2013.02.28

Take 2

I’m returning to my Fall resort tomorrow afternoon, for a scheduled operation on Monday. Nothing new. It was planned for over two months. It’s to get rid of a cancer spot on my liver, by the means of a procedure called chemoembolization. It is not related at all with the lung thing, aka it is not a metastasis. The procedure requires only local anesthesia. Afterwards, a few days under observation are mandatory (2 to 5) to make sure everything is ok, so unless something goes really wrong (that can’t happen, can’t it? ) I’ll be on leave from this site for about a week.

Take none

Tonight is the tenth Montreal “Nuit Blanche“. I cannot participate because I have to be fit for hospital tomorrow, and even then, I’m not in enough shape for such a city roaming exercise. It’s quite disappointing because of what I know, it should be better than last year, which itself was better than the one before, and so on… Oh well, since the Mayas had it all wrong, there should be a 2014.

2013.02.20

Poperies

The people of La Motte are preparing for an invasion of tourists. La Motte is a small village of around 450, located about 600 km north of Montreal. The road to get there is a long string of nothingness, scarcely inhabited except for a few villages and towns. In summer you can also find in that area a zillion zillion voracious black flies that munch on you like they haven’t eaten in weeks, leaving with parts of your skin. There was a church there but like many others in Quebec, it has been transformed into something else, in this case into a community center (centre for our European friends).

La Motte also happens to be the birthplace of Marc Cardinal Ouellet.

They base their optimism on another place which greatly benefitted from papalistic tourism, Marktl in southern Bavaria, which is the birthplace of Benedict XVI.

I don’t know how to break this to them, but Marktl is surrounded by 350 million people of which one heck of a bundle are Catholics. And none of them has to cross an ocean to get to Marktl. And once you get to Marktl, you don’t have enough of a lifetime to visit all the treasures that Europe has to offer all around. Once you get to La Motte, all you can do is head in the opposite direction and return with what’s left of your body. And is it superfluous to mention that the U.S. and Canada are populated mostly by Protestants and creationist weirdos who have other ideas on how to spend their vacations? Oh well, I’ll let them dream…

Today, Montreal’s Cardinal Jean-Claude Turcotte, in an interview before leaving for Rome, clearly mentioned that the Church needs an oil change, and said enough about Ouellet and his passage in Quebec City for us to know for whom he WON’T vote.

Also in the news these days, stuff about a Scottish cardinal who tried to play hanky panky with some of his priests, an American one who is being asked to stay home for the sake of decency, and those reports about a gay bishops lobby in the Vatican who would be subjected to blackmail. This not to mention other stuff not to be bragged about. The Church of Rome has seen better days. This does not spell good for Marc Ouellet. Officially, these things are not taken into account, but with all the forementioned cowpats, it can be assumed that they have enough on their hands already before electing a pope whose own brother pleaded guilty in 2009 to two counts of sexual agression against teenage girls.

Oscars

Everything went as expected. Last week-end, the four film critics of my daily forecasted that Argo would win for Best Picture.. All of them also thought the award should have gone to another film, Amour for one of them, and Zero Dark Thirty for the three others. Said one of them: Argo will win because it doesn’t scratch the flag. She also mentioned as ‘disappointing’ the fact that senators and actors called Academy voters to boycott Zero Dark Thirty under the pretext that it put forward American torture practices that many would prefer to be better kept under the carpet.

Elsewhere, in Iran, the local FARS press agency published a doctored photo of Michelle Obama where sleeves have magically appeared on her otherwise sleeveless one. If they can’t tolerate the view of a sleeveless dress, they should live with their convictions and discard the photo altogether. Or make themselves a copy for masturbating purposes. These people are pathetic. The film Argo itself has been labeled by Iran of being “anti-Iranian and fostered by Sionists”.

In an unrelated but still the same somewhat related event, late night television satyrist Stephen Colbert, had this to say after a stint about Marc Ouellet being ineligible to become pope because he is a Canadian (something I would tend to agree with by the way): “After all, God’s an American,” Colbert explained. “That’s why the Bible is in English.”

No He isn’t, God is German.

Or Russian.

Or French.

Whatever…

GOD IS AN AMERICAN
By Jean-Pierre Ferland (1972)

Ah, they’ll never understand
Go, St Peter, cut!…

2013.02.20 – 10h07

Italian blues

In a recent comment, Carlo linked a video featuring ballet dancer Roberto Bolle having fun on a song by Italian pop star Giorgia. I don’t know if it’s the winter blues but that immediately triggered my “Italy nostalgia” button. And when this happens, Gianna Nannini is not very far away. I found videos of both of them, Gianna first, then with Giorgia, in a live concert called Amiche per l’Abruzzo (Friends for Abruzzo) and staged in June 2009, in the “San Siro” stadium in Milan. It was a 12-hour fund raising concert to come in aid to the people of L’Aquila in the Abruzzo region, after the devastating earthquake which hit L’Aquila two months before. Forty Italian artists appeared live, but 102 Italian singers overall gave their support in one form or another to the concert attended by 60,000 and broadcasted live on 12 Italian radio networks and also the internet.

I had first elected to embed-link two great songs of the 80s, I Maschi by Nannini and the unkillable Ti Amo by Umberto Tozzi, but whose videos were nice but somewhat generic, you know, aerial views and the likes. Although both songs are favorites of mine, especially I Maschi, I chose rather these much more recent renderings, even if the song “America” dates back to those same 80s, late seventies in fact. Oh, and sorry for the brutal wake-up, for those who were snoozing. Gianna is not very much into lullabies.

America is apparently an hymn to masturbation. Google’s translations of the lyrics into French or English don’t seem very good. Too litteral. Maybe some Italian could confirm or infirm? And by the way, if anyone knows who is the sex bomb playing that guitar held by a pink strap on Gianna’s left, could you please tell him on my behalf that he is urgently requested to get in contact with me. Thank you.

A New Menace

American kids would apparently be the object of a grave new imported menace. I read recently that US Customs officers have since a few years taken the matter seriously and brought special attention to it. What is it? An egg. One with a prize inside.

From the net, and the US Customs and Border Protection: «Last fiscal year 2011, CBP seized more than 60,000 Kinder Eggs from travelers’ baggage and from international mail shipments. This was more than twice the number seized in fiscal year 2010. The product violates both Consumer Product Safety Commission (CPSC) and Food and Drug Administration (FDA) regulations. As the U.S. government’s law-enforcement agency at the border, CBP is charged with enforcing the regulations of both agencies to keep safety hazards away from American consumers.»

Elsewhere on the net: «VANCOUVER July 28 2012 — Chris Sweeney and his husband were driving home to Seattle after a recent trip to Vancouver when they were stopped at the border for more than two hours and threatened with thousands of dollars in fines for dangerous contraband in the trunk of their car. Their suspicious cargo? Half a dozen Kinder Surprise chocolate eggs, each filled with a tiny plastic toy — a childhood favourite in Canada but an illegal choking hazard in the United States. “I thought (the American border guard) had done his search and hadn’t found anything, and he was joking with us,” Sweeney, 35, told The Canadian Press in an interview Wednesday. “He wasn’t joking.”
[..]
Sweeney said a border guard told him and his husband that they could be fined $2,500 per egg, and then ordered them to head to the port of entry, where they waited for more than two hours. “We really didn’t know what was going to happen,” he said. “I didn’t know if maybe this was some really important thing that I just wasn’t aware of and they were going to actually give us the fine of $15,000.” But once inside, Sweeney said border staff later brushed off the offence and merely told them never to bring the Kinder Surprise eggs across the border again.»

When I think of an American Border officer, or a Canadian one for that matter, both of whom seem to think that smiling gives cancer, I start wondering if one day the FDA will declare illegal eggs containing morons.

By curiosity, and living in an area of this planet where these eggs are available (aka the ROP – rest of the planet), I bought one the other day since I had never before been face to face with this kind of danger. I’m happy to report that I survived. OK, I cheated, I’m not three years old or under. But still the same, I have other things to report:

1- It’s made by Ferrero in Luxemburg and a bunch of other countries which means whatever you want it to mean.
2- The outside layer of chocolate is thinner than the ozone layer
3- There is no inside layer of chocolate
4- The chocolate in question is to good chocolate what an Austin Mini is to a Lamborghini.
5- The brown layer called chocolate rests on an inside layer made with something whitish and which I don’t really care to know much about
6- The “killer” prize is encased in a plastic container which is impossible to be opened by a 3 year-old but which can easily be recycled into a convenient condom case or confetti container to bring along at marriages.
7- The prize in my egg consisted of three self-sticking (if you can manage to remove the protective paper) holograms of dinosaurs, along with a template to stick them on, and a leaflet warning in 37 languages about the danger of swallowing or inhaling (?) by 3 year olds or less. Not all languages mention the age limit, but there’s a pictogram of an ugly kid with a Forbidden sign (logo) barring it, along with the indication 0-3.
8- All in all, the prize in question seems to me less dangerous to kids than letting them in the care of parents who let them scrap their taste buds by eating these things (the egg shells, not the prizes).

ADD-ON Feb 22: Just saw an add on tv. They now have a Kinder whose prize is specifically tailored for girls. Can’t stop progress.

The incriminated egg. Without the feet. Those belong to the 3-minute egg-shaped timer on the left.

As one can readily see, one does not buy these things if he is in a severe chocolate craving.

As per those who feel compelled to treat their fellow citizens as dangerous smugglers for “importing” a few of those eggs, it’s nothing surprising. A few specimens of those boneheads were at it again Tuesday evening, showing to the world how paranoid, and ignorant, some of them are, when they held a Palestinian award-winning and Oscar-nominated film director for more than an hour at the Los Angeles airport, repeatedly menacing him and his family of a swift return to Amman. His nominated film, 5 Broken Cameras, has been seen all over the world including in the U.S. Even I saw it recently on Radio-Canada. If it wouldn’t have been for the intervention of Michael Moore, Emad Burnat would have been flown back to Amman and Sunday evening at the Oscars ceremony, the U.S. would have been the laughing stock of the planet cause one can bet that it would have been mentioned and certainly not in flattering terms.

The events as narrated by Michael Moore in the Huffington Post -> http://www.huffingtonpost.com/michael-moore/how-my-friend-and-current_b_2727297.html

«Apparently the Immigration & Customs officers couldn’t understand how a Palestinian could be an Oscar nominee. Emad texted me for help.» twitted Michael Moore. I can understand why they couldn’t understand, but that would be so long to explain…

Of course, customs boneheads are not an American exclusive. A few years ago they did the same in Toronto to Abdou Diouf, former President of Sénégal, but more so Secretary general of the Organisation internationale de la Francophonie^[1], and as such having the same diplomatic stature as Kofi Annan. Instead of the diplomatic reception he should have had, he was rather subjected to a body search. Mr Diouf was coming to Canada after being invited by the Canadian government.

^[1] – An international organisation regrouping 77 States and governments (890 million people) where French is the or one of the languages spoken. Some kind of French-speaking Commonwealth.

Connected

Richard Bain, the guy who tried to kill Quebec’s Premier on election night but killed a stage technician instead, was in court yesterday. He wants to be represented by himself saying that he has the best lawyer: Jesus Christ. Psychiatrists have declared him fit for trial. If they say so…

ADD-ON Feb 22: Heard this evening in a comedy program (radio) on Radio-Canada: «Jesus-Christ represented himself back then and it wasn’t a big success.»

Fishing

Ice fishing, what we call here “pêche blanche” (white fishing) is common on our rivers in winter, but especially so in Ste-Anne-de-la-Pérade, which is famous for this. This year, for the first time, they decided to establish such a temporary village in Montreal, and the Quai de l’horloge basin in the old port was chosen for this. For those who came to this blog last summer, it’s the basin facing the new urban beach I posted pics of on June 22.

Photo © Jacques Nadeau, Le Devoir

Shoveling

This is one activity I don’t indulge into this winter. Having gotten rid of my car last fall, only remains the outside stairs but one can’t shovel with only one hand so that’s that. We got some snow yesterday but nothing compared to what they had back east some days ago, with some areas receiving up to 60 cm of snow (that’s 2 feet). We also know about New England last week. It might rain here this weekend. Crazy winter this year. Everywhere. And as if snow wasn’t enough, now the sky is also peppering meteorites.

2011.03.24

Boots, provocation and other dance related things

For some time now, and increasingly and everywhere, right-wing values and ways of living in society are being adopted by the masses, who apparently see little problem surrendering their privacy on the Net or elsewhere in exchange for short term benefits. Whether they do it knowingly or not is less important than the fact that nature abhors vacuum, and that those who trail behind and pick up the bits and pieces of that privacy left here and there do so for, and only for, their own benefit.

Recently I sent to one of my younger brothers a link to a letter to the editor I had read in my daily and whose title was [translated] «The Freedom of the Press in Freefall in Canada». He replied that he was also reading articles about the same subject and pertaining to the United States, Greece, etc… adding «The boots make themselves heard more and more loudly.» Boots here is to be understood in its broader sense, that is countries where the State (or big corporations, it’s the same) controls what they want people to think, overtly or covertly, and take the appropriate measures for it to be so, and accessorily where civil liberties are considered a cumbersome nuisance. This reference to boots brought back to my mind a song from three or four years ago composed and performed by Yann Perreau, on lyrics written by Dédé Traké [you must know French to understand the wordplay used for this stagename]. Yann Perreau is well-nown Québec singer and songwriter. He is not at all in the “music industry mainstream”, more in the fringe rather. He also makes makes no secret of his political allegeance, that is Québec independence.

It wasn’t meant to be this way but this section echoes two other recent blog entries by Biggles and Carlo where these subjects were adressed.
The lyrics [translated] are below, followed by two videos. The first one is a live (it didn’t steal that description) performance at the Montreal Métropolis, a very well-known mostly standing up venue on Ste-Catherine St, near Place des Arts. Perreau is accompanied on the stage by the popular, for a certain age bracket, hip hop group Loco Locass, who sing in French and are also very independentist. Also accompanying Perreau is Samian, an Algonquin rap performer who sings in French and his native language, Algonquin, which he does in the last part of the video (he is the one with a navy blue t-shirt). I of course have only a clue about what he says, based on what Loco Locass are themselves saying. Not knowing if it’s one of their songs embedded in Perreau’s one, I couldn’t find them on the net for translation. But to make a long story short, they talk about the planet’s destruction and the Peoples exploitation. Samian knows a bit about that, being a Canadian Native (or Amerindian or Aboriginal, depending who you talk to).

I like this song for its lyrics, but also very much for its haunting music. Listening to it, you can almost visualize the German soldiers goosestepping their way down the Champs-Élysées in Paris.

LE BRUIT DES BOTTES
Dédé Traké/Yann Perreault

They are there, millions
Only waiting to resonate
Remains to find the feet
Willing to wear them

Live performance at the Metropolis

This other video is the official video for the song. You will or will not like it. For my part, the first time I saw it I was like Er..? The second time it was Gee! and on the third it became Wow!! It is the work of Montreal dancer/choreographer Dave St-Pierre who in 2006 created the show “Un peu de tendresse, bordel de merde!” (A Little Tenderness for Crying Out Loud!), second of a trilogy and which was well received here and in France (Festival d’Avignon and Paris) and after which St-Pierre was invited all expenses paid in Germany and Austria to complete his trilogy. The show however was not well received at all in London where it was blasted like there’s no tomorrow. They were performing at the Sadler’s Wells. More on this below. ^[1]

Someone commented this video on Youtube saying that “quebec people are super weird”. Yes, we know. Then again…

ADD-ON: I just realized that the Youtube version is a doctored one, aka censored by blurring frontal nudity. The original non censored version is available on Vimeo here -> http://vimeo.com/16998014

Trivia… or is it really?

Dave St-Pierre received a double lung transplant in 2009. Since then, he’s on fire. I wonder if it was done by the same surgeon I had. If it was done in Montreal, it’s quite possible. I wouldn’t mind being ablaze too, but don’t count on me to run around flashing you know what.

Real Trivia

Friend lived until recently at a stone’s throw from Usine C, an experimental theater located in an old reconverted factory, and where the show was staged. He saw the show… and survived.

^[1]
From a 2011 article by Mali Isle Paquin in La Presse. She’s a La Presse freelance columnist living in London. I removed the paragraphs formatting.

The blazing universe of Dave St-Pierre came onto a head-on collision with the English’s puritanism last Thursday. The Quebec dancers of “A little tenderness for crying out loud!”, playing for three nights in London, were greeted by “Fuck you” as soon as they appeared on stage. The public of Sadler’s Wells, den of dance lovers, had however been warned: there would be nudity. Obviously, it was not prepared to see it so close. For a dozen naked males, arrayed in blonde wigs, take to the floor in the first act of the play, created in 2006. The kamikaze pose their hairy asses on the knees of stunned spectators and wriggle their genital appendages like kids. One put saliva on a man’s glasses last Thursday. It was the critic of The Guardian. “This is the most unpleasant experience I’ve had in theater,” writes Luke Jennings. His cronies were hardly more tender. “Manure,” said Mark Monahan of the conservative daily Daily Telegraph. This finger salute to theatrical conventions (the play) had yet blown the director of Sadler’s Wells, Alistair Spalding, at the Avignon Festival in 2009. “I had never seen anything so bold,” he told La Presse.

Fortunately, Dave St-Pierre’s performers don’t lack tenderness elsewhere in Europe, where they toured intermittently since November 2010. They were the darlings of the Parisian public in late May (2011), during five euphoric performances at the Théâtre de la Cité. “People were ecstatic, said Claire Verlet, theater director in a telephone interview. I had never seen anything so genial. Ovations were never-ending. They didn’t want to let them go! ” The Quebec choreographer was invited to Düsseldorf (Germany) and Salzburg (Austria) at the end of the summer to work on the follow-up to A Little Tenderness… all expenses paid. It will complete his trilogy on love relationships, initiated in 2004 with Pornography souls. The Franco-German craze has obviously not yet crossed the Channel. [..] In London, a good fifty people left the 1500 seater hall 1500 during the performance. The others looked pensive and smiling after the show. “I had not laughed like that for a long time,” says Ulrike Tombling, 37 years. “I found it painful, said Simon Sterne, 38. They wanted to provoke us, but for what purpose? ” In the dressing rooms, the dancers had received the mixed reception as a cold shower. “Some had almost violent reactions … We invaded their sacrosanct space,” says Alexis Lefebvre.

Health update

I walked to Marché Jean-Talon yesterday (Feb 14), with stop-overs at the latino grocery store and Motta’s for a piece of pizza. About 1,8 km in all. Things are getting much better in that respect. I did stop a few times for short rests, though. Today the nurse who came for the daily bandage replacement over the hole I have in my back told me they won’t come this week-end and starting next week it’ll be only on Monday, Wednesday and Friday. Apparently the wound is healing well. I saw my surgeon last week for a three-month follow-up (the last operation where they removed the drain and made that hole to replace it was on Nov 7). He is waiting for the liver thing in early March to be over with and has plans to then close the hole in a way he didn’t give much details about, but which would be faster than waiting for it to close itself by tissue growth, which it could take a very long time, if ever. That’s when he came back with that thing about my being a very courageous person, adding «When you were in intensive care, absolutely no one there thought you had any chance of ever surviving» . I don’t like very much being reminded of that. First because I don’t see very well what courage had to do with it, my being in the coma. But more so, being reminded about this near-death brings tears to my eyes, what the psychiatrist I saw at that hospital called so beautifully “avoir de l’eau sur le coeur”, having water on the heart. Oh yeah, the left arm. I have nothing nice to say about the left arm.

City tobogganing

If having one of the weirdest winters in years wasn’t enough, some contractor doing street repair on Sherbrooke St on January 28 managed to break a major water line, flooding a whole block and more.

Swiss Connection

No I’m not talking about banks loaded with laundered money. Nor about colliding Higgs bosons in the Large Hadron Collider. I’m rather talking about waves. Sound waves that is. To be more precise, waves coming from the Radio Suisse Romande (the French-language Swiss radio network). And to break it down to an even smaller particle, although still light-years larger than your average boson, I’m talking about Option Musique, its fourth component, and which I’ve listened to quite often lately. When I do, it’s usually in late afternoon or evening. Over there it’s late evening or the middle of the night, which is fine with me. The music played is eclectic although rather smooth. They play a lot of French songs (including some Quebec ones), but others too. Most are also oldies (kind of) which we don’t hear often on our local radios. In the last hour for example, they played Christophe Maé, Daniel Balavoine, The Beatles, Stephan Eicher, Serge Gainsbourg, Célien Schneider, Renaud, Calogero, Lou Reed, Aliose, Michel Sardou, Thelma Houston. And no blabberings if only a few words of presentation at times, and no advertisement. Only music.

http://www.rts.ch/option-musique/

Habemus nullus papa

The Pope unpoped himself. He is leaving his red slippers stuck in the mud of financial and sexual scandals. They won’t be left empty for long. There’s a line-up of others who mildly protest that they don’t want the job while they ‘ve been working for the same for years. Among those, Cardinal Marc Ouellet, a Quebecer who is currently holding a top job at the Vatican (the choosing of bishops among others) where he is in regular contact with Mr Ratzinger, at least once a week, and with whom he shares his conservative views. If I were a Catholic and interested in having the Church modernize a little, if only to recognize equality between men and women, I’d be worried about this guy ever generating white smoke. He’s in the top contenders list, we’re told. It would be nice to have someone from Latin America or Africa for a change, but apparently and unfortunately, they would be just as conservative, if not more.

Of what I understand, Mr Ratzinger was a bright kid with not that much of a personality and who prefered to be alone with his books and thoughts more than attending cocktails. Some kind of nerd, finally.

Ouellet is not a nerd. He’s a freak. He worked for a long time in Latin America (that alone is scary) where the Church still acts like it did in our western countries back in the fifties. When Ouellet came back, the Vatican gave him the archdiocese of Québec (the city) where he never missed to show to all how disconnected he was with our modern society. When he opposed abortion even in cases of rape and whatever the age of the victim, that was it. He was whisked to Rome, not as a promotion as some thought, but as a measure of damage control before he shunned away what was left of practicing Catholics in Québec (the province).

Photo © Riccardo de Luca – AFP

The Swiss Disconnection

Here, the Swiss factor is accidental. It’s just that the IOC (International Olympic Commitee) is based in Lausanne. These people are considering removing the three-millenium-old sport of wrestling all the while adding golf. This decision and the reasons they gave for it show if need may be that the Olympic Games have ceased to be what they were initially, to become a humongous financial and mediatic enterprise, where « Citius, Altius, Fortius » refers to the cash they generate and where the truce-style “fraternity” between contestants of different countries is a sick joke. The next Winter games in Sotchi will cost Russians over 52 billion. This is mad.

For one, I can’t watch these games on television all the while pinching my nose not to smell all what’s behind them.

2011.03.24

I started editing this post January 26. That’s one of the reasons I hate winter. It’s like always having an urge to hibernate, so in the end nothing is done..

Out of…

The next worst thing after being out of luck is being out of bananas. I had bought five on the day of my release from the pen. I eat one a day (with Rice Krispies and milk… I know this is terribly unimaginative) so the last one took the stage on last Wednesday (23rd). The weather being what it was last week, I just had to make do without them. However, on Friday evening, there was a little rise in temperature, because of less wind mostly, so I took on me to get dressed and walk to the pocket supermarket near my pad, a 300 metre trip, 600 return. I bought a few other items, like raisins and cheddar cheese, not much, because I have to use the same hand to hold both the bag and the ramp when I climb the seventeen curled stairs when returning home. It didn’t work that well, the bag constantly getting caught in the vertical parts of the ramp, making it even more dangerous than not holding the ramp at all. I have to buy some kind of shoulder bag (sac en bandoulière) to free my hand, but the cold spell prevents me from shopping for this and a bunch of other stuff required by my new ‘condition’.

The Spring Battle

Anyone knows who owns the rights on Spring?

Pennsylvania’s Punxsutawney Phil and Ontario’s Wiarton Willie have both predicted an early spring since they both haven’t seen their shadow (which is kind of normal for a groundhog since they are almost blind). On the other side, I mean the north and east sides of the forementioned, I mean, tah-dah!!!, Québec, our own Fred boasts a 20/20 vision and saw both his shadow and all the crap that’s still to come. Considering my well-known love for winter, I suddenly have this urge to become an American, just for this once. As for the urge to become Ontarian, that’s a hell of a longer way than going to Tipperary, that’s all I can say. .

Scents

There’s an American television program (now dubbed here in French, I’m ashamed to add) featuring a family of obese (body) and anorexic (brains) bunch of misfits. I think it’s called Honey Boo Boo or Honey Goo Goo or Honey Poo Poo, it’s hard to tell, being all at once scary, slimy and…, well, and. From the little of it I have seen, I’d go for the latest. The Honey in question is a young girl (I think it’s a girl, at least she dresses like one, but the kind who’d open shop in dark alleys if you know what I mean). She is to honey what telephone pole syrup is to real maple syrup. Since the program still has viewers, I guess she (and her family) also attract flies.

We did have a series here called “Les_Bougon” and also featuring a family of semi-misfits living off of welfare and petty thefts and whose family dog was named Ben Laden, but it did not feature a six-year-old dressing up and acting like a whore. Their young girl was Chinese and born from a woman refugee found in a ship in Montreal’s port and who died soon after giving birth. They adopted her figuring she’d be a good investment since everyone knows the Chinese are good in computing, and they called her Mao. She indeed turned out to be the brightest number of the family, and not necessarily at school which she attended occasionally, sort of. For her there was more to learn in the streets and everyday life than at school, or gazing at her navel like the forementioned Poo.

Wynne Won

Kathleen Wynne won the leadership race of the Ontario Liberal Party recently. By virtue (?) of the parliamentary system we have here, she also instantly became Premier of Ontario. With our own Pauline Marois, elected the same day I was relieved of a lung lobe, a majority of Canada’s provinces are now governed by women. I don’t know what that means.

I didn’t mention it before, but on election night September 4, Marois who is leader of the independentist Parti Québécois, was the subject of an assassination attempt at the Metropolis in downtown Montreal. It’s a stage technician who was killed instead. Another one was injured. The accused (his trial just started) made no secret about his motivations, yelling on location «The English are waking up! It’s gonna be fucking payback». You won’t find any mention of this in the above link, except in the bottom references. It is however mentioned in the French version of that wiki page. I won’t bother expanding on that.

Da food section

Along with family reunions around the Thanksgiving turkey, the apple pie, the New York cheesecake, and the football cheerleaders, a special place in Americana has got to be given to the intriguing for some, disgusting for others, peanut butter and jelly sandwich. To my recollection, I have never eaten a peanut butter and jelly sandwich. To my recollection I have never even seen one either. Since I eat a lot of peanut butter these days because I was told it’s full of protein which I was told I’m very in need of, and probably because the winter blues make some people desperate, I got this crazy idea the other day, looking at my peanut butter covered morning toasts, to try topping them with jam. I took for granted that jelly here meant, in most cases, jam. I had cherry jam, so cherry jam it was.

Lending an arm

I take great liberty at blaming the winter blues for my being late doing just about everything lately, including feeding this here blog or visiting others. The fact is that my missing left arm and hand has more impact then I first thought. Every little thing seems like a mountain to cross and I very often postpone again and again. Using the computer with only one hand has also become a chore instead of the fun it should be. Of course if we had a decent winter maybe the morale would be on a better track. Since I’m back home, I have too much of a few fingers to count the days it was liveable outside. In this respect, we have the worst winter in years. And staying inside all the time is not good for anyone.

Boots

…to come

2013.01.14

Note: this post was edited for the essential on Tuesday Jan 22.

Above

Friend works in that brown tower, the one with the pizza pie Radio-Canada logo. Place Émilie-Gamelin which I talked about many times is located at the foot of that other hotel tower with a red logo in the top portion and whose window side is used for light displays. That area is also where is the Gay Village.

Family ties

Sister returned home yesterday after passing four and a half days with me. She and my stepbrother picked me and my stuff at the hospital last Thursday morning. They had done the two-hour trip the day before and had slept in a hotel upon arrival. They live near Ottawa, but on the Québec side of the river (and possible future border ) . He returned home soon afterwards but Sister stayed to help me for a few days. Help here would be an understatement. She cleaned, dusted, wiped and washed what would have taken me weeks if not a month to do. Needless to say, it was immensely appreciated. Brother could have picked me up on Thursday but, lucky him, he left for Mexico last Monday, for maybe three months, which was also my intended plan, before…

So, what’s new?

We are in the midst of a polar spell this week, tomorrow being the coldest since 2005 and this week the coldest since 1996. We can expect -40°C temperatures, considering the wind chill factor, and we’re in this until next week, at the least. I’m supposed to take small daily walks for my recovery but under these conditions, I’ll have to settle with moving from one room to another in the apartment. Temperatures were nice, even above normal from the beginning of January to one day prior to my return home. Me being as lucky as a Boeing 787 Dreamliner, nothing of this really surprises me. Add-on: It was -26 when I got up this Wednesday morning and didn’t move much for the whole day. Same expected tomorrow.

I don’t like it when it is very cold (besides my hating winter in general) because it puts stress on the electric systems, especially heating equipment. Electricity is used a lot for heating, here, because it is cheap. And that kind of stress is a fire hazard.

Front page of my daily this morning, with the caption The intense and biting cold did not prevent this Montreal woman to walk one kilometer to get to work: all that’s needed is to be well wrapped ! A warming of the stratosphere would explain the prolonged cold spell hitting North America.

Photo © Jacques Nadeau – Le Devoir

Being clueless

Should Republicans beware? That flaming red dress worn by Michelle Obama last night at the inauguration ball may be (in my dreams) an advance sign, along with what her husband said in his speech, that not having to bother with reelection, he will be out for the jugular. Like we say in French, «Ça va saigner!». Someone was saying on CNN this evening that the soft approach (trying to make sense with the Republicans) had been tried by Obama in the first mandate and they spat in his face. Too bad for them but that train left the station. They could have hopped in but they preferred to stay on the wharf. Dah-dee-dah!

Duh!

Microsoft sent me an email saying that they will kind of kill Messenger, and replace it with Skype. That news shook me about as much as I’ll be shaken when Georgr H. Bush will die.

Skype was a simple tool to use. Now I’ll bet that when we connect to it, we’ll also connect to the WWE (World Wide Empire) of Microsoft and all which that implies. They call it live.com. What a misnomer! You can die and get entangled in a spider web before it loads all its Microsoft crap.

Zzzzzzz

M’y sister’s visit had its toll on my endurance it would seem. In the hospital, I would nap a lot: breakfast, nap, washing, physiotherapy, daily bandage replacement, nap, dinner, nap, ergotherapy, nap, supper, nap, reading, sleep. For four days, nap was impossible cause I had to answer all of my sister’s questions like where are this and that, or where they should be put. I don’t complain of course, just imagining what it would have been to do all this scares the hell out of me, but since she left, I just feel like sleeping all the time.

Then again, maybe I’m simply a sore lazy ass, go figure!

Leaving with style

Hillary Clinton banged on the table today in Congress. It was refreshing to see those nit-picking Republicans be put in their place. Me thinks that, health providing, she may be back in 2016 for a third presidential term. Whether she does or not, she remains in my eyes an exceptional woman.

Looking east from a tenth floor, with Sherbrooke St. below – 2013.01.14

Blame it on Carlo

In a comment last December I think, Carlo mentioned that he was happy about my return since that would spell also the return of my long posts. Since then, I didn’t have either the time, nor enough access to the internet, to do so. Not to mention one-finger typing. But since I edit my posts in a separate editor, I started one some time ago, adding bits and pieces now and then, and waiting until its size met Carlo’s expectations before posting it. So it’s all Carlo’s fault in some way that I didn’t post more in recent weeks. (just kidding, Carlo, another instalment of my silly humour )

Appetite

I look at some of the food pics I’ve posted here in the past and I get hungry.

Frustration

I look at some of the food pics I’ve posted here in the past and I get hungry and I get frustrated knowing that for many, preparing them with only one hand would be very tedious, at best, if not at all at the worst.

Grasping certain realities

I don’t think I mentioned this before, but when I was in the coma, they did not know if I would survive. I was on artificial respiration. I remember nothing of this, of course. So it’s hard for me to realize that I came to one hair of dying. It’s like it concerned somebody else.

Shooting oneself in the foot

I guess this pic that I stumbled upon in the internet could be interpreted in two contradictional ways. Personally I am of those who think that the gun problem in the U.S. could be what will make it crumble as a society one of these days (or generate a civil war, it’s the same thing). I also think this “problem” is maybe one that can’t be fixed because the possession of arms coupled with an obsession about “national security” are both embedded in the core fabric of the country. Stricter gun laws will only act as a flame retardant, me thinks.

Pic © owner unknown

Low life expectancy

That big Dec 27 snowstorm which I mentioned in my post of that day turned out to be ‘historical’. Montreal had the largest snowfall in a single day ever, 45 cm. Since then, we’ve had many days of rain and mild weather (aka around 8 C) and not only is there virtually no more of that storm’s snow, but not much also of what was already on the ground at that date. Crazy weather. (add-on: it didn’t last)

Radiating

For the third year in a row, a Canadian (read Québec) film is among the top five nominees for the “Best film in a foreign language” Oscar. Could be worse.

Much of the same

Much hoopla about gay marriage and gay adoption in France these days. We hear the same old arguments about these measures being a lethal attack against civilization. Like the ideology-blinded Republicans in the U.S., these opponents won’t bother looking around in those other countries, like Canada, or large cities, like New York or Mexico City, where these measures are already in place and who are still very much civilized thank you.

View from a former outsider

Dany Laferrière is a Haitian-born author (1953) who fled the Duvalier dictatorship when he was in his mid-twenties, with Montreal as his destination. (I’ve mentioned him before). During the thirty some years since his arrival here, he also lived part-time in Miami. I finished his last book recently, “L’art presque perdu de ne rien faire” (The Almost Forgotten Art Of Doing Nothing). They say that there are no better eyes to gauge a society than those of an outsider. This small chapter from that book is so much us.

A Northerner

I come from a country of eternal summer. And for over three decades, I have been living in a country of which poet Gilles Vigneault says that «this is not a country, it is winter». So I left summer for winter. But it’s in Montreal that I felt summer for the first time. To know summer one must have crossed winter, I never ceased to repeat. And yet it’s in the heat of Miami that I had the strongest nostalgia of cold. One day when it was warmer than usual, I felt a frantic desire for ice. The call of the cold. The icicle, like a salmon, rose into that dark corner of my memory to remind me that I was also a man of the North. But being a man of the North is not only to be able to withstand very low temperatures, it is especially to be obsessed to the point of never losing sight of winter. Even in summer. When we speak of a good or a bad summer, we don’t do it with regards to that summer itself, we simply ask ourselves if we stored enough heat to face the coming winter. We talk about winter as the French speak of gastronomy or wine, just goes to say. When people ask me, as they do with all those who were not born here, what struck me the most upon arriving in Montreal, I reply that it is not winter but all which surrounds it. What one must know about the cold. Winter sports (skiing, hockey, snowshoeing). Movies whose story takes place in winter (Kamouraska). Weather reports that we hear several times a day without ever feeling any fatigue. The endless discussions, standing in the kitchen with a glass of wine in hand, about the Stanley Cup, Quebec’s independence and the survival of French in North America. The fact that the mood of an entire city depends on a few more degrees. Which suggests that it is easier not to notice an elephant in a corridor than to miss winter. A man of the North, it is the one who is surprised each year of the return of winter. One only has to see how excited the first snowstorm is annually greeted by people (adults as well as children) just as by the media. It makes front page in the dailies. And at least three reports in the evening news. We get excited to the point that a tourist might wonder if it’s the first time that it snows in this country. .

Free at last

It’s a little presumptuous of mine to use this famous Martin Luther King quote, but it’s to signal that as of yesterday morning (Jan. 17) I have been released from that readaptation hospital where I was imprisoned (sort of ) since December 7, where I was transferred from a much bigger prison, Hôpital St-Luc, not far away, and where my three-month stay was anything from resort-like.

My ward (10th floor) at the readaptation hospital was some kind of international cuckoo’s nest, with many of its around 25 patients not Canadian-born, and most older than me. Those who have been following this blog for some while may be tempted to comment that as per cuckoos are concerned, who am I to talk! This floor cared for patients having neurological problems. I was there because of my arm, but most others were people who had suffered a stroke (ACV in French). Many had speech problems and/or were confused or suffered from short memory loss and other cognitive problems. Many were also incontinent (I spare you the details). Some didn’t speak French or barely English, so when they talked to nurses or attendants, god knows who understood what. At first, the woman who was sharing my room was a nice person who didn’t talk much, which was fine with me since she was aphasic (because of a stroke) so when she talked it was very relevant about a certain reality, except that this reality was in her head only. She also had other heart problems and a pacemaker. One day she was sent to a real hospital for an operation to her heart and did not come back. She was replaced by a 92-year old Ukrainian who couldn’t talk except for grumbles that only his wife understood, didn’t speak French, couldn’t eat or drink anything, water included, because of a temporary (well if a couple of months is temporary) kind of dysphagia (stuff would go direct into his lungs) so he was fed through a tube connected to his belly and his stomach, whose regular maintenance made me so happy in the middle of the nights. He also had a bunch of numbers tatooed on one arm which I learned were a souvenir from three and a half years passed in Hitler’s resorts, namely Auschwitz-Birkenau, Mittelbau-Dora and another one whose name I forget. On top of that, he was partly incontinent. Four or five days before I left, he was all smiles since he was finally permitted to start eating and drinking again through his mouth, slowly at first, but still the same… Then, the second day before I left, he started peeing blood. In the evening, he was whisked by ambulance to my old home for three months, Hôpital St-Luc, where he had a heart attack soon after arrival, probably due to heavy blood loss, I was told by his wife the next day. She also told me that prospects were not good and that for some time now, he was on the wharf waiting for the train going up there to frickin stop and pick him up. Life is great. Then again… In economics, they talk about the cost of living. Maybe it could be applied to one’s health also.

I kind of found it strange that my hospital ordeal ended as it had started, with perfumes of death lingering around. My first roommate, before all hell broke loose, was a fiftyish man who was originally from France and who, him, had no speech problems, and spoke very well thank you. He was lectured and we had very interesting conversations, at least when they were not changing his bedsheats and everything associated, since he had frequent bouts of baby-like yellow, liquid and very smelly diarrhea, and was bed-stranded. I learned quickly that I had to forget about being fussy. It helped later when it was my turn to have my ass wiped. Anyhow, we appreciated each other’s company. But the thing is, this man had pancreas cancer which had metastized all across his body. One day, ambulance workers came to pick him up to bring him home. When he passed in front of me on the stretcher, I took his hand and told him how I would really miss him, to which he replied that it was the same for him. I know I also shed a tear, and of what I remember, his ex-wife who was there and who came every day, did the same when I told her goodbye. Life is great. Then again…

Some days later, I was hanging between life and death in an intensive care unit, connected to a brand new and sophisticated respiratory machine of which Friend and my family members present were told I was the first one ever to be connected to. The French man had probably some kind of equipment in his home to help him go through his last days. He’s most likely dead today. I’m [still] alive. Life is great. Then again…

Coming back to the readaptation hospital, as per the medical personel went, nurses, auxiliary nurses and attendants, it was a cross between a branch of Haïti, a smaller branch of Central and especially South America, a nice lad from Mexico City, two hidjab-wearing Muslim women, and a varied but not very large selection of “pure wool” Quebecers. Some kind of Babel Tower. Pretty much Montreal, in fact. The one I like, anyways.

I’m home again for the weekend. Not really any time to post. I prefer checking out your own posts since September (of the recently defunct year )

And may 2013 bring you the very best.

I was back home this weekend. I thought I would not have much to do compared to the last one. Bad assessment. For all purposes, I only had Saturday afternoon to roam the internet. I should be back home, hopefully, for next weekend. Meanwhile, at the hospital, the opening hours where are the computers depend on the phases of the moon apparently. Last week it was only open on Thursday afternoon.

I still have lots of fun things to do before I leave for the hospital this evening like washing the dishes and similar playful activities so until nexy Saturday it’s gonna be an arrivederci, goodbye, viszlat, adios or au revoir, depending on your cultural persuasion. Unless I can access internet in the meantime, of course.

Back in the penitentiary. Scheduled to return home tomorrow fo the New Year’s weekend, as last week. We have a big snowstorm today so at what time and how (Brother or taxi) remains to be determined. Yesterday the computer service was closed here so I couldn’t post until today, already that they are only open between 13h00 and 17h00.