Personal pet peeves include: dearth of public garbage cans for dog shit; whipped cream; cheapskates; flat gin and tonics; jack johnson; men who can’t salsa but ask you to dance with them anyway; the Chrysler 300; any and every comment about defecation; confusion between RU 486 and Plan B; cooled coffee; crookedly hung art; crowds and queues; children made to pose in photos like mini adults; bullshit; people who don’t print double-sided; and
How women in office buildings won’t shut the fuck up about competitive calorie counting.
Oh my god it is a pain in the ass to come to work come spring, and not because it’s so damn beautiful out that I’m drooling at my view of the sunny Scotia Bank. Apparently women who work in office buildings did not take science 000 and exclaim with evangelic fervour that SODIUM HAS NO CALORIES!
All day long all people have to talk about is which brand of yogurt wins for calorie-per-125 ml- serving, whether or not glucose is a type of transfat, and that you can probably burn juice calories faster than milk calories because juice is thinner.
These people are employed through your tax dollars.
And, lest I forget, I am also repulsed by women baking for staff meetings. I am revolted by women with candy saucers out on their desks. I literally have to keep a six foot distance. Have you ever, ever, ever heard of a man baking a goddamn muffin to call a nine o’clock in the board room? Does my CEO have scotch mints below his doctorate? Why on earth would you escape to an office space if your environment was no different than the foyer of a desperate housewife?
Glass ceiling looking a tiny bit like the uncleaned roof of a General Electric oven.
Thursday, April 24, 2008
Tuesday, April 22, 2008
on the inappropriately clothed
It is obviously spring now. There are teenagers in flipflops smoking on parkbenches outside my office window. But nobody is falling in love or anything, in fact there are a number of cases lately of falling out of it. Still, I hang my hopes on the inappropriately clothed. I love the inappropriately clothed. If I didn’t work in what counts as an office tower in this diminutive city, I’d be inappropriately clothed and smoking on a park bench.
When I was stuck in suburban Quebec City, extremely sad and extremely lonely, I coped by disappearing underwater at the Laval pool everyday (Olympic sized. Simply incredible) and counting laps, breaths, anything. This is exactly how I coped with being extremely sad and extremely lonely since I was twelve years old. That summer though I was out one morning at 5am walking off sad lonely steam in the neighbourhood when I found not one but two immaculate rusted over 1975 bronze CCM commuters. A hers-his pair of ‘em. I gripped each handlebar stem in a fist and shoved those beauties up the hill. I scavenged rags and cleaners out from under my then-boyfriend’s-parents’ sink and set to work. By 8 the household was awake and scandalized that I had dumpster-dived in what turned out to be the bf’s uncle’s driveway. I was beaming. I had my ticket out of suburbia.
When you don’t know how to drive, and I didn’t then, a bicycle is the power of a room of your own (something else I didn’t have then) times about a billion. Somebody pissing you off? LEAVE!!! Get on your vehicle and get the hell out of there. Shove a pump in your handbag. That’s it.
I learned how to drive about two weeks later. And driving is wonderful. You can, most importantly, cart crap around with you when you drive, like poodles and cases of wine. Even still though, I do not own a car and there are so many bikes in my house right now it's Brest at the beginning of the Tour.
Spring comes and the last dark crusts of snow melt into the gutter and yet all that can cure the sad loneliness of winter is a good long bike ride. Everyday 'till the November blizzards. Even though cycling is as pleasurable as sex while driving a convertible in Europe, it is not that popular among women. I have never understood this. Women need to take over roadie culture. It’s physiologically obvious. Drawbacks include hard breasts and enormous legs, but whatever. Swimming causes hard breasts and giant shoulders.
Dr S reminds me that side effects are sometimes entirely necessary, even partly curative, depending on what you are trying to treat.
When I was stuck in suburban Quebec City, extremely sad and extremely lonely, I coped by disappearing underwater at the Laval pool everyday (Olympic sized. Simply incredible) and counting laps, breaths, anything. This is exactly how I coped with being extremely sad and extremely lonely since I was twelve years old. That summer though I was out one morning at 5am walking off sad lonely steam in the neighbourhood when I found not one but two immaculate rusted over 1975 bronze CCM commuters. A hers-his pair of ‘em. I gripped each handlebar stem in a fist and shoved those beauties up the hill. I scavenged rags and cleaners out from under my then-boyfriend’s-parents’ sink and set to work. By 8 the household was awake and scandalized that I had dumpster-dived in what turned out to be the bf’s uncle’s driveway. I was beaming. I had my ticket out of suburbia.
When you don’t know how to drive, and I didn’t then, a bicycle is the power of a room of your own (something else I didn’t have then) times about a billion. Somebody pissing you off? LEAVE!!! Get on your vehicle and get the hell out of there. Shove a pump in your handbag. That’s it.
I learned how to drive about two weeks later. And driving is wonderful. You can, most importantly, cart crap around with you when you drive, like poodles and cases of wine. Even still though, I do not own a car and there are so many bikes in my house right now it's Brest at the beginning of the Tour.
Spring comes and the last dark crusts of snow melt into the gutter and yet all that can cure the sad loneliness of winter is a good long bike ride. Everyday 'till the November blizzards. Even though cycling is as pleasurable as sex while driving a convertible in Europe, it is not that popular among women. I have never understood this. Women need to take over roadie culture. It’s physiologically obvious. Drawbacks include hard breasts and enormous legs, but whatever. Swimming causes hard breasts and giant shoulders.
Dr S reminds me that side effects are sometimes entirely necessary, even partly curative, depending on what you are trying to treat.
Wednesday, April 16, 2008
on the man
All my (American) femmy blog favourites have had some coverage on the (Canadian) Walrus blog by Edward Keen, “Act Like A Man”. Although not put in so many words, Eddie is basically wondering why it is such a big deal to expect men to take pride in being responsible, capable human beings. He uses UFC and facial hair to colour his pallid analyses, but it comes down to questioning why males resist employment and moving out of their parents’ homes, and what the hell happened to courage and integrity and plain old talent. It’s cute enough, overdue to say the least. We’ve been in a static wait for the self-aggrandized GI-Joe-playing Bush to Act Like A Man and apologize for a hysterically manic spending spree of the entire American economy and hundreds of thousands of lives on a losing war. Our own childish and slovenly national leader is no better in The Man department, greedily hoarding power in areas he has no talent for or jurisdiction over. Hillier, now stepping down in a rare state of sustained honour, was one of few who had the cajones to stick up to our rolly-polly creepy-eyed PM, and that was in the unfortunate context of amplifying our military might. We recall when Linda Keen flared her testicles in the fight of nuclear safety, she was promptly canned. That doesn’t mean I didn’t join a cheerleading squad with her initials stitched across my breasts.
Which brings me back to the other Keen’s blog, and Acting Like A Man, a critical response thus far to his blogging. To which I say, "Of course you don’t have to actually be chromosonely masculine to take action against impotence!" And I am not likely to worry about “Acting Like A Man” being unnecessarily gender-loaded vernacular for Grow Up. It’s the dude’s blog, he can call it what he wants and I’ll take the same liberty. I hope it catches on, though, this responsibility and integrity thing.
Which brings me back to the other Keen’s blog, and Acting Like A Man, a critical response thus far to his blogging. To which I say, "Of course you don’t have to actually be chromosonely masculine to take action against impotence!" And I am not likely to worry about “Acting Like A Man” being unnecessarily gender-loaded vernacular for Grow Up. It’s the dude’s blog, he can call it what he wants and I’ll take the same liberty. I hope it catches on, though, this responsibility and integrity thing.
Tuesday, April 15, 2008
on troublemakers
Barbara Seaman, author of The Doctors' Case Against the Pill and a longtime women's health shit-disturber, has died.
http://www.cmaj.ca/cgi/content/full/178/8/988
http://www.cmaj.ca/cgi/content/full/178/8/988
Friday, April 11, 2008
on not working at a strip joint
i promise not to turn this into a work blog, but i can't quit smiling this afternoon, it's Friday, oui, and this is what a visiting surgeon, whilst sipping a weak cup of tea, said to me today:
do you have callouses on your bum from getting grabbed so much?
(honestly, is that funny or is that funny? he didn't even say ASS. loves it).
do you have callouses on your bum from getting grabbed so much?
(honestly, is that funny or is that funny? he didn't even say ASS. loves it).
Thursday, April 10, 2008
on plastic
In Newfoundland and here at home, pathologists are getting the slit-eyed once-over by a suddenly skeptical public. How do we know if these folks in their lab coats can really tell if we have cancer?
A series of public inquiries will have to be left to handle that. What we do know is that cosmetic surgery ain’t no specialty, there is no accreditation and therefore no way to be bitch-slapped for doing a bad job. This gross regulatory oversight got a bit of exposure back in the fall, when a pretty and young TO professional lost her life to liposuction under a general practitioner’s knife.
A Toronto-based friend of mine, now in medical litigation, did some academic work on just what is the legal framework buttressing cosmetic surgery and found, well, NOTHING. A GP can go for a three hour CME workshop on breast implants and then hang a sign outside her practice saying “Cosmetic surgery, Breast augmentation, Get it here!” Really.
Were I a plastic surgeon who actually studied the art and science of body reconstruction and perfection for about 5 years post med school, I’d be ticked off that the unqualified competition were calling themselves surgeons, taking away my customers (say what you want about “health-care-for-hire”), potentially doing physical harm to said patients that I will have to clean up later, potentially disfiguring the public understanding of plastic surgery, and wasting GP time that could be used for chronic disease management, reproductive care and all the other general problems GPs are trained to care for.
The plastic surgeons DID get pissed, and today the College of Physicians and Surgeons (the body responsible for the professional standards and training for specialists; which is not their union nor the body that presides over the affairs of general practice) meet to approve (or I suppose, not) additions to the vacuum of cosmetic surgery regulation. These will include that GPs not call themselves surgeons nor advertise to provide services for which they are not trained.
Say what you want about an individual’s decision to get liposuction, but any way you slice it (erg, sorry about that), he should be reasonably informed about what he’s getting himself into. My GP can do my pap test…but my boob job? No thanks.
A series of public inquiries will have to be left to handle that. What we do know is that cosmetic surgery ain’t no specialty, there is no accreditation and therefore no way to be bitch-slapped for doing a bad job. This gross regulatory oversight got a bit of exposure back in the fall, when a pretty and young TO professional lost her life to liposuction under a general practitioner’s knife.
A Toronto-based friend of mine, now in medical litigation, did some academic work on just what is the legal framework buttressing cosmetic surgery and found, well, NOTHING. A GP can go for a three hour CME workshop on breast implants and then hang a sign outside her practice saying “Cosmetic surgery, Breast augmentation, Get it here!” Really.
Were I a plastic surgeon who actually studied the art and science of body reconstruction and perfection for about 5 years post med school, I’d be ticked off that the unqualified competition were calling themselves surgeons, taking away my customers (say what you want about “health-care-for-hire”), potentially doing physical harm to said patients that I will have to clean up later, potentially disfiguring the public understanding of plastic surgery, and wasting GP time that could be used for chronic disease management, reproductive care and all the other general problems GPs are trained to care for.
The plastic surgeons DID get pissed, and today the College of Physicians and Surgeons (the body responsible for the professional standards and training for specialists; which is not their union nor the body that presides over the affairs of general practice) meet to approve (or I suppose, not) additions to the vacuum of cosmetic surgery regulation. These will include that GPs not call themselves surgeons nor advertise to provide services for which they are not trained.
Say what you want about an individual’s decision to get liposuction, but any way you slice it (erg, sorry about that), he should be reasonably informed about what he’s getting himself into. My GP can do my pap test…but my boob job? No thanks.
Wednesday, April 9, 2008
On prison, redux
Surprise surprise, Darcie Clarke moved to quiet Merritt, BC specifically to get away from the man who is suspected of killing her three children. Surprise surprise, she didn’t think leaving was enough, so she had a peace bond between them. And surprise surprise Allan Shoenborn violated it. And paid a whole $200 in fines! And the next time he was in jail, they let him out on bail because the court neglected to take note of all of these screeching sirens and neon flashing red flags! They forgot about how he’s a drunken wife abuser!
I kind of wish my tax dollars could stop going to inquiry after analysis after assessment all proving once again that the most dangerous thing a woman can do in a violent intimate partnership is leave the man. Actually I don’t know what is more depressing, that we keep finding the same thing and are seemingly powerless to change the dependent variable, or what this damn dependent variable turns out to be. I actually was commissioned in ’06 to do one of these reviews, reporting on years of domestic homicides and suicides in New Brunswick from the bowels of our province’s coroner’s office. I found what everyone finds: combine separation, alcohol, mental illness, a history of violence, useless peace bonds, and someone ends up dead. If there are children, it’s often the children.
BC has a Child Death Review Unit., and particularly in high-population jurisdictions like BC, these coroner outfits are valuable for tracking trends in accidental deaths (the BC CDRU’s latest report is on unsafe infant sleep practices). It can also trace how fatal child abuse might be found at the intersection of miscommunicating health, community, and education services. (NB, too, has a child death review board). But the Shoenborn children’s deaths are not about their being children, vulnerable to accidents and the excessive force of unfit parents. (Not that I am saying Mr Shoenborn was a fit parent; he clearly was not). The Shoenborn children died because the father was out to injure their mother.
You leave me, I’ll leave you with nothing.
The frequency of child death involvement in domestic disputes and the articulation of separations is disgustingly high. In the NB review I completed, almost as many children died as women. And more men died than women, because of so-called “love triangle” killings of women’s new partners, suicides, and murders of sons. The separation of Child Death Review and Intimate femicide-focused domestic violence death review hides the deadly extent of intimate partner violence, and also frankly results in double counting.
More to the point, all this counting doesn’t seem to be stopping anything. One would think that if decades of research in this area showed the stark clarity of the explanatory factors listed above, it would be pretty immediate- banally status-quo- to check if a separated man was an abuser, an alcoholic, mentally ill, and had a peace bond against him before releasing him from prison. Have these facts all stapled together in a file, and make a sensible call to keep him a spell. In my secondary research, I read that men who have a history of incarceration for domestic violence are less likely to reoffend lethally. Initially I was surprised- obviously these men are violent, and violence escalates, that’s the thing about violence. But in prison, the men sobered up. They got psychiatric help. Frankly, they learned that their pathetic behaviour made them each an excuse for a man. So they changed.
I kind of wish my tax dollars could stop going to inquiry after analysis after assessment all proving once again that the most dangerous thing a woman can do in a violent intimate partnership is leave the man. Actually I don’t know what is more depressing, that we keep finding the same thing and are seemingly powerless to change the dependent variable, or what this damn dependent variable turns out to be. I actually was commissioned in ’06 to do one of these reviews, reporting on years of domestic homicides and suicides in New Brunswick from the bowels of our province’s coroner’s office. I found what everyone finds: combine separation, alcohol, mental illness, a history of violence, useless peace bonds, and someone ends up dead. If there are children, it’s often the children.
BC has a Child Death Review Unit., and particularly in high-population jurisdictions like BC, these coroner outfits are valuable for tracking trends in accidental deaths (the BC CDRU’s latest report is on unsafe infant sleep practices). It can also trace how fatal child abuse might be found at the intersection of miscommunicating health, community, and education services. (NB, too, has a child death review board). But the Shoenborn children’s deaths are not about their being children, vulnerable to accidents and the excessive force of unfit parents. (Not that I am saying Mr Shoenborn was a fit parent; he clearly was not). The Shoenborn children died because the father was out to injure their mother.
You leave me, I’ll leave you with nothing.
The frequency of child death involvement in domestic disputes and the articulation of separations is disgustingly high. In the NB review I completed, almost as many children died as women. And more men died than women, because of so-called “love triangle” killings of women’s new partners, suicides, and murders of sons. The separation of Child Death Review and Intimate femicide-focused domestic violence death review hides the deadly extent of intimate partner violence, and also frankly results in double counting.
More to the point, all this counting doesn’t seem to be stopping anything. One would think that if decades of research in this area showed the stark clarity of the explanatory factors listed above, it would be pretty immediate- banally status-quo- to check if a separated man was an abuser, an alcoholic, mentally ill, and had a peace bond against him before releasing him from prison. Have these facts all stapled together in a file, and make a sensible call to keep him a spell. In my secondary research, I read that men who have a history of incarceration for domestic violence are less likely to reoffend lethally. Initially I was surprised- obviously these men are violent, and violence escalates, that’s the thing about violence. But in prison, the men sobered up. They got psychiatric help. Frankly, they learned that their pathetic behaviour made them each an excuse for a man. So they changed.
Subscribe to:
Posts (Atom)
