edwards block

One hates to be critical of the fundraising efforts of a hospital in this age of chronic government underfunding, but I just can’t help it in the case of St. Paul’s annual “Lights of Hope” campaign.

Annually at this time of year, I hope that the display wil not be re-erected, and am always disappointed. If you haven’t seen it, it is comprised of a wall of scaffolding, such as the type used in the repair of leaky condos, except without the synthetic covering that prevents moisture from hitting the exposed surfaces during the repairs. Here is a photograph that I stole from a website that actually promotes this visual assault as a tourist attraction (click for a larger view):

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This is a picture from last year, so the new addition this year is not visible. The gap that you can see to the right of the tree is a tunnel through the scaffolding, allowing pedestrians access to the hospital entrance. This year, the tunnel has been rounded and filled with white lights. It’s rather a disturbing feature, not so much because the healthy people who walk through it are apt to expect to encounter a Siegfried and Roy show upon reaching the interior, but because if sick people walk through – not an entirely unlikely possibility, considering the nature of the business – they may in their general terror mistake the white lights for the entranceway to heaven upon their demise (however hellish the scene).

I’m not sure what’s worse – seeing it at night, all aglow, or during the day, when it looks like a poorly assembled construction site. And this in honour of Christ’s birth? The poor old Sisters of Providence must surely be spinning in their graves, their life work having been turned over to the management of an ad agency of questionable taste (like there are any ad agencies of impeccable taste!).

As someone who is a bit cynical about politics, I can’t help but think that the wretched display is a plot by the provincial ministry of health to engender public support for the proposed move of the hospital to the Terminal street flats, which is apparently being opposed by local activists, despite the fact that the local activists have also opposed efforts to increase the size of the hospital on the existing site, claiming that the shade created by a tall building would darken the character of the neighbourhood. You see? By blinding locals with this high-wattage monstrosity, the government will not only make West Enders craving for the relative darkness of a tower, but justify the building of additional dams to generate electricity, which is in higher demand for some inexplicable reason.

Here’s an idea for next year’s campaign: promise local residents that the Christmas scaffolding won’t be erected if sufficient funds are raised by November 15th. Even I would contribute to that worthy goal!

It’s a good thing that I’m technically homeless right now and taking assorted house-sitting gigs. My transience will make it more difficult for George Bush’s B1 bombers to find me.

Did you catch the news today? According to the Daily Mirror (as reported by the Globe and Mail), immediate-past-empire Prime Minister Tony Blair talked current-empire President George W. Bush out of bombing the Al-Jazeera offices in Qatar. The U.S. government thinks that the Al-Jazeera television station promotes anti-U.S. sentiments. Al-Jazeera offices in Iraq and Afghanistan have already been “accidentally” bombed by the US military.

Even Frank Magazine didn’t face that kind of hostility from Brian Mulroney.

Attention CIA: The Calgary building shown in the centre (sorry – center) of this satellite photo has a sign out front that says “Conservative Party of Canada”, but it’s really a front for Al Jazeera in Canada. Use the information as you will.

To the piteous woman in the silver mini-van in Pitt Meadows, who honked at me, shook her fist, and exposed me to the most hatred filled countenance I’ve seen since ‘Dawn of the Dead’:

After you roared up behind me, you had to wait five seconds for me to turn right before you could charge past. Five whole seconds! Was that really such an imposition on your life? Was Wal-Mart holding a time-limited sale on plastic Adirondack patio chairs that you just couldn’t miss? I realise that life in the suburbs can be dreary for a Jesus-whipped ex-cheerleader, but that’s no reason to take out your hostility on unsuspecting cyclists. Does the phrase ’share the road’ ring a bell?

By the way – love the hair! Who’s your topiarist?

I, Edward, defender of forests, eater of soy products, and catcher-releaser of bathtub spiders, have brutalized to the point of death one small, defenseless mouse.

I was coming home from school, about to put the key in the front door of my abode-of-the-week, when a small mouse ran past my foot. Before any thoughts could be presented to my frontal cortex, some long suppressed instinct, perhaps, leapt from the depths of my evolutionary filing cabinet and gave it a quick kick. It flew up and smacked against the wall, fell to the ground, and lay on its back, legs twitching in the air, clearly badly injured. About then my liberal concern reappeared, and in a moment of clarity I knew what the proper course of action was.

I stepped on it, ending its misery, and kicked it into the garden. Then I went into the house and had lunch.

Oh well, better that quick death than a long, slow death on one of those hellishly torturous sticky pads.

Speaking of senseless violence and callous disregard for life, I see in the news that the United States Senate this morning voted 97-0 to provide George W. Bush with another $50 billion with which to prosecute his war on terror, bringing the total official cost of this project to $350 billion. That’s $350,000,000,000.00!

However, it is not just the unimaginable sum of money that astounds me, but that the senate vote was unanimous. Every single Democratic senator – and there are some 44 of them – voted in favour of the bill, except one, who did not vote. If this is an example of the official opposition to George Bush, America is in worse shape than I thought.

A few facts:

• Budget projections from the White House show that, by 2010, the annual military budget will have risen to $485 billion (Apparently the war on terror is expected to last a while.)
• Total military budget (estimated using White House projections) for George W. Bush’s presidency: $3.19 trillion ($12,000.00 or so per American).
• Total US budget expense for 2005: $ 2.48 trillion
• Total US budget revenue for 2005: $ 1.49 trillion
• Total 2005 Deficit: -$ 987 billion
• Total US Federal debt (to Oct08/05) $7,983,343,398,770.02 (That’s almost $8 trillion)
• Biggest US defense contractor: Lockheed Martin
• Estimated annual revenue that defense contractor Lockheed Martin receives from the federal treasury: $23.7 billion
• Corporation that Bush, as Governor of Texas, reportedly tried to give a contract to run the Texas welfare system before he had to relent in the face of public protests and an unfavorable regulatory ruling by the Clinton administration: Lockheed Martin
• Corporation whose VP was apparently a finance chair of the 2000 Bush for President campaign: Lockheed Martin
• Estimated number of Iraqi civilians killed in the war on terror to date: 26,323
• Cost to kill each Iraqi: $13.3 million
• Barrels of Iraqi oil imported to the US every day: 615,000
• Barrels of Canadian oil imported to the US every day: 1,624,000
• Estimated cost to kill all Canadians, should we become a threat to the US oil supply: $398 trillion

Well, I am now in my second week of school. In some ways it’s like being back in high school, except for the absence of physical violence, insane faculty and puberty-driven angst. There are more than a few first year students who still haven’t left the high (or even junior high) school mindset behind, though I’m sure they’ll start getting over it once they’ve had their first grade report.

One of the more common annoyances are students who consistently come to class late, who not only interrupt the lecture with their arrival, but some of whom are oblivious enough to make five minutes worth of noise as they get settled. And let’s not forget cell phones – the last time I was in school, these didn’t even exist, except in the shoe of an inept television spy. In fact, we still had a black rotary phone at home when I graduated.

Another thing that irks me is the speed at which some students travel through the halls. Wandering through life in an apathetic stupor seems to be an epidemic only slightly more prevalent than gathering to chat in front of doorways and at the top of flights of stairs.

Oh well. I can imagine what I was like at 17, so perhaps this is just the revenge of the gods.

As expected, I am something of a geriatric, in relative terms. Not only am I older than everyone in all of my classes, I suspect that I am also older than all of my instructors, including my philosophy instructor, who holds a PhD. However, I actually find it all very amusing. While my neighbours have earphones dangling from their collars, Hello Kitty! pencil cases, or designer clothes and hair, and chat about boy bands or muscle cars, I read the Globe and Mail and peer over the rims of my glasses at them curiously. They are not all eighteen, though. My philosophy class has a few old timers that are in their upper 20’s.