Earlier, at the grocery store, I got shaken out of my pouting about money, thinking of my heady week, by this adorable little two-year-old Asian girl. All dressed in pink, a plastic golden tiara perched atop her precious little head, bubbling up and down the aisle as she giggled and babbled at her mother. She radiated glee.

“Aww, how cute,” I gushed to myself. I turned the corner, pushed my way up, and thought, “Man, she gets too into this princess thing, she’s gonna be one high-maintenance teen one day. Fuckin’ Disney!”

Last year when I was working at an arts centre and had to do registrations, I used to be endlessly amused by all the adorable little girls wanting to sign up for ballet because they thought it was the first step one took toward becoming a real, live princess. A pretty pink dress, a twirl and a pose, it’s all a girl really needs, after all, isn’t it? Paris thinks so.

There are those of us who want to flat-out blame Disney for all of it. It’s Disney’s fault for everyone– the over the top two-year-old at the store, Britney Spears, Paris fuckin’ Hilton– all the bubbly, looks-first, diva-in-training girls. They’re all Disney’s fault.

Disney and their endless parade of fairytale females, girls all victimized by life in varying ways, all left clinging to hope and wishing against all wisdom that some gorgeous man’ll come along and sweep ’em off their feet, solve all their woes, and, yes, it’ll all end happily ever after.

Which works GREAT when you’re a two-dimensional figure in an animation world with a roaring soundtrack and the genius of editing to keep you at your rhythm.

Reality, however, is a wee bit trickier.

There is hope, though. There’s hope that girl who’ve seen the Incredibles will rather be ass-kicking, name-taking toughies who do some saving of their own, ‘cos they know men are just as fucked by fate as females are, and every now and then, even boys need a little savin’.

(Want to explore the alleged evils of Disney, well beyond the social ramifications of their princessifying of a whole generation of girls? Check out Carl Hiaasen’s Team Rodent. Funny but startling expose on the great Kingdom.)

Anyone who’s read me for forever and a day will know I draw upon Hunter Stockton Thompson as probably my strongest writing influence.
I was about 18 when Hunter got introduced to me by Whipped Boy, who’s lasted through the crowds of friends I had way back when, and is one of two people I’ll call to Dead Body Removal Services when required.
The other body-removing-friend is GayBoy, who I barely even knew at the time, but who I then proceeded to indoctrinate into the writings of the Good Doctor.
Who I knew better was Dan, but only for that short year that we hung out together. But we’ll come back to him in a moment.
Hunter blew my mind, and helped me figure out my own writing style, which I suspect emulates HST from time to time, but I think it’s more that his writing made my mindset finally feel all right, like it was okay to be a bit rageful and over the top. It was all right to think my opinion was the only one that mattered. If he could get away with it, then what did my journalism professors know after all? Objectivity? Fuck objectivity! Oh, how freeing that became.
Seldom have I ever truly tried to borrow HST’s style, but I bring it out on special occasions, usually ones involving drugs and travels, because sometimes imitation really, truly is the finest form of flattery.
One such time was when I tried to capture the experience of my first exposure to marijuana.
My story I wrote way back then is only on paper, somewhere in my boxes of writing… but I almost want to go digging through everything, as I’d love to see it again.
Still, I remember the start of the story, but only two people have read it, as it was before the advent of blogging, before I had an outlet. It was one of the few times back then I felt like I might be an all right writer, so it’s a bit nostalgically that I can recall my being excited enough about this one to actually show it to anyone else.
“We were somewhere around Cambie and 65th when the drugs began to take hold. I began feeling a bit light-headed and said, “Maybe you should solder–” when all of a sudden…”*
A completely honest and blatant rip-off of the brilliant opening to HST’s iconic novel Fear and Loathing in Las Vegas, but it was a story about a night that forever changed me.
It was about the night that Dan introduced me to pot. He never pressured me, just let me go there if I wanted, since he and GB were indulging. The three of us hung out a fair bit for a while there, but Dan began to grow away from us. Now and then we’d still get together, and this was one of those happy convergences where we all had a good time, after when I’d begun becoming much better friends with GayBoy, and Dan was off becoming some new guy with new friends.
But the introduction to pot was huge, and changed me to my core (over time). I’m not encouraging anyone to try it; I vehemently believe a lot of people should never touch the stuff, and a lot of the people who are doing it could maybe use a break. I’m not one of them.
Yet I had been radically antidrug at that point. I’m still pretty radically anti-anything-not-pot, but I was really judgmental of potsmokers, thinking they were all unmotivated losers, swallowing Anslinger’s big ol’ myth on that count. So, y’know, toking up wasn’t exactly something I’d ever itched to do.
Thing is, this Hunter Thompson guy I’d read not too long before that, well, it made me sort of start to realize how linear my perception of the world was. Could I see more of the big picture? Was I too uptight and rigid in my assumptions? Was I missing out?
So, I tried it. Nothing huge happened. It didn’t blow my mind… it just made me feel less restrained and happy and pleasantly amused at, well, just about everything.
Not long after that, I moved up north. Within a matter of weeks, really. I’d only smoked up a handful of times, hadn’t bought it, so when I moved to the Yukon, I didn’t touch any dope since I didn’t know anyone and didn’t have a connection.
GayBoy cured that conundrum, bringing some ganja up for a visit in the spring, after I’d been up there for six months or so. It wasn’t till after he headed back south that I had the chance to finally, at long last, try dope on my own, sans company.
And it blew my mind. The Northern lights were playing on the skies and I just… got lost in it all, finally understood my smallness, and how beautiful it was that I got to plug my smallness into a world this big. I felt gifted, fortunate, and ready for the world. And the sounds! The crunch of snow under tires, the whistle of the wind… Wow. For someone born with a hearing impairment, even the most fleeting moments of aural clarity can just stop one’s heart. Amazing, amazing experience to just suddenly hear things in nature you’ve never picked up on before.
On Saturday we’ll be laying Dan to rest. 33 years old. A 10-day-old baby girl left behind, fatherless. She’s the only really sad thing in all this, but Dan certainly wasn’t robbed of life; life was robbed of him.
I may not have been friends with Dan the last 10 years, but for a short time he was someone who pushed me to write, helped me try things, and set an example as someone who may not have made millions, but who really fucking lived his life while he could. The guy really understood that “live” is a verb.
As I forge through this year of change and growth in my life, he’s already been in the back of my mind. That I should hear of his death really rocked me a bit this week, despite him being so far removed from my life of late. I’m sad he’s gone. I’m sad he and I drifted apart. I’m fortunate to have had the gift of his friendship while I did.
I cycled home from work last night, and stopped at the highest point of my ascent over the city, stared down at the skyscrapers and the inlet and across to the mountains as golden light from the setting sun washed over the peaks and the scattered marine clouds dotted their space, lit up a bowl of dope, smoked a bit, listened to MLK by u2 as I took a rest on the grass a moment, and said a prayer of thanks to Dan, because, in a way, he’s the man who taught me how to find “god” in ordinary moments in an extraordinary world.
He exalted our nature, our part of the world, this incredibly rugged, beautiful rainforest landscape that is Vancouver. Fitting, then, that he should die at its hands in a river he’d probably made his bitch time and time again.
Tonight I’m left wondering if I’ve learned all I could from those who’ve been in my life, wondering if I should be less inclined to let people slip from my grasp, wondering who’s next, what’s next.
Saturday, we’ll lay him to rest. Saturday, we’ll all remember what exuberance he had, how indomitable and immortal he always seemed. Saturday, we’ll all go back to our respective lives and, with any luck, the lessons he taught us all about life and friendship and adventure will endure long past his too short 33 years.

*”Maybe you should solder–“… That really does need expanding, doesn’t it? Right, well, Dan didn’t have a coffee table. He apparently had connections with BC Tel and managed to snag an old massive, massive… hmm, the word escapes me. Spindle? The massive 4-foot-round wooden contraptions they’d roll the hundreds of yards of exterior telephone wires around… …all right, “discarded telephone wire spindle” it is, then. So, he had this for a coffee table, about 2 feet high, and he had a soldering iron he’d keep nearby and would plug in when people came over. He’d fired it up and once we’d sparked the doobie, we all started burning sentiments into the “table” top. At some point I realized I had become transfixed in watching the heat searing the wood, the resulting smoke, and I began pressing my luck, egging on the sparks and, potentially, a fire– then I realized I was getting a little too in touch with my inner would-be arsonist and passed off the soldering rod to GayBoy with Dan laughing hysterically at me. Ahh, youth.

I had a little weepy moment at work when telling my bosses I’d need a day off for a funeral in the coming weeks, so they told me to take off for the day.

“I think it’s a sick day, Steff! Go drink a greyhound and toast your pal.”

GayBoy and I will do an impromptu wake later this evening, so that’ll be the theme. For now, though, it’s a movie and curry before an ass-kicking memorial ride for my departed friend, who was passionate about cycling.

But that’s what I’d like to write about — sports/athletics, and women.

I’ve known for a while now, thanks to my chiropractors, that women’s bodies do weird things at different times on their cycles. When I’m on mine, my joints pop in and out like a fuckin’ jack-in-the-box, man. It’s crazy. When I’m athletic, like I was last week, since I was on my period during my whole kamikaze intro to spring fitness, I really, really need to spend a long time stretching, or I could get really fucked up in a hurry.

And now science offers a definitive study that shows this link really does exist, and it’s not just new-age practitioners who buy the whole “hormonal disturbance” thing that a woman experiences on her period.

This is significant for women everywhere who can plan their schedules around their cycles and avoid potentially painful injuries Rebecca Morrison British School of Osteopathy

The study suggests the risk of injury is linked to fluctuating hormone levels which affect the muscles and ligaments.

Both tissues appear to be vulnerable midway through the menstrual cycle, while the ligaments are at greater risk at the end.

Midway through the cycle, the level of the female sex hormone oestrogen, which gives strength to muscles and ligaments, drops dramatically, resulting in sudden weakness.

I shredded my knee by picking up a piece of paper off the ground a couple years ago. I just twisted the wrong way when leaning down (it was recovering from injury at that time, almost healed) and rr-r-r-r-rrip! I felt it pop apart, and I was on crutches for 10 weeks after that. THAT was on my period.

Then again, last week I cycled around 100 kilometres, worked out 90 minutes, and did a lot of work with freeweights, so I’m obviously not suggesting staying home with a ring of garlic around your neck for protection or anything, all right?

Just sayin’, if you’re ever, ever going to take the time to stretch before and after being physical, make sure it’s when you’re cyclically most vulnerable. Learn this shit. Use it.

Maybe I’m in a bad mood because an old friend went and died on the weekend. Maybe I’m in a bad mood because I got up and saw more snow falling when we should be well into a spring that’s never yet arrived. Maybe I’m in a bad mood because it’s Monday.

But I was pretty pissy when I got this comment on one of my best old posts, The Good Girl’s Guide to Giving Great Head (Part 2):

You are a dude. No woman would recall this much detail unless she had a dick herself.

Where to even begin?

One, most average guys couldn’t describe a great blowjob to save their lives. “Well, she… I don’t know, but, man, when I came, oh! And I remember this thing she did with her tongue…” They’re just happy when a woman’s lips are on their penis, but when she starts doing things with it, well, that’s even better. (No offence, guys. 🙂

Two, good writing is ALL about the details, just like blowjobs and cooking, man. It’s all about the details. I aim to be a good writer, in all its definitions. So, I write well, and I capture details very well, it’s why I should really be writing manuals for a living. But then I’d be bored and would have to kill myself, so, no, I blog instead.

Three, you just insulted every woman alive, including yourself. What, you don’t think a woman could get that good at giving head? You think every woman sees a penis and goes, “God, get me out of this as quick as possible. Give him a really itchy trigger. Man, I hate doing this” or something, and then just turns stupid and can’t remember the series of things she did to make him whimper and groan?

I really fucking hate it when people either a) steal this post of mine — which has been plagiarized all over the fucking web (gutless thieving fucking cowards) or b) think I had to be a GUY to know what to do with a penis.

No, I’m not a guy. No, I’m not a “trained professional”. No, I’ve never taken biology class. No, I’ve never taught or have been taught sexuality.

But I give a wicked blowjob, and I love the power it gives me. I make grown men crumple beneath me. It’s fabulous. I’m that person who sees life through hyper-detailed eyes. It yields me terrific results. I remember that everything I do is a collection of smaller actions that build into larger events. That’s what makes life fun. When I do anything sexual, I don’t often close my eyes. Instead, I watch my partner’s reactions, every breath they take and every move they make, and I’m really fully aware of the sensations I’m causing. You throw my great memory and my penchant to detail into the mix, and whew, you get some of this blog, babe.

Sigh. It’s what you get when you throw a philosophy addict into the art of sexuality and get ’em to write about how to make it all good. I live the overthought life. It pays off when I write about giving hummers, it would seem.

But I ain’t no guy. I’ve written about PMS and periods a few times too many to be male. But if you, cynical reader, want to delude yourself into thinking all women are too aloof to write such a thing, then I guess that’s your very-1950s’ prerogative. Go for it.

Oh, let it be known here and now then: I love comments. I’m just fully prepared to throw down when I see cheesy comments that need some commentary. (Fortunately, that seldom happens.)

(By the way, a lot of the older posts, like The Good Girl’s Guide, were originally posted on my old blog, The Cunting Linguist, but I didn’t copy all the comments over. This one was left this morning, so it’s a totally new comment, ergo probably a totally new reader. Or, was. Ha.)

My dear buddy lost his high school best friend today. Completely took us by surprise. For a short time there, I was friends with this guy, good friends. For about six months, we hung out a lot, but then we stopped, and I started hanging out with dear buddy because we were both grumping about this friend. Sixteen years later, we’re each other’s Dead Body Removal Service and will take each others’ 4am calls.

And now his bestest friend of old has taken early leave of this life, and I get to watch my friend be shattered. I’m really, really sorry that he has to experience such intense loss. I’m sorry any of us has to experience it, ever.

This friend who’s just taken his leave of us, he was one of those people with whom I was friends with for only a short time, yet still managed to make an impression on me as far as how I live my life, even today. He was into all the cool music, an early fan of snowboards, just a really cool, likable, earnest guy. We’d hit up coffee shops and discuss things, writing, movies. There were probably 10 people who really conveyed to me how much they thought I should be a writer back when I was younger, but he was one who pushed it at me for a short time there.

I don’t know why he and I stopped hanging out. I never understood that. I always felt a little betrayed that way, but I get the sense he did that to a lot of people. A dark, brooding guy at times, he seemed to go through phases with friendships, but I always was that type, too. Moving from era to era, group to group. The last time I saw him was several years after we’d stopped hanging, it was a brief visit the night buddy and I saw the Santana concert, many drugs were involved, and I was acting like an ass, so he called me on it. That’s the last time I ever saw him, when he told me off for being an idiot. But we’d long since stopped really being friends, so it wasn’t a big deal. Just, “Wow, I was sure an ass.”

But he was the first really, truly cool, comfortable, popular, honest guy that let down his exterior with me and allowed me in and to see his cerebral innerworkings. When I heard his father had died in a pretty brutal way, I sort of always saw that destroying this guy, so when I first heard he was dead this morning, I thought, “Drugs?”

No. Nothing like that. Died doing sports, something he always loved. Swept away, lost in a fury of foam. And I’m so sorry he’s gone. He lived an amazing life for the short years he was around.

When it came to sports, he was invincible. Amazing athlete. Always reckless, though, so there’s a sense of a lack of surprise in his death that way, too.

It’s so sad how we slip away from friends over the years, and when one just falls away forever like this one did yesterday, it’s hard not to wonder just how much more we could have learned from them, learned of them, loved them. It’s hard not to ask if we tried hard enough.

But what we really need to do is be grateful that, somehow, our paths crossed long enough to leave a mark, long enough to maybe have changed us for our remaining days.

Rest in peace, man. You were one of the first people who ever truly made me feel cool for having known you, and then to see how much lay beneath that swank exterior, what a great gift. May your ride be everlasting, man.

PS: This is my first post-Facebook death. It’s so fucking weird to look at his profile now and see “anything with a mild element of danger” in his interests. Fucking Facebook.

Tonight’s all about cleaning my apartment and doing a little Thai cooking, so I’m just posting an email from a friend of mine.

I’m opting out of online dating for a while. My focus this month is killer workouts so I can go shopping for some hot new clothes next month, then I’ll start playing the dating game the old-fashioned way. After all, this little anecdote gives one a bit of pause:

You should write about this DB! Guy is a friend from high school. Saw his pic was from plentyoffish.com and I asked him about it. Here is what he replied back to me. Let’s call him Douche for short.

Yeah
I signed up a couple months ago, Ive got a lineup of 65 chicks what want to date me, I dont have the time or energy for them all, Had one ofer last night , Nailed her 5 times then gave her the boot, might have another one tonite and ive got chicks booked for Sunday and Monday allreasdy. Its sickening how easy it is.

Anyone want to share some thoughts or experiences of these kinds? Hmm?

Yesterday proved to be a monumental day in that I had a major breakthrough in my mental game.

Now I have to try to convey it, so let’s see what I can conjure for ya.

I was one of those kids that grew up with a lot of health issues. You’d never know it to look at me, but they were there. So, I was sick a lot throughout my childhood, till 12 years or or so, which is a whole complicated story, but I think I’m only now starting to realize how much I always believed I was different, lesser, less able than others who didn’t have health issues. (None of which plague me today.)

I just never became active, and I always, always had excuses. I’ve always had a weight problem, since I was 9. I’ve never liked to exercise. Never thought I was good at it.

Yesterday, I got up, weighed myself (on my period, that was my first mistake) and saw I’d still not lost any weight. Sat down on the couch. “It’s time to start getting drastic,” I thought. “I’ll bike.”

I felt like shit. I was tired, not well hydrated, bitchy. But I did it. And 6 blocks in I stopped, thought, “Wow, am I bagged. This’ll take forever. I can still throw the bike on the bus…” But I did it. I pushed out the next 90 blocks (12k/8m). And got there, what, six minutes earlier than two weeks ago? (45 minutes.)

I was thrilled. As work wound down, I was feeling pretty ill, yet thought it’d be more of a hassle to go get bus fare and bus the bike than it would to ride the bike home. I was halfway up the hard part of the ride home when I thought I was nuts, but still pushed. I got home 10 minutes earlier than I did 2 weeks ago, three minutes off my best time ever. (40 minutes.) It’s fucking April, man! I’m not even in “summer” shape yet… though I’m in the best shape I’ve probably ever been in. (Really.) Love having a tripometer on the bike!

I have never fought through adversity with sports. Ever. The last month or so I’ve had this realization that I need intensity in my workouts, and I need to have an intense regimen. No longer will casual biking suffice as “exercise”. Now it’s full-out, leave-it-out there every time. It has to be. But dialing that up wasn’t working for me, until last weekend.

Tonight I had a screaming headache yet still turned in a 90-minute workout with my new gym buddy. Tomorrow, it’s the stairs followed by aggressive free weights in the morning. Friday, I hope (okay “hope” isn’t the right word… “plan to because my ass needs it” maybe) to ride my bike again, if weather permits.

I was in the gym, doing my freewights, and I stared at my reflection and thought, “Okay, now I’m seeing it…” ‘Cos I haven’t done the weights-in-the-full-mirror thing since December, but now I see that my already-lost 25, 30 pounds is a significant change in my body. Like, significant. It’s been gradual, so I haven’t really noticed until tonight, really. Next paycheque, I pick up a couple items of clothing to fit my new body, then I’ll really notice things. And get noticed as being thinner, I suspect.

Now I’m thinking 50 more pounds by September won’t be so hard. If I can do this this week, then I have no excuse not to do it consistently, then, do I?

I want to be that girl that kicks ass and takes names. I want to leave men in my wake in sports. God knows I’m getting there, and faster, better, cooler than I’d hoped. Very, very rewarding, this seeing-results-thing. Very.

Actualizing who you always thought you were, putting that person out there on display for the world, making that happen, is really fucking empowering, and I’m only now starting to really experience it. Ooh, this could be fun.

And I’m totally hitting another 10 pounds loss this month. Totally. Did I mention I feel awesome? So fucking tired, but I got two more weekdays of ass-kicking and name-taking before the blessed sloth of the weekend appears. Ahhh, earned sloth, what a beauteous thing. Still, I feel strong, leaner, and crazy fucking toning starting to happen all over. Very little jiggles these days. Bounces, yes; jiggles, no. This is good.

Relationships are never, ever going to be simple ever, ever, ever again.

Get used to it.

This woman’s taken her divorce proceedings onto YouTube in an assumed effort to mock, humiliate, and god-knows-what-else her older husband. (CNN’s story is here, you’ll have to find it yourself on YouTube; I refuse to watch it in the hopes of deluding myself that we, as a race, are still better than that, if only for a short while longer.)

No, what do I really think? It’s reprehensible. Grow up.

We’re going to see a drastic revisiting of the right to privacy in the future, but I fucking dread the road that takes us there, man.

Divorces are already horrific. Bad shit comes down. Is it really necessary to take a relationship’s demise to such a nasty new plateau?

When I dated what’s-his-face a couple years back almost now, and things went south, I wrote about it. Did I get a mouthful on that one.

What I should have said was that he was a fucking hypocrite. I had said (specifically to him) my relationship would always be fodder for writing. I’d always talk about aspects of things but I’d keep specifics out, right? But everything was systems-go. Which he was pretty fucking keen about. Turns out it can be fun to be written about.

Until, of course, I finally had something bad to write about, and then he suddenly thought he had been slighted somehow. Bullshit. But whatever. That comes after me saying “Yeah, well, you know, I got carte blanche when it comes to blogging.”

Not that I think I’m anywhere NEAR this woman on any ethical scale. Not even close! I’m honest and I do kindly unto others. The thing is, I stated a caveat emptor before things got rolling and gave my intended an out — I think that’s a really important distinction to make.

This dude never signed up to be on YouTube in any way, which is half YouTube’s appeal, I guess. But is it fair?

I’m very, very unkeen on censoring speech. Freedom of speech is so very important. And I believe that– However… if people continue to do stupid-ass shit like this, rednecks are going to have a lot of ammunition regarding why freedom of speech should be a little less free.

I’m beginning to think it may be hard to mount an argument if relationships continue deteriorating so much that the only way we know how to communicate is via the internet or cells, and if slagging people a la fucking kindergarten becomes commonplace on the World Wide Web and “sucking it up” is expected de rigeur whether you deserve the exposure or not, then I’m not so sure I’m going to want to defend freedom of speech so passionately. Maybe with an asterisk next to it, like, you know:

*Free to speak, except when you’re not some deranged, slighted motherfucker with an ax to grind who’ll say anything that makes a dent…

For the first time in a long time, I miss high school a little. Coming out of French class to find a cute boy waiting with a smile. “Wanna see a movie with me Friday?” Simple, easy. “I’ll call ya tonight.” Had to pass balled up notes in the hall between classes. Simple things.

We had call waiting, that made us special. I was the first kid I knew with a push-button phone. Fuck, man, I’m 34. Smack dab at the end of one era and the start of another.

And here I am, a blogger. So I blog about whatever my life is about, right? Including relationships. Does it make me bad? No, rather an open book. But I’m open about that, too. Now I’m starting to put my feelers out for dating again, and I wonder just how any new guys might respond to the “open book” status. We’ll see.

Like I said, it’s never going to be simple again, is it? Damn you, YouTube.

My week didn’t really work out as planned. That’s life. Today’s a gorgeous anomaly of sun and warm temperatures before we dip back to unseasonal coolness again tomorrow, so you KNOW I have a huge bike ride on tap this afternoon, coupled with plans for some photography.

I just wanted to post a quick something here, feeling pretty moved by this really tragic story I found on BBC.

Long story short: A female Italian artist decided she and her friend would try to bring a message of peace to everyone by hitchhiking dressed as brides to the Middle East. The two women got separated, and one has now been found murdered. So much for the cause of peace.

One of the victim’s devastated sisters had this comment to make, “Her travels were for an artistic performance and to give a message of peace and of trust, but not everyone deserves trust.”

I guess that’s something I see wrong with a lot of women today — too trusting at the wrong times.

There are times for trust and times for skepticism, and engaging in skepticism does not mean you’re a bad person, it means you’re protecting yourself against chance.

I don’t care if this “trust” is as dangerous as hitching for rides in the Middle East, or just choosing to have sex with a “nice” guy sans a condom.

I’ve had a story sitting in my email inbox for a couple weeks because I’ve not wanted to confront the depressing reality I’d need to tap into in order to do it justice, but it’s largely about how their is a STARTLING ascent in the transmission of sexual diseases with young women. What the fuck are you girls thinking? CONDOMS! If men say no to wearing them, YOU HAVE A REASON TO BE SCARED. I don’t give a fuck what his reason is — wearing a condom should absolutely be mandatory. I mean, come on! Okay, that’s another posting for another time, but you see that it clearly inspires some rage in me…

Tangent aside, this all goes to the same troubling thing: the wanting to be able to trust everyone.

You cannot trust everyone. It’d be nice. But there are very, very bad people in the world. Crimes will always happen, people will always be murdered, poverty will always exist. That’s just what the human condition entails. We will never solve everything, we’ll never genetically-engineer “nice, trustworthy” people, we’ll never conquer violence against each other. We can sure try, but I doubt we’ll ever succeed.

Trust can’t be randomly assigned. You cannot trust people you don’t know. You cannot trust people you have no history with. Trust must be gained or earned. As you get to know someone, you develop instincts. You must learn whether your instincts can be trusted or not. I can trust my instincts about 80-90% of the time, and I’ve learned that from years of judging it.

We need to live cautiously. We need to expect that the worst can happen. We need to understand that any situation can go from safe to horror in five minutes or less. And we need to believe that, even though we live with all these safeguards, there will always be people who surprise us and inspire us to continue taking the chance on trusting others…

…Just not blindly, like this poor, now-dead woman did.

Trusting others is a difficult thing to do, and we’re often wrong in the assigning of trust and faith to those others, but we need to keep trying because there will always be moments when trusting is the threshold to great, great experiences. Trust is hard to give, challenging to keep, but a terrible thing to live without.

Like I say, though, in a big ol’ world of wonder that also happens to be filled with STDs, automatic weapons, and violent people, the giving of trust can’t be done blindly. People’s faces have nothing to do with what lurks behind their eyes, and some of what’s lurking, none of us ever want to experience.

I guess there’s no happy way to end this posting other than to say, be wary of who you trust. They’re call “strangers” for a reason. Embrace skepticism, then allow yourself to trust when the time is right.

So, uh, happy weekend?

(This is a weird long posting. We’re going on a ride.)

Carrie Underwood just did a cover of George Michael’s Praying for Time for Idol Gives Back.

Well, I’ve neglected to share that GayBoy snagged us some GM tickets for the upcoming tour when it hits Vancouver. We don’t have great seats, but the day for me paying $200 to see anyone, God included, is still not even fucking close to nigh. Not when I can pay $12 and get sweaty, up close, and personal with dirty rock people in small clubs for insane shows that feel like the best kept secret in town.

Still, it’s George Michael. George got me through my folks’ divorce and my mothers suicide attempt. His Songs from the Last Century got me through the first year after her death.

I saw him live the last time he rolled through Vancouver, 1991, when I was just graduating high school. Old times. Killer gig. (His Cover to Cover tour where he performed only covers, none of his own work — pissed off the record company but it was awesome to get to dance to Superstition and Play That Funky Music [White Boy] ).

George is in a weird place. Mocked, derided, taunted for his escapades in Beverly Hills washrooms and getting arrested for pot. The older I get, the more I like the guy, though. He’s human after all.

People fuck up. God knows if I was famous for the last eight years and cameras had followed me around everywhere, I’d certainly be trying to live it down the rest of my life. I’ve been a complete ass sometimes. I don’t even want to get into some of the bullshit I’ve brought to life over the years. Suffice to say, I do not have cameras following me and have managed to get past most of my own stupidity, but the road was real fucking long, hard, and bumpy.

It’s part of why I can’t stand this obsession we have with celebrities. Constantly hounding them, haunting them, hurting them. Sure, they sign up for fame, but, really, would anyone ever really want to willfully submit to so much ridicule and analysis from others? Get real. Why should they carry those burdens just because they’ve had some success?

I feel badly for anyone enduring hard times, celebrity or not. I don’t think having money or fame makes anyone immune from hurt, shame, or resentment.

I often wonder what it is that drives us as a society to be so obsessed in this cult of celebrity. My thinking is somewhat subject to historical interpretation, though. (Bear with me for a crash history of the modern media.)

I figure that, before the media really began at the end of the 18th century — by media, I mean press and news in its original form, pure print and word on the street — it was easy to maintain a certain mystique when one was wealthy or famous. People might hear a bit about you here or there, but if you were a celebrity before about 1890 or so, you could effectively limit what the world saw or knew of you, and without a spin doctor eating 10% of your income.

But then… Better print technology meant more papers could be produced, bigger ones, so more content was possible. More competition was born, and suddenly newspapers had become bigger business. We entered a society of mass production, so advertising became more important because more things had to be sold. To sell more advertisements, they’d make more content, have more stories ergo more pages for ads. More content meant more paper, and more paper meant more costs, like ink, and running presses markedly longer. So they needed to sell more papers. Needing to sell more, content and sensationalism became important. When the news mattered, papers would sell themselves. But day to day, “hooks” became more important. Stories with appeal. And celebrities have appeal.

Long story short, celebrities were good for business. But then technology improved. The portable television camera, right up through to camera phones. Every bit of technology has made that access more possible, so the stories have become increasingly invasive as a result.

Well, now that we can see all the nitty-gritty about these rich, famous people’s lives, the mystique of wealth and fame has begun to erode, and suddenly the monotone of our lives seems so much less sucky because their lives suck too.

And I resent our tendency to submit to that, on a lot of levels. Whether it’s because I think we’re a big world with a lot of serious problems that need serious solutions and these vapid stories take away from that discussion, or that I just get bored by it all, I do know we can do much, much better than reading the latest story about how celebrity X fucked up with Y.

In keeping with this sentiment, I really try to avoid reading more sensational celebrity news. Someone talking about a movie is one thing, but there are limits, and I try to abide them.

I guiltily confess, though, that I’ve followed George Michael’s crazy happenings to a degree. But right around when my mother died, he’d lost his mother (and a lover) as well. He had an off-the-hook pot habit, was fucking up in a million ways. So did I, so did I, and so was I. A lot of his lyrics have always cut a little close to home with my own life experience. And, yes, knowing he was human and was fucking up made me feel a little bit less alone as what I perceived to be a failure, you know? But I know that was my motivation, and I’m honest about it.

(And he puts on one hell of a concert. It’s all the way off in July, but it’ll be great.)

As usual, total queen of the segue there, but it’s all about going with the flow. Writing’s a great ride some nights. 🙂

PS: But I have a lot of disrespect for GM refusing to take an HIV test. I think it’s irresponsible of anyone to not have an HIV test. In this day and age, anyone sexually active — married, in a relationship or not — should be tested annually at the very least.