Since the sermon on Sunday was quite vocal about how important it is for parents to know what their children are listening to, Mom, this is what I’m listening to.

Radiohead, Kid A, Amnesiac, and Hail to the Thief
Explosions in the Sky, The Earth is Not a Cold Dead Place, and Those Who Tell The Truth Shall Die, Those Who Tell the Truth Shall Live Forever
Xiu Xiu, These Fabulous Muscles
The Listener, Whispermoon
Sev Static, Speak Life
Coldplay, Parachutes
Andrea Bocelli, Verdi
Dawn Upshaw, Sings Pucelli and Bach
Espers, Espers
Derek Webb, She Must and Shall Go Free
Godspeed You! Black Emperor, Yanqui U.X.O, Lift Yr. Skinny Fists Like Antennas to Heaven
Thee Silver Mt. Zion, This is Our Punk Rock

… and the list continues. Now, Mom, you can make sense of some of these incomprensible titles. I mean, I can’t.

One of my friends over at the Cmcentral message boards, known as BennieM, had this to say about the foundation of government (evolving from a discussion on whether or not one should support laws that legislate ultimate morality, which evolved from a discussion about the Religious Right):

…But I’m going to ask you to think harder than normal. I think most of you ultimately have self-contradictory beliefs in government.

You are not asking the right questions. You’re blowing on the fire before you try to light it; and that’s just getting us all dusty. The issue isn’t whether this is a “moral law”, if that means one that promotes what is good and right. It’s whether this is a “moral law” in the sense that it agrees with why we legislate in the first place; that is, if the law itself is moral and not an hypocrisy.

While giving my kitchen a somewhat cursory going-over, I have coined a new cleaning maxim: “When in Doubt, Use Alcohol.” No, this does not mean that before cleaning one should have a beer. Don’t drink and clean. You could end up plugging a toaster into the sink.

Oh, what am I saying. If it helps you before you begin cleaning, have a glass of Burton Cabernet Sauvignon (1998 Reserve) before you begin. The subtle flavour of peach wood, and a good nutty taste with a good hint of leather. Really. I know what I’m talking about.

But I figure, what does the modern kitchen cleaner have on rubbing alcohol? There’s nothing that stuff can’t do, including but not limited to dancing a jig on your counter. Or maybe that was me. I forget. When I passed out, I think I was doing the stove, cause I woke up sweating.

That was a joke, for the humour-challenged. I didn’t pass out. Some fruitflies did. Nothing like chasing down fruitflies with alcohol whilst screaming, “Die, kraut mothers!” or something dramatic.

Now Playing: Listener, “Whispermoon”, Track 4.

Okay, so my idea of letting religions marry people to eachother as they see fit isn’t going over too well with anyone that I raise it with. Most of the time the objection is “well then they’ll be able to do whatever they want!” but some of the time the objection is the wide-ranging legal implications that are present, not to mention the fact that even this idea still needs safeguards.

Of course, that sort of brings us back to the question, What Is Government For? which stems the debate in the first place. In my view, the primary purpose of government is to create order and protect its citizens. How far it can go in creating and maintaining that order is another question in itself.

So, let’s say that children need to be protected. Obvious, because they don’t have the mental or physical capacity to be in a marriage relationship. Animals also would need protection, unfortunately. Let the only restriction be that marriage must involve consenting human adults. Then let religious authorities do their thing, whatever that thing may be. Frankly, it’s not the job of the government to enforce a certain type of morality on a group of dissenting people: that’s how democracies work. You don’t change people from the government down, but people change the government from the grassroots up.

So let the government wash their hands of it, get out of the marriage business, let the debate die down, and let the Christians get about their bloody business of evangelizing the world, instead of bothering with every bill C-250 that comes along, or with the latest petition that everyone is circulating.

Women can be a lot like those little tomatoes you get in your salad. If you’re brusque with them (imagine spearing that tomato with a fork), they’re dismissive (and the tomato rolls away), even when you’re right. But if you give it a little patience (a bit of gentle pressure and then spear the darn thing), most times it goes over fine (and you get to eat a tomato, unless that’s not your picnic, in case you suck and should be reading another blog), even when you’re wrong. Wierd.

So last night I’m driving home from Ancaster, exiting the QEW/403 combo to the Ford Drive/403 offramp, when I see a Ford Focus ZX3 execute a bizzare (but not unheard-of) cross-highway lane-change to get onto the same exit. Now, seeing that we’re not the most common cars on the highway — whole lot more sedans than hatches, you understand — we feel a certain gas-pedal-pressing kinship. And so we do this racing thing down the highway for a while, until my conscience got the better of me, and I pulled onto the Hwy 10 offramp. Those things got the better of me.

But the thing that got me, on that highway, is that at night, all the slow driver don’t drive in the right lane like they do during the day, but right in the freaking middle of the highway. So that the cars going faster than they are (such as everyone else) have to either pass on the left and congest the entire highway while doing, or pass on both the left and the right, one of which is illegal. Point #2: if you are a defensive driver, remember that defensive driving does not mean timid driving. Timid driver make other people have accidents, because their actions are almost impossible to predict. If you don’t know what to do in a dangerous situation, you are the dangerous situation. You’re just waiting to happen. Point #3: immigrants should not be allowed to drive unless they know how, regardless of whether their buddy works at the licencing office or not. I mean, I have no problems with immigrants. They can come if the government wants to let them. But for goodness sake, there are so many of them in Mississauga that can’t drive worth six beans and a hoola hoop that it’s getting out of hand. When you see three cars across three lanes driven at -60 kph by three men wearing three garish turbans, it’s time to tell them that they’re not in India any more, and it’s most likely that they won’t hit a cow if they go too fast. Sorry about the blatant racial steriotyping there… Point #4: If you are a woman, get off the road.

Okay, that last one was a joke. I know quite a few excellent female drivers. And yes, I’m talking to you, hot stuff. ;)

Okay, this is my thing here. Every time the government ratifies a civil union (the only recognized marriages), they’re making what is basically a moral judgement, because the only civil unions that the state will currently ratify are unions between one man and one woman. Now, obviously the government has no philosophical basis for this particular value judgement, considering that they claim to be an amoral state. So what will eventually end up happening — as it is — is that various groups with “alternative” lifestyles will be haranguing the state for legal status as perfectly sanctioned civil unions.

I propose to circumvent this problem, along with several others. Take control of marriage out of the hands of the government. With the way common-law marriages are happening nowadays, what’s the different? We certainly can’t force everyone to accept a Judeo-Christian mindset. So we have to either convert the entire culture, or work with what we’ve got.

So let the various religions marry people the way they want. Within limits of course. You shouldn’t be able to marry a child, because the state still has a legitimate interest in protecting children against predators. But that would solve the problem of a supposedly amoral state making value judgements about something they really can’t control. And it would also remove even more of the hands of the government from meddling in church business. Marriage is still a religious affair. The state has co-opted the process. And it needs to go back where it came from.

I’ve turned down a certain road at least seven times in the last two weeks to see cops pulling into the same street. You might say that this is a lot of cops, and I’ll tell you that I work right next to a police station. So there’s cruisers everywhere, all the time. The thing is, these cruisers never use their signal lights, or as some people like to say, their blinkers. It annoys me. They just scurry around at the speed of light on little industrial streets and ignore all the traffic laws that they feel like, and it makes me mad. I could get a freaking ticket if I did that sort of thing. Which I don’t.

But the police force, just like every other authoritative body, needs to lead by example first, and then force of law or force of authority second. This becomes more important the closer and more personal the authority structure becomes. I’m not saying this is right, but this is the way it is. Deal with it. The government, well, it doesn’t really matter a whole lot whether or not you respect it, because you have to pay your taxes or they’ll boot you to prison. However, people like fathers (with teenagers), elders, and bosses don’t have this option. It matters very much whether or not people respect you — not because the people so much know how to do this, but that you are respectable. If you are respectable, then no one has any excuse. Not even the tiny bit of understanding that can be given to kid who doesn’t respect his father when the old man’s a jerk.

Christian culture is really the only kind of culture worth having. The only one that really has the “elevation” of humanity in mind. No other culture that has developed has done that. And modern agnostic “culture” is laughable at best. I mean, come on. Agnostic culture? Riiiight.

Laura and an amazing handsome (but not too tall) guy exited the most rocking concert of their lifetime by the side door. Everyone else was filtering out of the building into a slow drizzle. Laura looked at him; probably the cutest guy she had ever seen. Not too tall, but craigy. She didn’t know his name, but now, in the moment, that didn’t seem to matter. Somehow she had ended up holding his hand as he puller her from the building, adrenaline still coursing through both bloodstreams.

Oh, it had been a concert. Right. Not a concert. The concert. The concert to end all concerts.

They collapsed at the side of the building, both laughing. It had been a rush getting to the exit — quite literally a rush. Under, over, around people.

He pointed. “That’s my car.” Laura looked, and there it was. An old brown minivan of the Aerostar variety. Here, it was a rarity.

“You call that a car?” she asked, laughing again.

He grinned like a kid. “Oh yeah, quite.”

Then he pulled her again, over to the van. Suddenly, a beeping. Cellphone. Pulling it out of his pocket, the guy flipped it open. His eyes filled with concern. He said something soft, something almost frantic, and flipped it closed again.

“My mum,” he said, getting into the driver’s seat. “She’s had a stroke.”

Oh, thought Laura. A stroke.

He turned the key. Engine started. Into gear. He didn’t let the clutch out. Instead, he handed her the phone. “Take this,” he said. “Call me.”

She watched him go. Watched him circle the parking lot. Felt drops on her shoulders. When the van came back, she wondered if he wanted the phone back. But no. He leaned out the window. Asked her what her name was.

“Laura,” she told him. “I’m Laura.”

He nodded. “Take this, too.” He leaned out the van window and kissed her on the lips. Then waved. Drove off.

She put a hand to her lips. Strange.

Flipped the phone open. Caught a glimpse of a few numbers. Watched the battery die.

Smiled.

Cried.

Life moves in rhythms and cycles, and it seem sometimes like the crest of a wave, sometimes the trough. Often like this is the same crest and trough as before. Like circles.

But then, circles bring their own perspective. Earth revolves around the sun, but the sun is constantly in a state of flux. A moon circles the earth, and though it follows the same circuit, the vista always changes. Circles bring perspective. They allow reflection, the sort that forward movement does not always allow. Every time around brings new thought, a different angle on a problem, sheds another colour of light.

Circles are not always the evil they seem, says I. I have been running circles around myself since the day I was born.