Found this article today and read it with my eyebrows practically in my hairline.

I think the point the author is trying to make is that you’d be surprised by what panhandlers spend their money on. And I admit, it worked – I was actually surprised.

Part of my problem is, I think, growing up in St. Albert. Everyone else who grew up in the Stalbert, how many homeless people did you actually see in the city? Hands? Anyone? I only ever remember seeing one – you know, that old guy whatsisname who used to hang around St. Albert High and bum cigarettes off the smokers.

But when I was younger, I remember going to Edmonton (or Toronto, or etc) with my parents and seeing lots of homeless. They’d hold out a hand – “Spare change?” – I’d put my hand in my pocket, and my mom would grab my jacket and pull me close to her. If I was walking on the inside edge of the sidewalk she’d drag me to the outside. “Don’t look at those people,” she’d whisper.

I’m not trying to say my parents were bad people or that they were trying to indoctrinate me against the homeless or something – it’s probably a Caribbean thing, and you have to keep in mind, my dad was so poor growing up that they ate songbirds and iguanas just to get by, and spent most of their childhood scrounging in the dump for food. They’re not anti-poor - but they always told me that homeless people would just spend the change on new ways to destroy themselves. Booze, cigarettes, drugs, etc. They also told me that if you gave money to street people that would make them just ‘want’ to stay on the streets instead of ‘getting a job.’ (I don’t even need to point out why that argument had no effect on me.)

So this article was really interesting to me. These folks are simply trying to get by and any of us are or will be (as we get older) a series of unfortunate coincidences away from sleeping hard. Sure, there are panhandlers who would take your money and go buy a bag (bottle? jar? bucket? no idea) of meth or crack, or kill themselves with plastic-bottle-brand vodka, maybe even a significant proportion – but I’m actually kind of inclined to think now that a lot of them would go buy more innocuous things. Deodorant. Food. Money for their celphone. A library card.

The thing is, I never give change because I can’t tell which panhandlers I’m helping to kill and which ones I might just be helping. I generally just donate to the United Way, specify no religious organizations, and hope for the best. Or I’ve given my doggie bag as I’ve left restaurants – that happened quite a lot in Calgary, I remember once coming out of a steak house downtown and almost tripping over a panhandler on the corner who said, “Spare change? Oh hey, or food?” and I swivelled without breaking stride and handed him the bag.

I’m reminded now, suddenly, of a night that a bunch of us in university were walking down Whyte Ave and a homeless guy shouted out to us for change. We all totally ignored him – didn’t even look, in fact – except for one friend, who stopped, stooped down, and was like, “Hey, man!” It turns out they knew each other from volunteering. They talked for a few minutes, my friend gave him a $20, and we kept going, in silence, to the club. I could barely see through a red haze of shame and confusion. I mean, nobody looked. None of us even reached for our purses. I guess it just goes to show that you never know who’s going to end up on the street – or what they’ll spend their money on once they’re there.

So I went to a faraway place and came back!

Too many memories to count, museums and galleries and restaurants and gardens, the stag party was the single most entertaining event I have ever attended in my life, the wedding ceremony was like a beautiful dream (a dream set in a crockpot, holy mackerel, talk about humidity), and the reception was full of love and jokes and pride and nostalgia and jazz and all sorts of stuff that I, with my cold ded interior, sucked in like a sponge.

No narration this time. Not even in chronological order. Kind of sad to be back home, I worry that I may have left my heart in Montreal.

Every morning I wake up and see this poster next to my bed. Most mornings I smile at it.

Even though it took three weeks to get here, I just love this print (by Hilda Grahnat but I can’t find it now, maybe it sold out?).

Anyway, the direct translation is like ‘What is it that you do in life?’ but from my hugely non-extensive knowledge of French I believe the context is something more like ‘So, what do you do?’ in the same way that you would be asked at a party.

So, what do I do?

I’m an environmental advisor at a large and elderly industrial facility in the Fort Saskatchewan area. I sample soil, hazardous waste, naturally occurring radioactive material, wastewater, groundwater, and questionable material from spill sites. I review environmental policy and regulations that come down the pipe and apply them to our site procedures so we don’t get sued or fined. I gather data, squish them through statistical analysis, and write reports for the regulator. I interpret laboratory results, on occasion do the analysis myself, provide support and advice on projects – mostly building or demolition – and liaise with the government and emergency response team when we have incidents. I shout at engineers. I probe, investigate, analyze, and conclude. Every so often I get both boots stuck in bright-pink mud (or worse yet, between two railroad tracks), get sprayed with liquid that smells like a burning chemical factory, or fall up to my armpits in snow. When someone says “Is that thing supposed to sound like that?” I drop flat and cover my head.

That’s what I do.

But is the question – at the party or on my wall – really ‘What’s your job?’ or is it ‘Who are you?’

It’s assumed that everybody defines themselves by how they put cupcakes on the table. For instance, if you met Michael H. Kelly at a party and said “So, what do you do?” he’d reply, “I’m a writer.”*

“I am.” Not, “I write.”

I am…a job.

Isn’t that strange.

What about people who don’t have jobs? What about housewives, hermits, retirees, the unemployed, the incapacitated, the comatose, and people who are locked away for talking to doorknobs? (“So, what do you do then?” “Oh, I’m a madman.”)

Do they say, “I don’t have a job, but I’m a fully-rounded human being, I have two kids and a canoe, I’m compassionate, curious, intelligent, and an active participant in many recreational activities such as softball and chess”? They don’t, because that’s not really how society wants you to answer questions like that. Because who you are doesn’t mean as much as what you do.

What’s interesting to me is people like Case (from Neuromancer, natch) who actively and persistently define themselves by what they do for a living. They wouldn’t have any other way to see themselves except by being good enough at something to have people pay them to do it. If you take that away they plunge into depression. Or wacky adventures involving sentient A.I.’s or what have you.

Have you ever seen those commercials, what’s it for, some financial planning service or something, where the middle-aged dude turns to the screen and says with a wistful smile, “When I grow up, I want to work with children.” And then there’s some dame who goes “I want to open my own restaurant.” Because they presume, right, that you’re just doing your job till you don’t have to do your job any more, and then you can go out and do… your passion.

People like that confuse me. Not everybody has a passion. Not everybody! I don’t, for instance. This came up a lot while I was unemployed in 2008.

Some Bloody Career Counselor Assigned to Me By Former Company: So we already know you’ll be able to find a job in the environmental field, but that’s not what I’m here for!
Me: Oh.
SBCC: So what’s your passion?
Me: I don’t have one.
SBCC: Everybody has one. What are you good at? That’s a good place to start.
Me: Irritating people till they put a hit out on me.
SBCC: Ha ha ha! I mean, what’s your dream job?
Me: I don’t have a dream job.
SBCC: Now look. Really reach down deep, and tell me what you find. Some examples I’ve seen just in the past week were writing their father’s biography; working with orphans in Ethiopia; growing organic produce to feed inner-city children; and re-homing abused horses.
Me: …Good…for them?
SBCC: A lot of people have the wrong idea, they’re working to pay the bills instead of doing what they’re really passionate about. How can you spend your life doing something that leaves you saying ‘Meh’?
Me: Your job seems pretty ‘meh’ to me.
SBCC: Now if you already had your bills paid and you could do anything you want, what would you be doing?
Me: … Sitting on my futon in smiley-face underpants watching ‘Singing in the Rain’ and eating a pudding cup.
SBCC: What kind of pudding?
Me: Butterscotch. What are you writing down there?
SBCC: Nothing.

Yeah, I know. This will come as a shock to no one, but I really don’t have any dreams or passions or overriding beliefs or powerful desires. What would I be doing if I wasn’t doing this? What do I really, really, really want to do?

As far as I can tell: sweet buggerall.

I mean I don’t really like inner-city children. Or orphans, for that matter. I’d say ‘writing’ but I don’t have the talent or the attention span and you kind of need both. I’d also say ‘reading,’ but who pays people to read? In the old days you could say ‘philosopher,’ and that meant you just sat around thinking all day, but I’m rubbish at that. Most days I can’t string together a coherent whatchamacallit. I want to be an astronaut but I can’t see without corrective lenses or do math, and how can that be good for huge pieces of multi-billion dollar equipment? Burlesque is out, I’m usually not coordinated enough to stand, let alone be trusted to not dance right off the edge of a stage. Marine biologist is out – I can’t use the breathing equipment because of my dodgy lung, plus also, there are too many things in the ocean that want to eat me. Being a research scientist was a nightmare. Being a housewife would be hell. Volunteering is for people who actually give a damn. I don’t want to help people, or change the world, or be a ‘global citizen,’ and I’m not really good enough at anything for people to give me money for it. I’ve realized that the job I’m currently doing is kind of a fluke, in that anyone from my grad class could do it, and I just happened to be in the right place at the right time with the right degree.

Anyway, this didn’t really have a point. I just got to thinking about that poster this morning a little more deeply.

So what do you do?

Who are you?

* Although odds are about fifty-fifty that his answer would be “I crash parties and steal canapes! Mwahahaha!” followed by scampering sounds as he disappeared out the side door with smoked salmon gougeres dropping from his jacket.

So as I’ve been crowing about to select females in my in-group, I got a custom-made dress for the big social event of this summer, which (being a gay wedding in Montreal) was pretty much the least I could do. I cannot even tell you how perfectly it fits. You will just have to wait for photos.

It’s navy with white polka dots and it is gorgeous beyond gorgeous.

After I opened the box and tried it on I was like, “Huh. Shoes.” And then: “Oh shit, SHOES!”

White shoes would be the obvious choice and if I can find a pair in the next two weeks that looks sufficiently 1940s-stylin’ to complement the dress, I’ll certainly get them. But wouldn’t it be nice to have a pair of navy-and-white shoes? Say, a pair of pumps like this but in navy?

Then I remembered that I, by a staggering coincidence, already own a pair of navy-and-white shoes!

…Although I’m pretty sure I will be beaten with a stick if I attempt to wear these to the wedding. Back to the drawing board.

My Corporate Challenge event was cancelled today, due to lack of participants (which in turn was due to the Cobalt Reduction unit, but that’s all I’m saying about that), so I decided to go to Celebration in the Square, which kicks off Edmonton Pride Week. I unfortunately slept in till 1 pm and missed the parade, also reasonable temperatures, but I still ended up hanging out there for a couple of hours. Good times, good times.

First impression: nice turnout! This was actually at the periphery, in the shade. There were a lot more people in the centre of the square where all the good stuff was happening.

Rainbows everywhere!

This guy was also everywhere. Ev-uhhh-ry-where. Fluttering here and there with a big grin, mirrored shades, Hom-brand Y-fronts, and an unparalleled willingness to shoot you with his imaginary arrows of love. Morpheus muttered something about how this guy was pulling all the straight girls and how totally unfair that was, and after that I didn’t want to seem like a groupie so I shot him from the back.

Many folks looked as if they were being horribly strangled by their balloon capes. Hilariously, at various points in the venue you’d hear the occasional yelp, followed by firecracker noises as these people bumped into people with body piercings or leatherfolks, and then you’d walk past and there would be a sad little heap of popped balloons on the ground.

The nice people staffing the Society of Edmonton Atheists booth were quite willing to pose for photos, ramen for that. They had the cutest FSM model, but I discovered when I got home that my photo of it was too blurry to use. Noodly interference I suppose.

Lady Gaga’s ‘Telephone’ as performed by two of many talented drag queens.

Oh, how prim!

TILL SUDDENLY

Had to get a shot of this, I think it’s been about ten years (maybe more?) since I had a snowcone. Seriously, the last time I remember eating one, it was at whichever K-Days I attended that had Love Inc performing during the evening. I think it was blue flavour.

Some hula-hoopers just hanging out and hooping in front of the stage before I left.

It was a really nice day, except for coming home and finding out that as predicted, seventeen tons of glitter had attached itself to my sunscreen as I was walking through the crowd. (As a final note for the day, it was 29 degrees out and the UV Index was probably off the scale, but my SPF 55 held up amazingly well. Not so much as a tan line on my feet from my new runners, seriously. I happily predict an end to the stupid criss-cross patterns I’ve been plagued with every summer.)

…and my face hurts from smiling.

I just got back from the greatest concert! With some useless observations:

1. At some point in your life you may feel tempted to attend an organ concert early. Do not do this. I kid you not. You will be subjected to things like this:

Face in organ (calling down to stage): OK, one… two… three.
Tech at organ (pressing one key): Bwaa.
Face in organ: That sounded good. Next one. One… two… three.
Tech: BWAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAA

To get the full effect what you need to do is stand in front of a semi truck and get someone to lean on the horn for twenty-five seconds straight. Seriously, my eyeballs were vibrating, and then of course you get the comedy act afterwards:

Face in organ: Can we do that one again?
Tech: What?
Face: What?
Tech: What?
Face: I said, can we do that one again?
Tech: Whaaaaaaaat?

2. This was Cameron Carpenter’s Canadian debut! And yes, folks, fuckin’-A. I’ve never been to a show I would have actually turned around and seen again immediately afterwards till now. Pure, unadulterated joy.
a) Initially I took him to be Liberace’s skinny and neglected lovechild, and I was getting all ready to hate him; do not, however, permit yourself to be taken in by the Swarovski-encrusted winklepickers. This guy is the real deal. At one point during a Bach toccata, playing with both hands and both feet on four keyboards and about fifteen pedals, he was a blur – like the Tasmanian Devil in an old Bugs Bunny cartoon. You know the phrase ‘pulling out all the stops’? Yeah, after one particularly vigorous credenza the folks in the front row were literally ducking in their seats.
b) He turns out to be incredibly charming and well-spoken, aside from being very sparkly. I was stirred by his explanation of both the Schubert piece he chose (based on Goethe’s ‘Der Erlkonig,’ a dark and disturbing poem) and the two pieces he chose to improvise.

c) It would not previously have occurred to me to do a fugue based on Bob Dylan’s ‘Mr. Tambourine Man.’ It was so clever and cheerful I wished I could have put it in pill form for when I feel down.
d) Thanks to a healthy diet of CBC Radio 2, I never really thought of the organ as ‘church music’ – I really see it as the sensuous, disturbing, passionate, slightly wacky, slightly chameleonic instrument it’s always been. And Carpenter just played the HELL out of the Davis organ. If you could compare his sound to anything without fear of hyperbole, it would be the organ at Unseen University. Like, to the point during his organ solo that you could shut your eyes and not even guess what instruments were on stage. Piccolos? Electric guitars? Tubas? Ninety-one guys having a tubular bell fight? I actually tried it a couple of times and it was still jarring to open my eyes and see one guy on stage.

I mean, just a wonderful, talented, cerebral, startling, and pleasurable evening, with two gracious encores, and the most excited lobby chatter I’ve ever heard. Thank you, Cameron Carpenter! I had only vaguely heard of you before tonight but now I luff you and am blowing you a kiss from very far away.

3. As a sidenote, I noticed a solid trend tonight in women’s fashion, to whit, a lot of ’40s and ’50s stuff, and all really well done. Wide-legged dress trousers in a Katharine-Hepburn-type cut, high-waisted pencil skirts, tight cardigans, puff-sleeved blouses, pearls, dainty flats, off-shoulder ballgowns, all brilliantly and unabashedly retro as well as quite sexy and up-to-date, and not costumey or self-conscious in the least. I’m actually wearing a retro-inspired outfit to a wedding next weekend so we’ll see if I can pull that off half as well as the dames at the Winspear tonight.

No, I’m still not done my hydrogeology paper. I still have tomorrow and Thursday thank you very much!

I run a finger and an eye along my bookshelves and despite their numbers I admit I sometimes feel… limited. Not so much in terms of genres or fields of interest, but… look, a whole shelf of Pratchett, some old white guy. Pierre Berton, white guy. Charles Darwin, white guy. Jacques Cousteau, pretty tan, true, but white guy. Harry Harrison… I have no idea what he looks like. Hang on while I look him up…oh hell yeah, he’s an old white guy.

I don’t have a lot of authors from somewhere other than that ‘white guy, Western culture’ viewpoint. Oh, there are a few ‘white guy, Jewish subculture,’ but that’s about it. And some Gabriel Garcia Marques, some Borges, but the rest of it is a solid block of gray hair and pale hands – Nabokov, Findley, Shakespeare, Poe, Peake, a couple of Russian guys, German guys, French guys. Wow. Seriously, wow.

So it came as kind of a revelation the other night when I put down a new book and thought, “Well, that’s it. That’s about the best short story I’ve ever read.”

It’s called ‘Hell Screen,’ and it’s by Ryunosuke Akutagawa, translated by Jay Rubin. I’ve got a couple of volumes of Japanese poetry, but holy crap, this guy – this guy writes like he’s possessed by a, a, posse of muses. This story is brilliant, savage, perfectly balanced, satisfying, scary, and vivid. It would make such a good movie that I wonder whether it’s been made into one already under a different name. The other short stories in this book are also very good, and obviously treated with care by the translator (dialogue, etc), but ‘Hell Screen’ is really something else.

I feel weirdly inspired now, filled with the holy fire, burning to put pen to paper or fingers to keyboard and get some ideas down of my own, and all because I broke out of the comfort zone I hadn’t realized I had. Next time I’m at a Wee Book (tomorrow, most likely), I think I’ll wander out of my ‘usual’ section and challenge myself with some Asian or African or South American or Middle Eastern authors. Innaresting, innaresting stuff.

So I’m not one to be easily swayed by events in the blogosphere, generally. I kept my shirt on for Boobquake and everything.

But when the response to a cartoonist drawing a sketch of a historical figure is to attack him with an axe and set his fucking house on fire, I can remain silent no longer.

So I have decided to participate in Everybody Draw Muhammad Day! This is, in its simplest and most childish form, a “Nyaa-nyaaah” at everybody against free speech, everybody who says “Thou shalt not because my book says so,” everybody who blames their imaginary friend for acts of cowardice, violence, censorship, and general asshattery. (More info, and arguments, here.)

For a Muslim to object to a public depiction of something he finds sacred is, to me, not much different from a rabbi approaching me at a picnic in Emily Murphy Park and saying, “Pardon me, filthy gentile, I object to you eating bacon. Stop that right this minute or I shall retaliate.” (I’m sure you can imagine my short and icy one-syllable response.) Same goes for Christians who object to Elton John saying Jesus was gay, etc. Seriously, KNOCK IT OFF. One man’s religious tenets are another man’s politely-observed cultural sensitivities are another man’s easily-ignored mad ramblings and that’s the way it’s always been.

Here’s what I drew first for Muhammad:

Get it? Mohamed?

Dammit, nobody’s laughing.

Secondly, I thought to scan back through Larry Gonick’s fantastic ‘Cartoon History of the Universe’ for his treatment of the prophet Muhammad. I couldn’t remember what he looked like and that’s because, as it turned out, Gonick chose not to draw him. In the entire section about the beginnings of Islam, there are no depictions.

Which is interesting, but I still don’t have a Muhammad of my very own!

Finally I sketched my own personal blasphemous rendering:

There! Now I just get to sit back and wait for the death threats to roll in.

Happy Everybody Draw Muhammad Day!

So a friend and I were talking today about a proposed co-op garage-sale thingy that my friend LT is planning to put on when she gets back from vacation, and she insisted I sell off some of my crappy oil pastels, so a few days ago I humped my ass over to the Dollarama to get some “frames” (i.e. sheet glass + razor-sharp fixtures) and did like I was told. Now that they’re in frames, I’m actually kind of struck by their cuteness… but now the question comes up, would you pay money for them? I think I suggested $10 and LT suggested $20 but that sounds high for a garage sale.

Here they are framed:

And here are a few others unframed, from an earlier picture (January, if the calendar in the background is any clue). I’d probably frame the fox and the robot but not the octopus. I’m not sure I could give up the octopus at any price point.

There are also a couple of new ones unpictured here (too lazy to photograph them) – pterodactyls, robots, and oddly lumpy hills. So, like, what… ten bucks? Less? More? Thoughts? (For background, LT is planning to frame and sell some of her own photographs for $20 and I think she’s trying to get other people to contribute to some kind of art-specific table, which is why I ask.)

A buddy of mine does broadcasty stuff. Radio, bloggery, etcetera, and he put out a call recently on Facebook for interesting local stories – local to our city, our province, or what have you. I responded with heartening stories of:

a) A friend of mine who’s involved in fighting human trafficking through the ACT. They’re screening a film in a couple of cities this weekend about human trafficking in Red Deer.

b) Another friend who volunteers with St. John Ambulance and recently received an award for a whopping 638 patient care hours, which doesn’t even include the time he spends filling out forms, sitting in an ambulance, etc.

And I am SO PROUD of my friends that it immediately occurred to me to pimp them to Tyler as potential story ideas. I could probably name a bunch more people involved in similar activism and/or volunteerism, people who are brilliant and passionate and vocal about their causes, people who make a difference.

Notice how I can’t pimp myself for a local story idea.

It’s not that I don’t feel strongly about things. Like, the Haiti earthquake? Fuck that shit! People are still calling plastic tarps home down there! Ground-level ozone? Let’s put a stop to it! LOTS of things. I feel strongly about female circumcision, male circumcision, Chinese bloggers, endangered insects, the destruction of the world’s rainforests, breast cancer, Bangladeshi flooding, American chestnut treets, sweatshops, children dying of preventable waterborne diseases, debilitating nerve illnesses, natives displaced by gigantic hydroelectric projects, crying babies on airplanes, the plight of political refugees, artists whose work is suppressed by cruel dictators, victims of sexual abuse, amputees, and big cats kept in small circus cages.

I mean, I’m not made of stone. Many things in the modern world hurt my feelings. But for some reason (overwhelming laziness?) I never actually get out of the house and support any of these causes. Maybe it’s that I don’t care enough. Maybe it’s that I have no skills I can donate to a cause. Maybe it’s that I feel like I’m not going to make a difference. The $50 I raise for supporting, you know, cystic fibrosis research or whatever, isn’t going to cure some guy with CF; it’s probably going to the charity’s CEO. Or to like the company who catered the walk or something. If I volunteer for a three-hour shift at the ticket table to a film about saving the whales, how many whales does that save? Three hours’ worth of whale, that can’t be much. Half a blowhole?

So what I want to know is, of my friends who get out there and do their thing, and I know there are many of you who want to heal the evils of the world, how do you do it? How do you remain unaffected by the apathy and cruelty of everything that exists? How can I start helping the causes I care about? Is it in you, that passion, or can I learn it? Because it kills me to know that my apparently unfeeling immobility will end with me dying without ever having made a difference to anyone or anything.