the fear and loathing decade....

For some reason, I completely missed the fact that we are about to hit a New Years milestone.  It took being surrounded by year end lists, when i realized a whole decade had scampered by.  Could that be?  Has it really been 10 years since we all fretted over a massive Y2K meltdown that was supposed to trample over the wires and ways of computer technology?  I guess so.  Gee, I still had a little one in diapers back then, and now he's out of my arms, having travelled to Costa Rica to attend a month long international village for 11 and 12 year olds!  I also had a little girl who rarely left my side and clung to me like a baby Koala.  Now, she's juggling work and school and her network of friends. 

I've been driving backwards since I learned that we're about to stamp this decade as complete, allowing the events which will define it to filter up.  And the more I thought about it, the more I could see how easily this collection of 10 years could easily be labelled "the fear and loathing decade......"  Events beyond our control, were foisted upon us and thrown into our lexicon and lives so radically that we are still reeling and dealing with them, the most obvious being the events of September 11, 2001.   Though terrorism was not a new concept, it truly became a personalized one as the fear factor ratcheded up to hyperventilation mode.  All of a sudden, it felt like we plummeted into a global cat and mouse, hide and seek game with evil.   We watched our leaders puff out their chests and make pronouncements about catching Bin Laden and his boys...... to eradicate Islamic fundamentalism, to target underground cells of disenfranchised Muslims through brute force. 

Bin Laden still rules the game of hide and seek. 

We have grown in awareness and weariness as the decade tick tocked away.  Afghanistan, Iraq, bombings in Indonesia, Bali, Spain, London, weapons of mass destruction were never ever found.  War children, extreme poverty, natural disasters where thousands perished despite the ability to prevent it through early detection.  Our anger increased as we learned of serious hot spots around the globe where violence and brutality against other religions, children and women. Patriotism was used shamefully to guilt many who expressed their opinions against the violent retaliatons.  Politicians continued to stumble and sputter while we became more aware of the smoke and mirrors they held up.

Sadly, Islamic terrorism reared its head again on Christmas day sending the airline industry into a tailspin.  Airports are full of weary angry people desparately trying to get on a plane to seek escape.  Flying will never, ever be the same again.  Our sense of safety will never be the same again. 

SARS, Swine, Bird......FLU!!!!  We became paralyzingly fearful of the pandemics which reared their gut wrenching illnesses which spread as fast as a sneeze in flight. Warnings became the order of the day.  Toronto became a pariah.  It took years for that city to regain its reputation as a tourist town.  We take this fear and loathing issue as well into the next decade, though many of us are now innoculated.  For the time being. Don't you wish you owned stocks in hand sanitizer and face mask making companies?

Politics has also added to the brewing fear and loathing felt in the pits of our collective guts. Has any politician maintained their full integrity?  Leadership tanked globally.  Lets hope it was just a bad gene pool??

Walls went up........a barbed wire prison the size of a city was the "answer" to an eternal war of hatred.  Piracy off the coast of Somalia.  AIDS killed.  Warlords maimed. We became consumed by raging talking heads........on the left and on the right who believe in their own brilliance as they rant on and on and on throughout the mainstream media and in our newer forms of sharing news and editorials.  Most of the best known blogs are lightening rods for nasty loathing and skin crawling opinions.  Scandals, fraudulent business schemes and blatant conflicts of interest ran rampant during this decade.  If the 70's was the ME Decade, then the first decade of the 21rst century has to be called the ME ME ME decade.....

It's a sad, sad state of affairs we are pulling into the next decade.  Reading about the background of the latest terrorist, who came from a well respected, well off family........ who was schooled in International schools, I was struck by a gut wrenching fear that on most days I can keep some control over.  Why?  Because despite the fact Bin Laden and his boys have targetted disenfranchised humans in war torn African countries and in poverty stricken neighbourhoods filled with angry young men with no future, it was a privileged radical fundamentalist who had chosen that direction, who had consumed the hatred, who tried to blow up the plane flying from Amsterdam to Detroit. It made me realize just how doomed we really are, and how we are basically held hostage to their sneaky tactics to kill. No one is safe. 

Fear and loathing............sadly, it will continue long after we put this decade to bed.

Tomorrow, I will take on another angle......... Because as much as it has been an emotionally heaving 10 years, in a negative sense, it also was one that has beautiful blooms too.  It was bad, but not all bad.  

Sweet Amazing Gracie

Ahhhhh.....how could you ever walk away from such an adorable little puppy face? Sweet surrendering brown eyes.......Well, guess what? You can't. Why? Because she comes bounding after you with a demonic growl intent on piercing your latest nylons, pyjama bottoms, coat, or even your stiff striped rubber boots. She can't leave well enough alone, our Gracie.

You don't believe me do you? Look at her! She's a monster, all curled up and sleeping after a good chomping romp dreaming of catching squirrels and eating unmentionables. You just want to pick her up, put her on your lap and stroke her puppy belly. I dare you to put your face close to hers.......she'll nip your nose and grab at your earrings! Our sweet Gracie isn't a lap dog, oh no! She's a defiant sassy canine who devours dried up pigs ears in one scarfing like it was one piece of kibble. She inhales her dinner and slops up her water and then promptly PEES on our other dog, Lily's bed while staring you down!
Ah, but who can resist the puppy paws, all soft and stumbly? At lunchtime today during our midday walk, Gracie bounded down the street after Lily only to hit a patch of thick slush and splayed out in a ballet move similar to Bambi on ice. My heart leapt for her. "Poor little thing," I thought, "just learning how to manoeuver winter's wonder".....well, until she promptly got up and bounded at me in attack mode! yeah, yeah she just wanted to play puddle jumping with the Mistress. I WAS DRESSED FOR WORK!! Oh well, I've gone to work with baby yuks strewn on the shoulder of my suit jacket before, what's a bunch of dirty paws on the trench coat?

Evidence of her lovely sweetness......the "playful" attack on the Lady of the house....Miss Lily, who up until this fall was a calm reliable friend who never left the front yard on her own, who never growled and would let any sticky fingered snot nosed kid to climb all over her. Afraid of the dark, loud noises, and her own shadow, Lily has never needed a leash even on a busy street. However, she has found her inner alpha dog........and as much as it goes against her Quaker like persona, she has had to resort to some intense TEACHING.

Unfortunately, this seems to happen in the middle of my living room which has just about been trashed completely. Every piece of wicker is munched.....sticks and chewed up errant pencils, torn up tissues, boxes and mittens......shoes too........all seem to get dragged into the munched up rugs. All pales in comparison to how much grief poor Lily has endured.......and embarrassment too! This puppy has no boundaries or proprieties.........

We never knew Lily could make a face like that! And believe it or not, they were playing. In fact while I was taking these photos this evening, everytime the camera would make a ding sound, Gracie would stop and pounce on me as I sat on the floor. Then as I was laughing at her shocking energy pointed at me, she would turn back to poor Lily and pounce on her again.

Sweet, irreverant, a pain in the ass puppy. Maybe one day she'll live up to her name? If she doesn't I may be the first one charged with strangling Grace.

Sweet dreams.............and may we never judge a book by it's cover ever again.

The thematic photography prompt this week over at Carmi's site is sweet..... For more sugary pics, click here.

restlessness..........

Restlessness has the capacity to dwarf meaning with it's unrelenting chatter. It's like a hum you can't shake..........a tinnitus of the soul. It's always there niggling away and if you aren't aware of it's presence, you can easily feed it the wrong food.

March has arrived like a lion, and if there's anything to that myth, there bloody well better be a lamb waiting at the end of it. More snow, cold winds, grey skies this weekend........... the view outside my window is a scene right out of a Bergman movie.

I'm tapped out of anything uniquely interesting to write about. Restlessness is winning, which is also a sign that I'm almost over this crazy flu bug. My energy is returning......not fully, but almost...... gotta find my optimism again. It's stuck under 5 frigging feet of snow!

Tomorrow, back to the grind. The month of March sucks.

Welcome To Vancouver, Canada

Five minutes after this picture was taken of this man, he was dead. He was killed by a taser attack, and an RCMP knee to the neck after he was completely doubled over on the floor writhing in pain from the electronic jolt resonating through his body. He vibrated and yelled in agony after he was shot not once, but twice by an over zealous RCMP officer.........one of four who had arrived to "deal" with this distraught tourist from Poland.

Mr. Dziekanski, 40, did not speak English, and had been at the airport for more than 10 hours, 6 of which he spent in the baggage handling area wandering around unnoticed. UNNOTICED! No one took the time to approach this man, who most likely was in a state of anxiety and for some reason disoriented to a point where he couldn't find his way to the exit area where his mother was anxiously waiting for him. If he looked anything like he did in this picture, I would think he wouldn't be blending into the hoardes of travellers stopping to pick up their luggage and leaving.

What does this say about the security of the Vancouver Airport?? If a man can wander through the passenger arrivals areas for 10 hours after disembarking from his plane without anyone noticing, how safe is this airport? In this age where airport security is supposed to have been beefed and tightened........and a man walks around aimlessly for 10 freaking hours??!!

These questions however are minor compared to the other unanswered questions.................

Mr. Dziekanski was killed on October 14th. The details of his death at the time seemed to indicate that he was completely out of control, confrontational, dangerous.........hence the need to taser him twice. Fortunately, his story and the truth was captured by a witness who video taped the incident.........from the moment of this picture to his tragic death. Like millions of others, I sat in horror watching the video on the National news last night.

I am at a loss for words to describe it.

It was true that this man was agitated at the beginning of the video. He threw the table he was holding. He three a computer, while talking in his mother tongue. At the same time, 4 RCMP officers (there original story indicated there were 3 of them................I counted there were 4) approached him, and Mr. Dziekanski seemed to calmed down. As he backed up to a counter, facing the officers and not acting threatening or confrontational at all.............simply upset and bewildered.......he was tasered which brought him to his knees right away.

I have never seen the physical response to a human being tasered. It's sickening and completely inhumane. Why they thought they had to zap him again is completely beyond me when they didn't have a reason to taser him in the first place.

His mother had been told that there were no records that he had gotten off the plane?? How can that be? She went home believing that he missed the flight, only to be woken by a 2 in the morning phone call from the airport authority to return to the airport. Unbeknownst to her, she arrived to identify her dead son........and to hear a made up cover up story of how her son was completely out of control deranged and died during a struggle with Canada's finest.

This is a story the RCMP will not be able to cover up. It's been caught on camera. Though they are doing their "very best" to spin it like they are known to do, its not washing away the blood. Tonight listening to AS it Happens on the CBC, one V.P. (where the hell are the Presidents/CEO's to deal with this??? Pansies!) after another stammer and stall and gag over their own words...........

They are going to get to the truth of the matter. They are never going to let this happen again. They are sorry and feel so badly for the mother. The video is only one side of the story.....an investigation will allow the parties involved to share their side........OH EXCEPT MR. DZIEKANSKI. HE'S DEAD!

Good thing we can count on a thorough inquiry and investigation into this unforgettable incident. What? Is it true?? The RCMP investigate themselves?? Sounds like a big wanking circle to me.

May this man rest in peace and may his dignity be posthumously restored.

May tasers be banned forever. They are glorified torture devices.

AND, may a whole bunch of VP's, CEO's, RCMP officers and a few baggage security staff land in the unemployment line at their local Human Resources office. Let's hope they dont have to wait too long for service. You never know what could happen.