Shut the F Up, You’re an Idiot!

I cannot stop humming that new Beyonce country song TEXAS HOLD ‘EM and watching those infectious 20 second videos posted on social media by the thousands of people dancing to the playful tune. One could say that I’m depraved and should get a life, but others could say I’m joyful, have rhythm, and long for my own Tik Tok video to go viral.  Despite the pleasure I get, I keep hearing the noise of naysayers in the background, who are up in arms that the pop singer is jumping on the coveted country music bandwagon. There are also haters who go so low as to bring up race.  To them I have only this to say, “SHUT THE F#CK UP YOU’RE AN IDIOT” (STFUYAI).

Instead of being happy that this woman has ignited excitement surrounding country music and the culture around it and stirred a new enthusiasm throughout the fashion industry, with folks donning cowboy hats, denim, and fringe, they have decided they would feel better about their own sad lives by pissing on someone else’s.  One radio station in Oklahoma even pushed back against playing the lighthearted song and others tried to follow.  What is wrong with people?  

It’s bad enough we have to acknowledge the color of her skin, which can be recognised in relation to Beyoncé becoming the first Black woman to reach the US No 1 spot On Billboards Hot Country Songs Chart.  For the love of God and all that is holy, the beloved Dolly Pardon, Queen of country, even posted on social media “I’m a big fan of Beyoncé and am very excited that she’s done a country album, so congratulations. I can’t wait to hear the full album! Those of you who think otherwise, should STFUYAI”.

I just wish Dolly or Reba would do a rap song and grab their crotches while singing about bitches and ho’s instead of pick-up trucks and mobile homes caught in a tornado. Imagine if their songs went viral and they topped the R&B and Hip-Hop Charts? I’m sure there would be haters out for them too, ready to rain on their parade and bust the windows out dem car. And to that what do we say? Yep, “STFUYAI.”

Then there’s Taylor Swift.  The 34-year-old is the biggest pop star on the planet and has achieved new heights of stardom and hysteria over the past year that’s rivaled only by Beatlemania in the early 1960s.  And with that achievement, in 2023 alone she quietly donated 50 million to truckers, 30 million to food banks, and 20 million to animals.  But despite her success and generosity, she has been subject to a barrage of irrational and petty hatred that has reached a grotesque and unwarranted level.  The first haters are the NFL fans who feel her presence has tarnished the game: A game where overweight men smash into each other and chase a ball for twenty-four inches at a time for hours on end, only after receiving multiple blows to the head. WTF!  The NFL has seen a huge boost in viewership with more women and teenage girls watching NFL games because of Taylors association.  It has also given families, specifically fathers and daughters, something to bond over and watch together. 

Then there’s the other group that has been riding the Swift hate train: MAGA right-wingers and Trump fans have made her the target of wild conspiracy theories about the looming presidential election this year, first by believing that the NFL would rig the Super Bowl for the Chiefs to win which would set up Swift’s endorsement for Biden (they did win).  They also claim that four years ago the Pentagon’s psychological operations unit turned Taylor Swift into an asset for democrats votes. To this one can only offer these words, “STFUYAI.”  

Let’s not forget about the ORANGE BLOB south of the border.  Or maybe you know him by his other names DARTH TAX EVADER, COMMANDER IN BEEF, MAR-A-LARDO, DONNY ORANGE TITS, HUMPTY TRUMPTY or the TANGERINE TWITTER MACHINE.  On his recent cross-country rally tour, while at a tractor pull disguised as a KKK meeting, he actually said this:

“I got indicted for something that is nothing. They were doing it because it’s election interference and then I got indicted a second time, and a third time and a fourth time. And a lot of people said that that’s why the Black people like me because they have been hurt so badly and discriminated against, and they actually viewed me as I’m being discriminated against,”

And if that wasn’t enough…

“The mug shot, we’ve all seen the mug shot, and you know who embraced it more than anybody else? The Black population. It’s incredible. You see Black people walking around with my mug shot, you know they do shirts,”

Wait, he’s not done yet!

“These lights are so bright in my eyes that I can’t see too many people out there. But I can only see the Black ones, I can’t see any White ones, you see, that’s how far I’ve come. That’s how far I’ve come. That’s a long way, isn’t it? These lights. We’ve come a long way together.”

How do you even approach this?  The fact that he’s batshit crazy and an extreme narcissist and overt racist helps explain his behavior, but what’s alarming is that he continues to hypnotize over seventy million voters who are too ignorant to ever fact check his baseless theories and rhetoric.  And despite the orange jackass facing 91 criminal charges across countless lawsuit cases, including sexual assault, it all doesn’t mean a damn thing because his pursuit of a dictatorship is all his base is after. They want to be led. They want to be saved.  From what?

So how do we explain this seemingly mass rejection of the democratic process – and the rejection of reality and sanity?  I say it’s a complex interplay of class and racial antagonism, aggravated by despair over the loss of the perfect job, the white picket fence, and the American dream from the 1950s. Donny Orange Tits challenges the American status quo and allows the mostly white working class to have a ‘false’ belief that they can get their old ways back – even if that includes sending blacks back to Africa, gays back underground, and muslins back to the middle east. It is the most troubling psychological phenomenon of the century and it’s happening right under our noses. To that there is only one thing we can say to Donald Jessica DUMP, “STFUYAI”!

Recently my partner Tom text me something that stopped me in my tracks. Normally he sends me gibberish about the cat’s stool or demands to pick up cookies or toilet paper, but this time it was different. 

“We keep reactivating the past in the hope that history will guide us to where we should go; but this is like driving a car with your eyes glued to the rear-view mirror.”

My immediate reaction was to tell him to STFUYAI, but then his words penetrated my soul.  It was as if a light bulb went on.  Suddenly I understood what.  Why. It all made perfect sense.  Is this human nature going forward?  Are we doomed to repeat the doing the same shit over and over?

So, you are probably wondering why this rant?  I think I recently started paying attention to what is going on in the world after a long hiatus and was shocked to see so much hate and anger out there.  I would normally feel sorry for people and want to offer them a helping hand or give them a big hug and tell them things will get better.  And I’d like to believe I should still do that, but I also think it now has to be prefaced with strong words of warning to stop them in their tracks and pay attention to their actions.  And the only thing I could come up with was “SHUT THE F#CK UP, YOU’RE AN IDIOT”.  Michelle Obama used to tell us that when they go low, we go high.  And I whole heartedly believe that, but these are desperate times, and we just have to meet somewhere in the middle.

So going forward, I encourage all of you to stand up for what is right.  Don’t be complicit in letting others shit on the world.  Just grab a megaphone and get up on a soap box and say those magical seven little words.  And if you’re not sure when you should do that, let me help you.

EXAMPLES OF WHEN TO SAY ‘STFUYAI’

1. Someone says you look fat in your outfit.
2. Someone cuts you off on the freeway.
3. Your cat wakes you up at 5am because they’re hungry.
4. Your neighbor doesn’t pick up their dog shit on your lawn.
5. Your coworker talks incessantly, and you can’t get any work done.
6. Anti-vaxers shout at you while you walk down the street minding your own business.
7. The network cancels Dancing with The Stars and moves it to Disney and now you have to pay money to watch C-list celebrities do the Fox Trot.
8. Tim Hortons runs out of Birthday Cake Timbits.
9. Billionaires’ horde their money away in hopes of flying a giant penis to the moon instead of donating it to charities or helping poor countries get on their feet with clean water and food resources.
10. Someone is overlooked for a job because of their age, sexuality, and color of their skin.
11. A big corporation continues to pollute the environment in pursuit of profits.
12. You receive a phone call from a Chechenian asking for your SIN number.

I hope this helps in your pursuit of justice and a life of tranquility.  Okay rant over.

This week on Survivor, I wanted to Jess to tell Kenzie and Q to “STFUYAI” after they produced a fake idol and kicked the sweet oddball to the curb. It all seemed so mean spirited, maybe because Jess is so sweet.  Sure, so she might be hapless at holding a 40lb wood block over her head while her teammates scream bloody murder at her.  Survivor clearly takes no prisoners.  I have to keep reminding myself that it’s a social game and if you suck at challenges, you can still win over people with your personality, and Jess for some reason was too ‘out there’ and didn’t warm up to people.   Poor Venus can’t catch a break with her team. They behave like highschooler MEAN GIRLS and decided she’s not worthy, mainly because of her stand-offish nature.  But again, we learn her backstory of being a Muslim immigrant and how she had to be strong and stand up for herself. Thankfully Randen has taken her under his wing – I like that in people, who won’t be a sheep and make an effort to include the underdog.   Okay is it me, or is Bhanu batshit crazy? Finally, we have a hero in Ben Katzman the musician with a heart.  There is hope in humanity.  Okay, it’s time to vote!

See you next week, SYNW!

Kurt

Survivor: The Fourth Dimension of Reality TV

It’s hard to believe that the beloved reality-TV series “Survivor” is still going strong. It has surpassed the Simpsons (34 seasons) and Gunsmoke (40 seasons) and become the longest running and most influential series on TV – even after Hee Haw.  Here are just a few reasons why after forty-six seasons on the boob tube, that we still love Survivor:  

• It’s a welcome distraction from work/life when your day is a piece of shit.  Just watch a clip of my typical ride home during rush hour in the big smoke.  https://www.instagram.com/reel/C2YuTQGOV9z/?utm_source=ig_web_copy_link

• It has allowed me to set up a betting pool, which has become a healthy competition amongst nearly one hundred ‘mostly’ strangers, all who come together to realize a chance to win money to spend on frivolous consumptions like pole dancing lessons or paying down their Porn Hub membership fees, and ultimately the chance to better their lives and give power to emotional spending.  It’s like a giant love-in that celebrates community and gambling in a weird way.

• I get quality bonding time with my partner Tom.  We shout at the TV and then at each other.  When one of his pool picks is evicted, he hurls expletives and calls the pool a big scam I concocted to sift money into the pockets of a few of my buddies. 

• By watching, we learn a little bit about ourselves and appreciate the relationships in our own lives even more.  It’s the ultimate fishbowl experiment where we observe total strangers fending for themselves in a cut-throat game, while in the absence of emotional support of a loved one for weeks on end, and ultimately break down on national TV and swear to go back home and be the best version of themselves.  The whole experience becomes therapy for them and for also us; and it only costs us twenty-five bucks!!!

• We harness valuable survivalist skills that could come in handy one day during a civil war or nuclear apocalypse.  We will be able to make fire, build shelter, fish with our bare hands, eat bugs, poop in the woods, and balance on one leg while holding two balls in thirty-degree heat for four hours. And if we are really lucky, we will find a clue to a hidden immunity idol.

• We love the drama of watching people crazier than our own family.  When I think of Easter or Christmas dinner with my family and the fierce finger pointing and brewing tension from having been slighted yet again during Secret Santa, I realize I don’t have it so bad compared to the lying, cheating, deceit, backstabbing, gossiping and treachery of total strangers competing for a million bucks.  It’s the greatest social experiment on TV ever and every season it’s a whole new shit show as “people are people” and, like snowflakes, none are alike and the outcome is completely unique every time.

• We develop serious strategy building skills from watching the players navigate the quagmire of relationships, plot twists, and immunity challenges.  Some weeks I feel like I should be channeling Stephen Hawking to help me figure out what the hell is going on. Survivor has reinvented itself over the decades, originally it was a bunch of lazy asses sitting around picking their arses on bamboo sticks all day, and now we see them run around the jungle hunting for complex game advantages and formulating voting configurations, making the show feel more like a board game or theme park.  And when I can actually figure out what the hell is going on, I tell myself that I’m going to try that move at work the next day and fuck people over. Maybe I’ll get a promotion.  Maybe I’ll get hauled into HR. I would not be surprised if there will be university courses on Survivor strategies one day.

• Okay, let’s get real.  We love the eye-candy.For the longest time there were lots of hot almost-naked people on a beach for 39 days. Not a whole lot else to it. Physically strong and attractive contestants like Stephanie, Ozzy, Colby, John Cody, Pavarti, Woo, Stephen Fishbach, Joe “Manbun”, and Marisa Calihan to name a few. And let’s not forget the season they finally stopped blurring out the men’s bits. I had to smoke a cigarette after watching.  Then things got “woke” and it’s now a kennel club of chubby, poorly dressed, bad attitudes, politically charged, chip-on the shoulder, saving-the-world players.  We are lucky if we get one six pack or pair of 44Ds to ogle at in a season.  And hello, where are the men with their buns these days? I miss Joe!

• The emotional pay off!   The loved one / family visit and letters gets me every time and I’m usually laying in a fetal position crying for my mommy.  Season after season I love the pure emotion of watching players open up and share their personal feelings. Vulnerable men and women having life-affirming epiphanies and realizing they need to do get their shit together when they go back home.  Players like the recent Emily, who recognized her abrasive, defensive personality was doing her no favors and when listening to others and showing empathy, realized her life can have deeper meaning.  I just love “the love of this show” sometimes.  Like I said, it’s the cheapest form of therapy. 

• I hate to admit it, another reason we watch is we like / love Jeff Probst. While Miss Kitty and Festus couldn’t handle another gunfight on main street Dodge City, and Homer and Marge are growing weary on the Simpsons, Jeff is going strong after 46 seasons. Who wouldn’t be when they have the chance to work on their tan and collect millions by working only three months a year.  He has been the proverbial host with the most spewing out the same, tired catch-phrases week after week, year after year.  But then, like the show’s format and casting, he enthusiastically announced he wanted to change, to grow with the times – remember how happy he was to retire “GUYS” from “come on in guys”?  Notice on occasion how he’s breaking the fourth wall and addressing the audience directly, as though he is conspiring with us?  Sure, he irritates the hell out of everyone by shouting commentaries behind the contestants while they are enduring brutal reward and immunity competitions, but like the drunk uncle at Christmas, we find him enduring as long as he doesn’t inappropriately grope us or fart during supper.  In short, Jeff has been the glue keeping it all together, in front of and behind the cameras.

• The sense of community.  Despite Survivor being about ruthless human individualism, it ends up becoming about relationships and community.  And believe it or not, I love our little pool community and how it brings sixty to over a hundred mostly total strangers together (yep, we once had over 100 in the pool) – for the past twenty years if you can believe it!  I like seeing new people join and I love seeing others win.  I imagine you all sitting at home shouting at your televisions (and your partners or children) when one of your players is voted off.  We live in a world where we are closing down, shutting the outside world, when now more than ever we really need each other most. We need to embrace “community”, focus less on ourselves, and more on others.  It’s how we grow as people, it’s how we become better; much like I imagine the contestants on Survivor do.

Whatever your reasons are for watching – nostalgic comfort, that excited sense of accomplishment when the two tribes merge, the rush of excitement when a contestant gets their hands on the elusive hidden immunity idol, the blurred out boobies, the final votes being read and the winner announced,  or you personally winning one of the Pool merger or cash prizes and splurging your new found ‘fun money’.  Just know by participating, by watching, you are entering a new dimension and are a part of something bigger than yourself. 

This first week was terrific. Usually, I’m not crazy about most players at the start, but this group let their crazy out in minutes.  Jelinsky, the first evictee, was delusional and so precious that he believed it was okay to quit tasks that didn’t suit his mood.  Clearly a millennial, quietly optimistic and confident at the expense of grasping reality and recognizing that life is hard and sometimes you have to push yourself to get ahead.  It doesn’t just happen or fall into your lap.  Jess Chong also stood out and let her freak flag fly by admitting she is unable to speak full sentences due to her anxiety.  Bhanu Gopal, newly emancipated from a life of poverty in India, was bursting with so much joy at everything and everyone that I thought he was going to have an aneurism.  Soda, the yappy schoolteacher, will either wear people down with her incessant nattering or ingratiate them. Tevin, the flamboyant actor is clearly a prolific observer and has a knack for the spoken word.  Maria Gonzalez is the no-nonsense woman who will not be taking prisoners. Then there’s Hunter, the quiet brooding small town boy, who I predict is the one to watch.  There we have it, a cesspool of snowflakes, all floating around bumping into each other, and hurling towards immense self-discovery and maybe some cash. I JUST LOVE SURVIVOR!!!

See you next week, SYNW!

Kurt

50 Christmases

It’s beginning to look a lot like…  You know, Happy Holidays, Happy Hanukkah, Joyeux Noel, Feliz Navidad, Seasons Greetings, Festivus for the rest of us, Baby Jesus Day, and good old Merry Christmas.  There are so many ways to refer to the most magical time of the year and you can choose the one that works for you.   I tend to go with Merry Christmas.  Sure, it’s old timey, after all its derived from old English meaning “pleasing, agreeable, pleasant, and sweet”, all those adjectives that make you feel all warm and fuzzy inside.  It’s hard to say when Merry Christmas first showed up, but recorded history says it was used as early as 1534 in England from John Fisher, a bishop who drank one too many giraffes of wine and shouted out slurring his words to his congregation “mery Christenmas”, hence giving birth to the tradition of drunk uncle at Christmas dinner who makes inappropriate comments and passes out farting in an arm chair.

I have experienced over fifty Christmases and have not grown tired of its charms. Every year the music, lights, snow fall, and colorful decorations warm my heart and I feel giddier as the big day draws closer.  As a child I looked forward to the presents and large family gatherings and later in my adult working life, I look forward to the break away from work and catching up on my sleep.   Over time I formed new traditions, from writing over a hundred Christmas cards, gift shopping for dozens, attending Christmas concerts, through to cleaning out my closets and donating last year’s fashions to those less fortunate, filling food drive boxes with two-year-old cans of chickpeas, and hosting an annual Christmas eve party where there is that one person that just won’t leave.  I loved these traditions and while some have subsided, I continue to form new traditions that make me feel festive.

Music plays a big part of the mood of the holiday season.  And I’m not talking about that maniacal screaming banshee Mariah Carey and Boney M saccharine, but the jazzy, bluesy, and melancholy tunes that make you want to burst into tears and donate all your money to charity.  For me, Christmas would not be complete without listening to Sarah McLauchlan’s depressing and haunting “Wintersong” album on repeat.  By day five Tom is threating to slit my throat if I play it one more time, but I shrug him off and he goes back to watching Hallmark movies and losing chromosomes in return. I don’t know why but I love to feel melancholy at Christmas. Maybe it’s because I’m so happy all the time and for once I can leave the cares of the world behind and feel something different.

For decades our tradition was to see a movie on Christmas day.  There was that one ill-fated year when we went to see Marley & Me and ended up listening to two hundred pathetic adults sobbing and blowing their noses while Owen Wilson said his goodbyes to that stupid dog.  I know I said I like melancholy but really this was too much.  After that we were more careful in our movie choices.  With the pandemic came a new tradition of staying home and watching Polar Express which transports us back to the wonder of childhood Christmases, and Office Christmas Party which reminds us of what it’s like to get stupid drunk at a holiday party and dry hump complete strangers and wake up in a pool of your own vomit.  Oh, those were the days. 

For nearly thirty years as an adult, I ran around frantically buying gifts for my family and friends and racking up credit card debt, getting stressed out wrapping into the wee hours, and spending thousands on postage to ship them across country and overseas.  Fast forward to a kinder, gentler, and wiser me, and I now go onto the World Vision website and buy goats, chickens, clean water, feminine hygiene products, and learning tools for the less fortunate in foreign countries.  I also click on a few other buttons and more donations are made to local charities, all the while, I’m sipping on eggnog listening to sad Christmas music and praying the non-diary milk doesn’t wreak havoc on my colon.  It really is the most wonderful (and gassy) time of the year.

Tom and I love to spend Christmas day alone, with the cat of course, who like every other morning screams bloody murder to be fed at 6:00am.  If we ignore him, he bangs the metal blind against the metal window frame until we wake up.  Because it’s baby Jesus’ day and we are in a good mood, instead of shouting at him to STFU, we get out of bed.  After the Royal Highness has his kibbles and we’ve had our coffee, we all congregate to the tree to open gifts.  There are usually more presents for the cat than there are for us.  He seems to be less interested in what’s inside the boxes and more engaged in the shiny, crinkly paper they are wrapped in. Oh, to be that simple.  I’m not interested in receiving gifts either, in fact they make me feel uncomfortable.  Every year when asked what I want for Christmas I always say, “a lump of coal” or “world peace”.  But this doesn’t stop friends and family from giving me ugly Christmas sweaters, dollar store nic nacs, or pajamas from the Colonel himself.   If you don’t believe me, feast your eyes on the photo below.  “WTF” was the only thing I could muster upon opening that gift from my sister Babs, who for evermore will be the one who bestowed me the most ridiculous but memorable gift. 

There is no doubt we all have our own traditions and Christmas has a different meaning for everyone.  For some it is actually about the baby Jesus himself.  Though I find it hard to fathom that God became a man to save us from sin so that we would end up getting into a fistfight over the last PlayStation 4 at Costco when we are pretending to celebrate his son’s birthday. For most however, like me, Christmas is about celebrating with family and friends, taking a break from the mania of life, and stringing up lights to cheer us during the most bleak and cold time of the year (well in Canada anyway).

Let’s say we find out an asteroid is going to hit the earth at some point over the next few months. It may kill all of us, it may kill some of us, it may splash harmlessly into the ocean, but there is no stopping it. All we can do is hunker down and see what happens. How would you react? How would humanity as a whole react? Well, I know how: We would prepare as best we could, and then we would surround ourselves with the people we love most and party our asses off.  I would eat dairy and run topless through the streets (hey you have your fantasy and I have mine). We would do this because we would realize it might be our last chance.

Imagine you are planning to see your grandparents, or parents, or siblings and friends for the very last time. You don’t know it’s their last Christmas, of course — if you somehow knew, you’d do it differently. You’d try to stretch out those moments. You wouldn’t waste time having shallow conversations or looking for a way to get away from your aunts boring story about her cat with three legs or listening to your drunk uncle’s rant about how Justin TrueDope is destroying the country.  You’d probably spend a little more time digging up old memories and laughing about the past. You’d spend less time worrying about the gifts and the thousands of dollars in credit card debt, and more about how you are spending the precious little time you have left. Once upon a time, nobody needed that reminder that life was short — the Christmas holiday was the reminder.

There is no doubt many people have lost sight of the real meaning of the Christmas holiday, that it’s supposed to be about generosity, redemption, forgiveness, and clinging to hope in a world turned dark, cold, and cruel. Many blindly go through the motions and put on festive sweaters and eat cookies and sing songs about a fat man in a red suit. But imagine sitting in a room with laughing kids who won’t be kids much longer and grandparents who won’t be around much longer, or friends who for one reason or another won’t be in your life. It probably won’t occur to you that it can all be wiped away – by an asteroid or something else.  It won’t occur to you that there will never be another Christmas exactly like this one, that time will move on, and people will change and that someday your most treasured memories will be things that at the time you experienced with nothing more than detached, mild annoyance.

So, if you’re gathering with your family and friends or neighbors or even strangers this year, I don’t care what you call the holiday, as long as you celebrate it with this in mind: You don’t get many Christmases. Make them all count. In the end, I think Christmas isn’t magical because of what it was or where it came from. It’s magical because that’s what it still is.

Our beloved Survivor has come to a close.  It too has weathered the years, well actually, 45 seasons and it still delights.  Twice a year Santa brings us our precious reality TV gift and we enjoy 14 weeks of backstabbing, outwitting, conniving, Jeff’s inane commentaries, and outlasting: not exactly in the same spirit as Christmas but we’ll take it. This season grinning idiot Dee outlasted and took home the sole survivor title – ugh!. I have no words because she annoyed the hell out of me.  Katurah deserved to win but enough said. This season started off dreadful with very unlikeable characters, some who bailed because the task was too hard, but eventually they grew on us. Emily was almost deplorable but through redemption and a serious dose of self-awareness became the darling of this season.  Caleb was the true heart and showed compassion by genuinely listening to others and gravitating to the underdogs.  Mama Julies also gave us heart but her only fault was her alliance with a bunch of nitwits, namely Dee and horndog Austin. Watching the finale, I was reminded that the show has become a happy place for the people who participate.  Even Jeff commented that ‘everyone genuinely likes each other’, which is surprising in such a cutthroat game.  I think its admirable that people are willing to place more value on relationships over some cash.  Which in many ways emulates the spirit of Christmas. 

Ho ho ho congratulations to the winners of the pool this season. 

Primary Pool:
1^st   Michael Watson – $759.50
2^nd  Mike Binky Wilson – $217.00
3^rd  Dana Boyle –  $108.50

Secondary ‘MERGER’ Pool:
1^st  Cynthia Harper – $325.50
2^nd Olivia McCarter -$139.50

Correctly Guessing Sole Surivor from the Start
1^st Mike Watson – $50
2^nd Ken Lall – $50 – ITS ABOUT TIME KENNY!!!!

Biggest Point Gain from Merger to Finale:
Rocket McGraph-Svirklys The Wonder Cat – $25

Biggest Loser at Finale:
Tracey Clarke – $25

Take care, Merry Christmas, and we’ll see you next year, SYNY.

Living in a Virtual World

Every time I log onto social media, namely Instagram and Tik Tok, I am inundated with someone singing, dancing, playing a musical instrument, telling jokes, cooking, modelling, crafting, doing just about anything to attract attention.  What the hell happened to nice, simple posts with photos of cats, vacations, babies, and plates of food?  It’s like everyone is Lucy Ricardo and they are begging Ricky to let them be in the show.  Since when did everyone wake up and decide they need to be an entertainer, a celebrity, and to be seen?  And why the hell am I watching these videos anyway?  Surely, I’ve got better shit to do.  Don’t I?  I do! I do!

It feels like it all started when the Pandemic came, and everyone was stuck indoors, secluded, with nothing to do but watch Netflix and bake banana loaves.  That lasted long enough for many to get bored and order the latest iPhone, tripod, Aura light ring, and of course, wind machine from Amazon.  Suddenly everyone fancied themselves Scorsese and were filming intricate, compelling, and downright entertaining micro twenty second movies and posting them online. One after another they would pop up on my feed and I immediately started following them and before long, months, hell even years went by, and I was following hundreds of total strangers. It’s like I was a junkie, fingering and swiping my phone like a crack addict.  At the end of each session, after what seemed like hours, I would feel dizzy and ashamed having laid on the sofa, wasting time watching other people create mystical, imaginary worlds where they look like they are having so much fun.  I know it was only the dopamine’s talking to my brain, trying to convince me that the virtual world is the real world.  I knew better but still I didn’t seem to have any control over it and kept watching.  

I would ask myself, who the hell has time to put together these videos?  I can barely make it to a yoga class at the end of the workday, never mind film, edit, and post a dance routine choreographed to music and a light show.  Don’t these people work?  Doesn’t anyone have to do the dishes or laundry or take out the garbage? I follow one guy who cooks a meal while dancing and playing instruments as his cute Pug dog sits on the counter and looks on waiting for a chance to lick the bowls.  The entire time he’s dancing, he throws his utensils and empty bowls across the room and sometimes even takes off his shirt while doing it.  Two other guys do hip hop dances while trapsing through malls, streetscapes, and people’s houses. Another two, twin brothers, do tap, ballet, and modern dances while topless in short shorts.  Four brothers, the Williams family, with tens of millions of views, wear suits and dance the most lavishly choreographed numbers in their family home, sometimes with guest celebrities in tow.  One guy travels the world with three cats on his shoulders.  THREE CATS! Another guy plays the most extraordinary violin concertos, also while topless.  One dude does half naked yoga and gyrates his hips like he’s dry humping someone. Another, who is battling depression, makes wood furniture and nic nacs, also sometimes with his bare chest exposed.   Hmm, wait, I’m starting to see a pattern.  Must be an algorithm that’s feeding me soft core porn videos.  I should report the sickos and have it investigated.  Maybe tomorrow.

And the songs people sing.  Wow! Some are parodies.  Some are the most incredible, haunting originals. Sometimes I will be watching a video listening to a song and start sobbing uncontrollably. Those ones are usually about something sad like being dumped or fired or disfigured by a falling object during the filming of a Tik Tok video.  Others are tragic about a family member overdosing or battling depression. These people bare their soles to millions of total strangers and sometimes I feel like a voyeur, which makes me uncomfortable, albeit moved by their story.  I often wonder why they don’t have a recording contract. I suppose many are on the Tik Tok in the first place to get that much needed exposure for a career.

I’m sure everyone knows by now that I love cats.  What’s not to love?  So much so I have been posting a weekly photo of my beloved pussy, Hunter, The Ginger Poet Cat, in a segment titled ‘We Be Chilling on a Caturday’, for almost four years.  But thanks to Tik Tok and thousands of industrious pet owners on the internet, the Caturday photos of him glistening in the sun with thoughtful captions overhead are beyond passe. Now there are cats that dance, fart, jump, travel, wear hats and shoes, and even sing to compete against my boring pics.  I’m lucky if that that fat, lazy ass cat of mine will lift his leg to lick his own genitals.  It’s absolutely staggering to see other animals like squirrels, racoons, possums, rats, dogs, chickens, kangaroos, and almost all of the passengers from Noah’s Ark performing for their dinner.  Again, who the hell thinks of this shit and finds the time to produce these videos and memes?

Then there are the dance challenge videos that people from all over the world post their version of as though they are joining some global revolution.  They are usually dances performed to some long, forgotten catchy song that for no rhyme or reason entices people to want to recreate their own version. This year saw a nearly 50-year-old song, ‘Young Hearts Run Free’, sung by Candi Staton in 1976 play while moms, dads, friends, siblings, children, nuns, doctors, and every Tom, Dick and Harry danced to the same twenty second routine.  I became so addicted to watching I had to download the song, including the extended play, and dance around my living room with the blinds closed. I didn’t dare join the challenge so as to protect my highly regarded reputation on the internet.   Just watch a few and see what I mean.

During the pandemic I became obsessed with another dance challenge called Jerusalema which saw entire communities, companies, groups, families, and people from every walk of life performing a line dance to a haunting song, mostly while wearing masks: Firemen. Nurses. Doctors. Nuns. Office workers. Airline workers. Students. Politicians. What struck me as beautiful was that here we were in a global pandemic, and people from around the globe came together to form communities and support one another. The song was created by a South African singer, Nomcebo Zikode, who wrote it while battling her own depression. Lyrically, it speaks about Jerusalem being the home of many religious believers and emphasizes that we all need unity in humanity. It’s a beautiful message and I love the videos.

As time passed, I realized I was spending too much time watching Tik Tok, sometimes in my dentists waiting room, standing in the grocery checkout line, and during my morning routine in the shitter after a strong cup of Joe.  I would sit there and swipe, scroll, and “heart” thousands of TikTok videos to watch over and over again.  My partner Tom, who thinks social media is the work of the devil, watched a few and I would see his interest peaked, especially by the ones with cats and shirtless men.  But then he would stop himself and exclaim “I don’t have time to watch this shit, I’ve got stuff to do”.  At least he has the self-control and good sense to move on. I just lay in a cesspool of dopamine’s feeling entertained, excited, yet drained and regretful.

While using TikTok I can see how a person might start to feel like they are a part of a community whether they are following others or have their own followers.  Today I have 321 followers and am following 760 others, the vast majority who are total strangers.  If I think about it, I realize the platform is designed to make people interact and bond and believe they are part of something.  This bond is further strengthened when TikTok influencers create physical events like the dance challenges where people gather and interact in their own way. One could say that TikTok helps create one big happy family for everyone to become a part of and enjoy. But I know better and can see that it is more like a sheep in wolves clothing, where the virtual world replaces the real world. That’s why it’s dangerous.

For nearly a decade I loved the memes on Instagram and Facebook, but TikTok’s funny video and memes came along and were far more entertaining. They were a great distraction from boredom and stress during the pandemic, and sometimes I find much of the content oddly relatable except for those ones where the guys have six packs – mine is more of a 12 pack, but who’s counting?  It’s simply staggering how creative and industrious everyday people out there are who make these videos.  I often wonder what would happen if they put down their iPhones and took on something more important, like picking up litter, volunteering, helping old ladies cross the street, or maybe conducting research into a life saving device.  Anything that doesn’t involve singing, dancing, or manipulating a cat into performing for its dinner.  

Oh sure, watching all these fun and cool videos might help me stay on trend and teach me a few things about cooking, DYI, gardening, home repair, nutrition, and how to properly gyrate my hips.  And at the end of a long, tiring day at work, Tik Tok might even help cheer me up and rejuvenate me with short bursts of video distraction. But in the end, I’m being inflicted with dopamine’s and becoming addicted to watching and ignoring the other parts of my life, like personal hygiene, socializing, and household chores, all the things that make me a productive member of society.  I’m also worried that an algorithm is going to paint a creepy and distorted digital footprint of who I am and five hundred years from now I will be studied in an anthropological report about all the things that contributed to the downward spiral of civilization.  I can’t let that happen.  I won’t!

In the end, I get that we humans crave micro-entertainment and with the advent of all this wonderful digital technology, we now have access to all sorts of platforms and ways to be creative to satisfy our desires.  But the psychologists, psychiatrists and social media experts are warning that spending too much time watching can be addictive and its consequences the same as those of any other addiction: anxiety, dependence, irritability, lack of self-control, and compulsion. And let’s not forget, Tik Tok is a matter of national security because the Chinese government is using the platform to spy on us and get all our secrets on fashion, dance moves, and cooking.  If this isn’t a sign that using social media is dangerous, I don’t know what is.

So where do we go from here?  Well, it may be easier than you think.  You can either flush your phone down the toilet, delete all your APPs, take up needlepoint and pottery, or even tie your hands behind your back.  Or you can find ways to limit your use.  Restrict the number of times a day or week you indulge.  Re-engage yourself with what’s in front of you, talk to the people in your lives and connect and bond with them over personal experiences instead of filming yourself bustin a move on the dance floor with a wind machine blowing on you.  You will probably find the real world is not so bad after all.

This week on Survivor, in what is known as “reality” TV, there is no virtual world.  I think that might just be one of the best advantages of joining this cutthroat game, that you get to leave the virtual world behind for weeks and experience face to face relations. That and you get to lose some of your fat ass from eating only rice and bugs.  The remaining six were reduced to five when nerd stick-man Drew was blindsided.  The last few episodes have seen some very cunning and highly thought-out voting schemes that are beyond the normal fare.  Throughout this season, Drew has provided us with sarcastic, articulate commentaries but this last episode we got a glimpse of what has been his sorrow for a lifetime.  After losing the reward challenge and not being chosen to go on the helicopter ride with horn dogs Austin and Dee, he shared that he has never been picked to be a part of anything in life, and that others often overlook him.  And after being voted out, he revealed to the camera that he feels bitter and dizzy from the whole Survivor experience and that it has not yet provided him the life-changing experience that others admit to having. “Maybe sometime later I will start to feel like I have grown from this whole experience” he admitted.  I felt so bad for him.  I can hardly wait to see what his questions are in the final jury interrogation.  With any luck he will unleash his wrath on mastermind twat-of-the-year Dee and expose her for who she really is. 

See you next week, SYNW.  Kurt

Express Yourself!

The English language is funny. Well, any language for that matter. I suppose saying “Bon Jewer Jim Apple Kurt” does not qualify me as French speaking, so I should only remark on English.  I find many of the expressions we use to be amusing and of interest.  There are literally thousands of expressions that all have an origin back story.  Did you know the expression “he’s on it like a fat kid in a candy store” came about because of me.  Yep, true story. I was a small child, as wide as I was tall, and my family owned a candy store. I had boundless energy and was always helping out by making beds, vacuuming, mowing the lawn, shoveling snow, cleaning the garage, chewing the pork chop down to the bone, you name it.  Any chore that was thrown at me, I was ‘on it’ which prompted people to reference me when speaking about an industrious person getting shit done.  If you don’t believe me, Google it!

There are literally thousands of these expressions, also referred to as idioms, that we use every day to communicate.  Some of them are useful to get a point across and others are simply bizarre.   Here are a few examples:

The best of both worlds:  Means you can enjoy two different things at the same time.  Like ice cream and broccoli, although in my case I need Beano and Lactaid to accompany me.

Speak of the devil:   This is when the person you’re talking about appears at that moment.  For example, you are having an afternoon roll in the hay with your best friend’s wife and your friend walks in on you.  This is what you would probably say. That and “OH FUCK!”

No pain no gain:  This one came from the infamous Benjamin Franklin and then became popular in the 80’s when Jane Fonda did her exercise videos and screamed at fat people.  Today she can barely walk and had a double hip replacement and new kneecaps installed. I call this irony.

When Pigs Fly:   Means something that will never happen. But the paradox is they can fly.  Really, you throw one out of a plane without a parachute and I guarantee you they will be air born for at least three minutes until they become bacon.

Laugh and the whole world laughs with you:   That’s an awful lot of people laughing. And what’s so funny that 8 billion people would have a giggle fit?  Probably involves a midget.

Let the Cat out of the bag:  I’m not crazy about this one because I love cats.  I guess if one was trapped in a bag and was able to get out, it would be for the best.  I know my fat ginger cat Hunter would burst out of the bag if he heard a can opener.

To cost an arm and a leg:  This one is morbid. It’s supposed to mean when something is expensive. But I can only think about the poor amputees who are walking around in circles with only one leg. Or trying to clap their hand at a piano concerto. 

Two birds with one stone:  Another gruesome expression.  It means to solve two problems at once.  But all I can think about is tweedy bird and his feathered companion being mowed down by a giant boulder.

Break a leg:  Usually you tell this to some actor before they go on stage.   Hmm, another idiom that makes me uneasy. I imagine some poor actor falling off the stage while performing their climactic soliloquy. “To be or not to……THUMP”.  

Getting a taste of your own medicine:  This one came about in the late 1800s and usually refers to when someone experiences something negative that they have been inflicting on others.  I pray that Donald Trump will get a taste of his own medicine one day. 

A blessing in disguise:  When some bad shit happens but it turns out to be good in the end.  For example, Lorena Bobbitt cut off her cheating husband’s willy, for which he achieved international attention by writing a book about it and going on talk shows and ultimately becoming rich and famous. Today he would probably be on Dancing with the Stars.

Let someone off the hook:   Brrr, another grisly one.  Makes me think of Leatherface from the movie Texas Chainsaw Massacre chasing those poor, dumb horny teenagers through a cornfield and catching them and hanging them up on a meat hook in his barn.  Worst movie ever! 

Once in a blue moon:   Something that doesn’t happen very often.  Like sexytime in your 50s or me loading the bowls correctly in the dishwasher. So, I’m told. 

A piece of cake:   Sure, I’d love one.  No ice cream though unless I swallow a bottle of Lactaid. Oh, never mind, it means when something is easy.

Giving someone the cold shoulder:  WTF? Who is coming up with these?  I can only envision a serial killer dismembering people and handing out body parts that he’s stored in his freezer. 

The elephant in the room:   When there is a problem or issue that nobody wants to talk about. Like erectile dysfunction or incontinence. Thankfully the clever marketers have brought these delicate topics to light and now TV commercials depict happy people living active lives while shitting their pants. Or horny old men getting boners while playing bingo or golf. 

Stealing someone’s thunder:   When a person takes credit for someone else’s achievement. 

“Karen stole my thunder when she announced that she was pregnant two days before I’d planned to tell people about my own pregnancy. But I showed her and told everyone it was her husband who knocked me up”.  This can also be combined with the ‘Elephant in the room”.

Air your dirty laundry:  This is when you hang up your soiled gotchies on the clothing line and your neighbors take photos and put it on Instagram.  But you can get revenge by stealing their thunder, breaking their leg, or giving them a taste of their own medicine, which is what you call the idiom multiverse.

Fat Chance:  A chunky guy named Chance.

Cold Turkey:  After Thanksgiving, you decide to give up ever seeing your family again.

Hold Your Horses: I suspect some farmer is yelling at his wife to hold onto the horses otherwise they will get out of the barn and run away.  It’s also something you say when you want someone to stop or slow the F#ck down! 

Get Someone’s Goat:  This same farmer is now stealing a goat from his neighbor, probably to keep as a companion or perhaps barbeque and serve with a nice chianti.

Get Your Ducks in a Row:  Wow, farmer Joe is on a roll.  He clearly is some sort of animal whisperer.  Now he’s getting ducks to line up, perhaps to perform the Animal Farm version of a Chorus Line.

Running around like a headless chicken:  Something I do every day at work. 

Cock and Bull Story:  Farmer Joe has issues and really needs to put his willy away when people are visiting his farm. He’s liable to be sent up the river for indecent exposure.

Bull in a China shop:   That bull is really busy. I don’t know how he finds time to go shopping.

Eager Beaver:   That annoying kid in grade school who keeps putting his hand up to answer all the questions.  Someone please pin a KICK ME HARD sign on his back.

Pie in the Sky:  Usually means something nice but unlikely is to happen.  “Karen’s plan to open up a strip club by the airport was really a pie in the sky idea.”

Everything but the Kitchen Sink: “It was just a simple weekend getaway, but Karen packed everything but the kitchen sink and some prophylactics and now she’s sure to get knocked up by famer John and have to do the dishes.”

Wet Behind the Ears:   I’ve heard of having your legs behind your ears which could conjure up several sinister images of horny adults.  Why someone would splash water behind them is beyond me.

Finger-lickin’ good:   This one is obvious to describe when some food item is delicious.  It’s also a well-known slogan created off the cuff in the 1950s by Harland Sanders, the founder of Kentucky Fried Chicken when referring to the chicken he sold from his service station in Corbin Kentucky.  Funny story about that.  When I was a kid, we were so poor my family went to KFC to lick other people’s fingers.  We was POE.  True story. 

Anyway, those are just a few examples of strange expressions we use.  There are literally thousands, but I should call it a day on the idioms and bite the bullet and put a sock in it before I start to feel under the weather.  That’s it, no more expressions from me.  It’s high time Elvis has left the building.   Like I said, the English language can be funny and bizarre when we use expressions to communicate with each other.  Just remember if you start working them into conversations and people do a double take to understand what the hell it is you are trying to say, then you need to choose your idioms more carefully, so you don’t look like the lights are on, but nobody is home. 

This week on Survivor the remaining seven were anything but expressive, except for Mama J who had to bite her tongue knowing that she was about to have an avalanche of votes against her.  Instead, through the mastermind of undeserving, arrogant Dee, a single vote for Emily ended in her eviction.  Why, oh why!  Emily was this season’s redemption star who started out aggressive and unlikeable and ended up endearing and lovable, and was the underdog who should have won.  The biggest shock of all this week was Katurah sharing her own story of redemption and resilience and how she was taken out of school in the 6th grade by her mother to join a religious cult, only to be told at the age of 14 she would become the wife of the creepy cult leader.  Her mother took Katurah and two trash bags full of their belongings, and they left the cult in the middle of the night. After that, she was enrolled in high school after three years without education and any normal social interaction. She went on to explain that it was at that time she had the startling revelation that she had nothing but obstacles in her way, being “black, poor, a woman, and gay.” Despite this challenging past, she decided to apply herself and study hard and go to law school and is now a lawyer who helps others in similar situations. I sat and listened in awe and once again was reminded that we should never judge a person until we get to know their story. Katurah has to win!  She is truly the Survivor.

See you next week, SYNW.

Kurt

Selling Snow to an Eskimo

They say salespeople make the best customers because they know what it’s like to have to put themselves on the line to persuade people to buy shit they don’t need.  I’ve been in sales for over thirty years – okay account management, a fancier title – and I’m still honing my sales skills to this day.  Some of my friends tell me that I can sell snow to an Eskimo with my swaying ways. They also tell me I don’t listen, talk too much, and often commit crimes against fashion.  Either way, I’ve done pretty well at my craft, but I’m not entirely convinced my success has been deliberate and calculated, but more to do with my personality and some common sense.

We all hate those fast talking, loud, and pushy salespeople who won’t back down.  We have that image of them as wearing an ugly oversized baby blue suit, perhaps one with a rose stitched on the back, and greased back hair that looks like an entire tube of Brylcreem was administered.  They never seem to register your discomfort with being sold on their product or service. They just keep finding ways to counter your objections until you either tell them you left the burner on at home and need to dash off or you just take out your wallet and buy whatever the hell it is they’re pedaling to get rid of them. 

Last weekend I decided to go out looking for a new gym bag. The old one looks like it was left on a freeway and run over by thousands of commuters and then used as a prop in an exorcism. It has rips, holes, broken zippers, smells like ass, and in one of the sealed pockets resides a fourteen-year-old empty tube of lavender deodorant and a disheveled key chain with a faded message “I’m speeding because I have to poop”.  If that gym bag could talk, it would have its own podcast.  The one thing that gym bag hasn’t done is keep me in shape, especially during the pandemic and for that reason it was time to buy a new one, perhaps in hopes of being inspired to drag my considerable ass to the gym more often.  

Let me first state, I hate shopping, especially for clothing. Over the years my aversion to retail has grown, which is ironic considering I work in retail design.  We grocery shop every week at break-neck speeds and have our journey inside the aisles mapped out with cat-like precision. I want to get in, get er done, and get the hell out.  Occasionally my partner Tom wants to explore new products and read the labels, which he does out loud mispronouncing words and gyrating his hips while instrumental Taylor Swift songs play over the store speakers.  For that reason, I often ditch him and go myself.   

I wear the same stretchy polyester pants, black V-neck Bench T-shirt, black socks and black underwear with holes, and tattered Cole Haan shoes day in and day out just to avoid having to shop for new clothing.  Don’t get me wrong, I have fancier garb in my closet for when I have to look professional, but the thought of having to go into change rooms with those awful funhouse mirrors and be told by the salesperson I look ‘fabulous’ in skinny jeans is enough to make me want to curl up and die.

Back to my gym bag excursion.  After yoga class, with endorphins and namaste’s a plenty, I mustered up the courage to go to the mall to ‘get in, get er done, and get the hell out.’   I took a few deep breaths, threw open the doors, made eye contact with a few zombie shoppers, and found the closest luggage store I could find. I made sure it was in a fancy mall so I wouldn’t have to rub elbows with hordes of common folk. The merchandise was finely presented on pedestals and inside cubbies with spotlights, as though each item was a sparkling jewel.  A well dressed, demure Asian lady with a Minnie mouse-like voice approached me and immediately started asking me questions. Thankfully she wasn’t wearing a baby blue suit or had Brylcreem in her hair, but she was a sales shark in disguise. She dragged me over to the sporting and leisure section and started grabbing at bags.  Each item she presented somehow was God’s gift to man and would bring me good luck and success.  Inside my head I kept saying to myself “calm the Fu#k down Ma-Ling!  For F sakes it’s a gym bag, not a life-saving kidney dialysis machine”.  I was tempted to just tell her I wanted something that didn’t smell like ass and would hold my plus-size jock strap and yoga shorts that looked like they were worn by a gorilla.  With each bag I would offer an objection; “too big, too small, not the right color, too soft, too hard. Not masculine enough.” But she somehow kept finding new features and benefits of the many bags on display to tempt me with.  Then she decided it was time to get to know me and asked me personal questions.  Her co-worker also came over to join the conversation, as though she was secretly calling in the troops to help her seal the deal. She knew what she was doing.  I could see her tactics to distract me from saying ‘no’.  Before long the three of us were laughing and carrying on and I was the proud owner of an ugly, polyester $300 gym bag.   They say there’s one born every minute, and that the best customers are the ones who work in sales.  True that.

I work in retail merchandising design and manufacturing.  My title, VP of Business Development, which is really Account Executive or a Salesman in disguise, is to find the customers and get them to buy custom designed retail displays and fixtures to help sell their products in store.  It all starts with a blank piece of paper or a design, which I must convince them will help sell more product than ever.  Once I do my song and dance the design is engineered, prototyped and mass produced to become for example, a custom-built beauty wall at Shoppers Drug Mart or a faux kitchen showcasing high end appliances in home décor retail and even a small counter display demonstrating vibrators in adult novelty stores.  One of my good friends likes to tell everyone I sell plastic shite for a living.  We also sell wood, metal, glass, aluminum, fabric, and synthetics shite, which are fabricated, molded, can be interactive, have audio, visual, and lighting features, and work hard to convince consumers to buy well-known brands when they are instore shopping.   

My selling technique is more about personality and relationship building.  Not an in your face, loud jazz hands type character, but more about being friendly, genuine, and candid. And not to mention passionate and knowledgeable – it’s especially important to know what I’m talking about before I attempt to convince someone to part with their money because I’m selling an intangible worth hundreds of thousands and sometimes millions of dollars.  I’ve got to be knowledgeable about their consumer, their brand marketing, the retail environment they sell in, engineering, materials, finishes, right through to packaging, logistics, and interactive technology.  You could say I’m sort of a jack of all trades and must know a little bit about a lot of things. 

I’ve been selling myself for decades and no longer feel the need to pull one over on someone, but more try to win their respect and loyalty.  I throw myself into my work and am passionate and enthusiastic about the project and our client’s business. I get to know their needs by listening, saying as little as possible and letting them do the talking so they take ownership of the process because when the project gets underway, I’ll be the one taking charge to ensure a successful execution.  I learned a long time ago that when your clients know you care they are more at ease knowing they are in good hands.   I always try to show empathy and am friendly enough to not get personal.  Never get personal. Keep your customers at arms distance but have open arms. 

I was recently asked by one of our junior salespeople how to be successful in our business. Well, at first you must make a positive first impression.  Start by dressing for success which means clean underwear, a snazzy sports jacket, nice shoes, and hipster eyewear.  Don’t dress like a whore and always be friendly and delightful.  Be sure not to be too informal and make inappropriate comments or political statements.  Saying things like “how about that war in the middle east?” or “don’t get me started on gender neutral bathrooms” is not the way to go.

Be enthusiastic.   By this I mean, show you are engaged in the project and care about the details.  You don’t need to flail your arms in the air and say things like “oh my gawd I love it” or “girlfriend, that color is sick”.  Try to refrain from saying things like “let’s meet to go over the project, and then head out to a local strip club to watch some hoes swing on a pole”.  Don’t ever do that. Ever!

Be analytical and prepared.  I always read over the technical drawings and review project details before sitting down to discuss a project with a client.  And if you don’t have an answer to a question, tell them you will investigate it right away.  Try to refrain from shouting into your phone “hey Siri, what the hell is blow molding” or “two trucks are travelling a 40km/h and one of them is carrying feathers and the other stones, which one will arrive in Edmonton sooner”. You will look ill prepared and stupid.

Being resilient is vital in sales. You are going to be facing rejection and have setbacks all the time.   Instead of getting discouraged after losing a big sale and burying your head in a pile of cocaine at the Big & Busty Badabing Strip Club & Emporium down by the airport, giving your last dollar away to Tiffany so she can finish university and get her nose pierced, just snap out of it, straighten up and don’t take it personally and get back to work. Focus on your next opportunity. Move on.

Always be present when talking to clients. Don’t be thinking about another deal, scrolling through Tik Tok threads, wondering who is getting voted off Survivor next, or sending inappropriate memes to coworkers on the Teams conference call. Be engaged so that your conversations with your customers are deeper and more meaningful.

Always follow up with clients. You don’t know if they got hit by a bus and never even looked over your proposal.  Or they read it and thought it was written by a moron with a third-grade spelling level and don’t have a clue what you proposed.  At some point a sale will slip away because you were too lazy to follow up. Today you can get software that tells you when a customer opens an email.  Or you can set a reminder in your calendar, just like you do for hair and Botox appointments. It’s not that hard.

Know when to walk away from a deal. You follow up for months and they don’t reply. You keep trying and waste valuable time that could be on other clients. I know I have wasted too much time on customers that never intended to buy. They just used me to get a free design or a quote.  That’s when you put a gypsy curse on them to grow hair on their ass and a wart on the end of their willy.

Maintain relationships with your co-workers, especially in a team environment like mine. Every single person from the designer, engineer, project manager, production manager, plant staff, logistics team, through to the installer are integral to the project’s success.   Acknowledge their work and share successes on projects.  Maybe buy them Dairy Queen gift cards at Christmas or leave a box of Timbits on their desk – unless they are lactose intolerant or have diabetes.  

Lastly, and most importantly, you will not be successful without putting in hard work. Sometimes you have to stay after 5pm to finish some quotes and proposals.  Sometimes you need to read boring documents.  Maybe go out on a Saturday afternoon and take some photos of competitors displays and share them with the client.  Spend extra time preparing that important pitch in PowerPoint, complete with animation and fancy clipart icons to make your presentation more memorable and dazzling.  There are an infinite number of small touches you can do in your everyday work that will separate you from the other yahoo salespeople who want to clock out and go home.   And to quote RuPaul “Don’t F it up”.

This week on Survivor everyone was selling something, but nobody is buying because there is absolutely NO trust in the game of survivor.  Without trust you won’t have a sale.  All you will have is deception.  Take jackass Bruce for example, the poor guy was totally deceived yet again.  The brilliant Emily somehow orchestrated him into believing they would vote out Jake and so he hung onto his idol only to get voted out.  I am simply in awe of Emily who started out as a seemingly despicable character and has had her eyes opened and blossomed into a genuinely unique and vulnerable person.  She is smart and analytical and not to mention frank, but now tempers those traits to not intimidate others.  She has warmed up and even cried this week when she won immunity, showing a more human side.  And she’s been in a long-term relationship with some patient dude.  I love getting to know people and am always reminded when watching Survivor that you should never form a decisive impression of people until you get a glimpse into who they are. Each one of us has a story worth sharing.  Every one of us is selling something and while we may never make a sale, we still have value.  

See you next week, SYNW.

Kurt

Cheer the F up!

To quote the Beatles, “Ah, look at all the lonely people”, who were singing about a woman named Eleanor Rigby, a friendless, spinster who died, and nobody came to her funeral.  This  uplifting song went on to ask “where do they all come from? All the lonely people.  Where do they all belong?”  Well, I don’t know where Paul, Ringo, John, and George were living at the time they wrote this depressing song, but I do know that today I apparently live in the loneliest city in Canada.  Yep, the Big Smoke is a cesspool of desolation, loneliness, sadness, and despondency. Well to that I say, CHEER THE F#CK UP!

A Canada-wide survey came out this week which claims that Toronto is one of the loneliest cities in Canada with nearly four out of 10 residents now reporting having the feeling three or four days a week.  Yah it’s called MONDAY, and it sucks. Nobody is happy Monday and if they are, they are nuts.  Everyone is happy FRIDAY because they will soon be released from the clutches of ‘the man’ and be free to do hot yoga and needlepoint for two solid days.  I didn’t need a study to tell me that Tuesdays to Thursdays SUCK!!!! 

I can admit I don’t feel so lonely when I’m walking down my street and there is a woman on crack cocaine with her pants down around her ankles dropping a deuce on the sidewalk.  Of course, I can’t look away, no, I make eye contact with her, and she shoots me back a smile, and just like that I made a friend.  I also don’t feel lonely when a crazed disheveled man smelling like urine walks past me screaming expletives and shaking his fists. He nearly punches me in the head, but I lock eyes and smile at him as though we are old friends passing each other on the street.  I also don’t feel lonely when motorists on the freeway flip me the bird for cutting them off as I rush home at break-neck speeds to watch my favorite reality TV shows.  I always wave my middle finger back and wish them well.  How can I possibly be lonely with all these jovial and lively friends and neighbors around me in the city of Toronto?

In comparison, the survey found that 28 per cent of people felt lonely in other major cities, like Regina and Winnipeg, the two armpits of the country. I would be down in the dumps too if I had to live in a city with mosquitos the size of cats flying around and where winter lasts nine months. Or the only decent place to dine is at the local Robins Donuts or Taco Time. Though I have to say those Mexi-Fries make my eyes go back in my head. Hmmm, so good. 

Of course, Montreal had the fewest percentage of people feeling lonely or unhappy.  Well, yah, duh, I’d be pretty happy if all I did was eat poutine, smoke DuMaurier cigarettes, and work thirty hours a week, all the while having copies amounts of sexytime, sometimes in alleyways and behind dumpsters (it’s in their blood, the French are horny 24-7. True story. Google it).  I would have thought that Vancouverites would be super happy with all that fresh air and mary-jew-wanna around.  Or maybe it’s all that rainfall that puts a damper on their west coast easy-breasy lifestyle. Who the hell knows.  Everybody just needs to CHEER THE F#CK UP!

Over on the other side of the country, the east coast, Newfoundland specifically, people are feeling especially slap happy, probably because they are busy getting jiggy with their sister, uncle, or cousins.  Turns out inbreeding releases special endorphins and that’s why the Newfies are cheerful all the time.  Who knew? No wonder those back woods cousins in that movie Deliverance were laughing and carrying on playing the banjo while they made love to some big city hunters tied to a tree.  Simple is as simple does, I guess.  Still, they were blissful and not at all lonely.  What the hell am I talking about?  I think I got sidetracked.  Oh right, people on the east coast are probably the happiest of all – regardless of the number of chromosomes they might possess.

So why all this doom and gloom?  The findings in the report indicated that post-pandemic there is an increase in Toronto adults worrying about work, experiencing severe loneliness and depression, and facing discrimination.  Many Torontonians also reported to have fewer friendships compared to pre-pandemic. In contrast, in 2018 when the same survey was conducted, the majority of Torontonians reported they had many close family members or friends. Back then everyone would make an effort to say hello to each other and host parties and hoedowns and such. Now everyone keeps to themselves and scrolls Tik Tok videos on their cell phones.  One of my favourite days in my 30+ years in the big smoke was one hot summer day when the power went out for over 24 hours and the entire city were in the streets sharing ice cream, having block parties, and sitting on their porch talking with their neighbors for the first time. It was truly magical.  Sadly, I am lactose intolerant and so spent most of my time chit chatting and oversharing, which might explain why I rarely ever saw my neighbors after the power came back on.  Still, it was a brilliant day. Wouldn’t it be great to capture that feeling again. 

The difference between being alone and being lonely is that you can actually be lonely with people. I suppose to not feel lonely you need relationships in your life that you trust, where you feel that you belong. The survey reported that a lot of people in Toronto just don’t feel they belong. It also doesn’t help that the city is outrageously expensive, which only adds financial stress to people’s lives.  Many are bummed out that they don’t get to enjoy all the entertainment and lifestyle events of the city like concerts, hockey, baseball, basketball, museums, restaurants, etc because it costs too much.  Instead, they have to go to free events like that giant six story duck they float on the waterfront for two weeks every summer where people stand around and go ‘oh’ and ‘ah’ at a giant inflatable bird while taking selfies.  To that I say, ‘GO F A DUCK’. 

I get it, the big city, especially Toronto, is plagued by problems.  So many problems. But the psyche of its people can make it more bearable.  I’ve always said half the battle in life is attitude. If you have a shitty attitude, then life is shit.  But if you are made to feel lonely in a place full of people, and there is no sense of community, of belonging, then that is just not right. Toronto is a city of neighborhoods, all so incredibly unique.  Little Italy. Little India.  Little Ukraine.  Little Poland.  Chinatown (second largest in the world). Kensington Market. Greek town. Little Koreatown. Little Tibet.  Somalia. Little Japan.  Portugal Village. Cabbagetown (where I live. The largest collection of Victorian houses outside of England).  There’s even the Gay neighborhood, at Church & Wellesley, where you can see incredible drag shows, and a large Jewish community where you can find the most incredible food. 

So, here I am in the most diverse city in Canada and one of the most multicultural in the world. More than half the people here identify themselves as belonging to visible minority groups and over 180 different dialects are spoke. How cool is that?  We should be embracing our cross-cultural nature and celebrating the mosaic that we live in.  If we are feeling lonely then we need to find a way to reconnect with the city, community, and neighborhoods.  One that doesn’t involve a giant rubber duck or tying your cousin to a tree.  So how do we get out of this lonely funk and feel like we are part of something, that we have a purpose and belong here?  

For starters, shut off the damn internet.  Get off your bloody phone. Nobody is building relationships anymore.  Just scrolling and streaming.  Go out and volunteer and contribute to the community around you. I get that the with the pandemic we got used to being on our own, and doing for ourselves.  We got used to a life that was very small.  And that’s okay.  It was survival and I believe learning those skills was a good thing.  But now it’s time to get back out. Go off the grid for a few hours a day and go for a walk, stop, and talk to your neighbor, a stranger, the storekeeper, the bus driver, your dry cleaner, hell, even the crackhead who shits on the street corner. In short, anyone whom you might meet regularly.  Research has proven that even weak bonds strengthen our immunity and well-being.  Just leave your phone at home or power it down. 

Ban or reduce work from home.  Yep, you heard me.  A lot of us are sitting at home (not me) and we think it’s great and flexible. But I think gutting the downtown and the emptiness of offices has contributed to the fact that we are not together more regularly.  Strong social connections and trust go hand and hand with people’s well-being. And besides, not being able to build camaraderie at work and solve problems, face to face, is slowly killing the productivity of the workforce.  Just saying. 

Let’s get out and volunteer, start reaching out to people again. And you can do it in small ways, like I said, maybe engage with a stranger once a day. Make eye contact. Say “good morning, how you doing”. I have been a volunteer fitness leader at the YMCA for 32 years now and it has done wonders, likely more than I know, for myself and others who attend my class.  I don’t know where they come from or what challenges their lives have, but for that one hour they get to boogie on the bike listening to music while releasing endorphins and feeling good about themselves.  There is a foundation called Volunteer Toronto which is even providing micro-grants to anyone who wants to jump-start an activity in their neighborhood.  I absolutely love this idea.  Maybe I can give walking tours of my neighborhood and make shit up about each house I walk by and freak people out.  Or start my own fitness class in the park, maybe a Zumba class for chubby older folks from all walks of life.  Sweating with the oldies outside under a magnolia can be a beautiful thing. 

Go out to some of the many cultural events in the city.  We got Caribana (the largest Caribbean cultural celebration in the world).  Gay Pride, the most festive and upbeat experience you will ever have in a crowd.  The Toronto International Film Festival (celebs from around the globe attend). These monster events find millions flocking to the downtown core.  Or choose something smaller; Beaches Jazz Festival, Doors Open, Hot Docs Film Festival, The CNE, Distillery Christmas Market, Luminato, Taste of the Danforth, Contact Photo Festival, Nuit Blanche, Fringe Theatre Festival, Outdoor Art Fair, Word on the Street Festival, and yes, even that F’n rubber duck by the water if you must.   You will quickly realize ‘wow’ this city is so vibrant and full of so many interesting people from all walks of life. I guess I must be interesting and vibrant too. Hey, it’s all about feeling like you belong.

And if you are not into large crowds or talking to strangers, go to one of the many Toronto Public Libraries and just see what is at your fingertips.  There are literally over 10 million items including books, movies, videos, music, all available in a variety of languages. Hell, you can even learn a new language at the library. FOR FREE.  Why not learn to speak Cantonese and then to go Chinatown and practice.  Or learn Italian and go order spaghetti in Little Italy.  Or Hindi or Punjabi and buy some spices in Little India to cook dinner for your friends.

You can also try taking stock in connections you already have.  You don’t necessarily need to seek out new ones. Sometimes when we are feeling lonely, we can’t see what’s right in front of us.  There might be that friend who annoys the hell out of you with their halitosis or the way they smack their lips, but you might expand your affections when you realize they are willing to listen to all your whiny bitching or don’t mind your incessant nattering about yourself.  You just might not be as deprived and lonely as you think.

Take some time to relax and slow down. If you’re frequently busy, running around with your to-do list or feel stressed by all the meetings at work or at home, it might be time to hit the brakes. Being on overdrive for too long of periods can actually cause people to start disconnecting from themselves and other people. Perhaps relaxing could mean listening to music, taking a bubble bath with your rubber duckie (Oh Lord there it is again) or just sitting with nothing to do and nowhere to be.

Another recommendation to deal with your feelings of loneliness is to reconnect with self-love and appreciation. No, I don’t mean sit around pleasuring yourself, I mean use the alone time to get back in touch with yourself. Be your own best friend. Meditate. Take some deep breaths and try to relax. Think about the ocean or dolphins (just not Flipper, he is annoying as fuck always trying to solve crimes and screaming at people from the side of the ocean).  Just tell your worry, fear and loneliness to piss off so you can just be with yourself. Namaste.

A great idea is to perform random acts of kindness. And while you’re at it, recognize the kindness in others! Sometimes when you feel alone, you might feel like isolating yourself from the world, which only continues the cycle of loneliness. I mentioned earlier to simply go out into the world and notice a smile from the store clerk. Hold a door for somebody, help an old lady across the street, or do something nice for a stranger. That’s when you start to get the endorphins and the oxytocin going in your body. Oxytocin is the bonding hormone. It’s what mothers have when they give birth. So, oxytocin is important.

Another thing you can do to cure loneliness is join a club to connect with like-minded people, perhaps one where you bond over common interests. Try to refrain from key parties, basement bomb making, and the Toronto chapter of World Naked Bike Ride.  Nobody needs to see cellulite, genitals, and boobs bouncing around on bicycles being driven by a thousand sad people. For that matter, stay away from TNT (Totally Nude Toronto – yes this exists – where a bunch of naked fat people get together to promote positive body image by sitting around eating pizza in a club house while their bits and bobs dangle.  Ewwww).  Keep it clean.  It could be a class or a committee. Any activity that puts you in a social environment on a regular basis. Vibe with someone over your love for pottery at a local art class. Find a group of people who are just as obsessed with Survivor as you are and join their pool and give away your money to strangers. Or maybe try something completely new, like goat yoga.

Turns out, connectedness with other people is vital for our survival. So, if you’re ever feeling alone and life is making your lonely, you can always go DOWNTOWN. When you’ve got worries, all the noise and the hurry seems to help, I know, downtown.  Just listen to the music of the traffic in the city.  Linger on the sidewalk where the neon signs are pretty. How can you lose?
The lights are much brighter there. You can forget all your troubles, forget all your cares.  Oh shit, wait that’s another song.  I tell you, sometimes this ADHD freaks me out. It’s like I have voices in my head, which admittedly may not be a bad thing as I will never be alone.  Touché.

This week on Survivor nobody had time to be lonely. They were too busy defending their life and hoping to live another day.  Three new tribes were formed, and one lost their votes, one kept theirs, and a third won a food reward (along with their votes).  This threw the alliances and strategies right out the window.  Stupid Jeff.  We learned that Bruce has zero self-awareness and cannot understand why someone would find him annoying.  We learned that dear, sweet Emily the analyst is not so good at numbers.  We learned that hunky Austin is an MBA and is good at math. We learned that domineering Dee is not so nice and likes to poke fun of others and laugh at their expense.  She’s also controlling the game and needs to have her ass kicked.  Sadly, bug eyes was booted this week. Poor Kendra did not see it coming. She left a causality, an innocent bystander, in the not-so-lonely game of Survivor.

See you next week, SYNW.

Kurt

Call me on your Dumbphone

This week there was a bombardment of media about cellphone addiction.  Apparently, it’s out of control (OOC) and the human race is forever altered, and not in a good way.  To quote superstar rapper Drake’s song Hotline Bling, “you used to call me on my cell-u-phone, late at night when you need my love”.  Thanks to our addiction to cellphones, the lyrics have been expanded to “now you call Amazon and order shit you don’t need and wrack up credit card debt while I sit home alone crying myself to sleep because I can’t keep up with the payments”.  Poor Drake.  He’s POE.

Our phones are almost perpetually in our hand or pocket and in fact, 46 percent of Canadians admit to using their phone while on the crapper. Needless to say, the incidence of phones being inadvertently being used to wipe rear-ends is on the rise, which means ass cracks are now added to the list of where we hold our phones.  Like I said, it’s OOC.

We all know that being online all the time is not healthy.  It gets you all hopped up on dopamine’s, the feel-good chemical in our brain released from the rewards we get from “likes” on our social media posts and from receiving new emails or text messages, which makes you insatiable for more and can ultimately lead to a sedentary life, one where you never leave your house to socialize and just stay home scrolling like a crazy person.  Put down the damn phone!  Think of it like alcohol, imagine having to have a bottle with you at all times, just in case. That’s almost where we are at. It’s not good.

Naturally people are finding it harder and harder to shut down and go off the grid, even for mere minutes. In one entire year, 365 days, the average person has not been able to disconnect for more than 7 days.  That means for 358 days (hmm, wait, 365-7 = 358. Yep) they have been online getting busy.  Some of the staggering stats that came out this week show just how messed up we are. 

• Old folks, like boomers, are embracing smartphones more than ever despite getting bombarded with scammers from the Congo or Chechnya trying to steal their social insurance number or get them to send money to a Prince in Saudi Arabia.  The percentage of people over 55 who browse the web using mobile devices rose from 47 per cent in 2015 to 57 per cent in 2019. By 2030 it is expected to be 90%.  Oh great! Gramma and Grampa Moses are now more prone to porn addiction and taking nude selfies.
• Three-quarters of Canadians surf the web while watching TV; meaning they are missing out on important content like who got voted off Survivor or Dancing with the Stars, or worse yet, who is shagging who on Days of Our Lives.

• 9 per cent of Canadians completed their education online and misspell words like BIZARE, AKWARD, ENVIROMENT and put hyphens in words like ‘dumb-ass’ and ‘jack-ass’.   
• 16 per cent found a home online and now live in a van down by the river.
• 22 per cent found a job online, and are now enjoying a career flipping burgers and earning a minimum wage at A&W.
• 10 per cent found their spouse online, who stole all their money and ran off with their cousin and now live in a van down by the river.
• 7% of people admit to checking phones during sex, meaning they may as well be fornicating with an apple pie or a hole in a tree. There is no hope for these people to live a fulfilled life with love and the legacy of children.  
• 64 per cent shop online and can’t figure out why they haven’t received their deliveries from Bed Bath & Beyond, Party City, and RadioShack.

• 70 per cent say they would never buy a house in an area that didn’t have high-speed internet. They would rather steam movies and text their friends than listen to the incessant nattering and nagging of their partners or children in suburbia. 
• At dinner parties and hookups, we are more likely to engage in conversation about how fast our internet speed is, known as megabits per seconds, or Mbps, rather than share photos of pets or family.   
• Being on your cell phone or sitting in front of a computer for most of the day can lead to Dowager’s Hump, which is a rounded hunch in your upper back. Yep, keep it up and you’ll be climbing the bell tower and chilling with Quasi Modo for the rest of your days.   

The scariest insight from recent studies is that children of parents who spend too much time on their smartphones are more likely to have behavioral problems later. Over enough time, from a very early age, if your kids attempt to communicate with you goes unrewarded or noticed, they are far more likely to grow up feeling neglected and distant and be emotionally unprepared for the world ahead of them.  A child will be more likely to act out and maybe start catching frogs and insects and smothering them in glass jars, and eventually move up the food chain and start dismembering people and burying them under the floorboards.  It may seem like a stretch, but it can happen.  The researchers dubbed the phenomenon “technoference” in parent’s relationships with their children, meaning that everyday interactions are interrupted by mobile or digital devices, which means far less time is being spent nurturing and encouraging their children not to murder. 

Another recent study claims those who struggle with mental health problems are more likely to be addicted to their smartphones.   The study claims those who live with illnesses such as anxiety or depression, or who are “emotionally unstable,” are more dependent on the devices. Individuals who are more “closed off,” or who have trouble communicating emotions, are also more likely to struggle.  I have mild ADHD, also a mental illness, and I definitely spend way too much time on my phone.  Many experts even claim that addiction to smartphones works the same way as alcohol or drug addiction.

And now there is something called “nomophobia” which is separation anxiety from smartphones. If someone decides they will go cold turkey, much like an alcoholic stops drinking, and puts down their cell-you-phone, without getting to the root of what led them to their addiction, they will likely just find another dependence, like eating, sex, or dare I say, murder.  Jesus Murphy, we have a problem! This is when therapy might be helpful.

To help break this dependence the experts say we must ask ourselves what do we really need our phone for at any given moment. If you don’t need to be on your phone, then don’t use it. They say all kinds of obsessive-compulsive behaviours have to do with coping with pain. It could be emotional pain, like feeling abandoned or feeling afraid that lead us to these addictions.  To that I say, calm the fuck down Margaret, it’s all in your head.  You can control it. You got this!

The solution is to apply yourself.  Change your behavior because it really is just that, behavior.  And not just you, the companies that supply you the drug (Apple, Amazon, Samsung, Facebook, Google, etc) need to pony up to their addictive products, just like the lotteries and booze companies have been doing.  Recently smartphone giant Apple decided to take responsibility, and now has an app called Screen Time, which will help users monitor their activity and set limits.  I suppose it’s ironic the very thing they want to caution you to stay away from, is what you have to use to be warned to stay away.   If they really wanted to put their money where their mouth is, instead of a pop up saying, “hey you, it’s time to shut er down” or “tsk tsk, your screen time is up 30% this week”, the phone could release 20,000 electric volts and shock the shit out of you when you use your device longer than 3 hours a day.  I bet you won’t be touching that phone. 

Because its behavior related, one place to start is by limiting nighttime use. Being on your phone late into the night seriously disrupts the melatonin surge needed for you to fall asleep, which is why you always look like a zombie at work the next day.  Try locking your cell-you-phone in a safe overnight and just going to bed and reading a book, taking a bubble bath, even or meditating.  Your mind will shut down instantly from the boredom of all those words filling endless pages of plot.  Or you will sink down into the bubble bath with absolutely nothing to do but think about your relationship and money problems.

Another solution to help us curb our addictions would be to break up with Facebook, Tik Tok, and Instagram for starters, where most of us are apparently spending our time online. I mean, do we really need to waste time making dance videos and posting them to get attention?  What is this, Solid Gold?  You will never be a music video superstar or hip hop dancer.  Why not read a book or learn needlepoint and expand your horizons.  Face it, your 15 minutes of fame will never happen so just give it up already.

And if you really want to cure your addiction, find a “substitute phone”. I remember in our high school Family Life class they had us carry around a 20lb sack of flower as a substitute for a baby so we would know what it was like to have to care for a real child at all times. I ended up losing mine three times, once in the school shitter, and then finally using it to bake a cake. I barely got a passing grade, but my point is that we should put down our phones and grab some other object similar in size and weight and keep it in our pockets. When the urge to check a message or post a kitty cat video arises, just grab that banana or pack of gum in your pocket. You might look pretty stupid trying to scroll or talk on a banana but hey at least you will have those dopamine’s under control.  

Another way to use your phone less is to delete all the apps you don’t need and turn off push notifications for the ones you want to keep to help reduce the amount of time you spend checking your smartphone. You can also turn notifications off for your email account so that it only updates when you manually refresh it.  Do you really need an App to do crossword puzzles or color coordinate your shoes alphabetically. No! Get a life!!!

All that being said, the good news is people are slowly starting to realize that the internet obviously is a massive benefit to society, but many are starting to realize we need to moderate how we use it and have a better understanding of how it impacts our lives. It’s been proven there is no good to come from having devices on us 24-7. There are simple ways to wean yourself and it’s all within reach.  So, why not give it a try.  You can do it.  The world will be a better place if we all to trade our smartphones for a dumbphone. 

There is no doubt Survivor is addictive much like cell phones. It’s been on the airwaves for 45 seasons and doesn’t appear to be slowing down.  Season after season we are anxious for its arrival and when it finally appears we throw our hard-earned money away to bet on the success of its players, all the while having to read some asinine blogs written by some yahoo in the big smoke whose ramblings have absolutely nothing to do with the show. For all we know he’s hoarding the pool money away and earning interest in an off-shore bank account.  Still we know the perils but continue to sign up to the ill-fated pool.  I guess it’s human nature to do what we know is bad for us, thinking that it doesn’t completely have control over us and that at any moment we can quit.  Hmm, let’s see about that.

This week was a complete and utter disaster. Front-runner Kellie got the boot after people finally realized she was threat because of her likeability amongst the crowd.  Much like sweetheart and all-around-good-guy, Kaleb, she was sent packing for being Ms. congeniality.  It only took 45 seasons, but people have finally figured out that it truly is a SOCIAL GAME and you get rid of the nice guys and keep the assholes around in order to garner more votes.  I liked that the Survivor auction came back. Jeff was all smug about it too, like he discovered the cure for a disease or something. I actually threw up a little in my mouth when Austin ate that fisheye.  I’m still dry heaving days later when I think about it.  I guess it’s better that than being on my cell-you-phone texting or playing Angry Birds.

See you next week, SYNW.

Kurt

This Hour Has 60 Stress-Free Minutes

Last night the clocks went back, and I took advantage of that extra hour and woke up at my regular time, 7am, which was really 6am, to write this week’s blog, and here I am one hour later with nothing more than a blank page.  I think they call that irony. Or a paradox.  I call it a pain in the ass.  But then again, what’s wrong with accomplishing nothing? With just sitting in silence and staring out at the rising morning sun?  With talking to my cat and asking how his morning is going (“great, thanks for asking”). We spend our days filled with endless tasks to be completed and end up running in circles like a hamster on a wheel.  It’s in our DNA to be task oriented, to earn a living, to accomplish goals, and to always be moving forward. It’s exhausting. So, why not take that free hour and simply stop and do NOTHING. 

My yoga instructor is always telling us to be present, to not think about what happened earlier that day or what we have to be doing next. Just be still and be in the moment.  She also tells us to relax our anuses, which often ends up in a casualty or two in the class – one of the reasons I will only eat ruffage after Yoga class.  But I digress.  My partner Tom is the most “chill” person you will ever meet. In fact, I often put a mirror under his nostrils to make sure he’s still with us.  He always says he can spend an entire day doing nothing. Just staring at the ceiling.  That’s how we discovered we had termites one year.  Don’t get me wrong, he’s not a sloth, in fact he’s quite efficient and takes care of the entire household; cooking, cleaning, repairs, gardening, pet care, all while holding down a job and babysitting a 50+ year old man child.  But he always takes time out to be present.  To sit and stare and do nothing. I have ADHD and so the thought of this scares the bajezus out of me.

The medical profession and marketers don’t tell us enough that relaxing can help keep you healthy, in both body and mind, and should be something we all strive for every day.  I suppose common sense should prevail and we should automatically be chilling out to recover from the daily stresses that life throws at us. But not everyone does.  For me, a typical day is ten to twelve hours of work and a race to the finish line which ends up with me either collapsing and falling asleep in front of the TV or lying in bed with a book on my chest, drooling on myself. Surely this kind of stressful, busy lifestyle can’t sustainable or healthy.

Funny enough, science tells us stress can be a helpful thing that motivates people to act and can even save your life in a dangerous situation. Most stresses we experience are small, like getting caught in traffic on the way to a party or losing an earring on the train to work or forgetting to PVR the Dancing with the Stars finale (true story).   And if a runaway bus is veering towards you or a bank robber is holding you up at gunpoint, stress can help guarantee you have the “fight-or-flight” and “live-or-die” instincts to get the hell out of the way. But constantly being stressed out is a recipe for disaster.

Science has also shown there are many benefits of relaxing and calming your body and brain. For starters, you are less likely to die of a cardiac arrest and go coo coo for Cocoa Puffs (that’s what we refer to in our house as ‘CRAZY’).  You are also likely to think more clearly and make better decisions.  You learn coping skills to deal with future stresses. You can also achieve a more positive outlook on life.  And regular relaxation can contribute to a healthier body, with a slower breathing rate, more relaxed muscles (including your anus), and reduced blood pressure. All good things.  Whoo hoo, where do I sign up?

Luckily, no matter how busy you are, it’s simple to learn how to create time for chilling and developing skills on how you can best relax.  When it comes to relaxation strategies, the easier the better! If you can find just five minutes in your day for yourself, you can easily slip in a simple relaxation strategy. Here is some handy dandy, quick ways to help relax:

Breath it out. This is super easy.  Lay down in a quiet place and breath slowly, in for three counts and then out for three counts. Repeat for five or ten minutes.  Please don’t do this at work in front of the water cooler or on bus otherwise HR and the transit authorities will cart you away.

Release physical tension. This technique comes in many shapes and sizes. Lay on your bed, a carpet, or a yoga mat.  Hell, you can even go to one of those massage parlors by the airport and lay on the table and get a happy ending. The latter will cost you a few bucks and may get you on the six o’clock news so please exercise caution.  It starts by tensing up one part of your body at a time, and then slowly releasing your muscles. As you do this, you will notice how your body sensations change.

Write down your thoughts. Getting things off your mind by writing them down can help you unwind. When you feel stressed, take a few minutes to jot down how you’re feeling. “Dear diary, that bitch Karen at work brought fish to work again and now the entire office smells like the ocean and I can’t get any work done on account of gagging”. Whatever is on your mind. Don’t worry about spelling or being prolific in your words. Just let it all out.

Make a list. This could be writing down all the things you are grateful for, like your lime green crocks, or your sexytime lingerie, or the hot muscular gardener who visits weekly and shows his crack when he bends over.  The experts say that when we’re stressed, we tend to focus on the negative parts of life rather than the positive. It’s been proven that thinking about the positive parts of your life and writing them down will help you chill out (and possibly make you horny).

Visualize your calm. This is where you seek to “find your happy place”? Sit in a quiet and safe spot and begin to think about a place in the world where you feel most calm. Close your eyes and imagine all the details of that place: the sights, sounds, smells, tastes, and tactile feelings. For example, the Motel 6 where you hook up for a quickie. Feel the sensation of the vibrating bed operated by quarters.  Or Vanna’s Gentle Touch Massage Parlour where you get your happy endings for ten bucks; just imagine the smell of cheap coconut oil from the dollar store and the sounds of Polynesian drums and flutes.  Maybe the taste of fresh strawberries being slowly and seductively shoved into your mouth like that X-rated movie 9 ½ weeks.  You may need to smoke a cigarette after all that raunchy relaxing.  The point is, the more you get into your visualization, the more you can relax.

Connect to nature. Spending just a few minutes in nature when you feel stressed can really help you relax. If you’re wound up, take a step outside, and go for a short walk, or simply sit in nature. Why not take a crap in the woods while there and use some fallen leaves to wipe yourself.  You won’t get any closer to mother nature than that.  And if you can’t get out, maybe go online, and look at images of beautiful nature spots for a few minutes – just don’t stop to shop on Amazon for shit you don’t need or go onto Pornhub.  Today there are even APPS, like CALM or CTFD which feature beautiful images of forests being shown as sounds of water trickle in a creek or birds chirp in the background, all the while a buttery, calming voice over helps guide you to that Zen place. 

Stress isn’t going anywhere soon and will always be a universal part of life, but that doesn’t mean you should let it get the best of you and cause you to fall apart or go postal. We can all take charge and control our stress by learning how to relax more often with just a few simple steps.  Admittedly I try to make it to Yoga class four times a week, which I am usually late for and end up falling onto the matt huffing and puffing while thirty other people laying on their backs taking shallow breathes, wish I could be on time for once. Minutes later I succumb to the chill atmosphere and by the end of class I have transformed into the shell of a peaceful man ready to take on the world. Then I get up and race to my next endeavor.  I also go for regular massages which help restore my aching muscles and joints and not to mention relax my mind from telling all my problems to my poor therapist who believes I should be paying double for all the psycho analysis. Whatever you do to chill out, just make sure you do it often. And the next time you have a spare hour, sit, and do nothing. It’s the best thing you can ever do for yourself.  

This week on Survivor everyone was stressed out knowing they could be next to go.  And with two souls on the chopping block, everyone was wound up tighter than the girdle on a Baptist minister’s wife at an all-you-can-eat church pancake breakfast.  Did you notice that Jeff seemed to be a little happier than normal this week, probably realizing he was that much closer to getting off the island and going back to the mainland to be pampered at his Beverly Hills spa getting facials, manicures, Botox and anal rejuvenation treatments (hey, it’s a thing. Google it)?

With tensions running high this week, the two teams competed pole dancing until two winners, Kellie and Dee, emerged.  Dee lasted seconds longer and took her team to Rancho Relaxo to get some well needed nourishment and to talk strategy.  Caleb, the most hated man in town, was along for the ride and did his best to charm them.  The losers went back to the old LuLu camp (which I though was cruel since it is haunted by defeat) and hashed out who would be going home.  In the end our dear Caleb and Sea Food were sent packing.  Caleb was utterly undeserving, and Sea Food was no loss since he was operating alone on an island and made no attempt to get to know anybody. With that said, the merger is finally upon us. With ten people left, nobody is going to be relaxing anytime soon until the last minutes when a winner emerges, and Jeff cranks open the champagne.

See you next week, SYNW.

Kurt

Spice It Up!

On a recent trip to the countryside, I could not help but notice everywhere I went there was a product for sale or an event that was themed around the flavor of pumpkin spice.  Coffee. Tea. Chocolate. Air freshener.  Face cream.  Cookies. Cereal. SPAM (WTF!), Energy drinks. Gum. Yogurt. Jell-o. Milk. Beer. Wine. Hot Chocolate. Soap.  Marshmallows. Pancake Mix.  Cup of Noodles.  Philadelphia Cream Cheese. Protein Drinks. Hummus. Muffins. Ice cream.  A corn maze. And for the love of God and all that is holy, there was even a bottle of pumpkin spice lubricant for sexytime occasions. Great, just what every horny couple needs, a burning sensation in their privates that smells like a festive pie.

I hate pumpkin spice to the depths of my soul. And now to the depths of my loins. Whatever jackass thought of this spice should be strung up and sent packing back to hell.  To track them down I did some digging around on the Interweb Google, and was surprised to learn I would have to travel back in time 3,500 years to when a key ingredient in the flavor was discovered on ancient pottery shards in Indonesia.  Then I would have to fast forward to the 1300s, when the Dutch were so enamored with the spice that they traded their colony of New Amsterdam to Britain in exchange for some islands where the spice was grown.  In fact, at that time Pumpkin Spice was so popular that a pound of nutmeg in Europe cost seven oversized oxen and was more valuable than gold.  I’d like to see some trendy, snot nosed millennial pulling up to a Starbucks today for their double double Pumpkin Spice Latte with soya milk and nutmeg with seven smelly bulls as payment.

Okay, okay, so pumpkin spice is popular, so much so that nearly one-billion dollars in pumpkin-flavored products were sold in the United States over the past year.  This from a country who celebrates tyranny in the form of an orange blob named Donald Jessica Dump, who very much himself looks like a giant pumpkin. I would not be surprised if the lunatic would claim he’s responsible for creating pumpkin spice and invite everyone to order his own flavored steaks and water from his corrupt website.  There seriously is no accounting for bad taste and poor judgement in America so I will not give credit where credit is not due. Just because something is popular doesn’t make it right.  As my dear old father used to say, “son, eat shit, twenty million flies can’t be wrong”.  True story.  My father was a very wise man.

Determined to put an end to the madness, I dug a little deeper on the interweb, occasionally being interrupted by pop up ads for, what else, pumpkin spice products, and the occasional filthysluts.com adverts (how they got my number I will never know).  Anyway, turns out the main ingredients in pumpkin spice (nutmeg, cinnamon, ginger, and cloves) are fraught with colonizer histories as the fight to control the spice was bloody and dramatic and drove the Netherlands and England to war in the early 17th century.  The European explorers wanted to bypass the indigenous middlemen and create monopolies over the sought-after spices and started using enslaved laborers to mass produce the spice crops.  Things got very nasty and violent, and a lot of people met their demise – just so you can enjoy a pumpkin spice flavored hot chocolate after a balmy October Sunday afternoon stroll through a corn maze in the country while wearing a wooly sweater, stopping occasionally to take photos while sitting on bales of hay as trees of orange, yellow, and red glowed in the distance.  Now you know those Instagram and Facebook moments of your rendezvous are full of shame, indignity, and disgrace.

Despite this miraculous substance, rumored to cure the plague, make consumers more beautiful, sharpen the memory, and calm the mind, allegedly changing the world, a few thousand years later, it is time to put it out of its misery.  I just knew there had to be something shady about this shitty tasting spice.  So, the next time you consume pumpkin spice foods or spray your living room with its putrid scented mist, or even rub your genitals with its burning seasonings for sexytime, just remember you are celebrating slavery and Indigenous displacement and have blood on your hands.  

Who wants to join me to protest in the streets for big corporations like Starbucks, profiting from pumpkin spice lattes, to start putting disclaimers on their cups?  Maybe something like this:

WARNING: Over two million Indonesian natives were slaughtered so that you can enjoy this hot beverage. You are nothing more than a shameless consumer whore from hell while we are the proud purveyors of corporate genocide.  Enjoy.

Sounds good to me.  Print it Dano!

I suppose it’s probably true that if we didn’t consume food that hadn’t been touched by slavery and Indigenous displacement, we wouldn’t be eating a lot of food today. Take ice cream.  I’m sure a bunch of Eskimos met their expiry when a gaggle of white dudes raided and dismantled their igloos so we can enjoy Rocky Road Haagen Das. What about palm oil in Asia, and fish and shellfish in Africa and Asia? All cultivated by migrant and seasonal laborer’s working against their will. Even dark chocolate has a dark history and for the longest time was produced by millions of children in Ghana and the Ivory Coast using free and child slave labor.  So, the next time you are chowing down on your Coffee Crisp or Snickers, remember you have the blood and sweat of starving chillens on your hands.  Enjoy it while you can because diabetes and Satan are coming for you.

Okay, where was I? Oh yes, pumpkin spice!  The very mention of it drove me down a rabbit hole and now I’m all fired up and have my panties in a twist about food injustice and exploitation.  Maybe I should run around that corn maze in the country for a few hours to blow off some steam, followed by a nice cup of tea to relax. Oh shit, wait, there’s the forced and inhumane labor conditions on tea plantations in Kenya, Rwanda, and Bangladesh. Maybe an ice-cold bottle of Coca-Cola for refreshment instead.  Nope, millions have perished farming cocaine, one of the ingredients.  Okay, how about a glass of milk.  No can do, cows are putting a massive strain on the environment because for every pound of beef produced, 16 pounds of vegetation must be consumed. Cows massive carbon footprint is dangerous for the planet. And don’t get me started on their stinky farts, also known as bovine emissions, which account for a whopping 18% of global greenhouse gas emissions, thereby contributing an existential threat to humans known as climate change.

I give up!  I lose. Pumpkin spice wins.

This week on Survivor things got spicy when the tribes were shuffled, creating two new teams who competed for tribal immunity.  The winning tribe went to the Tiki Tiki lounge to chow down on loads of grub while the losers sat back at camp with growling stomachs.  Upon reuniting, everyone scrambled to figure out who should get the boot. After much chit chat, all roads lead to Janani and Kaleb, which when Kaleb learned, exclaimed “you can’t vote out me, I’m Canadian”. No shit, back off Merika. I don’t know about you, but I really like Kaleb.  He’s sincere, empathetic, charming, and he’s from British Columbia (everyone is high there which is why he’s so damn chill). He is playing a wicked social game, and his only fault is that he is coming off as too friendly, but he’s Canadian for God sakes and that’s who we are.  In the end every single person, including traitor Emily (clearly not wanting to look like a deserter so she joined the ranks) voted for Kaleb. But in a universe where good wins, and evil loses, he played his shot in the dark and was safe, thereby cancelling every single vote.  Then it was bye bye Janani. It was epic!  

See you next week, SYNW.

Kurt