Sometimes When I Look at Canada in Winter...

I want to go back to bed. It was so cold last night the top of the Big Dick froze and fell off. And can you BELIEVE those icebergs?

Just like sometimes I can't face the morning rush hour.














It's just TOO brutal. If winter doesn't get you.... the sausage dog will.

And then there's the DANGEROUS state of our roads.



















I KNOW there are no cars...and it's DEFINITELY not as cold as Saskatchewan. As a Montrealer I do think Sean has a point.

But dude here's the problem ..... the neighbourhood drunk at the top of the picture has been reduced to crawling on all fours over the icy bridge.

He thinks it's pretty damm cold. And if you disagree with him...or try to help him...he punches you. So nobody does.

Oh yeah.Sometimes I miss summer so much...














I wish I didn't live here.

Why can't I dwell in a land of palm trees and balmy breezes?

Instead of this frozen hell.

But then.... it gets soooooo cold.... the canal freezes...













So Sébastien and I can skate on it.

Like we used to do on Beaver Lake.

Or play hockey... with the other guys.











While the little guys wait their turn. And the snow keeps coming down.

Then suddenly I don't want to live in ANY other country in the world.

Can you believe it ? Am I LOSING my mind?

Winter in Canada? No problem.

Bring it on...

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P.S. Sean...I'm afraid I've got BAD news for you. Temperatures here are supposed to rise into the double digits ...or almost... next week.

So brace yourself for more breathless CBC stories.

Extra!!!! Extra !!!!!

KILLER HEATWAVE hits Toronto!!!!!!!!!

The Neanderthals and the Humans

Uh oh...don't tell the crazy creationists...but the ugly argument over how humans happened just got even uglier....or hairier.

A new study by a Canadian professor suggests that not only did humans evolve from monkeys .... they also evolved from neanderthals.












Modern humans may well have evolved from hardy Neanderthals who suffered through a dramatic cold spell that descended on Europe about 40,000 years ago, according to a new study that throws another coal into the already heated scientific debate about our origins.

But really is ANYONE surprised? First they tell us the neanderthals shared 99.5 % of our genes. But they were COMPLETELY different. Then we're told they couldn't talk.

And then that maybe they could.

Neanderthals, an archaic human species that dominated Europe until the arrival of modern humans some 45,000 years ago, possessed a critical gene known to underlie speech, according to DNA evidence retrieved from two individuals excavated from El Sidron, a cave in northern Spain.

Which makes me wonder when they told us the neanderthals were too dum to make clothes... so they all froze to death.

Does than mean that now we should thank the hairy brutes for teaching us not only how to kill with a club ... but also how to SEW?

And if you add it all up how DIFFERENT from us were they?

















Just as I figured.

Or feared.

You know if this hairy love story continues.... I wouldn't be surprised if people stopped using the word neanderthal as an insult quite as much as they do.

Or if men stopped shaving their chests. Or women stopped shaving their legs.

Cave-a-bunga! Never mind the evolutionary implications.

Wouldn't THAT be awesome?

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P.S. I STILL believe that the real reason humans sometimes act like brutes....and have so many sexual hangups.... is that our monkey ancestors went with the chimps instead of the bonobos.

My Gay Year and the Wonders of the Universe

Just a few hours to go before 2007 limps off into history. But I hardly have the energy to write about it. It was THAT kind of year.

The planet continued to burn.... its inhabitants continued to kill each other in the name of religion....millions continued to die of disease and starvation when there was more than enough medicine and food to save them.

Stephen Harper's Con government continued to disgrace Canada all over the world. The religious wingnuts continued to come after us like rabid flying monkeys. And everything just got meaner, dummer, and crazier.

So instead of my Top Ten Depressing News Stories of 2007....how about the Top Ten Astronomy Photos?












To remind us what a wonder our little blue planet is..... in a magnificent but threatening universe. And why if we don't do more to save it...we don't really DESERVE IT.

Or how about instead of goosing the Pope for his latest assault on gay people ....and Spain.

I just run this old post.

If only to remember Garcia Lorca's young lover, Rafael Rodriguez Rapun, standing there unafraid firing a rifle at the fascist planes coming to kill him. On the one year anniversary of the day the fascists murdered his Federico.

And remind the religious fanatics that their hatred may continue to kill us...but it will NEVER defeat our love.
















Because our cause is just and beautiful. And love conquers all. No matter how long it takes.

Finally I'd like to thank the readers of this humble blog...and all my blogging friends out there for their support and encouragement. And the enjoyment I get from reading their posts or comments.

I also want to thank Sébastien, my beautiful companion, for putting up with me and my blogging and other misadventures for another year...and for managing to keep me grounded and STILL be the star in my sky.

And I'd like to end this last post of 2007 with a song from a man who was just one of the many innocent victims of the senseless violence that soaked our world in blood again this year.

But whose death almost broke my heart. The late great Lucky Dube.

Which might seem like a down....and not very GAY way to ring out the year.

But isn't really....



Because Lucky lives, reggae is strong, and so are WE.

And all the homophobes and all the hate in the world won't stop OUR struggle against bigotry and violence. Or prevent our final and glorious VICTORY.

Love. Resistance. Justice. Peace.

Happy New Year Everyone!!!!!!

Iraq, Pakistan, and the Ghost of Saddam Hussein

Trying to find something positive in Iraq is like looking for the proverbial pony.... in a mountain of bloody manure.

But this has to be good news.

Especially since Osama Bin Laden is so worried.

"Our duty is to foil these dangerous schemes, which try to prevent the establishment of an Islamic state in Iraq..."

So you know it's got to REALLY hurt.

And what must hurt the most is the fact that Al-Qaeda is being expelled from Iraq not by General Petraeus....although he deserves some credit.

But by their fellow Sunnis .....and the ghost of Saddam Hussein.











Hussein was a brutish dictator but he was a secular one. So in the late seventies when Saudi Arabia started building Wahhabi religious schools or madrassas all over the world, they couldn't build any in Iraq.

Which meant that although the country was extremely sectarian, the common culture remained secular...and nationalist. And the stateless religious fanaticism that Al Qaeda depends upon never took root.

So while at first the Sunnis were glad to have the foreign fighters on their side...it didn't take long before their fanaticism and indiscriminate brutality turned them off.

Which is why after the Americans leave...and the Shiites and the Sunnis and the Kurds work out a power sharing agreement with or without a civil war...Iraq might have a chance of being a modern secular nation one day.

While a country like Pakistan is doomed.

It allowed the Saudis to build thousands of religious schools. Its corrupt military used them to provide the Taliban with recruits and suicide bombers. So now Pakistan is crawling with religious fanatics...including many in the armed forces.

Nobody is safe. And anything could happen.

Some US intelligence analysts fear Benazir Bhutto's assassination could be part of a broader al-Qa'ida and Taliban offensive against Pakistan's secular leadership, focused on spreading militant influence inside the country. Success in this endeavour would pose a direct threat to the US and the broader Western world.

So much for the Great War on Terror.

Let's see if I can get it straight.

To get back at the religious extremists who attacked America, Bush and his neocons invaded the only secular country in the Middle East...and turned it into a magnet for religious fanatics. They never got Bin Laden, but they allowed the Taliban to regroup in Afghanistan, turn Waziristan and other barbarous places into safe havens for Jihadi terrorists. And they helped create the conditions for Al Qaeda to destabilize Pakistan .... the only Islamic country with nuclear weapons.

And now it turns out that the most powerful weapon in the fight against Al Qaeda in Iraq, and the main reason it hasn't turned into another Pakistan, was the ghost of the man they hanged.

Spare a thought for the old dead tyrant.

Isn't it a crazy world?

The Post Xmas Blues and the Ugly Canadians

Uh oh. I see the post Xmas blues are breaking out all over the world. The credit card bills haven't arrived yet. But the spirit of the season is fading fast. From the alleged site of the blessed manger.

To an ice station in the Antarctic.

And then there is the very UnXmassy story of the little girl in Dallas who won a Hannah Montana makeover...and some tickets to a Little Miss Montana concert....by writing this short essay:

"My daddy died this year in Iraq. I am going to give mommy the Angel pendant that daddy put on mommy when she was having me. I had it in my jewelry box since that day. I love my mommy."

Which would be REALLY moving... in a ghastly sort of way.

Except that daddy wasn't REALLY in Iraq. Or even dead.

But before we accuse the Americans of trying to gain an unfair advantage by teaching their kids to cheat before we teach ours how to swindle their way to success.

Let's take a good look at ourselves....with or WITHOUT our clothes.

Some Canadian shoppers wear their new clothes home to avoid paying a duty when they cross back into Canada. The old clothes get left behind in parking lots, dressing rooms and restrooms at malls and shopping plazas in the Buffalo-Niagara Falls region.

Can you believe it? Once we were running after their dollars and calling them the Ugly Americans. Now they're running after our bloated loonies and we're the Ugly Canadians !!!! Cheating our way through customs.

Is that PROGRESS or what?

Although to be fair...when it comes to ugly or just crazy... we may have the nasty neocon Stephen Harper and the idiot redneck Don Cherry.

But judging from this video... I fear the Americans may STILL have a slight edge....



Wow. DEFINITELY.

No wonder we're losing the Great War on Terror.

But don't let those post Xmas blues get you down.

Just remember that December is gloomy. But January is WORSE.

Have a great weekend everyone!

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P.S. I couldn't help but notice that some terrorist stooge has posted a response to that great patriotic video...



So I reported him to the Department of Waterboarding Security.

I'm doing MY part in the Great War on Terror.

Are you?

The Pogues and the Faggot Word Revisited

As you know I spend a lot of time on this blog apologizing for what I have written. Not always because I'm wrong, but because I always doubt.

I know that certainty rules these days. But I can't help but wonder afterwards whether I was fair and clear enough... or too harsh and nasty, or too clownish, or too serious.

Or in the case of this post. Not serious enough.

I must admit that when I wrote it I thought the bleeping Beeb story was a bad joke. And a tempest in a teacup.

But after reading this column....

To say that you’re offended these days is to risk being accused of being humourless; of not getting the joke. It’s the same risk you run as a woman who is offended by the endless parade of breasts in magazines such as Nuts. The new casual homophobia is couched as a perfectly acceptable, knowing joke, and coincides with a general feeling that gays have had quite enough equality..... That we are getting a little too big for our boots.

I wonder whether some gays rush to defuse these little brouhahas by saying that they are not offended because we are entertainers and pacifiers, used to deflecting homophobia around us with wit or just turning the other cheek. Our instinct is to josh, parry, swerve, not confront bigotry. We don’t want to be bashed. We don’t want to be out of the gang. Of course we know how to “take a joke”. We had enough practice in school and on the playing field. We excuse homophobia because we don’t want to fight, cause trouble, be different.

Now I'm not so sure. Because so much of what he says is true.

We want a place at the table and, if we have to suffer the occasional sting or belittling remark, then so be it. But equality isn’t about just what is enshrined in statute. It’s about being treated with – and, most importantly, expecting – respect and consideration. You can’t put that kind of thing into law, but organisations such as the BBC arguably have a responsibility to foster and encourage it.

And this little factoid DOES bother me...

The fact that the song reached No 4 is depressing: it was almost as if those people rushing out to buy it were not merely assailed by a sudden nostalgia but actually waiting for – indeed, actively investing in – that “faggot” line with some relish. Homophobia sells.

Because although I love the Pogues ... Fairytale of New York is not THAT great a song.

So now I don't know WHAT to think. Except that one.... homophobia is a disease and it's everywhere.

Two...I need a sense of humour in this bigot world to keep up my spirits so I can confront the real homophobes...and fight the real battles.

And three .....that when he wrote the faggot song..... Shane MacGowan was probably drunk...



So I forgive him.

I'm giving him the benefit of my many doubts.

Because sometimes....even when you don't want to... you gotta fight.

And sometimes you gotta laugh...

Benazir Bhutto and Pakistan's Religious Demons

Now she belongs to history.

And history will decide whether she might have saved Pakistan...or just helped sink it. Whether she was a secular martyr who heralded a new age of democracy...or just another lousy Pakistani politician incompetent and corrupt.

But nobody will be able to deny that Benazir Bhutto was really brave.

She was attempting to make the connection between lack of democracy in Pakistan and the rise of mullah-manipulated fanaticism.

And, right to the end, she carried on without the fetish of "security" and with lofty disregard for her own safety. This courage could sometimes have been worthy of a finer cause, and many of the problems she claimed to solve were partly of her own making. Nonetheless, she perhaps did have a hint of destiny about her.

A woman of destiny in a failed state going nowhere.

As for who gave the orders to kill her? The way they cleaned up the crime scene with fire hoses I'm sure we'll never know.

But it doesn't really matter. Because we all know where the young man who actually killed her almost certainly came from.

From one of the thousands of madrassahs run by religious extremists who turn little boys into suicide bombers. So Pakistan's corrupt generals and sinister intelligence services can use them as a proxy army in Kashmir and Afghanistan.

Boys just like this one.

“Even before you blow yourself up, virgins come to the site of the explosion and wait to take you to Paradise...”

The religious fanatics already hated her for being modern, secular, and of course for being a woman. But by vowing to reform or shutdown the radical madrassahs...and threatening the mullahs AND the generals.... Benazir Bhutto almost surely sealed her fate

Still, the secular generals who make up the high command of the Pakistani army must be sipping their scotches nervously in the garrison town of Rawalpindi tonight.

Ever since they sent off the first wave of jihadis to battle the Soviets in Afghanistan...and all those American billions started pouring in..... they've acquired incredible power and wealth.

But now the suicide bombers are amongst them. The killer children they nurtured with the help of crazy religion are turning on their own. And you can't put those kind of demons back in a box once you've let them out.

Today they came for Bhutto..... tomorrow they could come for them. And their nuclear weapons.

Which means that the Great War on Terror just got more complicated... and a lot more dangerous.

Although in one way it's simpler now. The writing is on the wall. Either Pakistan starts destroying religious fanatics instead of breeding them. Or they'll destroy Pakistan.

Poor brave Benazir. She never really had a chance. And she was a really flawed martyr.

But I'm going to miss her...

Donkey Tales and the War on Christmas

When I saw that West Bank residents had defaced Banksy's donkey not far from where Jesus is supposed to have been born. I couldn't help but think that now the poor Palestinians have lost everything.

Even their sense of humour.

And I also couldn't help but think of another donkey. And one of my favourite childhood Christmas stories.

The story of Small One the poor old abused donkey who finally has his moment of glory...when he gets to carry pregnant Mary to that manger in Bethlehem.

I could never watch that one without choking up.

Of course that was before I learned that Mary was a virgin. And that Small One didn't really exist. And neither does God.

But even as an atheist I love this time of the year. The lights....the songs....the food ...the feeling that we should treat each other more kindly than we do the rest of the time. And of course all that talk about peace on earth.

So it annoys me when I see some religious fanatics claim that we are waging War on Christmas. Even though... as JJ has fun pointing out... there isn't one.

And it disturbs me to see how right wing xenophobes use that fake war to make people believe that foreigners are stealing our culture and traditions.

All this would just be seasonal silliness if it were not cover for a more sinister drumbeat. The right has taken to flying the "Christian" flag in ways that suggest none too subtly that foreigners - Muslims - are stealing our culture and traditions. "They" are stopping "us" celebrating Christmas and teaching Christian stories to our children.

Which is not only nonsense...but dangerous as well.

And the LAST thing we need in Canada.

So I guess I'll just keep on believing that there is no God. Just a lot of humans living on a small and fragile planet who need to respect and care for each other a lot more than we do now if we're going to survive.

Because the earth is our only heaven and our only hell. And the gods aren't going to help us.

While I also keep on enjoying the beautiful myth of a baby born in a manger during a time of terror and persecution. Or the legend of the Hannukah lamp that burned forever. Or the story of Small One the poor humble donkey.

And of course all those Christmas songs....



The words may not mean anything to me. But isn't that HUMAN sound beautiful ?

Merry Christmas...Joyeux Noël...Happy Holidays everyone!

From me and Sébastien ....and my little donkey Kerouac.

Love and justice and peace on earth...

Secret Postcards and Homeless Gay Kids

I don't know why this postcard made me think of this story.

A new study says there are at least 3,800 people under the age of 25 living on the streets of New York and that almost 30 percent are gay, lesbian or bisexual.

The survey found that while many homeless youth went to city shelters 42 percent slept on the streets, subways or in empty buildings. Some, the study said, turned to prostitution trying to find a "trick" to spend the night with

Maybe it's because like bullying ....being thrown out of your home or being forced to leave and live on the street because of who you are or who you love....is a HIDDEN crime. Some can't see it. Others don't want to.

Even though in NYC it's been a growing problem for years.

With just two dozen beds available for gay, lesbian and transgender youth, they endure violence in the city's shelters, camp out in doorways in Harlem or pass the night at a 24-hour Internet cafe next to Disney's New Amsterdam Theater on 42nd Street. There, many of them trawl the Web for paying ''dates'' or try their luck on Christopher Street in the far West Village, where some quick work in a passing car might yield $30. ''You've got to do what you've got to do to survive,'' says Mr. Murray, who is 22 and has been turning tricks in the Village since he was 15.

And don't think it's any different in the big cities of Canada. Because it isn't. The gay kids are out there. But we can't see them ....or don't want to.

Especially when they turn up on the gentrified streets of our Gay Villages. Smoking crack, begging or bumming cigarettes. Or selling their bodies for a place to sleep.

And to make things even worse ... many of the kids themselves can't talk about what happened to them.

Because they feel bad about telling the truth.

Like sick people sometimes do...

















As if the gay kids were the sick ones instead of those who bullied them at school. Or their own parents who threw them into the street.

So homophobia gets off lightly. Again.

Isn't it time society faced this problem and its cause...and did more to help ALL homeless kids....gay AND straight?

Isn't it time the gay community took more responsibility for the fate of our young people?

Or is it time for a riot?




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P.S. For more postcards like those above check out the awesome Post Secret Project

And if you are a gay youth in Toronto you can get help at this excellent support centre.

Humpback Whales, iPod Fish, and the Acid Oceans

I was glad to see that international pressure has forced the Japanese to suspend plans to kill humpback whales.

An international outcry led by Australia has forced Japan to backtrack on plans to kill 50 humpback whales as part of an annual 'scientific' whaling programme regarded as a sham by the rest of the world.

And eat Minke whale sushi instead.

Now who is going to save THIS little fish?












From life in an ipod speaker.

"The fish in this thing does not look like it has very long to live and it can barely move...Even if it does live it's not a life worth living ... it's really just a torture box."

To me confining a little fish to a space as tiny as that just to look cool.... is as cruel as exploding a harpoon in the back of an intelligent sentient social creature when you don't need to eat it.

But what do you expect from people too callous, greedy, and ignorant to understand that?

Just like what do you expect from governments that can't even agree that global warming is a catastrophe that threatens us all?

Even as the oceans turn to acid.

The increasing acidity can eat away at the shells of crabs, oysters, clams and nearly microscopic organisms known as krill and pteropods. It also inhibits calcification, the process in which these animals rebuild their shells. Without shells, most of the animals probably would die.

Which could mean NO fish in a world where as many as one billion people depend on it for survival.

And of course no whales either. Protect them now. Wipe them out later.

Oh boy. How can we save the other living creatures who share this planet with us...

If we can't even save ourselves?