A big-wig in the world of Formula One Racing (the chief, actually) named Max Mosley’s at the centre of a sex scandal involving S&M and role-playing revolving around Nazi scenarios. Here’s a snippet from TIME.com:

Last Sunday the British tabloid News of the World posted video footage on its website of Mosley and five prostitutes in what it frothily described as “a depraved Nazi-style orgy in a torture dungeon.” In the secretly filmed video, the paper reports, Mosley “barks orders in German as he whips two hookers dressed in striped uniforms reminiscent of Auschwitz garb while girls in Nazi uniforms look on.”

Wow. Where do you start, eh?

It gets better. Turns out that his daddy dearest was the leader of the British Fascists back in the pre-war years and both pops and Mosley’s mummy much touted both Hitler and Mussolini as visionaries. Hitler was even a guest at their wedding, which was given by Goebbels.

Yeah. Holy doozie, Batman. Achtung!

I have some strong opinions about the Holocaust…* (Read the footnote for more.) But you have to be a fucking moron to be sympathetic to the Nazis.

There will be people who say that it’s simply acting out a sexual fantasy. It’s not really bad, it’s just play-acting. Yeah, well, some fantasies are left better unplayed. Especially if you have a political sort of career where this shit can come back to bite you.

The guy’s a fucking idiot. I don’t give a shit about the S&M. That’s fine, but pretending they’re a couple Jewish whores in Auschwitz uniforms as he cracks the whip with threats of whatever the fuck… And spectator girls in Nazi unis? It’s a little sordid. Throw his parents’ support for Hitler into the mix, that the Fuhrer was even a guest of his folks, and, yes, he should be made an example of.

I have a lot of issues with the way the media handles the whole Holocaust/Hitler thing, and it’s been bubbling up for me of late, so I really need to dial myself back here, but let me just say this:

The media portrays Hitler as a meglomaniacal paranoid nutbag with a knack for oppressing and exterminating minorities, like what he accomplished could have been done by any whackjob…

And that is a very, very dangerous assumption. Hitler was not insane. He was evil. He was an evil bastard who was a political mastermind, who managed to dupe a nation into going along with a plan to exterminate an entire race of people — hell, he even duped the whole world until he invaded the wrong country. A lot of people waved him off because he was charismatic, and look where that got us all.

Whenever someone says Hitler was brilliant, they’re demonized, as if suggesting intelligence somehow equates ackowleding them as having moral superiority. No, someone can be brilliant and the most evil motherfucker you’ve ever met, or never met, like Hitler.

So, yeah, I think if this guy’s out there laughing it up and getting off of pretending to be oppressing women in what was clearly one of the most horrific acts of inhumanity ever committed against the human race, maybe, just maybe, it’s worth getting his motherfucking ass booted from his semi-political position.

And I feel kind of hypocritical for saying that since I think one of the greatest things about my country is that we do believe that what happens in Canadian’s bedrooms is their business.

But it’s kind of like Vegas: What happens in Vegas stays in Vegas… But god fuckin’ help ya if it don’t, baby. Mosley’s Vegas didn’t stay in Vegas. That’s his problem. Tough. And now we know, so somone needs to pay the price.

Methinks it’s the dude dressing up as a Nazi and whipping faux-Auschwitz girls, but that’s just me.

*What I resent, rather, is the fact that it gets so much press while the other horrific genocides of the past go largely unspoken. [Which is largely because Germany took its reparations above and beyond and has continued to repent for its sins of the past.] What other genocides do I mean? The Congo at the turn of the 19th century, more than 10 million Congo Africans butchered by the Belgians, but do we talk about that and how it fucked that part of the world until even now? The Congo has never healed. Read Adam Hochschild’s brilliant King Leopold’s Ghosts for a literary look at that. Or is there pressure to really, truly at last know how many of his fellow Chinese Chairman Mao ended/killed thanks to a government-induced Great Famine [from bad policies] and the Cultural Revolution or just sheer cruelty? They say between 5 million to 20 million. Fat chance the Chinese will let us at their records any time soon, ditto with the Russians and Stalin, for whom the total genocide numbers are still very unknown, but informed scholars guess around 10 million. Again, Adam Hochschild wrote a brilliant look at the post-Stalinist Russia and the ever-present lingering of Stalin’s legacy, when you could trust no one, in present-day Russia in Unquiet Ghosts: Russians Remember Stalin. Or there’s a great look at Stalin’s probable mind-fuck headset is in the novel Autobiography of Joseph Stalin, by Richard Lourie, which is dark but brilliant and well-researched though fiction.

I think it’s hypocritical that Israel has been so helped and aided by others post-Holocaust, and little has happened to really help the Congo, even now. (That said, I think it’s good that at least Israel and Germany are the only nations really willing to talk about their attrocities. They’ve both been incredibly open about it all, and the reparations seem to have shaped Germany as a country. I wish others would follow suit!) I just keep hoping press beyond Mother Jones and their ilk will force a discussion on how such things affect the psyche of a country at large, and how that perhaps affects its role in international relations. It’s big stuff but we never want to discuss it. Look at the penchance for violence in the Congo even today, where no one has ever really tried to heal the past — perhaps it’s because seeing their ancestors’ heads on stakes as a warning for what happens to those who don’t collect enough rubber sap has created a legacy of the lack of perceived value on human life. Who knows what effect the past had. But I think we need to find out, or we may run the risk of creating an enabling environment. Holy footnote, Batman.

They say that you can’t really take on an active lifestyle without eventually getting onboard with healthy eating, and I think I finally understand why.

This past month, I’ve eaten hardly any fresh food — it’s all been processed, easy, or guilt-laden. I’ve found myself craving chocolate bars, something that, despite my weight problem, isn’t something I go after all that much, but I have been in the last couple weeks.

Yesterday was supposed to be Day One of The Healthy-Eating Steff, but helping GayBoy paint his living room made that come undone as he proceeded to ply me full of Timmy’s donuts and beers and martinis. (I had a healthy dinner, though!)

I did, however, get a healthy plan in place for my week. I’m going for high-energy, high-fibre fresh foods. At least three or four meals this week will include my homemade (baked, not fried, and low in oil) falafels I made (along with homemade tzatziki sauce that kicks ass), and I’ve found other recipes I’ll try for funky Caribbean salads with grilled salmon and such. Everything is to be a well-rounded, high fibre, mostly “fresh” meals (versus all-cooked), with lots of beans and healthy proteins involved.

Eating properly will change everything. I’ve been getting too active for the shit I’ve been eating to give me fuel. Living a sedentary life and eating crap is fine, but as soon as you’re cycling 25 km in a day or hiking stairs daily, it’ll take you apart at the seams, which is what’s happened to me gradually over the last month, thanks to the painting and everything else I’ve done.

I’ve become too active to be tired by my activities, if that makes sense. I’m getting fit, strong, and my endurance is greater than ever…. yet, I’m constantly lethargic. Being malnourished is the only thing that explains this lethargy of mine, and I’m glad I’ve got a plan in place to change that around.

Lucky for me, it’s going to pour rain all week so I can’t cycle in to work (aw!) but this’ll get me full of energy for next week, when the sun makes a big return. Besides, I’ll be able to do my stairs in the rain, and this’ll give me a chance to buy and swap out the new bike seat I need.

So, bear with me, minions, as I start becoming myself again over the next couple of days. Yay for nutrition. Enjoy your Monday. 🙂

Sally Kern.

She did the one thing Nixon said not to do. Get caught. She’s not really sorry she flamed gays and lumped their sexual “preferences” in with evil like terrorism. I am not pleased.

I don’t tend to want to bring politics up too much. I think I’m putting that practice on hiatus right now. I think this is an important time with important issues, a time when we need important people to do important things.

We don’t need motherfucking hate-preaching political hacks like Kern taking up space in office when someone who really believes in the “land of the free” wants to do a stint of real public service, instituting change in a time when the public is demanding just that.

It’s time to really fucking think before we go ticking names off in elections. What do our candidates really, really think?

The Victory Fund is the GLBT organisation that outted Kern’s ridiculous hating speech– but they didn’t release her name. They issued this statement this week:

…Sally and her admirers [have] trotted out their favorite talking point—they don’t hate gay people, they love us and want us to change. Well, nobody who ever loved me talked to me the way she did when she compared us to terrorists and cancer. That’s not the language of love or even tough love. It’s the language of fear, division and yes, hate.

Across America, Sally and her friends in the anti-gay industry are backing narrow-minded, extremist candidates who want to implement her world view—a world in which gay people are encouraged to fake being straight or to simply disappear altogether. If you’re gay, or if you are related to or know people who are gay, you understand how dangerous and misguided that message is.

So my message back to Sally today is simple: Thanks, but no. We’re not going to stop listening to people like you. We’re not going to stop fighting to elect people who will stand up to people like you. We’re not going to apologize for living our lives honestly and with integrity, even if that doesn’t comport with your twisted views. It’s your right to say vicious things, but it’s our right to say you are dividing Oklahomans and Americans at a time when we most need to be united.

America’s a fractured country. So much infighting in recent years and finger-pointing led to no one noticing just how fucked up everything was getting. Now, America’s lost credibility the world over. A recession is in swing. Things are getting tricky. It’s time for people with solutions, not people trying to cause more problems.

The people over at evolvefish.com have a slogan: “Freedom is the distance between church and state.”

There’s a lot of lip service payed to the notion of church and state being separate in the US of A, but I really don’t see that when I see guys like Bush and Huckabee wearing their religious sentiment so prominently when seeking office, and vowing to vote with their conscience.

I have a sticker on my scooter. It says “The last time we combined politics with religion, people were burned at the stake.”

And I don’t get these people like Kern who claim their faith makes it kosher to hate. I don’t get how they think rejecting something at the core of a person and demanding they change, lie, or simply suppress it is not at all what I always thought the “Christian” thing to do was.

That’s hypocritical at its core. (I may not be religious but I am a profoundly ethical person. I’m even honest on my taxes. It’s crazy shit. Makes for good blogging. I have shame but I’m too honest to deflect it.)

But people like that, they give religious people a bad name. Sorry, but fundamentalists usually suck. Highly consistent. Besides, I can’t respect anyone who literally thinks the world was made in seven days. Fuck, it took me three weeks to paint my apartment, man. That these Creationists don’t think their “God” could be capable of creating a world so complex and interwoven that it would take millions of years to unravel all its gifts and mysteries is so fucking insulting that I can’t comprehend how obtuse someone would have to be to swallow such kindergarten drivel.

Haven’t any of these people heard of an “allegory” or “symbolism”? “Metaphor”? “Duh”?

[record scratches!] Holy tangent, Batman. Well, there you go. Sally Kern just inspires me.

And if you’re a Creationist and you’re all offended now, boo-fucking-hoo. Save your time, don’t tell me about it. I got arguments from here to fucking Timbuktu and I will never, ever be saved. I don’t even have a Costco membership, man. I pay full price. Sad, but true. “Save” someone else.

Readers, readers, readers… Give yourself the gift of democracy and end the careers of any ignorant motherfucker mistaking religious sentiment with what a free person should or should not be permitted to do.

Surfing, I found me this interesting little bitsy:

Chances are if someone were to ask you, right now, if you were happy, you’d say you were.^[1] Claiming that you’re happy—that is, to an interviewer who is asking you to rate your “life satisfaction” on a scale from zero to ten—appears to be nearly universal, as long as you’re not living in a war zone, on the street, or in extreme emotional or physical pain. The Maasai of Kenya, soccer moms of Scarsdale, the Amish, the Inughuit of Greenland, European businessmen—all report that they are happy. When happiness researcher Ed Diener, the past president of the International Society of Quality of Life Studies, synthesized 916 surveys of over a million people in forty-five countries, he found that, on average, people placed themselves at seven on the zero-to-ten scale.
-Sue Halpern, NYT Book Review

Yep. Happiness. What everyone is, but isn’t. Like we’re all really “fine” when we’re asked. “Just fucking ducky” doesn’t tend to go over so well, eh?

Me, I’d have said 5-6. Working on it, baby. But that was the whole thing. Last summer, I asked myself if I was happy. I said no. I quit my job. I lost 25 pounds. I’ve painted my apartment. And I’m still not happy. But I will be. 🙂

It’s funny, though, just an hour ago, towards the end of one of those Impromptu hang-outs with dear buddy GayBoy, and it’s nights like these I find myself hoping we always live 5 blocks apart, ‘cos… hey. It’s when the best hanging out happens: By accident.

So we were chatting as we checked out Facebook, and I pointed to a friend and go, “Sigh. Her.” “Sigh, Her” is currently in Memphis after being in Austin after having sold everything in this fair burg order to take off and jetset the world for X many months. She’s one of those people who goes everywhere, and when she travels, she meets everyone, has great experiences, takes awesome photos. She just lives one of those Rare lives. It’s awesome. But she’s able to be Of No Fixed Address and No Place To Hang Her Hat. Me, I need a home. She has her priorities, and I admire the fuck out of them, but I have mine.

I’m wistful when I see her reporting simple things like, it’s raining in Memphis. “Aw, that’s nice. Walk in it, baby.”

But GayBoy goes, “Oh, I hate people like her. I do! I fucking do! I hate people like her. They’re out there living that life, doing all that shit, and, yeah, I hate ’em. I know I’ve chosen this life, but that doesn’t mean I wouldn’t want that one, too. I mean, everyone wants what they don’t have. They do!”

Then he probably went on a little longer, but that’s pretty fuckin’ bang on there. (Later, he would point at Matt Damon the awesome Sarah Silverman/Matt Damon “I’m fucking Matt Damon” video and comment, “Doesn’t he make ya just wanna sit on his face?”)

So, is GayBoy right? Do we secretly always say Yeah, I’m Happy*. Like, we have an asterisk by “happy”, as if it’s reliant upon some complicated formula for quantifying it. Secretly, it’s THAT life we’d rather have right now, but all things considered, and this being the lesser of evils, well…

“Sure… I’m happy. Yeah, well, yeah, of course I’m happy. I mean… [chuckles awkwardly] …I chose this life, right? Sure! It’s exactly how I expected it… Precisely what I thought I’d be getting myself in– huh? Oh… uh, on a scale of ten? Oh, seven. What, honey? Eight, yeah, solidly eight. Yeah, coming!”

Dude comes jogging back after a beat.

“Make that a seven.”

Considering everything we have, are we happy? If we had to keep our heads grounded and our dreams in check, would we consider ourselves happy? Well, duh.

I think “seven” is bullshit. I suspect there’s a lot more 5s and 6s, if not lower, out there. People don’t want to admit the reality, that they’re unhappy, because then that’d mean they’d fucking well need to do something about it.

“Sure… I’m content. Content is the word. I wouldn’t say satisfied, but I’m happy– uh, I mean, content, with what I have.”

Right. That’s a seven on a real strong grading curve there, man.

If you could reach into a magical bag of friends, would you take exactly those you have now, no more, no less? If you could reach into a magical bag of jobs, would you sign up for yours again? Is your home a great home you’d take in a heartbeat given a do-over? If you could be mysteriously whisked off and confronted with a daydreaming version of you at 17, is who you are now the person you wanted be? Is it who you’ll be glad you were at the other end of your life? Will you, on your deathbed, wish like hell you could’ve said “No, this isn’t enough for me” and taken more for yourself?

If you would change things about your life, you are not all that happy. So, the question is, what are you getting out of lying about it?

That’s a whole ‘nother posting, isn’t it? Well, that’s all for this broadcast, batfans! Tune in for more exciting shenanigans next time, at the same bat time on the same bat channel!

PS: Oh, and, uh… if this posting has taken you rudely to the realization that happiness eludes you, then… um… April Fool’s?

For some bizarre reason I dreamed most of the night about a hullabaloo raising in my childhood town because news reports were saying how authorities were planning to arrest Paris Hilton for defrauding the public by having a fake guru.

I don’t remember how it all shook down. It was a very weird dream. And now it’s Monday and I have to work.

Speaking of Paris, I saw a snippet of a report on the weekend about how all of a sudden there’s this screaming fear that Britney and Paris are turning “our girls” into “bimbos.”

What, now? I’ve been saying this for three years, for Christ sakes. One of my most popular postings was on that very topic. One’s here. Another’s here.

A lot of girls today suddenly think their looks are all that will get them anywhere in life. Like brains are some kind of option, like having extra cheese on your pizza or something. You could go there, but why would you? Brains are so much work! Far better to show some cleavage and skip the work thing.

And this is not a little problem. This is a huge problem. This is a problem that threatens much of the progress we’ve made in the feminist struggle over the last century, from the suffragette battles to get us the vote all the way up to us finally having a candidate for the top job in America.

Equality’s still a difficult road on which we have to travel. This unsettling trend of being STUPID because it’s EASIER is pissing me the fuck off. Boobs do not compensate for brains. Boobs are nice to have, but they don’t compensate for brains.

And just because some of the MEN out there are stupid enough to go dumbing yourself down for does not mean it’s a good notion. The odds are pretty good that those dumb guys who WANT a stupid girl don’t deserve any woman who doesn’t need to be inflated before a date.

Yes, some men get intimidated by brains. My dating landscape is littered with them. So what? I’d rather they litter by landscape than choke up my life.

The trouble is, too many guys LIKE this shit, and the guys who don’t aren’t speaking loud enough.

I know for a fact most of the guys I’ve been with or known can’t stand chicks like that. The guys I’ve been with always dig chicks like Janeane Garofalo or Sarah Silverman. Sassy, smart, and trouble. Kinda like me, really. It’s too bad I’m so into freedom of speech, because sometimes I’d really like to limit some others’. Sigh.

Oh, I don’t have any more rant in me. I’ve got exercises to do. Enjoy your Mondays, minions.

PS: I’m happy to report my home is beginning to look like a home… But I’m going slowly. I’m being way too methodical in the reorienting of my home. Last night I bought a shiny new toolbox for the first time ever, and even went so far as to separate out and organize all my screws and nails. Yeah. Scary. Everything I’m doing is that detailed, though. I’m getting it right so I don’t have to fuck around with it later. 🙂 But soon I’ll be done and then I’ll buy camera batteries and everyone can see how sexy my place is.

I’ve taken a break from the endless task of reorganizing my entire apartment to do some reading on Arts & Letters Daily and found an interesting academic look at a major problem of our times: Breeding. Or the lack thereof. The article, through the Claremont Institute, is here. It’s very hoity-toity academic writing so be prepared to give your head a shake. Some espresso and toothpicks for the eyes might help.

Here’s my take on the important part of what’s a growing problem. A lot of people are like me, opting out of the parenting scheme of things. And in a society where vacations and activities are advertised in rates for twos or fours, we’re really aiming at either people living in coupledoms or with a family of four. Or simply staying single for simplicity’s sake, like myself.

I read an article in Maclean’s last year about how the Islamic world is outbreeding the Christian world, and how the time is coming nigh when Christianity will be a distant second, population-wise, to Islamic faith… partly due as well to the casual religious views being held by most modern Western world folk versus the more orthodox or fundamentalist notions that might be out there, whereas more fundamentalist views are gaining strength in the Islamic world, with the resurgence of the Taliban, stuff like that.

It’s complicated, looking at the futures that loom for both Islam and Christianity. But with more and more Western people doing what I’m doing — opting out of the religion I was raised under, and choosing single independent life — we’re imposing limits on just how far our way of life can continue. If we’re not breeding, and that’s gaining popularity this decade, then just who IS doing the breeding?

But am I prepared to deviate from the me-driven life I envision for myself just so I can help prop up the basically atheist, hedonistic segment of society? Nah. Even if it means it’ll help dwarf the ratio of atheists versus fundamentalists out there? Nah.

So I accept that I’m definitely a part of the problem. People like me choosing hedonism over the noble act of continuing lineage and personal philosophies, well… that’s just not team playing, is it?

The thing is, marriage has taken a lot of hits in recent past. In other cultures, where marriage numbers are possibly higher, the rates of unreported violence and angst are much higher, too. We’ve done a lot of exposing how bad marriages can go, how wrong domestic violence is, and how much each of us as a person deserves in life versus what religion dictates we must endure. Also, when marriages do go bad, the blowback is legion, isn’t it? Us kids raised under the clouds of divorce and broken homes, we know there are no do-overs, and the scarring never really goes away.

And that, I think, is the biggest difference between Eastern and Western views right now, in 2008. Society has pulled away from the church-induced perspective on how enduring ills while keeping the faith equates living a virtuous life. Religion tells us, by and large, that we need to live lives of servitude. Marriage is sacred, a vow to live up to in the face of grave challenges, right?

But nowadays we live in a Virginia Slims society. We’ve “come a long ways, baby”, and now believe in entitlement. You know: Is that all? We’ve earned more. We deserve better. There’s got to be more than this.

Your spouse overspends? Driving you into debt? You’ve not been laid in six months and you sleep six inches apart? There’s no communication anymore? You deserve better! There’s more to life than that! You’ve earned it!

You’ve come a long ways, baby!

I believe in divorce. I believe in saying enough is enough when it comes to being unhappy day after day. But I also believe that divorce is a last resort… At the same time, I think marriage is rushed into, ergo compromised from the start. Most people, I feel, fail to really explore the rightness of marrying their partner — beyond the “wow, I love” him/her obvious, I mean. Money, sex, entertainment, ideas of how to spend a Sunday… these are very important issues that you need to have in common or even be on the same page about. You can’t say “Well, he’s more of a fetishist in sex, but he doesn’t mind not getting kinky with me…” Forever? He won’t mind it forever? Are you really sure that 20 years down the road without something he really digs it’s not going to be a problem?

People are incredibly naive about marriage. You can’t “work it out” down the road. You got to have your shit together before you go there, or else you need to assume it’ll never come together. Then, once you have it together, the marriage is all about keeping it together, working to keep things reasonably so for the longterm.

Marriage is broke, man. It really is. We need to do some fixing. We need to have more faith in life, more reason to invest in the future and do some breeding. Right now, not getting married, not facing the hellish divorces most of us my age or younger have endured, is a pretty damned attractive option.

“I can live on my own, have sleepovers when I feel like it, never have to drive a kid to soccer, can keep my finances in check, and can be grumpy alone when I want? Score. Sign me up, man.”

And, until it starts looking like we’re really missing something… until it starts looking like marrying and having kids and living the big American Picket Fence Dream is too full a life to choose the empty living-solo life… well, that’s going to continue to be the case.

When I consider the chaos and seeming routine of family life, I don’t feel I’m missing out. My life, as “empty” as it is, is a canvas to be filled whenever the urge strikes. And I don’t have to clear it with anyone. Gotta say… it’s certainly very freeing, this life of mine. And it’s not surprising more and more are agreeing with me.

What are your thoughts? How do we “fix” marriage? Is it fixable? Whaddya think of those like me, living single with no regrets?

Do you realize there’s an entire generation that has grown up without knowing what life before multitasking was like? I think this photo I found says it all.

Looking around my “someone’s been painting around here… and took last weekend off” apartment, I felt a little overwhelmed. “Well,” I thought. “The dishes are a great place to start. I’ll just do one dish at a time.”

Then I thought, “Wow, wouldn’t that be great? If life was just something you started and finished, never getting interrupted by emails or calls or silly things like jobs?”

And I remembered how life didn’t use to require multitasking, like checking cellphones when you’re waiting for a bus or stuck in traffic, or having to email before bed at night. I remembered how life once maybe involved a little TV, or the radio, maybe a phone call… but, mostly, you were pretty much left up to your devices.

Now, I don’t know about you, but I’m a bit of a mass media geek. I’m really into the messages used to try and sell us on things. Technology, for instance, was supposed to make our lives easier, bring us closer together.

Back in the post-war boom, when America began dreaming of a bigger, easier, sleeker, push-button future, when the ’50s rolled around, the message was “Machines will do everything for you, and soon! In the future, robots will be our servants, machines will do all your housework, and you can live the good life! Technology… the solution to all your problems!”

Here we are, a half-century into the high-tech/digital world. I’m telling you, remembering my open-door, born-in-the-’70s childhood on the heels of the hippy movement here in Vancouver, and comparing it to the hectic, frenetic, “You’re my neighbour?” anonymity of living in the modern era… Geez, I don’t really know that the pluses are outweighing the negatives. You know?

And I love my technology. I’ve always been one of the first to get the new toys that interest me, like digital cameras, iPods, laptops… I’m a bit of a geek. I’m the first person to freak if I can’t check my email every 12 hours… but that’s kind of the problem.

Here I am, interrupting dishwashing to blog, distracted again by a virtual world, pulled into communicating with people I’ll never meet, never know, and who’ll never buy me dinner. Do I even get anything at all out of this bargain? I don’t know. It’s the guise of a relationship that never needs to really be tested.

And that’s part of the problem with our day and age. We’re big fans of relationships that don’t need testing. The people you know in forums, through blogs, in Facebook groups, they’re not “friends”… they’re names on a screen. They’ll never help you hide a dead body at 4 in the morning, but they might tell ya how to Google someone who can.

In a time when multitasking and 200-character-or-less text messages are the backbone of our lives, we’re forgetting how to have meaningful moments. Times when time stops and the world outside remains exactly that: outside.

Being with someone used to mean really being present. Now, there’s advertising everywhere to distract you, text messages, portable entertainment systems (for everything now, really)… How often do we actually let the world come to a full stop around us? How often do we really take back our time? How often do we control what influences us?

We’re bombarded by the modern age so much so that we don’t even realize how ever-present quality of life compromises are, and how much they’re harming us. CNN recently published a big shocking expose I first wrote about two years ago, in which they’re learning that the amount of pharmaceuticals present in our water — from people toilet-dumping old, expired drugs or even cocaine, birth control pills, or any pill you can imagine — are having unknown effects on us. You should hear some of the theories, like how disposed birth control pills are causing estrogen spikes in urban water sources and this somehow explains the recent rise in “metrosexual” males versus their rugged country counterparts. (Hey, it’s a theory out there, man. I don’t make this shit up.)

Hell, a scientific report has come out linking nightshift work with cancer spikes because, the theory goes, humans are fucking with natural circadian rhythms that went unchallenged and unchanged since the dawn of man… until the invention of electricity. Now we defy millenias of circadian programming with a 24/7 world that never sleeps.

Everything has changed. Everything is faster. Me, I want to slow it down. I want a life where multitasking’s something I do out of necessity and only when occasions arise demanding it, not something I want to continue doing out of normality.

With summer hanging tantalizing close now, I long for those late night thought-provoking conversations I’d have with my friends, staring at the stars from a sandy beach, before any of us had laptops or cell phones or distractions. It’s not the same these days. Not as often, anyhow.

When science-fiction writers foretold of a world where computers and machines would be social intermediaries in our lives, I don’t think any of us could have predicted just how far-reaching and endemic their impact would be.

And now that the ride’s in full swing, what do we do if we want off? Finding myself a private cabin on the rugged BC coast isn’t really all that feasible, since I like my urban life. Slowing it down will take work. The trouble is, slowing down my life doesn’t mean those around me will do the same, and that’s the problem. Whether we like it or not, we’re often brought along when other peoples’ lives are caught in these whirlwinds.

It’s making it even more complicated to meet new people. As I embark on my “new life”, I’m trying to figure out a tactful way of asking “Are you one of those people who text messages on your Blackberry while talking to your friend… while you’re driving downtown? ‘Cause, if you are…”

It’s about priorities, man.

Or is it? Maybe they don’t get that life’s not that bad when you can actually sit in your apartment, in silence, hearing the splatter of tread on a wet road nearby or your neighbour’s wind chimes clanking in a gust. I don’t know. But I know what I consider “real” in life. I know I won’t be regretting that I didn’t answer my cellphone more when I’m a week from dead and buried, man. I know that, at least.

And I know I’ve got more dishes to do… one at a time.

(If any of this resonates with you and you wonder what one does to slow down the speed of life, you need to learn about the Slow Movement, and the guy who best encapsulates it as food for thought is Carl Honore in In Praise of Slow. Check out his book’s blog here.)

I wrote a posting yesterday that took me by surprise because I found it to be more personally oriented than I thought it’d be. It was one of those writing things that starts with “Well, I’m having eggs for breakfast” and after 250 words turns into a treatise on the human condition of hope and the political cures for it.
Yeah, all right. So this is why, even when you think you have nothing to say, you start with what you know: I just had eggs, I feel warm and fuzzy inside. And, hey, I just read this speech…
I don’t know, I found writing that post to be somewhat jarring emotionally, which is what surprised me, and greatly.
In this historic speech of his, Obama talks about how this change he envisions for the country will not be an easy road; it’ll be long, hard, and fraught with emotionally challenging reckoning.
At the start of this year, I sort of laid down a mental list of things I felt I needed to work on in order to make my life into something that is an ideal that works for me and allows me to achieve the work-life balance I’ve longed for, with a big focus on the health and home parts of life.
I knew it was going to be hard, and I knew it’d involve a lot of headtrips for which I’d be packin’ a whole lot of mental baggage, and I figured the journey would be pretty bumpy with a lot of stop-and-go.
I was bang on. There are moments when I’m feeling really overwhelmed by the mess I’ve gotten myself into this year and it just keeps feeling like the work to do is so much greater than the work that’s been done. Which is true. It will continue to be long and hard. Probably for at least another year.
Now and then it pays out for a short while. Like, this weekend, as the literal mess around me is coming to the beginnings of a close. That’ll keep me happy for 24 or 36 hours, and then I’ll realize I’ve more to do to get myself out of not only this rut that defined my life in recent past, but most of the life that preceded it.
Most of what goes on behind closed minds isn’t really yet fit for publishing, so you’ll have to content yourself to know only that the mental turmoil is great that one goes through in revisiting every thing about one’s life to decide what parts of one are worth keeping as-is, but also what parts need major updating.
It’s a endless flashbacks through a lifetime of moments that might’ve been, should’ve been, and even great ones that were. It’s a kaleidoscope of yesteryears, but it ain’t all pretty and going into the light. Some is dark, dark, dark.
And it’s really, really hard to remember that, beneath all the areas that require work, lies one hell of a frame befitting of such a remodel. The parts that are worth keeping are the parts so deserving of this work now. That’s the thing that’s hard to remember, the thing that’s worth repeating every single day. Everything is worth this outcome. This is worth that.
There are no magical red shoes you click three times and say matter-of-factly, “There’s no one like me” to mystically propel you into the idealized dream self you hold deep inside.
No, instead, the phrase “only human” comes up time and time again as one battles their way to a better self. Weakness and temptation rear their heads constantly. And there’s that horrifically skewed perspective.
Daily we stand before mirrors scrutinizing ourselves, with millions of synapses firing, more thoughts than we’ll ever even know are thought in a blink of an eye as we stare at our sleep-weary morning or nighttime faces. So many of the thoughts well beyond our control, many not to our advantage. Like Oasis sings, “All your dreams are made, when you’re chained to your mirror with your razor blade….” So too are our judgments.
Every moment we live, we judge ourselves a little. “Oh, I should have done this.” “Next time, I’ll do it this way…”
And every little fuck-up, shortcoming, failing, they add up, stuffed into little drawers in the recesses of our minds. Filed under headings like “whoopsies-daisies” or “colossal screw-ups”, ‘cos we’ve all been there, we’ve all had the inner groan in which we wish we could’ve had a three-minute do-over ‘cos that never shoulda happened, right? “If only.”
Usually, though, after a little while, our psyche leaves that filing room, turns off the light, and that moment’s never unearthed again. But when you’re going through a process of evaluating yourself, it’s like a board of review of your existence being conducted; all the evidence should be reevaluated, and, unfortunately, most of it is.
In my older, wiser self, I’m cutting slack on certain things in the past. I’m consciously remembering life is fluid, and far more flexible than our fears would have us believe. I’m holding to certainties like hard work pays off and desires can be actualized. I know my failings in the past have made me who I am, and will so greatly temper who I become, adding depth and understanding. All for the greater good, right? (And, thankfully, my life has had great deals of good in it, too. Living for the moment really has advantages.)
It’s a strange and turbulent time for me, though, and I’m wising up pretty quickly in the process. I’m also proving very quickly to myself that I can in fact make all the change I’m dreaming of become a reality. I’m doing it week by week, accomplishing more of my vision, and the feeling is an aphrodisiac for itself; doing it makes you want to do more of it, despite the ordeals that may lead up to the payoff.
It’s a wearying toil sometimes, and an emotional road. Like any epic roadtrip, rest stops are required. This weekend’s a rest stop. I’m at the end of another phase of the reinvention of Steff, and a little quiet time is needed so I can mentally map the next segment of this journey of mine.
Having a clear idea of the real, constructive steps I must take to make my dreams become reality is by far the most important part of my battle. I couldn’t do this every week if I didn’t know the real steps I can take that will always yield real results, results that add up into moments of change.
And I guess when I was sitting there yesterday thinking of why it is Barack Obama’s tremendous speech on race and the struggles that must be faced to conquer demons of the past in order to actualize a nation held in the ideals of its very own framework, the constitution, I couldn’t help but think of how much it is I feel I am entitled to but have not yet earned, and how much I need to understand where it is I’m coming from before I can truly know where it is I’m going.
I cannot say how great it feels to be able to reference a political speech as a thing of inspiration. These have not been inspiring times to live through of late, and to find such a thing of hope and realism on the political landscape was and is a jarring experience, but one I’m beginning to hope there’s a lot more of.
Meanwhile, for me, it’s back to the musings of a closed mind. Enjoy your day, good people.

I’ve now both read Obama’s entire speech on racism in America today and watched it, and, boy, I like this guy, man. I like him a lot. I think he’s the politician I’ve waited a lifetime for. I don’t think anyone could run on a platform of complete change and not achieve any. I don’t think you can articulate what’s so wrong with a country today and not have had ideas for a lifetime on what to do to fix them if a chance ever comes.

I have, for a while now, believed that Obama is, in some respects, a master manipulator, but I believe he does it for the right reasons — to make himself a viable candidate. By not polarizing people too greatly earlier in his career, he can stomp his feet a little louder now and achieve more through it.

He’s far from perfect and I have no illusions, but you gotta understand where I’m coming from.

I never pursued my journalism career for any number of reasons, but mostly because of what Stevie Cameron said to me over drinks after a conference she spoke at. (And I mean “said to me”, it was a private chat.) Stevie Cameron’s the journalist who exposed Canadian Prime Minister Brian Mulroney to be a duplicitous thieving hack back in the day and blew open the Airbus scandal. She’s up there with Barbara Frum when it comes to awesome female Canadian journalists, man.

So, she says to me I seem like a nice kid (I was 22). She had recently quit the mainstream political journalism beat and was now editing a women’s lifestyle magazine instead. She began to speak about how a career in journalism means committing to a life of finding fault in everything and everyone. It’s about finding problems and covering tragedies and wars and more often reporting on the worst of mankind than the best of it.

And I mentioned how I wanted to be the kind of old-school journalist that lasts out the ages, you know? Mencken, Murrow. Men of meaning and agenda. I wanted to call the world on what was going wrong, point it out, and be a part of the change that ensues. I was then and am now the sort of journalist that believes neutrality is overrated. I’m objective, not neutral. Then, I was an idealist, totally. I wanted to help change the world.

So she says, “And when it doesn’t change on your watch? What then?”

She pointed out the rates of addiction and alcoholism amongst the journalists she knew, and said that was often “what then”, so if change was my mandate, I should be prepared for stagnation and cycnicism.

Wasn’t the most heartwarming bit of encouragement I’ve ever received, no.

And I thought about it. I knew the writer I wanted to be, the kinds of things I wanted to do, but what if I fell short and I was some chick on a beat in the city, constantly exposed to the same shit all the time, never seeing change… who would I become then? Would I like myself? Would I like my life? Or, would I, as I suspect, feel vapid and empty inside?

Ironically, I’ve yet to become that writer I wanted to be, but I guess I’m working towards it.

When it came to shaping the writer I am, I was a huge Hunter Thompson fan, early Hunter, you know. Sharp as a tack politically. Fear & Loathing on the Campaign Trail ’72 stands as one of the best political books last century. Hell, he was the only writer on the campaign to call every single primary in the ’72 election, nailed ’em all. Whatever that tells you about his political skills, it should really tell you how well he knew his country.

He loved America but hated what was happening to it. Thompson, more than anyone alive, wanted to believe the American Dream. He spent his life waiting for the next voice that would cry out that a change would be a-comin’. He wanted to believe that someone else not only believed in the American Dream but would fight for it with the fight it deserved.

And Carter tried, but pretty much failed, but beyond Carter, that change never did materialize. Clinton looked like the next great white hope, but that ended in a disaster of cigars, blue dresses, and denials. More business as usual, more corruption, more disappointment.

The greatest tragedy of this race to lead the Democrats is that, man, Hunter woulda loved this one. God, how I wish he hadn’t put a bullet in his head that February day two years ago. I suspect he figured “Superbowl’s over, and Bush has two fuckin’ years to go, AND it’s February. Fuck, I’m done.” Pow. Tragic.

And here comes this guy who says America’s really, really broke, but if we all pull together, we can fix it again. He’s preaching change. He’s raising money on the web, running a clean campaign, chanting words like “we can” and “change”.

Business as usual ain’t going to fix America. Voting outside the box, though, just might. Obama ain’t perfect, but he’s different enough to be promising.

…And in a life filled with business as usual and disappointing politicians, I’m being given a few short months to believe that, yeah, maybe things can be different after all. I’m enjoying it. If he wins, it’d be incredible to see an optimistic America again. I don’t think Americans realize that the America of the American Dream is the nation the rest of the world really does long to see. We wanna see a country with its “best” at its forefront. It’s been a long, long time since we’ve seen that. America was built on dreams… having a few more right now certainly might not hurt.

I don’t think I’m an idealist to believe in a platform of change. I think of myself as a realist… I know we have it in us to have a better world. I prefer to believe in that part of us that finds cures for diseases, sends men to the moon, and creates global vehicles like the internet to unite us all through the miles that would appear to separate us. I believe that everything great about who we are, the world we have, and the people we can be all begins with a single dream by a single person at a moment in time.

If we waited for perfect people and perfect opportunities, we’d never achieve anything. Instead, we look for the best people of those available and the best opportunity that avails itself to us; that is how success is found and had.

So I’m going to go on the record here and now that it’s Obama I want on Pennsylvania Avenue.

(And here’s hoping that his comments on racism will do what Hurricane Katrina almost did, but failed to do: ignite a real, meaningful discussion of what’s wrong between the races in the United States today. It’s a problem we see very clearly up here in Canada, something that is very much a difference between our nations… our inner cities are racially blended. Sure, there’s poverty, but it gets spread around more. In the US, the colour blocks are a startling thing to behold, and something I would love to see changed in my lifetime. But it’s a huge topic for another time.)

I had a comment left yesterday on my posting from last Friday, in which I flippantly lauded “Steak and Blowjob Day”.

To save you from doing actual work, I’ll excerpt Virago’s well-written comment, and the ensuing comments from yours truly (and HER last reply) here:

Virago:
“Steak and Blowjob Day”? Because sex in relationships isn’t about mutually consenting, loving sexual acts (including oral), it’s about tricking your girlfriend into sucking you off while you watch TV and eat a MANLY chunk of dead animal. Just as VDay is about forcing your man to buy you poorly-made consumer capitalist crap to ‘prove’ how much he cares.

VDay and ‘S&B Day’, enforcing the gender roles that women only put out when plied with gifts and diamonds, and that all men really want is a housewife/mother and a sex slave.

Me:
You know, it’s funny. I’m totally torn on Steak & BJ day. On the one hand, I agree with you. On the other, I think it’s entertaining. I guess it would totally come down to the guy I was with, whether I’d think it could be fun or not.

Unfortunately, there’s probably a lot of men out there who wouldn’t see it as something amusing… as soon as a sense of “entitlement” enters the picture, it stops being a fun thing.

Virago’s reply:
I think you’ve hit the nail on the head there. If it was part of a jokey ‘hey hun, it was Chocolate Ice Cream and pussy eating day last week, now it’s steak and a blowjob day’ thang then it’d be fine, just a bit of fun. Sadly I think a lot of guys, as you pointed out, would see it as “hell yeah, I’m entitled to a blowjob, because I’m always doin’ shit like listening to her and not hittin her around so much as I used to”, in which case it is to be rigorously opposed. If necessary with baseball bats 😉

Here’s the deal. When I write about “guys”, my somewhat shallow notion of men in general by way of the ones I’ve known, loved, lost, forgotten, what have you, I’m generally coming from a good place.

Most of the men I’ve known, hell, all of them, have known “please” and “thank you”. I’ve never been insulted or run down, mistreated in any really cruel way. I’ve never been hit or slapped. Things that have gone wrong have been pretty run-of-the-mill things, things that are complicated to explain and that I barely even understand now, years after the fact, except the infidelity, which is pretty easy for anyone to relate to.

No man I’ve ever been with has ever had a sense of entitlement to me or my time. Because I’d never, ever, ever settle for that kind of guy. I wouldn’t settle for the kind of guy who’d put me down, abuse me, demand things of me, or disrespect me.

I don’t demand good behaviour, I just expect it. There’s a difference. I behave how I expect to be treated: I show respect, I’m generous, I’m open, I listen. And I expect all of that in return. I don’t get it, then I know where the door is.

[FYI: This doesn’t mean I feel fluffy and warm towards my exes. Visit me here where I live, Planet Earth, where past + relationships seldom = thumbs up.]

Yet, there are assholes out there. Not so much in my life, but they’re out there.

Unfortunately, I choose not to preface all my statements or postings with qualifications because some fuckwits have to go complicating my storytelling. I mean, really: “This following posting, when speaking of “men”, is actually referencing a select 57.6% of men who don’t think of spouses as glorified beer-fetching units.”

Assholes suck. Pricks with senses of entitlement deserve neither a steak, nor a blowjob. I’d rather not incriminate myself by suggesting what some of these men do deserve. But I have a really, really creative imagination and I love “dark” movies.

And, yes, it holds true that the always constant of pricks in the male race should be omnipresent in females as well. Where there are assholes, there are wenches.

So, I say this to you now: Mean people suck.

They do. Bumperstickers prove it. Polls are overwhelmingly showing that mean people are really, really disliked.

Therefore.

Therefore, only truly, truly nice guys who don’t think they really even deserve a steak and a blowjob, but, boy, they sure could use one, should be given a steak and a blowjob.

But since those are generally the only kinds of guys I tend to date (and they usually really, really enjoy steaks and blowjobs, I’ve found, albeit rather separately) then, you know, yeah, I’m not opposed to the gifting of said elements of delight.

Were I dating fuckheads who thought I existed only as a beer matron and blowjob-giver, I’d have one hell of a different perspective. Rightly so. In fact, the one guy I was with a long while ago who always “expected” blowjobs as part of the package stopped getting them. Hmm. Go figger.

I was raised to never settle, to never allow others to hurt me, and to never allow anyone to speak down to me. I try not to hurt others or speak down to them, and should hope I never cause anyone to settle. Living by these things hasn’t failed me yet, and I prefer to live a life where I think they won’t ever fail me. I’d rather believe the best in others than suspect the worst.

So, being a little vulnerable and making a gift of a steak and a blowjob might be something I’d do for a guy I knew saw the humour in it, but I’d probably do it out of the blue and not on a restricted “day”, because I’m non-conformist like that and it’s just how I roll.

But in restrospect, it was a stupid, flippant posting, and I shouldn’t have posted it without a little more insight, but I haven’t really been in my right head of late, as you may have gathered. 🙂

Mean people suck. No blowjob for you, meanie, and I’m keeping the steak. Behave, be nice, and the possibilities are endless.