Don’t trust anyone. Toronto is a dangerous place!

Recently Toronto blogger Aviva Rubin (http://nothinginmoderation.ca/) raised the question “What should my children be afraid of?” A lot, it turns out, when I researched the topic. They might encounter kidnappers, crazies, prostitutes, drive-by shooters, etc. I won’t even mention life-threatening playground equipment, such as treacherous swings that violate the first rule of safety: Keep both feet on the ground and never ever have fun. Ms Rubin could insist her kids never leave the house, but she has decided to be brave and send them out into the world with just a good warning. But what about the rest of us who are less intrepid than Ms. Rubin? Lke me, for example. I’ve mulled over a few solutions:

TAKE ANTI-ANXIETY MEDICATION? Not. I may wake up tomorrow morning to the news that the medical profession has declared anti-anxiety medication life-threatening and as dangerous as the Toronto streets. Those medical researchers are prone to changing their minds. Remember when they recommended Hormone Replacement Therapy, then turned around and warned us of looming stroke and heart attacks? Ditto with taking daily Aspirins. One day they were good for us, the next day we were urged to stop. Ditto with breast and prostate exams, which were supposed to alert us to lurking dangers. Turns out you may be scared to no purpose. And don’t get me going on fickle dentists – I can’t count the times they did an about face on tooth-brushing. We’ve gone from hard bristles to soft bristles, from brushing horizontally to brushing up and down. Am I still up to date on the best method of brushing my teeth? Oh my God, I can feel the anxiety creeping up on me! And vitamins, once praised to the skies, are now worry-inducing as well. You don’t know how they are going to interact with the rest of the medication you are taking, such as your anti-anxiety pills.  No, we need another solution to the perils of living in Toronto. Maybe I should hop into my car and leave this dangerous town.

On behalf of Senator Patrick Brazeau and Lonesome George: Mind your own business!

Someone has to speak up for those who want to be left alone. So, going from the ridiculous to the sublime, I start with

TOILET USERS: The toilet was once called a privy, as in “private”. Now we have iPoo, an invention that allows us to connect with other toilet users of a gregarious mind (Metro, June 13). Apparently it’s sold through iTunes -- can a pop chart of toilet noises be far behind?

PATRICK BRAZEAU: The senator missed 65% of meetings of the aboriginal peoples committee, as pointed out by journalist Jennifer Ditchburn. Oh wait, he doesn’t need me to speak up for him. He has a twitter account and a nice turn of phrase. He suggested replacing the D in Ditchburn with a B because she showed no regard “for personal lives and situations”. You go, Senator! You don’t owe an explanation to the public just because they pay your salary!

TORTOISES: Lonesome George, a rare tortoise refusing to procreate, has died, perhaps from embarrassment after a Swiss zoology student smeared herself with female tortoise hormone and manually stimulated him over 4 months.

New Do-it-yourself Opportunities. SAVE BIG!

Do-it-yourself is shaping up to be the trend of the century. There was a time when human tellers did your bank transactions for you. Now you punch the keys of an ATM yourself. Remember gas station attendants? Now you put the nozzle into the gas tank yourself. Secretaries? Stop dreaming and keep working on that spreadsheet! Cashiers? Oh, PULease, that’s so 20^th century. Bring on more automatic check-outs.

But my title promises: SAVE BIG. Where are the savings, you ask? Oh, you thought YOU were going to save big. No, I was talking about the banks, the gas stations, and the big box stores.

But this do-it-yourself/automation trend will put a lot of people out of work, you say. Maybe so, but don’t you understand? Do-it-yourself is the answer to the problem. Here are a few suggestions if you are currently unemployed:

TEACHER: You’ve heard of basement offices? Establish a private school in your basement. A lack of light/oxygen and the sight of fake wood panelling is known to induce coma in students. You’ll have absolutely no behavioural problems.

ENGINEER: Your career will take off when you start building bombs in your basement.

WRITER: Be your own publisher. Offer your stuff on amazon.com. I hear from a friend that they throw in 5 give-away days. No, I’m not kidding you. My friend tells me that 700 people downloaded his book for free. How is that for a business opportunity?

Alternatively you could flog your self-published book on a street corner. But think ahead to the winter months and make sure the street corner includes a warm-air grate. Come to an amiable agreement with your local homeless person. He gets to sleep there midnight-7am. You start selling your book during the morning rush hour. You might even get an unemployed poet to take the afternoon shift.

PLUMBER: Okay, maybe there are no unemployed plumbers, but if there are, I suggest public dog toilets in his backyard. And a sideline of illegal plastic bags. Now that the Toronto City Council wants to abolish plastic bags, new trafficking opportunities are bound to open up.  

Which reminds me of another do-it-yourself opportunity. One word to you smokers: Grow-op!

And finally a word to the underemployed
DATER: Forget about e-dates.  Turn your own head to a real person. Use your own brain to formulate thoughts. Use your own mouth to verbalize them. Use your own hands to gesture. Remember you heard it here first: Do-it-yourself dating.

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Margaret Atwood and Indiegogo Fame

Fame comes in many forms, I see from the June 19 issue of the Globe & Mail, which is all about the nature of fame.

British Columbia artist Emily Carr, James Adams tells us, is famous “in a Canadian sort of way”. Hmm, what might that be? It seems to involve death and apotheosis, well, not all the way. It’s “tantalizingly close, yet forever receding,” a semi-apotheosis. 

Then there is the fame of photographer Helmut Newton who is presumably famous in a German-Australian way. Or maybe it’s fame by association: Newton is buried next to Marlene Dietrich. Or fame by nostalgia. His renewed fame is due to the fact that “fashion moves stealthily toward a certain 1970s aesthetic,” Lynn Crosbie observes.

Then there is fame through Oprah’s book club. Luckily for the authors involved, that type of fame doesn’t necessarily involve death. Mortification helps (see James Frey’s apology and my blog of 5 May).

Finally there is involuntary fame, which involves legal action. That’s what happened to a graffiti artist using the moniker SLOW. He lost his anonymity through a new technology, Graffiti Tracker, as Michael Kesterton informs us.

A great (touchy-feely) time for pigeons, Canada geese, beavers and other vermin.




U of T motto. (Hope the beaver doesn't
escape the escutcheon and fell their tree).

 

Life used to be tough for critters. They were trapped, shot,   eaten, and hunted for their pelts. Not any more. In these touchy-feely times of ours, you can’t defend your airspace from pigeons, or your trees from beavers, or your lawn from Canada geese shit.

You don’t want pigeons to gum up airplane engines? Tough. You don’t want your tennis game interrupted by a pigeon colliding with your ball? That’s what happened at the French Open, so they hired a falconer. But even falcons have gone touchy-feely. I quote the New Yorker: “Hup! Hup! Hup!” the falconer yelled to encourage his bird to pounce. The falcon, by name of Zyna, clearly didn’t have murder in her heart. Her boss had to swipe her, and even then it would only jump into the air, spooking the pigeons enough to back up twenty feet. Maybe it had nothing to do with touchy-feeling. Maybe it was a labour dispute. You can’t make your falcons work overtime. According to the New Yorker, the falconer was aware of the regulations. “It’s the bird’s decision,” he said. http://www.newyorker.com/talk/2012/06/18/120618ta_talk_wiedeman