this isn’t happening
This is why you don’t go to the gym. For the record, so far in 2012 I have done my usual workout once, went for a swim, and taken part in my first of twelve weekly kickboxing classes.
Nothing to do with a resolution – it all just kind of happened. Like this blog post. Hey, I have a blog!
do what you want
Another election day. Goodness me.
No visits at the door of the Awesome household this time around, so I have no personal account to draw upon to help me make my choice. As usual, I’m headed to the local polling station as a reluctant Liberal voter, wishing that I lived in a riding where a vote for someone other than the Grit candidate could be a vote that went to a winner. Here in Ottawa South, a vote for anyone but Dalton is really just a vote for the PC guy, whose party leader has failed to distance himself from the mistakes of our Mike Harris past. And given the day-to-day of what goes on in my household, where our reliance on health care and education services are pretty much the only things that matter, the prospect of a government that gives Tim Hudak a say in anything at all is pretty scary, actually.
Fortunately, I do have other ballot boxes that are worth stuffing. And you won’t even have to take a stroll to your nearest community centre, elementary school or seniors home to do it.
The Aviva Community Fund wants to give away some cash to initiatives that can prove themselves popular enough to gather a bunch of votes over the next couple of weeks, and there are a couple of causes, backed by important people who are near and dear to me, which I’d like to bring to your attention.
- Foundations for Functional Communication is a proposal from Mindy and Geoff on behalf of their son Connor, who has benefited greatly from the use of an adapted iPad to help him express the ideas and feelings and opinions that he can’t put into words. I’ve never met Geoff, but I have more than a passing acquaintance with Mindy and can vouch for her as a quality person, articulate and empathetic, and young mister Connor is a pretty wonderful little dude. Should these folks receive the funding to put their proposal into action, only great things will result.
- The Ottawa Rotary Home proposes an inclusive playground in Ottawa near their property on Bank Street near Leitrim Road. There are a couple of these things around town already, but they lack the sort of interested involvement and regular planning that would convert these spaces from playgrounds with weird swingsets into truly inclusive community gathering places, where kids of every age and ability could come together and, you know, be kids. The Rotary Home are already experts in this realm, staffed by caring and involved people who work with young people with disabilities every day, and I know that their inclusive playground project would be a highly beneficial and successful one.
If you’ve got a few votes to spare after supporting these funding proposals, you might also take a look at A Driving Force and Rack ‘em up, which will benefit bike-riding, granola-eating, tree-hugging hippies like the folks at Trips For Kids and my teen-aged nephew. Get a job, all of you!
If I vote every day, and you do too, these will win, and we’ll be the first to congratulate each other on our selfless community engagement. OK?
final straw
As I raise my head to broadcast my objection
As your latest triumph draws the final straw
Who died and lifted you up to perfection?
And what silenced me is written into law.
Listen: R.E.M., “Final Straw”
I can’t believe where circumstance has thrown me
And I turn my head away
If I look I’m not sure that I could face you.
Not again. Not today. Not today.
If hatred makes a play on me tomorrow
And forgiveness takes a back seat to revenge
There’s a hurt down deep that has not been corrected.
There’s a voice in me that says you will not win.
And if I ignore the voice inside,
Raise a half glass to my home.
But it’s there that I am most afraid,
And forgetting doesn’t hold. It doesn’t hold.
Now I don’t believe and I never did
That two wrongs make a right.
If the world were filled with the likes of you
Then I’m putting up a fight. I’m putting up a fight.
Putting up a fight. Make it right. Make it right.
Now love cannot be called into question.
Forgiveness is the only hope I hold.
And love – love will be my strongest weapon.
I do believe that I am not alone.
For this fear will not destroy me.
And the tears that have been shed
It’s knowing now where I am weakest
And the voice in my head. In my head.
Then I raise my voice up higher
And I look you in the eye
And I offer love with one condition.
With conviction, tell me why.
Tell me why.
Tell me why.
Look me in the eye.
Tell me why.
your beat is nice
You know what’s not supposed to be all that difficult? Recommending music to friends. Particularly if you have an interest in music, as astute observers of this netwebblogpage have no doubt, uh, observed.
But when my old pal Kirsi, who has recently established a new weblog after years of just lying around the house all day or whatever, told me that I needed to suggest some music for her to check out as part of her 101 Things, well. It’s like a gauntlet was thrown, and that fucking Gauntlet was heavy like the arcade machine that used to be at the shitty convenience store on the corner, next to the magazine shelves where you couldn’t help but glance the porno mags lining the top rack, because you’re a teenager and that’s what teenagers did back in the days of carrying quarters to play video games that weren’t in your living room and sneaking peeks at naked people on paper because they weren’t readily available like they are now, on basically any electronic device invented since the 1990s.
(That convenience store isn’t there any more, nor are the two houses that were right near it, or even the tiny street those houses shared addresses on. Whole thing was bulldozed for some reason, even though the shiny new Pioneer gas station was built and opened before the houses and street were removed, so it’s not like they were an obstacle to construction or something. See these houses? Gone. Thanks for coming out! Farewell!)
The main issue with this request is that Kirsi and I are of roughly the same age, have grown up in the same time and similar geographical area, and even lived together for a while. So there’s a lot of overlap when it comes to awareness of and taste for popular culture, and I can’t just throw out a few of my favorite albums and be done with it. Kirsi already knows Achtung Baby and Automatic For The People, and anything I might suggest by the Tragically Hip would have to be old news. She lives in Kingston, for christ sake!
So, it’s taken me like two weeks to figure out what to suggest.
Alice in Chains is a band I’ve written about before, and their catalog overall would probably be considered too dark and heavy for most. But the Jar of Flies EP, from which “No Excuses” was the lead (only?) single, was a signal that something else was going on here, and the musical talents of the group extended beyond the grunge/metal fusion recorded on previous albums Facelift and Dirt.
The Constantines are probably a dude band, and their recorded stuff is inconsistent at best, but having seen them live while opening for the Hip in Ottawa, I couldn’t help but get hooked on their 2005 record, Tournament of Hearts. It accompanies us whenever we put the family into the family van for a long drive, and might best be enjoyed while staring down dividing lines on a highway somewhere.
There’s no way Kirsi doesn’t know about Sam Roberts, but Collider, which is the new disc that was released a couple months ago, is particularly great. I have said before that the Sam Roberts Band has never put out a bad album, and I feel pretty confident in recommending any of his earlier work, but Collider is on high rotation around these parts at the moment, and perhaps best enjoyed while enjoying an altered state.
Kirsi is a responsible parent and probably isn’t in an altered state very often, but it’s nice to have something to look forward to when the time comes, isn’t it?
you don’t make friends with salad
There is a quiet that falls over my little piece of the South Keys neighborhood at lunch time. All the daycare ladies have taken their yelling at the children inside, and there’s no lawn mowing, no hammering or paving or sawing or any of the other noise making that people seem bent to do for the benefit of themselves and to the detriment of everyone else within earshot.
It’s a great time to fire up the barbecue, throw one of my favorite burgers on there, and stand on the deck, taking it all in for a few. Then, after lunch, a blog post. Why not?
- Creepy, crusty, crumbling. What is it about abandoned amusement parks? I guess anything that was just left as-is, as though it was never even important in the first place, seems remarkable to me. Add to this the effects of time, and I think we have a pretty neat place to look inside.
- Speaking of abandonment, this discussion on Ask Metafilter is pretty interesting: Should we try to reply to all Facebook posts? I’ve worked on a couple of social marketing projects where the entities in question have struggled with what it is they’re trying to do on Facebook or Twitter, knowing that they “should” have a presence but failing at actually getting beyond the we-have-one-but-now-what phase. Free advice: yes, reply to every post, and if your company haven’t posted something – anything – in a week or more, you’re doing it wrong, no matter the circumstance.
- The long autumn of Roger Federer. The only thing I miss about having cable television service is live sports. My hockey needs are more or less covered by the grey-market streams one can find online, but the leisure of flipping on a sports network to catch some tennis or soccer at non-peak hours is not easily replaced, and I haven’t seen a live match in ages. Then again, I’ve always held that a habit of watching TV in the morning is a strong indicator that your life is pretty fucked, so I know I’m better off without. (See also: TV Raises Risk of Health Problems, Early Death. Who wants a free month of Rogers Cable? Anyone?)
- What photo sharing app should you use? My tweeps know I’m an occasional picplz user, and yeah, I’m totally a thirty-something drunken Android user. Typecast again!
Lunch finished, now I’m looking ahead to dinner. Sandra’s lemon onion chicken: one medium onion thinly sliced, a large clove of garlic, juice of two lemons, one tablespoon of grated lemon zest, a half-cup of olive oil, half-teaspoon of thyme, one teaspoon each of dried basil and salt, pepper to taste, and let’s say three chicken breasts. Mix, marinate in the fridge for a while, then grill. Thanks Sandra!