True Detective and the Investigation of Character

In an interview with the LA Times, True Detective writer Nic Pizzolatto made it clear that although the premise for the show is a murder investigation, what he is really doing is investigating character: "To achieve a personal vision that deeply investigates character, it makes sense to choose as a delivery vehicle a genre where an investigation is already underway…You can probably tell I don't give a ... about serial killers, and I certainly don't care to engage in some sort of creative cultural competition for who can invent the most disgusting kind of serial killer," he said. "This is just a vehicle. You could have engaged the same obsessions in a doughnut shop. But the show probably wouldn't have sold."

As we watch Marty Hart and Rust Cohle track down a killer, both men’s inner and outer lives are studied as well as the opposition in which these two lives sit.

Most notable and explicit is Marty’s dualistic concept of women. His wife, Maggie and daughters represent the wholesome, sexually pure females that must exist in Marty’s family life. However, outside this family unit exists the sexually exciting, illicit women who Marty calls up specifically for sex. Marty rationalizes his behaviour: “You gotta decompress before you go being a family man…Sometimes you gotta get your head right…It’s for your wife and kids, too. You gotta take your release where you find it or where it finds you. I mean, in the end it’s for the good of the family.” At one point, presumably in an attempt to be a better husband, Marty tries to resist the advances of Beth, a woman he has succumbed to previously. It is her promise of anal sex, a taboo act that "good" women don't do, that lures Marty back to her. He cannot resist the "whore" who meets his primal desires.

Beth represents an interesting shift in Marty’s eyes from virgin to whore , a transition that proves to be the inverse of her actual circumstances. When Marty first meets Beth, she is an underage prostitute working in a trailer park bordello. He feels sorry for her and gives her money and tells her, “do something else”. Tellingly, Rust asks, “That a down payment?” to which Marty replies, “Is shitting on any moment of decency part of your job description?” Rust’s initial assessment proves prescient when Marty runs into Beth later on in the series. She has given up prostitution and is working at a cellphone store. Marty wastes little time beginning an affair with her, the discovery of which proves to be his and Maggie’s final unraveling.

When Marty’s daughter Audrey is caught having sex in the back seat of a car with two teenage boys (having two men moves the situation from teenage fumble to a level of sexuality beyond her years, deepening the deviation in Marty's eyes), his reaction is over the top – he physically lashes out at her and calls her “captain of the varsity slut team”. And Marty doesn’t stop there: he metes out a severe jailhouse beating on the boys who were in the car with her. Marty’s anger at the boys blinds him to the fact that the desire driving the boys into the tryst with his daughter is the same desire that sends him, often drunk, to the apartment of his much younger lover, Lisa.

Lisa, although not part of Marty’s family unit, begins to take on the role of pure woman when Marty runs into her at a bar and sees her with another man. He breaks down her door that night and attacks the man with Lisa, an explosion of rage against the tarnishing of his pure mistress.

Indeed, a pivotal scene in the series is when Marty’s wife Maggie has sex with Rust, thus ensuring her split from Marty is final. She states it was the only way to make sure they were done: Marty cannot deal with his wholesome wife having fucked his partner – she is forever ruined.

Rust spends many scenes philosophizing about the tension between inner and outer lives. At one point after Marty has just claimed he keeps himself on an even keel and isn’t obsessive about things like Rust is, Marty says to Rust, “You know the real difference between you and me?” To which Rust quickly replies, “Yeah. Denial.” Rust believes Marty is lying to himself. If he really examined who he was, Marty would see the deception within himself.

Rust sees this tension in himself: who he wants to be and who he thinks he is, versus who he really is. When he’s being interviewed, he tells the two police officers about finally ceasing the fight within himself between these two forces:

Rust Cohle: It broke off. It was for the best, you know, I gave her cause. I can be hard to live with. I don’t mean to, but I can be… critical. And sometimes I think I’m just not good for people, you know, that’s not good for them to be around me. You know, I… I wear ‘em down. And they… they get unhappy.

Maynard Gilbough: Yeah, I think the job does that to a lot of guys. It changes ya. Some guys just notice, that’s all.

Rust Cohle: I can’t say the job made me this way. More like me bein’ this way made me right for the job. I used to think about it more, but, you know you reach a certain age, you know who you are. Now I live in a little room out in the country behind a bar, work four nights a week, in between, I drink. And there ain’t nobody there to stop me. And I know who I am. After all these years there’s a…there’s a victory in that.

Rust tried to act like a ‘normal’ person, accepting Maggie’s set up and engaging in a relationship with Laurie, later on in the series. But the essence of him - the Rust who drinks, who has dark thoughts about human nature, who craves being alone - cannot allow him to be part of a relationship in which the other person is happy. We see a change in Rust from 1995 to 2012. When he's younger, he tries to be this 'normal' version of himself, but Rust in 2012 realizes that this desire is just the mask of a constructed life.

The unreliable narrator is a technique used by Pizzolatto which furthers the notion of inner and outer lives. We have the truth of how something happened, but we choose how to present it to others. At the beginning of episode 5, Marty says, “I tell [the story of Ledoux's takedown] the same way that I told the Shooting Board and every cop bar between Houston and Biloxi. And you know why the story’s always the same 17 years gone? Because it only went down the one way.” Then as the episode unfolds, we see that his official version of events is not at all what happened. The same occurs when Maggie is interviewed by police. She tells them she doesn’t know what caused the fight between Rust and Marty when in fact she was at the heart of it.

The final episode, criticized by many as a letdown, is far from a disappointment. In fact, if viewers are to take the overarching theme of the examination of the inner vs. outer life, it is the perfect climax and denouement for the series.

When Rust and Marty finally find Carcosa, it is a warren of tangled branches weaving through an abandoned fort. The gnarled visual imagery is that of the neurons of the human brain, through which Rust and Marty are winding, separately, to the final spot where Errol Childress waits. The second half of the episode is a visual metaphor of the series’ descent into the human mind, or the “locked room,” a phrase which titles the 3rd episode. We are watching Marty and Rust explore the mind.

When Rust finally finds and confronts Errol, representing the darkness in the depths of the human mind, Errol implores Rust to “take off your mask” as he attacks him. Played out in front of us, we see Rust find his inner darkness which recognizes how it is hidden behind the public persona of his mask.

Both Rust and Marty are bloodied and beaten after their encounter, but it is Rust, who can still barely stand because of his injuries weeks after the attack, who looks to the sky and says “It’s just one story, the oldest. Light vs. dark…If you ask me, light’s winning.” He recognizes that this idea - of light vs. dark, good vs. bad, human’s inner worlds vs. their outer ones – affects all humans and that in general, despite Pizzolatto showing us the worst kind of human in Errol, we continue on because it’s the light that seems to be winning.

Brand's No Revolutionary

The video currently making the rounds across the internet is that of Jeremy Paxman interviewing Russell Brand about his position as guest editor of the New Statesman. Almost invariably on social media, it is annotated with a comment supporting Brand’s arguments against democracy. Gawker even suggested Brand may have started a revolution in its headline. But Brand’s half-realized arguments about his political apathy illustrate why he could never start a revolution amongst the people he claims to represent.



Paxman begins by asking who is Brand to be editing a political magazine, to which Brand replies: “I suppose like a person who’s being politely asked by an attractive woman. I don’t know what the typical criteria is [sic]. I don’t know many people that [sic] edit political magazines.” Now Brand is a comedian, so obviously we expect some humour in his responses, but he barely defends the position he’s accepted, reducing his acceptance to a quasi-sexual favour. And to start out by saying that he does not know the typical criteria to be the editor of a political magazine (because a degree in English and an interest in politics seems so far-fetched a concept) sets the stage for his subsequent arguments: half-informed and lacking common sense.

Brand does not vote. And when asked how he can comment on politics when he doesn’t exercise this democratic right, Brand replies: “I don’t get my authority from this pre-existing paradigm that only serves a few people. I look elsewhere for alternatives that might be of service to humanity.”

Democracy serves everyone, but only if everyone performs one fundamental act: they vote. The authority of politicians and in turn other authority figures (judges, police officers, teachers) depends upon the fact that members of a society are aware of their own personal belief systems, seek out a leader to further their goals and vote for them. Brand’s spouting of revolution and alternative systems mean nothing if he or others are unwilling to put them into action. And the democratic right to vote is one of the simplest ways to tell the system how you want it run.

Brand is disillusioned with the way British society works, implying that a utopian system shouldn’t “destroy the planet,” “create massive economic disparity” and “ignore the needs of the people.” But when asked what alternate system we could have, he flippantly answers “Well I’ve not invented it yet!” Later in the interview he dodges another point blank question by Paxman: “I’m asking you what it [the revolution] will be like” to which Brand responds: “I think what it won’t be like is…” and then just lists again his grievances with the current system. You can complain all you want, but nothing will change until you take that first step of filling out a ballot.

After Brand advances his position that corporations should be taxed, Paxman asks: “Who would levy these taxes?” to which Brand answers: “I think we need a centralized administrative system.” Ummm, like a government? Brand then gets angry that Paxman would dare to ask him these logistical questions in an interview when all he is calling for is change. (And if I had the space, I would trot out a flurry of examples of people who effected change – it takes both an idea and a means to bring about the change.) Brand also attempts to imply that facetiousness is just as valuable as seriousness – and that we won’t solve world problems with seriousness or facetiousness. Again reverting to humour when there is no viable alternative because he hasn’t actually thought of one.

Brand’s political views are actually quite similar to mine: redistribution of wealth through taxation (and higher tax rates for corporations), responsibility of energy companies and taking care of the underclass. But the fundamental difference, and why I am so disillusioned with everyone lauding this interview, is how completely uninterested he is in making any real and lasting change to British society. He crows about societal inequities and references a woman he just spoke to who’s been “fucked over by the aristocrats,” but is completely unwilling to do anything about it in any practical terms. He says he is trying to change the current system but offers absolutely nothing in tangible proposals or tactics to remedy the current system which he eviscerates so vehemently (and with such big, alliterative words!).

The only point where Brand has a valid argument is when he references the underclass who are as apathetic as he and don’t bother to vote: “Well I was busy being a drug addict [when Brand was 18] because I come from the kind of social conditions that are exacerbated by an indifferent system that really just administrates for large corporations and ignores the population that it was voted in to serve.” He’s right. There is a whole segment of society who, for a variety of socio-economic and psychological reasons, cannot be arsed to vote. And this is where Brand really fails.

He has a chance to really effect change: he knows what it’s like to live in those social conditions. He knows what it’s like to be a drug addict. He knows what it’s like to be apathetic towards the current system because it isn’t serving him. But he is now in a position to support a political candidate who is willing to do the work to effect change in Britain. Maybe Brand doesn’t want to get his hands dirty and reassess the way social programs are administered or how taxes are levied or how government funds are distributed. But he has very real power, gained from within the system he criticizes, to influence the voting habits and political leanings of a great number of people in Britain.

“I’m not voting out of apathy, I’m not voting out of absolute indifference and weariness and exhaustion,” he says. This is not acceptable. Not from someone like Brand who accepts the position of editor for a political magazine, espouses clear political views on a national television program and has the profile and audience to actually start a revolution. Brand says: “When there is a genuine alternative, a genuine option, then vote for that.” So he clearly supports democracy, just isn’t willing to work towards that genuine alternative.

At the end of the interview, Brand just becomes whiney – wondering why Paxman made a career of grilling politicians but then has a go at Brand because doesn’t like politicians. Of course he’s having a go: a real journalist holds his or her interview subject to account, asking uncomfortable questions of the subject. And they certainly won’t accept a call for a revolution from someone whose arsenal is filled only with facetiousness and suggestions of what not to do.

Gaz as a Morally Superior Character on Geordie Shore: a Five (okay, Six) Paragraph Essay

For those of you not familiar with the lazy summer indulgence which is endless episodes of Geordie Shore online, let me enlighten you. Based on MTV’s Jersey Shore, Geordie Shore takes the same concept of putting a bunch of twenty-somethings into a house, adding shedloads of alcohol and filming all the shagging, yelling and falling over that ensues. Now in its sixth season (and a seventh one being filmed), the show features eight housemates and is an anthropological study in the all the bad choices we make after the first two decades of living (and, well, all the fun that is had, too).

The paralytic drunkeness is worrisome and the men’s sole focus on “banging birds” makes one wonder how far feminism in the UK has really come since Emily Wilding Davison threw herself in front of the king’s horse a hundred years ago. Gary Beadle, known as Gaz, is the show’s top womanizer and has expressed his dislike of dates: “I don’t see the point in them. You might as well just skip the bullshit, go home and do [what] yous both wanna do and just bang.” (Although in an interesting inversion, he expresses distaste at being objectified when he is auctioned off at a charity event by his boss. “We’re not a piece of meat, Anna,” he says with indignation and absolutely no realization of his hypocrisy.) Despite his love of shagging random girls, he does, however, conduct himself in a consistently morally correct manner by telling the truth, criticizing others who cheat on their partners, and considering the feelings of Charlotte, his on-again-off-again love interest.

Gaz likes to go out drinking and pull as many women as possible (“pull” is a British term for pick up). In nearly every episode, he expresses this desire and we almost always see him follow through on his plan. In the first series, he has sex with Charlotte and we begin to see them develop feelings for each other. They will often fall into each other’s beds throughout the series if the other hasn’t pulled. However, not once does Gaz lie to Charlotte about their situation. He tells her he likes her, he enjoys their bedroom romps, but he cannot be her boyfriend. Even though Charlotte is clearly enamoured with him and will sleep with him even when she tells herself she shouldn’t, Gaz doesn’t use her infatuation just to have sex.

Although he enjoys his own promiscuity, Gaz is highly critical of other male’s philandering behaviour. When Sophie’s boyfriend Joel is flirting with different girls on spring break in Mexico in the third season, Gaz is not impressed: “For me, Joel’s got a bird, he’s seeing Sophie, he should be in Jay’s mindset [a Geordie Shore character who has a girlfriend at home and refrains from hitting on girls]…Joel’s still in my mindset…Joel keeps forgetting he’s got a girlfriend.” Gaz is similarly unimpressed with Vicky at the beginning of season 2 when she is getting closer and closer to housemate Ricci, but has a boyfriend on the outside. At the beginning of season 4, Charlotte arrives in the house with a boyfriend of two months, however she gets drunk and climbs into Gaz’s bed one night. He leaves the bed and expresses confusion as to why she’s doing this if she has a boyfriend.

Throughout the series, we watch the relationship between Gaz and Charlotte unfold: from their lovemaking to their fighting to their jealousies to their attempts at friendship. What emerges is actually a really sweet and caring relationship. They both enjoy each other’s (clothed) company and make honest attempts at a friendship free of the complications of sex. Gaz has been truthful with Charlotte from the beginning about his inability to commit just to her, but still realizes how much he hurts her when she sees him flirting with other girls. And he is entirely forgiving of her when she freaks out over his conquests: “There’s only so long I can stay mad at Charlotte for, so I give her a little hug and that’s it, forgotten.” At many points in the later seasons, Gaz expresses his fondness for Charlotte above others and his desire to have her around. And it is he who makes the rule later on in season 3 that he won’t sleep with her because he knows how much that complicates things for Charlotte.

Gaz shows himself to be a morally superior character for much of Geordie Shore by consistently telling the truth, expressing his distaste for people who are unfaithful in a relationship and by showing empathy for Charlotte who loves him and wants a more stable relationship. I do use the phrase “morally superior” with just a hint of irony: much of the behaviour on the show would be morally reprehensible to large portions of the world’s population. Morality has to do with what is right and what is wrong and those opposing ideas can be very different throughout humankind. But Gaz lives his life according to his own principles and his behaviour reflects his beliefs. Now if only we could get him to see that he treats women as part of an endless supply of faceless pleasure. And maybe Charlotte is the girl to do it.

Can't Take a Joke

In a recent column for Salon.com, Tracy Flory-Clark asks why can’t we quit with all the gay jokes – specifically the uncomfortable comedic scenes popular in modern comedy where heterosexual guys have to feign sexual interest in each other.



Now I’m a pretty big decrier of gay jokes – but there are subtle differences between the gay wedding depicted in Saturday Night Live's video and your standard gay joke. Comedy plays on the opposite of what you expect – for example, when Rob Ford falls over whilst throwing a football (seriously, watch this): it’s funny because he’s a football coach and supposed to be a pulled-together member of society leading our great city (oh well). So if you deconstruct the videos referenced by Flory-Clark, they are not making fun of being homosexual - proliferating stereotypes or portraying gay men as "lesser" - they make fun of known straight guys in a scenario which is the opposite of our expectations. With the spring break rap, it turns the whole idea of sowing one’s wild oats on its head (now that gay men and women can get married in some places) when the male rappers sing: "Down here it's our time/Spring Breakers/Get fucked up/Then find Mr. Right/and get monogamous".



What’s more troubling to me (perhaps as I’m a straight female and not a gay man?) is advertisements like this one that recently came up in my Facebook feed. I actually took some time to analyze my feelings about it, reconciling them to my core beliefs about sports and porn. What’s very obvious is that the director is taking a traditionally male sport and explaining the rules by using scantily-clad female athletes. Already, the athleticism of the game is demoted to a spot well below how these girls look (despite the fact they all seem to be quite athletic). Although they appear serious about the physicality of the sport, the shots of their various body parts detract from any marvel one might have at their skill.

There is a certain amount of sexual viewing that goes along with watching sports (I always catch my breath when Freddie Ljundeberg’s shirt comes off) but that is not the main reason for the Lynx match. We may think sexual thoughts about people in all sorts of scenarios - like a hot doctor in scrubs. But - the primary purpose of doctors in scrubs is not to look good for patients, just as the primary reason we go to sports matches to not to check out the athletes' bodies.

I’m also supportive of porn as long as it is ethically-sourced, so to speak. So why did this ad bother me? Was it not just a chance for boys to look at tits and ass?

And the answer lies in my criticism of Flory-Clark’s piece: this video was not made as comedy, pulling a 180 our expectations of rugby players the way Zach’s video made light of the heterosexual freedom rites before (gay) marriage. It was made to view women’s bodies. And there is already a well-worn field in which to view women’s bodies: porn. Having a bunch of women play a sport in order for men to ogle their bodies instead of marvel at their athletic skill is reductive and sexist.

Boys, Boobs and Bad Decisions (or, Seth McFarlane Hosts the Oscars)

Last night, the Oscars, meant to celebrate greatness in film, reduced half of the people working in the industry to a pair of boobs whose sole purpose was as an object for men to stare at.

In the first hour of the show, host Seth McFarlane sang and danced his way through a list of actresses who had taken their tops off in various films (which, Amy Davidson of the New Yorker points out, were serious, issue-driven movies like Brokeback Mountain and the Accused). This wasn’t a single verse in a number about movie nudity: it was an entire song devoted to degrading the talented, multi-faceted women in the audience, stripping (sorry) them of their dramatic skill and reducing them to a pair of tits.

I get it – boobs are great. And sometimes the sight of them in a serious movie might prompt a fleshly admiration slightly out of line with the tone of the film. But when McFarlane and producers devote a good 4 minutes of the Oscars entertainment to a bit on whose boobs we’ve seen, they’re making a comment on how they value women in the industry (and indeed, women in general).

In the few snippets of the Oscars I watched this time around (I’ve been on a lazy boycott since Titanic won), reducing women to things that we look at seems par for the course: watch this clip of Jennifer Lawrence fielding questions from reporters after her win.

Save for the first question, dealing with mental illness, the rest of the questions were inane and unrelated to her win – and Ms. Lawrence dealt with them expertly. When asked about her fall on the way up to receive her statue, she says: “What do you mean what happened?! Look at my dress! I tried to walk up stairs in this dress, that’s what happened...I think I just stepped on the fabric and they waxed the stairs” followed by a near imperceptible look that says it all: “Really? Is this what you’re asking me after I’ve won an Oscar in a movie which deals with mental illness?”

Many people have defended McFarlane, wondering what one would expect when you have the writer of Family Guy hosting the Oscars – but that doesn’t make it okay. Making jokes that place women’s worth solely on the nakedness of their breasts during an international broadcast is entirely inappropriate. (And so was his Chris Brown and Rihanna joke: Django Unchained was “the story of a man fighting to get back his woman who has been subjected to unthinkable violence. Or as Chris Brown and Rihanna call it, a date movie.” So now we're publicly calling out a victim of domestic violence in a distasteful quip?)

I can make the worst jokes and the most inappropriate comments, but I know my audience. I know who knows my actual values and McFarlane should never have risked the kind of offence he caused a significant portion of the population – whether our tits are in or out.

Sex Ed

There was a minor furor back in April when the Ontario Ministry of Education released an updated Health curriculum after consultations with sexual health experts, educators and other provincial education ministries. Church and “family focused” groups freaked out over children as young as 6 learning to use the words penis and vagina to describe, well, a penis and vagina. That wasn’t the worst of it, though, according to the critics: kids as young as 8 were to learn that there are homosexual relationships (what the children of same sex couples did before learning this, I don’t know) and adolescents were to learn the facts about anal and oral sex as well as the old standby of vaginal sex.

Rev. Ekron Malcolm, who is with the Institute for Canadian Values and was a major critic of the original revised curriculum, was quoted in the National Post, saying: “schools don’t need to be teaching my children about sexual orientation or sex education. Those decisions should be left to the family, to the parents, to guide children. These topics can be taught at the high school level, at the university level, when children can make up their minds.”

In terms of homosexuality and gender identity, there are huge problems with ignoring the fact that there are gay relationships and people who don’t adhere to traditional gender standards. (Never mind that fact that teaching homosexuality doesn’t mean teaching homosexual acts; just that boys can like boys and girls can like girls and people can marry someone of the same gender.)

A principal friend of mine had a gender equity assembly at her school which involved many skits dealing with male/female stereotypes and inequities as well as homosexuality. The next day, my friend had an office full of parents complaining that exposing their children to the idea that homosexuality was an acceptable practice contravened their religious and cultural teachings. And isn’t this what is really at the heart of Malcolm’s complaint, that parents should be able to teach that homosexuality is an abomination, contrary to the Canadian Charter of Rights and Freedoms (the document which my principal friend had on hand for her enraged parents meeting).

I knew a boy once who was being “guided” by his parents when he was told he was no longer allowed to dress up in his sister’s clothing. This was a highly intelligent, creative and empathetic boy who was made to feel that his exploration of gender identity was wrong. And believe me, he had a forming gender identity at age 7.

It is the child’s understanding of this identity of which Malcolm can’t conceive: “I can’t imagine a child now has to question their gender, question their identity,” he said. “I think there’s enough confusion among our children in the world, for them now having to question themselves. This is where I would draw the line.”

The confusion in the world is precisely the reason why we should teach sexuality in schools. Sex is way more readily available with the internet nowadays. When I was an adolescent, you’d hear stories of people stealing their parents’ porn tapes and sharing them with their friends or sneaking peaks at the top shelf magazines at the variety store. The exposure was minimal, rare, usually accompanied by a group and required some resourcefulness. Now, you can get all manner of pornography for free from any computer without parental controls and none of it is mediated with a discussion as to what’s going on.

Adolescents need to understand the different types of sex and their risks and how to protect themselves from these risks. Critics argue that grade 7 and 8 is too young to introduce students to the taboo acts of anal and oral sex but the crux of the issue is that a lot of kids that age are already doing it. I remember becoming aware of people participating in oral and vaginal sex in grade 6 – and those were only the stories that made it to my ears. Who knows the number of girls who were convinced that having anal sex would preserve their virginity and prevent pregnancy.

Sexual education is a delicate, sometimes cringe-inducing necessity. Part of it is certainly the nitty-gritty physiology of parts and acts, but another part of it is arming kids with knowledge in order to make their own decisions – it has been widely reported that teenagers who have been sexually educated from a young age often delay having sex. Sex ed class is also the only time you’ll have the attention of every single student.

Unfortunately for Ontario, the outcry over the new curriculum worked and Dalton McGuinty backpedaled on his support for the curriculum two days later. An interim edition of the Health curriculum is now available on the Ministry’s website with all the dirty stuff taken out. Grade ones still learn to “identify the major parts of the body by their proper names” and education around puberty is still in there for the grade fours. However, there is absolutely no mention of homosexuality anywhere in the general and specific curriculum expectations.

In Montana, the state government has come out with a curriculum document that details how to sexually educate children from kindergarten to grade 12 (see specifically pages 36 – 40). It is a fully inclusive document which details a variety of sexual knowledge. The document has attracted some conservative backlash, certainly, but as far as I know, it is still being implemented in schools. Hopefully the Ontario interim curriculum document will have a chance to be reviewed with an eye to inclusion and public health and the final document will take into account “the confusion” of the world and arm our children with the knowledge necessary to meet this confusion.

With This Misogynist Tradition, I Thee Wed

Ah, Margaret Wente – you never cease to annoy me of a Saturday.

This week it was her column telling us why weddings matter more than ever. Wente writes how as a young adult she thought marriage was a “dusty relic of the patriarchy” and weddings “a silly, conformist ritual full of fake piety, tasteless clothes and ostentatious spending.” But now, of course, as an experienced 50-something, she can see the error of her young adult thinking. (This is a sly arguing technique – because you can’t really argue with an elder who is telling you that essentially your beliefs are wrong because they believed them when they were young, but now they know better.) Wente now sees her decision to seek out “self-actualization and adventure” over the “banality of coupledom and family life” as wrong – huh? But she got both! Dozens of times women who married young have told me to enjoy my single life now – they wished they had. I’ve had conversations with women who I met travelling who were divorced and in their 40s doing the backpacker thing because they wished they had done it in their 20s, but got caught up in marriage and kids.

Marriage is a dusty relic – based on the exchange of property – and few people understand my ire at the father of the bride walking her down the aisle to her husband-to-be. Some couples have chosen to have both the bride’s parents walk her down the aisle, but the symbolic tradition still remains: it is the woman who is being passed from one man (and his wife) to another man. Never mind the fact that my (and most women's) last name is that of my patrilineal heritage only.

Having been through several weddings (the cheapest of which was $15 000), weddings do invite outrageous spending. Part of this, of course, is the fact that everything you spend money on for a wedding is grossly inflated because it’s for a wedding. And our society says that’s okay because we place such importance on this one event.

Let me digress for a moment here and say that I certainly do not judge those people that enjoy the tradition and pomp of a wedding. Some people love the pageantry and the flowers and the centerpieces. But two things remain. One: I urge people to really think about where certain traditions come from. Two: I think it was Salman Rushdie that once said that women want a wedding, not a marriage (I’ll ignore his gender generalization to make my point). And for all the white tulle and roses, that’s the whole point of the day – two people promising to stay in their foxhole together.

Wente argues marriage is “indisputably the best arrangement for raising children.” I totally agree that having two people raise children is better than single parenting and having a male and female role model (although these do not have to be the mom and dad of a heterosexual couple) is ideal. But what is most important is that two people agree to stick it out together in the long run. It doesn’t take a 40K wedding to make that commitment – a simple “you’re stuck with me ‘til I’m old, babe” would suffice.

And finally, I'm not sure Wente can effectively argue that a life with someone else is "infinitely richer" than being single. For her (hopefully), she is happy because she is with a good man, not because she is part of a couple. I'd rather be single than in an unhappy relationship. If I left my partner now, I'd miss him, not having a boyfriend. And because Wente has been in a relationship for the past however many years, she has nothing to compare it to - perhaps she would have been more adventurous as a 40-something, or done things she wouldn't have as a married woman.

As Wente notes, marriage rates are in decline and people are waiting until into their 30s to marry. And there's nothing wrong with this. There's nothing wrong with getting everything you can out of life and not placing landing a husband as your primary goal. And hopefully when we all look back at our 20s and 30s, we'll say, hey - we were right. And as elders, no one can argue with us.

A Year of Writing Annually

Over the past several years, there has been a trend in publishing where people live differently for a year and then write about it: they give up something or follow a certain set of rules. Finlo Rohrer details this in his piece for the BBC’s online magazine. He points to Kath Kelly's How I Lived A Year On Just A Pound A Day; Neil Boorman's Bonfire of the Brands, “in which the protagonist burned all his branded goods and then lived for a year without them”; and Hephzibah Anderson’s book entitled Chastened: No More Sex in the City, in which the writer gives up sexual activity for a full 12 months.

Other examples that come to mind: The Hundred Mile Diet by British Columbians Alisa Smith and J.B. MacKinnon who, for a year, lived on food procured from within a hundred mile radius of where they lived (I’d have trouble with the no coffee rule and the lean months of winter). Or The Year of Living Biblically by A.J. Jacobs, who follows the Bible so literally that he can’t shave his beard and has to stone adulterers.

There are other projects that fall outside the annual period: Rohrer mentions to Morgan Spurlock’s documentary Supersize Me that has Spurlock subsisting on food from McDonald’s for a month. And there is also Chris Jeavans’s blog in which she details her 31 days without buying anything plastic.

Stunts? Yes. But they all make a point about their subject: plastic is pervasive, McDonald’s is not good for you, the Bible shouldn’t be used to incite hatred, our world is comestibly globalized and sometimes casual sex interferes with women’s quest for “the one”.

Lazy as I am, I wouldn’t give up much that I like doing and I feel no need to follow a novel set of rules. But, as I’m sure everyone can acknowledge, there are several things I do as a matter of course that might be interesting to the reading public. But again, the laziness – so I will write in the spirit of John Crace’s Digested Read in which he takes books and distills them down to a few pithy paragraphs. (He even digests Chastened: No More Sex in the City – check it out at the link above!)

7 Months Without a Car

Back in January, I discovered that my muffler was completely rusted through. That, accompanied with the fact that the highbeams came on whenever I signaled left or right, the gas tank could only be filled halfway due to a hole at its top, the radio and parking brake didn’t work and the hood was held down with a flimsy contraption my dad had fashioned with the warning not to go faster than 60 or he couldn’t guarantee another hood-fly-up (which had happened several months before). So I sent my car to Car Heaven. Even got $300 out of the deal.

Considering it takes me 37 seconds to commute to work by foot, that part of being carless was easy. So was the fact that I live in an area where you can very easily walk to several grocery stores and specialty food shops to pick up anything I could want. I cheated a few times and “babysat” my parents’ car while they were away so I could purchase difficult-to-carry items like the economy pack of toilet paper or the large box of laundry powder.

Social engagements were arrived at by bike or public transit – the time commitment was definitely more, but there was never any waffling over whether to drive and remain sober or have a few drinks and cab it home.

The one drawback was missing out on those quick trips across town to visit people for just a few hours. Taking public transit sometimes was just not worth it. I also found I just did not frequent those stores that were out in Scarborough and I have yet to go back to Ikea.

25 Years Without Meat

When I was nine, my dad told me how they killed animals for food. I swore I would never eat meat again, and being the stubborn firstborn that I am, for the most part I didn’t. When I say “for the most part” I mean that there were a couple McDonald’s burgers in the first few years of my vegetarianism and then a few times when I ate meat without knowing it.

It’s become more of a routine now – I only know how to make two meat dishes and when I have tried bits of meat recently, I’ve found it takes a long time to chew. Besides, restaurants are much better now than they were in the 80s about offering vegetarian options. I also can claim environmental superiority by only taking up one field for food production instead of that field, plus a few more for the animals, plus a few more to feed the animals.

12 Days Without Sugar

A few years ago, I went on the Wild Rose Herbal D-Tox Cleanse (highly recommended) on the advice of my naturopath. For 12 days I was allowed no alcohol, no dairy products, no wheat or yeast and no sugar. I found the sugar the hardest, partly because I have quite the sweet tooth, but also because there is sugar in almost all prepared foods. I began reading labels much more carefully and ended up making all my meals from scratch – just fresh fruit and vegetables, beans, eggs and rice. I lost 8 pounds and felt so much better when it was finished. I also found my blood sugar levels evened out and I didn’t have that drop at 4pm when you crave cookies and other starchy, sugary snacks.

It wasn’t easy, though – I was craving things like pizza and cake like crazy. And when the cleanse was over, I went out and had poutine and immediately felt wretched. It taught me how much extra crap goes into prepared foods and how much what I put in my body affects me.

A Week Without Cell Phones or Internet Access

This summer I spent a week at a cottage where my cell phone didn't work and there was no internet. How did I cope? I went swimming, I read books and I lay in the sun. Hmm - this one seems to be the easiest - but also the shortest.

2 Months of No Work

At the end of the past 7 Junes, I have become unemployed. Weeks stretch out before me to be filled with sleep-ins, daytime television and meeting up with other unemployed friends. Some people ask how someone could possibly fill all those empty days without some kind of project or focus. Well, as I’m currently approaching the end of my unemployment once again, I can safely say that the days were filled and they slipped by easily.


On that note, I still have part of a week to continue my lazy unemployment. Maybe I'll try for a year of living like a responsible citizen. A year of getting up when my alarm goes off. Or a year without heroin.

Facebook & Feminism

Betty Freidan’s 1963 book The Feminine Mystique asserts that society requires women to define themselves by their husbands and family. During this Second Wave of feminism, many women broke out of the domestic sphere, both literally (by getting jobs, sharing housework) and symbolically (not taking their husband’s name). Despite this progress it appears, according to Katie Roiphe writing on doublex.com, that social networking sites may be causing women to revert back to being defined by their family.

“You click on a friend's name and what comes into focus is not a photograph of her face, but a sleeping blond four-year-old, or a sun-hatted baby running on the beach...Where have all of these women gone?” writes Roiphe, describing the majority of profile pictures of mothers in my friends list. I did a little Facebook statistical analysis and found that almost two-thirds of my friends who are mothers, have a picture of their child in their profile picture. Compare that to a little over a third of fathers who include a photo of their child in their profile photo. And this analysis did not involve the number of banal status updates some of my friends write about toilet training, eating habits and first steps.

Now before I am branded anti-child, let me say this: I understand that we tend to talk about what is important to us and what we deal with on a daily basis. If I was dealing with spitting up babies and squealing toddlers, kids would probably be an oft-visited topic of conversation for me. And of course, if I had a kid, they would be pretty close to the centre of my world, just like I was for my mother (Right? Right, Mum?). But just like my mother, I think I would have other interests outside the sphere of family, and my child and husband would not define who I was. According to Roiphe: “One’s children are of course an important achievement, and arguably one’s most important achievement, but that doesn’t mean that they are who you are.”

But here’s the difficult dichotomy within feminism: we strive for equal rights and the freedom to define ourselves how we see fit. So if a woman wants to take a great interest in the domestic sphere, free of societal pressures and expectations, what does it matter? If she just birthed a child of her loins and she wants to put a photo of him or her on her Facebook page, who cares?

Roiphe:

Many of these women work. Many of them are in book clubs. Many of them are involved in causes. But this is how they choose to represent themselves. The choice may seem trivial, but the whole idea behind Facebook is to create a social persona, an image of who you are projected into hundreds of bedrooms and cafes and offices across the country. Why would that image be of someone else, however closely bound they are to your life, genetically and otherwise? The choice seems to constitute a retreat to an older form of identity, to a time when women were called Mrs. John Smith…

It might be a bit difficult to project what book you’re reading or what cause you’re involved in through a profile photo. It is a small part of the whole Facebook page. And certainly the mothers in my friends list have other dynamic aspects of their personalities that are evident in their Facebook activities.

We need to validate archetypically female spheres: because of the whole uterus set up, women give birth to babies and due to their functioning mammary glands, tend to be the primary caregiver, especially in the first few months of infancy. Having and caring for babies does not mean women are sacrificing gains made during feminism’s heyday. However, being aware of what has gone before is essential. The Feminine Mystique illustrates a cultural shift in America where women were defined by marriage and family, yet many yearned for more. Nowadays, marriage and family may play a large part in women’s lives, but it doesn’t define them the way Friedan observed in housewives of the 1950s.

And here’s the proof: to the best of my knowledge, every single mother on my Facebook friend list is educated and employed. Thanks to feminists before them, they broke out of the domestic sphere with aspirations to higher education and careers. Some have kept their last names. I bet a few of them even let their husbands do the laundry.

Now if we could get some photos of that on Facebook…

Not Tonight, Honey, I'm... Oh Right - Obliged

Maybe it’s my unpredictable female hormones or the fact that I was almost convinced of the benefits of this UN-sanctioned war in Afghanistan; but I am now completely deflated by the news that president Hamid Karzai has signed a law that puts severe limits on the rights of Shia women. True, Karzai has backpeddaled after an intense international response, but it still brings up many uncomfortable questions.

The first has to do with the international response. Many critics used this opportunity to decry this step back in the UN’s quest to better the rights of women in Afghanistan. While certainly a bonus, this was not the reason the UN approved the forced removal of the Taleban. They went in because the Taleban were harbouring and funding terrorists who were loosely linked to the September 11th attacks.

Sally Armstrong, speaking on CBC’s The Current yesterday, pointed out that countries have never gone to war over women’s rights. I remember an article in Glamour magazine, of all places, detailing the oppression of women under the Taleban back in the early 90s. Western leaders cooled their heels for almost a decade before addressing the problems with the regime, their impetus certainly not being women’s rights.

So the UN is now in Afghanistan, nation-building and setting up democracy: essentially forcing Western ideals on a culture that has just proved they don’t hold. And this is where my deflation comes from: change like this can’t be imposed, it has to come from within and it’s going to take a really long time. Hell – when both my grandmothers were born, they were born into Western societies where being female precluded their right to vote. (By the time both reached the age of majority, they were afforded these rights. It is a right that I take for granted every time I enter a voting booth, despite only holding this right for a couple generations.)

The second question that arises is the fact that the law applies only to the Shia minority – a branch of Islam practised by the ethnic Hazaras, who, if you’ve read The Kite Runner you’ll know, are the social underclass to the majority Pashtuns (who are mainly Sunni). Not only is this law a gender issue, it is also a social one: Hazara women have been pushed to the lowest rung. Critics say that Karzai signed the law in order to get votes from the Shia population – but why is there a separate law for Shia women? (Although there is talk of a set of family laws being drawn up for the Sunni population - we'll see how these affect women's rights.)

Although the UN may have put in place a government that is supposed to share its democratic ideals, there is still a long road ahead until those ideals are accepted in everyday practice.

Blame

In the Globe today, there is an article by Ingrid Peritz questioning whether a faster response to Natasha Richardson’s head injury would have saved her life. A second article by Jessica Leeder talks about “talk and die syndrome” where patients are lucid and coherent right after the injury, but by the time they display worrying symptoms, it is too late. I hope this is not an attempt to lay blame in order to make sense of a random and tragic accident.

After severe headaches and signs of “instability,” Richardson was taken to a hospital nearby Mont Tremblant, where the accident occurred, and was then driven to Sacre-Coeur Hospital in Montreal for specialized treatment. The hours in between the accident and her arrival at Sacre-Coeur could have made all the difference to Richardson’s recovery, according to Peritz. But I’m not sure this situation would have gone any differently.

Richardson refused medical treatment immediately after the fall – as I’m sure do thousands of people who take a tumble during ski season. Though I’ve never hit my head, I’ve certainly had several falls on the ski slopes, off my bike and on ice. As long as you feel okay, as Richardson did at first, you brush yourself off and are on your way. Like many people, I err on the side of cavalier as opposed to hypochondria when experiencing a wide variety of symptoms and accidents. According to Doug Firby, a spokesman for Sunshine Village Ski and Snowboard Resort in Banff and quoted in Leeder’s piece: “Some of [the skiers] bang their heads. I can’t imagine a scenario in which you could actually force all those people to go to hospital.” The one thing I guess you could force them to do is wear a ski helmet, legislation that is sure to come down the pipeline soon.

But there are some accidents just happen and no amount of safety procedures and equipment can change that. It is unfortunate and utterly devastating to the loved ones of the victim who must spend an awful lot of time running through alternate “what if” scenarios in their heads. And sometimes people make glaring mistakes or are willfully negligent to safety and of course I believe these people should not be let off the hook. But sometimes accidents are just that: accidents. They are a confluence of unpreventable events.

I am reminded of Atom Egoyan’s film The Sweet Hereafter, based on a book by Russell Banks. In it, lawyer Mitchell Stephens comes to the town of Sam Dent after a school bus crash that has killed several of the town’s children. Stephens is intent on somehow laying blame for the accident – on the driver, the bus company – someone must pay for the deaths of these children.

But the conclusion of the book does not see anyone held accountable for the accident: it shows a community coming together only to mourn the deaths of the children. They see no need to find fault in order to assuage their pain – the people involved are already hurting enough.

Perhaps Richardson’s death will see calls for mandatory helmets on ski hills or better air ambulance service in the area. But it certainly should not be used to find fault where there isn’t any.

The Palin Is Just Not That Into You

First comes love, then comes… No, wait – first comes marriage, then… Oh shit, it was the baby first, then a forced engagement, then – what am I missing in Bristol Palin’s romantic history? Oh yeah – a little thing called freewill and a woman’s right to choose not to be the posterchild for Republican reproductive control. (Which is a bit difficult in the bedrooms and backseats of the nation as Bristol has demonstrated.)

It’s official: Bristol Palin and Levi Johnston, who were once "committed to accomplish what millions of other young parents have accomplished: to provide a loving and secure environment for their child,"* have broken up.

So now little Tripp will grow up, cared for by a single mother – an archetype so despised by the vile Ann Coulter who believes "Single motherhood is like a farm team for future criminals and social outcasts”. Oh how I love the way conservatives unwittingly screw each other with their black-and-white statements.

Bristol recently stated in an interview with Greta Van Susteren that abstincence is “not realistic” and that “[sex] is more and more accepted among kids [her] age” (really?), something Mama Palin and Coulter seem to ignore. So instead of making the hard choice to terminate the pregnancy, Bristol had the kid and is now setting up her own little future criminal.

But the thing is, little Tripp will probably be okay. Like all sweeping, black-and-white statements, they leave out the little grey nuances. Coulter claims 70% of inmates, teenage runaways and delinquents, and drug users (amazing how this percentage is constant throughout) come from single parent homes. Regardless of the accuracy of Coulter’s stats, she is only looking at one variable – how many parents raise you – and completely discounting all the other factors that go with criminal activity, drug abuse etc. like socio-economic status, mental illness and abuse, to name a few.

The fact that Tripp will be raised by a single mother who has a set of support systems in place (ie. money and Mama Palin) already puts him ahead of the criminals that fall into Coulter’s 70%. It’s not Bristol’s marital status that affects her kid’s success, it’s her socio-economic status.

Hopefully Sarah Palin has learned that to support abstinence-only sex education is one of these sweeping statements. It completely discounts a pretty intense factor: teenage lust; something which Bristol spelled out for her mom in her interview with Greta Van Susteren.

It is a grand thing that America chose wisely last November and voted in a president who understands that sweeping statements (hello, War on Terror) are always riddled with shades of that truth.

______________________________
*Mama Sarah, December 2008

The Elf Is Just Not That Into You

So, I avoided the cliché of going to see He’s Just Not That Into You with a huge group of girls by going with my happily married friend Michelle. Two things:

1. At the end of He’s Just Not That Into You, the adulterers are punished by being alone. This seems a simple solution to a complex set of feelings. I am certainly not excusing adultery: I’ve had the chance to be the other woman handed to me on a two-timing plate on a few occasions and have declined each time because of my respect of this institution I’m not entirely sure I buy into. But I cannot accept this simple-minded answer that humans must fit this monogamous model and should be punished for any aberrant behaviour.

2. The conversation that Jennifer Anniston had at the wedding with the Wiccan? Yeah, I’ve basically had that exact conversation. With a guy wearing a feather in his hair. We talked fairies and elves and sprites (he was into Celtic mysticism). When I asked what category I fell into, he asked what I felt I was. I said I felt like an elf. And so he said I was an elf.

Nurse.Fighter.Boy

They are my favourite kind of stories: simple ones told beautifully.

So often stories are told with complicated subplots and twist endings; writers trying to stay two steps ahead of their audience. But those stories rarely stay with me. The ones that do are the tales of an average person who lets you into their patch of life. Gavin Hood’s movie Tsotsi is one of them. Yann Martel’s Man Booker-winning novel Life of Pi is another. And now Nurse.Fighter.Boy, a film by Toronto filmmaker Charles Officer, is another simple story told beautifully.

Filmed in and around the visually lush alleyways of the east end of Toronto, Nurse.Fighter.Boy follows Jude (the nurse) and her son, Ciel (the boy) as their pathways intersect with Silence (the fighter). Jude suffers from sickle cell anemia, an inherited blood disease that shortens life expectancy, a fact of which Ciel is keenly aware.

The opening scene is of Ciel playing the magician in his Narnia-like playspace, a role he inhabits throughout the film, reciting incantations and performing rituals to keep his mother well. He extends his protective talents to Silence in the film, a character also in need of healing. And at the film’s climax, a wonderfully crafted and acted duo of scenes, we see this healing, told in silence.

This is the reward of telling simple stories: you can infuse them with so much more, as Officer does. His visual images of the moon, the role of magic, the presence of Jamaica (a place, I was told by a friend who grew up there, that is full of ghosts and magic) and that tenuous space between childhood and adulthood, all suffuse Officer’s film.

And this beauty is why the simple story of Nurse.Fighter.Boy stays with me.

A 9-Year-Old’s Guide to Love

Could a 9-year-old boy from Colorado have all the answers about how to get a girl? Alec Greven thinks he does.

After watching how boys and girls interacted at recess, he wrote a brochure entitled How To Talk to Girls, aiming to help some of those inexperienced third-graders get some play. His suggestions are much more innocent that a dating manual like The Game, but are they valid in an adult world? Well, let’s just say I’ve field-tested a few in my lifetime.

(All quotes have been taken from Zosia Bielski's article the Globe and Mail.)


“Class clowns: Turn normal. Less jokes, no jokes during class. Then you might get a girl.”

FALSE. This is the best way to get a girl. Make her laugh and you’re 38% cuter. A friend of mine was into this really cute boy, but then she got to know him and her jokes fell flat on him and he had no comebacks. Boring.

“The shy guy? They probably want to copy someone that they think is cool except it can't be a class clown or somebody that's power hungry.”

FALSE. We can spot a fake a mile off. We usually refer to them as “slimy” or “trying too hard.” A friend of mine, who I dated for, like, a minute, is like this. He has an idea of how he wants the world to see him. If he’d just relax into himself, he’d be fabulous.

"You also have to be aware that girls win most of the arguments and have most of the power. If you know that now, things might be easier."

FALSE. I may be alone on this one, but I think the age-old assumption by brow-beaten men that there’s no point in arguing with a woman and cow-towing to whatever she says (“Yes, dear”) is slightly misogynistic. It implies that there is no need to enter into a dialogue and listen to her reasoning. It’s just easier to shut her out and do what she says, because what she actually thinks doesn’t matter. I want my actions and motives questioned and I want to arrive at a mutually desirable conclusion.

"If you like a girl, comb your hair and don't wear sweats. You don't have to try too hard, but just try to look kind of clean."

TRUE and FALSE. You have to look good for the first date or two, true. And you should shower on a daily basis. But then it just doesn’t matter after that if she likes you. One guy I dated spent 90% of his time with me in sweats and once arrived at my house after the gym sans shower.

“[Pretty girls are mean because they] think they're all important and proud and they're worth more than other girls.”

TRUE. Unfortunately. We are a society obsessed with beauty – a society made up of biologically driven individuals out to get the best genes for our offspring. Pretty girls are treated differently by people and some come to act like they’re worth more than other girls.

Sorry, Alec. Despite a publishing deal and a movie deal, it looks like your advice doesn’t quite cross to those of us able to vote. But hey – this kid’s got another 25 – 30 years before he achieves male maturity. We’ll see how well his theories apply then.

A PARLIAMENTARY CAROL

With thanks to Gary Mason and apologies to Charles Dickens.

STAVE ONE

Parliament was dead: to begin with. There is no doubt whatever about that. The prorogation order was signed by Ms. Jean, who was a little put out at being called home early from her European trip, after a lengthy discussion in her oak-panelled study. Stephen’s name was on it, too. Parliament was as dead as a door-nail. Until January 26th.

Stephen was curled up in bed, awaiting Laureen to finish in the ensuite. This was going to be the first night in a very long time that he would be able to sleep without worrying about the economy, about slips of the tongue (addressing someone else as Prime Minister, why? Why’d he do that?), or about that nasty coalition forming like a pay equity case, across the floor from him.

Stephen drifted into sweet slumber, not even noticing Laureen as she crawled in beside him without a thought to possible suspension of her right to legal recourse for pay equity issues.

But alas, his sleep did not last long and he awoke in the middle of the night, thirsty and slightly peckish. Swinging his legs out of bed, he shuffled to his bedroom door. Reaching out his hand for the handle, he immediately pulled back. He no longer saw a door handle, but Stephane Dion’s face.

Closing his eyes and shaking his head, Stephen thought he must be dreaming. He opened his eyes and looked again at the handle. It was just a handle. He trudged downstairs and peered in the fridge, hoping that some of those PC Wild Pacific Salmon Mini Wellingtons that Galen Weston had sent over were still in the fridge.

“Monsieur Har-per.”

Stephen spun around to see Stephane Dion standing before him, clutching the parliamentary mace, completely transparent.

“Mercy!” said Stephen, his hand at his chest. “What are you doing troubling me at this hour?”

“You will be haunted by three spirits,” said M. Dion, without any attempt at anger or passion.

“Oh no!” said Stephen. “You, Layton and Duceppe!”

Dion smiled. “I am on my way out. Without their visits, you cannot hope to shun the path I follow.”

And with that, Dion was gone. Stephen popped a salmon wellington in his mouth and headed for the couch. He was soon fast asleep.

STAVE TWO

Stephen awoke with a start to find Belinda Stronach kneeling beside him on the couch. Her hair was soft and blonde, her skin dewy and glowing in the dark Ottawa night. She wore a blue pantsuit and fire engine red lipstick.

“Hello, Stephen,” she whispered.

“Belinda! What are you doing here?”

“I’m the Ghost of Parliament Past.”

“Long Past? Like back in 1926 when Mackenzie King asked Lord Byng to prorogue Parliament to avoid a motion of censure?”

“No. Your past. Walk with me.”

Belinda offered Stephen her hand and led him out the door of 24 Sussex Dr., down the road and along Wellington towards the Parliament buildings. They climbed the stairs to the public gallery. Stephen looked to his chair in the House, but instead of him sitting there, it was Paul Martin. He looked across the floor to where his party sat and watched a parliamentary session that was all too familiar to Stephen.

“I remember this,” whispered Stephen. “It was right around the time of the Gomery Commission so I knew I had more of the public on my side. I think the Liberals were presenting the federal budget?”

“That’s right,” purred Belinda.

“We were going to vote against an amendment the Liberals had made in order to….” Stephen’s voice trailed off.

“…bring down the government.” Belinda finished his thought.

“Didn’t you…”

“..cross the floor? I did. I didn’t agree with you forcing an early election. And I’d come to my senses about that Peter MacKay fellow. Come. We have a press conference to see.”

Belinda led Stephen out of the public gallery and down to where a woman had cameras and microphones surrounding her. She was talking about national unity and how it was being jeopardized by an alliance between “him” and the Bloc Quebecois, only because “he” wanted to bring down the current government.

“Is that you?” asked Stephen.

“Yes,” replied Belinda. “And do you know who I’m talking about?”

Stephen hung his head as he remembered how fervently had had railed against the coalition for courting Bloc Quebecois support.

“But it’s just politics,” he said.

“I must go now,” said Belinda. “Sweet dreams.”

Stephen watched as Belinda melted into the background of the press conference that was still going on. He sat down on the stairs and leant his head against the banister. Soon, he was fast asleep again.

STAVE THREE

Stephen awoke in an uncomfortable position inside the parliament buildings. Still feeling quite peckish, he headed down to the cafeteria to see if it was open. Arriving at the entrance, he was shocked to find Jean Chretien lounging in an easy chair, a tumbler of whiskey in his hand.

“Bonsoir,” he said smiling.

“What are you doing here?” asked Stephen.

Jean leaned forward in his chair, cupping the whiskey glass in both his hands. “I am the Ghost of Parliament Present, “ he smiled, arching an eyebrow.

“But you left office five years ago!” exclaimed Stephen.

“I’m back consulting,” said Jean, rising and heading into the cafeteria. “Follow me.”

They entered the cafeteria and stopped beside a table of men and women, their faces downcast.

“I can’t believe it’s finally happened,” said one of the women, swirling around the coffee in her mug. “I always knew AbitibiBowater was in a bit of trouble, but I didn’t think it would actually close its doors. I guess my kids are getting a helluva lot less from Santa this year.”

“Keep moving,” said Jean, guiding Stephen towards another table of people.

“They’re temporary only because they think the government’s going to step in,” said one of the men, a GM baseball cap atop his head.

“At least we’ll get through Christmas,” said a woman, eyes downcast.

“Yeah, but all the bills from Christmas come in early January, right when we’re scheduled to be temporarily laid off!” chimed in a grey-haired man with a chubby face.

“You think the government will give us a bailout?” asked the woman.

“What government?” answered another woman. “They’ve taken a seven week holiday during the economic crisis, leaving us with no stimulus package. All the other countries are busy trying to figure out how to get their citizens out of financial trouble and ours is on holiday!”

“Bloody Conservatives,” mumbled the man with the GM hat.

“Bloody Harper,” mumbled the first woman.

“But…I…” Stephen stumbled over his words, “It’s just politics.”

“I must go,” said Jean, swigging the last of his whiskey.

Stephen followed Jean out of the cafeteria and watched him fade into the background. He sat down on the chair that Jean had been sitting on and let his head fall to the side.

“I wanted to cut the political party subsidies,” he said to himself, “That would have saved some money.” And with that, he fell into a deep sleep.

STAVE FOUR

Stephen was awoken by the sound of wind. He opened one eye and saw a phantom approaching him. It was shrouded in a dark robe and did not speak as it stood before him.

“Am I in the presence of the Ghost of Parliament Yet To Come?” he asked.

The spectre did not answer, but beckoned with its hand. Stephen rose and followed the ghost through the halls of parliament.

They came upon a scene of Brent Butt, cellphone in hand.

“Yeah. Yeah. No – we just don’t think he’s topical right now,” he paused. “Yeah, I know he did a great job last time he was on. Well, I wouldn’t say natural ability, but he got a few laughs. Yeah, no – I think I’m going to pass.”

The ghost beckoned again for Stephen to follow him to another scene, this time of Rick Mercer on a cellphone.

“No, he says he won’t do the skinny-dipping again. He says his new post is much too serious to resort to humourous nudity. Yeah, I told him that, but the man’s got quite a bit on his plate, undoing all the damage, you know. Maybe we can get Harper to do the Polar Bear swim. Make a joke about losing his cahones. I don’t know – we’ll give it to the writers. Yeah – let me know. Okay. Okay. Bye.”

“Spirit! What is he talking about?”

The ghost did not answer, but pointed to the Office of the Prime Minister, a place with which Stephen was very familiar. The ghost gestured for Stephen to enter. Slowly, Stephen pushed the heavy door open. The room was empty. He turned to look at the Ghost of Parliament Yet To Come. The ghost floated across the floor, behind the desk and took a seat in the Prime Minister’s chair.

“What are you doing?” whispered Stephen.

Again, the phantom was silent, but slowly moved its hands to its hood and began to draw back the cloak.

Stephen’s eyes filled with terror as the ghost in the chair removed the hood. There he was, smiling with his grey wispy hair slightly askew: Bob Rae.

“No!” shouted Stephen. “No! This cannot happen! I must do something! Something to stop this horrible future! I won’t be vindictive with political party subsidies! I’ll give civil servants back the right to strike! I’ll work with the opposition! I’ll act like I’m in a minority government! Anything!”

STAVE FIVE

Two men sat in an Ottawa pub, enjoying an early February beer. One sported a graying mustache, the other, dark heavy eyebrows. The mood was sombre.

“Well,” said Jack, “the guy’s a weasel, that’s for sure. I can’t believe Canadians were okay with his backtracking. That fiscal update was a huge mistake, but everyone seems to have forgiven him.”

“I can’t believe the political ads over the Christmas season!” said Michael. “I mean, I thought those Galen Weston salmon wellington ads were annoying, but come on!”

“If only Michaelle had denied him, we could have taken over back in December and sorted out this economic mess,” said Jack.

“If only we’d had a better leader back in October, we could have avoided this mess in the first place, “ said Michael.

“I guess he’s got a lot more than just his platform under his sweater,” said Jack.

Michael raised his glass in the air and Jack followed suit.

“Stephen Harper remains as Prime Minister,” said Michael with a sigh. “God help us, everyone.”

Steph’s Guide to the Coalition

You know, my Canada used to include Quebec. But now I’m thinking, let them separate.

Tonight, Stephen Harper (has he coloured his hair in an attempt to avoid the stuffy-sweater-wearing image that hounded him during this past election?) was pretty heavy handed about the Bloc Quebecois’s support of the coalition, trying to scare Canadians with the prospect of Gilles Duceppe and his nefarious plans to separate. I say, who cares? Let them go. Quebec could be like Lesotho, but without the absolute monarch and annual virgin marriages. Or like Azerbaijan, with its little property on the other side of Armenia. We could travel abroad on a 5 hour train ride from Toronto without the hassle of an American boder – how fabulously European.

But to the matter at hand: the coalition (of the willing; ‘cos there’s a hell of a lot of people out west who are certainly not willing – isn’t it fabulous to watch them squirm and shout the word “undemocratic” as they claw to keep their beloved Conservatives in power?). Does Stephane Dion have the cahones? He’s got to have a hell of a lot of politicians propping him up and telling him everything is going to be alright as he steps back into the political limelight he thought he’d left back in October. He’s trying: his speech tonight was an attempt at an impassioned address. And ideologically, I’m with him (as is the constitution – take that, you wimpering righties!) But really, I think Jack Layton and his porn mustache would certainly make a better candidate for prime minister (his desire for that post is palpable, especially in recent months, I've found).

So it is all up to Michaelle Jean, who was probably having a lovely European time in Prague before she was yanked back to this Canadian reality. She meets with Stephen Harper tomorrow when he will request a prorogation of parliament. Will she suspend parliament, or refuse Harper’s request and allow a vote of non-confidence on Monday? Will she allow for an historical change in Canada’s history? Will she comment on Harper’s dye-job?

To quote my brother, who knew Canadian politics could be so sexy?

Steph’s Guide to Surviving the Current Financial Crisis

1. Get a job in the public sector.

I find it laughable that all those business types have their knickers in a knot over the tabled 12% over 4 years salary increase for elementary teachers. They complain that those of us getting paid by the government shouldn’t expect such an increase during an economic downturn. In the booming years when my Bay Street counterparts were making six figures and charging their entertainment expenses to the company, I never expected bonuses at the end of the year for any professional successes with students and I have no expense account to entertain the parents of my students. Public servants take the middle road: job security, but never making a huge amount of money. That’s the gamble of business – you stand to make a ridiculous amount of money in the fat years, but you have to accept that lean years are always a possibility.

2. Five months prior to collapse, buy property.

This will allow you to practise a more modest way of spending. All of a sudden your monthly expenses go up, so your disposable income goes down and you have to make cuts in spending. It also serves as a good excuse when turning down offers of a weekend in New York or a night on the tiles.

3. Vote in a left-leaning government.

Oh…shit… Well, we may be solving that one right now.

4. Dispense with any significant others before Christmas.

Just make sure it’s far enough ahead that you can’t be accused of ruining the holiday for them. Without a romantic partner to buy for and to attend a whole other set of parties with, your spending will plummet. It also cuts down on incidental expenses like the extra groceries you had to buy to feed them and restocking beer supplies.

5. Suggest a more modest family Christmas.

Out with materialism and in with environmentalism and altruism. Instead of buying heaps of things that no one needs or wants, suggest donating money to charities instead. Or buy consumables like, say…enough bottles of alcohol to replenish drying up liquor cabinets (hint, hint - ed.).

6. Break your foot. (This is key.)

You are now housebound and can’t go out. All little expenditures like that four dollar latte and those cute bowls at Pier 1 that hop into your shopping bag unexpectedly have been cut out. So have those last minute, unnecessary purchases in the checkout line of places like Shopper's Drug Mart, IKEA and Roots.

You also can’t pop up the road for a pint – way too tiring on crutches (and slightly dangerous to the healing process should that one pint turn into four, interfering with balance and judgment). Getting to and from any kind of social engagement must be elaborately planned, therefore many will have to be declined. Never mind the fact that any kind of holiday outfit will have to be accessorized by a big, grey aircast and crutches, immediately downgrading your attractiveness by at least 30%. This should also help to maintain your single (and therefore parsimonious) status into the new year.

And people feel sorry for you, so they’ll go out and buy you a four-dollar latte and refuse reimbursement. They'll also drive you places, so you save on gas (you can't drive your stick-shift car, anyway).

Spend you days at home, reading stories on the internet about how people are dealing with the credit crunch by having dinner parties at home, recycling key pieces in their closet and having martinis on their couches.

Now only if I could somehow get that liquor cabinet restocked...

Two Roads Diverged in a Yellow Wood...

I must say, I have been surprised at the people chosen to lead political parties of late. I really think the Liberals have shot themselves in the foot with Dion – and I thought that before all these election polls pointing towards a majority government. The dude has zero charisma. When he tries to make fired-up speeches about his plans for Canada, he just ends up resembling a Quebecois version of the Swedish chef on the Muppets. I don’t feel his fire. And neither do a lot of other Canadians.

But it’s Sarah Palin upon which I wish to parley. I was a little surprised when John McCain chose a woman as his running partner, but then I thought I obviously don’t have my finger on the pulse of Republican America, so there must be other reasons (her anti-abortion stance or deftness at hunting moose, perhaps). But then Heather Mallick said what I had been thinking: “It's possible that Republican men, sexual inadequates that they are, really believe that women will vote for a woman just because she's a woman.”

Did the Republicans see the tight race for the Democratic nomination between a black man and a woman and figure they’d get all those lady-votes because of Sarah? Are we that much of a tabula rasa that we blindly vote based on gender and not politics (even saying it sounds so stupid)?

Mallick thinks we woman are too resentful of each other to vote for a woman because she’s a woman. I don't know if it's resentment or just a refusal to look past a female's looks: a large amount of the media attention on Palin has centred around her appearance. And they’re not resentful of her dimpled Miss America beauty or her practical Alaskan physique. They make fun of her piled-on-top hair and take-me-seriously glasses. Forget about voting for her – they can’t even get past their male gaze to give a good analysis of her politics and suitability to run the country.

I wrote about this emphasis on women’s outward appearance when Barbara Walters caught herself about to compliment Barack Obama on his attractiveness. She did compliment him, but it was probably one of the few times Obama’s appearance has been discussed.

And over in Afghanistan, where under the Taleban the appearance of a woman was not discussed because it was hidden under swathes of cloth, the head of Kandahar's department of crimes against women, Lt-Col Malalai Kakar, was shot by Taleban rebels. She wasn’t criticized for her hair style or her dress sense or because one of her six children had screwed up. She was shot because she was a woman and women shouldn’t work.

Okay, next time I promise to write about Canadian politics.

Gas Is Not Food, People

I loved watching all the outraged drivers on the news last night react to the 13 cent jump in gas prices. There were accusations of price-gouging and calls for the government to cut taxes to help out the drivers of Toronto who, generally unaccompanied, negotiate over-sized, gas-guzzling vehicles through the plodding lanes of our city. Maybe I don’t fully understand their plight, as my car (a small, fuel-efficient Tercel) spends most of its time parked behind my building: I walk to work, bike for groceries and take public transport downtown the majority of the time.

But come on – these drivers are relying on a finite resource, the burning of which has contributed to the climate change of our earth. You should be paying more.

In Britain, the price of gas is approximately twice what it is here (and has been for the last ten years I’ve been keeping track). And most Britons drive small, fuel-efficient cars. And way more of them rely on public transport (I know – Britain is better serviced by trains and such, but it is because there is demand for it). Europeans seem much more willing to change their habits if something is expensive.

North Americans don’t want to consider any alternative to sitting alone in a comfortable car for 2 hours a day to get to and from work.

Sometimes driving makes more sense than other forms of transport. I get that. I drive if it’s raining or to a friend’s house if it's not well serviced by the TTC. But each time I get in that car, it is a conscious decision where I have weighed the other transport options.

UN Secretary General Ban Ki-Moon commuted to work in a solar-powered taxi this past week to raise awareness about alternatives to fossil fuels. That’s all I’m asking. Think about alternatives. The old vehicular standby is not our only option.