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28.01.06
Sing Yia Yeu Ui!
22.01.06
What is a “Canadian value”? Among the midden heap of political rhetoric being shoveled at us, we are constantly encouraged and reminded to act according to our values. Are we to take something so personal and subjective and try and align it to political parties, like finding matching paint colours? Amid the red, blue, orange and green, what does one do with yellow? Are we to be satisfied with a near match, and swallow the dissonance of our hues? Is this the best that we can hope for?
I find it amusing that several of our political leaders seem absolutely convinced that the majority of Canadians are in complete agreement with them. They would infer that if the majority votes left of center, then all of the country must hold left of center values. If there is a swing to the right, then all of the country must then hold right-wing values. And if the majority of the people believe in something, then it must be veritable and true. Let might make right, in other words. I doubt the populace is that mercurial, and if we only govern according to popular opinion, any meaningful change becomes impossible without a total paradigm shift in the electorate.
I don’t think you can produce an uncontested list of “Canadian values”. Seemingly benign entities like “peace” or “family” have vastly different borders and interpretations depending on who is defining them. Consensus in principle falls apart in the particulars. The range of values in the country is an infinite spectrum of colours. In the current system, each riding gets assigned a confident monochrome until we have our familiar patchwork of basically four colours. With the same brush we are painted, or tarred. Those who find themselves clashing with the overriding schema are silenced. Perhaps one day we can have a political structure which reflects the people of this country in a better representation of each of our true hues, chroma, and values.
Go vote anyway, if you don't vote, you don't get to complain.
08.01.06
There was a sign on the checkouts in the local supermarket “Please leave bags of pork legs in buggy”. We had been waiting in an unusually long line and it seemed amusing, who knew they were having problems? Then I saw the carts of people around me. Two carts were groaning under the weight of two full pork legs each, essentially half a pig. The jaundiced skin over layers of fat, pinkish meat and bone. The cashiers were having to walk around to the customers and use the hand-held laser thing to read the labels. Then I saw the guy with six legs of pork in his cart. People were backed up into the aisles of the store in lines to check out, possibly due in no small part to the pork sale. We commented on this to our cashier. “Yeah,” she said, “we brought in 20 skids of pork”. On our way out we sidestepped a stock boy who had been recruited to mop up the brownish pools of watery blood that dotted the exit. Hurrah for carnivory.
07.01.06
My Father had just left the house this morning when I heard a knock on the door. Thinking he had forgotten something, I opened the door. It was the Jehovah’s Witnesses, again. A few months ago I had answered the bell and listened to them instead of slamming the door in their faces. This, apparently, qualified me for their repeat visit plan, and they’ve been back a few times. Today however, they caught me off guard and I was still in my pajamas when I opened the door. My subsequent theological arguments were therefore undermined by the fact that I was in blue flannel jammies and my own acute awareness that I didn’t have any underwear on.
04.01.06
Written last summer, yesterday marks one year:
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