Okay?

Just flour. Maybe bleached. Let’s say it is. And slightly lumpy.

If you chucked it in my face, that’d suck. If it got in my eyes, like happened to a high school vice-principal in June of this year, it would really suck. Could it do some longer term damage? I think it’s likely. But would you call it a weapon?

I know that legally, if it’s not your fist it’s a weapon, but it seems like a funny definition. Why not assault with an object? Does an object become a weapon the moment I pick it up to bash someone with? So if I were to fling cats at people, those cats would become weapons? Haha! Oliver would not want to stay in a police evidence baggie.

Laws is weird! :o

Hmm. I guess it kinda makes sense that laws would be a bit loopy. They’re put there by people who’ve listened to the most fucked up criminal trial shit day in day out for decades. Like the Rengel case. You remember:

Oh man — that doesn’t get any easier.

This is the teenager who coerced her boyfriend into killing another girl because she was jealous of her. She was tried and sentenced as an adult and the boyfriend, D.B., is on trial now. In his case, it’s going to be simply a matter of how much time he’ll get. The trial will just be going through the motions. And they’re deliberating whether or not to try him as an adult, meaning they’d release his identity as they did hers. Sure hope they do! I’m curious to see, aren’t you?

The other thing I’d be curious to see would be the plans for the proposed Loblaws supermarket / Ryerson hockey rink. Right. And not just some weird hybrid, but inside the hallowed halls of Maple Leaf Gardens, no less:

You may remember a few years back when Loblaws tried to buy the Gardens to make the building into another supermarket. I’m one of those odd Canadians who don’t follow hockey at all, but even I knew that that wouldn’t fly. After all, the Gardens are an institution. To have a university hockey team in there seems appropriate, but a supermarket… It just doesn’t sound like a way to popularize the idea of re-opening the place.

There’s also the problem of having all that flour (not to mention other baking supplies), near all that violence and with no laws.

Thank. God.

Thirty-six days of military analogy was getting to be challenging, to be quite honest. For some strange reason I had decided I would never use the same term twice to describe the unions. Maybe I was trying to illegitimize them. Half an hour each night trying to come up with a new military unit: squad … squadron … division … unit … Luftwaffe … damn it! … squad? … I’VE ALREADY SAID THAT! … hmmm … how about … unit? … *much wailing and gnashing of teeth*

Not easy work; the cogs turned slowly and in circles much of the time. Did it keep me honest? Oh no, just constipated.

Terrible.

But at least it’s over. Here, have a final gander; bury your face in this one last time:

Has anyone invented Smell-O-Web yet? Because this is the reason to avoid that.

However, I really want to take a moment to stress that this really is both temporary and isolated. A TCL reader had expressed concern that the agreement would be too little, too late for this weekend’s Caribana festival.

I give you my personal pledge of honour (it involves a hand gesture!): even if the strike hadn’t been resolved by this weekend, the wiser and more responsible Caribana leadership had a contingency plan in place. Too many people would be really bummed out if it was canceled, especially over something like garbage. There’s the loss of income thing too.

Besides all of this, neighbourhoods and businesses have done a great job in keeping their own surroundings clean. They’re not as clean as usual, but that should be taken in context; for a major metropolis, Toronto is unusually feces free.

Anyone with a struggling shop open in a highly populated area understands that people don’t want to be shopping on rotting filth. It’s just natural that they’d want to keep the place looking neat.

If you’re looking for something to worry about during your visit, may I suggest murderous teens?

I had followed this case a while ago because it had so many interesting elements. The story basically goes that a teenage girl withheld sex and goaded her boyfriend to kill a girl she had perceived as her rival (though they had probably never met). The boy stabbed the “rival” outside of her own home on New Year’s day, and the murder’s been pretty much under wraps until the verdict. That came today.

The guilty part wasn’t surprising. The fact that they tried and convicted her as an adult was. And the life sentence. First-degree murder, pre-meditated through hundreds of very clear text messages. Not a very bright girl. And then there’s this:

The guy killed for that?!

Look, that’s not even being shallow; everything I’ve read indicates she’s unbelievably self-centered, clearly manipulative, crass, and devoid of any remorse or personality. Along with the extra storage for the winter months, that doesn’t leave much room for advancement in her life, does it?

Obviously, the boy’s father should be held responsible for not teaching him about masturbation, porn, the internet; even a simple Sears catalog for heaven’s sake! The whole nightmarish thing could’ve been prevented.

Such lovely brazier models. If only …

Just kidding. Yup, apparently that’s a bonafide legal defence these days.

In case your cave doesn’t get cable yet, the story is one of your basic teenage withholding-sex-for-murder deals. Right now the jury’s still out on whether or not the female half of the duo is culpable, but the precendent that appears to have been set has already been decided.

After all, if you can say “I didn’t really mean it” when on trial for first-degree murder (meaning it was planned), you should certainly be able to use it in almost any other criminal and civil defence.  Consider this courtroom evidence, a few excerpts from instant messages between the two:

“I want her dead … if it takes more than a week, then we’re just gonna be friends”
“ur getting blocked until u kill her”

The mother of the accused girl suggests that “they were trying to make each other jealous”. Her lawyer says that “things don’t necessarily mean what they appear to mean”*. Presumably Judge Nordheimer weighs each defence before allowing anything under the sun into his courtroom, so in this instance it must have been deemed a-okay.

I’m not suggesting that the defence will fly with the jury. Arguing that the words “dead” and “kill” in instant messages (where brevity usually prevails) mean to disassociate or block, especially when the longer word  “blocked” is used to mean just this, is a huge stretch. Even punctuation seems to be well thought out, and the diminutive “ur” and”u”, and a captilized “I” suggest a domninant attitude in the relationship.

Whatever; the point is that whichever angle you approach this from, it’s been allowed to be a part of the defence, including the bit where it wasn’t really serious. I really hope that when the full transcripts are released, these few details will somehow make sense. Right now, I get the impression that I should be able to make death threats of all sorts as long as I laugh about it afterwards.