january 13, 2001. Today we went shopping in Halifax. It was like a mini-holiday: I put on my Bauhaus t-shirt, outlined my eyes in black, slapped on some pink lip gloss & loaded up my Curious George lunchbox/purse. This was necessary ego camouflage, for I was out to purchase jeans and such a trip always has the potential to send me into a spiral of despair. In my quirky monotone finery I felt cool again, if only for a short while (there's only so long I can maintain my self-esteem in the presence of floor length mirrors). It was good to get out of the country for awhile and see the malls of other provinces. I hate to admit it, but the Boy & I are truly the children of suburbia, and our natural habitat is the multi-level mall. Malls are like white sugar: so bad for you, but so ubiquitous and convenient. We also explored some places on Barrington Street that were closing as we arrived - still, we managed to spend a good 10 minutes in a womyn's sex shop that was selling copies of "S.C.U.M. Manifesto" alongside a variety of dildos. (The Boy said later that it was obscurely comforting to find a place with a wall full of sex toys. I agree.) Notable purchase: Sea monkeys. We found them in one of those "educate your child the fun way" stores, next to a display of Harry Potter paraphernalia. I'll keep you posted. Before we got married, the Boy used to work all night at a major bank, counting deposits made to bank machines. During his 8 hours shift he listened to a lot of all-night radio as a way of fighting the intense boredom. This meant that I got to hear quite a few anecdotes about the crazy outer limits explored by Art Bell (i.e. the man who thought The Blair Witch Project was real) and the snottiness of the woman who hosted "Brave New Waves" (i.e. the radio show where you often hear songs composed of 'found sounds' recorded by a guy in his basement.) There was also a show on at 5:00 a.m. that entirely consisted of a guy reading the paper aloud. That's kind of how I feel today. Almost all of what I have to say from this point onward was incited by today's copy of the Globe & Mail...and so without further ado... Bush's Christian guru aims to reshape America Okay. This story about Bush's desire to let churches run all state assistance programs scares the living hell out of me (no pun intended). According to Bush's "guru" (read: the guy who's doing the thinking for the both of them), "poverty is not caused by a lack of money, but by a lack of moral values on behalf of the poor. As such, [he sees] welfare as a poor substitute for religion." Run that by me again? You mean that poverty isn't caused by people who insist on taking more profit out of the system than they could use in their life, thus requiring that some people must pour their life energy into the system without getting anything back? You mean that people who feel the despair of a life of fruitless toil are at fault for abandoning the rigorous morality of the middle class? You mean that the exploiters are right? What a relief. I can stop voting NDP now. This reminded me of something I read for class last year by Sam Smiles: The thoughtless and spendthrift take no heed of experience and make no provision for the future. Improvidence seems to be one of the most incorrigible of faults. "There are whole neighborhoods in the manufacturing districts," says Mr. Baker in a recent Report, "where not only are there no savings worth mentioning, but where, within a fortnight of being out of work, the workers themselves are starving for want of the merest necessities." This habitual improvidence is the real cause of the social degradation of the artizan. But the misery is entirely the result of human ignorance and self-indulgence. For thought the Creator has ordained poverty, the poor are not necessarily the miserable. Misery is the result of moral causes-most commonly of individual vice and improvidence. That was written in 1875. It didn't work then, either. Girls under the knife This article is about the regrettable trend of progressively younger girls lining up for plastic surgery. Surgeons are getting 15-year-olds in their office asking for breast implants, not to mention "several mothers who have dragged their 11- or 12-year-olds into [the plastic surgeon's] office and said, 'She's ugly. Do something about it.'" There's a great quote from a woman who runs a Body Image Project and should really know better: "In our society, how you look is becoming a prime determinant of whether or not you're going to have a good life, get a good job, have a loving relationship." Well. I suppose my marriage is a sham, then. What really struck me about the article was the reference made to the 15-year-old British girl who wants breast implants. Her mother-who's had quite a bit of work done on herself-was quoted as saying, "she has the same shape and build I had and I know just how she is feeling." I grew up watching my mother despise her body, and now that I have her shape it's very hard not to fall into that very basic learned behavior. I mean, I don't eat strawberries because my mother doesn't like them and thus she taught Nic & I to hate them. (The fact that I don't like this fruit makes me an often-reviled freak of modern society, but that's a story for another time.) She would be horrified to know that she taught me to loathe myself, but it's there nonetheless: why would I like the body she hated? It's an idea that clears up a lot of confusion for me. Unfortunately, it does nothing to clear away the self-loathing. Logic never does.