Hemlock B Bootsalotta

Furniture has been hauled, boxes are everywhere, and the basement is substantially cleaner than it was a week ago. Axel was considerably less cleared out of the space than had been advertised, but everything has now been relocated to big piles on the other floors. The only thing left to do in the apartment tonight is fix the paint on some wall patches where I spackled and Ajay will be moving in on Wednesday. Then we spend the next several months playing house tetris.

The cats are very upset about the entire thing, especially the part where they are locked out of the apartment.

Tomorrow I am working from home so I can duck out for a couple of hours in the middle of the day and go to a protest at Queen's Park against the drug-dealer Premier's cuts to public health insurance. I'm not sure what kind of turn-out there will be - the education cuts protest was massive but that one was held on a Saturday. This one will take place when most people are at work, but then in theory the MPPs will be in the building so it might actually have more impact. Guess we'll find out.

There was a "heightened security alert" downtown last week that was apparently caused by some guy threatening to copy-cat the van attack.

Nothing actually happened. But still, fuck that guy.

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The Toronto District School Board has a program where adults can take classes in their empty schools in the evenings or during the summer. They offer everything from salsa dancing to basic car repair. I took a household electrician's class once many years ago and it was really worth it.

So I decided to sign up for intro Spanish, just for the heck of it. Duolingo has been great for learning to read, but less so for learning to speak it or understand what I hear. I figured being in a room full of people struggling with the same issues would get me past my initial reserve about mangling the language in front of people, and then after I could go join a meet-up group or something.

So because I am very very dumb, I signed up for a class in a high school. In July.

High schools don't have air conditioning.

It's my own damn fault, I know full well that schools are big brick ovens. There was even an article published about a year ago about how now that summers are getting longer and hotter what used to be about a two-week period of students rendered useless by the heat at the end of June has now stretched into two to three months. Last September was brutal, I can't imagine anybody being able to think clearly in that soup. And of course the online comments are full of people ranting about how when I were a lad we had no air conditioning and kids these days are so spoiled yada yada yada. Cause as we all know, the people who post to comment sections have never actually read the contents of these articles.

The school where the class is being held is one of the older ones in the city and a technical school to boot, so to say it's been subject to neglect would be the understatement of the year. And you know, it's one thing to read a headline about how the province has a $15 billion dollar repair backlog, it's quite another to be walking down the halls. Almost all of the lockers are some degree of broken. The paint is peeling, and there are regular patches on the walls where somebody has obviously filled in holes. None of the water fountains work, but it's probably just as well since I would lay down money that the pipes have lead in them anyway. In the bathroom there are only a handful of stalls that have doors, and there are obvious signs of mold damage everywhere. And of course, because the province had set aside the budget to cover 0.001% of it, our new Premier cancelled the funds.

It's become kind of a subject of horrified fascination for me. How bad will things get before somebody decides it's important? When kids and staff are regularly getting injured? Or will having roofs falling in on top of teenagers just become normal, like school shootings?

But you know, at least all those millionaires will be taken care of.

I'm going to bed

A lot of people who live in Toronto don't remember the days when we suffered from a bad Nazi infestation. They hear about these assholes on the news and they think these people are a small vocal minority that nobody takes seriously and yeah sure, they start out that way. They started out that way in the 80s. Probably in the 30s too.

So what with the rise in neo-nazis and alt-right all over the western world, we've had another local outbreak and they've been holding rallys at City Hall. In the interest of keeping them a small vocal minority and not something worse, some of the local folks have been holding counter-rallys. I finally managed to drag myself out of the house and attend one this weekend.

There were maybe 30 of them? It was kind of hard to get a head-count because they were boxed inside a wall of bicycle cops the whole time[1]. It was a weird mix. Mostly they looked to be Soldiers of Odin (most of whom showed up late, apparently they took the bus in from Peterborough) and some Proud Boys. There were also a cluster of evangelical Christians who were there because gays. And a couple of middle-aged suburban housewives of the type who get the vapours when they see a hijab.

The cops pretty much kept the two groups seperated but didn't stop people from arguing across the barrier. Mostly it was an effort to drown them out, although as the day dragged on that got harder. I now fully appreciate the value of of the air horns and vuvuzelas that some people brought, they are a lot easier on the throat. On the plus side they didn't get to march unless you count crossing the square inside a wall of police.

Of course the press was there and of course they interviewed both sides and of course they printed the Nazi's explanation they they were just there to protest Trudeau's economic policies without any caveats. At least the photo on the CBC website actually showed some of the white supremacist flags.

Favourite moment: One of the bicycle cops had a Punisher water bottle. I pointed it out to Axe and he in turn tried to point it out to one of the press cameras. She saw him though, and hid it.

Second favourite moment: The Japanese tourists taking selfies in front of the line of mounted riot cops.


[1] There were easily more cops than protesters.

At one of our previous laptops&beers sessions somebody asked the room, "Do any of you have any opinions about Earth Day?"

Hoo boy, do I have opinons about Earth Day.

The first year it went international, Axel & I took part. We turned off our lights, lit some candles, sat around in our creepy living room with the plastic hanging off the bricks because we had no walls, drank a bottle of wine and talked. And it was nice, a little break in the middle of a hectic life.

The next day there were tons of news articles about how many people had taken part. How so many major cities, mine included, had seen major energy use dips. The number of people who participated put the event on the map in a big way. I let myself feel a tiny shred of hope, the sneaking suspicion that maybe we weren't totlaly fucked. Not because an hour of low energy use means squat - it doesn't. But if that many people had demonstrated that climate change was important to them, it couldn't help but be a flag to government and business that hello, WE GIVE A SHIT ABOUT THIS SIT UP AND PAY ATTENTION DAMN YOU. MAKE. A. FUCKING. CHANGE,

Ten years later I no longer participate.

Ten years later, my workplace - which has investments in the oil sands - puts an planet earth logo on their intranet site and encourages their employees to celebrate Earth Day by going for a walk during our lunch break.

Businesses all over town promise to dim their lights for an hour. Immediately after, of course, they go back to being fully lit up all night and causing bird genocide all summer long.

Earth Day is now a performance by marketing companies and PR hacks for the benefit of companies who want to convince people to give them their business becasue "they care". And I no longer bother to participate.




Drink List: A bunch of beers, four maybe? Plus a very strong g&t.

I am so so so sorry.

So now I know why they tell you not to fly when you have a cold. I can't say I recommend the experience.

( cut for pics )

I'm really glad to got to go, it was fascinating stuff if a little depressing. We found a number of memorials in town from the Irish immigrants thanking Québec for taking them in in their hour of need. There is also a sizable population of Québécois with Irish names because their ancestors were orphans taken in by local families. (Our former PM Brian Mulroney as an example.)

And as our tour guide pointed out, it really puts into persepective the measly 25,000 Syrians refugees Canada is taking in.

I mentioned a while ago looking for places to donate goods to Syrian refugees, and somebody requested that if I find one I should link to it. Just today Torontoist has article about the East End Pop-Up Shop for Syrian Refugees. It's also a local hub for refugees who want to connect with other people from home, for sponsors who want to share resources and for volunteers who want to help out in other ways.

And for all that crap that is too old or beat up to give to a family, but makes a nice satisfying crunch when you hit it - there's always the Rage Room.

OH. MY. GOD!



Serving the Prime Minister

Canada's sexy new Prime Minister Dustin Waterhole has swept to power - but what's going on in the back offices?

I thought I had a pretty good deal going. I was a young guy fresh out of school, and I had landed a job at the headquarters of the Leaf Party. But as we suddenly took power in an election, I was suddenly running the back offices and assisting the new Prime Minister, the young and handsome Dustin Waterhole. It turns out that serving the Prime Minister means more than just pushing paper...but, I mean, he does have nice hair.

DUSTIN. WATERHOLE.

I will not log into Facebook just to get into an argument.
I will not log into Facebook just to get into an argument.
I will not log into Facebook just to get into an argument.
I will not log into Facebook just to get into an argument.
I will not log into Facebook just to get into an argument.
I will not log into Facebook just to get into an argument.
I will not log into Facebook just to get into an argument.
I will not log into Facebook just to get into an argument.