Something tells me the ethnicity of the teenager armed with a knife on a Dundas streetcar who was recently shot and killed by a Toronto police officer will end up being crucial evidence for the defence.

Perhaps it will be the only defence necessary that he looked, well, like what a lot of people believe terrorists look like.

Middle eastern.

Personally, I think he was most likely experiencing a psychotic episode, a condition my family doctor says is an epidemic among young men these days. She suspects it’s a combination of lifestyle factors that brings on the episode combined with what we know now about the male brain, that it takes until the mid-20s, sometimes longer, for the reasoning part of it to reach maturity.

It’s a fact, a scientific fact.

I don’t know if you’ve noticed, but young men don’t cope well at all with either failure or heartbreak, both of which had recently been visited upon this young man. Add to that the awfulness of life back in his home country, Syria, where his mother lives, and recently getting the boot from his father’s house in Toronto – and I’m not blaming his father because the kid was probably being insufferable – and that’s a lot for someone that age.

My guess is he was also missing his best friend, a girl, who was off in Australia, maybe even questioning his sexuality, who knows.

But our family doctor suspects holing up and smoking copious amounts of marijuana could be a significant factor in bringing on psychotic episodes in young men, four of which she diagnosed in one month alone last year when we were seeking out her help. And it looks like he was no stranger to marijuana, and no stranger to drinking, and no stranger to that counter-intuitive (to me) combination of the two that young men enjoy so much.

Older men, too, it seems.

I wouldn’t be prattling on about it so know-it-all-like except that we’ve recently been there, done that, and it’s real and it’s happening in families everywhere and it’s a big and still (mostly) publicly unrecognized epidemic and to me that signals a huge and growing problem for society-at-large.

The kids are not alright.

There’s no defence otherwise (and I’m not saying the terrorist card is necessarily legitimate) unless the shooter himself was suffering from mental illness, so it will turn out to be the fault of terrorism, his fear that the teenager was a suicide bomber or somesuch stereotype.

But that’s just it, the shooter may well have been suffering from mental illness himself because that’s another publicly unrecognized problem – men in middle age going through andropause. This in spite of the medically known fact that in their late 30s, early 40s, more or less, testosterone levels in young middle-aged men start fluctuating, dipping down, surging up, causing all sorts of roller coaster emotions.

Mostly depression, which, so often in men, manifests itself as anger.

Again, it’s a fact, a scientific fact.

Add in relationship failures, work stress, sexuality issues, diet and exercise problems, yadda yadda blah blah – and a gun – and people can end up dead.

And I can only assume the shooter is under suicide watch now because he certainly should be if he isn’t.

But think about the political obsession with terrorism and how it affects the people charged with keeping the public peace. The level of fear has been systematically ramped up by politicians and pundits such that reality, the likelihood of terrorism, has long since been besides the point. Look at how our civil liberties continue to erode, in spite of the facts, such that we seem increasingly willing to give up democracy in favour of living in a police state.

I dunno but it strikes me that a police officer’s fear that someone is a potential terrorist, based on his looks, could become a defence for what otherwise looks a lot like unjustifiable homicide.

Certainly, many politicians and their supporters amongst the vox populi would agree that we live in perilous times, that shoot first, ask questions later is only fair if your job is to protect the public and you believe the public is in imminent danger.

Still, the above doesn’t go anywhere near explaining why the other police officers on the scene, and there seemed to be a number of them and maybe that was the problem, didn’t intervene with the shooter, who was clearly experiencing an entirely different reality than everybody else, does it.

There just doesn’t look to be a defence for that failure in humanity at all.

I’m doing a daily entry and numbering them accordingly to prove to myself that I’m a writer. Isn’t that clever? Why yes, Sooey, it’s the cleverest of clever. Whatever made you think of such clever cleverness.

Years ago I was looking for a Christmas present for my ex, who was very hard to buy for because I hated to spend money back in those days, when I came upon a Mensa workbook of some kind that I figured he’d be flattered enough by that the cost was irrelevant.

I think it was $3.99. No, seriously, it killed me to spend money on Christmas presents for my ex. There. I said it. He wanted expensive video games and/or electric guitars and I’m sorry but grow the eff up and here, here’s a Mensa workbook of some kind that looks like it could have cost $19.99 if I do say so myself.

Omigawd. I think my blood pressure went up just typing that paragraph.

Anyway, when I flipped the book over to check out the back cover it explained that the definition of genius is having confidence in yourself that you know the answer because you do know the answer.

Or something like that.

The fact that I’m questioning whether or not I remember it correctly, and I’m confident that I don’t, should tell you why I’ve never had my IQ tested and never will and also that the definition of genius might be something else.

Geniuses (genii?) are confident people, though, you have to admit.

Anyway, whatever it said I recognized that I’ve been unsettled by the connection between confidence and intelligence from about the age of twelve because it was around that time that I lost all my confidence and started  second guessing myself into paralysis.

Also, I started thinking that if I could do it, no matter what it was, it mustn’t be very hard to do, and therefore wasn’t worth doing.

I’ve always thought it was mostly a gender thing, that girls realize somewhere around the age of twelve that we’re not going to be Olympic gymnasts or movie stars because we read Seventeen magazine and do the math.

There’s a specific leg/torso ratio required to be an Olympic gymnast and a specific head/body ratio required to be a movie star. Also, you have to have big white teeth, no ridges, and certainly you can’t be missing a permanent tooth and have gaps and have freakishly looooooooooong arms and big floppy ears and wide platypus feet and split ends.

Boys, on the other hand, think they still have a shot at playing in the NHL even after they’ve quit hockey to take up guitar and think they can parlay their obnoxious guitar wankery into rock star careers well into their 40s and 50s.

But I’ve since learned it’s not really a gender thing and I forget if my ex was flattered or not but it doesn’t matter because the definition of genius, even if I remember it all wrong, is what stuck with me. Confidence is the key to a certain kind of success, isn’t it, because confidence allows you to make a decision and know that it’s just one decision among many that you can make at any given time but that it doesn’t matter what those other decisions were that you didn’t make because you made this one.

Anyway, I decided to number my blog entries 31 days ago to cleverly trick myself into recognizing how confident I actually am when it comes to writing (and I’m now 20 minutes over and it doesn’t matter, does it) and stop making excuses and try to make some money at it.

Today I waited out a monsoon in an Ottawa grocery store and while I was waiting I talked to the other people who were waiting and we all agreed that the weather these days makes us anxious.

It’s weird, fearing the weather all the time, isn’t it. But if you own property, weather is a worry because it can cause so much damage, none of it insurable. Meanwhile, it’s only going to get worse, isn’t it.

That’s got to have a weird effect on our collective psyche, millions of people living in fear of the weather, which is so obviously extreme, while climate change deniers call us chicken littles as they wade through their basements or shout down from their torn off roofs.

Speaking of which, everybody in my neighbourhood needs a new roof, so a monsoon is scary business. And we live in fear of hail because the hail last summer did such a number on or poor old roofs that my housing complex had to condense the three years remaining on a five year roof replacement plan to two, wiping out all our reserves.

Mike Holmes advises homeowners not to finish basements if they live in areas that could possibly flood, but I wouldn’t finish a basement these days no matter where I lived. Forget it.

I dunno but I think the weather we’re experiencing (and it’s hard to deny broken temperature records and floods in deserts and droughts in wetlands) is going to result in more and more people taking a pass on property ownership as not worth the risk and we’ll all be renting from China’s millionaires who think it is.

It’s early days but there’s something very unsettling about the police response to an incident on a streetcar in Toronto that resulted in a teenager armed with a knife being shot 9 times and then tasered, the entire take-down witnessed by the passengers he’d been threatening who had safely disembarked to the street.

Even the driver was safely off the streetcar and unless the kid was threatening to take off in it, it’s hard to imagine why the shoot to kill call was made.

Why are the police ramping up the level of violence in our cities? We know that the Harper government spent at least a billion of our tax dollars on security for its G8/G20 summits in Toronto that resulted in a level of violence perpetrated by police against civilians that shocked everybody who witnessed it, including journalists.

The people we pay to enforce our laws broke them with impunity while the people we pay to make them pretended not to hear or, in the case of Stephen Harper, didn’t even pretend.

Revenge of the Nazi.

No, I won’t take that back. I’ll risk godwinning my own entry but I’m not taking that back. He is so clearly not in our employ that you’ve really got to wonder who the hell is still sending their “hard-earned” money to his so-called party that’s already had its offices raided by the RCMP and, if there is any justice left in this country, will again in the not too distant future.

Seriously, I don’t believe that guy has ever expressed a sentiment that had anything to do with me as a citizen of this country who pays his salary.

And I’m white!

Speaking of which, I wonder when we’ll find out that the victim of this seemingly inexplicable outburst of violence by police was known to mayor Rob Ford or councilor Doug or bodyguard David Price – who hasn’t been seen in weeks, apparently.

When I think of what we do know about Rob Ford, it kind of boggles my mind to wander into unknown territory and then think that, not only is he still mayor of our country’s most important city and in charge of its police budget, but Ford Nation still hasn’t drowned in its Tims.

Because that’s the thing, it’s not like Ford Nation is going to get any smarter, is it, it’s just going to get older. I mean, it may not get stupider (it probably can’t) but it’s not going to get smarter, either.

Speaking of Tims, anonymous philanthropists who seem suspiciously like Tims shareholders, stop paying it forward to Tims by buying free rounds of coffee until it either stops taking advantage of that bullshit temporary foreign workers program or starts paying its temporary foreign workers minimum wage, ‘kay?

Oh, and it doesn’t count as philanthropy, Kevin O’Leary, when your investment winnings come at the expense of thousands, no millions, of your co-inhabitants of this planet (he bought BP stock after the company committed ecocide in the Gulf of Mexico) and you brag on our taxpayer funded network, CBC, that you made a donation to a hospital – even if it’s true, which I doubt it even is.

In fact, I hope it isn’t because hospitals should be funded with wholesome tax dollars, not tainted lucre.

And yes, I’m aware of the Ontario Lottery and Gaming Corporation and I don’t approve of that, either. And those advertisements are offensive. “You should gamble and maybe you’ll win and then you won’t have to be a part of society and instead can sail away from it on your yacht with your equally smug and shallow new friends.”

There’s something so “White Like Me” about those ads, too.

Yuck.

Right, and thanks for making us all accomplices to gambling and stripping our governments of their last shred of moral authority.

I’ve just finished reading a book called “The Body Economic” that proves government austerity is just a massive ripoff that not only kills people but reduces GDP. Indeed, Conservatives have been lying through their expensive teeth about the effects of austerity since it was first proven after the Depression that American states that didn’t introduce austerity measures were better off than American states that did.

The authors compare countries, too, and it’s just so insanely obvious after the first several comparisons that we’re being taken for a ride, really, read it, you’ll want to rip off your own head and start swinging it in the streets.

There’s a warning making the rounds of Facebook alerting the public to its right to take photographs when out and about in the public square. Apparently, the police have been roughing up and arresting citizens for photographing them in public so civil rights and democracy watchers are making the point that only police states seize cameras and film and photographers.

Democracies don’t.

For me it brings to mind what those Conservative nanny state lovers always say when police trample on the civil liberties of peaceful protesters and governments invade our privacy in the name of a terrorist enemy they can’t even identify anymore, “If you’re not doing anything wrong then you have nothing to fear”.

The thing is, like Ford Nation, they aren’t getting any smarter, they’re just getting older, too, and I’m wondering if it matters anymore what we know.

The police are shooting to kill first, tasering to wound second, and something tells me that’s the new normal in these dangerously stupid times.

I don’t want to give the wrong impression, I’m just trying to figure out how to live in a way that makes sense to me, working it out in public for your amusement/horror.

Don’t read this next bit if you’re wanting to shed a few pounds and are having difficulty, ‘kay? You’ll hate me and I don’t want that because I already have haters and I’m really not interested in having new ones and they probably aren’t either because we have our routine now and, well, you know how it goes.

Sorry, eh.

I may have been drinking more than I thought, because I find myself to be quite lean. Oh, and I just remembered, it may have been the pot because I always craved fat and sugar after a few hoots and since I’m off the pot (remember that expression? “shit or get off the pot!”) I haven’t been eating mountains of dessert before going to bed where I lay uncomfortably full and fretting about drinking and smoking pot and eating too much fat and sugar before bed.

Really, if you want to know how much fun I was having, picture Lisa Simpson trying to live life as Keith Richards.

No, Elvis.

No, Rob Ford.

Okay, that was mean.

For the record, I still eat dessert, just not shovels full of it. And it has to be homemade or of very good quality or I demure now.

If you thought I was demure before, get ready to shit your socks off with my demuritude now.

I was raised to believe, propagandized really, (although obviously I’ve been rebelling) that there’s a specific way to live. I’m not talking about diet and exercise because as soon as I was aware of both I was so fiercely committed that I drove people nuts about it. Seriously, I read Diet for a Small Planet when I was 12 and started running 2 1/2 miles every week night, 5 miles on weekend nights so I could be the next Olga Korbut.

I know, I know, but I also did yoga and was very close to executing a front walkover without spotters on both sides. I did shelve the next Olga Korbut dream when I was in the front yard practicing back bends and A. came down our street doing front flips all the way.

She was already into boys and smoking and parties, too.

I made hard work of my youth, now that I really stop and think about it. Becoming a drinking pot smoker and dessert eater may have been my way of taking the edge off it.

Okay. Good. I’m done. No regrets.

Whoo-hoo! Breakthrough!

But seriously, what’s Rob Ford’s excuse?

So no, I’m not talking about diet and exercise, I’m talking (again, I admit it) about being the economy’s bitch.

Years ago, and I’m pretty sure this really happened and I’m not imagining it, an offspring of Paul Desmarais, Andre, I believe his name was, made a public pronouncement of some kind to the effect that Canadians would have to work harder in order to increase national productivity. And, you know, I wish I could say that the rabble had pointed and laughed and shat in its hats by way of response, but alas, no, it did not.

There hasn’t been a time in my life when well off people haven’t been telling everybody else to work harder and increase national productivity. And now they’re telling us, through our politicians, who really don’t live in the economy at all, to do it longer and for less remuneration.

Politicians, pundits, commenters, analysts, experts. I mean, it’s not enough we were our parents’ and teachers’ bitches as kids, we got to grow up so that we could be the economy’s bitches, too.

Newsflash, everybody looking for the next generation to shore up the tax base, our kids weren’t nobody’s bitches and they ain’t gonna work hard for no economy, yo.

Is that the parlance? Did I get that right? I just text my kids because nobody wants to waste their minutes talking to their mom. I get it. I’m having to spend a few hundred buckaroos getting from Ottawa to Sault Ste. Marie visiting mine because she’s hard of hearing and, seriously, I want the Order of Canada for it now.

I’m not kidding, nominate me, bitches.

Because the economy, the economy needs to grow, we have to grow the economy, won’t somebody please think of the economy!

So, whenever I read about hard working people or people who work hard I roll my eyes demonstrably high and far back into my head because I’m rebellious that way and because hard working people bring to mind that Billy Crystal skit on SNL about the olden days “when we were poor and stupid and proud of it”.

No, seriously, stop it, ya dumbassed bitches.

I’m sick and tired of hard working people and people working hard because you’d think hard working people and people working hard would be sick and tired of being the economy’s bitches.

I say we down tools until that sucker starts working for us, because, trust me, I have kids and if there’s one thing I can assure you they are not going to do, it’s work hard for the economy, unless… maybe if we call it the iConomy?