… why I gave it up in the first place. I made a conscious decision quite a few years back to shun network TV. The interminable and juvenile ads bugged me and there really wasn’t anything on that grabbed my interest anyways. I’m not BIG TV watcher so am picky about what
Continue readingTag: media
Accidental Deliberations: The litmus test
It’s now the official rule of thumb for Canadian journalists: if the Harper Cons aren’t attacking you for having the nerve to point out their falsehoods, then you’re not doing your job.
Continue readingAccidental Deliberations: Monday Morning Links
Assorted content to start your week. – Dennis Gruending writes about the importance of Edgar Schmidt’s whistleblowing against unconstitutional legislation: Schmidt says that he has over a period of years raised concerns about what he considers the department’s flawed practices. He has done that through various official channels, up to
Continue readingredjenny: On Pregnancy and Body Image
Hooray for hips and belly I have never considered myself a particularly vain person. However, constant media messaging (your body is not good enough, therefore you are not good enough) has a way of working itself into everyone’s psyche to some degree. My whole adult life I’ve pretty much maintained
Continue readingredjenny: On Pregnancy and Body Image
Hooray for hips and belly
I have never considered myself a particularly vain person. However, constant media messaging (your body is not good enough, therefore you are not good enough) has a way of working itself into everyone’s psyche to some degree. My whole adult life I’ve pretty much maintained the same weight, no matter what I did. I have not really been able to gain or lose much regardless of what I did. Although my weight is exactly normal for my height, its distribution had caused me some anxiety. I was scrawny on top, with visible ribs and a flat stomach, and big on the bottom. I went through phases of calorie counting and exercising but only managed to get bonier on top, while my bottom half happily went about its business as usual. People asked me if I was sick. So much for weight loss attempts.
Still, I couldn’t shake the other desire I had always had: to be stronger. I hated the fact that I was small and weak, that no matter how hard I worked out in the gym, I would never be stronger than the average couch surfing dude. I would never be able to easily lift, carry, push and pull things. I would never be athletic. (I rode my bike all around Toronto for years, living mid-town, going to school downtown and working uptown – 1-2 hours a day of biking, and never got faster. Other bikers passed me, breathing easily while I struggled. So frustrating! A doctor I went to about chronic fatigue told me I had so little muscle that my mitochondria couldn’t effectively use oxygen. Um thanks, but what do I do about it. True story.)
The best thing about getting older was losing whatever interest I had in “perfecting” my visible body, and learning to accept its limitations (more or less – I still hope I might magically grow 25 pounds of muscle). I also grew to appreciate its positive aspects: I was generally healthy, I was fully mobile, I could touch my tongue to my nose, thrift shopping is a breeze for me because I’m so small.
Being pregnant is a bit of a trip because for the first time, I have to gain weight. I have only gained 6 pounds so far (16 weeks, so I’m right on target) but I’m the heaviest I’ve ever been, and I’m only getting bigger. (No more flat belly!) Except for the fact that my clothes don’t fit, it’s oddly enjoyable. I feel a little bit rebellious, flaunting society’s dictates (all women must have the body of a 12 year old boy). I can be proud of getting fatter. I am enjoying food like nobody’s business – gawd everything tastes so good (except the things that taste so bad–get them away from me). I have ginormous boobs (well, for me), and my wide hips finally are coming into their own. These amazing hips are going to make labour and delivery easier (I hope) than 12-year-old-boy hips would. I am proud of what my body will accomplish (hello, creating new life). I am enjoying the experience of my changing body.
Ask me how I feel when I get to the waddling stage.
Continue readingredjenny: On Pregnancy and Body Image
Hooray for hips and belly I have never considered myself a particularly vain person. However, constant media messaging (your body is not good enough, therefore you are not good enough) has a way of working itself into everyone’s psyche to some degree. My whole adult life I’ve pretty much maintained
Continue readingSaskboy's Abandoned Stuff: ConCalls: Another Poutine Style Recording in #RoboCon
Elections Canada may be allowing the Conservative Party to set the glacial pace of the criminal investigation across Canada into illegal election robocalls that misdirected and harassed electors. May be? Who are we kidding. It’s well past 600 days since the crime that calls into question the right of the
Continue readingAccidental Deliberations: Monday Morning Links
Miscellaneous material for your Monday reading. – Daniel Wilson takes a look at how far too many in the media went along with the Harper Cons’ hatchet job against First Nations: (C)ompare the generalized outrage last week to the shrug elicited by the non-indigenous mayors around the country who have
Continue readingDead Wild Roses: Leftist Propaganda – The Distributive Property
Education has come to a new low. We are now teaching SOCIALISM !!!1!1!! to children via (the devil’s ken) algebra… of all things. From the Raw Story: “But even worse is the way some textbooks are pushing the liberal agenda,” the Fox News host explained, pointing to an algebra
Continue readingA Puff of Absurdity: The Lasting Influence of Rhoda Morgenstern
I just saw that the house featured in the Mary Tyler Moore show is up for sale. And I’ve been thinking about how much I was influenced by the character of Rhoda. I used to wait for the few minutes she’d be on screen each episode. I’m sure I’m not
Continue readingPolitics, Re-Spun: Braids, Lights, Grimes: Canada’s Electronic Forces
There is some great art/electronic music coming out of Canada lately. Lights seems to be quite well known. Grimes, now out of Tokyo, is rising in recognition as a talented musician, who has a nice vibe of offering us to download her music by donation. They are making Canadians proud
Continue readingwmtc: it’s time we all starved the trolls: stop reading comments on mainstream news stories
Robert Fisk has a good piece in The Independent about the incivility (to put it mildly!) that is endemic in the comment sections of online news stories: “Anonymous trolls are as pathetic as the anonymous “sources” that contaminate the gutless journalism of the New York Times, BBC, and CNN”. Fisk
Continue readingwmtc: dr. dawg on the extraordinary acts of ordinary people, and the pundits who cannot abide them
Dr. Dawg has written a terrific piece about the mainstream media’s disturbing, if predictable, response to the courageous actions of Chief Theresa Spence. Extraordinary things, we are being instructed, may only be done by extraordinary people. Spence is frumpy, not particularly witty or intellectual, somewhat inconsistent as things change around
Continue readingSaskboy's Abandoned Stuff: A News Hope
I missed this Rap News from last May. You won’t want to miss it. If it’s confusing though, you’ve got fifty minutes of documentary catch-up, plus some news footnotes to follow up on. Plus, it helps if you’ve seen Star Wars. If this is all greek/geek to you, it’s a
Continue readingDead Wild Roses: Wiretapping in the USA – Liberal Viewer
I think Fox News sometimes tries really hard to be of use to the American public, but that urge, once realized, is quickly woven into partisan propaganda. Liberal Viewer brings to light what the ALCU is doing against the unlawful surveillance of its citizenry. As a Canadian, I realize we
Continue readingAccidental Deliberations: Sunday Morning Links
Assorted content for your Sunday reading. – Frank Graves’ review of the current state of Canadian politics focuses in on the growing gap between the Cons’ waning interest in listening to the public, and their growing expenditures on advertising and marketing: In Canada in 2006, the federal government spent roughly
Continue readingThe Canadian Progressive: Ottawa businesses support Chief Theresa Spence’s hunger strike
by Teresa Smith | Ottawa Citizen: OTTAWA — Two Ottawa businesses are donating their time and services to help Attawapiskat Chief Theresa Spence as she continues to her hunger strike for aboriginal treaty rights. Lara Purvis, 33, the floor manager at Venus Envy on Lisgar St. near Bank St., says
Continue readingAccidental Deliberations: Saturday Morning Links
Assorted content for your weekend reading. – Crawford Kilian comments on Chrystia Freeland’s Plutocrats as a useful expression of trends many of us have seen in action for some time: (T)he plutonomy is not just booming, but skewing the still-depressed economy the rest of us live in. Many of the
Continue readingSaskboy's Abandoned Stuff: On a Trek for Stars
I can’t simply make a fun Star Trek related blog post, I have to tie it into the Canadian political discourse also. So, here we go. Ottawa Citizen reporter, Glen McGregor came up with a manifesto to guide modern journalism. He’s seen journalism fall prey to some ridiculous habits, like
Continue readingCanada II: Ezra Levant and Sun News Network
Today both Ezra Levant and the Sun News Network have been asking scary questions about uses of money by the Attawapiskat community. They are suggesting malfeasance in an effort to discredit Chief Spence for political purposes. Why was Chief Spence’s partner paid so much per day? Why did they buy
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