Beninians denied, but Taiwanese Accepted!

Well, we couldn't get our Beninians, but we did end up with the honour of hosting 2 Taiwanese women from the the University choir.

I've spent the last two days trying to get the house acceptable, despite working 9 hour days, and ended up at the shopping mart in pink sweat pants (sans undies!), a swim top, and a towel on my head because I couldn't seem to fit shopping, bathing, and dressing into seperate time slots.

After I was completely exhausted from all that, plus prep cooking for tomorrows dinner, I decided I needed to just relax and unwind, so I plopped in front of the couch and watched "Shake hands with the Devil". If you have never heard of the film, or the book, or the documentary, let me elaborate: it is based on the memoirs of Lt. Gen Romeo Dallaire, the commander of the hopelessly underfunded, understaffed, and cut off at the knees right from the word 'go' peacekeeping mission to Rwanda during the 94 Hutu/tutsi genocide, which saw 800'000 people killed in 100 days. It wasn't actually the best choice to end a long tiring day with, being a thoroughly taxing emotionally, but by God, what a film/reality.

I remember in '94 hearing very very little about it at all. The first time I read up anything on the slaughter, it was in Jared Diamonds "Collapse", which explored the socio-economic basis for the genocide beyond simple racial bias. But an exploration of the "externalities" of war fails to reveal the true horror of, holy shit, I can't drive on this road cause it's block up with dead bodies.

Despite the wealth of evidence for human evil offered up by the film, I don't believe that the existance of such atrocities is incontrovertible proof that human beings are a wicked pile of evil bastard bastards whose depravity knows no bounds. Rather, they are clear illustrations that human beings are extremely adaptabe (perhaps 'pliable' would be a better word) to either end of the spectrum and, under the right circumstances, are capable of just about anything, good or bad.

Here's to trying to engender the best of human nature, even though it is hard to get a good taste with the starting ingredients. We just need to find a good recipe for sugar, spice, snakes, snails, and puppy dog tails.

Beninians DENIED!

I can't believe it!

My little house was for one glorious week to play host to two 20 year old women from the Benin choir that was to preform at Kathaulamiux, the bi-annual international choir that graces Powell River -reducing the time we have to dedicate to rednecked xenophobia to only 358 days of the year.

I've never been, and thought this was the perfect way to make my attendance compulsory. Not only that, our house would have the rare honour to play "Best of Canada" for visiting dignitaries. The moment I saw the Billet request tacked up on the Overwaitea bulletin board, I knew the moment of my destiny had come. When I heard we were getting women from Benin, I immediately got out the Atlas, read up about the place on the wikipaedia website, started making a Welcome banner, and even brushing up on some introductory French.

I remember being in school assembles in Japan and hearing the cautious words of the mayor (wow, bring in the big guns!), principle, and parents bestowed upon Japanese children who were being sent abroad for 2 week homestays in Nelson, BC. They were to be on their bestest ever behaivour, lest they should sully the great name and reputation for self-depricating humility that Japan has worked so hard to cultivate these post-war years. The students were always so nervous they might make an ass of their country, and I always wondered why they should worry so much.

Yet, with the arrival of the Beninians approaching, I was starting to get those hostness nerves...what if our house isn't good enough for them? What if they hate the food we make? What if they think we suck Spaghetti-Os? I think too many people have the idea that nothing they have could possibly fall beneath the standards of third-worlders, but anyone who has ever been understands that the rich are rich where ever they are, and the rich are always richer than the poor (duh), and I was operating on the assumption that if the choir had the money to come here, that they were probably higher up on the Beninian social heirarchy than we are on the Canadian one. I had already prepared our spare room, lamenting the cracks in the window and the feebleness of our spare bed, which consists of a piece of 6 inch thick marine foam laid atop two flats of wood that used to be for unloading slates of Campbells soup.

Then the worry passed and I imagined us all singing and hoolahooping out on the lawn, and created lasting memories of friendship that would bring all peoples of the world just one step closer to bliss and harmony.

And then they were denied visas! I wrote the PM, all piss and vinegar, asking why, oh why, had the Canadian government not seen fit to allow a choir into the country FOR A WEEK! to perform and make merry with the oh soo needing folks of our provincial town. I have been assured that my email has been directed to the appropriate Immigration minister.
This is the kind of arrogant bullshit that prevades thinking about third world people in general: can't let them go to a 'Have-lots' country cause they will love all our edible panties and dollarstore flash-light keychains so much, they'll never want to leave! And then they'll BURDEN the system. Excuse me, but the vast majority of immigrants don't even have social insurance, so how pray tell are they able to burden the system? Not to mention that they do most of all the work that really actually needs to be done, e.g. food production, sanitation, repairing infrastructure, manufacturing, while the lily-livered suit being paid 60'000 a year to attend weekly meetings on whether to invest in watercolours or acrylics sweats profusely and dribbles wasabi mayonnaise down his shirt fearing the hit his stocks will take a mass influx of hungry lazy poor flood the country and magically suck up all the welfare they aren't eligible for.

That and Benin is actually doing pretty well for itself, even on the world scale. They actually rate 4 places above the US on the Reporters without Boarders freedom of the press and political information rating scale. Suck it, First World; or in this case, you can suck it, but you can't tell anyone about it.

Cest la vie. We are on the list of emergency billets in case someone pulls out on the Estonias, but I really had my heart set on Benin. Oh well, at least I still have my keychains and edible panties to fill the great void.

Speaking of bad dreams...

There is no end to the horror of loneliness and the twang of a synthetic guitar.

Just the two of us, and a cap gun, or...

I fell somehow into the old haggle of part-time babysitting when I was a pre-teen; it was a stupid idea, I hated kids like Tibult hated hell and all Montagues. Besides the quirst for money to buy crystals and miniature wilderbeasts, I can't remember my motivation for getting into the business, but after having a weird dream about driving a motocycle into a convenience store made of sand in Morocco, I suddenly remembered exactly how I got OUT of the business; in two words, Russian Roulette.

It was my first ever job, besides selling old toys at the weekly town market, which I was too embarassed to ask "real' money for. I took care of two kids, a boy and girl whose names I can't remember. She was 6 and he was 8; I liked the boy much better, for he was clever, he didn't bitch and moan for hours on end, and he wasn't grasping or manipulative, which the girl, despite her innocent youth, was already well on her way to honing to a fine art. Being only eleven myself, I couldn't do anything terribly useful like cook dinner, drive, go shopping, or "lay down the law", so my duties, for which I was paid 2$ an hour, consisted mainly of playing with them and making sure they didn't get into any disasterous predicaments.

Earlier that year, I had begun volunteering away my lunch hours at Fernwood elementary answering phones for the office, all in a bid to forge some of the human self-esteem as I had spent much of my tormented childhood torment being a wolf, complete with running on all fours and biting people I didn't like. Parents calling the school had even praised my "polite manner" to the secretaries, and I was well on my way to securing my place in PeopleLand; taking care of little people seemed like the next logical step.

Usually, it went well. We watched TV (staple diet for teen babysitters), wrestled, played GI Joes and Dollies in equal measure, and then one day, well what can I say, I guess we got bored. The boy had recently gotten a cap gun for a present, and I had recently watched some manner of violent film (my very first film was 'LadyHawke', and my very favourite was "Robocop'), and somehow I ended up mentioning the two words that destroyed my babysitting career: Russian roulette. I've never been very good at withholding information, and when the doeey brown eyes of the children gleamed with interest as they asked "Russian rooolit? What's that?" I had no chance but to truthfully reply. The pieces of the puzzle all came blurring together as little-she went to grab her cabbage patch kids, and we'd see who was still smiling by the last shot. I remember very calmly explaining that in real life, Russian roulette was a very serious thing, and it killed people, and that in our gaming fun, we must understand the seriousness of the what we were doing, if it had been real life and all, but they just laughed and soon the tension and mystery of whose unlucky brains will paint the walls of the Kremlin tonite degenerated into shooting all the dolls in the head and then kicking them against the side of the garage.

That was enough to make me suitably distressed and I called an end to the activity and packed the two back inside, cursing myself for allowing it happen in the first place. Then I became extremely afraid: they were going to tell their parents, and I was going to be held liable for corrupting their fragile little minds, and possibly turning them into future homicidal maniacs!
I was always afraid shit was going to come pouring down on my head for everything I did back then: once, I sung "Under the Bridge" at campfire during presentations night, only I didn't remember the words, so I made up some new ones. I laid the rest of night waking, worried that the Chili Peppers were going to hear about my little copyright infrigement and Antony Ketis was going to decend down from California and smack the perm right out of my poofy 90's do'. So it was with this; I pictured the police showing up a my house some days after the incident with the news that one or both of the kids had shot each other, and I was being held cupable. I could have pissed myself with fear, except that didn't mean much at the time, cause i was always pissing myself over one thing or another.

The parents arrived home shortly after, and the little girl, no doubt smelling my fear on the wind, immediately broke into the tale of the wonderful fun they'd had playing the new game Charles taught them. I became delerious with dread and babbled some apology coupled with how I told them it was a serious matter, and oh god, please don't tell my mom. She drove me home in silence and simply never called to ask me to babysit ever again. And I never did. I think I saw her once in Thriftys two years later and hid behind the instant noodles to avoid the piercing gaze of her wandering eye.

Sometimes I think upon these things when I am considering what kind of parent I want to be to my eventual adopted child/ren. I'd like to be straight forward and honest about all things, because I hate hearing people bullshit to their kids: it only turns them into bullshitters themselves. However, I suppose a certain amount of restraint is in order to accomodate their level of understanding of the world. I myself was probably exposed to too much too quickly: I remember being terrified watching Harrison Ford screw his secretary in Presumed Innocent, thinking 'how could you do it, Han?". I was only 9 and sex is scary at that age...mind you I had no trouble watching that German terrorist get an icicle through the eye in Die Hard 2, which just goes to show again how ass-backwards our sensitivies are.

Still, if I can somehow manage to avoid playing potentially fatal games direct from the International Manual of Practical Tortures with children, I should make a damn fine mommy.

Fact-o-rama

I just learned an interesting little piece of potentially meaningful trivia yesterday while perusing the pages of "Foods that fight cancer" -put out by the University of Toronto Cancer research laboratory, so no hippy dippy shit- Anyway, here it is:

Thanks to that enigmatic extra chromosome, people with Down syndrome, produce very high levels of vasopressin, which inhibits angiogenesis - the process by which tumours, like viral houseguests, commendere your bodies own resources to make blood vessels to feed themselves. All tumours depend on angiogenesis, without which they cannot metatasize, so rates of cancer in the Down community are vitually zero.

According to current statistics, almost 50% of the WASP land will contract cancer during his/her lifetime, and over 60% of those cases will be fatal. So look upon the face of the future, that happy happy face, and rejoice, for the meek just might inherit the earth after all.

And another thing about yo' momma

In a flagrant attempt to NOT discuss the elation felt by the whole of the oppressed world at the Obama's fina-freaking-ly confirmed nomination, I would like to discuss something about more down to earth; namely, how words thoughtlessly misspoken can turn from innocent gossip (which is almost never innocent), to torches and pitchforks before you can say, "these aren't the droids you're looking for".

My boss is a very old woman, stout, strong, frugal with resources (read: cheap), but generous with people, stubborn as a dead elephant, but nonetheless, someone I generally admire, though I tend to complain about her in polite company, cause gosh darn it, it's sooooo much easier to be at odds with the world sometimes. However, something happened a few days ago that took me so aback, I'll never talk about anal beads in her presence ever again.

I guess it is a fact of nature that old women can never get enough of spreading the ill word about everyone they can. What happened: There is a young man living with his girlfriend and their love child in the top floor apartment above my store. The other tenants, all one of them, were very reluctant when Dr. Mr. rented out the apartment to said young man because he apparent came from the "wrong side of town": they must mean the side that doesn't have it's own pottery shop. However, he is a completely friendly and social chap, despite how many drugs his family did/sold/prostituted for/grew/refined etc....and after he had been there for a while, all the buzzing of the rumour bees seemed to quiet and they accepted that it was not a disasterously horrible man that had moved in.

Then a interesting combination of circumstances and the end/beginning of the month timing and all, blew in and almost ruined the man.

My co-worker and I witnessed a large truck pulling away laden with valuables, including a bed, a few days ago. We didn't think much of it, until Mrs. Owner woman enters, and says, "We better call Dr. Mr. it looks like they are moving out", to which I replied, "well if they were, they surely would have told him, cause they aren't assholes". But she phoned him anyway, being the previous owners of the building, completely unable to keep their noses out of what used to be but no longer is their business. And he had no idea what was going on. They had given no notice, what was going on, they signed a lease, and so began a great bitch session amoungst the old owners on the phone to the new owner about what a beast of man they had rented to, and someone should have known better cause his family was chalk full of Sex, Drugs, Teen abortions, Foodbank Fraud, and anything else that came to mind. Mrs. Boss woman, not content to destroy the man merely in the confines of the relationship he'd apparently offended, began to slander him to in-coming customers, and within 30 minutes of discovering this breach of trust and legally-binding rent agreement, she made the following statements:

"And you know, it wasn't just his furniture they were moving, they were taking stuff that we had put in the apartment, that couch was brand new, and the table and chairs...".

So now he is not only a no-notice-giving-moving-out-son-of-a-bitch, he's a down-right-dirty-took-the-prefurnished-furniture-bastard. And just as his right ear was about to burn a hole in the side of his head, the man himself appears, meets the full stares of everyone in the store and says, " hey guys, what's going on?" My co-worker politely, but directly asks if he is moving out, and he says no, so she asks about the furniture, and it turns out that, miracle of miracles, they bought NEW furniture! They were out fulfilling their duty as modern consumers, who are supposed to purchase a new carpet every 10 years, a new car every 5, and at least one musical instrument that no one knows how to play every 2, in ignorant bliss of the slander their shopping spree had bought them.

Mrs. Boss had made it all up, on the spot! I get the feeling she didn't even realize that she was talking out of what left of her raisiny old ass, ta boot? Jesus, and all without a whiff of proof of any fowl play whatsoever. They were even set to call the Fuzz.

Then it occured to me, this is how 'rumours' get started. Somebody just makes some shit up, and no one knows any better. Can you really trust anything anyone says about anyone or anything? I would like to say yes, because I try for the truth always, but isn' t part of the problem: once we hear and believe flat out stanky bullshit, we repeat it like it's truth. Trying to cut rumours off after they've passed even to one other person is like closing the sphincter after a fart has left anus. Pointless, just like a FART.

All I can say from learning a lesson from all this is that old women are terrible gossips, and try not to involve them in any of your affairs. And as the ancient Chinese say, "Never straighten you cap under a plum tree". Which has a deeper meaning in it's lunacy than any I could convey sensibly.