iMatt :: The Blog of Matt Clare

This weekend was my cousin Amy Arbuckle and Bill Bradley’s wedding out in Kitchener Waterloo.

The service was in Startford and best described as short and sweet. The reception was held back in Kitchener and my aunt had outdone herself with all the snowflake themed decorations. The other amazing sight was Bill’s dad, who lost 110 pounds for the occasion! Speech’s were great, and my parents danced the night away. Of course Amy look amazing and I think the Clare family is pretty lucky to have Bill as part of it now.

Lindsay also looked very nice. She looked like a Kennedy at the ceremony! She also finally had a good chance to meet my cousins; as they got her drunk at the reception.

I wanted to have a photo up for this post, but I neglected to hit my father up for his pictures before I left Markham. (I’ll get one soon)

Sunday was also Lindsay Turko’s* birthday. After I sent her flowers at work on Thursday I wasn’t sure if anything could top my gift, but her parents managed to do it with an iPod.

All that said: I would suggest that the two topics that I am the most ill-equipped to include in my blog (so far) are birthdays and weddings. So all those that can give a better account are welcome to in the comments section of this post.

* Why did I include my girlfriend’s last name in my own blog? Because I told her it’d be funny if mattclare.ca came up as the number one Google result for her name

By now you likely heard that the Supreme Court of Canada ruled to extend marriage rights to gays and lesbians in a unanimous opinion. I for one feel better about my own Canadian citizenship after the decision. (Parliament can allow gay marriage, top court decides, The Globe & Mail).

Why should two people that committed to each other, and who are that big a part of each other’s life’s, not be granted the rights that extend from marriage: property, health/survival benefits and other legal rights, to simple visitation rights if one is dying in a hospital? I don’t think the union needs to be called marriage, but since a log time ago religious marriage was codified in civil law, there seems to be little choice. Additionally, I’m glad that each religion is free to make it’s own decisions about if it is going to honour it or not. Both decisions are in the spirit of what the founder’s intent was when the charter was created.

Another bit of good news about honouring the rights of Canadians was Ontario Premier Dalton McGuinty words about Debbie Peliti, who found $40,000 and turned it in to the cops and was given a $2,000 reward.

Peliti is on welfare, and a mother of six. Her welfare case worker had called and inquired about the reward, as her benefits ‘should’ be reduced because of her ‘earnings’. The NDP brought it up in the house and Dalton did the right thing and met her and told her she would not be penalized for her honesty.

Here is what I really made my drive back from St. Catharines today, quoting CTV’s T.O. woman to keep reward for turning in loot article:

…..He also said the former Conservative government’s vilification of anyone on social assistance created “a different impression” of welfare recipients.

“If Ontarians want to know what do people on welfare look like, what do people on welfare do, now you know,” McGuinty said.

“But for fate, we would be on welfare, so we’ve got a responsibility to lend a hand.”

Those words that Mr. McGuinty said on the streets of T.O, represent the biggest change I wanted to see in the welfare system in Ontario.

So, this Christmas, give the gift of acceptance to the otherwise unduly persecuted.

I picked up a copy of risen (risenmagazine.com) today because Billy Corgan was on the cover. As you may or may not know, I’m a huge Smashing Pumpkins fan. Not only do I have over forty of the bands released disks *, but more than that, I consider Mr. Billy Corgan a major inspiration in my life. Every teen has their angst, Billy channeled his into expressions of love, sadness and happiness that shaped how I see the world. That resonates with me (and most other bloggers).

The interview covers how Billy suffers his fame willingly, but suffers none the less. He said the lowest point was when one of the staff members at the funeral service for his mother (which, not mentioned in the article, is not his biological mother….) said “I’m sorry to hear about your mother. Can I have an autograph?”. The supposed, hard hitting magazine printed that Billy told him to ‘f-uck’ off. Building on that, Billy spoke about a tabloid article that he saw with photos of Brittany Spears at the beach and the caption ‘Cellulite at 22?’. Celebrity is pain: it’s pain to be a celebrity, it’s pain to be holding yourself up to that (body) image.

One section that I thought really captured what is Billy Corgan was his response to ‘Would you rather be blissfully ignorant, or have knowledge and be a little grumpy?’.

The other day I was looking at my cats, and they were blissfully being cats, chasing a bug or something, and I thought, God, I’m going to have to bury these guys some day. That’s the beauty of life; you can’t really appreciate the depth of your love for something unless you’re willing to embrace the sorrow that exists as the expression of life. It’s there. If you want to stay in the moment of oh, that’s cute, the cats are playing, I don’t think you can get to the depth oh how amazing it it that these two little creatures are programmed to chase a bug.

That’s Billy Corgan.

The new album sounds good and I can’t wait to hear it. As for the poetry of Blinking With Fists, his book, I’ll be honest: I relate to the subject of poetry, and if it’s at all abstracted I don’t get it.

So that’s my contribution to the cult of celebrity pain.

* I also have a whole bunch of bootleg MP3s, but as Billy once said, if you’re after our bootlegs then you probably have already bought all the albums you’re going to buy. Just don’t perpetuate the bad live shows.

My last post I mentioned how Lindz and I had a nice visit with Erin, Mark and baby Eden (very cute photos).

Well apparently Mark and Erin got engaged on Sunday!

Congratulations!

Lindz and I had a nice weekend in the St. Catharines. We went down to the Falls View Casino and did a little shopping and had dinner (oddly, no gambling). Then we braved the high winds to get back to the car and went back to my plave and finally watched Super Size Me (it was always all rented before). I highly recomend the movie, if you like docs or not, you’ll like this.

Lastly, here’s a web site that ‘reviews’ the US gov’s new ready.gov website, and the signage found there in: http://www.uspoliticsforum.com/emergency/