Category: Inclusion

‘Someday it may come knocking on your door’

So with condemnation, and rightfully so, of John Galliano’s stupid anti-Semetic needle-dickery in the news this week, I can’t help but wonder why similarities, as in any, between Galliano’s bigotry and a recent US anti-Muslim rally, in Yorba Linda California, fail to be connected?

Elected Republican, Deborah Pauly, can be seen in this video from al Jazeera actually saying;

I don’t even care if you think I’m crazy anymore. […] I know quite a few marines who will be very happy to help these terrorists to an early meeting in paradise…

But I’ve taken her words out of context, you say? It’s quite possible I have. I can admit it. Not that I care. I’ve no idea where or why she was talking when the footage was shot that was featured in this piece. I guess it’s possible, like conservative Tea Party “activists” claim, she was speaking towards the “presence of speakers [that are linked, but not charged, in the 1993 World Trade Center bombing being] at the event.” Fair enough. Anything is possible. Even the validity, however unlikely, of some of the Tea Party’s extreme assertions. But, that said, it’s not like the Tea Party’s record against inciting reactionary ignorance is clean. But that’s not really my point…

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Stick that in your pipe and smoke it!

Just this past Wednesday, after a month or so of trying to coordinate a suitable time for both of us to meet, I was able to get into the city and visit a friend and check out what he is really busy working on.

My friend, Colin, has been working in the field of computer technology — mainly by helping to make various software applications, largely internet related, accessible — for years now. In fact, that is precisely why and how we met, over an entire decade ago! He was involved, as a student, with the folks who set me up with the means to use my first computer. University of Toronto’s ATRC (who are now at OCAD University as the Inclusive Design Research Centre).

It was the ATRC who outfitted me with the original gear I used to interact with a computer. Keep in mind, that was a time when I was differently abled, well differently abled than I am now, at least. Where my interactions were entirely facilitated through a head switch and an on screen keyboard. Much like I’ve written here before — well not so much the onscreen keyboard aspect, I’d rather foolishly forgotten, but I was delightfully reminded during said visit…

Continue reading Stick that in your pipe and smoke it!

CNN Strikes Again

Last night I tuned into CNN’s Election coverage. And believe me, no-one is more sorry than I. I should have known better. Totally my fault, I know.

A very small minded Republican, I assume, sitting on their “panel” actually told the audience if Obama wins minorities no longer have any excuses. Wow, what a relief, I feel so vindicated. All it took was a single Black man to be elected as President of the United States for an entire planet to drop their small-minded, selfish tendencies? What took so bloody long?

“Fucking goof…”

Thank You For The Opportunity

Well the moment I’d been dreading all week came today, my Grandmother’s memorial. For obvious reasons, of course, but, rather selfishly, I was nervous about being asked if the piece I wrote after her passing could be read as “part of the proceedings.”

You know, if I’d been asked earlier this week, I’m quite sure I’d have said no. There’s something about having the words I write, read back to me that leaves me feeling awkward and subtlety embarrassed. Sounds strange, I know. Because it is. What can I say? It’s the introvert in me.

But, more to my point, I was “dreading” being asked, mostly, on account of it was an exceptionally hard bit to write so soon after hearing she was gone. And I wasn’t at all comfortable with my reaction in response to my ramblings being spoken aloud, not only to myself, but a room full of people…

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