dexfarkin

Canada thwarts an attempted terrorist bombing with the execution of an investigation named PROJECT SMOOTH. One presumes that PROJECT PIMP DADDY and PROJECT AW YEAH... are following up to seize the remaining terrorists.

I'm stuck in hurry up and wait mode at work today. So obviously time to catch up on things.

There's an interesting letter floating around regarding a letter from a couple in CT regarding a decision not to hire a contractor for their home. They planned to add a room to their house, met with a number of contractors for estimates, and the one that seemed to meet the requirements best turned out to have an NRA sticker on his bumper, which led to their decision not to hire him to do work on their house. This has led to the typical range of responders to people asking if they thought it was okay if employers fired Obama supporters after the election (it's not, it happened, and thanks to right to work laws, it's legal in many states) or that they were being discriminatory in the same way they accuse Republicans of being. I'm not going to get too far into the actual leyyer, because no doubt it will be on tumblr and Fox News soon enough.

However, it got me thinking that from the responses I read, most really missed the mark and there is an interesting takeaway from it. Hiring a contractor is the act of a consumer, not an employer, so let's just remove those parallels from the discussion now. If you look at a contractor's vehicle as his place of business, it suddenly makes it more a question of what influences your decision to patronize any business? For example, I wouldn't shop or eat at a place displaying a giant Confederate flag in the window by choice. Ditto a place that was decorated to emphasize a specific religion that was unrelated to the business itself. I wouldn't shop at a place that proudly displayed support of intolerance or racism. Those in favour of strawmen are quick to equate this to a form of prejudice, no different to choosing not to shop at a store with a black owner or clientile. However, that argument is flawed; the decision to avoid a store with a 'Marriage is between a man and woman' sign is not a rejection or penalization of a people because of their religion, race, gender, or politics. It is a decision to reject their services based on the advocacy of those views.

Even something as simple as a bumpersticker that says 'I'm a member of the NRA' or a little box of phamphlets for the local 'Defend Traditional Marriage' meeting is a form of advocacy, no different other than by degrees to holding a sign or marching in the street. It is allocating part of your professional space to announce this element of personal support. Once you place that in the public sphere, you have to accept responsibility that your business will be judged in relation to it. There's the other side argument that such and such a person may have an entirely different meaning for his Confederate flag or his struck out rainbow sign, but that's irrelevent. As a customer, whatever your symbol means to you is less important than what your symbol means to me in choosing where to spend my money.

Trying to get into the television series, but have so far bounced pretty hard off it. It's decently well acted, and the script is intriguing, playing around in very interesting ways with the concept of Norman's increasing mental instability causing you to question what is real in the scenes which are just him. The supporting cast is also interesting, and there's some subplots and themes that have a lot of promise.

The thing is that the choices by the director to make his framing of Norman and his mother so disassociative and off feeds the overall theme nicely, but really blocks the chances to build any empathy towards them. Without empathy, the viewer is insulated from any kind of emotional reaction in response to the things they experience or suffer through. For example, there's a rape sequence which is told in a fairly bleak and brutal fashion, but really, the only thing that comes through as an uneasy story element to react to is the interplay between Norma and Norman following it.

In short, the show spends so much time reminding you that these are people who are already too broken to ever heal that you're not waiting for the possibility for redemption with either of them, but instead killing time until the inevitable transition from victim to monster is complete.

EDIT: That would be a 'rape sequence'. A 'rap sequence' would be if this series had been shot in the 90s with Will Smith as a wacky young Norman Bates and Alaina Reed-Hall playing his sassy 'moms' Norma.

It's been an up and down week.

1. Work has been unspeakable. I'm being pinned with the blame for difficulties on a bid by people who failed to do their required work for weeks, and ignored the fact that I've been heavily medicated for weeks as any kind of reason to take responsibility for double-checking results. If I wasn't looking for another job before, I would be now.

2. Saw Garbage tonight. First off, unbelievably good show. I'd have to say it's in my top ten for live acts, and their newest work is really good. It's easy to forget just how huge Garbage was back in the day, until they start playing their old stuff and you realize you know all the words automatically. The crowd was also intriguing; a diverse mix of old people like myself, ambitious 20-something hipsters, and really, really excited female teenagers. It was like a crowd made up of people who all looked like either hipster Jim Smith or Alestar.

3. I have had the most successful series of drafts in fantasy baseball ever. I expect to finish first in at least one league, and in the top three in at least half. I have tickets for the Jays game a week Friday, and opening day is next Tuesday. The world is starting to make sense again.

4. I have my cast off, but right now, my foot/ankle is pretty fucked. I need to start physio-therapy soon, and stretch out the ankle so I can walk properly on it. I have two impressive scars on either side of my ankle, and a plate and 9 screws in my ankle. Hopefully, I'll get full mobility back in it. If not, I plan to get a peg-leg and re-invent myself as a sexual pirate.

5. I've been finding tumblr insufferable of late to the point of being unreadable. I'm going to need to properly tailor it down, or get rid of it all together.

So the US just passed a series of gun laws added to the continuing resolution to fund the government. The laws, broadly, include the following:

1. Forbids anyone from asking gun dealers to keep an inventory of their goods, making it impossible to know if any weapons are missing or stolen.
2. Instructs the ATF to ensure that information they collect on the use of guns in crimes cannot be used in research involving gun use.
3. Locks down a broad definition of the types of weapons that are considered antiques and collectables, making it easier to buy, sell, and import these weapons and their ammunition.
4. Forbids the ATF from pulling a gun license from a dealer just because they don't see any legitimate business activity and suspect that the dealer is engaged in a criminal enterprise.

Look, I understand that Americans need gun laws because of your collective lunacy that one day some black guy is going to declare himself Godking and you'll have to rise up against him and shoot American police and military in a Red Dawn/Mad Max fantasy for liberty or something equally nonsensical, but really? Is it not obvious that these laws are absolutely designed to allow weapon manufacturers to sell weapons without any kind of oversight? Avocados and Legos have more oversight and regulation than the sale of something that is designed to put a bullet through the brain of a toddlers. Is this a healthy, modern society, where if you don't go around heavily armed all the time, you think you'll get shot? Shouldn't fixing that be the priority, as opposed to adding more opportunities for unfettered lethality?

As mentioned, about five weeks ago, I broke my ankle in three places walking home from the pub. While certainly not the kind of injury that changes your life or makes you re-assess how you're living, it hasn't been without at least some level of reflection on some things, and makes you consider what you have.

When I broke it, I ended up lying on a cold, wet street for about 30 mins, with my phone having issues (thank you Apple's decision to make a fucking buggy podcast player instead of leaving them on iTunes, and instead disabling my receiver). Some girls found me at the same time the police showed up at my door responding to a 911 call. By the time the ambulance was there, so was my girlfriend, who proceeded to spend the next day and a half in uncomfortable circumstances, while I navigated a Canadian hospital. She went on powered by crappy coffee as I lay in their receiving ward for ten hours, before making it up to a bed in an unintentionally private room. She dealt with nurses and staff to help make me comfortable, emptied bed pans (which are actually recycled heavy cardboard which look like old milk bottles and make a crap load of sense), found things to watch on the laptop so we both didn't go insane, waited for hours while I had surgery and slept on the floor because she wasn't willing to go home. I can't tell you how many times I wondered how I would have handled it if I'd been alone? Or if she had been a reasonable person and had gone home to sleep and get cleaned up for twelve hours. Instead, she stayed by me the whole time, leaving when I did.

My roommate took the baton next, doing all the shopping, helping set up a comfortable nest in the living room, emptying garbage cans and fetching soda and pills. She cleaned up, picked up food, and made sure that I was alright before leaving each morning, and cancelled her plans to hang out at night. In short, Rossi once again did the most important thing a friend can do - being there when it counts. My friend Johnny worked as a taxi for the duration, even though he had a busy schedule, making sure I could arrange what I needed to get done. Lauren, coming off of a tough half year in Morocco and having plenty of her own things to worry about, has happily jumped in to drive, shop and fetch, a smile and tremendous patience that she certainly doesn't owe other than by her own choice.

My other friends offered tremendous support, even if from most of them it was through the internet - keeping me distracted and engaged, being gentle about my drug induced mood swings and soliloquies, sending me logs and art and silly things to cut the trapped, isolated feelings of being on the couch. One of them shared her non-spoiler reaction to the newest DLC of our mutual obsession Mass Effect, mostly in a series of OMFG!!! messages. The first time I limped out to the pub for a band night, three weeks after the accident, I was met with a standing ovation, a parade of free drinks, and a ride home from the bassist.

My work, for all its faults, has been nothing but stellar in arranging so I missed little time, working from home. They have been sympathetic about the injury, and while they forget regularly that Dex on drugs isn't as sharp and accurate as normal, they still have made staying productive (and getting properly paid) possible when they didn't necessarily have to.

Even the hospital itself, with a few frustrating exceptions, has been wonderful. They have been mostly engaged professionals who while are working fast, never the less have appreciate humour and patience, trying to make the experience as painless as possible. For all the faults of the Canadian health care system - and there are many - I was given the best care possible, treated with respect as an injured person as much as they could, and at the end of the day, my costs are minimal for a remarkable level of care. Even the support systems in play have been great, qualifying me for a program run by our transit - the TTC - which provides door to door service for the disabled (temporary and permanent) for the same price as a bus ticket. Seeing the frustrations involved in just being on the crutches for a few weeks, I can only imagine just how important and vital it is for someone for whom this is a fact of life to stay active and independent on a normal budget.

And let me tell you, you gain a new respect for the ability to live your life when you're healthy. A broken ankle is pretty far down on the list of life changing medical challenges you can face. But it does trap you to a pair of crutches to move around. Distances that you'd travel without a second thought normally become impossibly far. Getting up to use the washroom or get something to eat or drink requires planning. You have to rely on other people because you know being stubborn will live you winded for the next twenty minutes and in pain for the next hour. It's a hard thing to adapt to, but thanks to my friends, the community built up around me, I've never been alone getting through this. It's not really enough, but thank you all again - for reminding me just how awful things are when you're alone, and how grateful I am not to be.

New comics have been purchased and will be delivered hopefully next week. I was asked why I still used a comic book store in London when I've been living in Toronto since 2001. The short answer is that I started collected comics when I was eleven and my first comic book store was one called 'Bid Time Return' on Queen Street in downtown London. The owners latter split as partners, and opened up two locations called L.A Mood's downtown and in the mall closest to me. My original membership number was #11, which shows just how soon I followed them. The mall location eventually closed, but the main store has been going strong despite better funded opposition since 1989.

Maybe it's a bit silly, but collected comics from the same people for the last 25 years has a nice feel to it.

Anyhow, I just revamped my pull list for the following:
All New X-Men
Uncanny X-Men
Uncanny X-Force
Wolverine and the X-Men
X-Factor
X-Men
X-Men Legacy
Age of Ultron

Sometimes there are no words.

Also, am I the only one that this picture makes me immediately jump to the idea of Clinton and Obama as one of those buddy cop movies from the 70s-80s?

I am now available on tumblr at the following address. Please feel free to add me.

http://dexfarkin.tumblr.com/