Swift This!

I still don't know anything about Taylor Swift's music but I find myself a little worried she'll give up all her magic powers and settle down to be a normal housewife with her latest boyfriend.

Whoever he is, everybody who's anybody, not that I know who they are, seems to think he's a keeper.

Tread carefully, Taylor Swift, and remember Madonna. Oh and go see "Barbie". Men take away from, they don't add to.

Sorry guys but you know it's true.

A few years ago now I remember reading an article by a young Feminist imploring the world's "Swifties" to stop believing Taylor Swift was their friend. She was quite exorcised over it all, their unabashed adoration, the piece entitled: "Taylor Swift Is Not Your Friend".

Calm down, Little Sister. Twas ever thus. Certainly it was for this Madonna fan back in the day. Cripes, during her stand-up routine Sandra Bernhard actually took a moment to beg Madonna to be her friend.

It worked, too, until it didn't. Maybe Sandra Bernhard would've benefited from an article by a young Feminist warning her away from Madonna, although celebrity infatuation isn't about reality, as Sandra would find out, so I doubt it.

Also, wanting to be Madonna's friend, in spite of her very clearly not wanting to be ours, unlike Taylor Swift who is very respectful of the Swifties, was an individual thing, nothing communal about it.

That's because it wasn't really about Madonna.

By the way, the Pope of the day took great exception to Madonna, and wanted her to come to the Vatican for a talking to. She was toying with Catholicism, his Church, and he didn't like her attitude one bit. He especially didn't like her quip about wearing a crucifix because "she liked having a naked man hanging around her neck".

She said if he wanted to meet he'd have to come to her.

I turned off Madonna when she wasn't very nice to a friend's daughter, a sweet, geeky girl and super fan whose father was with the record company involved with her "Who's That Girl" tour. He'd arranged a brief meet and greet when she was in Toronto, but according to my friend it hadn't gone very well.

To be fair to Madonna, she never pretended to be kind, to care about others, to be in it for anyone but herself. And to be fair to Taylor Swift, she seems to be the real deal, giving it her all for everybody.

A man, I forget which man but it doesn't matter, a man of note - and a man, ffs, not even a woman - pointed out in one of his articles that Taylor Swift's repertoire easily rivals Dylan's, in both quantity and quality.

I have no idea of Taylor Swift's repertoire so I can't comment. But Dylan was a teenage celebrity crush of mine, the man I knew would marry me if only I could get myself in his line of sight, not that I've ever been to one of his concerts.He and I were over by the time I was old enough, and living in Toronto at least and not the Sault where nothing. cool. ever. happened.

Wait, except for that kiss from Al Purdy. But it was on the cheek and he was just being kind. He'd centered me out, not expecting a kid to be at his reading, telling his audience off the top that he'd have to censor himself, not something he wasn't used to doing.

I was sitting smack in the front row.

That's how cool I wasn't. I'd snuck out of the house to attend a poetry reading by Al Purdy. Not because I was a particular fan of his poetry, but because I had a crush on him. I have no idea why him, at the same time I had a crush on David Cassidy of The Partridge Family, ffs, but I look back on some of my real life crushes who became actual boyfriends and I have no idea why them either.

My point is, at least Taylor Swift indulges her adoring fans with what certainly comes across as genuine camaraderie. And unlike Dolly Parton, a celebrity we all love to love, she doesn't shy away from politics and calling out the Basket of Deplorable...

Ah, I get it now. Taylor Swift is a Liberal Feminist, the kind of woman feared and loathed by men everywhere these days it seems. And her fans are indeed so devoted to their Liberal Feminist celebrity crush they unabashedly call themselves "Swifties". Millions of them. Millions of them ready and willing to pay for tickets to her concerts, no matter the price, especially since she's renowned for sharing the wealth with her thousands of employees, like no celebrity crush I've ever had, save maybe Madonna, who kept the same employees on the payroll for years SOMEHOW. Oh, and who's also a Liberal Feminist.

Oh and Drag Queen icon, lest we forget the performance artists beloved by Liberal Feminists world over just as they're feared and loathed by men world over, nowhere more so than Christo-Fascismdom.

And you just know Dolly is a Liberal Feminist, too, but not about to turn down anybody's money.

And that's okay.

Taylor's got this.

Are We Winning Yet?

Okay, got it.

We don't think emotions, we feel them.

So we have to take action to feel better, we can't just think our way out of feeling anxious or sad.

The Federal Court decided the government invoking the Emergencies Act to put the run on the Freedom Convoy neo-Nazis wasn't justified, that there was plenty the provincial government could've done to end the siege, but didn't.

Well, duh, judges. But Ford was at the cottage. What was he supposed to do about it anyway? Ottawa's not in Ford Nation, it's in Ontario.

The case was brought by our Canadian Civil Liberties Association so, oh well, maybe next time it'll stand up for the citizens who were terrorized by Freedom Convoy neo-nazis for three weeks, while the Ottawa police chief publicly begged for more resources that never came to free our downtown from them.

The federal government is appealing the decision.

Irony alert: The Federal Court decision found the Emergency Act violated the Charter rights of the Freedom Convoy, you know, the Charter rights they want to abolish along with democracy, law and order.

Conservatives are celebrating because they profited from the Freedom Convoy while it attacked us, Pierre Poilievre even declaring his run for "PM" during it.

Have I said how much I hate them lately?

A friend, who's still on Twitter, recently posted a tweet on Facebook featuring Pierre Poilievre doubling down with Jordan Peterson on his war against the regulatory body for his profession as a psychologist.

Aren't Conservatives usually critical of anyone calling herself a doctor who isn't a physician?

Can you imagine going for therapy to deal with panic attacks in the wake of a three week attack on your home by a gang of thugs from Alberta and your therapist turned out to be Jordan Peterson?

I left Twitter some time ago now because I was addicted to it so I was surprised to see the pathological attention whore is still trending. But I guess social media, especially political social media, is like a soap opera, and it takes forever for a plot to play out.

Donald Trump is proving to be quite a drain on our lives, isn't he, thanks to those armed-to-the-teeth idiots south of the border. Who would have imagined he'd be running for POTUS in 2024, even after having his ex-wife murdered and then burying her on his golf course in a coffin loaded with stolen state secrets?

Thank goodness for E. Jean Carroll, eh? That piece of shit rapist owes her $83M now.

Gee, maybe Trump should contact our Canadian Civil Liberties Association. See if he can get the decision reversed, have her charged for seeking justice.

So yeah, thanks for nothing, Federal Court.

Holy Words, Batman!

The "Promised Land" is a metaphor for peace. Otherwise it's meaningless.

The "Chosen People" are the helpers, as Mr. Rogers would say.

In times of need, "Look for the helpers."

A former colleague in Chaplaincy at Correctional Services described the Arab world as experiencing their Dark Ages. He was Christian Evangelical. We'd just had an info session about Islam he didn't attend.

When I read "The Minaret" I was drawn to its pared down simplicity, the rituals and practices. Here in Ottawa I was on the bus when a clutch of women in hijabs got on, laughing and carrying on, off to a community center to celebrate the end of Ramadan.

It struck me how different it is, the communal celebration, lots of families, vs the Christmases celebrated in individual homes.

The difference I see is cultural, not religious, shaped by geography more than anything else.

We think we're not still in the Dark Ages but clearly we are. So what if we can read. Fascists world over just use old works of fiction to convince their adherents to kill and be killed for territorial gain, beating their chests while proclaiming superiority over other men, raping women and killing children.

Meanwhile, Christian Evangelicals think Donald Trump is the Chosen One, Russian Orthodoxers think it's Vladimir Putin, Stephen Harper thinks it's himself.

It's madness, I tells ya. Madness. A world gone completely stark-raving mad.

Slippery Slopes and All That Jazz

Just so we're clear, and for the people in the back who may not be keeping up with the evolving language of modern day warfare, we're all human shields now.

You, your pregnant daughter, your newborn grandchild.

Healthcare workers, sales clerks, business owners, school children, their teachers, the principal.

Journalists. Of course, they're not so much human shields as being targeted for murder, aren't they. Murdered by snipers.

Foreign mercenaries? Who knows. Anything goes in war now. Bibi doesn't want to go to prison where he's belonged for at least a decade.

Two? Three? He and his wife are well-documented crooks. Hence why he's trying to over-ride the judiciary, turn Israel into Russia.

I guess the settlers would feel more at home if he did.

Israelis are demonstrating in their streets against his government and the war crime it's perpetrating in Gaza. Why are you supporting it? Because Postmedia tells you to?

It supports the odious bigot and misogynist Pierre Poilievre. Are you an odious bigot and misogynist too?

I wouldn't feel too smug, you know, watching other civilians being slaughtered halfway across the world from the comfort of your suburban Canadian pile, pretending it couldn't happen here. The Freedom Convoy embedded itself in a residential neighbourhood right here in downtown Ottawa, with public support from His Majesty's Loyal Opposition, currently riding high in the polls, while they proceeded to terrorize the local population.

New moms, their newborns, pets, palliative care patients, school children, women shopping for groceries - especially if they were wearing hijabs - anybody wearing a mask to protect each other from the deadly virus the Freedom Convoy actively prolonged, unhoused people - from whom they stole food - minimum wage workers - especially if they were Asian - city councillors - they went to the home of one and threatened his young family - Liberal and New Democrat politicians and their staff.

Civilians. They attacked civilians. Us. Me. You.

It was terrifying. People here have PTSD now. It's a fact. I ended up lying on the bathroom floor for hours, having to purge every bit of food from my body, the result of having lived for three weeks with a fight/fight/freeze response on high alert.

It was all public, not that you'd know what "it" was if you only read Postmedia, its official propagandist. Blatant criminality. No law and order. The Ottawa Police Service either unwilling, due to complicity, or unable, due to being outgunned, to enforce the law. Hell's Angels from Quebec, neo-Nazis from Alberta, Christo-Fascists from coast to coast to coast.

They had cranes and nooses and using megaphones in our public streets, which they had taken over, demanded Justin Trudeau's head, while broadcasting threats of violent insurrection all over the internet.

Like I keep pointing out, the Freedom Convoy waved lots of flags, but not one of them was Ukrainian. And no sooner had the mercenaries - because the lot of them were thugs-for-hire when CERB ran out -  finally been allowed to leave, not a scratch on any of them in spite of three weeks of public, blatant criminality, dumping buckets of their feces on the doorsteps of local aid agencies on their way out, than Putin, their ideological leader, invaded Ukraine.

They love Putin. It's the Christo-Fascism. He speaks their language, the same language spoken by the odious bigot and misogynist Pierre Poilievre they wanted to install as Prime Minister of Canada, once they'd taken out the democratically elected one, and still do. He's their choice. They're neo-Nazis and Christo-Fascists and bikers and Diagolon Accelerationists and Putin-lovers.

And Pierre Poilievre is their pick for PM.

The walls are closing in on Trump, another Putin Puppet and the likely Republican Party nominee for POTUS - again - and we're being sucked into his buddy, Netanyahu's, war against Hamas, the Islamic terrorists he funded and helped elevate to power over the very Palestinian children he's currently slaughtering with a free pass from the rest of us because they're not children, they're human shields.

Gaza is the most densely populated place on earth and Netanyahu is levelling it to stay out of prison.

Just so we're clear on where we're at now in modern warfare.

Same Difference

I have friends and relatives who think we should leave Ukraine to Russia.

They try to argue their opinion at me, but I distract them, change the subject. I know what they're going to argue anyway. I've heard it all my life from from their gurus, old men holding forth on American imperialism all my life.

Some of us even studied under them at university.

But they haven't read Timothy Snyder and I have, so I'm more up on Russian imperialism than they are. I'm also more up on its increasing Christo-Fascism, the same Christo-Fascism embraced by the American Right they pretend not to hope defeats Liberal Feminism.

It took me a while but I finally figured it out. They'd rather Christo-Fascism than Liberal Feminism.

Okay then.

I try to maintain cordial relations but they don't make it easy. I've had them argue at me there's no difference between Liberals, who are pro-choice, and Conservatives, who aren't.

What doesn't matter to them, eh?

Oh the privilege. I can only marvel at the rarefied air they breathe.

And that's just the easiest difference. They'll never admit it but the real reason they hate Trudeau so much is he took away the knife they enjoyed holding over our heads, declared the LPC a pro-choice party, case closed, abortion rights are no longer up for debate in Canada.

You know it, girlfriend.

Russia, the American Right, Canadian Conservatives, these are my enemies, not theirs. If you're voting against Trudeau because blah blah yada yada, thereby electing the odious bigot and misogynist Pierre Poilievre Prime Minister of Canada? Fuck you. Fuck you very much.

Here in Ontario we're going to be buying our health cards and driver licences at Staples because Canadian Conservatives.

Pharmacare? Good luck finding a doctor to do the prescribing.

We need therapy, not drugs. We're drugged to the gills. My friend's mom was on 20 different medications before she finally shuffled off this mortal coil, having never had therapy to deal with the childhood sexual assault so many of her generation experienced.

It wasn't fluoxetine that made me feel better, it was therapy, much needed advice on diet, a renewed commitment to exercise, better boundaries, letting go responsibility for the happiness of others.

Shedding guilt for putting myself first.

I have friends and relatives who think Israel's mass slaughter of Palestinian children and targeted killing of the journalists covering said mass slaughter is fair payback for the October 7 terrorist attack on Israelis by Hamas. I don't know why these people, many of whom didn't support George W. Bush's destruction of Iraq, the death of a million Iraqis, in retaliation for 9/11, support this obscenity being perpetrated by Israel - when so many Israelis don't - but they do.

It's not a war. The Occupier is bombing the Occupied. You raped and murdered our women. We're going to kill all your children.

Insanity piled on insanity.

You think that's crazy? We'll show you crazy!

Arguing semantics at The Hague.

Gord give us strength.

I also have friends and relatives who seem to support Russia, but not Israel, and friends and relatives who support Ukraine, but also Israel.

So this post is a thank you to my friends and relatives who understand two wrongs don't make a right, something I thought we all learned in kindergarten, and who support helping Ukraine defend itself against Russia's ongoing terrorism, but don't support helping Israel in its ongoing slaughter of Palestinian children.

I appreciate you.

Deja Vu Again

I had nausea again yesterday. I'd gone out for lunch with a friend, although I didn't really want to, and by early evening I was abed, where I stayed until this morning.

I seem to be fine now, having a cup of coffee as per usual, although feeling a little bit like life is one step forward, three-quarters of a step back.

Another friend had a distressing Wednesday, involving our healthcare system, and it's possible I over-empathized, making myself sick, but I don't think so. I think it's more likely I should not have gone for lunch when I wasn't gung ho about it.

I feel like I could go to bed and sleep some more. Hours? Days? Weeks? Months?

I wouldn't call it a panic attack. The nausea wasn't so overwhelming I had to purge everything from my body. A couple of Gravol helped, whereas in prior attacks it had no effect.

What good is universal healthcare without enough doctors? Wait times are destroying faith in the system but I know for a fact my 14 hour overnight stay in emergency, sitting in a chair with a badly broken wrist and broken knee until the morning shift arrived for duty, was because there was only one doctor available for a waiting room full of people in need of a diagnosis.

I'm not a REAL expert in healthcare resources but it seems to me the bottleneck is doctors, or a lack thereof. I mean, I and every nurse on duty, many of whom seemed to be waiting with us, knew I had a badly broken wrist and broken knee, so what's with having to wait for a doctor to confirm it?

Sure, I wasn't an emergency, but I wasn't not in extreme pain and distress, either, exacerbated by an overnight wait in a chair in a crowded waiting room. Triage made a bad situation worse, for me, anyway, and I was ahead of a possible ectopic pregnancy.

She had a family doctor, too. She's the one who said she'd rather pay than have to wait. I told her to bite her tongue. Ford Nation would have us paying AND waiting, don't be fooled.

What good will Pharmacare be without enough doctors to prescribe the drugs they love to prescribe so much we've got antibiotic resistant bacteria thriving in our hospitals now? Do we even really want Pharmacare? Aren't we drugged to the gills as it is with Canadians really needing less stress, better diet and more exercise in our lives?

The fluoxetine I was on could've been a placebo and I would've made the changes to my lifestyle that reduced anxiety anyway. And the therapy I was so lucky to get would've helped me see the light regarding my relationship with food. If anything, fluoxetine was suppressing my appetite when what I needed was more calories.

People who think they can afford the privatization of our public healthcare system will vote for it and Conservative politicians and their friends know it. Boomers and GenXers have lots of money, along with healthcare benefits that include drug plans. What they don't have is the access they want as they age. And who can blame them? They paid into the system all their lives with the promise it would be there for them in older age. It's not. And I live in Ottawa, not a small city or rural town.

I know what I saw while I waited 14 hours overnight in an Ottawa hospital emergency room and it was a system that's ceased to function as it should, a society that's not looking after each other, and a racket instead of a government in charge. And I know for a fact, because a nurse apologetically confided to me the next day as I was leaving the premises, there'd only been one doctor on duty overnight, hence the 14 hr wait.

One doctor on duty overnight in an Ottawa hospital. One. Lots of nurses, not seeming to me to be using their skills much beyond handing out painkillers. One doctor.

We're being treated badly by our government, punished for insisting on universal publicly funded healthcare even while it privatizes increasingly large swaths of it for insiders like former premier Mike Harris. We know this. His young wife runs a nurse staffing agency that's sucking our money out of hospitals and nursing homes and into his pocket and yet he continues to get away with it.

Why? Who wants this? How is any of this okay?

Staples? We're going to be renewing the healthcare cards we should never have had to pay for at Staples?

Wtf?

Existential Snow

Finally there's snow in Ottawa and more coming. It's been weird, this brown winter of ours. Very unsettling. I want the snow because it's good for the pond, but also because it's "normal", although every year now I get stressed out about wheelchair users, etc, trying to navigate it in Ottawa.

Why isn't our militia in charge of snow removal? Have the best equipment possible, train everybody how to use it, and when there's a storm call everybody in to man the barricades.

Don't put me in charge in spite of my great ideas. I was president of our housing association already. Today's investors are stupid, selfish and shortsighted.

The other day I was off to my final therapy appointment and while I waited for the bus a couple of women joined me. One of them unloaded her life story, or rather, her messed up daughter's life story, who lives with her, along with her granddaughter. It's the mood swings that get to her. Also the ADD and ADHD.

The other woman talked about her job in a nursing home. She hailed from Africa, where she said older people are treated quite differently. Her problem was with management and it not wanting her to interact so much with the patients.

While she was talking I wondered why we don't have all sorts of people requiring more care than they can get on their own or in their families living in them. One of the problems with the nursing home my mother was in is everybody's so elderly and infirm they can't be of much help to each other, although M., who was certainly experiencing cognitive decline, took to helping her eat. She'd also give me little reports on my mother's mental state, once commenting she didn't seem to know it was Christmas.

"Oh M. Christmas is two weeks away still."

<M. laughing merrily>

"Well that explains it then!"

They sat together for meals. My mother, M., I., and A.

M.I.A. alright. 

There's so much we need to fix. On my way home I met a woman on the bus who cleans houses for a living. She told me she's having trouble finding work now because she doesn't have a car anymore. At her last interview the man said, "I need somebody with a car."

She asked, "Why?" But he didn't answer. Just repeated something about emergencies. She figured he needed somebody with a car because he'd lost his licence and really wanted a cleaner who could run other errands. She said she'd've been perfect for the job but it'd been years since she could afford a car and no longer had an active licence to drive one.

She couldn't imagine doing a driving test now, never mind the expense of a car.

Public transit fares went up in the new year but I see lots of guys who can't afford the fare hop on for free using the side and back doors. Drivers are in a bubble now and other riders are on their phones or elderly. It used to be they'd keep their heads down but not anymore. The streets went feral during the pandemic and we haven't reclaimed them.

It's as if we think we can just paper over all the gaps revealed by the pandemic. Why? Why do we want to paper over people who need help just to get by? If paid meaningful work is so crucial to our collective health, why isn't it a priority of our governments to ensure we all have it.

Where are our publicly funded police with their big fat budgets to restore civil society their unions helped destroy by siding with the fascist Freedom Convoy over the rest of us?

I say smash the union, fire the brotherhood and start over. Only anti anti-vaxxers need apply.

Homemakers should be paid, by the way. That's how we balance the unpaid work burden shouldered primarily by women.

C'mon, men, help us. You're good at getting paid for the work you do. We aren't. Help a sister out.

By the way, if you're still under the delusion the Freedom Convoy wasn't just a bunch of neo-Nazis rolled into downtown Ottawa to bully the locals, on their way out they dumped buckets of their shit on the door step of an aid agency for the homeless.

First they stole their food, then they left them the processed remains.

My therapy file is closed now. 

Eating has changed for me. I'm back to being a pre-teen, so before the eating disorder I hadn't realized was still with me, even in my 60s. I've already gained 5 of the 10 pounds I'm after. Because I'm in my 60s I'm making sure it's muscle, too, running stairs, lifting my 2.5 pound weights (time to move up to 5 pounders) and what My Blond Companion calls "pirate yoga".

It's just stretching. I've cut out the "arrgh, matey!" moves.

What was that crazy need to prove myself worthy of existence by balancing my knees on my elbows?

I'm here therefore I have every right to exist.

Cripes, I even pay my taxes, ffs. No offshore accounts. No fare dodging. Just slowly but surely paying my way as every middle-class Canadian needs to do to make up for everybody else.

We hit the sweet spot of life. Born middle-class in post-WWII Canada. It's the Feminism, girlfriend, you know it.

The other big change in my life is boundaries. Boundaries, boundaries, boundaries. Mothers everywhere, read me now, read me again later - or just ask your adult children - you need more and better boundaries.

Let me put it the way an old AA friend put it to me once upon a time: Your adult child has a higher power and it's not you.

Also, keeping your family together is not up to you alone. Relationships between other family members are not your responsibility to fix.

No one leaves a family that's working out for them. Choices abound in this middle-class Feminist society of our Great White North. Sometimes people will make ones that hurt your heart.

Sometimes you will make choices that hurt theirs.

Keep the faith. It still snows in Ottawa in winter. But ride a bus every once in a while. Cars are isolating and keep us in a bubble. Riding a bus will help you recognize we're all in this together wherever and whoever we are.