Yearly Archives: 2007

Film Chickette: Westward the Women, 1951

I’m a film geek.

I once mentioned to a colleague (keep in mind I work in the film industry) that I had finally bit the bullet and seen Casablanca, which I had the good sense to see (and have since loved) at an independent film house that ran in first-run in the Dirty ’30s. He asked me if I’d taken film appreciation in school and my retort was, “No, all my sentiments are my own.”

But I love movies. I just thought I was well-versed but I went out with another geek last year who more or less proved to me that I’ve seen 80 or 90% of all the “best movies ever made”. And a freakish amount of ’em on-screen, too.

So… it’s not that often that I a) don’t hear about a movie or/and b) get surprised by its content or performance. I’m pretty on the ball about flicks and there’s few I’m not at least a little aware of. Geek that I am and all.

But tonight, I got surprised. I have just discovered a terrific flick for both men and women. For women, it’ll be a “my time of the month” classic or something they watch to remind them of their ability to kick ass and take names. For men, it’ll be a reminder of all the reasons women are worth going through the annoyance of knowing. Or something.

It’s called Westward the Women, and it’s from 1951, written by Frank Capra, so of course I had to like it. Capra’s film gold. I mean, he has his own adjective! Capra-esque! Like Hitchcockian. Pretty rare air there.

Anyhow. A Californian town is in its birthing stage. Now it’s just a valley populated by Roy Whitman and his 100+ pioneering men. The only thing missing from this West Coast paradise in the 1800s is wimmin folk. Whitman, in all his “I staked me Utopia, then built it” moral superiority, decreed that these women would be treated like the saints they were to give up their lives and travel west on the promise of a good life in a good land on a good man’s good stretch.

It’s about how 150 women come to decide to make the wagon train trip some 1, 500 miles across the American landscape, and the really amazing tragedies and trials that befall them on their journey. They’re told in the outset that some third of them would die en route as the wagons crossed some of the toughest land any man — and definitely woman — had ever seen.

It’s smart, it’s funny, it’s historically accurate if not a little cheesy, yet witty, well-shot, well-cast, and very, very watchable.

Now, I’ll confess I like the occasional Western. Loved the remake of 3:10 to Yuma bust still can’t get over how well Christian Bale ran for a guy with a wooden leg. Well done, Christian.

This, however, didn’t feel like a Western. It’s just a crazy-assed look at what happened from time to time in the Old West, filled with tragedies and touching stories and funny humour, and very little pandering to women. Tough broads who were women throughout but encountered some great adversity.

I lived up in the Yukon and knew a great story I should rewrite for here, about Diamond Tooth Gertie, who made the death-defying voyage from Seattle to the Yukon for the Gold Rush, succeeded where some 90% of the men failed, in getting to the Gold Rush after all. It filled me with great admiration, just imagining some of the things women like that had to overcome when crossing a continent on foot and wagon.

To see that heroism depicted in a movie like that, where the fact is that dying en route to the West wasn’t entirely uncommon in the 1800s, a century and a bit before 4×4 would be invented. Two words: Wooden wheels.

For something entirely different, go for Westward the Women. Before butch knew what butch was.

And, hey, look at the coinkydink of reviewing a pioneering movie on American Thanksgiving. Happy Yankee Thankie Day, Americans. May all your turkeys be good turkeys. And god stuff us every one.

Checkin' In, and a RANT about Fat Stereotypes

I’m just rushing out for breakfast but I wanted to check in quickly. I’m in ‘adjusting to world of pain’ mode right now as I’m ramping my fitness up by several degreees, thanks to learning that my knee’s finally able to handle an elliptical trainer at the gym. (I’ve blown it out a few times and “unstable” is the watchword. Elliptical trainers always had my kneecap clicking and wiggling by 5 minutes in. Did 10 minutes the first time ever last Friday and 25 minutes yesterday. Yay!)

And now my horrible right shoulder’s in its own world of pain, but whatever. I’ll swim tonight and then I’ll hurt everywhere, so the shoulder won’t seem so bad. πŸ™‚

Anyhow. I don’t have a lot to say… when I’m trying to focus on one area of my life, it makes the other areas get a little neglected, like blogging. Blogging’s really suffering though because I’m avoiding writing the probing look at How I Got Fat that I’ve promised to write. I really want to get into the emotional issues behind being overweight, because I’m real fuckin’ tired of hearing all these “fat’s catchable” or “fat is genetic” or whatever other new “shocking discovery” du jours I’ve been seeing on the news lately. Simple fact is, if you’re fat, there’s got to be areas of your life you’re not happy with, and food’s filling the void. And you’re probably ignorant about how to eat properly. I really believe that, but I’m apparently in the minority, and because I’m fat myself, I’m probably viewed as a bit traitorial.

Whatever.

Speaking of fat, I wrote this rant yesterday and can’t tell you what provoked it because of non-disclosure agreements and all, but I can share the rant. πŸ™‚ Enjoy.

________________________

If I have to see one more movie where the “fat” bad guy just sits around chewing things, his brain entirely disconnected to his mouth, and completely lacking of any kind of grace or dexterity at all, I’m gonna beat someone to death with a goddamned 48-pack of donuts.

Just fucking try me.

I mean, what, you hit 30% body fat and your brain suddenly ceases to function and bubbles instead with sugar-filled foam and vapidity?

And the fat guys always JUST eat. They’re always CSI exhibits of every fucking meal they’ve eaten in the last week. Yep, barbecue sauce crusted in the left quadrant of the (of course) horizontally-striped shirt, there’s cheese sticking out of their pocket, a donut’s surgically attached to the left hand until the guy starts chewing on his knuckles. Whenever he talks, his mouth is spewing food. When he chews, he smacks and sucks and slurps, as if making extra noise somehow conjures cosmic bonus points of tasty goodness.

I mean, how is the cliche fat-guy-who-talks-while-chewing-and-never-stops-eating at all funny anymore? Hasn’t this joke been beaten into fucking submission?

Yep, I can hear the joke over there now — crying out for help and whining about its inadequacy as it languishes in dark corners of unexplored creativity.

And what about the reality that most morbidly obese people tend to do their eating in secrecy because they’re so fucking tired of being stared at and mocked and humiliated? Like they just sit there pounding back their betcha-can’t-eat-just-one Lay’s potato chips or whatever, allowing themselves to be further humiliated and pointed at. Yeah, that’s right, they’re doing their bit to keep the rest of the world entertained as they sit there willfully eating everything ever placed upon this good Earth, oblivious to the snickers and derision being enjoyed by the onlookers in the food court.

Yeah. I’m getting really, really tired of seeing this stupid-ass writing passing as something witty and funny. Come on, writers. Cough up a fucking quarter and send away for that Cracker Jacks “how to be a writer in 17 easy steps” toolkit or something, wouldja?

Get a fuckin’ real job. Cliche-spewing dumb-ass hacks. No paycheques for you.

Reader Asks: Why Do I Keep Hurting Her?

I’ll have to go back and find this email to share with you all, but a longtime reader sent me a deeply personal email in which he more or less explored the realms of self-loathing as he told me about how he’s gone around fucking up the lovelife of this girl he cares passionately about. His question, more or less, was, what do you do when all you can do is hurt the one you love?

There is a young woman whom I’ve known for over three years, whose smile alone melts away every fear and worry I have. …I knew ahead of time, based on past experiences, that I break stuff. In this case, I was subconsciously sabotaging their relationship. …It’s been quiet and awkward between us ever since. We will stumble upon one another, but the hugs have stopped. The smile is still there, but I don’t know if it’s sincere anymore.

…And this is what I’ve done. For three-and-half years, I have hurt this girl. I have, directly or indirectly, negatively impacted her life. In a way, I want to walk away, hoping, feeling, that maybe, it would be the best for her. …Yet I am deathly afraid of losing her. I’ve come to terms with losing her to another man, but the idea of her being out of my life entirely… scares me. How can you love someone so much that it tears you apart from the inside when they’re unhappy and yet you continually find ways to hurt them?

Well, there you have it. See, he’s hating himself like he’s some kind of monster brought forth from Dante’s Inferno or something. To protect his identity, I’m omitting more specific infractions. But tsk, reader. Tsk.

I wrote him back and just cleared up any misconceptions that I’d be writing something sunshiny in his favour.

Thing is, I can’t go all medieval on his ass, either.

See, love makes beasts of us all, goes some old saying. Let’s update it. You know, a little more politically correct and equality-minded. It should say, “beasts, bastards, and bitches”.

After all, every single one of us has done something duplicitous or slightly unkind in love. Who’s kidding who? One of those dirty little secrets we all keep tucked away in hidden pockets. Me, I’ve occasionally been duplicitous, manipulative, and unkind. I’m human. I have the “fuckin’ up” gene built-in and far too easily accessible, thank you very kindly. Hell, I think the gene’s on auto-pilot at this point. Fuck, man. Let he who is without sin cast the first stone, like the Jesus guy once said. We do dumb, even bad shit, but then we learn to do better. You’re done the doing bit, now it’s time to do the learning bit.

Yeah, you’re being an asshole, reader. You are. You deserve a moralistic kick up the ass, but that’s just stating the obvious. We’re better than obvious. We’re intelligent.

So, whilst being an asshole, you’re also being an incurable romantic. And a really lousy little coward. Actually, a really successful coward. Full marks for you, friend.

I too have been a coward sometimes. It is what it is. Easy, is what it is. Easier to somehow never rise up and face the challenge, and decide “It’s better to know now how she feels, and then I can move on… either way.” The irony is, living in fear’s so fucking hard, and it makes us all become the people we’d sooner not be. But we are. When we deceive ourselves in that way, we’re those bitter, sad, underwhelmed people not chasing after what they really want. And it’s all because we’re too cowardly to face the truth and learn a little.

We would rather live with the possibility of there being that chance but living under the shadow of doubt and worry, while we play our little manipulation of keeping them close without having to come clean… because to find out definitively that they’re not interested in us would be devastating.

To know means having the power to move on, either way. You’ve simply never, ever admitted to how you felt, and instead sought to manipulate her life. If you couldn’t have her, then she shouldn’t be able to be happy with someone else. It’s almost like a Hollywood cliche. Dying villain-hero, raging against the world, “If I can’t have you– nobody can!” But you got weird and started insinuating yourself into situations you shouldn’t have entered, and as such are now dealing with The Wrath of Scorned Lovelorn Woman.

Yeah, good one. But you know this. I don’t know, what do you want me to say? You stop hurting people if they matter to you. We all hurt people we love. Most of us don’t do it as a matter of course, though. It just happens sometimes. You think you love her? Stop hurting her. Be honest. Tell her how you feel. Tell her you’ve been an ass. Tell her. Beg her forgiveness. A thousand apologies. And a good gift never hurts. Start the communication and see where it goes. Don’t be surprised if there’s a “Fuck you” somewhere in the mix, but there’s always the chance that the cosmos will align in your favour and love’s swift arrow pierces her offended exterior. There’s always chance. I believe in chance.

But the truth is, you continue doing what you’re doing and you will find yourself both without a lover, and without a friend. That’s almost a certainty. End it, be a man, and there’s hope something better can come of it.

Now go say 10 Haily Marys like you really mean it.

Just Taking A Moment… Venting on Nancy Grace

Okay, I just need to vent: What the fuck is wrong with Nancy Grace anyhow? Like, it’s not enough that news is news… there’s always that stupid fucking card at the bottom of the screen that reads– no, not “news”, but “URGENT NEWS”. Yes, all caps.

Jesus. And it’s of a story about an 82-year-old grandma who got Tasered. Shitty, hard to believe, moronic, and a sign of the times, but is it really “urgent”? Does a huge massing of concerned citizens mean she’ll somehow become unTasered? Is there a pressing concern for society at large? Like, “Ohmigod, I gotta get home before I’m Tasered!” Something like that?

Well, then it’s not “urgent”, then, is it? No. It’s really just another day of news. Not that sexy, then, is it? But news hardly needs to be sexy. It just needs to be new. Kinda is what it is. Funny how much the media manages to complicate that. If it’s new, tell us. If it’s important, tell us. But don’t fucking sell it to us. Just report the facts. Just the facts, ma’am. Like the story goes.

Anyhow, just to clear it up for the thick-headed types who can’t separate my opinion from the meat of that sad-ass story: I am completely opposed to the Tasering of 82-year-old women. I mean, what kinda cop are you that you can’t settle an 82-year-old woman down without having to risk inducing heart attacks? Gimme an M! Gimme an U! An S! And gimme a C! An L! And an E! Fuck, man. Get a real job, right? So, BOO and HISS to the dumb fuckin’ cops, but Nancy Grace deserves dollop of common sense– no, brains, period– as well. Urgent my ass.

And people wonder why the public in the know is getting their news from the ‘net.

The State of the Steff

I’m going to sound like one of those people you hate if I complain right now, because I’ll be honest, I’m still down on the weight. I’ve gone down to 17lbs off this fat ass of mine this month, but I’m disappointed. I thought I could’ve had a far better week. I mean, I’ve eaten chips, like a whole bag, too, and there’ve been those little chocolate bars around… Sigh.

It’s not about the number, it’s really not. If it was, I could sit here smugly and just go “I’m down 17 pounds! Nyah-nyah!” but it’s not about the number. It’s about being healthy. It’s about not eating shit like chips. I know I’m gonna falter here and there, but I’ve faltered too many times this week, AND I’m not eating quite as healthily as I want to be.

However, I’m not going to continue riding my own ass about this. I’m going to let myself off the hook and go “well, thank god for the number!” A little easier to make lemonade out of this, right? But I gotta wonder how much I might’ve lost had I been as healthy as I wanted to be this week. PLUS, I’ve not been exercising. I’m actually pretty pissed at myself for that.

So, there’s next week. Good. And no candy-focused holiday to fuck me up, right? Whew. Oh, and it’s been my time of the month, too. That always helps. Okay, so it’s through no small miracles that I’m still down another 3 or so pounds this week. That no-butter thing is pretty huge. I’m certainly more conscious of what other fats I have, and I’m pretty sparing on it.

I can improve. I will. This is a little reckonings of sort. And sometimes I plan to be bad on purpose, like the popcorn I’m intending to have at the theatre tonight. Die Hard and no popcorn? Good god! The travesties!

But dinner last night was oatmeal and fruit. Breakfast this morning, more of the same, with a side of vitamins. Lunch will be suitably restrained. Tomorrow I do the fun hike up and down from Wreck Beach a couple times, and expect a world of hurt on Sunday.

Tomorrow night I have a hot date with my nephew. Fun. The kid’s staying over for a night of movies, a late sleep-in, and hanging with the aunt on Sunday. It’s been about two or three years since he’s stayed over… but he used to light up like a million watts when he’d show up for sleepovers at auntie’s, and then the divorce/separation began with his folks, and now the only sleepovers he gets are at Dad’s. Add to that that he’s officially a pre-teen at 11, and I’m kind of dreading it and stoked at the same time — I’m so out of touch with hanging out with him that I’m nervous my cachet’s going to drop as he gets exposed to the inevitable truth: I’m just another grownup. But we’ll see.

I still have something on my side that his parents don’t have, though, and that’s punk rock. You never know. That could be just the ticket. πŸ™‚

Have a great weekend, people.

So It's Your Party, And You Can Cry If You Want To…

…but do you know where your drink is?

The Vancouver Police have just issued a warning for people in the club scene to be more vigilant not only about their drinks, but their drugs, and, yes, their bodies, too.

This is important for anyone of clubbing age to read, regardless of your town, and for parents to get informed about, so as to enlighten yer kiddies. This may come off as preachy, but whatever. I know whereof I speak, so ‘scuse me while I step upon my soapbox.

It turns out that the local gangs in our fair city have been getting better and better entwined in the club scenes, including all-ages parties, and are getting their drugs out there with more success than ever before.

Seems lots of folks are trying glam drugs like “Special K” (ketamine, aka horse tranquilizers used by vets to, yes, knock out horses… sure you want that in ya?), ecstacy, crystal meth (made with lovely things like sulphur, Drano, etc) that they either a) don’t understand the power of, or b) aren’t watching the dosages properly, or c) have no clue about the potential damage they’re doing.

As a result, the number of sexual assaults seems to be skyrocketing of late. The cops say more and more club-related sexual assaults are being reported every single weekend, and with Halloween being one of the biggest party nights of the year, they’re putting the word out there to make sure people clue in to how wrong it can go when you’re mixing heavy boozing with designer drugs you may or may not know the strength of. (By the way, cops speculate that only about 6% of sexual assaults that occur nationally in Canada get reported, so stats on what’s going on would be really inaccurate.)

It doesn’t take a lot to get your drugs or drinks spiked. I’ve had both happen to me. Someone sent me on an acid trip from hell a decade ago when I thought I was just smoking some happy dope. Hours and hours later, I finally came down, hiding in a corner behind some speakers, freaking the fuck out. Considering I was thousands of klicks away from friends and family, at a university newspaper/writer’s convention across the country, things could’ve gone much worse. Fortunately, all I remember is just being incredibly paranoid and scared. It popped my LSD cherry.

I can’t say the same fortune came my way the time I blacked out after someone spiked my booze at a party a few years back. All I remember is it being eight in the morning and waking up on a couch with all my clothes wet. I have no idea what happened that night, but I did have a guy apparently joke around with me as soon as I awoke (my legs were over his on the couch) and tell me “You were fabulous last night”, and while he said he was kidding, part of me knew the last thing I remembered before waking up was being fascinated by the eight foot-long turtles scurrying around in the bathtub across from the toilet and how much that fucked me up, and how much potential there was that something could have happened, and I’d never remember.

Apparently I was doing hot tub tricks later or something. I was, evidently, the life of the party. Pity I remember nothing. Fortunately, though, it seems most people could account for my whereabouts for most of the night… lucky I have a big, fun personality.

My point is this, and you can call me Mama Steff, if you wanna, but date rapes happen all the time. Stupid shit happens all the time. Drinking a lot is way easy to do, and mixing booze with anything else can really fuck you up. If you’re in a club, never EVER sit your drink down, and do NOT give it to anyone else to hold onto, especially if you know they want to fuck you. It’s so easy to dose you and take advantage, so just keep the power in YOUR hands by hanging on to your own drinks, eh?

Then there’s the small matter of drugs. Me, I like drugs. They’re fun. But the only drugs I do are the ones grown by someone, preferably Dead head type, who chats to his plants and ‘shrooms in a hydroponic greenhouse, thanks. I’ve tried the chemical shit, and bad things have happened every time. I thought I was gonna have a heart attack on Scooby Snacks, seriously. I almost went to a hospital. (Ephedrine, mushrooms, and some other little helpers all mixed together, sold in a pack of six pills, and some serious bang for the buck.) But I stick to the organics now.

You never know what you’re getting from a dealer. I love these people who just blindly trust dealers. They’re drug dealers. By their very nature they’re technically not trustworthy, you know? And you wanna assume everything’s peachy they’re giving you? Hell, I hear they’re grinding up glass and mixing it in with dope in the UK now, in order to get the weight up and sell you less dope ergo make more cash by hanging onto more of their stash. Powdered glass looks a lot like THC crystals, I hear tell.

Then the trouble with chemicals is, it’s pretty easy to fuck up the mix and get the balance off. You can’t labour under the assumption that the drug you’re doing this weekend’s the same potency as last weekend’s. And an hour later, when its full power kicks in, it’s impossible to turn back the clock on your dosage quantity, y’know? Hindsight 20-20 really sucks when you’re riding a high that’s too much bang for your buck.

The trouble with drug users is, too fucking many of you are too ignorant for your own good. If you don’t know what your drug is, what it’s made of, how it’s made, who made it, and how it got into your hands, then you shouldn’t be taking it. Seriously. If you’re doing Special K and you don’t know the ramifications, then you’re a fucking idiot. Learn something about it before you take that risk.

I’ve studied every drug I’ve taken, and the ones I’ve never touched are with very, very good reason.

And anyone who does crystal meth is a fucking idiot, whether they’re ignorant or not. Out of all the drugs out there, there’s no worse one to fuck with. And that’s in my humble little opinion, of course, but keep in mind I live in Vancouver, where drugs have taken their serious toll on our little populace, and we have 30 square blocks of one of the worst drug problems in the world, where crystal meth and heroin dominate the scene. And I also work in the film industry and have worked on far too many documentaries on how low one can go on meth. Bad, bad shit. Learn about this shit, seriously. And if you’re a parent, teach your kids.

Party up on Halloween. Just watch what you’re doing, be careful about your choices, and don’t get raped. If you don’t think it’s gonna happen to you, don’t kid yourself. It happens far more than you know, and about every woman, and some of the men, I know have had it happen to them.

Oh, and Happy Halloween. BOO!

(PS: While I like dope, a disturbing study has recently come to light in which it seems there might be a link between pot usage and schizophrenia. Too soon to know much, as it’s new information, but it’s something to be very wary of.)

The Swirl of City Life and the Deception of It All

So, like, HI. I thought I should just pop in and say HULLO to, well, my trusty minions. It’s the least you deserve, right?

I felt compelled to do some overtime today, which means I’m staring headlong into a six-day week. So uncool. But the gods of fate scoffed at me and handed me a broken hearing aid last week, which I’ve had to shell out $300 I had earmarked for computer upgrades. Which means I muddle through with my bogged down, overworked iBook for a few weeks longer.

Ah, well. At least the cash was around, eh? Not the ideal expenditure. I mean, how unsexy. Hearing aid repairs. Sigh. At least I can hear conversations and do my job, which is closed captioning, which means hearing conversations. Interesting circle, that.

(I’ve worn hearing aids most of my life, meaning 32 of 34 years, and most people need to be told I wear ’em, so they’re not those clunky big ones. And it gives me an interesting insight to life, I guess.)

Last night I hung with some friends who have decided that living paycheque to paycheque here in the city just wasn’t working anymore. Vancouver’s one of the most expensive places to live in North America, and the most expensive in Canada. If you’re making $90,000, it’s a great town, but under $40K means you’re saving pennies for a special occasion, if not just a box of Ramen noodles to get you by during more lean times.

(According to the 2007 EIU report on the world’s most expensive cities to live in, Vancouver is second only to New York for expensive lifestyles here in North America. For anyone doubting how cosmopolitan this town is, you got another fuckin’ thing coming. My perennial red line in my bank account is just proof of that pudding, thanks, but unlike all the other people who’ve clued in to how gorgeous and fucking awesome this town is, *I* was born and raised here. It’s in my blood. Don’t I get a discount or something? Ding the johnny-come-latelies, fer god’s sake.)

My friends had bought a house for around $300K and then flipped it within 2 years for $560K, and have fled the city to live in rural Ontario, where they’re gonna own a place 4 times the size, on 3.5 acres of land, for $250K.

Yeah, this is a great town to live in, but it really makes you question what’s important. Is it the $25+ entree dinners in swank places that have sexy names for martinis that are really, truly, just vodka served with juice for the lofty price of $9 to $12, or can you find your contentment at a cheaper price?

In chatting with ’em and their realizing how nigh the change is, from living just blocks from what’s considered the “counter-culture capital of Canada” (by Lonely Planet) and one of the coolest streets in the city, if not the country or continent, Commercial Drive, aka The Drive, where everything your heart desires (that isn’t provided by a chain store) can be found, to living in a big-ass house that’s 45 minutes from the nearest small-ish town, and a car ride from even the meagrest of necessities, I happened to mention something I’d heard once that struck home hard for them and sort of made ’em nod in agreement.

This wise dude I chatted up on a ferry back from the Sunshine Coast once said, and I’m paraphrasing and dressing it up, but along the lines of: “Cities are built for distraction. They’re there, chock full of things to do, places to be, people to see, so as to keep you from realizing just how much you’re feeling disconnected from everything you know’s important, but that you can’t name with words. It distracts you from your emptiness and your unhappiness, long enough it seems until it one day just hits you.”

So my friends are bravely heading off to a place far from anywhere, a place where, as Canadian poet Robert Service once said, “the silence bludgeons you dumb” — a place where they’ll finally find the time and solace to confront any demons they have, and unleash the happiness that hasn’t known how to come out in a busy, chaotic world like the one we’re in.

Every now and then, I’m wishing I’d be doing the same. Me, I’ve done that. I’ve lived in a small town up in the Yukon and know what community means, and harsh climates that force you to interact in new and different ways. There are days down here in the city, a city being taken apart and rebuilt for the world stage before the Olympics land on us in 2010, and there’ll be no turning back for this metropolis — 2 more years of non-stop construction everywhere the eye can see — when I just realize how soulless it all seems, how trying just keeping up to the pace of it all really does get.

Yeah, some nights the notion of living on one of the islands here on the coast, away from the madding crowd, is more than my imagination can bear. Some part of me, though, still really digs the distraction and the balance of nature this town offers. There’ll come a day, though. I’m almost certain there’ll come a day.

Meanwhile, Monday morning’s just hours away. Have an awesome week, peoples.

My Pat-on-the-Back Posting

So, at the end of August, I had a very, very depressing physical with my doctor. I’d gained back some 15 lbs of the 45 or so I’ve lost in the last couple years. I was wheezing, had been sick for a few weeks and would get sick again three weeks later, too, and just generally felt like shit.
My doctor gave me a very stern “this is your reality check” kind of lecture, told me I knew how to reverse it, I’d done it before, and it was imperative I did it again now, or the slippery slope would go downhill very fast.
I haven’t been weighing myself because I don’t think health is about a number, it’s about feeling good, having energy, and having a good attitude and a willingness to work hard to get where you want to go.
That said, I weighed myself this morning after scarfing down a monster bowl of oatmeal and three cups of delivious coffee, and I’m officially down 12 lbs, and that’s without really getting fired up on a workout program… the first time I’ve ever succeeded in losing weight via changing my eating plan.
Ooh. This is gonna get good. πŸ™‚ I officially began My Nemesis today… a 15-floor highrise down the street that I’m climbing stairs at. My calves will hate me by the end of today, but right now I’m embracing the smug.
Have an excellent day. I’ll write about something less me-centric in the next day or so.

Vancouver's Infamous Pedophile, Caught on the Lam

What a couple of days it’s been for the newsfolk here in Vancouver. This afternoon, a small twin-engine plane crashed into an apartment building about five minutes from my home. This evening, a 6-person homicide was found in a home in Surrey. And just in the last couple of days, a very controversial arrest was made in Thailand of a pedophile from the Vancouver area who’s managed to gain international notoriety as the swirl-faced man in digitally altered images depicting him abusing young boys in Asia.

When the shit gets weird, man, it gets weird.

The pedophile– oh, sorry, “accused” pedophile– is an ESL teacher named Christopher Neil who’d travel to Asia both to teach kids English, and I guess when that wasn’t fulfilling enough, to sodomize and rape them.

One of the things I’m huge on is personal freedoms. I’m all about doing what you wanna do behind closed doors, but pedophilia makes me wish public floggings were back in vogue. I say string the fucker up and let us at ’em. A little uncouth, perhaps, but if there’s anything we ought to hold sacred as long as we damned well want in this cynical, strange world we live in, it’s innocence.

Once innocence is lost, it never comes back. Cliche, yes, but true. That’s just the sad reality of what “growing up” means. Sooner or later, illusions are shattered. It happens soon enough for all of us, but when some asshole like Christopher Neil saunters in and ceremoniously strips others of that innocence — whether it’s by force or because some starving kid needs a couple nickels to rub together for his dinner, or, as reports say, $15 to rape ’em underaged — then I say the law needs to answer to it as fast and hard as it can.

Christopher Neil isn’t just your garden-variety pedophile. He’s one that raped at least 12 boys that we know of (but the speculation is that’s just a starting figure… the guy tried to enter the priesthood here in BC, but even the Catholic Church wouldn’t take him. Wowzas! Worked with cadets here in Canada, and did a little teaching, too… Investigations are ongoing). He then digitally altered his face in images he proceed to posted on the internet. Interpol finally was able to extrapolate an image from his mangled files, and pasted them worldwide in an attempt to find out who the hell he was. Vive le Photoshop!

Thing is, we don’t know the extent to which he violated these kids. One would have to hazard the guess that it had to be pretty severe in order for Interpol to take such a vested interest in this one guy.

Well… Imagine Vancouver’s pride to find out this internationally hunted fugitive is one of our own. My, aren’t we lucky.

Like I say, I think it’d be a banner day out if we’d string him up on the Art Gallery steps and allow the masses to flog him, but I hear tell that’s considered cruel and inhumane. Hmm. Well, like the people say, if it’s good for the goose, it’s good for the gander, right?

No worries, though. There’s always prison showers. I imagine the Thai ones have a certain exotic flavour but I bet when you get past all that international variety, a prison shower’s a prison shower, right? Tsk.

Welcome to crime fighting in the digital age, people. It’s nice to know some of the bad guys actually do get caught.

A Brief Look at My Time as The Other Woman

I’m waiting on a storm. A storm named LingLing, to be exact. You gotta love typhoons… they’re always given such nifty Asian names. We here in Vancouver don’t call this just a “storm”, no, this is the much dreaded Pineapple Express. A lovely parting gift sent our way by the fabulous Hawaiian Islands. Days and days of rain, lots of flooding, oodles of soaked-through shoes and out-turned umbrellas. The nasty part’s going to be the sustained nasty south-easterly winds… winds from the same unusual direction and with potentially the same impact (hurricane strength) as the ones that devastated this city’s world-famous jewel, Stanley Park, last year… razing areas of that park with the same impact as clear-cut logging would’ve brought. Gonna be decades before that park’s all better.*

But that’s not what’s on my mind tonight. I was watching Grey’s Anatomy just now, with the long-awaited confrontation between Torres and Izzie after George finally came clean on cheating on his wife Torres with the hot Izzie. Ah, the drama of it all. Torres called her a “traitorous bitch” for breaking the bond of womanhood and betraying one of her own.

I found myself remembering back to when I was once the “other woman”. It was a long, long time ago now. More than a decade. I was young, probably 19, maybe 20.

The thing was, it was a guy I knew had a crush on me for a long while. A couple years, actually. We were friends, more or less. I was always seeing this poet writer guy off and on, occasionally dated during the “off” times, but nothing ever came about with this guy in question ‘cos I was always pretty abrupt towards him. He was never really my type, I thought. As time wore on, I started realizing he was pretty cute, but I still wasn’t interested. Now, though, he’s the type I secretly crave.

Back then, though, all us friends had a day at a beach. I was his ride (which turned out to be true in more ways than one) so we wound up chatting a lot. Next thing you know, there’s sunscreen, bare backs, and massages figuring into the picture. Now, I might be putty in a good masseuse’s hands, but I can give a hella-good massage myself, which is what pretty much caused the trouble in the first place. Then he had to one-up me, and that’s always a good/bad scenario. Then the thought of potentials a la him outweighed the benefits of sitting around for the probables that came with a day at the beach with ze usual suspects.

We high-tailed it back to his place, and that began the next couple of weeks of some pretty wild sexcapades, some of which have been “fictionalized” on here, but that I think I might’ve deep-sixed after realizing I felt uncomfortable sharing it, either way, you get no link. And I’m leaving it at that. What I will say, though, is that there was that great friendly banter peppered with excellent sex, and a lot of trust that comes from befriending someone for a couple years before you bone’em in the sack. So to speak.

Suffice to say the sex was hot. Better than I’d had at that point, and possibly still among some the best I’ve had.

And then… and then I found out he wasn’t single after all. Worse yet, he was seeing someone I was friends-ish with.

And then… and then I did something I’m wondering now if I’d do again today. I admitted it. I went to her and I told her he’d cheated on her, and that it was with me, and that I had ended it as soon as I found out. I don’t know whether they ever went out again. I know the friendship I had with her was over, and I can only suspect I busted his heart up a little at the time.

And, yeah, as honest as I am, as much integrity as I know I have, I have to wonder if I’d do the same today. Prrrrrobably not. The thing is, I’m older, I’m wiser, and I know really intense, hot, great sexuality doesn’t happen often, not like that. Not with someone really deserving of your trust. Except for the cheating-on-his-gal thing, of course, I found him highly trustworthy.

Now, I’m at the other end of things. I finally realize he liked me long before… long before he even met his girlfriend. I know what we had was intense and hot and fun and more than just sex. Yes, it was wrong. Yeah, there are things I’d take back in a heartbeat. But I don’t regret a minute of it.

I wonder now if something happened along those lines if I’d chalk it up unfortunate timing but a long time in the making. I do know one thing… I really, really regret going to her. I really regret not having spoken to him first and allowing him to at least say his piece. Now I’ll always have that wonderment.

But yeah. All I’m doing now tonight is wondering. Wondering. And waiting on a feisty bitch named LingLing.

The moral of the story? Make sure your regrets are about things you did, rather than didn’t do. I should’ve had that conversation with him, too, but I didn’t. Regretting things one could’ve easily avoided is even more regrettable than the lack of action.

Fortunately I don’t make a habit of wading through my regrets all that often, and, luckily, the list isn’t as long as one might suppose.

Well, time to batten down the hatches before I get a night-time visitor very much not of my choosing. Come out, come out, whereever you are, LingLing. Such a tease.

*Yes, I’ve secretly always thought it would be fun to be a meteorologist. What? I have a geek side.