Our government is in shambles and our Political leaders are doing the finger bang, pointing and trying to tickle the prostate of the other. 

Like the ultimate heterosexual with his proctologist.

You can hear the lube greasing up the finger, “Bend over (glove snap) this is gonna hurt!”

Our current Prime Minister is facing a vote of no confidence and the other parties are circling around like buzzards at the corpse.

Can he be trusted? 

No of course not which is why four other political parties are calling for the vote.  And truth be told the four of them got more votes than his party did. 

The Parliamentary system rocks!

NOT!

I mean I hate the guy.

I’ve spoken, honestly about my “hate on” for Stephen Harper but he is our Prime Minister for good or for bad.

So, the anally retentive, tight ass, pseudo Hitler haircut, has one of three choices.

#1 - Accept the vote of no confidence as a man and accept the outcome.

#2 - Call another election; and as we just had one seven weeks ago; it’s not a prospect I embrace.

#3 - Ask the Governor General¹ to dissolve Parliament for a couple of months until it blows over.

It’s like being asked how you want to die. 

By firing squad, guillotine or rat poison.

And as MUCH as I hate her I feel, slightly, like Elizabeth Hassleback having to accept Barack Obama - A DEMOCRAT - with graciousness and open arms.

Of course, and I’ve said this before, there was no choice.  The U.S. election was a pretty easy call.  

You could have put a Cabbage patch doll against John McCain and I’m sure the outcome would have been the same.

And with Sarah Palin as the Matel toy she was/is, it just fed the  plastic debate.

I’d rather play with the box than with her, to he honest.

But this, the Canadian end of politics,  is confusing to say the least.

Stephan Dion, the leader of the opposition,  is a mess.  A FUCKING mess.  He’s the worst possible person to be Prime Minister.  He’s about as literate as drunken Irish poet vegetable.

It would be like having Tinky-Winky running the rest of the Teletubbies into the ground screaming, “I’m not gay!”

I guess I’m for the coalition of the lame against the tyranny of the lamer.  Maybe it’s psychotic of me but I’d like to see if they could get along.

And then we throw in the Quebec separatists (or as they like to think of themselves as “Sovereigntist’s” - that’s not an actual word but it conveys the message.) into the mix and all of a sudden they’re anti-Canadian. 

Not fighting for what they perceive as their rights.

But wait, didn’t Stephen Harper and his Conservative Alliance Party (which by the way used to be TWO separate parties until they merged without an election) try to form a coalition with the Separatists  just eight years ago?

This is all too “Melrose Place” for me.

I just wanna dig a hole.

So what do we do? 

Has Canada become a Banana Republic and are tanks going to scour the streets of Toronto?

Are Guerillas going to stampede traffic signs and take immigrants hostage?

Are we going to be the sad and pathetic refugees that I see on the “give this child an education by sending $0.30 a day” public service announcements?

God I hope not.

I just wish they could all grow up and play nice.

1. the Queen’s representative

R.e.: More Later.

I came back and called my friend Steve.  He told me of a man that he said I knew that had potentially committed suicide.  There weren’t defined parameters:  Meaning there was no note that helped clarify the situation.

So, I looked him up.  I was told I knew him, and being terrible with names but great with faces, I needed a visual to remind me.

I recognized him. 

Vaguely. 

We weren’t close, we weren’t friends, we didn’t even travel in the same circles, really.

But here was a guy who was, by photographical standards, gorgeous.  Again, from outside views, had a GREAT job.  A GREAT life.

And here he ended what some would see as an all together life.

People’s views of themselves; their place in the universe are so diverse and mixed with personal history and self-perception that reality is so clouded.

Other’s see me as this or that.  Fun, loud, life of the party…

I see myself as the fat-bald-white guy who is needy and lacking in self esteem.

No, this isn’t self pity.  Nor is this is a cry for adoration.  It’s just, fundamentally and plainly, HOW I see myself.

Absolution is a bitch.

It might be chemical, I don’t know.  I have addictions, I have flaws that are so plentiful that they fall out of my brain on a daily basis but I can’t go there.  If that’s where I decide my energy is to go, I’m lost.

It takes so much to just wake up.  To face a job that is tiring, is lacking  in financial compensation but I see what it does give me.

Other’s say to me, “you’re so self-less.”

No, I’m not. 

I’m the complete opposite.  I’m selfish because the people I work for remind me that I matter. 

And I’ll take that over anything.

I’ve been told, by a certain friend, that I don’t care enough about them.  And I’ve stifled communication with him because I was tired of being told I was a jerk.  I see his position and did the best I knew how to do to rectify the situation but it, to me, didn’t seem enough.

“You didn’t do this.  Others did but you didn’t.”

It’s what was pressed into the hand-held mirror every time we talked.

Why would I continue to let that being force fed?

Like I said;  I am this, I am that.

So, here I contemplate why he committed suicide and all I can come up with is, I don’t know why someone who I perceived to have it all ended his life when I recognize that I don’t.

Maybe, fundamentally, my glass is always half full.

I see what I DO have and not what I don’t. 

Oh, don’t get me wrong.  There are many times when I love to wallow.  Succumb to the self flagellation  that freely allows my right arm to whip my back while I remind myself of my failings.

There are more scars on my back than most may realize but I try to keep it into perspective.

I’m sorry this, perceived make-shift, human being didn’t feel he had the right to live.  I truly am.

I am not in pain, I’m not facing a terminal disease, I’m not even living in a cardboard box.

The words of a fictional character keeps coming to mind.  “Do or do not. There is not try.”¹

I am a failure in many ways.  Again, this is not self deprecation.  It’s a fact.

But I have to remind myself that I am a success.  Changing what I need to in my world and recognizing that I am a failure.

“It is a wise man who knows he is not wise.” 

Who said that?

I don’t know but it’s what I cling too.

To those who knew this man better than I; to those who thought as I do that he seemed to have it all…

I’m sorry for your loss.

But remember, perception is a wildly messed up thing. 

You may think you have little when you actually have the world at your fingertips.

Chemical imbalanced synapses aside, you are what you make of yourself.

If you need a drug to compensate, take it.  If you need a dietary change, eat it.   If you need global acceptance, seek it.

Just be and be glad for the chance to screw it all up.

1. thank you, Yoda.

Writing from intention is hard.

Writing from  the moment is hard.

It’s all hard. 

Putting yourself out there for the public to scrutinize welcomes both condemnation and praise and you try to take everything into perspective.

To balance why people are commenting and what their history is that brings them to this moment.  And what in your history brings you to the point that you need to get it out.

I have written out of anger.

I have written out of passion.

Out of “the moment.”‘

Out of indignation.

And people think it’s all superfluous.  It’s not.  It’s cathartic, it’s an exorcism and it’s a release.

I’ve found that since I stopped writing about the moment that I’ve stopped receiving comments and the public adoration has stopped.

I still have passion, I just contemplate now before putting it online.

I hurt people and for that I’m eternally sorry.  But at the same time, apologizing for it seems weak.

An honest apology is NEVER weak.  An admission of fault is humbling - but not a failure.

But it’s making a point, finding a position that is always important.  And you do it however you know how to do.

I am public:  And that’s been my curse.

Who wants to be in a relationship where, in the back of your mind, there’s this thought of, “Could I become the next posting?”

How do you find the balance between public and private?

And here I am ABLE to post, to write, to speak my mind.  Regardless of political leaders or current trends I’m graciously allowed to vomit thought.

I have electricity, I have clean drinking water, I have food that’s plentiful¹ I have the love of family and friends.

But most importantly I have my voice and that’s what writing has brought me.

I don’t mean this to be confessional but it’s the nature of the beast with this thing.  Write about something that MEANS something, write something that resonates and you have an audience.

Write about simple and superficial things and people glaze over you.

I’m still working on the balance.

Bear with me.  Please?

1. if you consider Kraft Dinner - for the States readers Kraft Mac and Cheese, food!

Didn’t bigoted lines get crossed just a day before?  Didn’t progressive thinking finally trump backward thought?

I guess not.

Part of my absence in the pool of confessionals was, I guess, for two reasons. 

The first and foremost:  I’ve been reading, watching, thinking, and even pondering all the plethora of pundits and their consciousness’s.  And there have been many.

The second, and the most obvious is that I’m Canadian and why would I care; not to rub it in to my U.S. kin but I already have that right. 

Yet wasn’t I was glued to my television to watch the ascension of a true and rightful King of America?  I was.  And, more importantly, I - along with millions globally - was moved to tears.

Truth is, I care very deeply.  Not only as a gay man but more importantly as a human being who believes in rights for all.

To deny someone rights based on biblical ideology, to watch bigotry thrown out the window and then the next day slam the window shut on an even smaller minority group is baffling to me.

I’ve heard stammering along the lines of, “It was the Mormons!  They did it!”  They very well may have done it; and in a strange way, that makes sense to me.  That they must feel like an even SMALLER minority because they don’t have the  right to be in a group marriage.

“If I can’t marry sixteen wives, why should same sex couples have the right to marry?”

And the truth is, why can’t they?  Polygamous relationships are catching fire in the gay world as well so why can’t more than two people get married.

I’m sure the Lawyers would LOVE it.   Imagine the divorce bills!  Lawyers would be feeding on the fat of disgruntled third spouses for decades!

Love is love and to deny same-sex couples the right to marry is an abomination and stands against everything that I believe the U.S. to be.

This is the country (and again, proud Canadian here) that begat Harriet Tubman, Martin Luther King, Jr., Rosa Parks, John F. Kennedy.

They went to the moon, for God’s sake.

The United States of America has rarely decided on policy based on fear of the unknown. 

So why now?  

What was the deciding factor on voters minds when they said, “Yes prejudice can live here, and please wipe your feet on the welcome mat but don’t worry about your shoes.”

How, in a country that puts marriage on the reality television circuit and that allows mail order brides even have the audacity to state that marriage is sacred.

It’s become a contest.

Give me a rose and I’m yours.

I don’t get it.

This is obviously going to be biased.  I’m gay, after all.

However it just shakes me to the core that people are shunned for their natural propensity to love.

Opponents would say it opens the door to any kind of love.  I’m sure they’re thinking that marriage licenses would be issued to a man and a swiffer:  If he so chose.

“Marry the same sex will bring on bestiality, pedophilia even.”

I will admit that goat I saw at the local petting zoo was awful cute….hmmmmm….I wonder….

It is with hope that in fifty years, when this question ever comes up again, we will have a societal shift in thought.  It will be with shame and embarrassment that we look back on this oppression.

It is sobering to realize that oppression has no colour, no race, no sex

It is equally obscene.

Believing, fundamentally, that Women HAD to fight because they couldn’t hide.

Blacks HAD to fight because they couldn’t hide.

Maybe our great curse and great blessing is that we could.  We could hide out in sham marriages and pretend.

But “Gay” crosses all colour lines.  Religions.  Sexes.  Even monetary status.

I believe, fully, that it will in some way be over-turned.  That people will wake up and realize their shame in voting for denying human rights.

So to my American cousins, I’m with you.  Not that my vote would ever count but know this…

Your fight is my fight.  Your struggle; mine.

Please find the time to watch this.  It’s important.

Peace and freedom be with you.

Yes, the Karate stuff is ridiculous; but the song.  OH THE SONG.

Enjoy.

More than special thanks go to Ty!  For making me remember and finding me the song.

A man who, even when he lived there, was never about the Red, White and Blue but was about the simple Maple Leaf.

About the equality that we achieved WAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAY before the big brother U.S.

The one thing about being Canadian is about being “middle of the road.”

We are so even keeled that passion is what lacks in our politics.  Our last election was so white bred that it was more of the toaster popping up before the yeast was coloured.

I am proud, not because I live in North America but because I’m a citizen of the planet.

So, to my brothers and sisters of all colours and nationalities…

Congratulations.

On making history.

Even if you couldn’t vote.

Even if you weren’t there.

You were a part of it - AND THAT makes all the difference!

I am PROUD of my American Brethren for the decision made today.  Your choice was strong and envied around the globe.

George W. was an embarrassment.  A hideous muppet of Dick Cheney and George Sr.

Cheney’s hand so far up Bush Jr’s ass that he could dink water while Jr. spoke.

Right now America you have PROVEN you are brave.

Congratulations.

You have MOVED me!

America, you got it RIGHT!

When is it replaced with empathy or even a basic understanding of what your “enemy” is going through?

“I did this but you did this so then I did this but it was because…”  That sort of thing.

In his mind I was the root of the problem and in mine he was all the things he’d said about me.

Maybe that was why everything after Star Wars: The Empire Strikes Back didn’t do as well critically.  Because Darth Vader, the epitome of Evil, redeemed himself.

It was simple.  He was bad, Luke was good. 

Like I said.  Simple. 

So is it that I don’t like my villains redeemed?

If so, what does that say about me?

And why is it that one piece of information can all of a sudden make me turn from thinking of him as the enemy to maybe being someone I completely misunderstood?

I wish I could be rock-like in my thinking but I’ve never been great at standing on a position where there were flaws in logic in either pro or con a personal situation.

So now that I have this new information could I ever go back and be friends with this man? 

That’s the one thing about being someone who leans towards the “spilling his guts/heart on his sleeve” type.

It’s a very tough thing to do.

I seem to be the one who’s left. 

It’s not self-pity, merely an observation.

He was Red, White and Blue and I was just Red and White.  And it was an easy casting choice to make him the bad guy. 

The distance helped. 

Not seeing him at bars or walking down the street - it was easy to make him the ghost of Christmas past that would only come in hazy moments of drunken stupors.

The one thing I do know is that it’s good to let go of the anger. 

This used to be the forum for rants but that’s changed in time.   Now it’s a barometer, of sorts.  An after thought, if you will.

I think before I type now.  It might make for a boring read but I’d like to think it makes for a better person.