schadenfreude, such a great word

The baying for Jian's blood continues; a surly "I told you so" piece by Noah Richler in the Star today, wondering if Jian is our equivalent of Jimmy Savile. As I've detailed here before, Savile, like Jian,  was Jekyll and Hyde, a charming public figure whose exterior concealed something vile. Unlike Jian, Savile was a loathsome monster who abused hundreds of small children over decades. Yes, the women Jian dated were young and vulnerable, but they were adults. They were grown-up women. There's no excuse for what happened to them, but let's not lose perspective. Let's not wallow in schadenfreude.

People at the Y this morning were all talking about him. At the moment, I am alone out on a limb of empathy for a very sick man with a very twisted world view, which he has obviously had for many years if not all his life.

What about the place of porn in all this? I've never watched it so don't know first hand, but an article in the paper yesterday talked about the ubiquity, not just of sexual images but of violent, horrific images debasing women. If you watch enough of that, surely you might come to believe that you can do what you want, as men do in the videos; that real women have no feelings.

That's all I can bear on this topic for today. I feel not just for Jian's family but for all the people who work at the CBC. What horrendous fallout.

This afternoon John my handyman and friend is coming, and we're shutting down the garden. Yesterday morning I opened my bedroom curtains to SNOW swirling by - not much, but white flakes, definitely. Today is sunny but cold. Time to rip out all the remaining plants, seal the windows, put away all the deck furniture. Cocooning begins. Six months of it. Ye gods.

On a cheerier note: I went yesterday to visit my grandson, and we played a fantasy game for the first time. He rearranged the pillows on his mother's bed into a semi-circle, sat with his feet under one, asked me to do the same, and said, "We dwiving in de car. I dwiving."
My God - he's 2 1/2 and he wants his driver's license already. I said, "Where are we going to drive to?"
He thought. "To de lello twain. And de gwey twain."
So off we went to the train station, to find the yellow train and the grey train.

I can't wait to find out where we'll go next.

Here's the poor neglected child in his backyard where he has nothing to play with.