The Right Rev. Dr. Peter Short, 38th Moderator (2003-2006)
[ Moderator's Letter to Members of Parliament on Equal Marriage ]
January 17, 2005
Please accept greetings from The United Church of Canada, and our gratitude for your service to Canada through the work of Parliament. I am writing to you because of the recently delivered Supreme Court opinion on marriage legislation, and the prospect of an early introduction of such legislation in the House. We wish you well and pray for you as you prepare for the coming session.
I want to contribute a perspective from the United Church to your deliberations. Whether or not you agree with what I am setting before you, I think you should be equipped with the knowledge that the General Council of Canada's largest Protestant denomination welcomes equal marriage. I believe that this decision has been reached not by abandoning Christian faith, tradition, and values, but by implementing them. I write to you in the hope that you will resist the assumption that anyone who speaks from Christian faith, tradition, and values must be against equal marriage. Some are, some aren't. This is true within the United Church, just as it is true within Canadian society as a whole.
The United Church has been deeply engaged with questions of same-sex relationships for 20 years. In August 2003, its highest court asked the Government of Canada to include same-sex marriage in marriage legislation. I am attaching a copy of the letter to the Prime Minister outlining the United Church's resolution.
In some ways, The United Church of Canada is tracking a common path with the courts and the federal government. While our General Council indicated its welcome of equal marriage, our polity upholds the freedom of each of our congregations to follow its conscience. In the year and a half since the Council's decision, many of our 3,000 congregations have been engaged in the same discussion that is about to take place in the House: whether or not to proceed with equal marriage. We know this conversation is difficult for many of our congregations, just as it has been difficult in the public sphere. In our own house we experience all the elements of this issue that are familiar in Canadian society: a clear opinion from the highest court; varied beliefs and expectations on the part of participants; freedom of religion; discussion preceding emerging policy; and the price to be paid for it.
I want to put before you now a Christian perspective on faith, tradition, and values. I write of these precious things because I believe they ought to be considered in making public decisions. I am aware of your responsibilities toward a multicultural and multi-faith society, and so what follows is not intended to be normative for all. It is specifically and unapologetically of the Christian tradition, a tradition that runs deeply in Canadian life and history.
I understand faith to be a way of living. To have faith is to implement a vision in one's daily life; in this sense, all live by some faith or other. Faith is not simply about the received doctrines. Doctrine is essential to religious life but it is not the final arbiter, neither of our decisions nor of our hope. After all, doctrines have been used to support slavery, apartheid, and the exclusion of women.
Some will protest that we must have faith in the Bible, and that the Bible takes an unfavourable view of intimate same-sex relationship. But I would answer that Christian faith is not an uncritical repetition of a received text. It is a mindful commitment to the power of love, to which the text seeks to give witness. Every generation of the Christian faith must decide how they will honour that demand of love in the living of their days. Changing circumstances and changing ideas are not the enemy of faith.
In fact, change is the only medium in which faithfulness can truly become faithfulness. Uncritical repetition is more like being on autopilot.
Similarly, I understand tradition to be a living treasure. Tradition is not to be confused with habit, custom, or convention. These are simply vessels that seek to hold the living tradition of God's presence in the world. Habit, custom, and convention are not themselves the light; they come to bear witness to the light. John's gospel says that the Word of God became flesh in Jesus Christ. The Word became a living being, John writes, not words. The Supreme Court follows this traditional wisdom when it declares metaphorically that the constitution is a living tree. In Christian tradition the measure by which we choose a course of action is the measure of the love of Christ, a measure that judges even scripture. It is never legitimate to use the words of scripture to promote a loveless agenda.
Further, I understand value to be created by God, not by ancient custom nor by current fashion nor by general approval. God does not love because human creatures have value. Rather, it is in loving human creatures that God gives them value. Value is a gift -- not a rule, not a partisan lever, and certainly not a weapon. It is wrong to invoke the love of God in order that one person's "values" might diminish another's value. Those who claim that homosexual people threaten to dismantle the value of heterosexual marriage would do well to remember that if anyone destroys marriage, it is married people, not gays and lesbians.
In the end, faith, tradition, and values do not decide for us. They equip us to take up the responsible and difficult task of deciding for ourselves. This deciding is itself an act of faith. So we pray for one another, we struggle to live in the love of Christ, and we take our step in humble trust that the next generation will deal generously with us, knowing we did our best with the vision of love God gave us for our day.
For me, Christian faith, tradition, and values contribute to our hope for that day when earth once more is fair and all her children one, including gay, lesbian, bisexual, and transgendered people -- all her children. The General Council of The United Church of Canada believes that equal marriage is a step on the path to justice, peace, and the common good. If prayer is a part of your life, please pray that we may tread lightly, wisely, lovingly, bravely, and faithfully.
Thank you for your consideration of these thoughts, which are offered in a spirit of commitment to the good of Canada. Please consider attending a breakfast [for Members of Parliament that] I will be hosting on marriage on Thursday, February 24, on Parliament Hill. In the meantime, I am attaching an essay on marriage I wrote for The Globe and Mail, in the hope that you may find it useful. Again, let me extend to you my prayers and the prayers of the church, as you pursue the difficult path of putting into legislation the best hopes of Canadians. May God bless you in your efforts and may your efforts be a blessing.
Sincerely,
The Right Reverend Dr. Peter Short, Moderator
The United Church of Canada


The Right Rev. Dr. Peter Short, 38th Moderator (2003-2006)
[ Let No One Be Turned Away ]
By the Right Reverend Peter ShortModerator, The United Church of Canada
I have been married for 30 years, but I'll not put that forward as any sort of qualification.
Experience is not the same thing as wisdom. Wisdom is like a guide and grandmother to the changing, exploring, learning mind. Wisdom says that it's a good time to change your mind when it widens your heart.
I have changed my mind about marriage and had my mind changed by marriage many times in 30 years. It isn't over yet. I could say the same thing about my many years of interpreting and articulating the treasures of the sacred scriptures. I suspect that the aim of scripture is not so much fixing the mind as it is widening the heart.
Marriage, whatever it comes to be in Canadian law and society, will not benefit from excessive sentimentality. While I would be the first to encourage a joyous and festive celebration of the marriage rite, I know that in most of its moments, marriage is less like a celebration and more like a trade.
Marriage lays a foundation, constructs a framework, and builds a house for love. Since constant perfect love is impossible (that's another story) marriage provides a structure, a habit of being together, a promise of faithfulness to carry us through those times when we know we must act with love but do not feel like loving. Eventually the house becomes a home, the wedding becomes a marriage, and the relationship becomes a habit of the heart.
Marriage functions the way any good habit or discipline functions. It helps us hang on through short-term ambiguity on the way to long-term freedom. The ambiguity is in the conflict between feeling and commitment. The freedom is in knowing there's a place to stand beneath the ambiguity - common ground. Common ground is not the same as having things in common, but you find that out in time.
Because it is a habit of the heart, marriage should be hard to get out of -- and into. Marriage is not casual, just as any good house is not casually built. That's what the old tradition of an engagement is about. It's a probationary period. In most jurisdictions, you can't get a licence and be married on the spot. The law requires that you afford yourself sufficient time to consider and reconsider.
Thus, marriage is not a spontaneous relationship, but a formal one. This is why a couple plans a wedding carefully and sets the wedding in significant traditions of people, place, clothing, and language. The marriage is constituted by promises given and its will to survive is sustained by a dependence on grace, that gift beyond explanation. It is not temporary. Not casual. Not for convenience.
We fail to take marriage seriously when we think of it as the private "experience" of two people. It's more than an experience. Marriage is an event that holds a couple from within and from without. The within part has to do with the love and commitment the couple generates. The without part has to do with society's investment in marriage as a carrier of stable relationships, social cohesion, and shared values.
The Christian tradition to which I belong has called marriage an "estate." This estate is a reality into which two individuals enter. In the act of marriage, they leave one estate and pass into another estate. Taking this passage changes both of them. It is a transformation they enter willingly and knowingly (well, at least they know in part). They are transformed from individual artists into a collaborative work of art. It is a transformation that is much too perilous an undertaking for those who are concentrating only on having their needs fulfilled. It is also a transformation that can never be fully realized if the depth, strength, and mystery of marriage are defined exclusively in the language of human rights.
The estate itself is not perfect (not to mention its occupants). Divorce happens. It hurts. Life must be reoriented. People must find a way to love again. For all its good and humble powers, marriage cannot banish the alienation that haunts the human condition. Marriage is, nonetheless, a good house that shelters the imperfect human's quest to persevere in love.
In the tradition to which I belong, we bring faith to the discussion of marriage. More importantly, it is faith that brings us to this discussion. Faith prompts that old question that stands at the heart of our experience as followers of Jesus; the question that runs like an aortic artery through the writings of the New Testament; the question that has haunted us from the very beginning and haunts us still: "Who is in and who is out?"
Christian faith brings us again and again to this question, as it brought our ancestors and will bring our children: "Who is in and who is out?" Our faith brought us here in the question of the ordination of women in the early years of The United Church of Canada. It brought us back again in the debate about divorce and remarriage in the 1960s. This same question is the essential element of our slowly dawning awareness about right relations with Aboriginal peoples: "Who is in and who is out?"
In the current discussion about marriage, the question looks like this: "Who will be invited to enter and live in the good house? Who will be welcome to give themselves to transformation by love in the honourable estate
This is not a question that can be answered adequately by relegating it to "the marriage file" in Ottawa. Certainly anybody who has been married knows there is no way in God's green earth you can put that experience in a file.
As we await the responses of the Supreme Court of Canada, the House of Commons, and Mr. Martin to questions raised in "the marriage file," it is a good time to think and pray and talk about marriage--an estate that in one form or another has been with us since time immemorial.
The General Council of The United Church of Canada has made clear its response. All those, regardless of sexual orientation, who are willing to give themselves to transformation by love in the honourable estate are welcome in marriage. I am aware that among ecumenical and interfaith responses to equal marriage, the United Church is mostly alone. Nevertheless, and with great respect for our partners and friends, I believe that the General Council has made the right response, true to the gospel and true to our tradition.
The identity of The United Church of Canada has never been primarily in our denomination. At our very beginning, denominational identity had to be relinquished by those Methodists, Presbyterians, and Congregationalists who took the risk of becoming the United Church. Our deepest and truest identity is still in our willingness to follow Jesus Christ as he crosses the boundaries that divide and alienate people. This is not an innovation. This is our tradition. God help us; it will always be that way. We expect change. At our best, we give ourselves to transformation. We hope for the widening of the heart. We believe that when you give yourself to following Jesus, you are led to a place God alone can see, in other words, to that same place marriage leads those people who give themselves faithfully and willingly to it. **
How, then, shall we be faithful to marriage? Not by forbidding change. Change is the only medium in which faithfulness can really be faithfulness. Faithfulness is to an unchanging environment as autopilot is to flying.
So let me express my hope and my prayer for all who are married and for all who stand at the gate of the honourable estate. Love is always a risk. So is life. But we believe in marriage as a good house that shelters the presence of the greatest of gifts. It is a good house for all the people and an honourable estate from which no one should be turned away.
** This paragraph was edited for space in the version of this commentary that appeared in the Globe and Mail on Saturday, January 31, 2004

How Christmas went, by Reid, age 6.

We had a great Christmas. I had to work the week prior and the week after, but things at work were pretty quiet.
On Friday, December 24th, Joe and I invited friends over to our place for Xmas dinner. We had more people show up than anticipated, but we were able to feed them all and have leftovers to boot. Who came over? Sean & Nancy, Jerome & Bruce, Allie & Noel, Ryan & Donna, Carrie and Mike, Nick, Darryl, ???. I had quite a fill of wine that night. I shut it down around 1:30am, since I had started drinking wine by myself in the afternoon while making pots of food.

I also received the most awesome news on Xmas Eve as well. Owen and Chloe are going to be parents! Yup, little brother is breeding. Their due date is July 8th, so that's going to cause a lot of happy turmoil in the middle of the summer. I'm gonna be an uncle! How cool is that?

Xmas day was quiet. Joe and I opened gifts. I was very fortunate this year. From mom & dad, a new ski jacket. From Owen & Chloe, a DVD/DVD-R/CD/CD-R/MP3 player for the house stereo, and a copy of the Star Wars Trilogy on DVD. From Joe, two shirts, Futurama seasons 1 & 2 on DVD.

On Boxing Day I went to A & B Sound to use up my gift certificates -- Bought seasons 3&4 of Futurama. Headed to Future Shop and bought a Canon Powershot A400 digital camera. It was a package deal containing extended warranty, rechargable batteries and charger, camera bag, 256MB memory upgrade...I figured the cost of the camera less the extras was only about $250. The entire package came to $440.

That night, Jerome, Bruce, Ryan and myself headed to Twisted Element to visit Natasha while she was in town. Her and Laura showed up, as well as Debbie and Sandy, Calvin & Doug, Curtis and man, plus two other cute friends. As well, Kevin McCuish showed up out of nowhere and hung out with us. Afterwards the gay boys headed to Curtis' place for a few brews. Curtis was obliterated and was starting to do weird things to Kevin (even though his boyfriend was there??), so I figured that was as good a time as any to get out.

The rest of the week is a blur. I had to work on the 29,30,31. I don't think I did much of anything that week but watch movies and sleep in my spare time.

NYE was fun. Joe and I went to Hugh and Brian's place. It was a very cold night, so they didn't have the turnout they were expecting, but we had fun anyways. Tim & Doug, Rob Blain, Mike & Shawn, Darren Stolz were all there. Nick showed up later after work. We headed home around 1:30am.

NYD was slow and dark. We relaxed all day, but had tickets for the BT show at Tantra that night. Hugh and Brian decided not to go, but Doug, Nick, Joe and myself went, and met up with Mike & Shawn there. There weren't many people out that night -- it was still bitchin' cold and the hangovers didn't help much. BT put on a good show though - it was his typical sound, nothing new or surprising. He did play a lot of remixes of old tunes though -- is this a trend or what? I don't care for it much if it is.

I went back to work a day early on Jan. 3. I wanted to bank the day for use later in the year. It's now the 12th, and I'm finally getting back into the training and working groove. We started Phase 3 of the Synergy sprint training program at Peak Power yesterday. I'm sort of sore today. We did our baseline testing yesterday as well, and I improved across the board. Some highlights: 7.2m triple jump, 346kg leg press x 6 reps, 3 sets of 70kg cleans x 5. It's been too cold to keep up with 55km+ weeks running, so I've been spending some time on the bike trainer, which hasn't been so bad with the portable DVD player in the spare room. It doesn't play the DVD-R copy I have of the 2003 TdF unfortunately.

I bought airline tickets for BK and myself for Tucson last week. $382 each, April 1-10 on United. One stopover in LA en route, two stopovers on the way back in LA and SF. Reid C. bought his ticket on the weekend as did Marcus, Chris, Cory, Craig all have yet to buy. We have seven going so far, can fit eight in Cory's parent's timeshare. I'm so excited!!!

Bandit and Gizmo are doing well. Bandit is such a little troublemaker. He loves getting dirty and teasing Gizmo into a wrestling match. I think we're getting him fixed in the next few weeks, once the weather improves.

Fetish report: I 'accidentally' won an eBay auction for a black zentai spandex suit in November which I received in early December. It was surprisingly close to my proportions and fits like a glove. I've tried sleeping in it; I find it almost too arousing to relax in. It's a lot of fun though. Joe's even fucked me in it once already.

I went a little crazy and bought some rubber items from InRubber.com based in Vancouver and Hauteng.de based in Germany. Everything was delayed shipping out over the holidays, but I received the InRubber.com order last week. It is wonderful! A pair of black footed rubber leggings with built-in C&B sheath, a black pullover shirt with long sleeves and attached gloves, and three masks, plus a pair of bike shorts with sheath and some Rubber polish as bonus items for patiently waiting. The leggings are skintight and feel wonderful, especially when everything is in place in the sheath. The shirt fits tight around the torso and lower arms, but the upper arms are pretty loose. I guess I'll have to build up the bar muscles to tighten up the shirt. The masks fit very tight as well. Everything was ordered in size small, which was definitely the way to go. I've had the stuff on about three times already. Took photos during the last session - very hot. Joe fucked me again with all of the rubber on - even hotter. I've noticed a few pinholes erupting. One is in the side of the right knee in the leggings, the other is in the left hand glove between the thumb and index finger. I have to contact Fernando at InRubber.com and find out the best way to repair these. Probably simple-layer bike patches will do the trick. The rubber isn't very thick so I'll have to be careful.

The order from Hauteng.de should be coming this week or next, I ordered three more bondage balloons from them, that I promise not to destroy on first attempt this time! I've also bought some surgical tubing to put in the balloon once I'm in to suck all the air out with the vacuum, and see how long I can spend vacuumized and immobilized in my rubber prison. I'm hoping for more photo sessions too, both with the rubber clothes on in the balloon and naked. I'm getting hard just thinking about it....

I have to lay off the fetish purchases for awhile. With the amount of bike equipment and travelling I'm planning on doing this year, I need all the money I can get my grubby paws on!

That's about it for now. Curling starts again this weekend. I'm hopefully going to test ride the Trek Madone 5.2 at Calgary Cycle and the Cannondale Six13 R3000 at Bow Cycle next week. I should be able to make a final decision on a bike then. I think if the Madone rides anything like my old 5500, that will be the choice to make because of its slightly more aerodynamic design. I've heard wonderful things about the Six13 too. Both are around the $4000 range. I will also order a front Ksyrium wheel (probably Elite instead of SSC) to complete another wheelset.

I've also ordered a new track bike to be built by Cochrane Cycle. It begins with the 2005 Giant Track frame, and it built with FSA and Deda parts. Jon Keech suggested Sugino components, and BK suggested Campagnolo which he has on his, but I was going for a lower cost. It's still going to cost just over $1800 to put this bike together (without wheels). I wasn't prepared to go over the $2000 mark, which would be easy to do with Campy or Dura-Ace components. I hope it won't cause any big problems. I'm still debating buying another wheelset specifically for the track bike, plus the Zipp 909 set or Corima disc wheel (another $2000). Cripes, this is gonna hurt!

The theoretical disturbing and upsetting thing about the entire Southeast Asia tragedy is that I don't think it will even compare to what humanity is in store for in the next 20-50 years. Horrific, yes, but just you watch for what's to come....calamity and destruction never before witnessed, but in what form will it take? Human-induced or Nature-induced, or something else?

God Does Not Cause Tsunamis How do you process such an epic tragedy? Where do you lay blame? Can you even try?
By Mark Morford, SF Gate Columnist
Wednesday, January 12, 2005
And like millions of Americans, I was on a reasonably relaxing and relatively effortless holiday break with my family when the earthquake/tsunami devastated Asia.
A fact that somehow managed to double if not quintuple the utter surreality of the event, as there I was, sipping wine and sharing laughs and opening gifts and lamenting the lack of Pacific Northwest snow for decent winter photography, safe as could be in a cocoon of middle-class all-American consumer-happy comfort as over 160,000 innocent people, most living in conditions you and I would find intolerable even in our nastiest and most Sally Struthers third-world fantasy, died in a horrific flood in about the time it took you to read this overlong sentence.
And like millions of across the world, I was jarred and horrified and utterly stunned by the raw power and random predisposition of nature, of God, of the universe, of karma and energy and the frail human animal and of water-displacement ratios and plate tectonics and whatever other terms you want to try and use to access the tragedy and believe me, people are trying everything they can think of, because, well, this is what we do.
We try to figure it out. Find a reason. Understand the roots. Blame something. Someone. Somehow.
Maybe this, then, is the most jarring thing of all. Bogus presidents and unwinnable wars and humiliating foreign policy, rabid homophobia and misogyny and pseudo-Christian absolutist agendas that seek to maul the kaleidoscopic nature of the national spirit, these are issues and events we can access, get our minds around, things the media can report on and people can discuss with something resembling articulation and alacrity. And yet here we are, the most massive and horrific disaster in decades, and ... nothing.
There is no available perspective, little by way of opinion or viewpoint except of course for reports covering the turbulent ecology or the amazing survival stories or the massive relief efforts and the U.S.'s initial embarrassing wimpiness therein, coupled with a few mentions of President Bush's own weird and paltry $10K personal contribution. (Note to Dubya: When the spoon-fed multimillionaire WASP president of the United States won't even match the donations of the star of "Miss Congeniality 2," better to not donate anything at all, OK, George? Now go back to your nap.)
Of course it makes sense. Of course there's so little commentary because, well, what can you say? There is no one to blame. There is nowhere to protest. There is no activist group to join or pundit to throw sticks at or candidate to get behind, no issue to rally around and no action you can take besides sending your check and suddenly becoming concerned about the state of tsunami early-warning systems in places you've never even visited and probably never will.
It is, perhaps, the most helpless and disorienting feeling in the world.
And unless you're House Majority Leader Rep. Tom DeLay, a charred and black little nub of a human who actually stood up at the White House prayer breakfast last week and read a passage from the Bible that would seem to blame the tsunami's victims for their own unspeakable fate (to listen to DeLay's reading, click here), given how the majority of them were Muslim and therefore they of course believed in the wrong God and therefore got what they deserved ha ha snicker.
And then he sat back down. And lightning, shockingly, did not strike him dead on the spot.
Unless you're a hunk of rank spiritual mold like Tommy, you don't claim any sort of understanding of such massive tragedies, knowing as you do that no matter how you come at it and no matter how many pictures you see and how many island communities and entire cultures you read about that were simply wiped off the face of the Earth, no explanation, no manner of verbiage can possibly do it justice, can possibly frame such epic natural disaster. We simply don't have the tools, spiritual or otherwise.
God fails. Earth fails. Man fails. The disaster, it just is. We stare at it and see the devastation and feel a deep relief that we were spared this time because we know, deep down, it could have very easily happened to us.
And we blink hard and we are touched on some primitive level, some ancient chthonic instinct that hearkens us back to the beginnings of time, before there was a person on the planet to conceive of a god who would gently explain it all away as a grand master plan and you just have faith and stop your worrying there there now. Right.
How could God let this happen? I've read that question a few times, seen that query posed, by adults no less, which is just a bit sad, if not bewildering. As if God really was some sort of bearded and angry old puppeteer yanking strings and wreaking random havoc across the world for mad, inexplicable reasons all while favoring Republicans and evangelical Christians and war, a childish and simple kind of God conceptualized mostly by 5-year-olds and fundamentalist Bush supporters and Mel Gibson.
As if God were not, actually, a raw and deeply pulsing energy force, a vibration, the ambisexual gender-free love-torn luminosity of all things that we as a species can relish and contribute to and celebrate and drink from but that, instead, we seem to be trying very very hard to beat the living crap out of, every single day. You know?
Don't ask why God let this happen. Maybe ask, instead, why the vibration of the world and our treatment of the environment is so low and ugly and un-God-like right now that these things seem more inevitable than ever. Maybe there's a hint in there somewhere. Earth as living organism. Earth as dynamic barometer of our progress and awareness. Earth shuddering at our mad lurches toward war and overdevelopment and overpopulation. You think?
Many, I've read, see the tragedy as a big wake-up call from the universe, something meant to jar us out of our bitter insularity and realize that we are, in fact, one species, one humanity, not all that different and not all that isolated, and, if nothing else, maybe we can feel a few of the barriers normally separating us break down, finally, at least for a while.
Well, maybe. Sadly, this is not the traditional American way. Our cultural memory is terrifically short. Our range of global humanitarian experience is terrifically limited. Besides, we've got a nasty, violent, deadly, unwinnable war in Iraq to keep losing.
Maybe you see such horrors, as I tend to do, as a call to carpe diem, to cherish the day and enjoy the moment like never before and maybe make a change in your life and your perspective before it's too late and because you have nothing, really, to lose, and because life is frighteningly fleeting and it can all be literally washed away in the time it takes to walk your dog to the park and back.
Primordial. Primeval. Prelapsarian. Many other polysyllabic words come to mind to describe the tragedy that only seems to point up the fact that we know far less than we think we know about How It All Works and even less about Why the Hell We Have to Be Here to Witness It.
And what's worse, there's not a damn thing we can really do about it all, except get slapped, again, with the fact that life can be unspeakably violent and brutish right alongside stunning and beautiful, and there is not a single place on the planet that is absolutely free of potential catastrophe or epic disaster or slow and painful rebirth. Nowhere.
And therefore, no matter how many luxury resorts and how much money and how many McMansions and how many manly SUVs we gather desperately to ourselves like hollow and ultimately useless security blankets, this very fact, this slippery transitory insanity, is in our blood, our cells, our genetic code.
And in the end, we realize terror has nothing to do with angry Islamic fundamentalists or right-wing Christian warmongers, and everything to do with surviving this mad shocking circus so as to milk this experience for all it's worth and haul its cartload of shimmering and bloody and fragile lessons to the next level, the next life, the next Mystery.
Could the lesson -- if there is one -- be that simple? And that incredibly difficult?

Christmas updates coming soon.....

Do SUVs Make You Stupid?
Pointless, dangerous and vain as ever, land tanks still sell millions. Only one explanation possible
By Mark Morford, SF Gate Columnist

Maybe stupid is too strong a word.
Maybe it's more like willful ignorance. More like intentional blindness. More like a calm and conscious denial in the face of a staggering stack of overwhelming facts that if you looked at for even one minute would prove that land tanks are some of the most overrated and silly and harmful and utterly pointless vehicles on the planet.

OK, maybe stupid is the right word.

Because there really is no other explanation for the still-roaring success of the land tank. Still no other explanation for their bizarre popularity, for the fact that, according to the Census Bureau and despite California's legendary rep for organics and environmentalism and concerns of health and body and air, our fine and heavily Schwarzeneggered state leads the nation in new registrations for SUVs.

Sad but true. Registrations for the huge lumps of bulbous steel jumped 39 percent between 1997 and 1992, from 1.9 million to 2.75 million, and overall there's been a whopping 56 percent jump in sales of the beasts in a mere eight years across the country, totaling nearly 25 million of the ugly tanks now lumbering across the American landscape and hogging all the parking and burning up most of the oil and sneering in the face of air quality and all rational thought and flipping over and bursting into flame after hitting a pinecone at 80 mph.

You can see it in the eyes of most every new SUV buyer as they stare, wide eyed and overwhelmed, at the massive vehicles in the showroom: some sort of veil drops over their eyes, some sort of weird opiate pumps into their brains and they lose all sense of reason or intelligence or common sense or environmental concern and their ego balloons and their testosterone kicks up three notches and they go into some sort of spasm of denial about how purchasing one of these things will, in fact, contribute quite heartily to the overall ill health of their own bodies and the planet as a whole, not to mention the very reason we are so desperately, violently at war.

And the salesman sees that look and just smiles and licks his chops and points out how this 4-ton hunk of environmental devastation can seat nine and tow a large tractor or maybe 15 head of cattle, plus it has 27 cup holders and three DVD players and a built-in sense of false superiority, and the vaguely depressed regularly emasculated suburban dad or the gum-snapping Marina girl with way too much of her parents' money and way too little self-defined taste takes one look and goes, oooh.

What, too harsh? Not really. Most people know these facts to be true, but buy the tanks anyway in a mad collusion of wishful thinking and raw denial and false advertising, absolutely convinced the beasts are somehow safer and sturdier (they're neither) and that they absolutely must have 37 cubic feet of cargo space to haul their grocery bags and 4-wheel-drive traction to get over those little concrete barriers in the mall parking lot and just ignore the fact that the thing rides like a brick and handles like a block of lead and is about as attractive and beautifully designed as a jar of rocks.

Irony? The SUV drips with it. Fact is, most Americans consider themselves environmentally conscious and claim to care deeply about protecting natural resources and don't really want war and suffering or the insane BushCo-brand oil dependence that causes both.

But the truth is, if Americans really cared about energy and pollution and reducing reliance on foreign oil and getting us out from under the massive hypocritical terrorist-supportin' Saudi thumb, they'd buy smaller or more efficient vehicles. Period. But they don't.

Waiting for that hybrid SUV to make it all better? Good for you. Step in the right direction, truly, though of course improved gas mileage and reduced emissions do nothing to allay the fact that SUVs still roll and still can't maneuver to avoid accidents and still hog parking and still assault the eye and tread as lightly on the planet as Arnold Schwarzenegger in ski boots. But hey. It's a start.

Another big fallacy? SUV roominess. Hell, ugly ol' minivans have far more storage and headroom, as do most sport wagons, PT Cruisers -- even large hatchbacks have more than enough overall storage (and often better headroom) for any but the largest of families and oh my God even this is a moot point because you well know that 97 percent of all SUVs on the road are single occupant and the only "cargo" is their purse or their gym bag, while the other 36 square feet is taken up by, well, ego and attitude and air.

Machismo? Well, yes. There's that. Big feeling of invincibility in an SUV, of a high and mighty driving position that gives you that commanding sensation, so strong and so powerful that you are willing to overlook that it's just an illusion, deceptive and harmful given how SUVs actually have more accidents, actually cause more accidents than passenger cars because they can't maneuver in emergency situations and can't stop in rain or snow and tend to flip over easier than Paris Hilton after a dozen Bacardi shooters.

And then you hear that, according to the U.S. National Highway Traffic Safety Administration, minivans are 10 times safer than SUVs in a crash. Whoops.

Truth is, small, nimble passenger cars may not survive a head-on collision with a Freightliner quite as well as your bigass Navigator, dude, but they do a hell of a lot better avoiding it in the first place. Which is why rates of serious accidents and incidents of death are actually lower for smaller cars than almost any lurching monster truck on the road. Period.

And sure you can be cheered slightly at the news that SUV sales are slightly sluggish lately, down 2 percent, and that Hummer sales are way off and Prius sales are way up and there's still a three-month waiting list for Mini Coopers.

Until you realize that 2 percent ain't much of nuthin' and until you read how the U.S. consumes 20 million barrels of oil each day, with passenger vehicles burning up three quarters of the total -- and SUVs alone burn half the total for all passenger cars, far more than their fair share and more petroleum than our entire country produces in a year.

And then you learn how that little pip-squeak tyrant Saddam was sitting on 10 percent of the world's oil reserves and that he might have once thought about threatening the nearby 60 percent owned by our buddies the terrorist-lovin', women-slappin' Saudis, and you realize that anyone who thinks we're in Iraq for democracy or humanity's sake is absolutely full of Rumsfeld.

Look. I know many people who own SUVs. Good people. Lovely people. Friends. Family. I know their arguments for owning them. I know that they know, deep down, that most of those arguments hold little sway and most are rather hollow and the result of slick marketing and just a little bit of fear.

And I know there is no accounting for taste and that a big part of the sad American ideology is a willful separation of cause and effect, and that there are worse atrocities in the world than owning a shiny black knobby-tired 5-ton Ford Expedition that never sees anything more rugged than a pothole in the Krispy Kreme drive-thru.

But, really, we have to just admit it: the SUV is hypocrisy incarnate. It is the perfect emblem for the American view, for our position in the world: gluttonous, vain, mostly useless (over 85 percent of SUVs never see a dirt road, much less need 4-wheel drive), ugly as hell and as graceful or practical as a school bus on an ice-skating rink.

Just admit it. Maybe it will help. Maybe a tiny confession of guilt will put us back on the right track. After all, admission of the problem is the first step toward recovery, right? That, and placing your order now for the badass new VW GTI.

WTF?!?!? We used to shoot pellet guns at each other all the time....maybe not so much on the schoolyard. Why is this even news? What a waste of e-space. I wish we got counselling for every traumatic thing that happened to us back then....

7-year-old fires pellet gun in Saskatchewan schoolyardLast Updated Fri, 17 Dec 2004 07:12:06 EST
NORTH BATTLEFORD, SASK. - A seven-year-old boy who used a pellet gun to shoot at other children in his school playground is facing disciplinary action but no criminal charges.
The trouble began on Wednesday morning with a schoolyard scuffle at McKitrick School in North Battleford, Sask.
The RCMP says two boys got into an argument before class.
One of the boys went home and returned with a pellet rifle. When students got out for recess, he started firing.
Several students were shot at, including the boy he'd fought with, before teachers intervened and confiscated the rifle.
The school called police and the boy was removed from school.
RCMP Cpl. Robin Bittorf said it doesn't appear anyone was hit.
"Two boys that we knew were shot at don't show any injuries at all," he said.
Bittorf said it's up to the child's parents, school officials and social workers to deal with the matter now.
The Youth Criminal Justice Act doesn't apply to children under 12.
"We can't charge him criminally for his actions and, as he is only seven years of age, I'm not sure he really understands the magnitude of exactly what he did," Bittorf said.
Since the weapon involved was a pellet gun, the owner can't be charged with a firearms offence, he said.
The boy's future at the school is under discussion. Ron Ford, the director of education for Battlefords School Division, says the school has a zero-tolerance policy on guns and is taking the incident very seriously.
"We see this as an average little guy doing a very foolish thing ... but we need to get the attention of him and his guardian that we view this as a serious issue," Ford said.
"He will be away from school until we're certain that is the case. And certainly more important to me is that he get the necessary counselling for him and his guardian."

Canada Goes To Hell Legal pot? Legal gay marriage? Universal health care? What's next, free porn and candy?
By Mark Morford, SF Gate Columnist

Did you hear the screams? Did you feel the menacing chill? Did you see the black and ominous clouds, moving north?
Did you sense, in other words, the very presence of Satan himself as he laughed maniacally and tossed around bucketfuls of ultrathin condoms and little travel-size packets of Astroglide like confetti while riding his Harley Softail up to Toronto or maybe Edmonton to join the ghastly and sodomitic celebrations?
Because it's happened. Canada's high court just ruled that the government can, if it so desires, redefine marriage to include gay couples, which it has declared it will do almost immediately, thus solidifying Canada's place as the chilly yet mellow and gay friendly and hockey-riffic epicenter of all known hell.
It's true. It's rather amazing. Gay marriage will be completely legal in Canada very soon. It's been oddly ignored in much of the U.S. media and hasn't really been much discussed among those in the terrified red states except when, deep in the night, from their respective lumpy twin beds, they whisper to each other across the room as they pop their Ambien and stroke their portfolios and curse their very genitals: oh my God what's wrong with those freakin' Canadians?
I mean (they continue), I thought they loved red meat and brutish sports and manly hunting. Are they all just freaks and perverts now? Have they been sniffing too many elk pelts? Is it something in the clean and plentiful water up there? Something to do with those weird French-esque people in Quebec, maybe?
I knew we should've been paying more attention to that border! Didn't I say so, honey? Didn't I say we should keep an eye on those northern weirdos after they dissed the Iraq war and legalized pot and sort of went about their happy and calm Canadian business whilst we here in panicky red-blooded America chewed our own karmic legs off in a paranoid and jingoistic rage? Hippies and perverts, I said! Save a few bombs for Ontario, George, I say!
Let us now do the naughty math: Canada has roughly 32 million inhabitants, of whom about 75 percent are over 18, of whom it can be loosely estimated that anywhere from 2 to 8 percent are gay (depends, of course, on who you ask).
All of which translates into a ballpark figure of anywhere from 1 million to 2 million gay Canadians of legal marrying age who will now eagerly laugh and kiss in the streets and confound poor reactionary born-again George W. Bush, and they will flash their wedding rings at parties and annoy all the single people, all while proving for the umpteenth time that love knows no gender limitations or legal restrictions and will trump your whiny sanctimonious religious puling any given Sunday. Heathens!
It's getting more confusing by the minute, isn't it? I mean, Canada now has legal pot and legal gay marriage and universal health care and no known terrorist enemies and a relatively successful multiparty political system. They also have, according to U.N.'s Human Development Index, one of the highest qualities of life in the world. All coupled with a dramatically reduced rate of gun violence and far better gun-control legislation than the U.S., despite having the exact same per capita rate of gun ownership and gun-sport enthusiasm.
What the hell? How is this possible? Why aren't they scared to death like whiny red-state Americans? Why don't they want to kill each other along with anything that might threaten their access to televised hockey and cheap beer and yummy poutine?
Aren't they aware of what's happening in the world? Don't they know they are openly hated for their freedoms and their cafés and their vinegared french fries? Aren't they human, fer Chrissakes? Oh, red states. How confused and irritated you must be.
After all, unlike the U.S., Canada backed the Kyoto Treaty (along with 165 other heathen nations). They also spend more per capita on education and less on health-care overhead than the U.S. They have a $10 billion federal surplus, a new record. They are not, as of yet, abusing the hell out of their vast natural resources (freshwater, huge forests, oil and natural gas, mineral deposits, etc.) and embarrassing themselves on a global scale every single day and making a mockery of their constitution or their citizens' civil liberties. What the hell is wrong with them?
Yes yes, I know, Canada's universal health care is flawed and not always of the best quality, and a great many Canadians think their prime minister is a bit of a schmuck and they hate paying taxes and of course they can be all profitable and progressive when they don't have a massive bogus unwinnable war to pay for, one run by a ravenous and fiscally idiotic federal government, and they only have one-tenth of our population and one-fiftieth of our desperate consumeristic gluttony. They have it easy, right?
Remember, Canada is boring. Canada is rarely in the news. Canada has no massive belching socioeconomic engine like America does, what with our NASCAR and Hollywood and Fox News and bad porn and the absolute best medical care on the planet despite how only a tiny fraction of us have access to it while the rest languish in bloated abusive HMOs and poverty and disease and 40 percent of us have no access to health care whatsoever. Take that, Canada! Oh wait.
We hate gays and love guns and think pot is evil but hand out Prozac and Zoloft like Chiclets. Meanwhile (as "Bowling for Columbine" so beautifully illuminated), Canadians leave their doors unlocked and don't feature violence and death on every newscast and still value community and diversity and discussion over solipsism and protectionism and a general hatred of foreigners and the French. See? We rule! Oh wait.
All of which makes you wonder: how many more countries will it take? How many more nations will have to, for example, prove that gun licensing works, or that gay-marriage legislation is a moral imperative, or that health care for all is mandatory for a nation's well being, before America finally looks at itself and says, whoa, damn, we are so silly and small and wrong? Is there any number large enough? After the announcement that gay Chinese and gay Russians may legally marry and grow lovely gardens of marijuana as they all get free dental care, will America remain terrified of nipples and queers?
Canadians. So mellow. So laid back. So gay. So not producing any truly superlative modern-rock music or ultraviolent buddy-cop movies and not actively siccing Wal-Mart or Starbucks or Paris Hilton on the rest of the world like a goddamn cancer. They're just so ... nice. And boring. And calm. And solid. And friendly.
And they simply beat us senseless on the whole open-minded, progressive thing. Kicked our flag-wavin' butts. Trounced our egomaniacal self-righteous selves and made the red states look even more foolish and backward than the whole world already knows them to be.
They did it. Canada made the whole gay marriage issue look effortless and obvious and healthy, and a massive black rain of hellfire did not pour down upon them and the very idea of hetero marriage did not immediately explode and their economy did not unravel like all the sneering cardinals and right-wing nutballs screamed it would. We must ask, one last time: what the hell is wrong with them?
Oh wait. Maybe we should rephrase. What the hell, we should be asking, is wrong with us?

Mark Morford has hit the nail on the head AGAIN....

What Are You, On Drugs? With so many Americans popping prescription meds, who needs nature and sex and exercise?

The odds are very good that you are on drugs.
Right now. This minute. As I type this and as you read this and as false Texas dictators rise and sad empires crumble and as this mad bewildered world spins in its frantically careening orbit, there's a nearly 50/50 chance that some sort of devious synthetic chemical manufactured by some massive and largely heartless corporation is coursing through your bloodstream and humping your brain stem and molesting your karma and kicking the crap out of your libido and chattering the teeth of your very bones.
Maybe it's regulating your blood pressure. Maybe it's keeping your cholesterol in check. Maybe it's helping you sleep. Maybe it's helping you wake the hell up. Maybe it's opening your bronchial tubes. Maybe it's brightening your terminally bleak outlook.
Maybe it's adjusting your hormone levels or controlling your urge to weep every minute or relaxing the blood vessels in your penis or cranking the serotonin to your brain or pumping carefully measured slugs of alprazolam or fluoxetine or sertraline or atorvastatin or esomeprazole or buspirone or venlafaxine or any number of substances with Latin-rooted jawbreaker names through your flesh in a bizarre dance of miraculous vaguely disturbing death-defying scientific wonder.
Forty-four percent of all Americans. That's the latest number. Almost half us are popping at least one prescription drug and fully one in six are popping three or more, and the numbers are only increasing and this of course doesn't count alcohol or cigarettes or bad porn and it doesn't count the mad megadoses of jingoistic flag-waving God-slappin' fear -- which is, as evidenced by the last election, a stupendously popular FDA-approved drug in its own right. But that's another column.
Have a teenager? She's probably on drugs, too. One in four of all teens are, according to new research. And we ain't talking pot or ecstasy or meth or fine cocaine or Bud Light or any of those oh-my-God-not-my-baby devil drugs that are so demonized by the government, but that by and large are no more (and are often far less) toxic and addictive and caustic than any of your average 8-buck-a-pop silver-bullet chemical bombs shot forth from the likes of Eli Lilly and Glaxo and Pfizer, et al. Ahh, irony. It's the American way.
All of which means one of two things: either it's the goddamn finest time in history to be an American, living as we are in the age of incredible technology and miracle medicines and longer life expectancies and $5 coffee drinks and a happy synthetic chemical to match any sort of ache or pain or lump or rash or spiritual crisis you might be facing.
Or it's the absolute worst, what with so many of us heavily drugged and over half of us massively obese and IQs dropping like stones and our overall quality of life deteriorating right under our noses and shockingly huge numbers of us actually finding Shania Twain somehow interesting. Which perspective is right for you? Ask your doctor.
It's become so you can't crack a joke about Prozac or Xanax at a party without at least three or four faces suddenly going still and unsmiling and you're like, whoops, as you suddenly realize that you can, as you walk the streets of this fine and heavily narcotized nation, imagine at least one very expensive drug pumping through the time-ravaged body of nearly every other person you pass. It's a bit like knowing their secret fetish or favoritest dream or on which nether part they want to get a tattoo. Except totally different.
And you might say, well, so what? So what if pharmaceuticals help us cope, relieve the pressure, help us survive this ugly and irritating world? Better living through chemistry, baby, so long as you don't mind the numbness and the glazed eyeballs and the heart palpitations and the lack of true feeling in your fingertips and the nightmares about snakes. Right?
So long as you don't mind the slightly nauseating sense that you have lost some sort of vital and perhaps irreplaceable link to the animal world and the luminous organic planet. But, as Dubya says, who the hell cares about that crap when you got baseball and war and apple pie?
Because here's the nasty truth: it's a highly toxic BushCo world right now and we've set it up so it's only getting worse, darker, more poisonous and unsettled and unsanitary. Maybe all our meds just help us maintain some sort of jittery and numbed balance, some sort of sad equilibrium. The BushCo doctrine dictates detachment, exploitation, abuse of every known ecological resource and profiteering from every known loophole and caring not a whit for nature and organic systems and balance? Hey, like nation, like body.
But let's be fair. It must be said right here that many of these drugs indeed help an enormous number of people and restore lives and bring light where only darkness once reigned and far be it from me to begrudge anyone his or her chemical-assisted reprieve from genuine suffering.
But here's the thing: it's still only a fraction. Only a small number of people whose doctors prescribe these meds like candy actually need them, and as for the rest there are these things called lifestyle change and dietary change and perspective change and even spiritual shift that can affect the overall health of your life like a goddamn miracle, like a thousand drugs combined, changes that millions simply refuse to undertake because, well, it's just too damn hard.
We don't want to know. We don't want to understand deeper, complex natural systems. We want pills, not awareness. We want magic bullets, not true magic. We want to eat what we want and exercise not at all and pay no attention to our bodies and our quality of life and expect it all to work sufficiently well until we die at 90 and they forklift us into our refrigerator-size coffins. After all, we're Americans. We're not supposed to care.
Nevertheless, it bears repeating: maybe what's lacking most in this society is a true and thoughtful and nuanced connection to and understanding of the natural systems, soil and sunlight and sustainability, lunar rhythms and whole food and maybe knowing where the hell your water really comes from. You think?
Because the truth is, it's not all that hard to get informed. It's not all that hard to affect serious change in your life and eat better and kiss better and require less chemical crap in your bloodstream and slowly but surely reduce the need for medication in your life. It is far from impossible to clear out the toxins and flush the BushCo-endorsed crap and defy the demonic corporate pharmaceutical PR and reevaluate just how you tread this life. They just want you to think it is.

Note to send out to Dave & Nic, Heather Gibb, Grant & Alana.

Hmmm..do you realize that that email subject line left me humming Elvis tunes all day? Damn you, Liwiski! I had to change it to deflect the singing in the head back to you...

Hello everyone....how are things in balmy Manitoba? (Apparently 'Friendly Manitoba' doesn't apply anymore).

Everything is okay around here. Life seems to be getting busier and busier despite the attempts to 'simplify' things. I've been finding that even though I hoped my schedule would lighten up over the winter, it certainly hasn't so far. Work has been insane the past month or so -- the production environment freeze started on Monday (no new changes or applications can be deployed in production for a month or so so that infrastructure changes can be made -- mainframe moves, server reassignments, etc), so all the development teams have been scrambling to get everything done in time. Of course, as I'm in Support I'm on the receiving end of 'incomplete' applications and non-existent documentation, so I've had my work cut out for me getting up to speed on the new applications, scheduling deployments, bug fixes and enhancements, and helping out the dev teams work on production issues as well as doing my normal day-to-day stuff. Hopefully this will slow down over the next few weeks.

The racing season went very well. I ended up 21st overall in the Alberta Road Cup for Cat 1/2, which is a 'best-all-round' rider award based on road race points over the season. I thought that was pretty good considering I didn't even race my first Cat 1/2 race until the Canada Day Crit in Edmonton. Being a hammerhead and racing every race available certainly helps! My team, Synergy, ended up 5th overall in the team road points category and 1st overall in the team Journal Cup standings, which is the track award. Synergy is certainly the most prolific team on the velodrome tracks, and is also very active in the track organizational council (CBTL -- see below). As some of you may or may not know, I was hit by a car in May while on a team ride, which destroyed my beautiful bike, but luckily spared me from any permanent damage. The guy who hit me basically fled before the Calgary police got there and I've been having a hard time since then trying to get the police to do anything about it. I'm just now getting an insurance claim processed on my own house insurance policy. Whether or not they catch the guy, I've surrender to the fact that I'm just relieved to finally be getting this ordeal behind me. On the bright side, I'm looking forward to getting a brand new 2005 road bike and a new wheelset to replace what I lost. I love saving up for and shopping for bike goodies!

Now that it's off-season, I'm working out at a power lifting gym with seven of my other bike teammates, focusing on improving strength and sprinting power. We're getting subsidized quite generously through the team. Three of the guys that I went to Tucson with last year are coaches at this particular gym so we had the privilege of getting a specialized training plan and dedicated coaching for a really good price. It's a good environment to work out in since people definitely notice when you don't show up. I also hope that the discipline required for power lifting technique will help me out as well, if only to save myself from getting injured. So, we're doing that three days a week, Tuesday and Thursday after work and Saturdays in the late morning. I'm still running four days a week, M/W/F/Saturday mornings, and still curling on Saturday afternoons!

I'm still Treasurer for my bike team and webmaster for the Track (velodrome) organizing body. It's year-end right now and we've been scrambling to get financial reports and copies of all our cheques/receipts/expenses/income reconciled in order to maintain our society status and be able for charitable money (i.e. casinos) through the AGLC (Alberta Gaming and Liquor Commission). It's been a lot of work (yep...volunteering can be a bitch sometimes), but things should quiet down considerably after New Year's. I've also committed to building an online registration system that will tie into the CBTL website (http://www.cbtl.ca), so that will keep me busy going into January and February and March and April......

It's also Christmas party season, and we've had our share so far. I'm pretty sure by the time New Year's rolls around, I'll be ready for some R & R and ready to apply some focus to my training regimen, since I'll be sick of drinking beer....NOT!

Speaking of beer....Joe officially gave his notice at the bar (Swan's Pub) were he has bar-tended part-time for four years a few weeks ago and his last shift working there is on Saturday. It will definitely be great to have him around in the evenings. He has a very good chance of going full-time with Telus Mobility in January which will mean a guaranteed income and benefits, which will be awesome. He's come a very long way in the company in just a year, and I've been trying to convince him to stick it out. He's very good at what he does (Data/Network Analyst), but he is growing weary of dealing with clients all day. He's been talking less and less about finding something else though, so maybe that's a good thing? I'm really hoping that freeing up some of his time will allow him to pursue more healthy things in his life -- eating better, exercising more, reading, finding some hobbies/activities that he's interested in.

We have a new addition to the family as well. We got a new cat, a 4-month old male named Bandit. He's black & white and really cute and cuddly. He can also be quite a handful at times. We felt 2.5 year-old Gizmo was going through feline seasonal affective disorder (don't think there's such a thing but that's what we labelled it). He would sleep all the time and wouldn't even come downstairs to see us when we were home. He still does a lot of that -- he's really a sloth in a cat's body, but for the first few days when we brought Bandit home and he was in a felicidal stage, he would follow the kitten around like a shadow and take the odd swipe at him. Now they've really warmed up to each other and he treats Bandit more like a chew toy. How weird...

This was a good year for travelling. I went with four friends (several from my bike team) for self-organized training camp in Tucson, Arizona over the Easter weekend this year, putting on some mileage in anticipation of the racing season. We did 800km in six days in the wonderful Arizona heat. It was a wonderful trip that I'd like to do again. Joe and I went to Toronto for five days in July to see Madonna in concert with some friends from Calgary, Vancouver and Toronto. Joe and I decided to make a mini-holiday out of it and stayed with friends for a few days and the Royal York for a few others. It was an intense trip as we spent most of the time 'socializing'. The Madonna concert was the first of several big shows we got to see this year. We also got to see Sting & Annie Lennox in concert in Calgary and I went to Sarah Maclachlan with Reid Cummings here as well. All were very good.

In August I went back to Grandview for a week for my great-uncle and great-aunt's 50th wedding anniversary. I managed to get a few days of rest up at the lake with mom and dad. Four weeks later, I returned to Grandview again as Grandma Dalgleish was ill in the hospital and her condition was getting worse so the grandkids trekked home to see her one last time. I'm very glad I did, as she passed away two days after I left back to Calgary on September 28th, so I had to return to Grandview once again for the funeral the weekend following in early October.

Joe and his friend Nick flew out to Vancouver for a short three-day getaway in mid-October while I was up running in the Banff Ekiden Relay Race, a perennial fave of my running club. We sent three teams up this year, and had a best team finish of 21st. Eight of us spent the night in Banff in a huge condo with a common hot tub. Great fun.

Not sure what's going on for holidays next year. The bike group are still planning a training trip south sometime around Easter again. We had debated places like San Diego, Durango, Colorado or Taos, New Mexico for a change, but now everyone seems to be swinging back in opinion to heading back to Tucson again. It seems to be the one of only a few locales that are civilized, safe, and guaranteed to be hot and dry for our visit -- plus the cycling is phenomenal. Nicole Liwiski's parents lived in Tucson when we were there last year, but they've recently relocated to Newfoundland (Nic's dad accepted a position at the new Voisey's Bay nickel mine in Labrador). It's unfortunate they won't be there since they fed us (five famished cyclists) and their own guests an incredible Easter dinner when we were there last year!!! It's that darn Manitoba-native hospitality, I tells ya!

Joe and I were planning on heading to the east coast sometime in the summer/fall of 2005, but I don't think that plan's formulating fast enough. Joe hasn't been back to his PEI stomping grounds in over 10 years, but it may have to wait at least another year. Neither of us can commit the time nor the money. We're seriously considering buying a house this summer, so it's probably best to return to some twisted form of frugality. I still have the trip to Arizona and the World Master Games in Edmonton (both requiring a week of holidays) to contend with. Maybe if things work out we'll be able to head to a tropical locale early next winter or something.

I'm still hoping to get back to Manitoba sometime in the summer of 2005. Nothing planned yet, but I'm feeling guilty about not heading to Grandview for Xmas, even though I stated that I would start heading there in the summer when there's more to do and see than head there in December. I have to stick to my convictions....I'd still like for Joe to someday see where I came from...which would be a lot better sell in the summer, obviously, however I've been sensing a chilly reception to that idea if we ever did come to Grandview together. I'm pretty confused as to the perceptions and possible reactions my extended family has of this, since they appear to be okay with things on the surface and then act or talk differently otherwise. They've all met Joe on neutral territory, but impeding on their turf may cause a different reaction. I'm trying to remain very cautious, yet optimistic. Integrating into my extended family was the main reason why I came out to my family, after all. Sometimes I feel that after all of my analysis and perspective-taking, all my views of the situation have been completely off the mark. The big Supreme Court decision on same-sex marriage constitutionality came out yesterday. Can you imagine if I had to send out wedding invitations someday? How GAY! LOL....I'd only get married for the gifts, naturally! Hey, if we're buying a house soon.....we definitely need some new stuff......hmmm?!?!?! ;-)

We're still seriously thinking about moving further west to Vancouver or Victoria someday, mostly for the lifestyle improvements we feel would result, however I've become very fond of the optimism and energy Calgary has and I foresee a bright future for this city - maybe. I'm happy with my job, my partner, my friends. I'm really getting tired of the conservative, money-centric (ie. whoring - the city would sell the Calgary Tower to China if they could make a buck out of the deal) attitudes in the municipal and provincial governments, the blatant rampant suburbanism and consumption here and lack of culture and traffic madness as a result, and particularly growing very tired of the Prairie climate. Some things to weigh out, I guess.

Anyways, enough about me. What are you guys doing for the holidays? Doing the Chyz thing, I presume? I have to tell you guys again how much fun I had visiting you in September. It was so much fun to play with the boys! They're growing so fast. I hope that I'll be able to do it again this summer as well. Time will tell...

I will REALLY try to call you guys before Christmas, however if that doesn't happen, of course I will make the annual call to Nic on our birthday. If I don't talk to you before Christmas, have a good one, say hi to the boys and the family, and I'll talk to you soon after.

Take care and talk soon
Reid




-----Original Message-----From: David and Nicole Liwiski [mailto:dliwiski@mts.net]Sent: Tuesday, November 30, 2004 5:40 PMTo: Reid DalgleishSubject: Viva Leishvegas!
Hi Leish!

How are things?

Working out hard as usual?

Uncle Greg is out visiting. Dwayne and Hazel have moved to the St. John's, NLFD. Dwayne has a job with the Voisey Bay mine out there. Greg will probably be living in Winnipeg.

Busy with the kiddos. A is playing hockey and Mark continues to grow. Things, in other words, are going fine in the Parkland.

Take care and keep us posted.

David

Built-In Obsolescence
It doesn't seem all that long ago that we were arguing over built-in obsolescence. It was an era in which consumers were increasingly unwilling to sit and let the whims of corporate America, their quest for ever-growing profit, define the public's welfare.
Yet even then, as protestors stared down rifle barrels and radical laws were passed protecting the environment, even as black America began to emerge from a centuries-long hell and migrant laborers began to discover power and self-respect, even then it was a challenging notion that Detroit might build in obsolescence so that we'd have to buy new cars instead of driving reliable ones.
It was a radical notion then, but look around you now. It's the norm.
How long will that fancy camera last? How long does it take before that sleek, new PDA is tossed into the closet? Will they last as long as your car? And when they're gone, will you just go out and buy another one, paying again for what you paid before?
How much longer will CDs last -- CDs that pushed vinyl out the door. How much longer will DVDs last -- DVDs that are pushing CDs out the door. Will they last as long as your car? And when they're gone, will you just go out and buy another one, paying again for what you paid before?
2Mhz, 66Mhz, 80MHz, 400Mhz, 800Mhz. 386, 486, Pentium, Pentium-II, Pentium-III. G3, G4, G5. You KNOW that when each one goes, I go out and buy another, paying yet again for what I paid before.
This is important. It's important for industry that we buy and buy and buy, that we never stop. Ever increasing streams of revenue based on ever shrinking costs. Don't think sales. Think perpetual rental.
Built-in obsolescence. It's the business model for the 21st century. We won't own anything anymore. We'll rent everything forever. And we'll owe our souls to the company store, as well we should -- for our own good.

So Many Christians, So Few Lions by Jack Nichols
According to the pundits, Bush was elected when Christians’ anxieties about “moral values” (spearheaded by their frenzied focus on the perils of same-sex marriage) sent believers scurrying to the polls. It seems well worth remembering, therefore, that insightful lions have treated ordinary Christians as an annoyance ever since those sunlit days at the coliseum in ancient Rome.
On the very day that Bush proclaimed his win, a Jesus preacher at the Taipei zoo descended into the lions’ cage in a failed effort to explain holy Christian theories to the great beasts. But lions in 2004 A.D., he quickly discovered, still prefer healthy skepticism to blind belief. They accommodated this missionary only after he seemed to offer himself as a tasty bite. It soon became apparent to him that the lions were adamant infidels who didn’t want to be “saved.”
I don’t want to be “saved” either. Henceforth, like the lions, I’ll simply roar without mercy into the faces of those who insist that a “wretch like me” must either pledge allegiance to The Christian Agenda or be burned forever in their loving god’s lake of fire.
The Judaic-Christian-Islamic tradition is odious because it supports one of the greatest of cultural dangers: restrictive sex-roles that can eventually spell planetary death, especially if such macho poseurs as Dubya are leading the charge.
When the hunting and gathering age came to an end and rich agricultural lands needed a tribe’s protection, the male warrior role was born. Fighters were sorely needed. Jews, Christians and Muslims, therefore, supported this warrior role from the earliest times and in spite of occasional phony nods to a need for peace, still do. Men, they allow, are wholly admirable as warriors, but become worthy of the death penalty should they dare to make love.
Wherever the religionists’ dogmas have enjoyed ascendancy, both women and gay men have ranked low on cultural totem poles. For Christian soldiers to march onward, these dogmas assume, male warriors must not, under any circumstances, be tempted to adopt what are believed to be “feminine” values.
Young male warriors are taught to fear such “inferior” values, and this fear has long been instilled by a schoolyard epithet considered worse than any other: sissy. To be a sissy is to be somehow feminine. To make love to a member of one’s own sex is treason. It is to forget that men must make war, not love.
It is high time, therefore, to reverse this Jewish-Christian-Muslim travesty by resurrecting the great “battle cry” of the 1960s counterculture: “Make Love, Not War.”
Bushie Christians flocking to the polls were fueled by their deepest fear: namely that the fellow citizens they’d labeled sissies might, in fact, gain equality, thereby eliminating the most frightening insult in their sick psychological arsenal: sissy. The threat of being called a “sissy” has far greater power to maintain a sick status quo than does the threat of hellfire.
What the religious fanatics fail to realize is that a society fueled by “feminine” values (which are, in fact, simply human values) would be far more loving, peaceful and satisfying than anything that the Christians’ traditional macho-mania can offer. If a male child is taught to put up his dukes in his high chair, to eschew showing his feelings and is assured he is dominant, on top, in control and competitive, he is a threat to others.
So-called feminine values are more truly spiritual and life-affirming. They include empathy, nurturance, receptivity (as in being a good listener) and the like. No wonder
St. Paul demanded that women remain silent in the churches. Men only would be allowed to do the talking, elevating their active-only stance, one that does untold damage not only to women but unwittingly to themselves.
Dr. George Weinberg (the heterosexually-inclined psychologist who coined the term “homophobia”) examined antipathy to “female” receptivity or passivity in his classic work “Society and the Healthy Homosexual”:
“Most men who loathe homosexuals have a deathly fear of abandonment in the direction of passivity. The surrender of control signifies to them a loss of masculinity, and their demand for control produces narrowness. To condemn passivity is like condemning your eyeballs. We need passivity to see, to discover, to learn.”
In other words, passivity provides humanity with a great strength, not weakness. But St. Paul and his Christian cohorts place the warrior male in charge of everything, devaluing the contributions of half of the world’s population.
The world-damaging Christian dogma that does more harm than any other, however, is called Original Sin. This dogma teaches that all people are born in sin and remain utterly depraved, having inherited the gross wickedness of Adam and Eve, their mythical parents. Humanity, it teaches, deserves to be eternally tortured by a god who will relent only if individuals accept the “sacrifice” of his son, a sacrifice-doctrine that had its tribal origins in bloody animal sacrifices, slitting the throats of pet goats and the like, to appease him.
Gay men and lesbians, who until the 1970s were told by mental health “experts” that they too were diseased and depraved, can discern the deleterious effect on each individual’s self-esteem that this disingenuous dogma of Original Sin has on those who believe it.
In October, 1963, in a letter to the Executive Board of the Mattachine Society of Washington, I appealed to the Board to ignite a revolution against the psychiatric establishment’s benighted diagnosis of homosexuality. Strangely, this letter, as the historian John d’Emilio notes in “Sexual Politics, Sexual Communities”, marked the first time that a movement activist had called for such an uprising.
The need for a similar response to the benighted Christian dogma of Original Sin, is clear for many of the same good reasons - especially so as to increase each person’s sense of self-esteem. This evil dogma, supporting the theory of humanity’s inherent Adamic depravity and must be quashed and utterly defeated. Perhaps there is no issue more pressing in what some are now calling the Culture Wars.

Here is the letter that I wrote to mom and dad re: Grandma's obit. I haven't sent it yet...not sure if I will.

Dad and Mom,

Before I begin, I want to make two points. Please don’t take this note personally. It is not meant to be a direct observation of you two, but a general sense of the thoughts of the extended family and the community of Grandview in general, sort of written how I would have it unfold in my mind. And, keep in mind that there are bits of sarcasm spread around too. (What? Reid being sarcastic?)

I want to make it obvious that I completely understand the implications of the following observations – I have tried to look at everything from multiple perspectives, so there is no need to defend a position using them. I know defence is the first reaction most people would take to the following pages I am about to write:

That the traditional definition of ‘marriage’ and ‘intimate relationships’ is something our family holds dear and is a construct that many members of our family would consider unchangeable or unalterable.
That apparently some/many members of our family are uncomfortable with the implications my life and relationships have on their sense of ‘right’ and ‘wrong’, even though they won’t indicate it in face-to-face conversation.
That most people in our family do not, nor will ever, consider my relationships to be in the same standing or on equal footing as those of my heterosexual cousins, even if the legal system considers them so.
That the family is undergoing grieving and some people may currently not be thinking in a sensitive, impartial way.

Okay, so here goes. Simply, I have been very upset at how I interpret everyone’s reaction to my relationship with Joe. I have this feeling that everyone has been paying me huge lip service over the past four years, but deep down are very resentful or very ashamed of what I am, yet don’t have the guts to say how they truly feel. I assume most don’t really know what to make of it, so they would rather toe the common Grandview line, breezing over an issue they find difficult or challenging (ignorance is bliss, after all) rather than face it, get educated on the facts of it, deal with it, and move on.

No matter how much members of this family wish that things weren’t what they are, the truth is, I love Joe Gallant very much, and we love each other enough that we may even decide to get married one day. End of story. If you don’t like it, tough shit.

Believe it or not, a gay relationship is not the fire and brimstone end of the world as all of the right-wing religious neo-conservatives would have you believe. In fact, some of these relationships are a lot less dysfunctional than some of the ones you would consider ‘normal’, despite all the external pressures gay people have on them to ‘conform to the norm’.

This has sort of been building, but I had been feeling like it had reached a new low point since the weekend at home for Grandma’s funeral. It wasn’t anything tangible, it was lots of little cues in situations that made me feel very inferior or angry. One such situation was down in Grandma’s basement when Grant would get grilled ecstatically by several people on how long him and Tara have been going out, when they’re planning on getting married, and how fantastic it is that they’ve been together for TWO WHOLE YEARS! You know, post-funeral family get-togethers tend to dwell on the living or potentially living to lighten the mood. I don’t mean to pick on Grant – he’s the only one in the family who is in a similar situation as me (unmarried, yet in a long-term relationship)…

I had told Mom (and a few other family members) the fact that Joe and I celebrated our fourth year together on September 20. Grandma’s death and funeral aside, I do understand that there were other more significant things going on in the family at the time, such as Scott and Jen’s expecting, Owen and Chloe’s first wedding anniversary, Dave Pulock’s 40th birthday.

However, was there any acknowledgement of this milestone from anyone at all? No way. It’s just too vile and shameful and society-destroying a concept to even consider that anyone would want things that way, let alone let someone know that they even thought about it in an even remotely affirmative light, or even celebrate it, heaven forbid.

After all, gay relationships are fake, and therefore really easy, right – despite the fact they are completely unnatural and immoral notwithstanding. There’s nothing hard about being an uncommitted, irresponsible, immoral sinner and living with another guy – it would be just like having a satanic roommate, right?

Well, I hate to disappoint you, but a gay relationship is just as much work as a straight relationship. There are emotional, financial, scheduling, security, communication – and yes, even child raising issues for some -- issues that have to be dealt with all the time. The fact that it’s a guy and a girl, two guys or two girls doesn’t make these conversations and compromises any different or easier for anyone. In fact, I would say they are harder to maintain for gay couples because there are the additional pressures of an generally intolerant ‘democratic’ society continually telling you how disgusting and immoral and unbalanced and misguided you are, that you and/or you and your partner are not worthy of equal benefits or respect or privileges because of who you are and your unnatural couplings, even though no one has a problem taking the same amount of tax money or disposable income from gay people as everyone else – things that may possibly have some effects on a person’s psyche and well-being. So, please don’t think things are easy.

I always thought our family valued truth, equality and honesty, but I guess I was wrong, or partly wrong. This all came to a head when I read Grandma’s obituary. There it was in printed words. A large part of who I am was completely and utterly snubbed, omitted, ignored.

First of all, I understood that Joe wouldn’t be included in the listing in the obituary. I know how Grandview works. There’s nothing worse than damaging the family reputation, having all those people talking about you behind your back because you’re the family with the gay son, upsetting the sensibilities of a bunch of people with narrowly defined concepts of right and wrong, black and white (because, obviously there’s no grey area in any matter) that they’ve learned in the church or some similarly misguided channel. Even if Joe had been put in the obit as Leslie Gallant (his legal name - which could’ve kept everyone guessing for awhile I suppose…), there were four things that really stood out for me at this point.

Whoever wrote the obit consciously made a decision to include EVERY family member except Joe and alter the historical truth. I can tolerate that a majority of the family wouldn’t want his name included. I was mostly upset because there was NO consultation on this at all – no one had the gonads to call me and tell me this was going down. I had to read about it for the first time in my Grandma’s obituary!
It really brought home the understanding for me of how my family is receiving this reality. There appears to be a lot of posing and lip service to sweep this issue as far underneath the collective rug as possible. I get the feeling that my lifestyle and life are just a shameful embarrassing black mark on the family’s name and reputation.
Would Grandma have been okay with the truth? Maybe, maybe not. But I believe, understanding how Grandma felt very strongly about equality and diplomacy within her family, that she would rather prefer the truth – an accurate account of reality – in her final life summary. She wouldn’t like to see some skewed, edited version of ‘reality’ in order to avoid rocking the boat and upsetting the tender sensibilities of some old farm wives that have never left the community and seen how any other parts of the world work. But then again, I could be wrong. It’s lucky that my sensibilities and feelings don’t really matter that much so these things can be done. But then, it’s no big deal to offend the fag, is it?
If someone is going to start defending this position with some religious anecdotes, I’d urge them to stop right there. Despite the fact we are thankfully a secular family and no one in the family should be making ANY religious references at all, the fact that Grant’s girlfriend Tara got full inclusion in the obit blows this theory out of the water. If Joe and I are living in sin, technically, so are they, but Grant’s relationship is real and mine’s fake, right? What a bunch of hypocrisy.

So, there it is. You may be thinking that I’m being overly sensitive about this issue, and maybe I am, but I think this situation is an indication of feelings that are a lot more latent, potent, and potentially dangerous under the surface. I don’t really know what to make of things anymore. I decided a long time ago to refuse to continue living with guilt-ridden responsibility to Grandview anymore and live my own life, no matter how deeply my roots are entrenched there. Is it possible that some people in the family are not taking steps to acceptance of my gayness, and may even be regressing? Obviously. What I do know for sure is that a lot of people have been lying to my face or pretending that things are okay when they’re not. For this reason, I don’t know if I can feel comfortable in Grandview anymore, let alone feel that safe.

Until I see some proof that things are becoming more inviting for me in Grandview, I think I will avoid the situation entirely. I feel terrible about this, but how am I supposed to react? How would you react?

The fact that I could legally marry Joe in Manitoba today if I wanted to now seems so ironic. What if we were married? Would Joe’s name still be conveniently erased from the family record? Most likely. Maybe now you can get a glimpse of how I’m feeling. I just hope that if and when the day comes that I do get married the family isn’t expecting any wedding invitations -- because they won’t be getting any.

By the way, if Grandma Ostrowski ever asks me again why I’m not shacked up and married, I’m going to give her a damn wedding date she can dwell on….

Mom and Dad, I fully understand that who I am has been a very hard thing for you guys to grasp, understand and adjust to, and I am so proud of you for how far you’ve come along the road to acceptance (or at least tolerance). Again, please don’t take this note personally, it’s not meant to be that way. I’m trying to point out (again) the unhealthy subculture of repression that allows a bunch of dissimilar people to live together in a ‘remote outpost’ like Grandview without killing each other (face it, Grandview is very remote in the grand scheme of things). I suspect it has always been this way in Grandview, and always will be. It is the only way the social fabric in such a community could remain intact without unravelling. It is also the reason why some want to escape far, far away, never to return. It is also the reason why some others spend a large chunk of their young lives trying to figure out fundamental truths about themselves once they are matured enough to understand the dynamics of their environment better and realize that they can’t keep running away from and being scared of the truth forever despite whatever responsibility they feel they have to people and places in their lives.

I do understand how Grandview works, which makes this situation even harder for you, and I apologize in a way for having this all result from Grandma’s obituary of all things, but I really want to you get a sense of how I see things. The fact that Joe and I are a complete non-issue to the family and that no one talks about it EVER are things that I can grudgingly accept – I mean, they were all scenarios that I had conjured up again and again before I even told you guys I was gay. Admittedly, the fact I live far away and only deal with the family intermittently helps the situation on both sides on many levels. However, like I have told you before – the one and only reason I came out of the closet to my family was because going forward I still wanted to be part of the family, I wanted to be able to be comfortable bring my life partner / spouse / boyfriend / whatever home and feel like I could be honest and open when talking about my life. Well, I guess that can be written up as being one of the biggest blunders of my life. In pure Grandview style, things are much better left unsaid, or ignored, or assumed – as long as they appear proper on the surface. The real world can be very ugly and the truth can sometimes be what you don’t want to hear, but it doesn’t mean it doesn’t exist. In order to move on in life and adapt to our now quickly changing world with as little baggage as possible, you need to deal with an issue at hand reasonably, logically, and properly, not ignore it or brush it aside, before you can move on to the next issue.

Living in a large community where there are people from all walks of life in all sorts of shapes, sizes and colours may be why I have the perspective on things that I do. You are continually challenged to reassess your belief system and your understanding of how things work or are. I understand fully that people in Grandview don’t need to deal with their inner insecurities about people who don’t look the same or act the same or think the same as they do because it is a situation they don’t have to be in very often.

Maybe at some point in the past I felt that I could be a beacon of enlightenment for some people in Grandview by living openly and unashamedly gay (how generous of me!), a great example for people to look to. However, things haven’t gone that way, and frankly, I’m tired of making the effort. Despite the strength I have tried to muster thinking I could eventually break down some barriers, I can’t really justify doing it anymore. It hurts me to think that I have felt such strong attachment to Grandview for so long, and now I don’t really care anymore. With Grandma’s death, I now have even less reason to come to Grandview. I don’t like to think of it in this way, but I do.

On a more personal level, I think about how much this hurts Joe too – he’s been dealing with this crap in his life for a lot longer than I have been dealing with it, and despite how much of a tough outer shell he’s built around himself and how much more his family was accepting of him than mine is of me, I know it still bothers him. I would question the sincerity of my partner’s family too after this snub. Why do you think he doesn’t want to do anything with my family? It isn’t hard to connect the dots.

Anyways, it comes down to this. Right now, I feel that I’m about to deal with my hang-ups about my family and hometown the same way I did with my homosexuality in my twenties – by running away. Back then, it was easy – guzzle down a few too many bottles of beer and then you have an excuse for everything. This time, it may be not so easy. Joe and my discussions about moving to Vancouver are becoming more and more frequent. At least in Vancouver, we’d be living in a destination spot and if anyone wants to see us, it’s the logical end to a trip, and it’s good that way. But I don’t think I can justify coming back to Grandview anytime soon, even with you guys there. The only thing that may keep me here is my closeness to Owen and Chloe and the potential of becoming an uncle someday.

I will never forget what mom said the day I came out to you guys on the couch in our crappy apartment in north Calgary:

“We hope it never happens that things come to the point where you never want to come home again”.

Well, sorry mom, but it has come to this point. I’m emotionally drained, upset, and particularly disappointed with my family and my hometown. I feel I’ve been disrespected and blown off. Despite my enduring love for my entire family (yes, even Uncle Dewar), I don’t really feel I have anything I want to contribute anymore. Please understand me when I say that I will never stop loving or staying in touch with you, mom and dad, but it won’t be happening in Grandview anytime soon.

I’m sorry.

Love always, Reid

Well, the American elections are over, and I can say I'm more than disappointed. I wonder what's to come over the next half decade? Geez, I hope we revert back to theocracies. That's exactly what we need...

Here's a letter I wrote to Mark Morford, a columnist with The San Francisco Gate. His messages really resonate with me, and he was as passionately anti-Bush as I am.


Hi Mark,

I truly am disappointed with the election results as they become clearer today, and I am truly sympathetic to the American people today. Despite the fact Kerry is no prize, Bush isn't even a booby prize. I have followed the ups and downs of the American election campaign as much as everyone else and have been glued to the media as a result, trying to absorb as much information as possible, all the while trying to process everything as non-partisan and non-judgmentally as possible. Yet, it still really boggles the mind to think that if even a slightly larger percentage of your fellow Americans had done some fact-checking and soul-searching, the results might have come out quite differently. Democracy is so wonderful and horrible at the same time.

As a Canadian, I tried to take American and non-American media reports and stories with a grain of salt. I realize that the Canadian media (more fair and balanced than American media? Hmmm...maybe not. Familiar situation....they're controlled by only two or three media conglomerates as well) may have been reporting things with a 'twinge' of partisanship, but the fact that a resounding majority of international opinion polls stated time and time again that Kerry was desired in the White House did not resonate with the American electorate. Why did the American people not consider the fact that a large majority of the global population overwhelmingly wanted Bush out? The fact that 95% of the world's population were not eligible to vote in this election, yet will still be affected by the outcome of this election is truly unnerving. The average American truly has succumbed to the fear-mongering and compulsive lying of the GOP and Bush Administration. Under the guise of the protective father (Father?), Bush has barely maintained his position, but now has the mandate to continue his steam rolling, neo-Con, Pax Americana agenda for at least the next few years. I fear the damage may be far too extreme by then that it may be too late to stop it.

Maybe it's something else? Maybe the American electorate voted for Bush in spite of global concern. I truly worry that the American consciousness might be more insidious than I had feared - that living in a culture of fear, distrust, aggression, guns, and hostility can really start to be internalized at a fundamental, long-lasting level after awhile. I'm starting to truly believe that a majority of Americans really do unalterably BELIEVE that they are the pinnacle of modern society (very Roman Empire-esque), and that it is the God-given Christian right of America to instill American beliefs, values and culture on the rest of the world at any cost because they are simply the best and only way to achieve world stability and enlightenment, and it is so obviously the right thing to do.

My favorite quote of all time is "Those who cannot remember the past are condemned to repeat it." by George Santayana. It speaks volumes about superpowers, forced occupations, insurgency, bad decisions and bad diplomacy. History repeats itself over and over again because people are too lazy, ignorant, intolerant or scared to learn about issues, facts, and reality beyond their limited perceptions and face anything that challenges them. Case in point, does Bush watch, listen, or read any more media than he did four years ago (which back then was practically nothing - a very disturbing personality trait for a world leader to begin with)? Probably not. I fear that the world is in for some big surprises over the next few years, and not good ones -- but maybe eye-opening ones.

Terrorism is a big deal, but not as big a deal as the governments would have you believe. How many people have been killed by Arab-based terrorism in the past four years (outside of the hot zones, that is)? Under one thousand, maybe? The biggies being Bali and Madrid, and maybe Chechnya. Terrorist cells are not as organized and armed as some people would have you believe, and it is almost ridiculous to think that they might be able to pull off another 9-11 or something as equally large-scale and synchronized without someone noticing something beforehand. What risk do people in Dubuque, Iowa or Montgomery, Alabama really have of being directly attacked by a terrorist organization? Probably even less than we do here in Calgary (we do have a large oil industry here after all - it could be a target someday. That's only before the Water Wars start, of course, which are going to render everything we hold dear today irrelevant). People have their priorities completely messed up. The environment and our unsustainable, damaging, polluting consumerist fever (and unfathomable public and private debt loads and teetering economies as a result) are the two biggest issues threatening the planet today. Everything else means zip if those two get messed up, and they're definitely not as irrefutable and untouchable as everyone naively wants to believe.

Anyways, Mark, thanks for trying to make a difference. I read your columns every week and agree with much of what you say and have really appreciated your passion to inform people of the truth and get them thinking about the things that really matter. It blows my mind that people are so uninformed and still have the ability to make decisions that affect so many other people that do not have a say. I wish you and your country all the best and wish the best of luck to your minorities (visible and invisible), poor, women, and secular citizens, as well as everyone else that isn't Christian, Conservative, rich, white and male. I think we may all be in a shock four years from now when we see how much things have changed in so many ways, and not for the better. Today, I'm relieved that I'm living where I live, and although I may come to visit you guys once in awhile (more so since the loonie is on the up-and-up in light of the American currency weakness...), I don't think I would have the required patience or resolve to live in the United States and endure what is to come. I wish you and yours all the best.

Thanks for reading,Reid