Volume 1, Issue 6
Monday, July 11, 2011
As you can see, we've changed our circulation to Mondays. I feel like people read a little more during the week, then over the weekend. Especially time-wasting-at-work blogs. So Monday it is. This week's On The Street comes courtesy of Londonderry Mall's parking lot. It's difficult to tell the exact year of this Corvette, other than the fact that it was built between 1968-1982. A few things would make it a little easier; for example, from 1968-1973, The Corvette had a gaping hole in the side of the front fender for a vent that was somewhat like a '#' if I can describe it correctly. From 1973-1974, although this vent was gone, the car retained a flat tail panel. In 1974 the car got the tapered tail panel. Unlike C4 (1984-1996) models, the C3 models did not have a removable panel here, it was part of the entire fiberglass body structure. But outside of that, we can't really tell. It has a custom hood, and custom headlights, the 1980-1982 'euro' nose, which could have been added after. The tail-lights had been replaced with old bullet style lenses, and the wheels and sidepipes are straight out of the 1970's. Same with the paint job. It's not rare to see a custom Corvette, but it is rare to see one that looks like it was owned by Hyde from That 70's Show. Who is harbouring these vehicles?
Female Leagues - An Introspective Into Female Sports
I was walking through West Edmonton Mall on a little shopping excursion this past Thursday, and was able to watch a little of the Brick Invitational hockey tournament. Specifically, it was the Boston Jr. Bruins against the California 2001's in tournament play. If you are unaware, the Brick Invitational is a hockey tournament, put on by overzealous hockey-dad Bill Comrie since 1990, pits 'super novice' teams of 9-10 year olds against each other. I imagine it's a hell of a lot of fun to travel across country and play other teams in a tournament like this, fueled by parental cash from other rich hockey parents and ex NHLers like Doug Weight, who coaches one of the teams. And on California, plays Scott Niedermayer's kid, who even wears his #27.
As I was watching the game there were a few things that occurred to me. One was that these kids were obviously in the process of being groomed for NHL careers. The other was a lot more upsetting; that the 10 year old, little redheaded girl playing for California would never see a career like most of these boys would.
NHL is a funny league, because it's one of the few sports leagues that you don't get a college grant for going to play. You don't play NCAA before you get drafted into the league, because there's so many other minor leagues. That means, generally, hockey players in the NHL can be complete morons. The bottom line salary for an NHL player, whether or not they have a 1 way, 2 way contract, or continue playing in the minors after drafted is $500,000 a year. Look, I'm not saying they didn't work hard to achieve that, spending their entire lives focusing on being better at hockey than anyone else rather than, say being mediocre in university level Calculus and English or whatever to get your average joe-schmo job and live an average life. The thing is that one little girl who was kicking ass up and down the ice could spend as much time and energy on her craft as anyone else, and she's not going to achieve that type of salary.
It, quite simply, broke my heart.
At the Olympics, or international tournaments, we cheer on the women's teams. In curling tournaments we remark at how attractive they are. When it comes to the big bucks, they're shit out of luck.
I have to think, if we really loved hockey as much as we say we did, we would have no problem with decent-money women's leagues. We get MORE hockey, right? What's wrong with that?
The little girl in super novice is the general problem we're still facing in society today regarding the feminist movement. It's cool for her to be there, but it's still odd for her to be there. And where she can go in that career is basically, well, nowhere that makes any decent money, or could even support a household, let alone make $500,000 a year. The fact is, many careers are still seen as 'man jobs' in spite of there being no reason for this. At the top ranks of hockey, sure a guy can generally skate faster and hit harder than a woman because physically they end up larger. I'm sorry about basic problems of anatomy. But outside of that, why are there so few women in engineering?
We support that girls can do anything, and then go, hey, a girl in super novice hockey, well she's good now but she'll never go anywhere. And it's sad that she doesn't know that now. I'm glad she gets the support she needs to play super novice, but it'll be a sad day when she realizes that society is going to take a giant piss on her dreams because of a strange gender inequality that needs not exist.
What's the solution; at least at this level? Well luckily new generations of people are being taught that boys and girls are equal. Being taught you should make the same and can do the same as a boy as a girl should make you demand it. And a large demand often results in change. However, on super novice hockey teams do we employ affirmative action? Like the CFL makes Canadian players required, should a girl on your roster be a rule rather than an exception. Or does that effectively move us backwards? Let the girls play who've practiced and earned it, and really want to be there, rather than have teams reluctantly select one and bench her. This girl was second line and got a lot of ice time, I should mention. She played her way into that position.
I'm always a proponent of non-affirmative action 'the best person for the job' but unfortunately in society we may not have reached that time where we can all adequately compete with each other without some sort of distorted view fucking that up. We still have people who believe 'the white person for the job' or 'the best man for the job' and then you bring in affirmative action and you might get 'the brown person for the job as subject to minority percentages' which to me, is about as inappropriate. Why didn't you get hired for a job? Because I was a white male, and there are some people who still exclusively hire white males for any job and give them higher pay and more respect, so now instead of having an equal paying job, I have no job at all? All of us majority, we're not especially blessed to have been the privileged for so long, only to become part of the problem, and then part of our own problem. I don't want to be hired because the boss was an old-boy-club-smack-ass-white-power-womanizing asshole. I don't want to be not hired because I'm not a minority.
Disregarding that, I'll still have a lot of opportunities in my life. Labour and Delivery Nurse may not be one of them. But I didn't practice my whole life to become that. The little girl on California's super novice team, she has practiced her whole life to be a hockey player. What does she understand of the opportunities available to her?
Pushing Singles - Pushed
I apologize to everyone, due to some issues with streamlining blogger and the new Google+, I lost most of my work from this week. Next week:
-Pushing Singles: The state of the music industry
-Matthew Good: Lights of Endangered Species reviewed
Letters To The Editor
Let me know what you think of the new distribution date!
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