Sure, Mondays sometimes suck because they’re the start to the week. But that’s sometimes exactly why they rock, too. I’m taking my Monday the easy way — slept in, having some lattes, and then I’ll casually amble in by bike around noon. Why end the weekend sooner than necessary, hey?
But let’s talk about what I’m reading. The Washington Post is running what should be a terrific 12-part story on the unsolved death of Chandra Levy, an intern to Congressman Gary Condit, from back in 2000.
What you maybe don’t know about me is that I was addicted to true crime from about 15-25. I was a voracious reader of everything from Helter Skelter to The Stranger Beside Me. So, part of me is pretty stoked to see the Post take this topic on.
It’s going to be a story of political skulduggery, methinks. Allegations have been made by some in the past against Gary Condit, who has taken offense and launched slander suits but never won. Continue reading
Category Archives: Politics
Teen Sex: The New After-School Special?
The news about teen sex these days just keeps getting more and more alarming. When it all comes down, it’s on Bush’s watch.
Earlier this year, studies showed that an average of one out of every four (26%) of teenage girls are now carrying an STD in the great USA. Never mind the teen pregnancies. These are sexually transmitted diseases, people.
The news is alarming now, but imagine five, ten years from now when the fallout of the STDs exchanged between today’s youths are really felt and known.
It’s been a few months now since the story came out. I’ve been quietly waiting around for the shitstorm to unleash, for when parents start screaming in outrage that their baby girls having a 25% likelihood of carrying an STD, and soon… But the shitstorm never came. The anger never rose. Continue reading
From There to Where? How Far We've Come.
The INT ran a fascinating story on the end of tradition in Albania last week. The article begins:
Pashe Keqi recalls the day nearly sixty years ago when she decided to become a man. She chopped off her long black curls, traded in her dress for her father’s baggy trousers, armed herself with a hunting rifle and vowed to forsake marriage, children and sex.
Women in Albania have long had the option to hold power traditionally reserved for the family patriarchs. The catch is, they’d have to abdicate their femininity, a la Keqi.
Once considered the only way a woman could be strong, by pretending to be a man, it’s now considered outdated and unnecessary, and women, for the first time ever, are making serious strides in a very old-world country. The longstanding opinion of women is stated succinctly here:
Under the Kanun [a code of conduct that has been passed on orally among the clans of northern Albania for more than five centuries], the role of women is severely circumscribed: Take care of children and maintain the home. While a woman’s life is worth half that of a man, a virgin’s value is the same – 12 oxen.
But things are changing, and quickly. There’s no longer the belief that a man or pseudo-man must be around the homefront to keep worlds righted and working. It’s now understood women can handle it all, too.
________________
There’s a lot of rah-rah “sisters are doin’ it” cheerleading going on on the stump in America today, with Obama trumpeting Hillary’s gender-bending run for the presidential nominee as the two engulf headlines with their show of unity in Unity and the their travelling love-in.
And I think it’s easy to get a little cynical and just dismiss it all as politics as usual when someone like Obama lauds Clinton by saying not only can women do it better, but “do it in heels…” But it’s important for us to really dust that cynicism off, especially for those of us under 35 who’ve never really seen how damaging sexism once was.
This is no time for that cynicism, though. For a little while we deserve to be proud, too. This is a great time to be alive. It really is. There’s a lot of hope for the future, with all these walls coming tumbling down these days. Black folks running for the highest office in the land, beating a woman for the job. It’s a wild time.
When you look at the sacrifices made by those who’ve gone before us, like the women in Albania who’ve opted for a life of virginity and pretending to be a man so they might adopt control of their families, or those who’ve been skewered in the public for saying a woman can do a better job than a man, like Hillary did, it’s been a long fucking road.
Girls today maybe don’t even realize that most of us females have had the right to vote for less than a hundred years. We had to fight for the right to have a say.
Women today maybe still don’t realize that most women never worked a job until this century, and pay still isn’t equal for equal roles, most of the time.
But, wow, have we come a long ways, baby. I get a little dejected sometimes when I see the Paris and Britney wanna-bes coming up in the ranks, but then I see the new generation of women who can’t stand their P/B contemporaries, who are smart, sexy, driven, resourceful, and promising.
It’s going to be all right. I suspect some tough times may still be ahead, but that light at the end of the tunnel just keeps getting stronger, doesn’t it?
It’s a great time to be a witness, don’t you think? An even better time to play a role.
Carlin is Dead, Long Live Carlin
Freedoms are something we take for granted in places like the US and Canada… until someone comes along and takes those freedoms.
The trouble with being “free” is we don’t always realize how limited that freedom truly is. That’s why we have people like George Carlin in our lives, people who push buttons.
Or we did. George Carlin died Sunday of a heart attack.
When it comes to really saying how society is, I think comics like Lenny Bruce and George Carlin have had such important roles to play. Lenny Bruce I’ve eulogized before on this blog. Carlin, not so much. I’m a huge fan of comedy, but more so the pushy, provocative skits of the ’70s.
In 1973, Carlin had a skit air on the radio that prompted another challenge of America’s obscenity laws that had plagued Bruce till he died. Carlin fought the charges and the Supreme Court ruled he was indecent, but not obscene. It wouldn’t be Carlin’s last fight, either, but he’d always win a little bit.
I’m a big fan of Freedom of Speech, albeit I’m a fan of our Canadian version of it, not the American version. (The difference? Although you’re not allowed to do hate speech in Canada, [which goes against “freedom” of speech but I approve] we can swear more, get away with more, and we have more sex on TV.)
But I’m a big believer that the freedoms I celebrate by being angrily on-point with issues, swearing all over the place, and flaming anyone I can think of, come on the heels of such provocative work done over the years by folks like Carlin, Bruce, Bill Hicks, and any other dead comedic great you want to lump in there.
Unfortunately, the debate between “obscene” and “indecent” still rages in the USA, and the land of the free still isn’t as unbridled and free as many of today’s comics wish it would be.
There aren’t a lot of comics where you always get the joke, professionals who understand how to really make their audience come alive, but Carlin was the last truly great comedian left from the time when American censors were getting paid too well for their jobs, when getting onstage meant daily questions of “What’s gonna be too much for this town, anyhow?”
For folks like Carlin and Bruce, that question would get answered when they’d land in jail yet again for some dirty jokes or peppering speech with profanities.
Just a little of the free speech you have in America is thanks to folks like Carlin who questioned those who called him “obscene”.
After all, what some people consider obscene is how the rest of us like to live our lives.
I’m sad that the world’s without Carlin now. I’m sad he never lived to receive his Mark Twain’s Humourist prize this November.
But I’m glad he pushed some buttons in his lifetime. Thanks, George. The mark you left behind changed the landscape of public speech, and you will be remembered.
Fuck The Pope.
The Catholic Church continues to dwell in the dark ages. Chillin’ in Rome on Saturday, Pope Benedict has again, and very adamantly, praised Humanae vitae, the 1968 Catholic document that declared the sanctity of human life in all its forms, including sperm and eggs, and thus issuing a Church-wide opposition to use of artificial birth control.
When choosing a new pope after John Paul II’s death, the Church decided against some of the more progressive thinkers who are wondering if, in the face of the epidemic spread of AIDS in Africa, it might be wise to begin using condoms to stem the spread of the disease. After all, Humanae vitae was written and enacted long before AIDS was either discovered or understood. Who could have conceived of a sexually-transmitted virus wiping out an entire generation of Africans in just 25 years after its “discovery”?
Today’s pope would have you believe it’s an act of courage to live according to the values espoused by Humanae vitae, but I say it’s an example of uncourageous Church that fails to see that we’re fighting against a horrendous virus that can, and may, mutate, making it even harder to prevent or even eliminate in the years ahead. But a condom is essentially the best weapon we have against AIDS. We can fight it now. Who’s to say what a future strain or mutation of AIDS might have the ability to do against us? Am I scare-mongering? No, but sometimes I get a little scared in the face of such dangerous ignorance.
The Church would rather an HIV-infected spouse have unprotected sex and risk infecting their partner than be safe and still share love without as much fear of death and disease.
JP II actively campaigned against the use of condoms to fight AIDS– in Africa!– by doing a series of speaking engagements throughout the continent in the years before his death, when Africa was already being labelled a hotbed of AIDS that had to be doused. The Church would have you believe that abstinence should be sufficient.
The powers that be in the Catholic Church have lost their grip on reality.
I was raised Catholic and went to both Catholic elementary and high school… Until, that is, it became known that my diocese had knowingly allowed a teacher to continue teaching at my Catholic high school for more than four years after they had discovered he had been molesting boys.
The spring of the year I learned that, when I was in grade nine, a girl committed suicide. The priest then told the school she would go to hell as suicide was a sin. You should have heard the heaving sobs and pained cries emitted by the student body as their grief became uncontrollable with the words “…to hell.”
That September found me going to public school. After three years of arguing with my parents about going to public school, they both were disgusted by the hypocrisy of the Church and I never was made to attend mass again.
So, I’m obviously a little biased.
Still, I am disgusted by the hypocrisy of the Church now. First it claims it’s the sanctity of human life, in all its possible forms, that drives it to fight for its protection by way of declaring all artificial contraception to be sins. Yet it’s the demise of human life they spread when all that’s needed to prevent more than 90% of the sexual transmissions of HIV & AIDS is the use of a little itty-bitty piece of latex. An entire generation has been wiped out and the Church STILL campaigns against a known way of preventing this horrific endless parade of death.
I mean, they’ve not declared the use of condoms as a sin then quietly looked the other way, like they seem to do to a greater extent with adultery and white-collar crime and other things that actually are sins committed against others. No, they’re out there banging that fucking drum and fighting it on a regular basis, with a microphone and camera, and in places where the education and savvy maybe could use a little helping hand. “Condoms are a sin, don’t wear condoms”?
That’s fucking obscene. That’s a fucking sin. Sanctity of life? Waste of life!
I think it’s a crime to do what the Church is doing. Not only that, it breaks my heart. It really does. When I was a kid, I was absolutely passionate about the Catholic creed. I had a comic book volume of the Bible, seven books I read again and again and again, dog-eared to shit, and I’m still angry at my dead mom for getting rid of ’em on me. I’d preach to the kiddies in the ‘hood about God’s good word. Thought about being a nun. Enjoyed going to mass before school every day, by choice, till I was in grade 5 or so. I was hardcore, just loved my Church.
I’m not religious, not anymore. The Church has disillusioned me time and time again. I dig Jesus. I dig Buddha. I dig Mohammed. They all have beautiful messages, and I believe in much of the values and ethics espoused by pretty much every major faith in the world. I live an honest life. I’m a good person. I’m charitable. I’m everything you should want to be. I just choose to believe that men keep fucking up faith by putting too much of man’s bullshit into something that doesn’t need to be as complicated as we have managed to make it.
Do I believe in something bigger than me? Yeah. But I don’t believe that saving my life when I choose to express the passion that lives in me as a sexual being by using a simple condom that I am being immoral. I refuse to believe that following my heart and libido and enthusiasm for life is wrong. I refuse to believe that using something created to make the act of loving someone else safe from disease and contagion should be a sin.
No moral code in the world can make that make sense to me. Anyone who believes it, I really don’t care their level of intelligence, education, or social importance; they’re a fucking nimrod. Seriously. Welcome to a little place I call Earth, where we have things like “spontanaeity”, “accidents”, and something apparently given by the Creator called “free will”.
Centuries from now, when we’re all dead and buried, and funky new people walk this plane instead of us, they’ll look at the history and say, “Okay, the Bubonic Plague… I get that, they had no plumbing, hygeine was hard, cities were overcrowded… but, AIDS? A guy in a fucking funny hat says using condoms was a sin ‘cos he thinks God told him that, so Africa doesn’t use condoms and AIDS wipes out entire generations? Fuck, man. That’s just moronic! How dumb were these people?”
Because that’s what it is. These Popes, man. I love how the first pope, St. Peter, was actually on a first-name “wanna get some wine?” basis with Jesus, but Jesus somehow forgot to mention to Pete that he thought popes should be “infallible” — ie, he “is preserved from even the possibility of error” according to the First Vatican Council of 1870, more than 1800 years after Christ apparently walked our world*. Funny how it’s not really until the Church began amassing more and more riches and power (during the middle ages), on its way to becoming the wealthiest organization in the world (think of all the art and real estate) that they decide Popes are to never, ever be wrong. That’s an awfully convenient thing to lay on one of the most powerful men in the world.
Never wrong? Gotta be kidding me! What a fucking joke. Somebody’s been lacing the sacramental wine with LSD again, man.
Fuck the Pope. Fuck the Church. Wear condoms. It’s the new rebellion. And it’ll save your life (most of the time, but not always).
*That’s when it was first written into the Catholic doctrine, 1870, but there was a good many who believed it as far back as the Medieval times, so about a thousand years or so, but a thousand years after Christ still.
On Freedom and Fallacies
This is take two on this topic. I’m starting fresh a couple hours later, after a glass of wine and homemade chicken pot pie.
It’s the second take because this topic is really important to me and I don’t want to fuck it up.
Thank god I have quality guidance like that of Fame. Yes, you heard me, the ‘80s arts school drama. It’s on, and I’m chilling. Defragging my mind, as I like to say. Watching fluff is exactly the right fit, and has given me some interesting perspective as I crack this nut for a second time.
Funnily, a girl in this episode of Fame scoffs at the notion of writing her private thoughts and dreams in a diary at the teacher’s urging.
“If I wrote down my dreams,” she says, “I’d get arrested.”
Yeah. Huh. Ironic.
To that end, take note of the week that was in the world of the wide web. Proper fucked, indeed. It’s like a crash course in What Not to Do in the Intertubez.
A Montreal guy writes some shit in a forum then figures rifle + college = a good afternoon’s plan.
Like the motherfucking coward he was, he went out and tried to kill a bunch of people. Realizing he couldn’t even do a massacre right, he deprived us of the fun of letting cops kill him. The coward took his life. Fucking better off dead, anyhow.
But he wrote in forums.
We shoulda seen it coming.
A dickhead in Seattle decides he’s going to act like a fucking 13-year-old and reposts another city’s craigslist ad by some dirty-minded femme, and gets a couple hundred responses or something, then figgers he’s got rights to publish that private correspondence in an attempt to expose those apparent sickos to the world.
But they answered a public ad.
They shoulda seen it coming.
A young mother in Florida writes her secret other self dark thoughts on a public blog, and then her child goes mysteriously missing, improbably snatched from their window. Young mother kills herself 16 days into the toddler’s absence.
But she wrote dark shit on blogs, then her kid vanishes.
We shoulda seen it coming.
A video diarist on the world wide web is exposed as a professional actress working off a script. The show is produced, directed, and written, yet has duped the majority of its viewers, primarily through YouTube.com, into believing the so-called lonelygirl15 was a teenaged girl locked in her bedroom and homeschooled by orthodox religious parents. Doh.
She’s a fake.
“Like ohmigod. But she, like, really talked to us, man!”
You shoulda seen it coming.
It’s happening. It’s really fucking happening.
You know what I’m talking about.
For some godforsaken reason, it’s starting to occur to people that this, like, internet thing might just be a way of seeing what’s really going on in the noggins of little people everywhere.
And, um, uh-oh, but what’s going on in those little people’s noggins everywhere is something that’s not very pretty.
Some people, it would seem, are angry.
Some of them even feel disenfranchised. And, look. They’re acting on this shit.
Yeah, well. When the odds are stacked, you ought not be surprised at the outcome. Probability and logic being what they are and all, yes?
I’m part of the generation that got schooled in Orwell’s classic 1984. We were raised to believe that someday, one day, the government would hear every word we would utter, and freedom would be a thing of the past.
I’ll be honest, the Digital Age scares me.
The ease with which people can access information about me is frightening. It should frighten you, too. Unfortunately, the time is coming nigh where voices on the web are not just an anonymous blur with little impact on the real world. Now, we’re not so anonymous, and now this world is more real than it is virtual.
There’s coming a time where what you say here is going to come home to haunt you. This is the age of insinuation, and anything you say can be manipulated and used against you. Decide now if you plan to live in fear of that, or if you have the balls to play the game my way, and own your ability to say what you think and how you feel.
In forums such as this, someone such as me might decide to write a little bloggie in which the entire contents of our deepest darkest other selves are posted up on virtual walls for the world at large to indulge in.
In essence, it’s a voice. I have a voice, you have a voice, we all have voices.
It’s idyllic. A virtual Utopia in which we’re all given voices and identities, something that ironically clashes with our seemingly democratic lives – lives spent living in societies that claim to be governed by the people, of the people, for the people.
Only they’re not like any people I’ve ever known.
And I don’t feel like I belong.
And I’m tired of feeling this small because I’m just an ordinary gal.
I thought I’d take my voice and use it. I’m not alone. You’re doing it too. And him, and her, and hey.
We all took our existences online, where we thought we’d have the right to say what we think whenever the fuck it pops into mind.
Unfortunately, when such vocal freedom is enjoyed by a world at large, some of those voices will be beyond dissent. They will be voices of rage and fury and vengeance. Or maybe they’ll be coolly quiet.
And that’s a risk we take by allowing open dialogue.
Every now and then, though, those voices will be warning signals. Intervention might occur, and it might segue to prevention.
Just because assholes and the disenfranchised like these can use the web to serve their fucted means doesn’t necessitate that the rest of us should have to watch our words.
Sadly, the voice of reason doesn’t seem to resonate these days. I fear that the talking heads of today might soon decide that there is such thing as too much free speech and they will indeed succeed in legislating the internet.
In which case now might be the time to, like the good hunter Elmer Fudd suggests, be vewwy, vewwy qwiet.
Only we’re not hunting rabbits.
So, Here We Are Again
The whole 9/11 thing is feeling weird. Reminds me of when five years had passed since my mother’s death. Has it really been so long? Boy, was that all it was? Five years?
Grief gets weird when you live with it for a long time and then — poof — it just vanishes, like. Guilt can come on, then. “I should be more depressed. Shouldn’t I?”
I’m watching some of the retrospective stuff. I think it’s important to remember it all, but I just don’t want to face any marathons. I forget sometimes, though, how fucked up it must have been to live in NY in those early days.
I’ve been thinking about that day. The weather today was very similar to the weather then — clear, sunny, warm, with just a hint of fall on the light wind. I remember the silence that morning. I never found out until I got to work — I never saw the news or anything that morning. I was enjoying coffee, sitting barefoot in my deck captain’s chairs, curling my toes around the metal railing.
I remember walking into the office, my closed captioning office, and the radio was turned on for the first time (and last time) ever. All the employees had no headphones on and were numbly editing files that probably needed no more editing. I knew something huge had happened.
“What?” I asked.
“Someone’s flown planes into the two World Trade Centre towers. Thousands of people are dead. They think it was terrorists. And someone hit the Pentagon, too.”
And like that I knew life on the continent had changed. No longer were we untouchable. Quite the opposite.
I didn’t think I could lose any more innocence after that day, but I was evidently wrong. I grow more jaded and disenfranchised with every passing year.
For a time, 9/11 made us all better people. We found the commonality. We had community. We had a cause. And something happened. A chasm. Conflict. Chaos.
Strange how quick that tide turned. Sad, too. Sigh.
When Will It Change?
I work a couple blocks away from one of the nastiest parts of my beloved city, Vancouver, Canada. It’s like a whole other world when you stumble into the Downtown East Side, just two blocks east of my office, a place that held, in the early ’90s, the highest urban rate of AIDS and HIV infection on the globe.
People like me who’ve lived in this city our whole lives know more about the disenfranchised in that area, and I have my own speculations on how it’s gotten so out of hand, but I’ve never looked into it all that much.
Suffice to say that at that two-block point east of here, it’s like an invisible wall has gone up. People sleep on streets, heroin is shot in alleys, fights break out over drugs, and everything’s out of control.
This area houses most of the prostitution and all of the meth and heroin junkies in the city. The mentally ill who are deinstitutionalized run rampant in this hood, and I’m faced daily with heartbreak and hopelessness when I see how much work is left to be done to help all these impoverished, seemingly forgotten members of our city.
We’re beginning to get a reputation internationally for what’s largely gone unchecked in this city, and that saddens me, considering all else this city has to offer — the natural beauty, the unforgettable cuisine, the multicultural population, the sports, and more. What the world doesn’t see and doesn’t seem to understand is how stacked against success the odds really are in dealing with this travesty.
This city is a magnet for the nation’s homeless — even for America’s homeless. They all want to be here because the climate is so tolerable year-round and because the cops tend to empathize rather than penalize these impoverished people. After all, if you’re homeless, where would you rather be in the winter, the snows of Toronto and Montreal, where it can go far below freezing every winter, or in the temperate climes of Vancouver?
Add to that the fact that so many drugs land here in Vancouver, where an average of 150 million massive cargo freights pass through annually, where we barely have the staff to search them, and where drug laws are so much more relaxed than in America, and you have a ticking time bomb that no easy solutions will patch.
The world’s about to hear more regarding this harrowing part of Vancouver, though, with the release of a controversial new “fictional” horror film by Australian filmmakers that focuses on one of the most legendary bastards ever to live in this province. Robert “Willie” Pickton is facing trial for the brutal murders of 26 Vancouver-area prostitutes, but is suspected of killing more than 125 of these women over the course of 20 years. A pig farmer by trade, Pickton covered his ass well by having his pigs devour the corpses of these women. As a result, little DNA evidence was recovered by what was the largest criminal investigation in Canadian history.
I’m saddened by the news that the families of these missing and dead women will have to endure a film that will probably sensationalize these brutal murders. And while I’m further saddened by the continuing downward spiral of this incredible city’s reputation, perhaps international attention will finally convince both the British Columbian and Canadian governments that this absolutely is NOT a problem that can be solved by Vancouver’s government alone. Our cops are stretched as thin as cellophane and there’s no money to be had.
In less than four years, the world will be on our doorsteps when the 2010 Olympics unveil. And what will have happened to the disenfranchised and forgotten by then? God only knows, but many, including myself, suspect they’ll be shifted out of the downtown core, pushed off to the side just to become some other neighbourhood’s problem. Out of sight, out of mind, and, possibly, out of hope.
RANT: God's Asked Me to Whale On Yo Ass, MoFo!
There’s a lot of attention being paid to polygamy and bigamy at the present, thanks to the arrest of that uberFucker, Warren Steed Jeffs. I know there are a lot of polyamorists in my audience, so I’m going avoid starting a war of words just because I disagree with the lifestyle.
(Disagreement does not equal judgment, so spare me the sanctimony, thanks! Do what thou wilt; just don’t invite me to the party.)
I want to say one thing, and one thing only.
CNN’s been showing these slighted polygamists who feel the world is up against them. (I may not agree with it, but I don’t think it should be outright outlawed, but that’s another argument for another time.) Naturally, the butthead I saw was excusing or justifying his lifestyle because he believes he lives that lifestyle in praise of God or as a means of being closer to God, or even because God wills it as such. Insert the justification you like best.
I am sick and fucking tired of everyone justifying their actions because it’s “God’s will.” No, people, it’s not God’s will. If you are religious, then you understand the simple premise of the belief that God gave free will to man so that man may choose and thus ultimately secure his own fate. You have chosen your lifestyle — whether it be that of a polygamist or that of a bake-sale/PTA mom. Don’t fucking tell me you’re doing it for God. Do it because you choose to, and have the balls to own up to choice, public opinion be damned.
I could turn around tomorrow and buy stakes in the best Belgian chocolate company in this city and scarf cocoa up my fucking wazoo, turning myself into some 400-lb ball of flab and say, “But God made the beautiful cocoa bean and I am simply choosing to respect the beauty of his creation by indulging in it! I’m doing it for God! My rolls of fat are a testimony to his greatness!”
Nuh-uh, sweetums. I’m doing it ‘cos it tastes so fucking good and I’m not getting laid so if that means I indulge, then I indulge. But it’s my choice, and that’s enough justification. “Because I want to!”
I’m really goddamned tired of people not taking responsibility for their actions. You’ve chosen. You live it. Be proud of it. Don’t tell me it’s for a God you’ve never had the privilege of sharing a beer with. You don’t fucking know what He wants, if in fact He even exists, so don’t presume to excuse your actions through Him.
A nation of pansies, that’s what this is. Fuck, man. God wills it, therefore it must be so. If that’s the case, then know this: God gave you a spine, but you CHOOSE not to use it, you fucking amoebas. Get with the program or check the fuck out, but spare me more of this bullshit.
(This goes for anyone on any side of the “God wants it” argument, whether Poly or PTA or Pro-Life or whatever. I’m just sick of the argument. Personal responsibility’s like some distant figment of the land over yonder or something. I, for one, think it’s time we remember what the hell it once meant.)
The Fine Art of Schmoozing
I have the rather freaky-ass opportunity to run with a different crowd now.
The people I’m working for are politically connected. It’s an entirely different world. I once fancied the idea of running for politics. I was probably 16 or 17 at the time and was volunteering for the Liberal party as a member of the Young Liberals. I helped campaign for an East Indian guy in a Vancouver suburb. I, I’m sorry to admit, was part of a Burma Shave.
(Kind of marketing done in pieces at roadside. Originally, billboards that would write out one well-developed sentiment over several clusters of signs. In politics, a bunch of yahoos standing roadside, wearing sandwich-board signs for any given politician. Hi, I’m Steff — resident yokel and yahoo.)
It’s fuckin’ ‘zarro, man.
Whew. Deep breath in, strong breath out. Yeah, it’s a real headtrip. I once wanted to run, y’know? Now I’d be the fringe freak candidate, though. I’m in the right fuckin’ city for it. Enter: The Sex Party. Oh, yeah. I want their convention to have the acronym O.R.G.Y. Hey, if it’s a bonus anywhere, this is where redundancy works. “The Sex Party’s convening now. The O.R.G.Y. aspires to take things to an entirely new level, but they say they’ll have to sweat it out this weekend if the right climax is to be found.”
Yeah, okay, you caught me: I also always wanted to be a news copy writer. Ah, well. Chasing ambulances proved to not be my thing. Nothing like showing up on the scene of an accident because it’s your fucking job when some gaping onlooker turns and calls you a “sick bitch” for liking that kinda thing. Nah, dude, it’s the grade for glass, y’know? Report from scene of an accident? What’s yer fucking excuse, bub? Whew. So, yeah, I learned to not like that one in a hurry.
Point is, there was a time when my life could’ve gone a couple other directions. Like, seriously different directions. It fucking STUNS me, BAFFLES me to be this person now, writing about the things I have, considering the type of aspirations I’ve always had. I’m outed, man, my name is OUT there. I can be Googled. I can be found. I can be deciphered — piece by bloody little piece. Like, it’s over for me. There are jobs I will never, ever have. There are positions I will never, ever have. It sort of disappoints me to know I can probably never get it on merit — like I damned well should. I can schmooze, man, but I can’t live that life, I don’t think.
There’s so much carefulness, you know? There’s been about a dozen times now in work-related (including tonight’s party) situations where I’ve said really politically incorrect things, like calling the entire Middle East sexist when I’m surrounded by Iraqis and other folks in that region. (I qualified it quickly by saying it was an easy dismissal by people who didn’t understand the culture so much — which is true, to an extent, as they do adore women, but I think that’s in the same ballpark as saying you love the kid and that’s why you hit them, to teach them… I don’t think it’s meanspirited, but I still think it needs updating).
Anyhow. Schmoozing. The fine art of.
Schmoozing, in essence, is the art of faking sincerity. Now, you can be sincere and schmooze, but it’s just easier to not give a shit, because then it keeps you neutral, all right? Keep it current, keep it simple, and keep it neutral. Don’t get involved, just have an opinion and a well-timed smile.
Eye contact. Need I say more? Fuck, man. Eye contact. All about the eye contact.
You gotta learn to listen with your eyes. You wanna focus on them so intently that they can tell you’re really being drawn in. It forges an intimate bond. You lean in ever so slightly. Tilt your head slightly to one side, and just soak ’em in. Be attentive. Listen, and more importantly, hear.
When you talk, think about what you’re saying. If you’re short on an idea, don’t hem or haw, or um or uh, ‘cos it makes you seem like a bubblehead. Do a simple “I don’t know” hand guesture as you try to find the right word. Focus then. Silence, good. If five seconds passes, it’s “I’ve lost my thought,” and you move the hell on.
If conversation falters, just tell them you’re just going to make the rounds but you’ll check in a bit later. Thank them for the chat, nod, and move off with a toast of the glass and a slow, searching stride.
When you’re speaking, don’t talk politics or religion, if you can help it. Don’t discuss money problems, ever, when you’re schmoozing. It’s about impressions, not bad ones. Ask where they’re from, who they know, and if you think they want to tell you, ask about their job.
You need yourself a 10-second introduction. “Hey, I’m Steff from Vancouver, born and raised. I fancy myself a writer, and when I need to pay the bills, I work in a consulting firm. The rest of the time, I blog, photograph, ride a scooter and a bike, cook, and slack.”
When someone tells you what they do, you have an in for asking for their business card. “Oh, I’d like to hear more about that sometime” or “Hey, I’ve been in the market for one of you” or “Oh, great. Say, can I get your card?” I favour straight-up, but in case you’re feeling pussy… you know.
You can touch if you get the sense they’re into that, but understand that different people have different personal space issues, and to assume that everyone’s cool with being touched is foolish, and in the case of some cultures, flat-out wrong.
Limp handshakes are creepy. Lose it. Be firm. Never more than three seconds for a handshake. Clammy hands? Find a way to dry them. Nerves are for pussies.
So, there’s a good introduction to the world of schmoozing. It works well for picking people up, too. Instead, you lean closer and closer. When you take a sip, always make eye contact over the rim of your glass. It’s sexy. When they can’t hear you, don’t speak up, lean into their ear and speak more clearly and maybe even softer, so they have to also lean in. It’s sexy. If you’re trying to pick them up, then definitely touch them, but just on the back of the hand or forearm, or possibly the elbow. Anything else can feel forward, I find. (Taking the elbow’s a bit more sensual, though.)
And that’s how ya do it. Go off, my minions, and schmooze this weekend. In my part of the world, we call it networking.