The big mystery in Toronto today was whether our drug-and-alcohol addled mayor - who is living proof that you can be white cracker trailer trash even if you live in Toronto rather than rural Alabama - will show up at the Santa Claus parade.

Traditionally, the mayor walks at the front of the parade handing out candy to kids but yesterday parade organizers sent Rob Ford a letter pleading with him to not show up "for the sake of Toronto's children." His press secretary has refused to say whether or not he'll make an appearance, and it's impossible to guess anymore. After all, this is the guy who insisted on live TV that, contrary to statements made to police by several other people, he did not tell a female staff member he wanted to "eat your pussy" because he is "happily married and has plenty to eat at home."

Fortunately for all, he didn't put in an appearance. That's going to be his fate for a while, and organizations all over town - from the Toronto Argo CFL football team which has a playoff game today to neighbourhood fete's - are disinviting him from things he'd been asked previously to show up. Toronto has had it share of goofball mayors – including Mel Lastman, who declined to accompany the group trying to land the summer Olympics to an IOOC meeting in Africa because, he said publicly, "I'm afraid my wife and I might be boiled in oil." But Mr. Ford guy is an embarrassment not just to the city but himself and his family and the city.

It’s been quite a week for our accidental mayor. After all, the only reason he was elected was because neither of the two reasonable candidates running in the last election would back out, deciding instead to fight each other so the vote of rational people was split and Mr. Ford walked to victory receiving fewer than four of ten votes cast.

Yet none of these are the worst things about Rob Ford. No kidding.

The worst thing about him is how his political ideology has been destroying Toronto as one of the most-liveable cities in North America.

He ran on “getting rid of the fat” yet newspaper studies of city expenditures last year showed that he reduced costs by less than 5-percent. But Toronto never has had a spending problem; it’s had a revenue problem which was made worse by Mr. Ford’s cuts to property taxes and other fees.

In the process, he’s added to traffic congestion because the $60 auto tax encouraged people to drive less. He’s added to pollution by removing most of the bike lanes in the city, forcing some individuals into cars while making the streets more lethal for cyclists. And his drive to privatize city services, such as garbage collection, did nothing to reduce costs while making service worse.

I live in an area of Toronto with many condo’s, where garbage has always been picked up by private companies. But bins for garbage and recycling on street corners were cleared three times a week by the city. Now that a private company is responsible for emptying them, it’s only done once a week. By the third day, the bins are overflowing. Calls to the city, the mayor’s office, the company, even my counsellor, produce no results and as a result on nearly every corner garbage overflows to the sidewalks.

And remember this yahoo wanted to sell off the TTC to a for profit business. Had city council allowed that to happen, public transit in Toronto would have deteriorated while fares would have skyrocketed. There is a reason why cities took over transit systems in the post-war years: Common services are best handled by government.

Rob Ford is living proof of something I’ve known for much of my life. Not all conservatives are stupid people, but all stupid people are conservatives.

Unbuttoning Mitt Romney

There are lots of disturbing things about Mitt Romney, from the unconscionable manner in which he built a great fortune to his abject refusal to unveil any more details about his proposed programs than he is about his tax returns.

It has nothing to do with his outrageous – and distasteful – comments about the attacks on the US embassies in Libya and Egypt, although they are part of it.

It also goes far beyond his telling a group of struggling middle class, working Americans afraid of losing their jobs that he is unemployed, and saying to another group that he loves NASCAR because his rich friends own race cars. It is remarking to a third group that "corporations are people, my friend" with "my friend" sounding deliberately smarmy and condescending, and even though no entity, living or inorganic, with "Inc." at the end of its name has given birth, sat beaming through a daughter's piano recital, grimaced in silent, parental pain during a Little League game as their son dropped a fly ball, felt the disappointment of not being hired for a desperately needed job, or sat at a parent's bedside as they slipped into death.

He annoys many people – especially me – with his smug arrogance, that congenital inability of his to relate to ordinary citizens and with his patronizing attitude that everyone else is beneath him for no reason other than his secret bank accounts in Switzerland are much larger than their account in the credit union at work.

Yet all throughout the campaign season, going back to the primaries in the dead of winter, something else, something much deeper, gnawed at me about Romney.

I finally put my finger on what it is about the Republican who would be president that is so bothersome: There is something fundamentally untouched about Willard "Mitt" Romney, something offensively virginal.

The few lines in his face that supporters might confuse for life experience are actually the lines of an overindulged child who has never been beaten and tear gassed by the police at a peaceful demonstration, or been locked away in a precinct house and denied the use of a toilet, and certainly not chained to the floor of a huge Air Force transport flying him hooded to a secret prison in a remote corner of a Caribbean island where the government providing the free flight hopes the world will forget about him.

"Overindulged child" puts Romney in perspective. He's a man who never had to decide whether to pay the electric company or the rent, or balance whether buying a piece of fruit today means he might not have enough cash to refill a prescription next week. He has no idea what the word "struggle" means and he lets everyone else know it.

Romney gives off a kind of full-of-himself belief that being nimble and clever and lucky – very lucky, starting with the accident of birth that found him being swaddled by a talented father – transcends the reality of any sort of human suffering.

It is this remoteness from life that lets Romney shrug off as "boys will be boys" his bullying and torturing of a gay student at the cloistered prep school he attended.

It is the separation from life that allows Romney to talk about the dangers he faced in France where his privileged life enabled him to escape the real dangers of Viet Nam.

It is because his feet have never had to quite touch the ground that enables Romney the candidate to assume an air of entitlement as he charters from one rally to another, telling outright lies to crowds of cheering supporters whose schools never taught them how to think critically.

Here's the ultimate irony about Mitt Romney: While the howlers on the right – in streets and in the media – try to portray Pres. Obama as "the other," someone not quite like us, the actual "other" is the GOP presidential candidate who has only a faint connection to what life in the United States is like for most of its population.

If you see a boy being led by a Mistress in a long, red latex dress down the street tonight, and he is wearing leather pants, a leather jacket and chest harness, please say hello! I am being taken to a party.

What a nice note to find in my e-mail box just now. I won't reveal who it is from other than to say it's a couple in the Midwest:

Dated: 9/7/2012 4:51 PM very impressive. and as a slave you seem dedicated and driven to serve not in kinks or sex but true service to make ones life better

In my profile, I refer to having a detailed slave c.v. A growing number of people - both Dominant and submissive - have written asking for a copy of it. To save time, I am pasting it here. I hope the formatting stays intact.

Detailed C.V. Of slave james

General Summary:

Nearly twenty years experience as a submissive and as an owned slave including many years as a live-in slave on a 24/7 basis. Lived in Total Power Exchange environment. Trained in full D/s protocol. Trained in three massage techniques. Service oriented. Fully bi-sexual. Physically and emotionally healthy; no drug use. Can live anywhere in the US or Canada.

Slave And Submissive History:

Property of Queen Charlotte (Natural Woman and Princess Una (TG Woman) – 2003-2010 – Chicago

Acquired from previous owner, was moved to Chicago and lived in their home. Alpha slave responsible for overseeing other submissives. I continued to work as a writer and gave my earnings to them. Duties included:

• Creating weekly work schedule and ensuring that duties of other slaves were carried out properly.
• Reporting any shortcomings of subordinate slaves and submissives.
• Scheduling personal appointments for my Owners such as those at hair, nail and aesthetic salons.
• Maintaining the household social calendar.
• Serving as major domo and butler at dinner parties and cocktail receptions held in the home.
• Providing regular massages to my Owners.
• Ensuring that other slaves did not pleasure themselves without the permission of our Owners, especially when showering.
• Available at any time my Owners needed my presence, for any purpose.
• Being loaned out to lifestyle friends of my Owners for up to one week to meet their needs.
• Being made available at lifestyle parties and events to friends of my Owners for their use, abuse and pleasure.
• Travel companion if required, and always accompanied my Owners to style events in Chicago and elsewhere.
• Being subjected to regular training, discipline and, when required, punishment.
• Providing sexual service when ordered.
• Milking other slaves once each month.
• Wearing a locked chastity device at all times.

Property Of Sir Richard and Mistress Taylor – 1994-2003 – New York

Collared after 18 months serving as one of their submissives. Duties as their owned slave included:

• Serving as butler in the home.
• Serving all meals, and preparing many of them.
• Serving guests their meal at dinner parties.
• Providing a massage to both Owners nearly every night before they retired for the evening, after being sent by Them to formal massage classes where i learned three techniques (Swedish, Shiatsu and erotic).
• Keeping the house neat during the week and cleaned it every weekend.
• Doing the grocery shopping for the home each week.
• Being used for daily training sessions.
• Providing sexual service when directed to do so.

Submissive To Madame Jennifer – New York City NY – 1991-1992

Provided service to Madame as she required. i attended to Her demands and needs several times a week, and often was ordered to accompany Madame out for the evening to the theatre, dinner or a film. A self-described sadist – both physically and emotionally – she trained me to be fully bi-sexual, to accept intense levels of discipline, and to be used in public despite my embarrassment and humiliation at being seen by others.

Work Experience:

The slave earns his living as a writer and independent journalist.

Education:

University of Minnesota – Bachelor Degree – Journalism/American History

Columbia University – Master's Degree – Journalism

Harvard University – MBA Program – No degree

Personal:

Divorced, no children or dependents. Immediate family members are all deceased.

The party turned out to be a dud. We stayed maybe an hour, then went to a restaurant for dinner. I was home by midnight.

The weekend may turn out to be more interesting than it looked like it would. I just received a phone call from a Dom/Domme couple I know casually inviting me to a lifestyle party this evening. Their regular boy submissive had to back out because his six year old son was rushed to hospital after being hit by a baseball. Since they always like to take a pair of submissives, I am joining their female sub. It will be nice to get out tonight.

"In" Or "Out"?

A question that sometimes arises is whether I am open about my lifestyle or closeted. It's worth asking and deserves a response.

The simple answer is that I am what my owner desires.

My last owners, Queen Charlotte and Princess Una, were very open about the life they lived, as a couple and as Dominants. So, when they would take me - or any of their three other slaves - out for dinner, I was dressed in appropriate but definitely fetish wear, which is all either one of them ever wore. And what does "appropriate but definitely fetish" mean when it's not raining? I would be dressed in leather, latex or neoprene pants and a leather jacket over a shirt or top of some kind. I wore the silver "dress" collar they'd acquired for me.

If I was sent on errands or to do the week's grocery shopping, my dress might be more casual - leather pants, say, and a leather shirt with my working collar.

If I accompanied them on a shopping expedition along Michigan Ave., sometimes I'd be on a leash.

By comparison, my prior owners were not "out" so, other than to lifestyle parties or events, I wore vanilla street clothes in public.

Yes, it was very awkward - alright, humiliating - the first few times I was taken out as a piece of property. But, like everything else in a slave's existence, it was my duty to act and behave as I was told. It gave my Queen and her Princess pleasure having it known that they had slaves so it gave me pleasure.

Someone wrote today suggesting that I put more details about my experience as a slave. They suggested that it would give someone reading my profile a better idea of how "close to actual slavery" my life was. So, lifted from my slave resume, here is how I described my last situation:

Acquired from previous owner, was moved to Chicago and lived in their home. Alpha slave responsible for overseeing three other full-time TPE slaves plus two part-time submissives. I continued to work and gave my earnings to them. Duties included:

• Creating weekly work schedule and ensuring that duties of other slaves were carried out properly.
• Reporting any shortcomings of subordinate slaves and submissives.
• Scheduling personal appointments for my Owners such as those at hair, nail and aesthetic salons.
• Maintaining the household social calendar.
• Serving as major domo and butler at dinner parties and cocktail receptions held in the home.
• Providing regular massages to my Owners.
• Ensuring that other slaves did not pleasure themselves without the permission of our Owners, especially when showering.
• Available at any time my Owners needed my presence, for any purpose.
• Being loaned out to lifestyle friends of my Owners for up to one week to meet their needs.
• Being made available at lifestyle parties and events to friends of my Owners for their use, abuse and pleasure.
• Travel companion if required, and always accompanied my Owners to style events in Chicago and elsewhere.
• Being subjected to regular training, discipline and, when required, punishment.
• Providing sexual service when ordered.
• Milking other slaves once each month.
• Wearing a locked chastity device at all times.

Hope this helps you.

Several Dominants have written asking me to explain how I see the difference between a submissive and a slave.

To me, a submissive may have a desire to serve but not commit to the life. Many are "weekend subbies," or kinksters having fun, or in the worst cases, are simply pretenders. There's nothing wrong with being a submissive who simply wants to have a diversion from their daily life, or who enjoys kinky sex and role playing. But it is not a commitment to service.

A slave, which is what I am, sees their fulfillment and purpose in being of total service to his or her owner. My intellectual, psychological, emotional and even physical pleasure comes from being of use to the person who owns me. Slavery has nothing to do with sex per se but everything to do with making the owner's life more pleasant.