Guilty

For a while, I was half thinking maybe they'd be found innocent. But no, the Afghani parents and brother were convicted of murdering their daughters/sisters/step-mother. Thank God. The only wonder is why it took 15 hours, instead of 15 minutes. But that's wonderful Canada for you. Plaudits to the jurors who wanted to dot all the "i's" and cross all the "t's" to ensure the verdict was just.

The one I feel a little sorry for is the brother. He was doing what his parents instructed him to do and what he was brought up and bred to do: kill girls who didn't toe the muslim line. Apparently he collapsed when the verdict was handed down, only to be comforted by the satanic father who instructed him to kill his sisters. And what about the other three young children? Apparently they are completely messed up -- obviously. What will happen to them? The parents didn't think about that tragic unintended consequence, did they. The whole thing is sicker than sick.

Rest in peace innocent ones.

A corollalry

To all my gay friends, acquaintances and colleagues -- you know who you are -- my last blog was not meant to be offensive to you in particular. I don't like anything heterosexual in public, ever -- let alone floating out in the ether of mainstream TV. And that includes all the hideous shows I mentioned. I think we should all keep ourselves and our sexual chatter to ourselves.

Hope that takes the edge off.

Weird

Not having been a voyeur on a date with two gay guys, I experienced the next best -- or was it worst -- thing watching 'The Millionaire Matchmaker' this afternoon. This is another stupid, dumb show that I occasionally can't help but watch. Instead of the usual two male millionaires choosing among six or eight stupid, dumb potential female dates, this one starred two gay millionaires and six or eight stupid, dumb potential male dates. (So far, no bias here.)

Needless to say, I was riveted as they got to know each other and the two $$$-aires picked their dates -- to the mortification of the rejects heaved to the sidelines. Then it was off on the dates.

Hearing guys say to each other, "You have a beautiful smile, has anyone ever told you that?" Intimate giggling, "Occasionally." "I love that you're so sensitive and vulnerable. It shows you have a big heart. Don't be afraid to let your true feelings shine through. You're so sincere."

Gag me.

"I love your back muscles, you're really cute and hot, shall we kiss?" "Why not." Why, was what I wanted to scream. But they do. It's not often you see two men passionately kissing in a restaurant, but there it was in living, breathing, pulsating colour. How do you spell "unsightly"? Now, don't start, I can't stand a man and a woman kissing in public either (remind me never to move to Paris). I mean, it was unshaven to unshaven, muscles to muscles, biceps to biceps. Just breathtakingly incongruous and absurd.

This is afternoon TV on a regular, everyday channel. It's sort of like 'Toddlers and Tiaras' grown up. Or a richer version of 'Wife Swap'. Or a homosexual version of 'Teen Moms'. And unless you have controls on your set, the kids can take it all in any day after school.

Scary.

I know homosexual men are everywhere and intellectually I accept it. But watching it actually unfold was about as weird as it gets. Made me think about a study I had read about research done on the Thames River. In it, the authors postulated that the prevalance of homosexual men in certain parts of the world was caused by the excretion of birth-control hormones into the water supply by women on the pill. The study was originally designed to determine why so many fish were hermaphrodites; then they extrapolated.

Although I know I will be scoffed at and accused of raging prejudice by the usual suspects, but it all sounds perfectly endocrinologically plausible to me.

"So" and "Is"

There is a new and annoying figure of speech in vogue. You hear it often when an expert is interviewed.

"Dr. Smith, how did you happen upon this phenomenon?" "So...we were conducting a series of experiments and we discovered it."

What is the "so" for? "So" means "therefore", or "for this reason", or "accordingly", or "thus". It is also used for emphasis, as in "so lovely". You have other expressions, such as "so-called...so-and-so...so be it...and so forth...so long...so what." But it is not to be used as a pause before starting a sentence. I can't stand it.

The "is" deal is even more irritating. People everywhere are repeating the word "is". Stop me if I have gone on about this before. "The thing is is that..." Why do people repeat the word "is"?! There's a little catch inserted and they repeat "is". Even worse...."The thing was is that..." Seriously. Open your ears and you will hear it ad nauseum. It is so common I bet you don't notice it. Notice it. It will start to drive you crazy.

Sandals and a Cultural Rant

It's only -minus 30 here, so folks go out in bare feet and sandals. I kid you not. That...spike heels and bolero jackets. No hats or mitts, natch. That's Calgary for you.

We were out for dinner on 17th Ave. this evening -- where a lot of young night lifers can be found -- and that's what we encountered. Twenty and thirty-somethings in barely any clothing or footwear. I loved it! What the hell, minus 30?! That's nothing. Actually, it feels warm, compared to the -minus 50 we have had all week. Pretty much ignoring it ourselves, we have carried on swimming, although I must admit frozen hair during the parking-lot slog is a bit much.

Nevermind. Here comes the rant, but if you are someone who confuses "culture" with "race", stop reading right now. Otherwise, here goes:

I have to vent a few words about a CBC radio program I heard last Friday. It was so outrageous I actually took notes -- just to be sure you would not think I was making this up. It featured a program called, "Boot Camp Moms -- Women Moving Forward" -- and it was about single, teenaged "moms" in the Jane and Finch neighbourhood of Toronto, which is a Jamaican neighbourhood. So, here we go with culture -- not race.

These immigrant mothers didn't vote because..."it's just politicians wanting money". This from teenagers on welfare$$$ in public housing. One of the leaders of this community said, "Until I started working with them, these girls were ignorant of their rights and entitlements. They didn't know about child care and other rights, so I had to educate them." Responsibilites? Forget about it.

I don't even need to tell you about my ears perking up. I grabbed a pen and notebook just in time to hear..."When my man beat me, I had to demand a woman policeman." Why do you stay with him? "Because he swept me off my feet and told me he would look after me, so that's why I put up with the beatings." The sweeping-off-of-the-feet part must have occured just before the sex part.

It goes on.

They have introduced a "Civic Engagement Course" to educate these teen mothers. But all to naught. "I'm gonna vote for whoever is black, period." Attention Obama shoppers! In fact, these teen mothers were the products of welfare, jail, children's aid or violence. And they seem to intend to keep it that way. Defiant to the end.

What about saying no to sex? What about setting boundaries? "I wanted a baby because the baby's the only person who won't leave me. And our men won't wear condoms. I feel loved when I have sex." These are teenagers, folks. But they are not taught boundaries as children. "We have learned helplessness. It's in our culture. We have no positive thoughts about ourselves."

There are those trying to introduce education, but the minute one of their men steps back into the picture, it all goes out the window. "If you get an education you step outside your group and you can't get back in," observed one expert. "In our community, we don't believe in grades. We take a collective and holistic approach. We don't want it to be about marks, we want it to be about learning." Yeah? Perfect. So how's that going to get you into Queen's or U of T??!!

A sad Canadian story.

Another great expression

My husband, B, comes up with some great expressions. "Life is full of small victories and mediocre defeats", and "If you could only separate the crap from the crap", are two I love.

After suffering through a grim exchange with a particularly difficult individual he added a beaute:

"Some people are so exclusive they're irrelevant."

I used to say the same thing when, in the public thoroughfare with my children encountering someone making a scene or causing a disruption, I would say, "That person is a problem.." Everyone knew exactly what I meant.

Little Alison

Premier Jean Charest might as well have added the "little" to the "Alison" during their joint press conference the other day. He actually referred to the Premier of Alberta as "Alison". Not Ms. Redford or Premier Redford. It was "Alison".

It jumped out jarringly when I read it. Can you imagine him referring to the Premier of Ontario as "Dalton"? Never. Or the PM as "Stephen"? Not on your life. But it was business-as-usual for a woman to be called by her first name -- even though she is a premier. One can only hope she noticed. Probably not.

I certainly notice when someone I don't know calls me by my first name -- like the guy who called yesterday trying to sell me financial advice. It was, "Hi Nancy!" "Hi, who's this?" (thinking I must know the person). But no, it was Joe-Blow-from who-knows-where. Hung up. Or the 12-year-old receptionist who hails, "Hi Nancy," when I arrive for an appointment. Call me old-fashioned, but I don't like it.

But this off-hand remark about Premier Redford comes from a man whose wife is so liberated a member of the "sisterhood" she keeps her maiden name. She's Micheline Something-or-other". Charest touts the fact that he believes he is in a very equal marriage with a enlightened and modern arrangement. Actually, he puts me more in mind of the 19th-century habitant who just got off a caleche from The Beauce.

The British

"We like to keep ourselves to ourselves." This particularly British expression aptly describes my family. "The neighbours next door must not be encouraged into too great a familiarity and they are, of course, adopting the same policy. They may be invited in formally to occasional parties, for the British, surprisingly, are fond of formal entertaining. But otherwise they must be kept firmly on the other side of the garden fence or hedge."

Picked up a fascinating book entitled, 'The British...Portrait of a People' and it is filled with absolutely enthralling nuggets about all aspects of the Britishman's life. Hedges put me in mind of my mother, whose property was ringed with them. So important were her hedges that the only time I saw her cry was when my brother took the electric clippers to them a little too enthusiastically. She was beside herself. The book describes their purpose like this:

"Hedges are grown around houses and their sole purpose is to keep the world out and preserve the privacy of the occupiers from prying eyes and passersby." Absolutely the case at our place. We had hedges up against fences and they were quite tall. No one could see in and we couldn't see out.

If a British house doesn't have a hedge, it has an imaginary one. "The imaginary hedges are as absolute and daunting as if they were made of prickly thorn. Should your neighbour be working in his garden a few feet away from you, you do not acknowledge his presence. You cannot see him through the imaginary hedge. Should you wish to speak to him, you go out through your own front gate, through his front gate, around to the back door and knock on his kitchen door a few feet from the point from which you started."

The book also has a chapter called 'The Antifamily' which covers the purposeful hardening of British hearts toward their children. This is in part because of the British adhorence of nepotism. "The thought that a man might be selected for being a relation...rather than on his own merits, is repugnant to all right-minded Britishmen." I can remember my mother making me promise never to take her into my own home. At the time I thought it bizarre, but this book explains it all.

"The old people, usually short of money, short of food, short of heating, subject to sudden accidents and illness, whose long lonliness is eased only by a television set or a cat, are one of the great problems of Britain. Their relations do not wish to see them, except on rare occasions such as weddings, funerals and Christmas dinner."

How true. Next I'll cover 'A Nice Cup of Tea'.

Taxes...again

Fully 66% of all taxpayers in Italy claim an income of less than $26,000. That's in a country where 188,000 own high-powered cars such as Maseratis, Ferraris or Porsches. Another 42,000 own yachts. Add to that the more than 500 who manage to scrounge private jets or helicopters out of their meagre salaries and you have a lot of folks evading taxes. No wonder Italy is trashed.

But Italy's new prime minister is cracking down hard to try and recoup billions in lost tax revenues -- especially in places like the luxurious hometown of the late Emperor Tiberius, the Bay of Naples in Capri. The country's most exclusive ski resort -- Cortina d'Ampezzo -- is the latest target where, over Christmas, tax evasion was revealed to have been on an endemic scale, not only among crooked boutique and restaurant owners, but also among their Lamborghini-driving patrons.

This is all in an effort to turnaround Italy's tax-evasion mentality, encouraged by Berlusconi's own behaviour. The hope is that investor confidence will return and help reverse the country's crippling $1.9 trillion debt. Good luck with that.

When I worked at Revenue Canada, it appeared to me that we always targeted ethnic minorities in our audit programs because the mentality of the majority of these communities was one of cultural tax evasion; the less tax you paid, the smarter you were. Naturally, we did not admit it, but with limited resources, we had to put them to use where the payoff would be greatest. On the customs side, we targeted flights from Jamaica and other Caribbean islands for drug and gun shipments. Plain and simple.

As I have ranted before, if you want to have a great country, you have to redistribute its wealth. And that is what taxes are all about. Otherwise, move to Italy or Greece.

Hey, you forgot one!

No, you have four kids, not three. Dean McDermott, the clown married to bimbo Tori Spelling, was agog when she announced she was pregnant with their third kid. "Wow, number three!" he raved when she showed him the pregnancy test. This took place on their reality show, 'Tori and Dean -- Home Sweet Hollywood'.

Hint: It's Ms. Spelling who has all the money, hence it's her hand that wields the editorial red pencil, wiping out Dean's other life.

Why do I watch? Because I can't wait for the next ridiculous scene. What inane dialogue will they utter next? "I love you so much"..."I love you so much too"..."hi momma"..."hi daddy"..."I miss you so much"..."me too"..."then we had a food fight!"...That's pretty much it for insightful interaction.

Problem is Dean has another kid with Mary-Jo Eustace -- she of the 'What's for Dinner' infamy. Granted, I find her enormously annoying -- and the mindless and absurd chattering in which she and Ken Kostick engage is idiotic in the extreme (thank G-d that show's off the air) -- but I did give her a thought today, as Dean fell about in raptures about his impending "third" child. Remembering something about an ugly divorce, I googled him and yes, he had a kid with Mary-Jo. How'd you like to be that kid, watching Dad deny your very existence on national TV? So, I guess their reality show isn't too real.

I predict another show down the road, with kid number one staring as another scr-wed up hollywood brat.

We both got 100

Talked to an old friend the other day as part of the usual Christmas nostalgia. She and I discovered life, love, short skirts, cigarettes and the odd pink lady together in high school. I was maid of honour at her first wedding, that's how close we once were. Hadn't talked to her for 10 years, since her mother died, and hadn't talked to her before that for a further 20, but it was as if no time had passed. Gabbing and laughing for an hour-and-a-half, we still hadn't scratched the surface of what we wanted to unearth and talk over. It seems the friends you make in your emotionally-formative years are the ones with whom you retain the strongest connections; she knows all my teenaged secrets.

She now lives in Laguna Beach, has a couple of famous family members and has become a successful painter. She was famous herself, but who knew she was a talented painter?! No one knew because I can still hear her mother telling her to stop being ridiculous, that painting wasn't a "real" job and to just try and find a successful man to marry.

My own mother used to say, "Nancy, it's just as easy to fall in love with a rich man as a poor one." We both laughed as we talked about our mothers telling us something we had just done or said wasn't "ladylike". Or something else wasn't "respectable". Or our attitude about such-and-such was decidedly "unbecoming". Or, "nice girls don't do that". Can you imagine telling the daughters of today anything so remotely ridiculous? Or was it all very sensible? I'm not quite sure anymore.

My friend and I both tried to marry rich guys, but it didn't take. It didn't take because we were on the cusp of the feminist movement. We were there when it all began. We were the first generation of women not to take after our mothers. We were the ones tuning in to Gloria Steinem, Betty Friedan and Germaine Greer. (Now I don't have much time for Gloria and her ilk; I much prefer people such as Camille Paglia.) Back then, still hedging our bets, we didn't go so far as to burn our bras, but we were determined to have our own careers, make our own money and set the course for our own lives. I remember swearing that I would never be in a position where I had to ask a husband for $2 for a pair of nylons. Never!

Well, I never have had to ask for $2 for anything. Happily, neither of us had the money to be "wives". Yes, it was a struggle, but it was so worth it. I would most certainly have lost my way, had I been able to quit my job and stay home. It may be great for some women, but not for my friend and me. I needed the affirmation and standing that society affords its members who pursue a career. Society still does not affirm "wife and mother" as credible choices. If you doubt that, just look at the pitiable money it pays child-care workers and cleaning ladies.

So, when a young woman educates me chapter and verse about women's lib or the feminist movement, I say, "Yes, I know all about that. We invented it." As I said to my friend on the phone, "Didn't we get a hundred in that?"

The seat of democracy

"The rule of law...means that there is a social consensus within a society that its law are just and that they preexist and should constrain the behavior (sic) of whoever happens to be the ruler at a given time. The ruler is not sovereign; the law is sovereign and the ruler gains legitmacy only insofar as he derives his just powers from the law.

"Before our more secular modern age, the most obvious source of just laws outside the political order was religion. The rule of law of Europe was rooted in Christianity. Long before there were European states, there was a Christian pontiff in Rome who could establish authoritative laws of the church. Rules regarding marriage and the inheritance of property were dictated not initially by a monarch, but by individuals like Pope Gregory I, who passed clear instructions to his delegate Augustine, sent to convert the pagan King Ethlebert of Britain to Christianity."

So much for Magna Carta. The rule of law was established by the Roman Church back in the second century AD.

This wisdom is taken from 'The Origins of Political Power', by Francis Fukuyama, historian and author at Stanford University. (These are the kinds of books my husband reads -- often aloud.) It's useful to look back at history to understand what is happening in most developing countries today. Virtually all human societies were organized tribally, yet over time, most developed new political institutions which included a central state that kept the peace and enforced uniform laws that applied to all citizens.

We take these institutions for granted, but when they are absent or unable to function -- such as in tribal countries like Pakistan, Afganistan and most African countries -- the consequences are disastrous. Democracy cannot exist within a tribal context. Simply not possible.

So, when people are tempted to criticize the church, they would do well to remember the role it played in evolving the democratic societies in which we are privileged to live and prosper.

Lover Come Back

Watching the fabulous Doris Day in this movie makes me wonder why I was not an adult in the '60's. There she is, false eyelashes, champagne hair, furs, sequins, high heels, ridiculous jewellery and a pound of makeup -- absolutely gorgeous! Just googled her and she was 37 when she and Rock made this picture.

It's amusing to watch Rock, who we now know was gay, trying relentlessly to get her into bed. It's also ridiculous she was still playing the innocent "ingenue" at 37. As Oscar Levant once famously quipped, "I knew Doris Day before she was a virgin." But the woman ruthlessly maintained a virtuous and unsullied image. I read somewhere that she insisted the camera lens be vaselined for all her close-ups so her wrinkles would disappear. And they do. Every time her face is framed, I strain to see it properly. I can't.

Had my own ridiculous moment with false eyelashes today. Sipping a martini at The Paliser Hotel for a New Year's Day lunch, I could feel one of them peeling. Drat. I had followed -- to the letter -- the instructions a cute waitress had painstakingly written out for me: put a line of glue on your hand, wait for it to get gooey, run the lash over it and simply press it onto your lid. Except the right one didn't quite stick and there it was, lifting at lunch. Nothing says "old bag" like a scruffy eyelash.

Just a word about the buffet luncheon crowd. Rarely have I seen so many overweight teenaged girls in too-tight, too-short outfits doubling back for yet another dessert...or three. What hideous shape will they take when they are my age?!

As to eyelashes, in honour of Ms. Day, I intend to keep trying.