It's snowing again. Come on...I get the point that I live in a coastal climate. I get the point that Canadian winters often require a "cease and desist" order before they'll roll over & die. But for heaven's sake. I got dressed this morning & came to work in one of the faculty buildings, and honest to God, I felt like I had been propelled willy nilly into January 2001.

As a Toronto girl, I need to know: who do I have to call about this?

* * *

So as mentioned in the previous section, I began working again. This time I'm making good on all the hours the Department paid me in a hopeful spirit. I think that they were pretty damn magnanimous to send me a pay cheque without seeing any work in return, and even the small amount I made as a part timer really helped during the time that the Boy was unemployed. It's working out really well: I have two weeks between practicum and graduation, and as I'm not moving out and unable to take a legitimate teaching job (or any other job for that matter), this is a good way to use the time.

The fact that I have done less than an hour of concentrated work in the last two days is something that doesn't quite fit into my intentions. But oh well.

* * *

You know, I don't think I like goth clubs anymore. I was thinking about this as I got dressed this morning. While we were at Shadowplay - which was a pretty good time - I remarked to the Boy that the whole Nova Gothic experience convinced me that I was more interested in seeing my friends than seeing black-clad strangers. Also, the whole finding-a-mate thing is over for me now, so there's no compelling need to look at beautiful bois & girls (other than the compulsion of 'beauty is truth, truth beauty'). The third reason my enchantment is waning is that LiveJournal has showed me that many club regulars are not as intelligent as I'd naïvely believed. I had honestly thought that the goth scene was somehow distinguished by brighter-than-average participants. They're not unintelligent - most of them - they're just not the 100 watt bulbs I had assumed them to be.

I still like the clothes, though. So as long as I have the wardrobe and friends who are still excited about the occasional trip up Queen West, I'll keep going. Besides, disillusionment is a very goth emotion.

* * *

And then there's the child-free thing.

I am enjoying the furor, I have to say. I find most child-free types assaholic, to use a word I haven't spoken aloud since the nineties. Past of my revulsion is simple logical response to some very odious acts of whining, part of it is concern that intelligence seems to be self-selecting out of the human race, and part of it is pure emotion. There are some very good reasons not to have children, but even if you don't want to become one of the child-enhanced, you have to realize that babies are the only game in town. Even Aldous Huxley couldn't figure out a way to remove babies from society completely.

And then there's the whole anti-family angle. As a third wave feminist, I resent the implication that choosing family over career makes me some hopelessly retrograde bubble-headed conservative brainwashed Barbie Doll. And I resent that fact that the child-free types seem to have turned family into a class issue, with the intelligentsia opting out.

I think I have a fairly good appreciation of what drives the child-free folks, as it's the flip side to a particular pattern of ignorance nearly everyone goes through; to whit, the Perfect Children of the Spinster Syndrome. We all know how to parent far better than parents, right? Since I got into teacher's college, I've done a lot of growing and changing, and one of the ways I've changed is in how I regard young people. I've always been enamoured with the idea of children far more than children themselves, and this attitude is death to the aspiring educator. In two years I have had a great deal of close & personal time with a wide variety of kids, and I have to say that tolerance goes a long way towards solving the problems with children. Kids are kids, and the sooner you accept that, the sooner you can jettison the idea that the universe owes you a perfectly-behaved society. Child-free people should just accept the fact that the impulse centres of the brain do not become controlled until the early twenties, so all children are struggling with neural pathways that are not particularly well-groomed.

And yeah. I dislike the small girl who runs up & down the aisle every Sunday morning. Or rather, I dislike the fact that her mother pumps her full of Timbits and gives her free range over the church. It's not this tiny chicklet's fault, and realizing that might go a long way towards healing the divide between the child-free and the child-enhanced. I have this theory, you see. My theory is that many child-free rants boil down to simple intolerance of other people. And also that many child-free people live in a state of hopeless longing for the glory days of college ("they all became parents and changed!! suddenly I can't talk about finnegan's wake!! waaaah!!!") and camouflage that in dislike of children. Three words: let it go. And three more: grow the fuck up. You yourselves are the most immature participants in this debate.

* * *

2 years ago today: "Do you like...gothic stuff?"