Peevery

Little peeves that have been peeving me of late:

Can we stop referring to suicide bombers as "cowards"? It's kind of hypocritical in a society as afraid of death as ours is.
What makes groups such as Hezbollah "cowardly", by my lights, is their strategy of blending in with the civilian population of Lebanon as they wage their low-level guerrilla war against Israel. This forces Israel to target civilians, meaning regrettable, but necessary, innocent casualties.

Can the Toronto Star examine the sky in its world, just once? A few months ago, it featured an article about fostering change in Toronto. The sequel came out today: it makes for gag-inducing reading. Supposedly over four hundred readers wrote in, and all of them, to judge from today's pap, spoke eloquently of the need for "community", the need for "broad-based initiatives across all socioeconomic strata", the need for "an annual potluck dinner held in all city parks."
Yike.
Not one word about the gridlock choking the city, beyond the usual demands for a huge increase in public transit funding. Not one word about the homeless choking the downtown core, on which untold millions are spent each year with no tangible improvement in their lot. Not one word about the gun murders, up again this year, beyond the vague notion that if we could just love these criminals a little more, they'd drop their weapons and become paragons of society.

Yeah, right.

Look, I know I'm supposed to be all for public transit because it saves the environment and yadda yadda yadda. I ride the bus at least three times a week. And I hate it.
For one thing, the so-called "air" on Grand River Transit busses is anything but. They stopped making busses with windows that open years ago, and us riders are forced to breathe some ungodly synthetic air that has me on the verge of passing out if I'm on the bus more than half an hour.
For another, the seven-minute trip to work takes nearly an hour by bus, due to a lengthy layover and travel by the least direct route possible.
And for a third, at least once a week I am forced to board a bus already stuffed with people, the majority of them high school students and thus (it must be said) little better than animals, their feet firmly planted on the seat ahead of them, glaring insolently at elderly and pregnant ladies who ask them to yield, screaming their fool heads off about teenage drama, oh, the horror of it. It's but a matter of time before the knives--or the guns--make an appearance. At times like that I'd rather ride in a car that runs on coal. Or seal blubber.

I'd ride a bike, but my insistence on obeying the law by riding on the street marks me as a target to every driver that comes along. No, thanks.

As for the homeless, surely the goal should be to get these people off the street and into shelters, housing, jobs? Until very recently, Toronto's city council refused to even count the homeless and find out just how many there were, on the specious grounds that this would somehow violate their rights. Now that the count's been done, we've discovered there are far fewer homeless than we've been led to believe (although still a goodly number). Is city council happy? Hell, no! It insists we must be missing scads of homeless people. Gotta justify those millions of dollars in annual funding somehow.

And about those young thugs shooting up the city: if ever there was a quality of life issue, this is it. There's little quality in your life when you're spread-eagled and bullet-riddled on a sidewalk. I have a suggestion for all those (mostly Liberal) politicians who claim that a little more love will turn the trick. I call it "Adopt-a-Thug". (I similarly feel that those violently anti-abortionist whackos should be forced to adopt an unwanted child.) Let's put our money where our mouths yap, and see how long it is before that money's stolen, eh?