It's All A Matter Of Emphasis.

Most often, the time I am most sensitive to emphasis is when I am asked,

"How tall are you?"

This is usually a couple of months after meeting a person, when they feel comfortable to address the freakishness that stares down at them day after day.

Before I came home for Christmas, however, someone lobbed another one at me:

"What do you do on Prince Edward Island?"

We tip cows and drink moonshine.

What do you think we do? We visit friends and family. We play games and music. We go to the movies and see shows. We shop. We cook and bake. We have feasts and beers and enjoy each others' company. In other words, all the things I do in Toronto, only with people who seem to know how to live a full life without a million people breathing down their necks.

I am cheesed about this because it's akin to the assumption that there's no work on Prince Edward Island. Of course there's work here - kids need teaching, hospitals need running, government grinds on, there are shops and restaurants and lawyers and farming and fishing and a million tourists to prepare for each year.

Until recently, there just happened to be more jobs in Ontario. That's why I'm there, essentially. There was more chance of be getting work there. Then the bottom fell out of the economy and I'm competing for the crappy jobs that are left with hundreds and thousands of ex-CAW union members. Honestly, I've been looking for decent work in Ontario for a year and a half, and I suspect I would have gotten something on PEI sooner than that.

To sum up, I guess I'm frustrated with the myopia city-dwellers have about rural Canada.

Toronto Scene.

I live in Little India. There's a lot of bright colour and delicious smells and fantastic wares in shop windows. We feel the Hindu and Muslim festivals deeply in our neighbourhood. Eid and Diwali are big flippin' deals.

This weekend is Eid ul-Adha, which, amongst other things, marks the end of the Hajj. It's not the huge party that we saw earlier in the fall for Eid al-Fitr (that night, I had a great vantage point as I was trapped on a streetcar which was slowed by a sea a swiriling sarees and mehndi vendors), but there are some signs up in the windows of shops bearing greetings.

I was walking home from the Lunacy Cabaret tonight and there were hardly any people in the streets. It's cold tonight - it's time for me to change to my winter coat. As I passed by the Ashdale Library, I met a large family coming the other way. A little boy of about 4 had run ahead of the pack, followed closely by another boy, maybe about 6. There was a garbage truck at the curb with a garbage collector at its back bumper. The little boy stopped, looked at the collector, crouched down a little, balled his fists behind him, locked his elbows, and yelled, "Eid Mubarak!" The collector, who looked to be of Chinese decent, smiled back at the kid and carried on in his duties.

Ah, Toronto nights.

Did Fox Sustain Brain Damage?

I thought I couldn't have thought less of the Fox Network than I already do.

When they recently killed Arrested Development, I thought they must have had a collective breath-holding contest and sustained major brain damage.

Anyhow, now I hear that the geniuses at Fox are pre-empting the delightful and hott Glee for FOUR MONTHS to air American Idol in its time slot.

SIXTEEN WEEKS!

I am seriously displeased. Fox, you are in the doghouse in my mind.

(But please start airing re-runs of X-Files.)

Go On, Go On, Go On, Go On.

The Vision Network, in all its wholesome wisdom, has started showing Father Ted.

I wonder if they just knew that the protagonist is an Irish Catholic priest and left it at that. "No need to delve any further into that storyline," says they, "after all, 'tis a lovely tale of a priest and his parishoners."

In the one episode I just watched, it was about a Bishop with a love child in California, Father Ted and his poor idiot sidekick Father Dougal protesting a filthy film and subsequantly making it a blockbuster, a demented old priest using "feck" liberally, and a old lady describing the shape of her husband's "lad".

Not quite The Waltons (which is also a Vision offering).

Really, AMC?

"The Shining" is playing on AMC right now. It started at 2 o'clock in the afternoon.

At 2:15 PM, I saw a horrified Danny foresee an elevator door opening, filling an Outlook Hotel hallway with a tsunami of blood. It's 2:45 now, and he's tooling around the halls on his big-wheels. WHERE ARE THOSE TWINS?!? I KNOW THEY'RE THERE!!!

I can't believe they're allowed to air this at this time of day. Care Bears used to have this time slot.

On a related note: was Shelly Duvall considered a good actress? I think she's awful. No matter how genious the movie is and how kickety-kick-ass the novel is, I hate hate hate her performance in this movie. I really would like to be able to find out what motivated them to cast her when her Wendy is so different than the Wendy in King's novel.

UPDATE: It's now 3:45, and they just had all (or from what I can remember, all) of the lady corpse ghost scene with Jack. Sure, her business was blurred out, but that's a lot of rotting flesh to broadcast in the light of day.

Spitting Images.

I don't really watch what I call "murder shows." There are usually cops and lawyers and brutal, soul crushing crimes. Me no likey.

Anyhow:

This guy from one of the "murder shows" (CSI, NYPD Blue, Law and Order, NCIS, etc.) looks so much like a Cardassian, I thought he must have played one.



He has not, but I think he should have.

Standing On The Shoulders Of Giants.

It was 10 years ago today I moved to England. I was 20. It was my first flight by myself.

I had a job interview the next at a hotel in a sleepy drive-though village in Kent called Hextable. It was my second day - I was sleep deprived and nervous. I used my fingers instead of the tongs to put sugar in my tea in the interview, but they hired me anyway. I was to work in the Utopia Health and Leisure Spa at the Rowhill Grange Hotel as a receptionist. By the end of the day, I had secured a room to let down the road from the hotel for £55 a week, which included a cooked meal every night ("tea").

My job didn't start for two weeks, so I took a train north to Scotland. I couldn't stay in Edinburgh through the weekend because there was some sort of international rugby championship going on and the whole city was crawling with Kiwis. I went farther north. I followed the East Coast. I went north of Tain, but not all the way to John O'Groats, a decision I still regret.

Northern Scotland looked so much like Newfoundland, it was the first of many pangs of deep homesickness I felt while I was in the UK.

My visa was good for 24 months. I was there only 9. I also regret not staying there longer. Now, at 30, I'd love to live in Scotland for a while. Wales, England, Northern Ireland - why didn't I just move and try a new location?

Because I was 20. I have logged a whole decade between who I was then and who I am now.

Still, I tried new stuff. I learned new things. I learned to drive a standard - in my own Mini (it was a POS, but it was mine). I discovered hard cider, haggis, Jaffa Cakes, Cornish pasties, and Ribena. I learned to ring bells in a church belfry. I found Jamie Oliver and Ant & Dec. I learned more "English" than I thought was possible (pikeys and zebra crossings and being "on the pull" and biros and skips and so on and so on). All these and so many more amazing memories came out of the mad adventure of Catherine in the UK.

How brazen and bold was I, a 20-year-old PE Islander, hopping on a plane to London? I wonder if I still have that same spirit, 10 years later?

I think I do. I hope so.