Big Fat Hairy Living

And he’s 6′ 3″ tall and weighs 308 pounds.

He wants to be a strongman when he grows up.

Holy fuck.

I’ve been feeling down for quite a while now. I don’t know why.

My company occupies an end unit in a drab industrial plaza. Because I’m in the last unit, I have to walk the length of the building to get to the bus stop. The exterior of the building has some pipes on the exterior, and each entrance has a fire alarm bell next to it. Every day on the way home I pass by four alarm bells, never usually paying much attention to them.

Around a month ago, I noticed that one of the bells had a whistling noise coming from it. It sounded almost like a boiling kettle, so I figured that it must be the sound of steam or water moving through a nearby pipe.

Last week I noticed some feathers on the ground beneath the bell. I stopped to listen. The whistling sound wasn’t coming from a pipe, it was coming from the alarm bell. And it wasn’t the sound of water, it was the sound of baby birds in their nest. A bird family had somehow built a nest inside a fire alarm bell.

This afternoon I walked past the bell, but there was no sound coming from it. I looked down, and on the ground were two perfect little baby birds. I wanted to cry.

Mark will be showing some work at a group show at Gallery X starting June 5.

The opening will be held on Wednesday, June 7 from 6 PM to 8PM. The theme matches the theme of Pride Toronto: Fearless.

Fearless is about how far we’ve come and how far we’ve to go; it’s about being bold, proud and true; it’s about the courage to be open about who you are, and to celebrate people in our past and present who make it increasingly possible to livewithout fear.

The opening will be held on Wednesday June 7, 2006, from 6pm- 8pm. Snacks and some drinks will be provided.

Gallery X is located at 491 Church St, Suite 200.

I’m going to New Hampshire on a business trip next month. For one day. On the day of my final exam. There won’t even be time to meet up with hot sluts.

Partly because I haven’t posted any pictures of hot guys lately, and partly as a reward to readers who have to put up with my long, boring political posts, I give you this:

When I first read this hack piece on Conservative MP/kook Maurice Vellacott’s recent bizarre comments about the Supreme Court, I thought the authors were just being stupid. I’ve changed my mind: they’re dishonest. Dishonest and egotistical. (The authors claim to be “the only overall monitors in the province of Manitoba,” according to the torturously long blurb on the top of the page.)

For those not in the know, Saskatchewan MP Maurice Vellacott is famous for suggesting that aboriginal men found frozen in the outskirts of Saskatoon after having been beaten to death by police were there because they were in the habit of going there to drink alcohol in a shack. He, of course, is now Stephen Harper’s choice for the Chair of the House of Commons aboriginal affairs committee. Vellacott is still at it, and he recently upped the insanity ante by making the following comments about Chief Justice of Canada Beverly McLachlin:

“I don’t think it is the role of the judge…to actually figure to play the position of God,” he said … He claimed McLachlin “herself said actually when they step into this role that suddenly there’s some kind of mystical power that comes over them, which everything that they’ve ever decreed is not to be questioned.”

In a rare response, the chief justice denied through a spokeswoman she said anything like that.

These Black Rod guys, however, think they’ve got some kind of scoop:

The Supreme Court spokesman had either lied or been misled by the Chief Justice when responding to Vellacourt.

They leave out the obvious third choice: They’re full of shit.

(Incidentally, right after flaming the CBC in their post for misspelling McLachlin’s name, the original post then proceeded to misspell McLachlin’s name everywhere. Those misspellings are have been corrected with no notice of the change.)

The authors gleefully link to a recent speech by Beverley McLachlin on unwritten constitutional principles, claiming that “the opinions Vellacott attributes to her are found in a speech she delivered in New Zealand last December.” That, of course, is a lie. They attempt to support this lie by selectively quoting parts of McLachlin’s speech, writing that

McLachlin told her N.Z.[sic] audience that judges must unearth the “unwritten principles” behind the laws of the land. It is their duty, then, to use these unwritten principles to supercede written laws whenever they see a discrepency[sic].

They are not bound by legal precedents; they must create precedents.

The judge’s response to Vellacott is disingenuous. She relies on the fact that people won’t understand that her approach to the interpretation and application of the law is radically different from what they think her words mean.

The idea that there are unwritten principles which underly the Constitution of Canada is, of course, not controversial to anyone who has taken grade ten history class.

The Canadian constitution is not a single document. It’s partly written and partly unwritten, composed partly of Acts of Parliament and partly of unwritten customs that have been developed over centuries. As an example, the role of the Prime Minister, how he or she is chosen, and how long he or she remains in office are nowhere defined in any of the documents that make up the Constitution of Canada. The office of Prime Minister developed over a long period of time and is a matter of custom, not written law.

As the Chief Justice wrote,

First, unwritten constitutional princples refer to unwritten norms that are essential to a nation’s history, identity, values, and legal system. Second, constitutions are best understood as providing the normative framework for governance. In this functional sense, there is thus no reason to believe that they cannot embrace both written and unwritten norms. Third — and this is important because of the tone that this debate often exhibits — the idea of unwritten constitutional princples is not new and should not be seen as a rejection of the constitutional heritage our two countries share. (Emphasis mine)

The Chief Justice goes on to cite precedents going far back to support her contention that there are unwritten constitutional conventions and principles that underly and supplement what’s in the written parts of our constitution.

The authors at The Black Rod also deliberately alter a quotation from McLachlin, changing the meaning. They write:

And McLachlin even conceded that judges have a special power to plumb the mind of the public.

“Confronted with a new situation requiring a new norm, judges just look to the written constitution for the values that capture the ethos of the nation.” Ethos, says the dictionary, is the characteristic spirit.

Leaving aside the fact that ethos means “distinguishing character” and has nothing to do with spirits in the supernatural sense, this quote is both out of context and incorrect. It has been changed to alter the meaning. Saying that judges just “just look to the written constitution” for values makes it sound kind of magical, doesn’t it? As if they just look over and divine some kind of spirit. In fact what McLachlin said, including the previous sentence which the authors deliberately did not include, is that

While they may interpret their written constitutions, courts are never free to ignore them. Confronted with a new situation requiring a new norm, judges must look to the written constitution for the values that capture the ethos of the nation. (Emphasis mine)

Boy, that sure sounds different from what The Black Rod were claiming she said, doesn’t it? Courts are never free to ignore their written constitutions? Judges must look to the written constitution? It’s amazing what selective quoting and deliberately falsified quotes will do. In discussing where these unwritten principles come from, the Chief Justice writes:

I return to the question: how can unwritten constitution [sic] principles be identified? The answer is that they can be identified from a nation’s past custom and usage; from the written text, if any, of the nation’s fundamental principles; and from the nation’s international commitments. Unwritten principles are not the arbitrary or subjective view of this judge or that. Rather, they are ascertained by a rigorous process of legal reasoning. Where, having regard to convention, written provisions, and internationally affirmed values, it is clear that a nation and its people adhere to a particular fundamental principle or norm, then it is the court’s duty to recognize it. This is not law-making in the legislative sense, but legitimate judicial work.

Written principles? International treaties? Past usage and custom? Rigorous process of legal reasoning? Boy, that sounds kind of different from “plumbing the minds of the public” and “taking on almost these Godlike powers,” doesn’t it? It sounds to me like they look at what’s written down and what has been done in the past and apply information from those sources to reconcile conflicts in law. There’s no mystic prophetic power at all.

Near the end of her speech, McLachlin adds:

Judicial conscience is not to be confused with personal conscience. It is informed not by the judge’s personal views, nor the judge’s views as to what policy is best. It is informed by the law, in all its complex majesty, as manifested in the three sources I’ve suggested.

Gotcha.

Why do so many people play along with fundamentalist Christian word games, granting the homophobic blather of “Homosexuality is a choice” by bothering to respond to it? Nobody claims that religious or political beliefs shouldn’t be protected because they’re not inborn, so why fall into this trap?

Via Pam’s House Blend comes an article in USA Today on a new study that shows that lesbians’ brains respond differently from heterosexual women’s brains:

Homosexuals’ brains respond differently from those of straight men and women when exposed to sex hormones, but researchers now say the difference is less pronounced in lesbians than in gay men.

Lesbians’ brains reacted somewhat, though not completely, like those of heterosexual men, a team of Swedish researchers said in Tuesday’s edition of Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences.

A year ago, the same group reported findings for gay men that showed their brain response to hormones was similar to that of heterosexual women.

In both cases the findings add weight to the idea that homosexuality has a physical basis and is not learned behavior.

… prompting bleeding-heart liberals to respond, “See? It’s not a choice,” the unspoken addendum being “They can’t help it!” As if there’s something to be helped.

Why does there need to be some reason or excuse or explanation for the way I am? I don’t need to justify myself to anybody. My rights as a citizen and as a human being do not depend on my genetics.

So when will there be a study that investigates the biological basis of fundamentalist bigotry?

Christopher Hume on the destruction of the Inn on the Park:

In many cities, the destruction of a landmark would be seen as an act of vandalism. In Toronto, it’s business as usual.

As anyone who has gone past the corner of Eglinton Ave. and Leslie St. in the last day or two knows, the old Inn on the Park is now nothing more than a pile of rubble. The 1963 building, designed by pioneering modernist architect Peter Dickinson as he lay dying of cancer, has been demolished to make way for a car dealership.

And on the poorly run Toronto Transit Commission:

The government of Ontario, starting with former Conservative premier Mike Harris and continuing under Premier Dalton McGuinty, has done most of the damage through devastating funding cuts. The TTC is now the only major transit operation on the planet that must make up the bulk of its funding through the ticket box.

Under chief general manager Rick Ducharme, the TTC has adopted a strictly nuts-and-bolts mentality that leaves the organization unable to see the big picture.

Any way you look at it, the commission, and Toronto transit users, are now paying the price for years of bad planning, deferred maintenance, and political interference.

More than anything, however, it is the politicization of transit that has caused untold resources to be wasted and opportunities missed.

Toronto is a mediocre city that doesn’t realize its mediocrity. Instead of trying to prove that it’s “world class” with asinine Olympic bids, the city should be concentrating on the stuff that matters: fixing roads, planting gardens, encouraging good architecture, building light rail networks. Instead we get ugly condos, power plants on the waterfront, and subways to nowhere. I’m tired of living in a city that would be considered third rate in pretty much any other country in the developed world.