Life on Queen Street

Here's the thing about me and how I feel about universal healthcare (which in Canada doesn't just mean that you're covered if you're a legal resident, it means that most-to-all medically-necessary treatments are covered)...

A couple or seven years ago, when I made a lot less than I do today, when I was living on my own and there wasn't much left over that the end of a paycheque once rent, food and transport was paid for, I had a health scare. There was a chance it was breast cancer. It wasn't but there was a chance.

Determining that I didn't have cancer involved

· two outpatient exploratory surgeries
· two rounds of pathology on the tissues removed during the surgery
· three ductograms (two conducted by the head of the radiology department)
· six to eight mammograms (I lost count after the first four)
· 10 consults with my general surgeon and
· more than 15 visits trips to my family doctor for updates, blood tests, reassurance and so on.

The out-of-pocket cost to me - $12 in Extra-strength Tylenol.

I was employed at the time but if I'd had to pay up front for any of those, even temporarily, just until the insurance company reimbursed me, I'd have thought twice and then three times about whether or not it was worth it to see a doctor, have a mammogram, have another mammogram...

Turns out I was lucky. It wasn't cancer.

But it could have been.

I've heard Americans say they shouldn't have to pay for someone else's health insurance. Well that's what I do every day. That's how Canada's system works - we all put into the pool according to our ability and take out according to our need. It isn't a perfect system. It's probably not the best of the imperfect systems out there but it is a good system and a just system and it serves the people of Canada far better than any private healthcare system possibly could.

I was lucky. When I got sick I didn't hesistate to see my doctor. I never worried about who would pay for my next test or my next surgery - employed, unemployed; under 18, over 60; making 80 grand or making minimum wage didn't matter because I live in a country where my medical costs are covered by my government health insurance plan.

And in the end it wasn't cancer.

The bill just passed tonight is not universal healthcare.

But for the millions of American daughters and mothers and wives and husbands and fathers and sons and brothers and sisters who won't be as lucky as me, it is a step towards a day when they won't have to stop and think twice about seeing their doctor.

It is a step towards a day when Americans won't have to depend on their luck to determine their healthcare.

Political murder is terrorism whether it occurs in Ireland, New York City or Wichita.

Justifying one act of terrorism rationalizes them all and dishonours the memory of all victims of terror everywhere.

That is a man I would follow.

My cat's pretty seriously sick - and I'm reminded once again why I treasure Canada's system of universal healthcare because blood tests for the cat started at $300. Add the ancilliary costs of treatment, a day at the vet's and actually being examined, we'd hit the $500 mark before even getting a diagnosis. I imagine what that it would cost for a human being and I feel faint. Universal healthcare isn't "socialist" - it's the decent fucking thing to do because no one should ever be faced with choosing between paying their rent, paying their power bill or buy food and going to the doctor.

The diagnosis, btw, was he's got a major infection (gee, what was your first clue? The massive fever?) and probably has for a while. If he gets better with antibiotics, good, otherwise the vet is going to want to go looking for causes.

My wallet trembles at the thought.

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Barack Obama was elected the 44th President of the United States of America. Sometimes, it's good to be wrong. My thanks to John McCain and the GOP braintrust who told him to select that mendacious ignoramus for a running mate and suspend his campaign to "address" the financial crisis - Obama couldn't have done it without you.

However, constantly point out how electing a black man means that the US is over its issues about race actually proves how much the US (or the person in question) is not over its/their issues about race. When a black, red, brown, yellow, puce, chartreuse man/woman/eggplant can run for President, Prime Minister or the head of the local School Board without someone commenting on their skin tone/ethnicity/religious affliation/gender or sexual preference is when the US/Canada/the rest of the world will be over it.

I believe Mr. Obama's election is one giant step for us all towards that day. But the fight is far from over.

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The ACLU is Challenging Proposition Eight in California. You can donate to the ACLU here.

Thanks to queenofthorns for telling me where to send the cheque.

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This morning, Andy Barrie interviewed Lisa Ray on Metro Morning about her upcoming films. Halfway through the interview, he asked how, without knowing her background, a person could see the ways in which she was Polish and the ways she was Bengali. Ms. Ray responded, "Well, I have Eastern European legs but I'm Canadian."

It made me think a friend, bubbling over about Obama's victory, who wished that I had been there to see all the people from different backgrounds, united in celebration and a renewed belief that they were one people, so I could understand what it meant to be American. And while I'm pleased for my friend and for all Americans who have found a reason to be proud about their country again, I don't need to see what that looks like - I live it every day.

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Tuesday is Remembrance Day.

My employer gives me the day off, so when I'm in Canada, I always go to a Service of Remembrance, normally at the cenotaph in Kew Gardens Park but this year, I thought I might go to the service at the cenotaph at Old City Hall. There's also a ceremony at Queen's Park.

Last year, I was in Cambridge, England on Remembrance Day. It was the first time in nearly at decade that I hadn't attended a service of Remembrance, although I watched the Queen and the Royal Family lay wreaths at the Cenotaph on the Mall in London. Between living in Ireland, where there were no poppies - the Irish disdaining them as a sign of British unionism and WW I itself as a British war, no matter the tens of thousands of Ireland's sons buried in Flanders' muck (De Valera choosing to sit out World War II because, really, what was the threat of Hilter's unchecked aggression compared to an opportunity to thumb Irish independence in Britain's eye?) - and then coming to stay with my German friend over Remembrance Week, the day mostly passed by me. Not that my friend would have snatched the poppy from my coat (I was somewhat more concerned about the Irish but for a week or so, it was fun to pick Canadian tourists out in Temple Bar by the poppies on their coats) but I felt awkward and constrained on the subject around her. A reminder of how very much of our tradition of Remembrance has focused not on the bloody stupid waste of war but the righteousness of our cause - the fallen are not merely the dead but "the glorious dead", glory being a privilege of the victor.

I have a poppy pinned to both my jackets.

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"In other news: rain is still wet."

The headline that Prime Minister Harper looks forward to meeting the President-Elect greeted me as I stepped into the vet's office last night.

No. Kidding.

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I need to write the review of TSCC: "The Brothers of Nablus" - in the meantime, Charlie Jane Anders of io9 said most of what I wanted to say already, damn her - "io9 - This Is How You Do a Science Fiction Show About Religion."

9:18 pm EST - Dear talking head on BBC World News,

( political commentary below, you click at your risk )

9:24 pm EST - BBC projects an Obama win in Ohio

(Electoral College vote: Obama 195/McCain 76)

9:34 pm EST - OH, FUCK. SHUT UP, JOHN BOLTON!

( political commentary below, you click at your risk )

Meanwhile, McCain just lost five electoral college votes from his win column. WTF?

9:40 pm EST - Texas is called for McCain


(Electoral College vote: Obama 200/McCain 124)

More importantly, it's now a tie game in Raleigh where the Leafs are playing the Hurricanes with 9:32 in the third period.

9:58 pm EST - Holy Fuck, Virginia. What is up with you?

10:04 pm EST - The Hurricanes in overtime - FUCK YOU - but Eddie Izzard is on BBC World. He's looking so butch. GOD DAMMIT, EDDIE! GET YOUR TRANNY ON!!!

10:12 pm EST - The head of the Colorado Republican Party who's talking to BBC World News is both rude and IMO, deluded. I have to say, my US friends, your talking heads don't like someone contradicting them. And the moderator just told Bolton - also rude - to STFU.

Oh, BOLTON, Obama does not owe his nomination to the anti-war wing of the Democratic Party. TAKE OFF THE BLINDERS AND PUT DOWN THE KOOLAID, FUCKTARD.

10:15 pm EST - Where the fuck did McCain get the single EC vote?

(Electoral College vote: Obama 207/McCain 135)

10:24 pm EST - BBC World News just introduced David Frum. I literally screamed out loud.

*is filled with revulsion and loathing*

11:01 pm EST - BBC calls election for Barack Obama.

\o/

11:23 pm EST - McCain conceeds.

11:56 pm EST - I swear to God, I thought Gore Vidal was dead. Looking at him now, I figure I was only half wrong.

He may, however, be drunk off his tree.

I've been wanting to write up my thoughts on the new TV season for a while and it's always been the last thing on a list of six things I needed/wanted to do, which is why I never got around to it. Today, I put it at the top of the list and Shazam! here I am, writing up my thoughts on the new TV season.

Last year this time I was in Ireland and consuming all my TV via the miracle of Flash Video, including new shows like CHUCK, PUSHING DAISIES, LIFE, PRIVATE PRACTICE, BIONIC WOMAN and BURN NOTICE; and old standbys like GREY'S ANATOMY, UGLY BETTY, DEXTER and FRIDAY NIGHT LIGHTS.

I was greatly enjoying CHUCK, PD and LIFE. BIONIC WOMAN was cancelled for lo, it was bad and the new show-runner wrote Katee Sackhoff's bad/anti-hero cyborg Sarah Corvus out of the show, which removed any sane person's reason for watching. GA was deep in the suck – the characters unrecognizable from the show's second-season high-water mark, the plots stupid beyond words as the show drifted from its "life and times of surgeon trainees" into bad melodrama land – UB was starting to flounder – really, who wants to watch their eponymous heroine torn between her conscience and her soon-to-be-someone else'-baby-daddy boyfriend? – and FNL was showing everyone why you don't mess with what works. But 30R was a solid weekly half-hour of glee, DEXTER was giving a seminar on anti-heroes and how to write them and L&O: SVU, while not groundbreaking in anyway, was reliably entertaining, if grim.

Then November and the writer's strike (fomented by the AMPTP in a deliberate attempt at union-breaking, which may end up backfiring on the producers in the long-run as the abrupt implosion of the US economy this fall chokes off the supply of hedge-fund money that was paying for a large chunk of studio excesses at a point when Hollywood, still arguing with SAG, has very little product in the pipeline), which lasted four months and shut down production on all series TV on the US networks as the productions ran out of scripts.

TERMINATOR: THE SARAH CONNOR CHRONICLES started in January. By March, I had totally lost my mind for it. Then it came back and… I'm all suspicious and unsure that it can/will tell the story I want it to again, which is a problem that's entirely about my expectations and not the show itself, which is good (which is a post of it own).

The writer's strike ended (yay!), I moved back to Canada (boo!) and Fall TV started up in September, just in time for my post-MA brain slump (uh, Brain, please come back, I need you).

So, of the shows I was watching last fall, I've kicked CHUCK and PUSHING DAISIES to the curb. ( Pushing Daisies - dropped )

CHUCK, ( kicked to the curb )

PRIVATE PRACTIVE ( a sign I should be doing something else )

Of all the shows I watched last season, I loved LIFE most after TSCC. It had so much going for it – unique concept, interesting writing, awesome production values (let's hear it for the music supervisor), a brilliant performances from Damian Lewis (who should be cloned so we could all have one) and strong supporting work from Sarah Shahi, Adam Arkin and Robin Weigert. ( so why have I broken up with Life, then? )

As for BURN NOTICE, ( on hold (again) )

( Returning shows: GA, UB, FNL & DEXTER )

Meanwhile, there's not much new this season that I've really liked: FRINGE lost me after the pilot – dude, if characters don't care about the planeful of DEAD people, there's really no reason for me to invest in the diagesis either. Status: kill it with fire.

I did check out THE MENTALIST and while it's not bad, Simon Baker's character verges on awash in emo-manpain for which I have no patience. OTOH, the supporting cast is interesting. But I remember almost nothing from the episode I saw on Tuesday except for Simon Baker's pretty eyes and Robin Tunney's wan irritation with Baker's character. Status: seriously, dude, I should read a book instead.

Finally, I've been watching MAD MEN, mostly because there's not a lot on Sunday nights that I watch. I think New York Magazine's Vulture blog nails the secret of MAD MEN's appeal (and ultimately, why it's most popular with TV critics): At times, Mad Men has seemed like a walking catalogue of mid-century American fears: women in the workplace, media manipulation, alcoholism, rape, abortion, race, and homosexuality, for starters. As such, it's depicted a culture that suffers from a kind of panophobia — a fear of all things — probably because everyone has become so unmoored from any traditional sense of security.

Which also describes the current undercurrent of North American culture, if you hadn't gotten that already. Like FNL (and, in a way, TSCC), shows that most accurately pinpoint America's insecurities tend to be most widely rejected by American audiences.

SpoilerTV has a video with MAD MEN's cast.

( Stuff I read online today - more on TV, comics, movies and Remembrance Day in Ireland )

The Headache of Reluctance has turned into the real thing. If I had hot water in my shower, I'd take a long one and see if that would loosen up my neck. As you may have already deduced, however, there is no hot water in the flat.

Again.

This morning involved a True. Irish. Experience. of heating the kettle and dumping it into the basin so I could wash. Delightful.

So, slow day of lying in bed sleeping and wishing my headache would actually leave.

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Interesting phenomenon I've noticed the last few days talking US politics in Ireland (aside from my buddy R's failure to understand why it annoyed the three of us Canadians when my tutor repeatedly referred to "American" speech patterns - possibly 'cause there weren't any in the room) - Senator Obama's appeal doesn't seem to have crossed the Atlantic, at least not to the group of us sitting round the bar in the M on Friday night. We all preferred Senator Clinton, saving the lone American. Then again, none of us are particularly exposed to US media at the moment, which seems to have thrown its weight behind a "good" (Obama) vs. "evil" (Clinton) narrative in the Democratic primary.

Today, I came across this extremely comprehensive comparison of the three Democratic candidates, which confirmed my instinctive sense of Barack Obama as a candidate of much flash and rather less substance in the sense that he's a) less experienced b) certainly no more progressive than Clinton (and possibly substantively less so on issues such as healthcare reform) and c) not particularly electable - I think if he becomes the Democratic candidate, he will be shredded by the Republican machine and all the campaign appearances by Oprah and stump speeches about hope in the world won't save him.

The Republicans are shit scared of a Hilary Clinton campaign because there isn't anyone who doesn't know her business. That makes her a dangerous candidate because she has everything to win and nothing to lose in a character battle. Obama, on the other hand, has everything to lose - this link, taken from the one above, is a good example of the kind of game-playing that will cause Obama's campaign to implode under the weight of a full media press by the Republican Party. In my opinion, anyone who believes that Obama's ability to win the nomination demonstrates his ability to win the presidency is fooling themselves. Then again, I also believe that Obama's appeal flows from a desire among Democrats to find a mythic figure who will sweep away the evils of the past and by extension excuse the party and its supporters of their complicity in the actions of the Bush Adminstration - he's quite literally the candidate of their dreams. However, dreamland is not where the next election will be fought.

And that, gentle readers, is my 0.02 on US politics for the next while.

According to this column on Comic Book Resources, two Democrats, George Miller (D-California) and Reuben Hinojosa (D-Texas), inserted a clause in the College Opportunity and Affordability Act of 2007 (H.R. 4137) that would strip American colleges and universities of their federal funding if a single student downloads pirated music or video regardless of what computer network they use (their own, the college's, the local Starbuck's). I understand it will also require students to enroll in a legal music-sharing service, regardless of whether or not they want to download music and make the entertainment industry responsible for deciding what constitutes a violation, so they can bypass the courts and go straight to the Department of Education.

The relevant section of the bill - "SEC. 494. CAMPUS-BASED DIGITAL THEFT PREVENTION" - states:

SEC. 494. CAMPUS-BASED DIGITAL THEFT PREVENTION.

Part G of title IV (20 U.S.C. 1088 et seq.) is further amended by adding at the end the following new section:

`(a) In General- Each eligible institution participating in any program under this title shall to the extent practicable--

`(1) make publicly available to their students and employees, the policies and procedures related to the illegal downloading and distribution of copyrighted materials required to be disclosed under section 485(a)(1)(P); and

`(2) develop a plan for offering alternatives to illegal downloading or peer-to-peer distribution of intellectual property as well as a plan to explore technology-based deterrents to prevent such illegal activity.

`(b) Grants-

`(1) PROGRAM AUTHORITY- The Secretary may make grants to institutions of higher education, or consortia of such institutions, and enter into contracts with such institutions, consortia, and other organizations, to develop, implement, operate, improve, and disseminate programs of prevention, education, and cost-effective technological solutions, to reduce and eliminate the illegal downloading and distribution of intellectual property. Such grants or contracts may also be used for the support of a higher education centers that will provide training, technical assistance, evaluation, dissemination, and associated services and assistance to the higher education community as determined by the Secretary and institutions of higher education.

`(2) AWARDS- Grants and contracts shall be awarded under paragraph (1) on a competitive basis.

`(3) APPLICATIONS- An institution of higher education or a consortium of such institutions that desires to receive a grant or contract under paragraph (1) shall submit an application to the Secretary at such time, in such manner, and containing or accompanied by such information as the Secretary may reasonably require by regulation.

`(4) AUTHORIZATION OF APPROPRIATIONS- There are authorized to be appropriated to carry out this subsection such sums as may be necessary for fiscal year 2009 and for each of the 4 succeeding fiscal years.'

Unfortunately, I can't figure out United States Code to tell whether or not the amendment would do what Steven Grant says it would do.

Still, anyone interested in keeping the RIAA/MPAA from riding roughshod over the privacy and education rights of millions of American students might want to call their representative and ask what the fuck is going on?

Look, I was against the idea from the start but, dude, seriously?

Just when I think Dubya's grasp on reality could not be more negligable, he creates whole new levels of delusional for himself to play in.

If anyone still thinks we should refer to the anti-abortion movement as "pro-life," this event next week should change their mind. The forced-pregnancy movement is holding a four-day rally to honor Paul Hill, who murdered abortion provider Dr. John Britton and his clinic escort in Pensacola, Florida in 1994.

Tell me that this is a joke. This goes beyond "get off my side" all the way to "get off my planet".