From shoes to Ugandan war children

Ugh. So stressed today.  I'm trying to wrap up a jillion things at work before taking next week off and of course I got hit with a bunch of requests, which I love working on, but which are stressful.  


Then I ended up crying at my desk no less than 2 times, a steady, salty leak from my peepers that I tried to furtively wipe away to avoid any unnecessary commentary from my office mates which would no doubt have sent me spiraling into full-on wailing.  The first set of leaks was as a result of an email exchange with my mum, the second set was after I watched that Kony 2012 video (Twitter hashtag #stopkony), which is EPIC long for an internet video (29 minutes!) but was only uploaded like, 3 days ago and has 40 million hits.  Here it is:

I came across it cuz John Green, my hero, posted about it.  So I watched the video and of course was swayed by it's slick construction and message (can you IMAGINE someone kidnapping the Big Yam and forcing the little Boobla to be a child soldier?!) and got all weepy.  

I followed it up by reading the inevitable educated liberal backlash (you know, the kind that results in crippling inactivity) like this article from The Atlantic (note: I agree with and frequently invoke the author's point about the dangers of western banal sentimentality when speaking of the developed world, thereby continuing to put my training in post-colonial studies to good use) and this one in The Washington Post and now I'm right back where I started, which is knowing a little bit about a pretty bad situation happening outside of my own privileged sphere in the world and paralyzed by the opposing forces of wanting to do good and not knowing enough to be able to be a true agent of change into self-loathing and doubt.  Which is basically the calling card of the educated liberal elite.  Sigh.

I don't know how people do it.  I barely have it in me to stay on top of Ontario news, which I need to for my job.  Let alone Canadian news, let alone what's happening in the REST OF THE G-D WORLD.  Let alone attain a nuanced, critical, educated understanding of a particular issue enough that I would be deemed to have the "authority" to be able to speak on it.  If that was the case, the only topics I'm qualified to talk about are:

- Pinterest

- the Big Yam

- which ramen restaurant in the GTA serves the best tonkotsu

- the relative merits of AYCE Japanese restaurants in the greater golden horseshoe

- why Jazz music is the refuge of the damned (and by "damned" I mean tragic nerdy guys)

It's just so demoralizing.  So, even as I so fervently wish that I could be a proactive, smart, contributing member of civil society (like so many people I admire!), I end up reaching that point of cognitive saturation where it's just easier for me to watch Top Chef or like, think about where I want to eat dinner with the Goosetang Clan tomorrow than do anything that will make any real change (however minute, at least it's not so self-gratifyingly directed) in the world.  

It's bigtime depressing.  BIGTIME.

Edit: The Dotytron coincidentally and independently also watched that video today and we talked about it, and as usual, he helped me to crystallize and formulate some thoughts on the above.  To wit: the critiques of the Invisible Children movement miss the point.  All the movement is hoping to accomplish is to harness the short attention spans and vapidity of the Facebook generation towards a common goal, within a short, fixed deadline (the only kind that exists today, the only kind that is sustainable today) and then leave the politicking and the logistics to the experts.  It's pretty smart and savvy and neatly tailors the activity to the right people - so you let the social networking dummy masses generate the momentum to push policy makers to then turn over the details to the experts.  

The post-colonial theory discourse of the banality of sentimentality doesn't necessarily hold true here.  In this case, it's different than when Paolo Friere or Gayatri Spivak talk about enabling the disenfranchised "Other" to attain their own autonomy free from the paternalism of the northern elite.  Friere and Spivak and the like are talking about more insidious and, some could argue, dangerous systemic power dynamics than in the case of the LRA and its actions.  In the case of the LRA it becomes a question of human immediacy.  The citizens of Uganda (by all accounts) don't have a conflicted, complicated relationship with the LRA - the LRA is terrorizing the people and the rest of Uganda don't have the means to do anything about it, but want to.  Big difference.  I think.  I have to think this through some more, but I can say that I find The Atlantic's critique to be fatuous.  

The Big Yam had his first visit with the pediatric dentist today.  His canine teeth are coming in okay and his molars seem fine...so it's just a matter of monitoring.  The dentist said the canines should act as placeholders to prevent shifting and there shouldn't be any impact on his speech development.  Basically, loosing his four bottom baby teeth shouldn't impact his speech any more than if he had lost them in the regular course of life, in their proper  time.  He can eat everything and we have to see the pediatric dentist every 6 months to keep tabs on the situation.  Phew!

As a reward, I jettisoned our dinner plans in favour of Amaya takeout and cupcakes from Bobette and Belle.  My book club was supposed to meet tonight at the Harbord House but people were sick so in the end, we called it.  I'm glad.  On a rainy cold day like today (with hail!) Indian food and cupcakes at home with the boys is exactly what the kind of restorative measures I need.

Fin.

regular guy voice

zomg! last night was insane! i biked home in the freezing rain and sleet and it was awful and my toes were cold but i had to do the grocery shopping so i did. i had my paniers on my bike so i didn't take a bag from the bulk store but carried out all the bulging bags of bulk goods in my arms. made it almost to my bike and then SPLAT! the bag of dates fell and EXPLODED in the road while i stood for what seemed like agonizing moments trying to decide whether to pick them up or not. then this creaky old man (like, seriously old...) came up and sweetly offered to hold my bags while i collected the dates and when i demurred, he said "no one will know!" lol! then i tugged on my bike and discovered that i had forgotten to LOCK IT UP. i could have lost my bike last night!!! then i came home in a fit and fury and totally damp and bone-cold and foul owly and told my tale of woe to the dotytron who said that he could top it with HIS story of being hijacked by CTV news on his way out from canadian tire with our natural ice melter. he was so zonked that he couldn't even be funny or ironic or taking the piss and it was plaguing him that he basically stood there with his mouth agape blindly answering questions like, "and why did you choose the natural ice melter?" "do you find that you're MORE prepared for winter this year than last year?" with his regular guy/everybody loves raymond voice and responded with total regular guy stuff like, "because my wife tells me to." LOL! it was really amusing how upset he was that he was going to be regular guy on national tv.

further to my post yesterday re: bedding saving your life. BEHOLD OUR $20 FLANNEL SHEETS FROM TARGET:

ZOMG. it's like sleeping in a warm cloud. i was WILLING myself to go to bed at a decent time and not dive in. i made the bed as soon as i got home and we kept looking at it longingly until it was a seemly hour to retire. so cute! so warm! so fluffy! so seasonal!

so i was nosing around on the shiny squirrel (where i got the print of the silhouette of my hair) and there's a NEW ONE. that looks like me with bangs! lol!

isn't that hilarious? and check out this ADORABLE blanca gomez print...if i ever have a baby girl, i'm so getting this for her room:



i was fiendishly excited all day at the first snowfall and first bitter cold of the season. this despite discovering that my faithful no-name ugly, heavy, winter boots had a hole in the sole on the way to work this morning. ugh! time to throw them out. i had harbored hopes that they might be salvageable when i discovered a small crack where the rubber meets the nylon near the end of winter last year - but a hole in the sole is not something you can cope with. luckily, i had the foresight to buy an uglier pair of boots last year. however, they're nowhere near as nice (i'm using that term loosely) and functional as the last pair.

guys, i freakin' love winter. love it. i love being too cold and having to get warm again. i love winter foods and winter activities (staying in, eating aforementioned winter foods, being cozy). all i wanted to do when i got home today was make tuna noodle casserole, make a batch of gingersnap cookies, and then change into my flannel jammies and hunker bunker down with the dotytron and knit. and i'm getting to do JUST THAT!

this dinner was a little dangerous because i'm capable of eating a freakishly large amount of tuna noodle casserole (especially when it's topped with brown, buttered, challah cubes) AND caramelized brussel sprouts. can you believe that before i met my friend T in university i had never had a brussel sprouts? one day i was over at T's house and she was talking about boiling up some frozen ones and tossing them in butter (she was a strict vegetarian at the time) and the THOUGHT of little wee crucifers glistening with butter so enraptured me that i set out to make them. and there's been no turning back. i love them so.

on sunday night we watched "two lovers" - after nearly cracking and ordering an exorbitantly priced movie off rogers on demand. what stopped us was not knowing our pin and being too lazy to find out. i'm not familiar with james grey's work. this film was my film friend D's favorite film of 2009 (barring any late contenders - which he doesn't anticipate.) it's a quiet little character study of a jewish guy leonard (phoenix) who works at his parents' dry cleaning company and attempted suicide once. he's caught up between two women who represent the two possibilities open to him - sandra (a luminous vinessa shaw), who stands in for the good, steady, sweet, nurturing path, surrounded by the (at times) suffocating pressures of family and lineage. then there's the shiksa goddess, michelle (played by gwyneth paltrow) who's a total head case and is mixed up, fragile, and possibly more broken than
leonard - but who promises a whole other world in her swinging blonde hair and lithe body.

the film is BEAUTIFUL. gorgeously shot - it takes place in the farthest reaches of brooklyn - not the romanticized part that young people and michelle williams have colonized and claimed as their own, but this whole other area of resolutely ethnic, working class folk that seems to belong to another era - another time in new york - before the different ethnicities were all appropriated and diluted in some swinging metropolitan cocktail. the tones of the film are gorgeous, deep, shadowy watery blues outside - shot through with warm russet rembrandt golds and tawny browns. so beautiful to look at. it's a tight, lean little feature too - and joaquin phoenix is a wonderful actor - all the performances are strong, with isabella rosselini as the wary-eyed, caring mother anchoring leonard's family life. i really enjoyed it and would highly recommend it.

i'm off to craft and listen to china mieville's newest book "the city and the city" on tape (ipod). a colleague hepped me to audible.com - which sells books on tape. it works kind of like netflix or zip.ca - you pay a flat rate per month which entitles you to x amount of credits (usually 1 credit = 1 title). i signed up for a special 3 month reduced rate - and apparently there are sales all the time on titles. i'm really excited. we're going to move my little portable ladybug ipod dock into the bedroom (we don't currently have any other media-players in there other than my vintage flip alarm clock) and listen to it before we go to bed - it's nice because that way i can knit and "read" at the same time.

fin.