On Environmental Consequences

Have you seen An Inconvenient Truth? It’s a fantastic documentary. I previously had always scoffed at the environmental movement, mainly because of its association with bearded people living in trees and lingering visions of that hilarious Greenpeace boat souped up with megaphones and orange paint going around ramming oil tankers.

However, this film is not only sound scientifically, but about as entertaining as a film about the potential end of the world could probably be. It is devoid of anyone chaining themselves to anything, doesn't mire us in scolding or threats of unavoidable impending doom, but rather gently suggests that unless we want to live in the global equivalent of a dirty tanning bed, we need to start changing how we approach our lifestyles.

I'm down with that. But I think the primary problem with engaging people in the environmental movement is the lack of immediacy in the consequences of environmentally irresponsible actions. It’s the same reason we engage in all sorts of other excessively consumptive behaviours, such as racking up credit cards or cheating on our partners or buying a couch you don’t need, but also don’t have to pay for until 2035. Yes, we all accept that at the rate we’re going, we’re going to cause massive global warming and boil all the whales alive and make our air into nuclear waste and grow tails or whatnot. It’s just that we’re not going to actually manage to do that for at least another thirty or forty years. And while we do feel mildly guilty about handing over a world that looks like the Chernobyl plant over to our children, we can sort of justify away our personal responsibility. Indignance is often a good defense.

“Hey,” you think, “my generation had to deal with the Depression / Cold War / Celene Dion / etc. I didn’t like making soap out of old candles and fireplace ashes / spending my evenings playing Yatzee with the kids in the wine cellar / listening to that god damn Titanic song for seven months straight either, but I managed.”

It’s a little different, of course, but it’s still easy to worry about that tomorrah, as Scarlett would say. Now, if each of us were immediately hit with the negative consequences of our actions, we would see greenhouse gas emissions disappear faster than Rachael Ray’s career potential. Say you threw out a can in the garbage. If, seconds later, a little cloud came and rained some burning acid rain on your head, I bet you’d stop doing that right away. If every time we drove our car to go four blocks down the road, we were attacked by a vengeful spotted owl, we might get out and walk. The other night I left the sink running while I brushed my teeth. Now if I returned to the bathroom to find a Sudanese family displaced by drought in there, I’d smarten right up.

So, Mother Earth, Hurricane Katrina was pretty bad, but you can’t try and appeal to our higher consciousness unless you employ distributive justice. Quit punishing the Third World areas; they're not the ones burning a kajillion gallons of fossil fuels a day. Throw a few natural disasters at Washington DC and you'll see things change in a hurry. Or better yet - go after individuals. If apocalyptic plagues could occur on an individual pro-rata basis, it would probably do quite a bit to deter people from their bad behaviour.

After all, if a mere $0.25 library fine will make you drive ten blocks (in your SUV, no less) to return a book on time, just think what a very small cloud of locusts waiting for you in your walk-in closet would do.

For T, who may have, in her time, hugged a tree or two.

On Taking a Sick Day

Being sick is not good.

It’s almost like a biological coup d’etat; your body, as the divisive faction, makes a sudden and violent overthrow of the reigning establishment. Everything is thrown into chaos as your renegade digestive and reproductive systems work in tandem to neutralize your higher functions of reasoning and seize control of your infrastructures and defense centers. One minute, you’re happily in control and being productive, and the next, you’re the French Fourth Republic.

Eventually one has to succumb to the silent pleas of coworkers who are tired of hearing you replicate the 5th Symphony in mucus and miserably slink out of work. Our societal obsession with constant communication, however, requires the setting up of an elaborate system of apologies to every other non-sick professional contact possible via voicemail and that great ambassador of absenteeism, the Out of Office Assistant. You also must firehose your cell and Blackberry number to everyone in the office, assuring them that they can reach you at any time, thus turning your home into your office and somewhat negating the point of leaving work in the first place. And to assuage your guilt at leaving the office, you pick up a massive stack of files to carry out with you just so people see it. “Just rest!” they assure you as you stagger out with your pile of fake work. “No,” you say, “I wouldn’t want to…cough cough…get behind and let the company down.”

Cue sunset and swelling classical score. What a brave little soldier. (Good thing they don't realize those files are actually just back copies of InStyle magazine.)

So home you go, but the worst part of the whole ordeal is that taking a sick day from work is like taking a vacation that you don’t really enjoy that much. You’re doing all the things you’d normally love to be doing instead of going to work…only you can’t enjoy them. It’s the cock tease of the work world. Normally, spending an entire day sleeping on the couch, having peanut butter and Saltine cracker sandwiches and gingerale for every meal, and watching Coronation Street for hours on end would be a fabulous treat. But the allure of curling up with a hot water bottle and a stack of trashy magazines fades when one must do it afloat in a sea of crispy Kleenexes. Your mouth tastes like dirty pennies. Your joints ache and even the hair on your arms hurts. You’re barking like a harbour seal and your throat burns like you’ve been huffing WD40 for three days. There is no such thing as elegant sick; it’s difficult to relax in a soothing bubble bath listening to Enya and enjoying a steaming cup of Jasmine tea when one is a Play-Doh Flem Factory. There is no such thing as sexy sick. Or even pretty sick.

So the only option to truly enjoy your sick day is to spend it unconscious. Do yourself a favour; abuse over the counter medications such as Dramamine for their drowsy side effects and you’ll thank yourself when you awake, whole and healthy, three days later. Be liberal with your dosage; you don't want to be even semi-awake if the Metallica 'One' video has taught us anything. A Neo Citron Toddy may be your only way out.

And at least you won’t be thinking about how sad it is that you had to spend a precious day off wishing you were more diligent about cleaning the bathroom floors while you’re humping the toilet and praying for death.

For M and J - get better soon.

On Why I Love Femme Fatales

“What are little boys made of?
Snips and snails,
And puppy dog tails,
That's what little boys are made of.

What are little girls made of?
Sugar and spice,
And everything nice,
That's what little girls are made of.”

~Mother Goose

I can’t think of the last time when I encountered a woman who was whole-heartedly, exuberantly, unapologetically bad, but I'm always a little glad when I do.

I can’t bring myself to hate a femme fatale. In the gender Olympics, we’re always Miss Congeniality. We make swans out of napkins. We vote left, hate the death penalty, adopt kittens, and are ten times less likely than men to jaywalk. We know the names of flowers and make casseroles. And I would bet good money it wasn’t a man who invented the process whereby you screen pictures of your kids and pets onto t-shirts and mugs. So it gives me perverse delight when I encounter a woman who, plain and simple, you just don’t want to fuck with.

I first realized the immense appeal of the femme fatale at the tender age of eight while at Sunday School, of all places. I was happily eating pages out of my catechism in an attempt to escape the boredom of our teacher’s diatribe on the sin of betrayal when she distracted me from consuming God's word with the story of Samson and Delilah. I was fascinated. Truly to my discredit, it wasn’t until years later that I realized the hero of the story was meant to be Samson, not Delilah. In my eight-year-old mind, Delilah took out the strongest man in the land and managed the destruction of an entire temple of bad guys simply by showing him her boobs. Pretty impressive, and that was on the fourth attempt; perhaps Samson should have caught on when he woke up to her tying his hands and feet the first three times. The concept was much easier to understand than the simultaneous unity and disparity of the holy trinity; Samson may have been able to wrestle a lion and slay an entire army, but exposed nipples were the Great Equalizer.

Since then I’ve had a clandestine admiration for women who traded in insipidity for killer intellect, bullwhips, wraparound sunglasses and Ducati Monsters. We owe a great deal to them. The Mata Hari supposedly wheedled secrets out of some of the highest-ranking officials in Europe during World War I by dancing around in a two-piece curtain. Cleopatra ascended to be ruler of Egypt during a time when most women were still giving birth in haybales, and Sharon Stone may not be able to claim the very first crotch-flashing in cinematic history, but she can certainly claim one of the most memorable.

The femme fatale has also contributed a great deal to the cinematic realm, perhaps in no genre more significantly than the action genre. Male characters, by and large, need to have gimmicky superpowers and a very extensive rationale for any damage they wreak upon society. Wolverine grew adamantine claws and was wildly pissed off because they killed his dad; Spiderman shot webs around and was wildly pissed off because he got wedgies in high school; and Dr. Doom created mystical energy fields with his hands and was wildly pissed off because a time machine on the fritz turned his feet into goat hooves (among other indignities.) By contrast, most femme fatales require nothing more advanced than a tremendous pair of breasts and possibly some leather bondage gear, and their sole reason for evil-doing is usually just sheer boredom. Now that’s my kind of evil. And were it not for the femme fatale, the entire genre of film noir would be non-existent. Someone needs to screw over the trusting sad sack, or we’d all be watching Turner Classics. And no one wants that.

So hail to the bitches, for they do all the things we secretly want to do. They tread shamelessly upon the weak to satisfy their own selfish desires, smoke and wear stiletto heels, drink hard liquor straight up, and you’ll never, ever catch them in pink. And while we won't admit it, that's hot. There’s a reason the entire developed world wants to have sex with Angelina Jolie; she was painting her clothes with her husband’s blood, getting Latin tattoos of death references all over her body and having bisexual affairs with gorgeous asian supermodels while Jennifer Aniston was doing a movie called “The Good Girl” and getting dumped (twice) by Vince Vaughan.

Sorry, Jenn, no contest. Vive la femme fatale.

For MF, who is far too nice to be a femme fatale but who understands the appeal of a fast sportbike and a really kick ass tool kit.

On Great Comebacks Overheard During a Cellular Conversation

"Why? Why?

Fuck you, that's why."

On Secretly Being a Yuppie

“Yuppie stands for "young upwardly mobile professional". Nightclub flunkie is not a professional category. I wish we were yuppies. Young, upwardly mobile, professional. Those are good things, not bad things.” ~ Des McGrath from Walt Whitman’s The Last Days of Disco

It’s interesting, isn’t it, how social monikers have become anathema? There were days when people would proudly declare themselves hippies, when feminists didn’t politely preface any opinion with “I definitely wouldn’t call myself a feminist,” and when people didn’t shrink from announcing themselves as Republicans for fear of being taken for a gun-toting anti-abortionist happily strafe-bombing Middle Eastern daycare centers. In simpler times, identifying with a group was reassuring; it served as a guidebook of how to dress, act, think, and whether or not one should ever buy a Volvo; and also to neatly distinguish neighbors in the daunting sameness of suburban life. ("Darling, of course we should have the Smiths over for dinner, but I heard they have their children home-schooled, are we quite sure they're not Communists?")

The neologism “yuppie” was coined, according to those sources that define such inane things as these, during Gary Hart’s 1984 presidential campaign. The term was used to describe his strongest supporters: socially liberal yet fiscally conservative young professionals. When Newsweek proudly proclaimed 1984 “The Year of the Yuppie,” the delight once taken in simple social categorization came under sudden and vicious attack by the emerging Generation X. Caught up in the orgy of apathy towards conformity, the title quickly tumbled from grace, absorbing all the negative connotations we can quickly recall by leafing through an issue of The Sharper Image, and its use today has dwindled to the point of near-extinction.

But have the yuppies themselves? I say no.

One defining quality of yuppiedom that has clearly not died with the label was single-minded devotion to career. According to The Yuppie Handbook (1984), “career had to be personally meaningful, emotionally satisfying, and a vehicle for self-expression;” in other words, people took their jobs far too seriously. Take a look through the titles in the corporate section at your local bookstore or at the ridiculously aggrandized vision and mission statements of any company’s website, and you’ll see that little has really changed.

(“Our guiding mission is to deliver superior quality products and services for our customers and communities through leadership, innovation and partnerships. Our vision is to be the quality leader in everything we do.” Name the organization? Tim Horton’s. Yes, folks, that lofty statement is the aim of a company that makes donut holes.)

Even job titles are morphing to keep pace with the need for us to imagine ourselves as deeply and emotionally fulfilled by our nine-to-fives; call me cynical, but it doesn’t make bothering people at home any more fun by calling myself a Outbound Customer Advocate rather than a telemarketer, and Ken Blanchard must be completely unfazed by his co-worker’s snickers to call himself the 'Chief Spiritual Officer' of his unimaginatively named Ken Blanchard Companies.

Yuppies were also highly discriminating (or at least highly self-conscious) about their social markers. No Danish minimalist glass coffee table would have dared be unadorned by a copy of The New Yorker, high-end food brands became the rage, and beer was snubbed in favor of wine, even by men (somewhat understandably – this was before the age of the microbrewery.)

Sound familiar? I can’t imagine anyone who wouldn’t be thrilled to find something other than Maxim in their potential date’s apartment. Capers and other high-priced “whole life” markets are popping up all over the place like the scrappy little organic veggies they sell, and “wine bar” has now entered our common lexicon just as “pub” goes on the wane. Those who pointed at the yuppie smugly and laughed at their slavish dedication to brands such as LL Bean and Mercedes should be cautioned; those who live in Apple or Lululemon houses best not throw stones.

What else did a yuppie make? An obsession with health and fitness, designer vodka, stainless steel appliances, cocaine, exposed brick, cocktails with silly names, and pasta. A quick spin through the trendy district of any urban center – and I point squarely at thee, Yaletown – shows that while carbohydrates have gone out of style, little else has. Politically speaking, I can't recall a single conversation I've had in the last few years where the person I was speaking to didn't say that they were "in the middle." "How so?" "Well, I mean, I'm socially liberal, but I don't believe in how overrun the government is by special interest groups." Right. In other words, be a whale-saving feminist minority rights supporter all you want, just don't ask me for any money for it. Socially liberal but fiscally conservative.

And now we're back to Gary Hart.

So, I am sad to say, we may in fact still be yuppies; it’s just that a label tends to fade very quickly until the group it defines eventually expropriates it. (I suppose that’s why honky never really caught on.) The yuppies may have shed their label in shame because the hippies and hipsters made fun of them, but they quietly went about consuming anyway. Now after a twenty year hiatus whereby we were scolded by Greenpeace, enlightened by the Body Shop and cautioned by Enron, the yuppie is back. And we are he.

Look on the bright side; a yuppie, at least, would have never been caught dead shopping at Walmart.

For my friend C, who is the only other person besides me who would admit to being a yuppie.

On Airport Lounges

When you think of "lounge," what images are conjured up in your mind?

Chocolate brown leather airchairs, a crackling fire, perhaps a few framed prints of pheasants? Well-loved and well-worn copies of British literature - perhaps Dickens - strewn amongst cut-crystal highball glasses of brandy? Witty folk in hunter green smoking jackets with those brown suede elbow patches mingling amiably and saying things like, "isn't it awful what's going on in Durfur these days?"

Well that's what lounge conjures up for me. But no, as it turns out, it's a small room unevenly lit with flickering flourescent bulbs where people chatter anxiously at top volume into their Blackberries, trying to drown out screaming children and the stale reek seeping in from the smoker's aquarium. Racks of cheezies, the National Enquirer, and cold starbucks coffee drinks abound, but not a brandy in sight.

There is a time and place for social stratification, and the airport, ladies and gentlemen, is it.

On Online Dating

Depending on who you talk to, online dating is either the iPod of the dating world, or its ill-fated beta machine.

One camp will insist that they have heard a dozen success stories. These success stories invariably involve someone who knows someone whose coworker was dating unsuccessfully for years and was about to resign themselves to a fate as an unmarried, Eddie Bauer sweater-wearing ambassador of cat ownership, when all of a sudden our late-thirites heroine meets her soul mate online; a handsome, gentle potash farmer from Montana who writes poetry and who then flies her out to meet him and takes her in a canoe out on a lake full of swans during a rainstorm, or some such. Inevitably these stories also end in "...and then six months later they were married and trying for a baby!" which, I suppose, lends credibility to the whole deal. Institutional sanction? Check. Procreation of species? Check. Must be true love.

The other camp is wildly critical of the whole idea. Their stories, by contrast, invariably involve middle-aged ex-cons perpetrating themselves as upstanding professionals in order to dupe hopeful legions of love seekers down to their basement dungeons, where they manipulate them into some bizarre form of sexual slavery and then dissolve them in lyme in their deep freeze.

Rationality would suggest that the truth lies somewhere in the middle. I've been on dates with people I've met through normal, real life channels where, by the end, I wouldn't have been too surprised if there weren't pieces of his last date still hanging around in the freezer. So perhaps it's unfair to blame the internet.

But it's very easy to understand the appeal. The internet marches forward like a secular version of the Roman Catholic empire, mercilessly sucking up entire industries in its wake. News, shopping, music, banking...when was the last time you went into a bank to talk to an actual teller? Tellers used to be power-mad gatekeepers who could exude chilly authority right through their synthetic blazers if you stepped too far outside of the little velvet rope lineup labrynth. (Now they wear lululumon pants with 10K charity run t-shirts and shout "I can help you here!" the minute you walk in the door. How the mighty have fallen.

So it was no wonder that dating would eventually become another industry to find considerable efficiencies on the world wide web. After all, you can cruise through pages of prospective partners, evaluate from a distance, and send a casual email - all without risk (basement dungeon notwithstanding) and with about the same amount of effort that it takes to pay your cable bill. However, a little effort might not be such a bad thing when the ultimate goal is finding someone you wish to spend the rest of your life with, no? Nature makes us compete for mates for a reason - survival of the species.

(Don't believe me? Watch the next time a pretty girl walks up to the bar to get a drink when two guys are standing there. Once they notice her in the presence of another male, both men will subconsciously start trying to direct attention either to their wallets or their crotch. It's like Wild Kingdom with cocktails.)

So competition, in some ways, is a good thing. In the absence of competition, we have...well, communism. And believe me, folks, you don't want dating to become communist.

After all, those olive green uniforms are so damn drab.

For my friend O, who has eternal optimism, and who to date has never yet been lured to a basement dungeon.

On Smoking On First Dates

It's well-deserved scrutiny or a witch hunt, depending on your viewpoint, but it seems that smoking has overtaken drunk driving, unsafe sex and Nazi sympathizing to take first place on the list of things that society disapproves of.

Smoking also happens to top the list of most people's "dealbreakers" when it comes to first dates. (Sadly, having children would probably have to take spot #2.) And it's considered a pretty reasonable dealbreaker, so you smokers out there - you may feel like there's just no solution except to throw a patch on your arm and kiss your pleasant personality goodbye for the next four months while you quit. Not so!

Smoking and relationships, you see, is kind of like being an alcoholic in a job. No one hires an alcoholic. If someone walked into HR and introduced themselves while wearing an inside-out shirt and reeking of Jim Bean, you can bet good money that resume would find its way to the Shred-It centre faster than Enron's expense reports. But, if you hire someone who subsequently becomes a raging alcoholic, could that company then get rid of them? No way. Not a chance. Legality aside, that would seem to be vaguely immoral - kicking a man when he's already down, out, and perpetually bleary. No, you are stuck with months and months of missed work, incomprehensible emails, and raised eyebrows at the sight of the travel mug. (Just ask Lindsay Lohan's co-stars.)

So here's the thing. No one is going to date a smoker, but you can't break up with someone for smoking once you're already going out. It just seems hystrionic. So folks, if you can get past the first few dates, you're olly olly oxen free.

Now, that's going to be tough. A previous post on first dates reveals that alcohol, after all, is essential to the dating process, and a poor smoker squirming their way through a first date once the first couple of drinks hits them is like a dog in a car with the windows rolled up in summer.

So if you suspect you won't be able to get through your seared tuna skewers and that fourth vodka tonic without scrambling out the bathroom window or huddling with the cooks out back next to the garbage dumster, I have for you the golden ticket. Simply take a jiffy marker and write "LAST PACK" on your ciggie pack before you leave the house. And when you do break down, go smoke, and come back in with that bingo hall reek clouding around you, and your date questions you, look sheepish and pull out the pack. Watch the look of judgment melt instantly away as they hug / high five / wet kiss you in joy. You're not a filthy addict anymore! No, not you...you're a fighter! You're a scrapper!

You're a big, fat liar.

But while they're lulled in the false assumption that you'll be cigarette free in a matter of weeks, you are free to play out the first few dates without concern about getting immediately culled for your disgusting, smelly habit. Giving you plenty of time to find things you're going to want to dump them for.

Now come to think of it...men, don't bother with this advice, as women will simply deny you sex until you quit. You're best to go straight on the patch.

On First Dates

Admit it. We all hate first dates.

We all enjoy second dates, usually because if there is a second date, it's because we already like the person...or at least can't yet figure out if we hate them. And the third date, well, who doesn't love the third date? And every date thereafter - usually fabulous. But just not that first one.

First there's the whole "where should we go and what should we do" aspect. Hurdle number one is avoiding the dreaded dry date. This is usually disguised as "going for coffee." No, no, no. Have you ever seen a SWAT guy in the puffy jacket defusing a bomb while sucking back a 16 oz Timmy Ho double double? No. Why? Because caffeine is not a good idea in a highly tense situations. Alcohol, however, is a great idea in highly tense situations, which is why people get pissed at office parties and whenever they have to visit their families during the holidays. So pick a date location where your date can have a glass of wine, for God's sake. (If you're too broke to do anything but coffee, don't date. Spend your time working overtime to get a promotion. No one wants to date someone poor anyways so you're not missing anything.)

The next Herculean task is selecting the venue. Sports bar? No. They have carpet on the tables. If we wanted to eat off carpet, we'd join our pets on the floor. The idea should not be to bring the floor closer to your food. Chain restaurant? Not unless the chain happens to be Nobu. Sorry, but chances are you won't find a romantic atmosphere somewhere where they have a burger named for a sports hero or where anything comes in a plastic basket. Believe me, your date will go better when you don't have to worry about your sexual chemistry being interrupted by the waitstaff singing Happy Birthday to someone. Be safe and pick a nice upscale place where everyone's complexion will be flatteringly candle-lit. You'll know it's probably good if teeny-tiny food comes on teeny-tiny plates, or if the menu features outrageous over-description, or if the word "truffled" is used anywhere.

And then - the date itself. What an exercise in frustration as you make small talk avoiding exactly the questions you really want to be asking. Wouldn't it be so much more effective - and fun - if you could just slide over the following little survey?

1. Age
2. Astrological sign
3. Occupation
4. Income
5. Quality of last relationship (please rate on scale of 1 - 5)
6. Time since last relationship ended (in months)
7. Who ended things and whose fault was it?
8. Level of comfort with commitment (please rate on a scale of 1 - 5)
9. Do you want children, and if so, when?
10. Please briefly describe your relationship with your parents.
11. Do you currently hold any extreme views on the following? (please provide additional detail below if yes): gender roles, religion, dressing up your pets, sexual orientation, abortion rights, racism, politics, reality TV, eating meat
12. Please provide two (2) references below of previous partners with name and current phone number or email address.

Simple, and it gives you time to have that all too important first drink while you're both completing it. Then, voila, you have all the information right there that you can't really talk about on the first date, a really good idea as to whether you want a second one, and a nice buzz on.

It also saves you from unpleasant topical surprises during the first date, such as:

"You know, acting brings a lot more fulfillment than say, your same old, 9-5, "steady salary" type job. Besides I really like to read on the bus. Gives me time to think."

"Oh, yeah, I totally want kids. I want a huge family. I mean, not right now, of course. Maybe in like, I don't know, eight months or something."

"Well, I wouldn't say I'm religious. I guess I do go to church, but our church is really a different kind of church. It's not like other churches, really. Hey...what are you doing Sunday?"

And so on. It's strange that people tend to feel bad about judging other people on the first date, when essentially that's exactly what you're supposed to be doing. That's the point of the date - figuring out whether there is sufficient compatibility. You have to judge in order to choose, and you do have to choose, otherwise you'd just meet each other when you moved in together.

But without the first date, we would never feasibly have a second, or third. So it will enjoy a time-honoured place in social history for many, many years to come. But feel free to print the survey for your next one.

On Right and Wrong

Why is it so hard to make the right choice? Very simple.

The wrong choice is always as much fun as you wish the right one was.