While I fully endorse the apparently eminent zombification of North America and its attendant territories (what up, Guam?), I have to admit that, if society was going to be playing by the rules as set forth by a generation of horror movies, I would be woefully unprepared. My taste in "horror" movies skews to a funnier set; my scares often come with hysterical giggling after. Unrelenting fear usually finds me hiding in the kitchen, pretending to cook lunch. In reality, I'm totally avoiding the scary music.
I figure I come by it honestly; when I was 10, prime time for easing into horror movies, my sister was six and my brother was two. Movie nights were still family movie nights. As my siblings got older, their interests lay mainly with the Disney clamshells. My brother watched Robin Hood three times a week for two years - even now, whistling that opening tune brings me right back. My parents, especially my mom, weren't interested in letting Freddy Krueger babysit her children. The wholesome upbringing probably did a lot to damper down my latent anxiety, but it didn't do much to prepare me for horror flicks fifteen years down the line.
Everyone's definition of horror is different - for some, it's gorefests like Saw, while others like the atmospheric creepiness of The Sixth Sense, or the craziness of Antichrist, or the teen-slasher classics like Scream. Going back, we can choose from Carrie, Poltergeist, The Exorcist, Nightmare on Elm Street, Child's Play, Night of the Living Dead, and a slew of other classic, and not-so-classic, movies. There's every level of bloodshed, every level of scariness, every possible villain, and, in the teen-slasher flicks, tons of nipples. Seriously.
While I don't often watch horror movies, I'll reading the living crap out of a big fat scary book. Somehow I'm able to handle it a little better. I guess folk wisdom dictates that books are supposed to be scarier than movies, because books can let your imagination wander. But I've always been a pretty visual girl. Scary movies? With the freaky music and the crash zooms on people's guts falling out or evil little girls? I am affected. That shit is scary! Somehow, I can read The Shining and then fall into a deep and dreamless sleep. Show me an unsettling film and I'll be up at three in the morning, wondering if I'm going hear the slow creak of the closet door, or if I'll just be stabbed to death by vicious clowns.
Horror movies make us face some of our ickiest fears. None of us sit around after work, planning for when the homicidal maniac rolls out from under our bed. Horror is useful for folks to get all sweaty about something scary in a safe way. Humans like looking at gory things. Could the Roman colosseum be considered an early outlet for our love of watching entrails blorp all over the floor? Maybe. All I know is, movies, with their corn-syrup blood, are a much more humane way of exploring our dark side. We can identify with the victims, sure, with their squishy parts all over the place; but, and it's not always charming to admit it, the killers are often pretty damned magnetic. We're drawn to the power, the violence, the single-minded commitment to mayhem and craziness. Villains that strike a balance between gentility and insanity - Hannibal Lecter is one notable example - are so interesting to watch. They make us second-guess what we think we know about evil. And villains that don't - all the possessed girls and hockey-mask-wearing nuts - are kind of fun too, with their gleeful destruction of their victims.
Toronto is one of the cities, uh, "blessed" with a horror (/sci-fi/action - basically anything where the probability of one of the characters getting a slug to the guts is fairly high) movie festival, and it joins New York, LA, Edinburgh, Cape Town, and loads of others in showcasing some of the newest releases and most memorable classics, along with all the freako flicks that aren't going to get the Criterion treatment any time soon. If you'd prefer to catch up on your horror content while lounging in the tub, grab a copy of Rue Morgue or Fangoria, magazines that specialize in the bloodier side of cinema. Horror movies are big business, an indelible part of our collective pychosocial imprint, and divisive in their likability.
I need to get over the fear and the gross-out factor and see some of these movies. I'm not going to sit through stupid films, but a lot of horror movies might be considered classics at this point, and they can appeal to my film-snob side as well as dangling fresh hunks of bloody human in front of me. Bring on the brains! Bring them with fava beans and a nice chianti! I will eat every bite.
Thursday, August 19, 2010
Tuesday, August 17, 2010
Bird Is The Weird
No one ever aspires to grow up to be weird. Remember the seventh grade? Fitting in felt life-or-death, like we all needed to master safe ways of doing our hair, of dressing, of interacting with our friends and foes and teachers. I was fettered with unforgivable sins: I was more comfortable with adults than I was with kids my own age (not so mysterious, since twelve-year-old girls are second only to wild dogs in their viciousness); I was smart; I was an early and awkward bloomer. Weird, which is what I was, was disastrous. Weird was unforgivable. Weird was decidedly not good.
No one admits to being the popular kid in middle and high school; comparing notes, we were all huge dorks with tragic glasses and unsettling orthodontia. (Which is a total lie. Some of you were cool - some of you had to be cool. I was very uncool - eating-alone-in-the-lunchroom-uncool, to be specific. Even the religious South African twins in the frumpy long dresses were cooler than I was, because they had an interesting accent.) By our own telling, we were all freaks and geeks, losers, with some humiliating incident from the school bus/lunchroom/playground/locker room that haunted us, maybe even to this day.
But now, weird has turned into something kind of...desirable. Especially in the creative realm, weird consistently has more street cred than the forgettable top-40 pap that's piped in around us like foam. Bjork, for example, whose mid-90s oeuvre still stands up as a solid, interesting collection of songs, and whose more recent releases, what with the vocal chicanery and the electrobeats backing her signature shriek-and-release voice, are challenging without being alienating. I'll admit to not really understanding Bjork's appeal, since I find her voice startling. And, yes, weird. But I also like Bjork very much, because she gets into airport fights and once inspired a fashion-spread caption that was basically a transcription of her description of the clothes: "Dees blouse is a hoppy yerrlooow," which I just love. Plus, one of the greatest emotional releases when you're feeling sad is to rent her film-acting debut Dancer In The Dark and just sob throughout. I swear to god I pulled a muscle crying at that movie.
Sometimes the weird is just too much. I like The Knife a lot, but their latest release is a head-scratcher. Inspired by Charles Darwin's writings, Tomorrow, In A Year is the sort of electronic album that is long stretches of empty headphones, interspersed with some opera and some random-seeming bleeps and bloops. I'll freely admit to not getting it.
But when the perfect weirdo balance is struck, it's a delightful thing. Exhibit A: Tilda Swinton, the British actress known equally for her inexplicable fashion choices as she is for her film choices, and who lives with both the father of her children and her much-younger boyfriend. I am fascinated by her. I love the makeup of her household. I love that she can flip between blockbuster Hollywood flicks and strange little indies. I love that her look seems equally inspired by German Expressionist films and HR Giger. She seems like an intergalactic ambassador who would be totally comfortable preparing a rabbit stew.
Weird isn't precious. To be a weird woman, you need to be aware of, and in control of, your sensuality. Obviously, it doesn't need to be used, but ignoring sex altogether isn't a weirdo move, it's just sort of sad and damaged. Same with crazy; weird isn't crazy. Even at her most bipolar, Britney wasn't weird. She wasn't harnessing her rage and insanity and turning it into creative expressions; she was threatening photographers with umbrellas. Unstable doesn't equal weird. She needed some professional help.
When you're a woman, you're supposed to be pretty. But when you're not blessed with starlet-y looks, or you're not interested in shoehorning your face and body into someone else's standards, or you're more interested in seeing what your brain or your voice or your talents can do, then you have to come to terms with your particular weirdness. Women in the entertainment industry who choose not to play the looks game are, to be blunt, weird. They're unusual, and sadly, sort of scarce, but when the gamble pays off, when their weirdness is balanced by their prodigious talent, it's a great thing to behold. It gives the rest of us weirdos some hope.
No one admits to being the popular kid in middle and high school; comparing notes, we were all huge dorks with tragic glasses and unsettling orthodontia. (Which is a total lie. Some of you were cool - some of you had to be cool. I was very uncool - eating-alone-in-the-lunchroom-uncool, to be specific. Even the religious South African twins in the frumpy long dresses were cooler than I was, because they had an interesting accent.) By our own telling, we were all freaks and geeks, losers, with some humiliating incident from the school bus/lunchroom/playground/locker room that haunted us, maybe even to this day.
But now, weird has turned into something kind of...desirable. Especially in the creative realm, weird consistently has more street cred than the forgettable top-40 pap that's piped in around us like foam. Bjork, for example, whose mid-90s oeuvre still stands up as a solid, interesting collection of songs, and whose more recent releases, what with the vocal chicanery and the electrobeats backing her signature shriek-and-release voice, are challenging without being alienating. I'll admit to not really understanding Bjork's appeal, since I find her voice startling. And, yes, weird. But I also like Bjork very much, because she gets into airport fights and once inspired a fashion-spread caption that was basically a transcription of her description of the clothes: "Dees blouse is a hoppy yerrlooow," which I just love. Plus, one of the greatest emotional releases when you're feeling sad is to rent her film-acting debut Dancer In The Dark and just sob throughout. I swear to god I pulled a muscle crying at that movie.
Sometimes the weird is just too much. I like The Knife a lot, but their latest release is a head-scratcher. Inspired by Charles Darwin's writings, Tomorrow, In A Year is the sort of electronic album that is long stretches of empty headphones, interspersed with some opera and some random-seeming bleeps and bloops. I'll freely admit to not getting it.
But when the perfect weirdo balance is struck, it's a delightful thing. Exhibit A: Tilda Swinton, the British actress known equally for her inexplicable fashion choices as she is for her film choices, and who lives with both the father of her children and her much-younger boyfriend. I am fascinated by her. I love the makeup of her household. I love that she can flip between blockbuster Hollywood flicks and strange little indies. I love that her look seems equally inspired by German Expressionist films and HR Giger. She seems like an intergalactic ambassador who would be totally comfortable preparing a rabbit stew.
Weird isn't precious. To be a weird woman, you need to be aware of, and in control of, your sensuality. Obviously, it doesn't need to be used, but ignoring sex altogether isn't a weirdo move, it's just sort of sad and damaged. Same with crazy; weird isn't crazy. Even at her most bipolar, Britney wasn't weird. She wasn't harnessing her rage and insanity and turning it into creative expressions; she was threatening photographers with umbrellas. Unstable doesn't equal weird. She needed some professional help.
When you're a woman, you're supposed to be pretty. But when you're not blessed with starlet-y looks, or you're not interested in shoehorning your face and body into someone else's standards, or you're more interested in seeing what your brain or your voice or your talents can do, then you have to come to terms with your particular weirdness. Women in the entertainment industry who choose not to play the looks game are, to be blunt, weird. They're unusual, and sadly, sort of scarce, but when the gamble pays off, when their weirdness is balanced by their prodigious talent, it's a great thing to behold. It gives the rest of us weirdos some hope.
Saturday, August 14, 2010
Five Seven Five
Because I'm feeling a bit under the weather, I thought I might write out some feelings with the old grade school standby, the haiku. Please, enjoy.
Surgical fuckups
left me feeling freezing cold
hurray for blankets!
(I had my surgery this week. As they were removing the ovarian cyst, the whole thing burst, releasing some sort of disgusting goop into my lady cave. It took 16 liters of fluid to rinse me out, which lowered my body temperature and had me shivering and cursing in the recovery room. One of the nurses told me "there's no need for that kind of language," which is complete bullshit. There's always a need for that kind of language.)
The cyst burst open.
Food comparisons are gross,
But way too common.
(The doctor called what came out of the burst cyst "like rice, or cottage cheese, or something," and hadn't seen anything like it before. As a fan of both rice and cottage cheese, I wish he had compared it to something else.)
Haikus are wicked
For painkiller addled brains.
Also, I love toast.
(It took a full 24 hours for me to eat solid food. Everyone who knows me is shaking their head in disbelief that I went so long without a snack.)
Way too much bad pain
through the stitched-up belly parts
Bring on comfy pants!
(I cried when I tried to get out of bed for the first time. Total red-faced sobbing, because I was so cramped up that I couldn't even extend my legs. For one brief moment, I was 100% convinced that I was going to spend the rest of my life in the fetal position, weeping and clutching at the nurse. Not a high point in my life.)
I feel way better
than I felt Thursday morning.
Anxiety sucks.
(I've been dreading this for months, and now that I'm firmly in the "lets see how much this hurts" phase of things, I've got to admit that I'm so happy the surgery's over.)
An ovary's gone,
I guess it was pretty wrecked.
Still. That leaves just one.
(I'm actually kind of sad that they had to take one of my ovaries. I can still have kids and get my period and all that, but it feels a little like I'm living without a reproductive backup now. In a way, I know that's kind of a silly way to feel, but I feel like guys with one nut might know a little something about this.)
Through this whole process,
I have been given the best
people I could want.
(Seriously, everyone I know has been so on-side with me and this whole thing. I've had the best luck with my family and my friends-family in terms of getting to talk about it, having company to appointments, having folks just be there to listen and to hold my hand. I was so intensely nervous about this whole thing, and I'll cop to be a bit of a drama queen as a result. But there were so many people around to make me laugh, make me feel better, make me feel loved. I'm a lucky woman.)
I am sleepy now
Sorry about this odd post.
These meds kick my ass.
(Snore...time for me to fall back asleep.)
Surgical fuckups
left me feeling freezing cold
hurray for blankets!
(I had my surgery this week. As they were removing the ovarian cyst, the whole thing burst, releasing some sort of disgusting goop into my lady cave. It took 16 liters of fluid to rinse me out, which lowered my body temperature and had me shivering and cursing in the recovery room. One of the nurses told me "there's no need for that kind of language," which is complete bullshit. There's always a need for that kind of language.)
The cyst burst open.
Food comparisons are gross,
But way too common.
(The doctor called what came out of the burst cyst "like rice, or cottage cheese, or something," and hadn't seen anything like it before. As a fan of both rice and cottage cheese, I wish he had compared it to something else.)
Haikus are wicked
For painkiller addled brains.
Also, I love toast.
(It took a full 24 hours for me to eat solid food. Everyone who knows me is shaking their head in disbelief that I went so long without a snack.)
Way too much bad pain
through the stitched-up belly parts
Bring on comfy pants!
(I cried when I tried to get out of bed for the first time. Total red-faced sobbing, because I was so cramped up that I couldn't even extend my legs. For one brief moment, I was 100% convinced that I was going to spend the rest of my life in the fetal position, weeping and clutching at the nurse. Not a high point in my life.)
I feel way better
than I felt Thursday morning.
Anxiety sucks.
(I've been dreading this for months, and now that I'm firmly in the "lets see how much this hurts" phase of things, I've got to admit that I'm so happy the surgery's over.)
An ovary's gone,
I guess it was pretty wrecked.
Still. That leaves just one.
(I'm actually kind of sad that they had to take one of my ovaries. I can still have kids and get my period and all that, but it feels a little like I'm living without a reproductive backup now. In a way, I know that's kind of a silly way to feel, but I feel like guys with one nut might know a little something about this.)
Through this whole process,
I have been given the best
people I could want.
(Seriously, everyone I know has been so on-side with me and this whole thing. I've had the best luck with my family and my friends-family in terms of getting to talk about it, having company to appointments, having folks just be there to listen and to hold my hand. I was so intensely nervous about this whole thing, and I'll cop to be a bit of a drama queen as a result. But there were so many people around to make me laugh, make me feel better, make me feel loved. I'm a lucky woman.)
I am sleepy now
Sorry about this odd post.
These meds kick my ass.
(Snore...time for me to fall back asleep.)
Monday, August 9, 2010
The Skinny On Showtime
Dear Showtime's Executive Producers and Casting Agents;
Dudes. (I assume you're mostly dudes.) I dig your shows. Weeds? That's a great show! It's funny! Andy Botwin makes me giggle, and you got Zooey Deschanel to come on and talk about her period. Mega props. Mary-Louise Parker's character has great clothes, and Celia is one of the best filthy mouths on TV. Californication? That's kind of a trainwreck, to be honest, but it's watchable and Duchovny, to no one's surprise, makes a pretty decent asshole. Dexter is a good show, what with the killing and the deadpan voiceover and the Michael C. Hall being all scary and sexy. Dexter is great; you can practically feel the Miami heat radiating through your television tubes. It makes a nice contrast to Dexter's icy emotional state.
Those are just the shows I watch; you have a great lineup. The Tudors, The L Word, Nurse Jackie, Queer As Folk - all shows with serious critical cred backing them up. People love your shows. Not just the critics - regular TV-watching folks, people who used to be loyal to HBO, are checking out your lineup. You done good.
On behalf of the television-watching public, I implore you just one small thing. Don't change a thing about your writing stable or your settings (I love Dexter's Miami, for instance), keep your fantastic actors, and definitely give whoever does your costumes a raise. But please, for the love of toast, feed your actresses a sandwich.
Showtime is a cable channel, which means they can flash titties around like it ain't no thang. But the Showtime ladies are uniformly skinny, which means they aren't really flashing a lot of glorious breasts. Most of what I see seems to be ribcage. There are a couple exceptions - Celia on Weeds isn't a size four, and we've seen her rack a few times; LaGuerta from Dexter stays fully clothed, but isn't a tiny slip of a girl. But by and large (or small), the women on Showcase programming are seriously skinny.
I'm not mad at skinny, but I do get annoyed when it's presented as the only option for women under the age of, like, thirty-five. Showtime's men get to be fat, bald, creased and disheveled. They're allowed to be imperfect physically, because their characters are imperfect. But while the same imperfections of spirit are bestowed upon the women, they're still expected to be thin, young, and smooth. And thin. Very, very thin. Obese Americans now make up one-third of the population; two in three are overweight. But those people aren't represented on my TV screen. Why not? Hell, even average weight isn't shown too often; it's the 18.5 BMIs that populate the TV land. It normalizes a seriously abnormal aesthetic.
Like I said; not hating on the skinny. Jealous? Sure. I've struggled with wanting to be thinner, but my body has insisted on being this weight since I was 22. It's my destiny. It's not a bad one. I used to think ribcages and protruding clavicles were attractive, but it recently occurred to me to start thinking like a straight dude. Sure, some of them like skinny girls...but a lot of them like big racks, round asses, tight leg muscles. They don't mind a bit of convexity in a woman's stomach. I'm not saying that straight men love obese women (although some do, and although that can be kind of complicated, props to them) - just that having a shape and having some meat on our bones isn't a bad thing. It's actually pretty hot.
But I wish I saw more women on TV who weren't teensy weensy little girls. I want women. I want breasts, hips, asses. Maybe even - dare I say it? - a stomach. Showtime, if you're going to flash some ta-tas, I want them to be, you know, real ones. Worth it. I'm tired of counting ribs - give me something sexy.
Dudes. (I assume you're mostly dudes.) I dig your shows. Weeds? That's a great show! It's funny! Andy Botwin makes me giggle, and you got Zooey Deschanel to come on and talk about her period. Mega props. Mary-Louise Parker's character has great clothes, and Celia is one of the best filthy mouths on TV. Californication? That's kind of a trainwreck, to be honest, but it's watchable and Duchovny, to no one's surprise, makes a pretty decent asshole. Dexter is a good show, what with the killing and the deadpan voiceover and the Michael C. Hall being all scary and sexy. Dexter is great; you can practically feel the Miami heat radiating through your television tubes. It makes a nice contrast to Dexter's icy emotional state.
Those are just the shows I watch; you have a great lineup. The Tudors, The L Word, Nurse Jackie, Queer As Folk - all shows with serious critical cred backing them up. People love your shows. Not just the critics - regular TV-watching folks, people who used to be loyal to HBO, are checking out your lineup. You done good.
On behalf of the television-watching public, I implore you just one small thing. Don't change a thing about your writing stable or your settings (I love Dexter's Miami, for instance), keep your fantastic actors, and definitely give whoever does your costumes a raise. But please, for the love of toast, feed your actresses a sandwich.
Showtime is a cable channel, which means they can flash titties around like it ain't no thang. But the Showtime ladies are uniformly skinny, which means they aren't really flashing a lot of glorious breasts. Most of what I see seems to be ribcage. There are a couple exceptions - Celia on Weeds isn't a size four, and we've seen her rack a few times; LaGuerta from Dexter stays fully clothed, but isn't a tiny slip of a girl. But by and large (or small), the women on Showcase programming are seriously skinny.
I'm not mad at skinny, but I do get annoyed when it's presented as the only option for women under the age of, like, thirty-five. Showtime's men get to be fat, bald, creased and disheveled. They're allowed to be imperfect physically, because their characters are imperfect. But while the same imperfections of spirit are bestowed upon the women, they're still expected to be thin, young, and smooth. And thin. Very, very thin. Obese Americans now make up one-third of the population; two in three are overweight. But those people aren't represented on my TV screen. Why not? Hell, even average weight isn't shown too often; it's the 18.5 BMIs that populate the TV land. It normalizes a seriously abnormal aesthetic.
Like I said; not hating on the skinny. Jealous? Sure. I've struggled with wanting to be thinner, but my body has insisted on being this weight since I was 22. It's my destiny. It's not a bad one. I used to think ribcages and protruding clavicles were attractive, but it recently occurred to me to start thinking like a straight dude. Sure, some of them like skinny girls...but a lot of them like big racks, round asses, tight leg muscles. They don't mind a bit of convexity in a woman's stomach. I'm not saying that straight men love obese women (although some do, and although that can be kind of complicated, props to them) - just that having a shape and having some meat on our bones isn't a bad thing. It's actually pretty hot.
But I wish I saw more women on TV who weren't teensy weensy little girls. I want women. I want breasts, hips, asses. Maybe even - dare I say it? - a stomach. Showtime, if you're going to flash some ta-tas, I want them to be, you know, real ones. Worth it. I'm tired of counting ribs - give me something sexy.
Saturday, August 7, 2010
How Much Is That Doggy In The Window?
I want a dog. I say this and people ask, "What kind of dog do you want?" I tell them I want a medium-sized black one with pointy ears and a bandanna, and they grin and back up a couple steps before saying, "You know a dog is a lot of work, right?," like the work I currently do best at is fingerpainting in the locked ward.
I'll admit that most of my previous dog experience comes from repeated viewings of the Guestian masterpiece Best In Show, and rolling around on the sidewalk with a fat Leslieville malamute that is just too adorable for words. Since my dad doesn't like dogs - he's afraid, which is natural, seeing as how they're cousins with wolves - we didn't really have them when I was a kid. Before my family moved to Japan, we had a mellow German Shepherd; Brea was given away because owning a large dog in Tokyo makes about as much sense as a bachelor owning a minivan.
My family has owned a series of mentally ill cats since we returned from Tokyo. Kasha ran away; Maggie used to hang out under the refrigerator when she was a kitten, and remains, eighteen years later, as skittish and spooky as ever. Molly has a fetish for sparkly pompoms, and will bite you when you feed her. My sister has done her best to damage them further, notably by taking them to inappropriate activities against their will. She once stuffed Maggie and Molly inside her parka (as she was wearing it) and took the dynamic duo sledding for half an hour.
As a result, I have a wary respect for my cats that borders on fearing them outright. I like other people's cats; I pet kittens on the sidewalk and cuddle with friend's cats on their couches. But cats don't really do it for me. I admire their independence and like petting the soft ones, but cats always seem to be rushing off to appointments or doing nefarious things in my closet.
I'll admit that I'm not really invested in pet culture as a general rule. The "fur kids" phenomenon that single people and couples without kids indulge themselves in is a little loopy for me: I don't want my pets to be my children, or my boyfriends. I want my pets to be my pets. Companions? Sure. Well-behaved roommates? Okay. A constant source of poop and shed fur? That just sort of comes with the territory. But I don't want my pets to wear outfits or sleep in my bed with me. I'm not looking for a surrogate baby. That creeps me out.
But the desire for a dog remains. Why? Who knows? I've had housemates with various forms of pets - I've lived with lizards and cats, gerbils and hamsters. Other houses in my sprawling co-op have lived with rats, snakes, and small, yappy dogs...sort of a bizarro food chain in some locales. People like pets. They like taking care of something, they like being outside themselves. Plus, the cuteness is a pretty big selling point. There are pets that are not totally cute, of course: the rodent family is kind of smelly, ferrets are pointy and icky, and don't get my started on the snakes-and-tarantula people. Those people are nutjobs. Dogs are standard issue kids of pets. I want one of those.
It might just be that I'm romancing the idea of a pet because my lifestyle right now can't really incorporate a dog. I live with, like, a jillion other people, and have zero cash monies because I am underemployed. A dog represents stability, keeping it together, having a plan and a schedule. Cats, while more flexible an option, always seem like they're running a business from your basement; like you're just their landlord. The only time I get any lovin' from cats is when I feed them. That's not nice. Dogs seem interested in the world around them. I like that interest. Plus, the cuteness.
We'll see what I can get. Maybe I'll sign up to be a dog walker at the Toronto SPCA; maybe I'll befriend a cabron with a pooch so I can spend some time rasslin' the thing. Maybe I'll get my life sorted out and get a freaking dog, like I've wanted to for years.
I'll admit that most of my previous dog experience comes from repeated viewings of the Guestian masterpiece Best In Show, and rolling around on the sidewalk with a fat Leslieville malamute that is just too adorable for words. Since my dad doesn't like dogs - he's afraid, which is natural, seeing as how they're cousins with wolves - we didn't really have them when I was a kid. Before my family moved to Japan, we had a mellow German Shepherd; Brea was given away because owning a large dog in Tokyo makes about as much sense as a bachelor owning a minivan.
My family has owned a series of mentally ill cats since we returned from Tokyo. Kasha ran away; Maggie used to hang out under the refrigerator when she was a kitten, and remains, eighteen years later, as skittish and spooky as ever. Molly has a fetish for sparkly pompoms, and will bite you when you feed her. My sister has done her best to damage them further, notably by taking them to inappropriate activities against their will. She once stuffed Maggie and Molly inside her parka (as she was wearing it) and took the dynamic duo sledding for half an hour.
As a result, I have a wary respect for my cats that borders on fearing them outright. I like other people's cats; I pet kittens on the sidewalk and cuddle with friend's cats on their couches. But cats don't really do it for me. I admire their independence and like petting the soft ones, but cats always seem to be rushing off to appointments or doing nefarious things in my closet.
I'll admit that I'm not really invested in pet culture as a general rule. The "fur kids" phenomenon that single people and couples without kids indulge themselves in is a little loopy for me: I don't want my pets to be my children, or my boyfriends. I want my pets to be my pets. Companions? Sure. Well-behaved roommates? Okay. A constant source of poop and shed fur? That just sort of comes with the territory. But I don't want my pets to wear outfits or sleep in my bed with me. I'm not looking for a surrogate baby. That creeps me out.
But the desire for a dog remains. Why? Who knows? I've had housemates with various forms of pets - I've lived with lizards and cats, gerbils and hamsters. Other houses in my sprawling co-op have lived with rats, snakes, and small, yappy dogs...sort of a bizarro food chain in some locales. People like pets. They like taking care of something, they like being outside themselves. Plus, the cuteness is a pretty big selling point. There are pets that are not totally cute, of course: the rodent family is kind of smelly, ferrets are pointy and icky, and don't get my started on the snakes-and-tarantula people. Those people are nutjobs. Dogs are standard issue kids of pets. I want one of those.
It might just be that I'm romancing the idea of a pet because my lifestyle right now can't really incorporate a dog. I live with, like, a jillion other people, and have zero cash monies because I am underemployed. A dog represents stability, keeping it together, having a plan and a schedule. Cats, while more flexible an option, always seem like they're running a business from your basement; like you're just their landlord. The only time I get any lovin' from cats is when I feed them. That's not nice. Dogs seem interested in the world around them. I like that interest. Plus, the cuteness.
We'll see what I can get. Maybe I'll sign up to be a dog walker at the Toronto SPCA; maybe I'll befriend a cabron with a pooch so I can spend some time rasslin' the thing. Maybe I'll get my life sorted out and get a freaking dog, like I've wanted to for years.
Thursday, August 5, 2010
Porny
I've been reading/listening to a lot of Dan Savage, and it is mind boggling what people freak out about. Straight boys hitting on their gay friends by accident! Girls who want semen in their nose because they live for the rush of the unperformed sex act! College students who have fallen in weepy, snotty love with men a generation older than them! It's all so fascinating. I love human sexuality, and the cross-section that Savage Love features is hairy and juicy. Insert your own joke and grimace at the attendant mental image here.
My favourites revolve around porn and cheating - people are nuts about that! Wives and girlfriends worrying that, if their main men partners like to look at naked ladies (or naked gentlemen, if their men have some complicated sexual preferences), it means that they're cheating degenerate bastards with some sort of mental disorders and they need to be Clockwork Oranged into not watching it anymore. Porn is dangerous, say these ladies. Futhermore, porn is cheating.
Okay, I might be more lenient about the definition of "cheating" than most people, but I would argue that most of the sex-having population isn't getting their panties in a bunch over the idea of pornography. It's a slippery slope, the anti-porn people might say. Porn leads to strip clubs, and strip clubs lead to hooker, and hookers lead to...I don't know...the clap? Getting knifed by a pimp in a dumpster? Or porn leads to thinking about other women, and that leads to kissing other women, and that leads to bending them over the chesterfield and having sweaty midafternoon cheater sex with other women.
Bullshit. Porn leads to masturbation, the most innocuous of all flagrante delictes. I'll hold a warning finger up to silence the people who would argue that masturbation isn't good in a relationship; my body, my choice, right? I can't catch anything from my own sex toys, my partner can't impregnate his hand, and people's rocks need to be gotten off. Sometimes partners get out of sexual sync with each other, for whatever reason: busy work schedules, the flu, a bad few months, an infant, whatever. I've been blessed with friends who can concur that a high sex drive is a blessing and a curse; sometimes, when the sex isn't quite as forthcoming as we'd like, we tap into our bodies, ourselves. As we all should, regardless of relationship status or sex drive, when we need to.
My pal and I, years ago, joked about making hipster porn: heavily accessorized topless girls making out on some disgusting house-party couch. I think it works, actually. There's also soft-core fixed-gear bike porn, for your cycling pervs. Everyone needs a niche. There's also the whole gamut of pornography that is people having sex, getting tied up, being pregnant, sucking on each others toes, getting splashed in the face with veritable bucketloads of semen, and whatever other disgusting and totally normal things like to think about when they pleasure themselves. Some things are porn in disguise: I remember being, like, eight years old and seeing a drawing in a magazine that wasn't sexual in the slightest...except it make me feel strangely excited.
Looking at naked people doing naked stuff on a screen, or in a magazine, isn't stepping out and having sexual relations with those people. It is a form of sex, sure, but it's sex that everyone is entitled to, no matter who else is bringing them pleasure. In the same way that not all porn looks like naked bodies and penetrations, not all sex is PIVMO sex. Every couple needs to define cheating for themselves, but too narrow a definition and you'll end up with a frustrated partner. Putting the kibosh on porn, or worse, making it some pathological flaw, does a disservice to your partner. They are no longer the master (or mistress) of their own sexual destiny.
Is there a time and place for porn? Sure. Your kids don't need to know your sexual tastes, nor do your roommates or your parents. If you're electing to look at porn and masturbate in lieu of an interested and willing partner(s), you might want to think long and hard about why. If you and your beloved are in a rocky romantic patch, it might be insensitive to load up the DVD player and let 'er fly in plain sight. But let 'er fly at some other time; when you have the house to yourself, when he's in the tub, when the kids are at grandma's and it's just you and your pleasure device of choice. It's your right. If you don't need porn, scrunch your face up and think your filthy thoughts. That's your right, too.
And if your favourite person happens to walk in while you're mid-scrunch, invite them to join you, if you want, or finish up and get back to the vacuuming. No sighs, no deprogramming, no accusations of cheating or gnashing of teeth. Just a realization that your partner is the owner-operator of his or her body, and that sometimes porn is the fuel that gets the engine to turn over.
My favourites revolve around porn and cheating - people are nuts about that! Wives and girlfriends worrying that, if their main men partners like to look at naked ladies (or naked gentlemen, if their men have some complicated sexual preferences), it means that they're cheating degenerate bastards with some sort of mental disorders and they need to be Clockwork Oranged into not watching it anymore. Porn is dangerous, say these ladies. Futhermore, porn is cheating.
Okay, I might be more lenient about the definition of "cheating" than most people, but I would argue that most of the sex-having population isn't getting their panties in a bunch over the idea of pornography. It's a slippery slope, the anti-porn people might say. Porn leads to strip clubs, and strip clubs lead to hooker, and hookers lead to...I don't know...the clap? Getting knifed by a pimp in a dumpster? Or porn leads to thinking about other women, and that leads to kissing other women, and that leads to bending them over the chesterfield and having sweaty midafternoon cheater sex with other women.
Bullshit. Porn leads to masturbation, the most innocuous of all flagrante delictes. I'll hold a warning finger up to silence the people who would argue that masturbation isn't good in a relationship; my body, my choice, right? I can't catch anything from my own sex toys, my partner can't impregnate his hand, and people's rocks need to be gotten off. Sometimes partners get out of sexual sync with each other, for whatever reason: busy work schedules, the flu, a bad few months, an infant, whatever. I've been blessed with friends who can concur that a high sex drive is a blessing and a curse; sometimes, when the sex isn't quite as forthcoming as we'd like, we tap into our bodies, ourselves. As we all should, regardless of relationship status or sex drive, when we need to.
My pal and I, years ago, joked about making hipster porn: heavily accessorized topless girls making out on some disgusting house-party couch. I think it works, actually. There's also soft-core fixed-gear bike porn, for your cycling pervs. Everyone needs a niche. There's also the whole gamut of pornography that is people having sex, getting tied up, being pregnant, sucking on each others toes, getting splashed in the face with veritable bucketloads of semen, and whatever other disgusting and totally normal things like to think about when they pleasure themselves. Some things are porn in disguise: I remember being, like, eight years old and seeing a drawing in a magazine that wasn't sexual in the slightest...except it make me feel strangely excited.
Looking at naked people doing naked stuff on a screen, or in a magazine, isn't stepping out and having sexual relations with those people. It is a form of sex, sure, but it's sex that everyone is entitled to, no matter who else is bringing them pleasure. In the same way that not all porn looks like naked bodies and penetrations, not all sex is PIVMO sex. Every couple needs to define cheating for themselves, but too narrow a definition and you'll end up with a frustrated partner. Putting the kibosh on porn, or worse, making it some pathological flaw, does a disservice to your partner. They are no longer the master (or mistress) of their own sexual destiny.
Is there a time and place for porn? Sure. Your kids don't need to know your sexual tastes, nor do your roommates or your parents. If you're electing to look at porn and masturbate in lieu of an interested and willing partner(s), you might want to think long and hard about why. If you and your beloved are in a rocky romantic patch, it might be insensitive to load up the DVD player and let 'er fly in plain sight. But let 'er fly at some other time; when you have the house to yourself, when he's in the tub, when the kids are at grandma's and it's just you and your pleasure device of choice. It's your right. If you don't need porn, scrunch your face up and think your filthy thoughts. That's your right, too.
And if your favourite person happens to walk in while you're mid-scrunch, invite them to join you, if you want, or finish up and get back to the vacuuming. No sighs, no deprogramming, no accusations of cheating or gnashing of teeth. Just a realization that your partner is the owner-operator of his or her body, and that sometimes porn is the fuel that gets the engine to turn over.
Friday, July 30, 2010
This Tastes Terrible
I have to confess something. No, I'm not pregnant - unless it's with some sort of fruit salad, which would be just disgusting - nor am I secretly married and/or divorced, a la Emmy Rossum. Although, can you imagine having, like, a secret husband? Would you pretend not to know each other at functions? Would it be a turn on, the secret marriage, or would be it be a huge pain in the ass? What does one wear to a secret wedding? (Actually, I've been to a semi-secret wedding, and if that event was any indication on how things are done, brassieres are optional, and the hangover is pretty much guaranteed.)
I digress. No secret weddings over here. No, my confession is this: I have terrible taste. I have bad taste in music, comic books, clothes, hairstyles, dates, alcoholic beverages, movies, hobbies, and paint colours. My only saving graces is that I have excellent taste in books and friends. Everything else? I suck.
Take, for example, the song I've been listening to on repeat for most of the week: Raghav is a Indo-Canadian pop star most successful in the UK, and his latest single is a flossy piece of summer fun. This is on the heels of that ridiculous "One Life Stand" song, which is a total club anthem and therefor awful by definition. I've been listening to that a bunch lately, too, because I hate my ears and my brain equally. But the songs are so much fun! They're dancing songs! Dancing is fun!
I have a huge crush on comic books generally, but I have to admit that some of my very favourite sequential art (I hate that pretentious term, and myself for using it) is the family-friendly newspaper strip Foxtrot. Don't judge me! I bought the anthologies secondhand, although I would have gladly paid retail for them, because I love them. And I, hipster jerkbag that I am, am ashamed of that love.
We judge each other based on our likes and dislikes. When I find out someone likes the Beastie Boys, or Firefly, or The Walking Dead, my brain starts pinging and saying, "This person is cool!" because I like those things, and because they have a certain amount of cultural currency and credibility. We can talk about zombies, or License to Ill, or some other cultural touchstone that defines us as idiot hipsters. When someone pipes up with the fact that they love Celine Dion, there's an awkward pause as we try to parse it out. Like, for real love? Or ironic love? It's confusing. Is Celine Dion so uncool she's...cool?
Other things? Not so much. I find my clothes in other people's closets and on the side of the road. Normal people shop at The Gap; I scrounge for my outfits like an animal. My last haircut was a DIY affair, a product of boredom and done with my dad's mustache trimming scissors. I think I look great, but I am notorious for thinking I look great when, in reality, I look the "before" picture on a makeover show. Because I'm sartorially dyslexic, I can't really tell the difference.
One of my friends read those hideous Twilight novels because she was interested in them from an anthropological perspective: what are these books? She didn't read them because she was looking to be entertained or because she thought Stephanie Meyer was really going to rock her world or whatever. She was reading to see if the books had merit, if the current fooferaw was based on anything actually, you know, good. Her report to me is that they are total garbage, which I could have probably guessed. But I'll admit to devouring The Babysitter's Club when I was in elementary school, and reading Sweet Valley High novels well past the age when I should have (I read them into my twenties. What's up?); if I was 15% dumber, I bet I would be all over those stupid books.
I think everyone has their bad-taste moments. My dad loves terrible beer; my sister has tipped me off to a lot of crappy music. I have friends who, by their own admission, dress like "lesbian gym teachers." I feel bad for people who are always in good taste. It must be exhausting to be that with-it all the time. My forays into bad taste are like little vacations from my usually awesome state of being. Tacky little cruises into the sea of bad taste, where the souvenirs are gauche jewelry and earnest comic books. Y'all should join me sometime; the water is just fine.
I digress. No secret weddings over here. No, my confession is this: I have terrible taste. I have bad taste in music, comic books, clothes, hairstyles, dates, alcoholic beverages, movies, hobbies, and paint colours. My only saving graces is that I have excellent taste in books and friends. Everything else? I suck.
Take, for example, the song I've been listening to on repeat for most of the week: Raghav is a Indo-Canadian pop star most successful in the UK, and his latest single is a flossy piece of summer fun. This is on the heels of that ridiculous "One Life Stand" song, which is a total club anthem and therefor awful by definition. I've been listening to that a bunch lately, too, because I hate my ears and my brain equally. But the songs are so much fun! They're dancing songs! Dancing is fun!
I have a huge crush on comic books generally, but I have to admit that some of my very favourite sequential art (I hate that pretentious term, and myself for using it) is the family-friendly newspaper strip Foxtrot. Don't judge me! I bought the anthologies secondhand, although I would have gladly paid retail for them, because I love them. And I, hipster jerkbag that I am, am ashamed of that love.
We judge each other based on our likes and dislikes. When I find out someone likes the Beastie Boys, or Firefly, or The Walking Dead, my brain starts pinging and saying, "This person is cool!" because I like those things, and because they have a certain amount of cultural currency and credibility. We can talk about zombies, or License to Ill, or some other cultural touchstone that defines us as idiot hipsters. When someone pipes up with the fact that they love Celine Dion, there's an awkward pause as we try to parse it out. Like, for real love? Or ironic love? It's confusing. Is Celine Dion so uncool she's...cool?
Other things? Not so much. I find my clothes in other people's closets and on the side of the road. Normal people shop at The Gap; I scrounge for my outfits like an animal. My last haircut was a DIY affair, a product of boredom and done with my dad's mustache trimming scissors. I think I look great, but I am notorious for thinking I look great when, in reality, I look the "before" picture on a makeover show. Because I'm sartorially dyslexic, I can't really tell the difference.
One of my friends read those hideous Twilight novels because she was interested in them from an anthropological perspective: what are these books? She didn't read them because she was looking to be entertained or because she thought Stephanie Meyer was really going to rock her world or whatever. She was reading to see if the books had merit, if the current fooferaw was based on anything actually, you know, good. Her report to me is that they are total garbage, which I could have probably guessed. But I'll admit to devouring The Babysitter's Club when I was in elementary school, and reading Sweet Valley High novels well past the age when I should have (I read them into my twenties. What's up?); if I was 15% dumber, I bet I would be all over those stupid books.
I think everyone has their bad-taste moments. My dad loves terrible beer; my sister has tipped me off to a lot of crappy music. I have friends who, by their own admission, dress like "lesbian gym teachers." I feel bad for people who are always in good taste. It must be exhausting to be that with-it all the time. My forays into bad taste are like little vacations from my usually awesome state of being. Tacky little cruises into the sea of bad taste, where the souvenirs are gauche jewelry and earnest comic books. Y'all should join me sometime; the water is just fine.
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