A HOLIDAY MESSAGE FROM CAROLYN BENNETT, PRESIDENT AND CEO BENNETTWORLD
Sirs/Mesdames:
Good morning/afternoon/evening/night:
It's that time of year again. A time we spend paving the way for next-generation products that create real benefits in our world. A time to invest in our ever-growing product line, which enables us to deliver new and improved technologies. And a time to interface with stakeholders to ensure high-caliber, actionable best practices.
I want to cry.
At Bennettworld, we love the holidays and care about fostering partnerships and collaborative research with an emphasis on partnerships among organizations and industry-to-research organization collaborations.
Eggnog. Say it and you'll believe.
As the season approaches, our customer fulfillment process begins with initiating the project once your estimates are given to the Client engagement team. Once your project is confirmed, an Enhanced feature list is prepared. The project and its associated tasks are then assigned to the respective leads in the Design and Development team.
It's all about fulfilling your holiday wishes.
We follow the iterative model of development. In this methodology, once the preliminary requirements are clarified, the next step is to quickly build the prototype. The prototype then goes through continuous evolutions until it becomes the final product, exact to specifications. Our design and development processes are well defined.
Like that wrapped present under the tree you know is a sweater.
When you outsource to us, we are sensitive to the fact that you require high visibility of the WIP (work in progress). This is the reason why we have adapted this methodology. At each stage along the development, it evolves before your own eyes.
Like the magic of the holidays.
This is the most crucial phase that gives you an idea of the shape of things to come. Our prototype ensures smooth communication between user and developer with different backgrounds. This is an intermediate delivery stage before the final delivery that aims to establish the proof of concept. You can now almost feel the solution that you had entrusted us to develop.
Just one more sleep 'til Christmas.
So at this time, we at Bennettworld want to extend to each and every one of you our warmest wishes for the coming holiday season. May your holiday season be filled with holiday happiness and holiday joy, followed by a most wonderful New Year holiday, and then followed by fiscal restraint. Thank you for your continued support and loyal patronage.
Carolyn Bennett
President and CEO
Monday, December 07, 2009
Tuesday, October 06, 2009
David Letterman-oh-man
Yes, it's been awhile since I've jotted anything down for the insomniacs and compulsive web surfers who may stumble upon this blog. I can stay silent no longer! I had been working on a masterful bit of essay writing for this very space, but abandoned it when news broke about David Letterman.
Full disclosure -- I have never slept with David Letterman.
Not for lack of imagination. I have had my sex romps with the gapped tooth goof in my dreams, lurid fantasies involving Mujibur and Sirajul, and Dave promising me work on the show if I just let him cop a feel. What has transpired the last week has brought all my dreams perilously close to reality. Maybe I really could have worked on the show if I had put out.
In Canada, there is a certain amount of putting out. We must put up and put out. There was a time that I recoiled at the thought of putting out to advance my career. I thought it humiliating and beneath me. Now I wish someone, anyone, was beneath me. I wish someone would ask me to put out. But at the time, I thought having sex to maybe, maybe, be considered to be a script supervisor on "Dog and Katts" was ill-advised. What powerful showbiz men are there in Canada to sleep with anyway? Peter Mansbridge? Lloyd Robertson?
I imagine Letterman's paramours were more than willing. Let's face it, who wouldn't want to shtoop a wealthy, witty and powerful older man? Why would a young woman settle for some impecunious shlub? Look, I'm using Yiddish words -- I must really have a point. Hey, I'd sleep with him now, just to hear that goofy laugh afterward. HEE HEE HEE HEE.
Yes, there is the whole argument about sex in the workplace, harrassment and favourtism. I take this very seriously. I feel sorry for Letterman's wife. But how many men are cheering for Dave and thinking he's the luckiest bastard in the world? How many women are thinking, I wouldn't mind a roll in the hay with Arthur down in issues management? Until the internet totally sucks our humanity dry, we still have urges. Raw, shameful, perverse, pathetic, humiliating, potentially lucrative urges.
Time will tell whether more women will come forward. If they do, then this whole thing becomes old hat. Industry. I hope it doesn't happen, but his private life is fair game now.
No one's joke about the scandal will be funnier than his. That's the way of the comic.
Full disclosure -- I have never slept with David Letterman.
Not for lack of imagination. I have had my sex romps with the gapped tooth goof in my dreams, lurid fantasies involving Mujibur and Sirajul, and Dave promising me work on the show if I just let him cop a feel. What has transpired the last week has brought all my dreams perilously close to reality. Maybe I really could have worked on the show if I had put out.
In Canada, there is a certain amount of putting out. We must put up and put out. There was a time that I recoiled at the thought of putting out to advance my career. I thought it humiliating and beneath me. Now I wish someone, anyone, was beneath me. I wish someone would ask me to put out. But at the time, I thought having sex to maybe, maybe, be considered to be a script supervisor on "Dog and Katts" was ill-advised. What powerful showbiz men are there in Canada to sleep with anyway? Peter Mansbridge? Lloyd Robertson?
I imagine Letterman's paramours were more than willing. Let's face it, who wouldn't want to shtoop a wealthy, witty and powerful older man? Why would a young woman settle for some impecunious shlub? Look, I'm using Yiddish words -- I must really have a point. Hey, I'd sleep with him now, just to hear that goofy laugh afterward. HEE HEE HEE HEE.
Yes, there is the whole argument about sex in the workplace, harrassment and favourtism. I take this very seriously. I feel sorry for Letterman's wife. But how many men are cheering for Dave and thinking he's the luckiest bastard in the world? How many women are thinking, I wouldn't mind a roll in the hay with Arthur down in issues management? Until the internet totally sucks our humanity dry, we still have urges. Raw, shameful, perverse, pathetic, humiliating, potentially lucrative urges.
Time will tell whether more women will come forward. If they do, then this whole thing becomes old hat. Industry. I hope it doesn't happen, but his private life is fair game now.
No one's joke about the scandal will be funnier than his. That's the way of the comic.
Tuesday, June 30, 2009
One Man's Garbage Is Another Man's Refuse
It is times like these I get down on my knees and thank God I don’t have kids. I do that on a fairly regular basis, come to think of it, but now more than ever. You see, in the city where I live, there is a garbage strike. A stinking, rotting, putrid garbage strike.
Being a standup comedian and writer, I produce the infrequent bit of linguistic rubbish, but on the whole I don’t generate a lot of trash. I travel light. I don’t own a house, have a car, have a cottage, have a Seadoo, have a ATV, have a scooter. If I had to, I could fit under my sink. I am that compact.
I don’t like throwing things out. I have newspapers in my office with headlines like “Gary Carter Traded To Mets” and “Ford and Brezhnev meet in Vladivostok”. What little I have I hoard.
So the garbage strike in Toronto is losing its novelty. People are acting like maniacs. I suppose holding onto stinking diapers would test the mettle of anyone, but no reason to get in your car and try to run people over at temporary garbage dumps. Relax, people. Wake up and smell the excrement.
Let’s look at the economic benefits of the garbage strike.
The city is saving money on salaries …
That’s about it. Next point, Bennett.
My point is one man’s garbage is another man’s refuse. The strike will be over one day and we’ll all eventually reminisce about the Garbage Strike of 2009.
Hang on to your memories, people. Life is precious.
Being a standup comedian and writer, I produce the infrequent bit of linguistic rubbish, but on the whole I don’t generate a lot of trash. I travel light. I don’t own a house, have a car, have a cottage, have a Seadoo, have a ATV, have a scooter. If I had to, I could fit under my sink. I am that compact.
I don’t like throwing things out. I have newspapers in my office with headlines like “Gary Carter Traded To Mets” and “Ford and Brezhnev meet in Vladivostok”. What little I have I hoard.
So the garbage strike in Toronto is losing its novelty. People are acting like maniacs. I suppose holding onto stinking diapers would test the mettle of anyone, but no reason to get in your car and try to run people over at temporary garbage dumps. Relax, people. Wake up and smell the excrement.
Let’s look at the economic benefits of the garbage strike.
The city is saving money on salaries …
That’s about it. Next point, Bennett.
My point is one man’s garbage is another man’s refuse. The strike will be over one day and we’ll all eventually reminisce about the Garbage Strike of 2009.
Hang on to your memories, people. Life is precious.
Tuesday, May 05, 2009
Portrait of Three Spinners
INSTRUCTOR: PETER GAULT
GYM: SYSTEM FITNESS, 2100 BLOOR ST W.
AGE: 50
IN CLASS MOTIVATIONAL MANTRAS: “Suck it Up!” “Attack!” “This is surgery we’re doing!” “Mind over matter!” “Feel good! “Be happy!
IN CLASS TUNES: Eclectic mix of techno and rock.
RESTING HEART RATE: 60 BPM
Bee pollen. And seaweed.
These are Peter Gault’s preferred sources of protein. No meat, no dairy, no legumes. No way.
He became a raw foodist in 1997 when he met California raw food pioneer David Wolfe in San Diego. At his home gym, Peter serves me a meal of “mashed potatoes” (ground cauliflower, cashews, olive oil and salt) and “hamburger” (beets, celery, avocado, olive oil and salt). It’s delicious.
“Only a handful of people in the city know how to make the food I make,” he says.
Gault is not only a hugely popular spinning instructor; he’s a wellness coach, a raw food chef and a wholistic trainer. Just don’t call him a guru.
“I’m not on that power trip. A lot of people are wanting that. I’m taking the pretension out of it all by making it fun.”
He got his spinning certification at Mad Dogg Athletics in New York and used to teach up to four classes a day. He says getting certification is easy but getting a job is hard. “In New York I used to ride my bike to all these different gyms to do my spinning classes. My life was a quest to hydrate. Now I teach one spinning class a day, which is the perfect amount of exercise.”
He’s lived in boats and trailers. He’s had two novels published and is ready to submit a third. He’s a passionate, off-the-grid guy and he attributes it to diet and exercise.
“Spinning is almost my theatre in a way, it’s where I get to perform. I put my class in the zone. Now and then I’ll crank up a really great song and let them go for it. No drills, no exercises. I’ll just let them meditate and enjoy the feeling.”
INSTRUCTOR: KATIE FLAHERTY
GYM: MAIN STREET CARDIO, 21 SWANWICK AVENUE
AGE: 45
IN CLASS MOTIVATIONAL MANTRAS: Drive it! I think I can, I think I can! Your endorphins kick in now!
TUNES: Top 40 favourites.
COMMUNITY SPIRIT: Off the charts
Katie is on the bike, legs pumping, and singing to U2. She has her eyes closed and her huge smile lights up the intimate church basement room. She radiates health, beauty and joy.
She also has multiple sclerosis.
“It’s exactly three years ago, May 18, that I was diagnosed with MS,” she says. “But I’ve lived with it for almost two decades.”
Katie credits Charlene Sullivan, Greg Lundrigan and Gudran Hardes, the owners of Main Street Cardio, for their support.
“When I found out I had MS, I cried a lot with Charlene. She always believed in me. I feel like this is home.”
Main Street Cardio is an inspiring environment. The designated heritage building with its stained glass and spacious rooms invites participants to nurture their bodies and minds through classes like spin, yoga and meditation.
Katie is no slouch on the bike. The mother of three teaches an hour class followed by a half hour stretch. “I’ve always loved spinning. It’s a great endorphin rush and calorie burner. You sweat out all your poisons. When my kids were younger and I’d be sleepless, I’d do a class and it just made me feel so purged.”
Doesn’t heat aggravate MS? “It can. If I’m in an exacerbation, when my tingles and my numbness torque up, I take it easy. Once it’s over, I slowly work my way back up. I don’t know if everyone with MS could do it.
For the past three years on National MS Day, Main Street Cardio has held a 108 Sun Salutations Event to raise money for the MS Society. Katie is an eager participant.
“My two feelings when I was diagnosed were ‘I’m going to live to the fullest and I’ll have to let go of some things’. It’s all about balance. Work hard, play hard and laugh.”
INSTRUCTOR: LYNN TOUGAS
GYM: Metro Central YMCA, 20 Grosvenor St.
AGE: 34
IN CLASS MOTIVATIONAL MANTRAS: A steady stream of coaching and instruction
TUNES: Dance, techno
BPM: 145-172
Lynn Tougas slides off her bike mid-climb and fetches the water bottle that a spinning participant dropped. She smiles and hands it to the panting woman. The class needs all the hydration it can get. This is spinning with a high level athlete.
“I competed with Team Canada at the Amateur Duathlon World Championship,” she says. “I went to Germany in 1998 and North Carolina in 1999. Duathlon starts with a 10 K run, then a 40 K bike and finishes with a 5K run.”
Lynn considered training for the Olympics, but finding a good female cycling mentor proved difficult. Instead she got accredited by the National Coaching Certification Program and uses those skills in her classes to keep people moving.
Lynn comes by her fitness honestly. Her father was in the Navy and used to show her videos of his basic training. Her mother took Lynn and her brother to the East Scarborough Boys and Girls Club (a YMCA outreach program) for judo and swimming lessons when they were young.
She loves the Y because of its diversity. “It’s an established charity. Money gets to the right places in a timely manner and it’s visible. People who work here tend to be here a long time.”
What does a high level athlete do to relax and have fun? “I play hockey in a co-ed recreation league a couple of times a month. Everyone at some time in their life should try a team sport.”
Lean and toned, Lynn looks a lot like another hockey player, Cassie Campbell. Single, she thinks she may intimidate some men with her level of fitness. Whoever she dates will have to be athletic. “Opposites attract, up to a point. My guy will probably end up being a rower.”
How can she assure a guy she’s not going to break him in two? “I don’t.”
GYM: SYSTEM FITNESS, 2100 BLOOR ST W.
AGE: 50
IN CLASS MOTIVATIONAL MANTRAS: “Suck it Up!” “Attack!” “This is surgery we’re doing!” “Mind over matter!” “Feel good! “Be happy!
IN CLASS TUNES: Eclectic mix of techno and rock.
RESTING HEART RATE: 60 BPM
Bee pollen. And seaweed.
These are Peter Gault’s preferred sources of protein. No meat, no dairy, no legumes. No way.
He became a raw foodist in 1997 when he met California raw food pioneer David Wolfe in San Diego. At his home gym, Peter serves me a meal of “mashed potatoes” (ground cauliflower, cashews, olive oil and salt) and “hamburger” (beets, celery, avocado, olive oil and salt). It’s delicious.
“Only a handful of people in the city know how to make the food I make,” he says.
Gault is not only a hugely popular spinning instructor; he’s a wellness coach, a raw food chef and a wholistic trainer. Just don’t call him a guru.
“I’m not on that power trip. A lot of people are wanting that. I’m taking the pretension out of it all by making it fun.”
He got his spinning certification at Mad Dogg Athletics in New York and used to teach up to four classes a day. He says getting certification is easy but getting a job is hard. “In New York I used to ride my bike to all these different gyms to do my spinning classes. My life was a quest to hydrate. Now I teach one spinning class a day, which is the perfect amount of exercise.”
He’s lived in boats and trailers. He’s had two novels published and is ready to submit a third. He’s a passionate, off-the-grid guy and he attributes it to diet and exercise.
“Spinning is almost my theatre in a way, it’s where I get to perform. I put my class in the zone. Now and then I’ll crank up a really great song and let them go for it. No drills, no exercises. I’ll just let them meditate and enjoy the feeling.”
INSTRUCTOR: KATIE FLAHERTY
GYM: MAIN STREET CARDIO, 21 SWANWICK AVENUE
AGE: 45
IN CLASS MOTIVATIONAL MANTRAS: Drive it! I think I can, I think I can! Your endorphins kick in now!
TUNES: Top 40 favourites.
COMMUNITY SPIRIT: Off the charts
Katie is on the bike, legs pumping, and singing to U2. She has her eyes closed and her huge smile lights up the intimate church basement room. She radiates health, beauty and joy.
She also has multiple sclerosis.
“It’s exactly three years ago, May 18, that I was diagnosed with MS,” she says. “But I’ve lived with it for almost two decades.”
Katie credits Charlene Sullivan, Greg Lundrigan and Gudran Hardes, the owners of Main Street Cardio, for their support.
“When I found out I had MS, I cried a lot with Charlene. She always believed in me. I feel like this is home.”
Main Street Cardio is an inspiring environment. The designated heritage building with its stained glass and spacious rooms invites participants to nurture their bodies and minds through classes like spin, yoga and meditation.
Katie is no slouch on the bike. The mother of three teaches an hour class followed by a half hour stretch. “I’ve always loved spinning. It’s a great endorphin rush and calorie burner. You sweat out all your poisons. When my kids were younger and I’d be sleepless, I’d do a class and it just made me feel so purged.”
Doesn’t heat aggravate MS? “It can. If I’m in an exacerbation, when my tingles and my numbness torque up, I take it easy. Once it’s over, I slowly work my way back up. I don’t know if everyone with MS could do it.
For the past three years on National MS Day, Main Street Cardio has held a 108 Sun Salutations Event to raise money for the MS Society. Katie is an eager participant.
“My two feelings when I was diagnosed were ‘I’m going to live to the fullest and I’ll have to let go of some things’. It’s all about balance. Work hard, play hard and laugh.”
INSTRUCTOR: LYNN TOUGAS
GYM: Metro Central YMCA, 20 Grosvenor St.
AGE: 34
IN CLASS MOTIVATIONAL MANTRAS: A steady stream of coaching and instruction
TUNES: Dance, techno
BPM: 145-172
Lynn Tougas slides off her bike mid-climb and fetches the water bottle that a spinning participant dropped. She smiles and hands it to the panting woman. The class needs all the hydration it can get. This is spinning with a high level athlete.
“I competed with Team Canada at the Amateur Duathlon World Championship,” she says. “I went to Germany in 1998 and North Carolina in 1999. Duathlon starts with a 10 K run, then a 40 K bike and finishes with a 5K run.”
Lynn considered training for the Olympics, but finding a good female cycling mentor proved difficult. Instead she got accredited by the National Coaching Certification Program and uses those skills in her classes to keep people moving.
Lynn comes by her fitness honestly. Her father was in the Navy and used to show her videos of his basic training. Her mother took Lynn and her brother to the East Scarborough Boys and Girls Club (a YMCA outreach program) for judo and swimming lessons when they were young.
She loves the Y because of its diversity. “It’s an established charity. Money gets to the right places in a timely manner and it’s visible. People who work here tend to be here a long time.”
What does a high level athlete do to relax and have fun? “I play hockey in a co-ed recreation league a couple of times a month. Everyone at some time in their life should try a team sport.”
Lean and toned, Lynn looks a lot like another hockey player, Cassie Campbell. Single, she thinks she may intimidate some men with her level of fitness. Whoever she dates will have to be athletic. “Opposites attract, up to a point. My guy will probably end up being a rower.”
How can she assure a guy she’s not going to break him in two? “I don’t.”
Friday, February 27, 2009
She Shoots, We Score
Is A Pro Women’s Hockey League Far Off?
It’s Saturday night in Brampton and the Thunder is giving it to the Montreal Stars. Forwards are flying down the ice, slicing by the defense, letting shots rip. There’s a battle in the corner for the puck, which springs from a knot of players. It’s scooped and fired at the net. The goalie gloves it and the whistle blows. Rival players shove and yap at each other until the referee calls two penalties for roughing. The players go off but it’s all for naught – Brampton is ahead by four goals and there’s a minute left on the clock. There’s the feeling that after the buzzer sounds the teams will brawl, but it doesn’t happen. Destroying an opponent on ice is enough for Brampton. The first place Montreal Stars has not only been humiliated, now the team has to make the painful trek down the 401 in a snowstorm.
The fans stand and cheer for the Thunder. It’s announced that Hefford has just hit 100 points, a league record. The stands clear, folks filing out happy and satisfied. For seven dollars, they have just seen Olympic calibre hockey. They have. This is the Canadian Women’s Hockey League, home to some players on Canada’s national team.
“We started the league in 2007 after the NWHL folded” says Sami Jo Small, Olympic medalist and goalie for the Mississauga Chiefs. “Instead of waiting for someone to step in, a few of us decided to form a league ourselves. We organized and learned as we went. We registered under the Ontario Women’s Hockey Association, who helped us with rules and regulations, how to hire refs – everything we needed to run a league. “
It’s a thrill watching women’s hockey at an elite level. It’s a game of finesse and elegance, a fast, intense sport where the players are supremely skilled and conditioned. It’s a game where women are free to be themselves. The league doesn’t have to worry about marketing the game like it’s a novelty anymore.
“Women had to smile and look perfect in pictures,” says Brenda Andress, executive director of the CWHL, “but we’re in a time right now when the game is so excellent, it’s okay to see the real side of what makes us tick.”
Fans are past the days of side shows like Manon Rheume playing an exhibition game in the NHL. Judging by the 1500 people or so at a typical outreach game, the CWHL is proving itself a definite alternative to the NHL for hockey fans.
A pro women’s hockey league in North America isn’t a pipe dream. NBA MVP Steve Nash is an investor and part owner of Women’s Professional Soccer, a new soccer league launching this year with teams based in Boston, Chicago, Dallas, Los Angeles, New Jersey/New York, St. Louis, and Washington, D.C. Andress thinks now is the right time for women’s hockey.
“There’s huge power within our league, so much skill and passion. It’s unbelievable that this skill could be here and no one knows about it. We’re bringing it to life ourselves.”
The CWHL has charitable status and is actively looking for sponsors to take the league to the next level. Currently, all players in the CWHL work or go to school full time. Some have small children. Sometimes Small babysits for the Chief’s Cheryl Pounder when she needs to go to practice.
“Cheryl’s with the national program and she couldn’t go skate because she couldn’t find a babysitter. The players help each other out that way, when the husbands aren’t available.”
Both Small and Andress are enormously grateful for the many people who volunteered and worked hard to get the league where it is today. They see it as catching on with a wider audience like the NHL original six did. Andress talks trades, drafts, coaching, revenue distribution — the whole shebang.
“We started up the CWHL because there was nowhere for elite players to go. A lot of Americans come up to play. They have the best university programs, but nowhere to play afterwards.”
Small played in a European women’s league briefly, but she says it’s not the same as here.
“Canadian players are the best in the world, and in North America, the best play in our league. If we could pay people, imagine how far we could go.”
Seeing excited little girls lining up to get an autograph from their hockey heroes after the match in Brampton, it’s easy to imagine the CWHL won’t have to wait long.
CWHL playoffs start in March. The final is on TSN, March 21 at 1pm.
It’s Saturday night in Brampton and the Thunder is giving it to the Montreal Stars. Forwards are flying down the ice, slicing by the defense, letting shots rip. There’s a battle in the corner for the puck, which springs from a knot of players. It’s scooped and fired at the net. The goalie gloves it and the whistle blows. Rival players shove and yap at each other until the referee calls two penalties for roughing. The players go off but it’s all for naught – Brampton is ahead by four goals and there’s a minute left on the clock. There’s the feeling that after the buzzer sounds the teams will brawl, but it doesn’t happen. Destroying an opponent on ice is enough for Brampton. The first place Montreal Stars has not only been humiliated, now the team has to make the painful trek down the 401 in a snowstorm.
The fans stand and cheer for the Thunder. It’s announced that Hefford has just hit 100 points, a league record. The stands clear, folks filing out happy and satisfied. For seven dollars, they have just seen Olympic calibre hockey. They have. This is the Canadian Women’s Hockey League, home to some players on Canada’s national team.
“We started the league in 2007 after the NWHL folded” says Sami Jo Small, Olympic medalist and goalie for the Mississauga Chiefs. “Instead of waiting for someone to step in, a few of us decided to form a league ourselves. We organized and learned as we went. We registered under the Ontario Women’s Hockey Association, who helped us with rules and regulations, how to hire refs – everything we needed to run a league. “
It’s a thrill watching women’s hockey at an elite level. It’s a game of finesse and elegance, a fast, intense sport where the players are supremely skilled and conditioned. It’s a game where women are free to be themselves. The league doesn’t have to worry about marketing the game like it’s a novelty anymore.
“Women had to smile and look perfect in pictures,” says Brenda Andress, executive director of the CWHL, “but we’re in a time right now when the game is so excellent, it’s okay to see the real side of what makes us tick.”
Fans are past the days of side shows like Manon Rheume playing an exhibition game in the NHL. Judging by the 1500 people or so at a typical outreach game, the CWHL is proving itself a definite alternative to the NHL for hockey fans.
A pro women’s hockey league in North America isn’t a pipe dream. NBA MVP Steve Nash is an investor and part owner of Women’s Professional Soccer, a new soccer league launching this year with teams based in Boston, Chicago, Dallas, Los Angeles, New Jersey/New York, St. Louis, and Washington, D.C. Andress thinks now is the right time for women’s hockey.
“There’s huge power within our league, so much skill and passion. It’s unbelievable that this skill could be here and no one knows about it. We’re bringing it to life ourselves.”
The CWHL has charitable status and is actively looking for sponsors to take the league to the next level. Currently, all players in the CWHL work or go to school full time. Some have small children. Sometimes Small babysits for the Chief’s Cheryl Pounder when she needs to go to practice.
“Cheryl’s with the national program and she couldn’t go skate because she couldn’t find a babysitter. The players help each other out that way, when the husbands aren’t available.”
Both Small and Andress are enormously grateful for the many people who volunteered and worked hard to get the league where it is today. They see it as catching on with a wider audience like the NHL original six did. Andress talks trades, drafts, coaching, revenue distribution — the whole shebang.
“We started up the CWHL because there was nowhere for elite players to go. A lot of Americans come up to play. They have the best university programs, but nowhere to play afterwards.”
Small played in a European women’s league briefly, but she says it’s not the same as here.
“Canadian players are the best in the world, and in North America, the best play in our league. If we could pay people, imagine how far we could go.”
Seeing excited little girls lining up to get an autograph from their hockey heroes after the match in Brampton, it’s easy to imagine the CWHL won’t have to wait long.
CWHL playoffs start in March. The final is on TSN, March 21 at 1pm.
Friday, January 30, 2009
A Copyright Doesn't Make a Wrong
My Great Aunt Rose, who lived to the ridiculous age of 92, resided in a one bedroom apartment at Yonge and Eglinton for over 40 years. In her later years, I did her grocery shopping every week not just out of familial duty, but to visit, have a shot of whiskey and a laugh.
One day, between cigs and an ounce of Jameson, she fixed her zealous eyes on me. “I saw your commercial on TV again.”
“That’s good. More money for me.”
“What’ja mean?”
“I get paid every time it airs, Aunt Rose.”
Her bright blue eyes went wide with disbelief. “You do? For that?”
“Yeah. I get residuals.”
“For that. To look like an idiot putting dishes in a sink?”
“Er, yeah.”
She took a drag of her smoke and shook her head. This challenged her Irish Catholic notion of life being a vale of tears. Someone actually making money for a television repeat, no actual toil involved?
I drained my glass and skulked out of my aunt’s place that day, feeling more of a scallywag than usual.
Isn’t residuals part of payment for creative work?
Now that I find myself in the internet and Web 2.0 game, I realize how unregulated this great frontier is.
The WGA writers’ strike was in large part over DVD residuals and compensation for new media e.g. content written for or distributed through digital technology like the Internet. While access to ideas, compositions and art is a wonderful thing, the people who create the work still need to feed themselves.
For every lousy commercial I landed I auditioned eighty times. For ever comedy special I did for television (2), I struggled doing sets in bars with names like The Beefeater and McSorley’s. Residuals aren’t free money, but payment for honing and practicing one’s craft.
This is all a whiny way of me leading you to this CBC Radio link and a stimulating discussion on intellectual property. This is important stuff, for while marketing is rapidly becoming “content” itself, its raison d’être is to promote the work and the ideas of others. And those ideas need nurturing a.k.a. filthy lucre to percolate.
By the way, that dish soap commercial kept me in TTC tokens and No Name instant coffee for two years. Coffee I shared with my aunt.
One day, between cigs and an ounce of Jameson, she fixed her zealous eyes on me. “I saw your commercial on TV again.”
“That’s good. More money for me.”
“What’ja mean?”
“I get paid every time it airs, Aunt Rose.”
Her bright blue eyes went wide with disbelief. “You do? For that?”
“Yeah. I get residuals.”
“For that. To look like an idiot putting dishes in a sink?”
“Er, yeah.”
She took a drag of her smoke and shook her head. This challenged her Irish Catholic notion of life being a vale of tears. Someone actually making money for a television repeat, no actual toil involved?
I drained my glass and skulked out of my aunt’s place that day, feeling more of a scallywag than usual.
Isn’t residuals part of payment for creative work?
Now that I find myself in the internet and Web 2.0 game, I realize how unregulated this great frontier is.
The WGA writers’ strike was in large part over DVD residuals and compensation for new media e.g. content written for or distributed through digital technology like the Internet. While access to ideas, compositions and art is a wonderful thing, the people who create the work still need to feed themselves.
For every lousy commercial I landed I auditioned eighty times. For ever comedy special I did for television (2), I struggled doing sets in bars with names like The Beefeater and McSorley’s. Residuals aren’t free money, but payment for honing and practicing one’s craft.
This is all a whiny way of me leading you to this CBC Radio link and a stimulating discussion on intellectual property. This is important stuff, for while marketing is rapidly becoming “content” itself, its raison d’être is to promote the work and the ideas of others. And those ideas need nurturing a.k.a. filthy lucre to percolate.
By the way, that dish soap commercial kept me in TTC tokens and No Name instant coffee for two years. Coffee I shared with my aunt.
Monday, December 29, 2008
I Rather Like Christmas
Simplicity is in, according to the Style section of the Globe and Mail. Frugality is all the rage. Gone is conspicuous consumption. It’s no longer de rigueur. In these days of economic uncertainty we all must make sacrifices, even the Ferragamo wearing set.
I’m sure folks on the street who call heating grates home are nonplussed to know they’re trendsetters.
I have never, never understood women who like to shop, who need to buy shit to feel good about themselves. I don’t understand the covetousness over shoes and purses. I think any woman who likes to shop is devoid of imagination. I am being a bit hypocritical here because I enjoy reading about fashion and I appreciate well designed do-dads. I just don’t need to possess any of it.
I find the idea of a magazine called Real Simple preposterous.
You know what I got for Christmas this year? Army surplus wool blankets! I’m thrilled. They have that scratchy feel that takes me back to childhood. They’re the next best thing to hair shirts, I tell you.
We’ve blown our wad folks. We just don’t need anymore shit. No more purses and cars and big screen tvs and radish presses and cappuccino machines and play stations and cell phones … okay, people still want cell phones. Not me. I was given a cell phone in July. I have yet to turn it on.
I rather like Christmas — not for the goods and services, but for the cold wintry weather. And something about divinity born among us. That’s kinda cool.
Viva la downturn economique.
I’m sure folks on the street who call heating grates home are nonplussed to know they’re trendsetters.
I have never, never understood women who like to shop, who need to buy shit to feel good about themselves. I don’t understand the covetousness over shoes and purses. I think any woman who likes to shop is devoid of imagination. I am being a bit hypocritical here because I enjoy reading about fashion and I appreciate well designed do-dads. I just don’t need to possess any of it.
I find the idea of a magazine called Real Simple preposterous.
You know what I got for Christmas this year? Army surplus wool blankets! I’m thrilled. They have that scratchy feel that takes me back to childhood. They’re the next best thing to hair shirts, I tell you.
We’ve blown our wad folks. We just don’t need anymore shit. No more purses and cars and big screen tvs and radish presses and cappuccino machines and play stations and cell phones … okay, people still want cell phones. Not me. I was given a cell phone in July. I have yet to turn it on.
I rather like Christmas — not for the goods and services, but for the cold wintry weather. And something about divinity born among us. That’s kinda cool.
Viva la downturn economique.
Friday, October 31, 2008
I Hate Halloween
I Hate Halloween.
There was a time I liked Halloween. Not anymore. It’s a commercial wankfest as big as Christmas. From two hundred dollar princess costumes to plastic glowing skulls to coffee shops charging five dollars for admission to, get this, their “coffee shop Halloween party” (yes, I just came back from a local fair trade coffee palace advertising this), Halloween is a money sucking faux holiday.
Now I have gone to my fair share of Halloween parties, in various states of consciousness. I have dressed as Elizabeth I, Julie Andrews, a knight and, when the imagination started failing, a nurse. But in the last ten years the marketing of Halloween has made participating seem obligatory. I don’t want to walk into my bank and see it festooned with tombstones and ghosts. I don’t need the reminder that I’ll be dead before I see my money again. Just give me my rapidly dwindling resources and feck off.
I don’t think I’ve ever given candies away to kids on Halloween. I always make sure I’m out at a movie or something. When you’re single and you live alone, giving candies to children, well, I dunno …I feel suspect. I don’t have much to do with children all year — why start now?
I once liked Halloween. “It’s The Great Pumpkin Charlie Brown” with its moody backgrounds, pumpkin patch worship and Vince Guaraldi bass and piano riffs captured the essence of a once otherworldly night, a night where the veil between the here and hereafter slipped just a bit.
Now Halloween and all its crappy, soulless merchandise is just another amateur night.
Bah!
There was a time I liked Halloween. Not anymore. It’s a commercial wankfest as big as Christmas. From two hundred dollar princess costumes to plastic glowing skulls to coffee shops charging five dollars for admission to, get this, their “coffee shop Halloween party” (yes, I just came back from a local fair trade coffee palace advertising this), Halloween is a money sucking faux holiday.
Now I have gone to my fair share of Halloween parties, in various states of consciousness. I have dressed as Elizabeth I, Julie Andrews, a knight and, when the imagination started failing, a nurse. But in the last ten years the marketing of Halloween has made participating seem obligatory. I don’t want to walk into my bank and see it festooned with tombstones and ghosts. I don’t need the reminder that I’ll be dead before I see my money again. Just give me my rapidly dwindling resources and feck off.
I don’t think I’ve ever given candies away to kids on Halloween. I always make sure I’m out at a movie or something. When you’re single and you live alone, giving candies to children, well, I dunno …I feel suspect. I don’t have much to do with children all year — why start now?
I once liked Halloween. “It’s The Great Pumpkin Charlie Brown” with its moody backgrounds, pumpkin patch worship and Vince Guaraldi bass and piano riffs captured the essence of a once otherworldly night, a night where the veil between the here and hereafter slipped just a bit.
Now Halloween and all its crappy, soulless merchandise is just another amateur night.
Bah!
Wednesday, September 17, 2008
Gliding High
“Straight ahead is Kitchener. Guelph’s at 2 o’clock. Can you hear me?”
I breathed slowly and deeply to fend off panic. It didn’t do a god damn thing. Every inch of my body shook. Good thing I was sitting down.
“Do you want to take the controls?” yelled Steve.
I brought my right hand over to rest on the joystick. I couldn’t stop the trembling in my hand, let alone steer the plane.
“We’re hitting a thermal,” he said.
Nauseated, about to pass out, I clenched my teeth. What if the wind tore us apart? What if my instructor had a seizure or a heart attack? Who would land the plane? Terror squeezed the oxygen from my lungs as I braced for a wild ascent.
This was one of the best days of my life.
Life had been dull as of late. Being conscious seemed an insensible slog. Life had lost its newness; sobriety had lost its novelty. The voices in my head grew louder. You can have a drink. You can smoke a joint. Where had the edge gone? Where were the highs? My life was a windowless, airless, florescent-lit room stacked with reports no one ever read. On the subway, on the street, in meetings and shops, I felt the creeping approach of decay and irrelevance. I prayed not to do anything stupid.
Then a letter came in the mail.
“One Free Introductory Gliding Lesson” read the gift certificate. On the card, a pilot wearing shades sat in the cockpit of a glider, vertical toward the stratosphere. My boyfriend purchased the lesson for me, in a not so subtle attempt to shake me out of my doldrums. The Southern Ontario Soaring Association (SOSA) Gliding Club invited me to quit whining and fly.
Gliding as a sport started more or less because of the Treaty of Versailles. After World War I Germany was restricted from manufacturing or using powered aircraft. Aviators, jonesing for the sky, developed, designed and flew motorless planes. They discovered how to surf the natural forces in the atmosphere to fly farther and faster. By the time World War II came around, the Germans had a supply of pilots ready to be trained in warplane operation.
Some of the old guys who run SOSA look like they could have flown in World War II. There are some hard core aviators at SOSA, retirees who live to fly. My guy Steve had been flying for thirty years. You are in good hands at SOSA.
The most frightening part of the lesson was being dragged to 3000 feet by the tow plane.
Every lurch, bump and dip felt extreme. Imagine turbulence. Now imagine being able to see turbulance infront of you, in the bobbing and weaving of the tow plane. There’s no in-flight entertainment system to distract you, no episodes of Curb Your Enthusiasm to watch. This is flight — heady, exhilerating, weird.
At 3000 feet the rope connecting the tow plane and glider released (yeah, it’s only a rope that keeps you fastened). Then off we went into the wild blue yonder; soaring, dipping, rising.
I began to relax half way into the flight. The terror of surrendering to natural forces eased into wide-eyed awe. Stretched below, verdant, bucolic, Southern Ontario: the cities of Kitchener, Waterloo, Hamilton, shiny grey clusters. Above, cumulus clouds, white wisps and patches of condensed air, the friend of gliders everywhere. By the time we sailed down to land on SOSA’s grass airstrip, I wanted to grab the control stick and head skyward again. Sheer bare-headed bloody freedom.
SOSA offers intro gliding flights on the weekend until the end of October. They also offer introductory aerobatic flights. To top it off, it’s across the way from African Lion Safari. But doing both in one day — that might be too much excitement to handle.
www.sosaglidingclub.com
I breathed slowly and deeply to fend off panic. It didn’t do a god damn thing. Every inch of my body shook. Good thing I was sitting down.
“Do you want to take the controls?” yelled Steve.
I brought my right hand over to rest on the joystick. I couldn’t stop the trembling in my hand, let alone steer the plane.
“We’re hitting a thermal,” he said.
Nauseated, about to pass out, I clenched my teeth. What if the wind tore us apart? What if my instructor had a seizure or a heart attack? Who would land the plane? Terror squeezed the oxygen from my lungs as I braced for a wild ascent.
This was one of the best days of my life.
Life had been dull as of late. Being conscious seemed an insensible slog. Life had lost its newness; sobriety had lost its novelty. The voices in my head grew louder. You can have a drink. You can smoke a joint. Where had the edge gone? Where were the highs? My life was a windowless, airless, florescent-lit room stacked with reports no one ever read. On the subway, on the street, in meetings and shops, I felt the creeping approach of decay and irrelevance. I prayed not to do anything stupid.
Then a letter came in the mail.
“One Free Introductory Gliding Lesson” read the gift certificate. On the card, a pilot wearing shades sat in the cockpit of a glider, vertical toward the stratosphere. My boyfriend purchased the lesson for me, in a not so subtle attempt to shake me out of my doldrums. The Southern Ontario Soaring Association (SOSA) Gliding Club invited me to quit whining and fly.
Gliding as a sport started more or less because of the Treaty of Versailles. After World War I Germany was restricted from manufacturing or using powered aircraft. Aviators, jonesing for the sky, developed, designed and flew motorless planes. They discovered how to surf the natural forces in the atmosphere to fly farther and faster. By the time World War II came around, the Germans had a supply of pilots ready to be trained in warplane operation.
Some of the old guys who run SOSA look like they could have flown in World War II. There are some hard core aviators at SOSA, retirees who live to fly. My guy Steve had been flying for thirty years. You are in good hands at SOSA.
The most frightening part of the lesson was being dragged to 3000 feet by the tow plane.
Every lurch, bump and dip felt extreme. Imagine turbulence. Now imagine being able to see turbulance infront of you, in the bobbing and weaving of the tow plane. There’s no in-flight entertainment system to distract you, no episodes of Curb Your Enthusiasm to watch. This is flight — heady, exhilerating, weird.
At 3000 feet the rope connecting the tow plane and glider released (yeah, it’s only a rope that keeps you fastened). Then off we went into the wild blue yonder; soaring, dipping, rising.
I began to relax half way into the flight. The terror of surrendering to natural forces eased into wide-eyed awe. Stretched below, verdant, bucolic, Southern Ontario: the cities of Kitchener, Waterloo, Hamilton, shiny grey clusters. Above, cumulus clouds, white wisps and patches of condensed air, the friend of gliders everywhere. By the time we sailed down to land on SOSA’s grass airstrip, I wanted to grab the control stick and head skyward again. Sheer bare-headed bloody freedom.
SOSA offers intro gliding flights on the weekend until the end of October. They also offer introductory aerobatic flights. To top it off, it’s across the way from African Lion Safari. But doing both in one day — that might be too much excitement to handle.
www.sosaglidingclub.com
Wednesday, July 23, 2008
What Do I Know?
One of my university professors was a genius. That word gets bandied around a lot, but the man possessed an exceptionally subtle mind. John Buell taught Communications Studies at Concordia University in Montreal. He had a PH.D in English Literature from the Universite de Montreal and was also a playwright and author. Several of his books were adapted for the big screen. I remember him well; gesticulating, guffawing and delighting at his own logic, animating heady material for dopey kids barely out of their teen years. We had to read McLuhan and Innis. We studied the history of the alphabet. We dutifully avoided the language of marketing. He had compassion too. Feeling lost and fragile, I once hung back after class and asked him if irony was an emotion. He looked at me, put a hand on my shoulder (yes, you could do that back in the mid-eighties) gently smiled and said, “It’s hard being young.”
The one thing that has stuck with me all this time is something he insisted on — that we distinguish between information and knowledge. To this day when I offer an opinion, I weigh it and try to figure out if I’m just parroting something I gleaned, or if I feel it to be true.
In the July/August issue of Atlantic Monthly, the article “Is Google Making Us Stupid” has had commentators ruminating. Margaret Wente at the Globe confessed that she didn’t have time to read anymore and that Google ate her brain. Indeed, several people interviewed for Nicholas Carr’s excellent article admitted to having their mental habits altered because of the internet. The author laments the demise of his attention span eloquently:
“Once I was a scuba diver in the sea of words. Now I zip along the surface like a guy on a Jet Ski.”
I feel his pain.
Allow me to demonstrate.
Try to get through this paragraph without hitting one of the hyperlinks. Try to stay focused on what I’m writing. Now imagine if it were dense, like a very technical policy report or a 19th century novel luxuriating in detail and description. Do you feel like Steven Page after his drug bust, all twitchy and sweaty? Do you feel ready to skim over these words? Do your eyes jump ahead?
Do you feel like you’re missing out on something? Do you wish you were somewhere else?
Altering our brains is nothing new (hey — I’m firmly in my Carlsberg years myself). I’m just acutely, uncomfortably aware that media is changing my thought process.
I don’t know what I know sometimes. And it scares me.
Carr refers to a U.K. study that found people using sites hopped from once source to another, rarely returning to the site they were first reading. The conclusion is “It almost seems that they go online to avoid reading in the traditional sense.”
Does this mean we’re all ADD? Is Novartis in cahoots with Google?
It’s easier to skim a website, more convenient to consume bits of info.
But really, do I know anything as a result? What do I retain?
Thorough reading involves a kind of dialogue with what’s being read. This requires concentration and contemplation — grappling with meaning. Above all, reading in the traditional sense sharpens a person’s critical and analytical skills. Not so easy to question a source when a person has five different sites going at once.
I read novels. I force myself to read because I’m a writer. I want to appreciate how other writers use metaphor, how they beat out rhythm, how they paint a picture with words. I want to do the work of imagining myself.
I wonder about my nieces and nephews and how they think. Can they read Dickens? Do they know how? It’s not their fault if they can’t.
I blame Al Gore. He invented the internet. I read that somewhere.
The one thing that has stuck with me all this time is something he insisted on — that we distinguish between information and knowledge. To this day when I offer an opinion, I weigh it and try to figure out if I’m just parroting something I gleaned, or if I feel it to be true.
In the July/August issue of Atlantic Monthly, the article “Is Google Making Us Stupid” has had commentators ruminating. Margaret Wente at the Globe confessed that she didn’t have time to read anymore and that Google ate her brain. Indeed, several people interviewed for Nicholas Carr’s excellent article admitted to having their mental habits altered because of the internet. The author laments the demise of his attention span eloquently:
“Once I was a scuba diver in the sea of words. Now I zip along the surface like a guy on a Jet Ski.”
I feel his pain.
Allow me to demonstrate.
Try to get through this paragraph without hitting one of the hyperlinks. Try to stay focused on what I’m writing. Now imagine if it were dense, like a very technical policy report or a 19th century novel luxuriating in detail and description. Do you feel like Steven Page after his drug bust, all twitchy and sweaty? Do you feel ready to skim over these words? Do your eyes jump ahead?
Do you feel like you’re missing out on something? Do you wish you were somewhere else?
Altering our brains is nothing new (hey — I’m firmly in my Carlsberg years myself). I’m just acutely, uncomfortably aware that media is changing my thought process.
I don’t know what I know sometimes. And it scares me.
Carr refers to a U.K. study that found people using sites hopped from once source to another, rarely returning to the site they were first reading. The conclusion is “It almost seems that they go online to avoid reading in the traditional sense.”
Does this mean we’re all ADD? Is Novartis in cahoots with Google?
It’s easier to skim a website, more convenient to consume bits of info.
But really, do I know anything as a result? What do I retain?
Thorough reading involves a kind of dialogue with what’s being read. This requires concentration and contemplation — grappling with meaning. Above all, reading in the traditional sense sharpens a person’s critical and analytical skills. Not so easy to question a source when a person has five different sites going at once.
I read novels. I force myself to read because I’m a writer. I want to appreciate how other writers use metaphor, how they beat out rhythm, how they paint a picture with words. I want to do the work of imagining myself.
I wonder about my nieces and nephews and how they think. Can they read Dickens? Do they know how? It’s not their fault if they can’t.
I blame Al Gore. He invented the internet. I read that somewhere.
Monday, June 16, 2008
Odds and Sods
Forgive me dear reader, for not updating this blog since April. I thought I was clinically dead for awhile, but it was just a false alarm. I've been on another government contract, which feels like I'm close to death on certain days. Only another 40 years or so to go until retirement to the big waiting room in the sky. I hope the magazines are good.
Everywhere I go, people want to know what I think about CBC losing the rights to the Hockey Song ... Okay, that's a lie. Two people have asked for my opinion.
CBC has misplayed this one. In its rush to modernize and reinvent itself, I think it's gone too far. Plus the old bag who wrote the theme is shrewd. Now the Ceeb is holding a contest to find the next great Hockey Night in Canada Theme Song. The Corpse is going to pay the lucky winner $100,000.
A measly $100 grand.
That's rights and all, I imagine.
As someone who has sold the rights away to a few of my own projects, I know what a lousy deal this is. I found out that some of my old comedy bits are airing on AOL radio. How the hell did this happen? Some sap in Kentucky or New Hampshire is listening to a 12 year old bit of mine and chuckling, if not guffawing - all without me receiving a cent. Oh well -- maybe my bit about being raised Catholic is helping some tortured soul somewhere put down the razor blades.
Whoever wins the Hockey Night in Canada Theme Song contest is cursed from the get-go.
The comparisons to the old theme will be plentiful and unkind.
Even the best theme will jar audiences for at least a few seasons.
The compensation is an insult. If CBC owns it in perpetuity, the compensation is criminal.
***
BONUS FEATURE
Because I am lazy and weary from writing all day, I am posting some deleted material from my first novel. Hopefully this will whet your appetite for the published version. Or it could disappoint you terribly. I am willing to gamble.
Enjoy.
Suzanne Foley's ruminations over her death and burial:
Plus, she hoped her tombstone would be forgotten over time. Cracked, covered in mold, overrun with weeds and neglect, her grave would inspire conjecture. When she lived in Toronto, she’d cut through Mount Pleasant cemetery from Yonge Street to go to a retail job. The only thing that made catering to impeccable North Toronto matrons bearable was the twenty minute walk through rows and rows of graves. The buried disquieted her, the tombstones and tombs mostly decades old. One crypt in particular disturbed her, the tomb of George Lehr, a man important enough to have a crypt, yet not important enough to have a larger maintained crypt. She would tense as she passed George Lehr’s final place of repose; crumbling, the entrance chained, a window yellowed and cracked, pillars slanted from erosion. Who was George Lehr, she’d wonder, pausing to absorb more of the fright. Was he loved? Generous with his time and money? Or was he some would-be robber baron disgraced by a scrubwoman who bled to death aborting the baby she claimed was his? Even when the sun shone, the crypt remained gloomy. She remembered visiting Sir John A. MacDonald’s grave in Kingston and being shocked at its ordinariness. The first Prime Minister of Canada’s resting place forsaken, across the street a Tim Horton’s attracting more honour and respect. At least the Americans knew how to bury people. They went to town.
Everywhere I go, people want to know what I think about CBC losing the rights to the Hockey Song ... Okay, that's a lie. Two people have asked for my opinion.
CBC has misplayed this one. In its rush to modernize and reinvent itself, I think it's gone too far. Plus the old bag who wrote the theme is shrewd. Now the Ceeb is holding a contest to find the next great Hockey Night in Canada Theme Song. The Corpse is going to pay the lucky winner $100,000.
A measly $100 grand.
That's rights and all, I imagine.
As someone who has sold the rights away to a few of my own projects, I know what a lousy deal this is. I found out that some of my old comedy bits are airing on AOL radio. How the hell did this happen? Some sap in Kentucky or New Hampshire is listening to a 12 year old bit of mine and chuckling, if not guffawing - all without me receiving a cent. Oh well -- maybe my bit about being raised Catholic is helping some tortured soul somewhere put down the razor blades.
Whoever wins the Hockey Night in Canada Theme Song contest is cursed from the get-go.
The comparisons to the old theme will be plentiful and unkind.
Even the best theme will jar audiences for at least a few seasons.
The compensation is an insult. If CBC owns it in perpetuity, the compensation is criminal.
***
BONUS FEATURE
Because I am lazy and weary from writing all day, I am posting some deleted material from my first novel. Hopefully this will whet your appetite for the published version. Or it could disappoint you terribly. I am willing to gamble.
Enjoy.
Suzanne Foley's ruminations over her death and burial:
Plus, she hoped her tombstone would be forgotten over time. Cracked, covered in mold, overrun with weeds and neglect, her grave would inspire conjecture. When she lived in Toronto, she’d cut through Mount Pleasant cemetery from Yonge Street to go to a retail job. The only thing that made catering to impeccable North Toronto matrons bearable was the twenty minute walk through rows and rows of graves. The buried disquieted her, the tombstones and tombs mostly decades old. One crypt in particular disturbed her, the tomb of George Lehr, a man important enough to have a crypt, yet not important enough to have a larger maintained crypt. She would tense as she passed George Lehr’s final place of repose; crumbling, the entrance chained, a window yellowed and cracked, pillars slanted from erosion. Who was George Lehr, she’d wonder, pausing to absorb more of the fright. Was he loved? Generous with his time and money? Or was he some would-be robber baron disgraced by a scrubwoman who bled to death aborting the baby she claimed was his? Even when the sun shone, the crypt remained gloomy. She remembered visiting Sir John A. MacDonald’s grave in Kingston and being shocked at its ordinariness. The first Prime Minister of Canada’s resting place forsaken, across the street a Tim Horton’s attracting more honour and respect. At least the Americans knew how to bury people. They went to town.
Wednesday, April 30, 2008
Tech-No?
I saw something on the TTC the other day that made this veteran of public transportation do a double take. An earnest looking father getting off at College Park stood poised to disembark. His young son, who I figured to be one and a half, sat silently in a stroller. So far, so good. I peered down at the yearling to make a face. He would have none of that. Instead, he balanced an iPod in his tiny hand and stared at the screen. He had earphones on and was watching Shrek.
Now I would figure being on a moving train surrounded by big people would be fascinating enough for a tot. Apparently not. The sight was so incongruous, I chortled (yes, I chortle in public on occasion). Now I ask myself – is this incongruous? Was this a case of a tired father wanting to sedate his son by mesmerizing him with a magic box, or of a techno-savvy dad wanting his little child to be electronically literate?The debate rages.
It rages between, say, those who applaud the changes to come at CBC Radio 2, and those who voice their protest on Facebook or the blog standonguardforcbcradio.It rages between, say, proponents of fast food and those who embrace the slow food movement.Technological change is inevitable. The way we communicate is changing. What we communicate hopefully endures. Television didn’t replace radio. People still listen to vinyl. Beethoven isn’t going anywhere (except on Radio 2, where he's GOING TO HELL IN A HANDBASKET). By the way, I think there should be more protests outside the CBC building. When was the last time CBC fans protested the demise of a favourite show? NEVER -- that's when.
If I have to hear anymore promos on Radio 2, I'll take a flute and shove it up a CBC executive's cakehole...but I digress...
Hey – I’m typing this blog on a computer, the greatest invention since the printing press. I like technology. I'm just not enamoured with it the way some web 2.0 idols are. It's just another tool.
The more technological the world becomes, the more I enjoy birds.
twitter twitter
Now I would figure being on a moving train surrounded by big people would be fascinating enough for a tot. Apparently not. The sight was so incongruous, I chortled (yes, I chortle in public on occasion). Now I ask myself – is this incongruous? Was this a case of a tired father wanting to sedate his son by mesmerizing him with a magic box, or of a techno-savvy dad wanting his little child to be electronically literate?The debate rages.
It rages between, say, those who applaud the changes to come at CBC Radio 2, and those who voice their protest on Facebook or the blog standonguardforcbcradio.It rages between, say, proponents of fast food and those who embrace the slow food movement.Technological change is inevitable. The way we communicate is changing. What we communicate hopefully endures. Television didn’t replace radio. People still listen to vinyl. Beethoven isn’t going anywhere (except on Radio 2, where he's GOING TO HELL IN A HANDBASKET). By the way, I think there should be more protests outside the CBC building. When was the last time CBC fans protested the demise of a favourite show? NEVER -- that's when.
If I have to hear anymore promos on Radio 2, I'll take a flute and shove it up a CBC executive's cakehole...but I digress...
Hey – I’m typing this blog on a computer, the greatest invention since the printing press. I like technology. I'm just not enamoured with it the way some web 2.0 idols are. It's just another tool.
The more technological the world becomes, the more I enjoy birds.
twitter twitter
Thursday, March 06, 2008
Let it Snow
I am a fan of winter. I love the cold, I love the snow, I love the silence. Give me a wind chill over a humidex reading any day. There is very little smog when it’s minus 10. My evening walk is made blissful by the absence of people on the street. It’s just me and the deep, dark sky. Everything is in sharper focus – the stars, the moon, animals. Winter makes me forget I live in Toronto, something I’m always grateful for.
The latest snow storm in Toronto has left citizens pleading for mercy. It’s just getting funny now. I have never seen Toronto laden with this much snow. It depresses people. Why? If only they understood the mystery of winter... Hmmm. "The Mystery of Winter". I LOVE IT. I think I'll pitch it.
In a few weeks all this quiet beauty will be gone. No more Nordic skiing. No more skating at night in the park. No more looking up at the winter sky and feeling like I’m eight again.
Winter is an eternity for some people.
For me, it is Eternity.
I will miss the winter of 2008.
The latest snow storm in Toronto has left citizens pleading for mercy. It’s just getting funny now. I have never seen Toronto laden with this much snow. It depresses people. Why? If only they understood the mystery of winter... Hmmm. "The Mystery of Winter". I LOVE IT. I think I'll pitch it.
In a few weeks all this quiet beauty will be gone. No more Nordic skiing. No more skating at night in the park. No more looking up at the winter sky and feeling like I’m eight again.
Winter is an eternity for some people.
For me, it is Eternity.
I will miss the winter of 2008.
Thursday, January 24, 2008
EI-EI-Oh
It’s not often that I deal directly with the government. Sure, I’m aware that certain entities rule society, but in my daily life I try to avoid these entities. Governance, like charity, begins at home. If I get up when the alarm rings in the morning, I consider the day a success. So it was with extreme trepidation that I recently applied for E.I. The only government service I use on an occasional basis is our health care system. Yes, we pay for it through taxes, but seeing a doctor without physically shelling out a nickel never ceases to amaze me. I had an organ removed two years ago. This required major surgery and a hospital stay. I didn’t have to put so much as a deposit on a credit card. Three squares a day, drugs administered by caring staff – it felt like a vacation. But E.I, that feels like doing hard time.
The last time I sullied a government office with my presence was when E.I was U.I. Remember those cards you had to fill out? Are you ready, willing and able to work? No, no and yes. As a self-employed artist I haven’t been eligible for E.I in twenty years. My last contract, ironically enough for a government ministry, deducted money at source, including E.I. contributions. First time I’ve had taxes off a pay cheque in many years. Why not investigate the world of government programs? How frustrating could it be?
I applied for E.I. online. The process has been streamlined for easy access. You can have your cheque deposited directly into your bank account. Sweet! Unfortunately, there comes a lot of hassle with it, in the form of reporting your activity to The Man every two weeks. That hasn’t changed. They want to know the dates worked in a week, the gross amount earned, the name and address of the employer, monies received other than salary and dates and reasons if not working. As a freelancer, I balk at the intrusion. I am self-directed, thank you very much. In Toronto, with our unemployment rate at 6.6 per cent, a person has to work 665 hours to be able to claim E.I. If the unemployment rate is 13 per cent and over, only 420 hours of toil is needed. There’s regular, maternity and parental, sickness, compassionate care, fishing, out of country and family supplement benefits, all out of the same kitty. For once in my life I was deemed “regular”.
My local Service Canada location is at the Dufferin Mall. In my ten years of living in the west end, I have never set foot in the place. People are invariably stunned when I tell them this. “Do you live under a rock?” is the usual response. Yes, a big, heavy, comfy rock that keeps me from going to places like malls. I broke out into a sweat the minute I entered the consumer terminal.
After a half an hour of panicked searching, I finally found the Service Canada office in the basement. Surprisingly, there was no lineup. I queued anyway, out of habit, until the woman behind the desk waved me over. I handed her my crumpled Record of Employment (something you’ll need if you ever apply) and hyperventilated. I still needed a couple of other ROEs from CBC, which is like getting blood from a stone. I flashbacked to the time I was ushered out of line and frisked at Schiphol Airport in Amsterdam. Why? Maybe I shouldn’t have worn army pants and a t-shirt that said “Kill the Rich and Eat the Poor”. As I stood trembling in front of the Service Canada clerk, I regretted ever going on their website and hitting the “send” button. I collect my self-employment receipts in a shoebox. How would I ever keep track of my whereabouts? Although E.I. is every working person’s right, it still feels like a quagmire.
I have to wait the obligatory two weeks before I know if my claim is going to go through. In the meantime I’m hustling for more work. Just don’t tell Service Canada. It’s time for The Man to pay it back.
The last time I sullied a government office with my presence was when E.I was U.I. Remember those cards you had to fill out? Are you ready, willing and able to work? No, no and yes. As a self-employed artist I haven’t been eligible for E.I in twenty years. My last contract, ironically enough for a government ministry, deducted money at source, including E.I. contributions. First time I’ve had taxes off a pay cheque in many years. Why not investigate the world of government programs? How frustrating could it be?
I applied for E.I. online. The process has been streamlined for easy access. You can have your cheque deposited directly into your bank account. Sweet! Unfortunately, there comes a lot of hassle with it, in the form of reporting your activity to The Man every two weeks. That hasn’t changed. They want to know the dates worked in a week, the gross amount earned, the name and address of the employer, monies received other than salary and dates and reasons if not working. As a freelancer, I balk at the intrusion. I am self-directed, thank you very much. In Toronto, with our unemployment rate at 6.6 per cent, a person has to work 665 hours to be able to claim E.I. If the unemployment rate is 13 per cent and over, only 420 hours of toil is needed. There’s regular, maternity and parental, sickness, compassionate care, fishing, out of country and family supplement benefits, all out of the same kitty. For once in my life I was deemed “regular”.
My local Service Canada location is at the Dufferin Mall. In my ten years of living in the west end, I have never set foot in the place. People are invariably stunned when I tell them this. “Do you live under a rock?” is the usual response. Yes, a big, heavy, comfy rock that keeps me from going to places like malls. I broke out into a sweat the minute I entered the consumer terminal.
After a half an hour of panicked searching, I finally found the Service Canada office in the basement. Surprisingly, there was no lineup. I queued anyway, out of habit, until the woman behind the desk waved me over. I handed her my crumpled Record of Employment (something you’ll need if you ever apply) and hyperventilated. I still needed a couple of other ROEs from CBC, which is like getting blood from a stone. I flashbacked to the time I was ushered out of line and frisked at Schiphol Airport in Amsterdam. Why? Maybe I shouldn’t have worn army pants and a t-shirt that said “Kill the Rich and Eat the Poor”. As I stood trembling in front of the Service Canada clerk, I regretted ever going on their website and hitting the “send” button. I collect my self-employment receipts in a shoebox. How would I ever keep track of my whereabouts? Although E.I. is every working person’s right, it still feels like a quagmire.
I have to wait the obligatory two weeks before I know if my claim is going to go through. In the meantime I’m hustling for more work. Just don’t tell Service Canada. It’s time for The Man to pay it back.
Thursday, December 20, 2007
Reruns
In 1997, I did a COMICS episode for CBC. Ten years later it is still running. It just ran the other week. I have people (I'd like to call them fans, but that would be presumptuous) approach me saying they loved my act. I had one foxy young man look me over and ask “what happened?” What happened? I put on ten years. I haven’t put on any weight, but I’ve let the hair go a lovely shade of silver. To hell with dyeing the hair. I’m 45 and quite proud of the fact. I’m alive, despite my best efforts. Now that I don't imbibe intoxicants or partake in recreational drugs, I have turned to fitness for my high. I hope to die in an avalanche. Okay, I hope to die in my sleep, but an avalanche is a distant second.
Be that as it may.
It’s strange seeing your former self replayed every couple of weeks. I wonder if Arnold Schwarzenegger's sister calls him up saying “I saw Kindergarten Cop AGAIN the other night on TV. I’m sick of you.”
Must admit, I was good. Not great, but good. And now as I embark on the standup trail again, I hope to be good-to-very good.
As you can see, I need a PR person badly…
Be that as it may.
It’s strange seeing your former self replayed every couple of weeks. I wonder if Arnold Schwarzenegger's sister calls him up saying “I saw Kindergarten Cop AGAIN the other night on TV. I’m sick of you.”
Must admit, I was good. Not great, but good. And now as I embark on the standup trail again, I hope to be good-to-very good.
As you can see, I need a PR person badly…
Tuesday, November 20, 2007
Of Brown Bags and Paperbacks
One of the unexpected pleasures of this nine-to-five job I have for another two weeks is the morning commute. I adore a full-to-capacity subway train in the morning. I burrow my way through the crowd and prop myself up against the glass door in between cars. NO ONE ever heads to this oasis of calm. Why? Why does everyone cluster around the doors where people enter and exit? They seem poised to stampede.
Safe and snug in my cubbyhole, I produce a paperback from my satchel (yes, I have a satchel -- what's it to ya?). For the fifteen minutes it takes me to travel to my lucrative yet deadening employment, I am happily immersed in the world of the particular author I'm reading. Lately it’s been Dickens and David Copperfield, but I’ve had to say au revoir to Peggotty in favour of a library book that’s just come in—Joe Keenan’s “My Lucky Star”. Keenan was a writer/producer on “Fraser” and this is his third novel. Show off. It’s every bit as sophisticated and witty as his television work.
As for brown bags, I must say I’m getting a little tired of taking my lunch to work. I ran out of lettuce today and added parsley to my cheese sandwich. Why I would have a bunch of parsley and not a head of lettuce in my fridge I can’t say. SEE WHAT THIS JOB IS DOING TO ME? It’s sheer madness! Some days I feel like driving my head through my corner office window, just for the physical sensation.
Marketing geniuses have suckered the unwashed into purchasing high end condos that will go up at the corner of Yonge and Bloor, in the not-so-near future. The bastards! They are going to knock down a perfectly ugly block of low rise offices and cheap ethnic eateries so some debt-ridden patsies can bed down in 300 square feet cubicles/nestings. I’ll tell ya – that’s gonna be one disappointing view from the 35th floor. Stollery’s on one corner and the Bay on another. Wowee. Oh so chic. Idiots! Meanwhile where will the stupefied go for six dollar chicken thali? Why didn’t the city consult with numb and bored neighbourhood office drones first? Developers – they don’t know nothin’ from chicken thali.
Two more weeks to go. How do people do this all the time?
Safe and snug in my cubbyhole, I produce a paperback from my satchel (yes, I have a satchel -- what's it to ya?). For the fifteen minutes it takes me to travel to my lucrative yet deadening employment, I am happily immersed in the world of the particular author I'm reading. Lately it’s been Dickens and David Copperfield, but I’ve had to say au revoir to Peggotty in favour of a library book that’s just come in—Joe Keenan’s “My Lucky Star”. Keenan was a writer/producer on “Fraser” and this is his third novel. Show off. It’s every bit as sophisticated and witty as his television work.
As for brown bags, I must say I’m getting a little tired of taking my lunch to work. I ran out of lettuce today and added parsley to my cheese sandwich. Why I would have a bunch of parsley and not a head of lettuce in my fridge I can’t say. SEE WHAT THIS JOB IS DOING TO ME? It’s sheer madness! Some days I feel like driving my head through my corner office window, just for the physical sensation.
Marketing geniuses have suckered the unwashed into purchasing high end condos that will go up at the corner of Yonge and Bloor, in the not-so-near future. The bastards! They are going to knock down a perfectly ugly block of low rise offices and cheap ethnic eateries so some debt-ridden patsies can bed down in 300 square feet cubicles/nestings. I’ll tell ya – that’s gonna be one disappointing view from the 35th floor. Stollery’s on one corner and the Bay on another. Wowee. Oh so chic. Idiots! Meanwhile where will the stupefied go for six dollar chicken thali? Why didn’t the city consult with numb and bored neighbourhood office drones first? Developers – they don’t know nothin’ from chicken thali.
Two more weeks to go. How do people do this all the time?
Wednesday, October 10, 2007
Initiative, Innovative, Developmental Capacity
I have been derelict in my duties as one in a faceless horde of bloggers jotting down thoughts for a public both real and imaginary. I apologize for my slacking off but I have a good reason -- I have been employed at a job that requires me to go into an office and write. I am a government communications hack. Yes, I have given up on myself. For another two months. Then the contract ends and I'll be back to being a freelance goofball.
There's a lot to be said for being a freelance goofball. The dress code is not as strict. A person can peruse dollar stores in the middle of the day. The mind can drift.
Who would have thought I wouldn't be able to let my mind drift on a government job? Who would have thought government workers actually did anything? Not me. I bought into all the stereotypes. Lordy, how do people multi-task all the time? It's bullshit, it really is. To quote Charles Emmerson Winchester from M*A*S*H, "I do one thing at a time, I do it very well and then, I move on". I must admit I enjoy playing adult, going into an office and being accountable to a team of people. But I also love being a free range artist, pecking and scratching at dirt.
Do you know what I look forward to most days? Deciding what colour of shirt I'm going to wear to the office. Should I wear blue or green?! Today I freaked out and wore yellow. YELLOW. Try having a serious conversation with a peer when you're wearing yellow. The shirt was soft, too. I felt like a newborn.
The only thing that sustains me through hours of deciphering mind numbing bureaucratic language is knowing that I have an agent who has taken on my first novel. Joy. Once this contract is over I'll get back to squeezing out meaning through my own syntax and style.
I hope I never see the words "initiative" "innovative" and "developmental capacity" in a single sentence ever again.
There's a lot to be said for being a freelance goofball. The dress code is not as strict. A person can peruse dollar stores in the middle of the day. The mind can drift.
Who would have thought I wouldn't be able to let my mind drift on a government job? Who would have thought government workers actually did anything? Not me. I bought into all the stereotypes. Lordy, how do people multi-task all the time? It's bullshit, it really is. To quote Charles Emmerson Winchester from M*A*S*H, "I do one thing at a time, I do it very well and then, I move on". I must admit I enjoy playing adult, going into an office and being accountable to a team of people. But I also love being a free range artist, pecking and scratching at dirt.
Do you know what I look forward to most days? Deciding what colour of shirt I'm going to wear to the office. Should I wear blue or green?! Today I freaked out and wore yellow. YELLOW. Try having a serious conversation with a peer when you're wearing yellow. The shirt was soft, too. I felt like a newborn.
The only thing that sustains me through hours of deciphering mind numbing bureaucratic language is knowing that I have an agent who has taken on my first novel. Joy. Once this contract is over I'll get back to squeezing out meaning through my own syntax and style.
I hope I never see the words "initiative" "innovative" and "developmental capacity" in a single sentence ever again.
Thursday, July 26, 2007
Live and Alive, Live!
I’m back on the standup trail again, after a long hiatus spent writing and having various surgeries. It’s different this time around. I’m ten years older and my hair is “executive blond”. I am no longer the fresh young face on the circuit. Instead, I am the battle-worn 45 year old face on the circuit. I’m lucky though, two litres of water a day has kept this battle-worn face baby smooth. So has not smoking and quitting drinking. I look like I’m in my thirties. Just ask guys in their 20s I’ve courted. Why am I back in the clubs trying to make audiences laugh, when I should be home curled up in front of the TV watching gruesome footage of the latest suicide bombing in Iraq? Because if you watch enough footage of suicide bombings, followed by stories about celebrity misbehaviour, juxtaposed with commercials for banks and skin crème and pizza pops, you’ll go mad. Doing standup comedy is like being a part of a fight club. You feel every joke bomb like a blow to the head, and every bit kill like a sweaty embrace. You feel. I’m learning that in middle-age, having brain and body totally engaged at once is a rare and pleasurable sensation. I am greedy for it now. I have been reborn.
Yes, the standup world has changed. Audiences are younger. My frame of reference may need sharpening. I don’t have a cell phone, I don’t have cable, I don’t have a satellite dish, I don’t have high speed internet. I am on Rogers Most Wanted list. It takes me 25 minutes to download four pictures. Why am I not more wired? Simple. I don’t want or need these things. Yesterday’s convenience is today’s necessity. Tomorrow we may find robots essential. But for today, I prefer to give the kid down the street ten bucks to mow my lawn, rather than a cyborg. Come to think of it, with his IPOD taking permanent shape in his ears and his trigger-happy text messaging fingers, the kid down the street is already a cyborg. Get a jump on the competition, Billy! Why not.
It is hard for me to relate. I like listening to birds.
But I persist. I’ve enjoyed riffing on middle-age, how I used to line up for Clash and Sex Pistol tickets and now I line up for a two dollar box of Bran Flakes at Price Chopper. There’s quiet satisfaction in saving a dollar fifty on cereal. That ought to stick it to the man! No need to protest at G8 summits. Younger audiences intimidate me a little. They can be quite conservative. What I may lack in celebrity knowledge they make up for in ignorance of world events, politics, science, religion and anything that doesn’t revolve around their own precious selves. In short, nothing much has changed since I was a pus-filled youth. The only thing different now is the accelerated speed of stupidity and lack of regard. Plus ca change and all that.
I’m not interested in playing only to the Bran Flake set. One of the hippest comics out there is George Carlin. At 70 he’s as relevant as ever, a sharp social satirist who’s not afraid to tear into American culture (or lack thereof). No subject is off limits: suicide, genocide, natural disasters -- all are fair game. Age shouldn’t matter when it comes to comedy; voice and originality should.
So come to the cabaret mein chum. Check out some live comedy. You never know, you may see someone in your demographic on stage, live and alive.
Yes, the standup world has changed. Audiences are younger. My frame of reference may need sharpening. I don’t have a cell phone, I don’t have cable, I don’t have a satellite dish, I don’t have high speed internet. I am on Rogers Most Wanted list. It takes me 25 minutes to download four pictures. Why am I not more wired? Simple. I don’t want or need these things. Yesterday’s convenience is today’s necessity. Tomorrow we may find robots essential. But for today, I prefer to give the kid down the street ten bucks to mow my lawn, rather than a cyborg. Come to think of it, with his IPOD taking permanent shape in his ears and his trigger-happy text messaging fingers, the kid down the street is already a cyborg. Get a jump on the competition, Billy! Why not.
It is hard for me to relate. I like listening to birds.
But I persist. I’ve enjoyed riffing on middle-age, how I used to line up for Clash and Sex Pistol tickets and now I line up for a two dollar box of Bran Flakes at Price Chopper. There’s quiet satisfaction in saving a dollar fifty on cereal. That ought to stick it to the man! No need to protest at G8 summits. Younger audiences intimidate me a little. They can be quite conservative. What I may lack in celebrity knowledge they make up for in ignorance of world events, politics, science, religion and anything that doesn’t revolve around their own precious selves. In short, nothing much has changed since I was a pus-filled youth. The only thing different now is the accelerated speed of stupidity and lack of regard. Plus ca change and all that.
I’m not interested in playing only to the Bran Flake set. One of the hippest comics out there is George Carlin. At 70 he’s as relevant as ever, a sharp social satirist who’s not afraid to tear into American culture (or lack thereof). No subject is off limits: suicide, genocide, natural disasters -- all are fair game. Age shouldn’t matter when it comes to comedy; voice and originality should.
So come to the cabaret mein chum. Check out some live comedy. You never know, you may see someone in your demographic on stage, live and alive.
Thursday, July 12, 2007
Diary of an Insomniac
July 5, 2007. 3:45am.
Dear Diary. Or should I call you a journal? I think journal sounds more mature somehow. What do you think? I can’t decide. Why don’t we just leave it for now.
My bedside clock says it’s 3:45 A.M. Wait – now it’s 3:46 A.M. I’ll have to be awake in another three hours. I’m debating whether or not to get up and do something productive like vacuum or drywall. I’ll debate another hour and exhaust myself into a twitchy semi-consciousness. Sounds like a plan.
I know why kids are afraid of the dark. In the void they see the spectre of their future as monsters and goblins. Adults know these spectres as loans officers and employers. Fear looms larger in a darkened room. Your own inevitability is clear.
Maybe I should have some milk.
July 6 2007. 4:25 A.M.
Dear Journal. Hmm. I kinda like “Dear Diary” better. “Dear Journal” sounds too 1984ish, too bureaucratic. What ever happened to the Orwellian predictions of 1984? I suppose brutal conformity did happen. Everyone wore pastels.
Mortimer at work said I did a good job on the report. What did he mean by that? What was he getting at? I don’t trust him. He has crystals in his office. He has an office. It’s all a ruse to trick me into a false sense of security. I’m on contract for God’s sake, I could be out the door in a second, panhandling on Yonge street with punk kids from Richmond Hill. Or worse, I could be doing amateur night at a stand-up comedy club. I have an idea. I’ll smile more often. I’ll walk down the corridors, smiling. All the time. My co-workers will either think I’ve been promoted to a staff position or I’ve gone insane. Flip of the coin.
Maybe I should have some warm milk.
July 7, 2007. 5:12 A.M
Dear Journal/Diary. Can’t sleep, but for a solid reason. The people upstairs are blaring techno and “whooing”. ‘Tis the season. Then again, every couple of nights is the season for them. It sounds like one of the party guests upstairs is either throwing up or having sex. It’s been so long for me it’s hard to tell the difference. They say having sex helps you sleep. That’s the way I used to sell it to my ex-husband. Maybe that’s why he’s my ex.
Maybe I should go knock on the neighbour’s door, not to tell them to keep it down, but to be louder. If I’m up, I’m up.
July 8, 2007. 2:57 A.M.
Dear Diary/Journal. Sometimes you just can’t sleep. They say women are biologically lighter sleepers that men. We always have an eye and ear open in case a baby cries. I have an eye and ear open for my own crying. My eyes feel like they’re calcifying. I’m so tired I can feel my skeleton turning to wire. Electricity darts under my eyelids. When I do manage to fall asleep, it’s invariably on public transportation. A passenger usually jostles me because I’ve drooled on their shoulder. Maybe that’s what I should do now – get on the streetcar! The mundane anguish will lull me.
July 9, 2007 3:54 A.M
Dear Diarnal. Get it – Diarnal? I’ve mixed Diary and Journal to form a Diarnal. Sounds like a sleeping pill. July 9th sounds like a sleeping pill. My adrenal glands must look like pillows by now. How can one person have so many stress hormones. And what’s with my pituitary gland? Isn’t it where melatonin is produced or whatever the hell hormone helps you sleep? I can’t keep track of my glands. Mortimer at work suggested I do yoga. What’s he getting at? What does it matter? The earth is scorched, the sun is angry, the environment is turning to dust. Then why does it feel like winter? Am I hot or cold? I’m confused. Screw people and their cars – they’re killing the planet. I don’t want stuff – I want other people to have stuff I can rent. My brain is a centrifuge of obsession, an amusement park ride that won’t stop.
July 10, 2007. 4:21 A.M.
Hey. Monday, or Tuesday morning. No, Tuesday. Good news. I’ve been let go from the office and my new landlord is moving into my apartment. Most people would lose sleep over this, but it doesn’t affect my nocturnal habits one bit. This news would kill a person accustom to eight hours of uninterrupted slumber, but not me. I feel great.
I’m hoping this crisis will have the reverse effect on me. Maybe the enormity of the stress and my chronic insomnia will cancel each other out. Maybe I’ll fall into peaceful, fretless sleep and have sweet dreams. I’m only losing my livelihood and home, it could be worse. I could have the flesh-eating disease. As far as bad things happening, this is bad, but you know, uh, I could have the flesh eating disease.
Maybe I should have some warm milk with a shot of rum. Wait - I don't drink. Remember that.
June 11, 2007. 11:55 A.M.
Dear Diary. I just woke up! I went to bed at midnight and slept solidly, the whole night through. Without meds! So this is what it’s like to be clear headed and rested. If I could manage a coma like this once every couple of weeks, I think I’ll be fine. I have nothing else to lose. But sleep.
Dear Diary. Or should I call you a journal? I think journal sounds more mature somehow. What do you think? I can’t decide. Why don’t we just leave it for now.
My bedside clock says it’s 3:45 A.M. Wait – now it’s 3:46 A.M. I’ll have to be awake in another three hours. I’m debating whether or not to get up and do something productive like vacuum or drywall. I’ll debate another hour and exhaust myself into a twitchy semi-consciousness. Sounds like a plan.
I know why kids are afraid of the dark. In the void they see the spectre of their future as monsters and goblins. Adults know these spectres as loans officers and employers. Fear looms larger in a darkened room. Your own inevitability is clear.
Maybe I should have some milk.
July 6 2007. 4:25 A.M.
Dear Journal. Hmm. I kinda like “Dear Diary” better. “Dear Journal” sounds too 1984ish, too bureaucratic. What ever happened to the Orwellian predictions of 1984? I suppose brutal conformity did happen. Everyone wore pastels.
Mortimer at work said I did a good job on the report. What did he mean by that? What was he getting at? I don’t trust him. He has crystals in his office. He has an office. It’s all a ruse to trick me into a false sense of security. I’m on contract for God’s sake, I could be out the door in a second, panhandling on Yonge street with punk kids from Richmond Hill. Or worse, I could be doing amateur night at a stand-up comedy club. I have an idea. I’ll smile more often. I’ll walk down the corridors, smiling. All the time. My co-workers will either think I’ve been promoted to a staff position or I’ve gone insane. Flip of the coin.
Maybe I should have some warm milk.
July 7, 2007. 5:12 A.M
Dear Journal/Diary. Can’t sleep, but for a solid reason. The people upstairs are blaring techno and “whooing”. ‘Tis the season. Then again, every couple of nights is the season for them. It sounds like one of the party guests upstairs is either throwing up or having sex. It’s been so long for me it’s hard to tell the difference. They say having sex helps you sleep. That’s the way I used to sell it to my ex-husband. Maybe that’s why he’s my ex.
Maybe I should go knock on the neighbour’s door, not to tell them to keep it down, but to be louder. If I’m up, I’m up.
July 8, 2007. 2:57 A.M.
Dear Diary/Journal. Sometimes you just can’t sleep. They say women are biologically lighter sleepers that men. We always have an eye and ear open in case a baby cries. I have an eye and ear open for my own crying. My eyes feel like they’re calcifying. I’m so tired I can feel my skeleton turning to wire. Electricity darts under my eyelids. When I do manage to fall asleep, it’s invariably on public transportation. A passenger usually jostles me because I’ve drooled on their shoulder. Maybe that’s what I should do now – get on the streetcar! The mundane anguish will lull me.
July 9, 2007 3:54 A.M
Dear Diarnal. Get it – Diarnal? I’ve mixed Diary and Journal to form a Diarnal. Sounds like a sleeping pill. July 9th sounds like a sleeping pill. My adrenal glands must look like pillows by now. How can one person have so many stress hormones. And what’s with my pituitary gland? Isn’t it where melatonin is produced or whatever the hell hormone helps you sleep? I can’t keep track of my glands. Mortimer at work suggested I do yoga. What’s he getting at? What does it matter? The earth is scorched, the sun is angry, the environment is turning to dust. Then why does it feel like winter? Am I hot or cold? I’m confused. Screw people and their cars – they’re killing the planet. I don’t want stuff – I want other people to have stuff I can rent. My brain is a centrifuge of obsession, an amusement park ride that won’t stop.
July 10, 2007. 4:21 A.M.
Hey. Monday, or Tuesday morning. No, Tuesday. Good news. I’ve been let go from the office and my new landlord is moving into my apartment. Most people would lose sleep over this, but it doesn’t affect my nocturnal habits one bit. This news would kill a person accustom to eight hours of uninterrupted slumber, but not me. I feel great.
I’m hoping this crisis will have the reverse effect on me. Maybe the enormity of the stress and my chronic insomnia will cancel each other out. Maybe I’ll fall into peaceful, fretless sleep and have sweet dreams. I’m only losing my livelihood and home, it could be worse. I could have the flesh-eating disease. As far as bad things happening, this is bad, but you know, uh, I could have the flesh eating disease.
Maybe I should have some warm milk with a shot of rum. Wait - I don't drink. Remember that.
June 11, 2007. 11:55 A.M.
Dear Diary. I just woke up! I went to bed at midnight and slept solidly, the whole night through. Without meds! So this is what it’s like to be clear headed and rested. If I could manage a coma like this once every couple of weeks, I think I’ll be fine. I have nothing else to lose. But sleep.
Tuesday, June 12, 2007
Kickin' the Bucket
“My father died.”
My best friend’s voice was flat. Clutching the receiver, I sighed. Although it’s presumptuous to say I know how she felt, I did know how she felt. Fourteen years ago my own father dropped dead while driving his car. The shock of losing a parent I had just talked to a day earlier kept me numb for weeks.
“Uh huh.”
Now, I know the weather is nice and everyone’s out inline skating or catching festivals or calling in sick to work, but, in fact, death does not take a holiday. Death can happen at the most inopportune times, like when you’re stuck in traffic or when you’re walking to the store for a litre of milk or when you’re having sex. Every now and then I’ll be on the subway, perusing that Metro rag, trying not to look at people, when I’ll gaze over the heads of passengers and think, "I am going to die. And I don’t know when".
“Gotta find a flight back.”
“Try American.”
No hysterics, no sobbing and weeping. This was a time for logistics, of organizing a far flung family and hastily putting together a service and an interment. To complicate matters, my friend’s father married three times.
She caught a milk run from Louisiana, while her brother drove up from Virginia and her two other siblings drove in from Montreal. As per her father’s wishes, the body was cremated immediately. Sitting in the beige pews of a middling funeral home in Kitchener on a Wednesday afternoon, my friend and I stared at a photo of her father propped up against the urn.
“My brother’s going to speak.”
“Ah, yes.”
Her brother is an evangelical Christian preacher and, most decidedly, the black sheep of the family.
“He better not…start.”
“There there.”
Several of my friends have lost family members in the last month. I went to my first Shiva last week. I found the evening poignant. Members of my friend’s synagogue led the prayers. And I thought French was hard to understand. I think I was the only goy there. I felt privileged to be invited, to witness this communal sharing of grief. Ritual, whether you believe in what is being said or not, connects us to each other and to history. My own father was barely mentioned at his own funeral. Now that’s old school. No one person is bigger than the resurrection in the R.C tradition. Eulogies are for cry babies.
As we listened to a cheesy rendition of Amazing Grace on the organ, I thought about how my friend must have felt looking at the urn that housed the ashes of her six foot, seven inch father. Five months ago they were fishing in Algonquin Park.
The eldest brother blubbered through a rambling tribute than ran well over 30 minutes. Then the preacher brother spoke. My friend rolled her eyes at her sister, who also rolled her eyes. I admire my friend’s militant secularism, but felt I had to pay attention to her brother, seeing how I would be one of the only people in the small chapel to do so. Her brother (at one time the preacher to the Montreal Expos) launched into a passionate sermon. He knew his scripture, the boy did. He also made everyone squirm. At one point my friend grabbed my arm and loudly whispered “when will this end?” I patted her arm and stifled a yawn.
The service concluded and my friend bolted toward the door for a smoke. This is modern dying, the secular and the sacred jockeying for position, families and friends struggling with their beliefs or lack of belief, or indifference. Meanwhile the deceased is off somewhere, or nowhere, or like City TV, everywhere. Fin.
I call my friend often to see how she’s doing. To my surprise, she never mentions her father. Her grief will come eventually, through a soft summer breeze or a smile from her daughter. It will hit her hard, this transient mystery. Maybe then she’ll develop a gentle tolerance for her brother.
My best friend’s voice was flat. Clutching the receiver, I sighed. Although it’s presumptuous to say I know how she felt, I did know how she felt. Fourteen years ago my own father dropped dead while driving his car. The shock of losing a parent I had just talked to a day earlier kept me numb for weeks.
“Uh huh.”
Now, I know the weather is nice and everyone’s out inline skating or catching festivals or calling in sick to work, but, in fact, death does not take a holiday. Death can happen at the most inopportune times, like when you’re stuck in traffic or when you’re walking to the store for a litre of milk or when you’re having sex. Every now and then I’ll be on the subway, perusing that Metro rag, trying not to look at people, when I’ll gaze over the heads of passengers and think, "I am going to die. And I don’t know when".
“Gotta find a flight back.”
“Try American.”
No hysterics, no sobbing and weeping. This was a time for logistics, of organizing a far flung family and hastily putting together a service and an interment. To complicate matters, my friend’s father married three times.
She caught a milk run from Louisiana, while her brother drove up from Virginia and her two other siblings drove in from Montreal. As per her father’s wishes, the body was cremated immediately. Sitting in the beige pews of a middling funeral home in Kitchener on a Wednesday afternoon, my friend and I stared at a photo of her father propped up against the urn.
“My brother’s going to speak.”
“Ah, yes.”
Her brother is an evangelical Christian preacher and, most decidedly, the black sheep of the family.
“He better not…start.”
“There there.”
Several of my friends have lost family members in the last month. I went to my first Shiva last week. I found the evening poignant. Members of my friend’s synagogue led the prayers. And I thought French was hard to understand. I think I was the only goy there. I felt privileged to be invited, to witness this communal sharing of grief. Ritual, whether you believe in what is being said or not, connects us to each other and to history. My own father was barely mentioned at his own funeral. Now that’s old school. No one person is bigger than the resurrection in the R.C tradition. Eulogies are for cry babies.
As we listened to a cheesy rendition of Amazing Grace on the organ, I thought about how my friend must have felt looking at the urn that housed the ashes of her six foot, seven inch father. Five months ago they were fishing in Algonquin Park.
The eldest brother blubbered through a rambling tribute than ran well over 30 minutes. Then the preacher brother spoke. My friend rolled her eyes at her sister, who also rolled her eyes. I admire my friend’s militant secularism, but felt I had to pay attention to her brother, seeing how I would be one of the only people in the small chapel to do so. Her brother (at one time the preacher to the Montreal Expos) launched into a passionate sermon. He knew his scripture, the boy did. He also made everyone squirm. At one point my friend grabbed my arm and loudly whispered “when will this end?” I patted her arm and stifled a yawn.
The service concluded and my friend bolted toward the door for a smoke. This is modern dying, the secular and the sacred jockeying for position, families and friends struggling with their beliefs or lack of belief, or indifference. Meanwhile the deceased is off somewhere, or nowhere, or like City TV, everywhere. Fin.
I call my friend often to see how she’s doing. To my surprise, she never mentions her father. Her grief will come eventually, through a soft summer breeze or a smile from her daughter. It will hit her hard, this transient mystery. Maybe then she’ll develop a gentle tolerance for her brother.
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