what_the_fuck_am_i_doing_here epitome of incomprehensibility is the name of a musical, err/rather, "anti-folk opera" about the Quebec student protests in 2012. You can hear music from it at http://www.whatthefuckamidoinghere.com/?page_id=10 - the title song, to my ears, is the best, and the sentiment is appropriate for lots of stuff. They're doing it at Concordia tomorrow evening at 7, and I think I'll go. I have tutoring French conversation workshop choir first, but I've already packed food I can take with me and the show's free (at Qpirg, room 204 of 1500 de Maisonneuve west. You should come! Whoever "you" are! I can say hello to you. I will be wearing a necklace with a large green-yellow pendant shaped like a treble clef, and possibly bright pink rain boots, so you can come up to me and say "Hi, epitome of incomprehensibility" and I will respond "Hello." Oh, and one side of my hair is still shorter than the other. 140221 ... e_o_i I never closed those brackets.) There. I feel better now. So: what the fuck was I doing there? I liked it, even though I asked silly questions. It was one girl with a guitar, and it was a cool guitar, and she sang fast and clearly at the same time. We joined along sometimes in the choruses. It was quite cosy, nowhere near the large room of the auditorium of the Hall building where they have the Cinema Politica series (and other films and lectures). But I got annoyed at myself for getting annoyed: this was for resenting the jab at pacifists, though now that I think about it it was mostly at police who were "pacifying" by repressive means. I guess I consider myself a pacifist - partly because I've seen how destructive violence can be, partly because I am violent and have strong dislikes and part of that is an irrational, paradoxical prejudice against the military. I have some sympathies towards anarchy, and the story the songs were telling came from an anarchist perspective, but can't I be an anarcho-pacifist who votes? And who doesn't throw things at buildings because 1) is afraid of being arrested and 2) finds destruction a form of violence, though has written graffiti before, mostly nonsensical things like "Ineluctable modality of the visible means never saying you're sorry" and such, not lately though... but heartily enjoys protests and will chant slogans, especially if they pun or rhyme (the actual cause comes a close second, motivation-wise). Leaving aside tiresome self-consciousness, I was there because I hadn't been in Quebec for the student strikes of fall 2011-spring 2012 (the "printemps erable") that resulted from anger in tuition increases, and underlying that a more serious discontent with the top-down way things are being run. I wanted to hear a grassroots, been-there-done-that perspective. On the outside, what happened was that tuitions were neither abolished nor raised as much as the Quebec Liberals said they'd raise it. But then the Parti Quebecois was elected and they've come up with an even worse proposed law, the so-called "charter of values" which prohibits public workers (including teachers and doctors, not only people who work specifically for the government) from wearing "ostentatious" religious symbols. Secular state = fair enough, but this seems to specifically discriminate against Muslim women. It's less a "let's be secular law" than a "let's hate hijabs" law. And how is state repression better than religious repression? How will it discourage fundamentalism? How, Pauline Marois? Answer me that. So, from bad to worse. Not the students' fault specifically. But qpirg has a library and bookshelves and you can sit and read. The politics are not so much narrowly leftist as leftist-all-over-the-place. I rather dislike the directional metaphor. It came out of a concrete situation, the seating of the French parliament, but left and right are used to mean to many things. And that ain't rite. (Or maybe it is.) Anyway, it's a place I might check out again. Dunno why I didn't go there as a student. Lazy righting essays, I s'pose. 140226 ... e_o_i I've half a mind... (Yes, yes, we know you do) ...to declare my treble clef necklace a religious symbol, and invent a Cult of the Treble Clef. It will be one of those violent matriarchal religions with ritual sacrifice, like smashing pianos, and castration of boy sopranos for the sacred cause of high notes. (Sadly, that did happen in Italy several hundred years ago. I mean the castrating, so that a man's pair of lungs could be employed in the service of a soprano range. But why do that when women can sing loudly too and men can do falsetto so well anyway? ...I'm not going to accept a verdict of "perversion"; if blurring gender boundaries itself is perversion, than surely so is emphasizing them. Lipstick. 'Tisn't natural. But it is a perversion of justice, in that sense, to mutilate kids who can't decide for themselves. See, I'm not out to say that the Cult of the Treble Clef is a GOOD religion. It can be a bad one. It can worship the band Bad Religion for all I care. The point is it could be a religion as well as anything else.) 140226 ... e_o_i Damn, this just reminds me that my treble clef necklace broke. 210925 what's it to you? who go blather from