Dear all,
Many apologies for falling down on my blogging duties. I know you're all dying to hear how the experiment with Embracing the Winter is going and what mischief Montoya has gotten up to and how much he and I miss E and what vegetables the vegetable delivery people have delivered. The suspense has been killing you!
But, also, if you're a Mac user you're still trying to recover from the feeling of discomfort-impatience-fear-annoyance-submission that has afflicted you like gas pain since catching a glimpse of the above Rainbow Wheel of Death (Apple's spinning wait cursor) shown above. I wish I had the computer skills to make it spin for full e/affect. I know! "E/affect" produces the same horrible feeling as the Rainbow Wheel of Death! I did it on purpose to illustrate my point: if you're wondering what it's like to live in the 'Twa, especially November through February, it is that feeling, the RWoD-e/affect feeling. Almost like nausea or indigestion but not really so well-defined and curable. You hope that everything will be back on track once the waiting time is over but also you're a little afraid that the whole system will crash but you're pretty sure it's not going to but it might and maybe you should reboot but also maybe just wait longer and for a few seconds you actually leave your body and look down on yourself and realize that your problems are stupid first world problems but also you know you'll spend the rest of the day trying to fix them and the fucking spinning rainbow hypnotizes and annoys all at the same time. That's the 'Twa, dear friends, that's the 'Twa.
Things that have helped me in 2012: money. I have money! For the first time ever I have the financial ability to purchase the things that I want now and not have to mortgage my future material happiness to make it happen. My job alone did not provide this, it was the sale of my grandmother's house that did it and so my relative financial security now is more about being someone's heir than anything else. News item: money solves a lot of problems. Once it was snowing and I didn't want to drive to the airport so I took a taxi. Another time, I wished I had a printer for my home computer so I could print out my lectures before going to school and then I bought one. E and I decided that we would try to see each other every 2-3 weeks throughout the semester and then we purchased 3 rounds of plane tickets to make it happen. Money absolutely makes a difference and is why this year in the 'Twa is better than last year. It doesn't solve all problems or even make being apart from E okay but it helps with a lot of things. I don't know if my job will get better but my financial security will and that will make it all get better. It's not polite to talk about money but maybe that's just because we're supposed to pretend like it doesn't make a difference or that rich people's problems are somehow just as weighty as poor people's but that's complete, complete nonsense. People will talk all kinds of bullshit about their religion, about their politics, about their sexual activities, about all kinds of things that are supposed to be taboo but I'm telling you the only real taboo is people owning up to their financial privilege and what we're all supposed to do about it. I'm not in the 1% but I'm not foolish enough to believe that the 99% are a monolithic category either and there must be something else out there than just wishing that a Green Party/NDP candidate would get elected in Canada or Obama get re-elected in the US or for Angie Harmon to one day wake up and realize that she is, in fact, on the
second gayest show in American television (Glee being first, of course).
I have a sum of money that I don't want to lose and I have to figure out what to do with it. I don't want to buy a house because
Holmes on Homes has completely scared the shit out of me re: buying a money pit, I don't have time to really find and attend to a property, and maybe I won't be living in Ottawa forever? So the answer is invest but invest in what? My thought: ethical investing is the answer! Oh, simple naive idiotic me.
There are dozens of "ethical" mutual funds and SRIs (Socially Responsible Investments) out there. The first problem I realize is that my definition of SRI is vastly different from others'. My definition of socially responsible is NOT, for example, supporting companies that openly oppose unionization, gay marriage, access to contraception, pro-choice, freedom of religion, evolution, and rational thought. Others appear to take the opposite view. The basic criteria of SRI is that it avoids companies that are engaged in alcohol, tobacco, gambling, or weapons trades. I would have thought that especially the weapons trade criterion would be a given but when one of the largest national economies in the world is at war and "defense" contracts are a-plenty, most non-SRI funds tolerate a few weapons companies here and there. Also, I've noticed that the tolerance of these trades rises when it's a government involved in the trade (I'm looking at you
LCBO).
The second problem is that the bar for ethical behaviour is really, really low so it's not that hard for certain companies to qualify. Most of the ethical mutual funds in Canada, for example, include shares in
Suncor, a company involved in developing the tar sands in Alberta. Not what I had in mind when I sought out ethical investing but, when the ethical
rock tar-sandy bottom has been established by the likes of Exxon and ChevronTexaco, Suncor's token wind farms seem like all goodness and light. And, really, if you're going to invest in Canadian anything, chances are you'll be investing in some kind of raw material/natural resource production somehow so whether it's oil in Alberta, gold in BC or Nunavut, potash in Saskatchewan, or hydroelectricity in Quebec, it's still going to be slightly better than what these companies would do in Africa or Asia (so the story goes).
If energy/resource production isn't palatable, the other options are 1) banks or 2) governments. Banks and governments only enable nasty companies, they don't do the dirty work themselves, and so pass the ethics test. For more information, see the Jain population in Gujarat.
I mean, it's not like I thought I would start looking for ethical investments and find a ton of companies devoted to producing bioethical, sustainable underwear run by two vegan lesbians and their 6 rescue cats from their
earthship in New Mexico. Really if I was going to be investing a bunch of money in such an enterprise, *I* would want to be the one in the earthship (no cats though). I just didn't expect the pickings to be SO slim.
Oh, I forgot. A final sector that passes most regulated ethical criteria appears to be tech, which means Research in Motion, Google, and ... wait for it!... Apple. Apple, you say?! How is this possible? I don't know. And it comes full circle.
Best part of Canal skating. 
Best part of Canal skating. 
Exhibit B: my sweet-ass Zojirushi bread maker that produces delicious 1 lb loaves. I *LOVE* it. The loaves are sufficiently small so that I don't feel pressure to eat bread morning and night before it goes bad and I can add grated carrots to the recipe to get rid of my carrot stockpile. I love it. Number of loaves made since purchasing bread maker: dozens! Too many to count! I love it.
Exhibit A: Snowshoes. They look awesome right? Snowshoeing is kind of exactly like walking. Only you're walking on top of deep snow. The thrill of walking on top of deep snow like Legolas goes away after about 5 minutes and then you're just left with a feeling of walking. Also, Monty can't follow so well and he's usually the reason that I'm out walking in the first place so while I don't rule out the awesome of the snowshoe in my life, it hasn't happened yet. Maybe when the Winter season as a yearly phenomenon is a thing of the past, we will all look back on these snowshoes with awe and reverence. But so far they've just been taking up space in my front hallway. I admit to purchasing them because E was purchasing the ice skates that I wanted but they didn't have in my size and in a fit of skate-envy I decided I really needed cool-looking snowshoes. 
Exhibit B: The Apple Wireless Mouse. Eff you, you effing piece of Ess, Wireless Mouse! It keeps becoming "Disconnected" for no good reason and requires a battery change all too often. So I have my wired mouse on hand for whenever the iMaus of the Future craps out and I don't feel like spending several minutes fussing over getting it connected again. I'm so glad I didn't go the way of the wireless keyboard. Also - wtf do we need wireless keyboards and mouses/mice for? This goes along with my puzzlement over the remote control toilet flusher I saw a lot of in Japan. Because I am relatively close to my computer and toilet when I am using them, I do not require wireless options for their functions. Others may do things differently.
