It’s a lowkey Saturday night in, and I’m thinking about getting an early night. I flipped my mattress and changed my sheets earlier (to the jersey-knit t-shirt sheets, mm), so it should be a wonderful sleep once I crawl under my covers. It’s barely 9 and I’m already looking forwards to bed.

I’m torn between sleeping late and getting up before sunrise to do some photography. A late sleep would really hit the spot, but so would some photography. I suppose I’ll figure it out around 5am.

Tonight I’m watching a really good indie flick from 2000, GirlFight. It’s about an angry, disenfranchised teen girl who happens upon boxing and her love affair with the sport.

I’m watching it to psych myself up a little bit. I’m starting boxing myself this Tuesday. It’s part of my new fitness kick. I’ve been cycling and last week I added swimming to my repetoire, and this week I take it up a few notches to build in the boxing to my regimen. I’ll be training at a gym owned by a former pro-UFC fighter, who will be my trainer, and I’m getting warned that I’ll be in a whole world of pain when morning strikes on Wednesday. Oddly, I’m not feeling deterred.

Boxing’s something I’ve been wanting to do for a few years now. I once worked with a woman who took it up at my age (33) and found herself going to the national amateur championships one day down the road. I don’t know if I want to go full-on to the world of boxing, or if circuit training and sparring’s all I care to do, but I’m keeping an open mind, and I do love a challenge.

I always sort of figured I was too fat, too slow, whatever, to properly box, and now I figure I’m just angry enough, getting quick enough, and have just enough to prove to make it worth my while.

This fitness thing isn’t about becoming a size 6. It’s not about looking the right way in a micro-skirt. It’s not about being fuckworthy. It’s about owning my body and feeling like the strong, proud woman I think I am. It’s about having my disposition match inside and out.

Inside, I’d actually rather never be thin. I wanna have my ghetto booty. I want those thick, broad shoulders of a swimmer, and the whole-body insulation that’ll keep me warm as I ride my scooter through 365 days worth of elements. But I’m tired of looking doughy and soft, ‘cos I’m one strong, tough chick, and I guess I’m simply trying to prove that to myself these days. Fuck anyone else’s perception, but it’d be nice if they shared mine, y’know?

The new kick I’m on is hard on me right now. I’m tired a lot in the evenings (but have more energy during the days) and thankfully I sleep very, very well as a result. This week I’ll be expending even more energy, and I bet it’ll be a hell of a trial for me, but I’m going to be very proud of myself. I already am.

I don’t know how just yet, but something tells me this boxing thing’s going to be great for my sexuality. I’m dying to find out how that plays, but methinks something about the raw physicality of it all is really going to compute for me. I’m that kind of girl, so it’ll be nice to finally be playing that role somewhere other than just the bedroom. Things are about to get fun, man. I promised myself before 2007 kicked in that this would be a year to remember. So far, I’m doing everything right. Gotta love prescience, baby.

My team was smoked the other night. Smoked hardcore, like Bob Marley on a fattie, man. The game’s going well thus far tonight, but I’m still all jittery, like a whipped fan in a seven-game series is liable to be.

So, I’m taking a minute to write.

I had a letter from a youngin’ nearly a month ago, and because I suck, I’ve not responded until now. Bad, bad blogger. Somebody oughta spank me, but I should only be so lucky. Sigh.

But let’s answer her now, shall we? The letter, short and sweet:

My boyfriend and I have been having sex for the past 6 months. We were both each others’ first. We’ve done tons of positions in tons of places, sometimes we have a lot of foreplay and sometimes we go straight to the sex. Sometimes it’s soft and gentle, sometimes it’s rough and fiesty. And it always feels great! The only problem, however, is that I have never had an orgasm. If he’s on top and I really like it and he continues, after a while it just stops as it’s getting pleasurable. And if I’m on top and I really like what I’m doing, I go for it too hard and suddenly I can’t handle it and I have to stop. We haven’t started using any toys because my boyfriend wants to give me my first orgasm purely by himself, with no “outside help”. Any advice?

There’s such a double-standard sexually. It’s bad form to pressure a guy who’s impotent and unable to deliver, but somehow it’s fine to pressure women to orgasm. “Well, if I can’t make you come, then I must be damaged goods! YOU WILL COME, dammit!”

And I know he’s probably never made such comments, but when you’re the female at the receiving end sexually, and you’re unable to orgasm in the 17.6 minutes that he’s able to perform in, somehow it means a) he’s a loser, and b) you’re frigid.

It doesn’t help matters. Not at all.

So, the question is, do you masturbate, girlie? If not, then you should. If you can’t make yourself orgasm, no one else will be able to do so — guaranteed. You absolutely must play with yourself if your sex life is ever going to be any good. No, you won’t ‘waste’ your orgasms on yourself. You’ll make yourself better able to relax and orgasm under others.

And when you “can’t handle it”, maybe you should make a mental note: that means you’re about to orgasm and you need to ride it out — literally. Back when I was 13 or so and enjoying my first masturbatory experiences — dry-humping pillows underneath my posters of George Michael — I kept thinking I needed to pee uncontrollably and was scared of making a mess. I kept running down the hall to go to the washroom. I swear, I flushed the toilet 10 times in the morning, confused why I was all wet and unable to pee.

An orgasm feels like a bolt of electricity coursing through your body. It’s electrifying. All your nerves come alive at once and then, whammo, it releases simultaneously. It’s different for everyone. But when you “can’t handle it”, don’t kid yourself — you CAN.

But him insisting on being the vehicle that delivers your orgasm is unfair. He doesn’t realize it, but he’s being domineering and controlling. I understand why he would want to be the deliveryman, but the reality is, it hasn’t been working thus far, and it may not any time soon.

The reality is, some 40% of chicks won’t orgasm until their 20s, if not later. It’s not something that has a shelf-life. It’s not something that comes easily for most women. It takes patience on both your end and theirs.

If your man wants to be the deliveryman, and will hear nothing else but, then he needs to start doing Yoga and Kegel exercises (particularly the latter) so that he can last longer and hold out long enough for you to lose your inhibitions every time and help you get to the promised land. You need to tell him to continue even when your body’s screaming no, because that’s the threshold for an orgasm. It’s a strange and difficult point to pass as a female — you think your body can’t handle it, but all it is is the Early Warning System for “good times ahead! brace thyself!”

And, hey, orgasms rock. They really do. But sex is awesome by itself, with or without results. If you can’t orgasm by way of his entering you, then maybe you can at least learn to masturbate yourself to orgasm after he’s finished. Maybe it’ll hurt his ego, but when he gets over that, he’ll fuckin’ love watching you get yourself off, especially if you’re able to lock onto his eyes with a hungry gaze as you deliver yourself to ecstasy.

Good luck, kiddo. Remember, it’s like Mark Twain says. It’s not the destination that’s important, but rather, the journey. Enjoy the trip, savour the experience, and forget about the end result, and you might find yourself happening upon the Big O after all.

And read books about sex — books like The Guide to Getting it On, Sex Tips for Straight Ladies from a Gay Man, or The Sex Bible. Education is the key to power in all avenues of life, including sex.

But y’all have what to add to this? Any insights? Personal experiences? Support? Empathy? 1-800 numbers?

I’m a Godfather addict. I love all three volumes of that brilliant cinematic series.

I was a mafia-mad kid from a young, young age, and I loved the romance of storied criminals from the early 20th century. I was so obsessed I even dressed up as John Dillinger and later Al Capone for Halloween in my teen years. (I broke the years up by being Charlie Chaplin one year.)

I was “unique” then. Few of the kids at school knew who Dillinger or Chaplin were, so standing up to announce to the class who my costume represented turned into a five-minute affair each year with a Wiki-style truncated historical account of each character. I wasn’t just into the flash, I knew the substance of those baddies.

I obsessed then over the golden age of La Cosa Nostra in New York and Chicago. Still do! Hell, we even have the mob here in Vancouver. A friend told me a few years ago of entering “the wrong door” in a café on Commercial Drive’s Little Italy, and instead of going into a washroom, emerged into an illegal backroom gambling operation. Guns sat on the table next to chips and cards, and surly Italian men in suits glared angrily at her mistaken entrance. She flustered her way out of the room and never again walked through an unmarked door on the Drive. Oh, the writer in me would’ve been in her glory!

My mobbed-up love affair continues, and watching The Godfather I, II or III sends me reeling towards that girl of my youth, the one who didn’t grasp the immensity of murder and the magnitude of their corruption. There’s something oddly honourable in the love of tradition and hierarchy held by the old-school Mafioso that today’s Tony Soprano weeps for the loss of.

The Godfather series is highly romantic, bloody heads of horses under bedcovers aside and all. Don Michael Corleone is a tragic figure torn between his love of aesthete, art, and intellect, and his pained duty to his family and his heritage. He chooses wrongly, deciding to err on the side of familial/historical love and loyalty, and ironically loses all he values as the price for his choice.

I’m minutes from the conclusion of the under-appreciated Oscar-winning third installment of the series, in which Michael and Kay revi sit the demise of their relationship. I know the ending is overwrought and somewhat cheapened with a quickie fast-forward of 30 years, but in that moment of reckoning the past with the present, there’s a lot of earnest pain* over love lost and prices paid. Michael the Former is juxtaposed against Michael the Present, a man riddled with remorse for the life he chose and the cost thereof, but given the chance to do it all again, you know without question he’d make the same decisions… Yet his love for her continues through it all. Decades later he’s still felled by the same passions he felt long before, and the pain of permanence in love is told all too easily by that look in his eyes. A man undone by love and honour is who Michael Corleone is.

But it left me pondering just how long our loves can linger. Through all the turmoil of our lives, memories of loves can last the longest of any we might have. God knows how plentiful are the ones that haunt me still.

I’ve chosen poorly in love. I’ve often chosen the wrong man for the wrong reason. I’m smart, and seek men who are smarter than I, but in so doing I get caught in this web of men who are unable to detach from logic long enough to let the heart rule the mind, and in so doing, are far too easily equipped to hurt.

I can’t help it, though. It’s who I am. I’m readily felled by intellectual bad boys. Always have been, probably always will be. I’m too given to logic to be able to be acquiesced by artsy boys, as much as I love arts. I despise the wishy-washy fluttery ways of artists, and given the choice between them and the more stoic smart guys, I know I’ll always choose the latter, and I presume they’ll continue to be undone by my ability to straddle both worlds without much effort at all, ‘cause lord knows the hurts go both ways.

But love knows no reason, try as it might. All of us are forced to choose between the worlds we wished we were in and the worlds that hold us captive. Just ask Michael Corleone. In love, despite all urges to go to the otherwise, we far too often go to the mattresses.

*It certainly helped in the acting that Pacino and Keaton had a true life on-again off-again relationship that spanned decades and ended badly, if one’s to believe all they read.

Creativity is a fickle mistress, and right now my mistress is screwing someone else.

It’s not like this is some Seussian endeavour of creativity. It’s a blog. It’s not even a fiction-oriented blog. It’s non-fiction. Easy-peasy, really. It’s almost like a formula of sorts.

(My Day + Some Thoughts) ÷ Logic x Reason = Nifty Blog

But aside from the fact that mathematics sucks ass and I failed in my quest for the Ultimate Geekette Award, creativity and inspiration have just not been striking many of my chords of late.

I did, however, minor in Geekology back in school, so I’ll have you know that I’ve been attacking this lack of creativity with a logic as fierce as a cat on a fat mouse. I keep tripping over myself and blaming myself six ways to Sunday for all different reasons about why I feel like some impotent version of myself, but it’s really not that complicated.

There’s the new job thing, for starters. Complex learning curve, but the plus side of that coin is that I’m clearly a driven, hard-working person with extremely high efficiency and a great way with the people, so the Powers That Be have deemed it time to make my lowly part-time office assistant into a full-time one. (I’m the office manager. Yes, I have peons. It was alluded today that I even have a whip to crack. C-r-a-c-k!)

Add to that the rather questionable decision weeks ago to do what might be the worst thing I can do for my creativity but the best thing I can do for my health (quit smoking dope, which had been largely chronic for much of the last eight years), and, yeah, it’s proving to be a humdinger. I’m more foggy straight than I ever was stoned. Jesus, where’s my dealer’s number?

Then there’s the other thing. Money was a big stressor for the last several months. All of a sudden, just as of last Saturday, that’s beginning to ebb away. Jesus, where’s my dealer’s number?

So there’s hope. Really. There’s only one thing I do know. The creativity will surge again. I know it will. My ethic for writing and its importance to me ensures that.

This happens to us all — times fall upon us when we somehow find ourselves just a little less of who we are than we wish we were. It’s deceptive. The proverbial catch-22. When you know you’re not really being yourself, you often are closer to being who you are simply because you know you’re missing the mark.

Times like these are like falling down a big ol’ hill: just because you know how you got to where you are doesn’t mean you can make your way back. Sometimes you need a new way home, and most of the time you’re gonna see some good sights along the way. It’s not a bad thing, just different.

And it’s weird. I feel myself changing. I’m this malleable work in progress and some kind of shape is finally emerging, but I’m so close to it that it’s almost too hard to see. I need to get a little distance, but being so caught up in the frenzy, distance is something I won’t have until I have it. Like driving, the objects whizzing by us suddenly relocate and end up in our rearview mirrors. Perspective’s a funny thing that way.

Y’know, a part of me craves contributing to this blog and another part loathes it — mostly because the act of writing forces me to look inward, and being the logician I tend to be, I’m just constantly at a loss right now as to where my journey’s headed. I suspect, though, that buying a postcard’s in the plans because I think this is one trip I really, really want to remember.

What I’m trying to say is, bear with me. I’m caught in an intergalactic swirlie, and it’s hard to stop the flush. When I come out the other side, though, I know I’m going to marvel over just how far I’ve come. Trouble is, I don’t know how far I’m going, so “the other side” sounds like a fabled Tolkien landscape kids tell each other of in hushed voices as they gesture to a horizon the eye can’t even see.

Some days, though, I can close my eyes and almost touch it. I’m hoping I’ll soon open them and find it all around me. In the meantime, I’m just trying to enjoy the ride, bumpy though it may be.

(If you’re like me, pictureless posts look boring. So, I thought I’d post one of my own for the hell of it. This was taken at the beginning of the month, along the river, not too far from my home. A hundred years or so ago, there were a lot of shipyards and fisheries and such along the banks. Now most of those are gone in these parts, and the occasional bit like that still stands as a throwback to an age gone by. It somehow seemed fitting for this topic.)

A reader sent me some links on incest and asked for my take. There are two cases she indicated that are presently making waves, one in Ohio and the other in Germany.

In Germany, a brother & sister are married with four children (two were born with handicaps) and the law is cracking down on them. Now, they didn’t grow up together. He was an adopted child who finally decided to find his birth mother when he was 23, in year 2000. He then met his birth sister, who was then 15. The particulars of their relationship weren’t disclosed in the story I read, save to say they had the four kids after he began caring for her when their mother passed away and she became an orphan. The guy’s now been found guilty of incest and a 25-month jail term has been doled out to him.

Some are calling the laws against incest legal relics and say this is a new age needing a new perspective on the engaging of sexual relations between siblings.

Then there’s the Ohio case. In that one, a 44-year-old guy’s trying to win the right to continue the sexual relationship that has begun with his 22-year-old stepdaugher.

So, the reader wants my two cents on the whole realm of incestuous relationships.

Uh, they’re wrong?

Sure, it gets complicated when the involved parties pass the age of consent. Or does it? Does the law have the right to get involved? That’s the original sticky wicket, really. Consent is consent is consent, isn’t it? See, in the scenario where “the couple” are married, you might think, “Well, they’re over 18 and kids are involved, so…” But when did it begin?

Same with the step-father/daughter relationship. Who’s to say it didn’t begin with him sneaking into the bedroom when she was 11, whispering sweet-nothings and spending the next decade of his life trying to convince her she couldn’t live without him, as some pedophiles are so slick are doing?

Bear with me on a tangent here. In the Virginia Massacre last week, there was a lot of controversy regarding the discovery that the shooter had been off his rocker for a number of years, yet no authorities had been able to successfully commit him long-term because the right of the individual was being protected instead of the rights of the many. Meaning they followed the letter of the law instead of following the essence of the law — which is that laws exist to protect the many, not just the individual, and sometimes difficult choices must be made. If you bend the laws to commit one guy who really does seem off his rocker, you make it easier to wrongly commit someone else down the road. At what point does lowering the bar leave the masses at risk? It would seem you’re damned if you do and damned if you don’t.

This is somewhat on the same wavelength. The trouble with giving in to a few incestuous relationships because the situations are seemingly working and consensual means that the many will be left more vulnerable in the wake of a more lenient approach to those certain individuals. This is probably why nutbags like last week’s shooter fall through the cracks, because bending the law for one case would leave the average person more vulnerable to a system that’s overexerting its reach in the claim that they’re pursuing the “greater good”. Kantism is a great theory but could lead to some very questionable legal tactics in our society.

I’m sure there must be the occasional incident where it would make sense to allow incest to occur. Maybe it’s sometimes a beautiful thing. But if bending the laws and ignoring the social morals that deem it so unforgiveable means more youths will be at risk of being sexually preyed upon by family members than are at present, then I think we need to stay the course.

I’ve known far too many women and men left fragmented by their family members who thought it their right to force them into sexual unions through simple manipulation or more overt means. They’ve then spent their lives licking their wounds and trying to figure out what they did wrong to bring that abuse upon themselves.

It’s hard enough to win those battles without having the law soften its approach just because a few people have reached an agreement to engage in incest. The scars of love run deep in all of us, and family’s hard enough without throwing more sex, mindgames, and legal conundrums into the mix.

What can I say? I’m an old-fashioned gal.

But how about YOUR two cents, eh?

This Don Imus debate is raging longer than I thought it would. It’s a catalyst for something bigger, or so I’m hoping. It’s interesting, because, being the whore that I am for Oprah’s more insightful shows (not the lame celebrity crap), she’s been tackling the drama from the perspective of just how denigrating (African-American) culture is towards African-American women. The spin is more or less that if they can’t respect themselves within their culture, then how can they ever expect others to respect them?

It’s really the age-old cultural chicken-or-the-egg scenario: What comes first, self-respect or respect from others? Can you respect yourself if no one else respects you? Or can you cause others to respect you by setting the benchmark for them in having respect for yourself, no matter what others say or do?

The thing is, this isn’t an African-American phenomena. Today’s young women in all cultures are regressing to a dumber-than sex-comes-first mentality of “if you’ve got it, flaunt it, ‘cos that’s all you got”. I’ve tackled this topic before in one of my personal favourite (and one of my most-commented & quoted) columns, and it’s an issue close to my heart. I hate knowing that a growing number of young women (but not all, thank god) seem to be of the belief that the only way to get ahead is through tight skirts, tight asses, and bursting bra cups filled with bouncy boobs.

Unfortunately, because they believe that, the reality is shifting, and it is starting to become more necessary for women to have that element of sexuality in order to get anywhere – or, if they’re to really get taken seriously, they have to do the complete opposite and abdicate their sexuality, which is also very unsettling. The trouble with each of these approaches is, if you build it, they will come, y’know? By giving in to the mentality of sexy substituting for smart, or sexy being eliminated in favour of smarts, they’re empowering this perception that women cannot be both. A lie if ever there was one.

There’s nothing wrong with letting your physicality speak volumes, but intellect should not be a mere footnote; it should be the spine, the binding, and the cataloguing in the library of your life. Intellect is everything. Knowledge is power. Articulation and debate can solve all the world’s problems, and women have the insight, the power, and the emotional capacity to contribute in far greater ways than we have ever allowed them to before now.

It’s no surprise that the most powerful women on the world stage – those like Hillary Clinton, Margaret Thatcher before her, and others – have had to almost entirely veto their sexuality in order to have any credibility. It’s because those women who use their sexuality for their success have failed to do so in a way that embraces their mental prowess.

Things aren’t improving. It’s not just a “Black” problem. It’s a “Woman” problem. I am a feminist. I don’t give a fuck that “feminist” has a negative perception to it. Wake up, world. That was then, this is now. Germaine Greer’s dead, people, and there are new voices rising in the dark that speak loudly in real terms applicable to today’s women without disempowering today’s man. There are women like Pink, India Aire, Salma Hayek, Oprah, and others who have found a way to celebrate their beauty while showcasing their minds.

I do not like this old-fashioned trend of women abdicating their sexuality in order to be taken seriously on the world stage, a la Hillary Clinton in her dark business suits and stern facade. I do not like the obsolete notion that a woman must be masculine in order to be strong. I do not believe women must belittle men in order to be card-carrying feminists.

There is a new feminism that embraces the greatness each sex has to offer. Women can offer softness and beauty and sensuality while contributing strength and wisdom and articulation to the world debate.

In this age where violence seems to speak louder than ever, sexuality is being reduced to crassness, and media swims only in the shallow end of the pool, the female soul has so much to offer, so much insight to give, yet it’s being drowned out by more of the cliché stereotyping we’ve seen so much of in all the ages before us.

Men have run the show for long enough, and look at what we have to show for it – shootings in schools, divorce at an all-time high, teenage pregnancy an epidemic, poverty growing by the day. Can women fix everything? Fuck, no. But we can help offer a different point of view, a new spin on things, a new set of values. Men and women truly working together, each showcasing their strength of character, we might just have a chance of turning things around.

But it all has to start with today’s young women believing they have more to contribute to the world around them than just tits and ass. They need to believe that their paths to success don’t lie only in auditioning for The Pussycat Dolls or in being the next 15-minute celebrity bimbo clad scantily with her glitter makeup being the only way she’s able to shine. Like Pink says, sexy and smart don’t need to be oil and water. It’s time to be more.

My condolences go to anyone from Virginia Tech.

I deal with grief with humour sometimes and can be wholly inappropriate, but it gets me through. I had a few things to say on the other blog about the terrible shooting. It’s a pity the gunman is dead. I happen to think the whole Mussolini Method’s a great way to send evil fuckers to the grave: Hang ’em in the own square and let the villagers flog the corpse. That way you save money on everyone’s therapy and the villagers get a little exercise.

But, really, a terrible thing. And I’m already curdling at the thought of how the NRA’s going to spin this as “all the more reason to carry a pistol”, and some people will almost certainly be left in agreement. Me, I’d rather we do the Dead Milkmen take on Rodney King and “Can’t we all just smoke a bong?” I say we bring back the love-in, man. We could all use a little more love on a night like tonight. Let’s hope you’re getting yours.

It’s a big bad sad world out there some days. But on the upside, sometimes you lose a camera and a perfect stranger turns it in. Don’t forget, there’s good out there too, no matter what some fucker like this wants you to believe. Don’t let ’em convince you. Believe in good.

I haven’t been writing a lot lately. You may have noticed. Jotting down a few ideas is a far cry from “writing”. When I’ve “written”, you’ll know it.

I don’t know if my writing’s any good on the cosmic scale of literary ass-kicking, but I know it’s usually honest, and that’s something I can be proud of.

Lately, though, I haven’t been feeling like I’ve been being honest with myself, so how in the fuck could I possibly be honest here? It’s been sort of a conscious choice to pull back a little, I guess, for want of protecting myself from admitting how unpleased with myself I’ve been and the lack of personal honesty I’ve had.

I still like my job, a lot. That’s been a really positive change in my life. It’s not about that. It’s not about my home, either, which has been just two steps away from full-on “rustic American crackhouse”, but which is now passably clean (and that was no small feat).

It’s about my body image. That’s the deal. That’s the problem. I’ve been really angry at myself for a while now. I’ve tried a couple different exercise routines, and they were both very problematic, but I could have prevented the problems had I been more practical in the outset. Now I’m onto something I think is working for me, and has worked for me in the past. So, that’s a start.

The thing is, I’m sure I have this reputation that you’ll pick up on if you go and read my backlog, in which I propose we should all love our bodies whether we fit in the mold of the “right” look or not. Every body’s a good body, you know what I’m saying?

But that’s also bullshit to a degree. That’s like latching onto some positive thinking methodology like “The Secret” and figuring that just thinking about it will bring you all you desire. Like I said, bullshit. Part of it is the thinking, but most of it is the doing.

Loving yourself and your imperfect body only works if you know you’re at least trying. You exercise some, and you eat reasonably well. If what you’re really doing is trying to convince yourself that you’re entitled to love and affection and physical respect because you’re a “good” person, and you don’t give a shit about what you’re putting into your body or doing with your body, then you can think all you like about being deserving of love, but you’re likely still gonna secretly hate yourself, no matter how you slice it.

So I know I’ve been eating badly and not exercising much beyond the last 10 days or two weeks or so. I hate what I was doing to myself. I’m also coming off a long, miserable winter of “stay indoors” weather and I’m about as seasonally affected as one could be. (See “seasonal affective disorder” aka SAD by clicking here.) But I’ve begun pushing myself, and I’ve talked to one or two friends to tell them the enabling of each other’s shitty eating habits stops now.

It doesn’t change the fact that I know I’ve been dishonest with myself — pretending I’ve not been eating badly, trying to tell myself my itty bits of exercising were a positive change — and it’s been keeping me from writing, from coming clean. Denial’s a pretty deep, dark corner to back oneself into, and it’s hard as hell to claw one’s way out of it some days.

So, I’m starting to like my behaviour again. It’s improving. Baby steps, but it’s improving. But what I’m really digging is the being honest with myself thing. I can’t believe how much loathing and disdain comes with lying to oneself about anything, even something as seemingly pathetic as a diet or exercise plan.

Honesty, though, in its most brutal forms is one hell of a powerful tool. Got to love it.

*(I’ve now taken my bicycle home from work [about 17 km] once this past week, but I’ve had three or four good rides in two weeks, and I plan to be able to cycle the 34-km round trip three times a week before “bike to work week” kicks in next month, followed by “bike to work month” in June. And, I got to tell you, cycling is incredible for my creativity. Stay tuned for that. And, no, cycling isn’t just another fleeting attempt — I’ve been very successful with it in the past.)

I’m off to be a good Samaritan to my big brother. In keeping with the cashing of my karmic cheque earlier this week when some kind, honest people turned my swanky camera in to the transit authority, restoring my faith in both Good Karma & Good People, I’m being more generous than I can afford to be, and setting my broke brother up with great food for the next two weeks. In my goodie bag — ham, a roasting chicken, eggs, milk, and tonnes of other good stuff. Weirdly, instead of being stressed about spending the money on him, I’m enjoying the act of being generous and helping him out, so I’m buying nice stuff that can go a long ways.
Being good to others feels good, y’know?
In other karmic news, a woman left her credit card on the counter in front of me and the clerk never noticed it. Nonetheless, I chased her down to return it today. Wow, I’m stocking up on good citizen points all over. Figure I pushed my luck earlier this week, and now I have to restock my karma account.
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Flying Angus said he was surprised I admitted to having made racist comments in the past. I think the surprise is somewhat ludicrous, personally. I think there can’t be a person on this planet who hasn’t made some kind of prejudiced, ignorant, or racist comment at some point, and most of us have done it more than a few times. It doesn’t take much — a crack about Asian drivers, a quip about “fags” or “queers”, a snide comment about a “fat guy”, scoffing at women and their shopping, a cynical comment about “Jewing” a merchant down. They’re all generalisations, and all are borne from ignorance or judgment. We’ve all said the comments, but few of us really realize just how much power that one flippant comment carries.
I own my faults and shortcomings. I’m pretty fucking far from perfect. Hell, “perfect” is nowhere on my radar screen. I’m conscious of crossing the line. There are comments we all make that are racially akin to the power of ‘white lies’ — it’s shit that’s been said so often it barely carries weight anymore. In a perfect world, we’d all get over it and start looking at each other truly as equals. But it ain’t a perfect world and while we might live in the Information Age, there seems to be more stereotyping and ignorance as each day passes. The question is, are you honest with yourself regarding your shortcomings? When you find yourself accountable for every word you say, then you come do your pot-kettle-black routine with me. Until then, my eyes are wide fuckin’ open.

Wow. So, there you have it: The public voice of dissent can actually affect big business.

Don Imus got a slap on the wrist, and after advertising dollars listened to the voices of outrage clamouring over the warhorse deejay’s comments about the “nappy-headed hos” on a college b-ball team, he’s been uncerimoniously canned, without even a final chance to say goodbye.

I see it from two POVs. One, the right to freedom of speech. Two, basic decency.

I’m proud to live in the most multicultural country in the world, and I’m a staunch feminist. I’m as open-minded as the day is long, and I’m partial to ethic foods as well as foreign cultures. It’s what makes us Canadians who we are, after the floodgates opened in 1971 (thanks to P.E. Trudeau –R.I.P.– the same PM who spearheaded the policy to keep government out of the bedrooms of adults and made it legal to be homosexual) to your tired, your hungry, your poor — what the US has purported to be, we have become: the single-most multicultural nation in the world, one that believes in a “cultural mosaic” and not the proverbial “cultural melting-pot” of our neighbour to the south.

What’s that mean? It means we encourage our immigrants to keep their culture but also to celebrate those cultures of their neighbours. We are a nation of cultures — the plural, not the singular — and we’re pround of it.

Does it make us less likely to get loyalty and a pursuit of Canadiana from our immigrants? I don’t think so. In fact, I used to teach ESL (English as a Second Language) and I remember my eyes getting misty last summer when an 8-year-old boy I taught told me of his family gaining their Canadian citizenship the weekend prior. He looked at me, this tough little stoic manly-man boy, and in his broken English, told me that he cried when they became Canadians, and that it was “the most proud day of my whole life!”

By celebrating their cultures, we celebrate our own.

That said, I’ve made racist comments and racist jokes. A staunch feminist, I routinely scoff “women” when talking things over with others. I’m off-colour more often than I’m on, and it’s part of what makes me such fun to know. Thing is, the people around me know that these flippant comments I make are jokes, not seriousness, and they know I’m beyond tolerant — I’m the original “mosaic” Canadian, and always will be. Hell, it’s like George Carlin and my buddy GayBoy always joke, “I’m not racist — I own a colour TV.”

So, Don Imus fucked up. Clearly. But he kept arguing how he was a good person who said a bad thing, and I absolutely believe that. Did he deserve to get fired? I guess he did. Shit happens to us all, and it’s how we respond that makes us who we are. And because he’s a good person, as he claims, I’m certain he will better himself and improve his worldview as a result… should the world be willing to forgive and forget, which I would hope they will do.

But I guess that what bothers me about it all is that I’d like to not live in a world where we’re to be accountable for every word we utter. We live in an age where our thoughts and feelings are ushered out to our fellow man without a moment’s hesitation — be it by blogs, podcasts, letters to the editor, YouTube, and more — and the blowback can be legion. I always joke that what I love about blogging versus real life is simple: The Backspace Key.

Oh, to delete and forge on! What a thing of beauty! But radio, live, to boot, is an entirely different beast. We all sputter things daily without fully thinking them out, but because broadcasters are given the “dead air is death” mantra — fill, fill, fill!– they’re accountable for every syllable they muster. But stream-of-consciousness broadcasts sometimes lead to the very offense committed by Don Imus. And now he needs to pay the price.

He’s right, too. There’s a difference between his utterance and the vitriolic venom spewed by Michael Richards, who unleashed an angry tirade against African-Americans in the club he was performing in, who’ll probably never work in Hollywood again. Context and emotiveness are huge when it comes to uncivilised utterances. We need to respect that.

Granted, I’ve never heard the broadcast, thus I spew smoke from my ass, but still. I don’t think he should be on the air. I’m pleased the people have spoken and action has been taken. I wish the same venomous public opinion could be rallied behind the War in Iraq, but god forbid I should be asking so much.

For now, I’m quietly happy that blacks have spoken out in angst and exacted some change in society. The Million Man March may have been four and a half decades ago, but from this Canadian’s point of view, so much still needs to transpire in the US. One small victory for black rights, and an earful from big business, is something to be praised, even if someone who is a “good person” like Imus should be caught in the crossfire. Collateral damage is expected.

Your thoughts?