songs for time!

!!!

can you beeee-lieve i've had a blog for almost a year!! well not really, but we're nearing the end of the year in which i started this blog. and it was certainly winter when i began. which makes me feel like representatively, a year. right?

so i am pretty excited about 2009. 

for one, i will get to use my camilla engman calendar! finally.

i didn't have a calendar last year. but for 2009, i have two. and they hang side by side on a little panel (i don't know what the panel conceals. isn't that funny? i just realized that now. and i can't check because i'm at my parents' house. later.), and they've been there for about a month.

the other calendar is art from cape dorset. it's really gorgeous and a totally appreciable size. seriously. the size definitely influenced my purchasing of it, one frivolous afternoon. 

the camilla one i have had since at least september. but it's been just sitting looking exciting, yet perpetually and mournfully closed on my bookshelf. a couple of weeks ago (i think probably when i bought the other calendar. that was a mistake actually. a mistake. i brought lunch to work, because i really can't afford to be buying all that food at lunch, but i got hungry at 10 30 and had brought something to eat, so ate it. but then i had a half hour for lunch, and no food. forgot a book so i thought i'd just walk up roncesvalles. accidentally drop way too much cash on unnecessary additional calendar from Another Story Bookshop [but they give you POINTS! towards new books!!]), i decided it was reasonable to start displaying the beautiful painting for january. maybe i can find it. 

this is it! 

at least as far i as can remember. if i was at home, i'd be sure. but i'm not. 

for two, what's not to get excited about. a year to designate and commit and design and observe and something something something you'll mistake as profound. 

so, x's and o's brothers, friends and lovers! to time! 

hahaha 

toasts' are lame.

and often uncomfortable. 

always so goddamn sentimental. getting at me through the same angle as a standing ovation to make me burst into tears. 

keeping everyone warm

some

here's a bit of that article

"That said, what I find most exciting about what is going on right now - beyond just getting rid of Harper, which is exciting in and of itself - is that we have this opportunity to show what proportional representation (PR) would look like, because all of this talk that this is a coup is a joke.

What is being proposed by this coalition is much closer to representative democracy than what we have right now, which is a government that has [slightly more than] 35 per cent of the popular vote in a turnout that was historically low, of 59 per cent of Canadian voters, which means that even though the Tories won more seats they had fewer actual votes than in the last election.

I think it is really important to talk about democracy, about what it actually means in this period. In some ways I think it is even more important than talking about the policies, because our electoral system is broken. Because of the Tories' extraordinary opportunism and terrible calculation we now have an opportunity to see a better version of democracy and see more people represented in government.

To me the best case scenario that could come out of this is, one, you get the coalition, and, two, the NDP uses this moment to really launch a national discussion about why we need PR and that that becomes one of the things that comes out of this crisis.

Now, they don't have the mandate for that right now, but we could come out of this with a national referendum on proportional representation. People might actually like it, which would be really, really exciting."

more excitement

read this article by naomi klein for an actual informed opinion on what's happening with all of this (versus my emotions)

a note from our sponsors

in light of the exciting and rather unprecedented (only in the sense that who woulda thought any of those old guys would actually have the gall to make a move on the Conservative's sad minority government) rallying behind our, remember, parliamentary democracy up on the Hill in Ottawa, i invite you to watch this incredibly wicked documentary on Hugo Chavez & Venezuela called The Revolution Will Not Be Televised.

to me it's like all of a sudden it seems that democracy here has managed to retain a shred of meaning despite the 8 year appropriation of the word by all nations, including this one, subscribing to the rhetoric surrounding the "war on terror". i'm wondering right now if the hijacking and subsequent attempts at redefintion of the term has moved people to forget that it has come along way since Plato. the brand of democracy we accede to, courtesy of Her Majesty (!!), is based on a document constructed in order to maintain a certain degree of fairness and representation in the supreme ruling of this country. which is where this very formal 'vote of non-confidence' procedure and possibility of a coalition government taking over the House is coming from. much to our surprise. or mine at least, because i'm fairly certain i've never even read the constitution. so sad. have you?

my roommate and watched a lot of news tonight, the best line was maybe Rex Murphy's nod to the 'separatists' being what holds together the propspective federal government.

though we are sort of not into this label for the Bloc. could we move on, please?

but seriously, this could be the smartest thing Gilles Duceppe ever does for Quebec; gaining the support and trust from Canadians still unnecessarily nervous about a separation that will likely never reach a number of yes-votes even close to the support garnered in 1995. all the while still maintaining the integrity of Quebec as a unique nation. maybe this is a unifying move!

and really. i cannot believe how Stephen Harper's slick move to get himself re-elected before people started getting really riled up about Obama being chosen as P.E. of the U.S and our own potential for 'change', is actually, actually and seriously, backfiring on him. eat that.