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Canadian Copyright Act, 6.:
6. The term for which copyright shall subsist shall, except as otherwise expressly provided by this Act, be the life of the author, the remainder of the calender year in which the author dies, and a period of fifty years following the end of that calendar year.
I live at the western edge of downtown Vankleek Hill, which is basically a block away from the centre of Vankleek Hill. From my apartment it takes less than a five minute walk to find cows peacefully going about their luxurious pre-butchered lives.
Basically the boundaries of Vankleek Hill are defined by rusted cow fences [link: here]. In the summer I’ll also run into a few horses. If I walk east it takes a little longer, maybe twenty minutes, but the livestock are all there as well.
Because Vankleek Hill is an actual hill, and one of the highest spots on the Ontario side of the Quebec-Ontario border, the surrounding pastures and fields can make it seem as though we’re an island, a bump on the horizon.
Which will come in handy when the ice caps melt and the Ottawa River overruns its banks, because it’s all mountains on the Quebec side, and all flat lands on this side of the river, so guess who’ll be sitting on the bank, dipping our toes in the new sea while Hawkesbury is under 75-feet of water? That’s right baby, the New Age starts here.
Of course we’ll have to teach the cows how to swim.
I cropped about a third of the sky off the top because I wanted the cows to be the centre of the shot. I have lighter versions, but I like this one… there’s a ghost quality to it. I might be nuts, but I think that tree in the mid-ground looks like a giant rabbit.
We all know the Mayans were not predicting the end of time when they left collections of little broken calenders scattered around their ruined civilization. Because “prediction” is a type of guess, and the Mayans never guessed. They just knew.
At some point we’re going to run out of Doomsday prophesies. Unfortunately there are just not enough historical texts, scrolls, rock paintings or walk-on-water prophets left to sustain the current quality of Doomsday paranoia.
We’ve been blessed over the past decade or two with some truly insane End-Of-The-World scenarios, like Nostradamus, the Celestine Prophecy, then Heaven’s Gate, and then the Y2K bug. Those were cool. More recently, Jenny MacCarthy and her fellow anti-immunization whack jobs almost started a full fledged plague.
Today we’ve got the Mayans; the 9/11 Truthers; Islamic fascists; Baptist Minister Fred Phelps and the other Christian ‘End Of Days’ hooligans; the Bilderberg Group thing has been around for awhile and, now, some sweet bullshit about a rogue planet called Nibiru coming back to slingshot around the sun, creating mass extinction on Earth.
This could be the sweetest Doomsday scenario of them all. According to Wikipedia, back in 1995 Nancy Lieder — someone lucky enough to have met ET and had a chip installed in her brain so she could receive messages from them — “stated that she was chosen to warn mankind that the object [Nibiru, aka Planet X] would sweep through the inner Solar System in May 2003 (though that date was later abandoned) causing Earth to undergo a pole shift that would destroy most of humanity.”
That’s the kind of crazy real Doomsday prophesies are made of. Her visions have more recently been combined with the Mayan Prophesies, by people who need to believe we’re all going to die, to create the 2012 Super Duper Prophesy.
Anyway. The photo is of a sunset back in September as seen here in Vankleek Hill. It has a real Jupiter feel to it… or maybe a Nibiru feel to it, like this is the last thing we’ll all see on December 12, 2012. Which is my sons birthday. Coincidence?
I’ve always preferred winter. Fall comes a close second, spring is too wet and summer makes no sense to me at all. I like snow, I feel comfortable in the cold and it just seems quieter in the winter. At the same time, sounds are sharper. The snap of ice, the casual thump of snow falling off of roofs, the muffled screams for help from someone buried by said snow.
The only problem I have with winter is the complete absence of colour. Blue Jays notwithstanding, winter is a black and white world… the nights are long and the days are short and stark, which can be depressing. Especially if most of our days are spent indoors.
So a few years ago, to break up the monotony of winter, I started taking photos of flowers, gardens, sunsets and sunrises. Anything with an insane amount of colour.
I don’t know if it has worked. I do have a lot more photos on my wall, and most of them are vibrant and interesting. So, when people come over, at least I have something to talk about other than the weather.
…of course, according to a recent article in “Men’s Health, nine of the ten worst cities in the United States with regards to depression, joblessness and suicide are all in “Sunshine States”. Which is normally where you find colour, flowers, gardens and warmth in the winter.
So… there is that.
When I was a kid I used to sneak out of bed and sit at the top of the stairs and listen to my parents and their anti-imperialist friends argue about life. During one of the arguments my father said, in a loud voice, “I don’t mind my son learning about Jesus, but I will not have him believing in Santa Claus”.
Then he picked up a pipe bomb and headed out into the darkness in the vague direction of some government building.
Or something like that. To be honest I might have picked up that line from ‘Howard The Duck’, but I’m fairly certain it was daddy. I get the two confused a lot.
So, now that I have a son of my own, I’m a little ambivalent about the whole Santa thing. To be honest (again), I just figured out yesterday that I only have four shopping days left until Christmas.
The kids sitting on Santa’s lap in the photo are my newly two-year old son, and his older brother who, I think, is just figuring out that Santa is, really, a load of horseshit.
It’s such a weird holiday. I really don’t know much about Kwanzaa or Hanukkah, but for Christians it’s a religious holiday whose main symbols are totally secular — a tree and a Coca-Cola marketing tool, and the religious part is totally manufactured. Christ — the man, not the expletive — was born in the spring, probably in April.
But I guess it’d be a little weird celebrating his birth, death and resurrection as Zombie Christ all in the same week. Plus, that’d be a lot of gift giving all jammed together.
Yeah. So… anyway, Merry Christmas.
Careful what you write on your blog. Especially if you’re in the Ottawa area and in the process of adopting a dog from the Friendly Giants Dog Rescue (FGDR) shelter, because they will find that post you once wrote about clowns, your neighbour and that thing your dog did that one time with that tool (ahem) toy you bought in Montreal, and not only deny your request to adopt one of their dogs, but they’ll threaten you and slander your name around town as well.
Because, obviously, you must be one of the worst people ever.
Of course the absolute worst kind of person is someone who would, like my friend did a few days ago, write a tongue-in-cheek post asking if the appearance of a dog should be a criteria in choosing which dog to adopt. Because, according to Kim Knapp, the co-founder of FGDR, that’s the only reason why she’s denying a rescued dog the comfort and love of my friends home.
Volunteer at food kitchens once a week? Tough. Build homes for the homeless? Fuck you. Donate your time organizing for charities and causes that help battered women and children? Well, double fuck you if you think that makes you a decent human being, because Kim Knapp will find that one post in the 2000 posts you’ve written over six years, that proves to her you’re a shitty human being and completely unworthy of adopting a dog from her.
Thank God there are people out there like Kim Knapp monitoring websites and blogs, keeping abused animals away from comfortable, loving homes like the one my friends offered.
And, at least to Kim, the sane response would be to publish threats — including asking for a city wide ban on my friends from being able to adopt a rescued dog — on my friends blog, and then again all over the FGDR Facebook page.
The whole sordid affair can be found here [link: here].
Or you can watch this really, really cute commercial:
You 
Tube Alert
Kim Knapp is our shining light. Because, of course, writing about the decision to adopt a pet in an open forum should automatically disqualify anyone from adopting a pet.
Just like discussing such matters with friends over coffee is a sure sign of someone who sacrifices dogs to the Devil. Sweet Jesus, can you imagine someone being allowed to adopt a pet who, previous to the adoption, had actually discussed the process with friends and family? Horrifying.
Just in case Kim, or one of her fellow True Believers, comes over and thinks my mom’s dog, Kipling (above), is kept dirty and wet all the time, I’m offering this other perspective. You know, in case she calls the dog police. Sure Kipling’s been dead for two years, but I’m sure Kim could find a way to retroactively take her from my family.
Who’s a good girl?
In a few days my son will be two-years old. He was born a few weeks early, so posting this a few days before his actual birthday kind of makes sense — his original due date was 01.10.10, so his middle name would have been Binary.
He was born on December 12 (twelve twelve), so we went with “Coolio Cooler McCoolalot Super Awesome” instead.
His first name is Victor. When he’s not playing Call Of Duty 4: Modern Warfare six hours a day he’s learning new words, having fun eating snow, chasing the cat (also named Cooler), stacking random objects on top of other random objects, and staring pensively out windows at downtown Vankleek Hill like he’s writing epic poetry.
When I get a chance — between diaper changes — I’ll put up a few more of my favourite photos of Coolio Cooler McCoolalot Super Awesome.
o_0