We Don’t Care What You Think…Most of the Time.

It seems to be very popular for news websites to open up a forum so that visitors can comment on just about anything they read. It’s not just for editorials either. This weekend, I saw a variety of rants and raves sitting below a simple list of stores and attractions that would be open on Thanksgiving. A degree in journalism is no longer required in order to see one’s thoughts in print (or online). A cheeky username and a crummy dial-up connection are all that’s needed in order to air your dirty laundry for the entire world to see, spelling mistakes and all.

And I’m fine with that, for a variety of reasons. First of all, I’m thrilled that at least a small portion of the general population is literate, and is indeed reading something. Second, I’m tickled pink that the idea of freedom of expression has become so cliché in Canada that people will sound off without even thinking twice. In some parts of the world, failing to keep your pie hole shut is a good way to get dead.

What really disturbs me is that tomorrow, when all of us will be asked for our opinion on a variety of issues of national importance, a good chunk of would-be editorialists will curl up into a little ball and fail to leave the house. More Canadians will know what happened on 90210 than what happened in the federal election. And then on Wednesday, when the media waxes philosophical about all the evils the new government is about to commit, they’ll be back on the net, shoving their two cents down everyone’s throats

Most non-voters fail to realize that an election is just the act of asking a lot of people for their opinions. Okay, it stinks that the ballot box isn’t a magic hole into which we throw wishes. Checking off a bubble on a piece of paper does not guarantee that when we wake up the next day the Blue Fairy will have fixed everything just the way we like it. When was democracy ever a matter of simple cause and effect? Nonetheless, the rest of my country is asking me what I think, about money, about other people, and about myself. They’re spending a non-trivial chunk of our taxes to ask me, and it will take less time for me to tell them than it will for me to take a shower. If I don’t vote, then I’ll be a big fat hypocrite. I’d like to spend those years feeling good about indulging in the same self-righteous ranting as the rest of the online commentators.

Yet Another Thing to Hate About Computers

Let’s play a game. Everyone think of something that really bugs you about computers and shout it out loud. I hear rants about auto-formatting, random crashes, the blue screen of death and slow start-up time. Some of you will cite pop-up ads and viruses, or the whole “should have saved more often” diatribe. Others will gripe that spell checkers are useless, and that memory keys have a way of becoming lost more often than car keys. I sympathize. And I have a new reason to despise our electronic side-kicks.

Computers don’t swear. How did I come across this new knowledge? What has led me to believe that my machine is a big ole’ prude? Presently, I’m in the process of dictating a bunch of stories into the word processor, using a magical piece of software that “understands” English and converts my squeaky recitations into printable documents. For the most part, it works, and I’ve managed to save myself from carpal tunnel hell.

However, it seems to have no knowledge of profanity, and being the saucy lass that I am, I need a few choice expletives in order to express myself in writing. I’ve typed them in manually, and repeatedly “trained” the software to respond to my voice when I say them. The computer stubbornly refuses to acknowledge. It will accept words like “Churros” and “Geisha” and “Gloopy”, but puts its fingers in its ears as soon as I tell it to type anything of the four-letter variety. This, in turn, makes me yell even more disgusting things into the microphone. The computer then warps them into acceptable, but inaccurate phrases.

I’m not stupid or naïve. I know computers don’t feel or think at all, which makes the not swearing part seem pretty reasonable. However, mine doesn’t want me to swear either, and if I’m to avoid picking it up and using it as a tennis racket every time something frustrates me, I need a machine that tolerates and supports my potty-mouth. If anyone at Microsoft is listening…

Not So Super. Get Used To It.

This has been a summer of movie superheroes. We’ve been introduced to ultra-rich and ultra-clever Ironman, and reunited with dark and mysterious Batman. Yeah, there’s been a do-over for that enormous green guy as well. Sure, they’re human, but also endowed with such power, such talent that they can’t help but serve the world. It’s entertaining, but also somewhat disappointing. Nowhere in the bunch (except for maybe the uber-crusty Hancock), are there super-losers, individuals with flaws that can save humanity from itself. If like cures like, and the best way to fight fire is with fire, shouldn’t we be brandishing bad habits as weapons? Wouldn’t it be more productive (not to mention convenient) to use our all-too-ready weaknesses? If to err is human, then wouldn’t a complete screw-up be the best candidate for superhuman status?

Surely, there has to be room in the pantheon for poor saps who can’t parallel park. Might two left feet count as deadly weapons? When will human kind make proper use of the tone deaf, the stinky and those who can’t seem to find matching socks? We’re sitting on a veritable goldmine of super-human capital here, and we’re looking to well-sculpted aliens in tights to save us.

I’m currently cultivating my own superhero identity, based solely on my shortcomings. Henceforth, I shall be known as “The Nerve”, capable of channelling the nervous vigour that makes me bite my nails and check the stove three times, into more productive activities. I will spend my sleepless nights monitoring the weak and vulnerable. Instead of reorganizing my Tupperware when I have ants in my pants, I will incapacitate evil-doers with my mile-high stack of “to do” lists. My anxious giggle will serve as a primal call to others of my ilk. I will be clumsy and forgetful and decidedly human, and that will be more than enough to save the planet.

But I won’t wear tights. Seriously.

How to Make Food with Your Back Porch

It ain’t no hanging garden of Babylon. It’s a few cheapo rectangular planters, a couple of bags of dirt, and a handful of spindly, but determined little plants. In a few weeks, if the weather cooperates, and the gods smile kindly on me, it will yield enough fancy-schmancy tomatoes to feed two people for a few weeks. Maybe there will be enough basil to make a few tablespoons of pesto. Maybe we’ll get a handful of apples and grapes before the birds and the bugs decide to chow down.

This shouldn’t excite me this much, but it does. Learning that your house is not only good for shelter, warmth and the occasional video game, but can also be used to grow food is a revelation. A few years ago, while the real estate agent nodded and smiled, and the previous owner spoke of the recently-replaced water heater, I stared out of the back window and envisioned my own personal produce aisle. There would be fresh herbs, edible flowers and a respectable crop of wild strawberries amongst the shrubs. I would float out the sliding door, like Donna Reed in yoga pants, and gather bundles of fragrant fauna in my arms. All of this from a kid who grew up in the country, and whose parents were “green thumbs”…it’s almost enough to make a gal break into verses of “This Land is Your Land”.

This unruly cornucopia is my pride and joy. Perhaps I’m not yet ready for a chicken coop, or my own chevre-producing goat, but peeking out at the tiny wannabe vegetables makes me feel like a regular Jenny Appleseed. E-I-E-I-O!

For George

As a kid, I used to sit up late on Sunday night and listen to comedy skits on the radio (yes, kiddies, I used a radio, and my pet dinosaur loved it too). When I was supposed to be finishing my homework or, God forbid, sleeping, I was filling my head with the words of modern philosophers, off-coloured sages who saw society with a critical eye and a sharp tongue. Of course George Carlin was among them (no self-respecting DJ would leave him out). I think, even twenty years later, if someone played George’s “Wonderful WINO” bit for me, I could probably still sing along. With his boundless energy, his general appreciation for silliness, and his beard, I think he reminded me a little of my dad…if my dad was the type to rant and swear in front of millions.

George’s wisdom followed me into my adulthood. I can remember watching his piece on acquiring “Stuff” while unpacking in a new house. I applauded when he appeared in Kevin Smith films, as an overly-ambitious Cardinal, then a hitchhiker with a plan, and then a grandfather willing to do even surrealist theatre for the love of his family. George’s mantra “I’m just looking for a little consistency, that’s all” stuck in my head as I tried to teach students about logical fallacies and forming decent arguments. Like most people, I still think of his list of things you can’t say in the media, and wonder why we’re so hung up on mere words. After spending a great deal of my life studying some of the greatest thinkers in the world, an old man with a grade nine education and a potty mouth seems to have proven what I’ve always thought- that good ideas and the ability to pull things apart don’t come with a fancy piece of paper. They come through a genuine desire to see things as they are, and what they could be.

And so, I raise a glass (or perhaps a middle finger) to George. Here’s hoping there’s such a thing as reincarnation.

Power of the Pigtails

When I was five, they were crooked. My poor mother would straighten and adjust them, wetting my hair, tightening the elastics, but they stubbornly refused to be symmetrical. I would learn, years later, that my head was actually crooked. No matter. Balanced or not, I loved having them. I loved the array of plastic do-dads one could stick on them. I loved the way they swung and jiggled of their own volition. I loved the way my head had suddenly become a little more interesting, as if some wee landscaper had carved topiaries or stuck in a water feature. The pigtails had power.

I’m not sure when or where I lost them. Probably around the same time the word “cool” took on the same heavy significance as words like “entropy” or “fiscal responsibility”. Probably around the same time as I shot up six inches in six months, and felt like enough of a sideshow freak without things sticking out of my lumpy cranium, pointing to my mismatched body parts like flashing arrows. They made a brief appearance here and there, usually as a more sophisticated pony tail in the back, the same one my now-husband used to flick with a pencil in grade 11 math (flirting was so much simpler then). For the most part, I let them sag around my shoulders, a limp reflection of my teenage angst.

The final nail in the coffin came after my first year of university, when it was time to join the sensible ranks of the adults. Uncelebrated for years, they met their fate on the linoleum floor of a salon, and to avoid feeling guilty, I kept telling people to cut shorter and shorter. I traded my bobbled elastics for something as bleak as “hair product”.

A few weeks ago, ignoring my advanced age, they reappeared. They took advantage of my new, “Why not?” approach to my hair. It was mostly intended to get them out of my face while I worked, to make sure they didn’t wind up in someone’s dinner. There was a familiar pull, a feeling of lightness as they were lifted off my neck and into small rubber bands. I’m not sure if it was the cool breeze on my exposed skin, or perhaps the increased blood flow to my scalp, but the effect was euphoric. They were much shorter than they had been 30 years ago, and despite the help of modern cosmetic chemistry, there were a few wiry, silver ones mixed in. Nonetheless, we recognized each other immediately. They still bounced when I walked, and pointed to my face. Happily, they were still a little crooked too.

Chicks Rule: Then and Now

Well, Hillary’s conceded defeat (for now), there are still fewer women PhDs than men, and the ruling female class in Hollywood seem to prefer pink cell phones and bite-sized doggies to the ability to speak polysyllabically. Some weeks, things just don’t look good for the X chromosome. When I feel myself sinking into despair, I do several things. First, I engage in a rousing round of Wii boxing. Then, I find excuses to use power tools. Finally, I look into the annals of history and dig for women who knew how to fling their weight around long before it became fashionable (and then apparently became unfashionable again).

Ladies and gentlemen, I give you Wu Zetian, otherwise known as Empress Wu. She walked, or rather shoved her way onto the scene during China’s Tang dynasty (618-906 AD), during which women were not required to bind their feet, or be entirely submissive, but were nonetheless far from achieving any sort of equality. Confucianism, the religion of choice at the time, deemed it unnatural and unthinkable for women to assume positions of power. One may envy of her reputation as a “good catch”, achieved by the tender age of thirteen. One may sympathize with the loss of her first husband, the emperor, and puzzle over her agreement to enter a convent following his passing. What really grabs the attention, however, are the events that followed. With her knowledge of music, literature and art, she charmed her late husband’s son, the new emperor, and began an ambitious ascent to power that would rival any cut-throat corporate takeover. Wu was a concubine at first, but managed to claw her way to first wife, a feat that involved framing the current empress for the murder of a child that Wu herself had orchestrated. Finding that she had outlived and outlasted both father and son, she boosted herself to the top of the imperial ladder, outranking even her own children, the direct heirs to the throne. Her most impressive act as empress was to change the national religion from Confucianism to Buddhism, a daunting task, but for obvious reasons, a wise and necessary one. Wu’s special brand of tough love yielded years of cultural growth, military success and economic prosperity. With only will, determination, and a generous helping of cold-blooded nastiness, Wu transformed herself from just another poor little rich girl into the ruler of one of the most powerful and paternalistic cultures of its time.

Whew. Now I feel better.