2012/06/14

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  Métro Papineau - 2012.06.06
  Louis-Joseph Papineau sans/without Victoria
  Scènes de Montréal - Montreal Scenes
  

  Business as usual

  The Los Angeles Kings won the Stanley Cup, for the first time in their 45 year history I read in the news. Forty-five years? Gosh it's like it was yesterday. I remember when the National Hockey League had only six teams. I used to watch hockey in those days. Then the league expanded in the United States, and later on in other Canadian cities. Then the Philadelphia Flyers started to act as goons and to beat up the players from the other teams. Before that, there used to be some violent clashes between players, but it was mostly only during the end of the season playoffs, when tensions were very high. After the Flyers, it became day to day routine. You beat me, I beat you. Violence in hockey has progressed ever since, so much that hockey fans these days don't even recognize it's there, taking it as part of the game. It's gotten to the point that it's rampant amongst junior leagues also, with kids who barely have begun to develop body hair being encouraged by moron parents drooling and yelling in the stands to go and beat the shit of players from the other team. It's gotten to the point that they had to enact strict rules to prevent the even younger ones to fall in this culture of violence. I don't watch hockey anymore. I haven't for about forty years, I just realize. When I zap and land on a hockey game (on CBC usually), there's 90% chances, by my experience, that I'll land on someone trying to break a body part of another player, the head more often than not. Hockey and concussions are synonyms.

  It's sad, because hockey is a nice game. It's just that they stopped playing and airing it about forty years ago. I remember the 1972 Series of the Century between Canada and the then Soviet Union. The Soviets came here and showed a mesmerized Canadian public that hockey could also be played with intelligence and art, and not only as a form backyard brawls as it was here. Canada won four, the Soviets three, and one game tied. But in fact, the Soviets lost much more. Our goon way of playing became the norm. As with everything else, the crap takes the cake, because crap is cheaper and brings in more bucks.

  I have a particular grudge against all those media sports commentors who, over and over and over, tear their shirt in outrage every time one of those incidents happens, as if it was the first time ever, and do nothing to have it stopped besides tearing their shirt for 30 seconds, before resuming business as usual until next incident, usually a matter of days (or day, at times).

  

  A380 - the epilogue

  I shouldn't have talked about the Airbus A380. Air France announced Monday that it will remove Montreal from its fly list as of October, due to a smaller than expected demand, in business class mostly. Air France has eight A380 currently serving, besides Montreal, the cities of New York, Washington, Johannesburg, Los Angeles, Tokyo et Singapour. Anyways, as a consolation, if it falls, it won't be on my head.

  

  Whoring around

  Mitt Romney has a new friend: Sheldon Adelson, a Las Vegas casino mogul. He had vowed to spend up to 100 million in support of Newt Gingrich in the primaries. He and his family finally gave "only" about 25 million to Newt's Super PAC before he called it quits. This money was spent in large part on ferocious ads against Romney. Now that Newt is gone, Romney suddenly becomes acceptable to Adelson, who along with his wife recently gave 10 million to the Romney Super PAC. What is the definition of prostitution again?

  This total of 35 million would apparently be a new record, and made possible by the decision of the U.S.A. Supreme Court authorizing enterprises, unions and individuals to finance Super PACs of their choosing, without any limit whatsoever.

  Incidentally I was reading an article only a few days ago about how the American Supreme Court has become (is being considered) more and more irrelevant on the world scene, in the last decades. It was not the case before, when its decisions were often used as something equating to "the guiding light". Another fine legacy left by Republican neo-Whatevers.

  

  Paint job - more about...

  I finished part one of the project. Tuesday was a write-off since it rained heavily all day. Too dark and sticky to do anything. Today I'll try to start the whatever-it's-called front room, a vestibule maybe, since it's where I do get dressed in preparation to going out. The radical "vest" means more or less clothes, and the French word for getting dressed, vêtir or se vêtir, was originally written vestir. The circumflex accent in French replaces a former "s". I don't feel right now like looking for the etymology of vestibule, but I'd bet it has a lot to do with a place one gets dressed or undressed. That room, where is my front door, is separated from the rest of the apartment by a patio door. Not an ordinary flimsy one with a screen, but a very heavy one with large white contours and equipped with thick tempered glass. I wasn't living here when the apartment was renovated (two years before I popped up, in 1985) but I'm pretty sure there are not many other apartment out there with such an entrance.

  What to you do on a rainy day? You travel to Belgium. Not with a car though cause at 8,4% alcool...

  

  

  Social crisis - not much more about

  I mean not much more that I care to talk about. It's getting nastier by the day. And the government is on full crackdown mode, hammering that the pacific protestors, and especially those wearing the red square, are violence ridden and intimidators. Everyone knows that they do this for electoral purposes and it's pretty sickening. I passed way too much time commenting in newspaper blogs these last days for my own good. There is so much to say that it would be never-ending so for now I'll just skip the subject.

  

  Reconciliation

  I planted my basil yesterday. I waited this far in the season because every year, Friend and I are rushed into making our yearly batch of tomato sauce because the basil becomes overdue too early, losing its chlorophyl and a lot of its taste by the same token. Ideally it's better to wait for the second week of September for the best tomatoes. By planting the basil in early June as before, it was ready in late August, which was too early. With a ten day delay this year, it should be just right.

  

  July who?

  I wasn't to post on this, but it's kinda cute in some way, so what the heck! The paint will wait.

  On May 1, 2011, the New Democratic Party of Canada was and had always been a curiosity in Québec, having, at times, a lone Member of Parliament from this province. It's a party with left oriented policies, very social democrat you could say. They are those who first started medicare in Canada, in the Prairies. They are the antithesis of Harper's morons, er... I mean conservatives. However they were also a very centralist party, considering the federal government as much more important than the provincial ones. This did not pass at all in Quebec, hence their quasi absence from the political scene. Quebec on the other hand had its own leftist federal party, the Bloc Québécois. The Bloc Québécois was created in the early 90s, when Canada once again shit on us, with the Meech Lake accord. It is of course an independentist party. Their arrival on the federal scene was massive and sudden, so much that they became at that election Canada's Official Opposition. An absurd situation and unheard of needless to say. However, for many reasons which I don't necessarily agree with, Quebecers thought that this situation, a separatist party representing them in Ottawa, was kind of leading nowhere, after 20 years. Since they are viscerally and for a large majority against Harper and his ultra-conservative agenda, they turned to the next best thing, the leftist NDP. So on May 2, 2011, history repeated itself and the day closed with Québec sending a whopping 58 new NDP members of parliament to Ottawa, making that party the new Official Opposition, tossing the Liberals.

  Recap: the NDP is for a strong centralized federalism and since it was essentially an out-of-Quebec party since its foundation in the mid 20th century, you can't say it was overly French, if you know what I mean.

  My member of Parliament is from the NDP. Up to now, he's one of the newcomers who impress the most in Ottawa. If what follows is an indication of what's to come, some people in the ROC are not finished having bad dreams.

  Members of Parliament have a budget at their disposal so as to send once in a while if they wish small parliamentary bulletins to their constituents. My member is no different than the others. What is special however is this:

  

  The above is not the French side of the leaflet's cover page. This is THE cover page. English available upon request, it says. That's it. In Canada where bilingualism is an official policy and where everything coming from the federal government is printed in both English and French but only used as a front in English-speaking provinces where getting French language services is often akin to a fat joke, this is not usual at all. It breaks the facade they worked so hard to put up.

  

  And the above is another page of the leaflet, this one listing all the major events happening this summer in our riding (Rosemont-La Petite Patrie). Keep in mind that Canada Day, our equivalent of the 4th of July, or France's 14 juillet, is the 1st of July. You can't say he overdid it in reminding people about it, did he? Then again, NOTHING ever happens in my riding on Canada Day, besides people moving from an apartment to another, a yearly ballet less and less elaborate as condos pop up and rented apartments diminish. I do celebrate Canada Day however. I get up in the morning and I look at the small Quebec flags I stuck in my hanging flower baskets for the Fête Nationale (the real one, ours, June 24) and which I carefully make sure not to remove before July 2nd, and I enjoy the moment. Call it a statement, if you wish.

  His referring to June 24th as Fête Nationale is also something undheard of from anyone evolving in or around a federalist outfit. For them, it's St-Jean-Baptiste Day, period, as it was before Quebecers gave themselves a distinct identity from other French-Canadians. Something these people negate to this day. Like I said, if others are like him in the NDP (and it's my take), Canada's sleep is anything but guaranteed.

  

  The above is a red square. If you're not intimidated by looking at it, there's nothing to be ashamed of, really.

  Now back to paint. White, for the nervous ones.

  • 15:14
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