It's Finally Here - Issue #13 of Galaxy Brain and the Final Chapter of "That Looks Good on You - You Should Buy It!"

 I hope you're enjoying it. I've started my next book, by the way, so stay tuned.

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GalaxyBrain.ca - 12th Edition - Is Live!

Galaxy Brain for what ails ya!

GalaxyBrain.ca - 11th Edition

 And here is Chapter Eleven of "That Looks Good on You! You Should Buy It!"

Starring Carol as Carol

UnGird Yer Loins! GalaxyBrain.ca's Tenth Edition Is Here!

 This one is chock-a-block, too, so enjoy!

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True Canadian Stories

 

At first I saw my own kids in the faces of the kids in the photo below, just as I saw my middle one in the face of a little girl who died in U.S. border detention a couple of years ago.

But then I saw my own face, and my kindergarten class, where the worst thing that happened to me was getting the palms of my hands slapped with a ruler for holding hands with another little girl instead of being single file as directed.

I still remember the fear I felt when I realized my mistake, that it wasn't double file time, it was single file time. Then the sting of the ruler and the shame of doing it wrong and the humiliation of being punished for it in front of everybody else.

 

I remember, too, the shame of feeling relief when it wasn't me being punished for doing "it" wrong, but someone else. I hated it, that feeling of cowardice, helplessness, the lowering of my head, afraid to look up lest the adult in charge think I was asking for it.

No adult I was aware of growing up questioned that there should be corporal punishment in public elementary schools. Or that principals and vice-principals, who were all men and all powerful, should be in charge of meting it out.

 

For most of my public elementary school years the principal was a former boxer with a temper and he meted out corporal punishment plenty. And in the early 70s, that same principal caught my grade eight teacher, who doubled as vice-principal, sexually assaulting a girl in grade six.

Freddie, our next door neighbour, went to a Catholic school. He told me stories all the time about the priests and the nuns. It sounded shockingly violent to me and I was just glad we weren't Catholic and I could go to a public school where at least it wasn't like THAT.

Everybody knew about the principal catching my grade eight teacher in the act of sexually assaulting a student. And everybody knew the school board dealt with it by transferring him to another school. It wasn't until the late '90s that he would be sentenced to twelve years in a federal penitentiary for the increasingly violent sexual assaults against public elementary school girls he had gone on to perpetrate over his 25-year career. It was all a bit of a miracle, really, that there was any justice at all, but a miracle of over a dozen victims being tracked down and able to testify, while another dozen were not.

That was our culture, the culture I grew up in, a white middle-class kid in a mid-sized city in northern Ontario in the 60s and 70s. It was a better culture than the one our parents experienced as children in Canada, but we were still powerless in it. Adult violence was still our problem. We faced the consequences of it. Parents rarely got involved in what adults in positions of authority did to their own children, never mind someone else's. That would have been seen as interfering in other people's business. It's not very long ago our governments made it an adult's duty, if that adult is in a position of authority, to report child sexual abuse to.... an adult in a position of authority.

 

So I look at this photo, enveloped in empathy for these children, because I know what our culture was during my childhood, and I wonder if the trouble some Canadians have in acknowledging the pain of residential school survivors, is because they have trouble acknowledging their own.

 

Residential Schools

GalaxyBrain.ca - 9th Edition

Chapter 9 of "That Looks Good on You - You Should Buy It!" by me, Kathryn McLeod, is now being featured (along with chapters 1-8) at http://galaxybrain.ca/

And remember - "TLGoY-YSBI!" is 13 chapters so gird yer loins.

Also, there's a bit of advice from me, Jim Diorio, and Jane Michelle Wilson, if you're looking for that sort of thing.

Click on all the images, though, because you never know what treasure you'll come across that you didn't know you were looking for.

What? It's a free county. I'll dangle a fucking preposition if I want to.

GalaxyBrain.ca - 8th Edition

Chapter 8 of "That Looks Good on You - You Should Buy It!" by me, Kathryn McLeod, is now being featured (along with chapters 1-7) at GalaxyBrain.ca

"TLGoY-YSBI!" is 13 chapters, by the way, so stay tuned!

Sick Daze

It's the start of a new fiscal year so I thought I'd put it out here on my handy blog that the federal government, here in Ottawa at least, is run on temps and casuals, none of whom get paid sick days. Nor do we/they get paid holidays. Case in point: One Sunday towards the end of 2019 I had to go to emergency due to a sudden severe pain that turned out to be a kidney stone, itself the result of a minor injustice done to me, a stand-in for all the major injustices happening to others everywhere all the time, which my brain fixated on in an unhealthy way, dragging my body along with it. I really needed time off the difficult clerical job I was doing, but taking time off would have meant not being paid. So on Monday morning I was back at it, working alongside others like me, but also alongside others not like me, because, not only were they better paid, they had paid sick days and paid vacation.

Public Transit Blues

I've ridden on double-decker buses in Ottawa. To me they feel tippy and out-of-control at any speed and in any season.

I've ridden articulated buses in Ottawa, too. Every time they manage to pull away from a stop or get around a corner in winter feels like a miracle.

I stopped a bus by standing in front of it on one of Ottawa's rare snowy days in winter. It was the first to show up heading my way home (or even not my way home) after three hours of praying for a miracle re the articulated bus stuck around a corner several blocks away. The driver didn't want to let me on, never mind the steady stream of (mostly) public servants behind me, including a man with a cane and a woman with a baby. Why? Because the stop I'd just forced him to make wasn't on his route.

My ex once waited with a bunch of (mostly) public servants for a couple of hours in the middle of nowhere on one of Ottawa's rare bone-chillingly cold days in winter. When their bus finally showed up the driver barely stopped before opening the door and yelling, "You can't get on! The heat's not working!" Then he sped off. I mean, it wasn't just cold, it was cold for Ottawa in January cold.

A man in a suit got off the elevator at a place I was working not too long ago and with tears in his eyes shouted, "I HATE OC TRANSPO!!!" Nobody even blinked. Just nodded in sympathy.

Lightrail.

I could go on. I've lived in Ottawa for a while now and I take OC Transpo.

Also, speaking of corners (three paragraphs up), and lightrail - I've ridden it, too. A couple of times I got on at Rideau (famous for the Great Sinkhole of 2016) after descending (at least?) four very steep flights of stairs, so steep I experienced some vertigo. Going east there's a corner past Hurdman that feels like an engineering fail of almost epic proportions. But what do I know? Certainly I've been on circus rides that felt that way, too, and they were perfectly safe.

I think public transit is a swing and a miss in Ottawa because it's thought to be a favour to people who either don't have cars, don't drive, or don't want to drive their car to work downtown.

By the way, there are bus drivers here who regularly make the sunshine list. I mean, far be it from me to deny working class people the sunshine list, but for people who make three or four times as much money as most of their fare-paying passengers, they could stand to be nicer about it.

And it's impolitic, but I don't want to not speak up just because I have the luxury of working from home during this pandemic, so out with it - since COVID-19 riding the bus is unpleasant at best. Mask-less men exhibiting anti-social behaviour pretty much have the run of it now. I've been on the bus with a six foot Viking at my side and felt unsafe. My friend who had to go to an appointment one morning had to endure one man shouting at her about music and another man ranting about missing his stop and trying to pry open the doors on the transitway. Neither wore masks. They either got on via the side doors or got on with a mask they ditch as soon as they're past the driver.

Anyway, maybe it's the pandemic finally has me feeling the Debbie Downers, but I wish public transit was more about the people who depend on it and less about the people who don't.

Name That Vaccine

Our media's daily reporting of this vaccine brand-off is fueling vaccine hesitancy. Somebody needs to read an ethics in journalism guide. None of it informs the public and a lot of it is counter to the public interest.

The Disappearing Royals

I wonder if what's really going on, and has been for a long time with the royals and royals-affiliated, is that the girlfriends and wives inevitably eclipse the royal and royals-affiliated men they date, marry, and divorce, because they're just more interesting to both the rabble and the media.

(By the way, we know Meghan Markle experienced and continues to experience anti-Black racism, particularly in the media coverage of her, and the public commentary around that coverage, because we witnessed and are witnessing it. Class has nothing to do with it. Talk of her financial situation is a distraction to anti-Black racism just as talk of a woman's financial situation is a distraction to sexism.)

Speaking of sexism, the problem with these women being more interesting than their men is that it conflicts with their role, which is to be seen and not heard and produce heirs. They're supposed to be models of fashion, decorum, and motherhood. Diana could have had a career on the runway ffs. And remember Shy Di? Every young woman and her aunt learned to do that look up from under to the camera. I still think of it when on Zoom peering up everybody's nostrils as they peer up mine.

How soon we forget.

And although neither Kate nor Meghan had to be accepted by the public as virgins, and both are actually older than their princes, not to mention on the long end of motherhood, the fact is that Diana did have to be accepted by the public as a virgin. And so it was that we watched with squeamish bemusement while Charles, who came of age in the '60s, and who was in love with his best friend, Camilla, cast about the land in search of - tada! - Diana, who would come of age in the '80s - AFTER marriage to Charles.

But as to the Queen, the linchpin to it all, is there a more boring person on the planet? Well, no, there isn't. Being boring is her role, and as we can all agree, she embodies her role like nobody ever. It's why The Crown is such a hit. Finally a look behind the role to what it might have been like for the young woman who stepped into it. Seasons 1 and 2 and we're done here - and thrown for a loop by Season 3 - because it's the young woman we're interested in knowing about.

Anyway, the royals, including the girlfriends and wives, always fell outside my timeline, interest-wise. Also, the media here, particularly CBC, pretends our connection to England is more than it actually is for most of us. England may as well be India for me. Or Wales. Sure, I grew up singing God Save the Queen, but it was dropped at some point back there and my memories are all of Canada Day now, whether it was actually Dominion Day or not.

 

I guess that's why the forever enmity towards Trudeau, who made it official. Canada is Canada. And Canadians are global citizens, not British ones.

None of this is to upset Anglophiles, of course, because it's all good and I mean it when I say I don't care about or have an interest in England and the royals and so I don't care if you do. Fill your Wellies.

However, I don't include Meghan Markle in that whole scene anymore because she made what I think is a good decision to quit the role and go public as to why. Anti-Black racism is The Problem, it really is. And our media is complicit in perpetuating it. We need to stop making excuses for it, distracting from it, attacking the messengers, and instead hear what they're saying about their lived experiences of it.

Issue #7 of Galaxy Brain - Live!

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Issue #6

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WWW

Okay, back to what matters - me coming to terms with the inevitable - White Whisker Whacking.

Get It

Now that the Donald J. Trump as President of the United States show is over I find myself at loose ends.

Also, now that my specific anxiety re the survival or not of democracy south of the border is gone, my generalized anxiety has come back with a vengeance.

So many people have lost their minds, it seems, programmed by their own social media feeds to believe that a racist money laundering rapist for the Russian Mob is The Second Coming.

To stay sane, I relied on a theory I pulled out of my ass four years ago, that Obama was/is an American intelligence operative, and that the DJTasPOTUS show was allowed to stay online to teach Americans a lesson in democracy, that lesson being that only by voting in numbers sufficient to overcome decades of gerrymandering and Black vote suppression and virtue signalling by privileged white democratic socialists (social democrats?) could the show be canceled.

(It should have been all any reasonable person needed to hear when Obama said of Trayvon Martin after he was murdered by George Zimmerman, "that could have been me 35 years ago" to get it, that anti-black racism is THE problem needing solving. Just as it should have been all any reasonable person needed to see when well-documented racist Donald J. Trump made fun of a reporter's disability to wild cheering at one of his white nationalist rallies to get that responsibility #1 was to ensure that he not get elected POTUS.)

Anyway, no doubt like you, I'm tired of the politics we play online here in the West while a mutating virus that emerged from the most powerful country in the world, the one that can perpetrate infanticide to check population growth and murder tens of thousands of students to check democracy and imprison and torture millions to check freedom of thought, maims and kills people, unchecked, world over.

For four years one of my handful of Twitter reads (I'm not on Twitter myself) has ended his tweets at Donald J. Trump with "you're going to prison, traitor". Others have tweeted that Donald J. Trump is a money launderer for the Russian mob, that he is known to have raped 12 and 13 year old girls (at least one of whom went missing shortly thereafter), that he's a decades long drug addict, that he's a white supremacist, that he's a sadist, that he's a pathological liar, that he gets away with it all because he's an informant to the FBI, and on and on and on.

I limited myself to this handful who got it to stay sane (even though none of them subscribed to my aforementioned sanity saving theory). The gaslighting I experienced from so many fellow politicos online who didn't necessitated it. And none of my handful of reads were murdered by the state because here in the West we can still publish the truth and live to publish it again another day. But they and lots of other truth tellers were threatened with murder by people who've been programmed by their social media feeds to believe lies, lies aided and abetted by murderous states like China and Russia, and political parties here that run slates of candidates for public office in our still democratic elections.

AOC said she thought she was going to die, murdered by a crazed mob. Nancy Pelosi we know, had the crazed mob found her, would have been murdered. Mike Pence? I doubt it. Even though he's probably been wearing a wire for the four years he's been glued to Donald J. Trump's side while he incited violence on Twitter from his personal account but as President of the United States for four unimpeded years.

We know the Republican Party in the United States is treasonous. Republicans themselves proved it on January 6, 2021. Fortunately, enough Americans had already, finally, got it, and the US, us, democracy, was saved on November 3, 2020.

Anyway, I know what political party created by Stephen J. Harper I don't ever want elected to public office here in Canada again. Conservatives here showed their support for treason south of the border a hundred and one different ways and in full public view for four long anxious years and they're still at it. And they've been inciting violence against democratically elected politicians here for even longer, most notably, Justin Trudeau. Really, ever since the Conservative Party of Canada was created it's been inciting violence against other democratically elected politicians and their supporters.

So like our American cousins who just saved all our asses, we need to get it, too.

I Found It!

 The funniest thing in the history of the world.

My Heart Will Go On - the recorder version

You're welcome.

Hey... Wait a Minute

Everybody and her Aunt Karen knew a mob of white nationalists was planning to attack the American Capitol on January 6th.

American intelligence would have known before the plan was even a twinkle in a Proud Boy's eye.

And have it all on tape.

Evildoers Redux

All I can say is that there had better be a Deep State.

I don't know how many millions of assholes voted for Donald Trump to be President of the United States in 2016. But I do know that 75 million assholes voted for him to be President of the United States - again - which had he won would make him President of the United States until Ivanka has him whacked and becomes POTUS.

Ugh, and the first female one, too.

You go, grrl.

But mostly I want there to be a Deep State because we can't count on non-Nazis keeping up this voting thing and one of Trump Inc's 75 million voters - so possibly the next Secretary of State - while storming the Capitol the other day tasered himself in the balls so many times that he had a heart attack and died.

Trumperica

 

Speaking of Sacrifice

Dear Liberals/New Democrats/Greens: Donald Trump was just President of the United States and half of the voting US wants him to be POTUS again.

Are you fucking kidding right now?

Join forces and be the "Opposite of Nazis Party" please.

New Year's Day online

On a Friday night!

Gotta love that serendipity.

As usual my New Year's resolution is to be a better person. Except this year there's a pandemic twist - online.

It will be a work in progress and there may be a few hiccups.

Anyway the goal is to look back at the end of the year and know that I  successfully weaponized my sense of humour.