Hope and Onions: Oh! The places you’ll go! …or not. Whatever.

1. babysitter, Mississauga, aka “Land of Factory Carpet Outlet” (sure, you can entrust the most precious things in your life to an anonymous stranger for $1/hr. And they will totally not eat your food after the kids go to sleep.)
2. McDonald’s “crew” and frygirl. The job lasted only three months, but the greaseburns are forever.
3. Shitty neighbourhood video store. You haven’t lived till you’ve been held up for 70s Betamax porn.
4. Receptionist and DIY librarian for LEAF’s national office (no joke–best job I ever had in my life)
5. Hostess, book-keeper, and pastry-chef wrangler at a seafood restaurant in Queen’s Quay. Emphasis on Queen’s; this was Kitty’s initiation into fag-hagdom. Kitty also learned to cuss and smoke here, much to the delight of Mama & Papa Kitty.
6. BSc student & p/t bank-teller (sorry: ‘Customer Service Officer, level 1′ *snerk*)
7. Calculus (and sometimes Chemistry) tutor.
8. Computer help-desk ‘consultant,’ U of Moo. “How can I help you if you won’t let go of my throat?”
9. MSc student and p/t computer/network support (Fear and Loathing in the Forest City)
10. Research assistant (Forest City)
11. PhD student (Forest City)
12. Unemployed (Forest City)
13. P/t grant proof-reader (“if I see ‘transdisciplinary’ or ‘leading edge’ one more time, I’m going to stab myself in the eye with a dull pencil”)
14. Birth of GDKitty (awww! They grow up so fast!)
15. Asst. on a software project for a kinky dentist (“don’t ask why the receptionist is covered in glitter; Kitty’s gotta eat.”)
16. Post-doc #1 of ? (fun times in Hammertown)
17. Unemployed post-doc (desperate in that shithole we call Hammertown)
18. Post-doc #2 of ? (still living in Hammertown but working in the Windy Apple)
19. Death of GDKitty? (errmmm…maybe not; let’s see if I can nurse this place back to health and still keep my GD job!)

Lilith Attack: Shave the Date! Free from Bush!

We’re pleased here in Canada that Bush is making his exit in January. Join our American sisters in this celebration! Mominatrix has initiated “Shave the Date: No Bush Left Behind“.

Whileaway North: The Senate

I’m not going to argue that Stephen Harper didn’t have the legal right to appoint his eighteen senators. He pretty clearly does have that right.

But what he doesn’t have is a moral right to make the appointments. He’s still prime minister only because he suddenly prorogued parliament in order to avoid a no-confidence vote (only a few weeks after an election result that he claimed would bring about a kinder, gentler, more cooperative government — we all saw how well that worked out, didn’t we?). He doesn’t have the confidence of the house, and, since he holds power only as long as he has the house’s confidence, his continued use of that power is morally suspect at best (no, Canadian voters, you did not vote for Stephen Harper directly. You only get to vote for an MP. That’s parliamentary democracy for you.).

This is also the guy who has long argued that senate positions should be elected and “accountable”. It’s nice to see that he stands by his principles when push comes to shove — as soon as it starts to look like he might lose power, he packs the Senate.

Now, again, he’s well within his legal rights to pack the Senate. And he’s not the first prime minister to do so when anticipating a loss of power (though that would usually mean an electoral defeat). But it’s just morally skeevy for him to do so. And you’ll notice he’s doing it a few days before Christmas, hoping no one will notice. Or at least that we’ll forget in January, when we’re too busy paying our credit card bills to remember what our Right Honourable Prime Minister was up to over the holidays.

And while I’m at it, can I just point out that out of eighteen people, he was only able to come up with five women? What percentage of the population are we again?

One Woman Army: My body, my womb

My body aches for children. It aches to be pregnant, to have a life held inside my womb. It aches to take care of children of my own. To be a mother. Its an odd place to be for a feminist activist. For a one woman army. My cohort of feminist soldiers c…

One Woman Army: Home again home again

I have been away for so long. Writing has long been such a part of me, yet over the past year or so it has gradually faded to something likened to a ghost limb. Part of me, but missing, aching, gone, and I am so disabled by it that I know not how to re…

Lilith Attack: Calgary Assault

Michelle Butterfield reports a tragic and bizarre story in the Calgary Herald this morning (see also the government press release). Shortly before midnight last Friday, a woman was attacked by Daryl Pichler and beaten unconscious. This is a sad and bizarre story. Two men took the woman and Pichler to their home and it wasn’t until two hours later that EMS was called. This woman is in critical condition. From the police report it is foggy what happened on Friday night but why would a woman woman suffering life-threatening injuries be talken to her home with the man that inflicted them? It seems they share a home together but if home is where the heart is this woman’s is broken and Pichler should find prison comfortable.

Update: Looking back into prior press releases, it is claimed that the men who drove the couple to their resience were “unaware of the incident“; but that just doesn’t make sense:

The woman suffered extensive head injuries during the altercation, which rendered her unconscious; unable to speak or walk away from the area. At least two vehicles pulled over to assist the woman following the assault. Unaware of the incident, the two men inside one of the vehicles, possibly a beige-coloured Toyota Corolla or NissanAltima, drove the couple to their nearby home in Deer Run.

If she was unconscious, unable to speak or walk, how were these good samitans, then, unaware of the incident? I don’t get it.

Whileaway North: A moment of silence

On December 6, 1989, 14 women were killed at the École Polytechnique in Montréal. They were killed for being women; the gunman singled out women, and claimed he “hated feminists”.

It’s been almost twenty years. Are women still being killed for being women?

Take a moment to remember these 14 women. Then take a moment to do something to stop this from happening again, to any woman.

Geneviè Bergeron
Hélène Colgan
Nathalie Croteau
Barbara Daigneault
Anne-Marie Edward
Maud Haviernick
Maryse Laganière
Maryse Leclair
Anne-Marie Lemay
Sonia Pelletier
Michèle Richard
Annie St-Arneault
Annie Turcotte
Barbara Klucznik-Widajewicz