often wasted) in those dreaded meetings upon meetings, hallway small talk, and awkward elevator rides.

did i mention the office is Way Over There? cupe recently plucked itself out of its fabulous centretown location in favour of an obscure location a mere two industrial blocks from the glamorous st-laurent mall. sorry, cupe staffers. no more 20-steps-from-the-backdoor bridgehead coffees. as thanks for sacrificing that delicious urban vibe, cupe has constructed for its prized employees a state-of-the-art building that apparently meets the most exacting contemporary eco-friendly standards. as a bonus, cupe has put big swank coffee machines on each floor that bestow FREE coffees, espressos, cappuccinos, and mocha frapuccinos. there's also a gym. jesus. but do these offerings really trump my bodum and daily walk about wrightville? i haven't decided, but am thinking no.

anyhoo, so that's the state of work affairs. i'm helping cupe get more in the news while trying to wind down my clc project and negotiate other wee ones. meantime, stuff at the personal level simmers on. i’ve been thinking lately about damage -- how what we incur winds up affecting what we inflict [more on that later]. and while i OF COURSE don't have any freaking answers, i'm starting to get clearer about how my damage co-habitates with me today, what form it takes, how it - no matter how contained i wish it to be - still stains people in my midst.

SHUT UP TEAM CLINTON

2008-03-16T22:49:00.004-04:00

from salon.com, 14 march, 'geraldine ferraro still needs to apologize'

"Any time anybody does anything that in any way pulls this campaign down and says let's address reality and the problems we're facing in this world, you're accused of being racist, so you have to shut up," Ferraro said. "Racism works in two different directions. I really think they're attacking me because I'm white. How's that?"

Not so good, Gerry. Rather than try to parse that almost incomprehensible but undoubtedly vile statement, however, let us instead analyze what Ferraro said about Obama -- which probably reflects the outlook of a certain segment of white America. One way to do this is to compare his career with hers.

Unlike Obama, who had to make his way in Chicago politics on his own merits after his stint as a community organizer and local lawyer, Ferraro benefited from family and political connections when she decided to run for Congress. Her cousin Nicholas Ferraro had been the Queens district attorney, and she got her first political job as an assistant D.A. Always a reliable cog in the Queens Democratic Party, which in those days was among the country's most corrupt and boss-ridden political machines, she didn't have to worry much about primary or general election opponents.

Ferraro's three terms in Congress produced little in the way of legislation -- again unlike Obama, whose single term in the Senate has seen him mark several milestones, in particular a landmark ethics reform package. That wasn't the kind of thing that Ferraro would have supported back when she was in the House, since she prided herself on cuddling up to the leadership rather than challenging the status quo in any way.

(as ripped off, tardily, from audra the astute)

she's still in it!

2008-03-05T00:54:00.006-05:00

and what a race it (still) is! based on the results out of those states voting tonight, here are the woozy, hardly satisfying things we know:

- hillary won enough to stay in it
- obama didn't win enough to end it
- hillary didn't catch up enough on delegates
- obama didn't score big headline victories
- bill somehow didn't manage to bungle it
- cnn yet again sucked the life out of it
- it's looking more and more like those superdelegates will get to decide it

mississippi! indiana! north carolina! guam! yes, you DO matter!
who knows, maybe kentucky, too!

sadly, we had confirmed the fact that assholes everywhere can, when given the opportunity, wax ad nauseum on their (often loose) understanding of 'momentum'.

AND we got incontrovertible evidence that vermont, with it's cute little delegate count, is an uber cool place chock full of uber cool people. thanks ben & jerry and friends.

lest I'M considered too hard on hillary

2008-03-04T13:58:00.002-05:00

columnist margery eagan filed a rather prickly 'letter' to hillary this morning. excerpts:

If you don’t win big today (you may, we know, who dares count a Clinton out!) but if you don’t win big today, then please, PLEASE, step aside. Throw in the towel. Give it up.

Oh, Hillary. Get real. Can we point to some gender advantages you’ve enjoyed? For one, millions of women will fight to the death for you because their boss dissed them back in ’62.

For another, suppose genders were reversed. Suppose you were a man. Who, I ask, would vote for a Mr. President whose First Lady groped, grabbed or bedded every pair of pants that passed?

yeesh!

me, on rabble, again

2008-03-04T13:52:00.004-05:00

[a previous blog post, revamped]

Is Hillary Clinton too square for the oval?

In a recent New York Times op-ed, Frank Rich adeptly outlines the flaws that have plagued Hillary Clinton's run from "day one," then suggests:

"Clinton fans don't see their standard-bearer's troubles this way. In their view, their highly substantive candidate was unfairly undone by a lightweight showboat who got a free ride from an often misogynist press and from naïve young people who lap up messianic language as if it were Jim Jones's Kool-Aid."

"But it's the Clinton strategists, not the Obama voters, who drank the Kool-Aid. The Obama campaign is not a vaporous cult; it's a lean and mean political machine that gets the job done. The Clinton camp has been the slacker in this race, more words than action, and its candidate's message, for all its purported high-mindedness, was and is self-immolating."

Like so many other ovaried observers, I have at times been hard on myself for choosing to support Obama instead of the first viable female candidate for president of those mighty United States. But neither the candidate nor her campaign has ever felt viable to me. As much as I'm a zealot for women's rights, I reserve the right to get excited about the right woman - my foremothers gave that to me.

The first woman to get this close to the oval office happens to come from and speak for the second wave feminists who have always left me feeling disconnected and unheard. Hillary does have chutzpah though; let's give it to her, what with those early claims of inevitable victory and the increasing vitriol over the fact that the numbers and people just aren't doing her a solid.

The overarching problem is that Hillary represents – not just to my mind, but for countless credible democratic activists – a kind of establishmenty flavour. To insist the heat comes from negligible policy differences between her and Obama, the thick versus thin resumé question, or even the gender question is to miss a bigger point. The era of Clintonian politics is over in a way that leaves no self-respecting or movement-participating progressive able to support Hillary in good conscience. And it has nothing to do with the girlie bits underneath her clothes. It's her last name and preferred peer group, not to mention that haunting record on Iraq.

I'm actually quite sorry, Hillary, that your lifetime of hard work on behalf of liberalism may not be enough to send the masses scrambling to hoist you up onto the throne. And I do genuinely acknowledge those efforts. Who's to say what kind of cosmic forces conspired so effectively as to make a charismatic Illinois upstart the stealer of your limelight, the tapper-inner to an apathetic electorate’s thirst for political excitement, the taker of your "turn"? We will soon know if he absconds with your cake or if you can eat it, too.

What I do know is that a great number of exceptional, progressive representatives of fresh feminism could have better challenged Obama. The better woman to vie for the American presidency is absolutely out there. Rather than bemoan whatever injustices may have been done to you, Hillary, on this campaign trail, I'd rather lament a system that requires those better women to have – as you do – the resources, pedigree, or inclination to enter the race. And even if she did, that system comes with a nearly bulletproof glass ceiling, so she'd have to don the hardhat, aggressive tone, and stiff upper lip that so brutally unpopularized you in this run (oh, and she'd also have to have the occasional $5 million hanging around to slide into the campaign when the going gets rougher).

the complete commentary appears here.

why i call audra funny

2008-02-28T18:03:00.003-05:00

from her 'analysis of the budget', inspired by those wacky LOLcats:

frank rich and i on clinton

2008-02-24T15:51:00.006-05:00

as if he hadn't already captured my heart with his eloquently persuasive indictment of bush and the iraq debacle, frank rich continues to say the right things about the US primaries season. in his op-ed in today's new york times, rich - in typical merciless fashion - sums up perfectly the flaws that have plagued hillary's run from 'day one', then suggests:

"Clinton fans don’t see their standard-bearer’s troubles this way. In their view, their highly substantive candidate was unfairly undone by a lightweight showboat who got a free ride from an often misogynist press and from naïve young people who lap up messianic language as if it were Jim Jones’s Kool-Aid. Or as Mrs. Clinton frames it, Senator Obama is all about empty words while she is all about action and hard work.

But it’s the Clinton strategists, not the Obama voters, who drank the Kool-Aid. The Obama campaign is not a vaporous cult; it’s a lean and mean political machine that gets the job done. The Clinton camp has been the slacker in this race, more words than action, and its candidate’s message, for all its purported high-mindedness, was and is self-immolating.

As for countering what she sees as the empty Obama brand of hope, she offers only a chilly void: Abandon hope all ye who enter here. This must be the first presidential candidate in history to devote so much energy to preaching against optimism, against inspiring language and — talk about bizarre — against democracy itself. No sooner does Mrs. Clinton lose a state than her campaign belittles its voters as unrepresentative of the country. "

*swoon*

like so many other ovaried observers, i've been hard on myself for choosing to support obama instead of the first viable female candidate for president of those shiny united states. but the fact remains, neither the candidate nor her campaign have ever felt viable to me. and as much as i'm a zealot for women's rights, i reserve the right to get excited about the right woman - my foremothers gave that to me. feminist dreams aside, the first woman to get this close to the oval office happens to come from and speak for the second wavers who have always left me feeling disconnected and unheard. hillary does have chutzpah though, let's give it to her, what with those early claims of inevitable victory and the increasing vitriol over the fact that the numbers and people just aren't doing her a solid.

the overarching problem, i believe, is that hillary represents - not just to my mind, but for countless respected, credible democratic activists - a kind of establishmenty muck, yesterday's flavour. it's not about the negligible policy differences between she and obama, or the thick versus thin resumé question. the era of clintonian politics is very likely over. no self-respecting or movement-participating progressive can possibly support hillary in good conscience at this point, and it has nothing to do with the girlie bits underneath her clothes. it's her last name and preferred peer group, not to mention that haunting record on iraq.

i'm actually quite sorry, hillary, that your lifetime of hard work on behalf of liberalism and social-democratism may not be enough to send the masses scrambling to hoist you up onto the throne. and i do genuinely acknowledge those years and those efforts. who's to say what kind of cosmic forces conspired so effectively as to make that charismatic illinois upstart the people's choice of this campaign, the stealer of your limelight, the tapper-inner to a nation's apathy towards electoral politics, the threat to your family's intended legacy, the taker of your 'turn'? not long now before we see whether he absconds with your cake or if you can eat it, too.

what i do know is that any number of exceptional, deserving, wholly progressive representatives of fresh feminism could have stood a better chance against said upstart. the better woman to be the first to ascend to the american presidency is fo-shiz out there. it's just too bad for us that she lacks the fees, trainers, pedigree, or inclination to even enter into the big race.

but i digress. for some levity during this mentally/intellectually/spiritually taxing race, slate came up with this hilarious video of hillary as embittered tracy flick and obama as paul 'cakewalk-to-victory' metzler (from the movie 'election'). what good are all these shenanigans if we can't laugh a little?

whack to the head

2008-02-19T19:13:00.010-05:00

in what can only be characterized as an ironic twist, a (finally!) reasonably productive week suffered a setback thanks to an injury that appears to have untapped a fresh geyser of disdain [me to my psychiatrist in december: “i’m not moody, i’m in a bad mood!”] yesterday – “family day”, no less – i spent some time crumpled up crying on the bathroom floor after smacking my forehead on the corner of a cupboard door (i've suffered a pulsing headache ever since), not just cuz it hurt like a mofo but cuz of what the whack let leak out, if you know what i mean. now a wee bump has taken up residence under a patch of reddened skin, there. the dark cloud that moved overhead in november persists, borne of the unforeseen whopping amount i discovered, belatedly, that i owe to revenue quebec. confirmed contracts for 2008 are slow in lining up – it’s the typical top-of-year problem of stuff percolating but no soothing brew yet. the only sure offer is to run a campaign in a potential federal election i’m hardly excited about for a party that hardly excites me, of late (although the offer itself is an appreciated step towards reconciliation). heard about three separate incidents of racism experienced in the past week by my pained dad which go rather nicely with the other discrimination already scattered across my worktop on account of this project i’ve been doing for a year. heartwarming. the oscars are coming up and i seem to be lacking my usual pop culture pump over it, maybe a hangover from the writers’ strike or just another few scored points for the mighty malaise that seems to be engaging me in american gladiator level battle. hmm… what else. oh, TODAY FIDEL RESIGNED. and the embittered, relentless snow just keeps on falling, leaving me seriously luke warm on the idea of venturing out to a friend’s birthday wine and cheese later. so much for aiming higher on that whole normal-levels-of-human-contact thing. social lives are overrated, i still think. plus navigating around the mountainous snow banks and perilous slushy bits out there is fucking ridiculous. i’ve always been fairly pro-winter, but in that perpetual quest to understand and embrace LIMITS, i’m fairly certain mine have been well reached insofar as my tolerance for deep-freeze temperatures and unwieldy snow conditions are concerned. my winter patience has a best before date, which may well be today.

despite all of the aforementioned shyte, to-do lists have the upper hand: cvs and websites are getting updated, laundry and floors and tubs are getting cleaned, sleep patterns are being aggressively challenged, administrivia tended to, and deals being negotiated so as to postpone the breaking of my kneecaps. most importantly, maybe, plans are being laid.

suck it, malaise.

me, on rabble

2008-02-10T17:16:00.000-05:00

the editor of rabble.ca posted this commentary of mine on friday, the first of what could be several provided i get things like my ass and creativity in gear. oh, discipline, why so elusive?

Obama shakes the best cocktail
Obama is igniting imaginations, rousing latent electors, and exceeding expectations.

by Pam Kapoor February 8, 2008

In his January column at rabble.ca, Duncan Cameron postulated about Barack Obama's invoking of nationalism, prompting my friend to chide, “Ah ha! I told you he was a right-wing candidate running on a policy of unity and hope [period].” As if the deployment of nationalistic rhetoric is a barometer of ideology and not a deliberate tactic – in this case, an astute one.

...

Millions of frenzied supporters are lining up for a sip of Obama kool-aid, few of whom have read every word of his every position. But I don't think that makes them stupid, just thirsty (for some, in a way they didn't even know they'd been).

Strategically, the NDP would do well to borrow from this approach. NDP-ers here in Canada are so busy tripping over ourselves to say the perfect thing and appease every strand of our imperfect base, we hardly say it perfectly. We are strategically stunted, stumped, on how to convey, package, or inspirationalize our position that is, in essence, a vision – far simpler than a policy book. The NDP still hasn't figured out how to sell our politics, in part because we insist on abhorring that brand of sales.

The age-old tension seems to be amplified now: remain entrenched in ideology and/or appeal broadly enough to be elected to govern. Some worry Obama's is a watered-down progressivism, designed for palatability. True, he is garnering mass appeal among independents. Shouldn't we revel when middle-of-the-roaders are persuaded to look anew at progressive viewpoints? Obama has what some call the "gall" to self-identify as a "post-partisan" politician. For shame! Why would we bulldogged ideologues ever want to loosen anything from our jaws, even if it could lead to advancement of our political objectives?

...

I, for one, am relieved to get behind a candidate who shakes the best cocktail of ideological compatibility, electricity, and electability – that's as much the Bush era hater as the communications specialist in me. And the election worker in desperate search of a Canadian politician with even half as much potential.

THE PIECE, in it's entirety = here.

yes we can

2008-02-05T22:09:00.000-05:00

in case you've been under a rock in siberia and somehow missed this latest contribution to exploding on-line OBAMA support, view will.i.am's collaborative rendition of an obama speech. repeatedly. and DIG IT.

miscellany round-up

2008-01-31T17:15:00.000-05:00

on health:

being sick sucks. being sick on one's birthday sucks harder. being sick on the heels of yet another awkward, intrusive doctor's appointment sucks harderer. may i - and all women - never have to be prodded or invaded or scanned by cold metal implements in unaccommodating quarters ever again. unrelatedly, i have spent the better part of the last 48 hours in a near-coma up in my glorious bed, but today have endeavoured to descend to street level and try and get some shit done.

bathe - check (thank GOD).
make strong coffee - check.
read global headlines - done.
scan to-do lists yet to be completed - done.
make the smallest of a baby step towards meeting a work deadline - done.
wash funky sickie bedding - done.
pop variety o' pills - done.
remain conscious long enough to enjoy the season premier of LOST - here's hoping! woot!

on politics:

i've been trying to pull together various strands of thought scattered about my desktop and mind regarding the democratic nomination race. audra beat me to it today to complain about the ongoing oddity that is the clinton offensive on obama. i'll admit to being put off by all sorts of related jackassry, including of course the uncomfortable discourse around identity, race, and gender. every feminist and her dog has weighed in on hillary versus barack, but i'm not sure my stuff is exactly about that. more later.

on art:

it has come to my very delayed attention that audio of me has made its way onto the internet: unplugged single-takes of a couple of my favourite tunes. if you be so inclined, here is me attempting to do justice to my fave aimee mann song, 'you know the rest' and here is me doing claude's breathtaking 'sailor song'. it ain't much, just me in the raw. cringe.

e-zine envy

2008-01-25T03:38:00.000-05:00

its been something like two years since i let lapse my 'weight watchers online' membership, but they still send me stuff with alarming frequency. why i haven't unsubscribed is if ever there was a corporate e-team i'd like to write for, it's this one (though air canada's on air runs a close second). if only i had found WW's points 'plan' as compelling or effective as their e-communications. for chrissakes, if you know my writing style at all, TELL ME i'm not a pea for this pod:

brain purge

2008-01-18T18:21:00.000-05:00

(inspired by audra)

thankful for:
my safe, comfy home.

proud of:
incremental successes in my Letting Go program.

missing:
those who’ve recently left a gaping hole in my heart.

looking forward to:
a Democratic white house.

preoccupied by:
finances, finances, finances.

thrilled by:
nothing.

disappointed by:
people.

thinking of:
making more changes.

wondering:
whether one ever really feels secure.

hoping:
for a dog by spring.

wanting:
a piano.

reading:
bird by bird by anne lamott
and
the audacity of hope by barack obama.

recommending:
dead-of-night walks.

making:
to-do lists, as ever.

listening to:
david bowie, the early years.

would kill for:
a long, deep, love-fueled, toe-curling kiss.

forgetting to:
submit receipts for reimbursement to santé québec.

most recently snuggled by:
not so much.

most recently slept on:
my glorious, glorious bed.

four things ...

2008-01-16T13:15:00.000-05:00

... standing between me and team obama in massachusetts:

the obstacle: my “in” to the campaign (a friend of a friend) has been reassigned to obama’s north carolina operation.
what it means: she had been stoked about 'using' me. sure, she could put in a 'word', but its all up to her successors -- i could be relegated to the status of any other out-of-state volunteer without an insider advocate putting me on tasks or in rooms at the more strategic and organizational levels.
and so: if you are related to, friends with, or have ever shagged one of the 4.5 paid state level obama staffers in massachusetts, could you hook a grrl up?

the obstacle: since the governor’s endorsement of obama in october, the campaign has been privy to an elaborate state-wide field and voter contact network, thus reducing its need to build a machine such as seen in a Big Deal primary state like new hampshire.
what it means: they may not have as much need to take advantage of the senior campaigning chops i was hoping to offer.
and so: can i really justify spending two weeks in a phone bank?

the obstacle: the state operation is a modest one, and so does not have a billeting program for out-of-state volunteers.
what it means: i’m on my own for finding cheap accommodations.
and so: anyone with friends or relatives in the cambridge/somerville areas with a spare couch?

the obstacle: i remain persistently bothered and uncertain about paid employment in this, the new year.
what it means: do i DARE gallivant in new england for team obama – however edifying an experience it might be – instead of actively wage seeking? i mean, professional development for consultants never ledgers under accounts receivable, i know, but deciding its value is really hard.
and so: is anyone out there in the position to guarantee me superbly-waged contracts for the coming months, thus assuaging the guilt i may feel for fucking off for two weeks?

maybe i'll just go to NEW YORK instead.

bob the man on politics and misogyny

2008-01-15T15:27:00.000-05:00

in his latest op-ed for the new york times, bob herbert - TO MY DELIGHT - poses enlightened and direct questions about the persistence of misogyny in american culture, and the absence of any meaningful discussion about it in american politics.

excerpts:

"With Senator Hillary Rodham Clinton’s win in New Hampshire, gender issues are suddenly in the news. Where has everybody been?

If there was ever a story that deserved more coverage by the news media, it’s the dark persistence of misogyny in America. Sexism in its myriad destructive forms permeates nearly every aspect of American life. For many men, it’s the true national pastime, much bigger than baseball or football.

Little attention is being paid to the toll that misogyny takes on society in general, and women and girls in particular.

Its forms are limitless. Hard-core pornography is a multibillion-dollar business, having spread far beyond the stereotyped raincoat crowd to anyone with a laptop and a password. Crowds of crazed photographers risk life and limb to get shots of Paris Hilton or Britney Spears without their underwear. At New York Jets home games, men regularly gather at Gate D to urge female fans to expose themselves.

In its grimmest aspects, misogyny manifests itself in hideous violence — from brutal beatings and rape to outright torture and murder. Fifteen months ago, a gunman invaded an Amish schoolhouse in rural Pennsylvania, separated the girls from the boys, and then shot 10 of the girls, killing five.

The cable news channels revel in stories about women (almost always young and attractive) who come to a gruesome end at the hands of violent men. The stories seldom, if ever, raise the issue of misogyny, which permeates not just the crimes themselves, but the coverage as well.

We’ve become so used to the disrespectful, degrading, contemptuous and even violent treatment of women that we hardly notice it. Staggering amounts of violence are unleashed against women and girls every day. Fashionable ads in mainstream publications play off of that violence, exploiting themes of death and dismemberment, female submissiveness and child pornography.

If we’ve opened the door to the issue of sexism in the presidential campaign, then let’s have at it. It’s a big and important issue that deserves much more than lip service."

knowing purple

2008-01-09T18:03:00.001-05:00

i feel so validated. even the incomparable chaka khan knows where purple is at:

"I’ve done some reading, in anthropology and other places, on what the color can mean. It’s a color of royalty, and of mourning. The Aztecs considered it a mixture of blood and the sky. I’ve just always been attracted to it. Like everyone has a note on the piano that their body resonates to. It’s also the freak color, it’s associated with hippiedom, the free-spirited kind of thing."

from a new york times interview.

new year's druthers

2008-01-05T23:47:00.000-05:00

new year's resolutions have always struck me as yet another sure-fire path to disappointment. and i've always harboured a bit of hatred for people who make and actually keep resolutions, if only because they mock my belief in the dubiousness of willpower. but january has a tendency to get people thinking about all sorts of shit pertaining to then and now, yesterday and tomorrow. and i'm not immune to that sort of thing.

so i've been contemplating druthers, wishes, and wants (the difference between which has always eluded me). thankfully, i possess a fairly decent grasp of the difference between fantasy and reality. but some days i'm a woman of action and others, a woman of apathy, so it's really too early to tell what of these might end up in The Plan. here we go.

i wish that in wintertime, the main mode of urban transportation was mildly motorized toboggans, that ice was sparkly but not deadly, and that municipal trucks didn't leave that annoying, tantrum-invoking band of piled snow across the bottom of our driveways when they clear roads at night.

if i had my druthers, when required to, i would make the transition seamlessly between MY preferred schedule and society’s standard hours without flinching or pharmaceutical intervention.

i wish my computer automatically increased speed and power at regular intervals and mutated to new versions of software bling all on its own.

if i had my druthers, my body would never hurt, true mind/body/work/life balance would be an attainable concept, and every food would be zero points.

i wish utterly unjustifiable expenditures like tattoos and plasma tvs and lattés were barterable.

i wish i could afford to divide my time evenly between this house, a funky loft in the heart of manhattan, and the tuscan villa in that diane lane movie.

i want my creative side to get taken out on a lot more dates instead of being kept on the DL like some sort of neglected booty call.

i wish i was higher paid, steadily contracted, and more valued, professionally.

if i had my druthers, people i might ever crave spending time with would live within a 30 mile radius but still be kinda distant and cute puppies or kittens (even the occasional baby) would hang out with me whenever i damn well feel like it but not on a permanent basis that would require me to be responsible for anything major like hygiene or a college fund.

i wish people would say what they mean and mean what they say, not make commitments they can’t keep, and have the balls in relationships to name it when they err, waver or desire to change the terms.

then, a parting gift

2008-01-01T23:58:00.000-05:00

after years of nagging me about it and my consistently responding that it's an absurd expense i couldn't possibly justify what with my lack of reliable income and an attitude towards my time on this planet that's blassé at best, the parents also bought me for xmas ... wait for it ... life insurance. UPLIFTING!

behold, the bestest gift. EVER.

2008-01-01T23:52:00.000-05:00

for this most wonderful of xmas presents, i'd like to thank first and foremost my parents for deciphering the complex code of my suggestion that hell no, they really shouldn't buy me anything cuz i sure have enough but oh how i'd cherish a special edition box set of the west wing. i'd also like to thank canada post for assigning such a personable package deliverer to my route and for transporting/delivering this bounty promptly and safely into my hot hands.

from a spiritual, emotional, and evidently irrational place: a deep and heartfelt thanks to aaron sorkin, his mind, his dealer, and the crackerjack team of tv-land people for so successfully sprinkling pixie dust on his vision. y'all obviously understand what the hell Good Television is and i, for one, am eternally grateful.

songs i've woken up humming this week

2007-12-30T23:45:00.000-05:00

today - baker street, gerry rafferty
yesterday - these are the days, 10000 maniacs
friday - my number, tegan and sarah
thursday - my love, justin timberlake
wednesday - caring is creepy, the shins
tuesday - who knew, pink
monday - the promise, tracy chapman

songs i've woken up humming this week

2007-12-23T10:59:00.000-05:00

today - karma police, radiohead
yesterday - wave your hands goodbye, the peptides
friday - you got me, the roots/erykah badu
thursday - in my mind, heather headley
wednesday - all the things i wasn't, grapes of wrath
tuesday - politcal, spirit of the west
monday - hold me now, polyphonic spree
sunday - someone saved my life tonight, elton john

61 of 365x35: mr. strachan

2007-12-22T18:45:00.000-05:00

oh sure, you led us deftly through the required academic rigors of 7th and 8th grade, but it's your dumb jokes, approachability, moustache, joe jackson passion, and tales of nicorette that linger better.

[i am doing x365]

60 of 365x35: mrs. templeton

2007-12-21T23:56:00.000-05:00

when two of us bravely stole halloween candy from your desk during a recess in, an 8th grader caught us and threatened to tattle. so we cowardly turned ourselves in. you barely gave a shit.

[i am doing x365]

59 of 365x35: mrs. niklau

2007-12-20T23:54:00.000-05:00

you hated that we cut behind your house everyday, but when the snow melted that spring to reveal a blanket of my secret (oops) butts on your side of the fence, the deal was sealed.

[i am doing x365]

58 of 365x35: mr. obrocki

2007-12-19T22:22:00.000-05:00

an oft-overlooked character in the story of my childhood, your name can conjure wafts of aromas of polish cuisine, random squaks of a grumpy old neighbour who liked neither kids nor hygiene, but no face.

[i am doing x365]

57 of 365x35: woman next to me on the plane

2007-12-18T23:09:00.000-05:00

that you resembled the mother in 'muriel's wedding' charmed me little as my throat and nostrils swelled from the perfume in which you obviously showered, as if we cranky, stifled traveling folk wouldn't be choked.

[i am doing x365]

56 of 365x35: gina

2007-12-17T23:36:00.000-05:00

your family oozed a kind of cool that showed me the distinction between hipster and the real deal. i think i thought i could get in on it by osmosis, by sopping up the mellow.

[i am doing x365]

55 of 365x35: joe

2007-12-16T15:33:00.000-05:00

since you lived around the corner, it was easy to slip over to your studio where you’d let me watch you sculpt. you weren’t famous to me, just gina’s dad who seemed obsessed by cows.

[i am doing x365]

54 of 365x35: jon

2007-12-15T23:55:00.000-05:00

i was sprawled serenely in the middle of your vast st-urbain loft when you sheepishly approached to say no, you in fact didn’t feel like sharing your weekend with me. i’ve not seen you since.

[i am doing x365]

songs i’ve woken up humming this past week...

2007-12-15T15:41:00.000-05:00

... the seeming randomness and surprising clarity of which prompted me to deem this a phenomenon worth tracking:

today – brown girl in the ring, bony-m
yesterday – somewhere only we know, keane
thursday – beds are burning, midnight oil
wednesday – radio gaga, queen
tuesday – cool night, paul davis
monday – tomorrow wendy, concrete blonde
sunday – love me still, chaka khan

53 of 365x35: john

2007-12-14T23:56:00.000-05:00

you got in over your head when you decided i was a story, hounding me like a dog with a bone. it was part personal, but it was more my influence – not me – you loathed.

[i am doing x365]

52 of 365x35: shaun

2007-12-13T23:59:00.000-05:00

no one could chair meetings like you could, keeping the elected students – like those rules – in slick order. we had to overlook hair and wardrobe concerns on account of that reliable, bylaw-loving, wry, strategic mind.

[i am doing x365]

51 of 365x35: dylan

2007-12-12T23:28:00.000-05:00

though often overshadowed by your aggression and your maniacal ego, we all recognized the power of your principles and intellect. when you hurled those keys at my face, you showed us your dangerous volatility, too.

[i am doing x365]

50 of 365x35: paula

2007-12-11T23:56:00.000-05:00

we often slumped, bored or overlooked, at the back of dance class. years later, after one of your parties, we were on all fours dabbing white-out on your parents’ linoleum wherever the hotknife had dropped.

[i am doing x365]

49 of 365x35: peter

2007-12-10T22:09:00.000-05:00

you unwittingly tested my entrenched ideas about christian revolutionaries, mostly by being so refreshingly respectful (not to mention lax) unlike other god-fearers i’d known. that you were also a cussing, chain-smoking looker didn’t hurt either.

[i am doing x365]

39-48 of 365x35

2007-12-09T17:43:00.000-05:00

39. jasmine
of all the things i found bewitching about you, it was your steady, wise energy that compelled me most. oh, those puffy lips. you seemed comfortable in your skin years before any of us might’ve.

40. kelly (one of the guys who fucked me up)
if ever we meet on the street, i’d spit on your face and pivot before you could speak of any hollow regrets for having inflicted a kind of damage on me you can’t ever fathom.

41. menaka didi
at a time when i was only beginning to grapple with my indian-ness, along came you – a munificent ambassador into the most indian of arts, making me feel more welcome than some relatives even do.

42. david h
i’d sneak down to your bedroom and burrow into your pillow to get high on the heady smell of clearasil, drakkar, and ego. years later, you became a Liberal climber, and the crush was crushed.

43. ian mc
it pained me even while i was doing it to gawk longingly at you like the other girls on campus, not because it was pathetic and cliché, but because i sensed you didn’t deserve it.

44. rowan
you were a beautiful misfit whose fears fit mine. the line you crossed with me may have ended our friendship, but the line you ultimately crossed with yourself marked a much truer ending. RIP, love.

45. svend
years after you’d handed alexa the victory and shattered me, i stared you in the eye and said there wasn’t a cliff i wouldn’t have walked off for you. i’m sorry, you said. me too.

46. another one of the guys who helped fuck me up
etched forever up in here is a picture of you with this caption: “creepy nepalese tour guide in front of whose crotch no preteen girl should ever be forcibly wedged in a tight fishing boat.”

47. robert
your physique intrigued me (long and lithe, like gumby), as did your mind, a sort of rubik’s cube. our fleeting connection was strange, when you think about it - full-body massages and mind games and all.

48. anon
we’d wax on about destinations to be explored, of distant adventures. so much talking. problem was, i finally allowed myself to admit, you never wanted to go with me. i think you wished you did.

[i am doing x365]

hairstory

2007-12-04T16:49:00.000-05:00

today i cut off the rest of my hair. the highlights are gone, as are, perhaps, any traces of my personality. shari called me her most brave client. i said it's a razor thin line between brave and crazy. she insists i didn't cross it - i'm not so sure. but i'm not sure i give a shit, either. this simple mousey brown helmet will soon be a mess-o-curls once more. the 'do ain't so short that i'll get mistaken for a chemo patient, but not too long that it looks like the unfortunate result of some kind of scissor-wielding self-inflicted rage. whatever. maybe i just wasn't enjoying the confused, misguided bedfro. maybe i just...

someone suggested recently that i'm obsessed with my hair, and i balked on the inside. not because i'm the least superficial person i know, but because the notion is so off-mark. if obsession indeed be at play here, maybe it has to do with wanting to feel something different. feel something. what is this feeling, anyways?

38 of 365x35: mr. evans

2007-11-29T23:52:00.000-05:00

you summoned me all stern into your office. i soiled myself when you said my dad would be informed of the whole smoking-in-the-girls-room incident. the deal you offered totally sucked, as did my negotiation skills.

[i am doing x365]

37 of 365x35: mr. s

2007-11-28T23:30:00.000-05:00

there was consensus that you were one of the most amiable teachers in the school, but also that your breath smelled like hot garbage – none of us appreciated when you’d lean in for close instruction.
[i am doing x365]

36 of 365x35: smc

2007-11-27T23:29:00.000-05:00

your laid-back, throw-back, peacenik-ness turned me on, not off. i used to imagine us climbing back to the 60s where we’d live out of a converted school bus, write poetry and manifestos, strum, dream, love.

[i am doing x365]

35 of 365x35: janice

2007-11-27T21:16:00.000-05:00

i was supposed to want to study piano under you because you were the best. awesome instruction, but your notations in the margins of my music were awesomer – my handwriting still mimics your funky script.

[i am doing x365]

34 of 365x35: sb

2007-11-25T23:32:00.000-05:00

ours was a fleeting acquaintance but of toe-curling impact, thanks largely to footsie during 'friday night videos'. you were the kind of compelling that renders a teenage girl tongue-tied, like your beautiful, unfriendly sisters did.

[i am doing x365]

33 of 365x35: gladys

2007-11-25T03:35:00.000-05:00

everyday after school, you’d bake yummy things with me like those cookies with a maraschino cherry poked in the middle. i loved flanking you as you'd belt out Yellow Rose of Texas at our piano.

[i am doing x365]

32 of 365x35: shaun

2007-11-23T17:46:00.000-05:00

when you turned to me during yet another of our raucous laughing sessions and said ‘don’t look now, but i think our personalities are dating’, i felt like i’d been body-checked, winded on the ice.

[i am doing x365]

31 of 365x35: norah

2007-11-22T23:33:00.000-05:00

you’d chuckle, as good sports do, whenever i’d call you ‘captain, my captain’, but i'm sure you've no idea how much your mentorship and friendship kept this flailer afloat during that amazing year, and still.

[i am doing x365]

30 of 365x35: j

2007-11-21T23:07:00.002-05:00

you wanted to marry me one day, but we could never quite steady the thing on the right rails. that plate waiting in the fridge whenever i got home from revolution plotting was sure nice.

[i am doing x365]

29 of 365x35: z

2007-11-20T20:36:00.000-05:00

you cried beneath the table of chips and pic-a-pop because jason refused to dance with you. you even threatened to play “total eclipse of the heart” (extended version) repeatedly until he would. tragic scene, imprinted.

[i am doing x365]

by my nails, sometimes

2007-11-20T13:55:00.001-05:00

a few of the things keeping me from curling up in the fetal position at the bottom of the bell jar (this time around):

my youtube 'favourites' folder -- fans of project runway (season 2, to be precise) surely appreciate the wetting of pants inspired by those legendary santino-does-tim-gunn moments, without which my prospects of making it through a day would be dodgy, at best. in this one, santino channels tim channeling nine inch nails - i wail irrepressibly every time i see it, just like daniel v himself:

minor meds -- sure, there's pretty much always a dull ache in some corner of my head, but even when there's not, what's the harm in a wee maintenance program? my daily dose of choice:

the volcano -- coffee lovers the world over well understand the elixir that is a good, strong cup of espresso. after inadvertently breaking two bodums in two months, i have returned to my beloved volcano to get me through. she's been with me a long time - she's reliable, doesn't judge me, and never disappoints. ours is a groovy kind of love.

chris cillizza and 'the fix' -- a blog that serves up some of my favourite political punditry of the american variety (the geek in me don't sleep just cuz i'm in a funk!). let's face it - having something consistent on which to focus while dangling is a good thing. and if that something regularly speaks highly of my boy obama, is fresh, AND well written? well hell, for an armchair political observer, that's a special brand of endorphin rush.

35x365: 28 nelson

2007-11-19T18:44:00.000-05:00

your talk of inherited loyalties to castro melted my heart. we embraced tightly for most of the drive back to havana, but who’s to say if i was holding you or if you held me.

[i am doing x365]

will the chill

2007-11-19T03:36:00.000-05:00

been spending more time outside than usual lately, breathing deeply – partly as per some tweaking of The Routine, but also in anticipation of winter. little bits of snow have fluttered around confusedly once or twice this past week, but there’s yet to arrive our first official snowfall. when it does land, that’ll be quite alright with me. breathing in deeply that sharp november air in the park today was good. having the likes of missy elliott and earth wind and fire along for the walk was good, too. but inhaling the intoxicating sunny chill couldn’t shake loose this feeling that something just ain’t right in me (again? still? always?) dammit. snow please come! make temporary tombs of things. cover shit up with your shimmer. cool this whole mess down. bring all the fluffy whiteness and freshness that is known to occasionally – temperature and location depending – signify hope.

35x365: 27 tim

2007-11-18T23:06:00.000-05:00

i hated your t-shirt that said “prague – czech it out”. otherwise, your presence was comforting. i recall making many sandwiches and dumb jokes with you. but you gave away little, so i remember little now.

[i am doing x365]

35x365: 26 julie

2007-11-17T23:50:00.000-05:00

i think you were from reno. hideous though it was, you landed the only single bedroom in our house, floral wallpaper and all. which meant you could host overnight guests freely. and you sure did.

[i am doing x365]

35x365: 25 jane

2007-11-17T23:47:00.000-05:00

everything about you butted against my desire to live beyond shallow impressions. but i couldn’t get past your permed mullet, acid-wash jeans, big pink nails. sadly, no compelling personality to make up for it all.

[i am doing x365]

35x365: 24 ken

2007-11-15T22:26:00.000-05:00

cigarettes and coffee and tarot, oh my. you: a medical anomaly, artist, teacher. me: a bumbling fake, ally, sponging off your aura. if only you lived here to administer – regularly – your special brand of care.

[i am doing x365]

35x365: 23 kathy

2007-11-14T23:59:00.000-05:00

i’m fairly certain you violated all kinds of camp policy when you handed me my first cigarette, taught me to inhale, and assured me i was “born to smoke.” the coolest counsellor then, creepy now.

[i am doing x365]

35x365: 22 unnamable

2007-11-13T23:22:00.000-05:00

you’d say jump, i’d leap. we laid our relationship down on a bed of clichés and hovered awkwardly around it like at a wake. you didn’t love me enough, you finally confessed. neither did i.

[i am doing x365]

anecdotal evidence of the precariousness of my mental health, of late

2007-11-13T17:47:00.000-05:00

i have taken to shouting in an aggressive and decidedly unladylike manner at invisible raccoons who i am convinced have established basecamp below my deck based on one backyard sighting of a couple of unfazed, lumbering visitors over a week ago.

each of my itchy bright-red burn blotches (mentioned last week) have been assigned a name, and i find myself making conversation with them in a manner not unlike, i realized today, that of tom hanks and a certain volleyball in that movie.

i am giving very serious consideration to a g.i. jane haircut – a full chop that would suit neither the shape of my cranium nor my personality but feels like a dire, urgent need all the same.

35x365: 21 giles

2007-11-12T19:05:00.000-05:00

you were among the first of many boys who would find the giggley gawky girls annoying and me fascinating. sang our hearts out at music camp, then wrote them out in letters until we forgot.

[i am doing x365]

35x365: 20 ian

2007-11-11T23:32:00.000-05:00

i asked to rub your bald head, you wordlessly gave it over. by the time we’d met, i felt proficient in Gay Men. later, you fell in love with a woman, and i knew less.

[i am doing x365]

35x365: 19 mr. pace

2007-11-10T20:07:00.000-05:00

better than the highest grade of my senior year, you gave me reason to believe i could write. that i must. that i might even be good at it. not to mention all the funny.

[i am doing x365]

35x365: 18 seema

2007-11-09T23:40:00.000-05:00

hardly older, yet light years away. i found you ethereal before understanding what that meant. you dared impart the secret password to a world of art, kate bush, poetry, Power of Women, of new knowing.

[i am doing x365]

35x365: 17 victor

2007-11-08T23:41:00.000-05:00

your pants were always too short and no one understood the stupid plastic bag you carried absolutely everywhere, by bike. but it's your brains, enthusiasm, and unwielding faith in the revolution that make you matter.

[i am doing x365]

35x365: 16 dale

2007-11-07T23:58:00.000-05:00

felt slightly intimidated there. when i caught you playing piano one night, i felt safe. what you whispered during that emotional hug after we brought the house down at that silly concert touches me still.

[i am doing x365]

sask, i still love you

2007-11-07T22:20:00.000-05:00

the next saskatchewan legislature
will be led by a sask party majority.
oh god.

things to which i freely admit at this point:

i am sad. i am not surprised. i wish a fifth term wasn't such a big fucking thing to ask for, from any electorate. i wish the sask liberals could have offered a remotely viable alternative so those nose-holding voters who somehow desired change could have at least gotten it done the ontario way.

i am mildly disappointed to have not gone there to work the campaign. at this moment, i'm feeling a wee bit homesick.

i am no blind loyalist and have certainly disliked many moves/decisions made by my chosen party - especially the sask ndp, good christ - but it is a sickening notion that they should be voted out based primarily on malaise. i am not excited to see which of its seriously whacky and dangerous ideas the sask party will roll out first [more of that heavy law and order agenda, anyone?]. i confess to liking wall's idea for fixed election dates, though.

i am gushingly relieved that my old friend warren held onto his seat (and a few others i particularly admire). i shed more than one tear during calvert's concession address - i really do agree with him that saskatchewan is the best province in canada.

i'm a bit pissed right now, but can't stay mad at my people. i really do love where i'm from. we should all be so lucky.

dear saskatchewan

2007-11-07T20:06:00.000-05:00

you, my homeland, will decide today on your provincial government. the polls will close in about an hour, and i have to get this off my chest as we countdown to a result.

frankly, you’ve got me worried. i’m not a poll obsessor, but the numbers look bleak for the beloved new democrats and promising for dapper brad wall and his conservative team.

[as an aside: a bright and worldly colleague of mine confessed cavalierly last week that he had never heard of the saskatchewan party. i was a bit surprised, but then again, does anyone from ontario really give a shit about what goes on elsewhere? although in the case of saskatchewan, we’re hard pressed to find someone in neighbouring alberta let alone the centre of the universe (aka toronto), who could say much about sask politics. but i digress. so anyways, i shared the story of the sask party, how it came to be, what it has meant for saskatchewan politics, and what it could mean today. this colleague of mine quite correctly pointed out the oddity of that party and its relationship to the federal conservative party, but we both agreed that what’s not an anomaly is the steadily-climbing popularity of the sask party, given the current political climate both in the prairies and at the pan-canadian level.]

look, like any unapologetically ensconced politico, i’m a huge proponent of change when it’s time to replace an incumbent government with the party you support. in your case, my home province, the ndp has governed for the past 16 years, during which time you have given them strange bedfellows during some shaky minority periods, while sometimes allowing them comfortable stretches of clear power. last time around, you barely put them on top. today, we all see the calvert-led npd shuffling sheepishly into e-day with disturbing poll numbers and grave uncertainty. point being, can we really blame you for choosing change? isn’t that just how things go – even you should conform to natural political tendency to turn over governments after 2-3 terms, no? and never mind electoral norms, do we not find ourselves staring straight into the evil eye of current political storms? how can you be expected to re-elect the ndp One More Time when every last political breeze in this country is swaying you – and everybody else – to the right?

ok, i know what you’re thinking: ‘we’re saskatchewan, dammit! whatever the so-called political climate is in this country, we defy it! we sway by a different wind here [a demonstration of that go-our-own-way-ness being that you remain the only place in the hemisphere (world?) that flips the bird to daylight savings time]. we contradict even the most consistent of political tendencies. for awhile there, we were pretty much the only place in the western world that didn’t consider socialism an indictable offense!’

i hear ya! but here’s why i’m worried. even in the province that birthed medicare, canonized tommy douglas, and has rallied consistently against the mighty tides of neo-conservativism, maybe you’ve possibly fallen victim to The Harper Era? maybe it has gotten its hold on you, too?

the rabid right will be dutiful and do what it does. so will the loyal left. in between those two extremes, my homeland, you have an oft-analyzed long history of weird voting patterns. contemporarily speaking, the ndp knows of its debt to urban ridings for steady provincial success. but many of your staunchest ndp supporters have long followed the bizarre logic of my parents: vote ndp provincially (and in the case of my mother, donate money and even sit on your mla’s riding executive), but vote liberal federally. and it’s that tipsy, substantial slice of the electorate that has me concerned tonight.

it pains me to name the obvious, saskatchewan. your traditional ndp base has become awash in disheartenment and disenfranchisement (for reasons we shan't get into here). and since there is no provincial liberal party to speak of (sorry mr. karwacki, A+ for earnestness, shame about the stunning lack of traction), my concern is that the sask party machine might have managed to tap into far more than just an anti-ndp sentiment. i’m talking about those forces of the right that have assumed deft control of public and political discourse under The Harper Era (with gratitude to george w.).

and so it is with heavy heart that i implore you, saskatchewan, the province i love: DON’T DO IT. DON’T GET SUCKED IN. prove me wrong and Go Your Own Way. and to you disillusioned centrist voters who dependably vote left but today may be flirting with the idea of putting your checkmark next to a new box: RESIST. don't buy into the sort of hype and rhetoric that confused voters in ontario, quebec, newfoundland/labrador, et al. BE STRONG.

holding out hope for at least another hour,
pam

35x365: 15 chad from pre-school

2007-11-06T23:53:00.000-05:00

we dove into the costume trunk and staged an earnest little wedding. "adorable", apparently. i kept the raggedy ann necklace you gave me for a hundred years, fantasizing we’d meet as grownups and consummate things.

[i am doing x365]

oh mUGGod

2007-11-06T17:28:00.000-05:00

day three of this headache. i swear this hasn’t happened since my early 20s when i was experimenting with various birth control pills, pharmaceuticals, and a coca cola addiction. i also swear that these have been the worst few days i’ve pushed through in quite the while. yesterday, i (accidentally, of course) splashed hot grease from the stove and now have three unpleasantly red toonie-sized burn blotches on my stomach. yes, stomach. let me assure you, other than maybe the eyelid or nipple (i wouldn't know), i propose the stomach is the worst place to be burned by cooking grease. the ensuing pain and discomfort of that dumbass kitchen manoeuver coupled with the headache made for a rather shitty monday. i suppose it was within that rawness that i found myself susceptible to a mini meltdown [my keep-it-all-in-check-o-meter is clearly on the fritz]. a simple question during a simple phone call opened the floodgates to a rush of pent-up feelings related to stress, loss, fear, You Name It. it was hearty and apparently necessary, but that sort of cry sure doesn’t help a headache.

and so my burned and achey self fell in and out of a bizarre sleep of dreams about comas and missing car tires and bunk beds and road signs and footwear. found myself surfing the net in the middle of the night for some good winter shoes. i need not slip-slidey shoes, nor clunky boots. i need in-between footwear. my winter boots have served me well for ten years will do so again when the time comes to trudge through volumes of snow on mini hikes. they keep me from falling thanks to a complex tread pattern down below, are ultra-lined, and lace up to the top of the ankle so are toasty warm. great. but what i really need is footwear for the daily grind that’ll get me from house to car to [insert random urban destination here]. but i don’t want one of those weird leathery jobs that go to the ankle but are actually quite gapey up there. and i don’t want anything with a girlie heel, as if those women aren't one steel grate away from a face plough when racing from taxi to highrise to nightclub – high heeled boots would be SO not me. i’m surely no fashionista, but i find myself confounded by what is lately passing as stylish. like honestly, when the hell did tassles come back? and what is the story behind this line of boots that has somehow managed to convince (dupe) the hipsters into annointed them cool? oh mUGGod. basic winter wear? sure. fashion hype? c'mon.

35x365: 14 girl from mass comm 201

2007-11-05T22:30:00.000-05:00

we strolled from class to a bench in the quad. within minutes, there was disclosure about various sexual traumas and scars yet to heal. though fleeting, i remember that intense solidarity. just not your name.

[i am doing x365]

35x365: 13 lisa

2007-11-04T19:05:00.000-05:00

upon seeing your bumper sticker (‘if you can read this, thank god your mother is pro-life’), i damn near ejected you - vigilantly - from my house. plus you whistle and talk too much while you work.

[i am doing x365]

35x265: 12 jack

2007-11-03T14:51:00.000-04:00

i stopped breathing when you sat next to me in that intimidating auditorium. people always stared – those absurd curls, piercing eyes. that swagger. i got to see the inside of your bedroom, and vapid mind.

[i am doing x365]

35x365: 11 alejandro

2007-11-02T18:22:00.000-04:00

guiding me through pulsing latin rhythms, i was the sexiest woman alive. our bodies sizzled, though we went no deeper than ignited flesh. i wanted to fuck you forever. then i heard about your wife.

[i am doing x365]

35x365: 10 mrs. s

2007-11-01T23:49:00.000-04:00

your house smelled of salve, white people food, and inertia. doilies, plastic covered furniture, and antiques from out of my world. mine were more than lessons in piano - early intro to old-fashioned culture, into knickknacks.

[i am doing x365]

redecorating

2007-11-01T00:43:00.000-04:00

not that anyone would notice because, let’s face it, the room hasn't exactly been operating at full capacity for a Long While, but i figured it time to make some changes around here. those obligatory links on the left have been updated and a new (coincidentally ndp orange) button has gone up which points innocent clickers to my desperately low vote count for a pipe dream prize. oh, and woot woot - ‘lost people’ now found have suitably gotten the strikethrough treatment. thanks, internet, for all the reunioning.

perhaps most importantly (hey, it’s all relative), i decided to give up on the multicolouredness of the posts and just let the grey hang out. less stress, more soothing. or not. whatever. i have seven thousand choices to make on any given day, so at some point it becomes appropriate to give no shit whatsoever about the colour of one’s blog posts. because i’ll tell you what, users of prefab annoying cheapo creatively-uninspired blog templates, NO ONE CARES. so i don’t. grey like me it is. at least until i manage to get my crap together enough to learn me some wordpress or some other newfangled set-up that might show some love to my own bona fide page somewhere off on its own away from this stepfordy blogspot zoo. wide open spaces and i gotta be me and all that.

35x365: 9 older lady in front of me at the maxi

2007-10-31T18:24:00.000-04:00

through the ‘8 items or less’ checkout, you quietly slid a six pack of budweiser, two cans of fancy feast, two cans of whiskas. if not to others, you serve as a warning to me.

[i am doing x365]

35x365: 8 lorna

2007-10-30T23:27:00.000-04:00

i so worshipped your mom’s tuna sandwiches and accent. your dresser drawers became steps to our pink-lit catwalk. the giggles! first best friend, secrets, mean older brother, spooky basement where we’d pretend to be brave.

[i am doing x365]

farewell, frump

2007-10-30T22:02:00.000-04:00

i think i killed a sweater today. it is unlikely that it will be missed. some weeks ago, i had pulled it out from the bottom of one of the last of the unopened boxes. it is shapeless, light blue, and grandma. i recall at the time questioning why i’d even dragged it to another house. it so clearly is from a time in my life when function and oversizedness were seemingly my only criteria in garment shopping. not that that has changed drastically since, but i know my attention has shifted - at least somewhat - away from hideous drapey fatgirl clothes to items that imply outrageous things like shape or style. so anyways, when i descended into the laundry room just now to look for my legwarmers, the big baby blue zip-up sweater was staring at me from a pile. it looked so sad, as though in need of freshening or time travel. so i filled a bucket with warm soapy water and shoved the knit mass in for a soak. then i exhausted myself trying to wring it out. my sore arms managed to drape it soggily across the sink. i suspect it shan’t recover. if it dries at all, it’ll take weeks. and who knows? by then, i may actually have confronted the fact that my days of frump are (should?) be over, goddammit. and if ever i need to dress warmly, perhaps i needn't look like blueberry muffin’s scary cableknit aunt.

35x365: 7 jerry

2007-10-29T23:44:00.000-04:00

when you came home that night and claimed to have been mugged near piccadilly circus and that you'd bashed the guy's head with a glass bottle, something in your eyes really spooked me. even now.

[i am doing x365]

35x365: 6 mike

2007-10-28T16:20:00.000-04:00

rabid for whatever pencil scratch poetry you were willing to share, reading you proved teenage minds could be genius, and made me want to hold your head in my lap and cry with you forever.

[i am doing x365]