There’s a brochure designed to help people wanting to move to Canada entitled ‘could I be Canadian and not know’ I remember thinking it was funny but I’ve soon come to understand that at times knowing what you are or feel, isn’t always as clear-cut. I’ve been plagued with a bit of uncertainty myself. Lately I’ve been thinking ‘could I be anti-American and not know’

Every now and then, a thought, an action, a reaction would have me furtively thinking to myself “does that make me anti-American”. There’s the Iraqi occupation, which I’m against so obviously I must be, then one day I decided to go to Tim Horton’s instead of Starbucks because they’re cheaper and they toast my bagels.

On Monday my cable company sent a petition to sign for the radio and tv board to permit them to offer HBO, Showtime, Nickelodeon, ESPN etc to their customers. Apparently it’s illegal to watch these stations in Canada and almost half a million people are doing it so it’s sort of a way to legalize it I guess. Discussing this with my sister, she agrees that we shouldn’t sign it because the American stations will soon take over and probably push out the locals. We already have all the networks from NY to LA on all time zones and 80% of tv programs are American.

My sister recently starting making muffins and she asked me to get her one of those giant muffin pans. I went to the store the other day and found out there’re called ‘Texas muffin pans’. That kind of turned me off so I didn’t get the pan. I stood there wondering why it’s called that, I imagined how ‘everything is big in Texas’ and asked myself if I really needed to eat jumbo sized muffins?

Last night my sister and I were watching a show on LA’s WB station. Arnold Schwarzenegger kept popping up saying if you voted for him he’ll tax California’s Indian casinos, I don’t know if that’s a good thing but isn’t it enough they took their land?

Anyway I digress… so just as the show cuts for commercial a voice over comes on saying “This program is brought to you by the United States Army” I cringed thinking that doesn’t sound right in a subtly threatening way when you hear it out of the States My sister’s silent for a while and then goes “now that’s just disturbing, I pay exorbitant cable bills only to be told that my shows are being sponsored by the same folks killing innocent people in Iraq… who knows what else my cable bill pays for?”

I don’t know… but do these things make me Anti-American?

PLAYING: Fallen – Sarah McLachlan

READING: Hey, Nostradamus! – Douglas Coupland

WATCHING: Paradise Hotel

QUOTE: “we all begin with good intent”