A morbid ending

I think I’m going to start every workday from now on by listening to The Office (US) theme song. It’s only a 30-second mp3, but with it I can create the illusion that I live in a clever and funny sitcom and that nothing that happens really matters, or is even real. I would use the Arrested Development theme, but I couldn’t find it online, so Office it is.

Two stories on CBC.ca this morning stuck out for me. The first is that Calgary has passed a bylaw that makes it illegal to, among other things, spit, fight, urinate or defecate in public, or put your feet up on public property. It’s amazing that these things are such a problem that they need laws against them. Those opposed say that the law is unfair to homeless people, who have no choice but to do those things because they have no private place to do them. The article I read interviewed a high school kid who thought the law was discriminating against everyone. He was defending his right to sleep on public benches:

“That's unfair even to [people like] myself — that I can't sleep on my public bench.”
Because of all the rights you could possibly loose, being able to sleep on a public bench is probably the worst. And what does he mean by “my public bench?” Isn’t that an oxymoron? Calgary should really just pass a bylaw outlawing idiots.

The other article was about stab-happy Edmontonians. I’m not really bothered that Edmonton has the highest [per capita] murder rate in Canada. Wait. Let me rephrase that. I am bothered that Edmonton has the highest per capita murder rate in Canada, but I don’t fear for my life when I walk down the street. It seems that most of the murderers know their victims, or that it’s a drunken-bar-fight situation. No one has any motive to kill me (that I’m aware of) and I don’t get into drunken bar fights as a rule, so I don’t think I’ll be killed anytime soon. A shocking number of the murders are teens killing other teens. One recent murder was of a pregnant woman by her husband. Men who kill their pregnant wives have to know they’ll be caught, right? Do they honestly believe they can head up the search parties and throw suspicion off themselves? I heard once (on Oprah) that the leading cause of death among pregnant women is murder by their spouses. Alarming, isn’t it?