Aaaargh!

You will need to read this in order to understand my emotional reaction, but what is this scab rag doing in front of my neighbour's door?

Now I Know Why Al Gore Invented the Internet

I am someone who can while away his every minute and hour seated in front of my computer, either playing endless simple games, single endless games, or just following different blogs and such to wherever they will take me.

In that context, I really needed another reason to glue myself to that glowing screen. That reason is called Cam4.

If you ever wondered why Al Gore invented the internet, you need look no further. At every moment of every day, you will find countless men from countries around the planet seated in from of their web cams, whacking off live for you. To add to the spectacle, each cam has a chat room with an endless stream of instructions from watchers, often in languages not spoken by the featured man, and predictably intelligent in their content. Some of the cammers have found ways to make a few dollars for private shows, but the bulk of this is free, free, free.

There are people whose profiles describe them as 'straight' insisting that other men take out their penises (peni?), take off their shirts, etc. There are others whose self-identification as 'bi-curious' flows into actions that are downright bi-inquisitive. And the people who you would think might risk the most in identifying as 'gay' — those in various eastern European countries where attempts at gay pride parades are met with threats and actual violence and those in a number of middle eastern countries where people meet terrible punishments for their homosexuality — are the ones doing the real self-identifying.

Oh, there's sometimes more than inanity and 'mature' content. Some of them actually chat and some of the people in the chat rooms are fun and funny to boot. You can hear the cammers' taste in music and watch them do funny things. And, in my favourite Cam4 moment, there was a cute boy in Switzerland whose cam is integrated into his laptop who picked us up to walk downstairs to go outside for a cigarette. I felt like I was being carried around the house (and a little bit like a needed a gravol).

So, thanks Al Gore. For the internet.

One-Sentence Movie Reviews

I have probably seen more movies this year (think school year) than I saw in the last several years before that combined. I remember that when I started my blog I did a few short movie reviews and I thought I ought to catch up with my many recent viewings. True to form, however, I will be very superficial about this and I'm determined to cover each in a single sentence, even if I have to make that sentence inordinately long.

I am also not paying any attention to conserving the surprises, so be warned in advance!

I sing you to me, Hugh Jackman, and I have something creamy in mind for you, too.

If you wear the same outfit as your friend, you might get what your father deserves.

(v.o.f. : Entre les murs) Sometimes those rigid hierarchical structures will make you the pétasse, and a pétasse ratatiné to boot.

If I wait around long enough, the wrinkly old man might become Brad Pitt, and then I will live for the moment, knowing it won't last.

Don't shoot the giant metal thing: it might get mad and swarm you.

No, I want to be Daniel Craig's forest wife.

I didn't know I could grow to have a degree of grudging respect for a pinched and bitter old nun.

We show some skin, but not-not enough.

Those Italian loafers really are quite effeminate.

I loved it, I hated it and I loved it again as I cried at the end, just like all the young women and their dragged-there boyfriends we saw it with.

I do enjoy watching Brendan Fraser, especially when he is taking care of a child he cares about and dealing with things supernatural.

Why are nerds so cool and can this guy play anything else?

I'm not sure if I would hide my illiteracy or my childhood affair at the price of a lengthly prison sentence, but then again I'm not a Nazi.

Contain your dreams or they will ruin your life.

There's nothing like a life of adversity to make you remember stuff, but I'm not sure when you learned how to dance the credits like that.

So that's it for now, except one final comment: what's with all the Nazi themes this year? (3 of the above and one I didn't even see.)

Unfortunate Usages

When I first started participating in chat rooms, many years ago, I found that one of the more difficult things was to refrain from commenting on the spelling in people's posts. Now, with greater development of our capacity to communicate, comes an even greater challenge to the language which is probably more revealing of the writer's language skills and cultural knowledge than of manual dexterity or typing accuracy. It is the misuse or misrepresentation of common sayings that serves to demonstrate that the writer is using them without even understanding what they mean.

This goes beyond the internet and into daily life. I watched an episode of Jeopardy where someone lost almost all her money by providing as an expression for drunkenness sheets to the wind rather than three sheets to the wind. Alex was neither kind nor forgiving.

I just can't stop myself from commenting on some of the instances I have observed, but without identifying the sources…

It's toe the line not tow the line: an unfortunate military metaphor for stepping up and obeying just like everyone else (each person's toes on the same line), not some kind of strange game of tug'o'war.

It is bearing witness to something, not stripping the witness of all clothing, as you would be if you were baring witness.

A friend of my mother's used to use the word (okay it isn't really a word) predictament, which must be that sticky situation that you just knew you would get into.

One battens down the hatches to prevent the sea from swamping one's boat in a storm, and figuratively to preserve one's integrity in the face of a daunting challenge. I'm not sure what one would achieve by battening down the hatchets unless that is a kind of 'swords into ploughshares' type of thing.

I suppose that the prostrate gland is responsible for keeping us down. The more familiar prostate doesn't have that impact.

Someone along the way noticed how often people referred to that building material used to ensure that the heating and cooling system does not leak as Duck Tape. That person actually registered the name and came out with a product, but it is destined to become the kleenex of duct tape as people keep using the wrong configuration to refer to the generic.

And let me close with one that is a lovely example of the mixed metaphor: loose cannon in the attic. I'm not sure how many people might have attached cannons in their attics, or why this would be as serious as it would, say, on the deck of a ship heaving in the waves, where it might actually swing around and shoot the wrong thing.

As aggravating as they are to me, I'd love to hear more.

Scientific Excess?

I already had a negative first reaction to the news about the woman who gave birth to octuplets in California before I heard that she also had six other young children at home. I think I heard a celebrity caught by one of those cheesy stalkerazzi shows say something about not wanting a litter for herself and, as little stock I put into the opinions of celebrities, I had to agree.

This week's news in Canada was the sixty year-old woman in Calgary who gave birth to twins after undergoing in vitro fertilization in India. The raging debate is about whether she ought to have been refused the procedure because of her age.

I'm not even going to get into the issues about how many to implant or whether there should be an upper age limit for the prospective mother. I think there are societies out there in the world that have come up with reasonable sets of rules to avoid the grotesque scenes of excess. I want to sound off on the issue of assisted procreation in its basic form.

I don't know if it's because I have never wanted children (as much as I thoroughly enjoy my nieces and nephews and the children of friends), but I just don't understand the massive use of resources to produce babies in a world that is overpopulated and getting worse. It has to be something about me that leaves me unable to understand the compulsion — or the obsession — to give birth to one's own child at any cost.

I am more concerned now that my province has decided that this should be a service covered by medicare.

I can understand situations where there is something mechanical or otherwise health-related that would prevent conception in the usual way. Like when one of the partners is HIV positive (don't want to infect your partner), or when both are lesbians (don't have all the necessary building blocks). I guess this betrays my own biases. But are these the kinds of situations in which these services are available? No. In both of these situations, people are being refused access to these services for precisely the reasons that they would be appropriate. And my tax money is paying for this kind of discrimination?

Okay, my tax money doesn't actually even cover the cost of my meds that is borne by the government, at least until the end of the month, when I go onto a group insurance plan. But I can still be righteously indignant, can't I?

Yes, when there are unwanted or orphaned children who could make a positive contribution to our society if only we welcomed them. Yes, when there are a number of other things that are more pressing that are not covered by our health care system.

But we do it because we can. The miracle science of producing litters of children for those who already have more than twice the number most have, or are twice the age of most people who are about to start raising children.

Someone should have called in the ethics committee a lot sooner.

Scab Rag

I have been fighting a battle for the last couple of weeks, a battle with a certain newspaper that I do not wish to receive, but which seems to be determined to make me recycle it on a daily basis. I'm usually a very even-tempered person, but this battle has had me starting each day aggravated and angry.

Let's start at the beginning of this story…

Some time ago, I had a weekend only subscription to the local English language daily newspaper. I valiantly fended off their every attempt to persuade me to buy the newspaper every day, as I really only had time to read it on the weekends. I had a few problems with non-delivery, but these were generally settled with a phone call, often with a credit to my account.

Suddenly, I started receiving the rag that haunts me. The English paper informed me that their newspaper is delivered by the delivery person from the rag in an arrangement that they have to share delivery services. While they seemed unable to consistently deliver the English paper only two days a week, they suddenly became extremely efficient at delivering their trash to my front porch seven days a week.

Phone calls to the English paper to stop it. Phone calls to the rag to stop it. E-mails to both. It took weeks to arrive at the end of the saga, but it finally stopped after I cancelled my subscription to the English paper, which I now go out and buy only on Saturdays.

Imagine my distress, then, to find that rag on my doorstep once again a few weeks ago. I thought it might belong to my neighbour, who I don't know, so I dutifully moved it in front of his door, sometimes even put it through the mail slot to remove it from the elements and to remove it from view. Then I noticed that on the occasions where he left his home before I did in the morning, he was moving it to my door, and I finally spoke to him about it. As it turns out, he is a unilingual anglophone, so it isn't very likely that he ever subscribed to that trashy publication.

I started calling them daily to complain about the unwanted delivery, and got assurances that it would stop. Two and a half weeks later, my days have been starting with aggravation, as I check for the rag, find it, and then phone them to put an end to the delivery.

I hatched a plot to find a way for it to cost them money — I would buy some large envelopes and mail each paper back to them with no postage on it and their address in the return position as well, or with no return address. Maybe postage due would make them take notice. I also threatened, yesterday, that I would stay up and confront the delivery person, an action from which they tried to dissuade me with more assurances that they would deal with the problem.

My first objection to this delivery is the lack of control over it. If I leave town for a meeting or for a vacation, the papers will accumulate, announcing my absence for anyone who might wish to rob me. Second, I am a total snob and this is not the unwanted paper that I could tolerate being delivered to me (it would be my very last choice of local newspaper to read, even after the free dailies distributed in the transit system). Third — and this reason arrived about a week ago — they are currently in a labour dispute (hence the 'scab' in my title) and I refuse to be associated with anything not produced by the real workers.

I was delighted this morning to look out on my porch and see only a little bit of snow and our joint bucket of salt for the steps (not very environmentally correct, but it keeps me from falling down the stairs and breaking a hip). Could it finally have worked?

***Breaking News***

Alas, no: the deliveries had not been stopped! There is the van of the delivery person stopping outside, and here I am getting agitated and getting my keys. I manage to get out the front door, barefoot and in my bathrobe, before he throws the paper and I stop him. He thinks he is delivering it to my neighbour, so I inform him that my neighbour is a unilingual anglophone and does he think that it is likely that he wants it? I'm sure I looked like a crazy person, but I'm hoping that worked.

Believe me, if it didn't I will be escalating, going postal (as in mailing them back).

Dog's Age

I am realizing just how long it has been since I wrote anything here. A veritable Dog's Age.

I have been involved in my new job, which I am enjoying, but which does occupy my time. I had a rather lazy time off for the holidays, not having had any time off between the hectic end of my previous job and the beginning of the current one, but I didn't use any of that time to write either.

Oh, I have things I have been wanting to write about, to photograph and to share, but those will wait some more. In honour of the amount of time I took to get back to feeding my blog, I present something I wrote to amuse myself and to recount a rather titillating experience in my life. For some reason at that time, all was camp, and I referred to myself in the third person feminine. Imagine.

Walk the Dog

The Definitions

1. Dog. A domesticated carnivorous mammal, canis familiaris, of many varieties.

2. Dog days. Hot, sultry days.

3. To put on the dog. To make a pretentious display.

4. Dogma. A belief, held to be authoritative.

5. Dogged. Persistent.

6. Dog's age. A long time.

7. To fuck the dog. To do nothing, especially when something should be done.

8. Dog eat dog. Intensely or viciously competitive.

9. Dog's life. A wretched existence.

10. To go to the dogs. To deteriorate.

11. Dog in the manger. One who prevents others from using or enjoying that which he cannot use or enjoy.

12. Doghouse. Disfavour.

13. Dog tired. Utterly tired.

The Story

He appeared with his 1 in the 2 of the end of summer. He 3'd below her window. She found her life controlled by 4 and waited for him 5ly. He didn't appear again for a 6, during which time she essentially 7'd. It is, however, an 8 world, and she felt she was leading a 9. He reappeared, his tact having 10'd, with an 11, to whom he showed the tourist attractions of the neighbourhood. She banished him permanently to the 12. She sighed, 13 of the whole species.

The End

And that little piece of 14 explains the amazing development of my Rapunzel tendencies when it comes to men and my living space. Extra points if you can name the 14.