Question for today

 October 7, 2001 - Question for Today: Why does Bush only read the letter from the little girl who thinks it's OK for her dad to be sent to war?

Roma

Roma at Lac Castor near Hunterstown, Quebec, August 25, 2001

Roma Flag, colours from Roma nationalist movement in 1930s, wheel added later to remember origins of Roma in India

Diary 2001

Wednesday, April 11, 2001

Diary 2001

2001 - Meditations on mortality, An old old man came to the office..... he wanted to show us some medals he'd got in the mail recently - they were only the two service medals that everyone got for joining and serving in the war... he would be just twice my age... he also told me a weird story about having to go to the Elgin Hotel during the war because an airman and a army girl had become stuck together and they had to take them down the freight elevator with a cover over them... he said the airman had died somehow during the process to separate them..... Murder, lots of shouting in the court room...." I want your blood"....
May 20, 2001 - Crabapple blossoms falling.... last week I saw a woman at the Chinese pavillion in the Botanical gardens in Montreal play the Erhu.... a two stringed violin - it is amazing the expression of sadness that she made with only a small and simple instrument.
May 25 - found the holy well........
July 27 - Pictures from the bot garden and a rainbow ..... there is a little grey white smudge in the sky that's a comet - I found my camera battery was dead when I got up early in the morning to take its picture and I have not gotten up early enough to get it again..... the HMS Hood has been found in the Denmark Strait and they showed the last sailor left alive from it dropping a wreath over it. My mother's neighbour died on it......
July 28 - Fireworks, where are the fireworks of yesteryear.... specifically those of 1984?

I saw the Erhu woman again in Montreal. This time bought a CD.
Shen Qi
August - "Shorts Deli, on the Main".......never expect someone on Morphine to pronounce "Schwartz". Saw where the fireworks of 84 were..... same kids playing in the park, yet they can't be the same............Birthday..... camped with Romany folk......... hosted by hippies blonde dreadlocks.....worship Kali Hindu Goddess of Death, their flag has Chakra of Change, wheel of mobility and to remind them of their homeland a thousand years ago in India.... Yul Bryner half Rom... sang songs love death Auschwitz, told story about Merlin turning himself into a good witch and turning her into himself to keep a promise and to marry her....... Red squirrel runs out from stage, looks at audience, jumps on Rom's thigh, he smiles, doesn't move, squirrel jumps off.....it was a squirrel and not a chipmunk a long time ago.......Flamenco dancing, the turning gestures of the hands symbolize birth life death, the death card in Tarot, not a thing to be feared but a symbol of change and rebirth, big bonfire unearthly yellow flames, sparks shoot skywards, fall to the ground.. fireworks are only pretty because you let go of them................ a woman shakes a plastic bag at her little white dog on the neighbours' lawn...

Click on door to enter world of Roma.. Door of abandoned house between Louiseville and St. Paulin, Quebec Sept 11, 2001!! A day that will live in Infamy! Remind me to get a souvenir copy of the times................ I got a big cheque from my late Aunt..........................everything silent, first time ever, no planes in the sky, no boats on the river, police and Air cadets watching the water.. 
As the late great Ramones said:
You watch the world complain, but you do it anyway
Who am I, am I to say
Bonzo goes to bitburg then goes out for a cup of tea
As I watched it on TV somehow it really bothered me
Drank in all the bars in town for an extended foreign policy
If there's one thing that makes me sick It's when someone tries to hide behind politics
October 7, 2001 - Question for Today: Why does Bush only read the letter from the little girl who thinks it's OK for her dad to be sent to war?
Neighbour dies, I was looking at him the day before - all grey....
December 25 - 87 years ago today my grandfather was sitting in a trench in France when the Germans came over for Christmas.... he said they heard them singing the same songs in English and German and then the Germans came into no-man's-land and they had snowball fights and played soccer.....

David Tsubouchi's secret SCTV stint

Tsubouchi's secret SCTV stint










copyright 2001 Mark Bellis



 from SCTV broadcast

Now, who was that man in the shades with a beard, here shown with Robin Williams in an SCTV episode from 1982...... could it be a certain David Tsubouchi (Shown in insert), now Ontario's Solicitor-General in the Progressive Conservative government? (Rather scarily in charge of the police.... prone to do crossword puzzles during those boring meetings with the public he has to take part in....and who reminded all those people on welfare how much better the weather was in Vancouver when he cut back payments... Tsubo portrayed a Japanese porn dealer in David Cronenberg's Videodrome, something he was understandably modest about when someone noticed it after he'd been named minister) ....in this spoof of the Deerhunter, he plays a Chinese gangster who gets clocked by Williams.........one of my big pet peeves is North American film makers think that everyone from East Asia looks alike, and they often put people who REALLY don't look Chinese in with regular Cantonese - and that's what got my attention on Tsubo. If you watch Hong Kong movies, you'll notice that they get Japanese actors to play Japanese roles.
Tsubo did this stilted Fu Manchu Chinese accent as he extorted money from Williams......."Ah the American, yes he's here but it's going to cost you... thirty-four thousand dollars ... American!"
Ah well, I'm sure it improved the public image of Asian-Canadians no end......