2000-11-05 || 9.58a

Sunday mornining before going to sew Lover's X-mas gift at Sister's place

Lover's got a 13-year old cousin who jumpend on a bus from Qu�bec city to meet an 18-year-old man in Montr�al. They met at a bar while he was in Qu�bec a week or so ago. Everyone thinks that Lover'd be the best person to talk this kind down a bit, as she was an exceedingly tempestuous kid herself, and I think that Lover really wants to make sure this kid doesn't make too many mistakes. Lover's kind that way.

Anyway, we left to go to Lover's Grandmaman's house, where the cousin was staying for the two days she'd be here, and came across a pidgeon that was flipping about in the middle of the street. One of the pidgeons that the City of Montr�al has been poisoning in order to save the fucking buildings or something. We thought it had broken a leg or something, though. After all, we're not IN Montr�al, eh ? (Just kidding, I'm not that na�ve), so lover wanted to help nurse it back to health.

Which, by the way, is a major passtime for this girl. She's like the Earth Mother or something. She finally stopped going in to work hours early --unpaid-- to take care of the sick animals when she realised it wasn't stopping her bosses from snapping thier necks ...

The pet shop where lover works was not out of our way, so she wanted to go get a box and bring the pidgeon home 'til monday. My opinion was that it might be better for the poor bird to get hit by a car and die quickly than for it to waste away, but I guess I didn't really feel that way. And anyway, I can't say no when Lover want's to do stuff like that. She picked it up and we walked a bit faster.

A few blocks later, Lover stopped talking about whatever we were discussing and said 'cf, what's *this*?!?!?' I turned around just in time to see the bird's head loll over and be still.

The last thing it did was to grip her finger with one of it's feet.

It's amazing how she can change from a self-sure, cocky, tough-arsed woman to a little girl with tears on her face and a dead bird in her hands right before my eyes.

It's amazing that no-one at the City thought that people would be watching the pidgeons die.

And it's amazing, as well, that people *do* stuff like that. We live in a world where we *must* cull animal populations in order to keep our man-made worlds in order. we have even changed the wilderness so that we *have* to allow some culling of the seal population, for instance, because it's either that or find some way to re-introduce the polar bear population that we've already diminished by so much.

How?

We have to allow the destruction of so many deer because otherwise we have to re-introduce wolves and lynxes and other predators into the wilderness of Qu�bec. Problem: No-one out in the country wants them in their backyards. They'd rather shoot deer.

Human beings are the most lethal predator on this planet. I can't think of one other predator-- T Rex? Nah, Great White Shark? Fiddlesticks! Grizzly? nevermind.-- that has been able to lay low *every* other species on the planet.

It makes me think that we're less the highest of the animals, and maybe more like the highest of the cancers: we change everything around us to suit our needs, and in the process, kill the larger organism. What's the difference in the larger organism is a cancer patient at the Montr�al General, or the planet upon which he lives?

I wish I was smarter. Maybe then I'd know the answers to the questions I'm always asking.

**********

After leaving Lover's grandmaman and cousin fighting and spitting at leach other (our work there was done...), we met Maman and Sister to go to my cousin's place in Verdun. Her aunt Betty came as well (who Sister and I hadn't seen since we were toddlers). She's a crazy old bat, that one. She kept us laughing with tales of her exploits and all that. For 40 years, she worked at Bell Canada as an operator, then moving on up. She told us of this time in 1967, when a man called from New York City ('You know, dey talk t'rough der noses like dat?'). Now, the operators were usually given a set number of seconds to be on with any one customer. get on, get info, connect, hang up. Up to and during Expo 67, though, the operator were allowed to chat up the callers a bit, to get them interested in coming to Montr�al. The man from NYC asked a few questions about Expo, was the weather nice, was it worth going, etc. He was being a pretty cock jerk about it, though. I think the fact that NYC has lobbied to get Expo that year might explain his next question.

NYC: 'And where are all the *shithouses*?

Betty: 'They're all in the American pavilion.'

click.

Her supervisor didn't know whether or not to give her a black mark because the guy'd been a jerk, so she called *her* supervisor. The supervisor said 'no, that was a snappier comeback than I could have come up with. Shake her hand.'

months latereverything's forgotten, and life's going on. Her department was having a going-away party for one of Betty's supervisors, and one of the executive VP's was there. He walked up to Betty and said 'you know, I should give you a gold star.' Of course, Betty asked why. The VP answered with six words: 'They're all in the American Pavillion.'

I guess one should never think that the mucky-mucks don't know what's going on in the lower eschelons, eh?

**********

Updated reading list: Model Behavior (sic) by Jay McInerney; Have Spacesuit - Will travel by Robert A Heinlein; The Code Book: The Science of Secrecy from Ancient Egypt to Quantum Cryptography by Simon Singh. I still have all of your suggestions, and will slowly get through the ones I haven't read. Thank you all.



||Gods save the Queen,
||cf

back || forth

older shite

One last little note... - 09.21.2006

de-stressing, biking and terrorism - 06.06.2006

Mildly stressed... - 05.29.2006

More crime stupidity - 05.28.2006

Scary stuff - 05.25.2006



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