Category: Editorials

On the Email I Received Prior the Provincial Election

Posted on by Rocco

This is part of an email I received earlier this week.

 

Let’s take a stand!!!
 
McGuinty: Gone!
Borders: Closed unless you pay your own way!
Language: English or French only official languages!
Culture: Charter of Rights and the prevailing laws!
Drug Free: Mandatory Drug Screening before Welfare!
NO freebies to: Non-Citizens!

 
We the people are coming
Only 86% will send this on. Should be 100%. What will you do?
————————————
“The problem with socialism is that eventually you run out of other people’s money”. — Margaret Thatcher

 

My mother, who is a very open-hearted and generous individual, is also very open when it comes to my contact info. So from time to time, my email address joins the mailing list of the odd person she may brush shoulders with at any of the charitable events she volunteers at. Charity isn’t beholden to any political stripe, so it may come as no surprise that my dear mother may cross paths with a person with such beliefs evoked in the above email, dolling out food to the needy at a local soup kitchen.

I immediately and jokingly responded by stating that I agree, and that my mother, who has never given up her British passport – or her accent, for that matter – since she arrived in Canada at seven years old, should be cut off from whatever “freebies” are implied in the list of demands. I guess my point was to demonstrate the short-sightedness of such a knee-jerk stipulation; that those you feel are undeserving, are often those standing beside you, contributing just as much to the social well-being as you are.
 

 
McGuinty: Gone!

In regards to our current premier, I can kind of understand her frustration, although I may be voting for him, as journalist Dan Arnold puts it, “even as I hold my nose”. I doubt though, from the emailer’s sentiment towards borders and welfare recipients that they’ll be voting NDP in today’s election [Note to reader: At this point I hadn’t yet voted]. In regards to the Borders demand, the future Ontario premier, be him/her rabidly anti-immigrant, would have very little control as to who arrives in the province. Even if they did have that kind of power, I would wager that they would quickly change their tune once they learn that “real” Canadians have standards as to what kind of work they “lower” themselves to do, and for how much.


 

Borders: Closed unless you pay your own way!

Speaking of borders, it’s amazing how some people have come to believe that the Canadian government (or perhaps the Ontario?) has become so generous as to pay the travel costs for refugee immigrants to Canada. I have no idea where this comes from.(Or perhaps they mean pay they own way while living in Canada. I’m a bit confused here) As an ESL instructor, I know first-hand the stories of families pooling their savings to send a member to our doorstep. I’ve heard stories from Iranians who paid smugglers to get them either through the desert or over the mountains to the safety of the next transit point. I’ve heard of Sri Lankan families having spent as much as $25,000.00 US – an enormous amount for that country – to get their kids to the border at Buffalo, New York. In my experience, all immigrants and refugees pay their own way, so perhaps in this instant, the emailer is getting exactly what they want.


 

Language: English or French only official languages!

Well, at least they’ve accepted French as one of the official Canadian languages. This stipulation is also irrelevant, unless the emailer is concerned about the Italian signage in Woodbridge, or the Polish language that adorns some of the shop windows along Roncesvalles Avenue in Toronto. I jest. No, my guess this is more to do with the strange symbols one finds at Spadina and Dundas, or along rather non-Greek stretches of the Danforth, where men with beards and “exotic” dress walk with their children. I’m curious to know how and where the line is drawn between what the emailer considers as acceptable, and what they consider an affront to their visual sense. How does one language instil in him/her a sense of history (Italian/Polish) while the others trigger the sense being encroached upon (especially when Asians have been around in Canada longer than most Poles and Italians).


 

Drug Free: Mandatory Drug Screening before Welfare!

The most puzzling demand of all these is this one. That they think they can make Canada (or Ontario?) drug-free by preventing welfare recipients from using drugs must mean that, from their perspective, only welfare recipients are on the pot. It’s difficult to imagine the constraints one must use to maintain this reality. Even if I had spent my entire life watch only SunTV and Fox News at home, and blasting Rush Limbaugh through my headphones whenever I venture outside, I doubt I would be able to shake the notion that some people who have jobs and pay taxes occasionally smoke pot and perhaps snort a little of the Devil’s Dandruff. Besides, do they really think that a welfare recipient in Canada can afford an eightball?

All in all, those of us left of centre should be heartened by this email, simply because it screams one word: No. It is a word often used by those on the cultural and political defensive. If this is the case, then perhaps this is the first sign that things are turning; that although we have a Conservative government in power and a conservative Mayor in Toronto, the public is losing its taste for their values and blind ideology. And those on the right, like the emailer above, are feeling this chill before we do.

 

Update: I voted NDP

Second Update: I may have been right. In light of the new Liberal Majority, a writer from Maclean’s Magazine from MacLean’s magazine was forced to admit on a radio conservative radio station that the anticipated “Tory Wave”, that had all the conservatives giggling like school girls, isn’t going to happen.

Yay!

On Turning 38

Posted on by Rocco

I’m very fond a line in a Sex And The City episode where the depressed male love interest of Carrie Bradshaw, in response to her encouraging him to get outside and meet up with some friends, stoically replies, “I’m a middle aged man, I don’t have friends.” It’s a line that I like to use every so often whenever I explain my social life, or lack of one.

Over the last year or so, the things I that have become my personal necessities – my books, my writing, my PS3 (weekends only!) – are all coincidentally things are very jealous regarding my attention.

But why have such things became priorities far and above that of meeting face to face with fellow human beings? The first reason that comes to mind is that I can partake in these activities without wearing pants. If you are puzzled by this reason, then I have to assume that you either a) have a roommate or b) live with your parents and therefore have no idea what it’s like to lounge around your kitchen and living room in just your undergarments. The ability to walk around pantless is the single biggest reason why people end up either buying or renting homes for themselves. Of course homeowners/renters will never publically admit to that, but there it is. Once you adopt the lifestyle of domestic pantlessness, the chances of you going out for anything other than work or Chicken Massala diminish greatly.

For those of you who still choose to wear constrictive legwear around the living room, going out is actually a reasonable and viable option. For you, all that is required is to simply pop on some deodorant and some make-up and march your tightly bound legs out the front door. For people like me, it’s a whole arduous process of putting down the book, finding my pants, putting on my pants, synching my belt, looking for the sock that came off when I took of my pants….even thinking about it makes me feel exasperated and completely unsocial.

I jokingly try to address this general unwillingness to get outside and converse with my fellow man. Yet this circumstance has diminished my greater circle of friends. I suppose if I were a younger man, this ever-shrinking list of social contacts would have worried me. But why not now, in my 38th year? Especially when I can count names of people who would pick me up from the airport or bale me out of jail on one hand. Of course, there are exceptions; those restless Saturday nights when I’m a little tipsy and sentimental, but overall, there is no great feeling of loss regarding the slow death of social events in my life.

Perhaps it’s the job that I have chosen teaching adults ESL students, where I exhaust my social energy managing conversations. It could also be the hours I spend writing poetry – straining to be introspective, wracking my brains for a sliver of profundity – which leave me spent, with no greater desire than to spend a night blowing away aliens in a first-person shooter video game. It could be that when I do venture out to social gathering, prior to at least three glasses of wine, I often find myself looking at other people deep in discussion, and wonder, a little enviously: What could they possibly have to say to one another? I read. I watch the news. And yet, how can they have so much to say?

Or – and think I’m getting close here – it could just very well be that I’ve reached a point where I have to save my verbal energy for practicalities. Discussions, debates and discourse take energy, but when we all end up walking away believing what we want to believe anyway, is there any point to me opening my mouth? In essence, we are ALL George W. Bush, cherry-picking the facts to fit our worldview and going with our gut on life decisions. Verbal pragmatism doesn’t fit into the equation.

Mind you, there are many things I’ll stand for. For instance I plan on making an appearance at the Counter-Rally against CLCY’s rally to De-Fund Abortion tomorrow at Queen’s Park. But for many things, I’ve learned that that simply living through a mistake is the best way – and usually the only way – to change one’s mind. Sometimes it’s just better to let the world outside come to its senses on its own. In the meantime, I’ll be here – a pantless curmudgeon with a dwindling number of friends – waiting to pick it up at the airport or, god forbid, bale it out of jail.

Reflections of a First-time Father

Posted on by Rocco

I am the father of Ava, the cutest baby girl ever.

Yes, you can commence eye-rolls now. But, how do I know she is the cutest? Because prior to the early morning of August 7th, my mental response to the sight or sound of a stranger’s infant was: why have they brought THAT to this restaurant? I mean, I thought kids were cute and I sort of understood their appeal, but even when my wife was at full-term, I would look at a baby in the next restaurant stall and wonder how anyone could put up with the screaming and crying and dribbling for 24/7. In fact I even had trouble imagining how I would feel about Ava once she was born. Would it be pure paternal love, or meh,..she’s kinda cute but…

You have to understand that for the duration of the pregnancy, Ava was purely abstract; a mysteriously growing bulge in my wife’s belly that would occasionally give her heartburn and head-butt her bladder. However, following the words, “I think my water just broke”, Ava quickly began to solidify into something much more concrete. With this realization came a cold sweat. The controlled chaos which immediately followed my wife’s announcement remains a blurred series of memories. I recollect an amateurish attempt at assembling a “go-bag” (Bath salts? Anne Douglas, really??), the repeated attestations to how “unready” we were (the baby was 3 weeks early), and the resulting and overwhelming feeling of failure on my part. How was I ever going to be a good parent? The water broke while I was playing Oblivion on my PS3, for crying out loud. Such thoughts I bravely concealed from my wife, though if I had confessed I don’t think she would have heard me because during the brief time it took us to get to the hospital, the contractions had escalated in frequency to about thirty seconds apart. A little trick, people: if you want to get into labour triage unit sooner, don’t tell them it’s your first pregnancy. After what seemed like an eternity we were admitted to a bed in the triage unit. A curtain separated us from the labour pains of about 4 or 5 other women, and after a three-hour, dystopian opera, my wife was finally admitted to a birthing room.

One thing I will say about this part of the process, without going into much detail, is that the days when the husband is expected to pace in the waiting room, or sip whiskey sours at the bar around the corner, are long gone. Now husbands are part of the action. The nurses and doctors want you in there, stroking foreheads and massaging hands. I did notice, however, a nurse in the room who seemed to be merely observing the action. I assume now that she was there in case I fainted or shrieked like a girl and ran for the hills.

As for myself, I found to the whole thing both terrifying and fascinating. In addition, it has changed my perspective on the female form. Witnessing a live birth has added an element of functionality to the allure; female wiles with a bit of heavy machinery thrown in. The best analogy I can come up with is discovering that your wife/girlfriend is actually a sexy and cleverly disguised Transformer. I must admit that during the crucial part of the birthing process, I broke from my affirmations to my wife and exclaimed quite clearly “holy cow!”, earning me a odd look from one of the doctors. The last thing I will state about my experience in the birthing room is that while I was told earlier that newborns come out a little pale, I was very surprised to learn exactly how pale. I mean, we are talking the colour grey. I confess that one of the thoughts that ran through my head when little Ava emerged was: Oh, my god, ZOMBIE BABY!!

These are neither the thoughts nor the expressions I thought I would make as a newly-minted father. A friend has asked me for my first impressions of fatherhood, and it has been a difficult question to answer. I’ve come to the realization that it is much like asking a heterosexual male what it is like to be attracted to women. How a man feels about this varies with his perceived level of success with women. My guess is that parenthood, like the sex drive, is instinctual. It is not so much something you feel, but something you are (I know, sounds smug, but it’s the best I can do). Upon seeing my daughter being born, I imagine some never-before-used circuits in my brain switched on, and in a heartbeat, my prime directive switched from “get laid!” to “nourish your offspring!” And how has this affected my daily life so far? Well, for instance, this week we’ve been told to get Ava’s weight back up her birth weight, and so began Operation: Feed Your Face. Whereas my usual weekend nights consisted of wine, cigarettes, poetry and PS3, the last forty eight hours have been a near-sleepless rollercoaster ride from euphoria to despair and back again, all depending on whether this little peanut of ours feels like eating or not.

All this speculation comes with a caveat: Things May Change Without Notice. After all, it has only been about seven days since Ava was born, and just as I am certain that those of you haven’t yet joined the parenthood club have done a lot of eye-rolling while reading this, I am sure that there are just as many veteran parents who’ve clicked their teeth at my musings and muttered just you wait until she’s a toddler/teen/twenty-something. So I’m quite comfortable being told to stuff a sock in it by you childfree hipsters, just as I’m sure the seasoned parents out there don’t mind me telling them to turn down the smug a little.

I’ll conclude here today by simple reiterating that Ava is the cutest baby ever.

My Rose-Coloured Facebook Glasses

Posted on by Rocco

 
“An even more potent force in this regard is the Internet, where it’s easier than not to fall down a down a wormhole of self-referential and mutually reinforcing links that make it feel like the entire world thinks the way you do.”

 
A few weeks ago I posted this quote from Seth Mnookin’s book ‘The Panic Virus’ to my Facebook page. The timing of the post – the day after Canada’s federal election – was not a coincidence. Judging from the status updates and tweets from my like-minded social media friends, the overall feeling, as the election results came rolling in, was utter shock. There was no shortage of ‘WTF’s as the conservative vote steamrolled across Canada. I wasn’t an exception. Where were all the left-wing votes? What happened to the nation of liberals flooding my inboxes on a daily basis? What happened to the thousands of youths throwing their support behind Rick Mercer’s Vote Mobs and spreading the digital word about websites like www.shitharperdid.ca?

Well, first, I was grossly mistaken that there was a whole nation of liberals out there. I had convinced myself that the world of my left-leaning Facebook friends and fellow Tweeters were representative of the world beyond my living room door. The overestimation seems clear now, but is it any surprise now how I had fooled myself?

While my parents’ generation had to sit through a great deal of cable news stories and Op-eds that they disagreed with, my generation – with increasing ease over the last decade – has been able to choose what news we want to watch and which opinions we want to hear. We’ve been able to edit out any information or ideas that make us feel uncomfortable or stressed, and keep those that reinforce our own world view.

Hence why my Facebook and Twitter friends all think like I do, and the links they post transport me to websites and blogs that never mar the finish on my leftist-coloured glasses. In addition, the Youtube segments I watch, from Jon Stewart to Bill Maher to The Young Turks, not only tell me the bits of news and opinions I want to hear, but they reassure me that those who disagree with such news and opinions are a stupid minority not deserving to hold power. Heck, do these rubes even know what the internet is?

In the end though, it was all BS.

As it turns out, we hold no advantage with intelligence, numbers or internet savvy. Some of you may balk at this, but the proof is in the pudding: their leaders are running the country with a clear majority. If you want to claim something about mass voter brainwashing and political trickery, then you can join the ranks of the Birthers, and to a lesser extent the Voter Fraud crowd who tried to discredit the last Bush Administration. Such communities are prime examples of how people brainwash themselves in order to protect their fragile world view.

The morning after the election results, one of my Facebook friends posted the status update: “I wish only my Facebook friends voted last night.” I’m sure the thoughts that went into writing this post were different than those I took from reading it. But it sums up both my keen desire to keep the real world out of my cozy digital realm, and the overwhelming disappointment that comes with the realization that real change doesn’t occur through witty Facebook updates and cute 140-character tweets. Somewhere along the line, and perhaps in part due to the grandiose claims of techies equating twitter activism with revolution, I confused having rosy-cheeked fun with making real change. In the movie, The Trotsky a character comments that “it only gets real when it stops being fun.”

How many of our generation would ever want social media to be anything but fun?