Chromescape

Parole

I'm tired and it was just barely light when I left work this morning. All the more reason to be happy that my parole date has been set! Three week today is my last overnight. Thirteen more shifts. I can't wait. I really feel like I've hit a wall this week and just don't want to do the nights anymore.

As I was pulling up to the house this morning, Weeg was sitting in the upstairs window. I waved at her and she heralded my return with a big mehhhwahhhhwuh.

I felt special.

Thesaurus Phrasing

Words are tricky, which is unfortunate seeing as I now depend on them to make my living. At work, I'm paid to choose words to make an event as precise and concise as possible. Everything I write is read out loud so I have to fight the urge to use too many adjectives or complex sentence structures that might make writing more interesting but that make speaking sound silly.

Sunday morning I was writing about Iraq. I was updating the plight of the two Italian women who are being held by Zarqawi. It turns out that they were initially kidnapped by thugs then sold to Zarqawi's group. A few minutes before I sat down to put the story together, I noticed the producer had changed my copy to read "handed over for money." Huh? I buzzed him and asked if he could change it back because somehow that phrase just didn't have the same impact. He told me that no, his argument being that slavery doesn't exist anymore, you can buy and sell people and sold has too many unwanted connotations.

Right. Tell that to Zarqawi. You also can't cut people's heads off but that doesn't mean I write his head was removed from his torso with a sword. Or how about he had nonconsensual sexual intercourse with the women for rape. But the point is they were sold. That was part of what was making the story so outrageous. That this is a new development in the whole lets-kidnap-foreigners campaign. I didn't agree with the producer's argument but there was little I could do because he has the ultimate veto on the show. Fortunately he buzzed me back about 5 minutes later to tell me he'd thought about it and had changed his mind to agree with me. So sold it was.

But the other part of all this is whole objectivity issue. I do have to make sure I don't right anything libelous or misleading. So there are all these verbal disclaimer phrases that we get stuck using. One os my "favourites" goes along the lines of militants loyal to radical Shi'a cleric Moqtada al-Sadr. God forbid we call them al-Sadr's fighters because I guess technically they aren't really his army.

But the whole thing does bring up a lot of questions. For example, when is a terrorist a terrorist and when is he just a militant? At what point does militancy become terrorism? How many suicide car bombings outside Iraqi National Guard recruiting offices or Israeli check points does it take?

CanWest/Global and Reuters want to know. Reuters is accusing CanWest newspapers of misusing the word terrorist in edited Reuters copy stories about Iraq and the Middle East.
(see http://toronto.cbc.ca/regional/servlet/View?filename=tor_canwest040917)
I know all this stuff is culturally sensitive. I know we are at a really critical point where increasingly there is the danger of falling into a Western world against an Arab world. I don't want that to happen and I want to do my best to keep people, and myself for that matter, from thinking that every Arab person is evil and wants to blow me up. I know that it is difficult because we only see the bad because that is the news. But it is important.

Compounding the problem is that I do see al-Sadr's fighters as terrorists. I don't believe that they are fighting for the liberation of the Iraqi people from US occupation (or should I say US-led-coalition). I think they are power hungry criminals who want to seize power through terror so that they can run their own shitty dictatorship of oppression. And their shitty campaign of violence, aimed I might add against huge numbers of ordinary Iraqis (like those queuing at Iraqi National Guard offices), is keeping Iraqis terrified and locked in their houses. Iraqis who could actually help the world to see that not every Arab is a terrorist.

When we look at numbers of people killed since the start of the War, there have now been over 1000 US casualties and something like ten times that for Iraqis. But large numbers of the Iraqi casualties aren't because of Americans but because of these friggin "militants." So are they terrorists?

Puppy pulls trigger on owner ready to kill him

September 9, 2004 (PENSACOLA, Fla.) — A puppy facing death along with the rest of his litter took matters into his own paws, police said.
Jerry Allen Bradford, 37, of Pensacola, allegedly had decided to kill seven puppies he had because he could not get rid of them any other way, Escambia County Sheriff's Office spokesman Sgt. Ted Roy said.



"He said that he could not give them away. He tried to give them away and he was unsuccessful so that was the alternative he used," Roy said.
Bradford allegedly shot and killed three of the puppies — 3-month-old shepherd-mixes, but when he tried to finish off the rest they wouldn't sit still for him. The man told authorities he was holding one dog in his left hand and one dog in his right hand, but he couldn't control them, Roy said. When the puppy in his left hand began to wriggle free, it put its paw on the gun's trigger, causing it to fire and the bullet hit the man in the wrist, Roy said. When Bradford went to a hospital emergency room to get treatment, a doctor called authorities about the gunshot wound, the sheriff's department said.
The three puppies Bradford allegedly shot were found in a shallow grave with bullet wounds in their heads, Roy said. The remaining four puppies and their mother are safe now at the Escambia County Animal Shelter.
"They're doing great," said Bruce Rova, a spokesman for the shelter. "The puppies are in good health. They're friendly." Bradford is facing felony animal cruelty charges, Roy said.
"He was not arrested due to the fact he had that gunshot wound to the arm and the warrant will become active and he'll have to go to court and plead his case," Roy said. Roy said he doesn't understand why anyone would think they had to shoot a dog just because they could not find a home for it.
"If it's someone you need to take care of that animal and take responsibility off of them as a burden we're definitely here," Rova said. As for the future of the dogs, the mother may be returned to the Bradfords, but the puppies will be put up for adoption, authorities said

My Old Flame

I'm thinking about getting back together with an old flame. The problem is things are fine right now. How could I be unfaithful like that? I know where things go with Old Flame. Things will be great for awhile then cool off right down to cold...

Yup, Fall. I know it's coming. There are all things teasing seasonal flirtations it keeps making my way. Like leaving work in the morning and it's just a little bit darker and the air feels cool, not in a cool-warm way; more of a warm-cool. Once the sun in the evening, even if the day was hot, it's kind of... nippy.

Biking down Lowther last week I noticed a maple tree. It's seriously prematurely red. Bright flaming red. It's leaves were falling- it was beautiful, but really too early. But there, all the same.

All this teasing make me excited for Fall. When it's warm in the day but I'm wear sweaters and tights. When the trees are beautiful and they smell like rotting gardens. That's a really good smell. The noise that you can make when you're walking through them, that's an easy one. And of course even being out of school for years now, I still feel like it is the start of something new.

But I feel guilty because Summer is just such a great season. It's warm and sunny and it stays light really late. How can you hate that? It's great to be able to wear flip flops as shoes! It's great to go for a walk to the store, come back and say "hum, I smell... ha! It must be really hot today!" Food all tastes really good. So I feel badly when I start to look forward to Fall. I get to a point where part of me just wants it to be full-on Fall so I don't have to feel like I am being unfaithful to Summer.

My old flame . Problem is, I know I'll flirt back. I can't resist. We'll end up getting back together, even though I know the relationship will just get colder and colder and turn into something I'm not interested in. We've been down this road before, of course. It's a seasonal thing.

Ivan el Terrible

There's something about a hurricane. Ever since Mitch, they've been my favourite disaster. Not the ones that hit the States; somehow trailer parks being washed away in southern Florida isn't quite the same. It's the ones that hit places that are already have ridiculously flimsy infrastructures. Big hurricanes, category fours and fives are really exciting. I think I have some perverse interest in seeing just how much damage they can cause. I mean it's incredible what some rain and wind can do. So when I heard that Ivan was a category Five heading straight for Kingston, well, I have to admit, I was a little excited. Then I felt bad I was disappointed when it got downgraded and shifted course. That's really terrible of me. I don't want hundreds or thousands of people to die, of course, I just want to see what kind of destruction could be caused.

I think part of it might be because there are just so many disasters around the world and most of them are caused by people blowing each other up or hacking their neighbours to bits with machetes. At least with a natural disasters, there's pretty much nothing you can do to stop it. No one is to blame for it. So if I have to be seeing horrible pictures of people suffering and catastrophic damage, at least let it be caused by a storm system and not some idiot with a rusty kalashnikov .

Ivan in Grenada

When I was in Mitch it was a great rush being in something I had no control over. We had been in Tela, on the Honduran coast for the weekend. It was a beautiful day on the Saturday but Sunday it had started raining a bit. We were wondering why the waves had become so big. We had thought about staying a day or two longer but with the weather decided to go back to PRR. When we got back, only then did we realize what we had narrowly missed being stuck in. Tela was whipped by Mitch and it would have been really bad to be stuck there. During the storm I was so bored. We were stuck at PRR and I had to ration my books, candles and water. There was no way of knowing how bad the Hurricane was since we had no radio or television. All we could do was sit and wait. For eight days.

Then after it passed I drove into Siguatepeque with our boss Enrique. We were taking a man from the village to hospital. As we drove along the highway, I couldn't believe what I was seeing. At some points we had to detour through mud tracks since they were better than the highway. When I saw US troops on the road the concept of the extent of the damage started to come into focus a bit. I leaned out the truck window and just pointed my camera back down the road. I got the best photo I've ever taken by chance. A couple of days later we backed the truck with supplies to take north to El Progresso and San Pedro Sula. It's flatter there and there was a lot of flooding. That part was the worst bit, that damage the most extensive and the poverty the roughest.

The thing about Mitch was that it was such a surreal, unexpected experience. Maybe what was so important was that I couldn't help but feel dwarfed by it. I was not important compared to it and people really effected by it. It felt kind of like being on some sort of weird drug. There was definitely something about the experience I've never felt since but want to feel again. Maybe that's why I get off on cutting these Ivan stories right now and wishing they were bigger because it's the closest I can be to actually being there and getting that rush again.

Meanwhile, Ivan's been upgraded again to a Five and is hitting Cuba today.

Who is the Weeg?

Can we ever really know?

Shitty Day

THE HAGUE (Reuters) - A Dutch driver was covered in hundreds of liters of manure when a tank burst on a lorry carrying fertilizer, police said on Tuesday.
"It was a nice night ... so he probably opened his window when he stopped at a traffic light, and then -- (it) happened," said Dana Kragten, spokeswoman for police in rural Drenthe province.
"The tank had a small window which burst, probably due to pressure ... The man said he had no time to back away his car or close his window." Police said the man, whose car was sprayed with an estimated 1,700 liters (370 gallons) of liquid manure, escaped injury though his car had to be towed away.

Yes, well that would suck.
Now, coming soon to my tv...here's one you know I'll be tuning in for:

Steamy Side of Peacekeeping Coming to TV Screens
UNITED NATIONS (Reuters) - Sex, drugs and corruption among U.N. peacekeeping forces in the world's most dangerous hot spots will become fodder for a new TV series, the whistle blowing authors of a tell-all book said on Wednesday. Emergency Sex and Other Desperate Measures,' written by current and former U.N. peacekeeping mission employees Heidi Postlewait, Andrew Thomson and Kenneth Cain, will be developed and produced as a dramatic series by Miramax Television.

Too much pressure

...to produce the first entry. I need some text to fill up the space so that I can just start blabbing about whatever I want. But it seems that I need to write some sort of introduction before I can do that.

So here it is. It's Friday night, nearly ten pm. I'm heading to work soon for another overnight on the Mothership. I'll be paroled soon and return the land of the living. In fact I'm hoping there will be some good news about that waiting for me when I get tonight.

The overnights have been a funny thing. The kind of thing that when you're told they are in store for you you really don't know how you'll do it. It's so weird being up at those hours. My whole life I've probably stayed up the whole night maybe half a dozen times. And always because I've been out having an out of the ordinary night. Never because I was at work. Working. Using my brain.

But anyway the time passes, and your body gets used to it and there's something kind of satisfying about knowing you have this crazy challenge in front of you that you are actually suceeding in doing. And biking home at 7am is quite a ride. Seeing who else is out there, how the city sounds, how it smells...and it does smell, especially on garbage days. Going through Kensington and seeing the delivery trucks bringing stuff in, ah...yes, it's kind of neat in my sleepy haze.

But the whole thing is disorienting. And I will be happy to be back on a normal schedule. And see people. I'm impressed with my brain that it hasn't descended into a nightime dark fog over this, but I don't think I want to push it. Definitely can't spare the daylight much longer.

Ok, how it that for an intro? Good enough. Let the Daily Weeg being.