The shooting of Jean Charles de Menezes, and the reaction to it — especially in his native Brazil — have been at the forefront of news for the past few days. I haven’t commented as I’ve been away. Normally I’d be the first to decry police brutality — and the fact that Menezes was shot 8 times, 7 of those in the head — needs to be explained. But I have a hard time blaming the police officers for making the decision to shoot. It was the day after the second coordinated bombing attacks in as many weeks. The man left a building that was being monitored for terrorist activity, entered a tube station carrying a bag, and ran when officers identified themselves and told him to stop.

At this point you have pretty decent cause to suspect that the man is dangerous, and prudence — given the previous day’s events — demands that you assume he has a bomb. The man is running toward a train, where to date 6 of the 8 bombs have gone off. To me, it’s clear: you have no choice but to incapacitate him. Now, in a perfect world, the police would have a weapon that could knock him down and pin his hands behind his back such that he couldn’t set off a bomb. But the situation was far from perfect, and so officers had to choose, and they choose to shoot. I honestly feel that they had no other choice.

As I said, someone has to explain why Menezes was shot several times at point blank range, and why he wasn’t contained on the bus rather than in a busy tube station, but in the end I believe the police had little choice.

Just one more horrible side effect of the bombings, I guess.

This cold has me out of commission for today, so I have a little time to post in between shots of cough syrup and cups of neo-citran.

The visit was short, but the visit was good. It’s been a long time since the old home was that crowded (my parents, myself & my wife, my brother & his girlfriend, my other brother & his wife & 3 kids, two visiting Aussies and two dogs); in fact, the old original farm house was opened up and six of us bunked in there. With friends of ours stopping by and a constant flow of tourists looking to buy maple syrup, it was a busy place…but still relaxing.

There was a great deal of reading, napping, watching of weepie movies (none of which I did), as well as eating and playing cribbage (both of which I did with gusto). We picked strawberries, helped make a batch of maple cream, barbecued several times, and visited a distant relative (distant in the bloodline sense, not geographical; they’re just down the road) who was also home from the UK, and whose family threw a big outdoor get-together. I played with my nieces and nephew, showed our friends around some of the property (where we saw some rabbits and a pheasant…hardly the bear they were hoping for though), spent some time on the junk rock looking out over the farm and talked music with my dad. We celebrated a couple of upcoming birthdays, played frisbee with a backdrop of thunderclouds and watched people get frustrated with a utensil parlour trick.

So the weekend, obviously, was a good time. One brother had to leave early to catch a flight for work, and his wife took the kids home later that day. The other brother stayed on for a day or so before heading elsewhere in the province. Our flight had a bit of a hiccup: a lady just in front of us had a heart attack, we think, but she seemed ok when she got off the plane. Still, the pilot picked up the speed and made the fastest landing & taxi that I can remember so that a medical crew could come on board. I’m glad she was ok; the couple next to me didn’t seem so concerned (“Geez, that landing was so rough“; “C’mon, medical people, hurry up…I’m tired!”) but some people are just assholes. Whattaya gonna do?

So now we’re back. The cats are happy to see us, I’m happy to have a supply of Tylenol cold and warm soup on hand, and happy that we can relax now until December.

Peace.

I got back from my weekend trip yesterday to find an early birthday present — season 1 of the BBC series The League Of Gentlemen — waiting for me. Looking forward to watching and, by all reports, being disturbed by it.

Whoa. Medical emergency (not ours, obviously) on the flight but all seems to be well. We’re in a cab, headed for home.

Dag, my throat hurts.

Last NS update: we’re now sitting at our gate, waiting for our plane. Everything *appears* to be on schedule. Fingers crossed.

Right now I’m drinking hot chocolate to soothe my sore throat. It seems the sickness has spread from our mother to my brother and now to me. At least it didn’t ruin my fun for the rest of the weekend.

More tomorrow.

I’ll post more detail later, but for now let me summarize by saying that I am very full, relaxed, fly-bitten and sunburned.

What is it about some people that makes them think it’s ok to cut your fingernails in public?

Anyway…

We’ve arrived, but my brother’s bags have not. I checked for him, but the bags just didn’t make the connection. That is a suck.

I like Pearson terminal 1 so much more than terminal 3. We breezed through (in so much time, in fact, that we now have nearly an hour of post-dinner sitting around before our flight boards); with any luck the rest of our trip will go as smoothly.

S’been an interesting day so far: packing, running errands, sending emails, readying blog posts, checking the news, cursing the fact that I’ll miss the NHL draft lottery, etc. And then there was the crazy man.

This morning my boss and I were walking along Bloor to a meeting, when some guy standing in the middle of the street started yelling at me. Not someone near me; he was very obviously yelling at me. I had no idea who he was, but he was angry at what I was saying…which is weird, ’cause we were discussing what might be the most boring topic you could conceive of: RSS feed auto-discover tags. Obviously he was drunk or stoned or batshit crazy or something, so we didn’t pay him much mind, but he was yelling some pretty nasty stuff. I think he wanted to engage in fisticuffs! I also don’t think it helped that my boss and I were laughing about it. Anyway, he disappeared (presumably to the other side of the street, but it’s possible he jumped down a manhole to escape the voices) and we strolled on to our meeting.

Gotta say, though, it’s not often I get yelled at by a crazy person before 9 AM.

Anyhoo, I’m off for a few days. I’ll be back Tuesday. Be good.

PS: according to a fortune cookie I just ate, my “emotional nature is strong and emotional.” Hooray!

I’m off for the weekend, but should be faithfully posting again by Tuesday. And wouldn’t you know it, the song that’s stuck in my head as I prepare to head for the airport: the underwear gnome song from South Park. Dag.

Take care, kids.