Poor Me

Feel sorry for us Albertans.

While we’re dealing with piles of snow

Complaining about how it just won’t go,

You sit there with sandals on your feet

Begging for change on the side of the road.

And while we battle the cold and the sleet,

Freezing off our baby toes,

You beat the heat

Barbequing scraps of meat

In a cardboard house.

“Poor me!” We cry

Towards the sky

As fluffy stuff flies by

Not thinking of you,

Who can’t choose

Between red or blue shoes,

And can’t get in to see an MD

For an useless knee

Infected with gangrene.

Because brushing off our cars is so hard.

To Bob Barker

I heard on the radio this morning that Bob Barker, host of The Price is Right and animal rights activist, has been saying the the Calgary Stampede promotes cruelty to animals; to which I can only reply:

GET A LIFE!

Barker put Alberta on the map, when he protested the Edmonton Zoo for keeping Lucy, an old elephant, rather than sending her to a more natural habitat.
1. Lucy is freaking old. She will probably not make the trip AND
2. Even if she does, she will have lost everything and everyone that she knows in addition to not knowing how to live in such a different environment.
3. The cost of transporting a really old elephant that may die enroute anyways is ridiculous. (Also, from what I hear, the Edmonton Zoo will not be acquiring any more animals non-native to the praries. Hopefully.)

Now, Barker is sticking his nose in to Alberta once again, claiming that a 100-year-old festival is cruel towards animals. Again, let's be honest; perhaps the Stampede is not the best form of loving our furry friends, but think about this:

Barker could be protesting the way humans farm animals; in order to produce more, fattier meats, humans have essentially eliminated any grazing or open areas in the farms that produce chickens for large processors. They're locked in cages or small pens, in completely un-hygienic conditions which enable the spread of disease rapidly.
Barker could be promoting healthier farming, supporting small, independent farmers who still allow their cattle to graze, their chickens to run free, etc. But he's not.

Barker is picking on one of the smallest issues this world has. By choosing this course of action, Barker is drawing attention away from REAL suffering of animals at the hands of humans. People knock hunting, saying it's harsh and cold-blooded. What is more cold blooded than penning animals up so you  can have a fatty steak at the end of your hard day behind a desk?

Barker wants to be an animal rights activist does he? I think he should go back to when animals were first domesticated; that was when cruelty REALLY began.

Ms. May hits it out of the park... hopefully

Bill C-38

Even the title sounds horribly boring; perfect for a political document, no? You will probably never see a bill titled "The Canadian Government's Shit-hole Maze Bill to give the Opposition the Run-Around In Order to Get What Prime Minister Harper Wants".

I'm not terribly interested in reading up on specific bills, even if they do GREATLY impact my life and my world, but I like to listen to what comes around through the grapevine, and what I heard about this particular bill was atrocious.
It's a 420 page document (Conservative: Win; very, very, very few people will take the time to read a 420 page document if it's not for fun) and contains a ridiculous variety of bills and amendments (Conservative: Win; people who happen to read the entire Omnibus bill - as it's known as - will pick out the parts they don't like and leave the parts they do, causing confusion within parties, communities, etc). The Conservative government did very well, the New Democrats attempted to pick out specific parts of the Omnibus bill to contest, though many of their objections would probably not pass; then Elizabeth May gave the speech of her life.

Elizabeth May is the leader of the Canadian Green Party and the only member of her party to be elected to Parliament. She recently wrote a speech condemning the Omnibus bill due to it's scrambled nature, BUT May's speech found a crack in the seemingly stone-cold bill: a true omnibus bill must have a theme for all the proposed bills; Bill C-38, May says, has absolutely no theme and that the proposals it contains are all over the map.

Now, Parliament is going through a "slow-vote"; this means that Members of Parliament will vote on more than 100 bills contained in the Omnibus bill. At the end of the day, who knows what will happen. Hopefully the Speaker will keep in mind Elizabeth May's encouraging and empowering letter and save Canada from the horrible, environment crushing C-38.

P.S.
Note how it takes a woman, representing her party with only one seat, to find the fundamental issue with this mish-mash of a bill. Whoo hoo!