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Yesterday, I was worried that the bulbs I planted last fall had died over the winter.
Today, it’s like Annie Dillard says in Pilgrim at Tinker Creek:
they say of nature that it conceals with a grand nonchalance, and they say of vision that it is a deliberate gift, the revelation of a dancer who for my eyes only flings away her seven veils. For nature does reveal as well as conceal: now-you-don’t-see-it, now-you-do.
These were simply not there yesterday.
Here they are today, coming right up through the snow.
And the more I looked, the more tiny shoots of green and red I could see, just waiting to spring into the light tomorrow. If it doesn’t snow.
An explosion and/or fire at Shaw Court in Calgary has knocked out a significant quantity of telecommunications equipment, affecting not only bank machines and radio stations, but stuff like 911 service and the program that tells ambulances which hospital they should take a patient to.
I’m going to repeat the salient bit:
…SPRINKLERS…in that room…ELECTRICAL EQUIPMENT…
SPRINKLERS…ELECTRICAL EQUIPMENT
SPRINKLERS + ELECTRICAL EQUIPMENT?!
LOLWHUT?
Normally when you talk about mission-critical infrastructure, you’re talking about stuff like the servers that handle banking and the stock market. And for that kind of thing, the technology exists to have redundant servers in multiple locations that can fail-over almost seamlessly if something like this happens. We don’t have all the details, but chances are some of this stuff is weirdass old mainframes and actual physical mechanical switches that can’t be failed over quite so easily. Still, why in the name of the Invisible Pink Unicorn and the Flying Spaghetti Monster would you put sprinklers in with them? I mean, I know the obvious answer, which is that halon is expensive. But whose brilliant idea was it to cut this particular corner? Maybe it’s just me, but I think 911 service is a bit more important than the stock market.
This is not photoshop.
What is colon hydrotherapy, you ask? It’s an enormous enema. A Dieticians of Canada publication describes it as follows:
Colonic cleansing or irrigation, touted as a treatment for cleansing the colon, involves the insertion of a rubber tube through the rectum into the large intestine. A continuous forced flow of up to 20 gallons of warm water eventually causes the body to expel the contents of the colon with the water. Colonic cleansing has been legally approved by Health Canada for use before radiologic endoscopic examination. Various peer-reviewed scientific studies were also found exploring pre-operative colonic cleansing as a means to prepare patients for a medical examination of the colon. A meta analysis investigating the efficacy of such treatment, for other than medically necessary purposes, concluded that there are no benefits derived from mechanical bowel cleansing; on the contrary, such a treatment may lead to further complications. Medical doctors do not recommend colon cleansing unless it is performed by a physician in preparation for a medical examination of the colon.
They offer gift certificates! Read the rest of this entry »
As I was practicing this evening, there occurred a confluence of events that has cost me not only the remaining hours of today, but also my heart. (1)Working on some Wagner, wondering what the hell “sehr massig bewegt” really means as a tempo marking, so I decided to see what there was on Youtube. (2) Scribbled in the margin of my music, the advice of my singing teacher: “Listen to Jessie Norman.”
Turns out I misspelled her name, but I found her anyway. I hereby declare my rapturous and awestruck utter fangirl love for Jessye Norman. She was born in Augusta Georgia, September 15, 1945. She was singing gospel music in her church by age 4, and became an opera fan when she heard a radio broadcast at age 9. Since then, the list of her accomplishments is an enormous wall of text. This is a woman whose voice can do basically everything. She can sing the whole range of female voices, from deep contralto to the top of the dramatic soprano range. And she can act! and and and I tell you what, how about I show, rather than tell. Some of the following videos are long but I promise you, you will not regret the time you spend.
I’ve had this post on the back burner for months, since a commenter at Shakesville (I think) said, you could never get away with restricting men’s access to Viagra the way state legislatures have restricted women’s access to abortion in America. And no, you couldn’t. But interestingly enough, it’s pretty easy to make a set of arguments for restricting access to Viagra, that are pretty similar to the arguments for restricting access to abortion. For the most part, all you have to do is search the text, and replace “woman” with “man”, “abortion” with “Viagra”, and “ends a human life” with “begins a human life”. (If pre-born human life is that important to you, you should take its creation as seriously as its destruction.) Then there are a few restrictions that claim they’re protecting women, and you just have to look at the flip-side: preventing men from hurting women. For some of the restrictions, I’ve invented an imaginary evil radical feminist anti-het-sex conspiracy to substitute for the Religious Right.
Every restriction on access to Viagra I propose below, is either a fact of life, or a legislated restriction, on abortion in at least one, and often many, American states. When the restrictions and their justifications are imposed on men, they look pretty radically man-hating (never mind that being unable to get a hardon is nowhere near as traumatic as going through childbirth against your will), but in their anti-abortion form, it’s not just fringe whackaloons making the arguments I’ll list, it’s people elected to public office. Read the rest of this entry »
Now it got Jack Layton. He was a good man. Someone in politics for what seemed to be the right reasons. A politician who passed the “would I have a beer with him” test with flying colours – I did have a beer with him and we had a lovely time. He was one of those people who could make you feel like the most important person in the world the way he listened to you. And now just like that he’s gone.
I’ve really had a problem with the discourse (or really, lack thereof) that’s surrounded his fight with cancer. The dogged optimism. The refusal to come out and say, when you’ve had prostate cancer and it’s back, and on top of that you’ve now got another kind of cancer as well, you’re pretty much fucked. And also, things like what Edmonton Strathcona MP Linda Duncan said on CBC this morning: “If anybody could beat cancer, it would be Jack.” I understand the sentiment. I really do. If cancer was something that could be fought with the will, who better than Jack, the perpetual underdog who never gave up. If cancer was something you could fight with hard work and determination, who better than Jack, who lead the NDP from near-demise to official opposition status. Except that cancer doesn’t care how hard you fight. If it did, we’d still have Jack. And a whole lot of other people too.
Around Fathers’ Day, the heteronormative masculinity enforcing messages involved in the associated marketing push absolutely drive me up a wall. According to the marketing that bombards us, “Father” seems to be some kind of monolithic hive-minded creature that only likes and does certain Very Manly things, and should only want certain kinds of gifts, and should only do certain kinds of Fathers’ Day activities. And I get angry on behalf of my dad, because I feel like it’s wrong to burden and confine him, and all men for that matter, with the expectation that fathers have to be a mix of Tim the Tool Man, Homer Simpson, and a randomly selected epic role acted by Mel Gibson, or else they don’t count.
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