Blue Box Blues

Is the city of Toronto really this stingy?

City officials are planning to crack down on people scavenging recyclables from blue bins. According to Toronto's Solid Waste Department, once the blue bin and its contents are curbside, the whole kit and caboodle is city property and they don't want anyone sorting through it.

You see, the city makes quite a bit of money off our aluminum cans ($2000 per tonne). Fair enough, but are these scavengers nicking empty pop cans? Anecdotal evidence (in the form of a couple of neighbourhood characters armed with shopping carts of varying constructions) shows that the scavengers are looking for wine and beer bottles. A cartful of finished Merlots and Tempranillos can net a tidy sum, especially in affluent neighbourhoods like mine where homeowners spend a lot on alcohol and can’t be bothered to make the trip to the Beer Store to return bottles.

(In the Beach, where I live, there are two LCBOs within walking distance of a large number of residents, including myself; however the Beer Store is a farther trek and therefore requires a bit more forethought than my usual, “Am I out of rosé? I think I’m out of rosé… I’ll just duck in for a bottle of rosé.” If the Liquor Store took back bottles, I could employ the empty one in, full one out method, based on the cold beer out, warm beer in method of university bar fridge drinking. But of course, the rosé bottles add up and require a large, strong bag in which to carry them, and a vehicle in which to transport them when there are too many in my kitchen cupboard not to be ashamed about.)

Why shouldn’t we let the enterprising unemployed continue with the sifting? Clifford Orwin compares it to the “biblical practice of gleaning”:

Leviticus 19.9 commands leaving the corners of one's fields unreaped so the poor can harvest them: One should never enjoy one's abundance to their exclusion. Similarly, I leave for the poor 20 cents of the value of every bottle of wine I buy. Collecting the bottle is their form of gleaning, and like gleaning in biblical days, it takes considerable labour.

There was a time when a city councillor wanted to ban panhandling: they found it somehow offensive, the homeless and unemployed sitting and begging for money. It annoyed people to be asked for money, to be reminded that we live in a many-tiered society, despite our many social nets. Why can't they get a job, asked some rather unempathetic citizens of our city.

Well, some have found jobs – jobs that don’t bother anyone (someone complained about the noise of scavengers, but give me a break – the industrial lawnmowers that rage at 8 o’clock in the morning outside my window are way worse) and help to support the province’s bottle return programme.

The City needs to stop worrying about who is returning my empty bottles of rosé and start worrying about more pressing issues.

Dangerous Trend Alert

What's going on with Katie Holmes?

I know there's the whole being married to a wingnut thing, and she's trying to keep up with her new friend, Posh Spice, but these jeans have got to be the final indication that signals a team of mental health professionals to swoop in and save her denimed ass.

There are trends that we try for the sake of the trends (I have a black fedora sitting on my hall table). There are trends we avoid, because there's no way it can look good (those short, high-waisted shorts were all over London while I was there this summer and like, two girls could actually rock them). And then some people seem to make an attempt to start a trend - is this what Katie is doing? Baggy jeans cinched just above the ankle that accentuates a heaviness in the hips, extending into the upper thighs?

I remember when Katie was the cute girl from Dawson's Creek that my brother had a crush on...

Battle of the Single Broads: Elaine vs. Carrie vs. Bridget

Three iconic singletons have emerged in popular culture over the past 15 years: Elaine Benes from the sitcom Seinfeld was the first. She kept up with her male friends, dating as many men as Jerry dated women; never placed too much importance on whatever man she was with; and entered (and lost) The Contest. She was intelligent, self-sufficient and witty. When Seinfeld ended in 1998, it paved the way for Carrie Bradshaw, the fictional sex columnist (based on real sex columnist Candice Bushnell) in the HBO series Sex and the City. Carrie dated far and wide, placing importance on finding a good man, but even more importance on a great pair of shoes. And across the pond in Britain, Helen Fielding was creating her heroine (and coining the term “singleton”), Bridget Jones, through a series of columns appearing in The Independent, which were fictionalized into the 1996 novel Bridget Jones’s Diary. Bridget Jones was a fumbling London thirtysomething trying to navigate her way through the dating scene, avoiding all "fuckwittage" and losing a few pounds along the way.

But how do these three women compare when lined up against each other? How do the major arenas of their lives measure up?

JOB:

Elaine: Writer for J. Peterman catalogue (after a turn at Pendant Publishing and personal assistant to Mr. Pitt), which she clinched just after meeting Peterman in the rain and describing her shirt: “This innocent looking shirt has something which isn't innocent at all. Touchability. Heavy, silky Italian cotton, with a fine almost terrycloth like feeling. Five button placket, relaxed fit, innocence and mayhem at once.”

Carrie: Sex columnist for New York Times, sometime freelancer at Vogue; lives her fabulous life and gets paid to write about it.

Bridget: In the first book, Bridget has an office job at a publishing house where she sends flirty emails to her boss, Daniel Cleaver (see Significant Relationships, below). In the second book, Bridget Jones The Edge of Reason, she becomes an on-air personality who attempts such stunts as parachuting into a pig sty and sliding down a firehouse pole, ass-to-camera.

FRIENDS:

Elaine: Apart from the obvious Jerry, George and Kramer, Elaine has some girlfriends out in Long Island who keep entreating her to “come and see the baaayyy-bee”.

Carrie: Solid as a set of Manolo wedges in bright summer colours; Samantha, Miranda and Charlotte have been by Carrie’s side since the beginning.

Bridget: Sharon (Shazzer), Jude and Tom are always happy to drop everything and meet Bridget in the pub for more than 14 units of alcohol and several cigarettes, despite any New Year’s resolutions.

SIGNIFICANT RELATIONSHIPS:

Elaine: Puddy, the face-painting, eightball-jacket wearing lug who Elaine is constantly breaking up and getting back together with – one time, both events happened on a single plane trip; another time Elaine got back together because she needed a bureau moved.

Carrie: Mr. Big is the one man that Carrie keeps coming back to, even when she’s committed to a live-in relationship with Aidan (who we all know is just too simple and too easy for Carrie). At the end of the series, Carrie ends up with Mr. Big. In the big screen version, after two painful hours of breaking up, she ends up with him. (Seriously, in real life, girlfriends would never let their friends go back this many times to such a waffle-weave man.)

Bridget: The first book starts out with Mark Darcy, in a cheesy Christmas jumper, being a bit rude to old Bridget. Then she gets caught up in the romance of bad boy Daniel Cleaver (who also happens to be her boss). As is to be expected, Bridget makes nice with the dashing Mark Darcy by the time he’s ready to wear his cheesy Christmas jumper again.

LOCATION, LOCATION, LOCATION:

Elaine: She is always in search of the perfect apartment in Manhattan, even considering Jerry’s apartment.

Carrie: She rented her apartment in New York for years, choosing to spend 40 grand on shoes instead of a down payment. She eventually buys her place, with a little help from her friends, after breaking up with Aidan.

Bridget: Lives by herself in a small flat in London, well-stocked with granny-pants and by the end of it, Mark Darcy.

CATCHPHRASE:

Elaine: “Get out!” (followed by a voracious push)

Carrie: Any age old question that attempts to understand men.

Bridget: “Fuckwit.”

Pretty Things

It was a repeat episode of The View today (I could tell by the mugs) and Barack Obama was the guest. As would be expected, conservative Elisabeth Hasselbeck grilled the Democrat candidate about his relationship with his pastor, Jeremiah Wright, who once made “incendiary” (Obama’s word) comments about the September 11th attacks:

We have supported state terrorism against the Palestinians and black South Africans, and now we are indignant because the stuff we have done overseas is now brought right back to our own front yards. (For a clip, click here)

These comments, which I completely agree with, were seen as unpatriotic and therefore Obama, whom I suspect secretly agrees with Wright, had to distance himself from Wright or face irrevocably damaging his campaign. The problem with American politics is that they place patriotism above all else: above rational thought, historical mistakes and personal freedoms. It’s that mentality of you are either with us or against us; there is no in between and certainly no room for debate. Obama, who represents (or at least, at one time represented) so much hope for the future of American foreign policy, cannot publicly agree with the idea that Americans can commit whatever atrocities they see fit in other countries, but absolutely can’t understand why others would want (and indeed plan and execute) to do the same.

But I digress. What struck me was that one of the women (I think it was Barbara Walters) stumbled a bit over paying Obama a compliment: she wasn’t sure if she should say how attractive he was. But she did, he accepted it with laughter, and the discussion moved to politics, which was Obama’s reason for being there.

Feminism has made some impact on separating women’s looks from what makes up their personality in that the women of The View were afraid to comment on Obama’s attractiveness (surely this is good, showing that there is no double standard?). Making any kind of comment on Hillary Clinton’s appearance would be seen as offside – but is that because she is not an overly attractive individual, therefore we can easily concentrate on her areas of expertise?

Julie Couillard, whom Heather Mallick describes as “the beautiful woman who had the bad judgment to date the ex-foreign affairs minister Maxime Bernier,” spent a lot of time in the news - not just for exposing Monsieur Bernier, but for exposing the top swell of one of her breasts. The Canadian press couldn’t get past it, as Mallick points out later in her column: “a trio of female Globe and Mail columnists…attacked Couillard for her breasts, her fragrant beauty and her insistence on defending her dignity as a woman.”

I guess what I’m trying to say is this: someone’s attractiveness is a big part of who they are. Sometimes it's what they're known for (models come to mind), sometimes it's part of what they're known for (Belinda Stronach, some might say). It's easy to see attractiveness as part of a man: Obama is a great orator, he seems to be quite good at the political game and he’ll already have a passport if he makes it to the White House (Georgie Boy did not. In fact, only something like 10% of Americans have a valid passport). But Obama is also pretty good-looking. The women of The View could pay him the compliment and then move on to what he was there for.

But when it comes to women, it’s a bit sketchier. Couillard (and indeed, other attractive women who have other things going for them) was not given the same courtesy that the women of The View gave Obama. Her beauty and sexuality were what was focused on in the media, instead of her reason for making headlines. It's silly to assume we do not notice (or judge) a person by their attractiveness: many psychological studies have proven otherwise and at the end of the day, we just want to procreate with genetically superior people. But someone's attractiveness is only a part of what they have to offer.

A Few Things

I’ve been away – both literally and figuratively. And this step back into bloggery may be brief, and for that I apologize – I just can’t seem to kick my writer’s arse these days…

Cheese, Please

Last week, Quebec announced it will allow its fromagers to produce raw-milk cheese, aged under 60 days, breaking from a continent-wide ban on unpasteurized cheese. It's something to do with harmful bacteria that the New World sees as a health risk in cheese ripened in under two months, even though many gastronomes maintain some cheeses reach their peak within a month, those pesky bacteria actually contributing to the taste and texture of the cheese.

The French (and other Europeans) have been enjoying these unpasteurized cheeses for centuries with no ill effects. In fact, pregnant French women have no restrictions on these types of cheeses, unlike us hyper-sensitive North Americans who ban brie and other foodstuffs like sushi from expectant mothers (despite the identical argument that Japanese mums-to-be have eaten raw fish for centuries). North Americans freak out during pregnancy (just recently I witnessed a pregnant woman hiding the fact she was drinking Coke from her husband), yet once these precious packages are born, they allow them to ride in big yellow school buses on the highway with no seatbelts (another WTF?!?! of mine, but that’s another post).

And A Four-Day Work Week, Too

In a bid to save energy, Nova Scotia Energy Minister Richard Hurlburt has suggested that government employees work only four days a week. Employees would work four 10-hour days and have a three day weekend, reducing the number of vehicles on the road and possibly the amount of power used in government buildings. The set up is about to be test-driven in Utah, starting on Monday. Although this seems like a good idea to a holiday-loving, easily-adaptable singleton like yours truly, there are issues arising in Utah around childcare, second jobs and night school.

All of this is untroubling to me, as I sit in the middle of my zero-day work week, annoyed that the Liquor Store will be closed tomorrow and the beach will be overrun with hard-bodied and flabby tanners alike. I also await the second round of my long-weekend-pot-smoking neighbour whose fumes waft through my flat only when the rest of the world has Monday off. While the workaday world looks forward to these summer long weekends, us teachers just wish they'd be over. Thank god those Americans will be starting their four day work week tomorrow and there will be a new episode of The View.