On Pride

I'm not so sure about those early Christians.

Sure, you have to kind of admire anyone who thought up the idea of feeding people to lions for fun, but I'm not so sure they really understood the concept of moral relativism. How can pride be a deadly sin? Pride is defined by Wikipedia as “a strong sense of self-respect, a refusal to be humiliated as well as joy in the accomplishments of oneself or a person, group, or object that one identifies with.”

Sounds good to me. People spend a lot of money every year on books to teach them how to have pride in themselves, insofar as pride relates to self esteem. I guess what really got the goat of the robe-and-sandal set was more hubris, or excessive arrogance and vaingloriousness (yes, I used it in a sentence, and yes, I am that good.) I can understand that. They probably had the six deadly sins all ready to go, had the foresight to envision Yaletown, and decided to round it up to lucky ole' number seven.

Even Aesop chimed in on the whole issue. As the story goes, two cocks (OK, roosters, but cock is just more fun to say) were fiercely fighting for the mastery of the farmyard.

"One at last put the other to flight. The vanquished Rooster skulked away and hid himself in a quiet corner, while the conqueror, flying up to a high wall, flapped his wings and crowed exultingly with all his might. An Eagle sailing through the air pounced upon him and carried him off in his talons. The vanquished Rooster immediately came out of his corner, and ruled henceforth with undisputed mastery."

The moral? Pride goeth before a fall.

Man, I wish a big eagle would come around and take George Bush off our hands.

I have no idea why this man is possibly still in power. Come on, Lindsay’s in rehab and Britney is bald and Paris has to poo in a glass room, so there is a God. What on earth is God up to letting this asshat run one of the wealthiest nations in the world? And I don’t blame Americans at all, because I’ve never, ever met one that didn’t think he was a complete asshat too. So who the hell voted for him?

I think God did it as some grand plan to remind us that pride might be OK in Chapters but it's not OK when you start trying to unilaterally blow up things you don't like. Here is a man who barely got in office at all. He should have been thanking his lucky stars that he got to be President after the nation he was set to lead categorically and undisputedly let him know that the majority of them really wanted the other guy. He should have lived out his years in office keeping his mouth shut, quietly emulating Clinton and keeping an eye on his daughters but noooooo, he decided to go rampaging around the developed world like a schoolyard bully. And while admittedly, no one got the atomic wedgie worse than Iraq, there’s no discounting the injustices he’s visited upon the American people he has sworn to serve.

Like the whole faith-based welfare initiatives. I get that George W. Bush is a Christian and is, generally, Up With Christ. But last I checked there was something in the First Amendment to the United States Constitution about keeping church and state separate. I guess nobody but me thinks it’s kind of crappy that the President just read that part in the Constitution, shrugged, and went, "oh well."

And the whole War on Terror. I will go on record and say that I whole-heartedly agree that a response needed to be made to the terrorist attacks. And I appreciate that it had the side benefit of freeing the nation of Afghanistan from an oppressive regime that attracted international criticism for human rights violations and which the US tolerated quite happily for five years. But did it need to be a preemptive war that has permanently jeopardized international relations, led to the deaths of over 650,000 civilians, and allowed the suspension of civil liberties on ground not our own?

Oh, George, but for your pride, you could have listened to those older and wiser than yourself. Martin Luther King Jr. would have seen the futility in your efforts immediately.

"The ultimate weakness of violence is that it is a descending spiral, begetting the very thing it seeks to destroy. Instead of diminishing evil, it multiplies it. Through violence you may murder the liar, but you cannot murder the lie, nor establish the truth. Through violence you may murder the hater, but you do not murder hate. In fact, violence merely increases hate. So it goes. Returning violence for violence multiplies violence, adding deeper darkness to a night already devoid of stars. Darkness cannot drive out darkness: only light can do that. Hate cannot drive out hate: only love can do that. Hate multiplies hate, violence multiplies violence, and toughness multiplies toughness in a descending spiral of destruction.... The chain reaction of evil — hate begetting hate, wars producing more wars — must be broken, or we shall be plunged into the dark abyss of annihilation."

And moreover, perhaps someone who can’t spell nuclear shouldn’t be in charge of the big red button. I’m just saying. But no, he’s like the proverbial pitbull, who once he locks his jaw into something, cannot let go. Too dumb, and too mean.

And, methinks, about to take a fall. His approval ratings are in the 30s, which are comparable to Nixon’s during the Watergate scandal. Only 19% of the people in his country think that he’s headed in the right direction, which is pretty much tantamount to 4 out of 5 people thinking he’s come unglued. Former President Jimmy Carter called Bush’s presidency the worst in history. Uh, this is Jimmy Carter, folks. This guy believes in UFOs but he stops short at thinking Bush should run the country? That should tell us something.

So if pride goeth before a fall, Mr. Bush’s days are numbered. World wide censure? Check. An impeachment? Getting there.

A giant eagle? We can only hope. Guess those early Christians were onto something after all.

On Technology and Relationships

It’s always astounding when something as un-organic as technological developments can have such a huge impact on something as organic as human relationships.

The first big development, according to National Geographic historians (those champions of the gratuitous naked-boobie photograph) occurred some 45,000 to 80,000 years ago when some intrepid heavy-browed cave dweller tied a sharp rock to a stick and threw it at something. The spear brought about not only more clearly delineated gender roles, but separated us, behaviorally-speaking, from the apes by introducing the concept of foreign relations. Are you listening, Dubyah? Apparently this is something that even someone lacking a frontal lobe can grasp.

It went something like this: prior to the invention of the spear, skirmishes between clans were relatively harmless. They consisted mostly of posturing, grunting, and occasionally a punch or two…not much different than you’d find between rivaling fans during professional sporting events nowadays. The invention of the spear, however, suddenly required clans to make treaties and negotiate peace agreements; it was one thing to bonk Oogar on the head, and completely another to turn the holy man of the tribe next door into a fur-clad cave-kebab. Peace ruled.

The spear also rapidly accelerated the differentiation of gender roles. Prior to large hunts, people mostly got by through scavenging; in other words, picking things up off the ground and eating them. Both genders were pretty good at that, so equality was the order of the day. But it was quickly discovered that their larger, heavier musculature and better-developed spatial capabilities meant that men would naturally be better at spear-throwing. So began thousands of years whereby men honed their focused throwing skills, and women refined their abilities to work in groups, communicate effectively and multi-task. It explains why to this day every man has a dartboard that he bought for his first apartment and why women can have a cell phone conversation while driving and applying lipstick.

(I think this might also have been where the three-day rule came into play; that was the typical length of a mammoth hunt. Thus was forever cast in stone the appropriate length to wait after a date to make contact again.)

So if the spear was instrumental in establishing traditional gender roles, it wasn’t until the 1940’s that the next tool would come along to completely turn them upside down. Yes, a little pink pill finally broke 75,000 years of “is he going to call?” and ushered in the sexual revolution.

For the first time in history, women were able to reliably control their reproductive cycles, Coca-cola douches notwithstanding, and the major motivator of forming relationships (orgasms) suddenly was no longer tied to the major detractor (screaming baby.) Finally, sex for sex's sake. In economic terms, the cost of sex plummeted and, as we learn in first-year business, the demand skyrocketed. It was the advent of Sexual WalMart.

It also meant that marriage was no longer the required or even desired outcome of a relationship. Religion aside, the purpose of a secular marriage had traditionally been that the man was obliged to keep paying the utility bills, so to speak, if his woman got knocked up. With the introduction of the pill, woman didn’t have to worry about pregnancy, and so she was free to take her time and date until she found a man she liked for his personal qualities rather than just his earning potential. (Which, I dare say, just might explain why women are now single for a whole ten years longer than before.)

Thus 'modern' dating began. People could date more than one person. They could sleep together, live together, try each other out for 30 days like Ginsu knives. Consistency dissolved. Ambiguity ruled. A multi-million dollar industry in self-help and relationship books blossomed in an attempt to make sense out of the new ‘no-rules’ rules. Even a blowhard like Dr. Phil was able to secure a living.

All because of something that looked like a TicTac and made of horse pee.

And what is the latest device that has reshaped the old “boy meets girl, boy spears things for girl, girl is able to decide her reproductive fate” story? The cell phone. For better or for worse, that little pink Razer has had a pretty significant impact on relationship behaviour.

Entire relationships, I suspect, owe their existence to mobile technology. The thing about mobile technology is that it’s mobile. Your phone, and thus your ability to communicate with your love interests, gets to go with you wherever you go. That opens up a whole new world of bad judgment calls that we simply didn’t have the opportunity to exercise before. Now our phones get to go out for cocktails with us.

The booty call, for example. Were there booty calls before cell phones? I don't remember, but I don't think so. There have always been pay phones, and answering machines that you could call and check. But never was the booty call so widespread as today, when an assignation can be instantly arranged while miles apart. Before, the booty caller had to go home before making the call to the booty callee, taking away considerably from the charming “I was just doing a tequila shooter in the bar off the waitress and thought of you” spontaniety of the whole idea.

And then there's the text message. Entire relationships have been conducted largely through this medium. It combines all the best parts of the email (elimination of rejection, ability to write and rewrite message before sending) with the best part of the phone call (immediate receipt.) It’s much easier to send a cheeky note through text messaging than it is in person. Have you ever called someone at their office, said, "hey u what u up 2 what u doing u want to see me l8er?" and then hung up? No. And the technology is new enough and unstable enough that text messages, if unwanted, can be safely ignored (“…oh you sent one? No, I didn’t get it…my carrier is just awful.”)

With cell phones, we can all reach each other at any time, so it’s no longer necessary to make dates long in advance of their happening. Relationships, particularly new ones, are more fluid than ever before. Formality dissolves, and a whole new paradigm takes place. The digital relationship. New challenges, new opportunities.

So here’s to the big three. Without you, we’d have much more clarity about whether or not our boy/girl friends just aren’t that into us, but we’d still be having ten babies, eating things we find on the ground, and using *69 to see who called while we were out. And I’ll take the single life, foie gras and caller ID any day.

For M, who still can't use her cell phone, but who has a great relationship anyway.

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 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.