So You Think You Can Dance is one of the rare reality shows that really inspires me sometimes, and in more than one ways.

Today I’m having my monthly visitor (ahem) so I’m all crampy on the couch, loving the dancing. This is the second time I’ve been quite affected by this scene in which this beautiful black man in his 20s dances this gorgeous, sensual scene with a woman. The man’s showing no passion for her, no lust, and it’s clear through the choreography that that’s what he should be feeling.

In the critiquing, the guy came apart and began to cry. Turns out he’s a minister by profession, so he’s all horrified at the thought of showing lust.

Unfortunately, due to the editing of the show, he was limited to what he could say to express that, but the tortured confusion on his face showed it all. He clearly, brilliantly understands the throes of passion in concept, because his routine showed lust and longing in all its languid ways, even if his face failed to convey it.

So we know he understands lust and longing, his choreography proved it (and it was his; Nigel absolutely loved the choreography and called it “brilliant” and him “talented”). Yet the prospect of demonstrating that longing facially and in his eyes just scares him to death.

And I don’t understand. Turns out his choreography was based on the Song of Solomon, in which it follows the courtship of a man and a woman, and the leaving of carnal relations till after the consummation of marriage. Thus, the lust and longing without acting that the fellow so struggled to convey.

That’s the part of religion I dislike, the part that puts such confusion into the mind of a young man like this, a man who is supposed to lead others to their own spiritual clarity but who cannot find his own.

How can it be wrong to simply showing the tortured pain of longing to be with someone you can’t be with?

I mean, ministers are allowed to fall in love and marry. It’s not like they’re priests. Feeling lust and not acting on it, isn’t that what it’s all about? Isn’t that the restraint religion demands of you? So, what’s the problem, right? It’s a sin to convey that that occurs, though? What?

But there you have it. It’s no coincidence, I feel, that religions are executed and administered by humans, the makers of human error. Mixed messages are delivered through various ministers and their “interpretations”, then unrealistic demands are expected of us, and not enough humility is used in explaining the limits of being human in a realm of gods.

We’ll all make mistakes, but it’s how we move beyond them that define us, in religion and in life. Religions would rather leave us thinking mistakes can’t happen, and when you do make them, there’s no open book for how to move beyond them. You’re often left to fumble and fuck it up, or go through the tortured self-loathing that may follow.

It seems to me that the greatest teachers are the ones who’ve made the most mistakes and best understand the struggles faces by their students. Why can’t ministers see that it’s their very humanness that makes them best skilled to lead us?

It breaks my heart when I see a young guy like this so eaten up by the struggles of his cloth that he can’t express what’s in his heart and embrace the artful creativity he doesn’t seem to want to believe his creator bestowed upon him.

What a silly, silly troublemaker this religion thing can be. Or maybe it’s just people fucking up something that shouldn’t be as complicated as we let it be.

Maybe part of the problem with believing that people speak to god is, we’re taking their word for two sides of the conversation. Any conversation I’ve had usually can use a little clarification on both sides of the equation. But what do I know?

I’m just a silly person who thinks that love and lust and longing and intimacy are far too beautiful things for a creator to tell us to never do them.

After all, any maker of any thing I know tends to want you to use everything they make, right? Sony wants you to buy all their home theatre products, use all the fancy add-ins so you can brag to your friends about all the stupid, unnecessary, “but at least it does it” gimmicks your new gadgets perform.

So why wouldn’t this God guy want you to explore being human in all its random glory? From screaming sex to tender kisses in the moonlight, from the exhileration of a skydive to the tragedy of a lost friend, from the moment you see your new baby to the moment your lifelong love dies, from 8,000-kilometres-apart longing to the emptiness of unrequited love…

All of it is what makes being human such a write-home-to-mom experience, man. It’s everything we feel, everything we can do, the incredible network of wiring and synapses that make emotions and life such a rollercoaster ride for us to live through.

How can any god think the look of tortured bafflement on that young dancing minister’s face be the road to spiritual divinity?

Sigh. Once again I’m left in utter confusion about how it can be wrong to simply be who we are.

Every now and then I start thinking that this blog shouldn’t be my soapbox. This year, however, the stakes are too high. There’s an old saying, if the United States sneezes, Canada catches cold. What goes on down south profoundly affects our country.

As a Canadian, I can’t legally vote for Barack Obama. But I can help change minds, and reinforce others.

I don’t vote for any one party. I vote on issues and conscience and have voted for at least five different national parties here in Canada, so that tells you I’m all over the place. But I only wish I ever have the chance to vote for someone who excites me as much as Obama.

There are those who think he’s too shrewd to be a “good” Democrat. Like, “Ee! Ee! He’ll use his powers for evil! He’s unknown!”

Here’s what I know. This is only an excerpt* of a speech given by Obama on October 2nd, 2002, almost six months before the US invasion of Iraq:

I don’t oppose all wars…

What I am opposed to is the attempt by political hacks like Karl Rove to distract us from a rise in the uninsured, a rise in the poverty rate, a drop in the median income – to distract us from corporate scandals and a stock market that has just gone through the worst month since the Great Depression. That’s what I’m opposed to. A dumb war. A rash war. A war based not on reason but on passion, not on principle but on politics. Now let me be clear – I suffer no illusions about Saddam Hussein. He is a brutal man. A ruthless man. A man who butchers his own people to secure his own power. He has repeatedly defied UN resolutions, thwarted UN inspection teams, developed chemical and biological weapons, and coveted nuclear capacity. He’s a bad guy. The world, and the Iraqi people, would be better off without him.

But I also know that Saddam poses no imminent and direct threat to the United States, or to his neighbors, that the Iraqi economy is in shambles, that the Iraqi military a fraction of its former strength, and that in concert with the international community he can be contained until, in the way of all petty dictators, he falls away into the dustbin of history. I know that even a successful war against Iraq will require a US occupation of undetermined length, at undetermined cost, with undetermined consequences. I know that an invasion of Iraq without a clear rationale and without strong international support will only fan the flames of the Middle East, and encourage the worst, rather than best, impulses of the Arab world, and strengthen the recruitment arm of Al Qaeda. I am not opposed to all wars. I’m opposed to dumb wars.

The consequences of war are dire, the sacrifices immeasurable. We may have occasion in our lifetime to once again rise up in defense of our freedom, and pay the wages of war. But we ought not — we will not — travel down that hellish path blindly. Nor should we allow those who would march off and pay the ultimate sacrifice, who would prove the full measure of devotion with their blood, to make such an awful sacrifice in vain.

I understand the whole Obama-played-it-cool argument against his rather calculated rise from the Chicago streets. I get that. But I also think he’s a man who thought “I can be a great president, and it’s stupid to wait until the end of my life.” I think he’s a man who stood by in horror as his country waged a wrongful war costing tens, if not hundreds, of thousands of lives, shattering its reputation globally, and he saw his plan to work dilligently toward a presidency get moved up quicker because he’s the only guy who stood out their boldly calling that war for everything that it was. In 2002.

When the country needed a leader who would study the facts and launch a war only as the last possible resort, because that’s what war should be, it didn’t have one. And very few voices spoke against the war. I don’t know of any who attacked the political means behind the war as succinctly as he did, as early. Very few understood the issues as he did, and as presciently. Sure, others agreed with him, but they didn’t have the balls to lay it all down in detail. It was unpatriotic and heretical to oppose the war then. Remember the Dixie Chicks?

Obama might have been shrewdly silent on issues that may have painted him in stereotypes future opponents (like in the most significant election of all, a presidential one) might use to paint him as the token black candidate who votes like a black candidate. And it’s too bad he had to play things coy in those regards, but I believe he did it with the intent to be a more action-oriented president. Saving change up for that rainy four-year term, you know?

The thing is, though, when a strong voice of truth needed to be heard, he did speak up. He fought a fight that could have hurt his career, and he fought it rather hard. For six years. I choose to allow that to speak louder than some of the votes that may have been somewhat losing causes that he opted to back tactfully away from to keep his record more neutral. Politics, it’s a tough game and calculations are required no matter how pure your motives. Perhaps even more so with your pure motives.

There are those who may think that, because Obama’s beginning to display master tactician strategies, that he’s somehow hypocritical to his “politics not as usual” message he eschews. You want to make that argument, fine, you could probably give it wings and watch it fly. Whatever. But it’s fucking dumb to think you need to be snow-pure and uncalculated in your handling of spin. Well, sure, if you want to lose elections and sit around being all ethical and pretty on the sidelines while the guys who knew how to calculate in politics took every single election.

Elections aren’t just good guys and bad guys, they’re more complicated and skewed and calculated than the lay person could ever believe. Look at the movie Wag the Dog, which starts out satire, but it’s fuckin’ six years before the Iraq war and looks like it practically wrote the war in advance. God.

Politicking is art and science, and if the good guys are going to win they need players who play the rules as well as they play the games. Obama seems to have a knack for it, and his first election’s proof of that.

I think there’s nothing wrong with getting off sinking ships (ie: not voting for something with no hope in hell of passing, if it means it’s a specific yea or nay is on your record). If it keeps your image a little more enigmatic and hard to pigeon-hole, it may in fact be the only way one can launch a quick rise through the political rankings, a la Kennedy and Obama — meaning Obama’s a would-be junior senator-cum-president, not necessarily the second coming of Christ a la Kennedy.

Be thankful there’s a Democrat who finally knows how to throw down with the best of them, and be grateful his motives seem pure. It’s kind of like Oprah being the queen of manipulation and slickety-slick, but with all the good she does, you think “well, she uses her powers for good, so, whew!” Ditto. Only thing is, he’s a politician, so everyone gets a little skeptical. Understandable.

I get that, but I have the rest of my life to be cynical. For the next five months, I’m gonna believe.

Read the whole speech, and it’s a doozy, here.

Fuck the pope, fuck the church, and fuck stupid-ass religious school boards for doing stupid-ass things.

Here in Canada, Ontario’s premier is expressing his “disappointment” at the Halton Catholic District School Board’s choice to NOT give its grade-eight girls the free, provided-by-government human papilloma virus vaccine, which is contracted through sexual activity, but is the leading cause of cervical cancer in women.

The problem is, the Catholic Church still lives in the la-la-land where everyone is perfect and sin never, ever happens, and things like AIDS and cervical cancer only happen to dirty people who deserve them.

The Halton School Board wants to remind grade eight girls that sex is not permitted by the church before marriage.

SIGH. When will the Catholic Church, the Vatican, and fuckwits like those running Halton start to realize what idiots they’re being? When will they start to accept the responsibility they bear for lives they threaten when they fail to accept the one thing their God has celebrated since He supposedly created everyone… the freedom to choose and act under free will?

But obvious that’s too big a mouthful for these dimwits, so how about I take a different approach this time?

As a 12-year-old, I was very certain that the stars and cosmos would align ever so perfectly so as to allow me to reach fame and fortune as a singer since I knew George Michael would spot my brilliance on the street one day or at a high school dance. Hey, I was 12 and dumb, it’s what you do at 12, right?

My mother said, “All right, but if life intervenes and George doesn’t find you and you can’t be rich and famous from singing, what are you going to do with your life?”

So I figured I’d get a journalism degree one day, since that’s such an easy job to get a career in. (Ha.)

Thing is, I picked a back-up plan. I’m not looking at life like it’s all going to go according to plan, because shit happens, as we all know. You make contingencies, you create safety nets to catch yourself when you fall, because shit happens. We have dreams and ideals, but a little thing called “real life” tends to get in the way every single time.

Why would the Catholic Church say, “Here’s the ideal: Strive for the perfect life without sin. But if you fuck up, you will pay the whole price, because we’re not letting you protect yourself with anything, ever. No condoms, no HPV vaccine… because our god is a spiteful, vengeful god who will strike you down when you fail to live the perfect, sin-free life” ?

Why? Why would a god who sends his only son to Earth, whose son befriends whores and sinners and thieves, who forgives all and understands the whole painful human experience from birth to death, wish that man not protect themselves from themselves? Doesn’t the Church realize how much they govern their faith under a mandate of fear and retribution? Don’t they even begin to understand the concepts of human error and forgiveness they try to teach so often?

These are THIRTEEN-YEAR-OLD GIRLS. They could be raped. They could mistakenly think they’ve found the love of their life. They could have a moment of weakness. How DARE the school district not require them to take a tiny needle (three times) that can prevent them from one of the stupidest, most senseless cancer deaths out there?

There are lines I don’t believe religion should be allowed to cross. There are lines I think the government needs to draw more firmly. When you’re talking about the HPV virus, or AIDS, things that can be averted through very simple means — a simple vaccine or a condom — the government has a responsibility to put the 13-year-olds’ interests ahead of their parents’ or their churches’.

We’re in a socialist system here in Canada, and we the taxpayers will foot the bill for either the cost of their vaccine or the cost of their battle with cervical cancer, however it should unfold. I’d rather pay for the vaccine, not the cancer. No one should be afflicted with a mostly-avoidable cancer like cervical cancer.

I’ve had an old friend, who’s drifted away and won’t get in touch, get cervical cancer. 32 years old. Two young children. She’s Catholic. Will she survive it? Hard to know.

But if all it would have taken was a simple needle when she was 13… imagine the different life she would be leading. Instead, she’s 32 and remembering that her mother died of cancer in her 50s. She’s got two babies and she’s facing questions of mortality no 32-year-old mother should need to be facing. Unfortunately, we didn’t have the option of the HPV vaccine when we were teens.

So when I hear about fuckwits like Halton and their “struggle” with their conscience, I want to fucking bitch-slap the whole lot of them and shout “FUCK your conscience. LOOK at reality, THEN make peace with your conscience.”

Save a life, or hang kicking-and-screaming onto your principles? Hmm. Gee, tough choice.

I’m really sick and tired of the hypocrisy of the Catholic Church and all its various boards and establishments. I’m tired of their penchant to prejudge people before the afterlife kicks in.

The thing about the Catholic Church that doesn’t make sense is, there’s so much talk about what’s a sin and how bad it is, and how horrible it is to be sinning (ie: premarital sex) and all that, but once you walk into the confessional and claim you’re sorry, you’re absolved. Sins are wiped away and you’re essentially a freshly-baptized baby again, more or less. Graham Greene once wrote said Catholics are more capable of evil than anyone else for they believe in salvation between the stirrup and the ground. Meaning, you can do anything you want, beg forgiveness, and receive absolution.

(It is this very principle, that of the proverbial sinning free-for-all followed by the clean-slate of absolution that ultimately made me want to leave the Church when I argued, at 13, with a priest who said a local serial killer of the time going to church Sundays was more likely to go to heaven than I was because he was attending church and receiving the sacraments, and even if I was leading a good life, I wasn’t attending, ergo likely had a date with hell.)

But what good is absolution of the sin if you’re being instructed not to safeguard yourself against AIDS or HPV by using pragmatic means like condoms and vaccines? How does it make sense that you’re not supposed to sin, but if you do, the priest can make it all go away with a rosary or two, yet you may contract an infection or virus that can kill you because preparing for the sin somehow makes it worse… even if it’s getting absolved in a week or two anyhow?

And there are those out there who are saying “So? Use the condom then, fuck what the church says.” But that’s not the point. The point is, there are a lot of devout people who don’t go asking questions outside the parameters of their faiths. They believe sex is a sin, they live by those principles. Yet they, too, are human, and shit happens. And when it does, because they’ve listened to their church and believed what the church has outlined about life in general, they may pay the ultimate price.

Those people aren’t reading this blog, they may never know better. And they don’t deserve to die just because they’re ignorant and devout. No one does.

And that’s why I’m disgusted with the church and all its administrative bod
ies, because they’re abusing the trust their congregations have placed in them.

It’s hypocrisy, it’s a crime, it’s a scandal. As a taxpayer, I want those kids vaccinated. As a good person, I want those kids vaccinated. As a recovered Catholic, I want justice here, I want those kids protected.

I’ve said it before, I’ll say it again: Fuck the pope. And fuck Halton’s school board.

And if you’re a parent of, or you are, a young woman between the ages of 9 and 26, and you’ve not yet visited a doctor for information about the Gardasil HPV vaccine, then you really must look into it. The vaccine is not retroactive, and it is not licensed for use over 26.

(Part of me doesn’t want to publish this, and part of me says “Write what you know, and publish it” because this is where my mind is right now. But know that a part of me thinks it’s whining, ‘cos I know a lot of people are as broke as I am right now, or worse, and for longer. But it’s where my head is, and sometimes I think that’s the best part of blogging… momentary glimpses of others’ realities. Welcome to mine.)

I chuckled a lame-ass chuckle when I caught a t-shirt with an arts-snob pun: “Baroque: adj., when you are out of Monet”.

Broke? Out of money? Recessions and seasonal slow-downs are a bitch, n’est ce pas? Wow.

So, it’s a week into my “I got towed!” broke-ass pay period, and I’ve got about 10 days to go. And, man, am I just bummed. Like I say, I know this is a four- to six-week period, it’ll pass, and I’m grateful I can look forward to some relief down the line.

But the trouble with the four to six weeks that need to elapse is, we live in a society that judges you on money. How much do you got? What can you do with it? Got toys? Prove it!

And it’s days like this where I start to doubt my life choices. And I hate that. I hate doubting myself. I hate the fear of “Man, what if I’d gone that other way? What would I have now?”

I don’t have a lot in life, you know? My life is simple. Splurging means I’ve paid $12-15 for a bottle of wine, instead of $9 or so. Or maybe it means I’ve bought a nice steak to grill. And that’s all right with me. I don’t mind my “small pleasures” in life actually being small, because the life I lead is so much more simpler and mine than the life led by most, if not all, of my friends.

Know that life you dream of where you have enough control over your life, enough time, and enough flexibility to do what you want? The life you had at 20? Well, that’s the life I still lead at 35.

Trouble is, it doesn’t pay great, and this city’s an expensive bitch to live in, but it’s my home. But I get by, and I’m all right with getting by. In fact, the track “I’ll Get By” by Swag is my personal anthem. And I’m all right with that.

But when I’m sitting around and I know there are folks around me who are five years younger and making $10,000-40,000 more a year than I am, it’s natural for me to start wondering if selling out and following my political instincts for a corporate career might’ve been smarter than following my love of the written word, as much as I might love the life I usually lead.

I could’ve probably done well in the political realm. When I was 18, I got involved with the Young Liberals. After a few weeks I found myself thinking “These people are so fake…” and I jetted from the scene, despite knowing it’d give me awesome job contacts.

I’d have made the contacts that keep some young folks I know sitting pretty at $70,000 a year, while I’m here scheming about an exciting diet consisting primarily of, yes, beans, and rationing my juice out.

Trouble is, I know I probably would’ve become one of those people that a) never writes, b) starts to wonder what might’ve been if she had been writing, and c) starts to hate the job so much that it’s all about living for the expensive-ass vacation it can pay for and all the pretty toys it provides to play with.

I wish some part of me could cook up a brilliant way to combine both worlds. But I’ve tried to live that dichotomy and it tore me apart inside over the last couple of years. I’ve learned the hard way that I gotta go for the soul of life, and not the show of life. I returned to a job that affords me the flexibility and the time required to live the writing life I’d like to maintain the rest of my days.

And most of the time I’m cool with just getting by. I’m cool with being this chick of words and thoughts and not a whole lot else. My cheapness is a running joke these days, and I’m cool with that, but not cool with being THIS broke, and not for this length of time. (It’ll be two or three rough months by the time this passes, but this is the worst patch and things will start to ease up in a couple weeks. Whew.)

I feel like a failure today. A big, fat failure, and it’s all because I haven’t got money in my wallet. It doesn’t matter that I’m a great person with a fun job and a cute apartment who’s lost 35 pounds all on her own steam, who’s healthier than ever before, and who throws down a good blog, you know?

I’m the chick who’s not getting her bills paid, and that’s the identity that screams loudest at me right now.

We’ve ALL had this feeling, probably. Or at least most of us have. That dark period before the dawn when you’re so goddamned broke you feel like you’re being Punk’d by Kra-Z Glue? That period when you can’t pay your bills, the best thing you can do is figure out which utility needs a greater percentage of the bill paid? Yeah. I fucking hate not being able to pay bills. That just sucks. I feel like such a pariah.

It blows, and we all know it. I’m certainly not the only person going through tough times these days.

Like any other challenge in life, I’m reminding myself that this is more a test of my personal endurance than it is bad luck. It’s an opportunity for me to see how low I can go whilst still bouncing back. Knowing your mettle is always advantageous in the contact sport of life.

But I’d like to spend a little less time being tested. Wouldn’t we all? Geez.

It’s the end of an era.

It’s the end of the time in which you had to be white and male to run for the office of President of the United States of America.

Now you can be black. Whether it’ll happen or not, we’ll know in November. That the possibility, with a 50-50 probability, even exists is pretty remarkable when one considers the past from which modern America has emerged, and how recently.

When King was killed in ’63, it was like some big voice in white America answering “Not on my watch” to King’s bellowing of “I have a dream.” Don’t think that’s fallen too far away from the collective memory of black America.

Tonight, though, it’s on our watch.

And we are all the better for it. Today finally is the tomorrow we’ve all been waiting all this time for. Today is the tomorrow, and it’s on our watch.

We’re blessed be here, now, when an almost impalpable but unmistakable veneer of cynicism seems to have fallen slightly away from America.

It has been a long, long wait. Nice dream, Martin. It plays out well in reality. A very, very nice dream. (Do we have to wake?)