Recession Season Snowman

All he has to his name is a 1992 Pinot Noir, reservation cigarettes and 6 cents yet he smiles though he will melt tomorrow because life exists within that in-between state of creation and destruction. This too shall pass, he said to me the next day when all that remained of him was a carrot and some twigs.

I love here. Here I love.

Happy new year

Meanwhile, in Canada...

Canada's political situation parallels ours in Thailand to some level.

Slate tells us how:

"A royal appointee shutting down Parliament; national cross-country protests; bloodthirsty accusations of treason and sedition. All the frictions of a new democracy. I hope they work it out in Thailand!

No, welcome to Canadian politics in 2008."

I'd already published the above but then I kept reading shit like The National Post and realised I wasn't done with this post yet:

"The Conservatives seem to have a lock on the spontaneous outbursts of singing the national anthem. Tories have reportedly burst into O Canada at their annual Christmas party on Monday night and again in the middle of a closed-door meeting."

In Canada, I breathe easy

I breathe in -
Fill 3 years of absence in 3 weeks.

I breathe out -
It's easy once you know how.

Medium double-doubles make the world a better place

Sometimes, I hang out at the Tim Hortons website. You know, these are things that I just do. I see they have this new Holiday Spice Hot Smoothee, a delectable concoction of ass-tasting coffee with ginger, nutmeg, all spice and cinnamon.

Honestly, I never thought I would miss my (un)friendly neighbourhood T-Ho, filled with high school kids and the homeless. Their coffee is uninspiring and insipid, but I still drank gallons of it as a student. I love that Canadians don't frown upon double-cream double-sugar medium coffees the same way the English would with their "just a splash of milk, thanks" righteousness! (That's right Gonz - righteousness!) I want the words "double-double" tattooed on my ass.

You can't write about T-Ho without commentary on national symbols, so I am going to attempt one. I never bought into the whole "Timbit nation" theory, it seemed absurd and offensive to reduce contemporary Canadian national identity to the Tim Hortons franchise and "I Am Canadian" beer commercials. I left Toronto about a year ago, I used to just think of T-Ho's as being nothing more than an unpretentious place where you can go and get yourself a freaking coffee without having to complicate your life. But now, I think there is something more to it. It's not just the patriotic marketing and the shipping off of T-Ho's goods to soliders in Afghanistan that makes it Canadian. It's the fact that it exists in every street corner, from Scarborough to Rosedale (well, Yonge street on your way south to Bloor from Rosedale station, but still a posh area!) and the universality of its logo that makes you think of Tim Hortons everytime you think of Canada (well, Toronto). You need to break a 20? Step into T-Ho's. Need to get out of the cold? Step into T-Ho's. T-Ho's: 42 years of convenient locating. And I don't who the hell this guy Tim Hortons was, but he is now just a coffee place that also sells deep-fried batter. But it is CANADIAN deep-fried batter, damn it! And it's coming to a location near you.

Remember those painfully cheesy commercials "based on real life" where Canadian foreign students write to the company and ask for coffee to be sent to Scotland or something? That is so going to be me. Except I am going to ask for a year's supply of their chocolate danish. You can keep your coffee!

Toppled Liberals and Ignatieff

It looks like Canadians will be discussing politics at Christmas after all. Arguing health policies over deep-fried turkey and denouncing American imperialism as they unwrap iPods. The beer will be Canadian, of this I am certain.

Just wait, they’ll vote Tory, I know it.
~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~
I am generally quite a fickle and emotional person, easily impressed with liberal rhetoric. Any talk of diversity, equality and justice makes me weep. So it’s no surprise that after reading Michael Ignatieff's speech to the Liberal Convention, I questioned why I ever left Toronto. So impressionable am I!

Okay, so maybe he made anti-Ukrainian comments and perhaps said that sleep-deprivation is an acceptable form of torture in this here age of terror, he assures you it was all taken out of context and we must buy his books to read these chapters in their entirety. But, he is a ridiculously good looking 58-year old. Crazy, but good lookin'. Anyway, here's the speech that made me weep:

"From afar, we're a very special and precious experiment. We're an experiment as to whether a multicultural, multilingual society can survive and prosper…

We are a ray of light in a gloomy world, a ray of hope in a world which is in fact ravaged by intolerance and by hatred. Let's get it right. The world does look to us, the world does ask us, 'get it right, show us how'. Communities of difference, communities of different languages can live together, can forge a unity together. You're doing it in this hall tonight but never forget that we truly are a light unto the nations, and we must never forget that in the daily life of our politics.

Now, there are countries to the south of us that believe in life, liberty, and the pursuit of happiness. And these countries that shall remain nameless want to export freedom and democracy to the world. And because we're Canadians, we're skeptics. We don't like rhetoric that's that high flung. We got some doubts about the project. We have doubts about the American dream. Ok. But let's remember that we have a dream. Because we are the people of peace, order, and good government"

O Canada, how I yearn for thee!