Bodies, stress and motion

When the Brain was finishing his master's he developed a bit of a twitch right under his left eye. You would be talking to him and all of the sudden a fluttering flurry would take over distracting you from his always engaging conversation. Perhaps all of his stress was understandable. We got married, he finished and defended his master's and we packed up everything we owned to move to India all in one month. That's alot going on.
Now i seem to have developed a bit of a twitch myself. Thankfully it is not on my face like the Brain's. Instead it is in the middle finger of my right hand. I mostly notice it at night when i am lying in bed trying to fall asleep. Twitch, twitch, wiggle wiggle - my middle finger starts spazzing out while the rest of my body is lying immobile. It is like my body is trying to tell me something through that middle finger, something about all the stress my PhD is causing me. Yeah, i think i can make it out ... it is f#%@ off dissertation. I guess i should listen to my body more often. It seems to have a point.

Whither Dennis Lee?

"If it walks like apocalypse. If it
squawks like armageddon.
If it stalks the earth like anaphylactic parturition."

It may soound like it, but this ain't your childhood Dennis Lee. Not at all. In UN, his latest book of adult poetry, Lee takes a deep look into our collective heart of darkness. But he does so with 'wild unpredictable energy in the language imparted a kind of vital dance to the poems' that makes the poems about the end of it all a whole lot less bleak than they should rightfully be. It's good, thought provoking and bewildering stuff. But traditionalist that i am, i say just don't take my alligator pie.

on world politics

I am a good global citizen, or at least try to be. I listen to the radio, watch the news, keep up the current events. But i am not afraid to tell you that this sometimes feels like an exercise in hitting my head against the wall. Right now (north) American media seems obsessed with a Florida woman's right to life/death. Sending this issue to Congress and letting Bush and his cronies mull this over does not warm my heart. Up here in Canada the Conservative Party is trying to turn back time and a lot of other things with their draconian view of our future.
In light of all of this it is refreshing to see stories like this one out of India, via Sepia Mutiny: Indian passports will now recognize a third sex. That's right, if you want a passport in India, your sexuality

"...is no longer restricted to male and female,” said Vivek Diwan, of Lawyers Collective. “Earlier, when hijras applied for a passport, their applications would be rejected on grounds that they were neither male nor female. This is a step in the right direction.”

Not Guilty

Just moments ago Justice Ian Bruce Josephson delivered a not guilty verdict against Ripudaman Singh Malik and Ajaib Singh Bagri, accused of murdering 329 people in the 1985 Air India bombing case. Though the judge seemed to accept the Crown's theory that there was a conspiracy to bring down Air India flights, he found that the accuseds could not be directly linked to the bombings. After five years in custody Malik, Badri and their famillies were visably overjoyed at the verdict, while the family of those killed in the crash were more silent in their sorrow and disbelief.
For more deatils as they come in check out the Globe and Mail and CBC News.

You say you want a revolution....

The Grey Sweatsuit Revolution. Now this is a revolution i could really get behind. In their manifesto, the Grey Sweatsuit Collective opine

The battle against fashion needs to be fought differently. We cannot simply dress weirder than the mainstream in an attempt dull our sense of complicity with western consumer society.

...The grey sweatsuit is our Trojan horse. We create a street trend, a visible statement, the system co-opts it without understanding it’s significance and then... BAM! Grey sweatsuits all up in the area! Our symbolism spreads like anthrax across the anorexic bodies of fashionistas everywhere! They look frantically for the next trend but there is nothing. Only grey sweatsuits. What’s hot for next season? How about the death of your vanity?

This is the greatest thing that could ever happen (to me). For those of you who don't know, i have affectionately been referred to as 'the most comfortable person you know', but what that means is that i am a slob. I have been trying to enact my own pyjama revolution for years now, but i can see that the Grey Sweatsuit Revolution is about more than just comfort. It is truly a statement. And while i would prefer a Navy Blue Sweatsuit Revolution, that would only feed my vanity (blue makes my eyes look good).

So i don't know about you, but i am going out right now to get a sweatsuit.

On Multi-tasking

Matchmaker Matchmaker
Make me a match
Find me a find
Catch me a catch
... Oh yeah, and i am going to the Upper East Side.

Ahmed Ibrahim, a NYC cab driver, will do more than just get you to your destination, he may also find you a potential mate!! This 50 year old cabbie takes his job very seriously. If he feels you are an eligible single - that is intelligent, gainfully employed and at least a little bit intersting - he will enter you into his catelogue of singles and contact you again when he found someone he feels you would match with. Oh yeah, and his service free! He says he does it because he just got tired of seeeing unhappy, lonely people. The New York dating scene is hard to negotiate, so he cuts through some of the crap for you. And he will only consider those who are interested in a long term relationship.

Personal Pigeon Problem

Gentle Readers, patience please while i ruminate on my personal pigeon problems. In December we moved into a lovely little condo. It was perfect in every way, but especially because it has a fairly decent sized patio. I could see all of my urban garden dreams coming true. What i didn't anticipate was pigeons. Yuck. Our perfect little patio fills up with bird guano almost instantly, while birds cross the sky overhead.
I need a solution to this problem. Yesterday i bought a decoy owl, but it doesn't seem to work as the decoy is on our patio in a tree and the birds perch two stories up on the roof og the building. My mom has suggested a sling shot, but the difference between her and i is aim. She has it, i don't. There are already spiky things where they like to perch. So, my kind audience, if you have any suggestions, please send them my way. My preference is for not harming the birds, but day by day i am getting closer to buying a bee bee gun.