Quebec's Singing Cop

Tearfree regrets not having blogged about Quebec's big "reasonable accommodation" debate up until today, but this singing cop story is a must-blog if ever there was one.

The background in a nutshell is this. In the past few months there have been a number of high-profile cases in Quebec of religious minorities demanding (requesting) reasonable or, depending on your point of view, unreasonable accomodation for their minority religion.

Hasidic jews who didn't want to see women exercise persuaded the Park Avenue YMCA to put up smoked glass and block out the spectacle. Muslim men who didn't think males belonged in prenatal classes convinced the management of a public health centre to kick all the guys out. And at yet another Y, dads were banned from the pool area during their kids' swimming lessons because the Muslim women also in the pool felt their modesty was being compromised.

Apparently all this, plus the heated discussions (see this 279-comment blog post) about reasonable accomodation, inspired an off-duty Montreal cop to pen a song about the situation and post it anonymously on a so-called humour website. The popularity of the song led to the cop's being recognized and he now faces disciplinary action, with the police union fighting back on his behalf.

For those of you who read French, the lyrics follow, and for readers partial to le chanson francias, you can listen and get the full effect here, but just let me warn you we're not talking Jacques Brel.

La fameuse chanson: ça commence à faire là
(Sur l'air de Le Moustique, de Joe Dassin)

On pense que ça commence à faire là
On pense qu'on a assez ri de nous autres là
Pis pour ceux qui n'seraient pas contents
Cri...-moi votre camp
On veut bien accepter les ethnies
Mais non pas à n'importe quel prix
Si tu veux te joindre à notre beau pays
Tu devras faire certains compromis
Lorsque accueilli dans une place
Il faut se fondre à la masse
Parce qu'on peut dire qu'ici tu es bien
D'où est-ce que tu d'viens?
On peut maintenant porter le kirpan
Parce que nous autres on est tolérant
Changer les règles du ymca
Pis un coup parti du clsc
Nous sommes-nous fracturé la raison?
Pour les caprices de chaque religion
Vos accommodements raisonnables
On est pu capable
Y'a des limites à s'faire chier dessus
Par une minorité de trous de c...
Si tu n'es pas content de ton sort
Y'existe un endroit qu'est l'aéroport
Toi ma minorité ethnique
Arrête un peu ta musique
Sinon dans ce cas-là tu devras
Retourner chez toi
Retourner chez toi

Personally I agree, as usual, with Patrick Lagacé that the song is an overreaction and xenophobic, but that the cop has a right to do what he wants on his own time as long as he conducts himself fairly on the job.

I would also add, however, that there are certainly cases when people do need to hear that if they don't like it, they can leave. For example, don't want to live without Sharia law? Bye bye. Think your new home is Sodom and Gomorrah? Go back to the old one. Believe wife beating is acceptable? Change your mind, or, well, head for the airport.

There, I said it and tough luck to all the biens pensants who customarily recoil in horror at the expression of any kind of love-it-or leave-it sentiment. While it is without a doubt true that reasonable criticism and/or requests for "reasonable accomodation" should not be automatically met with directions to the nearest international airport, it is also true that there does indeed come a point when "if you don't like it, leave" is not an unreasonable solution.

When I studied in Europe one of the things I learned that most surprised me was how many immigrants from the pre-jet age era had actually returned to their homelands for good. They'd come to the new world, decided it wasn't for them and caught the next boat home.

Whether they would have stayed had we had language lessons and medicare back them, I have no idea. But we do tend to forget -- because we're from the families that liked the new world well enough to stay and adapt and sing its praises -- that there have always been people who didn't like it here and there always will be no matter what reasonable accomodations we make.

Ratemyprofs.com discriminates against Canadians: Action recalls bitter softwood lumber feud

Until recently, Canadians could boast that not only were our curlers on top of the world but also that one of our countrymen topped the ratemyprofessor.com 50 hottest profs list. Well in yesterday's comments section, the sizzlingly hot professor in question, Steve Joordens of the U of T psychology department, alerted me that despite having more chili peppers than any professor anywhere, he had mysteriously disappeared from the list.

After scanning the site, I saw immediately what had happened. Where Canadians had once figured prominently, there were only Americans. Yes no longer was the 50 Hottest Profs list open to hot profs the world over; instead, it had been restricted to faculty members at American institutions only.

First they wouldn't let our softwood lumber in and now they're refusing our hot profs.

Enough is enough. It's time to fight back and get Joordens back on top.

Complain to webmaster@ratemyprofessors.com and to the NAFTA complaints commission

Suggested Text: Hath not a Canadian eyes? Hath not a Canadian hands, organs, dimensions, senses, affections, passions? Fed with the same food, hurt with the same weapons, subject to the same diseases, healed by the same means, warmed and cooled by the same winter and summer, as an American is? If you prick us, do we not bleed? If you tickle us, do we not laugh? If you poison us, do we not die? And if you wrong us, shall we not revenge? If we are like you in the rest, we will resemble you in that. If a Canadian wrong an American, what is his humility? Revenge! If an American wrong a Canadian, what should his sufferance be by American example? Why, revenge! The villainy you teach me I will execute, and it shall go hard but I will better the instruction.

Let me tell you what I really think

Last year the New York Times published an article about the excessive demands students make via e-mail. It was nicely entitled:

To: Professor@University.edu
Subject:Why it's all about me

This morning I opened up my inbox to receive one of those e-mails:

Good morning Deirdre,

Did you get my email on Tuesday with my assignment attached? I need feedback on my assignment idea...

Thanks.
-X

I had indeed gotten the original e-mail sent Tuesday at 2 p.m., which read:

Hi Deirdre -

I hope you're doing well. I am unfortunately not going to make it to class but I have attached my assignment.

Also, for my next assignment (due next week), I would like to write ........

What do you think?

-X

Well, what I really think is this.

You missed the class where we discussed what constituted a valid assignment idea so you are asking me a favour.

It is my policy to reply to e-mails within two to three working days.

Your follow-up e-mail arrived 1-1/2 days after the original so you were in effect requesting a double favour in asking me to reply more speedily than usual.

The tone of your e-mail is also rather demanding given that you are asking for special treatment. However, I understand that you are a conscientious student and that this e-mail problem is bigger than both of us as this article points out, so concerning your actual proposal...

Good luck,

DD

p.s. I look forward to reading your comments on what a bitch I am on ratemyprofessors.com

p.p.s. I didn't really write the p.s., just the rest.

You heard it here first

Tearfree totally told you so.. Now, honourable members, remind us again should we grant this "human right" to women.

Supposedly hip parents cont'd

Leah McLaren has a go at supposedly hip parents in today's Globe.

Alternaparents think that they're the first generation who decided to maintain their identities after giving birth. They think getting their kids to rock out to the Hives is revolutionary. Except they're forgetting something. The generation before them did the same thing. Except it wasn't the Hives, it was the Beatles.

...all this talk of the importance of punk rock and downing tequila shots between play dates is nothing more than a flimsy excuse to do what self-absorbed parents have always done: Inundate everyone around them with stories about how special and cute their kids are. And while alternaparents are clever at masking their message in self-deprecating terms, the point of the story is always the same: Isn't my kid adorable?

For more on the subject, see Andrea Buchanan's the Escalation of Cool and Tearfree's previous posts on Hip Cool Mamas where she commented, among other things:

For some bizarre reason today's Moms seem to think they are the first generation of hipster mothers and just can't get over the fact that they're Mommies and cool too (or at least think they're cool), as if that's never ever been done before. Well, Tearfree is here to tell you that just as mothers have been bored out of their minds with certain aspects of motherhood for centuries, so too have there always been hip cool moms.

Then, if you can handle it, and it may take a few tequila shots, check out Babble, "a magazine and community for the new urban parent" (red colour mine.)

Eeeek, a mouse!!!!

Just when you tell the whole internet you hate your cat, wouldn't you know it, he comes in handy?

On January 1, I saw something move in my kitchen and suspected it was a mouse although we haven't had mice here since 11 years ago. But then nothing and I had all but come to think I must have imagined it when yesterday morning I spotted the dog looking at the wall in a highly suspicious way, and later in the afternoon, proof positive. I witnessed the actual mouse scurry from the dogfood bowl to behind the oven while the cat napped blissfully on the radiator shelf less than two feet away.

Fonzie the cat redeemed himself last night, however, when I walked into the kitchen to find him with the mouse in his mouth and a gleam in his yellow eyes. I fled the scene to calm myself down with a CSI episode on serial killers only to find the show featured a reference to cat and mouse games, a nest of baby rats in an old evidence box, and an explanation of some horrible virus found in rat feces that will leave you bleeding from the eyes if not dead.

Nevertheless, at the end of CSI and without a hazmat suit, I made my way to the kitchen and discovered there was no mouse corpse. Instead, Fonzie was staring intently at the radiator in the hallway in what was obviously a state of high alert.

This weekend I will pick up some pet-friendly mousetraps and together with my cat, we will off the mouse once and for all. I have no guilt whatsoever about ridding the world of a mouse or two or three if it comes to that.

A question in memory of Trainwrecks

As a student of the blogging phenomenon (and the human condiction), I read a lot of blogs (or waste a lot of time, according to some.)

So I would like to ask you all something that's been on mymind for some time namely what do you think of Mummy bloggers who post endless photos of their kids. And how many photos are too many photos for you?

Also, what do you think of bloggers who post endless photos of themselves where it is obvious that they have selected the most flattering shots? Total attention whoring or just unabashedly putting a new medium to use?

A good Trainwrecks thread

Fans and detractors debate whether Trainwrecks was a good thing.

Update: Trainwreck refugee sites have been set up here and here. They're not like the old homeland, but maybe some day....

2nd Update: The second Trainwrecks refugee site linked above turns out to have been set up by the HN gang, alas.

More morbid blogging

Another death in the family.

Trainwrecks: RIP

Trainwrecks, one of my favourite blogs, is dead and gone.

Long, story short: Trainwrecks was a site dedicated to discussing the trainwreckiness of assorted trainwrecky bloggers. It filled a huge blogospheric need because many popular bloggers and their sycophantic followers flip out at even the mildest of criticism, which is in fact how this blog got started.

Trainwrecks was a site where like-minded blog readers could meet and make fun of trainwreck bloggers. In short it was confirmation that you were sane and far from alone in your disdain.

Alas some people saw it as a "hate" site and made it their mission in life to shut it down, because, well, basically, in a perfect world, or these people's perfect world, no one would ever criticize anyone including bloggers who create internet sites so that the whole world can read about their private lives.

Well, the Tearfree philosophy on this is if you don't want people criticizing your blog, don't blog or do it privately. Otherwise, deal with the criticism. Personally, I regret the fact that some of RTK's meanest commenters have abandoned us. Kyle Magill, Randy, Paula, McBunni, they added a cetain spice to the mix even if they were blinkered in their world view.

After all, what would all those anti-mean types say to the kid in The Emporer's New Clothes?

"Shh, if you can't think of anything nice to say, don't say anything at all."

I think we can all agree that the story would be lacking.
-----------------------------------------

Trainwrecks, here's proof you're missed. You're number three after the Iphone and Saddam and, unlike the first two, completely neglected by the MSM:

Failure to launch

For some years now, I've been reading stories about the supposedly horrible trend of adult children living in their parents' homes. It's a bad thing because

a) the kids are sponging
b) the kids are spending all their time playing video games and never clean up
c) the kids have McJobs instead of the real deal
d) the parents resent it and want the kids out
e) all of the above

Now I totally agree that I wouldn't want a sponging 25 -year-old child hogging the remote and expecting me to do the laundry and prepare the day's meals while he or she slept until noon, but frankly this does not at all relate to what I see of adult children living at home.

I know a number of 20-somethings who live at home because they are studying or simply enjoying the money they are earning in their first jobs. They do their own laundry, make meals for everyone, and get along well with their parents who like having the kids at home.

Why should they move out to live in some crappy apartment with a revolving roommate door? This idea that everyone must live alone for their twenties is a peculiarly late 20th century western notion. Time was and still is in the non-western world that you live(d) at home until you married and there was nothing remotely weird about it.

Isn't it just a little peculiar that in our supposedly greener society that we continue to encourage people to move out and waste enormous amounts of resources when it makes far more sense for them to stay home and share the coffee maker and the heating bill?

Quite simply there is no problem with adult kids living at home if everyone's happy. The problem is when the kids are complete slackers, the parents are exploited and the family's miserable.

If everyone's happy, it's a great thing, different generations getting along and sharing resources and each other's company. Putting pressure on kids to move out for the sake of it is just silly.

Special Topics in Pretentious Fiction*

Well, I finally finished last autumn's big buzz novel, Special Topics in Calamity Physics, and let me tell you, despite the critics' almost unanimous raves, it was a terrible book -- overrated, incredibly pretentious, and way too long.

Thank gawd for the internet for showing me I'm not alone. When I googled "Special Topics in Calamity Physics" + pretentious + overrated, I was led to Vani's fabulous review over in the Amazon readers' section. She says it all and what's more -- Marisha Pessl and all you professional critics, please take note.-- she does it succinctly. Plus, I stole her title* because I knew I couldn't do better.

In Defence of Jessica Simpson

I know. I am not well. Still reeling from my personal misfortunes, some of you must be thinking I have truly lost it. But I like Jessica Simpson. In fact, I really like her. I almost have a girl-crush on her. And I have felt this way since long before my husband dumped me. And I don't think that's why he dumped me. He felt the same way about her as I did.

Firstly, look at her. She's so pretty. If you take away the big Barbie hair, and the occasionally bag-lady and/or overly revealing outfits, she is really such a lovely girl. Love the jaw line, the full lips, the great teeth, the big smile, the cute little nose with the bump on the bridge that she refuses to get fixed. You have to admit it, she is pretty. And she has a killer body which has only occasionally veered into way-too-thin territory. The boobs are her own -- they even sag ever so slightly when she is not wearing a bra. I admire real boobs in a Hollywood bimbo.

Secondly, did you ever watch The Newlyweds? Yes, she was dumb, but she was also adorable. She laughed at herself. She was self-deprecating and good-natured. She never took herself too seriously. She was giggly and funny and down to earth and I laughed very, very hard when they went camping and she lay in the tent farting and whining in a strangely hilarious manner. Ditto when she tried to golf and her boobs kept getting in the way of her golf swing. She giggles and cracks herself up. She has the vague manner of a funny stoner chick. I could imagine hanging out with her and laughing for hours.

Thirdly, have you ever seen Jessica Simpson flashing her vagina to the paparazzi? Ever heard stories about her puking in clubs or doing endless lines of blow or being on painkillers for "period cramps" or getting a "precautionary appendectomy" which is actually getting Vicodin pumped out of her stomach or hitting on other girls' boyfriends or talking trash about other girls outside of clubs or going to rehab or doing anything like what all those other Hollywood starlets of the same ilk do every night of the week?

The worst thing Jessica Simpson has been accused of doing is sleeping with Johnny Knoxville while still married to Nick Lachey. I am not feeling too good about adulterers right now. But keep in mind -- Jessica Simpson was 21 and a virgin when she married that bland, puffy-faced Nick Lachey. If you had slept with only one man and your marriage was strained and your Daddy was causing you endless problems and your husband resented you for it and an astonishingly hot Bad Boy like Johnny Knoxville came knocking, wouldn't you have been a bit tempted? I'm not saying she SHOULD have banged Johnny Knoxville, I am just saying you can sort of understand why she did. To whit:

http://www.absolutjackass.net/images/miibpremiere1.jpg

Also, there are Daddy issues. She's a good Church-going girl who's been raised to do as she's told and respect her parents. And no matter how much damage that weirdo creepy Daddy has caused her personally and professionally, she sticks by him, just as she sticks by her insecure freak of a little sister. I admire that. Not the church part. Just the loyalty part. As well, you would have to search far and wide to find anyone who would say Jessica Simpson is bitchy. She is known to be sweet and funny and polite and kind to her fans and the people around her.

And that, my friends, is my defence of Jessica Simpson.

Men you wish you didn't lust after

Inspired by Jacy's "Dumped" post I'd like to engage in a little gratuitous male bashing, which I almost never, ever do but hell there's a time and place for everything so here goes.

This morning because it was snowing/raining/hailing all at the same time and because a moronic (male!!!) taxi driver almost ran me over, I decided to stop by Starbucks on the way to the dog park. They were playing John Mayer's Waiting for the World to Change, which I recognized because I'd seen it on CSI.

Now John Mayer is the type of guy I just hate to admit I find cute, as we used to say back when I was his age, or hot, as they say these days. He strikes me as pretentious, vain, sophmoric, shallow, and, worst of all, he's rumoured to have dated that notorious airhead, Jessica Simpson. But in spite of myself, I came home and bought his song and ogled his picture.

Sorry sisters, but I couldn't help myself.

Tearfree's war against nutritionists: Part III

Regular readers know that I find nutritionists annoying and delusional. And once again yesterday, my opinions were confirmed as I was listening to a discussion on CBC Radio's Sounds Like Canada about the new Canada Food Guide.

Some nutritional type was up in arms that the guide shows a picure of a T-bone steak in the "meat and altenatives" category. His point was that T-bone was a fatty cut and it would have been better to show something lean. Up until then, I had no objections.

But then as nutritional experts invariably do he went 10 steps too far right into fantasy land. A normal serving of meat, he insisted would be 1/11th or 1/12th the size of a T-Bone.

One-half, maybe, one-third, okay, one-quarter, getting a little small but I'm still with you.

But one-twelfth. NO, No, no. No normal person considers 1/12th of a T-bone steak a decent portion.

What is wrong with these so-called nutrition experts?

False alarm

Well, thank gawd for that.

According to the latest CBC radio report, security videotape confirms that the guy that set off the alarm bells was dressed in camouflage and carrying what appeared to be a weapons case.

My question is what kind of person goes to school dressed in camouflage and carrying what appears to be a weapons case?

Funnily enough just yesterday evening as a friend and I were waiting for a taxi, a guy walked by us dressed in full camouflage.

"What kind of idiot does that?" I asked my friend.

"There's a military spot around the corner," said my friend.

As far as I know there's no military building near the Concordia campus in question.

A Boomer Funeral

Yesterday I went to a memorial service for the wife of a former colleague.

The room was packed -- standing room only, in fact -- and I saw many people I hadn't seen in years. My neighbour (not crazy Katya) commented to me, "This is a real boomer funeral. Most of the people are in their fifties."

It made me realize that if I want equivalent turnout at my funeral, I'm going to have to get out the address book and make a few phone calls to all those people I've been meaning to get in touch with but haven't. When I told this to another one of the funeral attendees, who I ran into dog walking this morning, she said, "Oh don't worry. A lot of those people hadn't seen XXXXX (the widower) in 20 years. It's just what you do. You show up."

Yes, indeed. You show up and work the room and toast life and health and the dearly departed, who in this case died far too young. You think about what kind of funeral you should have and then you leave singing Joni Mitchell songs because could they really play anything else at a Boomer funeral...

And the seasons they go round and round
And the painted ponies go up and dawn
We're captive on the carousel of time
We can't return we can only look behind
From where we came
And go round and round and round
In the circle game.

So what kind of funeral do you want? I'm leaning towards a real party, but wondering if it's necessary to die young to throw a really wild wake. What do you all think?

I hate my cat

Happy Ending: I finally unloaded Fonzie at a garage sale.

We have had our cat Fonzie for seven years now. He came from a family with two-year-old twins via my stepsister, and we were assured he was child friendly and an all-around wonderful animal.

The answer to the obvious question -- namely why said family gave him up -- is this. The parents had split up and in order to exercise her newfound independence Mom went out and got a cat because Dad was allergic to them. A few months later, however, the parents decided to reconcile and the cat had to go, and that's how he ended up with us.

As it turned out, the reconciliation didn't last long, but Fonzie was never reclaimed. That's because he bites and digs his claws into you. which means that basically we ignore him but put up with his living here. We know that should you ever pet him or let him sit on your lap, he will give you a vicious nip or bury his hooked claws so deep in your skin you will be screaming in agony as you try to pry them out.

Visitors occasionally insist he is a nice cat until he turns on them. And this summer's housesitter admitted to sending him flying halfway across the room after he bit her while she was innocently talking on the phone.

Fonzie also mercilessly bullies and taunts our six-month-old dog, driving the normally silent pup into fits of ear-splitting yapping.

Although I have always been a cat lover, I feel nothing for Fonzie and would be happy if he would just vaporize. Unfortunately, he is 100% street proofed so he will not be taken out by a car. I cannot in all good conscience pass him off on someone else like he was passed off on us nor can I put him down. So my question is this. Can I phone up the woman he came from, who I learned over Christmas now has a lovely cat, and tell her that after seven-plus years, I've had enough and am sending Fonzie back?

Update: Just caught the despicable animal chewing on a new but thankfully cheap sweater I had left on the bed. I'll guage the damage once his saliva dries off. Is it any wonder I want him out of here?

Another Crazy Neighbour Story

Tearfree aka RTK's story about her crazy neighbours reminds me of my own crazy neighbour story. Forgive me if you are tired of this blogging theme, but mine too involves kitty cats and cuckoo birds.

Three years ago I had a cute little female cat named Lily. It was a warm June night and I left her out in our quiet neighbourhood while I went out for an hour. I returned and found her dead in a green garbage bag on our front steps, bleeding from a head wound.

She had apparently been hit by a car. My crazy neighbour, a loud, shrieking, bald Cockney Englishman with an equally shrill Russian wife, had witnessed her getting hit by a car. So he thought it was the decent thing to do -- to leave her on my front steps in a green garbage bag.

Now if you can take the time and trouble to put the cat in a green garbage bag, is there no way you could possibly hold onto the bag for a few hours, and leave a note on my front door asking me to call and then gently break the news? I have four kids -- did it not occur to him one of them might have stumbled upon their dead beloved pet?

I spent the night weeping and thinking the person who had hit Lily had left her on the front steps. It wasn't until I was taking out the garbage the next morning, still sobbing, that the Cockney idiot approached to ask me if I'd found the cat.

I didn't know whether to thank him or to tell him what an insensitive d**khead he was. I was too guilt-ridden and heartbroken at having left the cat out when I wasn't home to know what to say.

I am no longer as appalled, but they are still as crazy as ever. The spring and summer air is alive on our street with their shrieking arguments and their screaming at their angry children. Sometimes I wonder if Lily threw herself in front of that car.