Tough Week–Some Thoughts

It’s been a tough week in our world.  Not tough in a geopolitical sense, but in an emotional sense.  Tough weeks are things that one goes through in life, as they are a part of life.  There is no perfectly smooth, effortless glide through this world, with rainbows and Skittles for everyone.  That’s not the deal we get from Life. 

At best, life is a gift we get every morning when we get up.  How we make the most of that gift, every day, is how we define a life.  Little joy nuggets and little sorrow droplets amongst the compost of phone calls, interactions, bumping into furniture, email, lunch and the occasional coffee with the insistent, grinding background screech of what we call our society and our civilization. 

Finding those little nuggets of joy and happiness are what makes life worthwhile. 

Unfortunately, sometime the droplets of sorrow outnumber the joys and make for a tough week.  We lost four people this week, none of whom were especially close family or friends.  Two were colleagues from the workplace, one from long ago in television, one from the IT career.  Knew them both well enough to share a coffee with, knew a bit about them as people, not just anonymous faces on the floor.  Neither were ill, that I knew of, they just died.  The third was an aunt, in a far away city, whom I remember fondly, who passed at a ripe old age.  The fourth was the wife of a close colleague, who had been ill for a number of years, bravely battling and finally losing her fight with cancer. 

Where it becomes a tough week is how you feel.  There was a quote long ago that I can’t find the attribution for. 

The quote is this:  It is not for the dead that I grieve, but for the living that I bereave.

It sums up how one might approach this very touchy subject of death.  Those who have died are beyond our care now, those left behind are the ones that deserve our sympathy and what comfort we can offer them.  About all one can say to someone is that you are sorry for their loss.  There are no magical words that can help take away the sorrow for those left behind. 

I can’t make it better right now for the families and close friends of Michel, Billy, Joyce and Chantal, but I can offer them this observation. 

Those that are gone are still in your memories and your heart and it’s very sad now.  Eventually, you get up, embrace the gift you have and go hunting for the nuggets of joy.  You’ll find them.

International Women’s Day–An Ancient Reprint

Before the turn of the millennium a friend and I wrote for a website called whatthefuck.com.  Yes, the formal URL was whatthefuck.com and we were impressed that they could actually register a domain name with an obscenity as well as offer an email address of name@whatthefuck.com .  We had to write for them, so we did.  This of course was in days before Perl:  You had to code html yourself, or if you were leading edge, use an ancient plugin to Word that would generate half-assed semi-formed html as a starting point, then shine the turd from there. There was no WordPress, Facebook, Instagram, Twitter or whatever the hell is this hour’s hot app.

Our first missive was a little blotchy, but we did a few more.  By the time June 2000 rolled around we found our voice.  Imagine Kim Carnes with Joe Cocker’s larynx after she had been punched in the throat and was speaking through a corrugated metal dryer vent was our approximation.  Eventually this morphed into roaddave, which you can read about here. 

When we got up this morning, we noticed it was International Women’s Day, a United Nations sanctioned day to honour and celebrate 51% of the population.  Being that rare and delicate outlier subset of Men, (meaning white, middle-class, employed, intelligent, evolved and heterosexual) we considered writing something profound and important to mark IWD.  We struggled trying to find the right tone, the right sensitivity, the right sense of apologia and yet positive encouragement to the other half of the population, regardless of their socioeconomic and geopolitical status. 

Then we said, screw it.  It’s Sunday morning and the “Spring Ahead” time change has us mentally rowing with one oar around Lake Stupid in an under-inflated rubber dinghy with no keel.  Herewith, originally from whatthefuck.com, with Rob S, is 25 Things We Like About Women    

Since Cosmopolitan Magazine can do articles like “25 things your Man should do” we decided to return the favour. Some of them are mutually exclusive and some are either contradictory or just plain silly. We don’t care. We’ re going to catch shit from all directions on this, but we have no fear, so here we go:

25 Things We like about Women:

1: Curves. Kate Moss would be a terrible boink. If I wanted a bruised pelvis, I’d hump a garden shed. Women were designed to have a little extra padding. Nature said so. Don’t starve yourself to look like a twelve-year-old boy: Women are supposed to have curves.

2: Brains. Most women outrank men in this department anyway, but so few of them show it. Ladies, don’t be afraid to speak up when your man is trying to see into the gas tank with a lighter. We rely on you to keep us from being really, really stupid.

3: Class. There is nothing as wonderful as a woman in The Perfect Little Black Dress gliding down a flight of stairs. Hair done, makeup, tiny little purse and she wants to go out with YOU.

4: No Class. There is nothing as wonderful as a woman with a mouth on her like a trucker with Tourette’s Syndrome who could cuss the paint off your car at forty paces and she dares you to go out with HER.

5: Singing. The contented sound of a woman, humming or singing to herself while she works. Even if she couldn’t carry a tune in a box with a string handle, a woman idly singing for her own pleasure is a joy.

6: Strength. We don’t mean the ability to bench press 300 lbs., although that’s fine. We mean the ability to grab ahold of an ugly job and just plain do it. Moving 10 cubic yards of topsoil around with you in the yard, or taking the base of the ladder while you climb up to fix the burnt out light bulb in the foyer. The pale, frond-like beauty of Victorian times has no place in the year 2000.

7: Sparkle. This is so hard to define, but here we go. If your friends are envious of you because your significant other is just so damn much fun to be around, then she’s got sparkle.

8: Balls. Not in the literal sense, as that could be a bit off-putting. But if she takes no crap from anyone. An example: Her car breaks down and the mechanic tries to talk her into a complete overhaul of everything except the cigarette lighter and the antenna. If she says: “Oh, OK, whatever you say, Mister Mechanic.” she ain’t got balls.

Watch how she complains to a government department, or a counter person. If the phrase “I’ll cut off your head and shit down your neck.” comes out of her mouth, she’s got a big set and they rumble when she walks.

9: Demureness. If she blushes when you compliment her on how nice she looks (see #3) then she’s got the right amount of demureness. This is good. Making a woman blush is the first stage to winning her heart.

10: Cleavage. Be it bosomy cleavage in that blouse that is cut just right, wearing the lucky bra that hold Thelma and Louise just so, or at the top of the crack of her ass when she wears that bathing suit, cleavage is old fashioned and wonderfully erotic.

11: Common Sense. “Hon, if you have a snake tattoo on your face and more piercings that a voodoo doll, you are kinda restricting your career options, aren’t you?”

12: No Sense At All. “Let’s go skinny dipping in the neighbour’s pool at 3 am!”

13: Romantic. If she buys YOU flowers, or gives YOU an engagement ring.

14: Forgiveness. You come home at 3 a.m. from a buddy’s going away party, smelling like a brewery and have a stripper’s g-string around your neck, she simply asks if you had a good time with no heat or sense of “I’m going to kill you.” If you do this more than once a year, you should see the second paragraph of #8. Expect your life to be threatened. And you will deserve it.

15: Waxing/Shaving. Women should not have more pit hair than their man. Same goes for legs and upper lips. And Ladies, please do some weeding and pruning of your Secret Garden. A well-trimmed plot is a delight and occasionally going bald south of the equator is a saucy surprise. Going to the dentist for a shave is not enjoyable, nor is that “aaaaccccccck” sound we make when we cough up a hairball.

16: Smell. Women smell nice. There is something indefinably intoxicating about that soft tang of a woman’s natural scent on a hot day. We can’t explain it. To quote Garrison Keillor: “There’s nothing like the smell of a hot woman when some of the sweat on her, is yours.”

17: Perfume. Find a perfume that you like, use it sparingly and strategically. Drenching yourself with Eau Du Civet just makes you smell like the perfume counter at Woolworth’s, or that stripper from #14.

18: Passion. Believe in something. It doesn’t have to be the same things that your man believes in. In fact, you get some good vibrant discussions going with your man by taking a contrary view and backing it up with sense, logic and a passion about the subject.

19: Horniness. Once in a while whisper something really lewd in his ear when you drive home from a party. Ask him to drive to Lover’s Lane RIGHT NOW so you can make out like minks in heat across the hood of the car. A quick, spontaneous knee-trembler is fun for all concerned.

20: Self-Esteem. To quote Roy Blount Jr., “This is what I got, I can shake it, I can bake it. If you don’t like lookin’ at it, who asked you?” If you whine about your lack to this, or too big that, it just makes you look weak.

21: Humour. No, ladies, you don’t have to like The Three Stooges (most women don’t anyway) but if you can tell a joke, or laugh at one your man has told before, then you get points.

22: Snuggling. Men will never admit it, but most of us do like to snuggle. Be it spoon-style or butt to butt. Doesn’t matter how, just the close physical connectedness of being near is comforting.

23: Affection. So many people don’t show affection toward each other. A gentle caress, or a squeeze of the hand means a lot. Most men could be tortured for weeks by the Iraqi Secret Police and would never confess, but we will. Knowing you are on our side means the world to us.

24: Trashiness. If you go to a costume party with your man, dress up as Sister Roxanne, the Slutty Nun, who smokes, drinks and carries on like a whore in a habit. That’s fun trashiness. So are five-inch Fuck Me Pumps once in a while, or those stockings with the seam up the back and no panties.

25: Understanding. The Battle of the Sexes is over. Women won a long time ago, but the rules keep changing. Men try and keep up as best we can. We’ re not perfect and we occasionally forget the difference between the G, H, I, and J spots. Let us know and let us make up for it in our own way.