Day 3- a man snaps

Day 3 of the Ragnarok on my roof. The headaches started yesterday, I was so tired last night I was actually nauseous. Sleep deprivation is a powerful tool in the hands of people who want to torture someone, and I'm beginning to understand why.

My paranoia, irritability, and temper are all on edge. I told my co-workers last night that I'm one sassy remark away from a full blown psychotic episode. While I may be taking some poetic license with that, it's not that much of an exaggeration.

The hope is, that tonight will go quickly, relatively smoothly, and painlessly. I can go to bed early tonight, sleep in late tomorrow and my temperment and manner will be back to normal.

I'm running on 6 hours sleep over two nights, and to be honest, I'm a mess. I'm doubtful how much effect the coffee is going to have today, I have that acidic taste in my mouth that you get when you're really tired. The distressing part is, I have that exhausted feeling and I've only been awake for 10 minutes.

This isn't the groggy morning feeling before the coffee kicks in, this is exhaustion. I'm hopeful that these guys will finish their noisy work soon, and I might be able to get a few more hours of sleep in before I go to work this afternoon. Last night, when I got home I was a mess. At work, I was a mess. I suspect my days off will involve a lot of catching up on sleep.

Apocalypse?

The gates of hell opened up at 7:41 this morning, after a few months of teasing, a roofing crew has shown up to replace the tar on my ceiling.

For a few seconds, I was convinced Armageddon was upon and I was fully expecting to see the four horsemen of the apocalypse come charging out of my closet.

A group of about 12 workmen came charging across the roof, only 15 feet away from where my weary head was resting. With all the subtlety of a rhino on acid, these men started the process of ripping the existing tar off the roof.

You know the day is going to be bad when the first words out of my mouth upon waking are "yeah Gods, get the revolvers!". When my first thought of the day is, "where is the closest firearm", I know the day is not going to go smoothly.

Hope?

Sometimes as jaded as I get, as cynical as I become, sometimes something happens that restores my faith that the system works.

I worked last night, fully prepared to come home to read about Christy Clarks landslide win in the NPA nominating meeting. However, when I looked at the news I discovered that instead, the unpleasant had defeated the corrupt.

Sam Sullivan is an unpleasant man, a right wing ideologue, who I believe will do more harm than good to the city if he wins. However, he comes by his right wing thinking honestly and he's not corrupt and rotten to the core.

When Christy Clark entered the nominating race, and suddenly hundreds, if not thousands of membership forms flooded the NPA offices, rules were being changed to accomodate her nomination, I assumed, in my jaded experience, that her nomination was a foregone conclusion.

Sullivan has won however. This makes the civic election all the more interesting in November. It takes a little steam out my sails though, as I had been girding for a fight against evil. Now I must prepare for a fight against the unpleasant.

Now, as I contemplate the results of yesterday meeting, does this mean that sometimes corruption can be defeated? Christy Clark is so crooked, so beyond redemption, that she needed help twisting into her clothes in the morning.

As I said, sometimes, something happens that restores my faith in the process.

crush him in my fist

The world looks increasingly similiar to the mediterenean in the fifth century. A powerful empire the believes it's rule is the best thing that ever happened to nations it has conquered, either militarily or economically, is increasingly under attack.

Natural forces, and forces military are attacking this empire as the world around it changes. Rome had Pompeii, perhaps Katrina and Rita are the heralds of the end of this empire. The term barbarian used to mean, non-roman. People who do not subscribe to the US view of the world are increasingly called terrorists.

Around the world waves of change are happening, except in the United States. The US is increasingly isolated from the rest of the world. A slow motion economic collapse is occuring, since 2002 the US dollar has lost 25% of it's value. If this had happened in any other country in the world the IMF would be sending teams of experts and the Wall Street Journal would be writing "tsk, tsk" editorials about foreign national economic policy, much like John Fund did to Canada in the nineties. However, what's been said about the US dollar in the media, nothing, bupkus, diddly squat.

We are witnesses to history, we are watching the end of an historic period. The US is the most powerful nation in the history of the world, and it's the one who has had the shortest reign of world domination.

Disaster Redux

I wake up this morning, and apparently the gates of hell have opened up in the southern United States. Buses filled with seniors exploding on the highway, and levees flooding open again.

One has to wonder, if there truly is a christian god, surely he or she would be doing a better job of protecting this country which proclaims itself to be built on Christian values. In the past 5 years, there have been more episodes of mass destruction man made and natural,Than I remember in my lifetime.

What is even more interesting, these disasters seem to be taking place in the most religious parts of the, the Carolinas, Alabama, Texas, Louisiana. I don't believe there is a conncection between God and these disasters, I believe it's a fluke. However if I were a religious man, I would begin to wonder if my god truly did love me if these things were going on. The deal that seems to be implicit in all religious teaching, is that if you follow the guidelines set out in the bible and fight to protect christian values, which according to some of these yahoos involves persecuting gay people and shoving the ten commandments down everyone's throat, god will protect you.

The Morning Coffee

For reasons known only to my brain, my body decided to wake up ridiculously early this morning. Perhaps it was the anticipation of being able to relax with a cup of good coffee and the paper, one of the few moments of true relaxation I get on a given day. Alas, I'm plagued with back spasms this morning. This is one of the strangest things about getting older, parts of myself hurt that I never realized could hurt before. I have the strangest cramp in my back, it feels much like a knot in the shape of a crucifix in the middle of my spine.

Mornings are one of the best times of the day, when one awaks there are no problems, as the day piles on, the problems build up, but for those few magical moments, there is nothing to worry about. Of course by the time I head to bed, I'm curled up in the corner, wrapped in the fetal position silently screaming.

frustration

Political parties often complain about the lack of volunteers. I've always found this arguement annoying because I've made myself available over and over again, and either phone calls are never returned or messages never returned.

Maybe it's my ego getting in the way. But countless times, especially during civic elections I've made my services available to organizations wanting to defeat the NPA, previously for COPE and now for the newly minted "Vision Vancouver". Vision Vancouver wrote back and said "what would you like to do?" I told them pretty much anything, and then bupkus, nothing, zip, zero, nada.

I'm not going to beat myself up to offer my services for free.

Chris

harassment

Quite rightly, as a male in the working environment, there are several things I cannot say at work, especially around my female co-workers. This is a long overdue correction from days past, where people were allowed to say whatever they wanted to, no matter how uncomfortable it made people feel.

In the past 10-15 years, legislation, and workplace guidelines have established that there are certain subjects that are innapropriate in the workplace.

I've never seen this as a contradiction to my libertarian leanings. When I'm at a job, I have to conform to a dress code, and certain hygiene standards. Around clients and customers, there are certain words I'm not allowed to use. Regardless of how I feel about a customer, I'm not allowed to call him a jerk.

However, it would seem to me that a double standard has come into play. A young woman I work with has in the past three weeks, asked me what I think about her boyfriend wearing her underwear, asked me to imagine her running around her apartment naked, and yesterday told me a half dozen times that she was born in the year of the cock and wanted to know what I thought of this. I have a more than passing familiarity with asian culture, I have never heard of a year of the cock, I've heard of year of the rooster, but not cock. It should be noted that this woman is my supervisor at work.

Interestingly, my reaction to this has been guarded and measured, I think to myself, have I brought this on myself? Have I said anything that makes this sort of comment acceptable? I'm caught in an internal moral debate, as a liberal I'm uncomfortable making a complaint using a rule that was designed, let's not kid ourselves, to protect women, and minorities from white males who for decades ruled the workplace in North America.

Even more interesting has been the reaction of some of my friends, "is she good looking", "do you think she might be interested in you", "oh come on, she's just joking around".

Let's turn this around, if I went to work and asked this woman a half dozen times, what kind of pussy should I get, what kind of pussy does she think I would like, and it would be good to go home to a pussy every night? What do you think the reaction would be? Would there be any hesitation on her part to file a complaint if I were her supervisor?

Regards
Chris

compassion

One of the most interesting things to watch in the past 4 years has been the changing face of compassion.

Compassion has been especially interesting in the past 10 months, starting with the Tsunami in Indonesian and the Indian Ocean right up to the events with hurricane Katrina (just a random thought, how come we don't name earthquakes?).

At the same time as these events have been going on, there has been slow motion starvation going on in Africa and North Korea, as well as human caused events of mass death in Dharfur, Iraq, and Afghanistan.

When "photogenic" events of mass destruction take place, the world wide outpouring of support is incredible, in the billions of dollars. When death takes place on a slow basis, or is the direct result of human activity, the reaction is slow to non-existent. If you were to ask people on the street how they feel about the devastation caused by Katrina, I imagine you would see people wringing their hands, talking about how awful it is. If you were to ask the same people how they feel about the events in Dharfur, you would get the same number of quizzical looks followed by an interrogative "Dharfur?".

I don't doubt for a second the legitimacy of their concern and their compassion. People genuinely were upset by the devastation caused by the tsunami and Katrina. I just find it interesting that people react with overwhelming compassion to one event, and complete ambivelance about another.

ambition

I've been following closely Christy Clark's interest in becoming Mayor of Vancouver. A year ago, under the shadow of a scandal that might have implicated her, she quit the legislature saying that she wanted to spend more time with her young son. This announcement came mere days before the announcement of the preliminary results of a police investigation that involved a search of her husband and brother's offices.

A year later, she has not been implicated in anything. Suddenly, however, her desire for public service has returned. She wants to become mayor, not of the municipality of where she lives, but of the largest city in the province, a position that has traditionally been a stepping stone to the Premier's office.

Yet, not a question has been raised about the apparent clash between her idea of wanting to stay with her family and her political goals. What has changed? Has her young son grown up so much in the past year that he no longer requires her constant attention, granted I have little experience in raising children, but is there such a difference between a three year old and a four year old that this is the only year in a child's development that requires her undivided eyes and ears.

Perhaps, now that she has not been implicated in the police investigation it's safe to put her political ambitions back on track. Was she frightened that the police would find something last year?

The tactics going on in the NPA are the same that I saw in the hijack of the liberal party 10 years ago. The sudden flooding of membership forms, far too many to be adequately audited by part time volunteers, the bending of the rules to allow a "winnable" candidate to enter the race. It all hearkens back to a dark time when I saw an organization that I worked so hard to put into government taken over by, what I called at the time, "an assortment of snakes and weasels". Granted, the Non Partisan Association has never been an organization of sterling integrity, but even their old time members have to be standing back, shaking their head and wonder what's going on.

sadness

I'm rapidly approaching the age of 40, 36 years old. I'm single with no prospects on the horizon. There are times when I enjoy my solitude, in fact most times I enjoy it. However, this morning I woke up really wishing there was someone in the bed next to me. Maybe it's age because it's no longer a sexual thing, I just wished I had someone to talk about what was going on in the paper, someone to help me pick the movie at night, someone to complain about how I make the coffee too strong.

I date, however being burned repeatedly in the past I seem to choose these self destructive relationships that I know from the start are not going to be permanent. I don't think I'm a particularily difficult person to get along with, just someone who is not a racist, homophobic and has an ounce of compassion.

I have a feeling this is going to be an ongoing subject.

Letter to the Vancouver Province Sept.4/05

If there is a lesson to be learned by the Hurricane Katrina's destruction in the southern gulf states, it's that the full, catastrophic effect of two decades of budget cuts are finally having an effect. First, and most obvious is the neglected infrastructure. For years, Civic, State, and Federal agencies had been warning that in the event of a powerful hurricane, the levees might not hold. For years politicians hemmed and hawed and pronounced that “levee mainenance and repair is a priority” however little to no resources were actually allocated. To me this sounds chillingly familiar to our own provincial and civic leader's announcements about Earthquake readiness. The communication network completely collapsed, police officers, and emergency services were not able to communicate with each other, it took days for the scope of the damage to become known.

Second, and ultimately far more deadly, was the erosion of the middle class, much more visible in the southern United States, than in Canada, but moving in the same path, especially under the leadership of neo-conservatives such as Gordon Campbell, Christy Clark, Ralph Klein et al. Many of the people who were left behind by the hurricane, were those disenfranchised by society, the homeless, the mentally ill, and the poor. Many of these people were simply unable to get out of the city, despite a mandatory evacuation notice, no resources were provided to let them evacuate.

The tax cuts, budget cuts, civil service cuts and social service cuts have created a recipe for disaster. For far too long we've seen government solely as a belwether for the economy, an organization that sets business regulations and tax rates. New Orleans has shown us that government is there to protect the people it represents, and without adequate planning and funding it simply cannot do that. Government has much more to do than simply attract new mining companies, and tourism opportunities. Government has an obligation, a duty, and a mandate to provide for nothing less than the survival of it's citizens. New Orleans has learned this lesson far too late.

The questions we have to ask ourselves in Vancouver, and across North America is “how prepared are our leaders?”. Is the emergency preparation in the case of a major earthquake (in Vancouver's case) beyond the pretty brochure stage, is practical planning and contingency preparation in place? Is there feasible plan to evacuate the city available?

For far too long we've looked at natural disasters as something that happen in the third world, Last week showed us that they can and will happen here, and that the effect is just as devastating.

Regards
Chris Childs