to the rock.

i am returning to the place of my birth. my formative years, a time warp, with images of faded british boy-school movies blended in with a rural fishing-based culture and idllyic family happiness, my father's typewriter present in every memory, my mother calling across the community for me to come in to supper, and occassionally my father's british accent booming across the hills while we played with eels and crabs and flatfish.

every time i return, i question the role of place in the creation of identity. no matter where i go, who i become, i will always be influenced by the place. each region has its own effect on its people. newfoundland is cold and hard and isolated, and it creates community, trust, and support. for some reason, it also created happiness, zest for life, a desire to live well, to smile through the troubles that life throws our way. community. a shared understanding that we are in this together.

i was talking to a friend. her husband sells real estate. he is in the upper echelon, million dollar + listings. when he brings a client in to look at a place, he has to guard that client, because the other real estate agent who will be there will try to steal the client away, in order to reap both commissions (the lister, and the seller). at high level sales, the other agent is always there. both agents smile at each other. then they go about manipulating everyone involved, in order to make money.

to me, a newfoundlander, this would never work. i could never play at this game. i don't understand it. it's sickening. i have a community based ethos, gleaned from a place where we all had to work together.

no, my father was not a fisherman, he was a writer, another community based form of survival. but i was raised by fisherman, i played with their children, i ate at their tables. my mother's side of the family, all from newfoundland, came from fishermen. the mentality is, you help those who need it. you give food if someone has none, you go out in a rough sea to feed your family and you go out in a rough sea and risk your life if someone else's is in trouble.

i am going to teacher's college because i realize that, if i can't support a family with my writing, i never want to put myself in a situation where i would have to play this game. this "fuck everyone" game. it would be a slap in the face to the place i'm from. the place i call home. the people i love there. it goes against every grain in my being.

to those who play this game, they would consider me stupid, or weak. because i moved from place to place, city to city, country to country, i encountered many examples of "how humans play when there is a new person without a social network to rely on", ie - preying on the weak.

i was put into so many situations as the new kid where a group of kids would target me because i was new. they knew i had no 'cool friends' yet, or 'tough' friends, so i would be easy pickings.

these people would back off entirely, in some cases plead to be my friend, once i had established myself with friends at the new school. these people, these "feed off the weak", came from all classes, rich and poor.

i developed empathy at a young age. i saw the injustice, because i felt it. i was pushed, mobbed, stolen from, punched, called names... and every time, within a couple of months, i'd have my group of friends and the bullies would have backed off. they couldn't touch me because i had social power and could expect some retaliation.

i can't quite put my finger on it yet, but i feel there is a correlation between these bully type kids i dealt with, and the real estate agent who would steal your client and your earnings for your work. and i hate them for it.

i saw a lot of bad in people when i was a kid. i saw a lot of shallow when i moved to ontario and learned about labels. i saw a whole lot of bad and shallow when my brother's star ascended and the people who flocked about because of it.

and tomorrow morning (at 7am, natch!), i fly out of this wonderful, evil, beautiful, glorious, turbulent, violent, peaceful, chorus of a city and return to the world that showed me how to deal with awful people, how to deal with the inconsistencies of a life well lived, well experienced. One way is to talk about it, or write about it, or sing about it. i will do all those. i will also raise a glass to it.

i return home for my nan's 80th birthday party. she is a whirlwind of life. dancing until 2 in the morning, ski dooing, drinking occassionally, stealing a cigarette when no one is looking. she's lived long enough to do whatever the hell she wants. and she inspires every one of her children to never ever say they're too old, they're too tired.

it is also her oldest son's funeral. he wanted his funeral to coincide with a huge party/music festival that takes place on fogo island (EXTREMELY remote) every year, so, although he died two months ago, we're going back to celebrate him, his mother, and newfoundland, in one big lurching heaving hugging crying battallion of life.

to the rock

at 3 weeks

three weeks into my new unemployment.
i was paid for my first two weeks. my boss wants to keep me on retainer in case i decide to return. here's hoping that she still feels i'm worth it come week's end.

all i have been doing since leaving work has been blasting through my novel, as i can't imagine having a lot of time for it when i start school and i'd like to be shopping it while i'm in school. i am in love with it.

the novel, though for children, is such an intricate allegory that it's slowing me down. i'm chopping the finer points of metaphor out and focusing on the heroine and her fall from grace. yes, kids, it's a children's novel. they'll love it. trust me. i know all about kids, having spent the greater part of my 20's being one.


most of my friends are 30+. none have children. this suddenly strikes me as odd. when my father was my age, 32, he left his 8 children and wife and fled to newfoundland from england. he was a schoolteacher, and moved to newfoundland and became a professor of english.

i, on the other hand, have no children, and, at 32, have enrolled in school to become a schoolteacher. am i my father in reverse?? this is very confusing. is this why none of my 3 other siblings have children, of which i am the second youngest? we'll have them when we're 62 and then leave them all...

brilliant. i'll teach someone elses.

I did have a wonderful baccanalian weekend, biking, drinking, herbing, eating like a god, and karaokeing my way into nirvana. (the photo above is of my rendition of "we're not gonna take it", which i'll have you know brought down the house, a fact i am not shy to admit)

I generally think of my disposition as sunny, or positive, or cheerful. i get this from my parents. a gift. my father had a 'glass half full' mentality, except when it came to his wine glass, in which case it was always half empty.

may we all be so fortunate.

Poussin's "baccanalia", 1631.



to those of you who read this who believe that mankind needs to work, i give you the day 'sunday'.

even the christian big guy had to take a break.

the jewish patriarch (i'm guessing he's the same as the christian one: a white-bearded fellow, only meaner... maybe they were twins and had abusive and sadistic parents), he took saturday's off.

so we're given the weekend to relax. the other five days must be spent in slavery.

in france, they get 2 months holiday, and work 35 hours a week. They have universal healthcare in better shape than ours, have produced some of the best philosophers in the world, and incubated countless artists...

they have more red wine than they know what to do with, are freer sexually, have a beautiful metropolis, are incredibly individualistic, educated and proud, and yet... we don't live there.

i can't figure this out. shouldn't we all just get up and go?

the south of france looks like one of the most beautiful places on earth. it is a country that believes in its students. in ideas. in grand visions of nationhood.

although it may not believe in minimum wage (see recent riots), it does believe in loathing the english (which seems like fun, but only if you really really really mean it).

when i was working at desjardins, the world of money and stocks and profit and capitalism was paramount. a serious affair, discussed by serious people. educated, nice, friendly, but staunchly principled when it came to money: don't fuck with my money, or my belief in money. it makes my world go around, and it makes yours go around too, you're just too stupid to know it.

but i'm not motivated to this degree. therefore, when it comes time to fight for money, i don't fight as hard as they do for it, and will wind up with less of it. that's fair, as they're willing to fight harder to have more of it.

where it seems unfair is that, that wealth bequeaths more than prettier vacations and cars. it grants them culture shaping status.

and the people holding the power and the wealth, they think that other people (those like me) want what they have. yes, it's true, i would love to earn half a million a year writing screenplays that never get made from the comfort of my home. but as that's not going to happen, and the trade off to me (office hours, office life, forced to choose between your morality and money daily) is too steep, i'll keep writing. i don't want to live their life to get that financial reward.

but to those in power, they think others are insanely jealous. so they buy their cars and their labels and their materials to display their wealth to show that they have what they think others want. this is the equivalent of a child holding out an ice cream to a kid and saying "nah nah nah nah nah". i'd like it if we as a culture admitted that this was the case. that this was, technically, what those label-conscious folk were doing. Let our culture be more frank about what the motivations were for spending half your earnings on a purse and sunglasses, or a car. because then we could really see how stupid it was, and we'd be less apt to partake.

for those to whom money is no option, yes, you would buy the ferrari. of course you would. there is no cost-benefit analysis required, as there is no real cost. i have no problem with excessive wealth. if you have money, by all means play with it.

but where this all moves into the annoying is that living 'off the mall' (ie, off the grid) is next to impossible in toronto, because you become self conscious at how much egregious displays of wealth there are. it's everywhere.

there doesn't feel like there is a world (in toronto at least) where the 'nah nah nah nah nah's' haven't moved in. Queen Street West used to be down and dirty but fun and sexy, until the Prat's moved in there too, driving up rents, home prices, and the amount of starbucks per block. it's too bad. the street was once littered with pretty girls in handmade frocks, artists slumming on the curb drinking coffee, and a general bohemian chic that has been usurped by a wealthier, showier group who wanted to aspire towards the 'real', but ended up turning the 'real' into a catwalk and a show and a scene. not that it wasn't a scene before, it's just that it has become a scene i don't like.

My gal and I call these invaders prat's (which has a real definition as: the fleshy part of the human body that you sit on, or: An ass (slang since 1968), equivalent to arsehole, as in the phrase 'don't be such a prat').

Our version of prat, however, means People Really About Themselves. The new yuppies: those who can't afford to wear Prada sunglasses, but do anyway, so they can feel superior to their middle class co-workers.... no, i don't understand either.

we then formed a club, PRAP: People Really Against Prats, but the first P is silent :), so if you ever get a verbal invite to "RAP", you'll know you're being invited into the club.

so, of course, this leads to: why do my coworkers hate the French? Not only do they hate their culture, they hate the people, the history, the language, the fact that service in a restaurant takes a long time (ummm... you're on vacation, relax :), that they gave up and ran 60 years ago, and that they are really liberal there, and liberal is the new word for idiot. yes, reader, there is a lot i do not understand about the modern world.

the french are capitalists too, they are a G8 member, they have an army, an air force, a democratic government... but because the french, as a nation, have mandated that they need only work 35 hours a week, 10 months a year, this flies in the face of their PRATishness, get more and more and more and more mentality.

it seems they react to any position that might render theirs invalid (ie, the French seem to have a good thing going, which flies in the face of their position, which is: money = happiness, work = money, therefore work = happiness). i'm sure we all react to position that might wound, puncture or bruise the fragile pyscho-bubbles we invent for ourselves to inhabit. it's just that... well, i think i must have been a frenchman in another life... or at least, a french poodle. a pampered one.

anyway, that my coworkers (ex-coworkers) greatest insult about the french was how long it takes to get service in a restaurant says more about the one insulting then the one insulted.

ours is a flawed system dominated by and reflecting the values of those who believe that everyone wants more money, because they have the money, they have the power, and they set the mandate. having wealth thrown in your face makes you aware of the power of money, and your position as a person without it: poo.

you are less important, less visible, less interesting. the arbiter of all things current and a great reflector of a society's taste, television, doesn't have shows about "people who do little things of no great import" (unless they're beautiful or rich, in which case there's an adundance of them) or "people who can't afford breast surgery who are moms at home" (unless they're brought onto a show and ridiculed for being ugly and poor) and "working middle class people buying toyotas" (unless they're poor schlups like you who get to win toyotas, in which case you're talking to bob barker and are a desperate representation of the american dream).

there will always be rich and poor. i understand.

there will always be classism. i get that too.

there will always be those who want to flaunt their success: i get it. that's fine.

there will always be labels and pretty things and dressing up and going out on the town and living a little and opening the purse strings and on and on and on, and i get all those things.

i'm not talking about owning a beautiful car because you love it (i am partial to the 1971 or 1970 porsche 911 myself - that 1970 is gold), or a nice pair of sunglasses because you thought they were awesome and wanted to splurge. i'm all fine with enjoying your life and rewarding yourself for working.

i'm talking about living and breathing eating sleeping and shitting money, and ways to show people that you have it so that you can say 'nah nah nah nah nah'. it's the nah nah nah nah nah that gets me. you love chanel sunglasses? great. they look lovely on you. but why are all the sunglass makers putting a humongous label on the side (have you seen the new sunglasses??) .

i would just like to see a little more fight against this type of materialism in popular culture, a little more rebellion. a little more 'sticking it to the man' instead of 'working for the man' (ie the apprentice), a little more 'money isn't everything' instead of 'i'll eat poo for money if it's on tv - yes, i will prove how depraved we are'.

until then... i'll just keep writing

NOTHING new to report, really, outside of a speeding ticket that i'm going to be fighting. To keep you sated, here's an interesting little essay written by someone i don't know. They seem a bit 'fair and balanced', if you get what i mean, but the initial idea seems intriguing.



Vladimir Putin and the rise of the petro-ruble By Mike Whitney 05/22/06

"Information Clearing House" -- -- “If one day the world’s largest oil producers demanded euros for their barrels, it would be the financial equivalent of a nuclear strike”.
Bill O’ Grady, A.G. Edwards


On May 10, Russian President Vladimir Putin ignited a firestorm that is bound to sweep across the global economy. In his State of the Nation speech to parliament,, he announced that Russia was planning to make the ruble “internationally convertible” so that it could be used in oil and natural gas transactions. Presently, oil is denominated exclusively in dollars and sold through the New York Mercantile Exchange (NYMX) or the London Petroleum Exchange (LPE) both owned by American investors.

If Russia proceeds with its plan, the ruble will go nose to nose with the dollar on the open market sending several billions of surplus greenbacks back to the United States. This could potentially send the American economy into freefall; triggering a deep recession and an extended period of hyper-inflation. “The ruble must become a more widespread means of international transactions,” Putin said. “To this end, we need to open a stock exchange in Russia to trade in oil, gas, and other goods to be paid for in rubles."

Currently, the central banks around the world carry large stockpiles of dollars to use in their purchases of oil. This gives the US a virtual monopoly on oil transactions. It also forces reluctant nations to continue using the dollar even though it is currently underwritten by $8.4 trillion national debt. Putin’s plan is similar to that of Iran, which announced that it would open an oil-bourse (oil exchange) on Kish Island in two months. The bourse would allow oil transactions to be made in petro-euros, thus discarding the dollar.

The Bush administration’s belligerence has intensified considerably since Iran made its intentions clear. In fact, just yesterday, Secretary of State Condi Rice said that “security guarantees were not on the table” regardless of any Iranian commitment to stop enriching uranium. In other words, Washington will not provide Iran a “non-aggression pact” whether it follows UN Security Council guidelines or not. Surely, this is a sign that Uncle Sam is on a fast-track to war.

The United States must protect its dollar-monopoly in the oil trade or it will lose the advantage of being the world’s “reserve currency”. As the reserve currency, the US can maintain its towering $8.4 trillion national debt and $800 billion trade deficit without fear of soaring interest rates or hyper-inflation. Trillions of greenbacks are constantly circulating in oil transactions just as hundreds of billions are stockpiled in foreign banks. In effect, the Federal Reserve is issuing bad checks with every dollar printed on the assumption that they will never reach the bank for collection.

So far, they’ve been right, and as the price of oil continues to skyrocket, the Fed just keeps cheerily printing more worthless paper sending it to the 4 corners of the earth. Regrettably, if Russia or Iran goes ahead with their conversion plan, then the bad checks will flood back to their source and precipitate a meltdown. America’s economic supremacy depends entirely on its ability to compel nations to make their energy acquisitions in greenbacks.

If the flaccid dollar [isn't flaccid generally a penis? F] is not linked to the world’s most vital resource, then banks will dump it overnight. This extortion-racket is the system we are defending in Iraq, not “democracy”. It is a huckster’s scam designed to perpetuate American debt by forcing worthless currency on the developing world. In a recent article by Dave Kimble, “Collapse of the petrodollar looming”, the author provides the details of Russia’s importance to the world oil market. “Russia's oil exports represent 15.2% of the world's export trade in oil, making it a much more significant player than Iran, with 5.8% of export volumes. Russia also produces 25.8% of the world's gas exports, while Iran is still only entering this market as an exporter…. Venezuela has 5.4% of the export market.”

Obviously, it is not in Russia’s interest to trade with its European partners in dollars any more than it would be for the US to trade with Canada in rubles. Putin can strengthen the Russian economy and improve Russia’s prestige in the world as an energy superpower by transitioning to rubles. But, will Washington allow him to succeed?

A growing number of nations are now focusing on the empire’s Achilles’ heel, the dollar. Venezuela, Russia, Norway and Iran are all threatening to move away from the greenback. Is this a spontaneous uprising or is it a new type of asymmetrical warfare? Whatever it is, Washington is bound to be reeling from the affects. After all, war maybe possible with Iran or Venezuela, but what about Russia? Would Bush be stupid enough to risk nuclear Armageddon to protect the drooping dollar?

The administration is exploring all of its options and is developing a strategy to crush Putin’s rebellion. (This may explain why Newsweek editor and undeclared spokesman for the Council on Foreign Relations (CFR), Fareed Zacharia, asked his guest on this week’s “Foreign Exchange” whether he thought Putin could be “assassinated”. The Council on Foreign Relations (CFR), the secretive organization of 4,400 American elites from industry, finance, politics, media and the military (who operate the machinery of state behind the mask of democracy) has already issued a tersely worded attack on Putin (“Russia’ Wrong Direction”; Manila Times) outlining what is expected for Russia to conform to American standards of conduct.

The missive says that Russia is headed in “the wrong direction” and that “a strategic partnership no longer seems possible”. The article reiterates the usual canards that Putin is becoming more “authoritarian” and “presiding over the rollback of Russian democracy”. (No mention of flourishing democracy in Saudi Arabia or Uzbekistan?) The CFR cites Putin’s resistance to “US and NATO military access to Central Asian bases” (which are a dagger put to Moscow’s throat) the banishing of Washington’s “regime change” NGOs from operating freely in Russia (“Freedom Support Act funds”) and Russia’s continued support for Iran’s “peaceful” development of nuclear energy.

America has never been a friend to Russia. It took full advantage of the confusion following the fall of the Soviet Union and used it to apply its neoliberal policies which destroyed the ruble, crushed the economy, and transferred the vast resources of the state to a handful of corrupt oligarchs. Putin single-handedly put Russia back on solid footing; taking back Yukos from the venal Khordukovsky and addressing the pressing issues of unemployment and poverty-reduction.

He is a fierce nationalist who enjoys a 72% approval rating and does not need the advice of the Bush administration or the CFR on the best path forward for his country. [i think putin is a looney dictator, but i'm just a lowly blogger. F]

The US has purposely strained relations with Russia by putting more military bases in Central Asia, feeding the turmoil in Chechnya, isolating Russia from its European neighbors, and directly intervening in its elections.

Putin’s challenge to the dollar is the first salvo in a guerilla war that will end with the crash of the greenback and the restoration of parity among the nations of the world [so there ARE people actively cheer for the fall of the republic... i do not share this person's POV. also, i just trimmed some stuff that closed the essay because it made the writer seem a bit nuts... F]

July 4th, my independence day

I'm back.

Friday was my last day of editing at Desjardins. It had been seven months of heavy lifting with my eyes. Needless to say, my eyes had become quite tired. When I got promoted recently to more hours and less pay, I was thrilled enough to quit.

And so this is where you, my delightful readers, come in!

If anyone knows of any jobs coming up, writing, editing, proofreading, fact checking, you name it, I just wanted you all to remember that I have returned to the world.

To all those who were let down when you called me during my exile on Bay Street and I was unavailable, I'm here to patch things up.

A quick refresher:

I am still writing a sex and relationship advice column for Chatelaine.com.
I have been a staff writer on two television series, writing three episodes and story editing countless others.
I have been awarded Telefilm funding four times for two feature films I have written.
I have had a documentary film and a dramatic movie-of-the-week optioned,
and now I have worked as a business editor for 7 months on Bay Street.
I am currently applying to Telefilm for funding and finishing a children's novel.

I am qualified for something. If anyone knows what that something is, and it pays in dollars, please let me know so I can get down to business... or, as I prefer to say:

thanks!

F.Cook