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It's been pretty heavy lately.

This year has been a shitty one so far. Remember those wildfires in Australia? All those cute koalas being burned to a crisp? Turns out 2020 was just getting started with that one. Merely a warm-up for the crapfest that was to come. The latest calamity, of course, is the most recent civil unrest around the treatment of Black people by police, specifically the case of Jacob Blake of Kenosha, Wisconsin. Blake was stopped by police with his three kids in a van, and as the video showed, went around his van to reach inside it. There was a knife inside the van, but it's unclear if he was trying to get it. Blake ended up with seven bullets in his back. He didn't die, but it looks like he's going to be paralyzed from the waist down. His family is now claiming that he's also presently handcuffed to his hospital bed. That seems like a little overkill, doesn't it? At an anti-brutality demonstration in Kenosha a couple of days ago, a 17 year old kid, Kyle Rittenhouse, decided
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Sometimes it takes a pandemic to show what a people is really made of.

It's tempting to always compare Canada to the US, it really is. But, can you blame me/us? They're so big, they're right there, and on a clear day if I'm down by the lake, I can see it. Everybody and their dog in the Himalayan foothills and the jungles of Africa has heard of them, but the vast majority of non-Americans will never see the place. I can, and I have, and I've spent a lot of time there. So there. * * * * * Our two countries have official mottoes. Canada: A Mari Usque Ad Mare (or, "From Sea to Sea") The USA: In God We Trust Isn't it strange how, in the place of official church-and-state separation, the divine -- and, specifically, one in particular -- has found its way into so many things? (Then again, we have "God" in our anthem, or at least one version of it.) Anyway, I digress. We also have many unofficial mottoes, but there's a pair that are fairly comparable. The USA: Life, Liberty and the Pursuit of Happiness Canada: Peac
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Here we go again.

Look, I know blogging is so 2005. But I kinda enjoy putting my thoughts down somewhere in a semi-organized way, so get off my back, moooommmm . And a lot has changed for me since I last did this regularly, a few years ago. I got married, we bought a house, the world went to shit in myriad ways, and a close friend of mine died suddenly. Instead of sitting in an apartment that I'd occupied since Stephen Harper was prime minister, surrounded by furniture and decorations I myself had chosen and arranged, I'm in a house which is still relatively new to me, surrounded by some stuff I bought but a lot of which I didn't, and it's arranged in a way I never would've thought of before. (Same couch, though. Still comfy. And, I finally fixed the arm that I broke not long after I bought it. Thank you, YouTube, for your many instructional videos.) So, where do I begin? Let's start with co-habitation. Since my wife's parents are pretty traditional, we didn't l
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