How To Piss Me Off

Last night I was reading the newspaper and I ran across a small article about the PM-designate’s spouse.

The title says it all:

It’s ‘Mrs. Harper,’ for wife of incoming prime minister Stephen Harper

Harper’s 41-year-old spouse has been known as Laureen Teskey –

…

But the self-described small-town girl from Turner Valley, Alta., has let it be quietly known that she now goes only by the name of Laureen Harper.

Look, you can call yourself Bozo the Clown for all I care. But as long it’s still considered politically necessary for a woman to take her husband’s last name, to be a Mrs., not a Ms., then women will NOT have achieved equality. PERIOD.

The fact that I’d noticed his wife had her own name was the ONE thing Harper had going for him. Now he has NOTHING. NOTHING.

It pissed me off when Hillary did it. It pisses me off when the media calls Tony Blair’s wife Mrs. Blair when her real name is Cherie Booth. But this pisses me off even more, maybe because Laureen & Stephen are closer to my age–and I guess I just expect younger people to be more enlightened on these matters.

I remain impressed with Maureen McTeer (and by extension, Joe Clark), who didn’t stand for this bullshit, even 30 years ago when it was a much bigger deal.

It shouldn’t be a deal at all anymore. That it obviously is, is sad, sad, sad.

*

On a related note, there’s been much media speculation about who will make up the new cabinet. I noticed that ALL the names being bandied about were men. ALL.

Then I saw a snip of a Harper press conference in which he was saying how he had to increase the number of women in the Conservative party. Ha. Well, subjugating your wife isn’t going to do it.

Curious, I looked for some stats.

The number of women elected for each party, and the proportion of women in the party’s elected caucus, are as follows:

* Bloc – 17 (33.3% of caucus)
* Conservative – 14 (11.3% of caucus)
* Liberal – 21 (20.3% of caucus)
* NDP – 12 (41.4% of caucus)

The Liberal party isn’t doing great there, but the Conservatives? 11%? Can’t say I’m surprised, though. With all the anti-women crap they support (I know, they’ve tried to tone it down, but it’s there, simmering under the surface.), what woman in her right mind would join such a party? And as for the men, they probably secretly wish that it was 0% because y’all know where they think women are supposed to be.

Name Dropping

Back in November, I wrote a post about the annoying overuse of brand names in popular fiction. Well, apparently I’m in good company. Maud Newton posts:

Jessa Crispin hates what she calls “the Emo Boy writers.” (I particularly like her observation that “emo boys namedrop because it’s the only way they know how to explain someone.” Too many contemporary authors replace the individual experience with its pop-cultural echo. Why should anyone read a story if its characters can be evoked solely by reference to punk’s heyday or bad 80’s television?)

Miscellany

One of the better “suggestions for writers” lists that I’ve seen: Being Able to Write: Lessons from Other Writers, New and Well-Seasoned.

As always, I need to work on numbers 3, 9, and 14:

3. Schedule your writing.
9. Always carry a writing notebook.
14. Send out your best work, and send it out religiously.

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This post on lit mags made me wonder how many writers read literary journals/magazines.

I wonder how it is that such amazing work is left to collect dust in the few bookstores that carry them, or kept insulated in the academic world. If books are the showy muscles of the literary world, then journals are the blood: hidden, self-renewing, and essential.

Since we started TC, I don’t spend near as much time reading other literary journals as I used to. We keep talking about reviving Conundrums to Guess and journal reviews was one of the ideas. It would be a good exercise to read one journal a month and review it. Would be great if a bunch of TCers did this. Perhaps a use for the wiki Bellman was testing?

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Check out Debbie Ohi’s new comic: Will Write for Chocolate 🙂

The Bad, The Good, & The Fugly

The Bad: PM Stephen Harper. Bleh. 😦

The Good: It’s a minority government.

The Fugly: Belinda Stronach. Gah. *grind teeth* Think of a cross between Paris Hilton & Dubya. I can’t even begin to think what the person who puts an X beside her name on a ballot is thinking. “Wow, she’s really qualified for this job and I know she’s got my best interests in mind!” Riiight.

I do, however, remain more appalled by the fact that she won numerous awards for holding some executive position in her daddy’s company. This chick dropped out of university in her first year. So, you know, she was really qualified to run a mega-corporation. Sure. That’s uber-believable. Here’s some coffee. Smell it.

I Voted.

Did you?*

You know what’s weird? I live right on the edge of a riding (what a weird word–does the origin have to do with how far one could ride in a day or something?), and the voting place is actually on the other side of the line.

Anyhow. If this election goes the way the media’s been predicting, don’t blame me. I didn’t contribute to it.

I’ll be watching at 7 to see who won, with fingers crossed. There’s been a lot of hot air blowing around here the past month about BC being the deciding factor, but I’ll believe that when I see it. Never happens. Always all over by the time the polls close here. Ontario. Much too big. Needs to be split into like three provinces.

[*Only applies if you’re Canadian.]

2006 Books Read – #1

Purple Hibiscus by Chimamanda Ngozi Adichie

Purple Hibiscus

I picked up this book because I recognized the author’s name. Back in the day, she posted at The Site Where the Snarkers Met (as Amanda Ngozi). I remembered her writing & that I liked it, so when I heard about this book that was enough to send me to the bookstore looking for it.

So. I liked it. It was an easy read, meaning the writing didn’t tax my brain, which is precisely what I needed. It was interesting, in that it was set in Nigeria, so I got some insight into another part of the world. Always good. And I think it was quite perceptive; I related a lot to what the story had to say about family. I’d read more by this author.

Worth a Read

How to Do What You Love

I especially liked this part:

Some people are lucky enough to know what they want to do when they’re twelve, and just glide along as if they were on railroad tracks. But this seems the exception. More often people who do great things have careers with the trajectory of a ping-pong ball. They go to school to study A, drop out and get a job doing B, and then become famous for C after taking it up on the side.

Jumping from one sort of work to another is an odd thing. Sometimes it’s a sign of discipline, and sometimes it’s a sign of laziness. Are you dropping out, or boldy carving a new path? You often can’t tell yourself. Plenty of people who will later do great things seem to their friends and family and even themselves to be disappointments early on, when they’re trying to find the work they love.

…

Kids who know early what they want to do seem impressive, as if they got the answer to some math question before the other kids. They have an answer, certainly, but odds are it’s wrong. If you read autobiographies (which I highly recommend) you find that a lot of the most successful people didn’t decide till quite late what they wanted to do. And not because they were indecisive, or didn’t know themselves. It takes a long time to just to learn what different kinds of work are like.

I have this line — “I always admired the ones who were sure.” — I think I wrote it in one of my paper journals. Anyhow, it has stuck in my head, which makes me think it would be a good first line. For Jas, perhaps.