from CTV: Fatal bear attack renews calls for bear hunt.

Why are we so uninventive? In light of several recent bear attacks, why are we entertaining the idea of renewing the slaughter of bears as a means of protecting people who are wandering in territory that one would have to assume could be inhabited by bears? Granted, the idea’s been put forth by hunters who have their own agenda, but are we really so primitive that shooting an animal is the best way we can come up with to handle them?

It’s tragic that a bear killed this young doctor, but they must have been aware that a bear attack was possible in northern Ontario, just as people in towns like Canmore, AB must know that they’re infringing on natural territory for bears. There’s obviously no stopping people from moving about the country, nor should there be. But surely the method by which we keep bears from wandering into our homes or the way we fend them off should we stray into theirs doesn’t need to be so brutal and mindless as just shooting them. We have big brains. We’re upright and have opposable digits. We’re the ones who’ve been killing them for shits & giggles since christ was a cowboy. I think we probably owe them 1) a little respect; 2) a better way to live together than to occasionally kill a bunch of them when they get too cranky.

Huzzah.

I just finished the last of the chapters that I’m meant to cover before leaving for the intensive up north on Sunday. A whole week of personal disclosure, role playing, emotional displays and coaching triads. I’d rather bathe with a dead bear than do any of that.

1. Go watch this clip of last night’s Daily Show, hosted by Crooks and Liars. The bit with Ed Helms almost killed me.
2. Throw a few bucks to C&L. They provide one of the most useful sites out there, and I cringe just thinking of their bandwidth costs.

Ever have one of those days where you just can’t seem to get anything done at work? Where the stuff you should be doing, and the stuff you want to do just pile up while you deal with 20 little things?

I need a protégé.

I’m trying to buy TIFF tickets that I was told would go on sale at 7 AM, but the site appears to be down. Looks like a monkey got funky with their global.asa file or something.

UPDATE (8:00 AM): now the site loads but I get a timeout when I link to the order form.

UPDATE2 (3:00 PM): I’ve been constantly reloading the order form, to no avail. I’ve only gotten a real page to load a couple of times, and then it just times out. One time, this morning, I got in to the point where my order form was complete, I was signed in, I’d submitted by credit card info…and it timed out on the VERY LAST STEP. Whore!

I believe that I shall soon give up. Even if I get through, surely the films I wanted are sold out by now. One of the films I wanted on the 16th — Beowulf & Grendel — sold out while I was submitting the first step of the form, and I doubt the others are still open. Oh well, at least I got my original five; poor T-Bone might not get any if this nonsense keeps up.

Have terrible Jamie Foxx movies taught us NOTHING?

Interesting report released by StatsCan today about chronic unemployment. Not surprisingly, Atlantic Canadians are over-represented among the chronically unemployed.

I say “not surprisingly” because I grew up there, in a fairly poor area of the province, and could see the culture of work avoidance that some people had. It was a circular process, where the culture fed the environment and the environment in turn fed the culture, but the culture definitely existed; for a select few “drawing pogey” was a full-time aspiration.

Weeks and weeks ago my little friend Janana* sent me this link from McSweeney’s and I’ve only just now gotten ’round to reading it. Several authors tell the stories behind their favourite songs, and some of them are incredibly moving. My favourites were Ted Jillson’s piece about The Flaming Lips‘ “Do You Realize”, Dan Clem on “How To Disappear Completely” by Radiohead and “The Church of Johnny Cash” by Elizabeth Miller.

*some names have been changed to protect the wee and nearly-married

We have our TIFF tickets. We have full bellies from Eggstasy. We have a good movie under our belts. We have to go back to work tomorrow.

3/4, etc.

Two more movies to report.

• Sometime over the lazy long weekend we watched The Clearing (imdb | rotten tomatoes), which was maybe a little better than I expected. RT had rated it pretty low, but I’m a big fan of Robert Redford so I had hope. The actual result was somewhere in between my hopes and fears (which sounds dramatic, but really people, it’s just a DVD). I’m glad they didn’t go where most Hollywood writers/directors would’ve taken it, but I’m also disappointed that it didn’t live up to the potential that it created in the first 3/4 of the film. It could have gone in some very interesting directions, but the end felt…I don’t know, almost apologetic. It’s a little disappointing, but it’s still better than fucking Underclassman.
• The Constant Gardener (imdb | rotten tomatoes) was the only film released this weekend that didn’t look hideous. Indeed, it looked pretty decent, so after picking up our TIFF tickets with CBGB we decided to go see it. It turned out to be even better than I thought; I half assumed it would slide downhill into a typical chase / shooter / clichefest, but it stuck with being a political film. I’ve read other reviews claiming it was too slow, but I think that so long as you’re a grownup and can actually sit through a documentary or episode of 60 Minutes you shouldn’t have any trouble. Highly recommended.