Nuts & Mutton

Screamingly funny rag by Onion on those regular CNN fillers on the latest medical so-called breakthrough. A friend and I had a good old chinwag recently about the revolting way in which pharmaceutical companies invent diseases to sell their latest pills and then build advertising campaigns around them. You know the ones: “Don’t let embarrassing foot odour come between you and that dream job. Talk to your doctor about Toejam-B-Gone, the exciting NEW remedy for excessively sweaty feet!”

Looking back, I reckon it all started with Lifeboy Soap. According to Wikipedia, the makers of the soap actually coined the phrase “body odor” in order to sell their crappy product—which, if memory serves, smelled like carbolic soap and, if anything, made its users, usually young men, smell even ranker than usual—which was saying plenty, in 1970s Ireland!

The biggest of Big Pharm’s scams, to my mind, is the annual ‘flu scare, which, here in Canada where we have universal free health care, means that provincial governments are spending billions every year to buy doses of anti-flu concoctions that are made up by guess and by golly to cope with a possible epidemic. Most people get the ‘flu maybe once or twice in their lifetime; half the time, what we call the “stomach ‘flu” is just a bellyache caused by some random bug or food-borne pathogen, while a bad cold is usually responsible for the rest of it. If you have ever had the ‘flu, you will know there is no mistaking it—you feel like death, every bone, muscle, and sinew in your body hurts like hell, and there is no crap about nobly making it into work or to the kitchen to feed your family. All you want is to curl up in a ball somewhere and quietly die. Which most of us don’t; we eventually get over it and get on with life. A very small, really miniscule, percentage do actually die—mostly the very elderly or those whose immune systems are compromised for some other reason. It’s sad when that happens—but is that a good reason for all of us to be lining up like sheep to be shot full of some wacky antidote made up of past ‘flu viruses for some epidemic that might never happen?

But every year it’s the same—the government spends hundreds of thousands of dollars on print and television advertising, trying to scare us into trekking down to the nearest community centre or clinic in order to get our ‘flu shots—for which we, the taxpayer, have paid big bucks to Big Pharm.

I have never had a ‘flu shot and never will—but then I’m descended from an oul’ virago who survived not one but two episodes of the dreaded Spanish Flu. That would be my maternal grandmother, who was such a fearsome old bitch that even an epidemic that wiped out an estimated 100 million people worldwide couldn’t faze her.

This is what happens when you turn your back for a few days … people sneak up and lob stuff your way while you’re not looking. Maybe it’s a case of absence making the heart grow fonder? While I’ve been going through a bit of a blogging funk—a mixture of work piling up, becoming addicted to Twitter, and blogger’s block—both Kate and Thistle, bless their little bedsocks, sent me the above Superior Scribbler award. It was created by The Scholastic Scribe, with the rubric

As always, with greatness come obligations, and, according to the rules, I have to pass the award on to five other bloggers. Since I have been given the award twice, I should pass it on to ten other bloggers, right? And, since I received them from bloggers on both sides of the Atlantic, perhaps I should divvy them up accordingly.

As my blogroll indicates, in recent months I’ve become enamoured of a number of European bloggers, most of them Irish or ex-patriate Irish. The attraction is partly because they remind me of home which, thoroughly transplanted Canuck though I am by now, I still miss terribly sometimes. The other reason is that I find them really, really funny—and that definitely is an Irish thing, because they are obscene, rude, and foul-mouthed in the extreme. If you have ever spent more than ten minutes on a Irish bus or in an Irish pub, you will know that, while we Irish may indeed be gifted with the gab, we are also very, very rude! For a nation that is largely educated by priests and nuns, I’m guessing that cursing is a way of kicking against the pricks—and the fact that the equally priest-ridden Spaniards and Italians are also pretty inventive with curse words probably bears me out.

I should add that, because the following are all Irish, that means they are also an ungrateful bunch of bastards and are quite likely to tell me to take my award and stick it where the sun don’t shine. But that, too, is part of their Irish charm.

For my second Superior Scribbler Award, I choose the following:

If it seems that there might be a slight bias towards female bloggers in the latter list, you are right. While there are a few male bloggers on this side of the Atlantic that I really like—John at Running After My Hat, Alan at A Round World through Square Glasses, and Norm at Mostly Anecdotal come immediately to mind—it is true that most of the North American bloggers in my blogroll are women, while it’s a 50/50 male/female mix among the European bloggers. And I have absolutely no idea why that should be so.

Thanks again, Kate and Thistle, for shifting the blogger’s block. I’m b-a-a-a-ck!

I spent last evening watching this MSNBC documentary, which aired on tv here a few weeks ago and was recorded for me by #1 Son’s boyfriend. (I had tried to DVR it, and the damn’ thing was blank when I went to watch it … fairly typical of my experience with DVR, but I hope on, hope ever, and have so far resisted throwing the fracken machine out the window.)

In 2001, a Canadian-American GP, by the name of Shirley Turner, shot and killed her ex-boyfriend, Dr Andrew Bagby, in Pennsylvania and fled to Canada to escape justice. There she announced that she was four months pregnant by Andrew and, for the next few years, thumbed her nose at the US justice system, aided and abetted by various members of the Newfoundland judiciary who treated her with kid gloves, because she was a single mother. Shades of that hoary old joke about the criminal who murders his parents and throws himself on the mercy of the court as an orphan!

There are many good guys in this appalling and tragic story, including David Bagby’s friends and colleagues, and the Newfoundland lawyer who worked long and hard to try to bring Shirley Turner to justice. But the real heroes are Andrew’s parents, David and Kate Bagby. They gave up their lives in the States and moved to Newfoundland, where they attempted to gain custody of their grandchild. Frustrated at every turn by the courts—the film, made by their son’s friend, Kurt Kuenn, is a heart-scalding indictment of the Canadian justice system—they made numerous friends in Canada and bowed to the whims of their grandchild’s psycho mother, in order to maintain contact with Zachary. David Bagby has published a best-selling book about their experiences, entitled Dance with the Devil, and has become a passionate advocate for sweeping changes within the family law system in Canada

I won’t say how the film ends and, if you want to track down the DVD, which is due to be released on February 24th, I would advise that you not Google any of the protagonists because it’s a huge spoiler. Also, make sure you have a box of tissues close at hand as you watch. More info on the film can be found here.

The National Film Board of Canada has put its entire archive online … and it’s for free! Now that’s putting our tax dollars to work, in a good way for a change.

Remember this one?

Or this one?

And then there are all the fantastic documentaries, the live shorts, and the trailers. Pure heaven. I may never come up for air …

I had a brain fart the other day, when I read Janie’s post on Midlife Slices, and actually volunteered to be “interviewed” by her. You’d think an army brat would know better. “Never volunteer” … it’s drummed into us with our mother’s milk. Ah well. Here we go:

1. If you weren’t doing your current job, what else would you be doing?
Beats me. I fell into speechwriting by accident, after taking a year off work to complete a degree in Sociology. Just as I was contemplating my brand new degree (a month after my 50th birthday, I might add *preen*) and wondering “now what?” a friend of a friend mentioned to another friend of a friend that I was quite handy with the odd word here and there, and I received a call from Somebody Quite Important Who Shall Never Be Mentioned in a Blog — or rather from SQIWSNBMIAB’s secretary, because SQIWSNBMIABs don’t make their own phone calls, of course — asking me if I would consider drafting some speaking notes for an event that was coming up. And the rest, as they say, is history. Eleven years and two successors later, I’m still drafting speaking notes, and quite enjoying it all. What was the question again? Oh yes … I could do just about anything, really, except maybe chicken-sexing or working in a slaughterhouse. I’ve been a waitress, barmaid, chip packer, radio dispatcher, transformer winder, retail clerk, secretary, au pair, door to door encyclopaedia seller, hairdresser’s receptionist, press officer, customer services manager, project manager, marketing manager, and human resources consultant, so I could probably turn my hand to whatever comes up. If you are asking me what I would like to do, the answer is practice medicine (and maybe someday become competent … ta-da).

2. Other than meeting your husband, your wedding day or the birth of your children, what would you say has been the best day of your life and why?
Damn, these are really hard questions. What would you be in another life, Janie? A toenail-puller? Having taken a break and walked around the house a few times to think about this one: I think it was probably the day I drove home from the Dublin Gas Company, with a big fat redundancy cheque in my pocket and the knowledge that I would never again have to work for the worst arse of a boss I ever had in my life. As a single mother, I had forfeited the luxury of walking away from crappy bosses, so I had to stick it out with him for two years. And then a blessed redundancy package gave me back my freedom. O frabjous day! Callooh! Callay!

3. How did you meet your husband and how did he propose?
I met The First Husband when he was sent to Ireland by his Canadian company to manage a huge consultancy project with Dublin Gas. It wasn’t exactly love at first sight — (a) he was married and (b) I was sick and tired of babysitting the damn’ consultants. And I have to admit that we all thought the Canadians were a bit of a joke, with their grey pants/navy blazers/beige trench coats uniform and their unflagging politeness. Worst of all, they smelled to high heaven of aftershave and cologne, which was pretty hard to stomach. My workmates and I used to gather in Mulligans of Poolbeg Street, near our office, to compare notes on these aliens and their funny ways and devise fresh ways to torment them. But then he and I became friends and, over a twelve month period, it morphed into something deeper. Twelve years, three children, and three thousand miles later, I proposed to him.

4. What is the one thing in your life you’d go back and change and why?
Not one damn’ thing. Because I am what I am, and my life is what it is, due to everything that has happened so far.

5. How would TFH describe you to a stranger.
With all due modesty, I know that he tells everyone he meets that I am the smartest person he knows. (Note that — person, not woman. What’s not to love?) It would be nice if he also described me as the sexiest, most gorgeous woman he knows, but he’s shortsighted, not blind.

That was an interesting experience … I see “therapeutic” being bandied around the blogosphere, and I think I agree … If you would like to volunteer for some “therapy” here’s what you have to do …

1. Leave me a comment saying, “Interview me.”
2. I will respond by emailing you five questions. (I get to pick the questions).
3. You will update your blog with the answers to the questions.
4. You will include this explanation and an offer to interview someone else in the same post.
5. When others comment asking to be interviewed, you will ask them five questions.

1. Enough with the Dubya farewell tour. Get him out of there and let the new administration get on with cleaning up the mess he and his Dark Lord, Cheney, have made of the economy, the constitution, and America’s standing in the world.
2. Israel’s incursion into Gaza causes me to be conflicted. As I have written before, Israel has always been the good guys for me, the triumph of good over evil. But what is happening now in Gaza is beyond comprehension. I get that Hamas rockets are deliberately targeted at Israeli civilians and that they are using their own people as human shields against the Israeli invasion, but it cannot justify carnage on the scale that is happening now—over 1100 dead and 5200, mostly women and children, injured in Gaza. And it can never excuse exploiting a loophole in the Geneva Convention to use white phosphorus on civilians.
3. I’ve been craving some solitude.
4. Non Sequitur always makes me laugh. Especially today’s strip, which is a keeper.
5. I wish I could go to Italy next week. Or any week, for that matter.
6. Self-improvement has been on my mind lately. Which is a bit of a cliche at the turn of a new year, but what the hey.
7. And as for the weekend, tonight I’m (not really) looking forward to attending a wine-tasting and silent auction for a charity, tomorrow my plans include attending a wake for a decent man, too early departed, followed by a birthday celebration with the Krazy Kristians (family joke) and Sunday, I (don’t) want to work, but I have no choice!

Thank you to Janet for the template.

This post from Boing Boing is beyond disgusting. Although by no means a “foodie,” I have enjoyed my fair share of delicious smelly cheeses … but live maggots that want to eat my eyeballs? Blechh.