MONDOmagazine

By Heather Loney

During a particularly grueling soccer match last night, my coach was giving our team a half-time inspirational talk, mainly reiterating that we needed to put physical pressure on our much larger opponents, that we needed to be strong and not cower away from them. This talk of course made me think of what every soccer player thinks about during a half-time inspirational talk -- French Existentialism.

The first tenant of Existentialism is that existence precedes essence -- you exist first, and then are thrust into a world where your choices determine your course in life, your personality, and your “essence”. Sartre explains that a person is not essentially a coward, for example. There is no larger power creating humans, where one is to be a hero, the other a coward, and so on. Rather, a human becomes a ‘coward’ by making cowardly choices.

This got me thinking: does this mean that I’m not a surly pessimist essentially? That I can choose to be something else? Well then, my first choice towards becoming a little less surly is to buy a bitching ladies cruiser bicycle.

It is a thing of beauty. It’s from the ’70s, and not like “’70s style new bike”, but actually made in the 1970s. It’s bright blue, avec basket and bugle horn. It transports me back to an age where adventure and freedom were as close as the sidewalk, and the crotch-bruising caused by the bike seat was a sacrifice you were willing to make. If you are ever feeling a little sour, trust me, this is the bike for you. When riding it I feel free (which I am), young (which I used to be) and most importantly, French (which I could have been, had I been born in France). And the anguish that comes with being a human responsible for life as we know it suddenly doesn’t seem so weighty.

As I cycle past people in their cars, coming home from work, loosening their ties, sighing as the traffic slows their arrival home yet again, I wonder how long I will continue to live this freely, avoiding the distracting routines of career – marriage – family. How long can I ignore the disapproving glances of people in cafés on hurried lunch breaks, as I causally sit and write and sip coffee? How long can I get away with telling inquirers that I just graduated from university (approaching 3 years now…)? As I speed past a smiling kid on his 18-speeder, I yell out in joyful defiance, “ONE. MORE. YEAR!” As I ride into the sunset, fist-pumping the air, I realize that it’s the best choice I’ve made in months.

By Sam Linton

LOLcats. Laugh out loud funny, yes? LOLcats are pictures of ordinary housecats with ridiculous captions written in pidgin English, to great humourous effect. To most, they are a simple diversion from the banality of everyday living. But those few of us who know have another name for these sorrowful creatures: “the fallen.” For you see, these “laugh-out-loud cats” were not always figures of ridicule and amusement. In ages past, cats were believed to be amongst the most sagacious of beasts. What brought about their current decline in stature? The answer is to be found here, in yet another installment of…

Myths of the Internet!

Cats. In ancient Egypt, cats were revered as a goddesses. Other cultures also held a special place for felines: in Europe, they were known as witches’ familiars, companions in knowledge that humankind simply was not meant to know. And cats are significant in some Asian cultures as well.

Cats have long fascinated people with their apparent mythic insights into the unknowable. Now they talk in baby voices and ask for “cheezburgers.” How did this happen? And, more importantly, how will future generations recognize this, the moment when cats were robbed of their mythic qualities? That’s where we come in. Those of us belonging to the present must preserve the past for the inhabitants of the future.

Once the Internet inevitably ceases to be, be this through nuclear holocaust, rapture of God, or Avian flu (my money’s on the bird flu), we will have to rely on the tradition of oral storytelling. Thus, as you read this story, try to imagine yourself somewhere other than in front of a radiating computer screen. Imagine the tale as it would be related by a tribal elder or village storyteller, recounting legends of long ago by the light of a dying fire in the twilight of civilization. And now we can begin…

As the saying goes, curiosity killed the cat. At the dawning of the Age of the Internet, this saying proved to be disastrously prophetic. For ages, the cat was known for its mysteriousness, lending to the fabled animal an air of superiority, wisdom, and aristocracy. However, it was the characteristic of curiosity that inevitably led to the downfall of the cat.

Cats were intrigued by the Internet. It seemed to promise global access to information, and the cats’ curiosity was piqued. However, by nature cats are also secretive, and therefore they mistrusted the Internet’s vast gaze. If the cats were able to use the net to sate their curiosity about the world, would not the reverse be true?

But Internet was a crafty foe, and he knew the cats’ one true weakness: vanity. To the cats he proposed that they give themselves over to the Internet’s domain and learn all that they ever needed to know to satisfy their curiosity. In turn they would be presented on the Internet such that the entire globe might bask in their elegant magnificence. To this, the cats readily agreed. After all, cats had been revered in Egyptian and (sort of) revered in European circles since time immemorial. What could be better than an entire globe of worshippers? However, crafty Internet neglected to mention one important detail: total access. By consigning themselves to Internet’s domain, the cats had agreed to abide by Internet’s rules. In so doing, the cats had sealed their own doom, for in the domain of the Internet, everything one does, however embarrassing, foolish, or demeaning, is not only preserved, but popularized (see also: The Legends of the Lightsabre Kid, Leave Britney Alone Guy and Obama Girl). Suddenly, everything that the cats did to sate their curiosity, from sleeping on computer monitors (will this feel comfortable?) to becoming trapped in couch cushions (what’s under here?), was preserved and broadcast for all to see. How can one maintain an aura of mystery under such conditions? Simply put, one cannot. And thus the ancient and noble race of cats were denigrated to the level of the LOLcat, robbed of their intrigue and made into objects of fun by the clever machinations of Internet, king of all tricksters.

The lesson of the LOLcats bears much to think upon and is certainly worth preserving for the future. The twin dangers of curiosity and vanity will no doubt plague our descendants in the robot-ravaged battlegrounds of the future. Will our children’s children succumb to the silver-tongued entreaties of cyborgs? Will they trust every aspect of their lives to increasingly intelligent machines and feel secure in their inherent “mastery” until the day that Skynet kicks in and decides humanity is obsolete? Will the children of the feral bands of future-survivalists allow their own curiosity to overcome them and wander from the safety of their units, only to be consumed by waves of irradiated bird-flu zombies? Not if they heed the lessons of the LOLcats and temper their vanity and curiosity with the instincts of self-preservation. With any luck, the mythologizing of LOLcats could spare the denizens of the future a great deal of harm and heartache.

So remember, please, for the sake of the future, to print these articles off. Hand them down to your children, your children’s children, and your children’s children’s children, that the lessons of our times will not be lost.

Steph Perkins is an organized thinker. She can figure out the twist endings to M. Night Shyamalan movies within the first three scenes. Trust her advice.

Q- My best friend is stuck in what I consider to be a bad relationship. She is hell-bent on giving this guy endless chances to screw her over. She says she “understands” him and that she believes in the relationship, but I’ve seen her hurt by him so many times that I can no longer stand him. I’m about at my wit’s end! How do I be a supportive friend to her when I am completely against her decision to stay with him?

Wow, that is tough. And you’re going to need to be tough. While I don’t think you have to support her choice, I do think you have to support her.

I believe it is your duty here to suck it up. Yes, it’s all very frustrating and even painful for you to see your friend put herself in this position, but try and remember this isn’t about you. It’s her choice, regardless of whether it’s a good or bad one. We ALL make bad calls—you know you have, too. We all eventually learn from our mistakes, and we all eventually make it out alive. However this turns out, your pal is going to need you. She needs to know you’ll be there if something does indeed go wrong again. And you should be there.

You can make your case known, but don’t abandon your friend on this. Check in with her so she knows you are open to talking about it. Don’t shut her out, and don’t make it hard for her to talk to you about him. If she doesn’t want to let him go, she’s not going to. Isn’t it important to know where your friend’s at rather than to ban the subject because you don’t approve? It’s unfair to put her in a position where she thinks she has to choose; besides, she’s going to learn from her own choices, not from your attempt to make a point.

We all have different ways of being a good friend. One person may find it difficult to be supportive of an unstable relationship, but they may in turn be amazing at offering advice on how to let someone down easy, or they may be just the person to turn to for tough love (which we all need at some time). Not understanding what the hell your friend is thinking doesn’t make you a bad friend. I think it’s still possible to be loving, supportive, and on-hand while at the same time being honest about your misgivings. You just have to be patient and selfless and open-minded at the same time. Simple, right?

So you’ve taken my enlightened advice and decided to be cool about this, but still you sincerely dislike the guy. Not only has this jerk-off hurt your best friend, but he’s hurt YOU by doing so. Again, this is a good time to remember this is not about you and a good time to take the high road. You don’t have to be friends with him, but I’m sure you can find it somewhere in you to be civil. You don’t have to go on double dates, but you also don’t have to give him the stink eye every time you end up in the same place. You don’t have to forgive him if you aren’t ready to, but remember that your friend HAS forgiven him for now, so do HER a favour and make peace in some way. This is all for her, remember. As ’sure’ as you are now, you never know how you might feel about him in a little while if you just chill out for a second.

You just want her to be happy, right? If giving this guy another chance makes her happy, then I think you need to focus on that. She obviously wants to work out their problems and believes that they are workable. Maybe she feels she owes it to herself and the relationship to try. That’s her biznass, isn’t it? If she gets hurt, she gets hurt, she grows, and she moves on. If this is what she wants, I think you have to allow her to have it. And try not to be a totally huge dink about it, because you love her and that’s more  important than any guy.

In this article ,”conservative” is used synonymously with “prejudiced.” A double-edged sword?

By Ben Robinson

Two weeks ago, I wrote an article with some questionable humour in it. A reader named Dasha posted a comment that said I had crossed the line. I had offended Dasha. That was not my intent. Here is what I wrote:

“Maybe if you had said you had just hit your girlfriend because she wouldn’t shut up about being on her period, you would be allowed to continue to exist spiritually with your brethren, but owning a blog — and what’s worse, advertising its existence — were capital crimes.”

This is Dasha’s response:

“Good point about blogging; I agree. Although I’m not at all crazy about the reference to violence against women as an acceptable conversation topic. It is my understanding that this was a joke, but it was a stupid one indeed, one that might alienate a sizable portion of your audience. Keep that in mind, son.”

The point of my paragraph was that violence against women is unacceptable. More accurately, the point was that talking about it is unacceptable. When writing this, I thought to myself, “What is something one could say that would be so shocking that one might not be allowed to continue to speak?” Violence against women sprung to mind. I did not mean to imply that violence against women, or talking about violence against women, is acceptable. I meant to mention something taboo as a way of illustrating how taboo blogging was. The joke was that blogging isn’t as bad as violence against women. The joke was not that violence against women is funny.

Inside the joke about how talking about violence against women is unacceptable, a joke is made about violence against women that is unacceptable, and the unacceptable nature of the joke within the joke is what makes the main joke humourous. I apologize that reading my article brought up something that evoked such a negative reaction in Dasha, and possibly other readers. My intent was not to offend. I encourage more comments about how I sometimes cross the line and how I can prevent myself from doing so in the future.

I consider myself a comedy junkie. I watch a lot of comedy. A relatively new style of comedy that I have noticed in the past ten years is something I will refer to as “The Double-Edged Sword.” This may be a very old technique, but I have only noticed it in comedic media that has appeared since the late ’90s. The Double-Edged Sword is a bipartisan style of humour that typically deals with political correctness. In my mind, it was pioneered by Trey Parker and Matt Stone, creators of South Park. It was also employed by The Man Show and to a lesser extent other youth-oriented comedy shows such as Politically Incorrect, Sara Silverman, SNL, and MadTV.

How it works is this: someone says something blantently racist, sexist, or homophobic as a joke. To liberals, the joke is funny because the joke is so offensive. The butt of the joke is the teller of the joke. The fact that the teller is being unashamedly racist, for example Cartman in South Park, is funny because racism to liberals is seen as a sign of stupidity. It is a form of slapstick. On the other hand, to conservatives, Cartman is funny because he’s being racist, and the butt of the joke is the category of people Cartman makes fun of. Both liberals and conservatives laugh at the same joke, for different reasons.

In my opinion, what politicizes the joke is the person telling it. It seems to me, most comedians who use The Double-Edged sword are liberals. That’s how the sword gets its two edges. If a conservative told a Double-Edged joke, it would be purely racist, sexist, or homophobic. The true intention of a Double-Edged joke is to make fun of prejudiced views. The power of the Double-Edged joke is that no spin is necessary, a straight telling of the old kind of joke is funny because it is ironic.

If I may be so bold, I told a Double-Edged joke in my blogging article. I think a lot of people tell these Double-Edged jokes, but they are usually apolitical. For instance, if you act like a baby, and try to make someone laugh the exact same way a baby would, that is funny both because baby humour is genuinely funny, and because you are not a baby, so you are making fun of the baby. The goal of these jokes is to make the original edge of the joke seem stupid. If you are Cartman, you are making racism stupid by being racist. If you are a baby, you are making babies stupid by being a baby. Or more accurately, you are making adult baby-aping behaviour seem stupid and unacceptable outside the confines of a joke.

Perhaps this kind of joke is dangerous. Maybe it shouldn’t be done, because the wounds are still fresh. But I believe The Double-Edged Sword has an important place in modern comedy. I believe it is an effective tool in combatting prejudice. In the future I will try to make more clear whose side I am on when using this humour. And I apologize if just reading about abuse against women was offensive. I apologize for your hurt feelings. I guess what I’m trying to say is, I want to be on your side.

Foodstuffs’ hippest young hypocrite with another hit!

By Leo K. Moncel

Attentive internauts may notice that in the previous column, I expressed my opinion that we all need to eat less meat and implied I was working on it myself. So why have I turned around and run out to eat at an establishment called the Chinese Beef Lamb House?

Even more attentive readers may recall that the first paragraph of last week’s column was about how I’m really big on traditional cuisines. Basically, when I heard there was a good Chinese-Muslim restaurant in the GTA, I had no choice but to put my eat-less-meat reform on pause and get on the hated purple subway line to Scarborough to gorge myself with some good friends.

Plopped in the middle of a dismal strip mall, the ridiculously bright signage of the Chinese Beef Lamb House advertises the restaurant’s Halal status. Inside, the décor is a style I’d call pastoral-cartoony and fairly tacky in that endearing Chinese restaurant way. The huge dining room is clearly meant to accommodate large social functions. It’d be ill-fitting for an early date, but it’s perfectly good for eating with a number of friends.

The menu is, of course, heavy on beef and lamb. If you are seeking chicken or seafood, they are on the menu and I imagine they are good, but between the six of us, we felt there was enough to explore without even getting into it and still have a greatly varied meal – and we weren’t even adventurous enough to go in for the offal.

We began with the requisite Jasmine tea and watery draft beer. At eight dollars a pitcher, I was not complaining.

The first dish to arrive, our lonely vegetable, was cucumbers with garlic. In this recipe, one of the few raw vegetable dishes that is often seen on the Chinese table, the cucumber is smashed with the side of a cleaver, soaked in a salty garlic dressing with a bit of vinegar and sesame oil, then topped with fresh coriander. This light dish was an instant favourite and became more popular as we received the heavier dishes to come.

Next arrived two lamb “pancakes”, little sandwich-like foodstuffs where chunks of slightly fatty lamb meat rest between two pitas about the size of a compact disc cut in quarters. It was simple and scrumptious and the only dilemma was how to split eight pieces between our five meat-eaters.

Next, we received two orders of lamb with cumin. I was skeptical, but a friend who had dined here before insisted that two orders would be an absolute necessity. This seems to be a hallmark Muslim-Chinese dish: a Chinese cooking style is applied to ingredients typical of a Middle Eastern-Islamic tradition. The beautiful smelling stir-fry consisted of a goodly pile of thin-sliced lamb fried with onions, green onions, and, I do not exaggerate, at least four tablespoons of whole cumin seeds. A light, salty brown sauce with a hint of chili held the swarm of cumin seeds to the lamb. Two dishes just barely covered us; this intensely flavoured dish was agreed to be the highlight of the meal.

Our vegetarian friend, who was warned what he was getting into by the restaurant’s very name, ordered tofu with chili pepper, a dish of thin tofu skins covered luxuriously with a garlicky sauce and fresh green chilies sliced lengthwise. We didn’t steal too much from him, but it was tempting.

For our starch, we skipped rice and got a large flatbread that was erroneously identified as “sesame pancake”. It was sweet and chewy and covered in sesame seeds like a giant, disc-shaped Montreal bagel.

Another delicious starch dish is the stir-fried homemade noodles. Large ribbons about the width of a thumb with a slightly sweet sauce topped with thin slices of onion, carrot and lamb.

We also got four beef-filled buns, each almost the size of a hockey puck and filled with oily, well-salted minced beef. I found them just a little too oily for my liking, but tasty nonetheless.

The hot and sour soup was fairly ordinary, and though it was chock-full of strands of egg and soft tofu, the thickened soup suffered in comparison with extraordinary flavours of the other dishes.

After our meal concluded, we paused a moment. Yes, we were full, but we weren’t completely stuffed, and the joy of eating was just too strong to be halted yet. We picked up the menu once more and settled on a plate of sesame beef. This dish — slivers of sesame seed-topped beef stacked on pale cabbage confetti — was a beauty to behold. The sauce was a typical red sweet and sour affair, but not so gloopy, and tasty to be sure. The most marvelous part was the texture. I suspect the meat was deep-fried on a low heat without batter until it was fall-apart-in-your-mouth tender with just a bit of external crispness, like well-done ribs.

All-in-all I must say that eating at the Chinese Beef Lamb House was one of the best dining experiences I’ve ever had in this city. The service was dependable and the cost was really reasonable – main dishes start at $7.99 and max out at $12.99. The portions are not huge, but this place definitely doesn’t skimp where it counts. Side dishes like the cucumber, the buns and pancakes are around $4.99 – $7.99. The whole meal was only $16 each after tax and tip. The biggest problem, of course, is that it’s in Scarborough. Well, really, I’m glad it’s in Scarborough, or else I’d probably quadruple my meat consumption and never be able to unpause my little eat-less-meat reform. If you have an interest in Chinese food or even Middle-Eastern food, I cannot recommend this place highly enough.

The Chinese Beef Lamb House is presently located at 668 Silver Star Blvd, Scarborough, M1V 5N1.

For more information, check the listing at QQEat.ca (link: http://qqeat.ca/search/show.php?id=291)

There ain’t no awkward conversation like South African awkward conversation!

By Alex Meyers

[For most of 2007, Alex Meyers worked as a volunteer for an AIDS education charity in South Africa, transplanting himself from his native Toronto. This story was written during that stay and has only now been released to the public. Enjoy! -Ed.]

It was like an afternoon out of “Suburban Motel”. [We at MONDO encourage references to obscure pieces of Canadiana. -Ed again.] I wish someone had been there to verify my story because by tomorrow I might not believe it happened at all.

So I’m sitting on a wall in Libode Town when I am approached by a weary-looking white man. This is quite unusual; I am not aware of any other white people living in the area.

“You a backpacker?” he plunges in without a greeting.

“No, I work in the rural Mphangana location.”

“You are the first white person I’ve seen around here in five months.”

“Do you live in Libode, sir?”

“I’m not ’sir’. That’s an English title. I am a baron. Baron von Braun. You can call me Andre.”

“Pleased to meet you, Bar- Andre.” We shake hands. His face is lined with age and his sandy thinning hair is buzz-cut short. I guess him to be in his late fifties. He wears a faded blue polo shirt tucked into his jeans. He carries a nylon gym bag.

“It has been five months since I’ve seen a white face in Libode,” he tells me again. “What do you do around here?”

“Oh, work with the young people and in the school talking about HIV and other sexual diseases.”

“Uh-huh. Do you want to come to my place? I have some beer. I just live above the bar.”

A strange man is offering me beer if I go to his house. I shrug my shoulders. “Yeah, sure. Lead the way.”

He leads me through the front doors of the little Grosvenor Hotel, the only hotel in town. For Libode, it is actually a pretty nice place. I have been in here before. The washrooms have cold and hot running water. Apparently they rent out rooms on a more permanent basis. As we walk up the stairs, Andre tells me that he knows every shabeen (shabeen – a 24-hour bar; misery lives here) and cab driver in town. I act impressed. At the end of the hallway we stop outside room number nine.
The only pieces of furniture in the small hotel room are a double bed and a pair of low bedside tables. The room is neat. A TV sits in a metal frame bolted to the wall. A box from Pie City sits on the TV. Below the TV are stacked a VCR, DVD player, and an ancient-looking microwave. In one corner of the room a fishing rod leans against the wall, and a neat stack of Penthouse magazines sit on the floor. A toaster occupies space on one bedside table. Through a door I see the washroom. The room is on the second floor, with a small balcony overlooking the bustling main road below.

“This is my permanent residence,” Andre tells me with a proud gesture around the room. “I got everything I need right here. I got my own TV. I can heat up my pies in the microwave. Take a seat,” he says waving to the neatly made bed. He rustles in the gym bag and produces two 750mL bottles of Carling Black Label.

“Are you South African, Andre?” I ask as he hands me a beer.

“No, I’m Irish, but I was born here and have spent the last twenty years here. I carry an Irish passport.”

“And what do you do here in Libode?”

“I’m an electrical engineer.” Andre goes to the closet and comes back with what seem to be electric trade magazines. “I’ve been searching on the internet for nine months and I’ve finally found it.”
He starts handing me internet print-outs of some sort of technical diagram. The words ‘John Thomas Henry – AMPLIFIER’ appear at the top of the page. This must be the ‘it’ that my host has been searching for. Andre is spouting technical jargon that means nothing to me. He becomes disgruntled; apparently my face does not express a suitable amount of admiration.

“You’ve never heard of the John Thomas Henry amplifier?”

“Uh, no, sorry. Should I have?”

“The man is a genius. He revolutionized electrical engineering.”

When I ask what type of work he is doing currently, he says with disgust that he is preparing for Nelson Mandela’s inevitable funeral at Qumu, Mandela’s childhood home.

“This grotesque operation involves hundreds of workers, thousands of lights and miles of fiber optic and electrical cables. When he eventually dies it will be the biggest, most elaborate televised funeral in history. It will be bigger than Churchill, bigger than Kennedy, bigger than Princess Diana.”

“All these preparations for a man who isn’t even dead yet.”

“Yes, exactly! If you were him how would you feel watching all these people digging your fucking grave?”

“It is rather morbid. But I guess they couldn’t just start setting things up after he dies. Not with the size of event he will receive.”

“What if his family just wants a small family service in his local church?”

“I guess it’s too late for that.”

Andre then starts complaining about the ineptitude of the black men who work for him at the funeral site.

“They wasted an entire afternoon delivering a tea kettle to Libode. They could have taken it on the way home. FUCK. Helen Keller could follow directions better!” he declares. “You know who Helen Keller is, don’t you?”

“Deaf, blind and mute, right?”

“Very good. But listen, I’m not racist.”

I have to stop myself from adding, “Yes, only when I’m drunk,” on his behalf.

“I’ve spent twenty years in this country and I’m the only person who doesn’t feel hatred. You and I know that when we walk down the street all these black people think…” he gestures out the balcony, “What do they think?”

“Um…That we have money?”

“They all think we’re rich. They beg ‘One rand, sir,’ or ‘Just two rand sir,’ or ‘Please, sir, a cigarette’…”

“I just ignore them.”

“…I tell them to fuck off. You wanna learn about the white man’s side of apartheid?” This is clearly a rhetorical question. I get the feeling that I am going to learn whether I want to or not.

“I want to show you a video.”

Andre opens a door in the bedside table and gets out a stack of VHS tapes. I wonder if he is going to show me some underground, pro-apartheid propaganda film. He turns the TV on. Coincidentally, the first image we see is Nelson Mandela. SABC is broadcasting events marking the 1000 day countdown to the start of the 2010 Soccer World Cup which will be hosted by South Africa.

The first tape he puts in looks like a South African soap opera. He tries other tapes, but none of them have the video he is looking for.

“Fuck. I must have recorded over them.” He gives up, sits down on the bed, and takes a swig of beer.

“Where are you from?”

“I’m from Canada.”

“Canada, eh? What part?”

“I’m from Toronto.”

“Hmm…Do you think I’ve ever been to Canada?”

“Umm… I really could not…”

“Lemme tell ya something…” (I am starting to get the feeling that Andre is starved for company and I can see why.) “…The love of my life, the girl I loved more than anyone else in the world, she moved to Vancouver.” Silence. I wonder if that’s the end of the story.

“So did you go after her?” I ask. My question awakens him from his reverie.

“What? Oh no, she met some new guy and had kids,” he says with surprising dispassion. “How old are you, Alex?”

“I’m twenty-one years old.”

“How old do you think I am?”

“Well, if I had to guess I’d say…”

“Lemme help you out. If you take your age and multiply by three I’m almost there. I’m sixty-three.” Andre takes this as the perfect opportunity to start telling me about his life while he paces the small room. He tells me about growing up in Liverpool, England, and pulls out a scrapbook to show me pictures of his childhood. He says that his aunt was friends with Paul McCartney’s mother and Paul gave Andre tickets to one of The Beatles’ very early shows, before they got big. Andre begins to quiz me on Beatles trivia.

“What was Ringo Starr’s name at birth? …Richard Strakey. Which Beatles have been knighted? …McCartney and George Harrison. What was the band’s original name…?”
When Andre finds my knowledge to be sorely lacking he gives me a lecture on Beatles history: “Did you know Ringo was selected as the drummer because he was the only one with a car?”

From Beatles trivia he goes on to tell me about his time as a roadie for Robert Plant, his trip to Woodstock, and his life as an aging hippy backpacker.

Watching him pace the room ranting on this and that, I have to suppress a smile because my new acquaintance reminds me of a high school substitute teacher who was only ever known as “The Drunken Irishman.”

I’m on my second beer and Andre is telling me about his time as a medic with the South African Defense Forces fighting the Cubans in Angola in the 1970s. Figure that one out:
-an IRISH citizen serving in the…
-SOUTH AFRICAN army in…
-ANGOLA, a former colony of…
-PORTUGAL, where they are fighting…
-CUBANS.
The Cold War was a messed up time. Andre even tells me that the Cubans were sponsored by Norway and Sweden, but I’ve never heard this angle, and I’m skeptical, although you never know who was sponsoring who in those days. Stranger things have happened. “Kid, have you ever heard of the Saturn-5 rocket?”

“No, I can’t say I ever have.”

“You ignorant fuck!” he screams. “The Saturn-5 rocket was the first spacecraft to – observe the dark side of the moon.”

“Like the Pink Floyd album?”

“Yes, exactly. See the Moon doesn’t rotate on its own axis like the Earth does. That’s why we only ever see the side facing us with the Sea of Tranquility.”

“That’s pretty cool. I never realized that before.”

He grunts. “So you’re Canadian, huh? I’ve got a movie you might like to watch. It’s really funny.”

Andre goes back to the bedside cabinet and, after rooting past some porn tapes, grabs another VHS. For half a second I thought it might be Canadian Bacon, though I’m not sure why. But no, I’m not that lucky. Instead it is Dudley Do-right, but it’s not even the original cartoon, but the Brendan Fraser remake. Dudley Do-Right seems like a strange pick for a sixty-three year old bachelor with a very limited movie collection.
Oddly enough I am just buzzed enough to laugh at the Canadian clichés. Alfred Molina (“Dr. Octopus”) makes a pretty good Snidely Whiplash. Once in a while, Andre casts me a glance to see if I am enjoying the movie as much as he clearly is, so I force an appreciative smile. I am pretty sure this would be a terrible movie if I were sober. (Who is this marketed to? Aging boomers who harbour fond memories of the original cartoon? Their dull-eyed, pudgy progeny who can’t get enough of watching Dudley fall out of his chair over and over again? Cynical, drunken, college students?)

I am sick of this, and I want to leave. Fortunately Andre relieves me of the need to excuse myself.
“I got a girl coming over at four, so you have to clear out soon.” I assume he means one of the local oysters. “There is one last thing I wanna show you.”

He leads me back out of the room and down the hall and unlocks a storage room. The shelves are cluttered with bits and pieces of broken electronic junk. Andre gigs out a box full of vinyl records. I start flipping through them and see records by The Doors, Pink Floyd, Led Zeppelin I, The Eagles, Black Sabbath, and Iron Maiden.

“Impressive collection. Do you think I could listen to them some time?”

“No.” Okay then, that’s my cue to leave.

I grab my backpack and head back out into the bright sunlight of the real world. If this really was “Suburban Motel,” at least one of us would have been crying or bleeding by the end of the afternoon.

Remember: chances are, your mom IS reading it.

By Ben Robinson

Time has passed. It is once again “in” to have a blog. I know this because of the way I was motivated to resume my own.

Blogs experienced a trend-overload a few years back. Once it became easy for the average person to own a blog, the blogosphere exploded and every moderate to heavy internet user out there was pontificating daily about their depressing, fucked up lives. And each one of them craved attention more than my six-year old niece who, coincidentally, I babysat last night. I am an only child, and the concept of having a young girl yearn for every second of my time was foreign to me until recently — but looking into her dark, souless eyes as she cried, “let’s play Barbie!”, I was reminded of the early days of blogging.

Blogs are a misleading adventure for the uninitated. People go into it thinking, “wow, I read newspaper articles all the time and discuss them with my friends. Now that I have a blog, I will be the columnist. I will be an underground sensation. People will hang on my every word. And every word will be about how much love I desperately need and how much love I am desperately not receiving.” The problem is, nobody likes to read blogs. People LOVE to write blogs, but reading a blog is a step below reading coupon ads while waiting for the bus. Thus came the backlash against the blogging phenomenon.

It came to the point where if you innocently mentioned that you owned a blog while interacting in civil company, you would be immediately pounced upon and excommunicated from further participation in mundane conversation. Maybe if you had said you had just hit your girlfriend because she wouldn’t shut up about being on her period, you would be allowed to continue to exist spiritually with your brethren, but owning a blog — and what’s worse, advertising its existence — were capital crimes.

I myself started blogging towards the beginning of this dark era of blogging history. I was in a writing course in my final year of high school and for some unfathomable reason, my writing was attracting the attention of the opposite sex. Oh, how I hate what women can do to you. These literary vixens ganged up on me and suggested that I join livejournal. (benjabol.livejournal.com btw) My head swelled three times the size of my heart and I gingerly stepped into the world of posting my feelings for everyone to see. I started off trying to be clever, hiding my true emotions as any self respecting human should on the internet. Then, once again, with ginger steps I forayed into saying what I really felt.

Immediately the literary vixens flooded me with comments of sympathy and, like a monkey introduced to crack cocaine, I was locked in a vice grip of self-mutilation. My posts became emo-er and emo-er, my self-indulgence became legendary, and craving the comments, needing to know that SOMEONE was listening to all this, I posted as often as my marijuana-soaked cerebellum allowed. My mental health began to deteriorate and I chronicled my decline for the world to see – including my parents.

After I got out of the hospital for the fourth time, I cut myself off. I was no longer being funny at all. I was squealing like a pig in heat in an empty room. I allowed my blog to die – incidentally, when one returns to livejournal after a period of absence, former patrons of your blog will post a comment along the lines of, “you’re alive!” This is more than just word play. Many blogs end with real life suicide. But I digress.

It is once again “in” to blog. I know this because the kind of anti-trendster friends who I am lucky enough to associate with are the ones who have brought me back to blogging. It has become so uncool to blog that people don’t really blog anymore. Therefore, it is cool to blog. I am locked in a competition with two of my anti-trendster friends who have taken up blogging and they say I am kicking their asses. I have experience on my side. They are stuck in the beginning stages of posting blog entries that are heavily structured and premediated, while I have resumed my old habits of barfing on the computer screen and calling it a post. Strangely, the shame formerly associated with this practice is gone. I receive positive feedback whether I post a 2000-word mini essay on Kant (which I don’t), or a 200-word cry-for-help snippet on how my feet have changed colour in the past three years.

For people new to blogging, I have this advice. Blog as if no one is reading. I doubt that I do this myself. 90% of your posts won’t get any comments. It is very easy to become a comment whore. If it makes you feel any better, there is probably at least one person reading your blog at any given time. If it makes you feel any worse, that one person is usually your mom. Just write for the sake of writing, as if — gasp — you were writing a real journal with pen and paper. Also, say no to drugs.

Until next time… Ben Robinson, signing off.

Steph Perkins is an organized thinker. If Alexander hadn’t already done it, she TOTALLY would have figured out that Gordian Knot puzzle on her own. Trust her advice.

Q: I have a really hard time relaxing and socializing in large groups and with new people. Do you have any tips on how to combat social awkwardness?

Do YOU have any tips on how to combat social awkwardness? I behave like a total loser in almost all social situations. But perhaps I can help you just the same; I know what I would tell myself if I wasn’t too mental to follow my own advice.

First off, people aren’t ever as “cool” as you think they are. I have a complex where I think everyone is cooler/smarter/funnier than I am. In most cases this is probably true, but that doesn’t mean anyone should be put up on some sort of coolness pedestal. Everyone has insecurities, baggage, weird things about themselves you’d never guess. But you have just as much to offer this conversation, this gathering, this world as anybody else, so don’t sell yourself short. It’s so easy to do, but try not to fall into that trap.

Open up a tiny bit. Now, this should be handled delicately—don’t be scary. No one needs to know about your foot fungus or penchant for vampire porn right off the bat. The person you just met doesn’t want to spend half an hour listening to you drone on about how your last relationship went down the shitter, either. But putting forth a little bit of personal information is a good way to come across as approachable and maybe even relatable. Take a baby step beyond standby topics like your job. For example, at a party a couple of weeks ago I confided in an acquaintance about how nervous I get talking to guys. We wound up having a great conversation, and I now feel as though I know her ten times better than I did up until that point. Success!

Ask questions. It took me a long time to catch onto this, but it WORKS, especially if you’re the type of person who tends to clam up when they’re nervous. It’s easy too because all you have to do is come up with the question, and then you get to sit back and listen. Start simply with obvious ones to get the ball rolling (ask who they know there or make an observation about something or someone in the room). Once you feel you’re loosening up, get creative with questions like: “What’s your favourite place you’ve ever traveled to?” or “What’s your favourite spot in the city?” or “What’s the last movie you saw?” Go broad: you never know where it may lead the conversation. You might try and get a little wacky for fun, too. I tend to stress out over being SCINTILLATING at all times, but that’s pretty much impossible, so my fallback is silly. I can be silly on a dime, and if it turns out you’re talking to someone who’s also silly, hello fun.

Have a drink. Yeah ok, I might have a problem, but it helps.

You basically need to take a big fat step out of your comfort zone. I can’t tell you how many social situations I’ve been in where I’ve had to escape to the bathroom, stare hard in the mirror, and convince myself to muster my balls and get back out there. I also can’t tell you how many times I have completely avoided talking to someone and regretted it later. You just have to go for it, be brave, and I GUARANTEE you will be surprised—not only by how easy it actually is, but by what you have in you.

A latter day Angkor Wat, apparently.

By Claire Brownell

If you’ve only heard of one thing about travelling in South East Asia, chances are it’s Koh Phagnan’s full moon party. The stuff of myths, lies, legends, and rumours. These giant monthly beach parties in the south of Thailand are a magnet for young travellers of the waste case variety. There’s a t-shirt sold in Thai souvenir shops that lists one of the “Ten Commandments of Backpackers” as “Thou shalt make a pilgrimage to a full moon party on Koh Phagnan at least once in your life.” And it’s true: Koh Phagnan takes on a Mecca-like quality for backpackers. I met people in Laos, Cambodia, and in the north of Thailand who swore that they had finally left the south for good, who then checked their calender and — discovering the full moon was in a few days — scrambled to book 36-hour bus trips back to Koh Phagnan in order to make another party. To hear people talk, South East Asia had two wonders of the world: Angkor Wat, and full moon on Koh Phagnan.

Koh Phagnan and its neighbouring islands actually experince a monthly high and low season based on the full moon. The hype surrounding it is about two-thirds positive and one-third negative. Prior to going myself, I couldn’t get much out of the people who loved it and kept going back except, “It’s amazing… you’ll love it… you have to go.”

The details on the negative side were more specific. There’s a huge market for drugs in a party environment like that, which means an equally huge opportunity for Thai police to take advantage of the country’s extremely strict anti-drug laws. Stories of bank accounts being emptied by people bailing their friends out of jail for thousands of dollars are common. Thefts also seem to happen more often than not; everyone I talked to seemed to have either gotten their wallet stolen on the beach or their bungalow broken into. Finally, there is the no fail equation of Excess Drinking + Stupidity = Disaster. An often quoted statistic that I believe to be true, but for which I have no reputable source whatsoever, is that at least one person dies every full moon party. Alcohol poisoning, drug overdose, drownings, drunk motorbike driving — the opportunities for biting the dust on Kho Phagnan are as limitless as human stupidity.

After finally experiencing it first hand, I give Koh Phagnan a mixed review. The things that are good about it are great, but the things that suck about it are truly awful.

I’ll start with the pros, and things that are awesome about Koh Phagnan:

1) PARTYING ON THE BEACH: Have you ever danced by the ocean in moonlight on a tropical island? Trust me, it’s nice. Haad Rin, the beach on Koh Phagnan where the action happens, is set up like one giant dance floor. Instead of being self-contained, the bars all open up onto the beach, with speakers directed outwards and fire shows grabbing people’s attention to the sand rather than to the indoors. This creates an environment that, in a weird way, reminds me more of bush parties and drinking in parks back in the day, than hanging out at a bar, complete with cops breaking it up when it gets too late or too rowdy. People bring their own liquor from the 7-11 or bucket stands and hop from bar to bar, mingling with everyone and creating impromptu groups. In fact, I don’t understand how the Haad Rin bars make money, because no one ever actually goes inside. I probably don’t want to know.

2) BUCKET STANDS: Lining the stretches of beach between bars are shoulder-to-shoulder stands selling buckets at bargain prices. I’ve discussed the beautiful and timeless tradition of selling drinks in buckets in South East Asia, but if you’re new, a bucket generally consists of ice, a mickey of your liquor of choice, a Redbull, pop, and fifteen zillion bendy straws, served in a plastic bucket complete with handle.

To differentiate the stands, they are painted with slogans such as “Fuckbucket,” “King Kong Bucket,” and “Jerusalem Bucket: Jesus’s Favourite.” Since they’re all selling the same product, the people working at the stands will reward you for customer loyalty with discounts and buy-two-get-one-free deals. Imagine, just imagine, if this was legal in Canada: no student would ever need a summer job again. It’s like a lemonade stand, but drunker and more fun.

3) YOU CAN ALWAYS FIND MUSIC YOU DON’T HATE: The lack of decent music has been a consistent gripe of mine from day one, and a major cause of homesickness. The entire South East Asian subcontinent has an unfortunate obsession with Sean Kingston and Shakira; “Suicidal” and “My Hips Don’t Lie” are heard about 800 times a day in stores, on the radio, and as cellphone ring tones. South East Asian pop music is a mostly horrible, if occasionally endearing, knock-off of boy bands and Céline Dion-style power ballads. Bars catering to foreigners tend to go for inoffensive mass appeal and play either Bob Marley and Oasis on repeat, or Justin Timberlake and the Black Eyed Peas if they’re trying to get people to dance.

Koh Phagnan, however, gets that not every traveller who’s into going out and dancing is into the same type of music, and a lot of the biggest partiers are into electronic music that you don’t hear on the radio. My stay on the island actually broadened my taste in music; I was convinced I hated house, when apparently I was just listening to the wrong stuff. The genius of the Haad Rin setup is that if you don’t like what one bar is playing, you can just walk a few feet to the next one, bringing your unfinished drink with you.

4) KOH PHAGNAN DOES WHATEVER THE HELL IT WANTS: The Thai police don’t joke around when it comes to drugs and serving drinks after hours (unless they’re making kickbacks and bribes, in which case they laugh all the way to the bank). Partying on Koh Phagnan, however, is the basis of most of the island’s economy. The locals fight for the right to party using a tactic I can only describe as large scale civil disobedience. Every night around two or three a.m., the bars and bucket stands start getting hassled by the cops to shut down, and every night they collectively ignore them. Since the police are outnumbered, there is only so much they can do if everyone just plain refuses to listen to them. By the time they get too persistent to be ignored, the party has winded down anyway.

In Koh Phagnan, alcohol is prohibited from being sold anywhere in the country the night before an election, to keep people from making their choice under the influence. (I love this concept: “Man, last night I got so shitfaced that I totally voted Conservative.”) This happened the night before the full moon party that I went to, so the bars just turned off their music and sold drinks using the “Pssst… hey fella… wanna buy a bucket?” system. Even though there were no lights and no music, hundreds of people were sitting on the beach, playing guitars, hanging out, and drinking. The scene could be interpreted as either a sad testament to alcoholism, or a political statement about resisting state power. If all those people were as committed to, oh say, environmentalism or nuclear disarmament as they are to drinking, we’d be set.

Having said that, here are the Things I Could Do Without on Koh Phagnan:

1) GETTING ROBBED IS 100% INEVITABLE: But actually, everyone gets robbed on Haad Rin. Either their bungalow gets broken into, or their purse, camera or wallet go missing on the beach. The combination of laughably easy to break into bungalows, and crowds of drunk people carrying wads of cash in dim lighting, make theft too easy and lucrative to resist for both locals and fellow travellers.

My friend Sadie had extra bad luck on this count. When our bungalow inevitably got broken into, she lost 5000 baht (about $165) in cash. Then, on the night of the full moon party, somebody poked her through the bars of the window of our friend’s room with a stick while she was napping. She doesn’t know why whoever it was did this, but assumes it was to see if there were valuables on the bed within reach, or to check for people sleeping before breaking in. Whatever the reason, she grabbed the stick, shook it at them, and yelled at the top of her lungs, scaring them away. The point is, there’s not much you can do except keep your valuables locked at reception and not carry a lot of cash around.

2) SLEAZY DUDES: Self explanatory. They’re everywhere in South East Asia, but there seems to be a disproportionate number of them on Koh Phagnan.

3) BLAMING EVERYTHING THAT GOES WRONG ON DRINKING AND DRUGS: In an effort to attract more “upscale” tourists, the police are stepping up their efforts to rein in Haad Rin’s anarchic, free-for-all atmosphere. It’s easy to convince people of the need for the crackdown by claiming that all this crazy partying is Unsafe! and Corrupting Our Youth! and the usual stuff like that. Obviously, drinking and drugs contribute to the high rate of accidents. In my opinion, however, there are three things that the cops and government could do that would be infinitely more effective in improving safety than forcing bars to stop playing music at two and charging kids extortionary fines for small drug offenses. These are:

• Invest in street lights so that it’s harder to pull people into the bushes and rob and/or rape them, and so that motorbikes can see people before they hit them
• Ban renting motorbikes to tourists. It seemed like every other person walking around had road rash scars, so just imagine how many people were in the hospital not walking around
• Put a cap on the amount that clinics can charge for emergency medical services. The clinic on the beach was well known for inflating fees to ridiculous levels if they thought you were desperate enough to pay it.

But the authorities won’t do any of the above, because it’s easier and more lucrative to shut the whole thing down so that older tourists with families and money won’t be scared away from the resorts.

Aside from the the general pros and cons, the only real difference between the full moon party and any other night on Haad Rin is that there are about ten times more people. Travel agencies on neighbouring islands sell boat tickets to Koh Phagnan for the night. The huge crowds are actually incredibly annoying: getting anywhere close to any of the main bars is like shoving your way through a mosh pit. We eventually found a bar on the end of the beach that had booked a DJ playing music sufficiently underground and weird enough to keep the crowds away. We danced until daylight in a bucket-fuelled frenzy until we realized that we were the only ones left standing who weren’t on ecstasy, and that the sleeve tattoos we had painted on each other while pre-drinking looked a lot cooler at night. Standing in water that reflected a purple sunrise, an entire boatload of people bound for neighbouring Koh Samui waved good bye. It was pretty epic.

Overall, I give Koh Phagnan, oh, I don’t know, a four out of five, I guess. I had to take a few points off for getting burgled, sexually harassed, and almost run over. But I definitely get why people keep going back. Once you’ve been, every time you see a full moon, you think: Somewhere on an island in the south of Thailand, about 20,000 people are losing their shit.

And I’m missing it.

Gangs, Grains, and Grimness!

By Leo K. Moncel

Before we get going, I’d just like to point out that this is in fact a continuation of the column that began as, “Taste Test: A New Beginning”. There was some confusion between myself and our devoted, young section editor over the name of my column. So, let me explain what’s going on with “Red Food.” It is a reference to Timothy Taylor’s Stanley Park, a novel that I have not yet read, but have heard discussed on CBC Radio’s Canada Reads. Blue Rodeo’s Jim Cuddy synopsized a section of the book in which two different kinds of foodies are arbitrarily designated gang titles. The first group, “Crips” are people who are interested in innovation. “Bloods” are those who are attracted to tradition. Though I think it’s impossible to be a pure innovator or a pure traditionalist, I do tend to favour the “red” end of the spectrum when I do serious cooking or plan to eat out. Hence, red food. I could easily go on, as food traditions and street gangs are two topics of great interest to me, but there is something more urgent on my mind: The Food Crisis.

If you still don’t have a clear picture of what’s going on, I can’t say that I blame you. Even from legitimate news sources, coverage seems to break down to about 80 percent hysteria and 20 percent explanation. For a clean, brief synopsis, ignore the idiotic title and read Paul Krugman’s article.

Krugman points out that grain prices are increasing substantially, and that meat and the appetite for it are part of the problem; his final sentence ominously speculates that, “Cheap food, like cheap oil, may be a thing of the past.” And yet, if you were in any city in Ontario or Quebec (combined, about 60 percent of the country) last Sunday, you could have walked into any Harvey’s location and picked up a free hamburger. A product primarily of wheat and beef was being given away by the thousands at each location! So, is it any wonder that we in Canada at some level can’t understand this food crisis? If there was a food crisis, it stands to reason that people wouldn’t be giving away burgers. Cheap food is evidently not a thing of the past yet. Not in Canada at least. I have heard one explanation: that Canada has a very strong dollar at the moment and since we import a great deal of our food, our prices are going to be fine for now. This is sounds like good news, but it may be cause for concern in the longer run.

In A Short History of Progress, the transcribed Massey Lectures of Ronald Wright, Wright tackles the problem of civilization. In line with Thomas Malthus, Wright argues that in any civilization, “the population grows until it hits the bounds of the food supply.” When the population vastly outstrips what the earth can supply, ruin is imminent. Unfettered use of agricultural technology is a danger because as we produce more food, we immediately produce more humans to eat the food. Once the overworked earth offers no more, the surplus humans die. Based on playing through this pattern, in each case of a civilization’s fall, as the society’s elite see collapse looming, they are never wise about solving it. Wright describes the ancient Mayan rulers, whose civilization’s downfall was brought on by agricultural mishandling: “As the crisis gathered, the response of the rulers was not to seek a new course, to cut back… No, they dug in their heels and carried on doing what they had always done, only more so.”

Back to our free burgers: is this then one last hurrah before an age of darkness? Will we give away our meat, exacerbating its scarcity and eventually precipitating a scenario where meat is so expensive that the average Canadian cannot afford to eat it? This appears to be the course we’re on. So, let me ask another question — would you turn down a free Harvey’s burger? If you are the sort of person who never eats at Harvey’s (perhaps you find it too unhealthy, you dislike chains, or you genuinely don’t like the taste) then you won’t pick the burger up, and it’s not the price that is stopping you. But if, like me, you would ever buy one, it makes no sense not to take a free one. And so it is in the rest of Canada, with our comparatively low food prices. We resemble the Mayan rulers, digging our heels in, sating our worry with excess, and stuffing our stomachs while the city burns. There’s a sale on in the meat aisle, ending any minute now.

But, just so I can’t be taken as apathetic and completely defeatist, let me point out that I do think we can stop our race to food collapse. It just means painful adjustment – and the greater part of us becoming the sort of people who would never eat a Harvey’s burger. The only consolation, I guess, is that adjustments made now will help us avoid the even harsher adjustments necessary if we ignore what’s on the horizon.

By Steph Perkins

I have been told before that I am “weird” about public washrooms, which I think is stupid because you should be weird about them. And besides, I’m not weird about it — some people can’t even do their business in there — I can handle it. However, there are certain aspects to the public washroom that I do find rather disturbing.

I once worked as a receptionist in an electrical parts warehouse where my desk happened to be an unfortunate five feet away from the men’s washroom — a fact that was never lost on me as I was forced to inhale the aroma of urinal cakes all day.

Adding to this shit deal (HA) was this guy John: a nice guy, who insisted on informing me whenever he was going to take a dump. As in, “Hey Stephanie, I’m just going to be in the bathroom for about 15 or 20 minutes, so hold all my calls.”

Oh really John, it’s 10:15 AM and you’re taking a crap? You know, I think we established on my second day here just exactly when you’re gonna go in there, when you start blasting your poo particles everywhere, every day. No need for the breaking news. Honestly. I’m good. And then of course, after 15 or 20 minutes (sick) he’d come out and leave the door open, you know, to air out that nice Lysol/turd blend he’d whipped up in there.

Awesome.

Anyway, I think this is where my apparent complex came from. But again, I really feel like my stance is pretty normal on this.

So now I work for a very large company in a very large building, and there’s a women’s public washroom on my floor. It’s not bad. I mean it can be gross, I won’t go into detail on that, but I’ve never seen shit smeared on the walls or anything crazy. (Why are there always stories about someone seeing that? How on earth does that happen?) Anyway, ladies, I’m just wondering if we can’t go about our business in there nonchalantly. I already feel a wee bit uncomfortable running into someone I know in there — like hi, enjoy your movement, you too — so like, how bout maybe don’t talk to me while I’m peeing. This is definitely one of the top five most private things a person does, so please. Please don’t talk to me.

Also, I frequently find myself trapped between two people in their respective stalls trying to have a conversation. Also weird. Can you not wait 30 seconds to finish that thought? And I’m betting the person on the other side of me thinks it’s pretty weird/awkward that you cut one while trying to keep this convo alive. I’ll just be clear for both of us — it was totally weird. And I heard your friend haul ass outta there while you were still all “WHAT ABOUT THAT MEMO” from your stall.

Ya fuckin’ pervert.

Finally, I don’t love seeing and/or making eye contact with the person who was in the stall before me. I know this can’t always be helped — in busy bars and such  — but I just don’t like knowing whose butt was just touchin’ stuff in there. Weird.

And you know what, I don’t care if that’s weird — you’re weird.

Steph Perkins is an organized thinker. In this week’s installment, she has literally been trusted with the life of another living being. Trust her advice.

Q:  Should my girlfriend and I get a dog? We’ve lived together in the city for about a year, have a good-sized apartment, and we’re financially sound. She really, really wants one, but I’m on the fence.

A:  Ungh. I am not a dog person. I grew up around dogs, but they were terriers, which are pretty much the nerds of the dog world, so they don’t count. Or maybe that’s the reason I’m not a dog person. Either way, I will do my best to give impartial advice here.

This is mainly a question of responsibility, hence the fence, I presume. You can’t just go out and grab a dog without assuming your way of life is going to change in some major ways.

Are you responsible? Is your girlfriend? Take a good hard look around your place and at your daily habits. You can’t put off walking a dog like you can put off watering that plant in the corner. If you love to: sleep in super late; take off to New York for the weekend on a whim; party your face off all night and wake up on someone’s floor; or put your own needs above everything else, all of this will have to change.

Don’t get a dog because you’re:

bored
lonely
trendy
scared your girlfriend will dump you if you don’t…

Are you two a good team? When you fight, is it over the remote, or over who’s pulling their weight? Because getting a dog would be an endeavour in co-operation for sure, all of your adorable new responsibilities should be shared in order to keep your little family unit running smoothly. Are you solid? I always wonder about unstable couples getting a pet — what are they attempting to band-aid? In a strong relationship though, getting a dog would be a mature step forward. You know, if you’re into that whole “planning for the future” kind of thing. If done properly, it would, in theory, bring you closer together and make you work even better as a team.

Do you love your stuff? Puppies seem to eat just about anything. Some cases are more extreme than others of course, but here’s a worst-case scenario: my friends’ dog has eaten the following over the last six months: entire rolls of toilet paper; eight pairs of Calvin Klein underwear; the ASS out of her bf’s boxer shorts; a credit card; a whole raw steak; a dvd remote; and $60 cash in poker winnings. If you get a dog, you may have to put away your nice things for a few months, but probably not before you learn that the hard way at least once.

Do you love picking up shit with your hands? Just sayin’.

But considering all this, if you’re up for the challenge, I say jump off the fence and go for it. Taking risks is good for the soul. Plus, it’s spring! Go to the dog park, toss some sticks or whatever, and have fun. I’ll cheers you while I’m sipping cocktails on the Riviera, free as a bird. Just kidding. …Kinda.