Colleen Anderson's Blog, page 58

Empty Head

That' me. I have an empty head. Well, not completely. It has a brain, devoid of any pertinent thoughts right now. And it has a mucous production factory, that if it were oil, could solve the world's resource problems. Courtesy of course, of a cold. And really, as colds go, it's not so bad. Not the 3-box of tissues wonder I had last year. My neck muscles have only grown a bit sore from blowing my nose and the chafing from the rough toilet paper is already starting to heal.

But, between the...

The Skinny on Fat

The fashion industry has a lot to answer for. I may have posted on this before. In fact I did from the perspective of the fashion designer who used "plus-size" models for a show. Those supposed plus sizes were between size 8 and 12, hardly plus at all and normal for most women.

Well, I also came across the following article by a writer. who dressed in a fat suit to attend several fashion shows. The attitudes about skeletal models and towards overweight people that she experienced just...

Head Lice and Shame

I grew up in Alberta. There, the winters are cold enough that the only animal that had fleas would be mangy and often diseased. And head lice were unheard of. Perhaps the cold worked at keeping the numbers down there too.

Then I moved to BC, where there was a plethora of insects and other buggy vermin: spiders that flew in the wind on their spinnerets, spiders the size of your palms, slugs as long as a foot-long sub, moths, aphids, fleas on every animal if the summer was humid, mosquitoes...

Tiger Woods, Tiger Woods, Oh My God, Tiger Woods!

You would think by all the hullabaloo, the prime time furor and general gossip that no one ever ever ever has cheated before. Certainly not those famous people, our modern gods: rock stars, movie stars and sports stars.

I don't read the paper or watch TV but do listen to enough radio news (daily) to be up on current affairs. So when I'm being inundated with Tiger Woods this and Tiger Woods that, you know it's hit a high saturation point in the media.

Past Canadian Prime Minister Pierre Trudeau...

SF Writer Beaten and Arrested at US Border

I say US border because it turns out, in Port Huron, one must go through a US checkpoint before the Canadian checkpoint when leaving the US. SF writer Dr. Peter Watts was beaten and arrested by US border guards this week when they stopped him to search his car and he asked them what was going on.

His belongings were seized (notepad, flashdrive, computer, rental car, coat) and he was released on foot after being arraigned and charged into Ontario's winter snowstorm in nothing more than...

Ho Ho Ho Ain't Just For Prostitutes

One of the stupdest things I've heard in recent years in regards to Christmas was that Australia banned their department store Santas from saying, "Ho ho ho," because it was derogatory. Who made this decision, a twelve-year-old? That's a fine example of political correctness taken to a stage of extreme idiocy. It's like saying you can't say Merry Christmas but can still celebrate it.

Granted there are other religious celebrations at this time but if someone wishes me Happy Hanukkah and...

Parking Nazis: The Price You Pay

Parking in Vancouver has been annoying for a long time and is probably this way in most major cities. In some areas there are two (0r one) hour parking zones but they are few and far between and becoming more limited. These are usually in residential areas with high populations, such as the West End or around any commercial streets. The two-hour zones have gone down in recent years as the city puts in more and more metered parking.

Right now those meters run at about $4 an hour. That's a lot...

From Kyoto to Copenhagen: Will it Make a Difference?

In 1998 when I was researching fuel-efficient cars for Technocopia.com I came across the Kyoto Protocol. Already in place it was an agreement between developed countries to try and lower emissions to 20% less of 1990 standards by 2005. This amount varied depending on the country.

Each industrialized country that was initially included in the discussions was to ratify the agreement. Ratification means that they confirm their committment to or give official sanction to something. In 1997  it...

Pedestrians and Cars: A Two-Way Street

I cannot imagine what our ancestors of long ago would have thought of our casual disregard for motor vehicles. Tons of metal hurtle towards us and we will blithely walk in front of them with presumptions of our safety. And we, as drivers, hold these leviathans at our fingertips, feeling invincible as we do so.

But the truth is that hundreds of people are injured and killed everyday, the world over, because of cars, trucks, buses. Here in Vancouver, and most of Canada, pedestrians have the...

Blank Minds

I have nothing to say today. Really. My mind is blank or filled with things that aren't for public consumption. But then that makes me think of minds and our ephemeral memories. We are, in essence, made up of memory, which temporally places us between past and future.

I wrote about memory once when I was writing a column for fearsmag.com, a now defunct online magazine caught in the apocalypse of the dotcom fall. Memory is what defines us. Beyond the personality imprint of birth, we begin to...