Cupidwatch 2005 [#3]

You’d think in the days preceding Valentine’s it’d be emotionally healthier to seek out a willing recipient of a box of bon bons instead of rummaging through local attempts to score gratuitous attention from the holiday. Sure, but imagine how certain marketing weasels are bound to feel when their half-witted spin on Feb. 14’s festivities goes ignored, for no other reason but because they’re the 14th agency of the week craving a mention for their hubba-hubba-hubba sales pitch. So, because hapless flacksters seem at particular risk to die of a broken heart, noticing their effort surely transmits more affection than a back alley handjob.

But the bait became weaker as the past week rolled on. A company called Moneris, the country’s largest processor of transactions involving plastic, reveal that sales at candy, nut and confectionery stores during the first half of last February increased by 214 per cent over the preceding two-week period, even though the flow at restaurants only went up six per cent. Maybe it’s because a survey conducted by Human Resources Management students at George Brown College found that 45 per cent of cubicle drones have received salacious e-mail from co-workers, 37 per cent said they, or someone they “know”, has been caught in a sexual encounter while on the job, and 60 per cent of respondents are currently lusting after a colleague. Yet they’d better scrub themselves down before heading to the office, given how malodorous men are a turn-off to 55 per cent of females, according to a poll commissioned to get attention for AXE shower gel, which 43 per cent of women insist is ”the most important thing” a man should apply before a V-Day date. By contrast, only 22 per cent of those ladies are turned off by a poor conversationalist, and just four per cent care how he’s dressed. And while 41 per cent of the coveted 18-24 demographic will take two showers this coming Monday, only one-quarter of those aged 55 and over can be bothered to double dip.

Residents of this country, according to Scotiabank, spend an average of $61 on Feb. 14 – $74 by men, $47 from women. But while girlfriends get a $100 splurge, wives settle for half of that, compared to $54 wasted on boyfriends and $40 on husbands. This disparity oughta be taken up by The Pay Equity Task Force, subject of a Monday protest and news conference from the ever-cheerful Canadian Labour Congress on Parliament Hill. And for the 41 per cent of men and 22 per cent of women who confess to forgetting V-Day, in spite of all this consumer overkill, a card emergency response operation from Xerox will be churning out 500 last-minute color prints to save the day. Furthermore, according to Nokia, one-quarter of the population one-quarter of the population “would rather say ‘I Love You’ by text message than say ‘I Love You’ orally.” And where do these courtship rituals lead? To a life in the suburbs, a place where The Heart and Stroke Foundation’s timely report finds your own ticker is more likely to explode from a sedentary lifestyle. Look at it this way – the less burden you feel on Monday means the more likely you’ll suffer through another Valentine’s Day.

A dose before V-Day

Letters from today’s Advice to the Lovelorn column by Rebecca Eckler in the National Post get answered by Raymi the Minx instead. She’s not safe for work – but this sure isn’t a paying gig, so check out the latest wisdom proffered below.

Dear Raaaaaaymi,

I asked a woman out on a date after meeting her through friends. I was smitten immediately. I got her e-mail address and asked her out. Four days before our first date, I ended up getting back together with my ex-girlfriend. I still went on the date (my girlfriend knew about it) because the relationship with my girlfriend was so on-again-off-again, I was pretty sure it wasn’t going to stick. I ended up telling my date, over drinks, that I was back with my ex. She took it extremely well. Guess what? My girlfriend and I broke up again. Can I now ask the girl out again? Or will she think I’m crazy? – Single Again

Dear loser,you are obviously pussy-whipped for your ex-girlfriend and she will continue to walk all over you for the rest of your life because you allow yourself to be one of those i-will-drop-everything-in-the-hopes-she-will-take-me-back-even-for-just-a-little-while type guys and you are a careless moron who will never move forward and on to newer and better relationships until this hussy is out of the picture for good, and i mean, no friendly phone calls and emails and getting together every so often to buy her lunch. you know she shit-talks you. seriously. eventually (hopefully) you will convince some other woman to be your lady and she will be just like your ex and control you forever. why are you even bothering to ask my advice? you know you’re going to get back with your ex anyhow and you’ll probably get married and then she will leave you for some rich dude and then you will kill yourself. boring.

Dear Raaaaaaymi,

I have had a boyfriend for two years, long-distance. At a party I met another guy. We talked for three hours. I didn’t mention I had a boyfriend because it never came up. I later learned (through the rumour mill) he also has a girlfriend. I know I didn’t mention I wasn’t single, so I can’t blame him for no mentioning he wasn’t single. But I can’t help but wonder why neither of us said anything. We’ve kept in touch through e-mail. In my last e-mail, I told him my boyfriend was coming to visit. I never heard from him again. What does this all mean? – Confused

Dear Fatso,long-distance relationships are bullshit and the most boring thing ever to have to listen about at parties and everyone knows you are pathetic because you can’t find someone to be with who lives near you and you are wasting your time and when you meet up with your fake-boyfriend inside you are going, i hate him, fuck do i hate him, because if you were that into each other you would just move there or he would move to where you are and if he is one of those freak of nature monogamous types who is making you pretty i miss you packages and spoiling you from afar and thinks the world of you and you are out on the town pretending to be single you are a cunty wench who SHOULD BE SINGLE FOR FUCKSAKES! what does this all mean? it means you blew your chance with this other guy who had no interest in you to begin with and you saying you had a boyfriend made him go phew, see ya and showed him how much of a liar you are and he is also a piece of shit for having a girlfriend and not saying so. you are all pieces of shit and you probably dress lame.

Dear Raaaaaaymi,

I have been dating for years and years. If there is one thing I’ve learned it’s that the men I’m attracted to are wrong for me. I’ve met a few of those “really nice guys” every girl professes they want, but I’m never attracted to them. I know many women are attracted to the bad boy. I would like to change. I would like to fall in love with one of those “nice guys,” except I am never attracted to them. How do I do this? – Need a Change

Dear you are boring,i am so tired of people saying that nice guys finish last crap and women being attracted to “bad boys”. do you think men sit around going man i wish i could only fall for a nice girl but i just can’t so i have to go for a bitch, why me, wah wah, shut up. so you seem like one of those nice girl types but if you got with a nice guy type you would both be boring and wear sandals together and make friendship bracelets. so what. going for the bad guy is a cop-out and essentially means you are relying on this dude to be the interesting one so you can wow all your stupid bitch friends over lunch about how wild he is meanwhile he is secretly banging all of them and they aren’t even telling you so you know what, date the nice guy and save yourself the heartache.

Cupidwatch 2005 [#2 in a series]

Gathering the Valentine-themed detritus from this week on the PR wire – and this only covers up until 2:17 on Tuesday afternoon, six days before arrows are shot:

• A lubricious study commissioned by the folks at K-Y indicates only 12 per cent of Canadians would give themselves an A+ grade between the sheets – since the actual poll is nowhere to be found online, it’s uncertain if such favorable self-opinion came from chronic masturbators. Besides, one-third of the respondents “place the burden on themselves to figure things out” when it comes to getting love advice. Morning radio host Erin Davis shares with the K-Y researchers that her idea of a great lover is finished his duties in time for a 10 p.m. nocturne. And after dedicating nine decades of research to “intimacy enhancement”, meeting deadlines must be their business.

• Canadian Couples Need to Pump Up The Volume On Low Testosterone, reads the press release for AndroGel. “If the men were to have greater energy levels,” this survey reveals, “both men and women agreed that they would most likely increase walking, hiking and sexual activities.” Does the prospect of “walking” or “hiking” with a special lady motivate men to slather gunk on their upper body each day? Most disturbing is the term “pump up the volume” used to promote medication to help fend off a mid-life crisis – even if this is the year Christian Slater finally becomes old enough to legally date girls half his age.

• An online poll from Toronto-based Lavalife determines that 58 per cent of online personal customers pathetic enough to respond to an online poll would go without intimacy for a year in exchange for a shot at schtupping Brad Pitt, while one-fifth would go to work naked in exchange for their chance at romance with him. Wonder how that compares to how many female Lavalife customers weren’t getting any before signing up, and how many still don’t have a job. “When asked what they would do for a date with Jennifer Aniston, single men overwhelmingly responded that they would shave their heads completely bald.” Woah, that’s even zanier than showing up starkers at the office. Because nervously sitting across a coffee shop table from an out-of-work mediocre sitcom actress bitterly estranged from her mother and recently dumped by her husband for being stubbornly non-maternal is worth sacrificing a precious combover for.

• Vonage Canada learned that homewrecker Angelina Jolie would be the preferred phone sex partner for men in this country on Feb. 14. And now that they have your attention, they offer a sales pitch complicated enough to not convince the public that VoIP is neither the brand name of a lubricant nor a sexually transmitted disease. Back to the celebrity name-drop, Beyoncé is noted for “bringing up the rear” in the survey of male choices for hot ‘n’ heavy breathing via virtual numbers, while Prime Minister Paul Martin tying for last place on the female front. The survey was conducted by Decima Research, who randomly selected 1,024 Canadian adults on the topic of telephone love – that’d be 1,024 losers who aren’t conscientious enough to screen all of their incoming calls.

• The eighth annual Durex Global Sex Survey shows Canadians are getting action an average of 119 times a year, well above the global average of 103 and not far from the 137 little deaths pursued by the French. “Those surveyed are spending more time than the rest of the world on foreplay, an average of just over 20 minutes, and less than one-third have ever had to fake an orgasm.” And would you be interested in buying our unisex personal massager? Contrast how this same survey gets spun for media consumption in the Arab world, where the Durex flack details a corporate desire “to bring about a strong sense of awareness and preventative measures” in the Middle East blah blah blah etc.

Worse living centre

The clientele at a Tim Hortons in Kenora aren’t particularly fond of Toronto, revealed The Sunday Star in a sensationalistic cross-country checkup on hick antipathy toward this city. Gosh, wonder what other things such people don’t have any tolerance for – they would’ve been the same ones outraged when Alan Thicke chortled that, in his hometown of Kirkland Lake, a “virgin” was a 16-year-old who’d only been knocked up once. A world-weary teenage grocery clerk shrugs off the fact that Kenora’s only homeless people are Aboriginal, compared to the terror she felt at 14 when visiting “the only Canadian city with American crime”, which she need only avoid for five more decades to rival the retired fisherman in Peggy’s Cove, N.S. who’s kept his distance from “none too friendly” Toronto since 1948. For today’s dialogue in The Globe and Mail, pondering the topic Can our city be beautiful in the next five years?, a panel of architectural pointy-heads bemoaning a lack of focus, absence of leadership and misallocation of resources leads one to figure unconscious urbanism is our collective destiny. How else to explain the idea of a National Football League team in Toronto being regurgitated as a dim prospect for yet another generation? It’d seem an NHL-free winter is enough for dreary SkyDome’s new landlord to hang hopes on this last remaining bastion of commercial break curiosity. The country’s Diet Pepsi bottlers even had the temerity to issue a press release insisting one-third of Canadian viewers would be raptly tuned to Super Bowl commercials via Global, fruitlessly waiting for a taste of Tabasco, and getting stuck with Canadian Tire retreads instead. Diet Pepsi spots starring Carson Daly and Carson Kressley, meanwhile, remained as inaccessible in Toronto as anywhere else in this nation, which would certainly be crumbling to bits at this very moment if not for Mitsou.

Who, Claudia

This weekend, a reporter who once toiled for Moses Znaimer will bravely take their position as the savior of a troubled American news organization desperate to regain credibility and ratings. That’s right, Claudia DiFolco has been named co-star of two weekend entertainment news shows on MSNBC. A third-string showbiz starlet for CityPulse News in the late-‘90s, Claudia was last spotted hosting Fox’s pseudo-reality series My Big Fat Obnoxious Fiancé, prompting 21.3 million viewers to not recall her name. But maybe she’s vaguely remembered in Phoenix, where Claudia’s early-’00s stint as belly shirt-wearing bubblehead on KTVK-TV’s NewShow (sic) created enough of a stir to merit a nearly 5,000-word profile in the local alt-weekly, who didn’t bother checking facts with her hometown colleagues: “At Citytv, DiFolco was its poppier, in-house Charlie Rose, interviewing almost a daily cache of celebs, from Lenny Kravitz and the Rolling Stones to Tom Cruise and the Beastie Boys.” Quite a comedown for Toronto’s foremost interrogator; now she’s shilling for studios on weekend afternoon shows with names like MSNBC Entertainment Hot List – although it’s only a matter of time before Claudia herself is subject of a profile on one of her hometown junket pig troughs. Who’ll get her first, Ben Mulroney of etalk Daily, The A-List on Toronto 1, or her alma mater’s Star! channel? Just remember, as the story about her took great pains to point out, Claudia isn’t really a ditz she just plays one on teevee. Don’t think she’ll just regurgitate what publicists are spooning out, either – as proof of her tenacity, C. DiFo once strong-armed Smokey Robinson’s manager into facilitating face-time back in Phoenix when ol’ Smokey would’ve rather been enjoying his mid-afternoon nap.

Bingo calling vixens recruited for stateside duty used to be subject to widespread fascination – really, it’s the perfect path toward being picked out as a trophy wife, given how several names who made the leap to major American markets turn up no evidence of a current job. But one who hasn’t faded away is former YTV yokel Laurie Hibberd, due partly to her marriage to Regis Philbin’s swishy producer Michael Gelman. The former Weather Network hostess Jillian Barberie, who gained her surname (and Green Card) while briefly hitched to a former Montreal Expos third baseman, was displaced from her rambunctious spot on Fox’s national Good Day Live show, but will soon compensate with a Playboy pictorial. Rachel Perry, former veejay at MuchMusic, was recently serving at shrill shill at VH1, but appears to be pursuing a career in softcore porn – or modern-day variants thereof – and it’s just as well, since no one with more tattoos on their torso than Tommy Lee or 2Pac will be covering The State of the Union Address.

Meanwhile, today’s papers might’ve reported on the ordination of J.D. “John” Roberts as the new anchor at the CBS Evening News, if not for all the turmoil surrounding Dan Rather’s exit. While aspirations for a new approach to news at CBS have been mumbled about, in-house geezer Bob Schieffer has been named interim voice-of-God until the makeover is revealed – doubtlessly involving months of market research that’ll be rigorous enough to turn J.D.’s salt ‘n’ pepper hairpiece totally white. Last month, Roberts was diplomatically quoted in The New York Times as saying “neither myself or anyone who represents me has been contacted about what kind of role” lies ahead; today’s Washington Post indicates J.D.’s “friends” are indicating he feels “unfairly diminished” and might consider leaving CBS entirely. Thrown into the stew of speculation is the sultry name of Thalia Assuras who, like Roberts, served time at both CityPulse and CTV’s Canada AM, and is now being touted his potential co-anchor. Compared to all the histrionic real-life Ted Baxters, Kent Brockmans and Ron Burgundys who interminably wallow at those Eyewitness Team Action relic newscasts across the U.S.A., it’d appear a background with these seemingly enigmatic Toronto operations is an asset when it comes to news correspondent status climbing, even if the destination is reading movie studio bumph on MSNBC – given how ratings leader Fox News won’t endorse such Hollywood values. And, if you’re deprived of access to digital cable, you can help Breakfast Television co-host Liza Fromer pick a pattern for her wedding dress.

Thin veils on thinner ice

Bitter blog ideas don’t come more venerable – meaning it’s been maintained consistently for a few months and probably days away from being abandoned for a book deal – than Veiled Conceit, a contemplation of the snobbish Weddings & Celebrations pages of The New York Times. Forget what the courts say – it’s been two-and-a-half years since those Sunday capsule items commemorating connubial mergers, along with one consistently offbeat Vows feature, modified their policy to accommodate same-sex couples. This got Timothy Noah of Slate to demand the abolition of this “anachronistic holdover from the days when newspapers carried ’society’ pages unabashedly celebrating even the most trivial events in the lives of the local (usually WASP) elite” while continuing to “reward the crudest measures of meritocratic worth” particularly when the weddings involve aristocratic kiddies still too young to have accomplished anything of their own. Fine, but thanks to the NYT online archive spanning nearly a decade of nuptials, notice of the current Mrs. Jerry Seinfeld’s honeymoon-length first marriage in 1998, to a fella who inherited his money the old-fashioned way, is available for perusal along with the full-length November column commemorating Seinfeld rival Eric Nederlander’s second time around to a clinical psychologist who even boasted, “Emotional baggage is my business”.

Meanwhile, the Toronto media provides no such insight into the machinations of the upper crust. Reading between the lines of a business feature usually reveals more than a photo spread of cosmetically overhauled veneers mugging for the camera whilst being plied with hors d’oeuvres – yet the mating rituals of the local elite remain generally uncovered. Given how all three broadsheets are now running their version of a vapid Vows column, you’d think there’d be some competition for the most ostentatious tale; instead, middle-class ambiguity prevails in these fail-safe features, guaranteed to provide aging readers with a rare glimpse into the younger generation acting liberated from angst, if just for one day – plus, the photographer is already paid for. So, if any institution is desperate for a re-think, it’s these write-ups where a wedding is too often depicted as the selfless culmination of triumph over adversity, rather than a two-person plunge into shared arrogance and material gain. Maybe the gays will deliver more ridiculousness on that front, since the bourgeois weddings covered in the papers over the past three days could benefit from a more honest reading.

The Globe and Mail: Australian grad on walkabout lands in Toronto and gets a job selling mutual funds where “water-cooler musings” with a female co-worker leads to both dumping a significant other. With plans to propose during a weekend in Gravenhurst, he detours for a business trip, giving a package to the pal who owns the cottage – who leaves it behind. “Fortunately my ex-wife lives next door [to me],” chuckles the Aussie’s buddy, so ex-wife hires a locksmith to help retrieve the “package”. (If there’s homoerotic subtext in this story, columnist Judith Tenenbaum has none of it.) Sure, it was the friend’s fault – but given how they’re already crashing at the guy’s retreat, why the hell should he drive all the way back home? The package in question contained “champagne flutes and a toy koala and a polar bear teddy holding Australian and Canadian flags, respectively”. Now they’re off for a two-year stint on his turf, where she’ll do volunteer work as he runs a bank. The wedding march consisted of “Waltzing Matilda” and “O Canada”. The bridal party entered the reception to Australia’s football song. The newlyweds debuted to the Hockey Night In Canada theme.

The Sunday Star: The latest story (not online) concerns a couple getting hitched on a hockey rink. He’s 25 and she’s 23, together eight years ever since meeting in a high school principal’s office – where both awaited disciplinary measures for jumping a fence. This provides a bit of levity three weeks into the revamped Sunday edition, after one story of a narrowly dodged deportation order and another involving a breast cancer survivor. But details of how this latest couple got minor hockey leagues to shuffle their practice times in a Keswick arena overshadows the fact that it was a shotgun affair prompted by her self-conscious desire to not be “showing” in her bridal gown, which leaves one wondering just how long before the “Kimber vs. Jansen” showdown engraved on the ticket-style invitations will be appearing on a legal document instead. “It allows them to be a part of what’s happening rather than having something imposed on them,” says the pastor of the unconventional ceremony. Yet, a few paragraphs earlier, he’s praising the bride for bending to her new husband’s desire to exchange their vows on ice. Which one is it, then? Guess that’ll be one for family court to decide.

National Post: More high school sweethearts, these ones from P.E.I., where Adelee first learned of her future spouse’s intentions during a biology class via a notepad which contained “a complete unadulterated transcript of Phil’s feelings for her”. Quite an achievement for a heterosexual boy just starting high school. But she was deemed too young to date until “the gentlemanly qualities of her new boyfriend” led to her parents bending the rules, and he came forth with a promise ring for her 16th birthday. Then she went to Mississippi for a school trip, where “their e-mail correspondence began to uncover many issues between them”. The details are left unspecified. Her friends were suggesting a break-up, but they were both determined to reach the altar – he even read her a verse from the Bible on a pier in downtown Charlottetown that spoke of a husband’s dedication to his wife and what more do you need? “A month into their marriage,” writes Catherine Hernandez, “these newlyweds admit it has been a rough start but, as usual, they are willing to stick it through to the end.” What? Sounds like the only thing that’ll keep this particular couple’s clause intact is notwithstanding.

Cupidwatch 2005

Once upon a time, there might’ve been a reasonable breather between the Christmas season sales pitch and the promotional foreshadowing of the even less inclusive, more dysfunctional and similarly over-commodified occasion of St. Valentine’s Day. Yet, the annual Harlequin Romance Report, issued last week by the slumping Toronto-based publisher of happily-ever-after bodice-ripping paperbacks, earned its share of focus in the hometown media for attaching meaningless statistics to antiquated notions. Like how 19 per cent of women in “North America” – typical code for a Canadian survey where it’s unlikely Mexico was considered – want more help with chores around the house, even as 32 per cent of men wish their significant other would do something sweet for them on special occasions, while three per cent of fellas confess their concept of a guilty pleasure is curling up with a “sexy magazine”. Most of all, it’s revealed that people, regardless of genitalia, would rather not schlep off to work in the morning, Harlequin’s way of telegraphing a desperate quest to regain market share by churning out even more formulaic knock-offs of jadedly promiscuous chick lit.

More compelling are the results of a survey conducted by Brazilian professor and researcher Marcelo Peruzzo, dedicated to the subject of Who hurts others the most in Canada? Not a big surprise that “Lover” comes in at 13.6 per cent, compared to 8.4 per cent for “Husband” and 5.2 per cent for “Wife” – as Prof. Peruzzo explains, a weaker bond leads to less forgiveness, whereas erosion in a marriage breeds greater immunity. But blogging misanthropes aren’t left out of these findings either, as respondents also cited “Self” (2.6 per cent), “The world” (2.3, tied with “Fiancé[e]“) and “Life” (1.6). Mothers hurt their daughters more than sons, but fathers cause more hurt overall, and grandparents hardly seem to be upsetting anyone. (Mentioned by just 0.5 per cent of 433 surveyed.) Yet, any illusion that Brazil is a more hedonistic society gets dispelled by Peruzzo’s conclusions regarding how the amount of hurt generated by romance gone sour on his home turf parallels the Canadian statistics. Ladies, don’t go falling for that Brazilian wax thing – each hair seared from your most intimate of areas with expectations of arousing your man is another nail heading straight for your heart.

Those companies already announcing their desire to take your money “just in time” for Valentine’s Day include the eventually former book merchant Indigo, now selling diamonds worth up to $1.3-million; Pizza Pizza insisting that toppings can be a potent aphrodisiac, particularly that ever-phallic asparagus (“I guess that’s why a lot of romances have started or been rekindled over a slice of pizza,” offers Pizza Pizza’s VP of marketing); and Canada Post promoting the postmark from Saint-Valentin, Quebec, where a stamped greeting card can be sent inside a second stamped envelope allowing for the timely cancellation to be dutifully unnoticed by your stalkee. Does the same sweet deal apply even if the letter is being sent postage-free to Parliament Hill? Given how Canada Post indicate it takes up to fourteen business days to boomerang from one destination to the next, it’d probably help to know in advance how your local MP will tilt on the same-sex marriage vote. But if you want to express fondness for their sanctioning of polygamy, given how it’s tougher for a man to pack so many marital duties into a single day, maybe a Feb. 14 deadline needn’t be as firm.

Tin soldiers and Nixon’s coming

York University, forever suffering from an inferiority complex due to the remote location of its Keele campus, can now claim to be the current hotbed of the meta-protest. Rallying moonbats from the school’s Grassroots Anti-Imperialist Network (GRAIN) couldn’t resist the occasion of the U.S. presidential inauguration last Thursday to holler about York’s alleged financial ties to the likes of Lockheed Martin – and because it was so damn frigid outside, they weren’t going to gather on the lawn, which meant assembling inside Vari Hall. The prohibition of protest in that echo-prone rotunda has been enforced since a bout of nasty business last year, where undergrad Daniel Freeman-Maloy’s megaphone-wielding ways toward fellow Jewish students who don’t share his contempt for Israel. Freeman-Maloy was expelled from York for three years, but his mounting an elaborate legal defense and PR campaign against school president Lorna Marsden resulted in the decision being overturned. It’s no surprise he was among the members of GRAIN braying against York’s “ties to war, occupation and oppression throughout the world”, even if Freeeman-Maloy wasn’t one of the five activists arrested for throwing punches at paid-duty officers, pouring coffee on one of them and attempting to grab a constable’s Glock. But those arrests begat another rally the next day, allowing for Freeman-Maloy to dust off his bullhorn in solidarity with those who’d been dragged into the paddywagon. And, on Monday, there was a third event, where the media were invited to hear the denouncing of force against peaceful activists. Based on the estimates floating around, the turnout for the protests built from 20 to 300 to 500 – at these exponential rates, all 45,000 students at York will be protesting en masse by the end of the academic year, if only they can find a common cause.

The account from Isabel Macdonald posted at Rabble provides only the most breathless play-by-play account of the fuzz’s barbarism: “Then they began to move toward us, making a bee-line for the student with the megaphone. He was knocked down. I saw him lying on the ground with his hands raised protectively around his head, to defend himself from the cops’ fists and batons. I had trouble keeping my video camera focused, my arms were shaking so much,” she writes. “We followed as Greg was pulled down the hallway by a few cops, one of whom waved his bayonet in the air. I could hear him calling out, his small frame dwarfed by the burly officers on either side of him, ‘They called me “fag”!’ … Outside the classroom-cum-torture chamber, the crowd was growing. As at the scene of a morbid car accident, passers-by slowed down, curious and horrified, to find out what was unfurling in the hallway. ‘Why did the police attack the students if they were only speaking?’ I heard one woman exclaim. ‘Why?’ But nobody could answer.” The concurrent discussion thread casts aspersion on exactly what’s depicted in the choppy video “evidence” – shrieks of “Shame!” segueing into chants of “Cops off campus!” and the event’s ringleader being physically removed from Vari Hall while offering the time-honored rhetorical comment: “What the fuck is this?” The fact that several of the six officers have uncovered heads suggests the hats were flipped off amidst the fracas. Canadian Federation of Students unionists are now demanding legal fees from the university to compensate for police aggression, even if York’s internal security video depicted palm-outward police requests for the GRAINiacs to disperse.

A blogging York student, Dan Levy, a card-carrying GOP member from Florida with a site called The NeoCon Nexus, raises the obvious absurdity of peace activists trying to grab away a gun, while noting the aforementioned Freeman-Maloy might not have been speaking at the initial protest, but he was the junior Zapruder filming the confrontation. Yet another Daniel flails in pursuit of a more rational perspective on his own Das Blog, noting the cops didn’t intervene until being subject to at least a half-hour of law-breaking behavior: “I’d like to imagine if these cops had any sense, they wouldn’t throw the first punch. You know who would? A naive, idealistic 20-year-old student activist who’s watched too many cop shows and played too many video games, who thinks resisting arrest will make his situation better.” He also wishes for a Hegelian synthesis between police and protesters, lest you think OSAP money is just paying for more weed.

Martyr at the movies

Last week, Globe and Mail columnist Russell Smith delivered a prosaic screed, The films stink more than the greasy audience, a tirade against folks herding into Hollywood blockbusters that read like a campus newspaper parody of geriatric expectorate. Confusing things further was that Russell wasn’t making a point any civilized person could disagree with – just the aging College St. dandy’s version of Seinfeld-style populist stand-up without the burden of generating laughter. But he ended the column with a call for feedback, deigning to suggest you too could get interactive with this mightily pontificating boulevardier unaccustomed to quoting the proletariat. Then, a link to the subscription-only piece strangely surfaced on Metafilter, producing 85 reactions. Predictably, that response thread gave this week’s follow-up column some fangs – with the columnist noting his being called a “wanker” a couple times in a generally agreeable chorus of people unfamiliar with Mr. Smith’s reputation – yet the headline It’s confirmed: I have the tastes of a 72-year-old is kinda misleading. Rather, it’d seem the only Globe readers who’ll submit their thoughts to a Globe columnist – especially with the paper putting their columnists behind a firewall (even though you can usually find them gratis through Google News) – are Golden Agers. Does being able to prompt a ripple of reaction entitle one to many hundred dollars per week just because their words can line a birdcage? That’s the real question here. “I am still waiting for the arguments I prepared for,” asserts Russell, concluding with an allusion to the one 15-year-old female respondent who defended cinemas as the ideal hangout for 10th graders. “I quite agree. This is largely my point.” Hopefully he’s saved that e-mail address – the gap of 57 years between her and Russell’s disposition shouldn’t be a problem.

Don’t say that you love me

The Walrus, a periodical that prompted Utne Reader to inexplicably gush of Toronto being “the city with the hottest magazine scene in the hemisphere” also boasts of nearly all the masthead names beneath its foundation beneficiary Ken Alexander changing over its first year of publication. And with so much turmoil in the ranks – cue insufferable “tusk”-related puns – what’s positioned as a CanCon equivalent of Atlantic Monthly-meets-Harper’s-meets-The New Yorker (while pretending its fate is resting entirely on market forces) may have been distracted from living up to its launch hype. The new February 2005 issue contains Only Connect by Ellen Vanstone, a 3,126-word first-person account of trying to procure a new internet connection after a marital breakup – which is devoid of any detail of the “failure of true love” cited in the subtitle (moreover, the ex in question is Ken Finkleman of CBC’s The Newsroom fame) just a heap of lusterless typing about calling technical support reps and how her editors would rather she found a hobby. (Yes, it’s a metaphorical overload, in that sense not necessarily un-clever, but still …)

Could it be The Walrus were attempting their own version of last year’s Webstalker by Katha Pollitt, wherein the process of foraging for an ex-flame’s whereabouts was luridly detailed? Contrasting passages between the two provides all the evidence one needs about the difference between how neuroses are expressed among the rubes of Darkest Annex – by writers undeserving of a LiveJournal account – and the kind of wacky chick who gets to use The New Yorker as a therapist’s couch, while at least worthy of that buck or two per word.

The opening lines
Pollitt: “After my lover left me, I went a little crazy for a while. By day, I could pass for normal, as that concept is broadly understood on the Upper West Side, where I live – I sat at my desk, I took long furious walks in Riverside Park rehearsing all the terrible things I would say to him as he lay stricken with something rare and painful, I wandered through Zabar’s looking for kitchen things to replace the ones he took when he moved out. What kind of person walks out the door after seven years with a wooden spoon, a spatula, a whisk?”
Vanstone: “My phone service and high-speed Internet service started to break down a few months before I broke up with the man I was living with. As stressful as this development in my personal life was, it did mean that I could get a brand-new e-mail account in my new home.”

The sacredly profane
Pollitt: “He had left only one art work behind – a colorful picture of two ambiguously sexed people embracing, by a jolly, tough-talking artist we had socialized with when her child and mine were small. I called her up and told her I had belatedly come to conclude that my lover had had affairs during our years together and I didn’t want to keep her picture if she had slept with him. ‘I never saw his genitals,’ she said cheerfully – just mooned around with him in coffee shops.”
Vanstone: “We’d been on the phone for about half an hour, and getting along pretty well. I’d gotten into the habit of asking the technicians about themselves while waiting for my computer to reboot, or my modem to light up. Anyway, this guy, John in New Brunswick, at one point asked me something like ‘When you attempt to log in to your account via the Internet, what appears on your screen?’ I answered, ‘The same little box keeps appearing. You know – the little box that tells you to quit trying and fuck off.’ I could feel the ice through the line.”

A cultural touchstone
Pollitt: “I’ve always believed in the Nero Wolfe theory of knowledge. You can just sit quietly in your room – according to Pascal, the activity that if practiced more assiduously would free humanity from most of its troubles, but that was before e-mail – and through sheer mental effort force the tiniest snippets of information to yield the entire story of which they are a fragment, because the whole truth is contained in every particle of it, the way every human cell contains our DNA.”
Vanstone: “That reminds me of a line I heard on the old HBO sitcom Dream On: the odious Australian boss, Gibby Fiske, taunts the beleaguered protagonist, Martin Tupper: ‘What’s wrong with you? You look rougher than a sheep’s arse on “Farmers Drink Free” night.’”

The existential crisis
Pollitt: “Sometimes I think I would like to be a word – not a big important word, like ‘love’ or ‘truth,’ just a small ordinary word, like ‘orange’ or ‘inkstain’ or ’so,’ a word that people use so often and so unthinkingly that its specialness has all been worn away like the roughness on a pebble in a creekbed, but that has a solid heft when you pick it up, and if you hold it to the light at just the right angle you can glimpse the spark at its core. But of course what my friend meant was that I ignored inconvenient subtexts, the meaning behind the meaning: that someone might say he loved you, but what really mattered was the way he let your hand go after he said it.”
Vanstone: “I really want to make another list here, because I don’t know how else to do justice to the fiasco that my relationship with Bell Sympatico degenerated into during the dying days of our association. But the editors here refuse to discuss the list thing anymore. And I do realize it’s pointless. But when one has been through a terrible experience, it’s so soothing to make a complete record of all the transgressions – the treachery, the injustice, the heartbreak of disconnection. Perhaps it’s a bid for control, or a need to convey to you, whoever you are – to prove beyond any doubt – that none of this was my fault.”

Her parting thoughts
Pollitt: “In the months to come, I would look back on this time in my life almost as a kind of out-of-body travel, from which I had returned with nothing but a sense memory of having been somewhere inexpressibly exciting and far away. It wasn’t like a dream, exactly, although it had a dream’s strange internal logic. It was like looking through the window of an airplane at night, the way the city below appears so near, yet untouchable beyond the glass – a network of lights, flames, stars.”
Vanstone: “Sometimes I almost suspect that maybe it doesn’t matter what you buy, or whose system you go with, because underneath they’re all the same – the hardware, the software, the ISPs, the printers that cost next to nothing – till you run out of ink. … But at least my e-mail works, pretty much, or will, someday, if I can just figure out a couple more things, and, of course, get the right help …”