Humour

Lord of the Dance and Grocery Revenge

Sunday: I realize my disappointment with Celtic Spectacles

So Ken and I were hanging out at the cottage, after a dinner at the local pub (run by this awesome gay guy and his partner–I only mention this because it’s nice that our society has come so far that even in a place like PB, no one seems to care) and we had come back to the cottage and were watching not much on TV, just waiting for something interesting to come on, when Ken switched the channel to Celtic Thunder. If you don’t know what that is, it’s a group of 5 “boys to men” types who sing traditional Celtic music to a screaming crowd of women. I’ve never seen anything quite like it (yes, I have, but at the time I’d forgotten), and we had a really fun go at these guys. For one, they are super-choreographed. They step very deliberately to one side, then the other, and when it’s their turn to sing, each one descends a flight of stairs like he’s a robotic Miss America or something, then returns to the top when his “turn” is finished. Second, they are ranged in age, and oiled up appropriately to appeal to a mass market of women. There’s the teen-something one, who is meant to appeal to the 5 to 7 year-old range (as well as the Cougars), the early twenties hottie with superwhite teeth, then the 30-ish guy with his shirt open just enough to show off his gold chains, the 40 , and 50 year-olds (who look amazing for their age and would definitely be lusted after by the 70 and 80 year-olds in the audience). It was like watching a One Direction concert for the extremely young and the extremely geriatric—grandmas and granddaughters holding up signs with slogans on them (I love you Neil…I want to marry you, Emmet, and so on, ad nauseam.) I actually just googled their home page and realized to my horror that they have ‘Daniel’, a 7 year old member of the group—who the hell is lusting after him? and you should be ASHAMED.OF.YOURSELF. And I say this with all sincerity, since these ‘men’ are held up to the audience as symbols of manliness, even the seven-year-old, which is kind of creepy. Can you imagine being Daniel’s mom, and worrying about some 40 year-old woman carrying a sign that says “Daniel, I love you!! Marry me!! Kissy face smiley face”? But the best thing about the whole spectacle is the singing, by which I mean the lipsynching, because none of them actually sing. They pose. They move their lips and pre-recorded music comes out of their manly mouths, and it’s really obvious they’re doing it, shamelessly, like it’s the CELTIC WAY or something.

And now I get to the thing I’d forgotten, which was one of the greatest disappointments of my life. Lord of the Dance. Yes, Lord of the Dance, the incredible Celtic stepdancing/musical phenomenon of the 90s which had my heart on fire. I loved Lord of the Dance, the music, the spectacle, that Michael Flately guy who was so tiny and arrogant but tapped his little heart out. When they came to town, I begged Ken for tickets. Being the wonderful husband he is (or just to stop me whining), he agreed, and there we were in the first row of the balcony. The lights dimmed—the music began—dancers came on stage—it became PATENTLY OBVIOUS that every sound was pre-recorded. OMFG Lord of the Dance—even the tapping sounds were pre-recorded and were played over top of the actual tapping on stage!! The violins, the singing, the dancing, were all fake. I just paid $75 to listen to the CD I had at home. And that’s why I’ll never pay to see Celtic Thunder. So there.

Tuesday, when I mess with people in the grocery store.

Have you ever been in a grocery store, trying to shop, and someone keeps parking their cart in the middle of the aisle so you can’t get by? Have you ever wondered how to get your revenge on that person? Does it seem a little weird to take revenge on strangers in grocery stores? No it’s not—it’s necessary to keep a sense of balance in the universe. Like how in Thor, which I just watched with my grade nine class as a way to wrap up our mythology unit, Thor battles the evil elves to save Earth. (By the way, there is nothing more difficult than doing a mythology unit with grade nine students, because there is no easy way to introduce them to Uranus. Say it to yourself one more time if you don’t get it. Also, it can be very difficult to talk about flying buttresses as part of a unit on Gothic literature to a group of grade 12s with a juvenile sense of humour. Did I laugh in both cases? Maybe.)

So on Tuesday, K and I were grocery shopping. (This is always a challenge because I like to go to the store where I get points, and K spends the whole time criticizing me for buying things we don’t need “just for the points”. I’m sorry, but you can always use another head of cauliflower or a family pack of Axe body spray.) Anyway, we were in the Gluten-Free/Organic Aisle (because I stopped eating gluten last year, thinking it would help my joints. It didn’t, but now it’s a habit, and I feel guilty if I break it, like when a smoker sneaks a cigarette, except instead of getting pleasantly dizzy, your stomach gets angry at you. Enough said.) Ahead of us was a middle-aged woman, (MORE middle-aged than me, anyway) who seemed completely oblivious that she was in a grocery store with many other people, and hadn’t just won a private shopping spree on The Price Is Right, because as she was lingering at the gluten-free freezer, her cart was in the middle of the aisle ON AN ANGLE. T and I were on our way to buy some special crackers, but we couldn’t get near them, thanks to Frumpy McDuh. We waited patiently for her to realize we were there, but she seemed to be deliberately ignoring us as she perused the shelves. A young guy came down the other way, and we both stood there helplessly, looking at each other for support. He seemed content to wait, so K and I turned around and went back the other way, thinking we could go down the next aisle and go round the corner back up to the crackers that way. A clever plan, but wait—as we came around the top of the next aisle, this woman, like a polyester-pantsuited NINJA, was already there, with her cart again parked in the middle of the aisle! We quickly devised a second, even better plan, and we hightailed it around to the next aisle, where we waited patiently, steadfastly. Sure enough, here she came, strolling down the aisle quite leisurely. But what’s this? There’s a cart in her way? Whose cart? Yes, you know it. And it was on an angle that was quite impossible to navigate around. K and I pretended to be VERY interested in organic quinoa, discussing the merits of each brand, while she stood and waited. But she wasn’t patient, or polite either. She started to push her cart towards me, and nearly grazed my ankle, but I stood my ground, daring her to come any closer. She finally gave up, and as she rolled her evil elf eyes and moved off, K and I felt like we had achieved some kind of universal victory, like in Thor, plus, we finally got our crackers. And the 2000 points that came with them.

My Week 4 – An Open Letter To MacLean’s Magazine

Dear MacLean’s:
I recently read an article published in your magazine called “New Girl, Go Girl,” which purported to be about the “new feminism” (because apparently the old feminism, where women banded together and fought for equal rights with our male counterparts, wasn’t good enough). While there’s a lot to be said for young girls taking ownership of “cultural currency” and standing strong against “social stereotypes and a sex-saturated culture”, I take particular exception to three things in the article, and I will deal with them in order of appearance, so here they are:

3 Things I Learned From This Article
1) The best fictional teen heroines are the best by virtue of the fact that they are fat, plain, and sexual. “Fat” and “plain” are NOT my words; they belong to the author of the article, Anne Kingston. The first part of this article highlights a new teen novel, How To Build A Girl, whose heroine is described as smart, well-read, funny, but also fat and plain, among other things. Katniss Everdeen, of Hunger Games fame, according to Kingston, pales in comparison next to this new teen heroine because…well why is that, anyway? They seem to be fairly equal—I think we all agree that Katniss is smart, would have been well-read if the oppressive society she lived in allowed her to read extensively rather than fight for her freedom, and would have been hilarious if she (back to this again, sorry) hadn’t had to fight to overthrow a corrupt and oppressive government. As for her physical appearance, I can’t remember whether she was skinny or fat, pretty or not, because none of that was relevant to (sorry, once more) her fight to overthrow an oppressive, corrupt government. Kingston extolls the heroine of How To Build A Girl for the integrity of her personal quest—-to lose her virginity at age 16, which apparently she does accomplish in the novel. Good for her. Because that’s what very young girls SHOULD be reading about, not about women who want to change their worlds like Malala Yousafzai. It’s a shame that Suzanne Collins hadn’t realized that—I’m sure Hunger Games would have been even more successful if Katniss had spent the majority of her time trying to get laid. As for this being no “Cinderella story”, the heroine somehow gets a “coveted job as a music journalist, and sails into a bright future at the age of 17”, which is what happens to all girls who don’t pursue post-secondary education. In contrast, Katniss Everdeen’s Cinderella story is pretty close to the Disney version, except the mice are all forced to fight to the death, and the Fairy Godmother wants to kill her for starting a revolution.

2) Girls with “bass” run the world. Kingston cites Meghan Trainor, pop singer, and her catchy little ditty “All About That Bass” as part of the new ethic of female self-acceptance. I’m sorry, but did you actually read the lyrics of this song? There’s a neat little tool called Google that you might want to use. If you bother actually reading the words rather than just tapping your toes to the chorus, you will discover that Meghan, who for obvious reasons “refuses to be called a feminist”, is proud of her large posterior for these two reasons: a) the boys chase it, and b) her mama told her that boys like a little more booty to hold at night. In addition, she wants all the “skinny bitches” to know that she is “bringing booty back.” THIS is the voice of the new girl power? That boys like big butts and that we should make sure that our “junk” is in all the right places? I’m sorry, but how is this self-acceptance in any sense of the word? What it is, in fact, is yet another sad example of women trying to desperately justify their physicality to men, and to condemn other women for theirs. As a professional, intelligent woman, I honestly can’t remember a single time that I worried about what “the boys” thought regarding my ass, or the rest of my “junk”.

3) Feminist ideas that should have stopped being an issue are still relevant in 2014. Knight refers to Susan Douglas, who seems to be a walking anachronism, and her two contradictory statements. First, she condemns the new “sneaky form of sexism” which seems to mean “young women can do or be anything they want, as long as they conform to confining ideals about femininity and don’t want too much”. Second, she condemns “a celebration of stay-at-home moms and ‘opting out’ of the workforce”. Excuse my ignorance, feminist guru person, but haven’t we gotten past the point where we look down on our sisters who CHOOSE to be mothers? Isn’t that what the fight for equal rights got us—the option to work or stay home? Some women actually like babies and want to spend a lot of time with them; some women think they’re poop and puke machines and can’t wait to get back to work. Either way, that’s the right of every woman to decide, and to snidely suggest that there’s something wrong with celebrating stay-at-home mothers is akin to someone else snidely suggesting that there’s something wrong with supporting our sisters who want to return to the workforce. So who is it that expects women to conform to confining ideals? You can’t have it both ways, Susan Douglas.

While there were a lot of merits to this article, there were also a lot of flaws. Women need to stop worrying about their physical appearance and how men (and other women) feel about it, and start worrying about a) developing and promoting the power of our minds and self-will b) nurturing love for and promotion of other women and their choices and c) focusing on the world around us rather than the world within us. But that’s just me. Thanks for listening.

My Week 3 – Thanksgiving Discussion

Monday, when Ken and I ponder the meaning of Thanksgiving:

So we just celebrated Thanksgiving, and Ken and I were driving down to the cottage. It occurred to me that it was weird that we celebrate Thanksgiving in October and the Americans celebrate it in November, and what’s it all about anyway? And this is the conversation that ensued. Just for the record, Ken and I aren’t fussy about the accuracy of our facts:

Me: So why do we celebrate Thanksgiving in October and the Americans do it in November? What’s with that?
Ken: I don’t know—maybe their harvest is later than ours since they’re further south. They’re both just about giving thanks for a good harvest anyway.
Me: That’s not why the Americans celebrate Thanksgiving—they didn’t HAVE a harvest, that was the whole point. The Puritans came over here completely ill-equipped to survive. They were literally starving to death, and the Indians shared THEIR harvest with them, and basically saved their lives.
Ken: Oh yeah—“Thanks so much for your generosity—in return, here’s some small pox.”
Me: I know, right? “And some alcohol.” That’s gratitude for you. Do you think the native Americans “celebrate” Thanksgiving, or do they secretly call it something different, like “The Day We Wish You’d Never Shown Up”?
Ken: All I know is that Sherman Alexie just tweeted out that in celebration of Columbus Day, he was launching a Kickstarter campaign to raise funds to build a time machine, so that he could go back in time and stop Columbus from finding the New World.
Me: Seems about right.

Country Vets

Tuesday, The Day I Pretend To Be A Country Vet:

So I was reading the latest issue of my favourite magazine “Country Living”, because I live in the country but need help, because I’m not really a “country” person and this magazine helps me figure out how to decorate and cook in various countrified ways that make me feel like I can keep up with the other country people around here, although technically I live in a village with a gas station, a video store, and two restaurants. I say two, but there is a currently a plaza being built on the edge of town which is, like, two blocks from my house, featuring another gas station as well as a Pizza Pizza store and a Country Style Donuts place, because of course what every small village needs is national franchises that will run local businesses into the ground. I’m going to digress from my Country Living opening and complain for a minute about the new plaza because a) it’s been under construction for over a year and at this point I’m convinced that the owners only work on it when they win money at the Woodstock casino, and b) we already have some great restaurants in town as well as a gas station called the Diva (a tremendously cool name, right?) run by this lovely East Indian family, as opposed to drag queens which would also be fabulous, and which has amazingly cheap gas as well as dollar store stuff. These people are all local and I will NEVER buy anything from the new plaza. (Unless the gas station is full-serve because I hate pumping my own gas. I would like to be more loyal, but the truth is, I can be pretty mercenary when it comes to avoiding getting gasoline on my shoes.)

Anyway, back to my original topic—I was reading Country Living magazine and it features a column called “Ask A Country Vet”. And based on the questions that are asked of said veterinarian, I can only assume that SOME people in the country don’t get out much. This month’s issue featured the following question: “How can I prevent my cat from sleeping in the laundry basket on top of my freshly laundered clothes?” I’m going to give you a minute to re-read that question. Because I had to re-read it more than once to confirm that I wasn’t imagining that I was in an alternate universe where veterinarians had to actually answer bizarre questions like this. Then I pretended that I was the veterinarian and answered the question thusly: “After you freshly launder your clothes, PUT THEM AWAY. Then your cat can’t sleep on them.” It seemed like a pretty obvious response to me, as someone who has owned cats for many years, but wait—the vet responsible for this column apparently has never owned a cat, and very seriously responded that the best solution was to put a SHEET OF TIN FOIL on top of the laundry so that when the cat leapt into the laundry basket, the sound of the tin foil would startle it to the extent that it would become afraid of the laundry basket, thereby avoiding it. My immediate response to that was WTF??!! because in my experience with animals, scaring the crap out of them does not lead to a happy co-existence.

But the main reason why you do NOT want your cat in your clean laundry is this: Cats are filthy. They poop in gravel and then drag it around your house. I love my cat, but when she jumps up on the bed and wants to cuddle, I try really hard NOT to think of the billions of bacterias that are swarming all over the quilt, and I never, ever high-five her like I do the dog. Now, here’s what I imagine will happen in this whole tinfoil scenario—your cat uses the litter box, and is about to drag some of that poopy gravel into your freshly cleaned laundry on its little poopy paws. Then your freshly cleaned laundry scares more poop out of the cat, ONTO your freshly cleaned laundry. Instead of pissing your cat off, why don’t you try the simple, hygienic trick of putting the laundry away? Then it occurred to me that maybe the editors of Country Living magazine make up these questions because a few months ago, somebody asked this following gem: “Why does my dog chase his tail?”